Dear Jason

Hi everyone,

As you may or may not know, Brian (Alexander) and I got a dog, Jason, a while back. As you probably don't know, we had to put Jason down last Saturday. I've been really sad (obvi), and I wanted to write some things down...and then I remembered our blog! If you'll permit me...

Dear Jason,

I miss you. Things I miss:
- watching The Simpsons with you
- sneak-stretch
- being quiet when I roll over in the morning so you don't think it's time to go for a walk
- when you yawn when you wake up
- trying to make you snuggle me
- letting you sleep on the bed
- when you wiggle your whole body when I get home
- when you lick my face/when I immediately wipe it off afterward
- lying in the sun with you
- watching you be inappropriate with other dogs at the dog park
- helping you into the car
- seeing your little doggy face in the rear view mirror
- leaving the door open when I go to the bathroom to make sure you're not getting into trouble
- when you follow me around the house
- when you drool when you're waiting for your food
- feeding you
- playing with you
- petting you
- walking you
- talking to you
- catching your vomit
- saying goodnight to you
- saying goodnight to you a second time on my way back from the bathroom
- your eyebrows
- the way you smell
- cleaning your eye goop
- when you woof at people who are too loud
- when you sleep-woof
- singing songs and putting your name in them

I wish you would be a ghost and come visit me. It's lonely without you. Your dad put all of your toys up in the closet. I secretly wish that one of them would fall down from the shelf so I know you're here. I don't like walking anymore because it is inferior to walking with you. On my way home from work on Monday, I started crying in the hallway, and your dad had to come out to get me. You would greet me at the door, and I would say hi to you first, your dad second. The other night when I was setting my alarm before bed, I started crying because I didn't have to account for the time it would take to walk you in the morning. How do I start my day? I then realized that during the seven months we had you, I spent more time with you than with anyone else. I don't ever want another dog because I know it will be inferior to you. I love you, and I hope you come back as a ghost doggy to keep me company.

Love,
Mom

Things My Dad Talks about on the Phone

• Lawn, growth of
• Lawn, mowing of
• Bicycling, plans for
• Bicycling, friends' injuries sustained during
• Pritty Kitty, weight of
• Pritty Kitty, dietary changes for
• iPad, frustrations with

today, i actually saw a chicken cross the road
who knows why she did it.

Going to Madison

So in a week or so I will be driving from Wilson through Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and arriving in Madison, Wisconsin. I'll definitely be stopping in Deadwood, SD! Don't even worry! My question to you is: you know any other places between Wyoming and Wisconsin that I should see on my drive?

Hey! Roamerzzz!

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

I leave Seoul in two weeks to go to Honolulu via Taipei.

Where are you all and what are some recent events in your lives?

Food and Bike Crash

I'll say this about Korean food: my digestive system's response to it is a constant surprise.

On Sunday I was in a bike crash. I had ridden about 10 or 15 miles along the river, and I was on a pretty heavily travelled bike path. As I was riding two abreast in the eastbound lane of the bike path, another biker in the westbound lane made a left turn into me. I'm not sure exactly what happened, because I blacked out, but when I woke up there were people rolling me over onto my back. It seems I broke my fall with my face, which in turn broke my face. I have a broken schnozzer and a wicked headache, but other than that I'm fine. Everyone around was really helpful, including tiny Korean children, who smiled and waved and flashed thumbs-up at me, and my boss from work who came to the hospital and helped me avoid a tetanus booster in the ass. At the scene of the crash, someone called the police, people brought cold washcloths for my head, one guy seemed to be on dedicated keep-Brett-from-trying-to-sit-up duty, and a few minutes later an ambulance came and took me to the emergency room.

In the emergency room, I had two x-rays, a CT scan to check for bleeding into my brain, a shot of antibiotics, and a blood test. All of that, plus the ambulance trip, cost $240. A police officer came to the hospital later with the cyclist who hit me. That cyclist told the officer it was his fault, so he's paying for all my medical costs, which I feel kind of bad about, but I guess that's how it works. Anyway, no infection, no internal bleeding, just a broken nose. I might need surgery to make sure it heals properly, but I won't know until Thursday.

