More Insight into the Korean Psyche

This week has been an interesting week. I’ve still been working hard to adjust to a completely Korean environment. It’s not easy, and sometimes I am completely overwhelmed. I had some students this week that were horribly rude to me. I understand that they don’t want to learn English. They aren’t old enough, and haven’t seen enough of the world to understand how much it could help them in their lives. But even if that’s the case, what kind of person behaves so impolitely to a person who traveled 7000 miles to teach them. I would never have had the audacity to do something like that when I was in school. I understand that they don’t see me as a real teacher. I’ve been in Korea long enough to know that most of my predecessors screwed up my chances of ever being taken seriously as an educator here, but I am a human being, and it would be nice to be treated as such.

This Saturday after teaching Sabbath School, I went to my own church, practiced singing with the choir, then climbed into a van and drove to the East Coast. All day yesterday, and all day today I spent speaking Korean. My Korean skills are still lacking, so it was a very stressful couple of days for me. When I don’t understand things I feel overwhelmed, but I learned lots of new vocabulary words, and got a lot of speaking practice in.

While we were traveling, I had to opportunity to talk with one lady from church. She is in her late fifties or early sixties. A lot of people in Korea are very concerned about the situation in Japan. Mostly because if something does go horribly wrong with their nuclear plant, and the winds change, it will blow straight in Korea’s face. I’m not too concerned about that. I’m more worried about the Japanese people, and how they are recovering. However, I don’t have the built in prejudices against the Japanese that most of the older generation Koreans have. At one point during the car ride, this lady explained to me that most Koreans hate the Japanese because of the horrible things that the Japanese did to them during the Japanese occupation prior to WWI. That was over 70 years ago, but they still can’t forgive them. The woman even described the recent events going on in Japan as their 운명 or fate. I’ve seen a lot of racism in my life; I’ve even dealt with a lot of it first hand since I came to Korea, but I’ve never seen people act so cold in the face of someone else’s tragedy. It’s really disappointing to see this flaw in the people I love so much.

Koreans are generally such a warm-hearted people. If you are their friend, you become their friend for life. I guess this admirable quality has the not so admirable reverse effect as well. If you are their enemy, you are their enemy for life. That being said, today, some of the people I attend church with invited me over to their home to get to know me better. When we arrived, we walked through a gate, then followed a path that led to the side of a building. We then climbed several sets of cement stairs until we reached the roof. On the roof of the building was a small home. It was an extremely humble dwelling with a small bedroom, living area, bathroom, and a tiny kitchen, barely larger than my apartment now. The whole three person family lives and sleeps in those two rooms. There was no furniture apart from heavily laden bookshelves, no electronic gadgets of any sort. However, the parents and their son are so happy. They cooked me a delicious meal, and urged me to eat more until I had kimchi almost bursting from my ears. I think we all get so caught up in a world of electronics, and media, and new gadgetry that we forget what it was like to just be happy to be with the people we love. I’m grateful that I was able to spend my afternoon with this family, and I hope that one day I can aspire to be as happy as they are with a family of my own.

I hope you will all be grateful for what you have, pray for the people in Japan, and not let prejudice blind you in the face of other people’s suffering.

Living in the Real Korea

I feel very blessed this week to be living in a small city in South Korea where there are no earthquakes, tsunamis, or violent revolutions. As I look at the news, the devastation that is being wreaked upon other people, I feel incredibly lucky to be living the life I am living. With all of the earthquakes taking place all over the world, I took the time to look at a fault line map, and I am happy to report that no major fault lines run through Korea.

Since I have moved to Wonju, I have come to the realization that for the past two years, I was not actually living in Korea. I was living in an international bubble that can be found in all major cities in the world. Of course I was surrounded by Korean people, and Korean food. The customs were strange and interesting to observe and attempt to follow. However, if I ever needed that taste of home, that friendly American embrace, it was right around the corner. The local shops all carried peanut butter and Oreos. Mexican and Indian restaurants were a short subway ride away. It was the fun of living in a foreign culture without any of the isolation from everything I’ve ever known.

