“In the last three weeks? Everything.”

“Yeah, we kinda figured. You go to the other side of the world. What would you get yourself into? Everything.”

“Well, you were right. I’ve gotten to know Koreans a lot better. I finally have a class with the same kids every day, so I’m getting to know them. I know their names and their dreams and their fears. Also teaching a class made up of teachers, and made a few Korean friends outside work, so I’m seeing this beast from all angles at once. Anyway, I’m putting together some bits and pieces. I edited out/defined all the Korean terms and fixed a few little mistakes and sometimes combined a couple conversations into one, but none of it’s fictional. I’m paring it down to only dialogues, bits of writing and other raw info. You can make your own conclusions and judgments.”

“Can’t wait.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kwon Yuwon

English Reading/Writing/Discussion

12/28/2009

My Schedule Every Day (winter break, Monday-Saturday):

7:30 – wake up, shower, eat

8:30 – leave for school (during-vacation school)

9:10-10:20 – Math class

10:20-12:00 – study English in student study room

12:00-12:50 – eat lunch

12:50-2:00 – study math

2:00-3:30 – this English class

3:30-5:00 – study math or Korean

5:30-9:00 –Class at private academy. One hour is dinner.

10:00-12:00 – Get home to study, review

12:00 – Maybe go to bed. Sometimes stay studying or use computer until 2:00am.

7:30 – wake up, shower, eat

“This is how you spend your vacation?”

“Yes, teacher.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“How’ve your winter courses been going?”

“Only 4 days in, but so far they’re great. It’s nice seeing the same kids every day. I can actually get to know them. Got most of the names down. Are you teaching conversation stuff, or something new?”

“Yeah, conversation. Mostly games. You’re doing debate, right?”

“Yeah, debate, essay writing, a little poetry. Critical thinking stuff. Arun’s doing straight-up debate. We shared some material.”

“How’s it going?”

“Absolutely awesome. Yesterday we debated whether or not Korean high schools should change their English education system.”

“That’s a bit one-sided, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, the kids said they needed more Native-Speaking teachers, more conversation classes, more confidence-building stuff, less focus on the written test scores, etc. etc.”

“Yeah, well obviously. Like I said; it sounds one-sided.”

“There are counter-arguments. First of all, native-speakers are really expensive. The other big counter-argument is that the damn college entrance exam still tests just reading and listening. Since K high school isn’t mandatory and every kid is there just to get into college, if high schools stop teaching to the test, parents’ll just pull kids out and put them in private education full-time. High-school’s got its hands tied; they gotta teach for the reading test.”
“Yeah, that’s true. And none of the Korean teachers speak English in the classroom. I don’t really blame them, cuz none of them have perfect spoken English, and they’re so scared of the shame from showing it.”
“They’d be better teachers if they got over it. Students don’t really care if a teacher makes a slip.”

“It doesn’t matter if the students care or not. The teachers care, and it’s terrifying for them.”

“I wonder what it would take to get the test changed.”

“A miracle. You can’t change the test. It’s in.”

“No, really. What do you think it would take to change the English section of the college entrance exam? It’s what sets the pace for everything else; the high schools, the private academies, the tutoring, the lost childhoods, sending kids to live abroad. All of it’s geared for that test. Trying to make a move without changing the test first is just begging to fail.”

“You can’t change the test.”

“What if they brought in Native-Speakers to help make the test?”

“They won’t. They’re too proud. It’s the old-guard who makes the test. The most senior education & University people. They’re the top. They’re supposed to be infallible; you think they’re gonna hand the job over to someone else?”

“There’s gotta be a way. The president knows the whole thing’s gotta change.”

“Yeah, and all us foreigners love him, but everyone’s against him. The parents spend literally all their excess income sending their kids to private academies to study for the test. Even if the president can put enough pressure on to change the test, there’d be a riot; they spent years and loads of cash preparing for that test. It’s in, man.”

“There’s gotta be a way. It’s a stupid damn test. The parents can’t be that dense.”

“The parents don’t want an easier test. They want it hard and they want their kid to beat it hard. These are the same parents who think that an academy that pounds 50 new words into their kid each night is better than one that actually teaches 25.”

“Whatever. It’s gotta change eventually. Why not help it change sooner?”
“The test is in. You and I can’t touch it. Test-day is the most important day of the Korean year. They re-schedule plane flights for it. No bullshit. The noise from the plane might mess up the listening section of the test, so they reschedule all the flights in the country around it. The president brought us all here to get the kids talking, so get them talking. Take your 4 weeks of vacation, have another soju and when a toddler stares at you, wave.”

“Everything’s uphill, though. I tell some kid how important it is to talk as much as possible, but his time’s better spent pounding vocab for the test, and the test is that kid’s life. The kid knows it, and the kid knows that I know it.”

“True. You still can’t change the test.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lee Jinyoung

English Writing/Talking

1/6/2010

We are priceless.

We are valuable, expensive, and treasured.

In order to make ourselves more invaluable,

We study, study, and study.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kim Jinwon

Mr. N’s English Class

1/6/2010

We are damned study machines.

We are studying damned differentiation and integrals.

We are studying damned old literature.

We are studying damned un-useful grammar.

We are cursed.

We are not allowed to take the Test more than once.

We need high TEPS and TOEFL scores.

We, however, care hard to get a job during university,

And will forget what we learned.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Okay, you’ve learned logical format and debate, but that’s only part of persuasion. You wanted to talk more about Korean education, so we’re going to work on it again. This time, I want you to come up with a plan for how to get your changes implemented… made real. In order to actually change something in real life, you must convince the right people. You have to try a different method… a different way for each kind of person you’re trying to convince.

“Who’s involved in the Korean education system? Who are the important people?”

“Ooh. I think, maybe, president.”

“Okay, good.”

“Ministry of Education.”

“Universities.”

“High school office. Every Gu.” (Gu = region of the city. There are 12ish Gus in Seoul)

“Parents.”

“Private academy owner!”

“Students.”

“Students? Okay, yes. Not much power, but they’re involved.”

“Okay, that’s a good list. Now, think about what all these people care about. What do the private academy owners care about?”

“Money!”

“Then what next?”

“More money!”

“Yes. Money, then money, then money, then money, then educating students. So, if you want the private academy owners to change, you have to convince them that changing will make them more money.”

“Now, the Ministry of Education. What do they care about?”

“Money!”

“Hah. Not exactly. Public schools don’t make money. But it is very important to them that they not spend more money. So it will be easier to convince them to change if the change is cheap. Like, maybe, changing the way they make the English college entrance test…”

“Now, pick something you want to change about the education system. Who do you need to convince in order to make the change? Who has the power to make the change?”

…

…

…

“Mr. N, why did you put students up on the list? We can’t change anything.”

“Not true. Depends on what change you want. They can’t lower the cost of private academies, no. But how about this: [writing on board] STUDENTS WHO CANNOT AFFORD PRIVATE ACADEMIES SHOULD GATHER IN GROUPS AND HIRE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AS PRIVATE TUTORS.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Who on the list do you need to make this happen?”

“Students.”

“Who else?”

“Nobody.”

“Ah hah.”

“That maybe could work.”

“You know, maybe it could. How much does it cost you to go to private academy each month…”

…

…

…

“Yeah, the numbers work if you can get a big enough group of students together. 8-15, maybe. And there are ways to get around any problems. Have one kid be the leader, organize it, collect the money, set the meetings. That kid pays half or nothing. Also, you don’t need the tutor there all the time, just to explain the tough stuff.”

“Yeah. It could maybe work.”

“Yes. Just like a private academy, but cheaper teachers and no overhead.”

“Over-head?”

“Rent, employees, taxes. Cost stuff.”

“Right. No classroom. So where?”

“Hmmm… Space is a problem in Seoul. Do libraries have meeting rooms?’

“Just study rooms. They’re big. And have to be quiet.”

“Coffee shops, but that’s expensive.”

“Maybe outside?”

“Good! In summer, definitely. Actually, you know, Seoul has lots of public places. Just no public places where you can sit.”

“So… maybe… bring chairs?”

“Excellent. Jaewon, when you’re bored in University, I dare you to make a website that connects groups of high school kids with tutors. If you handle the money between the kids and the tutors, you could charge 5% and make a fortune. If you get enough students using your site, then your name will be on the list, and then you can start changing things. Anyway, I dare you.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lim Chowon

English Class

1/6/2010

We are playing mafia.

We are joyful, happy, and having fun.

We are addicted to playing mafia.

We will play mafia again and again.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I accuse Young-ho of being mafia!”

“Okay, why do you think he’s mafia?”

“He’s always very… quiet, and is his first game, so I think you pick him for mafia.”

“Okay, now Young-ho.”

“Huh?”

“Your turn.”

“Huh?”

“Soon, everyone will vote on whether they think you are mafia or not.”

“I understand.”

“If they vote that you are mafia, then you die.”

