I want...

to learn how to read the mind of the 4 month old that I'm taking care of now.

to be a good nanny.

to be an awesome wife.

to learn how to crochet so I can make things like this.

to go to San Francisco and visit this store.

to hang up the pictures that are leaned against walls in the apartment. (I guess I'm waiting for some kind of artistic inspiration or some amazing new additions to add to the collection.)

to drastically shorten my to-do list.

to start studying Korean regularly again.

to spend lots of time in the sun without increasing my risk for nasty wrinkles or skin cancer.

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

From New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St, Boston, MA 02108-2892, ISBN 0 870 6819 5).

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measles-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

one paragraph at a time: alliance

Found at one paragraph at a time:

alliance

“You have to make an alliance with your anguish,” he said,
“not wage war against it.” And I thought of all the fists
I had shaken at misfortune: games lost
because the shot clock ran out,
a good meal scorched in a forgotten oven,
money dropped on a dress worn only once,
the bully in 6th grade, the math test in 9th,
the wrong outfit at Halloween.
But of course, this isn’t what he meant.

If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure. And so the perilous
track-making begins. A certain blindness must necessarly
set it. Wending our way through darkness,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from one another.

e-mail from my Chinese tutor

I got an e-mail from my Chinese tutor today and I love it.

hi,
Long time no see,i miss you so much.
How are you going? and what about your sister's baby?
when will you come back to china? want to see you as soon as possible.
now i am looking for a job,but it is difficult, i want to Shanghai,but my spoken english isn't well, and i also not pass the CET-6. in shanghai, it is important, now i am not-confident, some campany come to my school to recruit the students, i attent the application. at the interview,the manager said that :you are excellent, you are better than any other students,but we only need some people who know korean, and you know only a little, so i am sorry, i can't recruit you ,even you are so excellent. at the moment, i am not sure whether i am excellent. most of people say i am so good, but it is difficult to find a job which i want .
some time is going, and i am well now, i will still go to find the job i like, i am sure i will find it, because i am qingmei, i am so confident,
i will come back this school at next May, hope to see you at that time.
hope you are hapy at vacation.

grandmotherisms

Yesterday morning at breakfast, my grandmother is reading the paper, apparently looking at the celebrity birthday list. She says, "Today Whoopi Goldberg is 52." (pause) "I wish she wouldn't wear her hair like that."

I say with a sigh "Oh, Mimi. If I were black, I'd wear my hair like that." I sigh because I don't understand why it matters to my grandmother how Whoopi wears her hair.

She sighs, groans, and says she's sure glad I'm not black. She goes on to say that cornrows are okay, but those "drablocks, or whatever they're called" are just messy and ugly.

Last week, she put down the paper at breakfast and asked me to explain "in one syllable words" what google is and what it does. I said the main thing people use it for is to search for what they want to find on the internet. She was happy with that. She then proceeded to ask me what pilates is. (She pronounces it pilots, like the person who flies a plane. This is the second time she's asked about this and she's still not sure I'm giving her the right answer.)

I tell her that pilates is a form of exercise that is a little like yoga. She asks me if I'm sure and says she thought it was something they sell at Radio Shack.

ode to my Chinese tutor

When I first met her at the beginning of the semester, I didn't think it would work out and was thinking of ways to let her know gently that I didn't want to continue. But, I couldn't think of a good way to tell her we should stop meeting, so we kept on. I began to like her because she's funny, she spoke a lot of Chinese to me (which I didn't understand, but it still helps!), and she encouraged me in speaking Chinese.

She's from Hainan Island (far South China). She tells me stories about how cheap fruit is there - how her parents sometimes eat 10 bananas each per day during banana season (because they have a banana tree in their yard) and how they have egg bananas there! She says they are a little fatter than a normal banana and taste a little like egg. I've gotta visit and check this out.

She has some pimples on her face and she says she's drinking special tea that she says is supposed to calm the fire in her body that is erupting on her face.

She sends me messages in Chinese and then teaches me what they say. This is the latest one:
鱼说: 你看不见我的眼泪, 因为我在水中.
The fish says: You can't see my tears because I am in the water.
水说: 我看得见你的眼泪, 因为你在我心中!
The water says: I can see your tears because you are in my heart.

