Category: The Wonders of Work

Today is supposedly the last day of school before summer vacation (여름방학).  Summer vacation for students, that is.  And many (if not most) students will be attending summer camps and hagwon for most of the summer – that's the Korean way.  I will be teaching school-run summer classes for the month of August, and I will get next week off.   But I have to continue coming to work this week, as there are many things going on for staff at Hongnong Elementary.  Sometimes it seems a little pointless to have to stay, despite the fact that most of the staff goings-on aren't relevant to a non-Korean-speaking foreigner.

But I'm not sure I really agree with those who vilify the "desk warming" phenomenon.   It's what you make of it.  Most of the staff in a school during these desk-warming days are quite busy:  making plans, rearranging classrooms, preparing presentations for the school talent night, etc.  If one chooses to take the time to interact with these people, and offer to help, you can build a lot of goodwill and it can be a learning experience, too.  

Yesterday, I had only one regular class (the others were "cancelled").  And I did a little desk-warming, I admit – surfing blogs on the internet.  But I also spent some highly productive time developing lesson plans for one of my summer classes, along with the person I'll be co-teaching it with.  And I accompanied one of the third grade teachers with her class to the gym for a highly entertaining PE class, where I kind of had the role of observer / English-speaking kibitzer.  And on Monday, I had my morning classes canceled and the kids for my first grade afternoon class didn't show up, but I was very busy developing detailed program plans for my other summer classes (for which I won't have a co-teacher).  I was working "above and beyond" as they say, making more detailed plans than requested.

Nothing is more effective in building goodwill among unpredictable Korean administrators than unexpected displays of competence and dedication, in my experience.  Actually, that applies to more-or-less competent administrators anywhere.  Korean administrators aren't incompetent – they're just different.   They're operating by different cultural rules, that for them and their underlings are largely transparent.  These rules are only opaque and seem crazy to us Westerners because we haven't grown up within them.

Today was one of those chaotic days.  Yet I feel OK about it.  It's weird how some things affect me, and other things, that seem to so profoundly affect others around me, slide over me with barely an impact.  Some types of chaos I can handle, others I can't.

Today they decided to announce that they were going to start remodeling the language classrooms – immediately.  That meant we had to move to a different place, a kind of supplementary staff room, and teach our after-school classes in a who-knows-where location. 

I wish I had taken pictures of the parade of children helping move all the stuff from the language classrooms.  It all seemed very communitarian. 

Well anyway.  Such is Korea.  Sometimes, given how institutions and groups make and execute decisions, it's puzzling to me how they've been so successful

I’m definitely a little bit sick. I was going to watch the World Cup match between Argentina and South Korea last night, and ended up falling asleep before it even started.  What’s with that? I basically slept straight through – I almost never can sleep 11 hours like that – I can barely make 7 hours normally, these days.

Anyway, I see that Argentina beat South Korea. Which is what I expected, though I was hoping SK could hold down the Argentinians a bit. No such luck – Higuain pulled a hat trick, no less. Ah well. SK could still make it out to the elimination round… as the runner-up team from their group – if they can beat Nigeria.

I did an upload from my camera. Here are some random pictures from recent life.

First, this is the bulletin board at the back of class – I’ve put up a bunch of pictures from my first graders. They were supposed to draw a fixed number of animals of their choice (practicing numbers and vocabulary for animals). Some caught on to the concept better than others. There’s some good drawings for that age group, though.

The next picture is the view from sitting at my desk in my classroom, looking out the door to the hallway and the courtyard beyond, where some workmen have parked a push-cart temporarily. The afternoon scene struck me as somehow picturesque and idyllic, right then, so I snapped a picture.

This is a picture of a second grade Korean Language Arts reader that I found in my classroom. I’m trying to read it, but it’s too difficult for me. It keeps me practicing, anyway.