“Oh. I die. Then I can only watch game, yes?”

“Yes.”

“If dead, cannot speak?”

“Yes. Young-ho, do you want to tell them anything before they vote?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“Please kill me.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“What are you laughing at?”

“I just think it’s funny that your mom doesn’t like you having foreigner friends. That really is conservative.”

“It’s not foreigner friend. It’s meeting friend on the internet.”

“Oh. Okay, that’s a little more understandable.”

“You meet friends on the internet often?”

“I once met one of my best friends on the internet. Sorry, but the whole parents thing seems strange to me. Curfews. Nagging phone calls.”

“You didn’t live with your parents after school?”

“I did for a little while, but even when I lived with them, it wasn’t like that. They thought I was an adult. They thought they shouldn’t tell me what to do.”

“I think you’re very lucky.”

“I think you’re right. So why are you getting your MBA?”

“For job. I did not pass government worker exam. I only took 1 year to study. Many take 2 or 3. Language degree is not good for job, so, now I’m MBA, but my grades are not good.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Why?”

“Well, I go to school mostly in Peking. My Chinese is good, but was not as good in beginning of my program, so grades were not as good.”

“Right. What’s your plan for getting a job, then?”

“I want job with a big company. So, I think maybe getting internship, and learning better English.”

“Right. English for jobs with big companies.”

“Yes. All big companies—LG, Samsung—all check TOEFL score when getting a job.”

“Any job?”

“Yes.”

“What about getting a job with a company that works with China a lot?”

“Need to have good English test score.”

“Who are you going to speak English with there?”

“No one, but need English test score.”

“Wait. Let me get this straight. You apply for a job. In this job, you only work with Koreans. You will never speak to a Westerner. But you may speak to Chinese people sometimes. You speak Chinese well. And you need a high English score to get the job?”

“Yes.”

“Which is more important for getting that job, the English or the Chinese?”

“The English.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. In fact, I have friend who works with Chinese company. When she was hired, her situation is exactly this.”

“Wow.”

“You are surprised?”

“Uh… yeah. I mean, I knew English was important for getting jobs, but I didn’t know it was that important. So, English and which school you went to are the most important things.”

“Yes.”

“They’re almost the only things.”

“Yes. Almost.”

“Grades don’t matter.”

“Yes.”

“Internships don’t matter.”

“Almost, yes.”

“Wow. You should make more American friends.”

“Yes.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Have you ever heard of a school where the students work 3x harder than the teachers? A lot of things seem backward like this. I have an eleven-year old kid in one of my classes who is studying for her Korean SATs right now. She’s eleven. I told a couple mid-20’s Koreans last week that when I took the SAT’s, I studied for about a week. They didn’t believe me. The pressure’s too high. And it’s all telling the kids not to make mistakes. They should be perfect. Then they try to speak English. Without making mistakes. They’re terrified, man. It’s sunk in. The worst part is that they know it. They all know how jacked up the whole situation is.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ko Jinmoon

Winter English

1/6/2010

Song of a Mask

Don’t want to cover darkness

Reveal it and destroy it!

Don’t be shy!

Don’t hide your fault!

Want to be used in

Good ways!

Want to be used in

Proper ways!

Wearing a black cape.

Want to take it off.

Still, no way to remove.

Still, no people reflect themselves.

Still, no changes occur.

Still, everyone deceives.

Still, everyone uses me.

I was under a shade.

No lights were in.

No hope was in.

Being under the pyramid.

Soul wasn’t under the pyramid.

Fame wasn’t under the pyramid.

Power wasn’t under the pyramid.

No one remembered me.

I was the only thing.

I was covered.

Don’t want to cover dirt.

Don’t want to cloak sin.

Want to release them all.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Hello. Why weren’t you here yesterday?”

“Hahah. Sorry. I had meeting with principal and some others, other—how to say—well, important teachers. Heads of department and things like that.”

“Got it.”

“Ms. Kwon is very busy this year. You know, she is head of new department.”

“Oh, really? You have one of the new ones that split out of the academic affairs department?”

“Yes, yes. One of those.”

“So what kind of duties did you get? What sections of the old department?”

“Well, most of the things about English department, Social studies department, and music department.”

“Oh, English?”

“Yes. Most of the English… uh…how to say… extra-curricular activities. As you know, this school gets lot of attention for English department, so principal and… owner always encourages us to try new things. They want us to encourage students, build confidence, you know.”

“Right. So, if I need anything, I should ask you?”

“Hah. Yes. What reminds me, I want some ideas. From you. What would you like to be different?”

“Uh… Now?”

“Yes. I think maybe you have ideas. I think you think up ideas maybe quite often.”

“Well, uh… First, I want us to use the English Café room. We built it. We don’t use it. I want students in there speaking English to other students. Not sure how. Anyway, write it down and bring it up in your next meeting. Brainstorm.”

“Okay. What else? Anything that needs money? I am making the, well, the spending plan.”

“The budget?”

“Yes! Budget!”

“Uh… board games would be nice. Word games. Scrabble, scattagories, maybe some uno or jenga sets; you can make special rules where kids need to talk.”

“Right, okay. What else?”

…

…

“Alright, teachers. What was today’s English discussion topic?”

“hmmmm…”

“I don’t remember, either. Could you pass me an apple? Thanks. Well, I have a topic that I want to know a little more about.”

“Sure. What?”

“Tell me about soo-neung.”

“College entrance test?”

“Yes, that soo-neung.”

“You know, they have no plane flights during the test?”

“Yeah, I’d heard that. Tell me more. Who makes it?”

“Um, well, some university professors and some high school teachers. Most experienced. Usually old ones.”

“Ah. So there’s one team?”

“Yes. Different every year. They spends one month together at some place. Some resort or somewhere. They have no cellphones. The food is brought to them, and they maybe keep the trash. No paper can leave their area.”

“Jesus…”

“Yes. And their families maybe don’t know that they are selected for making test. They are told maybe that they went on business trip.”

“Wow. Okay. Who selects the people who make the test?”

“Ministry of Education.”

“Really? The government?”

“Yeah.”

“So, it’s not the universities in charge of making the test?”

“No, government.”

“Then, in theory, the president could have some power over the test?”

“Well… I don’t know what is the president’s… interaction with Ministry of Education.”

“Right…”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I need more of your writing to correct, so today: write anything. A letter to anyone, an essay, a story, another poem, anything.”

*

*

Dear Teacher

…

I’m late again. Sorry that I’m late almost every day. I’d better get up early and be more fast. From now on this point I will not be late again.

I’m happy to be in your class :) It is fun and talking with you and friends is very interesting. At first I saw you at school, I thought you were very scary. But after all, you are not! I’m happy to know you better. I think I’ll never forget this class.

I think being in final year high school is kind of hard for every student. But I’ll work hard and enjoy myself studying.

Mr. N! Let’s have a class meeting in the future! Ha ha! At that time you will be older and we will be older too!

*

*

Dear Teacher

…

At first, I was about to join your class because it was free. But now that’s not my reason. I made lots of friends, funny first-graders and nice teacher. Also when I met foreigners on the street, I was dizzy. I lost my confidence when someone asked me in English. But I can speak well now. (not perfectly).

And I’m sorry for being late every time. I always try to get up early, but it is too hard for me.

Studying is like homework to 3^rd graders. The test is almost here. Everyone thinks it is hard and boring to study, but I think differently. I will enjoy it and I will make a good score in test. Pray for me.

Though we can’t meet again in class because I am 3^rd grader, I will remember you forever. Bye Bye!

*

*

Dear Teacher

…

When I first talked in English in this class it was kind of scary. Because I was afraid about my mistakes. But now I get more confidence in speaking English. I think that’s because you helped me a lot in speaking, writing and other things. I want to take this class forever!!

…

*

*

Dear Teacher

…

I want to tell you about Mr. N’s class. I have this class on the winter vacation. It is very fun. I like it. Let me introduce students in the class.

J______ and C______ are my good friends. J______’s nickname is a monkey because he looks like a monkey. C______ is an Egyptian. He lived in Egypt for about 40 months. And W______ is lazy. I think D______ likes to sleep. W______ has the same name as one of the 2pm members. But his face is different. W______ is older than me. He lives in same apartment building with me. I often see him. J______ is W______’s friend.

H______ is older than me. She has a force. C______ and J______ are her friends. They are always late for the class. And C______ and C______ are sisters. They are daughters of one of our school teachers.

I like this class because all of them.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“How was your trip home?”

“It was good. It was warm. What have you been up to?”

“Writing a little, planning my vacation travel, teaching winter classes, making a couple new friends, taking a few 한국어 classes and fixing the Korean high school English system.”

“Oh?”

