I teach several classes that revolve around helping teenagers learn to answer questions articulately in their second language. One of the questions they always seem to struggle with is the question of what there is of interest to see and do in their own city. I’m sure the question is included because it seems like it should be easy. Their struggle to find something to talk about always reminds me of how little we pay attention to the places where we live. We all do it. People who live in Johannesburg look a little bemused and generally resort, after a long pause, to suggesting a favourite restaurant or perhaps Gold Reef City. Cape Town people get stumped, too.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment when life in a completely new and foreign place stops being filled with the sheen of strange-ness and becomes familiar, but I think that is probably the moment when it becomes hard to think of places and things that are exciting about the city you live in. It’s also the moment when it starts to take definite effort to go out and find things to see and write about, not because things have become less interesting but because their familiarity makes them seem less spectacular. The fact that the place feels familiar, because it’s the place you live and not a place you are visiting, means there is less urgency to go and see things, instead of sleeping for another hour or sitting in your flat.

I’ve been very aware of that tendency in myself recently. It has taken me a long time to get back in touch with the fact that I want to live deliberately, consciously and, to quote something I once wrote “experience each moment before it is gone”. Choosing to do that, not just on exciting, brief trips, but in the place where you live and work, requires effort. One of the reasons I was originally so pleased with the idea of my rather odd working hours was because it would give me the opportunity to see the world I am living in. Recently I have been forgetting that and allowing myself to be dragged back into the mundanity of office politics and the stress of new classes and the sagas we create for ourselves to occupy the time that we would otherwise have to fill with things that take effort, like exploring. Today I dragged myself out of the house, determined not to drown in the lethargy of feeling like it’s too much effort and the excuse that I only have a few hours before work.

I really did only have a few hours before work, but I’ve been meaning to visit one of the parks slightly further away from home for a while now and this was the day. I hopped a bus and headed for my usual subway stop and down into the depths of the Daegu subway system. The bus was marvellously without the masses of school-children who usually crowd onto it on my way to work (they were still at school) and the train arrived almost immediately and was also pleasantly empty. The train-ride to Duryu from Manchon takes about 15 minutes. I am clearly becoming inured to subway travel because my mind drifted and I nearly missed my stop. Nearly but not quite.

From the platform I headed up and sought exit 12, as recommended in the directions I was following. I emerged from the subway exit and found myself on the usual busy intersection, except with slightly smaller buildings and a little more open space, which is always a welcome relief. The instructions said turn right, which was a little unclear as right would have meant walking into a brick wall, but I assumed (correctly as it turned out) that they really meant ‘go right along the big road crossing the intersection’.

As I walked up the road, I was struck by the feeling that this was a somewhat different part of the city to what I’m used to. For one thing, there weren’t signs for English academies everywhere and the shops didn’t all have fake-English names. I got the sense that here I had found a corner of the city not designed specifically for foreigners. This might make it slightly less attractive to occasional travellers but it’s somehow comforting to know that it’s not all one giant amusement park for the ‘others’.

A block or so up the road, I saw lots of trees and headed in that direction. This park (Duryu Park) is different to the ones I’ve visited so far. The parks I’ve been to have been tiny, perfectly manicured, carefully designed tourist attractions. This is just a park. A park with far more trees, well-maintained benches and old people playing board-games than I’m used to, but an ordinary large park on the gentle slopes of a hill. This means that every patch of ground is not covered in lawns and flower-beds. It really felt as if this is an ordinary place that is an integral part of the life of an ordinary community.

I wandered the paths for a while, enjoying the shade of the trees and the people living their lives and the gentle ordinariness of it all. At one point, I sat down on some stone stairs under some huge plain trees and just sat listening to the wind in the trees and the birds singing (or squeaking – strange birds) to each other. Down the slope, people were having quiet picnics or sitting in groups on benches chatting. It was wonderful to hear the wind.

At the top of steps, the world opened out into an open-air stadium. I assume that the stadium is used for sport, based on the soccer goal-posts on either side, but it looks more like a dusty school playground in rural Limpopo (in the middle of perfectly clean and maintained stadium seating) due to the distinct lack of grass. Perhaps this is because the stadium is also used for other things. I know there is a concert there next month as part of the Daegu Opera Festival. In the distance, I could see Woobang Towerland, an amusement park with rides and roller-coasters and the big swing/boat swinging from side to side.

A little more wandering brought me to a pond with purple and white water-lillies. I had astrange moment of trying to remember what Waterblommetjie Bredie is called. I also passed some fruit trees I was unable to identify the fruit of (the fruit of which I was unable to identify?), although one of them may have been a crab-apple tree. Near the exit of the park there are some fountains. Nothing spectacular or huge, but pretty water, arranged in a pretty way in the pristine light of an early Autumn afternoon.

On the way back, I stopped past the entrance to Woobang Towerland – the entrance is shaped and coloured like a Disney fairy-tale castle – and was taken by complete surprise by the sight of a scurrying grey-brown squirrel. It was rushing around, as squirrels should, I suppose, in Autumn, and wouldn’t hold still long enough for a photo but I saw it several times so I’m dead sure I wasn’t imagining it.

On the way back to the subway, I walked across a large pedestrial bridge. It was one of those that winds up the one side and then stretches across a busy road and winds back down the other. I’ve always thought that there is something ‘twirly’ and a little insecure about these bridges. At the same time, I love standing in the middle watching the traffic pass under you. It feels as though you have a unique opportunity to stand still just for a moment and watch the whole world rushing by.

Back on the platform of Duryu subway station, I saw a sign that said “origins of the name” and went to go and investigate, keen to find out all I could about the area. Unfortunately, the extent of the explanation was that the park was called that so the street was called that so the station is. Sometimes Koreans can be rather unpoetic with their explanations.

On the way back, I’d thought about stopping at the major downtown station to try and find the bookshop there that reputedly carries an English selection, but time was passing quickly and I still had a lesson to finish preparing so I decided to leave it for another day. I got off one station sooner than I normally do, just for the sake of variety and walked the two blocks or so to work.

At this point, I realised I was feeling a bit hungry so I went into the K-Mart downstairs from the office (school). This is one of the most mini-super-market-like shops I know in Korea (sort of like a Kwikspar only not sophisticated) but nothing looked appealing until I noticed that they were selling single apples. Daegu is famous for it’s apples, so they tend to be everywhere. I bought one and headed up to my desk. It seemed doubly appropriate to have an apple for the teacher. Most teachers, though, probably don’t end up with apples that take ages to eat because they are absolutely monster-sized and sweet and juicy all the way through. By the time I finished the apple (in between lesson prep), the afternoon of exploring was gone and my first class was beginning.

It wasn’t until I got home this evening that it dawned on me that a disproportionate number of posts on this blog so far have involved parks. It is a little odd that parks would be the places I seek out, although it’s probably appropriate given the excessive urbanisation of the place. I think the attraction is partly that and partly that parks are easy to find, always-open places which don’t involve conversing with any gate-keeper or teller who can’t speak English. Also, I happen to be a fan of parks, so it all works out for the best. Perhaps I have founded a whole new hobby – park-hunting, anyone?