22Aug/20

Where Are the Women?

A few years after moving to Manhattan, I decided to upgrade my social network and maybe also meet a girlfriend by joining a local Ultimate Frisbee league. One thing to love about

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09Aug/20

COEX, Gangnam Style

On Saturday I took a rare trip to Gangnam with my boyfriend for a leisurely stroll around COEX Mall, the largest underground mall in the world—nope, sorry, just Asia (darn you, Canada).

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01Aug/20

Five Techniques to Make Learning A Foreign Language Less Impressive

“What did you eat for breakfast as a child?” asked a wide-eyed woman from across the conference table. My friend had just introduced me to her clinical research group as “Kelley from Korea who

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01Aug/20

The Love That Some Love to Hate

aegyo (애교) /āgyō/ (noun): The act of being overly cute [1] The Silk Road’s raison d’être is to bring diverse people together in mutual understanding. As such, we do not stop at attempting

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11Aug/19

At the Dog Park

At the dog park, this thousand-odd-square-meter oasis of chewing, chasing, digging, loping, barking, nipping, pouncing, and rolling canine friends, neural nets wearied by endless curbside crowds may relax in the luxury of

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07Feb/19

First Position

As an academic who tends to the introverted pole of the MBTI, I find my social circle to be rather finite and reasons to venture beyond the metaphorical university gates somewhat infrequent

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12Jan/19

Still on Bergensbanen

The overland railway from Oslo to Bergen was supposed to be the most beautiful train route in Europe, and I did not have a window seat. This unfortunate turn of events was

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30Dec/18

Juniper Latte, No Berries

  The woman two spots in front of me in line at the Seattle-mermaid airport coffee shop moved slowly, deliberately. Her hand searched the air beside her, eventually finding a wallet in

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17Aug/18

The Growing Garden of Death

  I This story starts with cockroaches. The American Cockroach, to be more precise. Periplaneta americana. Water bugs. Coffee-colored, segmented vermin of various proportions, some as long as a grown woman’s ring

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12Aug/18

Notes from Geneva, June 2018

I write this on the TGV—le train à grande vitesse, literally “the train of great speed”—from Paris to Geneva, losing myself in the melancholy ballads of Petra Marklund and wondering exactly what

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30Oct/14

Online But Not Connected: The Internet Does Not Equal Globalization

This article was originally written as a guest post for I Dig Culture, an international media channel that explores human cultural diversity and exchange. You can view the full article here.  The

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24Oct/13

오늘의 곰돌이 모험

오늘 아침에 수업에 갔다 오는 길에 뭔가를 본 것같았다… 좀 더 가까이 가고 보니… 아~아주 큰 곰돌이란 걸 알게 됐다! 그랬더니 예의있는 곰돌이 친구랑 사진을 찍을 수밖에 없었다~ Share

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23Jul/13

From What Are We Trying to Escape?

  It is only in the last few days that the principles governing my actions in this world have come to light with a clarity different from, and perhaps greater than, ever

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18Jun/13
A white girl speaking Korean? That's like a tiger on fire. No physical laws broken here.

Not Today

I encounter a deluge of frustrating microaggressions every day I am in Korea. Simply because I am white, I must be unable to speak Korean, use chopsticks, eat spicy food, keep my

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14May/13

Your Chance Has Come

Once upon a time five years and about a month ago today, an overworked and underslept college student peered over her nearly finished dinner at a face that would change her life. This

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28Apr/13

Our Stupid Brains

A small restaurant I pass every day on the way to my lab has a dog. It’s a medium-sized stocky yellowish fuzzy dog, with a face and build approximating something between a

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21Apr/13

Lazy Korean Cooking: Doenjang Jjigae (Soybean Paste Stew, 된장찌개)

    Within my first week of arrival to Seoul last January, one of the first lessons with which I was inculcated as an intermediate Korean language student was that “한국 음식은

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08Apr/13

My Mice Hate Me, Part II: Other Mice Hate Me Too

Driven blindly by that regrettable desire for ever-richer experience, today I decided to practice mouse handling and dosing at one of my P.I.’s auxiliary laboratories. I met Park Taehee* at the other

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30Mar/13

The Mean Things We Say About People from Other Countries

  As a foreigner to Chinese, Korean, and Japanese friends, I seem to incite conversations on international topics more often than would seem the norm in strictly native circles. And, perhaps as

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29Mar/13

The Idiosyncratic Mannerisms of Korean People

    One thing I’ve learned during my three-year adventure in Mandarin Chinese and now Korean is that throughout the course of developing proficiency in a new language, subconsciously picking up on

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