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This shows Ji-young in Las Vegas
Duane has two women
Sight seeing in the old
Chinese town of Locke, about 15
miles from Galt. It is the last such town left in California.
The rest burned to the ground.
The "International dinner" at our
home
l. to r. Frank (well known wine maker in Lodi, the
largest grape growing area of California), Linda, her mother Ruth,
Veronika (Czech Republic) and Ji-young (South Korea) is a music major of
Piano.
Don't worry, she is not on the
road.
She didn't damage my car in her first, or second driving lesson.
Watch out for this one.
I just had to show her the important things of America
She should be very proud of this result. Do
you really believe that this is her first attempt at shooting? Her
first shot was not even on the paper, but as soon as I showed her the way
it works, these are all of her subsequent shots.
Notice that I didn't show my score card?
She is a serial killer
We have a lot of black widows in and around our house and
shop. Because of safety reasons, I show all of our International
visitors how to recognize the web and the spider. I often go around
and kill them. This time I kept them alive until Ji-young got here.
She really took to this activity and must have killed at least 10 of them.
The hustler
Linda and I have a pool table in our basement. Ji-young
insisted in helping me clear off my BMW brochures so that we could play a
bit. She has played before........... don't ask.
The guys all fell in love with Ji-young and Hershey was
no exception.
Ji-young at the Sacramento airport. She is ready
to board her flight to Spokane, WA and then the bus to Missoula, MT.
Ji-young in Missoula, MT
By Michele Hand
Through a connection with BMW-motorcycle owners, Ji-young Lim was invited
to spend some time with Pete and Michele Hand of Missoula Montana. Pete is
a musician and plays bass for the Great Falls Symphony Orchestra, the
Missoula Symphony Orchestra and Glacier Symphony Orchestra (of which he is
a founding member) but his forte’ is jazz. He also ran tour boats in
Glacier National Park. Michele moved from California to Montana to find
better snow for running her sled dog team and now is Chief of Financial
Operations for an architectural firm that specializes in western log
lodges.
Ji-young arrived by bus from Spokane Washington late Thursday, June 15.
Friday morning Pete left early to perform in Helena at
the Jazz Jubilee (Pete, Ji-young and bass photo). Michele and Ji-young
slept in a little and followed separately, since Pete’s car was full with
music equipment.
Missoula is in the Rocky Mountains East of Spokane. The two-hour drive to
Helena goes over the Continental Divide. This is where rain that falls on
the West side will flow into rivers that become the Columbia River and
flow to the Pacific Ocean but rain that falls on the East side will flow
into rivers that become the Missouri River and then the Mississippi River
and flow to the Atlantic Ocean (Continental Divide sign photo).
They arrived in time to see the performance in the park, but Pete wasn’t
there yet; he got lost, so Michele had to find him (Helena park and
Ji-young in the park photos). After the concert they checked in to
the hotel and the clerk handed Ji-young a map that was left for Pete to
show him where the band would play. Ooops.
Back in Missoula Pete, Michele and Ji-young went to a
park downtown where more bands were playing and food vendors were offering
samples as part of a community fundraising event.
Ji-young and Pete in the capitol building.
They had lunch in Last Chance Gulch, the original gold mining area of
Helena, and then they visited the Capitol building (In the Capitol photo). Michele served for 6 years as the Governor’s appointee to the Montana
Motorcycle Safety Advisory Committee so she explained how any citizen in
Montana can help make the laws and testify and, unlike Sacramento, in
Montana the elected legislators only come to Helena once every two years
for 90 days, then they go home to farm or sell cars or whatever it is they
do for their businesses (Capitol front and us on the steps).
Montana is wrapping up three years of celebrating the bicentennial of the
Corps of Discovery, Lewis’ and Clark’s expedition to find a navigable
water route from the Eastern coast to the Western coast of what is now the
United States of America. They followed the Missouri River upstream and
discovered what became Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. A
Native American Indian, Sacajawea, accompanied them and Ji-young learned
Sacajawea was kidnapped as a young girl and was reunited with her brother
while on this expedition.
