Dear Family and Friends,

Last semester was an utter wash in regards to writing and traveling but to compensate, I definitely grew as a teacher. Memorable lessons from last semester were the day when my aunt and parents visited to talk with my students (family visits are a great deal for me: they teach, I supervise), the team-teaching demonstration class that my fantastic co-teacher and I performed at the end of May, a July lecture by my best friend via videoconferencing, and another team teaching performance – this time in front of 35 US school principals. While I still cannot say if I plan to teach long-term, I can say that I’m enjoying the challenges now, and I have the pictures to prove it!

My sweet Aunt Jenny talks flying and illustrates with a flight map.

Mum and I indulge in a hug while I consider clocking one of my boys. (I resisted – that time!)

Our students re-tell Charlotte’s Web events during our demonstration class (in front of ~20 people – teachers from my school, other schools, our vice principal, principal, and my boss from the city). Our students were great!!!!

My co-teacher, Im, Eunjoo and I were very lucky to have Liona Burnham join us and our students got a real kick out of her talk.

Despite the wonderful teaching conditions, the end of the school semester, July 13^th, could not come fast enough. Towards that end, as is a life pattern with me, I had managed to utterly burn out my creativity and energy with quantity (and quality) of work. I actually ended with the semester before the semester ended itself – the Thursday evening that I found out that my British co-teacher Paul would be moved to another school. I haven’t written much about Paul here – but I’ve been beyond lucky to work with him - he has been an invaluable mentor, companion, and friend. More importantly, he is an amazing teacher and our students adore him (despite his sometimes difficult for them British accent!). Although losing him to another school was not a surprise, it was disheartening and the semester concluded on a decidedly sour note even though I will return to Daegu Foreign Language High School in September.

Paul poses with hundreds of goodbye notes from his students.

Burned out, disheartened, exhausted, I had to, had to have a vacation – so I snuck away from Daegu to… Malaysia.

Ciao!
Laura

Miss Ee and Miss Ee – one rarely sees the one without the other – pose with their sign for Paul.

**Pictures of my parents and from the demonstration class are courtesy of Son, Young Chai and Taegu Foreign Language High School.**

Dear Friends and Family,

My heart leapt last November when one of my most amazing students requested that I accompany a group of students to Bangkok and be the necessary “adult” while volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. Call me crazy – and many did – but an important lesson that I had learned in departing from the United States is that while I adore visiting beautiful tourist sites, true adventure and the best memories are formed while meeting people. So in my student’s invite, I recognized an incomparable cultural experience – Korean students in Thailand, oh my! - not to mention a legitimate excuse to re-visit beloved Bangkok with the added bonus of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity – an international organization founded on the notion that everyone has “a right to decent housing.” I immediately acquiesced.

And I’ll tell you straight out: the trip was an incomparable experience – but not one that I’ll be in a hurry to repeat.

It was my amazing student, Yeji, who conceived of the good deed of volunteering, planned the trip and talked me into “supervising”. Our volunteer group, dubbed as the Youth Act for Peace team, was comprised of me, my friend Julie (also a teacher from the US), and 18 students – most of which I recognized but all of which I was still struggling for their names as we departed from Incheon to Bangkok.

Habitat for Humanity sent a staff coordinator and vans to greet us upon our late arrival in Bangkok and drove us to the hostel that we slept at – eight beds per room – yes, even me and Julie. The next morning we awoke, put on work clothes and embarked upon a week of sweat, hard work, meeting “real” Thais, and seeing the sites. Most mornings during our week stay, we were picked up at 9 am from our hostel, driven to the work site, worked from 10 – 1, had lunch (cooked by locals and served on tables at the local community center) + a bit of a rest, and then worked until finished for the day. Our first day was probably the hardest work-wise: just after meeting the family that we were volunteering to help, we stepped into too big rubber boots and pulled on knit work gloves in order to mix, with hoes, a pile of dirt with a few bags of powdered cement mix and a bunch of water and then haul the wet concrete mixture in buckets in order to lay the floor of the house the we were assisting with. This was hard, hot work that the students had predictable reactions to: some excitedly pitched in, some were afraid to get dirty, and some helped for as long as necessary before taking to the shade. At lunch, almost all collapsed on mats in the shade for a snooze and dragged back to the afternoon’s work. That evening, we ate dinner, had a group meeting, and slept heavily.

