Getting my head around grad school

Well, dear blog, I have made another transition and need to process it. I tried to do this with my "women in science" post about resources I have found, but I think I need to spend some time just writing about where I am.

Physically, I am sitting at my desk (one of four) in my new office. No one else is here yet-- there is one PhD student who's been in this room for a couple of years, but the other three of us are new, and I'm the only one who's already here, since I worked here over the summer. I have two plants on the windowsill next to me, one is an aloe I adopted from my lab at IIHR/Iowa Flood Center, after a colleague and I discovered it had been abandoned and then repotted and revived it. The other is a little succulent I bought in Cedarburg, Wisconsin last weekend where I saw a group of old friends.
My very own filing cabinet is in front of my desk, and on it facing me are maps/diagrams of the Landform Regions of Iowa, the Stratigraphic Column of Iowa, and a Bedrock Geologic Map of Iowa. These came from a stand upstairs-- we share our building with the Iowa Geological Survey. My very own bookcase is behind my left shoulder. Right now it only has six books in it-- two books about Iowa by Cornelia Mutel, Wetlands, Wetland Ecosystems, Soils: Genesis and Geomorphology, and my adviser's copy of Benchmark Papers in Hydrology: Riparian Zone Hydrology and Biogeochemistry. It will fill up soon.

Mine is one of four offices in "The Maze" in the basement of Trowbridge hall. We have a kitchenette and table in the space the office doors open off of. There's a coffee pot and an electric kettle on the counter, and a dozen or so copies each of the "Journal of Paleontology" and the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" on top of the cabinets.

I am reading papers about nutrient cycles on agricultural watersheds-- mostly nitrogen fertilizer, where it comes from and where it goes. I have done a lot of reading this summer and have a really good start on building my intellectual understanding of all the pieces involved in this. I have also done a lot of insecurity this summer. I keep having golden moments of seeing a part of all the interconnected systems that affect a watershed and its hydrologic and nutrient cycles, and then coming back the next day, or the next hour, or after blinking, apparently, and feeling lost. I know that most of this is a mental thing that I do, where I don't think I'm good enough or smart enough or whatever-enough and freak myself out and undermine some key part of my mind. Clearly I also am just not able or expected to understand everything, but I am finding that just being here in the office and letting myself look through things that I've read and notes that I've taken, I have made a lot of progress towards a thesis topic/question. I will post more about that--hopefully soon-- once I've processed just a bit more. Related to this, though, I have been trying to say the words "I am a scientist" out loud as often as possible, to convince myself.

Classes start next week at the University of Iowa, and I am super excited. I am taking a Wetlands class that I waited YEARS for as an undergrad, only to have its normal offering canceled during my last year here--there is only one professor emeritus who teaches it, so it is not offered very often, and having it offered my first semester of grad school feels like a smile from the Universe. I'm also taking Soils and Hydrology, both of which come as highly recommended courses from highly recommended professors, so it's just going to be a good semester all around.

NASA's Earth Observatory "Notes from the Field" post

I had a post about the field campaign that NASA joined the Iowa Flood Center for in May and June this year, and here is a link:

Not Your Backyard Rain Gauge

Gratitude and Roots

I have been back in the Midwest now for 6 months, and goodness, they have gone fast. I have so much to be grateful for in these months that I don't really know where to start.

I am working for IIHR again, and now mostly for the Iowa Flood Center as a research assistant. The opportunities for learning-- about Iowa, hydrology, technology, research, how science and policy happen separately and how they interact, and all the various institutions that interact to impact and manage the environment-- just at the weekly staff meetings are incredible.

I am close to family and old friends again, which is just beautiful.

I am READING. I am especially trying to learn about Iowa's environment, past and present, but have learned that I read my Goal Books faster if I also let myself read widely and for fun. Being motivated by lists to a kind of ridiculous extent, I've found Goodreads really helpful to keep track of what I have read and what I want to read (50 books last year! 10 already in 2013!). I also made a list there of Iowa nature and history books that anyone can vote on or add to, and I'd love to hear if you have any recommendations!

