::A Geek in Korea::

There wasn’t really a concept of a fashion “season” when I grew up. We’d buy clothes at the beginning of school, then get some stuff for Christmas holidays.  Whatever wasn’t run through with holes or too small became our new spring clothing, and any clothes our cousins could no longer fit into were the clothes my brother and I destroyed during summer. When I got finished with something, my brother wore it. Then the next set of cousins or friends with suitable children would inherit anything left after my brother and I got done wearing it.

My wife went out to a department store last week and found some end of season discounts. Things move swiftly here, unlike where I grew up in rural Ohio. You can’t just walk into a store at any point of time and expect to see the same deals or the same types of clothing. The bargain bin is hardly a thing to count on when looking for deals. When stores get a new set of clothes they need to move them. They are at least two seasons ahead. There are trends and campaigns in children’s clothes, like adult clothes from designer labels. The prices reflex all of this.

Anything in Korea that needs to be sold to children has at least a 200~300% mark up compared to what it would cost in the United States. I can say that without exaggeration having shopped on things in both Korea and the United States. We picked up a suitcase worth of children’s clothes while on vacation, and that would have been the cost of two designer items in Korea. It’s staggering how expensive everything is, and insane that parents spend that much money on items to make kids look like little versions of themselves. All we wanted were a few items my wife had saw on sale a few days earlier, but it was not to be.

We were looking at things that were on sale, and they had completely priced us out of our price range with a t-shirt. The sale had ended, so it was back to $150 cardigans for toddlers, $40 t-shirts for little kids, and $100 mini-skirts for children that can barely walk. I wonder if the people that buy this are so flush with cash that they simple don’t know what else to spend their money on? After you have your huge apartment, nice car, and spend money on a kid’s education, everything else is money to burn, right? These people want to spend money on this stuff to look good. That’s how petty their life must be. I don’t envy someone that feels the need to spend that much money on clothes so that they can fit in with some play group.

It’s still warm and stormy. Despite being in the rainy season of summer, late fall clothes are occupying all the prominent stores. Most kids are growing, so it’s a little difficult to buy clothes three months in advance for small children. We missed their sale by a few days, so what we were looking for has already been shipped off to the lower tier fashion department stores that sell things from the previous seasons at a steep discount. In a few weeks this stuff will end up being for sale at the places we normally shop.

We found some items that were out of season and nice looking for a budget a block away from the department store. If we wanted to buy a lot of stuff, we would have started looking at the discount places to begin with. They recycle clothing by dropping it in big green metal boxes next to dumpsters. Those clothes get shipped off to other countries, or burned. It’s not like you can find second hand baby clothing shops anywhere. The baby that had been supplying Glow with clothes left for another country with her parents, and we don’t have any close friends with children of the appropriate size. Glow is also tall enough to be confused for a girl two or three times her age, so we’ve got to keep up with clothes more than the average parent with a small child.

Korea’s low birth rate has complex social and cultural consequences, but I can’t imagine the high price of simple things while raising a kid is going to increase the birth rate any time soon. Children’s education is criminally overpriced (and from a teacher that’s been on the receiving end of that money, I know it is true), and even things like lotion or toys are substantially more expensive. If they aren’t expensive, they are cheap, dangerous products from China you shouldn’t be touching, let alone letting your child play with. We’re relatively lucky, as we can get to the United States to shop, or have my parents send care packages of different things we need. I can’t imagine what a working class Korean family does to make ends meet if they try to make their children a priority here. There are small things, like a subsidy for child day care services that even we take advantage of, but there are a lot of kids that won’t reach their potential simply because they will be priced out of achieving it.

My vacation is mostly going to consist of spending the last few days before the semester trying to figure out what I need to do in class this semester. The time for procrastination has ended! I will shake off the heat-daze that has prevented me from getting any real work done, and go to work for real this week. Really. Honestly.

