Last night I had to go register for the  Korean class, only it’s already full.  They’re going to ask the instructor for an overload, so I’ll hear back within a week.

I wanted to find a book to read as dictation to my best students, because the dictation exercises given by the Korean National Curriculum ask the kids to focus on stupid words.  Basically, it will print out a passage, eliminating some words (depending on their level), which the students must fill in upon hearing.  But I totally disagree with the words they chose, as articles and prepositions, etc. are not stressed words and we’re supposed to be increasing their listening comprehension skills…so yeah, umm, let’s all listen for a, an, the, for, nor, from, at, etc….grr…And then I was reading too fast, so I encouraged asking me to please repeat.  The co-teacher took me aside and said – it’s not that – it’s that they don’t have enough time to even write it that fast!  I think she was shocked when I shook my head and said, “too bad.  They need to learn.”  So I showed them how to write the beginning of the words they hear, enough to recognize, and to go back and fill them in later.

Better than that, I think that having them learn to take notes – of the most important words they hear – true dictation – and fill in those incidental words later (or not), is a much more valuable skill.  So I want to read them passages from stories.  They could be engaging stories.  Plus I could flesh it out with explanations of difficult words, new words, and culture points.  Anyway, so I stopped at the closest mega bookstore, YoungPoon, to search for something.

I just want to say what a dearth of material there is for ESL students who are teenagers…All the stories at their level are written for early elementary school.  And all the books written for young adults are just impossibly challenging for my students, who are not much above the picture-book level.

And then I found a book called A Step from Heaven by An Na.  It’s a beautiful book from the perspective of a young Korean girl who has to emigrate to America at age four – old enough to understand loss and have to do some difficult adjusting to a new culture – up through adolescence.  It’s prose is sparse and it has the added benefit of being peppered with some Korean words and Korean culture.  However, there’s also a lot of American culture I’d have to explain, and her child-like associations/discoveries/explanations of American culture are difficult for me to explain as well.  I’m still debating whether to attempt it or not, because it would require so much focus from the students and they would need to not get impatient during the first few chapters where she is very young.  But I think it would be a wonderful and very real way to introduce what it is to be a gyopo Korean in America, and how we lose some things but also gain some things in Migook land.

Unfortunately, I closed the store and there was no way I could make the last train to Cheongpyeong.  So I decided to do the all-nighter at Dongdaemmun again.  Big mistake, as I was totally exhausted this time.

I began this nights’ never-ending shopping by grabbing some dinner.  Just chose one of the many Korean restaurants the block behind the huge high-rise fashion markets to eat a late dinner.  I asked for sam bap shik sa, [steamed pork and lettuce wraps w/ many banchans (side dishes)] which is what I order from the restaurant I like so much in my town, but she refused because there was just me.  So then I ordered the fish dish (didn’t write it down) I also like, the one boiled with radish and kimchi.  While there we all watched a t.v. program about the education of American presidents.  It was really weird for me, as an American, to watch them go visit the presidential museums & libraries to talk w/ presidential followers and then to see them follow up with interviews at the universities they attended.  And the whole message of these interviews was that American education is the best because it fosters the freedom to challenge the status quo and provides opportunity for true creativity while enjoying an international, multi-cultural experience.  Which really started to irritate me…

Why?  Because all of these people were basically P.R. people heading the universitys’ international programming.  It was like a huge commercial for American universities.  And I even wondered, with all the programs they create, if the students who enroll even get an authentic exposure to what being an American is all about.  We aren’t all Ban Ki Moon, right?  We aren’t all Obama or the other former American Presidents, right?  Or even Bill Gates…

And personally it pissed me off as an American, because I got accepted to Yale (which my parents torpedoed by refusing to fill out their required paperwork) and when I had to go to plan B, (a woman on welfare with two kids either has to apply to the most endowed schools or the cheapest local public schools she can) but refused twice by my own local school.  Why would a Yale-worthy student be rejected by her own local school?  The answer?  International student quotas must be filled first.  Why?  Because they pay the big bucks.

I remember a few months ago too, I was flipping through the channels and came upon a documentary about alternative education in America, and an exploration of Waldorf schools and Gardner’s multiple intelligences.  At least that’s a step in the right direction.  Bring educational theories and practices to Korea – don’t sell your house or don’t separate your entire family so your kids can pronounce English, for God’s sakes.  And while you’re at it, improve the universities and tighten accreditation so the entire country is not trying to get into only three worth their tuition.

