In my Seoul

These are the Rules as Stated by the Administration

2010-06-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

In the world of Korean school public education, nothing brings fear to the hearts and minds of teachers like the words ‘open class.’

We don’t really have anything like this in America. The closest comparison that comes to mind is Open House. You know, that event schools halfheartedly hold sometimes in which parents are usually too busy to show up. Parents that do manage to show up become weird, crazed versions of their former rational parenting selves. They enter a quasi-attack mode in which they use a technique called, in some circles, ‘ferocious niceness’ in an attempt to intimidate their children’s teachers into saying good things about their kids.

No, Korean school open class is an entirely different animal. The Seoul Metropolitan Board of education just passed a law (I guess technically it’s a ‘policy’ but policies feel like law here) that requires each teacher to open their class to families, teachers and administration four times a school year. This means that teachers are teaching an open class roughly once every other month. (This is my information for elementary schools, not sure about other levels)

I know what you’re thinking…so what? It’s forty minutes and the worst you have to endure is some smiling parents and an evaluation by the administration.

Wrong. So wrong.

The whole Open Class process lasts nearly a month in which time teachers slave over lesson plans-- re-working games, designing materials, meeting with administration to discuss their lesson plans, practicing the open class lesson on other classes. Teachers are required to consider ridiculous factors in their planning. For example, last year, my co-teacher freaked out two days before our lesson because she realized that the board game we were scheduled to play required the students to roll dice, and the dice would make too much noise on the desk top. She spent the next hour cutting out square pieces of green felt that she would put on the students’ desks before class began to dull the sound.

(Some kids at an English class I worked in over the winter. These boys chose me as their favorite teacher and followed me around. At least, that's what I like to think)

I was woefully naïve of the whole meticulous process. I thought, stupidly, that once we came up with our lesson plan (which had to be turned in to the administration over a week before we were due to teach the class), there would be nothing to it except to make the materials and teach the class. I was mistaken. Here is a quick list outlining the Open Class Process in further detail:

1. Pick your class.

This is tricky because you want to pick the class that has been the best. This means that the class participates well, is well-behaved and easily managed. The trick is that you can’t pick a class that you have already used before in a previous open class. Also, you can’t pick a class that another subject teacher (like science, music, etc) picked for their open class. These are the rules as stated by The Administration.

2. Come up with your lesson plan.

A typical lesson plan has an introduction section, a development section, and a closing section. Your introduction section has to include a review and some sort of motivation to get the students interested. Your development section must include GAMES.

Oh games. I think I have to take a minute to comment on Korean Elementary school English games. These are the bread and butter of our lesson plans. If students don’t get to play a game during a lesson, they demand to know why. If the rules of the game are interpreted by the students as somehow unfair, we have to figure out how to rework the game so it works for them. We can’t repeat the same games too closely or the students get bored. The games can’t be too hard or the students will give up. The games must be a delicate balance between fun and using the target vocabulary and grammar for each lesson. Too much of the former and you haven’t accomplished anything real in your class, too much of the latter and your class feels like a flop because the students won’t play. As a result of these restrictions (and others like them), games have become recycled and unvaried. (for those of your interested, there are three main types of games: card games, PPT games, speed games)

(Can you see me in the background? I'm attempting to manage the kids and make sure they share their food)

During open class, there are other, more strenuous variables to consider. During the open class, teachers ‘should’ include group work/pair work, individual work and class work. During the open class teachers ‘should’ have students doing listening activities, reading activities, and speaking activities. Parents want to see their children participate in class, so teachers ‘should’ include exercises that highlight individual student participation. These variables ‘should’ be considered along with the previously mentioned game requirement and accompanying restrictions. These are the rules as stated by The Administration.

3. Create your materials

A teacher ‘should’ look like she has put extra effort into the class. This often means creating his or her own materials via coloring or computer. For the last class, I spent an entire morning drawing and coloring an American flag and a restaurant menu for the motivation section of one open class. Teachers laminate flashcards, glue magnets onto everything so, if need be, it can be stuck to the blackboard for display, slave over Power Points, preview classrooms so that they can make sure the classroom is arranged to fully cooperate with their lesson plan. There is much prepwork to be done in the days preceding an open class.

4. Meet with the Administration.

This is the pre-open class meeting in which teachers submit their lesson plan (that they have already changed many times) to the scrutiny of men who haven’t taught in a classroom in twenty years (and who also probably had little interest in teaching, only in climbing the administrative latter). These men evaluate the lesson plan based on the above criteria and make alterations. No lesson is safe from administrative alteration. It is done so that the administration can feel as if they are doing their job successfully, not so much for the benefit of the students.

5. Prepare for the show

After the class has been picked, and all alterations to the lesson plan are complete, and the administration has approved the paperwork, and the materials created, it is time to start rehearsals…err, I mean practicing. Teachers practice their open class lesson plan on the other classes in the grade that have not been lucky enough to be picked for the Big Day. This processes is nerve-racking, because if it doesn’t go over well with the students, teachers must go back into the lesson planning phase, sometimes as late as the date before the open class.

The second part of preparation is training the class that was picked for open class. Teachers threaten, manipulate, persuade, and do anything short of promising to give them all As in return for their promise to act like good students on the Big Day. By the time the open class actually happens, students are no longer acting like themselves, but instead acting like Adderall-dosed robot children who have been programmed specifically to answer the right questions at the right time. They know all the words and motions to the songs by heart because they have been made to sing the song almost 30 times in the days leading up to open class. They know the correct responses to the teacher’s opening greeting because it’s been drilled into their heads through repetition exercises. I often feel bad for these classes whose award for good behavior and participation is a week of repetitive and anxious English class rehearsals.

(This is Jill. She's smart, but socially awkward so the other kids don't like her. She's all out all the time and sticks close to the teachers.)

So Why? Why do the teachers go to such strenuous lengths for Open Class?

Because they are the rules as stated by the Administration. The Administration is law.

After open class is over, the teachers have another post-open class meeting in which the administration evaluates individual teachers’ open classes publicly. Last year, I heard horror stories of teachers crying in the middle of the meeting (which is a dinner to reward teachers for their hard work). The administration can sometimes critique teachers on the most ridiculous and unreasonable things, such as the noise from rolling dice for a board game. There are catch-22s in which teachers can’t be right. Like, for example, the board should look neat and presentable during open class. So if, for example, you’re playing a game in which students move magnetized picture cards around on the board the end result could look messy. No problem, just remove the cards after the game is over, right? However, another rule is that you should not mess with already-used classroom materials until after the class is over. This rule also sucks when you play something like a board game and the students keep playing with the dice you weren’t allowed to pick up while you’re trying to explain a new game.

The good news is that my open classes are over and done with for the year! I just finished last week and the only major thing left on the ole’ Korean Public School Teaching agenda is summer camps. I can’t wait to tell you about those.

Things just got political

2010-05-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

It’s election time in Seoul and you know what that means.

Or wait, you probably don’t. And not just because I’m talking about Korean elections. If you’re like the majority of Americans, even the mention of the words ‘public elections’ makes you uneasy. Come November, when you’re pulling up to the drive through after work--between thoughts of what’s happening on Lost and whether you’ve made the right decision between Wendy’s or McDonalds—you can’t help but be plagued by a vague sense of unfulfilled duty…some lingering obligation that you’re usually able to suppress for the rest of the year. And its not until MTV tells you to Vote or Die, or you start seeing that damn blue rectangle bumper sticker on everyone’s car, that you realize---that feeling of guilt and bewilderment bubbling up at the back of your throat lately is your sense of patriotic duty.

Even if you do manage to get your butt out of the office chair, easy chair, driver’s seat for long enough to see if you’re on the registry at the local school, many of us still feel ill informed or downright bullied into our decisions by the nasty mudslinging campaigns on T.V.

Being a political science major, I often felt that I had to defend the American political system against some of its worst critics—my peers, the university students. Walking around, the sunshine of our youth glinting prettily off the windows of the humanities building, we’d suck down our Starbucks Frapuccinos and talk about serious political issues. Inevitably one rebellious soul would say something like “The electoral college, goddammit. Our country’s shit.” Of course, being the well-informed and wise political science undergrad that I was (and feeling like I had so went through this phase last year), I felt it was my duty to inform the ignorant of their mistakes.

I think Ben Franklin said it best when he said, “Democracy is a terrible form of government—but it’s better than the rest of them.”

So when I walked down the street on my way to work last Monday morning and was confronted with dozens of Korean women chanting and dancing in the streets, shouting out names of candidates between shuffle steps, I was immediately intrigued. Here is a country who shares our democratic values, but who had to fight for them much more recently than Americans and whose population is much smaller and more homogeneous.

I guess I felt it was my chance to observe the political process of a different country, especially in regards to campaign style (since I don’t care to do any serious digging into the nature of the Korean political machine itself…hey I’m only American after all).

To being, my first observation is that I have yet to see a campaign ad run on T.V. Instead, I’m bombarded twice a day by women in semi-uniform (they wear some sort of matching colored shift and sashes like girl scouts) and multiple times a day by these small motorized carts in which people are sometimes standing at a podium and waving and music is playing.

Now this music. This music is often a popular song (ranging from Mary Had a Little Lamb to current K-pop hits) in which the candidates have dubbed in their names at strategic intervals. Its kind of ridiculous.

Other forms of campaigning include posters at subway stations and other crowded public places. There are often Koreans standing in front of them reading the posters I guess in an effort to choose a candidate. The posters look like giant pictures of the candidates with a short list of their attributes. There are about 8 mayoral candidates for Seoul in this upcoming election.

I had a conversation with my co-teacher about elections. I asked her if she was voting, and her response was ‘of course.’ I also asked her if most Koreans voted and she said, ‘at least more than half.’ Indeed, in Seoul it seems like Koreans are taking an interest in the campaigns. And I can kind of see why. Instead of staring at semi-famous, somewhat removed men and women in suits through the medium of a TV screen, Koreans get face to face contact with the canidates’ campaign. I’m not sure how elections for the Mayor in major cities like NY and LA go, but my experience with senatorial candidates and gubernatorial candidates in my state does not afford me much personalized contact.

I find this more personalized approach a bit odd in Korea. I would have expected the opposite mostly because of the increased distance between those in power and those without power. Let me explain. A smaller scale example of the power distance index is my principal and the teachers (his minions). As I’ve mentioned before, we are required to do anything and everything he demands of us regardless of whether or not the request is reasonable or timely.

It’s not just at schools either. My coteacher used to work as a secretary at a bank. She told me that their official closing time at work was somewhere around four or five in the afternoon. But her boss (I guess the bank manager) would stay until seven or eight at night. Even though she was done working (and her pay only covered until closing time) she had to stay until the boss left because it was the ‘right thing to do.’ If she didn’t, the boss would ask her why she left. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

All this to say that those people with power, even a little bit, are uber respected and not your friends. My teachers don’t want to sit with the administrators at lunch because they are separated from us by an invisible boundary of respect and power-- much more so than in America.

That’s why I found the personalized, man-on-the-street campaign approach for the mayoral candidates of one of the world’s biggest cities so fascinating. It seems so much more personal than the TV campaign ads are at home. I’m not sure whether one is better than the other.

What do you think?

I also think it would be interesting to learn how different these candidates really are. Koreans, as a society, hold mostly the same values and ideals. And while Americans do too(the ideals of individual freedom, voting rights, equal opportunity) it seems to me that the Koreans' political debates would probably be much more mild in comparison. The areas of mass political disagreement, in my opinion, are likely to be much fewer than in America. Its in the definition of a collectivist society. Collectivism means coming together as one for the good of the whole group. Koreans are more likely to fall in line for the sake of societal harmony than Americans simply because that lies at the core of their beliefs. Look at collectivist japan. They have had a democracy for decades now and the same party has been in power for the entire time save for a few years in the 1990s.

Major political disagreements, i think, probably center around North Korea and South Korea's official policy on reunification. The older generation generally wants it, and the younger generation generally doesn't.

On a side note, the increased violence at the DMZ has become somewhat of an issue in the campaigns (or so I’ve heard through the grapevine). One of my South African friends’ mom called him concerned because the international news was saying Korea was at war. My own mother has asked about what’s going on in the country right now. Well, it doesn’t feel like we’re on the brink of war, that’s for sure. The Koreans aren’t talking about it. I haven’t seen an increased military presence. No one is buying tickets to flee the country. I guess its hard to tell whether or not this time the crazy N. Koreans really mean business or if they’re just blowing off some more steam.

Hell No, I won't Go

2010-05-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

(My mom and I at Jeju Island in front of the rock formations)

My mother came and went.

Now I feel deflated and sad, even though our time together was wonderful-- probably because our time together was so wonderful. We went to Jeju Island for a week on vacation while she was here. (Jeju is a popular vacation spot below the southern part of the Korean peninsula)

It was like taking a rest from running a marathon. An extremely difficult marathon in which obstacles in the form of Ajummas and Ajoshi’s are sent veering into your path in daily intervals and the extremely long winter wears on your nerves and your spirit until you think you’ll go insane from so much gray and cold. Jeju was wonderfully unpopulated. There were trees and greenery and nary a traffic jam in sight. And, best of all, there was plenty of room to avoid KVPs! (The Korean Veering Phenomenon)

We stayed on the club level at the Hyatt, a five star hotel mom paid for out of the goodness of her heart. Here are the club level perks:

1.Free drinks from 5-7 every night. These include liquor drinks, wine and beer plus heavy appetizers like spring rolls and smoked salmon. Andrew never felt like he took enough advantage of this little perk.

2.Free breakfast everyday. We stuffed ourselves so full, we weren’t hungry until Happy Hour. In fact, we spent very little money on food because we were always eating and drinking free food in the Club Lounge.

3.Free cookies and tea and coffee anytime you wanted.

(Enjoying free drinks and food in the club lounge)

Believe me, we were living in style. We had beach access, pool access, spa access. I saw a naked ajumma or two in the hot tubs in the locker room. (Korean bath culture encourages separation of sexes and nudity in public baths) Mom and I were fascinated by the intensity with which they scrubbed themselves in front of other people and then got in the tubs with us in all their naked glory. We toughed it out long enough to have an experience, and then we headed to the privacy of shower.

We took a taxi tour one day around the island. My Korean cousin, Dani, set the whole thing up. It was a long and eventful day in which we saw such natural wonders as a waterfall, rock formations, volcano and an underground lava tube (the tube was unlike anything I had ever seen before and will probably ever see again). The taxi man drove us around all day giving us information about the island in Korean which was interpreted through Dani. He took us around random back roads that followed the coast line…roads that we would have never found had it not been for him.

(Cousin, Andrew and I in front of some cool rock formations. It happened as a result of the way the rocks were cooled in the water. Each column was hexagonal or pentagonal)

At some point he asked if we wanted to stop for lunch but we told him we were fine (thanks to the massive free club-level breakfast we gorged on every morning). Turns out, we were probably starving the poor man… or at least jipping him out of a free meal. Dani called her mom during the trip who scolded her for not taking the taxi man out to lunch. Apparently its customary to not only pay the taxi man the agreed upon amount but also treat him to lunch as part of the fare.

So it happened that at the end of our long ass trip (at which point we weren’t even getting out of the cab to look at things when he stopped anymore because we were so exhausted) we had to take our taxi man out to dinner. Which was kind of a bummer, because he ended up picking the place and we had to eat dinner all sweat-sticky from our previous hikes up volcanoes and through lava tubes and other natural wonders.

Of course, he was nice and deserved the meal. I just feel like the whole thing was a wonderful illustration of the constant sense of obligation I feel in Korea. I feel as if my life is filled with unspoken but understood obligations. Obligation to my family, work, learning Korean, being polite to elders, yielding to people with children etc.

(Lava Tube Action: The lava tube was formed when the magma or lava or whatever was flowing underground out of the volcano and found an outlet. what was left over after all the lava/magma ran out was a hollow tube-like cave under ground. There was a whole park under which lied numerous lava tubes.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Everyone has obligations to work and family. But sometimes I feel as if I’m obliged to accept things that I would have a hard time accepting at home. For example, there are many times during the year when we do things as a school after school, like go hiking on a mountain or go to dinner or something. I’m often not told about these things until the last minute, after I’ve already come to school.

Sometimes I have plans to meet people for dinner or I wore shoes and clothes to school that are definitely not suitable to hiking. We are definitely not getting paid to go on these excursions, its just expected of you. If any of my teachers don’t want to go, they have to have an acceptable excuse and ask the head teacher if they can skip out.

Also, the other day, Yong-eun and I arrived at our second period class to find it empty, dark and locked. Apparently the class was doing some sort of health examination. We headed back to the office, happy that we had a free period off. (That’s one thing you can say about Korea, the incentives and rewards are just as unexpected as the obligations)

We get back to the office and the phone rings. It’s the home room teacher of the class we have to teach in the last period of the day asking if we could come in quickly and teach her class now instead of later. (I don’t know how she found out that we didn’t have class that period. She claimed that she wanted us to come in at the earlier time so she could let her class out early because she ‘heard’ that school was ending early that day) When Yong eun protested that the class would be short because second period had already started, the home room teacher said that we could just teach into our lunch time.

I don’t know about you, but in America, that’s when you say “hell no I won’t go.” In Korea, I guess you say okay and pretend like its all nice when you get to the classroom. Yong-eun was all grace and good manners, accepting the home room teachers’ apologies with a smile. I was not so graceful.

When we talked after class Yongeun said that the home room teacher felt she could ask those things of us because she was older, but that most of the teachers regarded her as rude and didn’t like her. I think people that are aggressive and straight forward like that are often disliked by people in Korean culture because many people don’t feel like they can say no to their requests.

