Home is where your pillow is.

I Used to Do Stuff

2011-11-19T16:13:00.001-08:00

Does anyone else remember when I used to live in one of the biggest cities in the world?

I do.

Remember how I had tons of friends? So many that I started to complain about their abundance and try to find ways to thin out the herd?

Remember how there were always too many things to do? I don't mean like a 'To Do' list, either. I mean all of the social stuff, all of the cultural stuff, all of the ... just stuff. There was so much stuff to do. Always. I got so sick of it that I'd block out sections of my calendar months in advance to dedicate to doing nothing, because there was just plain too much stuff going on.

I remember that. I remember when I used to do stuff.

Those were the days ...

I didn't really think so then, to be honest. Sometimes I did, but I'm not really cut out for big group interactions, and I get overstimulated pretty easily. I got sick of all the stuff. I remember that.

The thing is, it's been over nine months since I moved away from that big city, and into my parents' spare room. Nine months of no cool friends. Nine months of no social stuff. Nine months of no cultural stuff. Nine months of no stuff at all, really. And now I miss it. I miss it so much. I'm going crazy with the missing of it.

But what to do? If I were still in that huge city, I'd find some thing to do (It would be easy; there was always stuff to do.) and call a few of the herd of friends until someone either expressed interest in joining me, or invited me to do some different thing.

Here ... who do I call? And if I called them - what would we do, anyway?

So, I'm trying a different approach. I found a thing to do. (It was pretty hard. I had to get help from my 23-year-old brother's buddy, but we found something.) It's a small venue concert - two bands I've never heard of before and may or may not enjoy. I bought a ticket online, and I'm going to go to this concert. I'm going alone. My goal is to talk to at least one stranger. It's a big goal for me, but maybe that stranger could be a friend. I understand from the movies that people go out into the world and turn strangers into friends all the time.

Tonight I'm doing a thing. If I like it, maybe it will lead to me doing more stuff in the future. If I hate it, hopefully it will help me remember that I don't really like doing stuff all that much, and I will stop missing all that stuff that I used to do.

We'll see. Hopefully, one way or the other, it works. Hopefully, sitting alone at a concert in Oklahoma City turns out to be better than sitting alone in my parents' house.

Hopefully.

If not, at least in the future I'll be able to say, "Hey, remember when I did that one thing?"

That's something, even if only a very small something.

Spare Room Dweller

2011-09-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'm a spare room dweller.

I open boxes of storage - things I haven't needed in half a decade, or more, and drape the contents over the furniture you got from your ex-sister-in-law's great aunt. I leave it all out, because I still don't need it; I won't put it back in the boxes, but I can't get rid of it either.

I'm a spare room dweller.

I spend a whole day on your sofa watching BBC interpretations of Trollop's novels, filmed in the 70s. I leave partially dried loads of towels in the dryer, and you wonder how I came to have so many dirty towels to begin with.

I complain about the weather, politics, the job market, and the dryer that can't seem to get a load of towels dry. Your dryer, that you worked so long to buy. I don't like it. I complain. Also, we're out of gas, again, and by 'we' I mean 'you' because it's your car.

And thank you for letting me borrow it ...

is what I should say, but never do.

I'm a spare room dweller.

I ate the bagel that you planned to take for lunch. It was okay.

And your jokes about when will I be moving out? Your jokes ...?

Well ... let's be honest Mom and Dad, you knew what I was when you let me back in.

I'm a spare room dweller.

vent

2011-06-15T06:06:00.001-07:00

I needed a forum to vent, so, even though I said that I'm not going to blog anymore, for now at least, I'm writing this blog.

I am sad and furious.

I was watching America's Next Top Model (It will be hard to take anything I say after that seriously. I understand this.) and one of the girls got a haircut that I really liked. I thought, "Denice, that haircut would look great on you. It's perfect. It will show off your glasses well, and look super sheek. Go get a pair of scissors right now and see if you can make it happen."

It would not have been surprising if I'd jumped straight up and done this. I am not afraid of wrestling my own main, despite my stunning record of losses on that front.

But this time I said, "No, Denice, your hair's finally getting a little length to it, and this haircut might be a little out of your luck range. Go pay a professional."

So I did. I walked in and showed her the pictures of the hopeful top model that I'd put on my iPod. She glanced at them and told me to sit down. I left the iPod out for her, and even told her to feel free to pick it up and look at them again. She didn't.

For me, one of the worst things about another person cutting my hair, is that I have to take off my glasses, and the mirror is so far away. So, I really have no idea what's going on. I never have a chance to say, "Wo, that's going a little shorter than I want. Please refrain." Instead I just put my glasses on when she's done and think, "This doesn't really look the way that I expected it to."

That's about all that I thought while I was still in the salon. It wasn't until I was back home, and comparing the pictures of the modelling prodigy with my own reflection that I understood why it didn't look the way I expected it to. It was because it wasn't the same haircut. Where the model had lovely tapered bangs that angled down toward her eyebrows on one side, I had straight Frankenstein bangs that barely covered my hairline. And, the model still had some length in the hair on the top of her head, a clearly visible 4-5 inches at least, while mine had been shorn down to 2.5 inches, in the longest places.

In short, I asked for top model hair and instead she gave me a crew cut.

I know this is a lot of blog about getting a bad haircut, a human experience that probably each of us has had many times, but I'm so angry that she did this to me, and I'm sad. I'm sad, because I've spent the last year working on growing my hair out of the crew cut that I gave myself last year, and now I get to do it again, but by absolutely no fault of my own.

I'm trying to decide if I should go back to the salon and complain. I don't see how it could help. I mean, I'd probably get my money back, or a coupon, or something, but that's not what I want. I want my hair back.

Oh, the fury. The fury of me.

11 Days

2011-02-15T01:20:00.001-08:00

I'm wrapping things up in Korea and leave plenty soon enough. Just wanted to let ya'll know where you can find me next.

See Me Run

Thanks for reading!

Denice

Numbers, mostly

2010-12-05T03:55:00.000-08:00

9 - This is how many months have passed since I last posted on my blog.

196 - This is how many weeks I have lived in Bucheon, South Korea.

47 - This is how many kindergarteners I have taught since arriving.

3 - This is how many Korean flats I have lived in.

0 - This is how many minutes I have spent regretting my decision to move to Korea.

0 - This is how many boys I have kissed in Korea.

68 - This is how many blog posts I've written (counting this one).

7 - This is how many times I've flown across the Pacific ocean since moving abroad.

7 - This is how many visits I've had from family.

10 - This is how many fingers I have.

3 - This is how many novels I've started writing in Korea.

1 - This is how many I finished (in rough draft form).

8 - This is how many hairstyles I went through in Korea.

17 - This is how many pounds I lost in Korea.

20 - This is how many pounds I gained back.

31 - This is how old I am by Korean reckoning.

30 - This is how old I am as the Americans count.

13 - This is how many cities I've lived in during those 30-31 years.

26 - This is how many times I've moved between those 13 cities (that I remember).

196 - This is the largest number of consecutive weeks I've ever lived in one city.

196 - This is the number of consecutive weeks that I've lived in Bucheon, South Korea.

83 - This is how many days are left before I find a new pillow, and a place to keep it.

28 - This is the number of words left before the end of this blog post (counting these ones).

? - This is the number of months left before I post again.

Why I wiggled my toes this time.

2010-03-06T03:35:00.000-08:00

I was going to stop blogging and was trying to decide how long I should wait before I pulled this all off the Internet. I'm glad it's still here.

I was listening to music, and I decided to go online and listen to some black cab sessions, and when I was finished I listened to Jens Lekman's Black Cab, because it's still my favorite. Watching him sing I'd noticed that I'd fallen in love with him yet again and decided that it was time to get personal. If I'm going to keep stalking this songbird Swede in my imagination, then I ought to at least make sure he's single (I mean, what would my imagination neighbors think??) An hour later I'm finishing off a series of online Q&A's that he did nearly four years ago and I'm slightly more in love with him than when I'd started this journey, when I reach the last line on the webpage: Lots of love to everyone from Jens.

And I think to myself, "I'm someone." And I smile and wiggle my toes because I have just received lots of love from Jens Lekman.

And that's why I'm glad my blog is still here.

Just Now

2009-11-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

Just now a shadowy commotion against my curtains caught my eye. I opened them up to see that a great gust of autumn wind had thrown dozens of leaves high into the air and that now they were spinning gracefully past my window back to the ground like pinwheels dropped from an airplane.

Thirsty in South Korea

2009-07-07T16:26:00.001-07:00

Dear Neighbor,

Please stop taking my water. I suppose you step off the elevator and see that 19 liter bottle of clean and refreshing water sitting by my door and wonder why someone has left it there. You're probably hot and tired from a long day of being in Korea in July. Maybe you think, "I'll just take a little off the top then bring it back," but never get around to returning it. Maybe you think it's abandoned and looking for a home. It's likely that you suspect you've been blessed by the water fairy and dance from my door to yours (as well as one can dance while carrying a 19 liter bottle of water.)

The point you miss in all this is the 'from my door to yours' part. If, in fact, it were abandonment or water fairy bestowal - it is clearly directed at me and not at you. The truth is, it's neither. The water is there because I paid for it to be delivered to my doorstep - a convenient and fairly cheap service. It's so cheap, in fact, that if you can't scrape together the loose change to pay for it - I'll gladly double my subscription if you'll agree to leave one bottle behind for me each delivery.

If you are reading this blog and wondering if it is addressed to you (as it may well be) here are some clues to narrow the audience:

1. you live in South Korea
2. you occasionally see a large white girl in the elevator
3. while waiting for the elevator in the mornings you often hear the squalor of an amateur violinist - or someone singing loudly in the shower
4. over the past two weeks you have had the good fortune to stumble upon and abscond a large, full water cooler jug, twice

Sound familiar? If so then you are my reader of choice today. Swing by and introduce yourself - you know where I live, it's the apartment that sometimes has 'free' water samples out front. I'll invite you in for a glass of milk (I'd offer you water, but I'm running out quickly.) We can have a nice chat, look at pictures of the family back home, laugh at the whole silly situation, and figure out what the next bold step is in our mutual hydration situation. I know we can find a way to make this work.

Sincerely,

Thirsty in South Korea

The other girl on the swingset

2009-06-12T06:25:00.000-07:00

I had a great workout tonight. I pushed myself to a new level, and on the way down from hiking the stairs in my apartment building, I grabbed my recycling to take it out and sort. It was so nice outside that I decided to go for a walk. I tucked my emptied recycling bag under my arm and crossed the street to the pretty side. After a few minutes I came to a small playground. There are playgrounds all over the place, but I never play on them. I've never seen Korean adults on the playgrounds before and I worry that it might be taboo.

The playground was empty, though, and the swings beckoned. "Denice," they whispered, "come for a ride. Don't worry what others will think." I'd been silencing temptation all day. Silence donuts! I do not need your delectably glazed calories. See as I wisely eat this banana instead. Silence open window just big enough to throw first graders out of! Sway dejectedly in the wind as I take a deep breath and count to five before reacting. Silence movie theater! I reject your comfy seats and buttery popcorn. Tonight I will shadow box and lift weights while I watch 'The Biggest Loser' on my laptop.

Swings - you win. Here I come.

I set my recycling bag on a bench, preliminarily tested the strength of the swing, and took flight. I love swinging. I've always loved swinging. Many a neighborhood swing set has found itself the focus of my retreat from stress or sorrow. It's my sanctuary. It's my happy place. My legs pumped in a slow rhythm, marked by the squeaky chain keeping my pace. Air stroked my face and arms and I was grateful.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for this moment. Thank you for the strength that's been lent me today. Thank you for my amazing life, for my family, for my job. Thank you for truth in abundance, for joy, and for beauty. Thank you for friendships. Thank you for solitude. Thank you for 10 flights of stairs. Thank you for peanut butter.

"Squeak," said the swing.

"Thank you," said I.

And then I wasn't alone on the playground anymore. A young Korean woman was walking into the sand. She was wearing workout clothes and carrying a cloth bag. She set her bag on the bench, next to mine, and set herself in the swing next to me. I was surprised. As I said, I'd never seen Korean adults on playground equipment before. When she stepped onto the playground I'd sooner expected a scolding than a companion.

Quickly the pace of her swing joined mine. 'Squeak' 'squawk' 'Squeak' 'squawk' was the call and reply of our equipment.

I continued to enjoy the moment, already taken back by the similarity of our situations, when she began to whisper to herself in Korean.

My Korean is bad and I understood very little, but I did understand one word - over and over: 'Kamsahapnida'. Thank you.

Maybe she was praying. Maybe she was practicing a monologue. Maybe she was vocally thanking the universe for every moment that the swing set didn't buckle and collapse under the weight of the large foreigner in the other swing. I have no idea.

I am tickled by this, though, and I'll tell you exactly why. I love Korea. I love a thousand things about it, but I don't connect with it. I don't relate to the Korean culture, and it's very rare that I relate with Korean people beyond surface interchanges. So now I'm tickled by this new idea. I have this silly thought that there is a Korean me, that for over two decades we grew up on opposite sides of the world, in opposite cultures, but that we still turned out the same. For over two years we've been living across the street from each other without any idea. Tonight, we shared a swing set.

And I hope that right now she's at home, writing a blog in Korean about how tickled she is at the idea that tonight she shared a swing set with the American her.

Hiccups

2009-06-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

"sqwkwaw, sqwkwaw ........................ sqwkwaw"

That's what my hiccups sound like on the inside of my head. If there were another person here they would probably hear "hic ... hic ... hic ...", but there's no-one to hear them from the outside.

The Best Day Evar

2009-05-29T22:33:00.000-07:00

Bad news: The Swine Flu is in Korea. It came in with a foreign teacher, which led to the quarantine of a group of other teachers that had been in contact with the individual. You can read the adventures of that group here. My adventures are related to theirs, but are also quite different.

The H1N1 scare lead to the cancellation of our spring picnic. (Please do not ask me to explain why we were safer from the virus confined to our tiny, crowded, and poorly ventilated school than outside the city on a mountainside. The only answer I can give you is that the decision made the mommies happier - and in private education, mommy happiness always trumps logic.)

So, the day before the picnic I found myself looking at the next day's blank schedule and wondering what we would spend the day doing. I mulled over a few options, but didn't really like any of them, so I decided to let my class choose.

Without further ado I give you - The Best Day Evar: what happens when kindergarteners make the lesson plan.

First Period: Gym and Games
We started out the day in our little gym with stilt races.

Second Period: Cooking
Next we made a no-bake layer cake out of graham cookies, cream cheese, and sweetened condensed milk.

Third Period: Music Time

In may our theme was 'People to Know' which included figures like Ghandi, King Tut, Michael Jordan, and The Beatles. My class's favorite was The Beatles and Yesterday has become our most requested song.

Fourth Period: Field Trip

Next we went to the neighborhood playground to romp. I forgot my camera, but I'm sure you can imagine Korean kids on monkey bars adequately.

Fifth Period: Birthday Party
The final request was that we finish the day with a birthday party. It wasn't anyone's birthday, so we nominated Olivia the beloved pig of children's literature to receive the honors of the day. We sang and ate the cake we'd made earlier. It was super tasty, and the perfect end to what truly was the best day evar. I should let my kids do the planning more often.

A good day to be my feet

2009-05-10T04:11:00.000-07:00

On Saturday Celeste and I went to the beach.

I walked along the shore.

I followed some kids up a stream.

I savored the mud.

I explored some tidal pools.

I climbed some rocks.

And I sat in a very nice place to sit.

I smiled

2009-04-30T03:46:00.001-07:00

About 45 minutes ago I was walking home from work. I was taking the long way that cuts through the park, and via the modern miracle of podcasting, Bob Boilen was whispering the names of musicians into my ear.

A pack of high school boys ... straight ahead. We weren't exactly on a collision course. We could have passed each other without any contact at all, but I knew that wouldn't happen. They all waved and shouted, "Hello! So nice to meet you!" I half smiled and gave them a nod without removing my hands from my pockets. Just another Thursday evening - cutting through the park.

But the unprecedented followed. One of the high school boys broke away from the pack. He was wearing skinny jeans cuffed a few inches above his ankles, and his bowl haircut grazed his eyelids. It's a look that seemed to deserve mockery, but at the same time proclaimed, "You can laugh at me if you want, but you'll be wearing the same thing next year and trying to convince your friends that you were the first to wear it."

He stepped up to me and stopped directly in my path, forcing me to stop also. We stood there for a moment that must have been much briefer than it seemed, my exposed pedicure inches away from his vans. A smile spread across his face and he raised a single hand palm forward, reminiscent of a Vulcan well-wishing, and said, "High five."

A cheer burst out of his crowd when our palms met, as though he'd just scored a winning goal. I smiled. He rejoined his crowd and I put my hand back in my pocket, and I smiled. I smiled. I smiled. And I walked home.

Cherry Garden

2009-03-04T06:21:00.000-08:00

The half moon radiated through the fuzzy, starless sky while ajima's arms rotated in wide breast-stroke circles, mixing deep-fried sweet potato slices into the rice-cakes and sauce. Every time I go to her stand she charges me the same amount, but gives me a little extra. Her little extra is bigger and bigger every visit, until the sweet and spicy take away of my most recent visit nearly doubled the take away of my first. Swinging the black plastic bag of street-cooked dinner and joy at my side, I forgot to stop and pick up milk on my way home, because instead I smiled and thought about the promise of spring embroidered across the front of ajima's forest green apron: Cherry Garden.

So many words in so few sentences. I'm sorry reader, but that's just how good it was.

