And here I am in Yanji. Thank you, my family, for your many thoughts.
As the train drew near, Yanji station was announced in mutilated English, so I had time enough to gather my wits and my belongings, and make a hasty exit.
I was exhausted and disoriented enough that most of that day remains a blur. Mike introduced me to a few of his own friends, and together they contrived (quite deliberately) to keep me away from home and sleep until around 8:00. Miserable as it was at the time, I was grateful for it later, because that night I slept like the dead. The only thing that really stands out in my mind, was crossing streets. It was insane. At first I was able to cope with being nearly run down several times in succession. But as the evening wore on, and I became more disoriented, my fried mind blew a socket whenever we came to an intersection, and it felt as though I was flying in every direction at once, as maniacal vehicles careened past and around me in the dark, often with only inches to spare. My head snapped around, but it didn't seem to matter which way I looked, there was always a worse fate over the other shoulder. The 'Intersection of Death' was especially intense, and I came, then, as near as I ever have to panicking.
That night I slept soundly, and woke up the next morning pretty rested. Which was fortunate, because at 5:00 AM a group of us took off for Baekdu Mountain. That was a beautiful experience. After a five hour drive in a rickety bus, we hiked for one or two hours up the lovely, mellow green mountain, to a waterfall. We were to have hiked up the fall, but that trail was closed due to rock slides. So we hired a SUV, instead, and drove to the very top of the mountain, from where we had a breathtaking view of the glassy, water-filled crater at it's center. About two thirds of the crater is actually in NK. So standing on top of the world, over a magnificent scope, so close to the land of my people, was exhilarating.
I could write of more, but I know how quickly an email can get very long, so I'll stop here. I mostly just wanted to let you know that I got here safely, and to thank you for thinking of me.
Elisabeth
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
A Grueling Experience
Family...
Well, this train ride has been a grueling experience. With five hours left to go, my neck and shoulders are beginning to ache from three days of cramped inactivity.
I've seen a little of the country side, which is much like one would find anywhere, with it's greens and browns under a very blue sky. Here and there are herds of long haired goats. Their herders stand in the road side or sit picturesquely in the shade of a near by tree, with gnarly staffs and conical, straw hats. There are a lot of corn crops, their silky tassels hinting at the ripeness of their fruit. It has been pleasant to sit on one of the little, backless bucket seats by the window and watch the world sluggishly roll past. But, as those seats are quite uncomfortable, I've spent most of this journey lying in my bunk, above two others, with about three feet of head room. The forced rest has been a disguised blessing: I feel much more alive today than I did yesterday.
I found the train depot, yesterday, as you may have gathered. After paying the taxi driver, and hoisting my luggage out of the car, I began to walk in a generally unspecific direction. Before long I spotted a police officer on the corner. Showing my ticket to him, I pointed in several directions at once, and shrugged my shoulders. He obligingly gesticulated, grunted in four or five different tones, and made me to understand that I was to walk down to the nearest crosswalk and cross the street. This I did, and found myself before an impressive, stately building, pressed in on every side by a throng of people all heading in the same direction. For reasons ambiguous, only one person was permitted to enter the building at a time. So the surging crowd outside pressed and pulled together, moving like a strong current of water, while one individual at a time burst through the doors, much like a wet watermelon seed. Once inside, of course, the crowds thinned a bit.
I wandered around the depot for a while, until I eventually spotted a billboard above 'Waiting room number 4' that had numbers to match those on my ticket. I stood, looking around me uncertainly at the hundreds of people crowded, sitting, into this large room. Spotting an official at the very back, I picked my way over to her, and showed her my ticket. She unexpectedly punched it, and opened the little gate in front of which she stood, ushering me through.
I followed several corridors for an eternity, until my whole body began to ache from the weight of the two backpacks I carried. None too soon, a long cement hall opened on the left to a flight of stairs. Up these, and there was a train, with an officer standing at the door of each car. Again, out came the ticket. Again I was gesticulated at, and understood that I was to move further along the train. At every car I stopped, showing my ticket, was pointed in one direction or another, until at last I gave my ticket to an officer who scrutinized first the ticket, then myself, then stepped aside to let me in. Without too much more ado, and with the help of some helpful fellow passengers, I found my bunk, stowed my bags, and settled down for a very long ride.
I must leave you now.
Much love,
Elisabeth
Well, this train ride has been a grueling experience. With five hours left to go, my neck and shoulders are beginning to ache from three days of cramped inactivity.
I've seen a little of the country side, which is much like one would find anywhere, with it's greens and browns under a very blue sky. Here and there are herds of long haired goats. Their herders stand in the road side or sit picturesquely in the shade of a near by tree, with gnarly staffs and conical, straw hats. There are a lot of corn crops, their silky tassels hinting at the ripeness of their fruit. It has been pleasant to sit on one of the little, backless bucket seats by the window and watch the world sluggishly roll past. But, as those seats are quite uncomfortable, I've spent most of this journey lying in my bunk, above two others, with about three feet of head room. The forced rest has been a disguised blessing: I feel much more alive today than I did yesterday.
