I Want to Learn the French Art of Living

May 1, 2024April 29, 2024 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Why are you going to France?

It was astonishing how many people asked a version of this question. While it is true that I often travel for a job, I’ve visited 5-6x as many countries for pleasure as I have for work, and until this spring when I decided to stop working in order to take my holidays at a nicer time of the year, no one asked me why. “Because I want to”, was the real answer, but it seemed to confuse people. Other times, I told people I was going for the food, but most who have never been to France simply can’t imagine the food here being that much different. I once counted myself among them, but after my first meal in France, I thought that I had died and gone to food heaven.

Now that I’ve been in France for a couple of weeks, I know that what I was struggling to find the words to say was that I wanted to go to France to learn the French art of living. The French call this “Joie de Vivre” (Joy of Life), but it is perhaps better translated as “The Art of Living Joyfully”, and it’s a very deep rooted value in French culture. Joie de vivre isn’t about parties or euphoric joy, it’s finding happiness through living. Since arriving in Tours, I have been receiving a swift and enlightening crash course.

Musée des beaux-arts – “La Joie de vivre” (Victor Prouvé, 1904)

Practicing Kindness

I will say again that French people in general are more likely to be kind than rude (I’m sure they can be rude when called for, and that there are some percentage of rude people everywhere, but rudeness is not the default way of life). My first week in town, I had to run errands and do shopping while jet lagged and after my 3.5 hour French immersion class which left my brain feeling like a wet noodle. I could barely make comprehensive sentences in English (my native language) let alone in French. Despite my overt disorientation, every shopkeeper was kind and patient with me, most were even happy to use both French and English with me when I explained I was learning, giving me a chance to practice but also helping when the language was outside my skill.

I have not formally studied French since middle school. I came into this language program with a hodgepodge of random vocabulary and grammar that does not conform to standard learning levels in any way. I am not a quiet student, but I also felt that if I asked about everything I didn’t understand, I would derail the whole class. On my second day, I experienced an intense moment of frustration, and the teacher worked very hard to find out what was confusing me. I wanted to shut down and look it up later in private, but she worked it out with me in class. In the moment, I wasn’t happy to be the focus of so much time and attention, but in retrospect, it was a glorious act of kindness and support on her part. I’ve done the same for my own students, and it’s eye-opening to feel it from the other side.

I also had some disappointment in the apartment when I arrived –the washing machine was broken, and there was no Wi-Fi. In most other places I’ve lived, these kinds of problems were dismissed and I was left to handle them on my own or forced to nag the property manager (my last apartment in Korea was a nice exception, those people were great). I didn’t feel any animosity at the lack of amenities. I had of course emailed ahead of my flight to be sure that I would have access to a washing machine and Wi-Fi (among other things), but my response to the absence of promised resources while traveling abroad is less often anger and more often resignation.

To my surprise and delight, the owner of the school arranged for me to get 120gb of data for the month so I would be able to do things like make video calls, watch YouTube, and write in my blog. His efforts were above and beyond what he needed to do to meet his obligations to me as a paying student. The landlady came the next day with a repair man to fix the washing machine, so it was working again before I had a full load of laundry. While we waited for the repairman to finish his work, she engaged me in conversation, despite not speaking any English, and was patient and kind with my poor French, repeating things more slowly or finding simpler phrasing. She told me about several beautiful tourist attractions around the area that I look forward to exploring.

It’s hard to believe, but even panhandlers on the street here are nicer. I don’t speak French well and in any case have fallen out of the habit of carrying cash. I have nothing to give them, but even after I tell them this, they smile and ask where I’m from, try to speak some English with me, and wish me a good day.

Receiving Kindness

This is all in stark contrast to my experience in Sénégal where I was promised support and given none, treated brusquely by shopkeepers, and viewed as a walking wallet by most. Even in the US, my job had offered support and fallen short, resulting in an overabundance of stress, and my co-workers (who are nice people) still took a couple months to really warm up to me.

My knee-jerk response to this level of kindness and support was shock. For the first several days, every time it happened, I gawped like an idiot, stunned for a moment before a part of my mind went, “it’s ok, relax, trust, let yourself be supported by your fellow humans not because of prior relationships, not because of obligations, but merely because we are humans together.”

It wasn’t until later when I went to write about my experiences that I realized how much I craved this kind of human connection. I love my friends and family, I enjoy forming relationships with my coworkers, but there’s something deeply healing in looking up from our bubbles and saying “hello fellow human, this world is tough enough, so let’s do our best to make it softer for each other while we’re here”.

A Culture of Joyfulness

By the middle of my second week, it was apparent that the effect of joie de vivre is exponential. When everyone is focused on enjoying the little things, it’s easy to be happy and kind which makes everyone happier and kinder. Joie de vivre isn’t at its best when experienced in isolation, it’s something that needs a majority of people to buy into in order to reach its full potential. I can feel it soaking into me, too. I don’t need or want to run around looking for one exiting experience after another because the everyday life here is good. Not ecstatic, or overflowing with awesome, just persistently good.

_{Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alicepopkorn/}

The other day I gave my seat on the tram to a mother with two younger girls. I enjoyed watching them interact on the trip. The girls were talking about my blue hair, and when they got restless, the mom played “find that body part” (where’s your nose? touch your ears!, etc.) which was also fun for me because I’m not the best at French vocabulary. I was able to relax and enjoy the experience. It made me smile to see their small delights. No one was giving the mom dirty looks for her kids being kids, and the mom didn’t have to be self-conscious about playing with her kids on public transit.

Joy and Other Feelings

Joie de vivre could be compared to the practice of mindfulness, in that one of the goals is to be present in the present. Lingering over a meal, sharing an afternoon with friends, and watching kids on the tram are all wonderful examples of the everyday, but international vacations and once in a lifetime experiences are not excluded. The definition of joie de vivre isn’t what you are doing, but how you are doing it: a lunch without an agenda, a hangout with friends for no reason, an international vacation without the stress of focusing on what could go wrong, or what is waiting for you when you get back.

Joie de vivre also isn’t about being happy all the time. Obviously the French have “negative feelings”, I mean, have you read Sartre? But a range of feelings is the normal human experience. The impression I get is that “pretty good” is the baseline here, and feelings of more extreme happiness, sadness, anger, boredom etc. are all coming from and returning to that. In contrast, when I look at people in the US and a few other places I’ve lived, I see them defaulting to a baseline of “meh” (numbness or boredom) or even a baseline of anxiety and sadness. _{Image Credit: https://sketchplanations.com}

Regardless of what culture they are from, people are capable of feeling a full range of emotions, and a normal human will experience most of them in a lifetime, but living in a culture that forwardly values kindness and everyday joy makes a difference in everyone’s quality of life.

Can Americans Live Joyfully?

My initial answer to the question “Why are you going to France?” was often greeted with the suspicion that anyone going to live in a foreign country and not work for a couple of months just to enjoy things was dangerously decadent. This happened so often that I began to become suspicious of myself. Was I leaving my students and co-workers in the lurch? Would they be ok without me? Could I really justify the expense, not only of the vacation but of the time spent not working? The regular messaging of the culture around me made it harder and harder to be sure I was making the right choice.

There is a tendency in (but not exclusive to) American culture to view any action that is not productive (making money) as frivolous (selfish, useless, a drain). For me, joie de vivre is more likely to involve things that make you happy but don’t make money, nor lead to making money in the future. These are things that you do just because you like them (and that don’t hurt anyone else). I rate this kind of joy as sitting from tier 3-5 of the Maslow’s hierarchy. It’s hard to go after it when you don’t have basic needs met, but I would argue that it’s integral to love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization.

Side Note: money, privilege, poverty trauma, and first world problems. I could write entire essays on these topics, but I am not doing that here. TLDR; I know I have privilege; I know a lot of people genuinely do not have money for travel; I know poverty trauma (for those of us who were either raised in poverty or spent years as adults in poverty) has long-term effects on our spending and sense of worthiness; and I know that being able to afford a luxury that you don’t feel like you deserve is a first world problem. I am using my trip to France as a stand-in for a wide variety of frivolously enjoyable experiences in order to examine why many people struggle with letting themselves fully enjoy things.

When I started telling people instead that I was going to France to study French, they seemed much more comfortable. Once there was a cultivation of skill involved, it wasn’t just frivolous happiness, it was productive, and that was more socially acceptable. One day as I was hand-wringing about whether I needed to justify my trip to France, someone said to me, “Why are you beating yourself up about this? You deserve this. You can do this without going broke or wrecking your life, so go enjoy it.” It was an extremely succinct account of the two most important obstacles to frivolous (non-monetizable) happiness: Can you afford this? Have you earned this?

Can you afford this?

It’s a valid question, but I don’t think it’s the only hurdle to frivolous joy. There are many people who do not have travel money, or have other challenges to travel such as health and children, and I’m not suggesting (as I have seen other travel bloggers do) that one can simply manifest global travel with enough bootstraps. Maybe they can’t afford a trip to Paris, but what types of joie de vivre can they afford but are held back from doing because they feel guilty about it?

During my experiences in developing countries where almost no one has enough money, the social values writ large tend to be more focused on “slow living” and finding joy in daily experiences such as community, shared meals, nature, children, and expressing creativity – things that don’t cost much if any money. While people in these cultures may feel guilt about spending money on themselves instead of their family or community, they don’t seem to have any trouble enjoying themselves when it’s not a question of money. Even in Japan and Korea, wealthy countries famous for overworking, I still noticed people placing importance on these types of low cost joys.

Have you earned this?

American culture is embedded with an exchange rate of work for pleasure. You must burn x number of calories to “earn” dessert. You must work x hours to “earn” a break. I talked to people in my income bracket and above who can absolutely afford to travel, but felt that they could never possibly, because they haven’t hit the ever-shifting goal post of “enough work” to earn the pleasure.

The earning in question isn’t financial; it’s the unspoken moral economy. Many Americans have internalized the idea that we don’t really deserve to feel good (at least until we’ve suffered enough to “earn it”, which may mean never). But because we are human, we sneak around with minor infractions we call guilty pleasures while lacking the ability to fully feel the delight these activities should bring because we are too busy feeling guilty and wondering how we’ll be judged.

What will people think? If I eat a second slice of cake? If I skip mowing the lawn to have a nap in the afternoon sun? If I take my kids out of school for a day to drive up to the mountains and splash around in a glacial river? If I leave my spouse to feed themself and the kids and they end up eating Cheerios and ice cream while I have a nice dinner with my friends? If I leave the office when there’s a big project (and there’s always a big project) and my co-workers all have to pick up my slack while I’m tasting wine in the Loire Valley?

Look at the horrible social media backlash that middle and lower income people get for having nice things deemed by society to be “too luxurious”. When they use food stamps to buy steaks instead of rice and beans, or dare to have a new phone, a nice laptop, play video games, drink frilly coffee, eat avocado toast or anything else that might make life bearable, the internet loves to pile on. Grind culture tells us that the one true path to financial success is to have nothing that brings joy, and only to work as much as possible until you can earn your way to a house, a car, and a (maybe once yearly) family vacation to a theme park.

Let me be clear, none of these examples are likely to result in anything bad actually happening, but the real world consequences are not reflected in the imaginary consequences of people who are held back by these thoughts. The extreme version of this is called “catastrophizing” and people who suffer from this type of anxiety (as you might guess) imagine catastrophic results of actions they perceive as risky. The less extreme version is a bunch of people who don’t critically examine what is likely to happen, they just feel the guilt and shame as a gut-level reaction.

A New Way of Thinking

I don’t take these internalized feelings of guilt and shame lightly. They are deeply ingrained in us from childhood, and can feel like an irrefutable pillar of reality. But they need to go. Maybe in the way black mold or an insidious termite infestation needs to go, or maybe in the way a cavity needs to go: knock down a wall, drill a hole, excavate the rot and repair the damage. It isn’t something a person can just do –wake up one day suddenly be free of the pressure of guilt induced by unproductive pleasure. However, I suggest that everyone reading this start the long and difficult process of releasing the weight of these fears and finding the freedom to do things just for fun.

“[Joie de vivre is] revolutionary because for work-driven, vacation-and-long-lunch deprived Americans, it almost requires brain surgery. Why? Because to make that lunch a moment with a French touch it has to be just for fun, no rush, no agenda. An American [said] that her French women friends, who are physicians, ‘work long hours but find time to meet their friends, take vacations, and indulge in the life part of life, which is as important or perhaps more important to them than work.'”
— Huffington Post, “What is joie de vivre, and why are the French so good at it?”

This isn’t “run away with the circus” advice. I do not advocate joy at the expense of security or community. We still need to be able to answer the question “Can I afford it” with “yes”. Please do not go into debt chasing a consumerism driven idea of happiness (been there, done that, regretted my financial choices). It’s important to balance joy and responsibility, but until we learn what things are truly our responsibilities and what things are the weight of other’s expectations and demands that we have taken on unnecessarily, we won’t be able to say “yes” when asking “Do I deserve it?”

Once we are able to accept that we deserve to enjoy things without having to earn the moral currency to do so, there is a different way of life ahead.

They Say You Can Never Go Home

April 21, 2024April 21, 2024 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

“When I’m talking and someone else is listening, I am invariably left with the uneasy suspicion that I’ve made myself quite tiresome. If one is really bursting with things to say and has no one to say them to, perhaps the only recourse is to go forth and accomplish earth-shattering deeds, so that when the time comes for an autobiography, one need no longer be concerned that no one will take any notice. This is a childish fantasy, of course, of which I have been disabused as I have slowly come to realize that I have scant hope of becoming a celebrated public figure worthy of a best-selling autobiography. Better, then, to write a little about myself and let off some steam, so that I don’t become an insufferable chatterbox when I get old.”

Written on Water by Eileen Chang, Chinese-born American essayist, novelist, and screenwriter
— written in Japanese occupied Shanghai and first published in 1944.

My last post was more than 8 months ago as I left Senegal to return to the US. I always seem to have a hard time writing when I’m in the US because it doesn’t feel like “travel” or “adventure” to me the way being in other countries does. When I return to Seattle, I focus on enjoying my time with friends and family, having quiet daily experiences of shared meals or parallel play, and even when blog-worthy things do happen, the stories feature people who trust me not to share their private lives online. So, I end up not writing at all.

When I made my plans to return to America in 2023 I told myself and others that I would stay for at least 6 months and not more than 12. I looked forward to it. I felt that I had been away for so long that a quick pass wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted to “water my roots”. I wanted to bask in the everyday mundanities of my friends’ lives, to see the seasons change, to celebrate the holidays of my childhood. Being a long term expat means never giving up on the idea that our country of birth is our true home, while also never quite being as comfortable there as once were.

