Appreciation for the Calm

Starting 2022 amidst the most widespread outbreak of a 2+ year pandemic has ironically led to a slowing down and calm pace for my life. We've been lucky enough to avoid infection thus far, so now that the rates of Covid transmission and hospitalizations are higher than they've ever been, we've elected to reduce the number of activities we are engaging in at present as a mitigation strategy. The kids are still going to school and taekwondo (masked, thankfully), Min is doing whatever shopping we need, and I am going in person to work most days of the week and taking my Mom to doctor's appointments, but we've mostly curtailed other activities. Even though there is no government mandate to refrain, we find it prudent at this time.

Water always makes me feel peaceful. This is the Monocacy River near our home.

For me, this means no gym classes, no dining out, and no gatherings indoors. What's strange this time is that it seems as though very few other people are limiting some of their activities, despite the fact that our hospital is operating in crisis mode and our school staffs are dealing with absentee rates so high that we are discussing possible short-term contingency plans for in-person instruction. The local college I work with has already decided to stay fully remote with virtual instruction through February 6. There's no guidance to help the public in how to navigate what's happening now, and the CDC Director was describing it as "encouraging" that people like me with immune suppression and diabetes are the people that are dying from this round of infection. I digress...

The kids decided to prepare us breakfast for our anniversary (12 years--WOW). It was quite sweet.

Far from feeling deprived and adrift as I did in the early weeks of March and April 2020, I feel an ease of slipping back into the routines and joys we discovered when the whole world shut down. I find myself grateful for the beautiful nature in our neighborhood on my walks, for the free yoga challenge online, for a wonderful dance instructor still having Sunday Zoom workouts, for more time to play board games with my kids and cook healthy meals. I have enjoyed more time to rest and read, dig into my grad classes, write in this blog.

My little snow bunny.

I feel a kind of contented ease that I don't really recall enjoying in the past. Perhaps, I have just become more comfortable with existing in the present moment and enjoying the company of my family. Maybe I like the excuse to ruthlessly cut nonessentials from my life. Or maybe it was the first huge snowstorm of the year which always makes the world look brand new. Whatever it is, I like it. I'm going to try to cultivate this essentialist approach to my time and enjoyment.

Here's a little hope into the world that we can stay healthy and joyful, even if the world feels like it's conspiring to keep us from those things.

Baby J turned two months old...

Starting to develop some serious head control.

Having a child feels like you're counting time like a teenager does in relationships.  You celebrate weekly and monthly "anniversaries" (but I still refuse to call them that!) or "birthdays."  Jeongmin turned two months a couple days ago.  Here are some pictures of what he's been up to the past few weeks:

Baby giggles:  Awesome.

Hanging out with Nora, the daughter of my friends Amy and Andrew, just two weeks younger than Jeongmin.  He looks very smug here--he's quite the ladies' man already.

Daddy's belly is super comfortable.

He charms all the ladies.  Here he is with Min Gi's manager's daughter, Jisu.  He's already charmed her.

I love this picture.  It's captured the personality I see all day.

Min Gi has left his job to begin his new adventure as a full-time dad, and I have just one week of maternity leave left.  It will be hard to be apart from the little guy (very hard), but in some ways I look forward to returning to my job.

For more cuteness:

Baby: Weeks 7 -9

Natural Disaster #2: Goodnight, Irene.

What a week it has been here in the DC/Baltimore area, folks.  And damn, I should really be careful about wishing for experiences.

Just as we were all coming off of the collective "phew" from the earthquake that caused very little damage and even fewer casualties, the weatherpersons started to project a path of doom for the Hurricane Irene creeping up the east coast to finally hit North Carolina on Saturday, pounding the crap out of most of the eastern sea board up into Canada.

