a billion cherry blossoms city

I just got sucked down into the black hole vortex of a really excellent book, and have't been able to do anything since Saturday when I got it... Its called "Wicked" and I actually took the subway about fifty miles in the wrong direction because I couldn't stop reading it on the way home from the bookstore. It's about the true story of the Wicked Witch of the West, a character I've always liked and frequently mimicked as a small child. Just ask my parents... seriously...

Seoul has suddenly turned into a gorgeous emerald city over the weekend... It rained for two days and the barren winter branches have suddenly become green with buds, and covered with little pink cherry blossoms and huge magnolia flowers. No more Siberian wind hurrah! School is good- The major test period is over, for which I graded roughly 5 trillion tests, with the help of David O. Huff.

The kids are good, I find the smaller 10 year olds to be wonderful, and the 14 year old girls to be much fun, but the 12 year old boys should not be in school, but in a large fenced in area together. Korean culture, as I've mentioned, is extremely taxing on kids. . . They typically get up at around 7:30, attend a full day of school, getting out around 4 or 5, and come to my private school until 10:15.. when they have time to do their homework, much less have fun is beyond me. The boys seem to take refuge in mindless computer killing games and the girls turn to shopping. Not that I'm not gulity of persuing the spring bargan sales incessantly on the weekends...

On the plus side the kids are almost all into comics as they get older, a hobby generally reserved for the introverts, geeks and freaks in the US. The comics here are interesting and creative, and inspire some kids to become really good artists. When I ask the students to draw pictures, many of them draw highly stylized abstract things in the style of Japanese animation- its quite different in style from what you would see from American students I believe.

Politically-

The big story in the news here is the Japanese Text book case, which you may have heard about in the US.. Basically the Japanese occupied Korea from 1910-45 and the conditions for the Koreans were quite brutal. Now the Japanese are publishing books with their own version of history, saying that the Koreans "welcomed the Japanese happily" and so on. The Koreans have by no means let it go, and neither have the Chinese who were similarly occupied during this time. There is a distinct Anti-Japanese feeling here, and even the kids are generally taught that the Japanese are evil. The feeling is so strong that there are protests of all sorts going on about the text book, and a man actually lit himself on fire about a month ago. (He was extinguished and survived.)

Korean history as a whole has been filled with occupation and hardship, being such a small nation between superpowers China and Japan, and the 20th century was very violent and difficult here. It has only become a democracy since 1988. About 50 years ago Korea was the poorest nation on earth. This only makes its current high status as one of the economic "Tigers of Asia" or whatever more impressive. Many Koreans credit their success to their passion about education, and thats where I come in.

It is interesting to be in a country with so much history and change in the recent past.
When one sees elderly people around in Seoul, you know that they may have been a few survivors of the people they knew, and that their long lost cousins might be trapped on the other side of the North South divide and so on. Even my bosses who I assume are in their forties lived a great deal of their lives under a military dictator.

I don't have much to tell about myself, except that I now have an acoustic guitar and as of today, a computer! both very cheaply won, but I still need a monitor for the computer, and to hook up my service, so It will be a week or so before I can get on line from my apartment. I can't wait tho, the blue lights in this Internet lab are making me feel funnny...

Lucky for me, if I ever need to win the heart of a Korean guy, there are How To manuals on the Internet...
http://www.geocities.com/ypmljulia/how_to_earn_hearts2.htm