By Minnesota standards, an inch or two isn’t much snow, but by Seoul standards it’s pretty signifcant. It snowed today while I was at work. It was beautiful walking home, the ground crunching, the air clean-smelling and cold.
Here’s a view from a classroom window at work.
I felt good about work today.
What I’m listening to right now.
Cat Stevens, “Sad Lisa.”
This is something that recalls my adolescence.
Several long-time teachers are leaving Karma Academy this week. Yesterday was Lena's last day, and she gave a small simple gift of a can of Starbucks coffee. There was a little note attached, and it said, "I was happy to work with you. Take care! P.S. Don't think too much." This last P.S. was funny – it's weird how even people who don't know me very well, and across cultural barriers, nevertheless seem to understand my neverending, utterly fundamental character defect. I was flattered to be so transparent, maybe.
Last night, we had hwehshik (business dinner+drink), but I'm trying so hard to not drink alcohol, which makes me a definite killjoy in the Korean cultural context at events of this sort. I tend to just sit very quietly and listen to the conversation and banter, viewing it as an extended listening comprehension exercise in the Korean language. Sometimes I can earn some respect and/or surprise from my coworkers by interjecting some short comment or question, generally in English, that's appropriate to the current topic – which shows that I'm understanding, at least sometimes.
Well, I always come away frustrated and slightly depressed after these things – because I refuse to drink because of my health (and because I'm such a depressed, unhappy drunk), and that makes my coworkers see me as "too serious" and strange, and that makes me mad that I can't just be taken at face value. Sigh.
Life goes on.
Here follows an actual conversation with one of my favorite seven year old students:
“Hi. How are you?”
“I’m happy!”
“Good. What are you doing?”
“Water. 물.” He was translating – for himself, or to make sure he was getting the right word with me. He was standing at the water cooler, putting water in one of those envelope-shaped paper cups. Children seem to find drinking water this way endlessly entertaining.
“Did you have a good weekend?”
“Yes.”
“Good. What did you do?” I was going out on a limb in asking this question, because it was somewhat beyond little Jinyong’s level of English ability.
Without hesitation, and with a straight face, he answered, “똥먹었다!” As cheerful and as pleased as can be.
I burst out laughing. You see, “똥먹었다” means “I ate shit.” Seriously.
On the one hand, I was very proud of the kid – he’d understood a question I hadn’t expected him to (past tense, open-ended), and answered it (although in Korean) with communicative competence. The whole conversation showed a higher level of comprehension than I’d expected from him – he’s probably my lowest ability student. So I felt proud.
At the same time, it was a rather disgusting answer. He’s what you might call a potty-mouthed kid. He’s a Korean version of a character from South Park. So his answer wasn’t exactly unprecedented. It was funny.
I was laughing too much to continue the conversation. And I unintentionally reinforced his disgusting sense of humor by laughing at his statement. Ah well. Life goes on.
Music and experience become intertwined. This is the principle of one´s life having a "soundtrack."
22 years ago, on a late January day, I finished reading the last chapter of Gabriel García Márquez´s Cien años de soledad. I was living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was bleak and white and snowy outside. I was listening to Peter Gabriel´s So album, and the song "Mercy Street" was playing as I read the last paragraphs of the novel. As a consequence, whenever I hear that song, even these many, many years later, I am thrust back into the dissolution of the world at the end of that novel, despite the fact that the song and novel bear only a distant thematic relation – perhaps something on the axis of dreaming and perception and subjectivity.
What I´m listening to right now.
Peter Gabriel´s "Mercy Street," in point of fact, is dedicated to the poet Anne Sexton, and treats some aspects of her biography. Here are the lyrics.
looking down on empty streets, all she can see
are the dreams all made solid
are the dreams all made real
all of the buildings, all of those cars
were once just a dream
in somebody's head
she pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
she pictures a soul
with no leak at the seam
let's take the boat out…
…wait until darkness
let's take the boat out…
…wait until darkness comes
nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey
nowhere in the suburbs
in the cold light of day
there in the midst of it so alive and alone
words support like bone
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your inside out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
…swear they moved that sign
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms
pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth
tugging at the darkness, word upon word
confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
to the priest – he's the doctor
he can handle the shocks
dreaming of the tenderness – the tremble in the hips
of kissing Mary's lips
dreaming of Mercy Street
wear your insides out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy's arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
…swear they moved that sign
looking for mercy
in your daddy's arms
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
Anne, with her father is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves on the sea.
