life is good... ;0)

Song Jong Dong

a little of my everyday...

"teacher Jenipah" ;0)

Kwang Myeong OneRoom A-dong (aka my apartment bldg.)

Sunrise

WonPueong Dong and maples in the Fall

Global Foreign Language Institute! (my second home)

my street in Song Jong Dong

The house next to my apartment. It was always so beautiful in the early morning with the persimmon tree and the kimchi pots on the brick wall.

Dori-sa Temple

Dori-sa was built by Adowhasang who introduced Buddhism to Korea during the Silla Dynasty. The temple is presumed to have originally been located at the foot of Naengsan Mountain. It burned in a fire in 1677. It was later moved to the current site in 1729 and renamed as Dori Temple (The name Dori means views of peach and plum blossoms all over the hillsides of the mountain, even in the winter).

Dori-sa History

Hwaeom Stone Pagodaview from monk living quarterslibrary (Before Hangul (Korean Alphabet) was established, Chinese was the language used. However, it was only spoken by scholars and the elite.) As a result, the roof of this building is shaped like the Chinese A.kimchi pots on the roof maple at main building
your's truly and child Buddhamonks protesting newspaperamazing architecturemore amazing architecture

Dharmachakra showing the Eightfold Path

Buddha Statue

painting

Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey Day!

Today I made my students learn about a traditional Thanksgiving in the United States, and filled them with loads of turkey facts...

did you know...

that Americans eat somewhere near 45 million turkeys each year at Thanksgiving.

and

Turkeys can have heart attacks.

For those of you sitting down to dinner tonight, eat some for me! ;0)

I'd like to share...

the works of one of my favorites...Walt Whitman

Continuities

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

O Me! O Life!

O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

onward and upward

"pick your battles"

a friend passed on these words of wisdom that have been passed on for ages, but I've realized that they need to be put to test more so now than ever before. I believe, like Ben Harper, that I change the world "with my own two hands," but there are things that will not change no matter how much I try. So why stress myself out especially when it was never my battle to fight in the first place. so it's onward and upward from here on out. for those of you who I've been venting to lately thanks! it seems like I never realized how many wonderful and amazing people surround me until I went abroad and could no longer have physical contact with them. :0)

warm feet

for those of you who were wondering...

"any Korean can tell you, people dwelling in the Land of the Morning Calm are likely to experience pretty harsh winters and uncomfortably hot and humid summers. Summer temperatures can be as high as 35 degrees celsius, with winter temperatures dropping as far as 20 degrees below freezing. These weather variations are directly linked to the development of the traditional style of Korean housing-there was obviously a great deal to be gained from developing a method of keeping warm. One of the most innovative technologies developed in Korea lends itself to just this task. The ondol (this translates as "warm stone") floor, which dates back as far as the fifth century, was key in heating the Korean household."

each morning my feet hit the floor and are welcomed by the warmth of my ondol. furthermore, as a result of my heated floors, my apartment is now warm and cozy like a grandmother's blanket. For those of you voicing concerns because I'm so small (as if because I'm abroad my body won't do its job to generate heat) I'm not freezing to death. ;0)

headaches

I've a headache. Since I've moved to Korea I've a splitting headache at least once a week. I've not figured out if it's because of all of the air pollution, or my workload and all of it's frustrations. I'll be honest when those headaches set in I think what it would be like to just say to hell with it all and go home.

more later...

men

men on taking messages...

I love this, it's a prime example of what I really believe is a language barrier between men and women, hell maybe even a barrier that goes much deeper than that...

picture post

korea pictures...

those red dots you see are lanterns with prayers attached to them

the evening sun

behold...

bridge atop mountain

mountain view

I promise it's real...

temple steps

Gumi...I live down there

what the wiring looks like in one of the most technologically advanced countries...

some of these may seem a bit postcard-ish or like they were photo-shopped, well that is exactly how some of the places are here. The view and things like they temples seem almost surreal at times. I promise these are real pictures...

...

