Oh, sheep. Oh.

I'm climbing this tomorrow:

Bukhannnn-san, and at the base of it, The Blue House.

not as hard as Samak-san?

We'll start at Suyu Station, eat lunch at Doseong Temple (Sa=temple, by the way. fuck youuuuu map translators). Then we'll climb to the damn ass fucking peak (Baegundae) and drink some goddamn makkoli.

Hangul fact time: 북한 = bukhan, and it means "north of the Han (river)". Naturally, Bukhan-san is north of the Han River. So is North Korea. Besides being the name of a mountain in North-Central Seoul, 북한 is also the unofficial name of North Korea as referred to by South Koreans.

Bukhan-san has a looming reputation, I'm a little nervous.

dear 장마, dear East Asian Monsoon:

I'm expecting you.

Most Koreans get a little perplexed if I tell them I like rain. Rain in Seoul means acid rain; acid rain means you will carry an umbrella so that the chemicals don't get on your skin. (I own four umbrellas now. Do you still know me?) Umbrellas are heavy and inconvenient to carry on crowded streets. Everything gets wet. (Did I tell you most people also carry umbrellas when it snows in the winter? Again, because of the pollution.)

It never really occurred to me before that having grown up in a place where the air and the rain and the snow were not strongly affected by pollution could be a sort of privilege. Had I grown up in Seoul, I would probably not have the same fondness for rain. I would connect it with unhealthiness and inconvenience; I would grow tired of the humidity and the yearly monsoons.

As it is, I connect rain with peaceful sounds and fresh smells and cool air and calmness. So far I've found one of my students who grew up in Seoul, but likes rain just as much as I do. He's an oddball, I like him.

It rained all day today, but it wasn't the monsoon. The monsoon hasn't come yet.

1 분 vs. 1 초

Someone put their hands on my head for the first time in over a month today, and then 3 more people did the same thing with varying degrees of firmness.

Then I cried (a little, a lot), the first time I've let anyone see me cry since I got to Korea 7 1/2 months ago.

Here are the reasons I can think of for needing (wanting?) to cry in front of U Young-Hee and I So-Yeon (gg#2) so urgently:

1. after school classes making me feel worthless as a teacher again, how can I manage this new environment?

2. guilt seeping in when you tell me you miss me, sometimes I wonder if I am a bad person for finding it so easy to leave Michigan and the U.S. and you, sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who found it difficult to leave things behind

3. I've been feeling a little fragile lately, as though I've perpetually just eaten tongue (@warmandbarky)

4. it's been a long time since I cried in front of someone, maybe it was time and maybe I knew that U Young-Hee and I So-Yeon were safe people to cry in front of and also that no one would think it strange if I felt many deep emotions while their hands were on my head

goddamnit,

I just agreed to climb Suri-san (the 4-peaked beast I blogged about in January) again this Sunday. At least it won't be frigid this time. Maybe there will even be flowers.

The downside is that when I climbed it before I didn't have to teach the next week, so my aching body was allowed to recuperate in the comfort of my apartment. But next week, I have to teach. I also have to climb a LOT of stairs.

Here's hoping I don't get as stiff this time around. Here's hoping I eat another pupa.

oh no, I did something really wrong!

Remember the "OK!" and "I love you!" student?

I had him in class again last Friday, and he was rowdy as usual. He continued to be ridiculous ("I love you!" "Teacher, you are beautiful!" etc). I'm still not very good at dealing with those of my students who think the answer to surviving English class is flattering me to extremes. How can I make them stop being ridiculous without discouraging them from speaking altogether?

Anyway, the "OK!" guy is pretty hilarious, has a stable group of friends, and always comes across as very outgoing and confident about himself. On Friday, as he was having one of his usual bursts of rowdiness and demanded my attention once again, I felt it was safe to tease him a little. I do that occasionally with the rowdier students. (Is it wrong of me to do that?) My reasoning has been something like this: the rowdier students are sometimes/often being rowdy because they want attention from me. By teasing them, I am focusing my attention on them, and maybe that satisfies them. When they are being particularly rowdy, they often attract the attention of the entire class, and a slight tease usually makes everyone (including the person being rowdy) laugh, and it directs the classes attention back to me so that we can continue with the activity.