Flat Stanley

2009-02-16T14:16:00.000-08:00

My second-grade cousin Peter sent me Flat Stanley. One of my friends referred to Flat Stanley as the curse of teaching in Korea, but this was the first I'd gotten and I've been very excited to take him out and about with me. Once, when I was hiking on the fortress in Suwon with some friends, I saw a western family taking pictures of their Flat Stanley. They'd taped a chopstick to the back of him, so he was really easy to pose in their pictures. I thought, "If anyone ever sends me a Flat Stanly, I'm gonna do that." So, when Mr. Flat finally arrived on Friday, that's what I did.

Two days later I was on a train headed into town. Flat had already seen a variety of Korean sights and had spent hours on the Seoul Metro System, but I realized I didn't have a picture of him on the subway. So, I pulled my camera out of my messenger bag, then pulled out a laminated paper cutout of a man, gripping it by the chopstick it was taped to. I posed the man next to one of the handles dangling from the overhead railings, lined up the shot, snapped the picture, then returned Flat Stanley and my camera to my bag. Then came the hard part. I had to spend 10 more minutes on the train pretending I hadn't just done something extremely odd while several dozen Koreans stared at me, their faces portraying a mix of curiosity and disapproval. Next time I decide to do something strange on the subway, I shall try to remember to do it right before I exit the train. I like to leave people wondering, but I don't think I'm a big fan of standing captively on a stage before them while they wonder.

Dream

2009-02-13T04:29:00.001-08:00

Last night I dreamed that I bought an electric blue motorcycle from my Relief Society president at church. I raced over green mountains, winding through switch-backed roads, speeding into every turn. Then I woke up and walked to work in the rain.

Placement Tests

2009-02-02T14:43:00.000-08:00

I was in the corner grading tests. Only three of my students were still working on the essay portion at the end of this year's placement test. James of Belmont stopped writing long enough to ask, "Ms. Denice, if everyone is finished we will play a game?" (note: I've decided to give alias's to any of my students that I write about instead of using their real names, or rather the English alias's by which their commonly known at our school.)

I looked at the clock and thought, "Everyone's not going to finish James of Belmont, because you're not going to finish." I said, "Worry about your test James of Belmont and we'll see what happens." He started writing again.

Then The Grand Duchess Herself stopped writing and asked, "Ms. Denice, what if I write a word in my test, and you don't know that word?"

I swung a withering gaze in her direction and thought, "You are a 7-year-old Korean girl. You don't know any English words that I don't know." I said, "If there is a word in your essay that I don't know, I will look it up in a dictionary."

The Grand Duchess Herself sighed loudly and said, "Oh good!" before she finished writing.

Tony '2-step' McDermott was in the corner flexing his fingers instead of writing the last of his essay. "Tony '2-step' McDermott," I said, "You need to finish or you'll run out of time."

"I'm sorry," he said, "It's just ... it's just ... this writing and this answering ... ... ... This monster is breaking my hands!"

I thought, "You're funny." I said, "You're funny. Finish your test."

2009-01-31T03:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a bit after lunch, my physical well-being caught a glimpse of the desktop calendar that my supervisor Alice gave me at the end of last year.

"Is January almost over already?" it asked itself. "My, how the time flies! Why it seems just yesterday that we took our New Years vacation and left Denice sick for nearly two weeks. And it can't have been that long since our weekend jaunt that lead to her relapse shortly afterward. Isn't it amazing how quickly the time passes? One doesn't even notice. And here it is, January is nearly over and what have we got to show for the month?"

I had no idea this sub conscious self-talk was taking place. I was busy reading the Franny K. Stein book that my new class will start studying next week.

After a thoughtful pause my physical well-being picked up where it left off, "So much vacation in one month seems lazy, but I suppose if we're gonna go to hell we may as well go all the way, eh?"

And so, with only 33 hours remaining in the month of January I quite suddenly found myself sick for the third time in one month.

I can only hope that February finds all hands back on deck ready for duty, because my emotional well-being is getting a little tired of picking up the slack where my physical well-being has left off.

2009-01-20T02:12:00.000-08:00

My uncle put a link to this movie on our family website and it made me so happy that I'm putting a link here. Enjoy.

Korean Moped Man

2009-01-20T01:16:00.000-08:00

Korean Moped Man, I love you.

I love your speedy delivery of fried chicken, the mail, or Internet provider customer support.

I love the smoldering cigarette hanging out of your mouth at a jaunty angle above the pollution filtering mask that you have pulled out of the way to make room for it.

I love the yellow E-Mart bags wrapped around your gloves in the winter.

I love when I make eye contact with the wise and mournful plastic eyes of the polar bear hat draped over your brow like the carcass of a beloved plush toy.

I love when you zip past me and shout, "So nice to meet you!" Korean Moped Man, it is nice to you meet you, too.

I love when we are waiting at a crosswalk together and you take the time to throw me an upnod and rev your engine a few times. I hope you don't forget me too quickly as you zoom away to deliver that pressing McDonald's order.

I love you Korean Moped Man. You are the reason I look both ways before I cross the sidewalk, and today you are the reason I am glad I am in Korea, and nowhere else in the world.

Feelings

2009-01-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

Katie came skipping down the hallway at lunch time and full-stopped face first into me, wrapping her arms around my waist. I smiled down at the second grader and she smiled up at me. This made me feel good.

'Ms. Denice is chunky,' Katie said.

'What?'

Katie unhugged me and placed both her hands on the front of my purple D-shirt. They fit perfectly in the negative space of the giant 'D'.

'Plump,' she said matter-of-factly and smiled up at me. I did not smile back down. Katie removed her hands from my person and skipped away, as lightly and carelessly as she had come.

Usually I'm glad when the kids are excited about using their new vocabulary. Sometimes I am not.

When I grow up ...

2008-12-31T01:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think that I am pretty cool, but I never really know for sure. I feel the same way about most of my qualities actually, and I don't mind that. I think this state of uncertainty about ourselves is the part of the human experience that makes us socially tolerable to others.

I don't think that I'm a good writer sometimes, though. I always think I'm a good writer. I don't always think that I'm an excellent writer, but that's okay, because at least I know I'm good.

So ...

I'm on vacation. I'm not on the kind of vacation where I go somewhere interesting. I'm on the kind of vacation where I don't go anywhere, especially to work. I've also been sick, which makes it an even more restful vacation than I'd anticipated. Mostly I've been sleeping. I'll sleep for a few hours, then wake up and read a little, then sleep for a few more hours, then wake up and read some more.

For several months I've been working on this mammoth Pynchon novel. I'm convinced that I could read a bit of it every day and still never finish it. Marms said that it's the wrong kind of reading for a vacation, so I went to my bookshelf and picked up some Neil Gaiman. Sometimes I say I want to be Bill Bryson when I grow up. It's a lie. I really want to be Neil Gaiman. (No disrespect to Mr. Bryson, who I suspect doesn't follow my blog anyhow.)

In addition to reading the Gaiman novel I've been watching a silly television show and working on my jigsaw puzzle (which has more pieces than my Pynchon novel has pages) and I've been writing. I put my writing project on hold several months ago because I had some time consuming Christmas gifts that needed doing, but I pulled it up this week and I feel more excited about it than I have in a long time. I finally wrote the scene in the post office where Otis meets my favorite character, Lyla K.

Now it's a race between three daunting tasks I've set myself to. Which shall I finish first: the Pynchon, the Puzzle, or the Project?

Experience favors the novel and the jigsaw over poor Otis, and most likely I'll skip all three to watch more television or go back to sleep. It is a new year, though, (or will be tomorrow) which should count for something.

Waving

2008-12-02T04:44:00.000-08:00

This evening I went out to dinner with a coworker. When we arrived at the restaurant I stepped up to the glass doors and waited for them to open. They didn't. I looked to the side of the door for a button to push. There wasn't one. I waved my hand back and forth in front of the picture of the hand on the door. Nothing happened. My coworker reached forward, grabbed the door handle, and pulled it toward her. Like magic, the door swung open.

After dinner we were walking home and a young man jogged past us in the opposite direction. I heard a clatter and looked to see that his cell phone had fallen out of his pocket. I picked it up and shouted, "Hey!" as he caught the tail end of a walk signal on a busy street. He stopped at the corner, waiting to cross in the opposite direction. My friend and I yelled, but he didn't notice us. We waved our hands manically in the air, but he didn't so much as glance our direction. If I'd spoken Korean I could have tried, "You in the black hat! You dropped your phone!" Instead I just waved. His signal came up and he started crossing the next street. We couldn't run after him until we got another signal ourselves and we started wondering what we should do next. Luckily, halfway across the street he put his hands in his pockets and started to grope around for the missing phone. He paused for a moment, then turned around. I held the phone over my head and started waving and pointing at it. He spotted us and all was well.

Moral of the story: Waving - Doesn't always open doors. Doesn't always get people's attention, but sometimes it does.

The Footstool's Tale

2008-11-22T04:45:00.000-08:00

The tale begins last December when I moved. In the fall I'd expressed that if I could add any two things to my flat it would be an oven and a balcony, then in December my old flat was sold and I moved down the block into my new one. It doesn't have an oven. It doesn't have a balcony either. What it does have is a railed-off bit of roof you can access by climbing out my window, which is basically a balcony anyway. I thought it would be the perfect place to eat breakfast every morning, I just needed a place to sit. And here begins The Footstool's Tale.

I found the footstool at Home Plus early one Saturday morning. It's plastic, orange seat was a square resting on four aluminum legs and it was cheap, so I bought it. I took it home and ate breakfast out on my almost-a-balcony. It was perfect. It was also the last time I ate breakfast outside. I guess I'm just too hurried or lazy to climb up into my window seat and out a window, hauling my breakfast and my stool behind me so that I can sit and stare at the opposite building for a few minutes before work every morning. So the footstool stayed inside.

It's life in my flat was not idle. The footstool made the rounds, changing functions just about every time I got bored and moved my furniture. It served as a shelf for a houseplant, and then for my earring rack. It was my computer desk when I went through my 'sitting on the floor' phase, and then my computer chair when I stopped sitting on the floor and regretted my decision to get rid of my old computer chair.

For a while I kept it up in my loft as a night stand beside my mattress. When I decided to move it back downstairs I lost my grip on it and dropped it down the stairs. One of the plastic corners broke off.

Not long after that two of the legs bent inward. I tried to bend them back out again, but it was clear that the integrity of Home Pus's cheapest stool had been compromised beyond further reliability.

This is the part of the tale in which I turn my eyes downward in shame to make a confession. Throwing away my old computer chair had been a huge hassle in which I argued with and then paid off a pair of old security guards with whom I didn't share a common language. When I knew it was time to say goodbye to my footstool, I took the coward's way out. I made sure no-one was looking and left it in the stairwell.

Here comes the redemptive ending. A week later I stepped off of the elevator into the first floor entryway to find that my chipped and mangled footstool had found a new home across from the security guard's booth. I was surprised to see it there initially, and increasingly more and more surprised as it continued to be there.

It's been over two months now and the little orange footstool is still magnifying its calling in its new little corner. Sometimes it has packages waiting on it, sometimes notices in Korean. For a while it was home to a pot of yellow flowers, and one day a little girl was sitting on my stool while her mother conversed with one of the guards.

I gave up on orange footstool and abandoned it in a dark corner, but little footstool was too good for the shadows. Somehow it managed to find its way to a much better work than I ever gave it while it lived with me.

It just goes to show that a few thousand won spent at Home Plus may go much further than you'd ever expect.

Dog Soup (not for animal lovers)

2008-10-27T02:43:00.001-07:00

I've been meaning to write about Dianne Dog Day for several weeks now. Today I am sick at home and bored, so it seems like the time to do it. Also, I'm not feeling very wordy, so I might have a shot at writing a strong, concise entry.

Dianne was leaving Korea and hadn't eaten dog soup yet. Neither had Jenny, Ruth, and I, so we set a date. Due to four busy schedules, we set the date a month in advance, on Dianne's last day in Korea. Due to four poor planners, by the time we all got together a month later it felt like we'd spontaneously decided to do it that afternoon. Jennie and I were late, and we got lost.

We got found, too. Then we went to dinner. We were the only people in the restaurant, besides the handful of ajimas working there. They laughed at our broken Korean and laughed at us taking pictures of the food. We laughed, too.

It wasn't bad, the dog soup. It wasn't great either. It was like beef if beef were always too chewy and had a slightly off flavor.

The ajimas had a TV running in the back, and I glanced at it in time to see 'Oklahoma City' flash across the screen in sky blue script. Then I saw a familiar face, though no-one I've ever met personally. It was a face I'd passed while shelving biographies at the bookstore and had caught on an episode of Opera once. It was Faith, the miracle dog.

I looked at the dog on TV.

I looked at the dog in my soup bowl.

It was a beautiful moment. Thank you man's best friend, for loyalty on some days and dinner on others. Thank you universe for sweet moments of irony.

(Thank you Ruth for these pictures I stole off your Facebook page.)

The very big birthday party goes bust

2008-10-07T04:34:00.000-07:00

My class has been counting down for months. October 7th - the very big birthday party. A birthday party is never something to turn your nose up at, but this fell in a category all its own. October 7th doesn't just have one class 8 birthday, but two.

Celebrating both Danny and Amy's birthdays at the same time meant two class periods of party time instead of one. It meant twice as much singing, twice as much gift giving, twice as many candles, and we dared to hope for twice as much cake.

That's why we were all a little disappointed this morning when Danny and Amy explained to us that there would only be one cake. "Two cake - very, very many cake," said Amy. "Eat it and tummy is ouch."

Danny picked up the thread, "Amy mommy is Kid's College coming - birthday cake. My mommy is cookie and fruit."

Oh the cruel sensibility of the situation!

It turned out to be for the better. Amy's mom brought an enormous chocolate cake with Amy and Danny's names frosted on the top. After about twenty minutes of photo shoot time (see Korean obsession with photo documentation) and lighting the candles, singing, and blowing them out twice, we cut and served to all of the students, except for one. Poor little Jennifer - allergic to chocolate.

As soon as I said, "Sorry Jennifer, you can't have the cake because it's chocolate, but here are some rice cakes." a most unexpected thing happened. A little girl burst into bitter tears. That part wasn't unexpected, of course. The unexpected thing was that the frantic crying was coming from behind me as Jennifer resignedly accepted her plate of non-chocolate treats in front of me.

I turned around to see Yoona, one of my new students and the youngest in the class, screaming around an open mouth full of chocolate frosting. No one knew what was wrong, but it was clear that Yoona was doing everything she could to not swallow her bite of dessert, so my teacher helper rushed over with a napkin for Yoona to spit it into. The Korean staff took her out for a drink of water and to find out what happened.

"She's afraid of melamine." Yoona's mom told her not to eat any chocolate because of the melamine issues in China. Yoona had forgotten until she'd heard me witholding chocolate from her classmate. As soon as the explanation came back to us, Sophia and Lynn remembered that they weren't supposed to be eating chocolate either and switched to bananas and rice cakes as well. The atmosphere of the room grew somber as one after another students set down their spoons and pushed away their plates of cake. Only two students finished theirs.

Good thing we didn't have two cakes.

The melamine scare ruined the very big birthday party. Thanks a lot melamine scare!

It's interesting to have such young children so aware of this issue. I have to throw in one more story. Yesterday afternoon I was starving, so I ran downstairs between classes to buy a bag of nacho chips at the corner market store. A former student of mine, 8-year-old Lisa, was walking past and saw me holding the bag of chips. "Those aren't healthy Ms. Denice. They have Melamine in them." I smiled at her, but didn't respond. She kept walking, but as she passed the second door of the market she turned and shouted, "Don't eat those Ms. Denice, unless you want to die!"

I'm afraid I ate them anyway. Apparently my powdered nacho cheese craving outweighs my concerns form my own safety.

Pink Post It Note

2008-09-13T23:30:00.001-07:00

I know this looks like a valentine, but it's not. It's the directions to a chapel. Last October I went online and found the address, then asked my supervisor at work to write out the directions in Korean so that a taxi driver could easily take me there. I usually go to church in Seoul where I can attend an English meeting, but I've always meant to visit the local Korean congregation. This weekend I had travel plans fall through, which meant that I had a substitute arranged for my class in Seoul already, so it seemed like the perfect week to go check out the Bucheon ward.

I didn't expect it to take more than 15 minutes to get there, but I left an hour early just in case. I handed my pink post-it to the first taxi driver that pulled over, and we were off. Within ten minutes we were over by Bucheon station, and lost. The taxi driver drove slowly up and down the narrow streets peering out the windows in all directions.

He pulled over a few times to ask for help, passing my post-it out the window to pedestrians and fruit vendors. Finally we reached the intersection where the building ought to have been, but it wasn't. A woman in the corner market stall read over the note and verified the corner, but asserted that there was no church there. The taxi driver apologized, handed back my post-it, and asked if I wanted to go back home, offering to take me for free. I thanked him, paid him, and got out. I wasn't ready to give up just yet.

I stood on the street corner for a few minutes, trying to decide what course of action to pursue. Across the street I noticed a nicely dressed gentleman walking resolutely along and carrying a Bible. It's a pretty big holiday today, and Korea has a big church-going population, so I knew the chances were slim that he was heading to the same church I was looking for. For a lack of any other plan, I decided to follow him anyway. Five or so minutes later we were part of a large crowd of dressed-up church goers scaling a flight of stairs toward a cross-topped mega church. It clearly wasn't the church I was searching for, and I stopped across the street from it wondering what I should do next.

A man wearing a black suit and black framed glasses was posting a notice on the doors of the church, so I approached, handed him my note, and tried, with my broken Korean, to ask if he knew where it was. Instantly I was the center of a counsel of well-dressed older men. My post-it was passed around. There was a lot of pointing and a lot of Korean I didn't understand. In the end, the man I'd originally approached took charge of the situation. He took the note and told me to follow him.