I guess I could better explain it this way: Instead of having to say no to someone about something you’re uncomfortable with doing, the hard questions are just usually never asked. People are dissuaded from asking people for favors outright because its considered rude unless you know the person very well or they’re family. Even when your peers want you to do something, they’ll never phrase it that way. They’ll just say “you might want to….” Or ask some sort of question to dissuade you from your course of action… “Do you want to make up the class we just missed?” with an undertone of “because I definitely don’t want to.” its all about the tone.

(mom, andrew, me hiking up the path to the volcano)

Random Happenings:

1.During my after school class, the school intercom started playing the Disney movie “Anastasia.” The kids didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what was going on. I just sort of yelled over the music.

2.One of my favorite after school kids, a fourth grade boy, is officially my favorite student. He had his homeroom teacher message me when he was going to be absent from after school class one day. “Bart says he can’t come to class today. He wanted me to tell you.”

3.This is the same boy who, one day when after school class was cancelled, came into the office and straight to my desk. (this is very unusual. Kids are usually intimidated by me and approach one of the other teachers instead) He came in saying “Malia? Malia?” saw me, came to my desk and stared at me for a minute, stammering some mixed Korean and English sentences. I waited for him, and finally he managed, “Class now?” I said no class today and made an ex with my hands. He nodded solemnly and went on his way. They’re always canceling after school class and not telling the kids.

Do You Know Who I am?

2010-04-29T00:02:00.001-07:00

Here’s some Bloginess coming at cha--- (was that funny? Sometimes when I’m too happy my writing can get kinda punchy)

Mom’s here first and foremost and it’s amazing. Forget the fact that she’s paying for the five star hotel for our vacation to Jeju Island this weekend. Forget the fact that she’s bringing me Zpacks (hardcore anti biotics) and presents and messages from loved ones back home. She’s just so damn familiar. When I saw her these thoughts came to my head (not necessarily in this order):

1.Brodie, my beloved neurotic dog, sprinting around our house every time we come back home. He may be living with me when I go to law school next year.

2.My backyard at my parents’ house—we have a lame little peach tree (the pathetic wispy, Lowes –bought kind that are planted in middle class suburban neighborhoods) that produces hard, inedible peaches. I like to go out there when I’m bored or restless from being inside and break them in half in my hand to look at the fleshy inside.

3.Having space to maneuver around people so as to avoid hitting them (not possible in Korea due to space restrictions and weird cultural norms that avoid acknowledging a strangers’ existence)

4.Being able to drive a car. (before Korea I was all for public transportation, saving the environment and money etc etc. I can envision my little uppity liberal mouth spouting all kinds of crap about the way of the future. Now I’d shave my head for access to a car and the freedom to come and go as I please without having to worry about subway schedules, puking Korean girls or drunk ajoshees (old Korean men) trying to yell at the entire subway car.)

(My mom and I during the first time she visited in November)

My principal asked me today if I knew who he was (In Korean translated through my co-teacher). After I told him Yes, I’ve been aware that he was the principal ever since we were introduced in his office right after he came to the school, I got to thinking: Does my principal think I’m retarded because I can’t speak Korean?

I mean, this is somewhat valid. The students get frustrated with me all the time because I can’t speak Korean. For example, a student might ask me for help with the rules of a game and I completely misinterpret what they’re asking me. I think it would go like this:

Student Perspective:

Student: (in English) Malia Teacher! Help!

Me:Okay.(approach the table and look open and helpful)

Student:(in Korean) My partner won’t say the English word during the game. Does that mean he doesn’t get his points?

Me: Umm okay. Let’s do rock paper scissors to see who goes first. (pantomime rock paper scissors)

Student: No teacher! Minsu won’t say the English word but he’s still
counting the points.It’s not fair.

Me: Why aren’t you doing rock, paper, scissors?

Teacher Perspective:

Student:(in English) Malia Teacher! Help!

Me:Okay.(approach the table and look open and helpful)

Student:Korean Korean Korean Korean Korean. (Point vaguely at their
desk) Korean Korean.

Me:look around for where my Korean co-teacher is. She’s busy. Wing
it.) Let’s do Rock, paper, scissors.

You can see where it’s going from there.

My friend Neil who works at an elementary school in a different district of Seoul swears straight out that he hears his students calling him stupid (which is bobo in Korean).

I think they also feel as if I’m a little stupid for staring at them blankly when they come up to me and earnestly try to engage me in conversation (I mean, as earnestly as a third grader can). In my opinion, kids and adults have a hard enough time communicating without the language barrier, and kids always tend to get exasperated that those of us living in the adult world can’t remember enough of what our own childhood felt like to relate. I remember consciously having a thought when I was somewhere around 10 or 11 that went something like “when I grow up I am not going to forget what this feels like and act as stupidly as mom and dad are acting right now.”

Outside my school atmosphere it’s worse. In Seoul, Koreans think I’m Korean and treat me like one of their own. This may sound good in the ‘oh you’re experiencing what the culture is really like’ kind of way, but its not. I get asked for directions to places all the time on the street and in the subway from people of all ages (but mostly old people). When I tell them “I don’t understand Korean” in Korean, they just repeat whatever they said louder, as if I may be slightly deaf. I finally have to just break into speaking really fast English so that they’ll get the point and walk away, leaving me with the definite impression that I was the one who messed up that ordinary little societal exchange.

I feel as if I’m constantly doing something that clashes with what I’m supposed to be doing, with the idea that people have of me (as a perceived fellow Korean). I think this is hard to understand through a western lens because we are not a collectivist people. In Korea, you are constantly observed and conscious of those around you, even if you’re ignoring them. And I can guarantee you that they’ll notice if you do something immoral or even just embarrassing and, depending on what demographic they fall into (male/female, old/young, rich/poor) they may say or do something in reaction to your perceived immoral act. Korean children must attend ethics and moral education starting in the first grade. They have classes that talk about what the right thing for them to do is in a certain situation.

Koreans can be drunk in public (even though its not something people strive for its definitely culturally accepted as part of life), but they don’t want to be seen drinking in public places that aren’t designated as a place to drink (like a bar or restaurant etc). This is true even though there’s no open container laws or public drunkenness laws. I can’t tell you how many Koreans I’ve seen passed out or throwing up on the subways, but I’ve NEVER seen one actually drinking alcohol on the subway. Last weekend, when us ‘crazy foreigners’ popped open some soju and passed it around between us on the subway on the way back from a baseball game, our Korean friend that was with us refused to join us even though she drank before that at the game and after that at a bar.

I’ve already talked about the giving up your seat thing. That is definitely a moral struggle young people have to deal with everyday and believe me, the old people are not afraid to make you feel guilty.

Andrew and Lisbeth often talk about their get-out-of-jail-free White Card (WC). They use it all the time even when they don’t want to. They have no choice, their face and skin are a walking talking WC. Because of this, they are forgiven for drinking on the subway, for not giving up their seat to an old person, for talking too loud in places wher eyou’re not supposed to talk loudly, etc because just by looking at them you can tell they’re foreign and don’t know any better.

But I also think their WC separates them from the Korean population somewhat. The people who approach them do so because they want to practice their English, or are fascinated by a foreign culture. People don’t sit by Andrew on the subway for some reason (still haven’t figured that out yet). The other weekend we went to a place by the river to watch the cherry blossoms bloom (which btw hadn’t yet because the temperatures were still regularly below freezing in mid April). We were walking into a restaurant and Andrew was in the lead. As soon as he entered a little boy, who was running around the restaurant apparently on a free-for-all romp, stopped short when he saw Andrew and began to cry. Hilarious WC action working against him.

Anyway, my principal made me re-evaluate my status as a foreigner dressed in Korean clothing today for perhaps the hundredth time. Just thought I’d share.

I’ll leave you with some thoughts on Korean baseball:

1.You don’t get out if they hit you with the ball. I think its because pitchers don’t actually mean to hit you here, its just an accident so there’s no punishment.

2.I don’t think there are any pinch runners. At least, there appeared to be none because the big guys that could hit the ball weren’t rounding the bases very fast and they never subbed anyone in for them.

3.Many of the fans find the cheerleaders and cheers the crowd is doing more entertaining than the actual sport. Everyone buys those inflatable noise bats and beat them to dubbed American music like ‘dancing queen’ by abba and various greenday songs.

The Plague

2010-04-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

The reason I haven’t been updating my blog is because I have had the plague. Well, really I’ve had a couple of recurring sinus infections and an upper respiratory infection, the latter of which put me out for a solid five days (of course I was still societally pressured into work for four of those days…barely managing to find the strength to hand out papers to the kiddies.) All of my strength and energy was temporarily diverted from everything (blog, studying Korean, working on my pathetic lame excuse for a short story, working out, cleaning the bathroom) and channeled toward being able to function outside of bed.

Needless to say, during this time the Korean Health Care System and I became much better acquainted. And this entry has sprung into existence in order to tell you about its Pros and Cons.

But first some history.

Around the fourth grade I got a cold. Up until this point, it was my mother’s philosophy that unless you were running a temperature of over 100 degrees or having a bone stick out of your body, you’d be just fine weathering it out at home with some cough syrup and/or sprite depending on your ailment.

It’s not surprising. My mother shares this philosophy with most Americans who, although they may have money and health insurance now, grew up poor and without the means to pay for doctors’ visits or prescription meds. They were the ones who busted their chins open and had them stitched back up with tiny butterfly band aids. They were the ones who broke their nose because they were bent, table-height, to watch the pool game and the pool ball jumped off the table and smashed them in the face. They were the ones who got a tooth pick stuck—not once, but twice—in their mouth and had to get their mother to reach into their throat and pull it out. All of which happened to my mother.

(My mother at Christmas)

But perhaps the early childhood story that illustrates my point the most is this one:

My mother and her older brother grew up running around outside and playing after school more or less on their own. Not because their parents were particularly neglectful, but because people were more trusting back then. And if you had to work late or on the weekend, or you had to clean the house, the kids were occupying themselves until you called them in for dinner. At least, that’s how it was for my mom. One weekend, my mom and her brother were home alone and mom got stung by a bee. She began to have an allergic reaction, swelling up and all that. She had never been allergic to bees before and neither of them knew what was going on, so Uncle Garry called my grandma at work. “Mom, I think Mary’s sick. She’s swelling up.”

To which Grandma replied, “Put her in the bathtub.” Case in point---her first reaction was not “take her to the hospital to see what’s wrong.”

Uncle Garry put her in the bathtub and mom continued to swell. It eventually got so bad that Uncle Garry called her back. “Mom, Mary says she feels like she’s gonna die.” Grandma finally relented and told Uncle Garry to get the neighbor to take her to the hospital whereupon the doctors saw her and immediately stuck her with an epi pen.

(Grandma and Uncle Garry around Christmastime)

All this to say that my mother does not go to see the doctor about ‘any old thing’ (like we say in the south). And, as a result, neither do I. So when I got a cold in the 4th grade, we prepared to ride it out. I took tissues to school, soccer practice, cheerleading practice. I blew my nose every chance I got. I tried to keep the snot from falling out of my nose every time I did a back handspring. That kind of thing.

The cold lasted through most of my fourth grade year. And when I came down with a fever one night that topped 100 degrees we went to the doctor. The family doctor, the one you have to schedule an appointment for and whose supposed to know your history and all that jazz. We get in, the doctor takes some x-rays of my head and declares that I have one of the worst sinus infections he’s ever seen. He prescribed me some heavy anti biotics and sent me on my way. Within a week or so I was feeling much better.

My mom, whose experience with allergies consisted of the aforementioned bee sting, felt like the worst mother in the world for not taking me into see the doctor sooner. She didn’t know my ‘cold’ was actually allergies that could not be ‘fought’ off like any ordinary virus or bacteria. It had taxed my sinuses for so long that they had become infected and made me really sick.

From then on I suffered one or two sinus infections every year until I finally got allergy tested in high school. Like my mom, I was hesitant of doctors and tests and all that. I avoided allergy testing and shots and instead relied on pills like claritan and zyrtec. When I finally got the shots they changed my life. I was no longer living in allergy hell.

Now I’m in Korea. I’m not getting allergy shots because I didn’t know how to deal with transferring prescriptions and, like I said earlier, I just don’t like to DEAL with all that medical stuff. I guess I still haven’t learned my lesson because now I’m suffering horribly.

(Me out at a bar on the weeknd. I was not up for partying)

I experienced the tell-tale signs of infection about three weeks ago. My co-teacher agreed to take me to the doctor. (She even said she thought she’d like to make an appointment because her throat was a little sore). I felt pretty proud of myself for going to the doctor. I was heading off the infection, taking initiative, not repeating my mistakes.

We went to an ear nose and throat doctor near my school. It was a small office and hardly anyone was waiting, although my co teacher was afraid there would be many people there. The doctor saw us right away. He looked up my nose and poked around a bit. I explained to him in English that I thought there was a sinus infection on its way. My co teacher didn’t really understand what that was, but I think she tried to explain to him the best she could.

After looking in my nose for a while he nodded and seemed to dismiss me. I moved to another chair where they had me put a weird red light thing on my nose for like a minute. My teacher got her throat looked at and, at the end, she leaned over a throat spray thingy and got stuff sprayed in her mouth for a minute. We paid about a dollar twenty each for our visits and trooped downstairs to the pharmacy. There we each paid about three dollars each for pills. I was supposed to take three different pills for three days. My co teacher got some stuff too (for what exactly, I’m not sure).

(Me after being sick for a while. You can see the sore on my nose from where I blew it so much.)

I took the pills. At the end of three days the infection moved into my lungs and I began coughing. This is where it got bad. I began to get feverish and extremely weak. I missed a day of school. I waited it out until my pills from the first doctor were done before I returned to the hospital. This time, I had to go to a big hospital because it was Sunday and all the small clinics were closed. This hospital was slammed with people.

I had to go up to a large counter and get a number, then sit and wait for my number to be called like at a Sears or JC Penny’s customer service desk. Then I went up to the desk to tell them my ailment, I guess they put my name in the computer on a list for a specialized doctor. I paid them a couple dollars and they sent me into another waiting room with a ton of people. I waited there for about twenty to thirty minutes. It was weird. We were all waiting in a central room with doors for different specialized doctors all around.

I went in to see the doctor, she listened to me breath through the stethoscope for a minute, listened to my self-diagnosis, and prescribed me some meds. The whole actual doctors’ visit took about five minutes. The whole process itself (I had to get another number in the bigger waiting room to check out) took about an hour. I went to the pharmacy and paid three dollars for a shit ton of pills. And when I say shit ton, I mean enough to take six different pills three times a day for ten days plus a bottle of cough syrup.

I took these and immediately felt my cough get better. AT the end of it I could tell the infection had moved out of my lungs, but now its back in my sinuses. I get sinus headaches everyday, I have to do a sinus rinse often. Its probably just Spring in Korea (it just now got warm enough for the blossoms to come out), but with all the antibiotics they were giving me, my body should not have been prone to infection that soon.

(Crash!)

From this experience, I will now tell you the pros and cons of the Korean medical system as I see it.

Pros:

1. Cheap Cheap Cheap!

My whole experience cost me under ten dollars. Perhaps a better example is Andrew, my boyfriend. He broke his wrist snowboarding. He had to go see two different doctors for preliminary examinations of his wrist, Plus had to get a cast on his wrist AND see the doctor twice for x-rays. The cast isn’t off yet, but the whole ordeal has cost him, as of now, under two hundred dollars. CRAZY.

2. Visits are fast

One of the first things Andrew said about seeing the doctor for his wrist was that it was amazingly fast and efficient. My own experience the first time I went to the ear nose and throat clinic was amazingly quick. I was in and out of the doctor’s office in thirty minutes. My co teacher and I even let school grounds to do it and were back before the school days was over.
Cons:

1. Quality may be sacrificed for Quickness

Although we were in and out quickly, neither Andrew nor I are feeling 100% better. In Andrew’s case, he happened to break a bone that takes a long time to heal. In my case, I think the meds they gave me were ineffective. Plus, I don’t believe they took time to examine thoroughly, especially when I went to the big hospital for my respiratory infection. This surprised me, because the language barrier prevented me from adequately explaining my situation. I thought, therefore, that they would take the extra time to examine me to prevent misdiagnosis.

2. Overperscription of meds

It has been my experience that doctors in Korea overperscribe meds like crazy. I think this is partly because they’re so cheap. Everyone can afford them so why not? But also, I think it has to do with the fact that Koreans feel better with a diagnosis and meds.

It has to do with the culture. I’ve noticed Koreans always like to prescribe a reason for things, even if the reason is not well thought out or based in fact. For example, Koreans like to say that the reason they didn’t get SARS when the other asian countries did was because of the healing powers of Kimchi. Also, whenever a kid is misbehaving in class, they like to say its because he/she probably has family problems at home even if that teacher knows nothing about that child’s family life.

I think it’s the same with medicine. They’re sick, they want to know why and theyw ant to be doing something about it. My co-teacher and her sore throat are a good example. She wasn’t really sick. She just went because it made her feel like she was doing something to get over her fatigue and sore throat (probably resulting from having to teach all day and yell at kids). My friend, Lisbeth, is another good example. She called in sick to school one day because she was tired and didn’t feel like going in. When she told her school, they said she had to have a doctor’s excuse. So she went to the doctor and made up some B.S. about “stomach problems” (of course there is still the language barrier and all that). The doctor diagnosed her with an infection of the large intestine and prescribed her meds!

Random List of the Day:

1.My co teacher just told me that we’re going on a faculty field trip at 1 o’clock. I wore a skirt and flats with holes in them to school today. I asked her when they found out about this field trip and she said “Yesterday, but we didn’t think we’d go because the forecast said it was going to rain. But it didn’t rain. So I guess we’re going.” To which I replied “I wish you had told me about the possibility yesterday so I could have brought extra shoes along.”

2.Its getting warmer in Seoul, but the temperatures are still pretty low. Like the low fifties and getting down into the forties at night. For a while, we felt like spring would never come (a week ago temperatures were still below freezing) The Koreans say this is the longest winter they’ve had in 100 years. Global Warming?

