Summer 2003 Montage

[Once again, recycled stuff. Once again, I've corrected a few typos, and this time I rewrote some phrases that were a bit awkward, but the main body of the text stands as is, including a time-unit error in the second to last paragraph that will be addressed in the next recycled post.]

August 23-28, 2003

Hi Everyone.

Well, this little missive has received Horyon's reluctant stamp of approval. Towards the end there is a little bit about her that she sort of objected to, but in the end she agreed with Oscar Wilde: "There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Enjoy!

I would like to start off with the good news, to avoid bad feelings about the infrequency of my communiques as of late: If all goes as planned, we will be visiting North America sometime during January and/or February of next year. It is not clear when exactly we will be there, nor for how long we will stay. Our itinerary is only at the conception stage, and we hope that the weather cooperates. Of course, we will spend most of our time in beautiful Kansas, undoubtedly making up for that summer of 2001 visit with temperatures above 100 degrees every freakin' day until the week before we left. If that pattern holds, you can expect record snowfalls this winter.

The last time I wrote to you, we had just moved to a new apartment. It proved to be a very nice place. Of course, after six months of us living in it, it is not nearly as new as it used to be, and will likely never be so again. But it is our home, for now, and we are happy with it. Horyon is quite happy that it only takes her about 20 minutes to get to work. Instead of spending more than two hours every day riding the bus, she is now sewing a lot more, and spending more quality time sitting on my lap while I'm at the computer. Not right now, as it happens, but she could show up any minute.

The Neatest We Expect Our Apartment to Ever Be

Of course, every silver lining has a cloud behind it, or something to that effect. My new job is somewhat less inspiring than my previous job. I'm teaching university freshmen from a variety of majors. My class is a graduation requirement, so many of them do not particularly want to be there. My classes vary in size from 20 up to 45. Their ability to speak English varies from roughly 3rd grade equivalent all the way down to The Confusing Cavern level (you know the place, right? Whatever you yell echos back as a question. "What's *your* name?" Response, "What's your *name*?") and the Yucca Plant level (sits quietly no matter what you say to it).

But I Have a Nice View from my Office

Amazingly enough, their enthusiasm varies according to the same scale, except that very few of them have the energy level of a 3rd grader. Perhaps because most 3rd graders never come to class with a hangover.

My new coworkers are an interesting lot. For the most part, they have a very practical approach to the job: do it well enough to not be noticed, but not so well that you get noticed, while minimizing planning and stress. Fair enough, I suppose. I quickly came to the conclusion that higher educational ideals were going to cause me more stress than I wanted to bear, so I have cut back on them a lot. I know, it's dangerous to wean yourself completely from idealism, but you can give yourself ulcers if you keep too much of it. So this past semester I focused on devising a system for distributing grades in an equitable manner. Out of 350 students, only two of them came to me to get their grades changed at the end, so I consider it a success.

(Psst, hey! You wanna know what happened to the two students? One of them was a clerical mistake on my part. I simply didn't enter his final exam grade into the computer. Boom, from C- to A+, that easy. The other was absent one too many times and got an F. I gave her the three points she needed to pass and made her promise to name her firstborn son after me. In hindsight, telling her that my middle name was "Wonkadilly" may have been a bit extreme, but I'm still holding her to it.)

In April we had a house guest, Justin. Justin went through a rough time with the children's institute he was teaching at. I believe that misunderstandings on both sides caused the situation to fall apart, but that's kind of beside the point. The actual point is that one Thursday evening he called me, worried sick about his situation. He called me at one hour intervals until about three in the morning. This made my classes the following day almost intolerable, especially the computer geeks. The next day Justin came to stay with us for a while. We figured a few days for him to get back on his feet, find a new job, get settled.

It ended up being two weeks. Two long weeks. Two long weeks of long, one-sided conversations and a self-renewing pile of dirty dishes. Two long weeks of my usually-good-tempered wife telling me that one lazy slob in the house is enough. Two long weeks with more marital spats than in the previous six months put together. Two. Long. Weeks.

Then Justin moved to China. He told us that he couldn't afford the plane ticket, so we lent him money. Yeah, yeah, so we can't really afford to eat meat for the next few weeks, it's okay, take the money. He is planning to pay us back this fall, and I believe that he will. Just because he was a bit difficult to live with doesn't mean he's dishonest.

Incidentally, this is where I got hung up in writing to you all. I wrote a couple of pages about our Justin experience, and decided that it was just too harsh. Imagine the "two weeks" paragraph stretched into two pages, and I think you'll understand why it never got sent. And once I get started not doing something, I continue not doing it for a long time.

Before Justin came, I bought a bicycle. Horyon doesn't know how to ride a bicycle, being a total city girl. I love it. As you may know, I'm not much for exercising. Health clubs are about as exciting as watching the American economy recover, and organized sports hearken me back to the days when I was always picked last for sports teams at school. The bicycle is a nice compromise: doesn't have to be competitive, but it gets you outdoors. This is a big city, and I could potentially ride somewhere new every day for the next six months.

Just the other day I took my bike in for a tune-up. (That's right, a tune-up. The only engine is me, but the transmission is still a collection of little pieces of metal that work better if they're properly adjusted, ditto the brakes.) I managed to fit it in a taxi by taking the front wheel off, but it was still a tight fit. I also needed some accessories. The first thing I desperately needed was a longer seat-post. I bought the largest cycle in the store, but it was still a little small. Now the seat is high enough that when I sit on it my feet are not flat on the ground. Makes pedaling much easier, especially on the long haul. I also bought a speedometer. It is an extremely clever device that uses a magnet on the wheel and a small induction loop to count how many times your wheel turns without physically touching it. It also has an odometer, and it told me that the ride home from the bike shop was about 10 miles.

I don't know about you, but I was impressed. I don't look like someone who can move themselves 10 miles in an afternoon.

