It's windy, but it's a good feeling.

The sun came out after an entire day of pelting rain yesterday. I wanted to be upset and moody because it was raining AND it was Monday, but oddly enough I started to feel kind of calm. I remembered that I was in Asia, and for some reason, yesterday, that was just enough. Reading is a great thing for me, because I start to look at my own life less like something I "have to do" and more like a novel to be written.

Other excellent news. I am going to India! I've been accepted to volunteer with One! International, a small NGO that runs schools for poor children in Mumbai. They've even asked me to teach art, which is really exciting.

Also, not nearly as exciting, but happy for me is that they finally released the Avatar soundtrack for MP3 download on iTunes, which means that I now have it. Super excited. I love James Horner and I loved that movie.


On Monday, I started studying Korean with my Taekwondo Teacher's wife, and I'm super excited. They are like my family here. I spent so much time there, haha. It really makes me happy and I am so glad that I got the chance to do this.

Anyway just brief updates. Nothing spectacular happening. Here's a photo from the mountain climb I took on Sunday. There is a barefoot climbing festival happening soon, and I think my TKD teachers are going to take me!

Reading Korean Literature

One of the great ways to get into the mind of a foreign culture is by picking up literature from that country. I loved reading Ghanaian literature and watching Ghanaian movies because I could peek into the imagination of Ghanaians, and the fictionalized stories helped me to understand what was really happening in the world around me.

Anyway I absolutely tore through two short stories yesterday written by GongJiYoung (공지영), "Dreams" and "Human Decency". Both were really disjointed and confusing, but it still helped me to grasp at a certain mood, and it also reinforced my opinion that this place is scarred. She puts a lack of 'time line' into her stories. Her characters are always drifting back into the past in their heads, and you kind of forget what generation you're in. But there's definitely this sense of deep brokenness, guilt, and betrayal. The characters are living through the fact that their activism of the 1980s, while they have a civilian government now, seems to only add up to a more materialistic world. Her main character in Human Decency, a woman who gave up her life as an activist to work at a magazine, asks the question who are we "When we speak not of what is right and wrong, but of what we like and dislike?"

They were oddly powerful stories, although nothing really seemed to happen in them. It just seemed like these characters were grasping at that scar that seems to be here, that wound under a bandaid, that I can see but can't touch. And it's much bigger than Japanese Occupation and the Korean War, it's the dictatorship after it and the rapid development, too.

In Human Decency, Gong gives the impression that those who suffered from those times are forgotten, while the travelers who escaped the country during that time are the ones that are now in the country's imagination. The main character interviews "YiMinja", an enlightened woman who went to Africa and India and studied yoga and meditation, and drinks funny smelling tea. (And the main character says, after meeting her and her remarkable presence, "I now regretted disapproving of her because she had lived abroad.") The other character is Gwon, a man who spent most of his life rotting in prison because of a life sentence. He received it for passing out anti government literature. His two comrades died in prison. Now he seems to rot alone in his home with his brother, forgotten by his country because his struggle no longer seems to matter. They've all jumped past it.

But the main character herself seems to want to jump past it. The story takes us back into her life, into the people she lost. She doesn't want to go back to interview Gwon because of his connection to the life of activism that she ran away from--finally just tired of being constantly on the run. There's this continual inner struggle on her desire to honor her past and deal with her guilt, and this desire to turn away from it and accept the enlightened woman who traveled all over and learned of the world's wisdom. The character's inner struggles are fascinating when you look at it from a cultural perspective.

Anyway I totally recommend reading Korean literature for anyone who wants to get a deeper understanding of this place.

Things I want to do in the next five years

+ Go back to Ghana and Volunteer with a community program or orphanage
+ Visit/Volunteer in India
+ Get a TEFL or other equivalent certificate
+ Hold another art show; sell some originals
+ significantly reduce my undergrad debt
+ study Arabic in an Arabic speaking country

Just been popping around the Matador site lately. Also been working on an article about Jeonju for my recruiter's newsletter. I found out that my new co-teachers were  both recruited from the same agency, but they didn't contact me. I think it's kind of weird, since they did put them in touch with each other, and a bunch of other girls that they sent to Daejeon at the same time. I think I've kind of fallen off their radar. Then again, I feel like I've fallen off of all the radar these days.

