Finding Friday

Moments

2011-09-05T08:47:00.002+09:00

Confession: I have a problem called “Selective Memory.” Capital S. Capital M. For emphasis.

This is probably somewhere in the same family as “selective hearing.” My mom used to holler endlessly to my brother about that, about how he only heard what he wanted to hear, which very rarely included her demands to take out the trash, feed the chickens, or water the half-dead, potted green things in buckets on the back porch. I’ve never really suffered from this ailment so much. But selective memory is much worse. I can’t always remember things. And even worse, I can’t always forget them.

This has nothing to do with getting old, or with being slow. It has to do, mostly, with a memory that has no idea what decade Lincoln was President in, but can remember the first poem it ever memorized in the first grade. “In winter, I get up at night, and dress by yellow candlelight…”

I have no idea what borders Minnesota, but I know that Tennessee had the lowest real estate prices in the country when I was in college. I often don’t remember my four-digit PIN number on my debit card that I use two or three times a week, but I still remember how to tie a fishing lure, though I haven’t done it in many years.

Memory is tricky. There are some things that you think you’ll have forever--a last glimpse of a loved one, good times with your best friends, your first date. But for me, all of these have receded to a realm of colored smoke, where all form and detail has faded to emptiness, and anything I conjure up is only a speculation or a lucent phantom of what was.

And then there are things that are so small and insignificant that I don’t know how I’ve retained them all this time, why they have lived, starved for attention but not for power, in the little pathways of my mind, hibernating for long months and then bursting forth every now and again with such force and persistence and clarity that they occupy the whole of my attention for hours on end. The argument I overheard between my parents one Christmas Eve when I was in junior high that made me sick to my stomach for three days. Flipping the swings at the playground up over the top bar so that the chains clanged in an unholy summons and lifted the seat high above the sand. Walking alone into the dim, musty, dirty shack that smelled of stale bread and crumbling shoes to visit Ted, the old man who ate beet sandwiches, gave kids rides on his motorized wheelchair, and bragged that he was going to live to be a hundred. These things I remember as if they were yesterday, though millions of moments have happened since then, vying for space in that eternal computer.

I do not know why I cannot remember the feel of my first kiss, but my heart re-throbs with all the love and ache of the summer day fifteen years ago, when I sat with a pair of tweezers in a pool of hot, hot sun, pulling the bloated tics from the pink skin of that puppy I loved, who was so small and broken and sick from the day she was born, that the sight of those insects stealing her very life-blood away broke my heart with a million cracks that remain there still.

It seems to me that there are certain events in life that are “big” enough, that we should never forget them. So why, then, do I not remember my baptism when I was eight years old? Why do I not remember getting my driver’s license, though I remember the five months preceding it when I practiced and ran over every shrub and light post in two neighborhoods? All I can say is that I had better remember my wedding when that ten year anniversary rolls around.

Sometimes it’s not a matter of wishing I could remember, but of yearning to forget. I don’t want the old man, yellowed with disease and open sores, naked but for dirt, curled on the brick wall along that village road to lie, dying forever in my mind as he does now. I don’t want to always miss the boy who sat in the trees with me and talked for hours, leaves shutting out the world, who collected stones that we never skipped, who lives on in my memory, laughing. There are some moments that I wish could live in my mind but fade from my heart.

I wish I could call the shots. I wish I could say which events got filed for eternity and which went out with the morning trash. They should be my treasures to keep, my trash to burn.

But that power has never been mine. And perhaps I would regret it if it was. During those times when I scuttle through life, seemingly lost, I always go back to memory. The things I remember tell me who I am. What if I did not remember that argument between my parents on that dark winter night? Would I look at them today with the same joy at their happiness together—with the confidence that problems can be worked out? What if I had never pulled those sickening tics from that soft fur? Would I still have the compassion that spills out my eyes and my hands toward all suffering things? What if what I remembered most about that first love was his kiss, instead of his smile? Would love mean something different?

I’ve never been very good at remembering the big things. Perhaps they are simply too wide for me to really see them. But the collection of those little moments that swim through me has made me a lover of the insignificant. I love anthills. And leaves that are turning colors just at the edges. And half-smiles. And broken red bricks. And I don’t know if I could love any of these things if my memory was taken up by weddings and funerals and milestones. Maybe it will be okay if I can’t remember my wedding in ten, twenty, fifty years.

As long as I can remember the smooth softness of sweet icing, heels clinking on a dance floor.

Holy Hellions

2011-01-22T04:08:00.001+09:00

“Teacher, what is “die?”

I stop my science lecture on living vs. non-living things, and turn to the innocent wide eyes of the five-year-old who has not yet learned this powerful little English word.

“거푸집,” answers her friend, Amy, who is busily coloring the legs of the spider on her worksheet into six of the seven rainbow colors because she doesn’t like the color green.

I quickly glance back to Crystal and see her face go solemn. “I don’t like die. I will not die.”

I can see the fear in her face.

“Crystal, everyone will die. All living things will die. Spiders, dogs…and people. All people will die. Even me. Even you.”

“My grandpa died.” Chris joins the conversation. “He died because he was old, but now he is in…” His brow furrows as he looks for a word that does not yet exist in his vocabulary. He turns to Ian. “천국 in English, what is it?”

“Heaven,” Ian whispers back.

“Heaven. My grandpa is in heaven now.”

Crystal’s eyes have been following her classmates, but now they turn to me. “Do people really go to heaven after they die?”

She will believe anything I tell her. Completely. Because she knows I will never lie to her.

“Yes. People really go to heaven. And when you die, you can go there, too, and be with all your family and friends again.”

Crystal smiles. “Teacher? I am happy.”

I still see their faces. All of them. They run through my dreams. They stare out of the eyes of the little neighbor boy I babysit, though his round eyes are the color of seafoam, and theirs are almond, and glowing like black coals full of hidden fire. And sometimes, sitting in church and hearing a word like “heaven,” a whole conversation comes back to me, a tingling memory that hurts from my chest down to my stomach in the way that only missing and longing can hurt.

For a whole year, I think was collecting those kids. Collecting their smiles and their tears. Collecting their hugs. Collecting their pain and making it mine.

“Teacher, I cried on the bus today.”

“Oh, no! Why?”

“Because I was sad because last night Daddy came home and he was angry and outside and Mom outside too and yelling, and Mom go to her room and I hear her cry many tears. And her face red where he hit. But they didn’t know I hear, and I only cried on the bus.”

And even now, 7,000 miles away, I still want to make their lives perfect, so that Amy never has to tell that story again.

But I can’t, and so I try to remember their laughter instead, because I’ve collected that and made it mine, too. I still grin when I think about the Christmas concert on my last day in Korea. The kids had all just gotten to take turns sitting on Santa’s lap, where he gave each of them a stocking with a present inside. Crystal, lacking any degree of patience or self-control, had already torn open the wrapping and forgotten about the gift. But then I heard a little giggle, which started growing louder. I turned to look, and saw that she had taken off her shoe and put her foot into the stocking like a sock.

“Look, Teacher! STOCKING!” And she chortled and laughed, and danced on her one-stockinged foot, until I pulled out my camera. “Teacher, nooooo!” she yelled, yanking the stocking off, and hiding it behind her back, still laughing, the dimples in her cheeks deep, her eyelashes vibrating with delight.

Or Chris, perhaps more carefree and wide-eyed of any of them, hiding under the table in the corner, waiting for me to enter the room.

“Where’s Chris?” I say.

A very solemn-faced boy answers me. “Teacher, he didn’t come today. He is very sick.”

“Yes, Teacher, so sick. He has to go to the hospital.”

Giggle, giggle.

I hear the laughter coming from under the table. Slowly, I peer below, where I see Chris curled up on the floor, covering his traitorous mouth with both hands, muted giggles still spilling from his lips.

“Surprise!”

He jumps up laughing, and launches himself into my arms.

There were a lot of things I expected when I decided to move to Korea for a year. There were a lot of things I planned on. I planned on the adventure, on falling in love with the wildness of the country. I planned on my job being just a job, a means to the end of exploring Asia.

I remember the day when I found a school administrator scolding one of my kids who was hiccupping uncontrollably, completely unable to respond. The manager got more and more frustrated and kept yelling at her to stop. I went in and took Stella away from the manager, picked her up, held her, and waited for the hiccups to break into the sobs I knew would come, which eased into silent tears, which dried against my neck. It was that day that I realized that those kids would never leave me. The realization shook me. When I saw the manager scolding Stella, I thought, Judy, that discipline would work with Crystal, but not with her. It was then that I realized how well I knew my kids—that I knew why each one cried, and how to make them stop. That I knew which jokes would be funny to Amy, but would be lost on Andrew. I never planned on that. I never planned on these kids being the best part of my year. It was then that I realized that I had indeed fallen in love with Korea. But not in the way I expected.

But I was not always so good a teacher, and those kids were not always heaven. On many days, those seventeen kids were my hell. They raked me over Diablo’s coals. They made me cry in anger and frustration. And they made me yell—something I swore I would never do to a child.

Sometime during the first few months, before my younger class knew enough English to communicate with me, we were doing a craft project, and I passed out papers and scissors to all the kids. Ten minutes later, I was frantically rushing around, trying to help them cut out circles—a very tricky shape when you’re three years old.

But one little girl, Helena, didn’t need any help cutting.

By the time I noticed her turned sideways in her chair, scissors in hand, it was too late. She and the girl next to her were playing “beauty salon,” and the floor was littered with long strands of Sarah’s hair.

No, she didn’t need help at all. She was a pro.

Another time, we were doing phonics. Or we were supposed to. But Jake didn’t like phonics. And he didn’t like sitting. And he didn’t really like school all that much. What he did like was running.

He also liked climbing. With friends. Before I knew what was happening, ten kids were running amuck in the small classroom, Jake separating the three segments of the table, pushing them over from beneath, as a train of kids strung along the length of a jump rope dodged table pieces and imitated, as loudly as they could, every animal sound they knew.

I couldn’t even hear my own yelling above the noise.

But the deepest hell, the one that lived and grew inside of me, was one that didn’t pass at the end of a long, hard day. It was the hell that lived in my heart when they were cruel to each other. It was the hell I waded through when they lied, when I had to teach them how to be good people because their parents were working 60 hours a week and didn’t have the time. It was the hell I lived in when they drove me to be someone I didn’t want to be, when I found myself angry, impatient, frustrated, harried, and unsympathetic. When I found myself causing tears, and realized the fault was my own.

Children are these little pieces of heaven that sometimes put us through hell. But isn’t that what heaven does? Isn’t that what God does? He puts us through a hell so wide and deep that we think we’re going to drown in it, and then he comes and wraps his arms around us and smiles into our eyes and ears with such love and confidence that suddenly all is heaven again, and we recognize it, and it is worth it. Children are like little mini gods, I think. Certainly they do His work best of anyone in this busy, rushing world full of red headlines and broken static.

One minute I am so furious, and the next, little fingers brush my face, count my freckles, curl around my neck with such complete trust and adoration, that I do not know how I can possibly ever let go. And when I have to, some of the light inside of me dims, and I know that I will always miss my little holy hellions.

I stand before the crowd of moms and dads, a microphone shoved into my hands. I had not expected this. Did not know that I was expected to make a speech to the parents of my kids during their Christmas concert on my last day in Korea. Only half of them will understand what I say. And none of them can possibly know the feeling behind the words—the nuances that are never caught in a second language. So I just say the simplest truth I know.

“Thank you for your kids. I love each of them, and they have made Korea amazing for me. I know they are your kids. They’re not mine. But they feel like they’re mine. I was realizing yesterday, this year that is so permanent for me, is fleeting for them. In five, ten, fifteen years, your kids…my kids… will no longer remember me. But I—I will always remember them. And I will always love them. So, thank you.”

Here I stop, because I’m starting to cry, and the dim lights aren’t dim enough. I hand the mic to one of the Korean teachers and walk off the stage.

An hour later, I find a note on my desk, written in the hand of one of my five-year-olds.

“Christina

I will remember you forever and ever.

Love you.

Ian.”

2010 Remembered

2011-01-21T05:29:00.003+09:00

I've finally compiled a slideshow of pictures and videos from the past year, as I've wandered through Korea, China, and the Philippine Islands. It's a tribute to the adventures, the joy, the hard times, and most especially, the ones I loved.

2010 Remembered: PART 1

2010 Remembered: PART 2

The Price of Wisdom

2010-11-17T19:20:00.003+09:00

Eight-and-a-half months have passed—two-thirds of my time here in Korea is gone. And yet, in some ways, it seems that I have been here eight years. Time has moved in an unbelievable way, like a race car spinning wildly out of control. The weeks pass and I don't know where they've gone. I turn around and my three-year-olds are speaking in complete English sentences. I step back and realize that my five-year-olds are reading, that my clothes smell constantly of pollution and Asian detergent, and that I can sleep through a two-hour commute and never miss a bus or subway transfer.

I have found a crack here where I fit, but still, especially on quiet nights when I look for stars and can’t find them, there are things that I long for from home— the stars, the people, the dusty skies, the desert rain. The rain here smells like bleach, a smell I can’t quite wrap my head around, when every memory I have tells me that rain should smell like chaparral and electricity and dripping desert flowers. At home, the rain was saving, a divine shower of life on the dry desert. Here it is filled with acid, the acrid water eating the roads—a force of nature, but not of life. And yet, there is so much life here .The greenness of this place is as foreign to me as the people, and as unpredictable.

This civilization has been around for millennia, making my own country seem young and naïve, and much less steady than this place that no longer even recognizes the opposition it moves through, does not balk at it, does not complain or feel that it should have an easier lot.

