Several weeks ago, I awoke to a pounding on my door. Usually, this heralds the Gas Lady, who comes to trot briskly and non-judgmentally through my apartment to the laundry room where the gas meter lives and figure out how much I owe for the month. She invariably comes several hours before what I consider decent awake time, so I am not always at my intellectual best when she arrives. This explains why I was not really thinking about what day it was (not the Feast of Our Lady of Gas). I did my best impression of the restless undead (moaning, shambling), over to the door, opening it to discover not the Gas Lady, but Dr. P (now so called to differentiate him from my coworker, P who is not a doctor). There was surprise, as Dr. P was supposed to be in Chicago, land from whence I came. There was also great rejoicing.
Sadly, I had no vacation time, but Dr. P is a good sport and just sort of bobbled along with whatever the schedule dictated. He also has impressive talents as a mule. Those of you looking to smuggle fine food items into or out of any number of countries should look him up. Along with the fantastic gift of bringing himself across the world, he came with a full backpack of pesto, cheese (fresh mozzarella, Camembert, and haloumi), Genoa salami, and maple syrup. If you, in your culinary exploits, have never had any of the things on this list, you, dear reader, are deprived. If you, in your life experience, have never had anyone arrive unexpectedly and amazingly on your doorstep when you are far away, not unlike Santa Clause with a bag of loot, you should consider it. It is not a bad way to wake up.
Dr. P was able to stay for just 10 days, three of which we spent in Seoul, as I had to be there anyway for our German concert (Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzer). It comes to my attention now that I have extremely few photos from his time here (partly because I ran around like a crazy person, and partly because I'm bad at doing photos properly). I believe he has a few, in disparate digital locations (Dr. P is a notorious gadget fiend), and if he sends them to me, I will be happy to share them with you. For now, revel in these lovely photos from the historical site quite near where we stayed and where the concert was held.
This one is of the name of the gateway, which I forget, but it involves "dae" at the beginning and "mun" at the end. This quite formidable gate and its wall (you can see a person at the bottom left for scale) surrounded a palace complex that we toured around. Just for fun, I picked up the Chinese guide, and Dr. P (who is Taiwanese) picked up the English guide. The arty, off-putting angle of this shot is really just to get the whole breadth of it in one try, as my phone camera is actually quite small.
This is the corner of the gateway. The detail on the eaves is really fantastic. The colors are brilliant and the designs complicated. Somehow, I think in terms of heavy beams and both aesthetic and functional carving, it reminds me of the little I've seen of Pacific Northwest Native American architecture. The color scheme, however, is entirely different, much more toward the green end of things, which may explain why I like it so much...
This last one shows the ceiling for those going through the gate. It, too, is very ornate in a way that would look Baroque if in a slightly different context, but here seems to work. This part, unlike the eaves, reminds me of the ceiling of a mosque in Toledo, which has very similar inscribed-circles-in-a-grid patterns.Anyway, Dr. P's visit was a very lovely surprise, though I wish I'd had more time to slow down and enjoy it, and I hope all of you are shortly (or have been recently) the recipients of equally wonderful unexpected things.
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