November 2005: back in Seoul, Korea

So back in March, when I made plans to live in BC with
my folks for as long as it too Mom to live out her
cancer, I had no idea it would take all of seven
months for her to do so, no idea that it wouldn't be
until late October that I'd finally finished all my
visiting and taken the trip to Seoul.

So I'm back now. Back in the land of palaces and
gingko trees, easy public transit and lots of rice and
pickled vegetable side dishes. In fact, I've been her
for a month (tomorrow).

Out here in Korea, it's been an interesting go. I
spent about a week recovering from jet-lag and getting
re-acquainted with Korea in general -- revisiting my
favourite areas, taking long walks, writing in my
diary -- and found myself incredibly bored, so I
headed out to find a job, quite a bit sooner than I'd
expected to. The plan, originally, was to take things
really slow, to see Matt and my friends, to travel,
maybe see the countryside, and make sure I'd given
myself enough time to grieve my Mom here in Korea
before I jumped into working and going back to the
grind of things. Being in Korea is interesting,
insofar as I'm finally on my own -- there are no roles
here for me to play, except for Rob. I'm not "Rudy's
Boy", or "Dan's Brother" or anything but Rob, and
finally (in that way) being on my own, gives me the
chance to start sorting out my own closet, after
spending most of September with the family, in BC, and
then in Ontario with Dad.

Being in Canada was good. Satisfying. Appropriate.
I'm glad to have had the chance to take that time and
be there with my mom and dad. I'm lucky that I was in
a situation where that was possible. Now, it really
feels good to have my life back in motion again.

Unfortunately, being back in Korea was boring, with
Exgirfriendoseyo studying as much as she could, and with Matt
working, and with only so many books, and so many
hours I could walk around without getting sore feet
and smog headaches, so I looked for a job. I went to
the director of my first school, to ask him for a
reference letter, and instead he offered me a job.
His preschool supervisor was leaving at the end of the
month, so he'd bring me in as a supervisor. I said,
essentially, "why not?" -- I love the area, it has
great access to Seoul and two nearby parks, and good
restaurants, there are good restaurants nearby, and
the foreign teachers working there right now are
really good people -- I like them a lot, and they have
some good, close friendships. It's nice to be
connected to that network, even after only one month.
Plus, my boss absolutely adores me, and I should be
able to work that to my advantage, and, if nothing
else, he's a known quantity, so I know what I'm
getting from him and from this school.

The drawbacks are these:
1. a roommate -- and female at that. I gave Exgirfriendoseyo
the chance to veto the job, and she said she was OK
with it, so we'll see how it works out. (Though it's
nice having a friend nearby -- sometimes my apartment
last year was WAAAY too quiet.)

2. the director remains the same guy he was before --
he means well (usually), but he's also a bit of a
wildcard, and often asks you to do things without
enough advance notice.

3. the first month in a supervisor position is a lot
of work. if the workload decreases after I've got the
hang of things, then I'm set, and I'll have a really
great schedule down the line, but for now, I've been
working long hours (on my own perogative, however,
which is a nice change from being iron-clad-required
to do so. I figure that, like with ice skating, if I
do a strong push at first, it'll be easier to coast
later.) But. . . 3.1. I was very clear with Mr. Kim
that if the supervisor thing didn't work out for me,
I'd be stepping down -- that was one of the terms of
me coming on at all. So if the workload's ridiculous,
he knows that I'll approach him, and we'll work
something out involving either a pay increase or a
responsibility decrease.


Fair enough. We'll see how it works out. I'm trying
to be supportive for Exgirfriendoseyo -- her huge
middle-school-teacher qualification test is coming up
in two weeks, and she's been getting more and more
stressed about it, and I've been seeing her less and
less. That's a bit frustrating, but, as Matt keeps
saying, "Patience patience patience" -- that patience
will pay off in time. Meanwhile, it's been good to
pour myself into work for a while. It gives me
something to think about other than Mom, and it's been
a while since I've had enough going on in my life to
be able to say "I'll just set that aside and think
about it when I have time". That's good, after a
certain amount of time. As much as I love Mom and Dad
and the siblings, I needed (in a bad way) to get back
to my own life.

So that's where I am now. The church here remains, as
always, awesome. They actually postponed their church
picnic for a few weeks so that they'd have it after
I'd returned. That kind of love is hard to come by.
Matt, too, has been a stellar support: compassionate
and understanding, with a good sense of when to talk
about it, and when to help get your mind off it.
Exgirfriendoseyo and I are doing our best to be there for each
other, between her studies and my new job, both of our
schedules are heavily taxed right now, but hard times
prove the measure of a relationship, and this story
isn't over yet. I like my coworkers more and more.
One of them (his name is Caleb. . . Overstreet? . . .
is an MK whose father worked with my friend Cheryl
(Mellis) Zeke's father in Amsterdam. I said the name
"Cheryl Mellis" and he said "Oh. Colin's sister." It
was cool. I made spaghetti for those folks last
Wednesday, and it went over really well, despite the
difficulty of finding the right spices here. (If
you're into care packages, send sage, seasoning salt
(the regular orange kind) and italian seasoning. . .
and Colgate total, which I forgot to stockpile before
I came here). My students call me "rocks teacher"
sometimes, but they're already warming up to me.
They're younger than anyone I've taught before, and
that's challenging, but it's interesting. Plus, being
a supervisor is using a bunch of abilities and
faculties I possess, but haven't used in quite a long
time. It's interesting tapping some of those aspects
of personal interaction again. I even learned how to
make a spreadsheet!

My next update will contain less matter-of-fact and
more colour, I hope. But right now, I have to send
this one out and head down to Dr. Lee's house, for the
American thanksgiving celebration potluck he's holding
at his house.

Take care of yourselves.

love
Rob

October 17th 2005

After seven months and many adventures and
non-adventures here in Canada, I'm going back to
Korea.

I will arrive on Friday in the afternoon, and start
the business of getting my life there moving. It's
been an interesting seven months, and I've learned a
lot, but now it's time to begin a new stage.

At this point, so many things have happened in the
last seven months, that to write about them all right
now would result in a novella-sized e-mail, so I'll
save that for the novel, when it comes, and for now,
I'll point out the three most powerful moments of my
spring and summer.

The most powerful moment, the one that will stay with
me the longest and most vividly, was the moment when
Mom stopped breathing. The whole family was there --
the parents and four kids, as a group of six for the
last time. We were singing a song about heaven while
Mom's breathing got shorter and shallower, sometimes
stopping and starting again, with a horrific gurgle
getting louder and louder as she wheezed. Mom's eyes
opened wide and looked up at the ceiling (or heaven,
if you will), and while we sang a song of praise to
God: "Then sings my soul, my saviour God, to thee: how
great thou art!" Mom took her last breath. That song
will never be the same for me: we sang it again at
Mom's memorial in Ontario and I was right back at
Mom's deathbed, as vivid as if it had just happened.
It was, other than a cousin's car accident that mostly
felt surreal, and a ninety-year-old step-grandfather
two time zones away, the first time death came even
close to my family, and it couldn't have made its
entrance more forceful.

The second moment was my brother's wedding -- the high
point is a toss-up between two things: the first was
the moment when the door at the back of the chapel
opened and Dan's new bride stepped into view for the
first time, sending tears spurting to my, Dan's, and
my Dad's eyes (and probably a lot of other people, but
I didn't notice them). Seeing a growing love reach
the point of such a commitment was thrilling, and
balanced the ending of mom's life with the beginning
of my brother's marriage. The second high mark was at
the wedding reception when, as the best man, I had the
honour of making a toast to Dan and Caryn. The
opportunity to give my thoughts at that moment, on my
brother's special day, was a great honour, and I hope
I did them justice.

The third moment was delivering Mom's eulogy at her
funeral, and again at her memorial. Again, the chance
to add my words to commemorate such an important
moment in such a woman's life was a great honour, and
I did my best to offer up words of both love and
truth, with sincerity, and without sentimentality.

I will send another e-mail with the text of the toast
for my brother, and the eulogy for my mother. For the
rest of the story of my summer, I'll let you know
what's coming in a later e-mail.

On Thursday I will leave Canada, and arrive in Korea
on Friday. My amazing girlfriend Exgirfriendoseyo has supported
me and waited for me faithfully for seven whole
months, and I don't know if I could have survived this
year without her. My great friend Matt is waiting
there for me as well, and he, too, has been a solid
rock of loyalty and friendship during this time.
Thanks go to everyone who prayed for me and my family,
thanks to the extended family in Ontario -- seeing you
was also a huge blessing, and a great comfort. Thanks
especially to Cheryl and Zeke and Melissa, Brent and
Ayden, and to the folks at the solid grounds bible
study in Agassiz: your friendships added a bit of
normalcy and fun to a ridiculously intense summer.
Bless you. Now before this starts sounding like an
acceptance speech. . .

The next e-mail is the text of the eulogy and my
groom's toast from Dan's wedding; read it if you want,
trash it if you're not interested, but they were
important moments in my life.

Thanks to everyone on this list, and for the e-mails
and phone calls you've sent.

And I'll be back to bore you with details of my new
life in Korea soon enough.

Rob

My Mother's Funeral Eulogy

These are long, and I won't be upset if you don't care to read it, but they’re important in my story. If you want to discuss anything I said in here, feel free to leave a comment.

Eulogy For (J B) J Ouwehand

delivered September 11th, 2005

At 12:15 in the afternoon, on September 8th, 2005, J Ouwehand passed to glory. Her husband R and her four children were gathered around her bedside. As we sang the last verse of “How Great Thou Art,” about Christ coming to take his own, J’s eyes opened wide for the first time in three days. Her eyes looked heavenwards, as if she could see Jesus reaching out to take her home, and as her family sang, “Then sings my soul, my saviour, God, to thee, how great thou art!” she took her last breath.

Mom had a way of listening that made you forget she was there. She’d pay close attention, and care, without ever judging. Her ability to listen and keep a secret made her a magnet for people’s trust. With patience and unending love, I saw Mom open up even the most guarded and defensive people. She didn’t give advice, but she didn’t NEED to give advice, because she’d find a question that cut through so much of the extra, unimportant fuzz that the clearest solution, or the plainest truth, was suddenly obvious.