Whereas I, long accustomed to success, find myself torn by the opposition I have found here, indeed, by the very wisdom I am gaining.

Wisdom isn’t cheap, and it certainly isn’t free. The older I get, the more I realize that, of all things in life, wisdom demands one of the highest prices of all, especially for me. The price of wisdom is something that I value deeply, that I cling to tightly.

The price of wisdom is innocence.

It is a price that I tremble to pay.

But I am beginning to see a terrible thing. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is not happiness. And wisdom may leave terrible scars, but they are scars that save. Wisdom sees the complexity in simple things, the sorrow in the joy, and the meaning in the sorrow. Wisdom shows that all of humanity is broken people trying to find a way to be whole.

But still, sometimes I miss the innocence I had before—before I understood poverty, before I really understood sacrifice. Before I saw what it really costs to change. Before I looked at an innocent child and cried inside for what I knew the world would do to them in the coming years. Before I saw such goodness in people who would never understand where goodness comes from. Before I learned in the depth of personal experience how hard the spirit must struggle to remain strong in a broken body. Before, when I could go to a nice restaurant, and not feel the urge to throw up when I saw the prices on the menu, my mind flashing back to the eyes of starving little ones in the Philippines, their tummies slick and bloated in the rain.

I miss the way innocence once made life easy. And I look every day at my kids, still shining with the light of that purity--cruel and tough and brittle and quivering and cutting and forgiving and laughing and brimming over with the raw, bubbling, guile-less honesty that only a child can know. And I mourn for innocence.

But innocence goes and wisdom comes. And as I begin to see the shady corners of the world-- not the geographical corners, but the moral ones, the social ones, the individual corners of emptiness that haunt every heart--I see my own joy become deeper. It is still a reckless joy, still wild, still candid, still exultant over the tiny and mundane, but richer as a whole. I love fog over misty water a little more. I adore crooked stacks of books a little more tenderly. I play hopscotch on fence posts with a little less reserve.

And in all the opposition, I’ve learned that happiness is the easiest thing in the world.

Though I am still not sure, perhaps this makes wisdom worth the price.

Falling in Love with the Philippines: Days 4 & 5

2010-09-22T13:05:00.005+09:00

Wednesday was our day on the water. After checking in to the Bamboo House, a beautiful two-story house entirely made of bamboo, we left our luggage and hopped onto the catamaran we'd rented for the day. Our two Filipino sailor-guides took us around to show us the different islands from out at sea. There are a lot of them—over 7,000 islands in the

Philippines

, many of them tiny ones close together. We could see the outline of Taal Volcano far off in the distance, heavy clouds quivering over its mouth, heat and ash in their bellies. The ocean here is a color that I have never seen ocean be before. They always talk about the crystal blue waters, and that’s exactly how it is. Just looking over the edge of the boat, I could see the ocean floor in the more shallow areas, and fish gliding in the reefs beneath us.

After some sightseeing, they drove us out over the reefs, gave us snorkels, and set us free to explore.We had some bread that we broke pieces from and held beneath the water. Whole schools of fish swarmed us, enveloping us in amongst them, their slippery bodies flipping against my skin as they crowded for the bread.

There were so many different kinds of fish down there—rainbows and snake-looking things and black fish with frilly fins. The coral was all different colors and shapes and here and there, a purple starfish or a sanddollar, still living, squirming in the water of their world. After we had swum around for awhile, we hooked ourselves to a little motorboat, and were pulled along the length of the reefs, keeping our heads in the water, watching it all open up and spill away beneath us.

At one point, where the reef fell away into open ocean with a long, empty, sandy floor, a three-foot long, green sea turtle appeared out of nowhere and glided along the ocean bottom. He was incredible! We decided to dive down and see if we could get closer to him, but by the time we went up for air and dove back, he was gone. As fast as a blink of an eye.

After snorkeling, we hooked up with a kid on a motorboat, and paid him to take us to an underwater cave. There was an underwater entrance, and one above, hidden in the rocks that you had to climb to and lower yourself through. The light came in through that little hole in the top. The tide was stronger inside, because it was contained. If I just let myself float in the water, it would grab me and throw me to the other end of the cave, against the rock. The light filtered in from above, and also from the hole that reached below the water, giving it some crazy cool lighting. It was beautiful--the the rock with the green and blue growing on it, and the way the light came in from two different angles to hit the water.

We came back home to our Bamboo House after that, ordered some dinner, including a real coconut, and watched a gorgous orange sunset over the water. After that first Sunday of pouring rain, the only rain we saw was at night. But the clouds that floated across the horizons built up the most incredible sunsets. I love the sunsets of home. But I was mesmerized by the sunsets there. They’re wild like the ocean, instead of wild like the desert.

The sun was setting when we realized that we were in for a rotten day the next day. The sunburns that we had started to feel on the boat suddenly became full-force. It’s been a long time since I’ve been sunburned like that. I was fire-engine red—back, shoulders, arms, legs. Jon’s back and calves got almost as bad of a dose, and he’s actually tan.

I kind of felt cheated. It wasn’t like I was being neglectful. I put on sunscreen. 80SPF. Twice. But then, I don’t know anyone who’s been to the Philippines who didn’t get burned. It’s a hot sun over those islands. Hot and low.

Wednesday night was awful. Any way I laid was painful, and every time I moved, it felt like someone was sticking me with fire. So, basically all of Thursday was spent the same way. I guess I wasn’t looking too good in the morning, because after breakfast, Jon put on a shirt (which had to hurt like crazy), and went off to search for aloe vera. If I’d have known that he was going to traipse across three beaches looking for it, I wouldn’t have let him go. He came back with some fruity smelling lotion that had aloe as an ingredient in it somewhere, some aloe soap, and some burn cream from some clinic he had run across. We gave the burn cream a shot, but sunburns aren’t like other burns.

They’re like burns that have mutated so that they are impervious to all defenses.

The burn cream stung. A lot. And I don’t think it did much good, except that it made us feel like maybe it would. Here I must concede that the placebo effect is a valid bit of science.

After the room got too stuffy, we went outside and sat in the shade. I was going to read, but I kept getting approached by salesmen wanting to sell me jewelry. And baskets. And dart guns.

Jon wanted a dart gun. Probably he would have mixed his own poison and used it as a tranquilizer at school. Luckily for his kids, he resisted buying it.

That afternoon, we ate at Lucio’s Italian Restaurant, supposedly the best food on the island. As we were eating, I noticed three very skinny little kitties wandering around on the fringes of the restaurant. I’ve never seen such skin-and-bones cats. I started feeding my expensive Italian pizza and cheesy chicken to the hungry kitties.

As we were eating, a couple of men selling baskets came up to the edge of the porch. They were looking up at us from below, and at first I shook my head and indicated that I didn’t want to buy. But every time I looked over, they would place a basket on the edge of the porch in my view, until they had a quite a little row lined up. And I knew that I was eating expensive Italian pizza and feeding cats, and those men were starving.

I didn’t even have to say anything. Jon looked at me and said, “We’re buying something from them,” and pressed P200 into my hand.

I bought a very small basket. I could have bought it for less. But why would I? I love that basket, not so much for its beauty as for what it stands for.

I loved how much good I could do there. I loved that all I had to do was step out my front door, and opportunities to give were screaming in my ears with silent, broken voices.

Falling in Love with the Philippines: Day 3

2010-09-04T11:37:00.002+09:00

On Tuesday, we spent mostly the whole day traveling, first taking a jeepney to the LRT train station, and then the train to the bus station, and then a long, three-hour bus ride to Batangas, the port city where we wanted to catch a ferry to the beach in Mindoro, the island just south of Luzon where we had spent the first few days. The ferry ended up costing more than we had planned, what with insurance fees, and “optional” tips to the random people who yanked our luggage away, carried it a hundred yards, and then asked for a little something for their trouble.

Jon was getting pretty stressed out by all the salespeople and conniving baggage-carriers. As we were sitting at the boat terminal, waiting for our ferry to board, women kept coming up, trying to sell us hotel reservations, maps, more hotel reservations, vacation packages, refusing to be put off by our obvious lack of interest.

But there was one woman that stopped me that I will never forget. We were weaving through the markets of Bachlaran, up toward the stairs of the LRT station. She came forward gently, and, hand outstretched, palm cupped up, brushed my arm. I looked down at the open hand. She said nothing, but I knew that she was hungry, and I knew that she wouldn’t be begging if she had any other choice. In her arms was a baby boy, less than a year old. His arms beneath the white T-shirt had sores on them, and his face was dirty. Bits of colored string were threaded through tiny holes in his earlobes—the only adornment she could afford for her child. I turned to Jon who was carrying the money, and he pulled out a P20 note and handed it to her. She took it gratefully, but I wished it had been more. And it was I who should have given it. She had appealed to me, as a woman and as a mother—to someone who might really understand. I wish I could find her again. I wish that I would somehow cross paths with her one more time. But I know I won’t. Opportunities come once if you are lucky. And they don’t come again.

When we finally got on the ferry, a pretty little catamaran, the ocean breeze was hitting our faces, and all was feeling good, until they suddenly decided that there was a little rain coming down from above, and they had better shroud all the openings in rolls of thick, foggy plastic. No more breeze, no more ocean spray, no more beautiful vistas. The stifling heat made me feel a little naseous, so I eventually opted to ride the trip standing up, where I could feel a little air coming in from the bow of the boat and the movement of the ocean under my feet. After a while standing on a boat, looking out at the ocean, it feels like you are walking on water.

Then the island came into view, and it was beautiful. We disembarked at Puerto Galera, where they had a free jeepney waiting to take us all to White Beach. It was a beautiful ride along a winding road in the jungle, little huts and simples houses built along the road and half-naked Filipinos running along, ladling water or carrying laundry or logs or fishing nets, laughing in that completely free and joyful way that Filipinos do, their lean brown arms swinging as they ran, their bare feet skipping between the trees, heedless of the way that those trees followed them, laughing with them.

We got to White Beach just about as the sun was setting. It was a sunset of blues and purples, not at all like the fire of home. We had planned on continuing out to Aninuan Beach or Talipanan, the next two beaches over, because they were supposed to be quieter, more open with fewer people and touristy stuff. But it was getting late, and we were able to find a cheap place to stay that night. We each paid about five dollars apiece for accommodations.

After feasting at a candle-lit beach restaurant, while sand crabs feasted on us, we caught the flame-throwing show some of the native boys put on. Their brown bodies shining with sweat in the flickering orange light of the fire, moved and danced and played with the power of nature, flames dancing in the black stages of their eyes. They threw and caught and morphed the flames, spinning, dancing, tumbling together, man and fire, on a tiny speck of land in the middle of the Pacific.

Falling in Love with the Philippines: Day 2

2010-08-29T00:31:00.001+09:00

Monday, the second day in the Philippines, was about as near a perfect day as there can be in this world. That day, we decided to hit Pagsangan Falls. It was a three hour bus ride to get there, and and then another fifteen minutes or so on tricycle. The bus ride was incredible, because it was like a getting little snapshots of the island as we sped through it. Everything from ramshackle shanties of rotting cloth and rusting tin that people lived in, to georgous mountain vistas and fields of rice and banana plantations stretching up into those mountains. Palm trees, curling streams, and towering mountains were everywhere. I was amazed at the poverty of the people living in the midst of such a stunning wealth of beauty. People stared up at me from the streets as I looked out the bus window. That’s something that was both flattering and really disconcerting; I get stared at everywhere there. By everyone. Openly, and unabashedly. I guess I am nothing like them. At least on the outside. At least in our backgrounds and language and lives and stories. But somehow we're the same. Our smiles mean the same thing.

There was one town that we passed, where there was a group of women sitting at an old picnic table outside, next to their drying laundry strung from lines in the trees. One of them saw me through the window of the bus, and started whispering to another, pointing towards me. Pretty soon, the whole group was casting furtive looks in my direciton. I grinned and waved at them, and they suddenly all burst into smiles and started waving wildly at me. In that moment I felt so connected to them, though I knew nothing about them, not even a name.

Finally, we arrived at Santa Cruz, and took a tricycle to an old hotel that ran the boating service up to Pagsanjan Falls. The river was wide and beautiful, and all along it were small huts and homes, simple, bare dwellings for the fishing folk who made the river their home. We got in a canoe, and, paddled by two Filipinos who knew those waters natively and intimately, we started upriver. The fishermen stopped and watched us, unmoving, as we paddled past, probably quite used to the little wood canoes moving up and down the river. As we moved upriver, and started fighting against the rapids, the two boatmen became like little frogmen, jumping to and fro—out of the boat and back in, a leap over the bow of the boat to the other side, bouncing their bare feet in and out of the water, and pushing off rocks, guiding us perfectly up the stream, against the current, and avoiding the hundreds of rocky traps in our path. It was incredible! We would have capsized and wrapped that boat around a rock fifty times if we had been the ones guiding it.

The view was stunning as we started heading into the canyon. Stretching up on both sides was jungle and rocky cliffs—banana trees, plams, and thousands of other kinds of tropical vegetation. We could hear chattering monkeys, but they stayed out of sight. Apparently they only come out in the morning. I had never seen that kind of beauty before. The vines hanging down were dripping with water; the whole jungle was heaving with water that came down in streams and rivulets, along the trees and down the rock. The first fall we came to was tall and beautiful, and flowed well. This is the rainy season, and the river is high and the falls are strong. Sometimes during this season, they cannot take people past this first set of falls because the river becomes too flooded and dangerous. The day we went was, coincidentally, the first day of the season that the water had been low enough to take people all the way to the main falls.

