You really have rhythm in your soul Avya. I swear you came out of your mommy’s belly dancing and singing. I don’t have any videos of you singing one of your made up songs yet. It seems like those songs happen without notice and by the time I get the video camera going you have moved on to something else. I will try my best to get some video of you singing.

I do have more videos of you dancing but I don’t want our blog and video site to turn into the Avya Variety Show.

In this video we were hanging out at our restaurant during the hours we close so the chefs can prep. You got into the music that was playing and started dancing. I think it is just amazing how you interpret the music and create your own new moves to the music. It seems like every time you dance you add some new little movement.

I took you girls to see Avatar. I was a little worried about taking you Avya because you are still so young. I worried that you would get bored and start making noise or would have to use the bathroom in the middle of the movie. I am happy to say that you did quite well and gave me a lot a confidence that I can take you to more movies in the future. I think you were just happy that you got to drink pop and eat some popcorn and candy. You know, we don’t eat junk food or drink pop very often so it is always a special occasion when we do.

So I liked the movie but was no so impressed with the 3D. The 3D didn’t have much depth to it and that was pretty disappointing. I was surprised by how spiritual the movie was. I never expected that.

A couple of things ran through my mind as I was sitting there watching the movie.

Do people from different nations view the movie differently? For example, do they see that a bunch of Americans invaded a foreign land for the purpose of getting their hands on some precious natural resource? Do they view it as Americans viewing their way of life as superior and the locals that don’t accept their way of life to be primitive? I know each person has their own individual views but there can be generalizations made and that I guess is what I am getting at. What is the way that Americans view the movie in general and how does it compare to the way foreigners may see it. I don’t think the way I view the movie would fall into that general American view because of my international life and experiences. I did discuss this with a Dutch friend of mine and he said that he viewed it as Americans invading a foreign land so it adds some credence to my thinking but he is only one person so I can’t really use it as any definitive proof.

The other thing that struck me is how the movie is a condemnation of what America has done and is still doing in the Middle East. At times it is very subtle – a different religion which is ridiculed, a precious natural resource that drives the invasion -  then at other times it is quite obvious – “we will take terrorism to the terrorists”.  This is the conundrum I have. I think most Americans think that we are in the Middle East to take the terrorism to the terrorists. I think most Americans think that we did nothing wrong and we are there to defend ourselves or for some noble purpose. They think that our way of life or the American religion is superior and therefore we are helping the locals out. Why else would so many people support America’s military action there? But this movie is a direct attack on those views and this movie set the new box office ticket record. How could so many people go and watch this movie and even multiple times if it is a direct attack on their beliefs? This leads me to believe that they are not making that connection. I guess I will never get an answer to this – I just thought I would share with you girls the thoughts that ran through my mind.

Maybe I just need to watch a movie without thinking about it and be dumbly entertained.

Here are some pictures you took with your camera Sudona. And you had Avya take some pictures of you. I need to teach you how to use the camera correctly so you can actually get some clear pictures. :)

As you girls have read through these blog posts maybe you have been struck with the thought that we have a great life and everything seems so easy. Yes, we do have a great life, but it is not true that everything is easy and perfect. We have our difficult times, frustrations, pain, and challenges. But there are a few reasons that I choose not to write about these things. First, I like to focus on the positives in life. And with age and wisdom has come the realization and acceptance that no matter how bad things may be we will get through it and be able to look back on in with different eyes. I truly hope that I will be able to help you girls learn these lessons at a younger age than I learned them. Second, those difficulties and heart taxing events are deeply personal and I don’t feel comfortable sharing it on this blog with the world. Those are the things that I choose to only share with those I feel I can trust and feel close to. Finally, as a parent I feel like my number one priority is to protect you girls. I feel that I need to protect you from not only physical pain but also mental and emotional pain. Experiencing these pains is a part of life and you grow from experiencing these things but I know you have and will experience them no matter how hard I try to protect you. So, you will have those personal experiences to grow from – I just don’t want them to come from me.

As you girls grow older and I think you are mentally ready to understand more, and when we are through the situation which my be currently happening, I will share with you the other side of the stories. I will do it verbally and not on this blog so I can discuss it with you and help you see how we got through it and the lessons we learned. Hopefully you will gain some wisdom and perspective from me sharing those stories with you.

Here are some pictures with your grandmother. I see some family resemblance.

The same picture but playing around with some artistic app on my iPhone.

Here is a special experience you had Sudona. Your school asked you if you wanted to take part in a special class that was being offered by the Korean government at the main art center. We asked you how you felt about it and how it would effect your study time. We were a little concerned that it would take time away so you would have more difficulty preparing for your tests. So we talked to you about this and left the decision up to you. You said you wanted to do it so then your mother called and talked to your teacher about how this may effect your test scores. She assured us that it wouldn’t be a problem so we accepted the offer.

