Laughter: the Best Medicine

My little sister recently skype-interviewed me during her fifth-grade class, wanting to know about my "career" teaching English in South Korea. Talking about ME having a career sort of freaked me out. But in honor of my temporary occupation, I thought I'd post some highlights from said career. These are mostly quotations I pulled from elementary level (2-5 grade) writing assignments, and this is totally what gets me through some of those mundane days as a teacher. As the finale, I posted a hilarious essay in its entirety. All entries are posted with original spelling and grammatical and etc errors.

Help S.O.S
To get out of hunger we should give them foods. If you buy a tomato it could be helpful to send 2 tomatos. There is really many ways to help Africans. Like, sending books, opening schools, give them hopes. Hope is the best! -[Jaewoo, R4, from an essay on what he can do to help and serve his community and the world at lasrge].


“If You Burn Money, You Will Become Poor”
And if you become poor, you will have sicknesses. It is because if you are poor, you’ll have to sleep outside where dity things are. -[Elly, R5, from a "cause and effect" writing assignment].

Hi? President Obama,
Nice to meet you. I am Eddy. I am giving you this letter because of my Grammar homework. Ooops, sorry. I didn’t tell this. I live in Korea. Now, I will question few questions. Ow did you be a candidate? How did you get a Lobel Prize? Do you want to see your Uncle? (because seeing your uncle was the first and last). It is finished. My wish is you answering the questions. P.S. I want to be president like you. -[Eddy Cheong, Rs2-1, from a letter to President Obama. This was one of a handful of equally and even more hilarious such letters, some complete with clippings of the Chief with his family and vibrant comment-captions. Possibly the winning quotation from Hannah: "I am surprised you won because you are black"].

To victor
You grow up so poor
But now you work hard
You are use to doing your job
Busy three jobs
You have heart of gold
And you are healthy
You are nice
You are in seventh Heaven
And you help the baby so you
Have a heart of gold

-[Ariel, formerly RS2-3, from an assignment to write a journal entry. I'm really not sure why she produced this because it wasn't even her typical work. I could be wrong, but I think she copied it from one of those 5-n-10 notebooks with an awful translation of a cheesy love poem on the cover].


My Lovely Dad

Do you like your dad? All children have their father, but some children doesn’t have dad. I will tell you about my dad.
My dad’s nickname is ‘monster’ because he likes beer and if he drinks beer he is doing everything like a monster, but I likes he sometimes because he drinks beef very much sometimes he gives money to my sister and me. And I can go to PC Room, but my mom is really weird because if my dad is giving money to us she is hitting dad and says like “you idiot!” and he catch his eye and fighting. When I’m looking mom, dad’ re fighting I thinking about dog and eat’ re fighting and cat is winning. I don’t like this time and next time my mom ask to my dad like “do yu know what did you do yesterday night?” of course my dad going to be dangerous. Now I will tell you about how looks like my dad. My dad has lots of pimple like a really mad toad and he has really short beard. If I touch that I thinking about needle. Sometimes he drank beer his teeth are yellow like corns and his mouth smell are someone wear socks 100years. And If he goes to a beauty salon he says “please do not cut the whiskers” I think he’s thinking he is some idol star But I like this dad!! -[Cindy Cho, R5, from a writing assignment to "describe someone you know"].

[When teaching in Seoul, do as the children do].

The Trouble with Hispaniola

Photo caption: Even "wealthier" Haitian immigrants live segregated lives in the Dominican Republic (photo: R.W. High, 2007)

Planes flying to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, also fly on to Port au Prince, Haiti before third-legging it back to Miami, Florida, the original point of origin. Dr. Dennis Sullivan, now a professor at Cedarville University, practiced medicine in Haiti for almost four years in the 1980s, but 20 years later nothing much has changed in the country.

“Let me tell you a little bit about that trip from Miami to Santo Domingo to Port au Prince,” he says, sitting back in his chair and keeping an eye on the audio recorder in front of him. “[You’re flying in] low altitude planes. As you fly from Santo Domingo to Port au Prince you’re flying right over the center of Hispaniola and so you’ll see this beautiful lush green mountainous country below you, which is Dominican Republic, and as you approach the country of Haiti you can see, at the frontier, this abrupt border as the green completely gives way to brown. It’s one of the most incredible sights from air that you can imagine. As you look from the air you will see that the terrain below is nothing but desert-covered mountains. Furthermore, if you look at the waters around the Caribbean Ocean around Haiti, you will see the rivers, which are very, very muddy—brown muddy rivers—you can see the rivers washing out to the ocean and you can see the dark brown eddies . . .”

