A Throne Away from Home

I was teetering on the brink. Should I take the job at Nam Incheon SLP or not?

I'd looked into all the practical questions the State Department website recommended foolhardy Americans ask when considering a teaching job in Korea. I'd established that the school in question had been around for years, so it wasn't likely to fold while I was there. It was affiliated with a university, so there was probably some sort of professional oversight of things. The administrator spoke excellent English, so I'd be able to communicate with the Korean staff easily. I spoke to one of the foreign teachers, and she spoke well of the place and didn't seem to be trying to hide anything. Overall, I figured that the worst case scenario was that the State Department warnings were right, that going to teach English in Korea was a fool's errand, I'd end up living in substandard housing while not getting paid for my sixty hours a week of teaching in a dismal and overcrowded dump, and I'd have to go pleading to my sister to fly me home with her frequent-flyer miles. (Yeah, she'd berate me for my stupidity, but she did that anyway so what did I realy have to lose?)

Worst case scenario, I figured, was a free trip to Korea. Or nearly free -- I'd be out the cost of a passport and some scolding from my sister. That didn't seem like too high a price to pay for a little adventure.

But one thought nagged at me and made me hesitate.

What were Korean toilets like?

I wasn't exactly the seasoned world traveller. I'd only been to Germany and France. But France had taught me that you didn't have to stray too far culturally to come across some truly bewildering toilets.

We weren't five miles into France when we encountered the first.

I'd been traveling with my husband, Craig, and his friend, Eddie. We'd wanted to push to get the whole way into France before our first pit stop -- which was a bad idea, since we also figured that we'd need lots of Jolt to keep us awake for all that driving. By the time we crossed the border into France our bladders were the size of watermelons and crying to be emptied. NOW.

But, just as we expected, there was a roadside rest area just over the border. We were saved!

I parked the car and scurried over to the side of the building with the skirted-figure sign, while Craig and Eddie made their way to the panted-figured side. I made my way around a baffles only to be baffled.

There before me, set into the ground, was a clean, new, shallow cement trough. Painted on either side was a footprint to show the user where to stand. I dutifully planted a foot on either side and contemplated my predicament. Whoever had designed this bathroom evidently didn't realize that various solids and fluids were usually released by drivers at roadside rest stops; he hadn't designed any sort of drain or trap door or other exit in the trough for whatever fluids or solids might be deposited there. No. Whatever you voided would accumulate between your feet and, I presumed, await additions by the next visitor.

I called to Craig and Eddie, who joined me promptly.

"Look at this!"

They didn't seem nearly as put out as I was. "It's the same on the men's side," they told me.

"Well, I'm not doing my business in there," I announced.

I climbed over the guardrail and made my way into the bushes for Nature's Latrine. I was a camper and hiker; a hole in the dirt is a proper latrine. A nice clean cement trough isn't.

France offered further bewilderment when we stopped for the night at Rheims. Our hotel room featured a sink and a bidet, but no toilet.

"What I need to do can't be done in a bidet," I pointed out. We searched the room and found a closet -- a clothes closet, not a water closet. We crossed the hall and knocked on Eddie's door, to no avail. He was even more scantily provided for than we were, for he lacked the bidet.

The three of us prowled the entire floor of the hotel, opening every unlocked door. We found broom closets. We found showers. But there wasn't a toilet to be found. I ended up walking up the street to a gas station.

The final toilet insult came in Paris in the form of the sidewalk pay toilets.

They were some brushed-steel capsules that would have looked at home in any Star Trek movie aboard the most cutting-edge spaceship. When you put your coin in the slot, the door slid open with an efficient WHOOSH!

Revealing a tiny stainless steel room, in the center of which stood a thigh-high stainless-steel pedestal atop which perched a stainless-steel bowl. It looked like a futuristic clean freak's idea of a birdbath. And, like the cement trough, it had no drain or other exit in the bottom.

"I'm not depositing my business in a stainless steel birdbath!" I announced.

My husband, being less coy about his bodily functions, volunteered to try it out. He stepped in. The door WHOOSHED shut behind him. A few minutes later, it WHOOSHED open again. He stepped out and the door closed behind him.

THUD! We could hear a sound as if the floor had dropped away like a trap door. Then a loud WHISSSSHHH as if of a high-power sprayer. Then a CLUNK!

Curiosity overwhelmed us. We put more money in just to get the door to open again. The little stainless steel room was empty and clean.

