미국오니깐 사람들이 자꾸 "한국"에 대해 물어본다.
한국의 교육은 어떠니? 미국은 어쩌고 저쩌고 어쩌고 저쩌고 한데, 한국은 어떠니? 한국의 음악은 어떠니? 한국도 크리스마스 지내니? 한국도 기독교를 믿니? 기타등등 기타등등...

교수 파티에 초대되었을때, 음식을 준비해오지 못하면 식사 중에 같이 들을수 있는 그나라 음악을 가져오면 좋겠다하였다. 그래서, 음식을 하기 싫어하는 나는 열심히 음악을 찾아야했다. 다행히 이전에 숙명 가야금 연주단의 음악을 들은적이 있어, 음악 파일을 급히 찾아 씨디를 구웠는데...
그 와중에 여러 퓨전 국악을 접할 수 있었다.

이렇게 난 미국에 와서야 한국의 것을 찾기 시작하고, 한국의 것을 좋아하게 됐다. 국악이라면 지루하기 짝이 없는 음악으로만 생각되어 왔는데, 국악 퓨전의 선율은 너무 아름답다...

(한글로 쓰니 이렇게 빨리 쓸수가... 역시 난 한국어가 좋아...)

I was invited to my professor's house party today. International students from different countries - Taiwan, Turkey, Pakistan, and Korea brought foods so I could try new dishes. One special event was 'henna painting' by the daughter of the Pakistan students, which was so beautifully hand painted on the hands.

One of the Americans, who is half-Japanese and half-Caucasian, was hilarious. She knew about Korea a lot, liked to watch Korean dramas- she knew "내 이름은 김삼순", "대장금", "겨울연가" and so on. Furthermore, she knew "the fantastic couple" will be playing soon. - and shared her experience her visit to Korea. One bizarre experience in Korea, she said, was that a taxi driver picked up another passenger on the way going to the hotel. A stranger was sitting next to her. She firstly thought that he was picking up his friend or somebody he knew. I laughed a lot. Haha. ;-D
I also hated whenever a taxi driver picked up another passenger on my way. She must have shocked. LOL

American parties and Korean parties are different in some ways. At first, we have a party at home only at special occasions, such as after you move in a new house, and after you get married. Secondly, we do not ask guests to bring foods. The host usually prepare all the dishes by herself and the guests usually buy some gifts. Since I do not enjoy cooking, when I am invited to a potluck party, I feel pressured.

When I learned a potluck party in this country, I thought that it is a good idea when we throw this type of party on the 제삿날 (on the traditional holidays.) because the first son's wife has all the responsibility to prepare foods for more than ten family members, sometimes twenty, including the extended, which really makes her so hard, exhausted, and sick.
We call it "the holiday disease" that women usually suffer from before, during, or after having the big party on the holidays. It is from the old tradition way back more than hundred years ago. I don't think it is fair that only women are working so hard, especially the first son's wife in a family, for providing foods to her husband's families. Culture is not static, but fluid. If it is unfair to the minority (which is women in this case), we should change.
I would offer this idea to my brother when he gets married, so his wife should prepare foods for us on the holidays. I do not want her to feel miserable whenever the happy holidays are coming.

Who said that Florida is warm all year around? It is 40' F. The lowest temperature today was 27' F (= around -2' celcius.) It is cold to death. :-(

Oh, my god. I am almost crying.
I cannot believe my eyes. How could the Chinese government massively kill innocent pets? It hurts me so badly. The length of the dogs in the Four Urban Zones in China should not exceed 38cm. Otherwise, they are cruelly beaten to death by the government law whatever they are owned by people or stray. Visit here for the detailed information and sign up the petition to ask the Chinese government to adopt rabies prevention.

On the last day of the "literacy, family and culture" course, we watched a touching movie at http://www.teachermovie.com/ .
Some of the students were crying while and after watching it. I almost cried, but held back.
Did I have such a inspiring teacher in my life? I don't know.

"On the very day, she [the teacher] quit teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead, she began to teach children." - From "The Teacher Movie"

This book that I have read in the Literacy, Family and Culture course is about school experiences of people from diverse ethnic groups, such as African American, Asian America, biracial America, European American, Latino American and Native American. Twelve stories were written by different authors having different races, background, and school experience. Many of the writers in the book speak from socially subordinate positions.

As a third person who grew up in a different country so did not have school experience in this country, the stories in this book were shocking to me especially when they revealed that how they were suffered from discrimination in the school system just because of their skin color and their language.

I know that people in this country are very sensitive in discussing about races or ethnicities. But as Broutte pointed out, "differences between cultural groups have important social and educational implications." I would recommned this book to who are interested in multicultural education, even to Korean educators while the stories are what's happening in the U.S. This book is worth reading.