I found the train depot, yesterday, as you may have gathered. After paying the taxi driver, and hoisting my luggage out of the car, I began to walk in a generally unspecific direction. Before long I spotted a police officer on the corner. Showing my ticket to him, I pointed in several directions at once, and shrugged my shoulders. He obligingly gesticulated, grunted in four or five different tones, and made me to understand that I was to walk down to the nearest crosswalk and cross the street. This I did, and found myself before an impressive, stately building, pressed in on every side by a throng of people all heading in the same direction. For reasons ambiguous, only one person was permitted to enter the building at a time. So the surging crowd outside pressed and pulled together, moving like a strong current of water, while one individual at a time burst through the doors, much like a wet watermelon seed. Once inside, of course, the crowds thinned a bit.
I wandered around the depot for a while, until I eventually spotted a billboard above 'Waiting room number 4' that had numbers to match those on my ticket. I stood, looking around me uncertainly at the hundreds of people crowded, sitting, into this large room. Spotting an official at the very back, I picked my way over to her, and showed her my ticket. She unexpectedly punched it, and opened the little gate in front of which she stood, ushering me through.
I followed several corridors for an eternity, until my whole body began to ache from the weight of the two backpacks I carried. None too soon, a long cement hall opened on the left to a flight of stairs. Up these, and there was a train, with an officer standing at the door of each car. Again, out came the ticket. Again I was gesticulated at, and understood that I was to move further along the train. At every car I stopped, showing my ticket, was pointed in one direction or another, until at last I gave my ticket to an officer who scrutinized first the ticket, then myself, then stepped aside to let me in. Without too much more ado, and with the help of some helpful fellow passengers, I found my bunk, stowed my bags, and settled down for a very long ride.
I must leave you now.
Much love,
Elisabeth
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Perfect Rest
Dear Ones,
I may or may not have the opportunity to send any emails while in China. In any case, I thought I'd keep an account of life on a daily basis, so that when I do get the chance to email, either from here or from Korea, I won't have to dig back into the recesses of my mind to remember what happened when and where.
In these last forty four hours I've been able to catch a total of four hours of broken, alert sleep. So if what I write today seems in any way scattered or irrelevant, that will have to be my excuse. And I will continue to use it for the next thirty hours. My travels, you must understand, are only half over. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It wasn't too difficult to wave goodbye to you, two nights ago. I've said good-bye enough times that I'm pretty much able to disengage my mind, at times like that, from what's happening. So it wasn't until I actually stepped on to the plane, nine hours later, that a heavy weight settled on my chest, and my mind screamed at me, 'What on earth are you doing?!' Somehow planes always seem to have that effect on me…they're so irrevocable, you know. But I told myself that now was not the time to be entertaining such thoughts, and allowed the candy and cookies you sent along turn my mind to more pleasant, or at least less restless, channels.
The rest of the plane trip was uneventful enough to satisfy the most prosaic of travelers, if you don't count the fact that the seats were so squeezed together that my knees pressed into the seat in front of me for the entirety of the twelve hour flight from San Francisco. I was most sincerely thankful when we finally touch down in Beijing.
…Except, I'd never met (or, of course, seen) the man who was to meet me at the airport. I picked up my luggage, went through customs, and from there was quickly re-initiated into the very east-Asian method of maneuvering through a crowd (this, for those of you who are drawing a blank, employs mostly the elbows). And it was a crowd. I looked over the sea of glossy, black heads (I really don't know what for. As I said, I didn't know for whom I was looking) and quickly decided that the one who didn't have the luggage must be the one to do the finding. So I dragged everything over to a row of seats, pulled out a sudoku puzzle, and settled down to wait for an indefinite amount of time. It occurred to me that I should be a little nervous, at least. And certainly I berated myself for not having gotten Marvin's phone number, or at least having arranged a particular spot at which to meet him. But in the same moment I knew that He had His eyes on me, and absolutely had my hand in His. And sure enough, one from a multitude of Asian faces spotted me about a half an hour later, and called my name. He had been looking for me for several hours, and 'was just about to take off.'
'I'm very glad you didn't.' I replied with intense sincerity.
Marvin took me to the apartment where I'll stay tonight. To my very great joy, the elderly couple with whom I'm living speak fluent Korean so that we're able to hold basic, albeit stunted, conversation. Sometimes they laugh, so I know either that I've misunderstood their question, or somehow miscommunicated what I had attempted to say. It's all good practice, and I'm happy that, despite my deplorable lack of studying this summer, I'm able to pick up where I left off.
After exchanging some money into Chinese currency, Marvin brought me around the corner to a little cubby hole in a wall where I purchased a train ticket that will carry me up to Yenji tomorrow. That will be a twenty-one hour journey, which I'm not even remotely looking forward to. Marvin will put me in a taxi, give the driver directions to the depot, and then I will be on my own, with no way of contacting anyone, if I need help. As he was telling me this, he said, 'You should probably know that the driver won't take you all the way to the station, because he's not allowed to drive that far. He'll drop you off somewhere near by, and you'll have to find it from there.'
