OF HUMAN BONDAGE

My friend Nhu is a normal 20-year old girl: she studies hard, blasts Beyonce from her iPhone, and knows the best place for a cheap pedicure. It's hard to believe that when Nhu was 12 years old, her family sold her to an Australian sex tourist for $300. Nhu was locked in a hotel room with her rapist for three days, and her grandmother used the proceeds to buy food for the family.

Sadly, Nhu's rape and exploitation are "normal" for an estimated 3 million women worldwide, in countries like Cambodia, Thailand, India, and even the U.S. The good news is that Nhu's story doesn't end like so many others--with her permanently enslaved and beaten into submission at a brothel. Instead, Nhu is now the spokeswoman for an organization that prevents young girls from being sold into the sex trade. By providing girls from poor villages an education and a safe community to thrive in, Remember Nhu hopes to protect girls like Nim and Pat (pictured above) from the horrors that Nhu experienced.

KOREAN STREET STYLE #2

Koreans are fantastically photogenic. Whenever a camera is pointed in my direction I invariably look like a doofus, but Koreans seem to have a natural awareness of all their best angles. (One notable exception being the ajummahs, whose positions in the public baths are enough to give me nightmares.) Thus, when I asked some of Joe's students if I could take their photos, I didn't end up with a single bad portrait. Every one produced his or her own unique pose. A result of natural bodily grace or hours of practice in front of the mirror? I couldn't tell.

ON THE MOVE

The summer heat is starting to bear down on Busan, and I for one am ready to get out of Dodge. Luckily our summer plans will be taking us to more tropical climates, where warm temperatures and heavy rain are the ingredients for lush, green landscapes scattered with gold stupas. I'll be leaving for Thailand in mid-July to volunteer with Remember Nhu, an organization that aims to end child sex trafficking by caring for girls at risk of being sold into the sex trade.

A couple weeks later (after he gets done teaching Korean summer camp), Joe and I will meet up in Bangkok and (fingers crossed) get our visas for Myanmar. In case you haven't heard, Myanmar is on everyone's travel radar since democratic elections and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi took place this spring. We're hoping that by visiting for a few weeks during the off-season, we'll beat the hordes of backpackers bound to descend on the country this winter. Hands down, I'm most excited about seeing the monastery of the jumping cats. Yep, it's a real thing: Google it.

INTO THE WOODS

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

-Wendell Berry, "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"

We haven't found many quiet places in Korea. Granted, we're limited to the spots we can access by subway, bus, or walking (like Beomeo-sa, pictured above). There may very well be a temple in the woods that is just as quiet as it was a few hundred years ago, but the ones we've visited have all been crawling with snack vendors and fashionable hikers. Still, if you fight past the sightseers and step off the path, it's possible to take refuge in "the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years."

TIBETAN STREET STYLE

Like most women who idly trowel the internet, I'm a sucker for street style. Plus, my post about our Korean friend's unique fashion got me thinking about the other rare birds I've spotted in places like Portland, Shanghai, or Ouagadougou. I encountered this lovely lady sipping milk tea and catching up with her friends at a Buddhist nunnery one autumn afternoon in Lhasa, Tibet. When I picked up my camera, she immediately assumed this regal pose, as if having her photo taken by a stranger was the most natural thing in the world. I imagine one's posture has to be good to wear such heavy hair accessories.

MOTHER OF 20

Mother's Day always reminds me of Lillian, a woman I met in Costa Rica who has borne 20 children. Despite having given birth almost every year for more than two decades, this tough little lady still cooks over an antique wood stove and can make a mean gallo pinto. (In case you were wondering, the Guinness Record for the most children is 69, birthed by a Russian peasant in the 1700s.) And I thought having one sounded difficult.

KOREAN STREET STYLE

Fashion in Korea typically includes at least three of the following elements: glitter, ruffles, crochet, spiky leather heels that look like they belong on a dominatrix. And that’s just among young people—women over 40 uniformly favor animal prints, polyester, and plastic visors that shield the face like a welding mask.

The exception to the rule is Mrs. Shim, who has a style that’s uniquely her own and the confidence to pull it off. She sews a lot of her own clothes using natural, hand-dyed fabrics. On this particular day she was decked out from head to toe in handmade clothes, but often she’ll combine one piece, like a long skirt, with a leather bomber jacket and a Louis Vuitton purse (Koreans love them some luxury handbags). She doesn’t look like anyone else in Busan, and I think that’s fantastic.