Nuggets of Life: Mop-top

Koreans are pretty image conscious, and as a foreigner, I get a lot of comments on how I look, usually re: how fucking bonkers it is. Many of my individual features Koreans find wacky, or worthy of imitation, or something to aspire to. Occasionally, some will decide that this assortment of bizarre features is apparently handsome (I think this is more out of confusion and bedazzlement than anything), but usually they will stare in wonder that such a cavalcade of oddities can actively exist on a human head.

I get the usual comments: I’ve been told that the utter smallness of my face is pleasing, and something others would willingly shave millimetres of cheekbone off for. That my eyes, a murky-brown puddle colour, are dashing and beautiful. That my protruding ears are masculine, and speak to my great stature and likelihood to bear many male heirs. Students spend great deals of time looking deep into my face before declaring whatever they’ve been looking at to be fascinating and asking if there were any professionals involved in its installation. (The best remains the comment of a former grade six: “Teacher, you look a teddy bear.” “…I look a teddy bear?” “Teddy bear. You look.” She nodded solemnly and wandered away. At the time, she was wearing a headband with large, protruding cat-ears.)

The best is the repeated inquires about my hair. I have experienced multiple whispered, in-depth conversations between my co-workers and my friends, in hushed, susurrus tones. Whoever has the best English (or the slowest Korean) will then pipe up, the vox populi, to transmute unto me the matter of such grave discussion. “Michael, they want to know,” this interlocutor intones. “Your hair. It is curly.”

I scan this statement for an interrogative, and come up with nothing. I respond in kind. “Yes, it is.” At this point, the other party usually nods knowingly, as though I have actually divined what the true aim of the conversation is. After I stare dumbly for another moment or two, they feel compelled to ask me plainly. “We want to know. Natural? Or permed?”

Every time, every time, I say that it is natural, the other people look at me with awe. Some reach to their own heads, longingly.

[Sidenote: home internet on the fritz. Posting possibly sporadic and pictureless for next few days.]

No Smiles ‘Til Easter

This is new school planner is paying blogging dividends!

 

The first weeks of any school year are a bitter, silent power-struggle between teacher and the teeming hordes of students set before them. The victor will come to reign supreme for the following year, and unless dominance is established clearly and brutally from the onset, unless you claim yourself as an unfeeling Terminator willing to destroy the lives of your students should the need arise, all is lost. It takes very little environmental circumstance for children to get all Battle Royale on one another, and unless they feel the looming, spectral presence of authority nearby, they embrace their animal nature in an instant. If there is any hope of solace, of control, of a day that does not require Xanax, these early classes must set the tone. This is a war. There’s no tears in war, and there’s none in teaching.

Saga of a Desk Warmed

Today's agenda.

 

For foreign English teachers in South Korea, “desk-warming” is a very particular and horrifying phrase. It describes a time during the year filled with nothingness, with utter, unrelenting boredom. It is a black hole of time and space  where one’s brain slowly degenerates into something resembling seaweed soup, where one’s buttocks begin to develop bedsores from sitting for so long, when all joy seems to seep from the world. I never thought “we will now pay you to sit around and do nothing” would actually fill my very soul with dread, but here we are.

Nuggets of Pedagogy: Election Time

The entrance to my school is through a park, where several branching paths eventually merge and usher my students forth into the bowels of elementary education. On Monday, I took to the park with my earphones in, and soon noticed there was some amount of commotion up ahead. Being in Korea, and being at a Korean primary school, I am strangely acclimated to loud, showy commotions: people chanting, people singing, people waving signs, people distributing leaflets. This is common. It is not as common for my kids to be the perpetrators.

 

Democracy in motion.

 

Being the relentless attention-hog that I am, I switched paths so that I could walk the gauntlet and witness the frenzy first-hand. One of my camp kids, JW, spotted me from afar, screamed my name, and took off running. His compatriots followed, and they stopped before me and began to sing their campaign chant, while telling me to vote for CM, Grade 5 candidate number one. When I informed them that I probably didn’t get to vote, they chanted once more. The further I moved along the path, the more I was accosted once more in partisan passion, as my students threw logic to the wind, abandoned their usual terror of English, and urged me to vote for their chosen one.

