A Brief Introduction to Lexington, Virginia--some of which is actually true . . .

Back in 2000 when Ellen and I found out she was pregnant, we had a conversation about what we were going to do.  At the time, we were living approximately 105 miles apart, with Ellen in Charlottesville and me in Roanoke.  It was a very short discussion:

“Do you want to give up your job?”

“No.  Do you?”

“No.”

The only option, then, was to choose a spot halfway between the two locations and begin a double commute.  The only question was, where?

Again the conversation was short:

“Do you want to live in the country?”

“No.  Do you?”

That option gone, the only reasonable location was Lexington, Virginia, an historic town more-or-less equidistance from Charlottesville and Roanoke.  Once or twice when we were living apart, we’d make a date on a week night and meet in Lexington for dinner, trying out different restaurants, getting a feel for the town.  We weren’t impressed.  The place was small.  Very small.  Like, drive through end to end in six minutes small.  Like, notice a car from out of town because it stands out small.  And the restaurants weren’t that good:  there was the fancy place in town, where the waiters stood in their white shirts, hands behind their backs over white linen table clothes.  Only the food was just . . . okay.  Then there was the diner on the edge of town.  Even the salad was bad.  And I don’t mean kind of bad; I mean, we can’t eat this, we need to leave and go to Hardee’s bad. 

But it was either Lexington or someplace where your rental home came with a John Deere tractor and a gun rack in the dining room, at least one of which I refuse to live with (hint:  JD tractors are made in Iowa, home of my undergraduate alma mater and one of my favorite states ever).  So Lexington it was. 

It didn’t help that Ellen is a big city person.  Prior to living in Charlottesville, which was a necessity given her job, she’d spent several years in New York City, on the busy west side, taking the subway to work, doing carry out Chinese every third night, clubbing with Boy George and the former members of Oasis, waking up at noon in the dingy alley way behind a meat cutter, head full of cotton and a tattoo reading “Jesus was my meth dealer” bleeding on her forearm. 

Okay, not really, but you get the point:  whereas I’d grown up in a small town in Wisconsin visiting my grandparents in an even smaller town (think, drive from end to end in sixty seconds) that I absolutely loved, Ellen moved from one large metropolitan area to another, including Portland Oregon, L.A., Oxford, England, Minneapolis, and New York City.  Lexington for me was a step up.  Lexington for Ellen was a . . . well, nightmare is a strong word, so let’s just say that it wasn’t her idea of paradise. 

But such was life.  She was pregnant, neither of us was quitting our jobs, and both of us were afraid of cows.  So Lexington it was.

We weren’t willing to commit completely, of course, so we kept our house in Roanoke, renting it to a good friend with a cleanliness fetish, at the same time that we shopped for a nice apartment in Lexington.  We eventually found one on the edge of town and moved in the August before Will was born.  As is usually the case in situations where none of the persons moving actually wants to move and one of the persons moving is five months pregnant, the move was stressful and tiring.  Finally, though, we got the house more or less in order, took the dog out to go to the bathroom, locked all the doors, and crawled into bed. 

In order to make sense of this next bit, it helps to know that we have a king size bed.  And when I say “a bed” what I actually mean is “a yacht that two people sleep on”—it’s just that big.  These days, all five of us can crawl into that thing and drift into la-la land without touching each other.  Back then, when it was just Ellen and I, we could go for days in that bed without even knowing there was someone else on the other side. 

This is important for you to know, because not long after we turned out the lights that night, exhausted and a little depressed from the day’s move, I felt the bed begin to shake.  Not mightily mind you—no earthquake or anything like that—but a shaking nonetheless, just the light flutter of a body trembling on the other side of our runway-sized mattress. 

“Hey,” I said into the darkness.  I considered sending up a flare, but decided against it—no point in losing our deposit on the first night. 

The quavering continued. 

“Hey,” I said again.  I reached a hand into the darkness, groping until I found Ellen’s shoulder.  It was shaking.  Fiercely.  Poor thing I thought, and scooted across the sheets.  Must be the hormones, I thought, the move, all this change, everything. 

“Hey,” I said, again, holding Ellen close in my arms.  Her shoulders rattled against me.  “Shh . . .” I said.  “It’ll be okay.  Seriously.”

