I read of Davy Jones’s passing today and thought of you.

- Joe

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Much of the day I wrote. I’m trying to keep myself on a writing schedule. Today it was working on the glossary. I also had time to work on ZK Dining and work on a long rant for ZKFJ.

Business class was on business incorporation and taxes. I wish now that those two subjects were split into separate days. Many of us wanted more details on the requirements for incorporation. But much of the class was wasted on a single student asking hypothetical questions about tax loopholes that no one would get any practical knowledge from.

I also didn’t eat much today. Just some apple slices, a burrito from Paris Baguette, and a couple of hot dogs after class.

Jian got a flu shot.

Everyone else in the temple stay woke up, and the wranglers took us to the Buddha room, where we went through the prayers. Basically it was like bringing a newbie to a Catholic mass.

“Oh, I’m up? Now I’m down. Now I bow. I’m up again. Down. Bow… no down again.”

We finished, bowed to the Buddha one more time and left to another building. In this one, we had to do our dreaded 108 bows. Seong Eun, the intern who has been the interpreter, was also doing the temple experience with me, and she explained a little of the reasons for the 108 bows. Each bow is to remind people of certain tenets of Buddhism. Basically, be excellent to each other. I was given an English version of what each bow stood for. Even with the handy list I lost count quickly. These were full stand up, get on the floor and prostrate, stand up again bows.

Great exercise.

Individual drops of sweat were making spots on my mat by bow 70. When we finished, we meditated for a good ten to twenty minutes. Then we had a thirty minute break before Baru, the Buddhist eating ritual. Seong Eun and I both felt like we had rubber legs. We could barely walk, and using stairs was a new experience.

The Baru I found cool. I had learned about this years ago, but I had never actually done it. We get four bowls stacked inside each other with various cloths for cleaning and wrapping. There are a lot of steps in this ritual. I think half the time is spent cleaning and re-cleaning each bowl. But I liked the food.

After going through the eating and cleaning ritual we had to untie the bowls we had just tied and wash them for real in stainless steel sinks. After all that, I think we were pretty much finished. I did a little part about my impressions for the camera, along with a few walking shots, and we were done.

We went to a place to get breakfast breakfast. A group of restaurants outside the complex specialized in sanchae, mountain vegetables. I got a sanchae bibimbap, and it had a runny egg just like I like it. And the banchan was all good. They even had myongi, that leaf from Ulleungdo that I like so much.

Next was a long drive to the home of cherished tragic author Lee Hyo Seok. It was a good couple hours of museum shots. We had lunch of buckwheat noodles and headed to Yong Pyong Resort for some recreational scenes.

At Yong Pyong two of the crew members and I rode ATVs. I had never ridden one. My mom always said they were dangerous. And after my first run around, I could see why. We went up the mountain from where they rented the ATVs to where the camera crew was. From there, we did a lot of stunt driving for the cameras. I swore I came within six inches of the ground hovering camera in one pass.

After all that, the last shot was me coming in behind the other two and stopping in front of the camera, turning off the ATV and talking to the camera. It took a few takes to get all that down right. On the final take, I went around to get my place in line with the others. As I sped up, I saw a narrow but deep ditch that was camouflaged by grass. I couldn’t stop in time. The front of the ATV slammed into the edge of the ditch, and I almost went flying off the vehicle. The handlebars caught me–in the stomach. So I got bruised up all over. But I just went ahead and did the scene, and it was a wrap.

Next was the mountain coaster. It’s an update of the summer mountain sled ride I knew as a kid. But instead of a concave concrete track, they were nice and secure on a monorail. You couldn’t flip over in these. But believe me, I tried. I went down fast and found that even though the coaster was secured on the track, I may not be as secured in the coaster as I’d like. We did three shots of the coaster, and it was a lot of fun.

The final scene was to highlight gudul, a type of ondol, or under-the-floor heating. We went to a little village that specialized in it, with displays of different types. We did a scene with the village chief and then I helped lay down some mud and bricks for a furnace.

After cleaning up was the dinner scene. Great food. Todok, country doenjang and very herby jeon.

I was designated to sleep in a special hut meant to demonstrate the gudul system. They had already heated it that morning. But they wanted a scene of me with the chief stoking the fire for the already heated floor. So I’m now sitting in a hut that is about sauna temperatures. I’ve opened the one tiny window, and the bugs are quite happy about that–not letting a little screen block their way.

We just have three main things to do tomorrow, and one of them is paragliding.

Is that the right use of that phrase?

Watching Anthony Bourdain’s “A Cook’s Tour” inspired me to go ahead and move to Asia. I always said he had the dream job as a travel host.

Now I’m one.

Yeah, it’s not The Travel Channel. It’s Arirang. But I’m still living a dream. This summer we’ll be taping episodes of “ecotours” in Korea. Right now I’m in a dorm at a Buddhist temple in Pyeongchang. I’m wearing Buddhist garb and have to keep my hands folded just right when walking around. Also had a pretty darn good temple dinner.

So today we started our three-day shoot. It was mostly the temple and the forest leading to it. We tried to do an opening near the top of a mountain, but it was too foggy.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up at 3:50 to do prayers and 108 bows. I’ll ride an ATV and a mountain coaster. I’ll check out some markets and local cuisine. And on Sunday, weather permitting, I’ll go paragliding.

