Yes.
I’ve started a project to build a “town” with my 6th grade class. There are turns, they buy and sell property, start businesses, etc. A classroom economy.
Here are 3 shots of the first 2 days of the town. See how it’s growing, already? Hmm… I hope this works out – the kids (admittedly a small group) seem really into it – more than I even had expected. But they could lose interest. We will see.
I’m really proud of the traffic circle I made.
The school is a mess – a construction zone. Most of the teachers and, more happily, the administrators, are missing-in-action (they get longer vacations, because they’re “real” teachers, unlike the foreigner types). But I’m teaching “summer camp” classes. They’re awesome. No coteacher to have to work with or around or behind. I get to make up my own curriculum. And I know the kids already, so I already have some rapport.
I took some “class portraits” today, because I really want to make a serious effort to learn these kids’ names. Korean names are so difficult to learn, but except for the first graders I mostly have them down. So now I have pictures of them to study and to match up to names, as practice.
Here is my number-one super favoritest class – the 3rd graders.
And here are the first graders, behaving better than usual.
One of the things about the Thursday-Friday school staff fieldtrip that got me really depressed was the fact that I didn’t receive a lot of positive encouragement in my efforts to speak or understand Korean. I felt frequently ridiculed and mocked.
I’ve indicated before, on this blog, that right now, in my life, trying to get better at Korean is near the top of my list of priorities. Call that quixotic, or peculiar, or pointless. But it’s true.
So to the extent that the fieldtrip, and my interactions with some of my coworkers, squashed my optimism and enjoyment of trying to learn the language, it was was a real downer. And so… what have I done, today, in the wake of this?
I felt crappy. I didn’t go off to Seoul, as I’d planned – I lacked motivation. I had zero interest in going out into the Korean-speaking world. I sulked. This is bad behavior. I know.
Here are some pictures taken during the better part of the trip, done with my cell phone, so they have rather poor resolution. We were climbing the mountain Daedun.
And here are the principal and vice principal, plotting some new humiliation – or maybe (more likely) just being clueless and cold-hearted, in a good-natured and paternalistic way.
I have just returned from the worst 24 hours I’ve ever spent in Korea. Well, maybe there were a few 24 hour periods back when I was a soldier in the US Army stationed at Camp Edwards, up in Paju, (DMZ/Munsan/Ilsan) that were worse. But I’m just sayin.
My biggest mistake was that I’ve recently been relaxing my formerly teetotaller approach to alcohol – since my trip to Japan, when I made the breakthrough realization (or recollection – call it “personal historical revisionism”) that one of the reasons I managed to learn Spanish effectively in the 1980’s was because I wasn’t adverse to falling under the influence. It lowers inhibitions, which is a big issue with language-learning.
But this school that I work for – well, they’re a tribe of “college-frat-party”-worthy binge alcoholics. And that’s not my thing. Never has been my thing – even when I was doing my own share of binge-drinking myself, back in college.
Maybe I’ll give a detailed breakdown, later.
Let’s just say, I was witness to manifold unkindnesses, and became depressed, despondent and angry. I was in tears when I got home to my tiny Yeonggwang apartment. I haven’t been there, in quite a while – in tears, I mean.
I hold it all in: the anger, the tears. Bottled up. And then it comes out, when I can finally get alone, even though the drunk moment has passed. Alcohol sucks. And I’ve always been a weepy, grumpy, judgmental drunk – I know this about myself.
Hell. I know I can never renew at this school – alcohol reveals depths and truths about people, and although there are many kind and wonderful people working at Hongnong Elementary, none of those kind and wonderful types are the ones running things – the manager-types showed their true selves pretty effectively, as far as I’m concerned. And not in their own favor, frankly.
I will survive this contract. I can avoid the management types, mostly. But they are cruel, unkind people, who furthermore insist on excusing their cruelty as “tradition” and “Korean culture.” Fine. I know, confidently, that there are other types of Korean culture: types that don’t require cajoling people to get drunk, that don’t require laughing at (not with) underlings, that don’t require groping female employees.
