Prada Transformer

Rem Koolhaas' tetrahedron-shaped pavilion is a six-month installation on the grounds of Gyeonghui Palace in Seoul. Four cranes roll the steel-framed structure onto its different sides to create spaces amenable to various events: art exhibits, a film festival and a fashion show.
Today I checked out a free exhibition called "Waist Down - Skirts by Miuccia Prada." Garments by the lip-obsessed designer, as well several pieces by Korean students of fashion, are beautifully displayed. Windshield wipers craftily simulate legs in motion under some of the skirts, while others are playfully and constantly spun like whirling dervishes.

Visit with survivor of sex slavery

An 83-year-old woman lifted her shirtsleeve to reveal a bright red reminder of the day a Japanese soldier stabbed her and twisted the knife.

"I was fiery and spoke up sometimes," Yi Ok-seon explained through a translator. "They didn't like that."

"They" were her abductors, Japanese military men who kidnapped her and forced her into sexual slavery when she was 14.

This halmoni (Korean for grandmother) was one of an estimated 50,000 to 200,000 women, mostly from Asia, who were brutally raped, tortured and often murdered by Japanese servicemen in the 1930s and '40s.

When finally freed from her so-called "comfort station" after three years, Ok-seon halmoni remained in China for 58 years, unable to return to her native Korea. She built a life in China, but told us she was always haunted by the traumas she endured.

Ok-seon halmoni eventually moved to The Sharing House outside of Seoul, where nine survivors of sexual slavery by the Japanese military reside. The women, all in their 80s and 90s, campaign for the Japanese government's acknowledgment of and apology for rape crimes. Each Wednesday at lunchtime, at least one halmoni pickets outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

They also work to raise awareness of the tragedy among fellow Koreans. One young Seoul native visiting for the first time said he was ashamed that he'd never heard these women's stories before today. This painful history has been buried, omitted from textbooks.

To keep memories alive after they're gone, the women share their experiences through verbal testimony and visual artworks. The late Duk-Kyung Kang, the first Korean survivor to go public with her story, painted the above work, "Innocence Stolen," in 1995.

A group of impassioned volunteers leads regular Sunday visits to the House of Sharing in English. More information is online at www.houseofsharing.org.

Korean rugrats

Yesterday marked the first full day of school at the English-language academy where I teach, and already two of my kiddos have wet their pants! Add in hourly crying, spilled milk and the glue sticks required for overly sophisticated build-a-frog crafts projects, and you get a rather exhausted teacher.

I'm with children almost non-stop from 9:30 to 6:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and finish a bit earlier on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. From 9:30 to 2:15 each day, I work with impossibly cute and generally well-behaved 4-year-olds. They speak extremely limited English, though, and many are feeling the pangs of their first separation from their mothers. It's heart-wrenching when one bursts into tears because he misses his mommy, but lacks the language needed to express his feelings. That's when my assistant, who speaks little English, comes in most handy. Sally's awesome at plugging up the waterworks.

Once we get past the adjustment challenges, it'll be amazing to watch the little information sponges grow and learn – particularly when they learn to ask for a restroom pass.

In the afternoons, I teach older children (around 8 years in age) who have studied English through immersion. They're bright, sweet and considerably stoic since they spend the whole day in Korean elementary school, come to my class for two hours of cut-and-dried English curriculum, and then head off to taekwondo or some other activity. (Kids, especially upper-middle-class children like my students, are kept busy here.)

Horror stories about cash-grabbing hagwons (Korean academies) abound, but I think I lucked out. The staff at my school are caring, the pre-schoolers' comprehensive curriculum seems to encourage them to develop their many different types of intelligences, and several of the 13 foreign teachers are helpful veterans.

I look forward to sharing stories about classroom mishaps (because someone should at least get a laugh out of them), and hopefully many of those wonderful a-ha! moments that make teaching a most meaningful profession. Feel free to e-mail if you have any questions about Korean hagwons; I'm a newbie here, but I'll gladly help you find the answer if I don't know it.

Tour Tiny House

Here's a poorly produced video tour of my Seoul mini-apartment, which I lovingly call "Tiny House."

Three colleagues live in my building, and my friend Sadira and I are already looking forward to throwing barbecues on the sweet rooftop terrace. My surprisingly quiet little sanctuary is on the top floor of an eight-story apartment building a few blocks from Sillim metro station and two shopping malls. Surrounding streets are lined with coffee shops, mom 'n' pop convenience stores, karaoke bars, love motels and fantastic street food vendors. Thank goodness that delicious, inexpensive, reasonably healthy food is ubiquitous in Seoul, because, as you'll see, cooking in Tiny Kitchen presents some challenges.

Imperfect as it may be, Tiny House has become my Tiny Home. (Its inclusion in my teaching contract boosts my affection for the place.)