Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: Waiting for the secret police

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

How long until they come knocking on my door. I was online last night, and I was following a trail of articles about North Korea’s soccer team, which is playing in the World Cup in South Africa this year, in the championship for the first time since 1966. We had been talking briefly about it in my 6th grade after-school class yesterday afternoon.

정대세This got me onto the subject of 정대세 (Jeong Dae-se), the North’s star player (see picture). He is, in fact, Korean-Japanese, and has never lived in North Korea (except for recent stints training with the national team). He plays for a pro team in Japan, has done television ads and product sponsorships for South Korean media, and is very publicity-savvy. A fascinating member of the “Chongryon,” which is a weird semi-for-profit pro-North-Korean organization in Japan, that runs everything from businesses to schools to functioning as the North’s de facto embassy to the Western world (since the North has few formalized diplomatic relations). I guess this soccer player grew up attending Chongryon schools.

So I was looking at Chongryon in wikipedialand, and getting all fascinated. And so, curiously, I decided to follow a link to Korea University, which is the Chongryon-run university in Tokyo (hence a training-ground in the North’s official ideology of Juche, among other things. Juche has always fascinated me.

And there, instead of viewing the Korea University website, I was looking at a very scary “police warning” page (in Korean, of course), saying the site was deemed dangerous and banned. Hmm….

One doesn’t run up against the Korean national police firewall very often (at least in my experience). I wonder if they’re going to come looking for me, or open a file in Seoul? Will they come knocking on my door?

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Caveat: An Accidental Curry

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

12 PM rolled around, and, since it's Saturday and I've decided to be a homebody today, I realized I needed to cook lunch for myself – there's no convenient cafeteria, here, to vist at 12:30 promptly, with it's reliable supply of seaweed soup, rice, kimchi, etc.

I didn't really have much to work with.  I put some rice in my rice cooker, and decided to stir fry some vegetables.  But all I had was one green pepper, 2 mushrooms, and plenty of delicious onions.  I chopped them up and threw them in my fry pan.  I gurgled some cooking oil, and added some basil and chopped garlic, a dash of soy sauce (instead of salt, that's what I tend to use), and then I had an inspiration.

I was looking at some fat, juicy apples.  And I had some rather weird, organic, Korean yoghurt that some students had bequeathed on me after a field trip to a dairy last week.  And I thought – aha! – curry.

I chopped up an apple.  I found my raisins (that I sometimes nibble on for a desert type thing).  But the key was that although I had no curry powder, I had all the essentials for making my own:  tumeric (dump, dump, dump), powdered coriander (dump, dump), black pepper (dash, dash), ground clove (dash), Korean red pepper powder (dump).  That makes a passable curry – I've done it before.

Then, in an added inspiration, I looked at the dry-looking development in the fry pan, and thought to moisten it with a half-cup of orange juice.  Curry is most delicious when it's slightly sweet (with e.g. fruit), but spicy as heck.   And so then, after simmering this combo for a while, I added some of  the yoghurt, making it a deep goldenish brown colored glop, and stirred it all together.  And put it over my rice.

It was the most delicious freaking curry I've had in ages!  Certainly better than the pasty, bland Korean and/or Japanese styles I've gotten used to.  And spicy as heck!  I'm sweating.  Sweat.  Sweat.

I experiment a lot in the kitchen.  But  I tend not to talk about the failures. This was defnitely no failure.  Yay.  ^_^

Caveat: The view from my window

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

With reference to Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Atlantic: the view from my window, right now.

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So, on the good side – my window has a view. When I lived in Ilsan, all I saw was the wall of windows 3 meters across the courtyard. I love when the clouds get heavy and it rains. If you can ignore the heat and humidity, summer in Korea can be beautiful. As you can see, rural Korea isn’t really that rural.

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Caveat: Inside some kind of slow-motion Van Gogh

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / My Drawings & Paintings

Driving through the fields south and east of Hongnong, coming into work each morning by carpool or bus, feels like passing through a Van Gogh painting that's been animated, but in very slow motion. The colors are brilliant, and each morning things have subtly changed. Three weeks ago, the fields were almost all barley, and vibrantly green. Then over one weekend, the barley fields all turned to stunning yellow-gold and the sun turned summery. And then field by field, over the last two weeks, the barley has been cut, rendering each field in turn a more pale yellow-white, stubbly color, and then the fields are burned, which renders things brown-black. And then the fields are plowed, and the earthy is a muddy, dark color, and then the fields are flooded, turning them into silver mirrors of the skies. Baby rice plants are laid down by Rube-Goldberg-looking rice-planting contraptions, in neat rows of green shoots across the mirrory fields. The rice plants begin to grow, earnestly, and within days the fields are green-silver, and deeply textured. Finally, the paddies are drained, revealing the slick, red-brown Korean soil, with the rice plants standing in neat rows, preparing to absorb the summer heat and rains.
Each field follows its own rhythm, slightly different from its neighbors, so at any moment there's a whole palette of colors patchworked into squares and triangles across the rolling countryside: Green -> gold -> pale yellow -> black-brown -> silver -> silver-green -> red-brown with green. And so it goes.