I wanted to work in the US, not only for income, but also to give my days structure. COVID era Korea and the schedule nightmare of Senegal left me for years in a state of temporal blur where days ran together and there never seemed to be a good enough reason to do anything. During my sojourn in the US, I neither wanted nor needed to work full time. My goal was to soak up my community, not to sink into a daily grind. A part time job would keep me from decimating my savings, and give me a regular routine, but leave me with plenty of free time to enjoy being home.

In reality, I accepted a full-time position teaching an English immersion course for immigrants and refugees. The position came with a lot of challenges, but possibly more rewards. Being back in a physical classroom with a regular schedule and the ability to form a relationship with my students was so good. Learning the bureaucracy of the WA state college system… less so. (drawing of me teaching courtesy of a student’s daughter. I was wearing a floral patterned mask, not speaking with a mouthful of marbles, lol)

Meanwhile, when it came to housing, I knew I didn’t want to rent my own apartment since that would mean committing to a full year lease, and likely cost 1500$+ a month. Therefore, I arranged to move into the spare bedroom of a former roommate. After just 3 months of living together, it became clear that whatever had changed for us since our last cohabitation made a reprise totally impossible. I moved in with some other friends of mine who agreed to let me stay at least through my current work commitments. (pic of the backyard below) That beautiful home with a healthy family and 2 bright and loving kids was an absolute balm to my soul after the back to back combo of the pandemic isolation and the Senegal experience.

Nonetheless, it was always destined to be a short term solution, and I had to start seriously considering my options: renew my contract at this reasonably good job and work on finding a place of my own in the USA or bounce?

Reverse Culture Shock

Coming back to a life in the USA isn’t as simple as it sounds, and however much I may love my home and my community, there is no going backward when it comes to the march of time which wreaks changes in both society and personal growth. When you travel, you leave your familiar surroundings and go to a place where you are shaped by different forces and grow into a new version of yourself. While you are gone, the place you left behind also continues to evolve, shaped by local and world events, so when you return, you no longer fit. It is uncomfortable, and often more unnerving than the experience of not fitting in with a foreign culture. Abroad, you know you are the alien, but at home a part of your brain is constantly telling you that you are SUPPPOSED to fit here. It’s a dysmorphia of the whole sense of self.

But Kaine, you’ve been back to America since you left in 2014, you saw the changes as they happened! Yes and no. I saw America during my vacations the same way any tourist might see a country they visit for only a few weeks. I focused on excursions and experiences, the only real difference was that I made excursions of visiting friends and family rather than visiting tourist attractions. I planned sailing days and camping trips and cookouts. I went to house parties and dragged people out to karaoke nights. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the cost of groceries or what was happening in politics. For those few weeks at a time, America wasn’t my “home” it was my holiday, and it wasn’t until I was back in my home abroad that I returned to viewing the US economy and politics through the lens of the internet.

This is an excellent article about the experiences of long term expats returning home, and honestly reading it made me feel both seen and called out.

“Americans often develop new attitudes, values and perceptions as a result of their travels. These can often cause stress on reentry.

I see America through a sharper lens, both its strengths and weaknesses. I no longer take this country for granted and I really resent unbalanced criticism by Americans who haven’t experienced the rest of the world.

I see the validity of at least one other culture. That makes me realize that the American way is not always “right” or “best.” I am impatient with people who criticize other countries and blindly accept everything American causing them to never question anything.

I have an unclear concept of home now.

I place more value on relationships than other Americans seem to. People here are too busy for one another.

Everyone in America is always so stressed and frantic. They never relax. I feel like I can’t relate to others

The Economy

It’s normal to become critical during the second phase of culture shock. I’ve published about these effects before, and the article above is great for explaining how it manifests in reverse culture shock. Nonetheless, even while I was still in the first (honeymoon) phase during August & September, I started feeling the negative impact of some big changes in the US.

I needed a car because it’s almost impossible to navigate American cities via public transit, but I was absolutely shocked at the prices, even on used cars! In 2015 when I was in the US for a few months doing the paperwork for my Korean work visa, I bought a car for $1,750, drove it while I was in country, then sold it for the purchase price when I left. In late 2023, I couldn’t find a used car for less than about 7k$, and those were very sketchy.

My plan to buy a clunker for under 3k and sell it on to a poor college student went up in smoke. I ended up buying a used car from a dealership and hoping that the good gas mileage makes up for the loss in sticker price when I sell it back.

Then there are the grocery stores. I can’t say exactly why, but sometime after I moved to Korea in 2016, American grocery stores became increasingly overwhelming. I can’t even say it’s the size, because I have successfully gone to large box stores like Home Plus and Carrefour in other countries and not felt the pressure that American stores give me. I remember walking into a Safeway in 2019 and just staring at the wall of ice cream for a full 5 minutes, totally flummoxed by the array of nearly identical products.

When WA grocery stores became liquor sellers (2012), they had to figure out how to add new products without removing existing ones. The eventual solution was that many stores made the aisles smaller so they could incorporate more shelf space in the same square footage. The aisles got narrower, but stores didn’t replace their shopping carts with smaller versions. By 2023, the sensory overwhelm had gone from merely being too many choices and no way to choose, to a feeling of being totally lost and crowded in by impatient and frustrated shoppers in narrow aisles with giant carts which made passing an Olympic sport.

The products and packaging were unfamiliar, I struggled to assess healthy and frugal choices. Products that I did know had somehow doubled in price, overtaking average inflation at light-speed. In 2008, a person could buy a whole roasted chicken for $5, eat it for several meals AND make soup. An organic bird would be $7-9. Now the conventional chickens are $10+ and the organic/farm raised $12-18. In the end, I found that the only store which didn’t make me want to run away screaming was Trader Joe’s, and I did 99% of my shopping there.

Not only grocery stores, but the nature of in-person shopping had changed across the board. In-store service and options had become extremely limited. Once 24 hour shops had become practically European in their hours, and stores were chronically understocked and underserviced. Several times when I popped into a shop to pick up a small item or to look for something I could touch, measure, handle, or try on before buying, I was told plainly by the clerk that it was out of stock and I should look on Amazon.

Eating out was another huge sticker shock. My favorite Seattle staple food is pho (the Vietnamese noodle soup). At my graduation lunch in 2007, we could get a big filling bowl of rich meaty pho for about $5. Now a bowl of pho is $12-15. I went to a couple of what I would call mid-range independent (not chain) restaurants and dropped $80-100 on a single meal (after taxes and tip). Many places I lived and visited abroad, you could get a high-end meal out for between $25-40 (inclusive of taxes and service).

*mahalie from International District, Seattle, Washington, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons*

The Food

Food remained a contentious issue for me the whole time I was in the US. In the past, I have had food intolerances which contributed to chronic inflammation, pain and fatigue. I stopped eating dairy and wheat back in the early 2000s and it made a huge difference. Starting in 2008, I experimented with eating wheat and dairy in other countries as compared to in the US. Country after country, as long as I avoided imported US foods, I could eat what I liked and feel fine. However, in the US, it seemed my body only tolerated organic wheat & dairy products, and conventional ones still resulted in inflammation (a general flu-like bleh feeling all over). I thought as long as I managed my bread and milk, food in the US would be easy enough. My body laughs at me when I think like this.

It has been widely discussed that the quality of food in the US is very different from that of other countries. There are hundreds of articles about pesticides, hormones, preservatives, and processing chemicals out there you can read, and I’m not going to recap that here other than to say it is a well documented issue that food in the USA is problematic and contributing to many health problems for her citizens. (pic below, my first and only experience with Chicago deep-dish pizza)

After a couple of weeks of eating novelty junk treats and processed frozen meals, my body protested loud and clear. I had to be pickier and pickier about what I would eat and eventually, food that was too sugary or over-processed simply stopped tasting like food. I remember taking a slice of a cake that looked so delightful, then on my first mouthful wondering how it tasted so awful. The cake was sugary and vaguely spongy, while the frosting tasted like it was actually made of melted plastic. The people around me seemed to enjoy it. I visited a friend’s house where they made a meal I would have made myself 10 years ago and been happy with. I took a small amount to be polite, but again, my body made sure I knew that what I was eating had only a passing resemblance to food.

Not only did I feel constantly disgusted by the majority of US food, I felt bad about complaining or even abstaining when others around me were eating, enjoying, and offering to share. Sharing food is one of the most fundamental social bonding activities humans can engage in, and my friends, many of whom are still in financial struggles, wanted to share their food with me. How could I tell them that my body didn’t think what they were eating was food? (pic below, a Thanksgiving “turkey” made of Baskin Robbins ice cream and frosting, just one example of the absurd food-options that abound in the USA)

And, despite my caution around eating, and reintroducing an exercise regimen, I GAINED weight in the US. It is my belief that the food itself was the bigger part of the problem, but I also tend to overindulge in sugar when I am stressed, a condition that pervades the life of any American trying to achieve work-life balance. I don’t know what it would really take for me to be food-healthy in the US long term, but I expect it would require a LOT more work and money than would be required to eat a basically healthy diet almost anywhere else.

The People

I had to confront the feeling of failing to fit not just in the larger cultural sense, but also among my own friend/chosen family community. I changed and grew, and so did they. Most of them for the better, thankfully, but in all cases they weren’t quite sure where to put me in their lives when I was in town for months rather than weeks. When I was only available for 12 days, it made sense for people to rearrange their schedules for a unique event, so vacations were filled with revelry and reunion. However, I feared that living there would make my presence mundane, banal, and that my friends would think there would be time later, so they wouldn’t make time now. Thankfully, that fear did not come to pass. Although some people I saw only once or not at all during the 8 month stay, many others made time for me or invited me to planned events at least once a week. I treasure my community.

“General Challenges

People at home aren’t as interested in hearing about your foreign experience as you are in telling them about it .

You aren’t as interested in hearing about what has happened at home as they are in telling you about it.

You miss the tight-knit foreign affairs community you were a part of.

I have learned over the years that people stuck in one country (especially Americans) have strong feelings about listening to my adventures. Some of them love it, they see me as their own personal documentary, and it’s delightful. Others are busy comparing their lives to mine and dislike hearing about what I’m doing abroad. I try to respect everyone’s wishes in this, but it can be hard since 95% of the last 10 years of my life has been abroad and I can’t tell stories about my life experiences without involving travel.

Whichever way it goes, it’s massively different from talking to other expats. I had almost forgotten how much I loved swapping stories among the expat community when I ran into another long-term expat at a party in early April. I realized that it was the first time since coming back to the US that I felt comfortable talking about my life abroad for more than a few minutes or in any detail.

It felt like I was holding my breath around my friends and family. I talked about my American experiences with them all the time, shopping, work, things happening at the home I lived in or with other friends’ lives, but I minimized my expat-self, trying to fit into the shape that was left for me. I don’t think my friends consciously asked me to do this, and many would be shocked or saddened to learn that I had been suppressing a part of myself for their comfort. I know they love me and I chose to change the way I interacted with them to make them comfortable because I love them. Call it masking, call it code switching — choosing to focus on a different part of my life and activities when I’m with different people is normal. However, it has made me realize that I can’t live with ONLY this kind of interaction. I need the expat community too, which makes long term residence in the US challenging.

The other difference I noticed in people was more general, society at large. I don’t mean the blatantly obvious “us vs them” divide in America that you cannot help but see if you follow any news at all, but a quieter and less politically motivated change. The shared trauma of COVID changed everyone in some way. I cannot speak for the whole country, but in and around Seattle, people were more closed off, less trusting, less willing to be open.

It’s part of my mental health journey to notice nice things and to make the world around me better than I found it, so I trained myself in the habit of talking to strangers, offering compliments and help whenever I can. I made a game of my daily commute to see how many drivers I could be nice to each day as a way of fending off road rage. (strangely, the commute was one aspect of American life that didn’t bother me) Yet I found that often my overtures of friendliness toward strangers elicited a mixture of confusion and even suspicion before giving way to acceptance and relief.

I am far from the first or only person to notice this trend. A simple Google search will reveal many think pieces searching for reasons why Americans are becoming less social and more isolated, most stressing the dangers for our collective mental and physical health.

My friends who had regularly exchanged hosting dinner and game nights had stopped during lock-down and never re-started. The feeling I got was that the inertia of staying home was so strong that going out required a more special occasion than “dinner and board games”. I also tried for a little while to make some new friends or even (gasp) date. I met people who seemed nice, who I was happy to spend time with and get to know, but they had no ambition to do anything different in their lives. They wanted a new friend or a partner who would fit seamlessly into their existing lifestyles without necessitating a change of habits or hobbies.

People know they crave connections, but seem unwilling or unable to sacrifice even the tiniest bit of safety and comfort for the privilege. People who have been isolated for long periods of time can absolutely suffer increased social anxiety. When I floated this theory past an expat friend of mine who has been back in the US about 18 months longer than me, she said it wasn’t exactly social anxiety, but that everyone felt “tight”, and I understood exactly what she meant. I sympathize with how difficult and uncomfortable they must feel, but it’s both sad and horrible to see.

The American Dream?

Americans are also feeling a lot of financial anxiety. Almost all my coworkers were working overtime, some as much as double time (two full time class loads!) and felt completely unable to stop, either from the weight of their financial obligations (high cost of living) or from a fear that setting any boundaries for work-life balance would cost their job. I had coworkers who were astonished (and envious) that I simply didn’t read work emails outside the office. Others who fretted and stressed that their quarterly contracts might not be renewed despite the massive teacher shortage and high demand. The insecurity was so strong that even though everyone I talked to had noticed certain problems, no one wanted to speak up about them. (Did I? Yes, but it was neither easy nor consequence free. Still glad I did it.)

It was also hard for me to reconcile the gulf between online calls for social justice with the fear people experienced of getting personally involved. Having watched the struggle for civil rights and equity in the US take place almost entirely online for years, it had seemed to me like more people were getting involved, but after living in the US for a few months, I am concerned that the involvement is performative. People can safely speak out online and issue company memos to make themselves feel involved (or if you’re more pessimistic, to make themselves look better to others), yet when it comes to real practical solutions for enacting these policies, no one seems to want to take action. The college that claimed the top ranking for social justice, equity, and accommodation in the region had completely failed its non-English speaking students in this regard and when it was pointed out, they simply changed the subject. Only one person in the whole administration ever actually admitted to me they were failing in that area, and they still didn’t know what can be done about it.

To me, the fear of getting involved in social issues seems like an extension of the same fear that is preventing people from forming deeper social connections, and that fear feels to me like the fear of a child who has skinned a knee falling off their bicycle and doesn’t want to ever ride again. “No, no, walking or being driven is safe and comfortable, the bike is too risky, too painful, I don’t really need it anyway.” Yet, we tell our children to get back on the bike because we know that the better part of life isn’t about falling, it’s about getting back up, and that while it may not be strictly necessary for a safe and comfortable life, the joy of riding a bike with the wind in your hair, and the feeling of freedom it brings is worth the risk of a skinned knee.

