This week’s lesson in English class is all about describing personality. As a warm-up exercise, students had to think of five words that best describe their friend’s personality. The vast majority of students fell into comfortable conventions: words like “nice,” “kind,” and “smart” appeared over and over again. “Sexy” reared its head a good number of times (although I question whether having a sexy personality is a real thing), along with “cute” (Since when have male students described another guy’s personality as “cute”?) and “dirty” (I go back and forth between interpreting this as a slam or a compliment).
However, one student decided to describe his friend in a way I had yet to hear.
“Cheese. Cheese taste,” he told me.
“Cheese?”
“Cheese. Like cheese.”
“You mean ‘cheesy’?”
“Cheese.”
“Um… What do you mean?”
“Cheese.”
“So he tastes like cheese?” I asked the student beside him if he knew what he meant. He shook his head “no.”
“Oily.”
“I’m confused.”
“Cheese.”
“What?”
“Oil.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Greasy.”
“Greasy? That’s more of a texture.”
“Cheese taste. Bad.”
“So you don’t like cheese?”
“Yes.” He wrote a word on his paper. “This word.” He pointed. “Nah…see…”
He’d written “nauseated.”
Cheese makes you “nauseated”? Really? By hatin’ on his friend, this kid was also hatin’ on cheese. He just put himself on my bad side. After 9 months in a country with two types of cheese (cream cheese and “almost” cheese), I am one cheese deprived man. I would do just about anything for a taste of good, sharp cheddar or some smooth, smoky provolone. Ain’t got time for that cheese h8, lil’ dude. Lock it up.
When I first arrived at my new workplace in Seoul nine months ago, I was immediately given a desk in the teachers’ office on the fifth floor of my school, complete with janky laptop with Windows XP (Korean version, of course. Figuring that one out was, quite literally, one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do — when I arrived here, I was Windows and Korean illiterate [now I’m still Windows illiterate but not quite so in Korean — after thousands of random clicks, some of which did very bad things, I’ve learned Pavlovian-style reflexes to Korean symbols on the computer screen]), an unspoken invitation to all office events with my 14 all male fifth floor office colleagues (I was promised multiple drunken adventures with my office-mates stumbling from sushi restaurants to pool halls to karaoke bars from noon ‘til dusk during midterms and finals, but only one semi-materialized, and everyone left early), and an entitlement to free things from co-workers and the parents’ council.
Everything was all well and good through the end of last semester. I was privy to all of the things that happen behind the sliding door of my teachers’ room, both good and bad — free food (rice cakes! regular cakes! shrimp burgers! sweet potatoes!) and health drinks (Vita 500! Ginseng! Some weird orange fiber beverage!) and unselfconscious napping were obviously the most awesome, but they were coupled with not-so-pleasant things like constant toothbrushing (Koreans brush their teeth at least three times daily, but sometimes it seems like it’s an hourly thing), the spitting in the office sink that sometimes accompanies toothbrushing and sometimes doesn’t, and public nosehair trimming.
But this all changed.
I came in to school one day in late February, shortly before the new semester began, in an attempt to show my face and remind my coworkers that yes, indeed, I still teach there, and that I would resume my place in the group office as usual.
But I wouldn’t resume my place in the group office as usual.
I had been exiled.
During the Great Office Reassignment of 2012, teachers of all statures (literal and figurative) and subjects were shuffled around to different offices, thereby forced to move themselves and all of the piles of somehow-education-related sh*t they had accumulated during their decades of teaching service hibernation in the school building to somewhere new. Including me.
Here’s how it went down that morning in late February:
“Hello, Ben. Long time, no see,” said my Korean co-worker.
“Yes, it has been a while. How are you?” I asked.
“Uhhhh, you must move your office.” I guess he didn’t really want to talk.
“What?”
“Yes, move your stuffs.”
“Really?”
“Yes. What are you waiting for? Move your stuffs. This is now my office.”
“Oh… Wha… When should I move?”
“Before this afternoon. What are you waiting for? Move your stuffs.” Pushy bastard.
I hate when people push me to do things faster, especially things I don’t want to do in the first place, and I double hate when people push me to do things I don’t want to do at a fast pace and then don’t lend a hand, so I let the actual process of The Exile drag on for a while by stacking individual leaf of paper on individual leaf of paper in time with a soundtrack of frustrated/”I don’t want to do this” sighs while my impatient coworker watched.