바지락 [ba-ji-rak] is a small clam. Koreans love seafood, and I’ve been getting adventurous with the instant-foods aisle in the supermarket (see e.g. my recent post on nurungji). So I bought some ramen-looking stuff (that also claims to be lo-calorie and not fried – “notfrying” in English on the label) that was called 바지락. Last night, when I opened the package, I was surprised to find some actual vacuum-packed clams! And it cooked up pretty delicious.
Here’s a tear-down (i.e. pictures).
I’m not going to make any assertions or assumptions about healthfulness – I’m sure it’s packed with preservatives and MSG and who knows what else. But it was nevertheless pretty tasty.
The blogger IOZ is such a talented writer that I enjoy reading what he writes even when I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment. In a recent, broader discussion of Obama's rhetorical style and the recent State of the Union Speech, he says, "What, after all, is authenticity but the habituation of the self to its own autobiographical invention?"
That's such a brilliant, memorable line. It's going on my list of favorite quotes, thusly decontextualized.
I made home-made tortillas again today, using the masa harina my mom mailed me from Australia – I like that masa basically keeps forever in a well-sealed container. Unlike most “foreign foods,” Mexican-style masa harina isn’t to be found in even the most obscure Korean specialty store, because of two contradictory facts: a) there’s no market for corn flour, and b) masa harina is viewed by the government as nothing different than corn-meal (which is easily found), but corn-meal is a “raw food product” and therefore require a domestic manufacturer – which would require a market see a).
Anyway, made-in-the-USA masa harina can be bought in Queensland, Australia, food stores, and so my mother mailed me some after I visited her last year (it was about one year ago this week, in fact).
I press the tortillas flat with a plate, using some ziploc baggies as a non-stick surface. Then I cook them in a heated frying pan with no oil. They’re pure corn flour. Much healthier than store-bought ones.
It’s possible to buy frozen, US store-style tortillas in places like Costco, here, but I really don’t like those. Fresh, warm, home-made tortillas are awesome. I can’t make folded tortillas (i.e. tacos) with them, because, being hand-pressed, they’re a little too fat and brittle for that. Actually, they’re almost more like Central American pupusas. I put cheese or beans or rice or mushrooms on them. They’re delicious.
Today is 설날 (Lunar New Year, inappropriately called “Chinese New Year” in the West).
So… “may your lunar year be as wonderful and exciting and productive as the solar one you started a few weeks ago!” I guess it all depends on the moon, right?
I just can’t wait for the Mayan New Year. It’s supposed to be extra special, this year. Hehehe. Um. Just kidding.
I’m having a kind of boring day off. I’m so burned out on traveling places, lately. I’m just a dull homebody. It seems so cold and desolate outside, on the holiday. Like I woke up inside a dream, this morning.
I made some pasta and have been watching movies and listening to music.
What I’m listening to right now.
oOoOO, “Burnout Eyes.” What a great name for a band. What a great name for a band.
This is reminiscence (which is to say, I don’t mean a trip up to North Korea, a half-hour drive from here).
Lately, for some reason, I keep thinking of camping trips to northern Minnesota. It was an old, old tradition among my certain circle of friends, and camping trips to northern Minnesota and Upper Michigan were also a significant aspect of Michelle’s and my relationship.
In a related vein, I ran across a very old and somewhat embarrassing picture of me, possibly from the late 1980’s or early 90’s, standing in a campfire somewhere close to Hibbing, I would guess. It’s pretty funny – I reckon I was trying to stomp out the embers and was caught candidly. Dig the long hair.
Why do I post these things? Let’s just call it the spirit of full disclosure…
So, sometimes when we drove to Hibbing or Duluth or the UP, we’d stop and camp at Banning State Park, which is just off I-35, pert’ near Sandstone, along the kettle river.
What I’m listening to right now (nice segue, huh?).
Pert Near Sandstone, “Save Me.”
This might be called Minnesota bluegrass. An interesting genre.
I wrote once before about the Korean flavor called “누룽지” [nu-rung-ji = scorched rice] It was a time when I went through a short-time obsession with scorched-rice-flavored candy. Recently, I was wandering the aisles of my neighborhood supermarket, and beheld the product shown in the photo at right: “옛날 구수한 누룽지” (yet-nal gu-su-han nu-rung-ji = “old time savory scorched rice”]. It was on the same shelf as the multitudes of instant soups and ramens, so I adduced it was an instant product in the just-add-hot-water variety.
