A Brand New Life

First, the listings at koreamovietimes.org are not current… which is too bad, because someone took the time to translate them into English for us…anyway, always double-check, but I’m not sure how to do that…

I got to the theater in Gangdong and there were only three of us watching.  :(   The usher boy was really nice to me, and got me from the lobby and found my seat for me, because he knew I couldn’t speak Korean.

Glad I went by myself, though, as I was sniffling from almost the very beginning. (things that wouldn’t make anyone else but maybe me tear up, because I know and love an adoptee who went to St. Paul’s Orphanage and was there at the same time as the main character Jin-Hee, which was based upon the life story of the director, Ounie Lecomte)

It’s a beautiful movie, I loved the period 70’s clothing, and it was shot entirely from the perspective of a child, I guess in the manner of Truffaut.   It’s also a very Korean piece.  A lovely image then rip your beating heart out of your chest and slowly shred it kind of Korean film.  I have learned, with my talks with the Korean documentary director and the artist Jeong Ae, that it is CRITICAL for Korean audiences that there be something beautiful in every sad story.  This is why adoptees have a hard time relaying their struggles, because the amazing beautiful people we are gets lost in the relaying of a difficult story.  So this is why Lacomte’s rendition is important for us, as a model.

The story isn’t really about adoption, though.  It’s about abandonment and loss.  Which is part of adoption, yes.  But it’s not critical of adoption or Korea or political or anything.  It just relays how Jin-Hee faces each new unknown while haunted by and holding onto the memory of her father.  We follow her as she tries to deal with her anger over being so powerless and as she develops relationships with some of the other “orphans.” (I don’t consider abandoned children technically orphans, since they have living parents)  Some have hope for a better life.  Some have resignation.  Some have unbroken spirit and defiance.  All are hurting in their own way.  All must sing a farewell song as the ones who are chosen get sent away to foreign countries.  Especially heart-breaking is the device of Jin-Hee and her best friend Sook-Hee’s interest in caring for a broken bird.  I won’t spoil it, but only say that little people are fully formed humans and experience trauma and heartbreak in all the same way adults do.  Their souls can be crushed.  (it’s not what you imagine) They also think about existence and what that means.

All of the above without benefit of English subtitles, so I’d like to see it again and be privileged to eavesdrop on the children’s conversations one day.

Part of me would like to see a sequel, but then I think no, this is where it must end.  For us, there are three chapters in our lives:  chapter 1 – prior to our separation with our original families, chapter 2 – in transition and prior to our second separation, and chapter 3 – adapting to our new and not always better life.  We adoptees long to have our birth country understand chapter 3, and to rediscover our pre-amnesia chapter 1, but nobody has really portrayed chapter 2 before and what THAT did to us. It’s more powerful standing alone.  I just wish all Korean people could see it.

I looked for my friend Myung Sook, and there were two or three that I imagined could have been her.   Myung Sook’s amazing recall of her life before adoption, her life at St. Paul’s, and her horrific post adoption life will, I hope, one day be in book form.   Unlike most Korean adoptee memoirs, all the chapters are there.

Mr. Lee wants to write a book about my life, but fears too much will be lost because he isn’t confident in his English skills.  Maybe I should let him…

Q&A

Some snippets of Q&A where I let the kids practice their asking skills, from the last day in regular classrooms.

S.  Teacher, do you know my name?

T.  Awwwwwww.  No.  I WISH I did.  I’m sorry. I remember all your faces! (and then I had to explain how I see over 600 of them, but only once a week, and how I wish I saw them all more so I could remember.)

*****

S.  Teacher, are you going to leave?

T.  Yes.  I will be leaving.

S.  Don’t you like it here?

T.  I like the students.  A lot.

S.  We’ll be better!  Please stay!!!

*****

S.  When you read a newspaper, what is the first page you turn to?

T.  Whoa!  You are amazing.  That is an amazing question. (teacher applauds)

I turn to the world news section, but honestly I don’t read the paper much.  Friends tend to send me links to interesting articles.

*****

S.  May I ask about your t.v. documentary?

T.  Of course, thank you for asking.

S.  What do you hope for finding your sister?

T.  I think she deserves to know that her story has more information too, so that’s the main reason.  I also know that the adoption agencies lie to adoptees and their Korean families, so if she is my sister and I can prove it with DNA testing, then I can prove adoption was not done ethically in the past.  I want to improve things for Korea’s future children.

S.  (nods head)  Thank you.

*****

S. What would you become, if you could be a student again?

T.  I would combine anthropology and  documentary film, because I think people and cultures are fascinating and I would like to record them before they disappear.

(students all gasp with amazement)

*****

S. What do you think about our school lunches?

T.  You know, someone in every class asks this!  I think they are not great.  But they could be worse.

S.  What could be worse?

T.  Well, there is an awful lot of what we call “mystery” meat…

(students all murmur ” mystery meat” hoping to remember it)

*****

S.  What do you think of our principal?

T.  To be honest, I’ve only spoken with him twice, so I can’t judge his character.

*****

S.  What games do you play?

T.  (is that a cute question or what – and they’re so serious about it!)

Well, I don’t have much free time, so I can’t spend all the time it takes to play RPG games or most games.  So I only play quick games once in awhile like Tetris

(student nods his head as this seems acceptable)

*****

S.  Why are you chewing gum?

T.  (busted!  the ONE time I do that, and I’m called out on it)

I just ate something I didn’t like and didn’t have time to brush my teeth.

(student nods his head and is satisfied with the answer – phew!  close call!)

*****

S.  Teacher do you love me?

T.  Of course.  I LOVE YOU!

*****

 

A room of one’s own

Photos from last month before the English Zone was completed

Don’t ya just love the message over the door???

To encourage a more studious environment, the window shades have been printed with various Ivy League schools.  Korea is OBSESSED with Ivy League schools.  OBSESSED.

It’s kind of bittersweet for me, since that’s a photo of Yale in the middle – my almost alma-mater.  Oh, you don’t know my Yale story?

The Yale Story

Ten years after I graduated, with two kids and on welfare, I enrolled in college.  Five years later, after working half time, going to school full time and raising two children, working round the clock too many all-nighters to mention, I got accepted to Yale’s Master of Architecture Program.  It was such a huge personal accomplishment.  Despite being estranged from my family for over 17 years, and despite foundations paying for everything financial aid did not, Yale’s admission required my parents to fill out a statement about their finances.

The financial aid form came on a CD which was delivered to my slumlord house.  Only it was dropped on the porch in a derelict portion of the house that was never used, so my generous time frame to fill it out was cut short because I discovered its whereabouts so late.

I called my parents asking them for the information in writing, and my parents said that would take some research on their part.  Meanwhile, the clock was ticking.  I called again asking them for the information, and they made some excuses that they would have to contact their accountant.  My mother cried, “Why don’t you just go to a public school like the other children did?”  (Oh – you mean your real children who you helped pay for their tuition???) and then she added, “You just want to take away our retirement.”  (what the?)  Finally, after much pleading and explaining that nobody at Yale was going to take their money, my parents agreed to send me the information.  Over a week passed and then I received an envelope.  In it, written in pencil, on a piece of scrap paper, was an approximation of what they might make in a year.  I had specifically told them all the DETAILED information Yale required on this financial statement, and what they sent me was totally worthless.  This is from a man who had a graduate degree.  This was from people who had been filling out financial aid applications for their two sons for eight years or more.    The time had run out.  I had to write Yale a letter explaining why I could not attend their school.

Why Yale?  Was I obsessed with an Ivy League education and the networking it would supply me with?  No.  Only later in the workplace did I realize what solid gold it would have been.  I wanted to go to Yale because there was an existentialist philosophy instructor there, and I wanted to write a Master’s thesis combining existentialism, phenomenology, and the Japanese concept of space-time, ma.  I wanted to go to Yale because they had a program where architecture students actually built a house from the ground up.  I wanted to go to Yale because they had housing programs with the outlying area’s most needy residents.  One of my instructors wrote that I was the hope and future of the profession, one of the most creative students she’d ever had.  I ended up, instead, eschewing the narcissism, politics, and competition, and fed my kids with drafting grunt work instead.

Aren’t the opportunities being adopted wonderful?  Sorry, but I’m quite rightfully bitter about this one.  In fact, it’s the one thing I can say I’m bitter about.  That was MY OWN WORK and my own accomplishment, and they destroyed it. The other stuff?  That I can make allowances for, try and find some empathy or sympathy or understanding for their self-centeredness, or how I was used. But not Yale.  Not ever. No person should ever crush someone’s hopes, dreams, and future like that.

The following year I applied at my local public university.  They wouldn’t accept me because they were taking those who went on to the masters program uninterrupted and there was a budget crunch so preference was given to international students with their higher tuitions.

Okay.  So now I get to sit next to an image of Yale every day.  Sigh.

Anyway, I rearranged the chairs and tables like this (my drafting skills are good for something, after all:

(I asked for rectangular tables, btw!)  Anyway, I’ve set up this system of moving the kids around the room.  I’m sure the co-teachers thought I was insane at first, but now that they’ve seen it in action, I think they get it.  Each table has a letter and a number designation taped to it.  Every two tables share the same color.  So I’ve got 14 letter groups, 14 number groups, and 7 color groups.  Every student has a name tag with a color, letter and number assigned to them.

On the first day of class, I let the kids sit wherever they wanted and then I made sure to give each student in one of those naturally forming groups a different color.   So the conversation cliques were instantly outed by the students and  I easily broke them up.  Also, we did a lot of drills where I made them stand up, practice the classic “hello.  how are you?  I’m fine, thank you” dialogue, and then move to the right on cue.

Then, I show them a little video on  how that dialogue is wrong, wrong, wrong, and to never use that dialogue again.  And then I go through all the natural ways Americans greet each other at various degrees of formality, and then I play the “Wassup!” video for some levity.

If there’s time I also present a power point I made showing different types of people and asking the students how they would greet them.  And then I introduce them to the different kind of polite ways to address people:  old people, your boss, a fellow student, an officer, a teacher, the president, etc.  I show them that there are respect levels in America too, and explain how they are falling out of use, but are still important to know for certain formal situations.

Surprisingly, class 1-1 did really well in the new environment.  I guess that’s what 6 weeks of dictation does for you.  Class 1-3 did horrible.  I might have to send them back to the regular classroom for some more medicine if they don’t shape up.  The girls, as always, did amazing.

I must say that the huge touch screen monitor is very very cool.  And it’s also great to no longer have to travel from classroom to classroom.  It might not be so bad if I had a traditional subject, but to teach conversation in spaces so over-crowded the children have trouble moving their chairs enough to stand up is really difficult.  The only problem seems to be acoustics – the sounds  bounce off of everything and the room is painfully loud.

Kind of sad to leave what I’m building here. But I figure there will be more great and awful kids and new and different and equally rewarding challenges at the next place.

Secret Lives

So in our new English Zone, I was reviewing one of the new books purchased by In Kyung for teacher reference.  She did a very good job, btw, but most of the books were, of course, chosen for the Korean English teachers and more applicable to creative ways to teach grammar.  However, there were a few titles she chose which I found useful and which I wrote down and hope to purchase for myself.

One of them was Small Group discussion topics;  for Korean high school students and beginners by Jack Martire.  Martire is a long-time ex-pat who knows Korean culture well and his discussion topics are both very provocative AND distinctly about modern life from the perspective of a young Korean.