We don't often get hurricanes in this area--they usually fizzle out to minorly annoying tropical storms before they even cause us any rain--so we aren't particularly equipped to handle them well.  The last serious hurricane here was when Hurricane Isabel found her way up the Chesapeake Bay eight years ago.  I was in college down in St. Mary's, which is a low-lying area surrounded by water.  I hunkered down for the storm a bit more inland (with my friend Amy, who is--interestingly enough--expecting her first child about a week after mine) and remember that the main effects were a loss of power lasting an average of 8-72 hours for most people, major flooding (I know some people who lost homes in Georgetown from that), and downed trees becoming projectile missiles that destroyed parts of homes, cars, and anything else they fancied smashing into.

The nice thing about a hurricane (and just about the ONLY "nice" thing about a hurricane) is that you usually have plenty of time to prepare for the doom. Which is great (because you can prevent a lot of casualties and some more severe property loss), but also sucks because you feel obligated to do a whole lot of things to prepare that may prove unnecessary because the path of the storm alters.

With the memory of Isabel in mind, after working my 8 hour shift at the crisis hotline on Friday (with lots of people calling to ask for info about the storm), I slept only a few hours and spent all morning Saturday prepping my folks' house for the storm and making some foods that wouldn't require the use of electricity to eat (pasta salad, anyone?).  Since my parents are doing a lot of home repairs at the moment, by the time I finished, I was dripping with sweat and the garage was bursting with renovation supplies, trash cans, plastic bins, and assorted lawn things.   Then it was time to shower and head back in to work.

The worst bit of the storm was predicted for this area between 10pm Saturday and 3am Sunday.  Well... I work 4pm-12am on Saturday, so I just packed up the blow up camping bed, an overnight bag, plenty of food, and headed in figuring that I would wait to leave until after things had calmed down.  I crashed in a co-worker's office after my shift ended and woke up around 7:30 am.  We only lost power twice during the storm, and it came back quickly (within 5 minutes) both times.

As my drive home (and Sunday evening shift at work with many, many calls from people in crisis because of the storm) proved, we were very lucky.  Every other neighborhood I drove through seemed to have some major property damage/power loss.  The ones between were completely untouched.  I'm grateful that my family's house was spared, but I know others, like Amanda, dealt with some major damage and long-term outages.  School openings were delayed in Southern Maryland.  People in Baltimore are still without power.  The news is saying the property damage is reaching record highs and at least 31 deaths have been attributed to the storm.

My husband found the whole thing exhilarating, but he was definitely anxious.  Korea is not a country that gets much in the way of earthquakes, thunderstorms (which DC has had plenty of in late summer), or hurricanes, so it was all new for him.  He worried himself sick about me, even though he knew exactly where I was and that I wasn't doing stupid things like driving home in the middle of the storm.

Generally, the people who analyze this sort of thing (like my friend Sam who works on NOAA's latest hurricane weather computer modeling) say that the DC metro area got off pretty light, and I tend to agree.  Although that doesn't really help the people who did lose a lot.  (Side note--I'm really going to have to have a rant one of these days about how not opening storm shelters until after the storm is well under way in a county that has a significant homeless population living out of cars and under bridges and bleachers is unacceptable.  Telling them to "stay in the basement" doesn't help, morons.)

Let's hope that was the last bit of "excitement" on the mother nature front for at least... say... the next three months.  At which point I'm sure that the labor and delivery of my feisty child will be about all the "natural" and "disaster" I can tolerate.

Earthquake?

As most of you know by now, yesterday just before 2 p.m., DC (and much of the east coast) was rocked by a freak, nearly 6.0 magnitude earthquake centered in Virginia.  The good news is that there has been very little damage reported.  Everyone's been sharing their stories of doom and gloom from their buildings shaking and fears of an apocalypse and all that.  So what's mine?

I'll tell you.

Nothing.

