Ack, I've fallen delinquent in posting again. I think it's because I've just been so tired lately. I've burned out my batteries. As Spirit of the West might say, "I need home for a rest. Take me home!" And I will be home, in a mere two weeks! The thought is exciting.
The school year is winding down, and so are school activities. A couple of weeks ago I went with one hundred high school students to a place called Sokrisan Youth Centre for our high school retreat, where much fun was had. There were many activities. For me, though, the highlight of this trip was a Korean game that the boys started playing. It just says so much about Korea. So much. I will let it speak for itself.
What I love most about this is after all this elaborate discussion, planning, and effort of execution, none of it has any bearing on who the winner is. Rather, the winner is determined by a round of Rock Paper Scissors. (You can hear them playing at the end when they're yelling "Kye bye bo!")
You know how sometimes, things seem to stay the same forever, and then all of a sudden everything turns upside down? I've sort of felt like this over the past week. It's not that any conditions of my life have changed, but rather, my perception of them has changed.
Ever since I arrived in Korea to do this job, I have buckled down to work. I've been working hard to save money go back to school, for my retirement fund, and to hit the travel destinations I have dreamed of since I was old enough to have a concept of geography. But oftentimes, I have just felt like I was working, working, working, and the fulfillment of those goals was just some hazy date in the future. That sentence makes it sound like a complaint, though I don't intend it that way. I like my life here, I like my work, I'm blessed to have good friends. But I am also aware that my current existence here is not indefinite. Someday it will end...it's just that the ending has always seemed a long way off.
Over the past week, though, I've realized that it's not a long way off. In fact, I have just little over a year left. It's true that a year is not an insignificant amount of time, but it doesn't seem like that much when I've already been here three years to begin with. When I come back from summer vacation this fall, everything is going to be so different. Knowing that this is my last year here will make me appreciate all of the things I love about Korea, and will probably also make me more tolerant of the things I don't.
There have been moments too when I have thought, why am I leaving? Why not just stay another year? I can stay as long as I want. After all, Korea has been very good to me. It offered me one job that I wasn't technically qualified for, and when that all went sour, it turned around and offered me another (again, one I wasn't technically qualified for). As a result, I've experienced immense professional growth, have learned what I am capable of, and have become much more confident than ever before.
But I think that if I stayed, I would be at risk of getting into a rut. I still remember my TESOL teacher in Canada, who had lived in Korea for eight years. When I expressed my amazement to him at the length of time he'd lived here, he just shrugged and said, "If you can make it one year in Korea, you can make it eight." Now, at the end of Year Three, I am in complete agreement with him. The first year is the hardest. If you can endure it, you could live here the entire rest of your life, I think. But there comes a point when Korea is very, very comfortable and you have to make a decision. And honestly, I think I'm at a point where I need to be scared again. I need to be the newbie again. I need to do new things.
So in summer 2011 I am going to Europe, and then I am moving to Montreal. :D
Yesterday, just for fun, I sat down and started looking at the places where I want to go. Here was the sample itinerary that I came up with:
Seoul-Munich-Pisa: Spend the night in Pisa. See the Leaning Tower in the morning. Get the train to Cinque Terre and stay there for three or four days. Go back to Pisa.
Pisa-Paris: Catch the train, fly, or somehow get to Paris for the Conversation Corps Orientation. Spend the weekend in Paris and then on Monday go to my host family's home wherever it is in France I've been assigned.
France: Hang out in France for a month. After my stay with my host family ends, spend a week travelling to all of the places I want to see. Then...
France to England: Take the Channel Tunnel across to London, where hopefully I could stay with my friends Beckie and Dave? (I should contact them.) Go up to Devonshire and wherever else strikes my interest. Visit Margaret and Steven wherever they are in England by that point, and maybe my friend Lee as well. Then to:
Scotland. Spend a few days in Edinburgh, and other Scottish places of interest (like Leoch).
This itinerary is only the first draft. At first I thought it was still too early to start planning this venture, but it turns out that it's not, because Edinburgh has so many summer festivals that you often need to book accommodation over a year in advance. So it's time to start doing my research. I also need to consider if I want to take another detour through Southeast Asia on the way to Munich. It may be too expensive, but I am just not done with Southeast Asia yet.
Today on my weekly trip to the supermarket I was reminded of a Korean expression that I learned recently: "둰장 여", or "doenjang girl".
Doenjang chiggae is a fabulous Korean stew with tofu, mussels, onions, and soybeans. It is definitely my favourite Korean food. Not only for its taste (yum) but because it's cheap. The average doenjang chiggae usually runs about 4000 won, which works out to something like $3.50. For that, you get the stew itself, a bowl of rice, and an array of side dishes.
Unlike traditional Korean food, which is ridiculously cheap by Western standards, any kind of Western food or beverage is usually about the same price as it would be at home (dinner at the local Indian restaurant easily sets me back $30). Starbucks' prices are no exception.
So the expression "doenjang girl" has arisen to describe a Korean girl who wants to appear wealthier than she actually is. Instead of visiting an expensive foreign restaurant, Doenjang Girl will eat her $3.50 bowl of doenjang chiggae, then goes to Starbucks to purchase a six dollar latte.
It's interesting how things like this make you consider your own perspective. In the West I usually expect to pay at least $15 for a meal out. When my favourite Ethiopian restaurant in Ottawa charged me only $7.50 for my curry, I kept scanning the menu trying to figure out what the catch was. If you're used to that, spending $6 on a latte doesn't seem like a big deal. Considering it from a Korean perspective, however, it would be like me paying $25 for a latte after a $15 supper. Kind of nuts.
That thought was with me today when I was confronted by these beauties in the grocery store:
Raspberries!