The flowers in front of the Helena Capitol building show
the Missouri River and the route taken by Lewis & Clark. They passed through Missoula and went near what is now
Michele and Pete’s neighborhood (LewisClark photo).
Later that evening the Jazz festival resumed with Pete’s band starting
off, then a band that turned out to be from Fresno! Imagine Ji-young’s
surprise, a band she never saw or heard of while at school; she had to
come all the way to Montana to meet them. She talked with their piano
player who is a classical piano student in Sacramento; she got his email
address so they can stay in touch.
Saturday morning while having breakfast at the hotel Ji-young got to meet
some of Pete’s band and learned none of them have a music degree and the
piano player never even had a piano lesson! On the drive back to Missoula,
Michele and Ji-young stopped off the freeway to see if they could spot the
Bison (buffalo) at Gold Creek, but they were off in the far field and hard
to see.
Ji-Young got to sample gumbo (it was a bit too hot for
her) and a Viking (a local treat: a Swedish meatball on a stick, breaded
and fried). Everyone had some of Earline’s homemade lemonade, too.
Then they went to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation visitors’ center so
Ji-young could see Montana wildlife, just not in the wild . She learned the difference between a deer and elk and got to see a Rocky
Mountain Sheep, with the curly horns, and antlers from elk and moose. She
heard a recording of the elk bugling, which is how they call to each other
in the woods.
Back at the house on Saturday evening Pete and Ji-young finally got to
talk music. Ji-young played some of her Gershwin piece
and Pete showed her some of his jazz sheet music, which doesn’t have much
written on the page. Ji-young asked Pete about improvising in jazz and
taking solos. Pete said, “Well, there are only 12 notes, how hard can it
be?”
While Pete was cooking buffalo burgers for dinner, Michele put on the
television a DVD of Oscar Peterson, a Canadian jazz pianist, from the 1977
Montreaux Jazz Festival. Ji-young was fascinated, “Look at the size of his
hands!” She asked why he used two bass players at the same time, but of
course, Pete thinks that is what everyone should do.
The front of the house and beautiful flowers next to
Ji-young.
After dinner Ji-young talked to Duane and Ben, her next friend to visit,
and decided it was time to get her bus ticket and move on. On Sunday
morning, really early, Michele took her to the bus station and sent her on
her way to Seattle.
Ji-young stayed with Ben McCafferty and family on
Bainbridge Island, WA
l. to r. Mom Kathryn, son Ronan and Ji-young
Ned and Jane Bedinger in Southworth, WA
When I heard from Duane that Ji-young, was coming to Seattle to visit,
I sent her an invitation to visit my family at our home in Southworth,
across Puget Sound from the big city.
A few days later, Ji-young phoned from Ben's house on neighboring
Bainbridge Island. She said that she would be starting her journey
south soon and would like to accept our invitation to visit our home. No
problem, I told her, we were eager and anxious to meet her. Over the
phone, she and I discussed the options for her journey from Bainbridge to Southworth. There were several possible routes by water and land,
but the land option (drive over to pick her up at Ben's) was a bit more
complicated than it appears when you look at how close together they are
on the map. I can see Bainbridge Island a few miles north along the
shore line, but the only bridge to the island is on the other end, and the
drive is approximately 100 miles to go there and back. Ji-young, being an
intrepid sort of traveler, had already taken this into account. She
said, "I have planned the trip, I'll take the ferry to Southworth."
As she elaborated on the route she was planning to take to my house, it
was apparent just how intrepid a traveler she is. She had plans for
a three-legged, mixed mode trip from Bainbridge to Southworth (see map):
the first leg (1) by ferry from the Bainbridge ferry dock at Winslow,
across the sound to Seattle, the second leg (not numbered on map) overland
by city buses from downtown to the West Seattle ferry dock at Fauntleroy,
and the final leg (3) by ferry from West Seattle, stopping at Vashon
Island, and then on to the dock at Southworth. She said that she
positively was enjoying the novelty of transit aboard the state ferry
system, and that she was prepared to walk (with her luggage) uphill across
downtown Seattle to catch a local bus toward West Seattle, making the
necessary transfers in order to get to the West Seattle ferry. I
know the route she planned to take, and it was exactly right--she would
arrive practically at my doorstep. Still, it was a
time-consuming route and she was only planning to stay a short time with
us, so I proposed an all-ferry route (see 1,2 on map) that would bring her
just south Bainbridge Island on the way west to Bremerton, which was a
relatively short drive from my house.
