I Felt You Like Woman General

From a collection of Chinese theater images in California
Following my recent trip to Korea to create partnerships and awareness of our programs for international students, I have been meaning to connect with my Korean contacts by e-mail, but didn't have a chance to do it until yesterday. Within a few hours of sending out my cordial greetings, I got a response e-mail from one of my hosts.

Enjoy the interchange below. I do believe I'm seeing myself in a new light!

Me to Health College Official:

I’m writing to thank you for your warm welcome and hospitality when I visited Korea recently. I enjoyed my visit to your Health College, and appreciated all you did to host me and give me the opportunity to talk to your students about our summer language institute.

I hope that your students will keep our university as a possibility for those who would like to learn more English in our summer short-term program.

May God continue to bless you in your work at the Health College.

Health College Official back to me:

Thank you for your mail. Yes I hope our students may participate in your short English program.

I felt you like woman general. ^*^

[Your university] is so luck due to has good vice president. *^^*

Be healthy and blessed.

Hey! Maybe they are so luck to have me! Please excuse me for a few minutes while I don my helmet and polish my saber.

Sugar in His Tea

I was talking with a prospective faculty member for our university last week. He is doing post-doctoral research in Chemistry, and seems to be a gentle, quiet man. Knowing he grew up in Kenya, I asked more about that.

"I grew up in a small town in western Kenya," he told me.

"What tribe are you from?" I asked.

He smiled. "Luo tribe," he said. I think he liked it that I know that one's tribe is important.

"How did you happen to get from a small village in Kenya to here?" I asked. "How did you come to get so much education?"

"I grew up in a very poor family," he said.

Having traveled in Kenya, I could picture it. People here wouldn't be able to picture just how clearly "poor" means having nothing in Kenya. Maybe a hut. A sleeping platform with one piece of woven cloth to cover you. One pot or pan to use over a little fire for cooking. Flies crawling around your eyes.

He continued. "Neither of my parents went to school. But they made their children go to school. I observed, and I noticed that when you go to visit other people, the people who can afford to put sugar in their tea are the ones who have education."

And so, noticing the sugar in the tea, he pursued an education. And the doors of opportunity opened up from there.

Mystery and Lists

First of all, can you guess what the picture is? I thought I'd get a more mysterious bit of photography out into the blogosphere today.

In other flying thoughts, AC posted this meme at his blog, and I thought it might be vaguely interesting if I were to complete it and share it with readers. So here we go.

WHAT I WAS DOING 10 YEARS AGO

Teaching energetic young adults how to be teachers.

5 SNACKS I ENJOY

1. Nuts
2. Chips and homemade salsa
   
3. A piece of butterscotch candy
   
4. Veggies and dip
   
5. Peanut M&Ms
   

THINGS I WOULD DO IF I WERE A BILLIONAIRE

Set up a student aid endowment for first-generation college students, and another one for international students of promise who couldn't afford college.

Build a new library for my university.

Set up college funds for my grandkids.

Do a major health and education project for poor children in Thailand (the country of my birth).


FIVE JOBS THAT I HAVE HAD

1. Janitor in a dormitory
   
2. Dormitory hall monitor
3. First Grade Teacher
4. Professor
5. Administrator
   

THREE OF MY BAD HABITS

1. Keeping a messy desk
2. Making excuses to not exercise regularly
3. Blowing my nose at the table (well, for Pete's sake, you have to when you're eating curry!)
   

FIVE PLACES I HAVE LIVED

1. Bangkok, Thailand
2. Phuket, Thailand
3. Penang, Malaysia
4. Lincoln City, Oregon
5. Angwin, California
   

A Desert Thirsty

Cactus blossoms, Korea

I remembered the old days,

went over all you've done,
pondered the ways you've worked,
Stretched out my hands to you,
as thirsty for you as a desert thirsty for rain.
If you wake me each morning with the sound of your loving voice,
I'll go to sleep each night trusting in you.
Psalm 143:5,6, 8 (Message)

Purple Play-Doh and Spiritual Truths

Principals from church schools across the Northwest U.S. meet in Bend, OR
On Saturday, I got to play with purple Play-Doh to better comprehend spiritual truth.

