Third Culture

Well, the time has come once again. Textbooks have been returned, chairs have been stacked, and bookshelves have been covered in anticipation of their six weeks of collecting dust. The end of the school year has come and summer is upon us! This time of year has become increasingly bittersweet. Sweet, of course, because we get to head back to the U.S. and see family and friends. Bitter, because the end of the year, especially in the transient environment of international schools, is synonymous with saying goodbye to favorite students and cherished colleagues and friends. And so, sad goodbyes are intermingled with excited conversations of attending weddings, meeting new babies, and of course eating Chick-fil-A. It is a strange emotional dance that we learn more and more about as we spend time overseas.

Frankly, I have been a bit in denial over the end of the school year this year but I’m not really sure why. Don’t get me wrong, I love my summers off just as much as the next teacher and not all of the tears I shed at graduation were sad “I’m going to miss you” tears.  Yet, there is something about doing away with my beloved weekly routine that has me a bit apprehensive. As I pondered this trepidation more deeply, I came to a very strange realization. This year, heading back to America, I am afraid… of the culture shock. Over the past few weeks, I have peppered our families with questions about what things we could find in America that have become so important to our lives here. Can you find dried seaweed? What about good tofu or sticky rice? Will we have to drive to the nearest playground?  Will we have to drive everywhere?

It is strange to have some of the same feelings I had a few years ago about Taiwan and Korea now toward the United States. I have to remind myself that this is my home country and I will figure things out. I will undoubtedly quickly fall back into a routine that includes Target, Publix, and Sonic. The girls will certainly develop new tastes for good watermelon and Cheerios. All four of us will become reacquainted to sitting in the car rather than using a stroller. I will be reminded how awesome it is to have a question in a store and actually be able to ask it and understand the answer. But, the fact remains that my “normal” isn’t what it used to be. I am beginning to settle in more to the “third culture”, not my home culture, not Korean culture, but that strange no-man’s land that lays somewhere in between. 

So, as we prepare to cross the Pacific once again (let’s not discuss that daunting task), I have a favor to ask. If we show up at your house and I have a freak-out about trying to strap in a car seat or the way the rice won’t stick together, be patient with me. I just may be experiencing culture shock. Just throw a Chick-fil-A biscuit my way and hopefully we can hedge off any... unpleasantness.  

Eating Crow

I have a lot of opinions. Thanks to this blog and other social media, I have non-confrontational outlets so that I can express my opinions without causing too much of a stir. However, when I air my judgmental thoughts so publicly, I also have to admit to you when I find myself in a situation identical to those I so haughtily looked down upon. This past week I had to grin as I ate my words and put myself in a situation worthy of judgment.

Just a few weeks ago, I posted a blog all about how strange it is that Koreans like to stop and take pictures of my children. I scoffed at them and deemed them odd for this phenomenon. Mind you, this blog was a year in the making. It was not a one-time event that had me scratching my head but 15 months of our BOGOs’ lives where I passed judgment on our hosts for documenting the lives of children they had never met. I remarked in wonder why they would want those shots and how I wasn’t sure how one would present those photos to family and friends. And then, in a not-so-bizarre turn of events, I became guilty of the same peculiar attraction to strangers’ children.

Last week, the high school took a week break before finals to celebrate their annual “Discovery Week”. This is a week where student groups are sent to every corner of the globe to “discover” their world. Trips range from seeing theater in London, to scuba diving in Malaysia, to building schools in the Philippines. I was lucky enough to help lead a trip to Nepal that had us trekking through mountain villages (actually, they were just the “foothill villages” as anything below 15,000 feet  in the Himalayas doesn’t count as a mountain). Chris did awesome as he sponsored a local basketball camp and played Mr. Mom with the girls at home all week. 

Nepal was amazing. The landscape was breath-taking and the people were unbelievably hospitable. And, guess what? The Nepali children are cute. Really cute. Makes me want to take random photos of other people’s children cute. So, here I am trekking along when up comes a small child in tattered clothes and big, dark eyes. The first thing I wanted to do was whip out my camera and take a picture. But, the irony of this whole situation was not lost on me. I had just spent a year lamenting to anyone who would listen about the strangeness of other people photographing my kids and here I am wanting to do the same thing. At first, I tried to resist. I won’t be that tourist who comes back with stacks of pictures of random children whom I will never see again. My resolve didn’t last long, however. Barely 48 hours in Nepal and I was snapping away. You may be happy to hear that I did always ask permission first. I always appreciate when people ask.