At first, I told myself they were way too expensive. I would never spend that kind of money on a few tiny pieces of fruit. Then I realized that I would have paid the same amount for an iced mocha frappucino without batting an eye. These were just as delicious and much better for me. I bought them, took them home, and promptly ate them all. They didn't taste like Canadian raspberries (I think they must actually be another kind of berry) but they were awesome all the same.
School was hectic this week due to the visit of a committee from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), whose accreditation we need if our students are to attend any American university with our diplomas. Although the visit went well and the members of the committee were lovely people, it's still a bit nerve-wracking to have people coming round to your classrooms and observing all you do.
Still, when they presented their initial findings, I thought they were dead on about the school's strengths and weaknesses (or, "areas of strength" and "areas of growth" in WASCese), and I hope to see their recommendations implemented.
I've been feeling quite nice lately. Work is manageable and I've been getting out on the town to have - dare I say it - a social life. On Wednesday I went out to dinner with Bonnie and Kim, two amazing women I don't get to spend enough time with. Some excellent conversations were had, which only cemented the feeling I've been having lately that my friendships here are now well-worn and comfortable.
On Thursday I went in pursuit of my new hobby. In a continuing effort to get away from the tyranny of the computer screen, I thought it might be fun to try social dancing. I was rather dubious about it. As a child, I sucked at physical activity. I was lousy at sports and dreaded gym class as much as I now dread invasive surgery. I took dance classes for many years, too, but I just never seemed to "get" it. Eventually, out of sheer frustration, I convinced my mom to let me quit.
For some reason that I still don't understand, my brain and my limbs connected after adolescence. I was suddenly able to do forms of exercise that had always eluded me as kid. I also took up yoga, an activity that seemed to rewire my brain to make me almost graceful at times. But I still thought of dancing as something other people did. The fact that most of my daydreams include me rocking out on the dance floor with my celebrity crush of the moment has done little to alter this attitude.
Still, my best friend Maria has been dancing for years, and she's been trying to get me to come. She often goes to Seoul to swing dance, but when she found a salsa club here in Suwon she decided to learn that too. So I went along with her.
The club works like this. There is a lesson first where you learn new moves and practice them. You don't need a partner to join in, as it's expected that everyone will dance with everyone else. (As Maria says, "You improve by dancing with people above your level.") The men stand in one line, the women in another line, and you rotate partners. The class goes for about an hour, and then the dance party begins where you get a chance to "apply your learning" (more WASCese). That's when the club really starts to fill up with all kinds of people, Koreans and foreigners alike.
My teacher was a lovely Thai man who conducted much of the lesson in English. I didn't think that I'd be able to do well, but to my amazement I felt all of my old dance knowledge coming back to me. It's been buried in my brain all along - only this time, my brain knows how to tell my limbs what to do with it. The result? I can't remember the last time I had more fun! Obviously, I made a lot of mistakes, but they're fixable. I know I will improve with practice.
I danced and danced all night, and even though I didn't get to bed until after midnight, I smiled all day Friday and was in a great mood. I'll be headed back to the salsa club next week for sure. I've even found a place in Ottawa where I can practice during the summer.
Yesterday an Indian restaurant opened in our neighbourhood. I've been eagerly awaiting its appearance. Lauren, Elias and I went to check it out. We are pleased to report that it is up to par! I'm psyched to have Indian food so close at hand. Their gulab jamun is particularly good; it has lots of cardamom. I was also pleased to see that the restaurant was doing a roaring business for opening night.
I always feel good about the world after a good meal.
Today I have no plans, but I am happy with that. It's good to have a chance just to sit and relax a bit. I went outside for a walk and saw that the cherry blossoms are blooming at last. This is my favourite time of year in Korea and a sure sign that the prolonged winter is ending.
Last night I met up with some friends for a concert, somewhat enthusiastically entitled "Jamie Cullum the First Live in Seoul." I had some fun puzzling over whether they meant "Jamie Cullum the First" (as opposed to the yet unborn Jamie Cullum the Second, maybe?) or "Jamie Cullum's First Performance in Seoul" and decided that it was the latter.
I like going to shows in Seoul because an artist has to be fairly well known to come to Korea at all, but due to the language barrier they won't have as many fans as they would in English speaking countries. This means that the concerts are usually held in smaller, more intimate venues, which turned out to be the case last night.
Darrick, Krista, Leslie, Michael, Elias, Laura, me, and Lauren
Jamie was absolutely fabulous. I've never seen a performer with so much energy! He didn't just play the piano - he played every part of the piano, on it, in it, around it, and under it, turning it into his own alternative drum. Twice he climbed on top of it and jumped off. He also set up a beatbox track that just blew my mind. He and his fantastic band did two encores and we walked out well-satisfied with the state of the world and everything in it.
We did go around the back hoping that Jamie and his band would come out and hang with us for a while, but unfortunately they were whisked away in tinted vans only a few minutes after we got there. Even so, that didn't detract from the awesomeness of our evening or our post-concert euphoria.
On the subway
The best moment of the concert happened when I was watching Jamie and his band, listening to my friends sing along, and I realized that things have been shifting for me in a positive direction lately. I feel as though I know the direction my life is heading in, and that everything is progressing as it should. The "new" friends I made when I first started working here have suddenly been around long enough to count as old friends. I am grateful for them and for everything I have. All is well.
Hey, fourth weekly post in a row! Is it possible that I am actually on my way to becoming a regular blogger? Huzzah!
Since most of my colleagues usually take the opportunity to travel to other Asian countries during school breaks, it's easy to forget how much fun it is to travel around Korea. So when this long weekend came up, my friends Elias, Lauren and I decided to visit Andong (the Cultural Capital of Korea), since it's reachable by train and bus. We were joined by Laura from Germany, a student teacher who's been doing an internship at the school for the last few months. We were pumped to spend some time in the countryside, where the "real Korea" is alive and well!