Get Back on the Bike

The decision for to strike out again was unexpectedly difficult. My emotional and mental state had become a mélange of post-Covid insecurity, second-hand PTSD, and of course – reverse culture shock induced depression.

My “secondary trauma” (also called second-hand trauma and compassion fatigue) came close on the heels of all the work I did to process my own primary trauma. Secondary trauma is what happens when you are repeatedly exposed to other people’s primary trauma. It’s usually care providers like doctors and psychiatrists who treat trauma sufferers that get this, but it turns out aid workers in developing countries and teachers of students fleeing violence are 100% exposed to secondary trauma. Oh look, it’s me.

This combo meant that my overall resilience was lower, my anxiety was higher, I was less able to focus on new ideas, got tired more easily, had brain fog, and difficulty generating enthusiasm. Even after I decided that what I needed was to travel for joy (rather than work), I had trouble feeling excited or engaging in research and planning. This was especially devastating since prior to COVID, one of my favorite activities was researching and planning my global vacations. (the color coded spreadsheets brought me joy!)

One of my friends also pointed out that I was likely reluctant to make plans to leave because I was in a safe and comfortable place. There simply wasn’t anything uncomfortable (enough) for me to run away from anymore. What a wild notion. I’ve known for several years (thanks therapy) that when I started this journey I was running away from who I was in the US at least as much as I was running toward adventures and experiences in other countries. On this visit, armed with the new tools of my COVID-isolation induced therapy work, I was better able to be a person that I liked while in America. And due to quirks of fate, I found myself living in a home that had the kind of “good enough” parenting and comfortable easy love that I dreamed of having in my own childhood home. Who would want to give that up?

Yet as I cast my gaze across the sea once more, the idea of going to France for the spring took root in my brain. The lack of enthusiasm and general feelings of ennui made implementing any sort of plan quite challenging. I dragged my feet on making any decisions or booking anything for so long. People would ask me if I was excited to go to France, and I would lie and say “yes”, while inside I had a nightmare vision that I would do all this work and spend all this money and somehow arrive in France but be just as unenthusiastic as I was in Seattle. It was an act of faith on my part that I would do the minimum needed to embark, and that my sense of adventure would catch up to me at some point. And now, here I am in Tours, in the Loire Valley, taking French lessons and eating at a boulangerie every day.

Although it took weeks (maybe months?) for me to imagine and enact my plan, it only took a few days after my arrival for the fog to lift and my enthusiasm to come rushing back, but I don’t think it was the change of scenery (or quality of food) alone that performed this seeming miracle. Every single person I have met and interacted with in this historical French city has been open, kind, generous, and trusting with me. At first, I too was surprised, suspicious and even resistant, but when I let myself relax into it, I found that I could take joy even in the simple act of ordering lunch.

I may not be able to change the economy or the political landscape of my country, but I do have the power to change myself. I can decide to take risks and to be open to new experiences, even when I don’t feel like it. My favorite part of all my adventures has always been the people, and yet the people I love most are suffering in isolation. Perhaps the way forward is to put in some work towards rebuilding openness, connection, and wonder, and trust that the absence of an instant reward is not indicative of failure. Thanks to a combination of the support of my chosen family, my willingness to work toward a goal in the absence of enthusiasm, and the relentless kindness of a whole bunch of strangers, I’m finally feeling less “tight” and more excited for the future. I hope you can, too.

Aventure en France, me voici!

English Language Fellowship: I’m In!

September 16, 2022August 16, 2022 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

I am pleased to share with you that I have been selected by U.S. Department of State for a prestigious English Language Teaching Fellowship, and on October 11, 2022, I will start my 10-month fellowship project training teachers and teaching English in Dakar, Senegal at Ecole Inter-Etats des Sciences et Medecine Veterinaire as one of only 200 U.S. citizens chosen to travel to over 80 countries for the 2022-2023 English Language Fellow Program. The program enables Fellows to enact meaningful and sustainable changes in the way that English is taught abroad, and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) with funding provided by the U.S. government. Fellows work directly with local teachers, students, and educational professionals to improve the quality of English language instruction offered at prestigious universities and other academic institutions.

Since 1969, the English Language Fellow Program has sent thousands of TESOL scholars and educators abroad to promote English language learning, enhance English teaching capacity, and foster mutual understanding between the U.S. and other countries through cultural exchange. On assignment, Fellows teach English, conduct teacher training, develop resources, and organize events and conferences. These projects are challenging and the teachers selected represent the best of the U.S. TESOL community. In return, the program provides professional development opportunities to help participants experience different cultures and build skills that can greatly enhance their TESOL careers.

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State, administered by Georgetown University, Center for Intercultural Education and Development. For further information about the English Language Fellow Program or the U.S. Department of State, please visit their website, contact them by telephone at 202-632-6452, or e-mail ECA-Press@state.gov.

And if that sounds like a press release, it’s because it is! Formalities aside, I am extremely excited. The English Language Fellowship mini-series will start with stories about my application process, interviews, and pre-departure training and prep. After that, I hope to have plenty of posts about Life in Dakar starting in mid-late October once I’m settled in and get the Wi-Fi rolling.

Welcome to the next adventure!!!

Expat life: When “Home” Is a Holiday

September 13, 2019September 6, 2019 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Settling into school life and hoping for the summer to end as quickly as possible. I’m enjoying the new group of students and happy to see some of my best kids from the spring back in my class for part 2. I’m also working up the steam to start my next major research project which will hopefully be the key to the next big chapter of my story. Until then, I’ll continue on with the story of my July in America. As promised, this one’s all marshmallow.

Originally I was going to try and squeeze all my US stories into a single post, but I thought people might get “wall of text” fatigue. It’s true that the “worst things” post was a bit longer, but this one has better pictures ;P

The Best

Despite the months of stressful bureaucracy and anxiety inducing news stories, once I actually arrived in Seattle I had a pleasantly surprisingly nice time. I managed to avoid all the Nazi rallies, mass shootings, bad weather, or other catastrophes. I stayed with my friends who I traveled in Europe with last summer, and who were kind enough to also lend me a spare car. In an all too brief 16 days, I was able to reconnect with some of the best people in my life. Words cannot express how grateful I am.

In regards to headline news problems, I think in large part, I was just lucky (with a small dose of white privilege). It turns out that I just happened to miss the Nazi rallies and mass shootings which happened either right before I arrived or right after I left… it’s like having good weather or something, which I also had because thankfully the west coast was not on fire this year… tho it appears the southern hemisphere is instead?

My last visit to Seattle was only 9 days. I was sick from root canal and kikuchi, and working on emptying my storage unit in a way that would make Marie Kondo proud. I was not in a good space physically or mentally. Despite these hurdles, 2017 helped me to realize I didn’t need to be afraid of returning to Seattle, that the people who hurt me there couldn’t reach me anymore.

This trip (2019), I only had two real “errands” and so was able to take more time to really devote to spending with friends. Sometimes I forget just how important that really is. I live my life at the end of a very long line that ties me to Seattle and gives me stability. I was starting to feel my anchor line fray and now it’s repaired with all the love. I wasn’t lost or breaking, but perhaps dragging a bit. Now I feel stronger and more buoyant, ready to face another year or two of expat challenges out here at the end of my kite string.

Moments and Memories

I got to be in the US for July 4th for the first time in 5 years. I had a beautiful brunch cooked by friends, visited a local backyard party in the afternoon, got to see some friends. The fireworks show I went to was put on by some friends way up in the Snoqualmie mountains and was highly enjoyable. Plus, I got to geek out with people about my ideas and research in a new and exciting way.

I got a lovely camping trip near Mt. Baker with some gourmet s’mores and just enough rain to remind me where I was but not enough to ruin the night. My friend brought her boys along and they spent the evening picking huckleberries and later we taught them how to be “dragons” using their breath to keep the fire going strong. ❤ PNW

I got to visit my friend’s new farm, see all her beautiful and delicious plants, snuggle with the baby bunnies and chase the baby chickens around with a camera. It never occurred to me to use peacocks as guard animals, but it turns out they’re way better than dogs at watching the skies for raptors like eagles or hawks, which in the PNW are a bigger threat than coyotes or wolves.

I got to sit in a living room in my PJs and trade silly YouTube videos and teaching anecdotes. That may sound mundane but when you’ve spent several years socializing exclusively in bars and cafes it’s a huge relief to just chill with ppl with whom you have mutual caring.

I got to eat all the foods I miss: Mexican, Ethiopian, Seattle-style Pho, large American style chunks of beef. At the mexican restaurant we told the waiter I hadn’t had any good mexican food for years because there were NO MEXICANS where I lived… he was so deeply perplexed, unable to imagine a place Mexicans had not yet migrated to until I explained it was Korea. I also got homemade goodies.

I got to have a whole weekend of the best sunny sailing days and bbq nights in my memory. A couple years back, some very good friends of mine (really amazing people, too) finally fulfilled their dream of selling their house and moving on to a boat. I didn’t realize it, but apparently it had been over a year since they took their home out for a sail before my visit, and as he says it, unless you go sailing, it’s really just a very small and inconvenient house.

The weather was amazing, calm and sunny (ok, maybe not as windy as we’d like for a sail, but excellent for relaxing). We puttered around the Puget Sound and watched the other boats and abundant wildlife like harbor seals, porpoises and even a couple humpback whales. In the evening back at the dock, we grilled up steaks and burgers with fresh summer corn and talked and laughed well into the darkening hours. I had two days with two different groups because so many people wanted to come along we couldn’t fit them all one one sail. I got to meet some kids, and I got to introduce some of my favorite ppl to each other for the first time. The whole weekend felt like one amazing gift.

Finally, I got to karaoke it up with my fav singers and watch friends on the outs make up. Way long ago, we had a standing Tuesday night Karaoke event which has since fallen by the wayside except when I come to town. My flight left Seattle on Wednesday afternoon, so that last Tuesday I was in town, we brought back the tradition. Not everyone could come, so we had an earlier event the week before which was much smaller, but allowed 2 ppl I love to talk for the first time since a messy online fight and to make up!

At a karaoke night we sing our fav songs from back in the day, and do silly duets, and generally have a great time. Even when it’s not as dramatic as a friendship restored, I love watching ppl who haven’t seen each other in months or years come together again and catch up because they’re both coming to see me. Most of all, I love that our last song is a group sing of Bohemian Rhapsody. It was the “choir” song in general, but some time in the last 5 years it has become the “farewell Kaine song” and it feels like nothing so much as an arcane Bacchanalian ritual as ALL my friends in the bar get up on a tiny stage and circle around me to sing this 6 minute absurdist mini-operatic aria to/with me. It’s actually a palpable feeling of love and support I find stunning.

I know that none of the people I visited with live that way all the time any more than I do. I felt a little like the Doctor whirling into town for a wild adventure, and at the same time I felt like I was living in one of those quintessential “last summer before everyone goes to college” Hollywood movies where the days are an endless succession of ever more wonderful and heartwarming experiences. We’ve all returned to our daily grind lives, but for two beautiful weeks it was really a golden summer.

In Dixie Land

From Seattle, I went on to Memphis to visit with family. To be honest that was much less a “one last summer” movie and much more a “home for the holidays” movie but in July instead of December. That might sound cute, but take a minute to actually think about those movies… Ironically, I had actually suggested we do a Christmas in July event because I miss the heck out of my traditional American holiday foods, but in the truest spirit of “home for the holiday” movie tropes, it was planned for and never executed.

Comedic family drama aside, I did have plenty of good experiences:

My sister and I FINALLY got the tattoo I designed for us when her daughter was born (in 2011). We wanted to get it at the same time rather than doing it in separate cities, and it’s taken all this time for us to be in the same place with the time, the money, and the health (apparently you can’t get a tattoo while nursing) to finally get it done! And with all that, her tattoo artist is also her daughter’s uncle (there’s some by-marriage of her father’s sibling in there somewhere, I’m honestly not quite sure how he’s her uncle and I’m her aunt, but we are not related at all).

I gave the niblings all their accumulated gifts and my niece was very gracious about all of them, but my nephew who is a bit younger and still lacking in social graces was unimpressed by all but the car shaped pencil case. I mean, he always said thank you, but there was a clear difference in his level of enthusiasm once we got to the car shaped gift.

I got to dye my niece’s hair! Super exciting bonding experience there, as you know I love the crazy color in my hair. She wanted purple, and because she’s still a bit young, her mom and I decided on an ombre so that we wouldn’t be putting any of the chemicals near her face. She was a real trouper about sitting still (although playing the new She-Ra on my tablet probably helped), and all the showers she had to have, but in the end she was very happy with it. I later heard her teaching her brother how to be Bo to her She-Ra… wait till they find out who She-Ra’s real brother is…

I also had a chance to catch up with the girl that saved me from my own misguided desire to be “preppy” in high-school. She could not have been more grunge/alternative if she’d walked out of a Nirvana album. We were thrust together as locker partners by happenstance and eventually I got some JNKOs and flannel and we became great friends. We lost touch after the birth of her first kid, but found each other on Facebook last year and she took the opportunity to drive me all over backwoods Mississippi where I got to enjoy the woods, wash up in a ground pump (icy cold fresh water!), eat at a diner that was stuck in 1956 (prices too, I think) and learn all about what she’s been up to in the decades we were out of touch.

*Internet life disclaimer: yeah, this post is dedicated to all the nice and good experiences, but that doesn’t mean it’s always sunshine and roses. Never compare your real life to someone’s online life… even your own.

Over the next few months I am going to be working on posting all about my trip to both Irelands. Given that I’m going to also be working on teaching and researching, I’m not sure how much time I’ll really have for writing. To keep you entertained, however, I plan to be releasing a series of Chinese folk tales I translated several years ago. I once intended to make them into bilingual children’s book with short language lessons, but it’s been close to a decade and I don’t think it’s happening, so you might as well enjoy the fruit of my efforts in the form of traditional Chinese stories in easy to read English.

Expat Life: Nothing Simple Is Ever Easy

September 6, 2019 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Those of you following along with the Facebook or Instagram may recall that I spent most of July in the “good old” US of A. I can’t write quite as much about visiting home as I do when I’m on an adventure, but I’d still like to open a little window into my life. In the next two posts, I’m going to share the ups and the downs of travel in the US as an expat. Because I like to finish on a high note, I’m going to start with the downs first. It’s OK to laugh, schadenfreude is healing.

Why Go to America?

