Epilogue

Yesterday at 8:50 Central time, I touched down on American soil.  And let me tell you something, reader-  I don't care what you think of the president, congress, the former president, war, abortion, gay marriage, taxes, or any issue at all-- the country I stepped out of O'Hare International Airport to find is the greatest country I have ever seen.  People were friendly and polite, and I knew I could drive for hundreds and hundreds of miles in any direction and find a diverse spread all sharing my language and national identity. 
If you've stuck with me until now, I'm more grateful than I can put in to words.  Knowing that people back home (or anywhere else, since I had readers in over 10 countries, would you believe that?) were somehow with me though everything I saw and did and endured and enjoyed-- that made it worth so much more to me.  The tough times were easier and the good times were better shared.  I learned a lot about the world, people, history, and culture. I learned a lot about myself, too.  Some of my opinions have changed (I could now see a case for gun control being a good thing), some of my opinions have been strengthened (I believe there is a Right way to treat another person, culture be damned), and all in all I understand myself better as well. 

A year living and teaching abroad is not something I would repeat, but it IS something that was good for me.  I will neither suggest that you should do it, not dissuade you from it if you're thinking about trying a similar adventure.  I will only suggest that you look back through and understand what it was to be an expatriate, a teacher, lonely, and in the company of foreign friends.  It really is an experience, going from historical battlefields to high-speed bullet-trains to the human barrage that is walking down a Seoul sidewalk.  It's character building.  It's resolve strengthening.  It's difficult.  It's fun.  It's adventure.  It's enlightening. 

To those who believe Korea is the Asian clone of the USA- you're right on a sampling level.  Korea has found specific assets of US culture (Taio Cruz and Ludacris sounds, baseball games) to latch onto in an attempt to emulate, and they throw themselves into it with gusto.  But the human interactions are so deeply ingrained in a way absolutely alien to an American ("Who are you?" is irrelevant there... they ask "who are you to me?") that I remained mystified living among them for the whole year. 

Again I say thank you for giving me someone to write to.  Everyone who has read this- you have helped me personally.  When I was sick and alone in the wintertime, exhausted but proud after black-belt tests, or ready to make a last stand against a mafia attack that never came-- it was better knowing I could share it afterwards.

That brings this adventure to its close.  But only this particular adventure.  One thing I have learned about myself with certainty is that I have an appetite for exploration, travel, and challenge that isn't going to be sated simply by teaching abroad for a year.  There will be more to come someday.  For now, though, I've flown back the 14 Hours and returned to my World.  Before I say goodbye, though, I want to leave you with something that was running through my head the last month of my trip.  You know how we warrior-poets are.

The Road Home

A youth with but a score of years
that in his book could scawl
set off with road beneath his soles
to see and challenge all.

His ship did sail and forge a tale
as months to seasons flew
he saw the castles' yawning gates
took tea at temples, too.

But from contagion's Northlands beathed
cold shadows, storm and war.
He saw fires swell as torrents fell
in earthen tides and seas that rise,
strange eyes were warm no more.

And when his bones sank to the stones,
dust-tears in dimming eyes,
from creaking quay far, long away
he heard the seagull cries.

Godspeed! He found a vessel strong,
brae shanties filled his ears.
Her golden lanterns-- laughing souls,
spilled warmth of bygone years

Now icy spray bears swift this day
those bold hearts off to roam
but one soul sings atop the mast-
At last! The road to home!






Thanks for everything. 
Let's do this again some day.

Yours,
Jeff M. Davis.

Danger Days: the True Last Days of Jeff-Teacher.

Jeff-Teacher's log.  August 25, 2011.  1:13 a.m.
  I don't have much time left here in Korea.  I'm typing this sitting on my bed.  My room is bare.  Bare-er.  It seems like I'll never get everything out of here.  It's the middle of the night already, but I get up to check the locks again.  Both of them are still locked.  I return to the bed to make sure my kubotan spike (bought by me) and the Irish hurley (borrowed from a friend) are within arm's reach.  I'm ready.  I'm as armed as I can legally be in this country.  In addition to holding two weapons, I now AM two weapons, with a black belt in Taekwondo and Tukkong Musul, as of tonight.  Fourteen hours and a world.  That world is falling apart in front of me, as I daily get nearer to its end.  But I promise, I'm not going with it.  So to whoever comes to my door tonight-
 I have more fight in me tonight, than I've ever had in my life.

