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Evolutionary Psychology Primer by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the
Happy Memorial Day! If we were in America, we’d have had the day off. But alas, I worked 1-9. At least it was a good day. I taught some nice, smart middle schoolers in drama, music, and the new afternoon activity of yoga. I like being yoga instructor. Korean kids are extremely overworked, and an opportunity to help them take a deep breath and relax is welcomed.
English Village is such a beautiful place, and it is often the set for Korean films, tv shows, photo shoots, music videos and advertisements. All day long, the walkway behind our apartment leading to the fountain in front of the Concert Hall has been abuzz with big trucks, workmen on scaffolds hoisting massive lighting rigs, people setting props for a nighttime commercial shoot. I saw a woman setting up a street sign that read “Sentral Park”. I pointed it out to a Korean man near me. “It’s supposed to be a ‘C’,” I explained as I made a ‘C’ with my hand. He ran off to tell someone.
Tonight Adam and I stopped by with our friend Nolan to watch ten amazon models in evening gowns peer lustily into the camera. One girl half laid on the ground, arms around the sign still reading ‘Sentral Park’, another perched on a classic old car, another peered from a red phone booth. “Action!” and a massive fan began to blow back their hair as someone off camera threw pearl necklaces at the women. The models took five long steps forward as they reached jealously for the girl in the red dress who was front and center. Serious drama. And then another take and another take. Ridiculous. We couldn’t stop watching.
Filming will continue through the night as we listen to the director bark into the microphone “hana, dul, set” (1, 2, 3) outside our window… another take and another take until the sun comes up and they strike the set for another day at English Village.
-Jessica
Sorry about all of the long blogs recently. I’ve been having fun, but I know too many long blogs in a row get to be too much.
For a change of pace…
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=zqfFrCUrEbY[/youtube]
-Jessica
Stir crazy after a day-off spent in the apartment, I begged Adam to leave his homework and go to see Spiderman 3 with me. It took a surprising amount of arm-twisting, but I won in the end. I know, I’m such a supportive wife.
Spiderman was so good! Didn’t you think so? Adam said the reviews had been less than glowing, so I was pleasantly surprised. It was full of unexpected twists (at least for me, who has never read the comic books).
Outside the theater at the dark, quiet bus stop, we heard a girl shriek. Adam and I stared in alarm. Where did it come from? She continued sporadically yelling at someone on the other end of a cell phone or someone who was speaking in a low voice. It sounded like her yelling came from the roof of the mall across from us. Was it a lovers’ spat? Maybe she was around the side of the building. I expected Adam to shoot webs from his wrists and go check out the situation. He hesitated. “What would I say? I can’t speak Korean. And I don’t know how to call the cops.” And then our bus came. We boarded.
We sat in silence staring forward for a few minutes. “I keep thinking of what we heard,” Adam muttered. Was it just an argument? Was she on the phone? Was she being raped? I thought we should have checked it out, and I said so.
Adam reminded me of one of our glowing, cinematic moments. What if some silent Korean man had come to break it up?…
Back when Adam and I were dating, we were having dinner at his parents’ house. They sent us out to pick up some sodas and sandwiches from Subway. We jumped happily into Achilles, Adam’s blue olvo station wagon (he had lost a “V” somewhere along the way). Adam pulled up to the main intersection in the left turn lane, and I reminded him that Subway was to the right. “I grew up in this neighborhood! Don’t you think I know that?” he bit back. He pulled left into Walgreens and went in for a few minutes, emerging with a grocery bag of sodas. I gave him the silent treatment as we pulled back onto the road and down a ways into the Subway. We silently picked up the sandwiches and the martyr in me erupted as we got back into the car. Somehow the three minute drive back to the house was enough to scream some really bad words, and I reached for my purse, ready to bolt.
As the olvo rolled into ‘park’, I threw open the passenger-side door and sprinted to my Ford Probe. I dove into the drivers seat and peeled out of the driveway. Stunned, Adam tore down the driveway on foot after my fleeing car. Tires squealed as I threw the car into ‘drive’. Adam continued chasing me down the block. I finally slowed down when I was out of the neighborhood. Five minutes down the road, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go, my cell phone rang. After some debate and agreement that we should talk, I turned around and went back. Adam’s parents ate Subway sandwiches inside as Adam and I sat in the park gazebo across the street for hours into the night. Apparently, we hadn’t just been arguing about directions to Subway.
Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have checked on that girl. We should have. But sometimes it’s good to argue. If you push through it and don’t give up, your relationship is that much better. Making up is good.
We have a story that is infinitely more cinematic than even that, and I’ll tell you some time. But not tonight.
Much love,
-Jessica
(Images thanks to Cinematic Orchestra and Marvel Comics.)