Pagsanjan Falls is huge and heavy. It is not terribly high, at least visibly. The rock hides much of it. But it comes down as a mighty torrent of water, and shakes the river, creating huge waves the rock out from the place where the falls hits the surface of the river. Behind the waterfall is a black cavern called Devil’s Gate. When we got to the falls, we got out of our canoe and transferred onto a bamboo raft, paddled by more shirtless Filipinos. We headed straight into the waterfall. They say that the falls pounding on your body as you are directly beneath it is the best full-body massage you can get in all of the Philippines. We didn’t get to actually find out, because the falls were so heavy that going directly beneath them would have snapped our bones. We rode under off to the side, still getting a decently heavy downpour over us, but missing the real strength. Once inside the cave, they stopped the raft, and we looked out at the falls from the other side.

Jon and I took the guide’s invitation to swim with him, and jumped off the raft into the water inside the cavern. It was a great swim, an amazing ride, and as we pulled the raft back out and headed to the bank, I looked back and saw a perfect rainbow falling over the falls and into the water.

The ride back was fun, as we shot with the current over the 14 sets of rapids along the river. The sun was getting low, and kids were out along the river, washing clothes with rocks or pulling in the day’s haul of fish. We even saw some Cebu feeding along the river, obviously tamed by the folk who lived in the huts there. As we pulled past the rapids, the sun started getting low, and the river smooth out to glass that we glided along, seemingly effortlessly.

After a quick shower at the boat rental shop, we hopped the bus back to Paranaque, where we gave most of our coconut pie and twenty pesos or so to a few small, starving children, and hopped a jeepney back to Happy Coconuts, the look of a little girl’s stunned, joyful face, and her words, “Oh, thank you!” completely egraven in my eyes and ears.

Falling in Love with the Philippines: Day 1

2010-08-20T20:47:00.002+09:00

We woke up the first morning in the Philippines to pouring rain. And I mean, torrential rain. The tropical storm that started a week or so before had not let up much, and when it rains, it rains hard. The streets were literally rivers, the water completely burying car tires in some places. It looked like cars were just being washed down a river. But no, they were driving, and somehow managing to get from A to B as if swimming in their vehicle was a normal part of their routine.

We decided to try to find church that morning, and set out, hopping on our first jeepney. Jeepneys are the major form of public transportation here. It looks like a jeep, except stretched out. Like a stretch limo would look if it were made of silver and rust. Apparently, they originate from World War II. Each jeepney has its own special name in curling letters across the front—the Christine, the Jennifer, the Workaholic. And in the window are little signs denoting roads and stops that are on that jeepney’s route. They cram people in; up to twenty people can fit on the vinyl benches if you get cozy and half sit on the guy’s lap next to you. But, they’re cheap. For a flat rate of 7 pesos, sometimes 10, you can get to any point on the jeepney’s route. Matted stuffed animals hang from the dashboard, and the plastic tarp they put over the open sides blows up in the wind, letting the rain in. But I love them. They are a brilliantly fun way to get around.

As long as you know where to get off.

We did. We were going to transfer from jeepney to the National Rail, which would take us to within a few blocks of the chapel. Unfortunately, when we got to the rail, we found that that particular piece of the rail had not been built yet. Thus began two hours of jeepney rides in what we hoped was the right direction, and then finally a crammed train ride into the area of town we were headed.

As we were standing in line, waiting for the train to come, I decided to put my camera away, back into Jon’s backpack. A man off to the side of Jon, who had been watching us, noticed what I was putting away. He slowly maneuvered from the side of to directly behind us. Jon put his arm around me and pulled me to his side so that when he talked to me, he had to crane his neck sideways, giving him an excellent corner-of-the-eye view of the would-be robber. I took a more direct approach. I looked over my shoulder and stared at the man—direcly, and unblinkingly, until he moved away.

The train ride was packed and sweaty, but not too bad. However, having come a different way than planned, we no longer knew where we were, or how to find the chapel, although we knew that it was close.

This section of the day is already a little muddled for me—so much happened. There were the beggars—the man with no legs that I didn’t see, but that Jon stopped for and gave all our change to. Then, there was the man, huddled and unmoving on a low brick outcropping, one large T-shirt on his body, and that was all. Not even any pants. There was some kind of see-through scrap of cloth wrapped around his lower body, and he was wet and shivering. He was badly diseased, and yellowed bandages covered about half of his face. He was barely moving, and I knew that the small stack of change we left on the wall next to him was not going to save him.

There was a feeling that came over me then, of a pain like I have not felt before. I’ve seen beggars, but I’ve never seen a beggar who was more than a beggar, who was so sick and poor and tattered that life was actually hell. I have never seen a beggar that I knew would die. It is haunting, and I felt so helpless, standing there, knowing that I could not change anything for him, shaking to realize that life is fragile and that, though we often think we are gods with our gadgets and medicines and shuttles to the stars, we ultimately have little power over life, and even less over death.

And then there were the children. As we were wandering around, lost, I saw a jeepney named “Jesus is the Lord,” turning off of the street in front of us. I decided it was a sign, and we should turn down that street. It led us right to them. Three boys, possibly brothers, none of them wearing anthing more than a pair of shorts, their bodies glistening with the rain and the murky water from the street. They were calling out to give rides on “tricycles,” another form of transportation here that is either a motorcycle or a bicycle with a sidecar fitting two people attatched to it. They ride or pedal you around for a fee. The place where the boys were was a section of road that had been badly flooded and was a couple of feet deep in water. They saw us dressed in our now soggy Sunday clothes, and tried to get us to hop in one of the waiting tricycles. They were probably working as recruiters for the drivers. When we told them no, they followed us, finally asking for some money. Unfortunately we had run out of change. We looked, but had nothing. We finally had to tell them we didn’t have any coins to give them. Then one of them said, “Please, I’m really hungry.”

I never ever want to hear those words from a child’s mouth again.

Jon and I looked at them, and Jon said, “I believe you,” as the other boys echoed the first. “Can you get us some food?” they finally asked. We walked to the corner drugstore.

The boys pointed us in the right direction for the church, and we walked into the last ten minutes of the meeting, just in time to hear the end of a mixed English and Tagalog talk and to sing a closing hymn. While we were there, we learned that there was a ward that met not ten minutes from our hostel, though we had traveled two hours to try to find a congregation.

But I was different after that day in the city.
And I don't believe in coincidences.

Falling in Love with the Philippines: Part One

2010-08-03T22:14:00.002+09:00

Most people when they come to the Philippines, come and find a beach, buy some beer, and don’t move more than a one kilometer radius for the next six days. And they miss so much. They play tourist, and miss the heartbeat of the place they’re visiting.

We arrived in Manila Saturday night, and ended up taking a very expensive taxi ride from the airport to the Happy Coconuts Hostel where we had booked a stay for the next two nights. It was a good twenty minute ride into Paranaque, the next town south, with mellow English music playing in the cab. The taxi driver had been a taxi driver since he first learned to drive—basically his whole life. He pointed out the different things we saw as we passed them, and told us what prices to expect on jeepneys, and how to get from here to there.

It was one of those life-defining moments as I looked out of the taxi at a world so different from home, and so different even from the home I have found in Korea. Everywhere, tattered buildings looked like they were pieced together with rusty screws and spit, and then had the ocean waves beat on them for days on end. Signs were mostly in English, mixed with some Tagalog, and here and there a word of Spanish.

The people themselves were sprawled out in the heavy, humid heat. Guys hung around at broken picnic tables and outside fruit stands, barefoot, shirtless, their teeth white and shining in the darkness. Kids ran around, played in the gutters, searched through garbage. I saw one skinny, dirty child begging on a street corner, not an adult in sight. Elsewhere, men were peeing on the side of the road, girls in shorts laughed and jangled in huddled groups, and toothless men and young boys picked through the refuse left by others.

One dog, skinny and hungry, slithered by, sniffing at an empty wrapper.

Between all the buildings rose palm trees and green vegetation, crawling up walls and around bends and curling around the spaces between things. The whole scene was heart-wrenching and heart-capturing, and I think I fell in love with the Philippines on that first taxi ride.

Well, the hostel proved a bit tricky to find. We knew that it had a bamboo gate and was across the street from a fruit stand, but the taxi driver, I think, wanted to fatten up his fare a bit, and we drove past it, and then for a long ways, going very slowly. We did eventually arrive, and found the hostel to be basically the nicest building I had yet seen. Real beds. Polished wood floors. Air conditioning. Wood cabinet dressers and large mirrors. Lavish for what I had seen thus far of the island.

A little ways down the road from the hostel is a river that flows through and tunnels under the road. It has tangled vegetation on both sides, but it flows strong and fast, and looks like a roaring snake curling through the jungle. It smells badly, and is littered with trash, but from a distance, is quite beautiful.

Beautiful. Even in the middle of a city, the palm trees wave, and there is salt in the air, and you can tell that it is an island. Filipino people look South American in every way, except that they have Asian eyes. The islands feel South American too. Even in the city, out away from the beaches and coconuts and fire dancers, you can tell that these are island people, and that, even if they're living in a cement box with a tin roof, they are people of the sea and the sky and the trees that wave in the air curling in from their salty shores.

Train Bound for Anywhere

2010-07-11T20:34:00.008+09:00

I love trains. And buses. And subways. For someone who gets lost when she comes out of her apartment turning right instead of left, I have become quite adept at crisscrossing the country on trains.

Seoul by itself has 9 subway lines, with a combined 291 subway stations. Add in Incheon and the other surrounding cities in the metropolitan, and you've got an impressive tribute to mankind's refusal to stay in one place.

There is a world of movement here. Underground subways with advertisements flashing outside your window like an electronic flip-book, magnet trains that can cross the country from tip to tip in three hours, completely silent and going so smoothly that you don't realize you're moving...These are only part of it. Five to ten times a week, I find myself on buses driven by men who think they're driving compact cars on straight highways, careening around corners and honking at red lights before barreling through. Every weekend, just to get to get to church, I take a bus from Incheon to Seoul, get off, and transfer onto a subway, which levels out into a track going straight over the Han River, fog and sparkling water on both sides, and then dives back underground.

Sometimes I take buses without ever caring where I end up. Some people find comfort in a bottle, letting alcohol send them to a place where they can watch the world spin by without having to be a part of it. I suppose I have a somewhat less destructive, but just as effective escape of my own. From a bus or a train, I can look out my window at people and shops and cars, a world going about its usual business, as I sit all alone in a seat, isolated by language barriers and a glass window. I hop on buses going anywhere, and then when I am the last passenger on the bus, and the driver asks "Odi, odi? Where are you going?" I say, "I don't know," and get off, and wait till a bus comes along going the other direction.

Sometimes I ride a bus with a friend, just to talk for an hour or two until the bus comes to the end of its route.

Sometimes I really do need to get somewhere, and I look carefully at the Korean words denoting stops and transfers and arrival times. It was bus and subway signs that taught me to read Korean, and they are still what I read most.

Sometimes I am given preferential treatment because I am white--like the bus driver who shared his package of gum with me and told me about his sister in America. Or the girl in the window seat next to me who gave me her last coffee before smiling quickly and waving, and embarrassedly hurrying off the bus. Sometimes people are prejudiced against me because of my white skin and blue eyes. I get pushed, yelled at, knocked over. I sit next to Koreans, and they change to a different seat on the bus or tell me in perfect English that they are not comfortable sitting next to foreigners. Sometimes they leave the bus completely.

I ride buses when I want to be alone, and subways when I am feeling lonely. There are as many people on a subway as you want there to be. Subways are not so much like buses. On buses, people usually do not talk to each other. Human interaction is rare. On subways, everyone talks. You can make friends if you want to. You can also be invisible if you choose. Often, on subways, beggars come through. Usually beggars here are old, and often blind, lame, or missing various limbs. Many are veterans of war who have no means to care for themselves. I have a stash of cash in my backpack I keep for the beggars on the subways or on stairs of the subway stations.

Once, I rode the Airport rail to the Incheon Airport island, because I felt like a sunset, and the sun always sets awfully majestically when it is over ocean. And then, just this last weekend, I took a three-hour train ride across the country to the beach on the eastern sea. There is nothing like a train ride where green, foggy mountains interspersed with rice fields and tiny villages and curling rivers, pass by outside your window like a National Geographic special.

Trains make me feel like I can get anywhere. When my days are hard, and in life I feel stuck, trains give me mobility. Buses let me feel like I am moving. And even if I end up back where I started, the trip is never wasted.

City of Water

2010-05-29T14:23:00.004+09:00

I will always think of 부산 (Busan) as a City of Water. Perhaps this is an inaccurate representation, but having only been there once, and unlikely to ever return, this image of the city is all that I will ever have.

Busan is the second largest city in Korea, and fills the southern coast of the country. It lives on the water, and drinks from the East China Sea. The first day I was there, it was sunny and warm. Then, it didn't stop raining for the next two days. By the time I left, the streets were like little rivers, curling between buildings, and stone stairs throughout town had gutters cut down the sides, creating waterfalls that cascaded all the way down on either side of your feet.

Most cities have a background ambiance of sound that is particular to them, like their own personal fingerprint. But all I can remember from Busan is an orchestra of raindrops. I remember laying on my "bed" (aka a blanket on the floor) of the hostel I was staying in, right across from the raw fish market and docks, with the window open, listening to the rain crash down on pavement, drum across wooden roofs, dance over aluminum garbage bins, and crawl through the swaying trees. I thought at the time how loud it made the city, and how different it was from snow, which made the whole world quiet.

At one point, I climbed up to the top of the building my hostel was in, and crawled out onto the roof. I stood in the rain and watched it fall down and drown the city. It's a remarkable sight, looking down and seeing a sea of moving umbrellas in a hundred different colors, crawling down the sidewalks like bright, wet caterpillars.