The Exile was actually good in a lot of ways. It made everything a lot more convenient for me. My new office, you see, is my classroom (I’m the only teacher with his own classroom. I assume that the room itself was a harried addition in response to the news that the school had to have a special space to accomodate the government’s changing vision for English education, which included sticking the school with a foreigner), so I no longer commute up and down hallways and stairwells full of loud, smelly teenage boys who shout “TEACHUHHH!!! HI, TEACHUHHH!!! TEACHUH, HIII!!! I NO SPEAKUH ENGLISHEE!!! HA HA HA!! TEACHUH SO HANDSOME!!! IAMFINETHANKYOUANDYOU!!!” multiple times every day. Even with loud, smelly teenagers taken out of the equation, there are, like, 60% fewer stairs post-exile. Who likes stairs, anyway?
Just as The Exile was good, it was also bad. Very bad. This was basically an exile of nearly biblical proportions in the Korean educational system. Nearly everything in Korea centers around being a part of a collective group, not being an individual. This is especially true in schools: students are assigned a homeroom when they enter high school, and they stay with this same group until they graduate. Most of their classes are conducted in their homeroom classrooms (in Korea, teachers move from room to room, not students; I’m one of the few exceptions), so they stay with the same people pretty much all day, every day, for three entire years. The same idea is true for teachers: In the group offices, which house between 15 and 25 teachers’ desks each, teachers work together, laugh together, celebrate together, commiserate together, punish students together, and drink terrible instant coffee together, all reinforcing the importance of the group.
Being of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds made my involvement in this group atmosphere tenuous, even in the pre-exile days. Now, post-exile, alone in my non-Koreanness (and largely alone in my classroom most of the day [My only visitors outside of class are students trying to find a shortcut to the library; maintenance men who took a wrong turn and didn’t end up where they thought they would; and the vice principal, who is easily one of the strangest little men I’ve encountered in this country thus far, occasionally poking his head in to make sure I’m still conscious.]), my membership status is even more murky.
And, I stare at this for hours every day when there are no students:
My classroom, like most popular Korean interior décor, is 50 shades of beige.
While The Exile has put me in a strange situation within the social scheme of my school, basking in all this beige and the new-found between-classes quiet is quite calming.
It’s MiDtErMs, y’all!!! This really is one of the best two weeks of the semester to be a teacher here in Korea. What’s the other best week, you ask? Finals, for many of the same reasons.
Students aren’t excited, of course, but I sure as hell am. Here’s why.
1. No class. Thank. God.
2. Students leave before noon every day. You cannot imagine the heavenly post-apocalyptic silence that takes over the sullen halls of my high school after they leave (I’m convinced that the demons I teach will one day destroy the world, and the only sound thereafter will be the same, post-midterms absence of sound).
3. Midterms week isn’t totally responsibility-free for me as a non-Korean who teaches what everyone else seems to perceive as a class that’s only half-real. I designed several questions for my school’s 1st grade English exam (for all of the 650-ish sophomores I teach to take), including a short-answer question. Instead of simply writing some questions and getting off scott-free, I had to grade the responses from all 650-ish sophomores I teach.
While trudging through 650 half-assed attempts to respond to a prompt asking them to give advice in English to a foreign friend in need is a b*tch nearly as hellacious as conducting speaking tests for all of said students (come back in late June for an update on that two-week disaster-to-be), there are little gems like these that make it somewhat worthwhile:
When it comes to writing answers you know your foreign teacher (who has built-in bullshit AND Konglish sensors) will read, honesty really is the best policy.
4. Midterms is the perfect opportunity to enjoy take advantage of my Korean co-workers’ hospitality and eagerness to impress me. This week I’ve gotten more than my monthly quota of free stuff from Koreans. Free coffee (even twice in the same day, from two different folks — who am I to say no?), and today, a free, delicious lunch of samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly/really thick bacon that’s 2358623048 times better than regular bacon), awesome banchan (side dishes) and, of course, beer (it’s been a while since I drank before noon/at lunchtime, and today I was reminded that it’s great).
Who can resist grilled meats, vegetables, kimchi, garlic, sauces, soups, and beer??
Unfortunately, this midterm bliss must come to an end. But don’t you know, I’m counting down to the very moment marking the beginning of finals week.
Some compliments bestowed on me by the school security guard, who knows approximately 23 words in English, that never cease to make my morning.
On a rainy day when I walk to school in Chacos:
“Your shoes… good!”
When wearing a bright yellow necktie:
“Your necktah-ee so… beautiful!”
On a sunny day when I wore bright blue knock-off Ray Bans:
“Your sunglass… Delicious!”
My home!!
Mok-dong is a dong, neighbourhood of Yangcheon-gu in Seoul. It is famous for its education and good schools. It is also famous for the baseball stadium for Nexen Heroes. The name Mok means tree, probably named due to abundance of trees in the region.