Iowa looks very different now that I haven't lived here my whole life. Details of landscape and wildlife and food and smalltalk seem less obvious and more precious. I feel like there are Big Things I have learned living abroad that I can express better here than anywhere else, and that I have almost found my voice for expressing them.

I've had a hard time writing this first-post-in-a-long-time. I feel like I need to have bigger ideas better writing to share, but I am just going to post this for now and let it serve as my blog throat-clearing so I can get into the habit of writing here again.

holidays! presents!

I am always looking for independent artists to support over the holidays. My not-only-biased favorite is my brother's Etsy store, Trippi Thoughts Design,  which he started just this year and is already full of 47 beautiful items. My current favorites are these rose silverware earrings:

these dice earrings:

and these skeleton key earrings:

I... I like earrings.

Christian also had my engagement ring custom made through an artist with an Etsy store, MnM Woodworks. We are both super happy with it (it has been a little hard to finish this sentence, as I have to keep looking at the ring and it is around my neck on the chain that Christian's mother gave me so that involves looking very much away from the keyboard). He chose this artist from similar ones because of their straightforwardness, and had a very good experience. There are a lot of lovely wooden rings, and they have figured out lighting much better than I!

Last winter birthday season (my birthday is December 23rd and Christian's is December 25th) I bought things from the BoingBoing Maker's Market (and somehow didn't realize that it was being shutdown at pretty much exactly that time-- sad story!), and Topatoco, which has been my favorite source of nerdy gifts for years.

Living in Korea, I buy most of my books through What The Book, an English bookstore in Itaewon, Seoul's foreigner-central. In Iowa City, I did most of my book-business at the ICPL and The Haunted Bookshop, which has since moved and become even more excellent! In Ames I both worked and shopped at Firehouse Books, which has changed hands since I moved away but is still a lovely place.

I would love suggestions for more cool places to support and find meaningful gifts for the people I love! Where are you shopping for the holidays?

Quotes on A/Theism, to help bake my thoughts

"It’s often imagined that nonbelievers like myself must be, in principle, closed to spiritual life. This is not true. You can have a deep spiritual and ethical life without lying to yourself or to your children about the nature of reality, without pretending to know things you do not know. There’s nothing that prevents a nonbeliever from experiencing ecstasy, and self-transcending love, and rapture and awe. In fact there’s nothing that prevents a nonbeliever from going into a cave and practicing meditation for a year, like a proper mystic.What nonbelievers don’t tend to do is make unjustified and unjustifiable claims about the nature of the cosmos, and about the divine origin of certain books on the basis of those experiences. That is a difference worth noticing." --Sam Harris, speaking at Ciudad de las Ideas (Puebla, Mexico, 11/8/2009)

"I have much in common with atheists. What I find time and time again is that the god they’ve rejected is the god I’ve rejected. The god who doesn’t encourage intellectual honesty, the god who doesn’t care about the environment because 'it’s all going to burn'…the god who would condemn billions of people to hell simply because they haven’t said or done the proper ritual that Christians can’t even agree on…Some gods should be rejected." -- Rob Bell

"I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium for the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims." --Albert Einstein, in a 7 August 1941 letter discussing responses to his essay "Science and Religion" (1941)

"I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality as it is accessible to human reason. Wherever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism. ... I cannot accept your opinion concerning science and ethics or the determination of aims. What we call science has the sole purpose of determining what is. The determining of what ought to be is unrelated to it and cannot be accomplished methodically. Science can only arrange ethical propositions logically and furnish the means for the realization of ethical aims, but the determination of aims is beyond its scope. At least that is the way I see it. " -- Albert Einstein 

"Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent." --Rumi

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!

Getting a feel for Korea

It took me a while to find Korea. I came as a China Scholar. I still think of myself as a China Scholar. But I came to Korea to be with Christian, to broaden my view of Asia, to calm down and figure myself out, and to earn money. I had a hard time separating my understanding of Korea from my understanding of China-- most of what I saw in Korea were things borrowed from China. I knew that a lot of what I understood as China I should really understand as Asia, but at the same time China has been an 'exporter of culture' for thousands of years in Asia. A lot of things that seem Chinese here are, or were.