For example, one of the topics was on regulation of the internet by way of the sex slave trade.  He cited news articles from the late 90’s where a ring of internet prostitution was broken up by the Seoul police.  Approximately 300 girls were found to be soliciting for sex on-line.  The alarming thing was how organized this solicitation was, and even more shocking was the fact that most of the girls were under-aged, some as young as 14.  The interesting thing was that many of their customers were not men, but boys of their peer group.  The horror of it all was these girls were not even profiting from this solicitation, but were held captive because they were essentially being socially blackmailed into perpetuating what should have been an isolated transgression.

Sooo many tangent topics for discussion can spring from this article.  What conditions would cause so many young girls to be in this predicament?  How is it the boys can afford to pay for this activity?  How was it organized?  By whom?  How was this activity facilitated?  It seems clear that these children, despite being over-scheduled and living pressured academic lives are also woefully unsupervised.  In Korean society today, too many parents work late into the night and have very little interaction or relationship with their teenagers.

When I look at my students, (who, admittedly don’t represent average Korean students as much, because the majority conduct themselves in a more moralistic way due to having Christian parents and being practicing Christians themselves) see their fresh pimply faces, their naivete and almost arrested development in comparison to American students their same age,  and think about this article, it makes me wonder what kind of secret lives they lead.  I see young boys smoking on the way to middle school.  I see a couple of my girls of the gum-chewing, eyes rolling, smart-alec variety, and know deep in my heart that they really can’t handle and aren’t equipped for most of the vices of this world.

I once talked about urban tribes and the way American students wear emblems to mark being in a community and asked a Korean teacher about gangs or tough kids, since they are often portrayed as existing in Korean dramas.  She paused and said yes, possibly Korean students do this too.  I asked how she could tell, since they all wear uniforms.  The hair, mostly.  The way they don’t conform to uniform standards.  I wonder how far their rebellion takes them.  I wonder if the black t-shirt under the white oxford signifies something far more unhealthy than we would care to admit.  I wonder what the true cost of Korea’s economic development is.  Korea is so like Japan with all its sexual repressions yet is so unlike Japan, in that here individualism is not expressed or tolerated of its youth.

And what happens in a repressed society?  Transgressions.  And the result of transgressions?  Untimely babies.  Babies who are sent away as transgressions erased.  Because it is not the mother’s shame, but the family’s shame.  A family who could not provide a good moral compass.  A family who was not doing its job managing their household.

But also interesting in Korea, is that this secret life thing does not stop once childhood is over.  Many many adults here lead secret lives as well.  For example, I could actually sleep with as many Korean men as I wanted, if I were willing to join the many others for whom marriage has no meaning but for which is pivotal to their place in society.  Whether man or woman, these adult transgressors are legion, and its presence is commonly accepted for others and feared for oneself.  And, as it turns out since last year’s celebrated case of an adulteress actress, a jail-able offense for the women.

And, I believe, that these transgressions are the result of everything around Korea changing but Korea resisting REAL change.  While it embraces technology and takes it to a new level, imports everything, and hungers after global commerce, it doesn’t comprehend what the implications are, what it means to their society, and how to incorporate them in a healthy manner.  That some of the things they see as evil are actually beneficial, and some of the things they accept are a trap, enslaving them.  We are talking epic growing pains here.

There is hope, however.  Most of the Koreans I talk to are my age.  They went to college during the student demonstrations for the democratic movement.  They ALL categorically are opposed to this educational system, and some of them are considering saying to hell with their family’s traditional expectations and obligations, as dictated to them.

Mr. Lee tells me about his son.  He wants to direct movies like his mother and sees no point in scoring high in math and science to get into a university that doesn’t focus on  his interests.  So Mr. Lee let his son drop out of high school and study on his own.  So now the boy is studying directors, film history, social studies, etc.  Mr. Lee says the extra classes are killing his pocket book, and that he worries about his son’s future here in Korea, but that he sees the sparkle in his eyes and it fills him with joy to see his son change from someone who hated learning, to someone who has a lust for learning.

I bet Mr. Lee’s son doesn’t have a secret life.  There’s no need now.  May he grow and prosper and show the rest of Korea that in a crazy world without traditional values, personal happiness is even more important to achieve balance and sustainability.

So it’s official

I’m moving out of this bank vault and into a real neighborhood!  Away from Bellevue!  Which was making me INSANE!  Yayy!!!  The real estate agent was a pushover about taking less key money down and more rent per month.  Actually, it turns out that it is the buyer who pays the commission, so he kept working the owner to both take less key money AND keep the monthly rent low.  So I got a very good deal because, it seems, everything in Korea is negotiable.

Seems he stole me as a client and that would sour relations between him and his other real estate friend.  BUT, even though the other guy was nicer, he just didn’t have any good listings.  I told him I’d call him, but then forgot I don’t speak Korean…he probably thinks I’m a jerk now…

Getting my own place, independent of the schools turns out to be more of a commitment than I thought.  I’ll have to get a refrigerator and a washing machine, pots and pans and dishes, a mattress to sleep on, a table to sit at, and some book-shelves and at least a clothes rack if not a wardrobe.  I mean, all those things can be gotten cheap and sold – but it’s still a commitment.  Because of course I want my home to be nice and not look like a drop-off for someone else’s trash.   And then I’ll fall in love with my stuff.  But it’s also kind of exciting, because I love to hunt for the best finds.  But that’s also kind of daunting, because shopping in Seoul is like shopping in Manhattan – that could really wear a person out.

Looking around for things I’ll eventually need I found this:

A Salvation Army in Seoul!

In a couple of months I’ll have to part with all of my school-owned small appliances (don’t watch tv much, don’t use the microwave) and have to purchase some items.  I might just have to wash clothes by hand, since I didn’t see room for a washing machine anywhere, and I’ll have to buy or rent a refrigerator.  But a rice cooker?  SALLY’S!  AND, the proceeds go to rehab centers.  So they have a store and a coffee shop in Mapo.  Sounds like a wonderful way to spend a Saturday.  Yayy!

Also, some other second hand stores:

Yayy!  Who wants to line Emarte’s pockets any more?  Not I!

T-recycle co.

and

Recycle City

Really, I have no idea how one goes about moving here.  I’ve watched the movers move other people out of my officetel, and the movers – instead of using cardboard boxes like in America, use plastic self-closing storage bins.  MUCH sturdier, easier to cart around, and re-usable.  The question is, do they let the person moving hold onto the bins long enough to take their belongs out and organize them?  And what about in my situation, where I’ve got nothing to put my clothing into?  How should I prepare the clothes for moving, if not in boxes?  I don’t want to buy plastic bins that I’m not going to use again…

And really, since I am paying rent for three months that I could have been paying nothing, I really can’t afford many household items until March.  Maybe I’ll just carry one thing each evening, as I will be commuting sometime between December and February, and in this way s-l-o-w-l-y empty out my apartment.  What a funny sight I’d be to the regulars on the subway!  What a pain during the train transfer.

Yayy!  No more gaudy fuscia and gold bedspread!  No more mattress that’s like a box spring resting on plastic cones that I can’t sweep around!  No more audio announcements invading my apartment!  No more strange people knocking at my door!  No more eerie walks down long empty corridors just to get to my bank vault!  I’ll have a bedroom with a door!  No more delivery ads cluttering up my door!  Oh, the list can go on and on…

Also official is I was forced to let my school know I won’t be renewing my contract next year, since my new recruiter was forced to contact them to confirm my employment (sheesh – no way to even test the waters in this place)  So that was kind of a bummer.  The vice principal wrote nice things about me and In Kyung gave me a good recommendation and part of me is sad I’m leaving.  I only hope my new assignment won’t be terribly far away from where I live, as Seoul is a very very very big city.

adoption psyche

Adoption is a popular theme in Korean movies and dramas – it shows up all the time.

This year (last season) the big draw was the movie Ski jump,  (or Take Off ) which was about a Korean American adoptee who competes in the Olympics ski jump competition under the Korean flag.

Having missed it, I did get to enjoy several adoptees talk about its accuracy in portrayal of the returning/searching adoptee’s experience.  They said it managed to show what a tight spot the adoptee is in, trying to balance being sensitive to their adopting families and their first families.  They thought it was better than the typical Korean melodramatic portrayal of adoption, but it painted adoption from a distinctly Korean lens to comic effect (from an American’s point of view)  such as one dialog where the lead character calls his American parents and instead of asking, “How are you?”  He asks, “Have you eaten?” in English…

This year there’s another Adoption movie, Rabbit and Lizard / Maybe, which focuses on a Korean American adoptee who returns to Korea to search for her birthmom and falls in love with a cab driver dying of heart disease.  (of course, he’s dying)  No reviews yet from the adoptee community whether or not it portrays her anguish and culture shock in a realistic manner or not…I’ll bet language isn’t an issue…

I guess the main criticism of the many many films with adoption in the story is that adoptees come back from their foreign lands a troubled mess, there is little account of their true struggles here in Korea dealing with how Koreans receive them.  Most of the adoptees in the films are domestic adoptions, and they are portrayed as pitiful or wildly successful and cold hearted.  As a side product I may assemble links to these movies and dramas, but I’ve no time myself to watch them all.

Waking up early the other day I caught one on t.v.  An adoptee from America and this woman having an affair with a married man start to have a friendship.  Was it before or after he carried her on his back?  Of course his broken self attracts her.  Of course they have zero problem communicating, and of course his Korean is perfect.  Some pretty touching (and melodramatic) scenes of him finding his mother’s mausoleum and then turning to her for, well, you know.

Interestingly, the formulaic elements that seem to be in most romantic Korean movies are all there in every Korean movie with adoptees:  the guy carries the girl on his back.  (chivalry)  someone dies.(tears)  there is always a love triangle. (tension)  The formula works, but I wish they would allow a little reality to insert itself now and then.

That’s another reason why I’m so looking forward to A Brand New Life thursday.  Finally, a dramatization about adoption based on reality.  I only wish it would stay in Korea longer so more people could watch it.

 

Autumn in Korea – 10/21

Unfinished post – supposed to be about fall fashion, which I never finished

I’m loving the weather right now:  it’s clear and sunny during the day, and crisp and cool at night – almost cold.  I haven’t turned the heat on yet, as I’m enjoying being slightly cold, and spend my evenings sitting up in bed with the blanket half over me.

Went to purchase warm clothes this weekend, but now I remember why I managed to make it through last winter with the insubstantial items I have.   I remembered this morning when I walked into the over-heated teacher’s office and instantly had to peel off my jacket.   It’s going to be a sauna this winter, and now I’m realizing what I really need is some way to stay warm only for the walk to and from work.

I spent an outrageous amount on a thin black cardigan from, of all places, E-marte.  This after spending nearly the entire weekend carefully scouring each and every market stall at each of the four huge department stores in Dongdaemmon.  What I didn’t realize was that the clothing sold at E-marte was also sold in market style, so that it is possible to negotiate a lower price if you frown enough and look hesitant enough.  Although it appears to be like a real department store, each area (like misses or young professional, etc.) are really separately operated.  The sales people at these sections have stickers pre bar-coded with lower prices, and they will just put a new price over your existing price-tag for when you go through the check-out line.  I don’t think I’ve ever in my life spent so much on a utilitarian clothing item, but it was so basic to pulling together everything I have, and I have learned that there is such a huge selection and shopping is such a pain, that if you see something that works you should just get it right then.  It’s a one time only opportunity, basically.

