So yesterday I inadvertently accessed this blog while it was being redone, and I found a page inviting me to create a new account. I thought, "boy, that sounds like something I want to do, but probably I should wait until the site's no longer being worked on." Now that all the tinkering is done, it seems that the site has no user accounts... is there any chance you'll add that feature someday, or should I stop holding my breath?
As I've said before, I believe that Lotteria is far better than American fast food (at least it's not drowning in grease). It's not McDonald's; it's not trying to be McDonald's, or anything American really. It is its own fusion thing---although I admit that I've never tried any but the various bulgogi burgers (mmmmm bulgogi sauce and mushrooms), so possibly their plain ones aren't as delicious.
By the way... the lack of Korean McDonald's is also partly Lee Myung-bak's fault. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_beef_imports_in_South_Korea for more.) It's not exactly anti-Americanism, it's anti-Lee Myung-bak-ism. I think I'm just going to blame everything I don't like on the man.
*****
I had a mock-election class all planned, but alas! between my play preparations and my unexpected trip and Chungju Middle School being, well, Chungju Middle School, I never got a chance to try it. That said, I'm surprised you found any students who supported McCain: in ten polls of Tangeum classes, I had precisely none. I hope that you asked them why, because I'd be very interested to know.
Most people, I think, need a little bit of time before they adapt to/like the taste of kimchi. When I first tasted it, I wasn't quite sure what to think, but "delicious" was not the first word that came to mind. Several days of eating it later, however, and I am shocked at how quickly I am approaching that obsessive need for the food... I have no doubt that before we leave here I will be thoroughly addicted.
It's served cold, and the first time you eat kimchi, you expect it to be warm. It looks like it should be warm... but it's not. (Korean food has a high occurance of "now THAT did not taste like it looked," but usually this is a very good thing.) Now, once you know what to expect it's a totally excellent taste sensation, just be ready for a slight thermic surprise.
I don't even know what to say. TOO amazing!
You're beginning to convince me. :) Bethany and I have even been chatting about it -- after all, what better way to spend one's life than gallavanting all over the world in the footsteps of one's brothers?
I'm in hysterical giggles right now (or would be, if I didn't have an essay due in four hours). And I love your spiderman bag. And you are very tall. And very handsome. So it's not just the Koreans. :)
Love you!!!
@Barrett:
Thank you, Barrett, for your thorough analysis of Inside Lotte Mart. I need hardly say that your approval, as my film theory mentor, means a great deal to me. As for the film: the lack of closure was, as you suggest, a comment on the lack of any kind of ultimate meaning to be found in consumerism; the lack of structure was a similar attempt to capture that haphazard nature of a culture that rushes from one shelf to the next in search of the latest so-called "hot item."
You mention the central characters' lack of motivation, but I would have thought that this especially was an obviously intentional device: what motivates the perpetual shopper, the consumer? One can hazard many guesses (and a deeper analysis may in fact yield some sound theories--we shop to distract ourselves from our uncomfortable sense that we lack true identity, perhaps [but now I overstep the scope of our film]), but on the surface of it neither meaning nor motivation are readily apparent.
The animal and plant themes were an attempt to show how we have bottled and confined nature within the metaphorical 7-story shopping mall of our society.The poor lost dog is every dog.
Finally, regarding character development, I agree with you that it is disproportionate. I was going to try to argue that this too was intentional: that within the male-dominated culture of Korea we have given the female character even more time that would properly reflect the culture--but I think that is a sorry argument, and in reality the disproportionate character development stemmed mostly from a technical limitation (our very small microphone which has difficulty capturing the voice of any actor who is not actually holding the camera), and my own selfish desire to become a movie star; for I am sure there you have already discerned that the male character was played by myself. At the end of the day, I regret the way I handled this issue, and can only strive to be more even-handed in my future attempts at directing.
Yours truly,
Jordan Magnuson
P.S. You mention the difficulty you had filming at Cub Foods: I can only say that we were both fortunate and discreet at Lotte Mart.
What Excitement! I'm hoping we will have a fire drill at one of my schools now (though I can only hope that it might be as intense as your school's :).
Heh, that's a good story and a new one to me. I've never had a Korean fire drill, so if one of my schools burns down I guess that I'll be trapped in the building with no idea how to escape and no hope of rescue.
I'm sorry to say that the very long Korean speech was the first of many. (Yesterday I spent all day at a special English award presentation event which featured many, many Korean-language speeches.) I just glaze my eyes over and play music in my head; I think that all the Koreans are doing the same thing, so I fit right in.
