I'm Back

I have returned. After some issues with accessing my blog at school, I am back. I will not attempt to summarise the events of an entire two month period. However, in the this brief amount of time, after a few serious trials and many small ones, I have not only begun to settle in to life in my village but have, in a sense, grown to love all the wild eccentricities that characterize rural life in general and especially rural life on a small island in South Korea. My neighbors, some of whom are civil servants and policeman, some of whom are business people, and most of whom are farmers and day laborers have all become my friends. All are accomodating and all want to make my life in their community the most comfortable it can be. Mr. Kim, a civil servant, who is my immediate next door neighbor not only makes an effort to come by my apartment and say hello several times a week but will have me over for dinner fairly often. By western standards, his hospitality would be considered extraordinary. In many neighborhoods, including my own in New Bedford, neighbors hardly see each other. In the morning they slink out their doors and in the evening, having come back from work, they slink right back into their homes just like they had gone out. This sort of behavior is unheard of here; at least in my village. Every person, including myself, is a member of a real community where people look after each other. For instance, this morning, as I was waiting for the bus to Ganghwa-eup, the main centre on the island, Mr. Kim came out of his house, and went very far out of his way to give me a ride 'on his way to work'. It is absolutely remarkable. Since the first day I have been here, locals, people with whom I would not have come into contact through work, would come by, and give me gifts of produce and seafood. I still have five pounds of salted shrimp as a testimony to their hospitability. Sure, I may gotten ill as a result of their pickled raw crab and sure, I may have not enjoyed eating live squirming octopus tenticle but ultimately it was all an expression of something that is severely lacking in my own culture: hospitality. This, I believe, is a major hallmark of truly civilized people. Our own Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments express this same ethic of hospitality. Sodom and Gommorah were destroyed not for their vile sex acts, as many people have supposed, but rather, their inhospitality to the three angels of the Lord. It isn't very hospitable to rape your guests. And Jesus, came as servant, the very paradigm of hospitality. We are reminded of this selfless hospitality on Maundy Thursday, when we wash each others feet, and symbolically offer ourselves in service to each others. These Koreans, despite all their backwardness and general craziness, have retained something that we westerners have sadly lost.