Month: September 2019

Gonna do something a little unusual here. No Korean adventures (although I do have some more to share), no poetry, no philosophy. Instead, for the next coupla days, we’re talking baseball.

See, today marks the 5th year anniversary of one of the greatest games of baseball ever played: The 2014 American League Wild Card game. A single play-in game between the Moneyball Oakland A’s, and the hapless, hard-luck Royals, who were hoping to make the playoffs and snap their 29 years of not making it, the longest playoff drought of any professional team in North American sports. For some personal reasons, the game is and always will be special to me. What follows is mostly a repost, from my telling the tale of the game elsewhere.

If you’re interested in reading Brad tell baseball stories, welcome! If not, I highly recommend that you at least watch the video to follow. If neither of those interests you, well, thanks for stopping by, glad to have you! I’ll do this every day for a couple of days, just as my own way of observing the anniversary and celebrating hte arrival of the baseball playoffs (hoping the Brewers/Twins go all the way – it won’t happen, though. )

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To recap: The Royals spent 29 years being the worst team in baseball, the butt of every joke in the league. They had gone longer without a playoff appearance than any other professional franchise in all of North America, and Kansas City as a whole had not won a single playoff game in any sport in 20 years. On September 30th, 2014, after decades of false starts, the Royals finally had a shot to make the postseason. But first, they had to win the wild card. One single game to determine their fate – win, and get the chance to play in the real playoffs. Lose, and go home. Just like every other year for almost thirty years.

What follows is the story of that single game. 

Now, our biggest fear, going into the wild card, was that the Royals would fall behind quickly and their playoff hopes would expire 15 minutes after the first pitch was thrown. This was not an idle fear – remember, the Chiefs, the other franchise in town, had repeatedly appeared in the playoffs since 1985, and they had lost every single game. One-and-done was the order of the day, and it was quite possible that Royals fans would not even receive the illusion of being in a competitive playoff game. 

Their opponents could not have been more perfect, narrative-wise: The Oakland Athletics (A’s). The Athletics had once been the Kansas City A’s, but had moved on to the west coast after failing to win anything here. Out in California, they had revolutionized the game of baseball. With one of the smallest payrolls in the sport, the A’s had consistently put together winning team after winning team. In the fiercely competitive AL West division, they had won 100 games time and again – in seasons with  division opponents like the Mariners, who had set the single-season record for wins (2001) or the World Series-winning Angels (2002). The A’s had ignored traditional scouting reports on players and instead found undervalued statistics like on-base percentage (OBP, the amount of times a player reaches base safely per at bat) and home run power, picking up secret stars on the cheap. Their process was made famous in the book and later movie Moneyball. At the climax of the book, and the film, the A’s are on the brink of a 22-game win streak, a record in modern times. However, the team blows an 11-run lead, only to win the game in the ninth. The A’s hapless opponent in the film (and book, and reality)? The 2002 Kansas City Royals, mired in the first of what would be 4 100-loss seasons. 

12 years later, in 2014, the A’s still built their team around walks and home runs. Their players would work pitchers, taking lots of borderline pitches and drawing walks, while punishing pitches inside the strikezone for home runs (which would also drive in all those guys who walked earlier). They discouraged risky moves on base, running conservatively, avoiding making outs, and waiting for a homer to drive them in. Their defense was modest but not spectacular, their starting pitching was very good, and they had a decent but not great bullpen. By contrast, the 2014 Royals were built, as I said, on a brilliant defense and unhittable bullpen. But they were not a great offensive team. They had to scratch and claw for every run. Their offense was free-swinging, aggressively attacking any pitch the Royals thought they could hit. Once on base, they would aggressively take extra bases, stretching singles into doubles, going first-to-third any chance they got, and leading the league in stolen bases. They struck out the least of any team in baseball – but also had no power and no walks, dead last in both walks and home runs.

To sum up: Put the ball in play. Get on base. Run like hell.

In other words, the Royals and the A’s had polar opposite baseball philosophies. For decades, the A’s had won while the Royals had struggled. The A’s showed the way of the future, the Royals were mired in the past. The A’s got the dramatic Hollywood movies made about their fortunes – and the Royals were reduced to the roles of the foolish losers. The A’s became the team most identified with sabermetrics, spawned the most influential sports book of the generation, and entering the 2014 had advanced to the playoffs seven times in the last 14 years. The Royals became the team most identified with old-school thinking and lost 100 games four times in a five-year span.

The Royals’ failures became as much a testament to the value of sabermetrics as did the A’s success. To paraphrase Voltaire: If the Royals hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent them. But we didn’t have to invent them. They existed, and I knew this because they were my team. For two decades, my grandpa’s heart was attached to a franchise that my grandpa’s brain would have sat on the porch, shotgun in hand, to keep away. Tonight would be the first time the two franchises had ever had a face-to-face showdown in the playoffs.

A generation of fans, my friends, many of them, who had never experienced playoff baseball flocked to the park. Seth Atkins, a 26-year-old from Olathe, took the day off work from the high school where he taught, outside St. Louis. He arrived at Kauffman Stadium when the gates opened. 

Taylor Fritz, a 21-year old from Lee’s Summit, arrived at the ballpark early with his dad. They had seats just behind the right field wall, and settled in, hoping to catch a home run.

Kent Swanson, a 26-year-old from Overland Park, bought a ticket at face value that morning. When he and a friend settled into their seats in the upper deck, he felt the tension. “There was just 29 years of aggression and angst and excitement in that building.”

Abby Elmer, a 21-year-old from Brookside, finished her classes that morning at the University of Missouri and drove from Columbia to attend the game with her parents. Growing up, the trio shared season tickets. She had never seen Kauffman Stadium like this. “I just could not believe how loud it was. How insane it was. You could not hear the person next to you, it was so loud.”