What, you may ask, has put me in such a fighting pose, written in such fighting prose?  Well, I'll tell you.
Rewind to a week ago.
A newer teacher at the school is as bad as they come.  As bad as they showing-up-drunk, beating-children-with-sticks, bragging-about-mob-connections come.  His stories of friends with sashimi knives are lackluster, compared to Capone or the Bloods, but being not very gangster myself, I find myself intimidated.  As my last day comes around, heralded by an angelic chorus parting the clouds to raise a Hallelujah banner, I begin asking for a plane ticket home.  My boss, behind on hiring a new teacher, begs for an extra week or two out of me, first appealing to my pity, then offering a hundred bucks when he finds none.  As you know, readers, I am an outspokenly strong fan of everything about Korea.  So I tell him no, I have future plans in the US, and I need to be going. 
Cue:  a private rooftop chat up a secluded stairwell with our mafioso villain.  The smoke of his cigarettes makes our hero cough.
The Villain informs the Hero that to allow an older person to beg a younger person for something, and then refuse, is an extreme dishonor in the Sobaek system of Confucian incredibly-important heirarchy.
This line of reasoning has little impact on our very Western Hero.
 He goes on to detail that the mob is involved in the Hagwon (private academy) system and likes things to run smoothly.
Fast forward to today.
Open in the office:  the Hero recieves his plane tickets- Incheon to Tokyo, 19 hour layover, Tokyo to Chicago.  The Villain saunters in and drapes himself dramatically across his desk, asking the Hero if he's happy now.  A contented reply from the Hero triggers a short Hannibal Lecture from the Villain detailing how the Hero is the most self-centered person the Villain has ever met.
We're not so different, he and I. 
Exit the Villain, stage right, while the audience gape in shocked silence.  Then after a quick return, full of gleeful smugness, the Villain offers his showstopper line:
"Hey Jeff, tonight I'm going to show you what a real Korean gangster looks like."

Cue a flurry of reporting to the boss, having the incident swept under the rug, denial by Korean witnesses, and a general overwhelming reaction of nothing.
Well 14hoursandaworld-ers, your intrepid hero is not one to lay down and die.  I have my month's pay.  I have my black belt.  I have my plane ticket.  I have some more pay to collect yet, and then I have a trip home to make.  I'm sitting here waiting for a pounding at the door that may or may not come, but if it does, I'm ready for it.  More ready than I ever would have been a year ago.
 I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of combat training, which came with the added benefit of knowing that I am more capable than I have ever believed.  I have a Hurley from wonderful, helpful friends (who tonight escorted me as a group over the half hour trip to get my black belt) I would never have met, had I not come here.  I have a Kubotan defense spike bought for a beautiful girl I might never have dated, had I not come here.  I have an incredible family and friends who have been there with me through everything this entire year while I've been here. 

I have all those things people live for. 

Never in my life have I appreciated more the things I have.  And I WILL keep them.  And I WILL return to them, safely. 

I will stand on American soil in eight days.

I'm coming home.

Jeff-Teacher
Jeff M. Davis.

On Being Human

Sometimes a traveler also explores their mind.
                     - Kino's Journey

The Year is almost finished.  My fourteen hours that lasted for twelve months are ending in less than twenty days.  You can bet I've given thought to being back with my family and my friends.  And my homeland-Ah to sail again on the sea of cornfields of the Great Plains!  Those Amber Waves of Grain are calling my name.  I'm excited to be back in the land where restaurants give you a drink with your meal...and they'll refill it if you finish.  I'm excited for all of those things that a world-weary young man ending his year of self-imposed exile would love.  But I have to admit something else to you here.  And if you've stuck with me and read 14Hours this entire year,  you're probably not easily offended, so I'm going to take a gamble and be open with you.

I'm excited to get back my humanity.

I'm sorry if that comes out rough.  Let me preface it by saying that I have met some people in Korea who would give good old Midwest hospitality a run for its money.  I've seen a young man out with his friends stop to help a drunken old man who had fallen in the road.  I've seen an older gentleman immediately give a young pregnant woman on the bus his seat (though he stood with a cane).  I've seen displays that would do hearts anywhere some good.