And sheesh, maybe some Americans would like to go to school at their local public institutions as well.  Grrr…OK.  This is the only thing I am really, truly bitter about.  I mean, many adoptees are angry, people think my story is sad, yadda yadda yadda.  The only thing that really truly makes me see red is having worked my ass off – as much or more than any Korean anywhere – and to have the door slammed in my face – by my parents, and by my state, and all ironically because people from countries like the one that threw me away now have more money than I do.  And I wonder how THAT happened, hmm???

Oh!  right!  They didn’t have to spend money on social services and could instead work on their economic miracle!  How easily we all forget that.

A lot of us adoptee activists here in Korea come from similar working class American backgrounds and we had to struggle and work hard FOR OURSELVES.  We didn’t have silver spoons in our mouths and we didn’t get to go to Harvard or Princeton or…but many many Koreans can…

You’re welcome, Korea.

Now gimmie some cake…

I saw this video a long time ago and, though everyone who punches a clock feels like this on occasion, at the time I couldn’t shake out of my head that this video really describes how it is to be a Korean today.  The grind.  Keeping up appearances.  The han.  The group mentality.  Just asking my students what they want to be and then seeing what education stream they are stuck in says a lot.  One time, as a culture point, I explained how it’s common for Americans to ask each other, “And what do you do?” when first meeting, and how many people in the world find that rude, as they only work to get money and that they feel they are more than their job.  I had to explain that the American dream is to do what you love to do and make a living from it, so that our asking is really code for, “What is your dream?” and that we’re often excited to answer that question, because whether complaining or being frustrated or on our way, it’s all about our hopes and not about survival.  Working towards self-actualization really is a privilege we take for granted…Now, compound that with a collectivist society and you have something like this video…

So I wanted to share this with you, as I ran across it while organizing my external hard drive for the impending crash.  I also thought my son would really enjoy it, as he’s an animation major.

Lately I’ve been really really happy.  And the only source of negativity in my life is the self-absorption of other adoptees.  I’m really feeling like I’m not weighed down by this thing anymore!  Maybe it’s just pushing paint around, maybe it’s settling into my job, maybe it’s having some time on my hands.  I feel real blessed right now.

Well, I’ve been here two years now and tutoring and self-study didn’t work ’cause I have no self discipline and call me weird, but I need PEOPLE to study language with.  But last month I got inspired by a fellow expat Native English Teacher (also here two years) when she signed up for free beginning Korean language classes at the Seoul Global Center with her and her boyfriend.  I only had a couple minutes to decide if I wanted to join her and give up my Sundays.  I decided I did, but the class conflicted with TRACK meetings, so I had to turn it down.

Yesterday my school told me there were classes for foreigners in Chuncheon, and would I like to take them?  Sure!  Only it turns out they were expensive and required 3 nights a week.  Actually, they were a reasonable cost per hour, but 18 classes adds up.  And that meant kissing my nice evenings painting goodbye and also kissing all earthly pleasures goodbye.

But then I remembered the Korea Foundation Cultural Center classes (click on English, then click on Communication and then click on any of the Korean Language Classes you see listed to get to the page that gives you details about the classes)  I’d meant to take.  Before, I could only fit classes in on the weekends and theirs are offered during the week.  And there were always conflicts:  night classes, the commute, etc.  But all the planets are aligning this time, and I can get there with plenty of time to spare, thanks to the new subway line.  The only conflict is the first 4 week class, which starts during my work day.  But it also happens to fall on my prep day when I have only one class, so the school said I could leave early for it – no problem!  Yayy! 

It’s  once a week, costs nothing, and my weekends are still my own.  Perfect.

It’ll be nice to finally be in a class with others in the same boat, wanting to practice.  The first four weeks may be a drag, just because it’s hangul and I already got that down.  But it can’t hurt.  So supposedly 16 classes and then you can test into the advanced class, which I have no clue what level on the TOPIK exam that is.  Hope it’s great.  Hope I meet some nice non-adoptees, because you know what?  there are more people in Korea than adoptees and it would be nice to meet them.