That's right.  N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

I didn't feel a damn thing when the big disaster quake of '11 went down because I had chosen that moment to hop in my car and drive to the gym for my daily laps in the pool.  I guess when you're driving 40-50 mph, some mild ground rumbling just doesn't even register in your frame of reference.  When I got to the gym, everyone was freaking out and watching CNN where the story had just begun unfolding.  I asked what happened and a girl in the locker room who had been lifting weights said that a few minutes earlier, the whole building and all the gym equipment was shaking and felt like it went on for a full minute.

I was concerned initially that bad things had happened (after all, that's a pretty significant natural disaster), but as the reports that no casualties had occurred and few buildings had reported any damage, my disappointment at having missed the whole shebang set in.

I swam a half-mile (which did not feel nearly as satisfying as usual) and returned to my car to 13 (yes, 13) missed calls from my husband who had been pretty freaked out that I'd been unavailable in the hour following the event.  My sister had also sent a panicked text message.

But, of course, everything was fine.  Life resumed normalcy.  It was like the whole thing never happened.

Except for me, I don't even get the memory of the thing.

Is this what they mean when they say that sometimes history just passes us right on by?

Life's Little Changes

Yesterday, I heard the very fast, tinny heartbeat of my thirteenish-week-old soon-to-be baby at the OB's office on something that I swear she called a Doppler radar.

I know what you're thinking--I'm about to run off into a sloppy, sentimental tear-jerker about how joyous and bubbly I am at the thought of giving birth to my "little miracle" as the literature on classes offered by the local hospital likes to call it.  But you're wrong.

Being pregnant has been a hell of a ride.  Besides the hormonal rages, exhaustion that felt like when I had mono in college, and ongoing battle with morning sickness that could only be made tolerable by the use of acupressure wristbands, the emotional shock to my system is jarring.  As I enter the second trimester and the physical nastiness is subsiding, those emotional issues have nothing left to hide behind.

I'm experiencing a kind of raw vulnerability unlike anything I've ever known in my life.  I can't plan or predict or adequately prepare for the reality of motherhood--the very concept is beyond me.

Every decision, no matter how mundane or trivial before, is now being made as if under the bright hot lights of a police interrogation room.  Are you sure you want to get the ant traps with chemicals?  They could cause birth defects, right?  And let's not even get into the career-path choices I'm dealing with at the same time.  (Why oh why are you switching to a career earning $20K less per year than your already underpaid profession???)

But it's not even my own decisions that are killer.  I can control those.  Own them.  It's the decisions other people in my life make, like my husband, that are impossible to handle.

I have to rely on people, especially Min Gi; I'm only just now beginning to fathom the extent to which I cannot control the actions and behaviors of others.  This loss of control at a time when I need it the most to shape and form the best life for this future person growing inside me is unbearable.  Now, I know I'm a control freak.  And I've learned by and large to let go of this less attractive side of my personality over time, but it's rearing its ugly head with a fiery vengeance in the wake of the terror at the responsibility I am about to assume.

Don't get me wrong here; I want to have children.  Min Gi is excited and bubbly about it.  I have a lot of support from family and friends and current and future employers.  But I think this glowy-happy-angelic view we have of pregnancy only makes those of us (and I suspect there are more of you out there than will admit it) with some ambivalence feel alone.  Isolated.  Abandoned.

The combination of the fear, isolation, and loss of control is not pretty.  I'm fighting.  With my mom.  With Min Gi.  With my friends.  With myself.  I look at myself and see not a grown woman capable of raising a child with joy and poise, but a scared little girl that needs tending but fights back at everyone who tries to get in to help.

I hesitate to post this to my blog (which not that many people still read... thankfully) because of the public nature of the forum and knowing (hoping) that these feelings are temporary and will be overcome and replaced by others of a more positive and possibly nausea-inducing sugar-coated variety.  But I hope that both in revealing the pregnancy and in discussing the feelings I have about it honestly, I might be able to pull myself through it a bit faster.  And maybe, just maybe, make those of you feeling something similar less afraid to reach out and talk to someone about it.

Korea isn't the only country screwing foreign teachers...