Well, the first day I was in Busan, there was absolutely no indication of any of this. The sun was high and hot, and it was Buddha's birthday. We decided to go see Beomeosa Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in South Korea. It was up in the mountains, cradled by a whole lot of green. We took a taxi, but the curving, one-way road winding up was crammed. As our cab fare ticked higher, we decided to just pay it and hike the last mile and half. The hike was gorgeous, and took us through trees, across stone bridges, down meandering paths and icy streams. It was so stunning, with a beauty that is not mine. I'm constantly reminded that I'm only a visitor here, and can experience Korea's beauty, but can never claim it.

The temple itself was magnificent, with ornate buildings and stone carvings, and a sea of colored lanterns. But it was the tiny glimpses of humility that struck me most. As I wound through the lanterns and climbed the stairs toward the Buddha statue in the center, there was a small gathering of five or six old Korean women, hunched and wrinkled, sitting on prayer mats. Two more were on their knees, folded over on the ground, praying.

And I thought about how many people were down below, eating the free temple food and laughing, and how few were up there, praying to the only god they knew.

The world is changing so fast. The youth here grow up in a fast, chattering, glittering world, and forget the faith and the religion of their fathers. And I wonder if Buddha will die with those few old women who still honor him, if he will fade away in the face of a new generation that worships other gods. And a part of me fears that the same thing is happening to Christ. No mortal man has died so many deaths as our immortal Savior, as He perishes with every generation that forgets Him.

The other sight that struck me at the temple was a tiny bracelet of wooden beads draped over the ear of one of the statues. All along the row of stone-carved beasts, shiny coins had been placed in piles on the statues' heads, shoulders, and mouths. And in amongst the treasure was that one band of plain beads, hanging there surrounded by others' silver. What an offering. What a humble, perfect gift for a god/prophet who taught his people to forsake the riches of the world.

There are so many stories about this trip. Of necessity, I must skip many. But I would like to mention the motorcycle-riding monk. After we came down from the temple and were eating rice cakes under the lantern canopy, we were approached by this old Korean monk who asked if he could have a picture with us. There were three of us girls and one guy. He asked the guy in our group to take the picture. Then he wanted individual shots with each of us girls. I was nice and polite, but inside I was cracking up. Afterwards, he regaled us with his many travels and showed us all the pictures on his camera of him with beautiful women all over the world. He then physically herded us toward the parking lot to show us his Honda motorcycle, and told us all about it. Pulling back his monk's robe, he showed us the Honda T-shirt he wore beneath.

Well, the next day the water came. And we visited the beach and played in the surf, and found seashells tucked in the corners of rough, black rocks, and dodged the umbrellas on the mostly empty beach and watched the tide take the raindrops and make them part of the ocean.

There was one older Korean lady who was perched on one of the jagged black rocks piled along the coast at the far end of the beach. She was just sitting there, looking out to sea, a blue and white umbrella hanging on her shoulders. I could only see her from behind, her hunched back and bright umbrella, facing off into the wild sea.The cold rain made the water seem unstable and frenzied, and more than usually mysterious. The ocean was not inviting, as it always is on a sunny day, neither was it menacing as it is in a storm. It was independent, aloof, and quite unknowable. And the image of her looking out at that ocean, lonely and free, was somehow riveting.

Finding Ocean

2010-04-25T22:24:00.000+09:00

Last Saturday, lacking any plans to venture off to far-away cities, I decided to wander around my own. My friend, Jon, and I concluded that since we live in a coastal city, there must be an ocean around somewhere. Oceans are beautiful. And fun. We should find it.

Well, neither one of us knew exactly where the ocean was, but I very rarely know where anything is, and that has never stopped me. Plus, Jon had a kind of general idea of the direction it should be. That was good enough. We started walking.

We walked for an hour or so before we hit water. Alas, it was not the ocean. It was a river. A pretty river, yes, but there were no waves and tides and gulls flying into the sunset. So we kept going. Rivers flow into oceans. It had to be around somewhere. After another hour, I told Jon that if we didn't find it soon, he was going to be carrying all 120 pounds of me back home because my feet were going to fall off. Exaggeration? Absolutely. But it was fun to watch him re-evaluate his confidence that the direction we were headed was the right one.

Eventually, we found the ocean. Yes, we had to crawl through a hole in a fence and walk up a huge dirt pile to see it, but there it was--the water that stretched out forever at the edge of my world. The sun was just starting to turn pale gold and slither down the sky, and the gulls were still flying high over the water--so many of them that their silhouettes looked like a black cloud dancing above the water.

We could not get very close to the water because, you see, there wasn't actually a beach. Or any sand at all for that matter.

What there was, was a long stretch of gray clay, pocketed with little holes of water left from high tide.

The gray ooze was keeping me from my ocean. While Jon found himself a nice little perch on top of the dirt pile and sat down, I looked down at the squishiness and evaluated.

Now, most people think I am impulsive. That's not true. Perhaps I do things that seem impulsive sometimes, but the actions are always carefully weighed against the consequences before I choose to do them.

Although, I probably should have taken off my shoes and rolled up my pants before stepping down into the wet clay ground. I started carefully walking out, as the ground got squishier and slimier. Finally, the inevitable happened, and the clay took my foot prisoner. And I mean, my whole foot. And leg. Up to the knee. Had I been barefoot, I would have been able to pull out, but as it was, the ground held my shoes and legs like quicksand. Fortunately, Jon had, by this time, joined me (feet bare and jeans rolled up like any semi-sane person would do). He and the ground played tug-of-war with me for a few moments before I was free. We then continued on out so that I could get pictures of the beautiful sunset, as it turned gold and then orange and then red, reflecting off the water like a thousand thousand mirrors, and then slipping behind the foggy city in the distance.

When the sun was gone, it started to get really cold, so we picked our way back to the road, sloshed through some pools of water to get off the worst of the mud, and then started back, eventually hopping a bus back home.

My socks were stained gray and my shoes will never be the same, but those pictures, and the ridiculous fun of that random day are a hundred times worth it.

An Anthology of Children

2010-04-19T23:12:00.005+09:00

Just a little look into some of my kids:

1. The first day of class, about six weeks ago, I was in with my three-year-olds. There were a lot of them. I was intimidated. However, the lesson started off fairly well, and I had them expertly applying stickers to their workbook pages in no time. All of a sudden, two of the boys, Billy and Jake, who were sitting next to each other, turned in their seats (as if on cue) towards each other, moved their faces together until they were three inches apart, and promptly started screaming at the top of their lungs. I was completely caught off guard, and there was no way I could be heard above it, so I went over and physically turned them away from each other. The screaming stopped and they returned to their work. Five minutes later, they turned toward each other, moved their faces together, and started screaming again. This occurred every five minutes for the rest of class, with no apparent reason or motivation. I don't know if they planned it, but it was so bizarre and completely in sync that it had to have been masterminded.

2. The other day, I took my youngest class into the gym, because we were learning about the five senses, and the lesson book said I was supposed to teach them how to play Blindman's Bluff. Of course, that is a super complicated game to explain to ten three-year-olds whose English vocabulary consists of about thirty words and a dozen or so facial expressions. So mostly I just blindfolded one kid and then let them all run around screaming and trying to tag/maul/drag each other to the floor. As I was refereeing this chaos, I looked over at the stage, and saw Billy sitting in the corner by the audio equipment and projector. He had several cords grasped in his chubby little hands, and was trying to stick them into their corresponding holes in the equipment. I immediately ran over to save the expensive toys, but when I tried to pry Billy from his game, he clutched the cords to his chest, threw himself onto the projector, and started screaming bloody murder. (Troy, I think I may have a guy for your crew in twenty years or so ).

3. There is, in one of my classes, a little four-year-old named Daniel. Daniel is very quiet, always happy, and always daydreaming. I don't know what he thinks about, but I can tell that he is far away a lot of times. He seems to like the other children, but I think he likes to be alone more. He loves to sit next to me, but only participates in the lesson when I consciously draw him into it. Over the first few weeks, I noticed something. When I gave drawing assignments, whether to draw shapes or family members, or anything they wanted, Daniel always, without fail, drew the same thing. First he drew a house. And then he started attaching balloons to it. All colors of balloons. He would get so engrossed in his picture, that he was usually the last to finish. But when he was done, he had a perfect rendition (as far as a four-year-old could do) of the house from the movie "UP." I love those pictures. They are somehow, just HIM. Last week, we were reading a picture book, and in it was a hot air balloon. Daniel saw it and got all excited, pointed to the hot air balloon, and shouted, "UP!!!"

4. Chris is one of my five-year-olds. He's been in English kindergarten for a year already, and he understands pretty much anything I say, as long as I keep it simple. His English is surprisingly advanced, and he is starting to read. Last week was his birthday, and after we finished a short birthday party in the gym, I led them back to class the classroom to wait for their Korean teacher (my partner) to come. I was leaving the classroom to head to my next class, when I noticed that Chris was kind of trailing behind after me. I turned back and knelt down and asked if I could have a hug. He ran to me, threw his arms around me, and kissed me. "Teacher, I love you." And then he was off, back to the classroom.

5. One day, as I was leading my five-year-olds down the hall to wash their hands for lunch, Andrew, always at the end, stopped at the window of another classroom, and stood looking in, with his hands on the glass. I went back to fetch him. "Teacher, Kelly is SO cute!" he said with a huge smile. (She really is. He has good taste).

6. Coloring assignment. Ten 3-year-olds. Ten papers. 100 crayons. I look around to see their progress. Half of them are eating their papers. The other half are eating their crayons.

7. "Teacher? You have yellow hair and are from far away. And you are pretty. Are you a princess?"

8. Helena is one of the smartest kids I have. She is three. She also thrives on two things: being the center of attention, and being in a position of power. She's either going to grow up to be a brilliant business-woman, or the next dictator of North Korea. One day, I walk into class. The kids are sitting quietly on the floor, building something with blocks. Helena sees me come in, turns to the kid sitting next to her, and whispers something. Before I know it, the whole class is running around the classroom, roaring, pretending to be dinosaurs. It took me fifteen minutes to calm them down. She is also a sticker-stealer. By the second week of school, I caught her stealing stickers from other kids' sticker charts and putting them on her own. She cried when I sat her down to talk about it, and promised that she wouldn't anymore. The next time, she got a bunch of other kids to stand over there in the corner so that she could hide behind them when she stole stickers. Too bad teacher can see that her sticker chart is almost full and Billy's next to her only has two stickers.

9. My six-year-olds think it's hilarious to hear me try to speak Korean. Their favorite thing in the world is to mock me. Crystal especially. When I try to teach an English word, she will say, "Teacher, teacher, in Korean, it's bulgogi'. Or whatever it is. Then, if I repeat it, she just laughs and laughs. Then she immediately tries to get me to repeat other Korean words. I must have a terrible accent.

10. I walk into class one day, and Sarah lifts her arms above her head into a heart. "Teacher, I lub you!" Pretty soon the whole class is copying. "Teacher, I love you!" I didn't even teach them that.

If Easter Never Came

2010-04-05T23:08:00.000+09:00

I did not intend to write this message. But yesterday was Easter, and there have been some thoughts on my mind that have been demanding a voice, that are too important to let fade in silence. Easter has always had a lot of significance for me, but this year, it positively changed me. This was not because of fun activities I participated in, or special messages I heard, or worship I felt.

It was because, for me, it never came.

Easter is the most important holiday in Christianity. I realize that in saying this I am going against thousands of people who would hold banners and holler that Christmas, the holiday named after the Author of Christianity himself, trumps this other tiny day that blooms for a brief moment in the youth of spring. But Christmas celebrates the fact that Christ lived. Easter declares that He lives. And this is the truth that saves me.

Usually, on Easter, I arise early, and in the dark of a still and pressing night, I climb a mountain. And then, sitting there on the peak or the summit of the only hill I can find in the city, I watch the sun swell over the horizon, lighting a blinding golden fire in the sky, filling the whole atmosphere with yellow and gold and pink and orange…and light. So much light that I can no longer remember my climb of darkness. And then I sing.

“He is risen, he is risen, shout it out with joyful voice! He has burst his three days’ prison, let the whole wide earth rejoice! Death is conquered, man is free…Christ has won the victory!”

The words I can only sing haltingly, the notes pouring out with no precision and little beauty. But they mingle with the sunrise, and it is, somehow, enough. Darkness swallowed up in light. Death swallowed up in life. Despair swallowed up in hope. The end swallowed up in a new beginning.

But this year, there was no sunrise. There were no Easter hymns. And the world, my world, did not begin again. I could not find Christ. I could not find him on the subway or in the church, or on the grounds of His own temple. I tried. I looked for Him. But Easter morning turned to afternoon, turned to evening, and I found myself walking dark, foreign streets alone, shivering in the cold, my feet throbbing from uncomfortable high heels, wondering why Easter never came.

Normally when I am lonely, I know that God is there beside me. But there is another loneliness that is deeper, that swallows hope and quenches light. Last night, on those shadowy streets, I felt the loneliness of looking for God and not finding Him—like looking for the North Star and finding that, not only was it gone, but that every other star had also fallen from the sky, leaving it a vast sheet of everlasting darkness. The world felt as empty as if He had deserted all of creation and left it to spiral onward to its own self-destruction.

No, Easter did not come. And I wondered why I had to feel that—why when I desired to feel hope and life and light, I should be left in darkness. And then, quietly, and with the perfect teaching of a loving Father, a different question was put into my mind—What if, 2,000 years ago in a dusty city in a far-off land, that first Easter had not come?

What if Mary had gone to the tomb, and the stone was there, and it was not empty? What would the world be like today?