We got to Suwon Station at about 9AM. Though it was still cold out, I was pleased that it was a sunny day and that the yellow dust was lying low:
Elias, who used to live in Daegu, suggested that we stop off there on the way to Andong so that we could go to Mount Palgongsan, where the tallest statue of Buddha in the world is situated. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. We took a taxi up a remote hill to the gate, and as we were getting out the driver demanded that we give him an extra 6000 won because there was nobody waiting to go back down. At first we hemmed and hawed before Lauren told him in no uncertain terms that we would pay him based on the meter only. (Lauren is a useful travelling companion because she's got guts.) We all scurried out of the taxi and he cursed loudly and eloquently in Korean before taking off back down the mountain.
Fortunately, the experience of the Mount Palgongsan more than made up for the unpleasant cab ride. It was beautiful, scenic, and above all, clean, which you appreciate after months of breathing in smog and dust. It's a great place to hike and check out the natural sites.
These scary looking guys were guarding the gate to the park.
We hiked down to a bridge where an older Korean gentleman was kind enough to take a group shot: Me, Laura from Germany, Lauren, and Elias
As it turned out, the mountain had extensive hiking trails that led to temples throughout. We didn't hike that far ourselves, but the first group of temples we found was beautiful. Inside, people were praying to Buddha. I went into two different temples that day, one where a monk was chanting, and it was a lovely experience.
After visiting the temples, we continued our hike down a long path over a bridge. The park was decorated with lanterns throughout in anticipation of Buddha's Birthday, which is coming soon.
The Buddha statue itself was disappointing at first, as the area around it was being repaved and we weren't allowed in. Fortunately, we went round the back way and wandered beneath him at our leisure (there are some advantages to being foreigners!).
After being so thoroughly rejuvenated by our hike, we were a bit concerned about how we were going to get back to the bus station. Fortunately, when we looped down the back way, we discovered a city bus that ran directly to the bus station. We jumped on and were off to Andong.
Unfortunately, we wasn't able to find the vegetarian restaurant that supposedly exists in Andong, but we found ourselves some good food nonetheless! These are called banchan, or side dishes. The sweet black beans are my favourite.
We had hoped to visit a traditional sauna, but we ended up running out of time, which was unfortunate as there were so many of them around. This "25 hour" sauna was a particular favourite of ours:
The next morning, we were up and out the door to visit Hahoe (pronounced Hah-hway), a traditional folk village right in the midst of Confucian Korea. It was here, we were told (repeatedly) that Queen Elizabeth II visited when she came to Korea. We were allowed to go right up to the tree that she planted, but since it just looks like a regular tree I elected not to photograph it. However, I did photograph this house, built in Confucian style with separate living quarters for men and women.
Elias took the opportunity to check out the kimchi pots in the yard. Traditionally, kimchi is made and then left in these pots, which are sometimes buried for years. The result is healthy but potent stuff.
After the village, it was time to head back to Daegu so we could take our train back to Suwon. While we were on the bus, Elias thought that we should stop at a French restaurant in Daegu that he knows. I was dubious at first, as Korean attempts at Western food often have mixed results, but since Elias is a man who knows food, I thought I'd best go. The restaurant was fantastic! I had bruschetta and a smoked salmon salad while Elias and Lauren had steak and lamb respectively. Everyone was well satisfied.
The best part, of course, was the dessert. Homemade vanilla and mint ice cream! YUM! (You can also see Elias' chocolate mousse in the back.)
All in all, it was a great weekend! I hope that we can take another such excursion soon, although Laura is headed back to Germany next Sunday, so unfortunately she won't be able to join us.
Not much in the way of culturally Korean activities for next week, but I am excited because I am going to the Jamie Cullum concert in Seoul next Saturday! If you've not heard this man, listen now and love:
What time of day would you say this picture was taken?
View from my balcony window
If you said somewhere between 4-6PM, you are wrong. I took this photo at 1:15 in the afternoon, at which point I had my lights on. It's not actually a rainstorm. It's yellow dust, which Koreans call hwangsa (황사).
Yellow dust is a yearly phenomenon that I've had to endure since I came to Korea. Yellow sand blows in from deserts in Mongolia and Kazakhstan, affecting China, both Koreas, and Japan. Sometimes it's so bad that it even makes it to the US. It usually appears around mid-March and won't disappear until the end of June.
If it looks unhealthy, that's because it is.
As you might expect, yellow dust has always caused all kinds of respiratory problems such as asthma. But in recent years it's gotten worse due to all of the pollutants the dust now carries, such as mercury, lead, zinc, asbestos, synthetic hormones etc. The dust is also thicker now due to deforestation in China, which allows more of it to blow southward. Reforestation attempts have not been particularly successful.
I'm lucky in that so far the yellow dust hasn't caused me any health problems that I know of. It does mean I get more easily winded when I go outdoors, and last year it got so bad that I could taste metal pretty much all the time.
What bothers me most about it is that it looks pretty creepy and post-apocalyptic.
Other than the yellow haze through which I must conduct my daily affairs, I don't have much to report. I had the week off school, so I spent my time resting. Next week I should have more to report, since I have Parent/Teacher Interviews on Wednesday and Thursday. Then, on Friday, my friends Lauren, Elias and I are taking a long weekend's trip down to Andong, a tourist town in southeastern Korea. I've never been, but Elias says it's one of his favourite places, and it even has a VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT! Given that vegetarian options are hard to come by in this country, I'm excited to try it. I wonder what traditional Korean vegetarian cuisine is like. Pictures to follow.
Ah hah! A weekly update! They say if you can resist a bad habit for 28 days you will conquer it, so only 21 more days of not neglecting this blog and I'm home free!
It's been a big week at the school for me - our production of the murder mystery Who Poisoned His Meatball? by Craig Sodaro went up on Wednesday and Thursday to great success and rave reviews. The school community really came out to support it, and we were able to raise over a million won for Haiti relief (that works out to about $1000).
