November...

Well, I've gone and signed myself up for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as it's known on the interwebs).  You can follow my progress at the link above.  I guess it goes without saying that I may not be updating much next month... not that I updated much last month.

Anyhow, I'll let you know how it goes.  And now... on to the writing!  Happy Halloween!

I'm getting all "guh"

I miss having free time.  Teaching high school English in the U.S. is a very, very demanding job.

Something I've noticed... the culture here in PG county/suburban DC, that I was pretty "in touch" with three years ago, is now something almost completely foreign to me.  Part of it is getting older, but part of it is missing all those subtle cultural shifts that happen imperceptibly and rapidly without anyone who is a participant noticing.  Three years ago, almost no one but political bloggers referred to the Supreme Court as SCOTUS.  I still can't pick Katy Perry (yes, I had to look up how to spell her name) or Justin Bieber out of a lineup of similarly prepified tweens (frankly, who the heck cares?).  And now my students say things like "Mrs. S, you be getting me all guh," and I feel like I did when I was first learning about Korea and didn't know what "service" was (Good lord, I miss "service-uh").

It's got me thinking about cultural observations as an outsider in Korea and reflecting on how much I did or didn't understand.  Like if I hadn't grown up in the DC area, I might think some of these things were unique to this area, when really, they're new to the culture, not just regional.  Many things about Korean youth culture changed so rapidly that my students taught me things about Korean culture that older people, or even the venerable Korean of Ask a Korean wouldn't know.

How does culture change?  How permanent are the changes (or are they short term trends, like the Macarena)?  When we're living in it, we can't really know.  It's only over time that the depth of the change is revealed.

I think some things are easier to see from the outside (like the consequences of American consumerism) and others impossible to fully grasp except from within (like age-based hierarchy in Korean society, which I understand academically and linguistically but just don't get at all).  Living in a foreign land and marrying a non-American has made me a bit of an outsider of the culture once again.  And the first thing I've been truly excited about since coming back is trying to make sense of it all.  I've got my puzzle back.

Not Being There.

I shouldn't publish this because my family reads my blog, but it's time for my annual writing-share with my students.  This is what I'll be sharing tomorrow:

But they never call me. Near the end of my first year teaching in Korea, I had just signed a contract for my dream teaching job—a high school for students gifted in foreign languages—that would keep me in Korea another two years, when the e-mail notification for my internet phone line popped up with a message from my parents. During my year teaching English to elementary and middle school kids at an after-school academy called a hagwon, we'd fallen into a comfortable pattern where I'd call them on my Sunday mornings (their Saturday evenings with the time difference) to chat about life from 7,000 miles away. Yet, here was a message on Tuesday morning—one hour before my daily taekwondo lesson.

I had just fixed breakfast—instant apple cinnamon Quaker oatmeal that I'd scrounged up at Costco, a luxury in a country that feasts on rice and bean-paste soup with a spicy pickled cabbage dish called kimchi for nearly every meal. Why did they call on a Tuesday?

I clicked play and the worry in my mom's voice rang out over the tinny laptop speakers. “Honey, it's your mother. We don't want to worry you, but you should call us back right away. Dad's tests came back from the doctor.”

I tried to remember what we'd talked about this weekend. Mom had mentioned a doctor appointment, but it had seemed routine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Dad always goes to doctors for his diabetes and hypertension. Why that tone? The one she'd used to tell me my grandmother died.

In my head, I counted back the hours. Tuesday morning at 9:30 in Korea meant that it was 8:30 Monday evening in D.C. I hooked up my computer's microphone and dialed.

My sister answered. “Hello?” Even she sounded less energetic and more distant than usual.

“What's up? You sound weird.”

“I don't even get a 'hello' now?” She tried to pass it off like a joke. She was still a little angry with me at having moved halfway across the planet for her senior year of high school.

“Mom called. She sounded weird, too. What's going on over there?”

Sarah paused, unable to respond. “Maybe you should talk to Mom. Let me get her.” Listening to her fumble for words was a shock. She always has a snappy comeback. Always.