Starting for the Royals was James “Big Game” Shields, the centerpiece of a trade 2 years earlier that had seen the Royals give away their biggest young talent, Wil Myers, in return for the steady starting pitcher. Shields was in the last year of his contract – so this game was everything for him. If the Royals lost, Shields would leave and they would have given away a generational talent in return for – nothing. 

But as the game started, it looked like Royals’ fans worst nightmares were coming true. James Shields issued a walk to the A’s leadoff hitter. He seemed to steady himself with a flyout and a strikeout – but then he fell behind Brandon Moss. A few pitches later, he left a ball hanging just above Moss’s thighs – and the A’s batter demolished it, blasting the ball far out of the park. 2 runs scored and the Royals were losing before they had even had a chance to bat. The raucous crowd quieted. So it would be another Chiefs game after all. One and done. 

But then, in the bottom of the first, Alcides Escobar singled. A’s starter Jon Lester got 2 outs fairly easily, but then after a walk he gave up a single to the Royal’s chubby DH Billy Butler. Suddenly Kauffman was buzzing again – it was 2 to 1, and there were runners at first and third! The Royals might lose this game, but at least they would put up a fight.

However, the rally ended on a muffed play.

See, it wasn’t common knowledge yet, but the A’s pitcher Jon Lester had the yips. Specifically, he was unable to throw the ball to first base. Any time he tried, the ball sailed off into the stands or the dugout. And so, quietly, not drawing attention to it, he had stopped throwing to first entirely in the last few seasons – meaning he could not hold even the slowest runner on the base, because he’d have to win a footrace with the baserunner in order to have a chance to get him out. Which, in turn, meant that baserunners could take a huge lead off Lester and steal second easily. No one had noticed yet – except the Royals’ scouts.

Butler was quietly told to steal second. The slowest player on the team, Butler thought that the coaches were out of their minds. But while Lester chased Butler, it would give Eric Hosmer, standing on third, the chance to scamper home and tie the game. Shaking his head, Butler stepped off first…

…and it was a fiasco. Lester awkwardly stepped off the mound and scooted towards Butler – and Hosmer froze. He just couldn’t believe that a major league pitcher could not make that throw. Belatedly, he shook off his amazement and darted for home – but it was too late. Lester had gotten close enough to another player to awkwardly shovel him the ball, and the A’s shortstop whipped the ball home just ahead of Hosmer. The Royals’ first baseman dived in a desperation move, colliding with A’s catcher Gary Soto, but no good – he was out and the inning was over.

As a minor consequence  of the play, Gary Soto injured his thumb in the collision. The A’s catcher came out of the game and was replaced by Derek Norris. Norris was a much better hitter than Soto – but a far worse defender. The main job of a catcher is to throw out base runners attempting to steal. Norris was far, far worse at that than Soto.

The Royals didn’t know it, but they had just had their first big break of the night.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!

– Shakespeare, Henry V

Once more I made an attempt at my oft-desired burrito. Friday night I found myself back downtown. The others had some sort of super-lame workshop seminar (mandatory attendance), giving advice on things like classroom management, classroom apps, activities, and so on. Stuff that might have been useful a month earlier, but at this point they’re all veteran teachers. I, however, was exempt because my school is super-weird (it’s a private academy, so I alone amongst my peers do not work for the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education). SO! I joined them downtown after the seminar.

We wandered around the Asian Culture Center, where there was some kind of festival going on, lots of vendors, a stage blasting K-pop, and a lovely walkway lined with umbrellas. We had to pause for a photoshoot:

This was not a voluntary photoshoot. I was soon forced into taking a photo myself. Maria coached me. “Now, look off into the distance. No, more into the distance. Try and look more heroic, will you? There you go: noble adventurer.”

Anyway, we went for a walk out the backside of the culture center, when suddenly I saw a gigantic glowing sign: Dozen’s Bar.

Suddenly, the neighborhood snapped into place. Just beyond Dozen’s was a small alley. And down that alley was Ahorita – the Mexican restaurant I had so fruitlessly camped outside for two hours a few weeks ago. I STILL hadn’t had a burrito. And around me? The others were debating where a good dinner restaurant might be found.

I led the way. We found Ahorita. It was open. Full of anticipation, I followed the others inside and sat at our table. The restaurant was bright and cheery, with the usual Mexican decorations you’d find back in the States – a few rural paintings, some plants, the obligatory sombrero hanging on the wall. Eagerly I snatched up the menu and started flipping through pages.

And kept flipping.

First page? Nothing. Just appetizers. Well, no worries. Next page, we’ve got…ah, some enchiladas, very nice, nachos, always a favorite…hm, third page? Tacos, well, naturally…page four is, hm, taquitos and other dishes…fifth page? Oh, that’s drinks.

I flipped through again, just to be sure.

Then once again, in case I missed something.

I didn’t miss anything.

Ahorita, it turns out, does not serve burritos.

This perfect boy turned 14 a few days ago.

It’s not every day a dog turns 14. I’ve been struggling for two days to write something that fully captures Rowdy.

And, I’m sort of giving up! I can’t do it! Every time I start, I think of more things I want to say about him, more things I love about him, more quirks he has, more superlatives to heap on him. I get tongue-tied, and my usual effusive vocabulary vanishes into ether. Instead, let me just spam a bunch of dog pictures at you and I’ll gush.

