Dear Folks,

We are fixing to go to Stone Cole Creek (in the mountains nearby) for a tube floating extravaganza.  Maybe I'll add to this post later, when we come back, if I have a little time before I begin teaching at 5:30. 

Here are a few photos from our trip there a few days ago.

Here they are swimming in the creek water.

Who Dat Funky Man in the Big Hat?  An Jus What Do He Think He Tryin' ta Prove with Dat Big Hat?

Here's the Whole Gang, minus Mom, of course, who always stays home.

Love, Padooker

Dear Folks:

Church Related Material:

Ah, it's good to be back writing a journal entry.  I have heard good news from my family, that my mom has moved into an assisted living (retirement home) facility, and is doing much better.  She evinces a fine sense of humor, something that she could not do during the year she lived alone in the home she had shared with my father for forty or fifty years. 

I enjoy talking with her and believe she exerts a strong moral influence over my children.  She is steeped in the Southern Baptist Tradition.  I am Baptist, too, but I have attended other churches and have friends from a variety of denominations. 

Even my personal beliefs are modified by my deepest Christian friends.  If I understand correctly,  Catholics agree when they join the church to believe whatever the Pope pronounces as a new belief, such as the 1950 announcement that Mary did not in fact die a natural death, but rather ascended into heaven, similarly to the way Jesus did.

We Baptists have perhaps what you might call a bit more individual autonomy on beliefs, though we do ascribe to a code which: 

   A) recognizes the Bible as the sole certain authoritative revelation of God,

    B) places a stronger emphasis on the New Testament than the old, for forming church policy, and

   C) something else, I forgot... (Not much of a theologian, now, am I?)

I feel affinity for the belief of the Roman Catholics wherein they hold such high esteem for the command from God to be fruitful and multiply that, according to my text:  "Official Catholic teaching has been for years that in every act of sexual intercourse, the possibility of conception must be present for it to be a valid part of a couple's life.  Thus contraception is seen as 'intrinsically evil.'  But the unitive function [which Baptists respect] justifies sexual relations even apart from the procreative function." 

A Theology for the Church. Daniel Akin.  p. 389

My Question:

Now, my question:  If my wife and I continue to keep living like Catholics profess to believe and live (who knows the degree to which they actually do...), then are we just going to be overloaded with children?   We have five now, another just popped out this week. 

As per usual, he is male.  I'm batting 80 percent males now, a laudable feat in this land which places such a high relative value on males, to perpetrate the family name.   That bothers me.  I want to respond by adopting a few female babies, which get short shrift in this heavily patriarchal society. 

We have lived by the Catholic Code for sexuality, as elucidated above (or as Gilligan might say, "the way it is written above").  I like Gilligan.  My kids watch it a lot. 

Good Values from TV:

I believe that The Simpsons holds many similarities with The Flintstones.  My children learn high moral values from both shows.  I would not have thought the Simpsons to exude a high level of morality, but was directed to try it by Christian reviewers in Amazon.   Both shows are funny, and replete with a goodly variety of vocabulary.   And both have enduring, lovable characters, who do the wrong things at times, but always pay the moral price. 

We are still eating the little granola bars we picked up at COSTCO last week.

Rebate City:

I got myself a card to officially get myself a rebate on taxes.  For twelve years, I've paid 10% (value added tax) on all my consumption.  I could have avoided much of that, just didn't know about the possibility.   Well, now I have seen the light.  My wife will like that.  

Vow Wow:

Add to that the fact that I swore off buying more DVD's from Amazon (which I did for educational purposes, to learn my brood better and more English), and books here, and you can expect me to enter into a savings mode, where we should have enough money saved to make our great exodus from this Land of the Morning Calm (South Korea). 

I wonder just how tough it is going to be to keep my little vows about my book and DVD consumption, going neelo on that, as it were.  I only intend to do it until I get to the U.S.  And I think it appropriate to do so, as I stopped counting when I got past 2.5 or 3 million won (thousand dollars) on buying DVD's from Amazon. 

Couple that with my beefy tax rebates and we should do OK. 