MEGA harsh

2010-04-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

This is the story of my grandparents.

My grandfather, Kim Joo-taek, was the third youngest son of a fairly wealthy family in North Korea before the Korean War. They lived somewhat near Pyongyang by what is now the DMZ line. He had two older brothers and four younger sisters. During the Japanese occupation of Korea (in the years preceding the Korean War), his oldest brother became lost in Japan.

I have interpreted the term ‘lost’ in many different ways since I’ve been in Korea. The official story (from Halmony…my grandmother) was that the older brother was taken to Japan because the Japanese knew of his brilliance in some sort of science or math related field. This story is suspicious to me, however, because we were never allowed to talk openly about him in the family. My mother didn’t even know of his existence for a long time. I don’t think his name is on the family head stone at the cemetery. That kind of stuff. If he was taken involuntarily for some sort of extraordinary ability or intelligence, then it seems to me that we would honor him, or pity him at the least. But to pretend as if he doesn’t exist, that seems harsh even for strict Korean value standards.

A story closer to the truth might be that, during the time of Japanese occupation, he went there voluntarily. He was the first son of a semi-wealthy family. It would make sense that some Koreans made partnerships or friendships with the Japanese. I’m not even sure if it would have been seen as a betrayal of the family at the time that it happened. At any rate, as the years passed and the war uprooted the family, loyalties changed and this brother became ‘lost’ or, perhaps more like Halmony put it, dead. Who knows? Maybe I have some Japanese relatives out there.

Anyway, war broke out in the 1950s, of course. As I understand it, Halbodgee’s family took a while to decide to flee. The trains were already shut down. They were a bit further south so I suppose they could afford to wait longer. Also, it seems like they may have had a lot to lose—their land, their house, their estate. My Halbodgee’s second oldest brother fled ahead of the family to the south. That left Halbodgee, at age 16, as the oldest functioning male in the family. His father was so old that they had to leave him behind when they fled.

I’m not sure where his family settled or how my grandfather was able to go to the best college in Korea. (There are three colleges in Korea that are like our Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Those are Yonsei Univ, Korea Univ, and Seoul National Univ. Koreans call it SKY. Of the three, only Seoul National Univ. is a state school. The other two are private. Its, therefore, much cheaper to obtain an education at Seoul National Univ. Koreans let a lot ride on those schools’ reputations. For example, when I came to Korea, Halmony told me to make sure to mention to my superiors at my school that my grandfather went to Seoul National Univ. and that he was a doctor...:-p. Also, if you ever have the privilege to go on a blind date with a Korean, one of the first questions they ask you will be “Do you go to SKY?”)

(My cousin and I dressed in traditional Korean Hanboks for a photo.)

My grandmother, or Halmony, has a little less traditional story. She was the product of an affair between a married man and his mistress. She was born in China; however, Halmony claims her father is Korean.

At some point Halmony and her mother moved back to Korea and away from her father (on the northern border of the peninsula right next to China). Now to give you some idea of the fluidity and politics behind Korean family history, the original story I was told by Halmony was that her mother and father divorced when she was young. I learned this story later from cousins and confirmed it through my mom at a later date. Anyway, at that point in time in Korea, it was very unfortunate to be a child without a father. It was even more unfortunate to be a child unrecognized by her father. And it was extremely unfortunate that she was a girl.

Family is important in Korea, and the fact that Halmony had no ‘official’ family left her with no ‘official’ place in the social hierarchy. Eventually, Halmony’s mother met another man and they tried to get married (let’s call Halmony’s mother G.G. for great grandmother and her man S.G. for step grandfather).

S.G.’s mother had a problem with G.G. (I’m not sure why, other than the fact that I get the feeling that she was kind of weird). G.G. was afraid that if S.G.’s mother found out about Halmony, she would keep them from getting married. So she told Halmony to go away and forget that she was her mother.

MEGA harsh. I mean, who deserves that? She didn’t ask to be born into existence. Anyway, this further proves my theory that G.G. was weird and cold.

Halmony went to live with her grandmother (G.G.G.?). Meanwhile, G.G. and S.G. got married and begot four children. Halmony helped raise them and was (I guess?) still involved in the family.

Anyway, Halmony eventually scored big and married Halbodgee, who was, I suppose, a catch for her economic and family situation. They met when a cousin or something introduced them. I don’t know, it’s all very vague. But they had two sons, my dad and uncle, and left Korea four years after my father was born. The story doesn’t really get interesting again until forty odd years later when a small miracle arrives in the form of a granddaughter…

(Halmony in front of a Korean exhibit in Washington DC)

List of CRAP things that have been going on lately

1.I’ve had the plague for over a week now. Two rounds of antibiotics and hospital trips. No going out on the weekends. Its depressing.

2.I just found out I have to teach an after school class once a week for two hours. That adds my total teaching hours to 25 hours a week. I already feel like I can barely handle the energy required to teach my class load. Almost everyday I teach classes straight from 9-2 with a break for lunch except on Wednesdays. So whatever day they decide to put my after school class on I’ll be teaching straight through the day.

3.I have an open class in a couple of weeks in which the administration and supervisors of the district are supposed to come in and watch. So we have to have a super awesome lesson plan and stress etc. But the thing is, no one speaks English, so they never wanna come in and watch English class. So we’re just doing it to satisfy some bureaucrats that won’t bother to check if we’re actually doing the class or not.

4.I miss my friends in TN a lot right now. The weather is FINALLY getting warm in Seoul (last week it was still freezing temperatures!) and I keep thinking about walking around the Fort and hanging out with friends and opening up all the windows in apt. 7. I’m coming back to K-town next year…will you be there?

5.Mom is coming at the end of the month! So excited.

Teacher, He's Crazy!

2010-03-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you about Korean classroom discipline.

It’s Friday. Its still cold and icy in the middle of March. I can’t believe it, but I’m actually yearning for the rainy, mud puddle East Tennessee Marches that, although damp, were warm enough to wear sandals and shorts. I got all nostalgic for my flip flops--the ones that shot rain water dirt up the backs of my legs on my way to class last spring.

Now, on my way to a different kind of class, I try to avoid the iced over puddles sitting slick between the holes in the gravel, my winter boots not quite keeping my toes from feeling the cold. On my ways to class I have to dodge kids, ice, mud. Mud mud mud because our school is under construction and Seoul citizens don't understand the value of grass.

Fridays are bittersweet: I’ve got the weekend just around the corner (a sweet ass St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Itaewon where my friend Ian is making his DJ debut), but to get there I’ve got to teach five classes of fifth graders. On our way to class 5-6, Jenny (my co-teacher) reminds me that this class has the infamous ADHD kid lurking in its midst.

(Me, my friend Ian and some of his girlfriends at Roofers in Itaewon. It was a combined St. Patrick's Day Party and 6th month anniversary for those of us who arrived at the end of August.)

Now I’ve heard about this “ADHD” kid. The students say he’s crazy. The teachers pity and slightly fear him. They often talk about “the boy with the disease" who is supposedly taking his medicine to no effect.

I don’t know what the big deal’s about. I come from the good ole' land of the free-to-have-whatever-disease-you-want. It seems to me like every other kid in school had ADD or ADHD. Hell, we even knew the medicine names—Ritalin was fashionable in elementary school...sometime around late middle school Adderall became the new drug of choice. We knew that ADHD kids were just like us, if not a bit more fidgety, and simply needed an outlet for all their energy. They weren’t dumber than us. They weren’t crazy.

Jenny and I get to our classroom late in typical Korean-style fashion. This suits me just fine because every minute late is a minute less that I have to teach. We begin our lesson and it goes pretty well. I recognize some students from the fourth grade who were pretty high level and usually say hello to me in the hall. Our lessons are set up like this:

Introduction: Hello class./Hello Teacher….How are you?....How’s the weather?

Development: Introduce students to lesson material. Do the CD from the book which consists of dialogs and repetition exercises. Play a game.

We get to the game activity at the end of every class. This particular game required us to put the students in groups of four. Then each group was supposed to write down as many responses to “How are you?” in English that they could think of in a specified amount of time. Usually, this meant assigning one student to be the writer in each group. Having some students write while the others contributed orally served both the advanced kids and the lower level kids' interests. At the end, we would tally the scores on the board and give the winners a stamp in a chart at the back of the book.

So there’s one winner and six losers. We had just declared the winner and moved onto the next activity, when the ADHD boy began tearing up his partner’s papers and throwing them all over the ground. Several students turned around to watch. I stopped talking, thinking Jenny would discipline him. Jenny, however, tried to continue class. So it was like this: Jenny trying to teach up at the front of the classroom, drawing the students' attention to the tv screen, while the boy went on a silent tearing rampage in the back of the classroom. He tore up the girl’s worksheets and kicked her chair, shoved her and threw her pencils on the ground. I, apparently, could do little more than stand off to the side with my mouth open, looking as if I might do something. Finally I told Jenny “I think we should do something about that.”

She sighed and walked over to where the boy and girl were sitting. But instead of removing him from the classroom, Jenny took the girl from her seat and brought her over to the other side of the room where she stood awkwardly in the upper front corner.

ADHD boy began throwing the girl’s pencils, books, bag and jacket onto the floor. This made the girl, who was now the center of attention at the front of the classroom, begin to cry. Jenny, again, stood by the girl and wasn’t sure what to do. So I said, “Jenny, if you want to take him out of the classroom I’ll continue class on my own.”

Note: Us foreign teachers had no prior training on classroom management. When I asked questions about classroom management to veteran foreign teachers and SMOE administration, the general response I got was to “let the Korean teachers handle it.” It’s a weird time for Korean classroom management because physical punishment was just made illegal and there is no other system emerging to take its place. Furthermore, most teachers still use this form of punishment even though they’re not supposed to.

So anyway, by the time Jenny decided to follow my advice about the boy’s removal from the classroom, he had begun to hit other students around him. (By hit I mean hit in the chest and shoulders. Also, the students would grab his hands and they would push against each other as if in a test of strength). Some students were picking up the girl’s stuff and holding onto it to save it from the ADHD boy’s wrath. Higher level english language students were apologizing to me, saying “Sorry teacher, he’s crazy. I’m sorry you have to see this.”

After a while, it became apparent that Jenny was simply hovering around him. We had wasted a full twenty minutes of class time and our period was almost over. I managed to ask Jenny why she wasn’t removing him from the classroom. She replied “He’s too strong.” I was debating on whether or not I to just pick the boy up kicking and screaming and carry him out of the classroom, but I decided against it. I didn’t want his parents to accuse me of anything, and I didn’t feel like I could adequately defend myself (because of the language barrier) should his parents complain to the administration that I somehow acted with misconduct. I suggested that we call a male teacher to come in and help us with the boy, but Jenny replied that the homeroom teacher of this class would be back soon (like we were holding out, waiting for someone who could control him to come back).

Right around the time some of the boys from the classroom were getting up to help restrain the rogue boy, the homeroom teacher returned. She was about 5’5 and weighed 90 lbs. Jenny looked relieved. If the circumstances were different I would have laughed.

The homeroom teacher managed to drag the boy outside by grappling with him. She wrestled both arms under his arm pits and more or less hustled him into the hall. A couple of boys from the class helped clear the way (because all the children were up out of their seats by this point) and a couple more were helping her carry him out. Once they got out into the hall, several students rushed the door. I finally opened my mouth and told them all to sit down and close the door, but not before a few of them went out into the hall. Once we had finally gotten the class to settle down Jenny told me it was time for us to leave. So we left.

Outside in the hall, Jenny talked to the homeroom teacher who gave up her struggle and let go of ADHD boy. He immediately lumbered back into the room and started shoving students around. I told Jenny I’d meet her back at the office and got the eff outta there.

For me, that class period was hell because I felt that it was completely out of control. Later I learned that the general consensus was that his homeroom teacher was so skinny because the ADHD boy ran her ragged. (I saw her last year, she was just as much of a stick then as now). I felt like there were several things wrong with this situation and I will now list them:

1.“ADHD” is not a correct diagnosis, or at least it’s an incomplete diagnosis, for this boy's condition. ADHD is simply a term for diagnosing someone who has trouble paying attention and has excessive energy. Not someone who has targeted rage episodes at a peer for half an hour in the middle of class.

2.the reason this child is misdiagnosed probably has something to do with the fact that mental illness is not readily or openly discussed in Korea. Up until recently it was something one ignored or, if it was too big of a problem to be ignored, kept out of public site. This means there is probably insufficient research into mental health issues, especially issues pertaining specifically to the Korean population and the added cultural effects of Confucianism.

3.The home room teacher was obviously not equipped to deal with this boy’s classroom interruptions. The boy should have been assigned to a male home room teacher’s classroom.

4. There should have been a method set in place by the administration for dealing with this kind of situation or misbehavior. There was no recourse available to the homeroom teacher. She couln’t take the boy anywhere when he was interrupting class. There is no “taking you to the principal’s office” option in Korean Elementary Schools. The administration is above such duties. There is no detention room or even school officials to deal with this kind of severe misbehavior. In most cases, there is not even a classroom disciplinary code in effect. Teachers usually avoid discipline by instituting a merit system instead. Or they discipline on a case by case basis.

Now, I want to address why there is no set disciplinary code in the classrooms. I think one reason is that Koreans expect that the students will discipline each other. By this I mean that there is always an all important and dominating SHAME factor. Well-behaved students are expected to keep their not-so-well behaved friends and colleagues in line. And students, for the most part, do this because they are worried about how their class as a whole looks to the teacher, to outsiders, to their parents and to the administration. For example, in the situation above, the students kept apologizing to me over and over. They were worried about how this one boy made their class as a whole look. They tried to make him seem like a rogue figure, calling him ‘crazy boy.’ When he got out of hand, the 10 year old boys in class felt it was their duty to help their homeroom teacher by helping to manhandle the boy out the door.

There is one third grade class in particular where two boys sit up front kind of close to where I stand to teach. One of them is a good student and is usually quiet, but he’s friends with another boy who sits behind him. This boy likes to talk a lot while I’m talking and rock in his seat and do generally bad boy stuff. I know that all I have to do is look at that boy when he is turned around or talking and his friend in front of him will smack his desk and tell him to pay attention. I mean, crazy, right?

The crime rate in Korea is very low. The Koreans contribute this to the fact that there are no guns allowed in Korea. But I think it’s because of the SHAME factor. People don’t commit crimes because they are afraid that if they get caught, the shame brought on them and their family would be unbearable.

The suicide rate in Korea is very high. Young people, in the prime of their lives, often kill themselves during college or even high school exam week because they are afraid of failing their parents. There is a sort of urban legend story about students at a prestigious school in Seoul who got caught smoking cigarettes at their school and all jumped off a building. SHAME is potent stuff.

Here is my random list of the day:

1.The Yellow Dust came to Korea. It clouded out the sun and reminded me of the Matrix (remember that the future humans had to block out the sun so the machines couldn’t function anymore? But then the machines just used humans?) Anyway, all the Koreans stayed inside because they said it was super bad for your lungs and stuff. I didn’t notice anything except for the fact that the whole damn day (which was a Saturday wouldn’t you know?)was depressing as hell.

2.I have my first Korean test in like an hour! I’m so excited. I hope I pass. I studied a lot yesterday but didn’t study today because I wrote this post instead. Fail. I don’t have class next week but I’m not telling my school because I still wanna leave school early. (they gave me permission to leave early for Korean class)

3.I ordered my bride’s maid dress for lucie’s wedding!!!!!!!!!!

(Here are my choices for bride's maids dresses. which one do you think is better?)

4.I just got back from a third grade class. A boy was pestering a girl all period…flipping her the bird and calling her fat. Yong-eun simply kept yelling at him to turn back around in his seat and sit down, but didn’t draw attention to the fact that he was calling the girl names or anything. She bore up well under his constant torment and kept playing the game (usually kids who are being made fun of start crying or shut down and put their head on their desk). Ultimately, Yong-eun ended up using her rewards system to punish him. We have a chart in which we have each third grade class represented by their class number. The class numbers move up the chart according to how good they are. If they are bad, the class numbers fall. Right after this boy kept talking, she moved this class’s number down below all the others. Immediately the class fell silent and another boy began chastising the mean boy. On our way out, the kids (who usually say goodbye and get up to put their books away) was quiet, and the kids sat still as if waiting for us to leave.

5. I just bit into a rice cake and it spewed rice cake juice (???) all over my computer. The Rice cake was a present from someone to the teachers, not sure who.

6. For more information on ADHD, here is a helpful photodocumentary i stumbled upon:

http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/slideshow-adhd-in-children

OhMiGod Korea

2010-03-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

So I was leaving from Itaewon (the foreigner district) last week and I experienced the ultimate in Korean subway annoyances. Let me start from the beginning…

The trip started off okay. I had just left Neel and some others behind at the Wolfhound’s bar. On our way to the subway, Lisbeth and I spotted the holy grail of advertisements: a 20 ft banner advertising Taco Bell’s imminent return to South Korea (It had been here briefly and left after Taco Bell execs realized Koreans didn’t know what to do with on-the-go burritos and low grade meat tacos. Lisbeth and I were floored, and paused to take pictures and engage in what I like to call “foreigner-volume-level” exclamations.

Anyway, I got on the subway, rode the line 6 to my transfer at Dongmyo station, and broke into a Korean-style light jog in order to make my train on line 1 (which was sorta fun with my Wolfhound buzz). When I got there, however, I realized this train’s last station was Cheongyangni--the station right before mine. This happens to me about 40% of the time so I was willing to let this annoyance fizzle out a little even though it was late on a weeknight and I still had to hydrate and watch Gossip Girl before bed.

So I waited for the next rain in a semi-patient state. There’s an electronic board at most of the newer subway stations that shows if there are any trains at the two previous stops before the one you’re at. As the Cheongyangni train pulled away, another one popped up on the board.