In the time since having scorched-rice candy, a little over a year ago, I have also had the experience of having “real” nurungji. Here’s how it works. Cooked rice is often served in heated stone or ceramic bowls – sufficiently heated that it burns onto the sides and bottom of the containers. This is “scorched rice.” Once you’ve managed to eat all the rice out of the heated bowl, you pour boiling water into the bowl and use a spoon to scrape and stir everything around unsticking the scorched rice from the bottom and sides of the bowl. Rather than throw this away (as might be done in the US), this soupy substance eaten as a delicacy.
I guess the flavor grows on you. It’s kind of porridgy. And I’ve always liked porridges of various sorts. I like that it’s sufficiently esteemed in Korea to have turned into an instant food. I bought some, and had it, and it’s grown on me. Little packets of dried out, pre-cooked, scorched rice. You add hot water, and it’s a delicious snack.
Reading the ingredients, it consists of nothing but rice (product of Korea!) and salt (not over-salted, either). I’ve bought this product several times, now. I eat it just as you might eat a bowl of hot oatmeal. Sometimes I Americanize it into a true breakfast-style porridge, by adding butter or brown sugar (I’m sure this would utterly horrify Koreans). Other times I have it with a side of kimchi and drink oksususuyeomcha (corn-tassle tea), more Korean-style.
Welcome to the world of Korean comfort-food.
I guess they’re taking over the world. You have a hint of this, when a Korean seven-year-old spends a deeply focused 20 minutes crafting a story about them, along with illustration. Personally, I like his versions of the birds.
I awoke from a dream in the middle of the night, last night. I was dreaming that I was… dead. Or nearly dead. I was like a skeleton. I was in house or mansion with other skeletons. They were complaining about the lack of healthcare, and the poor food, and their depressing “retirements.”
I kept wandering the halls aimlessly. It was like the mental hospital in the awesome Korean movie 싸이보그지만 괜찮아 (I’m a cyborg, but that’s ok). Some of people were speaking Korean, too.
There was a buddhist monk sitting very still in the middle of an empty room. I said to him, “why am I so old?” He said nothing.
I looked at a calendar on the wall – it was Korean. But the year said 2069. That would make me… 104 years old – in the dream. Really? Why am I thinking of this? Why do I feel like a skeleton? Why do I feel so sad? Am I feeling old?
I woke up. I had trouble sleeping again.
What I’m listening to, right now.
Wado featuring Curumin, “Esqueleto Samba 808.” I selected the song because of the dream, not the other way around. The lyrics (quite simple).
agradeci, agradeci o amor
e o esqueleto de uma folha seca
voa, voa, voa ao solagrade o amor
a folha seca
agrade o amor
a maravilha seca
I walked home in the rain. I feel tired, because of not sleeping well, last night. So good night.
I’ve never really had a long-distance, many-days-long hiking adventure. The closest I came were my two months living in the mountains of Michoacan, traveling by horseback (1987). When I traveled in Patagonia, too, although I traveled by bus (or boat, sometimes), I had a custom of walking for 5 or 6 hours each day that I could, exploring whatever town or lack-of-town I had arrived at, that day. I particularly remember walking from Rawson to Gaiman (Chubut Province, Argentina), about 35 km. It sticks with me as a vivid day-long hike, for some reason, in Argentina’s Welsh colony, stopping at Welsh tea houses and strange roadside attractions intended to be visited by car.
Well, anyway, I’m mentioning this because of this video I ran across.
Condor’s PCT Adventure in 3 Minutes from Kolby Kirk on Vimeo.
I very, very often think of just throwing aside everything and walking some really long journey, like this man above has done. Also, there’s Simon Winchester’s walk across South Korea, from his book A Walk Through the Land of Miracles. It’s one of my favorite books “by foreigners about Korea.” I think of doing something like that. Or walking to visit my uncle’s house in Alaska, from somewhere like Minnesota.
I like urban hiking more than rural hiking, too. Over several days, I once walked the length of Mexico City’s Avenida Insurgentes, one of the longest boulevards in the city (maybe 30 km? taking the subway or bus to a spot along the avenue one day, then going home and picking up at the spot farther along the next day), and I once had this strange fantasy of walking the entire Mexico City subway system – essentially, walking from station to station until I’d visited them all, collecting small bits of the system on weekends or when I was off from work. I more recently have thought I could do the same thing with Seoul’s subway system, too. I’ve done some major portions of the Orange Line (Line 3), along which I live, that way, including the long stretch from Yaksu to Gangnam.