Sullivan is not the first to call Haiti an ecological disaster. Blamed primarily on government mismanagement, the country is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and has more than once been brushed off as being beyond hope. Noted anthropologist Jared Diamond noted Everyone familiar with Haiti whom I asked about its prospects use the words “no hope” in their answer. Most of them answered simply that they saw no hope (Collapse 354). Sullivan himself left Haiti after several years of seeing very little progress. Across the border, however, the Dominican Republic, while certainly no Caribbean Dubai, is slowly improving in infrastructure and boasts increasing tourism revenue.

Ever since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for microfinance self-sustainability research in 2006, microfinance has taken off in the international arena. Some are seeing the possibilities for these pragmatic economics to alleviate poverty in both Dominican Republic and Haiti. Hundreds of MFIs, or Microfinance Institutions, which make small loans to impoverished entrepreneurs, have sprouted up world wide since the 1970s. Many publications and studies are touting microfinance as the solution to alleviating world poverty. Even the United Nations named 2005 the International Year of Microcredit, saying,

Microcredit and microfinance have changed the lives of people and revitalized communities in the world's poorest and also the richest countries. We have seen the enormous power that access to even modest financial services can bring people. With access to a range of financial tools, families can invest according to their own priorities — school fees, health care, business, nutrition or housing.

The International Year of Microcredit also stated that of four billion people who live on less than $1400 a year, only a fraction have access to basic financial services. “With this huge unmet demand, the Year of Microcredit 2005 called “To build inclusive financial sectors and strengthen the powerful, but often untapped, entrepreneurial spirit existing in impoverished communities.” (www.yearofmicrocredit.org)

However, studies show that despite massive global poverty, often microfinance cannot even be implemented until structural and institutional changes are made within the country to ensure a stable and self-sustainable environment. Studies in the Caribbean have shown that often programs do not work on Hispaniola because of the typically paltry loan sizes or because countries do not want to work to implement structure after depending so long on aid handouts. Additionally, cultural insensitivity and poor strategy have contributed to untargeted relief waste. In fact, according to Haiti in the Balance, and analysis of aid in Haiti, the reason aid has often failed in Haiti is because t aid programs often target it as if it were a better-off Latin American country, and ignore the socioeconomic, racial and historical differences: “Donors seemed to go on to adopt an assistance model more appropriate to Latin America. Such a model assumed economic, social, and political stability. In reality, Haiti was more like a least-developed, fragile, post-conflict sub-Saharan African country” (6). Once again we are reminded of the parallels between Haiti and Africa, where anti-democratic, oppressive, self-serving leadership are common. (Harrison 32)

Among other problems, borrowers who cannot make enough profit to ever repay the loans fully and expand their businesses maintain the cycle of poverty. This is especially problematic in Haiti but is also stagnating in development and progress in the Dominican Republic. However, the DR is years ahead in terms of progress and so is able to better tackle problems and build self sustainability on top of subsistence. In determining whether microfinance has been a noticeably effective deterrent to poverty and alternative to traditional aid in alleviating poverty on the Caribbean island and whether there is home for economic progress in Hispaniola, it is important to examine the two nations of Hispaniola and analyses historical and current trends that compare and contrast aid, relief, and infrastructure in the two countries and how they now affect attempts to build self-sustainability through micro-financial enterprise and entrepreneurship, particularly for women.

[Editor's Note: Given the recent chaos in Haiti, I thought I'd go out on a limb and publish my undergrad senior thesis project regarding the devastation of Haiti, the disparity between it and the country with which is shares an island, and whether anything can be done to save the country. I particularly focused on the relatively recent (and Nobel-winning) theory microcrofinance, and spent four months of my life buried in books and papers and telephone/email interviews regarding the subject. I have since used Haiti as an illustration in multiple Korean elementary classrooms for social studies discussions, and now have spent a lot of time re-reflecting on the country. When my contract in Korea is up, I hope to make my way there and dive into reconstruction.]
This thesis will be examined in four parts: Introduction, history, microfinance, and conclusion. For the full PDF, click here: Hispaniola

New Journalism

* November *
She knows she should probably sleep now, but now she’s too keyed up. She fancies a shot of juice—Haruki Murakami makes juice drinking sound incredibly sensual and appealing—more so than the literary-favoured whiskeys and wines. She wasn’t at all craving it before, but now juice sounds good. Orange, perhaps, or grape: what she has on hand.