My oatmeal had congealed into a lukewarm lump. I didn't care. I wasn't hungry.

“Hello, dear.” Mom's voice still had that tone.

“What is it? You guys are really starting to worry me. Is Dad okay?”

“He's fine.” She had to swallow. “I told you this weekend that he was going to his doctor. Well, we didn't want to worry you, but it was not his normal doctor.”

“What do you mean? Tell me, Mom. Spit it out.”

“He went to an oncologist for testing. He has something called multiple myeloma. But don't worry. There's a lot of hope. There are so many treatments these days and the outcome is usually—”

“Wait, Mom. Did you just say Dad has cancer?”

“Yes, but the treatments these days—” She went on to tell me a lot of things about multiple myeloma that I did not hear. My father had cancer. And I was 7,000 miles away in a country that ate kimchi for breakfast. I had never felt so alone and so helpless in my life. I spoke to my father that morning, too, but I can't remember what he said either. I was thinking about the fact that I had just signed on to be away from my family for another two years and wouldn't even get a chance to visit them between the jobs. After I got off the phone with my parents, I canceled my taekwondo lesson, crawled back into bed, and forgot about the dried, cold oatmeal and the multiple myeloma and slept.

Two years later, having finished my employment contract with the foreign language high school and returned home to Maryland, I can finally talk about it. I still have trouble with the c-word, but I can say my father is in remission. I can joke with him a little about the fact that he can't use public swimming pools anymore because the risk of infection is too great. I ask him about the plans he's made for when it recurs in five years or so.

But I wasn't there when he lost 40 lbs and all his hair. His doctors wouldn't let me visit him while he was undergoing the bone marrow therapy because I was coming from a foreign country. I was half a world away when my family faced the biggest crisis they ever have because they all told me it was okay, and that I should take the job I wanted because it was such a great opportunity, and that there wasn't really anything I could do to help while he was in the hospital anyways because my brother didn't have a job right now and the economy was bad, so he could do what was needed. I wasn't there and my body rebelled, tore my guts to pieces, and put me in a Korean hospital a year ago. The doctors call it “ulcerative colitis,” but I know the truth. It's a physical manifestation of the guilt of not being there.

Every single day, I miss kimchi and taekwondo and the adventures I had in my husband's homeland. Was it the easy way out? My brother thinks it was. He resents me for not being there. For falling in love and getting married while our father almost died. My sister's anger at me for leaving in the first place grew more bitter. We remain distant compared to the inseparability we once had.

My dad is the only one that understands and approves.

“Cancer changed me,” he said last weekend while we were sailing on the boat he bought earlier this year. “All for the better. I would never have bought this boat, for example. A dream I've had for years—it just never would have happened. I was far too caught up in worrying about the future to realize that the present is what matters.” I look away, so he can't see the tears forming in my eyes. “I'm so glad you were off in Korea, having adventures, writing about them, sending us pictures.”

He doesn't say he was happy I didn't see him frail and weak like his other children did. He doesn't say that my getting married in Korea in January gave him something to get better for. He doesn't need to.

I know not being there was my way of being there for my father. But not being there was the hardest thing I've ever done.

I'm here, now, though. And now, sometimes for no reason at all, my father calls me to chat. And I don't have to wonder why he's calling on a Tuesday morning.

Illness and Reverse Culture Shock

For the last week I've been dealing with a creeping cold/flu which reached a new frenzy early this morning.  I'm still feeling like crap, but hopefully taking the day to rest will allow my body to heal.

I haven't been updating because of my illness and increased depression--which I believe may be related to reverse culture shock.  I'm glad I have a new job, but now that I'm in the routine of a "daily grind," my adjustment (or rather maladjustment) to my homeland has actually begun.  Coping with that, with all the issues related to Min Gi's immigration, and with a new job that's a lot more stressful than my last one is taking a toll on my health and my ability to write.  I have very little energy these days.