And my last purchase was a pair of cyclist pants. That's right, knee-length speedos for Rob. Horyon said, "Oh my gosh, promise me you won't go outside in those." I promised to wear shorts over them. They're supposed to be good for your circulation, as well as for wicking moisture away from your body. I have yet to try them out.

How about that? 10 miles.

Another thing I am proud of: I have a rosemary plant that is now one year old. I think this is my first plant to hit a birthday. Does anyone have any ideas for using rosemary leaves? Unfortunately, another plant purchased at the same time, the lemon-thyme, is not doing so well. It has one little stem with eight or ten little green leaves on it. The rest are brown. It did this last summer, too, but not as bad. I don't think it's going to make it.

Oh my darling, lemon-thyme.
You are lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, lemon-thyme.

Skipping topics again: On Tuesday Horyon, her father and I took her brother, Young-hwan, back to his university. It's a good five-and-a-half-hour drive, but we had to leave after Horyon and her father finished at school and had some lunch, so we didn't really get moving until about 2:30. Young-hwan and his father tag-teamed the driving. Both of them make Horyon get worried sick, but I have ridden the top of a bus through the Himalayas on mud roads only a couple a feet wider than the bus itself, with forest on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other. Until an actual collision occurs, I'm not interested, I'll just read my book, thank you.

When we got to Mu-an (pronounced like the movie Mulan, only without the L), we went right to Young-hwan's new apartment. It's a one-room affair, about 10' by 12', with its own bathroom, kitchen sink and window. Of course, Young-hwan has his furniture to put in there. There is an arrangement of poles that telescope from floor to ceiling, with a cross-pole to hang clothes on, and some book shelves. He sleeps on the floor, with traditional Korean bedding, and he has a TV and a little gas camp-stove. I suggested to Horyon that we could buy him a lamp, so he could turn off the light without standing up, and maybe read before going to sleep, or at least turn off the miserable flourescent tube-light without being left in the dark. She told me that I was sweet, but that he wouldn't appreciate it or use it, much less like it.

(Later I got to turn those words around a bit...) [I have no idea what I meant by this. Undoubtedly something terribly clever. If you have any idea, please let me know!–Rob in 2006]

After getting Young-hwan a little settled in, we went for dinner. Young-hwan thought he knew a good restaurant, but he didn't. So we drove for forty minutes to have dinner at 10:00 p.m. in the only place we could find that was still open and serving food. I had a new first–beef cartilage soup. Sounds tough, but it wasn't at all. This is after hours of cooking, and it was quite soft. The actual broth was made from meat and bones, so it was a good soup. It came with dol-sot-bap (dole-sote-bop): rice served in a sizzling hot stone bowl. Keeps the rice hot, and slightly burns the rice touching the pot, making nu-rung-ji. This is a traditional favorite in Korea that I have become strangely accustomed to. Slightly burnt rice. After taking the non-burnt rice out of the bowl, Koreans like to pour water in to make nu-rung-ji soup, but I don't care for that. I like to just scrape it out of the bowl and eat it with the real soup.

We then drove back to Young-hwan's apartment. Mr. Kang suggested that we could all sleep there, but I couldn't quite imagine it. Four of us, plus all of Young-hwan's stuff, which was still spread out all over the floor. One window, one fan, and everyone else in the room hates having a draft. Fortunately, my wife is an angel. She interceded for me, insisting that I would only be able to sleep in a motel. So we walked 10 minutes to the nearest motel.

The next day we went to Young-hwan's school and met a professor there. She isn't from his department, but she sort of keeps an eye on him. Does the mother-away-from-home bit. She showed us around and was very enthusiastic. Like, intensely enthusiastic. She and Mr. Kang laughed at each others jokes and kept each other very entertained while we drove around the campus, took pictures, then went to lunch.

Doesn't Look Like Brown-Nosing, Does It?

It was later explained to me that Mr. Kang and the professor had a sort of special relationship. You see, one part of the job of professors at universities in Korea is recruitment. And so it is suspected that perhaps this prof doesn't so much care about Young-hwan as about how his father felt about the university. And of course, Young-hwan can see right through this.

My dear wife just came in and told me that my computer room was a mess. I told her that she should be more positive, meaning that my room is neater than it had been in the past. She, however, interpreted this differently. She said, "Oh, do you want me to say, ‘this is the cleanest room I've ever seen!' or how about ‘Wow, you have a lot of books!' or ‘Hey, your shorts are big enough for you!'" I'm afraid I've created a monster. A monster of sarcasm. Be warned, once she gets to know you, you too will be introduced to the monster.

School starts this coming Monday for Horyon and me. We both feel that our vacation has disappeared without a trace. Horyon is somewhat more justified in this thinking than I am. She had to teach vacation classes in the morning for all but a couple of weeks of July and August, as well as teaching a couple of private jobs. That's right, high school students go to school during the summer. Only from 9 to 1, but if you ask me, that's four hours a day too many. These poor kids get about a week of vacation at a time, and the teachers give them homework so that they don't get lazy during this holiday.

Now, I don't know much about ethics, but this strikes me as being inherently evil.

My cousin Mark has gotten a tatoo and is learning to ride a motorcycle. No doubt his mother is not very thrilled about this. I find myself this close (holding thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart) to feeling regret at not following that path. And now, with an additional conscience living under my roof, it is not too likely to happen. I guess I'll have to wait for my midlife crisis. (My spell checker doesn't like "midlife". It suggests midwife, midline and meatloaf. Mmm, meatloaf crisis.)

And in closing, I would like to give you fair warning. At the end of September we have an interview with United States Immigration. If it is successful, we will be heading towards Kansas in January of 2004. We plan to stay for about six months, mostly with my kind, long-suffering parents. We will not be able to be home for Christmas. Both of our jobs require us to be here through the end of December. As they say, here, "Scroo-jee". And so our family in America will celebrate the birth and life of Jesus Christ on a day other than December 25th. I don't think it makes any difference, because it will still be about family, being home, and eating turkey with all the trimmings until you almost explode.