But now that I can be honest with you, I want to tell you about the other side I've seen this year, and how much it frightens me. 
Because you see, here, suffering is often just a way of life.  Kids play-fight back home, but there's a brutality to it here that jerks at my insticts, a stop this now.  Teachers hit students with a violence that has made me try to call for it to stop, before I even knew what I was doing.  Women often have finger-shaped bruises on their upper arms from either being roped into meeting men at booking clubs, or simply from an abusive boyfriend/husband.  The reality of a culture, a morality built on a strict structure of ranks is that if someone ranked above you abuses you, you simply endure it.  How do you know who outranks who?  Easy:  listen to what people say.  The language itself is such that you have to use the person's rank in things as small as your conjugation of verbs. 
The mindset becomes one of "Will I lose face among people I know for not caring about this person?"  The answer in public situations is often that you don't know the person and will probably never see them again.  And neither party is obliged to the other.  Which leads to a common conundrum: No one is enforcing your obligation to me, nor mine to you.  So both of us simply act careless of the other.  You drop your keys on the crowded bus next to me, and though I could easily reach them and help you, I don't.  I'm sick and tired and have been travelling all day, but you get through the train line before me and rush to the seat, then plug in your headphones and make no eye contact.  A parent's child screams and runs around a restaurant, but rather than discipline the child and worry about the other disturbed guests, the parent continues to eat and talk with friends.  It becomes so simple as two people walking will push right through each other, with neither offering an "excuse me". 
Is it awful?  There are two reasons I find this awful.  The first reason is that at one point I wholeheartedly believed this mindset.  The world was big out there, there were tons of people, and who cared if I inconvenienced someone I'd never see again?  I had nothing to gain from helping a stranger, it would only slow me down.  Likewise, I didn't expect help from strangers.  The world was a slick, icy place, and I had found the fastest pair of skates.  But something changed this year-  I left the Midwest.  In Korea, that mindset is EVERYwhere.  And it's completely mortifying to see a society espouse that mindset without a second thought.  I wholeheartedly admit I was wrong for having thought anything to this end. 
So....great!  Korea was actually good for me.  Made me a better person.  Now's the time where I turn to the camera and give a short monologue about doing good for others, regardless of personal gain.  Except there's no music swells, no heartfelt hug,  no fade to black with credits roll afterward. 
The harsh reality is that the movie doesn't end there.  Things get worse.  Now that I've decided to care about the welfare of strangers, the enormity of the wrongness here is even more unsettling.  Every husband slapping a wife around is culturally-approved unhappiness I can't fix--and no one else here seems to find it wrong.  Every person who pushes their way to the front of the line is an unfairness to those who were waiting, and everyone else accepts it as normal.  They say the mark of a person who has lost his sanity is often that he thinks everyone else has gone mad.

Well, I've not been one to be crazy.  The awful truth is that I scurry to my seat in the train, even if other people might need the seat.  I let the door close on the person behind me without holding it.  I don't move out of the way to let someone through a line, because i know my spot will be taken.  Even knowing all these things are wrong, Korea puts those who live within its culture in a position where you have the option of sacrificing your humanity one small portion at a time, or becoming a doormat to everyone who does.  And yes there are pushy people in the Western World.  But even on the streets of Chicago or New York City, I never saw anything like this. 

So what would you trade your humanity for?  A train seat?  The last bus to your apartment?  A job? 
It'll be good to come home. 