R.I.P. Norman Mailer

while the comings and goings of great minds is inevitable, to lose a talent like Norman Mailer is a major depression in the literary endeavor

the white negro
by Norman Mailer

II
It is on this bleak scene that a phenomenon has appeared: the American existentialist—the hipster, the man who knows that if our collective condition is to live with instant death by atomic war, relatively quick death by the State as l’univers concentrationnaire, or with a slow death by conformity with every creative and rebellious instinct stifled (at what damage to the mind and the heart and the liver and the nerves no research foundation for cancer will discover in a hurry) , if the fate of twentieth century man is to live with death from adolescence to premature senescence, why then the only life-giving answer is to accept the terms of death, to live with death as immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self. In short, whether the life is criminal or not, the decision is to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness, and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention, the life where a man must go until he is beat, where he must gamble with his energies through all those small or large crises of courage and unforeseen situations which beset his day, where he must be with it or doomed not to swing. The unstated essence of Hip, its psychopathic brilliance, quivers with the knowledge that new kinds of victories increase one’s power for new kinds of perception; and defeats, the wrong kind of defeats, attack the body and imprison one’s energy until one is jailed in the prison air of other people’s habits, other people’s defeats, boredom, quiet desperation, and muted icy self- destroying rage. One is Hip or one is Square (the alternative which each new generation coming into American life is beginning to feel) one is a rebel or one conforms, one is a frontiersman in the Wild West of American night life, or else a Square cell, trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society, doomed willy-nilly to conform if one is to succeed.

[...]

So no wonder that in certain cities of America, in New York of course, and New Orleans, in Chicago and San Francisco and Los Angeles, in such American cities as Paris and Mexico, D.F., this particular part of a generation was attracted to what the Negro had to offer. In such places as Greenwich Village. a menage-a-trois was completed—the bohemian and the juvenile delinquent came face-to-face with the Negro, and the hipster was a fact in American life. If marijuana was the wedding ring, the child was the language of Hip for its argot gave expression to abstract states of feeling which all could share, :at least all who were Hip. And in this wedding of the white and the black it was the Negro who brought the cultural dowry. Any Negro who wishes to live must live with danger from his first day, and no experience can ever be casual to him, no Negro can saunter down a street with any real certainty that violence will not visit him on his walk. The cameos of security for the average white: mother and the home, lob and the family, are not even a mockery to millions of Negroes; they are impossible. The Negro has the simplest of alternatives: live a life of constant humility or ever-threatening danger. In such a pass where paranoia is as vital to survival as blood, the Negro had stayed alive and begun to grow by following the need of his body where he could. Knowing in the cells of his existence that life was war, nothing but war, the Negro (all exceptions admitted) could rarely afford the sophisticated inhibitions of civilization, and so he kept for his survival the art of the primitive, he lived in the enormous present, he subsisted for his Saturday night kicks, relinquishing the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body, and in his music he gave voice to the character and quality of his existence, to his rage and the infinite variations of joy, lust, languor, growl, cramp, pinch, scream and despair of his orgasm. For jazz is orgasm, it is the music of orgasm, good orgasm and bad, and so it spoke across a nation, it had the communication of art even where it was watered, perverted, corrupted, and almost killed, it spoke in no matter what laundered popular way of instantaneous existential states to which some whites could respond, it was indeed a communication by art because it said, “I feel this, and now you do too.”

So there was a new breed of adventurers, urban adventurers who drifted out at night looking for action with a black man’s code to fit their facts. The hipster had absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro, and for practical purposes could be considered a white Negro.

To be an existentialist, one must be able to feel oneself—one must know one’s desires, one’s rages, one’s anguish, one must be aware of the character of one’s frustration and know what would satisfy it. The over-civilized man can be an existentialist only if it is chic, and deserts it quickly for the next chic. To be a real existentialist (Sartre admittedly to the contrary) one must be religious, one must have one’s sense of the “purpose”—whatever the purpose may be—but a life which is directed by one’s faith in the necessity of action is a life committed to the notion that the substratum of existence is the search, the end meaningful but mysterious; it is impossible to live such a life unless one’s emotions provide their profound conviction. Only the French, alienated beyond alienation from their unconscious could welcome an existential philosophy without ever feeling it at all; indeed only a Frenchman by declaring that the unconscious did not exist could then proceed to explore the delicate involutions of consciousness, the microscopically sensuous and all but ineffable frissons of mental becoming, in order finally to create the theology of atheism and so submit that in a world of absurdities the existential absurdity is most coherent.

it's universal

to all the boys I've loved...