The search for a basic coat was not so successful.  I’m longing for a Carhardt jacket, actually, or something that looks like it.  Something that will go over the extra fat gangster type hoodie I also spent way too much money on.  Plaid shirts seem to dominate the racks right now, and I was looking for one that I could belt and also look stylish, but the flannel here is thin and cheap, and they ruin the simple lines of these most American staples with the design touches they add.  I don’t need ‘C’ shaped slash pockets.  I don’t need pearl snaps.  I don’t need fold-up sleeves with button plackets to hold them up.  I don’t need extra pleats so it balloons at the bottom.  I don’t need a fake university emblem embroidered on it.  I don’t need a drawstring bottom, or an attached hood.  And why would I want a onesie shirt when I can have separates is beyond me.  Or a onesie hoodie that looks like it has a plaid shirt under it when I can have separates.  How I long for a simple thick wool Pendleton!

thank you, swine flu!

25 degrees F outside this morning.  Good thing I bought that gansta sooper thick hoodie, I think it was useful for all of three weeks!

School is closed today because we had over 50 swine flue cases in our school, and our school is late following the trend of school closures trying to shut down the epidemic here.

The epidemic, though, seems to be encouraged by Asian culture, even though paranoia about it has been building to near hysteria for many months now.  EVERY single night, swine flu is on the news.  Night after night after night.  To be honest, my response to this kind of overload is always to shut down:  I tuned it out so long ago I have no idea what it really is, what it really does, or what the current situation is.

There are anti-bacterial dispensers for the students to rub on their hands when they walk in the school.  There are extra signs about washing your hands thoroughly.  The surgical masks are more prevalent, but as a prophylactic measure they aren’t used consistently enough to do any good, as most of the time they are hanging unused from ears or scrunched below the chin so people can talk and eat, etc.  And yet – everyone is still sharing their side dishes and stealing food from each other’s lunch trays with used chopsticks.

So last week I went to the CDC to hear what the U.S. take on swine flu was about.  The CDC recommended more hand washing, staying home if you were coughing and had a fever, and to not gather in large groups.  The threat of death seemed pretty minimal, and the threat was more from complications due to other illnesses.  As a pandemic, it didn’t worry me very much.   I mean, it wasn’t like it was EBOLA or anything gruesome like that.

Last month, in one class I noticed a cup with about twelve toothbrushes in it.  I brought it to the attention of the home room teacher, telling her this was not a sanitary thing to do if they were worried about the spread of swine flu.  The teacher acted shocked and said she’d look into it.  A week later, I notice the cup is still there and I depart from my English lesson to point out that flu is spread through germs and germs are distributed in the air through drops of saliva and that saliva is on your toothbrushes and that a dozen toothbrushes touching means a dozen girls are exchanging the germs on their saliva.  Please, I implored, Please don’t put your toothbrushes together – you might as well be kissing a sick person – it’s unsanitary!  The only response I got was a giggle because sanitary, it turns out, is mostly used for feminine products.  Great.  A week later, I go to that classroom and the same cup is still full to bursting with a dozen toothbrushes, all touching.

I really wish the health professionals everywhere would revise their messages for Asian culture.  People here would change their habit without complaint.  But everyone in charge seems to have forgotten that swapping spit isn’t on the minds of anyone here and that contamination amongst friends is overlooked and welcomed.

Today I am home early, because I am fortunate to work for sensible people.  While the kids stay at home and sleep or play video games and enjoy their time off, most of the teachers in Korea have to go to work and sit there all day while they do nothing in an empty school.  But it’s a bonding experience and it means lunches out together, etc.  But at my school, this warming of seats is up to the discretion of your department chief, and most of ours are letting the teachers go home.  So we all have to come in and report, and then most of us can take off thereafter.

So that means I can catch up with all the back-logged writing I need to do! Procrastinate. Procrastinate. Procrastinate.

And that pesky letter to Kim Sook Ja.  I carry it around with me everywhere I go, so I’ll have it with me should I get a moment of inspiration.  But the moment never comes.  And I just carry it with me.  I guess a part of me likes it that way.  Unsent, it remains a possibility.  Sent and ignored, it means not breathing fully.  Sent and received could be crushing and anti-climactic.

But the swine flu is telling me I have no excuses anymore.

damn it.

drama, Korean style

Odds are nobody but my friends, family, and the occasional psycho English teacher type who makes Dave’s ESL cafe toxic and we mark him as spam so we don’t care, are reading my blog.  So I’m dying to give you a glimpse of how issues are (not) resolved at my particular school.  (which, I hope are unique to this unusual place I got assigned to)

Seems during the last mid-term exam, one of the secular teachers who really resents the heavy Christian overtones at our school took it upon themselves to cross out a Christianity reference in one of the tests.  The Vice Principal and the Pastor didn’t take very kindly to this, of course, and tried to punish the rebellious teacher.  Young-a, who seems to think she is Joan of Arc or something, takes up the cause

Her cause celeb prior to this was fighting to get the CCTV (closed circuit tv) removed from the school as she felt they were an invasion of privacy.  She kept asking my opinion about this police state we work in, and I kind of let her down by telling her there weren’t that many, and that they were valuable should somebody get assaulted or something.  And besides, who’s really spending all their time reviewing them?  They’re just for document, not spying.  And if you’re not doing anything wrong, then there’s nothing to worry about.  Now if they read your email, that might be another thing…Anyway, she was always taking this cause to the teacher’s union meetings and things.  She’s all about civil rights.  But just like with her attractions, all her passions go a bit far, in my opinion.

She has a meeting with the principal and it doesn’t go well.  Then, I hear about photos being taken of her, and her STEALING the V.P.’s camera, the rationale that he was violating her rights by photographing her.  So awhile back I wrote how I didn’t think two wrongs made a right.

Recently, I heard more of the story, which is she went to the V.P.’s HOME to confront him, and he took photos of her doing something.  They had some confrontation and he got so mad he hit her.  That’s when she stole his camera.  She went to one of the other teachers afterwards, and she was crying and bleeding.  So now there are three teachers involved in this mess:  the one who changed the test, the one who confronted the V.P., and the witness of the blood.

The following week there were meetings that didn’t go so well, the V.P., smiling, asking the witness to please convince Young-A to return the camera.  Then, the week after, there was a deafening roar and things being thrown coming from the V.P.’s office.  (I’m sooooo glad my desk got moved!)  The witness told me he was having headaches and insomnia over the trouble.  I told the witness  that Young-A should pick her battles more carefully.

The witness sided with the test-changing teacher, saying that the school had no right to force teachers to force religion on everyone.  I told him – but isn’t this a MISSIONARY school?  Isn’t that why the parents pay extra, so their children are raised with religious overtones?  Didn’t the teacher know he was working for a religious school when he signed up?  (well, they didn’t tell ME, but then again I can’t read Korean, so maybe it was just an AGREGIOUS oversight)  The witness agreed with my logic, but then spoke about seeing Young-A bleeding.

OK.  So I didn’t say anything about that, because in America teachers wouldn’t go to the V.P.’s private residence to argue with them.  And V.P.’s wouldn’t photograph teachers, and teacher’s wouldn’t steal their cameras, and V.P.’s wouldn’t thump them afterwards.

I told the witness that I was worried about him losing his job.  He said he was tenured and couldn’t lose his job, that none of them could lose their jobs.

So, they’re all stuck with each other.  They’re all constantly agitated and paranoid and snarling, poised for the next dogfight…If it weren’t so damn annoying, it would be comical.

But since I’m leaving, it’s getting more comical every day.

 

People Who cannot Leave

Here’s a documentary about the Yongsan-4 tragedy in Seoul, where 5 protesters lost their lives fighting for their rights to receive just compensation for their forced evictions. (the above is just a screen shot – click on the photo to get to the streaming video page, as it would not embed into wordpress properly) Thanks, Joyce, for the link!

It’s kind of the Korean equivalent to Harlan County, U.S.A.  where citizens band together to fight exploitation and corruption at the hand of hired thugs – yet the outcome was not a positive one.

Protesting in Korea is serious business, and people die.  Despite being a democracy for over twenty years now, the monied elite who really control things remain the power behind government officials.

I was reading that even despite the overthrow of dictatorships and the introduction of free and direct elections, the president is immune from criminal prosecution while in office, for example.

Yongsan was also a neighborhood I was going to check out.  Well, my new neighborhood is good for another two years before this happens there.  But really, it is also part of the master plan to heavily develop the areas surrounding the Yongsan U.S. military base (a huge chunk of prime real estate) that is closing in 2012.  The sheer scale of mass redevelopment is mind-numbing.

I, of course, will leave because I’m a privileged foreigner who can fall back on her English.  But my new neighbors, what will become of them?  Hopefully, the bad press from what happened at Yongsan-sa-ga will at least cause the developers to provide some equitable compensation – but still, with all the demolition of low income housing, where will all these people go?

comfort food

Oh my God, I just discovered Korean wild rice.

Black rice contains iron and minerals and preserves the germinal disks to provide more nutrients than white rice. Also, black rice has more calcium and vitamins (B1, B2, and niacin) than white rice and has a high content of protein, fat, vitamins B1/B2/E, minerals, phosphorus, iron, calcium, and amino acids.  It is particularly higher in lysine than white rice. Adding about 10-20% of black rice to white rice will enhance the taste and flavor of your rice.  Black rice is also used to make wine, rice punch, noodles, rice crackers, rice cakes, and Korean-style sushi.  Black rice extracts can be added to various foods as an enhancement.

It’s all black, short grain, and not grassy like American wild rice.  It’s actually a rice instead of a seed.  It’s got a natural malty sweetness to it and very nutty.  I know that Koreans add a handful of this when they want to add a nutty flavor, and it makes the rice turn a light purple color.

But I’m eating it at 100% wild rice right now, and it is sooooo yummy.  I downed some with dinner, and then I realized it would make a great dessert, so I threw a teaspoon of sugar (not even sure it needs it, as it’s naturally a little sweet) into what was left in the rice cooker, added a cup of milk, and voila – the yummiest warm desert ever.  Sooooooo much better than black bean pudding – nutty flavor, better texture.

Looking for a photo of it cooked, I noticed some other person making rice pudding out of it, but they ruined it with cinnamon and cardommon and raisins.   The author couldn’t tell if it tasted any different than white rice and only chose it for its color.  But in this case, the rice itself has so much nice flavor that it’s a shame to cover it up with strong spices.

* * * * * * * *

I’ve always been a big fan of pickled anything.  My dad used to make pickles that were similar in taste to Claussen refrigerator pickles with cucumbers from our garden.  The brine was the best part:  Very light and none of that burning alum flavor that most jarred dill pickles have.

I’m beginning to wonder if this affinity I have for pickled things is because of coming from Korea, as so many things are brined and fermented here.

One little treat that comes with sitting down at a Korean restaurant for dinner is mul kimchi. (water kimchi)  It’s basically  a small bowl of brine with a few pieces of white kimchi (cabbage and pears) floating in it.  This is mostly a winter appetizer.  Something about the cold brine on a cold day is supposed to be healthy for you, so you won’t find it served in summer for the most part.

* * * * * * * *

I’ve also learned to like acorn jelly.  It’s this kind of tasteless tan colored jelly that is pressed into blocks similar to tofu – but it’s not quite as firm.

It’s a great vehicle for a little of that awesome sesame oil/red pepper paste/sugar/hot green peppers/green onion/garlic/sesame seed sauce that goes on top.  I like tasteless things that are a vehicle for other flavors.