Things got somewhat easier in the following days and we took breaks from work and were tourists every evening. One day we visited the Grand Palace, Wat Arun, and Wat Pho. While another day we brought paper and colored pencils to an elementary school not far from where we were building and spent the morning playing with 100 or so adorable Thai kids. My students loved this! They performed a dance that they had learned in PE for the kids, gave away Korean memorabilia, and flopped right down to the floor to color and laugh and cuddle and play with the kids. As their teacher, I got the pleasure of being proud of my students while playing with my share of adorable elementary students. That was FUN!

But there were problems too. As “the adult”, I didn’t get breaks and I never stopped balancing the contradictory demands of wanting the students to have fun and grow while ensuring that they were safe. One evening while we were riding a water taxi up river, two of my students accidentally got off at the wrong stop. Heroically, Julie caught sight of this, got off with them and they found us. But that was scary. And then there were the times that the students ran late when meeting us at appointed spots – which caused me all sorts of panic (how would I explain their disappearance to their mothers???). And as the students were managing finances for the trip, there came inevitable points when I had to step in and work things through with them and Habitat for Humanity – which was decidedly not a pleasure (although all worked out in the end). As a final hoorah, the last day was amazingly challenging: 5 students were sick (i.e. fevers – I almost sent one to the hospital), one student ended up with concrete splashed in her eye (I had to wash it out with tear drops and make her cry), and on the way to the airport, Julie herself developed agonizing pain that we feared was internal but turned out to be an amazing muscle spasm.

In the end, although we were not able to finish building the house for the family that we were assisting, we enabled it (both with our time and with a mandatory donation), my students learned a lot (and mostly had a good time) while I too learned a lot about being an adult amongst teens, about being a leader. We all returned to Daegu, happily and safely – and can now reflect upon our trip with pleasure that increases with time, distance, and recovery.

With love,
Laura

PS: My apologies - I didn't talk a lot about Habitat for Humanity as an organization (they do amazing work!) but for more information about them and about the work they are doing in Thailand, check this article from their web site – not about us – but is still quite relevant.

Dear Family and Friends,

Each city in Korea has its own tourist slogan… Daegu’s is “Colorful Daegu” (in tribute to now mostly dead textile industry), Pusan’s is “Dynamic Pusan” and Seoul’s is “Hi Seoul.” Seriously.

The following pics are from my visit with Emily in February and with beloved parents and aunt in May so you, too, can say “hi” to Seoul!

...a cold day outside Seoul's Gyeongbok Palace...

...inside the throne room of Seoul's Gyeongbok Palace...

...decoration in preparation for the year of the golden pig - the Korean lettering down the side says "Happy New Year" (I can read!)...

...Seoul is lovely at night...





...traditional-styled Korean wear called "hanbok"...

...sleeping seamstress outside of Namdaemun Market...

...the largest Starbucks in the world... and oh, this sight makes me happy...!

...near the Han river at sunset...

...American tourists...

...pretty flowers...

...Korean architecture grows on you... truly, it does...

...number of kilometers from Seoul's Tower to Seattle... still, there are some days when I would willing walk 8,331.38 kilometers....


There, so now you all too have said “hi” to Seoul! --L

Dear Friends and Family,

Grasping the history of the Korean conflict turns a tour of the DMZ into living, breath-halting history. Suddenly it became easier to imagine the huts on the border that we had earlier viewed populated by military brass in diplomat mode. The landmine warnings were vividly real. Re-glimpsing the North Korean propaganda village flying the largest flag in the world amongst deforested hills seemed only sad. Standing on the tour bus to photograph the contested tree’s site became close to tourist mockery. And the peeling paint on the “Bridge of No Return” (where 83,000 prisoners were returned to North Korea after the Korean War while a mere 13,000 were returned to South) was perfectly understandable. That day in February, our bus drove us past all of those sights before returning us through anti-tank fortifications in order to deposit us at the JSA gift shop.

