new adventures

So 9 months later, I'm back with a new round of big updates.

First, a bit of catch-up: For the past year and some change, I've been working in the Daegu Center of Wall Street Institute, and I've been fortunate to have some great opportunities to build my job experience, awesome co-workers throughout the whole company, wonderful students, a perfect location in Daegu and a great little apartment within walking distance of work and downtown. There have been sizable challenges (mostly when the company went through a rough economic patch with layoffs), but overall it's been a great year and it was a really wonderful step in my life and career.

During that time, I also did a lot of soul-searching and research for future career paths, and finally settled on a plan to go back to school and work toward a career in international education development. I will at least eventually work in developing countries, and possibly I'll start out that way, but have to weigh several considerations (jobs, money, locations) in timing that.

My grad school plans went appeared to go awry when I bombed part of the GRE, but amazingly my top pick, George Washington University in D.C., took me anyway (as did American University, and I even got waitlisted at Georgetown - who knew?).

And on a most fortunate Friday the 13th almost six months ago, I fell for a friend who's since become an amazing part of my life. He's a 33-year-old Korean pharmacist in Daejon, a city a couple hours from here, and well ... just a really great guy who makes me silly happy. And as a bonus, his family is awesome, too. :)

A combination of funding considerations, grad school prerequisites and wanting to stick around with InSoo awhile longer led me to defer my admission by a year. But needing to seriously study Korean for both grad school and personal goals, and wanting to be closer to to my guy, meant giving up Daegu and my current job. So I managed to hook a university job in Seoul that will allow me to study and work simultaneously (and take a nice, long trip home over winter vacation!), and now I'm off to the big city for a year.

Leaving is bittersweet, but I know I will keep many of my good friends here and I'm excited about what's ahead. (And I lucked into a huge apartment with a great roof for dinner parties and lots of extra space for guests, so there will be plenty of incentive for visitors. Hint, hint.)

So ... yeah. That's pretty much the wrap. I don't know if I'll be updating this often again or what, but felt like I should at least post a note of major changes. Although I'm not so hot on the blogging these days (things have sort of settled into regular life rather than exotic notes of interest), I do think about all you out there in the real world and enjoy connecting with you on Facebook and other cyberspace places.

Living around the world for an extended time creates the problem of always being far from those you care about, no matter which country you're in. But it's a pretty amazing opportunity and lets us all know so much more of the world vicariously. And hopefully I'll see a bunch of you American batch in January or so when I'm back for a visit - probably with InSoo.

Love to all and keep in touch!
-K

some cute Konglish

A student today gave me my favorite bit of Konglish to date: "dog happy," "dog excited" and "dog hungry" - he had just learned "dog tired" and thought it could be expounded into any adjective form (and why not, I say?). I think I'm going to make it my personal mission to infect several people's slang with this one.

Another good one I ran into today: "Thank you, Mr. Weiss. Everyone please give him big hands." (How the heck is one hand, however big it is, supposed to help you clap, anyway? Ever thought about it?)

of honest toast

Every so often, I stop by a "toast" shop near work for a still-strange, yet occasionally appealing Korean version of a toasted sandwich. It's this odd mix of veggies fried into an egg square, honey-based sauce and American cheese on toast, and I can't exactly call it good, but sometimes it fits the bill.

Outside the walk-up window of the place, there's an open-top metal box with three spots for bills and two for coins. Inside, kerchiefed women flit and bustle around a couple grills and a small counter, and the system for getting something to go works like this: 1) call out your order, 2) place your money in the bins, and 3) wait for your "toast" to be handed over the grills to you.

It's a tidy system - the employees never touch filthy money. I'm not even sure they could reach from inside. Customers deposit their coins and bills - up to about 10 bucks - and collect their own change. Walnut-sized washers weigh down the stacks of paper money, and it's a happening joint - on a busy street right downtown, frequented by all ages of folks, especially teens and twentysomethings. The employees are kept hopping, and I often have to wait a couple minutes for one to turn around before I assiduously deposit my 1,400 won (about 95 cents, these days). I always make sure to have correct change; as the merely semi-literate foreigner, one learns how a little preparation can avoid all sorts of potential incomprehensible conversations. Though I think I needn't bother - I've never seen a Korean take such precautions, nor seen the toast ladies give anyone a second glance.

At any rate, every time I'm there, see that big wad of bills just hanging out in the teen-filled street with very little oversight, I get a little culture shocked all over again. "Only in Korea," invariably echoes in my head. Though I'm sure it's a naive line, the sentiment is true. Even coming from the "we don't lock our doors" Midwest, I'm shocked the system works. It's not a giant amount of cash, to be sure, but I'd be willing to bet there's a couple hundred bucks there on a good day.

I never realized crime was strange until I lived in a place without much to speak of. Sure it happens on occasion here, but petty theft is relatively rare and violent crime next to nonexistant. In fact, most police calls are to the army base vicinity, home of the proud U.S. military. The comfort and empowerment of living in such relatively a safe place makes me sad about the situation in my native country in a way I never expected.

Tonight at a busy coffeeshop downtown, a young woman left her purse, phone and MP3 player in the middle of the cafe while she went to the bathroom, then came back to collect her things and leave. The odder part was that I hardly even noticed.

But every day I see things like that money box on the street. I watch my students save study space with their laptops and nice cameras while they go out for lunch. I see shops and stands that leave a good deal of merchandise out on the street or hall when they close for the night, sometimes just draped with a sheet - occasionally not even that.

I walk by businessmen in nice suits with undoubtedly fat wallets who are out cold - sprawled out on the street, undisturbed and contentedly sleeping off the wild night before. I see young women walking solo at all dark hours through the sketchy parts of town. I shop at stores with cash registers far inside, where you have to walk past sometimes floors of merchandise to exit.

I've stared as mothers park sleeping babies in strollers outside shop doors downtown, then go about their business inside. For that matter, I've been handed strangers' children on buses while their parents fish for change.

