The Anniversary

Take off your shoes and stay a while.

Words seldom fail me, as this blog can generally attest. When confronted with difficult situations, with environments and occurrences that muddle in my noodle and seem hard to process, I can usually sit in front of a computer, compile several hundreds of words, and suddenly things make sense. Things fall into place: disparate emotions and confusing pieces coalesce, and I can deal with things again. This is preface to say that I’ve never been so dumbstruck, so wordless to describe my feelings about re-signing for another year in Korea.

Strange Voyages on the Internet Seas

Of those few meager hits that I accumulate, I often wonder how people came to find me. Sure, there are people I personally harangued in the real world, and some who have gotten through this, the great series of tubes, via vigorous linking. But some people stumble here on the sandy shores of Stupid Ugly Foreigner purely by chance, by looking out into the great waters of the electronic world and forging forth in search of the weird, the sexy, the funny, the gruesome, and usually some gangrenous, misshapen mixture thereof. How exactly did they end up here? How happy were they that they arrived? Let us cast a look upon these wayward travelers and remark upon their glorious sojourns.

Life and the Faulty Pause Button

Okay guys, you can go on break now.

When I decided to move to Korea, it was very hard to process the idea that the other part of the world would keep going without me. I’m not trying to sound remarkably self-absorbed, although that may be true, but it was difficult to conceive. Sure, people would get older, and taller, and gain a wrinkle or a grey hair or a tan in my absence. Hairstyles would change, weight would be gained or lost, coats of paint would be applied to walls. Time would obviously pass. But it was difficult to really believe that the lives of others I was so involved with would continue to forge ahead without me somehow involved in the mix.

Summer Camp: War of the Watercolours

Massive budget for camp. What should I do? Spent hours at the art store!

Foreign teachers in Korea are made to stick around during the semester breaks. We get some vacation, but in an effort to make us actually do some work in our otherwise cushy jobs and not let us run wild and free with exorbitant vacation time, we teach “English camps” in the summer and winter vacation time. These are, essentially, bonus classes with any number of configurations of kids. The classes are made up of volunteers or, more often, screaming, kicking, disillusioned vacationers being extorted into extracurricular education by parents who would very much enjoy getting them out of the house for a few extra hours.

Nuggets of Pedagogy: Taming of the Goon

Every grade has one or two “problem students”: those kids rued and infamous for their misbehaviours. Even with those staff-members whose English is shakier, these kids are one subject that can be easily discussed. “You know Minho*?” another teacher asks. I nod – I know the kid, and I know exactly where this is going. “This student… has troubles. Always make bad. Homeroom teacher is very headache.”

One particular kid up for regular discussion is N. N. has always been a little louder, a little gruntier, and a little more aggressive than the other kids: I’ve just tried to consider it part of his charm. He knows maybe 20 English words, one of them being my name. I see him wandering around the neighbourhood with middle and high schoolers. The carry themselves in such a way I cannot describe other than with the word “skulk.” His actions in school are legend, passing through a giant chain of whispers as he stomps past. “Did you hear what he did?” the onlookers say.

Every grade six teacher knows about N. Every grade 5 teacher remembers him as though he was a natural disaster enacted upon our school for past sins, like a plague of locusts and swears. They are just relieved he is out of their hair.

I think I might be N.’s favourite teacher.

I’m not going to claim pedagogical genius here, or something. I’m not doing anything special, and I’m certainly not more involved in his life than any other teacher. He just really likes me for whatever reason, and listens to everything I say, even when he doesn’t understand a word of it. I… don’t really know why.

After I returned from my grandfather’s funeral, N. saw me walking into school. We were at the main entrance, in the depths of the morning influx of students, messily and noisily changing into their indoor slippers. He barreled through dozens of third graders to come to my side. He seemed, for a moment, deep in thought. “Uhh…. Grandmother!” he called, with due urgency. He couldn’t really think of the word, but I was still pretty touched by the show of support. Every time he saw me for the next two weeks, he would ask me, in English or Korean, if I was alright.

I told my coteacher about it. She looked at me, confused, like I had surely misspoken. She repeated his name, in case I had mistook him for another burly, angry kid. She squinted at me for a long time, wondering if this was some trickery of the English language, and what I actually meant was that he spat on the name of my ancestors. After a few moments to process, she told me, “I did not think [N.] was capable of these kind of emotions.”

But he is, although he apparently doesn’t often show them. I want to figure out how it is I have got this kid on my side, so I can bottle it and use it for every student I ever meet in the future. For now, I guess I’ll just enjoy the unearned loyalty.

 

*For the record, “Minho” is a pseudonym. It’s basically the Korean John Doe.

Home in 11 Meals

Toronto: land of diverse food options.

How to summarize 2 and a half weeks home? The place that I grew up, where everyone I ever knew and loved lives? Where I did stuff, and saw people, and slept in a comfortable bed and had constant air-conditioning, and regular, unrestricted access to a pool? I could allow you to swim in the sea of my neurotics, on the mixed feelings I got about returning to Korea when everything at home just seemed so perfect (except for that whole, you know, joblessness thing). I could talk about how weird and how good it feels to be back in the adopted home. But food is evocative, and it provides me a nice narrative structure when I couldn’t hash another out, so here we go: Toronto in 11 meals.

The Foreigner Card: Being a China Shop Bull

Foreigners: always dancin' in fields and ruinin' things.

Social norms: they exist. Canada has them, and so does Korea. Canada’s are deeply programmed into my brain, and thus I anticipated a great deal of trouble moving to Korea, having to stifle these rules of engagement for a set often completely unlike my own. In social situations, I assume I’ll be taken as a sort of marauding barbarian–a defrosted caveman completely incapable of restraining my natural urges set fire to villages and steal all of the comely wenches. But living here for a year, I’ve come to learn how much lee-way I’m given, how much people are willing to pardon my comparatively Viking-like ways.

Lost Time-Zone: The Jet-Laggening

Just taking her for a quick spin along the coast. Back in a few hours.

While I process the nature of my return to Korea and everything to do with my glorious time in Toronto, a brief look at the hellscape that was my trans-pacific trip back.

 As we’ve discussed, I don’t do well with long plane rides, which is a problem, in that I keep taking them. I had booked a flight back to Korea leaving at 8:30 a.m. Toronto time, subjecting myself to a Draconian 5:00 wake-up, but a planned 3:00 p.m. arrival in Korea. Every other flight has landed me in Korea at obscene night hours, meaning taking the last train back to my apartment or waiting around for early morning buses, so an afternoon arrival seemed heavenly in terms actually feeling like a human being again. I was prepared for everything to go swimmingly.