While I waited, I occupied myself by trying to find the exact subway car door exit at Dongmyo that would open up at Hoegi by the escalators. This is very important, because if I’m in the right one—the car whose door opens right by the escalators---I can exit the subway train and jump right on the moving stairs without having to deal with Koreans cutting me off, or old Ajummahs disobeying the subway escalator etiquette and riding instead of walking up the left side of the steps.

Then, three things happen in quick succession:
The next train pulls into the station.
The loudspeaker announces that this is the train’s last stop.
I throw my head back and grumble at foreigner-volume-level.

Right around the time the third train rolls around (bound for a station past mine thank God), John Kennedy calls…my friend from TN, not the president. I haven’t talked to him in at least a month, and the first words he hears amidst the static and delay of our phone call are “Ohmigod Korea”…or something like that.

I board the third train (in what I hope is the ‘money’ subway car that will let me off at the magic exit). I have to stand up because there are no seats, but I don’t mind because I’m only four stops away and I’m talking to John Kennedy. We pull up to Cheongyangni, the stop right before mine, and everyone who had to get off of the previous train crowds onto ours. This makes the subway so crowded that there is barely standing room. Also, an old man gets on.

This man is not old old, just a little old. Old enough to get off work and get smashed at dinner on Soju and Malkali with his co-workers, or old enough to be newly forced to retire and bored with nothing to do except get smashed at dinner on Soju and Malkali with his other friends who have been forced to retire. Hell, who am I kidding? After you pass high school age in Korea everybody gets smashed at dinner on Soju and Malkali!

Anyway, this guy had had a bit more than the average Korean who usually just gets on the subway, swaying slightly, and smelling like he’d dumped a whole bottle of Soju on his pants by accident when the barbecue grill sputtered at dinner and he jumped, knocking the alcohol and a pound of kimchee and possibly garlic on his lap. This guy was leaning with his forehead against the doors, and, as the subway transferred from the underground track to the above-ground railroad tracks, he started holding his mouth with his hands, pinching his lips together.

As if this wasn’t enough, a girl was standing behind me pushing against my back, saying “Chamshinmanyon” (or at least, that’s how it sounds) which is something Koreans say when they want you to move or want you to wait on something. In this case, I think she wanted me to move. But my stop was the next stop, and, in any case, even if I had wanted to move there would have been nowhere to go. Nevertheless, the girl kept pushing and saying “Chamshinmanyon, Chamshinmanyon” to anyone who would listen…and people weren’t because everyone standing near the door was, get this, getting off at the next station. Can you imagine? Why would you stand by the door if you were getting off? That doesn’t make sense. If you’re getting off, wouldn’t you stand back in the middle and wait until right before your stop comes up, then start pushing on people’s backs saying “Chamshinmanyon” assuming that you’re the only person who wants to get off at this upcoming transfer station?

So there’s Chamshinmanyon girl pushing from behind me and the not-so-old guy about to puke all over the door everyone’s about to exit out of in front of me. Also there’s John on the phone listening to me bitch about everything.

When the train finally pulls into the station I see that I have grossly miscalculated the ‘money spot’ subway car and end up about five cars away from the escalators. But that doesn’t matter because Chamshinmanyon girl pushes me from behind as we get out so that I’m propelled forward at a speed that allows me to make up for the lost ground.

Finally I manage to get through the turn styles at Hoegi without falling victim to what I like to call the ‘Korean veering Phenomenon.”

Korean Veering Phenomenon: A phenomenon that occurs in Korea, especially in public places, in which Koreans utilize a sixth sense that allows them to detect when a foreigner is approaching them from behind at a pace quicker than the pace they are walking. This sense also allows them to detect the angle and direction from which they are approaching. Koreans often use this knowledge to veer gradually toward the right or left such that the foreigner runs out of space and can no longer pass them. You know KVP has occurred when you see a foreigner walking closely behind a Korean watching TV on their cell phone. (I myself experienced KVP the other day when I was trying to catch a subway train and had to round a corner to go down some steps. There was a large crowd of people coming up the steps in the opposite direction. There was just enough room between the wall and the crowd of people to squeeze around the corner and make it down the steps, but an old man (ajoshi) came out of nowhere and KVPed me into the wall. I ended up sort of side shuffling along with my arms spread wide until I made it around the corner and was able to run down the stairs)

That night after dinner in Itaewon, the missed subway cars, the almost-puking guy, and the Chamshinmanyon girl, I managed to make it out of the turn styles at Hoegi station without falling victim to KVP. Usually after this, I’m home free. All I have to do is walk a straight line the twenty feet or so out the door.

So remember, I was talking on the phone to John K., walking my straight line, when a small girl/woman runs into my left shoulder. Her head’s down. I can’t see her face. She makes no move to go around me. I think, “if I keep walking in a straight line and this girl keeps moving forward in her own direction, she will come unstuck from me and go on her way.” Because that’s what we were: stuck. It’s like she wasn’t a human but some sort of rag doll programmed to walk a certain way and then the programmer died and forgot to do give her a brain. (okay that’s harsh, but still).

I keep walking forward, and she sort of let’s herself be carried along with me. Her head’s on my shoulder and we kind of walk together for three or four steps. Then her boyfriend (I guess) swoops in and kind of ushers her away, saying something I assume was an apology.

Hey kids, its just another day in Korea. An especially bad one, and one that can be avoided if you avoid the subway, but a normal day nonetheless.

I had other stuff to tell you guys besides this story, but I got so bogged down by everything I forgot.

Here’s a list of things random happenings:

1.A 3rd grader stood up in class and asked “May I speak Korean now?”

2.There is a character in our 3rd grade textbook named “Lisa” who is an African American cartoon girl with dread locks. In the CD rom accompaniment to the book, however, the actress that plays “Lisa” is Indian (from India).

3.I guess I’ve been sleeping weird lately. When I stood up to go to the bathroom the other night I immediately dropped to the floor because my foot was asleep. Weird.

Thank God my co-teacher is a capable human being.

2010-03-10T21:53:00.000-08:00

Thank God my co-teacher is a capable human being.

We’re a new team, her and I, and I was anxious about how well we’d work together. We do fifth grade, nine classes, at the end of every week. She’s new to the school, she’s young, and I didn’t have high expectations because when we planned out our lesson together she seemed to follow pretty close to the lesson plan recommended in the book-- which tends to be a bit dry and suggests games for students that are unrealistic because either the students’ level isn’t high enough or because they are not well behaved enough to handle the relaxed classroom atmosphere the game requires. Plus, her previous position as a teacher in Nowon probably meant that she taught higher level students who were probably relatively well behaved.

Side note: In order to understand the different levels of students one may encounter in the Seoul school system you must have the following background information: Most of the higher education level/higher economic level students that go to our Elementary School move to Nowon in middle school to get a better public school education because there is more money flowing into the school system there. This phenomenon happens all over the city even though the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education requires teachers and administration to rotate randomly to a new school every five years to help keep education levels equal. The discrepancies in quality of education probably happen because of the different levels of income. Higher income areas send their kids to expensive after school academies, have higher parent involvement in school activities and I suppose have more money in their budgets for classroom equipment. When you ask someone in Seoul where the ‘bad’ areas of the city are, they will tell you areas in which the education is poorer because, let’s face it, there is really no unsafe areas in this city.)

Needless to say, I felt that my new co-teacher had had the life up in Nowon and was dreadfully unprepared for the roughness of our student population. But The Powers That Be must have felt I deserved a break because she blew me away.

She had behavioral chants for them to say when they began to act up. She had them bow hello and goodbye. She had them make nametags with their English names on them and display them on their desks. In short, she was MegaTeacher.

Fifth grade went by swimmingly, and I felt myself beginning to enjoy getting to know them.

Here are some more random happenings:

1.The third graders absolutely hated the names Rose and Sam. Sam means “fountain” in Korean. I’m not sure why they didn’t like Rose, but one girl begged me to change her name. She even took the time to think through an English plea: “Please teacher, I don’t like this name.” When I took up the nametag, she put it in my hand and said “I don’t like this!” It was like I was calling her Crap or Butthead.

2.When I asked the fifth graders to name any states they knew, I got the following responses: Guam, L.A., Miami, Mexico, London

3.My Co-teacher kept telling the kids that San Fransisco was a state.

4.I took my first Korean class yesterday. It was taught completely in Korean by a rather attractive Korean man. He had a doll made up of two pandas connected by a string. When you pulled them apart, they made cute noises and a little song played. He used this doll to demonstrate something or other. The funny part is, he thought the panda dolls were the cutest/funniest/most entertaining thing. He kept pulling them apart and laughing even though to us (a class full of westerners…Germans, French, Egyptian, American, etc.) it was only slightly funny the first time. The entertaining effect the Korean teacher was going for worked, however, because we thought his fascination with the pandas was funny.

5.Andrew Dillon broke his wrist snow boarding a couple of weeks ago. Since then, he has decided to continue working out one side of his body.

(Andrew Dillon making the "L" for loser sign. He claims he was scratching his eyebrow in contemplation.)

Respectful Barriers

2010-03-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you about something that happened to me this morning.

To begin, I was told that today I’d only have to teach two out of four classes because the kids were having class elections (a couple of days ago they all marched around the school with signs and posters and chants…). So last night I decided to celebrate with a couple of G&Ts and some beer with dinner—Lisbeth left my apartment saying “when I turn my head like this you have four eyes”.

(Neel and I eating Galbi (Korean BBQ), one of our favorite meals in Seoul)

When I get to school, I find out we have to teach all the classes. The reason for this is that the homeroom teachers can choose to hold class elections during different time periods than the officially scheduled ones. Their incentive to do this is that they want the kids to have English class because when they have English class the homeroom teacher gets to leave the classroom and take a break. So they call up the English teachers and “ask” them to come in and teach English that day. I put on all my best powers of persuasion and told my co-teacher, Yong-eun, that I thought that was kind of mean. She managed to get us out of one class but the other one was taught by a male teacher who was in charge of overseeing her duties as coordinator of after school classes.

This is third period. So right before we’re supposed to go to class, Yong-eun tells me she has a meeting to go to, and she’ll meet me up there. When I get up there, the kids are in full swing craziness, screaming “hello teacher” as soon as I get in the room, up out of the seats, drawing on the board, etc. Yong-eun tells me she has to go back to the meeting because it started late and was taking longer than expected and could I please entertain the students until she got back? Here are some things you should know before I continue the story:

1.This class is a third grade class. Third grade is the first year students are officially introduced to English.

2.This is the first English lesson this class has ever had.

3.I’ve never taught a third grade class by myself.

4.The homeroom teacher of this class is male. As a general rule, classes taught by male teachers are usually not as well behaved.

Needless to say, I had a very hard time entertaining them for the thirty minutes she was gone. I searched for “funny animal videos” on youtube and put them up on the screen. Kids asked to go to the bathroom and I had to tell them know by forming an “x” with my hands and leading them back to their seats. It was a night mare.

This whole situation makes me upset not because I feel as if my co-teacher left me in the lurch, but because of the reasons behind why she had to go to the meeting.

She was meeting with her after school committee of teachers because, on top of her responsibilities as an English teacher, she’s also in charge of after school classes (which she doesn’t teach). Her committee consists of her, a head teacher (the homeroom teacher of the class I was currently suffering in) the vice principal and another sixth grade homeroom teacher that was assigned to help Yong-eun. There are several reasons why this meeting was ridiculous:

1.The meeting had to be held in the third period, a time when Yongeun had class. We had just had an hour break before that in which she could have had the meeting; however, the meeting was probably arbitrarily set up by the vice principal and to have it changed at the last minute would have been seen as disrespectful to the VP. Lame.

2.The meeting took longer than expected because the sixth grade homeroom teacher that was supposed to help Yongeun dared to complain about her added workload. This was unforeseen because no one is ever supposed to complain or have negative feedback about anything except the administration. The Vice Principal was angry about her disrespectfulness. Yongeun was mad about the sixth grade teacher not taking her share of the work. The head teacher was mad because the VP’s solution was to assign the head teacher more of the work.

Now, the sixth grade teacher is new to the school, which puts her at the bottom of the totem pole which is why she was assigned to sixth grade (the worst grade) and to extra after school program work. BUT, she is also an older lady, which earns her some respect and is probably why she felt she could talk back to the VP.

The head teacher is male which automatically puts him at the top of the totem pole. Also, head teachers and positions of higher authority generally have less responsibility than their underlings.

This leaves poor Yong-eun at the bottom of the totem pole, overseeing a program that she has no concern for and no experience with just because she’s young and female and, therefore, least likely to argue.

Also, this leaves poor me, overseeing a third grade class that does not have the slightest idea what I’m trying to tell them and whose first experience of English class is funny animal videos and poor classroom management.

There is one more thing I want to cover. In general, the number of male teachers in elementary schools is much lower than female teachers; however, they almost always occupy a position of authority. Principals are almost always male and VPs are like seventy percent male. Male teachers are usually head teachers of their grades or programs (like the after school one). Our current English head teacher is a male home room teacher who doesn’t speak a word of English. Further, most of the time classes that have male homeroom teachers generally tend to be less well behaved. The men don’t concentrate on their classes or teaching, rather they try to scale the administrative ladder. There are exceptions, of course. One male teacher in particular I like really well. He’s a good teacher and his classes both respect him and like him.

To conclude, here is a list of random happenings I thought you might find amusing:

1.Instead of trying to separate the fish meat from the bone, I have resigned myself to eating fish bones during school lunches.

2.When my third graders got their English names, most of them liked the names “Jennie, Abby, Hannah and Lisa” They didn’t like “Jade or Patrick”

3.I wanted someone to be named Bob, but in Korean it translates to “bap” which is the Korean word for “rice.” Yongeun said no one would go for that.

4.Today the kids followed me all the way down the hall saying “goodbye” and waving.

5.I had to sprint yesterday to make my bus home. When I finally got on the bus, the bus driver made some exclamatory comments which I didn’t understand, and when I didn’t respond, kept saying them louder and louder until I just ducked my head and pretended to text someone on the phone.

Afternoon in a Haze

2010-03-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

OMG. So I’m updating my blogs now in Word and transferring the whole thing over to Blogger because I don’t trust my school computer. Here are a few reasons why:

1.I am unable to select and hold a desktop background. Everytime I try to put a picture up or a nice rustic country scene the whole thing goes black within the hour. The school computer guy thinks I’m Goth or computer-retarded or something because whenever he comes in to look at something on my computer he sets a new pic for the background and tells my co-teacher, who informs me, that I can change the background if I want. It takes all my self control not to laugh helplessly in his face.

2.Explorer will only sometimes run certain websites like Facebook or blogger. Depending on the day I think. On Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays it will operate them with great efficiency. On Tuesdays and Thursdays it will refuse to operate the websites at all, and send me an “error” message instead. Every week day Mozilla will run everything slowly and laboriously, sometimes causing me to force quit the application.

3.My computer takes a good 3-5 minutes to start up every morning. The screen is black. When my co-teachers see this they come over and start clicking the mouse furiously as if this is the first time my computer is slow in getting started. I try to explain the fact that this is normal routine computer procedure and we just have to wait it out. I’m still not sure whether they just don’t understand me or they too think I’m computer retarded. The thing about Korea is, “do first, ask questions later.” (Click furiously, take time to dissect the foreign teacher’s ramblings later.) Another thing you could say about Korea is that the population as a whole (from what I’ve seen) has a much lower understanding of computer operating systems. For example, my co teachers frequently yank out my USB without properly ejecting it, causing me to cringe and ask if they could eject it next time. To which they nod agreeably, and then replicate the action next time. (What’s the foreign teacher saying again? Eh, whatever.)

4.There is a message that appears every so often that tells me there is a possibility I’m running a counterfeit copy of Windows and would I like to be a good PC user and purchase a real copy? I think this is where most of my problems stem. It seems that in their efforts to acquire an English operating system for my computer, they somehow acquired a copy instead of the real thing. The computer guy must have then unknowingly ran a system update which detected the fraud and injected the ‘EFF you illegal software user’ package onto my computer. Usually, I’m okay with this minor annoyance. But when my desktop disappears on my computer and all I’m left with is the current open windows I’m working out of, I get frustrated. I try to amp up my efforts to explain things to the computer guy. So far, I think he just thinks I’m a moron.

So now that you know the conditions I’m working under, I’ll begin with a somewhat quick update on my life.

School has now begun again in full swing. I had five classes today, three in the morning and two after lunch. Luckily, they’re all third graders. On Thursday and Friday I’ve got fifth and I have no idea how I’ll make it through the day. I have to give so much energy to speak and hold class attention for five hours. I’m dead tired now.

I hate this feeling because it hinders what I can accomplish outside of school. I’ve always got big plans post-school like working out, having dinner with friends, finally cleaning my bathroom. But I usually end up watching arrested development and making a sandwich, going to sleep and starting the whole thing all over again. NO wonder people hate working.

I’ve also started on a short story, and I hope I can keep working on that. Like I said earlier, I applied to MFA programs but I’m afraid I won’t get accepted to any schools and, as an effect, be discouraged in my quest to become a quality writer.

To conclude, here is a list of notable questions my third graders asked me today when I was introducing myself.

-Do you kiss your boyfriend?
-What is your blood type?
-How is it possible for your American mom to marry your Korean dad?
-How old is your dog? How old is that cat?
-The cat is big. (referring to Gary)
-Do they have computers in America?
-Do you know where Washington is?
-Are you married?
-Do you know Spongebob?
-What is your phone number?

Cultural Paradox

2010-03-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

All the teachers just got a gift of luxury bath towels from the parents as a way to welcome the new principal. Whatever that means.

The gift was wrapped and each of us got one, but not a single teacher made a move to unwrap it. I was hoping we scored some chocolate or warm squishy rice cake, although the wrapping smelled like newspaper. I hesitated between mouse clicks and type strokes, my hunger ultimately trumping my concern for possibly committing a social faux pas.

