What Your Librarian (or Library Staffer) Wishes You Knew

1. Everyone has overdues.  Overdue items are not a huge deal.  Most library staff member have them, and we visit the library every day.  We do not write the "nasty emails" that remind you of your overdue items, and trust me, we are not looking down on you.  If you owe overdue fees, think of them as a nominal fee for an excellent service. (If you have more than a few overdues, you can usually talk someone into bringing them down to a reasonable level as long as you don't act like a jerk.)

2. Library items undergo normal wear and tear.  It's a sad fact of their library lives.  If you return a book with the spine tearing away from the pages or a DVD that won't play any more, we will not hold you liable.  Please don't refuse to return it and lose your library privileges because you think we are that unreasonable.

3. Circulation has a margin of error.  If you use the library regularly, eventually you will return an item that does not get checked in.  Don't panic.  Tell us, and we will search the shelves for it.  If you are not a jerk, we will give you credit for returning it even if we can't find it.

4. We do not judge your reading habits.  Don't mistake us for English teachers.  We do not think that you should only read wholesome literature.  We enjoy a good bodice ripper, young adult novel, culinary mystery, or horror story, or we at least have several beloved patrons who do.  I promise I'm not smirking at your bag of Nora Roberts novels.  As a caveat, if you say something like, "I don't read young adult novels, I'm not twelve," I am judging you for the book snob that you are.

5. We are a nonprofit institution.  No one is buying a Mercedes with your overdue fines.

6. It's pronounced "library".  It is not a berry.

I guess you can shelve most of these under "don't be a jerk, and don't assume that we're jerks."  Speaking of, I just had a delightful conversation with someone that started with, "Why are you working here?  Couldn't you find something else?"  Happy Friday, everyone.

Thailand

Our frenetic traveling days are over.  Nonetheless, I had planned to do a few cultural things during the week we spent in Phuket.  Alas, it wasn't in the cards.  We spent the entire time in Bangtao, with the exception of one day when we hired a private guide and went to Phang Nga Bay, Kho Panyee fishing village, and a temple whose name I can't remember.

And boy, was it fun.  We are really psyched to be moving to Hawaii now.  Xander loves the beach.  He loves playing in the sand, running into the water, and splashing at the shoreline.  He likes the little treasures that wash up on the sand (sadly, often trash!) and, when the water was calm, floating past where the waves broke.

Phuket is a cheap resort town that was overrun with Europeans, particularly Russians.  Everyone spoke English.  We ate many good meals, most of which were in sight of the ocean.  Xander impressed some people with his mature palate--normally the person ordering a burger and fries was his daddy.  Xander loves rice and most vegetables.  We did most of our shopping on the beach: there were little market stalls everywhere, and people wandered up and down the beach selling things.  We even rode a crazy Thai "taxi"--a motor scooter hooked up to a cart with some seats on it.

Our tour was hectic, but fun.  Phang Nga bay is beautiful.  James Bond island is not as cool as it looks in the pictures and was overrun with tourists.  Kho Panyee, a Muslim fishing village, was interesting to see.  The entire village, which includes a school, mosque, and hospital, floats on the water.  We bought banana pancakes from a stall there--Xander was a fan.  He also liked all of the cats.  Muslims are definitely cat people.  We had lunch at a fantastic floating restaurant with several pet birds, and afterwards Xander snoozed while Bobby and I checked out a temple that was in a huge cave.  I have almost no pictures of it because, as we know by now, you are not permitted to take pictures of the Buddha.

Saturday was Songkran, and we got to see a parade in the morning.  Shortly afterwards, our beach chair lady (who we visited every day) showed up with a little girl, who played in the sand with Xander.  They painted his face with some cream and shot him with a water gun.  He was not thrilled about the water gun, but he was curious enough to wander back into the line of fire a few times.  He ate several little buns with sausages  in them that our beach chair lady proffered.  Later, we went out for lunch and were all shot with water guns.  Xander, popular as he is, took most of the fire.  He was okay with it as long as the water wasn't too cold and didn't hit his face.  Apparently it's a cleansing ritual.

It was a relaxing trip, and we were sorry to leave, particularly since it meant plunging back into the hectic process of moving to another country.

A restaurant next to our hotel

Eating sand

Our breakfast area.  Most of the restaurants didn't have walls.

A shrine.  Every building had one in the hopes that spirits will chose to live here instead of in the house.

Our ride on the scooter thing

At a beach restaurant

On a longtail boat

James Bond rock

the temple

Sander

Woohoo! I'm in my clothes!

Songkran cream on his face

Stuffs a bun into his mouth while his Thai girlfriend plays with his toy.

On a swing at a viewpoint.

At another restaurant.  There was no indoor seating anywhere!

Bangtao beach

From James Bond island

Lunch at a floating restaurant

The beach chair lady gave me a cake!

He's packing for Songkran

Kho Panyee

Another shot of Bangtao Beach

The Next Chapter

Hello, poor neglected blog.  It's been a busy April.  The big news is that we're leaving Korea.  I accepted a position at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.  Our time here has been memorable, to say the least, and I'm sad to go, but oh, so excited to move to Hawaii.

In other news, we just got back from Thailand!  Pictures and summary to follow.

Baby beach bum prepares for life in Hawaii

The Harry Potter Phenomenon

Though you couldn't pay me to be 20 again, I sometimes wish I had been born a little later.  Here's why: the way the teen and tween population viewed reading changed dramatically in the years after Harry Potter.  When I was growing up, it was spectacularly uncool to be excited about a book.  I distinctly remember a girl holding up my copy of A Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis and using it to mock me to the rest of the class.  I may have grown up with other avid readers, but they were closeted.