It’s mostly fantasy. But fun to think about. And maybe someday I will do one of these things.
I received a phone text message from my student: “왜저래&KEVIN.” [왜저래 is a joking version of my name in Korean]. It was in commemoration of my reunion with Kevin the Alligator, who had been kidnapped by a student named Alex and was presumed “lost” or “dead” for 5 long, difficult, very sad days and was only returned Monday. Attached to the phone text message: the picture at left – me seated at my desk in the staff room with Kevin the Alligator.
I have first grade student named Ye-dam who doesn’t like to draw pictures. This is quite unusual. Who ever heard of a first grader who didn’t like to draw pictures?
Today, however, she showed that despite not enjoying drawing pictures, she has a highly functional imagination. We were doing our weekly activity where I have them make a story (based on a fairly structured frame that I give to them) and then draw a picture. Her story was: “What’s in the skeleton? A zombie is in the skeleton. A 투명인간 is in the skeleton.” Her illustration was a cursory stick figure with another stick figure inside it. I examined her story and picture.
“Is this the skeleton?” I said, pointing at the big stick figure. She nodded.
“It’s pretty good,” I said – because I believe in positive feedback, regardless of the quality of stick-figure skeletons. Ye-dam really likes skeletons.
“What’s this, then?” I asked, pointing at the smaller stick figure.
“Zombie,” she said, as if it were obvious.
“So,” I asked, not sure how to continue. Tentatively, I asked, “Where’s the 투명인간 [tu-myeong-in-gan]?” I didn’t know what a 투명인간 is.
“Teacher!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “투.. 명.. 인.. 간..” As if enunciating it carefully would make the meaning more clear to me. There was then a heated conversation between Ye-dam and some other students, the gist of which was that, “silly, teacher, doesn’t know what 투명인간 is.”
“Right,” I said, encouragingly.
Ye-dam sighed a heavy sigh, realizing she was going to have to explain this to me.
She talks to herself, sometimes. She thought outloud, in Korean. “Hmm, how’s this? 투명인간?” She proceeded to draw a very elaborate and detailed figure of a person. And then she erased it.
“보지? [See?]”
I shook my head. I thought she’d changed her mind.
“투명인간!” Pointing at the erased figure.
I shook my head. Confused.
She sighed. She then drew another elaborate and detailed and interesting figure. It took her some time. I was patient. Then she erased it. And pointed.
“볼 수 없어… [can’t see…]” she said.
It dawned on me, suddenly.
“Invisible man?”
She and the other kids all shrugged. They gazed at me with cute, blank faces. They didn’t know English, either, right?
I drew a stick figure on the blackboard using dotted lines. And lightly erased it.
Everyone nodded. Ye-dam was very excited. She was hopping up and down.
I said, “You draw very good invisible people.” She grinned shyly.
We admired her drawing together. The stick figures, and the 투명인간.
I’m not a conlanger (q.v.). If I were a conlanger, however, Ithkuil would be the sort of thing I would conlangify, perhaps. Which is probably why it’s good I’m not a conlanger – the last thing this world really actaully needs is more Ithkuils. There’s something nevertheless appealing about the idea of perceiving a language as an almost purely aesthetic object – I do tend to look at Korean that way, on the days when I’m feeling more positive about it.
I have managed to catch a cold. Again. Not really bad or debilitating, but annoying. I guess that’s what winter life is about when spending 6+ hours a day cooped up with groups of children. I slept a lot earlier today, instead of going to the bookstore as I’d well and truly planned to do. I guess I just need to accept that when I have one-day weekends, I’m not going to get anything “done.” Next weekend is 설날 (lunar new year) – and I have nothing planned. The city will be shut down, and the idea of travelling anywhere in the country is utterly inconceivable (because for the vast majority it becomes obligatory to travel on that holiday), but maybe I can at least do some “urban hiking” or something.
(Poem #5 on new numbering scheme)
the sound of the wind in winter in the frozen leaves of the frozen trees is perfect the buildings trace lavender-shaded straight lines against pales orange curls of sky near sunset nearby there are boys practicing soccer on the dirt on the playground of Munhwa Elementary School and their breath snakes up in visible lines of white in the January afternoon the setting sun reflects garishly off garish signs off a building across the street off in a separate place again the sound of the wind in winter in the frozen leaves of the frozen trees is perfect
A few days ago, I overheard the phrase 깐죽 at work, in the context of the English word “smart ass.” Ever since, I’ve been trying to puzzle out if there’s something equivalent, there, but the more I try to figure it out, the more I don’t think they’re really the same thing. You can imagine, though, why having a Korean phrase for “smart ass” might be useful to a teacher of elementary age Koreans with limited English ability.