To celebrate Buddha’s birthday, Seoul puts on an incredible, annual, international, weekend-long Lotus Lantern Festival. I have never seen so many people. I have never seen so many lanterns.
Yesterday, Adam spent all day in Seoul, and I joined him after work. As I stepped off of my bus onto Jongno, the main urban road in Seoul, I realized it would be no simple task to make my way to Adam’s and my meeting spot. Throngs of people were already flocking onto street-side bleachers to stake their claim on the best view of the coming parade. I swam upstream into Insadong, one of the centers of the Lantern festivities. Annie and Sung Sook were already there with Adam, when I reached the book shop. We wandered through the Buddhist worshipers, tourists, and revelers congregating at Jogyesa Temple.
As dusk fell, the temple began to glow with a canopy of lanterns. Red, pink, blue, yellow, green, white. The ancient tree looked as though its boughs were glowing lanterns. The first monks and drummers began to pour into Jogyesa’s courtyard, the final destination of the parade. We knew the parade had begun. We ran past the stirring sound of drums, songs, and TV announcers, and pushed through crowds.
Annie, the petite child that she is, was able to squeeze through to the curb for a clear view of the parade, but we weren’t so lucky. She came back to us, and we continued down the sidewalk to an entrance to the subway. There were people sitting all along the edge of the roof, and Annie and I climbed up on the sloping end. It was the perfect seat for viewing the parade. Adam wandered, seeking out the perfect photograph (and I think he found many). Sung Sook milled back and forth in her lovely, helpful way and brought us kimbop and dok boki in plastic bags. Annie and I managed to pick our dinner out of the bags with our chopsticks without sliding off the slanted roof.
After almost two hours of luminous lanterns and colorful costumes, we jumped down from our perch and made our way back to Insadong. The thousands of lanterns that had glowed their path down Jongno were now deposited in radiant piles on the sidewalk near the temple. Annie and I went on a frenzy, filling our arms with lanterns. When our arms were full, we would drop the most ordinary lantern and pick up a prettier one. People started looking at us, and one woman stopped to hand us one of her lovely pink lotus lanterns. “Obviously these girls want these lanterns more than I,” she must have thought.
On the far end of Insadong, Annie’s dad picked us all up in the van, and we opened the trunk to pile our lanterns inside. Annie and Sung Sook had collected seven lanterns, and Adam and I had nine. Our friends dropped us off at the bus stop, and Adam and I climbed onto the bus, laden with glowing orbs. The bus driver laughed and gave us the thumbs-up sign. We slept the whole way home.
Now we need to figure out a place to hang all of them.
-Jessica
Here is the 4th installment from our trip to Thailand in which we finally arrive at the island Kho Pha Ngan. This gorgeous flower photo is one of Adam’s– isn’t he good?
Across the plank, and we had arrived! Rejecting all of the taxi drivers, Adam and I took in the panorama. Bright turquoise water under an aqua sky. Across the water, Kho Samui rose up green and lush. The midday heat radiated from the dusty concrete as we walked into the town. We stopped to book our return ferry, email a few friends, and call our bungalow. A guide book had told us about Leela Beach on the Southern tip, a small laid-back beach just below the highly touristed beach of Haad Rin. We were ready to head to our beach.
We found the taxi stand and jumped into the back of a pick-up truck with planks on each side for seats. For 50 Baht per person, the truck wound up, down, around. The concrete road was broken and cracked, and the bumpy ride led us alongside motorbike shops, bamboo huts, open markets and gnarly jungle patches. The island narrowed toward the southern tip, and we could see patches of bright blue ocean between the passing palm trees. After we drove through Haad Rin, the concrete road became rocky dirt. I imagined how difficult it would be to navigate the bumps and divots, sharp inclines and curves on a motorbike. Apparently motorbike accidents are the leading cause of injury in Kho Pha Ngan. We passed a few gorgeous resorts and huts, and then our truck taxi turned down a bumpy hill into the Leela Beach Bungalows.
After so much travel and anticipation, I felt immediately disappointed as we stepped over branches along the dirt path to the thatched canopy that was the restaurant and reception area. Three sunburned, tattooed white guys in sarongs huddled around a laptop computer watching the final scene of last year’s romantic movie, “The Holiday”. A very large Thai girl and a beefy shirtless Thai guy with tribal tattoos and a silver ball in his left nostril greeted us. The very large Thai girl led us down the beach, littered with piles of seaweed, bits of coral and branches. The incredible ocean view was overshadowed by scraggly bushes, overgrown in the sand.
There was our hut, number 003. It was surely quaint when it was built in 1983, on bamboo stilts, thatched roof, tiny twiggy porch, but the wear of 25 years was obvious.
“Is this okay?” the very large Thai girl asked us.