The reason I’m telling you this is because my hesitation, that concern that I may be looked upon as weird or different--even more so than I already am in my status as a foreigner--, got me thinking about Koran social norms. I’ve drawn some conclusions that may be over simplified and grossly incorrect, but that I’m going to tell you about anyway because they’re entertaining.

Of course, as always, I will attempt to put these conclusions in list form for a more easily digestible reading experience.

But first I must preface the list with this: there is a contradiction in Korean society that drives me crazy. While Koreans are constantly concerned with the idea of a collective society, one that holds individuals in check and responsible for their actions through shame and social obligation (thereby requiring Koreans to constantly acknowledge each other in public), they also practice the weird and hard-to-adapt-to custom of pretending that strangers don’t really exist such that they can ignore strangers in certain situations. This will be easier to understand in the following list.

(My cousin, her friends, Andrew and I in Wonju Province at the Modugal festival)

Some social standards in Korean society:

1. Respect and make exceptions for the elderly and children.

(I almost labeled this “Respect and make exceptions for the weaker members of society” but this rule doesn’t apply to physically disabled people.) People observe this rule in America as well; however, the difference between the Korean and American perspective on this rule is that it is less of a rule in America and more of a moral or ethical decision. For example, in Korean society, it is almost required of a younger person to give up his or her seat on a bus or subway to an elderly person or children. This sounds like a small thing, but in the reality of everyday transportation in Seoul it gets to be a somewhat major sacrifice. Further, when you do give up your seat, there is rarely a ‘thank you’ but rather a dismissive wave that seems to indicate that your action was expected. The elderly come and stand by young people’s seats on purpose, and if you don’t yield immediately, impose a strategy of staring at you until you do. Young people have developed a defense against this social abuse: they watch TV on their cell phones or pretend like they’re asleep.

Other privileges children and the elderly enjoy include cutting line at subways, buses and bathrooms, blatant staring at people or things they find interesting, yelling or shouting in public places, physically fighting in public places. The elderly must also be spoken to in the polite Korean form at all times.

2. Dress nicely and appropriately when in public places or around people who aren’t family.

Koreans must always put effort into the appearance, or at least look like they do. Men and women frequently get hair cuts (at salons for like ten bucks). Both men and women style their hair and women rarely wear it casually pulled back. Most Koreans, like the numerous k-pop groups, follow a style or trend whether it be the newest western fashions, punk, androgynous, etc. High heels are extremely common. Women don’t wear hats in the long winter months of below-freezing temperatures because they don’t want to mess up their hair and make up. In the summer, women keep their shoulders and chest covered even in the heat to avoid being inappropriate. Going out in sweat pants or flip flops is hard because people stare at you. Its like…at least this is how I feel…that its your obligation to look nice because you’re representing Koreans. I mean, this may not be true everywhere in Korea, but I definitely feel like its true in Seoul.

I know my cousin won’t mind me using her as an example. We were getting our photos taken at a studio in Insadong, and they pulled our hair back tight in a bun for the photos. When we finished, there was a huge crease in our hair. I put my hair back, but she was worried about going out into the city and being seen. She said, “I’m acting like a typical Korean girl.”

3. Do not get loud or overly personal in public places

This rule means maintaining a relatively low sound level in bars, restaurants, subways, buses, streets, work place, etc. My co teachers and I leave our office to talk on the cell phone. Groups of westerners I have been with have been asked to be quiet or leave in many bars and public transportation places. PDA, cursing, and inappropriate talk is also frowned upon, and if heard by the elderly or middle aged, women may earn you some harsh stares.

The point of this list is to show that these social norms are stricter than American social norms because the public holds you more accountable. This is usually done through stares, but can sometimes escalate to someone telling you to be quiet or stop doing what you’re doing. It is not unusual to see an old man or woman yelling at a younger Korean for some crime no one saw committed.

(My friend Vivian and I in the subway in Winter. Lisbeth is talking to a stranger!)

Examples of the “Stranger” Rule

As I said earlier, even though Koreans hold each other responsible for their actions in public and feel like they are constantly representing Korean society and must, therefore, abide by certain rules and standards, they also treat strangers (in other situations) like they don’t exist.

1. You do not exist on the street

When I arrived here, one of the first things I noticed when I went out into the city was that people run into you. Of course, this happens in crowded cities. But in Seoul, it happens often, and without apology. People usually don’t alter their paths one iota to accommodate yours, and I often wonder what would happen if I didn’t move…would we just run into each other? Sometimes I try to do it, go against all my western instincts and just run into people (the way Andrew does when he gets really mad). I can’t help but swerve at the last minute and usually end up nicking people in the shoulders. The Koreans don’t look at you though, they just keep walking. They small Korean girls usually get knocked pretty hard and sometimes they let out a whine, but most of the time they bear up and keep balanced on their high heels.

Koreans walk and watch TV on their cell phones, they walk with their head down, they poke you in the eye with umbrellas, they fall asleep on you on the subway (literally head on your shoulder)…You can even see this kind of thinking while driving. People cut each other off and race to beat the bus, and try pass each other in the other lane at the last minute even though the traffic begins to pick up in their lane…But the Koreans never get traffic rage. They just accept it, maybe act surprised that they almost died, and keep driving.

2. You aren’t a viable option as a boyfriend/girlfriend unless you’ve been formally introduced

Aside from a few special circumstances, most Koreans meet their significant others through a ‘blind date’ or a ‘meeting.’ A blind date is pretty self-explanatory…a mutual friend introduces you and you go on a date. A meeting is what happens with a group of evenly matched people (even number of boys and girls) gets together to go out for dinner/drinks whatever. Most of the time, except for the boy and girl who brought the group together in the first place, the boys and girls don’t know each other. They play ice breaker games to loosen the ice such as “Image Game” in which a person says a statement (like who is most likely to get plastic surgery) and everyone points their chopstick at who they think the statement applies to/.

One time I was at a bar and the group of friends I was with (westerners, two boys and two girls including me) sat down with a group of two Korean girls and one korean boy who invited us (maybe because our groups almost matched?) The K-boy promptly asked the two western boys I was with which girl he thought was the prettiest.

There are some ways girls and boys who don’t know each other interact in Seoul. For example, night clubs in Seoul are places in which girls are pulled away from the tables they’re sitting at or the groups there with and made to sit with a different group of boys at the club. From there they can go back to their original table or they can stay to talk to the new boys. Also, dance clubs are another place where social barriers are more lax. Guys are usually very aggressive with girls on the dance floor, usually more aggressive with girls they don’t know, and this interaction sometimes results in friendship or hookups.

3. If you fall they will not help.

Unless you’re old or a child, if you fall or do something embarrassing in public, the general population will pretend it didn’t happen. As mentioned in a previous post, I was walking on the street looking around at the city and ran head-first into a steel sign. The guy in front of me turned around to see what happened, saw, and quickly turned his head forward again without breaking stride. I’ve seen other Koreans fall on the steps or in the street, I myself have eaten it in the subway or on the icy winter Seoul streets, the result is always the same.

Westerners are always the exception to the rules. If a Korean can tell you’re foreign, they don’t hold you to the same standards or expect you to follow the rules. But for me, its harder because unless I’m talking on the phone or with a friend, Koreans assume I’m Korean, and if I break a rule, they look at me as if I should know better.

I didn’t really mean for this post to sound so negative. It started off as an observation of a weird paradox I observed in Korean culture and evolved into a sort of rant. I guess it reflects some of my personal frustrations with living here; however, I have to note that I have come to appreciate Korean culture. It helps conserve your energy somewhat to not have to interact with strangers all the time. I like dressing up to go out into the city. I want to try out the night club experience. Its nice to live in for a while, but I fear that my western instincts and upbringing have ruined me for permanent living here. What do you guys think??

Back to School Again.

2010-03-02T03:22:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I already tried to update this once, so if I’m a bit short bear with me.

It’s the same cracked walls and cold office, kids cutting me off on the steps and dust in the hallways from construction seeping through the temporary ply board walls that line the back of the school. But everything’s different. Teachers are moving about the room, introducing themselves and helping each other figure out the school’s messaging system. An older homeroom teacher came to the subject room, arms full of office supplies and a chair cushion, looking around for a desk. A vice principal came and led her away.

I have a new co-teacher who is now my ‘monitor.’ Her name is Jenny (or Julie?) and we now teach 9 hours of fifth grade classes together a week.

I came to school this morning with the absurd hope that I would get to teach third and fourth graders with my secondary co-teacher Yong-eun. Mijung (my former fifth grade co teacher) would remain my ‘monitor’ or main co-teacher and things would remain relatively unchanged except for the added perk of only teaching young, perfectly behaved 8-10 yr olds.

In reality, I teach 14hours of third grade and 9 hours of fifth grade a week. I have to establish a new relationship with Jenny not only for classroom and teaching purposes but also for personal reasons. I was just becoming comfortable with Mijung. I knew that she would never question a sick day, I could text her without actually having to call her, the best way to get what I wanted with her was to be open and frank with her and talk about everything. When that didn’t work, I could complain to Yong Eun who would talk to Mijung until Mijung felt guilty and tried to do more. I felt pretty sure that Mijung had my best interests at heart and mainly struggled with the contradictory directions that my needs and the administrations’ demands took. Now, I have no idea who this Jenny person is or how she works. She doesn’t even know the Can Do Kids’ song for Christ’s sake.

All of that would be tolerable if it weren’t for the fact that I have to confront my new co teacher about the number of hours I’m teaching. In our contract is says we teach a total of 22 hours per week. If total number of teaching hours exceeds that number I am due overtime pay. I’m pretty sure my new 23 hour a week schedule isn’t including overtime pay with it. I guess I’ll have to dust off the ole contract and refer to SMOE world.com for what course of action to take.

SMOE world is the closest thing we have to a union. It’s a website consisting of SMOE vets who dole out advice and complaints. You have to have a password. You have to pass inspection to join. It’s pretty serious.

In other news, I’m anxiously awaiting news from graduate schools and my future in the United States. I got accepted to UT law and offered a full tuition scholarship. I also got waitlisted at Vanderbilt for the MFA program there. Out of hundreds of applications they accepted three and waitlisted seven. That puts me in like the top two percent! Even if I don’t get accepted into a program, I at least gained some confidence in myself as a writer. People whose job it is to distinguish between potentially good writing and bad writing think my writing may be worth something…

I’m updating mainly because Will Hale lectured me on the values, both externally and internally, of blog updates. Him and T-rav skyped me not too long ago while drinking at Will’s apartment. I miss you guys terribly. I wish I was there to celebrate the UT victory over KY in basketball with you, eat a Moo Moo Mr. Cow at Moe’s, work for twenty percet tips at Tomo, workout at the T-recs, watch adult swim, sleep with Eli on the futon, and, most of all, take whiskey shots in the kitchen. I love you guys!

Is she really still in Korea?

2010-02-03T19:16:00.001-08:00

(Me at Konjiam Ski Resort last weekend. The yellow sign says: Warning, Expert Slope)

Yes, followers, yes I am.

I have neglected the blog for several reasons.

1st: Before Christmas I was completely consumed and obsessed by graduate school applications. I studied algebra, I wrote short stories, I hounded my letter of recommendation writers, I filled in applications like a mad woman. There was no time for silly blog updates!

2nd: I lost my camera cord for a while. Correction, Lisbeth lost my camera cord in the abyss that is the giant mess in her room. (Lisbeth's room is a mess partly because she is afraid to throw out the trash and partly....just a little bit...because instead of cleaning she watches Korean soap operas on the internet). No worries though, Lili ordered and bought me a new one straight from Hong Kong! Pics should be up sooner rather than later.

3rd: I just havent felt like updating for a while.

But lately I've been feeling more like myself, making friends, filling up my free time with mindless TV just like at home! Megavideo is one of the only things that works here, and they cut you off after 75 minutes of TV. So often, right before Michael Cera is about to deliver a subtle yet hilarious punch line in arrested Development, or right in the middle of the Baker Girls' latest boy drama in Privileged, the screen cuts off and I stomp around my 14ft by 8ft apartment.

If it weren't for great friends willing to come meet me in my neck of the woods (Hoegi Yuk/Station) I"d probably go insane due to Megavideo stress-related incidents. I made a few friends during one of my winter camps at Sinne Elementary (not my school). They showed me how wonderful work can be when you are surrounded by four or five people who know how to play Spades and who can understand sentences like "that last hand you played was ballin'" or "Let's just pretend like we didnt understand what time we had to be back from lunch."

Ski Resort Madness

Andrew and I stayed in a cabin at a ski resort last weekend with some random friends/westerners we just met and a Korean guy we've been friends with for a couple of months now. I will now account what happened in the weeks before the cabin in list form because I think things are wonderfully easy to digest this way.

1. I get a call from my uncle who says he works for LG and can get us a mega ultra discounted cabin on a ski resort an hour outside of seoul. (114,000 won a night instead of 640,0000 won a night). Plus he can get us 50 % off rentals and lift tickets.

2. I consult Andrew, lisbeth, Dani et al. and we agree that this deal sounds like one of the most amazing things that have come our way in a while.

3. My uncle tells us the reservations are for a Saturday night and Sunday night. His family cant go because he forgot his kids started school the following week.

4. I ask for vacation for Monday so I can stay Sunday night. Andrew finds out he doesnt even have to go into school that day (because teaching high school in Korea is the bomb ass diggity and you never have to do anything...well you know, a little, but not much).

5. I set up a schedule of people coming to and from the cabin in groups of six to stay with us. Most are staying Saturday night and not sunday due to work. This process includes bus reservations, lift ticket inquiries, and much pressure from my part on people to confirm or not.

6. my uncle calls two days before the reservation and tells us he got the dates wrong. the reservations are for sunday and monday nights. (at this point I am half annoyed by my uncles's obvious scatter-brainedness and half amused)

7. everybody bails because they cant get out of work except me and andrew. andrew and i decide to go the cheap route instead of romantic-only-the-two-of-us route. I find a guy I meet the night before and he brings his friend. I also casually invite Kyung Han, a Korean guy we've known for a while with halting English who I don't expect to agree to go but tell me he'll go if he doesn't "get injured" on another ski trip he's taking earlier in the week.

(Kyung Han and I at the Ski Resort)

8. Our motly crew arrives and parties and skiis and has a generally good time.

yay for random last minute calls!

Here are some pics fromthe ski trip courtesy of Kyung Han. I will post another blog update soon when I get my own pics uploaded.

(Me, Andrew, James) (James, Kyung Han, Sebastien, Andrew)

Hongdae Birthday

2009-10-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

Well its official. I'm finished applying for law schools. (except for a few odds and ends I have to tie up. Law schools seem to be pretty anal.)

I have applied to:

Univ. Michigan

Univ. of Florida

Univ. of TN

Univ. of Iowa

Univ. of California at Berkeley

Vanderbilt

Lewis and Clark

I did the whole damn laborious thing while sitting at my computer after classes at school. Its kind of interesting to think that if I get into law school or graduate school, I will have begun the whole process while sitting at an elementary school in Korea.

Anyway, my birthday came and gone and I must say it was wonderful. We began our celebration at a bar downtown called J's Story. After an embarassing incident in which I spilled a plate full of chicken onto the floor, we settled in and had a great time with our giant party of fifteen or so. Surprisingly, the westerners left kind of early (with only me, lisbeth, andrew, duncan and amy to represent). Daeun brought many new Korean friends (and some old ones I had met on a previous trip to K0rea). They closed down the house with us that night. WE ate tons of food and drank lots of beer, courtesy of Korean Drinking games such as Baskin Robin's 31, Stupid Game, Image Game, and Sense game. We left J's Story to dance a bit further down the block at "Jane's Groove" which was amazing. It was like the Korean sister of Sassy Anne's. We jammed to MIA and other familiar tunes as well as some K pop and a random 90s hit here and there. (think jock jams)

We closed out the night with a noreibang session at "luxury" noreibang. This is a karaoke house that is designed like a luxury hotel, so you check in and have someone lead you up to your room where you're served drinks and whatever else you need on cushy couches or cute kitsch rooms.

Note: Forgive me if my writing seems a bit airy, I've been reading "confessions of a shopaholic" and it seems to be rubbing off on me.

Description of Korean drinking games:

Baskin Robbins 31: Each person in the group can count in intervals of 1,2,or 3. The person who lands on 31 has to drink. This game is fun if you have a large group of people that is hard to coordinate or if you're really drunk because its an easy game. The fun lies in screwing over the person who lands on 31 (because you might let them off easy by just saying "28, 29" and letting them say "30" to screw over the next person with "31."

Sense Game: This is a game in which the total number of people in the group must count one number to add up to the total number. FOr example, if you have six people playing, each person must count a nunber until it adds up to six. The catch is, you can't be the LAST person (in this instance, the person to count six) and you cant say a number at the same time that someone else does, or you have to drink.

Stupid Game: Drinkers sit in a circle. One person turns to the next person and says a number that is different from the number of fingers they are holding up. The next person in line has to turn to the person beside them and say the number that was previously designated by the number of fingers held up by the original person, but also hold up a different number of fingers. This continues until someone messes up. for example, if lisbeth turns to me and says "three" but holds up two fingers, I have to turn to Andrew on my other side and say "Two" but hold up, say, five fingers, or some other number.

Image Game: THis is the "you can only play this in a place like Korea" game. Players hold a chopstick up in the air and point it to the person they think most fits a certain image. For example, one person will say "The person who is most likely to get plastic surgery" and all players have to point to the person they think, based purely on image, will get plastic surgery. The koreans love it even if the americans are slightly uncomfortable. They hardly ever get offended and lots of peple drink. We don't think twice about playing now.

Adapting and Changing

2009-10-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

Well its been a month since I arrived here and I am just beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin...or should I say, my new high healed shoes and baggy clothes.