Rowdy originally belonged to my grandparents. I have known him since he was a wee puppy – the latest in a long line of Shih Tzus they owned. His official name, on his official Kennel Club Certificate (certifying his pure Shih Tzu breeding) is Justa Rowdy Boy. He goes by Rowdy, Rowds, Big R, Rowdster, Lil’ Rowdy, Peach Pit, Peaches, Chicken Noodle Soup, Noodles, Borkums, Sir Borksalot, Stinkbreath, and a hundred other nicknames depending on Lona’s mood.

He likes to play, especially with his favorite toy, Lambchop. Rowds first stayed with Lona when my grandparents went to Florida and discovered their condo allowed two cats – or a dog and a cat – but NOT two dogs. The new puppy, Snickers, was still bonding with my grandparents, so Rowds was shipped back to Kansas City and became Lona’s companion during her time living alone, working for the KC Film Festival. He helped keep her sane, and the two became fast friends.

A few years later, with my grandma unable to give Rowdy all the care and attention he needed (and clearly deserved), he came to us. He settled into life in St. Louis pretty quickly. Here, he enjoys himself at the annual Purina Pet Parade in Soulard.

He has become the most treasured part of our household. He travels with us wherever we go, and enjoys his walks around the neighborhood. He is spoiled with an extreme amount of treats and an even more extreme amount of love from Lona and I.

His vacations include a trip to Table Rock Lake, which he did NOT enjoy. Rowds hated the water. BUT, there was a large female dog living next door, named Ellie. Rowds LOVES large female dogs. When Ellie came on the dock, Rowdy practically pranced. His tail perked up, and he had eyes only for her. Unfortunately, he did not walk where he was going and plunged straight into the lake.

Later, he sneezed too hard on the deck and pulled a muscle in his leg. Poor Rowdy had to limp around on three paws for the next month or so. Suffice to say, he is not a fan of the lake.

He loves holidays, though. Look how horrifying he is on Halloween! He enjoys frightening trick or treaters.

He gets into the spirit of things at Thanksgiving. Wiped out and time for a nap on top of a clean plate.

Rowdy is less fond of winter. Especially snow. He would like to go inside, please.

He has many dog friends. Someone made the mistake of touching the dog treats, drawing the instant attention of Max, Tucker, and Rowds. He waits patiently for his turn, though – he is a good boy.

Sometimes, I think Rowdy misses Snickers. He went back to visit her once – she rode him like a pony and later (pictured) defeated him in mortal combat. He enjoyed playing with his much younger sister, but she exhausts him. I think Rowds was happy to get back to his own house.

His other hobbies include photography – Lona’s influence, no doubt.

For me, Rowdy is always associated with Papa. I can’t disentangle the two in my mind. Every time he barks at me because I am insufficiently speedy and generous with the treat supplies, I can hear Papa’s gruff voice growling in my ear, “You bein’ mean to my dawg?”

I’m so, so grateful that Rowdy is a part of my life. I love him so much.

Sometimes, his little dog body can’t contain all the beauty that is his tongue, and it leaks out a tiny bit.

This happens a lot.

Our little family would not be complete without Rowds. I know that everyone thinks that their dog is the best dog in the world. I know it’s impossible to put into words how special Rowdy is, or how much my heart overflows for him.

So, imagine how you feel about your dog, or your pet. Such is Rowds, to me.

He likes us, too. Every afternoon he would insist that we go outside and wait for Lona to get home from work. He would sit, enjoy the sun, and watch the neighborhood – but when she got back he was instantly ready to go back inside.

Once there, he would take a well-deserved rest from being so perfect all the time.

Happy birthday, Rowds. I love you.

This isn’t where I expected to begin my fourth decade here on Earth. Heck, this isn’t where I expected to be on my last birthday. But, here I am.

Now, it’s actually the 25th here, but I’m hoping to get this out before the 24th ends back home – I was making rather merry last night (to quote Bob Cratchit) and didn’t have time to write. I really don’t have time to write now, because I wanted to take some time to reflect on thirty. It’s a big milestone. Young adulthood is starting to slip into the rearview mirror and middle age is looming before me. I’m now the same age my father was when I was born. Did Dad feel as uncertain as everything as I do? Was he just making it up as he went along, too?

Probably.

So I have some thinking to do, and some writing. But to give that the time it deserves means not publishing something today, and I really do want to get in the habit.

I’m a long way from just about everyone I know. Apart from a handful of acquaintances in Japan, every human being I’ve ever called friend is about 15 timezones away from me. So I was worried about being lonely on my birthday.

But I failed to take the environment into account.

See, human beings, I think, have a way of responding to pressure. If life is easy and mostly stress-free, if we’re comfortable, we’ll stick with our chosen groups, and it becomes hard to meet people and make new friends. From the time I graduated to the time I came here, I made very few new friends – basically just my coworkers at Wydown, and my natural introversion meant it took literal years for me to open up to them, much as I love them. I’m not good at making fast friends.

But put us in a high pressure environment and we’ll cling to anyone who can empathize, like a sailor to a rock in a storm. Think of the people you meet at, say, freshman orientation in college. It’s almost a desperate frenzy to connect with people all week – people are never again so welcoming in the cafeteria every day! Two people I met my first week at Truman – more than ten years ago now, can you believe it? – I still call friends, although I see them far less often than I should like (I miss you, Lauren & Josh. I hope you’re both living your best lives. If you read this, I send my love).

Korea, it turns out, is similar. The four hundred of us at orientation were again in that almost desperate race to make friends, to find people who might be near us, anyone who could give us some company and support as we hurtle into the deep end of a totally alien existence.

If you remember, I’m…not good at that. I remember walking, lonely, around the lake, wondering how I would hold it together for a year. As I made my way back into the dorm, after sunset, I passed a group of people sitting outside at a picnic table. Now, at orientation, we all had to wear nametags, which also shared our province. And as I walked by, I happened to see out of the corner of my eye – Gwangju.