“Yup, well, take a bite out of it at least. Might work. Might not. Either way, other people are doing most of the work, so I figured it’s worth a shot. The hilarious part is that if my little plan does work, the media have already been all over my school’s English department, so getting their attention again should be relatively easy.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

“You told me that if I had any more ideas, I should let you know.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got one. Well, actually a student helped me come up with it. All my classes are first grade, but starting in March, I want one second grade class. I want them to be hand-picked, maybe 10-15 kids. During the class, the second-grade kids plan an English-speaking game. Then in trios, they teach it to groups of first graders. No teachers present. No speaking Korean allowed.”

“It will be difficult to arrange. We will have to remove the students from other classes.”

“Yes, for one hour each week, but these will be the students who can afford to miss some class. I want it. I can ask the principal and the owner myself if that would help.”

“So, it’s sort of mentoring program?”

“Yes. The kids are only missing speaking practice—building confidence. To get it they don’t even need me. They just need a group they’re comfortable with, somewhere where speaking incorrectly isn’t punished—it’s the rule.”

“You think you can find 15 students who have confidence to teach first-graders?”

“I’ve already got half of them.”

…

“Oh, you were asking about the college entrance test before?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“The president had the English section changed. Starting with next year’s freshmen, they’ll take a test more like TOEFL, emphasis on speaking and writing.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. It’s been in the news. You look pleased.”

“It’s a good week.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Teacher,

Though I saw you almost everyday for last three weeks and you saw how much I’ve enjoyed your class, I’m writing this letter in case you need a proving document that I want to be in your class this year (2010). I know that this whole program thing is uncertain, but if the program is going to be made, I would like to be included in that class for many reasons. To begin with…

*

*

Dear Teacher,

…

You said “some students will be chosen and they will comprise the second-grade class.” Oh my god… If he didn’t choose me, what should I do? So I insist strongly that you should select me. First…

*

*

Dear Teacher,

…

I think if I attend your class, I have confidence to teach first grade students. I’m not good at speaking English, but if you advise me to teach students, it will not be a problem. Perhaps they want a interesting class. I think I am one of the best people who teaches students delightfully. If you choose me, you will never regret it. Trust me (it’s not a mafia game : )  ).

*

*

Dear Teacher…

Dear Teacher…

Dear Teacher…

In late November, I signed up for a second Korean class, this one taught by the Korea Foundation Cultural center. It’s free and the teachers seem to be university students. I had to take an exam to get placed into a class for December. I tested into Beginner 1, almost got into Beginner 2. I found out after the test that Beginner 1 meets on Wednesdays at 4:00pm. Hmmm… With some annoyance, I informed the people who put on the classes that I happened to have a job, so wouldn’t be going to any classes. They told me that the Beginner 1 class always meets Wednesdays at 1:00pm, so when I re-tested in January, I would have to pull myself up to level 2. Hmm…

Fast forward to the end of December. I had been determined to cram for the last two days before the test. That determination had lasted up until the last two days before the test… Then other things just seemed to come along. So, I studied not at all, but I had been practicing in the intervening month; I’d studied a couple beginner Korean books and done some flash cards and bumbled around Kangwhado inquiring after missed buses. When I got to the testing center, the guy from the last month remembered me. “You must test into level 2,” he reminded me. No pressure. Should have crammed more (at all). Damn.

The test seemed to make more sense the second time around. Things I had guessed at before now made sense. Things that were completely foreign now contained enough clues that I could magic up a guess after piling inferential logic on top of inferential logic on top of my 10% comprehension. After I handed my test in, they asked me to fill out a new registration form (they couldn’t find my November one). I did so, then they looked it over and started talking about it. This is when I reminded them that they still hadn’t told me my score. Did I get into level 2, or what?

Nope. It’s level 3 for me! Oh, hell… I had gone on to answer the level-3 set of questions on the exam mainly so that I could gauge how much higher I’d need to score next month to move up. I didn’t actually want to be in the level 3 class… At this point, I requested that the test proctor kindly knock me back down to level 2. He refused (I think that level 1 & 2 fill up every month, and level 3 doesn’t). Damn. He did say that if I wasn’t learning, I could talk to the teacher about getting knocked back to level 2. Hmm… Okay… This was going to be rough.

I went to my first class on the fourth. I had memorized a few stock Korean phrases before the class, like: “Sorry, I don’t have a clue,” and “don’t ask me why; I guessed,” and “I’m only here because I’m good at taking tests.” I was prepared.

The class was all in Korean. Ruh roh. Fortunately, of the dozen people there, there were probably 4-5 who were worse at this than me. Phew. There were also at least 4 who put me so utterly to shame that I wonder if I’ll be where they are in… well… a long time. I comprehended all the stuff, though! My head hurt. I went to my second class last night, and damn, my head still hurts. For those of you who have learned another language like French, German, Spanish, Italian, I say nay: you haven’t learned another language. You’ve just learned a new set of words.

My Korean classes have given me new faith in my own job as an immersion teacher. It’s uncomfortable, but damn, does it ever make you learn. When I first started studying Korean, I used flash cards to memorize the most common 150ish words. This worked, but it was painfully slow, focusing on 10-ish words per day, plus cycling through the entire accumulated list for retention. It took weeks of practicing about 45 mins/day. After just 2 immersion class sessions, I’ve transcribed about 80 new words on flash cards, and about 70 of them I know well enough to recognize them immediately (though recalling them is harder). That’s just from the 2 class sessions, with almost no practice outside. Not bad at all.

Now, you have the privilege of hearing me espouse upon and complain about why I claim that learning another Germanic/Romance language is for sissies. The basic underlying structure of them is roughly the same. They have the same types of words (verbs, nouns, adverbs, articles, prepositions, etc). We’re not even going to go into how much easier sharing an alphabet makes things (not in this post, anyway). Move on over a few continents, and things change a bit.

Here, it’s all about messing with words. Prepositions are little magnetic bits that attach themselves to words, rather than being words on their own. I like to think about every sentence like a cell. There’s all the little organelles like nouns and adverbs and such, and they all shift a bit and get a little gooey if your sentence is getting complex. Then there’s the nucleus. The nucleus of the Korean cellular sentence is the verb-pile. The verb-pile is where all the important verbs, verb-bits and verb-altering bits twist around each other to produce the messenger RNA that tells the rest of the sentence what to do. The verb-pile, like all nuclei, is relatively dense. In fact, it’s usually one little phrase or even one word. Here’s an example of a sentence I’ve translated directly:

Subway(by) the supermarket(to) don’twanttogobut food buyneedto.

This cellular sentence is miotic; it has two verb-pile nuclei: don’twanttogobut, and buyneedto. One interesting problem which arises often (and which I point out to every single Korean who tells me that learning Korean is easy) is that “don’twanttogobut” is in fact not in the dictionary. Go figure. If it were, that would be a very very very large dictionary, since this word would be mashed between: “don’twanttogoand,” and “don’twanttogotoo,” and the “go” section of the “don’twantto” volume, would be between the “don’twanttogive” section and the “don’twanttogorge” section.

Of course, my kvetching about not being able to find verb-piles in the dictionary is just me being dramatic. Each verb-pile can of course be split down into its individual parts, and all of the parts can be looked up in the dictionary. Almost. You see, many (most) sets of words sound kinda awkward when you smash them all together, so the beginning & end of each word are massaged (unapologetically changed) so they will merge together better. In order to look up any word amputated from a verb-pile, you have to first massage it back into its original form, for which there are many arcane rules and many heretical exceptions. This, of course, assumes that you even know where to cut to properly separate all the various words in the first place. If you do know all of these things, chances are you already know what the damn word means. Korean dictionary makers have it easy.

when I briefly studied Latin, it was a great comfort to know that with a good enough dictionary and grammar book, I could translate most Latin stuff if given enough time. Now I take comfort in knowing that I can translate most Korean stuff if given enough Korean co-workers who I can convince to translate it for me.

There is progress, though. I can now take standardized-forms of verbs and mash them into present tense, continuous tense (am going), and can take stabs at past/future, though these stabs still often miss. I’m gettin there.

Next order of business: Snow!

It’s been cold in Seoul.  -17c (about 0 Fahrenheit) I think was the lowest so far. It snowed a bit on the 26th of December, but it melted away quickly. Not long before New Year’s it dumped more snow. This time it was snow in volume. One foot or so.

Seoul usually doesn’t get much snow, just cold. I’m told the Korean news agencies are reporting this as the most snow Seoul’s gotten at once in over a century. Wow. Seoul called in the army to shovel all the stuff off the streets and sidewalks. Shopping centers had employees out en masse sweeping off their entryways. Just in the last couple days, it’s started melting a little.