I'm not saying these are particularly grand ideas, just that they must largely work, or the systems would change. And most of the time, still, it shocks me - the honesty of my current residence.

At least, that's the word I would have used before. But can it be defined with just that one word, "honesty"?

What about my 24-year-old Korean friend, following many of her fellow countrywomen and hiding her two-year relationship with her very nice young man because he doesn't yet have the proper job to make him marriageable? To her, it is more noble to hide the situation until the timing is right than to dishonor her parents by openly displaying the relationship. And for their part, her parents quite obviously turn a blind eye every time she goes out to meet "friends." In what apparently is somewhat of a custom, it will all be reconciled some joyous day when he lands the job, and the parents won't even question the years-long ruse. I would be skeptical except that I've seen it before.

What about the way you must respond, "Yes, thank you," to any of a dozen times daily you're asked if you've just eaten, no matter what the situation? It can roughly be equated to our "How are you?" - only say something contrary to the expected if you're prepared to go into a huge backstory and receive others' concern.

What about the hundreds of "love motels" populating this and every other city in Korea? What about the well-trafficked red light district across the way - one of a handful in town? Does it matter that most of the wives realize at least most of what's involved in executive business dealings? That society of all levels supports various forms of female "entertainment"? (It's in every country, sure, but definitely more entrenched and widespread here in Asia, home of the Japanese geisha.)

What about the unwritten edict in this Confucian society that, if it comes down to it, you should lie rather than make your seniors lose face?

These all seem to be the opposite side of the coin ... at least from a Western philosophy. And I'm still figuring out how they can be attached to the same thing.

I grew up thinking honesty was a simple concept. You either were honest, or a liar. Good, or bad. But living here, it seems that what I thought was one idea is more like a dozen. A culture code that's made up of related parts, but much more complex than just one word. I guess we all grow up thinking things are simple ... but I think had I stayed forever in the Midwest, I would still believe something close. And maybe that would have been easier. But then again, aren't we all searching for the honest truth ... ?

my new place

So I just got my new apartment settled, and the location, setup and price are an absolute dream. A 10 to 15 minute walk to downtown/work (I had thought I would have to commute in), or if the weather's bad, it's two to five minutes to get to the subway and then one stop away and all indoors. And that subway stop next to my place is also one of the major train stations of the city, as well as a giant luxury department store with a basement grocery store, and there's tons of other shopping, eateries and cafes in the immediate area. And I'm paying only about 50 bucks a month - just over a fourth of what I'd expected to pitch in - to upgrade to a full one-bedroom, instead of a studio, where it would have been difficult to host the many local and perhaps couple international visitors I expect in the next year.

But that dream I'm getting is a pretty colorful one, including giant psychadelic pink flowers on the living room wall and other decor no less than three tones of orange, plus one of red. I'm finding the cheese factor and artistic challenge quite entertaining - a great trade for a one-year stint of otherwise great conditions ... thought you all would get a kick out of seeing the pictures (click here), too.

I move in late this week - new mailing address to come.

the jjimjilbang experience

I finally made it to a traditional Korean spa this week - only 10 months into living here. Many Koreans go a couple times a week.

The spas (찜질방 - roughly "jjimjilbang" - in Korean, extra stress on the first J) come in different sizes and with different amenities, but they're basically sites where communities gather to scrub, soak, sleep, chat and chill out. They're roughly $5 to $10 to get in, and you can stay as long as you want - many feature sleeping rooms or mats for open floor space. The bathhouse areas - equipped of some assortment of hot tubs, showers, saunas and pools, are separated by gender and you go sans clothing. But other areas of saunas, open spaces, television, PC rooms, karaoke rooms and massage offerings are coed and you wear standard-issue gymsuits. There's a pretty good write-up here if you want more info.

I honestly didn't know much about them before, and I'd been a little hung up on the naked part of the venture - not really wanting to hang out there nekked by myself, fending off what I was sure would be 10 times the normal amount of stares you collect as a foreigner just walking around fully clothed, and feeling odd about being seen in my birthday suit by co-workers, who have been the only other easy option of companions. But being a short-timer at a job gives you immense freedom, and going to the jjimjilbang is turning into the thing everyone does, and maybe I'm just over it anyway ... I finally bit the bullet and just went. And it was totally fine - great, in fact.

Whole families turn out together - multiple generations hanging out chatting and escaping the often grueling pace of life outside. It's a quiet and friendly and bustling place all at once, a stronger sense of community than anywhere else I've seen in the country yet, and such a vastly different world than exists in Western culture.

And the naked part, well turns out that was quite alright, too. There are stares, but you're staring too, a little, and mostly it's just not a big deal. Everyone's got a body and they're all different and the same - and you just get over it. Like being in a swimteam locker room again, but with hordes of strangers from age 2 to 82. It's really healthy dose of reality for Western inhibitions, I think. Strange that it's in the same place where it's considered daring to bare your shoulders or collarbones in public, but whatever.

Anyway, if you come to Korea, get to the jjimjilbang quicker than I did. It's cool.

... and we're back

Hi, everyone. I got beyond behind in posting here over the past couple months, but back now. The short of it is that I've been too self-absorbed to write anything of note - been trying to figure out job changes and life plans in general, and there was a really exciting period in which I thought I might have to leave the country and teach in Japan for the next year because of visa issues. But after considering many options, the final plan is to stay here in Daegu at a position teaching adults downtown, starting May 26.

I'm really excited to move back into civilization, and have another year here to enjoy this place and people I feel like I'm just starting to know. Not to mention work more on Korean. The next couple weeks will be a whirlwind, but it's a good thing and I'm on the countdown.

I'm planning a trip back to the States sometime this winter, and then I'll probably be coming back for grad school in fall of 2009, as I'm pretty sure I want to do this teaching thing for real - college-level languages/culture something. There won't be a whole lot of traveling this side of the world in the next year because of limited time off and budgeting priorities, but if I'm lucky I'll be able to swing a big trip next summer between work and school.