It’s also a total bitch to pick up with chopsticks.  For everyone – even if you’ve been using chopsticks all your life!

Other kinds of jelly’s (from wikipedia)

• Nokdumuk – made from mung beans
• Hwangpomuk – a yellow-colored jelly made from mung beans
• Memilmuk – made from buckwheat
• Konjac – a Japanese jelly

I could be happy here

Armed with my satellite photos as a guide, Jane and I walked around a neighborhood yesterday.  A REAL neighborhood.  The interstitial arterial  only wide enough for one car, if that, yet lined with small storefronts supplying the immediate area with all the residents need.  I thought it unlikely, but we found two real estate agencies even on this off-the-main-drag place.

Jane wanted me to learn how to engage the real estate agent and give me a sense of what is available by looking inside an apartment or two.  Only we couldn’t stop and looked at about five.  It’s not like in the U.S. where the housing on the market must all be listed and shared amongst the agents via computer.  Here, the listing is at as many offices as you go to and list, so if you want to find hidden gems, then you’ve got to visit many real estate offices.

We began to feel guilty, but as the possibilities were being presented to us, I think both Jane and I were starting to calculate whether or not, if we saw one today, if we could pull it off.  All a nice fantasy for me, since I’m really not in any position to come up with the key money right now.  But then we found the perfect place, and it was painful, and I wish we’d quit looking before I saw it!  Sigh, so I have to call the nice men back tomorrow and give them the bad news…(guilt, guilt, guilt, though I think it was more me leading myself on than leading them on)

Anyway -

The streets of Seoul are where I have to be.  I was just SO HAPPY being there, it’s hard to describe.  There were PEOPLE in the streets, and mo-peds parked everywhere, and children and dogs, and halmoni’s squatting on floors shooting the breeze with each other.  And everywhere you looked was a visual feast of sights and sounds, undulating roof-tops, the clash of patterns, vistas out towards rooftops below or impossible steps going up, few things at right angles to one another.

The perfect apartment was in some halaboji’s house, behind a gate, past a lovely little Asian garden.  You walked into a big room with a kitchen to one end, and to the left through beautiful wood and paper sliding screen doors was another room and then a bathroom at the end.  All for 400,000 won.  Character, charm, a garden outside, in a real neighborhood, affordable.  Can I move there right now?  Today?  Ha ha!  If anyone wants to contribute a loan to a key money fund, just let me know and I’ll give you my bank account number!

Damn Jane and her master plan of getting me hooked on Korea and Seoul and TRACK!  She means for me to retire here, I just know it.  And, she knows my weak points…diabolical.  Truly diabolical.  I’m not sure I can resist…

No…Oh well.  At least we know these places exist and that they can be within my budget.  Unfortunately, this entire area will be demolished in 2012.  I want to live there, but it will be sad that if I do it will soon be only a memory – like my adoptee friends who have gone back to visit their homes, only to find the streets don’t even exist, the entire neighborhoods gone, replaced by deadly uniform new and “improved” blocks of anonymous generic housing.

I knew I was in a hurry to find a place – I didn’t realize until yesterday how dire the situation is.  Korean culture will soon only exist in the country.  Hopefully the hills will preserve some of it.  I’ve identified about six areas similar to the one we saw yesterday that I’d like to explore, which hopefully aren’t on somebody’s gentrification plan.

I was really energized just being there.  There’s about four more months of teaching to go, and then I can move. (in the dead of winter) Please, please let me find a place as cool as the one we saw today!

things I’ve gotten used to

crowded subways

being jostled without apology

repeating everything I say to cabbies and counter people twice

kids saying, “HI TEACHER!” and then giggling

doing the head nod bow to acknowledge people in the hallways

not having a clue what people are talking about and being silent during their conversations – it’s kind of nice, actually, because it frees me of so many social obligations.

eating rice with every meal

things I may never get used to

At 7 pm two Korean girls wait for a taxi outside my building. It’s 50 degrees outside and they are wearing hotpants and fetish shoes.

It’s 1 a.m. on a Friday night, and two SEET English Town hagwon buses just went by.  One was empty, the other was not.

I keep longing to hear of someone in Korea who is happily married, but I guess the jury is out until I gather a larger sampling.  So far, it is about 12:2. (the two both being men)  Several of the women think they are lucky they are not wanting for anything and their husbands are responsible.  But love?  It’s not sounding so great.  Hopefully, the current young couples walking around openly physically affectionate will buck this trend.  Hmm…what else?

People skedaddling across the street – running when there’s no reason to run.  It’s called bali bali and means quickly! My kids used to poke fun at me if I did this (which is a lot less than their selective memory will recall) but it was usually because we started as the light was halfway to changing.  But here, it’s almost always run for some reason.  Rung across the street. Run to the bus.  Run to the subway.  Everyone’s always in a hurry, and it looks comical.

Adjummas cutting your foot at restaurants with big kitchen scissors.  Kind of reminds me of the first time in America when a waiter came to grind fresh pepper on my salad.  That grinder was about a foot long and kind of, well, intimidating…Same with the scissors, they kind of freak me out (but not in such a phallic way) and I also worry how sanitary they are, as people sometimes call them over to cut food I’m thinking they’ve already dipped their chopsticks in.  Similarly, if you get skewered street food, the stall owners will come and nip off your skewer so the meat or fishcake or whatever it happens to be is closer to the end.

The sound of hawking phlem as Koreans shower.  First time, I wondered why they would do that and figured it was an anomaly.  Second time, I still wondered why they did that and began to think it was cultural.  Now, third or fourth time I’m beginning to think all Koreans do this.

Seeing people walking and brushing wherever they happen to be.  Toothpaste foaming around their mouths and everything.  Dentists must be hard up for customers here, as everyone is OBSESSED with brushing.  Young-a took me to task for not brushing all the time, to the point I have PTSD about it.  I think I brush even less than before as a result.  I did manage to explain to someone that westerners think brushing is unattractive and a thing to do in private, but those that watch me (and I am always watched) must think I’m a heathen…

Teachers massaging the students.  To an excessive degree.  Some say it is to wake the children up.  Some say if done hard it is a gentle admonition.  Some say it is an apology for all the hours the students must spend at school studying.  But secretly, I think Mr. Lee just likes touching the boys too much.  In addition to the massaging is also patting the hands and arms, and to my discomfort it lingers far too long.

Students holding hands and rubbing and patting each other.  OK.  So I lived in Seattle.  I am NOT homophobic.  But I do get squeemish over excessive public displays of affection in inappropriate places.  There’s sometimes just an intimacy about it that makes me want to tell them to get a room…something about it beyond innocent friendship…like co-dependency manifest in young children…

(added) I know it’s probably just a cultural thing and harmless, but it’s always new and disturbing to this westerner every time I see it.

Here’s a funny video made by a gyopo, about adjusting to Korea.  Those of us here will appreciate it.  Except for the bowl cut thing, which might instead be a baby parma (half perm), it really hits close to home!

(added) The last scene where DK is back in America never letting go of his friend’s arm is really, really, how it is here…

celebration

Yesterday, Chusamma came to school in a smashingly tasteful charcoal silk suit.  I asked him what the special occassion was, and he said he had some private matter to take care of in the afternoon.

Today, he stopped by my desk and told me he passed the TEPS English test!  Yayy!  So that means he’ll not only get a pay raise, but can move on towards getting his phd.

So I wrote a little card for him on the stationary I bought to write Kim Sook Ja a letter, asking him to do the honor of allowing me to take him out to dinner.  For some reason, he kept saying he owes it all to me – and I didn’t help him AT ALL.  Maybe just forcing himself to speak to me in English helped his listening skills or something, I’m not sure.  He and Young-a are tight and she’s excellent at English, so I don’t think he really needed me that much…funny, I looked his name up in the school directory and it’s really Chil Sang, so I don’t know how that becomes Chusamma, but that’s how it sounds.

*************

Went to another open classroom demonstration, this time at a nearby public high school.  Omg – their facilities are sooo much better than ours!  I think every school on the planet is nicer than ours:  it reminds me of military buildings back when my husband was in the Navy, but they were cleaner.  Can you say drab?

On the way there, In-Kyung informed me that our school got the highest English test scores in Anyang, a city twice the size of Seattle, (something like 87 high schools) and she had to take that opportunity to remind me we have some of the highest caliber students, and that it could be much, much worse.   I let her know I was enjoying teaching lately, and that I was going to sign for another year had it not been for that incident with the student where I got no support from the school.  I also told her that maybe if the school would pay for my trip home, allow me to move, and guarantee me grading privileges and more support, that I might reconsider.  So we’ll see how that goes.  In the meantime, I will continue to explore neighborhoods in Seoul and get a feel for the job market.  I asked her to broach the Vice Principal about this, since my formal letter of about four months asking for changes came across as too direct…

At the school, I was surprised to see Mr. Mullet there.  He did a pretty good job – kept his lesson focused, had an easy-going style, and utilized multi-media in a creative way.  BUT like ALL THE OTHER open classrooms I have sat in on, he kept tossing candy to the children who answered questions.  In-Kyung and I had a hard time suppressing our comments about this, as she too feels this isn’t something teachers should resort to – I mean, it’s just uncomfortable to watch and really looks like training dogs for stupid pet tricks.  I kept oohing and aahing that he actually had large art paper and markers for the kids to draw with, which cracked In-Kyung up, because I couldn’t even get pencils for the soon-to-open English Zone for my students when I asked for it.  But I’m really excited I got narrow, movable desks and stools vs. comfy chairs with arms on them.

She did ask him later about the candy thing, and he said that he’d only recently started to use it since he was leaving soon and really wanted to get some cooperation and progress before he left.  He said he was spending a fortune on candy, but that it was necessary because the students were so low level and because he only saw them twice a month. I think In-Kyung was the only Korean teacher there who did not preface her comments with a long formal preamble thanking them for the time and effort and welcoming them and providing the snacks and…Asian culture.  It’s a wonder any business gets done!

*************

So if I stay here, I think I’d choose to live at Anyang Station, which is more vibrant than here.  Where I’m staying reminds me of Bellevue.  Like living in downtown Bellevue – only much worse, because there’s no single family housing as far as the eye can see.  And you know how much I hated Bellevue…how much most people that live in Seattle hate Bellevue.   How all history has been erased, most of the buildings are the same age, operable windows are rare, details to facades are lacking, how corporate and anonymous it all looks, how even the street trees are lacking in character.

I might also consider commuting hell.  It might be worth it, not having to adjust to a new school but to live in a real neighborhood with regular characters and a sense of place.

posts lost

THREE TIMES the past few days I have written, and the internet cut out and I lost the posts.  Not fun to re-create…

I have to get my discipline back on, as I’ve also not done any TRACK work this week.  But I did write this post on my Adoption Survivor blog, and it’s been getting some attention.

waste

So I was talking with Willie this weekend and he was mentioning how he takes care of his food scraps and the topic went from garbage to junk and then to decks/patios/balconies, and how in Korea there is no such thing as patio chairs and cafe tables because everybody uses that space to hold boxes and piles of crap – basically all the overflow from the apartments, because there isn’t sufficient storage space.  And I laughed and told him how I thought that decks were the equivalent of the American garage.

So many little things like that I mean to talk about that would enlighten you back home, but I forget.

Speaking of garbage, we were in Gyeongju and I was eating an instant ramyeon noodle and as I never drink the salt, red pepper and msg-laden broth, so I went outside to dump the liquid down the drain.  And the family marte shop keeper got all alarmed and Clara said something like, “they have a food waste container inside…”

Oh!