Next came a mediocre, over-priced lunch followed by a trip up to a viewing platform from which we should’ve been able to see well into North Korea – especially as the countryside just North of the border is spookily devoid of trees. But we couldn’t see much through the mist - even with the use of high powered binoculars.

Our last tour stop to visit tunnel number three indelibly printed North Korea’s determination to militarily alter the Korean peninsula in my mind. First we were subjected to a South Korean propaganda video which concluded with eerily inflated hope and then we were escorted to view a serious of timelines illustrated with Korean war memorabilia. Then we were escorted into another building, given yellow hardhats and terse instructions to stay with the group. We then walked down a steep incline into a rock tunnel.

The tunnel was just as you might imagine: a cool, long tunnel of rock with curved walls of chipped away rock, lit by strong light bulbs, and dripping with water. Dank to the point of sticking the insides of your nostrils. The walls had been blackened by fleeing North Koreans, who apparently figured that if they painted the tunnel black, the South Koreans would believe that the North Koreans had been digging for coal. An unlikely story even to my untrained eye. We walked single file, following the person in front of us and listening to our guide as he stopped to tell us that the tunnel could squeeze 30,000 soldiers per hour through it. It was hard not to feel claustrophobic.

We emerged from the tunnel fighting for breath – literally as the incline up is rigorous and figuratively as it had become easy to see that the North Koreans should be taken seriously.

I – we – returned to Seoul that day feeling that there was much to reflect on and found that while we were touring the DMZ, the long-running six party negotiations between South and North Korea, the US, Japan, China and Russia, announced a landmark agreement. My mind flashed to the laundered and now-glass covered flags in the DMZ meeting room. Readers of the world news would feel a raise in their hopes for Korea on the very day that had dealt a mortal blow to my own hope that Korea could achieve a happy ending.

Time will tell.
Laura


PS: Not all is doom and gloom in current Korean relations. You may have read on May 17th that trains crossed the North/South Korea divide for the first time in over 50 years. They aren’t going so far as to make a habit of this but the gesture was deemed good news. And just yesterday, my heart leaped at the news that South Korea’s current president, Roh, Moo-hyun, will visit North Korea’s Pyongyang in a few weeks to meet with North Korea’s Kim, Jong Il. Time will tell....

Dear Friends and Family,

Before returning with you all to the DMZ and in order to share my impressions (including why I used the adjective “menace” in describing North Korea), I need to shore up my conclusions by providing you all with my partial and prejudicial and likely boorish version of Korean history.

As you may recall, Korea, by definition, is a geographical peninsula filled with people sharing a common language and long-standing culture. Koreans have a rough history with “outsiders” – a history chock full of invasions by Mongolians or Japanese, a long bout of paying costly homage to China, and a habit of protecting its culture through isolating itself from the rest of the world. Enter modern times and the crucial point of 1910, when the Japanese colonized Korea and ruled in a decidedly non-benevolent style for 35 years (stripping Koreans of their ability to be Korean - down to changing their names to Japanese names) until the end of World War II in 1945.

In order to accept the Japanese capitulation and to assist in stabilizing Korea during a post-colonial governmental transition, American forces occupied Korea up to the 38th parallel while the Soviets occupied Korea down to the 38th parallel. Afterwards, the two armies, once united by opposing Japan and Germany but separated by ideologically opposing governments, could not agree on a forward course. So each occupier-ally helped Korea set-up a government: the US attempted to spread “democracy” to the South and in 1948, held an election that selected President Syngman Rhee while the Soviets appointed a charismatic leader by the name of Kim, Il-Sung to head-up the Communist Korean state.

