Even though I work with Track and talk to Jane Jeong Trenka regularly, I’m always finding new things she’s participated in that I was unaware of. I honestly don’t understand how so much activity and profundity can pour out of one person…
Read, An Interview with Jane Jeong Trenka at the Loft Literary Center’s website.
My spinning wheels and its changing scenery is, I guess, like addiction. As is connecting, however imperfectly and incompletely, to others via the internet. But sometimes it pays off, my repeatedly pushing these buttons. (the irony of using one addiction to analyze another addiction doesn’t escape me) Here’s a gem another adoptee found and shared on-line. It spoke to her for its reference to abandonment. It spoke to me for its reference to abuse, neglect, and abandonment. It is me, without the needle stuck in my arm. (and, I have always been fascinated by needles and white powder to an unhealthy degree, so made sure never to go there)
click on the title above to view the video page of this thought-provoking interview on Democracy Now, with Dr. Gabor Maté, Physician at Vancouver Safe-Injection Site, on the Biological and Socio-Economic Roots of Addiction and ADD
Excerpt from the transcripts:
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the people you treat.
DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, the hardcore drug addicts that I treat, but according to all studies in the States, as well, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. And the commonality is childhood abuse. In other words, these people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development, they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don’t have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside who wasn’t sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again.
And that’s what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief, and neurobiological development to early adversity.
AMY GOODMAN: What does the title of your book mean, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts?
DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, it’s a Buddhist phrase. In the Buddhists’ psychology, there are a number of realms that human beings cycle through, all of us. One is the human realm, which is our ordinary selves. The hell realm is that of unbearable rage, fear, you know, these emotions that are difficult to handle. The animal realm is our instincts and our id and our passions.
Now, the hungry ghost realm, the creatures in it are depicted as people with large empty bellies, small mouths and scrawny thin necks. They can never get enough satisfaction. They can never fill their bellies. They’re always hungry, always empty, always seeking it from the outside. That speaks to a part of us that I have and everybody in our society has, where we want satisfaction from the outside, where we’re empty, where we want to be soothed by something in the short term, but we can never feel that or fulfill that insatiety from the outside. The addicts are in that realm all the time. Most of us are in that realm some of the time. And my point really is, is that there’s no clear distinction between the identified addict and the rest of us. There’s just a continuum in which we all may be found. They’re on it, because they’ve suffered a lot more than most of us
By Barbara O’Brien, About.com Guide
The Six Realms are an allegorical description of conditioned existence, or samsara, into which beings are reborn. The nature of one’s existence is determined by karma. Some realms seem more pleasant than others — heaven sounds preferable to hell — but all are dukkha, meaning they are temporary and imperfect.
The Six Realms often are illustrated by the Bhava Chakra, or Wheel of Life.
Please note that in some schools the realms of Devas and Asuras are combined, leaving five realms instead of six.
MarenYumi / Flickr, Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
MarenYumi / Flickr, Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
MarenYumi / Flickr, Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
MarenYumi / Flickr, Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
MarenYumi / Flickr, Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
MarenYumi / Flickr, Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
The last three years have been exhausting, draining, extraordinary enough to wilt the resolve of ten hearty souls. I’m tired.
Today I’ve nothing to say about Korea, society, adoption, race, culture, or feminism. I’ve nothing to comment on other people’s blogs, or foreign community boards, or adoption support boards, to anyone in person, in emails, on camera, in print. or lecture.
I’m tired of it all. I want to chuck it (not me) all over a cliff, send a burning arrow its direction, watch it engulf in flames, and watch its delicate charred ash float away on the prevailing winds.
I want my memory erased.
I sat at the feet of my great grandfather Strong and watched as he slipped in and out of the past. He was over 90 at the time. Tears would roll down his face as he remembered the death of his daughter, who died of diptheria. And then he would be in another time, having conversations with someone invisible but long gone, and then he’d remember they too had passed, and then he couldn’t remember who I was.
Memories are like that. We remember the pain. We remember the joys lost that cause us pain. I want all my premature great grandpa Strong times erased. I’m only 45. Or 44. Whatever.
Every new job, (40 of them) every new place, (26 of them) every new interest – has been an attempt to be reborn. To be in the here and now and not dwell on the past or get overly preoccupied with future ambitions. All very noble and yet all very lame, because they were really a running away from this thing I want to burn; culminating in being here where I started, which is the past, the present, and the future – all pressing in from all sides with centrifugal force.
I want to wake with the sun, have a rhythm to my days, sing out loud, have a day where no cloud crosses my brow. But I’m stuck. I’m stuck here in abandoned/adopted/abused land. And I can’t get out.
I want the hell out.
I want at least a moment of sunshine and a spotless mind.
Please. Before I no longer recognize the present. Before all I am is a string of disordered painful memories.
By a call from my recruiter about the major corporation…
STRIKE THAT
25 calls/texts
25 today and 12 yesterday!
First, some background information on the continuing saga:
After telling the recruiters that their contract was worthless and that I didn’t want to work with their company anymore because I had no confidence in their business practices, I tell them no thanks, but that I’ll stick around for the interim while they look for a replacement. (see how reasonable I am?) They call and I get offered $5 more an hour and a promise they’ll find me more work the other three mornings if I’ll please stay. Sounds like still not enough money and an empty promise. Hmm. Especially since, how can I accommodate the V.P.’s flakey schedule if they’ve found me other work for the mornings at the same time? Hmm? I tell them no, thank you.
Please excuse the mess of poor quotation punctuation – I’m still fuming…
The class gets canceled by the student, and then again the following day. The following week, I get a call from Nadia the evening before asking me to come in an hour early. I agree to go and then get another text telling me again that the class is going to be an hour earlier and three more text messages explaining why. I put on my monkey suit (or as close as I can get to one) and go to where I’m supposed to rendevous with the teacher coordinator, who doesn’t show up. I call and she tells me – class was canceled, I told you that! (no. it’s in black and white . wasn’t told) Naturally, I’m a little annoyed and admonish her – if she’s going to text me about something so important, to please not back-peddle with long explanations, but make it simple and clear, like “no class today.”
That afternoon, I start getting a WHOLE SERIES of (excuse me) ass kissing calls and texts, from Nadia, and then Jemma, her senior. Then I get another call from some guy named Shawn, their senior, saying he will pay as if I went to class. Shawn goes on to tell me how it’s not their fault, the V.P. is very busy, how important I am, yadda yadda yadda. Then they say that they would like to offer me pay equivalent to four classes (= 4 hours to keep about 12 hours open = still not much) to compensate for the shifting schedule and to please keep my mornings open, with a pay increase after three months. I tell him they’re finally sounding somewhat reasonable, but that it doesn’t matter, I’ve been traumatized by my experience with them and no longer have faith in part-time positions: I will find a full time job and leave at the earliest opportunity. I’m only doing them a favor now, and please start looking for my replacement.
THEN – a few hours later I get another call from Shawn apologizing profusely and informing me that tomorrow’s class is canceled and – could I please change the class to Mondays and Wednesdays…please? Just this once. Now, now I lose it.
Look, I tell them. I TOLD YOU from the first day that I was ONLY available on Thursdays and Fridays because I’m still working full time until the 11th of February. You knew that all the time. What the heck are you doing promising things you can’t deliver?
He begs, he cajoles, he tries to get me to call in sick to work, etc.
Oh I see. So you want me to lie to my real job? How can you ask that? Do you want your employees to lie to you?
He goes on again to explain how it’s not their fault, but the student is just very demanding, and wants what she wants when she wants it, and that if she doesn’t see the new teacher on Monday, then the recruiters are finished. Because so many teachers have quit, she thinks the recruiters don’t manage their teachers well. I am beginning to think the V.P. is much like me, tired of excuses, and probably there’s nothing unreasonable about her at all…
I tell him I’m sorry he’s painted himself into this corner, but I really can’t help them. Turns out they not only promised that I’d be there on Monday, but that they promised the V.P. I’d also be willing to switch to Mondays and Wednesdays and be on call every morning.
He begs me to help him come up with a solution. I tell him to have somebody else stand in for me, since I’ve STILL yet to have a class with the student.
No good. The student picked me.
Well then, the V.P. will just have to take the class as scheduled or wait a week until my school is finished, just like any other person on the planet would have to do.
He says he will talk to his boss and H.R. at the V.P.’s company to see what to do. Next comes calls from Jemma. Texts from Nicole.
I text her back that they have lost all dignity and ask her if they really want to live like this.
A We-care-about-you call and about the sixth we’re-worried-about-you text from Nicole and can she call me again later?
I tell her no for god’s sake don’t call! Let me have my day back.
Call from Shawn practically begging. I tell him the V.P. is right – they don’t manage their teachers well. They have history with this woman and know her needs and instead of structuring the job assignment to accommodate her, they low ball the salary and attempt to trick and pressure the teacher into doing it instead. I tell him AGAIN that they are bad businessmen and deserve what they get. They should have told me up front what to expect, and they should only hire people who can accommodate what their client wants. God, I’m sick of being an educator.
Well, he says, it’s too late now. What do we do? Can I call you again tonight? NO! please no more calls from you people tonight. Let me have a peaceful an evening to myself.
Against my better judgment, I call my school and ask if I can rearrange my schedule to accommodate these idiots. I feel so wrong enabling them. I just want to take a bath and get the hysterics to stop. You know, I haven’t been paid anything yet for all this grief. I absolutely can’t believe the lengths these people expect someone who wants a job to go to. I can’t believe how many hours I’ve spent going to their office, being subjected to their ill-prepared, no-win humiliating training sessions, only to find out that they can’t find anybody who does what I already do just fine. I tell them I want double the class fee. In cash. Before the lesson. Or forget it. They say what I want is no problem.
Of course, the calls/texts continue from all of them. After about 20 of these calls, and one incredible email where Shawn offers me a monthly package that is LESS than the previous one offered, throwing in that it’s a 6 month contract, I finally tell Shawn: What part of DON’T CALL ME ANYMORE don’t you understand? If I get ONE MORE CALL you can forget about this favor I’m doing – coming in for you after I’ve already quit. This has crossed the line into harassment! I already told you I’m looking for full time work and won’t be signing any long contract.