I must admit, the summer vacation this year has been a lot of fun. First of all, I got through a vacation to the States with my wife and daughter and had a great time just hanging around the house sleeping and catching up on the World Cup games. Then I returned to Korean to teach a single “Survival English” class that I claimed “was death.” After that extremely underwhelming class was finished, I got to teach elementary and middle school students. It was a much needed change for me. I enjoyed it a lot more than the difficult college intensive course I taught last winter. I gave the farewell speech to the audience at the end of the elementary school camp, and I had a good time doing it. The entire camp was a blast. As long as the winter camp is run by the same people, I’ll be volunteering again without reservation.

Now it’s back to the grind of planning my syllabus, working on materials, and preparing for new classes. There has been a miscommunication with the office, and I’m scheduled to teach institute at night once again, despite it not making any bit of sense to anyone that would look at my schedule. I’ve asked for a change, but once again, being the lowest person on the rung of the security ladder will only make that harder. I’ve also been alerted to a potentially HUGE change in who I am teaching. There is a chance I might end up teaching middle school students during the semester, not just at camps. This is the first I’ve been told of this. Other than the time of the class itself, I am indifferent about the idea. From what someone let on, the class is running EXTREMELY late in the evening for me, so I’m a little annoyed that I haven’t been told about this before now. I had two goals this semester. Get out early, and spend less time at work. The office is trying to suck me right back in again, and I don’t like it now that I have a taste of freedom.

If I don’t get to change my schedule to move my classes to the morning schedule, I’ll be getting a few more hours of sleep. I’ll just be up later every evening working all the time. This extra sleep in the morning would help, but that would also require my dog and daughter to follow along with that particular script. As of right now, I wake up two or three times a night to a screaming, inconsolable daughter. If she wakes up when it is dark, I let my wife handle it. If she wakes up when the sun is up, I try to take her out of the bedroom to settle her down. If the semester starts and she is still sleepless, I’ll end up banished in the spare bedroom once again. Daddy needs his sleep. Even in a hot room without an air conditioner, Daddy needs his sleep.

Because I have a problem saying, “No time!” to people with similar interests that want to spend time with me, I’m not only planning a schedule for an entire semester, but also planning out a low level campaign for Dungeons and Dragons. This is a labor of love, not unlike writing daily for this website, but it is also a fair bit of time commitment for a week where I really should be focusing on something else. I built a map and picked out a scenario to run for Wednesday after I finished my chores today and whittled down my sleep debt to a more manageable amount with a short nap. I’m nervous about what is going to start happening when the play by post game I am involved with starts going again during the semester and I have to juggle two games potentially, one periodically offline, one daily online.

There is a lot of other stuff going on. We have to deal with any potential abandonment issues Glow might have from her short weekday trips to daycare. I have to find some time to exercise, and walk Yoshi in this unbearable humidity. I have to help with the housework and all the other responsibilities of being a parent. With no sleep…and a time deadline looming. It’s a bit worrying that I still don’t have the drive to sit down and be productive this close to the start of the new semester. Last semester I had a clue as to what I was going to be doing for the entire first half of the semester. Now I’m still trying to decide if I want to make the students buy the workbook, or have them just do copies I make available on the web. Eventually I’ll have to start deciding on those choices, because my schedule is running out of free time.

I’m a relatively understanding when it comes to people approaching me on the street. It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, or if it does, it doesn’t take on the air of, “SIDESHOW FREAK! LOOK AT THE FOREIGNER!” anymore. That used to happen fairly regularly in a large city when I was new to Korea. Now it is only small children and the elderly that have issues with foreigners being around. Slow progress, but it is something. Three times I had something weird happen to me today because of strangers on the street.

The first time was when I was returning home from dropping off Yoshi. He badly needed a trim to survive the summer heat. As I was walking across the street from the pet shop, a lady TAPPED on my shoulder to get my attention. I get bothered on the street from time to time, but unless I am getting on a bus or entering an elevator, no one is going to touch me. I turned around expecting either a friend of mine, or at least an old student. Nope. A young girl with her clipboard folder held up like a shield, and a friend standing nearby was asking me about where I am from and how long I had been in Korea. Same old getting to know you “Taxi Questions”.

