Tropical Storm Maeri

Monsoon season is upon us. This is the third day of nonstop rain from tropical storm Maeri. Bobby loves that the storm has my name. It's finally dying down a bit from the high drama of Friday and Saturday. The wind can get pretty fierce on the side of the mountain, and it will rattle all of our windows. Earlier this year, the wind blew signs from three restaurants in front of our house.

Monsoon season is tough to deal with for a number of reasons. The dog refuses to go to the bathroom in the rain. Bobby finally discovered that she will consider going if he puts a jacket on her and it's not raining hard. If it is raining hard, she will cry and whine to go outside, we will take her down three flights of stairs, and she'll balk at the door. She's not smart enough to deduce that it's raining from our villa, apparently.

This is hard to believe because during monsoon season, it rains in our villa. There are two or three spots that drip onto the floor when there's heavy rain. The landlord isn't too concerned about it, and we aren't either. One spot is in a room with a tile floor and a drain, and another is in the kitchen.

Summers are unfortunately short here. There's a brief honeymoon period from late May to late June that is sunny and warm. The monsoons hit in July and August, and September is nice but mosquito laden. That's the other reason monsoon season is a drag. It's great for bugs.

My maternity leave prospects

When I got my job, I felt like I had won the golden ticket. There is a nice benefits package, a lot of holidays, good pay, and talk about job security! Okay, I still thank my lucky stars on most days. We live in a fabulous house overseas, and I'm a librarian. People do not do this for the money.

That being said, I'm floored by the maternity leave policy. While forward thinking employers are giving their staff paid maternity leave, I not only don't get that, I have some pretty draconian policies on how I can take leave.

Basically, there's no way to have twelve paid weeks. If I were a longtime employee (either I got the job right out of college or I had children relatively late in life), I would probably have accrued some annual and sick leave. Let's say I've been working her for five years and have never taken any annual leave—that's about 80 days of annual leave. Hot dog! I was careful and saved for my future. But wait! I can only carry 30 days over from one year to the next. Darn.

But wait, I have sick leave! Sick leave doesn't ever expire, and I can accrue as much as I can carry. Unfortunately, according to the literature, I can only take sick leave if a doctor certifies that I am incapacitated. The site suggests that most doctors, being more softhearted than my employer, will allow that it takes six weeks to recover from childbirth.

So if you do the math, if I save my all of my leave days, I can take about 2 ½ months of paid leave. If I'm me, and I have taken some annual leave to see the amazing area I have moved to (and see my family when I go back to the U.S), I'll have about 3 weeks of annual leave saved up when the baby is born. Add the six weeks of sick leave, and that gives me nine paid weeks off. This is assuming that I don't have issues with my HR requiring certification and my doctor saying that I don't need six weeks.

Yes, I can take leave without pay. Clearly this system was designed for women with well off spouses, not sole breadwinners or even vital halves of a two income household. I can save up some money for a rainy day, but I don't know if I can save enough to cover my insurance premiums during this time, which is also required of employees who are on leave without pay. Not getting paid doesn't seem like much of an option.

Korean women are expected to take a year off for childbirth and caring for a baby. (If they're lucky, that is. A lot of them are not welcomed back.) Korean employees in my organization get that year in paid leave. I know my employees will be more than uncomfortable when I work until I pop, and come back when the baby is two months old. Actually, my most conservative one asked me when I would stop working, and I said the second or third week in November.   He replied, "November first!  That's too late!"  Yeeahhh.  This one also requested that I not hire a woman with a child under one, so I think nothing I can do (short of growing a penis) will make this guy happy.  But they'll all have to deal with it.  I have a feeling it won't be the first time I have pushed them outside of their comfort zones.

Agent Orange

Yesterday I was leaving Camp Carroll and I noticed that the fence outside the gate is plastered with signs. Most of them are in Korean, but one says, “US Army, come clean!” This is because of the big news here: some U.S. veterans claim to have buried Agent Orange on base. The Army says they buried some chemicals in 1978, but removed them two years later. Currently, they’re investigating the area along with the Korean government for traces of Agent Orange.

And the locals are making sure they do. There are demonstrations outside of the gate that cause it to close once and awhile. We always receive warnings to avoid demonstrations, and I do, but I’m not entirely sure why. I have never seen anything approaching violence at one of them. Actually, demonstrators have to warn the Army in advance that they will have a protest at a certain place and time. The Korean police show up in full riot gear, which looks pretty comical next to the Koreans waving signs and talking on bullhorns. No one even throws a tomato.

The Army and the Korean government have not found any Agent Orange or traces of it, but the investigation continues. The outrage caused by this incident brings to light a deeper issue. There are more and more Koreans who believe that the U.S. military has overstayed its welcome. It took me awhile to realize this, since Koreans are, for the most part, very polite to us. There is a pretty large disconnect between what the Korean establishment says and what the people on the ground believe. More so, I think, than in other countries, since you can know a Korean person for a long time without knowing his or her political opinions. They are just not expressed in mixed company. In my experience, when a Korean person speaks to a foreigner, Korea and everything Korean are sacrosanct, including the pro-U.S. rhetoric of the government. It takes an incident like this to bring all that hidden animosity to the surface, and it comes out in a pretty spectacular—albeit nonviolent—way.

More miscellanea

Well, it's been about two weeks since I've written anything. A few things have happened. We bought a new couch from the PX, we went back to Haeundae Beach for another sand festival, we had an ultrasound and discovered that the baby is a boy... I have been trying to tell people about the baby, since it's starting to show. One of my more traditionally minded staff members told me that Korean women don't tell anyone they are pregnant. That doesn't surprise me given the subtlety of the culture, but I'm starting to tire of hearing about these fictitious Korean women. Apparently, Korean women also prefer to stay home and take care of their families. I haven't met any of these women. I think they exist mainly in the mind of my employee. He's not the sharpest tack, and I'm sure his wife and daughter have him convinced that they are these “Korean women” while conducting their own lives as they please. Not that this is an original strategy—I'm sure women everywhere have been doing it for centuries. Now, given the tendency of Koreans to inform a person that they have gained too much weight, I wonder how pregnant Korean women deal with that (along with morning sickness, mood swings, exhaustion, etc) without telling the concerned individual that they are pregnant. Maybe they sock him or her in the jaw.

At any rate, I got pretty burned at the beach, but it was nice to go back. I forgot the camera, of course, but I think the sculptures were actually better this year. Bobby has gotten into cooking, and he cooked us a nice meal last night. He also baked a loaf of challah bread. I guess that's it for now.