Landscape Reflections
Landscape Reflections By Noé Toroczkai, 2nd Year ETA These paintings came from meditative moments in my travels within Korea where I was captivated by my surroundings and existed solely in the present. No thoughts, only an overwhelming sensation of warmth and connection to my environment. Snapping a picture during these moments does not do enough to convey the sense of inner peace and veneration for the surrounding nature that I experienced. Going through the labor-intensive process of creating these paintings allowed me to get to know the environment on an intimate level. Painting is a way that I can show my utmost respect to these places, by spending countless hours getting to know every stone, leaf, branch and flower that shared those moments with me. My hope is that these paintings provide an opportunity for the viewer to join me in appreciating the beauty of Korea’s natural landscapes. [Featured photos by Noé Toroczkai – Autumn in Bulguksa, Field of Comfort, Flora Garden ]
Through Mud and Myth
By Johanna Alexander, a second year ETA in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do The importance of history, they say, is that if we know the mistakes of those who came before us, we can avoid repeating them in the future. I’ll grant them this: it’s good advice if you’re like the people in those histories. The kind of person who could fall prey to petty schemes and deceitful promises. “Guys, come on now! He’s spreading false prophecies! I’m trying to protect you—clearly,” Poseidon said as he sent two giant serpents to strangle poor Laocoon, who had just warned the Trojans that the horse was a trick. “Thanks,” they all replied. What fools. Thanking the god for enabling their impending doom. Me? I’m nothing like them. “Thanks,” I said to the woman at the ticket booth. To her left and right sat two more employees, each with the same slicked black hair and pressed, collared uniforms. The three fates making an appearance this early on in my weekend adventure wasn’t surprising; the destiny of a legend was something anybody would want a part in. I pretended not to recognize them, but my blood was boiling in anticipation. What prophecy of greatness did they have in store for me this time? “The mud is great for your skin,” they said. All three women seemed to speak with one voice. Their eyes glinted through the plexiglass partition, but looked past me as I nodded and left with my friend. My friend, who desperately needed the weekend of rest and relaxation that this festival promised. My friend, who, when I presented the idea to her just yesterday, seemed hesitant that we could succeed on such short notice. “Last time we didn’t make a plan, it turned out fine right?” “Please, look who you’re talking to. It will be great!” We entered the festival, a huge stadium bordered by a fence with only one gate. At the beach behind us, hundreds of oblivious visitors were swimming and laughing in the ocean as their cellphones, shoes and wallets were slowly being washed away by the creeping shoreline. We soon found the mud arena and took turns pouring a thick concoction of earth and sea water on each other’s heads. This is what we came here for; I could feel my skin being nourished and rejuvenated. Not a moment after we had returned the ladle to its home in the barrel, we were grabbed by hands belonging to faces we could not see and thrown into a ring of strangers calf-deep in a diluted bath of the healing mud we had just indulged in. A man at the front of the ring blew a whistle, and all hell broke loose. Strange, I thought as my companion and I huddled together for protection. I came to relax like a king, but I’m made to fight like a Spartan? The other revelers at this bacchanal, with faces made anonymous and inhuman by the gray sloppy clay that covered us all, violently slung mud into our eyes, mouth, ears and somehow even in places where the sun rarely shines—though I supposed the mud was good for me in those places too, like they say. In the few moments I could spare to think during the assault, I began to wonder why—why would this turn of events be happening to me of all people? I had done nothing wrong. I had made no mistakes. I never do! And that’s when it hit me—the thought, along with a well aimed chunk of mud. I must be too perfect. They say every hero has a fatal flaw, and mine was that I had none! I was climbing too close to divinity myself and the gods were threatened. This was their punishment. A group of men launched a surprise attack and a shower of mud exploded across my face. Did they know what they were doing? Did they know that this assault was not of their own free will, but simply the hand of my heavenly atonement? Yes, I was having a miserable time. But a hero of my strength, stamina, beauty, cunning and renown (just to name a few) would never be felled by a little teasing from jealous gods who were too cowardly to face me themselves. I lifted my gaze and whispered through the mud in my mouth. “I’ll come out on top. Just you watch.” Crouching shoulder to shoulder with my friend, who was struggling to keep one eye open as witness to our judgment, I decided that I would take their preordained punishment with a smile. My body would be healed and I would feel relaxed—if only to spite them. As the festival dragged on, my voice grew hoarse with shouts of “Yay! I love mud! I can’t believe how awesome this festival is!” We tried to leave, but we couldn’t seem to make it to the exit gate, always getting mixed up and turned around in the hoards of muddy strangers who smiled and cheered as if this weren’t the first circle of hell itself. I had a thought then, that maybe they were not the executioners as I had previously believed, but the damned themselves, overcompensating just like us with a plastered-on smile and repeating hoorah. I wondered what the sorry lot had done to get here, for they could not have been the envy of the gods as we were. In the end—after hours of wrestling our way through ring after ring of muddy hell—we made it out alive. But it seemed our punishment was not yet complete. No, that would have been too quick, too dull for our celestial audience. The sun set as we hailed a taxi, trying to cover up our damp and dirty skin—unacceptable for sitting in someone else’s car—with our damper and dirtier clothes. “Can you take us to the Saerom 24-hour Jjimjilbang?” Sweating and bathing at a sauna is great for your health, they say. We hoped it would offer us some