My brother Dan mentioned something, and I was surprised that I hadn’t already included it in my eulogy, but here it is, now. Mom had a smile that never quit – everybody in Agassiz knew her for her smile. But her smile was more than just a smile. It didn’t come from mere happiness, like most smiles – happiness comes from being in good circumstances, but circumstances can change. Mom’s smile came from joy, and joy comes from a place inside a person that circumstances can’t touch. Mom’s joy came from the peace of knowing Jesus, and that peace beyond all understanding made it possible for mom to smile even in the most difficult circumstances. All last year, Mom never lost her smile. Even as she slowly weakened, she still found joy in knowing that she belonged, body and soul, to Jesus.

It’s difficult for me to realize just how much Mom did for me when I was small. Only another mother knows how much work and sacrifice it takes to raise good kids. One of mom’s greatest joys was always in her family. In reading her last year’s diary, the phrases that keep coming up again and again are “I really love Rudy, or Rebecca, or Deb, or Rob, or Dan, or the in-laws, or the grand-kids. . .” and “Rudy is so good to me, Deb is so good to me,” and so forth. Anyone who talked to her knew how proud she was of her family, and how dearly she loved us. She was never happier than when all of us were together laughing.

Mom didn’t just love her family, though. She saw God’s image in everyone she met, and loved them accordingly. Every person was precious to Mom, because she couldn’t help but love and respect all God’s creations. Mom was an amazing encourager, and she knew when and how to help someone take heart. Her hospitality was just as open and generous as her love, and each of the children have stories about Mom opening up our house to a friend in need, sometimes with amazing results, for example, the thanksgiving when Deb, then in her first year at Trinity Western University, phoned home saying, “Mom, there are some guys in this dorm who don’t have anywhere to go for thanksgiving. Can they come to our house?” and Mom said, “Sure. How many?” We had an amazing weekend, and one of those boys was a certain Bradley Jarvis, Deb’s husband now for four years.

Relationships were always Mom’s top priority, and those who knew her could go for hours telling stories about the ways Mom encouraged and helped the people around her. I’ve never met someone who spoke ill of her. Even the people who knew her best could never come up with anything worse than affectionate criticism of small, silly things. “Well, she really doesn’t have a photographer’s eye at all.” “She’s hopeless with a remote control in her hands.” “She gets Star WARS confused with Star TREK.” Those things just weren’t important enough for Mom to bother – there were people to encourage, and somebody out there needed some kindness; why on earth would she waste time finding out the names of the songs on the radio? Mom’s gifts were in other areas.

Mom’s greatest gift, the thing that will stay with me forever is, without any doubt, her love. 1 John 4:7-8 says “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Mom was like a huge human mirror, reflecting God’s love to everyone who came near her. I know for a fact that people saw God’s love in Mom: several friends have told me exactly that, including some who don’t personally know God themselves. Mom has always had an amazing capacity to give love, not just to family, but to everyone she met. Mom loved freely, and generously, without requiring you to meet a standard first, without threatening to withdraw if you didn’t measure up later, and without ever trying to get something back. Even on her death bed, Mom spoke words of care and encouragement to her visitors and family, and made sure everyone knew they were loved and appreciated.

It’s strange that a woman so good at giving love, worried for years whether people really appreciated her and liked her, but she did. Whether from rejections long in the past or imagined slights in the present, Mom somehow managed not to notice how well loved she was by the people around her. This worry was partially answered in Mom’s first ten years in Agassiz: she was never happier and more fulfilled than here in Agassiz. However, that insecurity was finally, completely put to rest in the last year of her life, when all the love that Mom gave out during her lifetime came back to her in a tremendous show of support and help. This outpouring made it obvious just how truly and sincerely people loved her. While it isn’t right for someone to die as young as Mom, I’ll say that it was at least appropriate that such an amazing love-giver ended her life surrounded by so many people who loved her. Mom kept a journal this year that she allowed her family to read after she died, and the most often repeated theme is how loved she feels, and how much she loves those around her. About a week before her death, I asked Mom what was the best thing she had learned from her last year. She said that she learned how much people loved her, but, more than anything else, she was overwhelmed by the depth and tenderness of Dad’s love for her. Dad’s love for Mom has been amazing and humbling to see, and I don’t think any feeling human being could watch Dad’s devotion to mom in these last few months without being truly touched.

Cancer is cruel, and it is only in a hurting, broken world that a woman as young as Mom should already be called home to heaven. On a day like this, the question why is impossible to answer, and honestly, even if we DID have a complete, perfect answer to the question “Why?”, it would only satisfy our minds, and it still would not quiet the ache in our hearts. Asking “Why?” can’t change anything; it only makes us focus on our own pain. Instead, I propose a different question, one that I think Mom would prefer us to ask: “how, even in this, was God’s name glorified?” This question will not end the ache in our hearts either, but at least it turns our eyes to God, instead of focussing on our own pain. Here is an incomplete list of the ways J’s life, and especially its end, brought glory to God.

An entire church in Germany, and another in Korea, was touched by Mom’s grace and courage when she visited. A girl joined the church in Korea on Mom’s invitation, and recently was baptized into God’s family. Dozens here in Agassiz saw, through Mom, that God’s promises REALLY CAN bring hope and peace, even in the shadow of death. Our entire family, on both sides, in all generations, have grown closer than ever before, and we have strengthened each other so much. The church in Agassiz has been like a tiny model of the Kingdom of Heaven, in the many, many different ways they’ve supported and sustained our family.

Many prayers were answered: Mom had enough time and strength to say all the important goodbyes she wanted to say, and visit each of her children and her family in Ontario; Mom survived Dan’s wedding, allowing that day to be a joyful one; the coma at the end was fairly quick; she got to see each of her kids one last time before she lost consciousness; amazingly, she had barely any pain as she fought cancer in her abdomen – an area of the body that is usually very sensitive to pain.

I asked Mom if there was anything she wanted me to share in particular in this eulogy, and she asked me to mention Philippians 2:14-15: “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.”

Mom pointed out to me that the way to shine like a star, to become blameless and pure, is simply to “do everything without complaining or arguing” and Mom was a model of that. She might be the least self-pitying cancer patient ever. She never complained or questioned, but instead, she lived out the end of the life God gave her gently and humbly, and she truly did shine like a star in the universe. Mom’s peace and serenity, and especially her trust in God, set an example for everyone else involved in her sickness. If she herself could suffer through this time without self-pity or anger, then we could certainly do the same. Yet even as others saw Mom’s peace and serenity, Mom wanted to give the glory to God, and point to the source of her peace: tucked away in her journal was the simple sentence, “I hope the story of ‘me’ doesn’t grow out of proportion” – she saw the way people were impressed by her story, and her attitude, and worried that the glory and attention would point to her, instead of to God. Even in her own fight with cancer, Mom humbly wanted to be sure that all the attention went to God.

That is J Ouwehand’s legacy. It is a legacy of humility, love, and trust in God. Mom has left the earth, and all that remain are her footprints, but those are powerful footprints. Those footprints are deep on my soul, and every time I give someone the benefit of the doubt, every time I am gracious and generous, every time I carry my own burdens without complaining, I am living out Mom’s legacy on earth. Really, every time I choose to live more like Christ, I am honouring my mother, because she was an example of a humble life patterned after Christ. Though her treasure is in heaven for living like Christ on earth, our lives bear the earthly fruit of her life. When we face difficult times with courage and peace, when we keep faith in people and love the unlovable, when we look to serve without attracting attention to ourselves, we honour Mom’s memory. By these things we prove that, without a doubt, death has NO victory in the story of Mom’s cancer, for even in her death, the kingdom of heaven advanced on earth, through the lives she touched.

To My Friends in Korea (August 2005)

Hello my friends in Korea.

I wrote one letter to my Korean friends, and promised
I will write more. Then I forgot to tell you more
about my summer. Some of you haven't heard from me
for a long time. I'm sorry.

This letter is in very simple English, because some
people on this list are learning English, and I don't
want my letter to be difficult for them.

My summer was interesting. I am surprised when I
think that I left Korea five months ago! Some good
things happened. I saw some of my very good friends,
and our friendship is strong. I travelled to my
brother's wedding in July, and I travelled to my good
friend's wedding in August.

My brother got married on July 2, and I was the Best
Man (I stood beside my brother when he got married.)
His wife is named Caryn, and she is a wonderful,
funny, interesting, sweet girl. I travelled to Dan's
town two weeks before the wedding to help him prepare
the last details. I met most of Dan's good friends,
and I really like Dan's friends and his church. There
are lots of good people in his life, so it was really
fun to see him with his friends.

My mom's stomach cancer slowly got worse and worse.
She couldn't eat much, so she got thinner and thinner.
She also got weaker. In July, she was too weak to go
to Dan's wedding. That was very sad. However, many
relatives (uncles, aunts, cousins) came to Dan's
wedding. It was AMAZING to see so much family there.

The wedding day was full of serious times, where
everybody thought about Dan and Caryn's love, and
about God's love for His people. The wedding day was
ALSO full of joy and laughing and funny times. It was
an incredible, amazing, wonderful wedding. I will put
some pictures from the wedding in this e-mail.

After the wedding, many uncles and aunts came to my
town, to visit my mother. She was very happy to see
so many people who loved her.

My time in BC has been good. I've learned a lot about
love, by watching how my father and mother love each
other, and watching how the church in Agassiz loves my
family. The church really really helped us a lot.
People came to visit, and brought food, and cleaned
our house, and did many many small, very useful
things. I'm amazed and thankful that God's people are
so good at helping each other. I think that the
friends and church people are like mirrors that show
God's love for me. God took care of me this summer by
sending loving people to me.

I also learned about love from my friends, because my
friends have been really good and helpful to me. My
friends in Canada, and also in Korea helped me stay
strong, so that I can be strong enough to help my Mom
and Dad. Thank you for your love, my friends!

Since Dan's wedding, mom slowly got weaker, and the
cancer got stronger. Now she stays in bed usually,
and last week she suddenly stopped eating very many
meals. Before, she ate three small meals every day,
and some snacks. Now she eats one meal (sometimes)
every day, and only has drinks, but no snacks. I
can't say if she will still live one or two or three
weeks, but she probably will not live much longer.

After mom dies, I might spend some time travelling in
Canada to see all my important friends, but then I
will come to Korea again. Thank you for being my
friends in Korea. I'm excited to see you all again.
I have missed Korea a lot (especially Exgirfriendoseyo, my
church, and my wingman, Matt, and Korean Jimjilbang,
and samgyetang).