Dreaming of Airports again,
Jeff-Teacher

Harry Potter and the Grownup World

        Something happened to my generation this weekend.  Something that can never un-happen.  And it's frightening and sad and intangible and a little unexpected, but it unquestionably happened. 
And this thing is the end of our collective childhood.  What makes me so sure of this cutoff?
That would be the real end of the Harry Potter saga.
True, they're just movies, and true, I'd known the ending of the story for years, but there's no question that when those credits rolled after the epilogue, something was done.  This story we'd all grown up on was at last done being told.  Some of us are young enough that we were read the story at first.  Some of us are old enough that we stooped to "children's books" to read this story that everyone else was talking about.  I was personally above the stupid story about the nerdy kid who was actually a wizard-- until, that is, I actually read it.  Wherever we were when it happened, The Boy Who Lived is the story of our childhood.  Its the story of a child who was totally unremarkable being pushed forward into a big world that was alluring and unfamiliar.  This world was a magnificent place, full of wonder and excitement, but not without danger.  Truly in 2003, when I was reading of a faceless enemy attacking the home of the heroes I'd come to see as Us, when I read of parents unsure whether to send their children back to school in dark times, I couldn't help but realize that Order of the Phoenix was a story of my own time.
I saw an ordinary boy dragged by chance into the grandest adventure told in my lifetime, saw him grow as a hero and a person while he juggled exams and relationships, and finally saw him confront an enemy that literally was a part of himself.  And the next thing you know, the three children I grew up with are adults.  The credits closed to black and one thing was absolutely clear. 
The mythology of my childhood was finished.
Now what are we supposed to do?  We can't find a new legend like Harry Potter to throw our whole culture into-- such devotion and delusion are unbefitting people who have reached adulthood.  We've lost the ability to be told a story.
And the music swells in minor, running helplessly down the slow strings of a violin. But all hope is not lost.  Because, you see, when we become adults we may lose the ability to be held rapt by tales of magic.  But we gain the ability to live our own high adventure.  Children sit safe in their rooms and live vicariously through bedtime stories-- adults travel the world.
Do I honestly think actually just going somewhere in the real world is equal to the magic and adventure of the Hero's Journey of Harry Potter? 
Without a doubt, yes.
There is mystery and wonder for lifetimes out here.  Anyone who knows about what happens inside the Large Hadron Collider knows there is magic.  If it's adventure you're after, take a trip to Komodo- the dragons there may not breathe fire, but they're much more likely to stalk you for days for a taste of your flesh.
So, class of '11, the point that (Hogwarts class of '11) I'm struggling to make without sounding like a graduation speaker is this: 
My generation hasn't lost anything with the end of the Harry Potter saga.  They were wonderful stories.  And some day I will pass them on to children (or flush with pride some night when I catch my children reading Harry Potter sitting by their nightlight because I told them "lights out" an hour ago).  But those stories are confined to the page, an imitation of a real adventure.  There's real adventure out there to be had.   Harry Potter has taught me a few things about how to meet that adventure, but I don't need yearn for his story- mine will be be real.
Have a look into the Pensieve for a moment.  Eighty years before Harry Potter, in a time that had very little in common besides the popularity of round spectacles, there was another literary character who surged to popularity in the English-speaking world.  Hopefully the longevity of this character says good things for the unforgettable Harry Potter, but it's what this character had to say for himself that I want to share with you now.

 Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.

These words come from Robert E. Howard's character, Conan the Barbarian in 1934.  I learned recently that this story is coming out as a new movie this year.  I'm not surprised.  The message here is clear, universal, and endlessly part of the human spirit:  No story can be told that is greater than the experience of life.
 And we only get one shot at that.
 It's my turn to step into the night, with or without Dumbledore, and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.


Jeff-Teacher

(I realize this was a little short on Korea-stories.  Don't worry, the adventure continues next time as I'll tell you what Korean history has taught me about how I should live to become a legend.)



Incheon: it's French for 'Dark', I've heard

Two weeks now since we seen the sun.  You'd think it got up in the morning, took one look at this city and called in sick, every day.  Whadda we get?  Rain. The kinda rain that runs in rivers for miles, and never cleans anything off the streets of this concrete jungle.  And the people all hide away from it, like it'll dirty them up next.  It's like everyone out there traded in their heads for these awful black umbrellas.  City that never smiles.
Yeah, I been gone a month or so, who's askin?  Why?  There was this dame.  We boarded a plane, ran for Jeju-- the Island of the Gods--that's what they called it, see.  The place where three gods in some story came outta holes in the ground and started the country or something like that.  Started by gods, run by politicians.  Somewhere in that history book, there's gotta be a mistranslation.   After all, how do you live with a history like that?  Sure, if you told everyone nowadays your great-grandpa popped out of a hole in the ground and said "let there be Korea", they'd put you away!  Nothin.
The island was a lovely place, if you like your fish and you like it still smiling at you.  Pretty enough to be in pictures, yeah it's somethin.  But it all comes from a volcano, and they know it.  That the world itself said "to hell with this place, let's see what kinda pretty fire it can make!"  and just like that, *pow*, a million postcard shops were born.  The attitude stayed, though.  One night it was, the lady and I were hoping to find a nice place, inside somewhere, where the jazz was free and the drinks were smooth.  Or the other way around, either woulda been nice.  Whatever it was, the two of us walked in arm in arm, and it was like the piano itself went out for a smoke break.  The room got quiet.   Only the ice in a glass moved, and even that got itself a dirty look for its troubles.  A waitress sauntered over, all painted up like she was the best tourist attraction in town.  Her co-workers had taken one look at us and dropped outta sight.  Guess she'd drawn the short straw.
"Sorry," she quipped, with a downright admirable imrpession of sincerity, "we don't serve your kind."  Figures.  Isn't that how life goes?  Just when you think you'd found a nice place, it turns out you found a real place instead.  We eventually did find a place that'd let us in from the rain.  The steaks were better there, too.
But life never stays away, like you'd hope it would.  A week of fine food, music, and that crazy-cold mist that even tropical islands can set into your bones come nightfall...and work was calling me back.