The shaking deepened and then she burst out laughing.  “I swear—“ she gasped, “I swear—.”  She had to take a deep breath.  I pulled back a little, trying to figure out what was going on. 

“I swear,” she said, laughing so hard she could hardly breathe.  “I swear I just heard a cow moo.”

That was in 2000.  Now, twelve years later, we still live in Lexington.  A couple times while we were in Hong Kong this or that administrator would probe gently, trying to see if we were interested in making our stay there more of a long-term thing (this isn’t that surprising:  the universities there are growing rapidly and desperate for faculty), but we never took the bait.  And since we’ve been back, we’ve talked a lot:  what sort of job offer or location or opportunity would lead us to pack up and move away forever?   What would cause us to leave Lexington? 

The answer:  very little.  Excepting an offer from the Sorbonne (not bleedin’ likely), or someplace renowned for its food—say, Tuscany or Toledo—chances are we’ll die in Lexington and get buried in our backyard, which sounds kind of creepy until you know that our land abuts a cemetery—and likely sounds creepy even then.

So what is this magical place that snares would be transients?  What is this Shangri-la that turns us all into lotus eaters—and worse, that causes us literary types to mix their metaphors? 

Sit back, and I’ll tell you:

Lexington, Virginia, population 7,000, more or less, is the county seat of Rockbridge County, population 36,000, more or less.  The county goes back approximately 200 years, and though wikipedia will tell you it was founded to shorten travel distances to the nearest courthouse, the truth is the county was created after a group of pissed off white settlers killed an Indian chief they believed was stealing their cattle and then selling it back to them.  Afraid that the people in distant Richmond would look upon this sort of wholesale slaughter of the natives as a criminal act of murder—probably because it was—the Rockbridge area residents very quickly established their own county, built their own courthouse, held their own trial and—surprise!—found themselves innocent of all charges. 

Which is a metaphor for something, I’m sure, likely involving genital herpes.  

Lexington itself was first settled in 1778 and named after Lexington, Mass. following the revolutionary war battle.  The town finally became incorporated in 1841 and grew steadily, feeding off of the timber industry, the advent of the railroad, and its proximity to the Great Wagon Road, which ran the length of the Shenandoah Valley, in which Lexington is located. 

Several things make Lexington distinctive:  first and foremost, it’s home to two nationally recognized colleges, Washington and Lee University and the Virginia Military Institute.  For better or for worse, these two schools shape the city:  go downtown on any weekend night and you’re bound to run into VMI cadets in their dress whites; forget to make a reservation for your favorite restaurant in early November and you’re liable to discover that every seating has been taken up by students being wined and dined on parents weekend.  Student rentals dot most neighborhoods, and real estate prices are inflated by the influx of faculty and artificially low mortgage rates sponsored by colleges desperate to keep Harvard-educated professors in a town the size of a moderately cramped parking garage. 

Not that I’m bitter or anything. 

The other thing that’s distinctive about LexVegas is that it’s purrty.  I’m not saying it this to make fun of southern accents—some of my best friends are southerners, and so are my kids—but because it’s just the appropriate way to say it:  Lexington isn’t pretty, it’s purrty, warm and soft and shockingly green, just like, um . . . your, uh . . . green cat. 

Anyway.

But damn, it is:  pretty that is, or purrty, or whatever.  Unlike Salem, fifty miles down the road and named after another Massachusetts town albeit one known less for a courageous battle than for burning human beings alive, Lexington has managed to keep much of its olde towne charme.  Most of the downtown sidewalks are glazed brick and a lot of the buildings have been standing since the late nineteenth century.  Away from downtown you’ll find tree-lined streets full of antiquated wood-framed houses, hardly a brick ranch or McMansion in sight.  It’s the kind of town where kids walk to school with their friends, where on the 4^th of July they have a bicycle parade down Main St. full of boys and girls on streamer-covered bikes, the sort of place where Sons of the Confederacy march proudly any damn day they want, waving that symbol of lost history, the stars and bars of the confederate battle flag . . .

Uh . . .

Forget I mentioned that . . .

Actually, that’s not true:  as of last October, the SoC—just one letter away from . . . again, forget I mentioned it—the SoC is no longer allowed to fly their flags from the town’s poles to commemorate the South’s efforts in “War of Northern Aggression,” a phrase that is not used ironically (by some—indeed, by many) down here.

