traditions: Easter.
April 25, 2011 § 4 Comments
i was on the phone with my mom just the other day. we talked of the upcoming holiday: easter. being far away from family and friends, i asked what festivities would be taking place at home without me.
the easter egg hunt? the egg dying? the visiting easter bunny? lunch? brunch? family photos? no, she replied. the usual easter festivities are on pause until another year, she said.
because this year my family finds itself stationed in various locations around the globe. we are not together. and so the usual is not the usual this year.
before i knew what was happening. i was …. angry. at my mom.
my mom?
whose children have traveled far from her by their own accord. whose children are not filling her house this holiday. i was angry at my mom?
because when you are not home, you imagine that home still goes on. in fact, you need it to. because it is home. it’s your culture. it’s your traditions. it has made youwho you are. but what i sometimes forget…is that my choices affect the whole.
my choices, not to be classified as good or bad. but just as precisely that: my choices, they affect my mom, they affect home.
my irrational anger turned to simple disappointment, all the while giving me greater understandingof myself, of what i want and what i desire in life.
i realized that i needed the traditions. the remembrance of the traditions when i find myself a long way from home. because it is the traditions that serve as a reminder of who i am, of who i want to be, and of where i come from.
because sometimes it takes distance for you realize that you need reminders. reminders of who you are. who you want to be. and where it is you came from.
so, dear friends, make the traditions. remind your family, your friends, your sisters, your children, your aunties and cousins. remind them to mark the days.
because someday you might find that your little girl has traveled a long way from home. and you might find that you miss her on the special days. but you can be sure…you can be sure that the traditions, the way you marked the days, while they might have seemed foolish, so much work and effort at the time…
you can be sure, that she now holds onto them. perhaps clings to them as she is out there in the world. as she walks confidently out into the world, she holds within her bits of you that you gave her steadily over the years. she might never acknowledge it. to you or even herself. but it matters. the traditions, they matter.
mark the days.
so when distance separates, you can be reminded.
that is…if you need a reminder which, sometimes we do.
marked the day with a picnic by the river
and a dusk hike
happy easter. whenever you are and whatever you find yourself doing this year.
– natalie.
the earth reminded me.
February 14, 2011 § 9 Comments
this morning.
i was talking to micaela, my roommate.
Autumn Musings
November 15, 2010 § 1 Comment
I am sitting here, drinking some coffee and listening to Band of Horses. A great soundtrack to the autumn seasons if I can say so. We have now been in Korea for a month. This seems like both forever and no time at all. Forever in the sense that my job has become rather regular and normal and the apartment comfortable and home like. No time at all in the sense that my Korean has barely improved from week one and I still have trouble finding my way around town.
I’m finding it easy to be here and yet forget why exactly I am here. What was it that lead to this decision to go, rather than stay? There was the fact that Natalie and I have always wanted to travel together. The longing to have a shared experience which we could call ours. There was the fact that we needed some good transition-into-adulthood jobs (That’s how I think of this teaching gig, anyways. The hours are not bad, yet it is a tiring experience. The lessons are not difficult, but the kids sure can be).
One thing I am incredibly grateful for is the changing seasons here in Korea (Although, I might be retracting that statement come Winter!) Don’t be offended LA, but how did I go four years without seeing the leaves change colors? Without feeling the cool air of shifting seasons? I just don’t know.
My brother sent me this quote the other day and it is rather fitting.
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” -George Elliot
We kind of did that, I suppose. We left MN with just enough time to catch the most beautiful early days of the changing season and arrived with plenty of time to experience the whole season here.
So, this brings me to the why. I think a large part of this move, of this transition abroad was the perpetual seeking that I find myself doing. That is, seeking transformation in the sense of a new experience. Seeking to broaden my worldview by encountering others so different from my own. Seeking peace outside of comfort. Seeking a challenge in the context of culture.
Which brings me to another quote from a small book by Esther de Waal which has brought both Nat and I so much goodness. She writes, “To be transformed implies letting go of control for a while in the hopeful expectation that something worthwhile may result. It means taking the risk that old certainties might be replaced by a new way of seeing the world.”
So, as the leaves change and the seasons shift, I hope that something within me follows. And I think it’s as simple as that.