That's about the wrap right now. Thanks for all your well-wishes and I'll keep you (more frequently) posted. :)

something to nibble on

So there I was, sitting in a cutesy Korean coffeeshop, with fish eating my feet.

It was the end of a typical weekend - the kind where I catch the first bus out and the last bus in and pack the day with various activities with friends in town. I had met one of my Korean friends downtown as she got off work for the evening, and she pulled out a booklet of advertisements to scan for coupons and places to go. We haltingly chatted in three languages with her Japanese co-worker about some of the shops, restaurants and spas in the book as she leafed through, and decided that we weren't all that hungry.

"Mmm, you want coffee and ... bread? This place has coffee, tea and bread," Yuni said, pointing to one of the pages. Her English is really pretty great, but there are plenty of times I miss what she's saying or only get part of it, and we hang out in part to trade language practice.

"Sure - sounds great," I shrugged, the ever-agreeable tourist. I wasn't quite sure what "bread" would turn out to be, but wherever my Korean friends want to go usually is great, so always happy to leave the decision-making up to them. Often, when you deal cross-cultures and cross-languages, you find yourself letting go of the small things and just seeing what happens - otherwise you'd be hammering out details for hours. She tore out the page and pocketed it, nodding.

We waved goodbye to the co-worker and ducked out into the cold night, then scuttled down a couple streets until we came to a nondescript set of stairs. Yuni pulled out the crumpled advertisement and consulted it a moment before scanning the signs plastered on the building.

"Here," she nodded.

We scurried up the stairs and through a door that opened into a warm, bright world buzzing with low conversations and smelling of tea and toast. Aproned staff bowed and greeted us, gesturing toward small tables surrounded by plush chairs in purple, green and gold. Bookshelves and faux trees were scattered among clusters of laughing young women. A few couples leaned close over steaming mugs, backlit by holiday lights and brick walls painted with foliage and shadows. It appeared to be pretty much the standard coffeeshop scene in Korea, with a bit of novel flair, and I was excited to have a potential new hangout downtown.

We set our stuff down and scoped out the menu, deciding on chamomile tea and the "toast bar" - basically a bunch of different breads set out by toaster ovens, butter and various jams. Koreans are pretty crazy about their toast, and there are entire shops devoted to just serving the crusty stuff. This seemed to be the coffeeshop version - aka, the "bread" Yuni had talked about. She went up to the counter to order for us and came back a few minutes later with our tea.

She said she also ordered something else, which I didn't quite understand, but I got that it would be ready when our number came up on a sign over on the wall - about 30 minutes. I wondered what could take 30 minutes in a coffeeshop, but again, it didn't seem worth figuring out sooner than necessary, so I smiled, said "Great," and asked her to pronounce "dog" and "crab" in Korean, which sound exactly the same to me but are supposedly different. Then we chatted about her sister's wedding and some translation work she'd done earlier that week for the U.S. Army in a court case for some soldiers who had gotten in a bar fight with some Koreans.

A few grammar and culture conversations down the line, number 178 was up, and I looked up at the counter, expecting to see a plate of something or other. But no, there was Yuni, calling my attention back and telling me to bring my bag. What? Um, okay ... maybe we had to go collect whatever it was from some other part of the restaurant? I grabbed my bag and headed after her, over to the side of the room where there were steps up to a long wooden platform. I hadn't really looked over here before but there weren't any other people except for the attendant, marking something on a clipboard and apparently giving Yuni some sort of instructions.

What the ...?

Yuni motioned me to take my shoes off at the bottom of the stairs and kept listening and nodding. I slipped off my clogs and padded up the stairs, curious. I could see some inset areas coming into view, and I thought for a moment that maybe they were like the floor tables I'd seen in other restaurants and this was a place for eating some sort of ceremonial food ... hmmm. But as I topped the stairs I realized that I was staring down into tanks of water ... and not just water - water full of small, darting fish. There were several cushions around the edges of the tanks, and sinks set into the floor a few feet away. I was totally bewildered.

Fish, fish ... oh yeah. I flashed back to the conversation we had had at Yuni's office about spa treatments and recalled a rather gross one about people submerging their feet into tanks of live fish, who eat away the dead skin. Kind of like a pedicure, a la Fear Factor. Wow. It all came clear. I had somehow missed the part about how we were going to get this spa treatment. But here I was, in this mod little coffeeshop in downtown Daegu, about to have my feet eaten off by a writhing mass of sea creatures. And it was a bought and done deal from a very sweet friend, and apparently quite the rage by the hip 20- and 30-somethings, judging by the crowd ... so hey, what the heck. When in cute coffeeshops with feet-eating fish in Korea ...

So yeah ... you can check out my pictures (just happened to have my camera along, by some great fortune). I really did it. And here's a Washington Post article with more information on the treatment, though about a Tokyo spa, and a link to the 나무그늘 site (the Daegu coffeeshop where I went) - though this site is all in Korean.

As for my experience, well ... learned the words for "creepy" and "tickle" in Korean, and basically tried not to think too much about it, except for realizing that this was perhaps the strangest 10 minutes of my life.

a trail of red lanterns

So I'm terribly behind in getting anything up about my trip to China - the government apparently blocks Blogger there, so couldn't do it from Beijing, and got swept into work and life when I got back. Anyway, better late ..., I guess.

So Beijing, Beijing. It's a cool place. Downright cold, actually. Those Siberian winds are really something.

But other than the chill, which was really only bad one day, Chinese New Year was the perfect time to travel there. Most of the city (population about 15 million people) clears out to go to their hometowns, so there's virtually no traffic and you can zip around to all the tourist sites. And the rest of the city turns out at festivals during the day (we happened across a major fair on our one free day) and stays home to light fireworks - traditionally to scare away evil spirits but today probably more to appease everyone's inner pyro. It was one of the most amazing scenes I've witnessed, standing at our plate-glass hotel windows and looking out over the exploding city - every block, every street, every house, it seemed, aflickering and abooming. Probably one of the biggest collective fireworks shows on Earth. The ruckus went on until about 2 a.m. every night but was totally worth the experience.