These weeks are going to be my most difficult weeks,
so I appreciate your prayers and thoughts, and thank
you for all the prayers you prayed all summer for me.
They really did help: Mom has a lot of peace in her
mind, and she doesn't have much pain from the cancer,
and that is amazing: usually stomach cancer is VERY
painful.

Sorry I didn't write more e-mails, and sorry this
letter is a little bit long. Thank you for being my
friends in Korea.

Rob Ouwehand

March 23rd 2005

Well, it's quiet today: last time I wrote a letter
like this, I was sitting in a sauna in Seoul, hoping
my ears wouldn't get blasted out of my head by the
earthquake-loud dance music playing nearby. This
time, I can hear a clock ticking, and wind blowing
outside the window. The air smells like carpet (an
extreme rarity in Korea: almost all floors are tile or
plastic cleverly disguised to look like light wood
paneling). I also smell cypress trees, growing things
(happy beginning of spring, all), and . . . nothing
(no car exhaust, no street food, no cigarettes). This
can only mean one thing: I am back in Canada.

I finished working on the 28th of February. My
Kindergarten students graduated to first grade (I have
really cute pictures) on the 25th, and I'm proud as
punch of them; Exgirfriendoseyo ALSO graduated from university
on the 25th of February, unfortunately at the same
time as my students, so, lacking the time to develop a
working duplicater safe for human use, I had to miss
seeing my girlfriend graduate. The conversation
went/may have gone like this:

"I wish you could be here to see me graduate, Rob."

"Oh Exgirfriendoseyo -- I wish I could be there! I'd scream
'That's my girlfriend and I love her!' as loud as I
could as you walked up to get your diploma!"

"But I guess it's OK that you can't come. Have fun
with your Kindergarten kids!"

for some reason she wasn't too upset.

I stayed in Korea until March 14th -- two extra weeks
after I finished working. Matt F, my best friend in
Korea (and the newest member of my pantheon of best
friends in the world), let me stay at his house for
two weeks, in his guest bed. This was really great of
him (especially after I figured out that the window
panels were improperly lined up, and THAT'S why the
room was so cold at night.)

The reason I stayed an extra two weeks was so that I
could end my time in Korea on a series of high notes
with my different friends and communities, rather than
on a frantic, rushed, "I still have to finish
packing!" note, like in 2003. Also, I wanted to spend
a LOT of time with my wonderful, beautiful, sweet,
funny . . . (she knows all the other adjectives that
go in this space) . . . warm-hearted and all-around
fantastic girlfriend Exgirfriendoseyo.

After my last day of work, (and before), I had a real
blast winding down my time in Korea. Matt took me
dancing one night (something I'd missed doing since we
were in Japan), I lost money playing poker with the
old coworkers, and I spent a lot of time with Exgirfriendoseyo.
A lot. In fact, just about the only time I DIDN'T
spend with Exgirfriendoseyo, was spent either packing, or
preparing some kind of gift for Exgirfriendoseyo, or travelling
to meet Exgirfriendoseyo, or sleeping, or with Matt. The number
one goal of my extra two weeks was to solidify the
relationship Exgirfriendoseyo and I have had since the end of
July, and make sure that it's built solidly enough to
last, and grow, during my time in Canada. It will be
a difficult time, and distance is never easy, but the
extra two weeks seemed to be exactly the right amount
of time to get everything really working well.

My next goal is to get her to come to Canada. We're
working on a strategy for talking to/asking her
parents, that includes a formal invitation from my
parents and stuff like that. Here's to hoping. My
mom really wants to see Exgirfriendoseyo again (and Exgirfriendoseyo wants
to see my Mom), and I think we can make it happen.

Now that I'm back in Canada, I'm starting to look for
work, and I'm writing a lot. This is a good thing. I
hope that I'll be able to do a lot of work on poetry
and stories, and hopefully, even be able to start
sending poems out to magazines and such. So if
anybody reading this is a magazine publisher, and you
need a poem to fill in an empty space, just give me a
shout! Beyond that, my main goal is just to be around
the house, making myself useful to my mom and dad as
Mom gets weaker, and Dad feels the strain of caring
for a sick wife. It's really the least I can do.

One thing I've learned over the last six months is how
important family can be. Mom and Dad have been
supported by their church family these months, and now
I'm in Canada to do what I can. Often, the best
things families do for each other aren't spectacular:
your uncle doesn't have to save you from a burning oil
refinery to be your hero, and your friend doesn't have
to carry you down a mountainside after you break your
ankle, to prove (s)he's a friend for life. Usually
love shows itself best in small ways -- a touch of
compassion, a compliment, a hug at the right time.
Right now, to be here for my mom and dad, it's all
menial things -- carrying in the groceries, mowing the
lawn, cooking dinner because mom loses her appetite if
she cooks, cleaning bathrooms because company's
coming. But, the sum of those things is not the
trivial nature of the work I'm doing, it's the way I
can show my love for my family right now. I'm lucky
enough to be in a position where I can do that, and
I'm so glad that Mom has someone to carry in the
groceries. (I think she is, too.)

Mom gets tired more easily. In October, when she came
to Korea, she managed to out-last both me and my dad
as we toured around Seoul. Now, she rests most of the
day if she's going out in the evening, and she falls
asleep at 8 pm if she's been active in the afternoon.
Sometimes she eats well, and sometimes her stomach
just rebels, but she is amazingly peaceful. She is
happy to see the people who come by, and she has an
attitude as positive as anybody I've met (which is
totally in character for her, but that only makes it
more remarkable). Dad sometimes feels the strain, too
-- he gets headaches and such sometimes, and every
once in a while he has a really emotionally exhausting
day, so please keep both of them in your prayers.

The Thursday after I arrived in Canada, my brother in
law had a birthday party for my sister. Her birthday
is January 1, but since New Year's Day is already a
party day, he decided to throw her a party on a
different day, so that her birthday was a special
occasion of its own. Unfortunately, Mom, Dad and I
had been told everything about the party but its
location (I don't think that's what was intended when
Brad said a surprise party), so we only managed to
find the party at all because I had stuck our
cellphone in my pocket, and forgotten it was there
when we drove out to Langley. Deb called us and we
found our way to our friend Sarah's house.

Then, on Saturday, my Uncle Tony and Aunt Marianne
came from Thunder Bay, Ontario, and on Monday my Uncle
Hugh and Aunt Heather (both Uncles are Dad's brothers)
came by from the Okanagan in BC, in order to help us
celebrate Mom and Dad's 30th wedding anniversary.
This was a pretty big, exciting thing. About 80
people from the Agassiz community came to and open
house in our church building, and gave their best
wishes to Mom and Dad. My uncles and aunts played
guitar, sang, and told jokes, and everybody ate,
signed the guest book, looked through Mom and Dad's
wedding album, and took pictures of the happy couple.


My uncle Tony reflected how an anniversary like this
celebrates the idea of marriage and commitment, as
well as my Mom and Dad's marriage, and it reminds
everybody to hold onto the ones they love. Doing this
takes a lot of different things: sometimes one is
needy, and sometimes the other. Sometimes, the main
thing that holds a marriage through a hard time is
stubbornness, and sometimes relationships only survive
by luck, or sheer grace, by the hope that things will
get better through commitment, effort and humility,
by the hope that the stubbornness will be worthwhile,
and give the grace a space to shine. Through all this
celebration, the main feeling, I think, was
thankfulness -- Dad thanks God for Mom, and the time
he's had with her. Mom thanks God for Dad, and the
love she's been able to give and receive. I thank God
that Mom met Dad, because if they hadn't, I'm not sure
how I'd be able to send this letter (and they swear
they're glad I was born, too). My parents have
touched a lot of people in their lifetimes, and will
touch more people in new ways before they're done, but
the anniversary celebration was a great way to note
how much good can come out of two people deciding to
build a life together, to make love an important part
of their life. I've always thought love is like a
muscle: the more you work it, the stronger it gets,
and the stronger a muscle is, the more work it can do,
and the more people it can help.

I'm not sure how long I'll be in Canada, but I hope I
get lots of opportunities to exercise love, and to
grow stronger because of it; the people around me in
Canada (and the US), and the people waiting for me in
Korea, deserve the strongest, most loving Rob I can
be.

Take care of yourselves.

If you live near Agassiz, give me a call: I have lots
of free time right now, and I'd love to catch up. If
you don't have my number, just hit the reply button
(delete the text of the rest of my letter) and ask for
my digits.

with love:
Rob Ouwehand

Christmas 2004 and New Year's 2005

The really, really loud music from the dance show
finally stopped, and now I'm only contending with the
moderately loud music and real-time fighting games
played by the kids sitting near me. I'm sitting in a
sauna's internet cafe, paying a lot more per minute
than most internet cafes, and feeling quite mellow,
thanks to having just soaked in hot and cold water.

I've reached the point in my contract where the light
at the end of the tunnel is getting quite a bit
brighter, and I don't mind that a bit; soon I'll get
to that mellow stage where nothing can phase me
anymore, the stage where I walk around all day as if
I'd just woken up, and I answer everything anybody
says to me with "No worries, pal!"

We have a CD player in the staff room, so all is well,
as long as I can put on some music during the five
heartbeat (I mean five minute) pause (not long enough
to qualify as an actual break) between classes, and
listen to a song. I've nicknamed the CD player "My
job satisfaction", because really, I'm just that easy
to please. There's a selection of music in the CD
wallet I leave at work that's varied enough that I'll
have songs ready to start me up (Led Zeppelin, Yeah
Yeah Yeahs), slow me down (Norah Jones, Nick Drake),
give me something new on my mind (Miles Davis, Glenn
Gould), take me out into left field (Flaming Lips,
Havalina Rail Co.) or just plain make me feel good
(Cat Stevens, Beach Boys, Prince). Seeing as the
break is exactly one song long, I'm set. Nothing bugs
me, as long as there are tunes -- even the new
Kindergarten teacher who made defamatory statements
about Mother Theresa's politics ("she should have
built a hospital -- why did she go and send all that
money to the vatican?"), or questioning the historical
existence of the prophet Mohammed (who led a conquest
during his life, and whose line of heirs were/are(?)
Islam's leaders for centuries). Whatever. It's all
good. She's just trying to start a conversation, and
sometimes it's fun to take her bait, if you can still
hear over the sound of Joe (the guy sitting on the
other side of me), grinding his teeth in annoyance.
(He isn't fond of her shocking statement converstaion
style).