Hagwon Fees:

I want to stop swim lessons this coming winter, for two months only, and have my three oldest ones take piano lessons again.  Swim lessons are cheap, 35 dollars per child per month, for four 50-minute lessons per week.   Padook, by comparison, is a monthly fee of 85,000 won (85 dollars) for one hour lessons, five days a week.  Ballet goes the same schedule as padook, but charges 100 dollah. 

I must save, but I love to spend money on my children.   At least I don't gamble and go out drinking with the guys.  

Love, Padooker

Dear Folks,

Hallelujah!  It is finished.   I mean that my wife's "ordeal-esque" struggle through the third course of her degree towards becoming qualified to teach ESL in an US public school is finished.  She clicked "send," for her final project and all else related to that little ordeal is now history, so suddenly, like magic. 

Now our family can rest.  It is a big burden on the whole family, mostly perhaps on me.  I do the majority of the child care and housework, bring home all of the bacon ... if you can say that.  You see, I earn most of our money sitting here on my burgeoning can, right here in my classroom, as it were. 

About that can, I would like to add a bit more.  For several months now, since my delectable knee injury (a source of great relish, commiseration, and what-have-you), I have not run.  Before that, I was always a runner ... well, not every Single Day after marriage, but most every day.  I would wake up early, and knowing that since I was capable of running lightly and easily for thirty minutes without undue discomfort, that it was best understood by me as a duty to do so, if only to maintain my health, live a long, robust life for my children, as it were. 

Well, now I no longer have that duty, "just one less thing to worry about" (As Forrest Gump said about money), and the greatest reason I am relieved of that duty is the one "most irrefutable," ... "Because I can't!"  Who can come back with anything to that?  

Yes, I do get a little exercise.  I bike to and from work at this summer camp elementary school thing.  And I swim, from time to time, about twice a week, whenever my current youngest dude expresses a desire to go.  The day before yesterday, we went together, and I got in 13 laps before he started looking at me with those big brown eyes from the kitty pool.  I pop my head up between every lap to check on him a few meters away in the children's pool. 

He plays freely with the other children up to a point, where he suddenly stops and comes to the side of the pool to look longingly at me.  I believe that while swimming, the euphoria dominates for a good while, until he becomes somewhat pensive, and then it is that he remembers our post-swimming jaunts of the past, where we go in the single baby carriage about town, to the Christian book store which is nearby, and to a bakery to sit a spell together while we eat some bread after parting with a bit of dough.  

Earning money and parting with dough is the regular measure of my life.  I sit down in the evening to have a conversation with South Korean students, then I take my children to sit down in a bakery.  The money flows through, round and round she goes. 

At the bookstore, "My Clever Lad(the youngest)" likes to buy a little trinket, which we do sometimes, bearing in mind the idea of storing up your treasures in heaven, where thieves and moths do neither plunder nor destroy, as it were.

My Shining Knight and his younger brother enjoyed the exercise machines with us at the West Taejeon Park Aviary yesterday. 

Now, that's a right big machine for a little boy to tackle, there dude!

Despite size limitations, My Clever Lad seems to feel he's got to do like his older brother and sister, who enjoy these machines no small measure.  I don't believe he could be much smaller and get on these machines.   Correction:  He was doing this two years ago, what with me holding him.  He insisted on it, and got his way. 

Now Who Dat Funky Jive Tuhkey Blocking My Abeyairee View?  What he think he Tryin' ta Prove?  And don't he know how to smile makin' a picture?  He Think He some Tough Guy Who What Don't Never Smile? 

Now's as good a time as any for a quick stretch. 

Little Dude pauses for a quick stretch on the pedestrian island.  Glad I snapped this one for posterity's sake.   Just wish I had a better camera.  Bout time to pony up the dough for an upgrade, and take the heat from my cheapskate wife, which should not last all that long.  I spent two or three hundred on books, Dr. Seuss books because my two middle children liked them, and poured through the samples I had bought earlier.  She said I had spent over four hunnert dollars in two days!   ... And?  .... Duh...

Money in My Book:

In my book, that's a whole lot better than putting it in the bank, or under the proverbial mattress, when you have something better to spend it on right now.  Amen to that.   another question, "How does she know how much money I spend?"  I feel as if I do a rather good job of sneaking the cash "out the house," and "the goods" into the house, when she's not looking, you know carry in half the groceries, and then quickly, almost nonchalantly, sequester a few more expensive items in the vestibule of our junky house, or casually walk them past her (on the floor of the living room, a place from which she cannot fall, what with her huge heft), pushing the extra items still in the baby carriage, with all it's nooks and crannies, out in front of God and everybody, as pretty as you please.  She never gets up to check what I bought.  But somehow she always finds out.  How do she do that?