Well, not really apple. More like circus act that confuses/fascinates/intrigues/concerns everyone in the audience. And the audience is all of Korea. When you’re a foreigner in Korea, especially a foreign-looking foreigner (non-Korean Asians fit in pretty well), there is no way to avoid countless pairs of Korean eyes that watch your every move save staying in your apartment as much as possible. And then when you do come out, everyone in your building will stare and whisper that you’re the foreigner that never leaves his apartment. Lose/lose.
I know I wrote a blurb about the phenomenon of being a phenomenon early on in my time here in Seoul. However, months later, I’m still amazed at how much of a spectacle I really am.
Here are some scenes involving uncomfortable stares.
Walking home from the gym one afternoon, an older man selling knock off North Face gear on the street activated his Foreigner-dar and locked his gaze on me while I was still a few paces away from him. I noticed this. I looked away. I looked back to check if he was still staring. He was. I looked away. Just after I’d passed him, I looked over my right shoulder to see if he was still staring me down. He was, this time staring on his way to alert another salesperson on the same block of my presence.
Kids are often the most obvious in displaying their dismay at my foreignness. Once, as I left my apartment, two kids were playing outside. One was young — maybe three — and the other, her older brother, looked to be around 9 or 10. As I walked by, the girl stopped dead in her tracks, let her jaw drop, widened her eyes, and whispered, just audibly enough that I could hear, “waegookin,” meaning “foreigner.” That wasn’t the first time, and it definitely wasn’t the last. One of these times I’ll whisper “hangookin” (“Korean person”) right back at them.
The ones that get me the most are the bike riders, young and old alike, who, upon seeing me enter their field of vision, immediately forget that they are responsible for controlling a moving vehicle on a sidewalk full of people that runs parallel to a busy road with plenty of oncoming traffic. I feel like a distraction equivalent in danger to texting while biking, an activity popular with high school students who will literally die if disconnected from their smart phones.
As I’ve figured out, there’s a progression in terms of how one copes with these countless gazes. Here it goes:
This is odd. Why are they staring? ——> Okay, this really is weird. I’ve never been stared at this much in my entire pre-Korea life combined. And I’ve only lived here for three days. ——> Is there something wrong with me?!?! ——> I’M A FREAK OF NATURE!!!!!!1 ——> Well, I guess I must really be a freak. I should have known that already. On with life. ——> I’m so empowered by newly found self-acceptance. I’ma just do mah thang. ——> Catch someone staring, stare blankly back at them. Challenge them telepathically to break eye contact first.
The phenomenon of being a phenomenon is not so simple, however. As an obvious foreigner, you not only receive uncomfortably long stares from Koreans in your vicinity; you see, you also receive uncomfortably long stares from other foreigners. Being a foreigner in Korea isn’t always a High School Musical “We’re All in This Together” experience when it comes to encountering other foreigners out and about. The stares you share with other foreigners communicate things like, “What are you doing here?” Or, “I’ll bet he’s one of those foreigners.”
So, in brief: If you’re not Korean and you live in Korea, you will be looked at, for a long time, by everyone.
It’s a SH*T MY STUDENTS WRITE post, y’all!
This week in English class we worked on a Create A Club project. All 650 or so of my students created a club of their choice, few holds barred. Here are some of the things they came up with.
As you may know, I teach in an all-boys school. It’s only the second week of the school year here in Korea, and the effects of single-sex education are already making themselves known:
Somehow, a significant number of my students strongly believe that joining a nail art club will help them date women. Curiously, the selling point for most of them is no more than the opportunity to touch girls’ hands. In my mind, I see them stroking (petting?) the hands of the poor girls they will theoretically manicure, and in my mind, it’s incredibly awkward.
Not all of my students chose to make a club centered around manicuring/spying on the opposite sex, however.
Some accidentally perpetuated stereotypes:
I think this club’s name is supposed to be a combination of “robot” and “logic,” but that’s not quite how it seems at first glance.
Some displayed their artistic abilities:
Some showed their love of high-risk adventure:
“He is die.”
Some chose to combine two of their favorite things: superheroes and ramen noodles.
Ramenman, defeater of hunger in 16-year-old boys?
Finally, others showed their utter disinterest in everything:
Oh, the sarcasm. Korean teens <3 The North Face, but only wear The North Face to walk to school. And, of course, to prove that they can afford the brand (prices on North Face gear are almost doubled here in Seoul).
The first tragedy of 2012: The Gangster was bikenapped.
RIP, Gangster.
Well, the new year started with many too many gin and tonics, an all-day hangover, and a new significant other. Still not exactly sure what led to what. Cheers, 2012.
