The Dream Team
Text and photos by Caby Styers, ETA 2018–19 This winter I was able to travel to Taiwan for one week with two really good friends. It was during this trip that I realized the importance of choosing the people you travel with and being there for each other when situations do not go as planned. Our trip started out with a rough patch when one of my friends realized on our bus to Mokpo that she had left her cell phone in a taxi that morning. We both live in Suncheon, in the southern part of Korea, and we were traveling to Mokpo, another city to the east of us. In Korea, there is no stopping buses when they are driving to other cities, so we rode the two hours to Mokpo, and then returned to Suncheon that same day and were able to find the phone. We finally rode back again to Mokpo to meet our friend before going to Taiwan, six hours after our first bus ride. My friend and I were a little tired and dispirited, but at the end of the day we were able to joke about it and move forward with our trip. The next day, the three of us took our flight to Taiwan. We were about to exchange our money at the airport when my other friend couldn’t find her wallet. We couldn’t believe something like this could happen again. We looked on the airplane, asked airport staff, and searched everywhere to find it. But we were not as lucky this time. While my friend not having her wallet was a constant stresser for her on our travels, we were able to help her and pump her up the rest of our trip. By giving her time and space to process the problem and her anxiety, and then being there for her to help strategize what to do next, we were able to help relieve some of her stress and enjoy the trip despite the complications. Losing valuable items became a daily joke as we asked, “Do we have everything?” before and after taking any transportation. Actually, we were able to save our phones twice this way. Finally, later in the trip, we traveled outside of Taipei to a very famous street called Jiufen. Jiufen is famous because it was the inspiration for the movie Spirited Away. There are hundreds of shops and tea houses in this area. After exploring this street, we tried to get to a waterfall in the late afternoon for a change of pace, however, we ended up getting lost on a creepy trail. As it was about to rain, we were walking by abandoned houses, a man chopping wood, and a lonesome, loud power generator. As the trail became darker, we became more lost, and more isolated from the rest of the world. I began to have a panic attack, but my friends, even though they were scared too, were able to help me through it. We were able to make it back and laugh about it on the way home. In the end, this was one of the most stressful trips I have been on, and I don’t think I will be able to go on a trip anytime soon without panicking about where my phone and wallet are. However, it was also really fun and memorable, because I went with friends that handled and adapted to stressful situations in a similar way that I do. Thinking back, I am surprised that we handled everything so well, and it was because we were able to be there for each other, each of us stepped up during the trip to lead the group. Ending the evening in laughter and jokes, despite the challenges of the day, was one of the many great memories from that trip.
Making Our History
Photos and text by Anna Yamamuro, a first-year ETA in Cheonan The Monument to the Nation My host mom has wondered before why I was interested in visiting the 독립기념관 (Dongnip Ginyeomgwan), or the Independence Hall of Korea, a museum located in my placement city of Cheonan. She asked me if it would be uncomfortable to visit a museum dedicated to Korea’s independence movement against Japanese colonization, considering I am half Japanese and half white-American. I said yes, but that’s the very reason I wanted to go. The legacy of that time still affects many people even today, and if we don’t face that history, uncomfortable as it may be, then nothing will change. I have learned about this historical period over the years in various forms—through minimal coverage in history class at Japanese Saturday school, then again through Korean literature and history classes in college. I have learned the big ideas, but there is still much for me to learn about the hardships both of my countries have inflicted on the one I live in today. I could have been placed to teach anywhere in Korea, yet somehow I was sent here to Cheonan—the birthplace of Korea’s independence movement against Japanese colonial rule—and it felt like a sign. My first impression of the museum was that it’s not a museum, really. It’s a park that stretches across a sprawling 23,424 square meters (almost 6 acres), complete with a lotus pond and fountain and a giant “Monument to the Nation” measuring 52 meters tall. Scattered among these are seven exhibition buildings describing Korea’s struggle for independence against Japanese colonization. Its immense size may be an indication of how important it was to the Korean people to tell their own story about what happened during a time when Korean voices were silenced. The White Lotus Pond While looking around the museum I was able to learn more about how the Japanese colonial regime took control over Korea. For example, Korean farmers were forced to send rice to Japan to supplement its own low rice production at the time, wrecking livelihoods and causing widespread hunger across Korea. As I walked through each museum building, I learned more about these kinds of details I had missed in the past, and reflected on how it’s possible that such horrible deeds were done by real, living people like us. I realized that these details of the colonial era speak volumes about how repressive institutions get established—slowly, subtly, insidiously. As I approached the end of the final museum building, I saw a wall dotted with bright yellow post-it notes, covered in messages from museum visitors. Buried within the sea of yellow is a title: “우리가 우리를 잊지 말아요.” (“May we not forget ourselves.”) Post-It Wall One post-it in particular caught my eye. It had the words “FUCK JAPANESE PEOPLE” sprawled across it in English, and was decorated with drawings of several middle fingers. My first reaction was an automatic, intense defensiveness. A series of thoughts ran through my head: It’s not all Japanese people, why are they spreading negativity on a wall constructed to respect the victims, I didn’t do anything wrong… but after a few minutes, I put all those thoughts in order and put them away. When your family and country have been through deep trauma, if you need to let out that rage through an angry, tiny, yellow post-it, that is completely justified. I can endure a pinprick of sadness and discomfort for your history. I began to think about my own history and especially my grandfather, my じじ (Jiji). I interviewed him once about World War II for a Japanese school project, I think in the 5th grade—and that is almost all