I didn't grow up with Play-Doh, actually. In Malaysia we had Plasticine, which is better than Pay-Doh because it doesn't dry out. But it's more bothersome than Play-Doh because it is oily and takes a lot more work to warm it up so that you can really make stuff out of it. It's the more "artsy" substance; claymation people use Plasticine to do their work precisely because it doesn't dry out.

I got acquainted with Play-Doh as an adult after coming to the U.S. so I missed that childhood imprinting regarding Play-Doh play. I've never figured out where the stink of it comes from, but I learned as a teacher that after a while you actually like it, because the smell signifies Fun. The excitement of opening that brand new container of Pay-Doh and seeing the fresh cylindrical blob of pure color and possibility inside is such a stimulating feeling! And the colors just get better and better.

This weekend Principal Mark (I was tagging along with Husband at a Christian principals' retreat) put us in groups of ten and gave us tubs of neon-colored Play-Doh. Then he gave us parts of a body to make. You make the eyes, I make the lungs, he makes the brain, she makes the ears, and so on. Our table of ten worked together, and Voilà! Out of fresh, neon Play-Doh colors there emerged our new friend, Sam. (Principal Mark had told us to give it a unisex name.) Although the final combination of our efforts was rather disconcerting considering my high expectations, I would like to proudly point out that I was the sculptor of those gorgeous purple lungs.

Principal Mark had us listen to a reading from that "body of Christ" passage from 1 Corinthians 12:12-26. Then he listed a bunch of people who interact with Christian schools: teachers, students, pastors, superintendents, senior members of the church, et cetera. We were supposed to say which of those individuals are represented by which parts of the body. Here are some of the sample comments:

"The senior members of the church are like the nose, because they can sniff which way things are going, and analyze it with the wisdom of their years."

"The students are like the heart, because they are at the heart of what we do."

"The principals are like the intestines, because they process the happenings of the schools and get rid of the junk."

"The teachers are like the hands and feet, because they get the work done."

And so it went. There was something about the whole exercise that made me think differently about us all as the body of Christ. I thought about the fact that even the parts that I see as more negative, have an important job to do. And we considered how they all work together, and how important it is that they do so.

I think this is something that becomes clearer to us as we get older.

And by the way, isn't Sam attractive in a Picasso-ish sort of way?

Floreated Teenie Weenie Veritas

As I have been thinking about the use and misuse of words since my last post, let me just throw in a stream-of-consciousness piece here about words and what they convey.

Our oldest daughter, when she was teaching English in Japan, brought to our attention the fascination that Asians have with writing on t-shirts (or on any surface, for that matter) and how they often garble the English language in making that happen. (Well, at least in Northeast Asia. Southeast Asia seems to have a better grasp on English by far, but I may be personally biased.) Oldest Daughter--who is one of my heroes in life--has a couple of amusing t-shirt examples that she bought and wears. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of those.

But having become sensitized to reading t-shirts when visiting that region of the world, I noticed one on the Korean subway that cracked me up. It's the t-shirt message I sort of "recreated" above: FLOREATED TEENIE WEENIE VERITAS. I was dying to get a picture of the t-shirt, but folks, there's just a teenie weenie bit of shyness left in me and I couldn't work up the courage to ask.

So, what does it mean to sport a flowery, teenie weenie bit of truth? I think that t-shirt would be a hot seller at Harvard, where their motto is "Veritas," in case you're not acquainted with that part of the world.