I followed him for the next twenty minutes. We walked up and down the streets reading numbers on the sides of buildings. Dozens of passing mega church-goers greeted my guide as we passed and I started to wonder who this guy was. Thirty minutes before his meeting started he'd dropped everything to take a walk with a lost foreigner, and it was growing quite clear that he wasn't just another face in his congregation. When he reached the end of his own navigational resources he asked another man for some help. They consulted over the not for a few minutes, and the new man took charge. Like a parade the three of us marched along, following the pink post-it.

Finally we arrived as the intersection where the men had decided the church must be. A familiar looking woman stepped out of the corner market stall and approached, probably telling the men the same thing that she'd told my taxi driver. Clearly there was a problem with the address. Had the church moved? It had been almost a year since Alice had written down the directions for me. I decided I'd have to save this visit for another day. I thanked the men and reached out to take back my post-it. The man from the mega church turned to the other and said what I think was, "She's saying goodbye!" and laughed.

He didn't relinquish the post-it. Instead he said goodbye to the other man and the woman from the market and indicated that I should still follow him. Ten minutes later we were standing in a police station. Apparently that's what one does with lost children and white people. There were two young officers on duty, one of whom spoke pretty good English. They took my post-it, turned to a computer, made a phone call, flipped through a rode atlas, and said they'd found it. I said goodbye to mega church man and thanked him again before I was seated in the back of a police cruiser. My post-it was stuck to the dashboard.

Within a few minutes I was back at the intersection. The corner market woman watched us drive past shaking her head and laughing. Three times the post-it had brought me to this intersection. It was past time to give up, but how? I was in the back of a police car. I didn't even have my own door handle, and even though one of the officers was wildly scanning a map, the other was still driving. When they stopped the car it was in front of another police station where two more young officers stepped out with a map to peruse my post-it and offer suggestions.

I was left alone in the car with the officer who spoke English. "I think the note must be wrong," I said. "It's OK, we have a new map," he replied. I wondered what good a new map would do if we had a bad address. The other officer climbed back behind the wheel, said something I didn't understand, started the car, and drove me directly to the church building I'd been looking for the whole time.

It turns out there was one word wrong on the note that had everyone looking at the wrong map. Somebody along the way had speculated that this must be the case, so we got a new map, and it worked. I was thirty minutes late, but I made it, and it was great. I met some cool people, exchanged phone numbers, and enjoyed the meeting very much, even though I didn't understand most of it.

So thanks. Thank you taxi driver who was friendly and patient even with someone who doesn't speak your language, had bad directions, and no phone number for you to call for clarification.

Thank you man from the mega church who was willing to drop everything to help a lost stranger in a strange land.

And thank you Bucheon police department for doing something that I'm guessing doesn't fall under your job description, and being so nice about having to do it on the biggest holiday of the year.

Anquished Cries in the Night

2008-09-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

Little mosquito, why have you done this to me? I have enough blood for both of us, and I would gladly share with you, but I'm allergic to your saliva and now for the third night in a row I'm lying in frustrated discomfort when I should be sleeping. It's not just the huge red welts that itch to high heaven, it's the paranoia that accompanies them. How am I supposed to sleep now, knowing that I'm lying her like a helpless piece of steak for you to consume.

I went online and looked for home remedies for the itching you've brought into my life, so now I'm dotted in little plasters of baking soda and I reek of finger nail polish remover and tea tree oil. This is what you've reduced me to little mosquito.

But this isn't the worst of it, all I want now is to kill you. I know if you were dead I'd be able to sleep again. The itching is only temporary, and I've taken two antihistamines, so I know it will go away soon, but my fear of your return is greater and will keep me awake until the drowsy side effects of those little yellow pills knock me out.

But I know you're still in here. I know it for sure because I can see you sitting calmly on my wall. You look so confident and sure of your safety. Do you know, little mosquito, that you've perched so high that I can't possibly reach you, even with a rolled up magazine? Do you know, little mosquito, the anguish that your presence is causing me?

Little mosquito, I was going to get up early and get some things done before work tomorrow. I was going to exercise and practice the violin. I was going to wash the dishes that I left in the sink after dinner. I won't have time now. I know already that it will be a fight to wake up at all, after the sleep inducing allergy pills that you inspired me to allow into my tormented body. Do you see where this is going, little mosquito? You've already given me sleepless discomfort, paranoia, and murderous intentions, but as though it isn't enough destruction for you, you're also reducing me to a creature that is unhealthy, without skill, and living in filth.

What I'm trying to say, little mosquito, what I'm shouting at you with my final remnants of consciousness before sleep takes over and leaves me victim once again, is that you're not invited. You're very unwelcome. You are a rude house guest, and I'm asking you to leave before I fight back into wakefulness from drug induced dreams of mosquito induced misery.

Water Ballet, hold the water

2008-08-05T02:41:00.000-07:00

Part of my Americation (credit to KaRyn for the apt term) included a water themed family reunion camping near Virginia Beach. On the final night of the reunion we had a talent show. My siblings and I had corresponded a bit beforehand and decided to do something together. We worked out some of the details like music and costuming, but only spent about 30 minutes rehearsing before our performance. All in all, I'd call the result nothing shy of masterful, but here's a low-quality video so that you can judge for yourself.

High Drama

2008-08-05T02:27:00.000-07:00

I actually wrote this post over two weeks ago during a layover on my way home for vacation, but in the course of my travels I never got a chance to post it, so here it finally is. As regards my travels, I have little to say at this moment, but maybe I'll throw something together later.

I’m sitting in the Tokyo Narita airport thinking how tired I am of waiting already and how unfortunate it is that I still have hours and hours and hours of travel before I finish waiting and arrive at my Grandmother’s house in Phoenix. So, to pass a bit of the time while I pray that I get a seat on this flight, I’ve decided to write an entry that I’ve been meaning to write since Monday or Tuesday, when an incident of high drama occurred in class eight.

To begin, I’ll set the scene for you. It’s early in the day and early in the week. Eleven four- and five-year-olds are seated around two oblong desks. Each child has a package of 10 markers and a workbook open to a maze. They are all more or less hard at work. The teacher seems in control, intelligent, beautiful, and likeable at first glance. Upon closer inspection she is clearly very in control, intelligent, beautiful, and likeable. (Lucky kids.)

One of the girls (Sophia is her name.) stands up and carries her book across the room to ask the teacher for help, and this is where the high drama begins.

Ready … go …

Christine found a black marker cap on the table. I watched her check her own markers to verify that it wasn’t hers, and then look around at her neighbors. I knew whose cap it was. Sophia was standing next to me. Her eyes were begging for help. Her maze was begging for help. The layers of black marker trails on the page attested to dozens of failed attempts to get the monkey to the banana. Sophia was issuing a low wailing sound while she waved her book and her uncapped black marker in front of me. Despite months of work, Sophia has failed to learn more then a couple dozen words in English. She has, however, stopped speaking Korean in class. The result is a lot of manic gesturing and frantic facial expressions. Like her maze, Sophia’s hands were covered in black marker.

Christine was still looking for the owner of the black cap. “Christine!” I called, “It’s Sophia’s.” Christine noted the marker in Sophia’s hand, nodded, and set the cap back where she’d found it. Sophia and I began the task of distinguishing between the maze’s original borders and Sophia’s sprawling additions. Then the shouting started.

Ann had mistaken Sophia’s cap for her own and tried to take it. Christine had taken on the role of property defender.

“Christine! My giving!” yelled Ann.

“No!” replied Christine, “No you! Sophia!”

I intervened. I pointed out Ann’s cap lying on the other side of the table, and tempers cooled, but I noticed that Christine didn’t put the cap back down this time. She gripped it in a white-knuckled, left-handed fist while she finished her maze.

I returned my attention to Sophia, the monkey found the banana, and Sophia squealed with delight, waving her marker dangerously close to my face.

I turned my attentions on another student, and missed the beginnings of the commotion that broke out across the room. A few swift strides brought me to the scene where I pulled Christine away from her attack on Sophia. Sophia wore a look of complete bewilderment. Christine was red faced and crying. Sophia was holding her black marker cap in one hand and her still uncapped marker in the other. Christine had a stripe of black marker ink running down her arm.

As I said, I missed the incident, but my guess is that Christine gave the marker cap to Sophia and that Sophia, either overtaken with excitement or clumsiness, accidentally drew a line down Christine’s arm.

No problem, this was easy to fix. I started cleaning the marker off Christine’s arm with a moistened tissue and asked her if she wanted to go to the bathroom and wash her arm or if she was ok. She angrily pulled her arm away and yelled, “No!” Her crying turned to frantic sobbing.

I gave several other suggestions: Do you want to finish your maze? Do you need a drink of water? Do you want to go outside and finish crying?

She grew angrier and angrier, glaring the entire time at the still confused Sophia.

Then I remembered the vehemence with which she had defended the marker cap from Ann, and then protected it until Sophia’s return. After everything Christine had done for Sophia, in what should have been a triumphant moment of returned property, Sophia had forgone gratitude and instead defaced Christine’s very person. For Christine, it was the ultimate act of betrayal.

“Christine, are you angry because you gave Sophia her marker lid and then she wrote on your arm?” Christine nodded.

“Sophia, did you say thank you to Christine?” Sophia shook her head, then rectified the situation with a sincere, “Thank you, Christine.”

Sophia didn’t stop there, though. She is the most motherly little girl I’ve ever met, and as soon as Christine had stopped swinging at her, she’d gotten a tissue. She walked up and placed the tissue over Christine’s nose and nodded her head as if to say, “Blow,” which I’m sure she would have said if she’d known how to in English.

“Sophia, can you say I’m sorry, Christine?” She did, and Christine said it was ok.

Then, glad everything had worked out, I watched Sophia use her marker-blackened hands to wipe the tears off of Christine’s cheeks, leaving wide gray streaks from Christine’s eyes to her chin.

At that moment I had three reasons to be grateful:
1 – Sophia didn’t seem to notice that she’d just war painted her friend.
2 – There are no mirrors in my classroom, so Christine didn’t notice either.
3 – Everyone else in the class was too intent on finishing their mazes to bother with pointing it out to Christine.

I decided to just leave it alone. A few minutes later we had our bathroom break. I’m sure Christine was surprised and bewildered at her sooty reflection, but she came back to class with a clean, smiling face, all drama apparently forgotten.

Ticker Man - a Saturday afternoon in three acts

2008-06-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Act I

Angie and I were killing a Saturday afternoon eating banana ice cream in some Cold Stone window seats when we saw him – the man who would make us glad there hadn’t been any good movies showing that afternoon.

“What is he doing with that toilet paper?” I asked, “or is that ticker tape?”

Angie followed my gaze, “Ummm, yeah, like receipt paper, I think.”

He was sitting on a bench directly across from us unrolling a roll of narrow paper, occasionally pausing to make a not on it with a pen. Pretty quickly the wind had draped the bushes and bench to his left with yards of his notes. When he reached the end of the roll, he did the only sensible thing: he licked the edge of the paper for a moment, folded it over, and then released it to the breeze.

Angie and I looked at each other and laughed.

“That was crazy.”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder what he was writing.”

“Seriously.”

We kept eating our ice cream. I found myself staring at him. For the sake of convenience, from here on out I’ll call him Crazy#1. Crazy#1 stood up and paced for a few minutes, spotted an unfinished cigarette butte on the ground, then sat down to smoke it. His hair was nothing short of wild, and his dark suit and shirt looked like they’d be pretty nice if not so worn and dirty. Next to him were a quality looking duffle bag and backpack.

Also, he was staring intently at something, something in my direction. Wait … me! Crazy#1 was staring at me! I turned to Angie and hoped he hadn’t noticed my staring, but we’d been staring at each other long enough that I was pretty sure it hadn’t escaped him. Angie was staring at him, too.

We returned to our ice cream and laughed the whole thing off. A few minutes later, we were both staring at Crazy#1 again, because he was in motion again. He’d caught the end of the ticker tape and pulled it over his shoulder, as though it were a heavy sack, and was walking down the street with it unraveling out behind him. When the tape was completely stretched out, he turned around and came back, still pulling the tape behind him.

A pedestrian behind him accidentally stepped on the tape (probably mistaking it for, say, an ordinary piece of trash) and it broke. Angie and I both gasped. Crazy#1 was not deterred. He dropped his broken end found the new end, threw it over his shoulder and kept walking. A second person stepped on the tape. “Don’t give up!” Angie cheered next to me. He didn’t, he found the end and made it back to his seat without further incident.

Act II

Enter Crazy #2: A little old man wandering past stopped to pick up the broken pieces that Crazy#1 had dropped on the ground. Crazy#1 had been scribbling intently on his remaining tape for several minutes, occasionally stopping to review some of what he’d written and nod approvingly. Crazy#2 probably would have escaped our notice entirely, but we were curious to see if Crazy#1 would react to the confiscation of some of his paper, even if it was a discarded portion. He didn’t even seem to notice, but the damage was done, we were watching Crazy#2 now. We watched as he crumpled the paper in his hands, walked past Crazy#1, and hid the papers behind a bush.

“He just hid those papers behind a bush, right?”

“Yes he did, yes he did!”

“What is he doing?”

Crazy#2 walked past Crazy#1 again, walked halfway along the stretched out tape, looked back over his shoulder to where Crazy#1 was still not watching him, bent over, and tore the long end off of the paper, gathering it as he walked away and disappearing from our view.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

For the next 15 or 20 minutes we watched, empty ice cream cups in front of us, as Crazy#1 maintained his stance of focused writing. Every few minutes Crazy#2 would come back, walk a circle around Crazy#1, and vanish again. Then, during one of his laps, Crazy#2 noticed us, sitting in the window staring transfixedly at Crazy#1, and at him. He laughed, shrugged his shoulders, then nodded in the direction of Crazy#1 while shaking his head as if to say, “Yeah, check out the crazy guy.” Then continued walking.

Angie and I could barely stop laughing. “We watched him hide trash behind a bush!”

“Yeah, and he’s been pacing this block for twenty minutes!”

We shook our heads as if to say, “Yeah, check out the crazy guy.”

Act III

Curiosity overtook us. Crazy#1 was still writing. He’d been at it for ages and was only growing more and more intent and pleased with his work.

“That other guy totally tore a piece off and he didn’t even notice. We could get a piece, just to see what he’s writing.”

“That would definitely go in my journal.” We laughed. We were joking.

The wind picked up a little and started blowing the paper off to Crazy#1’s left again. It reached a couple sitting at the other end of the bench. They stood up and moved as soon as it touched them.

Angie and I looked at each other.

“It would be really easy.”

“I’ve gotta have a piece of it.”

We picked up our bags, and went outside, trying to look laid back and casual as we crossed the walk to the bench. Crazy#2 passed us, smiled, and nodded. I don’t know if Crazy#1 saw us, because I was avoiding looking at him as we sat down in the recently vacated seats. I set my hand on the bench beside me; it was resting on the end of the paper.

I turned to Angie, “Is he looking at me?”

“No, he’s still writing.”

I tried to bring myself to do it.

“I’m scared.”

“He’s not looking at you.”

We were both giggling. “I can’t do it.”

Crazy#1 stood up. He had his paper over his shoulder again, but this time instead of walking into the wind, he walked away from it, past us. The tape draped itself across our laps. He returned to his seat, raised the end into the air, and released it to the wind. We were holding it now, all of it. Re ran it through our hands.

“He was doing math?”

“’6+6-1=5’?, I’m not sure I’d call it math.”

“Is he looking at us?” I asked Angie.

“No.”

“Does he look angry?”

“No, he’s smiling soooo big right now.”

“What do you think he’d do if we just rolled it up and took it?”

I don’t know why I even suggested it. All I really wanted was to know what he’d been writing, and maybe to have a little piece as a keepsake, but there we were, killing a Saturday afternoon accordion folding ticker tape on a park bench in Seoul. According to Angie, Crazy#1 never stopped smiling. Before we were finished he stood up and wandered away. Then I looked up. A young woman sitting in the Stone Cold window was staring at something … something in my direction. The story had come full circle. For convenience from here on out I’ll refer to Angie and myself as Crazy#3 and Crazy#4.

I tucked the bundle of paper into my bag, we stood up, and we walked away. As we left, Crazy#1 sat back down, Crazy#2 smiled at us and waved, and Crazy#3 and Crazy#4 looked at each other and laughed.

Fathers' Day Regrets and Redemption

2008-06-15T05:47:00.000-07:00

So a few years ago (and by a few I mean 12) I wrote my dad a poem for Father's Day. It's a decision I have regretted pretty much ever since. I was only 16 years old and the poem was sickeningly sentimental, and not very good otherwise. It's an embarrassment, really. I used to write a poem a week back then (it's one of those things that angsty teenagers do) and most of them were embarrassing, but most of them have also been lost in the annals of time. This one hasn't. It's on my uncle's old web page. For years every time I googled myself it was the first thing that came up (this blog has finally bumped it down to my #2 slot.) A couple of times, it's even come up on other people's web pages! Of all the things I've done in my life, this poem has to be the one thing that gets spread around the Internet! (if only a little.) Well, I decided it's time for some redemption.

This year I've written my dad a new Father's Day poem. I like it better, and hopefully it won't be an embarrassment to be for the next 12 years. Here it is:

Dear Dad, imagine a colorful box adorned with a tidy bow.
Inside you'll find my gift to you: a violet sombrero.
The color will give you elegance and the shape will lend some show,
So I hope you're not afraid to wear this violet sombrero.
It will shield you from the sun and warm you in the snow.
It's not without practicalities, your violet sombrero,
But mostly I want all to note this excellent man I know:
That's my dad - the Mighty One! - in the violet sombrero.

The Skin I'm In

2008-05-31T18:17:00.000-07:00

Last weekend our church had a singles' conference, which is pretty much always a good time because there are so many cool people out here. After our Saturday night party a handful of us decided to go see the new Indiana Jones movie. Sometimes when I decide to do things like this I forget that I'm not in America where I can just hit #1 on my speed dial (always Fandango) then hop into a car and head to the theater with the best show time.