The grape looks good in the fridge and she pulls it out and shakes it thoroughly. The white seal is still on the bottle: it’s not too late to resist midnight temptation and put it back. But no, the espresso mug comes down from the shelf: the blue, of the his-n’-hers Corona crown duo she won at a Mexican festival. Pink stays on the shelf, because baby blue complements the throaty purple.

But grape juice cannot be drunk alone, and the clove cigarette box long ago lay empty. That Hopeful President has banned them in the US, and they don’t seem to exist here. So she munches a rice cake semi-contentedly, and drinks the juice.

Now that the fridge is open, songpyeon and kimbap become irresistible as well. One of the former, two bites of the latter, and a completely unnecessary meal has come full circle.

Well-fit, she returns to the bed. The catch-all, the couch, the recliner, the threadbare, back-aching expanse that takes up a good third of the small room. She lights the candles with an experienced flick of an old Bic lighter and the tuna flavored rice that permeates the skin of her long fingers is masked by the aroma of pumpkin and cinnamon.

Shivering, she closes the big window in the balcony porch and shrugs into the (Japanese?) kimono her best friend had purchased one Christmas in (Chinatown?). It is surprisingly warm.

And she writes.



* January *
It has been writer’s block for days and the sludge once called coffee is cold in the bottom of the cup. Flicks a lighter aimlessly and wanders into the kitchen for lack of better inspiration.

If only as much time was spent engaging in worthwhile activity as is spent eating. Spies the sludge and considers a warm up. The fridge is full, but there is nothing to eat. There is orange juice, unopened, a month-and-a-half old. Doesn’t feel like drinking orange juice, but opens it for lack of better inspiration.

Washes down cold and calming, expiration date 12.25.2009: not long past. Reflects on that day, a happier time. The day of two Christmases.
One good juice deserves another and down it goes.

How’s that coffee holding up?
Yeah, warm it up a little.

Surfing the freelance jobs, those jokes: those worthless time-suckers. Contemplates one assignment, “How to Make a Life-Size Red Panda.” No further details. Too much effort. “How to Start a Tin Sign Business.”

Toggled to Twitter. Quiet, this time of night. Already read today’s headlines. A BBC Big Whig is retiring. Peoples’ Choice Awards are awarding the same five people and shows that have already won everything this year.

Gum is a better investment than food. Gum exercises the jaw; keeps the lips firm and supple and gives that Hollywood line. Costs less than food and staves hunger pangs. Can be refreshed periodically as needed. Relieves stress.

Freelance opportunity: “How to Diet Using Chewing Gum.”

Now the inspiration isn’t lacking. But the fingers hate it. They won’t listen or respond. Sometimes the greatest trouble with the head is its remote distance from the heart. Sometimes the greatest trouble with the heart is its obstinacy.

I'll be Home for Christmas!

When I first started singing the song this season, I figured it’d be the first year it would only happen in my dreams, as the song goes. But around the start of my homesick despair, the week of Thanksgiving, the bug my mom had planted weeks earlier started to resurface. Plans to Taiwan were being shot down at every attempt, and I was becoming less and less interested anyway. At this point it seemed just as logical (or insane) to travel home as it would be to go anywhere exotic on my own. And my usual harebrained travel schemes just weren’t appealing anymore: not with the invigorating thoughts of Mom’s fresh baked goods and lasagna and soups heating up the kitchen; the usual madness of carpool coordination in a houseful of drivers and broken vehicles; and the clamor of constant piano and drumsets and barking dogs waking me up early every morning.

I was freaking out when tickets started skyrocketing, by my best friend and all-time kick-assing-est travel agent was able to snag me one for just under $12thou. I’ll be flying out around noon Christmas day, and arriving in Chicago around 3pm Christmas Day.

I'll be home for Christmas.

