Shall We Game?

DVD bang. Noraebang. Boardgame bang. Korea has no shortage of bangs...(bang is Korean for room)...since everyone lives with their parents until they get married, wild Korean youth are forced into these "parlors" where they sing, game and if it's a DVD bang, makeout on a crusty used couch with some Chris Tucker movie playing in the background. Not that I would know about that one. But the next few pictures are documentation of my foray into the world of boardgamebangs. Let us make you fun.

Ok, ok...so I didn't have the heart to tell them that my attention span for board games is about the same as for a chris tucker movie when there's a man and a crusty couch available. It was fun anyway.

The winners circle! Look mom! I won the dongdaemun!

Here's How We Do...

Nesting and homemaking take on their own definition in Korea much like everything else. We cook in bedrooms and on desks...no space is sacred.

Something Like a Phenomenon, Baby

I've been thinking this for a long time...LDS women are NOT the only ones trying to figure this whole dating, settling, man thing out. It's a societal trend. Thank you to the ever watchful TODAY show for making it clear.

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx/?mkt=en-us&fg=rss&vid=c5c10e25-5dd1-462a-8202-e8165c95fb48&from=im_f_25-34&wa=wsignin1.0

I wake up exhausted....

Normally I would think I am depressed, but I'm not, I SWEAR! It's just that I woke up this morning and my first thought was, "How soon can I get home so I can get back into bed?" I blame it on my flannel sheets, down comforter, memory foam SPACE pillow and stone heating bed. I'm planning to log some serious hours this week during the lunar new year break.

sweet potato this...

I'm back on weight watchers but this time I'm doing it online. After all the holiday americationing, I needed to do something drastic to feel in control of my health and so I'm attempting to count the points in unidentifiable korean foods and cook at home a bit more. I'm losing weight like a mother so that's good. I guess I just needed to kick start it again. I also discovered something so taste tempting that I think it should be in a book somewhere (or maybe it is and I'm totally behind the curve.)

SWEET POTATO OMLETTE.

So the name is not very catchy, but neither was the mixed berry oatmeal cobbler that I invented last year. It just tells it like it is which I have apparently mastered in the realm of culinary delights but still aspire to in all other parts of my life.

that's eggs, a bit of milk with sweet potatoes (remember my stint as a migrant farmer in September?), red,yellow and green peppers, laughing cow cheese wedges, baby portabella mushrooms sauteed with a dash of olive oil, salt and pepper. Seriously. I dream about eating this everynight. Which is good because it's filling some very yummy craving shoes (no more ttaekbokki on the fly :( ). Who knew?

Whys Everybody Got To Run?

Today I counted approximately 8 women doing it and that was just on my way to work. If there is one thing that drives me over the edge of culture shock induced anger it is this: Korean women in impossibly high, pencil thin, overly ornate heels RUNNING with their hands up in the air. Running in the rain. Running in the snow. Running when it is obvious there is nowhere to go. (hey that rhymes!) Running to cross the street (when the light is still VERY green and will be for another 10 minutes). Running to get to Burger King. Clickety, Clickety, Clickety, Clack! Running, running, running and then...... oddly enough....... just stopping. That's right. There was somewhere really important she needed to be two seconds ago, but suddenly it's not that important. She can slow it down. Stroll a little. Wait, wait...she just remembered! RUN RUN RUN!

And the irony of it all? We get to the corner at the exact same time and cross the street at the exact same time and get onto the same bus at the exact same time. Are they running to stay warm? because after all, skinny = cold as al's mom always says. I don't know. I hope I never really figure it out.