The lack of agreement regarding which government was legit effectively divided Koreans in half. Neither government intended to rule only half the peninsula but neither could an agreement to unite be reached. Eventually North Korea, with superior resources and inferior patience, crossed the 38th parallel to attack South Korea on June 25, 1950. Thus began Koreans fighting Koreans in a civil war. But when it looked as if the “Democratic” South would loose out to the Communist North, the United States and the United Nations entered the fray to battle back the communists, inspiring China to eventually throw its weight behind the North. In three years, millions died, no side was able to assert dominance over the entire peninsula, the country was devastated in every possible way, and finally a cease-fire was signed on July 27, 1953.

The cease-fire, such as it was, still holds today. The Korean War has never officially ended.

I think it safe to say that following the Korean War, the South distracted itself by cleaning itself up, writing a constitution that included a future unification with the North, and diligently working towards a mighty capitalist society – even to the point of engaging, when fruitful, with the outside world. While the North built itself into communist military economy focused on “freeing the South” (from the repressive Americans), closed off to all but a few of its closest friends (communist China and Soviet Union), and talked itself into believing that it was a utopia ruled by the benevolent and brilliant Kim, Il-Sung. It is not truly known how North Koreans felt or feel about their utopian state but it is believed that North Koreans feel the separation of Korea as keenly as the South feels it – and that North Koreans can reliably be rallied around all “free the South” campaigns. Thus began the history of North Korea holding its people utilizing love/hate feelings for the South. It was not long after the cease-fire that a steadily increasing number of “liberating” attacks by the North on the South began.

Open – almost - hostility returned to the fore in 1968. In January 1968, 31 North Korean soldiers dressed in South Korean uniforms covertly slipped through the DMZ and moved south to the Korean Presidential Palace – Blue House – before being detected and arrested a mere block from the palace on the 22nd. This caused considerable outrage from the South Koreans, who garnered immediate, visible backing from the United States to the point that within a day, on January 23, 1968, a Navy intelligence vessel dubbed the USS Pueblo was surrounded and seized by the North Koreans in international waters – resulting in an 11 month hostage situation. In fact, 1968 was generally not a good year for Korea; accordingly to one source, there were 700 or so attacks that year although the number of attacks fell the following year to 300 as visible tension subsided.

Out-right hostility returned again in the 1970s. The US military at the DMZ’s Joint Security Area decided to trim back a sizeable poplar tree that dangerously (according to them) isolated 1 of their guard towers amongst 3 North Korean guard towers. On August 18th, 1976, a Korean work force was escorted by a few US soldiers to trim the large poplar tree. The group was surrounded by 30 North Korean soldiers operating under the impression that the tree was sacred to Kim, Il-Sung. The end result was that the tree remained intact while 2 US soldiers were beaten to death with the blunt end of axes. This resulted in the most militarized tree removal in history dubbed “Operation Paul Bunyan”: the poplar tree was removed and replaced with a monument to the dead soldiers. The workers sent to dispense of the tree were backed by helicopters, a number of B-52 bombers, and an entire army platoon. Happily, North Korea did not send soldiers to stop the cutting, so only a tree fell to axes that day.

It was also in the 1970s when North Korean defectors started talking about secret tunnels and upon following up, South Koreans began discovering incursion tunnels, running North to South directly under the DMZ. The tunnels were detected using water-filled holes dug vertically in the ground near the suspected tunnel locations. A sharp-eyed RoK soldier spotted water trembling in one hole (the movement was caused by the dynamite used to blast out the first discovered tunnel) in November of 1974. Other tunnels were discovered in 1975, 1978, and 1990 totaling up to four known incursion tunnels under the DMZ. And these tunnels were just a little too good to not be real. It was estimated that an entire regiment could pass through the tunnel in an hour. And individual studies of each tunnel showed design progressed with each tunnel. For example, the first tunnel has a bit of a water retention problem while the third tunnel slopes slightly up so that water does not stagnate. Clearly these tunnels were for more than amusement. Luckily, the North Koreans provided some always welcome macabre amusement with their explanation for the tunnels. The North claimed that the tunnels’ purpose was coal mining – although the black on the tunnel walls was easily identified as… paint. No trace of coal has ever been found in the tunnels.

