The Wall

The school year in Korean runs from mid-February until December and this means that, in theory, all the children are on winter break and should be off doing whatever it is that small children do. But this is Korea and this means that the idea of winter break only holds in theory. As I am basically working for a glorified after-school program, and the Korean population is all gaga about education, out little school now shifts to what is called the “winter break” schedule. This means that we now start our teaching day at 10 am and that all of the classes are consolidated as the Korean teachers try to figure out which students should be moved forward and which should be set aside for further development. The problem with this is that I really have no say in the matter – which means I have no idea what is going on — and if I did have a say, the students who I would move would all be moved to different schools, not different classes. After all of this is sorted out, my boss sells the parents on this idea of “special classes” and this means that throughout the break period some students will have extra class time to work on . . . well, something that is obviously “special.” It basically means that I have to think up “special things” for them to do besides the other things that they normally do in class. It also means that I have another seven classes for six weeks. Thus, I am basically pissed off and frustrated as these are the moments where the “communication problems” are acutely apparent. As it stands, I sit very still and do what I am told. It is not like I really have anything better to do.

I did get some things to fall in my favor. I have basically tried to stress the idea that I think textbooks suck rocks and that a greater feeling of accomplishment can be had if the kids actually read “books.” I checked on-line and decided that I liked the book HOLES and had my mom send me some copies. I am using that with some middle schoolers and I think it will work out. I am also using it with a high school freshman who showed up yesterday – “Scott teacher, I need a small favor . . . ” giggles Lydia as she motions for me to come to her office. At this point what is another hour of my time?

Woo Ju is all cute in her little school uniform and she is nervous as hell. I try not to be imposing but it is Friday and if I want to be a prick I could easily make things so intimating that she would scurry away and try to pick up French. I would have my hour back, now wouldn’t I? After explaining to her where I am from, I tell the kid that the choice of how to run the class is basically hers. This confounds her. She can read the text book I have set down in front of her, answer the questions about a short reading and complete the exercises or she can start to read a book (HOLES), look up all the words that she doesn’t know and then use those words in a diary that she writes in every other day or so. Those are two options, you choose or come up with another. I mean, it is her dime and I will work as hard as she wants to work. The textbook thing is really a cake walk as I don’t have to think . . . This other route . . . Well, I am probably going to have to think a bit and all of the rest of it. But like I said, what else do I have to do?

At least I found a reasonable place to get the books online and this will ease a great deal of pain. Ah, the joys of books in English that will be mailed to the crib without much of an added cost. As far as I can tell there are only about a buck more than they would cost in the states. There will never be an excuse for me to be bored.

Damnit.

The first week of this program started on the second so my sorry ass has been in scramble mode for about the last 14 days. After I took my little Christmas day trip to Oeo Sa temple, I have simply been trying to keep up. The week after that I only taught for two days and then I went to Seoul with Lydia and her husband David. Their son, Daniel, just landed a job with the Kolon Corporation. I thought that they only made mountain climbing gear but, like most companies in Korea, they dabble in all sorts of shit. For example, you see Samsung and you think “cell phones” or “TVs” but those people make everything here: Cars, trucks, air conditioners, blank CDs, apartment buildings, you name it. Hyundai is the same way – as far as I can tell this place is run by about 10-15 really powerful families who own a piece of everything. Well, Daniel needed some new threads for his new gig and mom and dad were on it. I was just along for the ride.