Gonna catch some rest now. Gotta be up for prayers in a few hours.

KotH, I know, was originally made to make fun of rednecks. But I’ve found parts of myself yearning for their lifestyle–standing around drinking beers, life so dull and peaceful that organizing tackle boxes and going to lawnmower shows sound exciting, backyard barbecues. I get how this show has lasted so long. The writing plays with stereotypes and breaks them. It makes social commentary with subtlety. And it pokes fun at a demographic that doesn’t mind laughing at itself. Look at the history of TV poking fun at the South–Beverly Hillbillies, Dukes of Hazzard, um, Jerry Springer. Even if I don’t agree with much of red state politics, I get them. I know how they tick. I miss living in a place where it’s 98 degrees in the shade, where going out to eat sometimes implies a tray at a cafeteria with two kinds of gravy, where common sense (though it takes its sweet ole time) usually prevails.

I so badly want to fire up my own grill in my own backyard. With squirrels. And fresh cut grass. And life is dull–in a good way.

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I thought we’d return to the fun-slash-embarrassment of my EBSe days with the 4th episode of Spy Zone season 2. This is where I started getting into the rhythm of the new show format and had fun with the characters. Frogman is a bad Yoda impression.

I have since changed the word superstition to tradition.

Especially regarding the recovering mother, if these traditions are important to her then they should be honored. Even if they are placebos, the relieve a Korean mother’s stress and aid in recovery. I have decided to only step in an contradict if I feel a practice would do more harm than good or if they directly conflict with my belief systems–as in, no one’s taking away Jian’s binky.

The new helper ajumma is here right now, and I’m hearing EJ laugh for the first time since giving birth. I haven’t talked to her yet about how she feels about this one, but she seems to know what to do better than the other one. She immediately heated a pad and gave EJ a proper breast massage. I assume it was proper because EJ was howling in the type of pain people get when going through Thai massages. She now coaching her on breastfeeding, and she’s showing techniques that I saw on You Tube how-to videos. So, so far, so good.

Here’s where I could use some help, and I’d like to make this post an ongoing conversation and a resource for other fathers with Korean wives. I’ve looked on the internet, and there’s not much out there that’s definitive, so let’s collect what we know into one place.

There’s a frequently quoted article by Yeoun Soo Kim-Godwin, Ph. D., MPH, RN, about non-Western beliefs and traditions about post-partum care (PDF here). It’s a good starting point, especially when she talks about her personal experiences giving birth in the U.S.

This is a concept I believe we should adopt as Americans. It’s not American bashing, which I get accused of sometimes for pointing out areas where we can improve. What I think is one of America’s strengths is its ability to adapt and improve itself based on the influences of its diverse cultures. And this is something that I think new mothers would love to become the norm.

Compared to a lot of South American and Eastern cultures, Americans put way more emphasis on the baby than on the recovering mother after childbirth. Where these cultures stress that a mother take up to a month to recover, American culture believes that a new mother can be “up-and-at-em” within a week–back to driving, carrying groceries and doing regular tasks that even modern science has discouraged.

In Korea, there are 21 days, samil-il, where a mother’s job is to just eat and rest. Her body is weak and broken. If she doesn’t recover fully she can have chronic issues in the future. Whether or not you believe this, it is the tradition. And it does make sense.

What I want to do here is collect the Korean traditional post-partum beliefs. I don’t want to judge them and label them as to how practical I think they are. But I will categorize them in whether they are current beliefs or have fallen out of favor in modern Korean society or are just questionable sources.

Current Modern Korean Traditions

• 21-42 days of recovery for the mother
• Eating Miyeok-guk (Seaweed Soup) at least three times a day
  • Belief: it cleans the blood and contracts the uterus
  • Considering the number of slim in-shape young mothers I have seen in Korea, who knows if this might actually have some truth to it?
• Don’t eat hard or crunchy foods
  • Medical science shows that new mothers’ gums are tender after birth, so there is some truth to this
• Mothers should stay warm
  • This is an old humors belief in hot and cold common in east Asia and other cultures. The blood is hot, and mothers lose this in childbirth, so they must always be kept excessively warm to recover this lost humor.
  • This includes not drinking cold liquids. They must be hot or at room temperature. And no ice cream!
  • Avoid cold drafts. The belief is that a woman’s bones are loose, and a draft can enter the joints and cause rheumatism or arthritis in old age.
  • Always wear socks and blankets
• Mothers have a special caretaker
  • This is either an elder female in the family, a person hired to help or some time in a post-partum clinic, known as a sanhujoriwon
• Mothers’ primary jobs are to eat and rest
  • No house chores
  • No driving
  • Don’t leave the house
  • This is another one that has some backing in medical studies
• Proper breast massages
  • I don’t think this is strictly a Korean belief
  • Hot pads and hot towels on the breasts also help–and are also not strictly Korean practices

Outdated or Questionable Korean Traditions

• People other than the parents can’t see the newborn for 100 days.
  • Korea used to have a high infant mortality rate, so babies were kept secret from the public until they reached 100 days old and had better survival chances. That’s the basis for the baekil 100-day ceremony.
• Mothers should not take showers or wash their hair
  • It’s believed that this will make them cold, but this is starting to fall out of favor