I nearly went in. I was tired, and it was late, and I was in low spirits.

But I did not.

I turned around, and found that the table was full of everyone going to Gwangju, the group having declared a bonding experience before departure. I joined them, and didn’t go to bed for hours.

We rode the bus down together, and we have a group chat, and through the last month the dozen or so EPIK teachers who arrived with me have been my closest support group here in Korea. So, with my birthday rapidly approaching, I thought to see if anyone would want to go to dinner with me, even though it was Tuesday night, to celebrate.

Not even a hesitation. Everyone flooded out – Shelby, Sadia, Saoirse, Shanice, Sarah, Rachel, Tom, Lily, Erica, Maria, Nadine. We met up at a Korean barbecue restaurant a veteran teacher had recommended to us.

I had told them I wanted three things for my birthday: Good food, good drink, and good conversation. All three were to be had in abundance. Our conversations wandered from Harry Potter (“There are only two real houses – Hufflepuff, and Slytherin.”) to Shakespeare (a no-talent hack stealing all his plots, or a genius wordsmith? Why not both?) to Blade Runner and all manner of other subjects. A steady supply of Korean beef and pork flowed across our plates. The lights were warm, and the drinks were good. Allow me to quote Virginia Woolf –

And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company—in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one’s kind!

– Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own.

It was one of the finest meals I can ever remember (rivaled only by a dinner on a rainy Guatemalan evening at Cafe Sky, with the glow of Antigua around us and in the shadow of the volcano, and by a warm summer’s lunch in the agora of Athens, enjoying ouzo and bruschetta on the same stones that once saw Socrates driving his countrymen insane with questions). I was so grateful to everyone for coming out to join and celebrate thirty with me.

Naturally, we went out for dessert – bingsu (I hope I spelled that right).

I was taught to arrange my fingers in the shape of a heart for a picture with the dessert…but I regrettably couldn’t quite grasp the concept.

Gradually, the night grew old – we did all have to teach in the morning after all. So we began to drift towards our separate busses and subways, headed home to face another day in Gwangju paradise. But before I went, my friends surprised me with one last surprise: A card, signed by all of them. ;_;

And so closed an evening that, in the end, was everything I could possibly have wanted for my thirtieth birthday. I’m not lonely here. Not anymore. I do miss everyone back home, of course. All of you, reading this – I can’t wait to see you again and to have the “subterranean glow” of discourse. But in your absence, though, I will be okay.

Thinking on it reminds me of the old song that Mrs. Files had us sing in 8th grade choir to warm up our vocal cords every morning:

Make new friends
But keep the old –
One is silver
And the other gold!

Today, I had a chat with Dong. Dong is an 18 year old, a 3rd year. He used to live in Denver, when he was young, but moved back to Korea 4 years ago and wants to practice his English. So, we meet every Monday afternoon, have a cup of tea together, and just chat. He’s an intelligent, kind young man and I have quite enjoyed our chats.

Today I happened to ask Dong about what his daily life in school was like. I see the students when I arrive every morning at 8, but after I leave at 4:40, what happens? What’s it like living in the dorms?

Well…Maybe this is the Westerner in me talking, but it sounds insane.

At 7:30 every morning, music plays throughout the dorms, pulling the students out of bed. Every student must report his wakefulness on a board, or else receive extra cleaning duties.

By 8 am, all students MUST be out of the dorms. They will not return all day.

Breakfast is from 8 to 8:20. “What do you eat for breakfast?” I asked. “What’s a Korean breakfast?”

“Mostly the same as lunch…kimchi, some meat, rice…” So, no special breakfast foods, like back home – with our vast spreads of bacon and eggs, omelettes and hashbrowns, pancakes and waffles and cereal and toast and French toast and –

I miss breakfast.

Anyway, after this seemingly dull and (to my palette) strange breakfast, the students need to be in homeroom by 8:20. Homeroom lasts for 20 minutes, then classes start.

Classes run from 8:40 to 12:30. Biology, physics, math, earth science, chemistry – it is a science high school. Once a week, English conversation with me. Korean history. English reading and writing.

At lunch, a brief rest. No classes until 2:30 – but PE, art, or a similar “elective” seminar in the auditorium starts at 1:30 and is, of course, mandatory. Then two more classes in the afternoon to carry through to 4:40.

After 4:40, school is “over” – but it’s time for an “after-school” class on a subject of the student’s choice. It is, of course, mandatory. At 6:30, it is dinner time – the same as lunch, which was the same as breakfast.

7:30 brings the first study session. The students troop to the study room, a vast cubicle-filled hall with sound-muffling on the walls and individual study nooks. Two hours of self-study follows, homework, etc. Then a break at 9:30.

Then two more hours of self-study.

At midnight, the students are released to the dormitories, with fully 7 and a half hours available to sleep in. Naturally, they stay up 3 hours or so and socialize with their friends, because let’s face it – when the hell else can they do it? Then four hours of sleep before the music starts next morning.

This lasts all week. On the weekend, Saturdays start at the same time, but instead of class at 8:20, it’s time for self-study! Two hours, then a break, then two more hours til 12:30. Lunch. Same as breakfast was. Same as dinner will be.

At this point, Dong admits, self-study would be a little tedious, so the students go to a sports club, or an art class, or music, or some such elective. Dong enjoys basketball, but sprained his ankle. He doesn’t mind stumping around in the cast, though, because it means he doesn’t have to put his name on the wakeup board in the morning.

In the afternoon, it’s more self-study until dinner. Then four more hours until “bed.”
Sunday, more of the same.

