Why? I write to remind myself.

So why would I start blogging about Korea when we are still here in Canada and our plans to move to South Korea are more than seven months away?

One reason is because traveling, nay, relocating to the other ends of the earth, is (insert appropriate adjective plus exclamatory punctuation here) enough when done alone or as a couple, but it is a different game entirely when preparing to move as a familial unit: dad, mom, son (age 7 at departure time), and daughter (three and a half at DT). There are all the regular preparations to be done when moving overseas (immunizations, passports, visas, insurance, other assorted important documents, etc., not to mention the luggage), but it is now X4. Blogging on this topic is a good way keep a record of our family's preparations for our big adventure.

This leads to another question: why are we going to Korea, anyway? South Korea's a crazy place, with even crazier neighbours. The air is bad. Sometimes, people's habits and behaviours or beliefs range from bewildering to absolutely infuriating and unjust. Our family and friends are all here in town with us, for the most part. We live in a good neighborhood, generally safe, close to conveniences. I have a pretty decent job that I quite like; I never dread going to work, I like the people I work with, I like my actual work (teaching English for Academic Prep at a university), with a good pension and benefits plan. The air is clean. We don't have a lot of money, but we're able to afford not having to pay for daycare so that Matthew can stay at home with the kids, namely just Roo, since Bo is in school all day. (The benefits of being able to afford having a stay at home parent with kids when they're young is invaluable... a topic I'll cover at a later date). We have a Subaru station wagon (white, not too flashy, especially in this neighborhood!), and we live in a cul-de-sac with little traffic. We rent in a neighborhood where we could never even begin to imagine being able to afford to buy a home, a quieter area with winding, unnecessary roads.

Yet, as the years pass, we realize we're settling, albeit uncomfortably so, into a life that neither one of us had dreamed was for us. We're realizing that our grand dreams of travel, of exploration and adventure, of education for our children, are going to pass if we continue to just settle for our present life. We continue to feel itchy and restless because we've seemed to have done exactly that, settled into the suburbs, and into a life that neither of us dreamed for ourselves.

Life seems good. It is good! But perhaps the biggest reason we want to leave this life is because we live among people from a culture with values and beliefs, in many cases, in opposition to our own. The vast majority of the upper-middle class who surround us, and, it seems, our entire culture, value money or the evidence of that money by way of a variety of possessions, instead of time with their children. Actual time spent with their children, as opposed to the time spent working in order to provide iPods, or other devices for distracting their kids' attention from the real world. Time spent teaching their children how to be disciplined and hard-working, positive and well-behaved people who know how to interact with others in the world. To impart upon their children an appreciation for the things they appreciate by spending time doing these things with them... cooking, music, art, sports, gardening, etc.

I am referring to the people who work so desperately hard to fit an image in order to garner the respect and admiration of others around them (by flaunting an existence of wealth by owning a certain amount of property, owning more than one car, outfitting their kids with the proper accountrements of a "Jersey Shore"-obsessed youth - just watch South Park's "It's a Jersey Thing" for their own unmistakable commentary - and so on and on and on...), instead of the respect and admiration of their husband/wife and children.

It would be naive, if not downright stupid, to think that "moving up the ladder" is not present in Korea. In fact, "keeping up with the Kims" is fiercer than the North American "Joneses." So why move us all to Korea? Because the fact remains that we are not Korean, and we will never fit there. We have no desire nor expectation of fitting into Korean society and keeping up with it. We do, on the other hand, feel intense pressure to fit in and keep up with the society and larger culture to which we belong now. And it really doesn't sit well with us.

If we don't prepare now, we will probably never go. We might stay in the suburbs where life is good enough, and we'll settle into becoming the type of people we swore we never would when we first decided upon spending the rest of our lives together.

There are other reasons why we've chosen Korea, such as being able to get quite a good job, and being able to save money, and being able to live overseas with our children, but the biggest is to live our dreams and make them come true. The first step is Korea, and then who knows where?! Possibly living in Israel, or learning how to do organic farming, or studying French in Montreal. And, or course, settling, when we are ready (in maybe 4-5 years, when Bo would be about eleven and Roo eight), into a house in a place (likely in Canada) that we can afford, where we can work at something we love, and where we are surrounded by a community with whom we feel a sense of belonging and solidarity. We might very well have chickens. We would need to have a large garden.

So to answer the original question - why blog? - I write in order to remind myself of keeping to our dreams and not settling, and to maintain an account of the process.