If you would like to spend some time with us while we are in North America, please let me know ASAP. We may be traveling outside of Kansas, weather and funds permitting, and we may be able to come to you if you can't come to us. Just be prepared to have us sleeping on your floor!

Oh, and remind me of where exactly you are when (if) you write to say "Come visit me!"

And We Went to Outback Steakhouse. I Got to Keep the Hat.

Peace,

Rob

Me in Thailand

These are pictures we took in Thailand. Below is a small version of me for my profile.

New Apartment and Anti-War

[Once again, another archive item. Upon rereading this one, I found that the anti-war rhetoric was seriously turned up, and made a big cut at the end, which I will explain once you get there. This time I found a paragraph had been cut in half. I was unable to find the original version, so I finished it the best I could. If any of you go to the trouble of hunting down the original email, you will probably find that I screwed it up there, too. Hopefully the idea I've completed here matches what I would have written three years ago.]

Dear Family, Friends and eavesdropping aliens:

We've moved. It wasn't fun, but it's done. And in the words of the theme song from TV's "The Jeffersons," we have moved "up to a deluxe apartment in the [north-]east side [of Busan]."

For the first time in either of our lives, Horyon and I are living in a brand new apartment! So new that it still smells like paint. So new that there was still plastic wrap on the doorknobs when we moved in and the windows have numbers painted on them so the construction guys wouldn't put them in the wrong apartment.

Let me tell you, this is a nice apartment. The doorbell has a video camera in it, so we can see what kind of idiots have come to visit us without opening the door to give them access to our home! The bedroom light has a remote control so you can turn out the lights without getting out of bed! There is a water filter under the sink so that we can drink the tap water without mutating into giant rat-creatures! There are phone jacks in every room, and internet jacks in all the bedrooms! (Of course there are no jacks in the kitchen, because I'm supposed to stay there barefoot and looking pregnant.) There is a new refrigerator! It doesn't have ice or water in the door, but it's new, so it doesn't smell like whatever food the previous owners kept until it went bad! It even has a dishwasher! The kind you put dirty dishes and soap in and press some buttons and wait an hour and your dishes come out clean!

This was, in many ways, the least painful move I've ever been involved with. We actually started to prepare last May. I was told by Kosin University that we would be moving in the fall, despite the fact that we had just moved that April. However, the move never materialized. Instead, many books, videos, clothes and some cooking supplies were put in boxes. Over the following months, many things came out of the boxes, but a lot of it just got moved as it was. In addition, thanks to the foresight of my lovely and intelligent wife, we did some packing up to two months before leaving. Our last 24 hours were still pretty intense, but we paid a little bit extra for the movers, and they packed a lot of stuff for us. Especially the kitchen. They put away all the dishes, and a lot of the foodstuffs. When we arrived at the new apartment, they pulled it all out of the boxes and put it in the cabinets. Of course, I wasn't happy with their choice of which cabinets to put which stuff in, but that is a minor problem.

The Sack household (Korean branch) has experienced a sort of twist with this recent move. Before the move, Horyon was always tired and frequently sick. Spending a total of more than two hours a day riding busses took a serious toll on her. I had to be Mr. Cheerful far more than comes naturally to me. However, I was in a good job, close enough to walk to work in 20 minutes, and only teaching four days a week.

Now things are different. Horyon has regained about eight hours a week a time that she can use to live. She wakes up later in the morning, doesn't get sick so much, and has moved nicely into the role of Mrs. Super-Cheerful. Which is good, because I need some cheering up. My teaching load went up from 14 to 20 hours a week. Gasp. It is divided into 10 classes of two hours each. My total number of students is 350, for an average of 35 students per class. One class has 50 students! And I'm supposed to teach conversation! My percentage of lecture/activity time has gone way up, I'm afraid. To make things even more interesting, around 90% of the students are freshmen. The 10% who are upperclassmen are a mix of students who really want to learn English and students who couldn't quite break the D+ line the first time around. Teaching the same lesson ten times is enough to fry my brain. It is in my nature to modify lectures as I repeat them, but I want to keep these classes as similar as possible, so that I can compare grades between different classes easily and write one test for all of them.

Now it takes me longer to get to work, too. I used to be able to do the front door to classroom run in under 15 minutes, now it is 25 minutes on a good day. On a bad day–rain, long wait for a taxi–it takes 40 minutes. Not bad for living in a big city, but pretty rough for someone who is not at his best in the morning. Like me. I have 9:00 classes four days a week, and at least once a week I have to skip breakfast to be on time for class.

In addition, I am required to have 10 office hours per week, double what I had at Kosin. So I have jumped from 19 hours required at work to 30.

Don't get me wrong. I know that I won't be able to find a job like this in America. At least not one that provides a spacious new apartment and a salary that lets me live well, save money, and continually expand my CD collection.

I would like to take this opportunity to reassure all of you that we are okay here in South Korea. South Korea, like many countries around the world, is going through some anti-American sentiment. However, as in those other countries, people here know the difference between Americans and the U.S. government. The U.S. military is a slightly different matter.

There is no doubt on the part of the older generation that the American military presence here is needed. People who can actually remember the Korean war, and the Japanese occupation before it, are still thankful to the countries that liberated Korea, especially the U.S.A. Younger people, however, see American military bases squatting on prime real estate. They see a few U.S. soldiers occasionally acting in a very disgraceful manner and not (in their opinion) being sufficiently punished for it. They see a predator. And our international politics do little to dissuade that notion.

With regards to the newly begun war with Iraq, I must say that I am deeply disturbed. I have a lot of respect for those in our society who serve in the military. I grieve for those lost and killed in action. But I do not respect our President's decision to go to war. To me, it seems that the U.S. is like a lynch mob hanging a child molester. No one argues that the child molester should be allowed to continue his activities, but in a civilized country he is tried in a court. Evidence is studied, a jury of peers is consulted, and rules that have been previously agreed on are followed. The U.N. is exactly that, and it has been completely ignored.