Instead we walked blindly to the nearest theater to find that there were no more showings that night. Then we tried to catch a taxi to another theater, but couldn't get a taxi to save our lives (it was insane, there were like 10 taxis across the street, but Korean taxis won't turn around. You have to go in the direction they're pointed or you're out of luck.) Anyway, after tons of walking, a subway ride, and a lot more walking, half the group decided to call it a night (one person was so fed up she took off without warning. That was a bit distressing.)

We were down to three: me (I don't give up lightly if there's a movie at the end of the tunnel), Jennie, and Angie. After dedicating some time to confirming that our missing party member hadn't been abducted and a sticky episode of sitting in chewing gum we carried on the hunt. We failed. We retreated to Baskin Robbins for some consolatory ice cream.

The whole experience turned out to be an excellent crucible for friendship, though. Jennie and Angie and I were already making fun of the whole experience before it was even over, and before we left Angie told us that there's a really great spa in her town (Asan, about an hour out of Seoul) and that next Saturday we should all have a spa day. So, a week later I was on a train with Jennie and Sammi, a fourth friend who decided to join us.

The spa day was excellent. It was rife with new cultural experiences and overall very pleasant. We floated around in a wading pool for a while. We did a whole gauntlet of jet spray water massages. We sat in a shallow pool of fish that eat your dead skin right off you (which was mostly a novelty I think, because it was really like spot ex foliation, probably much less effective than a good scrub, and much more ticklish.)

Speaking of scrubs, we did that too. Imagine, if you will, a big log that a little old Korean lady has decided to shape into a canoe. She puts the log on a table. Dumps a few buckets of water onto it, then starts sanding vigorously away. She hits every bit of the log until it's smooth as silk, then pours a few more buckets of water on it and calls it good. But it's not really a log. I just asked you to picture a log because I didn't want you to picture me naked, and also because the image of vigorous sanding is probably pretty accurate to what I experienced.

The scrub took place in a public bath area (women only thankfully.) This is an idea I've just recently gotten used to, and this was only my second venture into the world of public nudity. I discovered that it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Taking your clothes off in public is like ripping off a band aide, really, just get it over with and then you're fine. Actually, I found myself strolling between the different soaking pools and saunas with increasingly more and more confidence. I mean, your skin isn't like a bad outfit that you later wish you hadn't worn, it's yours completely and you can't really change much about it without taking drastic measures, so you might as well own it, even when there's a room full of Korean women giving you curious glances.

Anyway, enough about me being naked. Needless to say I don't really have any pictures for this post. It was a great day, and next week Jennie, Sammie, and I are headed to Pusan for our three day weekend, with yet a new fourth - Ruth - in tow. I love the inexhaustible store of really cool people that Korea continues to produce for me (even if many of them are imported.)

Progress Reports (revised)

2008-05-20T03:53:00.000-07:00

Blogger's note/disclaimer: This is the first time I've ever regretted a blog I posted. The original version came out with a tone completely different than what I'd intended. The modifications have been minor, and just to be completely clear: I adore all four of these kids. I wrote this blog to highlight some of the personalities that enliven my life. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

If I didn't have a boss, or had some kind of ESL kindergarten tenure, my progress reports would read less like "Your child is a pleasure to have in class." and read more like this:

(Not only am I not changing the students' names, but I'm posting photos. So if a parent stumbles across these, there will be no doubt. I might really wish I had tenure at that point.)

Danny is a lively boy and I never have to worry about the classroom ever becoming silent when he is present. He speaks English well, and freely. I am concerned about his disinclination to complete his written work. To be frank, I've seen him crumple up and attempt to eat about as many worksheets as I've seen him finish in a timely manner.

Nancy is often a delightful happy girl. The rest of the time she flies into hysterics when faced with ordeals like having to use a yellow pencil instead of a pink one, or being brushed by a passing classmate. Also, she thinks every day is opposite day. You should probably confirm that your daughter doesn't actually believe that she is a boy and that babies are 'yummy, yummy' when consumed.

Peter is clearly a gifted child. He is one of the best speakers in my class and can read and write very well for his level. He is also gifted with charm and charisma. Somehow, despite having regularly physically assaulted nearly every member of the class, he is still the most popular among my students. Also, I hope he is up on his shots, because he bit me the other day.

Christine's behavior is pretty fair, as is her English. Honestly, I'd have nothing in particular to say about your daughter, other than the usual progress report fall-backs I resort to when I don't have anything else to say, except that when my father visited my class earlier this month she kicked him in the shin. She disrespected my family; now it's personal. Thought you ought to know.

Kimchi is not in my spell check dictionary. (part 3)

2008-05-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Finally, now that it's more than a week past, the final chapter in my April 26th adventures. I'm sorry to report that there are no photographs for this segment.

So, my ramblings had taken me past the comic books museum and the library, and now I was standing at a trail head. There's a bit of a mountain behind the library. It's nothing serious, but it was green and lovely, and there was a trail headed up it from right where I was standing. My watch told me that I had nothing but time, so why not? I put away my mp3 player and started up the gradual incline.

Did I mention that it was green and lovely? There was a bird somewhere that I could hear, but not see. What I do know is that it wasn't a magpie, pigeon, or sparrow, which made it automatically more interesting than any other bird I'd seen in months. The trail wasn't crowded, but I could pretty much always see other people. I always feel a little out of place hiking in Korea because I don't have the official Korean hiking uniform.

Every Korean seems to own a full-on Gortex matched-set outfit, and when they hike, even if it's a casual day hike, they come decked out with hiking boots, a collapsible walking stick, and a full backpack with a drinking cup swinging loosely on the back of it. I was wearing a pair of tan slacks, and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. I was decked out with my messenger bag and my red Keens (which make me feel like I'm an 'in crowd' hiker anywhere else in the world but garner disapproving glances here.)

Anyway, about 15 minutes along the trail a little old man started waving to get my attention and shouting, "You come here! You come here!" I wandered over, assuming he just wanted to practice his English. Well, he didn't really have much English to practice. I knew more Korean than he did English, which is really saying something. We still pounded out a bit of a conversation in which he learned that I'm from near Texas, I'm an English teacher, and that I'm not married. Having exhausted all my Korean resources and feeling that I'd done my 'foreign novelty' duty, I told him it was nice to meet him and goodbye and continued on the trail. He continued, too, pace for pace with me.

After we'd hiked side by side in silence for about 10 minutes we came to a little rest area. He grabbed my arm and pulled me over to a bench where he sat me down and sat next to me. This time we stretched out conversation to include what part of town I lived in and how beautiful Korea is. There were a couple of middle-aged women sitting on the bench to our left pouring themselves coffee out of a silver thermos. He turned and asked them for some coffee, which they poured into a paper cup and handed to him and he promptly tried to pass on to me. I didn't know enough Korean to tell him that I don't drink coffee for religious reasons, so I just said 'no, no coffee' over and over while he demanded to know why until he gave up and drank it himself.

When we started walking again he stretched his curiosity about my drinking habits and asked if I drank rice wine, beer, or rice liquor. After getting no, no, and no. He asked what I do drink. I told him water, milk, and juice. He said something I didn't understand and pointed at my belly. My guess is that he said, 'Well that's why you're so fat.' But it might have been, 'By the way, that shirt really suits you.' He then proceeded to ask what kinds of meat I like to eat and what sports I like to play. He shook his head disapprovingly the entire conversation. He told me that I needed to eat kimchi, which I assured him I do.

About this time we stepped off the trail onto a busy street I didn't recognize. I looked around for a sign that might tell me where we were. My hiking buddy grabbed my arm again and started pulling me to the left. I was starting to worry that he might be planning to take me home with him as his new pet American. When I didn't follow him he indicated that the subway station was that way. We spent a good 40 minutes strolling silently through the city together. He offered to buy me some milk, but I declined since I had water in my bag and didn't really want to drink milk after hiking all afternoon. He seemed disappointed and I was a little sorry for that. Finally we arrived and Bucheon station. He gave me a piece of paper with his name and phone number on it and waved me away.

All in all, we spent over an hour and a half together.

When I got home I pulled off my Keens and examined the pair of blisters I'd acquired, looked disapprovingly at my favorite hiking shoes, took a shower, and watched two episodes of House.

The End

Animatronics is not in my spell check dictionary. (part 2)

2008-05-01T01:43:00.000-07:00

Let's see, where was I? Pressing on to Bucheon Stadium? That sounds about right. Rick Steves was on my mp3 player finishing up his conversation about sailing and transitioning into the most threatened historical tourist sites for his Earth Day special and I was walking around the base of the stadium to see what was there besides the jewelry/kite making shops I'd seen last time. (See if you're reading this in reverse chronological order you're probably a little lost right now because this is a continuation of my previous entry, just so you know.)

What I found was pretty exciting: The Korean Comic Book Museum! This was something I could get into! Out front there were a few statues of comic book characters that I mostly didn't recognize and the drains had a path of cartoon faces painted along them. Admittance was about three dollars so I paid my dues and headed in. Everything was in Korean, which wasn't necessarily surprising, since I'm in Korea. Unfortunately I don't know enough Korean to make heads or tails of paragraph after paragraph that I assume lay out the history of Korean comic books, but couldn't be sure. So I walked through the main hall looking at yellowed comic book pages and wondering why each was significant.

In Korea, for some reason, people like to throw a bit of English into everything. The Korean Comic Book Museum was no exception, but it was very little English. The only thing I saw in English was a heading on a display of ... well, of comic books. It said: Comics, the core contents of the digital convergence era of the 21st Century. I've given that a lot of thought. I have no idea what it means. I have a couple of theories, but they've all been constructed by clustering together fancy English words with no in particular point or meaning, so I won't bother you with them.

At the end of the main hall was a wall sized illustration of a girl lying on her back looking up at the vast night sky. I stood there waiting for a few minutes, hoping the girl scout troop between the picture and me would clear out so I could get a shot of it. I wanted to know what the two words in the girl's speech bubble were.

I never got the photograph because a woman who worked at the museum came over and escorted me to a door cut into the bottom right corner of the illustration. She slid it open and indicated that I should enter the tiny room behind it. I did, and she closed the door behind me. I found myself in what I appeared to be a converted closet, and not a very big one. The walls, floor, and ceiling were painted black and all surfaces were covered with twinkle lights. I think I was supposed to feel like I had stepped into the pages of the comic book. It felt more like a Korean woman in a green vest had just escorted me into a shabbily decorated closet and shut me in. I stood in there for about twenty seconds, during which time a string of lights fell off the wall beside me. I chalked it up to second rate animatronics and and let myself out.

After walking through two more rooms of comic books (which I couldn't read) labeled with plaques (which I couldn't read), I reached the grand finale, a room where you could draw your own comic book character on a bit of paper and pay five dollars to have it made into a button. I opted out, but spent more time looking at the wall of abandoned buttons than I had at the entire museum before that. I guess you can put just about anything on a pin back button and I suddenly become interested. It took every ounce of moral fiber in my being to keep from stealing one, but in the end my moral fiber won out.

When I had walked into the museum I'd been thinking, "Awesome! I'll have to bring Dad and Cassandra here when they come visit!" When I walked out I was thinking, "Nevermind." and also, "I'm hungry." I bought a kabob of street meat from a nearby vendor and finished my circuit of the stadium.

At the end of the block that the stadium sits on is a sign that points off the sidewalk and toward some stairs running through a little wood. The sign says 'Lilac Garden' in English and nothing in Korean. At the end of the trail is the Bucheon Public Library. I think this might be a ploy to try and get ignorant, flower-loving tourists to read more. If it is, it has one major flaw. The only English book I stumbled across inside the library was The Cat in the Hat's Picture Dictionary. I did, however, find Shel Silverstein translated into Korean, which really, really made me wish I knew Korean so I could get a feel for how that translation went. Overall, I was just happy to be in a library again. It's been over a year since I got a library fix and the withdrawals were getting messy.

And guess what: the story's not over yet, but I'm stopping again. That's right, I promised one long blog or three short ones. Well, here's short blog number two and trust me when I say that the best is yet to come ....

Teleportation is not in my spell check dictionary.

2008-04-30T04:19:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a month and now I feel so much like writing that I might create the longest blog entry in my history, or maybe I'll just post three little blogs tonight. We'll see, won't we? (Hey, do you see the question tag on that sentence? The 'won't we?' part? I dare you to try and explain how those work to a room full of ESL 9-year-olds.)

So, last Saturday I teleported back in time, to April 2007. It started Friday night when it started to pour rain (Who knew that rain causes time teleportation? I mean, besides Isaac Asimov who I'm sure covered that somewhere in his prolific library.) Anyway, I worked late on Friday because I was behind on my progress reports and my lesson plans. I called my buddy Jill as soon as I got home because I should have been headed into Seoul to spend the night at her apartment before our early Saturday morning hike. She said that it was supposed to rain all night and no-one wanted to hike in the mud, so I stayed in Bucheon.

By 1:30 on Saturday afternoon I knew I had to find something to do or I was going to go crazy - and that's when the teleportation happened. You see, in April 2008 I have too many friends and too many obligations, so all of my time is always planned in advance and I never do things by myself. Not so in April 2007. In April 2007 I spent my free time rambling solo around this strange new place I'd landed in, and I loved it. So, secure in my April 2007-ness, I put my camera, a book, and my journal in my bag, downloaded some Rick Steve's podcasts onto my MP3 player (admittedly a luxury I didn't enjoy yet in the first April 2007) and walked outside. I got to the main street and turned right, because right is the direction I'd seen the least of (unless I turned around. Then it was left.)

Within 20 minutes I'd passed the GS department store and crossed the border dividing the familiar with the unknown. The unknown looked a lot like the familiar: tall apartment buildings, flashy signs, crowded streets. I kept at it, though. The view changed gradually as I walked. The buildings thinned out and green mountains started drifting in around me. But, before I'd been out an hour I realized I'd walked back into the familiar when I saw a funfair on the horizon.

You see, months and months ago when I was still taking Korean classes I was korean-napped. A korean-napping is when you find out that all plans have been changed when you're already en route to a new location and everyone dodges inquiries into how long you're going to be stranded at that new location with them. At that particular korean-napping I ended up keeping friends in Seoul waiting for over an hour after my 2-hour, down-the-street class turned into a 4-hour, remote-location cultural experience at a museum inside a stadium next to a fun fair. I'd wondered a few times since then where on earth that museum/stadium/funfair was. I was driven to and from the event and hadn't payed enough attention either time to have the slightest idea. Well, there was the funfair right in front of me. Now I knew, and here I was again.

That's when I heard someone calling my name. I pulled my earbuds out of my ears, temporarily silencing the guy who was chatting with Rick about Mediterranean sailing, and looked around. Stopped at a traffic light up ahead, a bus full of kids was shouting my name. I should clarify - the bus wasn't actually shouting 'Ms. Denice! Ms. Denice!' but the kids certainly were. They were too far away for me to recognize any of them though, and none of my students has mentioned seeing me since then, so I may always wonder about that one.

Bewildered and frustrated that I'd gone out looking for something new and instead had only bumped into old again, I popped Rick Steves back into my head and pressed forward, past the funfair and into the bowels of Bucheon Stadium.

To be continued .... (because I want some popcorn now, so I'll finish later.)

What about spoiled milk? Can I cry about that?

2008-03-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

My freezer broke this week and they've taken the entire unit out and sent it for repairs, including my fridge. That's made life a little interesting for me. Every morning before breakfast I have to run downstairs to buy some milk, and I have to decide if I'm gonna get the carton that's a little bit too small to satisfy my breakfasting needs, or the one that's a little too big and will leave me with leftovers I can't store. My lunches have been reduced to peanut butter and honey sandwiches because none of those ingredients are super perishable, and I've been eating out every dinner so far, though I don't really want to keep that up. They said it would take about a week to get me back my refrigerator, and I hope they're right. Apparently my temperament isn't suited to amenity free atmospheres.

Last night a few of my coworkers and I grabbed a taxi from work to the Bucheon station area to go to the Indian restaurant there. After we finished eating we sat around in the restaurant and talked for about an hour. It was cool because two of my dinner companions were people I don't really hang out with much, so it was interesting to hear some of their chatter. The third person was Mel, with whom I hang out almost daily it seems. (In Mel's blog she always uses people's first initials instead of their names, so I'm half tempted to just call her M, but that would mostly be a joke that no-one would really get because none of you actually knows Mel or reads her blog.)

Anyway, the topics of conversation covered things like football coaches vs. coaches of other sports, soccer formations, the U.S.'s interstate highway system contrasted with those found in Europe, and a few movies I've never seen. In other words, it was an excellent practice in listening for me. Joel, one of the new guys at work, actually mentioned a few times that they'd strayed onto a topic of conversation that didn't interest me again. He was wrong, though. I was interested, I just didn't have any input. (Honestly, there were a few minutes where the soccer formations conversation became reduced to a series of numbers spouted off in quick succession and I wasn't really interested in that part. But my dinner was delicious and there were some great Baliwood music videos playing, so I was still enjoying myself.)

After dinner we stuck Joel in a taxi home (poor guy. He's been in Korea less than a month and he's already on crutches.) and the rest of us walked the hour home. I was surprised at all the things that lie between Bucheon station and my house that I've spent the past year being completely ignorant of. For example, there's a traditional open air market that's only a few blocks away from my house. It's in a direction I never got around to exploring before my social calendar filled up so much that I stopped exploring and started just going places. Anyhow, it was a lovely walk and put me home just in time to go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up bright and early on this Saturday morning.

Today my new adventure will be Costco. I did a year in Korea without it, but I have some friends headed that way and I'm curious to see what all the hype is about, so in I go. If you don't hear from me again, know that I found bulk granola heaven and am truly in a better place.