Which relates, I suppose, to two rather more complicated components of life in the Lex:  first, it is very much a place that is steeped in confederate history.  It is, after all, Washington and Lee University, and no matter how you slice it, that last bit isn’t named after someone by the first name of Peggy.  Indeed, good old Bobby Lee is actually buried in Lexington, on the W&L campus, in the Lee Chapel.  Which is a chapel.  You know.  A sort of religious building?  Where you worship God?  Or gods, as it turns out.  And if you think I’m kidding, then feel free to glance in and see what they have where the alter should be. 

Hint:  it looks an awful lot like a confederate general carved in marble . . .

In addition, Thomas Jonathan Jackson—he of Stonewall fame—is also buried in Lexington, or at least most of him is as I’m not sure what they did with the arm that his—ahem—own men shot off.  Old Stonewall is actually buried in my backyard—or in the cemetery next to my property at least.  Indeed, I can almost see his statue—which portrays him with both arms standing tall and facing to the (surprise!) south—from my desk as I write these very words.  Stroll by his monument on any given day and you’ll notice a half-dozen lemons strewed about the grass:  among TJ’s many quirks was his belief that sucking lemons made a man stronger.  Pity it didn’t make him glow in the dark, because maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten shot.  By his own men, have I mentioned that? 

Indeed, the southern history here runs deep enough that when they were considering shutting down the confederate museum in Richmond, Lexington was mentioned as a possible alternative site.  That the museum wasn’t actually moved here perhaps points to the second complicating factor that needs to be mentioned when we discuss Lexington:  namely, that the town itself isn’t really representative of the deep south—or even the moderately shallow south. 

Allow me to explain by telling yet another one of my short but stupid stories:  a little over a year ago I was invited to a party where I didn’t know a lot of people.  Generally in situations like this I drink too much and make a pass at my hostess, leaving only when the police show up and chase me through the woods.  This particular evening, though, I was well behaved (my hostess was a former karate instructor) and more or less sober.   At one point I was introduced to a guy in his late forties with long, graying hair, workman’s hands, a loud laugh that was infectious.  When he asked me what I did, I told him I was a professor but that I was currently on sabbatical writing a book.  He gave that laugh of his and said, “Rockbridge County:  where half the people have written a book and the other half have never read one.”

It was a harsh comment—funny as hell, but harsh.  And like most funny as hell but harsh jokes, it had more than a bit of truth in it.  In this case, I think, it made an exaggerated claim that pointed to a real fact:  half the county—mainly, the people who live in Lexington, are over-educated geeks like yours truly; the other half (who actually read plenty of books) are . . . well:  not. 

On some levels this is a political thing:  every other year, our congressional district regularly elects a carpet-bagging mind/soul vacuum, largely because the Republican county wipes out the Democratic city. 

And as is the case generally in the US these days, the political is social:  not only do the town and county vote in very different ways, they live very different lives—or at least generally.  The county embraces rural life, is not afraid of guns, and tends to engage in the life of the mind without getting obsessed about it.  The city folk generally pride themselves on being cosmopolitan (e.g., being able to distinguish good Thai food from bad, good single malt scotch from cheap), tend to keep even water guns away from their kids, and argue strongly that there’s nothing wrong with being intellectual, that, indeed, the country would be a much better place if people would start to pay attention to what they’re thinking and why they’re thinking it and whether or not what they’re thinking is actually true. 

But again, I need to say this:  generally.  Because the fact of the matter is that:  a) the minute I make generalizations like this, I start to think of exceptions; and b) I generally like to be honest about the complexities of these things, particularly when: a) it’s a small town and I’m easy to find; and b) the people I might offend likely have guns. 

But more, I think, I really don’t have any interest in arguing that a town full of wealthy folks, academics, and wealthy academics is necessarily better than folks who know how to fix a tractor—or the other way around.  Rather, the point I’m trying to make, finally—FINALLY!—is that Lexington, Virginia doesn’t fit the stereotypes—accurate and inaccurate—of south central Virginia.  It’s its own place, its own weird place, full of anomalies. 

And that’s why we like it. 

And that’s why I’m going to write about it from now on.

And that, at least, is the truth. 

My Own Private Kitchen

A little travel/food piece I wrote for Roads and Kingdoms, all about the best private kitchen in Hong Kong.

Feel free to read about it here!