If, on that Sunday morning of long ago, Mary had found the body of her beloved Master, undisturbed in its borrowed tomb, my empty Easter would have been every Easter afterward. And every day. For every person in this crumbling, trembling, crying world.

The sacrament would be just another piece of bread. The temple would be just another building. And Easter would be just another day.

I know what life would feel like without Easter. I felt it yesterday, and I am full of gratitude for that gift. Because today I woke up with the sun and fell on my knees and thanked my God that the one time it mattered most, Easter came.

Two Words

2010-03-19T22:56:00.001+09:00

Today I got to thinking about the five or six Korean phrases I know well. And then I got to thinking that there is only one of those phrases that I have used five to ten times a day since I got here. No, it is not "anneyong haseyo" (hello). It is not "goodbye" or "I'm sorry." It is not "I'm lost."

The one phrase that has lived in my mouth since I arrived is "gamsa haminda"--"Thank you."

And in a world that is sometimes incomprehensible and frustrating because I cannot communicate--when I end up walking out of a store empty-handed because I do not know how to explain to the clerk that I need garbage bags--I find that the ability to express gratitude makes all the other communication barriers mere trivialities.

"Gamsa hamnida" and I bow my head, and they smile, and I realize how easy it is to make people feel valued. No speeches, no lavish gifts. You don't have to make them your best friend and confide your deepest secrets. They just want to be noticed. Acknowledged. Connected with for half a second, when you put life on pause to say, "I see you."

Two words is all it takes.

Yes, Some Who Wander are Lost

2010-03-12T21:00:00.000+09:00

Saturday. I'm hungry; my fridge is empty. I decide to go to E-Mart. I've been there once, I know one of the buses that stops there...noooo problem.

Wrong.

The ride to the E-Mart was ten minutes. The ride home was three hours. (For those who are unaware of the significance of this, I could have ridden to Busan, on the southern tip of the country, in four). As I boarded the #1 bus, which I had arrived on, and settled into my seat, I was rather pleased with myself for not having gotten lost. It was two stops later that I realized that we were heading AWAY from home, and that the determined little Asian man at the wheel was not planning on turning around any time soon.

Not even for a silly little American girl whose eyes have just grown wide at the realization that she is headed into uncharted territory with no cell phone and no ability to communicate her address to the bus driver, assuming she knew her address. Which she didn't.

I saw three options:
1. Hop off at the next stop, find a bus going the other direction, and hope it went by my apartment. If I ended up in the middle of nowhere, I had food and a pocketknife.
2. Give myself a tour of the city and see where bus #1 ended up. Eventually it would reach the end of the route and turn around.
3. Wander back three rows to the boys who had been talking about me for the last fifteen minutes (quietly practicing their English of "Hi, how are you? Where are you from? You are cute.") and see if I could borrow a cell phone.

The boys amused me, and I didn't want to ruin it, so I decided on option number two.

So that's what I did. I gave myself a tour of Incheon. And Gimpo. And Hyundai.

And I ate cookies made in France and sold in Korea as I looked out at Asian shops with American posters in the windows and thought how fascinating the world is.

All the while, I filed away information on the Blue Bus #1 route:
3 middle schools
2 elementary schools
1 high school
1 Incheon Civic Center
8 Outdoors and Sports stores
17 clothing shops
1 tall clown on stilts handing lollipops to teenagers
1 Buddhist temple
2 parks with Asian trees and waterfalls
10 bars for Koreans
2 bars for foreigners
3 very skinny roads where a bus like ours should not have been allowed
1 stunning view of the Han River

Eventually, the bus did come to the end of the route. The bus driver tried to motion me off the bus, but I shook my head and tried to indicate that I wanted to stay on and keep him company on his way back (I was, by then, the only passenger). We played back and forth between American and Korean sign language for awhile, until I gave him the name of my town and he shook his head and muttered and indicated that it would be a long time till we got there. I nodded and smiled and sat back down.

By the time I got back home, I was tired, but my head was spinning with pictures from the city and countryside, and I went to bed happy.

I could end the post here and save myself the embarrassment of continuing, but I'm off work for the weekend and my apartment is warm and I have nothing better to do.

So, the next day was Sunday. And I wanted to go to church. In English. So, I took my trusty map of the subway system, and a piece of paper with my director's phone number in case of an emergency, and wandered out to my bus stop to find Bus #81, which, I was told, would take me to the subway station in Geomam.

It did. And the subway took me to the station at Gimpo, where I transfered subway lines. And that subway took me into Seoul, where I got off and started wandering the streets, trying to follow the vague directions I had been given to the church.

I found it. There are stories worth telling about the next seven hours, but not in this lovely post about being lost. We shall skip to after the single's activities and dinner, when my new friend, Jon, and I boarded the subway to head home. Jon was the only other person in the ward who lived out in my area of town, so he decided to travel back with me and see where I lived so that we could get together sometimes on the weekends if we were bored. We did just fine until we hopped the 81 bus to head back to my apartment. It should have been a 15-min. ride.

As it turned out, the bus never went by my apartment. I don't know why. Except that I am doomed to be lost all the days of my life. After we rode the 81's short circle route a couple times, we hopped off and caught another 81, hoping this one would make the right stop. It didn't. We got back on another 81, which was actually the same as the first one. The bus driver recognized us.

We got off. Walked to another bus stop. Got on. The bus driver was now quite perplexed.
We got off. And decided perhaps we should try a different bus. We got on a #78.

At one point, I made Jon get off the bus with me because I saw a Paris Baguette breadshop and thought my apartment must be nearby. Jon didn't bother to tell me until we had gotten back on another bus that Paris Baguette has shops on just about every corner in Korea.

Through the whole thing, he was grinning and teasing me and having a great time. He thought it was sooo hilarious that I didn't know where I lived and couldn't find it. He said he had been meaning to just hop a bunch of buses one Saturday and orient himself to the city.

And really? It was a lot of fun. Riding buses around with a martial artist who is in love with literature, people, sleeping under the stars, watching sunsets on mountain tops, and trying to take a chunk out of world hunger by teaching economics, really made for a good evening.

The 78 didn't go by my apartment...

But, hey, the 76 did.

A Taste of Korea

2010-03-09T08:51:00.000+09:00

Korean food is something else. And often, it’s made from something else that I don’t really want to know about. However, all my nightmares before I came of spearing my own fish and eating it raw and then puking from giardia for the next two days, seem to have been unfounded after all…So far.

Now, I will try almost anything once. And if it doesn’t make me sick, I will usually try it again. Two shots—that’s what you get to convince me.

So, let’s first cover the basics. In Korea, with every meal, you are served a bowl of rice. (The rice is sticky rice, which I love). With every meal except breakfast, you are also given a bowl of soup. And then, there are a variety of side-dishes. These are served in communal dishes that you just stick your chopsticks into right along with the dude next to you. (If you have a problem with germs, this is not the country for you). Most Koreans will take bits of these side dishes and mix them with their rice. The kids are much more gung-ho about this, and will mix everything on their plates together, including the soup. It ends up looking kind of like it’s already been half-digested… Luckily, the adults don’t do this so much.

Also, on the table with most meals is kimchi. (Oh, the dreaded kimchi!) This is not, however, actually revolting. It’s not. It is very spicy, as are most dishes here, and doesn’t taste at all like the rotten vegetables it actually is. I don’t love it, but I’ll eat it.

Another thing that’s big here is seaweed. Seaweed is gross. I tolerate it.

Well, one of the first nights I was here, before I’d really been introduced properly to Korean cuisine, I had a cheeseburger that Patrick was so kind as to order for me. I think he told me “cheeseburger” just so he could see my reaction when I bit into it. He was amused.

This was, if you haven’t guessed, not exactly a cheeseburger. The wrapper said it was a “Hanwoo Steak Burger.” I initially intended to look up “hanwoo” and see what kind of animal that was, but then I decided that maybe shouldn’t. And I left it at that.

The burger was not too bad, really. The strangest thing about it was the “fixings.” On one side, there were onions. On the other, was broccoli and mushroom pieces glued together in some gray colored-something and smeared onto the bun.

Ask no questions, and you won’t throw up your lunch.

One more “interesting” experience before I tell you that I actually really love most Korean food:

On the first day of classes, I ate lunch with the kids at school, which is normal. On this day, for one of the side dishes, they had these little crispy things that looked kind of like Chinese noodles, except a little darker and a lot stickier. They were covered in some kind of sweet sticky sauce, and tasted excellent! I was about halfway through them, mixing them into my rice a little at a time, when I stopped, horrified. The crispy little noodle things had eyes.

I’m not talking like potato eyes or something. I’m talking EYEBALLS. That’s when I realized what I was eating—fishies. Itty bitty fishies who still had their itty bitty eyeballs and bones and everything.

I was suddenly a bit queasy. I don’t like fish. I detest it when it is still recognizable as such. But I had liked them before I knew what they were. It’s just that, now, every time they crunched, I imagined tiny little skeletons breaking into pieces. And the eyeballs…They were wide open, staring at me as they had stared in their moment of death…I couldn’t get over the eyeballs. At that moment, little Crystal held up her tray to me and said, “More fish please.” I just looked at her. She knew what they were and still wanted them?! Culture fascinates me sometimes. It’s kind of like brainwashing from birth. I’ll have you know, though, that I finished my fishies. I will not be outdone by a five-year-old.

Well, after all that, let me say that I have grown quite fond of Korean food. There are so many delicious dishes. Beef bulgogi is one of my favorites, as are the egg and bacon sides. Gimbop is really good if you can get past the seaweed it’s wrapped in. Sweet and sour is classic and is big here. The Ramen tastes like it has a whole bottle of Tobasco sauce in it, which is kind of fun. But what Korea really does is pork.

A couple of nights ago, I was down at the school late, trying to finish up lesson plans for the next week, and eventually Patrick and Sunny were ready to close up, so they insisted that I come to dinner with them. So, I went to dinner with the boss, his wife, and his mother-in-law. We went to a Korean barbeque. And let me tell you, it is an entirely different experience going to dinner at a Korean restaurant with Koreans, than it is going with Americans.

I had been to a Korean barbeque with Sarah and Brianne, the other American teachers at my school, but the experiences were completely different. For one, when you go with Koreans, you are seated in a different place. Usually, part of the restaurant has normal tables and chairs like we’re used to in the West, and part has low tables and mats that you sit on on the floor. They will usually sit a group of Americans at a regular table. But if you go with Koreans, you take off your shoes at the door, and are seated at the low tables on the mats.

Another thing that is different—the sides that come with your meat. When I went with Sarah and Brianne, the sides were very good, but very safe. When I went with Sunny and Patrick, our sides included raw tuna, wasabi paste and stew (dang hot!), some other really hot something, cold kimchi water, and a drink made of burned rice.

But the BBQ was amazing. Korean barbeque is famous, and there’s a reason for it. In the center of your table is a hole, and in the hole are charcoal briquettes. Your meat is grilled right on your table. They slap the meat on there, and you cut it and turn it, and all that as you eat your sides. And during this meal, I made a discovery. I have never really liked pork all that much, but that is because Americans have NO CLUE how to season or cook it. Pork here is to die for. Americans do steak. Koreans do pork.

It ended up being a really fun time. They wanted to order me some beer or soju (popular alcoholic drink made from rice), but when I declined and told them that I didn’t drink alcohol, they all ordered Sprite. That’s something else I noticed. Hospitality here is not only that your guest be provided the things they need, but that the very environment be tailored to their specific comfort.

Also, I kept watching the mother-in-law, Rachel. Through all of this, she was absolutely attuned to me. The minute my glass was empty, she would remind Sunny to refill it. She didn’t speak English, but that didn’t matter. As soon as a few pieces of meat were done on the grill, she moved them over to my plate. She ate a little, but if I had finished mine when more meat was done cooking, it went on my plate.

Finally, I announced that I was full, which was mostly true. I could have eaten more, but didn’t need to. And I realized that only after I was completely finished, would Rachel eat. I thought about this, and later asked Patrick some general cultural questions, and I realized that Rachel is part of an older generation—a generation that has seen harder times in Korea, that is more traditional, and more immersed in the old ways. In this country, “Have you eaten today?” or “What are you going to eat when you get home?” are

common greetings instead of “How are you?”or “Goodbye,” because there was a time when the majority of people here were poor and did not get enough to eat. Korea is now a large industrialized, modern nation, and starvation is not a real problem, but the traditions of the past still make up the fibers of their social and behavioral codes. And there is a kind of grace in it that is enthralling and mysterious, and very beautiful.

A Bit About Town

2010-03-01T10:59:00.004+09:00

Well, I was going to wait to do another post until later in the week, but the cold rain today ruined all my exciting plans of jumping on a red bus and seeing where it took me. (Buses here are color-coded. Red ones go into Seoul.) Today is Korean Independence Day, so everyone has work and school off. There is a big celebration in Seoul, and as a result, Geomdan is nearly deserted this morning. (Geomdan is the outlying provice of Incheon where I live). On Saturday, Sarah, one of the other teachers, took me around the city a bit. During the day, this part of the city looks a bit tattered, as there is a lot of industrial growth here. Every floor of every building is a different business, so sometimes you have to enter a restaurant and then take an elevator or stairs to get to a department store. There is a delicious little bread shop right around the corner from my apartment called "Paris Baguette." Random, I know. But you can look inside the windows as you stand out in the rain, and the warmth of the fresh bread inside fogs up the windows and makes it the most inviting shop on the street.

