Transitioning progress

Hello all! Well I have officially made the transition from visitor to resident. Not just in getting my place and making it homey but also in getting a green card, a cell phone, and internet access. I even opened checking and savings accounts this week and got an ATM card. It has been a long 10 days living in my new home and not being in communication with anyone (save for a conversation with my father, step mother, and sister one afternoon from a PC club which I found within the block but is very smokey so I am celebrating having my own connections now). Which is why you have not heard from me all this time. I wrote a couple of posts but have not been able to add them to the blog because I have not had internet. I have no access to email addresses when I’m not on my own computer so forgive me for taking awhile to respond to your emails about the blog being up. It also means that I have not had a chance to solve the technical difficulties with loading my photos to this blog but I hope to get that done before too long as well. Please be patient with me and all of this new technology.

I ran into a woman who lives in my building named Catherine. She is here teaching as well, from Ireland. I delight in her accent and she and I went out to a bar around the corner, called Mad Max’s, to visit and get to know each other. Amazing to me, she had 3 draft beers and I had 3 sprites and we both ate all the popcorn we wanted-all for 4500 Won, which is about 3 dollars. She and I both found it surprising that they serve molded jello (with fruit, in leaded crystal bowls) with their beer here, as well as plates of fresh fruit (and which I have not seen offered in any restaurants). Catherine lives on the eighth floor and her place is much smaller than mine, if you can believe that! She is able to get on somebody else’s WiFi (as I was when I lived at Reah’s). I now believe because she is so much higher up than I am (she's on the eighth floor and I'm on the third). She must sit in the corner by the window on her bed for it to work but since she just got here three or four weeks ago and has not yet gotten her green card (so can’t get internet of her own yet), has generously offered to allow me to come up to her place and use her internet. This was so supportive and yet then the emails I needed were unavailable to me when I went to the PC club (which I try to avoid since so many smoke there I can barely breathe). Having been under the weather with a cold all week, breathing has been harder than usual already. We are going to check out the public singing forum in our building together sometime (I can hear someone crooning, even as I write this). Having heard about her teaching junior high and high school students (and how challenging it is to get them to speak in front of the opposite gender and when they feel so self-conscious), I am grateful to be teaching elementary school instead-who seem to be less self-conscious the younger they are.

Lexy and I were told to have a Halloween party this week. My teaching days were changed from Tuesday and Thursday to Monday and Friday so we did it on Wednesday, a couple of days before Halloween. I bought a pumpkin, roasted the seeds, carved it, and put some candles in it. The kids were very impressed and the two first grade classes gave me thumbs up for it. Lexy and I each bought popcorn, candies, suckers, and chocolate candy bars, etc. and I typed up instructions on How to make a Jack-O-Lantern. I mimed the instructions, step by step. I showed them the sketch I had made of my design for the carving and how I had transferred it to the pumpkin before cutting and they each turned the paper over and drew a design for one they might make. Lexy found a bag full of Halloween decorations and we closed off the classroom next to the one we usually use and turned it into a Haunted House, with the traditional Korean seating on the floor with low tables. We even had a CD with Halloween sound effects and played that in the background. Lexy took each of the six classes into the scary room and then beckoned me in, draped with black cape-like fabric and a “The Scream” mask, and glow in the dark long fingernails. The kids screamed with delight as I pursued them with my long fingernails, then offered them my mask and other costume pieces to try for themselves. They got plenty of sugar that day. I’m not sure how much English they learned but I do hope they saw that school can be fun and not always so much work. Although Lexy and I were both much more tired than usual since we were both sick with colds and sneezing and blowing repeatedly throughout the day, which takes much energy, as does cleaning up after 43 children, all of whom are less than 14 years old. Many of these children have already been to a different school before they come to our after school program and they are often exhausted. They have stuff going on at home too-one fifth grade student’s mother died this week, another’s grandmother is in the hospital, etc. Lexy and I have each had talks with one of the other fifth grade girls to keep her hand out of her pants during our class (which happened every couple of minutes, before we told her that behavior is off limits in our class-a conversation I could not have with her in Non-Violent Communication because even regular English she does not understand-but I think I was clear with my eye and hand gestures). Korean children are not told to be quite and that is something I have heard other English teachers say they have had to teach them because it has not occurred as a possibility to the Korean teachers they work with. Hearing some of the English teachers advocate corporal punishment and it’s efficacy is painful for me and I would like to share NVC with them but have not found the extra energy necessary to do so yet.

It’s great to be able to go out and walk around anytime of the day or night and not have to worry about whether or not I’m safe. I’m also enjoying the ease and freedom of taking the subway and not having to worry about my possessions disappearing or of being attacked. The subway rivals anything that New York City has but is much newer, cleaner, and less expensive too. From the sound of things, apparently a woman is safe anywhere in Korea except in her home (yes, domestic violence is world-wide).

I went to Seoul via subway for the first time last Sunday and found a couple of meetings there as well as about 30 new friends, most of whom are English teachers and many of whom are Americans. One guy is even from San Francisco and regularly went to Radiant Light Ministries 10 years after I did. We all went out between meetings to Itewon, the district in Seoul with the most foreigners and the most diversity of foods and had pitas/falafals. They were a wealth of resources and I plan on making this trip to Seoul on a weekly basis to get the spiritual support, community, and socializing I need.

