Rain and my Korean identity

Ah, the sound of summer rain.

And the cool air wafts through my windows to ease the frustrating heat.
Cars go by and one can hear those refreshing swoosh/splash sounds
Even the light thunder is soothing to my ears...
I feel surrounded, touched, cooled... even sexy in this kind of weather.

Anyway, I don't know what is happening, but lately I haven't been feeling Korea. I don't feel like going back. Why?

1) Language barrier - and subsequent snide remarks about being of Korean-blood while not being able to speak the language
2) Leaving friends behind for another year. Something in me wants to save or salvage past friendships. I don't want to meet people and never see them again. I don't want old friendships to die.
3) Leaving family - as with the last point, I just don't want to go off somewhere... relationship with my parents is a bit weird, I'd like to repair it a bit.
4) I need a job in which I can use a reference. I don't think hagwons in Korea would make it to the reference list.

Also, I've lost that blind love of the land.
I've accepted Canada as my home. And while I tried to straddle the line, being proud of my Korean-Canadian identity, I'm seeing less use for my Korean identity now. I guess I've been indoctrinated with Canadian/Western values.
Being exposed to different races, more often than not, I find myself liking them more than my Korean friends...

I've also been turned off from nationalism by seeing nationalism in action. Two words for it: brutish and ugly
It has led to war and the sacrifice of youth, and more generally the bullying of other races, leading to exclusion and closed-mindedness.

I'm not excluding myself from being Korean-Canadian, but the tone of it is different.

I will still fondly recall the times my grandmother made myuk-guk for me on my birthdays, still fantasize about the Korean war and Korean food, and reminisce about the times I used to learn Korean from this cute block-set my parents bought me...

But I'll know that I'm not bound within this label. That really I'm just a real woman in Canada, and being Korean is only a part of my identity, not the defining characteristic.

Water is Life

Man, I'm thirsty. I think I'll get some water... probably grab some Montclair, good cheap stuff. Ya, actually maybe I'll treat myself to some Evian. Oh, isn't Evian great? It's so lap-able, soft and smooth on my tongue and... huh? Water scare?
What are you talking about?

Water as a scarce resource. Who would have thought?
And yet, fresh bodies of water all over the world are disappearing.
We've seen bits and pieces of this information being disseminated.
For example, the polar ice caps are melting and the Great Lakes (the largest body of fresh water in the world) are massively polluted. The oil refining process in Alberta is taking lakes worth of water that may not be replenishable.

Yet, many of the losses, especially in the 3rd world, are happening under the radar.

More children die from lack of clean drinkable water than from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

The 6th greatest body of fresh water in the world, Lake Chad, has been reduced to 5-10% of its original size. 9 million people rely on this water, and many of them are now leaving the area. This body of water has existed for 20,000 years, and only within the last 70 years is it being reduced with such rapidity.

In many 3rd world regions, including China and India, millions of water refugees are born. These people are forced to leave their homelands because there is not enough fresh water to drink.

And why has the world, the news world, not responded? It is a fault shared by the media and the media consumer. Because water shortage is not an attention-grabbing emotion-evoking issue. People like stories about HURRICANEs and TSUNAMIs, not a story about something as commonplace as water. Here, it seems unreal, almost impossible for us to understand... not enough drinking water? Why don't they just turn on their taps, use a Brita filter or something? But to create fresh water resources requires well-drilling equipment, which requires money - which, well you know the rest.

I've looked up some water-related NGO's
here's a list:

http://www.globalwater.org/
http://www.wateraid.org/uk/
http://www.bloodwatermission.com/
http://www.unicef.org/wes/index_links.html

here's an article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1234244.stm

Anyway, there is something that people can do. Donate. Even $5, $10, $20... and more if you can. The beauty of this is that this is simple. There's no ugly partisan issue, no human/social complications. It is a matter of digging holes...

Of course this is small-scale, but small-scale matters. Thousands of villages can be saved.
I generally don't expect more, as I am incredibly wary of a great change in public opinion about this matter. But who knows, perhaps you can inform your local politician, or perhaps you can bring it to the attention of Bono. Who knows. Anyway, I'm out.