Plus, my last living grandparent, my mother's mom, died this weekend.

It's been a bad week.  I can only hope that it will get better.

Min Gi Arrived! New Job and Townhouse...

On Thursday, my lovely and wonderful husband arrived in America to begin the U.S. chapter of our life together.  He is now an official permanent resident of the United States, on his way to citizenship in a few years (if all goes according to plan, which it rarely does).

I have to say that for the last month, I've been in a major funk.  Most of this is attributable to my job struggle and stress (which I absolutely must blog about, but felt very uncomfortable doing as it unfolded for a variety of reasons--not the least of which was what might happen if potential employers discovered my blog) and not having my own place for the first time in my adult life without a definite plan for obtaining (and affording) one soon.  With Min Gi here again, I realize that a big part of it was also missing him.  He calms me down from my often irrational and uptight self and brings me back to reality. So, it's good to have him back.  He has also promised to start blogging (mostly in Korean, some in English perhaps), so I will be linking that blog soon.

As I mentioned, I have been offered and accepted a full time English teaching position at a small high school in the same county where I worked before going to Korea.  The position is for ninth grade regular level and an inclusion (half special education students) class, but my schedule is not completely definite at this point because the long term sub who I will be taking over from has been teaching a history elective that will be moved back to the social studies department, leaving me one class short.  It's A-day, B-day style block scheduling, but the ninth and tenth grade classes that are not honors level meet every day to prepare for the Maryland High School Assessment (HSA) which occurs at the end of English 10.  This is good for both the students, who get extra practice, and for me, who will have a smaller overall student load.

I took this job for many, many reasons beyond the fact that it was the first full time, contracted teaching position offered to me (though it was that, too).  In fact, before accepting, I had been very excited by a long term sub position in another county with an offer to move me into contracted as soon as a spot opened up--a county with a much better reputation for both education and for teacher support than the one I'm working for (again).  However, this school impressed me.  First off, I ran into the woman who trained me in the Resident Teacher Program I took to become certified six years ago while waiting for my interview.  We caught up, and since she works there as an Instructional Coordinator, she was, as always, very straight with me about the good and bad things about the school.  In the interview itself, one of the Assistant Principals (about five minutes in) said, "I'm not supposed to say this at this point, but I'm going to:  I like you.  I want you to work here."  It's flattering, but more importantly, being desired as a teacher at a school goes a long way towards winning administrators over to your side, which is absolutely necessary as a teacher new to a school.  Finally, they all but promised me Advanced Placement classes next year (which I LOVE teaching) and that they would support me in establishing a school theater program (this school has none).  I was sold.

The school is a bit out in the country, but I like that.  Yesterday (with the great assistance of my brother and good friend Michelle), Min Gi and I have moved to Waldorf, which is in Southern Maryland, a five minute commute from my new job and about 30 minutes from DC.  We took a two bedroom townhouse for us and the cats, ensuring plenty of space for any family members or friends from Korea who would like to visit.  Fortunately for me, Waldorf is also an area where I have a number of friends, thanks to my previous work with a community theater in neighboring La Plata, the Port Tobacco Players.  (As a welcome home present for Min Gi, I got us tickets to their production of Arsenic and Old Lace, which was fantastic, although it closed this weekend.)

So now, other than the insomnia from drinking too much caffeine to help with moving yesterday and the fact that the cats and a few boxes are still at my parents' house (hopefully this will be resolved today), we have accomplished my major goal for the year, which was to move us all here and find a good job.  I start teaching Monday, and while I'll do some prep work this week and attend back to school night this evening, I don't intend to stress any more about jobs until after I've begun working!

And that's what's been going on.

Current Status:

Employed.  Full time.  Teaching English.

More information to follow.  After Min Gi arrives tomorrow.

Q & A: Non-white women; Internet hook-up; long flight tips; Marine base in Vietnam; Korean Tuesdays

It's been a long time since I've answered my formspring questions. Sorry to those of you who'd been waiting on an answer.

