Fleeting Beat

The past month's travels

I often hear misnomers being said of Korean men in Korea. That implies they are as a whole more gentle, compassionate, non-violent, etc towards women than say western men. Men are individuals and all different, but what I have noticed moreso is the societal systems that are rather indifferent and perpetuate violence against women. This piece on the current state of rape laws which is from a clearly patriarchal system is an example and not off base from my own research. From what I've read of Korean and Korean-American communities handling of the abusive of women~ by authors from both; these misogynistic systems are still highly prevalent. The reluctance of authorities and outsiders to get involved in situations such as domestic disputes has been something that I have been frustrated by in Korea. I'm glad to see things may be changing. Don't get me wrong, America's no utopia. It has it's own chauvinistic idiots like Glenn Grothman to deal with.

Found the almost best grocery website ever! Organic food being shipped to Korea for free in less than a week. Drawback- it had to fly on a plane to get here. I must look into local options, but I doubt I will find Annie's Cheddar bunnies here or organic chickpea/ any other bean or grain and organic mint flavor. Next year I will have my shamrock shake!

I was also impressed with the turnout. We were mainly doing it for just our friends and co-workers, but we had a full house. Many of the guys on staff who just came to be supportive were surprised how much they enjoyed it. Good times.

Dog's summer flight reservation made, IB conference and flight booked... to be paid for by my school, end of the year party planning started and Vagina Monologues rehearsal underway.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day on the Han

So tumblr has been difficult to use for the past few months on my phone and I'm too lazy to start up my mac. Anyways here's one of the few pics of Thailand from my phone during our land days. I ended up with a perforated eardrum from diving and sat out the last day. Which resulted in my first time to the doctor in my 2.5 years in Korea. It's finally starting to feel like spring in Seoul. Summer flights are being booked and end of the year going away parties and festivities are being planned. Time is going so fast and it's getting to the point of doing "last" trips and going to the usual places with friends leaving. It's starting to get sad, but at least there will be great places to visit. Looking forward to: Singapore, KL, India, Budapest, Germany, Shanghai and Indonesia trips in the next year or so to visit some awesome people :)

Live aboard Thailand~ pretty awesome. Diving everyday and hanging in the sun. I forgot how good real Thai food is.

Oh and at our conference today we had Kagan as our speaker. I definitely need to incorporate more of his ideas into my teachings. 

Overall it was a breath of fresh air. Don't get me wrong I love Korea, but it has many flaws. I'm starting to get to the point of being ready to move on to a society that makes individuality and creativity more of a priority. It's great here, but life is short and after next year it looks to be time to move on. Oh the places to go...

I had a student drawing a beaver today and I made him look up what a beaver tail looks like. "Do people eat beaver tails?" he asks as he shows me seemingly deep fried beaver tails. Apparently Canandians call fried dough beaver tails. I suppose it's similar to elephant ears at the fair. But everyone knows the carnie folk arent killing elephants; I'm not so sure about Canadians and beavers.