The fog melts away from Yeonggwang this Sunday afternoon like smoke from the popping embers of a fire in a damp stone brook shore. Upon the ambient screen of gray receding from my ninth floor balcony, our new home town revealed itself one structure, one street, one briskly walking woman at a time. Only the steep hills, thick and cool with bold green life, can trap the fog within their breadth before the warming noon burns it off.
Somewhere a truck with loudspeaker echoes through the streets as it drives, pumping varying volumes on and off of walls and rooftops nearby before slicing the pitches through the breezy porch screen. The muffled voice recording looped the same sentence nearly one hundred times before it disappeared down the Western farmland road where it originated. This form of entrepreneurship is not uncommon in our new home, as farmers with flatbeds chocked full of produce advertise by bullhorn and drive through the streets.
Restless to explore last night, Rosalyn and I ate at a Chinese restaurant called something to the tune of Toang-Po-Song. Following several difficult meals due to total communication breakdown, we were ecstatic to discover the menu choices were accompanied by pictures and even English translations. After some delicious sweet and sour pork and spicy bean curd with rice we stumbled upon one of many "PC Bangs" to check email and use the internet. Joining the ranks of gamers with eyes glued through spectacles to bright computer screens, we logged away an hour or so before a pre-recorded female voice came across the intercom. Clueless as to what we were being informed, we turned to ask someone sitting behind us what the voice had said. Hoping for no more than a broken English response, we asked the man if he understood the announcement and to our amazement explained in near perfect english that it was to ask teenagers to leave by 10pm. Our new friend introduced himself as Woody, while his real name was 규 이 (Gyuah). He assisted us by answering all sorts of questions concerning Yeonggwang's bars, restaurants, grocery stores and culture. He actually works out of town at the power plant but was in town to visit the hospital due to a knee injury, making it more fortuitous to meet such an oracle of sorts in such an unlikely setting.
We have briefly met two other English teachers on the street in town named Scott and Tony, but they were on their way home and we only spoke long enough for them to direct us to a local pizza joint. Yeonggwang will certainly prove to be an interesting home for our year here in Jeollanam-do, yet the exact identity of the place will take more time and many more posts to define. We are finding our place and discovering more of the language, culture and general life that makes up Korea every day.
Recent Comments