Maybe it is when she finds the receipts laying about, or when she spots a child curled in a corner reciting the text from a new book, or the little dude pushing about a new 3-dollar monster truck.  Who knows, but she has a radar for things like that, and a quick tongue to boot. 

Extra Money:  She recently once said that she figures I spent two thousand extra dollars a month for a period of years when I was regularly paying for the house, teaching many hours per week (and had fewer children and vastly more youthful energy in store), enough to add up to 2 eok won (200,000 dollars).  I strongly doubt that.  I feel like she must be counting some things as "extra," which I count as essential.  Start with the dental payments to fix cavities, alternating with the regular "nickle and dime" expenditures for little snacks and chocolates.  After all, what is a childhood without a bit of chocolate here and there?  And what are deciduous teeth for if not to rot, and learn a good lesson the only way that sticks, by experience, that you need to regularly brush your teeth, or what's left of them anyway.

My Lovely Dandelion.

Here is a photo of My Dandelion, eating corn at her grandmother's house.  I took three of them to COSTCO, and we stopped by Grandma's home for an hour-long surprise visit.   We rarely go there because it is a twelve minute subway ride, plus a ten-minute walk, from our humble abode.  We usually visit them about two or three times a year. 

Here is My Clever Lad doing his thing in Grandma's Home.  He is one happy boy.

Sparse interior landscapes:  And here we are together at Grandma's.  Sporting few tables to their relatively small homes (Apparently, tables take up too much space.), the South Koreans in my sphere of acquaintance often eat on the floor, squatting and sitting Indian style around the dishes, which I find splendid, in perfect keeping with my tastes and heretofore habits.  I fit right in here in South Korea, in more ways than one. 

Other foreigners come and go, usually staying for just one year, to finish their contract.  They say that they dislike the lack of respect, culture, and interesting architecture.  None of that bothers me.  Supply and demand makes this a good paying place to be, and also means that my input (labor) is more highly valued (as opposed to say, the relative value that is placed on it in France, Venezuela or Germany.)  It is great to sit there on your derriere and do the exact same "work" (gabbing, as English Conversation) that you would be doing in another part of the world (France) and yet know that you are delivering far greater value in the process. 

But yes, back to COSTCO; we always have a blast when we go to COSTCO.  We buy unusual food.  Yesterday, I bought Honey Nut Cheerios!   Until a year ago, my burgeoning brood knew not that such delights existed on this earth.  Let me tell just them that the earth is indeed a much larger vehicle than they once may have so blithely assumed.  Heh heh heh ... little ones ... ah.

We also stocked up on calcium tablets, the one nutritional supplement that we can actually detect as being effective.  My wife and I have a touch of arthritis, and feel that a calcium tablet a day keeps the ole doctor away.  Don't want doctors in our house, now.  I spent twenty two dollars a piece on two bottles of calcium tablets, which should last us maybe 6 months.  I don't actually take one every single day. I am far too forgetful for that.

We also bought some long-tail frozen shrimp, about one kilogram (if you can guess how much that would be in real terms) for maybe 9,900 won (ten bucks actually).  And we tasted some sorbet ice cream, a fantastic thing for my children, even though we have never actually bought any.  We have had the free taste at COSTCO, though, two or three times now, and it is magical.  I abstain because I do not want that sugary stuff in my mouth. 

Now, adding some meat to it, animal fat to be exact, would be a different story; I think I could manage to slide a sample of that down my available gullet with no regrets.  But sorbet?  Isn't that just a bunch of chemically flavored sugar?    When they start giving out samples of Haagen Dazs, then you'll see me lining up for seconds, bringing each child by for a sample.  Lots of children equates to lots of samples, always has.  

I'll close on this note.  I have a saying to that, "The more children you have may multiply the number of diapers you have change, but it also multiplies the number of samples you can get away with in COSTCO, as it were."  I don't know whether this particular saying will get very far down my family tree, but hey, it's worth a try.  It seems to be lacking a tad in the conciseness we generally expect of aphorisms, no?