So, I have come to you to ask forgiveness in my judgment of the Korean people. They aren’t strange. Or maybe, it is just that I am as strange as they are. I wondered how one would present pictures of foreign children to their friends and family and so, here I go. 

Do you want to see pictures of cute Nepali children? Yes? Okay, here are a few…

Making Others' Memories

I know, I’ll be the first to admit it. I have cute kids. Even when I try to look through the unbiased lens of someone who did not carry them around in her womb for nine months, I continually come to the conclusion that they are pretty stinking adorable. Exhibit A:

 

 A certain smile, a giggle, a new trick, or cuddles with her sister and I am over the moon once again, lost in their unbelievable adorability.  So, I am not surprised when other people stop to take a gander at our little beauties. I mean, come on, there are two of them, right? 

Here is what I don’t get. Why do swarms of people line up to take their picture or, better yet, have their own photo taken while holding the foreign baby? Wherever we go, iPhones come out and pictures are taken of the girls. If we are at a public park or other location where we are stationary for some period of time, crowds gather and queues form as if they were red carpet-bound starlets.   

Unless we are in a hurry to get somewhere or they make my baby cry, I honestly don’t mind it too much. (I do worry that our girls will grow up with pathologically inflated egos and severe narcissism but I suppose we can cross that bridge when we come to it.) I just don’t understand the desire to photograph other people’s children. I often see cute ankle-biters around wearing little tutus or overalls and I let out a contented sigh and an adoring smile. But I don’t stop to take their picture. I mean, how does that conversation happen?

Hey, honey, how was your day?

Oh not bad, but guess what I saw during my lunch break?

What, dear?

A foreign baby!

No, I don’t believe it!

Why yes! Here is the photographic evidence!

Wow, that baby sure is foreign!

Or maybe it goes a little something like this:

Hey, do you want to see my pictures from my vacation to beautiful South Korea?

Sure!

Okay, here we are at the palace, and here we are with the cherry blossoms. Here we are at Seoul tower. And HERE we are with foreign babies!

Oh wow, you saw foreign babies? Incredible! Now I want to go to Seoul!

I’m really not sure. I genuinely would like to hear how those photos are explained. To be honest, my goal when taking pictures is to have as few strangers in them as possible. We stand at certain angles, aim the camera in a certain direction and all of a sudden we transform a crowded park into a secluded family scene. That’s what I’m after but apparently we don’t see eye to eye on the subject. Maybe when we are in the States this summer and I come upon a cute Korean baby, I’ll have you take my picture holding him/her. Then I’ll show the picture to my family and friends and figure out just how to have that conversation. 

From Generation to Generation

Some things that you need to know about our family: Chris loves sports. I mean, really loves sports. Quite possibly the number one thing he misses about being in America is ESPN. When I was pregnant, the idea that our girls might pick up on my tragically un-athletic gene was a horror that was left unspoken for nine months. Happily, Lily and Lucy were able to put their old man’s mind at ease at their doljabi celebration where they each confirmed their propensity for sports by choosing soccer and basketball respectively. Coming from a family whose giftings are… elsewhere, shall we say, I sometimes chuckle about the high priority that sports hold in our daughters’ futures.

After a more thorough examination, however, I have to count myself guilty of a similar desire. It is entirely possible that I love food as much as Chris loves sports. I quite literally plan our vacations around countries known for their cuisine. We went to Vietnam a few years ago with the lone goal of drinking the coffee and eating the soup. And it was awesome. So in the same way that Chris wants our dear daughters to share in his love of athletics, I want them to love being in the kitchen and tantalizing their taste buds.

I shared earlier that this year was the one where I came into my own in the kitchen. I relearned my way around and started joyfully filling our bellies once again. Recently, I came to the conclusion that satisfying my and Chris’ culinary wanderlust wasn’t enough. I wanted my daughters to learn to appreciate new flavors and to eventually enjoy eating like I do. (Selfishly, I really just want someone to get as excited as I do when the local grocery store starts carrying nutmeg and then start scouring the internet for as many recipes as I can find that call for it.)

So, since the girls’ tiny palates are still in my hands, I decided to try some new recipes. A good friend of mine offered a toddler cookbook and I was off. Hummus, roasted red peppers, falafel, corn fritters, sautéed tofu, you name it and I was going to try it. I was amazed at how willing the girls were to try my new concoctions. Some recipes I put on the table fully expecting them to turn their noses up at (or projectile spit across the room). But, these little troopers have put their mouths to the task and have given most recipes a big BOGO thumbs up (or a “more” sign gesture, same thing pretty much).