Mr Kim (remember him? – the PE teacher) was actually among those who were pretty kind to me. He seemed a bit disgusted with how out of control the alcohol games got, too. He explained to me, mostly in Korean (with a dictionary in hand), that we should make a Hongnong Alcohol Blacklist, and that the first three members included certain highly placed individuals in the school’s administrative staff. I laughed at that, and he was sullenly pleased that he’d managed to make a joke across the cultural and linguistic divide.
Okay. That’s enough.
Looking out the window of the bus, coming home, I saw a cloud with a silver lining. Literally. Korea is a beautiful country. And there were enough “off to the side” kindnesses shown to me in my sadness, today, that I know better than to give up on the humanity of Koreans. Generalization and stereotyping are almost always really bad ideas.
Here’s a mountain or two, that I saw.
These are some pale blue paintings from temple walls. I took these pictures a while back but decided to post them now because I can’t think of anything else I want to write just at the moment.
Korea has no donkeys, mules or horses. I don’t know if this is characteristically Asian, or if it is more specific to Korea, as a legacy of the total destruction that occurred during the Korean War. But it’s one way in which that makes rural Korea different from other poor or developing countries I’ve visited – mostly these have been in Latin America, where there are strong traditions of using equine beasts of burden, but I also remember seeing a lot of rural animals pulling things in Morocco.
Anyway, rural Koreans use these small, two-wheeled tractors instead. They can pull carts to and from town, they can work in the fields… they are general-purpose, internal combustion beasts of burden – although you can’t eat one if things get rough. Back when I was in Korea with the US Army, the soldiers had a slightly insulting name for these tractors: kimchee rockets. For whatever reason, that term has stuck with my mental vocabulary – it’s difficult for me to think of them as anything else.
We were constantly having to dodge kimchee rockets when we (my support battalion) drove rural highways in northern Gyeonggi province (near the DMZ) back in 1991. There’re a lot of expressways and much more development up there now, so the kimchee rockets are rare on major highways. But there are still a lot around in Korea – especially down in the significantly backward part of Korea that I’m in now.
Here is a picture of a farmer driving his kimchee rocket towing a low-tech, ad hoc trailer, into town on the road in front of my apartment here in Yeonggwang. I took the picture yesterday morning as I watched the fog lift, while waiting for my carpool to arrive.
The view from the new, probably temporary English-teachers’ staff room, taken last Friday when it was rainy and steamy-hot, right after the chaotic move.
Note that even a town as small as Hongnong has some high-rises, the cookie-cutter 20-storey apartment buildings that are ubiquitous in Korea. The overall population of the town is probably about 15,000, I would estimate. Not big enough for a traffic light, by Korea standards. But they have a 7-11. And about a dozen churches.
One of my favorite movies is “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.” It’s a weird movie, and funny. There’s a line in there in which John Lithgow’s character, Dr Lizardo (AKA John Whorfin, the evil Lectroid from Planet 10), says “Laugh while you can, monkey boy.” And the term “monkey boy” arises at other points in the movie, too.
I was hanging out with some rather hyperactive and English-deficient 5th grade boys during a recess period, recently, and started aping some of the Lithgow lines from the movie, using Dr Lizardo’s over-the-top fake Italian accent. The concept of “monkey boy” was something these boys were able to wrap their minds around, and so it became a bit of an out-of-control meme. I added the prefix “crazy” to it, and in that form it became a form of address, as in, “what are you doing, crazy monkey boy?”
The boys love it. And now, anytime they see me, they say, in good English (if somewhat Italianesque-sounding, a la Dr Lizardo), “I’m a crazy monkey boy!” I think the other English teachers are annoyed with this. But my thinking is: at least one of these boys may never have uttered a coherent sentence in English before this meme took off, and in that sense, I’ve taught some English.
It’s funny to imagine this will be something they always remember. I can imagine a scenario in which one of these boys, someday grown up and in his 20’s or something, is in some setting where he meets a foreigner, and decides to say the only thing he knows in English: “Laugh while you can, monkey boy!”