I was already somewhat annoyed by being stopped, but I deemed it polite to at least take off my headphones to listen to her…one ear, at least. She introduced herself, and I thought that she was going to go into some sort of introduction about a topic she was gathering information on, which was why she was holding onto the binder. Nope. It turns out she was a pushy religious lady that wanted to know my background with her particular sect. I told her that I had heard of them, but didn’t need to hear anymore. I told her I was inconvenienced by her chat because I was exercising at the time and the delay was affecting my workout, which was true. She let me go with little fuss.

She was definitely brave. She spoke English well, in a practiced way. She clearly had religious training in approaching foreigners to deliver her message. She wasn’t as pushy as some of the other religious people that approach foreigners. They will drop whatever they are doing to walk with you. Trying to escape that is a lot more tricky. You have to duck into a business or home.

Another person, a lot older and probably not as good with English, bothered not only me, but my daughter at a store. My wife was getting a refund for a defective item, stranding Glow and I at the customer service area while she negotiated the details. A lady approached my daughter and I and started asking invasive questions. “Your daughter….is she your daughter? Is she American? Her mother is Korean?”

Is that really the first thing you want to know? You don’t even want to know her name, or how old she is? Not even a polite question first? What the hell business is that to you who the mother is? Do you score extra points or something? Ugh. I can deal with a Korean kid pointing to me and saying, “Hey! You aren’t from here!” Trying to make me feel that my daughter is something different because she is of mixed descent is a good way to rile my righteous anger, NOT win favor or start a conversation. It was only after she approached me this way that she started telling me about her religious group. My wife walked back into the conversation at the point where I was grabbing the stroller and walking away to avoid a scene. I had already been bothered by this particular group once, and I didn’t need them to be in my face while I sat around at a store too. My wife swiftly dealt with the issue by saying we didn’t need her particular brand of religious opinion.

I used to complain I was never targeted for religious handouts on the streets when places of worship passed out religious paraphernalia emblazoned on tissues and pencil cases. Now they approach me and speak to me in English. I think I liked it better when I was ignored.

The best interaction I had with someone on the street was entirely non-verbal. I was walking Yoshi home after his shave, and an elderly man riding a bicycle stopped five meters in front of us. He looked at Yoshi, looked at me, then gave me a huge smile and gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up. I walked away smiling, and I almost wanted to stop and start asking him a series of questions about why he was so awesome, but decided I didn’t want to be a pestering person that bothers people on the street so I stayed away.

Now that my schedule has gone to strictly teaching morning camps, I finish early in the afternoon and can spend time at home. I’ve even started sleeping in the same room with my wife and child again. My daughter Glow steadfastly refuses to sleep more than a few hours a night. We can get her to bed around nine, then she’ll wake up at eleven, then every few hours for the rest of the night. This morning she woke up early in the morning, sometime around 6 AM. Normally there is a noise outside, or something that might stir her, but today she was trying to bang on the window to the veranda where the dog sleeps. Yoshi is rather testy from being outside the majority of the day, so we don’t want him to be disturbed. Everybody wants their sleep, except for Glow.

Instead of fighting Glow to keep her away from the window and quiet, and seeing that my wife was at her wit’s end trying to put her back to sleep, I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to go for a walk with her. Just after dawn, the weather is cool, and there shouldn’t be so many people outside. I decided I’d take Yoshi along to get his walk for the day, seeing that if the weather got hotter later, I wasn’t going to be going out again. I strapped Glow into our backpack style carrier and took to the route I’ve started using with the maximum amount of shade in the neighborhood that isn’t overrun with dogs or slow old people.

Cardiotrainer, the software I use to track my exercise habits on my Android phone, has upgraded their notification program so you can see how often you’ve scheduled, or missed, your workouts. Extra guilt, extra motivation to get that exercise! When I started out with the baby on my back, and my dog on a leash, I was making ridiculously good times. I need to cross the street five times total in my trip, and I made the lights and happened to cut down two minutes on my initial pace kilometer. The rest of the time the routine was normal, except cooler than it has been for weeks, even with a baby strapped to my back.

Glow as about to fall asleep when a dog off a leash walking near its owner attacked Yoshi. I tried to keep the situation from getting dangerous by picking up my dog, because Korean people NEVER expect their dog without a leash to start biting. They act like it’s never happened before. There ARE leash laws, but no one enforces any kind of pedestrian laws in Korea. Good luck getting it enforced.