The Peace of Wild Things
October 24, 2010 § 8 Comments
Since the flu bug kept me inside ALL weekend (I have recently learned, this is a teacher’s worse nightmare), I repeat ALL weekend, Micaela was too kind to abandon plans to hang out and help her poor flu-stricken friend. But Sunday promised us a day of hiking to one of the famous Buddha statues in the region…we both knew something good would happen this weekend.
But when we woke up to the drenched earth and a steady drizzling rain, our hiking partners said, “maybe next weekend”, and this left Micaela and I to our imaginations.
Determined to see enjoy some of Korea that we had yet to see or experience, inspired by some of our dearest friends who are gifted gardeners….we set off toward the hills. In search of some green. And to let our lungs breathe the wild air.
We meandered through the gardens for quite sometime. Looking at this and that, seeing if we could figure out what things were, admiring large rain buckets and letting our feet sink into the sticky mud. Mostly enjoying our umbrellas. And the wildness around us.
I could say more. But Wendell Berry says it so beautifully. I’ll let his words fill the page this time in his poem: The Peace of Wild Things…
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Enjoy your Sunday friends!
Little By Little.
October 23, 2010 § 3 Comments
Sometimes it’s a bit uncomfortable.
Sometimes it’s just a bit too easy.
Sometimes the constant adjusting to the unknowns is exhausting.
Sometimes the full-time job thing is not striking my fancy.
Sometimes the idea of living somewhere is a bit daunting and not as sparkly and breathtaking as traveling.
But more often than not…I find myself desiring to make the most of the amazing opportunity that I feel like I have been given. Micaela and I share this desire and remind ourselves of it daily.
It is, and I believe will continue to be, a weird, awkward, heart-tearing, yet soul-expanding challenge. This challenge I am referring to is the balance of living in one world while still holding onto the world from which I came. As one author put it, it is important to recognize the “significance of belonging to two worlds”.
In the wee moments of the evening before I left, a friend pressed a small and slim blue book, worn from much companionship and journey, into my hands. “You may need this,” I remember her saying to me. And thus far, my friend has been so right.
The wonderful author, Esther de Waal writes about how life is about learning to recognize the “thresholds”, the crossing over from place to place, that we all encounter with the ebb and flow of our lives. Our friend Esther, writes about these things in a geographical way as well as in a metaphorical way.
Esther writes, “I have become aware of the continual movement of crossing over thresholds into the new, while still of course being part of what is left behind…thresholds open up what is new and unknown…in one word, call it transformation. To be transformed imples letting go of control for a while in the hopeful expectation that something worthwhile may result. It means taking the risk that old certainties might be replaced by a new way of seeing the world.”
I read these words over and over again. I make this my mantra, my prayer, my deepest desire…for now, yes. But mostly for all of life. For you and for me.
So little by little…Micaela and I are seeking this kind of transformation that Esther speaks of. Little by little we learn a small bit more about how live life here. Sometimes we sit outside the Cafe literally right around the corner from our apartment and try to teach ourselves Korean. 
Other times we head into downtown Daegu to the tourist center and get as many maps and tour books as we can lay our hands on, even if they aren’t in English…we still take them (Micaela did that. I’m still unsure of why exactly, perhaps she is over confident in our language pursuits, or she just didn’t notice they were in Korean, which is possible).
And other times, as we are running from teaching at the public schools to a few hours of teaching at the hagwon (the private school) there is little time to eat, but there is time for “Take Out”. Take out at our favorite kimbap place. Yes people, way cheaper and millions times better than anything you’ll find at a fast food restaurant located in your neighborhood. Read it a weep, 1,000 won. A little less than $1.00. MacDonald’s can’t even beat that with that stinking thing called tax, really making the dollar menu a complete lie.
You even get free chop sticks. Life. It cannot possibly get better.
Little by little. We are finding our way here. And who am I kidding, typically it is one hilarity after another.
Especially when you have someone to laugh about it with.
Our first video blog
October 10, 2010 § Leave a comment
On our first night in K-town, we decided to video and share a few thoughts. Mind you we had not slept in many, many an hour.
Emanation 