Here are two pictures of some of these boys, monkeying around in the hall (I’m pretty sure they’re miming some kind of pregnancy and birth scenario – note that the one has his head up under the shirt of the other!):
I learned, in an email from my father, that my cat (well, ex-cat? ex mine, anyway) was put down. She was 15 years old, and had been sick for a long time.
Bernie was a good cat. We got her as a tiny kitten in February, 1995, in St Paul, Minnesota. Here is a picture of her, from 1997, in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, where Michelle and I lived at that time. She was a well-traveled cat, having lived in 5 states and driven across parts of the country at least twice.
I get to harbor guilt feelings about this death, too. People and animals, whom I leave behind, and then they die. Michelle and Bernie had a link – I would call it a “dysfunctional relationship with Jared” link. So it’s a fitting time for Bernie to go, I suppose – today is very close to the exact 10-year anniversary of Michelle’s suicide.
Another awesome pic, from a drive across Texas/New Mexico in 2007. Note that she was a very good “car cat” – she would just sit and look out the windows for hours on end.
Here are some pictures to go with my last post about yesterday’s hiking experience on the southern flank of Mudeungsan.
I’m back “home” in Yeonggwang after my weekend adventure(s). I’ll write more later – lots to write about, I suppose, if I really wanted to. But for now, here’s an awesome picture I snapped yesterday evening.
I’ve always loved taking pictures of random dogs when I travel… or of any animal, really.
My friend (and colleague at work) Byeongbae took me to his home, where I met his wife. He lives in a very modern and nice apartment in a modern development in the southeast part of Gwangju – the area reminded me a lot of Ilsan, actually. Here is a view from his apartment.
After that, he said every Saturday he goes to a bathhouse. He invited me to accompany him. I’ve always thought the Korean bathhouse tradition was cool, but I admit I often feel uncomfortable as a “foreigner” going to them – so it was nice to go with someone as a “guest.” It was actually very relaxing. After that, he and his wife and I drove out the eastern flank of the city, in Mudeung Mountain Park (actually near the hotel where I stayed during my orientation). We visited a temple there called 원효사 (Wonhyosa). I took some pictures.
His wife joined some friends at maintaining a vegetable garden that is in the woods near the temple.
Here is my friend, hamming it up a little bit beside his car, while we waited for his wife and their friends to get back out of the woods.
[this is a “back-post” added 2010-06-21]
With reference to Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Atlantic: the view from my window, right now.
So, on the good side – my window has a view. When I lived in Ilsan, all I saw was the wall of windows 3 meters across the courtyard. I love when the clouds get heavy and it rains. If you can ignore the heat and humidity, summer in Korea can be beautiful. As you can see, rural Korea isn’t really that rural.
One of my first graders presented me with this picture the other day. How did she know I like cats? I put on the bulletin board.
Unrelatedly and randomly, here is some 김치볶음밥 that I made for myself this evening.
[this is a “back-post” added 2010-06-03]
A while back I took a hike up the mountain to the east of the town. Here are some pictures.
Looking east.
Looking back along a little road.
Looking at the town. In the foreground, one of the monuments to the dead that can be found everywhere on hillsides in Korea.
We had staff volleyball yesterday afternoon. It typically happens on Wednesday afternoons, if it’s going to happen. This time, instead of it being “intramural,” Hongnong Elementary (my school) was playing against Beopseong Elementary (the next school down the road), and so we all piled into various vehicles at around 3 pm and drove over to Beopseong. I thought I would have to play. But they were taking the competition with the other school too seriously, and they had already seen that I wasn’t really very good at volleyball, so, as the game against the other school progressed, it became evident that I wouldn’t be invited to play. I just sat and watched.
First, there were a couple women’s games (female staff vs female staff), and Hongnong won those games. My fellow foreign teacher (who I got to know because she went through orientation training with me at Gwangju last month) played for her school’s team, and really did quite well (better than I have done so far, anyway).