Wonju is different. The school I work for doesn’t allow students or teachers to wear shoes inside, there are no western toilets in the bathrooms, and no custodial staff. Every day after school I watch as the students, after a long day of studying, pick up their brooms and mops and clean their own school. I thought I got stared at a lot in Seoul, but here it’s amped up. However it’s not the rude disgusted stares I was used to. They are stares of curiosity. There aren’t many foreigners living in this city, especially foreign girls, so I am a bit of an oddity. My students are constantly telling me how pretty I am, and asking about my hair.

I went to the supermarket yesterday to go grocery shopping. It was strange how spoiled I was in Seoul with easy, if expensive, access to any food I want. In Seoul the local stores sold tortillas, salsa, and cinnamon. Those things were no where to be found. However, I did invest in some delicious dumplings. The school I am currently working at is a vegetarian school. Previous to this year, I had always relied on my school lunches for my weekly supply of protein. However, this school doesn’t meet that requirement, so I have declared Saturday and Sunday to be meat days. I have meat dumplings, tuna fish, and even some pork. I go back to being a weekday vegetarian first thing tomorrow morning.

Today, I went to my new church for the first time. I was a little nervous because I’ve never attended church in Korean, but it went pretty well. There are a lot of words I don’t know, but I’ll learn. The people there were very nice, and took me under their wings immediately. One nice lady sat next to me all through church and told me all about the trip she’s taking to America in July. They’re going to see all of the church history sights. Should be fun for them. Apparently her son is studying dentistry in Michigan.

After church I was talked into joining the makeshift ward choir. There are only about thirty people who go to the church consistently, so they needed everyone they could get. It was fun singing in Korean. Before I left I had already exchanged numbers with some people and arranged to meet up with a bunch of people for a trip to the east coast next Saturday. It was a good day. I am slowly becoming adjusted to the peace and quiet lifestyle that Wonju offers. It’s so nice after the bustle of Seoul. However, it’s time to stop lazing about and use my newfound free time to write an awesome graduate entrance essay.

원주: The Adjustment Period Begins

This week was an extremely eventful week. I’m not even sure where to start. Monday was my last day of work at LCI Academy in Seoul. There was no morning kindergarten, I had no classes to prepare for. All of the things I really needed to do were outside of school, such as going to the bank and transferring money to my American bank account. However, all six of the foreign teachers who were leaving were told that we couldn’t go take care of anything until noon, then we had to be back by 2pm. Even though there was nothing for us to do at the school, and if we all went to the bank at the same time, it would take FOREVER. But logic seems to play very little part in the planning that goes on at LCI. Oh well, I finished everything I needed to, and successfully fulfilled my contract with LCI. Monday night I went to my last Korean class at Yonsei University (at least for the next year). Then, Tuesday morning, I loaded my possessions into the car of a Korean man I’d never met before and drove to start a new life in Wonju, South Korea.

I settled into my new apartment really easily. It’s a lot better than my other apartments except for one respect…the shower. There isn’t one. I’ve seen this in other people’s apartments, but I’ve never had to live with it before. There is a hose attached to my sink and I have to use that to shower. Most apartments have a hook on the wall you can hang it from, but the hook in my bathroom is located in a spot that I cannot possibly stand under…showering has been a bit awkward this week. I’ll have to figure out a way to suspend it from the wall.

Now for the school. It’s a very interesting dynamic. I start out each day by singing a hymn I’ve never heard before, reading a passage of scripture from the Bible, then praying with my coworkers. I like the tone it sets for the day, but it’s a little awkward right now. I’m afraid I’m going to pray wrong or something…even though I know there’s not a wrong way to pray. After morning service, we plan for our classes until 8:30 when the first class starts. Each class is 45 minutes long. I teach on average 5 classes a day. The rest of the time I get to spend prepping for my classes. It’s a strange thing to actually have time to prep for classes. I can create worksheets, and since I have technology available to me in my classroom, I’ve even been making PowerPoint presentations. The schedule is still a little confusing to me, but hopefully the more I do it, the easier it will become to figure out.