A Pocketfull of Playdough

2008-03-06T02:39:00.000-08:00

Our new school year started this week. This means that last week at our graduation I sent off the kids I'd been working with for a year, the ones who could discuss train collisions and soccer tournaments and recite all four stanzas of The Road Less Taken verbatim. I've replaced them with a group who are two years younger and can recite the phrase "Ah, Ah, Apple" ... with prompts.

One of the biggest challenges is that I have cryers this year. Even when my kids couldn't speak English and had no interest in what I was trying to get them to do (or not do) they never cried last year. A couple of these don't stop crying. We've had two full days now, and I can happily report that for at least 30 non-consecutive minutes of that time every eye in the class was dry.

I have a couple of trouble makers, too. Anna's already had a time out. I didn't give her the time out for jumping on the table (after all, who doesn't want to jump on a table every now and then?) I gave her the time out for yelling no at me when I asked her to get off the table.

Danny says no, too. He says no perpetually. No matter what we're doing as a class you can assume that we are doing it over a stream of "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" That and Ann and Dylan both hysterically sobbing "Omani, Omani!" ("Mommy, Mommy!") Actually, Dylan's mom is my supervisor. I think that's his biggest problem: he knows that if he could just get past the giant, white woman and out the door, within thirty seconds he could be in the office by his mother's side.

The tiny bit of Korean I've picked up over the last year has been quite helpful. I don't generally speak it, but there are some phrases that it's been handy to understand like: "I have to go to the bathroom." "I'm hungry." "I'm finished, teacher." or the more specific "Jennifer is bleeding." and "I put the playdough in my pocket." I didn't actually get all of that last one, but the word pocket combined with a playdough cognate were enough to tip me off to the fact that I had a doughy, linty mess on my hands.

Anyway, it's been an adventure already and I'm only two days in. Only 363 to go before they have Robert Frost down!

Moments of Wonder and other cheesy cliches.

2008-02-26T06:02:00.000-08:00

Today I saw stars for the second time in a year. The light pollution in Seoul is so bad, and the air so often hazy that they just don’t get through very much. One of my Korean teachers and I were discussing it way back when I still had Korean teachers and she told me that if I think I see a star in Seoul, it’s only a satellite. Walking home tonight, though, there seemed to be too many to write off as satellites. I stopped in the park I was cutting through to count them. There were 23. I wasn’t entirely convinced still (and some of the spots were certainly moving) but then I saw noticed Orion’s Belt. Stars for sure.

Amazing, wondrous stars. Like pinpricks through a vast sheet of hazy, faded-from-black paper. And they twinkled. Twinkle is one of the primary default star verbs, I know, but I’d never really paid attention before. They really do; they twinkle.

I was walking home from seeing a tear-jerker of a movie, so at that moment, with my emotions already rubbed raw by the entertainment industry, it’s possible that I cried a little. I’ll only admit to it being a possibility though, because I don’t want to sound like an emotional old lady.

This was my second moment of wonder in the past three days. The first happened on Sunday night when I looked out the bus window and wondered where on Earth I was.

What I did know was that I was on the 1600, a bus I’ve been riding a few times a week for months now, but wherever it had taken me tonight was not where it had been taking me for the past few months. I guess the sign posted above the driver probably explained the route change, but that’s only a guess because it was way more than my sad little reservoir of Korean could handle.

I started paying very close attention to the signs outside and managed to get off at a stop with a subway station: Incheon City Hall. It could have been a lot worse. I was only six stops with one subway transfer and then a 10-minute bus ride away from home. Granted, it would have been nice to just ride the 1600 home like I usually do, but like I said, Seoul is a big place and it could have been a lot worse.

I did worry a bit when I descended the polished granite steps into the subways station to find it completely empty. The ticket booth was closed, there were no guards around, and no passengers. Not a soul, but the turnstiles were running, so I scanned my T-Money card and continued down to the platform.

There wasn’t anyone down there either, not on either side of the tracks. It was just me standing on the unusually bright and sterile looking polished granite platform among rows of polished granite columns listening to the loudspeaker emitting what I decided must have been an Abba’s greatest hits CD after Dancing Queen finished and Take a Chance On Me started.

When I find myself in these kinds of odd settings or circumstances I always regret having read so many books and watched so many movies over the course of my life, because instead of just thinking, “Well, this is unusual.” I think something more like, “I think this is the kind of place that gateways to magical realms are usually tucked away.” or “I’m sure I’ve seen a horror movie that started exactly like this.” Usually it’s all three of those at pretty much the same time, but the horror movie one always quite louder than the other two. That’s why I was relieved seven minutes later when I was stepping into a sparsely occupied subway car rather than disappointed to find that I hadn’t stumbled into a fairy tale after all. Within the half hour I was home.

Denice's Little Therapy Corner (Pull up a been bag chair.)

2008-01-26T05:29:00.000-08:00

I asked myself a question today. It happened after I had eaten breakfast: sausage, a pancake, a smoothie, and some fresh fruit dipped in chocolate. That isn't relevant, though. I was at a friend’s for a brunch with a handful of my favorite women and I did not want to be there. I spent the whole time I was there trying to convince myself that I did want to be there, because I should have wanted to. It was good food, good people, good times all around. It was totally my thing, but I was not feeling it today.

After that, I talked myself into going bowling with even more friends and guess what? I didn’t want to be there either. I willed myself to enjoy it. I tried smiling for a while, to see if that brightened things up. I tried being a little zany, dancing around and stuff. Overall, though, I was done with the whole thing before I even started. So I played a couple games and left instead of going out to dinner with everyone.

I got on a subway and a few stops later realized that I was pretty close to the Seoul Arts Center, which I hadn’t visited in ages. It used to be one of my favorite spots back when I first got here. I hopped off my train and headed over to check it out. That’s when I started to feel like I’d been here for a really long time. By here I mean here in Korea. I walked beside this big wall covered in vines and thought about how taken I’d been with the wall the first time I’d seen it, smitten really, enamoured. Now it’s just that wall I walk along to get to the SAC, which is just the SAC and not a super exciting place to visit, and the subway is just the way I get there, and not an adventure, and the people I crowd in with are just people and not mysteries, and I’m just another person who lives here and rides the subway and thinks things like, "I haven’t been to the SAC in a while, perhaps I’ll swing by and see what they’re showing."

And that’s where I answered the question that I asked myself back at the brunch, after I had eaten breakfast. One of my friends called me a prolific blogger, and I thought, "No I’m not. I’m a very lazy blogger." But I could kind of remember being a prolific blogger a long time ago (last fall?) and I wondered why I had stopped. That was the question: why did you stop blogging? Not just blogging, actually, most writing that I’d done so regularly just a few months ago seems to be on the rocks. I pulled out my journal while I was hanging out on the SAC grounds. I always carry it in my bag because I’m in the habbit of writing in it on the subway, or during work breaks, or wherever I catch a thought and a few minutes. I should say that I was in that habbit, because the last entry was over a week ago and only says, "My brain is tired. It’s on vacation."

But walking to the SAC I kind of pinpointed what’s up with me. I’m not just glum; I’m not just anti-social; I’m not just ‘not feeling it’ when it comes to writing or hanging out with my buddies.

I’m bored.

I’m a bit appalled that it took so much effort on my part to figure out such a simple thing, but I’m pretty confident with this diagnosis. I am in a boredom-induced funk.

I’ve given a little thought to defunking myself and have yet to find a solution that I’m very happy with except for this: I used to spend every weekend out exploring by myself, but now I have a bunch of friends and a lot of social and church events filling up my free time. I think maybe I miss the solo ramblings of Denice and maybe I need to trim back how much I force myself to be social, because maybe I’ve been social enough. Maybe.

Plum full of excuses

2008-01-02T19:49:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted a new blog entry because I had to move. I spent three days packing, then I got sick, then while I was sick I moved. Then I had to unpack. My new apartment is pretty nice, but it doesn't have a phone jack, which I still don't get.

I haven't posted a new blog entry because school's been on vacation and that's where I have Internet access. I have enjoyed my break, though, and have filled it with all kinds of productive things like watching Arrested Development episodes and doing jigsaw puzzles.

I haven't posted a new blog entry because I've been so busy with all of my holiday parties. It seems like I've had at least four parties a week for the past couple of weeks. I only threw one of them, though, so I can't complain about having been too busy.

I haven't posted a new blog entry because I'm spending the last few days of my vacation substitute teaching while my friend is out of town, and her transportation/teaching schedule really eats up the whole day. Besides, this is my vacation, I shouldn't have to worry about updating my blog when I'm not worrying about teaching my own classes.

I haven't posted a new blog entry because I haven't particularly felt like it, but I've been doing quite well (besides the sick/moving weekend) and have been frightfully busy (besides the whole Arrested Development/puzzle thing.)

And that's my excuse, and I think it's a good one. It would have been longer, but I have to teach a class in two minutes.

Sunday Afternoon

2007-12-09T19:33:00.001-08:00

Rebecca was missing, and Jill and I had taken it upon ourselves to find her. That's why we were sitting outside in the cold.

"I think I'd choose smaller feet," I said. We were discussing changes we'd like to request when we get our perfect bodies in heaven. "Then I can wear all kinds of cute, trendy shoes."

"You think there will be trendy shoes in heaven?" Jill asked.

"Of course, how could it be heaven without good shoes?"

Jill voiced doubts about spending an eternity wearing white, which she claims doesn't suit her, and expressed a preference for peacock blue. I tried to picture a chorus of heavenly host robed in peacock blue and decided I was okay with the change.

"If most of the people in the building are ESL teachers, chances are they're all hung over right now and no-one's coming out for a while." Jill shifted a little next to me. "How did you get in last night if you don't know the door code?"

"There was an old man that let me in."

Rebecca and I had planned to meet for sushi the day before. I underestimated Saturday afternoon traffic (again) and was late, but not so late that I'd have expected Rebecca to give up on me. I once bumped into her still waiting for a friend at Seoul Grand Park nearly two hours after they'd planned to meet. After it was clear that Rebecca wasn't turning up, I ate some sushi alone, did some shopping, then headed over to her building to find out what happened and see if she wanted to see a movie.

I was at her subway station when I realized that my recollections of my two previous visits to her house were vague, at best, and that my sense of direction offered little promise in the way of stumbling onto it. I searched my brain for any clues at all, the memory of any landmark. A gas station. Last time we'd been waiting at a crosswalk and had had a conversation about a nearby gas station. I started a slow spiral out from the subway station looking for any gas station.

The fact that I was standing in the lobby of Rebecca's building only an hour later was a miracle, especially taking into account the four or five other buildings I'd already stood in the lobby of trying to decide if they were Rebecca's. This was it though, I was sure of it. Characteristically, I had no idea which apartment was hers.

Well, I'd served a full-time mission for my church, hadn't I? Going door to door was nothing new to me. I was pretty sure I'd never taken the elevator in her building, so the apartment must be close to the ground floor. I started on the second level and worked my way up. It was a Saturday night and most of the apartments were empty. I apologized to a couple Korean men, but besides that I didn't hit anyone else until the fourth floor.

I knew the guy that opened number 403. He worked with Rebecca and he'd hung out with us for a couple of days during summer vacation. He didn't know where Rebecca lived, but he knew who would. The girl in 203. I'd already hit that door, of course, and knew that no-one was home. I tried it one more time before I gave up and went home.

"You know that if she's dead in there her cat's eating her right now." Jill's hands were wrapped in an alpaca fur coat she was supposed to be taking home to KaRyn. "When they lick you that's what they're doing. They're checking to see if they like the way you taste."

"Is it going to kill you if I eat some chocolate?" I knew Jill was fasting, but I wasn't and I was hungry. I had a couple pieces of candy left over from my primary lesson about tithing.

"No, go ahead."

"I'm sure she's fine," I said, though I wasn't sure if I believed it. When she hadn't shown up for church that morning or answered any of Jill's phone calls that afternoon we started to worry. Before we'd left the church building Jill asked A.J. how one goes about reporting a missing person in Korea, just in case.

"Korea is a relatively safe place," Jill said.

"Relatively." I wasn't ready to be calmed.

"Well, yeah, stuff can happen anywhere."

I started to wonder if I'd crossed the line yet where I'd be mad at Rebecca if she was perfectly fine. I thought about Benfold's Annie Waits and told Jill about the line "Maybe he's been seriously hurt. Would that be worse?"

"I think I'd choose your eyelashes." Jill was staring at me.

"What?"

"For my heavenly body, I want eyelashes like yours. They aren't fake are they?"

Now I felt uncomfortable. "No, but I'm wearing a lot of mascara."

"Still, mascara can only do so much. Look at them, they're almost up to your eyebrows. They're like butterfly wings. I bet if you batted your eyes enough you'd fly away."

"This is silly."

"I don't think any one's opening that door." I could feel that Jill was leaning towards giving up.

I thought of trying a new approach. "I'm going to throw something at her window. Do you know which one it is?"

"You'll only end up cracking the window, with our luck."

"No, I'll throw this button." I pulled the half-dollar sized spare button out of my coat pocket. "It won't crack the window."

"No, it'll crack the button."

I shrugged, "I have another one at home. Which window is it?"

"I think it's the second from the bottom on the far left."

That's when I saw Rebecca, strolling down the street with her cat in tow as if it were a chilly Sunday afternoon and she hadn't a care in the world, which of course, was exactly the case.

Jill and I didn't stay for long, because we're both allergic to the cat. On the way back to the subway station I admitted that I was a little let down, after all the build up, that everything was perfectly alright.

"Yeah, but it's still good."

"I know," I conceded. "Hey, I'm going to be in town tomorrow evening, do you want to meet up for sushi?"

"Yeah, what time?"

I hope this doesn't mean I'll spend Tuesday evening sitting outside Jill's apartment.

And it could, too.

2007-11-19T02:08:00.000-08:00

Today I made egg salad with my kindergartners. That was fun, and I can't remember last time I got so much praise for my culinary abilities.

Yesterday I called an Innocent bystander an aardvark. His reaction was as bewildered as it ought to have been, and I felt a little bad about the whole thing afterwards.

The day before that I slid down a friend's hallway in my sock feet. I was wearing my favorite dress with my favorite jewelry and had put extra effort into my hair and make-up that morning.

The day before that I made a whole batch of chocolate chip cookies. It took me all evening, because I can only fit two cookies in my toaster oven at a time.

The day before that I sat in a coffee shop and read about Mother Teresa. I had extra cinnamon in my hot chocolate and underlined a few choice phrases in the book.

The day before that I woke up extra early to go shopping before work. I bought a new bag for my temple clothes and put it into use that night.

The day before that was my last day to cover a class for the girl who fled the country without warning. Her replacement plays professional women's' football.

The day before that I rode an hour into Seoul for sushi. As long as I was there I bought a new outfit too.

Tonight I will make soup and re-pot a couple of plants.

Tomorrow, anything could happen.

Why I teach

2007-11-13T00:49:00.000-08:00

I collect pinback buttons. I'm assuming that anyone reading this knows me, and that if you know me you certainly know that. On the off chance that someone slipped through the cracks, though, that's an important thing to know about me. Two reasons come to mind that you should know that. Firstly, now you can send me all the pinback buttons you've had lying around wondering who you should send them to. Secondly, this week started with an Evel Kneivel button pinned to the lapel of my black shirt.

"Teacher, that what?"

"It's a button, just like every day."

"Nooooooo."

Ahhhh, the language barrier. How refreshing. "Yes, Joshua, it's a button."

"No teacher, the on the button what is that?"

"What's on the button?"

"Yes."

"Oh, it's a man riding a motorcycle."

"Why?"

"Umm, I guess because he likes to."

Joshua rolled his eyes, which he does quite well for a six year old. "No teacher, why the motorcycle the on the button?"

"Why is there a motorcycle on my button?"

"Yes."

"So the man can ride it."

"But why?"

"I don't understand Joshua."

"Why the person the on the button?"

"Why is this man on my button?"

"Yes."

"He's very famous. He could jump very far on motorcycles."

"Jump the on the motorcycle?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

"I don't know, but he could jump over cars and even very big trucks."

"On the motorcycle?"

"Yeah."

"Teacher, really?"

"Yeah."

"No teacher, really?"

"Yeah, really. He was a real person."

"No teacher. Not the motorcycle jump the really."

My calling came alive in me. I'm here to educate these children, and it suddenly became clear just how much thier education was lacking. During my next break I went online and printed up some pictures of Evel Kneivel in action. When I showed them to the class, their awed responses were appropriate to the gift of knowledge I was giving them. We passed the pictures around and hung them on the board. My duty was done. All I could do was hope the seed took root.

That was yesterday. Today I walked in and Joshua had his sketch book open on the table.

"Hey Joshua, aren't you supposed to be in the music room?"

"Yes."

"Well, go to the music room please."

"Wait, teacher, I is the drawing. Look."

"What are you drawing?"

"I is the drawing the Evel Kneivel."

Sure enough, stretched across the bottom of his page was a sea of huge trucks, and flying impossibly over it was a tiny stick man standing on a motor cycle.

My work here is done.

Fortunately, they still pay me for just showing up, because I don't plan to leave, just stop working.

I can't do another thing until I get those severed heads!

2007-10-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I decided to go help out with the U.S. Embassy's haunted house. It was a good decision. I met some friends for lunch then we headed over to the embassy housing. Most of the prep work was already done on the house and we were down to the final touches.

After a nice walk-through I took over the 'Barbie Party' room. It already had scores of mutilated dolls strung up from the ceiling, but that was about it. By the time our small crew was finished there were blood soaked draperies, shelves of ex-boyfriends' heads, and the words "I want to be pretty!" spray-painted on the wall. I was satisfied. I moved on to the surgical room. I took over the lighting and blood splatter. Once my effect was achieved I helped Lila arrange the chicken backs around the room and broke for dinner.