Then it was time for the men’s games. They played three games, and after Beopseong won 2, that meant there was a tie between the schools, 2 games to 2, because Hongnong had won the women’s and Beopseong had won the men’s.
The final game was quite suspenseful, and, honestly, some of the most entertaining volleyball I’ve ever watched. I didn’t resent not being allowed to play – I probably would have messed up. The last game came down to 20 points vs 20 points. There were a lot of amazing volleys, too. And finally, Hongnong won, 22 to 20. The pictures aren’t that good, but here are a few.
First, the women’s game – you can see my colleague Donna, who teaches at Beopseong, looking victorious after a winning a point.
This is the last men’s game, during a long volley after the game was tied 20-20. That’s our vice-principal looking appropriately dynamic in the white shirt in the foreground.
This is a picture of the Beopseong campus.
[this is a “back-post” added 2010-05-29]
저는 어젯밤에 긴 산책을 한 것 있고 아름다운 폭포를 발견했어요. 나중에 찍은 사진을 추가해 보겠어요.
Here are some more pictures from last weekend’s hike over to Gamami.
First, of me – the town in the valley behind me is Happy, Harmonious Hongnong.
Next, walking down the highway near Gamami.
A little before that, looking down from the mountain, southward, over the Beopseong inlet.
Last, the (in-)famous nuclear power plant – one of the largest nuclear power production facilities in the world, from what I understand. “Springfield, Korea!”
Yesterday with some of the afterschool kids (I don’t have an afterschool class on Thursday, but my co-teacher and fellow foreign teacher Casi have one) were playing with the green plastic alligators. They were having a lot of fun. Here is a picture.
Here is a picture of one of my first-graders, Haneul, who insisted I needed to take a picture of her.
Today is Buddha’s Birthday, a national holiday. Casi and I walked over to that Baekje Buddhism monument this morning (appropriate, right?). Here is a picture of an unexpectedly ascetic-looking Buddha that we saw there – see his ribs, showing?
Now I’m in Gwangju, where I found a place with FAST free internet wi-fi. I’m fixing and updating my blog.
Today, I went with my friend Peter (who’s finished his contract at hagwon in Ilsan and who is visiting me for a few days) on a long, long hike over to Gamami beach (가마미), which is the coastal part of Hongnong Town. It was a great hike. Here are a few pictures.
[This is a “back-post” added 2010-05-21]
I have decided to call my new home Hantucky – a combination of “Han” meaning “Korea,” and the increasingly productive place-name suffix “-tucky,” meaning “some place kind of like Kentucky” (cf. the popular appellation Fontucky, for Fontana, California).
Here is another picture of my school, looking northwest toward the mountain behind it. Behind that, you will find the infamous nuclear power plant, and the Yellow Sea. I want to go hiking over that mountain, soon.
Today, I went out to Hongnong to hang out with my FFT (“fellow foreign teacher”) and experienced severe apartment envy. Not only do I envy the fact that she lives within walking distance of work, but also her apartment is just as big as mine and much cleaner and brighter (more and better windows) than mine. Ah well… such random inequities are inevitable, right? I will try to focus on the positives of my apartment in Yeonggwang. It’s more centrally located and convenient to a marketplace and bus station. And it doesn’t have Jehovah’s Witnesses lurking about on Saturday mornings – we shooed some off at her place this morning.
Anyway… I wanted to walk up the mountain west of Hongnong, but she wasn’t interested. I’ll do that on my own, some other time, I guess.
Here is a picture of Hongnong Middle School, seen from the main drag. Note the rural character of the community. Heh.
Meanwhile, here are some pictures of my long walk around Mokpo yesterday.
[This is a “back-post” added 2010-05-09]
My new apartment is not called an “apartment” by Koreans. The term “apateu” is reserved for the cookie-cutter apartments found in high-rises. Several of my coworkers have told me that I’m living in a “house.” But, by the standards of American English, it’s still an apartment.