I never thought I'd said anything really hurtful. It was never my intention to make anyone feel bad, but simply to refocus the class. If a student says, "I love you!", for example, I might tease them by saying, "Oh, really? If you really love me, then give me candy" (holding out my hands in a cup to receive the candy). The response is something like "sorry!", at which point I feign disappointment and carry on with the class.

This strategy usually seems to work perfectly, and so it's become something of a habit. None of my rowdy students have seemed to be discouraged by it before.

So I teased "OK!" a little on Friday, and everything seemed fine. The class was split up into groups at the time, so the teasing was heard by him and the group of friends that he was working with. "OK!" laughed, his friends laughed, I laughed and redirected their attention back to the questions they were supposed to be asking each other. Everything seemed fine.

But today, "OK!" saw me coming out of the subway, didn't greet me and whipped his head around to avoid me. That's bad, rude even. School etiquette says he should have said "hello" or "안녕하세요" (which is how they would greet their Korean teachers). And usually, if "OK!" sees me in the hallways or in the subway or at my desk he always greets me and comes over to chat me up. So the fact that he ignored me means he is substantially angry at me.

Fuck, I thought, and then nearly started crying on the way to school. I really did wish he would stop saying "I love you!" constantly, but I never meant to hurt his feelings or make him angry or discourage him from speaking English. I'm sure I've annoyed some of my students before, but I didn't think I'd done anything to anger or hurt them. How do I fix it? What if I can't?

suddenly I have a busy life, how did this happen.

monday: 1st grade c-level with Han Jin-An (is the patriarchy), English teachers' class, 1st grade b-level with I Young-Gyung. Korean evening class a short bus-ride away from my home, 3 hours.

tuesday: 3rd graders with biffle co-teachers, English teachers' class. After school english class for students, 2 hours. Tango class, 1 hour, milonga if I still have the energy.

wednesday: 3rd graders, 1st grade c-level with Han Jin-An. After school english class for students, 2 hours. Meditation club if I still have the energy.

thursday: all 1st grade a-level, all Park Mi-Ran, all the time. Korean evening class, 3 hours.

friday: 1st grade b-level with I Young-Gyung, 3rd graders. No after school schedule as of yet, but maybe that's yet to come.

I'm usually away from home from 7:30 am til about 10:30 pm, and when I get back I barely have the energy for checking my email before I go to sleep. When I signed up for Korean evening class, I didn't know they were going to spring 4 hours of after school classes per week on me. It's extra pay, so I'm not arguing, but damn, that pretty much means I have to eat dinner on the go every single weekday.

KoHo is trying to convince me to do another language exchange program with him and some other teachers, and what can I do when he looks at me calmly and asks me if I've read the book of Buddhist sayings he gave me? U Young-Hee would really like it if I joined yoga class every sunday. I'll try to stay strong.

But when will I knit? When will I study Korean? and more importantly, when will I lesson plan?

If I was still in BsAs I'd be going to sleep right now,

I guess I'll just blog instead.

When I walked out of the airport it felt like spring in Seoul, but the cold weather (read: 0-8 degrees C most days) is back now, I think that's for the best. For a minute I thought I'd skipped out on the end of winter, and was partly thrilled about it but also a little disappointed. I must have missed the cold weather, maybe I wouldn't do as well in a year-round warm climate location as I've always thought I would.

I spent the weekend getting over the cold I came down with mid-flight between BsAs and Johannesburg, and didn't really enter the world again until just this morning, the first day of the new school year at Seoul Electronics High School (Monday, March 1st was a national holiday - Independence Movement Day). For a long time I was completely calm about my approaching return to teaching, but I became incredibly anxious last night, briefly contemplated dropping everything here, flying to Chicago and spending the rest of my life crashing on Jamie's couch. Apparently I've returned to the pattern of my weekly Sunday night (or night-before-the-new-week-of-work) near-breakdowns. For some reason I thought my time away would change things in some way, I don't know how. But the old anxieties are still there, and I still feel infinitely calmer and happier at my desk at work than I do anywhere else in Seoul (except maybe at the top of a mountain, there isn't anything that makes me laugh the way the peak of a mountain does).

Everything's changed for the new year. Park Mi-Ran no longer sits beside me, and neither does Im Kyung-Hwa (frequently referred to as gossip girl #1). Shin-Jung seems to be stepping into her rightful place as my main co-teacher, and either I'll move desks, or Park Mi-Ran will no longer play as large a role in my life as I've become accustomed to.

