Our First Day

Tuesday, February 21st

Even finding a way to eat breakfast was an adventure.
Melly and I took our sweet time getting ready, shuffling our belongings in the tiny hostel room, getting dressed in layers to withstand the biting cold of the humid Seoul air. It felt good to be operating at our own pace. We walked out into our first glimpse of Korean sunlight and found ourselves in a gray wintery day in a gray urban megalopolis.
The buildings weren't as vertically staggering as I'd pictured--the city didn't even feel as intensely huge as New York City, even though the population was far larger. But the sheer DETAIL was overwhelming. Hangul signs cluttered the sides of every building, every floor and every doorway boasted a sandwich-board sign with unintelligible messages, pictures of food I've never even heard of before, coffee shops, restaurants, mobile phone dealers, mystery buildings everywhere. "KPop" (which sounds a hell of a lot like bland American pop sung in Korean, in my snobby opinion) and techno pumped out of shops onto the sidewalk while Korean women spoke quick Korean paragraphs into headset microphones, inviting every passerby to step inside their cosmetics shops and buy, buy, buy.
Lots of info to process.
So we wandered into a street packed densely with small shops and mom n' pop restaurants, stopping at every turn and taking careful note of the landmarks so we could find our way home. We wandered for a good thirty-five minutes, hoping to find a restaurant with some English next to the pictures (hell, we had to start somewhere). Finally, there it was, a noodle house with pictures of soup and dumplings outside with English translation! Thank God! Well, I still don't know what that is, but I can at least order it! Yeah, we got this! No problem!
As soon as we walked in and started towards the counter, the two Korean women behind the counter started yelling at us and waving us back towards the door. Oh God! What what what did we do??? Should we take our shoes off? Hang our coats up or something??? I don't understand I don't understand HELP!!!
And then we saw that they were gesturing us towards a machine in the corner, a machine the size of a small ATM with a large touch screen on its face with pictures of the menu items on it. Oh, I got it. Clumsily, we made our choices clear to the machine. Sometimes it would pop up a little menu with two options for a dish. Both options were in Hangul, so we just chose at random and damned be the consequences. We'll eat anything at this point.
That was one of the best meals of our lives. A delicious noodle/tofu/vegetable soup, a platter of stuffed mandu dumplings, a ball of seasoned rice with beef encrusted in seaweed. And a pot of complimentary kimchi, perfectly spiced, perfectly crisp! My God, I had no idea food could be this good. We secretly studied the local Korean people eating around us, trying to find out little subtleties in etiquette, how to slurp up the noodles without making a ridiculous scene, what to do with such and such dish of sauce or whatever. It was a very intense and vibrant experience.
On our way out, I consulted our guidebook and told the woman who had prepared our meal, "Mashi-iss-seo" which means "This is delicious." She was utterly delighted, and bowed to us and thanked us ("Gamsahamnida!") And sent us on our way. We left the restaurant feeling triumphant and proud.

We met up with James an hour or two later. He had the day off work and offered to show us around the city.
James is a flurry of vigor and passion, and has a way of rendering me speechless at least once every couple of minutes, either from the sheer random hilarity of his thoughts, or by his fearless way of cutting past the bullshit between people. He has a true gift for connecting with people, and always has a question to ask them, always is genuinely interested in learning more about the individuals he's with. He showed us how to use the subway (Seoul has a great public transit system, by the way), and amidst the frenzy of activity and flow of Korean people, he turned to Melly and me and asked, "I have a question for you guys. Have you ever heard of the prisoner's dilemma?"
We hadn't. He explained that the prisoner's dilemma happens between two parties who are locked in a cycle of bitter competition and forced cooperation. If you and I are enemies, but for the moment it is mutually advantageous for us to cooperate, then we will cooperate for now. But when will that trust be betrayed? When will the agreement to cooperate be broken? And who will break it? Is it better to break the agreement first, to act out of self-interest and survival while forsaking any notion of altruism or peace? Or is it better to bide your time, perhaps enjoy the benefits of the truce while always taking the risk that the enemy will strike first?
And is this, perhaps, what we all do all the time? Are all our alliances and agreements really born from selfishness? Do we only cooperate because we must to survive in our society? And, if so, what is our true nature?
Self-interest vs. altruism? Self vs. other? Connections between people, between nations, and the possibilities of peace? The looming threat of war? Where do I end and you begin? What is the Self???
The conversation was so involving that we missed our subway stop and had to catch the train in the opposite direction. As we walked out into a new section of Seoul, I contemplated my motivations in being here, I contemplated the ways I could relate to this new nation of people as a total outsider, I contemplated North Korea and the deep scars they've left on the heart of the world, I contemplated economics, politics, spirituality.
"Damn it, James," I said. "Don't you think I have enough to think about right now? We laughed and continued on into the street.
We met up with James's Korean friend Hayley, a native Seoul musician. And we went shopping. High-end posh boutiques pushing handbags for 250 bucks (250,000 won, that is), vintage used-clothes shops selling charming American jackets and shirts from the 70's, shoe shops, book shops, electronics shops, malls, street vendors. Korea is shopping PARADISE, I decided.
Hours later, we wound our way through densely packed alleys into a charming local restaurant. We sat cross-legged on the floor around a small table and feasted on spicy tofu soup, Korean blood sausage in broth (was actually quite tasty), rice-stuffed chicken in boiling broth, kimchi, pickled radishes, cabbages, pahjan, and more. The table was literally covered in perhaps two dozen dishes, each containing something strange and spicy and new. And DELICIOUS. Hayley and James helped us learn about the culture and language, and we laughed over shots of soju. Completely wonderful.
After dinner, we meandered to a lovely coffee shop on the second floor of some nearby building. I enjoyed a caramel affogiato--vanilla ice cream in a dish of espresso--and Melly sipped an iced peach tea.
We talked for a long time. We realized that we were all searching for something in our hearts, and we didn't know what it was and we didn't know how to find it. We realized that we were wanderers, gypsies who felt compelled to taste more than one dish from life's buffet. But we wanted to find our work. We wanted to focus and create something beautiful. We didn't know what we wanted our futures to be.
"The way I see it," James said to us, "is there are two kinds of people. There are those who keep the world running. Doctors, mechanics, construction workers--the people that actually make the system work, those who fix what's broken, and so on. And then there are those who evolve the world. And they may not fit into the system. They may be on the outside of it all, they may not even know what they're doing."
We realized that we all shared the same deep-seated confusion in the pit of our stomachs. The same fear. That same sense of searching. The feeling that everyone had a plan, a sense a purpose, except us.
But we laughed and smiled with each other that night, and we raised our glasses happily together. We were friends now. Life had brought us all here, to this little coffee shop in South Korea, and for one night at least we had found each other.
For now, that was enough.