Howl's Moving Castle

I've finally seen Miyazaki's new movie. I've been looking for it since I came to Korea, but I've only found it in a few shops and it was expensive. I was thinking of going to a DVD bang (room) in Myeongdong to see it, but then last night our DVD store had it. I picked it up immediately, we brought it home and then went out to buy speakers for our laptop. Watching movies on this thing is terrible without speakers, and I expected beautiful music because the music on his last picture was beautiful.

I had high hopes, which is often a bad sign, because of course, it's easier to be disappointed when one has high hopes. But friends, I was not disappointed. This movie was excellent! Miyazaki's done it again! The animation was superb; the characters were loveable, quirky, cute and funny; and the whole world was insanely imaginative, from the beginning when Howl and Sophie trip across the towns rooftops, to near the end when Howl creates a new house and furniture is falling from the ceiling and rooms are popping into existence. The movie is also exciting; things happen so quickly that one is never bored.

As always in Miyazaki movies, the heroine is stunning while at the same time unremarkable. Sophie has never been beautiful, and in her words, "all I'm good at is cleaning." Chesterton said that in fairy tales extraordinary things happen to an ordinary boy and that in modern stories ordinary things happen to abnormal people. Howl is definitely a fairy tale, and in this way is similar to The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia . Sophie is a young girl who works at a hatter's and isn't happy there. Because she's not the type of girl to complain, this comes out it a conversation with her mother. One night after accidentally meeting Howl, the Witch of the Wastes comes to the shop after it's closed. Sophie tells her to leave, and she does, but not before casting a spell on Sophie. This spell turns Sophie into an old lady, and she then runs away from her home at the hatter's shop. While running away, she finds Howl's castle, gets in and designates herself the new cleaning lady because it's so dirty. Thus it begins, and through the rest Howl tries to stop a war and Sophie tries to break her spell and the group of people inside of the castle grows and they turn into a extempore family. Because this post is getting too long, I merely say: It's terrific. Watch it.

Scott's Birthday

Yesterday was Scott's birthday. It was a pretty good day all in all and we both had a good time. I made Scott breakfast in bed... heart-shaped pancakes(corny, I know), fried ham and banana-blast smoothie. Then we read the second chapter of 'The Hobbit' together. We have recently (within the last two days) began reading this book... Scott decided that we would start having 'family reading time' where we read a book aloud.. one chapter a day. We have started with 'The Hobbit' because I have not read any of 'The Lord of the Rings' books and Scott likes them. We bought it at one of the biggest bookstores in Korea 'Bandi and Luni's bookstore'; they have a huge English section. A bit later, I went to the gym and Scott went on a very long walk. After the gym, I went on a mad search for birthday candles and found a weird kind of really long skinny ones, then I went to Baskin Robbins and bought an icecream cake. (I probably would have made a cake if we were home, but here we have no cake pans or anything of the sort). It was kind of a girly cake, all pink with a little angel on top... but it was the only cake that was not a Christmas cake, so it had to do.
Later, when Scott got home... hmmm... I don't remember, anyway, around 4pm I started making his birthday dinner. I made a three course tex-mex dinner (although the third course was icecream cake, which is not tex-mex, and I didn't make it). To start, we had Mexican corn soup with Rye bread, then for dinner we had taco salad and taco chips with salsa, cheese and beans. Anyway, it was pretty good and we were both very full afterwards. Then we had the icecream cake... when I took it out of the freezer the angel had somehow been decapitated, but we repaired her before lighting the candles and singing 'Happy Birthday'. The long skinny candles, were combination candle-sparklers, so they were kind of cool... Scott did not blow them all out on the first try. The icecream cake was strange... very different than dairy queen. It had no cakey, cookie stuff or fudge... just icecream, a mix of cherry and almond icecream, it was still good though.
Anyway.... just an update, I have to go, I'm a bit late.
For more birthday photos, check out our photo album link.