Anyway, this whole dogs snapping at my feet incident woke up Glow, so when we got back to the apartment I was not able to get her back to sleep. I gave my wife some time to sleep for a little while, and I got my walk and exercised with the dog at the same time. I also liked getting up early and doing something with my time. I went to work ready to go, having already been up for a few hours. I even managed to stay up a few hours without needing a coffee until I got to work.

Tomorrow is my long day, where I have a lot of classes with very little children, so sleep tonight will be even more important. Glow doesn’t care, and the weather makes me think getting up extra early to exercise might be my only chance once again. I don’t think I’ll be up for teaching a morning schedule, but an early workout routine for the next few weeks would be fine for me. There are a lot of other people with the exact same idea, with dogs or without, so I’m not the only one that exercises before the day gets started.

I have become as difficult a sleeper as my daughter. A few days last week I did something stupid: I started working on a D&D encounter in the evening. Once I get my imagination fired up, I’m incapable of going to sleep. The “Tetris Effect” of being overwhelmed with D&D when I get started working on a concept is really bad. I’ll lay down, start thinking about some twist or plot, then it turns into hours of distraction. I can’t sleep when the next twist is a few more minutes away. This is an easy thing to avoid. Simply finish all D&D related things early enough in the afternoon that I don’t have it in my mind when I go to bed. At least there is a week long break between now and when my players return from vacation. I’ll be able to plan a bit if the camp runs smoothly, then relax.

Not only do hobbies keep me awake, but the weather has been unbearably muggy and sweltering. Laying down in any one position will mean your skin slowly drips sweat. Fans do an uneven job. Air conditioning is limited to the bedroom and the living room. If my daughter is being fussy in the bedroom, all the cool air isn’t going to help me sleep there. The living room is too big and expensive to cool, and the second bedroom doesn’t get a direct shot of air. Hot and sweaty or cool and noisy. Take your pick.

Now that my sleep habits are tied directly to how well my daughter sleeps, I get less sleep than I need for other reasons. For example, when a lightning storm rolls through town, agitating my dog, my daughter can’t sleep. No sleep for daughter, or dog, means no sleep for me. I stayed up to help keep my daughter from getting in any trouble, then when she finally went to sleep I was too awake to get back to bed. I started watching some television, got swept up into a show, and watched a series of episodes back to back.

Today I fought off a really well deserved nap just so I could collapse tonight. I think it will work on my end, but by daughter is restless and it might storm at any moment. I pity the camp students I run into tomorrow morning, because I’m going to be one sleepy person tomorrow if I don’t get some rest tonight.

I’ve been walking farther than normal these days. I’ve been taking more pictures, walking with a bottle of water, and heading out to enjoy the early afternoon each day with a podcast in my ear and nothing on my schedule except lunch and an hour’s worth of teaching each day this week.

I have the luxury of easing into my schedule at the moment. One class for the next two weeks, then I get hit like a brick with lots of extra classes. This means I can walk around the neighbor a great deal longer than I normally do with my dog, and often with my daughter as well. I enjoy walking around for exercise, and it gives my wife a little time each day on her own to do things she needs. It’s a win for everyone.

If I wasn’t enjoying myself so much with my lazy afternoon walks, and the naps that follow them, I’d be getting more work done to prepare for next semester. I won’t have time off like this for several months once the semester starts. I should take some time to enjoy myself, right?

This part of town is full of interesting sights when you have the time to notice them. I snapped the picture of the horses on an “Adjumma tour” bus that was just about to pull off for a rocking time. The singing machine had already started putting up lyrics, and the bass was already rocking the windows. These old ladies were about to go raise some hell. I just thought the logo was awesome.

Ages are confusing in Korea. My daughter has been two since January 1st, but her first birthday was today. Figure that out. Everyone gets a year “older” on the first day of the year, and people can celebrate either lunar or solar birthdays, depending on how old school that want to be.. It is complicated. Today was Glow’s Korean birthday, known as (돌) ”dol“. It’s the biggest birthday celebration for a child, and ironically she won’t even remember it. I missed the majority of the event because of work, but arrived while people were finishing their meals to greet them and help take care of Glow before she got hurt walking around the restaurant.

