Family

The moon is smiling tonight.  No kidding.  It's a crescent moon, but the crescent is on the bottom of the moon, so it's as if it were smiling.  I've never seen that before.  It's possible that it doesn't happen in North America.  I don't know but I wonder what it's happy about.

My parents are coming to visit me this coming weekend! I'm very excited for it.  They're so good to me.  And this has reminded me that I've wanted to write about families, and family life in Korea, so that's what I'll do.
One very prominent way that Korea holds to Confucian values is in it's family life.  To Koreans, the family is the most important group that one is a part of.  A person's family plays a large role in their life - much larger than in western culture I would dare to say.  One particular way that I've seen this to be true has to do with the amount of influence that parents and grandparents play on their children's (even adult children's) decisions.  In conversations with a number of Korean co-teachers, I've been surprised by how much say their parents have in things like where they go to college and what job they get.  A number of times I've heard them say, "I'd like to do this, but my parents want me to do that instead."  Also, I've found it somewhat true that Koreans live with their parents longer than in western culture.  I believe that, traditionally, children continue living with their families until they get married, which (according to wikipedia) on avarage doesn't happen until they are 31.6 (for men) and 28.7 (for women) years of age.  I know a number of Koreans who are around my age and are living with their parents.
Moreover, I've found that the importance placed on family relationships includes a person's extended family.  When I ask my students what they did over the weekend, the most common answer I get is, "I visited my grandparents."  I've found that a person's uncle, aunt, and cousins are usually quite important as well.  This can be seen when almost every business closes and traffic is crazy during Korean holidays like Chuseok and Lunar New Year because everyone is visiting and spending time with their extended families.
Finally, when you think of Korean families you have to take into account that Korea's Total Fertility Rate is 1.23, which is 219th among 224 countries, according to the World Factbook.  Most families in Korea don't have more than two children.  I only know of one of my students who is in a family of three children.  I had thought there might be a limit on how many children a woman can have in Korea, but I can't find any information to support that notion.
And that's what I've found to be true about families in Korea.

As for me, I'm slowly but surely adjusting to the recent changes.  My new class has had a reputation for being a somewhat uncontrollable class, but while I have had to be much more of a disciplinarian with them than with my previous class, so far things are going much better than I'd expected.  Also, I think having a tougher class is a good challenge for me.  I'm pretty sure I was taking 'having the the best class in the world' for granted, and I forgot about what it was like to discipline.  So it's good.

And my parents are coming. Yay!
Thanks for reading.
Michael

Ps. Here is a link to a good song that I've been listening to lately.  It's by Macy Gray and it's called "Beauty in the World".  (Hopefully it'll makes you smile like the moon)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qX7ZsxD3Ik