[This map is the attached gif file.]
With that settled, we didn't talk again until the next afternoon, when
the crowd of commuters had passed through the Bremerton terminal and Ji-young
was left, with only a small rolling bag and a smaller backpack, dialing
the pay phone to call and let me know that she had arrived.
She didn't need to complete the call, because we were there--my 15-year
old son Miles recognized her, and soon the three of us were walking to the
car, by way of Bremerton's 'leaping salmon' waterfront fountains, and the
burrito stand where we stopped for take out.
On the way home, we asked each other questions about work, travel,
home, Duane, and so on. I learned that she is from Seoul, studies
classic music in the US, didn't really speak English until she arrived
here to study (I would have guessed she had spoken it all her life), and
had gotten the travel bug for seeing more more of the western states from
Duane. And she hopes to become a concert pianist and so spends
virtually all of her time studying and practicing, driven by the desire to
perform on stage.
Pulling into my driveway, Ji-young exclaimed something I did not
understand. Miles understood--she had been startled to see a deer standing
there beside the driveway, before it disappeared into the neighboring
woodlot. It was the yearling deer that Miles sometimes chases out of
the garden and stalks through the fruit trees. Ji-young was seeing
Southworth with fresh eyes. This was not the only time on this visit
that she would be surprised enough by Mother Nature to exclaim aloud at
seeing wild animals in the landscape!
We brought Ji-young into the house, my fingers crossed because my
household, honestly, has not achieved that level of domesticity that says
"We straighten up the house every day, after every meal, etc." The
furniture doesn't match, the parrot flies around loose, the cat comes and
goes, and we're oblivious to most normal household rules. But we're
friendly in a nerdy/beachcomber/biker sort of way, and Ji-young
gracefully, effortlessly picked up on our way of life. She fit right
in. Jane greeted her in self-taught Korean, which seemed to
genuinely please Ji-young. This was the key note of her visit with us--she
was very attentive, very good at listening and interacting with us, and
most of all she left no doubt in anyone's mind that she considered and
appreciated everything.
She stowed her gear in the guest room, and we were all soon settled
around the kitchen table for big mission-style burritos and conversation.
I was curious to hear about Seoul, the city she calls home in Korea.
I myself have lived and traveled in Southeast Asia, and I have traveler's
tales and impressions from big Asian cities like Manila, Bangkok,
Singapore and Jakarta, but my Korean experience is limited (I spent three
months among Korean fishermen, on the Bering Sea, aboard their factory
trawler out of Pusan, S. Korea). So, I plied Ji-young with my
questions, interview-style, hoping to evoke a sense of Seoul and her
life there, and she did not disappoint me. About Seoul's mass transit
system, for example, I was curious. In my experience as a traveler,
very few cities have good human-scale mass transit. I asked Ji-young
about this, and she provided lots of interesting examples of how Seoul is
geared for mass transit. Seriously, she declared, Seoul's mass transit is
a perfectly viable alternative to owning/driving a car. Seoul's
subway and buses, she said, are safe enough for her to travel at any hour. The transit system there provides frequent service from everywhere to
everywhere. As a serious music student, she said, she spent most of
her time at school and home studying and practicing piano, but could
easily travel anywhere in Seoul when she needed. "Yeah, that's just like
Seattle," I opined, "we have good bus service, and the buses go
everywhere." "No," she said, "I mean that in Seoul you never have to
wait for a bus. They run every few minutes. You can step out
of your house and catch a bus to take you anywhere in the the city."