-Deborah

Merry Christmas everyone!
This will be short... as I'm sure everyone is quite busy. We had a very good Christmas, with lots of eating of course and fun times for everyone. Mostly this is just a note to let you know that we have posted our Christmas photos in our photos of korea album on this page... so if you would like to see more of what you see now.. just go into our photo album and enjoy!

Christmas Eve

Hello everyone,

Today we are preparing for Christmas and for the Cantata. I caught the bus outside of our apartment and went to Home Plus, a grocery store made by Samsung and Tesco. I had to get some whipped cream for our Christmas breakfast and our Christmas dinner. I also had to get the rest of the stuff for Deborah's stocking. While I did that, Deborah stayed at home and began making some cinnamon rolls. She had already baked a pie earlier in the morning, and it's a blueberry pie; we found the filling at the foreign food market in Seoul. Now that I've got all Deborah's stocking stuff, the only preparation left is for Deborah to finish baking the cinnamon rolls and the wreath of bread she's making with the left over dough.

To prepare for the cantata, I have to find some black pants and a white shirt. I brought neither with me to Korea. I've e-mailed Pastor Bill to ask him to find me these items, because he has all the connections. He hasn't yet e-mailed back a response and I have to leave in under an hour, so I'm unsure about what's going to happen. Anyway, practice begins at 2 o'clock, but the cantata isn't until 7. That's a long practice. Good folks, adieu!

"Love in the Ruins"

I read through contemporary novels much more quickly than I read through classic novels or poems. The Oddysey, for instance, took me several weeks to finish, even though it's not that large. In the middle of it I stopped reading. Love in the Ruins, on the other hand, a novel by Walker Percy, took me five days, and it's larger than the Oddysey. For the curious, here's a bit of what I love about Love in the Ruins:

 

     "Papa, have you lost your faith?"

     "No."

     Samantha asked me the question as I stood by her bed. The neuroblastoma had pushed one eye out and around the nose-bridge so she looked like a Picasso profile.

                 ---

     I wonder: did it break my heart when Samantha died? Yes. There was even the knowledge and foreknowledge of it while she still lived, knowledge that while she lived, life still had its same peculiar tentativeness, people living as usual by fits and starts, aiming and missing, while present time went humming, and foreknowledge that the second she died, remorse would come and give past time its bitter specious wholeness. If only-- If only we hadn't been defeated by humdrum humming present time and missed it, missed ourselves, missed everything. I had the foreknowledge while she lived. Still, present time, went humming. Then she died and here came the sweet remorse like a blade between the ribs.

 

Percy's novels are full of such What's-wrong-with-us passages. In this novel, Doctor Thomas More, a lapsed Catholic, invents a device to measure the ills of the human soul. He plans to use it to save America and the world, which he believes are falling apart in some sense. The tool, however, is mostly diagnostic. It can cure people but only for short periods of time. Chesterton said that for every author, there is one title from his books that can describe every book that he has written: for instance, Dickens's was Great Expectations. Similarly, Doc Thom More's device is descriptive of each of Walker Percy's novels. His novels, Percy said this, are "diagnostic." They examine and describe the ills of the modern soul. And every time I read one, I find myself getting excited and saying to myself, "He's right! He's right!" Also, they have wacky, fun plots, and they're really funny too. So, what's not to like?

Give thanks

I have a rash on my chest. I first noticed it this morning, but at the time I thought it was just from sleeping on my chest. It doesn't hurt, though, and it's not itchy.  My chest is mottled red, pink and white. We've just finished devotions, and we read about how Christ is Lord of creation; he commanded the waves and wind to stop, and they stopped. But not only can he control waves and wind, he healed a man of leprosy and Pete's mother-in-law of a fever. So, it's not like this rash is an accident. God himself decided to smite me with this gift. What can I do? Give thanks.