It was a pretty special offer. They chose few than 10 students from your school to attend this and you were one of them. In the class there would be students from schools all over the area. I think there were a few reasons that they offered you the chance. First, you are a very good student. All of your teachers say that you listen well and focus on the task at hand. So, this would give the teachers and administration of the clay class a good impression of your school because you would be representing you school. Second, because you are such a good student you are doing well in school and so missing some classes won’t have a negative effect on you or your ability to keep up with the class. Finally, the class would be taught in both Korean and English and you are the only student in your school that is fluent in both of those languages.

So, I had to pick you up after lunch once a week for a month and take you to the class. Then later I had to pick you up from the class. After each class you told me that you had a great time and because you are an English speaker you were able to have conversations with the teacher before and after the classes.

I am so happy you got this experience.

I snapped a couple of pictures of the fitting we went to Avya. It is for a modeling gig that you got and we had to go to the fitting to make sure they had the correct size clothes prepared for the shoot. I guess it is just like any job, people only see the big end results and think that it’s all so easy. There is a lot of taking you here and there to different fittings, auditions and meetings. I am not saying that any of this modeling stuff is hard but there are a lot of little things that go on behind the scenes that no one knows about unless they have had a similar experience. Your mother got very good at managing it all and keeping it from being too difficult or too much for either of you girls to deal with. I still have some learning to do but I am getting better at it. But I also know that you will do much less modeling now because I am not on sites submitting your portfolio for modeling jobs. Sorry about that but my Korean is just not at that level right now and your mother is far too busy. Maybe after the restaurant gets set and it is all running smoothly your mother will start submitting your portfolio again. I just think it is great that you are having these experiences and you never know where they will lead. It is also helping you pay for your university education and I don’t want you to miss out on that. But life has its own path and we will only know for sure how things will end up after they have already taken place.

You girls know that my cause is climate change, or global warming if that is what you prefer to call it. There is a concerted effort going on right now to make sure that all people refer to this issue as climate change because so many people seem to be confused by the term global warming. So many people seem to think that global warming means that the weather should be getting warmer so when we have these huge snowstorms they think it is proof that global warming is not happening and therefore not a concern. But this is not the case. The increase in frequency and strength of hurricanes, greater snowfall, greater floods, droughts, and all the other changes in what is normal weather patterns is evidence of climate change (global warming).

I worry about your girl’s futures. How should I start to prepare you for great calamity in the future due to climate change. I fear that once the rich a powerful are finally rebuked by the masses on this issue it will be too late to reverse it and the world is going to go through an upheaval. The scientists are saying we are getting very close to the point where our efforts will not be able to reverse what is going on. We are losing our polar caps at an alarming rate and without those climate will change drastically. Possibly even another ice age. How will populations move and survive through an ice age? We could always hope that scientists are all wrong or we could just sit and hope that they come up with some solution. It’s pretty sad how people try to deny what scientists say until they need help from the scientists to come up with solutions for what they originally warned about.

As you girls know I love TED Talks. In this talk Bill Gates talks about what he thinks needs to be done. I like how he gives ideas and is supporting a solution but he tries to stay out of the finger-pointing politics of the issue. He is a better man than I.

Is health care for the masses on its deathbed?

We are in the middle of a debate for health care right now. This may be an issue still going on by the time you girls read this because it has been going on for 70 years now. I think it is very sad that an agreement can’t be made to help our people have security about their health.

Yes, it is true that government does not run things well. Anyone that has gone to the DMV can attest to that. But there is a big difference between whether you can get your car registered and whether you can get health care when you are deathly sick. I don’t put a lot of blame on the health care companies, they are businesses and therefore their purpose is to make money. Therefore they benefit by rejecting insurance, dropping people, and refusing to pay for procedures that patients need. It is also true that profits from businesses drive innovation but again this does not lead to everyone having health care. I guess it comes down to what you think the government is there for. I believe that the government is there to protect the masses from the few that have the money and power. If we follow the less government idea then we would get rid of medicare and let the elderly fend for themselves. We would get rid of minimum wage legislation and let business take advantage of the people in times when there is excessive unemployment. We would get rid of age limits and go back to a time when child labor was a common practice. We would also go back to a time of segregation. All of these things were done for the benefit of society and most fought for these things against the rich and powerful.

The health care debate is another issue that is right in line with these. The rich and powerful don’t want the government involved because this could hurt their bottom line. Climate change legislation is another debate that is going on right now and falls in line with this. The rich and powerful want to continue to have their fossil fuel businesses make a profit so they are fighting against legislation that would benefit society and the world. It is a shame that people can’t see what will really benefit them and society and not just be blindly lead by false data and arguments. Manipulating the masses has been the state of politics these days – “clean coal”!