As for the students, I really like them. There are some really low level classes, and some really high level. There’s one class where everyone in it is practically fluent. Two of the students don’t even have an accent. I really enjoy teaching them. One of my favorite things about teaching middle schoolers is that I can use my vast knowledge of K-Pop to get them involved in talking in class. This week we had a debate on whether Big Bang or 2PM was a better Korean boy band.

My co-workers seem pretty nice. All of the Korean staff is really busy with the start of the school year, and I feel bad stopping them to ask questions. I hope things will calm down a little bit once we get into the swing of the school year. There are supposed to be four foreign teachers, but right now they’re having a little bit of trouble finding a fourth, so there are only three of us. One of them is from the Philippines. She is really nice. I don’t think she’s actually a native English speaker, but she’s fluent. The other is an interesting gentleman from Georgia. He speaks very quickly with a southern accent. I sometimes have difficulty understanding him, and I assume that the students do to.

I haven’t explored the city very much yet. But I intend to explore a lot this week. I start attending the Korean church next Sunday too. I had to go into Seoul for a meeting this weekend, but starting next weekend, it’s full on Korean mode. I hope they will speak to me in Korean. If I can make church friends it will really help me in a lot of ways.

End of Part 2, Please Insert Disc 3

I would like to tell you a story that began about four months ago. Last November I was on a train on the way to my Korean classes, when my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but I answered it anyway. It was this Korean man. He asked me if I was looking for a job, and having decided only days before that I was going to leave my current job, I said “actually, yes!” He asked me a little information about myself, then asked me where I would like to teach. I described my ideal school and location, and he said… “Hmm, I think I have exactly what you want.” A week later I had an interview. Two ladies from the school drove all of the way to Seoul to meet with me for thirty minutes during my lunch break.

We decided to hold the interview at a coffee shop down the street from my school. We went inside and they asked what I would like. So, of course I told them. “Actually I don’t drink coffee, or tea.” I was delightfully shocked when one of the ladies replied, “Really? Neither do we!” So we all got hot chocolate and sat down for the interview. They were really nice ladies, and the interview seemed more like they were trying to convince me to come teach at their school than a job interview. After the interview I felt really good about the two teachers I had met, and consequently the school. However, as they were wrapping things up, they added that the school was a private religious school…in fact a 7th Day Adventist School. I really don’t know much about their religion, but they seemed like really nice people. Contractually the foreign teachers are not allowed to drink, smoke, or do anything that would mar the reputation of the school…easy. So the other teachers I would be working with would be upstanding people.

About four hours after the interview, I got a phone call from the recruiter who had made first contact. The two women had been so impressed by me, that they wanted to hire me immediately. The next day I had the contract in hand. I thought about it for about a week, then decided to say yes. The idea of teaching in a 7th Day Adventist school is a little scary. I’ve never really been discriminated against on the basis of my religious beliefs, and a lot of Korean people have very misinformed opinions of the Mormon Church. However, I did a little research, and the standards between our two religions seem similar. There’s even a clause in the employee handbook saying that I must dress modestly. I hope that my religion will not be a problem with them. I feel more comfortable around them, knowing that they have the same religious standards as I do. I hope they will get that same feeling from me.

After I verbally accepted the job, the hard part began. Due to the stupidity of some of my predecessors, immigration laws were changed this past year. Before you just had to supply your original degree, and a state level background check. Because people had been faking their degrees, and committing crimes in other states, beginning in 2011, all teachers entering the Republic of Korea are now required to have a notarized copy of their degree affixed with an apostille (Basically an international notarization), as well as a federal level background check. I was able to secure the degree certificate easily enough. However the Federal (FBI) background check was a different story. I submitted all of the paperwork back in November…I still don’t have my background check. I stressed out about it for a LONG time. Thinking that if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be able to stay for my third year. After almost three months of waiting. I called immigration only to find out that because I was renewing a current visa, I wouldn’t need to submit it until 2012... When I told this to my recruiter, he said “oh yes, I know.” I wish he would have told me, then I wouldn’t have had to freak out about it for so long.