Look Out! Here comes the Spider Joe

Can he swing from a thread?......
Well not just yet, but given the chance I'm sure he'd try.
Our son is a Spiderman-a-holic. He runs back and forth in our little apartment, shouting "boy's running like spiderman", he has spiderman poses and even a spiderman face. Joe is addicted to spiderman.

When we had trouble with him using the potty at his babysitters it was "his" spiderman we bribed him with.

Then on one glorious day in late October, his Grandma came to visit, whom he hadn't seen in nearly a year. If there was one thing that could break the ice it was spiderman. Is there anything like preening over yourself in the mirror admiring your new Spiderman pajamas?

(Hanna's aside: Back when Matt and I were "just friends", he would often talk about how he wanted a child, just in order to train him to be a superhero, specifically one that was imbued with the amazing superhero assets one could only obtain through the bite of a radioactive insect (or arachnid, for you nerdy biology types). Personally, I am more inclined to admire and empathize with the Green Goblins or Dr. Octopuses of the world - even though they suffer the inevitable downfall inherent in all supervillains, they, well, always seem admirably motivated to accomplish their lofty goals, like taking over the world. Spiderman, and other superheroes, seem, in comparison, predictably reactionary. As a child, I would always watch Inspector Gadget, not because I liked the cartoon, but because I harboured the faint hope that "today, maybe today, Dr. Claw will finally get that damn Gadget!!").

(sigh.....Matt's aside to Hanna's aside (could this get more ridiculous). Why is it that older siblings tend to have a penchant for siding with evil? some sort of quick excuse for the crimes they commit against their younger brethren....I'm not sure. I do know that I grew up with a brother who always had to be the bad guy. He was Darth Vader to my Luke Skywalker, Shredder to my Ninja Turtles, Megatron to my Optimus (seriously I can go on and on) Mummra to my Thundercats, (does anyone remember the Visionaries?) He was the bad Visionaries to my good Visionaries. I kid you not, he was, when we were children, the Germans to my Allied forces (Yes that's right Dave, I remember "The Battle of Britain: Their Finest Hour", the computer game.)

So Matt wonders why we older siblings feel this inclination to the evil side of human nature... with our "younger brethren" so uppity with their "morals" and "righteousness", all we could really do was counter it, our yang to their yin, etc.... Or just punch them twice when our parents weren't looking. Or frame them for crimes they hadn't committed. Or steal their cookies. Or lock them out on the roof of the house when you were supposed to be taking care of them for the afternoon (I slap my knee with mirth at the very memory).... ahh, delicious deception, enforced through brute strength.

And who can blame us younger siblings for desperately hanging onto to some out dated twisted perception of justice? There just had to be something coming for our older siblings, didn't there? Shouldn't they be struck down by God's fury, or at the very least suffer something utterly humiliating in front of their friends, perhaps along the lines of what they did to us infront of our friends? Doesn't it seem right? DAMN IT GOD, WOULDN'T IT BE JUST??!!!!!!! Why did they always win?......What the hell happened to Karma???????

Somehow, somewhere along the way I think we forgot we were talking about Joe. He's doing great and learning "that with great power comes great responsibility"....(At least as long as he remains the only child).

Joe's Birthday

And then he was two........bah bah ba bahm. Crazy the responsibilities that come with being two years old. Such as having to dance for an hour straight to the same song, not for fun but as though your very sanity depends on it (probably more ours than his, as the war of attrition that is raising a two year old rages on in full swing). It's not as though Great Big Sea's "Donkey Riding" is all that bad of a song, but everyday all day it's "donkey riding", "just donkey riding" or if he's been told no more, it becomes "donkey ride, no no no". But it was Joe's birthday and if he wanted to listen to nothing else for a solid hour then I guess he picked a good day to ask for it.

All in all, Joe had a pretty fantastic day. His birthday included a trip to the Wal-Mart playroom, fancy yellow Kart-Racer shoes (with flashing lights to boot...sorry, I couldn't help myself), along with several new books from his Grandpa via Amazon.com, some plastic jungle animals, part of a model train, and a couple stuffed toys and marbles from Tae-Young (our boss's son, who has developed a great fondness for Joe), combined with a whole lot of balloons and access to the "big fan button" ( after two years it's not even remotely strange that the remote control to the air conditioner was probably his favorite part of the day). Sadly, though, right as he was presented with la piece de resistance, a delicious, succulent birthday cake fresh from the ovens of the bakery downstairs, he was hit with a fever, and spent the next day and a half clutched to his mom (and sometimes dad, if he was feeling better), digesting only children's "Tyrenol" and juice. (Dammit, Mom and Dad, I was sick and you ate most of my birthday cake!)