Across the street from Paris Baguette, and down just a bit is a bank which doubles as a convenience store. I had a time there Saturday, trying to buy shampoo and conditioner. They have a hundred kinds of shampoo of all sorts of colors, but I saw no conditioner on the shelves. "Conditioner" is a hard thing to explain when playing charades. I have been very grateful these past few days for my long years of education in the theatrical arts. One thing I love about this country, though, is how friendly everyone is, how anxious to help. Case in point: Sarah and I took a bus down to the E-Mart, a muliti-floor, multi-purpose store similar to Walmart. After shopping for groceries on the bottom floor (which was quite an experience--I have never seen so many fish eyes staring at me as I walked down an aisle), we went upstairs to look for a plug converter, since the electrical outlets here not only use a different voltage, but also are a different shape. Now, imagine walking through aisles of electronics, trying to find an adapter that: 1. changed voltage from 220 to 110, 2. adapted flat prongs to round ones, and 3. could take a three-pronged American plug with a ground. Now, imagine that you cannot find such a thing, and must now try to explain to the saleslady exactly what you're looking for. As we tried to demonstrate with invisible plugs what we wanted, the poor saleslady started looking more and more distressed that she could not understand us. Just as this was happening, two shoppers who were passing stopped, and the man started translating for us to the saleslady. It was a big relief, and also kind of funny, because as soon as he told her what we were looking for, this huge grin broke out on her face, and she started herding us across the store. The other shoppers followed, and continued to translate as they all started rifling through plugs, and Sarah and I stood back, trying not to laugh at the exuberance of these helpful Koreans. As they found the right one and we thanked them and started downstairs, I saw our little saleslady chattering to another store worker. In moments, before I knew what was happening, they started charging down the escalator toward us! At first I was a bit alarmed, and wondered if we had gone out the wrong exit or if we were supposed to have taken off our shoes in the store or something...but as they reached us, and motioned for the adapter in my basket, I realized that they were still trying to be helpful. She picked up the adapter and began pantomiming how to put the pieces together (it was a multi-adapter with different pieces for about five different countries) and how to plug it into the wall. I bowed and thanked her and tried to let her know I understood, and then watched how happy she seemed as she headed back up to her floor.

This is something that seems universal here. People want to help. There is an underlying thread of kindness and hospitality that seems to run through all the interactions I've seen. Perhaps it would be different if I was not a foreigner, and of course I am sure it is not always the case, but it is something I think that is much more a part of their culture than it seems to be in America. There, we so often treat foreigners with impatience and frustration because they have not learned enough English to communicate with us. Here, they treat foreigners (for the most part) as guests.

Well, I was going to say a bit about the food here, and my experience with traditional Korean barbeque, but my hour on the computer is about up, and I think it will soon be kicking me off. I've been using internet in a "PC Bang," a big computer room usually filled with dim, creepy lighting, smoke, and a whole bunch of Korean gamers. (World of Warcraft lives strong in Korea.) Hopefully by next week I will have internet in my apartment.

First 24 Hours

2010-02-27T10:35:00.002+09:00

Well, the East is not the same as the West. And anyone who tells you that it is has probably lived their whole life in some little podunk place where nothing EVER changes...Like Nebraska.

I don't think that it was until the last half hour of my 16-hour flight that it hit me how far away I was and how different life was going to be and how long a year could potentially last. As we started flying over the country toward the Incheon Airport, I gazed out of my window on the brown and green land below and thought how similar it looked to home from the sky. Up there, with the details blurred into masses of color and line, I could not believe that I had come nearly 7,000 miles. Birds must think all the world is the same. But as we started passing small islands dotting the sea like little anthills and I looked down at could see a clear green crystal ocean shoreline, I realized that this was not at all the same as home.

Incheon is the third largest city in South Korea, and the Incheon airport is located, not on the mainland coast with most of the city, but on an island just off shore. When I realized this, I was fascinated at how the city had spread until it bled out into the ocean and then just kept going.

By the time we landed, it was nearly 3am my time, about 7pm local time. The sun was setting over the ocean islands and the airport was bustling with a lot of not-Americans. I spent the next hour in the airport trying to figure out how to use a luggage cart, convincing a taxi-driving con man to let me use his cell phone, and boarding myself on a train, hoping it was headed the right direction to take me to the stop I needed to be at to meet the director from my school who was going to drive me to my apartment. I'm sure I looked quite ridiculous as I tried to maneuver two large suitcases and two more shoulder bags around. I will admit that there was even one point that I tripped over my own luggage and fell flat on my face...but we won't talk about that.

As it was, I did get off at the right stop. And as I stepped out onto the street, the city greeted me. For anyone who has not seen a big city in Korea, it was about like the Las Vegas strip times a billion. Skyscrapers towered into the sky, and everything was lit in bright, flashing colors. The signs were all written in hangul, the Korean alphabet--flashing messages across billboards and theatres, clubs and banks. It was not Western, but it was a city as I have never seen "city" before.

As I stepped off the train, there was a man who got off at Geomam also, with his wife, who saw me struggling with my luggage. He walked up, took my biggest suitcase, and without a word, started walking toward the elevator. I followed somewhat hesitantly, trying to talk to him, but he chattered back at me in Korean, and it took me about two seconds to realize that we were not going to understand each other. But he most certainly was going to take my suitcase. I was protective of that suitcase. I followed it. I half-wondered if he was the one who was supposed to pick me up, but if he was the director of an English school, shouldn't he speak English? Well, he wasn't the director of the school. As we got to the sidewalk outside, he stopped and tried to talk to me again. After a bit of gesture, I concluded that he wanted to know if I had a ride. He stopped a girl on the street, talked to her, and she pulled out her cell phone and gave it to me to call Patrick Kim, my contact. Then, they were on their way, with smiles and waves and even a bow (very unsual to do to someone younger than you). As they went their own ways, I thought about how, even though everything is different here--the culture, the language, the fashion, the landscape--people are all essentially the same.

There are those who will try to cheat you (the taxi driver I met in the airport), those who will ignore you (the lady at the first currency exchange desk I went to), those who will ridicule you (again, we won't talk about that incident), and those who, though strangers, will go out of their way to help--who look out for you when there is no one else but God.

Well, Patrick Kim and his wife, Sunny, finally did come to get me, and dropped me off at my apartment. They are the kindest, sweetest people I will probably meet in this country. Or ever maybe. Mix traditional Korean honor and hospitality with youthful enthusiasm, kindness, and exuberance, and you have the Kims. They were even so thoughtful as to leave breakfast on my counter for the next morning, and provide my apartment with slippers (since it is a cardinal and eternal sin to wear shoes indoors). They did not, however, know how to work my washing machine. Tomorrow I shall have to start just pushing buttons.

My apartment, though cozy inside, looks from the outside like I should fear for my life. I don't know if I will EVER go out after dark. Since my door has two deadbolts and a video camera so I can see who is knocking outside, I'm going to assume that I should probably also not trust my neighbors.

Well, today was spent meeting kids and touring my school and sitting through hours of orientation/training. It was rainy and half the city disappeared into a fog that hung over the city and lasted all day. I wanted to be outdoors more, but it was fun being in the school as well. I am something of a celebrity to the six-year-olds who insist that I am the sister of the other American teacher who "looks just like" me. Anyhow, this is a long post, and it is time to be off. I shall leave you with a list of observations from my first few hours here:

1. Koreans have the most eclectic taste in footwear that I have EVER seen. If the color exists, they wear it on their feet in a variety of colors and ridiculous shapes.

2. While not allowed back home, taxi drivers here may solicit for customers in the airport as much as they please. I may be naive, but not naive enough to not realize that it would be stupid to pay W50,000 for a cab fare when I could go downstairs and pay W2,800 for a train ride.

3. You are not cool if you don't own a black coat. Luckily, I do.

4. Americans in foreign countries are obnoxious. I knew this, but it was reconfirmed to me.

5. I will miss my raisin bran. They do not eat cold cereal here, one of the great loves of my life.

6. Koreans love Spam. This is an ideal gift for a hostess when you are invited to someone's home.

7. 12 kilograms is too much for carry-on luggage when you are going to be lugging it around airports for hours. I don't even know how much 12 kilograms is. But my shoulder does.

8. The Korean alphabet is not like a "secret code."

9. Koreans like red. Even my microwave is red.

10. Hamburgers here are not actually hamburgers. And they have broccoli and mushroom paste instead of ketchup and mayonaise.

Untouchable

2010-01-18T10:20:00.002+09:00

The retention basin is full. I can't remember it being full since I was a child. The water that is in it now glistens like a lake-- it is a lake, a lake built by men because they are ever needing water-- water for their lawns, their parties, their vegetable gardens. Especially here in this dry, wasted desert where water is as beautiful as the sky that sends it crashing to the earth one month a year.

When I was a child, I would run through this park with the carefree abandon and bare feet that were my brand of transportation and movement through life. There were frogs here then. When the field was full of water and the sun was bright in the early morning sky, as far as the eye could see, marble-sized amphibians flew through the grass and air, up and down, up and down, like trillions of tiny see-saws cutting the field, miniature splashes on the flat, cool water.

Now as I sit here, there are no frogs. But if I close my eyes, the wind blows the cool smell of water to my nose, and it feels like an ocean or the sky before rain in a foreign place. And then I open my eyes and idly hear the chanting cicadas who own the summer, and see the sky shine in the iridescent blues of an abalone, and watch the touch of man stir the surface of the lake with lights of the city.

And I think that there is something untouchable about water and the night.

Road Trips

2009-09-06T08:40:00.002+09:00

In honor of my being about to embark on a lovely road trip, the third this summer, I thought I would share that fact that I am a bit concerned about the outcome of said trip, and relate some tidbits of history to demonstrate why. In two days, I will be driving from Mesa, AZ to Las Vegas, NV, to St. George, UT, back to Las Vegas, and then up to Provo, UT, after which I will return to Mesa. I know, I know, it is not at all a very efficient nor logical path, however, since it is for a wedding, and weddings are also neither efficient nor logical (in general), it kind of fits.

Past events to warrant the fact that I have started praying for this trip nearly a week in advance:

1. Trip to a family reunion in New Mexico last year--car died twice, halfway there. As in, one radiator problem and one shredded tire.

2. Trip to the Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City--my tire tread caught on the road bumps and sent my car flying through the air into a ditch, where it skidded to a terrifying halt fifty yards further. I was saved by an ambulance-driving hick sent from God.

3. Trip from Provo to Concord, CA this past May--on a dark road in Fresno, not far from Yosemite, the reverse in the car went out and we ended up in a ditch. While being towed out via climber's webbing and a nice man with a big truck, I ended up in the middle of the road, trying to cut the twisted rope between the two cars before the headlights of another car screaming toward me put an abrupt end to my life.

4. Driving from Provo to Mesa--serpentine belt in my car went out and I ended up stuck in Cedar City for the next six hours, and then driving like a madman to make it home in time for my best friend's wedding.

5. Driving from Mesa up to school--Got lost and ended up meandering through five states on the way from Mesa to Provo, after staying a night in New Mexico.

6. Driving back to Provo from a weekend in St. George, we hit a blizzard that obscured vision so badly we were forced to crawl along, using overturned cars on the sides of the road as markers as to where the edges were.

Six examples from a very long list of the road trips of my life. All prayers for this next week are welcome.

Birthday Fire

2009-01-13T12:27:00.003+09:00

Okay, I know I just posted something 3 minutes and 28 seconds ago. But I realized that I have a story that desperately needs to be told. This is the story of the "Birthday Fire." It goes like this:

Eleven days ago, on my last night in Arizona before coming back to Utah for the new semester, my parents threw me a kind of quickie birthday celebration, since my birthday had almost-but-not-quite arrived. Ah, the gloriously beautiful cake with happy little sprinkles dancing all over it, and flickering, tantalizing candles. I reached for it to draw it close so that I could blow my birthday wish into existence... Alas, I leaned too close.

"You're on fire!" my mom yelled (which was not exactly helpful) and proceeded to start blowing in the general direction of my hair (which was helpful). The nasty smell of burning hair filled my nose, and I realized what had happened only after the flames had been extinguished. My hair had been on fire. On. Fire.

The ends of the hairs on the left side of my head were curled in the semblance of velcro...and they were about two inches shorter.

I smelled like burned something for days.

Although I really intended to get my hair trimmed when I got back to Utah so people wouldn't ask questions, it never happened. I felt kind of like a heroic survivor.

And the story was just too good.

16 Random Facts About Me

2009-01-13T12:13:00.003+09:00

Well, I apologize for my inconsistency in posting things. My dad recently said that my blog site was fraudulent, since the only posts on it are from a "younger self," and don't indicate who I am now as a 22-year-old. I had another friend who requested a list of random facts about me. So, in order to appease both parties, I therefore post: 16 Random Facts About Me. Why sixteen? I have no idea. Perhaps because it's a random number and meshes with the randomness of the facts.

1. I hate soggy things. In all forms and in all circumstances.

2. Before I was born, the doctors told my parents that I was probably going to be mentally retarded. I was born normal and then my grandma dropped me on my head. Maybe that explains some things...

3. I have always wanted to visit Italy, see the art museums, get lost once, and paint a landscape from a rooftop.

4. I love the sunshine. My roommates in the past have nicknamed me "Lizard" because most days they would come home and find me curled up in a patch of sunlight on the floor. I completely understand why so many civilizations worshiped a sun god.

5. The only two things I have been able to consistently collect throughout my life are scarves and books. And friends. But it sounds kind of creepy saying I collect people.

6. I love wise sayings and random quotations, and have amassed an enormous amount of them on paper, on my computer, and in my brain. I guess I collect those too.

7. I am ambidextrous and can do most things with either hand. However, I can only draw with my right and only cut with my left.

8. I am a word nerd, and have been editing my cereal boxes since junior high.

9. I can handle nails on a chalkboard with no problem, but I cringe at the sound of paper rubbing against paper--like the paper rubbing sticks people use in art classes.