I had just taught my students logical discourse format and had them map out arguments. The day of the great snowing, one of my students presented me with a formatted argument for why we should cancel class to play in the snow. Well done, kid. I had them work quickly, and we called the class with 30 minutes remaining. There was much snow thrown, and even some knocking of people into snow drifts. A few of the kids got up the courage to throw snow at me (they would never consider doing this to their Korean teachers). In fact, one kid got yelled by another teacher for throwing snow at me. I gave better than I got, though, mostly through being devious. Oh, there was one rule to playing outside: no speaking Korean. Any kid who spoke Korean was banished back into the classroom to finish their work. This happened to one student. Poor guy. The janitor and several teachers were shoveling snow off the walkways and clearing the glass roof of the amphitheater (a mammoth task). My merry students were adept at undoing their work, especially when they threw each other into snowdrifts, where there would be much flailing and hurling of huge armfuls of painstakingly shoveled snow.

I solved this problem by getting two snow shovels and rotating them among the students and myself. While we still displaced a lot of snow, it was utterly dwarfed by the amount that the two shovelers would clear away. Teacher-relations were salvaged. It is common knowledge amongst all communal bodies that people who are being punished (ie: made to shovel snow) are traditionally fair game for ridicule. Thus, the snow-shovelers often had snowballs thrown at them. This struck me as a really really bad idea on the part of the snow-throwers. They soon discovered this after being on the receiving end of a few shovel-loads of snow.

I’m going to call this post here. What’s coming next requires some kind of satirical format, and I’m still mulling over how best to convey it. Stay tuned.

Well, to start back up where I left off in the last post:

Yes, we missed the bus to get from the Buddhist temple back across the island to the ferry.  It was cold.

We checked with a local restaurant owner to make sure the bus had actually stopped running for the night.  She said it had.  Fortunately, she lent us her car and her husband for $17.  Once back on the bigger island, we ate seafood, went to sleep in our over-priced room. On the 26th, we wandered around a bit more and headed back to Seoul.

On the 28th, my Winter Session classes started.  I don’t have to get to school until 9, which is nice.  Here’s what I do everyday:

• 9am – 70 minute class of discussion/debate/essay writing with only 15 students (yay!)
• 10:20-11:50 – Surfing the net, writing blog posts, skyping people
• 11:50-1:00 – Teaching English to Korean English teachers.  Only had 3 teachers sign up, all women who were different generations of student in the school (ie: teacher 1 used to be a student of teacher 2, and they were both students of teacher 3). We have unofficially renamed this class: “eating lunch in English.”  Basically, we hang out and chat in English for an hour. I was initially worried about coming up with enough discussion topics, but at the end of each day, the ladies pick what they want to talk about the next day.
• 1:00-2:00 – More messing around, lesson prep, taking a walk, etc.
• 2:00-3:30 – Second discussion/debate/essay writing class, this time with 5 students (I’m getting to know them pretty well)

It’s cool teaching the same kids every day, though it sucks that the classes are spaced so far apart. I know most of the kids’ names after only 4 days. There are no co-ed classes during the year, so this is new for them. I force them to work with the opposite gender as much as I can. In my big class the boys get a little intimidated because all the girls are a year older then them (it just worked out that way).

I also have three teachers’ kids in my classes.  Their parents smuggled them in.  They’re all good at English, but they’re 12/12/10 years old, which is interesting in a high school class with lots of debate. When the 12-year-old boy had to stand in front of the class and refute a 17 year-old’s argument (remember, Korean society is extremely hierarchical and age-based), the kid looked like he wanted to go hide in a closet somewhere.  He avoided looking at the older guy the whole time he was speaking. Fortunately, it’s all in his head. The rest of the class has sort of adopted him, and they’re very supportive.

The other 12-year-old is more confident (she is also one of the best English speakers in her class of 15), and the 10-year-old is her little sister. I haven’t made the 10-year-old talk in front of the class yet, but her writing is good, partially thanks to a piece of paper where her big sister translates stuff that’s over her head.

The first day of class I did a direction-following exercise where I told them to write all sorts of stuff on  different sections of a piece of paper. I asked them to tell me one place I should visit in Korea, and one place I should not visit in Korea. Here are some of the better places they said I should avoid:

• school
• bars
• clubs
• jail
• Pyongyang (capitol of North Korea)

for New Years I went to Apgujeong. It’s one of the two wealthiest and most plastic sections of Seoul. I paid a small fortune ($60) to get into a little evening club. It was semi-formal dress required. They had all-you-can-eat kabobs, oysters and snack food, and all-you-can-drink red wine and Souza mixed drinks, which was nice. What sold me on the place was the live jazz music they had all night. I showed up at about 8:30, and there was live music almost constantly until 1:00am. Other than my group of friends, there was only 1 other westerner in the place, which was cool. Simon met a Korean guy who was there with 8 of his friends. It turn out they were a troupe of B-boy dancers hired by the club to perform just before midnight. That was pretty impressive. They asked us where we were from, and we said everywhere. We had 2 Americans, 1 Canadian, 1 Brit, 1 Kiwi, and 1 German. We hung out and chatted with the B-boys until closing then hopped cabs home in the frigid well-below-freezing to begin our respective 2010s.

Okey dokey.

First off, it goes without saying that I’ve missed everyone from home, especially over the last three weeks.  I think of you all often, and each time you say “nothing’s changed here,” you’re being more boring than necessary.  Things always change, just small things.  Also, I’m not trying to get into a change competition with anyone.  Yes, I’d win, but that’s not the point.  What you call “not very exciting news,” I call “home.”  It’s nice to hear about things that are essentially the same.  Same = home.  Different = not home.

Now for something completely different:

Kangwha-do, Seokmo-do, Christmas and Awe:

“Do” (pronounced ‘doe’) is Korean for “island.”  For Christmas, I went island-hopping.

It all began about a month ago.  Several teachers in Seoul realized that many of us only had a few days between school ending (12/23 or 12/24) and winter session classes beginning (12/28-12/30).  This was our Christmas window.  Simon, my New Zealander buddy, suggested we get out of Seoul for a few days.

After a coffee and a glance through the Lonely Planet: Korea, it was decided.  Destination: Kangwhado.  It’s big.  It’s close.  It’s anti-urban.  Sounds perfect.

We set up to leave on the 23rd, but Simon had school on the 24th sprung on him.  Damn.  Our third amigo bailed because he refused to brave the roads on xmas eve.  A coworker had told him horror stories of 2-hour trips becoming 8-hour trips due to traffic.

The Kiwi and I were not to be deterred!  We filled up on street food beforehand, and I’d packed water and snack foods of all kinds.  Bring on the traffic!  The plan was also to get beer, but we wanted it cold, so we waited to get it at the bus depot.  We had to run to catch the bus, though, so no beer.  Oh well.  We left the Sinchon bus terminal at around 6:30pm on Christmas Eve.

It was slow-going as we neared the outskirts of Seoul, but the bailer had failed to take one thing into account when he wuss’d out: we were heading northwest.  On Christmas Eve (especially when Christmas is backed up by a weekend), Seoul’s highways are packed as people go to visit family across the whole country.  Pretty much all of that “whole country” lies South and East of Seoul.  As you can see on the map, northwest of Seoul lies the Seoul suburbs, the islands we were visiting and North Korea.  Traffic accounted for 30 minutes of our 2-hour trip.  Not too shabby.

I should play with maps more often

We got to Kangwha-eum (eum means “town”) at 8:30pm on Christmas Eve (there are two bridges to the island, so the bus got us all the way there).  We asked a cabbie to take us to a minbak (somewhere that rents out the rooms of a house; usually cheaper than a hotel/motel).  The cabbie said there were no minbaks in the main town.  Did we want to go out of the town?  Hmm…  We paid the $25/each for a motel room (no 2-bed rooms).  On the way out, we bumped into a young couple who I think were renting by the hour (did I mention that most mid-20′s Koreans live with their parents?).

It was well below freezing.  Simon and I shivered our way down to the town’s main street, where we found a couple bars, had a couple beers, met some ajoshis (middle-aged men), and hung out with some kids in their mid-20′s.  While English-speaking ability is notably worse outside of Seoul, the locals were very outgoing and generally very friendly.  We also got to practice our Korean a bit.  The ajoshis spent minutes phrasing the standard questions in English (where you from?  What’s your job?  Where are you living now?).  Simon and I are used to these, so as soon as they got the questions across, we shot the answers right back in Korean.  They laughed as they realized that their English wasn’t all that necessary, and were somewhat impressed.

We saw a candle-lit procession of church-goers roaming around before going to their midnight services.  Also, I was wearing a Santa hat the whole time, which was generally a hit.

On Christmas day, we slept in a little.  We’d had some soju with the younguns, so we took the morning slowly.  We checked out and then set out in search of food.   All the restaurants were closed.  After checking down all the main streets in our chunk of town, the only one we’d found was cheap and unappetizing.  We ranged further, but soon gave up and headed back to the cheapo restaurant.  On the way, Simon spotted some people sitting above a butcher’s shop.  Sure enough, there was an adjoining restaurant up there.  For Christmas brunch, we had by far the best sam gyeop sal I have ever tasted.  Being situated above a rural butcher shop, it was almost certainly the freshest I’d ever had, and it was also the cheapest.  Christmas ’09: so far, so good!

