Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Daycare - with pictures!

Tuesday, March 27 - our regular day off

Apologies to Bennigan's and their club sandwich. I wound up as sick as Bry yesterday and last night. Fortunately (more or less) I spent most of my evening and night being ill, so I didn't have to cancel classes...and I had today to recuperate (more or less). But I'll spare you the details of my miseries; we have pictures to peruse!

We got Kath off to daycare as usual and then ran a number of errands in town during the morning, enjoying our 'new' car and the new freedom it's giving us. Around quarter to twelve we stopped in at the daycare to see the director and drop off our payment for the month. She was quite gracious about allowing us to be 'late' with it next month as well (they prefer to be paid at the beginning of the month rather than at the end, understandably) and was happy to let us sign Katherine up for special supplementary classes that will run for the next two months as well. For an additional hundred thousand won she'll be getting Logic, Art, Math, Music, and Science during the afternoons (that includes the 'textbook' and other supplies, apparently, as well). We hope she'll enjoy it all!

We were able to watch her through the classroom door for several minutes undetected before we stopped in at the director's office, and it was delightful to see her in her environment, interacting with the teacher and with the other children. Her 'songsaengnim' (teacher) noticed us and slipped out to welcome us in, but we indicated that we'd see the director first. What struck me was that while we were talking, Katherine (along with all the other children) looked up and noticed us at the door, and while she smiled happily in recognition, she showed no indication of getting up, running to us, or in any way being discontent with what she was currently doing (studying the names of shapes with the 'English teacher', as it happened!)

After our visit with the director we were invited to come in and see the class settling down to lunch. The songsaengnim moved gracefully around the room with a pot of rice, filling up the little cups in the presented lunch trays, and the children sat happily eating and chattering. Our sweet daughter ran over to us with a big smile, dispensed several hugs, and then resumed her seat with her classmates, picking up her miniature fork. Her friend Choon-so greeted us with equal enthusiasm and had to be asked several times, patiently, to "Anju-seyo!" - please sit down- and go back to her lunch. Katherine, who won't touch rice at home, daintily began to nibble on her rice, a forkful at a time, interspersed with ladylike sips of the clear beef broth - "soup with nothing in it", as she likes to order whenever we eat out. We sat on the floor and looked round, and the director gave us permission to take photos. And, for your enjoyment, here they are!



The corner of the classroom, where they are just sitting down to lunch

Katherine with her lunch tray. She has beef broth, rice, a scrap of pickled vegetable, and a half-a-savory-pancake. Note the adorable rabbit-eared 'joined chopsticks' to her left.

And finally, here she is at the end of the day, with her friend Choon-so, outside the Honeybee Restaurant at Myongji Ipgu, which Choon-so's grandparents own and operate. Aren't they an adorable pair?

Oh, by the way - the other errand we had to run, after we left Katherine happily eating, was to go out to the Yongin Department of Motor Vehicles and exchange our car's license plates. The ones we had actually belong to the used-car lot, and one of the gentlemen from the lot drove down to Yongin today to meet Bry and give him his new, legal plates. There was a bit of a mixup (we wound up waiting at the wrong office) but we did eventually get the new plates - AND Bry got his Korean driver's license, which was due to expire this May, extended for the next two years... without PAYING anything for the privilege! And we met some interesting people, so there's yet again a silver lining to our various clouds.

We hope you appreciated this illustrated installment of "Leaves from the Land of Morning Calm"! If you want more pictures, make sure to leave comments.... :)

xxoo,

Judy










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Sunday, March 25, 2007

A Monday Vignette: Bubbles

It isn't a great way to wake up - the light too bright, the shoulder being shaken, the insistent little voice next to my ear in counterpoint with my husband's: "Judy, it's time to get up... "/ "Mama, I'm hungry, make me breakfust!" / "Judy? Judy, wake up..." "I wanna egg! I wan' toast with Cheez Whiz!" The above is generally a signal that I've overslept, which in itself means I didn't get enough sleep during the night.

However - I have a Monday morning nine o'clock class, so I drag myself up and into the shower. The breakfast I throw together for myself and Katherine doesn't sit well on my stomach for some reason. Bry is still not feeling well from his bout with stomach flu and decides to call in sick. And there's a note on our front door from our next-door neighbour, a MJU professor, coolly asking us to 'take in our clothes hanger' out of the 'public space' while acknowledging the fact that we are 'with child' - presumably the logic here is that we can be assumed to need more space. Nonetheless she seems to feel that having to look at our three coats hanging neatly on a foot-wide, meter-and-a-half-tall hatstand (next to our door and not impeding traffic in any way) is detrimental to her well-being in the morning.

Classes, despite this unpromising beginning, go well. We're starting Unit Three (already? The midterm exam is only a couple of weeks away!) and studying Adverbs of Frequency (which are much easier to master than their name would imply). Red, Purple, Blue, and Green class all dutifully hand in their homework, and most of it is of pretty high quality, from a superficial examination.

I stroll back down the hall from a quick visit to the water fountain between my Blue (1 - 2 pm) and my Green (2 - 3) class, and pass the cleaning adjummas. Usually this trio of diminutive, hunched 'aunties' in grey uniform blouses and baggy grey/blue pants scuttle cheerfully from room to room, sweeping, wiping, dumping garbage, and looking busy. At the moment all three of them are sitting on the floor against the second-floor balcony rail with a long piece of bubblewrap over their legs like a futuristic shawl. And they are all happily popping the bubbles.

I stop. I stand in front of them, causing a temporary rift and redirection in the stream of students around me. I slowly start to grin as they look up at me: three wrinkled faces on perma-bend, wattled necks - three pairs of calloused, swollen-knuckled, hard-working hands - three pairs of short legs tucked comfortably into a half-lotus - all sitting there popping bubblewrap like three-year olds. I hunker down in front of them and they grin back. And the four of us pop bubbles together, in a stolen, theraputic, tranquil moment of satisfaction.

Pop.
Pop pop pop.
POP!

You try it.

