Papa Tomato runs back to Baby Tomato, squishes him, and says, "Ketchup!"

Thank you, Mia Wallace...

So I've been a lot of busy and a little down in the dumps lately, hence my lack of updates on here. I have a lot to catch up on, especially my writing.

Speaking of writing, I do feel a bit as if my writing muscle (as the wonderful Dale Rigby calls it) has atrophied a bit. The way my mind processes the English language has completely changed from its former use - digesting dense literature or information, synthesizing and analyzing it, and creating strings of sentences and paragraphs that express those analyses as appropriately as possible using specific vocabulary - to its current one: finding the most boiled-down ways to convey every piece of information, from classroom directions and lessons in English to making simple and banal efforts at conversation in Korean with staff at my school. For example: "Yesterday evening, I went to the bus station!" (Eileen smiles and nods enthusiastically; new vice principal smiles back and chuckles at Eileen's awful accent: some kind of weird trans-lingual bond is now established....) I have to avoid the specificity I usually love about language, because sometimes telling your students that "popular" means "everyone knows and likes (noun)" is easier than going into the contextual implications and connotations that could be associated with the word "popular." To some, this probably sounds like a strange or pointless thing to worry about, but I've been very consciously wiring my brain a certain way for four years, and this necessary re-wiring does make me a bit nervous.

OK Eileen, ENOUGH ENGLISH MAJOR RANTING ALREADY! Sheesh!

I DO have a few things to talk about that general audiences might care about / be entertained by (but I had to get that first part off my chest, okay?)

To begin, and while I'm already stealing material for titles in this post...

A Foreigner in a Foreign Land: Learning to Grok becoming Soju-Brothers
The fact that Korea is one of the most culturally and ethnically homogeneous nations on the planet must be known to understand anything about this culture. One thing relating to this idea of "sameness" that I've realized is that, while any dozen Americans might have between them 20 or more cultural backgrounds and with them a diverse set of traditions, mannerisms, etc., Koreans tend to have one "Korean way" to do EVERYTHING, and this includes drinking.

It's a good thing the complex ritual of giving and receiving alcohol was explained (and demonstrated) to us at orientation, because it wasn't a full week into my life in Cheonan that my knowledge of drinking etiquette was tested. My school's vice principal was promoted to principal at another school, so all 80 of the schools faculty gathered at a kalbi (table-side barbecued short ribs) restaurant. After cooking and devouring our generous portion of pork (all while sitting cross-legged on the floor), my table mates and I were joined by the school's principal. With a jocular gleam in his eye, he told me "I am going to test you now on drinking."

As an aside, this man is an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING boss. We were told to expect our principals to be very busy and well-nested at the tippity-top of the totem pole of school hierarchy. While Principal Yu is both of those things (busy and respected), he is also an incredibly kind and down-to-earth man who takes great interest in the well-being of his staff and students, who makes time (which he may or may not have) for visitors in his "open door policy" office, and who has been exceptionally welcoming to me in particular. Actually, he is so welcoming that I often skip the Fulbright-suggested "Insa" or greeting upon entering and leaving the school, as it usually leads to a cup of tea and a 15-minute visit.

Back to the drinking. Principal Yu picks up a bottle of soju, and, as I was trained, I pick up my shot glass with my right hand. I touch the elbow of my right arm with my left fingertips in a symbolic gesture (this way you neither give things to nor receive things from people carelessly). He pours. "Konbe!" we say, and I drink the soju. I hand him the same shot glass, take the bottle from him, and we reverse the process. After we've traded a couple of drinks this way, we open the circle to the whole table, and the toast turns from "Cheers!" in Korean to "I love you!" in English. Four teachers and my Principal surround me, all of us reddening and warming a bit, and we pour for each other around the circle, sharing the alcohol, sharing the glasses, sharing the love. (How could I help but think of Heinlein here?) I went home that night feeling a buzzing happiness not just from the rice whiskey but from the acceptance I already felt from this group of co-workers.


Teaching the Teacher: my yoga instructor and I take things 'step-by-step'
My neck was on the floor, along with the lengths of my arms, fingertip to shoulder, and my feet. My hips and waist protruded upward as high as I could push them. My breathing was obstructed from the weird angle of my chest, but I tried to maintain the steady and deep breaths "in 1-2-3, out 1-2-3" that I was taught. My yoga teacher speaks to the class in Korean, then he looks at me. "Eileen, hands on your... neck?" He points to the intended body part. "Ankles" I say between breaths. "Yes! hands on your ankles!" I smile, and grunt, and try to shift my body into the progressively more contorted pose.

Sometimes we wind up practicing our lessons at the same time.

My yoga teacher, Jin-Seok Kang, and I have a bit of a deal going on. I stay after class for 15-20 minutes and help him with his English vocabulary and pronunciation, and he gives me two free yoga classes on top of the three per week that I pay for. Sometimes one of us is too busy to meet after yoga for English lessons, and sometimes I am too busy or tired to go to class at all, so it is not a contract set in stone. But getting to play the roles of student and teacher back-to-back has given me a better understanding of both.

Yoga in Korea - or maybe yoga in a studio where the instructor is as well-trained in true Ashtanga yoga as Mr. Kang is - is not like the fusion of stretching, strengthening, and relaxing I got used to in the Preston Center at WKU. "Listen to what your body needs today," and "Feel the energy and power your body generates and let it strengthen your mind" are not phrases heard in Dain Yoga Studio in Cheonan (not that I would understand them if they were...) Mr. Kang does not care as much about what my body needs on any given day as he does about just...how...far...I...can...stretch. Even if that means "how far I can stretch" when he is kneeling against my back in Downward Dog, or when he is pulling my wrists past my outstretched legs and toes in a forward fold. This man is interested in yoga extremes.

So you can imagine how frustrated I can get at him after a day of wild high school boys, silent girls, crashing computers, and classes rescheduled at the last minute, when he looks at me and says, "NO, Eileen: HEELS ON GROUND!" or "FEET IN AIR!" The last thing I want at the end of those days is to be told what to do in such demanding terms. One day, after yoga, while I was gulping down water and looking over Mr. Kang's hand-drawn diagram of the human body with the vocab words I had given him written in as labels, I noticed a couple of spelling errors. I pointed them out, and he smiled, shook his pony-tailed head, and erased them. "Step-by-step," he said, "In yoga, you go step-by-step; in English, I go step-by-step." Suddenly we were in the same place: we both wanted to learn something from the other, and we both had limits to how much we could retain and how much we could teach in a given period of time.

To my dear readers, I apologize for yet another dry and photo-free entry, but there is a new album on my Picassa now! Some day I will write something and take pictures of the same thing and have a nice little package for you, but today is not that day! ; )

Cheers, Love, and missing you all!
Eileen