The Brilliance of My School

Sometimes I question the intelligence of people around me. I often question my school. Frequently, things happen that make me wonder who thought this was a good idea? My favorite example of a lack in logic was the construction of a plexi-glass wall in between the teachers' room and the rest of the office. All of the teachers are squeezed into one room, which is packed full of desks. At one of our useless Tuesday meetings, we were informed that there would be some construction taking place the following weekend, but not to worry, it would not disrupt us in the slightest. The construction was to make the upper half of the wall plexi-glass. This would cosmetically enhance our school. Oh yeah, they would also be moving the wall back two feet, thus reducing the size of the already small teachers' room (this part was muttered as an afterthought). Well, the construction began on Friday morning, and it was earsplittingly loud. It was sort of disruptive because it we still had to teach on Friday. Also, all of the Korean staff had been displaced into hallways and the computer room, which several classes needed to use to take tests on the computers that day. Also, they unplugged and took away all but one of the teachers' computers, which is where the tests and handouts we need to teach our classes are stored. Oh yeah, and all of the photocopiers, except one that was broken, disappeared. The broken photocopier was then plugged in outside of the teachers' room. After a few hours, all of the teachers were rounded up to help move the desks out of the way for the construction. I was annoyed at being "not disrupted" by the construction, but I laughed it off, thinking it would only be for one day. However, the construction lasted another week or two, but don't worry, it wasn't disruptive at all. Just like the time when a mysterious man came into my class to use his electric screwdriver to fix things during the middle of my class. Using power tools isn't loud at all. Sometimes I feel like I am supposed to teach an obedient class in the middle of a circus tent. "Oh no, kids. Just ignore the juggling bears and listen to my enthralling lecture on American history." The chaos almost drives me to insanity, especially when it is over something as silly as half of a plexi-glass wall that, in my opinion, didn't make the room look any better. Especially when the Korean staff stacked shelves up to the ceiling on their side. Now the teachers have a wonderful view of the back of cheap cabinets. I don't know about you, but I don't find the sight of particleboard stapled together to be pleasing. What was wrong with the wall that we had before? Who thought that this was a good idea?



Along with the utterly useless plexi-glass wall, we got a glass door that doesn't open because of the piles of crap shoved in the way. To my knowledge, no one has ever gone through this doorway.

I Think I'm Getting Weirder and Dumber

People who come to Korea fall into two basic categories. There are the people who are running from something, and then there are the social rejects. People running from things include the guy who told Ariel and me in our first conversation with him, "Yeah, I wore out my welcome at home." By this, he meant going to rehab eight times for cocaine. The other category includes those people who are so awkward that they don't really know how to have friends. We are talking Napolean Dynamite style, never had a girlfriend, wearing a pocket protector, watching Battlestar Galactica. These wonderful people are brought together in Korea. Sometimes I wonder which of these groups I fall into. Well, I don't have a drug problem, but I don't play Dungeons and Dragons. I like to think that I am one of the few "normal" people in Korea, but some people may disagree with me on that. Anyway, in Korea, you are friends with the people around you because they speak English, not because you actually chose to be their friends. In a way, it's good because it teaches you how to be friends with different types of people, but there is a downside. Ariel and I have decided that there is a spectrum of weirdness in Korea that applies to all foreigners. On one end are the real weirdos, and on the other end are Ariel and me (a.k.a. the anomaly of normal people). In order for the two ends to hang out, we must meet somewhere in the middle. This is good for the weirdos because they become more normal, but unfortunately, the normal people become more awkward.

I believe that there is another unfortunate spectrum in my life right now, which I like to call the Dumbness Scale. It is much like the Weirdness Spectrum, only it measures intelligence. I like to think that I am on the smarty pants side of the scale, but again, this may be disputed. Many of the people that I am around throughout my day are on the other side of the scale. There is the scheduling woman who isn't sure how to count. When Ariel pointed out her mistake, she replied,"Oooohhhh, it goes 1,2,3, not 2,3,1." Or there is the girl who forgot to wear a jacket the day after it snowed. "I just forgot to wear one," she explained to me in the freezing temperatures. And then there are the kids I spend my day with at school. "Teacher! Cold!" means The air conditioner is on too high. Would you please turn it off? Sometimes it's not just the language barrier that makes me crazy. I explain the exact same thing everyday in my writing class: how to write a four paragraph TOEFL essay. I have explained it different ways. I have shown them examples. I have made them practice. I have been doing this for months. Do you think that they write four paragraph essays? No, they don't. I say the same things over and over, and they never seem to get it.

So when I come home, I may have changed a bit. I may not be a sharp as I once was. I may stand awkwardly in a group of people, not knowing what to say. I may forget to use articles when I speak. I may over-explain everything. Hopefully, the effects will not be permanent.