Caveat: Homesick.. for Ilsan?

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Homesick?   No, not really.  But maybe.  I'm experience a kind of odd missing of Ilsan.  Of the city. 

I knew moving out into the country would be difficult for me.  My new apartment is a long walk from even a convenience store.  There is a vegetable garden, however.  And some chickens, up the road.  And a giant "love motel" called "Glory" with a rainbow themed neon sign.   And an industrial installation across the way, where they like to bang on things.

Caveat: 3, 2, 1…

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

There were some kids doing science outside on the track/soccerfield/gathering area, with some supervision – although less supervision than would be found for similar activity in a US school. They were launching water and air pressure powered plastic bottles made into rockets. The idea was to see how far and how close to a target at the other end of the field they could get to.

I think they’re going to a science fair at Naju, tomorrow, based on overheard conversations (my ability to figure out what’s going on from overheard conversations continues to improve, but still leaves a lot to be desired – it still requires a lot of context). Here’s the last girl of the evening, launching her rocket – after it occurred to me to take pictures. It flew pretty far, but wasn’t that close to the target.

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Korea postponed the launch of its rocket, Naro-II, which, if successful, will be the first successful launch-to-orbit of a satelite by the Korean Space Program from Korea’s new space launch facility. It was supposed to take off yesterday evening around 6 pm, from the Naro space center which is at the southern end of Jeollanam Province. They had an unsuccessful attempt last year (Naro-I). They’re using a combination of Russian heavy-lift rocket technology and home-grown control and satellite vehicle (so, the bottom stage is Russian, the top stage is Korean).

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Caveat: 말이 많으면 쓸말이 적다

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

There are some workmen doing work on the “staff” bathrooms that I had been in the habit of using.  Actually I have no idea if they’re officially “staff” bathrooms, but they’re across from the Principal’s office so I that what I think of them as.  Anyway, because of that, I started using the bathroom across the little courtyard to the west of my classroom.  Why am I telling you this, you might be wondering?
In this bathroom, someone has posted little Korean aphorisms and proverbs over each urinal.  So while I use the urinal, I get a Korean language lesson – if I can sort out the vocabulary.  I try to choose different urinals, to get some variety.
The above aphorism (말이 많으면 쓸말이 적다 = mal-i manh-eu-myeon sseul-mal-i jeok-da) seemed to make sense – the only word that puzzled me was “쓸” but I guessed it meant “wise,” which would give the meaning of the phrase as “there are many words but few wise ones” which makes sense.  But it turns out (according to my coteacher) that it means “will-be-used” (roughly).  That gives “there are many words but few that will be used.”  I don’t understand this quite as well, but it’s not impossible.
Yesterday, I had a sudden “aha!” moment in thinking about serial verbs in Korean.   Serial verbs are where several different verbs get strung together, each with a finite ending, with only the last bearing all the extra endings (marking politeness, etc.).  A simple example would be “공부해 봤어요” (gong-bu-hae bwass-eo-yo = I tried to study).  I suddenly thought that maybe these serial verbs are the Korean language analogue of periphrastic verbs in English (periphrastics are also sometimes called two-part verbs, like “get up” “get down” “get in” “get out” etc.), not syntactically (obviously), but definitely in terms of what you might term “semantic pragmatics”  – they’re what the language turns to when it needs a new meaning.  I’ll think about this.
In other news:  I am learning a lot from my coteachers.  Ms Ryu, with whom I teach the 3rd graders, is a very patient and kind teacher, and she has an amazing focus on positivity and the kids behave amazingly well for her.  I need to learn to emulate her tricks and style.  She spends a lot of time explaining to the kids what will happen.  This is not a trick I can use effectively, given I’m supposed to be speaking English and that my Korean is so bad that I doubt I could get my ideas across very well anyway.  But it does underscore the importance of being consistent and predictable, which is something I CAN do, and which helps the kids to know what will happen.  She always writes what the lesson objective will be, on the board, and sometimes even has the students read it.  I could do this, in English, too.  [e.g. “Students learn to say:  I like __ / I don’t like __”]
My other coteacher (the “main” one), Ms Lee, with whom I teach the fourth graders, is generally quite focused on keeping things “fun,” and she is a more kid-centered, western-style teacher.  The consequence, with Korean kids, is that there are more moments when the classroom seems out of control, but I think if you can tolerate this state of affairs, it can be good for learning, too.  It’s a fine line between “seems out of control” and “really is out of control.”

Caveat: Destroying

Banalities & Journaling / Kids

Dialogue, today at 2:28 pm. Student has two pointy-looking wood-carving implements out, and is focused on something at a desk.
Teacher: "What are you making?"
Student: "Destroying."
The behavior was questionable, but the English was excellent.