So far, the worst part is that I can't wear my glasses. Apparently they put too much pressure on my broken schnozzer. Teaching a bunch of colorful blobs has been interesting. "Hey you--blurry kid in the back. Wearing red. Yeah, you. Pay attention." On the plus side, I now have a good reason for being slow at learning names.

Not Natural

Hey Guys, time to blog about not being in Salem again. So, lately I've been really connecting with this idea that we as humans have very natural, primal and ancient parts of ourselves that we, and our culture, often suppress. I'm sure we're all familiar with the argument that humans have "fallen out" of nature and feel instead we can conquer it etc. Well, I'm talking more about our inner psyches not necessarily our connection to things green. We are an ancient species, and the urban/modern lifestyles we experience in this day has existed for only one tiny miniscule percent of our entire existence. This history has left something ancient in our evolution. With my immersion into business school, I have become acutely aware of this ancient woman-being inside of me. During this semester at times when I had so much school work that I did not have time to breathe, an emotional force came out from inside of me. It manifested in tears and trembling, feelings of isolation and being lost, and an overall confusion "from where do these feelings come? is it me?" It was the feeling that I am sure in history past has led people to seek exorcisms.

On the day of my last exam, when everyone was at the Aquarium and the weather was beautiful, I found a book of C.G. Jung's nature writings. On one of the intro pages I read some along the lines of: "If the natural and ancient psyche of a person is suppressed and ignored, it can revolt... at time suicidally." It all made sense to me then. Those emotions, those strong feelings that felt as thought they would burst from my chest were my ancient woman-being starved for attention. I suddenly understood why I had become so deeply invested in dance this past semester and why at times I felt a force from inside, myself but not, starved for something.

Having become more aware of this part of myself, I was able to understand my feelings when I was first boarding my plane home to New Orleans yesterday. I suddenly felt sad, separated, insecure, and unsure. I think that it is not natural for people to be subjected to switching between worlds so quickly. Getting on a plane and flying from my life in Salem to a past life in New Orleans got my ancient woman-being's panties in a twist. And it's cool now. Now that I know she's there and what her deal is I don't feel so afraid or confused when I don't understand my emotions, I just know they're from her.

Quick

This city moves so fast that sometimes I think it can't even keep up with itself. Today I took a bike ride, which I'll describe in more detail below. Many of the streets I was on were constructed so recently they're not even on internet maps yet (in English or Korean) and I happened upon a nature preserve/park that's shown on Google Maps and Naver Maps--and listed on Korea's own tourism website (under "Noeul Park")--as a golf course.

More on the bike ride: It was probably my most eventful bike ride ever. I took a bridge across the Han River that I'd never ridden on before, hoping to get to the bike path that runs along the side of the river opposite where I live. As it turns out, the bridge passes over that path, but gives no way of getting to it. So I rode down the other side of the bridge planning to find a way to get back to the river. I ended up getting shunted into a left turn along with a bunch of traffic as the bike path I was on ended and we entered a construction zone. I figured that was probably fine, because we were pointed at what looked like a new development of high-rises and, in my experience, new developments here usually have well-marked bike lanes, so it'd just be a few minutes of riding through the construction before I'd get to enjoy the smooth pavement of a new bike lane.

Not so. The road bypassed the new development and took me past a sign that said "Motorway 500m," and then I was on a highway. I couldn't really turn around and ride back, because the shoulder was small, there was lots of traffic, and it was, well, a highway. So I rode on the shoulder until the next exit, got off the highway, and ended up on a local road. I didn't really know where I was, but I had a pretty good idea of where I came from, so I turned left at the bottom of the off-ramp and started riding through a flat-ish area of farms and greenhouses. The road alternated between dirt and pavement as I rode between farms. Then suddenly I was being chased by dogs. Maybe they just wanted to say hello and get a nuzzle, but I didn't slow down to find out. Instead I sped up, waving to people who stood by the side of the road looking puzzled as to why I was pedaling madly while being chased by loudly barking dogs. Eventually the dogs gave up the chase, and I turned onto a bigger road that led back to the main road that I had originally been forced off of by the construction. Later I found a park. Then I biked home and ate what felt like a well-deserved dinner.

roaming? yessiree bob! MENTAL roaming! Spring break -- you temptress, you siren! -- has done it again.... Motivation: 0 Time Management Skills: 0 Summmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmer SUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMER and for some, graduation. Holy cow. "Schools out for summa. Schools out for eva." Amiright?

