Reading

I went to What the Book used bookstore and the Kyobo Bookcenter when I visited Seoul the 15th-16th, and have spent a lot of my out of school time reading since then (partially, I caught a pretty bad cold last weekend and spent most of my time resting. Also I just really like to read).

I read Ender's Shadow, which follows the same timeline as Ender's Game-- probably one of my favoritest books, if someone was to make me choose-- but from Bean's perspective. Christian told me he liked it better, and I think with good reason. Bean is in a lot of ways more socially isolated but also less self absorbed- he is much more aware of himself and able to read what's going on around him. I spent a lot of time thinking about my brain and other people's brains and how we are shaped by experiences and all sorts of good things.

At the same time I started No god but God by Reza Aslan. I don't feel like I can sum this book up sufficiently without it's own really long post, but I'll write a start, at least. Aslan wrote this book as an introduction to the "history, evolution, and future of Islam" and did so with a readable grace that I am very grateful to have found. He describes the the Middle East-- already centered around pilgrimage to Mecca-- into which Muhammad was born. He describes Muhammad's life and the various states and theologians and movements and mystics that have followed after Him and his Quran. I have learned a lot about Islam, and been growing in how I think about religion and spirituality from reading this. (I have been just reading one chapter a day, so a still have a few days left before I finish.)

Next I read The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Buck was raised in China (her American missionary parents moved there when she was about 2 years old) speaking both English and Chinese. So, while her book has gotten criticism for being a story about 'real' Chinese farmers written by a White American, she was actually pretty informed in what she was writing. The prose is 'simple' to a fault. It reads in an almost train-of-thought flow that shares this Chinese farmer's perspective on the events and people in his life and --impressively for her background-- does this without judgment or any sense of cultural or moral superiority. Buck definitely highlights how awful women's condition was in China, but she makes them and the men in the book real people who interact and think about what best to do with that condition. There are no real heroes in this book--there is a lot of luck, good choices, and bad choices. I don't think this should be the only book you read if you want to understand China-- even if you only want to understand China before 1949-- but is a lovely novel to start with.

I am now reading Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian, who was the first Chinese author to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature. I am only on page 70 of about 500, so I can't tell you its big picture. Thus far it follows two journeys ('mine' and 'yours', which I suspect might both belong to the author, but at different points in time?) in remote parts of China, searching for meaning and self. At this point, I can already pretty confidently recommend it to anyone who has seen different possible lives/versions of themselves while traveling or meeting new people or investigation new ideas or spending time in nature. Ummm. So pretty much everyone. I guess just if you like to read.

Recently I read The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith ('recently' and 'finally', as an uncle gave this to me a few years ago and it took a while to catch up with my in my travels). It advertises itself as a "Libertarian science fiction adventure!" and does not disappoint. It is an Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole alternate history, which (while a bit pedantic more than once) is an excellent medium for what the book is trying to do. It shows a USA where the Whiskey Rebellion was successful and its spirit continued to define American politics, and thus provides a model of Libertarian government. It gave me a lot to think about and economically and politically, and the show-not-tell of a novel is a great way to learn a new way of seeing the world (though Smith also does a fair amount of telling through his 'propertarian' characters, so be ready).

I read the first part of A. S. Neill's Summerhill School just before going to Seoul (and then the tone changed a bit in Part 2, and I found new books, and I moved on, fickle reader that I am!). Along with The Life and Work of Maria Montessori by E. M. Standing that I read about a year ago, this helped me re-understand and appreciate my mother's motivation for homeschooling Isaac and I, and gave me a lot of insight into how intellect and emotions develop. Neill founded a school where students are not required to do anything-- if they break something (well, some things) they have to pay for it, and there are rules set by the students and staff together about being quiet at night and such-- but they don't have to go to lessons, ever, if they don't want to. And when students arrive there from the public school system, they don't want to. It takes usually weeks or months and sometimes years before students realize that they WANT to learn and want help doing it. Some students never go to lessons and study entirely on their own, in whatever subjects they like. His students, for the most part, end up successful and generally more confidently creative than their counterparts in public schools.

I have been reading Your Life As Story by Tristine Rainer off and on since I bought it at Prairie Lights in Iowa City in August. It's a book about writing autobiography (if you couldn't tell) and does a lovely job of talking about the squishy ideas of how to write about your life with solid examples and advice-- and a lot of respect for how squishy it is. The paragraph that is sticking out most in my mind is one where she talks about how subjective and changable memories are in time and relationships. Depending on how old I am and who I am talking to, my telling of various events in my life change drastically.

Oh man! And I finally read Watchmen, which was good and thoughtful and educational if also graphic. And earlier this year I read Transmetropolitan at Christian's behest (and he is reading Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler-- which I cannot recommend too strongly if you want to learn about China!). Dystopian futures! Adventure! Good brain food.

I'd love more book recommendations! Love!

Expatriation, or something

Possibly the biggest challenge I have been facing in myself is how exciting living in a different country isn't. I mean, yes, I am building awesome friendships with people who have quite different perspectives in life (in some ways, anyway). I am seeing new places, learning new languages.