Miscommunication

Sometimes communication can be difficult in a foreign nation, especially when you don't learn to speak the native language. My Korean is so bad that I can't say much more than "How much is this?" Since I can only say about three sentences and understand maybe five sentences in Korean, the conversation has to continue in English if we ever want to get beyond "I am a teacher." This does not work well if the other person speaks as much English as I do Korean. Often I just talk to people in English while they respond in Korean, neither of us knowing what the other said. This situation is acceptable if you are talking to the taxi driver or waitress, but other situations can turn disastrous. When I try to explain a problem with my schedule to a Korean staff at my school, the schedule inevitably comes back wrong about five times before I stop trying to explain the problem and decide to ignore it. I suppose it is my fault for being in Korea and not learning the language, but I do work at an English academy. One would think that they would hire English speaking staff. While most of the miscommunication I experience here is due to the language barrier, I experienced a different kind of miscommunication on Friday. It was the kind of miscommunication where you think back to what someone said, and you think to yourself She totally lied to me!

I went to a dermatologist for rosacea. Rosacea is what makes my face red. Basically, the blood vessels are too close to the skin. I've tried lotions and prescriptions before, but I decided to look into laser surgery, thinking it would be cheaper in Korea. The doctor spoke English, and we talked about it for a while. She made it seem like it wouldn't be a big deal so I decided to try it. She told me I could start right then and there. I told her that I needed to be at work in a couple of hours, and she reassured me that it was ok. The only warning that she gave me was, "You will be a little red." Remember that quote because this is what I feel lied to about. So I went ahead and had the laser treatment done. It felt like a lot of little bee stings. When I stood up to leave, I looked in the mirror and noticed that my face wasn't "a little red." It was covered in purple bruises. I had spots like a leopard, and I had to go teach children. Deciding that bandages on my face looked better than the spots, I tried to look inconspicuous. I told my students that my cat attacked me in the middle of the night. The doctor lied to me, so I lied to the kids. Maybe it's not lying, maybe I just miscommunicated the information.

I wonder what will happen next...


My school has gone a bit crazy. Not a good kind of crazy, but a weird kind of crazy. It all started because enrollment was down. My personal theory of why enrollment is down is that people are not stupid, and they realize that the teaching our school requires us to do is ineffective. Making kids memorize over a hundred words a day is not realistic. Having kids use college textbooks when they are in fifth grade is ridiculous. Any normal person could see that these methods of teaching are not going to work. Any normal person would realize this. However, the owner is not normal. His theory for the low enrollment is that we don't make the kids sit up straight in class. Yes, that is right. Good posture = learning. Nevermind that these kids go to school for 12 hours a day and on average sleep 4 hours a night. The slouching kids are not just tired, they are disrespectful brats who aren't paying attention. The owner is fixated on this slouching theory. He has gone so far as to make part-time workers go around and check that the kids are sitting up straight. If there is unacceptable posture in a classroom, they come in and yell at the kids (in Korean). The part-timers also get the super redundant job of checking the kids' homework (as teachers, we check the homework also and already fill out a sheet of who didn't do their homework). So maybe 3-4 times in a 45 minute class, the part-timers barge in and bark Korean at the students. This is supposed to make our teaching more effective. I am starting to think that there is no word in Korean for "effective," and that is why my boss can't seem to figure out what effective is. On the other hand, I think that the part-timers have an inkling. Normally, they just shut up, do their job, and collect the $2/hour that they make under the table. That all changed last night when they were told that they had to wear some silly arm badge that said "English Only." One part-timer refused (I can't blame him. I wouldn't be humiliated for $2/hr). The owner promptly called the obstinate worker into his office and fired him. I picture the scenario in my head (but I imagine it happening in English which I know is not a reality). The owner yells in a rage that someone would have the audacity to disobey him. The part-timers stands there with a smirk. Finally, the owner throws in a few more choice words and points a finger at the door. The part-timer saunters out the door without looking back. As an added bonus, the other part-timers realize that one of their kind just got fired over an armband and follow him out the door, throwing down half-graded tests and meaningless papers. That is how I picture it going down, but I am sure it wasn't as heated as I imagine because I am in Korea, where people are normally too polite to quit. They have to ask for permission to leave. I know that the guy was fired on the spot, and I know that the other part-timers quit and walked out. What I don't know is what will happen next. Now there is no one to yell at the kids for slouching. How will the students ever learn without the added discipline of 19 year old Korean boys interrupting my class every five minutes?

How much kimchi can you eat?


When kids write essays about traditional Korean stuff, they often write about kimchi. In case you don't know (just as I didn't before I decided to move to Korea), kimchi is spicy fermented cabbage. It is eaten constantly in Korea. My students ask if I know what kimchi is, which is a ridiculous question because it is eaten at every meal in Korea. You can't go to a restaurant and not have them grab for the large tupperware and dish out kimchi into a bowl. It doesn't matter what you are eating, you get some sort of kimchi. There are actually many kinds of kimchi, and they are each served on their own little dish. A typical Korean meal involves a table covered in small dishes. I would hate to be a dishwasher in Korea, and oddly enough, most people don't have an automatic dishwasher in their homes. As usual, I am going off on a tangent. Back to the importance of kimchi in Korean culture. Koreans love the stuff. Kimchi is eaten with all kinds of food. Our Korean "mom" serves us kimchi with spaghetti, cookies, and pretty much everything we eat at her home.