Most of the trip was a packaged tour - a great way to hit the highlights for a great price, if you don't mind a little dog-and-pony showing. Got most all the major sites done (Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Olympics area - including the Birds Nest, acrobat show, martial arts show) and a small dose of the actual city and people, and it turned out to be a fantastic intro to China. Click the red lanterns to get to my Beijing photos and captions. Once there you can click pictures individually or click the "Slideshow" button to view the pictures as you like.

Granted we were almost entirely on the tourist track, but I was really impressed overall by how clean everything was, and how much the city is obviously spending to impress for the upcoming Olympics. Everywhere, there's construction and renovation projects - more or less thorough. In just a few blocks, you might find newly-gleaming skyscrapers and sleek Western-style shopping malls, as well as hurried walls thrown up around decrepit sections of crumbling huts. And the bathroom horror stories I'd heard might all be true, but mostly there was modern plumbing and conveniences.

But the real story of China, for me, was its place at the end of a three-country spectrum: Japan, Korea and China. I saw all three within the span of a week, and through the preparations and celebrations of the Number 1 holiday for all three nations - Chinese New Year. It was like traveling backward from the spinoff to the source of the party, following a trail of the holiday's signal red lanterns.

And I find that my current home makes so much more sense in the context of its neighbors. Korea has a love-hate relationship with both its neighbors, influenced by milenniums of invasions and culture swaps. Just as Japan is markedly different from Korea, so is China, but to the opposite extent. Where the Japanese are slight, the Chinese are sturdy; where the Japanese are fashionable, the Chinese are sensible. Where Japan is all order and rule, China is color and chaos; where the Japanese are reserved, the Chinese are confrontational. And Korea fits neatly in between the two - geographically and in all other senses.

I've considered jobs in all three countries, and after traveling the others a little I can still see myself in any one. But I returned home with a new fondness for the middleman - no doubt in part because it's nice to return to a new place and realize that the foreign has become familiar. I remember the same sensation in Madrid, and any number of less exotic places I've lived. But it's also the one with the easiest language, if not the most English ... and the one most welcoming of Americans. And in the end I find that being the classic fence-dweller that I am, I like the view from here.

Japan: the Far, Far East

The sun was distant as we herded onto the swaying boat, bedecked with the typical Korean blare of colors and patterns, and the lingering smell of stomach acid. On the TV in front of the seats, a muted infomercial for a Hello, Kitty! vibrating belly buster flashed. We chugged out through a maze of rust-streaked cruise and cargo ships, and into a smooth expanse of the gray sea. The Sea of Japan, according to my seventh-grade geography teacher and most of Western history. It's only this year that I realized there were other accounts, that every Korean, down to the third grade, will cry out indignantly if you happen to call it other than the "East Sea." The decades of Japanese rule still don't sit well with Koreans, and this name debate is only part of the ongoing tension. Even the venerable National Geographic - the closest thing to a world authority on place names - hasn't ruled decisively on the matter, using both (though Japan's more prominently).

It's not the only thing separating these two Pacific Rim countries.

When the boat docked at Fukuoka, I was greeted by my friends and a world of order and sophistication. Spic and span streets are lined with methodical architecture and dazzling LCD screens. Trendy couples shield runway-worthy getups from the drizzle with clear plastic umbrellas, which they then lock in special cases at the entrances of gourmet restaurants. Potted flowers adorn temporary construction walls. There are whole parking garages for bicycles, which Japanese can maneuver while holding umbrellas AND texting on their cellphones. Crosswalks play music. Robots roll through malls, delivering advertising and information. Toilets have heated seats and an inspiring array of buttons and levers. And a plethora of English and well-thought signage makes it easy for foreigners to navigate most any system. Everywhere, things are tidy, planned and systematic.

Korea is a country in the midst of a near-miraculous rebound from millenniums of invasions and a quite recent civil war. But even the relatively cosmopolitan and enormous Seoul is nowhere close to the dazzle of much smaller cities here in Japan, or so I've seen and heard. Apparently, the rush of cash here after World War II created an economic force powerful enough to lift the country from devastation to prosperity in just a couple decades. Although its economic landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and other nations are now making inroads on its markets, this small set of islands continues to be a world powerhouse. Japan provides a stable and modern lifestyle for its population - albeit at a high cost of living and grueling work demand.

The ferry from Busan, South Korea, takes about three hours, and Fukuoka is a common hangout for those needing to start the clock over on Korean tourist visas or change Korean visas. It's on the island of Kyushu, which also includes Nagasaki, site of the second atomic bomb. We spent one day touring there. "Hi, my grandfathers bombed your grandfathers, and now I'm here to take a picture." It was a little weird. But definitely worth going - the museum, park and memorial are both moving and educational. And although the bombing of Pearl Harbor is conspicuously left out of timelines of events leading up to Nagasaki disaster, it's awe-inspiring how otherwise politically neutral and peace-focused the displays are.

Otherwise wandered around Fukuoka sites, took a three-hour tour of the suburbs when we took the wrong bus (I was NOT in charge, surprisingly), ate lots of raw fish (yum!), discovered a hot lemon drink (yum!), checked out the rave-reviewed La Boheme Italian restaurant (a must-go if you're in the city), and crashed at the Khaosan Fukuoka International Hostel - a good place to stay if you don't mind a walk, or paying an extra bus fare.

Here's a slideshow of pictures. You can click on it to get to the full album with captions.

a glimpse of Africa, and other travels

So I'm a bit behind the times, but my friend Jimmie has finally updated his blog with some images from Sudan, and I wanted to put a link here for anyone interested in seeing some great photos. Jimmie, a college buddy and photographer extraordinare, is documenting church construction in Sudan for Samaritan's Purse. Read more about his work on his blog.