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Tiny Collision, Taking Car, Tossing Cookies - March 26

The words 'peaceful' and 'weekend' never seem to come into conjunction in our personal experience, and the last two days ran true to form.

Saturday was payday; flush with cash, energy and optimism, we went into Seoul with Katherine and had a fabulous time running round Gosok Bus Terminal. Katherine added another English-language kid's video to her scanty collection (she's currently attempting to memorize 'The Aristocats') and enjoyed picking out a couple of children's books. Along with sundry snacks, chocolate milks, getting to pet the rabbit in the pet section, and lots of Mom-n-Dad time, it made for a great day for her, though a busy one. She and Bryan both fell soundly asleep in the bus on the way home - until we came to an unscheduled and abrupt stop just a few hundred meters before the Yongin exit.

Some little Hyundai had either changed lanes at the last moment or decided to brake sharply - in any event, our bus wasn't quite able to stop fast enough and tapped the car's back end. It wasn't much of a jolt for us, but it must have shaken up the Hyundai's passengers. We weren't able to see much, but it appeared that no one was hurt; there was plenty of handwaving, name cards being exchanged, and cellphone transactions. At one point about halfway through the discussion the passenger just ahead of us, a well-groomed man in an immaculate business suit, pricked up his ears and jogged off the bus to join the exchange - apparently welcomed! Bry and I speculated that he was an accident lawyer... but in any case it was eventually resolved and we were able to proceed. For once the rigid schedule of the highway buses was disrupted (we've seen a driver close his doors almost in an adjumma's face as she came panting up, and pull away from the loading platform because she would have made him thirty seconds behind the hour...) so our schedule was also off by about half-an-hour.

We got our bread for the week at Paris Baguette and then headed up to E-Mart for a big grocery load - so wonderful not to have to skimp and skim but to have some things on hand! As I don't yet have a pantry - we need to buy a shelving system, probably just a bookcase or two, for the kitchen closet - I'm not 'stocking up', but it's nice to have a can of tuna, some mayo and ketchup, some snacks, and so on actually in the house. Katherine wasn't left out here either; she got to watch the fish with Mommy and then pick out a mini toilet seat! (I'm not kidding - she's anxious about sitting on the big toilet because her little bum tends to fall through. This cute padded seat is designed to sit over the adult one and comes on and off easily.) We found a throw blanket in a quiet beige plaid for the amazing price of 5000 won and picked it up to cover the strange assortment of cushions and upholstery on the scavenged armchair.

Sunday... well, Kath woke up with a croupy cough, a grouchy expression, and purple circles under her eyes. "I think she needs a rest, Bry," I pointed out, "some unscheduled time." Bry wanted to go to church, naturally, so I volunteered to stay home with her - fortunately, because my mother phoned and we were able to have a lovely long chat. Not to mention that we got the video system on Skype (though not the sound) running and Mom was able to see me, Katherine, and our apartment via our little laptop's built-in webcam - fun for all of us. Alas, I couldn't hear her due to technical difficulties, but we just stayed on the phone to remedy that. Hopefully she'll be able to get her microphone settings corrected and we'll be able to avoid the long-distance charges between Canada and Korea from now on! Katherine sang the little song she's been learning at daycare: "Sarang-e, sarang-e...." (which means "I love you") and mugged happily for the camera, while I got to show off my decor and my new lamp (see last blogpost).

We had a lovely long leisurely day together until Bryan got home - with a bad case of stomach upset and a new car.

Oh, did I mention that he phoned to warn me that he'd gone to Bennigan's for lunch with our good friend Chung-Soo and that they were going to a used car lot afterwards? So he got home around six, parked our new (ok, old, but you know what I mean - new to us) Daewoo Leganza behind the apartment, staggered into our place and spent the next four hours in close communion with the bathroom. I only got to see it - the car, that is - this morning.

It's white with grey upholstery, a four-door sedan with a nice big trunk, automatic, 69 thou k, 1998 Leganza by the Korean auto manufacturer Daewoo. We paid 4 million but insurance and transfer fees brought that up to about 5.5 - less than six thousand Canadian. More details later, as I have to go to lunch.

Bry, by the way, spent most of the night purging his system and wasn't well enough to go into classes this morning. However, we expect that he'll sleep off most of the weakness and nausea today and be fine tomorrow (which is our day off anyhow). Spare a prayer on behalf of what we suspect is simple but nasty food poisoning (drat that club sandwich at Bennigans!) and I'll keep you updated!

Love from Judy,
see you tomorrow
xxxooo

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Enlightened... Judy Makes a Lamp

Remember a few blog entries back I was listing things I'd like in a care package, and whimsically included 'a lamp'? Well, the price of lamps everywhere seems consistently high. But as our livingroom has all the warm and cheery atmosphere of a dental waiting room at the moment, I have taken steps to remedy that without dropping fifty bucks on a fixture - I've made my own.

While at the big stationery store in the basement of Gosok Bus Terminal the other week, I happened to spot a string of LED mini-lights in the hobbyist section, right next to the flocked trees, train gravel, and log cabin dioramas. The box was 12 thousand for a string of fifty white mini-lights, with funky rectangular slabs of bulbs about the size of Katherine's thumbnail. 'I can do something with those,' I thought, and scooped them up.

Back in Yongin I found some marvelous hanji (handmade mulberry paper. It will feature prominently in these discourses, so remember the word!) in a coarse brown fiber - very strong, textural, see-through, and flexible. If you remember my 'jusi' (banana fiber) baseball cap from the Philippines, that's what this hanji looked like. I bought two sheets: one to lay artistically across the mundane coffee table, and one to make into my lamp.

Then I spent an hour or so outside our house picking out long straight sticks from the bushpile on the hillside and cutting them roughly to size. I selected eight short sticks, about eight or nine inches each and about the thickness of my index finger. It took longer to find the four straight uprights which needed to be just over two feet. I took them all inside and while the glue gun was heating up, I formed a box frame held together temporarily with twist ties. A dab of glue to secure the round sticks against each other, and then a good tight binding with brown sisal twine (that great rough string you use to hold up peavines in the spring, or wrap presents with), letting the cut ends hang down about an inch or two - very artsy and rustic, what with the bark on and all...