Did I tell you that I just got off the plane?  I’d seen them before, but just never used them and so forgot about them.  Basically, there is so much emphasis on recycling that very little actually goes in the trash (and who really knows where THAT goes…?  The urban myth is it goes to slop pigs in the country) and any food that does go in the trash is solid.  How do they accomplish this?  The answer is that every place has a food waste can.  Basically, it’s a trash can with a collander/sieve straddling the top of it – or a special can with a perfectly fitting sieve resting inside, so that the solids can be removed to reduce the trash and because the fermented liquid would become a disposal problem.

I have NO IDEA where the garbage in Korea goes.  While the trash collection bins look like big plastic dumpsters, I haven’t seen any dumpster trucks come to pick anything up.  I have seen the recycling trucks: they are these archaic-looking little trucks that come by in the middle of the night and everything is hand-thrown into them by one lone guy.  This is a very low-tech process, and I’m not sure if the entire thing is done through independent contracts and/or if it is just done for re-sale, or if these little truck operators work for the city.  Then, around dawn is the sidewalk crew of adjummas.  They wear little yellow uniforms, garden gloves, and push special carts, which hold brooms and dustpans, and many different bags for them to sort what they pick up.  It doesn’t matter how littered the street is by evening’s end:  in the morning, the street will look brand new clean and spotless.  Everyone knows they’ll be by, so it’s common for people to leave their drinks, cans, bottles, cigarette butts, etc. wherever they are.  So people litter here – but it’s typically not just random throwing and tossing, but purposefully set some place where they know it will be picked up.  And most people I know who are smokers are very careful to carry around their butts until they find a trash can or chattori. (ashtray)  Of course, there are those that use the street as an ashtray – but again, considering how many smokers there are here – the streets are actually pretty free of cigarettes, and the butts you do see laying about are again in places where everyone knows either the shop worker, doorman, or cleaning adjumma will come along eventually.  So in a weird way it kind of supports jobs.

Straining things has ingeniously been thought of all over the Korean house.  In the kitchen sink, the drain has a sieve with a handle in it as well.  The sink drains here are huge:  instead of the drains that they have in the U.S. which are the same size as the 1.5 inch pipes, the drains here are about 4″ wide and about 5″deep and function in much the same way as the food waste garbage cans.  Also, in the bathrooms is a similar large sieve beneath a flat drain cover at floor height, which very effectively collects all hair after a shower.   This system wouldn’t work so well on a bathroom sink, however.  But no worries:  you can purchase from adjoshis on the subway, or at trucks selling  household items, these barbed coils of plastic with a handle on the end of it.  They’re like pipe snakes, but the barbs snag any hairs or things clogging the sink elbow.  Mr. S. didn’t like how slow my drain was and brought me one.  It works fantastic.  Everyone in America needs one of these things.

During our stay in Busan a week ago, it came as somewhat of a shock to be in a western hotel room once again.  Not only was there no foyer to take off your shoes, but the floor was not raised and heated, and the floor was carpeted.  Jane and I were both totally creeped out about the carpet and the impossibility of cleaning it properly after so many barefoot visitors had stayed there.  And then there was the western bathroom, with it’s bathtub, curtained shower, and fixed shower head.  The problem with the western fixed shower head is there is no control over the water.  What I’ve come to appreciate about the hand-held Asian shower head is how you can localize its use:  Want to only wash your feet?  no problem.  Just dyed your hair and you want that dye to stay over the drain?  No problem.  AND the water pressure close to the scalp when you are shampooing gets you rinsed out faster and more thoroughly as well.  Want to clean up only our naughty bits?  No problem.  Want to shower but feel like giving your hair a break for a day/or don’t feel like having wet hair to style?  No problem.  With the hand-held shower, you can take a thorough shower and not need a shower cap.  In fact, it’s hard to find a plastic shower cap in Korea.  Want to clean the bathroom?  With the hand-held shower head, you can hose down the walls and floors and clean up the bathroom thoroughly in minutes.  The thing I don’t like about Korean bathrooms is that you have to ALWAYS put the toilet lid down or your seat will be wet, you have to keep your toilet paper out of the way of any spray spillover, and if you share a bathroom, then there’s the slipper thing if you need to go to the toilet after someone’s showered, because the entire bathroom will be wet afterward.  But I’m lucky and my shower is enclosed, so I don’t have that problem.

Most Korean toilet paper dispensers have a stainless steel blade that hangs down in front of the roll, to make tearing off the paper easier.  Joyce was mentioning how the public squat toilets are so much better for the environment, in terms of water consumption.  They use about half as much water, yet the flushing is really powerful somehow, with no visible tank.  People say euww about the used toilet paper cans which are always next to the squat toilets, but it probably is much better for the sewer system.  And the people who empty the bathroom trash do so with very long tongs, like the ones they use to move people’s shoes around.  What sucks is when there isn’t toilet paper in a public restroom, so you always should have a travel package of tissue with you or remember to take some paper dinner napkins from any table you leave.  What’s great about Korea is that there are clean public restrooms everywhere, meaning you never have to be inconvenienced and every citizen, from those wearing fur to those living on the streets, can stay clean.  There isn’t any of this nimby discriminatory attitude here about who can or can’t use a bathroom, which is really refreshing.

We all need a little bit of inspiration from time to time

I’m really enjoying class 1-1, believe it or not.

The funny thing is, the dictation as punishment has really been a wonderful vehicle for me and the class to develop a relationship of sorts.

As a result, these unruly boys have had to be my captive audience, and so I spend a great deal of thought and effort trying to find provocative material for them to consider as they listen and write.  For two weeks I read about education in America and told them my own story, and how if I can go from THE WORST educational background in America to being accepted to Yale, then ANYTHING is possible if you want it bad enough.  I read about the meaning of family and reunion and personal responsibility.  Today I got to class and the class was (will wonders never cease?) getting. out. paper. and. pencil. and . ready…I read two commencement addresses:  One by Anna Quindlan and the other by Steve Jobs.

Amazingly, half the class was at full attention listening to the Steve Jobs speech.  One of the boys asked if he could have a copy.  I think that’s kind of cool that he wasn’t embarrassed to ask for that out loud, so I just gave him my copy and said, “we all need a little inspiration from time to time,” and several heads nodded.  I wonder if anyone ever says anything inspiring to them ever.

I’m feeling teaching is very rewarding today.  I am glad I chose high school, because there is a certain level of self-determination that I like to appeal to that younger students just wouldn’t have.

In the other classes, I did a pre Halloween lesson.  I showed the kids a common craft video on How to kill a zombie.  Then, I gave each group images of different monsters/demons/what-have-you and asked the students to give the class a presentation on how to identify, prepare for, and kill the monster they were assigned using ordinals to explain the process instruction.  As always, the girls did way better than the guys, and some of the presentations are hilarious.  For example, In one scenario I wrote:

Werewolves are eating all the pets in your neighborhood and now your best friend is missing:  what will you do?

One girl group decided that first, they would throw a “fat” party.  “Why fat?” I asked.  “Because he ate so many pets, he must have gotten fat.  So we will throw a party for only fat people.”  Then, they would drug everyone with sleeping pills.  Next, they would check everyone’s teeth for fangs.  And finally, they would pull out the fangs with pincers so he couldn’t chew meat anymore.

So I was really pleased with them.  The students seem to be most creative when they see an opportunity for humor.

It’s kind of frustrating doing group work, simply because there are sooooo many kids in each class that you can’t engage them, give a lesson, and then give them enough time to both learn how to work on group projects AND prepare for presentation AND present.  But somehow we manage to get something put forward each week.  The Korean high school English classroom is a strange mixture of middle school projects with really high level vocabulary and elementary school verbal ability.  But I think they’re enjoying it.  And hopefully they’re speaking more than they were before.  Not as in just speaking, but communicating their own thoughts.

Hmmm…do I really want to leave and get a hagwon job or search for the more lucrative but less secure private lesson market?  I just wish this assignment wasn’t in Anyang.  I’m vascilating and glad I didn’t turn in my letter of intent to not renew.   Maybe I would like this job better if I got to move to old Anyang and took a bus into work.  Or maybe I should try to get a rural assignment, like a friend of Willies – maybe take over his position if it is still available – where I’d have half as many students I saw twice as much and also make more money.

sign of the times

After an entire Saturday spent exploring a neighborhood, shopping at Dongdaemmon for winter clothes and a rare night out with my Migook friends in Seoul, I woke up early (as always) and had to leave because (as always) being the only one awake and trying to keep busy with nothing at hand trapped in a small room having to be totally silent and not disturb anyone for hours and hours and hours (because most people after a night of revelry sleep even MORE than usual) is too much to bear – and it always happens, so I know that for my own sanity it’s best to leave, apologize later, and utilize my time better.

So I went back to Dongdaemmon because I was not yet done with my shopping mission.  In retrospect this was a mistake, because despite being wide awake, I was physically too exhausted and drained to be shopping, and as a result made some stupid and expensive purchases.

ANYWAY, realizing I hadn’t eaten in eons, I headed up to the 7th floor food court of Migliore, where I was instantly accosted by two of the most aggressive, pushy adjummas, trying to get me to patronize their food stand – and then I was lead away by another pushy adjumma, built like a bulldog, telling me THEY were same same and trying to shove HER menu into my hands.  I had to fight my way past her and out of her (literally) clutches and practically ran to the farthest corner of the food court.  I made my way past the rest of the Korean food stalls and got accosted by another aggressive (but half as much) woman who shoved a menu in my hands, and I quickly saw the kim chi bop and ordered it.  No sooner had I sat down, then she started barking at me and then realized I didn’t speak Korean, so instead she barked, “PAY NOW!”  Sure!  Anything you say!

I watched with horror as each group of customers coming up the escalator were similarly greeted (with a smile through gritted teeth and loud desperate hawking of the merits of THEIR food stand vs. the others’) having to pass by their gauntlet.  Then, to my amazement they nearly ripped one customer in two trying to each get her to go in the opposite directions.  The poor customer managed to duck out of the way as the two adjummas started screaming at each other and bitch slapping each other over trying to steal the others’ potential customer.  Another adjumma came out to start screaming in support of one of them, and then the the bulldog adjumma began screaming at them as well.

I sat there eating as quickly as possible, my stomach churning and entire body tense with adrenaline, wondering about the kind of economic desperation that would cause those women to behave in that way.  Because it wasn’t just hatred of each other – they had instead, in their eyes, the look of hungry rats in survival mode.  They were literally competing for scraps like junkyard dogs.  They were scared.  They were also scaring away any customers they could have gotten.  Meanwhile, the more low-key restaurant was doing a swift business.  But that doesn’t seem sustainable for every restaurant up there, and it’s certainly not a place I’ll ever return to, no matter how hungry and exhausted I get.

I’ve noticed other things lately too.  The fares in half the taxis have incrementally risen by 200 won.  I’m not sure if Koreans tell these cabs to go to hell, or if like me they’re just happy to have gotten one and pay.  The price of clothes, too, seems to have risen a bit.  And the spaghetti I used to order at a pizza place near me is now too expensive to warrant purchasing ever.

I remember when I first got here I asked about the economy, and everyone said it was really really bad.  They said that it used to be much much better, and that everyone was tightening their belt and being very careful with their money.  It still didn’t seem that bad to me, as everywhere I looked Koreans were buying, buying, buying, and the stores appeared to be selling a lot of stuff at great prices.  But now that I’ve been here awhile, I am starting to see the relativity of things better.