The whole process was immensely exhausting for me, but it was also rewarding to see how well our talented cast did with their performances. Considering that the Drama program was non-existent when I arrived here, it's gratifying to see how far it's come in a very short time. This year's been a lot easier because I have a true partner in Dave, the new middle school teacher who started work here this year. Our work styles complement each other well and we each think of things the other doesn't, so between the two of us we've accomplished a lot. It's so much easier now that I don't have to do it alone.
I'm also grateful for how much I've grown as a director. Even last year when I directed my first play, I had no idea what I was doing (and it was pretty obvious). This year, having some experience under my belt and working with Dave made the process much smoother. I was even able to do some of the things I'd wanted to do last year but couldn't, like have three performances instead of one, have a student design a beautiful program, and get corporate sponsorship to help with props. Now I find myself much more comfortable as a director, and feel able to accomplish things I never even thought I was capable of before.
The best part of all of this, though, has been how much the kids have gotten out of it. I know what a difference my participation in Drama made to me when I was in high school, so it's been wonderful to see the same thing happening to my own students. Yesterday one student had the following as her Google Talk status:
♫ The past 3 months were the best time of my school life :)
I don't think a teacher could ask for anything more than that.
Today I played around with iMovie and create a montage of the production. Let me just say, Macs are awesome. Enjoy!
So, I haven't written in here since June 23rd...eek.
For the past couple of weeks I've really been thinking that I need to do more with this blog. I mean, teaching at an international school in Asia is a pretty cool gig, and people would probably be interested in reading about it. And yet I never update.
There's a few reasons, I guess. I teach writing at school and I am writing a novel in my spare time, so I tend to think that if I'm going to blog I better sound like a National Geographic journalist or something. I put insane pressure on myself to think of headlines and captions like:
Inside International Education in Korea In a country where rote memorization and cramming dominate Korean public schools, many Korean parents are looking to a Western education to help their children get ahead.
Which is all well and good, but come on. That just seems like work. I work enough already.
My friends Tom and Bonnie have a fabulous blog that really captures not only their personalities, but what life at our school and in Korea is like. They update it every week too, which seems a big job to me!
Finally, last week I asked Bonnie how she manages it. "Well," she said, "it helps to have two people, obviously. But keep it short and sweet - that helps too."
"Short and sweet," as you all know, is not really my style. I tend more toward "longwinded". However, in the interests of documenting a pretty cool existence here, I think I should make the effort...so here goes!
I have a six hour rehearsal with the kids in the play today. I'll pick up some batteries for my digital camera and see what I can accomplish. I bet I can get some good shots to upload.
I'm home for the summer now, and with such copious spare time on my hands, I have devoted myself to developing important new life skills. Like making my photos of my trip to Alberta into an iMovie. Feel the excitement, friends!
Making the iMovie has taught me that I really need to start taking more interesting pictures, especially more pictures of friends actually doing stuff.
I woke up really early feeling awfully nervous about how my high school drama class' play was going to go. This is my "mixed" class, containing students in grades 6, 7, 9, and 10. Not only is hard to teach a drama class to students in four grades who don't even know what drama is, the odds stacked against us were thus:
A) During yesterday's rehearsal, my students still didn't have their lines memorized. B) We had a 25 minute window in which to perform, but the play has been dragging at 35 minutes because of forgotten lines. C) Normally I schedule lunchtime performances on days when students have my class right before lunch so that when the audience enters the auditorium the kids are all dressed, miked, and ready to go. But today I couldn't. We had only 25 minutes to get ready, which, if you've ever taught middle school kids, you will know is not enough time. D) Somehow, I also had to feed the kids, but fifteen minutes before the pizza was supposed to arrive, the receptionist called and told me she forgot to order it. (This is the second time this has happened. It only just occurred me to now that I speak enough Korean to do this myself. I order food to my place all the time, so why can't I order pizza to the school? Why did I never think of this before? Anyway, I digress.) E) The elementary students were practicing for their own concert in the auditorium that morning, which meant that I would have no time to set up the set pieces in advance. F) We were performing for the high school students, who are all nice kids individually, but when you put them together they have to be the most apathetic group of people in existence. Moreover, they don't really know what Drama is so they tend to be reticent about embracing it. How were they going to react to the show?
I was gnawing on my nails all through my morning classes thinking of this, but seriously, the timing turned out to be so beautifully orchestrated that I couldn't have planned it better. Firstly, my students in the pre-lunch class finished their debates with five minutes to spare, so I sent them to lunch early, giving me precious time to put the set together. Then, my students' middle school teachers graciously released them early so that they could come to prepare. That meant that by the time the bell went, half my cast was already dressed. That first half did mike check while the later arrivals dressed, and just as we were finishing up, the belated pizza arrived! I gave my kids their pep talk during the impromptu lunch in my classroom, and by the time our audience started to trickle in from the cafeteria, they were fully ready to go.
My students' performance was just bang on and the audience loved it. They clapped, they cheered, they laughed, they oohed and aahed. My students were stunned by their peers' reaction. (I was too- because, well, usually they don't react to anything.) This is their first big show in front of an audience, and they weren't expecting that. They held up well. Some lines were forgotten or missed, but they covered every mishap, and the play actually ended up running just under time. It just went beautifully! I think the kids are really excited to do the play again on Monday for the middle school students. They will be the first group in the history of my school to do the same performance twice, so I think it will be a real growing experience for them.
Still, I can't help but feel that the high school show was the most important. Next year, Drama will be mandatory for all middle school students, but it remains optional for high school students. Most high school students have emphatically avoided it because it was unfamiliar and Korean teenagers are shy about appearing on stage. But I feel like, because of that play, high school students are starting to understand why Drama is important and beneficial. I hope that some will sign up for it.
I took this picture in the Demilitarized Zone looking into North Korea in early 2008. Note the creepy guy with binoculars in the left window.
