Thursdays are days for self-loathing. Well, at least in the afternoon and thereafter. The morning at Mrs. Chung’s was actually pretty nice and I felt great until reaching class at Ewha. It’s been several weeks since I practiced serving tea with Mrs. Chung. This time when I arrived, there were repairmen working on a problem with the heating in her house. They were noisy and Mrs. Chung’s attention was always divided between them and me.

I was fascinated by the leak in her heating system. Korean homes are heated by hot water circulating through pipes which are laid into the floor, called ondol in Korean. Great invention. I love the heat in our apartment because it’s so efficient and feels nice and toasty on bare feet. Apparently one of Mrs. Chung’s downstairs neighbors has been complaining to her about water dripping into her apartment. The neighbor is certain the problem is in the ondol system. By the time I arrived, the repairmen had pulled away the top layer of linoleum and had hammered away at Mrs. Chung’s concrete floor shattering it into bits, which sat like a gravel pile in the middle of one of her bedrooms. Should concrete crumble so easily? I was surprised that the pipes were as deep as 6 inches below the surface and completely inaccessible except by pick or jackhammer. I’d always imagined them just beneath the surface, at maybe one inch, and thought that if the linoleum were peeled back the pipes would be twisting there naked and within reach. I can’t believe apartments were built whose heating systems were buried within 6 inches of concrete. The men couldn’t find the leak, so they hammered away at more and more concrete seeking it out; the hole got bigger and bigger, resembling construction work seen on the streets. In the end, I think they never did find it, but suggested it was some other kind of problem in someone else’s apartment. They pushed the rubble back into the hole. I wondered if they were going to leave it that way and if Mrs. Chung was always going to have a divot in her floor, but then they brought in a bucket of mixed concrete which they slapped into the hole and smoothed like a new sidewalk. These men were lucky because all the while they were working, Mrs. Chung fed them the same things she was feeding me.

She was happy to see me and fed me well despite the distraction. I was also happy to see her, as I have missed the comfort of being in her home. I ran through the ceremony only twice because Mrs. Chung was more interested in drinking tea and chatting. We first sipped bowls of mal’cha, then regular green tea made from leaves, and then poi’cha (pronounced "bowee cha") from China. It all filtered through me quickly, and I was hurting by the time I finally got to Ewha.

I asked to buy some green tea leaves from her to give as gifts to folks back home. I’ve gotten into buying them all self-contained tea cups that have an infusor and lid for drinking loose leaf tea. I thought it would be nice for them to also have quality green tea from the source. So I asked, she gave me the bags, and then I said, "How much?" to which she replied, "Sixty-five thousand won" Oh god. I didn’t even know if I had that much on me, but I did - just barely. That’s $45 for two small - I mean, small - packages of green tea leaves. Guess what folks, nobody’s getting this stuff for a gift. The tea leaves are very fine and the brew is smooth and mild. Very fine tea indeed. She told me that once finished brewing, the leaves should be removed from the tea pot and eaten with sesame seeds and salt. (I was like, yeah, for the cost these things can’t just be thrown away afterward - gotta use’em up.) We ate a few pinches and they were quite good.

I asked her if she could give me a Korean name. Awhile ago she told me how she had gotten a Korean name for the adopted son of a friend of hers in the States. Foreigners who stay in Korea for extended periods often get a Korean name and I thought it would be nice to have one also. Then I could get a tojang (more familiar as a Chinese chop) with my name. She took my birthdate and birthtime, and said she would consult her friend who chooses names for people. She says it’s important to choose the right name because it affects the personality of the person to whom it is given. I asked her to find out if it costs money because I don’t want to pay a lot for a name. Ha!

I left her house feeling great. I had two packages of tea held safely in a wooden box, a package of special kim (seaweed, known as nori in Japanese - the stuff used to wrap California rolls), a bottle of special spring water and a belly full of tea. She is just like a mom to me.

Tried a new bus to Ewha, which was speedy and more convenient than the one I usually take. Unfortunately, today was my last class there on Thursdays and I won’t need to take that route anymore. Class itself was mildly interesting. The lecturer was one of the few women lawyers in Korea whose most interesting information was the details of her personal experiences being a token women in the corporate structure of one of the most sexist societies in the world.

The self-loathing began when I started grabbing people for questioning about their research in Korea. I’m scrambling as I’ve discovered most of these people are leaving soon and I need to tap them for as much as they’ll give me. The problem is that once I say why I want to know, they all shift into teacher mode and talk to me like I have no experience. And man, it’s really hard for me to be on the receiving end of such condescension. I can accept it from people who’ve I’ve already determined to be way above me, but not from people whom I consider only slightly above and who, in other areas are really right there at the same level with me. Like, no one I’ve talked to has experience in psychological research, yet they all feel compelled to fill me in on what it’s like when they find out my degree is in psychology. They don’t know who I’ve worked for or even what I completed as an undergrad. I kept wanting to say, "I know... I know... I know...." But, you know, now is not the time to let my pride swell and ruin things; I need to suck up, be humble, and just take whatever they give me. They don’t have to help me at all, and the fact that they are even taking the time to meet with me is generous.

Besides, I am confused about how to do other types of research. I’m finding I really need to read more articles in Anthropology and Sociology because I get really tripped up in the micro-ness of psychology and feel like anything more macro isn’t even valid. I’ve been brainwashed.

I need something to study.

I have some ideas, but I’m having trouble deciding if the work would be useful somehow. I can always find ways in which they are not. The stuff I’d really like to undertake would cost a lot money and be logistically very complex. That’s totally beyond me, so I’m just shoving those away somewhere else - to the back burner maybe. There’s the time factor: less than a year left, but that’s not so bad as far as data collection. Mostly it’s a problem of funding. Then there’s language and how to overcome that to learn background info and collect data. Aye.

But the worst - the absolute worst - is berating myself for not starting earlier. Why didn’t I jump on the gun in that first year? Why do I always wait until the last minute? It’s almost too late now. What an idiot I have been. That’s what I keep repeating to myself. It hurts every time I think it.

I try to counter it by remembering what I learned once in counseling training to help the helper keep from judging the helpees: People do the best they can under the circumstances. I think that’s true for me. This tour has been so hard. I can’t believe how miserable I’ve been, how sad I am at spending three years here. Though I can see how living in Asia has encouraged amazing growth and provided me with unbelievably broader knowledge of global experience, I still think if I had it to do over I wouldn’t have come. How’s that? I think many people would think I’m nuts to say it. I picture my uncle Bob giving me that look like "Why don’t you just do this?" Well, one big answer is that I’m 26 and I want to get started on my career. For people who are older, they’ve done that and now they’re ready to wander off to the far reaches of the planet. Young people do that too - I know many people who just travel. But I don’t usually meet people my age who’ve spent 3 years in a place without working toward a future career. One year, maybe, but three?

I watched Farewell My Concubine on the movie channel. It was in Chinese of course, with Korean subtitles. I’ve seen it before but through the eyes of someone to whom Asia was completely foreign. There was much then I didn’t understand. Now, though I couldn’t understand the dialogue - except for one or two words of Chinese and a few I read in Korean - the Confucian things, the material symbols of culture, are all very, very familiar. It’s amazing how similar China, Japan, and Korea can be. I am glad for that knowledge. Also, recently, I’ve been reading a lot about the Chinese revolution spanning the first half of this century, and also the autobiography of the last emperor. This basis let me follow the timeline easily, but also allowed me to question the validity of the movie making. That’s really powerful.

Sad, sad movie.