In other news, I'm heading for Beijing next week for the Chinese New Year ... but also now skipping over to Japan for a few days this weekend. Most of our vacation falls around the winter sessions, so I'm cramming a lot of my travel into these couple months. Pictures and posts to come.

Meanwhile it's been back to the routines of teaching and living in the Village, wrangling with Korean studies and boisterous kids, and the exquisite torture of making Asian children say "parallelogram" (I've been teaching math this session).

On Sunday I helped chaperone a field trip to an indoor amusement park of blow-up slides, playgrounds and obstacle courses, and then to ice skate, with meals and other logistics throughout. It was enjoyable - if not easy - extra money, but also a case study in how kid-oriented this country is. Being out in public with 37 random children, it's really clear how much people here seem to view child-rearing as a collective endeavor. Any child is everybody's child - and people go out of their way to talk with, comfort or chastise any little one in their vicinity as they see fit. In our case, many of them did their best to do all that in English, which really is a heroic effort.

It's a marked difference from the States, where many people do their best to avoid public interaction with unknown children - not without reason.

For one thing, Americans have many more fears of pedophilia and other improprieties involving children and strangers. No one knows the actual rates of such crimes in either country, but (like most crimes) it's reported far more in the United States, and people are generally less worried about it in Korea.

For another thing, Americans tend to more support the right of parents to choose how their children are raised, and to criticize anyone who would interfere that. In Korea, people may have just as strong opinions about the way things should be done - though I'd doubt it - but they will rarely contradict a senior person (in rank or age) about anything, and group harmony is far more important than individual freedoms.

And in a less concrete influence, but perhaps the greatest one, Korean culture seems to prize childhood more as a golden era, and Korean people tend to go to far greater lengths to ensure their children the most opportunities and enjoyment. It's not uncommon for parents here to work dawn to dusk to afford to send their children to the best private institutes for English and other skills. They push their children hard, but they also devote a lot of energy to making sure the kids have fun and are happy, both in daily life and weekend activities.

But I don't think this group effort to raise children happens only here (though I imagine Koreans have their own brand of it). I remember a story one of my friends told me about being on a bus in Latin America somewhere, and a woman who got on just handed her a baby to hold while the woman fished change out of her purse - and no one looked twice. And I remember children playing in the streets of Madrid becoming collective charges. And from anecdotes and writings about even other places, I think maybe this is the way most of the world works, to some degree.

There's good and bad to all these things, which you could argue forever, like most points of any culture. But everything else aside, it is extremely refreshing to feel so supported in doing your job - especially when it involves taking care of children.

Bali Top 10

A la my iconic countryman David Letterman, here's my Top Ten Things Learned in Bali.

10) Every single Balinese person needs to know where to place you on their mental maps. Where are you from? When did you arrive in Bali? Where are you staying? When are you leaving Bali? Just go ahead and print business cards with your answers - it will save loads of time.
9) You might want to consider putting a "No, not interested" on that card, too ... for whatever gadget or service they're peddling.
9) You can't put on a Santa hat or blow a noisemaker without hitting an Australian during the holidays.
8) How to add "yeah?" to the end of every sentence, like a good Aussie. (I've still got the holdout European "no?" popping up every so often in my speech, so maybe it will cancel out.)
7) Go to the Gili Islands. And Ubud. And the rice paddies. And the volcanoes and lakes. And the black beaches on the east coast. Leave the traditional beach zone (Kuta, Legian) to neighboring Java's old hats and candy wrappers, the incessant merchants and the Speedo-clad Russians.
6) Bali is a great place to gain five pounds on the fabulous banana pancakes, mango lassis, Baileys Comets, tuna steaks or the peanut sauce at Nomad's restaurant in Ubud. Bali is a great place to lose five pounds to the Bali Belly ... just don't get caught on Gili when the whole island's plumbing is out.
5) Bali is perhaps the best place in the world to shame yourself into learning another language. Even the beggars know a minimum of three.
4) You ought to suspect something when every single Balinese person says "rain" with an Australian accent.
3) Bali's rainy season is not, in fact, "no big deal," as so many guidebooks and tourists are fond of saying. Good thing we had three weeks to wait out the clouds.
2) Sea turtles are cool. Especially when seen underwater from a few feet away. Komodo dragons are freaky. Especially when they launch spittle like bullets from yards away.
1) Know when high tide is. Try surfing for the first time then. Make sure there are plenty of small children to mow down as they're playing in the shallow water, and plenty of real surfers to annoy by stealing their waves. You'll provide an afternoon of entertainment to an entire beach - and take first place in the Technicolor Bruise Competitions.

and we have visuals

So, at last, here are my first pictures from Asia - and some lifted from my friends - showing some of the highlights of our holiday trip to Bali. (Click the link above to get to the gallery of all the images, or to see them one by one as a slideshow, click the picture of the tree at right. You can change the speed of the slideshow at the bottom of the screen.)

My Christmas present to myself this year was breaking down and buying a point-and-shoot camera. It did a pretty good job, for what it is, and the fumblings of the person behind it. I swear manual settings are easier to do than programs, even though people get impressed by folks lugging around manual cameras.

I kept the pictures small and put credits on a lot of them because I have a paranoia of the images turning up as postcards somewhere and then wanting to do something with them later down the line ... hope y'all can still make out enough to keep you entertained.

so this is economics

Just a few hours remain of my three weeks in Indonesia. Having signed away my rights to a shower, and with a day's journey ahead, I'm hiding away from the tropical sun in an Internet cafe in Bali touristville, aka the Kuta beach area.

Two J-school friends and I met here for the holidays and spent the many sun and rain-filled days sampling the sites, tastes, hobbies and escape of Indonesia's Number 1 island for tourism - in fact, one of the top tourism destinations in the world. This little island - about 90 miles wide by 55 miles deep - and other neighboring locales (we stayed three nights at the Gili Islands, off the west coast of Bali's neighboring island, Lombok) house all the classic tropical-island attractions: reefs, volcanoes, beaches (black and white), famed surfing waves, ancient artforms, teeming markets, legions of resident artisans, lush vegetation, exotic animals, and that relaxed island culture.