Although the Western media loves to make a big fuss over North Korea, South Koreans' typical response to the antics of North Korea can be summed up in one word: "Meh." They've lived beside them for so long, and have dealt with so much crap over the years, that for them it's no big deal. That isn't to say that they don't care; South Koreans are deeply saddened about the division of their homeland, but they don't freak out the way the West does every time North Korea rattles its sabre.
The thing is, North Korea might threaten South Korea and Japan and the US, but it isn't really about those countries at all. The fact that they have to do this speaks to the fact that the regime is probably crumbling from the inside, and they have to attack an "outer enemy" to ensure unity within. The US, South Korea, and Japan are the most convenient scapegoats. The Western media does not seem to have picked up on this.
After two years here, I've kind of adopted an indifferent attitude towards the North and its antics. I have to say, though, that the idea of the armistice being over is hugely unsettling. If the North did attack, their resources are so limited, their military so antiquated, that they wouldn't stand much of a chance...but they could cause a lot of damage in the interim.
I keep picturing what would be going through the mind of a North Korean soldier marching into Seoul and seeing the buildings, the lights, the cars, the stores, the prosperity. What would they think? Everything I've ever been told was a lie? Or, after a lifetime of indoctrination, would that only drive him to greater fury?
Korea is always a noisy place. When you have 42 million people crammed into a country that is smaller than Canada's smallest province, the concept of "noise bylaw" doesn't really apply. This fact confronted me at 7AM this morning when construction workers began to jackhammer the road outside my apartment. Right now the truck that sells popcorn on my street corner is blasting some pop of the musical variety. You simply learn to live with it or tune it out after a while.
My friends Tom and Bonnie live on the ninth story of a typical Korean high rise apartment building that overlooks a busy intersection. I've grown accustomed to hearing the sounds of car horns, shouting, and other traffic noises when I go over there.
Last night, a bunch of us went over for worship. As we were singing, I noticed that there seemed to be more horns than normal. Aside from that, the shrill sound of a whistle kept piercing the night. At first I just assumed that one of the stop lights was out and somebody was directing traffic, but the whistling became more frequent and more insistent.
"Ugh, it's Whistle Man again!" Bonnie exclaimed.
We were all intrigued. "Whistle Man?"
Tom and Bonnie explained it to us. I'll let the video they posted on their own blog speak for itself:
Our friend Stephanie, who also lives in the building, has been intrigued by the Whistle Man for some time. "I have a theory," she said. "The Whistle Man was married, and his wife was hit by a bus. Now he tries to stop buses in an attempt to keep the same thing from happening to anyone else."
"That would make a great Korean drama," laughed Darrick.
We gathered at their window and watched Whistle Man. Tom and Bonnie's video was shot in the daytime, but it was night now and Whistle Man was running around in the darkness. Some of the buses got too close for comfort because they hadn't expected to see him. One bus stopped and the driver started yelling at him. I began to feel anxious, watching him. He looked like an ajoshi, a Korean middle-aged man, who had drunk one soju too many and lost his sanity along with his sobriety.
When we finished watching him and started to worship, I found it hard to concentrate on the songs because I just kept thinking about him running around down there.
Stephanie seemed to feel the same way. "I'm going to go down there and talk to him," she said.
"What are you going to say?" asked Darrick.
"조심하세요. It means 'Take care'. Somebody has to say something to him, and Koreans aren't going to do it."
She was right. Koreans' general response to anybody exhibiting signs of mental illness is to alternately to ignore them or laugh at them. In Korea, mental illness is a fate more shameful than death.
Of course, foreigners are exempt from many of the strictures of Korean culture. That freedom does come with a sense of obligation, however, because sometimes you are the only one who can do things that Korean culture prevents Koreans themselves from doing.
Such as attempting to intervene with Whistle Man.
"I'll go with you," I volunteered.
Suwon is fairly cosmopolitan and foreigners aren't as unusual here as they are in other parts of Korea, but we still weren't sure how Whistle Man would feel about being approached by two foreigners late at night. We stopped at a small convenience store to buy him an ice cream cone in the hopes of soothing him if we made him nervous. The store owner was standing on the sidewalk watching Whistle Man and laughing at him.
As we walked towards the median, we could hear our friends yelling encouragement from the ninth floor window. "Here," Stephanie said, "you'd better talk to him. Your Korean is better than mine. I'll give him the ice cream."
"Okay," I said. I ran through the word in my head, adapting it to the polite form to use to someone older than myself. (The Korean language is heavily hierarchical according to age - using the wrong verb ending is extremely rude.) Suddenly I was really nervous. We walked closer and I called out, "Ajoshi, ajoshi!" He didn't turn around. I wondered if he didn't hear me or if he was just ignoring me. "Ajoshi, ajoshi!"
We walked right up to him and he turned to face us. I was startled. For one thing, he was not the ajoshi he had appeared to be from Tom and Bonnie's window. He was young, younger than me, no more than twenty-five. He was definitely not drunk. I could tell from the shape of his face that he had some form of mental retardation. He did not seem fazed by our presence at all. He cocked his head, looking at us as if he saw us, yes, but we were just utterly irrelevant.
"조심합니다," I said. ("Be careful.") It was ridiculous to be using the formal honourific form to him when he was younger than me, but my mind stalled and I couldn't think of the correct way.
Stephanie handed him the ice cream, which he accepted with the bow of his head and then went back to his cart as if we didn't exist.
"Be careful!" I yelled again in Korean.
Whistle Man looked back at me and nodded once, then kept walking. I knew that, the second he stopped looking at us, we vanished from his mind. By the time the elevator took us back up to Tom and Bonnie's apartment, Whistle Man was gone.
I don't know if he left because of us, and I imagine that he'll be back on the median whistling away again before long. But I'm glad at least there was no more traffic-related danger for him last night.
Today I went into the office to talk to Andrew, the director of the school's General Affairs about my oh-so-hideous, purple squiggle wallpaper. It was an interesting case of cultural difference.
