ahhhhhhh! blogger! ....I just corrected a mistake in my last entry for the second time or third time! Blogger is out to embarrass me! It better publish my real entry now! Anyway, it's New Year's Eve here in Korea and I'm going on my 3 day get away soon!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!! It's just going to be me, my books and the internet!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah! Yeah! I'm so happy! Finally some solitude!

Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I remember a dream I had
There was a tall house with many rooms
Inside wood paneling was everywhere
And there was an emergency in the house
The memory is fading…I think it was a fire
I remember a frail woman in a bed covered in a quilt
She was always forgotten
I was crying because we always forgot her
Suddenly I was carrying her in my arms out of the house
Long, frail, and holding on to me in weak dependence
I faintly remember crying and crying

Joanne, Ro and I were talking about dreams tonight at dinner. I was talking about how for me there have been times when a dream has convicted me. There are certain dreams when I remember them I'm instantly struck with something. Usually when meaning is conveying someone has to open their mouth and form words then the hearer combines the tone, the body language, the context and the meaning of the words to make meaning in their own mind. But sometimes there is a different kind of knowing or understanding. The kind of knowing that skips words but injects pure meaning into your mind without needing the vehicle of words. This is the kind of knowing that sometimes hits me when I recollect certain dreams. I just suddenly have a wordless knowing that’s hard for me to even put in words. That’s what it was like with this dream I knew instantly it was somehow about my grandmother and that I felt sadness but even now I can’t say specifically about what. There are obvious reasons for sadness in the dream but I can’t help but feel the sadness is bigger than that.

I don’t know why I felt like I wanted to talk about that. I had that dream many months ago and at the time it troubled me. I remember telling friends about it with tears in my eyes but it got brushed away accidentally in conversation. Perhaps, it’s because when I was chatting online with a friend today she asked me if I’ve prepared myself for the inevitable concerning my grandma. I guess I’ve been asking myself that question my whole life. For all of my high school years and most of my college years my grandma was my anchor. She was basically my only parental figure during my teen years.

Well, I had wanted to talk about my 27th birthday. Wow! “27” It seems so amazing to even type that. Am I really 27? Have I messed up on my calculations? I have to go to sleep, so I’ve got to stop here. I have one on one conferences with my students all day tomorrow so I need my beauty sleep. So musings about turning 27 will have to wait. Something that I wrote in the middle of my 26 year that I’ll probably talk more about later, “I tried to be great, but learned I was a child.”

These last weeks have been really stressful, a combination of teaching an intense essay class and having two close friends preparing to go overseas among other things. I stole away at dusk Sunday and took a run to the lake on campus. It was a quiet, calming friend. I wrote this there.

Simple Peace
the bank is bathed in faded gold
the sun dims
green water ripples
the tree branch cradles me
I want to laugh
I want to cry
birds greet me
brisk wind covers me, calls to me
silence calms me

My office still has its unbroken morning quietness. The heater's slowly warming it up like a tiny oven and I'm still wrapped in my jacket as the dull sun light streams in. Yes, it's back to the books for me. Yesterday I had conferences with my students about thier essays all day. Today it's back to teaching and studying my grammar books. The verse that touched me this morning, "know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge..." Col. 2:2-3

I'm recovering from my hard-hitting essay class. I don't know what hit me but whatever it was it knocked me out. Last night I went to bed (passed out) at 10 pm which is like a world's record for me the queen of night owls (well, maybe the mayor or governor of night owls) Needless to say that class has been exhausting me probably in combination with the end of the semester stress. I feel kind of lame saying that because I think there are a lot of people that work harder than I do but here I make a big deal about it and am talking about it to all my friends.

Lately, I've been feeling on the edge of tears in what seems to me random situations. Yesterday in the middle of my second day of class I had been teaching for about an hour and half then suddenly realized that I desperately needed water. The English department has just moved to a gorgeous newly constructed building but unfortunately currently there's no drinkable water in the building. It hit me that here it was 2 in the afternoon and I hadn't drunk any water since 8:30 am. First of all, that is not healthy but if you're a teacher you know that's suicide for your voice. So my voice was started to get all messed up and hoarse. There was this moment in class that I kept mumbling to myself that I needed water like a weirdo and at that moment I felt so frustrated I just wanted to cry. (Thankfully, Sandy came to my rescue and brought me some apple juice later on.)

It just struck me as funny that I consider myself a pretty interesting person if not more than interesting because I'm kind of weird and random. While this might be true, I think my entries into my blogs tend to be about mundane things like how I brushed my teeth today. haha... The irony of it all. Why am I that kind of blogger? Oh,oh...