It's a beautiful place, undoubtedly a little oversold as a tropical paradise, but still fascinating and multifaceted. Known for its tolerance in oft-militant Indonesia, Bali has the country's most diverse religious climate (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity), and the tourist machine there represents Indonesia's main outreach to the Western world. The Dutch have been regularly visiting for centuries - one of which they owned the place - and it's a major Aussie holiday destination. Several Japanese frequent the island; Koreans, South Africans, Russians, Brits and other Europeans come in lower numbers; and you can even find the occasional odd American. Estimates vary, but some say tourism makes up as much as 80 percent of Bali's economy, which makes the island - in the middle of an impoverished nation and region of the world - extremely vulnerable to threats to that industry, such as the terrorist bombings here in 2002 and 2005. Each shopkeeper, each cabdriver has a before and after story, particularly about the 2002 blast, which killed an estimated 200 people in a nightclub. Twenty were killed in 2005.

Since the blasts, tourism has slowly regained steam, with an estimated 5 million people visiting the island each year (statistics from the Indonesia's bureau of statistics). Bali is once again claiming its place as one of the wealthiest territories in the country. But it's still an island where poverty and luxury intertwine in an uneasy co-dependence.

And I find I am still a naive traveler.

In American eyes, I'm working-class, earning my own living in the lower white-collar trades. In European and Korean eyes, it's something at least similar. I travel, edging me into the realm of elite, but on my own it's mostly a no-frills style ... staying at budget hotels, navigating public transport and schlepping my own bags. It's a role I've felt mostly comfortable with, smugly self-righteous and benignly ignorant in. But this world is brown and (almost entirely) white, and coming here marked the first time I independently, irrevocably found myself part of the part of the rich, Western world. The served. The employers. The ones who buy adventure, who purchase culture. Who have more in their wallet than their waiter makes in a month.

I'm not sure how I imagined it would be ... can't say with any certainty that I thought about it at all, short of anticipating some sun, beautiful sights and good social time. But it definitely was a jolt upon arrival to find myself so classed for the first time of my adult, independent life. It's something that makes me uncomfortable, and yet right or wrong (some of both, I think) won't stop me from traveling, from spending, from hiring. I understand the business aspect of things, the fact I bring valuable cash and other benefits to struggling people. I just don't want to entirely lose that shock, to expect to live in this role. I don't want to relish my happenstance boon in social order, or to forget it. Mostly that.

It's a world of gray, this tourism business, especially to impoverished regions, but one I want now more than ever to explore. And I will bring my dollars, my camera, my glasses and my empathy.

back on the road again

It's been a whirlwind of a week, and weekend, but here I am in the Incheon (Seoul) airport on Christmas Eve, waiting for my flight to Bali. There's been a 7-hour delay, and I'm missing the two books that didn't make the packing cut something fierce, but honestly I can't remember being more content in months.

It was a sprint to the finish at work, a week of both angelic and hellion children ... and not much in between. Getting through it - especially Saturday school with the little ones - is something of a blur, but by 6:30 Saturday I was scrunched into the Village shuttle amid animated Tagalag (Filipino) conversation, headed toward civilization and adventure. Spent a fabulous night on the town - my first since moving to the mountain - in the company of the best tour guide/translator/cultural ambassador, aka a native friend, and caught a few hours of remarkably comfortable sleep on the overnight commuter train to Seoul. (Tourist note: in Daegu, saw a great jazz/blues band of young Korean guys at a fun club called "That," then hit an upscale bar called "AU.") Then I rambled around in the big city for a few hours, sweet-talking my way into the newsroom of one of the major dailies (which ended up being dead, being as it was Sunday), hit the Namdaemun market and ended up walking in dress boots from there to the Seoul Tower (a mostly vertical jaunt), which wasn't my brightest idea ever, but definitely memorable. Finally dragged myself over to the hostel I'd booked near the airport and found a fairly ramshackle building but clean, comfortable, private rooms/bathrooms, a kind couple running the place, and a value that absolutely can't be beat - I definitely recommend the Incheon Airport Backpackers Hostel.

Then this morning I met a fellow passenger for my Bali flight on the shuttle over to the airport, a worldly Korean doctor from the Gwang-ju area, and the airport time has been pleasant enough, chatting away for the past few hours about language, food, culture and travel.

It's the first big trip I've done, and it's great feeling like I'm finally getting to what I came abroad for ... or at least one of the major reasons - travel. But being out and about has also made me realize I'm feeling more at home in Korea - that comfortable sense of knowing transit lines, landmarks, enough phrases to get around, good friends, and the revelation that I'll miss those Korean staples kimbap and kimchi a little in the next three weeks. Even the markets don't overwhelm me the way they used to. Plus it reminds me of all the things I love about this country - mostly the kind and friendly people, and the perks of being American here (though there's baggage with that, too, but I'll save all that for another post).

And it's vacation, one in which I'll be seeing old friends at the day's end and heading to holidays on the beach. So call me Pollyanna, but I swear life couldn't be better. How did I get lucky enough to be born where I did, when I did, to whom I did, to afford me the opportunity to do this? Thinking on it too much puts me dangerously close to guilt-trip territory, especially the more I see all the lifestyles in the world, but today I feel like it's the best Christmas present ever.

^_^a

You know how sometimes computers screw up certain characters - like when apostrophes become question marks and accents turn into ampersands? For the longest time, I thought there must be something really buggy between Korean computers and American ones.

