The Gift

Christmas in Korea is celebrated a little bit differently than other parts of the world. In Korea, Christmas is a couple holiday much like Valentine's Day. So instead of gathering with family, Koreans usually go on dates on Christmas. This concept is still very strange to me. And I can't wrap my head around not having Christmas traditions with your family.

 My family has some spectacular Christmas traditions. And although they've changed over the years, and even some traditions have stopped over time, I'm really grateful that I have those memories and that, for me, Christmas is a happy time.

This year, being alone and all for Christmas, I wanted to create a personal tradition that I could also share with the people I love so we could still be together for Christmas. So this year for Christmas, I'm reading the four gospels. When I realized that my Christmas celebrations this year would be very stripped down, and probably without any fanfare or pageantry, I knew that the best thing to do would be to focus on the life of Christ. That's what Christmas is supposed to be all about right? So family, friends, and anyone else, please join me! If you read about 10 pages or for 30 minutes a day, you should be able to finish before Christmas.

I'm not a perfect person. I struggle with the baser tendencies of humankind just like everyone else. But lately, I've had this desire to do a little better, and try a little harder. It has only been a few days, but reading about the life of Christ has already helped me to do that. In the quiet moments of study in the mornings, I've read about what it means to truly live your religion. And I would love to hear what my friends and family have to say about the same chapters. So, what do you say? Are you in?

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On Hope

I spent the last hour or so going over some things I had written years ago. And like I often do these days, I lamented the old me. But instead of moping, I decided to do something about it. I decided to sit at the keyboard and write; to transcribe thoughts into words and sentences as I listen to the familiar clatter of the keys beneath my finger tips. I don't know if there's any more productive and comforting sound for a writer than the tapping of keys.

I don't know what happened to make me stop writing. But I did, and I'm so out of practice that I'm not sure if I can even call myself a writer anymore.

But back to these thoughts that need transcribing. One of my Korean friends is leaving for the army tomorrow and I'm unreasonably upset about it. It took me a little while to figure out why, but I think the reason is I know he's the first of many goodbyes I'll be saying over the next few months. The contract for my job ends in February. I've thought about extending. And I likely will, but the past eight months have flown by so fast, I feel like I'm already clenching tightly to the figurative sands of time in my fists, but it's slipping away without my being able to help it. And the tighter I clench, the more quickly it slips away.

I think the reason time is passing so quickly is because I've figured out what I want to do next. But I'm scared that it's such a far-fetched idea that I won't be able to accomplish it. I'm so afraid of failing. I don't even want to jinx it by talking about it out loud. So this idea about my future, this place I want to move to next, I've only mentioned it to a couple close friends. Except for last night when I finally talked about it in a more casual conversation. And for the first time I thought, "Hey, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can take the GRE in a month, apply for grad school, and get into the university I've thought about almost every hour for the past two weeks.... Maybe I can start writing again. Maybe I'll feel inspired again."

I don't know if it will happen, this crazy dream of mine that seems so impossible. But as I transcribe these thoughts into words and sentences, I've realized why the sound of keys tapping sounds so comforting to me; it's the sound of hope.

A Happy Anniversary Indeed

Three years ago my life changed in ways I never could have imagined. So while most people look to the New Year as a time for self-reflection and evaluation, that time, for me, has become October. I think about where I was three years ago, two years ago, one year ago. What was I doing? How did my body feel? What have I learned? Have I progressed?

For those of you who don't know the story, I'll summarize. Three years ago, I was in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. I was learning Korean, and I was learning how to teach. I was having the most incredible experience of my life. And then suddenly, I needed hip surgery. And then that hip surgery led to an infection, which led to an extended hospital stay, which led to a lot of other things that would take years to re-tell.

It's so outrageous to think that something as small as a few millimeters of misplaced bone in my hip could change my life so drastically. But it has. Some days that change is good (as explained here and here). But some days that change is not so good. I still have days wondering what could have been. I still have days of regret and anger when I can't do the things I used to do at the speed I would like. But each day is all a matter of perspective. Every day of pain is a question (click this link to read one of the best sermons I've ever read on the subject). Will I remember how surgery brought me closer to God? Or will I distance myself from Him? Will I remember how it humbled me and helped me turn to others for help? Or will I remember how helpless I felt? Will I remember to be grateful for this body of mine and the second chance I got? Or will I hate my body for all the things it can't do anymore, for the way it looks now?

Everything is a matter of choice.