I had a stressful week but I had a really nice weekend. I'm sitting right now on the patio of a coffee shop, enjoying the sun, which was exactly what I did yesterday. Today, my new friend Amina and I climbed one of the mountains on the other side of the city. I didn't get the name of it, but with Google maps, I found a Gemeori mountain in just about the right place, so I think that's the name of it. It was a really steep hike, full of stairs and constant upward climbing. But it was totally worth it. From the top, we could see all of Daejeon. I could almost find my neighborhood, even though it was on the opposite side of the city.

Daejeon seems so big when you're traveling across it but it's actually quite small. You can see the whole city in one 360 view from this mountain... even with the haze, my neighborhood was just barely disappearing on the other side. Daejeon is a flat space surrounded on all sides by mountains. Gyeryeong, the mountain close to me, had disappeared in the haze, but the apartments close to me were just barely visable over the small hill that separates my neighborhood from the ritzier ones along the river. I could see my grocery store and the river where I ride my bike. It was pretty neat.

Anyway I'm going to focus now on readying more photos for my website, and then I'm going to go home and clean my house something fierce.

Magoksa Temple Stay Festival

Well my exciting Magoksa Temple Stay Festival turned out to be somewhat iffy. It seemed as though things were really poorly planned, especially since my tour group showed up with 2 buses instead of the 1 that they apparently said they were bringing. They were also an hour and a half late, so I sat around with this guy outside the traditional Buddhist Center just chatting for a while. He had decent English, which was nice.

After my group finally arrived, we registered in an enormously complicated (yet it shouldn't have been) process, and then went to eat lunch, which was delicious. Then we headed off to the temple, where the monks were doing a drumming competition. That was pretty fantastic. The monks were dressed in gorgeous clothes and just flew these sticks across this enormous drum, making beautiful, flowing--deep--sounds like the ocean. I loved it.

This guy won the competition and was asked to do an encore. He was great--got me moving, though nobody else was dancing. There were a few ladies next to me that had cute little "go go!" signs for their temple. They didn't win, but their spirit was adorable.

After the competition, there was a demonstration of how to make a relief pressing of some of the beautiful bronze work done on the bell. (You can see it in the back on the right of the photo.) There were news cameras everywhere--documenting the interested foreigners and templestay activities--and then they got just about everybody to help make this relief. He used water and a brush to slap wet paper over the carving, and when it was finished, it should stand up alone.

I helped! Anyway it was pretty neat but I got bored after a little while, and wandered over to the other festivities, like making pancakes and other things. As a group, we went on a hike up to the crest of a mountain to see a place where people were buried--apparently because if you buried your parents there, your children would become kings and queens. I had a fascinating talk with a student from Mexico, getting all into the topics of religion and that. Felt great to dust the cobwebs off of that part of my brain.

Then we had some weird things happen... after dinner we had a show, which I was expecting to be monk martial arts and all that, but as it turned out it was only one performance of monk martial arts, and a lot of other performances. There was an amazing taekwondo demonstration crew, and a group who played seriously loud and raucous traditional music. Then it turned into this weird talent show.... and it was really boring, and frustrating, because the announcer wouldn't let the interpreter speak. Fail.

Anyway the next day was full of nice stuff... we had a meditation practice and a talk with an English speaking monk, who actually lives close to me. He was from either the USA or Canada... not sure. Then there was a Lithuanian monk who was also really cool. It's nice to see foreigners integrated into the society here.

After lunch, the Seoul group took off, and I just wandered around the temple complex for a while. I was having a real... frustrated with Korea day. I didn't blog about this for a long time because I was really excited for it, and it got really... frustrating.  That was just a real bummer.