I suppose I haven't really adapted that much, I'm sitting in my teacher planning listening to John Prine and Iris DeMent on Youtube...but I've come pretty far. I like being in my little room, i've decorated it nice and colorful, all reds, yellows and pinks, just like i always do.

(My desk. Notice the bottle of Jack on the top back corner. a bottle of Jack in Korea costs about the same as it does in Tennessee. Jack Daniels, why dont you cut your native people a break?)

(My kitchen is tiny. My bathroom is my worst-bathroom-nightmare with the shower over on the lft hand side. actually, the water running in the picture is part of my shower. I turn a nob on the sink and it goes to a showerhead over the sink that just shoots down righ tin the middle of my bathroom. arghghghgh, whatever. I've gotten used to it now.)

My weekends have been very eventful. I've grown close to my cousin, Da-eun, and she takes andrew, lisbeth and I all over. We went to a small village south east of seoul in Wonju province. There was a traditional festival going on when we got there. We danced to drums (which sounded a bit like a baby smashing pots and pans together), we drank homemade markloli (kind of like nigori--the unfiltered white sake), we watched a korean play about a traditional korean village, andrew was made to go up on the stage and bang a drum (stiffly of course...we had an all around rowdy good time. Being outside the city was like jumping in a cold mountain stream on a hot day: a shock at first, but you settle right in after a while.

The first weekend in October is called Chuseok in Korea. It's Korea's major holiday, but its kind of lame if you ask me for being THE holiday. The celebrating goes a bit like our Thanksgiving. We got five days off in a row (counting the weekend) to eat all the Korean food we could handle, and realx in Gangwha-do (Kangwha island). Gangwha is wehre my family is from, after they fled from North korea. My uncle's art studio is there, and two of my aunts and one uncle lives there. During Chuseok, you go to your ancestors' graves and show respect. We went to church the morning of Chuseok, then went to the graveyard. I bowed all the way down to the ground twice and half bowed once to my great grandmother and great grandfather. My great great grandmother was also there, they spread her ashes around my great grandmother's grave.

For CHuseok, Andrew Lisbeth and I took a bus one hour north of Seoul to Kangwha where Daeun and her family met us. We went to a Buddhist temple on the island, drank tea, went to the market, bought beer and snacks, and stayed up all ngith playing scrabble, jenga and drinking. It was amazing. Right before bed we sat on the roof and looked at the stars that are impossible to see in Seoul.

This weekend we are celebrating mine and Lisbeth's birthdays in HOngdae. Hongdae is the area around Hongik university where everybody goes out to party on the weekends. Hopefully it will be fun, but not as fun as it would be if i were home. I miss my friends so much. YOu guys make me feel so special and complete. I can't wait to see you again in a year and I invite as many of you to come visit as possible.

Note: During the writing of this entry, I had to sit through a "civil defense drill" in which a siren went off for like five minutes and some official sounding announcements were made in Korean. My co-teacher just told me that in case something bad happened with North Korea the South Koreans had a drill to practice evacuation of schools and other places. Also, she said that traffic stops on the road for ten minutes. I think that's insane because traffic in Seoul is ridiculous and everyone is in a hurry. I can't even imagine what it was like on the roads outside.

(My view from my window on the tenth story. If you look toward the bottom right, you can see the garden on the roof.)

Some funny things:

1. The only male teacher in the subject room isn't actually a teacher, he's just a retired guy who stays on at the school. Every so often, his cell phone will ring really loud, blasting this random girls' pop song in which the words are in english....so far all i've been able to make out is "that's the way the story goes..." hahahah

2. The other day I was walking to my bus stop only to find that there was a giant hole where the stop should be. Random construction I guess. So waiting around the hole were these two businessmen dressed in suits who were at least over fifty. As I approached, I realized they were yelling at each other. IN like no time they started throwing punches and grappling at each other. The construction workers around the site tried to intervene in the fight, temporarily separating them. However, as soon as their back was turned, the old men threw each other into the hole and wrestled and punched each other. It was really weird. They got their suits all dirty and the construction men were struggling to pull them out of htis dirt hole in the middle of the sidewalk. The whole time my kids were walking by saying hello, having to strain a little bit to talk over the two old men shouting. ahh well, TIK (That stands for This is Korea. Its our new saying)

Good things that have happened to me:"

1. Andrew and I have gotten much closer. We don't fight very much. its nice.

2. I submitted 5 law school applications. I feel like a super woman.

3. I decided that I might want to do something else besides law school. This may seem lik a negative, but I suppose its a positive if I realized it before I dropped thousands of dollars on something I wouldn't want to do.

4. I met a gay guy from south africa that lives on my floor who wants to be friends like from sex and the city. Excited!

Homesick

2009-09-28T23:38:00.000-07:00

LJ throwback!

Music: Folk Alley from http://www.shoutcast.com/radio/Folk

Mood: Tenatively Happy

I am listening to folk music, and I am happy. I miss banjos. I miss trees. I miss you friends.

The weird thing about Korea is that culture is judgmental. Everyone is looking at you and judging you because you're a representative of them (you know, collectivist society and all that stuff). For example, most everyone is conscious of how they dress. There are no pajama pants and oily hair in Seoul. Even the casual styles are carefully calculated, with pair of pink high top shoes say, or a ponytail with just the right amount of fly away hair and hoop earrings. There is no true rolled-out-of-bed look.

As true blue foreigners, people like Andrew and my neighbor Amy get a Get Out of Jail Free Card. If Amy wears a tank top and accidentally bares a shoulder or two, the Koreans forgive her lewdness because her nordic ancestors blessed her with blonde hair and pale skin. If Andrew decides to grab my butt in public, the koreans forgive him because he's a horny westerner.

If I'm lucky, they will lump me in with him and forgive us both. More often than not, I have to endure dirty looks and slack stares from Koreans on the subway. If Andrew grabs my butt, They look at me as if I am the ultimate Korean slut. If I'm alone, I can forget any sort of forgiveness. I commit social faux pas multiple times a day. Let's see if I can make a list...

1. inappropriate clothing
2. inappropriate level of voice (too loud)
3. not following subway etiquette. This includes but is not limited to
-being aware of the invisible lines between your seat and the next, and NOT crossing over whatsoever (unless youre a korean and happen to fall asleep. Then you are allowed to slump over on the person next to you until your face rests lightly on their shoulder)
-Yielding AT ALL TIMES to the ajummas (which are older korean ladies who seem to have collectively rebelled against their former subservient status and are currently living their lives out as surly, callous, self-serving crotchety old ladies who cut in front of you at the subway station, have special seats reserved on the subway, dont speak the polite form of korean to anybody, and wear huge visors and sunglasses that practically eliminate their last visible traces of humanity)
-Understanding that lines do not exist in Korea, and to attempt to form one is a ridiculous expectation that can not possibly be followed by people in a hurry--and everyone is in a hurry. If you wait in line for all the stalls in the subway bathroom, you will never get one, because other koreans just entering will take the first stall that comes available as soon as possible. Likewise, waiting in line to get off the subway will simply get you shoved to the back of the 'herd' that forms. The proper way to exit a subway train is for everybody to crowd as quickly as possible to the opening, not waiting for anybody to get in front of you, and creating a situation in which everone is stuck, shoulder to shoulder, until someone forces one person free by pushing them from behind. In which case, a mad rush for the elevator occurs and the process starts over. This rule is important. Waiting in line in Seoul for anything will only result in making you last to do or get whatever it is you want.

4. Not being able to speak the language. Because i look Korean, and I am half Korean, my lack of Korean language skills basically makes me a paraiah to my people.

okay okay, i exagerate...slightly. But it feels like this a lot. Navigating Seoul can sometimes be extremely exhausting, especially if I dont have my guard up. The judgments are crazy! and they're everywhere! people don't hesitate to give you a stare down if they;re mad at you--but they won't confront you directly, that would be impolite. I was talking to one of my other friends in the building, Viviane, and she told me that one of her Korean friends who studied in America told her she missed America because she could walk out on the street there without being Judged. this is from a native korean--proof that I am not just going crazy with culture shock.

i miss you, my friends, so much right now. I wish I could teleport back for a hot second and throw back some hurricane katrina shots. Nobody here knows who I am except Andrew and Lisbeth. Nobody here loves me the way you guys do. Its weird. Being in Knoxville, I felt safe and protected, because I knew if we were out somewhere, and something bad happened, whoever I was with would be there, would try to help. But here, with these people I just met, around koreans who can't understand me, I feel vulnerable.

Anyway, next post Im going to update on stuff I have been DOING. I promise it hasn't all been sad things. Its just what I write about because writing helps me deal with sad things. I have pictures too!

(Preview for next post: Lisbeth, Andrew, mycousin and I went to a small Korean village. Pictures will accompany!)

Love you!

Food Coma

2009-09-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

And so it begins.

I have just gotten through with lunch. The menu:
Chicken (ommm)
Cucumber Kimchee (my favorite!)
Regular Kimchee
Rice
Seaweed Soup

This constitutes a wonderful meal. Sometimes they have unsavory items such as dried and shriveled anchovies laid abed this crunchy stuff or some such. There are many SMOE-ers who end up only eating the rice and kimchee everyday. (Not liking Kimchee in Korea is like not liking peanut butter in the U.S. or not liking that paste stuff from Australia. what is it? V-Verm-???)

And now, my wonderful friends who I would give all the cucumber kimchee in the world for, I must tell you that for three and a half to four hours everyday i have to fight a devastating food coma. Right this moment, as we metaphorically speak, I am fightin the urge to lay my head down on the desk and snooze. The fake wood looks almost spongy and my eyes could use just the tiniest close. I don't know what it is. The food portions aren't even that big--in fact, they're tiny. I starve until lunch and then I starve approximately two hours after lunch, continuing until dinner. You'd think this new hunger would stave off the food-coma, but it only transforms the feeling from a pleasant urge to cat nap to a weakening ache behind my cheekbones.

So I make myself lists of things to get accomplished. Lately it has pertained mainly to lesson plans and Law school application stuff. But who wants to think about that when dreaming would be so much better? Or, even better, an obliterating nothingness from which one emerges refreshed!

Oh to feel refreshed. I barely get that on the weekends and hardly ever during the week. I have to catch it in snatches. Lately I have taken to forcing myself to work out once I get home. Just a little run on the treadmills in the downstairs rec room of my apartments at O.S. Vill. I feel a hundred thousand times better after I do this. But it doesn't always happen.

On the weekends I feel as if I must make the most of every free second I have. This is not to say that I don't have time to myself during the week, because I certainly do (I get off of work at five and have my whole evenings free). But there are not many people around to hang out with. lisbeth is over an hour away by subway, so seeing her during the week is almost always out of the question. Andrew has a night class from 7 to 9. If I went to see him or he me, we wouldn't see each other till late, and then have to go to school in themorning. Hopefully, after andrew's night class is over, we will get to see more of each other. This weekend, we celebrated our second anniversary. I made him Kimbap (a korean dish which is kind of like cooked sushi) and noodles. I bought a low sitting table and covered it with a scarf. we sat on the sleeping pads i bought for guests. I also had candles and music. It was cute-mom called it a 'poor kids in the city' anniversary. I think he really liked it. Afterward, we went out in a district around Hongik university called Hongdae. This is where all the young people and foreigners go to get their party on. We went with my cousins dani and nica (Daeun and Yeaeun). Of course we had a wonderful time, but I was exhausted on sunday from being out and drinking soju. I went to the movies with Lisbeth and Dani and watched that weird/dark/kids movie "9". I really liked it, even if it did make my heart crawl.

But thats what I mean by being tired. I was tired Sunday and Sunday night i couldn't fal asleep since I'd been up late on the weekends.

Amy, a girl from Michigan who lives next door to me, has been my primary comrade. We go to dinner every evening, we work out together, and we generally complain about SMOE and the oddities of our Korean teachers. Its nice having her there. We explore our little section of Seoul together, looking at the odd Seoul fashions, trying new food, and flirting with a cute Korean guy who sells gelato.

(Note about fashion: Andrew thinks the seoul fashions are ugly. They have to cover your shoulders, but can be as short as you want it to be. Everytime I tried to find a suitable Seoul 'going out' dress, he told me i looked like a bag. I think its more conservative bohemian and I sorta like it. Except some garments can be really ugly in their attempts to be tastefully conservative...weird huh?)

I've killed forty minutes. I've still got three hours and twenty minutes to go.

I love and miss you all. I'll post pictures later I promise.

Teacher Planning Period

2009-09-07T00:08:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in my mandatory teacher-planning period. We are in the 'special subject teacher room.' From what I can tell, teachers are watching videos, shopping online and, in my case, blogging.

I just finished my first day of teaching. Victorious! The classes went well, the students were very interested, and I didn't do anything offensive or unforgivable. It was, in fact, very gratifying to see the students singing my "can-do kids" song. My biggest concern is the amount of energy I gave them. They seemed to suck it right out of me like a sponge and spill it all over the halls and cafeteria. I'm not sure if I can sustain this everyday for a week.

I'm banking on the fact that third graders aren't going to take as much energy. They are rumored to be much calmer, more cooperative and lower maintenence even though they are younger. Plus, they're cute as hell. I'm going to take a picture of all the little asian kids so you guys can see how much cuter this race is when they're small. (Just kidding...I'm allowed to say this kind of thing because I'm two races)

My immune system is currently completely overwhelmed. I've developd a stye in my eye, a ridiculous sore throat and today I've been fatigued. I may be getting the swine flu (in which case I would be relieved of my teaching duties for a few blissful days). But, more likely, my immune system is just bruised by less-than-stringent health codes for street food, my general lack of grace (running into things), and Soju.

Cultural oddity #1:
Yesterday, I presented a powerpoint for my first lesson to introduce myself. The picture on the first slide was something I thought was a nice, neutral picture of me. I had my hair up in a bun and was wearing a black tanktop. Mi-Jung called me over to her desk and said, "I'm going to be frank. You are showing too much of your body in this picture." I felt like she was calling me a red-light district whore. I was embarassed, but I wasn't sure why. On my way home, I paid close attention to the women walking around Seoul. None of them had on spaghetti straps and I counted only two who had 'sleeveless' shirts on. When I got back to my apartment, I sorted through my wardrobe and discovered that half of my clothes consisted of some degree of sleeveless shirt, dress or sweater. I have nothing to wear in Seoul.

Other facts of relevence:

The picture of my dad at the beach without a shirt on was allowed to stay in the power point, although I changed it of my own accord later just to be fair.

Korean women often wear high high heels just to leave the house, and very short skirts.

Palm up or down?

2009-09-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

Sign at my subway Station (Hoegi station) in east Dongdaemun, Seoul

I've been at my school now for a few days and it has been a much easier adjustment than I expected. All of the things I feared--unaccepting teachers, overwhelming workload, miscommunication--has not only been avoided, but seems to have been addressed and tackled by my co-teacher, Mi Jung, before I even got there. I heard horror stories about native speaking teachers being thrown into a teaching environment without any explanation of schedule, expectations or even a syllabus.

Mi-jung was having none of that. She had a whole schedule made out for me. She explained that it was subject to change because she was trying to talk the principal into letting me teach third graders instead of sixth because the sixth graders were so rude. And was that what I wanted? She told me she was very sorry about the changes in plan at the last minute. (I wish I could present Mi-Jung to SMOE as a role model) I only had ot ask her about my settlement allowance once and she had the school accountant depositing it into my bank account this week. She gave me a specific time to plan out our lessons together. She reserved a classroom so we could have our own space to talk amongst ourselves. I love Mi Jung.

I love her because she is all the things that I was afraid she wouldn't be. Don't get me wrong, she doesnt take me out to dinner like some of the other co-teachers. and she didn't buy a thing for my apartment. But she means well, and she's good in all the ways that really count. Jeeze, all my emotions are so raw I'm sounding corny.

Funny Story:

I sat down with my principal on the first day I came to school. It was very formal. We all had to wait to sit until he sat. A short, bobbing girl came in to serve us tea. No one said thank you. He spoke to Mi-jung in Korean and she interpreted for me. I kept my answers short. My tea was amazing, but I only sipped it twice because for some reason I thought that would be more polite. He dismissed us at the end with a nod of his head. We waited until he rose out of his chair before Mi-jung, the two vice principals Kim and I got up.

But before that, he asked me, through Mi Jung, if I stuck my hand out the window palm up or palm down to see if it was raining. You see, I am only half Korean, and he wanted to see which half was dominant. This would be an indicator of how well I could adapt to the working culture at Myeon Mok Elementary School. I had no idea which answer was right. I answered truthfully, thinking that my truer half was American. "Palm up," I said, indicating with my hand what I meant. The Kims went "oohhhh" and the principal nodded. Mi Jung said, "That's what he thinks the Koreans do" with just the tiniest hint of exasperation. I'm more Korean than I thought.

In other news, I ran into a metal sign today. I was hiking back to my apartment because I had missed my bus stop by two. (It had to do with some confusion over what the 'stop' button meant and thinking, stupidly, that the bus doors would open to let people off at every stop). I was making the best of it, listening to my best cheerful music (Paul Simon) and taking in as much of Seoul as possible. I was absorbed in a type of miniature slum in which the houses, sitting far below street level next to the train tracks, were smushed closely together with trash and broken things on the rooftops. The day before I had passed the slum and witnessed a family perched in the narrow alleyway between two houses. They were all clean, and eating neatly with chopsticks from food spread out on a bright yellow blanket. My mind could not comprehend why the scene struck me as so interesting, so unusual. I was trying to figure it out when I slammed temple first into a metal sign. The sound was so loud, a young Korean male with headphones a few feet in front of me turned around to see what all the metal ringing was about. As I staggered backward I watched him turn back around so as not to witness my embarrassment. At first I was grateful, but as I walked I wondered if he would have helped me if I had fallen from the blow.