What Remains

In less than a week, it’ll be almost two years since we returned to the States.  A lot has happened in that time:  lost teeth, piano lessons, graduations from preschool and fifth grade, karate, piano recitals, some pretty major home renovations.  At times it’s easy to forget that there ever was a Hong Kong year, we’re so buried in the heres-and-nows of Virginia.   Which means at times it’s easy to think that none of it mattered, that we shouldn’t even have bothered. 

But still . . .

Here’s a short list of what, two years on, remains from that year:

1) There are, of course, the objects:  the Hong Kong flags hanging in the kids’ rooms, the tin wind-up toys Jamie got for his birthday when we were in Vietnam.  There’s the red salad bowl made of finely-grained wood, the fancy brushed steel flashdrive I received as a party favor at one of the conferences I attended.  I still have my nice suit from the tailor down in Central, and Ellen has two or three skirts and a few shirts from Hoi An.  Over our mantel is a fancy porcelain carving of gold fish swimming around a lotus plant, and opposite it hang a pair of paintings from Hanoi and Xi’an, respectively.  We also have a neatly embroidered baby carrier over one bookshelf, not too far from a trio of fantastical paintings from Bali showing brightly colored dancing beasts and magical women. 

I’m pleased to note that my beautiful, six-million dollar hand sewn rug from Beijing is still beautiful, and worth every damn penny, thank you very much.  This bears mention, because just after I bought it I was one of the guys on the trip—a Canadian whose family had just joined for the day—was teasing me about spending so much money.

“What you should do,” he said, “is buy a stop watch.  Then when you get home you can time yourself whenever you stop and look at the rug.  That way you’ll know how much all of this cost you per minute.”

Jerk.

For what it’s worth, not a day goes by—okay, not a week goes by . . . okay, not a month goes by where I don’t pause, look at that rug, and say, “Dang.  That’s purty.”

As all of this probably makes clear, we bought a lot of souvenirs when we were in Asia.  Enough to decorate the entire house, actually, so that, stepping into our living room before actually meeting us, you’d assume “Hanstedt” was some sort of weird name from an obscure ethnic group in China. 

Seriously, we’ve pretty much decided we can never live abroad again simply because we don’t have any rooms left to decorate.  That, or we’ll just have to buy a second house next time we return to the States. 

That said, the objects we actually notice—the ones that make us pause for just a millisecond, our hearts suddenly warmer than they were before—aren’t necessarily the expensive ones, or even the big ones:  there’s the silk embroidery of a lotus flower on the wall by the front door, for instance, almost an afterthought when we were in a small shop in Vietnam, but now something that I’ll pause and . . . just look at for maybe half a minute every other day or so.  Or the small wooden plates next to the cookbooks, thrown in with the aforementioned salad bowl and a half-dozen other things we got in a shop near our hotel.   They’re beautiful—one green, one red, one natural wood color, the grain showing in all of them—and they catch my eye almost every day when I walk into the kitchen. 

Or when Lucy comes down in the morning for breakfast, and she’s wearing her blue and white sport uniform from the international school.  Mornings where that happens, both Ellen and I will pause, watching her make her way to the table.  Sometimes we’ll look at each other and grin, sometimes we won’t, just watching her, both of us smiling, the little red Norwegian flag flashing on her shorts—and we’ll know it was all real. 

2)  Then there are the memories. 

Some of them are prompted:  the first Christmas we were home, for instance, we made photo albums for each of the kids.  For Will and Lucy, this meant culling their nearly 5,000 pictures (each) down to 400 or so that we put in separate albums, customizing each one to reflect the experiences of the child, what they valued, what they’d want to remember.  For Jamie this meant picking at random from Ellen’s thousands of pics, trying to choose images that would somehow capture key moments for a little guy who was barely half-way through his third year when we returned.

We gave the albums to them on Christmas eve, halfway through the present opening.  For twenty minutes everything stopped.  All three heads were bowed, all three pairs of hands were flipping the pages, flipping, flipping, scanning from side to side, taking it all in. 

“Look!  Will!  Remember?” and then Lucy would point to picture of the bird market and tell a story.

“Hey, look!  Remember?” and then Will would hold the book up so we could all see a picture of the kitten we found in a park in Shanghai. 

“Look!  Remember?” Jamie would then holler, and hold up a picture of a—what was that?  A cat turd?  A dead bird?  Hard to tell.  Not really even sure that he knows . . .