@Doug:
You would love it here Baba: the culture is indeed extreme and homogeneous, and the English sparse; I'll post on those aspects specially later on. Maybe we could get Karith to come teach English here as well, and then we could have the whole family :)
Okay, now I'm finding myself feeling envious of you guys and this amazing cultural adventure you're having. I've always wished to live somewhere where the culture was extreme and no one spoke English. And you're there! I'm almost ready to take a sabbatical from my life to spend a year teaching English in Korea! Keep the interesting stories and insights coming.
-Baba (you can tell your students they can think of me as "Minnesota Magnuson")
It's great to hear from you two, and to see your face and hear your voices. That video of lotte mart was great. I look forward to hearing about Starcraft.
Do you think i could get your dad's autograph? I've always liked Harrison Ford.
...OK, I don't have much more to add since we already talked about most of this stuff in person, but I was interested in Mr. Sam. According to this incredibly useful Wikipedia page "Sam" is a real Korean family name, but there's only 51 of them in the nation. (Unless some Sams have died or been born since the year 2000.) Is your Mr. Sam one of the 51 real Sams, or is he simply having you call him by his English name?
As for the CD, I'll have to enquire about that. But the dialouges are listed in the back of the book, so I read them. This really isn't as bad as it sounds, the students in fact often seem interested in watching and listening to a real person speak English. And I was just handed a photocopy of the teacher's book, so now I have even more notes in Korean to decipher.
Are you on internet shopping then? Because that chapter look thrilling.
Just ensuring that you come up to Chungju so I can show you a good time.
Isn't it amazing how quickly Korean regionalism is injected into your bloodstream here? Within a week I was already thinking of Cheongju-ites as big-city snobs (despite the fact that they live less than an hour away from me), Danyang-ians as small-town hicks (despite the fact that some of them live less than 20 minutes away from me), and Seoul's inhabitants as "not real Koreans," in the words of a teacher at Chungju. I thought that I'd seen some pretty extreme regional differentiation in England, but Korea is incredible... when I tell my kids that I live in Bongbang-dong (a section of Chungju), all of those who also live in the same region assume that I am their special friend. Remember, wherever you live in Korea is the best place on Earth.
But I'm still waiting for pictures that showcase Gunsan's scenic wonders. Just give me ten beautiful spots within Gunsan city limits, and I'll eat my words.
Thanks Matthew for your continued insight into how ungly Gunsan is, but we are trying to look on the bright side of things, and make the best of our suroundings, however ugly and flat they might be. Marisa and I are both quite happy with our city, thank you very much.
I enjoyed the movie, though the male character was more fully developed than the female, and I wasn't certain about the motivation of either. While food seemed a factor, I couldn't tell that either actually ate anything. Perhaps the strongest connection for me was to Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, especially because of the animal theme. (When I saw the dog I thought perhaps they had moved into the grocery section.) You rushed the end a bit. Compared to the carefully constructed prologue, the abrupt lunge at closure was slightly disappointing. But perhaps that was your comment on the ultimate emptiness of Westernized capitalism!
I am interested as well that you were evidently able to film unhindered. Last time Fuyuhiko visited us, we got in trouble in our local Cub for videotaping. Clearly, we were spies from Byerly's trying to steal the trade secrets of the New Brighton Cub, a store that can't even keep Oat Squares in stock.
Finally, the Dillard fan in me appreciates your subtitle indeed.
Actually, could we please vote to have Lee Myung-bak removed from power? I defy you to find a single Korean who likes the man. No one really seems to understand how he got to be president, but if he continues with his semi-delusional policies he's going to start undoing Korea's coolness. He hasn't even been in power for a year and the teachers at both of my schools are holding weekly emergency meetings to discuss how they're going to cope with his latest arbitrary change to the educational system. (There's no denying that the Korean educational system---like any other in the world---could use a little bit of improvement, but deciding to award bonuses to teachers who are "more effective" and asking the other teachers at the school to "rate" their co-workers as a 1, 2, or 3 -level "effective" teacher is an absurdly, stupendously bad way to go about it.) Immediately after he was elected, he actually tried to force all of the schools to teach every subject in English. My co-teacher told me that Math, Science, and Korean teachers could be spotted weeping in the hallways. It took a week of this insanity to convince him that the new rule maybe wasn't the greatest idea ever.
