What I miss about the Mother Land:
1. Going to Maren's house and drinking all of her Diet Coke (before she went through that "Diet Rite" and "Fruity Crappy Diet Dr. Pepper" phase...really Maren, was it any better than the brown goodness of the true drink?)
2. Going to Liz's house and eating all of her cheese and chocolate cake. That's cheese. and cake. not cheese cake although that would have been nice too.
3. Going to Maren's with Aliah when Maren is in Texas and Drinking all of her Diet Coke while convincing Puddles that he is not Maren's REAL child.
4. Staying home with Crystal and spying on the neighbors and watching Arrested Development when we are supposed to be sleeping.
5. My family.
6. Taco salad shells and real ranch dressing.
7. Jeff stopping by my work and dancing in the street in front of the Governor's Mansion.
8. walking barefoot in grass.
9. Going to Target on a Friday night and being able to try on clothes that don't cut off your circulation because the arm holes are made for women who drink Corn Water.
10. Singing loudly in my car. Crying in my car. Praying out loud in my car. Driving by myself in my car. Really any kind of transportation not of the mass kind...
11. Fountain sodypop and large candy aisles.
12. Relief Society in the Ensign 7th Ward and the Gatherings
13. Lava Hot Springs and my girls. Hell. I don't think it will ever be that kind of good again.
What I am grateful for in KOREA:
1. Shrimp with eyeballs sink to the bottom of my soup bowl making it easier to eat the top of the soup without restraint.
2. City energy.
3. Opportunities to share the gospel without having to do SLC damage control.
4. Survival Korean Text Book and Very Cool Language Exchange partners/friends (majayo.)
5. I am surrounded by more children that I ever thought possible and I love them more than I thought possible.
6.Cleaning a 100 square foot cubicle/apartment takes one hour instead of one day and having a shower/bathroom takes multitasking to a whole new level....
7. There is a temple 4 subway stops away!
8. It's ok to wear whatever you want. NOt so sure that those pants match that shirt? NO worries! Wear it anyway. And throw in those shoes that don't go with anything ever...you're in Korea!
9. Constant grist for the mill of my soul.
10. People! People! People! thrown together by circumstance and choosing to love.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Thank Goodness Koreans Buy Things in Bulk
And so you see, nothing has REALLY changed. I still squander away my Saturdays joyfully wandering the aisles of Costco purchasing things in bulk; tampons to last 6 months, tortillas to last one year, cheese to last one...day. And I still top off my bulk foods purchases with a chicken bake and diet coke. You can take the girl out of America but you can't take the Costco out of the girl...or something like that.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Ninny Takes A Bath (with 75 strangers)
This weekend I did something that I never thought I could do. I stripped down completely naked and sauntered, nay, mosied around a public bathhouse/sauna (girls only) called a jjimjilbang. Don't worry, these pictures are not of MY nudist experience...they're simply stock photos to help you understand the "after" part of jjimjilbang. FIRST, you come in and lock your shoes up in a special shoe locker. SECOND you acquire your jjimjilbang issue pajamas...pepto bismal pink bermuda shorts and T-shirt for the ladies and slightly larger blue version for the men. THIRD you walk into the women only section and try to avert your eyes uncomfortably as you are greeted by the sight of a nekked old saggy boobed korean grandma spread out all over the bench eating. FOURTH you also get naked and try to make the washcloth that they call a towel cover as much of your body as possible. FIFTH you sneak into the hottubs with about 50 other naked women and children and sigh the sweet sigh of relief when you are finally covered up to your neck in hot water.
After the initial shock of nudity, it all becomes rather strangely comfortable...and you forget that not one person you interact with is clothed. Not to be too graphic, but they do this all body scrubbing thing once you've percolated in the hot tub for a while...a korean lady in black bra and underpants puts you on a table, tells you that she's going to wash you like a fish and begins to scrub your body with a little glove that peels your flesh from your bones. Occassionally she will say something in Korean to the other ladies scrubbing next to her and they will all laugh and you will be accutely aware that she is saying your butt is the size of a pumpkin. Immediately after the scrubbing, you feel like a pink, squirmy baby...smooth and slightly traumatized. And then you put your pink outfit on and go meet up with your friends in the communal rooms, trying not to visualize the boys hanging out naked with a bunch of other men and hoping that they don't spend too much time visualizing you.
