Today I am told to not go outside or breathe the air because there is a yellow dust alert for today and tomorrow.  Supposedly the wind carries the toxic pollution from China here.  The surgical masks come out or people try and stay in.  Me, I don’t think a surgical mask is going to do much to protect against the smaller particulates.  I figure I’ve injested enough hazardous chemicals at the shipyard to kill a moose, so what difference are a few more from China going to do to me?  I will smoke into the wind and flip it the bird…

I wrote this to Myung Sook:

Today I got in an argument with the English teacher representative at Gyeonggi-do ministry of education.  She tried to paint me as critical of the Korean’s English skills because I said the language of the contract was weak.  She tried to accuse me of not appreciating anything and why did I have a problem with the schools.  She tried to assert her power over me by saying that when she approved me she didn’t realize I would be such a problem.  We were yelling at each other on the phone.  Afterwards, I just wanted to go for a walk and do something destructive like have a cigarette.  Only I have been told I was not allowed to leave the school ever.  So I sat there, trapped and crushed by Gyeonggi-do and Korea and my helplessness here.  And I got a little weepy and some teacher noticed and then I was surrounded by concerned people who couldn’t understand.  And then I was balling.  And now I am not only an ungrateful problem to the people who have the power or not to hire me next year, but I am also a weak pathetic mess to all my co-workers.

Young took me out for a cigarette anyway, and I told her that I was embarassed, because I’m really very strong.  Strong?  You don’t look very strong to me, she said.   She doesn’t know how many trials this person has had.  My middle name should be Atlas, I’ve had to hold up the world so many times.

At least I had one really great class today.   (never mind that the earlier class the video monitor doesn’t work, so there goes half my lesson)   Some of the boys really do get it that I’m giving them really helpful tricks and tips and really do care.  So they have some like jingle they say out loud with counting and at the end, everyone magically shuts up.  So they were like not only giving me respect, but forcing the other kids to respect me too.  And they seemed to be the popular kids doing this too.  It was awesome.  I had them teach me the jingle, but of course with my early onset altzheimers I have forgotten it.  I am finding if I don’t write a Korean word down in romanized letters, it is gone forever.  Later today, the second boy’s class was just horrible.  They just think it’s social hour and I spend half the class trying to get them to shut up while it’s their classmate’s turn to talk.  (You can really tell who have spent their entire childhoods in hagwons and who haven’t)  I told them I don’t have to do any of this and that I can just go back to Seattle and let them continue saying “late-uh” and “English-e.”   There are one or two geeks in class who feel bad for me.  One apologized for everyone after class, even.  God bless geeks.

GOAL is scheduling a volunteer for me this Saturday.  I will call rev. Kim and see if he has any sage advice for me, after having seen so many adoptees come and go through his doors.  I think I’m a little different though.  I’m twice as old as most of the other adoptees.  Most adoptees my age do not stay in Korea to live.  Most adoptees my age are too smart to do something so world shaking.  Most adoptees have more options than I do.  I’m here now.  I’m stuck here.  It will get better.  But fuck, the past month has just been emblematic of my life – way the hell more hellish than it should have been.

You know – one thing I’d love the world to learn from those on the bottom is that “cheer up – stay positive – things will get better.”  REALLY DOESN’T HELP.  How ’bout oh my god that sucks it’s amazing you haven’t slit your wrists you should cry and rant and scream here have a beer and here’s a box of tissue go to town.

What was this post called?  Oh yeah. Yellow Dust.  I don’t know why the fear of that dust amuses me so.  It’s the least people in Korea have to fear.

OK. Anyone who knows me knows I at least temper my moaning with trying damned hard.

I have:

contacted two people from Dave’s ESL Teacher Board, met one of them, and will meet another one who has been very supportive and nice, as soon as I can afford to even get on a freaking subway and go one stop away…

created a profile for a language exchange site and contacted a couple of people

will call the first volunteer I had from Koroot, I think her name was Mi Young (what a sweetheart) to see if she would like to hang out – as soon as I can afford subway fare.

I’ve emailed G.O.A.L. asking if I can still have volunteer access, even though I have no specific needs and am not staying at Koroot.

I think some of the teachers at school would like to play matchmaker – they always ask if I have a boyfriend, and I have to remind them I’ve only been her a couple of weeks. One guy was joking about dating but he has a wife. Some guys are the same everywhere, it seems…

I will try to find out where the local YMCA is and see what services they have for immigrants.

Must learn how to ride the buses. The subway is great, because the fare from the satellite cities is 900 won no matter how far you go or how many transfers you make. It is also great because there is constantly a new train every three to five minutes. BUT it is also 900 won if you are only going one stop away. The buses are supposed to be really comfortable – they just take longer because sometimes there is gridlock during rush hour. Nicer because you can get a sense of the city, and the fare is not as expensive.

The problem with anything is always costs. For example, Sebastien of GOAL took me out for lunch after the KBS show, and that cost about 14,000 won. ($9.33 and he wouldn’t let me pay) So you know how it is Seattle American culture to at least make everything as dutch as possible, so I offered to get some after dinner coffee. Well, that ended up costing 9,000 won. ($6) Transportation for the day was 900 subway x 2, plus 2,000 taxi. So even with a free lunch, it ended up costing me about 13,000 won.

Anytime you leave the house for Seoul, it takes about an hour minimum. Then you have to eat. It’s way too easy for each trip to rack up to about $10. Especially, if it’s a social situation such as language exchange. It’s also why I can’t hang out with my fellow English teachers even if I wanted to. They think nothing of dropping twice that in an evening. More like quadruple that, because they like to drink and eat at foreigner bars where the prices are jacked up. I thought students were poor? Come to think of it, I think all the students I trained with had different ideas about what poor is. They were all from fairly comfortable backgrounds.

Somehow, I’ve got to figure out what my expenses are. For example, I know the Emart foods are pretty expensive. It’s like equivalent to buying the packaged gourmet foods from QFC. Because I live in a high rent town, close to a high rent area, there are no cozy street markets here like I’ve seen in Seoul. There only seem to be a couple restaurants where I can eat by myself – all the others cater to two or more because of the way they are cooked. If I can find a real market nearby, will I be able to cook any of the kinds of food they sell? The meals at these restaurants where I can eat are reasonably priced – 4,000 to 5,000 won. Super cheap, actually. But I can’t read anything on the menus and don’t know what to order. Maybe I’ll just have to go every day and order a different thing each day for three months. If I go to the grocery store, I have no idea what I’m purchasing. I really need a volunteer to help me. That, or I need a native-speaker to live with.

Maybe I should just quit eating and just smoke cigarettes at 2,000 won = $1.33 / pack) and drink soju, which I got at one place for 1,500 won = $1 – and one bottle is enough to make one person feel no pain.

That sounds like a really nice plan.

Land of the not-so-calm.  That’s the title of another Korean adoptee blog.  It’s so descriptive in so many ways.

Land of stress is more like it.  Land of internal conflict.

Here I know what I look like.  So now I can paint a self portrait.  But what about a life?

Several times over the years I have been asked for a photo and been hard pressed to find any.  That is because it takes other people to take a photo of you.  And there has never been anyone on the other side of a camera.  That is because I don’t bond with anyone.  That is because I am not fun.  I am plagued by / weighed down by a deep mistrust of people, a deep disappointment in people.

And so I always wanted to be a hermit.  And worked all my life to be one.  And I almost was for a few months, in my cabin in the woods.  I miss that cabin!

Here I am a hermit, but not by choice.  I’ve never longed for company so much in my entire life.  But there is none to be found.  I don’t know how to bond with the culture I’ve been raised with my entire life, and I don’t have the money to participate in the activities of my fellow English teachers, even if they can tolerate my serious presence.  I am rejected by the foreigners in my building, because they already have their own circle of foreigner friends and I can’t show them anything about this culture.  I certainly don’ t know how to bond with a new culture.  I am a social misfit, relegated to my high-tech, efficient box.  To not be able to communicate AT ALL is new.  To not be able to understand ANYTHING is also new.  I seem to only be able to understand “sorry.” Oh that’s right – that’s because that’s one of the few words Koreans seem to be able to say in my language.

Well, I knew this would happen ahead of time.  I was aware of this concept, and mistakenly thought it would not be a problem, as I have traveled alone before.  But living and traveling are two different things, and I have only traveled to places where I could communicate in some limited fashion.

Don’t get me wrong – this is an incredible experience, in an incredible country that will be blooming soon.  But the impact of being uprooted and transplanted but never taking root is even greater here.  It is as if the concrete of this new city is impenetrable, and I will always have a shallow foothold wherever my fickle wounded heart takes me.

And so I write.  I write to the few bodies that have put up with me and my gloom.  Who understand that I did not ask for this dark cloud nor have it seeded with salt.

In my closet is a new umbrella, the first one I have purchased in twelve years.  In Seattle, we don’t want to admit the rain affects us.  In Korea, the closet has a special tray to catch the umbrella run-off.  In Korea, we are resigned to the rain.