10. When I was in fourth grade, I started a fad at my elementary school--I brought back the game of Jacks.

11. I can read a book upside down just as fast as I can read it right side up.

12. I have always wanted to climb a frozen waterfall with an ice pick, but would choose death over skydiving.

13. I have had 23 different roommates at BYU and have liked them all.

14. I have written two novels.

15. I love growing gardens and will eat home grown stuff over store bought any day.

16. I'm a sucker for sentimental movies, guys, and cards.

There you have it. Me in sixteen sentences--give or take a few.

Cabin Remembered

2008-11-15T12:07:00.003+09:00

There are few places built by men that can ever affect us as deeply as those untouched beauties of nature created by God. The Taj Mahal, for instance, which the Sunday Times in London calls “Thrilling, exciting, ravishing!” could never approach, in magnificence, a structure like Mount Everest—touching the heavens, gilded with the white marble of snow, commissioned by the supreme ruler—a crowning glory for the kingdom of Earth. In most instances, God remains the supreme architect, the supreme landscaper, the supreme builder. In a few creations only, we clumsy mortals, dabbling in His arts like a child with colored Crayola wax, approach the skill of the master.

And as a child, no creation of God held, for me, the majesty one solitary cabin did, built by the calloused, work-chaffed hands of a mortal, nestled in a forest of pines in the mountains of northern Arizona.

That cabin, Uncle Jim’s cabin, as we called it, was built by my uncle before I had learned to speak, and to me, was the embodiment of the flavor of summer. It tasted like polished pine drizzled with tree needles, covered in quilts stuffed with the smell of August rain. I lived for the weeks that would be spent there, every summer since before I could tie my shoes, since before I knew that most people’s summer vacations were spent at theme parks and beaches and foreign countries. And even after I realized this, I felt lucky somehow. They had thrilling rides and salty waves and beautiful vistas, but I had gooey fire-eaten marshmallows and romps through the forest and an old rope swing.

* * *

The swing was my magic carpet, my fairy wings, my happy thought. I spent a great deal of my childhood wishing I could fly, sprinkling sand on my hair to take the place of pixie dust and jumping off of garbage barrels and cars and trees and frightening my mother with my resistance to the chains of gravity and a life consigned to solid ground. But physics always won and I inevitably returned to the earth. Solidly, firmly, with various amounts of spilt blood. But the rope swing was different. Science didn’t apply. The old rope hung from a monster of a tree on the edge of a slight gully off to the side of the cabin, dangling down to hover three feet above the ground. I would grab the rope and pull it as far backwards up the hill as I could, so as to build up the greatest possible momentum. Reaching up the rope as high as my skinny fingers could grasp, I would latch on and lift my feet from the ground, sometimes only getting my foot into the loop at the bottom after I was already sailing through the air. High over the gully and back. And back. And back.

My little brother, Scotty, was still small at my earliest swing memory—too small to reach the loop that was as high off the ground as his head. I remember him watching us once as we squealed with delight, whooping at being able to lift off the ground and not have to come down again. His somber eyes were calculating, his head tilted, as if the picture didn’t make sense. I remember my older brother picking him up, holding him in one arm, close, tight against his side, grabbing the rope with the other hand, letting go of the ground. I can’t do anything but remember the pure joy that took over my brother’s baby features—the smile that split his face, the ringing song of glee that exploded from him, carrying through the pines as if it had been waiting his whole life to get out.

* * *

There were other things I loved about Uncle Jim’s cabin: the banisters carved and polished and curving down in perfect slides from the upper story down to the main floor, the forest green carpet so soft and thick it hid my feet completely up to my ankles, the way the crickets talked to each other, argued with each other, sang lullabies to each other so loudly that my mother’s own lullabies were lost in the symphony, the deer and other animals that had never learned to be afraid of human beings.

* * *

I remember being awakened in the darkness of an early morning when I was no more than four or five years old, before the sun had risen, before the darkness had shrunk only to shadows. My mother’s excited whisper pulled me from the warmth of the colored quilt.

“Christina! Come see!”
“Comeseewha?”

My legs were bare and tingled in the ghost of a chill that trickled through the room as I sleepily followed her out of the bedroom and into the living room. The wide, glass French doors bordering the fireplace sparkled with moonlight and tiny specks of dust that flickered and reflected the light like glitter. The porch light was on. My mom held onto my hand and pointed out the window. There, separated from me only by a nearly invisible piece of glass and a few inches, was an enormous black bear, pawing through the garbage can, his black eyes glinting in the light from the porch, his shaggy fur quivering over muscles that could tear me apart in less time than I could make mine carry me far away. My whole head could’ve fit inside his paw.

“Ohhhh…” The sound came out as a mixture between a gasp and a whisper of awe. At that moment, the creature paused, pivoted his body with a liquid grace that a dancer would be jealous of, and looked at me, his eyes penetrating and unblinking, the breath from his nostrils a dancing wave in the cold night air. My fingers reached out and touched the glass.

I never stopped following that bear. Caressing the idea of him with the awe of someone who for a moment connects to something so vastly different from herself. When I was in high school, black bears went on the endangered species list. They were being hunted. Their lands were being cleared for homes. Their forests, and their own bodies, were being consumed by fires. When I was in college, I did a research paper on them and they came off the endangered species list. Every time I drive into the mountains, I look for them. Sometimes I see them. I am sure that sometimes they see me. But never once since that first night have we seen each other—locked together in the same moment, splitting a single gaze.

* * *

One summer, when I was about fourteen, my mom got sick. It came fast, or at least it seemed so to me. Kidney infection, my parents decided. We were at the cabin that week, and the remoteness that had always seemed so thrilling was suddenly frightening, menacing, cold. It was miles to the nearest town. We had no medicine, and there were no doctors. My mom lay on the couch, moving little, pain filling her lungs instead of oxygen, moving through her back, her chest, aching her arms. I remembered the time my little brother had gotten frighteningly ill, the way he didn’t want to play, didn’t want to move, didn’t eat for three days. I remembered the rasp that shook him as he breathed, as if he was exerting all his energy to fight a foe I couldn’t even see. But we had had a doctor then. The day my mom’s illness was the worst, I remember sitting in my room in the darkness of the cabin, seeing the sun streaming through the window, and realizing that the darkness was only in me. I prayed then—prayed the way people pray when their choices are death or miracle, when their faith is forced by desperation. I prayed a prayer of love, as all real prayers are.

My mom got better—slowly, peacefully. My dad had found, outside the cabin door, a juniper bush growing merrily and gaily as if it were a weed. He boiled the green berries from it into a tea and fed it to my mother. And slowly she recovered. I wondered if my uncle had planted the bush or if God did.

* * *

Once, the cabin became the battlegrounds of a civil war—a frantic, screaming, thundering, desperate war with brother against brother, mother against daughter, peppered with shaky alliances that switched sides in instantaneous moments of treason. Rubber bands secured to curved sticks with clothespins were released and went flying—into sofas, enemy backs, and occasionally rung the antlers of the stoic, stuffed spies on the walls. When ammunition ran low, the littlest member of each battalion was sacrificed and sent forth to gather up those rubber bands that had hit their marks—or not—and were left in pockmarked patches all over the floor, staircase, and dark corners of each room. Sometimes, ammo stashes were stolen in their entirety, forcing an entire side to take risky dashes into another’s territory, looking for hidden piles with which to arm their weapons. I don’t remember now who won the war. I don’t know that the war even could have been won, considering no one ever died from a rubber band wound, and a smart snap on the skin rarely slowed down a running soldier. The real war we fought was one we didn’t even know we were losing—time.

Last Christmas, after all the gifts were opened, and the living room was strewn with various paper and wreckage of the morning’s raid, my dad brought out one last gift. It was a gift to the family, from him, and we let my youngest brother, Nathan, open it. Inside was what might at first appear to be a very odd assortment of paraphernalia. My little brother’s thirteen-year-old face was screwed up in a slight look of confusion, though it was only seconds before his eyes grew wide with a ghosted remembrance. He picked up one of the six smooth pieces of pine that had been cut into the rugged outline of a pistol and I watched his eyes trail from it to the bag of Ace Hardware rubber bands shoved in the corner of the box with an equally large bag of clothespins. I wondered how much of that long-ago battle he remembered. He had been so young—and before the war came around again, the battleground that was our cabin had vanished.

I don’t want to end the memories, as I sit here and think about them, knowing that the next paragraph must shove nostalgia into reality. I want only to remember the bat we found in the bathtub, soft brown leather wings, blinded by the light, curled in crashed flight. I want to remember the campfires we built outside, preferring them over the luxury fireplace indoors—the camp songs that we added nonsense verses to until they were tangled and unrecognizable and our laughter was squeezing salt water from our eyes. I want to remember the lazy afternoons in the hammock, squished together like string beans, sometimes swinging so high we flipped, rolling onto the sharp pine needles below, the smell of sap and pinecones marinating the dirt beneath us. I want to remember the way the trees cleared and the stars rolled in at night like concourses of everlasting armies come together in scattered array, more pinpoints of brilliant light in the heavens than there ever could be men on earth—the immortality of them forcing me to taste my own predestination for death. Years later, the stars are still there, but the ashes of the fire have gone cold, and the hammock and beams and winding stairs have become part of those ashes. It was not many years before God took back the land that man had built on, and made it His again.

I’ve never really tasted summer since my last visit to the cabin. I was sixteen the year it burned—turned again to the dust that had once fed the seeds that became the pines that built its walls. I know why hell is called an inferno, why fire lives in the breasts of the damned rather than the saved. I knew some portion of hell the day that fire consumed the first place I had ever loved. Hell and fire. They went hand in hand, belonging to each other like I had once belonged to that cabin—like I wanted it always to belong to me.

But the black ashes that kicked up at my feet as I looked on the acres of scarred ground in the silence the settled as my family got out of the car and paused, looking at a ghost, were part of the land now. Flat land, bare land. Not a trace of the chimney, the beautiful oak door, the curving balcony that had once moved gracefully around the upper story like a necklace curving around a woman’s neck. And then my eye caught a flutter of white. There, miraculously, bafflingly untouched by the ravages of the raging fire, was the old rope swing, still dangling over a blackened gully. I ran for it, hooked my foot in, and let go, feeling the wind in my hair as I flew for the last time—flew and wished I didn’t ever have to come down—flew and wished—flew. Quietly, then more loudly, then growing to a wild chorus, the bubbling chortle of pure joy of a little boy years ago echoed in my mind, rang through my ears, swam over the empty land. And of all the creations, the buildings, the structures of God and man, left with the fingerprints of their makers, I knew in that moment that the cabin was different. It didn’t matter who had built the place—what mattered was that the place built me.

Halloween

2008-11-03T11:18:00.002+09:00

So, I like Halloween. A lot. It makes me all tingly and excited inside. Unfortunately, for the last two years, I have had midterms on Halloween. The most sadistic, horrible Halloween trick ever. And no treats.

So, this year, I decided not to have a midterm. And instead, I went to the ward party, which was one of the best Halloween parties I have actually ever attended. The ward had rented this huge "barn" (actually a lodge) up in American Fork. My roommate, Elise, dressed as a witch, and allowed me to give her a nasty huge putty nose and warts, Rachel went as Paris Hilton, and Julie as a China doll. I had forgotten entirely to go to Savers and pick up some stuff for a costume, and having recently downsized my closet, I was hardpressed for anything at all that I could put together in 20 min. I reverted to the "old lady" costume I had done once in high school. Some wrinkles, a blacked-out tooth, and old lady clothes were a quick and easy solution.

After we were all ready, we drove up to American Fork. The barn/lodge was enormous, with two stories, the top balcony overlooking the lower floor. On the bottom floor were long tables filled with food--soup from the "soup contest," cake (because it was my bishop's birthday), vegetables, chili, and punch. We got our picture taken in Cinderella's carriage, and then heard that the hayride was departing, so we hopped on. The hayride went to a spook alley that had been set up by a family in a nearby neighborhood. This was, by far, the COOLEST spook alley/haunted house I have ever been in. My roommate, Rachel, clutched my hand all the way through, walking in front of me, and therefore doing all the screaming for me. By the time we got to the end, we were both quite shook up, but the candy bar given to us by the zombie at the end made it all worth it.

We headed back to the barn on the returning hayride, where we ate and chatted, went upstairs where a dance was going on, and then wandered outside where they had a big bonfire with marshmallow roasting and bobbing for apples. It was so much fun to see people in costume, completely unrecognizable, and wonder if I actually knew them in real life, since our ward is quite large and I am rarely able to attend activities. I made friends with a few people, whom I am sure I would not recognize today. I can just imagine it: "Hey, Kool Aid man! How's school going for you?" Assuming of course, that I recognized Kool Aid man at all in his jeans and Nike jacket.

The evening ended with a costume contest, the winners being Kool Aid man (of course), Jason Bourne, who came as himself (seriously, he looks exactly like him and his name is Jason), and Poison Ivy (from Batman). At about 11pm, we headed back home, a slight rain falling from the grey clouds that were now crawling creepily across the sky.

All in all, it was a great night, and a fa-"boo"-lous Halloween!

All the Pretty Leaves

2008-11-02T11:42:00.021+09:00

Today, under the pretense of heading to campus to finish up some much needed editing on the final sounds for the show I'm designing, I took my camera for a walk. Provo is so beautiful this time of year. It is interesting to me that the two seasons when the world is most alive with color are springtime and fall--the birth and the death of nature.