Haiku

Haiku, as we know it, is that type of poem which is too short to be worthwhile. When I had to learn haiku, I thought I ought to teach my teacher about it, because she didn't seem to recognize that it was a joke. But I think that haiku is perfect for capturing the short moments of beauty that we experience from time to time. Occassionally, common things become intensely beautiful, and it often last for mere moments. It could be anything, too: the steps leading into your home; the monotous neighbourhood when seen while sitting on the curb in twilight; water dripping from a rock; melted snow streaming downhill; McDonalds when you're walking around Sydney late at night trying to get a sundae; the sky slowly darkening over the lake while your friends are on the shore and you're doing the dead man's float; looking at the glistening pavement from an apartment balcony just after the rain; any number of things. Often these moments of beauty are couched in other, more extended experiences. Sometimes they come out of nowhere. At any rate, the haiku seems the perfect form to capture these moments. Read, for instance, "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound.

A small story

When I walked out this morning, I could feel that this world was against me. And how could it not be? It belongs to Him. The graceful curve of the road reminded me of His works, which the cold, bare trees had arisen hours earlier to proclaim. The wind, blowing through the trees like fingers on a harp, was singing, "Great and Terrible, Almighty and Cold."  I shivered, chilled with fear, and walked on. The sun, I could sometimes see it over the grimy buildings, was coming up over the mountain, leaping from the peak to the valley bed to warm our city like a husband his wife.

 

Even when filled with the warm, yellow sun, this city seems a waste. Our merriment is fakery; our laughter is veiled tears; our entertainment a mere soporific, leading to the sleep of death.

 

But while walking to work I saw a strange sight. A child was walking with her mother. In a tree, she saw a leaf that she wanted to get for her mother, so she darted to the tree and climbed it. She climbed almost to the top, for that's where the leaf was, and she stretched out to get the leaf. She stretched too far, and she started to fall forward. She swung her arms furiously behind her, trying to grad hold of a branch, but she missed them all. She fell forward; the mother screamed. The child started somersault to the ground, screaming to her mother for help. I thought child would break her neck, or get some serious injury; she was high enough. But when she reached the ground, it cradled her like a soft mattress. It bent to the shape of her body, took her into the earth a few feet, and then sprang her back out onto her feet. She then ran to her mother, grabbed her hand and they walked away happily, seemingly unsurprised by the kindness of the earth.

Cultural note

In Korea, Christians will often go to worship three times a week. There is usually a worship service on Wednesday night, on Friday night, and then on Sunday. Also, they have services every morning at (I think) 5 o'clock. Some people, I'm not sure how many, go to those. This is quite different from our Western culture, where we attend service three times in one day, two in a row on Sunday morning and another on Sunday evening. This is merely descriptive, though, and no one should take me to mean that Korea is more spiritual than Canada because they have Wednesday and early morning worship services.

 

I suppose our Wednesday evening prayer meeting is similar to the service, because at this we sing hymns, the pastor shares a message and then people pray. However, as far as I can tell (I never went), prayer meeting is not very popular.

 

Koreans are also very open about their problems. They always tell me when they are distressed, and what they are praying for, and what they want me to pray for. My co-worker who sits next to me asked me how my spiritual life was going, and I my first reaction was nervousness. I'm not used to answering that question. Mostly, I don't ask others and they don't ask me. I think that here I'm learning things about the communion of saints. But don't worry; I won't come back saying, "Oh, this is how they did it in Korea." If I do, you can all bludgeon me with maces.

 

I heard in a interview the other day that the secularization of North America hasn't demolished religion, as it has done in England, but has domesticated it. It has made religion private, and Christ our god on the mantelpiece. Moses, on the other hand, approached the bigwig and said, "God said let them go, or He'll smite you with plagues." Contariwise, I would try to apologize for my beliefs, almost as if saying, "I know it sounds dumb and unreasonable, but..." Dei gratia, I am slowly growing stronger in all of my beliefs. I can now take the offensive by mocking and poking fun at false beliefs.