Of International 7-11s and Goodwill for all

Well, you knew what would be first on my list, didn't you? A daily trip to the local 7-11 to create and then consume my very own fountain drink. But what did I discover upon my arrival???? Nothing short of a Christmas miracle. They have new machines (god bless america) that simultaneously infuse your beverage of choice with any number of delicious enhancing syrups. Think Jamba Juice power boost in pure sugar form. Lemon? check. cherry? check. vanilla? check. Do you wantALL THREE in your 44 ounces (that's right OUNCES!!! take that metric!) of brown caffeine free bubbly water? OK! Done with simplicity and privacy from the comfort of your own machine. No more bulky bottles of syrup with messy pumps. No more nosy neighbors watching with disdain as you overflavor your beverage. This is the gift that I have been dreaming of. But finally, no more dreaming. 7-11 made it all come true again and again and again for approximately 8 days of my 10 day vacation. This is Christmas.

Then of course I met up with my friends!!! Landy Lou and Alie were still up for some thrift store hijinks...so we left children& husbands (alie), boyfriends (Caitlyn) and televisions (sadly, that's me) behind for a jaunt through the treasures of nursing home castoffs. I found a dress...

Can you believe they didn't let me keep it???? (actually in retrospect, I'm starting to wonder why I DIDN't keep it. It could have been cool.)

I've still got pictures to post of my family, but I knew psychmom would start to wonder if I didn't get these up and running...WE ARE FRIENDS!

Back on the Bus

So I've been home from my americation for a little over a week now. I realized that it was really over when I loaded myself back on the bus and sat for 1 1/2 in commuter traffic with the overwhelming smell of garlic wafting around me and then struggled to get my 3+ bags of luggage into a cab only to have the driver tell me he didn't know where my apartment was. No more driving to the place you are going and wheeling a cart full of familiar things right up to your car. No more talking to strangers and being able to say more than just, "how much is this?" and "yes, no, I don't know."

I was a little bit dejected until I rode up in the elevator to my school and heard the voice of one of my students screaming, "Who wants to drink the water?" ahhhhhh home. Oddly enough, it's these little people that made me happy to be back. I struggled a lot over the break with sleepless nights dedicated to how to make coming home a year early feasible. Maybe it's like being on a mission...you don't go home because coming back is harder. Well I did it anyway, and now that I'm back, I'll stay in Korea for another year. But that's it. One more year. Korea is not for the faint of heart. But I am not faint of heart so there.

Jet Lag and Unmetered Consumerism don't mix.

ho.
ho.
hi.
I've been in the US for about 6 days now. I'm happily consuming, sleeping, consuming and sleeping. Here's a quantitative list of accomplishments since christmas day when I arrived:
$50 at Trader Joes
3+ hours of Television including 2 episodes of what not to wear and 4 episodes of silver spoons
4 pairs of Shoes
1 bag of baked cheetos consumed
1 bag of baked cheetos stowed for return to Korea
3 hours in Target clearance sale shopping.
3 movie theaters
2 trips Red Robin and 400 steak fries in my belly.
2 malls conquered
12 cherry diet cokes
6 lime diet cokes (PS. black cherry vanilla diet coke has ceased to exist in the 10 short months I've been gone. why?)
400 bubble gum bubbles
6 old navy undershirts
1 morning at the temple
10 crest whitestrips applied
2 hours of driving in a car with music
1 niece
1 nephew
2 fights with family that involved tears
3 best friends visited and loved
unmeasurable amounts of english english everywhere!

contented sigh. life is easy good when it's vacation in americation. I'm tired all the time because it's never the right bedtime. I'm a little bit afraid of how hard it might be to get on the plane next saturday. I never realized before how much I've stopped listening...when everything is in a foreign language you get pretty used to following non-verbal clues...so it's strange to be dumped back into a place where verbal clues matter. I stole a very cute boy's french fries at the airport because I wasn't listening to the number. I didn't remember to pick up my change from a $20 because the tab was $10 and we don't have anything higher than a 10 in Korea. I'm surprised at how much money tipping at a restaurant takes and how expensive popcorn is at the theaters here. I'm surprised at how little I care about eating "American" food. It's strange to be back where I am nothing special just because I have blond hair. I'm also a little surprised to remember how good it feels to be with my family, embroiled in their lives and part of the silliness that is us. A wonderfully surprising way to ring in 2008.