Caveat: Stasis

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology

Lately I've been feeling burned out.  I know what you're thinking:  I just started this job!  No… I'm burned out on change.  Traveling almost continuously for 8 months, living out of a suitcase.  The stress of finding the new job.  The complications around my housing situation once I started my new job.  Those things have me feeling  burned out.

So my solution to that is to go into a sort of near-hibernation mode for a while.  For a weekend.  I didn't do much this weekend.  The farthest I traveled was the grocery store.  I still feel exhausted on Monday morning.  But I think I'm a little less "burned out," hopefully.

I need to solve a problem with my first grade after school class:  it's too big (20-something kids) and they're too unfocased (with too low-level English) for my regular song-and-dance strategy to work.  I need new strategies to keep these kids' attention.  I'm really opposed as a matter of principle to using the giant TV/computer monitor… as a rare, native-speaker resource in this school, it seems like a terrible use of "me" to be sitting there pushing a button on a computer.  And I've always been skeptical of the effectiveness of technology-driven language lessons – especially with children.

On the other hand, I had the best class I've had in ages with my sixth grade after school class.  We did something a bit like mad-libs, they would randomly make up nouns, places, verbs, characters… then they had to tell little stories about them.   Being sixth graders, the nouns included things like toilets and trashcans and dog poop, and the characters were mostly each other or cartoon characters… but they had a lot of fun, making up little disconnected stories.  We're working on "how to make a narrative."

Caveat: Alcoholland!

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

It’s not what you’re thinking.

Last night, I joined some fellow foreigners on what is a regular Friday-night outing in Yeonggwang, for pizza and beer and later a game of self-generated trivia. And what turned out to be a lot of disgruntled chat about “things wrong with Yeonggwang” or “things wrong with Korea.” And I admit, I was disgrumbling, too.

Ultimately, one of the reasons I find myself staying away from gatherings of expats in this country is that they too often turn into complaints sessions. Either that, or it’s just an almost college-life-style binge drinking experience. Which is a total turn off for me, too.

Don’t get me wrong… everybody needs to complain – all you have to do is read my blog to see that I’m guilty of it too. But I also have learned, over the years, that sitting around and complaining, socially, is generally a bad idea. It reinforces the feelings of powerlessness and frustration, rather than leading to solutions or forebearance. So I tend to make my own complaining a solitary pursuit – I complain to the journal (this blog), and I keep my face-to-face social interactions as positive as I am able. It’s hard. But it pays rewards, emotionally.

There aren’t many “foreigners” working in Yeonggwang county. There are maybe a dozen working for the public schools. These foreigners have been attempting to forge some degree of community, under the leadership of a guy named Jim. I admire this – Jim’s even created a website, which is full of information for people who might come to Yeonggwang in the future.

I suspect there may be some foreigners working at the nuclear power plant, but I haven’t met any. Some of these may be “guys from India,” such as I found to be so ubiquitous in Suwon (a city with a lot of things for internationally savvy software engineers to do). I have overheard something that was either Chinese or Vietnamese on the bus to Hongnong twice. So there are non-native-English-speaking foreigners around, too. But I’d be willing to guess that none of the hagwon in the Yeonggwang area are employing westerners.  Are there other foreigners? Probably… but I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. It’s not like Ilsan, where there are whole restaurants and bars dedicated to the “foreigner” market.

alcoholland barOh. So what’s with the title of this post? I saw a sign on a bar, walking back from the pizza joint, that seemed to imply that the name of the bar was “Alcoholland.” I attempted to snap a picture with my cellphone… it didn’t come out well, but there it is. What a totally awesome name for a bar. And maybe… what a great nickname for all of South Korea. It sure is hard, sometimes, not being a hardcore boozer, in this country.

I had one beer last night, and woke up with a headache. I don’t do alcoholland well, obviously.

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Caveat: OMG I gots some internets

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

I haven't had internet at home for … a long time.  The closest I got was when I was staying in Suwon, in January thru March, but my connectivity at Suwon was sporadic.  And since starting work in Hantucky, I've been deprived.  I've been able to do the essentials.  But there a little things, that long ago became important habits:  streaming internet radio (such as MPR or KCRW); being able to blog when I felt like it, rather than when it was possible; being able to look something up on wikipedia when I wanted to, rather than having to note it down and wait until I had a chance to look it up later.  These are luxuries, in the scheme of things.  But I'm very pleased to finally have the ability to do these things again.  And my blog admin website isn't even blocked.  Wow.  Special super-duper wonder-bonus, eh?

A friendly and competent Korean technician came and got it working for me, this evening.  Special thanks to my co-teacher for handling the various telephone calls that were required to make this happen.  Hopefully… I won't have to move again.  Ergh.  Scary thought.  Mantra:  Pessimism = bad;  Pessimism = bad;  Pessimism = bad.  Heh.

Caveat: Election Day

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Yesterday was election day, in Korea. Which is a sort of public holiday. Most countries either hold elections on a day when people are off anyway (like Sunday), or else they don't give people a holiday, but accommodate the need of workers to take some time off from work to vote. But Korea makes everybody take the day off – except small businesspeople, I suppose – there were still some guys banging on metal stuff in the factory-like establishment across the road from my new apartment.