Two weeks ago, I gave all of my paperwork to my recruiter, but I still wasn’t sure that everything was going to go okay through immigration without the background check. I’ve been in Korea long enough to know that if one person says something, even if they are in a position where they should know what they’re talking about, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true. However, on Saturday I went to my new school for orientation. They returned my Alien Registration Card and my passport. Stuck inside my passport on what used to be the last blank page, was a beautiful sticker renewing my visa for 12 more months. I am now secure enough to announce to everyone that I will be staying in Korea for one more year (Don’t ask me about my plans after that).

Now let me describe my new school. This Tuesday, I am moving out of Seoul to a “small” city called 원주(Wonju), population 300,000. It is in the beautiful Korean province of 강원도(Gangwon-Do), nestled amongst some mountains. It’s a really pretty place. The school is a private middle school with only about 400 students. I will be one of four foreign teachers who teach all of the students. Apparently it’s quite a famous private school in the province. The students have all been studying English since they were in kindergarten. Many of them have even studied abroad in English speaking countries. I’m pretty excited to teach them. The classrooms are big and filled with materials I can use to teach. There are even computers and projectors. In the teachers office, I have the same materials at my disposal as the Korean staff does. I feel like I’m on equal footing with the rest of the teachers. The people that met me and gave me the tour were so nice. They took me all over, and seemed really concerned about my feelings. They apologized for the mess of part of the school, and assured me that it would be cleaned up my Wednesday, when school starts. The vice-principal spoke to me entirely in Korean and seemed delighted when I responded in my limited Korean. The reason I decided to leave Seoul was because I wanted more opportunities to practice my Korean. I spent almost all day Saturday speaking Korean.

The vice-principal and one of the English teachers gave me a tour of the town, then showed me my apartment. My new apartment has four rooms…I have a bathroom, a bedroom, a laundry room, and a kitchen. They all have separate doors. It’s like I’m living in a place where humans are meant to live. There’s even a closet, a TV, and…get this…a microwave! I haven’t used a microwave or a TV in two years now. I don’t even know if I remember how to use them. My apartment is on the fourth floor of the building. According to Korean superstition, the number 4 is bad luck because it sounds like the Chinese character for “death.” So, the elevator in my apartment is numbered like this 1,2,3,F,5. After the tour of my apartment, they took me to the convenience store on the first floor of my apartment and introduced me to the store clerk, then asked her to take care of me. It was really cute.

I really like the feel of the place where I’m going to be spending the next year of my life. It feels like the perfect job. This could all change once I actually start teaching, but my first impression was excellent. I’m still a little curious to know how the recruiter got my phone number back in November, but it seems like I needed to find this job. Well. I’m off to try to throw everything into my suitcases…wish me luck.

The Crescendo

The school year escalated to its height this past week with our performance on Tuesday. It was an interesting six very LONG hours. First we had a dress rehearsal, then we shoved all of the children into two tiny rooms with ten already very stressed out teachers, and expected the kids to be quietly amused whilst awaiting their turn on stage. We spent four awful hours in those cramped quarters, with only a short respite to go out on stage and let the kids make fools of themselves in front of their parents. The whole day was like slow semi-organized torture for both the kids and the teachers. I don’t see how it could possible have been enjoyable for the parents either. They had to sit through three hours of kids who were so petrified that they couldn’t talk loud enough to be heard even with the aid of a microphone.

