I'd give Korea a 10 out of 10

I’ve officially been in Cheongju, South Korea for one month. It’s been interesting to be back as “not a missionary.” I have to say, with all its ups and downs, I love it. There are bad things too, but so many good things that I made a top ten list. 

So, the Top Ten best Things about Being Back in Korea:

10) The food. is. so. good. Dokbooki, Rabooki, SunTubu soup are currently some of my favorites, which is odd because I didn't really like them that much the first time.

9) It's been fun to meet new people--most of the new people I've met are my coworkers and they're all, without exception, really awesome.

8) It's been wonderful to reconnect with people I met the first time I was here--the heunduk ward members, old mission companions and old Daejeon missionaries.

7) Noraebangs--or song rooms. It's like kareoke in a private room with your friends. They always have these weird, unrelated movie/ music video scenes playing during the song, which I think are just as funny.

6) Having my own apartment. It's just a studio apartment with a kitchen, but I really like it--it's light and open and extremely comfortable, although there's a nice tv sitting in the corner that I never use.

5)My students. They are hilarious. Today one of the middle schoolers said, "You have a very high nose?" "What, are you saying my nose is big?" "No, no it's pointy."

4) Being able to understand way more Korean that I did the first time I came. Understanding the funny things my elementary aged student say.

3)Maybe this should go under number 10, but Korean yogurt is so good.

2)Living in the same city as Liz and sharing our experiences on the weekends.

1) Church members who watch out for us and take care of us here. I miss my family, but I honestly feel like I have an extended family here in Korea every time I go to church.

Where Rivers Change Direction

 “When I am older I will believe that following in their wake has filled me with the inconsolable joy of animals.”

I’m probably not qualified to say this, but I think Mark Spragg’s memoir “Where Rivers Change Direction” is almost perfect. For me, at least. It’s a collection of non-fiction essays about Spragg’s childhood and life in Wyoming. The essays are connected by place and time—the Wyoming, for the most part the sixties-and arranged chronologically. Spragg’s prose is clean and vivid and reading this memoir was a beautiful experience.  He gives an honest yet generous narration of the people from his past, including his father/boss, mother, other ranch hands and even a mangy cat.

           I enjoyed seeing through Spragg’s eyes, becoming for a moment a boy who loves horses, who is capable beyond his years with them, who grows through worlds of danger and beauty to become a sensitive, quiet, introspective man. For me, reading a memoir is like being carried around on someone’s shoulder while they look at their own past. Mark Spragg tells us stories and also lets us see for ourselves through his description of the places and people. Of all the things that literature can do, I can’t help feeling like this is the most worthwhile. It’s like I’m reading to live another life and to understand what it would feel to have another heart beating in my chest. I can’t help but appreciate the value of the stories of the people he writes about, people who can’t put their own stories into words. Stories that would have been lost if no one had written them down.

Another thing I find beautiful is the sense of quietness in his essays. More than Spragg’s thoughts or interpretations, in many instances we merely experience the quotidian details of a story that tangle themselves up in larger meaning over the course of the essay. One that was particularly poignant to me, for example, is “Wintering.” Here he’s graduated from college (maybe because that’s about where I’m at) and ends up spending a fall and winter in solitude, living way up in the mountains and watching out for the property of some rich people. In the beginning of the essay a horse screams horribly because it’s caught in a wire fence and he’s forced to shoot it. The essay describes his self-imposed solitude, his interaction with another recluse, the landscape, and finally his descent into town  when he starts to scare himself that he’s losing it. In the end, having finally left solitude for people, if only for one night, he says “I hold my breath and hear the clean red scream that holds us all as one.” There’s so much that the essay doesn’t tell us: why he jumped at the chance for almost complete silence and why the screaming dying horse haunted him through his self-imposed solitude. So even though he brings us along into his time of quiet, there’s still a sense in which he still protects his own privacy.

 I remember a speaker coming to BYU when I was there and speaking on reverence. He referenced the fog covered mountains that were right next to campus, and remarked that we reverence the half covered/half disclosed (or something to that effect). In any event, that’s what I felt reading Spragg. 

Between the click of the light and the start of the dream...

The tittle's from a song by Arcade Fire called "No Cars Go." It kind of sums of my position now--just doing temp work and waiting to go to Korea. Most days I am really really excited although there are days when I feel like I've just been waiting since April. My cousin Liz left last Tuesday to go to the EPIK orientation. My original plan was to do EPIK with her but due to bad fingerprints, I had to resubmit my criminal record check. Now my plan is to work in a hagwon in the same city/province. I should be receiving my background check in a few weeks and I'm scheduled to go September 15th, but that could be pushed back depending on how fast I can get my paper work in.

The job I was offered was originally for a gyopo, (a native Korean who lives in the U.S.), but since I can speak a smattering of Korean they hired me. I'm glad because it should be near Liz and also because I'll be able to use my Korean to talk to my student's parents. Here's the video I had to make in order to apply for the job:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUVNpGgqCRs Luckily, my Korean friend Cheong Soohyun helped me a lot. It already has eleven views, which means that I'm only about fifteen million views away from becoming a YouTube sensation.