President Bush has not convinced me, or practically anyone else outside of the U.S., that Iraq was directly connected to the events of September 11th. Frankly, I foresee serious consequences to this war, regardless of whether we win quickly, slowly, or in a Vietnam-like manner.

It is unusual for me to enclose pieces written by other people, but I found this article to be some serious (and seriously disturbing) food for thought. A good friend of mine sent it to me, and I feel it to be my duty to share it with you. This is certainly not intended to suggest that you-know-who is exactly the same as the-guy-in-charge. (As one critic pointed out, the inference is that Bavaria=Texas! Good luck assessing the accuracy of *that*!) However, the parallels are interesting to note.

As always, I wish you all peace. I am more afraid for those of you living in the United States than I am for myself.

Rob


When Democracy Failed: The warnings of history

by Thom Hartmann (at http://www.thomhartmann.com/articles/2003/03/when-democracy-failed-warnings-history )

[I have decided now, June 2nd 2006, to not paste the entire article here. After all, this is Roblog, and while I may agree with many things said in the article, I did not write it. However, I encourage you to go to the website above and look at it. When I originally emailed this out, it started a couple of heated discussions. I have no wish to revive them, but I will still post any comments you care to make. Incidentally, I have just finished reading _Modern Times_, a history book covering most of the 20th century. I still think that the Hartmann article linked above has some valid points, but like any essay that can be read in one sitting, it has some simplifications. Nevertheless, the point about us having to choose democracy is still valid. Enough said.]

[Now it is 2016, and I have updated the link and decided to include the text here. It hadn't even occurred to me that the link could change over time, but now I know that not only do links change, but entire swaths of the internet can just disappear. Text takes up very little space, so I'm throwing it in. The following is not written by me.]

When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History

by Thom Hartman

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world. It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack.

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.

His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.

His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.

February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.

We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.

[Once again, the last half of this post is not my writing, but my attempt to comunicate the circumstances of my writing. It is not my intention to break copyright law, but to preserve history.]

Christmas and New Year's 2003

[Once again, dear Reader, I offer you a musty old email taken from the electronic shelf of my hard drive and served up with a cup of good cheer. I admit to fixing one typo this time, but no other changes. So let us go back, back, back to 2003. Oo-ooo-ooooh.]

Dear Friends, Family and Loved Ones:

When I was in university, the father of a friend of mine said, "Being sick is never fun, but being sick when you're away from home is misery." I've had a cold for a week now, and once again that truth has been brought home for me. And now that I'm getting over it, Horyon is coming down with it.

I pointed out to a friend of mine that I rarely got sick before I got married. He suggested that perhaps inherent in the wedding vows (you know, "In sickness and in health,") is the implication that you *must* spend a certain amount of time being sick.

At Christmastime I was healthy. We both were, actually. Well, Horyon is always a little sick, but for Christmas she managed to get in good shape. She only had Christmas day off. No Christmas Eve holiday. No Boxing Day (a Canadian holiday during which one celebrates all the new boxes one has acquired over Christmas, I believe). Just the one day.

I suck at buying presents. This year I bought my darling wife a CD of Christmas music by her favorite piano player, Andre Gagnon, (don't ask me what he's gaggin' on, I don't know,) a set of cast iron plates for cooking stuff in the oven, like fish or steak or whatever, and a Hormel canned ham. She argued that the cooking plates were actually for me. I countered with the sexy underwear argument: I may actually cook with the plates, but she gets to eat what's on the plates, thereby enjoying it (arguably) more than I do. We definitely shared the ham. Hard to get real ham in Korea, and that stuff made some pretty good sandwiches. But the CD was definitely for her. There were many, many CDs I would have bought before that one.

Okay. Like I said, I suck at buying presents. Fortunately, my parents sort of covered for me. Two weeks before Christmas we got a package from home full of presents. Now, Koreans don't really do Christmas presents. Kids usually get one or two presents, and that's it. On gift occasions, it is considered polite to give money. Don't you wish it were that easy in North America? That was something I hadn't really thought about much until I came home carrying a box full of presents and my wife went nuts.

"Presents! Wow! Let's open them!" she squealed.

"We can't open them now," I countered. "You don't open Christmas presents until Christmas."

Thus beginning the debate. Usually when we disagree, I let Horyon win. But we both seem to agree that in matters of culture we should defer to the person who has spent the longest time living in the culture in question. Korea and America both have Christmas, but I decided that Korea wasn't doing Christmas properly, so I stood my ground. There was a lot of whining and begging and even a few threats to open presents while I was not present. I quickly conceded that the presents already opened by the just and fair employees of Pusan Customs should be properly unwrapped and appreciated. This, however, proved to be like the "freebie" that drug dealers are so fond of distributing.

Eventually, I got Horyon to promise that we would open one present on Christmas Eve, and the rest on Christmas morning, just like my family used to do. We went to sleep that night peacefully in each others' arms. Okay, I was sort of restraining her, but it was a very loving sort of restraining. She just doesn't have the years of Christmas Present Patience built up like I do. I hope she can get used to it by the time we have children old enough to notice things like that.

The follow-up is New Year's Eve. When the first midnight of 2003 (or was it the last of 2002?) rolled into Pusan, Horyon and I were at her parents' church. I was struggling to stay awake through a long sermon in a language which I have no deep grasp of, under a hot air vent that was blowing right down on us. Pretty much the same as last year. We had had a lovely dinner at their home previously, which deserves a lot more exposition than the church service.

One of my favorite Korean foods is called shabuh-shabuh. Like many of my other favorites, much of its charm lies in the presentation, though the taste still packs a punch, too. First a large pot of boiling broth is put on a small grill on the table. Also on the table are bowls and plates with various ingredients, different kinds of leaves and mushrooms, and very, very thinly sliced raw beef. These ingredients are thrown at will into the pot, like uncooperative explorers at the mercy of a tribe of cannibals. And like the cannibals, we enjoy it very much. You can throw in whatever you like, but throwing something in doesn't give you dibs on fishing it out, dipping it in sauce, and eating it. Unless my metaphor fails me, it's a cannibal eat cannibal competition. And sitting next to my brother-in-law, Young-hwan, means the competition is pretty hungry.

