Exploring the City by Night

The first couple weeks were long, sometimes in the sense of feeling drawn out, sometimes in the sense of feeling infinite and open. The feeling of endless possibilities that came with being dropped into a new world, an unknown quantity to my colleagues, and untested as an explorer was both liberating and intimidating. Here I can be anyone, and no barrier stands in my path: I'd better not fuck this up!

Basically everyone who decides to dust off for Korea to teach will experience all of the following in the first two weeks: jet lag, illness (from the indigenous germs), feeling in over your head at trying to control kindergarteners, indigestion, and having no phone and no bank account for at least 2 weeks. But more memorably (and therefore, more importantly, once you survive those weeks) you will also see, taste, touch, smell and experience: new food, new streets, weekends out sightseeing, and drinks and fun with colleagues and fellow foreigners who can't wait to welcome you to your new life.

Go up to the top of Namjang tower at night and look out at the lights of Seoul, extending outward in every direction, your field of vision too small to encompass it all, even from here, the top of a tower on the highest hill in the area, once used to light beacon fires warning of enemy attackers. Both the lights and the buildings go on and on forever. The scale of it is incredible. It's as though the city is built of legos. Normally, when you are down there, you are a lego man, or woman. Up in the tower, you are once again a full-sized person, looking down at lego buildings and little lego people that you can watch through high powered binoculars for 1000 Won. Except a lego city is usually confined to a living room, where the walls are less than 10 feet away. Here the city fills a vast, open expanse. Imagine every inch of a meadow covered in the small blocks, or an emptied-out hayfield whose borders are beyond your vision and you start to get a sense of its hugeness. To a new arrival, this view represents all that is unknown--but none of it is unknowable. All you need to do, if you ever want to find out what's there, is to go back down to street level, and start walking. Now more than ever the world's great cities are grounds for endless exploration. There are more than 44,000 people per square mile in Seoul. In that kind of density, you just start walking and you're bound to get somewhere.

Now, I don't actually live in Seoul. I live in Deokso, which is technically considered the outskirts of Seoul. They don't have suburbs here, but if they did, that's what Deokso would be, most likely. If I want to go to downtown Seoul, it takes me about 45 minutes by subway. Between here and there is Donong, Guri, Wangsimni and a few other places whose names are really hard to remember. Each of those places is larger than Deokso, and each of them are technically considered to be outer reaches of Seoul. They are distinct entities, but it's only about 5 minutes rail travel between each one. They almost blend together, with small patches of mostly undeveloped area between. One way to picture it is to imagine the railway lines as fingers extending out from Seoul, and the population centers around the line stops are like the knuckles on the fingers. Deokso is a faraway knuckle.

So, the title of this post is "Exploring the City by Night". By "city" I mean Deokso, not Seoul. This is a city of 80,000, which by Korean standards, is pretty small. But to me, Deokso is still the most urbanized place I've ever lived. Gainesville has a greater overall population, but it doesn't feel half as "cityish" as Deokso (not that that's a bad thing. obviously gainesville is awesome no matter what). Deokso, in turn, is dwarfed by the unfathomable immensity of Seoul. Seoul is taller, deeper, busier, wider. It's an ocean. Deokso is barely larger than the University of Florida campus. And in that space are alleyways filled with neon signs and twenty storey apartment high rises and many more of the markers of possibility that make Seoul such an overwhelming experience to try to drink in from above. Basically, what I'm trying to tell you is, Deokso is the perfect place to wander around by myself. It's geographically small enough that I feel I can get to know its ins and outs easily in 16 months, yet it feels like I'm an ant of an explorer when I stand beneath its tall buildings. This is a place where there is still a strong rural presence. Behind my apartment complex there are small one room houses next to fields that might be about 30 yards square, farmed by families who are living just like their ancestors did, except now their view has white concrete buildings mixed in with the mountains. Oh, and they have cars, TVs, and they send their kids to schools, and they have national health care and... OK, maybe it's a fantasy to imagine that they live just like their ancestors. But it's still striking to start off on a walk with the plan of exploring, to step outside of my building to get a view of tall buildings, a big bridge and a subway station, then to turn around, walk a quarter mile and find myself in cabbage fields where farming families live.

This mix of urban and rural makes me feel like I never know what's around the corner when I toss on my headphones, pick a random direction, and just keep going until my feet tell me to turn around. It's great alone-time, and I know already it's going to be a reliably excellent experience to put on some music, grab a camera (or leave it at home, either way) and just find what's out there in Deokso. I've always enjoyed observing, and I feel like I've landed in a great place to be an observor.

Until next time.
I love the world and that means you.

Randy