Seoul After One Week

First Class, September 1, 2010

In May 1983, Barbara and I hiked 9 miles down the Sanmaria gorge in Crete. This descent began in midmorning, and around 6pm we passed through the sideropylos
or “iron gate” at the nether end of the gorge which terminated a few hundred meters from the Mediterranean. It was literally all down hill for eight hours, and the next day previously unacknowledged muscles in our legs kept us to a crawl. We had missed the last boat back to Herakleion and spent the night in a Class “C” hotel on the beach (there was nowhere else to put a hotel) on two of the squeakiest and most narrow beds in the entirety of Crete or maybe the known world.

All this represented itself to me as I was hurtling downhill twenty-six years later to teach my first class at Sungshin University at 8:35 on my way to a 9am class, and I had not had a 9:00 since John Lindsay was mayor. I realized the decent was steeper than the gorge. I knew I was in Korea, at that moment, but I had to stretch for a reason why, and I knew there were no mountain goats watching me from infinitesimally narrow ledges as there were going down the gorge. There were spectators to my down hill race as I felt all possible swords of guilt pointing at me: omygodwhatif Iamlateformyveryfirstclass?

No mountain goats but a lot of Koreans whom I was legging it past who knew this was just a migukin weirdo sweating through his suit on a sleeveless day as he was what…shaving with my double AA celled minishaver with one hand, a trick I had become adept at driving to Lehman for forty years, a Volvic Water bottle disfiguring my suit jacket. If summer’s here can winter be far behind? The neon flashed through my mind: What if there were an icestorm in December? Could I rent a luge?

Finally I reached the bottom of the narrow street and found myself in the Valley of the Shadow of Sungshin University, and now it was up a massive incline to the building I was to teach in. As I struggled up the asphalt, concentrating on every stride, exquisitely dressed young women students floated up past me. Yes I thought, I used to be able to walk up a hill too, but no one was interested in my past, and how would the future face me with eight minutes to gather my syllabi and make it to class alive?

As you are gathering, this is a long story, with ups and downs. Wringing wet I arrived in my classroom with two minutes to spare. At least I hadn’t started out on the wrong foot temporally. Sam Han, Lehman’s Institutional Technology Fellow, had hipped me to a Korean idiom: Sugo hasaeyo! “ Work hard!” Et etiam tu!

Gary

PS: There is a great article in this past Saturday’s NYTimes about a Korean woman who took her driving test 949 times before she passed. Although I am a neophyte here, my sense is that her story really penetrates into the layers of everyday life and how it’s lived. Read it: it’s online of course; check under Profile.
Gary