In relation to which train to take, 'Someone will be able to help you, but don't let anyone besides yourself hold your ticket. If you let go of it, you'll never get it back.'
And when I asked how I'll know at which station I'm eventually to disembark, 'Oh, you'll probably just know.'
The entirety of the trip is fraught with vaguenesses, and if you've ever spent time in a foreign country, you'll understand some of the discomfiture I experience in being set loose to find my ambiguous, twenty-one hour way, alone on my second day here. If it weren't for the absolute certainty that every step (I do not speak generally, but very specifically: every foot step) I take is Ordered and Prearranged, I would be experiencing every emotion other than that which I now feel, and that is perfect rest.
...
Yay! I get to send this sooner than I thought I would. I'll be taking off for the train station very soon, and hopefully (though by no means probably) will be able to send a quick email tomorrow, when I've arrived, letting you all know that I'm still alive and hopefully not too disoriented.
Missing you already,
Elisabeth
I may or may not have the opportunity to send any emails while in China. In any case, I thought I'd keep an account of life on a daily basis, so that when I do get the chance to email, either from here or from Korea, I won't have to dig back into the recesses of my mind to remember what happened when and where.
In these last forty four hours I've been able to catch a total of four hours of broken, alert sleep. So if what I write today seems in any way scattered or irrelevant, that will have to be my excuse. And I will continue to use it for the next thirty hours. My travels, you must understand, are only half over. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It wasn't too difficult to wave goodbye to you, two nights ago. I've said good-bye enough times that I'm pretty much able to disengage my mind, at times like that, from what's happening. So it wasn't until I actually stepped on to the plane, nine hours later, that a heavy weight settled on my chest, and my mind screamed at me, 'What on earth are you doing?!' Somehow planes always seem to have that effect on me…they're so irrevocable, you know. But I told myself that now was not the time to be entertaining such thoughts, and allowed the candy and cookies you sent along turn my mind to more pleasant, or at least less restless, channels.
The rest of the plane trip was uneventful enough to satisfy the most prosaic of travelers, if you don't count the fact that the seats were so squeezed together that my knees pressed into the seat in front of me for the entirety of the twelve hour flight from San Francisco. I was most sincerely thankful when we finally touch down in Beijing.
…Except, I'd never met (or, of course, seen) the man who was to meet me at the airport. I picked up my luggage, went through customs, and from there was quickly re-initiated into the very east-Asian method of maneuvering through a crowd (this, for those of you who are drawing a blank, employs mostly the elbows). And it was a crowd. I looked over the sea of glossy, black heads (I really don't know what for. As I said, I didn't know for whom I was looking) and quickly decided that the one who didn't have the luggage must be the one to do the finding. So I dragged everything over to a row of seats, pulled out a sudoku puzzle, and settled down to wait for an indefinite amount of time. It occurred to me that I should be a little nervous, at least. And certainly I berated myself for not having gotten Marvin's phone number, or at least having arranged a particular spot at which to meet him. But in the same moment I knew that He had His eyes on me, and absolutely had my hand in His. And sure enough, one from a multitude of Asian faces spotted me about a half an hour later, and called my name. He had been looking for me for several hours, and 'was just about to take off.'
'I'm very glad you didn't.' I replied with intense sincerity.
Marvin took me to the apartment where I'll stay tonight. To my very great joy, the elderly couple with whom I'm living speak fluent Korean so that we're able to hold basic, albeit stunted, conversation. Sometimes they laugh, so I know either that I've misunderstood their question, or somehow miscommunicated what I had attempted to say. It's all good practice, and I'm happy that, despite my deplorable lack of studying this summer, I'm able to pick up where I left off.
After exchanging some money into Chinese currency, Marvin brought me around the corner to a little cubby hole in a wall where I purchased a train ticket that will carry me up to Yenji tomorrow. That will be a twenty-one hour journey, which I'm not even remotely looking forward to. Marvin will put me in a taxi, give the driver directions to the depot, and then I will be on my own, with no way of contacting anyone, if I need help. As he was telling me this, he said, 'You should probably know that the driver won't take you all the way to the station, because he's not allowed to drive that far. He'll drop you off somewhere near by, and you'll have to find it from there.'
In relation to which train to take, 'Someone will be able to help you, but don't let anyone besides yourself hold your ticket. If you let go of it, you'll never get it back.'
And when I asked how I'll know at which station I'm eventually to disembark, 'Oh, you'll probably just know.'
The entirety of the trip is fraught with vaguenesses, and if you've ever spent time in a foreign country, you'll understand some of the discomfiture I experience in being set loose to find my ambiguous, twenty-one hour way, alone on my second day here. If it weren't for the absolute certainty that every step (I do not speak generally, but very specifically: every foot step) I take is Ordered and Prearranged, I would be experiencing every emotion other than that which I now feel, and that is perfect rest.
...
Yay! I get to send this sooner than I thought I would. I'll be taking off for the train station very soon, and hopefully (though by no means probably) will be able to send a quick email tomorrow, when I've arrived, letting you all know that I'm still alive and hopefully not too disoriented.
Missing you already,
Elisabeth
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