Learning

It took me a long time before I seriously committed myself to learning Korean. Since I came I've been able to read in some capacity but my actual language skill was desperately low. For the last 5 or so weeks I've been spending a good portion of my time studying the native language of the land that I live in. It's been incredibly rewarding. I hope that by the time I leave here, I'll be able to talk with some level of fluency. Provided my interest doesn't wane, of course...much like this blog!

I think I figured it out...

I think I figured out why blogs like this tend to fizzle out over time. The feelings of being lost in an exotic place fade as things become more familiar, as routine sets in. Woops....


So just a small story. I got a haircut yesterday. It's not a big change, but change enough. But, the funny thing about the haircut was that I managed to scare the hairdresser. In the past couple of weeks I've really applied myself to learning Korean. Each day I've been studying more and more...and really, it's about time. It's something I should have begun months ago. Oh well. Anyways, my hair is being cut and communication is thin. As a general rule here, if you're a foreigner it is assumed that you speak no Korean. I speak a little. The hairdresser points to the front of my hair and makes a cutting motion and an inquisitive face. So...being complacent about my hairstyles, I simply look to her and ask -in Korean- "What do you think?". She screwed up her face and I repeated, "What do you think?".

Her reaction was as if she had been spoken to by the dead, she did a spin, a laugh, and made an incredulous statement in Korean. Then, she said we should cut that part of my hair. After this...there was very little I could communicate to her. But not next time.

People 3

It was between 6 or 7am. We'd been biking since just after midnight and were about 12km from Icheon, our half way/three quarter way point to Wonju. Moving off of the partition we'd taken a break on we got on our bikes and started on our way to Icheon. Then we noticed my rear tire was flat. In the middle of the country, no towns in site, and a dense fog covering everything, we started to walk in the opposite direction from Icheon, hoping to find a nearby village or town.

We walked for 3 hours.

Many fruitless encounters followed until finally we found the small city of Yangji (양지). Relieved, we strolled through the streets looking for a bike shop or hardware store. We quickly stumbled upon the latter. A woman noticed our plight from inside the store window and expressed her concern. She picked up her cell phone and made a quick phone call to a friend, a store owner across the street. He quickly came out with a bicycle pump but we let him know that it was a puncture, not just a flat. The woman jumped back on the phone to call someone else. Using body language and hand signals she told us where the bike shop was. We walked to it but were dismayed that it didn't open for another hour and a bit. We went to the local convenience store, ate some ramen, drank some juice, and killed 20 minutes.

Walking back to the bicycle shop, the owner greeted us, patch kit in hand, smile on his face. He'd come in early to help us.

People 2

Early in the morning we had loaded up our bikes on a bus and headed to Wonju. Our intention was to climb/hike up a mountain that day. We reached the city, biked around for about a half hour to collect our bearings, and headed towards the base of our goal. Reaching the mountain we came into a neat little town on a slope. Filled with restaurants, shops, houses, and the site of elderly hikers in full gear, we knew we had reached the right place.

We bike around the base for a bit, looking for a suitable path to take. We eventually settled on a quiet and steep stretch of concrete path at the north end of a small road. We climbed for about 40 minutes and reached a chain. The sign beside it said, "Danger:No entry" (in Korean, of course). Dismayed, we turned back.

Reaching the bottom of the path was no trouble, the steep angle helped us go quickly. We reached the pole where we had locked up our bikes in about 10 minutes. As we began unlocking and untangling our bikes a group of five or six old women came around the bend. We offered a friendly hello (again...in Korean) and the enthusiastically replied in kind. The women offered very warm smiles, likely impressed by our friendliness and surprised for our presence. One women came out from the group, digging through her bag. She produced a bag of about 6 small oranges. We tried to politely refuse but she insisted. With a great smile we accepted the bag and offered our sincere thanks in both words and short bows of our heads. We said good bye to the women and they said goodbye to us. We all carried on with our day.

A grand plan; People

I figure I can pad this thing with a series of smaller entries.


I think I've mentioned it before in this blog that it's the people in this country that have made it so wonderful. Of course there have been negative encounters, but it's nothing unexpected and nothing I take personally. Besides that, the positive experiences have far outweighed the bad. So, in honour to the great people, I'll be posting a series of short entries telling about the small but memorable encounters I've had.


