Back in Korea

Greetings from South Korea! I arrived here on Friday local time and came directly to Sinae's hometown where I am still on Sunday evening. I'm planning on going to Cheonan, the city I live in, tomorrow around 10am so I can get settled in at "home" doing business that I need to tend to as well as starting to prepare for classes next semester. I'm still not completely sure of what I am doing but I purchased a lot of books from Cambridge University that will hopefully give me some tools on teaching better classes. The internet has a lot available but sometimes I end up spending more time looking than I actually find and these tools seem to describe what the purpose of the activities are.

I also feel like I have a more realistic goal with students this time. Rather than expecting them to be able to have conversation comparable to native English-speaking university students I am setting a goal of them being able to have conversations that I can have with my nieces Emma and Tammy who are 6 and 4 years old, respectively.

It was hard to leave for the airport on Wednesday night Mountain Daylight Time. There were a few moments when I almost started crying as I remembered what I have seen Mom go through. There are some memories, both good and bad, that I don't think I will ever forget. Did I mention that I started crying as I read the last few pages of "Letters to God" to Mom just before she went home. As I read that book, I recalled times when things seemed really unstable with Mom. I learned later (back to me leaving for South Korea) that Mom cried after I left, when she was alone at home and had to do things herself.

For the most part, I am happy to be back in South Korea, though it is hard for me to be so far away from my mom during this time of recovery. I am hoping to go back in January or whenever she has her second surgery to help out around the house like I did this time. Hopefully her blood clots will be long gone by then and she won't have to go through the whole process of going from the OR to ICU to the surgical unit to TCU.

This whole dilemma about whether I should return to Korea or not is an interesting one. There does seem to be a conflict of interests between taking care of Mom at home and continuing my life in South Korea, where I am involved in a deep, romantic relationship. Both relationships are very important. I did ask Mom if she would like me to stick around for a year and she said she didn't think that would be necessary. Of course it wouldn't seem realistic since my job is in South Korea, which I need to pay off my debts and more importantly, this is where my girlfriend lives. I don't know what the future holds but I think we are both hoping marriage is in the future for both of us. This requires a lot of conversations, growth, thinking and praying on both of our parts, both together and separately.

The whole scenario is interesting because early on in our dating relationship, as we talked about our values and how they differ in both cultures I recall telling her family is not as important to me as my relationships with my friends. My how Mom's health condition change my thinking and my actions. I no longer question whether or not family is important but I still wrestle with how to continue to live my life overseas, continuing to grow and learn about others while also taking care of my family.

For me, there is no question that blood is thicker than water. But I think that we sometimes forget that and when we do we hurt those who are closest to us. To prove the significance of this statement, my relationship with my Uncle Kenneth comes to mind. I hesitate to use his name here but I think with the limited traffic of people who come here as well as the fact that he wants to be known for living up to his convictions is enough reason to name him here. Anyway, it is interesting how much he came to mind as I was going through the process of helping Mom and the family out during this eventful visit home. I'd just like to take a few minutes to reflect on these things. I intend to say nothing negative here, since that probably wouldn't do much to build him up or mend fences with our relationship as it stands now.

I think Kenneth probably had a lot to do with my ease of taking care of Mom. If you know Kenneth at all, you know that he lived with his mom (my paternal grandmother) for a number of years and did things that I didn't understand while sacrificing other things. It is not insignificant to me that Kenneth only married after my grandmother passed away. I don't think there was even a question to him of whether or not he should care for his mom except when her health came to the point where he didn't feel he could do enough for her anymore. I learned a lot of consistency from Kenneth, particularly when I was a child. While I disagreed with him regarding some of his views on the status of women he was quick to make sure that he helped women out, rather than holding one view and then expecting them to do those things his rationale said they weren't equipped to do.

That brings the many mowing lessons I had with Kenneth to mind. Of course there were many other lessons he taught me. But this was a basic one. We had conversations about how my brother Bruce, my dad and I should help my mom mow the lawn more. And I learned how to use a John Deere self-propelled push more from Kenneth. I also dare not forget the many lessons he taught Bruce and I when he, my Great Uncle Glen and Grandma would come to Greeley, the city where I lived. We would go shopping together and Kenneth would usually buy something for Bruce and I that we needed, like a tube for our bicycles or a low-priced word-processing program for the computer his older brother, my Uncle Leland, gave Bruce and I. One of the other memories I have came to mind often during my time there because I saw it every time I parked my Honda in my maternal grandpa's garage during my most recent visit.

I was working on my car, a 1970 Ford Galaxie 500, with Shane, someone I went to church with whom I thought needed some TLC. I was in a hurry to get him home before I had to be at work so I wasn't thinking very clearly (Haste certainly did bring about waste on that day). I put the transmission in reverse and it wouldn't go because the parking brake was on. The parking brake release handle was broken so I using adjustable pliers (aka "Channellock" even though that wasn't really the brand of pliers that I used) without putting my footing on the brake pedal. The idle was set quite high on that car and before I shut my door it seemed that car was flying out of the garage until the door caught the middle pilar of that garage and must have pulled the bottom out a good foot. As strong as that Ford was built, my mistake ended up bending the door, something Bruce was able to fix very quickly, partly because of his own ability and partly because of his training in auto body. The next time Kenneth came to Greeley, he fixed that pillar so that it was in at least as good of shape then as it was before my accident.

As I reflect on those things, I realize how important that time was with Kenneth. He was also very supportive of me when I went to college in Boston and Idaho, even though he didn't agree with the views I had taken on as my own. He even drove all the way from Chappell, Nebraska to Nampa, Idaho (This is about a 12 hour drive from Colorado). This meant a lot to me and is something I won't forget.

During these times, Kenneth communicated to me that I am a valuable person and that my views, as far as how close they are to being right, is not as important as our relationship was. And there is a part of me that understands why things have worked out the way they have, at least for now. It is hard to have a deep relationship with someone when your views seem so different, even though it seems to me we are probably closer than what we think, and I don't think Kenneth is interested and perhaps not even able to have a deep relationship with someone whose views are so different from his. So, instead of harboring ill feelings toward Kenneth, I want to remember these lessons he taught me and practice them in my own life. Of course I hope we are able to mend fences at the right time, but I also want to respect his privacy and his own personal convictions.

This reminds me of another lesson I learned, both through various experiences during my time at home and the insight Sinae offered me. I believe Leland also contributed to the lesson that sometimes we need to take the good with the bad in our family experiences and be grateful for what we have, learn from past mistakes, and treasure the gift of family, something not everyone has, rather than shunning our own families for not being the Platonically perfect (Somewhere out there is the perfect family which I should have been given) family. When I think about it that way, I think I have been very blessed. The funny thing is that where my family has sometimes had weaknesses, God blessed me with friends who filled in those holes as well. And sometimes I find myself identifying family members as friends (One of which reads this blog and posts comments regularly).

Now all of this is easier said than done. So I hope you will remind me of these lessons when you find me complaining about the imperfections in my own life.

This is a long post. Thanks for hanging in there. It's almost 11pm here. I think I'll take a look at my notes from the sermon this morning (I was blessed to be able to follow along a little bit this morning, especially when the pastor talked about "in Christ" in Greek. I'm hoping I can find his sermons online since he preaches in Sinae's hometown which is 2 1/2 hours away from me, and also since I think this might be a good way to study Korean. I figure that if I can understand Korean sermons listening to people speak normal speed Korean might be a breeze), brush my teeth, send Sinae a long text message (It's called "Shotmail" in Korea), and get some sleep before tomorrow morning.

I hope you have a blessed day wherever you are.