After the performance had finally ended, all of the exhausted staff filed out of the performance hall after handing the children over to their parents. Then instead of getting to go home for a nice rest, we all had to go out for a staff dinner. Which means I spent the evening eating meat and watching my co-workers get progressively more and more drunk, until about 11p.m. when I could stand it no more, and left. I then had to sleep because the next morning I had to wake up at 6:45a.m. in order to go take the analytical writing section of the GRE. I took the test. I don’t think I did very well. I kind of choked on the first essay. I think I did a lot better on the second one. I haven’t written an English essay in years. Now I have four months to study for the other two sections of the GRE, then a terrific graduate school essay to write, and letters of recommendation to find. It’s going to be a long year.

Yesterday I babysat for some really cute kids. They go to church with me. Their mom is Korean and their Dad is American. It was interesting to see how the two cultures mix in a household, and in the kids themselves. The oldest girl was 5 years old, there was a three year old boy and a one year old boy. The 5 year old seems pretty well balanced. She can speak both Korean and English fluently. She speaks English to adults, and Korean to her siblings. The three year old was my favorite. He is very linguistically confused at the moment. He can’t quite tell which language to speak . Luckily I could understand his mix of English and Korean, and he understood my mix of English and Korean. It was a lot of fun being able to speak Korean to the kids. I like speaking to the three year old crowd. That’s about my speaking level, so I didn’t feel like he was judging me.

I also saw an interesting movie yesterday. It’s called Late Autumn or 만추, it’s a Korean film, but it takes place in America and the stars are Korean and Chinese, so they communicate with each other in English. However, the girl talks to her family in Chinese…I don’t speak Chinese, and all of the subtitles were in Korean. I could get the gist of it, but the subtitles were going too fast for me to read them all. But I gleaned enough to understand the film. I don’t think the director meant it to be as funny as we found it, but the English dialogue was definitely funny. I highly recommend it.

Ringing in the Year of the Rabbit with a Rather Painful Bang

About three weeks ago, I woke up at 4am with a terrible itch on the side of my head. That itch turned into pain, and soon I realized that I could no longer hear in my left ear. I took some ibuprofen, waited for it to kick in and went back to bed. When I woke up for work my ear still hurt ridiculously badly. I told myself I could make it through the workday, then I would go to the doctor after work. I started teaching, informing the students that my ear was really sick, so they had to be very quiet. About an hour into class, I was checking a student’s workbook, when all of the sudden I felt this excruciating pain in my ear, it started making these frightening popping noises, and when I reached up to touch my ear there was reddish goo oozing from it. I dropped everything and ran out of the classroom. I sent my co-teacher to watch the students, then I went to the bathroom and cried for about five minutes, not because of the pain, but because it’s scary to have blood suddenly start oozing out of the side of your head.

Once I had managed to compose myself, I went back to the teachers room, and asked someone to take me to the hospital. When we got to the doctor’s office, he stuck a camera in my ear and said, “aigoo!” a Korean expression of shock and dismay. He then proceeded to suck the fluid out of my ear and poke my already sore ear with sharp metal instruments. As I got up to leave the office, my ear started to ooze yet again. So he suctioned it out again, to no avail, three minutes later it was oozing again. I got a fun pack of medication at the pharmacy (six different pills…no labels) and went back to the school to get my stuff to go home. As I was telling my supervisor that I was going to go home and rest, I was clutching an already bloody Kleenex to the side of my head. I still had tearstains on my face, and she said “go have a good rest, try to come back for your class at 2.” I didn’t go back at two. My ear didn’t stop oozing until Thursday morning.

I did go back to work on Tuesday because I felt obligated. It was our lunar new year event which means we all had to dress up in traditional Korean garb and play Korean games. The kids were really cute, and I didn’t really have to do too much, so it wasn’t too bad of a day, despite having to constantly wipe the blood/pus mixture from the side of my face. After work on Tuesday I went back to the doctor’s office to get more drugs. In Korea they only give you enough drugs to last until they think you need to come back for a check-up. So I went back and he poked me in the ear again, and it hurt. He told me my hearing would come back “soon” (I have yet to see this “soon”). He gave me a prescription for 6 whole days worth of drugs because the doctor’s office would be closed for the Lunar New Year holiday. So I went and got more medical fun packs, and went to my Korean class.