 

The campaigns went on for three or four days, much of it bewildering and bizarre as it was comprehensible. When I could read the signs, they usually said the same things (Our school! Happy, clean, fun!), though the parents obviously differed in how much money they shelled out. Some went for heart-felt and homemade, with lots of glitter-glue and embossed construction paper, while the eventual student president, DG, had professionally printed and graphically designed posters (he also, in person, seemed like he really did not want to be in the race, but as my co-teacher mentioned, his mother was probably in on it). What some lacked in flash, they made up for in intensity. And sashes. There were a lot of sashes.

 

The eventual winners were not at all who I predicted, but I did play a part in student democracy, and got to enjoy embarassing my grade 6s by taking pictures of the candidates. And ultimately, that’s what teaching is all about, probably.

The Friendship Buffet

Make friends. You have exactly five days.

Describing orientation when we first entered Korea, one friend recalled the experience as a sort of friendship buffet. Everyone put on their brightest smiles, turned their personalities up to 11, and became obnoxious, exaggerated parodies of themselves, creating a giant sea of Pauly Shore characters. It was a sort of, “And if you pick me, this is the sort of zaniness you’ll get! Heyo!” People marked their territories as different person archetypes, sought out others like them, and staked claims on the people they found coolest. They would spend the next year with these people, and they needed to acquire them as soon as humanly possible, lest they be left alone and, most horrifically, uncool-seeming in Korea.

Nuggets of Pedagogy: White Day

White Day, for those of you not East-Asia-side, is a greeting card holiday invented by Japanese candy companies. There, Valentine’s was repurposed as a day where women would buy sweets and chocolate (or make them) for the men in their lives. White day, March 14th, was subsequently invented as a payback day, where men in turn give chocolates or candy to the ladies. It is also celebrated in Korea, because Korean candy companies also enjoy money, and were like, “Why are we not in on this racket?”

As I left school today, a cadre of 4th graders bolted to me, as they often do, to say hello, realize they have a small repertoire of English beyond “hello,” and then stand around idly grinning at me. We talked a little in Korean, and just as I turned to go, one of my former students spotted me from across the playground and made haste. He arrived, huffing and puffing up in my grille, and produced the above giant lollipop.

“I’m not a girl,” I casually mentioned, in both English and Korean, just in case it wasn’t clear. He shook his head, remarked that this was okay, and pushed the candy forward again. Never one to turn down free candy, I accepted, he bowed with an enormous grin, and scampered off into the distance, happy as could be.

In summary, I think I just agreed to go steady with a Korean 7th grader.

Drinking the Kimchi Koolaid

Neon Sea: How did I live life without you? Guide me home.

There comes a time in living abroad when the things that are weird begin to stop being weird anymore. Cultural understanding, proper time for acceptance, and a unique blend of Stockholm Syndrome swirl together to suddenly make things that were once utterly bewildering, teeth-grinding annoyances become normal, every-day. Things I once found impossible to comprehend and soul-crushing to endure are now part of life, and their absence confuses and frightens me.

Housecleaning in the Echo Chamber

Hello, gentle readers. I know that you are out there, funneling words from my fingertips directly into your own eyeballs, and I am flattered that people go on reading this blog on a regular basis. But sometimes, I run out of things to say. Despite living in another country and daily experiencing weird things beyond my previous imaginings, I find nothing is humorous or bizarre enough to preserve in splendorous internet amber. I wither and my fingers twitch over a sullen, silent keyboard as I try to figure out what the hell to talk to you guys about.

Now is not one of those times, mind you (I’ve got like six posts gestating on my flash drive), but it’s happened before. It will happen again. To insulate myself against the ensuing panic when I can’t think of what to write, I bring thee this: Ask Me Anything. A place where you, the viewer, can express your deepest, innermost queries about me and my life, as I know these issues consume your very spirit even as we speak. Ask me about life, Korea, and teaching, or just tell me how much you love and worship/loathe and despise me and everything I put to words. (Or, do it by email! stupiduglyforeigner [at] gmail [dot] com)

Onward, internet soldiers.

The Big Boy Airplane

Hop on board.

 

The first time I can remember being on a plane, I made number of observations. The predominant one in my young noggin, upon glancing out the oval porthole to the great, cloudy panorama beyond, was, “Where all the angels at?” (I was a very literal child, and when I discovered a distinct lack of winged cherubs lazing about in the sky, I was remarkably unhappy). The next thoughts: I don’t like the food, the seat is uncomfortable, and oh my god how are we not there yet. I also remember looking around, seeing families, and then seeing lone adults, especially young ones, and being bewildered. What were they doing? Where were their mommies? How would they not die?