Name's Jeff M. Davis.  I'm a teacher.  It'd say that on my door, if I had a door of my own.  Trouble is (and believe me, trouble always is) the world isn't as kind to us private folk as it used to be.  A man hardly can get to work without the calls coming in already- dissatisfied customers, outraged clients-- you're never half the teacher they wanted you to be, and they're always payin you half what a teacher outta be paid.  I spend my mornings and evenings in the gyms- daytime on the nice side of town, nighttime in a place where little old ladies don't walk their poodles alone.  In a world like this, a man's gotta know how to do for himself if some toughs jump outta an alley.  Got myself one black belt, and may even have two in a month.   But who am I kiddin?  Nothing exciting ever happens here in the rain.

Oh and don't forget, if the rain doesn't get ya, the heat will.  Times like these, the summer even drives the flies indoors.  Tough luck for me.  Tougher for the flies.  Air conditioners and freezers gasp like a chump who got given the long walk off a short pier, if you read what I'm sayin.  So when this dame showed up at my door, all the way from America with a proposition, I was all ears.  Pictures, it turned out, was what she had in mind, the kind you see in the cinemas.   Somethin to do indoors when the summer's waiting for you outside with a Chicago typewriter and a lousy attitude
"Sweetheart," I questioned her, "where am I supposed to get the money to buy all these movies you're talking about?  What would ya have me do, knock over Fort Knox?"  She laughed dangerously, leaning across the doorway to answer.  The single bare lightbulb cast her shadow into the hall, throwing off curves that'd make a major league pitcher cry. 
"Who said anything," she came back with a half a smile and even less conscience, "about buying?" 
Turns out I'm in the best place in the world for movies, and not the kind you can see on the silver screen.  No, in a place with a connection this fast, and copyright laws as loose and wild as they are, seems a fella couldn't ask for a better time and place to try his hand at downloading.  So she just has ta ask, and the films come flowing in.  Now I'm doin pretty well, I see her on the weekends, when she's finished her classes, take her out to a nice restaurant, then hold the umbrella while she gets in a cab.  After that I catch the last midnight train to Incheon, my city that never smiles, back the the apartment with the bare bulb swinging and the computer humming as the tide of movies creeps higher.

Well, that's the truth, or near about as I can make it.  I may have embellished a few details, but that's my job, after all.  I'm a teacher.  Says so on my door.  Or it would, if i had one.




P.S. This fourth of July, have a bourbon for America.  Make it a double and have one for me, too.

Deception!

So I've been holding back a tale of intrigue for just the right time.
Because I have made you wait long enough, now is that time.
Relax a while, reader, as I weave a tale of intrigue shadier than a ... shady....shade.

You remember, of course, the boss I mentioned at the beginning of the year?  The wounded military veteran professional gambler with a few aggravating traits?
 I read the book American Shaolin a week ago, and it mentioned that in Asian societies (specifically Chinese, but applicable elsewhere), feelings are not expressed at surface level, so that a man can get a leg up on everyone else around him.  And no one asks whether a person is lying, they ask why he is lying.
Well, fresh off the plane midwestern me was not worldly enough to know these details intimately.  So when my boss would tell me about himself (and I could put down my bible and apple pie long enough to listen), it never occurred to me that he was telling anything but the truth.  But after he left, about a month ago, the truth began to come out.

His Masters in English? 
From a nonexistent university in England.

