Last Friday evening, in the “TP2” class. Everyone was in a joking mood.
Brandon said, “Did you know Cindy has a strange body.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, imagining something bad. But then the girl demonstrated strange, double-jointed limbs.
“She can put her arms behind her back strange too,” the girl next to her said. Cindy tried to demonstrate, but the constraints of her sitting position didn’t permit her a full range of motion. Still, I was impressed.
“Like an octopus,” somebody said.
“오징어 [ojingeo = squid],” I said. Somebody laughed. “She could be a new superhero,” I added. I’ve been thinking about superheroes, and this seemed clever. “Ojingeogirl,” I suggested. Dried squid are a universal snack food, with the same level of iconicity as hotdogs in American culture, maybe.
Cindy seemed impressed by this idea, and several other students began to riff on it. Then Luis said, “How about Gulbiboy, too? Who is Gulbiboy?”
I pointed to Brandon. I’d been telling the students short stories about my life in Yeonggwang, earlier, and they were charmed by my accounts of “Gulbi-land” – the preponderance of gulbi shops selling the (in)famous Yeonggwang gulbi (a sort of dried croaker fish).
I pretended to have a string of dried gulbi, which I lifted. All Koreans know what dried gulbi look like, because the strings of fish are given as gifts on holidays. I mimed extracting one of the 20 cm long fish from the string, and pretended to throw it like a shuriken (Japanese “ninja” throwing star) at Luis. “Thwack,” I emphasized. The students were all in convulsions of laughter at this point.
“Oh no, Gulbiboy!” complained Luis.
Later on, Brandon tapped me on the shoulder, in the lobby. “I am Gulbiboy!” he whispered, triumphantly. Brandon is very tall, but his face reminds me a great deal of my nephew’s, perhaps if it were aged a few years further into early adolescence. I feel a certain connection with him for that reason, maybe.
“Go rescue Ojingeogirl, then,” I suggested, pointing toward Cindy, standing out by the elevator. He made a pleased face, before he thought it through, and thought better of this.
Here’s why I sometimes have a really hard time working with opinionated 14-year-olds who have very limited English:
Student: Teacher!
Me: What?
Student: My school 원어민 [native English-speaking teacher] is handsome but you are not.
Me: I see…
Student: You have small head but big 배 [tummy]
Me: It’s very sad…
Student: Why are you 통통 [fat]?
Me: I don’t know… I used to be fatter, you know. I dieted a lot.
Student: 와아아 [wow].
This student is not, otherwise, habitually insolent or impolite. In fact, I like the student a lot. And I know from previous experience that comments, negative or positive, regarding another person’s appearance, are much more freely thrown about in Korean society than in Western culture: long-time readers might remember the time the restaurant owner (a total stranger) in Busan greeted me with “You’ve got a bit a paunch” [in Korean]?
So what do I make of this? Should I take the time, yet again, to explain that this sort of talk will get a person smacked in the US? – Because I’ve explained it before, I’m sure. Does it even matter?
Regardless, it can take a strong ego to survive this kind of thing, can’t it?
Sigh.
Later, I had a more pleasant (but equally culturally interesting) conversation with my boss.
Boss: You [Westerners] like to argue.
Me: Koreans like to argue, too, I think.
Boss: Koreans like to fight.
Me: Fight… argue. Yes.
Boss: No. Argue is rational. Koreans just like to fight.
Me: Hmm. Yes, I could see that.
Boss: You know I’m right.
Point taken.
Tomorrow, my coworker Grace goes on her month-long special vacation home to Canada. That means my schedule is getting massively augmented. I’ll have 30-something classes, for the next month or so. I’m not even really dreading it, though I feel a little overwhelmed by mastering the content of the classes, I don’t feel particularly overwhelmed by the extra time I’ll be putting in – I’m really in a sort of “wanting to forget my dull, unaccomplished life” mood, lately. So I’ll throw myself into my work. I’ll dedicate myself to hearing the unintended insults of a hundred teenagers.
For someone who doesn’t own a television, I sure seem to be watching a lot of TV lately.
I have been watching a Korean rom-com drama called 아직도 결혼하고 싶은 여자 [the woman who still wants to get married]. It’s better than that last one I watched (내조의 여왕), but I’ve kind of reached a lull of interest in that show.
So then I started watching episodes of the American series called Heroes (from 2006~10), which I remember catching a few early episodes from back when I was still in the U.S. It’s definitely got a lot of plot twists and turns. And the strange thing is that I’m also currently trying to work my way through Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore, which has some almost eerie match-ups with the series in terms of themes or atmospherics. They’re both, ultimately and essentially, magic-realist oeuvres – one low-brow, the other high-brow.
And then I also started a Chilean historical/vampire drama called Conde Vrolok, which seems quite atrocious, but it managed to hook me in somehow. And it’s funny, but the streaming (and free) video from Chile is much higher quality than the streaming (paid) video from the U.S. affiliate of Korea’s MBC. Go figure.
I suppose I like that I’m essentially watching 3 series in parallel, in 3 different languages. It feels very language-geeky.
I started keeping track of how much I’m running, exactly, starting last Friday. So in one week, I ran 21.6 km. My pace is kind of slow – but it’s all jogging, not walking. If you add in my walking (commute to work six days a week and running errands – I walk everywhere), you could probably say I cover an equivalent distance in walking, too. And that would make about 42 km, which is a marathon. I was somewhat inspired in this project by following – on facebook – the manic walking exploits of two of my cousins, Jori and Trevor, who each covered something over 250 miles last month in a sort of competition between them, posting their distances each day. I won’t get close to that. Not yet, anyway.
