and nary a drop to drink.

I do have three prospects, but they are all very uncertain.  One of them isn’t open (possibly) until late May.  The other is that construction safety R&D and isn’t baked yet.  The other is in Jeollanamdo (the southernmost part of Korea) living in a two bedroom cottage with stone walls!  Maybe I could do TRACK work remotely from there.  How I really want to go there and bag the city altogether and start over fresh.  Feeling out right now if it is one of the school districts I’ve been blacklisted from.

There are so many jobs, and it’s a full time job every day just sifting through them.  Here we are in the middle of the biggest hiring season for foreigners who speak English, and I can’t find work  because I’m too old and not white.  I started pasting discriminatory hiring posts again, but the list became depressingly too long and figured you already got the picture.  I’m just numb to everything right now.  Live with uncertainty long enough, and it changes you.  Not depressed.  Just numb.

**********

My last days at school are spent cataloging the new English Zone library, looking for work, and organizing TRACK’s volunteer group.  I continue to check the pulse of the adoptee rights groups and the issues surrounding Haiti (and I hope they throw the book at those U.S. missionaries who claimed they didn’t know 10 of the 20 children they attempted to smuggle out of the country had parents)

Enjoying setting up the library and I’m sorry to leave it, unfinished, next week.  I enjoy putting the fiction in alpha order by author, enjoy determining the Dewey decimal number, enjoy writing down all the publishing information and ISBN numbers, enjoy adding them to the database, enjoy discovering interesting new books and writing the synopsis, and especially enjoy putting the labels on their spines.   Back in the day when I did this in college, we also typed the information on paper pockets for the check-out cards, painting glue on them and sticking them inside.  We also typed index cards and filed them.  It was especially fun to write in cross references or corrections with a needle sharp #2 pencil in your most perfect handwriting.  Covering the book jackets was really fun too, and I took great pride in how mine fit like a second skin.

It’s a great collection In Kyung chose:  Newbery and Caldecott.  Cambridge readers.  Scholastic series on world social issues, etc. Makes me want to read children’s books all day.  Too bad the all the shelves are cabinets with solid wood doors that are kept under lock and key.  That’s real inviting.  I mentioned this sarcastically to my co-teacher, wondering if they’d ever get used at all, and she agreed.  The books seem more like decoration.  Hidden decoration.  What a waste.  Also in the English Zone is an area with three office desks and chairs which nobody uses, and four student computers with desks that the kids aren’t allowed to turn on.  Hopefully, they’ll figure out how to incorporate  these things they put in.  But right now, it’s looking like a pretentious show.  And the most important thing – the children’s desks and seats – are pieces of garbage that are already falling apart.

**********

I miss the zen of mindless labor.  My favorite jobs in life were:  being a janitor,  factory work,  and warehouse order picking at Amazon.  Something very freeing about it.  It seemed hard at the time, but the work went by fast, you were physically fit, and your imagination could wander, no politics, and worker fellowship.

Yesterday I got to school and all of the teacher’s cars were there.  I figured it was one of the orientations for next year’s students or something, and I went up to the English Zone to happilly  continue catalogueing library books.  So I was really getting into the zen of this, when students barge in and ask me if I’m here for the day, and then a couple minutes later there’s an entire classroom of loud rowdy boys in what was once the sanctuary of my quiet library.  God, why didn’t I become a librarian???

My co-teacher comes in and tells me that I have class.  Oh really?  I didn’t even know school was in session.  We haven’t had school for over a week!  (the boys are all sitting there waiting)  She goes and prints out the day’s time-table, which is completely different.  Turns out I am a half hour late to school.   This not getting the memo thing is really REALLY getting old…

What can I come up with for a lesson in zero minutes?  The co-teachers tells me that none of the teachers teach this week – they just show movies.  Um, the last two weeks when school was in session the teachers just showed movies…What is the point in making them come to school at all?  Why do they even have school after final exams?  Three weeks or more of drivel. Then, on top of that, why do they give Native English Teachers a contract with three weeks of vacation when all the Korean teachers have six to weeks off, and the English teacher therefore has to come to school and warm a desk for two weeks BY THEMSELVES, teaching NOBODY and just pushing paper around?  All of the English teachers I know are banging their heads over this one.