Anyway, on to deep and interesting things. Just kidding. Probably on to how I made my bed today. The truth is I've felt this kind of numb, sad evading feeling lately. Sometimes when I read other peoples blogs or certain poems or I watch certain movies I get this feeling that I don't have many complicated emotions and deep inner worlds in me. Sometimes I'll get a glimpse of an emotion in some song or poem and I'll get this sad, empty feeling like if I dug into myself I couldn't really come out with that much emotion but I just feel blank nothingness. It just makes me wonder lately if I know who I am. I think people who write often have a deep inner world. They know what they feel. Knowing them on the outside is like just like scratching the surface, you have to soak in their poetry, read their thoughts, perhaps view their art or whatever medium it may be to get a glimpse a view of their deep inner world. And sometimes I feel I don't really I have that but I want that richness. Sometimes I wonder if I'm afraid to look inside myself and let what's inside me really express myself. Perhaps for me to look into some of those emotions is to face a lot of self-doubt and perhaps self-loathing.

That's one of the fascinating things about art and blogging to me. Did I just put art and blogging in the same sentence? My ideas about art have been developing over time but as far as my own philosophy goes I think one of the key things in creating is being deeply honest. For the artist the kind of honesty that knocks them to their knees often in pain. It's possible, of course, to create not being transparent but I believe the art that penetrates us the most is usually the most strikingly honest and transparent. The songs, the movies that often pierce us are the songs or movies that the writers had to dig into themselves and pull things out that maybe they didn't want to look at. That's why writing poems is so good for me because I can�t write them unless I'm honest about where I am. It's one way that I try to dig into that world in me, take out some emotion and turn it over in my hand like some precious stone.

Yesterday I started my winter essay class. They were really cheery, so that was cool. Hopefully they will stay cheery even though they're going to have a ton of homework. As for me I feel way too busy. I think that will subside after my class gets into a groove. I just started with my new Taekwondo teacher (my teacher last semester left for the army today) so that's going to be interesting. Already he taught ro and I this cool hand thing. Gotta go prepare. So far I like this class but the prep makes me stressed!

Hello and happy December. It's kind of strange and surreal being in Asia during this commercial Christmas month. There are certain atmospheric tips that you get about what phase of the year you're in. I remember in high school it was baseball, as soon as the softball and baseball teams started practicing for their season out on the ball field that's when I got the signal school is almost over for the year. That always made me happy when I saw them because I then knew summer was just a couple months away. This December I know cognitively what time of year it is but the amount of signals just aren't there. When I tell my students what a crazy, stressful and chaotic month December is in America they just can't imagine why. Then I say, "Well, everybody's shopping and the malls are packed. People are stressed preparing for parties and worried about their budgets." But you just can't convey the feeling of Christmas to them, they need to walk into a mall and see the strained, tired people racing around for gifts to the background music of overplayed Christmas songs for themselves. Last night I went to the theater with "the girls" and laughed loudly about Love Actually. After watching that movie I thought, "Ah, there's the Christmas I remember..."

Ok, here I go again about the movie, "The Passion" by Mel Gibson. The movie is ready to be seen right now at theaters, however, they're having problems getting theaters to show the movie. There has been a lot of media talk that the movie is anti-Jewish, pushing Christianity and so on. So far it sounds unreasonable-many worldviews are expressed through the art form of film and Christianity has the same right to be heard.

Here's an excerpt from the website and if you want this movie to have a broad viewing go to the website and help out. Just by putting your name and zip code down that let's them know how many people want to see this movie. And this is not just for Americans, anyone in the world can take part.

"As some of you may know, you may never get a chance to see this movie! Many of our visitors have asked us if there is anything they can do to help. The answer is yes, and here are ways you can...." And hey-if you have a blog, why don't you link this page and suggest your friends put their name down as wanting to see the movie. Just my humble suggestion....^^

I wish I could just connect my brain to my computer and just purge out all my thoughts onto my blog. It's such a bother to cram all my thoughts into squiggly letters and make sentences. At least I wish I could just talk and my computer would type everything for me. There probably is a program out there that would do that. hmmmm.... There is something I spend a ridiculous about amount of money on.

As Morpheus said in The Matrix 1, "Time is always against us." And in my case as usual I should probably go to sleep but I just wanted to see if I could squeeze some of my thoughts out before I hit the sack. Right now I'm having this reoccurring feeling that I have once in a while. It has to do with having too many worlds in my brain. My visual image of this feeling takes the form of a kind of collage or mosaic of all these people inside of my head talking about their views on different topics. No, I'm not hearing voices. :-) That's just the picture that comes into my mind. There is something perplexing, mysterious, troubling and intriguing about how we all live on the same planet together but each culture (not to mention subcultures within cultures) is so wrapped up in itself and often truly believes it is the only one reality. I often experience this tangibly through simple exchanges with my students. And it really trips me out sometimes. It goes something like this, I'm working with whatever culture-it may be Spanish or Korean or whatever and we are having a conversation about nothing special. Then one of us will say something that suddenly makes me realize in that moment that even though we are standing right next to each other and have some pretense of knowing each other really we are worlds apart.