But a lot of the memories are unprompted.  We’ll be sitting at the table eating dinner, and out of the blue Lucy will say, “Remember the time Jamie shook his fist at a monk?”  And we’ll burst out laughing.  Then Will will say, “Remember when he ate his dinner so fast that he threw up?”  And we’ll laugh again.  Then Ellen or I will say, “Remember how Eldon use to love playing with Jamie, how he would come over and shake his fists at him and Jamie would shake his back and the two of them would keep doing it until they burst out laughing?”  And we’ll laugh again, even louder.  And it will go on like that for ten minutes maybe twenty, sometimes half an hour:  “Remember?’  “Remember?”  “Remember?” 

3)   And then there’s something else, something that’s harder to explain: 

I see it when Will and Lucy come home from school, and I find them in Will’s bedroom, their heads together, lost in some game they’ve made up, involving marbles, beads, or three kinds of glue and miniature Leggos.   

And I see it sometimes on Saturday mornings, when Jamie is fussing about some thing or another and later I’ll notice that he’s turned quiet, and discover him in his room, being read to by his older brother.

And I see it on nights when Ellen is gone or out with her friends, and instead of cuddling with all of the kids separately, I’ll stretch out on the big bed in our room and the four of us will lay there, telling stories about the day, about school, about burping and farting, and our friend Lilianna who talks in funny voices.   

And I’ll see it sometimes when we go on a trip, a short trip to Charlottesville, maybe, and I’ll give them a heads-up when it’s five minutes until departure, then we’ll all climb in the car, no fussing, no complaining, just a sense of, “This is who we are.  This is what we do.”

I’m not sure how to describe it, really.  But it’s very real.  It’s like a river that’s cleared, all the dirt and debris settling to the bottom, firming down into sediment that will be solid for years to come, leaving everything above clean and pure.  It’s as though we’re utterly content with ourselves, with who we are as a family.  And with our place in the world. 

That’s what it’s like.  That’s what remains. 

  

On Korea, Fear, and Harry Chapin

It’s easy to forget that traveling is kind of scary.  When we’re sitting at home, booking those tickets, we’re thinking about the dazzling quality of the sun in those foreign places, the exotic foods, the colorful markets, the peculiar interactions with locals that we’ll collect and bring home to narrate over the dinner table at parties so we can make our friends jealous. 

What’s absent from these visions is what it’s like to finally get through immigration, to gather your bags, and to step out into the airport concourse of a country we’ve never been to before, where we barely know the language, where the customs may be nearly impossible to comprehend, and where even the very air has not just a different smell but a different quality to it—to get through all of this, experience all of this, and then think “Now what?”

Part of the reason I like traveling with Ellen is that she’s very good at those first moments, very good at relishing the strangeness and moving us forward.  When I’m on my own though, particularly after I’ve had a long flight—and let’s face it:  from the States, everything is a long flight—I generally feel mildly nauseous and slightly feverish, with a weird granular taste in my mouth. 

Case in point:  I flew into Korea the other day (and boy are my arms—oh, never mind), never having been there before.  This sounds stupid, I know, but I was surprised by how different it was.  I anticipated a Hong Kong kind of place—basically clean, basically modern, only with more open spaces and more fermented cabbage.  After all, Korea is Asia’s “success story,” the little country that could, with a solid economy, an educated work force, and all the modern amenities.  And all my friends had told me what a great place it was:  “It’s like Toledo,” one of the other Fulbrighters said, “only with more Asians.  And, you know:  fermented cabbage.”

What I saw, though, on the bus-ride in from the airport looked more like Vietnam than post-industrial Hong Kong:  a dusty gray sky, semi-dilapidated houses, stooped-over women working in rice paddies.  

It was late when I arrived, so that first evening I ventured only a stone’s throw from hotel, strolling down a brightly lit alley to one of those little restaurants where you grill your meat at the table under an industrial-strength ventilator hose, then wrap it in a lettuce leaf with some coleslaw type stuff and fermented cabbage, eating it sideways like a sloppy but tasty Korean taco.  Which sounds great.  And it was, except for the fact that this was clearly meant to be a social activity.  Not only was my table round and large enough to seat a small baseball team, it was surrounded by other tables, all of them filled with laughing families and gangs of friends.  Needless to say, I was tired and dirty and a little depressed and feeling sorry for myself, so I compensated by eating my way through half of a cabbage-stuffed cow and the hind quarters of a barbequed pig.