Whatever. It's all good. No worries, pal!

Happy New Year.

As most of you know, I spent Christmas in BC (Agassiz
specifically, with brief forays into Langley,
Chilliwack, Vancouver, Harrison Hot Springs, and a
mountainside near my home). This was an excellent
thing. The doctors have given mom about 4-6 months,
(but we don't say things like "Last Christmas
Together" out loud, 'cos that makes the egg nog and
almond rings taste a little bitter, or at least
bittersweet, and who's cutting onions in the other
room again?). We had some amazing moments of family
closeness reflecting on the last year, making
Oliebollen (dutch new-years treats deep-fried in oil),
cooking a turkey, wandering around Harrison Hot
Springs, and driving all over the Fraser Valley in
units of three or four.

Of course, as with any family, seven days of family
closeness was. . . well, tiring -- everybody was
totally beat by the end of it, but it was great.

My nephew kept wanting to hug me so hard I fell over,
"Tio Rob. Do you have a squish for me today?" and my
niece wanted to shout "NO" at me every time I spoke to
her (which her father asked me, rightfully, to
discourage. I did my best); she would also blink at
me rather than make other funny faces. She was really
sweet and affectionate to my brother Dan, though -- I
smiled to see her run towards his legs as if he were a
magnet and she a paperclip begging to be picked up.
I'm continually impressed at how reasonable my
sister's kids are -- they respond amazingly well to
reasoned and calm explanation of why you can't play
that game, or why you won't give him the plastic
hammer until he says he's sorry for hitting your. . .
um . . . lap . . . with it. (didn't actually happen.)
If you tell them to play nicely, they actually DO!

Deb and Brad were in and out, being the closest to
home in Langley (an hour away), but the dinner table
is never full without the laughs Deb brings to it, and
the planned zaniness of things like no-utensil
spaghetti meals and cream pie fights. Dan remains the
funniest person I know, and also the one who
understands me best in the world -- the one who'd know
all the secrets. The midnight cigars and frigid walks
and drives are something I'd never trade for anything.
His fiance Caryn. . . let's just say I can't wait for
her to be my sister. She fit into the family
amazingly well. Her first ENTIRE WEEK (wow) with the
entire family totally exhausted her (of course -- a
new family is like a new culture, and culture shock is
exhausting, whether it's national or familial), but
she stood up amazingly well, and I think everyone in
the family has really warmed up to her, since seeing
her in all the different contexts and situations that
come up in a whole week together.

Two of my uncles came out as well -- it was great to
see them, too, and I love those people, and two of my
nearest and dearest also came out to see me, and that
put a big old smile on my face, too.

On the Tuesday, my sister bought some whipped cream
and whipped egg-whites, and we had a cream pie fight,
where we pull names out of a hat and throw cream pies
in our family's faces. I aksidentaly got some craem
in my fase (bad for the allergies) instead of just egg
wite (and the spelling in this passage is a clue as to
who perpetrated this cream-smearing). Some got in my
eye, which irritated my eye, and had me worried that
I'd have pink eyes for. . . the family pictures later
that afternoon. Yes, we got family pictures. They
were great -- we got some amazing pictures of everyone
in the family, and especially some real keepers of my
wonderful mom. I can't wait to see the copies.

As you know, I'll be coming back to Canada in March to
take care of my family and see my brother properly
married. We'll be apart for a while, but I'm working
hard now on establishing solid roots for our
relationship, and positive patterns of trust and
communication, so that we're equipped to deal with a
time apart. Francois Duc de Rochefoucauld once said

"Absence lessens the small loves and increases the
great ones, as the wind blows out a candle and blows
up a bonfire."

(I'm not actually THAT smart: I looked that quote up
on the internet so I could use it.) So my work right
now is to make sure that the flame is big enough
before I leave that the absence will increase it,
rather than extinguish it. Talking to my friend
Melissa, who had a long absence in the middle of HER
courtship with her wonderful now-husband, made me feel
a lot better about this.

(the now, retroactively renamed Exgirlfriendoseyo and I celebrated an anniversary this weekend
at a FANCY restaurant, taking pictures together at a
photo studio (quite nice ones), and eating lamb and
steak in a restaurant overlooking Seoul at night.
Every time I see her it's better than the time
before.)

Anyway, before I make you all ill with my mushy talk,
I'll move on to other topics.

As when news came out that Matthias has muscular
dystrophy, and the sweet people in church showed their
concern by asking, weekly, "How's your nephew,"
despite the fact muscular dystrophy is a disease that
will take about 20 years to finish its process, now,
well-meaning students continually ask about my mom,
and I have to say, several times a day, "still sick."
This situation requires tact and discretion more than
anything else, as much as the first instinct is to be
surly and say "please don't bring that up right now"
or to look for the nearest exit. I'm doing my best.

It's an interesting aspect of human nature that, even
when your situation is difficult, you can still find
what one coworker calls "the little v's" -- the small
victories. He's a smoker, so for him, every smoke,
and ever cup of coffee make his day a little better.
Little things can totally change one's perspective --
people caught on desert islands probably spend as much
time wishing for a toothbrush as wishing for an
emergency transmitter. My little victories are not
cigarettes and cups of coffee, but times my students
crack me up, the five minute conversations with my
girlfriend during lunch and long breaks, getting a
message on my phone, getting e-mails, and being
cracked up by Matt and the others in the staff room.
Long hot showers. Saunas. Cold winter air that wakes
me up. The smell of Exgirfriendoseyo's hair. Matt's loud
laugh. Cindy (in Kindergarten) absently taking and
holding my hand during class. And if I can play music
in the staff room at break time too, well, I'm
laughing my way home at night. Optimism and,
moreover, contentment/happiness, just like holiness,
awareness, fitness, and punctuality, are not so much
conditions as disciplines, and I'm learning how to be
in the habit of happiness.

Take care my wonderful peoples. I hope all of you are
in the habit of happiness and optimism.

love
Rob Ouwehand

Christmas 2004

Greetings everyone.

Hi. Merry Christmas (in case I don't have a chance to
otherwise greet you for Christmas). It's getting
colder, plastic evergreens are springing up like
flowers in May or acne the week before prom night, so
it must be December. This Christmas feels more like
Christmas than last year, because, I suppose, of the
music: last year the only Christmas music I got to
hear all December was that elevator Christmas music
you get on the radio, which is usually not the kind of
holy, meditative Christmas music that puts me in the
holiday/Advent spirit, but this year I have the
antidote: I have place my Handel's Messiah in the CD
case that I carry around to work and home, so whenever
I want it to start feeling like Christmas, I just pop
some Handel into the tape player in each classroom,
and have the Messiah as the background music for that
class. The Messiah being the one thing that readies
me for the holidays more than any other thing, I'm
feeling much more Christmassy this year, even though I
haven't so much as smelled egg not, tasted a candy
cane, or even seen a nativity scene.

Korea has its beauties, even in winter -- the trees
are finally empty of their various colours, which
means I can see the mountain more easily. (**one
single white male: tall, sensitive, articulate,
seeking a silver lining to various clouds; if
interested call 0** *** **** after business hours.
Serious inquiries only.**). Unfortunately, as
beautiful as Seoul winter can (HONESTLY!) be, I've not
been able to enjoy it for the last week, because I've
been feeling sudden urges to fall asleep, cold sweats,
and a bad cough. That's right, yours truly is sick: I
get funny tastes (and sometimes colours) in my mouth
when I cough, I wake up with headaches and am
constantly thirsty. Sometimes I sneeze fifteen times
in two minutes for no apparent reason. I even took
Wednesday off to rest. I'll get better, of course,
but it's a pain being sick and having a bedtime of
10:00 pm.

Let's get this over with quickly:

you all know now (unless you've forgotten somehow)
that my mother has terminal stomach/liver/other places
cancer. This means I will be going home for
Christmas. That means I had to purchase a plane
ticket home for Christmas, which also meant I now have
no money for Christmas presents (sorry everyone -- ask
again on a year when my mother isn't dying. Believe
me, I wish I had the choice to spend my December
paycheck on books CDs and hobby accessories for all my
friends, too.) It means I will be in Canada, in
Agassiz, specifically, for the week between Christmas
Day and New Years' day, but it also means that my top
top tippy toppest priority is to be with my family
this Christmas as (here come the waterworks) it
may/probably will be my family's last Christmas with
my mother in the mix. All this is to say no, I can't
spare a whole day (out of my five, one of which is
lost to jetlag) for you; no, I can't drive out to
Langley or Vancouver or Red Deer or Manhattan to swing
by your new pad (though I'm sure it's really cool).
However, if you want to come out to Agassiz to see me,
I'll make sure that Mom and Dad have lots of tea and
crackers on hand, and you can drop me a line and I'll
send you directions to my house.

But unless seeing me is deathly urgent, or I am
"please become godfather to my children" level close
to you, here is some reassuring news:

I'd asked my boss if I could extend my contract for
three extra months so that I had three more paychecks
before I came back to Canada, and I could properly be
my brother's best man in July when he gets married,
having worked until May, I'd be able to live in Red
Deer in June and sort things out for him. My boss,
for whatever reason, decided she'd rather hire
somebody else next March, and has decided to reject my
offer to stay for three extra months. Maybe the
uncertainty of my family situation was part of her
rationale, but in the end, I'm not too fussed. She'll
be able to bring on a new teacher at the beginning of
a semester (which is nice for her), and maybe hire a
couple (which is cheaper for her), and I don't have to
bust my groove thang for 10 and a half hours a day for
an extra three months. And (here's that silver lining
I advertised for earlier:) now I'll be coming home at
the beginning of March, so that's not too far off
after Christmas -- barely any time at all, the way
time keeps passing faster and faster!) so I can be
there for my parents' 30th Wedding Anniversary! I
hadn't thought about this, but that's pretty exciting.
And, suddenly I've gone from having about five more
months at this school, to having just over two more,
and that, my friends, is a nice feeling, considering
the level of workaholism the administration has begun
to ask of its teachers.

The downside (and this is big) is that I'm gonna miss
my girlfriend the now, retroactively renamed Exgirlfriendoseyo.

A lot.

















A lot.

As she will me.




but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

of course that part won't be easy. she's really been
a rock for me, and I'm so grateful and lucky/blessed
that she's in my life right now. Everybody in my
Church (where she's been attending weekly), just
adores her, and asks about her caringly when she's
absent because of a test or a paper.