Love, Padooker

This is Sunday morning, The Sabbath Day, when we all take a bath and wash our hair, whether we need it or not.  I'll troop them off to church, while Wifey stays home and enjoys the tranquility of our humble abode.   I must call my mother, bathe the brood, and head out the door within the next hour.  Our native speaker preacher has returned from his one-month visit back to the States, and should be reved up to preach a good sermon this morning, coming back fresh, as it were.  I have not had a vacation in twelve years.  Bout time to take one, no?

Dear Folks,

This evening, ladies and gentlemen, I took my dear children out to eat at a bakery.  We spent 14 dollars and some odd cents, it being somewhat difficult to give you an accurate figure, as we are not entirely apprised of the exact exchange rate as of the time of purchase. 

The main purpose of the outing was dual:  A) To let Daddy out of the house so he could walk around enjoying life with his children in a relaxed environment;  and B) to get the children out of the house so Momma could enjoy a relaxed, quiet environment in the home alone. 

As it was was ... we killed two birds with one stone.  We do that a lot. 

Here inside the Paris Baguette store, a nice lady agreed to take our group photo for us.  We sat there maybe twenty-five minutes. 

It started around 6:20, when I decided to take My Clever Lad out for a walk.  We moseyed up in nice Summer Night Air, in the general direction of the padook hagwon. 

Along the way, we stopped and ate "chicken-butt-on-a-stick," (a particularly popular Korean delight), Oh-Dang(composite fish snack)  and Dduck-Poggi (photo forthcoming, next time I go out to eat it), and then we dropped by picked up the three older children after their padook hagwon. 

We ran about outside afterwards, like wild children.

After we picked up the older kids, we sashayed back to the Dduck-Ppoggi place, ate some more O-Dang, and then went to the Paris Baguette bakery, where we commenced to drop 14 dollah on a sandwich (split four ways), some bread for home, and strawberry milk, plus a small apple pie, split four ways. 

Little Dude and Mom enjoy the $1.50 long bread he insists on bringing home each time.  We can't cut it up and eat it there in the shop with the other bread.  He buys it solely because he likes the long shape.

My wife is big.  Can you see she is big?  Can you say "Big Mamma?"  She is so big she is about to pop!  Can you say "Pop, Big Mamma.  Pop!"?

Love, Padooker

Dear Folks,

Big Spoon:

We need a big spoon.  I don't buy much new, to comply with my wife's most ardent desire to be thrifty.   However, as I ladeled out some cereal from a large tupperware knock-off container, for my third son this morning, I realized that yes indeed, we are a family bereft of large spoons. 

What with a big spoon, why we could ladel out cereal two or three times faster than our current fastest safe rate.  I write "safe rate" because, yes, I suppose I could sling cereal with the best of them, but then it would be all over the chicken floor, and what good is that?  Sort of defeats the  purpose, don't it now? 

Currently none of our children exceed the safe rate of cereal ladeling, but then they are now patient, with few social demands, which should change as time goes on and they become ever more busy.  Then who could say?   Better to act now, make a stitch in time, I say. 

But, I can see the writing on the wall, meaning that our charmed pastorally oriented pattern of sole reliance upon small spoons only has been admittedly a bit naive, though not without some quaint and cozy rustic beauty in the simplicity of our young married life. 

When the kids get a little older, we're going to have to splurge and go shopping for a big spoon or two.  That's unavoidable.  And you know, when one is in the wash, you need to have a back-up.   So there's two, right off the bat.

Besides, if you're going to buy one, you sometimes can get a deal by buying two at the same time.   To be honest, I haven't really looked into it much, but then, I've not felt until now the impending need for a larger spoon.  I had blithely assumed that life was complete with the spoons we had  ...  Me and my pointy little head. 

Here is my family cutting up a bit at our friend's house.  Sandy has a high officetel, 10 floors up with a fine view of the town park.  We watched an exciting hail storm from this window, complete with thunder and lightening galore.  The sunshine you see in the background is the light before the storm.

My children enjoyed watching "Big Valley" this morning, as well as a Disney movie about dogs that had cheesy acting, but good scenery of Antartica.   The dogs were great, but the human relationships were wooden, pretentious and lacking in credibility. 