I know about his life before he became じじ. じじ told me about how he was just a teenager during the war, who went to the countryside with his younger sister to escape the American bombings. He experienced hunger and saw people stiff and dead on the side of the road from starvation. But he survived, became a loving father and grandfather, and was a caring teacher to hundreds of students. When he was still with us in this world, I got the sense that じじ didn’t like that I enjoyed K-pop. Once, with the best intentions, he warned me that Korean people were “dangerous.” What I would give to have him meet my loving, endlessly kind, Korean husband now. The museum also made me think of my husband’s grandfather, his 할아버지 (Harabeoji), who is Korean but also tells us his story in Japanese, because that’s the language he went to school through. Every time we see him, 할아버지 describes how his father convinced him to flee his homeland on horseback, before North Korea was closed off to the rest of the world. He explains how he survived the war by escaping to Southeast Asia, where he met some American army men who he was able to communicate with through miming and received food rations from in exchange for helping with translating. Like じじ, he was also once a teacher. I think じじ and 할아버지 could have been friends. The Statue of Indomitable Koreans As all these thoughts swirled around in my head, I was struck by the absolute miracle that is my family, and everyone’s families; the whole generation that lived through the World Wars. Both our grandfathers narrowly survived hardships that I selfishly don’t even want to imagine. They, and those around them, made a series of choices that led them to their futures – to their careers, to their homes, and to their loved ones. They had children, who also had children. And two of those children are my husband, Sean, and me. The two of us have three cultural backgrounds, each intensely interconnected yet often blind to each other’s perspectives and histories. We could have easily ended up being born and raised in any of the three countries, but after a series of coincidences and
Contrasts
Text by Paige Whitney, ETA 2017–19Photos by Melissa Kukowski, ETA 2017–19 This past winter marked the first of my ventures into Southeast Asia. I chowed down on delicious food from many nationalities in Singapore, and was happily blinded by pastel buildings and neon lights in Hong Kong—but the biggest surprises came in the Philippines. Melissa (a fellow ETA) and I spent most of our time in the Philippines in Manila, the country’s capital. We drifted around to huge shopping malls, and traipsed through Intramuros (the old Spanish quarters), Rizal Park, and Binondo, the world’s oldest Chinatown. While our Airbnb was a beautiful condominium with multiple pools in Makati, Binondo was my first real in-person glimpse of the poverty segregated to districts of Metro Manila. Through a back alley, crates of crowing chickens stacked precariously close to a bridge over a small river’s edge decorated the whimsical scene as we walked past throngs of children playing and little puppies teetering beside them. The children’s eyes smiled as one young boy innocently called out to me, calling me “beautiful,” as his friends laughed in embarrassment. On the main roads, the feeling was different. The air felt thicker and heavier on the sidewalks as we walked by men welding and soldering car parts. Later, while sitting in an air-conditioned cafe with an iced coffee to recharge, I could feel and even see the black layer of grease that had collected on my arms as I walked by. While these distinctions showed in every area of Philippines we visited (despite our small sample size of only two places of the many islands), Boracay—which was the most highly anticipated portion of our week-long travel plan in the Philippines—was where the class divide became starkly clear. The island did not disappoint (because it was the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life) but it did surprise me. Boracay is a very small island—you have to take a ferry from the larger island that houses the airport to reach it—of under four square miles. It had been closed for six months in 2018 to recover from environmental damage sustained from massive over-tourism. The effects of that consciousness and the seriousness of the cleanup job were clear in the paper bags used at the convenience store, the paper straws used in buko (Filipino coconut) and shakes alike, the “environmental tax” being most of the ferry fee, and the crystal clear blue water. To even enter Boracay, you must show proof of your hotel booking on the island or be sponsored by a resident of the island. We stayed at a “local home” through Airbnb (which is technically a workaround of the entry to the island), a humble little apartment accompanied by curious pet kittens and water warmed only by the rays of the sun. We truly were in the thick of an authentic neighborhood – roosters crowing at any hour of the day or night, babies crying, fires burning in barrels in the plaza where teenage boys played basketball late at night, and the scent of dinner lingering in the air. Yet a five-minute walk brought us to almost a different world—the beachfront. The number of suntanned foreigners was staggering, the countless restaurants selling overpriced food catered to a westerner’s palate, the luxury hotels and spa advertisements rampant—was I really still on the same island? How did the line get drawn so harshly and quickly between the wealthy foreigner-centric beach and the borderline impoverished neighborhood we were staying in? The next day, we ventured further into town in hopes of finding beach towels. The remaining efforts to redo the infrastructure of the island were all about—power lines leeching energy and hanging dangerously low, large portions of sidewalks just dug up, and new sewer piping laying exposed in the sun. The taxi drivers of the island—mainly motorbikes—continually called to us: “Hi ma’am! Beach? Only 30 pisos [about $0.60]! Yes quick ride, beautiful beach!” They seemed just as confused to see us within their neighborhood as we were in trying to find the towels. It’s difficult to talk about these topics without spreading caucasian pity on the situation or without sounding emotionless, but my experience in Boracay was eye-opening. Of course, it was the “tropical vacation” that I always wanted to have, but it showed me more than just beauty in delving into those streets beyond the beachfront. I learned to be aware of my privilege, needing to consider how lucky I am with my opportunities and economic faculty, but also hoping that some of that wealth that Boracay gains through tourism will be given back to their local communities, and not just go toward making the beachfront fancier. Seeing that divide up close really hit home, as well as left me hoping that the larger powers will check themselves and distribute their successes to all those on this tropical paradise.