Do you see colored girls in Korea? Like blacks, Hispanics or mixed girls? I mean I often here stories of Caucasians dating up there but...I'm curious.

I'm not exactly sure what perspective you are coming from (are you a man who wants to hook up with "colored girls" or what?), but I will answer. There are many non-white, non-Korean girls living in Korea. The largest groups I've encountered are Chinese and Filipina students and African-American and Hispanic soldiers. In the English teaching community, they are about proportional to what you would find among college grads from the seven countries eligible for E-2 visas, except that there is about a 70/30 male/female ratio and a much higher percentage of people with any Korean blood within that teacher community compared to a normal population. I come from a very, very diverse part of America, so I tend to think the foreign English teacher community is not very diverse (mostly white, middle class). However, people from less diverse areas think that the expat teaching community is very diverse. So I guess it depends on your perspective. If you actively seek out non-white women, you will find them, but I seriously doubt you will be impressed by the number of them you find (except in certain areas of very large cities). I will say that in Korea, more of my non-Korean friends were white than anywhere else I've lived/worked in my life except during college.

My husband is thinking of going to South Korea to be a teacher, I was wondering how long it took you to get internet hooked up in your apartment?

Your husband wants to go to South Korea, and the only question you have is about length of time for internet hookup? You have some restraint, m'dear. Depending on which service you choose and how well supported you are at your school by the teachers who take care of these things, it could take between 3 days and 2 weeks from the time people start asking around. However, in my first apartment, internet was already set up. In my second apartment, Min Gi shopped around for good deals for about a week and then found one and a week later, I had internet. In the last apartment, we transferred the contract from the second apartment, and I think I was without internet for only a day or two. South Korea prides itself on being the most wired country in the world. It's not for nothing.

How did you deal with the long flight over there? I want to travel but I hate to fly. Any tips for getting through it?

I like to deprive myself of sleep and fatty foods for the 36 hours prior to takeoff. I sleep better on the plane that way, and sleep so well the first night that I usually only experience mild jet lag after. On the plane itself, I read, listen to music, doze off, get up and walk around/stretch, play with the in-flight entertainment center, and always ask for at least 2 cups of water when they come around and offer. Sometimes I find the free red wine helps me zonk out even more quickly, but be careful about hydration. Planes are nastily drying environments.

Are there any remains of the Marine base at Marble Mountain???

I was not specifically looking for the Marine base at the Marble Mountains in Vietnam. However, I recall there was a marker for the lookout point the Americans used and the platform was there and my motorcycle taxi driver mentioned the base (he was a South Vietnamese soldier during that time). The effects of war there struck me more in the extreme shell damage to the temple sites and ancient carvings.

I remember reading how you and your husband speak English at home and every Tuesday it is Korean language day. So now that you are coming back to America, will you do a language swich-a-roo to keep in practice? I would think speaking Korean back in the US [would be helpful].

As you recall correctly, we usually speak English at home and for awhile we were doing Korean on Tuesdays. Right before I left Korea, Min Gi was in hardcore English study mode because he hopes to be able to work and function comfortably in his new country, so my Korean studies were sadly neglected. Currently, we are in separate countries, so I am not speaking much Korean at all these days, with him or anyone else. We will probably speak English at first in America because we are going to stay with my parents, and it is a little rude to speak another language around people who don't understand it when everyone is perfectly capable of communicating in the host's language. I would like to re-start the Korean Tuesdays when we are set up in our own house and then perhaps increase it to 2-3 days a week, as my Korean studies pick up more and I grow my skills.

That's all the formspring for now, but feel free to ask me a question anytime. I'm less crazy stressed now that the move to the U.S. is about 50% complete, so I should get to answering them faster.

Sentimental Possessions

I've mentioned that I'm becoming more and more attracted to low-impact living and minimalist lifestyles, especially after the consumer shock I'm experiencing returning to the U.S. from another country (albeit a fairly consumerist one). While I'm not quite ready to shuck everything except what I truly need and live out of a backpack, I am going through the already pared-down possessions I stored in my parents' basement when I left for Korea three years ago and purging many things I no longer need or want. I'm selling a few, but mostly I'm giving things away on Freecycle, to friends, to the library (media) or to Planet Aid (clothes).