But that's okay, because there is plenty to go around. After the plates of meat and veggies are empties, the soup left in the pot is very rich and flavorful. Ready for the second course.

Mandu are Chinese dumplings. The best ones can be purchased uncooked from Chinese restaurants. Horyon's mother had picked up some earlier that day, and these were put into the rich, bubbling soup. She also put in some Korean dduk. (Don't worry about how to pronounce it, you're bound to get it wrong.) Dduk is made of rice cooked beyond all recognition, formed into unnatural shapes, like inch thick cylinders, thinly sliced, then put into soups to function as a sort of eating speed bump. Once you bite into a piece of dduk, it takes some serious chewing to get to the other side. A small pile of dduk chips was thrown into the soup, too. They don't really change the taste, because they have no flavor. Well, actually they taste like rice.

Most Westerners agree that rice doesn't have any flavor by itself, but Koreans (and most Asians in my experience) disagree. My rebuttal involves two Korean street foods: dduk-boggi and ho-dduk. These are both served off of street carts by ajumas (older women with ‘tudes) who call to you to come try their tasty treats. As you might have guessed, dduk is the major ingredient in both dishes. In dduk-boggi, four-inch-long tubes of the stuff are heated up in a thick red sauce made of sugar and chilli pepper powder. Other things are thrown into the mix, too, like whole hard-boiled eggs, green onions, and o-dang (pronounced "oh' dang" which is the polite version of what you would say if you knew what it was made of). It varies from spicy-as-hell spicy all the way up to burn-a-hole-in-your-stomach-and-take-the-paint-off-the-wall-behind-you spicy.

Ho-dduk is much more pleasant. The dduk is prepared a little differently, so it is soft and squishy like bread dough. A ball of the dduk is made around a core of cinnamon, brown sugar and nuts, then the ball is fried in butter. It is usually available in the winter, when you can see your breath. You stand shivering in the cold, pinching a light-brown pancake thing in a makeshift hotpad made of a couple of small pieces of card stock just folded together. You have to be careful how you eat it, because when it's hot the filling is liquid. It will burn your tongue, stain your shirt, and make sticky little circles where it drops on your shoes as you stand to eat it. Once piece usually sells for about 45 cents, though you can sometimes still find them at three for a dollar.

Of course, my argument is this: if dduk has flavor, then why the hell is it prepared with such overwhelmingly flavorful ingredients?

And that is why it takes me so long to write one of these letters. I start out talking about dinner, and end up out in the street eating ho-dduk.

Meanwhile, back at the Kang family dinner, I ate a lot of mandu, and quite of few of the dduk chips, too. In soup like that, they acquire enough flavor to be worth chewing through.

It was a fine dinner, worthy of song. Though it was many hours before the 11:30 p.m. New Years Eve service, it still fought a valiant battle to drag me into dreamland during that service.

At about 1:00 a.m. on New Years Day, Horyon and I caught a cab for home. We had had an offer to stay the night with the Kangs, but they were leaving early in the morning to go to my father-in-law's home town. I've done that once on a holiday. I will not do it again. I absolutely refuse. I won't.

Unless Horyon asks very nicely. Very, *very* nicely.

And now it is late January. This should be vacation, but once again I am working. (Am I turning Korean?) I'm teaching a reading class of 12 students. Their abilities are extremely varied. On my last test, the high score was 100%, and the low score was 26%. Some of the low grades are slackers, but some of them are working hard, if not necessarily doing their best. Fortunately for me, I have been teaching this class in a manner most unlike my usual style: every day we do exactly the same thing in class, except that on Fridays we take a test. So last Tuesday when I came to class unable to talk, I simply whispered that we should do what we usually do. Sujin (pronounced sue-JEAN) is the best student in the class, and she helped me out quite a bit.

Sujin has been in my class twice before. She is a vocal music major, but her conversational English is better than any student in the English department. She studied for a year or two at a music school in Cincinnati. I don't doubt that the music school improved her English, but she also made a little pocket money working at a TCBY. I would guess that that is where she sharpened her English, as well as her sense of humor. Nothing brightens my day like having a student actually laugh at my offhand jokes. She is going to get an "A" in my class, but she might not have the best grade.

Joy (a nickname, much easier to remember and pronounce than Hyoun-kyoung), has also been in my class a couple of times before. Joy doesn't speak or listen as well as Sujin, but Joy knows how to study. After getting 85% and 88% on the first two tests, she aced this one. As someone who used to take tests pretty well, I stand in awe of this. Granted, I have attempted to make my tests easier as I went, but she has once again proved to me that if you set a high standard, the students who care will make it. I just hope that the rest of them can figure out the trick before Thursday–the final exam.

As I finish this up, I have also finished my last pure teaching day at Kosin University. And today went out with a bit of a bang. A couple of weeks ago the professor in the office next to mine stopped me in the hall to complain. I had left my stereo on during my class, and he found it hard to work. I apologized, and made sure to not do that again. So today, after my class was finished, I was in my office with some of my students, and I had the music on. Not loud enough to hamper our conversations, but apparently loud enough to bother my neighbor. We heard him yelling, and banging on the wall. My students guessed that he was talking on the phone, and was mad enough to actually bang it against the wall. I turned the music down long enough to listen for a bit, then turned it back up. I didn't want to be party to listening in on someone else's conversation. A few minutes later, he stormed into my office and asked if this was a discotech. (Sorry, not sure how to spell that one, and my spell checker is more confused than I am.) We migrated out to the hall, three or four of my students and myself. The guy was tearing into my students. He wouldn't talk to me at all. He acted like I wasn't there, or like I was an overgrown child. I was so pissed off I could barely see straight. I finally left.