Our next stop was just up the street: a restored palace from the Goryeo era.  Here are a few pictures:

Oops!  That’s not a Goryeo-era palace!  What is it, you ask?  Check out the roof in the fourth picture again.  Look closely.

I’m not kidding, go look at that fourth picture again.

No way…

You gotta be kidding me...

I thought it was a safe bet that I would never confuse a restored Korean palace with an Anglican church.  I guess I was wrong on that one.  Well, high-five and happy-birthday, Jesus!  On to the palace!

We asked a local if he knew where the palace was.  Turns out he wasn’t a local, but he called information for us and then pointed us toward the real palace.  We learned that the French had briefly invaded the island and stolen a bunch of documents and artifacts (which they still have… punks).  The re-built palace was a little run-down–probably lacking funding, but somebody got creative with the landscaping.

The guy at the info booth gave us a tourist map that covered Kangwhado and the smaller islands to the West.  We asked him about minbaks and he circled all the villages that would have some.  We grabbed a cab across the island to a fishing village called Eopori (sound-wise, eo=’aw,’ o=’oh’ and i=’ee’).  We were eager to drop off our bags somewhere.  We asked the cabbie to take us to a minbak.  He dropped us off at something that looked like a hotel.  We asked a local shopkeeper.  She directed us to a “Pension,” which was basically quadraplex’d beach-houses.  Hmm.  The owner cut us a ‘special deal:’ $65 for a single room with sleeping mats and no bed.  Hmmm.  At this point, it seemed like minbaks were an extinct species of tourist housing, and we were running out of Christmas Daylight.  Screw it.  We’ll take the room.

Unburdened, we decided to check out one site before dark.  There were several buddhist temples built up in the hills.  Sounds like a winner.  Simon wanted to hop the ferry to Seokmodo (smaller island) and check out the temple there.  I was a little skeptical, but willing.  I’ve developed the habit of letting Simon decide where/what to do, as he spent six months of his life backpacking through India and Southeast Asia; the man’s got traveler instincts.

The guy at the ferry ticket office made sure we understood: the last ferry back left dock at 7:30pm.  It was about 4:30 then.  No problem.

The seagulls have discovered that ferrygoers will throw food to them.  The rear deck of the ferry had an almost constant wind blowing, allowing the gulls to hover stationary just off the railing.  I actually snapped some video of a seagull gliding in seeming-slow-mo to grab a Koreacheeto out of a man’s hand.  Way fun.

The background is Seokmo-do. The picture is taken from Kangwha-do. They're very close.

The ferry ride was only 15 minutes.  Kangwhado and Seokmodo are very, very close to each other.

Kangwhado had one decent-ish sized town and several small villages.  The capitol of Seokmodo is a cluster of 20 buildings.  Awesome.  Take us to your temple!

Hmm…  Transportation might be a problem.  No cabs waiting dockside, so we started walking.  That was a dumb idea.  We got a couple hundred yards into rice-paddy territory when we decided to turn back; anything with wheels and a friendly disposition would be located near the ferry dock.

We found the bus stop.  A bus leaves to do a circuit of the island’s one road every hour.  While waiting for the bus, we threw words of Korean back and forth and tried to make sense of all the signs we saw.  One of them jumped out rather obviously: “Minbak-$17 (yes, I’m converting everything into $ for you).”  Damnit.  Now that the Pension ajoshis had our $65 in-hand, we find our minbak!  We boarded the bus and waited for it to depart.  As it pulled out, we saw a sign on another building: “minbak!”  Two buildings later: “minbak!”  As we left town, the lighted signs faded away, and were replaced by pieces of plywood on which were painted: “minbak!”

Minbak after minbak after minbak on top of minbak!  Dubai got lots of press for their World Map, but I think the Koreans deserve a nod; they have an island which is constructed entirely of minbaks!

We went about 60% of the way around the island in 30 minutes, passing a great many minbaks and never going more than 35 mph.  The bus dropped us off at another collection of 20 buildings, which the Lonely Planet said was the base of the temple hill.  In a victory over the Korean Language, we asked the bus driver when the next bus would come through, all without using a single hand-gesture! (onjay bossuh dashee awdsay-yo?).  He said 6:00.  It was 5:30.  Not much time.  It was snowing.  Also very cold.  Okay, we’d just run up and take a glance at the place.  We bought some fried food from a street vendor. She also gave us cups of hot broth and a warm holiday smile. She liked my santa hat.

Simon and I had commented several times throughout the day that it really didn’t seem like Christmas.  To be sure, we were having a great time.  But it wasn’t very Christmas-ish. Not until we started climbing that hill. It was dark now.  Our fingers started to numb through our gloves.  We ate more hot food as we walked. The road wound uphill through a thin and ghostly forest. The snow picked up as we climbed. Gorgeous winter is gorgeous winter no matter where in the world you are, and to us, gorgeous winter meant Christmas.

Then we saw the first building of the temple compound above us.  “Jesus Christ,” I said.  Simon responded with: “We can miss the bus.”

I've artificially brightened this a little bit, but it gives an idea of the majesty, the bare trees, the stone and the ambient light.

Bear in mind, this temple is in the middle of the middle of nowhere.  I was expecting wood-beam architecture on dirt and a small shrine.  I was wrong.

The buddhist compound was on a leveled platform.  There were five or six buildings, all ornate and gorgeous with sprawling stone foundations spaced around a broad paved plaza.  First we ducked off to the side to see a huge amphitheater full of statues of disciples, where we snapped off these:

Horrible picture, awesome statues.

Rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows.

I took off my Santa hat and we entered the plaza.  It was dark and snowing, but light from within the buildings diffused across the whole compound, making an artificial and stilling twilight.  It was incredible.  As I said, stilling. I’ve only felt so emotionally still in a couple other places: the first time I entered a cathedral and the first time I stood in the crematorium of a concentration camp.  Both of those experiences were assaulting in their own way. This one was quieter, calming, but just as still.

We haven’t gotten to “Awe” yet.

This next part will be difficult.  The day after all of this, I asked Simon: “how am I supposed to communicate last night in a blog?”

He shrugged and said: “You can’t.”

Well, I’m a poet.  I don’t like hearing about what can’t be done with words.

At the back of the plaza is a stairway leading up into night. It’s white stone with blocky posts and lanterns at the landings.  It’s all chiseled angles, purposeful: it goes somewhere.

As far as can be seen from the bottom, the stairway heads straight up the mountain.  Eighty steps up, it hits a landing and turns.  From there it winds gently up the steep mountainside, sometimes turning every twenty feet, sometimes running as a sloped path for hundreds.  Snow drifts gently down.  At once you are walking through a dark and grasping forest, climbing a bright path and looking out from the side of a mountain.

cut stone blocks, fingered branches, rolling treetops, silhouettes of a shoreline miles away, snowflakes kissing all of it.  And it’s all still.  The only thing moving is you.

You are alone. Your nose and fingertips are numb.  Breezes sting your face, but you don’t care.  Your eyes can’t stop moving as you climb.  You can never see far ahead, but behind is all laid out, stretching to the sea.

You hear chanting from far away.

It grows louder.

The trees give way.  The stairs continue, then bend back.  There’s a stone platform that hugs the cliff face directly above you.  All you can see is a short wall and stone railing.  Light showers out from atop the platform. The chanting rolls down to you. As you climb again, drums sound, great and hollow and reaching up to you from the temple plaza hundreds of feet below.

You step quietly. You are an intruder on something holy. Something holy in a place of magic, a place that even in silence could still your thoughts and lull your dreams to a contented sleep.

There are candles. A shrine. Carving in the cliff-face. Buddha. Thirty feet tall.

A ledge between you and the platform. You edge onto it. Halfway. Three-quarters. This is all. No further. The chanting stops.  You back away, but a man smiles and motions you forward.  You gain the platform, slipping to the side as the three pass.

You are alone. Only you and stone and candles and Buddha and ghosting trees and the cliff-face edge of everything, where all things standing jut into emptiness and cast lost shadows, drunk by the sea and the clouds and the shoreline so far away.

Large things wash over you, through you, and slowly flow out, down the hillside.

“I think you can take a picture,” your companion says absently; neither of you dedicate much thought to speaking. “They won’t mind.”

“No,” you say, surrounded and drinking it in, all angles,

all bright points and dim distances.

“I don’t want one.”

By the way, all the pictures get much much bigger if you click on them.

My final week of 2009 teaching began on Wednesday the 16th and ended on Tuesday the 22nd.  I hadn’t taught a class in about 2 weeks, so I’d had plenty of time to plan my final lesson.  Finals were done and everyone was just waiting for the closing ceremonies the following week.  Most classes were showing movies or having independent study.

When the kids came into my room, the lights were off, but xmas lights were strung around the ceiling and upbeat xmas music was flooding out of the room’s surround-sound system.  My first classes got the task of drawing a xmas tree on my whiteboard, complete with presents drawn below and taped-on ornaments.