A Night at the Jjimjilbang
By Chloe Sferra, a second year ETA in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do Mud clogs my nose, seeps into my ears and piles up at the base of my eyes. The chunks of clay and water are thrown at me with no intention except to fly into my mouth and choke me. I can only clear it off long enough to take one more breath before it once again blinds me. I sit huddled in a ball, mud up to my shoulders, and accept this punishment. I’m circled by strangers who happily drown me. They scoop the mud up with their hands and kick it into the air with their feet so it comes down on me like rain. I close one eye, hoping to protect it, and keep the other open as a witness. I dig my fingernails into the clay on the ground, clawing at it, but there is nowhere I can dig to that will offer me an escape. I keep my head down for the sake of survival. My friend next to me, also huddled in a ball, whispers something to herself. Was it a prayer to get us out of this pit? When it finally comes to an end, I use my dirt-stained hands to regain my sight, wiping mud away with more mud. I leave the scene hand in hand with the strangers. This is why we all came here. We came to play in the mud, rolling around like pigs, laughing and choking and whining in it until we rinse it off briefly, only for a moment, before jumping back into the mess. “They say it’s good for you,” my friend says to me. “The mud of Boryeong has special minerals that help your skin.” “Who is ‘they’?” I ask. When my friend suggested attending the Boryeong Mud Festival less than 24 hours ago, I thought she knew something I didn’t. Maybe she has some omnipresent foresight because she swore it would be a great weekend. A weekend full of rest and relaxation, which is the kind we needed. To the outside eye, the mud festival looks like a playground. It has slides and games, food and beer, spas and yoga rooms. When you are done splashing around in the mud you can run across the street and splash around in the ocean. Through clay, water and salt, you leave cleansed, softened and relaxed. That’s how it’s supposed to go. When I leave the festival, there are still traces of dirt on me. My bright orange shirt has turned dull, and my white hat has discolored to a grayish brown. It stays under my fingernails, and my hair is stiff from it. There is something else too. I shift a little and can feel it. The dirt has found its way into my mind. It sits there like a lump in my chest. My blood feels clouded. I first felt this different kind of mud when I returned to my placement in February, picking up right where I left off. But things started to change bit by bit, and I could feel the weight inside me grow. With each person I expected to see now gone, and each experience I thought would be the same now altered, the mass got bigger. These days it is so big that I can recognize it flowing through my veins, thicker than my blood. I hate this feeling. I hate that I don’t know how to get rid of it. I hate that I can’t even name it. All I know is that it feels eerily similar to how this mud feels on my skin. Dry, thick, suffocating. Like the mud, it hides in secret places around my body and won’t go away. The dirt outside of me and the dirt inside of me. I want to be rid of them both. “Let’s go to a jjimjilbang,” my friend says. “The cold water pool there is good for you.” Does she, too, see all my muddiness? There is only one jjimjilbang in this coastal Korean town. I wonder why the rest have disappeared. The Korean public bathhouses, known as jjimjilbang, are places meant for healing, cleaning and relaxation. For just a few thousand won, around 10 U.S. dollars, one can have 12 hours of access to a range of experiences. A jjimjilbang relies on traditional Korean medicine techniques to allow each visitor to heal their body. Healing, yes, that is what I need. I follow my confident friend to this magical place. She tells me all about the jjimjilbang during our long taxi ride. I listen closely, taking her words as gospel. She rattles off what to expect: karaoke rooms, gaming computers, restaurants. She goes back and forth talking to me and the taxi driver. To me, she mentions the common room where we will sleep in matching pajamas next to more strangers. To the taxi driver, she talks about the other closed-down spas. To me, a description of the must-try sweet rice drink, sikhye. To the taxi driver she gossips about previous passengers he has met. By the sound of it all, maybe a jjimjilbang is exactly the answer I need. The cleanliness I desire must be there. Like a hero searching for hidden treasure at the end of a quest, I will surely find what I am looking for too. When we arrive, she instructs me on the final expectations from the spa: the segregated bath houses complete with showers, hot tubs, cold pools, saunas and scrubbing stations. Store your items in your designated locker and strip down in the open locker room space before entering the bath house. Then, let the cleaning and healing begin. Past midnight, the otherwise busy spa is quiet. Some people are already asleep in the common room and the bathhouse is still. We undress and tip toe cautiously from the locker rooms to the showers. Tonight, in the female-only bath house area, there are just four other people. There is a