I’m glad I’m exercising more. I wish I could feel like it was improving my health, but so far I have lost no weight, and I don’t really even feel much healthier. I will have to be patient. What I’m listening to right now. [Update 2017-02-28: Video embed has been removed due to “link rot.” The song with new video embed has been included here.] Bob Dylan with Johnny Cash – Girl from the North Country. The song makes me think of fall in Minnesota, and camping trips to Hibbing and weekends in Duluth.
It’s not that I don’t like classical music. I was raised on a steady diet of Dvorak, it seems like, alongside the Grateful Dead and Cat Stevens and the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack and other eclectica. But in my day-to-day life, I don’t listen much to classical music, to be honest.
I think part of the reason for that is that it has never worked well for me as “background music.” Unlike most other genres, it’s very difficult for me to listen to classical music and do other things at the same time – whether it be jogging or studying or surfing the internet. Perhaps my ad hoc musical education, mostly a gift from my bestfriend Bob, was a little bit too thorough, and I find myself listening too carefully to classical compositions.
I don’t think that’s it, entirely. I have always struggled more with the rhythm aspect of all music than with, say, melody or counterpoint. I find that the lack of overt rhythms in classical music (unlike such as are provided by the backing drums or synthesized beats of almost all other genres) almost makes me uncomfortable, at times. It’s almost as if I have to work harder to “follow” what’s going on in music without explicit rhythms. I know that sounds strange – and it’s hard for me to explain.
OK, whatever. Returning to my initial point, away from my digression: I do, in fact, listen to and enjoy classical music, occasionally. And I love hearing live performances of it.
One of my favorite pieces, by far, is Rachmaninoff’s Concerto Number 2. It’s one of those pieces that I will find running through my head sometimes, unexpectedly. Perhaps that just confirms that I’m a hopeless romantic sap, deep down inside. The picture, at left, is borrowed from the wikithing. It shows Rachmaninoff with a redwood tree in 1919.
What I’m listening to right now.
This youtube, above, is my favorite part – the first movement – apparently from a 1929 recording (!) in which Rachmaninoff himself played the piano with the Philadelphia Philharmonic. I also like the third movement, though, for which I found a different recording. I often find snippets of these two movements running through my brain.
If I were a Korean middle school student, I'd be grumpy, too. But I think one reason I don't really enjoy teaching middle school students is because unlike with elementary age children, I don't really know how to deal with adolescent grumpiness. With the younger ones, I can be a clown, I can regress myself, and more times than not, I can pull the kids out past their grumpiness and we can move on. But with the older kids, I just get drawn into it. Older kids are more stubborn in their anger. I had a hard day today.
I don't really have much more to say. I ran 5 km tonight, when I got home from work. Unlike most people, exercise never puts me in a good mood, and I question whether it really serves to lessen my depressive tendencies, for that matter. My time in the military, when I exercised daily and was in the best physical condition of my entire life, was – as some who know me well will recall – also one of the most depressed periods in my life. Still, there were many factors contributing to that. What I mean by this is only that I challenge the commonplace that holds that regular exercise is a legitimate way to combat depression. But I do need to be healthier, and lose some weight, so I'm pursuing building this habit, regardless of how grumpy it seems to be making me.
What I'm listening to right now.
Sarah Jarosz – Long Journey:
I have just begun A long journey that will run The length and width of summer time And the cool fall air will guide me home Yea the cool fall air will blow me home
You'll be miles away I want to go, but I wanna stay The music beggin' me to go But your love can guide me home Yea your love can guide me home
Stary nights and summer sun I think you just might be the one With this mountain pass keep runnin' on And I wonder if your love and guide me home Oh yea I wonder if your love can guide me home
For those not reading between the lines, I've been kind of down, lately. One part is just the feeling that I'm in a holding pattern at work, and the stuff where I can take initiative, like my textbook project, aren't going that well. But the main thing that has me down is exactly the thing I predicted I would like least about my return to Ilsan. My Korean feels like it's atrophying.
The reason is quite simple. My Korean made progress, in Yeonggwang, because I was constantly around people whose English was so bad that my Korean skills, limited as they were, were competitive in the "communication marketplace," as it were. Here in Ilsan, both my coworkers and my students, for the most part, have much higher level English skills, on average, and so my Korean ability becomes essentially worthless in the communication game – because I'm both socially shy and a little bit lazy, at some level, I don't have the willpower to force communication into the less comfortable, more difficult mode that sticking to Korean requires. Hongnong was so good for me, because I was constantly being called upon to communicate with people who utterly lacked English skills – it thus overcame both my shyness and my laziness.
So I stick to English, and then beat myself up for doing so. And I don't have the gumption to sign up for a class, either – I've been put off by the commute time required, and knowing that work is about to get a lot more demanding, once the testing period ends and I have to jump into the full-fledged summer session.
Am I regretting, now, my decision to come back to Ilsan? Not at all. I love that I have a comfortable and reliable "home life." That's important to me, and was missing in Hongnong. My stress level is, over all, much lower. And I'm rebuilding the good health and lifestyle habits that I allowed to atrophy in Yeonggwang – my daily exercise, my better eating habits (although so far I can't seem to shake the extra kilos that Yeonggwang blessed me with). So, much as I predicted, the move back here is a mixed bag – advantages and disadvantages. It's just that lately I'm really feeling the biggest disadvantage – the lower level of motivational support for my commitment to keep learning Korean.
“I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that I and others are one.”
This is #67 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).
… 65. 모든 생명은 소통과 교감이 이루어진다는 것을 알게되어 감사한 마음으로 절합니다.
“I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that all life is achieved through communication and sympathy.” 66. 모든 생명은 우주의 이치 속에서 살아간다는 것을 알게되어 감사한 마음으로 절합니다.
“I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that all life is living within the principles of the universe.”
67. 나와 남이 하나임을 알게되어 감사한 마음으로 절합니다.