This is what it looks like when you meet in the common room...big logs (for some inexplicable reason...perhaps to make you feel like you just bathed in hot spring instead of a bathtub?) and people in their outfits playing games and hanging out. We went really late in the evening so a lot of people were asleep. We (and by "we", I mean "everyone but me") wanted to play a rousing hand of Harry Potter UNO, so we snuck downstairs to the golf putting room. The guys had staked it out earlier and found that it was supposed to be closed but they didn't lock the door. Enter the foreigners who could claim ignorance when the authorities discovered them lounging on the couches playing a card game that can barely be called interesting. We did get kicked out, but it was really a disappointment in terms of drama. :( 
Everyone just sort of passes out on the floor when the time comes for passing out...and you end up drooling on a mat next to a complete stranger. Evidently there is a sort of law of the jjimjilbang about mats...if you leave it for a minute, it will be gone. I fell asleep with instructions to hold down the fort and when Lumi and Jason and Nate came back, a mat, pillow and BLANKET were gone. How did I, of keen observational powers, miss this one? I have concluded that with all that dead skin scrubbed off, already waifish Koreans are about as present as a gust of wind and so can be a bit more stealth than usual. That's obviously the truth.
I woke up the next morning to Nate pondering the question, "At what point does the reality of a nice comfy bed at home outweigh the coolness of matching pajamas and communal sleeping?" I answered quickly and without reservation, "Right Now." We packed up and headed home to sleep our Saturday away in the comfort of our own beds with freshly scrubbed skin and a neckache...That my friends, is jjimjilbang.
After the initial shock of nudity, it all becomes rather strangely comfortable...and you forget that not one person you interact with is clothed. Not to be too graphic, but they do this all body scrubbing thing once you've percolated in the hot tub for a while...a korean lady in black bra and underpants puts you on a table, tells you that she's going to wash you like a fish and begins to scrub your body with a little glove that peels your flesh from your bones. Occassionally she will say something in Korean to the other ladies scrubbing next to her and they will all laugh and you will be accutely aware that she is saying your butt is the size of a pumpkin. Immediately after the scrubbing, you feel like a pink, squirmy baby...smooth and slightly traumatized. And then you put your pink outfit on and go meet up with your friends in the communal rooms, trying not to visualize the boys hanging out naked with a bunch of other men and hoping that they don't spend too much time visualizing you.
This is what it looks like when you meet in the common room...big logs (for some inexplicable reason...perhaps to make you feel like you just bathed in hot spring instead of a bathtub?) and people in their outfits playing games and hanging out. We went really late in the evening so a lot of people were asleep. We (and by "we", I mean "everyone but me") wanted to play a rousing hand of Harry Potter UNO, so we snuck downstairs to the golf putting room. The guys had staked it out earlier and found that it was supposed to be closed but they didn't lock the door. Enter the foreigners who could claim ignorance when the authorities discovered them lounging on the couches playing a card game that can barely be called interesting. We did get kicked out, but it was really a disappointment in terms of drama. :( Everyone just sort of passes out on the floor when the time comes for passing out...and you end up drooling on a mat next to a complete stranger. Evidently there is a sort of law of the jjimjilbang about mats...if you leave it for a minute, it will be gone. I fell asleep with instructions to hold down the fort and when Lumi and Jason and Nate came back, a mat, pillow and BLANKET were gone. How did I, of keen observational powers, miss this one? I have concluded that with all that dead skin scrubbed off, already waifish Koreans are about as present as a gust of wind and so can be a bit more stealth than usual. That's obviously the truth.I woke up the next morning to Nate pondering the question, "At what point does the reality of a nice comfy bed at home outweigh the coolness of matching pajamas and communal sleeping?" I answered quickly and without reservation, "Right Now." We packed up and headed home to sleep our Saturday away in the comfort of our own beds with freshly scrubbed skin and a neckache...That my friends, is jjimjilbang.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
A Tree Grows in Korea
Last weekend I got some fresh air in Andong, a folk village where my friend Youngji grew up. Her parents have a summer house there and we ate our way through the eastern part of Korea all the way to the coast. Here are some pictures from the trip...including this first one at the subway station in Jamsil. 
This is funny for several reasons but most specifically because it conjures images of Lord of the Rings instead of mismatched Korean fashion...and considering the fact that every piece of clothing in the store has sparkles, bows and some misspelled english words on it, GRACEFUL isn't the word I would use. But I digress...behold the glory of the roadtrip!!!!!!
Did you think I would forget to chronicle the reststop bathroom? I think this bathroom was so interesting to me because it FELT so weird and open like the creepy kind of bathroom you find yourself in during a crazy nightmare where clowns chase you through the halls...At the beginning of the trip the bathrooms looked like this...a veritable oasis of peeing with toilets of BOTH kinds (squat on the ground and western) and a lovely gardenesque display in the middle. By the end of the trip, there was not a western toilet to be found and I got really good at not peeing on myself. 