However, after a while even though I might not agree with the perspective of whichever culture I'm living in their view starts to seep into my brain. I begin to understand them to some extent. I begin to have a duel brain. I can see a situation form their point of view and also from my culture's point of view. But then I travel some more and then more. Soon many ways of seeing the world have seeped into my brain and it amazes me because I understand each of them and yet I know that each one thinks they are "the only way" of seeing the world. It's not quite as confusing as it may sound because I know what I think in the sense that I have a core worldview, Christianity, that acts as a grid and guide for what I experience. It's not that I don't know what I think; it's just that I feel like I sometimes have so many worlds in my mind. When you live in another country long enough or talk with a certain culture enough it's like their perspective leaks into your veins. But what is perplexing and sometimes almost laughable to me is that I sometimes feel all these views or empathies live in my brain but they all believe they are so totally the only truth. For example, I feel I can really understand the Korean mind sometimes. Perhaps I can even think like them even though often I choose not to. Then I go to America and I can think like them, too. I also know that they often think their way of thinking is the only way. I can understand both these ways of seeing the world. They both live in my brain but in so many ways they are so contradictory. So in that way, sometimes I feel there so many ways of seeing the world whirling in my brain that I think my brain is going to explode.

Um, that was way too hard to express! I'm going to bed. :-)

Wow, there has been a bombing at some synagogues in Turkey today. I'm watching it right now on the news. What a tragedy. Oh, what are we going to do about the Middle East. Speaking of this area of the world as I mentioned before I'm trying to get together a trip to Uzbekistan. There are two people that are seriously thinking about it not including me. However, they are both women so now our team needs at least one guy to seriously think about it. So please, please pray God would call the people he wants to come and that he would just bring together all the details.

I'm feeling kind of sad and uncertain about my winter break right now. As you might know I went to Uzbekistan last summer. I went with a missions team here on campus. The student group is going on more missions trips this winter including a trip to China among other possible countries. I have proposed a trip to Uzbekistan because I think there is great potential for powerful ministry in the universities and I'm interested in starting a program between our univeristy and some of the universities there in Uzbekistan. I am not sure though, maybe it's just not the time now. So should I go at all? I don't know. Also it doesn't seem like anyone else has this vision and it's hard to organize something like this unless you have a lot of people behind you. So please pray for me when you read this. Please pray God would open the right doors and close the wrong doors.

I haven't written for a while. Right now I've got my frayed sweatshirt on and my shoes are covered with mud. I just came to my office really quick to get a book then I'll go back to my house to prepare for my lesson today. This semester my free time is in the morning and I teach at night. So this morning I had my Tae-kwon-do lesson and then went stomping around the little lake on our campus taking pictures for my online photography class. I'm borrowing one of my student’s camera so I always have limited time to take pictures because he needs it back during the weekends. It has been raining nonstop for the last couple days making us all depressed and making it difficult for me to take pictures so now I'm relieved I can finally take some pictures outside. I'm kind of stressed about my lesson today. I need to teach about poetry and that makes me a bit insecure. I also just don't have the time today to do all the research that would take. So I hope today isn't a nightmare. Gotta go prepare...

I can't believe this! MIT has put 500 of their courses on the internet for anybody totally free. I just reviewed it quickly but they had classes from "Drugs and Culture" and "Middle Eastern Poetry" to "Neuroloical Studies of the Brain". Wow and it's all free... It's called Open CourseWare. Wow... I'm going to go crazy now looking through that info...

I've stayed up too late. I'm sleepy but I think I'm still going to go home and read for a while. However, I must let you know why I stayed up too late in my office. I told you a while ago about how I walked around the fishing villages around my university and took pictures. Well, I've got some of the pics up and I really like them. Not all of them are up but a good portion. I think I captured some cool scenes. (if I do say so myself:-)) Take a look... I strongly recommend you put in it on "slide show" if you have a fast connection.

Ok, I've been sitting in my office chair so long that my leg is aching. Am I getting old? Actually, I don't think I've been sitting in my chair that long. It might be that ever since I started Tae-kwon-do my hamstrings have been constantly soar from my new stretching routine. You know if you're not flexible you just physically can't do some things in Tae-kwon-do. Sometimes when my teacher teaches me something and I'm having a hard time instead of modeling the kick again he just makes me stretch again.