I had the next day free.  Instead of racing out the door though, a la Ellen, I slept in late, ate breakfast, and found myself lingering in my hotel room.  I checked my e-mail, tried to negotiate some end-of-year financial complications with the Roanoke Review, posted something meaningless on Face Book, browsed the pages of a few friends.  I looked up a couple key phrases in Korean—hello, thank you, how much?, and please get your fermented cabbage out of my air space—then checked my e-mail again, just in case someone had written me something from the United States in the middle of the night in the last three minutes.  Nothing.  I packed my backpack, counted my cash, checked my e-mail.  Sighed.  Looked around the room, trying to find something else that needed to be done.  When nothing presented itself, I checked my e-mail, went to the bathroom, checked my e-mail and dragged myself out the door, heading toward the nearest subway line.

It didn’t help that the train smelled vaguely farty (this happens, I’m sure, in a country that prides itself on fermented cabbage).  I sighed, pushed some kid out of a seat, and settled in the next few stops.   Emerging into the station, I was confronted with twelve different options for possible exits.  I glanced at my map.  I wanted the Namara--something  market.  That’s not the actual name of the market, of course.  It has more letters and no dashes at the end, but the fact of the matter is every time I looked down at the map, then glanced up at the directions board, I promptly forgot the second two-thirds of the word.  Korean is weird, I decided, more like German or Russian, with all those letters and vowels:  I mean, Kamsamnida?  What kind of language requires half a sentence just to say thank you?  I longed for Hong Kong and Cantonese, and those two character-, two-syllable phrases:  Cho san!  Ngoi Sai!

I gave up.   Even with all the letters, I couldn’t find Namara—something market anywhere.  Sighing, I trudged up to street level and spent fifteen minutes poking attractive women with my finger, trying to get them to take pity on me and point me in the direction of the market, or at the very least to take me home and feed me fermented cabbage. 

When that didn’t work, I stopped a grubby old man selling what looked like frozen turkeys out of the trunk of his car, who immediately pointed me in the right direction.  “Walk that way,” he said, nodding toward a tall building with a seven-story portrait of Marilyn Monroe on the side.  “Behind that.” 

I walked.  It was hot, and it was noisy, and it was dusty.  And I wasn’t even sure why I was going to the market.  I’d been to Asian markets before, of course, plenty of them, and it wasn’t like this one was going to be any different.   Shouldn’t I be doing something more meaningful, like going to a museum, or visiting a Unesco site, or eating fermented cabbage?  Certainly, that’s what Ellen would have done, especially if she only had one day in a foreign country.  Of course, Ellen also would have researched the country before she flew there, buying a book or two and a map, and spending at least an evening on the internet trying to get a feel for things.  Me?  I’d spent every evening the week before stuffing my face at various Hong Kong restaurants and drinking beers with Joe.  Now that’s what I call traveling.

Once in the market, I felt a little better.  It was Asia in all its glorious chaos:  stalls filled with soccer jerseys and nonsensical t-shirts—Korea Legend Start Here! 2010—tables covered with brass trinkets and nylon socks.  At one point I saw a woman in a long dress trying on underwear—pulling them up under her skirt, then peeling them back down again before trying on another pair.  There was a vendor frying something doughy looking in a vat of sputtering oil—fermented cabbage donuts?—and a quiet looking lady selling long braids of bread dusted with sugar.  Those were good, and I would know, because I had six. 

When sugared bread lady finally shooed me off, I went in search of gifts for the kids.  Noah, the son of a friend, had been adopted from Korea several years ago and his mother had asked me to get him some souvenirs.  I picked up a little baby opium pipe and a set of nail-spiked numchucks, plus a couple of T-shirts:  “Number One Hot Korea Bad-Ass”; “You My Lady; Me Your Pimple,” that sort of thing.  Eventually I wandered down into a lower level and discovered an entire bazaar of sorts, booth after booth of homemade jewelry, K-pop CDs, foam padded bras, glasses, camping equipment, freeze-dried noodle pots.  I picked up a few more trinkets, wandered a bit more, then made my way back up to street level.

