From: Peter
Wynne-Willson <pwynne@nuri.net>
Subject: No longer the sole Seoul occupant
Monday
6th December
I
have engineered a little time in the office to send this. As predicted, there is less time than there
was. I'm also a little worried that something
is wrong with this system. I haven't
had any e-mail at all for the last week, and only one message since my computer
was stolen. Could you send me
something, just to show that it is working.
Ali
and Eddie and Jim arrived ten minutes later than scheduled last week, after
quite a long-feeling flight, which is in fact quite long. I will leave her to tell you all about that
some time. From my point of view it was
quite nerve-wracking enough just waiting for them. First their flight inexplicably disappeared from the arrivals
board for ten minutes, just like happens in disaster films, and then a man
arrived to be met by his wife standing next to me, and a baby who screamed and
shied away from him. I was in a bit of
a state by the time they appeared from customs. Jim did what we call in the trade a 'slow burn'. He had no idea of course that the reason he
was being forced to stay in a seat for 11 hours was because he was going to
meet that man again. Once he had
realised who I was though, he stuck to me very firmly, and was gratifyingly
distraught when Ali had to take him away a while later. One of my students,
Yong, had offered to drive me to the
airport, and bring them back. The drive
back took nearly three hours - a good introduction to the city of 12 million
cars, all stationary. Ali and Jim
slept, Eddie talked quite a bit.
The
boys took about three days to adjust to the time here, which took us
ridiculously by surprise. Ali says it
was a bit like concentrating so hard on the birth, you forget about the small
matter of dealing with the baby when it's born. They were awake in neat shifts throughout the whole of both the
first two nights, so those days are now something of a blur. I think we went into the city a couple of
times, visited the university and did some shopping. I certainly remember it felt a little different. It is lovely to have them here though, and I
am really appreciating the chance to share everything now [except the apartment, which I quite enjoyed
not sharing!] One of the big differences is that travelling anywhere with
either or both of the boys you attract a quite unbelievable level of
attention. People are generally keen on
children here, and western children are a rarity, so on several occasions there
have been so many people trying to touch them that we have had to take evasive
action. It isn't just smiling and
saying hello, it is constant ruffling of
hair, pinching of cheeks, poking of tummies, and just straightforward
grabbing of whole child. Women of a
certain age fight to get Jim on their knee in the tube. Suddenly getting seats is no longer a
problem. They are managing very well -
much better than we are - and when Eddie relaxes with it enough to do his
bowing 'annyong hasseyo' there is the kind of collective response from everyone
in the train that you think only happens in musicals. Actually that is slightly the sense of the whole experience. From the moment you get on a train,
previously disparate passengers seem suddenly to turn into a chorus, an audible
intake of breath in unison, sitting up and turning their heads like meerkats,
all looking without blinking at us.
This attention can get a little wearing, when for example Jim is not
happy. It is embarrassing enough
dealing with a tantrum in public, but with fifty or sixty people following
avidly every aspect it is hard not to have a little tantrum yourself. I daresay before the time here is up....
Eddie
has been in to work with me a couple of times, which has worked well,
particular for him, since each of my twenty students felt they should give him
a packet of sweets or cake or biscuits.
He has been learning Korean traditional drumming, a bit of dancing, and
there has been a great deal of appreciation of him generally. Jim and Ali also came in to meet the
graduate group, and they are all coming to both of the groups performances
which happen later this week. The
graduates are performing on Wednesday in the Girls High School, and the other
group is performing to groups of children coming to the University on Saturday.
It
has been a week of politics here, because the University was due to be granted
National University status, an important step, which was suddenly blocked after
protests from the older universities, who feel it's level of resourcing is
unfair, [the ability to hire foreign 'professors' is actually one of the main
bug-bears] and that they are losing their best students. KNUA was set up by the
Ministry of Culture six years ago, and is funded by them, rather than the
Ministry of Education, which tends to support the other universities case, in
part because of course most of the people there attended them. The argument was due to be debated in
parliament next week, but this has been postponed. It is a very interesting and complicated dispute. I wasn't sure at first whether I may be in
fact on the wrong side of it [is it the equivalent of working in a
grant-maintained school?] but really am now pretty convinced by KNUA's case. The place was established to provide
something that the existing Universities were not doing - a high quality of
vocational and academic arts education in combination, and for those
establishments now to say they could do it better seems a little rich. One way
or another I have supported the protests as far as I can. The students and staff here responded by
mounting a big outdoor performance,
which Eddie and I went to, the other side of town on Wednesday. It was a fantastically impressive event,
with everyone wearing black, and a great range of performance. I had not really appreciated that the staff
here are many of them very well-known and accomplished performers, and they
were doing their stuff - a mixture of traditional music and dance, which as
described previously is well-suited to mournful protest, an improvised dance
with a stunning solo cello, specially written angry poetry and drama [probably
equally powerful, but a little harder to follow] and some spectacular opera
singing by a quartet of big-for-Korea professors. It was cold but stirring, and Eddie particularly enjoyed the
drumming, which is why he has been doing it.
We
have been to some playgrounds, markets,
shops, palaces, parks. Today we are off
to a 'folk village'. The much-vaunted
below-zero weather has still really failed to arrive. Today is quite cold, but sky very blue and beautiful, and we have
had no weather that would be unusual in Britain, except for the sustained
sunshine!
I
had another stereotype-busting experience that I must report. While rehearsing we got into a discussion
about masks, and Yumi mentioned that in Korea people wear face-masks when they
have colds. That isn't to do with
pollution, then? No, it is in case of
giving germs to others. I apologise for
exacerbating a pitiful image of suffering people in their naive self-induced
smog. Please replace this with one of a
city with an advanced sense of community which rather makes one feel guilty for
all that public sneezing and sniffing at home. I expect if I stayed here long enough I would end up having to
modify every single impression I've given in these messages. Not that this is not the twelfth most
polluted city in the world, though. At
the moment I stand by that..... Anyway.
Off to be one of Jim and Eddie's entourage on another sortie into their
adoring public. More soon.
Love
to all.
Pete