I suppose a small mundane update on my life is in order. I usually leave that to Twitter but I feel like this week is a good time to do it since I just passed my 4-month anniversary in Seoul. School’s been rough, but my R4 students have finished up an awesome batch of persuasive speeches and an informative magazine about animals. We’ll be celebrating with a “Christmas Bonus” party in the next week or so. R5s blew me away with some astonishing debate prep, and our showcase for Christmas week will be shaping up nicely. If they beat Joe’s MAG5s, my wallet’ll be empty: I promised them pizza for a win.
* Homemade eggnog, a Western necessity and fashioned with surprising success in Korea ghetto-style :)

I’ve had a very creative month thus far with my younger students. Cool lesson plans (homemade Pit!) and even spur of the moment educational rabbit trails have been really fun. Today during a 2nd grade social studies lesson about Jamestown and Plymouth, students were examining textbook illustrations as commenting on the colonists’ canoes. I explained that these were not canoes, they were rowboats. They had never heard of such a thing. They immediately understood when I sang a few lines of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and we proceeded to learn the round at the top of our lungs for the next 15 minutes.

Christmastime and the newly added incentive of going home hasn’t harmed, either. Ask my Uni roommate: Naomi will vouch for my inexplicable boost in charm and wit around this time of year. I’ve had Christmas music going constantly…spicing it up with variations discovered on AOL’s AMAZING Christmas music station. Armik’s Spanish guitar discovered through the World Christmas option is my new favorite. I play the music all morning during my preschool classes as well, particularly in art when we’re coloring. Yes, WE color. They fight over Teacher’s drawings ;)

Christmas is NOT commercialized here whatsoever. At times it’s a relief, at times, I miss it. I put up a $10 string of fabulous Christmas lights I managed to snag in Namdaeumun—which is a traditional marketplace with a few shops decked out for Christmas. The only place I’ve really seen it. One guy tried to charge me $18 for a few feet of tiny lights! Christmas lights make me happy and you can be I’ll be getting my fill of that good old American Christmas commercialization when I do some morning-after shopping at home…I haven’t seen the new Target since it was remodeled and it’s been quite the talk of my little home town.



At the insistence of my Korean coworker, Eileen, I have begun taking weekly group flute lessons at the local department store. It’s been a blast. The teacher formerly taught a flute orchestra in Russia, and although she speaks very little Konglish, we manage to get along and I’m starting to force my shamefully rusty self back into some semblance of musical discipline. It’s been great getting to know Eileen as well. We often eat Korean food together after lessons, and hope to start Tae Kwon Doe classes after the New Year.

Unfortunately, I’ve replaced working out with Internet TV and torrent movies, and am recently obsessed with finding new Christmas movies as well as the recently finished first season of Glee. NEVER thought I’d get into that after Highschool Musical made me gag, but the show is really fabulous. I’m halfway through the first season and haven’t watched anything so voraciously since Weeds. Episode 7 has some particularly pungent one-liners. For example: “We’re dealing with children. They need to be terrified. . . .Without it their bones won’t grow properly.” This completely describes my feelings toward my preschoolers these days.I love the music. As for Christmas movies, I recommend “Joyeux Noel” for its seasonal sentimentality and highly discourage “The Shop Around the Corner” –a rare James Stewart failure and the original “You’ve Got Mail.”

But despite my lapse into the cursed single adulthood bad habits, I’ve also been getting out the house nearly every night to socialize with a fantastic group of fellow ex-pats in my neighborhood. One girl is headed home to Fargo, ND this week so we’ve been trying to squeeze even extra time in. It’s been good to talk and laugh and learn with and from this international group. Tonight a girl just passing through en route to Texas entertained us with stories from her recent trek to India/Nepal and upcoming nine month sabbatical to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Canada. It’s things and times like these that refresh, inspire, and encourage me to carry on… yet to break free from the potential to despair and get lazy. I’m not always faithful, but I’m learning. I’ve also been more regularly attending an International church during this Advent season and connecting more with the 20s-30s group, which has been a lot of fun. It’s kind of a far trek, but lately I’ve been making it a real priority.

I’m only 21. Sometimes I forget that, and it just strikes me, so. I've always been such a nostalgic, and I often feel like I'm 90 years old. I also find myself thinking I sound like my mother! It's the whole teaching thing...

But nothing matters at the moment. Cuz I’ll be home for Christmas.

Failure

The seat was warm.

His music preceded him; a few surprisingly melodic snatches on a battered harmonica.

He was wrinkled; cubic zirconia studs in each of his large leathered lobes. Shoulders hunched forward in a standard olive green overcoat, he staggered with the off-beat roll of a hurrying subway car.

