Thoughts & Drabbles
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Current Events
As an expatriate in South Korea, I’m watching events unfold with a unique perspective. I am not a minority in the U.S. and certainly cannot and will not be able to speak to the personal experience of my minority American brothers and sisters. Ever since I was young, my father has taught my brothers and I to be highly skeptical of all police: “If he pulls you over, don’t get out. Don’t open your trunk. He has no legal rights to do that without a warrant. He may place damning evidence on or in your car and frame you. If a police car is following you on an empty road…
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“Foreigner”
Current Korean language headache: 외국인 is translated as “foreigner” or “international” and literally means “outside country person”. However, the real meaning is “non-Korean” which poses some problems if you’re attempting to talk about foreigners in your own country. For example, to talk about international students at my home university posed some real challenges during my writing segment today. If I write in Korean, “there are many international students” and use the word 외국인, the Korean reader will assume I mean there are many non-Korean students. Not quite the point I was trying to make, eh? The definition for “foreigner” in English is location dependent. If I’m in America talking to…
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For Prospective EPIK Teachers: The Realities of Living and Teaching in Seoul with SMOE
It’s that time of year. Applicants to EPIK (English Program in Korea) eagerly await acceptance and eventual placement results. Almost everyone wants Seoul and almost everyone is disappointed when they don’t get it. Everyone wants to live in the capital: the glitz, the glam, the Gangnam. But for those of you holding out for Seoul and nothing else, we need to have a reality check. I’ll admit, I was relieved when I opened my placement email and saw “Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education”. Confirmed– I would not be living in a village with no access to the outside world. I could keep doing all the things I had been doing…
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Women and Coffee
Last night my amazing Korean tutor who lives in Hong Kong and popped off about my boy problems told me, “I moved to Hong Kong because I got married. But it didn’t work out.” She’s lived in Hong Kong for 8 years and I’m desperate to know more: if she wants to move back to Korea, what happened with her husband… I asked her if she wanted to remarry to which she swiftly and vehemently said “no”. She added that a boyfriend would be nice. I’m really amazed that she uprooted her life for her spouse and then decided to stay anyway. What a queen! All this continues to convince…
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Birthday Thoughts
There are things we, especially women, are made to fear as we near thirty. As if the privilege to age should be shameful instead of joyful.
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Five Year Plans
The real reason I never made a five year plan is not because I am a flake but because I was never happy enough where I was to imagine continuing that situation for another five years. At the time I was supposed to tell you, “In five years I will have invented X and married Y and received Z promotion or award. I’m going to become CEO and change the world.” That’s the point of a five year plan, after all, right? To show others what magnificent goals you plan to achieve. That seemed to be the reason that my employers and parents asked for it. For me that’s too…
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The “Bravery” of Moving Abroad
When you’re raised to be an independent thinker, is it really that shocking when you take an uncharted path?
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To Mary Oliver
My favorite poet passed on January 17. To honor her legacy, I’d like to share her most widely beloved poem “Wild Geese”: You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter…