Submitted to the Vice Principal of Baekyoung High School on 9/24/2009

Background Information

I have three boy’s classrooms which are behavior problems, making it impossible to conduct a speaking class.  Speaking classes are inherently chaotic because students are learning in an atypical way, and that is an exciting opportunity for many of them to socialize.  Some students try to capitalize on this opportunity, ignore the Native English Teacher’s lesson, and abuse the teacher if the lesson interferes with their socializing.

To stop this disrespectful behavior I threatened the boys with dictation of English.  Dictation is not only painful, but it is also good practice for listening exams.  They chose dictation over behaving, unfortunately.  These boys have no respect for visiting foreigners, for women, or for teachers in general.  I do not make rules to be broken or make threats I don’t carry out.  If I were to do so, then my words would mean nothing.  And so we have dictation…

In every class now, I have the students tell me what the rules of class are before class begins.  After several weeks of this, a few classes no longer need to recite the rules and they just automatically follow them.  This is the goal, and this is the process.  Once I am confident they can behave themselves, then I know I can do many of the TESOL communicative activities I was trained to do.  Because these teaching techniques require a lot of student movement and participation, it is imperative that the students respect me prior to starting these activities.  So we are almost there, except for the three problem boy classes.

Today’s Incident

I asked the boys for the class rules (which every other class has been able to tell me) and heard none.  The class would not take their seats, they were continuing to socialize ten minutes into the classroom, and the student in question (I did not get his name during all of this, so I will just call him “the boy” from now on) was especially defiant in the amount of talking and sound level of talking he continued to do – both while I was speaking, after I told him to respect me as the speaker, after I told him again, and after I told him again.

I told the class if they could give me one class period of dictation following the rules, then I would drop the scheduled dictation for next week and they could enjoy going to the English Zone when it is completed.  But the students today did not seem to care that they could have the last punishment dropped:  they continued to make my class their social hour or sleep.  The amount of total disregard for everything I said was too much, and I got a stick from the back of the room and started to hit desks where students were sleeping.  The boy in question continued to ignore me when I told him to stop talking.  I told him that if he didn’t stop it, the entire class would get another dictation.

I told the students to get out paper and pen and only about half a dozen did so.  So I had to yell very loudly to get out paper NOW.  Several students started mocking me and copying me.  I told them that it was obviously their choice to keep getting dictation, and they could have had next week’s dropped if only they had been respectful.  I warned them that if they continued like they were, I would add another week of dictation as punishment.

I proceeded with dictation, and the boy continued to talk.  I then told him to shut up.  And he continued to talk and laugh at me.  Because he was the leader in this, I decided to punish him.

• I told him to get on the desk and he responded by putting his forearms on the desk. (the boy is smiling and laughing this whole time)
• I told him to get ON the desk and he stood up and then lay on the desk.
• I told him to get ON THE DESK on his knees, and he sat on the desk in a comfortable position.
• I told him ON YOUR KNEES and he pretended he didn’t know what knees were. (the boy started playing sick and making jokes so the entire class was laughing)
• I told him to put his arms up in the air, and he told me his arms hurt because he was late.
• I told him I didn’t care what happened when he was late this morning:  I wanted his arms up in the air.  (the boy defiantly laughed at me, was being a comedian with whatever he was doing with his arms, and the entire class was laughing)
• I told the boy to go out in the hall.  (the boy started sticking his head up through the class window making faces)
• It is at this point that I left the classroom and decided to take the boy to the Principal.  (the boy laughed and said okay and was happy to go to the principal for some reason)
• So I turned him around and took him to the Vice Principal instead.

In Conclusion

Teaching in Korea is very different and challenging – the students are very immature, the classes have about 10 more students per class, the students have no respect for anything but the exams.  This is difficult enough for Korean teachers, but Native English Teachers do not believe in hitting and violence, we are not allowed to do so, and we do not have the power of grades.  We essentially have zero power.  Neither do I believe in bribing children or treating them like best friends – we are role models and authority figures, whom children should respect because we know things they need.

I need (and all NET’s need) more support with these most difficult students, because the culture is soooo very different and because we are stripped of all power.

I would also like to add that 75% of my classes I enjoy, I feel the students are learning a lot from me, and that even though we may have small difficulties on occasion, they are learning a little more about real respect, other cultures, and global perspectives.

Please find some appropriate punishment for this boy, so that the other students know that it is NOT OK to disrespect a Native English Teacher.

Thank you.

Sincerely, Leanne Leith

Btw, the English Zone is beautiful and I look forward to having a dedicated environment free of the student’s normal distractions.

I was just called to speak with the head of the department about this incident, and it has been determined that the boy will be given a second chance.   The boy was asked to write an essay about why what he did was wrong, and was told that if it happened again he would be punished.  I told him I was very unhappy and disappointed with this decision, because now the entire class will know they can always get a second chance.  I told him it is critical that a native English speaker get support regarding discipline matters.  I told him this is why there is a discipline problem in Korean schools, because there are no real consequences for improper actions.

So I guess that seals it:  goodbye Baekyoung High School.

I will write up my formal notice tonight…

So I’m back after a week of intense webmastering for TRACK…

It was a nice return to discipline, teaching by day, being focused by night, having many short-term goals one-right-after-another, to see immediate results, and to value that more than sleep.  I’m hoping to not lose this, as I need it to make all the puppets I’ve been planning in my brain for the past two years, and because it gives me more purpose than just making a buck.

Well, I must be honest – I do like challenges, and I have that in spades here.  AND it has its rewards:  class 1-2 applauded after my last lecture on Why you should learn English.  I’m still pretty floored by that.  I wish I had given that lecture at the beginning of the year…maybe next year…

Or maybe not.  Every day I vascillate whether to re-sign here.  Even though I’m only just now getting a handle on the discipline problem, (2/3rds of the way through the school year!  doh!) I also feel like I know what I’m doing better now.

Basically my approach is to research videos on one topic – it has to be really interesting, it has to have some social message or sample of western culture, and it has to have some value in their lives regarding their future and most pressing interest, which is their test scores.  So lately I’ve been choosing videos which have writing or subtitles and no narration, and I read in real-time so they can get listening practice while reading and hearing English spoken naturally.  Then I just speak about the topic and its relevance to the students, then I create some simple exercise which requires the student to form their own thoughts and express them.  I demonstrate with the co-teacher, and then it takes the rest of the hour to get through all the students.

The snag in this is the students don’t respect each other.  So it’s very late in the year, but perhaps my biggest focus is on mutual respect and consideration, which is sorely lacking here.

If I re-sign, then I get a trip home and back during winter vacation.  If I re-sign, I get to enjoy the English Zone which I helped design specific to my needs, and it is very different than the other English Zones I went to visit.  If I re-sign, I will have the same kind of student that I have been working with, and for which I now have a clue about…

If I re-sign, I will have to stay in this sterile stupid officetel, shut off from Korean culture and the natural environment.  If I re-sign, I will continue to be more than an hour away from the centers of interest in Seoul and my working with TRACK.

If I don’t re-sign, then I must give notice by December and then I MUST find new work.   And I don’t get to come home…  : (

Last weekend I was all prepared to re-sign, but then I met up with Jane and a Dutch adoptee for an Indian buffet lunch in Itaewon, which is the Sodom and Gamorrah of Korea and a magnet for most of the American soldiers on tour and also for many of the hedonistic young foreign English teachers.  Long story short, I was really attracted to the area – not the main streets of Itaewon or Hooker Hill or any of the garbage, vomit, and sad visions of Korean girls who’ve gone down a road they can never come back on – but the depressed area surrounding Itaewon.   An area not comfortable enough to attract westerners.  The area where Jane was born, which probably hasn’t changed much since then…it, and many other hidden places around Seoul, are the neighborhoods playing in the movie in my mind.  I think I would like Korea more if I lived in a place where there was a rhythm to life and you have to greet your neighbors and you buy the day’s food on your walk home, and the walk home is meandering.

So the last two nights I have been researching ’til the wee hours of the morning places I’d like to check out.  It’s very hard, because it’s getting dark very early and it’s almost dark by the time I can get there.   I look at Google maps for the densest urban fabric.  I look for streets that aren’t straight.  I look for areas with topographical interest.  I avoid areas where apartment blocks show up on the satellite imaging.  I’ve researched English translated articles in Korean newspapers about villages and neighborhoods, about urban renewal/village destruction, and about areas that defy re-development because the steep rocks only allow small footprints.  In this upwardly mobile, class-climbing, status-conscious society people here want to live where it’s flat.  Because this society was an agrarian society, the hills have always been where the poor were exiled, because the hills lacked fertility.  these places:  they are left to the old and the under employed. But I think they are beautiful in their unique character.  Much more beautiful than the post-war 4-5 story brick box apartment developments and much, much, more beautiful than the concrete apartments of the new cities and the proven false Utopian urbanist ideals of Corbusier and others.  (how easily I forgot my Architecture history)  Even with doormen and high tech gadgets, the best materials, the most efficient lay-outs, and the great restraint and sophistication of Korean design sensibilities, these officetels and apartment are still nothing more than socialist housing blocks to me: a poverty-filled experience for anyone, even if you pay $1,000 a month for it.

So that’s a dangerous sign.  As soon as I start doing research like this, it usually means I’ve pretty much made a decision to move on.

The question is:  will I forever be moving on?

Yesterday on the way home, a young Asian woman stopped and asked me (with some desperation in her voice) if I could speak English.   She wanted to know which bus to take to Anyang Station.  I started telling her that I didn’t know (but she was totally relieved that I could speak English) and that I only knew the subway system.  But she said that the buses were better and could I read the map for her.  I showed her that the stop she wanted was not on the bus map and that she would have to try another bus stop, and we parted ways.  But then afterward, I wish I had found out more about her and gotten her number.  Another lost Asian who doesn’t speak Korean should be my friend.  But, like always, I was oblivious to an opportunity presented to me…  :(

I’ve noticed several times a red-headed guy waiting at the bus in front of my officetel every day.  So today I went up to him and asked him where he was from.  He told me Canada, and reminded me that we’d met before, drinking outside the GS25 one night.  Is that hilarious or what?  Maybe all white people are starting to look the same to me… ha ha ha!

In the elevator I am surrounded by my reflection.  My bangs are unruly and they are a worry.  I adjust them this way and that.  I realize I am acting very Korean.   Other Koreans enter as the elevator stops.  We all stand in uncomfortable silence, surrounded by duplicates of our uncomfortable selves.   Each of us are relieved proportionally as one of us leaves.

Today Mr. Lee listened to my lesson and it spoke to him.  It spoke to him so much that, in class 1-7 he voluntarily managed the classroom, to the point where he threw his drum stick at a boy and then cracked his skull with it and sent him out of the room.  He really wanted the boys to hear this lesson, and the lesson was an hour long lecture about the importance of learning English.

Basically, I talk about economics.  I tell the students they should care because it’s all about money – which the students are obsessed with.  It doesn’t matter what profession they want to be in as adults, the truth is the big companies’ profits are fueling the entire economy, and those professions are dependent on the big companies.  The economic miracle is all due to a few of these companies that were able to trade globally in a market where English is the language of commerce.

And the language of commerce, like it or not, is English.  I tell the students that if these companies fail, then Korea fails, and you have no prospects and no money and no future.  I tell them it doesn’t matter if they like America or not.  America may decline, but English is on the rise, and on the rise in growing markets.  I tell the kids it’s great they think Korea is the best country IN THE WORLD, but I also explain what xenophobia and nationalism are.  I tell them that if they don’t know the competition, they can’t beat the competition.  I tell them that if they can’t recognize their own faults, then they can’t fix or improve them, and they are doomed to fail.  I then go on to show them a power point presentation of Engrish.com and point out the many ways in which poor knowledge of English hurts Korean image, reputation, and profits.  I explain that Engrish is a joke to westerners, and that it makes me laugh because I am a westerner.  But I also explain that it hurts me because I am also Asian, and it makes all Asians look stupid.

I point out where hanguel letters that have two sounds can create problems.  I point out where type-o’s and bad grammar can create problems, and I point out where a total lack of understanding about western culture can lose business.

This one, is especially tragic.  I tell them maybe 300 jobs and untold hours and untold dollars were lost because no westerner is going to have the confidence to purchase technology that can’t even spell its own name right.  Yes.  This is a color LOSER.  Korea’s loss.  And all because their study of English is superficial.

An hour of this was a bit much, but half the class was focused, so that was a good sign.

Class 1-1, however, is still on their dictation punishment.  I told them the choice was theirs and we could end this if I got two lessons where they could prove themselves to be young men and not children.  But they failed, so dictation will continue.  And then one smart ass decided to make a popping noise with his mouth and it spread like an uncontrollable and moving cancer.  Since I don’t care anymore I made any further disturbances punishable by push-ups and standing against the wall.  There were about nine standing by the end of class, and I sent two outside for talking and being disrespectful while I was dictating.  Mr. Lee left class five minutes early to take care of them, and I have no idea what he did.  But it was nice to see him actually being motivated on his own.  I don’t know or want to know what happened in those halls.

Today  I thanked Seven Star for sitting with me at lunch.  He told me that his thesis adviser was in control of his life, and that he would never achieve his PHD if he didn’t pass the TEPS test like his adviser told him to.  So he spends four nights a week studying English at an academy.  He can’t afford to not sit with me.  He needs the exposure to English.  At least the guy is honest.  So I’m okay with that.  We’ll use each other for the rest of the year.

He still hopes Y and I will mend our differences.   He told me she is in big trouble right now.  Last week the Vice Principal took a photo of her doing something she wasn’t supposed to, so Y STOLE HIS CAMERA.  I guess this story is supposed to impress me, but I don’t think it’s right to protest civil right violations with criminal acts.  And putting your job on the line is short-sighted and dis-empowering.

After a payday dinner out (this time I realized that my bi bim bop place served jap chae, so I ordered that and it was yummy) heading home when I noticed some fellow Baekyoung teachers sitting at a corner convenience store, so I stopped and said hello.

About four guys, sitting but strangely not doing much talking and not drinking. I asked if they were sitting there to watch the dancing girls. (every opening of any establishment seems to have two or more scantily clad girls badly dancing hip hop to Kpop songs, one of whom’s voice is screeching over the music, along with lots of balloons and things…but the girls had thankfully taken a break. They said no, they were just waiting for others to get there. I asked about the drinking, and they said, “later.” So they motioned for me to join them and I pulled up a chair.

I guess I caught them on the only one or two times a year they get together. This seems to be common among all the Baekyoung teachers – they’re too busy, live too far away, and they’re all settled down. Long story short, I ended up hanging out with seven of them for the rest of evening. We checked out the newly (badly) remodeled place the girls were advertising (we all got sports towels as gifts) and had makkolli and soju, then moved on to a sushi bar, (Korean style, which means sashimi and drinks) and then on to noraebang. Like all of the teachers all of the time, many of them were upset about the vice principal.

Shop talk aside, I was really glad to be there, mostly because of Sang Chil. The others joke that Sang Chil’s head is too big. The restaurant serves head cheese along with the makkolli, and they ask me if I know what it is. They tell me it is pressed pig head – like pressed Sang Chil head…Sang Chil just laughs about this – his head is height weight proportionate, but let’s just say he could lose ten or fifteen pounds. He’s taken to riding 30 km every day to school to try to trim down. (like all the other bikers in Korea, he dons full spandex for his ride every day.  He says the seat is very uncomfortable, so I tell him about the blue men riding naked in Seattle, and he tells everyone else in Korean) I tell him that big head means big brain, and they’re just jealous. Sang Chil says I always seem happy, but really it’s because he’s just so good-natured and always making light of everything, that I can’t help but smile around him. It’s really rare for me to be able to say that about anyone: I hate jokes, I hate clowns, I barely have a sense of humor, and whereas I can appreciate wit and sarcasm, etc., it doesn’t really make me smile…but an easy sunny outlook does, and he’s got that in spades.

Had an awesome time and learned a lot…such as, it’s unusual the restaurant I went to had Jap Chae on the menu, since it’s a special treat usually reserved for holidays.  I heard for the second time that the clear liquid from the top of the makkolli is the best, and that thick makkolli is undesirable.  (Mr. S. told me it gives a person gas)  “So why do you shake the bottle then?”  Sang Chil looked at me like he’d been bonked on the head, then started cracking up.  His reply:  “I DON’T KNOW!!!  Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!  Bad habit?  Eh!  Korean custom.”

This reminds me of the time Y was struggling to get her shoes off inside my door.  “Why don’t you sit on the stool?  That’s why I bought it.”  She sat.  A look of wonder crossed her face.  The idea that removing shoes is easier when you’re not standing on your feet hadn’t occurred to her before.  “This is amazing!  I should buy a stool!”

I’ve never been in a Korean home with a stool or chair by the door…It used to be that the floor was quite a bit higher than the entry portion where you took your shoes off – at least a full step higher or more and you could sit comfortably on the edge while removing your shoes.  But now that the modern ondol heating system is just heated tubes of water, the step is only about three inches high.

In an effort to still relate what might be new info for you, before I forget what’s new…

If you come visit Korea, you’ll see many people break the counter of their shoes (the portion which covers your heel) on purpose, stepping on them to make them more slipper-like for easy on and off.  Many women walk around with their high heel sandals unstrapped, and I’m not sure if this is because of the difficulty of always taking them on and putting them off, or because they have so many layers of blisters from wearing bad shoes they think makes them look sexier. And house slippers, (which most homes have at least one pair available for guests to keep them from contaminating the floor the adjumma washes on her hands and knees and which is swept obsessively all day) bathroom slippers (which, if you share a bathroom without a shower enclosure, they help keep your feet dry when you walk to the toilet after someone else has showered – they’re about 5/8 of an inch high and have perforations throughout the plastic sole) and the common sporty plastic slippers most people own and which are di rigeur for students school, are a little wide so they can accommodate a wide range of people, and thus it’s easy to lose one as they slip off too easily. So I’m sure this accounts for the shuffling or skating kind of motion many Koreans exhibit when walking, especially when they are in a hurry.

Also, if you go to a traditional restaurant, there will typically be one of those hand-operated mechanical arms resting by the shoe shelves.  The waitress or cashier will move the pairs of shoes around and put them on the shelves with the mechanical arm.  At some restaurants, too, there will be aprons hanging on pegs for the customers, so you don’t splash soup and kimchi and pepper paste on your clothing.

At every restaurant they hand you a sanitizing pre-packaged wet towel to wash your hands with prior to eating.  Which, as a westerner I’ve always found amusing – since nobody eats with their fingers, and everyone sticks their already contaminated chopsticks into the community side dish bowls.

Rice, you may have heard, is eaten with a spoon.  This isn’t an exclusive rule, but kind of makes sense because Koreans tend to mix everything together, and once the rice has met a sauce, it no longer sticks together, making chopstick retrieval nearly impossible.  Meals start with a soup, and it’s common to add some of your rice to the soup, or any of the side-dishes, etc.

Rice must have 400 iterations in Korea.  It’s ground into flour and made into pasta and pastries, rolled into ropes, cut up and boiled like dumplings, called dduk, it’s beaten into a paste and made into cakes both sweet and nutty, fluffy and refined or rustic, dropped into soups like dumplings, pressed into the broth itself to thicken it, the crispy remains at the bottom of the rice crock have barley tea or water added to create a tea or pudding for dessert, sugar is added for a punch, and then there is the fermented makkolli rice wine.

When Sang Chil asked what I thought of the kids, I told him the boys were animals.   He told me all the native English speakers have said that. He told me Michael, the Canadian who preceded me two years earlier came to class with his HOCKEY STICK. omg! I felt so much better after hearing that!

The PE teacher, who is probably the most handsome man in Korea, is also the most unpretentious, unconceited handsome man in Korea, and his wife is Korea’s most famous female archer, a gold-medalist at the Olympics. And he’s a total goofball singing. It’s interesting to compare what Koreans choose to sing, as opposed to Americans (migooks). You know: some songs just become anthems to a culture or an era, and it was weird and nice to be pulled into a pile of all of them swaying to some anthem and singing at the top of their lungs. It was a huge group hug kind of thing.

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All week Seven Star has been eating lunch with me.  He and this other girl. (I need to learn her name) He’s the only one I told, and I feel bad because English is difficult for him and because he and Y are such good friends – but if he is, then he knows how she can be as well.

Seven Star, with his comb-over and crooked smile…the kids are always making portraits of him and giving them to him. There is currently a portrait of him on his cubicle, which is made entirely of junk food from the student snack shop.  At Easter time, there was an egg decorating contest, and someone made a Seven Star egg head with a comb-over. When I asked the girls in my class what they valued most in life; what would they take with them into space if the earth could no longer support life, one of them wrote down Seven Star. On another occasion, when I asked the students to tell me their best or worst summer vacation experience, one girl relayed how she ran into Seven Star at a bus stop, so it was the best experience. But it was very hot and the girl wanted ice cream, so she suggested that Seven Star buy them both ice cream. Seven Star pulls out his wallet and shows her (he shows EVERYBODY this) how his wallet has no money, because his wife won’t give him any money. (Seven Star thinks this is a riot and loves to tell everyone why he doesn’t have any money.  With all his stories, one can just imagine her as the old battle axe…) So then the girl finishes her story by saying that, at that point, both she and Seven Star cried for ice cream, and then dramatically told us how it then became the saddest day of summer.

The other girl is this funny creature. She has a really high-pitched squeaky voice and everyone pokes fun about it. She is bow-legged, and not very graceful. Her clothes range from dowdy to trendy, and everyone jokes about her behind her back, because she asks people’s opinions about how she looks all the time. (I try and compliment her when it’s a hit, but most of the time it’s a miss) People also wonder why she stays at school at night when she doesn’t have a class…

Anyway, for the last six months she could never get the nerve up to even say hello to me in English, even though people would push her to. But I think something about it just being Seven Star and me has made it safer, and a freaking floodgate has opened up. She’s absolutely giddy about English now, and she tries to talk my ear off all lunch. I learned she’s from Pusan, that she lives on her own! (this is REALLY unusual in Korea) and that she moved here last year specifically to be free. She misses everyone she knows, but she also knows everyone there, and wants more choices in men to date. So that’s why she’s come to Seoul – to blossom, to find a mate. And she dreams of getting out of Korea, and moving to Japan or America. She is almost fluent in Japanese now and that’s what she’s doing every time she stays late at school, she’s studying Japanese. I’m really starting to like her: she’s sweet.

***************

For some reason, I’m beginning to feel like a would-be Amelie. All these characters: Seven Star, the bow-legged girl, Gestapo, Mr. Moon (who the kids call “Mr. Bean”) who left to study more English, the teachers in my adult class, The vice principal, (whose name means “spot” and everyone howls in laughter calling him that) Y, are as compelling as in that movie. Sometimes I feel like they all want me to manipulate their lives in some way. Like they all wish I were as mischievous and meddling as Amelie.  Because I am so unusual here, because in the few months I’ve been here so many atypical things have happened surrounding me, I think they think I have something they don’t.  Like I will do and be outrageous like Amelie and get results.  And they want some of that.  Y just took it too far.  And just like in the movie, Korean ideas about love and life seem really superficial to me. And yet they are horribly sentimental and absorbed with philosophizing about their own lives and Korea, and it stems from self pity.  Just like in the movie, the message is that time is running out for love, so get it while you can or you’ll miss out – it doesn’t matter if it’s superficial, just do whatever you have to do to not end up alone.  I think I’m the only person on the planet that hated the message of that movie.  The characters are endearing, but we must shoot higher, we must not sell ourselves short.

I do care about all these people, and it is maddening to see what they will accept.  Can you say jaded?  And I know that I have no concept of the consequences were they to assert themselves, so I try not to judge them individually.  But as a society?  When the vast majority are living parallel lives of quiet desperation, then the lunacy of not coming together for change is crazy-making.