The cable guy came and (just as I suspected) one button got switched off and flipping it was all it took to get me back mainlining Project Runway Korea.  This season’s a little disappointing, though, as the entrants don’t really have a developed point of view and all their designs are waaaay too busy.  Unfortunately, I turned on CNN and BBC and it just feels like the past eight years has been the steady beginning of Armageddon.  I think except for the design shows, maybe I’ll just stay in my little bubble.  I’m certainly more productive without the boob tube on.

I got a little worried about the neighbor’s white dog awhile back when I didn’t see it for a few days.  And then I got all excited ’cause I saw it again:  he must have been in his doghouse sleeping.  And then I didn’t see the mottled mutt…Then I freaked out because BOTH THE DOG HOUSES WERE GONE! Well, not exactly.  One of the doghouses was IN THE CHICKEN YARD.

Why?  Where did the doggies go?

Yesterday I saw the white dog again, living under the rabbit hutch.  Tied up with no shelter.  And where is the mottled mutt?  And what do chickens need a doghouse for? (insert suspenseful music here)

Also yesterday I heard a loud argument verging on violence.  I never know if this is just Korea, or if I’ve just been blessed to not have neighbors like that my whole life.

But other than that, life in the country is sweet.  I wish my own life was MORE country-like, as living in this apartment could be anywhere Korea.  Anyway, the streets are uncrowded, there’s nobody pushing me, everyone is dressed casually or practically, and nobody’s in a big rush. I park my bike like everyone else here, just chained around its own wheel.  Anyone with a truck could come have a field day here and make-off with dozens of bikes, but nobody does.

Passive teacher seemed surprised today when I apologized to the class for being in a bad mood.  I explained that nobody likes listening practice, me included, and that since I have to teach a subject everyone hates, and I’m already at a disadvantage as a foreigner, could they at least make my job not harder than it already is?  They seemed cool with that.  After class, she told me I didn’t have to teach the National curriculum to that class anymore, and that I was free to do anything I wanted – hopefully something more fun.  Which is great and all, but more work for me.  Then, for the third graders I asked them to please not sleep, that makes me feel like crying, (I pantomime melodrama and smile) and we play some name game and I learn all their names and we just talk about our cell phones for the rest of the hour.  So these kids who supposedly can’t speak English did stellar talking about something that’s important to them, and the teacher seemed really happy.  So maybe they are realizing they can’t get their idea of the perfect edutainment robot that magically does a grammar dump, but that maybe what I do is better than a textbook.  At any rate, I’m really glad I have two years under my belt.  It’s all so much easier now.

Plus, the things the kids say are so funny.  For example, I was messing up one of the listening exercises and I apologized, telling the kids I couldn’t read the small words in the teacher’s book.  “Teacher!  You need an UPGRADE!”  while pointing to my glasses.  And then there’s the chance to make some kid feel validated who wouldn’t normally.  Like the boy who loves Trot music.  “Really?!” I exclaimed.  “That’s sooo coool!” And he just beamed all over.  And it is cool, that this boy loves something none of the other students would be caught dead listening to.  And then there was the other boy, who dreamed of being a farmer.  “Thank God for you!”

Thank God for the kids.  You know, Korea would be a much more civil place if all the old people and their twisted Confucianism would just kick the bucket.

And speaking of kids, Transracialeyes just had a 12 year old adoptee post a question, is that cool or what?

Oh!  I can hear my half hour of computer time is about to end, so gotta go!  I guess it IS a good thing the t.v. is working, since EVERYTHING I need to do tonight is on the computer…But on the other hand, the computer being so uncooperative has freed me from my work substantially, so I’m actually enjoying its final days…

2 am and I’m up again!  These days I’m taking a nap after school, waking up about 5 hours later, and then doing – absolutely no work!  Yayy!  The cable tv isn’t working for some reason, and the computer overheats every half hour.  (unless it’s sitting on ice, and once that thaws I’m out of luck until it freezes again, which takes many hours) Then, back to sleep for an hour or so and off to school. Thank God for the bike, as it takes me less than 10 minutes to get to school now.

The last two days I spent painting.  Hadn’t been able to pick it up for almost two weeks, but back at it.  I’m incredibly slow.  Probably over-work some things.  I noticed something I thought was fibers, but it turns out it’s previous half-dried paint, so I have to be more careful and learn not to scrub the surface, as it rolls up.  And not happy with the colors (I used burnt umber and would rather have used raw umber, which I didn’t have at the time) And then have been painting in glazes and produced a little green where I didn’t mean to.  But it’s all just an experiment and not bad for a first crack at it.