4 more calls and texts from Nicole, asking to talk over coffee. I tell her please, I just want to do my job, be left alone, and to collect my money. Just business. Please don’t call me again. So what does she do??? Yup. SHE CALLS. She just wants to have coffee and chat. I finally told her, “That’s it. You can’t respect me and leave me in peace, so I won’t be coming in Monday. DON’T CALL ME AGAIN. I won’t answer the phone.”
1 more text from Nicole. “but I’m just worried about you because I want to be your friend!
Oh – my – God. Sorry this is so long, but you can not begin to imagine the whining, and long windy excuses, and disgusting sucking up that my poor ears have had to listen to today. I’ve only relayed my business-only short and increasingly curt answers. I agree to buy them time to find a solution and they repay me buy trying to trick me, manipulate me, and con me into more. As if this is a relationship anybody would want to continue.
Shawn tried to reason with me once. He says he spent a few years working in America and he understands that time is money. But this is Korea. I have to understand that they have to do what this very important person asks. I tell him they had every opportunity to do just that in a professional manner, and that I have nothing to do with their mistakes.
Between all these calls, I am trying to organize a public event for TRACK and attend a meeting and talk with a person in Jeollanamdo about a real job and worry about my unpaid heating bill. I am beginning to think I am like some Korean garbage magnet. I just want to run away.
The phone is turned off, though, and it’s beautifully silent in my little basement apartment. I’m going to watch a streaming movie and try and calm down.
All of us (those I talk to) who are foreigners who are not white and not a couple living in Korea have to go through this exercise often just to stay afloat. Here’s my list for today:
Post Interruption…
and nary a drop to drink.
I do have three prospects, but they are all very uncertain. One of them isn’t open (possibly) until late May. The other is that construction safety R&D and isn’t baked yet. The other is in Jeollanamdo (the southernmost part of Korea) living in a two bedroom cottage with stone walls! Maybe I could do TRACK work remotely from there. How I really want to go there and bag the city altogether and start over fresh. Feeling out right now if it is one of the school districts I’ve been blacklisted from.
There are so many jobs, and it’s a full time job every day just sifting through them. Here we are in the middle of the biggest hiring season for foreigners who speak English, and I can’t find work because I’m too old and not white. I started pasting discriminatory hiring posts again, but the list became depressingly too long and figured you already got the picture. I’m just numb to everything right now. Live with uncertainty long enough, and it changes you. Not depressed. Just numb.
**********
My last days at school are spent cataloging the new English Zone library, looking for work, and organizing TRACK’s volunteer group. I continue to check the pulse of the adoptee rights groups and the issues surrounding Haiti (and I hope they throw the book at those U.S. missionaries who claimed they didn’t know 10 of the 20 children they attempted to smuggle out of the country had parents)
Enjoying setting up the library and I’m sorry to leave it, unfinished, next week. I enjoy putting the fiction in alpha order by author, enjoy determining the Dewey decimal number, enjoy writing down all the publishing information and ISBN numbers, enjoy adding them to the database, enjoy discovering interesting new books and writing the synopsis, and especially enjoy putting the labels on their spines. Back in the day when I did this in college, we also typed the information on paper pockets for the check-out cards, painting glue on them and sticking them inside. We also typed index cards and filed them. It was especially fun to write in cross references or corrections with a needle sharp #2 pencil in your most perfect handwriting. Covering the book jackets was really fun too, and I took great pride in how mine fit like a second skin.
It’s a great collection In Kyung chose: Newbery and Caldecott. Cambridge readers. Scholastic series on world social issues, etc. Makes me want to read children’s books all day. Too bad the all the shelves are cabinets with solid wood doors that are kept under lock and key. That’s real inviting. I mentioned this sarcastically to my co-teacher, wondering if they’d ever get used at all, and she agreed. The books seem more like decoration. Hidden decoration. What a waste. Also in the English Zone is an area with three office desks and chairs which nobody uses, and four student computers with desks that the kids aren’t allowed to turn on. Hopefully, they’ll figure out how to incorporate these things they put in. But right now, it’s looking like a pretentious show. And the most important thing – the children’s desks and seats – are pieces of garbage that are already falling apart.
**********
I miss the zen of mindless labor. My favorite jobs in life were: being a janitor, factory work, and warehouse order picking at Amazon. Something very freeing about it. It seemed hard at the time, but the work went by fast, you were physically fit, and your imagination could wander, no politics, and worker fellowship.
Yesterday I got to school and all of the teacher’s cars were there. I figured it was one of the orientations for next year’s students or something, and I went up to the English Zone to happilly continue catalogueing library books. So I was really getting into the zen of this, when students barge in and ask me if I’m here for the day, and then a couple minutes later there’s an entire classroom of loud rowdy boys in what was once the sanctuary of my quiet library. God, why didn’t I become a librarian???
My co-teacher comes in and tells me that I have class. Oh really? I didn’t even know school was in session. We haven’t had school for over a week! (the boys are all sitting there waiting) She goes and prints out the day’s time-table, which is completely different. Turns out I am a half hour late to school. This not getting the memo thing is really REALLY getting old…
What can I come up with for a lesson in zero minutes? The co-teachers tells me that none of the teachers teach this week – they just show movies. Um, the last two weeks when school was in session the teachers just showed movies…What is the point in making them come to school at all? Why do they even have school after final exams? Three weeks or more of drivel. Then, on top of that, why do they give Native English Teachers a contract with three weeks of vacation when all the Korean teachers have six to weeks off, and the English teacher therefore has to come to school and warm a desk for two weeks BY THEMSELVES, teaching NOBODY and just pushing paper around? All of the English teachers I know are banging their heads over this one.
Last Friday I went for yet one more meeting with the recruiters giving me the job with the major corporation. And then they tell me, oh by the way…she cancels and reschedules a lot. And she changes the times a lot. Sometimes she’ll ask you to come early and then will be on the phone late and sometimes you might have to sit for a half hour, or the class will run late. So please give her make-up classes if she needs to reschedule. I present different scenarios, and every one ends up with she’s not available for make-up classes except in the mornings at the same time. I tell them this is like being on call, that I can’t just leave every day open for that possibility, and that that’s a little unreasonable. Turns out this is their last chance to secure this company through their vice president, and it means a lot of contracts in the future for corporate training seminars, please you are very important to us. I am told they are sorry and they understand but it’s just a very picky client with special needs. (I am, meanwhile, being paid $10 less than most of the jobs I see advertised) Never mind the unaccounted-for travel time.
After stewing about this over the weekend, I just told them no thanks. The class is a moving target, and I’m only being compensated for actual class time, with no consideration for all my valuable time that I can’t fill up with other lessons.
When are Koreans going to learn that contracts have to be forthright – you can’t go adding little oh-by-the-way’s whenever you feel like it! (and if you tell them about bait and switch, they feign being all hurt!) little things like oh-by-the-way, we’re not going to pay for half your flight to Korea, even though we promised we’d pay you from your home to here…When are they going to learn that this attitude hurts themselves, and they have no one else to blame when foreigners bail on them, when they have a double standard for their contracts? It’s okay for them to dishonor contracts, but if a foreigner (with no representation or way to communicate) dishonors a contract that’s been dishonored by a Korean, then the foreigner is always the bad guy.
I told them this extra information was not what I signed up for. They were nice enough and I wasn’t angry with them, but that they really need to get their order of operations worked out and that I both needed to work for a company I was confident in and that it’s obvious juggling part time jobs isn’t a good idea if everyone works this way. I offered to meet as arranged with the client until I find other work to save them face, and that they should look for a replacement. So that’s where it stands, which is great, because I was finding myself in the bizarre position of having to discount decent jobs because I’d signed up for this lousy job that doesn’t pay much, to break into a niche which doesn’t seem so great. Now I can leave without breaking any contract.
****************
I learn from one of my students that last year’s teacher ran away. Last year’s teacher? I was told they didn’t have a teacher last year, that they went a year without. So now everything makes even more sense. It’s so amazing none of my co-workers who even hate this school and its administration wouldn’t mention this to me. So maybe the student is mistaken. But it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Talk of such things might give the new teacher having difficulties ideas. It would also make them look bad. Must save face at all costs.
Saturday I was invited to the one year birthday party for the grandson of my landlord. It’s a big event here in Korea, and it was held in a wedding hall. The real estate agent and I went to a big hotel and there were maybe 60 in attendance. Another baby birthday was happening at the same time, with maybe 100 in attendance, and the shared buffet looked big enough to feed about 300 people. This extravagant party was especially called for because adjumma’s first grandchild was a boy, from her first and only son.
Adjosshi and the birthday boy
I already knew this, but the real estate agent explained how in times past a child living to be two years old (one by Western standards) was a major milestone. Many children died shortly after birth, and so 100 days was a celebration, and if the child made it an entire year, odds were the child was strong enough to live to adulthood. The real estate agent explained that medicine was hard to come by should a child become sick, and that often poverty meant there wasn’t enough food to go around to make the child strong. He said it was like this up until about the time I was adopted, and that was probably why I was sent away. I didn’t tell him I was over two and maybe almost three by the time I was abandoned, or that I was fat and healthy, and I wondered if there had been a 100 days celebration or a one year celebration for me growing up, since I DID have a family for quite some time…
Aside from eating ungodly amounts of Korean & Chinese dishes (the buffet line was double-sided and stretched for 50 ft, and then there was also 10 ft. of sushi buffet as well. 110 ft. of food, if you can imagine…) there didn’t seem to be much of a program except photographing the baby being cute. There was little focus on anything but eating more and more food.
With all that sumptuous food, my favorite was a simple, clear magenta-colored soup with minimal amounts of cabbage, green onion, and flower-shaped carrots floating in it. I loved it because it was cold and fermented like mul kimchi, yet it was infused with (probably) jalapeno pepper, so it was also spicy hot. Beautiful, delicate, yet surprising in its contrasts. This recipe sounds similar, but not half as pretty. (maybe the greens were mustard stms?) The real estate agent called it namul kimchi, but that’s a broad name for any vegetable banchan.