For the evening I opted out of one of the acting stations and worked as one of the four tour guides. It was the best decision of the day. I got to see the whole show 20 or 30 times and with a different set of reactions every time. By the end of the night I'd fine-tuned my spiels to a tour-guide art form, I'd led at least 10 crying kids out the back door, and I'd thoroughly coated the bottoms of my shoes in ramen (from the devil's kitchen.) I can't remember last time I had so much fun. Just imagine my pleasure at delivering the line, "Be sure to watch your heads as you duck through this next door, and please don't look the girls directly in the eyes; they've had a long night and they're a little agitated." through my best southern-hospitality smile.

I wish I could do it again. Lucky for me, I still have five more Halloween parties this week (of course, three of them are here at school.)

One final note: our newest teacher didn't show up for school on Monday. After several hours of not answering her phone the directors sent someone over to her apartment to make sure she was alright. She was gone, along with all of her stuff. That's right, she did the often-joked-about, but seldom-carried-out midnight run. Now I have two extra classes a week, but at least I'm getting payed for it.

Charmed, I'm Sure

2007-10-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm still without the Internet, and doing all of my correspondence during work breaks, which is my excuse for going so long without writing. All-in-all, things have been going along swimmingly, though (less the swimming, of course.)

Once my family left everything settled back down to a pleasant routine. The weather has started to cool off, so I wake up early every morning to a crisp, yellow air seeping through my vented windows. Sometimes I go for a run. More often I promptly talk myself out of going for a run and read a little, or do the dishes. School is quite pleasant. I find that I love my job more and more as the months pass. It fills my days with variety, so I'm never bored, and provides me with oodles of entertainment (which is very important to me.) After work I often walk the long way home, diverting myself through Central Park, unless I have to swing by E-Mart for a few groceries. I gave up on cooking for myself for a while, deferring to Korean fast food, but I've started back up again. That's a bit of an exaggeration. Lately my staples have been corn flakes, pancakes, and grilled cheese sandwiches.

In the evenings I spend a lot of my time reading and tidying up my apartment. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I spend three hours on a language exchange with my buddy Joel, half the time in Korean and half the time in English. Unfortunately, Joel is leaving for Australia in a month, so I'll have to arrange an alternate study buddy.

My weekends have been very full the last little while. I keep meeting up with friends for things like movies, hiking, dinners, parties, church activities, and the rare date. I've been in and out of Seoul so many times this month that I burned up my usual $40 dollars per month transportation fund in two weeks. Oops.

Anyway, the point of all this was just to say that, generally speaking, my life is charmed, but still pretty ordinary. I am doing well, even without the Internet in my apartment (a point that surprises me entirely.)

And for now, that's all I need, so that's all you get.

Family: Isn't it about time??

2007-09-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

My Internet went away. I waited to see if it would come back, but it didn't. I had Jay at work call my provider. They came and told me I still had the Internet. I showed them that I didn't, but they insisted that I did and left. On a whim I told Jay to have my Internet shut down. They next morning a man showed up and took my modem. He was in my apartment for 30 seconds, and left behind all of the cables and the modem's power cord. I guess that's that. Now I don't have the Internet, and I wish I did. I'm in an Internet cafe, or PC Bang as they're referred to in Korea, surrounded by the sound of enthusiastic young men and gunfire.

The good news is that I'm not here alone. Mom and Darvil are sitting next to me. They actually made it out here this time. They got here Saturday morning and have been following me around for the past few days. Yesterday we went and saw Seoul Grand Park. I was mostly excited because we were hunting down a letter box there. Unfortunately, the initial clue was either too outdated or too vague to give us any footing and we never even figured out where to start. One of these days I'll go back and check out the outer, outer ring by myself, but yesterday was all about checking out the animals and seeing the dolphin show. Oh well.

Today we're going to check out the Gyeongbok pallace. I hope they have some cool stuff going on for the holliday (today is Korean Thanksgiving.)

Anyway, that's all for now.

Oh, no it's not. I have to tell one more story. Last Friday I was wearing pants with a skirt over them for work (because I'm stylish like that.) It's a good thing I was. My pants were extra baggy that day, and at one point I made an akward turn (to console a boy who'd hit his head frog jumping under the table) and stepped on the cuff of my pants. I walked right out of them. William promptly forgot his head-bumping woes. All of the class burst into laughter, and three of the girls had no choice beside laying on the floor and laughing until they cried. For the rest of the day I was bombarded with pleas of "One more time Teacher! Please one more time!"

Yes, I can try to charm them until the sun goes down, but now I know that if I really want their attention, all I have to do is undress a little. Who knew that kindergarteners and men were so alike.

A little hopscotch annecdote

2007-09-18T04:17:00.000-07:00

Today it rained heavily so my class had to cancel its weekly trip to the playground. I went into school a little early and made three hopscotch boards on my classroom floor with tape. That was a pretty big hit. Actually, any time the kids had to move around the room for anything today they did it via hopscotch. At one point we'd been playing ABC bingo and were cleaning up. We used googely eyes for markers and I was holding a tub of them without realizing that Harry was under my hand hopscotching back to his chair. He jumped up under the bucket and sent a shower of googely eyes all over the room. No big loss, though. One of the tricks I picked up when living with my five-year-old cousin Skyler is to make every undesirable task a race against the clock. "How fast can you pick up the eyes?" I shouted and stood comfortably counting while 20 little hands scrambled around the room, correcting the disorder before I could get to 50.

I believe Mary Poppins said something about making every job a game in that popular Disney song "A Spoonful of Competition."

Cultural Faux Pas

2007-09-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a bit more stressful than a Friday ought to be, and when classes were over I was more than happy to be out of the place. I rode down in the elevator with Amy, who’s only been here for a few weeks. We discovered that neither of us had plans for the evening and decided to go see if there were any movies showing in English at the CGV.

It was pouring rain, so we took a cab home to change into some more weather-suitable clothing and then walked the two blocks to the theater. While walking we talked about cultural faux pas and the rose-flavored gum a young man had given me in the elevator.

"Is it good?" "Yeah, it is, but I have know way of knowing how accurate the rose flavor is, since I’m not sure what they taste like." "Does it taste the way they smell?" "Sort of, I guess."

"Have you noticed that no-one here eats while they’re walking down the street?" "Yeah, today I was eating a muffin on the way to work and I felt like everyone was staring at me. Of course, I always feel like that here, and maybe they just wanted to know what the big white girl eats for breakfast."

And so on for two blocks, up the elevator to the fifth floor, and perched on a bench waiting for our number to be called so we could buy our tickets for Born Ultimatum.

Neither of us had eaten dinner, so we hit the concession stand for hotdogs, soda, and substandard caramel corn. The concessionaire balanced our food in sturdy plastic trays for us, and we proceeded into the theater to hunt down our seat assignments.

The movie was entertaining enough, neither of us was expecting a great cinematic achievement, but there were some shocking car crashes.

At one point I lifted my soda out of the tray, which threw the entire set-up off balance, tipping it away from me and pouring all of my popcorn onto my shoes and down the back of the girl sitting in front of me. I tried to quietly apologize in my broken Korean, but I’m not sure how much was coherent. Amy couldn’t stop laughing loudly and drew the stars of everyone surrounding us.

I wonder, is it a cultural faux pas to simultaneously up-end your food onto a stranger and distract an entire audience from a key scene in an action flick?

The upside to the whole thing: It was still raining after the movie and when I opened my umbrella it showered a confetti-like rain of caramel corn on me. I felt like it was my birthday. Amy laughed some more.

After All

2007-09-11T02:36:00.000-07:00

This will be a quick note, since I have to leave in five minutes for my first language exchange appointment, but a strange thing happened in my first grade class today. While my students where completing there workbook pages about their favorite school subjects I realized my eyes had focused on a six inch wooden ruler in Lisa’s pencil box. Stamped on it were the words: Midfirst Bank, Stillwater.

I bank with Midfirst. It’s a small bank run under the Chase umbrella with, as far as I know, only branches inside Oklahoma. Stillwater is a city in Oklahoma. I asked Lisa if I could see her ruler and she passed it over. When I asked where she got it she told me she got it in America.

"Did you go to Oklahoma?" I asked.

"Yes, I did," she answered, "I got this ruler in Oklahoma." I told her that I used to live in Oklahoma and her simple answer was, "Yes, I think I saw you there. The first time I saw you at Kid’s College I thought ‘I think I saw her somewhere.’"

Do I think Lisa really saw me in Oklahoma? Not really, but who knows? It is a small world ...

Googely Eyes

2007-09-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

Today I was buying some banana milk (which is milk that tastes like a banana and not that is squeezed from a banana) because my lunches here are usually pretty spicy, so I like to come prepared. My favorite lunch spot only serves water and loads almost all of the dishes down with a red pepper sauce, which isn't weird, just Korean. Anyhow, my banana milk rang up at 500 won, a price that sounds quite high, but isn't, and I reached into my pocket for my change. Mixed in with my coins and staring up from my palm were several large googely eyes, the kind where black round pupils clatter around inside clear plastic bubbles when shaken. Yes, I carry googely eyes in my pocket. I am a kindergarten teacher. This is my life.

I've put myself on a television fast, indefinitely. It's lead me to explore some interesting things online, like a website that offers free public domain audiobooks (I've been listening to Mansfield Park) and NPR's show 'All Songs Considered.' There's a lot of good stuff out there. I have to admit, though, that my television detox has been painful. I find that curiosity about 'So You Think You Can Dance' and 'America's Next Top Model' hovers constantly at the back of my awareness. I feel pretty safe, though. I buried my television under a tabletop and some kitchen appliances, out of reach of my cable hook-up. You know what they say: Theater is life. Cinema is art. Television is furniture.

Anyhow, that's really it for now; just wanted to let y'all know that I'm still here. I'll try to write more, and soon.

Denice (the nice one)

My Story

2007-08-14T23:21:00.000-07:00

The National Fatherhood Initiative ad at the top of my window is starting to make me feel guilty because I haven't been a dad today. Ah well, there's always tomorrow.

I've been stuck at home sick for four days now. I'm beyond ready to be finished with that. This morning my doctor said I would be sick for three days. English is his second language, though, and I'm not sure when those three days started. If they started Saturday morning then he's already wrong by a whole day. If they started this morning then three days may also be my countdown to complete insanity.

The following is a record of all of my extra-apartment dealings since I woke up sick Saturday morning:

Saturday afternoon: my water delivery came and I had to run downstairs to an ATM so I could pay for it.
Saturday evening: two block walk to E-Mart to get medicine and a stop at the convenience store on the first floor for saltines and poweraide
Monday morning: took a cab to school where one of the staffers met me and took me to see a doctor. After my shot in the tush, Jay dropped me off at E-Mart where I bought soup, Jell-o, and popsickles.
Tuesday morning: took a cab back to the doctor's for another stick in the heiny.
Tuesday afternoon: ran down to the convenience store for a toothbrush and a pair of socks

Besides that I've been stuck at home. Staying home sick is way better when you don't live alone. When you live alone it's boring, and there's no-one to distract you from the fact that you're sick, so you feel sicker than you need to.

Mostly I spent the time propped in my bed watching TV or movies. A person can only take so much of that, though, especially because I haven't been able to sleep much, so my days are extra long.

I've taken to calling home excessively. Since I have tonsillitis, it hurts to talk, so mostly I just listen to mom for as long as she can come up with things to talk about. I feel like I'm super in-the-know about all things Oklahoma Hurlbut right now.

I also take four or five showers a day. This isn't really because I'm bored, or even particularly dirty. It started out to try and regulate my hot and cold flashes, but after my fever broke I discovered that my throat hurts the least when I'm in the steam-filled bathroom. After a few showers they started to get boring, so I decided to mix things up a little. My cabinet contained a pile of sample spa products I've accumulated since I've been here, so I started adding spa treatments to my shower time. After a couple days of this I had a radiant complexion, baby soft skin, well-manicured nails, and silky smooth hair. I was also out of little packets of mud masks, ex foliating cream, hair packs, and body washes.

I spent the next couple showers lying on the bathroom floor running the shower at its hottest temperature and blasting jazz through the apartment. I'd pretend I was at a really classy sauna and make up all of the conversations I was having with the other people there. It only took two of these sauna visits, though, for me to find all the other guests shallow and uninteresting, so I decided to stop going. Today I started painting in the shower. I have a box of 24 colors of water-based poster paint. I've found that sitting on my shower floor with the water running and then painting on a wall that isn't being hit directly is perfect. The paints still run down the wall, but it's kind of a nice effect, and since your in the shower, it's super easy to clean your brushes when you're finished. Actually the whole work area can me cleaned in just a couple minutes. Unfortunately, this process includes washing your painting down the drain, too.

Sunday afternoon I decided to blow up my air mattress. I think the reasoning behind this decision was that I was uncomfortable (as tends to be the case when one is ill) and maybe I would be more comfortable on an air mattress (as is almost never the case, ever.) It took me two hours to blow it up. I spent about five minutes on it before I moved back into my bed. Sunday evening I decided that the air mattress would be much better if it was inside a fort (which is almost always the case.) I used to be a pro at building forts. I threw this one together pretty quickly using a laundry drying rack, an end table, a computer stool, an oscillating fan, two bed sheets, and a roll of duct tape. I climbed into the fort and before I'd even settled something heavy fell on my head and the whole fort collapsed around me. The heavy thing turned out the be the computer stool. I have a lot of outs on the failed fort, though. I was sick, for one thing, which meant that I was also in a hurry, because I knew I had limited energy. And also, I live on the eighth floor, and eight is an even number, and even numbers are bad for fort building, because squares collapse and triangles don't. So really it was a doomed endeavor from the beginning. I got back into bed.

On Monday evening I decided to clean up the collapsed fort. Letting the air out of the mattress took about two hours, but lucky for me I fell asleep half way through. The really lucky part is that I fell asleep on the air mattress, so it kept deflating while I slept.

Anyway, for dinner tonight I ate two pieces of French toast with jam. This was momentous. On Saturday and Sunday I was having major stomach problems, so my diet consisted of stray crackers, nibbles of toast, and apple peal. On Monday and Tuesday it was drastic throat problems, so my diet shifted to quarter cup servings of brothy soups and occasional half-eaten popsickles. In short, I was getting really hungry. My throat hurts quite badly again now, and I don't think I could pull off more than, say, a little oatmeal or rice, but for a few beautiful hours this evening the skies cleared and I ate real food.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Will Play For Food

2007-08-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of my vacation. It was a good vacation, and I don't want real life to kick in again yet, but I suppose that's the whole point of real life.

My family was supposed to come in, but after a couple days of miserable travel circumstances on their side, it became clear that the trip would be much better postponed. Lucky for me, the day they should have arrived I bumped into a new girl at church who also had no plans for the upcoming week. We ended up meeting in Seoul just about every day to explore some of the stuff I hadn't done yet.

On Monday we went hiking at Mt. Bukhansan, which is allegedly in the Genus Book of World Records for being the most crowded national park in the world. That's why it was wise of Rebecca and I to go during what is predicted to be the hottest week of the year. It certainly wasn't crowded. I was about to list all of the reasons that it was unwise for us to go in the miserable heat, but I'm sure all of my readers are creative enough to construct that list without my help. A highlight of the trip was getting lost on the way to the trail. We stopped at an outdoorsy looking shop to ask for directions. I asked in Korean, and as I've gotten used to, I got my answer in English, "Where is mountain??" He laughed a lot, then borrowed a pen from me to jot down some Korean on a post-it note. He handed the note to me with the pen and indicated that if we felt a need to ask someone else for directions we should use his note instead of attempting to speak his language again.

On Tuesday we were going to take one of the evening cruises along the Han river. The good news is, we found the river without any help. Then we walked along the river for a couple hours watching the occasional cruise glide by us and wondering where exactly they stopped to let people on. The directions I got off the the Internet said to leave the Dangsan subway station through exit number five and then walk for twenty minutes. Just to be sure we tried the twenty minute walk in a few different directions, but never saw anything that looked promising. My guess is that either the information online was outdated, or that the place you get on the boat is marked by an unobtrusive pole sticking out of the ground somewhere along the shore that can only be identified as significant by those with very deep levels of Korean intuition.

On Wednesday we took a tour of the Gyeongbokgung palace. I learned an interesting thing on this tour: gung means palace in Korean. Despite the fact that all of the palace names end with the same syllable, I never made that connection. Turns out I should be calling it the Gyeongbok palace and that by saying Gyeongbokgung palace I'm being redundant. I hope I'm not too set in my ways to change. Overall it was a lovely tour. I learned a lot of interesting things that I didn't pick up when I went and just wandered around the palace grounds by myself a few months ago. I also felt particularly free of evil spirits when we left the grounds, probably because we passed by at least 12 different statues, symbols, or engravings that were designed to ward off evil spirits. After the palace we went to the National Folk Museum. The display was of Korean pots. There were four or five rooms of nothing but Korean pots, mostly kimchi jars. I'd honestly say there were at least 500 kimchi jars in the display, and besides some variation in size and hue, they all looked the same. 'Oh look, a panoramic view of kimchi jars! If you look through these portal windows there are kimchi jars on the other side! Over here you can see kimchi jars in their natural environment!' Meanwhile, I'm trying to imagine the guys that made these kimchi jars. I wonder if they were thinking, "This one will be in a museum someday." or, "Yeah, this'll hold kimchi. Next!"

On Thursday I woke up tired and sunburned with dreadfully sore feet. Rebecca was supposed to call me to agree on a time to meet up and go to Seoul Grand Park. I hobbled around my apartment for a few hours hoping she would forget to call. She didn't. Good news is, we were on the exact same page. We decided to take a vacation vacation and stayed in on Thursday.