Never trust a president whose Wikipedia bio contains the phrase, "escaped the two-year prison sentence sought by prosecutors." Or the sentence, "Lee has proposed a number of changes to the country's education system, reportedly with the aim of making education more appealing to the upper class."
On the bright side, every one of his policies appears to have changed since the last time I checked, so maybe it'll all be OK.
Looks like you're a week or two behind me in that book. You should ask why you don't use the CD, it honestly makes things a lot easier for those not blessed with the ability to speak Korean. And I don't understand how you do that third or fourth page that requires listening to a dialogue (which is not written in the book) without the CD.
My favorite moment while teaching that lesson was when I asked a student, "what do you want to be?" and he replied (cleverly using vocabulary I had taught them the week before when we were doing compound words), "I want to be bookworm." My immediate response was, "ah, but you can't be paid for being a bookworm," which upon reflection showcases the whole absurdity of the lesson: the correct answer to the questions, "what do you want to be?" and "what is your dream?" is a job. We really are teaching them to be good little members of society, aren't we?
Ms. Du/Tu does indeed sound great, but represents yet another example of the folly of Romanizing Korean names.
Tell us how your conversation class goes! My first few weeks were reeee-ally awkward since all of the kids assumed that I was secretly there to devour them, but recently we've started getting along quite well and the number of vacant pauses has dropped to almost nothing. Actually I've grown immensely fond and possibly overprotective of the students in my conversation classes; at any rate we all really like each other. Today I had a really hysterical conversation about movies involving three guys and three girls, in which the girls' favorite films were The Matrix, Terminator, and Saw III, and one of the guys said that his favorite movie was The Devil Wears Prada. Something Has Gone Wrong with Korean youth, in the best possible way...
I should stop blogging in the comments of your blog. I'm just naturally attracted towards the superior site, I suppose.
1. Yup, you can definitely tell how much larger Gunsan is than Chungju by the relative sizes of our Lotte Marts. Even the E-Mart here is only five floors, and I think that the floors are slightly smaller.
2. Geez, Gunsan is ugly. And poorly laid out. I have mentioned this before, but seeing that vast expanse of dirt fronting the Lotte Mart forced me to say it again. My co-teacher told me that the government is pouring money into developing Gunsan at the moment---what on earth are they doing with it? Starting an Uglifying project? Accept my challenge, come to Chungju, and take videos of the downtown area here---I guarantee that you won't be disappointed. (And maybe, my challenge having been answered, I'll shut up about how ridiculously unsightly your town is. 'Cause seriously, your immediate area around the University is actually quite nice... it's the rest of the city that sucks.)
3. Your street dancers / objectified human advertisements have clothes. This is good. Hi-Mart does not let them wear anything more than bikinis (well, they can also wear jackets, but only if they remove them during the performance).
4. They actually sell cats? Really? Koreans are not fond of cats, and Matt has reported having serious problems finding cat food for his (absolutely psychotic, I mean really-really-disturbingly-unhinged-in-a-way-that-makes-me-never-want-to-go-to-Matt's-house-again level psychotic) feline.
5. You should have a toaster, it's in your contract. (At least I got one... in fact, I see my exact model for what looks like 33,000.) You should be complaining about all of the items you are supposed to have that you do not---if your co-teachers don't know what to do about it, call to the nice native English speaker guy at the head office. Of course, this may "cause problems" for your Big Boss, which will cause him to stop being so nice to you.
For a bit of fun, ask a Korean who's been oversees for more than a month at one time what it was like living without their 김치 [seriously, I don't know why we even bother Romanizing Korean when the hangeul are so awesome]. Ten to fifteen tear-filled minutes later, pat them on the back and tell them it's OK... they're back in Korea now, and the nightmare is over.
Thanks, Jordan & Marisa, for getting this going. I now have this (along with Matthew's and Karith's blog sites) open when I open my web browser, so I will check for new news daily.
Marisa is posting away, and we enjoy her writing style and her good humor. We look forward to hearing more from you, too. (I'm using the royal "we" for some reason - I'm just speaking for myself, from actual knowledge, but assuming everyone else I know shares my sentiments - how's that for projection?!)
So yesterday I inadvertently accessed this blog while it was being redone, and I found a page inviting me to create a new account. I thought, "boy, that sounds like something I want to do, but probably I should wait until the site's no longer being worked on." Now that all the tinkering is done, it seems that the site has no user accounts... is there any chance you'll add that feature someday, or should I stop holding my breath?