I wasn't even sure if I'd be able to get permission to paint my walls, because as I said before, it's just not something Koreans do. One day, when I was feeling particularly whiny about my revolting wallpaper, I asked my Korean friend Mi Ok why they choose decor like squiggles and checkerboards instead of painting their walls pretty colours.
"Because," she said, "whatever colour you picked might look good in autumn, but it wouldn't look good in winter. You'd have to wait a whole year for the colour to look good again."
I guess this goes to show a real difference in mindset between Koreans and Westerners. For one, I would never consider a colour choice to correspond to a season of the year -- to me, it corresponds to a mood, regardless of whether it's spring, summer, fall, or winter. For another, even if the colour didn't match the season, I would rather have that than boring blah wallpaper that looks awful all year round.
So I approached Andrew with some trepidation. He looked at me with that expression Koreans always get when they're trying to figure out what the hell foreigners are thinking, and said, "When do you have time? I will send people to give you new wallpaper."
I had horrific visions of new, equally unbearable wallpaper replacing the stuff I already hate. "It's okay," I said hurriedly. "I can do it myself."
He looked at me in obvious surprise. I had known that this would shock him, because that's another big cultural difference -- the DIY interior decorating craze that rages in North America is not common here. Koreans are not about DIY home improvement. "You can do that?"
"Sure," I said. "I've done it before. I'd like to paint, actually."
"Wow," he exclaimed, genuinely impressed. "You are okay to do that?"
"Yep. I'll just strip the wallpaper, sand it down, prime the walls, and paint them."
He pondered this for a minute. "I have seen Westerners do this in movie," he said. "I think it is something foreigners like."
"It is."
"Ah. Very different from Korea," Andrew commented, but his tone sounded amused rather than forbidding, and I knew he was going to let me do it. "Be sure if you paint, then new people in your apartment can put new wallpaper on."
"Sure, no problem!" I exclaimed, delighted.
I went down to lunch and excitedly told Glau we'd been approved. My friends were dubious. "You're going to take the wallpaper down yourself without a steamer?" Stephanie asked, her eyebrow arched.
"It will be easy," I said, which is true. The benefit of Koreans not really liking home decor is that their wallpaper is not the best quality. I've already started pulling strips of it off without even wetting it down, never mind steaming it.
The next problem to tackle is finding the necessary materials. If I was in Canada I could just amble down to Home Depot and pick one of eighty thousand colours, but hardware stores are non-existent here, so I may have to scout. I still have to decide what colour to paint the living room. I'm thinking yellow might be nice...
Anyway, I may soon find myself in over my head, but I don't even care. Just anything to get rid of the purple squiggles.
I usually get in a few good segments of some Korean drama. Seriously, Korean drama is like the crack cocaine of television. The more I get into it, the more addictive it becomes. I would even go so far to say that I enjoy it more than a lot of Western shows, maybe because it's manga in television form. Or maybe because Korean shows only run for a set number of episodes (usually no more than twenty five), which means that a good idea doesn't get beaten to death.
Right now, I am all caught up in 꽃보다 남자, which translates to "Boys Before Flowers". It's about a group of high school boys who attend the most prestigious private school in Korea. They call themselves "F4", and they generally go around making the lives of other students hell.
Then, one day, one of the targets of their bullying tries to kill himself by jumping off a building. It just so happens that a girl named Jan Di, the daughter of the nearby drycleaner's, is on campus to deliver this boy's laundry, and she ends up saving his life. To keep the school from getting negative publicity, the school's CEO decides to make her a scholarship student.
Of course, Jan Di hasn't even been at school a week before she becomes F4's newest target. However, when she stands up to them instead of taking their crap, the leader, Jun Pyo, falls in love with her. Unfortunately, she's fallen in love with his best friend, Ji Hoo. Oh no!
And it just gets better from there. Kidnapping, stalking, breakups, cheating, spontaneous flights to New Caledonia, near-drownings, confessions of love, heartfelt apologies, nights spent at the top of Namsan Tower...this show is freaking amazing. I love it!
If any of you should feel so inclined, all of the episodes are available here (completely legally too, I might add), with English subtitles, of course!
It's strange that I've lived here for six months and I am only just starting to get to know my neighbourhood. I think it's because A) work keeps me pretty busy, and B) my apartment building is on the main thoroughfare and it just didn't occur to me to go off the beaten path and discover what might be around.
Since I've gotten back from Christmas, though, I've done a bit of rambling, some of it by myself, some with others, and I've realized that I actually live in a pretty cool little bourgh. The area in behind Homeplus is crammed with little restaurants, shops, coffeehouses, and bars -- there's even a gelato place.
So this morning I took the opportunity to amble around and see if I could find any material for today's installment of my randomness series. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find anything since my neighbourhood is probably one of the most Westernized places I've ever encountered in Korea. However, I ran across two gems!
Beware the Beef!
1. This was posted in the window of the local health food store. In 2003, Korean officials banned American beef due to concerns about mad cow disease. So far as I know, no Koreans ever got sick from eating tainted meat, but when the government reversed the decision last year, Koreans were furious, inciting violent protests in Seoul and a backlash of anti-American sentiment. Restaurants posted signs to let customers know the origin of their beef (the school cafeteria still does this) and Koreans hissed and spat at the mere mention of American beef.
Media attention given to the issue was short on facts and long on hostility. To me it seemed to be more about Korean nationalism than it was about any legitimate health concern. In my experience, Korean nationalism is often based on blatantly xenophobic attitudes towards Korea's competitors, an opinion confirmed in this article:
"South Korea has built the world's 13th largest economy largely through exports. Still, in a country that has been invaded by bigger neighbors throughout its history, people harbor a deep suspicion about big powers, even allies like the United States.