Although there are a lot of wonderful things about America, recently I struggle to recall what they are. I have no intention of moving back, and I don’t really dream of “visiting home” with any kind of heartfelt nostalgia. Mostly it scares me.

I have a lot of anxiety about visiting America. I will admit that not a small amount is fueled by the news: will I have to punch a Nazi? Will border patrol get unreasonable about letting me in? Or out? What will I do if I’m adjacent to a mass shooting? What if I need healthcare? It’s enough to drive a sane person crazy, and I’m not terribly sure I started on the “sane” side of the goal line to begin with. So why go at all? Glad you asked.

It’s our favorite game: Bureaucracy!

The main reason I needed to return to America this summer (as opposed to exploring Iceland or something) was to renew my driver’s license (DL). I needed a new license so I could drive in Ireland in August, and so I can vote in the upcoming 2020 elections.

What’s the Word for Negative Serendipity?

Of course, I came to this conclusion through a hilarious series of unfortunate events. When I went online to try and fill out the application form for an IDP (International Driving Permit), I realized I could NOT FIND my DL! Anywhere! I remembered having it on the way back into Korea from Malaysia in February, so I knew I hadn’t lost it in some random country, but I could only imagine it fell out of my wallet in a taxi or shop in Korea and was gone forever.

The Other Bad News

Back to the DL. So there’s me in a panic because we’re planning a ROAD TRIP for Ireland, and my mom does not know how to drive on the left. I HAVE to have a DL, and according to recent EU laws, an IDP too. I go back to the WA DOL website to replace my license and it says I’m in range to renew, so I think “hey, might as well”. I go to renew only to find out that I have to come in person every OTHER renewal… so that 2 year lottery really bit me in the bum. The good(ish) news is that I have the ability to get to the US before Ireland. The bad news is that WA has the licenses printed out of state and they take 2-4 weeks to arrive by mail. Only. By. Mail.

Sidenote: I never was able to get anyone in the DOL or DMV or USPS to explain to me how a homeless person gets a license. What if you’re living out of your car? Even if you don’t drive, the license is the primary source of ID in America used for benefits, employment eligibility and voter registration. Yet one more untenable obstacle to make a path out of poverty impossible.

The OTHER bad news is that according to the internet the EU is taking this IDP thing pretty seriously. It used to be you could just show up with a US DL and rent a car, but laws change, I guess. So it’s looking like I could be in big trouble for not getting the IDP and I have to have a valid DL in hand to get an IDP. So. I applied online for a replacement DL (still expires in 12/19) to be sent to my friend’s house where I’m staying in WA so I can pick up up when I arrive, then go first to AAA to get the IDP with the soon to expire DL then run over to the DOL to renew in person and get a DL that I won’t have to show up in person again for 12 more years.

Except. It can’t be that easy.

The Problem with the Post Office

The DL is returned as undeliverable and shredded. I’m told if you aren’t “registered” with the post office, then your official gov’t mail will not be delivered. I thought that mail would be delivered to the address written on the envelope, silly me. Now we’re registering with the post office. (BTW, when I did the DL renewal back in 2016, this was not an issue. The postal service delivered it to my friend’s house with nary a qualm. Clearly this rule is optional.)

Regardless, you’d think it would be easy enough for me to just have this sent to the address that the post office has on file for me, right? No again! My US apartment is a shitty run down poor-ppl apartment, so the mailbox is not safe AND frequently the mail carriers deliver mail to the wrong box, or just decide not to deliver it. This happened so often while I was residing in the US, that I started having anything I cared about sent to my office instead.

In addition, there’s no way to “register” multiple addresses with the USPS. In the end, I did a temporary address change for the period of time necessary to accomplish this and had the DL sent out again.

In the end, I got it all to work, and I got my updated DL and my IDP and then literally no one in Ireland even cared about the IDP. The rental company and the guard (name for Irish police) were only and exclusively interested in the American licence. So much for getting your info from the internet? But seriously, don’t take my word for it if you’re going to drive abroad it’s better to follow the laws as written, even if the locals don’t enforce them.

What’s Up Doc?

Since I now had no choice but to visit America, I had this dream of seeing my primary care provider (another weird American eccentricity that doesn’t exist here) to get refills for my prescriptions that are either uncommon or not available here in Korea (not illegal, just not here). I go to a sliding scale clinic in Seattle because when I was poor and unemployed (which in America means also uninsured) it was the only place I could afford at 15$ a visit. When I got insurance, I kept going there so they could bilk my insurance company for as much money as possible to put toward their operating budget. My care provider of many years actually left America shortly after I did and joined DRs Without Borders (cool!) which sort of means the only health care professional that knows anything about me is AWOL. But at least the office has records, right?

But if any of you have heard anything about American health care it’s about the cost. Some of the (if not THE) most expensive health care and prescription drugs IN THE WORLD. In order to afford it, I would need insurance.

l-35426-usa-accessible-healthcare-we-dont-do-that-here-e1567743486654.jpg I have great coverage in Korea, but it is ONLY in Korea. Generally speaking, traveler’s insurance DOES NOT cover the country you reside in… or the one you are a citizen of. You know, in case those are different. Even though I live, work, and am insured in Korea, traveler’s insurance policies would not cover me in the US because of my citizenship. Foreigner’s visiting America can get traveler’s insurance. People who live in the US can get regular insurance. But Americans who live overseas? Well, heck, that should only be military personnel, no private citizen could POSSIBLY want to live overseas and come home on holiday while still being exempt from medical bankruptcy! /sarcasm

Some expats can get insurance when going home by signing up for a short term insurance plan. Because of the way that insurance is linked to employment, a lot of these are available for ppl who are between jobs, but often exclusive to ppl who are between jobs, such that, if your insurance has lapsed for too long, you are not eligible. There are still some generic short term insurance policies around, but it turns out that’s another state by state law and it’s not allowed in WA state.

Sometimes I really do think that the countries of the EU have a more stable and interchangeable system of rules than the states in America. I don’t really understand how you can have health insurance in only one state. I wonder in retrospect what would have happened if I’d signed up for short term insurance in another state and then presented it in WA… probably I would have been told I was out of network.

With regular “short term” plans off the table, and regular travel insurance ineffective, I found exactly ONE expat insurance plan for my situation: short term visit to my country of citizenship but not residence. However, it excluded so much (pre-existing conditions, reproductive health, most prescription medicine, the list goes on) that it was basically useless. All too often people buy these policies without realizing what they don’t cover.

1280px-Healthcare_costs_to_GDP_OECD_2015_v1 In the end, I decided against getting an additional plan. I have good US car insurance, so anything involving a car (even me as a pedestrian) would be covered by that, anything else would probably be covered in liability. For things like a cold/flu it’s cheaper to go to a drug store than a doctor anyway, and for emergencies? Well, car, crime, and accident would be covered and that basically leaves things like aneurysms, and I decided that if that was going to happen, it’s just my time. ‘Murica!

The Price of a Pill

I was able to see the doctor in Seattle, and after some awkward explaining of my situation re: employment, income, and insurance they decided to give me the sliding scale rate. I have to say I was pretty happy with the way they treated me overall, the doc was invested in my whole well-being not just “why are you here today” and was happy to help me get refills that would last me until my next bi-annual visit. The challenge came in filling those.

Even if I had gotten that expat health insurance it wouldn’t have covered the prescriptions. I found a website called “GoodRx” that does coupons (oh the insane dumbness of THAT process) and was able to cut the cost down. This still ended up being a multi-week, multi-state process because they could only use the coupon on 2 doses a day and I needed 8. I ran out of time in WA and had to finish in TN, and good on those pharmacy reps for going the extra mile to help me, but ffs would it KILL the US to just sell prescription drugs at affordable rates? I bought the same medication in Thailand for pennies on the dollar what it cost even WITH the coupon in the US. The only reason I didn’t do that again is that factoring in the airfare to Thailand it ends up being more, and I’m not planning on being there any time this next year or two.

COSTCO-SIZE ME

On the other hand OTC drugs are sold like gummy bears over there. In Korea, I have trouble getting basic things like acetaminophen, naproxen, and ibuprofen, as well as Sudafed and Claritin. In some cases they need a doctor and have to be refilled CONSTANTLY because the Korean docs don’t give long prescriptions. In other cases you can buy them at the pharmacy OTC, but like 5 pills at a time. I’ve actually had Drs prescribe Tylenol that is weaker than the American OTC stuff I had at home. Maybe the locals who haven’t been overexposed and built up some kind of pain med immunity can get away with that, but I cannot.

Plus, whatever weak-ass decongestant they sell here cannot attack the portal to the mucus dimension that opens in my face when I get sick. Only that good pre-meth ingredient Sudafed stands a chance. Hence, my desire for Costco sized bottles of all of those meds, and in the case of Sudafed, however much I can buy before I end up on a meth-cooker watch-list. The last refill I got was 2-4 years ago (I got a couple on the 2017 visit but some were from 2015). One short trip to Costco with my mom later and I was 100% restocked for under 50$.

Ladies and gents, the US pharmaceutical economy:

2 years of birth control = 500$

2 years of the top three NSAIDS + allergy meds +cold meds = 50$

This is what I did from April until July. I fought with banks, government offices, and healthcare providers because the US does NOT want it’s citizens to live abroad, or travel, or be healthy.

The “ex” in Expat = extra paperwork, extra hassle, I swear. Expat-Problems

Had enough of complex bureaucracy, crazy international systems, and general complaining? Me too! Stay tuned for the next episode where we explore all the happy and wonderful things I got to experience on my visit to my homeland. Good friends, good family, good weather, good food, so much goodness it will turn your brain to sugar! Coming soon: Expat life: When “Home” is a Holiday.

Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

June 18, 2019 / Gallivantrix / 1 Comment

I know I publish in a maddeningly irregular schedule. The reality is, this blog is my hobby and not my job, not even a part time one. I actually spend money to run this sucker and I’ve been able to do that for 5 years while never asking for anything from the readers except possibly some likes and subscriptions which are really only for the serotonin boost because I do zero monetizing here.

I have some deeply mixed feelings about the ability and tendency to monetize every possible aspect of our lives, but that’s not what this blog post is about. This is the first time in 5 years I’m going to ask for money, but it’s not for me…

They say that 40% of America is just one missed paycheck from disaster. That rises to 60% for even a small health crisis. I had a medical disaster in 2008 that I’ve alluded to here from time to time, and it made me understand just how quickly a smart, driven, well-educated and experienced person can go from a reasonably good life to being homeless and unemployed. It’s terrifying. One day I’ll actually write that whole story, but I’m still not ready.

The only reason I made it through is because of my family: chosen and bio. People who let me crash, people who let me use their homes to sleep, bathe, cook, and eat in. People who loaned me money or just bought things for me when I needed it: medicine, clothes, food, gas. People who kept helping me for years, even after I got a job and wasn’t in “crisis” mode because they understood that it can take years to fully recover from a fall like that.

One of those people is my chosen-sister, Carla Jones.

We met as teenagers back in Tennessee and when I moved to Seattle, she was only a couple years behind me. She slept on my couch for more than a month when she landed, even though she had a job within a week (a job she still has 14 years later) because she didn’t have enough money to pay first and last month’s rent until she got a couple paychecks under her belt. It was a tight fit. I hadn’t yet broken up with my abusive boyfriend (because I was still in that brain fog of denial and guilt), and the three of us were trying to live in a one bedroom apartment while he was trying to turn me against her to retain his control (which I now know is a common abuser tactic, yay). Seeing the way he treated her was probably the biggest catalyst for me to finally escape.

Several years later, when I was recovering from my health crash I needed to move again. I had been living in the attic of an insanely kind and generous family with a new baby and although I had found a job again, I was still not making enough money to rent my own place. I’d been “paying” about 300$ a month to the household I was living in, but I promise that’s a fraction of what any room in a house in Seattle will actually go for. Really, look it up. There’s people renting a couch in the living room to sleep on for 500-600$. It’s crazy.

They were being incredibly nice about the whole thing, and had not given me any kind of eviction notice, just a request that I move on so they could better use the space for their own family. Reasonable! Meanwhile, Carla’s living situation had become untenable. She was living in a rundown basement apartment with a slumlord of an owner who refused to fix anything including the leaks that were contributing to the masses of mold, and an ex-con, ex-roommate who refused to get their stuff out of the apartment.

We decided to pool our resources and move in together. I didn’t have much in the way of money, I was making thousands less than her, but I did have good credit (thanks dad), and the tenacity to spend 3 months searching every apartment for rent in Seattle to find The One. In the end, I found us a space with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a dishwasher, a disposal, a fireplace, and a balcony! For only 950$ a month! My problem? I didn’t HAVE half of rent, plus half of internet, water, garbage, electric, etc… I had taken a shitty phone job expressly because it paid 100% of my health insurance premiums and I was still hella sick.

Despite the fact that Carla also has a chronic illness, she was in a much better position. Her job was unionized, and she couldn’t lose it for being sick. She had a home office, so she could crawl from the bed to the chair on bad-but-not-too-bad days. She had disability insurance that would pay out if she had to miss too much work. She agreed to take the larger bedroom with the en suite bath and to pay the lion’s share of the rent and shared bills.

I honestly have no idea how much money this saved me during the time that we lived together, but I know that I would never have been able to achieve my current dreams without her support. When I left in 2014 to move to Saudi Arabia, she let me pack my things into the front closet, and to leave my furniture, books, tv, art, etc all around the shared space. It saved me the cost of a storage unit at a time when I was sure I’d be returning to Seattle to live again.

On top of the financial help, Carla has been a steadfast emotional support to me since we met. She accepts all my weirdness and all my illness without batting an eye. In many ways, that’s worth even more because there’s no way to measure love.

I could tell you more about Carla’s life, about her childhood poverty, how she lost her mother because of doctors who were too biased against women and poor people to find the cancer until it was too late, about her lifelong battle with extreme migraines and trying to navigate the same biased healthcare system that killed her mother, how she struggles daily to be understood as a person with an invisible illness.

I could tell you how she loves tacos and crazy socks and weird hats and dressing up like a zombie. She is one of the kindest and most generous people you’ll ever meet. She’ll give whatever she has to help others, even when she probably shouldn’t. She’ll feed anyone that comes in the door, and loves to make Christmas stockings full of shiny dollar store junk because everyone should have a full stocking Christmas morning.

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She cooks the most amazing food, and I could tell you about every magical birthday cake she ever baked that made me feel loved and special. How one year, while I was deep in a My Little Pony obsession, she figured out how to make the MMMM cake (Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness) because she saw how happy it made me.

I could tell you about her for thousands of words, and hundreds of pages because she is that much a part of my story. For more than two decades she’s been there for everything, and now she needs more help than I can give.

