God Dances

there have been special moments
when i have taken a breath
and sat on the sidelines.
in these special moments
i go beneath the sound of the music to
where i can hear the swish of feet moving
the tapping of heel to floor.
in these special moments
i sense the Oneness of hearts
i feel the atmosphere charged with energy
generated by collective happiness.
in these special moments
i know i am a dancer
not because i know the moves
but because my soul is moved.
there have been special moments
when i have felt the brush of wings
and in those moments
i am completely at peace.
God dances, didn't you know?

A Ray of Hope

the one thing about aging into your 30's and being single has to do with children. i have always wanted to have children. it seems that the road my life is taking will not allow for marriage for quite some time. some have told me to adopt. well i have always wanted to adopt also and that is something i will do after i am married. i watched my mom raise 5 children alone, i know it can be done but there is definitly something lacking when there is no strong, healthy male role model. i think it would be selfish of me to adopt a child when i am not married.

since it has become clear that marriage will not be happening for a little while yet i was getting worried about having children later in age. then i watched Oprah. there was a woman on the show being interviewed about something completely seperate from this topic. in the course of the interview the woman talked about the fact that she and her husband had had two more children...one when she was 48 and another when she was 50. i have heard all kinds of facts that having children that late poses many possible problems.

i don't know that i will be single that long but i am not holding my breath. i am quite happy in my singleness and now that i know i can have healthy children even if i am older, i am cool with waiting until somebody comes along who will add to the happiness.

The Fine Print of a Group Centered Society

Korea is a beautiful, warm, and fascinating place. Korea is a very homogenous, tradition entrenched, and xenophobic country. This has been the two faces of Korea that I have experienced. I have found that in the countryside people are much nicer and warm. In the city I have found coldness and not just the winter weather. I think this is to be expected of most cities in the world. To truly experience Korea I would not suggest living in Seoul or even Busan. Granted there is much more to do in the city but the transportation system in this country is first rate so getting to the city is extremely easy and inexpensive.

Something that has truly amazed me though is how people in Seoul treat eachother. Overall it seems that most Koreans here are so afraid of standing out that they don't do anything that would call attention to themselves.

For example, when my friend Irene and I were on the subway one evening, two women and a group of children were sitting in our car. The subway came to a stop and the gaggle of children and the two women got off. Suddenly one of the women started banging on the subway car window as the train started moving. She was yelling and banging. Everyone looked at her then in the direction she was gestering. There, on the seats across from us, was a kid knocked out. I guess the women didn't realise he was asleep and he was overlooked as they exited. The train started speeding up and not a single person moved. Everyone sat there looking at eachother. Me and Irene were the only foreigners in car. Not a single Korean person moved. When we realised that no one was going to get this kid off at the next stop so his mom could meet him, she and I got up to move him to the door. I don't know how old this kid was but he was big, heavy, and dead to the world. So here were these two skinny, foreign women trying to lift, carry, walk this kid to the door. Meanwhile no one got up to help. We got to the next stop, got off and took this kid to the platform where he woke up enough to see two foreign women who cannot speak Korean holding him up. Now I don't know about anyone else but I would have been FREAKED out by this if I were a kid. Luckily, a subway official came up to us right away. I guess someone at the previous stop had sent the message that a kid had been left on the train.

Now, as I write this I am still angered and shocked by the lack of concern the people in the car had. You would think that in a group centered society people would look out for each other. I have discovered there is small print...loyalty is with the group YOU BELONG to. Now if someone in the car had known the woman they probably would have helped.

I have seen people fall and no one stop to help them up. My sister Sopia, who is Korean, had this huge heavy suitcase once and we were going to a restaurant to eat. A man walking in front of us got to the door and just let in close in our faces. I won't even touch the fact that he didn't even bother to help her with her suitcase. There seems to be no sense that there are other people around you.

I think before I came to Korea I imagined a very different "group conciousness". I imagined that people would take care of eachother even strangers. I imagined courtesy and acknowledgement. What I have seen, especially in Seoul, is fear. Fear of standing out from the crowd. Fear of anything outside of the group people may belong to. Fear of acknowledging others. This group centered society seems very oppresive and the expectation is that people give into the group they belong to, even if it is wrong. The job of the individual is to uphold the status quo.

I don't remember things being so blatant when I lived outside of the city. I am not sure that this is Korean culture or city culture. I think it is a bit of both maybe. I have found that my first few years here were awesome and I lived outside of the city. I moved to Seoul where the focus was being placed on building up the Baha'i community. Luckily, I have been able to be of service here but I think if I were to come back I would move further south and to a smaller town.

The best things about living in Seoul though are that most of my friends are here and that has been true throughout my years here. There is also a pretty active Baha'i community and the Salsa community is HUGE. There is brunch on Sunday, western goods can be found easier, and there is also so much to do. I don't thimk I realised until now that I am not an "city" type person. I don't like the noise, the loss of connect, the absence of concern for others.

Of course, I cannot generalize and say that all people are this way all the time but the greater percentage of the things I have seen have not been the way I would want to live my life. I smile much less now. I have adopted the "eyes straight ahead" walk . I don't like this effect. Living here in Seoul has also awakened some of my own insecurities which is a good thing. My friend Brian who is from Texas still smiles at people and akcnowledges them whether it is reciprocated or not. I think he has found though that most people do reciprocate. So the challange has been reflecting the attitude of a Baha'i which means overcoming my own insecurities.