She gets on to me because I don't actually study Chinese except by listening to Chinese language learning podcasts a few times a week, so I can't read many of the characters. My ability to read characters is the main way she gauges my progress, so she covers up the pinyin (the romanized way to read Chinese) and makes me read the characters. I either get lucky or can read the top half of the pinyin that she's covering up, and she praises me and tells me that I must have been studying!

Oh, thanks to a special commenter recently. The comments make me smile, but I can't comment back and can't visit other people's blogs to comment either because blogger blogs are blocked right now.

truth is better than fiction

At the gym on Monday a lady in the locker room started talking to me. First in Chinese and then I asked her to speak Korean. That might have been a mistake, because then she wouldn't leave until I did. She showed me pictures of her daughter who is a student where I teach. She asked me when I usually come so that she can come at the same time. She told me as we walked out that she has gained weight since coming (she told me exactly how much) and then asked me if I could give her some of my fat.

Today, I ran into her again on the way in as she was on her way out. She told me about her day and then said she was wondering if I'd be at the gym today. Then she asked for my phone number so that she could call and see when I'll come. I hesitated, trying to find a good way to get around it, but gave it to her. She sent me some message in Chinese today that I can read 8 characters of. Not much of a clue what it says.
________________________________________
I was eating at my favorite hole in the wall Korean place last week when one of the kimbap ladies took a break to sit next to me and give me a short quiz:
How old are you?
Have you gone to your inlaw's house? (a creative way to ask if you're married)

She didn't go to the normal next question - Why not? or When do you plan to? And she didn't ask any more questions about my job or how much money I make, so she was less nosy than most.
_________________________________
I had this conversation on the phone in the office recently:

Hello. This is William. I can find Nathan?

No. He's not here.

Yes. I know. Bye.

Well, obviously he didn't know that Nathan wasn't there. If he had, he wouldn't have called. In Chinese, the phrase "I know" is used in a lot of places where we would say "I understand," or maybe even "okay." My Chinese tutor always says "I know dat" at funny times. After I explained to her about that, I used the Chinese "I know" phrase in a context I thought I had heard before and she called me on it, told me it was wrong. It's good when I get a taste of my own medicine.

Pusan, Korea

An overcast day in Pusan on the Haeundae beach.

A vending machine for books on the Pusan subway. (In Korea, most people are occupied by reading, listening to their mp3, playing with their phone, or sometimes watching their personal video players. In China, they seem to be less concerned with filling up every second of their time when on public transportation. Even when I take a long train ride in China, I've never seen anyone reading anything other than the occasional magazine.)

In Korea...
I saw a man getting his nails done at a manicure shop in the mall.

I was walking with my friends on the beach where we walked in front of a large group of middle school age boys on a field trip. As we walked, they started to leave in groups and pass us. As they passed us, almost every group would dare the others to talk to us, the foreigners. We tried to talk to a few in English, but they were too embarrassed or didn't understand. So, I spoke to one of the boys in Korean and he just opened his mouth and stared. He wouldn't say anything. After he ran away, one of my friends said "He reacted to you speaking Korean as if a dog had just spoken something understandable!"

The lady checking my luggage for liquids at the airport on the way out of Korea saw my Korean study book and then started to speak to me in Korean. She asked me where I was studying and I told her I was a teacher. She then said "You teach Korean?" Although if she had talked to me longer, she would have realized I wasn't qualified, I was flattered at first.

a Thursday

Today started with multiple hits of the snooze button before it was time to get serious, get up and get ready for Chinese from 8-10 (at my apartment, thankfully). Actually, it's English-Chinese exchange. I sat through most of the hour of English thinking how this is a bad idea and I need to swap this tutor for someone who I'll just pay to teach me instead. But, the Chinese hour made me change my mind, at least for another week. I'm probably in this relationship for a reason.

Then, I did two loads of laundry and chatted with my sister before taking off to run a few errands before class. I took some sweaters to get fixed, scarves to be cleaned, got copies of my apartment keys made for my new roommate, and picked up bread, peanut butter and jelly for my class. My sister had talked about burgers and mac and cheese which reminded me that I've been hungry for American food, so I got a burger and fries to go at burger place that's a sad knock off of a Korean chain. I had actually never ordered food there before and when I sat down in my office to eat it, I realized why nobody I know really goes there. It was okay, but not exactly what you could classify as good. In conversation class, we talked about recipes, food words and giving directions while making small pb&j sandwiches. They were happy.