I really hate the stupid name calling too. Calling someone a socialist is just a way to manipulate the ignorant. Are people too stupid to realize that we already live in a socialist society. Anytime you tax people and provide for the less fortunate you are a socialist society. Ask these people if they want to give up all the entitlements they are getting and you will get a resounding “NO”!

It would all be a very interesting TV show if it didn’t directly effect our lives.

I hope you girls will always have compassion in your heart for the less fortunate. Remember in the long run you will have a more fulfilling life if you care more about others well being than you do about your financial excess.

Okay – I could go on for pages about this girls but I better leave it there. I am not completely happy with the way this post clearly defines my points but you girls will know my way of thinking by the way I live my life and they way I talk with you.

Here are the required pictures that go along with every post. These are pictures you took with your camera Sudona.

I have no idea where you girls will be living when you read this. I also have no idea how things will be when you girls are reading this. That is why I make a post about current politics at times. Because you will be living in the future and know the results of the current political events. I also thought it would be good to make a post about the current state of culture because culture does change and you may find it interesting to look back and see what things used to be like.

So, with that in mind I took a picture of a sign of a kind of place you can easily find in Korea right now. I think it is a great idea and fits in quite well with Korean culture. These places are what could be called entertainment rooms. They have many room, and the rooms tend to be only around 8 feet by 6 feet. In one of these rooms you will find a comfortable couch and a large HDTV. There will also be a game systems like a Nintendo Wii, XboX or Play Station. So if you want to play video games you can. They also have computers hooked up to the TVs so you can get onto the internet or play games on the computer. They also have cable TV hooked up and DVD players so you can watch TV or Movies if you choose. They really are entertainment rooms. I guess you could say that they are like the livingroom setup you wish you had but can’t afford. You pay by the hour for these rooms and the price is really reasonable – typically around $5 to $10 an hour. So, if you have a group of friends that want to go together it is really cheap.

I said they fit in quite well with Korean culture. Well, if you remember from prior posts I said that children live with their parents until they get married and the eldest son often lives with his parents until they pass away. So, as you can imagine, it is not so easy to get personal time away from your parents. I think a lot of Koreans use these rooms to get personal time. You will also find that a lot of couples go and spend time together in these places like a westerner would go and park at lookout point.

The other day Sudona we were downstairs and I was doing housework and you stopped me and said you wanted to give me a hug. You gave me a big and said you felt like crying because you were feeling so much love. It was such a touching moment and meant so much to me. I knew exactly how you were feeling because I have had the exact same feeling so many times. You then asked me to move over to the bed and you got up on the bed on your knees while I was standing on the floor so that our heights were about the same. Then you gave me a big long hug and just squeezed me really tight. Then you gave me a big kiss. Actually your kiss was a little too long and it made me feel uncomfortable but I didn’t want to reject you in any way because I knew you were sharing such deep emotions. We talked a little bit about the emotions you were feeling and the moment passed.

I think this touching moment came about due to several reasons. First, I am a very emotional person and I am always expressing my love through affection with you. So, I think you have picked up on these traits from me. Second, there has been a huge change in our home life with your mother working all the time and me being at home taking care of you girls most of the time. I think that this may have been a way for you to deal with this change. Finally, I just think that we have a very close relationship and as you are getting older you are feeling that more deeply and expressing it.

Here are a couple of scans of things that I put away to add to your book of memorabilia. It is quite old so the size of your feet is much bigger now. Actually your wear around 245cm shoes now. I find it pretty funny that you are only 9 years old and your feet are already larger than your mom’s. I say it jokingly once in a while to give your mother a hard time and when I do that I can see pride in your face. You are so happy that you are tall and will be a tall woman.

Here is some homework you did a while back. You had to get a picture of your family and relatives and write about them. You chose to use one from Avya’s first birthday party.

Just another book update. You finished Stage Fright on a Summer Night by Mary Pope Osborne. You really liked this one in the series and it gave me the opportunity to talk about William Shakespeare. I think that is one of the good things about this book series – the books cover important people and events throughout history so you learn a little about history at the same time as being entertained. Also, we have many small conversations about the content while reading the books. Sometimes I don’t like all the questions, I just want you to keep reading because your questions can be quite off topic and because of my obsessive compulsion to finish things.

I had heard before that Shakespeare coined a lot of words but I didn’t realize that those words were such common words. Here are a few of the words that the book said Shakespeare coin – blushing, hush, bump, lonely, downstairs, upstairs, long-legged, excitement, shooting star, for goodness’ sakes, sorry sight, forward, gloomy, good riddance, upstairs, howled.

Click on image to shop for the book - http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/o/mary-pope-osborne/stage-fright-on-summer-night.htm