She’s having another flare up that’s causing her to miss a lot of work. She’s not going to get fired, but she could get evicted because landlords don’t wait for disability insurance to pay out. While she’s sick, she doesn’t get a regular paycheck, and the disability insurance is taking an unusually long time to come through. She’s burned through her savings and although I’ve been able to take some of the pressure off by paying a few other bills, there’s just more than I can do alone, however much I might want to.

Today I’m asking in the true American crowd-fund-your-illness tradition, but not for myself: for Carla. If you like my blog (which is free), think of donating to this fund as a way to say thank you to me by helping someone I love. If you have a friend or relative with a chronic illness, and you know what this is like, spare a couple dollars. Every little bit helps. Click the link or button to open a link to the Just Giving page for Carla:

I hope that you and your loved ones never have to experience these things, but if you do, then I hope there is a world of kind strangers out there willing to lend a hand, too.

Thank you everyone!

The Tooth Saga: Cavities, Root Canals & Crowns, oh my!

May 17, 2018 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Sometime in January 2017, while crunching some very hard candy, I noticed that there was a slight twinge in my left, rear, bottom molar. I made my first dentist appointment for a day in February when the students were not in class. It has taken 15 months to finish the work. Inspired by the “letters home” from early explorers on long and challenging treks into the unknown, or log books from ship’s captains lost at sea, I have assembled this saga as a series of Facebook posts, unearthed by future historian me.

Dentistry is not exciting, but this experience has shown me the solid consequence of the American health system that kept me financially barred from adequate dental care after I became an adult. I’m sure I could have found a dentist in the US who could have dealt with my issue more quickly and less painfully, but I would never have been able to afford it. However much of a struggle this was, I didn’t loose any teeth because I couldn’t afford to go, nor did I end up financially ruined because of a painful emergency. And if you don’t believe Americans go bankrupt from dental care, just ask Google.

20 February 2017

Dentist. ugh.
X-rays, told I need a root canal in one tooth and an inlay in another. Told the root canal will take 3-4 visits (not counting this one) and while it will be mostly covered by insurance, the crown will not be.

22 February
First root canal session.

28 February 2017

Root canal session 2: dentist agreed that I shouldn’t have felt pain the whole time since last appointment. Not sure what the problem was, but hopefully it it’s addressed. Only 2-3 more of these to go.

28 February 2017
I spent the week between in horrible terrible pain and when I got to the dentist to explain this, they went back in and found a second “root” of nerves that needed to be cleared out. They assured me it would be better after this, but that this would add some time to the process.

2 March 2017
I can’t find a record of the my thoughts from this visit. Perhaps it was unremarkable? All I have found is the text from the hospital confirming the appointment.

7 March 2017
Root canal session 4: actually the 5th visit to the dentist because the first was consult. We’re finally finished with the “root canal” portion of the procedure and although it hurt mucho ouchies, I was assured this is normal. I’m getting pretty fed up with this pain. Next week, we will start the crown procedure, minimum three visits, first visit extra long, show up an hour earlier.

14 March 2017

Dentist visit 4,378… I don’t know, I’ve lost count. Root canal is done but due to persistent pain, they did not start the crown process today. They put a temp back on and want me to wait two more weeks while I take some antibiotics. Yay.

29 March 2017

The root canal that would not end. They don’t want to do the crown until the pain stops, which is reasonable in case there is a real problem and they need to go back in. So after waiting for the last 2 weeks and having a decrease but not a cessation of pain, they topped up the temp crown and said to wait 3 more weeks. It’s a new form of hell.

19 April 2017

Remember that root canal I’ve been getting since February? Well, the pain in the tooth finally stopped and today we began the process toward a crown. This involved the dentist filing the tooth to a tiny square, then the dental tech making a temp crown of acrylic by hand. My gums are sore, but I’m happy to be making progress again. However due to the upcoming holiday, I have to wait about 2 more weeks to get the final crown installed. #longestrootcanalever

*From February 22 until April 19, I was in daily pain.

8 May 2017

This dentist… Same procedure from February… Turns out they weren’t making my crown at all, but just stuck a temp in there too kill time or something. So instead of getting my crown and being done with this ordeal like I expected, I have two more visits after this one to finish one forsaken root canal. I’ll be taking dentist recommendations for the other cavity.

17 May 2017

I have a crown!!!!! Let the normal chewing commence!

From April 19 to May 17 is the time it took them to install the crown AFTER the pain had stopped. Although the pain in the tooth was better, there was still regular discomfort and irritation that would last 2-3 days after each visit when they poked and prodded me. Each visit I told them what hurt, when and for how long, and they continued to insist it was normal.

Within 2 weeks, the tooth began to hurt again. I had read online that a crown could cause sensitivity as well and that some people had intermittent pain for up to 6 months after a root canal. However, as June continued, it became apparent that the pain was neither mild nor intermittent. It went from an occasional twinge at mealtimes to a constant dull ache with sharper pains when brushing my teeth or chewing.

16 June 2017
I couldn’t believe this pain was normal, regardless of how clear my exit x-ray had looked. I called the hospital but was told they were booked solid for the next 10 working days. When I told the nurse about the pain, she suggested I find another dentist. I don’t know if she was being helpful or trying to get rid of me, but either way, I didn’t feel like I had a choice.

19 June 2017
First visit to Dr. Kwon. It’s official. 2017 is the year of the dentist. Pray with me to the tooth fairy that the simple fix works because the alternative is redoing the root canal.

Dr. Kwon was a friendly if somewhat nervous man who spoke competent English. His suggestion was to grind down the crown a bit so that it wouldn’t hit the upper tooth anymore, thus relieving the pressure. He also gave me antibiotics and painkillers, and told me to wait two weeks.

It didn’t work.

27 June 2017

The tooth saga is not over after all. The pain resurges. The crown must go. Rage.

29 June 2017

Well, there goes 350$. The crown was cut off my tooth today.

6 July 2017
*This is a long rant about dentists and teeth. You have been warned.*

Trying not to nuke the dental industry at large. New dentist seemed so kind and helpful but keeps changing his mind, which is NOT reassuring… has changed the plan several times since the first time I visited, and I don’t understand why. He went from telling me that if altering the crown didn’t work, the next step was another root canal. Then today, asked me if I wanted to do another root canal or skip to the extraction… I don’t f*n know, I’ve never had this problem before ever, I go to medical experts because YOU’RE supposed to know. Extraction seems like it would suck if it’s anything like having my wisdom teeth out was, so hey maybe we should try the less invasive and less painful and less expensive thing first? But also can you please tell me what you’re going to do differently from the first dentist who clearly didn’t actually do it right? Now I’m being referred to a specialist who may or may not speak English…

The tooth has been hurting 80% of the time at least since Feb.

The referral of July 6:

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“He is a professor at Pusan National dental hospital”… I know English is not Dr. Kwon’s first language, but this sounds an awful lot like he knows a guy. Right?

When Dr. Kwon finally texted me back, it was with a photo of a computer screen showing the website to Pusan National University Hospital…

When I asked for the name of the specialist, Dr. Kwon said he didn’t know. When I asked about the referral, he simply sent the picture again and said “all the best and hope the treatment goes well”.

7 July 2017
Today the pain became so bad I couldn’t work. I got an appointment at the dental university hospital and started out seeing a resident, but got bumped up to specialist. She worked on the tooth for about 2 hours and found many more hidden nerves. She is pretty sure she got them all today. I’m still numb from the anasthetic, and my jaw is sore af from being open so long, but they think I should be pain free in a day or three. I’m going back on Tuesday and one more time after that. She’s trying to finish up before I go on vacation. It’s too soon to call it, but so far I feel like this is progress. Cross your everything.

8 July 2017
The good news is that the parts of me that hurt yesterday seem to have calmed down. The bad news is everything else hurts instead. My jaw aches, I can’t yawn. I bumped my front teeth with the rim of my water bottle and it hurt. I bit down too fast, it hurt… Oh yes and every muscle in my core and shoulders hurts from being clenched in pain and anticipation of pain for several hours yesterday. But nah, the dentists here are sure I’ll be fine with just Tylenol. -.-

11 July 2017
The dentist was surprised to hear I was still in pain. Surprised the Tylenol hadn’t helped. Surprised I was in pain even while sitting there not moving. They tried to begin *without anesthesia* and I nearly jumped out of the chair when she touched the tooth. It was clear to me that this is not what they were expecting.She used more lidocaine and after getting the tooth clear again, a microscope to see the smallest parts. She cleaned more, found more places that seared and stabbed through the local anesthetic.

Still in pain with the local anesthetic. Dentist finally agreed to pain meds, 3 days… My next appointment is in 7 days. Talked them up to 5 days of meds. Checked the medicine they offered. It’s a low-grade NSAID used for “mild to moderate pain” and not common in the US because if the side effects… Also 5 days worth of antibiotics and antimicrobials. While we wait. Again. To see if they finally got it all or if I have to lose the whole tooth.

16 July 2017

What a weekend. The tooth pain has receded from “OMG I’m gonna die” to “annoying persistent pain” which is nice because it allowed me to enjoy Pride yesterday and even march, but scary because I’ll take my last dose of meds today and see the dentist Tuesday and try to figure out a) why it improved, b) if it’s likely to keep improving, and c) how long we should wait to answer the question of whether or not to remove it…a week before I get on a plane to Seattle.

18 July 2017

My tooth of course did the most awkward thing if neither fully recovering nor staying bad. This half recovery led the dentist to want to try *one more* root canal cleaning to see if she can save the tooth. This was much better, no pain through the anesthetic. They still won’t give me pain meds because they think the meds aren’t what worked last week, and they said after a day or two of soreness from the procedure, I should be ok. One more appointment next week the day before I go on a trans Pacific flight. Down to the wire.

25 July 2017

Filled and temp capped the tooth today. It gets to rest 3 weeks while I’m on holiday then we check it when I get back. And if all is well we wait 3 months with a temp crown because of what happened last time. Still a game of wait and see but at least it hurts less and less often.

Went on vacation to North America for 3 weeks. Tooth pain was pretty rough for the first week, but Canadians have good meds.

16 August 2017

Theoretically, the last root canal procedure was done today (again), sans anesthetic and not that bad. Now we wait a healthy time before committing to another crown, I’m thinking a few months…

But wait! There’s more than one cavity! The original x-ray back in February showed ANOTHER problem on the upper right side of the jaw. No dentist wanted to deal with it, I later was told because they didn’t want me to be on a liquid diet since having work done on left and right at the same time would make chewing impossible. Considering I spent a few weeks not being able to chew anyway, this seems like a poor excuse… nevertheless- a new dentist must be found.

But first? LASIK and my bi-annual gov’t sponsored health check. After all, a girl can only visit a healthcare professional so many times a week without going crazy.

Had LASIK and recovery time, and managed to get lymphadenitis (Latin for “your lymph node is swollen but we don’t know why”) which got in the way of timely dental care while still keeping me in constant pain and regular hospital visits. Yay!

2 September 2017

Went to dentist number four to start on cavity number two. She says she’ll try to treat it by filling first but my fear that waiting and waiting (not my idea, every dentist I saw told me to finish root canal 1 first) now means it’s gotten worse and might need another root canal. She also found at least one maybe two other tiny cavities. And told me that I needed to do a full cleaning today (covered by insurance) before having more work done. Gentlest cleaning ever, tho. Now my teeth feel funny as almost 20 years of hardened plaque are gone, and next Saturday we’ll start on the problem tooth. The moral of this story is don’t wait two decades to get your teeth checked.

9 September 2017
Well, the bad news it’s another root canal. Good news, this is the gentlest dentist ever. Even the tool to administer the anesthetic was painless, and it didn’t numb half my face, and they let me hold this cute Teddy Bear. Still have 3-5 more visits for t

his root canal. Then the smaller cavities and the crowns. The year of the dentist continues.

12 September 2017

Supposedly the roots are eradicated. Now I wait 3 more hours for the anesthetic to wear off and find out if they missed any.

13 September 2017

Root Canal 2: My teeth seem to enjoy being ambiguous. This is just enough pain that I can’t be sure nothing is wrong, but not so much pain that I can be sure something is wrong… #dentalpainwaitinggame

18 September 2017
Although this is going much better than the first tooth, still some pain and she went looking for more nerves today. The anasthetic is somehow affecting part of my nose and right eye. It feels very strange. Next appointment, one week unless it hurts to much.

25 September 2017
My teeth hate me. Good news: still hurts less than the first one. Bad news: still hurts. Dentist 4 can’t figure it out and wants me to go back to Yangsan. But she’s writing an actual letter of referral so I can go straight to the specialist, and they’re refunding money since they can’t finish it there. Also, I am a dental mutant, my teeth are funny shapes. *Sobs quietly.

26 September 2017
Day 7/7 black and white photo challenge complete.

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It takes a long time to get in to see a specialist if you don’t have emergency level pain.

26 October 2017
Finally got the the cavity filled today. Third (and easiest) tooth problem. Hooooraaaaay! Next week I start on getting the crown for root canal #1. I’m down to like 1.5 teeth problems!

31 October 2017
The second crown on the first root canal has been initiated. These folks are not kidding around. The amount of attention to detail is reassuring. Plus, when they made the impression, instead of multiple attempts with squishy molds, they waved a magic wand over me then and made a digital 3d image! I’m feeling pretty good about the fairly minor price bump over my last crown install.

9 November 2017
All the dentist. Got the crown, but extensive bite testing revealed it to be 4 micrometers too short. While waiting for this to get fixed, I got more lessons in oral hygiene including brush each tooth ten times, brush 4x a day, and use this metal mini bristle to harden your gums. Got the crown back with a temporary fixative and I get to test drive it for a week before the permanent upgrade. I can see the finish line (for one more tooth anyway).

Finally got the diagnosis on the mysterious lymphadenitis. It’s called “Kikuchi Disease”, a non-lethal, self-healing disease which mainly presents in women so no one bothers researching it, and it’s named after the man who “discovered” it.

17 November 2017
Dentist x2: yesterday I went to the specialist to work on root canal 2. They found a mysterious 4th canal. Follow up in a week. Today I went to get the crown perma attached on root canal one, but when they took it out to clean the temp adhesive and prepare for permanence, the tech dropped and shattered the crown, so now we’re starting over with a new temp crown and they’ll remake the crown again for trial next week. I swear this tooth is determined to be a hassle for the whole year. But at this point, it’s so absurd I can only laugh. Third crown is the charm?

I gave up posting dental updates on Facebook after this, but the third crown was a success, and by early December, I was deemed to be complete on the second root canal. Before scheduling the crown, however, I wanted to wait for the pain to fully dissipate and stay gone for at least 6 weeks. Best case scenario, that would be the end of January 2018.

