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I don't mean to say that I've never shared laughter with my co-workers and students and friends here before. Of course I have. But these past two weeks I've been having a lot of shared hysterical laughter with my new department-mates, which has never happened before. Yena's always been in my department, but I Young-Gyung and U Young-Hee moved into my department for the new year (replacing Park Mi-Ran and Im Kyung-Hwa). We already knew each other, but sharing the same office space presumably brought another layer of comfort.

Skipping, awkwardness, the Korean verb for "to lick," and melodramatic hand gestures are involved. I think I've let out another layer of weird, and that's a relief. We'll never be able to talk about rimming, but it's nice to make weird faces at each other. The first time it happened I was so happy, I didn't realize how much I'd missed the kind of red-faced-can't-stop laughter that is normally reserved for skype-biffles.

I think I'll be happy in Park Mi-Ran's relative absence from my life. Spending my school life next to her was a little oppressive.

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.

pictures I'd forgotten about

gossip girl #1 on the left, the immovable force on the right.

isn't gossip girl #1 pretty? isn't Korea pretty?

I Young-Kyung, my youngest co-teacher, back in the day when it still felt like summer and she took me to Namsan Tower.

Touring a traditional village about an hour outside of Seoul, Kim Ok-Su tortures KoHo in front of the palace while I look placidly on.

Kang Shin-Gu, me, Kim Ok-Su, KoHo, Kang Eun-Shig (is the christnormative regime). These are the people I did the language exchange with last semester, minus Yang Sunsaengnim, who is taking the picture.

Drinking makkoli, Korean rice wine. 건배!

Kim Ok-Su is the love of my life, part 1. We are huddled together in a heated shack in the traditional village while the rest of my co-workers laughed at us (especially me, because I'm from Michigan). But it was damn-ass cold that day.

My co-workers play dress-up with me, part 105. I am a guard from the Joseon Dynasty.

Hoping none of the stones have iced over.

Kang Shin-Gu demonstrating how to wrap rice, pork, and kimchi into a small leaf of lettuce and then eat it in "one shot!" Kang Shin-Gu loves commanding me to "one shot!" while I'm eating and/or drinking with him. I always obey.

I took a nap just now, and dreamt.

That happens sometimes lately.

Everyone was in my dream. Ann Arbor friends: Jane, Jamie, Audra, Hannah, Nora, WhitPow, maybe @megiddings, I'm not sure. Teacher friends: Park Mi-Ran, KoHo, Yena, Shin-Jung, maybe gossip girl #1, I'm not sure. Various "fellow" native-English-speaking teachers from Seoul who will go unnamed, because the ones who were in my dream were the ones I hate and avoid, generally speaking.

There was a party, we were all playing an absurd game where we careened around the room acting like we were ships in stormy waters, rocking from side to side and bumping into each other as much as possible. Then we all took our shirts off, and I tweaked everyone's nipples. But then Hannah's and WhitPow's girlfriends got mad at me for touching their women.

At some point, the party ended, and then all of you were gone except for Jane and KoHo (hiking teacher friend), and Jane and I were wandering the streets of Seoul and/or Paris and we came across KoHo, who was surrounded by twenty-odd feral cats. He was clipping the nails of one of the feral cats, and the cat was very angry. Also, we were all standing on the roof of a building and/or high up on the limbs of a telephone pole.

Then suddenly Jane left me on my own and I was trying to find a place to stay in Seoul, only Jane was the one who was living in Seoul and I was visiting her here and I didn't know where to stay. Then I ended up staying in this really plush lobby of some business place for free, I don't really know why. And I think this is where the rest of my teacher friends entered the picture, we were at some conference or something and Park Mi-Ran probably took care of me, the end.

dear swine flu:

You can't just take over my whole weekend like that, and then leave me Sunday afternoon, just in time for me to be well enough to go to work on Monday.

Seriously, I feel like I've been reasonable over the course of our relationship. I didn't complain when it was your fault half of my students went missing a month or so ago, and I didn't even complain when you finally decided to lodge yourself in my throat the morning of the day I had to finish giving speaking tests.

So let's be reasonable. You can have my weekend, but I'm gonna need something in exchange. I was too sick to get anything done Friday, Saturday, and half of Sunday, so it's only fair that I get a couple of weekdays off. So if we could hang out together until Monday or Tuesday, that would be awesome.

Heartz,
Pam

(p.s. dear people-who-are-not-swine-flu: I don't actually know if I had swine flu. I felt like shit this weekend, which included: a high fever, sore throat, headache, sinus pressure, and body aches. All of which, my internet research tells me, are symptoms of swine flu, but also of a lot of other less funny things. I didn't think my condition warranted going to the hospital - though I briefly considered calling Park Mi-Ran because a) it would make a better story later, and b) I kind of wanted the hospital to give me a test to determine whether I actually had swine flu or not. [But what if the test was negative? All my dreams would be crushed!] Anyway, I didn't go to the hospital, so I don't know what I had.