When my students caught up with me, they told me that he is an art professor, and therefore *sensitive*. I brought up a vocabulary word from earlier in the day: irritable. He ranted about how he had pounded on the wall, but I hadn't paid attention. I have grown fairly thick skin, living abroad these past seven years, but this shook me up pretty badly. This guy was angry. And he had never come and knocked on my door.

Things got better after that. I had lunch with my students (Pizza Hut delivery, yum!), then we sort of studied together for the final. At the end, I gave my last thank you and goodbye speech. I told them that I was sad to leave Kosin, but that incidents like the one today make me a little bit happy to leave. I don't expect that people will be nicer, or more fair in Kyoung-sung University, but at least they will not be constantly talking about being Christians, and doing Christian things, and how important Church is, as they attempt to stomp on me.

I am sad to leave Kosin. It has been a good job. It has provided our first home together as a husband and wife. It has brought me friends that I would not have even known how to ask for if I had gone to God with a request. And the students, with a very few exceptions, have been a blessing to me. And I choose to believe that the exceptions were blessings in disguise.

And to you, gentle reader, I hope that the coming New Year (January was just a warm-up month, you know) brings you sufficient challenges to make you grow, sufficient joy to warm your heart, and just enough sadness to make you appreciate how beautiful and wonderful it all is.

Peace,

Rob

Kosin University's Advantage

[note: this was originally an email from the time before blogs. Well, before Roblog anyway. I originally sent it out in December of 2002, and I present it to you with no changes or editing, other than a snappier title than "December 2002". Enjoy. ]

Dear Friends and family: This is not quite a Christmas Card email, but it might be the best you get from me! Enjoy!

One thing that I love about this job is the people I come in contact with the most: my students. I am leaving this job for a new one, and the students are the aspect of Kosin University that I will miss the most. I would like to introduce you to one of them. Not my best student. Not one I've grown very close to, either. I do, however, consider her to be one of my more visible successes.

Hei-Jin (pronounced hay-`jean) showed up in the third week of a 16 week semester. She was a very quiet, mousy girl. Glasses, hair with a tight wave, big shoes that went out of style a couple of years ago. She wouldn't look directly at me, and hardly spoke. She came in late, so she had to sit in the first seat made available in our circle of twelve students and me. As it turned out, that was next to me, because I was the first to move a bit and pull a desk in. I gave her a syllabus, and told her to talk to the other students about what was necessary to do in my class, including the journal.

She didn't talk to anyone. She didn't get it. She didn't do the work, and we were approaching midterms. One day I dragged her into my office and insisted that she do a journal. As usual, she didn't look at me, muttered something, and ran away like a nervous horse escaping a corral. I thought that would be the end of that, but the next week she came to me in my office and gave me her journal! She put it on my table and left without saying anything, but I thought it was pretty impressive that she had done that much.

When I looked at it, I found something amazing. Instead of just writing about her day-to-day activities like most of my students, she wrote about her feelings! Her spelling was pretty bad, and her grammar was out to lunch, but her feelings came through, sometimes very clearly.

I talked with one of my coworkers who has been here a long time, and he remembered HeiJin. He said that she dropped out a couple of years ago. She had been a shy student, but not a complete basket case. My department head told me that she had had some mental problems. And from reading her journal and homework assignments, I gather that she doesn't have the best family life in this country of dysfunctional families.

She slowly responded to me, more and more. At the beginning, she was reluctant to sit next to me in class, but by the end it was her expected seat, and she always moved towards it, even if she arrived before I did. She also became capable of talking to me, and even glancing at my face as I talked to her. I found that she has a pretty smile, though it is usually fleeting. Her speaking and listening skills (in English, of course) are still very low. But she wrote a Christmas card for me, one of only two cards I've received from my students.

She wrote the following in her daily English journal. The only instructions for the journal are to write down what you think and feel. This is the only thing I've seen in my three semesters of teaching composition that looked like a poem. It was inscribed in a large smiley face with a very small, but friendly smile. I believe that she is a tortured soul. Tortured by her family, her surroundings, and herself. I am honored that she opened up to me.

Bench-------------

There is bench. Anybody isn't in there. But the bench is alone.
It can loneliness. I can go sometimes.
Some day. Sky is higher and higher. Day is warm
Sun is blinding. Anybody was no I sat there
Now. it is not lonely
Bench many tell. Merely is quietly.
From what time, like it. I want to be
alone. It is state empty. It's not busy.
It's garden of mind. If need easy, look
for there. comfortable. Look for there, comfor-
table. How are you (getting on)?

-Moon Hei Jin


I never see her talking to other students. As far as I know she comes to school, studies, and goes home. When asked to write about a funny or scary experience, she wrote a scary experience. It involved explaining to her mother why she had a textbook that she couldn't afford. I don't believe she misunderstood scary, I do believe that her life at home is not at all pleasant.

If you believe in prayer, I ask you to pray for her. She will, in all likelihood, fail every class this semester except mine. For ethical reasons, I cannot consider giving her a better grade than a "D". I don't believe she will be able to study at Kosin University next semester. I don't know what she will do. I'm sure she doesn't know, either.

Pray that God will bless her, watch over her, and protect her.

I miss all of you, especially around Christmas. Be thankful for what you have.

Peace,

Rob

The Shoe Being on Both Feet

[Once again, another archive edition Roblog from before Blogging. This one from April of 2002, though it covers events from almost a year previously. Please don't mind the crazy formating.]

Dear Loved Ones:

Well, at 8:15 this morning I finished my first assignment as a grad student. I know, some of you didn't even know that I had been accepted to grad school, but fear not, all questions will be answered, though hopefully not in such a rambling, dark, foreboding way, with sentences that strained to reach their goals, like nursing puppies separated from their mother.

Sorry. Did I mention that I didn't get any sleep last night? I have had a 3 hour nap, but I don't think I'm caught up yet.

Horyon is not too happy with me. I said that I would not let this happen again, and she seemed somewhat relieved. She said she had never worked all night like this when she was in university. She would have just given up. I told her that I had done it more times than I could count. That was a mistake. She said, "So this is a habit, and you will probably do it again, right?" What could I say? "No, honey! This time I've learned my lesson! I'm too old for this crap! I swear, never again!"