... I started this post in a coffee shop in City Hall. I am now sitting at a kind of play/gathering ground (explanation in a moment) by the coast where, bless Korea, there is public wireless internet. There are coffee shops and bakeries popping up all over the place-- a Western fad. (There is also SPAM everywhere-- a product of American military influence in building South Korea's economy after/during the war...) This is a better place to think, and a good example for me to try to untangle my ideas of China and Korea. 

There is a long concrete wall behind me. It was I think recently painted a pale yellow, and has raised sculptures of fish and octopodes and Jeju Women Divers. On the other side of the wall is the ocean, which just switched from a deep turquoise to almost black with the setting of the sun, though there were clouds blocking the sunset for an hour or so.

I am sitting on the top of four large concrete steps that lead down to a large concrete court. The concrete is swirls and blocks of color-- blue and pink and yellow, I think, though I have almost always been here when the sun has been low and the yellow streetlamps distorting the color scale. This court ends maybe another hundred feet in front of me, and stretches probably half a mile from side to side. The area far to my right has basketball and other courts. Along the other edge are vendors. Some of them sell food, and most of them are renting some kind of equipment. Bicycles (for 1 to 4 riders), rollerblades and skates and pads,  child-sized electric cars, balls to throw around. There is only a small crowd out tonight, as it is Sunday, but there are still lots of families and more than a few sweethearts walking up and down the seawall or riding something around in circles. There is a constant murmur of parents telling their kids not to get so far away, or laughing or cheering their approval of some feat of balance, or children who have run out of feats and need a hug. It sounds like a community.

To get here I walked 20 minutes or so downhill from City Hall. The road I took was full of shops-- bags and shoes and pets and clothes-- and to cross the last main road I had to go underground and walk a hundred feet through the shopping strip that runs for a mile (I think?) under Jungangro. I am drinking a bottle of Tropicana Spirit: Juice100 &Sparkling, White Grape flavor. It was part of a 1+1 deal at the FamilyMart (a Japanese chain which competes with the Korean GS25) near my house. And, you will recall, I have my new black netbook on my knees, surfing the web and writing this to you fine people.

Okay. So, this court/public square feeling area could be in China, more or less. I have seen similar places at the center of cities where rollerblades are rented-- it is a good time in any country! But of course, in China the paved public pedestrian areas big enough for this are the People's Squares in the middle of cities (generally in the place where Something Else stood before 1949). But they are used in much the same way. I didn't ever live near the coast in China, and most of Korea is near the coast-- so we can chalk the salt tang in the air up to geographic differences.

Korea went through its lightning fast economic development in the 60s-80s, so the air here feels calmer as well. In China I often feel heavy with the emotional intensity that comes from Chinese people trying to keep up with the changes of the last century and keep track of their identity-- I say that or something like it often and am never sure if I'm getting quite what I mean across. This feeling is a lot of what makes China fascinating for me, though I struggle with it. I know I still do not have a good feeling for Korea's changes in the last century, because so many people here are so comfortable with them. I don't feel that struggle, but I know I also don't feel whatever was lost in it.

Korea is one of Asia's "four tigers" of economic development, and they* are conscious of being taken as an economic model by other 'developing' countries. My East Asian Economics/Economies** professor liked the description of Asian economies as a flock of geese-- Japan is the lead goose, and Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong flank it.

As an American (particularly as a white person, sadly) and walking symbol of the economic development that  both of these countries are aiming for, I am treated differently here. Differently from the way I am treated in American and differently from the way that most people are treated here. Overall, I am not given as much attention here in Korea, but I am definitely noticed. Understandably, not everyone is sure what to do with me. Do they like what my identity represents? Can they interact with me like a regular person? Can I understand even one word of their language?

The vast majority of people I have encountered in both countries have been incredibly welcoming-- embarassingly so, when I think of the way that foreigners, and especially foreigners who don't speak English, are talked about and treated in America. There are cases of discrimination, but they are not the rule. Definitely the main difference between China and Korea is that in China-- at least if you get away from big tourist areas like Beijing and Shanghai-- people are much more intrigued and excited to see a foreigner. Though I have had people in both countries tell me that I was the first foreigner they had ever talked to, or sometimes even seen in person.