People I work with told me that they planned their dol celebrations months in advance and will end up paying a significant amount of money for the reservations and large guest list, but hope to break even or make a profit if enough guests are generous. We kept ours local. The majority of family members lived in the city, and we made restaurant reservations at a nice, but cheap place. It wasn’t the expensive buffet my brother in law wanted, but he wasn’t going to be paying off the tab. I had delicious food while people wrapped up their conversations. It sucked coming late though.

The Korean gift at a dol that everyone expects is a gold ring for the child. Glow got that, as well as a few other nice jewelry gifts. I think she might have more jewelry than my wife at this point. (My wife has lost multiple pieces of jewelry by accident, and has metal allergies. I’m not that bad about giving her gifts of appreciation. Honest.) None of these gifts are expected to be worn, or are practical pieces of decoration.

It’s actually very common to treat the gold rings as a liquid asset. Parents will melt down children’s dol gold rings or bracelets when faced with economic hard times. The gold is always presented with a certificate of quality for easy verification, with a price estimate. Students told me during the IMF, to pay off Korea’s debt, they surrendered lots of gold jewelry to the government. I would guess lots of this was stuff given to young children the parents had kept. It’s like an early CASH4GOLD scheme.

We will end up using the money (but not the gold) we received to get a few things we’ve been meaning to, like a car seat (we don’t own a car), and starting an education fund for Glow. My parents started a fund for her in the United States as well. If Glow is going to be studying in the United States, but the time she’s able to go she’ll need a lot more gold to sell off to pay for her college tuition. I don’t think what she pulled in today is going to cut it.

I’ve been having to deal with the high temperatures in Korea, the jetlag from the vacation, a sleepless and fussy daughter, and a new class. There has been a little bit of an adjustment getting back into the routine of blogging daily about things that are happening to me because the status is pretty much quo at this point. It’s like I never left, but I’m really tired and want to take a lot more naps. It’s not that I didn’t want to take a lot of naps before I left for vacation, but now the crashes caused by jetlag coincide with classes. It’s really annoying.

My daughter has adopted the “sleep all day, wake parents up” routine that just has gotten way out of hand. She’s grumpy. She cries. She doesn’t want to be left on her own for a second. The weather is so hot, and so draining, and hauling around a little noise maker is exhausting. When she sleeps during the day, she is rested and well behaved. If we kept her awake all day so that she’s start sleeping at night, she’d be a terror to deal with. When we let her sleep all day, she wakes us up and won’t be put into the crib calmly. My wife claims that it’s an adjustment from travel, and that she’ll get less clingy in a few days, but I don’t know. We’ve been dealing with this sleep issue for a long time, and nothing we do has gotten any of us any rest. It takes a toll.

My class yesterday was terrible. Turns out I was handicapped from the start. The book is really unusable for foreign professors, the focus of the class is dumb, and the people aren’t all that talkative. It’s really hard to get them involved, and I just didn’t have the energy to keep the class going my first time meeting them. I did better today, but I really don’t get what I am supposed to be doing with the materials yet. The person that assigned me to the class said, “People usually hate teaching that book. It isn’t popular with foreign teachers. Here is so more stuff, but I don’t know how you should use it. Good luck!”

Anyway, there is talk of a birthday party for Glow happening for the Korean family this week. I’ve not been consulted or briefed on the details, but we’re trying to do it quick and easy. There is usually an elaborate party with lots of guests, but we already had a big birthday in the United States. The Korean first birthday is usually a big party, elaborately arranged months in advance. We have two days to find a restaurant to make a reservation. I like small birthday parties anyway.

Other than the daily walks with my dog, my life hasn’t yet gotten into the routine that just “clicks” with me and leads to lots of interesting conversations and things being discovered. I know that with time I’ll end up back in that well-worn groove, but right now it feels like my record is skipping pretty fiercely.

We had a family reunion/party/birthday party at my parent’s farm yesterday. This farm is where I used to spend my summers growing up. It has a large lake, shelter, woods, and not much in the way of modern conveniences. We bring coolers full of food and drinks, and spend the whole day celebrating outside with the family. It was a lot of fun.