Last Friday I went for yet one more meeting with the recruiters giving me the job with the major corporation.  And then they tell me, oh by the way…she cancels and reschedules a lot.  And she changes the times a lot.  Sometimes she’ll ask you to come early and then will be on the phone late and sometimes you might have to sit for a half hour, or the class will run late.  So please give her make-up classes if she needs to reschedule. I present different scenarios, and every one ends up with she’s not available for make-up classes except in the mornings at the same time.   I tell them this is like being on call, that I can’t just leave every day open for that possibility, and that that’s a little unreasonable. Turns out this is their last chance to secure this company through their vice president, and it means a lot of contracts in the future for corporate training seminars, please you are very important to us.  I am told they are sorry and they understand but it’s just a very picky client with special needs.  (I am, meanwhile, being paid $10 less than most of the jobs I see advertised)  Never mind the unaccounted-for travel time.

After stewing about this over the weekend, I just told them no thanks.  The class is a moving target, and I’m only being compensated for actual class time, with no consideration for all my valuable time that I can’t fill up with other lessons.

When are Koreans going to learn that contracts have to be forthright – you can’t go adding little oh-by-the-way’s whenever you feel like it!  (and if you tell them about bait and switch, they feign being all hurt!) little things like oh-by-the-way, we’re not going to pay for half your flight to Korea, even though we promised we’d pay you from your home to here…When are they going to learn that this attitude hurts themselves, and they have no one else to blame when foreigners bail on them, when they have a double standard for their contracts?  It’s okay for them to dishonor contracts, but if a foreigner (with no representation or way to communicate) dishonors a contract that’s been dishonored by a Korean, then the foreigner is always the bad guy.

I told them this extra information was not what I signed up for.   They were nice enough and I wasn’t angry with them, but that they really need to get their order of operations worked out and that I both needed to work for a company I was confident in and that it’s obvious juggling part time jobs isn’t a good idea if everyone works this way.  I offered to  meet as arranged with the client until I find other work to save them face, and that they should look for a replacement.  So that’s where it stands, which is great, because I was finding myself in the bizarre position of having to discount decent jobs because I’d signed up for this lousy job that doesn’t pay much, to break into a niche which doesn’t seem so great.  Now I can leave without breaking any contract.

****************

I learn from one of my students that last year’s teacher ran away.  Last year’s teacher?  I was told they didn’t have a teacher last year, that they went a year without.  So now everything makes even more sense.  It’s so amazing none of my co-workers who even hate this school and its administration wouldn’t mention this to me.   So maybe the student is mistaken.  But it wouldn’t surprise me one bit.  Talk of such things might give the new teacher having difficulties ideas.  It would also make them look bad.  Must save face at all costs.

Saturday I was invited to the one year birthday party for the grandson of my landlord.  It’s a big event here in Korea, and it was held in a wedding hall.   The real estate agent and I went to a big hotel and there were maybe 60 in attendance.  Another baby birthday was happening at the same time, with maybe 100 in attendance, and the shared buffet looked big enough to feed about 300 people.  This extravagant party was especially called for because adjumma’s first grandchild was a boy, from her first and only son.

I already knew this, but the real estate agent explained how in times past a child living to be two years old (one by Western standards) was a major milestone.  Many children died shortly after birth, and so 100 days was a celebration, and if the child made it an entire year, odds were the child was strong enough to live to adulthood.  The real estate agent explained that medicine was hard to come by should a child become sick, and that often poverty meant there wasn’t enough food to go around to make the child strong.  He said it was like this up until about the time I was adopted, and that was probably why I was sent away.  I didn’t tell him I was over two and maybe almost three by the time I was abandoned, or that I was fat and healthy, and I wondered if there had been a 100 days celebration or a one year celebration for me growing up, since I DID have a family for quite some time…

Aside from eating ungodly amounts of Korean & Chinese dishes (the buffet line was double-sided and stretched for 50 ft, and then there was also 10 ft. of sushi buffet as well.   110 ft. of food, if you can imagine…) there didn’t seem to be much of a program except photographing the baby being cute.  There was little focus on anything but eating more and more food.