Hmm... I think I'm going to stop here and try to come back with another entry just on Korea in the near future. It's I'm still struggling to put my finger on words to describe how these countries feel so very different. There are here, I'll just keep writing til they come out!

*I say 'they' and mean it in a way that is so general as to be pretty much inaccurate. There are plenty of people here who are contentedly clueless about politics and economic development in a lot of ways, just as there are most places.

**I really love that the lines around concepts are different in every language.

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.

Rooting

Traveling in the Midwest was wonderful. It made me feel 100x more connected to my whole life story, and less like I am in a dangling chapter at the end. I had the chance to hang out with two different friends I hadn't seen in years (one I hadn't seen at all for a couple of years, I think, and hadn't seen satisfactorily for 3 or 4 and the other I hadn't seen for 5 years). Just seeing my family and america-friends was lovely and empowering, but seeing those two in particular made me feel more complete.

Every person I saw showed me a different part of myself. I have friends and family who are pursuing all sorts of different lives, and I feel very privileged to be able to witness them. It also made me feel much better about where I am. Being on this side of the world, it is easy to think about what I 'would be doing' in America, to think about all of the other paths that I have not chosen (ummmm I guess I would be doing this anywhere. Heh). In any case, it was really nice to realize that while I have not figured everything out about who I want to be and what I want to do, I have learned and I have grown. Connecting with old friends helped me to see this, partially by letting me see their successful lives and realize that I have success in the things I want. Partially by reminding me of who I was and who they were the last time we connected, and letting me see how much we both have grown.

I am collecting perspectives and experiences. Learning about myself and about the world, and if that keeps me a little overwhelmed and not quite on my feet for a while, I think that's okay!

I am sitting right now in a coffee shop in 'city hall' in Jeju City. (The city center in most towns is called this. There is an actually City Hall building, but this whole area is called city hall, or sicheong.) It is a beautiful early-fall day outside. I took a long way getting here from the apartment I am sharing with a family. I walked down a road I hadn't before and discovered a lot of little restaurants to investigate, and stopped into a bookstore that just moved from city hall. I bought a korean photo-dictionary. And now I am going to study some Chinese, maybe study some Korean, and do some private writing!

Love!

Dear Blog, I am sorry for neglecting you...

I just deleted 5 half-written and unpublished posts from this blog. I have had a difficult time writing anything more than ANGST! and CONFUSION! since May-ish, which is odd because since then I have been feeling more and more calm and confident (and have been perceived as such by others, including my adept-at-sensing-bullshit Mother, so probably it's true!).

I love you, blog, and I am going to work on arranging my thoughts so I can share them with you constructively.

In the meantime, have this Symphony of Science video. I love them so much!

In America!

I have been starting and abandoning posts regularly since my last one in may, on my identity as an American and a resident of Asia, on my growing understanding of Korea as separate from China (bringing some more definition to my picture of Asia), and a couple of times just simple "here I am" updates. I have been distracted by the advent of Beach Season on my island, and also just switched over into quieter and more face-to-face forms of mental processing.

But this week is the first of my visit home this year! I flew into Chicago on Saturday and spent a lovely Sunday with a dear friend exploring and am now in Ames. If you are in or near Ames, too, please don't be unhappy with me for not spending time with you yet. I have been almost entirely at my mother's house sorting through and condensing yet again all the belongings I left here. I will be down to a few boxes of books and notebooks and one tub of a few clothes and toys I want to hand down (I think). My mother is moving out of her house, and I am living in Asia for at least another year. So everything I own is future-use-only or coming to Asia, and I don't want to leave much sitting in other people's space.

I am telling you this now because I am also dealing with some jetlag. I did an excellent job of sleeping (only) during the night while in Chicago, but in Ames I have been staying up later working and been more anxious. I find myself now at 5am, with a skype date in three hours, a dinner date eight or so hours after that, and lots left to do in the meantime. I have run into enough walls trying to decide what to keep and ship and give away that I know I can't make more decisions tonight, and all the work that doesn't involve decisions is rather clunky, and I don't want to interfere with my mother's sleep any more than I have. Anyway.

