Happy Peppero Day

Dear Family,

The weather has definitely become cold. Even still I can't persuade myself to layer. And so I walk down the street with a light sweater and benumbed limbs. Part of the problem is that Koreans keep the indoors dizzyingly warm. The one day that I did wear a long-sleeved shirt to work, I thought I should die of heat exhaustion. During the ten minute break between classes I went into the unheated section of the building to partake of some good, old fashioned coldness. So, I opt for fifteen minutes of coldness during my morning walk to work, over several working hours of intense heat. In all rationality, though, it probably wouldn't kill me to wear a coat out of doors.

Today is 'Peppero Day'. Peppero is a thin, long bread stick, about the size of a small straw, either filled with or dipped in chocolate. And 11/11, because the ones in this date look like Peppero sticks, is the day on which one exchanges Peppero with his friends. Yesterday Paul, one of my students, gave Teresa and I each a package of Peppero with hearts and "Sweet Love" liberally scattered over the pink wrapping in which it came. Very cute.

So happy Peppero Day,
Elisabeth

Like a Bug, Really

As one hour in the class room is added to another, muscular tension in the vocal regions of the Meeguk and Eelbon (American and Japanese, respectively) mouth and throat begins to relax. To chew up and spit out one hapless sound in lieu of its more schismatic brother is no longer the predominant mode of pronunciation. Each has grown either lazy or disgruntled, according to his own particular propensity, and has lapsed into a much more relaxed pronunciation pattern: that which conforms credulously his own native tongue. I won't hazard a guess at the Japanese accent, ignorant as I am of it. You shall have to be content of my caricature of the American, who thakes voiceless sthops tho a new level, by unceremoniously thurning the more evasive intho fricathives. This is salubriously cleaner than the than those previous expulsions of breathy force, but is unfortunately no more accurate, and is certainly far less amusing. Thus evasive remains the Korean language to the untrained tongue…

I was thinking about God, and it struck me how very much greater and more awesome and terrible He is than anything I could ever imagine. I really wonder that I never before thought of God as big. As mind numbingly, explosively big. When I do, I become so very microscopically small and irrelevant – like a bug, really. That's all I can think to liken it to. Suddenly, then, all my goodness is ridiculously insignificant. After all, of value is the most self-possessed bug? I am so utterly beneath Him, so decidedly unworthy of His notice. Is it not presumptuous of me even to think about Him? If He should deign to despise me, that would be esteemed a distinction. That He has stooped to love me and to know and be known by me is more incomprehensible than the most fathomless mysteries of the universe. Perhaps, then, that is why one cannot see God and live. To have the fearsomeness of God revealed would strike such terror into the heart of the observer that he would no doubt die of post-traumatic stress. While I have no desire to be struck dead, I certainly wouldn't mind being seized will a healthy dose of holly fear and amazement.