For the first part of the lesson, I taught them how to make paper snowflakes. A couple students complained that they were in high-school, and this was stupid. The vast majority of them made their first snowflake, re-folded it to figure out exactly how the cuts worked, then started on a second—the masterpiece.

I wore a santa hat for the whole thing.  I announced that I had presents for them (a stocking full of candy), but that they had to be good children and participate in the xmas spirit to get it.  Then we karaoke’d “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”  They had all heard the song before, so it went relatively well.

When we got to the second verse, I asked why the song talked about pudding and why the singers demanded that the listener “bring it out here.” Some classes had students that knew about caroling, but most didn’t. I explained xmas caroling, namely that it involves singing to strangers.

What we were doing wasn’t really caroling. The audience was missing. Easily remedied. “Get ready,” I said, “we’re going Christmas caroling.”  Then I alt-tabbed to skype and dialed up a random friend.

The class could all see my laptop display projected up onto a screen.  They could see the phone dial symbol on the skype program, and every single one of them knows what “call mobile” means.  I gestured for them to be quiet while the phone rang.

Steve was the first one to pick up.  He doesn’t celebrate xmas, but hey, what’s a Christian holiday without a little evangelism?

• Steve: Hello?
• Jeff: Hey, it’s Jeff… Normann.
• Steve: Oh, hey man, what’s up?
• Jeff (frantically gesturing for giggling students to be quiet): Uh, not much.  Hey, I was wondering if you could help me with a little project I’ve been working on…  Hey, can you hear that (karaoke music starts)?
• Steve: uh, yeah…
• Thirty Korean high school students: “We wish you a merry Christmas!  We wish you a merry Christmas!  We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!”

We sang the first verse & refrain.  Steve was impressed (we’d practiced a couple times, and choir is a mandatory class for all students in the grade I teach.  They were awesome).  Then Steve got interviewed.  How old are you?  What’s your job?  Do you have a girlfriend (he’s married—doh!)?  Finally, we swore Steve to secrecy, then we called his wife…

I did this with about 10 classes.  In all, I think about 25 people were hit up by the Korean tele-caroling.  Notable reactions to the performance:

• Is this live?
• Wow.
• ……….*sounds of laughing*………*sounds of laughing*…..
• Sorry, I couldn’t really hear any of that…  Who is this again? (damn cell reception)
• So… you actually get paid to do this? (by far my favorite response, and the students laughed really really really hard—thanks Jorge)

Other notable things that happened during the calls

• We got hung-up on when someone tried to put us on speakerphone.
• Upon first picking up the phone:

“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Jeff Normann.”
“Hooooooooooooooooooooooooly shit.”
“Uh, oops.”

Thank you, everyone who got tele-carol’d. I’d especially like to thank everyone who submitted themselves to an interrogation afterward and everyone who sang back. You people rock.  For those of you who didn’t get a phone call, either you don’t celebrate xmas, or I lost your phone # when I moved to Korea, or I had you slated for calls on Monday/Tuesday (see below).

After the signing, each kid got candy from the stuffed stocking.  I also passed around a stocking to put coins in for charity, promising that I would match any amount the kids put in.  Since this country recently pulled itself out of poverty, donation to those outside of one’s family/friends is not an established part of the culture.  That’s a piece of Westernism I don’t mind spreading.  I haven’t taken the stocking to the bank yet, but it’s pretty heavy. I’m proud of my kids.

My Christmas party was going splendidly. It just begged for something to mess it up… That something was mandatory training. During my last two days of class, I had to go to Korea University for a seminar on co-teaching (how to make use of/survive Korean teaching partners–I’m lucky in that all of mine range from okay to excellent). Grrr…

Of course, I had something special planned for Monday. The workplace in Korea is notorious for being disorganized as far as scheduling goes (in my rather irate words: in Korea, the Best Laid Plans are hunted for sport). Sometimes you can arrange to slip through the cracks, though. I called the people in charge of the training and told them my monday lesson had been in planning for over two months, so I was going to go through with it & I’d be a couple hours late to their shindig.

The two months figure wasn’t BS. In my first class on Monday there’s a student who had told me about her dream career during her mid-term interview. An old friend of mine is currently doing well at this girl’s dream-career, so I decided that for xmas, I’d get the two in contact with each other, so the student could ask for some advice.

So, the friend was at the top of the caroling list on Monday.  Said friend didn’t answer the phone.  Grrrrr.  We left a message, and then the student and I sent off an email two days later.  This is the down-side of surprising people.

Right after class on Monday, I locked my computer in my office and then headed off for training.  It was far better than expected, and I actually learned quite a bit (this was the bosses’ Christmas present to me, I guess).

On Tuesday night, I was tired.  I had come to the conclusion during training that in my first semester, I had done exceedingly well at keeping kids’ attention and convincing them that there is more to speaking English than taking tests.

But I hadn’t taught them much, and I hadn’t gotten them speaking enough. I had spent a great deal of time blindly experimenting, trying things that might/might not work. It’s a necessary part of doing anything new, I know, but it sucks that the burden of said part falls on kids who I have generally come to see as victims of their education system (one of my best students caught me nodding off in my office. She told me I should get more sleep at night. I asked her how much sleep she got each night. Four hours. Almost never more than four hours).

Inefficiencies in the combination of private/public/University education put a very heavy burden on students. My next semester will go much better; I know what I’m doing now.

I was tired on Tuesday night after training. I went back to school to retrieve my laptop. The Christmas lights were still on in my classroom. 250+ snowflakes littered the walls and ceiling; many of them were taped together and draped in garlands around the room. The whiteboard was covered with snowflakes and pictures and messages.  Someone had made a chain of paper angels linking hands and taped it on my desk.

In February, all the kids would return to school, but they’d be in the next grade, and none of them would be my students again.

I turned off the fluorescents and sat in the glow of the Christmas lights for a few minutes, quietly playing music and running through some breathing exercises. That was my Christmas, I decided. I had some plans for the 25th, but nothing that could match meditating that room, soaking up the well-wishes of the couple hundred students who had taught me how to be a teacher. Thanks, kids.

I locked the door, headed home and supposed that all the major Christmas memories of 2009 were already in the bank. There were some good ones, though, so I was okay with it.

Luckily, I was wrong. I will never forget 6pm, December 25, 2009. For more on that, see the next post: Kangwha-do, Seokmo-do, Christmas and Awe.

I replied: “Nothing sunday.  Saturday I’m stalking pop stars all day.”

So it began.  I woke up, dressed a bit smartly for a Saturday, suit with no tie and a heavy overcoat (it is cold here now.  The ice outside my apartment hasn’t been melting during the day anymore).  At about 8:30am, I left home to take the subway most of the way across Seoul, where I met a friend of mine (an English teacher from London).  We showed up at his all-girls high school, where everyone was slightly surprised to see us.  Most high schools have school for a half-day every-other Saturday.  The Londoner said that I had come in to discuss Winter Camp planning with him, which was slightly true.  They also informed him that 2NE1 would be at the school this afternoon.  Really?  Yes, we had heard something about that…

2NE1 (pronounced like the number ’21,’ meant to represent the 21st century- yes, Americans would read it as ‘to anyone’) is a new but very popular group, which solo debuted with fire, followed by I don’t care, and are notable for the fact that they appeal to both genders (not common here), and they portray women as something other than sweet, demure, and high-heel’d.  It’s a start.  They were coming to the Londoner’s school that day to film a clip for a new video, and they also promised to perform a few songs for the girls at the school.

I know a bit about Korean pop music, but not too much.  All the groups are formed by corporate entertainment overlords, who also contract all the creative talent to write the songs.  The band members are only dancers/singers, which seems to cheapen the whole thing a bit.

We showed up at maybe 10:30am.  A little portable stage was being constructed.  We had a couple hours to kill before the actual members of the girl group showed up.  So, the Londoner gave me a tour of the school, introduced me to tons of his students, who were very shy.  Most Koreans seem to find me madly attractive, so I think I’m now the subject of a few dozen high school crushes.  Whatever.  The band was late, so the Londoner and I exchanged ideas about Winter Camp lessons, then went out to lunch with a co-worker of his.  The guy’s really cool, a mid-30′s Korean P.E. teacher who did a year of school at USC.  He was very chill.  While hanging out in the teacher office, I also met one of the English teachers who spent a year living in 3-4 different parts of California, including South Lake Tahoe and Davis.  Small world.

Before 2NE1 showed up, we all gathered in the big teachers’ office, which was right next to the classroom that the band would be shooting their video in.  Unfortunately, the hallway was off-limits.  Film crew members, aids, the directors, and private security were swarming everywhere.  So we hung out.  They prep’d and they filmed.  It took hours.  we saw them walk past the office a few times, doing walking-down-hallway shots, wearing risque versions of student uniforms.  We had consulted with the P.E. teacher beforehand, and we set out our primary mission objective:

- Get a picture with 2NE1.