She's doing exams and papers right now, wrapping up
her final semester, so I'm trying to be a steadfast
support for her, and encourage her in her studies.
Last night I cooked special, Rob-style spaghetti and
brought it, in a plastic container, down to the school
where she was studying, and surprised her with dinner
there. That was fun -- but we're trying to find the
balance between relationship maintenance and diligent
study, but right now I feel like diligent study is
winning by a longshot, and I miss her sometimes. Of
course, this, too, shall pass, and the reunion (of
sorts) when she has leisure time again, will be
wonderful, but for now I'm trying to be a solid
support and encourage her as much as I can.


A few weeks ago I got this one: the opposite of
YESterday is NOterday.

I've been having fun with my kids; I've learned how to
speak Konglish really well -- English with TOTALLY
Korean pronounciation, and that always cracks up the
kids, but the best laugh one of the kids dealt to me
came a few weeks ago.

I was teaching the word "Statue", and I mentioned that
often we see statues in churches and temples. Eddie,
one of my sweetest Kindergarten students, made the
finger gesture that the Buddha often makes in his
statues -- thumb and middle finger touching as if you
moved the "A-OK" sign down a finger, as if he's about
to flick something with his middle finger. Then he
asked "Teacher, do you know why Buddha is making that
way?" (making that gesture)

"Why, Eddie?"
now I have to explain a game of rock scissor paper
that korean kids play (they LOVE variations on rock,
scissor paper, and it's the ultimate argument settler
in this country; it's universally recognized as fair).
In one of the variations, the winner of the game gets
to flick the loser in the middle of the forehead.
This flick is usually done by the index finger or the
(strongest) middle finger. Eddie explains to me that
Buddha is making that gesture because. . .
"Buddha and God play rock scissor paper. And Buddha
win, so Buddha can do this one" (makes flicking
motion) "to God".

I didn't find this a bit blasphemous, of course -- it
was just a kid living in a culture where Buddha and
God are about equal influences on the religious
preferences of people around him, trying to make sense
of it all. It made me laugh, and hey, the dude wears
the virgin Mary around his neck two days in five, so
he'll grow up to understand more about it all, I hope
in a way that's as lighthearted as that, down the
road. It's a lot nicer to be able to chuckle about
the way religions can live alongside each other than
the two girls in another class who have been known to
feud in class because of has Christian parents and the
other has Buddhist parents (I learned about that one
from my teaching assistant). It saddens me that kids
so young are already building walls and being nasty to
each other over religion, which (from what I've
gathered) is (if nothing else) humanity's attempt to
figure out how NOT to be nasty to each other.

I explained counting syllables to a class by using
words that had lots of syllables, that I knew the kids
wouldn't know, to show that you don't have to know a
word to sound it out or count its syllables. The
words I used were "detrimental" and "extraneous",
which I repeated several times in class, until one kid
put up his hand and asked "Teacher, what's
excremental?"

My girlfriend sends me messages on my phone, and she
keeps making adorable spelling mistakes -- and somehow
her spelling mistakes ALWAYS turn into different
words; they never just turn into nonsense. She spells
message wrong, so she regularly says things like

"thanks for that massage. it made me laugh"
or "i'll send you a massage later"

yesterday she said "I told my mom that you brought me
spaghetti. "She was empressed" (I don't know what the
emperor's wife has to do with my spaghetti OR her mom,
but it make me smile)

and unfortunately, since she'll recieve this letter, I
guess that massage mistake's gonna stop now, but it's
been fun.

so that of course leads to the question "When your
Korean friends' chronic English errors are really
cute, is it still your responsibility to correct
them?" -- one lady at work always says lunch "lonchee"
so that the word lunch almost rhymes with the word
"raunchy" -- and do I need to correct that, when it's
so cute? She's the same one who told me, when I went
to the doctor's, that I have to get lots of lest.

My name regularly becomes lobeuh (which is how Koreans
say "Love" in Konglish), so I'm Love teacher to some
of my kids, and to others, I've told them about the
Lobster nickname, so I have a few kids who won't stop
calling me Lobster, Love, or Robot, which I don't
mind.

Matt's brother Joel is here, and he's cool. And I've
started making spaghetti again, after almost a
two-year hiatus. This is really nice -- it'd been so
long since I'd made spaghetti, it's nice to get back
into practice. Also, especially during a time that's
particularly emotionally challenging, with a
girlfriend who's unavailable because she has to study,
making spaghetti is (I realized) a REALLY comforting
ritual for me. Making it makes me feel almost as good
as eating it. Plus, afterwards, my house smells SO
good afterwards.

Anyway, I should probably go. I'll see some of you
this coming Christmas, and the rest of you in March.
I miss you and I love you, Korea's still good, life
and God are still good -- it just sometimes takes some
looking to find the silver lining. Like when your mom
sends you an e-mail about how "it's getting more
difficult to do everyday things -- I had to take a nap
in the middle of a meeting with some church families"
-- but then, it's also my mom where I take my cues,
and where I learned, to look for a silver lining. I
remember her saying "well, you know, surgery's not an
option, but on the bright side, I get to keep my
stomach and eat food with flavour," and "I try to
think positively -- I've lost a lot of weight, but hey
-- I fit into everything in my closet now! And I
don't snore anymore!"

Way to go, mom. Everybody on this list could learn
from you. I'm not sick -- I'm just staying home from
work to watch movies and sleep. No less than Hamlet
himself said, "there is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so", and John Milton agreed that
"The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make
heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven." and, to
paraphrase Proverbs 17:1: "Better a dry crust with
peace and quiet than a house full of feasting", I'll
say, "better a sick mom full of love and joy and
wisdom, than a healthy mom who's the subject of all my
trips to the counsellor" I wouldn't trade you for the
world, Mom.

And to all the rest of you:

well, I like you all, quite a bit, too.

God Bless

Rob

Mom' Cancer Announcement

I don't know if I have room, or heart, to comment more
than what my father wrote. Here's the e-mail I just
recieved.
*****
December 1, 2004
Dear Family,
Thank you all so much for your prayers during this
past week. Jane has had
a great week, filled with hope and expectation. We
have both felt very
much the support and encouragement of all of our
friends and family during
this anxious time.

God has answered all of our prayers, though not in the
way we had
hoped. Our prayers during this time have been that
above all, God would be
glorified by whatever happens. And we are sure that
the events of today too
are in his control and will work together for his
glory and our benefit.

Yes, as you've probably guessed by now, the news today
was not good. Jane
had her surgical examination, and the doctor found
cancer in many different
places. Jane will not be facing the major surgery of
having her stomach removed.

It seems in some ways that we are now back to where we
were last October
after the first CTscan. Cancer seems to have a way of
keeping us on a
roller coaster ride for some time. But now we know
for sure that Jane's
cancer is not operable or curable by human or medical
means.

This does not mean we no longer have hope! Of course,
initially, and
always, our hope is first and foremost in the Lord!
We have every
confidence that our lives are securely held in his
hands, and we know that
he will lead and guide us in ways that may seem
mysterious to us, but that
reveal his wonders at work in and through us. We have
experienced this
already as we have seen how the Lord has used this
time of illness to be a
blessing to many whose lives Jane's life has touched
over the years.

We will continue to strive for fullness of life as
Jane uses the means the
Lord shows us and as we keep our hope fixed on him.
How much time Jane,
or, for that matter, any of us have left is still not
in our hands. And we
pray that God will spare Jane for as long as he needs
her to be a blessing
to others and to reveal his glory though her. We also
pray for strength,
comfort and grace for each member of our family in the
trying times in the months ahead.

Please continue to remember us in your prayers, as you
have been doing.

Please feel free to send this email to others you
think might be interested
and willing to join us in prayer.
God bless you all,
Rudy

Eventful. . . A Little Too Eventful.

So a lot has happened since my last letter. I
remember writing in my journal a few months ago, "what
does it mean that my life has been so peaceful lately
-- does the lack of opposition show that I'm off
course from my life goals, or what?"

Calm before the storm, friends. Calm before the
storm.

To summarize (as if I EVER summarize). . .

1. As I described before, my nephew was diagnosed
with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a particularly nasty
kind of degenerative muscle disease.
2. (This was an awesome part -- a ray of sunshine, if
you will): My brother got engaged to his girlfriend in
Red Deer, Caryn Siler, who's a grate humman beign.
(Sorry about that spelling, folks. A little inside
joke action there.)
3. My grandfather has been in and out of the hospital
more frequently again in the last few months, which
leads to all the worries and concerns I've discussed
in previous letters.

4. (Hold onto something: this is the big one.) My
mother has been diagnosed with stomach cancer --
gastric adenocarcinoma of diffuse (signet ring cell)
type ('cos I know you'd be curious, Dr. Dave). It's
about the nastiest form of stomach cancer out there.
Since the diagnosis, we've found out that it's spread
to her liver as well, which means that surgery is not
an option, and because of the kind of cancer,
chemotherapy won't cure it; they've opted not to use
chemo because it might give her an extra two months,
but only at the cost of making her other remaining six
to twelve months miserable.

You know how serious it is when Dad writes an e-mail
about test results, and spends as much time talking
about heaven as he talks about what the doctor said.

So let's just say it's been a difficult time -- I
wrote after I learned of Matthias' muscular dystrophy
that allowing yourself to love someone always opens
you up to the possibility of loss. This takes that a
little farther again, as this time, the one touched is
my mother, someone I never allowed myself to love --
someone whom I love as naturally as breathing, who's
been part of the bedrock of my life since before I had
a heartbeat.

I found out on Friday the 15th, talked to Mom and Dad
that Saturday morning, and have yet to make the rest
of my rounds on the phone. Deb, sorry I haven't
called you yet. I love you.

The upshot is that my mom and dad have come to Korea
to be here on my birthday, and the week after; once
Mom had the diagnosis, that was the first thing she
wanted to do, and my uncle bought my mom and dad
tickets to Korea, while my aunt got on the phone to
raise funds so that both parents could go. Dad's
church graciously gave him another two weekends off
(they just got back from a trip to Germany to see my
other sister, Rebecca), to send him to Korea as well.
I've been surprised at the suddenness, but it's so
good to see my mom and dad again.

It's been a tearful weekend, and a week of great joy
and great sadness, with joy outweighing the sadness,
but a few main impressions have come out of it:

1. I am surrounded with good people -- the coworkers
really stepped up for me on the Friday I found out
with compassion and understanding, and also with
enough humour to make me feel like things can continue
at least somewhat normally. Matt has been a rock for
me, and Lina (my Korean girlfriend) has proven her
quality and compassion in a really amazing way.