Stories I will tell my grandchildren

Once I lived in Seoul, Korea and I knew some girls named Grace and Lumina and we danced and posed and tried to contain our awesomeness but honestly it couldn't be contained...we were awesome. Once, I had to work on Thanksgiving Day (most americans living in Korea just let it slip by unnoticed) and I was really sad that no one recognized what a special holiday it was to me...so we ordered a complete turkey dinner from the army base and invited a bunch of americans and one australian to feast together at Heather's House. It was one of the best thanksgivings I've ever had.

Once I learned the Tango, Cha Cha and Samba from a Korean model named Bruce Lee. Every saturday, after dance lessons, me and my gang, the "Do You Happy Club" went to eat moksal which means literally pig neck. We wrapped the spicy meat in kaenip(sesame leaves) with more peppers, kimchi and korean greens and shoved them in our mouths tirelessly as we laughed and learned languages and fell in love with korea and each other. We dined and dined until we were sick and happy and couldn't help but dance the cha cha in the street.

One fall, in Korea, I listened to a beautiful Chopin recital given by the mother of one of my students. After the music filled me with notes and poetry, we wandered in the crisp fall air and I discovered the most beautiful part of Korea: bare branches hung heavy with ripe fire globes of persimmon fruit against perfectly blue skies. With friends, this moment became a definining one.

Once, I taught a classroom of 6,5 and 4 year olds all about music and songwriting. We wrote a song and made guitars and kazoos from household items and then played them so loudly that the people who worked in the businesses next to us shut their doors until we were finished. I loved noise then.

Once I was a Korean Migrant farmer.

Once I lived in a place that didn't have 24 hour breakfast but luck struck on a friday night when we discovered Butterfinger Pancakes...Real eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes and orange juice never tasted so good! We ate and ate and ate and thought we might order more just to keep us there until the restaurant closed at the old hour of 3am. We didn't, but I did lick the syrup from the plate. The End.

Wanna see something cool?

Here I am just thinking about doing something cool on the church floor. That something cool might be breakdancing. I think about that a lot.

Here I am attempting to execute the something cool that I was thinking about in the previous picture. Notice the way my cool breakdancing looks strikingly similar to falling down.

And here I am receiving help from someone because evidently doing something cool is not in the cards for me.
Luckily, everyone else that I hang out with at church here in korea is wayyyyy cooler than me. This is our group from singles conference nov2007. love love love love love.

Ethical Dilemmas and TreeTop Trouble

There are a million things that I love about Koreans and Korea. The men, the passion, the food, the konglish, the simplicity of the language, the hanbok, the family, the traditions...to name a few. But there are some parts of the culture that I cannot navigate and a few things that I downright hate (besides the leggy shrimp): The vagueness, the indirectness, the saving face. These things are nearly impossible for a cornfed westerner such as myself to grasp and though I understand them to be inextricably connected to the things I love, I find myself at a bit of a cultural crossroad.

I'm staying for another year and a career opportunity has presented itself in the form of a promotion. But the promotion means that I would have to somehow learn how to tread emotionally lightly in true korean fashion...never really saying what I think, bowing down to superiors even when I think they are wrong, saying yes when I really mean no and then just NOT doing the thing I said yes too in order to "save face". It's better to say yes and not do it or make an excuse than to say, "I am unable to accomplish the task you have requested of me." This is NOT true to my character. The reason they want me for the position is because I am a communicator. But I contend that my communication skills are only as effective as the system in which they are permitted to function. I'm interested in challenges but not if it means losing a valuable part of my integrity or what I perceive as my integrity. Any thoughts?

In other news, I've found a new coping mechanism now that my guitar is a bit on the fritz. It's call TreeTop Trouble and just TRY to tell me this isn't addictive... I can't get to level 4 and my students are buzzing up to 20. This is unacceptable. I will simply need to devote more time to competitive chihuahua jumping. If indeed that little animal is a chihuahua.

Zipper's Treetop Trouble

And this is why I love teaching

that's right. faggy mom.

