Travel Korea Day 4 and 5: Expectations

I grew up with my father admonishing his children to “lower your expectations.” He said that most people’s disappointments come from those that are unrealized. The lower the expectation, then, the less disappointed one can be. When I trained with XTI, my mentors constantly affirmed that assertion—admonishing me not to lower expectations but to have none at all. “Live in expectancy,” they said. Expectancy for them is living in a way that listens to God’s Spirit and lets Him control events that happen rather than you; expectancy is the willingness to be surprised. Each of these assertions is important in our faith journey: One protects from hurt while the other allows Jesus to be our rightful life-guide.

I feel as though in this Christmas journey across Korea, I couldn’t help but have some expectation for every place that I would visit: Gwangju, Busan, Jeonju. In my mind, I thought Busan would be an “easy” place to explore—on the map, it looked so simple. I pictured Jeonju to be a small town, with its “hanok village” located in the middle of nowhere on the dark outskirts. Just as the imagined picture I created for myself of Korean life didn’t fit with my actual life situation in Chungju, so my imaginings about them didn’t fit with the places I would visit, either. Facing the realities of these places rather than my wispy dreams wasn’t negative. I’m not sure you could call it “lowered expectations” or “expectancy,” but I went on the journey with the hope of adventure, armed with expectations though I was. It proved to be somewhat disappointing but also surprising in other ways.

As I planned for my trip to Busan, my tourist map proved to be slightly misleading. I knew the city had a subway system, but as I’m from a place with no such animal, that was a poor judge of size. I don’t know how big a city need be to necessitate subway transportation! The map itself looked simple: one or two intersecting freeways compared to San Antonio’s hub of five. Easy to get around, right? I picked out some interesting sights to see, a little off the subway route but according to the map within reasonable walking distance; I could get to them all in no time. It was only later that I realized that the Lotte Department Store that I thought was in the central part of town—a place around which I thought I could find a room—wasn’t the only one in Busan. There must have been at least three others, acting as mini-hubs in their respective sides of town.

Simple map or no, this was no simple city. The day after arrival, I learned from a fellow ex-pat that Busan is apparently quite “neighborhood-minded.” Here I was trying to traverse great distances in the city in one day when the locals themselves were content to merely stay put! No wonder the night of arrival was frustrating! I was disappointed that I ran out of time to see all the places I marked on my map, but was dreamily unrealistic about the time needed to travel to them. The task was necessarily daunting in a city of five million. “Reasonable” proved to be something quite different in Busan.

Jeonju I thought would be different than Busan, a country town, of sorts, absent of hurried busy-ness. We were in the city for fifteen minutes before the bus arrived at the terminal, when it had taken less than five to arrive at Busan’s. As we drove through en route to the station, the city lights felt reminiscent of NYC’s Times Square. I instantly observed how extensive Jeonju must really be. From the terminal, I expected to ride in the taxi thirty minutes or more to get to the hanok village outside of town, my destination for the night. Little did I realize that this place was in the middle of the bustle! It was like falling asleep at the Alamo: You step back in time as you enter through the gigantic wooden doors, but modernity still surrounds you.

The hanok “village,” what I thought to be a single traditional facility housed inside a thick concrete wall and complete with a courtyard, much like a San Antonio mission, actually showed itself to be an entire set of such facilities, encompassing an area one to two miles square. I decided to explore this radius a little, but I had learned from my experiences in Busan: If I couldn’t find whatever it was in the same neighborhood I was in, it had to be left for another trip. Inside this perimeter lay dozens of traditional guest “wons” (rooms) alongside exhibition centers, relics from Korea’s royal dynasties, and (so I presume) poor local housing. These, in turn, stood nose-to-nose with modern upscale restaurants an chic shops; in that respect, it was not unlike the Riverwalk. I didn’t know I would be sleeping in the ritzy side of town!

Because of the hanok’s gentrification and a layout akin to the King William District in San Antonio, the atmosphere of this place was sort of “lassie-faire,” to each his own. What I found profoundly odd was a lack of people to whom to direct questions; instead, at varying points of interest stood information kiosks. I thought I was here primarily for the experience—to paint calligraphy, to shape ceramic clay, to assemble ingredients for bibimpap. I did none of those. Even at the Traditional Culture Center, I found a significant lack of tour guides or hands-on classes. If I had made reservations for a tour or a class, I might have experienced more traditional culture, instead of just passively observe it. I feel as though this will be an experience I will understand only after the fact. Still, I was able to explore this small neighborhood, run into ex-pats from Canada, and engage in a lengthy conversation with a Korean woman in the traditional tearoom of the Jeonju Traditional Culture Center.