Meanwhile, my church has really banded together in
support. I feel really surrounded by love, care and
prayer (as does my mom). People have helped me find
cots and bedding for my parents, and even picked them
up at the airport when I was at work! Last Sunday,
mom and dad came to my church with me and my
girlfriend, and all three newcomers had a wonderful,
warm welcome, and on Wednesday night we went to a
church family's house for dinner, and on Friday we'll
have a farewell potluck dinner at another's.

2. My mom is surrounded by good people. My mom's
church has answered the news with so much love,
support and generousity, that I want to go back there
and give every single one of them a hug. Christians
like to talk about community and the unity of
Christians, but Mom and Dad's community have really
shown that it's more than words.

3. I've been really amazed by my Mom's reaction -- it
seems like she's handling this whole thing better than
anyone else. She's said that the whole thing so far
has made her realize how many people there are who
care about her. She has a level of peace and trust in
God that helps to keep me from flying off the
handlebars with my own anxiety. My Dad, too, has been
really solid, but please remember them both in your
prayers, and not just my mom. I think Dad is the one
who has the hardest role. Pastors are not usually the
ones who ask for emotional support; usually, they're
the ones who give it, so it's a hard place for him to
be. Mom has the hope of heaven staring her right in
the face -- she'll even tell you that she's not afraid
of going home -- but Dad's the one who will remain,
bereaved, after she's gone.

4. It's so good to be around my parents. It's one of
those instant comfort buttons. When I'm sitting
around a house with my folks, it's not exciting. Most
conversations happen at night around bedtime, and the
rest of the day is mostly quiet, in Korea as in
Canada, but it's just a good atmosphere -- having
their presence here is really nice, and mom and dad
have really been game to try out foods and go places
as far as their stamina will carry them. (Their
stamina's diminished -- Dad by a cold and Mom by her
stomach.) We had a great weekend eating different
kinds of non-spicy Korean foods (mom loved Korean food
-- both parents were real sports about trying new
tastes) and seeing the Han River, looking over Soul's
skyline from the tallest building in Korea's, walking
through a palace, buying Korean-style clothes in the
traditional market (that was my thanks-for-coming-out
gift for my parents), and meeting my church family.
We spent the whole weekend with Lina, my girlfriend,
and she really got along well with Mom. She even came
to church with us on sunday and really enjoyed meeting
the people who've been helping her care for me these
few months.

My mom loves people so easily that it makes people
love her, too. Lina really loved meeting my folks. I
loved seeing her be accepted and loved by them. Most
of the weekend, Lina walked around with my mom,
holding her hand, and she sent me a message (hopefully
teasing) that she misses my mom more than she misses
me when she can't see us during the week.

In other news, I went to Japan during the five day
weekend that was Korean thanksgiving. It was really
interesting to see how two countries can be so similar
in some ways and so different in others -- just a
different feel on the streets, a different aesthetic,
a different (much lower) noise level. A different
twinge in the shapes of faces and eyes and noses, a
different fashion sense -- it was interesting going
back to knowing NONE of the language, after reaching a
point where I can survive fairly well in Korea with my
Korean.

They have better urban planning, though. Quieter and
more peaceful -- but sometimes oppressively quiet.
Expensive. Really expensive. We spent the whole time
visiting and staying with friends Matt had made while
travelling in Cambodia and Thailand, which was easily
the best way to encounter a new country -- we didn't
see the touristy spots, but I think we got a real feel
for the people and the country. One night, a friend's
father actually took the day off work so that he could
buy ingredients, and then he (a sushi chef), prepared
sushi for us like you wouldn't believe. It didn't
stop coming, and there were so many different tastes
and textures. He spoke barely any English -- "You
like me sushi. I happy," but we had a great time, and
Matt's friend Kuru translated. Matt got out Kuru's
guitar, and sang a song by a Canadian folk singer
named Stan Rogers, and he and I sang a song we've done
together a few times, with harmonies. Then Kuru's
father said, in Japanese, "I'm not a good singer, but
you shared Canadian songs with us, so I want to sing a
Japanese song to you."

The man -- my father's age, and unable to speak
directly to us -- sang a song to us, and opened a part
of his heart, in the ragged voice of a man unfamiliar
with singing. It was one of those moments of
understanding that can't quite be conveyed. Then he
sang a second song, called "Sukiyaki" which some of
you might recognize; it was a hit song in the 1960s in
America, and a version, translated into English, got a
lot of radio play in the mid nineties, enough that I
knew the words. I sang the song back to Kuru's father
in English, and he was totally amazed and surprised.

All this to say I had some really cool connections,
and made some friends that I hope I will see and hear
from again.

Japan was great. Expensive, and too many coins
(everything up to 500 yen ($5 equivalent) was a coin
-- start lobbying NOT to get a $5 coin in Canada. So
many coins is just maddening), but beautiful in a way
that Korea isn't, because Korea was so busy trying to
grow faster that they didn't take as much planning or
aesthetics into account. Tokyo is a very carefully,
thoughtfully, and beautifully designed city. I
enjoyed that part a lot.

But, coming back to Korea has only reminded me how
much I love Korea. Koreans are warm and expressive in
a way Japanese aren't; just seeing a mother give her
daughter a hug on a street corner here was something I
didn't/wouldn't see in Japan. It's quiet and peaceful
there, but Korea is just plain fun, and more exciting.

So I loved Japan, but it reminded me how much I love
Korea in the same stroke. I'm glad I went to Japan
though.

The students, as always, are hilarious -- one girl,
because she didn't know the word "garlic" when I told
her about eating garlic spaghetti, immediately accused
me of eating "garbage spaghetti", and you know you're
with kids when you hear somebody singing classical
music with weird voices, culminating in one of my boys
doing Beethoven's piano piece "Fur Elise" in a roaring
monster voice -- his voice and the melody being about
as opposite as a message and its mode can be.

Work has been a soap-opera involving backtalking,
gossip, miscommunications, accusations, couples on the
rocks, supervisors who feel "uncomfortable" talking to
the people they supervise, and directors who talk to
everyone else on staff instead of the one with whom
they have a problem. It's been interesting. I'm
getting along better with the staff these days, and a
few of the other wrinkles (a co-worker's constant
complaining, and a few other kinks) are getting worked
out -- to the extent that I'm enjoying the staff room
more that I have. . . since my last workplace, really.
The mix of personalities is just starting to mellow
and gel.

At my church now, I'm teaching Sunday School for the
younger kids -- four Koreans with low degrees of
English, and two native English speakers from South
Africa (one of whom has on occasion corrected details
in my stories, and has also made requests: "Why don't
you tell us about David and Goliath?" I have a man
who's volunteered to help me with interpretation when
I need it, but they want me to do most of the sunday
school in English -- English Sunday School would be
quite a draw for a certain kind of parent to bring
their kid to our church.

I'm going back to Canada for Christmas to be with my
family. I will be spending most of that time with
family, though -- this just seems to be a Christmas to
be home. I'm glad about that -- the jetlag will be a
stinker, but having just had my parents in Korea, and
remembering what it's like to be around the family,
there's no place I'd rather be.

Autumn in Korea is the most beautiful time of year --
Mom and Dad managed to come at the perfect time; the
two best times are during cherry blossom season in
April, and autumn leaves week in October, and Mom and
Dad hit the Autumn leaves square on the nose. It's
light jacket weather with cold evenings, cool enough
to enjoy a warm drink for a little more than just the
taste. I managed to bring them around, thanks to the
Seoul City Tour Bus, to a lot of different areas of
Seoul, and they saw one of the major markets, some old
stuff (palaces and a folk village) some pretty stuff
(some walking trails near my place and the Han River
at night on a cruise), and some fun stuff (middle-aged
ladies dancing along with the stage shows at the
sauna, kids staring). We wore our Korean style
clothes around a number of times (especially mom), and
it was amazing how many smiles and approving looks we
got from Koreans (especially older ones). Ask me to
show you my outfit when you see me next.

Having Mom here's been an interesting perspective --
she has a remarkable peace about her cancer, and
seeing her courage, and her trust in God, has really
given me a lot more peace about the whole matter as
well. It's started a lot of conversations with my
friends about her faith and her trust in God, as well
as the hope of heaven, and helped a lot of my friends
to understand what I believe. On the bus home from
the airport to drop my Mom and Dad off, I explained to
the now, retroactively renamed for privacy, Exgirlfriendoseyo, my girlfriend, what that hope of Heaven means
for my family, and even my Buddhist-raised girlfriend
agreed that the idea of going to heaven to be with a
creator who knows and loves you sounds more pleasant
than ceasing to exist and eventually having your
memory die as well, only to reincarnate and go through
the grinding-wheel of a flawed world where sorrow is a
necessary counterpoint to joy, again. Maybe the best
perspective I've heard yet -- and Mom, sorry for
stealing your story -- was from a conversation my mom
told me about having with my nephew Matthias, the
five-year old who's been diagnosed with Duchenne
Muscular Dystrophy and who isn't expected to live past
age 25.

Matthias asked my mom,

-Oma, is it true you have cancer?
-Yes, it is.
-Why do you have cancer?
-I don't know why. Only God knows why.
-So you might die, right?
-Yes, I might die. And then your mom and dad, and
your Opa (Opa and Oma are the dutch words for
grandfather and grandmother), and your uncles and
aunts will be very sad.
-But I won't be sad if you die, Oma.
-Why not, Matthias?
-Because then you will go to heaven and be with Jesus,
and one day I will go there too, and then God will
give us bodies that don't have a problem.
-That's true. And in Heaven, we can praise God
forever.
-But Oma, we praise him already!

Way to go Matthias. I'll be so glad to see you one
day in a body without a problem.

If I haven't learned anything else from such a trying
time, I've learned how deep my own roots go in the
Church -- to my church, my bible, and my Lord were the
first places I went (along with my best friends, in
Korea and in Canada) when I heard the news, and that's
where I've found the most peace. I apologise to any
readers of this letter -- some of you aren't
churchgoers and aren't down with the things that have
brought me comfort -- who might feel preached at by
all the "religiousity" of this letter, and I hope I
didn't beat you over the head, but if you take nothing
else from all this God talk, at read it and know that
you've learned something about your friend Rob and
what things, deep down, form the bedrock of his
character and his family. It's steadied me in this
time, and whether you believe it or not
philosophically, it's a part of my story personally,
so I guess it was bound to find its way into these
letters eventually.