Consider how this is a country without tipping.  What kind of salary can be made if, for instance, you wash dishes at a restaurant or you sell cell phones.  In every shopping district there may be four to six cell phone stores – each with anywhere from three to six employees.  How many cell phones must be sold to pay all those employees?  In every store you go to, there seem to be twice as many salespeople as needed.  If shirts are sold for $7 US each, how many shirts must be sold simply to support all those employees?  If you sell mandu for $1.75 US, how many mandu sales must you make just to keep your shop open? When I went to visit Jeong-Ae and wanted coffee, we had to go on a quest for it because there were no coffee shops.  No coffee shops survived long in her neighborhood because nobody there could afford to spend $3 US on coffee.  Why would anyone spend $3 on coffee when you can purchase an entire meal for the same price?  If you are working at one of the small businesses, can you even afford a meal?

In stark contrast to this is the omnipresent in-your-face barrage of luxury items on t.v.  From LG’s frameless flat panel LED tv’s, to luxury cars, to cell phones that practically brush your teeth for you.  And btw, internet access on your cell phone costs $8.55 more a month, but then you are charged for every minute of usage.  Who are these people watching t.v. on the subways, and how the hell can they afford two hours of streaming t.v. every day?  Who are the people buying clothes at the Korean Rodeo Drive?  How can there possibly be sooo many people wearing authentic Levi’s at $80 US a pop?  Who are these people paying 1 million won ($855 US) for their kids to have Hagwon lessons?  (answer:  nearly everyone with a corporate job or now dual income families) and HOW?  (answer:  dad never comes home except to sleep)  But for many Koreans, that treadmill is something they can only dream of and hope for.

And so, I have decided to do my best to support small business in Korea.  Last week I was excited to discover a banchan (side-dish) deli in an alley at Pyeongchon station and vowed to go there from now on.  (this may not sound exciting, but there is SO LITTLE here in my part of this new city, that it was truly exciting)  But tonight, while shopping at E-marte I totally forgot and bought kim chi there.  Damn it!  These mega stores will be the death of everyone, and I contribute to it through my laziness and forgetfulness.

So none of this post is anything new to anyone living here.  But for those of you back in the states, I just thought I’d bring you up to speed on how my perception has changed over the past few months.  It’s all kind of warping my own sense of monetary value as well.  More on this in a different post.

being appreciated

Class 1-3’s last dictation was today.

Like some of the other class material I have introduced in the past, I vacillated whether or not to share what I chose today.  I have to carefully consider politics, my audience, the politics of the school, and the parents of my audience.  My lessons are sometimes strange even to me because, for instance, the last three weeks the focus has been about economics – and that’s thinking which is far to the right of my own nature.  Similar to when I did a lesson for my evening discussion class on body modification.  Despite my personal bias against plastic surgery, I found myself saying I would not take any position, as my ears were pierced and some might find that barbaric…

Consider if you will the current president is likened to Bush and was elected into office for the same reasons Americans tentatively and regrettably elected Bush into office.  Then you have the world’s oldest continuously maintained armed border for a war that officially hasn’t ended.  You have an older generation who fought against communism, decades of dictatorship and a middle-aged generation who fought for democracy, and young people who enjoy the benefits of capitalism but who think that the fights of the past are irrelevant and impotent.   And through every one of these political eras, Korean families have been separated and sacrificed.  Anyway, I am careful not to talk about reunification to anyone here.  Mostly because I haven’t done my homework and don’t understand all the nuances, and can at best only put my feelers out for what Koreans I talk with think – and those tend to only be middle aged Koreans, limited to the few who can speak English with me.  My sense is that most people want reunification, and that each and every family has somehow been touched by personal loss as a result, but that everyone secretly is glad if it doesn’t happen in their lifetime, as it will drastically alter the distribution of resources and affect everyone’s standard of living.

Today’s fare was an article Jane wrote in Pressian about Cheuseok.  It spoke about a Korean expression about returning home and the importance of family for the holidays.  It chronicled the emptying of Seoul as everyone returns to their family seat to honor their ancestors and their cultural traditions with loved ones.  And then it spoke about the two Koreas putting their differences aside for one day to allow 100 N. Korean and S. Korean family members to reunite.  It also linked a bit of news that had recently captured the hearts and minds of many S. Koreans, that being the Imjin river which flows across the border, which killed 6 S. Koreans and which, after devastating flooding in N. Korea, carried the body of a nameless boy across the border, yet obviously N. Korean due to his different attire.  The article spoke about adoptees as nameless and different:  returning yet denied the opportunity to have meaningful cultural experiences because we have no elders to bow to / no family to return to.  She likens this to how like the N. Korean and S. Korean families, adoptees and their families are kept divided by politics – the politics of governments and adoption agencies.  Jane wished also for 100 adoptees to be reunited this holiday, and then closed with a statement about the importance of family for ALL Korean people.

Despite dictation being a punishment for these young boys who need to learn appropriate behavior and self control, I’ve made sure that all the dictations also provided something insightful or provocative for them to think about.

Today, at the finish of the article, one boy applauded.  Applauded Jane’s writing, and maybe because I chose to read it to them.  Others hesitated but thought about it too late before the moment was over.  But I noted and registered and I respect where their hearts and minds were.  This has happened in other classes in the past, for other messages I’ve tried to impart.  I find the willingness of Korean students to show their appreciation in this way very encouraging.  I know I’m not the most fun teacher in the world, but I do feel like I am value added!  I think they are beginning to realize I REALLY CARE about them and their futures, so they are listening more and more.  I think it is partially this and maybe partially that their Korean teachers don’t appeal to their intellect much through issues-based discussion topics.

The non-dictation classes have been going well too.  The girls, especially, do an amazing job with their short presentations, even though their vocabulary is limited, they somehow manage to express themselves.

Some of their multi-cultural sensitivity is a bit disturbing, but I try to explain, for instance, that nappy hair is not dirty  (actually, just like delicious the word dirty is over-used for lack of other vocabulary, so that’s sounding like a new lesson in the works…) and that black hair is  a lot of work to take care of, etc.  That old people CAN work and have a lot of experience.  That baldness has nothing to do with skills, etc. etc.

The group work is always noisy, but there are often one or two students who will help call the class to order should my bell or voice fail.  One girl in particular, I complimented her group on their skills at concensus building, and she just BEAMS whenever she sees me.  Fortunately, she appears to be the class captain, so she’s on top of excess class noise more rigorously than even I am now.

Yeah, today was a good day.  I think I like teaching high school.  And honestly, there is sooo much prep time and vacation time and free time and liberty with the lesson planning, that I will miss it if I go entirely privates or privates and part-time hogwan.  I just wish I was in Seoul or the countryside instead of this new city.  And then there is Mr. Lee.  …

still new

Today after school, hungry, I walked towards the spicy garlic fried chicken place.  Yet I kept walking, thinking better of the huge quantity of fat fried goodness and the high cost.  I wandered and wandered past dozens and dozens of Korean restaurants:  pork restaurants, beef restaurants, eel restaurants, puffer fish restaurants, prehistoric-looking monster fish restaurants, North Korean restaurants, etc.;  all of which beckoned me inside but none of which had photos of the food or any way for me to order any of it and slim prospects of being able to order a single person’s portion.  So I just kept walking and walking. Famished, I went into a Chinese restaurant and sat down, but the prices were Hagwon-ga upper middle class high and had to leave.  Walking some more, I stopped at several more restaurants inquiring after an English menu or asking if someone spoke English or asking what an ingredient was in English.

Everywhere you go, the response is something like, “yeongeo…” (which is Korean for English) while sucking in air between their teeth and shaking their head in combined apology/self disappointment/consternation/pain/sympathy) followed by a barrage of muttering, followed by an “annio..”

So I dispensed with my desires and just decided to get anything I could.  But even at the street-food-like places, I couldn’t order anything.  So I finally settled on pizza.

It was actually the first time I’ve ordered pizza in Korea.  I know you’re thinking, how can that be possible, you’ve been there over half a year now!  Well, I’m just not into pizza that much.  Especially the Korean pizza I’ve had with others.  It’s pretty expensive, and again comes in portions that are too large.  Anyway, I went to one with a walk-up window and pictures, and I pointed to the pizza I wanted, but the workers couldn’t see the picture because they were inside.  So some salary man standing next to me ordered for me.  Only there was some confusion about which one I really wanted, and I couldn’t tell them the difference.  Suddenly there were two salary men, and three workers all incredulous that I – this very very Korean looking person – couldn’t speak Korean.  They were all very kind and attentive and one of them handed me a pre-packaged chocolate covered waffle, saying, “service.”  At first I thought he wanted me to buy it and I declined, but the salary man kept handed it to me repeating, service, service. It took quite a bit for me to convince them I didn’t want the waffle.  So I went and sat down inside once students came up to order, and one of the pizza guys give me some slivers of pizza to eat and a cola to drink while I waited.  “Service” he told me, and then a different salary man told me, “free charge.”  So I thanked him for the snack while I waited, and the pizza man kept saying, “oh! free charge!”  delighted he’d learned some more English.

And so I walked home with my small but too large pizza.  Which ended up being quite disappointing because it had potato on it, which has a texture that is kind of weird to me, and the sauce was sweet…surprisingly, there was no corn on this pizza, which is hugely popular here.

And then it dawned on me how very behind I am.  I’ve had – and continue to have – so many other things on my plate, that I am still very much a newcomer here.  And it’s really strange, because if I were just on vacation to some foreign country, I’d be guidebook familiar, phrasebook ready, survival phrase ready, studying for hours to get the most out of my few weeks.  But all these other things I do and my focus on learning about SOCIETY here has usurped all that space in my brain.

I am hoping next year, when this contract finishes, as my birth family search chapter closes, and I have restructured my living situation to be more convenient, that I can start fresh and focus more on being able to order food and get pizza without potato and corn.  I’m hoping I can walk around Seoul more.  I’m hoping I can find favorite hide-aways and regular haunts, interesting things to do and relaxing activities to participate in.  It’s time to not only stop being so new, but to also be new the right way.

The fixer

I just woke up an hour ago and handled some back-logged emails.  It’s been the pattern the last few days to come home, work on the TRACK website, and fall asleep sitting up and my laptop still running. I wake up after about four hours, work some more, until almost dawn, again fall asleep with my laptop still running, and yet amazingly still wake up ten minutes before the alarm goes off and work some more, leaving myself not enough time to shower or walk the twenty minutes to work.  I now spend more money on cabs than food!

Down on street level, and despite it being midnight I go to buy some mild coffee and the new GS25 employee is out front with two other college-aged boys practicing some footwork for a dance choreography, which reminds me of Karl who would dance anywhere anytime if he had an idea he wanted to work out.

It dawns on me once again, that I am a fixer.  Whether it was the Latin dance community in Seattle, or Korean society’s attitude towards adoption and women’s rights, or websites, or homeless issues, or pretentiousness in building design, or anything on the planet, I am obsessed and driven with fixing things.  Whether I am an un self-actualized artist in a cabin in the wood, or an Architecture student in slum lord housing with a leaky roof, or an English teacher in an officetel, my best moments are when time is lost and I’m so absorbed in my work that I neither eat nor sleep nor bathe. It doesn’t matter where in the world you are – it’s all good if you have a purpose for being.

Is it true?

