Random Thoughts Five_The Vision Trip Essay for the Minjok Herald

           So I'm here, once again, sitting in front of my computer with nothing to do.

          Well apparently I didn't get to write for The Minjok Herald, so.. I've been a bit depressed last night and stuff. But oh well, it's over. My fault for not putting my best effort into the assignments, I guess. Had too many things to do other than the assignment. The English Conversation speech, the Samuchim practice, blah blah blah. Ehh whatever.

           Well it wasn't like a bad, bad, bad piece of writing, but I agree it was kinda boring all the way. And maybe out of focus, just a bit. I was going out of time when I was wrapping it up, so.. Okay, I admit, I knew when I finished that it was another one of those very common 'oh my god I learned a lot of things in America! So happy!' kinda essay. But I had like 20 minutes till the deadline (it's a pity that they actually extended the deadline for two days afterwards for those who hadn't turned their essays in on time.. oh wow) so yeah.

But still, I feel like posting the essay.

So here you go.

The Start of a New Life

There was a loud rattle as the plane took off, and I was off to America.

Going on a Vision Trip—the first, and the last, school trip in my three high school years, along with some sixty friends of mine—I was thrilled and worried at the same time: thrilled, because after all it was the start of a ten-day freedom from schoolwork; worried, because I wasn’t really sure if the trip was going to be that something I needed.

A Vision Trip to the United States, with all its university campus tours and info-sessions, is generally thought to suit its name well. But in my case, I already had a vision of majoring in biochemistry, of going to Stanford. I had never even thought of other possibilities; it was just there laid out for me, and I wasn’t going to go through all the trouble changing it—which I thought meant that the trip wouldn’t help me much with building up on my life.

It turned out that I was completely wrong in every possible way.

With the universities, I learned that Stanford wasn’t the only one in the world. Swarthmore, Yale, Harvard, and all the others we visited had their own unique characteristics. Swarthmore is located in the middle of a national forest when New York University has all of New York City as its campus. Harvard is full of ancient buildings when MIT is full of modern buildings. Added up, these features form very unique universities, both in academics and in campus life. There were a whole lot of possibilities out there that I just wasn’t seeing.

Outside the universities, I learned everything else—the “life lessons.” Five days into the trip, we happened to pass through Harlem on our way to Columbia. When I was told that we were in Harlem, the first thought that popped up into my head was ‘Whoa wait, hold on, we’re what? Passing through Harlem? You mean the Harlem with all the crimes and stolen cars and worn-out buildings and dark alleys?’ And looking out the window, I realized something was wrong. The real Harlem wasn’t what I had in mind. All that it was different from the other parts of New York was that there were a few more black people walking on the streets. Other than that, it was just the same. I didn’t see any sign of guns, all the cars had totally legal New York plates, and the buildings couldn’t have been cleaner.

Yes, it may be that because I really love crime novels and action movies, which usually make Harlem look like a terrible place, I might have a more distorted preconception of Harlem compared to other people. However, many people do have vague fears of the place. And seeing with my own eyes that the reality is far from what people think was a very fresh experience, something that I’ve never been through before.

Looking back on my experiences in America, it gave me a whole lot of things to think about—my future, my thoughts, everything about my life before the trip. Vision Trip certainly was the something I needed. Without it, I might have gone on with my life just as I was before, thinking the way I always think, acting the way I always act. But now it’s different. I’ll have to cope with a lot of changes in my life from now on, but if they make me a better person, I’ll do it.

So here goes, the all-new Ben Jeon.

We're Not Always the Right Ones - "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"

           

           When I first read “Body Rituals among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner, I was struck speechless. I remember myself thinking ‘Who in the world are these people? How can they do such cruel things to others? Oh god, okay, enough with the cultural relativism nonsense, look at these people! No, no, no, they’re just wrong. This isn’t something that can be justified. I am not even going to try to understand them. Ever!’

           It probably wasn’t an unusual response for this piece, though. Most of those reading this for the first time would have thought similarly. Miner talks about the extreme customs of the Nacirema in this essay. Here’s an example: those called the holy-mouth-men “have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes.” Setting aside the other equally shocking customs, this alone is enough to nauseate the readers. Miner himself, at some point in the essay, also goes to the extent of regarding these people as a group of sadists and masochists enjoying these cruel rituals.

           Although I, personally, couldn’t get even close to understanding these people, what I wrote as a reflection of this essay was about the good old cultural relativism. Even if we think of these people as cruel sadists, all these unique rituals might mean something important to the Nacirema. We can’t just simply say, “We’re the best, you’re just primitive.”

           Then came the realization.

           This essay actually was about Americans—‘Nacirema’ is, in fact, ‘American’ backwards.

           Imagine how shocked I was.

           ‘Oh wow, it all makes sense now……’

           There was no cultural relativism to be discussed in the first place. The Nacirema culture was the American culture itself, only seen through a different perspective, and what I was doing was getting disgusted at the culture of one of the most civilized countries in the world. This essay was just a display of how our own custom can be viewed as something really weird by others. The “holy-mouth-man” mentioned above? Dentists. Think about it. When we have cavities, we go to the dentist, who “enlarges” the holes and fill them with amalgam, the “magical material.” It is true that some are scared of going to the dentists, and it is also true that we sometimes feel pain, which makes it possible to express it as “ritual torture” in the writing.