As I've said before, I believe that Lotteria is far better than American fast food (at least it's not drowning in grease). It's not McDonald's; it's not trying to be McDonald's, or anything American really. It is its own fusion thing---although I admit that I've never tried any but the various bulgogi burgers (mmmmm bulgogi sauce and mushrooms), so possibly their plain ones aren't as delicious.
By the way... the lack of Korean McDonald's is also partly Lee Myung-bak's fault. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_beef_imports_in_South_Korea for more.) It's not exactly anti-Americanism, it's anti-Lee Myung-bak-ism. I think I'm just going to blame everything I don't like on the man.
*****
I had a mock-election class all planned, but alas! between my play preparations and my unexpected trip and Chungju Middle School being, well, Chungju Middle School, I never got a chance to try it. That said, I'm surprised you found any students who supported McCain: in ten polls of Tangeum classes, I had precisely none. I hope that you asked them why, because I'd be very interested to know.
Finally: huzzah for Obama!
Most people, I think, need a little bit of time before they adapt to/like the taste of kimchi. When I first tasted it, I wasn't quite sure what to think, but "delicious" was not the first word that came to mind. Several days of eating it later, however, and I am shocked at how quickly I am approaching that obsessive need for the food... I have no doubt that before we leave here I will be thoroughly addicted.
For the sake of all that you hold holy--- both of you--- follow Jordan, not me!
(That is, you should say, "what better way to spend one's life than gallavanting all over the world in the footsteps of my brother?)
It's served cold, and the first time you eat kimchi, you expect it to be warm. It looks like it should be warm... but it's not. (Korean food has a high occurance of "now THAT did not taste like it looked," but usually this is a very good thing.) Now, once you know what to expect it's a totally excellent taste sensation, just be ready for a slight thermic surprise.
That seriously looks amazing . . .
I don't even know what to say. TOO amazing!
You're beginning to convince me. :) Bethany and I have even been chatting about it -- after all, what better way to spend one's life than gallavanting all over the world in the footsteps of one's brothers?
I'm in hysterical giggles right now (or would be, if I didn't have an essay due in four hours). And I love your spiderman bag. And you are very tall. And very handsome. So it's not just the Koreans. :)
Love you!!!
@Barrett:
Thank you, Barrett, for your thorough analysis of Inside Lotte Mart. I need hardly say that your approval, as my film theory mentor, means a great deal to me. As for the film: the lack of closure was, as you suggest, a comment on the lack of any kind of ultimate meaning to be found in consumerism; the lack of structure was a similar attempt to capture that haphazard nature of a culture that rushes from one shelf to the next in search of the latest so-called "hot item."
You mention the central characters' lack of motivation, but I would have thought that this especially was an obviously intentional device: what motivates the perpetual shopper, the consumer? One can hazard many guesses (and a deeper analysis may in fact yield some sound theories--we shop to distract ourselves from our uncomfortable sense that we lack true identity, perhaps [but now I overstep the scope of our film]), but on the surface of it neither meaning nor motivation are readily apparent.
The animal and plant themes were an attempt to show how we have bottled and confined nature within the metaphorical 7-story shopping mall of our society.The poor lost dog is every dog.
Finally, regarding character development, I agree with you that it is disproportionate. I was going to try to argue that this too was intentional: that within the male-dominated culture of Korea we have given the female character even more time that would properly reflect the culture--but I think that is a sorry argument, and in reality the disproportionate character development stemmed mostly from a technical limitation (our very small microphone which has difficulty capturing the voice of any actor who is not actually holding the camera), and my own selfish desire to become a movie star; for I am sure there you have already discerned that the male character was played by myself. At the end of the day, I regret the way I handled this issue, and can only strive to be more even-handed in my future attempts at directing.
Yours truly,
Jordan Magnuson
P.S. You mention the difficulty you had filming at Cub Foods: I can only say that we were both fortunate and discreet at Lotte Mart.
What Excitement! I'm hoping we will have a fire drill at one of my schools now (though I can only hope that it might be as intense as your school's :).
Heh, that's a good story and a new one to me. I've never had a Korean fire drill, so if one of my schools burns down I guess that I'll be trapped in the building with no idea how to escape and no hope of rescue.
I'm sorry to say that the very long Korean speech was the first of many. (Yesterday I spent all day at a special English award presentation event which featured many, many Korean-language speeches.) I just glaze my eyes over and play music in my head; I think that all the Koreans are doing the same thing, so I fit right in.