On top of this, I didn’t know where I would be by the end of February and was hesitant to start what could be a month-long procedure if I would have to leave the country before it was finished.

In late February, I did have to move, but only to Gyeongju where I started a new job and spent all my free time in March handling moving, hiring paperwork, and staying legal in Korea paperwork (employment visa, etc).

The Final Crown

2 April 2018
Finally got all my ducks in a row to the point where I feel comfortable committing to several more weeks of dental work to finish this UNBELIEVABLY LONG PROCESS only to find out that the dentist I want to see has the same days off as me.
*headdesk

14 April 2018
Teeeth. I went in for the crown fitting today. Discovered that the mild pain is not related to the root canal, but instead some gum damage and a tiny cavity on the tooth next door. At least it was easy to fix. 10 days to real crown. Is it too much to hope my dental drama is almost over?

15 April 2018
Expletive deleted temporary crown came off and broke in less than 24 hrs. On bread.

16 April 2018
I think I just unintentionally haggled for dental care.

I had to go to a local dentist in Gyeongju to replace the temporary crown, since going without could change the shape of my teeth/jaw alignment enough to make my permanent crown not fit right. They tried to charge me 50$ and when I declined service and prepared to leave, they hurriedly asked if I had insurance, and then reduced the charge to 5$…

25 April 2018
Oh my fucking Christ. I need hugs now.

Although my next appointment was on this day, this post is not actually about the dentist. I went straight from the dentist office to the movie theater to watch Infinity War and the pain of Thanos was far worse than anything my teeth could muster.

2 May 2018
This dentist thing will never end. Some occasional mystery pain in the tooth and they want to wait two more weeks to see if it goes away. She checked everything today and can’t find any reason for there to be any pain. It’s not bad, and it’s very inconsistent, but they expect teeth to not hurt at all after a root canal is complete.

12 May 2018
Dentistry: my preferred dentist was in town today so I was finally able to see her about this last crown. She made some fine tuning adjustments the other dentist missed, and we did the final setting! The whole area is throbbing because as the tech cleaned the extra glue from around the crown it was rough on the gums. However, barring any further craziness. This saga is finally over! From now on I’ll try to get my regular check ups and catch any cavities before they become root canals.

Finally, my extended dental drama is complete. As long as I live in a country with affordable dental care, I’m going to make it a point to go annually for a cavity check. Here in Korea, an X-ray and basic cavity filling will cost me 50-100$ depending on the quality of dentist. It’s still not chump change, but unlike other health issues, cavities never go away on their own, they only turn into more painful and more expensive procedures. I wish that America would make the annual preventative dental care and basic filling affordable for everyone, because then I might not have put off going for 17 years until I was faced with this insane saga.

However sloggingly long and grueling this was, it is nothing compared to what would have faced me in the US where I would inevitably have waited until the pain was too severe to ignore, then been faced with emergency costs and probably lost both teeth, and just as probably been unable to afford implants to replace them. On top of health and hygiene issues, good teeth are a key to good jobs and good living situations since Americans tend to highly discriminate against visibly bad teeth as a sign of “moral failing” the same way they look at body fat. Yet both are more often a result of financially inaccessible health care. My teeth were visually fine, and didn’t actively hurt me, so I simply ignored them for almost 2 decades. Learn from my mistakes and go find a dentist you like.

North American Summer

August 29, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 7 Comments

What with the total media explosion, I was more than a little apprehensive about my plan to return to American for nearly 3 weeks this summer. I think if it had merely been a trip for my own enjoyment, I would have gone to Iceland or Patagonia or nearly anywhere else in the world. However, there were some practical considerations that dragged me not quite kicking and screaming into Trump’s America in 2017. Mostly, my fears were unmet and I had a lovely time reconnecting with friends and family, but I didn’t feel completely at ease until I passed through Canadian customs and was an international traveler once more.

A Little Bit Political

Back when Obama was president and the country still looked mostly sane (at least from my newsfeed), I had this glorious plan to spend every other year overseas teaching English, and to return to Seattle in between times where I have a standing offer for employment from a lovely French lady, and some decent prospects of joining the thrilling world of project management (no, I don’t know if that’s sarcasm either).

In 2014 when I started this blog, I packed my stuff up for storage thinking it would be nice to have my clothes, dishes, bedding etc. for those years I was in the US and that it was worth the cost of a storage unit to not have to buy them new again every time I came back.

When I left for Korea in February of 2016, early in the primary election process, my friends asked me, “how long are you going to be gone this time?” and I replied, “depends on who wins the election”. Everyone thought I was joking.

To be fair, I can’t lay all this on one man. There is a seriously disturbing trend in the US that I’ve commented on a few times in the last year. I try not to wax political often because this isn’t a political blog, but some things affect me so much I can’t leave it out. I see the election of Trump as a symptom, not a cause, and I see America taking a turn for the I-don’t-want-to-be-near-that-when-it-explodes.

Maybe that’s selfish… well, not maybe, it is. I have a better job, better pay, better vacation, better vacation opportunities, better health care, and an over all better quality of life out here than I have ever had as adult in the US. I haven’t been un-poor long enough to be willing to go back to that life. Add on going to rallies, protest marches, calling congresspeople, and risking my job and freedom to do so? No thanks.

My hat is off to all those who are staying to fight, and even more to those who are returning from life abroad to get involved. You are brave, and I respect that. I wish you luck, and I will be cheering for you. I will also bake you cookies, or offer moral support whenever I can.

So Why Go Back At All?

That storage unit was costing me about $1,200 US annually and I can do much cooler things than store stuff for that much money. I tried to get some friends to go and get things they wanted for free out of it last year, but only one person did (and even then I had to remind her several times). I don’t know what it says about my Seattle people that they can’t make time to go get free stuff they want. Thus it became that I was forced to return to Seattle to empty the darn thing myself.

And then there’s the niblings. I neither have nor want children of my own (I never have and no, I’m not changing my mind, and yes we’ve already established I’m selfish). I don’t hate children. I teach children. I love hanging out with my friends’ children (assuming they don’t drool too much). My sister has two beautiful little ones that are and always will be a precious part of my life. They are as yet too young to join me abroad on their holidays, so I try to get by there about once a year (or two) so they can see my face and form some kind of mental image of their Auntie.

Anxiety

I was so terrified of going back.

I was terrified that the Arabic stamps in my passport would get me flagged at immigration. Even though I’m a citizen, it turns out our constitutional rights to privacy (like cops needing a warrant) don’t apply at the border.

I was terrified that some kind of medical issue would crop up while I was in the US and financially ruin me (travel insurance only covers so much). Or worse, that it would prevent me from returning to Korea. Being trapped in the US has become one of my worst irrational fears.

I was terrified that I would witness some horrific act of racism or xyz-phobia… because if I saw it and didn’t get involved, I would be somehow less for watching passively, but if I saw it and did get involved, I could end up arrested, in the hospital or even dead like that poor guy in Portland. And if it could happen in Portland, it could happen in Seattle.

I was terrified that my growth and self discovery would be disregarded by my friends. It’s not like they’ve been able to see me going through all of this except in sporadic Facebook posts.

I was terrified that toxic people I had cut from my life in the last 3 years would try once more to insert themselves into my attempt to enjoy the company of those I do still cherish, bringing drama and spite to what should be a nice time.

Various versions of these scenarios were the topic of restless nights and nailbiting free-time in the weeks before I went. Perhaps the only bonus to my horrible root canal misadventure was that I was in too much pain and anxiety about my tooth to worry as much about what would happen to me in America.

The Actual Experience

At the border: Customs at LAX was very smooth, all machine operated. I used one of the little kiosks to enter all my data and it printed a sort of receipt I gave to the customs officer who welcomed me with a nice smile.

Healthcare: I did get a little sick, I had a mysteriously swollen lymph node, but it never got hospital worthy and was gone in about 10 days. Mostly, I was just juggling the tooth pain and being totally sleep deprived from trying to do all the things.

Violence: I didn’t see any horrific behavior, although this is more than likely because I spent nearly all my time in someone’s house or being escorted through the nicest parts of town for our errands. I did see a dead body on the highway. It was a suicide. The man had jumped from an overpass and landed on a car below. When I drove past, the EMS had not arrived, but there were more than enough bystanders parked on the shoulder that I decided the best thing I could do was get out of the way. It was a bit strange how blase my American friends were about this story, like oh, yeah, dead body… next.

My Friends: I was able to make a schedule ahead of time so that the people I wanted to see most were already planning something with me, and there were a few “free for all” spots. No one I didn’t want to see showed up, and I got to see everyone important to me. This was a resounding success and resulted in one of the more epic sailing days I’ve ever had, a wild midsummer night’s fairy party in the woods, and my traditional group sing of Bohemian Rhapsody at karaoke (don’t judge me), as well as several days of pleasant company and catching up.

A benefit of selecting only those most important to me for hangouts was that they were all pretty much on board with my growth and happy for my self discovery. It’s a good sign since that’s how friends should be, but I spent too long around people who kept me down or resented my self improvement to take the good folks for granted now.

Bonus: I got the whole storage unit cleared out and managed to only have a half a trash bag to throw away. Everything else I didn’t keep was given to a person who would use it or donated to Value Village.

American Money

This trip was the most expensive I’ve taken by over 1000$, and I didn’t spend a single night in a hotel. Friends and family found me spare rooms the whole way. Yes, the trip was also longer than previous holidays, but I only rented a car for 9 of the days and was not having to pay for every meal of the day, or things like park entrances and tour fees. America is expensive.

Airfare: Getting to America is bad enough what with that giant ocean in the way, but I flew round trip to New Zealand (which is also an ocean away and on another hemisphere) for less than the cheapest round trip to the nearest coast of the USA. And if you want to go anywhere other than the coast, you’re stuck paying inflated airline prices that include no meals or luggage (which basically everywhere else in the world does include). I can fly from Korea to Norway for less than it costs to fly from Seattle to Memphis, and I’ll get fed and my bags will be included.

Hotels: I could not have afforded this trip if I had to rent accommodation in addition to a car. If you want a room in America in a part of town where you are unlikely to hear gunfire, you will pay 80-120$ a night minimum. (booking.com only lists 4 in Seattle for under 100$ and all of those are over 90$) Everywhere else I’ve gone, I can get a bed for between 10-30$ a night in a safe place.

Car Rental: I paid almost 200$ less because I am a legal resident of Korea than US residents would have paid to rent the same car. I tried searching for smaller rental companies, but I couldn’t find one that didn’t have an online reputation as a scam. This in and of itself is crazy, because in other countries I usually rent from small companies because they have better rates. In America, I had to go with one of the big names to avoid being ripped off. When I was reserving the car with Budget online, I discovered that the rate was significantly different depending on what country I listed as my legal residence (not citizenship), and I was instantly outraged about every other time I’ve rented a car while living in America.

Taxes Not Included: I was born and raised in that country and now that I’ve had a glimpse of the promised land of menu clarity I never want to go back. I got the worst case of sticker shock when I went out for dinner with two friends at Azteca. They had treated me the previous 2 meals we’d had during my trip, so I wanted to pick up the tab and thought I had a rough idea of the price… oh no. Because American menus (and coffee shop signs and grocery stores and everything else) don’t list the real price of things. Between tax and tip, it ended up being about 25$ more than I had thought and while I am so grateful I have a job where that’s not bank breaking, I can remember there was a time in my life it would have been.

Tips: I’m all for food service workers being paid well, but I have a hate on for tip culture in the US because it backfires and causes customers to feel entitled to mistreat workers for anything less than 5 star service/food even at Denny’s, and it allows employers in most states to pay them less than minimum wage while taxing them on a presumption of tip earnings. I’d rather just see the price of the food include the tax and whatever markup the restaurant needs to put in there to pay it’s employees well. Then I can decide if it’s in my budget without doing calculus and everyone goes home happy.

The Highlights

Somewhere, one of my bffs* is reading this and going, but wasn’t I a highlight? Yes. Literally everything I got on this trip (except that lymph node thing) was a highlight of my summer, but “I spent all day chatting with my dearest friends in Seattle and then we got Mexican food” does not make a good blog post, so these are the stories I think strangers will find most endearing.

*bff: literally, best friend forever. I employ this as a plural occupancy category.

Fairy Party: My friend throws the most elaborate parties. She’s going to pharmacy school, but really, I think she could make a mint as a custom party planner. My favorite one to talk about was the time she did a Neverland theme for her birthday. Each room in the house and the yard were set up like a different part of Neverland, and each guest was asked to come in costume. I built a tepee for the Indian area (Peter Pan was not great about First Nations representation, I know). There was a kiddie pool for the mermaid lagoon where wet t-shirt contests were held. Tinkerbell’s fairyland was a glowing tree, the basement was Captain Hook’s quarters… it just went on and on.

This year, she did a Midsummernight’s Dream, but instead of using the house, she used the backyard and the entire greenbelt behind the house. Because it’s public land, they can use it whenever without a permit, and she decorated the entire woods in fairy lights and magical bowers with clues and quests and geas hidden everywhere.

In many ways, I felt as though I had walked into a new world, not only because of the extreme decorations, but because of the 120 people who came that night, I only recognized about 10%. Although I’ve only been away 18 months, it seems that my friends have also been making changes in their lives and perhaps replacing the same toxic people I was worried about with new faces.

Sailing Day: I started off this particular Saturday by visiting the home of some excellent friends who accompanied me on the Thor’s Well Adventure years ago. They cooked corned beef hash and I taught them how to poach eggs. From there we headed over to Shilshole Marina, where another dear friend (who let me live in his attic when I was homeless) had finally fulfilled his dream of selling his house and moving on to a boat with his family. Plus my friend who I met in Dubai (even though we lived a couple blocks apart in Seattle!) and her husband and we had a perfect sailing crew.

The wind was mild, the sun was shining and the mountain was out. We puttered aimlessly around the Sound while enjoying a selection of Korean wines I’d brought back for the occasion and one bottle the captain of the day had brought back from Greece years ago I’d found in the storage unit the day before.

These are people I’ve been trying to get in the same room for years. I was convinced they’d enjoy each other’s company and while I’d gotten them to meet one or two at a time in the past (with good results), this was the first time I got them all together. It was absolutely wonderful to see what a good time they all had.

After we examined our crab hunting results and determining that we would not be having crustaceans for dinner, we migrated back to the abode of the morning where we had a simple grocery store meal and got down to some jazz improv.

Karaoke and Beyond: I stopped by some of my past haunts and reconnected with some old friends, but my favorite part of this trip to Seattle was seeing my friends reconnect with each other. People who had barely seen one another since I left came together at one or another of the events I planned and (re)discovered that they enjoyed each other’s company.