Then, every guest was given a raffle ticket. The real estate agent took me to a table with eight goblets. Each goblet indicated a different symbol for a profession, and we had to choose which profession we thought the baby would be and leave our raffle number in that goblet. Later, there was an MC who had the halmoni say something to the baby, and then he asked everyone a question, and answers were shouted out randomly from the crowd. The real estate agent pointed at me and said “Migook!” Everyone clapped. And then I was shoved up to the front and a mike was stuck in my face. Turns out I won an award for traveling the farthest. The real estate agent thought it was hilarious that everyone thought I came just for the birthday party. Now, with the two mugs I won I now have six coffee mugs that I haven’t bought.
The young family
the baby and his omma
After one more prize for something, the baby’s parents put a tray in front of him with eight items on it. The baby ’s attention was directed towards the tray, and the baby picked up some money to play with, so that means he will be a businessman or some profession involving money. Then, a raffle ticket number was chosen from the corresponding goblet. There was cake cutting, the birthday song in Korean, and then? Everyone got up and rapidly split! Real estate agent too, one of the first outta there, and since he was my ride…
I came home and slept off some of my eating and heard my landlords arrive, and rushed to catch them and give them the envelope of cash I had been told by others was required at these things. A friend was with them and the adjumma invited me in for food and I got to watch her disrobe from her hanbok prior to making a snack. I told her how ipeuda it was and she dressed me up in it, and it was many sizes too big. Then she told me she would get me one. Then she said she had to have it dry-cleaned first and I realized she meant she would give me hers. I tried to protest, knowing how expensive these silk taffetta ones are, but she didn’t understand. So all I could do was thank her. So, it looks like I will be the owner of a hanbok soon! I wonder how much alterations will cost? I’m really thankful the colors are a simple and restrained.
adjumma and baby
Fortunately, (and probably to her relief) I convinced her that a cup of coffee would suffice, and I watched and listened as they pulled out the pile of envelopes. There was some controversy, and from what I could gather someone called her friend explaining that they had neglected to write their name on the envelope, and the amount they had given. Mr. landlord (I don’t know his name, and though adjumma’s last name is Kim, I think I read that the women keep their maiden name here in Korea) went through all the envelopes and found one without a name, but the amount inside was less than described. Much controversy ensued with loud phone calls back and forth, and some recriminations about some people who left early and didn’t leave a gift. I guess that at these kind of functions: birthday parties, weddings, and funerals, cash is always expected and everyone’s gift amount is carefully recorded. This is so gifts to their functions are equal or better, for to give less is offensive and can cause bitterness and feuding. The keeping up with the Jones’ here is pretty insidious…
It’s kind of a shame, really, that these gifts are not from the heart but obligations, and that people must put on a big show and measure the value of their relationships. But, as can be seen by the hanbok gift, some things are beyond social constructs.
This week weather is a balmy 30 degrees in general: warm enough during the day to melt some of the black ice. The past month, however, has been quite frigid, snowing now and then.
Today this is gone, but this is an indicator of how continuously cold it's been here. This has been knocked down several times by adjosshi, but this one is about two weeks of build-up, one drop at a time.
All the locals say this has been an unusually harsh winter, and that typically there is not half as much snowfall, and sometimes it even rains. Everyone here attributes the wild weather fluctuations of the past few years to global warming.
Environmental consciousness is pretty high, but personal commitment to it seems fairly low. With their giant neighbors to the West, who have a terrible record on environmental protection, it’s easy to boast. So health is of more concern to Koreans who are downwind of Chinese factory pollution. And that so-called yellow dust coming from there that is announced on the news? I’ve been told that it actually IS yellow and visible to the naked eye on some days (though I’ve never witnessed this). Supposedly desertification in parts of China is increasing, and the winds pick up pollution-laden yellow dust. As a result, Koreans don the surgical masks to protect their lungs. These come in all kinds of fabrics and colors, I’ve seen winter ones with knitted covers for extra warmth, and they have all kinds of cute versions with cartoon characters on them for the children. The air quality doesn’t seem that bad to me – nothing like Thailand where 2-stroke moped engines and small diesel trucks left so much carbon in the air you could practically eat it. Fortunately, a lot of things that contribute to reducing pollution here are institutionalized and followed, such as the great mass transit system and recycling.
Korea’s working hard on beating out the competition in green technology, so I’ve no doubt they’ll be well positioned. I read recently that one of the main components of Macintosh technology depends upon Korean products, and that’s why Apple is one of the few U.S. computer hardware companies sold here. It’s a status symbol to own an Iphone 3g, even though they can’t take advantage of some of the advances in technology that are proprietary to Korea (and its marriage to microsoft) here. German cars are also allowed, so I wonder if there’s some similar relationship going on there?
from: http://www.papayatreenursery.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=166
“…Fruit is excellent dried and can be stored for years! Very high health benefits! Used as a food and medicinally by the Chinese for hundreds of years. Considered a blood purifier! Make a healthy delicious Korean hot tea called “Techu Cha”. Wonderful to drink during cold winter months. Drink this hot beverage instead of coffee; your body will thank you…:
Like most Koreans, Miwha is super health-conscious. While we don’t necessarily agree on what promotes health, I would say that Koreans practice in daily life what they preach more than Americans. In almost every home that I’ve been in, even the most modern ones, you will see one food item or another drying to be made into tea for some particular curative or preventive medicinal tea or another. So far I’ve seen flowers drying, corn silk drying, orange rinds drying, and jujubes drying. She says that when she was growing up (she’s the same age as I am) everyone lived in houses (she grew up near Uijeongbu – a city quite close to the DMZ) and that every house had a jujube tree and they would pick them off the vine and eat them. Except for being poor, she and many others feel Korea was a better place back then, as families worked together, relied on each other, and people shared more. Just the fact that they had real houses is enough to convince me! After dinner every night, Miwha soaks her feet in hot water and herbs to increase circulation.
Tonight, after a REALLY INTERESTING and POSSIBLY PROMISING interview for a job NOT TEACHING ENLISH (!!!!!!) I decided to purchase one of the rotisserie chickens that are always being sold at the corner of Itaewon Station. I got it home and cut it in two, thinking I would save half for later (if that’s even possible – Korean chickens are all game hen size. I don’t know if their lives are cut short, or if they’re a special breed, or if maybe that’s the size God wanted chickens to be before hormone-laced chicken feed was invented) but bam! When I cut it in half, it was revealed to be stuffed with rice, garlic cloves, ginseng, and jujubes! Just like you’ll find in the samgyetang soup Koreans eat to ward of the common cold. Only the outside was crispy and roasted. (btw, if you want to try this, then be aware that the guy selling the chickens is often in the parking lot gate house out of the elements so he doesn’t freeze) Soooo yummy! Who knew you could get samgyetang without the tang, roasted on a stick? Well, I guess Koreans would know, but since I and half the residents of Itaewon can’t read his Korean sign, most just walk on by. I’m thinking I won’t be able to save half of it…
OK. I am, perhaps, the only English speaker in Korea right now who is remotely free and qualified for this job and it is right up my alley, since there are very few English-speaking architects in Korea, and there are even less English-speaking architects who have ever done more than don a hardhat and walk through a construction site, much less lift a hammer, hang off the sides of buildings, connect wiring, wear a respirator, tie down loads, carry their weight in materials, work with other trades, etc., etc., and maybe even fewer who can do technical writing. The only problem is I don’t speak Korean and they’ll need to find someone who understands a little about construction and can speak English as an intermediary. If I get this job I could make much much more than an English teacher. So thank you, wrongful black-list writing dirty recruiter – maybe you’ve really liberated me to find greener pastures.
Yes, there is an unprecedented voice of reason and appeal for care and consideration surrounding the matter of Haiti. But we’ve seen how, without constant vigilance, reason can be side-stepped and forgotten.
Adoptees of Color are stepping up to make it known that we are watching: Some history should not be repeated…
From Adoptees of Color Roundtable
This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption.
We understand that in a time of crisis there is a tendency to want to act quickly to support those considered the most vulnerable and directly affected, including children. However, we urge caution in determining how best to help. We have arrived at a time when the licenses of adoption agencies in various countries are being reviewed for the widespread practice of misrepresenting the social histories of children. There is evidence of the production of documents stating that a child is “available for adoption” based on a legal “paper” and not literal orphaning as seen in recent cases of intercountry adoption of children from Malawi, Guatemala, South Korea and China. We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking.
For more than fifty years “orphaned children” have been shipped from areas of war, natural disasters, and poverty to supposedly better lives in Europe and North America. Our adoptions from Vietnam, South Korea, Guatemala and many other countries are no different from what is happening to the children of Haiti today. Like us, these “disaster orphans” will grow into adulthood and begin to grasp the magnitude of the abuse, fraud, negligence, suffering, and deprivation of human rights involved in their displacements.
We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin.
As adoptees of color many of us have inherited a history of dubious adoptions. We are dismayed to hear that Haitian adoptions may be “fast-tracked” due to the massive destruction of buildings in Haiti that hold important records and documents. We oppose this plan and argue that the loss of records requires slowing down of the processes of adoption while important information is gathered and re-documented for these children. Removing children from Haiti without proper documentation and without proper reunification efforts is a violation of their basic human rights and leaves any family members who may be searching for them with no recourse. We insist on the absolute necessity of taking the time required to conduct a thorough search, and we support an expanded set of methods for creating these records, including recording oral histories.
We urge the international community to remember that the children in question have suffered the overwhelming trauma of the earthquake and separation from their loved ones. We have learned first-hand that adoption (domestic or intercountry) itself as a process forces children to negate their true feelings of grief, anger, pain or loss, and to assimilate to meet the desires and expectations of strangers. Immediate removal of traumatized children for adoption—including children whose adoptions were finalized prior to the quake— compounds their trauma, and denies their right to mourn and heal with the support of their community.