The frame looked very much like an old-fashioned box kite on end, with a square base against which the bottoms of the uprights were tucked securely, and a square top with the ends of the uprights protruding about an inch or so. The next and simplest step was to wrap the sheet of hanji around the rectangular body, allowing the base and top to show at both ends.

Then I took one more stick, about ten inches long with a nice bark pattern, and put it directly across the top, centered, gluing and binding it with the sisal again, exactly like a handle. I took the string of lights out and wrapped it in foot-and-a-half-long loops (to fit within the shade of the hanji). Gathering the loops all together at the top (LEDs don't emit any heat to speak of) with another piece of sisal, I tied the bundle to the handle stick in the centre, letting it all hang freely and centred within the square of the lamp. The bottom of the loops were about two inches from the floor.

I let the control box (yeah, since the lightstring was designed as for advertising or Christmas display, it came with a little green box near its plug end which allows it to flicker in eight different settings or pulses) sit freely just outside the frame and plugged the whole thing into a socket behind our newly-scavenged armchair.

It looks great! The roughly textured, see-though hanji sets off the bark and sisal, the lights pulse slowly (on setting number four, that is), and it's illumination and sculpture all in one. Once I dig out the digital camera, I'll take and post a picture so you can see it in situ. Which reminds me that I need to take and post a lot of pictures - particularly Katherine!

Must go eat now as my office hour is over and my lunch hour has begun. Enjoy whatever meal you are going to sit down to!

love,
Judy

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Fresher than Fresh Air - March 20

It was a productive 'day off' today! (WARNING: 'Fresher than Fresh Air - AKA Bryan and Judy's Day Off' contains blow-by-blow mundane descriptions of travel, administrative details, and taxi air fresheners. Feel free to wait for the next blog entry unless you are desperate to keep up with our saga!)

We got an early start with Katherine safely and cheerfully off to daycare at about 9:05 this morning; once she was on her shuttlebus we kept on walking down the hill to one of the main drags through Yongin, Hwy 42. Many of the inter-town busses run along either 42 or 45 (the other main street), so if you know which number goes where - and where they stop - you can get around quite efficiently. We hopped the 6000 to Suwon and spent the next fifty minutes staring out the windows at the ever-increasing conglomerations of Lego-like apartment high-rises which are cutting into the rice paddies and soft contours of the Korean hills.

At Suwon Station we grabbed a cab and waved our passport receipt under the placid cabbie's nose (as we weren't sure how to say "Suwon Immigration Office" in Korean). He nodded cheerfully and shot out into the six lanes of teeming traffic spinning off the roundabout, wisely demurring right-of-way to a bullying bus but insouciantly cutting off fellow taxis and shouldering past smaller cars, to successfully be ejected into a roadway 270 degrees from his original direction. Bry and I visually confirmed it to be the right road, and settled back into our seats (though one can't exactly say we 'relaxed'). Our cabbie dropped us, flashers blinking as he slid into a stop reserved for the bus barrelling in behind him, directly in front of the Immigration Office. We hastily thrust our fee at him and scrambled out of the taxi as the bus blatted its horn in indignation.

Pickup was a considerably simpler, quieter, and less crowded affair than application had been: three minutes wait while a clerk wandered over to the counter where we were waiting, a wave of our passport receipt, and a trade-in for two passports and two precious Alien Registration Cards - our primary identification documents while residing in Korea! We were able to spend the remainder of the morning (about eighty minutes) browsing through the giant E-Mart just down the street from the Immigration Office before heading back to Suwon Station for the anticipated lunch at the Outback.

(I picked up an adorable fuzzy quilt with little bears on it for Katherine's 'bed', some hooks for the kitchen, a spatula, a nice wooden dishrack for only four thousand won, and a few other basics to make the house more livable....if you really want to know! And we had the chicken fingers and salad with Outback bread and a baked potato on the side. Those baked potatoes are worth fifty minutes on the bus alone: the skin earthy and salty, the flesh soft and slightly flaky, the toppings real butter and real sour cream.... I never leave so much as a flake on my plate!)

Bryan had cracked a molar a few months ago - split it completely in half in his gum - and, horrific as that sounds, had been claiming that it wasn't causing him pain - but last night it decided to call in its debts. On close observation it was clear that one side of his face was noticably swollen, and I insisted that we get back to Yongin in time to see a dentist - preferably our 'old dentist' who might still have our records. So.... across the street (six lanes of traffic) via the pedestrian bridge, find the good old 6000 bus, and another hour back home.

"Our" dentists still had their clinic on Main Street - I mean Hwy 42 - and the bus let us off almost in front of their door. Although it seemed that none of the people we remembered were still there, they did still have Bry's records, and were happy to take him in and start treatment on the spot. I did a bit of browsing at the stationery store while he had his X-rays done, then headed back to the university while they put him in the chair for nerve extraction. Yet another taxi. Here I must digress and explain the title of this entry - the inspiration for sitting down to describe our day in such excruciating detail.

Korean taxi drivers, like public transit specialists everywhere, attempt to personalize their relatively impersonal automotive space in very similar ways. While not a patch on the glamour of taxis in Bangkok or Manila, Korean taxis have their own charm - a sort of homely, plaintive feel. One can always tell when one is being conveyed about by a Catholic 'kisanim' (literally, 'Mr. Driver', or 'Driver-sir') as there is usually a rosary draped artistically over the rearview mirror, a Madonna image embedded in 'crystal', or a devotional card taped up. The Buddhist drivers tend towards plastic lotus flowers on the dashboard or monk bracelets in heavy brown wood beads hanging off the mirror. Of course, there are always the secular tokens: the picture of the kids, the hands-free cellphone accessories, the mini-TV, the mini GPS screen, and the air fresheners.