Two of my old college friends showed up to celebrate as well. Spending time with college friends was also wonderful. I haven’t seen them in two years, since they visited Korea! We had a long day of drinking, playing Frisbee Golf (First time!) and overeating. I actually got a sun tan on my arms. I’m particularly pasty after four years in Korea without any manual labor or beach side vacations.

Glow got to open a year’s worth of presents accumulated from all the relatives. She wore a hanbok, which my mother-in-law bought the occasion. It was beautiful, but a little hot. Korean celebrations rarely take place outdoors. We got pictures with her taking apart her gifts, and my wife thanked everyone for the money and cards. We got books, clothes, and some toys for Glow too. Lucky she’s small enough that her clothes don’t take up that much room. We’ll need an extra suitcase for all the stuff we are attempting to bring back with us regardless. Plus we have a new collapsible stroller…the haul has been impressive so far.

I’m glad I got to see a large portion of the family enjoying themselves and having fun at the farm.  The place is home to a lot of my favorite childhood memories. Having a day off to spend with relatives while they gush compliments about our daughter was really nice. Glow won’t remember any of it except for the pictures, but it was still a nice thing to do. The highlight of the trip for me so far was being able to go swimming in the lake with my daughter for the first time. My mom bought her a swim suit and we went out on the water. She took to it like a fish! It was great! I’ll certainly remember that for a long time.

William Gibson describes jet lag as “the time it takes for your soul to catch up to where you are” in the book “Pattern Recognition.” Pattern Recognition is the worst book by William Gibson I’ve ever read by a wide margin, bit I do have jet lag. My sleep has been unusual for the past few days. I get food cravings in the middle of the night. I eat enormous breakfast meals when I would usually be having dinner in Korea, and my snacking doesn’t really follow normal times here. I sleep from the early evening to the middle of the night, get up and watch stuff on the DVR, then wait for people to get out of bed. Glow sleeps better than I do. I have urges to nap after 5pm. It’s weird.

My parents kept their promise to keep us busy. We went to see a few sights as a family and had a huge meal. I can’t get over the sodium and sugar content of every single meal I eat. My portion sizes have already been thrown for a loop, but I’m trying to watch all my excessive consumption. I find putting the work into preparing my own meals keeps me mindful of how much I eat, and where to draw the line. So much of the food in my parent’s house is easy-prep, or pre-cooked meals. The basic ingredients of food have been replaced with sets of food that let you cook exactly what is in the box easily. I can still put together a wicked sandwich from scratch, but my enthusiasm for yet another sandwich tends to run thin after a few days.

I’m not at the “missing Korean food” phase, yet, but I am certainly no longer a fan of processed or fast food in the States. Most of the commercials I see have me scratching my head. The worst product I’ve encountered so far is in a grocery store. They sold individually wrapped, pre-sliced apples pieces at a substantial markup. The fact that there is a market for people too dumb to use a knife that want to eat apples just leaves me shaking my head.

There are other annoyances too. My parents do not consume media the same way I do. I need a WiFi signal to function at full capacity, or at least a fast data pipe to push podcasts to my ears. My parents still have a dead-tree newspaper delivery service and listen to AM radio. They primarily watch cable news to stay informed. (Yes, it leads to lots of annoying problems.) I’m so busy with activities and playing with my daughter, I’ve had to drop the majority of my “swallow all the firehose” style RSS news consumption.

I’m even a day or two behind on my podcasts because there has been a lot going on. That’s a welcome change. I’ll always have plenty to listen to when I get back. Tomorrow I am going to be kidnapped and taken to a rural location and forced into manual labor. (It’s the WORST! It happens EVERY TIME I visit my family!) This farm has no electricity at all! I’ll certainly be listening to something while I ride in the car, and while they have me doing tedious things like cutting grass or hauling water. I have a short tolerance for yard work.

I’m trying to stay positive, despite a few headaches from the airline and the family. (See tweets for more frequent snark.)

I should thank Running with Chopsticks for the mention about my musical tastes though. That got me through the day.