He dropped the arm that held the instrument to reveal a droopy under bite, proffering his other grubby hand to a nearby passenger. The passenger, an American girl, nudged her male companion who immediately offered the ajushee a few coins. The man accepted them soundlessly, remotely—as if it was expected. He added them to a zippered pack around his waist, and moved expectantly to the next foreign sucker.

I feigned poverty and shook my head slightly, and hesitated, he moved on down the long row of soulless eyes whose emotions and feelings, if any, were carefully hidden beneath the obscurity of l'humanité en masse. A few more harmonica blues wafted on with him.

The girl nudged me. “How many of these people do you think are heading to church?” she asked.

I glanced again down the line of glassy eyed passenger, dozing or meditating in their glittery ties, polyester suits, heals, and faux fur collars.

“50%.”

She didn’t respond, so I asked her the same.

“More than half,” she answered, and said nothing more.

The seat was warm. I love these heated subway seats.

We sat in silence. I mulled thoughts of being late to church myself and what I’d possibly eat and do afterwards.

Suddenly, she turned to me again.

“Always give what is asked of you,” she said.

Feeling guilty, I gave a paltry tithe at church an hour later. Perhaps the ajushee is cackling merrily amongst broken green bottles in the gutter, having spent the genuine tinder of gullible foreigners. Perhaps he’s sitting at the hospital bedside of a beloved. Perhaps he’s huddling over the stovetop of a streetfood vendor, waiting for a hand-sized portion of dukbokki. Or maybe he’s in heaven giving witness to the ones who gave to the Christ Child and the ones who sat stonily in church.

He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses. Proverbs 28:27

One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. Proverbs 11:24

Reading the Culture, Pt. 2

25 August 2009 Tuesday--Perhaps the reason dangling charms on cell phones are so popular here is because it’s all they have to accessorize the inconspicuous monotony of their school uniforms—which many kids wear late into the evening as they go from one academy to the other long into the night. Of course, they also accessorize with shoes. What else do you entertain yourself with when you're a mini genius with parents breathing down your neck because you’re not yet a doctor at age 14?!

I love the convenience/cost of public travel here, but not for long periods of time. I really hate humanity in that sort of setting—I feel like all of our worst failings and pent-up horrible-ness comes out in a crowd.

Case study #1: Last Sunday at Nowon station a man boarded my subway car who just didn’t fit the normal Korean subway crowd. He was darker, swarthier, and bigger, with an easier American way of draping himself across the seat that was familiarly American. His gold earrings bounced with the movement of the train as he laughed comfortably with his lady friend. They spoke in fluent Korean, though, so I surmised they weren’t foreigners.

Case study #2: The next weekend, I was engrossed in the sounds of Genius (Apple’s Genius, that is) as I hiked down the mountain when I crossed paths with a dark-skinned hiker. He was fit and sported a sleek wooden walking stick, a far more traditionally classic look than the popular carbon fiber ski poles. But what really set him apart was his hair: long and grey, it was flecked white, pulled back in a tight ponytail, and accompanied by a scraggly beard. He looked like either a very tan Korean or maybe a Mongolian. he was dressed in impeccable hiking gear, as all Koreans. While seeing a people of varying backgrounds, ethnicities, and intelligence levels in the forest preserve near my Midwest American university was quite normal, it surprised me in retrospect to realize how taken aback I was by seeing here anyone the least bit out of the ordinary.

I’ve been struck with this realization that all Koreans conform to the group thinking social pattern in everything they do. Even the hott trends in fashion which would be individualized and accessorized to the extreme there as much as creatively possible are not here. Everyone looks wacky and ridiculous here, but none of them stands out because they’re all basic copies of each other. A short time is all it takes for the foreigner’s eyes to become adjusted to the difference. After that it stays the same. The difference is simply the cultural divide, not the malleability of the people. The weirdness becomes just commonplace. Nothing changes, day after day; For the most part, people live expression-less, conformed lives. Trends are huge, but transient. They come and go. Everyone gets on board simultaneously, then everyone disembarks in the same manner.

It is evinced by the preschoolers who contentedly play “rock-scissors-paper” to decide who will copy the other’s coloring page first. It is evinced by the 2nd graders who will only play games in class if they can team up with their table partners. It is evinced by the exact replica of shops and stands and vendors selling rows and piles of exact replicas from leggings to bookmarks to lense-less glasses to shoes to jeans to food.