Every other weekend, the students go home and see their families.

…

I’m sorry, this sounds insane. I…can’t really coherently put my thoughts to paper at the moment, but how is the students’ mental health? All this, plus the pressure of the one-and-done exit exam at the end of high school (do well, or never go to a good university and suffer in grinding poverty forever!), the pressure from parents and elders to succeed…I keep coming back to insanity.

Now, Korea has very high scholastic achievement, sure, and has worked wonders with its economy, growing from one of the poorest nations in the world in 1953 to the 10th richest today. Surely their incredible dedication to work is partially responsible for this.

But at the same time, Dong admits, he doesn’t feel that he’s learning much more than he did in Denver. That doesn’t especially surprise me.

The human brain is capable of only so much focus at a time. Try to press beyond that and you get massively diminishing returns. Sure, you can squeeze out a little more here and there – but on the whole? How much productivity is lost through student stress and inattention? If, say, the 4 post-dinner self-study hours were dedicated to leisure and recreation, would the students be sharper, more attentive during the day? Dong says half of ’em just sleep through first period anyway (which makes it a freaking miracle that all of my first hour students are awake every day!).

How much more creative could they be? Where’s the opportunity to explore other things? To read a book, just because you can? Pretty much all my own education, especially in history (which, let me tell you, I know a modest amount about) came on my own time, because I was curious, and wanted to read.

Could I do that in Korea?

Madness.

I never really appreciated umbrellas before moving to Gwangju.

I believe there are two reasons for this. For one, while it of course does rain in Missouri, rain is by no means a common event – a couple of days a month, perhaps. Why have an item that I’ll use only a few times per year? Second, and more importantly, at home, I had a car.

It’s amazing how much of a difference being a pedestrian makes. If it’s raining hard, and you’re driving somewhere, well, no matter. You’ll get a little wet on the walk to your car, and a little wet on the walk to your destination, but it’s hardly anything worth bothering about. A couple seconds of mild discomfort? Bah! I kept an umbrella in the car for the worst cases*, but otherwise I had no appreciation for the largely-useless contraptions.

As a pedestrian, though, they’re wonderful. No longer do I have the luxury of a roof over my head as I travel – now the walk to work (which is nothing at all to complain about – just 20 minutes, one mile through the city) is weather-dependent.

And it weathers a lot here. I arrived during Gwangju’s rainy season. Every morning, humid air rolls in from the East China Sea and flows down into Gwangju’s bowl. The mountains around contain the clouds, and they build up, and soon enough it’s steadily drizzling. The clear fall days where I can see the mountains are rare (and precious).

It’s been drizzling steadily here for the last 48 hours or so. I am so, so thankful for my umbrella. I’m sorry for every bad thing I ever said about you.

Sometimes you just have to travel a bit to get perspective on things closer to home.

*Once, a year ago, Lona and I went to First Fridays at the Science Center for Harry Potter trivia.** I met her for dinner after work first, and it was – pardon the cliche – raining cats and dogs. It was as if God had decided that humanity was a wicked creation and resolved to purge the Earth of its corruption, and people really ought to look into what that fellow Noah had been up to the last couple of weeks. More water in the atmosphere than air, that kind of thing. I was grateful for my car umbrella that night.

** We got our butts kicked. I know way less about Harry Potter than I thought I did.

Mountains hold a special place in the Midwestern imagination, I think. *

When all the land around you is, more or less, flat, any variation draws in the mind, and I’ve lived and grown up in the middle of the largest patch of flat this side of the Eurasian steppe. Plains can awe with a sense of scale, like a dry ocean, to be sure, but they don’t have the same hold on the human imagination that mountains do.

See, throughout history, mountains have been special. In Greece, Mount Olympus was the home of the gods. The final resting place of Noah’s great Ark is Mount Ararat. Five thousand years ago, Mount Sinai is where Moses received the Law. Jesus was tempted atop a mountain, and Mohammed’s revelation supposedly happened on a mountain. And in India and China, temples themselves are sculpted in the form of mountains, rearing up towards the heavens and the dwelling places of the divine.

• 

• 

But I never get to experience any of that. For me, mountains have always existed in the abstract – except for the few times they haven’t. I will never forget my first glimpse of the Rockies – hunched in the back seat of my family’s minivan, 8 wretched hours of Kansas behind me, peering up through the windshield at what looked like a great, dark mass of cloud rearing up in front of our van. And then the slowly-dawning realization that they weren’t clouds.

So you can imagine that it’s with great joy that now I am surrounded by mountains. All Korea is mountainous, and Gwangju sits in a bowl with the great masses on all sides.

Now, last weekend in Korea was Chuseok, a traditional harvest holiday celebrating family ties and togetherness. This 4-day long Korean Thanksgiving festival meant that most business were closed, so my friends and I took advantage of the long weekend to tackle Gwangju’s main mountain: Mudeungsan.

Mudeungsan looms over Gwangju, dominating the eastern horizon with its bulk. It stands 4,000 feet high, which isn’t especially impressive to anyone but a child of the plains like me. I find it plenty impressive enough, of course. The mountain has three peaks, one closed to the public due to its role as a military base, and is dotted with Buddhist temples and Korean shrines.

The ascent and descent are supposed to take three hours apiece, so Tom, Lily, Shanice, Sarah, and myself opted to meet by the reservoir at the base by 9 am, so we could be up and down in decent time.

Naturally, nothing went according to plan. In retrospect, this was Friday, September 13, so I should have realized, but I’ve never been much of one for superstition.

