Why ‘Yes and No’?

I am currently living in Jeonju South Korea; I work as an English teacher in the Gimje Middle School (for boys) – a city about 20 km from my home. This job will keep me busy here until September 2009. Prior to this, recently got my Minnesota teachers license in grades 5-12 social studies teaching. Before this I worked in the electronics industry in Minneapolis for about 20 years, and before that I worked in the US Army as a Russian linguist. This blog is an attempt by me to chronicle my first stay in Asia.

Why ‘Yes and No’?

I read somewhere that the ability of people to process and deal with ambiguity in their lives was a sign of intelligence. If this is truly the case Korea is a country that is filled with some very bright people. Since I’ve arrived here I have gone through the typical tourist’s consternation of having local Koreans answer very simple direct (i.e. unambiguous) questions with equivocation or an answer of yes (regardless of whether yes is the right answer). There are many examples of western tourists having these sorts of ‘problems’ when attempting to communicate with Asians in their home cultures. There are many quite obvious reasons for these types of interchanges.

For me, I’ve been here long enough that I can start to see a tiny bit deeper into the Korean culture (excuse my Hubris here!). I still see varied, interesting, and to me, strange differences between Korean and American cultures. But I still run into unexpected types of ambiguity.

For me, this is a useful metaphor to describe many of my experiences in Korea (so far), hence the name ‘Yes and No’. But I have another reason for this specific title. As an amateur student of European history, I know about Peter Abelard, the French Scholastic (he taught in Paris in the late 1,000’s to about 1130 AD). One of his more famous writings is called SIC ET NON (Latin for ‘Yes and No’), this was a book where he used biblical quotations to answer fundamental questions about Theology and Morality with both yes and no answers. This was one of a growing number of reasons that Abelard had a very difficult life in Medieval France. So, the name for my little prosaic blog is called ‘Yes and NO’ mostly as a conceit, and a homage to a great mind from long ago.

This page has the following sub pages.

• How and Why I got here…
• Technology and Tools I use…