Tight Ship:

We run a tight ship around here.   (For maximum effect, think:  The sheriff from the Cool Hand Luke Movie with his inimitable classic line, "What we have here is a failure to communicate...")   I like to think we have what you might call a strict adherence to raising children in keeping with the way my beloved parents raised me and my siblings galore.  

We have a place for everything and everything in its place.   Living in such a tiny apartment (a la South Korean style), we must operate like we live on a ship.  There is no other way.  The South Korean way is merely to have no possessions. 

But I have come to strongly believe that the lack of books and art, or just cherished possessions, in their home is a strong underlying reason for their high rates of despair.   You see the symptoms of despair reflected in their boredom (having nothing to say in class), sky high suicide rates, tops in the world divorce rate, and second to Russia alcohol consumption rate, per capita.

My parents were raised in the richness of the Southern Baptist Tradition (SBT for short if you like).   And that is how they raised us, with my father taking the helm each night to lead us in Bible readings and prayer.  We were all free to contribute to the prayer, while my father finished off for everybody. 

My wife sees that as a distinct, incomparable blessing, too, a very good thing our children.  Her family did not do this, but we adhere to it just like my parents did.  As she says, "It is a helpful reminder to us that our children could not grow up well without a regular reminder that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is watching over them as a regular part of their lives."  That is very sweet.

But yes, children need a sense of God in their lives.  There is occasionally a defiant young student in my classes who says in response to the religion questions in our conversation texts, "I believe in me!"  That's fine with me, and I suppress a chuckle, with ease from long practice.  I realize that there will always be that sort. 

However, it clearly disturbs the other students in class.  South Koreans are brought up to respect authority and to "toe the line," conform all the way.  Loyalty is highly prized, and with Christianity as the dominant religion in this culture, it really grates on the majority when a wide-eyed youngster trumpets his proud, solipsistic despair like that. 

The Pathos of Do-It-Yerself "Spirituality":

It reminds me of the super pretentious, do-it-your-self moralists who hung out perpetually on campus from my college days (always hanging out, never actually studying all that much), who regularly sasheed about campus posturing with heavy usage of the words, "spiritual," and "dude."  

In the tiring, pathetic cases to which I bore witness over the years, this post-modern mumbo jumbo acted to weaken communion, breaking social ties.   Over time, as I saw these fellows come to ruin, in work, marriage, and just physically, I began to believe more strongly that their radical denial of community dependence just doesn't guarantee proper emotional and intellectual development.  

I really liked these guys, though.   I enjoyed kicking hacky sac with them, taught them a bit about juggling.  They lacked the discipline to become very good at juggling.  Still, they seemed nice.  I thought it abusive to their girlfriends when they changed girlfriends so frequently, or argued over what seemed trifles to me, but I saw that as their personal life, off limits for discussion. 

One thing these "spiritual earthies" did not do was excel.   They never excelled at anything, not first chair in the trumpet section, not an A average, not great at any sports.  Never very good at speaking or writing.   But cool.  They were cool.  And check that earlier remark.  I wrote too quickly.  They did indeed excel at hanging out.  You'd see them all day long in the center of campus, and on rainy days, in the sweet shop, knocking back coffee and doughnuts. 

They talked big on the environment, but then they drove fancy SUV's, and hopped about the world during the summer, taking planes to Europe for fun, or out West to be rafting guides over summer vacation.  And so long as their parents continued a steady stream of money. 

The thing is that there is just nothing in such "spirituality" that guarantees any bonafide connection with any other navel-gazing souls out there.   It is the perverse inverse of the inimitable Rose of Sharon symbol, which unites in the pure spirit of God.   And it is not beautiful, having no cogent, well-developed sense of tradition, art, etc.  The only guarantee you seem to get is a guarantee that you never really start in your life, never fully committing to anything or anyone.  The one thing you can certainly not ever do well is raise a slew of children.  There is no way your radically individuality-based "spirituality" will ever permit you to hew to an absolute moral rule, the basis of civil society. 

If you want to get along with others on a consistent basis, and be a productive, acceptable member in society, sometimes you have to to tell yourself that something you desire to do (or even believe you have an inate hankering to do) is wrong, solely because it contravenes a standard moral rule ... The Golden Rule, or one of the Ten Commandments. 