The best place to see funny t-shirt sayings--and various other phrases used by second language learners--is at engrish.com, to which I was also tipped off by Oldest Daughter. I thought I'd give you a few examples here. When I see something like, "Defy the Keen Edge of Desire," I do a "Huh?" double-take, and then I always start looking for the deeper meaning, which may or may not be present. I can pretty much guarantee a deeper meaning wasn't intended. Sometimes, I've decided, your brain just needs to relax and accept that you don't have to make deep sense out of everything. On the other hand, you might hit paydirt and make wonderful sense out of something that didn't originally make sense at all.The guy who designed this shirt must have figured it out. He just pointed out the meaninglessness right up front.And then there's the girl who's warning us to get ready for the judgment, which intrigued me mightily. Did you know that the final judgment was going to impact all five senses intensely? I didn't. Not all of the t-shirts are meaningless or negative or scary, however. I like the idea of being able to turn on the charm and being guaranteed of then being perceived as marverous. I'd like to be charming and marverous every single day, as a matter of fact.

All of these t-shirts are fun and entertaining, but yesterday I saw one right here where I'm visiting in Bend, Oregon that struck me as simply depressing. Maybe it's because I was taking in the whole picture of the shirt plus its wearer.

We were sitting with a friend in a fairly pricey Mediterranean restaurant for supper, and a guy sat at the next table with a woman. He had a very short haircut, and a weathered and tanned face. Although he was probably around fifty, his face was lined and leathery with frown lines. He had frowny lips, as well, and frowny eyebrows. He was wearing these words on his black t-shirt:I could overhear his conversation, which was proceeding like thick molasses, since he was expressing himself so deliberately. "I ... can't ... believe ... I ... didn't .... I ... can't .... believe...." Oh for Pete's sake! I was waiting for him to spit out what he couldn't believe while still trying to look interested and engaged with my husband and our friend, and Mr. Frowny Self-Absorbed Guy started his phrase all over! A minute later he was still trying to get it said.

I didn't catch his entire conversation, but I did catch that it was very self-centered and suffocating in his expectations of others. His t-shirt message contributed to the picture. Here were my thoughts as I observed: This is a guy who thinks looking good is everything, but ironically, he doesn't look good himself. Maybe he's rich. Maybe he owns a big company or has developed a lot of real estate around here. But who would want to work for him? Someone must report directly to him, if he's built a business selling something people want to buy. How did he convince them to buy from him? He sounds like one of those self-important guys who actually dupes some people into thinking he is important. I wonder if the woman's bored out of her mind? I know I'd be ready to plead a food allergy and leave the restaurant--a trick I've actually been known to pull in order to end to a miserable date; but seriously, I ate something with milk in it first so that I'd be telling the truth...

As I write this, I'm thinking, Maybe he'd had some brain injury or something. Maybe he has a learning disability. Maybe I've unfairly and meanly judged a guy who wasn't what I perceived.

Well, according to the t-shirt, judgment produces a five-senses-intense-impact experience, so that could be interesting ... for someone. And that's the Floreated Teeny-Weenie Veritas.

A Few Musings on Truth-telling and Leadership

I've been thinking about truth-telling, and beyond that, about the truth-related effects of what leaders say to others. Truth, defining it and getting a general agreement that it is present in interactions, are crucial in our world.

Some people in any leader's world feel very unsafe to the leader, because they have demonstrated that anything you say can and will be used against you. For a leader, being in a room with someone like that is unnerving. You may begin with the assumption that you're interacting with goodwill to all people. On the other hand, that person starts with the assumption that you are not, and hears everything in a context of suspicion and negativity. Operating in such an environment is a tricky and restrictive task, because as a leader you can end up listening to yourself through their ears and trying to protect yourself by watching every word you say. And then the second-guessing begins.

No, I am not paranoid. This is how it is.

Let me switch gears and explain from another direction what got me thinking about truth-telling. Yesterday I interacted with some kids who came by the office. Having been an elementary teacher and done my academic specialty in human development, I'm well aware that truth may be defined differently for children up through the age of about eight.

"I want to tell you something," said Boy. "I'm in first grade."

Well. I happen to be Mrs. Principal, and I knew he was in kindergarten.

Mom had overheard Boy's little announcement, and she popped in after he'd wandered away. "I don't know why he said that," she told me. "He's in kindergarten."

Boy overheard his mom, and he came by my desk a little later. "I want to tell you something. My Mommy is lying," he told me. "I'm not in kindergarten. I'm in fourth grade."