From Ye Olde Cellular Phone

If this works, I have just made a blog post using my cellphone. I'm sooo 21st century. There should also be a picture of the view to the west of my apartment. Here goes!

Seoul, Job, Thoughts on North Korea

I wrote most of this as an update to people I haven't been in touch with since I've been here, so some of it will probably be things you've already heard from me, but there're also lots of heretofore unblogged thoughts. Here goes:

Seoul's fun, if a bit crazy. It's a huge city. I can get on the subway in downtown, ride for 50 minutes, and still pop up right in the middle of downtown. Pretty much anything I could possibly want is in this city, except maybe isolation and large green spaces. There's a national park on a mountain inside the city limits, and even that has been packed with people every time I've been there.

My job is usually really fun, but it's not much of an intellectual challenge. Certainly I put effort into keeping students' attention and helping them learn, but my deadlines are easy and there's not a lot of pressure. I think that's different for me than for a lot of teachers here, though. I competed in debate in college for four years, and now I'm teaching it to middle- and high schoolers, whereas most other teachers are teaching English without ever having taught English. I also work at a private school in a pretty affluent part of Seoul, which I think is reflected in the students at my school and their ability (and maybe willingness) to devote time and energy to academic work. I've talked to a few people who have taught English in more rural, less wealthy areas of Korea, and they seem to have infinitely more experiences with student violence and reluctance to cooperate in class than I do. I feel like I have a pretty easy time facilitating learning and mutual respect in my classes compared to most people I've talked to, but I don't know whether that's because I'm good at it, or I have a higher threshold for 'misbehavior' (whatever that means--how do we decide when someone goes from behaving correctly to behaving wrongly?) than other teachers, or just that my students are predisposed to enjoy debate. Maybe all of those? I have no idea.

Experiencing the results of the interactions between the governments of North and South Korea has been pretty strange at times. I write "the governments" because to me that's where this conflict seems to lie. An island 60 miles away from Seoul was shelled by North Korea, four South Koreans were killed, and no one seemed to care much. I was at work when the shelling began, and my boss turned around at her desk to tell us what was happening and then turned back around and went back to work. A few weeks later there was a country-wide air raid drill that the government described as "mandatory" but, in my experience, was widely ignored. I came here a pretty staunch non-interventionist, but I think I've changed my mind, I just don't know what I think intervention should look like. The South Korean government publishes estimates, based on information from North Korean defectors, that 20-30 thousand North Koreans starve to death every year. That, coupled with the terrible indignity of malnutrition and the ruthless suppression of dissent, creates a situation that I think needs to be changed, but is not going to change itself. Popular uprising becomes a lot less popular when the consequence is almost certainly death. The South Korean (and for that matter, American, Chinese, or Russian) government seems to worry most about the potential for North Korea to develop nuclear weaponry. I care less about North Korea developing nuclear weapons in the future than I do about the persistent repression of people living there now.

I feel safe here. Almost everyone I've talked to feels safe here, despite seemingly consistent portrayals of the situation by governments and most news media as "tense," or "volatile," or "unstable." My life is fun, but it's weird living so close to the territory of a state that seems to me the most repressive in the world.

Two weeks ago I read a study from Princeton ("Fortune favors the Bold and the Italicized: Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes," summarized in a BBC article here) which concluded that ". . . information in hard-to-read fonts was better remembered than information transmitted in easier fonts." Since then, much to the chagrin of my students, I've been using fonts like Lucida Calligraphy and Impact and Algerian for some of the worksheets and articles I hand out. I can't tell if it's working yet.

Hope things are fun, wherever y'all are.