what is this

I am unsure of how exactly to begin the first post on my blog that will ostensibly document my travels, for which I hope this year-long stay in Korea serves as the catalyst. Much is already known by those few who will read this, and I'd rather avoid exhaustive litanies and recaps and endless comparisons. Simple as I may be, such writing is even too pale for me. I'd also like to avoid this turning into one of those "grand connections" type of blogs, where every minutiae of experience is mined for even tangential meaning. That is terrible.

There are many expectations to temper and impressions to assess and reassess, many tales told before takeoff whose echoes only serve to color the very expectations I swore to be free of upon arrival. Perhaps it is our nature to carry expectations, or it is at least mine.

My particular corner of the Republic of Korea is Gyeonggi province, or Gyeonggi-do colloquially. It is rather large and surrounds the Seoul area like a doughnut whose southwestern corner has been nibbled upon. A thirty-minute bus ride to the southeast puts you in the heart of Seoul proper, depending of course on which area you seek. It is a vast metropolitan area unlike, and yet rather similar to, any other. It has its rich and poor, its well-heeled and rubber-soled, its traffic and trash and rats and food and sewers and lights. There is still much to be explored in Seoul proper, and I have the remainder of my year to do so.

Most of my time is spent in Gyeonggi-do, specifically Goyang which encompasses both new and old iterations of Ilsan, my neighborhood of Janghang contained within "new" Ilsan (Ilsandong-gu). Services are plentiful and many feature home delivery via scooter, and McDonald's is one such proprietor offering such an option. Food is everywhere, the very glue of Korean society and the complement to just about anything one does. For all the preparation I undertook, eating cuisine that seemed simply too American to ever exist outside of America, it seems that folks just like pizza and burgers no matter their time zone. Korean pizza usually features a veritable goulash of toppings - corn kernels, sweet potatoes, barbecue sauce, walnuts? - but living in the town run by East Side Pies for so long meant these sorts of things barely blipped my PIZZA-DAR (HINT: it's a radar for pizza). But don't worry Dad, I've had some decent Korean. Oh, how I miss cold cuts and good cheese.

Now for some random bullets that may eventually get more words of their own, but for now get only a mention:

- Beer and soju are widely available and very, very cheap. Too cheap.

- My entire bathroom is also my entire shower. Efficiency!

- Public transport is cheap and quick and reliable and shames the US in every conceivable way, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. What a concept - reams of data on the wisdom of public investment in transportation convincing a government to do so and they do it. Think about this the next time you are sitting in traffic, Texas.

- Et cetera.

More later, probably.