Leaves, I think, die with more grace than any other living thing. There is nothing so graceful and perfectly beautiful as an expiring leaf, glowing with a short fire of color, floating down with the chilled breeze, the edges slowly drying, browning, dying. Most plants die suddenly at the turn of the seasons, conquered in a moment by a frozen breath of coming winter . Leaves die slowly, letting us watch their lifeblood seep out until only the crunchy brown shell remains. I don't know about everyone else, but I never really notice leaves until they begin to change color. It's as if they're reminding the world,
"Look! I was here. Don't forget me--the weather will change and I'll be coming back."

Autumn seems to me to relate an awful lot to people. There are times when, after having a view from the top for a while, suddenly the weather changes and we feel gusts that we can't control pick us up for a moment before, twirling, spinning, tumbling dizzily, we fall. And then, sitting there amongst the heap of others who have fallen, we begin to realize that we all must fall. The seasons change for all of us. And there is a way to fall with grace, with color and beauty, lifting those around us, even as we plummet ourselves.

There is not, after all, a season so full of hope as fall. From the bottom, already curling and feeling some of the color of success or ease or happiness begin to fade, we look around and remind the world, "Look! I'm still here. Don't forget me--The weather will change and I'll be coming back up."

The Contents of a Woman's Purse...

2008-10-30T04:37:00.009+09:00

They say (someone, I'm not sure who) that you can tell a lot about a girl from the contents of her purse. Perhaps this is true. I also think the purse itself says something about the girl. Some girls like purses that are about the size of duffel bags and covered in "cuteness" of various colors and degrees of glitz. I am not one of those girls...I fear that I would develop severe back pain carrying my entire desk, bathroom, and refrigerator contents around with me wherever I went. No, my purse is small and brown. Why brown? I only have one purse (shocking, I know), and brown matches everything. My purse before that was black. I don't know if the contents of my purse say much about me, but I was cleaning it out today, a tri-monthly ritual, and figured I would list for you all what I found. You can make your own judgment.

A half-empty package of Kleenex. I have been sick for almost two weeks, and have produced more snot than six two-year-olds combined.

A voucher for free car repairs from a Japanese car shop in Provo. I paid thirty dollars for it, mostly because the salesman looked really tired and discouraged. I've never used it, because I don't know anything about the integrity or quality of the work there.

4 Packages of Emergen-C Super Energy Booster. Which is basically 1,000mg of Vitamin C, Vitamin B, Calcium, Zinc, and various other minerals that they have flavored to taste like a tropical island. The health-nut's caffeine.

One box of melted together, chocolate-dipped Altoids. They once were very tasty. They now resemble the kind of present your dog would leave you in the backyard.

A 3''x5'' copy of the Book of Mormon, in a handmade little case, courtesy of my mom. Keeps me company when I'm working a show I've already seen 17 times.

A checkbook with six checks left. The last entry in the register was for fast offerings in October of '05. That does not mean I haven't written checks since then.

A bottle of Ibuprofen. I used to get a lot of headaches when I was out and never had any pain relievers. I bought some and now I don't get headaches. Best insurance investment I've ever made.

A black 2 gig flash drive that contains pictures of my elementary school kids from two summers ago, and sound effects and music files from the last four shows I've designed. Also, there is a talk that I wrote for church last summer about the value of education.

A fold-up circular brush that resembles the radios disguised as powder puff cases that girls use in action movies to rendezvous with their secret cohorts.

A spare key to my car, which I want to never have to use (again). This is mainly because my car alarm is locked on, and if I open the car manually, before unlocking it with my key fob, the alarm goes off and continues to go off for hours.

Three pens. A tiny purple one, a medium sized silver one, and large black one. And I still dig through my purse on a regular basis, unable to find something to write with.

A laser power pointer. Lots of fun to play with in large lecture classes.

Dental floss. The most useful thing I own. I don't floss, but it works WAY better than toothpicks to remove stubborn pieces of apple or beef from crevices where they've taken up residence.

Four buttons from three different sweaters.

Half a package of cough drops. I've been devouring them like candy lately. Also, the more I eat, the happier and loopier I seem to get.

A tiny crochet hook from a hair highlighting kit. I have no idea why or how it made it into my purse.

A key chain made out of a rock found and polished by my Aunt Dianne in Oregon.

A pair of fingernail clippers with a mini savings card for the local grocery store attached through a key ring.

Two more buttons from another sweater and a pair of pants. Yes, I still own and wear all the sweaters, buttonless as they are. The pants went to DI.

About here, I would normally run into the large crescent wrench I used to keep in the bottom of my purse. Unfortunately that once earned me three armed escorts, an accusation of terrorism, and an extremely long delay at an airport. The wrench has been removed.

A driver's license and a debit card. The driver's license picture has me ate age sixteen wearing the required school uniform from high school. The debit card is on the "found" part of its cycle, as I continually lose it and find it again. And right now it actually has some money on it.

A temple recommend, set to expire in December, listing the name of a bishopric member whose name I didn't even know when I got it.

A voter identification card (I'm voting for McCain), a laminated card with the phone numbers of every coworker and theatre department faculty, staff, and custodian, as well as radio numbers for each of the four theatres I work in, a movie rental card from the BYU bookstore, a Wells Fargo telephone card, punch cards from Pioneer book and Cafe Rio, another laminated card with numbers for each of the stage managers at BYU, a Verizon Wireless card that gives the number of a representative named Eric Palmatier (I think he sold me my last phone, speaking of which, I have a great story--ask me sometime), a health insurance card which once saved me over a thousand dollars in the emergency room, a social security card (the contents of which I shall not say so openly), an expired Harkins movie card, a useless driver's permit (also a good story), two library cards--a boring yellow one for my home library, and a cool silver one with a reading dragon on it for the Provo library, a credit card with a $6500 credit line and a 0 balance (proud of that), a card with a picture of Jesus, a Staples reward card with the name of Kevin Farnsworth on it from when I was in Student Council in high school, a Red Cross blood donor card that says I'm A+ and have donated three times (hasn't been updated in a while), and a Target gift card with 37cents on it.

Oh, and in a completely different pocket from the above, my BYU ID. You can tell I don't suffer from OCD in any way.

And in that same pocket, 16 free ice cream vouchers, only three of which are expired, as well as a movie theatre gift certificate, and two free bowling passes for Fat Cats Bowling.

Oh, and two more movie passes. I should go.

Ticket stubs from the Homecoming Spectacular, the play James and the Giant Peach (in sign language), Transformers (which I saw with my roommate and we snuck warm, homemade brownies into the theatre and had everyone drooling fifteen minutes in), a Passover Seder Service (authentic and very cool) that I went to last Passover, and National Treasure 2--the first date I had with my first boyfriend last January.

Two one-dollar bills jammed in amongst hundreds of receipts for everything from car repairs to grocery stores to bookstores.

A piece of blank paper.

A love note from a roommate.

A reminder of a breakup.

And a handful of change.

P.S.

2008-10-27T13:26:00.003+09:00

Those really long, daunting posts are always going to be essayistic type things. The shorter ones will concern my current life. So feel free to skip the long mental musings. I promise to post exciting stuff too. :)

Re-evaluating the "Facts"

2008-10-27T12:55:00.000+09:00

When I was in the eighth grade, my science class went to visit the Coco-Cola factory in Arizona. Looking back, I cannot figure out what we must have been studying that would have warranted such a trip, and to this day, I only remember two things from it. One was that the actual reason they put caffeine in soda pop was so that people would get addicted and buy more. I remember thinking it strange that they would admit such a thing, and it felt almost criminal that the manager stated it so matter-of-factly, with no hint of remorse. The other thing I remember from the trip was the tour guide telling us that Coco-Cola used to be green.

Nearly eight years later, neither of these facts has impacted my life in any way. I do not drink caffeine, due to the headaches it causes, and while mildly revolting, the fact that Coco-Cola used to be green has never affected my view of soda pop, tour guides, or the color in general. And yet, the fact remains, a seemingly permanent resident in a brain that is completely unaffected by its presence. And it is not alone. Over the years, I have amassed a large fortune of completely useless information. I do not wish to get into the controversy of the age-old whine, “When will I ever use this?” that becomes the soundtrack of high school. I will therefore avoid organized education and stick to the facts that I have collected from remembered and unremembered wanderings through the texts and conversations of everyday life.

There is, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a tremendous concourse of statues, a few of which depict men on horseback, frozen forever in the moment of battle. The statues have plaques down near the earth, most of them rendering a single name. I recognized a couple as I wandered through the battlegrounds several years ago, but most were unknown and as common as the men who once answered to them. There, wandering through the statues, I was introduced to a fact about the construction of the statues. Apparently, they were not frozen in the moment of battle, but in the manner of death. The horses with two front legs rearing in the air carried a soldier who died in the Battle of Gettysburg. The horses with one leg in the air held men who were wounded in battle, and later died from those wounds. If all four legs were on the ground, the rider had made it through the fight unharmed.

I thought this fact intriguing, and at the time, filed it away for some unknown future use. Writing this essay, four years later, is the first time I have ever recalled or used it. For some pieces of information, this is the way it is. I am sure I have things stored in my head that I don’t even realize are there until they are recalled by a sudden connection or a card drawn in a game of “Outburst.” Other thoughts swim through my consciousness, making laps that bring them again and again to my thoughts.

One of these is the “Death of the Leftie fact,” as I call it. I remember my astonishment and delight when I first heard that right-handed people lived an average of nine years longer than left-handed people. (And the delight had nothing to do with me being right-handed because, in fact, I am not. My own hand orientation is ambiguous, and often referred to as “ambidextrous.”) This is one of those facts that does not hide in hibernation, but surfaces quite frequently, usually when I meet a left-handed individual and proceed to evaluate their seemingly normal physical health. I long wondered why these people were fated for an early death. Was it some brain defect that caused the left-handedness in the first place? Was the trait a result of a long-buried genetic flaw? The only explanation that really made sense to me was that the world was made for right-handed people, including equipment, appliances, and services, and perhaps there were a large number of accident-related deaths from lefties trying to use technologies that were simply not made for them.

Eventually, I needed to set the question to rest, and so I did what any 21st century college student would do—I Googled it. There, bold and strong and affirming my brilliance at coming to the correct conclusion were the words, “2,500 left-handers die each year using products designed for right-handers.” Another website reported that a large majority of left-handers try to switch hand preference at some point in their lives. I can only imagine the awkwardness of this, which might make something as seemingly harmless as a pair of scissors into a sudden tool of bodily harm.

Unfortunately, not all of my bits of trivia are so easily proven, and, indeed, sometimes I find that science presumptuously insists on un-proving them. One of my long-time favorite facts is: “The average person swallows seven spiders in their sleep over their lifetime.”

At least, that is what I learned, years ago. However, today, as I was browsing collections of pointless information online, I ran across it again. Only this time, it said that the average person swallows eight spiders. Was the change in statistics due to an increase in the spider population? Do more people today have allergies, and thus are forced to sleep with their mouths open? I suppose there are countless possibilities for why the fact reads differently today, and yet, something tells me that it is simply due to the unreliability of statistics, and that if I wasted a few more moments of my life surfing the Web, I could find the same statistic claiming that the number was 19, 4, or 57. In addition, (being fair to science), I am also aware that anthropoids flee from breath, recognizing it as a threat, therefore making it awfully unlikely that such a large number of them actually meet their demise in this fashion. Why, then, is it so easy to believe those delicious bits of information we are fed from unreliable sources, sifted through eighty-nine different mouths and ears before being passed on to ours?

I would guess that it has something to do with humans’ delight at the uncanny and unexpected. The thought of swallowing spiders in one’s sleep is almost as delectable as reading in a science journal that people’s hair continues to grow for a couple of months after death. And something as obviously fiction as Monster from the Black Lagoon would never be able to compare with a movie about people’s stomachs digesting themselves in mass numbers when biological warfare creates a drug that prevents the stomach from producing that needed layer of mucus every two weeks. (In the unlikely event that such a movie were ever created.) Thus, the saying: “Fact is stranger than fiction.”

And yet, as with the spider statistic, sometimes fact and fiction have an ambiguous relationship. I remember hearing in some motivational talk once, that children laugh approximately 400 times a day, while adults only laugh about 15. I think the point of the talk was to encourage us all to look at the positive in life and laugh a little more. But if I laughed 400 times a day, I would be laughing every 3.6 minutes. After a few days of being purely obnoxious, I fear that, rather than appreciating my happy outlook on life, people would begin to doubt my sanity, and my happy, positive life might be lived from inside four padded walls. And while it seems that children are indeed generally happier than adults, most kids I know give equal, if not greater, attention to various explosions of crying, yelling, and whining, as they do to laughing.

And yet, despite the inconsistencies, the exaggerations, and the straight-out falsehoods that mingle with the random facts in my brain, I find that since most of them serve the purpose only of my own enjoyment, sometimes in the moment of learning, sometimes later as they pop up unexpectedly, I do not usually mind a little fiction mixed with the fact. After all, fiction can only be drawn from fact in the first place, since it is all that we know, and the best and most interesting “facts” of all, those that make me smile at the quirks and complexities of life, often walk the fuzzy line between two kinds of truth—fact and imagination.

A Rambling Introduction

2008-10-25T12:29:00.000+09:00

Well, this is it. The long awaited, possibly prayed-for blog now exists. People have been asking me, telling me, and threatening me to set this thing up for three years now. I felt it necessary to wait until I actually knew I would make use of it. Due to my recent fascination, nay, obsession, with writing down long passages of quotidian quixoticisms and mental meanderings on the infamous phenomenon, "Facebook," I decided that the time for blogging has come. (Although, I may have to shut it down again if I continue to invent sentences like that one.) Anyway, I guess the purpose of it all is to give, for what it's worth, the joys of "Friday" that I continue to find in even the "Mondays" of life.