I always had this vision of Seoul via M.A.S.H. in which entailed drunken soldiers in Hawaiian shirts are trying to forget where they are and why they ended up there. This really wasn’t the way things ended up being but I did end up in Iteawon and, while in some shit hole pub, as I was waiting to meet Ian Leighton at a hotel an hour later, I did listen to a bunch of American Service people as they built their loads for the approaching night. In their voices, and as they chased down shots of bourbon with the local ale, there was this sense of longing for a place that was a world away. There is a scene in Apocalpse Now where they are having a barbeque after tearing up some village and in the voiceover Martin Sheen is commenting on how the more that they make things seem like home, the more conscious one becomes that where they are is not that place. This is what the pub felt like. Sort of homey, but in a way that was slightly askew. Maybe the stuff on the walls and the bottles of ale made one think of The Torch, The Alley Cat or any bar which a upstanding barfly would call home, but as the neon glows it becomes clear that the wait staff didn’t cheerlead at Flint Southwestern and the head bartender didn’t play third string D.E. at MSU. No, their accents betray years of TESOL teachers and their grammar has a stiffness to it that doesn’t seem quite right. It isn’t a “Twilight Zone” kind of feeling, more like that feeling of waking up after tying one on and beginning to replay the scene from the previous night; images are fuzzy and a bit out of sequence, faces are familiar but out of focus, motion is stilted and goes in spurts, it is real, it is simply different and doesn’t feel “right” no matter what one does to adjust the playback. A rerun with scenes missing. Colorized B & W.

This scene didn’t really pop up until later in my adventure as I was traveling with Koreans and this meant plenty of rest stops for coffee, noodles and other snacks. Filling up the gas tank once (small car, about $70 – gas is about $1.10 a liter), lots of mountains to look at and tunnels to drive through. There is a $15 toll to pay to cover our nice drive along a pretty swell highway – not that swell. We stop at Lydia’s brother’s apartment for a big fat feast and then it is off to my weekend hang out spot.

Daniel lives in a small basement apartment in the center of Seoul and he lives like most senior college students: plenty of empty bottles, take out containers, clothes everywhere, no clean dishes. This was perfect as I felt that I actually understood the guy. He was a mechacnical engineer and he really had no idea what his new job would entail. He was simply riding it out until it started and dreading the fact that he would have to start work at 9 am the following Monday. I have no idea what kind of student he was or what the job market is like here but he said that he interviewed with about 50 companies and it took six months to find this job.

Piss on that.

The first thing that we decided to do was go to the night market at Dongdae-Mun and it was incredible as they seem to be selling everything imaginable at all hours of the night. From what Daniel said, people come from all over the country to buy clothes and other goods and take them back to their own reigions. I don’t know that I would call it a wholesale market but it was something like that. There were also large buildings that had various stalls filled with merchants selling . . . well, if you want it and they don’t have it I doubt that it can be legally obtained.

In the end I bought a belt as I only brought one with me and every knows that it is the accessories that really make the man.

When we returned for the night Daniel got on-line and quickly made me an interniary of the things that I was going to do the following day. This included which subways to take, the time allotted at each place and phone numbers that I could call should things fall apart. I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t really good with “well planed events” and that he was pretty much wasting his time if he thought that I could keep to a schedule which involved any more than two events. It was the engineer in him that was reacting with horror when I explained that this wasn’t going to go off as planed and that he had best pick a time for me to just give him a ring. He decided that six PM would work.

The following day I was an hour behind schedule by the time I left his door and immediately got on the right subway line, going in the wrong direction. I cleared this up and made it to Gyeongbokgung right at the ceremonial changing of the palace guards. This was nice as after living in London I never saw the changing at Buckingham Palace and really wondered what all the fuss was about. Here, as it was cold as hell with a light falling of snow, the ceremony was a bit scaled down but it was still pretty cool.

The palace and the surrounding grounds were simply amazing. The pictures that I took can’t do it justice and by the time that I left the area Daniel’s to-do list was totally shot to shit.

I hate to say “told ya’ so” but . . .

I ended up leaving the grounds by a side entrance aand quietly began to wander the streets. Themount of people and traffic was a stark contrast to Pohang and it really made the fact that I live in a sleepy little fishing village rather clear. There is so much movement and motion.
How anyone could find sense of peace in such a place was beyond me. Then I found a Buddhist temple that was in the middle of an afternoon ceremony and this illustrated that peace in such a bustling place was indeed possible, if not fleeting. The temple was undergoing a renovation but I still went inside and tried to see what was going on.
This was not a perfect idea I really had no idea what the procedure was and although I got on my knees like everyone else, I happened to be near the door and debris kept falling on me from the work going on above me.
I guess there was some kind of karmic thing going on as I really wanted to take some pictures and it was as if someone, or something, knew that this was my intention. You want to take pictures, well you will be covered in filth for doing so. I left, feeling a bit enlightened, a tad dirty, shook off the dust, wandered around the site and continued to screw up Daniel’s well made plans.