I have another paper due in 2 months. We'll see.

Along the way, I have had to deal with a few other things. Allow me to touch on the highlights:

Pepsi-holic

For Lent I gave up Pepsi, and all similar carbonated, sweet beverages. For those of you who have known me for a long time, Pepsi is one of my biggest vices. Next to knocking over liquor stores and stealing candy from babies, of course. Anyway, this year I decided to give it up, making up my mind to pray every time I wanted a drink of Pepsi.

I certainly didn't manage to pray every time I felt the craving, but I did pray more often in the last 40 days, that's for sure. Feel free to bring it up with my coworkers. They now refer to me as a recovering Pepsi-holic. It doesn't matter to me, because I am now firmly back on the wagon, wearing my seat-belt now, thank you very much. I now understand that Pepsi is not essential to my well-being, but I still like it lots. And it's cheaper than buying juice, too.

I think I'll do it again next year. You know why? It's like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer: It sucks while you're doing it, but feels soooo good when you stop.

And let me tell you, that first drink was good. I swear I could taste each individual chemical.

Easter Sunday

Our church has no full-time minister, so three of us take turns preaching. This year, I had a good idea for Easter, based on some interactive sermons my parents were participating in back home: A talk-show format. I would be the host, and I would interview three special guests, maybe Peter, Mary Magdelene and Pilate. Or Barabas. Or someone else involved in the story. I asked three of my coworkers if they would like to do this, and they agreed. I suggested that they choose their own characters, and they came up with Mary, Cleopas (on the road to Amaeus), and Joseph of Arimathea. They researched their characters, gave me their info a couple of days before Sunday, and I asked questions in line with their stories. My part was definitely the easiest, but it was a teeny bit stressful, especially with a 4,000 (plus or minus 500) word paper due the next day.

Incidentally, 3,700 words looks like about 8 pages on my WordPerfect. Not including the complete transcript of a 2 hour class, which looks more like 11 pages, with really tight margins.

Even though today is Monday, it still feels like Easter to me. I've really only had a nap. It's a darn good thing I have no classes on Mondays. And this Friday is a holiday! All right!

Computer Mayhem

As I mentioned in the last email, we bought a new computer. After dallying with Linux (a do-it-yourself operating system, completely free, but with no guarantees), I broke down and bought Windows XP. I'm afraid that my particular flavor of geekiness is not computer-oriented enough to use Linux. But there were definitely some good things about it, compared to Windows. For starters, it's small and efficient. It flies on the PC.

Windows XP, however, has been, well, how can I put this delicately? It's... I've... I give up. There's no delicate way to say that it pisses me off. Saturday and last night, the two nights before my paper was due, I had to reinstall Windows 3 times.

Still Doing the Job Thang

Seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm teaching two writing classes this semester, and I decided to make my students write an almost-daily journal: 6 days per week. I collect them once a week and check ‘em over. It works wonders on them. They become more comfortable writing, they learn some basic formatting, they learn to not be afraid of writing. It's great.

But I have fifty students divided between those two classes. It now takes me about five minutes to read and write a response to one journal. Total time, 250 minutes. More than four hours. And you can bet that I am incapable of sitting and reading these things for a full hour at a time. They are tough to read sometimes.

It's worth noting that I have basically inflicted all of these things on myself. Maybe it's time I stopped being so darn nice to other people.

All right, all of you who were reading this and thinking "Wow, I should ask Rob to do something for me, cause he'll do anything!" can just forget it! I'm not doin' nothin' for nobody!





Okay, I've had a day to think about that, and I'm sorry. You are welcome to ask me to do something, I will smile, nod, say "yes," then put it off until you want to strangle me.

Yeah, I feel much better.


Movin' and Groovin'

This coming Saturday (the 20th), we will be moving to a new apartment. My university provides an apartment for us, and though they never come right out and say it, money drives the whole thing. (You see, it's a Christian university, so they can't talk about money, except to tell us that we shouldn't complain about it so much.) (No bitterness there, eh?) So we are preparing to move.

Okay, you dragged the truth out of me, Horyon is preparing to move. I have packed a box and moved a few things around, at her prodding. Those of you who have seen me move will be nodding your heads right now and feeling sorry for my wife. Pray for her. Pray for her sanity. Even if you believe that God ignores all prayers, even if you believe that God doesn't exist, pray for her. This will be another test of our love.

Summertime Greens

I chose "Greens" because of Kermit the Frog's song about being green. He says it's cool and friendly-like, big like an ocean, important like a mountain, or tall like a tree. Horyon told me just yesterday that she missed Kansas. It is a good place to call home.

My Mom considers herself to be quite fortunate, in some respects. Despite having been blessed with two sons, she was still given the opportunity to plan two weddings. (Okay, mine was a vow renewal service, but it sure looked a lot like a wedding.) Now, when I hear the words "wedding" and "plan" in the same sentence, I start to get nervous, but that is Mom's cup of tea. She loves organizing big events, she loves seeing it all come together, and I think on some masochistic level she even likes the stress involved.

It was very nice. Our former minister, Rev. Bill Nowlan, came out of semi-retirement to co-officiate with Rev. Jim Bell. My Uncle Tom sang a song that his wife, Debbie, chose–John Lennon's "Grow Old With Me." Absolutely beautiful. (Well, the singing was beautiful, Tom looked like Tom.) Many friends attended, including some from quite far away (thanks Jerry and Michele!).

We had wedding cake. Oh my oh my it was good. Let me tell you something: Koreans like cake, and you can buy cakes everywhere. They look beautiful, with fruit on top, or chocolate. But when you taste it, something is wrong: Korean cake isn't sweet. They think American style cakes are too sweet, so they make theirs really bland, especially the icing. Some people adjust to this, and I used to think it was okay, but after having old-fashioned American wedding cake, I can no longer eat Korean cake.