Tragedy Strikes at 9:54pm

not 5 minutes ago, while restringing my guitar in preparation for the roadtest of my delicious new whiskey-soaked-rock-star-approved-post-illness voice, one of my guitar pegs broke off IN the guitar rendering me helpless and unable. I am shocked. I am bereft. I am wondering what the word is for superglue in korean.

Wait...a....minute!!!! unless this is a sign from God that it's OKAY! to spend some real money on a nice NEWWWWWWW guitar? A better guitar??? A guitar that is worthy of my new whiskey-soaked-rock-star-approved-post-illness voice??? If this IS some sort of christmas miracle, then maybe I should promise to only play Jars of Clay and Michael W. Smith songs on the new guitar...

Who am I kidding. I will not get a new guitar and I will not ever play jars of clay. So the deal is OFF. sigh. anyone know a good luthier in Seoul?

Thanksgiving Eve 2007

Well technically, it's not really thanksgiving eve in the western world yet, more like thanksgiving eve early morning... but here at my computer in Seoul, Korea it's as good as here.

I taught some of my students about Thanksgiving today. They weren't nearly as excited about it as they should have been, issuing sigh of boredom during the youtube video of the macy's parade and twitching around as though visably tortured during my impassioned speech about the virtues of cranberry sauce. What they did handle well was the giving thanks "game" that I invented out of sheer desperation. We went into the gym and I threw a ball at them. If they caught it, they had to say one thing they were grateful for. It came out sounding a little bit like a prayer... if we said most of our prayers after someone heaves a huge exercise ball at your head. C was grateful that he had many friends, and many many toys and candy and a big house. J was grateful for his good dad and food to eat. And me...what was I grateful for?

Here's a partial list:

I am grateful to be a teacher (to which C said, "that's not a good thing, teacher. Being a teacher is not grateful" hrmmmph. ) It's not constant, but most days I feel this pang of realization. What I mean is just that I am realized to some degree because I am able to be around children all day. I really am meant to love them.

(side story) the other day someone (I think Lumina) asked Evan, all of 5 years old if he was happy. He looked at her sideways and answered her question with another question. "Is it Halloween? Is it Christmas? It is not Halloween, so I am not happy." There.

I am grateful that tonight I will go to bed ON TIME. that means 10:30. and it will happen.

I am grateful for my calling as the District Single Member Rep. Sometimes it can feel a little strange to be defined by the title of your calling...to step into a ward you are visiting and have every "don't worry you'll get married" comment in RS addressed directly at you because you have had to introduce yourself as single. BUT, it's really expanding my horizons and giving me opportunities to work and serve that I've never had before. I am experiencing miracles and hoping for them more and more. That feels nice.

I am grateful for a warm place to sleep even if it is on a mattress made of granite. (do you notice a sleep theme here?)

I'm grateful that I can fly home for christmas to see my best friends and my family.

I'm grateful for the military base that does "thanksgiving to order" at the commissary and for military friends who bring the turkey to us. The fact that I will be consumming honest to goodness grocery store turkey and stuffing in less than 24 hours in Asia is a small but true gift.

I am grateful for costco.

I am grateful for my health. And that my fingers and toes tell me when a low pressure system is moving in...it's kind of like esp and that's cool.

And finally, I'm grateful to be living in Korea. I really mean it this time. I'm happy. I was watching some american television commercials about christmas and it made my stomach a little queasy because I am so out of touch with American Pop culture these days. I don't know what anything is anymore. I don't know who the new celebrity babies are. I don't know what Britney's been doing with her kids. I don't know what the new movies are. But it's good. It means that I'm here now. I'll go home to america as a visitor and I'll be happy to come back to my HOME in korea. WOW. Home. I'm connected to something about Asia...there are people here that I love, people who live here and will always be here in Asia. I guess I could say that I'm grateful to love korea because I never thought it would happen for me. Hangkuk e Saranghaeyo.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve friends near and far! May the Holidays see you happy where you are and may our paths cross in significant ways SOON!