This was nowhere more obvious than my resurrection of the Tuesday Night Karaoke Tradition. For as long as I can remember, while I lived in Seattle, we did this. The group changed over the years. Some nights were packed, other times only 2-3 people would show up. One year, the place burned down and we had to find another bar until they rebuilt. It is an institution of my time in Seattle, and I do it if I’m there on a Tuesday.

It turned out that since I left, it had all but completely stopped, yet everyone who came out was happy to walk down memory lane with me, sing their old favorites and catch up on 18 months of missed time with all the other people there they hadn’t seen even though they live in the same city.

Niblings! How can that not be a highlight? Ok, you don’t get a million kiddo pics because my sister doesn’t want her kids faces on the internet, but I got this one of my niece in her Korean hanbok where you can’t see her face, so that’s safe.

The kids were 4 and 6 on this trip, but it’s been 18 months since I’ve seen them. My niece, the 6 year old, remembered my last visit fairly well, and was happy to see me again. My nephew (4) is basically willing to trust anyone his sister trusts, and was also happy to see me (so many kisses), but asked me at one point if this was the first time I visited their house. You can only imagine how much fun it was to try and explain to them that a loooooong time ago (2001-2003ish), it was my house, too.

I really love blowing their minds with weird facts like, yes your mom is my baby sister, yes your grandma is my mom, and yes it’s tomorrow in Korea.

I brought back a spoiling number of gifts including the beautiful hanbok (Korean thriftstore ftw!), spare change from every country I’ve visited since the last time I saw them, and magical Kinder Eggs, which are dangerous contraband in the US for some reason. At least I know one gift that will always be popular next time I go back?

Additionally, my niece made me a picture with invisible ink, which is basically a white piece of paper with some suspiciously greasy smudges on it and her and her brother’s names in one corner. It is a testament to how much little people can fill your heart that this came back in my suitcase to Korea and now adorns my apartment.

Being There for Milestones

One of my besties who I have dragged into the life of globe trotting glory finally got her chance to go to pastry school this year, and it just so happened that I made it to Vancouver in time to attend her graduation. It’s amazing to me how the friends who live abroad keep popping up in my life. My burlesque dancing magical Vixen Valentine is one I met in Seattle but I see once every year or so somewhere. And Jane (formerly JaneMeetsWorld and now PastryJane) has been with me in the US, in Europe, in Korea and this time in Canada.

It was just one more in a line of seeming coincidences that make our world small and cozy that I could join her and her family to celebrate such a milestone and to have a slice of her final exam cake! Moments like this one fill me with gratitude that I have friends as crazy as me, who will travel around the world, use apps to gossip late into the night with me, and while we may never know what city we’ll be in together next, we know we will meet again for sure.

Also, although my sister might kill me if I put her picture in here, I have to mention her. She only grudgingly let me take selfies with her, in and out of uniform, but it just so happened that we got to hang out on the very day of her 10 year mark as a police officer. I know that’s a hot button topic in America right now, but she is and always will be my baby sister, and I couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishments as a person, an officer, and a mother. I am grateful that I could spend that day with her.

Wrap Up

I spent three weeks in North America covering Seattle, Memphis, and Vancouver. I got to reduce my material possessions (and bills). I got to solidify my theory of meaningful friendship in Seattle. I got to make my sister smile, hug my mom, and play with my niblings. I got to see my sister reach her 10 year mark and get vested, and my best international girl graduate from her dream of pastry school. It was good.

If you’re reading my blog from America and you think, “man, how does she have the money to take all these extravagant trips?” I don’t. It doesn’t cost as much as you think, and it costs even less if you start from outside the US. What I also don’t have is the money to come back to the US very often. This was probably my last visit to the ol’ U.S. of A for a couple years minimum (assuming Civil War II doesn’t start by then). In the mean time, I’ll take 2-3 international vacations for the price of one US trip and I’ll consider myself well off.

Back in Korea, I’ve just finished off summer camp and am undergoing as much healthcare as I can tolerate before the school year starts again (yay! root canal, LASIK, biannual health checkup, I love living in a country with affordable health care!). Hopefully the oppressive summer heat and high humidity will ease up soon and I’ll be able to frolik outdoors. Failing that, I am planning a trip to the Philippines for October.

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll check out the Instagram for some day to day pictures around Korea and my life as a teacher between vacations.

A Year Later, Still Relevant

June 12, 2017June 12, 2017 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

A year ago, after attending the Seoul Queer Culture Festival (Pride), my elation was destroyed by the Pulse shooting and after some time to process the grief and anger, I wrote this. Now, with the political climate of the US and the world drifting more and more into divisive, unhealthy, and downright dangerous territory, I think it’s important to remember these things, so I’m reposting.

It’s not a traditional rant, but I’m not soft-balling it either. I’m not going to curse and yell and insult people. That doesn’t help. But I’m not pulling punches and guarding every turn of phrase. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you have an open mind (I don’t have a big enough following for trolls yet) so I’m hoping you’ll be open to some different perspectives on the issues this has brought up and won’t nitpick every detail or metaphor to death in an attempt to avoid the message.

Disclaimer: I have employed the word “you” here as a general term for “a person” or “a group of people” because it’s shorter and more convenient than those phrases, and because it sounds less awkward than “one”. If you (actually you) don’t feel like you fall into those thought patterns, please feel free to observe how other humans do. If you (personally) think it applies to you, then please do the awesome thing and admit your past errors and strive for personal improvement.

Connection

The problem of violence in America has no quick fix. It’s not one type of problem. It’s a gun problem, and a mental health problem, and a male problem, and a sexual entitlement problem, and a loneliness problem, and a homophobia problem, and and and….

The fact that I can’t remember which shooting this came after is a horrible sign, but someone pointed out that socially well connected humans don’t go off and kill a bunch of fellow humans. I don’t mean socially acceptable people, by the way. Not the kind of person everyone says “he seemed so nice” about. I’m talking about connection. Genuine meaningful social connection is possibly the most important thing we can do for another human being. Love and belonging are the third tier of Maslow’s hierarchy, only overshadowed by the need for food and safety and integral to achieving esteem and self-actualization. They are NOT OPTIONAL for humans.

In order to make the connections that provide us with the sense of love and belonging we need so much, we have to feel safe (second tier) and have our physical needs met (first tier). This means things like jobs, minimum wage, enough to eat and no fear the power will be cut off soon are important not just for the person at risk of snapping and being violent, but for all the people around him (yes, him, they’ve all been men) who need to be in a safe place in their lives in order to be available for social connections. It’s not about handouts and food stamps for the lazy or entitled. It’s about creating an environment where people are capable of achieving love and belonging, because only then can they start investing back in that environment in a positive way.

To make social connections we need to be mentally and emotionally healthy too. Mental health care availability and removal of mental health care stigma are a big part of making that happen. Plus, it has the side benefit that people who are really struggling can get some extra help before they feel the need to lash out violently.

We need a social value of peer care. This whole “every man for himself”, “not my circus, not my monkeys” attitude is destructive. A society is dependent on co-operation and co-care for success. It’s supported by science and religion. But I don’t even know how to get this idea off the ground in the US. Rugged individualism (aka “selfishness”) is deeply ingrained in the American identity these days, but it hasn’t always been. Once upon a time, there was a horrible war against some evil men and our country banded together. I don’t know if it takes Nazis to make us help each other, but it does prove that we’re capable.

2017 Add on: I could not have dreamed when I wrote that sentence what was coming, I thought I was speaking in hyperbole about Nazis…

The “Or” Problem

America is fascinated, hypnotized, enslaved to the idea that every issue has two and only two sides which are so opposed to one another that any form of compromise or middle ground is simply unthinkable. I don’t mean uncomfortable to think about, I mean, people’s brains are actually incapable of thinking the thought. Thought rejected. This is known as the “false dichotomy”.

Example: All the guns or none of the guns. If you are for gun rights, you must be in favor of all the guns. If you are for gun control, surely you want to destroy all the guns. Many of you say, no no, we don’t think that way. BUT, when you tell a die-hard NRA conservative you want gun legislation, all they hear is “‘Bama wants to take our guns” and the next thing you know we’re being moved at state owned gunpoint into UN appointed Orwellian style living blocs. Madness! (I’m not making this up, I wish I were.)

Ugh. I said I didn’t want to have a conversation about guns. Sorry. You can look at many aspects of American life and see that you’ve been sold on an idea that something must be A or B and there simply is no alternative or middle ground. Political parties and candidates are another great example. Republican or Democrat… anyone heard of the Green Party? Many people seem to think that the alternative to hating LGBTQ+ is embracing it wholeheartedly. And, while I wish you would, I also know that it’s totally possible to disagree with a person’s life choices and still not hate them. I do it every day.

Even in this way, Americans are dichotomous. You love it or you hate it. Well, you know what? I don’t love or hate pistachio ice cream. I bet there’s a lot of that stuff in your life and you don’t even think about it. But, when it comes to a hot button issue, you must choose a side. Team Tony, Team Cap. Team Edward, Team Jacob. Team Coke, Team Pepsi… really, that’s what you’re reducing complex social issues like religion and sexuality to when you do this.

And while we’re at it, a side note on false equivalencies. , such as this lovely comparison of Obama to Hitler. Both were in favor of a policy, therefore they are the same? No. Obama =/= Hitler. I could spend the rest of the year finding examples of how this is used in all these polemical arguments, but the ones I want to bring up are: anger =/= hate, and dislike =/= hate.

I’m angry at my sister for staying in a crappy city, but I still love her. I’m angry with my friends when they are stubbornly stupid about writing in a vote that won’t count in their state, but I still love them. I’m angry with my students when they don’t do their homework, but … you get the idea.

I don’t like Donald Trump. I don’t like the creepy homeless guy on the street corner who smells funny. I don’t like Kanye West. But, I still think they all deserve fundamental human rights and that old American goodie: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

But Kaine, that kind of anger/dislike isn’t the same as what I feel toward (insert group here… oh, let’s say Westboro Baptist, but pick your own if it helps). Yeah, it’s smaller maybe. WB makes me want to pull my hair out. Makes me want to scream. Makes me want to go to a junkyard and smash things. BUT, it doesn’t make me want to kill them. It doesn’t make me want to take away their right to free speech. It also kind of makes me want to make them some tea and say, hey do you need a hug cause you’re clearly very upset about something (though in the case of the homeless guy, maybe not a hug until he’s showered).

We need to stop buying into A or B. We need to ask “why” about everything over and over until we discover the root issues. We need to remember it’s “liberty and justice for all” full stop, not “all white Christians” or “all men” or “all heterosexuals”. And then we need to take a long hard look at “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as it applies to everyone. We’ve already decided that taking someone else’s life (murder) or property (stealing) is not a liberty anyone is permitted no matter how happy it will make them. We’ve decided that absolute freedom to do whatever you want is not the path to a healthy society. We already curtail certain actions deemed destructive to the well-being of our nation and its people. Of course we must be careful about what we choose to curtail, but we cannot act like it is an anathema to do so. Ben Franklin said that a person who would surrender freedom in exchange for security deserves neither, but that’s become another “or”: freedom or security. Why? Why can’t it be and?

Freedom and security.

Dislike and respect.

Disagreement and compassion.

Can v Should: As It Applies to Free Speech

When I was living in the Middle East, I learned some very valuable lessons about free speech. I’ve been working on a separate post about that, but the core of it I think is important to this issue as well. But let me be clear: I am in NO WAY advocating for the government control of speech or expression. I am talking about social and civic responsibility that comes with having that freedom. Abraham Lincoln once said that “we should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.” There are some people out there who are just easily offended by things that are genuinely not damaging to others. There are things that need to be said that will be hard to hear. I will support the legal right to free speech forever. But, the second part of that quote is damn important.

In America, when someone says something insulting (about your faith, your lifestyle, your weight, appearance, gender, orientation, skin color, etc) the result is all too often “You’re an adult, suck it up”. The expectation is that adults should just be able to deal with being insulted or having their feelings hurt (even though arguably many of these insults are signs of bigotry and oppression and not just about hurt feelings).

In the Middle East, when I had conversations about such insults, I explained that we didn’t want the government to police what we could say about religion or anything else for that matter. This is the core of our free speech amendment, that the government can’t punish you for the insult. People understood that part, but what they couldn’t wrap their heads around was why anyone would want to be so insulting in the first place.

Sometimes I get to explain about how important it is to be able to speak out against powerful institutions that may be corrupt or have a corrupting influence, that may be stealing or hurting people. That’s the reason we have the first amendment, after all, not simply to protect the Westboro Baptist Church screaming insults at a funeral, but to protect people like Edward Snowden who tell us when our government is breaking laws, or in a less controversial light, people like Neil Degrasse Tyson who speaks out about climate change and evolution despite how unpopular those things are in the US.

In other words, the right to free speech is protected so we can punch up at those in power who are ostensibly abusing it. Using your words to hurt, bully, intimidate, threaten, marginalize or oppress other people isn’t exercising your first amendment rights, it’s just being an asshole.

When you tell the story of someone who is insulted for their race, religion, gender, orientation, etc and the reply is “You’re an adult” the follow up shouldn’t be “suck it up”, the comment isn’t directed at the victim, it’s directed at the attacker. “You’re an adult. You should know better”. Kids insult each other, bully each other, and call each other names because they are learning. As adults we tell them it’s wrong. We ask them to think of how they would feel if someone called them that name. You’re an adult, you should know better than to insult someone that way for no reason other than to prove you can. What are you 6? Like two kids in the backseat of the car, one sibling holding a finger just millimeters away from the other’s skin. “I’m not touching you! There’s no law against it. I have free speech.”

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to.

You’re an adult. You should know better.

2017 Add on: Freedom of speech also doesn’t come with a guarantee of platform or audience. No one is obliged to invite someone to speak at an event, and no one is obliged to listen to them. People like Ann and Milo don’t have a right to an auditorium or TV air time and failing to give them a chance isn’t an infringement of their right to speak without persecution or prosecution by the government, which is what the amendment guarantees.

And, because it’s come up more than once over the last year

YES THERE ARE LIMITS TO THE FREE SPEECH GUARANTEE IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

The first amendment does not give everyone the right to say whatever they want without legal consequences. Things not protected include: incitement to violence, false statements of fact (slander, libel, perjury, etc), obscenity (with caveats), child pornography (thank goodness), “fighting words” and offensive speech, plagiarism, and a few others. So before you get all defensive of that alt-reich, neo-nazi’s right to free speech, check out if his words really qualify.