We affirm the spirit of Cultural Sovereignty, Sovereignty and Self-determination embodied as rights for all peoples to determine their own economic, social and cultural development included in the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Charter of the United Nations; the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The mobilization of European and North American courts, legislative bodies, and social work practices to implement forced removal through intercountry adoption is a direct challenge to cultural sovereignty. We support the legal and policy application of cultural rights such as rights to language, rights to ways of being/religion, collective existence, and a representation of Haiti’s histories and existence using Haiti’s own terms.
We offer this statement in solidarity with the people of Haiti and with all those who are seeking ways to intentionally support the long-term sustainability and self-determination of the Haitian people. As adoptees of color we bear a unique understanding of the trauma, and the sense of loss and abandonment that are part of the adoptee experience, and we demand that our voices be heard. All adoptions from Haiti must be stopped and all efforts to help children be refocused on giving aid to organizations working toward family reunification and caring for children in their own communities. We urge you to join us in supporting Haitian children’s rights to life, survival, and development within their own families and communities.
Please feel free to add your endorsement in the comments section below this statement at the Adoptees of Color Roundtable Statement on Haiti
I came across this lovely piece by a hapa gyopo, eliciting for others her own discovery while tracing her Korean family roots. It is both compassionate, generous, thoughtful, and delivered with simplicity and clarity.
An absolute delight, It also brought a little pang to my heart when I thought about my own children who have a much harder path making any connections such as these. As an abandoned adoptee, all my forays into Korean heritage must by default be academic. All connections to Korea are those I create anew. All heritage is vicariously imagined through my connections to others who have a known history. For my children, this is yet another layer removed. Me and mine, we’ve always had to make something out of nothing. Granted, it’s a beautiful something we have, but when even those who HAVE history long to be connected to it, where does that leave us?
This desire is fundamental to being human. To abandon a child is to leave it stranded with no map, no compass, and no datum. To have no mementos or tokens of significant events and significant non-events is unsettling. There is no place on a map that you can point to or drive by and get out of your car and pace the ground and plant your foot in the earth and say, I was here. There is no fact that can be corroborated about yourself. There is no telling you aren’t a total fabrication or that you really existed. No birthdate. No name. No place. Only your skin and a whole country.
I hope one day we can redefine this landscape so that all Koreans can know their roots.
I am, however reluctantly, an epiphyte, living on nutrients from the air, rain, and surrounding debris. I had hoped by coming here to search, I could give my children enough history to write a story like the one above. I guess their story just has to begin with me.
From one trusted non KFTRA recruiter that I actually told the whole story to:
Thank you for sending me this email. Wow…you certainly have a situation that is far from average! I wish I could say comforting and encouraging things, but you seem to be very familiar with the uphill battle you have in terms of getting a job here in Korea, particularly in a limited geographical area.
So, the majority of schools that we work with are only willing to hire caucasian female teachers under 35. The exception to that it usually public schools, however that option is obviously not one that will work right now. I think your best bet will be to continue to contact people and to search high and low for opportunities, perhaps a few part-time opportunities to put together. You probably won’t get much help from recruiting companies. I think a direct hire is more realistic since the attitude that schools take is, “If I’m going to pay a recruiters, I expect XYZ…”What we will do is try to send your application to any schools that would possibly be a match, but we don’t have too extensive a network. We will see what we can do, but please continue to exercise all options in the search.
In a discussion about the white privilege of international adopters with another adoptee who can pass as white, I was asked if this applied to adopting Korean-Americans.
I would say resoundingly yes. Those Korean-Americans and adoptees adopting are adopting out of white privilege. Why am I in so much trouble here in Korea? Because of my white privilege, because I didn’t know enough about what it means to be Korean. I am a banana here. (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) Once upon a time, I was a rotton apple. But today I am a banana, thanks to being raised white.
Once upon a time, I too considered adopting – even though I was abused and adoption did me no favors. I too thought I could “save” a child and give them more opportunity. That’s called privilege and it’s gross. And it was the marginalization of my race and country that comes from white privilege that got me to think that way. And I’m sorry – just because you can’t have children doesn’t entitle you to scour the wombs of other countries to exploit a nasty situation.
I had no reason not to believe what the prevailing messages from those surrounding me were saying. I had no reason to think about how imperialist it was. I especially didn’t think about how I was a product of this patronizing mind-set. I didn’t think about the children’s mothers or the lack of choices their mothers had, because I had pushed the thought of my own mother into the most remote, inaccessible places I could. I didn’t think about how my actions ultimately contribute to perpetuating a social structure that disenfranchises women and the poor. I didn’t think about how I was f*g with a system from the outside and how that was affecting Korea’s ability to raise themselves beyond a developed economy into a more enlightened, advanced society. Ultimately, self-determination – without interference – is the only thing any nation can have confidence in.
I can come here with my white privilege and say, “you backwards heathens, you should do this and you should do that.” But really, it is up to Koreans to come to their own conclusions about these things and that takes time. Time to enter the global village. Time to produce mongrel children and be forced to accept them. Time to dispense with us vs. them. Time to realize you can can respect your elders for their service and suffering, but that honoring them does not have to mean committing the same mistakes they did.
In so many ways, Korea does not realize it has arrived. Like roboseyo recently wrote, and that is evident in example after example, nothing indicates this nation’s insecurity more than their posturing and protesting how valid they are. All we can do is provide good examples and hopefully, the contradictions of the past and the tyranny of its dictates will cause enough electric jolts to their systems that they will realize – hey, we are free and it doesn’t have to be this way anymore.
Minsoo kept her baby and she’s doing well. Young Hee got a divorce and the world didn’t end. Kyunga’s half black baby is beautiful. Eun Sook started her own business and it’s thriving.
Taking and adopting their little children/embarrassments/burdens isn’t helping them grow, but retarding Korea’s growth. We can help Korea by not interfering, leaving them to clean up their own mess, helping them help themselves, and celebrating what they do right.
So on my last day teaching small group discussion with my only student, 18 year old Dae-won, we were contrasting the lack of respect young people have for adults vs. the traditional Korean values of respecting elders which is a core tenet of Confucianism. He told me the lack of respect was wrong and that he liked that aspect of being Korean.
We talked about different aspects of the Korean value system. We talked about race, and he felt racial discrimination was wrong. What about ugly people? fat people? “To be honest, I don’t like ugly people. If they are nice, I will tolerate them, but I would never let one be my friend.” (Huh? Koreans are very candid, I’ll grant them that…) What about working for a woman boss? He felt gender discrimination was wrong but didn’t think that a female boss would ever be common, but that it might be a problem in the office, and I suspect that maybe he wouldn’t work in an office with problems… I told him how women are still not equal in America, but that we are almost equal in the workplace now, that we are close. What about the hagwon system? He felt it was necessary, because the public schools’ education was not good. But wasn’t that elitist? Doesn’t that mean the poor can never climb up in society? Yes, it was unfair, but that’s just the way it’s always been and it won’t change. But what if all that money spent at hagwons was spent improving public education? “That’ll never happen.” What about corporal punishment? He felt it was harmful to both student and teacher. So if it’s harmful, how should students learn right from wrong? Corporal punishment. But didn’t you just say it was harmful? Harmful but necessary.
I asked him what about Korea needs to be fixed, and he started a really long list: racial discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, class discrimination, civil rights, university entrance exams, etc., etc., and more etc. Then I asked him what about Korea should stay the same? Immediately he talked about respecting elders, and then, then there was a long pause, followed by a longer pause, followed by a still longer pause, followed by I-can’t-think-of-anything-more. We kind of had a shared moment of silence surveying the imbalance of his lists, and I think he had sort of a revelation at that moment.
I gave him a short article about adoption. It offered two opinions about finding birth families. One talked about how noble it was to save children but that it was understandable if those children longed to search for more information about their original identity at some point. The other was from one of those happy adoptees who think anyone who searches is damaged and angry, and belittled them for selfishly hurting their real parents, the ones who raised them. I told him to ask me any questions he wanted to, and he came up with, “Why would someone adopted care whether another adopted person wanted to search or not? If I were adopted I would have to search. Isn’t that human nature?” I explained how complicated it was for us adoptees and how we are made to feel grateful, how dealing with adoption is a life-long process, and how threatening it can be to find the path they have chosen is rejected as harmful by other adoptees. But that I agreed with him: wanting to know is probably human nature.
I asked him if he became a father suddenly, what would he do? He kind of short-circuited and so I asked him if he had seen the movie, “Jenny and Juno.” He told me that yes, he had seen it and that actually it made a huge impression on him and his friends because they were also in middle school at the time. “We thought: THAT COULD HAPPEN TO US!” Did he agree with Jenny and Juno’s decision to keep their baby? He told me that it was great, but that it wasn’t real, because actually Jenny and Juno didn’t raise their baby: their parents did, which didn’t seem likely. He wasn’t sure. He just wasn’t sure what he would do.
After more talking, I told him how really rewarding it was for me to hear the opinions of Korean students. He asked if I was going to be there next year, and I told him that I had wanted to be, but that because of politics I had to find a new job. He asked how it was going and I told him not well, because of the discrimination. He asked if I was going to be okay and I told him I wasn’t sure. He told me he wished he was in grade 1 so he could have had me as a teacher for a full year. I told him that it was better this way, that the grade 1 boys weren’t mature and didn’t appreciate the opportunity. He told me that it was a great, great opportunity. I told him to contact me any time he wanted to.
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In a previous discussion class with the Korean English teachers, I had given them Stories from Korean Unwed Mothers to read, from (I think) the Korean Women’s Development Institute. The teachers were really moved and couldn’t thank me enough for the really provocative reading. “Good. VERY good. Very Interesting.”
As we discussed the different narratives, it was interesting to see how divergent the opinions on them were. The male teacher stated, “I am not convinced. These women complain but it is their fault they are in these situations.” The female teachers had less blanket judgments, depending on the circumstances. (most of these stories defied the stereotype of the teenage mom who gets in trouble. In each of these stories the father was totally not culpable for anything. The women were duped, abused, or robbed, etc., and left with huge bills, no means of monetary support, and excommunication from their families.)