To everyone on this list: thanks for being an
important enough part of my life, in whatever respect,
that I felt like you ought to be part of this news and
these events in my life. I'm glad to be so surrounded
by people who know, care for, and understand me in all
the different ways you do.

So thanks again for your care, prayers, and concern.
I'm glad to know you all, and to have you around at a
time like this.

Much love

Rob

August 26th 2004

OK.

It being fully two months since I've sent one of these
out, and those two months being quite eventful and
mostly excellent . . . it's time for some rob-style
catching up. (X-style is a totally acceptable
Konglish term -- if I want my hair cut like Justin
Timberlake, I just say "Josteen Teembohraikeuh style"
at the barber's and they'll figure it out.

In the meantime. . .

My general rule of thumb for surviving in Korea
without going off your rocker is to keep in mind the
rule of twos: every new endeavour takes two attempts
to get it, and every simple, mundane task takes twice
as long as it would in Canada, because of language
issues, etc.. However, something strange has
happened. Matthew, the new co-worker I told you about
in the last e-mail (who's no longer a new co-worker,
but an established co-worker), and I have some weird
knack about us (Mattie would call it good karma or
somesuch), whereby the rule of twos doesn't apply to
us. Somehow we do things together effortlessly.
(Knock on wood.)

During the last week of July, I had my summer
vacation. We decided to set out and climb a mountain
-- Jiri mountain, which many Koreans will tell you is
the most beautiful mountain on mainland Korea. We
managed to find bus tickets, rooms, places to sleep,
food, transit to odd, random bus terminals, find a
movie theatre or a nightclub in a strange city, all
with very little trouble.

Matthew has been hiking since he was six. I've been
hiking since I was twenty four. We managed, through
studying a map, to find the route up the mountain that
took less time, but, according to everyone we
consulted, was the hardest trail on the whole
mountain. I was carrying my backpack, and the routine
was this: Matthew hikes for twenty minutes, sits down
and waits ten minutes for me to catch up; I catch up,
he sits five minutes with me while I catch my breath,
bluster and whine, and then takes off again. Then, as
if to add insult to injury, about three quarters up
the mountain, when I was ready to collapse (this climb
was HARD, and I'm not exactly a tiger or an athlete),
he grabbed my bag, and carried it the rest of the way
to our destination, along with his own. It was quite
an experience -- somehow I discovered not just a
second or third wind, but a sixteenth wind somewhere
in me that I didn't know existed. The view was
amazing, and in two days we hiked a mountain that
takes most people four days. After the muscle
soreness subsided, I felt like a king, and that first
sauna after the mountain was one of the greatest
things I've ever felt.

Somehow everything went perfectly on summer vacation
-- from climbing the mountain to finding our way
around Kwangju, the city in southern Korea where we
played tourist, to the people we met. On the Saturday
before Jiri mountain, Matthew and I were in a
traditional Korean market; Matthew was going to show
me his favourite tea/incense shop, where they sell
incense made from a 600 year old recipe that's
apparently so good for you that it does everything
except raise your children. While in that shop,
Matthew mentioned to the really sweet, cute sales lady
that he burns the incense during his Yoga workouts.
She said "Oh! I study Yoga!" Matthew mentioned that
he also teaches Yoga, and she asked for his number; he
said, "We should get together some time," and she
said, "OK, but is it alright if I bring my twin
sister?" At this point Matthew and I exchanged a
glance that said, almost verbatim, "does life even GET
any better than this, or should we just both die now?"
and Matthew kept his composure enough to say "Yes."

The next Saturday (after Jiri mountain), we had dinner
with the twins, and it was one of the most enjoyable
dates I've ever been on.

And that whole story is to tell you that the reason my
e-mailing has trailed off is because I'm spending
about an hour every night now talking to a certain
twin on the phone. (As is Matthew with her sister.)
It's currently in that really fun "getting to know
each other, can't spend enough time with each other"
stage, but so far the outlook seems good. Her name has been changed to Exgirlfriendoseyo, and her English name (that I chose for
her) is Angelina Summer, or Lina. Feel free to
inquire about her if you ever want to read an e-mail
of me gushing frantically, even tiresomely, about how
wonderful it is to be alive. (Just ask Melissa --
she's had one already.)

And don't get too excited yet either -- we've known
each other for just over a month so far, so things are
still very early and tentative, but it's been a lot of
fun getting to know her, and I frankly never expected
I'd be in any kind of close relationship with a Korean
girl -- I'd always figured the cultural differences
were just too great to bother. But I bother now.

One of my favourite students just left the school; she
was a kindergarten student, one of the ones I saw
every day, and she was the funniest little sweetheart;
she had hugs for me every day, and a quick, ready
laugh. On the other hand, one of the boys who left in
June is back from Toronto, and he's as sweet as ever.

But he's not the one I want to tell you about either.
It's happened again -- last year, it was a little girl
named Serina, whose smile always came out when I came
to class, and who wrote me cards and letters telling
me she loved me. This year, it's Jina. She's stolen
my heart outright. She just moved to Korea recently
-- before Korea, she lived in Rochester, Minnesota,
where, naturally, she'd learned perfect English. She
has this funny middle American accent in the middle of
a bunch of Korean accents, she happens to have a
perfectly internalized sense for English grammar.
Really, there's nothing I can teach her except how to
do a monkey dance or tell a story about a
shape-changing, flying hippo with a straight face.

Here's the thing, though: she doesn't speak Korean.
She's moved to a country where the kids her age
haven't gone to school long enough to speak English,
and she can't speak their language. Today we were
talking about trying new things, and I asked her if
she'd been scared when she moved to Korea (two months
ago). She said she was, and I asked her if she liked
Korea better now than before. "Yeah."

Then I made the mistake: "Have you made some friends
now, so that you feel better?"

"No. Not really." She said it with a brave face --
not quite slopping over with a child's optimism, but
at least something better than bald stoicism -- and I
shifted the conversation quickly, before she could
start getting more homesick than I'd probably already
thoughtlessly made her.

After class, the kids were lining up to go outside and
catch their busses, and she was at the back of the
line (where she usually goes), and I picked her up and
gave her a hug. I said, "Jina, I hope you find lots
of friends in Korea."

Then she said "Me too," into my shoulder with a
forlorn voice that no child her age should ever need
to use -- unless it's about something silly like
"Hyongeun got pistachio nut ice cream and I wanted it
too, but I'd already asked for mango-strawberry." --
and with those two words she carried my heart away and
hid it somewhere in the dimple on her left cheek.

I told her I'd be her friend, and she said she wanted
to come to my house, and hugged me a hug with a little
too much loneliness and need in it.

Fortunately, her Korean teacher then shouted, "Jina,
let's go!" before I could burst into tears right then
and there, but all that's to say I've fallen in love
-- or at least fallen in compassion -- with another of
my kids, and I hope she'll be OK, and I wish there was
something I could do to help her adjust, but I can't
quite clone myself into a six year old who can play
with her, and I don't know if a twenty-four-year-old
goofball buddy is really what she needs to feel like
she can make it here in Korea. Seeing Jina go through
that rips the band-aid off my own homesick sores, but
I can handle myself; I'm holding out. I know where to
go to find Anglophones my age. I just hope she'll be
happy here.

In other news, I had a phone call from my mom and dad
in which mom said something along these lines, in her
most allusive voice:

"So, Rob, have you talked to Dan . . . lately?"
"Not really. I got an e-mail a few weeks ago."
"Hmm. You. . . might want to . . . call him. He may
have some (significantly said,) NEWS for you."

of course, by now there was no doubt he had news, nor
what its nature was, given the status of his courtship
with his girlfriend Caryn, so by the time I talked to
Dan the next Saturday, I'd guessed that. . . he's
ENGAGED (sorry to those of you for whom this is a
repeat.) He asked me to be his best man last
Saturday, and I said "of course." The date's July 2.

So I've decided I'm going to try and extend my
contract with this school until the end of May, so
that I can spend June in Red Deer with my main man,
and then probably spend part of the summer travelling
before buckling down on the rest of my life, or at
least the next step.

In health news, please continue to pray for my
grandfather, and pray also for my mother; if you
e-mail me, I'll tell you more details, but enough of
you who receive this update already know about them
that I'm not going to get into detail on it. But pray
-- if you're into that kind of thing.

Student quotes: "You are the funnily funnily funnily
Rob teacher." (from Daniel).

"I really liked going to the mountain. I have lots of
good mammaries."

"I want a dog. I'll buy a puddle."

"Why do you tell crazy stories like that, teacher?"
"I'm just playing with you."
"We're not toys, teacher."

"Three stickers if you can name the four Beatles."
"John."
"Good. There were three more. Any guesses?"
"Matthew, Mark, Luke?"

Penmanship error: My house is cozy became "My house is
oozy"

Remembered the spelling, forgot the meaning: "My
summer vacation is going to be superficial!"

A girl on the subway looks at the portrait of WB Yeats
on the cover of my Yeats poetry collection and says
"Harry Potter!"

A three year old marched up to my table at dinner the
other night (his parents had put him up to it). I
expected him to do something weird or hilarious like
take some food or start crying, or jump up and down
and run back and bury his face in his mom's neck.
Instead, calmly and properly as an ambassador, he
stuck out his right hand and waited for me to shake
it. In my wonderment, I could barely finish my meal.

Anyway, there are some of the bones, and some of the
trimmings, of my time. It's been sticky hot and work
has started to get tiring (especially the afternoon
business), but it just cooled down this week finally,
and I'm doing OK.

I need to wrap this up now, before the letter reaches
critical mass and implodes, so go in peace and
happiness, and bless you all.

Love always:
Rob Ouwehand

May 2004.

My jacket smells like saltwater.

A long long time ago (for those who don't already know), my ancestors (on my father's side) were fishermen; many Ouwehand fishermen still live in the village Katwijk (the home of the original Ouwehand) even now. My uncle owns a boat, my dad wishes he did, and I'm never happier than standing on the deck of a boat, or piddling around a lake somewhere in a canoe. Lacking these, even wet grass on bare feet at least pleases me a little.

