Those Clever Koreans!

I find the Korean people very clever in dealing with difficult situations. Many people live in high rise buildings--Jonathan & family live in an 18 story building. When a family is moving into the building, their stuff is taken up outside the building and taken in through large windows. The stuff is placed on a platform that rises like a fireman's ladder to reach the floor when it is unloaded. Very smart!

After the start of the school year last fall, Jonathan & Robin had to move to a new apartment. Their household was moved in the same manner--up the outside of the building and in through a large window. When they left for school one morning their stuff was in one apartment and when they came home that same day everything was moved to the new location and everything was placed exactly where it had been in the old apartment. How did they remember the location of all the stuff? Did they draw diagrams? Take pictures? Jonathan & Robin were impressed with Korean's hard work and efficiency in completing the move so quickly and in such an organized manner.

Amazing!

Korea's Culture of Perfection

Korea. Competition for top grades here is fierce. Most students go to after school schools so they can get into the best universities, graduate at the top of their class--make their mothers proud! Work hard for the glory of your mother! As one of the memes on the wall declared. Strive for perfection!

When people go out shopping they dress up in their finest clothing, apply elaborate make-up, wear high heels and sheer stockings. Perfect skin, as white as they can make it. Eyes too small for perfection? We have just the surgery for that! Eyelids too flat? We can fix that with a clip here and there. My! Your calves are large! We told you about all that running! Not to worry! We can slim them down for you! Operation slim-down and you will be one step closer to perfection!

What a great graduation gift! Parents, show your daughters your confidence in their future! Get them that eye lid surgery! Don't let them fall behind their friends in their search for success.

It's not unusual for men to wear make-up. Jonathan and I went to the bank to get money exchanged. The man who bowed and greeted us at the door was wearing make-up. Suit, tie, well shined shoes...and make-up.

Rules. We must adhere strictly to the rules. We must be punctual. If the scheduled time for a bus to depart is 8:19, at precisely 8:19 the driver will put the bus in gear and his feet on the gas peddle. No mercy for latecomers exists in the world of bus drivers.

For all their dedication to rules and perfection, motorcycle drivers seem to live in another dimension. They feel free to ignore red stop lights and ease into on coming traffic. As long as Korea has motorcycles they will be free of absolute perfection.

Let's see--which way do I go from here?

In spite of my many travels, I find that I have difficulty finding my way around. My ability to navigate in a new place would score somewhere in the vicinity of 2 out of 10. Here in Suwon another navigation hindrance is the fact so many buildings look alike. Jonathan, Robin & Win live in a veritable forest of high rise apartment buildings. Government regulations require  a certain percentage of the land be left "green", so there are playgrounds and landscaped areas, but 18 story buildings still take up lots of space. I think there are 40 or more high rises in the place where J R & W live. They are all exactly alike except for the numbers on the outside of the buildings. One afternoon I walked over to to the school to observe Jonathan in action in his classroom. On the way back I took a wrong turn and although I was very near home it took me a while to find the right building.

At last I found 303 and put in the code to open the door- after each number a female Korean voice softly murmurs the number you punched in-- in Korean. After a short pause the door opened. I took the elevator to the 13th floor, eager to get inside and use the bathroom. The code for the door did not open it. I tried again and then again. The need for a bathroom intensified. Finally a red light around the keypad came on and an alarm bell buzzed. At that point I decided to exit the building and try another way home.

When I came out the door I saw Win coming out another door in the building. I had not noticed that 303 had two towers and I had gone up the wrong tower. We think the guard saw me and opened the outer door for me. I had been trying to get into the wrong apartment.

How great my relief was when I put in the code for the outside door and it worked and then the code for the apartment worked as well so I made it to the bathroom without an embarrassing incident. I'm here to take care of Win, but he may be taking care of me instead--at least in the walking around town part!