Oh wow! I understood what she was describing--in Seattle, if you
want to commute by bus, the transit system gives you a very narrow
scheduled window in which to catch the right bus, and if you miss it,
you'll have to wait 15 or 20 minutes, often even longer before the next
scheduled bus. But in bustling Seoul, transit doesn't have
such built-in lag times--it is not a system that ever leaves you killing
time, waiting. Ji-young's Seoul is exotic, a teeming, thriving Asian
capital. Like all of the glimpses of Seoul that she gave us, I liked
this one quite a lot.
[
After dinner we settled on comfortable couches and talked for a long
time about culture. "Why" Jane asked Ji-young, "do you suppose it is
that women in some cultures cover themselves from head to foot. In
Pakistan, for instance, women wear black birkas." We all had
theories about this one, and most of our theories had something to do with
men requiring the women to do so. Miles and Jane gave us a good
laugh when they reached the conclusion that men would never be the ones to
require women to cover themselves, at all. Ji-young gave us pause to ponder
when she speculated that if it was not men, then it must be the older
women who required the younger women to cover themselves so completely.
The conversation that evening also ranged over topics about the internet,
which Ji-young felt was contributing, through free music downloads, to the
demise of live music performances--the audiences for live performances,
she said, are dwindling as recorded works become easier to acquire. She
was looking forward to performing as a concert pianist and hoped there
would still be an audience for live performers when she was ready.
Jane found this implausible--she felt that that we all acknowledge the
internet as an interactive medium that facilitates communication between
people, but wondered why, if that is true, that the internet hadn't become
more of a stimulus to musical creativity, with musicians on different
continents playing together in concert over the network. Ji-young
led us to the conclusion that a diverse group of musicians would do better
being in the same room, where the vibrating air from each instrument
stimulates and invigorates the players.
We all eventually wandered off to check email before bed, saying good
night and heading off to our rooms for a snooze in Puget Sound's famous 60
degree (F) sleeping weather.
The next day, Ji-young and I hiked through the blackberry thickets on
our way down to the beach. "Do you ever have bears here?" she
wondered. I told her that yes, they've been seen a mile or two inland, but
never around the beach, as far as I know. She was interested in the
wildlife and lore, so I further explained that if she did go to the beach
alone and did come upon a bear, she should stand up as tall as she could,
wave her arms and make lots of noise, giving it plenty of time to see her
and escape. "In Montana, I learned that I should lie down on the
ground, cover my head and stay still," she said. No, I told her,
that is how to survive an attack, especially by a grizzly bear, but around
here, you're more likely to encounter a black bear--scare them off is the
best thing. More to fear around here, I continued, is cougars.
They have the reputation for attacking people, and even hauling off
children. If one grabs you, I instructed her, fight as hard as you can.
I think Ji-young was ready to turn and head for the house at this new
information, but we went on, down to the beach, and we saw no large
carnivores, which is normal for Southworth, except for when a pod of
killer whales swims by, but we didn't see them either that day.
As we strolled on the cobble beach at Southworth Point, she once again
exclaimed something I didn't understand, pointing excitedly at a very
large, immature, bald eagle leaping up off the beach into flight, not very
far away from us. I know this particular bird, I've been watching him
since springtime--he frequents a snag in the woods by my house, and
is part of a group of 5 or so other mature eagles that hunt nearby. This
bird hasn't gotten his adult plumage yet, but already he stands out
because of his extra-big size. As we walked along, he
must have been just out of sight on the beach, no more than 20 yards from
us when took off. Ji-young was speechless at the sight, watching as
this youngster flew low over the water, rising at the end of his flight to
land on a piling by the ferry dock. "Is that an eagle??" she
asked me, her voice full of amazement . "Yep, but just a
baby," I told her.
We took a few pictures sitting on the old driftwood in
the grass above the tideline.
What a beautiful photo.
Ji-young and Ned, the host.
We continued our walk, leaving the beach at the ferry dock and walking
up through the village of Southworth, where I introduced Ji-young to the
postmaster and the shopkeeper at general store. Everyone was very
pleasant, smiling and saying hello when Ji-young introduced herself.