But last weekend I went on a ferry tour of Baekdo a remote island off the southern coast of Korea, with a group of forty other foreigners. This was WONDERFUL. It was a quiet town of 1200, suddenly filled up with a bunch of foreigners eager to have fun and excited to be on vacation (it was a three day weekend). So our excitement was reflected by their excitement and curiosity at having us, and basically, we spent the whole weekend feeling like celebrities or something. Kids followed me to the pier where I went fishing, asking me questions I couldn't understand, much less answer (though I made funny faces, and that seemed to suit them fine). I think they thought my name was Canada, until my friend called me crazy for making funny faces, and then they thought my name was crazy.

(No jokes about that later, please.)

So along with the language guesswork and funny communication attempts by some cute kids (who may have never seen a foreigner before; whitey doesn't often visit Gumundo or Baekdo), I had a gorgeous weekend in the fresh air. Korea's ocean is really beautiful -- the cold early mornings and ocean air make you feel alive, and the islands off the south of Korea, because of whatever geological quirk formed them, are often smoothed, as if they are very old, but very tall -- like the long canine teeth of a dog sticking up out of the ocean. They would be visitable, but only if you could put rock climbing gear on over your scuba gear. And there at the top are those grey-green scrub plants that sprout in such grey and green places, and the water sprays up on your face, causing what I can only call the ocean squint -- I don't think I squint quite the same way in any other place -- and later in the evening I lick the corner of my lip and taste salt from the seawater that dried onto my face.

I love the sea. If I liked seafood as much as I love the sea, I might end up in some port village, or as a fisherman myself. (Unfortunately, I don't have the patience for picking out bones.)

During the weekend, I met a girl who is, as JD Salinger once said, "A verbal stunt pilot" -- the kind of person who rewrites song lyrics to fit inside jokes. Her name was Edisa, and she was the first black woman I've spent time with in Korea (I've seen some, but there aren't many here; Korea remains surprisingly racist toward Africans and their descendants. Korea's a very appearance-oriented culture, and employers ask you to include a photo with your application is so they can avoid people who are ugly, overweight, overage, or coloured "wrong" (too dark). Sometimes schools won't even hire people with Asian background because it's not as "other" as having white teachers.) She was good with a comeback, and willing to let me talk out my random thoughts (of which I've been having many). Together, we came up with the dumbest idea for a restaurant ever. Worse than "so I can say I have", a place that sells all those foods you'd only eat on a dare, like prairie oysters, haggis and blood pancakes. How about this (isn't this ghastly?) -- "Poachers" - a restaurant specializing in dishes made from endangered species. The slogan (of course) is "Good to the last one!"


But before I can really set into this story, we need a bit of cultural background.

The older folks in Korea are called Ajumma (mature woman) and Ajashi (mature man). Ajumma can apply to any Korean woman over 30, and any man over 20, depending on who's addressing him/her. By the mid-fifties, because they've "paid their dues," I guess, some behave a little less politely than most other Koreans, and care a little less about the general courtesies that are either the grease that keeps the wheels of society turning, or the B-S- that keeps people from acting out who they really are.

Ajumma, especially, is also a personality type, and the personality connotations are not too positive. Unlike older ladies (50 and up) in North America (pardon my generalizations here), ajumma is the one most likely to shove you as she dives for a seat on the subway; she's the one most likely to be rude to you in a restaurant, to touch your white skin, poke your curly hair, grab your love handles (out of sheer curiousity -- look at how big those cheese-smelling foreigners get!), comment that you're writing in your journal with the wrong hand (I'm a lefty), and you'll sometimes do what they say, however unnecessary, just so they'll leave you alone. This is the impression many foreigners get of Korean ajummas. Some of us carry a downright bitterness and resentment of the mature set.

Here's a video showing how the mature set is often viewed here in Korea. Pay attention to the music style, and the over-the-top rudeness of the older folks.



Ajashis have a similar reputation; they, and young men, can be the harshest judges toward foreigners. The most negative image of an ajushi is a drunken, middle-aged man swearing at the top of his lungs, possibly starting fights with his belligerent talk, hacking up loogies and spitting in the street, ogling girls, and maybe propositioning blonde westerners by asking them if they're Russian (blonde Russians are often recruited to work in the profitable prostitution industry here). Here's a reflection on that kind of ajashi, from someone who's writes about Korea much better than me: just to show I'm not just blindly generalizing or being unfair.

Yeah, this is the most negative stereotype, but (I've discovered) it becomes really easy to judge people when you can't communicate with them and, by communicating, prove such judgements wrong. Judging goes both ways, let's not forget; once a group of ajashi ruined my day (and most of my week) by arguing over who had to sit next to the big-nose (me) on the subway car; one ultimately chose the other end of the car, away from his friends, over sitting by the stinky honky. That hurt, so I can understand how easy it would be to dismiss ajashis in return.

Anyway, that's the background; sorry for so much explanation. Now the tour group was on a ferry, heading out to Baekdo, the scenic islands, and foreigners were scattered around the rear section of the ferry, so that a few ajumma and ajashi had to sit beside foreigners. One ajumma took it upon herself to propose a series of seat trades that would clump all the foreigners together in the middle section of the seats. (I also noticed that one of the LEAST desirable seats was next to the African-American woman I mentioned earlier;) I started to wonder whether this wasn't a racially motivated attempt at micro-segregation. Then, just as she was getting more emphatic (she put her hand on my arm and rocked me sideways, as if to roll me out of my seat), and I was getting quite annoyed, this music came on over the speakers. It was ajumma music; I can't even describe it to you except that if you took the sample music on an average three keyboards/synthesizers, played them at the same time as a karaoke song track, faster, to a disco beat, and then added shrill Korean vocals with echo effects, you might have something a little quieter. It haunts the foreigners; we just can't understand it, verbally, musically, OR culturally, but somehow the mature folks in Korea LOVE it.

Here's an (inexplicable) sample.



So that kind of music comes on, and suddenly, this same Ajumma who was starting to annoy most of us is in the aisle, DANCING! Not only that, she pulls her neighbour up to dance with her, and then, gets one of the foreigners up there with her, too! The rest of the ferry ride was one long dance party, with fifty and sixtysomething Korean men and women doing silly dances (point your fingers and shake your shoulders and knees kind of stuff) with a bunch of twenty and thirtysomething North American (and Irish) English teachers dancing along. Add into this the hilarity of the bad music and the fact we're boogieing with people our parents' or grandparents' ages, and the TERRIBLE dancing ('cause there's no other way to dance to music like that except badly), and mix in the excitement of the fact NOBODY in the room had EVER seen anything even remotely as odd and unexpected as white kids dancing with old Asians to terrible music on a scenic boat tour, and it was enough to make me smile for a week.

And wow, those ajumma are energetic! The lady who started it all hauled just about every single foreigner out of their seat for at least a little while. My friend took a lot of photos with her digital camera; I hope I can send a few along to you.

And the best part is this: now, next time a drunken ajashi sits next to me smelling of Korean alcohol and dried squid snacks, and brays about George Bush and growls, "Yankee go home", or an ajumma behind me in line pushes, even though I have nowhere to go and can't get HER on the bus any faster by pushing the people ahead of ME (happens), or butts ahead in line (ALL the time), instead of silently resenting them, I can smile, because hey, I've seen the other side of that coin, and it's pretty fun.

So it was a perspective I think I needed.

(ever notice how if you look at the cut on one five-year-old's hand, suddenly everyone has a scrape to show you? Or if you wake one up with a short tickle, suddenly you have seven sleeping kids? Kindergarten's so much fun. It's really fascinating dealing with kids that age.)

There's this funny quirk in speaking Korean to Koreans; when one gets into a taxi or in most other situations, one says a few Korean phrases (most often something like "how much is it?" "I'll have two, please, to go" or "take me to the Hongdai district, please" and then, the Korean will answer. Conversations with Koreans always involve a lot of context guessing, body-language reading and general "usually they say this next" experience, but after a foreigner shows that they speak a little Korean, Koreans always answer with one of two things:

"Do you speak Korean."
or
"Your Korean is very good."

Both phrases involve the phrase "hangug-mal" (literally, Korea speak), but it's difficult (other than by learning more of the language) to read which of the two phrases the Korean is saying, so one invariably guesses wrong, and the conversation either goes

"Do you speak Korean?"
"Thank you."

or

"Your Korean is very good."
"Only a very little bit."


Anyway, I'm enjoying my school, mostly; a few people are a little more curt and blunt than I'm used to dealing with (which requires more sensitivity and grace than I sometimes have to spare after telling a class to shush a hundred times in forty minutes.) I've been tired lately, so I think my students are getting to me more than they normally do. My patience reserves are low, as is my annoyance threshhold. I'll be OK once I kick this long-running, low-grade cold, and sleep some, I'm sure.

I had a student ask if, at the end of the month, if all the students in the class did all their homework, we could do something special -- I said "What kind of special thing?" "Go into the playroom" (Our school has play room equipment like in a MacDonalds for the preschool kids). "You can't do that," I say, "you're too big to play on that."

"Teacher, not to play on it -- just to break stuff." I howled. Absolutely howled.

Seen on the spelling section of a multiple choice test:

"Canada's national sport is _______"
A: ********* B: **********
C: ********* D: Hokey.

The preschool students also laugh hysterically every time they see me blink. I'm enjoying work, though I find myself staying late a little more often than I think I'd prefer. (though that's as much my choice as anyone else's; I didn't realize how long I was staying at school until I commented to my boss, who looked exhausted, "It's been a long day for you -- you've been at school almost since I got here this morning!")


Yesterday I went out with my friend Colleen (the one I met in the snowstorm of my last e-mail). She really surprised me by asking me what I was angling for in our friendship. After nearly choking on an apple slice, I took about a full minute to compose my thoughts (I realize how unfair such long silences are to my friends when they ask such loaded questions -- a sixty second pause allows people who ask me important questions just enough time to imagine I'm about to give the worst possible answer, but that's how I am, so deal with it. I like to choose my words on touchy topics.)

But fortunately what could have been a can of worms (had we had different ideas about the friendship) was instead a simple, "I enjoy being your friend and I'm very content to leave it at that."

Such topics, even when they are cleanly defused, are still risky, and feelings can be hurt accidentally by wording something wrong, or seeming too relieved (or not relieved enough) that the other isn't interested.


Take care, all.

Much love and ocean sprays on all your faces (hopefully the real thing, and not just the aftershave flavour). Thanks for reading this whole long thing; I hope it was worth the time for you, and worth the typing for me.

robouwehand