When I worked in Korea, one of the "hot topics" that Korean bloggers who were English teachers enjoyed (endlessly) blogging (and complaining) about was how some disreputable and shady hagwons liked to exploit their foreign English teachers and screw them out of money, time, and benefits promised them in contracts or guaranteed by Korean labor law.

Newsflash, children:  Korea isn't the only offender in the screw-the-foreign-teacher game.

My very own employer in the U.S., Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland, is in hot water for failing to comply with U.S. labor laws regarding paying the visa fees for foreign employees.  In today's Washington Post article by Robert Samuels, "Federal investigation: Pr. George’s owes foreign teachers millions," PGCPS was sanctioned by the Department of Labor on behalf of mostly Filipino teachers recruited for math and science positions.  They were called a "willful violator" of labor law:

School officials recruited the foreign instructors for classes such as math and science that were hard to fill but then required that the teachers cover thousands of dollars in expenses related to getting temporary work visas — expenses that, Labor Department officials said, should have been covered by the system. That violated laws requiring that U.S. and foreign teachers be compensated equally.

Federal officials have labeled the Prince George’s County Public School System a “willful violator’’ of labor laws and could forbid it to get any more temporary work visas, the majority of which were given to educators from the Philippines.

Our defense?  "We didn't know."  It is so like PGCPS to plead incompetence in order to wriggle out of what amounts to a criminal finding.  They are now open to civil lawsuits on the matter.  As if we didn't have enough budget problems.

Now, I will admit that I do not work for the most reputable of counties.  They do not have a history of treating teachers well and frequently have "scandals" at all levels of administration (most recently our County Executive was indicted for corruption and removed from office in February of this year).   There's a reason I'm leaving at the end of this school year and never, ever looking back.

However, it will be hard now for the screwed over EFL worker in Korea to now claim that it would "never" happen back in America.  It just did.

Ok, Korea... what do you want from me?

With about 24 hours to go before I hop on the plane to DC (which explains the lack of updates, btw), Korea's trying to send me a message about my leaving, but I can't figure out what it is, yet. Here are the news events from the last few days that are just... bizarre:

1. My school was hit with a major round of food poisoning, cancelling all my classes on Monday. The cafeteria is now out of commission until further notice.

2. The day after we leave Jeju (yes, tons of pictures and blogging from that to come) to return to Daegu, it's hit by typhoon Dianmu. A major one (and the rains from it have made it up to the mainland now, too) that closed down all the airports. Hopefully it will have passed through Korea by tomorrow and not be affecting Incheon... Sheesh.

3. A bus exploded in Seoul Monday, injuring 17 people. It's so crazy because nothing like that had happened to these buses before and now everyone's worried about the safety of these buses that run on natural gas.

4. North Korea. I really don't know if I need to say more since the situation is so charged up right now that it's actually making the headlines in the U.S. again.

So... is 우리나라 telling me to go or to stay or to do a silly dance? Dunno. I'm just trying to go about my business of getting everything done and packed and saying goodbye to as many people as possible without weeping hysterically (Ohmma almost broke me down last night when she started crying and agreed to visit the U.S. for the first time) before we hop the 3 am bus to Incheon with two cats.

Thankfully, my wonderful husband is willing to do the round trip with me to Incheon (five hours in a bus each way) to ease the process of checking in the cats and to say goodbye melodramatically as we separate for the next month.

But for now, I have to go meet Se Jin for coffee. On about 4 hours of sleep with the rain pelting down... Korea... I'll miss you, though you seem to be pouting like a spoiled child at my departure.

My New American Dream

The Crafton family from Severna, MD now rock my world:

Crafton family enjoys rare closeness after seven years together at sea

After living the past seven years in this cabin the size of a hotel bathroom, the Crafton family seems in no hurry to clear out now. On a muggy, sun-drenched morning, all five of them -- knees just touching, lives completely entwined-- sit cheerfully in the sailboat that has been their home since they pulled away from this Severna Park dock in 2003.