The Next Journey

I can't read the signs! I'm in Korea with Jonathan, Robin & Win. I'm going to stay with Win while Jonathan & Robin go to Bangkok for a teachers' job fair. They are looking for new positions for next year and will interview with schools who are looking for an English teacher and a Technology Expert in Education. One of the countries they are considering is Saudi Arabia. Scary, eh? But the school is within a compound. Safe.The students are mostly international kids whose parents work in the oil industry. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

I came early enough so we would have time to do tourist type things. I loved the Korean Folk Village. It shows life as it used to be before South Korea became modernized and industrialized. I love the way they used natural things around them for building. The mud & rock walls had patterns. The roofs were constructed out of thatch if you were poor, but the wealthy family used tile. Jonathan and Win had fun making bamboo flutes.  It was interesting, but it was so cold the wind knifed through our coats till we were chilled to the bone! It's been years since I was that cold. Most of the exhibits required walking around outside so there was no chance of being where it was warm even for a few minutes--ah...that was the lure of the candy shop. Nice and warm and all those sweets!

The most frustrating part of being here is that I cannot read the street signs. Many  more street signs in Seoul include English, but here in Suwon, very little is in English. It is frustrating to me! I want to read and understand those signs! Compared with Seoul, far fewer people here speak English and that creates problems for Win. He looks Asian (he was born in Thailand and was adopted by Jonathan & Robin when he was a baby), but he speaks only English. When Win and I went out to lunch yesterday the girl behind the counter could not communicate with me. She turned to Win to ask him and I told her he speaks only English. It's very confusing. Once when Win was playing outside he was bullied by some boys who insisted that he speak Korean. I guess he finally convinced them he did not know Korean. Korea spent so many years dominated by other countries that their motto now is "Korea for Koreans!"

This post was written in Korea, but I'm posting after returning to the US because of difficulty with the Blogger site in Korea. When I signed on all the tabs and buttons were in Korean and I could not remember where the "post" button was. I wrote two entries but could not post because I can't read Korean! So here they are now.

About those Christmas cards

The Christmas card I had printed was a surprise when it arrived; it was much larger that I had envisioned. In fact, it was enormous. Special envelope...probably extra postage. The photo on the front was one of Allen Ray & me on the Blue Ridge Parkway, taken last fall when we were there with Sadie Kay and Ray Crumbley. It's a nice photo. In the past I have used photos of us with the grandchildren or the grandchildren alone. This year it's just Allen & me because that is who lives here. Maybe it was the size of the card, maybe it was because it was just the two of us, but I was suddenly struck with the fact that the Christmas card said nothing about the purpose of the holiday. It is Jesus' birth. The only hint of the "reason for the season" was Christ-mas. Is that enough?

For many years I sent only religious themed cards--never a Santa Clause in the greeting. Then one year I found a really cute card with a little mouse who was mixing up some Christmas cookies. I guess on the night before Christmas someone WAS stirring! I moved on to pictures of the grandchildren on the front of the card. My family would enjoy seeing how the kids had grown over the year. But the card I sent this year seems to be totally divorced from the "God became man" core of the holiday.

I hesitated to write about this subject. I get many cards from friends with pictures of themselves and their children. I enjoy seeing and displaying them, but has this become a distraction from the true meaning of Christmas? We have so many distractions to keep us from time alone with God. So many things we must do, many things we do to entertain ourselves. Before we realize it the day is gone, we are sleepy and we have no time left for anything. The day has been empty of spiritual food.

The cards are finished. Allen will mail them for me today. I'm not sure what I will do next year, but I know the card will not be like the gigantic one I sent this year. Maybe I'll write a poem for the card. (or not! I'm terrible at writing poetry!) Maybe I'll put a small picture of us on it. I'm going to want to celebrate the birth of the Savior God sent to earth that long, long ago.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Peggie Groves, my neighbor and best childhood friend.

Swinging on monkey vines in the woods at the end of the street. Damming up the little spring fed stream then watching the destruction as we let go the waters of our tiny lake.  Hours and hours playing our new Monopoly game on the dining room table. I stepped back in time into the today. I spent the day with my childhood friend Peggie Groves who recently moved to Ellenton, Florida.