I would read this sixty-seventh affirmation as: “I bow with a thankful heart and become aware that I and others are one.”
I have no idea if I got that right or not. It seems right, it fits with Buddhist themes, but I really had to guess at the first three words “나와 남이 하나임” as not even the dictionary was being exceptionally helpful.
I’ve been really depressed about my Korean-learning project, lately. I overhear things, and just don’t understand what’s going on. This morning was a typical example: there was one of those “building announcements” over my apartment’s intercom, and I understood “this is an announcement” and “so, telling you this one more time,” but I didn’t get any actual useful information out of the announcement. I’ve clearly lost the gumption I had to sign up for a morning language class – too overwhelmed by the commute required.
I’ve been playing around with trying to figure out how to calculate the distances of my evening jogging. I have just been guesstimating up to this point, but today I found an app connected to google maps called mapmywalk.com that works fine for South Korea. So I used it. It turns out that the route I was thinking of as 5 km was actually a little under 4 (so much for guesstimating, right?). I worked out a slightly different route that was a little over 5, and tonight, I ran it. And here it is. I like map-apps.
[UPDATE 2024-04-27: The embed link here rotted, I happened to notice. And I have no idea how I could reproduce / recover the cool map that was shown. Thank you, internet!]
Meanwhile. I’m feeling a bit grumpy about work, today. The “write me a textbook” project is going badly, and I felt like a kind of boring, crappy teacher today for the classes I had. Sigh. Not every day is good, right?
What I’m listening to right now.
The National, “Conversation 16.”
This song has awesome lyrics. Check’em out.
I think the kids are in trouble
Do not know what all the troubles are for
Give them ice for their fevers
You’re the only thing I ever want anymore
We live on coffee and flowers
Try not to wonder what the weather will be
I figured out what we’re missing
I tell you miserable things after you are asleep
Now we’ll leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Everything means everything
It’s a Hollywood summer
You’ll never believe the shitty thoughts I think
Meet our friends out for dinner
When I said what I said, I didn’t mean anything
We belong in a movie
Try to hold it together ’til our friends are gone
We should swim in a fountain
Do not want to disappoint anyone
Now we’ll leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city to all the silver girls
Everything means everything
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
‘Cause I’m evil
‘Cause I’m evil
I’m a confident liar
Have my head in the oven so you know where I’ll be
I’ll try to be more romantic
I want to believe in everything you believe
I was less than amazing
Do not know what all the troubles are for
Fall asleep in your branches
You’re the only thing I ever want anymore
Now we’ll leave the silver city ’cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city to all the silver girls
Everything means everything
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
I was afraid I’d eat your brains
‘Cause I’m evil
‘Cause I’m evil
‘Cause I’m evil
I'm not sure how I'm feeling about work. On the one hand, it's mostly pretty unstressful. On the other hand, I'm not having as much interaction with kids as I did at Hongnong nor even at LBridge: because Karma combines "test prep" with regular English curriculum, during this midterms cycle the kids get pulled out for special test prep courses, which is great if the stress of giving classes gets to me, but it is annoying if hanging out with kids in class is the highlight of my work day. At least at Hongnong, although I often had no classes to teach, I still got to interact with kids around the school and at lunch, etc. There's no deskwarming at Karma, though. Mostly I'm filling my time with curriculum development work – I'm writing a textbook, supposedly (which is really hard, actually), and doing iBT (TOEFL) prep tutoring with a really smart 9th grader.
I really meant to enroll in a Korean language course for the mornings, but I've been unable to summon the gumption. It's not the idea of 12 hours a week of language class that's putting me off (that's what most of the courses I've looked at offer), it's the additional 12 hours a week of commuting time that it would entail – none of the courses are closer than Hongdae or Jongno, both of which would involve more-than-an-hour-each-way commutes. I hate commuting.
I've been looking into trying to find a tutor who I could pay for one-on-one classes, out here in Ilsan. But I'm kind of picky about who I'm willing to pay as a tutor – most Koreans don't know squat about their own language, from a linguistics standpoint, and I find it very frustrating trying to learn from them. Unpaid hanging-out style efforts at conversation is fine – I can approach it like a field linguist doing research. That's what many of my Korean friends are for.
But if I'm going to pay someone, I want them to know their language's phonological inventory (and know how it differs from that of English, for example), and I'd appreciate if they could recognize the difference between an auxialiary verb and an example of verb seriality, etc., and have them subsequently be able to try to explain these things to me – you know, like actually teach me.
I suppose my complaint about the people I've paid to teach me Korean, in the past, is the flipside of the same, utterly legitimate complaint lodged against so many of the English speakers hired to teach English in Korea – the fact that they can't tell a modal verb or English prosodic vowel reduction from a hole in their posterior means that Korean students aren't really getting much bang for their won, in teaching terms.
What I'm listening to right now.
I jogged my 5km route last night, dodging drizzle and rain drops. I listened to this track on my mp3. I'm becoming incredibly annoyed with the fact that I've gotten back to a 4 or 5 night-a-week jogging habit, and I'm still not losing weight.
This morning, I'm listening to it again. It's raining hard against my windows, and the sky is the thick gray that makes it feel like the sun didn't quite finish rising.
It's been raining a lot – yesterday there was a respite, but aside from that it's been raining almost continuously for approaching a week now. Yey summer in Korea.
The lyrics.