The air fresheners are more than a token in some taxis, between the aroma of the driver's kimchi lunch, the cigarette he had while waiting in line at the taxi stand, and the lingering scents of the last passenger's hair cream, jasmine soap, or burping child. And they are invariably less than discreet. In fact, most look as though they were designed by Barbie and filled by Dr. Frankenstein: bulbous clear globes with ornately metallic caps shaped like cute animals/ dumplings / apples / crowns / cartoon characters, sloshing with scarlet-red, bile-green, or pinesol-yellow fluids. The aromas are equally unsubtle, ranging from 'Freshly Plasticized Strawberry' through 'Slaughtered Pine Forest' and 'Really Lemony Lemon'. But hey, it beats second-hand kimchi and cigarette smoke any day.


Bryan and I met back up at the office, from which he departed to pick up Katherine and eat supper with four of the other teachers at the Honeybee at Myongji Ipgu (see earlier blognotes) while I stayed at the office computer to get a few things organized and write this blog entry! His face feels a bit better already and we hear from Dev that we actually have a health and dental plan that may cover much of the costs for us!

We also got our bank accounts set up just in time for payday next week, and I found a pediatric clinic that will accept Katherine should she fall ill enough to require it, so it was a pretty good day for getting things accomplished, all the way around.

And now I'm signing off, in hopes you were at least marginally entertained and informed. If not, at least my typing speed is getting back up to spec....

Love you, miss you, and hoping to hear from you / see some comments,
Judy

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Saturday, March 17, 2007

Of Saturday, Shopping, and Supper

Today was a satisfying Saturday, a balance of busy business and peaceful recreation, just as a weekend should have.

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Katherine wakes me at seven, which is an excellent time to wake if one has been an early-to-bedder; it is light outside and one feels rested, but not so late that the morning feels wasted should one have things to do. She is snuggly - a nice change from her independent stand-offishness of late - and full of enthusiasm for the day ahead. Her eyes sparkling, she plants many energetic kisses on me with her soft moist mouth and demands tribute in tickles.

"You're not going to daycare today, darling," I murmur to her as she settles down enough to listen, "today is Saturday and you can spend all day with Mama and Daddy. And we're invited to supper with Auntie Mir..." At which she regains enough energy to bounce up and announce that she wants her breakfast.

We duly break our fast together before waking Bryan up, have our various showers, get dressed, and are ready to walk out the door at quarter to nine, into a cool and cloudless spring morning. As always, Katherine's patient trek all the way down the hill to Myongji Ip-gu (the main gates, about a fifteen-minute hike for her little legs) is rewarded with a mini chocolate milk from the Family Mart there. The lady behind the counter knows us all by now and is delighted when Katherine goes confidently over to the dairy case, selects her ‘choco uyu’, and brings it up to the counter with her ‘obegwon’ coin (about fifty cents) in hand.

Our bus driver, on the other hand, doesn’t even glance at us when we board our randomly-selected 5000 bus at the stop just outside Myongji Ip-gu. It is traditional that the many busses which use MJU’s huge parking lots as a end-of-line rest area and turn-around point don’t charge students for a lift into town (usually just to the Bus Terminal which is about five minutes away by wheel), and we instructors have been graciously included in this tradition. However, this ‘kisanim’ (‘honourable driver’) , despite his age-crinkled brow, seems unfamiliar with the exemption, tapping the fare box with peremptory meaning and grimly-compressed mouth. Then again, as he had been tossing back a packet of Korean medicinal granules – a foul-tasting brownish concoction usually prescribed for any common grippe, ague, or headache - just seconds before we boarded, the brow-crinkling and mouth-compression may have had strictly physical significance…

He lets us, and the other three passengers, all students, off ungraciously just before the terminal, at the main junction in town. I have in mind a number of acquisitions, and I suggest a plan of action for the morning which Bryan accepts nonchalantly. Our first stop is the new Paris Baguette (a bakery chain which makes, among other things, loaves of some of the more passable bread in the country – made with wheat flour and unadulterated with the sweetish corn flavour that many other Korean breads possess, a flavour that only intensifies with toasting, alas!) at the east end of town.

We pass a pet store, some of its stock on display out on the sidewalk, and Katherine is enchanted when the rabbits sniff hopefully at her knuckles through the bars of their cage. She prefers the bright sparkle of the fish, though, having fallen in love with the children’s story “A Fish Out of Water” and been promised an ‘Oscar’ goldfish of her very own at some later date. She looks up at me impishly and paraphrases: “I’ll on’y feed him a liddle. So much an’ no more!” I grin back, in shared recognition; what a treat it is to have already, with my three-year old daughter, that mutual pleasure of a familiar book!

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At the bakery we buy them out of our preferred bread, and head back towards the centre of town, wary as always of the various pedestrian hazards. There are various stumps of concrete serving as parking bollards, rough ends of wires, spikes of rebar, belaying cables, oddly-spaced poles, head-high awnings. There are puddles of invariably orangish-red vomit (stained with the all-purpose ‘gochujang’, red pepper paste/sauce) from over-indulgence in the hofs and bars and norae-bangs (singing rooms or karaoke bars) the night before. Vendors’ displays crowd the space in front of their stores. Piles of cardboard, neatly flattened and tied, sit beside the bagged trash of those same stores. Sullen small trucks, reckless motor scooters, jaunty Kias and Hyundais, bullying buses, all surge along feet away from the edge of the sidewalk. Then there is the condition of the sidewalk itself – usually a blend of erratically buckled interlocking brick and odd strata of concrete, poured by municipality, store owner, street maintenance and helpful pothole vigilante alike without reference to code or zoning. We proceed in our usual fashion: Bryan saunters along watching traffic with one eye and Katherine with the other, Kath alternately lags to investigate something of interest or darts to catch up with the preferred-parent-of-the-minute (Bryan), while I hover like an anxious cat at her shoulder, one paw extended lest she suddenly dart into one of the many hazards aforementioned.