With all that sumptuous food, my favorite was a simple, clear magenta-colored soup with minimal amounts of cabbage, green onion, and flower-shaped carrots floating in it.  I loved it because it was cold and fermented like mul kimchi, yet it was infused with (probably) jalapeno pepper, so it was also spicy hot.  Beautiful, delicate, yet surprising in its contrasts. This recipe sounds similar, but not half as pretty.  (maybe the greens were mustard stms?) The real estate agent called it namul kimchi, but that’s a broad name for any vegetable banchan.

Then, every guest was given a raffle ticket.  The real estate agent took me to a table with eight goblets.  Each goblet indicated a different symbol for a profession, and we had to choose which profession we thought the baby would be and leave our raffle number in that goblet.  Later, there was an MC who had the halmoni say something to the baby, and then he asked everyone a question, and answers were shouted out randomly from the crowd.  The real estate agent pointed at me and said “Migook!”  Everyone clapped.  And then I was shoved up to the front and a mike was stuck in my face.  Turns out I won an award for traveling the farthest.  The real estate agent thought it was hilarious that everyone thought I came just for the birthday party.  Now, with the two mugs I won I now have six coffee mugs that I haven’t bought.

After one more prize for something, the baby’s parents put a tray in front of him with eight items on it.  The baby ‘s attention was directed towards the tray, and the baby picked up some money to play with, so that means he will be a businessman or some profession involving money.  Then, a raffle ticket number was chosen from the corresponding goblet.  There was cake cutting, the birthday song in Korean, and then?  Everyone got up and rapidly split!  Real estate agent too, one of the first outta there, and since he was my ride…

I came home and slept off some of my eating and heard my landlords arrive, and rushed to catch them and give them the envelope of cash I had been told by others was required at these things.  A friend was with them and the adjumma invited me in for food and I got to watch her disrobe from her hanbok prior to making a snack.  I told her how ipeuda it was and she dressed me up in it, and it was many sizes too big.  Then she told me she would get me one.  Then she said she had to have it dry-cleaned first and I realized she meant she would give me hers.  I tried to protest, knowing how expensive these silk taffetta ones are, but she didn’t understand.  So all I could do was thank her.   So, it looks like I will be the owner of a hanbok soon!  I wonder how much alterations will cost?  I’m really thankful the colors are a simple and restrained.

Fortunately, (and probably to her relief) I convinced her that a cup of coffee would suffice, and I watched and listened as they pulled out the pile of envelopes.  There was some controversy, and from what I could gather someone called her friend explaining that they had neglected to write their name on the envelope, and the amount they had given.  Mr. landlord (I don’t know his name, and though adjumma’s last name is Kim, I think I read that the women keep their maiden name here in Korea) went through all the envelopes and found one without a name, but the amount inside was less than described.  Much controversy ensued with loud phone calls back and forth, and some recriminations about some people who left early and didn’t leave a gift.  I guess that at these kind of functions:  birthday parties, weddings, and funerals, cash is always expected and everyone’s gift amount is carefully recorded.  This is so gifts to their functions are equal or better, for to give less is offensive and can cause bitterness and feuding.  The keeping up with the Jones’ here is pretty insidious…

It’s kind of a shame, really, that these gifts are not from the heart but obligations, and that people must put on a big show and measure the value of their relationships.  But, as can be seen by the hanbok gift, some things are beyond social constructs.

This week weather is a balmy 30 degrees in general:  warm enough during the day to melt some of the black ice.  The past month, however, has been quite frigid, snowing now and then.

All the locals say this has been an unusually harsh winter, and that typically there is not half as much snowfall, and sometimes it even rains.  Everyone here attributes the wild weather fluctuations of the past few years to global warming.