Anyway, I kind of avoided going out in public. The whole election thing is a bit overwhelming, with trucks and dancing girls and bowing campaign workers beside major highways and loudspeakers and crazy campaign jingles. I just hid in my room, feeling kind of moody.

I'm convinced more and more that the 하나라 party is basically a front for the reactionary Christian right, in Korea, much the way that the Republicans have gotten more and more that way in the US, abandoning their secular conservative and libertarian roots. For that reason, although I don't agree with everything the 민주 stand for, I was hoping they'd do well in the elections, mostly to register a protest against 이명박's administration, since these are local-only, mid-term elections.

I watched the election results on the TV this morning, and it was a mixed bag: 하나라 won the Seoul and Gyeonggi governorships, looks like, which are the two largest and influential constituencies that voted. But overall 민주당 seems to have done better than I was expecting. I was surprised by the number of independents who did well, too, especially in counties and towns in the southern part of the country.

Caveat: 귀여운 고양이

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / My Photos

One of my first graders presented me with this picture the other day. How did she know I like cats? I put on the bulletin board.

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Unrelatedly and randomly, here is some 김치볶음밥 that I made for myself this evening.

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[this is a “back-post” added 2010-06-03]

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Caveat: Happy Birthday, School

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

So it turns out that today is my school’s birthday. And, since this is Korea, that means I don’t have to work today. Hmm.

Actually, I’m not really into NOT working, these days. I’ve been really enjoying my job, and not really enjoying my “life-at-home” – because of the frustration and lack of control around my apartment situation. Hopefully, they won’t move me again. But… I’m still trying to come to terms with the latest round of disappointments and frustrations.  But… without complaining to anyone at work, which is hard. I just carry it around bottled up, and vent on this blog. I’m sure everyone is really tired of hearing about it. OK, OK. Change the subject.

I still have no internet, either. And I went to a PC방 last night in Yeonggwang only to find my blog site was blocked there, too. What’s with that, anway?  At this rate, I’m going to have to invest in one of those VPN accounts that Chinese disidents use when they want to surf the firewalled internet. And it’s just because I want to work on my blog? The thing that’s funny is that the blog itself isn’t blocked … anyone at my school or at that PC방 can view the content of it (and presumeably all the other blogs that are out there hosted by typepad) – I just can’t get at the administration website.  What’s the rationale between allowing people to view content but not make updates?  What, exactly, do they think they’re blocking? Is it a mistake?

Hmm.. probably: “Never attribute to malice that which can be more simply explained by stupidity.”

So I came to Gwangju, today, because I know where there’s a cafe with free wi-fi that doesn’t appear to have any annoying IP blocks on it. I’m sitting drinking iced coffee and downloading some episodes of dramas – because on top of everything else, my cable TV in my new apartment appears to work only sporadically. Yet another problem to try to ask for help on without seeming to be complaining about it. Not that cable TV is good for me. I lived just fine for 2 years in Ilsan without it, and never missed it. But given the lack of internet in my apartment, the cable TV was providing some distraction, anyway.

I’m not doing very well at NOT talking about my issues with my living situation, am I? I would go off and travel somewhere, but I’m really a bit burned out on that, too.

Well, back when my cable TV was working, guess what I saw? They were televising a “go-stop” tournament. I blogged about this game a few months ago. Seeing this on TV was almost more bizarre than the 24-hour baduk channel (바둑 is the Korean name for the game we call by the japanese name: “go”). Though it’s maybe not quite as bizarre as the fact that Korean cable TV has two channels devoted to televising Starcraft tournaments (Starcraft is a multiplayer video game).

Here’s a picture of the go-stop game on TV:

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Caveat: Just a bad dream

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I awoke from a vivid but unpleasant dream this morning. I was moving into yet another apartment. Go figure. This time, the "apartment" was a traditional style Korean house (perhaps influenced in appearance by the historical drama I was watching yesterday afternoon). But it was full of machinery and network servers (hmm… shades of life in Long Beach). And… it was filthy. Of course. I started trying to clean. I found a corpse under the kitchen sink. The bathroom wall was rotting and full of maggots.

OK. It was just a bad dream.

I had kind of a bad day yesterday. Stewing in my new apartment, but I was feeling sickly — my stomach was upset, either from stress or something I ate Saturday. Or both. I had a "toseuteu" (toast) on Saturday — maybe that was it.

I caught up on watching some Korean dramas. I finished the "Oh My Lady" series, and started two new series: 제중원, which is the first Korean "historical drama" I've found interesting, taking place in 1880's Korea, around the establishment of the first western-style hospital in the country; and 연애시대, a contemporary romantic drama involving a divorced couple that keep gravitating back to each other.

Caveat: The Karmic Consequences of Complaints?

