Mantianxing-

So this Saturday we had an MT. MT is one of those words that are ostensibly in English, but which English speakers never themselves use. MT stands for “management training” and is a ubiquitous feature of Korean culture- the equivalent roughly of the English word “retreat”. Other examples of this strange linguistic phenomenon I have noticed are “Handy” for “mobile phone” and “Beamer” for “projector” in German. Borrowed from English, but misborrowed somehow. With the huge rate of borrowing from English, it is only natural that a few miscarriages will happen along the way I guess.

Anyway- we went to a place called Mantianxing… Which would be translated “Plentitude of Heavenly Stars Lake”. The English translations of these things always sound way more exotic than the Chinese originals. Anyway it was a great time to get away from the pressures of YUST, and even though I am still battling a bad illness, I am really glad that I went. The drive, on the road to North korea, was spectacular, and trite as it may sound, the best adjective for the day was “golden”. The rice fields ripe for harvest, the steep karst hills lining golden valleys, covered with craggy tamaracks, and silver maples, and some kind of bamboo-ey pine tree, yellow and orange and gold and brown and red. The roads are narrow here, lined with birches, the villages are neat and orderly, pink houses with blue rooves, an occasional red neon cross marking the site of a ch, and always that last line of mountains, on the other side of which is THAT country- the other side, that brooding presence to the south that is always on the horizon of our thoughts and minds. I couldn’t help, as I spent the day playing games with the English majors, meeting my advises, going on a lazy motorboat ride through landscape straight out of ancient Chinese paintings, thinking about the people who live on the other side of THOSE mountains. Especially as I spent a lot of the day talking with one of my advisees who is from the capital of that country- an energetic, smart young kid, with great English… not quite what I expected, honestly…

It was a good chance to meet my students, freshmen, hesitant and uncertain about their English, some older S Korean brothers, enjoy the lakes, and the pagodas, and the beautiful fall foliage. The only hitch is that one of our buses wouldn’t start on the way home, so we had to spend an hour all crammed into the buses. Eventually someone thought to jump the bus. It’s frustrating when you don’t know the language well enough to be involved in what is happening, or in the decision making process, but in a way, it is also kind of relaxing. There’s a certain kind of freedom that comes from being ignorant and powerless.

Random post, I know, but just wanted to write about our MT. Please check out the photos on my flickr page.