Walking back down the road toward my house with Ji-young, I felt a new
awareness of my surroundings, like I was seeing this familiar place
through new eyes. I recognized for the first time that my
neighborhood had been built with strong oriental design elements--the
rooflines, the proportions, even the colors and materials seemed to be
very oriental. This awareness seemed to grow stronger and more
vivid, which surprised me because I've walked down this road many times
and never noticed the oriental influence, but it was undeniable: there,
before my very eyes, I watched as my neighborhood seemed to become more
and more oriental until it was so real and unavoidable that I felt as if I
were suddenly and truly walking through a Korean village on my way home
from the post office. I wondered seriously, and a little desperately,
about whether this was real, whether I was experiencing a substantial
intuition about other lives and other places, or having some sort of
flashback. Unable to decide, I said to myself "Why resist? This is an
eye-opener, a free trip to the orient, take it!", and I tried to shut down
my analytical mind (like suspending my disbelief when reading fiction,
know what I mean?) so that the experience could take root, undisturbed.
In doing that, this sense of seeing through other eyes grew
tremendously--I had a powerful feeling that I was no longer tied down in
my little corner of the world, but had diversified in some new way, such
that I was now walking through more than one place. "If this is what it is
like to host a foreign student," I thought, "sign me up!" I don't
think I can adequately describe what I was feeling. Suffice it to
say that it was a shockingly new awareness, for me. It was
thrilling--I wondered if this was what it is like to be two places at
once? or if I could be more, even many places at the same time? even
as I was walking through my little neighborhood at this firmly fixed
latitude and longitude.
At that moment when I understood the distant extents of my
neighborhood, I suspect that I too exclaimed aloud, an inarticulate,
involuntary utterance full of amazement. I don't know if I did, but
I hope so. Such uninhibited expressions are a sure sign, I
believe, of an experience that is very good for the soul.
Thank you, Ji-young. We hope you enjoyed your visit with us as
much as we enjoyed having you.
My stay in McMinnville, Oregon
Aurora and her husband hosted me. She is a long
time friend of Duane's.
Mom, I have this new job. I told them that I knew
how to drive a car.
I am learning to take and give reports. This is
all about the bad guys.
Don't worry mom, they promised to spend the entire
morning teaching me to ride.
Mom, this has been a very important 10 months that you
have allowed me to stay in the USA and learn about life. I have some
important news for you and dad. Are you sitting down?
Staying with Paul and Margaret Cole in Independence,
Oregon
Ji-Young, Paul and Tanner at Moe's Restaurant
(Oregon's best clam chowder) in Lincoln City, OR
Ji-Young in the distance getting blasted by the sand and wind. Oregon
is full of contrasts, it was 60 degrees and windy at the beach that day
and over a 100 degrees just 45 minutes away in Independence, Oregon.
Ji-Young thought I was kidding when I recommended she bring a sweater
that day!
Ji-Young went back to the pick up to get her sweater
again, at Depoe Bay, OR
Ji-Young and Margaret at Silver Falls State Park. Getting away from the
heat again to a wooded area that has many falls.
Ji-Young in Portland at the youth hostel. It was another 100+ day and
she and I and Tanner were really hot. We tried walking to Powells book
store but the puppy couldn't make it in the heat.
This was also in Lincoln City. Paul and Ji-Young are
watching folks make glass floats at a glass blowing demonstration.
Hi Duane,
28 June, 2006
How are you doing? I am at Portland airport now, waiting for the flight
that goes to Oakland. I will go straight to my friend's house, where
I put all my bags.
It was one great travel, I had so much fun with the total strangers.
All the families tried very best for me to feel comfortable and have fun.
Boy, I am impressed.
I cannot believe that I am leaving here the day after tomorrow. I
have such good memories that half of me is reluctant to leave even though
I miss my family so much. Anyways, next time, I will email you from
Seoul. Take care and please say hello to Linda. THANK YOU!!!
Sincerely, Ji-Young
(l. to r.) Father, Sister, Aunt, Mother and Ji-young in
Seoul.
Come back, more added when she
sends me photos from her camera
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