Once I went away to college I did not often go back to Crucible, Pennsylvania where I grew up. Last year I went to the 50th anniversary of my graduating from Carmichaels Area High School. I realized then how much I had forgotten in the last 50 years. I tried to waken my memory by writing about the things I did remember. I talked with my siblings. I got out taped recordings of interviews with siblings who have, to use the Southern expression, "passed on." The more I look back, the more I remember.

Talking with Peggie today I heard again the music of the names of the families who lived in Crucible: Descutner, Patterson, Miller, Grimes, Sergiovani, Kawalski. So many of the names ended with ski that I felt like my plain ole Huntley name was boring, unimportant. My favorite Italian was the grammar school bus driver, Romeo Palone who expected a kiss on his cheek as we boarded the bus each morning. Nothing like that is possible today, but he was wonderful and made us all safe. Those were the good ole days when a child could ride the school bus and not worry about being beaten up or threatened with a knife.

I love the sounds of those names. Serbian, Italian, Irish, Polish, Slovakian, Dutch. These men came to work in the coal mines. A good day's wages for a good day's work. It was a tiny town, but its diversity of ethnic groups was amazing. There was unity of purpose in the workday, but there was also separation. The company built houses for workers to rent called The Patch and each nationality had its own section. The groups hung on to their native language, but they learned English, too. The influence of many cultures on the area is amazing. Germans in Pittsburgh gave us Heinz catsup and dill pickles. Wives shared recipes hullopkis (cabbage rolls), nut rolls, and all kinds of ways to make jello. Most of the wives made bread at home without the aid of a bread machine. Irish soda bread, yeast bread, biscuits, and for breakfast, buckwheat pancakes dripping with butter and sweet syrup.

I've probably spelled heaps of things wrong in this post. I don't remember how to spell all those lovely immigrant names, but I love what they brought to my little coal mining town of Crucible, Pennsylvania.

Now that she is forty

Cammie 'n Chris' Wedding Day

Cammie was born on September 29, 1974. Of my three children she was the most difficult to bring into the world. I labored for twenty-four hours before she came hollering into the world.  But I did not care about the pain, God had given me a baby girl. After the much easer births of David and Jonathan, the exquisite pain was a surprise. The joys that came later were just as amazing. 

My mother taught me to sew when I was about twelve years old. It was a skill I needed, too because Allen and I were so poor when we first got married. I got pregnant very soon after the marriage certificate was signed. Married November 22, 1967, first baby boy born August 25, 1968, David Wroyston. My quickly expanding waistline required new clothing and we could not afford a whole new wardrobe. I was working in a Head Start program and had to have maternity outfits to accommodate my growing belly. Allen purchased for me a Singer sewing machine in the most popular color, light blue. Back then fabric and patterns were not as expensive as they are now and I was able to make all the clothes I needed for my job and for my new position in life--an expectant mother.

Jonathan was born two years later, in 1970 and I had lots of fun making matching blazers for him and David when they were just toddlers. The jackets even had fancy insignias sewn on to the breast pockets. I have photographs of them smiling into the camera, all dressed up for church. 

When Cammie arrived I was eager to get out the Singer sewing machine and make some pretty little things for my infant daughter. Making girls' clothes is much more fun than making coats for little boys. Before she was born I made diminutive t shirt type garments with a drawstring closure on the bottom to keep Baby from kicking off the covers and getting her tiny legs cold. Later came romper suits in all sorts of bright colors and patterns. My favorite pattern was one that crisscrossed  in the back and buttoned on the shoulders. The back was open and showed off matching bloomers.

By the time Cammie was a toddler we were living in Lakeland and I was teaching High School English. I would often take her with me to basket ball or baseball games. Friends from that time  still remember that beautiful little three-year-old with softly curling blond hair, inquisitive blue eyes, and a fearless drive to know everything about the world she inhabited.  She was a delight!

And still is.