"Obedience" and "sacrifice" were such difficult words for those fair-weather friends of mine, how they loathed any such term.  But that's what doing a good job in a company is all about.  That's what raising a spate of children is all about.  That's what being a long term friend is all about, accepting standards and in that, being capable of definition.  People can thus know you.  Without adherence to standards, you can neither be known, nor know yourself.  You're just some kind of uninitiated swathe of primordial goop. 

Well, that's my two cents worth.  In the name of some of my "goopy," albeit quite superficially sincere and amiable, hacky-sacking friends, I feel a need to explain their tragedy if it helps future young ones to avoid their fate.   And yes tragic is the right word, as some have died, cocaine, car accidents, rock-climbing with weak fingers and no rope.  But many more have not died, but continually vegggg...   Vegging out and pretending to each other and themselves that life was not difficult, that success could be enjoyed without effort, while all was cool, and your desire was your best guide ... this was not a recipe for success.  

That said, I need to point out that though they could "hang out" with the best of'em, they lacked the ability to be idle, in the fullest sense of that word, tranquil, still, in an open posture towards God. 

The Great Dane Said:

A. "Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further."

B. "Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good."

C. "How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech."

Here my second son and third son play with two of Sandy's dogs in her apartment.  We had a fine time there, with me taking up the perch by the window and enjoying just sitting down, not having to worry about any one of my kids.  About town, I am constantly thinking about the youngest one, now three, who may dart at any moment into the road after a ball or whatever. 

Two years later, he will be finished with that stage and a bit more mature such that I can take my eyes off of him.  But by that time, the younger one should be gaining in his mischief. 

I wonder where I could buy some chess pieces like this.  I might check the U.S. Chess Federation's Shop.

I would like to have them for my school in the future.   I also want to make a shuffleboard place, a gateball Jang, a couple of horseshoe pits, and a nice Oriental garden with a carp pond.  Sheep and a small vineyard would look good on the property, too, enriching the view.  

Love, Padooker

Dear Folks,

Here we are posing as a family in front of The Great Stone Dragon.   I believe we may have to pose here again some day, make it a tradition.  You can't buy a better backdrop than this, can you?

And here we have the Great Stone Lion, what with two boys behind it, smiling and patting the lion.

    I have thirty minutes of freedom.  I begin teaching at 8:00.  It will be odd when we move to the U.S. of A., and I no longer teach in my home.  We have shared our home with wholesale truck loads of students now for nigh on twelve years.  They play with my children while waiting for class, and sometimes after class, when they linger. 

    I am thinking about offering one university here, though, to send students to my home in the U.S. for me to teach them "the English," and stay at my home in the process.  I might teach fifteen or so at a time, in order to make it economical for the school.  However, a smaller number would be easier to teach.  They surely do talk a lot of Korean with each other. 

   I would teach only padook majors.  The university name is Myeong Ji University, in Yong-in City, about a two hour bus drive from here, which is an eternity for us.  We visited there once, and felt very challenged handling the bus ride.   I remember in the U.S. that I didn't think twice about going to a place that was two hours' distant. 

Now, I do.  Too, I own no car here, just walk everywhere I need to go and take a train wherever else, unless, as in this case, no train goes there. 

Here we have My Shining Knight tearing out in the first photo, and My Clever Lad running down the hill in the second.  This is on the way back from Joong Moon Baptist Church, a 20 minute walk from our humble abode.

Dear Folks,

I just cleaned up some grape juice from the floor, knowing in advance that my son would spill, when I gave him a fairly large dose in his plastic Thomas-the-tank-engine cup.   Just for the record, he is the one who insisted on the large dose, not I.

One maverick arm of the grape juice flood ran under the bookcase, and will just have to stay there until some blessed varmit, such a loose hamster or deerhorned Beetle on the lam, shelters there for a spell and eats it for lunch. 

But I warrant you, I am not about moving more furniture about the house.  I schlepped enough pianos and bookcases for a good long time yesterday.  And my arthritic fingers feel it just now.

It all started with my second son sitting in front of the proverbial Boob Tube screaming in his sensitive way in response to my third son running back and forth behind and in front of him when he periodically came to this end of the house in his cyclical mad dash from the kitchen to the far end of the living room, pushing a large green toy monster truck in front of him. 