People told me that Month Seven is really difficult because you just get tired of all the crap that you brushed off for the previous six months. And I totally agree. They say it was the hardest... I don't really agree with that, because I thought Month Three was much harder, but I am definitely just TIRED of this crap.

But I had a really excellent lunch with some people I know are going to be good friends, so I am looking forward to continuing those relationships. And I'm still drawing my story... one little piece at a time.

My little ones are the reason I come to work.

They are just absolutely adorable. Brand new kids, with innocent little hearts, adorable little faces, and strange behavior.

The new students at my hagwon are ALL my students. We have two foreign teachers here, but my coworker wasn't given any of the new students. There could be plenty of reasons why, but I think my boss just thought that--on top of everything--they'd want to see a female teacher first. So I have four brand new classes and they are just the cutest things ever.

In my Tuesday-Thursday, I have a little girl (who has changed her name like 4 times) who is madly in love with the boy that sits behind her. She drives me NUTS with her constant pestering of him. When she raises her hand, she also just makes random sing-songy noises that are dual part hysterical and dual part obnoxious. She's always kind of gnawing with her voice... and when she's not doing that, she's up bothering the little boy--trying to steal his stuff.

The other hysterical little boy in this class is probably the ugliest child I've EVER seen. He's not going to stay ugly--but right now, he's got it baaad. His eye sockets are too big for his eyeballs. So his skin is stretched out over them like he's some kind of all-natural batman. And he's got the snotty breath like that awkward kid on Hey Arnold. And he just stands there and STARES. With this "durrrr" look on his face. One time I was grading homework, and my door was open... and then I turned around, and THERE HE WAS, just "durrrrr" staring at me. And then he just said "Maaayyyyygeeee." And I just about DIED. Soooo funny.

In my other class, on Wednesday and Friday, I have a bunch of kindergartners. They're tiny little buggers, and they're so energetic. They make me so happy, even though they also frustrated me, but their hour is probably my favorite hour, because they just giggle at every stupid thing I do. It's so much easier to entertain them, haha. And they're all missing teeth, giving me hugs, and doing adorable stuff. If I came back here, I think I would try to land a kindergarten job. They just make me so happy. It's exhausting, but I feel like it's worth it with them, because I really CAN see improvement, because they start with NOTHING.

Anyway... that's my rant about my kids recently. I've been working personally on some drawing. I got this idea to actually "draw" a book; to take one of my short stories and put it into pictures. Currently it's going quite well, but I'm only on the first page, harhar. This weekend I'm staying in town, and I'm hopefully going to find a place where I can do some scanning. Hopefully. I'll check the PC rooms around this area.

Some things this weekend.

Well I had a pretty uneventful week. My Ghanaian friend came back into town, but I missed him--it appears as though the Daejeon auto companies don't have a lot of good stuff this time around, so he headed up to Incheon before I had enough time to meet up with him. Bummer. Been making an effort to get out in the morning, but this morning my goal is to clean my house, because I'll be gone all weekend at a monk festival! Yeeeeahh!!

Anyway, we have a new teacher here. Alex is at the end of his contract and so the new girl is here. She's from South Africa and she looks like a lot of fun. I haven't actually hung out with her except with our bosses, but she's interesting and kind, so I think we'll get along.

This weekend I hit up Seoul and hung out with Stephanie, which was definitely what I needed. I spent a lot of money, but it was a well worth it trip. First I met up with the TeachESLKorea folks and met some people who had been placed by my recruiter. They were all really fun and intelligent, and had some really interesting stories. I met one guy who was working in a technical High School--you know, for non-college bound students. This sounds like an amazing job! Sometimes I just wish I got a chance to touch kids who weren't privileged.  But I think my hagwon sits in the middle of the economic world here, so I'm usually pretty happy with the students.