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

I don't dare complain to anyone about my new apartment – each time something has gone wrong, and I've said something negative about my apartment, the next apartment is worse, in some way.
It's easy to feel like someone in the administrative office hates me. It certainly leaves me feeling unwelcome and unliked. But… I really think they have no idea how this whole process has impacted my feelings. Koreans, in general, don't think about the feelings of others (especially "outsiders") the same way that many in the "West" seem to. And, I think it's possible that they have tended to interpret my complaints about my various apartments as "calls to action," when, in fact, I'm really mostly merely venting my feelings.

Anyway… so what's the new apartment like? It's very small. Smaller, even, than my apartment in Ilsan, by maybe several dozen square feet. But it's very clean. That's the positive. And the smallness doesn't actually bother me, although I admit I'm still missing that first place I was in in Yeonggwang, which, despite it's filth, was roomy and quirky. This new place is just a "box in a building" – but it's clean, and has an A/C unit (which I know I'll appreciate come the dog days of Korean high summer).

My biggest complaint about the new place is: the missing "extras" – many of those things that have been "standard furnishings" in each of my Korean apartments up until now. There is no washing machine (I'm supposed to use a public one in the lobby of my building – I don't see this happening very often, as it seems both inconvenient and fraught with communication difficulties vis-a-vis the other residents and the building manager), there is no microwave (my place in Ilsan had no microwave, but it did come with a toaster oven that functioned as an adequate substitute), there are no broom, trash can, toilet brush, or cleaning supplies of any kind (good thing it's clean, but, it means I'll have to invest in these things, which is a little bit annoying), there is no desk or chair (but the place is so small that I allowed the guys moving me in to convince me there was no point in getting a desk or chair – where would a desk and chair go?), there was no bedding (admittedly, they could see I had my own – that I had bought for my first place, because the stuff given to me at that place was too filthy to use), there were no kitchen dishes of any kind (again, they knew I had some of my own – but my set is incomplete and I'd been relying on things like a fry pan, bowl, etc., being provided).

OK… this is just more venting, right? I'm going to try very, very hard not to complain to the people who put me here, because at the rate things are going, if I do, next they'll stick me in a closet or a barley field somewhere with some chickens.

Caveat: Alligator needs a doctor

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology

Today, I get to move – 3rd time since starting this job, last month. Maybe it will work out. Maybe not.

Meanwhile, busy day ahead of me. Some girls saw that I had used some tissue paper to wrap the mouth of the alligator, and immediately felt this was a medical emergency. They proceeded to operate, although they were also trying to watch Girls’ Generation (소녀시대 = a popular Korean pop group) music videos on the computer.

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Caveat: Staff Volleyball

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos / The Wonders of Work

We had staff volleyball yesterday afternoon. It typically happens on Wednesday afternoons, if it’s going to happen. This time, instead of it being “intramural,” Hongnong Elementary (my school) was playing against Beopseong Elementary (the next school down the road), and so we all piled into various vehicles at around 3 pm and drove over to Beopseong. I thought I would have to play. But they were taking the competition with the other school too seriously, and they had already seen that I wasn’t really very good at volleyball, so, as the game against the other school progressed, it became evident that I wouldn’t be invited to play. I just sat and watched.

First, there were a couple women’s games (female staff vs female staff), and Hongnong won those games. My fellow foreign teacher (who I got to know because she went through orientation training with me at Gwangju last month) played for her school’s team, and really did quite well (better than I have done so far, anyway).

Then it was time for the men’s games. They played three games, and after Beopseong won 2, that meant there was a tie between the schools, 2 games to 2, because Hongnong had won the women’s and Beopseong had won the men’s.

The final game was quite suspenseful, and, honestly, some of the most entertaining volleyball I’ve ever watched. I didn’t resent not being allowed to play – I probably would have messed up. The last game came down to 20 points vs 20 points. There were a lot of amazing volleys, too. And finally, Hongnong won, 22 to 20. The pictures aren’t that good, but here are a few.

First, the women’s game – you can see my colleague Donna, who teaches at Beopseong, looking victorious after a winning a point.

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This is the last men’s game, during a long volley after the game was tied 20-20. That’s our vice-principal looking appropriately dynamic in the white shirt in the foreground.

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This is a picture of the Beopseong campus.

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[this is a “back-post” added 2010-05-29]

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Caveat: Foodie?

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Here is a little-known secret fact about me.

There are not that many websites for which I am a "regular." Most you could probably deduce, simply by "reading between the lines" on my blog a little bit: huffingtonpost, theregister.co.uk, wikipedia, theatlantic.com. But there was one that surprised even myself, when I caught myself typing this address into my browser this morning: latimes.com/features/food/.

Hmm… jeez, am I a "foodie"?

Maybe. I sometimes fantasize about my "next career" being that of chef. Not that it will come true. Why, specifically, LA Times? Because it's a pretty good food section – there are so many interesting restaurants and food trends happening in LA. Also, at least so far, the LA Times is one of the few major US newspapers that hasn't taken to experimenting with throwing up "pay barriers" for their online content. Not to mention the fact that I lived in LA for almost 10 years, and that was one of the paper-pulp version's sections that I browsed pretty loyally – sitting in the Burbank Starbucks on Saturday mornings, and all that.