So, for anyone who is interested, this is what we have discovered concerning the girls’ preferences so far:

Hummus: love it

Falafel: can’t get it in the mouth fast enough

Roasted red pepper pasta with tofu: hands down their favorite meal

Strawberries: won’t touch them

Olives: Lily, not so much; Lucy, loves them

Raw red pepper: Lily, definitely; Lucy, no

Kiwi: absolutely not

Sautéed tofu: usually the protein of choice

Salted seaweed (aka “kim” in Korean): by far their favorite snack

And so, there you have it. I never would have guessed that a small child would prefer seaweed to strawberries but I stand corrected. Wish us luck as we try to pass down our passions to our children and I wish you luck in the same endeavor. Here’s hoping our girls order something other than chicken fingers at restaurants and can actually learn to do a lay-up.

Back to Taiwan

Now, I know what you all are thinking. Christmas was so long ago, isn't it about time for the Simpsons to go on vacation again? I know, it has been a long three months for us too. But, fear not! This last week was our long-anticipated spring break and we were able to pack everyone up to meet Mama C and Granddad in our beloved Taipei.

Here are a few mementos from the trip:

Our expert travelers making their entertainment selection

Lily eating from Granddad's chopsticks at one of our favorite restaurants

Lucy and Mama C

Lucy riding the subway

The glass-bottomed gondola

The playground with Mama C and Granddad

The Fam at Big Tom's Ice Cream at Sun Yat Sen

We are now accepting applications for teaching abroad.

Butter

There are some days when I like to think that I am immune to culture shock. I would consider myself as an open-minded person, one who likes to assume the best of everyone and see the kimchi pot as half full. I believe that I first left my “home culture” when I left the Rocky Mountains for Sweet Home Alabama and have picked up a quiver of skills to embrace cultural differences since then. But, every once in a while, I get knocked off of my high horse and land face first into a muddy puddle of culture shock. Icky, slimy, tantrum-throwing culture shock.

I found myself in such a puddle the other evening as I was playing Suzy Housewife in the kitchen. I was attempting to get dinner ready for the girls during the time of day that happily tends to coincide with their fussiest and neediest spell. I then had the sudden desire to bake some cookies because, well, I wanted to eat some cookies. With a baby on one hip, I reached into the cupboard to pull out the necessary ingredients. My next move was to go to the fridge to find the required two sticks of butter. Enter the crash of falling off of the culture-shock-proof high horse. How could butter cause such a disturbance, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

Perhaps it is because our Western palates have grown accustomed to the flavor enhancement provided by butter, but America makes butter very easy to use. It is packaged in easily used sticks labeled with measurements to correctly divide the butter should the recipe call for a fraction of that stick. What’s more, these paper-wrapped sticks slide effortlessly out allowing home cooks to go on about their baking without a care in the world. Not so in Korea. Butter is packaged in giant blocks of what I have approximated to be about four sticks. This requires me to take a very large knife and slice the brick into fourths to achieve the rough measurement essential to whatever recipe I am using. While this is annoying, it isn’t what pushed me over the edge into my culture shock mud bath.

The tipping point came with the wrapper. Even the word makes me grimace with bitterness in the memory of this barrier between me and my cookies. As I mentioned, I am used to butter sliding out of its sleeve smoothly, easily, like butter, right? Not so much here. I am convinced that there are evil little anti-butter using elves who sneak into grocery stores at night randomly cementing sections of the paper to the butter itself. This requires Suzy Homemaker to tear the wrapper off in tiny shreds that have been adhered to the crevices of the butter brick. Not only that, but the wrapper has two layers, the aluminum layer and the transparent paper layer. Therefore, at the point when you believe that you have triumphed over the cementing elves, you find that they have, in fact, bested you with an extra layer of paper to be scratched off in even smaller shreds than the aluminum.

So, here I am. Sweet potatoes waiting to be smashed, chicken begging to be flipped in the pan, hungry baby on the hip letting me know about her increasing impatience, tattered scraps of a butter wrapper strewn all over the counter, and me wielding a ridiculously large knife ready to quarter the cursed block of butter. Not exactly the embodiment of the Suzy Homemaker I had envisioned. I had one of those out-of-body moments of clarity as I imagined someone walking in and seeing me all disheveled holding a baby in one hand and a butcher knife in the other as the chicken finally set the fire alarm off (This probably would have happened if we hadn’t disabled the fire alarm long ago…). I decided to put the knife down.

And so, I came face-to-face with the ugly beast herself: culture shock. Why can’t Koreans package butter like America? Because this isn’t America. Deal with it. And put the knife down.