<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>Mapping WordsMapping Words | Mapping Words</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.mappingwords.com/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.mappingwords.com</link>
	<description>stories about travel, culture, people &#38; places</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sat, 18 May 2013 12:00:03 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1</generator>
		<item>
		<title>&#8220;Because you&#8217;re foreign&#8230;&#8221; Western, White and English privilege in Korea</title>
		<link>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/18/because-youre-foreign-western-white-and-english-privilege-in-korea/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/18/because-youre-foreign-western-white-and-english-privilege-in-korea/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2013 09:14:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sarah Shaw</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living Abroad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Musings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[discrimination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[English privilege]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreigners]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Koreans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privilege]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[special treatment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Western privilege]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White privilege]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mappingwords.com/?p=7696</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[*Note: This post chronicles my own experiences with privilege in Korea as a White, American female. I am NOT speaking for all White people, females, Americans, Westerners or even Koreans. I nervously sat among my classmates in a holography class at the Korea National University of Arts in February 2009. A few days earlier, I&#8217;d flown to Korea to begin my semester as an exchange student. The professor asked me my name. I knew that Koreans place their family names before their given names, so I said, &#8220;Shaw, Sarah.&#8221; He was confused for a couple minutes, and eventually he&#8211;or someone else&#8211;prompted me to say my name how I normally would. &#8220;Sarah Shaw,&#8221; I said. It seems obvious, but that minor detail made me realize that I was different. Even though Korean exchange students are expected to blend into the US school system in America, in Korea, I would not be treated as a Korean student. A few months later, all the students in the fine arts department went on an MT (membership training) trip to the East coast. We stayed in a traditional Korean-style pension. The rooms were filled with stacks of floor mats, comforters and hard, bean-like pillows&#8211;except for one room [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/18/because-youre-foreign-western-white-and-english-privilege-in-korea/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Instagram as a visual diary</title>
		<link>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/13/instagram-as-a-visual-diary/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/13/instagram-as-a-visual-diary/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 14:43:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sarah Shaw</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Photography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taiwan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[countryside]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daily life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[instagram]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[people]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[photography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seoul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[smartphone photography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Taroko Gorge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visual diary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mappingwords.com/?p=7624</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Seoul, South Korea: Buddha&#8217;s Birthday lanterns. Love it or hate it, call it photography or not, there&#8217;s something romantic about Instagram. Captured spur of the moment with a smartphone, these digitally-enhanced, square-formatted images are both visually appealing and a great tool for documentation. For about a year, I&#8217;ve been uploading photos on Instagram, and in some ways, they remind me of my sketchbooks from high school and college, filled with printed photos pasted onto thick pages and altered with layers of acrylic paint, pen, and magazine clippings. Although I can&#8217;t flip through my catalog of Instagram photos by hand, it serves as a visual diary to record bits of my daily life, and momentarily replace the printed imagery and paint with filters, frames and blurs. Today I scrolled through 107 images that I&#8217;ve uploaded (which isn&#8217;t much compared to the 4000 images that I&#8217;ve taken on my smartphone in the past two and a half years), and I mentally re-lived some of my travels through Asia and reflected upon my daily life in Korea. Here are some of my favorite images:  Sangweol Village, South Korea: This is the bus stop near my university. The couches disappeared last week, which made me [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/13/instagram-as-a-visual-diary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Spring festivals in Korea: the Jindo Sea Parting and Butterflies</title>
		<link>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/01/the-jindo-sea-parting-and-butterflies/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/01/the-jindo-sea-parting-and-butterflies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 08:06:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sarah Shaw</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Destination Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Festivals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Food and Beverages]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Photography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Adventure Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[butterflies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grandma bbyong]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hampyeong butterfly festival]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hilarious ajumma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jeollanam-do]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jeonnam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jindo sea parting festival]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[live octopus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moses miracle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sannakji]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weekend trip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wild boar chasing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mappingwords.com/?p=7536</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last weekend, I walked across a parted sea wearing thigh-high rubber boots, chewed on wiggling octopus tentacles, and saw a baby wild boar poop on a guy&#8217;s t-shirt&#8211;all within 24 hours. With Adventure Korea, a budget travel company catered to foreigners, I traveled to Jeollanam-do, Korea&#8217;s southwestern province, to attend two annual spring festivals. On Saturday around 2 PM, we arrived on the island of Jindo for the Sea Parting Festival. This festival is based on a ancient legend involving tigers and an old woman named Grandma Bbyong. Long ago, tigers were abundant on Jindo, and when they began invading the local village, people fled to the nearby island of Modo. Grandmother Bbyong got left behind, so she prayed to the Dragon King (a legendary spirit) everyday. One day, the Dragon King appeared in her dream and told her that he would connect the two islands with a rainbow bridge. Sure enough, when Grandma Bbyong arrived at the coast and began to pray, the bridge appeared. The sea road opened, and villagers from Modo walked across playing drums and gongs. Upon meeting the villagers, Grandma Bbyong confessed that seeing the sea road appear was her last wish, and shortly after, she passed [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/05/01/the-jindo-sea-parting-and-butterflies/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>&#8220;I think Shaw is an outright bigot.&#8221; Encountering trolls on the internet</title>