Click to continue

Think I could convince Min Gi? Would you read that blog? Something to shoot for...

Contributing Writer to Joongang Daily

Well, this has been a very emotional week for me, and I want to write about it all. However, I've also come down with the flu. So I will give you a few highlights:

--We held the second English Play Festival at our school (I mentioned last year's festival in brief). I wrote an article for the Joongang Daily that ran on Friday about our schools English Play Festival. You can read "Students learn English through acting in Daegu," which is my attempt to keep some things foreign teachers do in Korea in a positive light. William wrote a much more detailed and emotional view of our brainchild over at his blog. I will put up my own thoughts and feelings about this later when I can do so without being reduced to an emotional puddle of goo.

--Saja likes to chase her tail. She does this daily for about 10 minutes. It's very entertaining, so I will share my 30 second clip of it with you:




I will fill you in on more happenings (of which there are many) in short order. For now, back to bed with more medicine.

Min Gi is on TV

Last week at Asurajang, our friend Jinju showed up with camera in tow. Apparently, her husband is being profiled for a kind of documentary show because he is an "early adapter" which is Konglish for a techie geek--someone who buys the latest technology and writes manuals and reviews online to let other people know about the advantages and flaws of a product. The documentary contrasts Jinju and her husband with an old couple in the Korean countryside who live without much technology of any kind. Anyhow, several members of my swing club, including Min Gi, were interviewed for the program.

You can watch the program here (it does open up a video program on your computer so if your security settings are really high, you might not be able to see it). At around 24:43 the section about the swing dance club begins, and at 26:08 you can see my husband joking around that Jinju's phone number changes so often that he has two numbers stored in his phone for her, but whenever she calls him, a new number pops up and he doesn't know who is calling (this was related to the profile where Jinju was complaining a bit about her husband often changing her phone). You can also see my friends Leah (the only white person in the interview) and Jina as well as some of Joey (Leah's husband) dancing with Jinju. In the background of some shots are other folks I know and love dearly.

Well, enjoy!

Short Story Published on Internet Magazine

Good news for me! The online literary magazine, Girls with Insurance, published a short story of mine today called "Suicide Hotline." It is entirely fiction, though obviously based somewhat on my experiences as a volunteer crisis counselor. Enjoy!

Korea's Marriage Migrants

Doing research for an upcoming project, I stumbled across a fascinating piece of research presented at the International Conference on Border Control and Empowerment of Immigrant Brides held in September 2007 in Taipei. Marriage Migrant Women in Korea and Attempts to Organize Them was presented by Lee, Inkyoung. She uses case studies and statistical data to highlight the problems faced by women, mostly from rural China and Vietnam, who come to Korea to marry with the promise of the wealth of a more powerful country. Unfortunately, the reality of such arranged marriages rarely live up to the promise of "The Korean Dream."

Some excerpts:

“There were many people who went to work in Korea from my hometown. They became richer and built nice houses when they came back. I envied them a lot. I was keen to work in Korea. But it was quite difficult to get a working visa. One of my acquaintances introduced me to a Korean man. I just thought that I would marry him and as soon as I arrive in Korea, I would run away from him and work somewhere. But the guy was quite gentle to me. We just fell in love with each other after several meetings and I gave up running away from him. But you have to know it, most foreign brides come to Korea because of poverty. If they are well-educated or if their family has a lot of property, they never come to Korea for marriage especially to men old enough to be their father. Our family does not have much money and could not give us education so I came here. Even Korean men who are married to foreigners don’t have money like us. If they are tall, well educated, or have good jobs and good salary, they never marry us. We were poor there but we are poor here in Korea.”? Related by a Chinese who has lived for 3 years in Korea.

It’s a story from my Chinese coworker. I believe she explained well the situation at home, their motivation for marriage migration and the method they use. I already gave up academic value in this paper. I think it’s beyond my ability. I am using many cases to understand the situation of marriage migrant women in Korea.