I told the younger one to quit.  I told the older one to pray for the patience of the Lord to help him bear the disturbance which prevented him from watching his DVD.   Neither command was very fruitful towards general harmony and geometric order.

Hence the quasi-divine idea that sprung within me, apparently emanating from my very visceral region, such was the pressure of that cauldron, knowing that my entire ability to support my children rested, in these cramped apartments, upon my keeping my children quiet to avoid disturbing the immediate neighbors ... because word gets out. 

If people believe "The foreigner can't control his children.  They are wild."  then right off the bat, demand for my services as a teacher of their children drops off like a rock from a handy neighborhood precipice.

So, I hit upon the idea of moving the TV to the most remote room of our humble abode, way back in the back, where the piano had lurked, with her keys lying fallow for the most part, almost entirely unstimulated, with a lackluster finish to reflect her abandonment.

Now, after much reorganization, she shines in splendor and people stop to perfunctorily tickle her lovely white ivories in passing, to her great joy in delectable administrations.

I shall snap a few photos to post here for you, in good time.  Please be patient with me, dudes. 

Ah... The TV Room.  Now that is a fine thing in and of itself.  Is that an exterior window that manifested itself above my TV sofa?  Or, is it merely that I moved my sofa from the standard center-of-home living room to a diminuitive sequestered chamber in the darker recesses of our domicile? 

Love, Padooker

Thanks to a clerical error, I must now fork out one thousand dollars for a tonsilectomy for my third child. 

 A few years back my doctor, speaking in English, said I had until my son was seven years old to decide whether to lop off his tonsils, nip them in the bud, so to speak.  Up to that time, he said, the government would pay for the operation costs.

In English we say what we mean and mean what we say.  When we don't, we feel a little queasy twinge of guilt. That's cultural, the way we are brought up, thinking fidelity to truth is a great value.

Now, it turns out, upon a follow up visit last week, the doctor says he definitely needs them out of his head, only that now I must pay, because my son is six, and in speaking Korean, they use three different, conflicting systems of counting age, depending on how pretentious they want to be, downplaying or showing off age superiority, a huge thing here for social pecking order.

The upshot if that I must pay because he was thinking in Korean, but speaking English.  There is nothing I can do about it; my son is a year late to claim his unchosen entitlement, something we are forced to subsidize, but may not now accept for our own child.  Gotta squeeze out some more dough.  I have decided to work three weeks this summer (weekday mornings only) to make 1.8 million won, about 1.8 thousand dollars, at one elementary school, and one week at my school for a similar summer camp program.  That outta make up the difference.   Without that, I could'a, should'a, would'a taken my children to a water park, and been loaded with cash to contribute to my Long Family US Homestead Fund.

Here you see our budding young living room, about to emerge pristine, stainless and new from the murk of rearranging.

Dear Folks,

  I have a bit of a problem.  I found a purportedly Christian website as a part of Xanga.  Being a Baptist, I logged into it with glee, taking a trial subscription, but have yet to find any points of commonality with which I can identify.  All I can find is a bunch of mushy navel-gazing, puerile stuff that is not really Christian at all.  Bad writing, to boot. 

What should I do?  I cannot with good conscience sign up as a friend.  A friendship invitation came forthwith, but it represents a group.  I didn't realize it was a group of writers, under one moniker.  What is that? 

If I want a friend, I want to meet him, get to know him, where he stands on things, and most of all, in full Kierkegaardian drama, I want to know that he is an authentic person, grounded, and standing behind whatever he says.  How can a "he" be a "he" when "he" is masquerading about as a "we"?  

That is just one of the problems, though.  Being plural means no one takes the brunt of any criticism I may have.  It is all too easy to sidestep responsibility for any foolish then one of them may write.  So when everybody "speaks," then really no one is speaking. 

I feel I wouldn't mind being friends with some of them, if but they would sign up under their own individual banners.  Oh well, maybe I'm just in a non-tolerant mood, but I'll tell you, this thing rubbed me the wrong way in a heartbeat. 

I think of the Golden Rule, where we are to do unto others before they do unto us ... Oops!  That's not it, is it?  I mean, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  OK, that's it.  So, when I try to look at it as the shoe being on the other foot, and I am part of a group, extending "friendship" to individuals out there, it smells and feels veddy veddy fishy. 