After class, two students I didn't know came into the office asking me to give them a test so that they could pass the class they failed last semester because they stopped going to class. I had no idea what they were talking about, but after talking it over with one of the Chinese teachers, I understood my duty. I had to give them their final oral exam without knowing what class it was for, what they learned that semester, or what their original exam looked like. Right. Makes perfect sense. They can skip out on a whole semester of class and then take an exam from a clueless teacher to make up for it. Their English was good, so they passed. Ridiculous.

I went out to dinner with a fellow teacher who's been here for only about a month. She was gung ho about trying a new place as a sort of adventure, so we went to a dumpling restaurant down the street that we'd never been to. I asked for someone who spoke Korean or for a Korean menu, but neither were available. So, the waitress and I had a fun time. She suggested a few things and I took her up on them, not knowing much more than the category of food they were under. We got two plates of dumplings, one plate of sweet and sour pork with pineapples, and a pot of tea. The pork came because she said foreigners like it and one of the dumpling dishes was recommended because it's their specialty. I think I understood more than I expected to, but there were a few times that she went off on some explanation that I had no idea about. She came back periodically to make sure we enjoyed it and told us to come back because they have many more delicious dishes we should try.

Tonight holds some Korean study and hopefully an early bedtime!

a great schedule

The weather is warming up again (the highs around 35 Fahrenheit) and the moonscape like snow piles on the side of the road are shrinking with the help of the sun and people still working to chip away at them. Two pictures as a farewell to the snow:

On the windy walk up to YUST Sunday morning after the second snowstorm.

I'm loving my schedule this semester. Just 4.5 hours of teaching. The prep time for the 1.5 hour American Culture class takes more than the conversation prep, which I knew it would, but it's a fun class to teach. The book finally came in today, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands on that tomorrow and adding some structure to the semester.

I've committed to going to the gym more and it feels really good to get back into a routine there. I also bought tickets to the swimming pool on campus, which is the newest one in the city (out of only three, one of which I think is permanently closed). I haven't been yet, but I'm gonna try to go tomorrow and try out the hand paddles I bought over the summer (and haven't used yet).

Today, I met with my Korean tutor for the first time. We have planned to meet just two hours a week, but this semester I am going to get my rear in gear and do serious studying on the off days so I can really make good use of those two hours. I started tonight by reviewing what we learned today and when I finish typing this, I'm going to "preview" (do we use that verb in English in this sense?) the stuff for our Friday meeting.

I also met a girl who's a friend of one of my American culture students who wants to do language exchange in Chinese/English. She wanted to meet as often as possible, but I said two hours (one hour English, one hour Chinese) is plenty for now. We'll see what happens. We're meeting for our first study session tomorrow at 8am!

What I need to make more time for is to keep up with the students I got to know at my old university. I made a trip up last week to meet a student for lunch and it was so good to see so many of my old students.

Two unedited pics of my apartment. It's a cozy little place and I'm really enjoying it. I took these last week. In the first one, you can see the red ottoman that doubles as a coffee/pile of stuff table and my nest on the floor where I work on the computer (until I get wireless) and study or lesson plan. I'm not so much of a sit at a table or desk person, but I use the couch when I'm reading.

the poor design seriously threats your soul

I was looking around a store yesterday on the way to meet a friend. The stairs down to the store had this sign above them. It's the name of the store and their motto, I guess. We should all take it to heart, I think.My friend and I had planned to meet here, at the relatively new National Museum of Korea, but she ended up having to work longer than expected, so I went on my own. It was pretty impressive. The national museum itself is huge, as you can see. They have all sorts of Asian art on three floors. The special exhibit there was ornaments decorated with jewel beetles. They had belts, headdresses, etc. that were decorated with the shiny backs of special beetles.They have one section devoted to their beloved language, which was also pretty interesting. The Korean language was invented by a king and his scholars to give the common people a way to write and read without learning the Chinese characters that the language used to be written in. The shapes of the Korean alphabet are made to look like the shape of your mouth or tongue when you say them. I think that's pretty cool. I didn't know that until a few years after I learned the alphabet, though.
The museum had great English translations, but there were still a few funny things to find, like this sign:
In the special exhibition part of the museum, they have some paintings on loan from the Louvre. It was an extra 9 bucks to see that and it was super crowded, but it was nice. I overheard one girl saying something like "hardly any of them have any clothes on!" (of people in the paintings).

