Spotless Mind

(unfortunately my camera is busted, so no pictures)

One of my students asked me today if I was Canadian. I said, "No, why would you think that?" He replied, "Because all Americans are fat, and you are not fat." Take that for what you will...

A coworker who lives below me just got a cat this weekend. She got the cat from an animal adoption agency that looks for a permanent owner while she takes care of it. I've never been a cat person, and cats have never shown me much love. But, I have to say, I do like this cat. It's still very small, and it has some sort of disease that has stunted the growth of the hair on the tip of it's tail, and it has cataracts in one eye. I've seen it run into unseen walls other conspicuous objects more than once. As I said, I like this cat.

You might have heard that Korean kids play lots of video games. Whatever you heard, you didn't hear enough. Now, the government has recognized they actually have a serious health/economic/social issue on their hands because of the amount of time their kids spend online. Check out the cyberspace addiction boot camps the government has set up. The picture of the addicts itself is pretty funny, if you're into the whole brevity thing.

So. Thanksgiving in Korea. The day before, my boss told all of us American teachers that he would take us out for dinner. I was expecting it because Korean bosses are almost supposed to take their employees out on a somewhat regular basis. He pulled me aside and showed me a picture on his cell phone of what we would be eating. It was the decapitated and seemingly deep-fried head of a quail. "We will have bird for Thanksgiving," he assured me. Luckily, quail heads are tough to come by in Korea, so we ended up stuffing ourselves on the "turkey of the sea" for Thanksgiving instead--squid. And instead of cranberry crumb-cake, we had fried kimchi. In place of wine, we had soju. All in all, a pretty good Thanksgiving.

There are still a lot of superstitions in Korea. This is a modernized country, but underlying the big business and metropolis of Seoul is a very traditional culture (you'll probably read that exact same thing on any online blurb about Korea). I've graded multiple college essays that discuss fortune tellers and their role in the shaping of the authors' lives, and other essays concerning "objects" that people keep with them for a supernatural purpose. One particularly ridiculous belief is "fan death". This is the idea that, if you leave a fan blowing in your room when you go to sleep, it will create a vortex that sucks the air from the room and suffocates you. Well, I don't keep a fan blowing when I go to sleep. But that might have something to do with winter, and not impending doom.

Believe it or not, I got an opportunity to practice my French recently. I tagged along with a friend to a "French dinner" she had set up with someone via the internet. On my way to the dinner, I got nervous because I couldn't think of even the most basic words like "when" and "how"; I just kept mixing in Korean words. This was a problem I was having when first trying to speak Korea, I just kept mixing in French words. It's like there's only room for one extra language in my head, and when I try to think of one, I inevitably use some of both. Well, as long as you can speak some Frenglean we should get along just fine (that was the best way I could think to combine those three languages, and I have been thinking for a good while). At the French dinner, I was pleasantly surprised at how much French came back to me while talking. It was broken French to a certain extent, but it was always constant, and fluent at times.

As for Korean speaking, I'm getting better. I'm still taking classes and spending a good amount of time studying on my own, and have been able to have a few halting conversations over the past week. Unfortunately the "busy season" for work, meaning the 12-hour days, begins in mid-December and I won't be able to continue classes. Studying has been one of my hobbies thus far, however, so I think I will continue with it and, if all works out, have a language partner to talk with regularly.

And, just in case you forgot about the rest of the world while deciding whether Hill-dog or Obama will be the next ruler of the free world (is that an accurate breakdown yet?), the Korean Presidential election is next month. I've begun to see street-corner stump speeches lately, and, although I don't know what they're saying, I've read a bit online about the candidates. Most of the presidential policies are focused on domestic issues, mainly closing the opening wealth-gap and unemployment. If you think about, Korea has crammed about 200 years worth of economic development into about 50 (and it shows in both the physical infrastructure of the city and greedy business philosophy of the young people). What has happened is that the Korean economy is one step ahead of its society. In 50 years, it has voluntarily adopted Western business ideas to create huge corporations to get rich quick. These adopted business philosophies are in quite contradiction with the Confucian lifestyle Korea has lived with for a long time. 50 years is not enough time for social ideals to change, because, literally, those same Koreans that were around BEFORE 1950 and remember the older values are still alive! As my boss described to me when I was talking with him, "Korean youths are immoral and only concerned with money. They no longer respect anything." My boss is 45, by the way, in case you were imagining an 80 year-old miser with a penchant for hating on young'ins. Yes, he was born after 1950, but Korea didn't completely give itself to the economic Dark Side until the 80's, when a military dictator took firm grasp of Korea and forced development down its throat. Naturally, some groups of people (meaning, the majority) have fallen behind in the "economic count" during this rapid growth. Hmmmm. I just realized I've been getting carried away from the presidential election topic. But, to be fair to myself, so often these days I sometimes find myself generalizing about an aspect of Korean society or city or business, only to stop and have to rethink the whole thing because Korea (Seoul especially) has undergone crazy change in such a quick amount of time. The old and young generations here are very much at odds because of the rapidness of change. Anyway, I'll devote my next entry to discussing my impressions of Korea after three months, but, for now, suffice it to say that it is difficult to discuss any shortcomings of Korean life without putting it into a historical context. Yes, that is an obvious remark for any country. But also, Yes, many people forget it.

Another tidbit of Korean foreign policy lost on international ears is relations with North Korea. Though foreign policy is an ancillary concern in the Korean election because the candidates agree on most of it, the changes taking place in the North seem to be significant. I guess I always imagined that this would be a sudden change, and that, one day, Kim Jung-Il would die, the borders would open up, and people would cheer in celebration. But realistically it's happening as I write this. The idea of North-South reunification is becoming somewhat of a reality. Pyongyang has hosted more foreign diplomats in the past few months than ever to discuss the opening of North Korea, literally and economically. There will be a train running between Pyongyang and Seoul for the first time in 60 years next month, for the purpose of reuniting families whose oldest members are close to death.

I had dinner after a Salsa class with my classmates, one of whom was a Master Sergeant in the Army (a pretty good dancer, to boot). He told me he'd been there when the Berlin Wall was taken down (on duty), he'd been there when the Saddam statue was torn to the ground (on duty), and he thinks this North-South reunification will be the next big page in his lifelong history lesson. He was an interesting guy, so I'll describe him briefly. He is from the former British colony of Guinea in South America, where he designed airplane engines. Now, he is Master Sergeant of the Biological Weapons team (WMD team) of the US Army in Korea. He also is a semi-professional soccer player for Seoul United. And he dances Salsa. He insisted to me over and over that I had the right mindset and had made the right choice to come out to Korea and explore the world. He thought Korea especially was the right place to be because of the impending economic boom, though he did not mention when/why/where/how this boom would occur. He was just very sure of it. Regardless, he obviously is a traveled person and has seen some things in his day that I never will. I did appreciate his comment, because he seemed very sure that I was doing the right thing. More and more, though, I'm starting to feel that way too. More on that in a different entry, when I feel the urge to discuss such things. I'm going to go see this guy's soccer match next Sunday, apparently it's a championship game for his league.

Lastly (concerning the elections), I think it's safe to assume the US-Korean joint control of military operations here will continue. Plus, there was just the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries, giving all the more reason to maintain a strong relationship. Although, this does not mean people here in Seoul lose any love to the American soldiers in town on the weekends. Korean men especially don't like the idea of big, drunk, tough looking foreigners hitting on their women.

I'll try to get a new camera for my next entry, cuz I'm sure to lose some of your attention without visual enticement.

A dieu.