It’s the top, third floor of a commericial building. Maybe it could be called a “flat.” Or, very charitably, a penthouse. Underneath me is a hairdresser’s shop and a tteok store (tteok is Korean rice-cake, in at least 10,000 varieties). The apartment was frighteningly filthy when I got into it on Monday – I was afraid to sleep on the bedding provided, and the floors had enough dust that walking on them barefoot was a bit like a stroll on the beach.
I’ve been cleaning industriously. And I’ve been attempting to decorate. It’s much better, now. And, on the good side, by Korean standards, this apartment is huge. Gigantnormous. And it has access to a rooftop “balcony” area that I could see becoming a nice spot to hang out on summer evenings – as long as I do some cleaning and invest in some kind of patio furniture.
Here are some pictures. Note that the wood-looking floors are just the ubiquitous Korean “wood-flavored linoleum” – they look much better in the pictures than up close and personal.
First, my livingroom, with TV and a few weak efforts at decorating – the textiles strategically placed to cover holes or blemishes on the wall.
The view from the rooftop area, looking north, I think… I haven’t got my directions completely down yet, in my neighborhood.
The kitchen area.
The entry area.
The bedroom. I bought some new bedding, and have been sleeping on the nice firm mattress, but I can confidently say that I will migrate to the floor, Korean style – especially once the weather gets hot and sticky.
The “extra” room – maybe it will be my office/studio?
I’ve lived in worse places. Some cleaning and decorating will make it fine. nd… it’s the most space I’ve had since … wow, since I was married, maybe. Too bad all my junk is in a storage unit in Minnesota – if it where here, I could unpack it all and sit and admire it.
That’s me standing and looking a little bit goofy in front of one of the entrances to my new school. The sign over the entryway reads “꿈을 가꾸는 홍농 어린이” (kkumeul gakkuneun hongnong eorini = “Hongnong children [are] cultivating [their] dreams”).
I think one of the things that impresses me about Korean society is that the children seem so happy. Children everywhere in the world can seem happy, but in many of the places I’ve spent time, the children seem, on average, a lot less happy than in Korea: e.g. parts of Mexico, south Minneapolis, L.A. Is my memory or perception distorted? I’m not sure. It’s not a scientific sample, it’s just my gut-level impression.
Anyway… a society with happy children can’t be doing too badly, I think.
The training is over. Tomorrow I will meet my “co-teacher” and we will go to Hongnong (my new town), where I will meet my school and get to see and settle into my apartment, hopefully.
I’m nervous and excited. It’s been a long 8 months, since I was employed. It’s been largely voluntary, but I’m looking forward to being “settled” again, finally.
The training program took us to a soccer game yesterday. It was between Gwangju and Seongnam. The stadium was almost empty – I think our large group of foreigners was about a quarter of the audience. This one guy, Dave, proposed a bet on the outcome. I studied the two teams’ rosters, and said, OK, I think Seongnam will win. And I was right – Seongnam won, 2 to 0. Was it pure luck? What was my betting strategy?
I just bet on the team that had foreigners’ names on the roster. My thinking? If the team can afford to put some foreigners on its roster (an expensive proposition, apparently), then they must be serious about winning, and are probably near the top of the league, since very few foreigners play soccer in Korea (baseball and basketball are different, where most teams have several foreigners at least). I suppose it still could have been luck, but Gwangju was pretty clearly out-classed in the game – the Seongnam team (foreign and Korean players equally) was faster, nimbler, and seemed generally better prepared.
Here, ancestors are thick on the ground. There in my home country, it’s not like that. Ghosts are far and few between. Flowers on the forest floor, clustering and waiting for sunlight – that’s how ancestors are. Sometimes you see a lot, sometimes, not. Mostly, you never notice them. But they’re thick, here. Thick on the ground.
This large group of “newbie” EFL teachers in the training here were taken on a field trip yesterday. Kind of like a one-day tour of some parts of Jeollanam province. It was cool. I took a lot of pictures. But here are two that actually show me – which are rare. I’ll maybe post some of the “scenery” pictures later.