Youngji wearing her mother's driving sleeve. I'm not kidding. It's to cover her arm so she doesn't get that one arm tan.
Evidently if you wear flowers in your hair in Korea, they call you crazy girl...so here we are, 4 wild and crazy girls. haha.
basking in grass that I'm allowed (and not afraid) to lay in...these pictures remind me a bit of that little park in SLC where I used to lay in grass on my lunch break back before grass signaled something sinister and untouchable.
Rice paddy. First time I had seen one. Kind of cool. These next pics are of a traditional Korean family house...The Shin family owned this house built in the 1800's. The compound has 99 rooms which is supposed to signal wealth. The oldest son would live here and his wife would keep the house and make the food for anyone in the extended family who came to visit. That's a lot of food.
This is how they heated the floors back in the day...kitchen stove, fire under the house that would heat up a large slab of stone. The stone stayed warm for a night and you slept directly on it. The modern derivitive is the stone bed that I now sleep on. Pretty inventive if you ask me. A little smelly maybe and definitely HARD but inventive!
We found a little stream in the mountain after eating our "energy chicken" soup (each region is known for a specific food item and Andong is famous for salty makerel fish (yum) and this ricey chicken soup that you're supposed to eat when it's hot to combat the heat with more heat???) and we dipped our feet in and lounged around like lizards on the rocks...eventually it degenerated into singing the songs on our cell phone hold music and that's when we decided to go to the east coast of the ocean...
This is funny for several reasons but most specifically because it conjures images of Lord of the Rings instead of mismatched Korean fashion...and considering the fact that every piece of clothing in the store has sparkles, bows and some misspelled english words on it, GRACEFUL isn't the word I would use. But I digress...behold the glory of the roadtrip!!!!!!Did you think I would forget to chronicle the reststop bathroom? I think this bathroom was so interesting to me because it FELT so weird and open like the creepy kind of bathroom you find yourself in during a crazy nightmare where clowns chase you through the halls...At the beginning of the trip the bathrooms looked like this...a veritable oasis of peeing with toilets of BOTH kinds (squat on the ground and western) and a lovely gardenesque display in the middle. By the end of the trip, there was not a western toilet to be found and I got really good at not peeing on myself. 
Youngji wearing her mother's driving sleeve. I'm not kidding. It's to cover her arm so she doesn't get that one arm tan. Evidently if you wear flowers in your hair in Korea, they call you crazy girl...so here we are, 4 wild and crazy girls. haha.
basking in grass that I'm allowed (and not afraid) to lay in...these pictures remind me a bit of that little park in SLC where I used to lay in grass on my lunch break back before grass signaled something sinister and untouchable.
Rice paddy. First time I had seen one. Kind of cool. These next pics are of a traditional Korean family house...The Shin family owned this house built in the 1800's. The compound has 99 rooms which is supposed to signal wealth. The oldest son would live here and his wife would keep the house and make the food for anyone in the extended family who came to visit. That's a lot of food.This is how they heated the floors back in the day...kitchen stove, fire under the house that would heat up a large slab of stone. The stone stayed warm for a night and you slept directly on it. The modern derivitive is the stone bed that I now sleep on. Pretty inventive if you ask me. A little smelly maybe and definitely HARD but inventive!
We found a little stream in the mountain after eating our "energy chicken" soup (each region is known for a specific food item and Andong is famous for salty makerel fish (yum) and this ricey chicken soup that you're supposed to eat when it's hot to combat the heat with more heat???) and we dipped our feet in and lounged around like lizards on the rocks...eventually it degenerated into singing the songs on our cell phone hold music and that's when we decided to go to the east coast of the ocean... Rocky, pebbly, not sandy...this ocean was deep blue and angry..the stuff of poetry. I spent quite a bit of time contemplating life and lost love on the rocks while the surf pounded in with the coming tide. I wanted to write something sad and purposeful like the waves but I didn't bring my journal so I sent the poem out to the cloudless sky to be translated to the language of water someday when I return.
I loved being there especially because I can now say that I've been to the ocean on three continents. I think I will spend my 30th birthday in August at the Korean Coast (a follow up to 29 on the South Australian coast!) but maybe down south a bit more where the waves won't make me cry.
Andong was nice...a perfect escape from the city and a needed reconnection with my own fragility. Nature is so amazing.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Father's Day of the Future for Celebrities
My childhood friend Amy Steele is in this little short fathers day movie playing Suri Cruise. One time I accidently blew a snot in her hair when I was braiding it and she was still my friend. And now she is an actress is LA.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Really.