@Doug:
You would love it here Baba: the culture is indeed extreme and homogeneous, and the English sparse; I'll post on those aspects specially later on. Maybe we could get Karith to come teach English here as well, and then we could have the whole family :)
@Matthew:
That is indeed a very interesting Wikipedia page! Alas, our Mr. "Sam" is simply using his English name with us.
Okay, now I'm finding myself feeling envious of you guys and this amazing cultural adventure you're having. I've always wished to live somewhere where the culture was extreme and no one spoke English. And you're there! I'm almost ready to take a sabbatical from my life to spend a year teaching English in Korea! Keep the interesting stories and insights coming.
-Baba (you can tell your students they can think of me as "Minnesota Magnuson")
It's great to hear from you two, and to see your face and hear your voices. That video of lotte mart was great. I look forward to hearing about Starcraft.
Do you think i could get your dad's autograph? I've always liked Harrison Ford.
Thanks for updating us!
...OK, I don't have much more to add since we already talked about most of this stuff in person, but I was interested in Mr. Sam. According to this incredibly useful Wikipedia page "Sam" is a real Korean family name, but there's only 51 of them in the nation. (Unless some Sams have died or been born since the year 2000.) Is your Mr. Sam one of the 51 real Sams, or is he simply having you call him by his English name?
As for the CD, I'll have to enquire about that. But the dialouges are listed in the back of the book, so I read them. This really isn't as bad as it sounds, the students in fact often seem interested in watching and listening to a real person speak English. And I was just handed a photocopy of the teacher's book, so now I have even more notes in Korean to decipher.
Are you on internet shopping then? Because that chapter look thrilling.
Just ensuring that you come up to Chungju so I can show you a good time.
Isn't it amazing how quickly Korean regionalism is injected into your bloodstream here? Within a week I was already thinking of Cheongju-ites as big-city snobs (despite the fact that they live less than an hour away from me), Danyang-ians as small-town hicks (despite the fact that some of them live less than 20 minutes away from me), and Seoul's inhabitants as "not real Koreans," in the words of a teacher at Chungju. I thought that I'd seen some pretty extreme regional differentiation in England, but Korea is incredible... when I tell my kids that I live in Bongbang-dong (a section of Chungju), all of those who also live in the same region assume that I am their special friend. Remember, wherever you live in Korea is the best place on Earth.
But I'm still waiting for pictures that showcase Gunsan's scenic wonders. Just give me ten beautiful spots within Gunsan city limits, and I'll eat my words.
Thanks Matthew for your continued insight into how ungly Gunsan is, but we are trying to look on the bright side of things, and make the best of our suroundings, however ugly and flat they might be. Marisa and I are both quite happy with our city, thank you very much.
Hm... I'll try to get that "reply only to previous post" issue solved when I've got time. Thanks for letting me know!
Jordan
Jordan and Marisa:
I enjoyed the movie, though the male character was more fully developed than the female, and I wasn't certain about the motivation of either. While food seemed a factor, I couldn't tell that either actually ate anything. Perhaps the strongest connection for me was to Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, especially because of the animal theme. (When I saw the dog I thought perhaps they had moved into the grocery section.) You rushed the end a bit. Compared to the carefully constructed prologue, the abrupt lunge at closure was slightly disappointing. But perhaps that was your comment on the ultimate emptiness of Westernized capitalism!
I am interested as well that you were evidently able to film unhindered. Last time Fuyuhiko visited us, we got in trouble in our local Cub for videotaping. Clearly, we were spies from Byerly's trying to steal the trade secrets of the New Brighton Cub, a store that can't even keep Oat Squares in stock.
Finally, the Dillard fan in me appreciates your subtitle indeed.
Barrett
Actually, could we please vote to have Lee Myung-bak removed from power? I defy you to find a single Korean who likes the man. No one really seems to understand how he got to be president, but if he continues with his semi-delusional policies he's going to start undoing Korea's coolness. He hasn't even been in power for a year and the teachers at both of my schools are holding weekly emergency meetings to discuss how they're going to cope with his latest arbitrary change to the educational system. (There's no denying that the Korean educational system---like any other in the world---could use a little bit of improvement, but deciding to award bonuses to teachers who are "more effective" and asking the other teachers at the school to "rate" their co-workers as a 1, 2, or 3 -level "effective" teacher is an absurdly, stupendously bad way to go about it.) Immediately after he was elected, he actually tried to force all of the schools to teach every subject in English. My co-teacher told me that Math, Science, and Korean teachers could be spotted weeping in the hallways. It took a week of this insanity to convince him that the new rule maybe wasn't the greatest idea ever.