Lexy gave notice at work last week, her last day will 11/15. She has invited me to join her for a weekend in Busan. Busan is where most Koreans go for vacations, sort of a resort I think (with beaches?). I know it’s south of here quite a bit and I will take the super fast train for the first time to get there-looking forward to seeing the countryside. Her birthday is 11/13 so we will celebrate with dinner at her favorite restaurant (Outback steak house, which I hear is expensive) and then take the trip a week later too. She is only 26 but the job is too stressful for her and her health has suffered as a result. I will miss her as we have gotten very close and are a good team. We have similar views of compassion towards the children and I hope the next teacher will as well.

I learned yesterday, when we went to get internet, that I put the wrong address on my voters registration and Young Living autoship order so I spent most of the day trying to get these things sorted out. Looks like I will be able to vote by fax and I will receive the products I’ve been anticipating for a couple of months now. Yippee! I only knew my address from the piece of mail that was in my box (I figured if it got here it must be right) but since these are the first two things I will receive here and the building name was wrong that was not going to work. Korean addresses do not have street numbers and names usually but rather building names and floor or room numbers.

I learned today that my work schedule will change for the sixth time. Starting on Monday, I will be working at a new school in the mornings (Reah will pick me up and drive me across town and then somehow I will get to the school with Lexy and have lunch and prepare for the day before classes start at 1:00 pm., at least for the next two weeks. Who knows what will happen after that. I did develop a curriculum for tutoring Eric, Reah’s 12 year old son. I submitted it today for approval and she thinks it looks good (even though I’ve never done anything like this before). I’m dubious about whether she can understand it even as she has not practiced English for 10 years now and her skills have disappeared. Choosing the books from the office’s library and having him read a page or two for me (to assess his reading level) was a process: one that my weekly reading with Ian (my 12 year old next door neighbor at FrogSong) supported me with. My intention is to make tutoring fun for Eric but I can tell by the way he is less interested in spending time with me, since he learned I will be tutoring him, that shifting the focus might be challenging. He already goes to two schools so this is more on top of all of his class work and homework too. The pressure is on to get him into a college in America even though he is only in fifth grade, and even though he is at the genius level in his favored subjects of chemistry and mathematics. I have compassion for him and want him to have a childhood so am determined to make the tutoring fun for him, even though I’m sure it will take a ton of energy and creativity to do so.

The solar dryer seems to work ok and the take off your shoes area has become functional since I realized it has mirrored doors on the shelves. The bathroom is more functional since I got the squeegee but I have yet to find a store that sells the adapter I need to hook up my Multi-Pure water filter in there. I’m using my Bemer a couple of times everyday and so grateful to have it here, and the massage table it rests on, which makes this place so much more functional than it would be without it.

I learned this week that the vacation times I had hoped to take, to celebrate my birthday and do a residential Ortho-Bionomy training, are impossible. I’m disappointed about that but want to see if there is something else I can get excited about that is happening on the two weeks that I will be taking off (last week in Jan and last week in July, I believe, in case you have suggestions). I need to have something to look forward to so having plans for those two weeks will support sanity.

Today I began studying for my Clinical Aromatherapy exam, at last. So much change has been happening that I have not had the ability to focus since I got my corrected homework back, to use to study for the final. I’m happy to have more focus and something to do that feels like an efficient use of my time and a way to make some progress.

Looking forward to hearing some news and weather from Sonoma County once I get my internet hooked up. Hoping that will help me feel more connected with all of you from afar.

I spoke with Kat today. She says the funds for California to purchase my car have been released so that is a huge relief and celebration. You will be able to purchase my book soon, which I am told has shipped to Australia and New Zealand but not to the US or Canada yet. I’m celebrating being a published author and cannot wait to have the book in my hands! Will, of course, let you all know when the website is ready and you can purchase online-more urgent needs for internet access. Trusting and in awe of the timing-how me getting internet (to be able to set up the website) has coincided with the book becoming available, even though both are happening at least a month later than I had hoped.

Had an interesting conversation on the subway tonight with a man who lived in Paraguay for six years. We spoke Spanish though, not English. It felt great to be able to communicate with someone. I am aware of being disabled with not being able to read Korean, or speak it, of course. Everything in the stores and restaurants is in Korean, and everything on the computer even. Things that I have taken for granted are no longer easy. For instance, I got my first utility bill. It had data from the last year and lots of analysis of costs and I could not read most of it-took me an hour to figure out what I needed to pay, which turned out to be about $10 for 2 weeks (but I did notice that October has the lowest cost of any month all year, probably due to the temperate weather). I’m relieved to know that I won’t have many of those extravagant utility bills I thought might happen.

I’m thrilled to have the movie theatre so close to home but am beginning to see that even though there are movies nearly anytime of the day or night, it’s rare for them to be in English. Perhaps I will learn more about the Korean language and culture if I watch films in Korean.

Wishing you all a very Happy Halloween and an abundant harvest time,
Terri
P.S. Hoping you get out and vote on Tuesday!