The first story especially upset the women. One of the female teachers just shook her head and said, “That girl. She did everything she was supposed to do! She was a really good person, had worked hard and had her whole life ahead of her, and the only thing she did wrong was make a mistake in judging her fiance’s character! (as did her entire family – their relationship was condoned, the father was already part of the household, and he even took on the husband role after the baby was born – but ultimately ran away from his responsibilities) I could be that girl! What is a girl supposed to do? One mistake and her life is ruined! How can we know? All it takes is one wrong man.” (And there are so many here)
In the end, all of the teachers, even the male teacher, felt great sympathy for the plight of the unwed moms. I asked the teachers, what would you do if your daughter was in such a situation? Even with all they had learned and all they had felt, one of them pretty much spoke for all of them and told me, ” I would make her give the child up for adoption.”
Wtf? How could they say that after displaying an outpouring of sympathy and sometimes admiration for these women?
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In the land of the morning calm there is a deadly fatalism that nothing can be changed. In this fatalistic land, alternative options are not considered.
We adoptees make our appeals on t.v. and are exploited. We are the day’s drama. Today’s tear. Forgotten tomorrow. The search for things to cry about is unrelenting here. It is cathartic to shed tears, but working towards change is too dangerous. Let others take those risks. The tears are cheap. This human drama happens to others: not our family. If it does happen in our family: deny, deny, deny. Preserve the image at all cost: That baby never happened.
Just below the surface in the land of the morning calm is an hysteria, an illness so chronic yet also acute no one can remember a day without it. Fear of hunger, fear of having the individual beat out of you, fear of violation by invaders, and fear of social isolation has been replaced by keeping up with the Kims. Image is everything here. Your judgment by society is everything here. The Confucian hierarchy and class consciousness has never disappeared: it’s just shape-shifted.
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The mudang mediates between the living and the dead who don’t rest. She has the haunted living untie knots in cloth to release bondage from the disturbed spirits of the dead. The adoptees visit fortune tellers and challenge them without birthdays or history to go by. They talk of exorcism ceremonies by mudangs. But is it to release us from the bondage of the dead, or from bondage by the living? Maybe instead of exorcism we need to call the dead. Oh honorable great great great great grandfather, your blood has been cast aside as worthless. How do you feel about that?
What does Korea do with us? We the children that never happened. Deny, deny, deny. We haunt Korea like the dead that don’t rest. Our drama provides momentary release. But we’re supposed to go away again, not continue to disturb with our nagging presence. Korea wants to exorcise us but untie nothing. They keep creating more of us, casting us as far away as possible, killing us off. What tangle of knots does that create? What kind of passive aggressive violent knot does everything challenging Confucius make? What if Confucius was wrong? Have they suffered more by their own hand than all the conquering forces combined? When will the fallacy of “harmful but necessary” sink in? When will suffering stop being romanticized as noble? There is a knot for every baby sent away. The cloth stretches around the globe. How can a whole nation untie something that big?
Well, actually, I got up and now once I sit down I can’t get back up! (It’s a long ways from the floor to standing) How the hell does someone hurt their back just standing up???
It’s my anti-mojo in Korea, striking once again…
Maybe I need one of those ubiquitous hiking poles. But really, it looks like I’ve already incorporated a pole whenever I walk. Hopefully, this is just a muscle problem and not a slipped disk. Jane gave me a topical analgesic patch, (so sweet!) but it’s only taking the edge off. With all this down time, I’ve spent all day looking for jobs again. Today’s survey resulted in these:
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Female F2 Visa holder or F4 Visa(half asian) holder
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Female F2 Visa holder or Mixed F4 Visa holder
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North American Female Teachers will be preferred: because there are kindergarten students
(Korean’s Cultural trait, we can not help it)
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E2 and F2’s all say, Oh! You’ve got an F4! You’re practically GOLDEN! (because we’re allowed to teach privates legally) Yeah right. Willie and I are discovering it’s the kiss of death. I’ve probably sent out about 50 resumes and only heard back from 3 people. Maybe I need to join a goddamned church to get a private. (no offense to Christians – I just don’t believe God + religion is a healthy combination for man or planet)
Five more weeks of this and if I can’t find something viable, then I’m going to have to tell Korea to kiss my ass and move somewhere less prejudiced for work. To be shut out by my own race is just dumbfounding. Excuse my attitude, but living in a Kafka novel tends to do that to a person.
Thailand is sounding real good about now. In fact, I should apply because their positions also start in March.
multi-cultural, multi-language project
It has come to my attention that Nathalie Mihee Lemoine/Cho Mihee has uploaded videos of her works and interviews the past few weeks, and I felt you should see the incredible force of this artist and the great impact she’s made for adoptees through her example and with her assistance.
excerpt from biographic article:
…In 1991, she traveled to South Korea for the first time. With French as first language, Lemoine spoke no Korean and little English at the time. Yet, with the help of Korean-speaking friends, she set on by examining adoption records, visiting orphanages and police stations. soon, she discovered a couple of startling facts.
First, she was actually three years younger tha her officially record age. She also found that she was of mixed-race-her mother was Korean and her faher was Japanese.
‘What they say in the [adoption] file its’ a lot of lies,” she says.
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That title of that one exhibit in the film, I wish for you a beautiful life, is from a book of letters collected by birth mothers of AeRaeWon to their children: It’s absolutely heartwrenching. How can this kind of separation be the only solution? Why is adoption the only viable solution??? WHY???
I have been saying to myself and those around me who ask about my failed reunion attempts that it really doesn’t matter, and I really didn’t want reunion anyway. Part of this is true: I don’t want the complications or the incredible effort or more heartache. But I must admit the reunion scene in this video broke me. Again. I want to see her face. I want to get one tentative hug. I want to sob in her arms. Just once. And be able to choose to stay or let go.
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Helping adoptees search 1994 – the very first adoptee organization in Korea (this one is all in Korean, so you can only understand through the images)
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Here is part of a documentary on her from 1996 – 45% Korean
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And some of her artwork from 2004
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Thank you, Cho Mihee, for plowing through your pain and paving the way for the rest of us.
So I think I’ll start posting anything unusual/strange that I come across…
Just now, on my way to the teacher’s restrooms, I thought I heard a theramin and figured it was a movie soundtrack someone was showing to the kids, but then I saw two men practicing SAWS to traditional Korean music – a private lesson of sorts in the one assembly hall we have.
Five more resumes sent yesterday and no replies today. (see last post for what adoptees are up against here)
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Today’s conversation with a junior in high school today covered: thoughts about testing for university entrance exams, (he thought testing did not measure potential – but it turns out several schools have changed to a western entry model which does measure potential – but its too early to have witnessed any effect) and suicide, (he felt those that commit suicide are self-absorbed and don’t stop to think that others are also going through the same experience) I also wondered about the demise of the yangban (the elite ruling class of old) which I theorized as never having really lost power and I learned that the chaebal ( dynastic, family-run corporations) were not the remnants of the ruling class but were instead turn-coats whose allegiance followed the money, whoever was holding it. (great business ethics model) I wrapped up with asking him whether it was true that the diminishing respect afforded the elderly had to do with western exposure, and the answer was not-at-all. Probably due more to modernity in general. He thought it was a bad thing, because the elderly have a lot of experience that the young could learn from. What a nice, smart boy.
I also found out about social pecking order in student life and how important the beauty factor is, as well as more about university student life and the balance students strike between studies and extracurricular activities, most predominantly the club they join, which becomes the major part of their social lives. I taught him the difference between a nerd and a geek today, and how being a geek no longer has the stigma attached to it that it once did. When asked to rate himself as a student, he gave himself a 10. And I concur, since he was the only student to take advantage of an English conversation class. We’re both glad for the extra time to be able to talk in-depth.
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So today I figured I’d better stock up on groceries while I still had some money left.
After getting some staples, I stopped by the banchan store and picked out a bunch of side dishes as my vegetable portions. This time the adjumma was by herself, and after a few sessions of me pointing mutely at this or that dish, she asked me if I was Ilbon. (Japanese)
“Annio. Migook saram.” I said as I continued to pick out dishes.
Then she looked at me quizzically and asked me in Korean if I was Korean, to which I said I was. And then I think she exclaimed, “and you can’t speak any Korean???” To which I replied “no. Annio. Hangukmal.” She really couldn’t believe this. I think she must have said, “not any at all????” And then I remembered to reply, “na-nun Ibyung-a.”
Her face dropped a million miles on the floor and she got soooo sad and gave an audible “awwwwwww,” and she came over and gave me a full-on hug. And then I think she must have been asking me if I was okay, and I was saying, I’m okay. I’m okay. The hug was nice. Much better than the dark cloud and then moment of uncomfortable silence that usually happens.
While she was packing up all the dishes she stopped to ask me if I’d found my mother, and I told her no. And again she asked me (I think) if I was okay and she gave me a big hug and was patting me on the back like a child.
I told her again I was okay, thanked her for the yummy food, and carried my heavy bags slowly up the hill to my house.
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Thus concludes another noteworthy yet not really that atypical day…
SALARY
E-2: 2.3M + housing allowance(300,000won)
F-4: 2.3M (we don’t need housing?)
F-2: 2.4 (Basic salary)+300,000won for housing allowance)
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Job #1 (Two native teachers with F-2 visa or F-4 visa with western-look wanted)
Job #2 (native female teacher wanted)
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2 Openings on these classes
F2(or F5) only . Nationality : USA preferred
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btw,
E-2 – Foreigner here on an Education teaching visa
F2 – Foreigner married to a Korean national
F4 – Foreign ethnic Korean (me)
F5- Foreigner with permanent residency
In preparation for my demise as a publicly-funded private missionary high school teacher, I have spent the last week responding to late-breaking job positions. Yesterday, one of the temporary business English recruiters contacted me and today, mid day, she informs me she’d like an interview this evening.