Today was Joe's first day with Hyun Ju, his new babysitter. We think it will be a much better experience for him. No more bite marks, scratches, or slaps upside the head with packages of pickled radish from Yoo Bin. After only one day, he has already started calling her "halmoni", which is Korean for "grandmother".

I Hits Ya Cause I Loves Ya, Baby

Well, it seems that the tumultuous and raging relationship of Yoo-Bin and Joe will be drawing to a close. Boon-Oh (Yoo-Bin's mother and Joe's sitter) has told us that she cannot care for Joe any longer, because she finds caring for two little toddlers very difficult, especially considering the fact that Yoo-Bin has become extremely protective of her mother, and deeply resents Joe for taking away her attention. So... we have (with Boon-Oh's help) found another sitter for Joe, an older woman with two children in high school. This woman also helps out part-time at a daycare, so she will be able to take Joe with her to play with other kids.

Poor Joe. He was coming home every day with new scratches and bite marks, all the while proclaiming his love for Yoo-Bin wishing her a sweet good night as we tucked him into bed.

He is learning Korean, though. The other day, he was unwillingly eating his lunch. Finally, his exasperated parents said, "OK, Joe, only two more bites," to which he responded, "Anee, anee" (roughly translated: "nnnnoooooo").

Why A Fine Arts Degree is "Worth It"

Aside from functioning as a very expensive daycare for those fresh out of high school or not so fresh out, I've been racking my brain to think of why a liberal arts degree (or more specifically a Fine Arts degree) is worth the time and money invested.

A couple obvious answers come to mind, like oh say being able to teach English in a foreign country like Korea. Or maybe the knowledge that you have a new perception of the world that your parents and family who haven't taken all the liberal arts classes simply cannot understand.
Maybe your parents have paid for your degree and you don't like them, so there's some satisfaction in knowing how much they've spent for you to go to university for an Art degree and barely graduate.
I'm sure for everyone there is a different answer, and maybe some answers would even include words like career, work or job. Such words seem strange to me but I'm only one person.
For myself the answer may evolve with time (maybe someday career or job won't seem so foreign) but for now it would be that I can draw pictures my son enjoys, pictures that would have earned me no respect if I had drawn them while in university.

Matt

How to beat so your kids will listen

A short time after I began working at Seoul Language Academy, I noticed that the students were much more well behaved for the Korean teachers than they were for the foreigners. I remarked how drastically the classroom atmospere shifted the moment a Korean in a position of authority poked a head in my classroom. Instantly, posture was straightened, eyes were averted downwards, and all chaos came screeching to an instant halt. For a few brief moments, the students' attention was riveted on their "sonsangnim", meaning both "teacher" and "master."

So why such a shift in behaviour? Well, another thing I soon remarked was that Korean teachers carried large "whacking sticks" into their classrooms. Measuring about 1.5 feet in length and about 1/2 an inch in diameter, the teachers have no qualms about smacking the upturned palms of their misbehaved. In fact, in order to aid the discipline in my classroom, I will threaten them with Rodger, another Korean teacher who also happens to be the manager of the school. The kids are terrified of him because, as they tell me, he "hits us really hard." He is also a Korean man, a "father figure."

Speaking of corporal punishment and fathers, I recently asked my advanced class to write in their journals about their "worst experience ever." Every class, I give them a topic to write about for a few minutes, and on this day, I got a response that my delicate Canadian sensibilities had not prepared me for. One student (who also happens to be the smartest in the class) wrote that the worst thing he had ever experienced was the time he had been caught lying. His father, to teach him a lesson, beat him with a golf club so badly that he was unable to go to school the next day (and it takes a lot to get these kids to miss school). Yet the student was grateful for having been taught the lesson by his father, whom he adores.

So, if I were in Canada, and heard of such a story, it would unquestionably be my responsibility to report such an occurence to the proper authorities. But here in Korea, where it's so commonplace, beating your child or spouse, or keeping your students in line with a large stick is the norm, and they see nothing wrong with it. In fact, they wonder how we in the West have let our children rule their parents and teachers through lack of discipline.

Korea ostensibly has one of the highest rates of spousal abuse in the world, but it is not a punishable offense. And standing up to authority, or questioning authority, is, in most cases, completely inconceivable. So the wife submits to the husband, the children to the father, and the students to the (Korean) teacher, and the tradition of authoritarian rule continues in much the same way as it has for centuries, with the help of sticks and clubs.