My Glimpse of Korea: Filial Piety and Saving Face

(I apologize now for any misspelled words. This got long.)

For most of my life when I heard comparisons between Asian cultures and Western cultures people have often spoke of the social organization of each. The West being a very individualistic culture and Asia being very group oriented.

In Korea filial piety is most important. This is great when you look at how tight the family unit is. Within the family people will take care of each other and the grandparents play a big role in the lives of the next generation. There are fewer old folks living on the streets uncared for because the culture encourages adult children to take care of their elderly parents. It is quite possible for an individual as a child to know lots of love, protection, and security. This all begins to change when they get older.

Middle school...stress starts being put on the child to perform well. Not just for their own sense of pride but for the family pride. I had a middle school student come to class once who was really upset. I asked him why and he tells me that he didn't get an A on a test so now everyone in his family would be disappointed and upset. Parents being upset is one thing but this kid was carrying the happiness of his entire family on his shoulders and happiness meant an A.

I didn't mention the importance of saving "face" in Korea. It is what is seen on the surface that is most important. How an individual is viewed in society also reflects on their family. If a child doesn't get the top grade in class that effects the "face" of the family. I will come back to this later.

High school...is hell. Now in America it would be great if our high school students put even a .10 of what these kids put into their studies. I have seen nothing like it. Let me give you a break down on an average high school kid's day in Korea...8a-2p school, 2p-12a institutes/academies...math, english, science, other foreign languages, test prep, piano school, violin lessons, voice lessons, tae kwon do, komdo, art school, dance classes, swimming...and any number of other activities I can't even imagine. I have even seen a Lego school here. I am not exagerating when I say that some of these kids get home at 12a and haven't even started homework for the numerous schools they are going to. Many of them carry the pride of the family on their shoulders which is ,of course, what university they go to which will decide their place on the social ladder.

Oh yeah, and all schools have classes on Saturday mornings every other weekend. That changed...it was every weekend when I came here 4 years ago.

Filial piety...loyalty to family. This is the basis of the group centered society. Saving face is very important in Korea because it not only effects the individual but how the entire family is perceived. As a result of this, there is very little crime in Korea. (I wonder if it helps that most people, even little kids, are at least first degree black belts in Tae Kwon Do?)

I remember the first time I went to the bank and people were waiting in line at the ATM with BRICKS of cash in their hands!!! They were depositing money into their accounts at the ATM! There was one guard on duty. That is CRAZY!!! I remember one of my friends telling me how he walked into a department store and on tne first floor in the jewlery section there were displayed EXPENSIVE watches. I am talking a grand each at least and they were not COVERED!!! Dude...would not happen in America...nah, never! I am not saying that people don't steal but what I am saying is that it doesn't happen often.

Well, that is on the little people's level. When you get up into the upper echelons of society theft and corruption runs rampant. Since I have been here there have been at least two suicides committed by very wealthy, political types that got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Once again saving face. Somehow when a person publicly shames themselves it frees the family or group. For example, an actress and an entertainment company wanted to make a porn movie based on the women who were made sex slaves by the Japanese during Japan's occupation in the 40's. Some of these women are still alive. To make matters worse, they were filming in Japan, a country that has yet to apologize for its atrocities against Korea. Needless-to-say the shit hit the fan. Everybody was angry. I even wrote a letter to the editor of a Korean national paper expressing my anger. In shame, the men who owned the entertainment company shaved their heads and made a public apology. I don't know what happened to the woman but I have heard that she will never find work again as a legit actress.

Saving face is so important that a person will outright lie rather than tell the truth. One of the most frustrating things is that many people will not say no. They don't want to hurt your feelings. So, if you invite a bunch of Koreans to your house for dinner, you hold your breath and hope the phone calls don't start coming. If the phone calls start the cancellations start and sometimes AFTER you have bought the food. The worse is when you have already started making the food. Most folks would rather not disappoint you but end up disappointing you and causing an inconvience...to say it nicely. It happened to me once but I learned my lesson. When I have dinners at my house I am very flexible and plan to make something that I can start cooking an hour before folks are to arrive. This not saying no thing has driven many foreign people crazy. I think the word that is said instead of no most often is "It's okay"...something to that effect.

Not saying no seems to be a way of saving face and usually when someone doesn't follow through on something no one says anything. Once again, you never let another person know that they caused you an inconvenience. What happens instead is silence. That person may never speak to you again rather than talk about it and let it go. Lots of people who have dated Korean people have experienced this. Sometimes it is abrupt. There wasn't a fight or anything, they just stop taking your calls or responding to your text messages. Sometimes a person has no clue if they did something wrong or not.

The flip side to this though is that once you have a real Korean friend, they are a friend for life. My closest Korean friends are more like family and we have talked when there may have been misunderstandings. They will be there for you when things are really bad. Like 2 years ago, maybe more now, I found out I was working for an illegal company. One of my Korean friends came with me to speak with my "employers" and another one came with me to the school I was working at to speak with the vice-principal. Now these women had things to do and didn't need to help me but they did. I have countless examples of this. Friends of mine going far beyond anything I could have imagined. These people will tell you no :)

Yes, there is TONS more I could write about and in due time I will. This current blog writing is an effort to capture some of my experiences here before I head back to the States. There is much more where this came from!!!

Is it Working?

I am not sure if the bugs in Blogger were fixed so I am writing this as a test. I got so tired of writing things that didn't post that I quit writing. We'll see now.