Unfortunately for me, most of what remains in my possessions are papers/items that have sentimental value for me, but little meaning/value for another person, such as letters I exchanged with friends in elementary, middle, and high school or the seven half-filled blank journals I kept through the same period. I've been pretty ruthless--recycling the letters after reestablishing contact via Facebook with my elementary and middle school friends, taking two of the notebooks that I'd filled less than 1/4 of that were falling apart at the seams and ripping out the pages that contained my bad poetry and musings about boys then recycling the rest. I have plans to scan the pictures onto my hard drive so that I can get rid of the physical clutter.

What are impossible for me to deal with right now, though, are letters and cards from students. Unlike the letters from a young person sent to my young person self, I feel a special responsibility to those "thank you" and kind message cards entrusted to me by the students I've had the joy to work with--maybe even to encourage or inspire just a little. Perhaps it is because I may be in a transition of moving away from teaching as my main form of paid employment (though I'm sure I will continue teaching in some way throughout my life) that I am so strongly attached to these items.

So to preserve my sanity, I am fiercely limiting myself to whatever will fit in a shoebox. Any other purely sentimental item that is not re-usable (like the journals I will finish filling in--I began last night! haha), beautiful (like some of my decorations I've gathered in my travels and want to display in my home), currently useful (like the purse my friend Leah gave me before I left Korea), or I know will have a use in the near future (like the 5-6 children's books I loved because we want to start a family soon) must fit in the box. I am filing all old writing I wish to keep (the stuff that's not electronic) in one plastic portfolio-type folder. Everything else that I want to keep for emotional reasons must go, in one way or another.

Allowing myself to keep a few of these items is helping this process feel good. It makes it easier to decide what really makes me feel the strongest by keeping the physical copy and what I'm ok with digitizing and/or letting go. Perhaps in the future, I will be able to let even more go, but for now, I'm content with this solution.

Unemployed Teacher

In the DC area, tomorrow marks the first day of school for many districts, including Prince George's County, my old haunt. As you know, I've been looking for work in the US since way back in February. It's been a frustrating, humiliating, desperation-making, humorous, and slow experience. The end result of it all is that I have now joined the ranks of the US unemployed. Not that I'd even be counted in the statistics, since the job I left was in Korea (and I left it voluntarily), so I don't qualify for benefits. Plus, I do have part-time work as an editor. But my career? The one for which I hold the highest certification the State of Maryland can bestow? The one that would give me health insurance and enough money to support me, my immigrant husband, and his mother back in Korea and allow us to consider starting a family? Yeah... I guess that's "on hold" for now.

Way back in college, I made the decision to become a teacher for several reasons.  First was that I love literature and writing and want to share this joy with as many people as possible.  Up there as a major secondary reason, though, was a virtual guarantee of a livable salary and work available just about anywhere in the world I wanted to go.  I didn't ever want to end up where I am now, unemployed, living in my parents' house, so rather than pursue some other more "unstable" lines of work, like freelance writing, acting, or publishing, I became a teacher.  After all, year after year in America they were practically begging bums on the street to fill their classrooms.  Fellow teachers and I regularly joked about how they almost preferred "warm bodies" to competent people because of the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through for certifications and the like. I figured teaching would always be "safe" from an employment perspective.

Here I am, six solid years of experience and a Master's degree later, unable to get a job.  I am an unemployed teacher.

My plan from back in Korea was that if I couldn't find a job, I would just substitute teach for a bit and get my name known around at a few schools so that when an opening did come up, I could slide in, no problem. Well, even that plan is blown. Montgomery and PG have no subbing openings. And I don't really have a car (I borrow family members' cars), so I can't commute many other places--not for subbing (I'd figure it out if I was offered a permanent position).