***************

Sang Chil tells me there is blood in my eye. Alarmed, I realize he means my eyes are bloodshot. I tell him that’s what happens when I wear contacts all day, drink coffee, and follow it with makkolli. Several hours later, as I am leaving the noraebang and we’re saying adieu, he finishes by telling me there’s blood in my eye again. I start to get PTSD flashes of Y telling me you have a spot on your face, your sink needs scrubbing, you look older today, your hair is different, I never see you brush your teeth, you should be more careful with your ID card, you can’t afford that, you must eat this…

I know much of this is cultural, yet I also see the pathology of this constant criticism, and how it affects people: it affects THEM. DEEPLY. Yet they continue to do it to each other and press everyone around them to do the same.   Is the obsessive dieting, skin whitening, mirror-checking, exercising, etc. image consciousness to be better people, or to put an end to the same kind of criticism they dish out so easily?

Y’s doctor told her she needed to gain a couple kilos, so her response was (I watched her) to eat even less and control her portions even more each day.  Anorexia means never having to hear you’re fat in Korea.  It’s a wonder it isn’t even more prevalent than it is, given the climate here.  The climate here.  The everybody’s business is your business, critical, stress-filled climate.

Part of me really wants to stay at this school and not just run away from it.  I want to see if I’m a good teacher.  I want to have a year without celebrity and incident.  I want to be able to say I weathered a long trial and came out stronger, instead of bailing when I see a greener pasture.

But another part of me wants to move somewhere more lively and cultural.  But in many ways, that’s a thing of the quickly disappearing past – and this sterile apartment and high rise new city living IS becoming the reality of Korea today.  And this is not really the memory I want to keep.

But really, I’d just like to be visiting.  Have a blast partying with Koreans, enjoy their goofy sense of humor, but opt out of all the anguish that truly feeling the anthemic bonding requires.  Picture Russians stupid on vodka singing a ballad about suffering and surviving.  Now just replace that with Koreans today stupid on soju singing a pop song about suffering and surviving.  I watched another old movie the other night, and a man had returned home after a tragedy.  All the men were sitting around a table drinking, and the man was crying.  Soon everyone was crying.  And one of the men started singing a traditional song – it was really beautiful and I could tell it was about suffering, and everyone started singing and bellowing out this song from the bottom of their toes.  The solidarity of shared fates, tragedy, defeat, despair is something Americans have never known.  Maybe it’s this whole Asian continent.  Maybe it’s any oppressed society in the world.

I can try and understand, but I can’t relate.  There’s a little of this in the adoptee community as well.  Again, I can try and understand, but I can’t relate.  Maybe my isolation has been greater, or maybe my wall is higher, my fear of vulnerability paralyzing, I don’t know.  I know my privilege is probably the same.

Tonight I sit alone in my apartment, and I’m strangely really really happy.

I moved my furnishings around, did some deep cleaning and I love my apartment now! It is now a very tidy art studio and there is now even MORE space. Now, when I get my rowing machine life will be perfect.

Little things make me happy:

Seeing that a laptop cooling stand costs over 40,000 won and that a stainless wire trivet costs 4,000 won, I took the trivet and wrapped the edges with rubber for  traction, and it’s doing a bang-up job.

Buying a recycling organizer which uses old plastic shopping bags and can be broken down, so that makes transport to the recycling bins AND when moving much easier.  Only 9,000 won.

Finding a place for everything and everything has a place.

Realizing I can make a better marionette easier, faster, and cheaper with practically no material costs because everything comes out of the recycling bin.

Having slowly acquired almost everything I need to begin.

Realizing dictation is a great, great punishment for the undisciplined boys classes.

Realizing not caring whether the boys keep up with the girls totally frees me.

Realizing I can tell them they won’t be going to the new English Zone when it opens, because they will have to stay in their homerooms taking dictation until they decide they can control themselves.

Realizing I can always use the threat of staying in their dreary classroom taking dictation gives me POWER.  Mua ha ha ha ha!

Having a great new Korean co-teacher helps a lot!