...

Usually Korean men who want to marry Vietnamese have to pay around 10,000USD to 15,000USD to the brokers. The brokers take the men for marriage trips for 5 nights and 6 days on the average. I would like to describe in detail what they do during the trip so that we can understand how quickly marriage is conducted by the brokers. The first day, they reach Vietnam. They attend a marriage meeting and select their girls. If the girls agree to marry them they meet the girls' parents and date with the girls and prepare documents in seconds. They apply for spouse visa to the Korean embassy and take a medical check-up and go shopping for their brides on the third day. They have the wedding and sleep together on the fourth day and go on honeymoon trip on the fifth day. Korean husbands take a medical check up and come back to Korea on the sixth day. I think it's quite a short time for someone to meet and decide his/her spouse within 6 days. Brokers' interest is getting higher by the success rate of marriage. So the brokers never provide real information to either party but only the image of Asian women to Korean men and developed Korean society to foreign women. This kind of marriage has potential problems due to lack of information and time. We receive many complaints from migrant women towards the brokers such as domestic violence, confinement, and other severe human rights abuses.

The statistics she pulls are also enough to knock some sense of perspective into the English teacher K-blogging circle who complain about Korea's reaction to their relationships with Korean women. Of the 39,690 marriages between a Korean national and a foreign person registered in 2006, almost 70% were between a Korean man and a woman from China, Vietnam, Philippines, Mongolia, Cambodia, and Uzbekistan, countries known to have marriage brokering services for Korean men.

People who complain about E-2 visa regulations in Korea may not be wrong, but they really should realize that there are bigger immigration fish to fry in this homogeneous and sometimes xenophobic country. Do some good and educate yourself about these things.

Gotcha!

"Hi Mom. I'm just calling to let you know I'm ok. You probably heard the news by now."

"What news?"

"About North Korea?"

"What happened?"

"Oh. Wow. Turn on the TV. They invaded Seoul earlier today."

"Oh no. Why is this not the top story on the radio???"

"I don't know, but I just wanted to let you know I'm ok. The U.S. embassy sent out a report advising us not to panic and to please not plan immediate evacuation if we were south of Daejeon, but I don't know."

"You should come home RIGHT NOW. Is Min Gi's family in Seoul alright?"

"They're fine. Mom... what day is it?"

"Thursday. Why?"

"No... the date."

"The first... Oh! You're awful. Call your father and tell him, too."

He bought it hook, line, and sinker as well. Happy April Fool's Day, all.

Reflections on Genocide

Excavated mass graves at the Choeung Ek site. Each of the 29 graves contained remains of more than 100 bodies; the largest had almost 400.
Located 17 km outside of the capitol city, the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek have been preserved as a memorial to the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge against the Cambodian people between 1975 and 1979. Similar execution sites have been found throughout Cambodia containing the remains of more than 2 million people brutally executed by the Khmer Rouge. Min Gi and I visited in the early morning, just as the school children were biking to the nearby school.


The "Magic Tree" where Khmer Rouge soldiers would hang a radio to blast propaganda to drown out the cries and screams of the prisoners. There was also a "Killing Tree" where soldiers supposedly smashed infants' skulls against to save money on bullets.
A Buddhist stupa was constructed at the site to honor the dead. The stupa contains many of the remains found in the grave sites, including clothes and bones of the victims, preserved as a religious monument. There is also a small museum on the grounds which includes a small documentary movie theater and some of the weapons used for execution.


Clouds reflected in the tiered stupa
After spending about three hours walking around the grounds reflecting on the events that occurred at the site (we were the first ones there and there were very few tourists until just before we departed), we went into to town to see the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum is housed in the former Khmer Rouge prison, S21, that served as a holding and torture center for people later executed at the Choeung Ek fields.