Yesterday, we had the delight of making kimchi with Korean "mom." Of course, before making kimchi, we had to eat brunch. In case you are wondering what brunch means in Korea, it was kimchi (of course), rice, meat, broccoli, oysters, peanuts, and eggs. It's not what I would normally think of when someone says the word "brunch," but hey, I am in Korea. After eating, we sat on the newspapers laid out on the floor and got to work. Korean "mom" busted out a huge tub of salty red pepper paste and garbage bags (yes, that is plural, there was more than one bag) of salted cabbage. At first, Paco and I were only observers because we "might get clothes dirty." We watched as "mom" took the heads of cabbage one by one and covered each individual leaf with the red pepper paste. After a while, we convinced "mom" to let us help. We put on plastic gloves and started rubbing the paste onto the cabbage. We did this for a few hours before we had to leave to go to work. When we left, there was a sizable garbage can filled with our newly made kimchi, and "mom" showed no signs of stopping until all of the cabbage was used. I asked her how long it would take her and her son to eat that much kimchi. She solemnly replied "six months." I was blown away. This tiny Korean woman is going to eat a garbage can worth of kimchi. I am guessing that the garbage can ended up weighing as much as she does.

On a random note, Korean "mom" just got accepted to teach Korean in Ecuador for 30 months. So Paco and I will likely head to South America net year. Anyone want to go to Machu Picchu with me?

Exploring a Seafood Market



While Ariel's parents were visiting, we saw some interesting places. One of the uniquely asian experiences was a trip to a seafood market. After a long subway ride filled with many transfers, we managed to find our way into a warehouse filled with vendors. It was a little disturbing to see so many ocean creatures clamoring in tanks waiting to become dinner. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience. The ground was wet with sea water and animal guts. Ariel and I both rolled up our pant legs before entering. I expected it to smell unbearably fishy, but the air just seemed thick and musty.


The warehouse was full of massive shrimp, abalone, enormous mussels, snails, squid, octopus, fish, skates, sharks, eels, and many more marine creatures. Octopus were sitting in tubs of water and crawling out, only to be poked and prodded by a woman with a long stick until they relented and stayed in the tub. Shrimp practically the size of my head rested on beds of ice. Mussels and snails gasped for a breath of sea water as they lay stacked in a pyramid.


We stood and took in the sights. We gawked as men grabbed fish out of tanks and beat them over the head until the flopping subsided. We watched as people filleted fish and laid it on beautiful platters. We took pictures shamelessly. I only saw one other white person. It was upsetting to witness the raping of the ocean (I even saw some sharks in the fish tanks), but I don't regret going.

The Dr. Fish Experience



How could we resist? It's a coffee shop that has good coffee. That in itself is a difficult thing to find in Korea. Ususally, coffee is burned, watered down, and comes in a dixie cup. There are very few places where you can get a real, large cup of coffee, which is why I love Starbucks at the moment. Starbucks feels like home. It is even decorated for Christmas already in true American fashion. It's still the beginning on November, in case no one has noticed!?!?!?!!?! But I am digressing from the importance of Dr. Fish.

It's a nice coffee shop where you can sit and relax (unless it's the weekend, and then it's a madhouse). You sip your coffee and eat free bread and waffles. Eventually your number comes up, and it's your turn for Dr. Fish. You are probably wondering what the hell Dr. Fish is (if I haven''t already called you and rambled on and on about it). Dr. Fish is where you have fish eat all of your dead skin. First, you wash your feet off, and then you sit in front of a nice window overlooking the busy street below. Next you stick your feet in a pool of water filled with hungry fish. The hungry fish bite you, eating the dead skin from your feet and ankles. For someone who is ticklish, this is pure torture. It's common to hear shrieks of horror from the waegooks (Korean word for foreigner) as the fish chomp away. The Koreans sit there like it is a normal thing to have hundreds of fish biting you at once. There are actually whole pools that you can lay in while fish eat skin off of your entire body. I don't think that I could handle doing that. It was hard enough to keep my feet in the water for 15 minutes at a coffee shop.

I learned from the menu that there are many benefits to Dr. Fish. Besides exfoliating, it gently massages your feet in a way that no person can do. It improves circulation, and it brings you closer to nature. You feel connected with the fish that are getting a meal of dead skin. Being a biologist, I see this as a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. I benefit by getting smoother, softer feet. The fish benefit by getting fat off dead skin. It's a win win situation. I'm just glad that I get to be the person and not the fish in this scenario.