This last picture is from yesterday afternoon, when I accompanied some coworkers out to where the fifth graders are having an overnight camping excursion (near Bulgapsa, at the other end of Yeonggwang county from where Hongnong is). I didn’t get to interact with the kids much, but I got to sit and listen to some of the teachers shoot the breeze with our vice principal and the local groundskeeper over beer and watermelon, while the kids were doing various activities with other teachers. The picture shows the kids finishing setting up their tents. The whole thing has a bit of a military air to it, which is exactly what I would imagine for a school camping trip in Korea. But I’m betting most of them are nevertheless having a blast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These are my metaphors. This is my mental space.

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

Well, it wasn’t really much of a deluge, as deluges go.

There have been some men working on digging up a sidewalk outside of the hallway outside of my classroom, the last few days. I guess they made a mistake, and piled some dirt in a ditch that was important for draining something. The consequence was that water started oozing into the hallway, making a flood.

My 6th grader, Rachel, came into the classroom toward the end of the lunch hour, and said, “Teacher! You must come the hallway. Now! See this!”

I poked my head out into the hall, and saw the flood. But what was really interesting to me was the way that there was a group of students cleaning it up – with no adult supervision. 5th and 6th graders, fetching mops, and moving the water down the hallway and splashing it out the door. They were not working very efficiently, but the fact they had taken the initiative to do this only serves as another confirmation to my speculations yesterday about how Korean culture still has deeply embedded memes about preparing for and coping with an unknowable future.

Maybe that’s too deep. The flood wasn’t that deep. Here’s a picture of the kids with mops, tackling the flood.

It was a day of minor crises. In my afterschool class for the first graders, a new enrollee punched another kid in the nose while my back was turned. I got to experience that inevitable moment, that every elementary teacher gets to experience at least once, of being bled upon profusely by a wailing child. This was not the first time, for me. And interestingly, the whole thing didn’t really phase me.

It’s weird how when the adults around me do stupid shit, I get furious – I’m thinking of my current mess involving my housing. But when kids around me do stupid shit, I just smile and say, “it’ll be OK.” I guess that’s a good thing.

I carried the child to the nurse’s office, down the hall, and she installed some cotton in his nostrils. I separated the two boys involved, and was hopefully appropriately stern – I suspect the new kid had punched the other because the other had been teasing him for being the new kid. So I assume both were at fault.

Anyway – I have a ruined shirt, with bloodstains. I hope my necktie can be saved – I like the one I was wearing (it’s the one I bought in Germany, showing a map of Leipzig, in silk – the kids think it’s cool: “oh, necktie map!”).

I was so angry yesterday. I was told (not consulted, simply told) that I would have to move out of my apartment at the middle of next week. And that my new apartment wouldn't actually be ready for me to occupy until sometime in early June; consequently, I would have to live in "temporary housing" for around 2 weeks – I guess the school's teacher/staff dormitory. I got to see this dormitory – it's about like my apartment in Ilsan (a small single-room studio), but it seems I will be sharing the space with other employees-in-transit. This was not entirely clear.

I suppose, as I reflect on this, that I brought this on myself: the main thing (really, the only thing) that I complained about, at the start of my job, was the quality of my housing. So for all I know, this little nightmare is the consequence of some bureaucrat in the administrative office getting wind of my complaints and trying to "help" me. I don't feel helped.

First of all, I had worked out a sort of peace with myself about my apartment. I dealt with the filth by buying lots of cleaning supplies and scrubbing the place industriously over the last several weeks. And so part of my resentment now is over this "wasted" investment. Also, I'd been getting comfortable with the positives of the apartment – its large size, it's unique configuration, its very convenient location in downtown Yeonggwang. Mostly, I was just glad to be having a place that I could call "home" again.

And now that's all messed up.