"Wake up, wake up, IK! You should go to black friday shopping. "

I will stay up all night. Otherwise, I won't be able to get up that early. One hour and a half to go. But I am very sleepy.

Thanksgiving is the day that family get together and have a big dinner, turkey. I don't know why. I felt like I had to do something with my family, but my only family,my husband just slept, slept, and slept, which made me so mad.
He and I had a small dinner, a beef curry, which does not sound thanksgiving at all. Whatever...
I may try turky next year if I still stay here.

This semester will end three weeks later. Wow, already! I took one online course, the Internet in K12 Instruction, and one traditional course, Literacy, Family and Culture. Both courses are very interesting that they opened my eyes into the world that I did not know before.

My online course just finished last weekend, and now I have one course be finishing soon. That course requires me to write a response to reading every week, so this is an ongoing assignment. In addition, the synthesis paper is awaiting that should be turned in by Dec 8th, which kind of worries me.

Believe it or not, I have never written a synthesis paper before in my college years in Korea. Perhaps because my major was physics so the assignments were mostly about solving the questions rather than writing papers. Or perhaps because writing was not emphasized in education at that time. I don't know.

It has not been long since I learned academic writing because I had not learned until I came to the States three years ago. My college never taught me a college-level academic writing even in Korean. In my high school, I just learned ABOUT writing, but never actually wrote. What a ridiculous! Also, academic writing in Korea and in the States would be much different. For whatever reasons, my lack of prior knowledge on academic writing in English made me sometimes embarrassed with writing assignments. My first writing assignment in the master's program at the university was to write a response to reading an article. I was not sure what to write: write my thoughts, my opinion to agree or disagree, or my summary?
Anyway, to my surprise, my papers got all As so far. I just did my best not to be left behind.

As time passed by, rather than complaining differences between two countries' education, I began to blame my prior teachers or schools in Korea for not teaching me well. What did they teach me? What did they let me write? What did they let me THINK?? What chances did they give me to read? What freedom did they give me in learning?

Although cultural and educational difference shock me from time to time, I enjoy learning everything new here. The courses here make me think and think and think. (Now my brain found its work to do. ha ha.) Even though the synthesis paper is a little daunting, I am pretty sure that it will teach me something in writing and thinking at the end. How lucky I am!
Last week one of the American students in the classroom asked what Asian students think about education in their countries to compare to education in the U.S. It was a pretty tough question to answer, but it is true that something wrong is going on in Korea as the Korean education do not teach students to think, and makes the smartest students become just average.
I wanted to ask back to the American students what they think about their education. But time was running out, so I couldn't.

Guwol likes to run, but because of my lazeness, he could not run as much as he wanted. I felt so sorry about that.

Yesterday I finally took him to the Kanapaha park to let him run. It was a such a beautiful day with warm sunshine and a little breeze. I found a place where people did not come and let him to run off-leash. I threw the ball that he was chasing to retrieve to me. He was a like a little retriever! Haha. :-) (He does not have any single drop of a retriver blood.)

When I was playing with my puppy for a while, I noticed that some people stopped walking or biking to watch my puppy to run and take the ball back to me. I was proud of my puppy. Go, Guwol!!

Recently I happened to know some interesting blogs written by Americans who are living in Korea. It is like the opposite of my life, living in America as a foreigner. As I experience culture shocks in this country, they also have the same experiences. Their stories sometimes make me laugh, nodding and telling to myself that that must have been weird to them.
One more interesting thing to read their stories is that I can be updated with what is going on now in my country, where I left about three years ago, in the eyes of foreigners.

A world is becoming so close. People are moving across borders for whatever reasons. Living in a new country as a foreigner is not always fun or happy, but knowing different cultures is a worth in this globalization. After all, different people and cultures exist in the world. What bothers understanding different people in the different world?

I used to feel uncomfortable with so many sexual scenes or comments in the television. But you know what? When they do those freaking stuff, I now just laugh. I began to accept that they and I are different.

"It was apparent that colored people in the United States had been brainwashed into believing the standard for beauty was measured by the appearance of White people. " (Boutte, Gloria. (2001) Resounding Voices, p112, Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.)

This comment attracted my attention, thinking that 'yes, it is still apparent that colored people in the world wide has been brainwashed into believing like that, I guess.' Some Asians get the plastic surgery to look like the white. Media such as TV, the Internet, commercials keeps conveying the message of that the beauty is the appearance of the white or the white like, such as long legs, big eyes, fair-skinned, bigger nose, and so on.

What is the standard of beauty? What is the beauty of the East?