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Starting with the most recent...Yesterday I went to the post office to see if some undelivered mail was sitting in wait for me. I'd been to this post office before to send mail back home, so the attendant was familiar with me. I took a number and waited for my turn to make an inquiry. My number was quickly called and I went up to the counter. With a broken Korean and English mix I tried to ask if there was some mail for me there. The attendant quickly caught onto my question and began to tell me that I needed to go to another post office to check. She proceeded to point towards a typically undecipherable map fragment to try and show me. Sensing my confusion, a bystander who could speak English and Korean hurriedly came over and asked if there was anything she could help with. I gladly obliged. In mere seconds my questions were answered, I exchanged some sincere thanks, and was on my way.

Just a small gesture of helpfulness, something that seems in no short supply here.

To Laugh or Say Nothing

Haven't updated in waaaayyyy too long. Awful. No editing. Enjoy!



To this point I haven't written anything about teaching, mostly because I don't feel it fair to talk about my kids on this kind of medium. But, there's really nothing to stop me from talking about, well...me.

Now at this point in my contract, I'm not the best teacher and I will definitely never stop trying to better myself, but I have learned a few things in a short time. One of the most important things is having learned when to laugh or simply when to say nothing. Humour is incredibly important in teaching, it shows vulnerability and makes one more accessible. However, humour can also unhinge a classroom and send kids into chaos. So it takes some keen micromanaging of random events to assure that things, when they don't go as planned, still manage to go as "planned".

The first story I'd like to share was reminded to me by one of my students this past Tuesday. It happened in the first month of my time at this job. When teaching the more basic classes to younger students it becomes habit to perform as kind of a clown. Although the material is almost enough to stimulate the interest of the kids it's nearly impossible to avoid clowning around to maintain the energy level of the class. In recent weeks this has basically degenerated into random sound effects, overly dramatic re-enactments of things, and strange jokes, at the beginning my attempts were more circus like.

When teaching I like to wear dress clothing. Shirts and ties and all that. Well, the glory of long sleeve collared shirts is that they have front pockets. Now, a front pocket is very useful; it can hold pens, money, paper, even snacks. Moreover, the front pocket can be used to catch things that have been thrown in the air. Now, since my front pockets carry so much in a day, I believed that it was sewn on very strongly. As such, I took it upon myself to illustrate the difference between the prepositions 'in' and 'on' with a quick demonstration involving an eraser, my head, and my shirt pocket.

Displaying 'on' was simple, I just had to place the erase atop my head and the kids shouted out the correct preposition. Now, for 'in', I had something special in mind. I tossed the eraser into the air and attempted to catch it in my shirt pocket...the first attempt was a failure. I tried again and missed but I couldn't stop here, my kids were enjoying seeing their teacher mess up. I threw the eraser into the air once more and watched its decent. I was almost in the perfect position to catch it! I lunged forward, stretching my pocket in order to catch the eraser. I felt the eraser hit the fabric and then fall to the ground. The class erupted in laughter. At first I was confused. Then, I noticed that, hanging limply from my chest, was a flap of fabric that had once been my pocket. In my zeal to show off my 'mad skills' to the class I had torn the pocket right off of my shirt. The children pointed and laughed and I stammered for a second for what to do. Do I say nothing? Do I pretend like it was supposed to happen? Or do I laugh? I chose the last option. I laughed with the class and played around with the pocket to diffuse the situation. For the remainder of the day, about 4.5 hours, I taught with a shirt with a former pocket hanging from my chest. Honestly, I barely noticed. Sometimes you just have to laugh!

Now...for when it's better to say nothing. I consider myself more of a musician than an artist but teaching requires more drawing than singing. As such, I spend a lot of time at the board crafting crude drawings to illustrate points and stimulate interest. In the chaos of drawing both quickly and poorly my creations can sometimes end up looking like some pretty strange things. Boats as bananas, dogs as horses, and people like monsters. Sometimes its good to make fun of your own drawings or play along with the kids poking fun at them. Other times, they don't seem to pick up on what's wrong, or only a few pick up on what's terribly wrong but are a little embarrassed to say anything. This is particularly the case when drawing a map of Korea and how it's attached to the Asian continent.