There is nothing in the online Korean-English dictionaries for 깐죽 or its verbal derivatives (as reported to me by coworkers: 깐죽거리다, 깐죽대다). The Korean-Korean dictionaries didn’t seem very useful (or maybe I didn’t understand them well enough). Naver.com, for example, says, “쓸데없는 소리를 밉살스럽고 짓궂게 들러붙어 계속 지껄이다.” This is, in itself, hard to take apart, and it took some time pooking around google translate (plus the dictionary and some grammatical knowledge, because google translate is, by itself, useless for Korean-to-English) to even get the gist of it, which is something like, “To chatter on uselessly and harassingly in a vulgar manner.”
While I can see why someone would draw the link between a phrase meaning that, and the English “smart ass,” they’re still not really the same, as it neglects the “smart” part of it – the fact that a smart-ass doesn’t just chatter uselessly, but that the smart-ass has an aspect of “too smart for his/her own good.”
One translation I found encouraging was in the lyric of a song called 청춘고백 by Outsider (image, right), translated here. The translation offered for 깐죽거리던 is “snarky” – which is closer to “smart-ass,” definitely.
Conclusions? None, really.
“깐죽” seems to be related to the idea of talking too much, and/or out of turn, and/or vulgarly, but I don’t see much to suggest it implies speaking in “smart-ass” way specifically. So it only means smart-ass in the more broad meaning of the latter term.
What I’m listening to right now – the song I mentioned.
Outsider (아웃사이더 [a-ut-sa-i-deo]), “청춘고백.”
This is Korean rap/r&b. Awesome.
빈 수레가 요란하다
empty cart-SUBJ is-loud
An empty cart is loud.
“He who speaks most knows least,” roughly.
Maybe I should shut up.
What I’m listening to right now.
Washed Out, “Amor Fati.”
A certain student of mine drew this picture of me.
Frankly, I look like a South Park character. That’s not so bad, I guess. I think the “this is warm” under my foot – which I initially took to be a pile of poop – is actually meant to be a “worm,” but misspelled as “warm.”
Who is the certain student? The boss’s daughter. What might this mean?
If you own an electronic gadget made in China, I think you should listen to this recent episode of “This American Life.”
[UPDATE 2012-03-17 It turns out this radio show has some scandal associated with it. Given that, I probably should retract my recommendation to listen to it. Most of the commentary below stands, however.]
Normally, I don’t have a lot of patience for Ira Glass’s brand of vaguely sanctimonious hipsterism, but this show hit home for me. It’s somewhat directed at Apple, which is a mark in its favor in my anti-apple worldview… but I’m well aware that Apple Corp is far from the only – or anywhere close to the worst – offenders in the realm of worker exploitation in China. I would, in fact, wager that my cheapo Jooyontech desktop was made in China without anything even resembling a passing nod to workers’ rights such as Apple presumably tries for (apparently without much success, but still, at least they pay lip service to it, right?).
Despite everything said in the above-mentioned program (which I will reiterate, I hope you listen to), I still don’t think Paul Krugman is wrong in his quote at the end – this is just another country (albeit, in China’s case, a historically unprecedentedly huge country) working its way up the “value chain” in the process of modernizing and industrializing. The US, Europe, Japan, South Korea – all these countries passed through phases where things like child labor and complete union illegalization were nearly universal, and perhaps, as a good marxist, I should accept that this is just a sort of “mode of production” that every country must pass through.
All the same, it’s sobering and depressing to think that it is somehow inevitable, even sitting in a country such as South Korea that is only now beginning to emerge from the far end of this agonizing socio-economic process.
OK. Nothing to add to that. Just listen to the show. Think about it, the next time you play with your iPad or log onto the internet on your cheap, convenient computer, or whatever.
Here’s a question: “What is stuff for?”
Meanwhile, what I’m listening to right now.
Metric, “Sick Muse.”
I’ve written before about how frustrated I’ve become trying to find Korean television dramas with English subtitles that I can watch on my computer. It really does help me learn Korean to watch, but I’m just not able to really get enough of what’s going on to watch without subtitles, yet.