Koreans in their 40s remember a childhood song handed down from their fathers and grandfathers: "Don't be cheated by the Soviets. Don't trust the Americans. Or the Japanese will rise again." Koreans still chafe at the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea into the Communist North and the pro-U.S. South after liberating it from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II."
One of my coworkers once remarked, "I don't understand how Korea can have such an inferiority complex and a superiority complex at the same time," with which I agree wholeheartedly. On the one hand, Koreans are very enamoured with all things American, but on the other, there is a lot of resentment towards the States for a variety of reasons, such as the steady encroachment of American culture on the traditional Korean way of life, or the ubiquitous nature of the English language globally. The American beef issue is an outlet for Koreans to express this resentment.
American beef is back on Korean supermarket shelves, and according to my coworkers, is about two thirds of the price of its domestic and Australian competitors. Being vegetarian, I had sort of forgotten about it until I saw this sign. Apparently it will be a hot topic for some time.
While we're on the subject of food, that brings me to my next picture: squid!
It's Squid for Supper Tonight!
In Korea, it is extremely common for restaurants to advertise their fare by displaying a smiling, happy cartoon version of the type of animal that you will consume inside. I have seen countless grinning pigs and winking cows during my two years here. I like this squid because he looks like he's under pressure, as if he's saying, "I'll keep this smile on my face even though you're about to come in here and eat me!" He's resisting. Fight on, Squid.
My other favourite thing about this sign: unlike North America, where a business usually needs to be at least twenty or thirty years old before it can legitimately merit such a display of age, Korean business have no compunction about proudly displaying that they have been operating "since 2008" or "since 2007." What amuses me most about these signs is that businesses come and go overnight, so rapidly that it's actually pretty hard to find a business that's been in operation "since 2006".
Does that mean that there aren't businesses that have been in operation for many years? There certainly are...but strangely enough, in those cases, the owner usually tells you directly instead of putting it on a sign.
Well, I think that's it for this week's installment. Next week, I will have to put it on hold because I am spending a week vacationing in THAILAND! Pictures of Thai waterfalls, food, and elephants are forthcoming.
Although there are a lot of neighbourhoods in Seoul that attract foreigners, the most well-known is probably Itaewon. It's a bit skeevy at the best of times. If Itaewon was a beach, it would be the scummy beach where all the weird fishes wash up, the ones the fishermen look at in bewilderment before tossing them back to the sea and praying their boats won't be cursed.
When I went today, though, the skeev factor was pumped up by at least 10. Maybe because it's the first time in a while that I've gone by myself. Despite the sketchiness of Itaewon, I usually do look forward to going there when I'm with friends. No matter how anybody might feel about it, it's a useful place. There's a foreign food market that sells granola, Western spices, and beans (all hard to get in Korea), an excellent English bookstore, plus-sized clothing shops, and a terribly named restaurant called Foreign Restaurant that has a fantastic Indian buffet (with halvah for dessert!). There's also my favourite Thai restaurant in all the world, where they give you a private dining room on your birthday. Not to mention art stores and antique shops. It can be a fun place.
That was not the case today. It started before I even got to Itaewon. I was on my way to a play in Hyehwa and thought I'd nip in to pick up some pre-made pizza crusts for homemade pizza. As soon as I got on the orange line of the Seoul Metro, I noticed that this foreign guy sitting further down the subway car was staring at me in the perviest way. Every few seconds I would look back at him to see if he was still staring...and yep, he always was. When the train stopped I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could, and the guy followed me through the station to the concourse that switches to the brown line. When we got to the escalator I took the stairs instead. I flew down them and by a miracle of good timing, there was a train already at the platform. I managed to squeeze in just as the doors were closing. The guy ended up being stuck on the platform. My relief was palpable.
So I was already a bit unsettled by the time I actually got to Itaewon. I went to the market, and no pizza crusts, but they had Indian flatbreads that would do just as well. I bought them and strode back down the street back to the subway line, when this OTHER pervy guy, even pervier than the last, stepped into my path. With a smile that would grease rubber, he looked at me and said, "Good afternoon, ma'am."
I just shoved past him and kept walking. Fortunately Itaewon is always crowded so it was easy to lose him. I was really happy to get back on the subway and out of there. I think from now on, if I'm by myself, it would be better to go to the foreign food market in Hannam, which is on the same street as a bunch of churches and has a highly reduced sketch factor.
~
On another, unrelated note, it would seem that my New Year's Resolution to write in this blog weekly has fizzled. I have decided that, to motivate myself to write more often, I should start a new feature. It will be entitled "Korean Randomness of the Week." This will be a good way for me to show you all of the things that I love about Korea, as well as give you a sense of just how random this place is. Doing this feature will require me to act partly as a journalist and partly as a cultural anthropologist. Every week I will locate an example of the absolute randomness that is Korean culture. Then I will attempt to explain things about it that, by all logic, defy explanation.
My first contribution comes from my students. As an assignment for their Communication Arts class, I had my ninth and tenth graders write and perform their own commercials. In the class blogs I have them keep, many of my students provided links to their own favourite commercials. Since I don't have cable in Korea, I haven't seen most of them, so I checked them all out.
The first commercial is an ad for SK Telecom's broadband service. I did not include because it deserves the "Randomness Award of the Week," but because it deserves the "AWESOMENESS Award of the Week." It is just a really cool commercial. I can't embed it, but you can watch it by clicking here.
The second commercial, however, is in a class by itself. It is a cell phone commercial that is currently very popular in Korea right now. It features none other than K-Pop sensation Big Bang!
Her skirt is, by far, the greatest thing ever!
This commercial makes me proud to own a Cyon cell phone. I was also proud of myself for understanding the first few song lyrics. They go like this:
"Give me an ice cream, please! Give me two ice creams, please!"
I'm glad that my efforts to learn Korean have allowed me to pick up these subtle nuances.