On Friday we were going to go to the beach. We spent the whole morning looking at maps, guidebooks, and websites trying to figure out how to get to a beach. After spending an ample amount of time lost already that week, we decided to skip the beach and do Seoul Grand Park. I'm so glad we did, the park was great! We were only there for a few hours, but in that time we strolled through a rose garden, soaked our feet in a fountain, fed corn chips to reindeer, barely avoided feeding the fringe of my parasol to some lamas, took about a zillion pictures off a ski lift, watched some bears wrestle, and ate grilled squid. I'd say the beach couldn't have topped it.

Anyhow, the point at hand is still that vacation is over and I have to go back to work tomorrow. I decided this past week that my calling in life is to do whatever I want and have no responsibilities.
So, I'm looking for someone to sponsor my loafing. If you're interested, please send my parents a check made out to me. I promise to put it all toward my new life calling.

Until then, I will be forced to work for a living. Do you really want that on you conscience?

Corned Beef Hash

2007-07-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

Today there was no school, because it's a Korean holiday. I slept until 10:30. This is unusual for me, but I was up until after four reading Harry Potter. I woke up and the first thing I did was read some more Harry Potter. That's pretty much what I've done with my day off.

I don't know what time it was that I took my break from reading. I've had very little reference to time today, but there was a certain point that I realized I was hungry, so I put the book down. I was going to go out to lunch, maybe for chicken, maybe for kimbap, but I remembered the bag of potatoes, oh yes that bag of potatoes. It's the one I only manage to think about when I'm not at home. Sometimes I sit at my desk at work and think about all of the things I ought to do. I ought to write my lesson plan. I ought to sort through the stacks of things on my desk. I ought to make some flashcards. I ought to rotate the decorations in my classroom. I ought to write my blog. I ought do something with that bag of potatoes, if they haven't gone bad yet. Celeste gave me the potatoes some time ago, and I know that potatoes keep for quite a while, but I was flirting with the limits, not even considering that I don't know how long Celeste had them before she gave them to me.

And finally I managed to think about the potatoes while standing in my kitchen with some free time and headed for a meal. Potatoes it is then. I decided to hash them. I wished I had corned beef, but I didn't. I live in an East Asian country. Sometimes you take what you get.

While the potatoes cooked I hung out some laundry to dry and thought about sweeping the floor. I operate under the premise that if you think about sweeping enough times it's as effective as actually sweeping. I listened to a mix of Pacific Overtures and Fiona Apple. When the potatoes were finished I turned off my music and turned on the fashion channel. I would have thought it out of character for me to choose the fashion channel as my favorite, but when my choices were trimmed down In Style floated to the top. A Project Runway rerun was on. I sat down with my hash and took a couple bites. No good. It needed something. Maybe some mayonnaise, or salad dressing? In my fridge I found an empty bottle of mayonnaise and wondered why I had put it back instead of making a note on my shopping list.

Do they sell mayonnaise at the GS downstairs? No, they don't. Of course, I had my shoes and hat on and was standing in front of the perishables section before I knew that.

"Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hey!"

Mary had a stack of pizzas and was picking up a two liter of Coke.

"Oh, hi."

"How many times a day do people say hello to you in English that you just don't notice it anymore?"

"Sorry, I was looking for mayonnaise."

"They sell it over by the produce spot. If you go past the produce stuff and inside that little shop thing, it's on the top shelf, just right there."

Half a block later and I had mayonnaise and some milk (for good measure.) Walking back to my building I passed the new foreign food/pottery shop. They sell Milano cookies. They don't have the orange ones, which are my favorite. They don't have the mint either, which are my second favorite. They have the plain ones, though, and it's something. I was there already, so I swung in to grab a package. The charming lady who owns the shop tried to have a conversation with me, as she always does. When her shop first opened I told her that I don't speak Korean, but I made the mistake of telling her in Korean. 'I don't speak Korean' was one of the first phrases I learned when I arrived, and I've since determined that people get the idea much more clearly if you just say it in English.

Anyhow, I smiled and listened to her incomprehensible chatter for about five minutes before I approached the counter to pay for my cookies. Sitting square in the middle of the counter top was a solitary can of corned beef. It cost five dollars, which seemed rather expensive, but I bought it.

By the time I got back to my flat Project Runway had been replaced with America's Next Top Model, an episode in which the girls got into a fight involving a pan of brownies. I sat down to enjoy my corned beef hash and realized that I'd left my water in the kitchen. Then I remembered that I live in a tiny flat and without leaving the comfort of my couch I can effortlessly reach into the kitchen and pick my water bottle up off of the counter.

I finished my single meal of the day, ate some cookies, turned off the fashion channel, and picked up Harry Potter.

The End

My name is Keguri Kogi.

2007-07-02T08:12:00.001-07:00

Last week my kindergarteners were all telling me their Korean names and laughing at my pronunciation of them. Hudson took things a step further by inquiring, "Teacher, you Korean name what?"

"I don't have a Korean name," I replied, "only an English one."

Unthinkable. The kids decided to immediately fill the void in my nomenclature. They called a round table and the discussion began. William wanted to name me after his baby brother. Joshua wanted to name me after himself. Both ideas were discarded rather quickly. Julie suggested Eddison and it was I who pointed out that the name wasn't even Korean. Finally a consensus was reached.

"Teacher," Hudson announced, "You Korean name Keguri Kogi." I repeated the name, "Gagori Goggi?" Everyone laughed. I spent the next fifteen minutes undergoing a grueling session of pronunciation training. I practiced using it in a sentence, "Cho-nun Keguri Kogi yeyo." My name is Keguri Kogi.

"Does it mean something?" The class laughed. I took it as a bad sign. At my next break I asked Sateen, one of the Korean staff members, "What does Keguri Kogi mean?"

"What?"

"Keguri Kogi"

"Keri Kogi?"

"No, Keguri Kogi"

"Kakula Kogi?"

"No, Keguri Kogi"

"Kurika Kogi?"

"No, Keguri Kogi"

"Keguri Kogi?"

"Yes"

"Why?

"Just curious"

"It means the frog meat."

"What?"

"Like eating frogs, the meat of them. Frog meat."

My name is Frog Meat. I told Sateen.

"Well," she said, "It's very unique, yeah?"

I think for now I'll probably stick with Tunnisa, the closest Korean pronunciation of my name.

Monsoon season has started. It's been raining for about four days now, but not heavily. I rather like it, actually. This morning when I went walking I had the whole track to myself. That was cool. And my clothes didn't get gross and sweaty, so I don't feel compelled to wash them before I walk tomorrow, just hang them to dry. And, I just so happen to own four umbrellas. So let it rain, I say.

I have a brown rice mask on my face right now and it smells like Soju, the rice liquor that everyone drinks out here. I hope the smell is rice related. It would be a bad thing to be an intoxicated kindergarten teacher, I assume.

I had my first open house last Friday. It was my second graders. All of their parents came to watch our class. The idea was that it was a standard class, but the administration wouldn't actually let us have a standard class. Every line had to be rehearsed and memorized, and we had a PowerPoint presentation, and I had to dress up, which may have been the worst part. All in all things went pretty well. The topic of our class period was party planning and each student gave a speech outlining the sequence for planning different aspects of a party. The speeches were all great, except for Michael. Despite having memorized a speech on party locations that he'd been reciting verbatim for two weeks now, he decided to go free style at the presentation. The best part was that he still pointed to all of the bullet points in his slide show. So he would point to "1. Think about what kind of party it will be" and say "We play the computer." then point to "2. Find out who is in charge of the party" and say "We play the playground."

Ahhh, well.

Anyhow, I'm going to go wash the rice liquor off of my face then come back and read this again with glasses on. Then maybe I'll post it.

Love to all,
Frog Meat

What of it, mate?

2007-06-22T01:01:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a dreadfully long time since I've written. I've been lazy. The longer I go the more work it seems the whole mess will be, so I continue to put it off. But apparently my brain doesn't think I should sleep tonight. And it occurs to me that leaving out the pictures will move this process along. So here it is: a blog from me. But no pictures.

I've had any number of subjects I've wanted to use as I've thought about writing entries the past couple of months. Some of my favorites have included:

never quite a mile
still D-Nice one
from an honorary kiwi and America's next top model
desert racehorses and other indications of madness
Tickle Miss Denice (three words you don't want to hear while teaching first graders)
and
I salsa-danced with Bruce Lee

Instead I typed in a random question that has no bearing on my life or the contents of this blog.

Last weekend I went to Geongju (I made that spelling up) with Celeste (a coworker). It was the perfect way to spend the weekend. I got to see a lot of cool old Korean stuff, which I guess was the point, but mostly I was glad to be out of the Seoul metro for a while. It was so nice to breath without thinking about the fact that I'm breathing, if that makes any sense. It was a four hour train ride to get there and the scenery was ideal. I even saw a giant, golden Buddha on a mountainside. Also, the train here is so much more comfortable than air travel. I'm hoping they've extended the rails into Oklahoma before I head back to the states.

I did manage to get a sunburn (silly girl) which I halted with the purchase of an enormous straw hat. I also sampled the famous Geongju bread, which must be the only thing they eat out there, because it seems that Celeste and I passed dozens of Geongju bread places looking for somewhere to get some real food for lunch Saturday afternoon.

Overall, the experience made me really want to find a place outside of the city to teach next year. I think my only regret on that front would be moving away from a great English branch at church.

I went salsa-dancing with some of the girls from church a couple of weeks ago. I started the evening with a basics class where I was paired up with a Korean model and part-time salsa instructor who had chosen Bruce Lee as his English name. It was the kind of moment where I say to myself, 'Denice, you are in Korea salsa-dancing with a male model named Bruce Lee.' and then I answer myself, 'Yup.' Of course, by the end of the evening my partner was a Korean girl who spoke no English and was as thick as my wrist, but at least she let me have the girl's part.

Today we had a kindergarten field trip to a robot museum. It was quite nice. I bring it up for two reasons, really. First, I watched six mini robots ballet dance to Sarah Brightman singing opera. That is a sentence I wouldn't have expected to ever use. Second, now I have been to the ubiquitous hall. For those who need it (because I knew what the word meant and still came home and looked it up): according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the word ubiquitous means existing or being present everywhere at the same time. I have to admit I had reservations when we approached the room marked with a neon sign in English. What kind of effect would entering a ubiquitous hall have on me? Was I ready for what waited within? Was it safe to bring my kindergarteners with me? I have to admit that my step over the threshold lacked resolve, but it isn't always with determination that we enter ubiquity.

In the end it turned out to be a showroom for futuristic gadgets, the kind of stuff you'd expect to find at Disney's Tomorrowland (and now I have the song from the carousel of progress stuck in my head.) Actually, none of the stuff in the room seemed to be particularly ubiquitous to me, or, like most of the stuff at Disney's Tomorrowland, particularly futuristic. The trouble with portraying the future is that it keeps catching up.

Now you get a Denice flashback that has almost nothing to do with any of this: When I was in the fourth grade there was a book-shaped package for me under the Christmas Tree. Dad told me it was a basketball, but it wasn't, it was a book. It was a Merriam-Webster pocket dictionary (though I don't think I have any pockets big enough for it. Maybe pockets were bigger back then and I've forgotten.) I'm sure the dictionary's gotten a lot more use from me than a basketball ever would have. I still have it. The only remaining evidence that it ever had any cover at all is the red stripe of a spine, and I regret that I've also lost the pronunciation guide contained in the first few pages, but all of the words are still there. You know what word isn't there, though? Internet. That's right, my dictionary is older than the Internet. I thought of that just now, as I was typing up the definition of ubiquitous. In fact, for all I know, ubiquitous means something completely different than it did 18 years ago, and here i am using it synonymously with omnipresent like a chump. The thing is, I love Mr. Dictionary (I don't remember when I named it, but it wasn't on one of my most creative days, was it?) I don't want a newly revised and updated version. Besides, I just checked and it does have the word fuselage. Fuselage is my favorite word to look up because I had a crush on a boy once who told me that it was his favorite word. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but now I look it up any time I'm testing a dictionary. I know that's probably not the best standard, but Mr. Dictionary passes, so I think I'm set. Besides, my dictionary smells good.

Okay, that was much more random than I meant for it to be, and I think the nerd in me is showing more than I usually let it, so I'm going to stop.

But at least I've written, right?

The Mystery of the Thompson Garden Gate blog entry

2007-05-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling very Harris Burdick lately. I feel like this blog should start with an author's note explaining that the manuscript of this blog was discovered in some sort of Victorian local and that its authorship is unknown. That's the kind of mood I've been in. And it's not even autumn yet. Could be an interesting year.

I stopped writing for a while because I didn't feel like it, then suddenly, about the time I normally go to bed, I felt like it again. It leaves me a little concerned at what I'm going to come up with here. Hopefully I'll have the good sense to not post if it comes to that, but I doubt i will. History indicates ...

I've become a little weird about my blog that last little while, too. I've grown uncomfortable with the idea of people reading it. Silly, since I post it on the internet. The other day at work a coworker mentioned that he'd read it. It didn't bother me at the time, but now it's bugging me. If you're reading this Chris, I'm feeling self conscious about that. If you're not reading, I have no way of knowing that right now, so I'm wasting perfectly good comfort, as well as a lot of second person pronouns.

I'm going to try and get past all of that, though, and just pretend no-one is listening (which shouldn't be too hard for me.)

It's been a pretty good while. I went to the opening ceremony of the Hi Seoul festival a week and a half ago. It made for a pleasant kind of evening, the kind where you eat meat off of sticks, learn dances from middle-aged men, listen to performances entitled 'A Scent of Sophisticated Pop Ballads' and address intoxicated Australian girls with sentences like 'It's not my intention to try and convert you tonight, so you can put down the balloon.'

Good fireworks, too.

School's been going pretty well. I laugh a lot, at the children.

The other evening I went to the sauna with a coworker. We only went to the dry part, since there was no naked there. (We walked past the wet part and the naked there was prolific.) It was a splendid way to spend a Friday evening. It was like wilderness camping, but inside, and with your choice of wildernesses, and everyone is wearing white jammies. I liked it.

On Saturday I intended to find the Mt. Umyeonsan nature conservatory and then hit the Seoul Art Center for their children's book illustrations of the world display. I got lost looking for the conservatory. I actually always knew where I was, but the conservatory's location was much more elusive. After regrouping, I gave it another try and got lost again. After four hours of roaming the streets of Seoul I realized that I wasn't going to find the conservatory without better directions, and that there was no time left for the SAC, since I was meeting a friend for dinner.

No dreadful loss, though. I like being lost (as long as it's only temporary) and I wandered through some lovely places. I still have a couple more weekends to hit up the art show, and as far as I know the conservatory isn't going anywhere (though I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it roams a bit. There were several times I knew it was just around the corner, but it was gone by the time I got there.)

I stopped at one point to photograph this piece of pottery (because I wanted too, in case you were wondering) when a police car snuck up behind me and startled me fiercely with it's loud speaker. The police men apologized and drove away laughing. I mention this for two reasons: firstly, the story somewhat justifies the existence of the photograph and secondly, the exact same thing happened to me once in Rexburg, Idaho. It makes me wonder if there are patrol cars all over the world sneaking up behind young ladies just for the heck of it. Those little universialities. (This is not a word, but it should be.)

I still feel like writing, so I'm going to keep going.

There was a quail in my flat this week. I was sitting for a friend who was in Hong Kong for a bit. I was excited, initially, but that went away pretty quick. For one thing, that bird had a wicked sense of humor. I discovered this on the first night when it leaped onto my bed during the wee hours and hopped about on my posterior until I shooed it away. It fled laughing into a corner until I fell asleep again and it could repeat the process. It happened three times that first night. After a few days I managed to lock him in the bathroom. This was especially nice because it was much easier to clean up the quail poop in my little drain-basin box of a privy. The day before Jasmine got back into town I actually got the bird back into its cage. Unfortunately, the first thing Jasmine did when she showed up to retrieve her pet was open the cage. Trooper darted under the bed and we spent 30 minutes trying to coax him out again. She finally got him. You can see her here at work. You can't see the bird in the last picture, because it's under her blouse. More and more I realize that It's not cats and dogs that disagree with me as pets; it's anything that requires more from me than regular watering and sunlight.

That was a long paragraph.

I'm finished now.

And after a lifetime of searching Liza and the talking caterpillar swore they would safely keep the secret of the Thompson Garden Gate blog entry, and they did just that.

The End

ps

Family, isn't it about time?

Someone still loves you Boris Yeltsin

2007-04-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

This week I've been pretty good about things that are often neglected, like not doing the dishes. I've actually been very good at not doing the dishes this week. Not cleaning, in general, is quickly becoming a specialty of mine. This week I've done a great job of rolling my eyes at small children, and I'm beginning to excel at putting off things that I normally do promptly, like filing student work. My desk at work has nearly achieved a clutter so immense that there's nowhere left to stack things I'm putting off, yet I still manage to pull it off. That's what's so amazing about me. I'm out here achieving the impossible. I dress daily without clean clothes and eat regularly without shopping.

I would love to report on what I have been doing with my time, but I'm not sure what I would report. I haven't turned on my TV all week, and I've barely cracked the book I'm reading. I have spent a few evenings out with friends, but I usually get my stuff done in the mornings anyway. I haven't slept passed six thirty in weeks.

Curiouser and curiouser.

I really don't know what to say.

Either my classes have been extra frustrating this week or I have been more susceptible to frustration. I fled the office (and my stacks of unfinished work) at four thirty today, scandalously early. Fled is really the word for it too. I've been pushing myself to get stuff done, but something has been eating at me, and I've been reaching a breaking point much too quickly.

My, this is glum. Let me think of something cheerier to write.

I had some good sushi the other evening. That made me happy. I wandered around in an aquarium store and looked at fish. I like fish, apparently for eating and looking at. That's good, because all the restaurants here store their still live food in fish tanks out front, so I can look at it and eat it (though I haven't eaten any of it yet. I'm a little choosy about my Korean food.)