Classrooms converted into tiny brick holding cells.
The prison was a former secondary school. It was eerie to see how starkly the cheery, yellow-tiled, institutional floors contrasted with the preserved cells and torture devices and other exhibits. Of the estimated 17,000 prisoners, only 12 were known to have survived, four of whom are still alive today. One documentary at the museum had a former Khmer Rouge soldier and a former prisoner touring the site again, together, describing the torture techniques that were used.


An individual torture room for the most "dangerous" prisoners.
Overall, the morning was sobering and a little depressing. I learned a lot about Cambodia's dark and recent history, and I hope to learn more in the future. What's so unimaginable is that the United Nations allowed the Khmer Rouge oppressors to represent Cambodia's interests until 1993. Western countries' role in the atrocities in Cambodia (and other parts of Asia for that matter) make me ashamed of my country.

The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Genocide is impossible for me to understand.

It took a long time for me to accept that reality. When I was young, I thought (naively) that I could figure everything out if I just thought about it long enough. I wanted to believe that we could study these mistakes and learn from our collective historical mistakes. I believed in the power of humanity to improve itself. That "world peace" was possible--and even could be achieved within a lifetime.

I remember reading everything I could about the Holocaust and Stalin's regime to try to understand how people could participate in mass murder. I very quickly realized that the perpetrators of the worst violence were not all psychopaths. It's too easy to simply label the soldiers "evil"--they were often relatively normal, somewhat idealistic young men and women. Even the leaders maintained a distance from the worst of the atrocities, making it less immediate. And after awhile, one stops feeling like there is a big difference between 2,000,000 and 2,000,001 people killed.

I still don't know how to reconcile the existence of such evil with my understanding of people, who I believe generally act in ways they believe are good and right. No one is the villain of their own story. But then, how do these things still happen? I don't know. I really don't...

Floating Village near Siem Reap

The Floating Village moves with the tides.
One afternoon, our tuktuk driver, Tee, offered to take us a few kilometers out of town to see the floating village on Tonle Sap, the largest lake in Southeast Asia. Originally founded by immigrants fleeing Vietnam during the war who were unable to afford land in Cambodia, the village is completely self-contained, with a school, church, basketball court, and alligator farm.


Yes, that's right. An alligator farm.
Unfortunately, pollution in the lake threatens the livelihood of these already impoverished fishermen, and tourism (and the begging of tourists) has become one of the few sources of income needed to sustain their way of life. Perhaps my awakened interest in simple living recently was partially inspired by what I saw in Southeast Asia--people living lives with so few of the amenities that we believe are "necessary" these days.


Children paddling home from school.
On the boatride to and from the village, T and the boat driver spoke with us about the economic situation in Cambodia. The government is viewed as very corrupt by the people. One example of their corruption is that they don't allow independent tour boat operators; they will only allow certain companies (who probably bribe the government officials in return for huge kickbacks) to operate the boats and while they collect a huge fee from the tourists, the boat operators make a pittance.

To see the rest of the pictures along with some I took from around the town of Siem Reap, click here:

Floating Village Tour and Around Siem Reap

It would not be until we got to Phnom Penh that we would understand how recent and deep the wound the Khmer Rouge cut through the heart of this beautiful, once-supreme Khmer kingdom of Cambodia truly was. I wonder how long until she can recover and when my country, the U.S.A., will recognize its own horrific contributions to the nightmares that people living in Southeast Asia still remember...

Creepy, Sad Coincidences.

Once, in university, I decided to watch the Catch-22 movie (finally, after worshipping the book for years). As I watched it, Joseph Heller died.

This morning, one of our first grade groups had prepared a presentation about Korean models who had made it internationally, including Daul Kim, who happened to commit suicide this morning. (Note that the Metropolitician has a great post up about the bullying that may or may not have contributed to her suicide; I personally have a HUGE problem with the way Korea blames net-bullying exclusively for the suicides of celebrities as it demonstrates their ignorance about how suicide works and the fact that it is often preventable)

Stuff like this creeps me out, even though I know it's completely coincidental.