Anyway, the blow did it. It cracked the careful wall I had built to hold in all my overwhelmedness. All my inflexible Americanness. Not since the first day when I saw how my bathroom resembled a prison and I would have to sit bare-assed on the sink to wash my hair had I cried. And only then a very little bit.

I guess I have more american in me than my principal thought.

My address is: (1004) 319-12 Wooyong O.S. Vill

Hwi Kyung Dong, Dongdaemun0gu

Seoul, Korea 130-876

Orientation Summation

2009-08-31T05:17:00.000-07:00

Quarantined until further notice.

Yep, that's what we were. Confined to lecture halls in the chemistry building, a dirt soccer field and three meals a day in the cafeteria.

It was not unheard of to stand outside the dorms,

(a gathering place between the boys' side and the girls' side)

slouching down with our purses and sandals. Not dressed up too much. Gathering up the nerve to walk outside into the city to quickly buy Soju at the market, scurrying it away in our bags to drink in our dorm room like the college freshmen we all were over four years ago.

Apparently, foreigners, the other white meat, are notorious carriers of the swine flu.

Meanwhile, our SMOE guardians lorded over us in green basketball jerseys that sported fake American names like Claudia or Chuck, keeping information locked up in the COORDINATOR'S OFFICE at the end of the hall in the boys' dorm.

(Funny story. Claudia, the notoriously uppity and self-righteous SMOE coordinator, told Adam Kostecki that his last name sounded like sonofabitch in Korean.)

We ate our Kimchee, but it was all we could do no to stab each other with chopsticks as we grew gaunt from lack of information and last minute changes of plan. On the morning of our departure, there was a list posted of last minute changes in teacher placements. One girl cried. It was a mess.

We did manage a good drunk though.

Lisbeth and andrew and I played cards with Adam (the sonofabitch), Richard (from Richmond), and Philip (Who looks like the Canadian version of Chris King). They drank a liter and a half of Hite and I tried to drink some kind of sweet Soju that tasted like cough syrup.

And here I am now in Dongdaemun at the Hoegi subway station. An hour and a half away from Lisbeth in Gangseo, forty five minutes away from Andrew in the south, and an hour away from my family in Mok Dong.

I guess I better get to learning how to navigate the subway.

Nerves

2009-08-27T03:53:00.001-07:00

The longer I am kooked up at this university in Suwon the more anticipatory and anxious I get. There are several reasons SMOE gives us for our imprisonment. THey include:

1. quarantine for Swine Flu

2. To make sure nothing happens to us until our health insurance kicks in

3. because we are getting paid and we have to do what they say

Swine Flu here inspires near manic-like fear in the masses. We have to take our temperature twice a day. Our trip into Seoul to observe classes in action got canceled because of the Swine Flu (Because we might have it? Because the schools are closed?) Word on the street is that some of our schools haven't opened back up for the school year because of Swine Flu.

But its not like people are dying. Or even getting sick. But there sure are plenty of people wearing masks.

But we are busting out tonight! We have company and we might break the rules. :-) More on nervousness later...

JETLAGGED

2009-08-24T04:52:00.001-07:00

I have arrived in Seoul somewhat triumphantly.

I woke up this morning at 6:30 ready to start the day. (I also woke up at three thirty and five thirty, feeling as if I should have been awake long ago, although I only went to bed at ten).

Early this morning I was glowing: taking a walk around campus, meeting new people, eating breakfast, playing soccer on a dreadful dirt field, showering, TLC with Andrew etc. I started to wane around lunchtime and flagged considerably during the three hours that our whole crew sat through lectures on KOrean history, English teaching in Seoul, and Living in Seoul. By the time they dismissed us for dinner (with an alotment of about 20 minutes to eat) I was ready to pass out. I felt headachy, bodyachy and soul-tired.

LIsbeth and I took a much-needed two hour nap. When that alarm went off, I had to claw my way to the surface of consciousness and shuck the covers with tons of regret. We're hitting up the dominoes across from the cafeteria.

(Side Note: After failing to find the button to allow us entry through a sliding glass door into the dominoes restaurant, we had an interesting conversation with the dominoes guy who told us they didn't have the 'original pepperoni' but that they still had pepperoni. Needless to say, we got cheese)

Now we're waiting for pizza, and I'm thinking about going to find Andrew Dillon who is most likely asleep in his room.

I have been assigned as an Elementary School teacher which is great. I wanted little kids whose respect I didn't have to go through the trouble of earning. After today we will be divided according to our classroom levels to attend lectures. Lisbeth is Middle School. Andrew is highschool. Oh well, at least we'll be forced to make new friends.

Already I've made friends with canadians, a giant south african man and some Tories.

More on the information they gave us during lectures to come. I"ll post some pictures too at some point, as soon as I get this ethernet cable back.

Oh yeah and one more thing. SMOE would never fly in the states. It is one of the most disorganized and communication challenged organizations I have ever encountered. Different students have different information at different times. (Today, Jon Pak, program director, told a group of us to follow him outside and then left us to stand there wondering what to do next until we gradually dispersed.)

The frustrating part is, they had all the information originally and hardly gave the students any. We are still being withheld from information. For example, Jon Pak won't let us have a Q&A session until Friday. LIsbeth and I have deduced that this is so we foreigners can't make demands (such as changing schools/location/etc.) until it is too late.

I hope Lisbeth and Andrew and I get the same district.

I'm going to wander down to dominoes to see if my 'original cheese' pizza is ready yet.

Too excited to sleep straight

2009-08-21T19:09:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow I'm leaving!

And I have mixed up feelings.

I'm half teeth-falling-out anticipation, worried that I have packed too many bags to be reasonable, but left my socks behind lying peacefully in a plastic cubby in my closet.

I'm half wild anticipation, stuffing my soccer cleats in my 70lb. bag in case there's a pick-up soccer game at orientation. (Soccer with some hot Aussies?)

So I'm torn. what else is new?

Pre-plane jitters

2009-08-18T23:37:00.000-07:00

I leave for Korea in four days.

And I have that sort of nervous feeling I imagine a dog has when he's found the perfect spot to go to the bathroom, but realizes other dogs are in the vicinity and he is, therefore, far too vulnerable to allow himself to let go, to release that which he was just moments before preparing to expel.

It's a light feeling in my gut that leaves me not-so-securely rooted to the ground-floating. I don't know if that's because my body is helping me out, un-attaching itself from the sticky Tennessee clay, or if its the universe or God telling me that I'm making a huge mistake.

Malia, Go back for the following reasons:

your Grandma is from Cocke co.

you went to college forty-five minutes down the road

you drink the same whiskey every football game

you sing Dolly Parton at Karaoke Night

Those pictures of Jesus in Renaissance paintings have him soft-featured, mouse-haired, and palepalepale. He'd wouldn't mind if I failed to hop on my plane at McGhee Tyson, failed to bounce through Hotlanta and out the other side to bow down to SMOE affiliates with an Anyonghaseo! But my Grandparents at Korean Church worship that white God. He beat out Buddha in Korea after America beat out China---at least partly. So it would appear that God/universe might care about my Korean soul search.

God and the Universe aside, the bottom line is: when people meet me for the first time they ask, "Where are you from?"

And I say, "Here"

But that's not entirely true, is it?

I know where I'm from. I know where my home is, I'm just not clear on how to live in it. No wait, I'm clear on how to live in it, (and I do, happily) but I'm not sure that it can't be better living.

I better finish packing.

Short story/fiction: Everything You Touch Falls Down

2008-04-15T15:23:00.000-07:00

Everything You Touch Falls Down

The late afternoon sun sagged low in the sky, lighting only the highest branches of the tallest trees. The willows that lined the riverbank were left in cool shadow. At this time of day, the willows seemed hunched and frustrated, dragging their long arms through the water like miners panning for gold. Black mosquito bodies appeared, making peppery halos around the men sitting on the bank. They fanned their hands through the air in a well-practiced motion, starting near one ear, pealing red from the sun, and ending by the opposite cheek. Occasionally one of them would spit into the river, and a cod would rise to the surface to eat it.

The men were drifters, wandering up and down the river alone or in packs. They were the sort of men whose faces felt cold without a beard, even in the middle of July. They had long since forgotten the purpose of shoes, soap or toenail clippers, preferring the feel of hard packed earth giving way to soft river soil under their feet. Every evening could be spent fishing by the river or skipping rocks. When the weather finally turned bad (or a few of them heard of something more interesting going on down river) the men could disband with a general air of satisfaction.

Near the willows, one man sat with a soft brimmed hat perched on his knee. He had fallen silent for some time, staring at the river and chewing on the end of a harmonica.

"Jimmy boy, how the hell do you fish all day and come up empty?" Earl said to the man with the hat.

"How the hell do you come to care about it?" The last part of Jim's sentence dragged slow like swirls of river bottom dirt.

"I don't." Earl scratched at a scab on his leg until a piece came off and started to bleed, "You never catch anything though, and I ain't sharing."

Jim blew absently into the harmonica, gritting down on the metal with his front teeth. The sound made ripples in the water. "Look at them ripples. Sometimes I wish they'd spread all the way from bank to bank, but they always fade out."

"Ripples is trouble. They mess things up. They scare away the fish."

"Fishing ain't the most important thing in the world."

Earl snorted.

Jim scratched himself and sucked his teeth.

"I'd rather watch ripples than worry about catching fish."

Earl squinted at the water. "Ripples is trouble."

The sun was high, drawing waves of heat off the highway like a powerful magnet. By the time Jim emerged from the woods he was sweating alcohol, his feet burned from the hot asphalt on the road. He sat down on the shoulder to put on his shoes, breathing in the dry smell of exhaust fumes. A faded pickup approached, its pieces loose and rattling. The window rolled down and spit out trash.

A mile or so down the road was a two-pump gas station connected to a convenient store. A man sat behind the counter drawing on his arm with a pen. Jim passed the store on the far side of the street and circled back around to the Coke machine that sat around the corner from the store's entrance. He took out the chain and searched its length until he located a small pick-key. He inserted it into the lock, making sure it was firmly lodged into place. He wrapped the chain around the iron bar until it was taut. He pulled hard. The cylindrical center of the lock came free and Jim opened the door, stuffing his pockets with quarters. He continued into town, staying in the grass. When he walked on the road, he thought he could feel the hot asphalt through his shoes.

The dock was sunk low with the weight of so many feet, making the river close, almost a continuation of the dock. Every once in a while a man would forget his way in the dark and almost fall into the river. Firelight bounced off the water, lighting the men's chins and noses, leaving their eyes muted.

Salvador's small boat had drifted up to the dock just as the sun fell below the willows. He was a short man whose hands moved from his cigarette to his stomach to his mustache in steady, fluid movements. Jim enjoyed Sal because he told stories about his wife and how she complained about his mustache. Or how she insisted on having sex missionary style. Tonight, he was red-faced and excited.

"I am celebrating tonight boys. I show those guys downriver whose boss," Sal tipped back a bottle of tequila, leaving his mustache glistening, "I delivered to a restaurant in Portville and this hombre estupido try to rip me off 100 dollars." Sal spread his hands apart and shook them, "I say, 'look blanco, you think I am straight from Mexico City? I know how much cod and catfish cost and you are being a cheap bastard.'"

The men laughed and slapped each other on the back. A few broke beer bottles against the dock.

"Did ya get him Sal?" Jim asked.

"He just say 'okay okay' and give me the money. I call him chicken shit and leave." Sal took another swig from the bottle but was laughing so hard some of it dribbled down his chin.

The men danced and stomped and drank for a few hours, until they were spent and had to lie down for support. Sal walked over to Jim and sat down.

"'Hey Jim, where is your son lately? He would like my story."

Jim propped himself up against a cooler and spat into the river, "Hell if I know." Then he dropped his head down between his knees, the tips of his hair brushing the dock, "Sal, sing us a song."

Sal pushed himself up from the dock, swaying for a few moments. He stood by the fire, his legs spread, tightening his body until the force of it was behind his voice. Then he sang, a Spanish ballad that slid smoothly over the water and into the night.

Jim ate at McDonald's for lunch, choosing a table outside in the play area. He ate quickly, keeping his eyes on his burger wrapper, concentrating on the hollow thud sounds of kids crawling through plastic tubes. On his way out, he noticed the shoes in the cubby holes at the play place's entrance. A blue sandal had fallen out of its cubby and lay apart from the rest. He fingered the blue plastic, trying to guess what age the shoe's owner was. Probably around four or five, the age at which kids found going to McDonald's so exhilarating that they ran themselves out on the playground, making bedtime much easier than usual for their parents. He hoped kids still got that excited about McDonalds.

The sun was fading out, its light slowly covered by layers of gray clouds. The birds had fallen silent, pushing their heads under their wings and hiding in the willows. The men on the river bank shifted uncomfortably, their poles lay uncast at their sides. None of the fish were biting. Finally someone said, "Well, we better go on in."

They pulled tarps from different camps along the river and strung them together. Lawn chairs, cards and liquor were placed underneath. They finished setting up just as the first drops of rain began to fall. The men settled in, playing a game of poker and betting on fish they hadn't yet caught. Jim sat off to the side, shooting liquor. After a few rounds of poker, he picked up a wooden box that had been sitting at his feet.

"Look here boys," Jim opened the lid.

"Shit Jim," Earl slapped his knee, "Once you get those knives out I know trouble's comin'."

"It ain't no trouble," Jim began to take the knives out and stick them in the ground, "Its fun."

"Let's play," another man said.

The men picked out a broad tree that grew about twenty feet from the tarps. Earl ran out into the rain, hunched, with his hands over his head, and stuck a quarter to the tree with gum.

"Alright boys, anyone who splits the quarter gets a kiss from Sal's wife," Jim said.

"Woowhee, I wonder if she tastes like enchiladas," a man said, licking his lips and rubbing his belly.

The men threw knives and shot liquor. The later in the day it got, the wider they missed their mark.

"Hey Earl," Jim said, swaying slightly, "If I hit the quarter with this shot, you gotta go get my knife out in the rain."

"That ain't nothin. First of all, you won't make the shot. And second of all, I already went out in the rain to set up the target, so it ain't nothin."

"Well then, if I make it, you gotta stand there while I shoot again."

"What do I get if you miss?"

"You can have the knives."

Earl sat down hard on the knife box. He squinted his eyes and rubbed his beard. "You sure about this?"

The other men got excited. "Earl, he ain't gonna make that shot, go ahead, those knives are as good as yours."

"Alright then." Earl stood up.

The men passed the bottle around for a good luck shot, and clapped Jim on the back. Jim picked out a knife with a dark wood handle. He threw it.

It flipped end over end through the air and grazed the outside of the tree trunk, landing in some bushes.

"Looks like I got me a new knife collection." Earl stood patting his belly. The men yelled and whooped in congratulation. Earl walked over to claim his prize.

"Go out and stand by the tree," Jim said.

"What?"

Jim held up a knife. "Go on."

Earl hesitated, glancing at the other men. They were huddled together, their hands in their pockets. He turned and walked out into the rain slowly, deliberately.

"Turn around."

Earl turned.

Jim threw a second time. The knife was on target, sinking into wood a few inches above Earl's head.

He stayed in the grass and kept his head down until he reached a park. It was no more than a patch of grass with a walking track running the length of its borders. A few rotten benches and some picnic tables sat in the grass. As he approached, he noticed that on top of one of the picnic tables was a small drawstring bag. Jim opened it and found a set of hard glass dominoes, the lines and dots were painted blue, purple, green and red. He sat down on the track and began to set them up, creating a large spiral that took up the width of the track. Then he laid down on the grass beside it, put his arm over his eyes and fell asleep.

A foot nudged him awake.

"Dad."

Jim sat up, shaking his hair and rubbing spit from his beard. "What took you so long?"

The man was young. He would have looked like a younger version of Jim save his large ears which stuck out through his hair. He looked at Jim and shrugged. "Did you set these up?"

"I was waiting." Jim moved so that he was facing the spiral, "Remember when we used to play?"

"We never played dominoes."

"Yeah we did, remember that one time after you came home from school? You were sad 'cause your teacher gave you a bad grade or something. So I cheered you up by playing dominoes."

"We only played that one time."

"Really? I could of swore we played other times." Jim yanked some grass out of the ground and began to tear it apart.

"Nope."

Jim continued to tear at the grass for a few moments. Then, "So you comin' back to the river with me? We can throw knives."

"No."

"No what?"

"I'm not going to the river."

Jim looked up. "Why'd you come here then?"

The young man was silent for a moment. He reached into his pocket to get a cigarette. He fumbled with a lighter. After he got it lit, he took a few quick drags and said, "To tell you I'm not coming back."

"Why not?"

"Because." The young man's eyes moved back and forth. His gaze found the dominoes and he bent down next to them, "Everything you touch falls down and hits somebody else."

"Shit boy, what are you talking about?"

The young man pushed the first domino over, hitting the second, which hit the third and the fourth, fifth, sixth. The sound of single dominoes hitting each other became a rain-like song that echoed through the park. When it was finished and the spiral was collapsed, the sudden silence was abrupt and empty.

The river was high from the storm. Every time a riverboat passed, water would slosh up onto the dock, getting Jim's feet wet. The moon was old, offering little light, so the men had to huddle around the fire to see. They were quiet except for Sal, who had brought his wife, Frieda, with him.

"These guys are great. They live life with no regret. Never having to work, just drink and fish and sleep." Sal's speech was fast and slurred. His wife looked at the men, she neither smiled or frowned. Her brown eyes regarded them evenly.

"Now, it ain't that simple." Earl said.

"Sure ain't." Another man said.

"Sure it is. You love the river. You love fish. No family, no wife. You prefer it this way, right?" Sal had moved away from his wife and was laying down on the dock outside the circle of light.

"Hell yeah, life is better that way," Jim said, "who needs a woman anyway? They ain't nothin' but trouble."