The Crab Bucket

When I was learning how to be happy (another one of those things I keep meaning to write about in more detail), I read a lot of studies, and listened to a lot of psychiatrists, therapists, sociologists and neuroscientists. One day, I’ll make a comprehensive list with links and you can all take the shortcut to the searching I did, but until then, it gets doled out piecemeal.

Today’s piece: toxic relationships & crab bucket tribes. I had to learn about vulnerability from Brene Brown. I had been hurt so much that for part of my life it was easier not to feel. But Brene reminded me that is not a sustainable model for happiness, it’s only a barrier to pain and the absence of pain is not the same as the presence of joy.

Being vulnerable is the only way to experience love, and love is key to happiness. Don’t just take my word for it, watch her TED talks, read her research. Being vulnerable means you open up to people and experiences. You let them in. That means people can hurt you. As a result, it’s really important to back away from the people who will hurt you often and badly. They may have the best intentions. They are certainly worthy of love, but that is not your job.

Additionally, I learned that our mental tracks, our personal narratives if you will, are greatly influenced by the people we spend time with. If we hang out with people who have no ambition, who are negative and critical all the time, who always find something to complain about or some reason not to try, then it becomes harder for us to break out of those thought patterns.

Even worse is the “crab bucket”. I learned this word from Sir Terry Pratchett, but I don’t think he made it up. Basically, there is no need to put a lid on a bucket of live crabs because as soon as one tries to climb out, it’s bucket-mates grab on and pull it back down. People do this too. People who are in bad situations for whatever reason, people who have had to learn to accept those situations (bad job, too many kids, crappy apartment, bad relationship, wrong career, etc), people who are unhappy but unwilling (or unable without great effort) to change it. They are comfortable in their discomfort. Seeing someone else get out, “make it”, improve their lives should be a cause for celebration, but too often it simply reminds them that their own lives are less than they want and it breeds resentment. They will attempt to keep those around them in the crab-bucket for all kinds of reasons besides flat up jealousy or resentment. It could be because they like you and want you around, they want to have things in common with you, or because they don’t want to be alone, but it’s still not good for you.

Whether someone is actively toxic in the sense of abuse and chronic negativity or passively crab-bucket in the best meaning friendly way, they are still an obstacle to your happiness and you can’t be vulnerable to them, you can’t invest your time in them without expecting them to have a commensurate impact on your life.

Excising toxic and crab-bucket people from my life was not easy. It was a deeply painful process. I admit, I didn’t confront many people. I let most of them quietly drift away. Moving out of country helped that a bit. Only the ones I truly deeply cared about did I try to talk to. Sometimes it worked and we improved our relationship. Sometimes it didn’t and it blew up in my face.

Now I’m getting better at making non-toxic friends up front, so hopefully I won’t have to do that again. But I’m encountering a new toxic, crab-bucket relationship in my life that I didn’t really see before: my country.

Your country is a lot like your family. You don’t get to choose where you’re born. I’ve often thought I was lucky to be born in the US. So much privilege and wealth. Such a wonderful history of freedom and innovation. Anything was possible… the American dream.

I learned the hard way that’s not real, but I was still hoping America was going to pull through. I admire people who work tirelessly to improve it, who don’t give up. I said before that even toxic people are worthy of love and I meant it. Just because I can’t be the person who gives it to them doesn’t make them unworthy. I guess I feel the same way about America. I’m starting to feel like hanging around America is overly negative. I definitely feel like America is turning (has turned?) into one big crab bucket. People tell me all the time “every place has problems” as a way of minimizing the problems in America or somehow trying to equate them with problems in other places. People tell me all the time, “not everyone can just leave” as a way of reasoning out why they can’t.

Every place does have problems, just like every relationship has problems. You don’t stop talking to all humans because of it. You don’t give up on vulnerability or love. But you don’t stay in an abusive or toxic relationship either. Yes, in case it wasn’t clear, I’m comparing the US to an abusive or toxic friend/partner. I hear people in bad relationships say things like “no one’s perfect” and that’s what I hear when people say “every place has problems” in the wake of the Orlando shooting. Places that have problems like that are the national equivalent of abusive spouses. If you’re comparing yourself to central Africa to find something worse, it’s like saying yeah, he slaps me around sometimes, but at least he doesn’t cut me up or break any bones like Betty and Paul down the street. Neither one is ok!

And yes, it’s probably true that not everyone can leave the way I have. But more people could leave than are doing so. Countries like Germany are struggling with record low population growth and are desperate for immigrants who can contribute to their society as well as their population numbers. Places like Korea are giving away scholarships (transportation and living expenses included) to people who want to come here and commit to a multi-year study of Korean language. Furthermore, the people who are going to stay should be doing so because they want to fight for America, to work and toil and loose sleep and gain gray hairs to rebuild a place worth living in. That’s worth doing, oh gods yes.

Not every bullied LGBTQIA+ leaves the bigoted southern towns they were raised in as soon as they turn 18. Some because they don’t know how, can’t afford it, think they have no place to go. But some because they want to stay to work to improve conditions for the next generation and that’s work worth doing. I met an amazingly bright young lady while I was teaching in China. She could have easily used her intelligence and education to get a job and move to a great city, or even leave China which is the dream of so many there. Instead, she told me her dream was to go back to her tiny village where people don’t even have indoor plumbing and teach at the local elementary school to give the next generation a better chance. Wow.

There are people in my life I thought were worth fighting for. I haven’t abandoned every relationship that was damaging. But I’ve made choices and worked for the ones I wanted in spite of the risk.

I’m looking really hard at America right now, because I don’t think I can passively live in the crab-bucket anymore. Right now, I’m taking a “break”, travelling around the world, but before I go back for anything longer than a vacation, I have to decide if this is a toxic relationship I have to cut loose, or if it’s a painful relationship I want to work to fix.

2017 Add on: I’m heading back to the US this summer to dispose of my stateside material goods and visit my family again. After this, I don’t think I’ll be back for a while, certainly not until there’s adequate health care and I don’t have to worry about getting stabbed to death for standing up against Islamaphobia. My mom is retiring next year, so I’m hoping she’ll be able to come out and visit me and bring my niblings along so they get to see more of the world.

That said, I’ve met several Americans who are heading home. When I asked them why, they said they felt they needed to stand up and do something about the state of things. Even when we talked about the fact that they were unlikely to ever find as good a job as we have here, let alone as good a healthcare plan, they looked sad, but resolved. I admire these people immensely and I hope that they can make a difference.

Ghandi said we have to be the change we want to see in the world, but only you can decide what that means for you.

I can’t even begin to list all of the horrible things that have happened since I first wrote this post. Increases in white supremacist violence, more restrictive laws to increase the school to prison pipeline, the Trump administration, the Paris accord withdrawal, Syria, Russia… people are scared, some feel under threat by the government’s plans to dismantle health care and other social services, and others are under threat because of the color of their skin, the god they worship, or the person they love. Don’t give up. #Resistwithcompassion.

어떻게: How

November 11, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

I have to admit, I’d rather be posting about my trip to the DMZ. I’ve got pages and pages of stories left from my summer and fall adventures, but somehow, it just doesn’t seem right to keep blithely moving on to happy travel posts without at least acknowledging what just happened. I’m not a political blogger, but those who read here know sometimes I share my thoughts on a major world event, and/or event that causes me deep emotional reactions. If you just want the happy travel stories, that’s ok. I like those better anyway. But, for what it’s worth, my .02 on the election.

I’m 16 hours ahead of the West Coast. The election was well underway when I woke up Wednesday morning. By lunchtime, the Koreans were staring at the electoral map on my phone, just saying 어떻게 (ottoke) over and over. It means “how”. By the time I left work, it was over and I was in shock. My Canadian and I ate pb&j sandwiches and drank 2 bottles of wine while trying to talk about literally anything else.

I didn’t sleep well. Anxiety and stress combined with some lingering back pain. I woke up tired and numb. Random thoughts keep scrolling across my brain like one of those LED tickers in New York. Tears coming and going as I walk down the street to the bus station. No appetite at all. Even when I’m finally hungry, I can only eat a few bites before it all seems disgusting again. I cried, I yelled, my coworkers laughed because they thought it was a joke until I gave example after example and then they cried too. I spent the whole day fighting the urge to just lay down on the floor and stop moving. My body is in grief.

어떻게 (ottoke)

I was (am?) one of those disenfranchised white people who is sad-mad about the loss of my future. I believed in the meritocracy and it failed me. I’ve changed careers 3 times because every time I invested in the training and the low level experience building, it was just in time to have the economy hiccup and destroy my future. In America, I couldn’t get adequate health care because it was too expensive. I put myself in insane debt for a career that I will never have now. I couldn’t afford to live on my own with a full time (30-50% higher than minimum wage) job. Even with a roommate, I couldn’t save up for a car, a house, a new TV or even dream of getting out from under the credit card debt without the aid of my family. I took a job I didn’t like with no prospect of advancement simply because I needed the health benefits more than I needed a job with a future. I drove the one new car I bought way back when the economy was still good until it died a sad death from lack of me being able to afford regular maintenance 16 years later. One of the reasons I never married or tried to have children because the very thought of even more financial burden terrified me to my core.

What makes me different from the rest of the disenfranchised white people who believe Trump can save them? I am honestly not sure. It could be my educational level. It could be my hippie mom. It could be my urban location. It could be … nothing.

You can make jokes and snide remarks about racism, but we all know that only a small portion of the Trump base are really off the hook haters. Most of them are the lost people, who like me, thought that if they worked hard, they could get that house with the fence and the kids and the dog and it would be ok. We are all processing what it means to realize that just isn’t true.

My cousin – my mixed race, female cousin told me she would have voted for Trump if she’d voted. (Do not even get me started on that “if”) When I expressed my worry for her and her family members of color, she was surprised and said she had no clue how I got the idea he was racist. Even when I tried to explain, she dismissed it as having happened so long ago (the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and you know the recent election cycle) that it wasn’t relevant anymore. When I asked her to tell me some things she liked about Trump, all she could tell me were the same things I’ve read and seen over and over. Hillary is BAD, the establishment is BAD. Trump is not those bad things. Yeah, but what do you like about him. He’s not the establishment.

She was just as politely patronizing to me as I’ve seen well meaning liberals be, too (and if I’m being brutally honest, as I’m sure I’ve been to people when I feel like they are being dumb but I still want to try and be nice). I was hoping my liberal media “bubble” was exaggerating that “voting-against” response. That if I just talked to a reasonable Trump supporter they could explain the good things to me, but nope. It looks like the people who don’t love Trump are so in hate with Hillary and “the establishment” that they don’t care who else gets hurt, including themselves.

I can’t tell you how much I want to be wrong. I want to be Chicken Little and not Cassandra. So. Much.

어떻게 (ottoke)

And there’s the riots, which I am not happy to see. I don’t want violence to be an answer ever. Yeah, I know, the Trump supporters did it first, but now that they’ve won, they’d like it all to stop. People are like “oh you’re overreacting”, “oh you’re whiny cry babies” (nevermind that’s been pointed at us for caring about anything ever for decades, so it’s lost it’s oompf as an insult), but I voted in 2000 when this happened with Gore and I was not scared for my nation’s future (although, it turns out I should have been). I was mad when Kerry lost in 2004, too because that explitive promised to do recounts and bailed. And the Democrats didn’t take to the streets in protests and riots because voters who lost an election were capable of telling the difference between a guy we didn’t like the policies of, and a guy who we honestly believe will enable the ruination, incarceration, and deaths of humans we care for and respect.

It’s not about oh we lost, boo hoo. It’s not about, oh we didn’t get our way and now we’re throwing a tantrum (looking at you House Republicans). It’s about all these horrible stories on twitter of people being harassed, threatened, and assaulted in the name of the President-elect. It’s about high school students being groped and bullied and beaten while their classmates chant “white power”. It’s about spray-painting the President-elect’s name on cars and churches then setting them on fire, sometimes with people still inside.

They say they’ve never rioted when their candidate lost (a debatable claim at best), but I say we’ve never abused people in the name of our winning candidate. This isn’t like any other election.

어떻게 (ottoke)

Oh, yeah, I’m not going back. It’s not as big a political stance as it sounds. I left when the country was improving. I left before marriage equality. I left, not because I was disgusted or afraid, but because I like to travel. I’ve stayed away for the very practical reason that I get paid better for work I find more rewarding in cultures that have superior access to quality health care and in communities of like-minded globe trotters. It’s better for me out here than it is at “home”. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of going back before. What would I do? How would I pay rent? How would I afford health care? This is just a sort of nail in the decision. I don’t want to live in a country where I’m struggling to just get by when I can live somewhere that I thrive. I desperately want America to be that kind of a place again, but I’m not optimistic for the near future.

Not everyone can leave. Not everyone would actually have a better life outside America. Not everyone even wants to leave. That part’s just about my life choices.

어떻게 (ottoke)

Bunch of folks are looking for the love. We know hate is bad, we know love conquers hate. I personally don’t like hating because of how it makes me feel. But I’ve also seen a lot of people in the at-risk minority groups get righteously upset at those “love uber alles” type messages. They worry, and I think justly so, that we who remain un-impacted or less impacted by virtue of our skin tone, our gender, our economic status, or our geographic region can take the moral high ground and love without suffering, thus forgetting the pain, fear, anger, loss and very real danger being experienced by people not us. But, I think it’s ok to love while still being hurt, angry, sad, mad, and scared. I don’t think you have to choose.

I’m trying not to hate. I saw the Daily Show the other day, the it comes with the package speech Hassan Minhaj gave, and it so succinctly put into words why I’m upset with the not-actually-horribly-racist Trump supporters.

Maybe right now, I feel the same way about them. I don’t actually hate you, non-racist, non-misogynist, non-xenophobic, Hillary-hating, establishment-destroying Trump supporters… I just don’t care about you? Doesn’t really feel good.

I’m trying to find all my compassion and use it, but I’m tired, wrung out, this year has seen so much tragedy in the US and I am afraid it is only going to get worse. And yeah, I’m mad at the people who voted for this. But I’m trying to be like… family mad. Mom mad. That kind of mad where you’re like, “I can’t believe you just took the family car for a joyride and crashed it into a telephone pole!” HUG “I’m so glad you’re ok, I love you.” because those go together. We can be mad at people we love and we can love people we’re mad at.

I’m not sure I have it in me to love the super bigots yet. I may not be that enlightened. But I know that’s not most of the people I’m mad at.

So they’ve shown it’s possible to not-hate someone, but at the same time not care if they live or die. I’m saying possible to be mad at people for doing dumb, dangerous, shortsighted, selfish things and still . That’s the struggle for me right now. That and trying to decide what to do with my book collection if I’m really never going back there.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to lay down on the floor and stop moving.

어떻게 (ottoke)

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