Our wedding cake was yummy.

And we had an outdoor cookout after the vow renewal ceremony. We had hamburgers and hotdogs and potato salad and all of my relatives brought food. The heat finally broke and it was only in the 80's that day, so everyone felt cool and comfortable. We tossed a frisbee around, ate food, and socialized. A truly good time.

Saying goodbye the following Monday was pretty rough. Poor Horyon felt like she was just getting to know my parents, and I almost felt the same. I know they're my parents, but when you go so long without being with someone, it takes some time to get back into the comfort zone.

Who am I kidding? Our comfort zone has so far proven to be wide enough to encompass Korea and Kansas at the same time. It may one day prove big enough to encompass other planets. For the record, I would like to tell all of you that my parents are the best people you could hope to meet, and I would have no other parents. We are friends, and Horyon quickly adjusted to that pattern. It was hard for both of us to leave because we like them, as well as loving them.

Well, Horyon was worried that I would leave you with the impression that we did very little in Kansas this summer. While it is true that it was our vacation, and we did spend some time doing nothing, we did do a lot of thing. I'm just not going to tell you about all of them right now.

Except for Uncle Don's barbecue. Let me tell you, my Uncle Don can cook. We managed to have a disproportionate number of meals at Becky and Don's house considering that they are a 45 minute drive from home. We also ate a disproportionate amount of food, too. Mmm, barbecue. Nothing in Korea comes close.

And there you have a slice of the recent present as well as last summer. Our home computer will probably be down from Thursday thru Saturday, but my work computer will still be working. I'm always happy to hear from anyone who receives my messages. Just let me know you're alive and kicking.

Peace,

Rob

p.s. The shoe being on the other foot just means that I used to be a university student, and then a professor, and now I'm both. And I couldn't think of a good idiom for that.

Peter's Broken Leg

[Another archived mass email, this one originally entitled "Full Circle." Though it was sent around July 26, 2001, the events covered take place in the fall of 2000, and center around Peter Hart's close encounter with a cinderblock wall and the Korean health care system.]

Dear Friends, Family and Loved Ones:

Well, I really dropped the ball on getting back to you.  Rest assured that I did not move to a cave and go primitive.  It has felt like that from time to time, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't.  I just got married, that's all.  And at times it feels like moving to a cave would be a smaller change, in part because a cave would not come with in-laws.

Also rest assured that the broken leg in question was not my own.  Though the story of the broken leg, and the man attached to it, is intertwined with my own story, and brings me about full circle in part of my own life story.

Flashback, anyone?

In September 1998 I came to work at ELS in Somyon, Pusan.  On September 17th I broke my leg.  I stayed in a Korean hospital, had a miserable time, and got over it.  End of flashback.  If you want the detailed version, ask me and I'll email it to you.

By September 2000, Peter Hart, originally from London, England, had been in Korea for eight months, and was enjoying himself, even when the wind was blowing.  Until September 16th, when the wind blew just a bit too hard and blew over a cinder block wall, part of which landed on Peter's right leg, not just breaking it, but breaking his shin bone into three distinct pieces.

I was in the middle of class when an ELS staff person came in looking very confused and asked me to take the phone.  It was Peter, in an ambulance, sounding absolutely terrified and tortured.  Some of my high-level students, one of whom was a doctor, gave me a ride to the hospital.  It was a terrible, gut-wrenching experience.  Once we got there, it was like reliving the whole thing, the pain, the humiliation, the anger.  Seeing it happen to someone else did not make it easier.

The students who came along told me later that they were surprised at my behavior.  Specifically, I think, when I asked a gentleman in the elevator if it was so *%&!!#ing hard to hold the *%&!!#ing elevator door open for a guy with a broken leg?  Oh yes, I was definitely not at my best.  And in the X-ray room, when the technician casually picked up Petey's broken leg by the heel, I felt it in my gut and damn near fainted myself.

I remembered my time in the hospital, surrounded by people I didn't know, comforted rarely by people I barely knew, and under the complete control of people I couldn't understand.  I refused to leave Pete's side until he went into surgery about four hours later.  While he was in surgery, my manager and I went back to ELS and made a quick game plan to cover Peter's classes for the rest of the month.  We also arranged for his roommate, Dave, to bring some of Pete's stuff to the hospital.  And I made it back to the hospital before he came to.  I stayed with him until his girlfriend, Juyoung, arrived.  I spent the next night in the hospital with him, though.

The next month was somewhat like reliving my own life.  Well, actually, it was more like watching someone else relive my life!  I quickly became one of Peter's best friends, because I was one of the few people who completely understood what he was going through.  (To be fair, though, Petey and I were on pretty good footing before.  At one point he said to me that I was the most non-typical-American American he had ever met, and I told him that he was the least British Brit I had ever met.  (Go back and double-check the hyphens on that.  Go on, I dare ya!)

And so once again I have gotten caught up in details that you are not particularly interested in.  So allow me to conclude the Peter Portion of the Story by adding that for a while Petey had the coolest contraption on his leg.  No cast.  Instead it was this collection of aluminum rods, arcs, and weird stuff.  Some of the rods went *through* his leg, looking like something out of one of those Hellraiser movies.  Disgusting, but fascinating at the same time.  He had continuing problems with infection, probably related to staying on his feet too much and drinking beverages that people in his condition shouldn't drink.

At one point in his recovery, he asked me to give him a full schedule.  Against my better judgement, I did.  He couldn't do it all, so I picked up two hours of his classes.  It was a looong month for Rob, with a total of 3 hr/day of overtime.  Made good money though, which came in handy, because . . .

A Korean wedding is expensive.

To be continued...



So which would you rather have, a cliff hangar or more delays?

[Yes, I used the wrong hangar. Jon VanHoose commented that it gave him an amazing vision of a home for planes clinging to a cliff, from which they could take off by just falling. It's tempting to go back and edit these pieces, but that's a slippery slope I do not wish to approach. If I ever write a memoir, I'll consider it.]