Decided to make her blue and the background orange.   This is still just the under layer and very thin, so it’s still waiting for me to learn how to lay the paint on in a real painterly fashion.  He he, my easel is a music stand, my palette is part of the board I sawed off to make the picture square, and my computer is only alive for that long thanks to the tupperware block of ice it’s sitting on.  I bought a pair of Asian sleeve protectors for a whopping $2. (how is that even possible?)  They look silly but work great!  Sillier looking still is me wearing two pairs of glasses, because I’ve found I can’t see a damn thing with my bi-focals (cause you have to look down), so I wear my old prescription with a pair of reading glasses over the top.  My kingdom for lasik surgery…

I found three private degree art programs that look awesome, but their students go on to major heavy-hitting colleges in the states, so I’m thinking I can’t afford them.  They’re in and around Gangnam, (the finance section of Seoul, which is where the elite do their business) so that’s an indication right there…One of them has a continuing education program which starts at 6pm.  I’d try (and probably fail) to make it on time, but it’s almost every night, so that wouldn’t be sustainable and when would I have time to paint?  I think the only way that could work is if I lived nearby.  And then how would I eat…we all know what a disaster it was for me to find work in a white man’s world (teaching English in the private sector in Korea – also where all the money is) I also found a dozen art hogwans that cater to adults – “hobby” art, they call it.  Most of which are taught during the day for bored kept housewives.  One or two of them seem like they’d be okay, but a far cry from the conceptually rich stuff being done at the Gangnam schools.  There are also a lot of hogwans prepping students for university entrance.  But their stuff is more on the line of illustration.  And it all looks the same…and again, the hours for all of these are such that it’s difficult for me to get to.  I just need to not live in the country, I guess.  It’s okay.  I’ll just keep playing around at home.

I did buy a couple pre-stretched canvases and that way I can have more than one thing going at a time, and as tedious as it is, (and also requiring confidence) I should try to pull out the water colors again.  I need to not be so timid with the colors in that medium.  On my list is to get a real easel, a huge canvas, and some oil-bar, because I’m too anal and the fat sticks force me to be more fluid and expressive.  Missing from the art equation is music, because my computer can’t handle music for long…

School is going great!  (most of the time)  The first week I got some criticism for speaking too fast again, so I kind of went off and told the co-teacher, goddamnit, I’m here to give the students native English exposure:  it’s a disservice to the student’s listening skills if I speak too slowly.  So the following week I gave them phrases to express their needs.  I told them I have no idea what their needs are unless they tell me and it’s no good for them to sit there with a deer-in-headlights look on their faces and to let me go on.  So now they have to ask me to repeat and to speak louder:  that I’m there for them, and will happily do whatever they ask.  3/4ths of the class really got it and they are now steering their own education!  Ms. Leith, can you say that again please?  To which I say, “SURE!  I’d be HAPPY  to!”  I also introduced the seemingly retarded TESOL method of rotating partners.  As annoying as it is, it DOES give the students more talking opportunities.  Like all things, it works with the proactive teacher and doesn’t work with the passive teacher.  It’s annoying for me because the students are so immature and chaos rules, but hopefully they can get the routine of it if we don’t all cave in to the peace and order of desk work.  But I really like using the National curriculum, because it’s so much less prep work for me.  Though there are an awful lot of scripted dialogs to make the kids listen to…

I was already in a grumpy mood yesterday when the passive co-teacher informed me she had a lot to do and would be gone half the class.  This is the third time she’s done that already.  Only this time it was listening skills from scripted dialogs with the lowest level students.  A sure-fire recipe for classroom management headaches, but I wasn’t prepared to change lesson plans mid-stream.  Anyway, it all went to shit and I ended up telling the students to shut up.  Which, by the way, Korean students think is worse than saying fuck. (which they say all the time)  So they made sure the co-teacher heard about that when she finally showed up.  She told me to not be angry, that they were good kids but that they just weren’t interested in English.  Then she told me that some of them don’t even know the alphabet.  Now, she’s right about them being good kids, but that only made me pissed off once again at the Korean education system.  I mean, why force kids who have worked HARD at not learning even the alphabet for many years to sit through more classes?  A similar thing happened in the passive teacher’s 3rd grade class, with 3/4ths of the students stubbornly ignoring the lesson, sprawling over their desk (the posture they adopt most of the day and night) and totally ignoring their Korean national curriculum.  So I left the room, got my student list and wrote down the TWO students who were participating and then told the co-teacher (who had arrived halfway through class) that I’d much rather just have private conversations with those who gave a shit.  To which she said, “Oh.  That might be a good idea.”  So that’s what we’re doing next week.  She gets to babysit sleeping soon-to-be university students and I’ll take one or two of them to the English lab and just chit-chat.

