incredulity

Even though I've lived in Korea for more than two years, there are still moments when I look around and become incredulous that I'm here.  Coming here was such an unexpected thing. Even when I was preparing to come here for the first time, I don't think I ever really thought it would happen. But then one day someone told me to get on an airplane and I did.

These moments of incredulity happen at various times. Today I got one while I was teaching. A student told me that today was his last day. This kid is super cool even though his English is terrible, so I asked him if he wanted a goodbye present from me. "Um," and he thought for a moment, "cow meat, please." I guess I just don't expect that to be a request of too many teachers in America. Although to be fair it's hardly a normal request of teachers here as well.

miscellaneous

Three years ago today I was arriving in Korea for the first time. That seems about right.

I've taken some pictures since I've been back. Click on through to see them.

sounds

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Sim, why are you writing at 8am? Would it happen to have anything to do with the lead-footed jackass who lives above you?" Astute observation, dear reader. And yes, it just might have something to do with him.

Did you know that for native English speakers, Korean is one of the five hardest languages to learn? I'd assume that that's a two way street, and that the inverse is true, that English is just as hard for a native Korean speaker to learn. (4 "thats" in that last sentence, setting a new single sentence Journey to the East record.)  Pretty much everything about the two languages is different, even basic things like word order, sentence structure, and the alphabet.

Korean has its own alphabet. You may look at it and just see a mess of pictures, not all that different from Chinese. But Korean actually has letters which represent sounds, and which when put together form words. Once you learn the letters, the pictures become much more discernible, and it's actually quite an easy language to learn to read. Much easier than English, in which rules are constantly contradicted.

Not only do the alphabets look different, they sound different as well. They have sounds we don't have, we have sounds they don't have. The most notorious example of this would be our distinct sounds for R and L. In Korea, both of those sounds are represented by the same letter. They also have no letters for F, V, X,  and Z.

Here's where Konglish rears its ugly head. Konglish is English words that have been adapted into Korean. Words like radio, computer, chocolate, etc. However, because the alphabets are so different, the words get mangled in the transition and come out sounding weird. Also, if there's ever a sound in an English word that doesn't exist in Korean, they must substitute in something else. Fs become Ps, Xs become SHs, Vs become Bs, and Zs become Js. Konglish gets Koreans used to mispronouncing these sounds. It's a problem that almost all Koreans have, from novice learners to those who've been studying for years.

It can also be funny, because they can often mispronounce a word, and in doing so say a completely different word. Take the word "Zoo". Remember that for them Z is J, so "Zoo" can quite easily become "Jew". As a result, and as happened to me the other day, you can have a Korean child adamantly proclaiming, "I hate jews!" and "Jews smell bad!"

You know, blogger.com allows you to see which google searches brought people to your blog. I might be in for a steep uptick of my anti-Semitic readership.

themes

There are a couple of topics that I frequently find myself writing about on this ol' blog here. One is how the modern South Korean student is overstressed. The other is my acute fear of elderly Koreans. Today I stumbled across two news articles that overtly explain both of these things:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45255193/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/parents-pray-jets-grounded-korea-college-exam/#.TsNf2T3hfGc

and

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2011/11/16/serial-smacker-hits-seouls-new-mayor/

Enjoy!

a case of the mondays

I can't tell you how many times over the past 3 years that I've sat at my desk as the last few seconds before the first period bell sounded, dreading it all, unable to see how I could possibly get through the day. Sometimes that feeling is due to a hangover, other times it's due to a particularly bad schedule, and still others because I just don't feel like teaching. It's those last few seconds that are particularly awful, because I give up any pretense of pulling myself together, and for a brief moment I think to myself, "If you left for the airport now you could be sitting at McGlynn's in 36 hours."

I don't tell you this for any particular reason, other than I felt this way today. Mondays are the worst for me this year. 

A large part of your success or effectiveness as a teacher over here depends on what happened, and happens, when you weren't, and aren't, around. I'll try to explain.

First, most of how you'll fare in the classroom is decided before you even step on the plane to get over here. If the teacher you are taking over for was competent and managed his or her classes well, then you're already starting in the plus column. Conversely, if the teacher you're taking over for was dogshit, you've got a considerable hill to climb just to get back to level pegging. 

In my case, for year 3, much like year 1, I've taken over for dogshit. In both cases I replaced someone who was fired due to their incompetence. I still very clearly remember my first workday ever in Korea, when my manager said to me, "You can't do any worse than the teacher you're replacing. You could walk into the classroom and take a dump on the floor and you'd be doing better than her." I think my current employers could express a similar sentiment. The guy I took over for sucked at English and got fired because it was plainly evident- even to people who can't speak English- that he was incompetent. However, the school had to keep him around until a replacement was found, effectively making him a lame-duck teacher. So, for the last 6 weeks before I got here, my classes were being presided over by an incompetent teacher who no longer had any reason to even pretend to give a damn. In fact, he was actively trying to hurt the school before he left. I heard he even went so far as intentionally leaving the air conditioners in the school on overnight so that my employers would incur a higher electricity bill. If I had a picture of a considerable hill to climb, I'd post it after this sentence.