Anyway, I hopped on a bus by 7:30 that morning for the hour-long journey to the far side of town. Gwangju was mostly deserted, the streets near my apartment still littered with the assorted detritus from the revelry the night before (I live in an area with lots of nightlife, even during Chuseok!), which made a slightly surreal, post-apocalyptic feeling. I reached a transfer station…then waited. The bus I needed to take was nowhere to be found. It would periodically appear on the electronic notice board, then disappear. 45 minutes later, just as I started to worry (haha, long after I started to worry), it showed up – so I was a solid 30 minutes late.

Naturally, I was the second one there.

Everyone was late, with their own misadventures, but I want to kind of keep this short, so let me sum up: We all arrived at the lake by 10:00, and set off up the mountain. There was no sidewalk, and the narrow road switched back and forth many times on us, as cars whizzed by. Also busses.

Yeah, we could have taken a bus another two miles or so up the mountain. Oops. That mistake would have significant consequences later.

Still, 40 minutes hard marching brought us to a small wall, fronted by a pillar mounted on a turtle:

This, it seems, was a shrine & tomb dedicated to the memory of a general who fell defending his border fortress to the last against an invading Qing army.

We explored his relics, including his armor and weapons, lit some incense in his memory, and naturally took a selfie outside. Pictured: myself, Lily, Sarah, Shanice, Tom.

Then it was on up the mountain. We slogged up the road for another 45 minutes or so, dodging busses, and admiring the scenery.

And here is where our troubles began.

See, we were not the most coordinated bunch. We all assumed someone else would do the research on the proper path to the top of the mountain. SO when the time came…no one had a clue which path to follow.

So we dug out our phones and took our best guess. I took point, and forged into the forest on what I was told was the path to the peak. Which was technically true!

But it was a path in only the most technical sense. Thick undergrowth quickly closed in on both sides of us. The “path” was a narrow track, scarcely visible as a slightly-wider space between plants. It was impossible to clearly see it more than a few feet ahead at a time, and so I had to pick my way slowly and carefully.

The local wildlife didn’t help matters. So narrow was the path that approximately 4,000 spiders opted to build their webs across it, presumably thinking, “Oh, man, if this works, we’ll eat like kings!” With no machete to hand, I grabbed a handy branch and started hacking a path through the tangled webs, trying to not think too hard about Bilbo Baggins getting nearly devoured by spiders in Mirkwood forest.

Trees had fallen to block the path in places – I had to squeeze under one particular fallen giant that helpfully dumped dirt, bugs, and other detritus on my head as I passed. Sometimes the path ran right into fields of boulders, and we had to pick our way as best we could, essentially guessing at the correct exit. Once, we lost the path entirely and spent about 15 minutes debating whether to continue to forge ahead or to give up and go home. Had we not periodically seen signs assuring us we were on the path to the peak, we probably would have given up.

Three hard, sweat-and-spider-filled hours later, we stumbled over one last rise. Panting, out of breath, thirsty, dirty, and bloodied (a bad step in a boulder field), it was still worth it.

The forest was still thick, but a short distance away a broad rock thrust into the sun – and beyond, sparkling in the sunlight: Gwangju like none of us had seen before.

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The mystery, though, was the elderly Korean couple also up there. They were dressed for a picnic and were clearly enjoying sunning themselves on the rocks. They were wearing sandals. They clearly didn’t come up the way we did…so how the heck had they gotten up there?

We spied on them as they left, and learned something very important: There are two paths to the peak. One was the spider-infested obstacle course from hell we took. The other looked like this:

A broad, leafy corridor ran down in gentle switchbacks all the way from the peak to the bus stop (which was beyond where we had turned off the road on our adventure). Benches were spaced along it to provide break areas. Hell, there was even a coffee shop run by Buddhist monks.

Oh,yes, on our way down, we found a Buddhist monastery. It was beautiful, of course, so we all took a bunch of pictures. It was filled with tourists and the monks were doing a banner business in lemonade in their little shop.

I was also able to take some pictures of the interior of some of the shrines, and of the decorations outside the coffee shop.

After recovering our strength there for a few minutes, we at last felt up to the task of descending the last few hundred meters to the bus stop. Overall, the descent only took an hour or so, compared to the three hours we’d taken to climb up – because we had climbed the first and smallest of Mudeungsan’s three peaks. We’d have to come back for the higher one another day.

So, that was Mudeungsan. On the whole, it was a pretty great adventure. 10/10, would recommend the shrines and temples.

Just, y’know, before you go…look at a map.

*Possibly just mine. Typical Mind Fallacy.

Because I’ve been attempting to be more adventurous lately (did you notice? it’s involved doing things like moving to Korea), I said yes when my coteacher (Park) came to me with a request this weekend: a friend of hers was looking for a native teacher to talk to a class about American history, geography, and culture.

So now tomorrow night I’m off to Jungang Girls’ High School, where from 6-8 I’ll do my best to cram American history and culture into 12 girls’ heads. Note that the girls are of “middling” English ability, and my contact at the high school isn’t so great at the language herself. Well, that’s fine – it’s not like I’m any great shakes at Korean, or indeed, really speak any Korean at all, so it’s just another hill to climb.

No, the real challenge is how the hell am I going to pack this into two hours? The United States is the third largest nation in the world by both population and land area*, with 400 years of white people history alone (more obviously if you throw in the natives before Jamestown & Plymouth Bay colonies). There are over 50 metro areas of more than 1 million souls, over 100 with populations of at least half a million, and nearly 400 individual cities with more than 50,000 people. The nation sprawls across a vast continent with every climate known to man present somewhere within the borders, has an extremely intricate and complex intertwining body of federal, state, and local governments, and has been more or less the global hegemon for the last 70 years.