There is one half black student this year.  You can’t tell from his features and he looks all Korean, except for his hair which is too straight to make a nice ‘fro and too nappy to lay down nice in a typical Korean haircut.  He doesn’t seem ostracized at all, thank God, but I think it’s good he lives in the country where he doesn’t have to compete for image-conscious jobs, which is also a good thing because he’s a pretty lousy student.  Korea’s going to become more multi-cultural, only you won’t be able to tell because most of the foreigners are Asian brides.  The mixing or race is still a long ways from being common.

Oh, and I spotted two white families with their Korean adoptee kids again, while waiting to meet my friend for dinner in Insadong last week.  Note to myself:  stop going to Insadong.  It’s a mecca for tourists, especially those on homeland tours.  I just get queasy seeing that.  Because I’ve been in those shoes and KNOW.  I know that unnameable thing that is between them all that can’t be talked about but is as plain as the nose on their face.  And btw, I know I’m an American slob, but I can still, for the most part, claim it’s casual and I’m even guilty of cool on better days.  But most American tourists just look um – sloppy – and sometimes even dirty.  So their kids looked really sloppy too.  Which REALLY made them stick out.  And really made them seem like cast-offs, because Korean kids (elementary age and younger) have got to be the best-dressed most doted-on kids on the planet.

There are also two students that are 26.  I think there is such a thing as an equivalency exam, but I don’t think there are courses for it, so these dropouts have decided to come back to school.  Unlike in America, young people live with their parents until they get married, so they don’t have to worry about feeding themselves, etc., but it must affect their prospects.

All in all it’s going well.  The first graders are sharp, excited to have a foreign teacher and very friendly, and the second graders and I have mutual respect going on.  If they could all just act like young adults…I swear these high school kids are just like middle school kids in the states – absolutely no self discipline. I don’t know how many millions of times I’ve said if South Korea ever goes to war, they’re screwed.

*******

Just got back from eating  dubu kimchi at a neighborhood restaurant.  I like this place’s dubu kimchi better than the dubu restaurant ’cause she uses sesame seeds in it, and the last time I went to the dubu restaurant the pork wasn’t right so got concerned.  And I remembered to ask for bep gae (less spicy) since this ajumma puts in too many peppers.  Only this time there was no pork at all.  :(

I heard last month that supposedly all Korea was hit with hoof and mouth disease and all the livestock had to be slaughtered.  Not sure how that’s impacted the meat availability, but it’s everywhere still.  I’m sure prices went up.  But, just like when the cabbage crops all got wiped out, restaurant prices stay the same.  I’m thinking the amount of meat has just been reduced instead.

While there, two guys started chatting me up after seeing me fumble with putting bep gae into a sentence.  The inebriated one who couldn’t speak any English turned out to be a taxi driver and the less inebriated one turned out to be nae dong seng (his younger brother).  It’s always weird how everyone always has to suss out everyone’s age.  They thought I was under forty, and were surprised that I was their noona.  (older sister)  It’s always surprising to me to meet an old ajosshi and find out he’s younger than me.  (I really must have some pact with the devil or something as far as aging goes.  Every new encounter makes me reconsider my urge to stop dying my hair…)  He kept going on and on about how (I think) he didn’t know any English because he was older.

The dating pool for foreigners really is in the 30’s and younger due to this education gap.  Too bad for me!  It was a really friendly encounter and I wish I had more of these, but as a person who doesn’t really drink  or eat late at anjou (drinking food – you’re required to order food at most drinking establishments) places that seriously cuts down on my interaction with Koreans when they’re most sociable.  But it’s also necessary to go to tiny, hole-in-the-wall places such as this, as most Korean socializing is done in inclusive, often obnoxiously so, groups and interaction with such groups is negligible.