Never trust a president whose Wikipedia bio contains the phrase, "escaped the two-year prison sentence sought by prosecutors." Or the sentence, "Lee has proposed a number of changes to the country's education system, reportedly with the aim of making education more appealing to the upper class."
On the bright side, every one of his policies appears to have changed since the last time I checked, so maybe it'll all be OK.
Looks like you're a week or two behind me in that book. You should ask why you don't use the CD, it honestly makes things a lot easier for those not blessed with the ability to speak Korean. And I don't understand how you do that third or fourth page that requires listening to a dialogue (which is not written in the book) without the CD.
My favorite moment while teaching that lesson was when I asked a student, "what do you want to be?" and he replied (cleverly using vocabulary I had taught them the week before when we were doing compound words), "I want to be bookworm." My immediate response was, "ah, but you can't be paid for being a bookworm," which upon reflection showcases the whole absurdity of the lesson: the correct answer to the questions, "what do you want to be?" and "what is your dream?" is a job. We really are teaching them to be good little members of society, aren't we?
Ms. Du/Tu does indeed sound great, but represents yet another example of the folly of Romanizing Korean names.
Tell us how your conversation class goes! My first few weeks were reeee-ally awkward since all of the kids assumed that I was secretly there to devour them, but recently we've started getting along quite well and the number of vacant pauses has dropped to almost nothing. Actually I've grown immensely fond and possibly overprotective of the students in my conversation classes; at any rate we all really like each other. Today I had a really hysterical conversation about movies involving three guys and three girls, in which the girls' favorite films were The Matrix, Terminator, and Saw III, and one of the guys said that his favorite movie was The Devil Wears Prada. Something Has Gone Wrong with Korean youth, in the best possible way...
I should stop blogging in the comments of your blog. I'm just naturally attracted towards the superior site, I suppose.
1. Yup, you can definitely tell how much larger Gunsan is than Chungju by the relative sizes of our Lotte Marts. Even the E-Mart here is only five floors, and I think that the floors are slightly smaller.
2. Geez, Gunsan is ugly. And poorly laid out. I have mentioned this before, but seeing that vast expanse of dirt fronting the Lotte Mart forced me to say it again. My co-teacher told me that the government is pouring money into developing Gunsan at the moment---what on earth are they doing with it? Starting an Uglifying project? Accept my challenge, come to Chungju, and take videos of the downtown area here---I guarantee that you won't be disappointed. (And maybe, my challenge having been answered, I'll shut up about how ridiculously unsightly your town is. 'Cause seriously, your immediate area around the University is actually quite nice... it's the rest of the city that sucks.)
3. Your street dancers / objectified human advertisements have clothes. This is good. Hi-Mart does not let them wear anything more than bikinis (well, they can also wear jackets, but only if they remove them during the performance).
4. They actually sell cats? Really? Koreans are not fond of cats, and Matt has reported having serious problems finding cat food for his (absolutely psychotic, I mean really-really-disturbingly-unhinged-in-a-way-that-makes-me-never-want-to-go-to-Matt's-house-again level psychotic) feline.
5. You should have a toaster, it's in your contract. (At least I got one... in fact, I see my exact model for what looks like 33,000.) You should be complaining about all of the items you are supposed to have that you do not---if your co-teachers don't know what to do about it, call to the nice native English speaker guy at the head office. Of course, this may "cause problems" for your Big Boss, which will cause him to stop being so nice to you.
For a bit of fun, ask a Korean who's been oversees for more than a month at one time what it was like living without their 김치 [seriously, I don't know why we even bother Romanizing Korean when the hangeul are so awesome]. Ten to fifteen tear-filled minutes later, pat them on the back and tell them it's OK... they're back in Korea now, and the nightmare is over.
Thanks, Jordan & Marisa, for getting this going. I now have this (along with Matthew's and Karith's blog sites) open when I open my web browser, so I will check for new news daily.
Marisa is posting away, and we enjoy her writing style and her good humor. We look forward to hearing more from you, too. (I'm using the royal "we" for some reason - I'm just speaking for myself, from actual knowledge, but assuming everyone else I know shares my sentiments - how's that for projection?!)
-Baba