Such strolling, along with a bit of eye-shopping - as Koreans call browsing - combined with the discovery of a new large video rental place where we’re able to set up an account, takes us happily to an early lunch at the single representative of evil Western fast-food in town – McDonalds. Well, authentic evil Western fast-food, that is. There are an unfortunate number of ‘burger stalls’ and Lotterias selling horrible patties (which, I might add, would be lucky to contain anything as healthy as dog food, let alone dog, despite the frequent assertions by disgusted foreigners to the contrary…) and equally horrible fries composed of sweet potato, chipped parsnip, or other less identifiable tubers.

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If I may digress for a moment, this type of ‘cuisine’ is known as “Fusion”, a word which upon encountering anywhere in this country one would be well-advised to avoid diligently. Korean food, love or hate gochujang, is delicious, balanced, and healthy, while Western food, say what you may about the ever-increasing serving sizes (and ignoring the many passing fads such as carb-counting) has the vast culinary traditions of both North America and Europe behind much of it to produce such amazing genres as Italian pasta, French desserts, Southern comfort food, Danish smorgasbord, and so on.

However, as with many cultural fusions, the mixture of the two produces an unfortunate intensification of the worst, not the best, qualities of both. For example: “Donkass”, which is as vulgar-tasting as it sounds, is a pressed-pork piece (I cannot in all conscience describe it more fairly) covered with a thick coating of dried breadcrumbs and deepfried, then served with a sauce composed mainly of third-grade ketchup and hardened sugar. ‘Salad’ at such places is usually finely-chopped green cabbage with shards of purple cabbage, some mugwort or other medicinal herb, stirred through with a dollop of no-name mayonnaise imitation, while their idea of sausage cannot be adequately envisioned in a family-friendly blog …

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That aside, we enjoy our fat-laden treat of hamburger and fries, while Katherine makes tentative friends at the miniature ‘Play Place’ beside us, and wash it down with (so far) guiltless water. The young mother three tables down, whose little girl has been casting wistful glances at the tube slide, sends down a yoghurt drink (which thankfully Katherine has learned to appreciate) with admiring glances at our daughter’s eyelashes. A group of middleschool girls, in maroon unifrocks, delays our exit with similar flattery, practicing their limited English between giggles. If only our college-level students were so uninhibited with the few words and phrases they know, how much actual communication could they not achieve, Bryan and I wonder to each other as we hurry towards the taxi stand.

The early promise of a beautiful day has turned threatening; grayish-blue clouds glower in the west, and above us a high overcast hides the sun. We can afford to smirk, though, for we have gotten a taxi and are hieing our way to the local bastion of culture and readily-available comestibles – E-Mart!

Two large floors of shopping (one groceries, one household goods) plus two floors of parking above that – seems an odd system, but it’s quite workable, connected with two sets of escalators. The first set is outside the cash registers (so one can enter on any floor and depart again with the single item one has needed) while the second is internal (so that one can shop moving freely between floors, and exit once to pay for everything all together). There are lockers large and small for outside packages and bags, nice big grocery carts (and even a few ‘car-style’ carts to entertain toddlers), a packing area well-provided with boxes, twine, and yellow ‘E-Mart’ blazoned tape, a little seating area, a small food court, and even a tiny pet section. Mind you, it doesn’t have a photography studio, a music store, and a short-term daycare like the E-Mart in Suwon, but one can’t demand everything of such a small town as Yongin!

At the end of almost every aisle stands a uniformed clerk with his or her samples of goods, and one could skip lunch and merely browse the offered samples (as Katherine proceeds to do, having left most of her hamburger untouched.) She tries bites of ‘pulgogi’ barbequed beef and bacon, cereal and ‘mandu’ dumplings, cream-filled bread and soy milk. We love the variety of products on the shelves, and do a quick grocery run, but we have a couple of items specifically in mind, and we find them successfully.

Katherine is now the proud owner of a nice set of sneakers which fit her far better than the little slip-ons she must wear at daycare – a necessity given all the walking we have to do together. And we have a fold-up stroller, which will make life easier for everyone (see reason above), especially at five in the afternoon coming home from daycare with a tired child up a steep hill.

Outside E-mart, with a giant bag of bread, two hefty bags of groceries, some bottled water, a packaged stroller, and Katherine, we wait in vain for a passing taxi. The road is busy, and one does not usually have to spend more than five minutes before one rushes by, but this afternoon we wait for ten with no luck. Finally one pulls up but as we are second in line, we are still waiting. As I sit down again with Katherine on my lap, a glistening silver truck pulls up to the stand, the smoked windows roll down, and two familiar faces look out – Chang-so and her mother!

The owner of the Honeybee restaurant (at Myongji Ip-gu, where we often eat), whom we call affectionately “Halmoni” (Grandmother) is driving her brand-new purchase, and her daughter and granddaughter (Chang-so, Katherine’s daycare buddy) are in the front seat with her. “Where are you going?” they ask, and when we gesture up the hill towards Myongji, in the opposite direction from their truck’s nose, they cheerfully wave us into the backseat. Groceries, stroller, water and all, we pile in and Halmoni does an insouciant U-turn in the face of oncoming traffic.

The truck’s back seats still have plastic over them, the arm rests slick with protective tape, the scent of ‘new car’ spicy in our tired noses. All too quickly we are up the hill, pulling into the Faculty Guesthouse’s little parking lot, unloading our booty, effusing our thanks. Halmoni and her family wave our gratitude away cheerfully, Katherine and Chung-so exchange kisses, and we part with smiles.

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I put Katherine down for a nap while I unpack and put things away. Bry must head down to the office so he can use the computer and printer there: yesterday he bumped into an old friend of ours, an erst-while MJU chaplain and current pastor in Suwon, and was invited not only to come to church tomorrow in Suwon, but to preach! So, at Pastor Im’s insistence, we shall be sitting through a Korean church service (though the sermon will at least be half in English. The pastor will translate Bryan’s fifteen-minute message line by line into Hangeul for the benefit of his flock…) rather than with our old acquaintances in Seoul Union Church with whom we were joyfully reunited last Sunday. Ah well, it’s never boring around here!