Pour Me Another (Another Poor Me) From the album "You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having"
V:1 And all she wanted was a little bit of solid, Feels like love, it doesnt matter what you call it, Heal those cuts, or hide em underneath the polish, Break another promise, And take me as a hostage, Hold your job down, And let the zombies crowd around, Thankin mommys god, but its a cops town, Keep it safe for me, While I chase a fantasy, Swerving through the galaxy, Searching for a family, Happily surrounded by planets and stars, She was stuck uptown, you was landed on mars, Its all fucked up now, caught your hand in the jar, Another small step back, for that man at the bar, Spill a little bit of blood on the street, For love that goes to those who know, That they drink too much, And hold your own glass, Up to the heavens, Take the little time to try and count the seconds, It goes
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
V:2 Drink it all away, numb it down to the none, Stay awake tonight and wait for the sun, You say you hate your life, you aint the only one, Let your frustration out the gate and watch the pony run, One double for the hunger and the struggle, Two for the fool tryna pull apart the puzzle, Three now I smile while I wait for your rebuttal, By the forth shot, Im just another child in a bubble, Tryna play with the passion and the placement, Just to see what these people let him get away with, Still tryna climb a mountain for you, Hammer in my hand, still pounding on a screw, She no listen, so he dont speak no more, Nobodys winning, cause neither is keeping score, Dont wanna think no more, just let me drink some more, Pour me another, cause I can still see the floor,
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
V:3 Live life tipsy, stiff if it dont fit right with me, Kiss my whiskey; lift my lips press to my angel, Swallow it and leave her empty bottle on the table, Let the past fall, Making faces at that clock on the back wall, Countdown to last call, Ask all of these people that make sounds, How long does it take for the pace to break down? Another lonely little trophy, If only I can walk a straight line, Id make it home free, And everybody in this bar thinks that they know me, And my story, Like poor me, I could count the days till you come back, Or I could follow them sunrays down to the train tracks, I can stumble drunk, over hope and love, Or I can just keep drinking till I sober up
[Pour me another, So I can forget you now, Pour me another, So I can come let you down, Pour me another, So I can remember how, True that I am to this addiction of you,] x2
Bottles, pints, shots, cans, Couches, and floors, and drunk best friends, Models, and whores, and tattooed hands, Cities, and secrets, and cats, and vans, Good times, laughter, bad decisions, Strippers, and actors, and average musicians, Mornings after, and walks of shame, This bartender knows me by my real name
Eleven years ago, this week, Michelle committed suicide. We were separated, but we hadn’t really figured out if we were divorcing or not. It was a hard time, obviously. I’d spent nearly two years away, first in Alaska and then in L.A. where my dad was, while Michelle and Jeffrey were still living in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Our last phone conversation included the words, “Are we getting divorced?” to which the other of us answered, “I don’t know.” She also uttered the phrase, “There’s a better place for me than here.” I kind of knew where her mind was. But what could I do?
This piano piece by David Lanz was never really one of my favorites, but Michelle was deeply sentimental about it. She once told me, eerily, as we sat cuddled on the sofa in better times, “I hope I die to this music.” I could be misremembering, but I think this was, indeed, what she may have died to – it was in the CD player in the bedroom where she took her fatal collection of pills. This is hard information to dwell on. So I call this piece “Michelle’s Suicide Music.”
For a person who doesn’t believe in ghosts, I’ve accommodated Michelle’s ghost with a great deal of faithfulness and peculiar ritual behavior. Once I dreamed that she (her ghost) was stuck at the Incheon Airport, having come looking for me. One day shortly after that, I took the bus out there to show her where I was. And in the fall of 2009, when I had the chance to pass through Philly, I stopped by Quakertown, where she died, to see if her ghost was there.
Sometimes I feel as if she’s looking over my shoulder. I don’t feel she’s angry. More just tagging along, curious to see what I’m doing with myself. Other times I feel as if she has found her “better place” and still others, that she’s this seething knot of sadness and regret. I’m sure mostly these are all my own projections onto what was once her.
Picture: circa Christmas, 1994, visiting my father’s house where he used to live in Temple City (next door to the house he grew up in, in fact). Jeffrey was, perhaps, bored, but Michelle was really happy during those times – we’d exchanged our “secret vows” the preceding month, when I’d returned from my 6 months in Chile.
True summer in Korea means rain. These broad fronts of humid, hot, overcast weather with lots of rain swarm up from the south and then just linger over the peninsula. It’s as if the tropics come to visit for a few months each year. For someone who grew up on the Northern California coast, this is backwards in more than one way – rain is supposed to come from the northwest, and in winter, and be cold. But rain is rain is rain. I still like it.
Our current bout of it started two days ago. Yesterday’s and today’s satellite pictures are almost identical.
I swear, it’s utter coincidence. Otherwise, you’d think I was developing a minor obsession. Yesterday, I mentioned Ke$ha in this here blog thingy, in the context of pretentious marxist philosophers and her possibly-related war against pretension.
Meanwhile, I had set my mind to watch episode 20 of season 21 of the Simpsons. Why, specifically, that episode? Because I had heard that it’s the episode in which Lisa Simpson joins a debate team, and that seemed relevant to my work on designing a debate curriculum for my work. My students love the Simpsons almost universally, and so the idea of showing a “Simpsons Debate” struck me as a fun way to approach the subject.
Lo, and behold, look what the episode’s couch gag was: the Springfieldites reprising Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” With the added benefit of being less NSFW.
Well, I managed to run across a novel problem, for this new Background Noise “feature” of mine: I couldn’t find a youtube for the particular music track I was listening to. So, being the resourceful type, I made one. I can’t find the lyrics for this song online, either. I might try to transcribe it at some point, I think it’s pretty interesting for Nuyorican Rap.
The pictures I added to the video are lame – I was in a hurry, and I just slapped in a few pics I found via the goog. The last picture is something I found that’s not even in NYC, it’s in Chile, but it seemed like a good picture to put on at the end.
To change the subject a little bit, but still on the topic of Nueva York, I was thinking some more about my entry the other day about “all the world’s people in one city” – questions of density. Here’s the fascinating thing. Paris was the densest city mentioned in that graphic I posted at that last entry.