I was expecting to be teaching 1st and 2nd grades again, but was told this morning that I'd be teaching 1st and 3rd grades instead. I start teaching Thursday, the new 1st graders were staring out the windows at me as I walked into school this morning and they either mumbled something to me in English or mumbled something to each other in Korean. I smiled and waved and stared back at them, they ducked back inside the window.

For some reason the instant coffee I just drank tasted exactly like I'd just vomited in my mouth, I hope that never happens again.

and then he told me I was a god

6 Feb. 2010

I've been dreading this movement but now I am moving (because it is time to move) and it feels like coming home a little, somewhere along the line airports ceased to be confusing and unknown places and became something like my comfort zone. Once more I am not searched at customs, though I have a shaving razor in my carry-on and I'm carrying several hundred dollars of converted currency that I was really supposed to report. #privatemeat is a cheese "whopper" in the lounge outside customs, I guess I eat cheeseburgers now

if I still have enough ₩ for wine. On the bus from Seoul I teared up briefly - it felt like I was leaving Korea - I am leaving Korea. Passport control asked me if I was coming back to Korea and I said yes - that's true, and I'm positive I projected the vulnerability in her tone. How strange that there is even the option to not come back but outside of my job there is nothing really to hold me here and I don't know why I am cleaving so tightly to Korea when it was so easy to leave Michigan.

15 Feb. 2010

They'll serve my cappuccino after I finish my panqueque 55, they don't drink coffee with food here. Korea doesn't drink any beverages with food, unless it's alcohol (I'm thinking about Korea a lot here). I've only just found out that Argentina is usually considered a third-world country, I'm not even sure what that means. The fact of my American privilege more obvious than it has ever been before (more obvious than in Korea? where I am given a job only for speaking English, where even the oldest person at the table sometimes treats me as the honored guest. I have things these people do not have and have no expectation of ever having. (Not all of the people, I mean, I don't know what I mean.

16 Feb. 2010

("Oh! Girls from Michigan are beautiful!") I imagine that everyone who sees me and Audra together here forms the assumption that all girls in Michigan don't shave their armpit hair. I finally managed to keep my eyes closed the whole time with two of the leaders, maybe I didn't even want to open them

Told me I was so tall and beautiful that if I would only dance my height (instead of trying to fit myself to the height of my leaders) I would have the world at my feet because I am a god ("sos Dios"?)

17 Feb. 2010

"Hola Leo, dame un poco de tu fuego" -Oscar, I don't know what it is about me that makes all the middle-aged porteños think I'll respond to the most saccharine and obvious pickup lines they can muster. "La vida es corta" is another

FUCK TANGO IS THE WORST THING EVER FOR MY SELF-CONFIDENCE IS THIS REALLY WHAT I NEED NOW?

24 Feb. 2010

I wonder if Korea will feel like home when the plane lands. I feel like a raw nerve right now - we're on the highway out of BsAs, I don't know if I'm ready for my sense of reality to shift again so soon. Nelly Furtado "I'm like a bird" just started playing in the taxi, we're at the toll booth. I'll definitely blog about that when I get home.

There's a strong "tow wind" which has "decreased our flight time substantially" - to 8 hours! Originally, flight time was 12 hours between Buenos Aires and Johannesburg, or something like that (though I can't be sure, flight lengths and times have been blending together these days) and I thought: OMG! only 8 hours! what a relief!

Turbulence is a side-effect of the strong tow wind, they've told us. I like the turbulence when it happens, it reminds me that there is a world outside, that we do not exist in isolation in this claustrophobic space. Most of the windows are closed - the window across from me was still open for a while and I could see some sort of horizon through it (though it was dark out, and we've been above cloud-level this whole time - maybe the horizon was the line between our layer of clouds and pure sky?) I liked that horizon, but my window view is gone now. It's light out now, I can see a corner of someone's open window and the real light from it is a relief from the darkness of the cabin, though I'm the asshole who turned on my reading light while most other people are still trying to sleep - I'm sorry! I tried to sleep, really, but I couldn't and the darkness and inactivity was making my head feel too tight, I needed light and OH NO now I can't even write anymore if this pen dies.

[pen didn't die! don't worry <3]

26 Feb. 2010

I've gotten so comfortable in seat 38A, by the window, that I'm dreading leaving it a little, leaving it means I am getting terribly close to Korea, terribly close to having responsibilities again.