Feeling obliged to voice a commitment to Truth, I replied, "I don't think so. And I don't think that's very nice to say about your Mommy."

So I went home from work with the whole "truth thing" rolling around in the back of my mind. A little later in the evening I stumbled across the Democratic debate on the television. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were going at it, mostly respectfully, and much of the talk revolved around things they had said. Hillary had made up details in retelling a story about Bosnia. Barack had flung off an arrogant-sounding comment about people and how they relate to religion and guns. Both candidates were on the spot for the various ways in which they had dealt with truth, assuming all the rest of us can actually differentiate what that is.

I found myself feeling empathetic and sorry for them both. I only have a tiny taste, comparatively, of what it's like to have to use your words all the time, throughout your working days, in an environment where your words are analyzed, where they shape opinion and decision-making, and where they are liable at times to be picked apart. While the people around you can pop out with anything and not pay for it because their speech is expected to be completely protected (and I'm glad that even stupid speech is generally protected in our country), the expectation of leaders is that you are never allowed to stray one iota from defensible, verifiable truth. And by the way, it should be stated in terms that are acceptable to the hearer.

Sigh.

The problem is, leaders--at least those in my world--want to be truthful. But those moments come when you're tired either physically or tired of being under scrutiny, and something pops out of your mouth that surprises you. While an employee in my institution can wonder, "What on earth did I just say?", they can go on with little to no bump in the road. But leaders can have a "What on earth did I just say" moment, and it's too late. Your words are examined, repeated, and may chalked up against you.

I once talked with another leader about this. On rare occasion, he said, he found himself telling a story falsely. Because of the situation, his frame of mind, or whatever, the story came out as he wished it to have been, or as he needed it to have been in the heat of the retelling. His mind played a trick on him and he'd recognize that what he had said was a bit off what he knew to be reality. And then he was horrified. At such times, one wonders if they can be trusted with recounting an event, or if they're becoming people who cannot be truthful, whose accounts of events or circumstances should be consistently taken with a grain of salt because they're always twisted somehow. It's terribly unnerving.

And then there are those moments when you are feeling your oats, or tired out, or torqued by some situation or person, and you let fly with a sarcastic or ironic comment that you wouldn't otherwise voice. You might be kind to yourself about the incident, but others will not be.

This is what I perceived in these leaders who were debating last night, answering questions from Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. And I really felt for these people who, regardless of what you may think of them, have more knowledge and experience in their field of work than either you or I, and must constantly employ their words while under scathing scrutiny.

It's a sobering thing.

Happy Eighty-Second

Happy Birthday to my Mama, who is 82 today! We had angel food cake and strawberries on Saturday to start the celebration, and the flowers arrived at her house yesterday.

Mama, you're the very best. You make April 15 a day I have always looked forward to. I hope your 83rd year brings you joy and good health, and, as the Chinese say... good luck and prosperity!

Korea, Day 6.1

The gate to the Gyeongbok Palace, during the changing of the guardI had hoped to be on a plane home today. When I bought my ticket, we didn't realize that the president of Korea was about to call an election holiday. That was today. So all the schools were closed, and there wasn't much I could do about that. Furthermore, the flight I'd hoped to get on was full, and the waitlist was full, and they wouldn't add me to it. So I threw in the towel and decided on a day of tourism and rest.

I joined a morning tour that began at Jogye-sa temple. They had started dressing it up for Buddha's birthday next month. It was a gorgeous building, full of worshipers on this holiday.
As I approached the building, I noticed this happy little buddha waiting for a handout. How could you resist, with a face so cute you want to pinch his cheeks? But I did--resisting both the cheek-pinching and giving him a handout.
Inside the temple were three buddhas. The first one has his hands in the position of teaching. The second one had his hands in the position of sacrifice. Thinking it might carry a significant spiritual lesson, I tried to get the guide to explain what was significant about sacrifice. But even though she tried twice, I didn't get it. So I resorted to the Asian coping mechanism, smiling and nodded knowingly and saying "ah" and "thank you." The third buddha has his hands in the position of healing.