Choo-ri

I have thought I should change the name of this blog to "the snow chronicles" or something, because I feel compelled to let you guys know every time it snows. I woke up to beautiful snow this morning. I celebrated by walking to McDonald's where they now have breakfast food! This is a new thing. They have always been open for breakfast, but now they not only serve hamburgers (I guess they still serve those at breakfast time too), but they also serve egg mcmuffins and pancakes in Korea for breakfast. It was nice.
Yesterday, I went to see 미녀는 괴로워, a movie with the family I used to live with. Afterwards, we went to a new shopping center near where they live. We were walking around outside and saw this sign. It says "Danger of electric shock. Do not touch the tree." Except the word they use for tree (the trees have Christmas lights on them) is not the Korean one, 나무 (nah-moo), it's a Konglish word, 추리(choo-ri) which is meant to be the English word, tree. I couldn't believe it. Why wouldn't they use the Korean word for tree? The younger sister looked at the sign, looked at her sister, and said "Onnie (older sister), what's a choori?" I was glad she asked, because I didn't know either. The older sister explained to us and we laughed. More examples of Konglish here and here.

friends and language

I've had some really great time with friends since I've been here. They've been a blessing to me in more ways than buying me food. Some of these friends I don't stay in touch with well, but still coming back and seeing how we've changed, talking more in Korean, talking about things we long for, things that have hurt, things we've learned...is good.

I thought when I first came here that I mostly acquired friends who wanted to speak English. That may to some extent be true, but now that I can speak more Korean, I realize that they spoke English because I didn't speak Korean, not mostly because they wanted to practice. That may not sound like such a great revelation. I just didn't know they'd be eager to speak in Korean once I learned how. I still have a long way to go in Korean studies. I can't talk about deep things to the extent that I want to, so I revert to English if I know my friend will understand, but I long to be able to really talk about things that matter in this language. I still sometimes lament that I chose one of the hardest languages on earth (gramatically) to learn, but I love it.

You might be wondering why my Korean has improved since I left Korea. I'm not sure it actually has improved, but I keep hearing surprise that it has. I think because I've had a series of one-on-one tutors since I moved (it's much cheaper to get tutors in China!), I've become more comfortable in speaking. With my tutors, we sometimes go over grammar or workbook exercises at my request, but mostly I just listen and talk with them in Korean. In Korea, I generally didn't talk that much to people in Korean above simple daily exchanges, but in China there are a few people I only talk to in Korean because that's the only language I share with them. I know that the grammar centered 6 months of classes I took here helped lay a very necessary foundation, but it's really the normal communication practice that makes a difference in learning.

On a side note, a short article on why it's a good reason to learn a foreign language here.

circumstances

The circumstances are not ideal, yet it seems to me that life's moments don't have to be right or not right anymore, so fraught and weighted with "value," but just of themselves, what they are...

from A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee

I've read these two books recently - the one above and another one by the same author called Native Speaker - that are basically about Asians fitting in to "normal" American life. I've been thinking that perhaps I'm on the opposite end of that picture, a white girl trying to fit in to Asian life, although it's certainly much easier for an Asian non-American to fit in to American life than it is for me to fit in here. Of course, I am also segregating myself in many ways, some necessary and some not so much so. I hang out with the teachers in the English conversation office, mostly stay on campus, etc. This happens because I'm really too busy not to do that, my students and my work requires me to, and so on. I spend as much time as possible in language study, but I don't make as much progress as I should because I'm not in an immersion environment. So, while I love what I do, I'm torn, because I think language study is actually the most important thing so that someday I won't have to live this segregated life.

None of what I just wrote has to do with the quote I copied above. I do love that quote, though, because of how I feel circumstances have been normal lately and yet not so. Circumstances aren't ideal and the moments haven't been so weighted with value lately, but yet they have been good.

English funnies

I watched a Korean movie yesterday with some of my students. The English title is 100 Days With Mr. Arrogant. It's about a high school girl who has to repay damage she does to a college student's car. Through the 100 days, they fall in love, etc., etc. It was sorta cute. Afterward, I read the review on the back of the DVD case. I type it here word for word.