Whenever I got e-mails from Korean friends^^ (in English^.^), all sorts of strange marks would appear. Dashes, periods, underscores, random letters ... and tons and tons of carets. (You know, those things that sound like the crunch-munch-bunny kind - but are actually upside-down-Vs: ^). @.@ But then I noticed them on instant messages -_- and when someone would send me a text message on my cell phone. -.-

I just couldn't figure it out. (?_?) Could it honestly be a mass electronics bug? o.O Maybe Koreans decorate their text with symbols like they decorate their products with English words. O_o Maybe I just knew a lot of typo-prone people. @_@ Maybe their keyboards were setup in such a way that they couldn't help but hit a bunch of odd things. -_-;; Maybe they were politely cussing me out. \(>o<)/ And just what was this obsession with the caret? ^_^a Pretty sure it wasn't about beta carotene. OTL

Well the mystery was solved the other day (*´?`*) when I finally got around to asking one of my Korean friends what the heck was going on over on the keyboard there.

You know that ever-present :) that people use to show they're joking? Academics call them "emoticons," but the more common term is "smiley faces" or just "smileys." There are a few theories about where they developed, but basically computer people realized their value sometime around 1980 to clarify written messages that could otherwise be misinterpreted.

Well Americans use only a handful with any regularity, and they generally revolve around a face torqued 90 degrees counterclockwise. So, for example:

• :) traditional smiley
• =) another version
• :( sad face
• ;) wink
• :P raspberry (tongue out)
• :-) smiley with nose

Turns out Koreans use an entirely different set. The main difference is that their emoticons tend to run vertical and emphasize the "eyes" - quite frequently written as those durned carets. In fact, the classic Korean smiley is actually a pair of smiling eyes only: ^^. Variations on that theme include:

• ^-^
• ^.^
  
• ^__^
• ^ㅡ^

(Not sure about the nuances of these.)

But unlike Americans, Koreans are far from content with a piddley handful of emoticons. And once I hit up my old friend, Google, for more on the subject, I realized it's more than just a collection of symbols - it's a veritable artform. (This is the land of anime and manga, afterall.)

Anyway, here's a compilation of some of the Korean emoticons I've seen in everyday use as well as some of the more creative ones I've happened upon. You can check out my sourcelist at the bottom of this post for more. I've put them in blue so the list is clearer to read, but they're typically just in black and white. Also, it appears that the meaning of several of these is fairly subjective, so don't take this list as any sort of authority, just some examples.

• ~_~ = content
• >_< or >.< = angry
• ^_^a = scratching head
• =^.^= = blushing
• \(>o<)/ = shouting/angry
  
• (^o^) = laughing or excited
• (*^^*) = shyness
• ;_; or ㅠ_ㅠ = crying (the second one is made with a Korean letter, but it can also be done with English capital T's in some fonts)
• -_-;; = cold sweat or unbearable (basically something that is a source of stress); can also be embarrassment or chagrin
  
• (-.-)Zzz = sleeping
• o_O or o.O or any variation of this = surprise
• ^_~ or ^.* = wink
• @.@ or @_@ = dizzy or confused
• (?_?) = perplexed, wondering about something, "What?"
  
• -_- or -.- = something like "hmm" or just no emotion
• ~~~~>_<~~~~ = extreme weeping
  
• \(^_^)/ or \(^o^)/= cheers, "Hooray!"
• (>^_^)> <(^_^<) = hugging
• OTL = frustration (it's a person banging his/her head on the ground - the O is the head, the T is the arms, the L is the legs)
  
• (*´?`*) = sigh
  
• (^(oo)^) = a pig
• @}-;--`-- = a rose
• >(/////)< = a candy

Here's the best one, though ...

()()() ()()()
(-(-(-.-)-)-)

... a rabbit gang.

Know any other good ones? Feel free to leave 'em in the comments.

SOURCES: Dave's ESL Cafe forum, http://blogger.xs4all.nl, Locomote.org, Lets Learn Korean

it doesn't get any better than this

OK, so I just hit the high point of teacherdom: my first letter from a former student. Probably my only one, being as we are now subject teachers and I only see the students for 90 minutes a week each, rather than having them all week long, so not much time to form any sort of bond. (Not that I'm complaining - subject teaching makes far more sense with our constantly changing schedule, and is much more manageable.)

So this letter is on the traditional cutesy Korean paper decorated with flowers and hearts and nonsequitor, nongrammatical English ("Today is happy day." "Good things might come to those who wait." "Welcome to Flower garden"). Korean products, including clothes and stationary and mugs, tend to use English letters/words as decor rather than for meaning, and some of it is pretty funny.

The letter is from my one student, probably about 12 years old, who cut her finger in art class (no more big scissors). Her English name is Tracy, and she plays a traditional double-reed Korean instrument sometimes written as "piri." Apparently her brother plays it, too. It should give you some insight into how fantastic and cute the kids can be, and how they tend to talk very dramatically for humor and emphasis. I've tried to preserve the spellings, capitalization and spacing in typing it here.

Hello, Kristin marsh teacher?
I'm Tracy. How are you? I'm fine.
I want to see you. My finger is ok. Teacher, thank you. I'm crying. And I'm sad. Because, I miss you. I'm crying every day. I miss you, teacher!
Oh, dear. Soon, my brother's concert. It's the Pili. There is Donga shaping [shopping] 10thfloor.
Good, bye - Kristin marsh teacher!

- Tracy -

I'm prety. You are prety.
I'm kind. But. You are very kind.
I miss you.

Isn't that the best thing ever? :)

the holidays a la Asia

I'm sitting in my dorm room on a cold December night, looking out on our resident fuselage, listening to some mellow blockbusters on MySpace music, thinking about careers and tomorrow's lesson plans, and trying corn ice cream. It's not as weird as you'd think - kinda like frozen creamed corn.

We've got our first official batch of five-day kids - about 45 from a private school or schools in a more rural region northeast of Daegu. That's 4 or 5 kids per class. Last week it was 18 in each class, and we've had all manner of daycamps, overnights, half-days and three-day sessions, so we've really seen the gamut. They're all awesome, though, and what makes everything worth it. Tensions have been high recently over various things, but these kids are the best part of everything, and what make me thankful every day, if not quite every class (We are considering getting "I Survived Group 12" T-shirts after one particular crew), that I took this job. They're just fun and creative and goofy and crack themselves up with these jokes that aren't even funny, but it totally cracks me up that they find them so hysterical.