"I'll drink to that," one man said, and they all drank.

There was no response from Sal. Frieda shifted, crossing her legs and folding her arms over her chest.

"What's up with you women anyway? Thinking you're damn special." Jim set his empty beer can down and crushed it with his foot.

In response, Freida tilted her head to the side, looking down at the dock. Her dark hair fell off her shoulder, leaving it exposed.

Some of the men stood up, others moved closer to the fire. They opened new cans of beer.

"You speakee English?" Spittle flecked out of Jim's mouth as he spoke. He turned to the other men, "She probably don't need to. She's probably too busy fucking to talk." The men laughed appreciatively. Earl's smile stretched across his fat face.

She drew her arms in so that her elbows were down, and her hands were under chin. She hesitated. The men were gathered close together now, almost shoulder to shoulder. "Salvador is a silly man and drinks too much. But he comes home where I am at night. I think that is special."

"It ain't special. You just have something he wants," Jim laughed.

"Hey Frieda, you wanna go for a swim with me?" a man said.

Frieda began to cry, a soundless weeping that went unnoticed by most of the men. It had been a long time since Jim had seen a woman cry. Her tears seemed to follow the same path down her face, the first following the second, third, fourth, fifth.

"I think she looks like she wants to get wet," Earl said. He stood by the fire, bent slightly forward so that his face was almost over the flames. Beads of sweat were on his nose and forehead. Jim noticed his knife in Earl's waistband, the wooden handle stuck out, weighing down the elastic. It looked heavy and awkward tucked into his pants.

"I tell you what boys, why don't we give Sal a swim in the river?" Jim turned to Earl, "You ever seen a drunk Mexican swim?"

Earl cocked his head to the side for a moment, unsure. Then he smiled and said, "Hell no I ain't. You think he'll float?"

Jim picked up Sal, heaving his weight to the edge of the dock, and dunked him. He came up sputtering. The reaction was immediate. Some men stepped back and a few sat down. Earl squatted by the fire.

Freida hurried over to Sal and spoke with him in Spanish. Jim helped her get Sal to the boat. "Gracious," she said.

"Don't thank me. You ain't fucking welcome here." Jim watched as Freida turned on the motor. The little boat sped away downriver, traveling quickly with the current.

Jim returned to the fire and squatted next to Earl. The waves from Sal's boat made water wash up onto the dock and soak their feet.

"Fucking river," Earl said. He passed Jim the liquor bottle and he tipped it back.

Grandma's pictures

2008-04-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

Here's some pictures I took of my grandmother for photo class last year. Isn't she beautiful?

Short Story: When Skies Are Gray

2008-04-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

When Skies Are Gray

Sinking apartment buildings crowded Fairview Avenue, huddled up together like they were trying to keep warm. Occasionally street lights flickered, outlining the sharp edges of benches, open windows and aluminum cans. At times like these, tattered mittens were thrown up over the faces of the homeless sitting by the dumpsters, and babies cried, startled by the sudden brightness. Most of the time though the neighborhood was blurred and dark, casting a convenient shadow over the tenants and passersby. Kate's apartment was at the end of street, across from a small grocery. At night, her building was completely dark, tucked away in a corner that was not reached by the flickering light. Most of the other tenants in her building were elderly, and had reached that point in there lives when the outside world was no longer familiar, and so they hid in their rooms. Her son, Michael, was the only child in the building. Every week when Kate hur

ried home after a trip to the grocery store, his voice would echo through the walls and into the corridor. The sound always surprised her because his baby talk sounded hollow, almost alien, in the empty building.

If she could, Kate liked to bring home stickers or crayons as a peace

offering to Michael for having to leave him alone for the fifteen minutes or so it took her to buy food. But lately she barely had enough money for bread and cereal. She'd come home, scoop Michael up out of his playpen with one hand and prepare dinner with the other. On nights like these, they would feast on hot dogs and instant mashed potatoes.

On Tuesday and Thursday nights, Kate took Michael with her to work the toll booth on the St. Matthew bridge. He was happy enough sitting propped up by the window, watching the car headlights-blurry at first, slowly sharpen to two beams and sort themselves neatly into rows. Somet

imes commuters brought him candy and commented on how big he was getting. Mrs. Denton, a doctor's wife, often came through Kate's booth on her way home from the gym. She brought Michael lollipops, and would say things like, “I bet that boy eats you out of house and home.”

Every Thursday, long after Michael fell asleep, Mr. Burbank pulled up in his Toyota. Tie undone, hair slightly coming loose from its gel, taking short drags from a cigarette.

“Pretty Kate, how's life treating you?” The traffic was usually slow by then, and it was his custom to sit and talk with her for a few minutes.

“It has its bright moments.” Her gazed shifted, taking him all in, settling on

his ring finger.

“Isn't your wife going to be mad that you're always getting back so late?”

“I doubt she even notices.”

Kate counted out the change and handed it back to him. He stared at her hand and nodded toward the sleeping child.

“Buy him some ice cream,” he said.

She waited until he drove away, tail lights fading into the pale grayness of early morning, before wrapping her arms around herself, squeezing until she felt all the breath leave her lungs.

But most people passed through without noticing Michael. They were commuters from the city in such a hurry to get home that they didn't bother to look up, so that Kate became familiar with all the different kinds of male pattern baldness. Most drivers didn't like to make eye-contact whereas the people in the passenger seat, separated by a solid cushion of blood and bone, generally stared. They were the ones that noticed Michael and frowned in disapproval.

Kate had stopped taking Michael to Big Mama's Grocery store a few months ago. The colorful cereal boxes and shiny floors excited him. Every few moments he would reach out f

rom his perch in the cart, spreading his fingers so that they looked like a spider, and touch something. She always caught whatever he knocked over a second too late, chasing rolling oranges down the aisle or picking up the crunched remains of a bag of cookies.

Once, she had left the cart at the front of the aisle, parked beside a large pyramid of popcorn boxes. Michael stood up in the cart in an effort to touch one, lost his balance, and fell over into the pyramid. Kate hurried over, picked up Michael and turned around to leave.

“Had an accident there, did we?” A tired-looking old man approached them, his skin wrinkled and hanging loosely, chicken-like, from his neck. His name tag identified him as Jim, but Kate had always thought of him as Big Mama's husband.

“Yes, he gets excited by everything in here. I'm sorry we made such a mess.”

Jim bent down, re-stacking the pyramid. “Oh it's alright. He reminds me of my son at that age.” Jim looked up at Kate from his crouched position while he spoke, “Could you hand me those boxes over there?”

Kate sat Michael in the cart and crouched down to help him straighten.

“You live across the street?” Jim's hands shook slightly as he shifted the boxes.

“On the corner.”

“Can't imagine raising a kid in this city.”

“Where are you from?”

“Kentucky." Jim squinted at her, sucking on his teeth. After a moment, "I had a ranch."

Some of the corners on the cereal boxes had been crushed. Kate tried to fix them, pressing the thin cardboard together with her fingers. "Sorry."

Jim took the box from her and shook it before putting it back in the pyramid. “One time I got this full grown Mustang somebody had managed to catch out in Montana somewhere. It was beautiful, that horse.”

“Aren't Mustangs wild?”

Jim looked up at Michael who stared right back at him, his round head tilted to the side. “Most people think they are, but in fact they're feral animals. The cowboys tamed them and were their masters for a while. But after there were no more cowboys left, they escaped and became wild again. That Mare from Montana was beautiful, you could tell she was never gonna let me tame her.”

“What happened?”

“I tried for a while, trying to break her down. But you could see it in the way she flipped her mane back, the way she danced on her front legs—she would die before she let someone tame her, make her do things she wouldn't ever do otherwise."

Michael began to fuss, and reached for one of the boxes on the newly-formed pyramid. Kate stood up and pushed the buggy back.

Jim said, “She quit eating after a few weeks and died.”

"I'd like to see a Mustang.”

“You won't find one here. They need wide spaces and sunlight to survive.”

Kate apologized again and left. That night, after she had put Michael to bed, Kate sat in a chair by the window. The cold colors of the street seeped through the window pane and into the room, mixing with the dust and dirt on her floor. That was the last time she took Michael grocery shopping.

Most of the time, Kate waited. If the safe in the wall was full and the rent was paid, then she didn't mind waiting. She passed the time by playing with Michael, working at the toll booth, or cleaning. She cleaned often because a layer of dust and grime covered her brown furniture and thin rugs, and no matter how

hard she tried to wipe it away it always came back. Waiting was okay because it divided life up into short, small doses that were easily swallowed. Sometimes Kate pictured herself on a time line that remained flat during her periods of waiting and spiked sharply when something important happened. The spikes were merely a bump, a small blip on her time line.

Waiting was hard when the safe was empty. Kate passed the time by sitting in a kitchen chair next to the phone, staring ahead into space. She moved only to attend to Michael or answer the phone. When the phone finally rang, she moved quickly, snatching it off its cradle and talking in sharp, efficient tones.

“Yes?”

“22nd and Fletcher, black Mercedes, the doors will be unlocked.”

She moved quickly, grabbing her case out of the closet with one hand and scooping up a sleeping Michael with the other. He was used to their late-night outings and slept on peacefully while she shifted him into a sling on her back. The steady movements of her quick strides and then the subway kept him asleep until they reached their destination. She crept into the back of the Mercedes and locked the door. Hunching down, she made sure Michael wasn't squished between her and the seat before assembling her pistol and fitting it with a silencer.

Kate waited again. This time, her waiting was defined by a sharp sense of

purpose, a goal. A small thrill fluttered in the pit of her stomach and she gripped the handle of her gun tighter. After a while, Michael began to stir, so she sang softly to keep him asleep.

“You are my Sunshine, My only Sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are gray.”

The song faded as a man in a tuxedo approached the car, fumbling in his pockets for the keys. He stood there with the door open, talking on the phone and gesturing animatedly. His arms flailed around and his mouth gaped open for a few seconds and then shut tight again. He reminded Kate of a fish out of water, an angel fish she decided since he was wearing black and white.

“No, I can get you the money. I swear to God. Just give me a few days-I'm good for it. My kid had to get braces and all this shit, please-hello? hello?”

He snapped the phone shut and climbed into the car, slamming his fist into the dashboard and grunting with the force of it. Michael jerked awake, letting out a loud cry of protest. It was one of his more substantial cries, starting from the depths of his belly and emanating from the throat. The man turned around in surprise. Kate shot him. It was clean and almost soundless, right between his eyes. She dissembled the gun, wiping it down to make sure there was no blood or gray matter on the weapon. Quickly she exited the car, careful to avoid the cameras at the ATM machine across the street. Michael's cry echoed in the

deserted business district, bouncing off bricks and plate glass windows. Filling up the emptiness.

After a job, Kate relaxed. She let the answering machine pick up missed calls and took Michael out to the park. She'd push him around in his blue stroller on the walking track to get exercise and fresh air. Afterward, she followed Michael around on the playground, his skinny arms digging holes in the sandbox or climbing precariously up wooden platforms. He was awkward and shy with the other children, preferring to play alone or with Kate. The few times other children played with him, it was in the form of bullying. Michael was made to march behind another child, or move over to let someone else ahead of him in line for the slide. Kate, who was waiting to catch him at the bottom, would have to stifle her urge to yell at other people's children. If there was money left over from the subway ride, Kate took Michael to get ice cream before returning to Fairview Avenue. He would fall asleep early on evenings like these, before the streets had a chance to turn gray with the setting sun.

The streetlights that flanked Big Mama's Grocery were the only working lights on Fairview Avenue. The circles of fluorescence surrounding the store acted

as a kind of line of demarcation: Gang members and drug dealers on one side and less obvious customers on the other. The people who entered the store did so with hunched backs, keeping their heads down and away from the glare.

The tall automatic doors at Big Mama's seemed to be vacuum sealed, so that every time they opened, the swooshing sound made Kate feel as if all the air were being sucked out of her lungs. Breathlessly, she skimmed through the toiletries, throwing Johnson's shampoo and rash cream in her cart without glancing at the prices. After a job, she was careless, almost reckless with money, buying impractical food like pork rinds, avocados, and sushi the deli made several hours earlier. She walked quickly through every aisle, running her hand over plastic wrappers and cold freezer windows. In the bakery she sampled little square pieces of stale pumpkin bread sitting, lumpy, in a plastic bubble.

She saved the magazines for last, slowing down to browse through “Travel” and “National Geographic.” She imagined Mr. Burbank and Michael sitting at home on a blanket spread out on the floor. She would return home from the grocery with bags full of goodies, presenting Michael with his stickers first before giving Mr. Burbank the National Geographic she had bought him as a surprise. He would look at her, pleased, and say “That's the right kind of thing for a man to be reading.”

Kate picked up a “Star” and an “Inquirer” magazine instead and walked up

to the checkout counter. Jim greeted her, his thin mouth turned upward in a vague attempt at a smile.

“Hello Kate.” He rang up the sushi and the magazines, and Kate could hear him sucking on his gums. When he finished, he looked up, squinting through his glasses, and said, “Where's Michael? I haven't seen him around lately.”

“He's at home.”

“I liked that boy. He reminds me of my son.”

“How's that?”

“Oh, its that look. Wesley was bright in the eyes and the heart, like your boy.”

“Bright? There's not much of anything bright around here,” Kate glanced out the door to the twin circles of light illuminating the otherwise gray sidewalk.

“Its a kind of freedom they're born with. People like me and you, we don't have it. We can earn it sometimes, we can try real hard, but most of the time we just have to see them on their way,” Jim paused for a moment, holding her bag of pork rinds, “I'm lucky. Wesley moved up here to the city, got a big fancy job commuting and everything, and he let me follow him. I lived a few good years with him and his family before he died.”

“I'm sorry,” Kate looked up at him, “How did he die?”

“Somebody up and shot him. Should've known with this damn city and all the crime. Anyway, its been a few years ago now. I'd trade all the horses in the world to get Wesley back.” Jim finished bagging the groceries and handed them to her. She grabbed them and walked to the door. Jim let out a breath.

“Hurry home to your boy. Mothers should be Mothers, you know.”

Kate listened to the doors swoosh shut behind her, cutting off his words. She stepped quickly into the darkness, hunched over with her head down.

The phone rang. Michael had fallen asleep on a blanket in the living room after a long day at the park, his stomach full from eating a scoop of double chocolate chip ice cream. Kate rushed to pick up the phone, glancing at Michael to make sure he was still asleep. But when she put the phone to her ear she hesitated. A voice on the other side said, “Hello?”

“Yes. I'm here.”

“The warehouse on Highview Boulevard. The target will exit out the side door and into the alley.”

Michael was fussy on the subway ride into the city, jerking awake every time the train stopped. They hid behind a dumpster in the alley, the smell of rotten food and cat litter hung in the air, as well as the acrid stench of some sort of chemical. Kate crouched low, balancing on her haunches while she assembled her gun. Behind her, Michael's feet dragged the ground, his white tennis shoes getting streaked with the grime of the alley.

She waited, her legs falling asleep underneath her from squatting for so long. She concentrated on her heartbeat, trying to see if it matched Michael's rhythm, faint but discernible up against her back. Then she tried to match his breathing, but his breath came too quickly so that when she sped up her breathing to match his, she began to feel light-headed and anxious.

The night was beginning to take on the gray hues of morning when the warehouse door finally opened. A man side-stepped into the alley. Kate could see the back of his head and the outline of his shoulders under a black overcoat. He was holding a cigarette in one hand and fumbling for keys with the other. When he dropped them, the small tinkle of keys hitting pavement echoed in the empty alley, creating a sound too big for such a small object. She stood up, wincing at the pain of a thousand pinpricks as blood rushed back into the lower parts of her legs. The man bent over to retrieve his keys and Kate stepped out from behind the dumpster.

Something about his hunched position made her take a step closer instead of shooting. The hair on the top of his head was thinning but well-styled by a generous helping of product. The hand holding the cigarette had a slight tremor, automatically shaking the ash off the end of the cigarette when it got too long. Kate knew who he was before he stood up and met her gaze.

The surprise in Mr. Burbank's face quickly faded, replaced by fear and then a sort of coldness.

“It's you.”

She pointed the gun at his chest, holding it with both hands.

“The fucking toll booth girl and her kid...Fuck.” Mr. Burbank took a drag

from his cigarette and stood facing her, his hands hanging awkwardly by his sides.

Kate felt Michael's small, steady heartbeat. It was slower now than it had been earlier when he was pumping his legs on the swing set at the park or chasing bugs in the grass outside their apartment. As she stood there, gun in hand, some strands of her hair were pulled, stuck to Michael's sticky face as he turned in his sleep.

“They won't stop.”

Gray morning sunlight entered the alley, blurring the spaces between the trash and brick walls and crumbling pavement. Mr. Burbank closed his eyes and exhaled. By the time he opened them again, Kate was gone.

Michael was crying. He had refused to eat his dinner and now sat on the floor, balling his hands into tight fists and directing his cries toward the chair where his mother sat, waiting for the phone to ring. The phone had been silent for three months, and Kate had begun to pass the time she spent waiting for the phone by twisting the cord around her fingers, tightening it until the tips turned white.

She looked out the window onto Fairview Avenue, the lights surrounding Big Mama's grocery casted shadows on the surrounding street. She wondered if the grayness that seemed to occupy the street most of the time, sinking into the crevices and defying the light, was there because of her. She wondered if it was her fault that there were no horses on Fairview Avenue.

Kate walked over to Michael and picked him up, pressing his chest against hers. He stopped crying momentarily, looking at his mother with wet eyes. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight, until all the breath left their bodies. They stood like that, slightly bent, silhouetted against the shabby neighborhood outside the window.

Introducing...

2008-04-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

Hopefully my blog will include photos, stories and news information i find important. I also write creatively, so that stuff will be on here too.

(My friends and I at the library at our college. )