March 15 "How old are you?"

I’ve noticed that it is very common for Koreans to ask me how old I am, a question I rarely get asked at home other than when filling out forms in the doctor’s office. I have gotten used to this question at work, but today two complete strangers asked me. I took the subway to the Noeun district to go to the prehistory museum there, and as I was charting my course in the subway station, a man asked me where I was trying to go. I told him and he said he would show me how to get there. He led me through various passageways and down winding alleys, which might have made me a little nervous anywhere but Korea, until we were within sight of the museum. On the way he asked me how old I was and I told him—sixty. He told me in return that he was seventy. He looked fifty.

Later, while sitting and soaking sore muscles in the spa at Yuseong, a man climbed into the tub next to me and asked me how old I was. This too might have made me a little nervous anywhere but Korea. I told him my age and he said that was how old he was too. He looked forty-five.

Speaking of age, the downtown area of Daejeon, where I live and work, is sometimes called “new downtown,” because it has all been built in the last 20 years or so. If there is a new downtown, there must be an old downtown, since new and old are relative terms. I discovered that the old downtown is near the train station, across town, and decided to pay it a visit.

Old is not that old. I have read that Daejeon was pretty well destroyed during the Korean War and was rebuilt afterwards. So old downtown was constructed in the 1950s, and some of it remodeled more recently. What makes it much more interesting than new downtown is the huge market there. For blocks and blocks people sell produce (some from China or Malaysia, but must locally grown), fish, spices, meat, and various snacks and household items. It is a loud, colorful, aromatic, bustling place with a mostly adult clientele.



Across the river from the market and the train station is a part of town that is the opposite: a long criss-cross of pedestrian malls lined with stores with English names. Some of them, like the "Sexy Cookie" lingerie shop, may have lost a bit in the translation.
Those who stroll through this reproduction of a generic Americanization appear to be young and hip, or are at least trying.

On Friday my friend Chon Byung Ick and I went to the Daejeon Culture and Arts Center (the performance hall) to hear a concert by the Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra. It was quite nice. Although the orchestra is almost entirely Korean, the conductor is Spanish. They did pieces by Shubert, Hayden, and Tchaikovsky. Unlike most concerts and performances in Seattle, it started exactly on time.

I had mentioned at work that on Saturday I wanted to go to Gongju, a town about 45 minutes from Daejeon. Gongju was the capital during parts of the Baekje Dynasty, from 18 BC to 660 AD. Severy people expressed concern that I intended to take the bus all the way to Gongju and then try to find the major tourist sites there all on my own. My friend Mr, Kang decided that he should take me and bring along his high-school aged daughter so that she could see Gongju and I could help her with her English on the way there and back. We had a good time exploring the burial mounds where the tomb of King Muryeong was discovered in 1971 and we were able to wander in and out of replicas of the burial chambers, always an adventure. There is a great museum in Gongju that has many of the treasures that were in the King’s tomb. Mr. Kang was able to get his car washed on the way. I am learning all kinds of new stuff every day.


I have even learned a new strategy for parking my motorcycle when all the parking spaces are taken.