		<link>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/29/i-think-shaw-is-an-outright-bigot-encountering-trolls-on-the-internet/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/29/i-think-shaw-is-an-outright-bigot-encountering-trolls-on-the-internet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 01:21:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sarah Shaw</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Musings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Writing + Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DagSeoul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet troll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personal attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[racist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trolling]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mappingwords.com/?p=7501</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I don&#8217;t really want to write this, but I feel like I owe it to myself. Yesterday, an anonymous woman ardently bashed my recent Glimpse story, &#8220;Riding the white horse: On being foreign in Korea,&#8221; by twisting my words and failing to comprehend the meaning behind the narrative. She concluded her irrational argument with, &#8220;I think Shaw is an outright bigot. A high-minded fool. I think she’s a colonialist pig, a patronizing shit. She believes being empowered is being a flirty know-it-all who pretends to be frank without ever being genuine and claims this is empowerment.&#8221; Despite her cruel personal attack on me, rather than my writing, I&#8217;d like to say sorry. I&#8217;m sorry that she misunderstood my story and now views me as racist, rather than a foreigner who has embraced a new culture. If I were a &#8220;colonialist pig,&#8221; I certainly wouldn&#8217;t bother to study Korean full-time, and if I were a &#8220;patronizing shit&#8221; I wouldn&#8217;t have taken the time to reflect on my professional and personal relationship with Kevin. This woman doesn&#8217;t understand that this story is my personal experience, it&#8217;s my personal reality. I spent several months, on and off, working on this piece, and I worked with editors through multiple [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/29/i-think-shaw-is-an-outright-bigot-encountering-trolls-on-the-internet/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How studying Korean made me realize some mistakes I&#8217;d made teaching English</title>
		<link>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/26/studying-korean-teaching-english/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/26/studying-korean-teaching-english/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:12:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sarah Shaw</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Language Learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Musings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[effective teaching methods]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EFL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[English]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Korean]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[language learning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learning styles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teaching English]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mappingwords.com/?p=7473</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Warning: This post may be a bit ranty because I&#8217;m mad at myself for failing my Korean midterm. I also have a speaking test on Tuesday which I will inevitably fail, and to top it off, I&#8217;m fucking hungry, and our cafeteria doesn&#8217;t serve dinner for another 45 minutes. It&#8217;s been awhile since I&#8217;ve studied a foreign language full-time. Actually, it&#8217;s only happened once before. I was 18, and I studied Spanish 20 hours a week for a month in Cusco, Peru at a private language school off the main plaza. Now I&#8217;m 25. While I was an exchange student and later teaching English, I studied Korean for a couple hours a week in a class run by volunteers, and I dabbled in some language exchanges and online independent study. Not much more. I&#8217;m currently studying intermediate-level Korean full-time, in a class filled with students who, as a whole, are able to communicate better than I can. I knew this from the get go after being placed in level 3, but I stayed in the class because I wanted to challenge myself and learn something new. Studying level 1 would be counterproductive, and quite frankly, a waste of time. Because [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/26/studying-korean-teaching-english/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Riding the white horse: On being foreign in South Korea</title>
		<link>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/20/riding-the-white-horse-on-being-foreign-in-south-korea/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/20/riding-the-white-horse-on-being-foreign-in-south-korea/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:53:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sarah Shaw</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Asia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living Abroad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Narratives]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Teaching English]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[being foreign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cultural barriers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[culture shock]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[glimpse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Glimpse Correspondents Program]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Matador Network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seoul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sex]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teaching English]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[understanding]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mappingwords.com/?p=7403</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[KEVIN, my Korean co-teacher, had an idea for our open class. “Let’s make a motivational video,” he suggested. “I’ll ask, ‘Would you like some more?’ you’ll say, ‘Yes, please,’ and after we repeat this a couple times, you’ll stuff your shirt with balloons. When you stand up to clear your tray, you’ll look really fat!” “Really, Kevin? I have to be the fat foreigner?” “It would be so funny,” he assured me, “and it would make the students more interested in the lesson.” I sighed. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of humiliating myself in front of all my students and the classroom evaluators by acting as the stereotypical fat Westerner, but I wasn’t opposed to the idea either. It certainly wasn’t politically correct, and I would never think to create a “humorous” video like this in the United States. But I wasn’t in the United States; I was in Korea, and after several months living as an expat and teaching English in Seoul, I knew that the image of “fat people” made Koreans of all ages burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. I borrowed a button-down shirt from the overweight Canadian after-school teacher, and another teacher agreed to film [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.mappingwords.com/2013/04/20/riding-the-white-horse-on-being-foreign-in-south-korea/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>