The peace and quiet lasts till about four, long enough for me to devour a few more of Mir’s books – she has a fairly extensive English library which she’s been lending me a bag at a time – and then do a bit of unstressed tidying up. It is actually a lot easier to keep a small place picked up, IF you do it as you go along and have everyone’s cooperation. I’ve been a bit of a tyrant about it in these first few weeks, but I do want to establish good habits right off the bat: so – Bry hangs his own coat up, Kath picks up her animals when she’s moving to another activity, and so on. I have managed to scavenge an armchair (that’s a story in its own right) AND a discarded but intact-as-to-its-upholstery ottoman, and have made a couple of bright collages for the walls, so the place is looking better every day.

Kath gets to watch her DVD from the rental place (102 Dalmations) on Mama’s new computer after she wakes up, Bry returns safely with message to hand, and we go on up to Mir’s apartment more than ready for food!

And such food it is: she has prepared a lavish Korea feast which must have cost her dear in both time and won, from the opening traditional seaweed and miso soup to the finishing ‘Bae’ pearapple and non-traditional cheesecake. Katherine shows off her chopstick skills with her new ‘children’s chopsticks’, an adorable contraption which looks like a drawing compass with pads, loops, and knobs on, and actually eats bits of the marvelous meal.

Besides the soup and dessert, there are marinated black beans, scallion pancakes, dried seaweed sheets, fresh hot and sticky rice, shredded salt-n-sugar ‘kim’, carrot and celery sticks, barbecued ribs! perilla leaves, gochujang, soy sauce… and even a costly imported Miller Genuine Draft for Bryan (because Korean men like beer with their meal, and Mir is nothing if not perceptive). It is completely delectable, and she encourages us to take seconds and thirds (though since everything is on the table at the same time, the Western idea of a course does not truly apply and one merely keeps eating and refilling the plate until satiated) before putting out the cheesecake and bae slices.

I heartily wish I were not so groggy from an interrupted night, early morning, long day walking, and somnolence-inducing vast meal; I must beg off almost immediately after we finish, and since that is also just past eight in the evening that is also Katherine’s bedtime. She needs it, as she’s gone from lovably cuddling on her favorite ‘Imo’s’ (auntie’s) lap to playing ‘seafood’ (opening her mouth to display chewed but unswallowed morsels, alas!) She is rendered respectable and says her farewells affectionately and audibly before we stumble down the stairs with her and put her down on her quilts with goodnight smooches.

Well, from kisses to kisses: it hasn’t been that bad a day, has it? In fact, the best adjective I could choose to sum up this Saturday would have to be…. “satisfying”. So on that, eminently satisfying note, – to bed!

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Care Packages; or; 'Hey Mom, Send Money!"

Really. Due to a strange concatenation of circumstances - not that there are ever any other kind of concatenations - we are won-less. Despite having money in two North American banks, literal hundreds in traveller's cheques, and our first paystub coming in fifteen days, we cannot buy groceries today.

Under normal conditions, one requires no more than a presigned traveller's cheque and a passport, correct? Not at the bank on campus. No, no: 'if you do not have an account with us we cannot possibly give you so much money...'. "But it's a TRAVELLER'S cheque!" I protest to no avail, "it is the SAME as money!". They refuse to believe this, insularly insecure. 'You must set up an account,' they keep repeating, 'before we can give you money.'

In tones of frustrated patience I explain the following: I need an Alien Resident Card to set up an account - correct? Correct, they assure me. I continue: My Alien Resident Card is currently being processed in Suwon, about a 40 minute bus ride from Yongin. They nod. I do not, I point out with teeth politely clenched, at the moment have even enough money to buy a bus ticket to GET to Suwon to pick up that card. They look at my twice-signed traveller's cheque and confer for a while. Then they make me a counter-offer, beaming benevolently. They will LEND me ninety thousand won - roughly the amount of the hundred US dollars to which the cheque should entitle me. When I get my card I will come back and set up an account with them, yes? And THEN I can cash the cheque. And THEN I can PAY THEM BACK their ninety thousand won loan!

Alas, this sucessfully-concluded transaction took place about ten days ago, so that ninety has been spent. Our Alien Cards will be ready for pick-up on the fifteenth - two days from now. But none of the bank machines on campus, for some reason, are willing to let us access our Canadian accounts (which was our mainstay while shopping in Seoul last weekend! And by the way, we have our own computer now... more on that later...), even with the hefty surcharge - the administration seems to have removed all the Cirrus-capable machines. The upshot is that I don't have three bucks to pay for lunch at the cafeteria today, let alone go grocery shopping (much needed eggs, milk, bread, etc.) and far less run into Seoul for some few creature comforts for the house. Did I mention we are still sleeping on T-shirt pillowcases? And Katherine's daycare wants me to take my turn at sending in 'parched beans' and 'immature anchovies' (as translated by our ever-helpful Korean assistant Jisu) for a 'morning snack' for the students...

Oh, and today was our day off, but we're stranded on campus - no bus or taxi funds. Thankfully Bry paid for the laundry on Friday when he dropped it off, so we will have clean clothes today when he picks them up on his way home from the student laundromat - washed, dried, and folded neatly in a big blue plastic bag. And there was enough food in the house for a healthy breakfast for us all and a packed lunch for Katherine.

Anyhow, enough whining - our fellow teachers won't let us starve. I'm sure Dev or one of the others will spot us a short-term loan, but I'm just very tired of having to ask - yet again. Let's change the subject!