The more I think about it, the more I think there are lessons in this, whether you read left to right, or right to left: Teaching, Sacrifice, Healing. Think about it.
Next we went to the Gyeongbok Palace, established in 1395 by the Joseon dynasty. Originally I'd thought, "I don't want to see any old Asian palaces. I've seen plenty of Asian architecture in my time."

Good thing I had a day to fill. It's a gorgeous place, full of drama, beautiful lines, and color. We began by watching the changing of the guard. Here's a little clip so you can hear the melodious music to which they marched in.


It really was full of pageantry and color. The guys in the red have the highest rank, our tour guide told us. They made a lot of noise, beat on drums and cymbals, played reedy instruments, and one blew on a conch shell. Kind of made you feel like getting up and marching around Jericho.
The guard above, if you click on the picture and look closely, is wearing a fake beard, very cleverly done.
The king's throne room had all sort of symmetry and symbolism in it, all having to do with yin and yang and balance. Round pillars, they told us, represent heaven. Square things represent earth. They are always done in balance, as we saw when we viewed a building on stilts--half of which were round and half of which were square. On the mural behind the throne there is a sun and a moon both depicted over the mountains, again for balance.
There were various courts and passageways between them, all beautifully preserved with simple, elegant lines. The tour guide told us that in the old days there were no trees in the inner courtyards. They were doing all they could to keep would-be assassins from finding things they could hide behind while they targeted the king.
Next to the palace is the folk museum, depicting life in Korea over the centuries. The pagoda is part of that museum.
This particular piece intrigued me. It's a funeral bier. It reminded me of a ship. Check out the little men on animals around the decks, and the birds and various decorations. This was to accompany the dead person happily to heaven. It reminded me of the fancy paper mansions that were built for rich people where I grew up, complete with paper TVs and servants and a paper Mercedes Benz ... all to be burned as part of the funeral ceremonies, to accompany the family member via the smoke into heaven.

From the folk museum, we took a ride past the president's palace. Our bus wasn't allowed to stop, so we caught a one-second glimpse of it with its blue tile roof. They call it the Blue House.

The tour companies have connections with various industries, and they take you there during the tour--sort of like hostages--to buy the products. On Sunday we were taken to an amethyst store, and today we were taken to a ginseng store. They hustled us up via elevator to a display area where they told us how ginseng was grown. It takes 6 years to mature a plant, until they can pull it up and use the roots. So it's expensive to grow, expensive to buy. The store lady went on and on about how the root looks like a human body (see a bunch of them in the photo to the left, which I took surreptitiously after being told not to; that glass tube is as tall as I am). Then they showed us big pictures of ginseng roots looking for all the world like male and female bodies.

Okay. Moving right along.

Next they took us into this room and shut the doors. There was a presentation of the products we could buy, the cheapest of which was a box of ginseng product for $250. You could see the tourists go cross-eyed. We were told how ginseng would undo all the bad habits that could ruin our bodies--smoking, drinking, and so on. It would also give us perfect complexions, and do a few other miracle things that are not supported by scientific studies.

Then we were given little tiny cups of ginseng tea to drink. As one of the other tourists pointed out to me, it was all a very clever ruse, because they next let us out of that room and into a shop where things looked pretty cheap after what we'd just seen and heard. I bought a couple of boxes of ginseng candy (the samples were yummy) for $5 a piece. I think my compadre was right; the clever ruse worked. The tour was going to end up in Itaewon, a horrid tourist-trap shopping street I'd rather avoid, so I hopped off the bus at City Hall and went to see this shrine, which I'd spotted from the hotel restaurant window during breakfast this morning. According to the sign nearby, this was a place where an emperor of the Joseon dynasty offered sacrifices to heaven in the 1800s. It was a lovely, quiet garden tucked down in the midst of the skyscrapers.


They put interesting words they put on their tall buildings around here. I amused myself with this one on the walk back to my hotel. Happy Forever would be a nice place to live and work, don't you think?