March 8 The Hike

I had a scare this weekend when I got a call from Patti saying that my father was in the hospital with pneumonia. In addition to worrying about him, it made me realize again how isolated and out of touch I am here. Fortunately, he is well attended by my brothers and sisters, who insist he is on the road to recovery. I called him at the hospital and he predicted that he would be home in a couple of days. He’s pretty tough for an old guy. Hang in there, Dad.

On Friday, needing a haircut, I stopped in at the City Hall barber shop, which you can only find by cutting through the City Hall “fitness room.” The barber shop is a two person operation. The barber cut my hair very quickly and meticulously, with no loss on my part of any portion of either ear. Then he shampooed my head in the sink. Afterwards the beautician blow-dried the stubble and applied various lotions, creams, and pomades. I look great! I should have taken before and after pictures.

Then I wandered around until I found an archeological ruin that I had been looking for. Apparently this is a place where excavations have found settlements from the Old Stone Age, New Stone Age, and Bronze Age, right in downtown Daejeon (the New Downtown, not to be confused with the Old Downtown, which is near the train station.) I think the huts on display there are reproductions. If they are really three to five thousand years old, we should find out what they are made of.

My friend Kim Sung Hoon, the manager of the section where I’m currently working and a resident of the 10th floor of my building, stopped by one evening to show me how to use my washing machine. That’s very helpful, because I’m tired of doing my laundry in the sink. It’s actually a pretty cool appliance—a combination washer and dryer. Just put in the clothes, set the cycles and drying time, and I’m good to go. In return, I’m editing a resume and application for him. Unlike the instructions on the washer/dryer, it is in English.

On Saturday I got my first real cell phone call, from Kim Chu Ja in the Office of International Relations and Education. She wanted to know if I could go hiking in the mountains with her and her husband. Hiking? Sure! But what they call mountains here, we would call hills. I was ready for a walk in the park.

Some park. The trail we took up Mt. Gyeryong was steep and rocky, and Chu Ja and her husband Hee Dong are fit and trim. I had a hard time keeping up, but it felt good to be out in nature after weeks in the city. The trail led to a small pagoda, really just two towers of stone, high on the hillside. At the bottom of our trail down, we stopped at Donghaksa, a monastery for Buddhist nuns (I guess that’s a nunnery). I was surprised to see that the nuns, like traditional Buddhist monks, have their heads shaved.

Afterwards, of course, we had to stop at one of the many little restaurants outside the temple area for dinner. Hee Dong ordered an assortment of pajeon, a kind of fried pancake made with flour and egg. We had five different varieties: seafood and green onion, mushroom, kimchi, acorn jelly, and potato. The usual assortment of side dishes came with, and we washed it down with some Korean rice wine, which I had not had before and really liked.

Speaking of wine, I discovered a Korean red table wine at the grocery store. It’s quite a find—a little over a dollar for half a liter. I found it bursting with raspberry Kool-aid on the front palate, with strong hints of Smith Brothers Wild Cherry Cough Drops and a lingering Listerine finish.