I had two doctors visits, and two trips to the pharmacy in a two day period (aren’t you proud I actually went to a doctor). I came away with clean ears and 6 different kinds of medications, all for the low, low price of 13,000 won. Which is about $12. Nice.

Wed-Fri I didn’t have to work because of Lunar New Year. It was really nice. On Wednesday I stayed in my apartment all day and “rested.” I realized I’m not very good at resting, so I cleaned my porch because I was really bored, and did laundry. Thursday I went to Gyeongju with some friends from church. Gyeongju was the capitol of Korea during the Silla Dynasty (57 BC-935 AD). So it’s a really old city with lots of tombs of ancient Korean kings. Everywhere we went there was another burial mound, it was like Starbucks in Seattle. All of the buildings had the old Asian style roofs. It was a really neat city, it’s what I always thought Asia would look like. It was also nice to be out of Seoul for a few days. There were no skyscrapers or high rise apartments. We walked around looked at old stuff, went to a Buddhist temple, ate southern food (Korean style). Thursday was actual lunar new year, so everything was closed. For dinner we called the McDonalds delivery people (Yes, they deliver McDonalds in Korea). It was a fun low key trip.

Sick and Sniffly and Stressed

I spent this week feeling alternately ill and bitter. Korean society isn’t one that believes in resting. Last weekend I started to feel slightly sick, like I was coming down with a cold. In the end I did come down with a cold, quite a rough one at that. Sadly my contract of indentured servitude does not allow for things like illness. So despite the fact that I couldn’t breathe properly and couldn’t stop sneezing long enough to say entire sentences, I still spent my entire week at work.

Even if you just have a cold, and the best medicine would be a day of rest they send you to a doctor, and then tell you to come back to work. All week, all I really needed was a day off, but there was no time for anything like that. So I went to work as usual. Then since I was “well” enough to go to work, I figured I was well enough to go to school. So I would go sit in my Korean class and pretend to learn. However, it is very difficult to concentrate on a different language when the inside of your head is so fuzzy that it’s difficult to think and speak even in English.

It was definitely an interesting week. My students weren’t that great. They were a bit hyper, which is understandable. These poor kids have been in school since last March with only a week of vacation in the summer and a week in the winter. They are 5 years old. I’m 25 and I am completely sick of school. I have no idea how these poor kids are coping with everything. And they have about 20 more years of solid education before it will all be over. I heard President Obama applauded the Korean educational system in his State of the Union address this week, but if he understood what their system actually entails, he wouldn’t speak so highly of it. Sure it’s probably better than the American educational system, but at least American kids get the chance to be kids. These poor kids are in school from the moment they turn 4 until they are 24. They are put in huge classes, and expected to study 12 hours a day. Their science and math scores are through the roof, but their creativity and imagination are phased out around 3rd grade. So far out of the three places I’ve lived in the world, I would want my own children to be educated in England.

A few days ago, Korean Immigration started sending me daily text messages reminding me that my visa expires in 30 days. I really should figure out what I am doing come March. I’ll let all of you know as soon as I do. I’m hoping to stay in Korea for another year, but that’s all in the hands of Korean immigration right now. If they will accept me without a new criminal background check. Keep you fingers crossed for me.

This week I was having another American craving. I really wanted burritos. Alas, the fixings are a bit hard to come by, but I made due. I went to the grocery store, and managed to find tortillas, lettuce, salsa and a small extremely expensive block of Colby cheese. Alas no refried beans or sour cream were available. So I got some chicken and fried it up fajita style. Then I found some plain yogurt to use as a substitute for sour cream. When all was bought, cooked, and finished, it was delicious and practically like home. Although rather a bit more expensive.

Well. That’s my week. I’m going to spend the rest of my evening resting up for the two days of work I have this week. Huzzah for Lunar New Year, it’s bigger than Christmas. Happy year of the Rabbit everyone!