Returning to his list finally took place after I had a coffee and realized that left to my own devices I wouldn’t see a damned thing. I ended up going to the Namdaemun market and simply wandering around. The only other things that I had on my list to purchase was a bound blank book and a new pen. Without effort these were found at a reasonable price and

THE WALL

They told me that after four months I would “hit a wall” and I have done so. Obviously there is the idea that once someone plants the idea of a “wall” in your head, you will find a way to hit it one way or another. I had this vision that things were all good and that I was really on top of my game, that nothing would ever cause me to doubt my decision to come here and that my “new life” would be perfect and that it was one of those “new beginigngs” that everyone dreams about. I often compare the life that one lives to the tructure of a book and the beauty of life is that it offers ample opportunities for re-writes. Things are going shitty, think of a way to rework the plot into something that is a tad more palatable. It may not be perfect, but it could offer enough of a change that it keeps everyone guessing, including the struggling protagonist. The problem arises when everyone involved become off kilter, doubt settles in and the book, as written, is ready to be pulped.

I had this vision of writing about my little trip to Seoul and trying to make it all entertaining and then it was becoming boring to write about it as it was a done deal. Then, time started to pass and I didn’t feel like writing at all - not even the little letters that I so love to mail. My new schedule was kicking my ass. I would leave the job (Oh yes, it is seriously becoming that) and return home with this feeling of dread and this feeling of what the fuck am I doing here? . . . I still can’t speak the language for shit, I can’t stand aspects of my job . . . there are moments of loneliness and I am sick of being thought of as a “foreigner” . . . the weather really sucks as it is cold, dry (15% humidity) . . . everyone has a cough . . . my family is 6000 miles away . . . There is no way to pull a “do-over” as I am stuck here for the moment. The doubt just gnaws at me. I miss some of my things. It is just a funk that is difficult to shake.



The New Year’s tradition is to watch the sun rise out of the east and make a wish and I did that without really knowing what to wish for. Health, I am old enough now that I finally wish good health on all of those for whom I care . . . A wish that I could find a girlfriend . . . A soul mate seems like far too much to ask for . . . What else?

Go home, sleep it off and then the new schedule starts and for the last two weeks all I have done is try to keep little kids motivated enough to learn some Engrish. I try to go to the gym, do what Mr. Yu tells me to without complaint or pause. I try to only curse under my breath when the Yoga Nazi tricks me into some position that causes me to teeter and evokes giggles from all of the women in the class. Do that and eat and my day is pretty much shot until I enter the next one . . .

So that is where it is at: doubt and a busy schedule. The doubt passes as soon as the schedule begins to settle into something that is acceptable, tolerable. I return to listening to jazz – currently Art Tatum – and that really helps. Bought a Toni Morrison book(Love) and allow her command of English remind me why I love this language so much. Read the papers on-line and remember why I am so pissed off all of the time . . . Once the settling in part takes effect, life isn’t so bad and the degree of doubt isn’t as pronounced as it was . . . the down, much like the stock market, begins to turn around (Hey Pal, turn that frown upside down!) and then the mind finds something else to ponder . . .Life goes on.

In the end, I guess that this is what happens when, as they said about my friend Mike, “his bi-polar is really fuckin’ with him.” The moods change and the only way to make it settle down is to . . .well, try to do something besides sit on a goddamned bar stool and bitch about it. I haven’t returned to that as of yet and it is really not in the plans as the mix is crowded enough as it is . . .

Other than that, well things are simply things. I hope all your New Year’s wishes come true.

Peace,

sh