Things I've seen in Seoul in the last week:
- 3 men urinating in public. 2 of these men were my commute bus drivers. We're trucking along the highway and just as we merge onto another road, the bus pulls over for an unscheduled stop. I appear to be the only person concerned since everyone else is asleep with the curtains pulled on the bus to block out the possibility of a ray of light (did I mention that makeup here is called things like "superwhite" and "whiteout" and "pastywhite"?) When the bus driver reappeared a few minutes later from behind the bush zipping his pants, I realized what was going on. Not that I take umbrage. I do hold the Creativity School record for the most trips to the bathroom within a 1 hour period. If I was a Seoul busdriver, I think I would just wear diapers or spend my life dehydrated, the latter not being a very difficult acheivement in a place where they sell corn water in bottles the size of a thimble and call it refreshment.
-A sign that read "Mr. Pizza...made for women." I'm not kidding...their entire advertising campaign is all about how they make pizza for the female population. Exactly HOW do you make a gender specific pizza? Extra estrogen? Oddly enough, it was the best pizza I've had in korea. Maybe the secret ingredient is subliminal messaging... This girl I met once here wrote a blog all about Korean pizza that is hilarious...read it here: http://www.misskoco.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
- A Red Dodge Ram. You might not think this noteworthy but I promise you it is. I swear that with as many SUV's as Seoulites own, there is not ONE car any color other than white, black and maybe MAYBE silver...a Red American TRUCK is like a total fish out of water. It made me happy for a minute.
-A little girl about the same age as my students learning how to walk after a surgery. It was humbling. She had to stop every couple of steps and her mother had to encourage her the entire way. I saw this while Lumina and I sat on a bench making fun of Korean fashionistas (no kidding, green, brown, yellow and navy blue all in one costume) to make myself feel better about the fact that not one pair of shoes will ever fit me here and that the only skirts I can buy have elastic waists...And the reality is, as imperfect as our bodies may be, they are a gift. We walk, we move, we dance, we emote, we feel. I wasn't feeling sorry for the little girl...It was more like a deep sense of wonder at the resiliency of the human body and spirit and the lengths that we have to go to make them work together. It was a really nice reminder that there are better ways to deal with my discontent than dragging another person through the mud (even if they are wearing stilleto heals with cuffed jean shorts) and that I can do better at treating my body with the respect it deserves.
-Baked Cheetos. I saw baked cheetos in my hand and in my mouth. A taste explosion of orange MSG goodness thanks to Liz who knows how to make a homesick girl ALL BETTER!
Went to Andong Folk Village with Youngji and JiHyun and Lumina this weekend and miracle of miracles, my camera worked...so pictures coming soon!
- 3 men urinating in public. 2 of these men were my commute bus drivers. We're trucking along the highway and just as we merge onto another road, the bus pulls over for an unscheduled stop. I appear to be the only person concerned since everyone else is asleep with the curtains pulled on the bus to block out the possibility of a ray of light (did I mention that makeup here is called things like "superwhite" and "whiteout" and "pastywhite"?) When the bus driver reappeared a few minutes later from behind the bush zipping his pants, I realized what was going on. Not that I take umbrage. I do hold the Creativity School record for the most trips to the bathroom within a 1 hour period. If I was a Seoul busdriver, I think I would just wear diapers or spend my life dehydrated, the latter not being a very difficult acheivement in a place where they sell corn water in bottles the size of a thimble and call it refreshment.
-A sign that read "Mr. Pizza...made for women." I'm not kidding...their entire advertising campaign is all about how they make pizza for the female population. Exactly HOW do you make a gender specific pizza? Extra estrogen? Oddly enough, it was the best pizza I've had in korea. Maybe the secret ingredient is subliminal messaging... This girl I met once here wrote a blog all about Korean pizza that is hilarious...read it here: http://www.misskoco.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
- A Red Dodge Ram. You might not think this noteworthy but I promise you it is. I swear that with as many SUV's as Seoulites own, there is not ONE car any color other than white, black and maybe MAYBE silver...a Red American TRUCK is like a total fish out of water. It made me happy for a minute.
-A little girl about the same age as my students learning how to walk after a surgery. It was humbling. She had to stop every couple of steps and her mother had to encourage her the entire way. I saw this while Lumina and I sat on a bench making fun of Korean fashionistas (no kidding, green, brown, yellow and navy blue all in one costume) to make myself feel better about the fact that not one pair of shoes will ever fit me here and that the only skirts I can buy have elastic waists...And the reality is, as imperfect as our bodies may be, they are a gift. We walk, we move, we dance, we emote, we feel. I wasn't feeling sorry for the little girl...It was more like a deep sense of wonder at the resiliency of the human body and spirit and the lengths that we have to go to make them work together. It was a really nice reminder that there are better ways to deal with my discontent than dragging another person through the mud (even if they are wearing stilleto heals with cuffed jean shorts) and that I can do better at treating my body with the respect it deserves.