Caveat: it is what it is

Banalities & Journaling

monday. less negative than last week. mostly over whatever flu i had, and mostly reached equilibrium RE the housing mess (not to say it's resolved – only that "it is what it is" and life goes on). another good day with the kids – although those first graders are hard to control, sometimes, especially when my co-teacher, who seems to trust in my experience, wanders off to take care of other business and isn't around if a discipline issue might arise (um, which it did, but i managed a stand-off with the kid involved until the end of class, when i found the co-teacher so she could explain my issue to the willful child in question). and for all that, i feel fine about it. now i have to go back to my unloved, internetless and gloomy temporary apartment – it's raining but i might take a long walk regardless. or watch another episode of some korean drama that i downloaded over the weekend. or both.

Caveat: Horses?

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I wonder what horses symbolize, for me. I awoke this mornng from a vivid dream that included horses.

I was leading a group of Hongnong kids along a street in Hongnong. This is not something I've done – my activities with the kids so far has been limited to inside the school – but it's easy to visualize, as I see kids that I'm teaching around town quite a bit. But I came to a field at the edge of the town, and there were horses. I was trying to get the kids to try riding the horses, but they were reluctant. I wasn't getting upset, but I was feeling frustrated. Some Korean adults of uncertain identity were looking on. The air smelled of wood-smoke, and it was cloudy, a bit blustery, but not damp.
The weather, these last few days, has reminded me of my winter/spring in Chile in 94, and everything is turning deeply green, as spring advances. I think the weather in the dream was based on that. And there are a lot of horses in Chile. Certainly, there are basically zero horses to be found in rural Korea – I think at the close of the war, in the 50's, they had eaten all their horses, and tractors, jeeps and trucks provided a better substitute than going out and finding a new stock of horses for the country.

But horses must mean something to me, personally. I had a period when horses were a pretty major part of my life, during those months I spent in rural Mexico in 87, when I actually had my own horse and rode every day. Why was I trying to get the kids to ride the horses, in the dream? Why were they refusing? I guess not very much was happening in the dream, but it was very, very vivid.

Caveat: 지난주말 일요일에 사진 많이 찍었어요

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

Here are some more pictures from last weekend’s hike over to Gamami.
First, of me – the town in the valley behind me is Happy, Harmonious Hongnong.
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Next, walking down the highway near Gamami.
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A little before that, looking down from the mountain, southward, over the Beopseong inlet.
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Last, the (in-)famous nuclear power plant – one of the largest nuclear power production facilities in the world, from what I understand. “Springfield, Korea!”
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Caveat: Trying to brainstorm positivities

Banalities & Journaling

That sounds stupid.  But drifting through some old haunts, today, I was trying to think of ways that I could try to stay more positive about my new situation.  Actually, as I've said before, I'm not really that down on any aspect of it except for one:  the apartment mess.  But that's such a huge factor, it's influencing my mood too much.  So… one thing I can do, is simply avoid my apartment as much as possible – such as taking this trip, this weekend.  But that can be exhausting.

I need some "out of the house" hobbies, right?  I was jogging somewhat regularly, when I was living in Ilsan last year – that needs to start, again.  There're a lot of interesting places to walk around, in Hongnong – I have to get past the "after work momentum" and make more effort to hike around in the evenings.

Just some thoughts.

Caveat: More Alligators For All

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / My Photos / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Yesterday with some of the afterschool kids (I don’t have an afterschool class on Thursday, but my co-teacher and fellow foreign teacher Casi have one) were playing with the green plastic alligators.  They were having a lot of fun.  Here is a picture.
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Here is a picture of one of my first-graders, Haneul, who insisted I needed to take a picture of her.
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Today is Buddha’s Birthday, a national holiday.  Casi and I walked over to that Baekje Buddhism monument this morning (appropriate, right?).   Here is a picture of an unexpectedly ascetic-looking Buddha that we saw there – see his ribs, showing?
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Now I’m in Gwangju, where I found a place with FAST free internet wi-fi.  I’m fixing and updating my blog.

Caveat: “Please, I’m hungry.”

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology

In the 3rd grade classes, we've been doing some very simple command forms, as part of the national curriculum. We had a little dialog for our current chapter's "role play" section. There's a little animated cartoon that goes along with it, that's played on the DVD. There is a prince and poor man, and they're having a little conversation. Note that although this is English class, the story being played out seems deeply Korean in character (in my humble opinion). I'm not sure if it's based on a Korean folktale, a European folktale, or is strictly a product of the authors' imaginations. Regardless, it could work in a medieval European setting or in a pre-modern Korean one (meaning… up to, well, just a few years ago). Here's the dialog:

Prince: Sit down, please.
Poor Man: Thank you. I'm hungry.
Prince: Oh no! Look at your hands. Wash your hands.
Poor Man: Oh, please! I'm hungry.
Prince: OK. Open your mouth. [Prince puts some food in the Poor Man's mouth]
Poor Man: Thank you.
Prince: You're welcome.

