SchneiderWeb

I have been in Korea now for nearly four months. Surprisingly, I haven't had that much difficulty acclimating. The climate is the same as in New York. In fact, it's been cold enough lately that I went local and have taken to wearing a surgical mask while riding my bike. I have been eating Korean food for the past 15 years, so I haven't had to adjust my diet (although I have forgotten how to use a fork); and I now even eat kimchi at most meals. My language skills are slowly coming along; I am no longer completely oblivious to what is being said at the weekly pastor meetings. Yet there is one local custom with which I don't expect to ever be comfortable--that being the sauna. First of all, forget the image of "sauna" that you have from your health club. We're not talking a bunch of guys wrapped in towels while they sit in a room the size of a jail cell and stew in their own sweat, as awesome as that sounds. No, Korean saunas have a rhythm and a ritual al...

I have a backlog of posts coming, for anyone who is still interested. I have an assistant starting this week to take over the children's ministry, which I have been leading for the last two months in addition to my other responsibilities (adult English ministry, Korean class, film club). His arrival should free me up for other things, like blogging. In the meantime, I had two New York moments in the last few days, including one just minutes ago, that I feel like sharing. A facet of life here in Seoul is that the taxis do not share the rules of the road that the rest of society follows. Green always means go, even when it is a green walk signal for pedestrians and cyclists. As I was crossing a busy intersection last week a taxi that I had a wary eye on blew through the walk signal and passed by close enough for me to rap my knuckles on his back door. I regret not yelling out, a la Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, "I'm walkin' here!" All I could muster was an an...

I've been here in Seoul for nearly three weeks (three weeks tomorrow, to be exact), and now have somewhat of a feel for the way in which life is lived differently here from back home. Koreans do some things better, some things worse, and some things just differently.  The Better Cellular and wireless technology : Korea is home to Samsung and LG, so it should come as no surprise that Korea is a world leader in all things cellular. Every Korean in Seoul seems to have a smartphone, from elementary school kids to grandmothers and grandfathers. And you can use your smartphone to pay for just about everything, which is convenient but also a little Brave New World for me, especially considering the rampant identity theft here. As for wireless, you can get a WiFi signal in the subway--no awkward eye contact there--everyone has their head down in their phone. Bathrooms : Korean bathrooms don't have bathtubs or shower stalls. Instead they feature tiled floors that slope down t...

I'm not sure whether I'm chagrined or relieved that 9/11 passed here in Seoul and I wasn't even aware of it, at least not until I came home in the evening and logged on to Facebook to see all the profile pictures that had been changed to honor the victims of that horrific day, the rescue workers who served heroically, and the majesty of the towers themselves. Sandy and I lived so close to the towers that we were almost too close to appreciate their grandeur. We did, however, take the subway and frequent the shopping mall beneath the towers daily. So while they were a place of work for some, and a tourist destination for others, for me they were the place where I met Sandy each night, the place where I did my banking and clothes shopping, and the place that, surprisingly, served as the backdrop for a weekly farmers' market. Only when my family came to visit the previous summer did I view the towers with the eyes of a tourist, from the observation deck atop...

Either the world turned upside down or I'm on the other side of the globe! We left JFK last Tuesday at 1:00 PM and arrived at Incheon on Wednesday at 4:00 PM, 27 hours later. We were told by the captain that the flight would take 13 hours and 40 minutes, when in fact it took 13 hours and 42 minutes. I don't know where those two minutes went, but I want them back. I could use them because my sleep cycle has still not fully acclimated to Seoul time. One of my bigger fears about coming to Korea was fortunately not realized, as the dogs passed their inspection and were not quarantined. Korea is strict about bringing pets into the country. The dogs had to go through multiple examinations and vaccinations, be microchipped, and be issued health certificates which then needed to be validated by the FDA office in central New Jersey. As if that weren't enough, they also had to be on diets because they and their carriers could not weigh more than 11 lb. if they were to ride in the c...

August is drawing to a close and with it the Summer of John, which is what I dubbed this--my first extended time off in 15 years, and probably the last for the foreseeable future. As the calendar turns from August to September, there is a palpable change in the air. There are the welcome cerulean days and blanketed nights of September that render the haze of August but a hazy memory. But so too does the lazy rhythm of summer give way to the more purposeful pace of autumn, as schools once again open their doors and corporate offices resume five-day work weeks. Speaking of schools, in seminary there is a word to describe this transitional state between two worlds, which one hears surprisingly often--"liminal." Come to think of it, I'm not sure that "liminal" gets much use outside of seminary, although I may challenge myself to use it in casual conversation--that and "teleological." Here goes: Many students today probably found themselves in a liminal...

Korea, like most of the world outside the United States, and (I think) the UK, uses the Metric System. So in addition to learning Korean at a deeper level, I will need to familiarize myself with another foreign language. Whatever I learned of the Metric System in elementary school (thank you, President Carter) was lost along with my Rubik's Cube and orthodontic retainer. Let's attempt some basic conversions from Metric to English and vice versa. For the last few weeks Korea has been in the midst of a heat wave, with temperatures getting up into the mid 30s--Celsius, that is (~95 F). To walk a mile in another person's shoes is to walk 1.60934 kilometers, which seems more understanding but less poetic. An ounce of prevention is worth only 0.453592 kilograms of cure, which leaves me feeling sick. And then there's currency (not Metric, I know). One dollar is worth roughly 1100 Korean Won, which given my monthly salary, makes me a millionaire. Bartender, a round for the ...

Hello? [Tap tap tap] Is this thing on? I've fired up the generator, the lights are flickering, so... Let's Rock First off, to paraphrase a great American author, the rumors of this blog's demise have been greatly exaggerated. I would like to consider the time since my last post to have been a sabbatical, but really I was consumed with finishing my final semester of seminary, completing my ordination requirements, and then moving back to Englewood. And to be honest, a combination of inertia, laziness, and the lack of anything compelling to write kept me in hibernation. However, I am about to undergo what Facebook would classify as a "life event." On Sunday, August 11, I will be ordained as a "teaching elder"--Presbyterian parlance for "pastor" or "minister"--in the Presbyterian Church (USA) at Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York City. I almost need to type that sentence again to have it sink in. So this is what those three ye...