Packing for a year or more (well, I left almost everything in Korea, so it's not exactly packing) always brings a lot of anxiety; I feel like I have to make all the decisions about what I will read and use and do in the next year or so RIGHT NOW. That isn't actually true, of course, but it feels like it.

My life in Korea is good. Christian is probably coming back to Korea a couple months after I go back at the end of August. I am living with a Korean family right now (or rather, my things are) and will probably be finding a new place to live on my own when I return. (My current apartment was supposed to be a sublease and has turned into a homestay, and though the family is all-around lovely I really want to have my own space.) I live surrounded by beaches. I am studying languages (once my books get to Jeju, also hydrology!) and working towards being ready for grad school. I am so grateful to have this stint in the Midwest again to see everyone. I hope I see you soon, wherever you are!

Moments

I have been experiencing my time in leaps of realization and ever-clearer days. I know now that I want to live on this side of the world, at least for the plan-able future, and I am slowly clearing away the guilt that clouded my ability to see this and is still weighing me down about it. I don't hate the US, I actually like it much more than I did before I moved to Asia. I love love love my family and friends and would love love love to be closer to them and an in-person part of their lives. But I feel right here, and have an almost unimaginably sweet job: working with kids, working with language, having a LOT of time to study other things and to build relationships on both sides of the Pacific. And I think that a me armed with Skype and happiness makes me a better force than a confused me wherever I'd be able to find a job in the US next year.

I have been putting off finding/buying souvenirs for people. Partially because there is still a box in Iowa with some of the souvenirs I bought the first time I went to China (in 2006) because it is easy to lose momentum in connecting the right things with the right people to mean something. And I don't want to buy more clutter. And many souvenirs are clutter.

But a few days ago I was inspired to go to the beach and pick up shells and offer them to my brother for the business he is starting making t-shirts and jewelry and otherwise using his artistic skillz. I walked barefoot along the seawall and the first two beaches, and put my sandals back on to walk across the field on the way to the smallest beach by the Oreum*, because it's harder to see what you are stepping on in grass and I know for a fact that some weird foreigners like to strap small fireworks to model airplanes and fire/fly them in that field (*cough*). I almost escaped from the tinny sound of music blasting from the restaurant by the biggest middle beach after I climbed down the stairs to the sand, and wiggled my toes through the dry warm top sand to the coolness underneath. I picked up shells and thought about life, and wondered how much time has passed since the first person picked up shells and thought about life at that beach in Hamdeok.

Someone started announcing something over the beach speaker system, but it was far away and in Korean (and didn't seem to be inviting or inciting panic), so I ignored it and kept sidling into the surf and sifting through shells and rocks and sand and seaweed. After a while I noticed that some dark clouds were rolling their way towards me from the west, and decided that perhaps the faint korean buzz was correct, and I should head home. I stopped on the seawall and sat down when I saw a fish jump out of the water, and stayed to watch another 30 fish follow suit (or perhaps the same fish and a few of her pals do a really impressive dance). A dark grey crane stalked slowly from the westmost beach, and a white crane was far enough out in the falling tidewaters that she kept disappearing in the reflections on the waves.

I have had some really good conversations this week and in the last few weeks, and gotten a lot of really good support from all over. I just going to be here for a while. I am going to keep moving on my China plans and other studies, but I am going to try to focus on the moments that happen, and try not to think I must justify my days by what they might build towards in the future.

*Oreum are the "parasitic volcanoes" scattered across Jeju island. They are more or less hills, except that they are 120% cooler than average hills because they were formed by volcanic eruptions.

Reading novels in Chinese

I have had some realizations in the last month about who I let myself be, and some about who I actually am and what I want.

I have been telling myself that it is too hard, too lonely, too far away to keep living on this side of the world. And I have been feeling maybe not guilty but goaded by some peoples' voices in my mind who ask what's wrong with America?, or my own voices in my mind that whisper I may just be trying to run away from relationships before they get too complicated. That I may not be running towards anything.

But I am. And I have realized that I simply don't want to move back to the US. I want to let my whole being move to this side of the world, and not be standing a mental step back towards Iowa because I know I'm moving 'home' before too long. I want to stay here.