Drifting a long, I found a small diner, maybe seven feet wide and twenty feet deep, glass fronted.  On the door was small advertisement:  Noodle Mussels!  Spicy or Mild!  The place looked clean enough and the owner was a nice looking guy in glasses, so I stepped in and was escorted to a table at the back. 

“You look?” he said, gesturing toward some pictures on the wall.

“Just mussels.”

“Enh?”

I pointed at the table beside mine, where two girls were piling shells on a plate.  “Mussels.”

He nodded and went off.  I sat down, took a deep breath.  An older woman with curly hair brought me a pitcher of water and a cup, then returned with a fork.  I waved it away, drawing metal chopsticks from the container on the table.  She nodded, smiled, pretending to be impressed.  I drank, and a few minutes later she returned with a small plate of kim chi—fermented cabbage.  It was good.  I drank some more and ate some more, and started to feel more at ease. 

Well, almost.  Suddenly, I felt a prickle of unease:  the sign outside had said mussels with noodles either spicy or mild.  I definitely wanted spicy.  I stood up and looked at the bowls of the young women at the next table.  Their broth was clear.  Could that mean . . . ?  I glanced at the pictures on the wall:  on the left were mussels spicy.  The liquid was red.  Further along, on the right, were mussels mild.  Clear. 

Damn. 

I glanced at the pictures again, then sat down.  I rubbed my face once, took a drink of water, shook my head.  It didn’t matter.  Mussels were mussels.  Besides, who knew how hot the spicy ones were?  No one wants to get sick on their first trip to Korea. 

I took another sip of water, then looked around.  It was a small place, just six table.  The walls were tiled and the tables laminated, the kind of restaurant you could hose down at the end of the day and then let drip dry overnight.  Even the pictures on the wall were covered in plastic. 

I caught the eye of a heavyset woman sitting at a table at the bottom of the stairs.  She was looking at me, frowning.  Then she looked at the pictures on the wall, looked at me again, and twisted in her chair, saying something in Korean.  The waitress, the one with the curly hair, glanced my way, then came over to the table. 

“Yes?”

“Nothing,” I said.  “It’s okay.”

She smiled again, indulgently, then padded back to the kitchen or whatever it was by the door.  I blushed, then glanced at the woman who’d called her over. She met my gaze.  I smiled a little, and nodded.  She also smiled, just a little, and nodded back.

After that, the day was gravy.  The mussels were good, I picked out another spot I wanted to visit—a neighborhood with old, interesting architecture and a palace with a hidden garden—paid my bill and went out the door.  I found the subway right away, got on the right train, and got out at the right stop.  Ten minutes later I was wandering down glaze cobbled lanes so narrow I could spread my arms and touch the walls on each side.  I got lost a little, but it was a pleasant kind of lost, and when I came out on the other side I could see the palace just up the street. 

Admission cost $8 US, and I spent much of the afternoon just wandering from building to building, taking pictures of the intricate artwork on the ceilings and trim and trying to avoid the heat.  I’d paid to get into the hidden garden, and was a little annoyed when I arrived at the gate and learned that you were only allowed admission as part of a tour.  I like to wander.  I’m good at getting lost, and good at finding food, and good at finding quiet little gardens in cool shady places—like, say, for instance, gardens, particularly hidden gardens—in which to take naps.  This is how I experience countries. 

That said, the tour wasn’t that bad, and would have probably been even better had it been in English.  I left the garden and palace, wandering east, thinking I’d just explore some neighborhoods, see what Seoul was really like, maybe do a little home shopping for when Ellen and I moved here (because Korea was quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the world).  At one point I ducked down into a subway to get under a busy street and discovered a German bakery and coffee shop.  Two lattes and an onion-cheese bread later, I emerged into the late afternoon sun, dazed and happy and in need of larger pants.  I found a pedestrian mall populated by art shops and soap makers and jewelry and picked up seven or eight more souvenirs.  Then I headed back to the hotel and took a shower. 

Dinner that night was at the same restaurant, only this time the other US speaker from the conference was there and we spent the evening talking about family and travels and careers and how mediocre Korean beer was but how we’d have another bottle nonetheless, thank you very much.  I collapsed into bed that night feeling stuffed and content.