Fast forward to today.  You can see even the cool kids make references to the Hunger Games and Twilight (the series, not the movies).  The ones who spend a lot of time in the library still have cadres of friends.  During the summer, young people abound in the library, many of whom are dying to get the next book in a beloved series.  In a strange twist of fate, our community's middle school queen bees wave to me, the community librarian, in public.  I have finally achieved the social status my twelve year old self was dying for.  

It is no longer uncool to read, and though many young people don't know this, we have the Harry Potter series to thank for it.  Harry Potter was the literary phenomenon that rocked our society.  Kids and adults read it. Everyone talked about it.  Suddenly, if you weren't familiar with Harry Potter, you weren't with it.

In the years following Harry Potter's popularity, children's literature exploded.  Where you would once find one meager shelf of "children's chapter books" at the bookstore--ranging from The Velveteen Rabbit to Sweet Valley High, you now would find ranges of stuff, now divided between "middle readers" and "young adults" (The New York Times Books section, the final holdout, finally divided its bestseller list of "children's chapter books" into middle and young adult sections about a year ago).  Young adult science fiction and fantasy grew exponentially, and was eventually followed by most other genres.  Now there are books for reluctant readers, books for video game enthusiasts, graphic novels that are not about superheroes, and even young adult books for adults.  

I firmly believe the world is a better place for this.  The first post Harry Potter generation is now coming of age, and they are some of the most creative, compassionate, socially responsible, and imaginative young people we have seen in awhile.  And yes, I am familiar with the bellyaching about millennials and their short attention spans/ lack of respect for personal privacy/ poor spelling/ poor verbal communication skills, an opinion that is repeated in different guise with every generation that comes of age.  It's hard to deny that young people create more, write more, and do more for the world they live in.  I'd like to think that Harry Potter, and his help returning reading to mainstream juvenile society, had something to do with that.

West vs. East

I have taken particular notice to the difference between western and eastern cultures for the past few years.  It was overwhelming at first, and my knee jerk reaction was to consider the western way better all the time.  I still have that reaction sometimes, and have recognized it for what it is--I am an American, and will never be anything else.  I will always bristle upon sitting down to a table at a restaurant and having the eldest male pick my entree.  I will always feel more comfortable seeing a mixture of race, dress, and behavior when I step into a large crowd.  I have noticed how the difference between the two cultures has come up a lot in contemporary nonfiction, particularly the difference between Asian students and American ones.  I have gotten into several discussions about the Asian way of having conversations, conducting business, and, particularly education.  And I have decided that, while some methods are clearly superior, the world needs both of us.

Westerners and their coveted individualism are behind some of the most successful off the wall ideas of our time.  Americans in particular have brought us Facebook, the iphone, the telephone, electricity, youtube, jazz, and other creations that were odd in their time.  The individualism that allows us to believe we are right in the face of overwhelming dissension allows American visionaries to bring seemingly absurd ideas to fruition.  There are consistently two or three self-published titles on the New York Times bestseller lists because of the persistence of someone who had every reason to believe she was not a good writer.  You don't see that in Korea.  Notably, you also don't see people performing terribly on stage (as they do in American Idol) and insisting that they are just undervalued as they are booed off of the stage.

Asians and the value they place on education are blowing Americans out of the water in an international job market.  The statistics are clear.  Asian Americans are far more successful in school and in life than their Anglo counterparts.  For some reason, western culture still values popularity and self esteem over actual education, which is the only real road to success.  When I see students here and think back on my own grade school days, I'm embarrassed for us.  That's not to say that there aren't things to value in a western education.  We place more emphasis on individual thought as opposed to giving the teacher what he or she expects, which, in reasonable doses, is a positive thing (see the previous point).  On the other hand, Koreans value hard work and respect someone who works hard, while Americans value get-rich-quick, fad diet, four hour workweek schemes that promise a lot of reward for little effort, but rarely deliver.  This idea unfortunately bleeds into our academics.

Plastic surgery is popular here and Koreans are notoriously image conscious, as anyone who is somewhat overweight can tell you.  On the other hand, you can walk into any crowded space and pick out the Americans because they are often three times the size of anyone else.  There is a healthy medium between obsessing about appearance too much and ignoring obviously unhealthy eating habits, and it lies somewhere between Korea and America.

I suppose we are yin and yang to each other.  Our time in Korea has shaped me, and I hope to absorb the better aspects of it while not looking too far down my nose at the negative ones.  After all, Korea and America both love Harry Potter.  Doesn't that mean that we're fundamentally the same?

Ugh. Again?

Seriously people!  Let's stop acting like asshats in a foreign country.  I have been to several different countries, and Americans tend to display the worst behavior of any nationality when they're abroad.  Every culture has its dirty laundry, but most people know enough not to air it on the world stage.  This frat house behavior is so embarrassing to the rest of us.

So yeah.  Some GI's shot bb's in a crowded area and scared the crap out of a bunch of poor civilians.  It's turned into a big international incident, and there have been protests outside of the Yongsan post.  Not funny.

Speaking of asshats, I get a lot of questions from the folks back at home about whether or not we're safe.  KJU likes to rattle sabers.  I think these are just a little more strongly worded hollow threats.  From what I can see, Koreans aren't incredibly concerned, and neither am I.

Spring!

It's finally spring around here, and we've been enjoying the weather!

I recently saw X licking spoons, then putting them back into the drawer.  I wonder how long he's been doing that.  Kids are such weirdos.