But I still wake up every day and think about going to work (or other things I would rather be doing). I still get unnecessarily anxious about social situations. I still have to get out of the house and DO things, and it is still just as easy to sit at home on the computer and waste time.

And more than that, it can be lonely. It is harder to start new relationships, though I find the payoff of connection is generally much bigger when friends are coming from different cultures, it is much easier to step on each other's toes by not paying attention to "the things that actually matter" in a relationship-- since we may have quite different ideas about what those are. I don't want to go shopping some days because I don't want to deal with the fear in employee's eyes when they realize they might have to deal with me.

I don't mean to be complaining, really. I know I am very lucky to be here and am grateful for the experiences I am having and the ways there are making me grow. There are just always people now and then who tell me that they are impressed that I can live here, and (aside from just not being very good at taking compliments) I always want to shout "Don't be!" I am dealing with most of the same problems that I dealt with in my life in Iowa.

I continually realize that no matter what exciting scenery I find for myself, I will always be me. I am lucky, but if any of my family and friends still in America (or wherever their home country) moved to a new country, they would very quickly discover that I have done some things well, but that they could do a lot of things better.

Jeju Island Geology, for a start

I have been enjoying living on an island. It is perhaps the exact opposite, geographically, from living in the middle of Iowa. Jeju Island was formed by a volcano-- similar to the Hawaiian island. The volcano, Halla-san (san means mountain in Korean), stands tall in the center of the island, almost always shrouded in humidity and clouds, sometimes poking its head out above them. I have only seen the whole thing clearly once so far. My co-teacher says that it is usually only visible for 10 days a year, or that's what people say.

There are scattered around the island about 360 "parasitic" volcanic cones-- that means that for at least part of the time that Halla-san was active, the amount of magma underneath it was so great that the main volcano was not big enough to release it and it pushed its way through all over the place. The small peaks are visible all over the place-- in Jeju's dialect of Korean they are called "oreum." I have climbed a couple so far, and I love to see them in the distance and imagine the lava shooting out and pooling over the landscape. This would have been a truly dramatic place to live a few hundred thousand years ago.

There are remnants of Jeju's dramatic past all over: the sharp divide between land and see, sometimes dropping off from basalt cliffs to deep water; the oreum scattered across the island, sometimes with their feet in the water; and the lava tubes. Christian and I visited one lava tube called Manjang cave.
I wasn't able to get a good shot with my camera, so here's one from Discover Korea.

It is a place where lava pushed through-- perhaps taking advantage of a crack in the rock--  the outer layer of lava solidified and the rest kept flowing. This picture is of the end of the tunnel that is open to tourists (Manjang cave being one of two or three sections of tunnel open anywhere on the island, out of I think 5 or 6 known tunnels-- one of which is more than 13km long). As we were leaving, I noticed that a lot of the ceiling had light patches. I wondered what they were, and Christian suggested that they might be minerals leached from the soil above. I said, naahh, that's possible, I guess, but highly improbable. Well, one of the first sentences in the UNEP report is that that is exactly what happened, and that is it rare. So, I feel silly, but not completely silly?

It's a beautiful place! Come visit!

--Pretty much all of the information in this post that isn't a personal anecdote is from the United Nations Environmental Project Report on Jeju island as a World Heritage Site, which you can download for your very own self! It's only about 6 pages long, and chock-full of great information.

--also, please note that each of these 'exploring the world' and china series posts are labeled as such, and the tags are at the top of the list on the righthand side of this page. If you just want to view one of these series, just click on its label!

Exploring the World Series Introduction

Writing goal number two!

Is to think about/research again something involving environmental science, different countries, education, economics... basically to try to organize my thoughts about what I have learned and experienced... um... while I have been alive. Mostly not involving China.

I have spent time as a homeschooler, which allowed me to spend a lot of time figuring out how I learned; experienced my parents' divorce, which allowed me to deeply examine how I thought and felt (as in, the processes that lead me to various thoughts and emotions, not just examining the thoughts and feelings I had then); gone through grades 7-12 in the Ames public school system; earned degrees in International Studies and Environmental Science at the University of Iowa; and been able to spend time in Germany, Egypt, Korea, and China, last year earning a graduate certificate in Chinese Studies.

Sometimes I'm happy with what I've done so far and where it seems to be taking me, but overall the last year or so I don't know what I want to do with this range of experience. My goal this year is to calm down and let myself figure that out (as my darling mother assures me is inevitable). I know that teaching will be stressful, especially at first, but I have always enjoyed working with kids and after a while I think I will be able to settle into a routine and relax. Especially since my contract involves working only 15 hours a week with comfortable-living's pay.

These posts will go up on Thursdays, as this one is, and I'm hoping that I'll find some answers about what my focus should be by what topics I am drawn to explore. I'll be starting out looking around where I am more in depth-- Jeju island geology and a little history, the Korean language. I've been looking for more music from China and from Germany, to better keep up my language skills, and I'm not sure if the things I find will just surface here as post titles and asides or if I'll find an idea to tie together a whole post or two. I would really appreciate comments and questions, as always, to help me root out all the corners of each topic. Thank you! Love!