March 22 There is no wrong way

On Friday, I wanted to go to the Geology Museum, which is across town in the middle of a sort of high tech industrial park. The whole area looks a little bit like the Microsoft campus and environs. The bus that I needed to take me there passes through my neighborhood in a sort of zig-zag route, according to the bus map, but I wasn’t sure where to catch it, since the map doesn’t actually have street names or landmarks on it. I found a bus stop with the right route number and eventually a bus came and I got on.

The bus went this way and that, turning again and again. I did not recognize any of the streets. Then the driver pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine. He looked at me. I was the only person on the bus. He asked me something which I assumed meant where are you going? I told him where I wanted to go. He made me to understand that I had gotten on the bus going in the wrong direction. We both sort of laughed. He got off the bus to take his break but motioned for me to stay. After a while he got back on and drove the bus again. We retraced our path. We passed the place, across the street now, where I had gotten on. Eventually we came to the stop that I wanted, near the museum, and I got off. This led me to the realization that there is no wrong way. Some trips are longer and more random than others. But sooner or later we end up where we are going to go.

The next day I gave a lecture to a class of Daejeon Metropolitan City managers on Seattle city government and how it is similar to, and different from, city government in Daejeon. Many students stayed awake for the entire talk, which I illustrated with photos of Seattle—the Space Needle, the First Starbucks, the Alaska Way Viaduct (see it while it’s still standing!), etc. They were most interested in my perceptions of the differences between the two city governments and asked some thoughtful questions, including “What do citizens in Seattle complain the most about?” That was a good one.

On Sunday, Mr. Kang, who had taken me to Gongju last weekend, invited me to have lunch at his church. I could hardly refuse. The church occupies the sixth floor of a commercial building about a half mile from my apartment. It is apparently an unaffiliated evangelical congregation of about three hundred, and I got there just as the two-hour service was finishing. The “church basement” where we ate is of course on the same floor as everything else; I met many, many people, walked through the line, got my plate of rice, kimchi, and other assorted pickled vegetables from the ladies dishing up the food, passed on the “meat” dish, which appeared to be chunks of Spam and chunks of cheese in a spicy sauce, got a bowl of thick soup, and sat down between Mr. Kang and the minister on the floor (no cushions for these hard-core Christians) at one of the long tables. Mr. Kang’s wife even made a huge salad for us to share, because she was afraid that as a vegetarian, I would not get enough to eat.

One thing puzzled me and I don’t know quite how to ask about it. We removed our shoes when going into one of the rooms where the high school youth group meets. And we removed our shoes again when going into the kitchen/dining area. But people inside the chapel itself keep their shoes on! That seems very strange, certainly contrary to the Buddhist tradition of removing shoes before entering a meditation hall, temple, or monastery. Maybe because in the chapel, people sit in regular pews, but in the other rooms, seating is on the floor? Every day is a new challenge to understand what’s going on.