But I thought to myself, surely there are places more dense than Paris. And of course, listening to Spagga & friend, this evening, I thought: Of course! Manhattan!
I ran the numbers. If all the people in the world lived in a city of Manhattan’s density they would fit in an area almost exactly the same size as… get this… South Korea. Interesting, huh? Can you imagine this entire mountainous little republic covered in high rises? It’s pretty easy to do – they’ve made a heckuva start on it already.
A boy who I will not name wrote the following "essay." Note that he's at the lowest level here at the hagwon – he's not an advanced English speaker, and this essay in fact was showing a lot of initiative and innovative language use relative to his normal level.
For my next shrek party I have a die an I'm are zombie. I eat a shrek delicious stomach. Good! Ghost appear on my 가스레인지 [gas range] and die an die and die an die and die and die an die an die an die an I like die I like die I want a die I want a die I want a suicide I want a suicide I'm sad. An bye-bye.
I realize 5th graders often have rather morbid senses of humor, but this seemed pretty intense. He smiled as he read it for me, if that's any consolation. I remember writing such morbid things at that age, not that I was necessarily developmentally on an particularly even keel, either. I normally didn't give such writings to my teachers though.
I’m contemplating the density question, vis-a-vis issues of per capita environmental impact. I ran across an interesting graphic the other day.
Here’s what I starting thinking about, in seeing this. The “Paris” version, above, is the densest – so imagine the world’s population living in that space. That would be one messed up ecosystem, there on the Mississippi delta. The impact would be, essentially, total. But think of this: the rest of the world would be empty of people. Maybe there would be some agriculture – this sort of graphic doesn’t say how putting everyone in one city would see how their resource needs were taken care of, how they would be fed, etc. But let’s imagine a best-case scenario, with all the people living in this giant megalopolis in the Mississippi delta, and then a bunch of sustainable automated farms and mines feeding it. Hmm… kind of science-fictiony. And I don’t want to try too hard here. My only thought … my main point… is that this mega-city’s impact would be huge, but the rest of the planet would have much, much lower impact. That seems to lead to the ability to imagine the Earth much more sustainably carrying its current population. QED Density is a good idea.
I went out to do my little jog around the lake. I like doing it at night when I get home, after work – jogging in the dark suits my personality quite well – it’s less hot at night, and I don’t feel like people are watching me. Ilsan’s Lake Park is well lit and has lots of paths and trails.
I took this really cool picture of the amazing, full, bright, shiny moon hanging and reflecting over the Lake, with part of the Ilsan skyline. My little digital camera did pretty well, I think.
In keeping with my apparent theme for the week: random languages that I studied long in the past. Above – the opening of the most interesting of the four Gospels (in my opinion), John. As found in my mother’s old Greek New Testament, which I acquired in January when visiting her, when she showed me a box of books she was getting rid of.
My ability to read Greek is very poor (maybe slightly better than my ability to read, say, Welsh – see previous blog post – mostly due to the more accessible plethora of cognates). I did take a semester (or two? I don’t remember) of Ancient Greek in college. But the translation of this phrase is nevertheless quite easy because it’s such a commonly known phrase: “In the beginning was the word…” – see? You can complete it yourself.
Shall I attempt to read this book? Probably not. But Greek (and especially ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, “the common dialect” [koine] such as found in the New Testament) is pretty high on the list of languages that interest me. The Bible makes a great text to revisit when learning a language, because it is so meticulously translated into each language. I saw a trilingual edition in a bookstore a while back: Greek, English, Korean. I should have bought it. Then I could mess with koine guiltlessly, having the Korean staring me en face.
I’ve been in a weird state of mind, lately. I keep revisiting random poetry and random languages I studied in times long past. I guess I’m trying to live up to the “unrepentant language-geek” part of my blog’s header (see above [UPDATE: Obsolete information – no longer in header. Still true, though.]).
So… I was mucking around at wikisource.org (a place where public domain texts can often be found). I began browsing Medieval Welsh poetry. I took a course on Medieval Welsh in 1988. I loved it – despite (or because of) it being one of the most intense academic undertakings I’ve ever tried. I remember struggling to translate bardic love poetry, as well as, most memorably, the legend of Pwyll and Rhiannon from the Red Book of Hergest. I remember Pwyll blindly chasing Rhiannon down into Annwn (the Otherworld) vividly.
When I found a four-line poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, I decided to “figure it out.” I won’t go so far as to say I “translated” it – I got the gist of it by using google translate, but also had to surf to some Old Welsh dictionaries, because google translate is based on the modern Welsh language, and the program doesn’t know what to do with the obsolete vocabulary and grammatical forms of 15th century Welsh. I have no idea how accurate my little translation might be – I was unable to find any “official” translation online.
Goddaith a roir mewn eithin,
Gwanwyn cras, mewn gwynnon crin,
Anodd fydd ei ddiffoddi
Ac un dyn a’i hennyn hi.
There’s a wildfire among the gorse,
Parched by Spring, withered kindling,
It will be difficult to put out
and [to think] a lone man caused it.
[Picture at right: Welsh Summer Landscape Painting]
I actually find the tone of the poem strikingly “modern” in its sensibility – but perhaps that’s a reader’s projection.
The negative aspect of this “mucking about” with other languages: I’m still trying to reignite my former passion for learning Korean. My heart hasn’t been in it. I’m plateaued.
A parting thought:
“I did not learn any Welsh till I was an undergraduate, and found in it an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction.” – J.R.R. Tolkien said this. But it’s precisely true for me, too – I could have said exactly the same. But I didn’t quite end up so creatively productive as Mr Tolkien.