I do miss 'home.' I miss my friends and my family and have dreams about the skies in Iowa. To drive on a highway with radio blasting and see a thunderhead rolling towards me across the plains. Ah.

I have got to stop telling myself that I am afraid, though. I have got to stop being afraid of challenging myself. I have got to stop being afraid to belong. (I know that last sentence is angsty, but it's an honest and dominant fear of mine, I think. So there you have it: I'm angsty.)

One excellent thing I learned last year in China was just to go. Just to read, just to talk. I have been reading novels in Chinese, though I don't understand anything close to everything. I am just reading and getting from it what I can.

Beginnings and Endings, right?

The end of my two-and-a-half-year relationship last Saturday was not out of the blue or in anger, and though I have had some pretty low emotional points about it in the last week, overall I'm feeling very positive that it was the right decision and I am moving in the right direction.

This week has been an explosion of options. I realized that boyfriend-man was a major, though not the only, thing pulling me back to the US. I think I am not moving back this year, and I am re-exploring options for the next few years. Here are some of the options on my mind:

For the rest of this year and the beginning of next:
1) Stay in Korea and keep earning my Native English Speaker dollars and paying off my student loans
2) find a job in the Midwest to be close to family and friends, and keep paying off student loans

For the year after next:
1) Move back to the US and pursue grad school/teaching certification. This has been the plan I've been building most of this year, though I've been having trouble deciding whether to pursue Montessori or a state teaching certificate, or both.
2) Move back to the US and pursue grad school in Environmental Science or Engineering. I could still make tutoring a regular part of my life, and perhaps have the more individual affect on their lives that I would not be able to have if I only saw students in classes of 30.
3) Move to China under a Chinese Government Scholarship and pursue Environmental Science or Engineering at a Chinese University. This would put me in China with some long-term stability, and I could make/continue solid friendships and start a life as an international science liaison.
4) Move to China and get Montessori certification at the teaching center in Hangzhou. Teach in China and return to the US when/if the job market increases with enough teaching experience to be competitive
5) Other things yet unthought of that will give me opportunities to teach, travel, and keep involved (even vicariously) in scientific studies.

I posed a couple of these on facebook the other day and got a lot of excellent feedback, much of which supported my feeling that I don't want to teach in the US right now. I really, really would like the right answer to bring me closer to home, but I also don't want to move home and feel stuck. So, right now I am leaning towards things that will keep me on this side of the globe for a while longer.

"The brain is a very big place in a very small space"

Hello, all!

I'd just like to share some of the music that has been filling my mind since I didn't manage to write a new post last weekend. Very short, but I hope you enjoy it!

Take a Minute by K'naan-- this is a grounding and grateful song.

The Puzzle by Brother Ali, and Good Lord by Brother Ali as well-- I am continually impressed by the humility and wisdom in his lyrics (and by his life story).

Keep Your Head Up by Andy Grammar-- a sweet, hopeful song. (If you're not really into rap/hiphop, start here on this list)

Dig by Incubus and Earth to Bella by Incubus. I have shared these before, I think. They fit well with my introspection.

and last, Ode to the Brain by Symphony of Science ! This dude cuts together and autotunes pieces of scientific lectures (from the greats!) and the results are often really moving.

I bet that you can figure out which one my title came from.

how do we show each other who we are

I have always disliked labels. I owe this largely to having been raised and homeschooled by an anthropologist, as well as the Baha'i community. I learned early that they are often a deception; they whittle down complex identities to one or two words. Labels are generally static in the minds of those defining them, while the identity of anyone being defined is a dynamic thing, daily growing and being pruned. They are often assigned or inherited, and can be a constant hindrance to a person’s being seen by others or even understanding themselves.

One the other hand, they can be powerful and beautiful tools when they are self-chosen and self-defined. A dear friend has recently begun demanding that the people in her life let her define her Chinese-Americanness for herself and be willing to learn (as we so desperately need to) about how our behavior and attitudes might be racist without intending or often even realizing it.  You can find her words on this here in her blog. She has been a strong inspiring force for me to keep examining myself, and to see positive and negative aspects of my mind with confidence to best become who I want to be.