Living and working in Korean society sometimes reminds me, quite a bit, of military life: the sudden, unplanned-for changes in course, the arbitrary announcements, the disconcerting mixture of carrots and sticks, arranged so differently than in American life. So they throw some new thing at you, and you just have to cope. I have been in the habit of calling this "Confucian Immersion Therapy" – but now, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure how Confucian it all is – a lot of things that make Korean society and culture are attributed to the 500+ years of state-sponsored, orthodox Confucianism (hence the moniker you hear sometimes: more Chinese than the Chinese).

But this pel-mel, from-the-top style of people management doesn't really match my understanding of Confucianism. I think it must arise from something else. My guess is the centuries of oppression, both by conquerers and an internal, highly entrenched and privileged elite, have led to a culture of "adapt to the moment at all costs." And, just like the military embeds uncertainty in its culture as a kind of semi-intentional means of ensuring preparedness among the troops, I suspect Korean society may embed the same sort of military-style uncertainty, for similar reasons: you never know who might come over the mountain next week.

What Confucianism offers (and, prior to that, what Buddhism offered, and, more contemporarily, what Christianity is offering) is a sort of equanimity for dealing with this certain uncertainty. A reason. A why and how for coping. But the uncertainty itself, so prevailing, so dominant, so universal – that's just plain old Korean.

I believe in the selective evolution of cultural traits – so I assume that this arose in Korean culture because it was selected for, by historical factors. Now, it is deeply embedded, and, vis-a-vis the broader, emerging, global culture, it offers both advantages and disadvantages. It makes Koreans great entrepreneurs when they are the minority (think of the millions of Korean diaspora, successful small business people all over the planet). When they're the controlling, dominant majority, as in their own country, it can make the whole enterprise seem a bit… well… challenging to deal with.

Back to my dilemma: I've made my frustrations known. I explained my feelings to a coworker this morning: "I feel like furniture." This simple sentence seemed to be something he could wrap his mind around, and made clear that I was unhappy. But he only shrugged, and said, "sometimes it's like that." See? Equanimity.

Korean schools (both public schools and private hagwon) seem to have a firm tradition of the periodic 회식 (hoe-sik [the official romanization is misleading, pronunciation is /hwehshik/] = meal of raw fish), where all the staff gathers together to eat sashimi (회), sushi (조밥), etc., and drink soju and beer and bond together as an organization.

[CORRECTION, added 2010-05-23: I guess the word 회 in this phrase actually means “get-together” or “group activity” according to one of my Korean-speaking readers – but I had always assumed it referred to the sashimi, because 회 also means sashimi, and that’s always – without exception – what was served at these get-togethers, in my experience.]

Korean business dinners are highly ritualized affairs, with complex rules for serving and downing shots of soju with the principal, vice-principal, eldest teacher, etc. Everyone sits down cross-legged on the floor at a single long table – the women staff tend to sit toward the ends, the men in the middle arranged roughly by age (not seniority, which isn’t quite the same) so that the oldest are near the middle of the length of the table.

I mostly try to resist ending up drinking to much, but it’s very difficult. It was interesting to see the principal (who seems very “upright” – not quite the right word but you get the image, maybe) ending up very drunk – because he has to drink some for each shot he forces one of his underlings to consume. He “held court” – sitting in his spot and having people come to him and serve him and he would them serve them. Meanwhile, the vice-principal was making rounds doing the exact same thing starting from the other end, but he was mobile and the people he visited were stationary. In this way, by the end of the evening, each of them had done at least one shot with all the main people under them (I don’t think they did it with everyone, but maybe down to the department-head level).

It was much more ritualized than what I have been used to at hagwon 회식, but it also managed to feel more friendly. Hagwon events always felt awkward, with a lot of tension between various bosses and sub-bosses, probably due to the for-profit nature of the hagwon biz, and the fact that that means no one’s job is secure if the CEO decided to cull the ranks. Of course, everyone manages to show up the next morning as if nothing happened.

I wonder how much of Korean civilization has been implemented by people with hangovers?

