Two new bus routes and tea class today. Spent the better part of the day at Mrs. Chung’s house drinking green tea and eating Korean snacks. We ran through the first part of the ceremony 4 or 5 times, but the rest of the hours were spent talking and drinking and eating. I am so lucky to be learning this from her! She’s been doing the ceremony for over 20 years, she has more tea sets and accouterments than she can count, and she just knows so much about tea. Tea is a way of life for her; and tea, she teaches, is a way to the soul. I can’t help but draw a comparison to The Karate Kid - I know it’s a terribly trite example (and a bad movie) - because, like in the movie, I’m not just learning skill but spiritual rite.

But the best part I think is her. Some people, they carry history with them more than the future; she is one of those. Mrs. Chung was telling me that she has tried to learn to use the computer, but can’t. "I just stay here and do the tea ceremony, keep myself busy that way." She said that her mother’s life was so hard after the war and now that she is the same age her mother was then, she appreciates all the comfort she has. The younger generation doesn’t know - they have forgotten - and so they want to spend and spend, but she doesn’t need the status that’s dangled to us like carrots from a stick by a consumer capitalist machine; she’s content with the comfort her mother’s generation struggled to secure for their children.

Her son, who is away at military school, called and said he wanted to come home soon. She said he wanted to drink tea with her.

I like being in her sparsely decorated home. So quintessentially modern Korean, except her home is also filled with the ceramics of tea. She showed me two teapots she owns that are one of a kind. The artist who crafted them borrowed them from her when he showed his work on exhibition. I was impressed with the relationships she’s cultivated with potters and tea growers. Her tea comes from Chollanam-do, where we saw the bushes growing in long rows on the hillsides. They ship it to her specially. Additionally, she teaches etiquette to rich people. Seems that even the most privileged in this society are not familiar with the proper etiquette and that even governors, she said, will grab a tea bowl with one hand and slurp away. She cringed when she told me that and then showed me an example. We both laughed at how well she can impersonate a slovenly Korean man. It was hilarious.

She says I’m doing well. I hope so. I remember a lot more this time and am just working on getting the steps down so I can start smoothing the edges. She invited me to assist her when she demonstrates the ceremony for the new US Ambassador’s wife and her friends. She mentioned it will take place at a luncheon in a town called Kwangju in Kyonggi Province (same province as Seoul), where there is a famous ceramics artisan whose wares the "ladies" will be admiring. Me too, I guess. I hope I can go.

All of this is so much more than just making a cup of tea and drinking it. The ritual makes the drinking a more active process, combining an awareness and cultivation of social relationships with spirituality of the self and nature. It’s the latter aspect that attracts me the most. Etiquette and social graces are interesting avenues to understanding the culture, to appreciating it, but they can have little or no meaning above just being rules for the sake of rules: like in the US where it is thought impolite to eat with utensils in both hands. Instead, it is the connection established between individuals through the acts of serving and receiving, and that tea must be brewed in a specific manner, which takes time, in order to appreciate its fullest essence; that is what touches me.

I feel like I live in a modern world without meaning as constructed and maintained by ritual. While I dislike arbitrary restrictions like "manners", I do appreciate and crave that my actions have not only purpose but significance. Seems like modern life places all of its emphases on the end, disregarding the means and thereby failing to see the degree to which the means are an end in itself.

After leaving Mrs. Chung’s home and later on the trail, all I could see were beautiful people. Thousands of examples of the best humanity can be: a young woman carrying her baby; old ladies chatting and laughing; a guy who looked to be 80 exercising with headphones on; young boys jumping and scrambling around a basketball hoop; that old, old guy sitting out in front of his apartment building, waving and smiling at me as I walked by. I couldn’t help but smile too - at every one. In the cool sunshine, they all occupied this space with me.

Tonight, walking west toward home, the orange sun hung heavy over the horizon, silhouetting all those skyscrapers rising higher and higher.