Tomorrow I was planning on going to Yongsan Electronics Market to look at English translators, but I have to stay for the cable guy so I can get my Project Runway fix.  With all my looming expenses (DNA testing, dying computer, art supplies, possible art classes?) I shouldn’t be looking there, but I wanted to check out translators.

When I was conducting my conversation class for teachers I was asked about the value of these things and I told them I thought they were extremely valuable.  I used to work with a Japanese girl at one architecture firm, and she referred to hers often and couldn’t speak more highly of hers.  I think these are really valuable as a bridge to language because they are resorted to in times of need, and when is the time you remember language?  Answer:  when you need to communicate something personally important to you.  So, in the absence of a nurturing bilingual companion, these devices can help you cobble together communication.  While they shouldn’t be a crutch, they can assist in your understanding and give you some exposure to grammar syntax that would normally fly past you.  It beats studying survival Korean in print in a vacuum because it eliminates those phrases you may never use, and is ready reference when you need it most.

Korean ones can be bought in America, but the price of these are about $350 or more in the states, whereas they can be found for just under $200 here, depending on if you purchase them on-line or at a place like Yongsan Electronics Market. Also, the American ones are mostly just talking dictionaries with banks of useful phrases that you have to search for under various categories, so they aren’t as convenient and are best for tourists in limited situations.

It’s really overwhelming searching for these because there are dozens and dozens of dictionaries for next to nothing, but what you really want are the translators, and there are only a few of those.  You have to be careful and get one that has English as well, as some concentrate on Chinese or Japanese.  The ones that do only one language are a little less, so you should be suspicious if it is considerably less expensive.

While researching these gadgets, I discovered that Korean translators have a lot more words packed in them than American ones (go figure).  We’re talking dozens of dictionaries – many highly specialized dictionaries:  legal, business, medical, etc.  The translators do actual machine translation, like the ones on-line do.  The problem for us foreigners are that the menus are also in Korean, so if I get one, I’ll have to find a Korean with the time to (doubtful) map these out for me in English, or I’ll have to translate each menu item and map it out myself (more likely).  Included in these translators are usually learning programs as well, and I want to go to Yongsan to try them out for myself and see how two-way the experience is, as they are designed for Korean as the native language.  They advertise native voice for the English, and I’m hoping that the vocalizations of words goes both ways…

These devices also have the bonus of being like pda’s.  You can increase the memory with a card and they can play movies, games, MP3’s and store e-books.  Half the time you see Koreans on the subway watching movies and I bet it’s on these things.  The two I’m looking at are also pen tablets, and you can train to recognize your own writing, so it can search using your handwriting.  Not bad for $200.  I’m wondering if more is really better as I survey my own habits (one being not wanting to pack a lot of gear with me whenever I leave the house), but then again at such a cheap price (for all those extra functions) I might just think about it as an Ipod that just happens to speak Korean.

The two I’m looking at are:

Casio EW-SF3300

You can click on these photos and they are links to see how these are advertised and also how the google translations work and don’t work for specs.

and

Sharp RD-CR3100

How to research goods in Korea:

Google your search, then click on translate.  Then, because Google doesn’t like to translate when you click on a link, you have to go back to the original and find the Korean link location, click on it there, and then take that link and have it translated.  (you can download a google translation tab (in the language of your choice) for your browser’s toolbar to speed up this process).  The problem with a lot of Korean sites is they use comped images to advertise all the details, rendering the words untranslatable.  So I’ve found that going to blogs and reading people’s personal reviews is much more informative for machine translation.  However, some Korean cafe sites are also inherently machine untranslatable, especially Daum cafes.  And within given sites, some pages are translatable and some aren’t.  Anyway, it’s a lengthy process…Gmarket.com is also a good place to go for rock-bottom pricing.  But again, it relies on those images.  It’s also better to machine translate your English searches into Korean and use their Korean site, as the bulk of Gmarkets products do not show up in their English website.

