Amazing...

What do you get when you take one couple, add one sister and one brother to that couple, then add 2 children to that couple, and add a niece and nephew to that couple. For those who are not astute mathematicians, that equals eight people. More than that, it encompasses the population of one apartment during our stay in South Korea.

There was one television. There was one computer. There were two bathrooms.

I kind of have this sense that if you had the same situation in the states that there would also be a chaotic mess to deal with. The apartment wasn’t necessarily small, but it wasn’t huge either. It actually had 3 distinct bedrooms [all which are small according to our standards], but everyone got along comfortably.

Why?

If you’ve ever seen an Asian culture in action [for most of you, this would probably be on your respective television sets or in magazines, I assume] you might notice a lot of hand holding and a special closeness.

But in America, we yearn for what we consider to be freedom.

What’s amazing is that when there’s something that rocks your life, maybe that freedom isn’t valued as much anymore. Sorry, there won’t be much more than that – I know that it really isn’t much of a follow up, but I’m still trying to get over the flight back on top of hay fever.

[Finished Theodore Rex. You can check out my review here]

We’ve had a wonderful time while staying in the southern portion of the Korean peninsula, but in a couple of hours, we’ll begin our journey “home.” La has been an absolute champ in the way that she’s acclimated to this culture and to a few [somewhat] uncomfortable circumstances. I’m not going to throw out a list of things that we did while we were here, but our fotiki.com site will be updated as soon as we can transfer our pictures onto a hard drive.

There’s not a whole lot that I’ve missed about being in the U.S., but there are two very significant things that La and I have discussed that have been hard to do without.

The first involves the language gap. Growing up, I was given quite a few opportunities to learn Han Gul [the Korean name for the Korean language] but never applied myself to it – I was a pretty rebellious son-a-b as a child. Opposed to seemingly popular opinion, the rest of the word does not [in fact] speak English.

[as an aside, we have been tempted on more than one occasion to speak to people in Spanish and Portuguese – which is just dumb]

The second is our loss of autonomy. It has been difficult for us to try to go anywhere alone. When we do, and if we are gone for an extended period, we are asked “what happened.” This is a difficulty as La and I love to explore our surroundings when we’re in a new place. On the good end, my mother’s family have been so unbelievably accommodating in shuttling us around or leading us through different areas. Their kindness has made this trip sweet.

All in all, leaving is sort of bitter sweet.

You come to love people that you’re related to – the same people that you only get to see [apparently] every decade or so. On the other hand, you get to leave the people that you have no social history or common language with.

You have to leave the extreme kindness of your family and new found friends. Conversely, you’re free to live again.

When it comes down to it, that’s what we want though [right]? Don’t most of us in our individualized culture yearn for freedom? Trust me, this will bleed into my next blog.

Reporting from South Korea...

[Finished reading The Religious Life of the Theological Student by Benjamin B. Warfield]

With understandable caution, airports around the United States are “randomly searching” passengers before they enter terminals. Considering the assumption of what those charged in England are purported to have planned, Airlines are now also “randomly searching” passengers before they enter into their respective planes.

Shortly after 9/11, I was searched at pretty much any airport I walked through. If I was flying, I was usually with a lot of my Anglo friends; with my thick eyebrows, darker complexion, and crazy eyes I guess I feel like I was often the one singled out to be searched. It wasn’t a big deal to me, I figured that it was just part and parcel of the traveling process.

After that first year, I don’t think I’ve been singled out since. I was singled out this morning when entering the plane to ensure that I wasn’t carrying any liquids onto our flight, but that’s not where I want to go with this.

La was on her way to freshen up. On the way to the ladies’ room, she noticed that a man had been singled out to be checked. They were, as the standards go, patting him down and rummaging through his carry on. That is, they were patting this elderly Caucasian man down after they had him stand up from his motorized wheel chair.

Now he was a candidate for world terrorism if I’ve ever seen one.
It’s a good thing they checked him; who knows what kind of violence he had the potential of causing?

As of late, I’ve thought often of how off base our government is in handling our business and safety concerns. This man is a prime example. In the vein of seeking a politically correct solution, we put forth a “randomized” process where anyone may be searched at any time by process of indiscriminate selection.

Well, at least we can say that there is no race-gendered-socioeconomic-age profiling in our airports. Chalk one up for the good guys.