The Hayoung is already through is a high inside three year classes learn to
living, however and still and often and often white daydream of hair. Not
over at solid now living the male friend that live inside, Hayoung out the
cent's hand. The Hayoung harms the heat of the difficult heart head, in be
the street disorderly beat the vapor car. Her ruined male learn to living
the Hy all and new to run the car, Hyungjoon to beg the Hayoung tpensate the.
The Hayoung did not have money, then not wish the gnd sign to down owe single,
and need to be wanted the for inside yungjoon make on days for repair the.

Maybe you can understand why we have to read real English books just to keep our English at the same level it was when we came. The level of English we use can deteriorate quickly, but we have a lot of fun reading this stuff and catching our friends in their errors!

quotes

Our office can sometimes be quite funny. A few weeks ago, as the new teachers were getting settled in, we were walking to the only restaurant that is within walking distance (on a cold day anyway) from our campus. The dinner wasn't so enticing in the cafeteria, so on the spur of the moment, a few of us decided to walk to this little hole in the wall restaurant. It was very cold, and I hadn't planned on going out, so I was just wearing a shirt, jeans, and a coat. It wasn't enough. As we ran with teeth chattering to the restaurant, somebody said that we should make a TV show of our life here. Then somebody said, "Well, we could! It seems like anything is possible in Yanji!" We've been quoting that line ever since.

That same teacher often says quite funny stuff. She was the one who inspired me to make a schedule for myself to keep on track as I study Korean, because she had made one for herself to study MCAT. So, I was asking her if she'd kept up with her MCAT study schedule. I have tried to keep up with mine, but I decided to also count watching my Korean drama as study time. So, she said: "Oh, I wish there were an MCAT drama!"

One more, just for good measure. Three of us went to a meeting on Sunday downtown and we saw another teacher there. The next day, one of our group said to the other teacher: "Remember that day we saw you downtown?" It took us a few seconds to realize it, but she was talking about yesterday. So, I said "Do you mean yesterday?" and we all laughed. Sometimes we feel like time flies, but then some days are so long!

We have a board in the office where we put funny things people say. Needless to say, it's never empty.

I am reading the essays from my intermediate class. They were supposed to make a timeline of important events in their life and then choose one event and write about it. One of my students wrote about her first job. It was a year ago during winter break. She got a job for 3 yuan an hour and worked two hours per day. That's less than one dollar for two hours of waitressing. She said she walked instead of taking the bus in -12 degrees Celsius weather in order to save more money. Wow.

already a week!

This past week went by so quickly! I'm spending most of my Saturday, again, in the office e-mailing, writing tests, entering grades in the computer, and trying to get stuff ready so I can leave my classes for a day and a half with another teacher. I got three teachers to cover my three classes for Friday and Monday morning. They were all very gracious, even though they don't get anything for it except what I can give them by way of thank you (like some homemade cookies, or perhaps a special find from Korea).

I finished interviewing all my 80-or-so students except for one this week. That's a big accomplishment. Now I can use my time in the office to get work done.

I taught Rascal Flatt's song "Broken Road" to my intermediate class on Friday. It sort of goes with life lessons and the idiom that we learned on Friday was "blessing in disguise." They like learning songs, and it's fun to teach them, too. I'm gonna teach George Strait's "Run" this week to my beginner class. We're doing a unit on entertainment, so they are learning about the different names for genres of music. Most of them say they like country music, but I'm not sure they really understand what country music is. I've played a few samples for them, and I even did a few steps of the two step, which they thought was funny.

I've started watching a new Korean drama this week: 넌 어느 별에서 왔니? And I finally called my Korean tutor from last semester, so we are going to start meeting once a week. I set up a Korean study schedule for myself which I'm trying to keep, and I have the number for a girl who wants to tutor me in Chinese, so I'm gonna start that this week or next. So much to learn!

a late Valentine's message

We cleaned out the office last week to get ready for a new semester and I found this gift bag. It's a lovely example of the need for English teachers in China (or Korea, since this might be a made in Korea bag). It's filled with hearts that say "my herat" all over it.

Does herat even sound like heart? No. It's just a silly error. Spell check! Dictionaries! Think about something and run it through someone else before you make bags out of it and mass market it!

words

I got this idea from jenni to make a word cloud. It's a word picture of the words that appear most often on this blog. You can make one from your blog here.