Knowing these things has made my feelings towards labels complicated. I am sometimes too wary of  the judgments I will receive from others for identifying myself with an idea or group, and sometimes wary of the problems that I might be allowing myself to sweep under a rug and ignore by placing a label over the areas of my identity involved.

I am lucky that in the Midwestern US the notable elements of my identity are chosen, invisible, or both. I do not wear my minority religion in my skin; I do not wear my parents’ divorce in my face. One cannot tell by looking or even talking to me that I was homeschooled, however much of the stigma against homeschooling they may buy into. I blend very easily into the white middle class majority. I cannot escape from being labeled female (my boobs have seen to that since seventh grade, and my love of dangly earrings rather reinforces it). I spent a lot of time in middle and high school experimenting with how 'female' I dressed and how people reacted to me. I hate how big of a difference there often is in how well people treat a feminine-ly dressed woman verses a more androgynous-ly dressed one, but I nevertheless am usually in the well-treated category.

The Baha’i Faith has often been central in my thoughts about chosen and denied identities. When my parents separated and my family identity shifted radically, and I began public school and lost the present tense in my alternative-schooler identity, I took a big step away from my identity in the Baha'i community as well. Partially this was confusion; I didn't understand the change in my other identities and thus didn't understand how this one could stay the same. I could also feel a strong desire in myself for stability, for something that I could rest my identity on and stop thinking about it, and it frightened me to think about how much I would stop thinking about if I gave in to that desire.

I did not identify with religion at all during middle and high school. I investigated quite a few philosophies and religions and learned a lot about myself, largely through counselors and support groups. The removal of my primary identities gave me an excellent and rare opportunity to look underneath my labels and clean out my definitions of myself, and the help that I received allowed me to take advantage of it. 

During my freshmen year of university I decided that I was far enough from my former identity as Baha'i to investigate it again. I started looking through the books I still had and eventually decided to try praying and see if it made a difference in my life if I didn't tell anyone else about it. I did and it did, and after a while I decided to call myself Baha'i. I think this was one of the best decisions of my life. I affirmed my ability to define myself and was able to grow all over my mind and spirit with the ideas and discipline of Baha'i teachings.

Lately, however, I have been realizing that my Baha'i identity has been becoming more negative than positive. This is partially because I have been far away from my home Baha'i communities and thus haven't had as much input available on how to keep myself moving in positive and intentional directions, religion-wise. And mostly because it has begun to get tied up with my insecurities and other mental and emotional shortcomings. I have been feeling this label pulling me away from other people, making it hard for me to understand them rather than respect them for who they are. I do not think that this is inevitable with religious identity, but I don't think I'm the only one who has these struggles. There is a Truth in the Baha'i writings that I experienced pulling me up to a place above labels, where I could see more clearly what people around me were offering and the burdens they were carrying and how beautiful they were. But more recently I have been feeling myself holding this label up as proof that I don't have to look (and simultaneously being frustrated for lack of beauty in my life), that obviously if I am Baha'i I am seeing what's important.

Because of this I have decided that I need to take off my Baha'i label for a while. I am looking at my other identities and trying to figure out what I should do with them. I don't know if I am taking off my religious label forever. I don't think so, but I think to be honest in the self-investigation I need right now I cannot make any promises. 

I am so grateful for all of the sincere people in my life who constantly inspire me to look at myself and what I am giving to the world carefully, and for all the love in my life.

The Hamdeok View: pictures from my new place!

The view out my window/over my balcony rail

This and the next couple were taken along the sea wall right in front of my building

Did I later eat these dried radishes at a local restaurant?! It's very likely, but let's move on.

These last three were taken from the top of my building today when I got my laundry

Gratitude list

I've been focusing on problems (and fixing them, thankfully) in myself, my relationships, and in the rest of the world lately, and need to refocus on things that are good in my life. So, in no planned order, here are some things I am grateful for.