This week I started eating Korean yogurt, though, and it also makes me happy. According to an old lady at the grocery store it will also make me skinny. I hope not to disappoint her.

You know what I have been using my time on. I've been drawing a good bit this week, and writing. Maybe that's why I'm so moody, or maybe my moody disposition drove me to it.

I also built a desk in my apartment out of some spare shelves and a suitcase. I'm sitting at it right now, and I really appreciate its being here. Not having a desk around is like going out and discovering that I've forgotten a pen. Those are always the days that I need a pen the most, and even though I can usually hunt one down, it's never a very good one. I get stuck with a blue ball point or something like that. That's unlivability right there.

This blog is getting more and more ridiculous by the minute, so I'm going to leave you with a random picture and call it good.

Sorry to any who may still be reading.

Why did I get out of the taxi?

2007-04-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I walked through the city. While I walked I looked for glimpses of the familiar. I don't so much mean that I was homesick and looking for a touch of something comforting. It's more that I was completely lost and hoping to spot anything that I recognized, anything that might hint at where under the blue Bucheon sky I was. And while I walked I asked myself one very relevant question over and over, thinking that if I kept asking I might come up with an answer. Without an answer I wasn't sure I could tell the unfolding story to anyone. They would probably ask the same question I was asking myself, and it's the kind of question that I feel pathetic answering with 'I don't know.' I begin with this because I still don't know the answer to the question, but I'm going to tell the story anyway. So, when we get to the part where you feel compelled to ask, 'Why did you get out of the taxi?' please don't bother. I've already asked, and I simply don't know.

After church today I took the subway back into town and decided to grab a taxi home instead of taking the bus, as I usually do. This was partly because I wanted to stop at an ATM at the Hyundai Department Store and it was easy to take a taxi straight there, then just walk the last couple blocks to my apartment.

The taxi driver was very friendly. He spoke a little English and was amused by my Korean, so while he drove we had our conversation in double. He would say 'So nice to meet you' and I would reply appropriately, then remember that I knew that phrase in Korean and reply again with my 'Pangap samnida' for which he would offer an appropriate response. I was so caught up in our chatter that I didn't pay attention to where we were. When he stopped the cab and triumphantly announced 'Hyundai Department Store' I noted that I didn't recognize the buildings outside my window, but I paid him anyway and got out of the taxi. (Resist the temptation; you can do it.) He drove away and I began wondering where I was.

I stopped wondering where I was 20 minutes later when I spotted the top of the driving range at Lake Park. It was still a 10 minute walk to Lake Park (it's a pretty tall driving range) and another 20 or 30 from there to the Hyundai Department Store. It would have been a much shorter walk from the subway station. On the plus side, about a third of the walk was on a lovely walking path that follows a stocked creek along the side of a beautiful park. I didn't know that was there and I'm excited to visit it again sometime, with deliberation.

Besides that I don't have much to tell this week. Classes are going well. The kindergarten kids went to the Kid's College farm this week to plant sweet potatoes. It was a nice deviation from the mundane. There were a lot of spiders, though. My second graders all failed their test over the future tense on Monday, so we've been drilling it all week and they passed it on Friday with a lot of moans and groans and 'can this be the last question, teacher?'ses.

On Saturday I went to the park with some friends from Korean class to enjoy the blossoms and nice weather. That evening I went out with some coworkers for dinner and dancing and general cultural enrichment. This evening some of the girls from Korean class decided to have a girls night in. We were going to make cheesecake and eat popcorn and watch movies. The girl with the DVD player forgot to bring it and the girl in charge of the popcorn neglected to confirm that the hostess owned a microwave (I'm afraid that was me) and somewhere along the lines the cheesecake idea was dropped completely. So instead we drank grape juice and played rumicube. Still a decent enough girls night in, I think.

At any rate, it's getting a little late and I'm quite tired. I also have a leg cramp. So, I'm going to eat a banana (celebrate potassium) and hit my firm Korean mattress as gently as I can (to avoid bruising ...)

Good night.

ps Since I didn't take any pictures this week, I offer instead a poem by the good Mr. Milne:

Happiness

John had great big, waterproof boots on.
John had a great big, waterproof hat.
John had a great big, waterproof mackintosh,
And that (said John) is that.

No, I am die, die, die Ms. Denice.

2007-04-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

When I first arrived, my first grade class wasn't doing a very good job of using sentences or using my name, so I taught them that when I'm taking role they need to answer with 'Yes, I am here today Ms. Denice.' If they aren't present I don't require them to use a complete sentence to answer me. One of my biggest challenges in the class is Andrew. He's at a lower level than the rest of the class, and has no apparent interest in participating. Mostly he sits in class and sharpens his large collection of pencils. Lately he has taken to answering role call with, 'No, I am die, die, die Ms. Denice.' I find it interesting that the children who make me frown the most are also the ones that make me smile the most.

On Friday we took our Kindergarten classes to central park to hunt easter eggs. I've never had so much fun with my kids. We laughed and joked the whole time. Some of my kids have well developed senses of humor and catch me off guard several times a day. (I'd repeat some of the jokes for you, but I doubt I have any readers sophisticated enough to embrace the subtleties that underly Korean Kindergarten humor in translation.)

While I was hiding the eggs one old woman stopped and stared at me for a while shaking her head disapprovingly. I can't blame her. It must be hard for the natives here to deal with the influx of western school teachers overtaking the city and so deliberately littering in the parks. It must take a certain degree of audacity to balance hard-boiled eggs on tree branches in broad daylight.

After the kids finished hunting the eggs I taught them Simon says (teacher says, rather) and then we ran some foot races and played duck, duck, goose. I smiled the entire morning. Not once did I wish I was somewhere else.

On Friday evening I left for an Easter retreat with the church that sponsors the Korean classes I attend on Saturday mornings. It was great. We roasted marshmallows and sang. The spot was charming and the people were interesting. There was good conversation and worthwhile scenery in abundance.

On Saturday the pastor (Dave, a theology student from Australia who's probably my age and has great taste in books and music) gave a short sermon on the depths of the Savior's sacrifice and its implications in our lives. It was a well-delivered sermon and I was grateful for the opportunity to feel connected with Christianity outside of Mormonism. I feel that too much focus is often placed on how Latter-day Saints are different than general protestants, when in fact our similarities vastly outnumber our differences. I think it is tragic that we spend so little time interacting in the Christian community.

Anyway, now I'm back in my bright box of a room. I'm showered and I've cleaned the flat, so I'm feeling pretty good, with only one dilemma: my zipper hoodie stinks. When I was in Russia I bought a blue zipper hoodie at a street market for (if I recall correctly) the equivalent of three dollars. Despite the Adidas patch on the front of it I'm confident that the Adidas manufacturers have no knowledge of the item's existence. I don't know why I felt the need to give you a history of the hoodie, but now you know (and knowing's half the battle, Adam). The dilemma is that my hoodie stinks. Not in the, 'It's a lousy hoodie' sense of the word (and I don't mean that in the lice-infested sense of the word lousy). Wow, that was super confusing. My hoodie is neither lousy, nor lice-infested, which is redundant, but it does smell bad. It spends a number of its evenings out with smokers and this last weekend out with a campfire. It smells bad because I wear it every day and don't have a dryer. In order to get rid of the smell I have to live without the hoodie long enough for it to air dry. This is my dilemma. My hoodie stinks.

And now you know ...

Ups and other vague directionses

2007-04-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

It's been a good weekend and right now I'm pretending that it's not over instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour as I suspect teachers ought to do on Sunday evenings.

After work on Friday I came home and read until 9:30 or 10. My time from then until around 4 a.m. was occupied by pellet guns, anime, karaoke, dancing with a tin cup on my head and my second ever excursion into a bar. (The first was for my uncle's wedding reception when I was 10-years-old and my memories of the event center around a bowl of chocolate covered nuts. I suspect my memories of my second bar attendance will center around a drunk man in a red T-shirt who purchased a can of soda for me.)

Half the culture shock I'm experiencing right now is probably in conjunction with my American coworkers rather than with anything Korean. On the whole I'm quite fond of them, but I hadn't realized how subdued my lifestyle was until I encountered their lifestyles (and I think I've only encountered the more subdued bits). I almost feel like I'm in high school again, except that no-one's playing Dungeons&Dragons or wearing stage makeup.

At any rate, after only four hours of sleep Friday night I got up and went to my Korean class, after which I had intended to take a nap, but never did. Instead I went into Seoul to hike Mt. Umyeonsam. I had read that it was a casual and enjoyable hike, and the Seoul Arts Center is at the base of the mountain, so if I got bored I had an easy backup.

The hike was, in fact, casual and enjoyable. The mountain was covered with purple blossoms and clusters of exercise equipment. I was tempted to steel some flowers, but resisted. The exercise equipment did not tempt me. There's supposed to be a temple at the top of the mountain, but my uncannily useless sense of direction landed me at a peak with only some chinup bars and a phone booth.

On the way back down the mountain I passed through a grove of trees covered in yellow blossoms that were emitting a shockingly sweet smell. I succumbed to temptation and left the path to press a couple of the blossoms into my notebook. Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to upload fragrances or pressed flowers into my blog, but I did take a picture. I'm also not certain how I managed to pass through the notably intoxicating grove of trees coming down the mountain but not going up, but anyone who knows me at all knows that I have a knack for that sort of thing.

It was dark by the time I got back to the street. I decided to try the Art Center, but only the gift shop was open and I'm all stocked up on overpriced umbrellas with famous paintings printed on them. I did buy a set of colored pencils off the clearance table though.

(Wow, I just realized that when I'm typing, I have a British accent in my head. What kind of sense does that make?)

On a final random note, this weekend I have been tempted to buy a chick, a fish and a snail. Instead I keep coming hope and watering my lily, which I think speaks highly of the plant.

Here are a few more pictures of the mountain and the street beneath it.

Another paper holiday

2007-03-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

I decided to be a tourist for a bit this week. On Sunday afternoon I went to see the Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was the first thing on my list of touristy things in Seoul, and it turned out to be only one subway stop away from church.

It was a beautiful day, the perfect weather for it. I opted against a guided tour and just wandered around enjoying the scenery and the cool breeze. There's a large pond on the grounds and I perched on a bench for a while listening to a man playing the harmonica. With the tourist atmosphere came a slew of languages blending along the path behind me, including what seemed like a dozen accents of English and a little Sparrow and Magpie (with Korean accents.)

All in all it made for a good way to spend an afternoon, and I got some nice pictures (in my opinion.)

Saint Patrick's day here was a nightmare, the kind in which all of your tormentors are wearing vests and top hats made out of greed construction paper. The school decided to set aside three full hours for celebration to be planned and executed by the individual teachers. I was hard pressed to think of a time when celebrating St. Patrick's Day meant more than hoping I had some piece of green clothing that wasn't in the laundry hamper and possibly wearing my 1980 vote for Kennedy button (which I found, to my dismay, was put in storage before I moved, so no Kennedy this year.) So, it was three hours of craft time.

The pre-made kits for our construction paper hats didn't come with the warning that the hats would fall apart before we finished constructing them. Our supervisor knew it was a problem, so she duly warned our teacher helpers and gave them some tips for solving the problem. My teacher helper doesn't speak English. I just felt like pointing that out, really. Her linguistic proficiencies were never an issue since she was providing face painting for all the students that day and was never in my class.

So, three dreadful hours of glue sticks, scissors, yarn and green paper and my class has turned out a pile of glue sticks, scissors, yarn and green paper. We set the pile aside, break for lunch, and come back resolved to move on and finish the day on a good note. We're going to learn how to play Uno. I'm demonstrating the game when my supervisor pops her head in the door. "Picture time! Where are the hats?"

It's unthinkable to take the picture without the hats. So, now my kids have to watch silently for the next 20 minutes as a staff of 4 Korean women recreates their failed craft project with yards of scotch tape and pounds of staples.

I can't blame them for any bad behavior after that. Kids who are put through that deserve to be unruly.

I did cap the day off by joining some coworkers at Bennigan's in the hopes that there would be corned beef. There wasn't, but they did still serve food, and at that point that was all that mattered.

And thus we see another St. Patrick's Day pass and rejoice the lack of snakes in Ireland and the lack of holidays next week.

If they make you cry, you lose.

2007-03-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

For the last few minutes there has been some sort of loud-speaker-esque announcer outside. I didn't notice it until just now, when it dawned on me that I no longer live a block away from Moore High School. I can't think of anywhere nearby that a sporting event may be taking place, or any sort of loud-speaker-esque event for that matter. Now I'm curious, but not curious enough to put shoes on, wait for an elevator, and hunt down the source.

So, I know that I came to Korea to be an elementary school and kindergarten teacher. I knew that when I was job hunting; I knew that when I interviewed and signed a contract; I knew that when I packed my bags and flew halfway around the world. I don't know what I was expecting or thinking teaching kindergarten was going to be like. Any time I've ever met anyone who told me they aspired to teaching kindergarten I wondered what was wrong with them. I suppose a lot of people must have been wondering what was wrong with me when I told them that I was not only going to be teaching kindergarten, but teaching it to kids that have no idea what I'm saying. I have to say, If I met myself right now, I'd think I was crazy.

I love all ten of the kids in my kindergarten class, most of the time. They're super smart, some of them are really sweet, and a few of them crack me up. A couple of them will also have it coming when I go insane and duck tape them to their chairs. James, for example, finishes all of his work enthusiastically and accurately. I just can't let him stand up for anything, because he'll pull chairs out from under the other students, then throw himself on them while they're still on the ground. Joshua can somehow manage to get even my shyest kids talking, which is great. But when he gets bored he'll turn off the lights and start body slamming the other kids (who seem to have been conditioned to get up and run around screaming any time the lights go out. Bedtime must be a chore for their parents.) And blessed Joey is a linguistic genius with a devil of a vocabulary. Yesterday it was 'girls are poop' today it was 'teacher, you are panty!'

Last Thursday they had me pretty close to tears, but things have been getting better. I don't think I'd go so far as to say that the children's behavior has improved, I think I've just lowered my expectations. I discovered that by dropping my standard of good conduct a few notches, suddenly each child in the room was a better student. Yes, Joey may have dipped his hands in the paint today and then laid a double-handed slap to my belly, but but boys will be boys, right?

So the day ended tear free, I've added a little unexpected yellow to my wardrobe, and I dished out Korean smiles by the handfuls with my own attempts to communicate in a foreign environment at the Baskin Robbins on the way home. It's only fair. Joey didn't understand when I explained why he was in time out; I didn't understand when the enthusiastic young man in a pink hat told me why he was putting three flavors of ice cream into my pint instead of the one I had ordered.

And so the loud speaker sets on another day, and one more teacher retreats into the sugary depths of comfort food.

Door free shower zone

2007-03-02T18:32:00.000-08:00

My appartment is really a room, but it's an amazing room. Through some amazing enginuity and Korean elbow greace they've managed to fit a kitchen, bedroom, living room and laundry room into about 15 square feet. The blessing of it all is that they added a separate room for the bathroom.

The walls are papered in a bland grey, the color of cement. I discovered this morning, while attempting to hang my calendar, that under the drab paper the walls are made of cement. I'm so glad they covered up that pale grey color for me.

Another funny thing, my appartment isn't only 15 square feet, I beleive it's probably 15 cubed feet. I don't know why the ceilings are so high, because the people here could probably live very comfortably with six foot high ceilings. I can only assume that they had the appartment especially fitted out with me in mind, knowing that westerners are so tall. And thank heavens. If the ceilings were any lower I may not be able to clone myself and stand on my own shoulders with room to spare.

As you've probably noted already, the shower has no door. It's just a nook in my bathroom with a shower head on the wall and a drain on the floor. There's another drain at the other side of the bathroom too. At first I was quite distraught at the water pouring across my bathroom floor and tried to find a way to prevent it. One of the other teachers assures me that it's supposed to be that way, though. He also explained why it's such a great system. Since the bathroom is designed for getting soaked, when it's cleaning time he just sprays everything down with a cleanser, then scours it off with his showerhead. This is something I'm looking forward to trying.

Anyhow, I had my first day of class yesterday, but I wasn't teaching (thank heavens.) There are four new teachers and we each observed our classes as they were taught by more experienced teachers. We'll observe again on Monday and then we take over on Tuesday.

One of the other teachers, Mary Miller of Boston, came in on the same flight as I did and lives one floor above me. We've been sticking together so far, and that's been nice. For one thing, the smallest package of toilet paper we could find at E-Mart last night was and 18 pack, so we decided to split it. Also, she knows how to say 'thank you' in Korean and I know how to say 'hello' so between the two of us we can pull off a semblence of polite.

Anyhow, we spent the morning exploring the city and I think we're going to do some shopping now. I also have to figure out where church is.

Love to all!

Denice

Panic Attacks

2007-02-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

Today is a left justified kind of day. For one thing, I somehow find myself moving to Korea. When I say 'somehow find myself' I of course mean that I spent months applying for jobs and planning this move. It seemed like a better idea when it was just an idea, though. Now I'm just over a week away and find myself waking up to measure my suitcases and mailing my college degree to the Korean consulate. So far I've packed a sheet of stickers, a stamp pad and a book of children's poetry.

My doctor told me that I was having panic attacks a couple weeks ago. I described the sensation of a tightened chest from a racing heart, shortness of breath and slight dizziness. 'Panic attacks,' he said. 'Not panicked,' I said. 'Fooling yourself,' he said.

There's so much I planned to do that I'm not sure I'll have time for. What about all that music I intended to burn onto my laptop? What about the fish I planned to make out of construction paper, the photos I planned to print? What about the novel I hoped to write?

What if I measured wrong and my suitcase is too big?