I still have bad days sometimes; days where there's a click and a hitch in my step. If I walk too quickly or too much, I'll spend the rest of the day hobbling around like the grandma I think I've always been. And even though sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't gone through all of that, on this the third anniversary of my hip, I would never take any of it back. I learned too much. I grew too much. And I've been led on this amazing journey back to a place that I love very much.

So cheer's to you hip! Now let's go climb a mountain together or something!

For My Sister, In which I douse myself with cold water

Today I skyped with my little sister. She's 11 now, and getting all sorts of chatty and teenager like. While the phone was being passed around from person to person, she told me how I'm the subject of her school project on the person she admires the most. Then she talked more about how she googled my name to find pictures of me on the internet (and a lot came up.... not terrifying at all). Then in a brief moment before the phone got passed to someone else, she asked, "So what's feminism anyway?" I didn't get the chance to answer, but in it's simplest definition (according to dictionary.com) feminism is "the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men." So basically Rach, feminism is making sure women have the same rights that men do in all aspects of life. And I support that. What gets messy, I think, is that not all feminists have the same definition of equality. There are a lot of feminists, for example, that don't like religion because they think it makes women weaker. But I disagree. I like my religion. I find it empowering.

Now what does this have to do with me dumping a bucket of cold water on my head? Great question. While I admire the awareness the whole campaign has raised for ALS, I haven't been the biggest fan. So when my sister nominated me, I was not interested in doing it.

But here is my younger sister, participating in something good, raising money and awareness for a cause. So because she asked me to, I did it. I want her to know she has a voice, that she has the power to participate in movements. I want her to know that when she speaks, she should expect people to listen. Not in spite of the fact that she's a lively, intelligent, 11 year old girl, but because of it.

On a closing note, rather than donate money to the ALS foundation, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in the past month, I'm donating some money to a different organization. http://www.kiva.org/ is a website that helps coordinate micro-loans to people across the world who want to start a business and support themselves. It's one of the organizations highlighted in one of my favorite books Half the Sky.

And instead of nominating specific people, I'm just going to challenge everyone to go out and do something good today; donate money to a charity that means something to you, bake cookies for someone who needs them, make a child feel like they're being listened to. I don't care. Just do something good.

Poison & Wine

Since I read this article last week, I've only been playing Civil War songs on a continuous loop. Now let's all take a moment to listen to my favorite song of theirs and mourn the band that got me through my great break up of 2011.

On Beauty

Yesterday I was at lunch with the sister missionaries, and since both of the sisters are Koreans who went to BYU and BYU-H respectively, we began talking about mutual acquaintances. There was one guy we started talking about, and as just as an aside, I said, "Oh man, he is so handsome!" The new sister missionary started protesting immediately.

"Him!?" she said, "No way!"

"YES!" I answered. "He looks like a taller Taeyang." I didn't know how to emphasize this more.  But she insisted his skin is too dark and kept giving me looks like this.

Then Sister Son prompted me to tell a story I had told her a few weeks ago about guy I met, who I immediately dubbed, "The most beautiful man alive." So I told the story about this guy, who I had deemed too beautiful to make direct eye contact with, let alone actually speak to. And then to satiate the curiosity of Sister Choi and Oh Kyoung Mi, I showed them a picture of aforementioned "most beautiful man alive."

Again, Sister Choi was SHOCKED. "He's the most handsome man you've ever seen in your life?" Her eyes were telling me I really needed to get out more. I think she thought I'd been living under a rock for the past 25 years of my life. I tried to explain that the picture didn't do him justice, and that if she saw him in person, she'd understand. Oh Kyoung Mi seemed to offer the same sentiment as Sister Choi (that I needed to get out more), while Sister Son just laughed at the whole thing.

So this type of thing happens to me pretty often. I swear I see a literal breathing, moving statue of Adonis himself, and Korean girls are always like

Although funny, I think these anecdotes are pretty illustrative of beauty differences in Western and Korean culture. I've had more than one student tell me they wished their skin was whiter, their face smaller, their eyes bigger, etc. etc. They want to look more liked the idealized Western girls they see in movies. So you can imagine their shock when I tell them that the majority of guys I knew in high school liked dating Asian girls, or when I tell them that darker skin is actually more valued in America.