I once observed that Korean students are forced to stay so long in uniform that the only way to uniquely distinguish themselves s to accessorize with cool shoes and cell phone charms. But I have discovered that even most of those are copies of each others—imitations attempting to individualize but afraid to actually do so.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many Koreans seem racist. They don’t quite know how to evaluate variations in their midst. And in the past, it seems that infiltrations to their culture have met with less than satisfactory endings (Japanese and Manchurian occupations, etc).

Translated into society and Korea’s place in the world, emergent from history, I wonder what this means for the future of the country.

Reading the Culture, Pt. 1

“How's SK taking Kim's death, from what you can see?”

My friend queried via Twitter, mere moments after I read the announcement in the news myself that Korea’s former president Kim Dae-jung had died. I had been in Korea for less than a week, and I had no idea how to respond.

I could speak one word of Korean, I was living with also-new-to-Korea Americans, and I really had no idea how to respond to such a question. It freaked me out a little: if I was supposed to be working toward some sort of hazy dream career in international journalism, how would I ever be marketable if I couldn’t form such a simple opinion? Was I an idiot for not being able to ascertain their attitude regarding a momentous event?

I couldn’t even attend the state funeral that weekend: I had already paid to reserve a spot white water rafting out in the country. Instead of spending the weekend analyzing black suit-clad crowds and immersing myself in the bereaved culture, I spent it with loud foreigners splashing each other with rafting paddles.

My response at the time was merely my honest observation: it seemed (according to media reports) that a lot of people had thronged outside the state building where the funeral was held. Thus it seemed that the highly popular Kim was definitely mourned by a respectable number of citizens, and at least the face of the media who decried his untimely passing.

As the week progressed, it also became apparently that even stern North Korea had held a soft spot for The Sunshine Man, and was edging toward less ominous relations with the South while paying its memoriam to a beneficiary even they couldn’t deny.
So I walked downtown, stood in the streets drinking coffee, munching corndogs, trying to get the firsthand experience. I was determined not to fail this first opportunity to pursue real international journalism.

Language was a problem once again. I couldn’t just casually ask the corndog vendor what she thought of grandiose politics over grease, food fumes, and change. I couldn’t question the twenty-somethings with their Cass beer bottles and ramyeon wrappers and piles of Parliament cigarette ashes, deep in beatnik philosophizing at the red plastic table outside the corner 711. I couldn’t interrogate the businessmen in shiny polyester suits and faux leather man purses waiting to board Bus 1142 to Nowon.

I couldn’t talk to anyone, really. School kids in uniforms with backpacks, plastic bags and clutching various fried foods and be-trinketed Samsung mobiles as well as each others’ hands wandered by, noisily. Most of them probably spoke smattering English, but conversation here was impossible as well, even if I chanced upon an elementary or highschool student intelligent enough to engage me.

Nor had I really seen anything in the way of protests in the city since I’d been here. My first Saturday, I had passed an Anti-American rally in a park somewhere. I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know they were even anti American until my supervisor Joe pointed it out. I’d seen nothing since.

It irked me that I couldn’t eavesdrop on subways or in coffee shops. Normally one of my favorite activities back home, I couldn’t even somewhat follow conversational lines here like I could among the Hispanics in DeKalb or LA. My iPod was spending quality time with me here. But while that fact was surely enlightening me on postmodern American adolescent philosophies (in fact, I’d even downloaded some K-Pop, or Korean pop music), it wasn’t helping me understand South Korea’s political climate.

Sigh.

“How does one ‘feel’ or determine the political climate of a country—especially in a country where one doesn’t even speak the language?” I asked my friend Mara.

Mara: ever the refreshing friend; fellow product of a Liberal Arts Christian university that, despite some massive shortcomings, has produced some superb critical thinkers and a few brilliant people. Cynical and optimistic by turn, Mara, unlike many foreigners, challenges me to think further than the handsome Korean boy coming on to me at the bar.

She has seen some rallies, she said, but not many. The real way to sense political climate is to observe the culture. Even if you don’t understand the language, you can see and evaluate what is going on around you based on body language, attitudes, what people wear and read. You can hear murmuring at school even among students, and you can start picking up on things as you make Korean friends, or mingle enough with other foreigners who discuss Korean coworkers and friends.

As we shared observations and postulated opinions, my sense of self-doubt began slipping away. I can read people, I can take what I observe and make it into hypotheses.

... TO BE CONTINUED ...

Photo credit: http://www.nation.co.ke