Sooooooooooooooooo - if someone wanted to send us a care package, say of things that weren't readily available here, and was interested in knowing just what items we'd have on our wish list... here's the list:

1 plastic shower curtain (Dollarama) - off-white, aqua, or white, in that order of preference.
1 large-size jar of Cheez Whiz - the one I brought is about half-gone despite hoarding.
Several bags of Ruffles potato chips - Sour Cream and Onion for me, Regular for Bry. If you poke a little hole with a pin, squeeze out excess air, and tape the hole up with scotch tape, you can pack two in the space of one. And they make great padding, even if the chips crush down.
1 large bottle of tar shampoo (in the brown plastic bottle, available at the pharmacy. Double-wrapped because it reeks and a leak would be disastrous! It's expensive but lasts Bry about six months...)
A lamp. No, just kidding. I do long for Canadian Tire, where I could just buy all the pieces and make my own lighting fixture for about ten dollars. Here the cheapest, flimsiest little bedside lamp with a ruffly shade and impractically tiny stem costs thirty thousand won - while something like a standing sconce would be over a hundred thousand (about ninety to a hundred dollars)
Home and decor magazines - something to read in English! Bry treated me to an imported decorator mag at the bookstore in Suwon the other day and it was 12 thousand won... (looks guilty)

Interestingly enough, some of the things I thought wouldn't be available, ARE now. Spices, for example. Cinnamon and garlic powder! Deodorant. Broccoli. Salads! Real lettuce and mache salads, not just chopped cabbage. Ready-to-go food like fried chicken, dumplings, spaghetti. Most of this is due to the new presence of a big shopping chain called E-Mart - which actually bought out Wal-Mart in Korea - now with stores throughout the country. Our E-Mart is walking distance, about five hundred meters from the Myongji front gates, so that is a real treat.

Now, if only I could go grocery shopping.....

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Thursday, March 8, 2007

Detention Block H, Cell 9128

We love our classes, but we hate our classroom.

It's a 'neutral' (read 'bland') off-off-white that I suspect the painters put on with a broom - after stirring with a scorched walking stick in an unwashed porridge pot. One wall is taken up by the immense black chalkboard (all right, points for drama) and another by a row of dust-grimed, uninspired sliding windows (but the view is out over the mountains - if only we could see them...). The back wall is completely without interest from corner to corner, the floor is poured concrete, and the wooden dais which runs the length of the chalkboard to give the professors some added height/status echoes like a Greek theatre's thunderbox with the lightest footfall. The only furnishings are eight industrial tables (steel legs, pale greyish-brown fake ashwood top) with four chairs each, a rickety wooden podium which reaches almost to my chin (and would conceal some of the Korean female professors entirely), and a teacher's desk huddling meekly in the corner behind the door. Drab, and an uninspiring environment for intellectual stimulation!

Bry and I are sharing a classroom (and an office, and a schedule. That ensures that we get the same day off... obviously a priority...) turn and turn about. The theory goes as follows: I teach two classes in a row, then he teaches his two while I have one office hour and one lunch hour. Then I'm back in the classroom while he has lunch and office, then I head back home while he teaches his final two, then walks down and picks up Katherine from the daycare shuttlebus at 5:15.

Note that I said theory. In practise, things are rather different. My lovely six-hour 'morning schedule' which was supposed to allow me to get home at three-thirty, tidy, recreate, fix supper, and smile at my dear ones coming through the door at five-thirty has been completely changed. I have an extra class (more on that later) and the regular conversation classes have been moved around so that two days a week I start at 10 and go till 5. Yup, so much for a morning schedule!

As it's working out, we all get up at six-thirty or so and shower, dress, eat breakfast. Then we both walk Katherine down to the shuttlebus which arrives at 9:05 (or on a day when I have a nine o'clock class Bry does it on his own) and then head to the office together. I do assorted maintenance, email, organizing, and paper shuffling when I'm not actually teaching... and then there's the whole free supper thing.

If you are a teacher at MJU, you pay 3500 won (about three or four bucks) for a lunch at the Faculty Cafeteria, but you are entitled to a free supper from 5 - 6. It's usually rice, soup, a couple of spicy vegetables, and fish or other strange protein. So, in the interests of saving both time and money, we have been eating at the cafeteria for our suppers - and there's little point in me walking back to the house for an hour or so then coming back for supper, so I stick around. That means another hour or so hanging out in the office, doing more papershuffling or surfing the net. When Bry finishes his last class, we pick up Katherine together from the shuttlebus stop and haul our tired bodies back up the very long, steep hill from the Myongji gates to the campus centre, then across the campus to the cafeteria.

Katherine thinks it looks like a shark or a tiger, and it is indeed a sleek and attractive piece of modern architecture - alas, the only such on campus. Most of the other buildings are concrete clad in unappealing stucco or off-coloured subway tiles. Case in point - our building, Hanbogwan. Nausea Green ceramic and Fainting Beige Mud stucco covers the exterior. Inside it's grey, off-white, and off-pale-yellow. The design is less than optimal, being a box inside a box-like stucco hole. I'm not kidding: two floors are technically below-ground, getting their sunshine filtered down a 'light well', a sort of moat surrounding three sides. The other side of the building, the back as it happens, overlooks the sloping hillside and actually has a large balcony where students sit, study (and smoke) in sunny weather.

Our office, which we have nicknamed the dungeon, is on the second floor (that's still one floor below ground) on the front side, so our nice big windows look directly into a streaky stucco wall about two meters away! The eight-foot ceilings would relieve some of the oppressive atmosphere, except that the entire room is a puce and grey box: fake travertine pebble floor straight out of a sixties shopping mall, pimply puce walls (that vomitous 'soft' stucco texture that gets sprayed over concrete block to disguise the seams), and three dogfish-grey-blue cubicle dividers. The desks are industrial grey and the office-style chairs are black.... the whole lit with three sets of double fluorescent tubes without light panels over them. All in all, an artistic nightmare and psychologically stultifying even for the less sensitive among us.

However, lest you begin to worry about future work-related traumas, let me assure you that the chairs are at least quite comfortable, the desks are large with a nice set of drawers on one side and a bookcase unit on top, and there are two internet-connected computers with a printer and an English MS Office suite installed. Also, since I have never been one to suffer my environment for long, it already looks a bit better: four foamboard 'bulletin boards' have now been installed over each teacher's desk in warm colours, a soft brown scarf lines the broad marble windowsill, and the bleak 'view' is in part disguised by a beautiful old broken Korean hourglass drum (carved wood) full of dried 'weeds' with dramatic shapes and textures. I've also made several desk organizers out of various snackboxes and scavenged cardboard, covered with paper and broad black tape to disguise the ill-assorted colours and fonts, so my desk is tidy and efficient.