Environmental consciousness is pretty high, but personal commitment to it seems fairly low. With their giant neighbors to the West, who have a terrible record on environmental protection, it’s easy to boast.  So health is of more concern to Koreans who are downwind of Chinese factory pollution.  And that so-called yellow dust coming from there that is announced on the news?  I’ve been told that it actually IS yellow and visible to the naked eye on some days (though I’ve never witnessed this).  Supposedly desertification in parts of China is increasing, and the winds pick up pollution-laden yellow dust.  As a result, Koreans don the surgical masks to protect their lungs.    These come in all kinds of fabrics and colors, I’ve seen winter ones with knitted covers for extra warmth, and they have all kinds of cute versions with cartoon characters on them for the children.  The air quality doesn’t seem that bad to me – nothing like Thailand where 2-stroke moped engines and small diesel trucks left so much carbon in the air you could practically eat it.  Fortunately, a lot of things that contribute to reducing pollution here are institutionalized and followed, such as the great mass transit system and recycling.

Korea’s working hard on beating out the competition in green technology, so I’ve no doubt they’ll be well positioned.  I read recently that one of the main components of Macintosh technology depends upon Korean products, and that’s why Apple is one of the few U.S. computer hardware companies sold here.  It’s a status symbol to own an Iphone 3g, even though they can’t take advantage of some of the advances in technology that are proprietary to Korea (and its marriage to microsoft) here.  German cars are also allowed, so I wonder if there’s some similar relationship going on there?

“…Fruit is excellent dried and can be stored for years! Very high health benefits! Used as a food and medicinally by the Chinese for hundreds of years. Considered a blood purifier! Make a healthy delicious Korean hot tea called “Techu Cha”. Wonderful to drink during cold winter months. Drink this hot beverage instead of coffee; your body will thank you…:

Like most Koreans, Miwha is super health-conscious.  While we don’t necessarily agree on what promotes health, I would say that Koreans practice in daily life what they preach more than Americans.  In almost every home that I’ve been in, even the most modern ones, you will see one food item or another drying to be made into tea for some particular curative or preventive medicinal tea or another.   So far I’ve seen flowers drying, corn silk drying, orange rinds drying, and jujubes drying.  She says that when she was growing up (she’s the same age as I am) everyone lived in houses (she grew up near Uijeongbu – a city quite close to the DMZ) and that every house had a jujube tree and they would pick them off the vine and eat them.  Except for being poor, she and many others feel Korea was a better place back then, as families worked together, relied on each other, and people shared more.  Just the fact that they had real houses is enough to convince me!  After dinner every night, Miwha soaks her feet in hot water and herbs to increase circulation.

Tonight, after a REALLY INTERESTING and POSSIBLY PROMISING interview for a job NOT TEACHING ENLISH (!!!!!!) I decided to purchase one of the rotisserie chickens that are always being sold at the corner of Itaewon Station.  I got it home and cut it in two, thinking I would save half for later (if that’s even possible – Korean chickens are all game hen size.  I don’t know if their lives are cut short, or if they’re a special breed, or if maybe that’s the size God wanted chickens to be before hormone-laced chicken feed was invented)  but bam! When I cut it in half, it was revealed to be stuffed with rice, garlic cloves, ginseng, and jujubes!  Just like you’ll find in the samgyetang soup Koreans eat to ward of the common cold.  Only the outside was crispy and roasted.  (btw, if you want to try this, then be aware that the guy selling the chickens is often in the parking lot gate house out of the elements so he doesn’t freeze)  Soooo yummy!  Who knew you could get samgyetang without the tang, roasted on a stick?  Well, I guess Koreans would know, but since I and half the residents of Itaewon can’t read his Korean sign, most just walk on by.  I’m thinking I won’t be able to save half of it…

OK.  I am, perhaps, the only English speaker in Korea right now who is remotely free and qualified for this job and it is right up my alley, since there are very few English-speaking architects in Korea, and there are even less English-speaking architects who have ever done more than don a hardhat and walk through a construction site, much less lift a hammer, hang off the sides of buildings, connect wiring, wear a respirator, tie down loads, carry their weight in materials, work with other trades, etc., etc., and maybe even fewer who can do technical writing.  The only problem is I don’t speak Korean and they’ll need to find someone who understands a little about construction and can speak English as an intermediary.   If I get this job I could make much much more than an English teacher.  So thank you, wrongful black-list writing dirty recruiter – maybe you’ve really liberated me to find greener pastures.

