Before I came to Korea, I had eaten some Korean food. I had a Korean friend in college who took me out to the only Korean restaurant in our small college town in Missouri. It must have been unremarkable food by his standards, but for him, it was a taste of home, and I’m sure he ate there often. To me, Korean food was very different from the Chinese food I grew up eating in California. And it was delicious. In America, Korean food is still not well know outside of the major cities – you really have to seek it out, and I did sometimes. Pajeon, galbi, and of course, more kimchi. Compared to Western food, the most common flavors in Korean food are amazing and some of my favorites: toasted sesame oil, garlic, scallions, and chili powder. Before I came in June 2010, I had eaten more Korean food than most Americans whose parents aren’t Korean. But I was completely unprepared for the incredible variety of food and strength of the food culture here. For someone who enjoys eating with the seasons, Korea is great. Your strawberries, your incredibly flavorful, soft, and delicious strawberries, show up in Spring, and you can’t find them again until the next Spring. Waiting is difficult, but they’re worth the wait. I could return to Korea every Spring for the rest of my life just for the strawberries. I could go on and on about so many fruits and vegetables here, not just how delicious they are, but that so many Korean know what province grows the best melons, what city makes the best dried fish, or what province has the best food overall, Jeolla-do obviously. And the food is so regional. There are five galbi restaurants on every block in Gyeonggi-do, for example, but they’re not as common as you travel south. And try finding moju, Gyeongju’s sweet and spiced version of makgeolli, in this area. Every area makes their own version of makgeolli! Kimchi is very regional as well, some places use shrimp sauce, some use anchovy sauce, some add squid and oysters, some use none. And I’m just talking about cabbage kimchi! I’ve actually made kimchi, six different types so far. But that is the tip of a very large iceberg. One of the first things foreigners learn is that kimchi isn’t just made from cabbage. I’ve been to the kimchi museum in Coex Mall, and they say there are over 170 types of kimchi! 170!! I like studying how weather and culture has influenced what people eat, and Korea is a great example of how people have adapted to the long, cold winters by preserving food without refrigeration. Kimjang, the kimchi making time of the year in early Winter, was, and still is, a remarkable family and community effort to make an important food that sustains Korean through the Winter. I’ve learned that you have to use mature kimchi to make kimchi stew, and that there are two different words for rice, ssal for raw, and bap for cooked. And I’ve learned so much more, but I still am just a baby when it comes to knowing Korean food. Not only is it delicious, but the culture and history of Korean food is incredible as well. I still have so much to learn, and my Korean friends have been very generous with their time, knowledge, and skills to help me learn more about  your remarkable food.

Besides the goal of having a healthier relationship with her boyfriend or with herself, she doesn’t appear to have any ulterior motives for telling me. And I’m very taken with my wonderful girlfriend, even long-distance, so I have no ulterior motives for being a sympathetic ear and offering my experience as a possible guide. I want my friends to be happy. That’s it.

I was in an unhappy relationship for years, and I’ll take most of the blame for the many problems that made it an unhappy one. It would be deeply satisfying to know my past difficulties helped my friends avoid some of their own.

So for their trust and for whatever that’s in me allows them to open up to me, I express my gratitude.

Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Love is my religion – I could die for that. ~ John Keats

I don’t believe in much, but I do believe in the power of love to transform each of us, individually, and people as couples, families, communities, and so on. I know that if everyone in the world felt the bittersweet, tender, fearless, electric touch of love just once in their lives, they would be changed forever, and the world would be changed, forever.

I guess my life has been about love, many peoples’ lives probably are about love, the search for it, the discovery of it, the loss of it, the sacrifices we make for it, denying it, resisting it, giving into it, feeling it towards ourselves, feeling it for others, celebrating it, transforming it, receiving it, accepting it, being overwhelmed by it. I think whether we know it now or ever, or can admit it, love is the engine and the center of our universe.

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For many other, food is fuel. Or pleasure (I raise my hand.) Or community. Or heritage. Or memory. Or therapy (ok, my hand has to go up again.) Or tourism (me again). It’s work, for everyone, whether you get directly paid to do it, even when we love to do it.

And food is gratitude. I feel it means more when you make food rather than buy it, but I like cooking more than most people, so that feeling would be self-serving. But I still think it’s true.

Food is also geography and culture, and history. And migration, economic trade, and craft. It can even be art. With vegetariansim and veganism, the natural, locavore, and organic food movements (they’re not necessarily the same thing, though there is some overlap among them), food can also be philosophy. Food is one of every human being’s most basic needs, though we can make it as complex or as simple as we want it to be or when we have the means.

I’d really love to read a lot more about food and I have a pretty long Amazon wish list (this is not a hint, this is merely my way of collecting books I’d like to read later) of food history- and anthropology-related books that beckon me. It’s clear I’m not alone in my interest.

I grew up coming here with some frequency for a couple reasons, mainly because I had family in Van Nuys and La Habra. The other reason was, of course, Disneyland. All good Christian families would travel through the most depraved place on earth to reach the Magic Kingdom[TM]. Which, of course, is what LA is, or at least represents for much of the world and even the US. Even northern Californians. Maybe especially us, or them, whatever. I don’t think the Mason-Dixon line is in any danger of losing its status for top geographical rivalry in the US, but northern Cali definitely isn’t a big fan of southern Cali. I think the funniest thing about this is that the south is generally oblivious to this rivalry, which means it’s not much of a rivalry, kind of like shadow-boxing really.