This applies in a more immediate sense as well. I'm the only foreign teacher at my school, but the kids are taught English by Korean teachers as well. This is also something that year 3 has in common with year 1. Korean teachers have the distinct advantage of being able to communicate much better with the kids. This is good for them, not so good for me. I've overheard a fair amount of my Korean co-teachers classes, and they go something like this: 

Koreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankorean*could*koreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankorean*should*koreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankorean*would*koreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankoreankorean*okay?*.

When I then walk in to bestow my own version of English education, which actually consists of speaking English, the kids aren't exactly primed for it. Insert another picture of that considerable hill to climb.

I don't mean to paint every class I teach with the same brush. But on Mondays that brush does get used a lot. Mondays, man, I don't know how I get through them.

surroundings

This post is going to be about where I live. I'll probably be using the word I a lot. I think I've used the title "surroundings" previously. Maybe not.

I live in Daejeon. I've lived here before, but I'm in a much different part of town than before. Before I was in the northeast part of town, this year I'm in the northwest. From my apartment building I can see the Daejeon World Cup Stadium, which was built for the 2002 World Cup which was shared by South Korea and Japan. The stadium was the site of a controversial 2002 World Cup match between South Korea and Italy in which dubious refereeing helped South Korea to victory and into the quarterfinals. Now, it's primary use seems to be to house a bowling alley. Seriously, I walked past it the other day and saw a sign in Korean that said "Daejeon World Cup Stadium Bowling Alley."

The area I live in seems to be quite affluent. The reason I think this to be the case is that within my immediate vicinity there are things I've never seen in Korea before: houses. See, everyone over here lives in these massive apartment buildings, scores of which can be seen at anytime simply by looking up. So, when I was strolling through my area shortly after moving in, I had to do a double-take. A few houses even have solar panels on the roof.

Unfortunately I didn't get a house to live in. I got an apartment with paper thin walls, underneath the loudest damn Korean in the country. It's bad enough that there's a couple of kids who can get a bit loud as they set off to school, but if I manage to sleep through that at 7am, the guy above me is certain to make sure I don't sleep past 8. This guy STOMPS around. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that each step sounds like he's jumping up and down trying to make as much noise as possible. The loudest he gets is when he walks down the stairs from his floor to mine. It's what I wake up to every morning. One of these days, and this is inevitable, I'm going to stumble out my door half naked and attempt to teach him how to descend a flight of stairs like a sensible and conscientious human being.

Another new thing about this year is that I have access to a subway. Gwangju doesn't have one, and my first year here I didn't live near any stations. Now I live right outside of the World Cup station subway stop. It consists of only one line, which doesn't even stretch across the entirety of the city. But it can get me to the part of town where my friends live, so I'll be taking it a lot.

There's one part of my area that I'm a little down on, though. You may recall that I've written about "kim bap shops" in the past. They're those cozy little restaurants you can go to by yourself to quietly get a bowl of soup or some rice dish, and occasionally a crazy, old, drunk Korean man may assail you for no apparent reason as you wait for your kimchi stew.

I frequent these places quite a bit, and in the past I've always been on good terms with the people who run them. They were always friendly and smiled at me; when I left Gwangju I even gave my local kim bap restaurant owner a hug. This year I've only found one kim bap place in my area. It's run by a bunch of middle aged women, and I'll tell you right now I won't be giving them any goodbye hugs. Every time I've gone there so far they've kinda glared at me and treated me like I'm an annoyance. I walked in there tonight after work and a few of them shot me some nasty looks, so I turned around and left. I wish I knew how to say, "YOU JUST LOST YOURSELF A CUSTOMER, MISSY!" in Korean.

Now I gotta find a new kim bap shop.

paranoia

I wasn't expecting to be this scared all the time. It's all I think about. Well, when I'm working I can push it to the back of my mind. But the second I get a chance to think, my thoughts wander, and always in the same direction. Then I go to the bathroom to check. Checking for them blood blisters.

While I was home I got a regular blood count taken, and the platelets were always solid. I last got one about a month ago and I was right around 200, which is fine. While I was home it didn't stress me; even after I went off the steroids the numbers climbed. So I wasn't worried about coming back. It was a one time freak occurrence. Sometimes it just happens to people.

Now that I'm back here I'm certain they're gonna plummet. My dilemma now becomes how to handle it in the event of a relapse. I can't just play dumb and act like it never happened before, if only to avoid another bone marrow biopsy. However, I'll have to confess to my employers that I knew it might happen. I didn't tell them about it before they hired me, but now I can't just say, "Oh, there's one little thing you should probably know about me. I might spontaneously start bleeding to death for no discernible reason."

One of the required documents to get a teaching visa here is a health statement. It's only 4 or 5 questions. One is if you've ever had any infectious diseases that threaten public health. No.  Another is if you've ever received treatment for an emotional condition. No. Another is if you've ever been HIV positive. No. The last is have you had any serious diseases or injuries for the past 5 years. Erm. I don't think I lied by checking "No", because I think of a serious disease as being cancer or the plague. But still, I now wish I'd been up front about it.