Horas de pesadumbre y de tristeza paso en mi soledad. Pero Cervantes es buen amigo. Endulza mis instantes ásperos, y reposa mi cabeza. Él es la vida y la naturaleza, regala un yelmo de oros y diamantes a mis sueños errantes. Es para mí: suspira, ríe y reza. Cristiano y amoroso y caballero parla como un arroyo cristalino. ¡Así le admiro y quiero, viendo cómo el destino hace que regocije al mundo entero la tristeza inmortal de ser divino!
– Rubén Darío
No me acompaña el genio Cervantes de tal modo como a Darío, precisamente. Pero sí me acompaña – siempre está presente en la mente. Me brinda un cierta perspectiva sobre el mundo que me rodea: un distanciamiento medio-posmoderno, digamos… o barroco. Es igual.
Me ha introducido una melancolía este fin de semana pasado. Pasará, seguro. Mientras tanto… viendo dramas coreanas, y leyendo poesías al azar.
My brother posted a link to this video in facebookland. It’s worth repeating.
Who doesn’t remember the Sesame Street Martians with love in their hearts?
I think these aliens were my single most favorite things about Sesame Street. Their telephone routine is as clear as a bell in my mind, 40 years later (well, I’ve probably seen it since then a few times).
This little dubstep remix is appealing for its combination of that kind of nostalgia and modern trends in music. Very cool.
IamPumpking, “The Yip Yip Martians Discover Dubstep.”
I suppose I had to have a bad day, eventually. I felt discouraged. I will say that today, then, was the official ending of my "new job honeymoon" at Karma Academy. My frustration was on two fronts, one general and one specific, which are basically linked. Neither of them is novel in the least – I can almost guarantee I've ranted similarly before, probably on more than one occasion.
First, the general: I'm struggling more and more with a feeling of unclear or vague expectations, vis-a-vis what sort of teaching I should be doing, what I should be working on, what I might be doing right or wrong, etc. Koreans almost never tell you "how you're doing" – until there's some crisis or some problem. I've been feeling guilty, too, because of the inevitable double standard that emerges whenever you have "native speaker" and local Korean teachers working side-by-side – we are inevitably, because of our different proficiencies and distinct market values, held to different levels of expectation. This always makes me feel like I'm exploiting some kind of peculiar affirmative action program, inappropriately.
So the second thing is that today, there was not a major crisis, but a minor complaint from a parent that then got blown out of proportion in my mind. Hagwon parents are so hard to please, of course. One parent complains of not enough homework, and another complains of too much. How can one respond? Often what happens is that you give lots of homework, and there's a kind behind-the-scenes understanding that not all the kids are being held to the same standard, as driven by parental expectations or requirements. The conversation goes: "Oh, that kid … his mom doesn't want him doing so much homework, so don't worry if he doesn't pass the quiz, just let it go." This grates against my egalitarian impulses, on one level, and on another, despite being sympathetic to it, I end up deeply annoyed with how it gets implemented on the day-to-day: no one ever tells ME these things until some parent gets mad because I never got told, before, about the special case that their kid represents. In the longest run, of course, in the hagwon biz, one must never forget who the paying customers are – it's the parents. And for each parent that is pleased that their kid is coming home and saying "hagwon was fun today," there's another that takes that exact same report from her or his kid as a strong indicator that someone at the hagwon isn't doing his or her job. So it boils down to this: happy hagwon students don't necessarily mean happy hagwon customers. As a teacher, you're always walking a tightrope: which kids are supposed to be happy, and which are supposed to be miserable? Don't lose track – it's critical to the success of the business.
I came home feeling increasingly grumpy, and went on my 3km jog, feeling fat and old and slovenly and inept at my career. The humidity is high, the night felt hardly chilly at all. Now I'm eating an ascetic dinner of rice and kimchi, and drinking cold corn-tassel tea. I'm churning mostly fruitless "if I ran the hagwon" fantasies in my head.
I have compared life in rural Jeollanam Province to Kentucky. Or some other rural and reputedly under-developed part of the US, since, in fact, Kentucky doesn't really meet the archetype, anymore, as well as Mississippi, or, more suprisingly, Nebraska (which I read somewhere now is the part of the US with the highest incidence of rural poverty).
But I took advantage of the Kentucky archetype, which has become a part of the American dialect in that it's possible to use the suffix -tucky to indicate a place wracked by the social problems of rural poverty. Many people refer to parts of Southern California's "Inland Empire" as Fontucky, for example – a portmanteau of the city name of Fontana with that suffix, -tucky. And I once heard my own birth county referred to as Humtucky (combining Humboldt and -tucky) – as well as the quite common phrase Kentucky-by-the-Sea.
So I coined the term Hantucky to refer to Yeonggwang County, combining the prefix "Han-" which simply means "Korean," in Korean, with that -tucky suffix. I was pleased. I like coining terms.
The other day, I was walking along the broad, clean, tree-lined boulevard in Ilsan. I passed an automated bicycle-rental post, where a woman was using her credit card to check out a bike. Two very polite bicycle-mounted policemen rang their bells and rode past. A man with long hair in a pony-tail and a rainbow-colored umbrella walked past, talking into his iPhone. And there was the Russian immigrant woman I overheard speaking Korean with her blue-eyed daughter, that I saw last week. And the two Turkish or Middle Eastern dudes in suits rushing toward the subway. There're organic-only food stores, and posters in front of schools talking about environmental issues. I even saw a Volvo.
Prosperous. Liberal. High-density yet leafy-green and littered with parks. Even slightly multi-ethnic (well, that's a stretch, but all things being relative, in Korea).
So I had a sudden insight. If Yeonggwang County is Hantucky, then Ilsan might just well be Hanneapolis (<- Minneapolis).