I have yet to check out whether or not Korea’s version of the Ipad – the TAB – has decent two-way translation programs.  Of course the Ipad does, but that’s a whole lotta money and not enough computer (for my needs, which include needing to make it a local server for webhosting.  Plus it’s expensive, and Mac products are more expensive in Korea, which adds to their cache here among those who consume conspicuously).  The TAB is less than half the size, but I’m concerned about whether I can manage a Korean operating system and adding their programs. These are also (probably) more money than I can spend, though it might be wiser to just skip the translator altogether and put all resources towards a more comprehensive solution.  IF a TAB has both translator, and an OS I can manage, it might be a good investment as portable word processing and internet, since I might be a recipient of a donated workstation soon.

There are other brands of translators which are more like little tablet pc’s, complete with windows operating system, that do all but brush your teeth, but I’m keeping my eye below the $200 range.

Welcome to Korea, land of technology…

*******

Oh, about being upwind.  The situation in Japan hasn’t affected us at all.  Koreans aren’t even really talking about it, for what I can tell, though it is on the news as everywhere, and of course a lot of volunteers are heading over there, since it’s only a few hours away.

Being in a media vacuum, I didn’t even KNOW for at least a day.  I did contact Karl and he said he’s doing okay and heading south of Tokyo to stay with friends.  But he was packing and didn’t have time to give me details.  Once in a blue moon I’ll get a google chat pop up from him, as we’re in the same time zone and all I know is he switched from the countryside and has been teaching art in English at an all girl’s school in Tokyo this past year.

For those of you worried, Korea is very old geologically, and far west of the Pacific’s “rim of fire” subduction zone, atop which Japan sits, which makes sense as islands are geologic babies and pop up where there’s current earthly indigestion.  I guess earthquakes have been felt here, but its’ really RARE.  A lot more seismic activity in Washington State, that’s for sure.  Also, Korea is west of Japan and therefore upwind of it on the  jetstream, so Washington State would be more likely to get nuclear fallout from Japan than Korea would.  There is also 700 miles between Seoul and Tokyo, and no radius of contamination is going to be that far reaching.

The only natural disasters to worry about in Korea is the annual flooding, due to the monsoons every July and August, as the terrain is very steep, rugged, and impermeable, due to the ancient mountains.  That, and the hurricanes that hit – but those are pretty rare, maybe one about every ten years.

So the only thing to worry about really is if you’re a coastal dweller within pot shot of North Korea, and even that is a limited worry as NK can’t really afford to finish anything it starts.  So Korean fishermen should think about fishing further south, as they seem to be written off as collateral damage in the two Korea’s cold war chess game.  Oh, yeah, and don’t join the Navy if you can help it.

Living on borrowed time, so going to fold up the laptop and let it cool off.  Hope you enjoyed all the info!

I’d like to add that I have come to decide that Myung-Sook is right.  I’ve just been in denial all this time, feeling that I needed to discount that abandonment was part of Korean culture in order to continue fighting.  However, the sick thing is that it really does permeate everything here.

I do believe it is a new phenomenon, post-war, and that it was jettisoned into the Korean psyche by the self-promoted cult of Holt.

Did you know that Bertha Holt received a STATE HONORED FUNERAL when she died?  Probably why Molly walks around wearing hanbok…so a little canonization dust will guaranteed decorate her path wherever she goes.  Koreans who helped Holt give away Korean children and who continue to help give away Korean children speak about their involvement with this process with pride. I set them straight whenever I meet one.

And, as I found out with my class of highly educated and thoughtful Korean teacher conversation class, send the baby away is the defacto response to even the most compelling story of mother and child in hard circumstances.  SICK.

I, too, have been horribly disturbed by the prevalence of this topic in film. So disturbed I took to entering into a spread-sheet every film I watched on MySoju.com, and also that has mentioned adoption on Soompi.com. The list is too huge…and I don’t watch Korean movies or dramas much.

I am convinced that the whole revisiting of this pain validates their conviction that they are the most suffering people on the planet. I am so sick of Han…

But, what Myung-Sook showed me is that even though this is part of contemporary Korean culture now, it doesn’t mean it’s good, right, or can’t be changed.

Fortunately, Korea IS adopting the Hague Convention and that means legislation will soon follow to at the very least protect the identities of Korean children.  About freaking time…

So, I will clarify my position.  I like most Korean people individually.  I hate the Korean collective.  I like traditional Korean culture.  And I hate, hate, hate this post colonial culture of capitalizing on being exploited by imperialists in order to support an easier path to self promotion through the abandonment of women by the expulsion of their children.