So we had the kids playing out this extremely simple little tale, in pairs, having memorized their lines. Most of the kids are pretty much playing it "by the book," with very little emoting or "acting." A few get into the role, with some begging gestures when the poor man says "Please," for example, or a supercilious glare from the prince when he remarks on the poor man's dirty hands. But one pair of kids played it over the top, and I was laughing hard when they finished.

The best part was when the boy, who was playing the prince, said "OK. Open your mouth." The girl who was playing the poor man opened her mouth, with an appropriately starving and pleading expression on her face, and the boy, with a great deal of flourish, reached under his desk and pulled out a little thermos. He proceeded to carefully and slowly unscrew the top, and poured out a measured portion of the liquid inside. This was totally unexpected for both me and my co-teacher – we just watched, surprised. The boy, as prince, then glanced, with an arched eyebrow, at the "poor man," and proceeded to… drink the juice himself!

The "poor man" was devastatedly disappointed. Her face showed it, too. The prince poured another small amount into the cup, and only THEN offered some to the poor man. At this point she took the drink – with a perfect expression mixing desperation and disgust – drank it slowly.

It was like watching a tea ceremony, but with the intentional rudeness of the server drinking for himself before serving his guest. Which, of course, captured perfectly the socioeconomic tensions lurking in the little play's subtext. All the students, the co-teacher and I all applauded and laughed together at this excellent performance.

Caveat: Metaphors for a Micromanaged Homelife

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

At the risk of annoying my loyal and not-so-loyal readers with my ongoing negativity RE my living situation, I'm going to rant some more.

I guess that's what there is to do, given the isolation I'm feeling, sitting in my gloomy, depressing, temporary apartment, internetless and out-of-control.

In order to cope with, specifically, that last element – the feeling of being out-of-control – I let my mind wander to past experiences and fantasies that capture my current experience. I have been obsessing on 4 metaphors.

1) The Army. I served in the US Army in 1990~92, including training in South Carolina and "permanent station" here in Korea (up by the DMZ). The feeling of having no control over where I'm staying, over what's going to happen next with where I'm sleeping, of having my personal life micromanaged – these feelings are something I haven't experienced with such intensity since my Army experience.

2) Prison. I have never been to prison. But I found myself sitting in my little apartment, and coping with my current feelings of frustration by thinking: "this could be prison. As prison, it's not so bad. I can go out and take a walk. I can cook something for myself. I can watch TV. If I'm feeling obsessive, I can kill time by scrubbing the vast quantities of mold in the shower, or by sweeping up the previous occupant's copious stray pubic hairs, to be found in every nook and cranny. Life isn't so bad."

3) Foucault's Panopticon. Related to the prison idea: the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, conceptualized a sort of "ultimate dystopian prison" wherein everyone was constantly being watched, monitored, disciplined. A glass prison. I think of this specifically because my current temporary space has a giant picture window facing the school itself, across a gap of maybe 10 meters. There are no drapes or curtains – and I don't really see how I could justify finding some, given this is, supposedly, temporary – it'll be over in a couple of weeks, right? My coworkers, if they're lurking in the school in the evening, can sit and watch the "foreigner" – what is he doing? Oh… he's watching TV. Oh… he's pacing. Oh… he's picking his nose. Oh… he's cooking something. Wow… he's eating kimchi. Weird foreigner.

4) The Zoo. All foreigners in Korea can sometimes feel like a zoo animal. The above-described "panopticon" feeling contributes to this further. I feel as if I'm constantly being watched, and sometimes it feels like it's strictly for the amusement of those around me. I realized that in actuality, most of these people aren't even aware of me. Koreans, typically (and I hate to stereotype too much), don't really pay attention to their surroundings much. Perhaps no one has even realized that the "foreigner show" is on, in the window across the way. But if they do realize, then surely their curiosity will get the better of them, and they'll be watching me. When I was much younger, I tried writing a short story, in the science fiction genre, about a man who had been kidnapped by aliens and was being kept simply because he was interesting to watch. The story was a bit Kafkaesque: no real point; just living as a zoo animal, for the aliens. I think others have written stories like this, too, although I can't recall any specifics.

These are my metaphors. This is my mental space.

And yet… as you can see from my previous post, if I set these things aside, the work itself is going fine. I'm teaching well, and competently, and it's fun, too. The classroom has become a refuge. This is very similar to my darkest times when teaching at LBridge (hagwon). There, the darkness was caused by feelings of being overwhelmed by the offhanded, randomized and unpredictable nature of life in the staff-room. Here, the darkness is being caused by feeling of being overwhelmed by the offhanded, randomized and unpredictable nature of my housing situation. Not so dissimilar, eh? I'm suddenly wishing I had a much "fatter" schedule – if I had 40 or 50 classes, I could just bury myself in my work and I'd have zero time to meditate on my barracks/prison/panopticon/zoo.