Good News for International Couples

In Korea, anyway. Korea is voting on a new bill that would allow its citizens to possess dual citizenship with other countries after age 22. Current law makes dual-citizen children choose at that age and revokes the citizenship of Koreans who acquire a foreign citizenship and requires foreign nationals who obtain Korean citizenship to renounce their former country within 6 months or two years.

Check out the article from The Korea Times.

So if the bill passes, Min Gi would be allowed to become a U.S. citizen (eventually, if we make it through this whole green card process) without giving up being a Korean citizen AND if we move back to Korea, I could get Korean citizenship without giving up my U.S. status. And our future kids wouldn't have to choose between the two countries. I say this would be a "win" all around.

Wow for won!

One of the risks you take when you go abroad is dealing with foreign currency exchanges. About a year ago, the economy tanked and the floor fell out from under us over here in Korea. Within a month, without any actual changes on the part of my employer, my effective salary in US dollars fell to about 2/3 its value compared to when I signed the contract.

Today the won dipped below the 1200won=$1 rate for the first time in 2009. Yay! This is good for me. Earlier this year, when the rate climbed to more than 1500won=$1, I was despondent. Although I wanted to stay in Korea to get married this year, I had to seriously consider going home after my last contract and taking up a job in the U.S. where my salary would be three times what it is here.

When I first got to Korea, the won was 900won=$1--a much better deal for me at that time. Even though my base salary is now 400,000 won more per month than when I first arrived, the exchange rate change makes it worth more than $200 LESS than that original salary PER MONTH--gross.

Fortunately, the won stabilized around 1250won=$1 and appears to be going down even more. I hope this pattern continues, or at least holds, for the remainder of my time in Korea. I'd like to see my student loans pretty much disappear before I go back to crazy consumer-happy America.

YouTube and Talking to Birds

Well... I tried to include a small video of my kitties being silly onto YouTube for use in the blog when I was confronted by this evil message:

"본인확인제로 인해 한국 국가 설정시 동영상/댓글 업로드 기능을 자발적으로 비활성화합니다.
We have voluntarily disabled this functionality on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law."

Holy crap! You see last year, in response to the suicide of actress Choi Jin-sil, the South Korean government thought that cracking down on netizens ("net-citizens") who left cruel comments about her that supposedly pushed her over the edge would prevent suicide. (Because of course mean comments are the LEADING cause of suicide--not mental health problems and health care accessibility, no...). They thought people would be less inclined to be net bullies if they have to sign their real name to their comments. So they passed a real-name verification law.

Anyhow... I seem to be able to get around it by setting my location to "Worldwide" instead of "South Korea"

So I bring you Princess, talking to the birds:





Perhaps she is trying to learn Korean, and got confused...

Will there be "fireworks"?

There is some debate about whether North Korea's latest plan to piss off Obama and draw attention to the recent appointment of Kim Jong Il's third son as his planned successor involves launching rockets at Hawaii on the 4th of July. You can read about it here. The U.S. seems to be taking this as a strongly credible threat and beefing up security on the islands, although South Korea's military has seen no evidence of the missile preparations to date.

Once again, the general populace of South Korea remains completely unperturbed, despite escalating tensions and provoking actions and statements from their brothers to the North since Lee Myung-bak took office a year and a half ago. For once, I agree with them regarding this threat. First of all, it's not against mainland South Korea and instead focused on a U.S. soil attack, so there's no real reason for concern here. Second, the lack of activity (unlike the last missile launch) seems like it will either not happen or be rushed and fail. Finally, I may be growing desensitized--perhaps I'm starting to understand how if you grow up in a country under constant threat of attack you might not pay attention, even when that attack seems slightly more likely today than it did yesterday.

That said, I won't allow my apathy prevent me from hoping that indeed the "threat" proves to be as much of a joke as I think it will be for the sake of those in Hawaii (or any island nation in between should the missile fail to reach its intended target but still cause damages). Let's all hope for the same.