Yay

By the way, I'll be coming home December 5. Get your party hats ready.

Chincha? #1 - Fans

Sometimes life in Korea is crazy. Really crazy. In the last few weeks of my stay I'm beginning a new series of entries entitled "Chincha?" (which means really? in Korean). These entries will attempt to share with you a little dose of strange so that when I arrive home you can better understand why I act the way I do.

Recently my students were asked to respond to the following prompt:

In Korea there is a widespread belief that sleeping with an electric fan can cause death. What evidence is used to support this phenomenon?

I would like to assert that Fan Death is a real cause for concern here. The lesson was supposed to be teaching them about being critical of the news that they read or see, as there were news stories asserting the dangers of sleeping in a closed room with a fan. Here are some of the responses I received. Seriously. (edited slightly for coherence but DEFINITELY not context)

"If you turned on electric fan in sealed room, you can't breathe O2 and you breathe CO2 and you could die."

"Person's body temp is 36.5. When only one degree is deleted it is harmful for body. If we sleep with fan our body temp will go down so we will die."

"Fan takes fresh air and if you turn on fan in closed room there'll be no fresh air left."

And, my personal favorite:

"Fan make tornado ---> suck air
temperature down
O2 to CO2 ---> worse than a candle"

Mind you that these are middle school students. When pressed for real, actual evidence and when confronted with the reality that fans make wind and do NOT change the chemical composition of air, they resorted to the old standby "My mom said so". At least they're listening to their parents.

Lantern Festival Redux

I went to the lantern festival in Jinju last year, but frigid rains kept us from really enjoying the event. This weekend was perfect. A beautiful festival set next to an impressive fortress. I've got a lot to say (as you may know from earlier posts) but since I've had my camera back for the first time since June, I figure for today I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Where I Stand

One of the major reasons that I haven't been posting a lot lately, aside from pure laziness, is that I have been grappling with the multi-cultural-ness of it all. I am aware that this sounds not only strange but also obvious: a multi-cultural struggle while working in a foreign country? That's surprising. But really, when it comes down to it, there are some paradigm shifts that you simply cannot prepare yourself for and, I'm finding, just may be impossible to adjust to. Of course there are the straightforward changes that one makes--learning the language and digesting the spicy food--and there are the behavioral differences that, however annoying, one grows accustomed to--getting pushed and bumped and cut in line--but these things are not really what I'm driving at. What I mean is the greater, systemic changes that are required in order to live successfully in another culture, the changes that are not obvious until after a level of involvement has been reached.

Like I said, I'm finding that, in the case of Korea at least, I think I am incapable of making these changes because I think it would involve changing who I am and the way that I look at the world. Because of this, I have been at odds with Korea despite the desire to make the most of my time here. I have been struggling to find the words to describe experiences that I only superficially understand, and to explain why I have chosen to stay despite this struggle.

In the next few days I'm going to be writing about these issues more. I feel that you, as my friends, have a right to know what is really going on almost as much as I am finally ready to analyze my own thoughts and feelings about it. Before I get into it, I would like to remind everyone that this may sound overly negative, but I by no means intend to imply that my experience here has been predominantly so. Life, no matter where, has its ups and downs.

Standards

In keeping with the fact that standards of beauty are different the world over, one of the highest compliments you can receive from the most critical Korean demographic, the middle school girl, is "you have a small face." I kid you not. "I love your eyes" and "Your hair looks great" and "Have you lost weight?" all pale in comparison to the standards of beauty set by those with small faces. Its disconcerting, really, the first time someone appreciates your face for its diminutive qualities; the feeling is akin to someone saying that they have never before seen shoulders quite like yours or that your feet are exactly proportionate to your body. How does one respond to this??? The only thing I could come up with was an awkward silence and an uncomfortable clearing of the throat. What can I say? I'm pretty classy.