With only a half hour to change out of my Michelin man costume, (it’s freezing at school and there’s remodeling going on, so I’m dressed in as many unflattering, comfortable layers as possible) I rush home to survey my wardrobe and find NOTHING corporate-looking in my closet. I continue to wear the white turtleneck I was wearing all day, throw on a scarf, pop in my old contact lens prescription, line my eyes, pin back my too-long bangs, de-fuzz my black pants, black sweater, and black coat, and rush out the door in less than a half hour. Of course, the directions from the subway to the recruiter’s office look much shorter on the map, and then I fail to see any bike repair shop and walk an extra three blocks looking for the place and am five minutes late.
After a normal interview, the recruiter asks me to give a demonstration lesson without warning, and hands me a book. It’s the student book and there is no teacher manual and no guidelines, and she just tells me to give a lesson to her in a conversational manner. It kind of throws me because the format begins in a formal, class-room-like way, so I have too many questions on how to proceed. This hesitation = failure, and yet somehow I manage to convince her that I really do enjoy teaching conversation and explain to her what tripped me up.
She doesn’t think I’m ready for the corporate classes and yet; yet maybe I might be interested in this one client she has, who has different concerns than the typical students. Maybe if this one client is happy, then I can be given other classes. By all means! Let me try! The recruiter looks worried.
Long story short, I will now, in the near future, at the crack of dawn, have English conversations with the president of a hugely major (can’t disclose to you) company in Korea. This person has already eaten four English tutors and has a strong personality! I am a failure in the regular business conversation classes because I do not present myself confidently enough, but something about me is different enough to be given to the eater of English tutors either as a possible solution to their problems or out of desperation or both!
Can she do it? Can she teach the president? Will the president’s son fall for her? Will he end up carrying her on his back? Will this be a rags to riches story? Where is and who is the third person in the love triangle? Will she not only save the tycoon from English embarrassment, but bring the family closer together?
The recruiter, even more worried, asks why I came to Korea alone and why I’m not with my family. I tell her American families are different, and she disagrees and says she knows several American families. She already knew my kids were in college, but Korean kids stay with their parents until they land their post-college jobs, so that didn’t register with her. Finally, I reminded her that American kids usually leave home at 18 and that, actually, I’ve lived alone for several years already. That seems to satisfy things somewhat.
The recruiter looks at me and says, “Do you own a suit?” No. But I’ll buy one. (I’d mentioned several times that I would be purchasing more appropriate attire earlier) I tell her that I’ve never owned a suit, because the West Coast is a different business environment and suits are considered stuffy there. “What’s that on your face? Is that a PIERCING?” No. Maybe you’re looking at a mole. (actually, it was a pimple) “Please put your hair up when you meet the client. You should get a haircut. And you need to straighten your hair.”
“And put on some makeup.”
******************
Ahh, back in the world of narcissists and sociopaths. This, folks, is why I never pursued my Architecture license and hated business meetings. The whole image-is-everything mind-set is such a bankrupt place to spend your time. My hatred for such pretenses and glad-handing is actually a strong knowledge base, but pretending to be that way while at the same time being nurturing and empathetic to someone who wants to be that way in a second language has an irony to it that would be laughable were it not for the shared desperation.
Nothing is for free and there is no such thing as easy money!
If I weren’t so intrigued and compelled to meet the kind of person that can send four tutors packing, I probably would have moved on. But I like odd characters, even cantankerous ones, and hope they prove to be interesting.
The forgotten unknown war.
I crossed out forgotten, because I never remembered it in the first place. In fact, up until this weekend’s movie blitz I never knew ANYTHING about it.
This might come as a shock to non Koreans and Koreans alike that an ethnic Korean would know so little about something that so directly or indirectly deeply affected their and every other Korean’s life, but I’ll wager it’s not so shocking to other adoptees.
The only thing I did know about the Korean war was that it was before I was born, and I wasn’t even sure how much before I was born: I just knew it was extremely annoying to always be asked, when people quite obviously could see I didn’t match my parents, if I was a war baby or not. So I learned to educate them that no, that was before my time. Oh, how the west always wanted to romanticize the Asian orphan. War baby. Daughter of a whore. That’s truly what everyone wanted to believe. And it truly added to my allure and also devaluation by white men.
So watching this movie was an eye-opener for me. Especially because I embraced the “ain’t gonna study war no more” anthem of the 60’s, which was also before my time. So I didn’t. Not at all. Because that war was about another race, not me, because I was not one of those people from that place (wherever THAT is)…
I didn’t know, for instance, that the North had nearly taken the entire peninsula or that the bulk of the war was spent keeping China at bay.
Missing from the above documentary was any pre-war analysis. I got some sense of what liberation meant from a few moments in the Korean movie Welcome to Dongmakgol, which is about an idyllic village untouched by time or war where a lone U.S. pilot and some stray North and South Korean troops manage to overcome their differences to save said village.
After centuries of rule and oppression, once the Korean peninsula was liberated, it was still being pulled in all directions by others. And still is today. Greatly weakened by poverty to the north and over-consumption to the south, Korea still doesn’t have a secure sense of itself: only that it must survive.
A member of the progressive party tells us of her protest days during the pro democracy movement and how her father locked her in a closet for days so she couldn’t join the violent demonstrations. She talked of their battle cry: FIGHTING! and how it’s just a fashionable meaningless thing to say now and she’s embarassed by what used to make her proud.
All around me are uniforms, at the schools, at the department stores and restaurants, the banks, and the salary men in their suits. Maybe these are remnants of militarization. Kindergartners yell out chanted response to calls from their teachers, and if we only dressed them in drab and put red ribbons in their hair, it’s not a stretch to see communist China. They like this. They thrive on it. To follow in a uniform manner builds solidarity and fosters fond feelings that the adults here still cherish. You are one of many. You belong to something. Even protesting is uniform and orderly.
I asked my student yesterday if he was a leader or a follower, and he said follower. Why? Because leading was too hard. To lead meant you had to be concerned about everyone and take care of them. “You mean, like a father figure?” I ask. “Yes,” he replied. I told him that in the west, we thought of leaders as those with the best ideas, who could inspire others; who made things happen. No. A leader took care of people.
I know that being part of the armed forces was the only secure thing my former husband ever had in his life, the closest thing he had to a functional family, and that when I worked for the military industrial complex myself I came to appreciate its rigor: one always knows the rules, your needs are always met, and you are never alone. Not having these three things strike terror in the hearts of Koreans, and so they live a life full of fear. Maybe this is what Tobias Hubinette meant by comforting an orphaned nation. The entire country has no leader, no father figure. And without an oppressor, who is the enemy? The uncertainty of that is stressful, almost too much to bear. And so they cling to uniforms, Dokdo and Tsushima, changing Japanese revisionist history, and keep the fight alive, trading arms for English, because without a fight there is only oblivion.
In the course of this recent movie marathon of mine, orphans of domestic or international variety come up far too frequently. Maybe a third of the random Korean movies I’ve seen have an orphan in them. A third!!! You’d think maybe one a year would be excessive, but no…now tell me someone’s conscience isn’t disturbed…In a forgotten country reeling from a forgotten war, in an orphaned nation, we cast-offs are co-opted as symbols of everyone’s collective hard knocks, yet we have no purchase. We were jettisoned for survival due to our inconvenience and we are beginning to be courted back again for survival and convenience. And when we aren’t co-opted symbols of THEIR hardship and tragedy, then we are envied our flight OUT of Korea, to a land of milk and honey.
“Nobody imagined adoptees would return,” Mrs. Seol of Holt said. Nobody imagined anything but their own escape fantasies. Over 76,000 have returned: way over half of all adult adoptees. Definitely not the neat ending they’d wanted.
I meant to post this two weeks ago. The letter to Kim Sook Ja got returned, with the following stamped note,”undeliverable as addressed.”
Holt blew it with the insensitive way they handled my case. Instead of being forthright about about all the documents they had and then exploring every possibility and giving me the opportunity to extend an invitation to her, they call her up from out of the blue and say some unnamed person thinks she’s your sister, without any background information. I’d run screaming in the opposite direction too.
Well, I did all I could this year, so I feel a little more at peace. Maybe in a year or two when I can afford a more thorough private investigator, she will feel differently. Kim Sook Ja deserves to know the circumstances behind her abandonment and the odd way in which our fates were documented as one.
In the meantime, may all the grateful Korean adoptees – working for the industry and hell bent on whitewashing everyone else’s stories – go to hell. The records, wrestled out of the adoption agency’s clutches, tell another tale.
So all year long I played the kids indie music before class started – that is, until they started demanding all music and no lesson…
Anyway, they would ask me if I liked K-pop and I told them it wasn’t very original, of which some would get offended and some would agree. I even tried to talk about how ART changes lives and makes us see the world in new ways, and that maybe some of their vocal and musical talent could be used to say something important, or to push their cultural heritage in new directions.
Well, this is an example of Korean pop music trying to push their cultural heritage in new directions. I couldn’t make it to the end…
Believe it or not, this won some music award…and that snake charmer music in the beginning of the song is the Korean traditional instrument, the Taepyongso, which is very similar to the Cornetta China that John plays for his traditional Cuban Conga and Comparsa music.
It’s really too bad. Some Korean music is hauntingly beautiful, and I’d like to hear more of it. The traditional Korean vibrato singing called pansori that grates on so many western ears is at times really spooky and hauntingly beautiful.
Here’s a sample from the movie Sopyonje that is tonight’s movie fare. Just the first few minutes of this movie can give you an idea of its expression of melancholy and han, and of its importance as an oral tradition.
and I can’t find the words for this…
The song she is singing is from a Korean folk tale about filial piety. Sim Chong is a girl born to a blind man. When her mother dies, shortly after her birth, her dying wish is that the girl becomes his eyes. The father’s name is Sim. The daughter’s name is Chong, which means eyes. Chong becomes an accomplished seamstress and one day a noble woman is impressed by her industry and offers to adopt her, but she refuses out of loyalty to her father.
While she is being delayed by this woman, her blind father goes searching for her and stumbles in a creek. He is rescued by a monk who tells him that if he donates 300 sacks of rice to the monastery, Buddha will restore his sight. Sim vows to give the monastery rice and is warned he will receive terrible retribution if he breaks his promise.