I just ate black bean noodles from a package.  Very yummy and comforting.  So glad I got something and it actually turned out to be what I thought it was.

The only jeans I brought with me just presented me with some air conditioning…sigh

Friday at lunch, the only gorgeous male teacher at school (he’s married with a 4 year old daughter, of course) told me I was very strong.  Huh?  Yes.  It is so cold but you are just wearing your shirt.  Koreans all have their coats on.  You are very strong.  He also commented on how much jewelry I have.  Huh? I explained how I really don’t have much jewelry, I just wear the same jewelry every day.  But you have three rings!  Korean women don’t wear jewelry.  Maybe only one ring.  I looked around, and sure enough, the women were wearing no jewelry or maybe only one ring – their wedding rings. I told him this was nothing.  I modeled many piercings all over my ears, my eyebrows, my nose, my mouth…  Korean youth like earrings he says.  I have seen a couple boys with one earring.  Pretty radical.

Also Friday, as we were at the cell phone store, I noticed that my co-worker and the cell phone girl both had on gray eye liner.  So it looks like they have on no makeup, but their eyes are almost imperceptibly lined so as to have some more definition. Koreans are pretty classy.  And it’s having an antiseptic aftertaste to me.  When I see someone who is not put together, who is wearing something crass, who is slightly askew, who looks comfortable, I just want to hug them.

I must look like some gaudy whore to them, all this jewelry and make-up!  Every day I regret bringing my most conservative clothes and fitting in so well with the status-conscious dressing.  I wish I still had my afro and was even more outrageous.  I wish I had piercings everywhere and I was a scarey dragon lady.

Every day I look at my closet and dread putting a monkey suit on.  I feel strangely corporate and part of a machine.

I like all the people at school who have bothered to talk to me.  They have all heard about me and that I am an adoptee.  They all feel – I don’t know – apologetic.  It kind of makes me lonely when they talk to me, though.  I ask them about their families, and then they tell me some scenario that makes me fall silent. Everyone misses their kids.  Idiots.  Their kids are right there.  Spend time with them.  I don’t think I’m going to ask about families anymore.  But I also don’t know how many more times I can say, yes, I like Korean food, yes, I like kimchee, no, it’s not too spicey for me.

It’s time to think about what to ask the students so they will be motivated to say answers out loud.  What do/did you want to be when you grow/grew up?  What are your hopes and dreams?  What do you do/would you do in your free time, if you had free time?  So sad. They will tell me lies.  They will tell me I want to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer.  They will all tell me that.  I think they believe that they believe that.  I don’t believe that.

The things they are proud of, I just can’t relate to.   I did one exercise where I asked them to tell a new person about living here:  where should they visit, what is there fun to do, where should they live, where should they go shopping, eating, etc.   The answers were kind of predictable.  they are proud of their pop music.  they think this area south of the Han river is the best area to live (this concrete new city, devoid of street life and color), they think the over-priced conservative boutiques here are the best.  they love E-mart.

1/4 of all Korea lives around Seoul.  That means 3/4 of the people don’t.  Hopefully don’t live like this.  Maybe I will move south and learn to speak low-class Jeollado dialect and wear cowboy boots and swear and smoke in public.

Right now, all I want is some soju.

What’s that?

The word today is that Barrack Obama wants the U.S. education system to be more like Korea’s.  I HOPE this isn’t the case, because I’d like to sit my favorite living orator down and tell him a few things…

In the past few weeks, I have for once become a grateful adoptee for growing up in the United States and not here.  Not because of the culture.  But because of the state of education.  Of course, of course, they are intimately entwined.  But let’s ignore that for now and just look at the institutions.  (I’ll pull this from some of the various conversations I’ve had with half a dozen Korean English teachers this week)

I am told Koreans study abroad because only three of their Universities have any value at all.  And the top university barely registers as a blip on the international universities of merit list.  In contrast, U.S. universities have excellent reputations and attract students from all over the world.  All this week I became more horrified as the amount of study time Korean secondary students are subjected to was revealed:  At first I thought kids took after school classes and went home around 10 pm.  Then, I found out kids took after school classes, studied, went to hagwans, and then went home around midnight.  Now, today I find out kids do all of the above and either study more or go to more lessons and get home around 2 am.  TWO A.M.  Have to be at school before 8 a.m.  I am told my new town is especially renowned for its secondary school scores, and one block from my school is a commercial district comprised entirely of hogwans.  I asked to be placed in a location near a subway station, but it sounds like the reason I am where I am is more because the area around my private high school and all of the hogwans has become high rent district, populated primarily by families which have moved to live in the center of their child’s studying universe.