Yes, there is an unprecedented voice of reason and appeal for care and consideration surrounding the matter of Haiti.  But we’ve seen how, without constant vigilance, reason can be side-stepped and forgotten.

Adoptees of Color are stepping up to make it known that we are watching:  Some history should not be repeated…

From Adoptees of Color Roundtable

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption.

We understand that in a time of crisis there is a tendency to want to act quickly to support those considered the most vulnerable and directly affected, including children. However, we urge caution in determining how best to help. We have arrived at a time when the licenses of adoption agencies in various countries are being reviewed for the widespread practice of misrepresenting the social histories of children. There is evidence of the production of documents stating that a child is “available for adoption” based on a legal “paper” and not literal orphaning as seen in recent cases of intercountry adoption of children from Malawi, Guatemala, South Korea and China. We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking.

For more than fifty years “orphaned children” have been shipped from areas of war, natural disasters, and poverty to supposedly better lives in Europe and North America. Our adoptions from Vietnam, South Korea, Guatemala and many other countries are no different from what is happening to the children of Haiti today. Like us, these “disaster orphans” will grow into adulthood and begin to grasp the magnitude of the abuse, fraud, negligence, suffering, and deprivation of human rights involved in their displacements.

We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family”  to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin.

As adoptees of color many of us have inherited a history of dubious adoptions. We are dismayed to hear that Haitian adoptions may be “fast-tracked” due to the massive destruction of buildings in Haiti that hold important records and documents. We oppose this plan and argue that the loss of records requires slowing down of the processes of adoption while important information is gathered and re-documented for these children. Removing children from Haiti without proper documentation and without proper reunification efforts is a violation of their basic human rights and leaves any family members who may be searching for them with no recourse. We insist on the absolute necessity of taking the time required to conduct a thorough search, and we support an expanded set of methods for creating these records, including recording oral histories.

We urge the international community to remember that the children in question have suffered the overwhelming trauma of the earthquake and separation from their loved ones. We have learned first-hand that adoption (domestic or intercountry) itself as a process forces children to negate their true feelings of grief, anger, pain or loss, and to assimilate to meet the desires and expectations of strangers. Immediate removal of traumatized children for adoption—including children whose adoptions were finalized prior to the quake— compounds their trauma, and denies their right to mourn and heal with the support of their community.

We affirm the spirit of Cultural Sovereignty, Sovereignty and Self-determination embodied as rights for all peoples to determine their own economic, social and cultural development included in the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Charter of the United Nations; the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The mobilization of European and North American courts, legislative bodies, and social work practices to implement forced removal through intercountry adoption is a direct challenge to cultural sovereignty. We support the legal and policy application of cultural rights such as rights to language, rights to ways of being/religion, collective existence, and a representation of Haiti’s histories and existence using Haiti’s own terms.

We offer this statement in solidarity with the people of Haiti and with all those who are seeking ways to intentionally support the long-term sustainability and self-determination of the Haitian people. As adoptees of color we bear a unique understanding of the trauma, and the sense of loss and abandonment that are part of the adoptee experience, and we demand that our voices be heard. All adoptions from Haiti must be stopped and all efforts to help children be refocused on giving aid to organizations working toward family reunification and caring for children in their own communities. We urge you to join us in supporting Haitian children’s rights to life, survival, and development within their own families and communities.

Please feel free to add your endorsement in the comments section below this statement at the Adoptees of Color Roundtable Statement on Haiti