Saturday, in my PN2 class, that's the phrase Boyun used, to describe me: "Teacher. You are… cool. But, um, strange, yes." I felt quite pleased – that's pretty good, to get from a rebellious and mildly obnoxious 8th grade girl, who is notorious at Karma Academy for wearing too much eye liner and for having a foul mouth (in two languages, no less).
Working Saturdays is going to take some getting used to. I've managed to reach almost 4 years in Korea without regularly doing this thing that most Koreans view as utterly inevitable. So I might as well get used to it. I never do anything with my weekends, anyway, right? But I do seem to make use of the "down time" in a sort non-productive, recuperative way.
Fortunately, today (Monday) is Korean Memorial Day. So I get a holiday. And a two-day weekend, after all. What will I do with this holiday? I might try cleaning my apartment – I feel like I'm living out of boxes… it's a little bit college-dorm-room-esque.
I went to Costco, yesterday. Anytime I feel the slightest bit homesick for life in America, I can go to Costco. It's an instant cure. And a good way to find relatively inexpensive, "real" cheese (as opposed to plasticky Korean stuff, which, although I love it dearly, I sometimes grow tired of). This time, I found some actual Swiss cheese from actual Switzerland. I also found granola. Wow. I might eat that.
I was walking away from the Hugokmaeul neighborhood where I work after my early-ending Friday, over a foot-bridge across Ilsan-no. I looked west-northwest toward the Yellow Sea and China and North Korea off to the left there, in the haze, and the sun was orange. It looked very big, hovering there in the afternoon haze, but in the photo I took it doesn’t look very big. Or orange.
I went to a bookstore and bought some EFL materials – I’ve been tasked with making a “Debate Textbook” at work, the first thing that resembles, vaguely, the “curriculum design” aspect of the job description I’d discussed with my boss before accepting the position. I’m excited about it – I hope I can do a good job.
I didn’t sleep well last night – not sure why. I’m feeling restless in a very undefined way. I’ve been getting more exercise. I walk 4 km. every day, mininum, in my round-trip commute to work. Plus, I even went jogging in Hosugongwon (“Lake Park”) twice, last week. I have a little, approximately 3 km. long, route that I’ve been trying to follow. So far I’m still stuck with the extra kilos that seem to be one of my least-loved Yeonggwang legacies.
This blog entry emerges from a typo I found in a book I’m rather casually perusing. The book is Formalism and Marxism, by Tony Bennett. The book is one of those lit-crit books that I picked up out of my mother’s collection during my last visit to Queensland in January. It examines the relationship between the Russian Formalists and more recent works – I was attracted to it because it discusses Althusser and Eagleton, specifically.
Anyway, I’m not reading it very deeply. Some of it is familiar if somewhat stale territory, and certainly the fact that it’s now almost 40 years old dates it somewhat in the realm of lit-crit. But actually I don’t want to talk about marxist literary criticism or Terry Eagleton (who would have been one of my marxist muses had I ever written that PhD thesis on Cervantes, perhaps, along with Frederic Jameson and Gilles Deleuze).
You see, on page 157 of the paperback edition of Bennett’s book, there is a typo. Instead of saying “metaphysic of the text” it says “metaphysic of the test.” And the thing is, I’ve been thinking about tests a lot lately. Tests are a big part of work in education, and especially, Korean education, and more especially, Korean hagwon-based eduction. The test is the thing – the only thing.
I have been developing a new feeling about testing. Part of this is influenced by certain fragments of data emerging from the bigger world (see my blog entry from a few weeks ago, for example). Part of it is trying to make peace with the huge discrepancy between my dreams and ideals about education (which are vaguely Waldorfian and deeply influenced by my own unusual educational experiences in alternative “hippy schools” during my elementary years, during which tests were essentially verboten) and the reality-on-the-ground here in Korea (which is that testing is god and all bow down before it).
Running across this typo, in Bennett’s text, caused me to perform a bizarre mental experiment. Instead of replacing the word “test” with “text” in the evident error, I decided to replace the word “text” with “test” in the subsequent paragraph. Here is my sublime paraphrasing of Bennett’s idea, then, reframed as being about tests, rather than texts (I’ve italicized the original typo and bolded my substitutions). Bennett is writing about the thought of Pierre Macherey, so my substitution game has inflicted on Macherey some thoughts about tests that I’m sure he never had.
More radically, Macherey breaks unequivocally with what we have called ‘the metaphysic of the test‘. Urging that the concept of the ‘test‘ or the ‘work’ that has for so long been the mainstay of criticism should be abandoned, he advances the argument we have noted above: that there are no such ‘things’ as works or tests which exist independently of the functions which they serve or the uses to which they are put and that these latter should constitute the focal point of analysis. The test must be studied not as an abstraction but in the light of the determinations which, in the course of its history, successfully rework that test, producing for it different and historically concrete in modifying the conditions of its reception.
The thing is, the quote mostly still works fine, despite this substitution. This is because texts and tests are obviously related, from a metaphysical standpoint. They both are functional, performative emissions of a broader cultural and ideological context. And it leads me to an insight about my changing attitude to testing: tests are not abstractions, but emerge from concrete cultural conditions and serve broad social purposes above and beyond just pedagogy: they’re disciplinary systems and indoctrination engines as much as they are evaluative tools.
Here’s what I’m beginning to think: it’s not so wrong to “teach to the test” as we say. But let’s teach to the test in an enlightened way, making kids aware of the functions these tests serve, and openly discussing the role they serve in society and their strengths and weaknesses. I recall, specifically, some concepts about “conscientization” in the context of Liberation Theology, to which I owe a huge debt to a certain professor Hernan Vidal at the University of Minnesota – one of those incredible teachers that leaves a permanent change with a person’s way of thinking about and seeing the world.