-Baked Cheetos. I saw baked cheetos in my hand and in my mouth. A taste explosion of orange MSG goodness thanks to Liz who knows how to make a homesick girl ALL BETTER!
Went to Andong Folk Village with Youngji and JiHyun and Lumina this weekend and miracle of miracles, my camera worked...so pictures coming soon!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Broken Camera and Other Lame Excuses
I have not written in my blog because...
1. my camera is broken, finally, completely, utterly. No pictures to post makes me feel lame now.
2. I have been really really really really busy at school. It's quarterly progress report time and one more reminder that I don't REALLY know what I'm doing! Lumina and I stayed here at the school writing the reports until 1 am thursday night. Problem #1...I care too much about making it flow...at one point I had to remind myself that the people reading the reports are less University professor, more English As A Second Language Korean parents. That helped ease the stress a little bit, but it still made for an insane couple of days...
3. I got my 3rd calling at church...I'm now the Nursery Leader, choir pianist and activities committee member. Nothing like a branch to make use of every talent you never knew you had. But this time, the joke is on them. I can play like three hymns, so I guess our choir is going to get really good at "God Be With You Till We Meet Again".
4. I've been too busy bearing my testimony "sniff sniff, I didn't want to come, but...snivle snivel, now I'm so glad I did because you guys totally rock!!!!" at Youth Conference. I'm not kidding. Ok, so it wasn't really YOUTH conference, but there were bunk beds, boys, DDR, sand pit volley ball and a testimony meeting. We went to the military base religious retreat center and had a singles conference. We listened to our guest speaker, Barbara Barrington Jones (who's completely convinced me that I need to marry someone who has a good second last name possibility) and played theater sports (which reminded me that I'm not very good at improv comedy. sigh.)
5. I'm a little weirded out that Korea is NOT a vacation. I'm struggling to understand how to convey the details of my life here to help everyone understand that most of the time, I feel like I'm living in Salt Lake again. The novelty of living overseas seems to have passed. Although I still find funny weird Korea only things, I want to just write about life and how it's the same struggle to understand myself and my motivations that I have anywhere that I live. The location, though a bit more exotic than SLC, has become simply the backdrop of my life rather than the meat of my existence. I miss my friends, but I like life here. I'm settled in. I'm here and I'm not just visiting. This is home. so strange.
so please to accept my apologies! glad to be back.
1. my camera is broken, finally, completely, utterly. No pictures to post makes me feel lame now.
2. I have been really really really really busy at school. It's quarterly progress report time and one more reminder that I don't REALLY know what I'm doing! Lumina and I stayed here at the school writing the reports until 1 am thursday night. Problem #1...I care too much about making it flow...at one point I had to remind myself that the people reading the reports are less University professor, more English As A Second Language Korean parents. That helped ease the stress a little bit, but it still made for an insane couple of days...
3. I got my 3rd calling at church...I'm now the Nursery Leader, choir pianist and activities committee member. Nothing like a branch to make use of every talent you never knew you had. But this time, the joke is on them. I can play like three hymns, so I guess our choir is going to get really good at "God Be With You Till We Meet Again".
4. I've been too busy bearing my testimony "sniff sniff, I didn't want to come, but...snivle snivel, now I'm so glad I did because you guys totally rock!!!!" at Youth Conference. I'm not kidding. Ok, so it wasn't really YOUTH conference, but there were bunk beds, boys, DDR, sand pit volley ball and a testimony meeting. We went to the military base religious retreat center and had a singles conference. We listened to our guest speaker, Barbara Barrington Jones (who's completely convinced me that I need to marry someone who has a good second last name possibility) and played theater sports (which reminded me that I'm not very good at improv comedy. sigh.)
5. I'm a little weirded out that Korea is NOT a vacation. I'm struggling to understand how to convey the details of my life here to help everyone understand that most of the time, I feel like I'm living in Salt Lake again. The novelty of living overseas seems to have passed. Although I still find funny weird Korea only things, I want to just write about life and how it's the same struggle to understand myself and my motivations that I have anywhere that I live. The location, though a bit more exotic than SLC, has become simply the backdrop of my life rather than the meat of my existence. I miss my friends, but I like life here. I'm settled in. I'm here and I'm not just visiting. This is home. so strange.
so please to accept my apologies! glad to be back.
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