Anyway, it’s tough for me to hate LA. First, Kamila is here, so I can’t possibly be grumpy about spending time here with her, wherever we may be, even here. And then I’ve just come from Korea, which just barely made it above freezing the entire month before I flew here. By contrast, the weather in LA is quite fantastic: warm (in the 70s), sunny, and light breezes. Hard to hate that.

The food, for me, is another reason to soak up as much LA as possible. The diversity of cuisine and its general tastiness are all positives. Little Ethiopia has 8 Ethiopian restaurants in a single block! (It’s a micro-neighborhood though, not much more than a block long.) The diversity of the people, in all their creative wildness, is fun and energetic to be around. Hand-in-hand with the diversity and wacky energy of the Los Angelenos, plus the food, is the number of distinct neighborhoods: K(orea)-Town, Little Tokyo, West Hollywood’s Eastern European/Jewish community, Little Saigon, Chinatown, Thai Town (the only one in the world), multiple Mexican areas (including one with a Mariachi Plaza where  you can pick up a band for a party, just bring a van to carry them and the guitars!), and so on and so on. I could grow old trying to list all the distinct ethnic neighborhoods in LA, so I’ll just have others do the heavy lifting. I haven’t spent time exploring NY City, but I’m sure it’s the same way, but without LA’s really nice weather. That goes double for Chicago. Maybe triple.

Venice Beach is a the flagship for crazy and diverse (and medical marijuana), its houses, especially along the canals (from whence it got its name), are gems of residential architecture. In fact, many area in LA have really interesting and beautiful homes. I’ve been gawking at the many, many beautiful and interesting houses in Hollywood Hills and West Hollywood where I’ve been hanging out the last couple weeks.

With all this talk about interesting food from around the world and beautiful homes (which doesn’t mean huge homes, but this is a very expensive real estate market), this isn’t exactly a post about social justice or income equality. The post is a counter-balance to the northern California prejudice that its southern brethren are without culture. I won’t say that LA is a bastion of culture like New York, Paris, Rome, London, wherever. Actually I will say it, it really is.

There, now I’ve gone and completely betrayed my heritage. Happy now? Of course I am, I’m in sunny LA!

So I grabbed the opportunity between contracts to see Kamila. Like the song goes, it’s so nice, it’s paradise, to come home, especially when you have someone to come home to.

Enter the monkey wrench. For the past 4 months or so, the woman who owns the hagwon has told my foreign co-teacher and me that the school was having financial difficulties. The number of students hasn’t really increased, which was critical for the school’s continued survival. As I was heading out the door after work on Tuesday the 18th, Kelly, the Korean manager, said she wanted to speak with me. She told me that since the school was having difficulty, they could no longer afford two foreign teachers, and they they decided to let me go.

To say the least, I was in shock. It’s one thing when I was living in the US and got laid off or fired, and it’s another animal all together since I was over 6,000 miles away from the US. Since they prematurely canceled my contract, I lost any chance for the severance pay, which was equal to a month’s pay, and I lost my plane ticket home. Just to get home and lick my wounds, I was going to take quite a licking. Not good.

I headed back to my apartment in Byeong-jeom, dazed, confused, frightened, and starting to get angry about how unfair the situation was. I emailed my recruiter, Issa, a great guy who did a great job getting me here and helping me understand how the process works. While I knew there were a lot of jobs for foreign teachers in Korean, I was deeply unsettled and had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Didn’t know if I was even supposed to show up for work the next day. After texting Kelly and finding out I had a month, I felt a little better, but not much. Didn’t sleep much that night.

It’s a complicated situation, but I seem to be moving in the right direction again. And I’m coming home and spending a few weeks with Kamila in Los Angeles before I come back here and do another 1-year contract, this time at a place that appears to be a lot more stable and well funded. It is certainly has a lot more students, always a good sign.

Now I just have to pack and clean up the apartment before February 1st so I can get on a plane as soon as possible, hopefully that day or the next at the latest.

It’s been interesting.

There are chemical companies which are creating “food” and flavor; there are other chemical companies genetically engineering crops, which medium- and long-term seem not be worth the short-term benefit they confer; we have a populace, at least in the US, and maybe increasingly so everywhere else in the first world, that is becoming more and more distant from the origins of their food, both physically and mentally; a political system that seems to be completely in the pocket of the companies that make the aforementioned “food” and genetically-enhanced crops to the detriment of our health; and environmental issues which threaten our food supply. I see those as just the main challenges facing food, and there are many more lesser ones.

On the flip side, there’s also a movement to remedy all of those things:  a group of people who are dedicated to the creation and preservation of small, honest, un-enhanced farming and ranching; they exist because there is also a group of consumers, led by chefs and other highly food-interested people who insist on more honest food and who believe that “bigger”, “faster”, and “longer-lasting” aren’t the most important synonyms we can apply to our food and animal crops; lots of non-professionals who cook and blog who are strong advocates for a greater connection to our food and for preserving food culture; and environmentalists who aren’t just worried about how many of us will get skin cancer or the implications of rising sea levels, but also about how the depreciation of our environment threatens our food supply. Since the only things we need to do to stay alive are eat and breathe, it’s an excellent idea for scientists to focus their research efforts and advocacy toward perpetuating the health of our food supply.

So a food writer’s knowledge, e.g. Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, encompass a huge landscape of extreme depth and breadth. It might be an interesting job.