Chong, fearing her father will die and knowing there is no way they can make enough money to purchase 300 sacks of rice, tells her father the noble woman has offered him the rice for allowing Chong to be her daughter. To save her father, she sells herself to sailors to be sacrificed to appease the Gods of the sea whose storms are wrecking many ships. When she walks overboard, the seas calm and the sailors are convinced it is because of her devotion to her father.
This film won best director at the 1993 Cannes film festival, btw…watching it made me wistful. I am just a cultural tourist in this land. There’s so much cultural heritage we adoptees have been severed from, but we’ve got han in spades.
I wish I could afford to go to more cultural concerts, before this legacy disappears. Every now and then, I’ll pass a small shop with old people in it, and this kind of music will be playing, and I know that in a few short years this isn’t something anyone will experience just walking down a street.
Fortunately, some people in the country are trying to keep this tradition alive:
Lately I’ve been singing this song in my head.
Hugely popular in the early MTV days, I heard the quintessential oriental chinky chink riff a lot and it was all in good fun and inspired instant pogo dancing.
But now that I’ve spent a month in my Korean apartment with no furniture, I’m beginning to think I’m turning Korean. But Korean doesn’t fit in the song because of the syllable stress…
Something about being floor bound is changing my relationship with buildings. If it’s even possible for this 4′-10 1/2″ person to feel smaller, I do. And my 6′-0″ tall ceilings somehow seem like 8′-0″ tall ceilings as a result of being way way down here on the floor.
The inability to sit anywhere with legs dangling or at 90 degrees is forcing my body to fold up on itself, and vertical is such an effort that our natural inclination to economize movement forces one to choose to stay low and crawl to reach things. I find myself squatting more and also reclining more.
I can’t remember what exact incident it was when I realized I must look like an adjumma, the particular way I was crouched, and then cracking up at my own image. And my constant shedding is really a problem, because when you live at floor level, anything littering up the floor starts to bother you – a lot!
I can’t, honestly, say I’m enjoying it that much. Sustaining crossed legs or switching extending one leg or having one knee up gets to be tiresome. In my little Japanese upholstered half seat, it’s initially a relief to sit on something soft and lean back upon something that isn’t rigidly perpendicular, but even that requires a constant shifting of legs. And then I slide. And then I’m reclining again. And then I’m sleeping.
From a motor/locomotion perspective, removing the subtleties of the range of movement that a body on two differently jointed legs makes, with all their pivot points, vs. a body resting on two seat bones, I suddenly feel like a weeble, whose major movement is wobbling from left cheek to right cheek. Movement is like that of a sumo wrestler. Arms provide relief by redistributing weight to hands on thighs or floor, also in movement like a sumo wrestler. (see the first few minutes of this video to know what I’m talking about!)
Forget about keeping your knees and ankles together daintily. You need your hanbok skirt to cover up your vessel. You also need a gravity inversion table to give your poor spine a stretch in another direction.
I can live like this for a little while, but I definitely need some furniture soon. The problem with furniture is it kills the multi-functionality of a room, and Koreans traditionally lived in just one room with a separate kitchen. The mattress folds up and gets put on a shelf or in a chest. The dinner table folds up and goes on a shelf. the seat cushions come out when the table comes out. Today Korean apartments are much more like western homes, with a room for each member of the family if they can afford it.
Interestingly, the only people I’ve seen living like this are the people I replaced when looking at this apartment. Most homes I’ve been in (granted I haven’t been in many) are fully western furnished. People have beds, tables, chairs, and couches. One time I asked someone if they slept on the floor and they were clearly offended, though floor mattresses are still easily obtainable for purchase , so I’m guessing that living close to the ground has low class connotations. Or maybe it’s just Koreans have learned to like stretching their legs and backs. Maybe it’s not only the improved diet, but also the western furniture which is making Koreans taller…
First of all, thank you John for getting me here in the first place. Thank you Jane for helping me get-the-hell-out of Pyeongchon and for the rice cooker and humidifier. Thanks for the starter pots and pans and dishes Dan. Thanks for the refrigerator Willie! Some day I hope to be as good of a friend to you guys as you are to me. I’m lousy at being a friend, I know, but I am loyal.
I asked for a forbearance on my student loans and have spent most of it this month on housewares and now feel all my basic needs for living are met and fully functional. There’s now a clothing rack in the closet, a shelf in the kitchen, a large steamer/fry/sauce pot, an electric kettle, a shower hose that doesn’t fall off, a blanket and pajamas, a shoe shelf, and everything I need to wash clothes, a can opener, various utensils, and food in the fridge. Mrs. Kim approves.
It’s been fun wandering around my neighborhood each day as I discover some unmet need and venture out for the resulting shopping trip.
I try to purchase from smaller establishments but find they are mostly lacking what I need. Some of these places I don’t understand how they can even feed themselves. I went to the hardware store two minutes walk away, for example, and the guy was sleeping on the floor. He’s always sleeping because he never has any business. I had to pantomime that I needed a light bulb and he sold me one out of a box. When I asked him how much I saw a momentary flash of deceit cross his face and it took him too long to tell me. He ended up charging me 700 won. I don’t know if he jacked up the price but almost hope he did. The thought of 10-15 cents making a difference in his life seemed like a small price to pay. I’d go back, but most of what he sells I can’t use…
Seven Star asked me if there were any markets nearby. I told him there was no traditional market, but that there are some small and mid-sized groceries. He made a face and told me he would advise that I only shop at big chains and to save my money. I think he’s wrong. Just like in America, this might be true if I bought a lot of pre-packaged products, but since I hate most of that stuff it’s not a problem.
Seven Star also suspected the doorman wanted a bribe and told me my apartment mix-up was my fault because I was too trusting. His lack of trust and blaming me for what I felt was just a misunderstanding sent me on a horrible tail-spin about the lack of trustworthiness in Korea. But he also advised me to keep a baseball bat by my door and didn’t think anyplace but an officetel would be safe for a beautiful young woman. (ha!) So actually, I think Seven Star is just paranoid and maybe it isn’t all Korean people. However, there’s not one neighborhood I’ve ever been in anywhere in Korea that doesn’t have locked gates and bars on all their first floors…
Mostly I end up at the DC department store. I think the staff there thinks I’m crazy, as I’ve spent countless hours deliberating over things such as, do I want the purple dust pan with no rubber transition strip, or do I want the one that matches my broom but has that annoying cartoon on it or do I want the plain one that’s too small and not very ergonomic? I am totally neurotic about these kind of things, especially given that it’s mostly cheap crap from China that ALL looks like junk!
Cute side story. Mrs. Kim is in my apartment and sees my feather duster lying on the floor. She takes it and starts sweeping the floor with it, approving that I have cleaning supplies and thinking it is some new kind of broom. I shouldn’t have let her go on thinking a feather duster was a broom, but I didn’t know how to explain it to her.
This also reminds me of the time Young-a came to my officetel and insisted on sweeping after we ate. I handed her my full size standing broom, and she grabbed it about a foot away from the bristle head and was bent over, trying to use it like a short Asian broom, complaining about how it was a bad broom and hard to use. (the weight of the handle being so much more than the brush end which made it impossible to control) All I could do was chuckle and wonder what HER culture shock would be like if she had to live in America. The thought of standing erect while sweeping was such a foreign concept to her she’d never entertained it – even when faced with the obvious misplaced physics of its use.
Today’s sojourn for a stool from which to wash my clothes took me past some street food vendors. Let me tell you, there’s nothing better on a cold day than to stop and buy a roasted sweet potato from a little old man sitting in front of a charcoal fired metal drum roaster. Smells wonderful. Warms your hands and warms your insides. I don’t like roasted chestnuts, but the roasted corn on the cob might seduce me one day on another trip.
Where I live is perpendicular to Yongsan military base and I walk the main arterial there some times.
Closer to the base the businesses are less retail and service oriented and there seem to be a lot of small scale factory operations that do things like make dduk or deok (rice cake – in this case it’s a paste that is rolled into pasta shapes and cut for purposes of boiling like dumplings – in other cases it is sweetened and possibly flavored with additions like nuts or bean paste and made into deserts)
I see several operations like this in basements in my neighborhood as well. I also see a lot of taxi cabs. The adjosshi that is my landlord’s husband is also a taxi driver.
The base is surrounded with what looks like 40ft. high freeway sound barriers or temporary construction walls and no way to look in, which is to be expected, but you’d think they could have provided some vegetation or something to ameliorate the starkness of such a wall. There is a smaller alternative to DC that has simpler designed products that I like to go to that is on the way to Yongsan.
On the way home I stop and buy some banchan (side dishes) at a store and the woman is tickled with my cursive signature. The banchan, btw, is excellent and thank God for that store, otherwise I would get no vegetables since the school cafeteria is no longer open and I’ve no idea how or the incliniation to prepare those dishes for only myself anyway.
Connecting the Yongsan area and Itaewon is antique street. I bet there are close to 100 of these antique shops. It’s a really bizarre thing seeing all these items – they’re large and heavy or strangely out of place and it’s hard to imagine them in a Korean apartment. They might look okay in a large villa, and one can often see them as the main decor in some of the more eccentric and unfrequented bars and coffee shops run by bored Korean wives. Each shop specializes in one thing or another, such as Rococco or Victorian Shabby Chic or Atomic Age. They are very, very expensive and most of them have been imported from Europe. I had a lot of fun checking out some mid-century modern from England, comparing it to American mid-century modern. But the prices were almost double.
Looking for cheap storage solutions recently I began to realize that furniture in Korea is really, really expensive. Plastic is used a lot and the particle board and papered stuff like one might find at Ikea is almost twice the price, and it tends to be quite ugly. In fact, there is one guy on-line who imports Ikea and sells it at a really high mark-up. The best prices for this garbage furniture can be found on-line at G-market. But it’s really garbage and really over-priced. (actually, some of it is inexpensive, but it’s thin and basically disposable)
The beautiful interior design and decor you see in Korean movies and dramas is all boutique stuff, and I can’t imagine the price. There truly truly is a huge class disparity here, and the problem is there’s nothing of quality available for the poor.