Beauty in Korea is absolutely fascinating to me. Appearance matters so much to people here, as it does in America. But I think the one glaring difference is that while Americans try not to acknowledge that beauty matters, Koreans do. So people tend to comment on your appearance more than they would in America. I've been here for six months, and I think I've been called pretty more in these six months than I have in the entire 25 years of my life combined. (Which, honestly, just makes me uncomfortable since I've never been attractive by western standards. And the compliments just make me conscious of the fact that people are looking at me and that I look different. So of course I don't believe it and then my face usually turns red and I change the subject as quickly as possible)

But not only is appearance important for women, it's important for men as well. It throws all the beauty and gender constructs I learned in my Women Studies classes completely out of the window. For example, you see just as many male celebrities endorsing skin products here as you do female celebrities. When people ask me the biggest difference between American men and Korean men, I tell them American men use absolutely no skin products. Their reactions are priceless.

I guess this is all just to say one more thing I've learned since being here--Beauty is only geographically deep. So don't worry about what you see when you look in the mirror. You could move halfway around the world and become a model.

A Six Month Assessment

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it." Daisy Buchanan, The Great Gatsby

For almost the entire month of July, I anxiously waited for the day in August when I could celebrate my sixth month mark in Korea. But then somehow in the first week of August, I completely forgot that I was going to write this grand soliloquy of a blog post (I suppose all blog posts are soliloquies though aren't they?) And so now I've been in Korea six months and two weeks this go around and here are some things I've learned.

1) I absolutely detest living alone. After living with roommates for the past five years at BYU, the idea of living alone was a dream. Don't get me wrong, there are perks; walking around in your underwear, peeing with the bathroom door open, doing dishes whenever you want (which in my case is usually right after I finish a meal, and believe it our not, that used to drive some roommates crazy). But none of these living alone perks outweigh the perks of companionship. I desperately miss the late night dance parties, the ice cream feasts, and the soul-searching conversations we all shared. I really miss living with my best friends. And as much as I try to drown it out with k-pop, or re-runs of the West Wing, there is nothing more deafening than the silence of living alone.

2) It's rough working nights. That's all.

3) It is hard being a foreigner. This experience has given me a whole new insight on what it means to be an immigrant. Something as simple as buying groceries can be completely overwhelming. Or there are those times when I have so much to say, but absolutely no way to communicate it. I feel like an idiot at least 65% of the time. Also the whole looking different is much harder than I expected it would be. When I was a missionary here, it didn't phase me. But back then, I always had a companion to soften the blow. Now, however, it's a totally different story. And with Korea being such an appearance driven society, my looks get commented on a lot. Usually they are nice comments, occasionally curious (like "why is your face SO RED?" "Becauseeeee it just is...."), rarely rude, and only one time cruel. But still looking so other takes it's toll. This new found empathy I've gained for immigrants to any country took me completely by surprise. But I'm so grateful for learning this empathy through experience. It's made me better.

4) Making friends is hard. I was pretty crippled by shyness in high school. But I overcame that at BYU. Unfortunately it's back again. But somewhere during May I decided to stop being so scared, and I really went out and tried to make friends. I think I have some pretty great ones now. Of course I have a million thoughts a day that I wish I had a best friend here to tell. But thank goodness for the internet which makes best friends in America seem like they're only a city away.

5) Do you want to meet the kindest people on the planet? Come to Korea. I try not to be the helpless American all the time; but sometimes it just can't be avoided. Thankfully there's always someone around to help a girl out when she needs it. But what sets Koreans apart from others, I think, is their willingness to give without being prompted. I went to lunch a few weeks ago with some friends, and they all set some food into my bowl before they even took their first bites. I didn't ask for any and I had a very large amount of food myself. I'm still not sure why they did it exactly. But this is what I do know, Koreans take care of people. It's just what they do. It's in their nature. And I love them for it.

It seems like there were a thousand other things I wanted to write about in this, my grand six month soliloquy. But this will have to suffice for now. Not every day is this exciting adventure that I think my Instagram makes my life seem like sometimes. Some days are hard. Some days the taxi driver is mean to you because you can't speak Korean, or you try on a shirt at a store (because there are dressing rooms), and you didn't know you weren't supposed to try on shirts and then the employee yells at you and you don't quite understand why, or you get lost on the subway, or train, or just walking. But then there are those days... Days when you hear your new favorite song playing on every street corner in the entire city. Days when people feed you the most delicious food you never even imagined existed. Days when you look across your city and you see hills and valleys so beautiful, and you wonder what kind of miracle it was that brought you to this crazy place. Those are the days that I'll cherish from the past six months, and those are the days I'll look forward to with great anticipation in the six months to come.

Unless I extend...