Wait a minute, I cried, he actually did live in England!
As it turns out, he did.  He fled the country with his uncle who was under suspicion of drug charges, while still in high school.  Meaning not only did he never get that masters degree, he may've never had a diploma either.

But he MUST have had some value as a teacher!  As soon as he left, students started to quit the school.
Word began to come in from parents a few weeks later, that before he left, this man had told the parents that the other teachers at my school lacked college degrees.  Sinister.  But not as sinister as insinuating that the NEW school he was starting would  be run by he himself who they could trust.  Can you almost feel the snake oil?

Finally, A new teacher that had been called in right as he was leaving had been quiet around me.  Not unusual.  We didn't primarily communicate in the same language, so that's normal, right?
Turns out, he'd told her I didn't talk to her because I looked down on her English skills.

Turned the staff against each other?  Check.
Turned the students against the staff?  Affirmative.
Bamboozled everyone with forged documents?  You got it
Funneled the runoff into his own school?  Perfectly
Step five?  Profit.

Also that "pro gambler " thing was actually just him having a betting problem.

Am I upset about all this?  You bet I am! 
I was working under a Master of the Art all along and had no idea because I didn't speak the language!  Oh the disappointment!  There was so much I should've been learning!  I mean, he's not a TRUE master because he was found out, but that's still a stunning amount of bluffing your way past everyone.  The saying in the school now is that the only truth ever heard from his mouth was the sound of breathing, and we're still checking the certificates on that.

So that's good news.  My story needed a villain.   A plot twist of sorts, so that everyone can go back the the scene selection on the 14HoursAndAWorld DVD and go "oooooh yeah, I totally saw this coming".


While we're on the subject of deception, there one other cruel trick I'd like to point out, and it's more general, and not leveled at a single person.  Because it's leveled at a group, it may sound like I'm generalizing.
I am.
I do. 
I will continue to do so. 
I'm sure you can find exceptions to my generalizations, but they are based on observations.  Never fabrications.  Wow, Jeff-poet, congratulations.

Anyway, I saw this comic recently

The accuracy is astounding.  Even down to the granny-perm and tracksuit.  And it made me pause to think.  I have been told that Waygooks (us foreign people) look old more quickly than Koreans.  Which brought up the idea of aging gracefully- it seems to be rarer here.  Aging seems less like a gradual adding of laugh lines and crows feet and senility, and more like one day the Wisdom delivery truck arrives but it crashes directly on them while making its delivery.  That may be in part due to the harder life lived here and later retirement age, but either way, one thing jumped out at me.

I do see many foreign men here take local girlfriends.  However, when I see a man in his fifties walking with his Korean wife, rarely do I stop and think "He chose....wisely". 

So I believe I've found the cruelest deciever of them all, and that's beauty. 

Don't despair, men in the audience!  Yes, you can still choose a beautiful girl and be happy with her.  But the moral of the story is- you should check out her mother first.  Maybe get some indication of whether she's going to keep that lovely figure when she-- ok you're checking her mother out for too long.   Yes, everyone can see what you're doing.  But in all seriousness-- Safeguard yourselves with this one simple check.  Just long enough to make sure there's no granny perm should be fine.

Til next time
Jeff-Teacher

Americanism Part II, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Overpaying

Last week I talked about what living in Korea has taught me about being an American, and I hinted that I might have some more about American values for you this week.  Well, I am a man of my word, so here's the heart-stopping conclusion! I'll begin with a couple thoughts about Korea.

So I went shopping this week. For a birthday present for my little sister. I ended up with a nice enough (though trinkety) little thing and, full of myself for another successful present purchase, I asked the cashier the price. He rattled off a nonchalant Korean number, and (after processing what it was he meant), I was very surprised. Surely he couldn't have meant THAT much. He did. I looked at the gift in my hand. Yep. It was still the same one, the one I wanted to give my sister. I paid and walked out without so much as a regretful should-I-or-shouldn't-I. Later, on the street, I saw similar gifts being sold at a much lower cost. Similar, but not quite the same. Clearly, the one I had bought was not superior enough to merit the price difference, but I found myself absolutely not caring. The money meant little to me. I wanted the one I had, and I had enough money for it. The specifics were a non-issue.