The idea of teaching to the test with an admixture of “conscientization” regarding the ideologies of the modes of production that are embedded in these tests, in the context of trying to be an elementary and middle school English as a Foreign Language teacher in Korea – well… let’s just summarize by saying: “easier said than done.”
But… it’s possible. With a modicum of humor, hints can be dropped. Smart kids get it – I’ve done it before. Now, I’m starting to feel I have a philosophical frame or justification for doing so. And I’m making peace with the test.
Not much going on. The weather is turning summery – which I don’t like. I’m not really into summer, although I like it OK when it’s raining, which it does a lot during the summer in Korea.
Monday is my hardest day, but yesterday because it was “end-of-month” the schedule was rearranged so they could give achievement tests to the middle schoolers. I still had a lot to do, but fewer classes. I spent my free periods preparing for my debate class – I want to do a good job on this, as it’s the only class I have that’s “mine” in the sense that I’m being allowed to innovate my own curriculum. More of that will come with time – I knew there would be a lot of settling in, first. I have to see where things are before I can go somewhere else.
My apartment is a mess ever since I got my stuff. I unpacked everything but I don’t have a lot of storage. So… piles. Need to sort and organize. I always procrastinate on that.
OK. Nothing important to say. Remember OK Soda? That’s how I feel.
I’ve been pretty stationary since starting my new job. I realized I haven’t even ridden a bus or subway in several weeks. Ilsan is so walkable, so I just walk places.
I decided I needed to go somewhere, and my friend Mr Choi invited me to Suwon, so I took the subway/bus combo down there yesterday. He met me with some of his friends and we drove to some middle-of-the-nowhere place on the west side of Suwon where we went to a restaurant-combined-with-furniture-shop. These hippy-ish Koreans making hand-crafted furniture and delicious food.
After it was over, I helped Mr Choi with proofreading the English of some materials that are part of his latest business scheme (he’s always got a business scheme or three going). One has to be non-perfectionist with these things – try to catch the worst of it, and let a lot of the less horrible errors go past. Otherwise it makes the correction proof a red blur of ink. People seem to have this misconception that the output of Google translate is good English, which it most certainly isn’t, most of the time.
Here are a few pictures.
Me in the restaurant with the delicious food.
Some hand-crafted furniture.
A functional reproduction of an 18th-century Korean crane thingy of the sort used in the construction of the famous Suwon fortress.
This short animated movie made a huge impression on me when I saw it, as a child, on the big screen, at the Minor Theater in Arcata. I’m guessing it was 1972 or 73, maybe. I never forgot it, although I forgot (or never knew) its title. And the other day, surfing the internet, I found it. It’s still awesome.
I remember we used to go to movies at the Minor and then go to a restaurant called the Epicurean afterward, where I was strangely addicted to these peculiar vaguely counter-cultural sandwiches that included chopped lettuce, cream cheese, and olives.
A month after leaving Hongnong Elementary, I am still receiving text messages (and picture-messages) from various former students almost daily. Sometimes I don’t even recognize the name – that’s frustrating, to imagine having had such an impact on students I don’t know that well. My heart is touched.
At left and right, some cute pictures from a pair of sisters who were evidently messing with their cellphone. Below, a little message that appeared on my phone last night, from one of the fabulous 4th graders. A cultural note: Koreans use the phrase “I love you” quite freely – both in their own language and in English. I was told repeatedly by my group of semi-anti-social 8th-graders, last night, “I love you.” There were elements of both irony and sincerity in these declarations. Nothing is quite so surprising to an American as having a guy who looks like a junior-varsity football player with a page-boy haircut making a “hand heart” and outright saying “Teacher, I love you.” Of course, I’d just given him a “pass” on his homework.
I’m still working on that project to scan some of the “goodbye letters” that the Hongnong kids made for me.
.
hi? im kim ji min .*”””*..*”””*. * L O ♡ V E * “* Y O U *” .”*. ♥ .*”. ☆._.”**”._.☆
hi? im kim ji min .*”””*..*”””*.
* L O ♡ V E *
“* Y O U *”
.”*. ♥ .*”.
☆._.”**”._.☆
Yesterday was truly Monday. Under my new work schedule, which has now started, I had seven classes, with a single one-period break, in the stretch from 3:30 to 10 pm. I told Curt that it felt like I had finally had my "first day of work" initiation. He laughed, and asked, "and how was it?"
Not too bad. One small class of 8th graders were just as I remember my most recalcitrant and obnoxious previous experiences with 8th graders. It's like trying to teach a room full of lazy comedians suffering from severe sleep deprivation. Wait… that may be close to accurate. Other than that group – which I suspect I may be discussing further in the future – it wasn't bad. Mostly I stuck to my lesson plans and stayed happy and calm.
The staff room was rearranged on Saturday after I left. I knew it would be – they had to accommodate the other new teacher. It's a pretty cramped space, but I was surprised to find my desk placed at the end of the double row of desks. I was very surprised.
Korean "office arrangements" are very interesting, and often deeply reflect positions within the explicit hierarchies. I'd been given what any Korean would identify as a "second-in-command" position. I felt awkward about this. Was it a deliberate attempt to joke about or flout those conventions? I sat down self-consciously and played at arranging things on my desk, and the office manager guy came in and asked if I would be happier if my desk were turned sideways (which would break the hierarchical feng sui). I said, yes, maybe. Then I joked, no, it's ok, this way I can be 팀장 [tim-jang = team leader]. All the other teachers laughed at this. I still feel a little bit strange about it.
Last Friday evening, in the “TP2” class. Everyone was in a joking mood.
“오징어 [ojingeo = squid],” I said. Somebody laughed. “She could be a new superhero,” I added. I’ve been thinking about superheroes, and this seemed clever. “Ojingeogirl,” I suggested. Dried squid are a universal snack food, with the same level of iconicity as hotdogs in American culture, maybe.