I’ve had a couple of false starts, where I find a program and watch a few episodes, but then I can’t get the rest of the episodes with subtitles, so I’ve taken to finding shows and downloading all the episodes before watching them. What I end up finding becomes somewhat random – i.e. I’m not really watching shows because they appeal to me but rather because they’re the ones I can find.
One show I started watching recently because I’d gotten all the episodes is called “마녀유희” [ma-nyeo yu-hui = “Witch Yoo-hui” in official translation]. It’s a romantic comedy series (or really, mini-series in US parlance) from 2007. A too-young female business executive (heir to some rich family presumably) has a bad personality and this ne’er-do-well medical-school dropout (and wannabe French chef) does a pygmalion on her.
That should be enough to get the gist of the story. You can read an atrociously written summary at the wikithing. The whole connection to an actual witch-based fairy tale is tenuous at best (mostly played up in the intro to each episode). I had been hoping for something brilliantly conceived like the Hansel and Gretel meta-tale movie I liked so much a few years back.
But, so… I’ve been watching that. It’s entertaining, anyway.
When I was 17 and 18, the coolest musical groups in the world were Talking Heads and David Bowie. I was a weird kid, right?
I heard on the radio that David Bowie is turning 65 today. He’s kind of retired, apparently.
What I’m listening to right now.
David Bowie, “Ziggy Stardust.” Lyrics:
Oh
Oooh yeah
AhZiggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly,
and the spiders from Mars. He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy’s bandnow Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, aww he could lick ’em by smiling
He could leave ’em to hang
‘came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan.So where were the spiders, while the fly tried to break our balls
With just the beer light to guide us,
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?Oh
Ooh ohZiggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo
The kid was just crass, he was the nazz
With God given ass
aww He took it all too far but boy could he play guitarMaking love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band.Oh yeah
Ooooooo
Ziggy playyyyed guitaarrrrrr
Sometimes one student can ruin a class. Or a day. And there's nothing to be done about it – just bluster through. Sometimes parents make boneheaded requests, and there's nothing to be done about that, either – just bluster through.
So I was already having a grumpy day. And then…
Recently, some random strangers (trolls) posted utterly non-useful comments on one of the youtube videos I posted of my teaching (it was an effort to show how I tried to teach "debate" to a very low-level 3/4/5 grade class, and felt it went better than I'd ever dreamed. The substance of the comments: "control your class!"
<rant>
I saw the comments, and I watched the offending video – frankly, it's not that uncontrolled. It's from a few years ago – it is, in fact, from my last day at LBridge, at the end of August, 2009 – so over 3 years ago, now.
There's the one kid, John, who was always vaguely ADHD and so I tolerated a kind of restlessness in him. Excepting him, and his special circumstances, none of the other kids show a great deal of uncontrolled-ness. To provide additional context, this was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a regular class. There was the fact that it was my last day – the kids were aware of this. There was the fact they'd just attended an assembly where they'd received special packages of goodies – that's what a number of them, notably John, are obsessively fiddling around with. Finally, I'd decided to deviate utterly from the expected curriculum, without preparing them for this fact. I'd "wrongfooted" them. So there's the fact that they don't really know what I've planned for them. And finally, we cannot forget that the presence of a video camera, in and of itself, will tend to make kids act out and do strange things – they don't get the "just act normal" dictum that older kids or adults can understand.
Considering that, I'd urge my anonymous commenters to realize that context in these things is important. Further, it doesn't appear either of these creepy commenters went on to watch the subsequent parts of the same video – they only watched the first video, and therefore they didn't, in fact, see that the kids actually managed to present their "debate" – pretty low-level, admittedly.
But obviously, I've taken these anonymous, troll-comments personally. Because, when you get right down to it, I do feel some insecurity about my ability to control a class. Like on bad days. Like today.
But I'd like to set aside that insecurity, for a moment, acknowledging it for what it is – an expression of insecurity about my teaching ability, and not something grounded in sound pedagogical theory or child-development psychology.
Kids do not, in fact, need to be "controlled." "Controlling" kids has nothing to do with providing them with a good education. Kids need to be engaged. There are only two reasons kids need to be "controlled" in a classroom: 1) their safety, 2) because they make the adults uncomfortable. Only the first reason is legitimate. The second reason is just about people nursing secret fascisms in their blasted, grown-up souls. "Controlled" kids are bored kids, depressed kids, turned-off-to-learning kids. Kids should be positively engaged, and to the extent a teacher is successful, they will then control themselves.