Secondary mission objective was for me to ask one out on a date.  This was mostly a comedy-value objective.  The Londoner offered me 10-to-1 odds that I couldn’t, and I said that considering the grueling schedule and the army of personnel/security, the odds should really be more like 40-to-1.  He agreed that they should be, but he still only offered 10.

The picture was the primary goal.  I could put it to such good use.  Just two weeks after I started teaching, I had played a jeopardy game where students picked numbered buttons.  Each button lead to a picture that the students had to talk about.  Invariably, one of the students would pick #21, and all of the students around him/her would sing the “eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-21″ chorus from 2NE1′s Fire.  I would wait for them to finish, then click the #21 button and wham!  I’d replaced the normal clip-art picture with a downloaded pic of 2NE1.  The students decided then that I was basically the coolest teacher ever.

I have a whole new batch of students coming in March, and we will surely play this game again.  If I could repeat this event, but with a pic of myself with the band, my coolness status would officially transcend the reach of mere teachers and reside somewhere in the realm of gods.

The picture was the goal, and the awesome P.E. teacher was our Korean-speaking representative in charge of realizing that goal.  We figured that the principal would meet the band, so we decided to ask him to squeeze us in.  The principal had gone home, so no such luck.

So, we waited in the teacher’s office for an opportunity.  Then it happened.  An aid came in with a hand-drawn diagram of the room layout and some movements for the video.  She needed copies.  The P.E. teacher (who is Captain Suave himself), puts on his best accommodating grin, and informs her that he would happily make as many photocopies as she needed.  Furthermore, he would really appreciate it if she could line up three pictures with the band.

She said she’d see what she could do, but the girls had to okay it.  It was a start.

Then we hung out for a couple hours.  I talked with teachers and with students and with the Londoner and the P.E. teacher.  He had developed a game.  Three teachers (all male, all in their mid-late 30′s), would try to get little glimpses of the filming that was going on in the hallway.  There was a security guard posted to keep people out of that particular hallway.  Unfortunately for him, our rather large teacher office had three doors that opened onto that hallway.

Three men.  Three doors.  One security guard.

What ensued was, in fact, straight out of Looney Tunes.  It was childish.  It was shameless.  God damn it was funny.  It was made even better by the fact that this school was built according to the Korean convention: the wall separating the teacher’s office from the hallway was covered in windows.  From inside the office, we got to watch the security guard the whole time.  I didn’t take part in the festivities, but I must admit that I was massively entertained.

The little impromptu concert was alright, slightly underwhelming.  The music videos and actual concerts are awash with synthesized music and digital alteration of the singers’ voices.  This performance seemed like an okay-ish No-Reh-Bang (karaoke room) rendition of what the songs normally sound like.  Pop stars aren’t incredibly astoundingly talented.  Go figure.  I snapped off a bunch of pictures, though most were bad b/c the view was from above and behind the stage (didn’t leave the teacher’s office, b/c it was our staging point for Mission: Photo).  I also had a little bit of fun messing with the Londoner.  I had researched the band a little bit, just in case we actually got to chat with them.  He hadn’t looked them up at all.  He was trying to decide which one of the four he thought was the most attractive, and I cautioned him to be very careful in his choosing: their ages were twenty five/twenty five/eighteen/fifteen.

After the little show, the aid got back to us, said the band would film a bit more, and that we should stick around until after everything was finished and torn down.  Okay.  The P.E. teacher’s girlfriend called.  They were supposed to meet soon.  Doh!  The Londoner and I had both met the girlfriend before.  We told her to come to the school and join in the fun, but there were some complications with that idea.  Our opportunity clock started ticking away.

In the end, the P.E. teacher had just enough time.  Right before he had to go, the aid got back to us, and reported:

*MISSION FAILURE*

Apparently, the video being filmed wasn’t set to be released until the 29th of December, so the manager had declared no posing for pictures, because they might wind up on the internet, giving pre-debut exposure to the costumes, etc.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  Anger.  Such bitter anger.  We pointed out that the girls had just done a show for a couple hundred high school students, many of which had cameras, and ALL of which had phones.  No avail.  I would even have been cool with having the aid take the pictures and giving us her email address to pester her about it on the 29th.  She had grown kinda fond of us over the course of the day, so I guessed she would follow up on it.  To the manager, the issue was closed for discussion.

We were given the option to stick around for another X amount of time to maybe shake hands and say hi.  It would allow me to ask one of them out, which would have been interesting, but alas, we were a bit less than thrilled about the whole situation.  So we left the school before the band did.  On the walk to the subway station, the Londoner, and the P.E. teacher and I reflected.  First off, we were sad to discover that the sassy attitude the group is known for is only skin-deep and only while the camera is rolling.  During the shoot, they seem just as docile as the rest of the gender-divide pop stars.  Pity.

In the end, the three of us agreed that the highlight of 2NE1′s visit was in fact the security guy trying to guard three doors at once, while grown men ran back and forth between them.  It’s rare that you actually feel like you’re in middle school again.  I wish I had taken some video of it.

I really would have been cool with not sharing a pic w/ 2NE1 until after December 29th.  But noooo.  Instead, I dedicate the following section of this blog entry to the band’s prick manager.  How ya likin’ the low-ISO & 12x zoom, punk?

Yeah, they were pretty cold.  Look at what kinda clothes the audience is wearing to get an idea of the temperature.

Also, bonus points if you can guess the 15-year-old.

I was going to meet a guy I know from Berkeley for his going-away party.  Yeah, he’s moving home.  Sucks.

Busan is basically mini-Seoul, except that it’s on the coast, it has cleaner air & water, and it’s 10 degrees warmer.

I was a little bit worried about the prospect of going to a different city.  It was not that long ago that I finally got used to navigating my own Korean city.  Robert gave me some great directions for how to get to the subway station near his house, though.

zoom zoom

Seriously, those directions made me feel loved.  I took a picture of the computer screen, and left it on my camera for reference in case I needed it.

Then off to the train station.  This is what a bullet-train platform looks like.  I wish I’d taken a picture of the locomotive.  Oops.

Seriously comfortable

The inside was very spacious and comfortable, and the seats reclined really far.  I traded seats with a woman so she could sit next to her friend.  My new new seat-mate was a mid-40′s businessman who slept for most of the trip, allowing me to study my Korean book in peace.

Now, when I got to Busan, the subway station was right under the train station, as promised.  I debated for a minute about whether to get a new subway pass for the next couple days, or just get 1-way tickets the whole time.  I decided that before doing either, I should check to see if my Seoul subway pass works here, and voila, it worked just fine.

Yup. It's got a subway.

Then I went downstairs and found this map posted on the wall →

Now, I had heard before that the Busan subway is relatively simple to figure out compared to Seoul’s.  I still chuckled a bit when I saw the map, though.

"like a bowl of spaghetti dumped on a table"

This is what I’m used to.  By the way, if you click on the picture, I live between Ogeum and Gaerong stations on the dark purple line in the Southeast of the city.  My school is at Jamsil, where the pink and the green lines meet (northeast of my home).  A rough guess of travel time is 2 minutes per stop, plus 5-10 minutes per transfer, so it takes 40min-1 hour to get anywhere in the center of town (above the big bend in the river).  The two minute rule breaks down if you cross the river, and when you start getting toward the ends of the lines; then the distance between each stop stretches reeeeaallllly far, because you’re hopping around between satellite cities.

Anyway, I ran a finger along each line on the Busan subway map until I found the stop whose name was shared by two universities, and then I went there.  It was still nice of Robert to give me the full directions, though.

So I was now in Busan.  It was about 9:00pm.  Robert met me at the subway station, walked me back to his apartment, where I met Robert2 (they’re a gay couple who we used to refer to collectively as “Robert Squared”).  I had only met Robert2 in passing once back in Berkeley.  Then we went out for a night of celebration!

I met a dozen or so foreign English teachers in Busan.  They were alright.  Lots of Canadians.  Most of them worked for private cram schools, and most of them disliked their jobs/bosses moderately or vehemently.  They referred to me and the other guy who worked for a public school as “those assholes.”  Yeah, I’m glad I did my homework before applying.  Robert vented at me briefly over the weekend about his boss’ shenanigans.  Apparently in order to avoid paying the mandatory pension match, she didn’t register any of her foreign teachers with the national pension service, and (since they’re linked) she didn’t enroll them in the national health care plan either.  Robert’s eligible to get most of his taxes back when he leaves the country, but his boss tried to dissuade him from going to the tax service office, possibly because she’s been embezzling some/all of his tax $$.  She also scheduled a flight for him that leaves before he gets his severance pay.  I suggested he make copies of all of his paystubs/bank records, and then if she stiffs him on his severance, he should send it to the Korean tax office with a note that says: “Hi, I think my boss is cheating on her taxes.”

