Last week an old friend asked me, “What’s going on over there? You’ve stopped writing.” Well, that’s both true and untrue. I’ll lay it out for you straight. I have no talent for fiction. Still, let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. This Winter saw a lot of boredom in [...]
It’s hard to write about Hamdeok. Hamdeok is heaven. How do you describe heaven? It was more like hell at first. I guess that’s what Korea is to me, hell become heaven. In Shelby County, going East on interstate 40, there is an underpass just before Exit 20. The bridge above is, in my mind [...]
There was only one day left in the Son Family Vacation. Son Family, that’s what Tanner, Dahee, and I call ourselves. Every good Migook (American) needs a Korean name. Upon hearing that Tanner had one, Teho, I insisted. Dahee named me Eun-Ho. It means “Silver Lake.” Teho means “Big Tiger.” Dahee chose that one for [...]
After Yonggeunsa we ate samgyetang for lunch. Samgyetang is a whole chicken stuffed with rice and one ginseng root in a pot of soup. We eagerly took the chicken apart, Dahee and I helping Tanner, whose right arm was still in a cast. He had broken it in a feat of raw and powerful aggression [...]
Saturday morning we awoke to join the rest of the weekender tourists in the two-hour ticket line at the Haeundae Megabox. Tickets had been available online for months, but for whatever reason the Busan trip wasn’t real to me until we took off. I hadn’t even booked a bed, and it was after touching down [...]
On Thursday, October 8th, I departed from my normal after-work routine of heading into Jejusi for drinks. Instead I changed clothes, strapped on the bag I had packed two days before, and boarded a plane for the Pusan International Film Festival. I was alone. Tanner and Dahee, two close friends, were set to arrive the [...]
Jongdal is the town. Chodo means “Elementary.” Hakyeo means “school.” Every weekday between 11:45 and 12:10 I step off the outskirts bus, the one that circles the entire island. I say “Komapsimnida” to the driver, walk past this blue arrow, and eat lunch with the teachers and children of Jongdal. The sounds of the lunchroom [...]
Once more it has been quite some time since my last post, but with reason. Not long after the hospitalization, civil trials, rock shows, and cross-country journeys, I became a statistic of the economic downturn. I was laid off, and fewer things more fortunate have occurred in my young life. Luck has been with me. [...]