I told In-Yeon (sp?) about the alternative schools my kids went to, approximate school sizes, the kind of classes, etc.  She was shocked that such small class sizes and creative, integrated curriculum were public and for free.  I told her how kids don’t do that much homework and spend a lot of time exploring their own interests or hanging out with friends.  Then, when they get to college they go a little wild as freshman, but quickly become very very serious about their studies and put all their energy into it.

In contrast, Korean students get prodded, pushed, and pressured to study, study, study from the earliest of ages, each  year the pressure increasing, until they (hopefully) get accepted to some major university.  Whereupon, totally burnt out, they have fun for the first time in their lives and their studies go to hell.  Thus – poor university ratings and poor university student test scores:  a strange phenomenon, given that Korean secondary schools have something like the second highest math and science scores in the world.

And here is where I will put forth that this is also the difference between learning for tests:  quantifiable, testable knowledge is so different from holistic, creative, intuitive thinking.  Shoveling in data while not being given time to process that data and own it really isn’t sustainable.  American students are greatly lacking in the math and sciences, but more than make up for that through strength in the humanities, which also fosters creativity in math and sciences.   Deriving meaning, formulating concepts, and expressing oneself are the bulk of the American education.   And because it’s owned by each and every student pretty successfully (in my opinion) it’s not only sustainable but fodder for unlimited possibilities.

Supposedly the Korean president wants all schools to be more like American.  But the focus is not on how our institutions are run, but on the English language.  As if the English language is the magic bullet to stellar University scores.  But the prize is not the art of communicating or learning for the love of education.  The prize is still in Korea. The prize is still on scores and prestige. So your offspring can get a top position in a hierarchical corporation, reflective of a hierarchical culture.

This has nothing to do with education.

This has nothing to do with self actualization.

This has only to do with competition.

It is akin to child abuse.

. . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . .

Oh my once culture.

This is madness.

It makes my chest tighten, witnessing the stress of it all.

Can even one thing I say or do provide any alternative or ray of hope to these children?

When I have to make them stand up so they can hear and not fall asleep?

• Went off about being told we would be reimbursed less for airfare on facebook and with my recruiter, who says they will look into it.  Emailed my co-teacher, who probably hasn’t read her email yet.
• Taught the teachers (and vice principal) and they CLAPPED afterwards.
• Met the classes I missed last week when I was at KBS – and I got a boy’s class that instead of being smart ass’s were actually participatory and funny.
• Told the English teacher In-Young that I couldn’t come in on Saturdays for English Club because it wasn’t in my contract…I think she was surprised but took the contact thing as fact and told me she would let them know…
• Returning from a lunch-time smoke, I got nabbed by the missionary (for real missionary) and two others for tea and conversation in the Chancellor(?)’s office.  They wanted to know about my search and to tell me they were praying for me.  They wanted to extend an invitation to a teacher’s bible study group.  They wanted to practice their English. I extended an invitation to start another teacher’s class if they couldn’t make it to the current one I am teaching.  Spoke about getting my own classroom and was told it would be better if I made friends first before I made requests…
• Was told the vice principal insisted on having me get a phone come hell or high water (well, that’s not the words he used) today and was driven to Boemgye by In-Young to do that.  Took over an hour, In-Young translating the whole time.  (I am spelling her name wrong – It’ not Young, Eun possibly? – names are sooooo hard to get right here)
• Was kind of scolded for leaving campus – and found out we have to sign out and GET PERMISSION first whenever we do that.  I’m supposed to show up ten minutes early to school and report to someone and I’m never supposed to leave campus.  I told them I felt like a student.  “It’s just the Korean way.  You’ll get used to it.”  Now I know why (I found out) some teachers go up to the roof to smoke.  But I’ve been advised that I should never go up to the roof…
• I GOT A PHONE!  I had to call the vice principal, as my first call, to let him know that mission was accomplished.  No money down – same person who’d told me 50,000 down when I was by myself the other day…
• Got my first junk mail personally addressed to me (how’d that happen?)  It’s really weird to see something all written in Korean hangul yet addressed in English.

Now, I have to spend several hours getting to learn about the phone.  I got the cheapest phone they have, and the cool violet colored one didn’t work, so I got a gunmetal one.  They were shocked that I didn’t really care what color I had or what features it had.  My plan is per usage because I know I’ll never use it much.  18 won per second speaking and 20 won per text.  So that’s about 70 cents per minute.  So it’s just for people to call me and for if I am lost somewhere.  With English speakers I will text.  Got to pick the last four numbers – but now that I’m at home, I don’t know what the first three local numbers are!