Really, watching that video, after seeing those comments, I was expecting to see kids jumping around or bouncing off walls, and in fact, I saw no such thing. I saw a few kids fiddling with things, OCD style. I saw a few kids looking around at other kids, or making side-comments in the their native Korean, a few times, even, to clarify what I was saying in English (I rely on and encourage this – it's called "leveraging peer-teaching" between those with stronger English skills and those with lower-level ability).
And if one goes on to watch the subsequent parts, you will see that without any violence on my part (meaning not physical violence, but authoritarian verbal coercion a la the "traditional classroom"), I get 100% participation in my little experiment to teach debate to high-beginning elementary English learners.
</rant>
Sigh. I deleted the trolls. And I posted a link to this rant at that video. Not that it makes a difference – I have 0% expectation that the offending trolls would read this rant or, that, if they did, would understand my points. Nevertheless… I had to get the thoughts off my chest.
Here's a book I want to read: The Atheist's Guide to Reality, by Alex Rosenberg. In a review at 3AM Magazine, Richard Marshall summarizes,
Rosenberg is a fearless naturalist, whose ‘nice nihilism’ doesn’t imply that we can become nihilists. He disturbs the comfy domestication of the naturalistic world view. Evolutionism and physics gives us a nihilist universe, purposeless, meaningless, ultimately devoid of everything we think is important. But it has constructed us as having evolutionary reflexes that grant us illusions of freewill and purpose we cannot but believe.
Even the review makes for very dense reading. I haven't been doing very well at dense reading, lately – but I hope I can find Rosenberg's book at Kyobo or somewhere like that.
Today is perihelion. I hope you have a good day, so close to the sun.
It seemed very cold outside. That’s because perihelion has nothing much to do with climate.
My little ones (first graders) where so hyper today. I came out of the class, and went back into the staff room, and I said, “It’s like teaching popcorn.” Unfortunately, it was a metaphor that had to be explained, which seemed to lessen its effectiveness substantially.
What I’m listening to right now.
Madness, “Blue Skinned Beast.”
My students alleged that I resemble pop star 임재범 [im-jae-beom, which he himself prefers to romanize as Yim Jae Beum (which is, in my opinion, a truly misleading and horrible way to romanize it, but, well, with names there’s a lot of freedom on this matter in Korea)].
I don’t really think I do.
In researching it (i.e. typing his name into a Korean search engine and seeing what pops up), I think it must just be the glasses and the haircut, more than anything else. Perhaps the rather exaggerated way he changes his facial expressions as he sings – I do that a little bit during my classroom antics. I certainly don’t sing like him, though.
A student asked me, the other day, "Teacher! Why haraboji hairstyle?"
"Haraboji" means "grandpa." So he was referring to the fact that, as I have allowed my hair to grow out a little bit in the last several months, the gray shows more, as well as the fact that it continues its thinning, apace, up top. I guess as my hair grows longer, I end up looking older.
I should observe, as I have before, that I have NEVER had a conversation with an adult Korean (male or female) about my appearance where the question "why don't you dye your hair" DIDN'T come up. They seem to find the fact that I don't do this astounding. I have almost succumbed to the pressure, but it has always been something that repelled me as being somehow vain. I would sooner begin shaving my head, to be honest.
Well, anyway. Was I offended? No – not by the student. But I may return to the shorter hairstyle – I'm not so utterly free of vanity as all that. I'm not a grandpa yet. "Ajik" I said to the student. "Not yet."
Walking home from work, the night air sparkled with a sprinkling of snow, the air cold and clean-tasting. Work is hard these days. I’m trying hard to improve my teaching, and there’s a lot of pressure and discomfort at work because we’ve been losing students, too. This is partly just because hagwon business is cyclical, and parents always pull their kids out of hagwon in January, when public schools are in vacation and parents find other things to do with their kids. I can never understand how Korean managers – ever relatively good ones such as my current boss – seem to take these cycle-driven losses of enrollment so personally, and assume there’s some mistake being made by teachers as opposed to just being the vagaries of the market.
Well, anyway. So work is hard, these days. I have a tight, dense schedule, too. But I felt OK about it, today, walking home in the dark in the cold in the snow in my dreams.
I found this really interesting image online at a site called love all this – it’s supposedly Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s resolutions.