The holiday season has fallen here, too, which I'm coming to find means giant anime-style Santas and who knows what other Christmas creations parading the streets, a plethora of cooked-batter streetfoods, and the traditional merchandise explosion you find back home. Oh and the karaoke version of "White Christmas" is about the best thing I've seen yet - one long string of pictures of Korea's verdant hills and Buddhist temples. Not one flake of snow.

Mostly it's been cold and dry and rather sunny, but this weekend was one miserable long drizzle ... the perfect kind for curling up in a downtown coffeehouse with a new book (or three) and watching civilization scuttle by outside, and I definitely indulged. It's strange finding myself reading again - entranced by the bookstore and perpetually in the middle of about six books, just like when I was a kid. I guess that lifestyle of eight-hour days of staring at words is finally relaxing its grip. Now I've just got to figure out what to do with the library I'm amassing.

I get pangs for American holidays and family time every so often - like the other day when I saw pictures of the Iowa Mills' Thanksgiving, or tonight when I told a Korean friend about last year's holiday outing to Kansas City's jazz district. But I'm also looking forward to trying out this whole island holiday thing this year, spending Christmas and New Years on the shores of Bali with good friends from college, now spread around the world.

Oh but I never did quite get my Thanksgiving story put up here ... so the 20 of us Americans at the Village (with the very important help of certain Korean staff) coordinated as traditional a dinner as we could muster the Sunday after the holiday, and I volunteered to do the last-minute shopping, thinking I was being smart to avoid the chaos of climbing over everyone else in the kitchens with all their Korean machinery. Well, the short of it is that I ended up being very much the turkey and having my most fabulous "weird foreigner" moment yet in this country, loaded down with a ridiculous amount of food, answering relentless phone calls and trying to navigate Korean public transportation.

With considerable effort, I had dragged my overladen bags down to the bus stop near the local Costco (a Sam's Club-style warehouse of mostly Western things), but the bus pulled up before I was quite ready with my fare. But I leaped on anyway with all my cargo, much to the amusement of the onlooking passengers and the bemusement of the surly driver. The next bit all sort of happened at once - me fishing for change, one of my bulging bags tumbling down and various Thanksgiving offerings rolling out across the floor of the 739, the bus jolting forward and my shoe sliding off my foot into the stairwell and just barely slipping out the closing door. I don't think anyone else saw the shoe go, and I was quite the wild-haired freakshow there, still digging for a darned 100 won piece and debating the worth of a Size 12 shoe, laden down as I was and sock-footed, two busrides and one walk from home in Asia. To top it all off, my phone started ringing again.

The shoe won out.

Seven blocks later, I had found the coin, collected my things and finally managed to hit the stop button, and all the wide-eyed Korean "aunties" watched me clamber off the bus. I then hobbled back the direction I came, at one particularly poignant moment passing a true bag lady (a rare sight here, but you just can't make up the stuff that happens in real life - no one would believe you). And even in the middle of my "I am ridiculous" haze, I did realize that my lot even at that moment was something to be thankful for, because I was strong enough to huff and puff it back, rich enough to afford a taxi for the last leg of the journey when I had missed the right shuttle, and lucky enough to have an amazing, nostalgic feast waiting for me when I got there.

And I got my shoe, dadgumit.

changes, chicken feet and cute children

No time for a full-on post, but a few notes from Daegu:

1) In the lastest string of changes, we are not, in fact, getting our public school kids until at least March. Classes between then and now will be on a week-by-week or day-by-day basis depending on which schools we can schedule, and will probably be entirely daycamps. We start this week with 4 days of different grades from a prestigious private school in Daegu and one day of a kindergarten class from Yeungjin's academy. Definitely keeps us on our our toes, but we're also getting pretty good about adapting to curveballs.

2) I've realized that my friend in Sudan, where people live in huts and goats wander around in the streets, is eating less exotic food than I do. I'm pretty sure I had chicken feet tonight in town.

3) I hung out with the first- and second-grade classes yesterday to prepare for this Wednesday and Saturday when I'll be teaching youngsters, and they sure are cutie little bundles. Cutie little bundles who speak about 10 words of English. And apparently not all of their parents have impressed on them why they go to this place with the strange people who babble nonsense, because some of them feel it's their duty to teach us to speak properly. One little girl resolutely repeated "Han bon do" each time I said "Another one, please," and one of the boys had the following conversation with me:

[6-year-old scribbles what appear to be a boy monster and girl monster on his paper.]
Me: Oh wow! Two people - one, two.
6-year-old [pointing to each in turn]: Namja, yoja.
Me [pointing to each one]: Yes ... "man," "woman."
6-year-old [pointing]: Nam-ja ... yo-ja.
Me [pointing, nodding]: Yes ... "ma-an," "wo-man."
6-year-old [perplexed ... decides to take a different tack, points to a boy across the table, then a girl next to him]: NAM ... JA ... YO ... JA.
[We go a few more rounds of pointing at different people and pictures, with him first getting more emphatic, then patiently slowing down for this simpleton who just can't get it, and finally giving up to go bang on the drums.]

I HAVE RENTERS!!!!

Five months later, I finally have income back at the condo in the Springs. Whew - major relief! The new renters move in on Tuesday, even. I'll still be paying a little each month, but I can finally start getting to some of those financial goals - fun and boring - I came over here with instead of just scraping by. Here's to renters!

an interesting read

So my vagabond reporter friend, Megan, has had some amazing stuff on her blog, but her latest post is a particularly interesting story about a math teacher she met in Vietnam. Check this out: http://gypsyscribbler.blogspot.com/2007/11/hey-mccain-youve-got-friend.html.