Part 1
We are not your mothers!
You have been weaned from the breast of a woman for years
Yet you come to us wounded and half filled with promises you can only keep half the time Trying to suck a lost sense of self dry
We have become much to accustomed to sleepless nights and damp pillows
Have become much to accustomed to waiting for our empty beds to be weighed down with the body’s of men, heavy with the scent and the hands of other women and we simply wanting to be loved and to love ourselves unconditionally
Simply wanting the truth of whether you can really love us or not.
Play Hester Prynne
Place scarlet letters on our chest
Become adulteresses, cheating ourselves out of what we truly deserve
Willing to settle for less
Willing to act like a little less then a goddess
Willing to sleep with the enemy
Men to scared to stop acting like boys, thinking we can love away their scars
So we take the lashes of their insecurities they pour on us
And lick our wounds in quiet mourning for the little girls that we lose by the minute.
Part 2
You said you had a photographic memory.
But apparently you forgot that honesty begins by being real with yourself and the ones you claim you love
The truth cannot be hidden
What’s clouded in darkness will always come to light my love.
You should have known that,claiming you saw my light so clearly and brightly
I guess shit happens
I just wish it wasn’t me
And I guess it’s so much better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all
I know that’s some easy shit to say but I’m still gonna try to live by itI’m still gonna try to put my faith to rest in itI will sleep on dry pillows now in a bed big enough to love myself in.
I will awake these coming mornings with my eyes dry and shiny, full of the knowledge
I am priceless and worth nothing but honesty
I will remove this scarlet letter from my chest
And take the hand of the little girl I used to be and say I’m sorry to her
I’m sorry for cheating you out of the joy you have always deserved
And I will wait for a man to come along that can give me the truth of how much he can really love me

-Mayda Del Valle

rainboot

it continued to rain
I try not to postpone
but I wasn't at ease

you would understand

if only you could watch

the rain

come down

I wanted to tell you
about the rain
but 'cause I've become

a stranger

I bought some rain boots instead

and tried to put myself at
ease

while I waited for the sun

jnw

java and sijangs

since it's Saturday I slept until 11 am and even then I could still have slept a few more hours . anyways every morning after waking I fix my routine pot of coffee. well this morning I get up, and much to my sleepy horror I barely have one scoop of coffee. wtf! on a Saturday of all days. how did I not notice that?! ok if truth be told I made a note that I was running out in the middle of last week, and that I needed to make a trip to Lotte Mart to replenish. so I call my neighbor thinking perhaps he can rescue me and I will not have to leave my apartment. btw I'm like a werewolf on the weekend or is it dracula, either way I do not leave my apartment during the day unless I absolutely have to. well anyways my trusty neighbor doesn't answer his phone. arrrggghh. I really wanted that steamy, creamy hot cup of joe. of course I wasn't going to the aforementioned lotte mart all the way across town, but lately they have built about twenty new businesses all at once at the end of my street. so within in literally thirty seconds I have access to a bakery, a butcher, a dc market (small grocery store), an atm, a fabulous mundu and tchigae restaraunt, among other things. anyways i'm off to make my purchase.

well I did get my coffee and now that I'm back with that steamy, creamy hot cup of joe barely two inches from my hand I wanted to share what it's like in the mornings at the end of my street, particularly saturday mornings...

ok when I give directions to my apartment I tell the cab driver song jong dong bun gae sijang. Song Jong Dong meaning my district and bun gae sijang which means lightening market. literally every morning, rain or shine, men and women set up their stands or lay out their blankets to form this market. this market consists of nothing but fresh food with the exception of people selling snacks they package as they make it (although that's fresh too right?). anyways these men and women sit or squat, calling out their prices and products to people passing by, many barely even pausing. First off let me tell you about the array of fresh food sold at this bun gae sijang. There is everything from seafood on ice, beans, dried peppers, lettuce, cabbage, pumpkins, onions, squash to apples, berries oranges, the infamous korean pear, grapes, to even an array of nuts, especially chestnuts. I must also tell you about the men and women actually doing the selling. every morning these older men and women, some women are elderly to the point where they are hunched over, spread out their wares for people to survey and buy. some of them barely make two or three dollars a day, yet each day, rain or shine they return. when it rains they set up these huge umbrellas that would be much coveted by beachcombers in North Carolina. The women, especially, are something to behold. Their faces are slackened with the effects of gravity, most of them have more wrinkles and lines then a shirt that just came from the wash, and all of them have mastered that shuffle of the feet that all older people seem to pick up along the way. what is most striking though is their hands. although their hands are wrinkled and so ridden with rheumatism, one can tell these are strong hands. hands that are not strangers to field work, even now, which is evident in the way these women shell beans, or pull and prune their fruits and vegetables so as to draw attention for sale. what might be a bunch of brusque sellers in heavy competition under a veneer of niceties at home, is an understanding and friendship between the people here. of course there is competition, but these people have a bond between them and have created a sort of community at this market. it's like this every morning, but saturday mornings are even more chaotic because people are off of work and can actually take advantage of the sale. I promise, to take a picture soon of this beautiful chaos so that you guys can see for yourself...

free hugs

we need more of this...

in light of the ridiculous punishment of the 13 year old in Illinois for hugging a classmate, here's a wonderful video. It was actually filmed in the next town over from Gumi.

weighing some options

This is just a random thought/post about the future.