I really, really like the resolution that goes: “19. Keep hoping machine running.” It appears he doodled a picture of it, too. I like the idea of a “hoping machine.” I’m doing some repairs on mine, currently.
What I’m listening to right now.
Neutral Milk Hotel, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”
I was quite amazed today in my RN1 class when my student Taeu said he'd done his homework. He'd indeed done most of it. I made a big show of congratulating him. "Wow," I said. "That's the first time in six months that you did your homework."
He got a hurt look on his face. "Teacher," he complained. "Second."
What I'm listening to right now.
Absurd Minds, "The Question."
I’m not really very well-informed on this, but I’ve formed an opinion anyway. North Korea remains more-or-less stable for two reasons: 1) the state leverages traditional Korean communitarianism to get buy-in from groups that would otherwise resist (mostly the “bureaucratic class” and/or the low and mid-ranking military); 2) the economy is much more pre-industrial (i.e. feudal) than people have been thinking – many (if not an outright majority of) North Koreans are existing in an essentially pre-industrial society based on subsistence agriculture.
I have formed these opinions partly just through reflection – I read articles about NK often, but I can’t really point to specific articles that caused me to develop the above view. If I run across something specific in the future, I’ll try to remember to add them to this post or some future related one.
The below graph (from Brad Plumer at Wapo’s Wonkblog) is an interesting summary (and never forget that before about 1960, North Korea was more industrialized than the South – a legacy of Japan’s colonial industrialization policies for the peninsula and the fact that the North had at least some coal).
Mientras tanto… what I’m listening to right now.
Dënver, “Olas gigantes.”
This is a Chilean music group. I think the diaeresis (or “umlaut”) on the “e” is just a playful bit of typography, as opposed to symbolizing anything, although there are some native languages of Chile that use the double-dotted diacritic on certain vowels to indicate laxness or centralization in their orthographical systems, and the word “dënver” has a certain Mapudunguny look to it (I studied the native language Mapudungun at Univ. Austral de Chile in 1994) – but Mapudungun itself doesn’t use “ë”. I don’t know if the group’s name has something to do with the American city of Denver, either.
Letra
Dijiste vamos a nadar,
nunca he visto olas tan gigantes,
dijiste qué nos va a pasar.
Y que todo va en bracear,
y hacías con los brazos
de manera circular.
Entonces nos lanzamos a nadar
y las olas explotaban
como si nos odiaran,
y nos golpeaban sin piedad,
y yo braceaba y braceaba,
no servía de nada, daba igual.
Es que yo en ti confiaba más,
yo sólo seguía sin más
tu físico espectacular.
Así que simplemente me dejé llevar
y ahí vi como pasabas,
toda doblada tu espalda
y no vi más.
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Or rather, I don’t share them – I’m superstitious that in sharing them, I would either jinx their eventual success or else set myself up for disappointment in the event that they don’t work out.
I was listening to NPR and someone said that in Portugal they avoid this problem by making New Year’s wishes instead of resolutions. Wishes are less work than resolutions, too. And that way, I can share them.
So my wishes:
To all my friends who put up with my periodic anti-socialism (and abstract socialisms, for that matter), who reach out to me to say hi and see what I’m doing beyond the slightly directionless blog, THANKS. Love.
2011, that is. Ending.
2011 went by really fast for me. That was after 2010, which was one of the longest, most stretched-out years of my life. The difference? There was a lot of instability and uncertainty in my life, in 2010. Whereas 2011 went pretty smoothly… mostly according to plan.
2010 started with me NOT getting a job in Korea. I lived in a hostel and took language classes for two months, before finding a job. Then the job turned out to have… well, let’s call them complications. Most notably, the Hongnong Elementary School had a tendency to make me move from apartment to apartment, and not ever tell me what was coming next, work-wise. Much worse than hagwon experiences I’ve had. OK. So that was 2010.
2011, in contrast, was easy. Predicatable. I finished the Hongnong contract, came back to Ilsan to work for Karma, and suddenly… it’s 8 months later. Life, it seems, goes on.
Interestingly, this happens to be the 1900th post to this here blog thingy. How ’bout them apples?
Walking home from work, late afternoon, the sun hung low in the sky and was like a pat of butter in mashed potatoes. I tried to capture this with my camera. Below picture was taken about a block north of my apartment building, along Gangseonno [강선로].
Um.
Happy New Year. 새해복 많이 받으세요~~. ¡Feliz año nuevo!
What I’m listening to right now.
Phaeleh, “In the Twilight.”