For one thing, it is unbalanced, like I am part of a fraternity, scouring new pledges in the vetting process.  I dislike that whole shebang, though it worked well for my younger brother; he was happy to join  a fraternity when he first went to college.  Not I.  Well, I must close this post. 

I went out to get my children from a friend at the subway.  We are back now and it is nine thirty, high time for bed.

P.

Dear Folks,

Now, Who Dat Funky Clown in My Office?

My youngest son is pushing against me now.  It seems as if the Saturday Doldrums have overtaken our home.  Mom is studying behind me, preparing to displace me as the primary bread weinner, making me redundant, obsolete, putting me out to pasture, as it were, converting(resigning) me to a life of couch potato, and at the tender young age of 47...

What shall I do?  Should I resist?  Or, should I take this glad opportunity in hand, welcome it as my shining white knight of relief?  I could write more, but I do that anyway.  I could read more.  Now there is an option I like.  I'll toss that about in my little pointy head.  Yes, reading would be fine. 

Wake up the kids, wash them, get them on the bus, clean up the breakfast mess, then cozy up with a good book in the big bay window to watch the soft gentle rain fall beside me as I read.   There's gold in them thar hills, I warrant Chee!

Yes, I could easily get used to this.

Of course, I'll preach, too.  But you see, I imagine I will preach in a small church, and spend much time preparing sermons.  Reading and writing seems heavenly to me.  I don't know that I will watch much in the way of soap operas.  I watched one last night, episode 9 of "Brideshead Revisited," a melodramatic one entitled "Orphans of the Storm."  I generally find English dramas enjoyable. 

Wifey should be finished with her master's degree in about three years, whence I will begin to peter off my working schedule even more.  It has petered down a right smart bit since the hey day of my teaching here, a few years back when I taught better than 60 hours per week. 

Here we are on the subway, on our recent trip to COSTCO.

And here is a shot of a student with me, and then another shot of just me in my yellow pants at my desk.

Love, Padooker

Dear Folks,

My wife is sleeping.  I do not see her much.  She devotes nearly all of her waking hours to her university studies.  She is a hard worker. 

I have seen some of her texts, and I believe her program is a fine one, unsurpassed perhaps by the bigger "name brand" universities, maybe even better for the higher quality of professor attention.  She says that her professors are very attentive to her, responding quickly and in detail, with full concern, to her e-mailers. 

I do not believe she could get a better education at Chapel Hill or Duke.  I had courses at Chapel Hill, and also at Appalachian State University.  I took more courses at UNC-CH, but perhaps more of my best professors taught at App State, generally considered the weaker of the two universities. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at UNC, and yes, in general, my peers seemed to have a little more "on the ball," were more interesting to talk with at UNC.  But there was not shortage of interesting individuals at App State.  My best friend in my MBA program was Hwang Myeong Jin, a South Korean.   He was very bright.  We had much fun together.  He was the first person to teach me about padook. 

We need to leave for church here soon.  We will go to the same church we attended last week, Joong Moon Baptist Church.  We have usually attended a Presbyterian church here, as my children like it very much, but I feel a need to get them more accustomed to the Baptist heritage, as I view their beliefs to be superior. 

Also, the more I study these differences, the more I see them as being substantial and critical.  I didn't feel that way so much as a child, but blithely assumed that the differences between the denominations were somewhat insubstantial, not critical.

Here above is a photo I took of myself and a stone statue of the Buddha, or at least the South Korean perception of "the Buddha."  They decry the Buddhas elsewhere as not being the same.  It is interesting to me, this photo, as it juxtaposes the old with the new, the changing of the guards, as is reflected in society.  I am white, Christian, and English, alive.  This society is running rabidly in that direction. 

For my part, the utterly "white" is insignificant, but it is of extreme significance to my students.  They can't stand to get "a drop" of sunshine on their skin, lest it darken some degree from the ideal white.  Why? 

That would require a long answer, which I will attempt if anyone is interested. 

(I despise racism of any sort, contrary to the prejudices of my students, who are willing only to marry someone of their own ethnic group, and social class, as they define it.  Curiously North Korea is not of the same ethnic group.  Go figure.)

Love, Padooker