Supposedly, because the cost of disposal is so high, people will leave discarded furniture on the street and many poor people furnish their homes with this recycled stuff. But I’ve yet to see anything that wasn’t broken, and the one time I saw a couch I was in a bind because I didn’t have anyone to help me drag it home.
Walking the other direction through Itaewon’s east side are every kind of international restaurant you could want: such as Turkish, African, Indian, Pakistani, Moroccan, Thai, Mexican, Uzbekistan, French, Belgian, Japanese, Italian, etc. Starting with the more down-to-earth and least expensive and working its way to more refined and expensive the further you head east in the direction of the embassies.
Eating International in Korea is interesting because some of the dishes have become fusion dishes – due to either limitations on expensive items or to satisfy Korean palettes, I’m not sure – but they are sometimes spicier than you might be used to elsewhere on the planet. There are often times a side dish or two thrown in, in deference to Korean culture and sometimes the side dishes are just out and out Korean side dishes.
Not only food but also retail gets progressively more expensive as you head east, and the shops are replaced with boutiques and then some pretty impressive architecture and the jim jil bangs get replaced with world class spas offering a full range of services such as mud baths and aroma therapy, etc. The BMW dealership is in that direction as well. And also busloads of tourists – but I don’t know what they could possibly be looking at up there.
Along with hip hop gear, leather, and shops catering to larger American sizes are lots of tailors. I guess there’s over 1,200 shops in Itaewon, and they tend to be a bit pricier than other areas because they have more western made products for sale. Levi’s, Calvin Klein, and Nike have stores here too.
Anyway, this place is interesting. Now, I’ve got some clothing to learn to wash and hopefully this time I can do it without permanent wrinkles.
Day after relentless day I travel “home” to an empty apartment. But after almost a year, the foreign landscape is becoming familiar, even though I am illiterate, deaf and dumb here, so I am becoming accustomed to this unhealthy isolation.
Yesterday I went and had an expensive breakfast at the American Diner and was delighted to be able to eavesdrop on a conversation about urban planning.
You don’t know how much you miss eavesdropping when you are denied that ability.
Always, always, I am always alone. I am not sure if this is because I work at a publicly funded secondary school and am therefore the only foreigner, or because Koreans are too busy to socialize, or if it’s only the Koreans at my particular Christian missionary school that fear socializing, or if it’s because I’m too unusual because I look too familiar and my presence makes me question their own expectations of what foreigners are supposed to be and why I am a foreigner and how they reconcile their own shame, or if it’s just too much work to try to communicate with me, or if it’s because I’m too strapped for money to afford the requisite trappings of socializing, or if it’s because in times of stress I retreat so I can lick my wounds to heal and begin again. Probably all of the above.
Some days, I could go mad with the desire to just speak out loud to someone next to me or to turn and have someone next to me, but no one is there. I am either surrounded by people who can’t and won’t talk to me or living a monk-like existence between my four walls. Most days I have only images pouring in from my laptop or silent words pouring out from my fingers. Sloppy, poorly formed, extemporaneous words, trying to process this experience.
And then, occasionally, I meet Jane for some adoption related excuse and we talk about friend things and I forget I’m standing in the presence of giants. Next week? Jennifer Kwon Dobbs will be here and Jane’s table will turn into a think tank and I will be in the presence of not one, but two giants. Watching them tackle ideas together is like witnessing live a CG simulation of a brain in seizure, the neurons firing so fast collapse is nearly imminent. At their table, I am like a baby: poorly versed in literature, zero exposure to adoption studies, only two years getting back on my bicycle writing anything, and all of it amateurish and as amateur. I feel superficial and simple in their presence. But still they welcome me. And we drink makkolli and act foolish and blubber like friends do.
Take a few minutes to read this interview/discussion with Jane Jeong Trenka, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, and Su Yung Shin published in the Asian American Poetry and Writing on-line journal to see what I’m talking about: the connections they make, the bravery of tackling subject matter holistically, their clarity of logic and humanity. I am illuminated by their presence, and you will be too.
Thought I’d document my new puppet making process for you.
Over the past few months I’ve been collecting low-tech puppet-making materials…wow, that wig was expensive!
And here we are at stage 1:
………………………………………….
In the movie Henry and June, Uma Thurman was often accompanied by her puppet, Count Bruga. 
For some reason, this spoke to me. As Henry’s muse, her tortured manic soul seemed like a different person in the images of her and the puppet alone together. So I’ve always wanted to make puppets for people to animate. As extensions of ourselves, imagination and the world of dolls are repressed as we become adults, but isn’t that what we really need more of?
A teenage girl I know has been taken out of school for mental health issues, and so I thought maybe a marionette of herself would be a good companion to have. So I’m making one for her and her sister.
When I tell people I like to make puppets, they instantly go on about using them for teaching or plays, etc. But I’m not interested in sock puppets or entertainment. I’m interested in exploring the abiding loneliness of existence and the ways in which we create alternate worlds. The way we animate dolls and the meaning of dolls is of deep significance.
My moniker almost human is often mistaken as negative self commentary, but really it is a description of these bodies I feel the need to make. I can’t help thinking that this sense I have of being without people and place is a feeling all people share, and that these bodies we inhabit or that we animate could be therapeutic for others as well.
I need to have someone teach me how to wash clothes. I’ve washed clothes by hand before, but that was when I had a whole bathtub, so had no idea how to proceed here. My first attempt mixed some soap powder with water in my little basin, but it was too much soap and couldn’t rinse it out enough…
I went and bought some bar laundry soap! Works much better! And I love the way it smells, too. And a brush to go with the scrubbing board. For rinsing, I just spread the clothes out on the bathroom floor and hose them down a long time. The problem is wringing. I can’t do enough of it and then the clothing is permanently creased and no amount of flattening or ironing seems to get the creases out. I was drying the clothes on my rack in the walk-in closet, but now I’m wondering if I should just dry it in the bathroom instead, and not wring it at all…The traditional method of Korean culture was to beat the dried clothes with sticks on a flat board. I wonder if they wrung or didn’t wring first?
The clothes are cleaner than machine washed, but I also imagine they’ll get pretty beat-up looking fast and wonder if I should wash them inside-out…I know in the Caribbean they hung their clothes inside out due to the sun bleaching, but did they wash them inside out as well? T-shirts don’t look so great after being hand washed. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to buy anything made out of t-shirt material in general from now on: they just pill up and get out of shape and get dingy too fast. Comparing them to my one warm woven shirt after hand-washing, and the difference in looks and ease of cleaning is amazing.
It feels anachronistic, this hand washing, and that’s kind of fun. If only I knew what I was doing!
I take back my previous statements about loving floor heating. Well, sort of. The problem, from a personal heating/cooling perspective, with this floor heating is the oppressive monotony of it.
Anyone who’s ever read Lisa Heschong’s Thermal Delight in Architecture would understand. (which you probably haven’t, not being an Architecture major, but which everyone on the planet should read – especially non-Architects, as it’s tiny, incredibly accessible, and how more people should think about Architecture) Like everything in life, it is the contrasts and the progression between them which make life interesting, which delight us and remind us we’re alive.
But sitting on this floor, lying on this floor, walking across this floor, I just feel like slowly baking ham…
Maybe it was different in another day and age when, instead of evenly disbursed coils set in concrete, the ondol system was truly fed by fire and the heat from the fire was shunted under the floors via actual flues. At least then the heat was uneven and a person’s thermal comfort could be controlled by the proximity to the heat source. Or, maybe it was better when the walls were only 3″ of straw and mud and the windows were covered in paper.
The only escape from this heat is to strip, or open the window, or go hang out in the unheated bathroom and get dripped on. Or sleep. Sleeping gives relief due to the lowered body metabolism, and I’ve even found my little moving pad blanket inadequate. So I bought these super cute blanket pajamas for sale everywhere, and I roast in those as well. But, I roast cutely…
I haven’t lived in a real winter climate since I was a kid, so it’s very amusing for me. I forgot, for example, that manhole covers = guaranteed slipping, and that even if you don’t eat pavement, one slip and muscles you don’t know you have will be sore the next day. I’d forgotten that people must start their cars 15 minutes early and leave them running so they don’t stall out. I’d forgotten that pipes freeze and walls sweat. I’d forgotten that over-dressing is a great way to get yourself sick from sweating and freezing.
Korean winters are a bit different from American winters, however. Except for the Ugg boot knock-offs, the majority of women are still walking around in high heels. Fur is everywhere. NOT fake fur. Real once live animals. It’s super chic, but also super pretentious. Scarves are a fashion must and I’m actually all about them. It really sucks being around so many wonderful sweaters and scarves and passing them all bye.
Cardboard boxes are everywhere, used to soak up the excess melting snow from boots. There don’t seem to be trays for snow boots like in the States. There don’t seem to be that many wearing snow boots. Just like there aren’t many raincoats during rainy season, just umbrellas. There aren’t boot scrapers or brushes either. The school hallways are a filthy dirty mess…
The most frightening thing in my neighborhood is the grade of the hills are so steep. (30-40%!!!) There aren’t sidewalks in most places, and the streets are barely wide enough for a car to get past, so if one skidded it would be easy to get pinned or crushed between a car and a brick wall…I also live in a high density motorcycle/moped area, probably precisely because the streets ARE so steep and narrow, and these crazy guys are still driving in the snow and ice. I watch them going downhill on idle, their legs out dragging their feet, squeezing the brakes.
Another frightening thing is because the area is sooo hilly, there don’t seem to be safety regulations regarding stair step riser height or stringent handrail requirements anywhere in Korea, wet steps can be really treacherous. The street of course is unlevel, and the bottom step is often met with some poorly constructed ramp connecting the two. I’ve helped several old ladies cross this transition out of stores, but the entire time I was praying I didn’t take them down with me if I lost it!
And the curbs here. They’re not rolled asphalt or poured and rounded concrete like in the states. They’re GRANITE. And they’re smooth and they have pretty sharp edges.
I haven’t seen any salt or sand being used to control the ice. Only snow shovels. I also saw shop owners on their hands and knees scraping the ice with hammers laid on their sides. They were doing it in unison and chanting something, so it made me feel good.