And just tonight, I watched a man in a business suit walking in front of me down the street plug a nostril and blow his nose across the sidewalk. Repeatedly, and without a backward glance, he purged his nasal passages all over the walkway until he was satisfied, then walked on. Such occurrences are commonplace here, as it's not unusual to see Koreans hawk up and spit in internal walkways in buildings. So recently I've decided- by the time I leave this place, I will have developed the vocabulary to inform the practitioners of the phlegmatic arts that this is not only disgusting and dirty, but rude to all around. After announcing my intention to a friend, I was rebuffed with a phrase I've often heard (but rarely stopped to consider)- It's not worth it. I've always found this phrase strange. If I'm able to do something about a problem, whether or not I'm guaranteed success (and indeed, in this situation I'm guaranteed failure, since I can't really stop this practice altogether), then the right thing to do is to do my part to fix the problem. Yes it may cost me time, effort, money, or a potential friend in the form of that Korean businessman I’ve just offended-- but the practice is not a good way for people to go about life, and I have the capability to begin combating it-- so I don't see any other option but to act.

Prepare yourself for this next part if you are easily offended, or if you have been on mars since about 1776. It may shock you with its offensive stereotypes and sweeping generalizations.

Americans

Are not known for being

Very savvy

Tourists.

They routinely overpay for things that any local (or really, even foreigners from other countries) would look at and ask “Are you crazy? There's absolutely no way that little tourist toy is worth even half of what you just paid for it.”

There, I've said it. Have I started any fights yet?

Even though you, noble Reader, are probably the exception to the rule, the One American who Proves they're Not All the Same, it's hard to disagree that the stereotype exists. American tourists tend to be favorite prey for tourist traps because they know the Americans can and will pay whatever prices they set. And why is that? Because they routinely say things like

“Oh I know it's only a paper figure of a tortoise, honey, but it's a Mexican paper tortoise. We can't get those back home. What's twenty dollars going to hurt? We're on vacation!”

How did this come to be? How did a nation born with the value of Thriftiness carved into its psyche come to be the nation known for outlandish expenditure?

The answer to that question was best articulated by English author Philip Pullman who wrote “If you can, and you should, then you must”. America is a nation blessed with the land, population, and natural resources to create, build, and spend on levels the world has never seen. This was publicized to the assembled spectators of nations worldwide in 1907 when President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the circumnavigation of the globe by the Great White Fleet, America's capital ships. Essentially the entire American navy was painted white for high visibility, and set out to visit the nations of the world as they steamed all the way around the globe. Excessively expensive, an operation that committed the full function of the U.S. Navy to a mission that didn't require any combat. Nevertheless, President Roosevelt had decided that the United States had reached a point where it should show the world that it was a global power. And because power was projected internationally at that time by naval forces, the way to do it was a naval world tour. Being full of the prosperity that would last until the Great Depression, they also had the cashflow to do so. With the funding, he realized they can. With the need to bring his growing nation into a place on the global stage, he realized they should. Can. Should. Must. So they did.

Today, the United States is the largest military spender in the world, coming in at about six times the expenditure of second-place China, and with higher total military spending than the next 20 ranked nations combined. It seems we still buy into the idea that if we can and we should, then we must. Of course, this philosophy has its ups and downs- we can and should do many things for which we have the money, it just means we have to give up money elsewhere. But a decision maker bent on doing the right thing can't dismiss an opportunity because it has a cost or a commitment. I would challenge you to think of a reason that includes the words “it's difficult” to avoid doing the right thing in a situation where you have the power to do so. Now try to say that reason without making a pouty-face.

So yes, the gift I bought my sister does not have the same value as the cash I paid for it. And no, I do not expect to clean up the streets for my efforts with nose-blowers. But both are worthwhile causes, and within my capability to pay the cost.

Last week, when Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALS, I heard a minority outcry online. Many were reticent about a victory that had cost the US massive amounts of money, soldiers, and political capital. “Was it worth it?” was the rallying cry taken up on Facebook statuses that day. However, I stand behind the efforts of Presidents Bush and Obama, both of whom understood that the removal of World Enemy Number One from the Earth was something that should be done. And both knew very well that United States could do it given time, men, and money. Because as Americans, our spirit is not one of “Is it within my price range?” It's a spirit of “Is it good? And am I able?”

Can. Should. Must.

'Til next time,

Jeff-Teacher