Dear Family and Friends,

Although the standard definition of “hooky” is absence without permission, one Tuesday I was informed that my presence was unnecessary the next day. Awaking to school bells the following Wednesday morning made me feel giddy with guilt - as if I were a kid playing hooky. I pulled on jeans, pulled out my city map, turned my back to school and walked to the subway. The time had come for me to determine the layout of Daegu for once and for all and I knew exactly where to go: Woobang Tower.

I am constantly lost in Daegu. And I don’t like it one bit. My navigational abilities are generally based on above-average landmark recall; however, here I am frustrated at every corner as one building visually blends into another, as one tree-covered hill looks just the same as 10 others, and taller buildings do not scrape the sky. Apartment complexes are everywhere and differences between each are too subtle for my usually discerning eye. Nearly 3 weeks into being continually lost, my next hope was to spend some quality time examining the city from above. I hoped for mountains, bodies of water, noticeable buildings, discernable building patterns… really, anything memorable would do.

Happily, there is one landmark in the city that is easy to spot. Pronounced “woo – baaan,” Woobang Tower is surprisingly akin to Seattle’s Space Needle. A space-age looking-landmark flanked by an amusement park, there is an observation level with a 360 degree view of the city and you even may dine in style at a mediocre restaurant in its top. Sound familiar? Anyway, locating the tower from the subway was easy. Getting to the top of the place, not so easy as there were few English signs and fewer English speakers to point me. I walked up a steep tree-lined street and upon arriving at the building’s first level, through a series of Korean, English and gestures, I learned that ticket sales were in an obscure corner on the forth level. Then, due to a miscommunication with the ticket seller, I purchased 3 tickets, questioned the expense with friendly finger pointing, was refunded my purchase before I re-purchased a single ticket to the tower observation deck.

Stepping from the elevator to the completely empty observation floor was a triumph. My aerial examination of the city was not. No bells sang, no marvelous “ah hah” realization hit. As I paced from one window to the next, my eyes scanned a city of apartment complexes, low cloud and tree-covered hills, more apartment complexes, hey, more apartment complexes, squat short apartment buildings with brightly colored-water storage tanks, a western department store, downtown with a few distinguishables, and more apartment complexes. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed the view. But it took me a few minutes to see beyond my disappointment. I paced the entire view and then took a break by climbing an additional level to examine a lunch menu at the “78th Floor” French restaurant before deciding that a meal there couldn’t be worth my entire week’s budget and returning downstairs for an additional look-see.

The clouds had slightly cleared, as had my disappointment, and I began to see the city that I was at Woobang Tower to view. My eye first caught several impressive church steeples. Korea is a mixed Buddhist and Christian country but from Woobang Tower, there only seemed to be a heck of lot of churches. So I began to wonder: where are the Buddhist temples? If all of the temples are in the mountains (as I had read), how and where do Buddhists worship? What percentage of Koreans are Christian? How do percentages of Koreans that attend Christian services square up with other Christian countries?

Pulling my thoughts back to the Daegu spread before me and its rows upon rows of apartment complexes, I recalled my initial description of the city as “a lot of tall green hills surrounding a city that had a remarkable number of white, uniform apartment buildings that resemble cave stalagmites up-side-down.” Over my weeks here, I’ve been aesthetically irritated by the uniformity of the apartment complexes and mentally retaliating with this rather apt description. Apartment complexes in Daegu are architecturally uninspired, modern, and utilitarian. And I don’t get it. Why so many buildings? And why are they basically the same?

But up in Woobang Tower, I stopped seeing the buildings and began to picture the people living inside. I began to imagine those people preparing their children for school, descending in crowded elevators on the way to work, and wondered if the high density housing lead to complex traffic jams. How do most people get to work? Do most own cars? That lead me to next wonder, where do these people go to work? I recalled street vendors, teachers, industrial workers and wondered if Korea has a rather disparate workforce. And are there disparate neighborhoods? I hadn’t yet noticed any. And what is Korean economy based on? What jobs are considered best? What is the unemployment rate like? Do all Korean workers work 6 day weeks? How do the workers feel about switching from the 6 day work week to a 5-day week? What is the concept of the “weekend” like around the world?

All the sudden, I had many questions and few answers. As I bowed thank you (“kamsa hamnida”) to the elevator lady on the ground, as I hungrily made my way to the afore-glimpsed Western department store, and as I savored my lunch of bibimbap, I came to the realization that I would be no longer lost in Daegu when I formed more than a surface understanding of the city and the country it resides in. A cliché to be sure, yet in the end my trip to Woobang Tower yielded what I had hoped for: an idea on how to feel less lost in Korea.

Fondly,

Laura