This first picture is of me with some school girls that were at the Nagan Folk Village – a sort of Korean Historical theme park (tastefully done). Kids in Korea will run up to foreigners – especially large groups of foreigners obviously on tour, and say things like “Hello!” “How are you?” Basically, they want to practice English, and be friendly. These girls were impressed because I’d managed 3 or 4 phrases of passable Korean, and so I suddenly became a rock star.
This picture is me in front of a small compound gate at a temple complex at Jogyesan National Park.
The last time I talked with my mother, she shared an aphorism with me that’s been rolling around in my brain: “Before enlightenment, there are trees. After enlightenment, there are trees.” This is probably a paraphrase of something aptly Buddhistic, but I like the simplicity of it.
I was thinking of it, and looking at trees, yesterday, as I climbed up the path up the mountain behind my hotel here in Gwangju. There were many trees, in various stages of springing forth, from bare branches to luxuriant pale, glowing green, with lots of blossoms too. Some of the trees had little labels on them placed by the local park service that maintains the park, and so I set to trying to learn some of the Korean names of trees – assuming I could identify the tree in question based on my own somewhat stale knowledge from my classes in botany of 20 years ago.
It was a steep climb – good exercise to reach to top. The view out over Gwanju wasn’t spectacular: there were too many trees. But it was beautiful. And I had the space mostly to myself, since rain was threatening. It’s pretty rare to have park-trails to oneself, in Korea.
Here is a picture.
Here are some low-rez cellphone pictures from my long walk to the monument to Baekje Buddhism site that I visited yesterday.
I am participating in a rather in-depth, week-long orientation and training program related to my new job. This is very disorienting – because I never had so much as an hour of orientation or training at any of my three previous jobs in Korea.
Some of the “cultural content” it is a bit redundant or boring, for someone who’s already been here a few years. But other bits are amazingly useful, and I find myself thinking, “gee, it would have been nice to have known that, say, 3 years ago.”
Overall, I think this will be good. Plus, the hotel where this is taking place is the poshest place I’ve stayed at in a long time – possibly since I had the Oracle 8i/9i certification at that resort in Pennsylvania in 2004.
Here’s a picture from my hotel balcony, looking west-southwest over Gwangju, as the sun is coming up behind the mountain behind me.
I like to invent little metaphors that sound like good names for rock bands.
Yesterday, walking around Gwangju, I ran across some monuments to the Gwangju democracy movement of 1980. Although the movement failed against the dictatorship of that time, it was a significant turning point in the evolution of South Korean politics.
I began to reflect on South Korea’s “protest culture.” A lot of people view this as a sort of political immaturity (even, or especially, South Koreans themselves), but I have a rather different take on it. Firstly, this “protest culture” is as innate and important to modern South Korean democracy as, say, a town hall meeting is to New England democracy. Secondly, however, I think the fact that people in this country feel free to begin a rally or protest at the drop of a hat actually makes South Korean politics a bit more genuinely responsive and, well, “democratic” than a superficial systemic analysis might suggest. So rather than seeing it as a blemish on the South Korean polity, I see the protest culture as a sort of enhancement, if an imperfect one.
But it seems odd, doesn’t it, that a country still so steeped in Confucian culture and values would adopt protests and riots as a (more or less) legitimate means of political expression? Thus I stumbled on the idea of a “Confucian riot.” Which sounds cool, and is maybe less oxymoronic than you’d think. And I was contrasting the idea, in my mind, with Japan. Japan doesn’t have the same kind of protest culture as South Korea – not at all. Perhaps, lacking a recent historical experience with in-your-face dictatorship (i.e. at least not since WWII, and arguably even before that), Japan never developed the need. Japan is a more consensual polity, whether truly democratic or not. More like a “pep rally” than a riot. And so I stumbled on the contrasting idea of a “zen pep rally.”
I’m just thinking about these things. This is not a polished thesis or even intended to be a well-structured argument. More like a suggestion for two contrasting metaphors for two intimately related but profoundly distinct societies.
Here is a picture of a monument to the “518” movement (the Gwangju uprising of 1980), in front of the central high school. And some other monuments I noticed, not far away.