A 2nd year high school student was in one of my 1st year classes yesterday between periods, and he turned to me ans asked, “Is it true?  You REALLY can’t speak ANY Korean?”

“Yes.  It’s true,”  I replied.

Jane called us unicorns – people really can’t believe we exist sometimes.

This isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.  Others dismiss this as laziness on my part.  They will tell you Korean is easy to learn.  Why, there are foreigners competing on t.v. all the time!  Yes.  There are:  young foreigners who do nothing but take Korean classes three hours a day  for two years straight…Me, I have to be on the ten year plan.

*****************

Between classes a second year boy who’d dropped out of my evening class because his father made him  (He didn’t do so well on a test I guess) and who is exceedingly smart, very good at English, and just an all around good guy, stopped by to settle an argument with his teacher over grammar.

Presented to me was the longest, most chewy, hard-to-follow, pedantic sentence I’d ever encountered.  And there was a word which it wasn’t clear if it was being used as an object or as part of an adverbial and I told him either way would work, depending on what your meaning was.  Okay.  So try to explain that to someone.  Okay.  So the instructor had told him it was an object and that it didn’t make sense the other way, but because the damned sentence was soooooo long and compounded, I couldn’t break it down for the kid.

It really pained me to have dropped a notch in his eyes, and I hope to run into him and explain:

I want to explain that a) we native speakers wouldn’t WRITE a sentence that complex and b) if it’s that hard to discern under a microscope, then we wouldn’t be concerned with it.  (The level of splitting hairs and near sadistic grammatical torture they put these kids through is almost abusive, in my opinion!)

I want to tell him that in all my years of college I never had to crunch grammar in so rigorous and taxing a manner.

I want to explain that the best Korean English teachers in my school may be good at breaking down examples like the preceding, but that when I am asked to edit exams and handouts, etc., I am always finding the teachers themselves don’t have a command of the most simple things like articles, prepositions, and pronouns.  I want to explain that the use of million dollar words while not having mastery over the basics only hurts them by using up valuable resources.

I want to explain that learning obscure vocabulary and untying the most mind-bending grammar imaginable doesn’t help them communicate with the world.  I want to explain that listening, comprehending, and being able to express oneself is more important.

*****************

I think Jane is disappointed I gave up on Korean.  Unlike her, though, I don’t have a family here that I need to NEED to communicate with.  I also don’t have a family here or anyone here that will bother to take a moment to mentor me.  I am also surrounded by people who a) are only concerned about improving their English or b) are freaked out by the prospect of talking with me in English.  And except for Young-A, nobody here is so excited about the western mind-set to want to get to know a westerner well enough to get any further understanding. (or they think they know it already)

Taking the subway and meeting for a lesson meant 1.5 hours travel each way.  That plus the actual lesson and eating dinner would eat up 5 to 6 hours of an evening.  So that was 3 nights a week, and then 2 nights a week, and then 1 night a week.  Working with TRACK and searching for my family meant there was no time for study, and it’s been a long time since I’ve studied and am very undisciplined and rusty.  Anyway, it was exhausting.

So it’s just pointless to expend that kind of energy unless there’s someone to communicate WITH.

I’m actually much happier now that I’ve set that aside.  I’ve got time on my hands, and can watch a movie now and then, which I learn much more from.

Are you in there?

I bet you are!

I will see this movie come hell or high water and try and see if you are portrayed in it!

I will look for the mischievous one who likes to play outside, the one with a sparkle in her eyes. I will imagine how it would be to be 8 instead of 2 while at the orphanage, and wonder about the bonds that we all made there during our stay.

Here’s the movie being released, made by a fellow orphanage mate of my Seoul sister, Myung Sook:

From Joong Ang Daily

An orphan struggles to overcome abandonment

October 09, 2009

Jin-hee, played by Kim Sae-ron, in the movie “A Brand New Life.” Provided by Seoul Film Commission

Jin-hee’s morning begins on a bicycle, her arms wrapped around her father’s waist as he navigates the streets. She enjoys the ride and the warmth of his back as she presses into him.

It’s a big day. Her father bought her new clothes, which she is now wearing. He also bought her a large cake, though it’s not her birthday. She is so happy that, during lunch at a restaurant, she sings a little song for her father.

The day, however, takes an abrupt turn. Jin-hee’s father drops her off at an orphanage, where she’s left with a dozen children she has never met. It’s the beginning of a brand new life for her, one she tries desperately to escape until she realizes that there is nowhere for her to go and that her father is not coming back.

She quickly learns that life at the orphanage is full of separation and sadness, as other children are adopted and leave her life, one by one. Her best friend Sook-hee (Park Do-yeon) lands in the arms of an American family and is whisked to a land where she apparently can eat cake every day. Although Jin-hee eventually gives up on the idea of going back home, she can’t shake the memory of that bike ride and the warmth of her father’s back.

The French-Korean film “A Brand New Life,” which will be screened at PIFF under the World Cinema category, narrates a heartbreaking story about overcoming the sorrow of separation and accepting fate. The film beautifully illustrates the process that Jin-hee (Kim Sae-ron) goes through as she slowly realizes her fate and then learns to embrace life as an adoptee. Every moment is tear-jerking, but at the same time it gives you hope that one can find a new path.

The film is based on the true story of Korean-French director Ounie Lecomte, who was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1966 and was adopted by a French family when she was 9. She spent one year at the Saint Paul orphanage, run by Catholic nuns, in Seoul. It is the first French-Korean joint production and is Lecomte’s debut film. It was co-produced by renowned director Lee Chang-dong and was filmed near Seoul. It was presented for the first time at the Cannes International Film Festival in May.

Lecomte said in an interview at the Cannes festival that she tried to portray the emotions of a little girl facing extraordinary circumstances – abandonment and adoption – rather than simply replicate her childhood. “The year at the orphanage is the time and place of an intervening period between two lives: a life in which she didn’t have to learn how to let go and then a life in which she will learn how to desire,” Lecomte said.

The film will be shown at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 9 and at 11 a.m. on Oct. 11 at Lotte Cinema at the Centum City complex in Busan. It will also be released nationwide on Oct. 29.

A Brand New Life

Drama / Korean

92 min.

By Limb Jae-un [jbiz91@joongang.co.kr]

rewards

Mr. Koorng, (?) the doorman, moves the potted plants from the sidewalk and inside for the evening. He mops the marble lobby of the officetel and picks up cigarette butts from around the entry and GS25 with his garden gloves on. Mr. K. was once an English professor, and now retired sort-of, is a doorman at Hanyang Worldbil officetel apartments. (some of my favorite people in the world are doormen. Like Massalu, the Ethiopian restaurant owner in Seattle, who was also the doorman at my 2nd architecture firm and from whom I faithfully would patronize for the most garlic-laden tomato fit-fit in the planet) All the foreigners love him, (as opposed to the other doorman – which actually I love too, especially after I bought two baby pillows and he started cooing and saying something in Korean about babies and smiling) and he is like the officetel good-will ambassador.

Mr. K. always says hello to me and tries to strike up conversations, but it’s always awkward. Tonight must have been more conducive to conversation because he stopped and chatted for a good long time. He told me all about the 14 foreigners who live in the high-rise, and how one of them was from Austria and not an English teacher. He also told me about an adoptee who lived here the year before, and whose white adoptive mother came to visit her three times, and how she went home. He said he knew how hard it was for Korean adoptees because we couldn’t speak our own language but everyone saw us as Korean. I agreed and told him how it was weird to see the white foreigners be treated in a special way, while we were treated like Koreans-yet-not-Koreans. We had a good long talk about the Korean economy and he proudly told me about all the things Korea does well, and rightly so. And then he told me I should search for my family and how I should contact the t.v. stations, even though he saw SBS following me around. I told him about TRACK and how we recognized that in today’s economy there was no reason to send children away and how difficult it was because of Confuscian ideals. I told him how we were working to convince Koreans that ALL children should be valued. He nodded, looked pained, and had nothing to say. We talked about learning Korean and he offered that every foreigner just needed a Korean guide to make it relevant. I talked about waiting for a Korean guide, and about how I was going to save for key money so I could go to Seoul and be free. He thought that was a very good idea.

**************

The weather is getting quite nipply. The last two weeks were a very bizarre pendulum of extremes. Still balmy hot by mid-day, yet med-weight jacket cold at night.

But the tide has turned, and it is now long-sleeved weather all day. I need to purchase sweaters and wonder in amazement how I survived March and April of last year, since I had nothing of that weight to keep me warm in the sometimes sub-zero climate.

So I’m excited to purchase some of the amazing structural and design fashion-forward sweaters in Seoul, but I also need to save for key money…I just need to figure out how the heck I did it last winter with what I have, or figure out how little I can purchase and how versatile I can be with a few layered pieces.

**************

I’ve decided that Koreans are correct that Makkoli puts you to sleep, AND that the thinner it is, the better. So now I barely shake it, and I drink 3 of the 4 dixie-up size cups and leave the thick dregs for the drain.

Perhaps the continuous turn-over at the GS25 has ceased, because now they see me and understand when I say, “cup.” Which is really funny, because I haven’t bought a bottle of mokkoli in about two weeks.

Had a little dong dong ju with my Migook friends in Gyeong Ju, and wasn’t crazy about it. It’s some other kind of rice wine, but more effervescent AND it tasted like bread mold to me, so I couldn’t drink it. However, it is very popular with others.

Mr. K. told me about makkoli being drunk by the peasant farmers during their work break, and how it made them more productive.

**************
It’s midnight after a four hour makkoli-induced nap. Lightly hungry yet not wanting to walk around in the cold to go through the frustration of trying to find something to eat for the limited choices a single person has, I settled on an instant nurungi, which is the rice dessert made from the toasted rice stuck to the bottom of the rice crock.

I’ve come a long way from a year ago, where I could barely tolerate eating rice at all. It happened when I was sick last spring and post fever and not eating for three days, having nothing in much in the apartment to eat but rice. I made a pot of it and suddenly it was the most comforting, satisfying food in the planet. Surprisingly, there are a few dishes which are Korean which have almost zero spice to it and is quite bland. Porridge. Pork stew. Koreans seem to appreciate this as occasional contrast to their diet.

**************
Today Mr. Lee was back to his old worthless self again. The perpetual conundrum of the Korean classroom is the varying level of student ability. The top students actually listen and are engaged and interested in your lessons. The middle students try and then you lose them half the time. The bottom level students don’t even bother. (I’ve seen students not even bother to take exams, that’s how uninvolved in school they are – they just sleep through them on purpose) But in my class, I must make them try. During my powerpoint lecture, sometimes I catch Mr. Lee sounding out words or being fascinated by the lecture. But when activity time rolls around, and their heads are on their desks, and I need his assistance to get the kids participating, where is Mr. Lee? Looking out the window. Or watching me as I wake students up or try and explain the instructions in a new way. So it always takes twice as long as it should.

Today it really pissed me off. The uninterested were unresponsive as the dead and I clearly needed help, but Mr. Lee just stood in his spot in the corner like a catatonic person. I swear most of the rage I feel is Mr. Lee’s fault. I have such great classes with the female co-teacher, who is always ready and assisting.

Mr. Lee is my main reason for hating it here. I have to leave Mr. Lee behind.

**************
My female co-teacher wanted to introduce healthy competition and offered candy as a contest prize halfway through last week. I let her do this but expressed my distaste for such things. I must say, I didn’t think the results were any better. And, it was sad for me to hear the disappointment in the other groups who didn’t win but who thought their work was equally good. Learning or doing a good job really should be its own reward. Competition is healthy if there’s a specific goal and discreet measurable progress that can be charted. But for something subjective? I don’t like it at all, and think it’s counter-productive.