I arrived in Suwon just now. I had left some things with my friend here who runs the guesthouse where I stayed in February and March, and I’ve come to pick them up: a box of books, and some winter clothes (which, given how chilly this Korean spring has been, I probably should have taken with me to Gwangju two weeks ago… but, I’ve survived).

I’ll spend some time tonight or tomorrow using the convenient intenet to catch up on my blog posting. I could have gone to a PC방 (internet cafe) last week in the evenings and done it, but I was obsessing with cleaning my new apartment, and focused on adapting to school.  Anyway, if it takes longer to get internet in my apartment, I’ll have to develop a PC방 habit, I suppose – I can’t neglect this blog too much, can I?

Here is a picture of my main classroom at my new job. Imagine it filled with a bunch of wiggling first-graders, as it was this afternoon. As an English teacher, I’ll see bits and pieces of all the grade levels in the school, from kindergarten to 6th grade.

Korean addresses are backwards from what we Westerners are used in most countries I’m familiar with. They list the largest geographical unit first, and then “drill in” or “zoom in” to the most local unit, without using commas. So my new workplace would have a partial address as follows: 전라남도 영광군 홍농읍 상하리 홍농초등학교 (jeollanam-do yeonggwang-gun hongnong-eup sangha-ri hongnongchodeunghakgyo = South-Jeolla-Province Yeonggwang-County Hongnong-Town  Sangha-Village Hongnong-Elementary-School).

The map above shows Yeonggwang County. It’s on the west coast of the peninsula, in the northwestern corner of South Jeolla Province, which is the southwestern mainland province of South Korea.  So you visualize that it’s “facing” China’s Qingdao across the Yellow Sea to the west. The green-bordered blob you see is about 50 km. north-to-south and the same east-to-west, with some islands floating offshore. Maybe I’ll get to visit them sometime.

Hongnong Town is the knob at the top of the map. Yeonggwang Town (the “county seat”) is the cluster of extra roads you can see near the center of the map (but a bit off to the southeast from center).

The county is rural, but it’s not as rural as many might imagine. South Korea has a very high population density, so the number of persons-per-square-kilometer, even in an area like this, is more like New Jersey or Eastern Pennsylvania than it is like Iowa or Idaho. And Korea is crisscrossed by expressways, nowadays, too, so there’s not much left of the long, slow trips on twisting one-and-one-half-lane highways that even I remember vividly from the early 90’s.

I already like my new school. It’s just like any other Korean elementary school, a bit of a cookie cutter architecturally, with the dirt playground in front and the three-story facade of classrooms. But in a town as small as Hongnong, it has a bit of the feel of a community center, too, maybe.

I was shocked and dismayed to learn that my apartment will not be in Hongnong Town, but rather Yeonggwang Town. That seems like a long commute (about 30 km.). Also, when I saw my apartment, it was rather dirty, and definitely a bit shabby. Hmm… lots of cleaning to be done.

I signed a contract today.  This means I have a job – unless the bureaucrats intervene:  I really have too little confidence in the Korean Immigration Authorities' objectivity (which is to say, in their capacity not to be arbitrary), but… I think I have a pretty good chance.  More than 90%.

So I will start in mid-April, presumably – as soon as I get my E2 Korean work visa.  I have to get this from an overseas consulate, so since I'm going to Japan this weekend, I'm just going to stay in Japan until I get my "authorization number" for my visa, which I can take to the Korean consulate there to get the actual visa pasted into my passport.  I may be in Japan a week or two.  Maybe I'll go somewhere interesting:  back to Nagasaki, or over to Tsushima, or something that's a fairly short trip from Fukuoka.

The school where I've signed is in Yeonggwang County, in Jeollanam Province.  If Seoul is Korea's New York City and Washington DC and Los Angeles all rolled into one, and if Gyeonggi Province is Korea's Maryland and New Jersey and New York State all rolled into one, then Jeollanam is Korea's Kentucky, or Korea's Georgia.  It will definitely be a big change.  But I'm looking forward to it.