One of my favourite things about my extended family is that we take "extended" to a whole new level. I've heard many stories about larger families that eventually drift apart and splinter off over time. My family, on the other hand, takes immense joy in connecting and reconnecting. Our genealogy is well-documented, and we all take it seriously. Most people would consider second or third cousins as being too tenuous a relationship to bother with, but not us. Basically, if you're descended from my great-grandparents Josef and Ludwina, or married to someone who is, we're delighted to have you. Since they had eighteen children, that's a lot of descendants!
Last summer, I went with my mom, aunt, and grandmother to a celebration honouring my great aunt's fiftieth anniversary as a nun. There, we heard one of our distant relatives comment that she had no family in Ottawa. Well, we were quick to disabuse her of that! Soon Natalie was attending every barbeque, holiday dinner, and family function we had going. This Christmas, Natalie's parents came to visit, so we all went out for supper on Boxing Day.
Sometimes, explaining my international lifestyle to my extended extended family leads the conversation in amusing directions. At the Boxing Day supper, Natalie's mother leaned across a noisy table.
"So where you do live?" she called to me.
"Korea!" I called back.
She looked confused. "I don't know where that is!"
"The country!" my mom explained helpfully.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I thought that's what you said. I just didn't think I could have heard you right, so I convinced myself you were talking about one of the suburbs around here!"
We all had a good laugh about it.
Exchanges like this often make me think about how living abroad sometimes maneuvers you into a position where nobody can truly understand where you're coming from. Your colleagues and friends overseas have shared your experiences there, but they don't know what your home is like and have never met any of the people you've left behind. As for your home and the people you leave behind, you can tell them stories and show them pictures, but they'll never really know.
In either situation, there are things that don't translate, things that can never be adequately explained. I am still ambivalent about this. On one hand, you end up with a frame of reference that is ultimately quite unique. On the other hand, it can be lonely.
It's 4:23 AM and I am wide awake. No time for napping today, so I'm not sure exactly how I will function during my yoga class, hair appointment, and evening at my friend Vanessa's house. Hopefully the excellent conversations she and I always share will keep me semi-conscious.
Every night I've managed to sleep from ten until two thirty, at which point I wake up and am unable to get back to sleep again until about seven, when I manage about another three hours. Last night I made the mistake of staying up until eleven, thinking that pushing through the extra hour would tire my body out enough that I could sleep through the night. Instead, it upset the whole delicate balance, and I have not slept AT ALL. I am this strange combination of alertness and exhaustion.
Even with the jet lag, though, it's still been good to be home. I was lucky enough to make it into Ottawa before snowstorms shut all the airports down, so I have just been kicking back, eating my mom's cooking, and chatting to friends. Since the snow did not interfere with my travel in any way, I haven't had any qualms about enjoying it. The cold air here has made me realize that Canada is really in my blood. I get cranky if I don't get a dose of Canadian winter every year. My daily treks to the gym down the snowy street has been the highlight of each day, even if I haven't had the energy to do any more than that. I love rural Ontario, the old houses, the empty fields, the friendly people.
It's also good to have a chance to sit back and reflect on how the semester has gone. I feel like my life is on an excellent trajectory right now. I am doing a job where I have lots of opportunities to help others, and I am gaining a lot of experience that will serve me very well in my intended field of librarianship. There are still a few tough decisions to make about how long I plan to stay at GSIS, and how long I want to live overseas in general, but I don't have to decide that definitively until October. There is plenty of time. Overall, I am on track and heading exactly where I want to go.
I tend to get pensive whenever the holiday season comes. Not so much because it's Christmas (although I LOVE Christmas) but because it's the end of the year, and I always find myself evaluating where I am, what I'm doing, and where I'd like to go next. I think that I will probably always look back on 2008 as the year that led me out of the darkness. My students talk a lot about bullying and the negative effects that it has on them, but I always notice that they somehow assume that it is only a school thing, and someday it will be outgrown. The experience I had with a workplace bully, though, was a thousand times more devastating than anything I ever faced when I was in school. I still feel sick when I think about how isolated I was at the beginning of 2008, and how my amazing overseas experience had deteriorated into a nightmare so quickly. In January, after everything that had happened, I felt so broken and lost. All of my confidence was gone and I couldn't take a step in any direction. The decision to leave Korea in February so I could get away from the bully's sphere of influence, without knowing what I was going back to or what I would do next, was the most difficult decision I've ever made. What was so good about the decision, though, was the realization that my heart always points me true. Within two weeks of being back home in Canada, I knew that I wasn't done with Korea. I also knew that thinking of nothing but myself and my own problems was exhausting me. I wanted to be in a situation where I could be of service to others. The two objectives converged when I first considered working at an international school. To this day, I still don't know where the idea came from or how I thought of it. God was definitely watching out for me when he put the idea into my head, and even more so when I got hired at my school. God found a way to bring me back here. My job is a lot of work, and I know I complain about it sometimes. I also don't feel like I always do it as well as I should -- it feels like I'm making mistakes all the time. But what motivates me to improve is the knowledge that this job has taught me that I will always keep working to be a better teacher, a better coworker, a better friend. My coworkers are all so healthy in their worldviews and their relationships with other people, which has allowed me to relax and trust new people again. When I think about all that I'm learning from my students, I get more and more excited to improve so that I can continue to help them change and grow. They are such cool people, each with their own goals and ambitions, and I am so happy to be a part of that. I feel like, this second time around, I have found a new Korea, the Korea that I had originally come here to find. The Korea that I experience through the filter of my own perception, unclouded by anything or anyone else. I am also more productive than I have ever been, doing things I could not have believed I would ever do. In 2009, I plan to push all personal limits and see just how far I can go.
"Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen." - John le Carre
I'm Laura Sanders, a "Librarian in Training" doing my MLIS degree at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I want to spend my career making sure that young adults have access to resources and know how to use them. Since I have a passion for international education, I'd like to do this all over the world.
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