We’re not going to get all that in two hours. So let me jot down some notes to myself, and organize my thoughts while I try to grapple with how to do this lesson. This will be kind of stream of consciousness and I don’t have time to edit this**, so bear with me.

My approach, instead, is going to be to give the students the tools they need to understand the USA on their own. Let me point out to them some ways to come to grips with the US, a few useful levers that they can use as sticking places in order to do independent exploration. I’ll give them Brad’s Three Keys to Understanding the US.

Key #1: The USA’s founding myth is rebellion against an oppressive government.

We are far, far more skeptical of government power in the USA than just about anywhere else in the world (even former Communist nations!). Not that our government has ever been especially oppressive (despite Woodrow Wilson’s best efforts), nor was the ministry of Lord North under King George III all that wicked and tyrannical. But the myth is there – that is, the idea that we are doughty independent rebels standing up for our rights against a brutal, centralizing, distant imperial force – is woven into our national DNA. Note that calling something a myth does not mean it’s untrue! Myth here instead refers to a story we tell ourselves to explain why the world is the way it is. The Greek myths explain the Greek worldview, Jewish mythology explains Jewish theology, and just so the American foundational myth creates the American worldview.

This explains our strong state governments, and our (comparatively) weak federal government. While the federal government does continually grow and increase its reach and power over our daily lives, it has to fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground – remember the battle over Obamacare? Over whether the Census should ask if you’re an American citizen? Our continued resistance to a national ID card? Americans are skeptical of anything which seems to give a potential tyrant power over us, and it all stems from the original experience with the British. You don’t find this same skepticism in Korea.

Key #2: You cannot understand America without understanding American race relations.

Perhaps it’s because I was raised in the ’90s and ’00s, when this was all the rage in American history writing, but the theme of race is an undercurrent running down all the way through American history to today. Now, you can certainly write American histories without focusing too heavily on the racial divide – Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier hypothesis comes to mind, you have Mahan and his naval power, etc. But those histories can only get you so far, and only in a few places. You can, more or less, get through the 18th century, sort of, without mentioning race (if you do your best not to talk about the Southern colonies – but then how will you talk about the relations between the colonials and the Indians? Stuff that’s almost forgotten today, like King Phillip’s War?

All of American history, especially as an independent nation, has its central domestic tension: the large population of African-Americans living in the plantation South, and the efforts of the planter class to maintain control over that population, beginning with the brutal oppression and violence of slavery and continuing through the legal and social humiliation of Jim Crow, and the perversion of the Constitution in order to maintain that racial caste system.

Much of modern America traces back to the initial racial divide. The blighted inner cities? Goes back to white flight, the Great Migration, etc. Fights over whether or not a bakery has to bake a pro-gay marriage cake or if they have the right to their own conscience? Goes back to Jim Crow and “separate but equal” facilities. No IQ tests for important jobs or for important civic duties like voting? Ultimately because those and more besides were once abused by the Southern planters to maintain their power. The modern arguments about affirmative action – especially the discrimination against Asians by many of our top universities, something of great concern to a lot of students here – trace their root back to this.

In many ways, the Civil Rights Era represents a third founding of the United States – after the Revolution and the Civil War/Reconstruction. Many of our founding ideals were at last coded into law at that time, and Martin Luther King has a place in the American pantheon of civic heroes comparable to Abraham Lincoln or George Washington.

As a largely homogeneous society, Koreans haven’t grown up with the same awareness that we have. They’re not steeped in it, the way American students are. But you can’t understand America without understanding race.

Key #3: America is big.

Stop laughing, it matters.

I’ve heard it said that in America, 100 years is a long time, and in Europe, 100 miles is a long way.

People, Americans and non-Americans alike, don’t really appreciate how much larger than most nations the US is, or why that’s a big deal. But it’s a huge deal.

The United States is nearly 10,000,000 square kilometers in area. It runs for 2,680 miles at its widest point and is 1,500 miles from north to south. By comparison, the United Kingdom is about 250,000 square kilometers in land area. France is a little over 500,000. The entire land area of the European Union is 4,500,000 square kilometers (and that figure will soon shrink…maybe)!

Put it this way: the distance from Paris to Moscow is about the same as the difference from Los Angeles to Kansas City. That distance destroyed Napoleon. It’s only halfway across the United States.

Why does it matter?

Think of the troubles the EU has wrangling a continent-wide union, getting British and Greeks and Poles and Portugese all on the same page. Think of China’s struggle to control its own continent-sized empire, with all the necessary repressive measures in Xinjiang, Tibet, and lately Hong Kong. The United States is as large or larger than those polities. And we all have lived under one government, at peace with each other***, for more than 200 years.

But that size has consequences. The population density of the USA is far, far lower than in most of Western Europe. That matters for things like the railroad systems, power infrastructure, and yes, federal spending. It makes things like health care delivery, internet service, hell, even the mail delivery far more complicated for the US than for other nations. It matters for travel – our cities sprawl out into the empty space, and servicing all those suburbs is damned near impossible for mass transit…but we DO have an excellent interstate system. Why do so many Americans own cars? Why are they so large? Well, there you go.

Why do so many Americans only speak one language? Why, a Frenchman might speak French, Dutch, English, German, and Spanish! Perhaps even Italian! But in France, a day or so of driving can carry you from Paris to the border of the Netherlands, of the UK, of Germany, of Spain, or of Italy. In the United States, a day or so of driving can carry you from English-speaking east Texas to…English-speaking west Texas. From Kansas City, in the center of the country, for more than a thousand miles in every direction, there is one language spoken: English. From Berlin, within a thousand miles, there are more than 30 – and that’s me only counting Europe. So yes, many Americans only ever learn English.