I’m always thinking about the future whether it be tomorrow, next week or even next year. Lately I’ve been thinking about the direction I’d like for my life to take (at least what is within my control) in so far as my career, job, etc. It’s that old adage “what do I want to be when I grow up?” I really believe that people are happiest when they are doing work that they enjoy and that which ignites their passions. I’m trying to figure out what that looks like for me. I know one thing: I don’t want to be an ESL instructor forever. As a matter of fact lately I don’t even know if I want to teach. When I was younger it seemed like the ideal job, and continued as thus until I actually started doing it. I’ve realized like with many other things in my life I: a) do not have the patience for it and b) do not like being the focus or center of attention in the sense that a teacher is (or any job for that matter). This is a good job now, but not something that will sustain me professionally!

I also know that I love literature and languages, especially learning languages. I have always thought that if I could get paid to learn foreign languages and combine my love for literature with occasional travel, I would really have found a great job. I’m not sure such a job exists, per se, but I’ve been researching and there are a few ways to exploit that interest.

more on those later...

little pepper

so something amazingly spectacular happened in my 10 am class today. Diana, a student who I've seemed to clash with since her enrollment in my class two months ago, paid me a compliment. I nearly shat myself. yes I used the word shat. anyways I told my class to have a good weekend in Korean for the first time, they were very very pleased and commenced to clapping and calling me quick learn teacher. hahaha anyways Diana says: "jenniper you are special foreigner, you learn fast in passion. In korea we have saying 'little pepper has lot of fire' that is you jenniper." ok seriously, hearing her say this nearly brought me to tears. seriously this woman and I have been at odds since day one. one of the first weeks of class I made a smart ass comment because she skipped my class after telling her classmates my lessons were too difficult (although the previous day she had said the current lesson was too easy). so each day has been a silent back and forth between the two of us. anyways the comment paired with a lesson that seemed to go very well (they seemed to understand and enjoy the lesson) left me nearly floating out of class. this class actually puts the most strain on me because there are mixed speaking levels so preparing lessons is very difficult. I've realized that all the intermediate classes are like this because it's the "in-between" level. And wouldn't you know who has all 5 intermediate classes? your's truly. so it's a constant battle to say the least. I'm not venting all of this for sympathy, but it's moments like today's comment or when a student suddenly has that "aha" look on their face because I was able to get through to them that makes this whole thing worth while. I imagine it's like that for every teacher since there are no instant rewards, it's those irregular "moments" we wait for. and so I wait...

"In my mind I'm going to Carolina"

So, while I'm not homesick there are things that I've realized I never fully appreciated while I actually had them within reach...of course isn't that the way of life, in every aspect.

anyways here are some of those great things worth noting about my North Carolina...

more later...

first post

the view from Gumi Train Station in downtown Gumi

since it's been two months and some change since I've arrived I won't bother with backtracking through all of that. instead to give you an idea of what my first two months were like here is a piece from the column I wrote for Global's newspaper. I have been offered a position writing a column each month on my experiences in Korea. Talk about flattering...

First Impressions...

Thinking back to a course I took while in college called “The Forgotten War in a Forgotten Country” Korea seemed to me a country that was lost in the shuffle as other powers made their way to the top. Of course I was aware of Korea’s rich culture background and its modernization that resulted in perhaps the most technologically advanced country, but I still had the notion that Korea was “forgotten.” It was my interest in Asian culture as well as this “forgetfulness” on the world’s part that drew me to Korea.

I arrived late, so much of my first hours were hurried and dazed as a result of jet lag. However, the next day I realized “forgotten” was hardly an appropriate term one could use to describe Korea. My first real day, or rather my first week was spent in a blur of sights, sounds, and smells that assailed my senses beyond belief. In my opinion my first weeks and furthermore my first two months in Korea could be likened to a love affair in its early stages. During a first encounter the two parties “feel each other out.” There is usually a sense of awe which can lead to the initial infatuation. Within the first few days of arrival I began to “feel Korea out” and as it goes my senses were heightened, and I too was in a state of awe. So then began the love affair.

Like any other foreigner or “waeguk”, I suffered my share of culture shock that even included a trip to the hospital my first month here, but adjustment has not been the quite the feat I had initially expected. Soon after settling in I began to find my rhythm in the “land of the morning calm” and thus make Gumi my home for the next year. I’m learning Hangul, discovering the hidden restaurants with the best kimchi tchigae (yes, foreigners like spicy food too!), anticipating my weekends for travel and discovery, experiencing an ancient culture such as that of the temples, and making as many Korean friends as possible. “You’re almost Korean!” my students tell me, and whether it’s true or not is of course debatable. So, may the love affair continue…