And no way was I going to step into a public toilet with a floor that dropped.

For the rest of our trip to Paris, I made a point of remembering where all the plain old ordinary commode-style toilets were so I could go to one when the need arose. I'd make an extra subway ride to get to one. I was having none of the bizarre non-toilets.

If I'd encountered such weirdness in such a non-alien country as France, what could I expect to encounter in the mysterious East? You might have to stand on your head to use an Asian toilet!

So I asked for pictures of the apartments.

I got back pictures showing a normal living room, kitchen, and bathroom -- complete with easily-recognizable American style toilet.

I took the job.

A Loser?

Today I was talking to James (a friend from church) after Korean class about how much I hate going to the gym, and why. He addressed the spiritual aspects of my discouragement. He left me thinking.

You don't have to scratch far below the surface with me to hit a rock-solid core of despair and futility. I headed downstairs to wait for everybody else as they took the elevator down. I thought about that unshakable core of despair and futility. At first I thought that it made sense. What have I made a success of? My son hates me. My daughter is holding on by her fingernails. I haven't had a romantic prospect in nearly a decade. And here I am, in Korea because I can't get a job back home.

Then it struck me. I couldn't get a job back home. Okay. That happens. The economy is slow and my family settled in a particularly depressed area (How appropriate!) where jobs are scant even when times are good. I couldn't get a job back home.

I didn't settle into burger-flipping or go on welfare. I came to Korea. Just this past year I went on a mission trip to China, went on a tour of Mongolia, and spearheaded a successful drive to sponsor a well for a village. Not a bad year for a "loser".

Unintentional Clock Face

God's own acid trip

More evidence that the whole "monkeys and typewriters" thing makes as much sense as "The earth is carried on the back of a giant turtle." SOMEBDODY had to have come up with this. And whatever He was smoking, I want some:

Guitar Links for Helen

Guitar Chord Transposer

Library to look up guitar chords

Guitar basics

Strumming - Online lessons

God as Dungeon Master

To those of you who aren't D&D geeks, that's not anything weird, sinister, or kinky. The guy who runs the game is a Dungeon Master or DM.

I first concieved of the paradigm of God as the ultimate Dungeon Master back when I was still married to Craig, who for all his faults was the best DM I've ever played with, bar none. The DM is basically god of the gaming universe. There are rules, but he can choose to bend them. Or not. He can choose to fudge the die rolls.

I asked Craig once what he did if we didn't go into the tavern where the old Gypsy woman was spinning the tale of the nefarious vampire we were supposed to go destroy. Craig pointed out that he had more means of getting messages to us and he could come up with somebody if the old Gypsy woman didn't work.

Now, that said, let's move a moment to one of my pet peeves with my preschoolers. Bear with me, they tie together. As you'll see quickly.

Every day we have a Teacher's Helper. It's just the next kid down the attendance sheet from the kid that did it yesterday. Unles the kid who is supposed to be TH is absent, and then the next kid gets it.

The kids drive me crazy with wanting to know who will be TH tomorrow, the next day, the day after that. I don't want to tell them because I hate being forced to commit to something that can change. I can tell Ye Eun that she'll be Teacher's Helper tomorrow, then she's absent and Ha Rin is Teacher's Helper.

And what does it matter? They rotate. Show up every day and you'll be Teacher's Helper roughly once a week. Be late, like Min Gun usually is, and you'll blow your chance most weeks and everybody else gets to be TH after only four days instead of waiting five for their next turn.

But for ten months now there's been the relentless pestering about who will be Teacher's Helper tomorrow and the day after and the day after.

"I'll tell you when you need to know!" I tell them.

And I get one of my Presence of God moments. The "Sound familiar?" moment. The "Somebody has to keep telling YOU that. If you can't listen to Me, you could at least listen to yourself."

But I want to know! What's my next assignment? What am I gonna be doing next year? What's my five year plan?

Never mind I've never once had a five year plan that worked. In fact, making a five year plan -- which all the Success Gurus tell you is absolutely necessary to avoid wasting your life -- is a sure fire plan for disaster for me. I've never had one that doesn't totally blow up in my face and send me 180 degrees off from the direction I'd thought I'd be heading in.

But not having a Five Year Plan drives me as crazy as it drives the preschoolers crazy not to know who will be Teacher's Helper on Monday.

Why is it harder to let go of the admonitions of Success Gurus, whose names I can't even recall, than to let go of the admonitions of GOD, for crying out loud?

Mullins