No! I thought. But we were exhausted, overheated, and our backpacks weighed heavily on our sunburned shoulders. “Yes, thanks.”
She handed us the key and shuffled out. Adam and I swung our backpacks onto the bed, and I noticed the blanket was covered in sand and debris that had blown in through the holes in the thatched roof.
With no where to sit but the filthy bed, we dragged ourselves back to the canopy area to unwind from our long journey from Bangkok. We were both in thoroughly foul moods. Adam and I sat side by side on hard wood chairs on the uneven concrete under the thatched canopy and stared across the water. Adam’s face and bare chest had turned a deep purpley red. I felt queasy and exhausted from the all night bus ride and too much sun. My sunburn had set in, but it was nothing compared to Adam’s. I went to the counter and asked if they had any aloe, but they pointed me up the beach toward Haad Rin. I wanted to see something more the beautiful Thailand I had heard about, so I coated sunscreen on my already sunburned face and shoulders. I kissed Adam good bye and went on an afternoon expedition. I walked up the littered beach, and as I passed the last of the Leela Beach Bungalows, the scenery changed.
The beach was clear, as though it had been raked that morning, the palm and flowering trees were neatly trimmed and swaying languidly in the tropical breeze, and the resort was set beautifully on the beach. I walked a little further and saw a second sprawling resort with a wide open restaurant and gathering area. People lounged on pillows around low tables on the vast, covered, wooden patio. I stepped up onto the patio and followed the meandering boardwalk beside the pool, in front of several little cabins with hammocks hung on each large porch, past a multi-unit guest house.
This had to be the place for us. Coco Hut Village. It felt good– like the resort Adam and I enjoyed on our honeymoon in Cabo, Mexico. I wandered along the winding boardwalk until I found the reception office and learned that the rooms in the guest house were within our limited price-range, and there was a vacancy. Good to know!
The young receptionist directed me up over the hill and down a long concrete stairway to the convenience store on the East side of the island. I stocked up on aloe gel for our sunburns.
As I began walking back, I noticed another patch of bungalows at the base of the concrete staircase. They were somewhere between the quality of our current bungalow and that of the Coco Hut guest house. Wanting options, I stepped into their canopied restaurant and told the three people on the couch that I was interested in seeing a room. In unison, the three looked up to the counter, and out sauntered a lanky asian guy with rock star sunglasses and long wavy hair clipped into a low ponytail.
“Sawadeekaa,” I greeted him.
“Yeah, hi, I’m not Thai. I’m Malaysian,” he teased. “Welcome to my home. You want to stay?”
I told him “maybe,” and asked to see the cheapest place. He grabbed a key from behind the counter and strode out ahead of me. Then he stopped, flashed a smile back at over the top of his sunglasses, and stuck out his elbow expectantly. I paused, smirked, gave him two pats on the shoulder and kept walking.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Jessica, and yours?”
“Jeffrey. Jeffrey Johnson.”
“That’s not your name. What’s your given name?”
“Jeffrey Johnson, nice to meet you.”
We climbed a few steps to the bungalow, and he unlocked the door. It was nice and clean with two twin beds. I asked if there was a cheap hut with a double bed. Jeffrey Johnson coyly raised his eyebrows and asked how many people would be staying. I told him that I was traveling with my husband. “Oh, that’s okay. We can be friends.”
I was ready to return to Adam with his aloe. Jeffrey Johnson asked if I would return to stay there, and I said I’d talk to my husband and maybe see him later.
“My bungalows are beautiful and a good price. You also have a free place to stay in my heart.” Heh… thanks.
Up the concrete stairs, down the hill, through the beautiful Coco Hut Village, past the neighboring resort, and back to the seaweed covered beach. Adam and I ate delicious green curry prepared by the very large Thai girl (at least their food was delicious), played several hands of gin rummy, then went to bed knowing that in the morning, we would move down the beach to the guest house at Coco Hut Village.
-Jessica
next… short stories from the week on the island.
I just found out by a friendly comment on my NPR at EV blog post that the National Public Radio/Marketplace story about English Village aired today in the States. And, some of my interview made the cut! If you’re in America, I might be talking to you through your radio this week! Tune in to your local Public Radio station.
If you haven’t heard it, you can click here to go to the NPR website and listen to the story.
(You will need RealPlayer on your computer to listen to the download. If you don’t have RealPlayer, you can download a free version here.)
If any of you are first-time visitors who googled your way here from the story… welcome! We’re so glad you’re here. Pull up a chair, and stay a while.
-Jessica
p.s. Hannah, thanks for the tip.
p.p.s. If anyone is looking to teach abroad, or if you want to learn more about English Village, feel free to email us or comment. We’d love to have you here.
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