Class 1-1, the infamous class, is well on its way to being orderly. However, dictation (I have to admit) has got to be a drag. They were dropping like flies today but it was okay with me, because most of them got the majority of the message prior to fading away. For the five who made it through to the bitter end, I took them to the snack shop and bought them any treat they wanted. Not one to bribe my students, I think everyone was shocked at this show of appreciation.

Surprisingly, most of the boys bought microwave chicken sandwiches instead of sweets. Maybe school lunch was especially awful today.

**************

Ah, the nurungi’s ready. yummmmm!

Heroines everywhere

Probably the highlight of my visit to Busan (since I wasn’t allowed into the theater to see Resilience because I was 2 minutes late – but that’s another story) was meeting Kyong-Wha.  (Her story in the New York Times follows below)

I consider myself a lucky girl to not only have heroines, but to meet them and be able to get to know them personally.

Heroine #1 is Jane Jeong Trenka, who is the most unselfish person I’ve ever met.  We’re very similar, in that we see a need and follow up on it.  But she’s younger and thinks bigger than I do, and she exhausts all of her seemingly (but not) boundless energy creating a better world for women.  Currently she and a team of advisors have DRAFTED A NEW LAW to be proposed to the Korean National Assembly.  How’s THAT for citizen action???  Historic.  Landmark.

Heroine #2 is Kyung-Wha.  Here’s another woman who sees a need and, instead of sucking it up stoically by herself, she not only puts herself out there, but creates a foundation for single mothers BY single mothers – the first of its kind in Korea – called Mama Mia.

Reading the article, you will be both energized and impressed by this fearless, courageous woman and encouraged by the writing and the exposure of this issue in the New York Times.  But Korea, it seems, does not see Kyung-Wha’s actions or Sang-Hun’s New York Times article in such favorable light.  In fact, fall-out and negative comments by netizens of Korea’s insular cyberworld has been rather severe.  They ask things like, “How can you ask for the government to help you when YOU messed up?”  They refuse to recognize any of the extra hardships and descrimination these women face for TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS. They do not appreciate Sang-Hun airing Korea’s dirty laundry out in public, never once considering that it was they who dirtied the laundry to begin with.  They see nothing wrong with the government promoting adoption and discouraging women to raise their own children, as most Koreans still think of America as the land of milk and honey:  even though there are more jobs here and the standard of living is REALLY HIGH.

I learned, in addition to the NYT article, that the measly 50,000 won (half of the $85 the government sends to subsidize those who already have the means to adopt) is taken away once an unwed mother gets a job:  which of course she must do, because how can you live on $42.50 a month?  There is a child support system here, but it is not enforced, so dead-beat dad’s merely have to move so their address no longer matches the database.  There is no blame directed at the men for their part in procreation.

Kyung Wha’s little boy is an absolute delight.  Jane chases him and they play mock battle like the Pororo characters from Korean children’s tv cartoons.  His peels of laughter amuse everyone but his mom, who knows he will be extra hard to settle down.  He hits his head under a table and cries and she rocks him in her arms, kissing his head.  I see this and remember how much I loved these moments of just being there for my little ones, comforting them.  Later, he’s passed out across two restaurant chairs, oblivious to all and looking like an angel, and I remember Jane saying earlier under her breath something like, “and to think he could have been sent away.”

So I’ll post the first half of the NYT article here, and let you finish the rest there…

Mok Kyong-wha, with her son, said that she broke up with her boyfriend while she was pregnant and refused when he asked her to have an abortion

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: October 7, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea — Four years ago, when she found that she was pregnant by her former boyfriend, Choi Hyong-sook considered abortion. But after she saw the little blip of her baby’s heartbeat on ultrasound images, she could not go through with it.

As her pregnancy advanced, she confided in her elder brother. His reaction would sound familiar to unwed mothers in South Korea. She said he tried to drag her to an abortion clinic. Later, she said, he pressed her to give the child up for adoption.

“My brother said: ‘How can you be so selfish? You can’t do this to our parents,’ ” said Ms. Choi, 37, a hairdresser in Seoul. “But when the adoption agency took my baby away, I felt as if I had thrown him into the trash. It felt as if the earth had stopped turning. I persuaded them to let me reclaim my baby after five days.”

Now, Ms. Choi and other women in her situation are trying to set up the country’s first unwed mothers association to defend their right to raise their own children. It is a small but unusual first step in a society that ostracizes unmarried mothers to such an extent that Koreans often describe things as outrageous by comparing them to “an unmarried woman seeking an excuse to give birth.”

The fledgling group of women — only 40 are involved so far — is striking at one of the great ironies of South Korea. The government and commentators fret over the country’s birthrate, one of the world’s lowest, and deplore South Korea’s international reputation as a baby exporter for foreign adoptions.

Read the rest of the New York Times article here

English is Funny

just hit the right arrow at the bottom for a slide show.

if you hit the big arrow, it will play like a video and has an annoying laugh track

Chapter Two

I was telling Clara how I could never keep a journal because I would self-edit to a paralyzing degree, and that I appreciated blogging because once it was sent, it was a commitment.  I also told Jane how sometimes embarrassing my blog was, with its sometimes wrong early analysis and assumptions, but that I wanted to keep it as a document of what it’s like to transplant oneself into a totally alien culture, and that even the flaws had value for others who might travel the same path.

I wanted to maximize my time and resources and be able to share as much as I could with my friends and family as an on-the-spot reporter, so they could experience WITH me:  I never imagined I would get other readership.  This process, in the end, became more like that journal I never wanted to write.

When Sara was little and we would sometimes have minor words, she would run off to her journal and scribble furiously, and I would yell at her something like, “Don’t think I don’t KNOW what you’re writing about me!”  Lenn asked me if I’d ever read her journal and I told her no, because I always knew that in the heat of the moment the passion of her writing would not include all the love and affection we had for each other.  It’s just not human nature to write about what we’re secure about, or about what makes us content, or to note all that keeps us complete and balanced.  No.  We write about what sticks out in our minds as exceptional:  we write about the extreme highs and the extreme lows.  I, too, have written only about what is exceptional.  And, it’s been an incredibly exceptional experience moving to Korea and, in particular, my experience may be more exceptional than most.

Chapter 1 included:

• Culture shock, culture shock, and more culture shock
  • Typical west meets east culture shock
  • Learning to teach in an over-crowded classrooms with unruly boys
  • Exacerbated by self-employed free spirit meets Neo-Confuscianism
  • Looking Asian / feeling white / being treated Korean
  • Failing Korean lessons
• Legal struggles which almost resulted in litigation
• Typical emotionally draining returning adoptee search process
• Atypically being featured in a documentary and dealing with press coverage
• Being adored to an unhealthy degree by a co-worker
• Becoming a core member of an activist group to improve Korean society for the next generation of children

So upon reflection, instead of closing shop at the virulent thoughtless comments of someone with nothing better to do than sabotage the work of others, I’ve decided it would be appropriate to institute a second chapter to this blog, since that’s really where I’m at.  Since it appears I have readers who haven’t met me in person, who haven’t experienced my demeanor or witnessed my skills and foibles, and who can’t discern my subtle and darkly dry sense of humor and who can’t see the unwavering optimism of my actions vs. the sardonic bite of my written words, then I will endeavor to work harder at a more balanced voice.

It took me over a half a year, but I now feel capable, even though I’m still learning new things and maneuvering through more cultural surprises:

• I can now manage to engage 75% of my classrooms of forty+ high school students in a way that appeals to their intellect yet does not pamper them.  They appreciate me – NOT because I am their entertainer, but because I care about their futures, and they know that.  When I first got here, I am sure I sounded like a jerk (because I was a jerk) talking about what we westerners do.  But now when I let my students see through my western lens, I make it clear that it is not a criticism of them.  I tell them this is what WE Asians look like, this is how WE appear,  and how we need to recognize what needs to be fixed so we can improve, so WE can compete.  So WE can survive.  So our children can have a future.  They’re worried about the future.  They get this.  They appreciate this.  I’m not afraid to talk about my personal life and what I’ve seen and experienced.  It’s honest.  It’s different.  I think they like it.
• The remaining 25% are learning about mutual consideration and respect in a highly structured and consistent manner, and are very close to joining the other 75% in more advanced lessons.  They don’t like this at all.  But it’s good for them.  In the end, I think they will have learned something priceless.
• I really love the kids a lot and it is sad I only get to see them once a week. I’m also sad that our time is too brief and there are too many of them to learn all their names.  I wish I had a home room and could have a real relationship with one class.  I long for a smaller class size and wonder if a hagwon situation would be more rewarding.  Yet I value the lesson planning I get to do and the impact I can make.
• The act-ups are actually the most awkward kids just trying to find some way to be appreciated.  It won’t be long before they realize they need to find more appropriate methods for attention. Just goes with the age group and territory.  But it’s painful to watch (again) and annoying to be used.
• My favorite classes are the small group discussion classes.  I love to interview my adult students in depth and help them express themselves.  They’ve all come a long long way in confidence and ability because it’s such a safe environment and because I raise the bar quite high.
• I love the challenge of teaching in a high school, and THE ONLY reason I am leaving is because my particular school will not provide adequate support.  If one child out of 600 is insubordinate and I tell him disciplinary action will be taken, and then the school takes no action, then that tells 599 kids that there are no rules and they can run all over the teachers.  This is not just my problem, and this is why the majority of teachers in my school are angry much of the time.   They are angry with the administration because this school does not support its teachers.  Perhaps this is the difference between a government underwritten private school and a purely public school.
• In all my past rants about the frustration of teaching in Korea, the frustration is not with the students, but with those teachers – both Korean and foreign hagwon – who provide poor lessons and purchase the student’s favor or merely babysit so their jobs will be easier.  They make all the good teacher’s jobs more difficult.  Fortunately, I have yet to meet the hagwon teachers, though I have to deal with the entitlement the children exhibit from being spoiled by them.  They also seem to be the oldest generation of Korean teachers.  Unfortunately, one of them is my male co-teacher.
• Individual Koreans are very endearing and they, too, struggle with all the same questions about society that I ask as a newcomer.  I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to hear their opinions and learn so much about this culture so soon.  It is sad to hear resignation in their voices and I try to give them hope and new alternatives.  It’s easy to do coming from Seattle, which is all about innovation.
• I can’t learn a second language, so I have nothing but admiration for those that can.
• I do have problems with group mentality as most foreigners here probably do, as I equate my individuality with my civil liberties.
• I love the food to an unhealthy degree
• I love how the metropolis is punctured by land masses that insist on respect.
• I think the culture is fascinating, the society severely handicapped by its class structure, and I have the greatest sympathy for the daunting learning curve necessitated by globalization for Korea’s survival.
• Like my other returning adoptee activist friends, I vacillate between longing for the comfort of all I’ve known in the west and sustaining myself through the discomfort of relocation so that I may, in some small way, help Korea to both keep its culture yet also create a society that values EACH and EVERY ONE of its sons and daughters.

Soooo.  I’m NOT going to shut down the blog, but I AM going to be more aware that the blog is no longer my own little pillow scream, but has a public audience and I will attempt to show what’s unspoken and second nature and centering, though in reality, that would require a laugh and a smile, which words don’t draw very well.