My backup plan--to change careers into public relations, editing, or writing--is moving slowly because as few contacts as I have in education here, I have even fewer in those areas (although, as I said, I do have a part-time, freelance editing gig that's helping keep me sane).  I have one very exciting, very promising lead, but it's moving at a snail's pace.

I'm lucky.  I have a family that can support my basic needs while I try to figure out a way to become independent again.  It's not ideal, but I have a place to sleep and food to eat and transportation most days.  Mom has offered to help out with health insurance if it looks like the unemployment will last for awhile, and it looks like I will have to take her up on that offer, though I really, really don't want to (um... point of moving back to US being to HELP my parents, not be a burden on them).  And I am truly grateful to them for their help and support.  I'm trying to pay them back in ways I can--cooking dinner for everyone (maybe even saving them money by doing so), helping out with the remodeling projects around the house, organizing and minimizing the stuff I put in storage before I left for Korea--but my number one priority is becoming independent of their care again.  It's ridiculous that a married career woman should be this dependent on her parents.

It's hard on me.  I'm a planner, but with no idea of what the future looks like, it's nigh impossible to actually make plans.  I have two dependents, Min Gi and his mom back in Korea.  We have a plan figured out for the financial support of his mom, but he and I are moving back to dependency--which also means we're putting our plans to start a family on hold (bad idea to get pregnant with no health insurance, no job, and no house).  This is depressing.

I'm staying positive.  I'm trying to enjoy my unemployment time by reading more, experimenting in the kitchen, and staying active.  I've taken on a number of self-improvement projects, which I will be blogging about as I go through them.  I'm considering just making the leap into self-employment, but unfortunately my health situation (unless we figure something out there) makes that an untenable plan for the long-term (stupid America's stupid lack of appropriate, affordable health care).  I just have to learn patience.  Patience is not a strength of mine.  But this whole experience is schooling me in it.

Wednesday Review--We Married Koreans: Personal Stories of American Women with Korean Husbands

I know I haven't done a book review in a long time; rest assured that it is not because I have gone the last few months without reading. Quite the contrary. In the last few months, I've been in a mad reading frenzy in an attempt to rid myself of all the books I had accumulated in Korea that I did not wish to bring back with me to the U.S. Fortunately, I discovered Bookmooch and an English used book cafe called Buy the Book (Downtown Daegu, above the Mr. Pizza on the main street with Communes and Billibow and the like), so all of my books went to loving homes.

One of the books I did want to keep with me, however, was We Married Koreans, a collection of 12 true stories of interracial, intercultural marriages between American women and Korean men in the 1960s. The collection is edited by Gloria Goodwin Hurh, whose own story appears in Chapter 5.

If you have any interest in American or Korean cultures during the last 50 years or in intercultural marriages in general, you should read this book. Do not be put off by the fact that it is self-published and therefore contains some errors in grammar and usage that (hopefully) would have been caught by a professional editor or that the women are not professional writers. It tells a fascinating history, both personal and cultural, of Korea as it struggled towards democracy (one woman's husband was imprisoned for anti-government demonstrations in Korea) and America as it struggled towards racial equality (many of the women speak frankly about some of the racial epithets hurled at their children). The couples mostly met, married, and lived in America, but most lived for at least a short time in Korea and one missionary couple spent most of their marriage in the Korean expat community in Brazil. I feel like I just sat down and read 12 very good personal blogs about Korea.

Each woman speaks positively of marriage and praises intercultural marriage, despite the challenges they have faced. None of them have divorced and most stories are accompanied by a picture of the couple from within the last five years, graying and wrinkled, but still together. I was particularly moved by the stories of Faye Moon, Dixie Whong, and Sharon Shin, but I got something new and interesting from each story. Many of the women were Christian missionaries or united to their husband by a strong faith, which did not speak to me as much as it might have to someone from their era, but I still enjoyed reading the book very much.

I can only hope that Min Gi and I will be as happy together in our future as these couples seem to be.