The next day the anxiety was back.  It was conference time, and suddenly I was aware of the fact that:  a) I had to give a serious 40-minute talk for which I’d been paid a nice bit of money plus expenses; b) I didn’t know my hosts; c)  I didn’t know anything much about Korean general education; d) I didn’t know anything much about Korea (other than the fermented cabbage thing); and e) I was an idiot. 

Here again, it’s one of those imagination versus reality things.  When you get the e-mail inviting you to speak, all that you can think is, “Cool:  Korea!”  If you give it any more thought than that, it’s probably something vague on the lines of, “Well, I’ve been to Asia before; how hard can it be?”  This ignores the fact, of course, that, though both are in Asia, Hong Kong and Korea are radically different places with radically different cultures.  Not to mention languages.  For while I can more or less get by in Hong Kong with a little bit of Cantonese and a whole lot of English, these only work with people who:  a)  speak Cantonese; or b) speak English.  Which, go figure, doesn’t cover Korea. 

Actually, that’s not entirely true.  Plenty of people speak English in Korea.  Just not as many as in Hong Kong and not quite as well.  And because the only words I knew in Korean were, “Hello,” “How much does this cost?” and “Does it always smell like that?” my ability to grease the social wheels was limited.

Which means that, in reality, I found myself feeling awkward and nervous and amateurish when we met our hosts and drove to the campus where the conference was being held.  Every one was being perfectly nice, of course, but when there’s limited opportunity for small talk and you’re kind of tired and nervous, the awkward seconds feel like awkward minutes and the mild blank glances of strangers feels like glare of disapproval. 

But then the conference began and the talks began, and it became clear that my hosts had a wonderfully organic understanding of the complexities of general education and a real intellectual and emotional investment in its success.  In the afternoon, I gave my talk and nobody booed except for this one little old granny who said I sucked and should be sent back to Yugoslavia, me and my band of baby ducks.  Not surprisingly, the moment I was done I felt a lot better.  Then my new friend from America spoke and the two of us started fielding questions.  Within a matter of minutes the whole room was caught up in an intense conversation about the differences between integration and interdisciplinarity (don’t get me started—I can talk on this for days), about the necessity—or not—for a year of foundational content prior to synthesis and application, about all sorts of things that would really try the patience of those of you who have made it this far in what is already a really long blog post, even on this blog, which is known for really long blog posts. 

It was a great conversation.  It was complex, it was thoughtful, and it was funny.  I loved being teased by the audience, loved it when they pointed out contradictions between what Natalie had said and I had said.  I loved it when there were follow-up questions and debates between audience members.  It was fun.  It was great.  It was extraordinary. 

The conference was followed by a small banquet for the organizers, speakers, and various VIPs.  Again, a little moment of anxiety as I was led to a table and seated as the sole white guy amongst a group of Asians.  But beer was poured and toasts were given and the food was good.  Someone told a story about how the government had offered dignitaries a choice of tickets to various concerts, and everyone had chosen K-Pop—fluffy Korean boy-and-girl band music. We all laughed, and drank more beer and ate more food.  There was more talk about general education and more beer and one lady who’d been slightly critical at the conference sat next to me and made sure the waitress took care of me. 

When that was over, I waddled back up to my room, packed my bags, scheduled a wake up call, and dropped instantly into sleep.   I awoke at dawn the next morning, took a shower, grabbed my bags, and headed down to the lobby where they flagged a cab.  Climbing in and buckling up, I thought about Harry Chapin.  He was killed in a car accident while riding in a cab, after all, and for some reason every time I take a taxi to the airport, I think about him.  Which makes absolutely no sense, of course—he was on his way to a concert, not to the airport—but I always wanted to be a rock star when I was little (e.g., 43), and I suppose I like to think of myself that way whenever I can. 

So I climbed into the cab, and buckled up, and sipped my water and munched on my meal bar, and thought about what would happen if I died right then.  Which is morbid, I know, but I hadn’t had much sleep and I’m kind of a melancholy dude, so this is what happens sometimes.  And what I thought was that if I died, Ellen would be probably kind of sad for a while but would then maybe hook up with that carpenter guy she has the hots for and be pretty much a lot happier for the rest of her life.  And then I thought that if I died on the way to the airport, having just flown to this new country, having spoken at this conference, having been part of this important conversation, having met these people, having eaten all of this amazing food, Ellen would probably tell people that I’d died happy, that I’d died doing the things I most loved doing.

And she would be right.