           Miner does a great job of fooling the readers. While reading the essay, I didn’t even think of connecting Nacirema to America. Of course, the topic itself, drawing the readers in by surprising and disgusting them at the same time, would have contributed to it, but the author’s use of high-level vocabulary words and a very academic tone probably did much more. Miner uses the word ‘ablution’ when he simply could have used ‘washing.’ Throughout the essay, he maintains a very academic and inquiring tone—the use of formal expressions, quotes from experts, and even a bibliography at the end—which makes this work look like the product of an extensive study. And this altogether prevents the readers from getting the slightest hint of deception—there wouldn’t be wordplay in such an academically written paper now, would there?

           This essay could be just something to laugh at for some people, but knowing the real intention of the author, there is an underlying message: we are at no position to judge others. If this applies to the American culture, there’s no reason why it can’t be applied to other cultures, including the Korean culture. There are dentists and hospitals in Korea too, and men shave their beards and girls go on diets—in other words, Koreans have “holy-mouth-men” and “temples” where elaborate ceremonies are held to cure people; men conduct the practice of “scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument,” and girls go on “ritual fasts to make fat people thin.”

The Masai

           Different people perceive things differently, based on what they know and what they are familiar with. Just as we think of the Masai people to be uncivilized and unhygienic to go hunting with spears and drink cow blood, they might as well dismiss us as crazy people trying to do everything with a lump of metal—smartphones. Unless we can be sure that we understand their mindsets perfectly and thus can look at their customs entirely from their perspective, we cannot tell how desirable following a custom is. Therefore, we should perceive of other cultures just as they are and respect them.

English Conversation_Speech: Finding a New Home

                 When I was in sixth grade, I went to live in San Diego, California. At first, I didn’t want to go there at all. After all, I had all my friends here in Korea, and my life was perfectly fine. Why in the world did I have to go to a new place and face all the challenges? But in the end, I did. Well, to tell the truth, I was half-forced by my parents to go, who thought studying abroad would be a great experience for me.

So, on a sunny day in the last week of August, after sixteen hours of flight and a transfer at LAX, I was standing in San Diego International Airport with my parents and a ton of luggage. The first impression? Well, it was weird. And it wasn’t comfortable at all. I mean, the city itself was warm and looked good and clean. Well, just like a normal city. But I just couldn’t get the hang of it. It was too new and unfamiliar, I guess. Even small things like there being no tollgates for freeways made me surprised and anxious. They gave me thoughts like ‘What kind of place is this?’ and I started to wonder if I would be able to live there without any trouble for the next two years.

                  One of the important things we had to take care of was enrolling in a middle school. I was supposed to go to Carmel Valley Middle School, and honestly, I didn’t like it. I can’t explain why exactly, but I had this feeling of being an outsider, a little Asian boy who couldn’t speak English well, trapped in a world of English-speaking people. I remember the feeling I had the first time I stepped into the school. It felt so big, and it felt like all the teachers there were staring at me—even though most of them probably didn’t even bother to give me a glance. I didn’t know what to do, and I had no idea what I was doing there.

                  But, well, I had to go to a school, and I was admitted into Carmel Valley. And as I expected, it was hard. Everyone was so fluent in English, and most students didn’t even try to get to know about me. It was totally up to me, how I acted, to decide whether I would make friends and have a fun school life or whether I’d just stay as an outsider in the classes. I chose the former. Well, basically that was the only choice I had; I didn’t want to be alone for the next two years. I tried and tried, and thankfully I started making some close friends soon.

                  After about two months, I didn’t feel like a left-out Asian kid anymore. I was a part of the school, a part of the society. I had lunch with my friends, ate their tater tots and curly fries, played card games, and walked to classes together. We went paintballing for birthdays, and played table tennis. They even threw a surprise party for me when it was time to leave the country.

One of the best memories I have with my friends is doing a group project in math for extra credit—we had to write new lyrics, about mathematical concepts, for a song of our choice and actually record ourselves singing it. I was in a group of three, with Eric and Kelsey, and I remember chatting on Gmail for hours writing lyrics and planning out everything. By the time we finished, we had transformed “My Love” by Westlife into “My Math” by Eastlife.

                  It took almost a week to complete the project. We had funny weird lines like “find the circumcenter of the triangle, that’s math,” and it was pretty obvious that we all were really bad at singing. But still, we had lots of fun writing the lyrics and singing—close to screaming—in front of each other. And after turning in our final version of the recording, we ended up posting our video on YouTube, voluntarily. I really enjoyed the time doing all this with my friends, and I still have the video on my flash drive so that I can play it anytime.

At the end of my two years in San Diego, I didn’t want to come back to Korea. By then, I could say for sure that I was a Carmel Valley Bobcat, that I was a true San Diegan. The school and the city didn’t feel strange anymore; it felt like home. Well, San Diego was my home.

Everyone has hard times, especially when they move to a new place, a new environment. Right now, most of us are probably worrying about our lives in KMLA. We all are new here, and what we are going through right now is totally different from what we expected—well, for me that is. Some might even be thinking that their middle school lives were a whole lot better than the life in KMLA. But don’t be so negative. We’ll all get used to this someday and we’ll enjoy it. And by the time we graduate, we’ll all be an important member of the ‘KMLA Family.’