Caveat: Kindergarteners

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

I finally had my first time with the "kindergarteners." Actually, the Korean term that is translated as kindergarten is 유치원 (yu-chi-won) and it really means any schooling below first grade – so the age range is from "barely out of diapers" right up to 6 or so (western counting). Many public elementary schools don't have kindergartens, but this one that I'm working at, because of the same extra funding that allows them to have two amazing and underappreciated native English teachers, also has a kindergarten wing. And on Wednesday mornings, barring other events, I get to teach the little ones.

I spend 30 minutes with each group: oldest, middle, and youngest. They were great fun. Kids that age are easy to teach language to, because they just sit and soak it up, like sponges. Half-an-hour a week won't get them fluent, but at least it gets them exposed to it, a little – kind of like the Spanish that American kids get so often in lower grades.

I showed them one of my famous plastic finger-chomping alligators (actually, it was my co-teacher's new alligator, who had bought a few after seeing how I used them in class and liking the idea). They were very, very focused. And we did the 코코코 game (ko-ko-ko means nose-nose-nose): you touch parts of your face, and name them, and then at some point you make an intentional mistake, like pointing at your ear and saying "nose." The kids think this is hilarious, and it helps them learn the vocabulary. You can apply it to other things too, like piles of toys in the shapes of food, or whatever. It's a pretty informal game, but those work best.

Finally, we read a story (there are some pretty good Korean-developed curricular materials that include custom-written stories, that I was given to use). Reading picture books to kids is great, you can stop and talk about what's going on in the story much more smoothly than when watching a video or listening to a CD. It becomes more INTERACTIVE, and can work at any level: "Where's the dog?" "On roof!" "Why?" "Hide."

Caveat: Worse than a hagwon job?

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

I was lying awake last night, overwhelmed and frustrated. Why am I taking this so hard?

I think I always tend to view my "home" (wherever it is and such as it is) as a refuge from whatever frustrations I'm dealing with in life.  So having the "home" situation BE the frustrating situation that I have to cope with leaves me feeling exceptionally naked and vulnerable.

When they gave me my first apartment, and there were issues, I was angry for a little bit, but I told myself: "it looks like they had some BAD foreign teachers before me [meaning dirty, unreliable, etc.] and I can prove myself different, and earn their respect." But when, one month on, they pull that out from under me, shuffle me around like a dog to a kennel, and they put me into a temporary apartment that would make a Guatemalan Discount Hotel look hospitable, well… to put it mildly, I feel underappreciated. 

And never is there clear communication. That's the Korean Communication Taboo … I've written about that before. But when applied to my living situation, it's extra frustrating.  And it strikes me as deeply UNPROFESSIONAL. I'll rant more about professionalism later, in a separate post – Koreans have no monopoly on lack of professionalism in the world. 

I lay awake and found myself thinking: "Can it be that working in hagwon is actually better? Have I DOWNGRADED my career? Have I moved to a third-world country?" Hmmm…. that last point is relevant. I already knew this intellectually, and now I'm coming to grips with the "facts on the ground": Korea IS a third-world country, but Seoul is a first-world city, and so it appears that I'm going to have to reduce and alter expectations in a BIG WAY, to adapt to life in the provinces away from the capital.

But honestly… I have to ask, where's the "pride of place"? Or is this particular school just exceptionally messed up, in that respect?  Is it better at other schools?

Caveat: What am I? A Freakin’ Cleaning Service?

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

My first reaction to my new living space: "What am I? A Freakin' Cleaning Service?" They have me move into a new apartment, and, because I find living in filth unbearable, I will end up cleaning the hell out of it. And then… they move me to a new place? They could get a lot of apartments cleaned, over a 12 month contract.  I will post pictures. Later. I'm sorry… I keep meaning to stop complaining about this whole mess, but it keeps… staying mess-y.

Caveat: My life as an inconvenient dog

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

It was pouring rain last night, and continued this morning. I heard that there is a Korean proverb that says moving on a rainy day brings good luck, but I'm not feeling lucky, at the moment.

Today is the day of my eviction. Today, I have to move out of my so-diligently-cleaned apartment, and into the temporary housing (i.e. staff dorm) for the next two weeks. Today, I feel like an inconvenient pet dog, being shunted into a kennel.

The irony is that yesterday I had a really good day at work – if one disregards the black cloud that was hovering over me because of the housing situation. I felt like I was "doing the right thing" in all of my classes, and that I was able to keep control and stay on target with respect to my lesson plans (although the ones where I was co-teaching all seemed to run a bit long).

There's added irony: during my worst days at LBridge hagwon, I felt very pleased and content with my "home life" (i.e. my living situation, meaning apartment, location, the stability of those things, etc.) and miserable with my "at work" situation. At this moment, I feel things have reversed exactly 180 degrees – now I'm miserable about my "home life" (specifically the instability being foisted on me by my indecisive adminstrators and having to move repeatedly) and pretty content with work.

I guess you can't win them all.

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