And rather surprisingly, especially to us who are hyperaware of the fanfare and seeming success surrounding the Sunshine Policy, liberating attacks from the North Koreans continue almost to this day. In 1998, the body of a North Korean was found on a beach just south of the DMZ, along with equipment suggesting a non-friendly mission. And if my memory doesn’t deceive me, as late as in 2004, a North Korean submarine was caught near in the very South Korean waters near Jeju Island. (I found this tidbit in a museum but cannot confirm it).

Summed up, this partial, prejudiced history adds up to the idea that North Korea has spent fifty-four years planning attacks on South Korea while ruled by an authoritarian government that has raised generations of North Koreans to believe that Kim, Il-Sung is more miraculous than God and that actively believe that South Korea contains the enemy. Here in 2007, the North Korea leadership, now starving its people of food and other necessities, is in need of a certain level of hostility with South Korea and the United States to give its government purpose. The malice against the US, against South Korea is ingrained in North Korea, it will endure.

All of this is why I came to feel that North Korea is menacing, much like a thundercloud hovering in the distance, poised to wildly strike. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that war is inevitable… but a peaceable solution to the Korean War seems far away.

And now back to the DMZ….

Regretfully yours,
Laura

Dear Family and Friends,

And “thus the whirligig of time …”

As I’ve been preparing to at long last write, Shakespeare’s phrase “thus the whirligig of time exacts his revenges…” (from Twelfth Night) keeps popping to mind. Although I’d say that it is not time itself that whirls but what memory reduces time to: a colorful blur of memories punctuated by recollections of perfect clarity. It is hard to believe that while the calendar has flipped to August and I’ve just returned from Singapore, this blog remains halted at the DMZ in February. And yet I will still feel compelled to return you all to February as I do want to finish my visit to the DMZ (I continue to consider this one of my most important visits). And you are likely to be curious about my last week of February, in Bangkok, with 18 of my students, building with Habitat for Humanity. After that… well…

Have you ever looked back upon your life and regretted that you cannot remember a thing for a stretch of weeks???

Looking back just now, I remember nothing - not a thing - between the beginning of March and the end of April. Instead, I have an impression of scattered panic (what shall I teach?? how shall I teach it???) before my memory coalesces in the midst of April with my students performing their skits inspired by Charlotte’s Web followed by a two day city-sponsored trip with other “native” English speaking teachers with the program that supervises us. A friend had a serious accident on that trip and my computer developed a grave overheating problem – issues that I was still dealing with when I hugged my parents and dearest aunt in Seoul at the beginning of their visit at the beginning of May. A week later, after my beloveds crossed away through the airport gates in Daegu, computer problems, my usual workload, plus preparing for what turned out to be a series of “demonstration” classes consumed me to the point that my writing voice gradually faded and was gone by the end of the school semester on July 13^th – which could not come fast enough but still came as a surprise at its conclusion.

A flight to and stay in Malaysia, a summer camp back in Daegu and then other flights to Indonesia and Singapore and I now find my writing voice revived with whirled together memories just a few days before I return to the air – this time to visit Seattle after fourteen months abroad. And then I will begin another semester in Daegu in September.

Hence why the phrase “...the whirligig of time exacts his revenges” feels so apt - to me.

One thing I do know is that I have passed the point in which the description “Laura Drumm quit the life she knew and journeyed to Asia to travel, learn about the world and teach English for a year. This is mainly a blog to keep her friends and family fully in the loop - but also record her adventures and explore writing.” I have now established that that I love traveling, I love writing, that I love teaching, and that I have the wherewithal to continue all in the immediate future. This knowledge has changed into the life “I know” and although I am about to attempt to bring this blog up to date, I have broken with writing at this blog long enough to contemplate likely change of what and how I will write in the future. But that is the future and I left off a while back in the past so…

A few of my lovely first year students (aka high school sophmores) and I during our "demonstration class" on May 31, 2007.