I have a specific example from early on that better displays how it's best to say nothing in some situations. I was drawing a lakeside scene in order to illustrate what a lighthouse was and what a pier was. Everything was going fine at the start, the beach was there, the water, the horizon, and the pier. Then I had to draw the lighthouse. I drew it quickly, not too good of an idea. After I'd finished, I did a double take...it's shape was a little suggestive. I hoped none of the kids would notice. As I was talking about the scene and identifying the parts, I noticed one of my kids was trying to hold back some laughter. I made eye contact and he pointed at the lighthouse, "teacher, it is a.." I interrupted him, "lighthouse, yes...anyways" He kept trying not to laugh and I kept from letting on that something was horribly wrong with my drawing on the board. Sometimes it seems that if you don't acknowledge that anything is wrong the kids will follow along, despite their better judgement.

Traffic

The traffic here has a different system of logic and it's not a uniform one. In Ansan, for example, traffic behaves very different that how it behaves in Seoul.

Two weekends ago a co-worker and I biked to Seoul. The trip itself went much quicker than expected, about an hour and a half in total. The sites along the ride were beautiful. The colours on the leaves are in the midst of changing, so the normally green surfaces of the innumerable mountains are now covered in an orange and yellow blanket. The road we took wasn't too busy highway, like the highway we had taken to Icheon three weeks prior. Instead, it was a quiet two lane affair that cut a straight path from Ansan to Seoul. It went over and through low mountains, small dusty towns, and quaint farming valleys. All the while cars would calmly pass us, save for the occasional bus or truck which would force us to hug the shoulder. It was overall a very docile and uneventful ride.

Then, we found our way into Geumjong-gu in Seoul. The 'Gu's' are essentially city districts, Geumjong being about 10km from our final destination, Seocho-gu. Anyways, we came into Geumjong-gu from a road that emptied out of a small farming area with small and poorly built houses. The road itself ended with an 8 lane intersection with a confusing system of traffic lights. As we slowly inched forward on our bikes, cars kept pressing towards us, as if to goad us into moving forward even more. Taking the pressure from the cars as a kind of friendly advice, we disobeyed the traffic signals and made a right turn as soon as an opening presented itself.

Once in a more urban area the change in traffic behaviour was much more obvious. In Ansan, cars and pedestrians will often give way to others. It's not uncommon to watch cars stop and allow pedestrians to cross the road and vice versa. Well...in Seoul, it's essentially a giant game of chicken. When I first came here, I though it would have been insane, if not suicidal, to bike along its streets. It looked like there was no definite order to things...it was simply a chaotic mess waiting to quickly consume the unwary.

Well...having ridden along country highways at night alongside speeding dump trucks...Seoul didn't seem so bad when I finally biked into the city. As the traffic quickly increased in density and volume, we seamlessly fell right into the same pace as the other drivers on the roads. Cutting in and out of cars stalled in traffic, biking quickly along the shoulder behind delivery bikes, and playing cautious games of chicken with aggressive drivers at intersections, I never felt uneasy or afraid. The beast that I had first witnessed now seemed to be a symphony, cacophonous but logical. There were times where we were exiled to the sidewalk, but these instances served as another exercise in precision biking. Refusing to step down off of our seats we slowly wound our way through the throngs of people. Occasional rings of the bell and a lot patience made the entire experience feel like a living slalom.

This past weekend we replicated the same experience in the downtown area of Wonju. The traffic wasn't as aggressive but at times just as dense. Searching for the bus station we wound through the lines of traffic, at one point passing a delivery bike driver who had stopped with the traffic. He likely doubted the size of a gap between cars but I felt it was large enough to fit through. After I had passed him I heard the familiar sound of the throttle being increased on a scooter. Shortly thereafter I was cut off and passed by the same driver. I laughed and felt more like part of a team than an adversary.

This whole entry has been a bit of a tangent...but I'm still getting used to biking in this country. It's one of the few things I thought I would never do here, specifically biking on the roads in urban areas. But like many of the stranger things here, it possesses a bizarre logic. Though I may not agree with it, I basically have no choice but to adapt. I just need to invest in a competent respirator...my head scarf isn't a good enough filter for the dust and exhaust on Korea's crowded highways and roadways.