I found out at church today from a fellow prof. that I was on the news in Korea lately. Well, not just me but the university I work at, too. Last semester MBC came and filmed my class for about 10 minutes. So about 1 minute of that time is on this video that was shown on MBC. So if you want to see it I have the link, but first you should have a fast connection and you'll have to brave the Korean website. I'll try to give you clear directions but you won't understand most of the writing on the website and also the speakers on the video are Korean. But I think it's still really interesting and not too difficult to find the link. So go to this website (the Korean website, not the English one) and look for the "Handong PR video" title. The title will be in English. The first video link will have the letters "MBC" that's NOT the correct one. Go 3 links down and you will also see MBC again. That's the right link. Click on that and you will see me in about 2 minutes after starting the video and you'll also see other professors from my school.

I'm sick and kind of sad. I've been home all day lying around my house. I haven't been this sick in quite a while. My voice sounds pathetically croaky and I've got a cough. I should have been lying in bed but instead I was glued to my laptop surfing the internet for hours. Honestly, I can't remember what I was doing on the internet for so long. Hmmm...Let's see I typed out all my goals, did research on different books on making documentaries, researched laptops, researched pda's... Oh, I guess that's what I did. I have that kind of mopey, lump on a log kind of feeling. Like I'm trapped inside my body. I don't want to lay around- I want to do things, go places but I just don't want to move my body.

I was supposed to speak for MNE on the topic of "Spiritual Warfare" today but I had to cancel. That would have been great, hopefully I will get to speak for them later this semester. I also canceled my classes today. Thankfully my night class is taking a test, so another teacher is going to drop off the test for me and the students will take it with out me there. Another thing that was canceled today was the filming of my life. :-) Actually, it's true. A student's taking a documentary class and would like to make a documentary on a foreigner's life in Korea. I was really excited this student asked me to do this because I'm also interested in making documentaries and would like to learn as much as I can.

The desire to learn about documentaries has grown in me. I travel a lot and see such amazing things. I would like to capture some of those things and share them with people. It's a way of not having so many experiences, ideas and images bottled up inside you. Photography, making videos, my poetry and this website are methods I use to keep myself from feeling isolated or locked up inside myself with my experiences. I guess that isolation could be thought of as the other side of expression. In the past I thought artists expressed through their art just for the purpose of expressing. It never occurred to me that it was also a way to feel community or to feel less isolated.

I've finally started corresponding with, Frontiers, the mission agency I'm interested in working with . So I'm really happy about that. I've been trying to establish contact with them since the end of July. And it seemed somehow my emails didn't get through to them or the on-line vision survey I took didn't get through to them when I sent it to them through their website. But at last we are communicating and the "California rep" and I are starting to dialog over email. So we'll see where this goes.

Today I went with Ro, Sandy and some Korean guys on a hike to a temple on a mountain with the purpose of enjoying the changing fall leaves. It was beautiful. Fall is my favorite season. I love the crisp air coupled with the bright sunshine and the changing leaves. I think Ro gets tired of me going on about this though. And she often reminds me of why she doesn't like the fall, "It's the coming of death!" She's referring to winter, which she greatly dislikes. I mention this because the contrast in our moods about fall strike me as humorous. Well, I'm going to go do some reading. I just wanted to write a little bit. Hopefully, I'll write something more inspiring and deep next time...:-)

I should be writing a test but instead I'm surfing the internet and correcting the dates on my poetry page. It's really weird but when I viewed my poetry page the template was totally different (not of my doing) but I ironically I think I like it the best out of all the templates I've seen. So I hope it'll stay but when this quirky stuff happens with blogger it usually goes back to normal the next day. Thankfully I copied the html (A-ha...I'm so clever) so I can keep the template. So now that I've bored anyone that's not into blogger or websites I'll tell you that this was a "cool movie" weekend. I saw 2 movies that really touched me and filled my mind with things to meditate on. One was About a Boy and the other Equilibrium which I saw in the theater. Equilibrium really impacted me. It's been rattling through my brain the last 24 hours; I think I need to see it again. Its premise is really fascinating. Another movie that has been thought provoking for me, even though I've only seen trailers is Lost in Translation. It's a movie that I can really relate with in the sense that I daily have to interact with a culture and language I don't completely understand and doesn't completely understand me. Some of the scenes from this movie are like the story of my life in Korea. You know until I had a blog I had no idea that I cared about movies. Isn't that weird? But I guess I do cuz I'm noticing a trend in my blogs that I often talk about movies.

Ok, my poetry page is finally up. I want to put the real dates for when I wrote the poems but as you know I've had some probs with the page. So not all the dates are correct for each poem. Some of the dates are correct but not all. I'll change them later.

oh my gosh, there's my entry after all. Blogger is being so weird and flacky! Is blogger being wacko for anyone else!?

I'm really, really sad. I erased accidentally the entry I just wrote. I also have been working on a poetry page but something keeps on being weird with blogger. I've spent hours trying to get that thing published then the entries don't even show up. So it's like I totally wasted my time. Sometimes technology makes me so mad!