Size matters.

It creates a huge diversity of cultures within the US. Florida Man is famous around the country, and Florida has very little in common with its nearest neighbor, Georgia. The Northeast and the Southeast are very different places. East Coast vs. West Coast. The Midwest, the Rust Belt, the Mountain West, the Southwest, New Orleans doing its own thing, the Pacific Northwest, California, Alaska, Hawaii – there’s a hundred different little cultural enclaves in the United States and we all need to get along with each other. Our laws need to be acceptable to the tree-hugging-est hippy in Portland and the rootin’-tootin’-shootin’-est cowboy in Lubbock, Texas. Our political parties need to appease both these people and millions more. That’s why our laws are often a kludgy mess of compromises and we answer so many questions with, “Well, it depends on your state…”

So those are my three keys. If you can grasp those 3 distinctive facts about the United States, you’ll be well on your way to understanding our little idiosyncracies. Is that a decent introduction to American history, geography, and culture? Hell, I dunno.

But it’s what I’m going with, so fingers crossed!

*If we bought Greenland, we’d pass up Canada. I’m just sayin’.
** Full disclosure – I never edit these. Sorry.
*** With one notable exception. More or less.

It missed.

Bummer.

It’s Friday morning and Typhoon Lingling* is roaring up the East China Sea straight for my front door. I’ve never been in a hurricane before, so this promises to be an exciting weekend! Things aren’t scheduled to kick off until around 11, though, so I have a bit of time to nip downtown for a welcome dinner hosted by the metropolitan Office of Education for all the new English teachers in town.

In the meantime, I am here at work with an unexpected two hours, because my morning classes of 3rd graders are busy with university entrance stuff. It’s the start of second semester in the Korean school year, which runs from March to February, as opposed to the autumnal American system.

So, I thought it was high time to give everyone a snapshot of what my school looks like, and what a typical day of work is like for me. I will have pictures once I am home at my own computer.

The Gwangju Science Academy (or the Gwangju Science High School for the Gifted, I see multiple translations) is a modestly sized high-school of about 250 students. The Korean education system is divided 1-6/7-9/10-12, so I have the equivalents of American sophomores through seniors. Each grade is referred to by their grade within the school, so the 10th graders here are referred to as 1st Grade, the 12th graders as 3rd Grade. Took some getting used to, but ultimately not that hard to accommodate myself to. There are 4 Korean English teachers – 1 each for Grades 1 and 3, and 2 for Grade 2, plus myself.

The school focuses on STEM education for gifted students from across Korea. They must be nominated by their teachers and pass an entrance exam to attend. About half are locals from the Gwangju area, and the other half come from across the country. Gender ratio, as one would expect given the STEM focus, is skewed, with 4 boys for every girl. I see 16 different classes, each containing about 16 students. The students room here on campus – there’s a large dorm building attached to the academic halls, and a surprisingly small cafeteria for so many students. Every other weekend they visit home.

The building itself is very nice. It seems to have been newly remodeled, maybe around 2012-2014. Like most Korean schools, the outside has a dirt soccer field (which seems comically underutilized at this science school) fronting a large, multi-story building. The first floor is dedicated to administrative offices, sprinkled with copies of classical paintings and a portrait of Korea’s first astronaut, who was an alumna of the school. The other 3 floors are all given over to each grade. My office is on the 3rd floor and my classroom on the 4th. The office is nice, spacious, and comfortable, shared with 3-4 other teachers at any given time. I have 1:1 planning-teaching time, so all of my lessons at this point are planned out literally until I’m 30!**

As for teaching itself, so far, it’s a dream. My classroom is spacious and all mine, to do with as I please. I have 2 whiteboards and a chalkboard, and a lovely projector/podium set up. More desks than I know what to do with, so most I have shoved into a corner to give me some open space in the back, while the rest are grouped into tables (it is a conversation class, after all).

I arrive at work at 8, where I see between 2-5 classes a day. Each class I only see once a week, and all their names are basically gobbledygook to me, so learning names is a slow process. Usually they will file in during their 10-minute passing period, then I get 50 minutes to teach. The whole school gets 30 minutes for lunch, which usually includes kimchi, some sort of spicy soup (ranging from crab to chicken to seaweed), a rice dish, a spicy meat dish, and some noodles and vegetables, plus a fruit. It’s pretty solid on the whole, but it does take some getting used to. At least my chopstick skills are improving. Then back to class for a few hours, wrapping up the day at 4:40.

And the students? There is a (literal, ahaha) world of difference between a typical American middle school (even one as nice as Wydown!) and a Korean high school for gifted children. Behavior is the first thing you notice. Students bow in greeting when they pass you in the halls. Papers are handed in with two hands, as if they were a defeated enemy surrendering his sword. And while they laugh and chatter and stare at their phones like normal students, all it takes is my shutting the door to the room (my “begin class” signal) for them to instantly cease and give me their attention.

Their English level ranges from so-so to “why are you even in this class”. Some can only more or less follow what I say (I do my best to slooooow my speech waaaaay down, but it’s hard since I’m a naturally quick speaker). But they are enthusiastic and willing in class, and it feels like my biggest challenge going forward will be finding ways to keep them challenged.

It’s, uh, gonna be hard to go back to middle school.

*I read it somewhere that hurricanes with cutesy or even just plain female names tend to have higher death tolls, because people don’t take them as seriously. I have no idea if this is true and haven’t bothered to do the research to find out, because I find the anecdote amusing enough that I don’t want to falsify it. Just remember, grain of salt, since my source at this point is literally “I read it somewhere.”

**that’s far sooner than I would prefer.