• my mother, my daily encourager and ever-ready cuss-outer of things that trouble me
• people who call me 'dude'
• chocolate in all of its (but especially milk-free) forms
• the ocean outside my window
• my students' sense of humor
• my electronic reader-- thank you dad!
• all the people who share music with me
• ondol heating. genius.
• for-the-rest-of-my-life friends/guardians of my identity
• languages, and the freedom to study them and understand my mind better
• books! everywhere, books!
• the peach juice in my fridge
• having made progress in my what-do-I-actually-want-to-do-with-my-life decision making this year
• being paid enough to live and pay my loans and save a little money for working 15 hours a week (I know, people, it's crazy)
• the fact that every korean student everywhere seems to know the word "crazy"
• boyfriend-man, and all that we have been learning recently
• indoor plumbing!!

Safe!

Hello all!

I had a few emails from concerned friends and family members, and just wanted to update here as well so everyone knows I am fine. Jeju island is quite close to Japan but the tsunami didn't do any damage here that I am aware of.

Love!

My Education, part 3: Beginning Public School

My mother taught my brother and me at home until 1998, when I was finishing 6^th grade and Isaac was finishing 4^th. My parents separated that year, and both Isaac and I started public school in the fall. I had attended I think a month or so of first grade (after which my mother decided it wasn’t the best place for me to learn) and I believe two weeks of fifth grade (after which I decided it wasn’t the best place for me to learn) in public schools. I had just lost my identity as a family and my identity as an alternative-schooler (and moved house twice in five months), so for me a sharp identity-less panic was cast over the general malaise that is middle school adolescence. *

Even while I was attempting to just keep my head down and get good grades so no one would look at me and I could try to find some solid mental ground to stand on, I was horrified by some of the things I found in public middle school. Not that it was a bad school or that I had bad teachers. Many of my teachers were good, a few of them were excellent and there is only one who I would credit with increasing my anxiety. For one thing, I found that cliques were real, even though every book or movie or anecdote I had ever heard of seemed to prove that all cliques did was build walls between people who should have enjoyed each other.

More than that, I found that I had trouble relating to how the students learned. They were not used to having any control in their learning, and so didn’t often seem to evaluate the worth of a piece of learning outside of what it meant for their grade.

The experience that stands out most illustrating the difference I felt between our minds was a lecture by the eighth grade Social Studies teacher while I was in seventh grade. I don’t remember if it was just my grade or the whole school that was required to attend, but I remember being sent rather unexpectedly to the auditorium first thing in the morning instead of to my first period class. This teacher was originally from Laos and he told us the story of his family’s escape from their probable deaths in that country. I have never been a morning person, or terribly fond of changes in my schedule without my consent, so I don’t remember being thrilled to be in the auditorium at 8am when I was expecting to be in Reading class but I was moved by the offer he was making of such a personal experience. And I was impressed by the odds against this kind of story coming to me in Ames, Iowa. So I resolved to thank him for it.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want his attention when I talked to him. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone. I didn’t really want anyone to look at me. I just wanted to get through my classes so I could go back home. But I finally convinced myself that, even if not because of the magnitude of what he had offered, I had to thank him because everyone else would and I would be the obvious one missing.  So I wrung my hands for a while when everyone was milling around in the cafeterias afterwards and finally walked up and thanked him for what he had shared. He said I was welcome, and I think said another warm-hearted thing, and then as quickly as I could I made an awkward retreat.

A week or so later during a break in my Social Studies class, my teacher asked me (in front of everyone) if that had been me who thanked his colleague who had made that presentation. I said I had, and he thanked me and said I had been The Only** student who had thanked him, and that the presenter had been very moved that I had spoken to him.

Aside from this total backfire-- attention-wise-- of what I had been trying to accomplish, I could not believe this. I could and can hear some homeschool parent voices in my mind saying that public school kids don’t have manners, but honestly I think those voices can be dismissed pretty quickly. There were many students who were at least as worried about looking good as I was, and many also who were genuinely kind people. Somehow this just wasn’t personal for them, somehow they didn’t relate to him enough to want to talk to him. Or, if they wanted to, some other social force stopped them.

*I realize this is more or less a demand for pity, but this had a huge effect on the way that I experienced public school and I haven’t found an honest way to talk about this phase of my education without it. It probably also made my opinion of middle school much more negative. Please bear with me.

**I remember “The Only student”, and it may have been “one of the only students” or “one of the only students who wasn’t in his own classes.”