Anyway, most of the Busan people were cool.  Their foreigner bars had more of a small-town, we-all-know-each-other feel than Seoul’s foreigner bars.  Much friendlier.  I’ve discovered that I love the darts game “Cricket,” because it rewards players who are only vaguely accurate.  Another girl who lived in Cloyne with me showed up to the party as well.  After the restaurant/bar, fourteen of us went to a No-Rae-Bang (Karaoke room).

You're gonna meet some gentle people there...

The No-Rae-Bang was ridiculously large, twice the size of the next largest I’ve ever been in.  We  Robert put on “San Francisco (be sure to wear some flowers in your hair),” and the 4 bay-area kids sang it together.  Ah, home.  We headed back to the Roberts’ apartment ridiculously late (most bars and No-Reh-Bangs stay open until 6-7am here).  They complained that it was cold, but I was in a warm heaven because it was noticeably above freezing.  I slept on a few folded-over blankets on the floor.  I have a new appreciation for heated floors now.

The next day we slept in late.  Then we slept in more.  Then we got burgers at a very tasty burger place.  Here are a few pictures of Busan that second day (click on ‘em and they get bigger):

Oooh, shiny

Ignore the trashbags

Yup, my hair sticks out funny

Now, do you see that bridge in the background?  It’s two-stories like the Bay bridge, and at night it lights up all pretty.  Busan is very proud of that bridge.  It also has one very interesting oddity which you can see if you zoom in on this map (The bridge is the one in the ocean with the ’66′ on it).

Does anything look not-quite-right about that bridge?  For those of you who have not clicked on the link yet, you really should.  It’s not nearly as cool if I just tell you.

Let’s look at the usual purpose of bridges: to connect places that are separated by something that you need to cross over.  This Busan bridge is special among bridges because there is absolutely no geographic reason for it to exist; you could just drive along the shore instead.  Now I’m sure it’s faster, because you don’t have to drive through the city, but still…  You could build a wide thoroughfare, or you could build an overpass, or you could built a suspension bridge over the ocean.  Of these three choices, which would you choose?

Okay, fine, the bridge over the ocean looks cooler, but it seems a tad fiscally irresponsible.

That’s Busan.  The highlight was definitely getting to see people I know, and getting to know a second awesome Robert.  I tried to convince them to come back and sign on with public schools in Seoul.  They said they would think about it.

I realized that it’s been 4 months since I’ve seen anyone who knows me.  I mean, who has known me before.  I’ve never gone that long in my life without seeing people who know me.  I think the longest was probably a month or so when I first started in Berkeley.  Weird.  Last weekend should hold me over until January, when I’m off to China to see Zhuo!

In other news, I have a plan for xmas now!  Simon (the Kiwi guy) and I and possibly 1-2 more people are going to head to an Island Northeast of Seoul, where there’s a hostel and an ocean and cold wintry outdoors stuff and no subways/taxis/tall buildings.  It should be fun, and we don’t have to dump cash on plane/train tickets to get there, just a short bus ride.

One of the main things that I need to drill into their heads is standardized format.  They don’t write anything here, ever.  It’s all book work and tests (lame, yes), so they haven’t learned the little things like how to write a heading.

So, I made sure to put the same standardized heading on every one of my essays/stories with name/student#/date before the title.  I also made up a fake student name/# for each of the essays/stories.  I expect that whichever students read the following story tomorrow may be a little confused.

Homer

student number: 1

Thargelion 22, 850 BC

The Odyssey

In ancient Greece there was a man named Odysseus…

Also, I assume that if Homer had written the Odyssey as a 200-word student essay, some things may have come out a little differently.  I think these are my two favorite episodes:

“Then Odysseus blinded and made fun of a Cyclops.”
and
“Then Odysseus and his son killed pretty much everybody.”

My vacation begins December 23.

- I’ll probably go somewhere outside Korea from December 31 until January 3 or so.  There’s discussion of the Philippines, and I might try to visit Zhuo in China.

- I work for three weeks in January

- From January 25 until February 6-ish, I’m free again.  If anyone wants to visit Korea or the rest of Asia, this is your chance!  Send me an email and we’ll talk.

Okay, now that that’s done.  What’s been up with me?  Lots of everything!  I’ve been playing Borderlands with friends from back home once or twice a week, which is pretty rockin, even if the game’s a bit simple and too easy.

I also got sick.  I was a little worried it was the dreaded swine-flu.  Nope!  Just a cold, and a pretty mild one at that.  I saw the doctor and I brought a co-worker with to translate.  Silly me.  Doctors = hyper-educated = speak English.  He loved the practice, though.  I have never seen someone so thrilled to say a sentence like “now, I shall take a picture of your throat!”

I’ve bit off more than I can casually chew at work (it’s a habit).  I gave the kids a homework assignment, to send text messages to each other and then write me an email giving me the details of it.  Any time you give a homework assignment to 500+ kids, there are repercussions.  In this case, there are about 100 repercussions in my in-box (graded homework is extremely uncommon here–grades are usually just exam scores, so most of the students skipped the homework, which I was kinda counting on).

Also, I hosted that speech competition a couple weeks ago and now we’re printing up the speeches in a little commemorative book.  I edited the speeches, which was quite an undertaking b/c I told the kids not to worry about punctuation/etc too much since their speech is spoken.  Now I’m writing critiques of each speech, which is surprisingly time-consuming.  It’s good to be writing something like literary analysis again, and some of the stuff in the speeches is pretty damn good.

My next big conundrum is the students’ final grade.  I handed out scorecards at the beginning of the semester which I’ve made stamps on to mark participation, doing homework, etc.  The idea was that the # of stamps would determine their grade.  Then educational differences struck.  In almost all of their classes, the students have textbooks and workbooks.  That’s it.  No binders.  No notebooks.  No blank paper.  They read from the textbooks and do work in the workbooks, and any notes they have to take they take in the notes section of the workbook.

The problem with this is that the students have never had to keep track of stuff.  Even worse, since they have no notebook, they keep their scorecard folded up in a pencil case, or tucked loose into a textbook, or just in their pocket.  I’d say about 70% of them have lost their scorecard at some point in the semester.  Hmm.  I also underestimated how many class sessions would be canceled, so the # of meetings isn’t enough for each kid’s # of stamps to contract to the mean of their participation level.  Hmm again.  Mid-terms have also warned me about grades and parents and mixing the two.  I had a giant fit on my hands because a girl got a score of 9 instead of 10 under less than ideal conditions.  If I start failing top-graded kids because they can’t keep track of a piece of paper, I’m going to have an armed revolt.

Great.  On the one hand, each kid was told right at the beginning just how important this piece of paper is.  Some day soon, they will in fact have to keep track of stuff.  If I lose my passport, I’m in a world of hurt.  At my last job, if I lost a client’s $50,000 check, I would have been in a world of hurt.  My initial answer to the students-losing-scorecards problem was that if you coddle them, they’ll never learn.  Damn the fallout, the kids gotta be taught a lesson!

There are a few problems with this.  First of all, the idea of “I need to keep track of my stuff,” won’t stick, because there is n0 reinforcement.  The parents will almost certainly blame the evil waegook for his outlandish grading policy, and when the kids start school again in January, they’ll be a grade higher and they’ll go back  to having nothing to keep track of except text books and test dates.  On the other hand, letting them off for screwing up would be an absolutely terrible idea, showing them that they actually don’t have to take responsibility at all.

The compromise: the kids who have enough stamps on their scorecard will get an automatic 100% on the final exam score.  The rest will have to write me an essay.  It will be short, only one page long.  I’ll have a grading rubric drawn up beforehand.  If any of the students who must write the essay complain about there being two different standards of grading, then I’ll tell them the essay is not mandatory; they may take their scorecard grade instead if they wish.  We’ll see how many takers there are.

In other news, I’ve been writing quite a bit more in the last few weeks.  I think it’s because I’m settled in and comfortable in day-to-day life.  I got a haircut today.  I was a bit worried about getting a haircut through a language barrier (I’m trying to grow it long, and having someone hack it off before I can get that across would suck).  Last night a friend pointed out the obvious answer: get your hair cut in Itaewon (the foreigner hangout district)  Whaddya know, I went today and the hair stylist could communicate perfectly.  Although, not perfectly enough to make hair-stylist small-talk.  Maybe they don’t do that here.  Or they just don’t do that in English here.  Either way, a silent haircut was kinda weird, but it got the job done.

In other other news, I’ve started putting apps on the ipod.  Any suggestions?  No games yet, but Korean flash cards as well as some lessons, a word processor, and appbox.  The word processor is pretty cool.  I’ve been able to scribble down outlines for short stories on the subway.  The keyboard is a little small/slow for all-out fiction writing.  I wish I could get a little roll-up keyboard for it (that may sound like a joke, but it isn’t).

Related to the above: what do you get when you mix apples and onions?  You get awesome.