Human Rights Violations

Yesterday night, three Koreans at a bar asked me if I realized what Hollywood movie star I looked like. "Here we go again," I thought. Their verdict: Ed Norton. My inner penguin was nonplussed.

Speaking of movies, I'll admit a little bashfully that I've consumed about two seasons of The West Wing since leaving London. I tend to read, and watch things, in bursts; I love seeing story arcs unfold.

Debating what to teach tonight... I'm thinking of doing "bad" leaders for a change: "Bin Laden and Buddies." Or maybe fan campaigns to revive TV shows (Star Trek, Firefly, Family Guy) as (rare?) examples of successful popular movements in modern-day America. Fictional leaders could be fun. Ooh, Ammar versus Rodrigo (from The Lions of Al-Rassan, perhaps my favorite novel.) I'm going to miss this job.

In Boston, I frequented a Korean tea shop, called Dado. So I came to Korea expecting bountiful and delicious tea. Alas, tea isn't as easy to find as I had hoped; there are coffee vending machines at every corner, and more Starbucks clones than you can shake a fist at, but tea seems to be the choice of a past generation. And not a single tapioca shop. It's clearly not Taiwan.

When I was little, I was so addicted to teatime on my family's visits to Chile that once, when we had skipped it, I was inconsolable until my grandparents agreed to serve teatime as the first course of dinner. Me, spoiled? Absolutely.

The number of camp casualties continues to increase, a fact little-noted in the Korean media. Yesterday, one girl broke a finger playing basketball during the obligatory PE hour, and another chipped a tooth running down the hall and tripping over an object (she's exercised her fifth amendment right, or the Korean equivalent, not to identify what the object was.)

In creative writing, most of the kids' short stories so far have featured murders and/or love triangles involving Katalina, usually both. (The latter suggests they might be more perceptive than they're sometimes given credit for.) In one story, another TA (the engimatic EJ) got flushed down a toilet, whereupon Katalina turned into King Kong and ravaged the town. For their final story, David and I instructed them not to include any camp personnel as characters, and to secure permission from a teacher before killing anyone. Yes, we're cracking down on free expression. It's fun to be authoritarian, even south of the DMZ.

I shared the opening of The Lovely Bones with them as an example of how to hook a reader. Not everyone knew what a salmon was (oh, how I miss sushi) but they all gasped at "I was murdered on December 6, 1973..." I'm trying to figure out why I found that novel so compuslively readable too. I think it's very much the characters (they're roomy characters; I find a place to fit inside each of them) and the smooth narrative; it's also the unique, understated yet weirdly believable point of view. I think I'm better able to suspend my disbelief regarding an omniscient narrator when that narrator is in a place where she has every right to be a little bit omniscient... yet still very human, and very young. I cringed when her father got his knee bashed in: not moving on literally made it harder for him to move. I loved the flashes of Ray's family (I forget his mother's name--Ruana?) And I was cheerfully surprised when the situation with the despicable yet frail Mr. Harvey was resolved off-stage, or at least out of focus. I wish you all a very good life.

Back at camp, the youngest student, Doyee, set his story on the USS Enterprise. He was captain, of course, implying Picard either met a grisly fate or left the fleet to perform in a Klingon version of the Christmas Carol. It's nice to know Star Trek fans survive--and continue to spawn--abroad.

To my surprise, the girl who got tortured a few days ago now walks arm in arm with her alleged torturers again. I'm not sure if I'm witnessing a great reconciliation, poor short-term memory, or the tip of some sociological iceberg.

Randy and I recently finished downloading the Star Wars Holiday Special. I won't subject the kids to it but I do plan to watch it on the flight home--probably on the Seoul-Singapore leg, as there'll be more cities nearby for an emergency landing should I require defibrillation.