And, most importantly, the office may be drab (though not for long), but our compatriots are not. We're enjoying getting to know everyone, and to pick up our friendship with Dev where we left off. A number of cafeteria meals together, conversations over the shared office hours, and going shopping inevitably starts the bonding process! I promise to let you know about our fellow teachers next time.

Love and hugs,
Judy

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Katherine the Trooper

March 7, 2007

Katherine has been completely amazing through all the various hassles and stresses we've been undergoing in the last week. She's trudged along on her little legs without complaint, uphill (literally) and down, through bitterly cold weather, with her new best friend 'Backpack' on her shoulders; waited for half-an-hour for her shuttlebus to show up, hopped on said bus with her new classmates without tears; gotten through an eight-hour day of shopping and traveling around Seoul; eaten seaweed, fish, beefknuckle, and other strange broths quite cheerfully; trusted assorted strangers with whom Mommy and Daddy have decided to leave her; put up with head-petting, cheek-pinching, and numerous other types of fawning from the adjummas and adjusshis on a daily basis - apparently the eyelashes are a big hit. She keeps getting 'arumdawayo!' (beautiful) and 'kyowaaaaayo!' (so cute) and 'in-yo!' (like a doll) as a steady diet of compliments.

I must say, she's behaved angelically through it all. A few tears here and there, sure, and perhaps just a bit more whining when she wants something - but for a three-year old in a strange country where none of her language ability does her any good, sans most of her toys, all of her books, videos, furniture, and other familiar things, in a new tiny house, her first daycare (in a strange environment, culture, and language), she has shown remarkable flexibility and even grace. We are frequently amazed at the understanding and perception her comments show, and how maturely she expresses herself.

In the morning she hugs me tightly and says, "I don't want to go to daycare, Mama - I want to go to the office with you. Can I come to the classroom?" Note: she understands that we both have to teach, and she refrains from saying that she doesn't like daycare, which she does. But she misses the intensive time that she has had with both parents since she was born. .. At five-fifteen she springs off the little shuttlebus full of energy and bright-eyed, telling us she had fun.

Yesterday she got off with her new friend Choon-so, the three-year old (well, ok, in Korea apparently both Katherine and Choon-so are actually FIVE years old, but anyhow...) whose grandparents run the Honeybee Shik-dang (restaurant) at the Myongji gates. Bryan and I often go there for dinner and Bry has his favorite dosot pibimbap (rice and veggies in a scorchingly hot dish, with an egg cracked on top and some red pepper paste). Choon-so's mom (who with her husband also works at the Honeybee) and I were waiting together, and after lots of hugs and kisses we were all swept into the restaurant together. I assumed we'd just warm up (it is SO cold here this week!) but before I knew it the two girls were sitting at a table together and Halmoni (Choon-so's grandmother) had whisked two little dishes of food in front of them. Child-size servings of hot rice, some fish broth, some hot fried tubu (tofu) and a fried egg each! It was delightful to see the two rosy little faces tucking into it together.

I picked up a little box of bee-shaped pushpins at the market to say 'thanks' but I think I'll need to come up with something fancier, because the Honeybee folk have been marvelous so far.

This morning, for example. It was NOT a good morning. Katherine came home with a four-page 'newsletter' in her bag yesterday which I stuck in my purse to have our office assistant help me with (because of course it was all in Korean). We left the house together, Kath and I, at eight, in a cold wind, and trotted fairly briskly down the hill to catch the shuttlebus (which has been coming at 8:20 - 8:30 am). We sat by the bus stop for thirty minutes in the increasingly bitter cold, and at quarter to nine, in a panic, I ran up with her to the Honeybee (about thirty feet from the bus stop). Choon-so's dad was 'on duty' and welcomed us to sit down in the warmth. I explained, nearly in tears, and in mixed Korean and English, that I had to teach at nine and was afraid Katherine had missed the shuttlebus.

He picked up the phone, dialed the daycare, and informed me gently that the shuttlebus time had been changed and that from now on it would come at nine. "But I have to be in the classroom at nine," I nearly wailed, looking between my chilled child and the clock. He indicated that he would be happy to take her down ten minutes from now and that I should go. Katherine, not oblivious to this exchange, flung herself into my arms in tears - understandably. Here was her dear mother abandoning her to a stranger, instead of her comparatively familiar shuttlebus driver and teacher.... and why couldn't she come to the office with me, please Mama?

I had a brainwave: pulling my business card from my purse, I got him to phone our apartment. In a few quick words I explained to Bryan and asked him to stay on the phone with Katherine so I could make my escape without hysteria (on whose part I did not specify). He cheerfully talked, sang, and told her a story until it was time for the bus to come, and Choon-so's dad patiently took the phone away and let Bry know he was walking her out. When we called the daycare later to check up on some other information, she was apparently just fine - so most of the trauma was on our part!

I came panting and frazzled into my office at two minutes to nine, threw on makeup, grabbed my books, took a deep breath and marched outwardly serenely into my classroom.... only to belatedly realize that on Monday my schedule (like everyone else's this week) had been changed around and I didn't start teaching till eleven.

I am ashamed to say that I said several unladylike words under my breath at this point and, I suspect, swore. It's all rather unclear. Anyhow, it did all get sorted out, I did get to all my classes, the newsletter got translated (I have to buy a birthday gift under 2000 won - two bucks - for two of Katherine's classmates who are having a birthday this month! And we have to bring in 'beans and dried anchovies' - presumably for a class snack! - on the fifteenth.... Don't you love this country?), and I've finally printed out my FINAL REVISED ULTIMATE SCHEDULE which should be valid for the rest of the semester.

Must go, have a class in five minutes. Love you all!

Don't forget, you CAN post comments. Just type in nonsense in the verification bar and keep submitting it and refreshing until the picture shows up!

Judy

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