The real kicker was Sunday, though, because on Sunday I went to the Heritage Mass Choir concert. It's every month in this church in a really hip area of town, seemed like a lot of young worldly minded people. (There was even a sincere jazz club in the area!) The Heritage Choir is a gospel choir in Korean--and you'd think that would be kind of dorky, but these people can BELT this music. I was so impressed. And I had so much fun. It was really uplifting--even though I did cry the ENTIRE time--it was just so amazing to see so much passion in the music, and feel so connected. After I managed to stop balling, I started to follow along with the songs (church songs are simple for a reason, in any language). They had the words posted on the screen above the choir, and the audience was encouraged to sing along. So we did. In Korean. It didn't strike me until later that I was reading a completely different language, and SINGING--doing something pretty familiar to me throughout my youth, but in an Asian country, in an Asian language. That moment kind of renewed my faith in life, and religion, and interfaith/interculture--everything.

The best part of the thing, though, was the sermon. Recently I'd been frustrated because some English speaker was leaving letters on my door saying "Please come celebrate Jesus's death with me." Or something--commemorate the death, I think were the exact words. Anyway I was so not ready to go and be all excited about death and violence and suffering. Ask me to celebrate Jesus' life, and I'll be happy to do so, but ask me to celebrate his DEATH, and condone suffering and violence, and then I get a little testy. Since that was barely the point of the majority of the gospel anyway. Sure he died. But then he came back--and truthfully, that's more of the miracle, right?

Okay religious rant aside, I was going feeling a little testy towards Korean church. I hadn't been able to find a church where the preacher made me feel inspired. In fact I felt more inspired by the speeches that characters on Grey's Anatomy gave. But this sermon at the church was NOT a message of suffering and death--it was a message of hope. It was about giving and finding hope, and always spreading hope, and being witnesses to the hope of new life through Jesus's LIFE. And hearing a positive Christian message really just made me so happy. (I know all this because one of the women in the choir was bilingual and was providing translation services to the foreigners sitting in the corner.)

On the whole it was an amazingly uplifting experience. I recommend it to anyone in Korea who has an ounce of musical appreciation or religious appreciation. The next one is on May 2. It's Dongsoong Church at Hyehwa Station. (It's up a hill a ways on the left of Exit 2, I believe.)

Sunday: Jeonju, Traditional Buildings, Music, and Food

Jeonju (전주) is a small city just south of me, about an hour's bus ride from the Yuseong terminal. On Sunday, I went down to explore the traditional building district, or Hanok district, of this small, delightful city.

I spent a lot of time walking. It was comforting to wander around, and this city had some definite charm to it. The buildings are almost all squat hovels, and even outside the official 'traditional' district, the city has a lot of charm and comforting, homey feel. The day was sunny--in fact, I was unprepared for the sun--I got a sunburn on my face, which is now peeling in a terribly ugly way. It's been so rainy here that I almost forgot what the sun could do.

The goal of my trip was mostly just to take pictures. I was wandering around the narrow roads, photographing the whitewashed houses with their heavy, decorated roofs. I got a few good pictures and a lot of really mediocre ones. What the real joy of the trip was what I accidentally walked into--a Korean traditional music festival. I heard some amazing drumming, saw some dancing, and all around enjoyed some authentically Korean music that wasn't the dreaded K-Pop. I also watched a line of plastic-chair sitting grandpas, and had a good laugh over how sincere they all seemed.

Jeonju is also famous for Jeonju Bibimbab, which is apparently better than all other bibimbab everywhere in Korea. I had some--it was pretty good, but it was also double the price of regular bibimbab. Though I do have to say, it was quite delicious, which extra pieces of beef and some seriously serious side dishes.

Anyway it was a good trip, and I'd recommend visiting the city. My picture application isn't working today so next time I'll send pics.

English Mistakes Made by Stupid Americans

Ran across this link posted by a friend on Facebook. English teachers in Korea spend a lot of time being pissed off about Korea's bad English, or the mistakes that make their way into the public, when there are a million English teachers here who can fix it.

But it appears, in America as well, we have some issues with spelling--especially those who have a certain opinion about the "Official" language of America.


Photographs from American English-Only Protests