I feel better now. Almost normal, aside from my continued runny nose. Sadly, I'll almost definitely be feeling well enough to go to school tomorrow. WHEN will I get a break. WHEN.)

The end.

There is too much to tell you, how can I say it all?

1. I had an open class with Park Mi-Ran this Wednesday, which means: people watching me teach, all my co-teachers watching me teach, 3-4 other teachers watching me teach, the principal and vice-principal watching me teach, no parents watching me teach (for which I am infinitely grateful). Which means: forcibly inserting myself into Park Mi-Ran's good time, no longer waiting for her to make space for me as a leader of the classroom. Because if I wait for her to hand control over to me, she will take control and then the class will be over and no one will know I was there.

2. These days, my relationship with Park Mi-Ran reminds me of my relationship with my mom before I moved out of the house. She is maybe the most significant person in my life here. She arranges my schedule and protects me from unfair treatment and makes me feel so powerless sometimes. She has so much control over my life, she choreographs my entire life within the school and a significant amount of my extracurricular activities; I want to rail at her and assert my independence. But (instead of the explosive fights I had with my mom) the tension here remains all under the surface. Park Mi-Ran is my immediate boss; she has 30+ years of teaching under her belt. If I create a conflict with her, it would essentially guarantee that virtually the entire staff would be hostile towards me for the remainder of my contract. Irony of ironies: sometimes I feel as trapped here as I did during my days at Grandville High School.

3. I've been eating nothing but clementines for hours.

4. I know that it's December now, but I can't quite make myself believe it. No snow no snow no snow no familiar Christmas tunes no Christmas lights lining the streets. What will I do for my 3-day Christmas vacation? What will I send you for Christmas?

I begin to insert myself into my co-teachers' good time.

You all know by now that I have doubts about my teaching skills. Most of the time, I ask a lot of advice from my co-teachers and defer to their judgment in times of uncertainty, trusting that they know more than I do about what's best for our students.

The exception to this is Han Jin-An, the older male teacher who barely speaks English. I know from the other teachers that he has a reputation for not caring very much about the students or how much they learn. Generally, about 90% of the students sleep during his class (the English classes he teaches alone, not the ones I teach). He makes no effort to wake them up. His participation and attendance in the classes we "co-teach" are spotty to nonexistent, and so I have had to rely on my own judgment from the beginning in his classes. I have had to decide what is best for my students in the 50-minute time slot that I have influence over their lives.

And this reliance on my own judgment is beginning to spill over into the rest of my classes, I think. I am starting to knowingly go against the will of my well-meaning co-teachers on occasion, over small things.

For example, last week I taught family vocabulary and expressions to both 1st and 2nd graders. To get their attention, I made up a poster of my family tree, using pictures that I printed from my computer's photo collection and from the photos Mom has scanned and put online recently. While making the poster, I hesitated over the little red hearts I was cutting and pasting to represent marriage. To lie to my students and tell them my parents are married, or to draw a zig-zag line through the heart and teach them how to say "divorce"?

Divorce is a taboo subject in Korea. It's really, really looked down upon. Prior to doing the family lesson, I hadn't told even the teachers I am closest to that my parents are divorced. And it's not because I'm ashamed of it, or because I'm still upset about it. I don't think either of those things are true. But they just assumed that of course my parents were married, and you know, Park Mi-Ran is the immovable force.

But a lot of my students come from so-called "broken" families. Many of their parents are divorced, many of them were raised by single parents. Some of their parents died when they were young, some of their parents deserted them, some of their parents abused them. Some of them were raised entirely by their grandparents. Etc. And these students are so ashamed of this, so ashamed that their families are not picture perfect.

How could I not tell them my parents are divorced? How could I not laugh along with them when one student said "goodbye, heartbreaker!" when I asked them to think about why the heart over my mom and dad was different from the hearts over my grandparents and my aunts/uncles? How could I not give them a reason to be more open with me, to show them that a different family doesn't have to mean a sad family? They look up to me. Maybe knowing that I am the product of divorced parents will help them believe that they can be happy and successful, they can do exciting things too. (Because to them, my life is so strange and exciting.)

So in every class, I purposely highlighted the reason for the zig-zag line, despite the fact that it was easy to see that my co-teachers were uncomfortable with it. Because I thought: "this is a good thing for my students."

Then, today, one of my students said, "Pamela, you like black men? Black people what name?" They are so curious about the existence of black people in the U.S.; it is strange to them to think that I grew up in the presence of black people (and not even that many! I grew up in suburbia, for christ's sake!). Most of them have only ever seen a black person in the movies, usually represented as a gangster. There's a lot of racism directed towards black people here, way more than in the U.S., and way more blatantly.

When the student asked me those questions, my co-teacher immediately tried to steer me away from the situation. But I said, "No, please help us talk about this, this is important." Because this student wanted to learn something real, for once, and I wanted to teach it to him. And maybe now he thinks of black people as a little less like "others" than he did before.

The point is, I still let myself be guided by my co-teachers in a lot of situations. But I'm starting to think that sometimes I know what is good for my students, too; I am capable of teaching them something real.

sometimes Park Mi-Ran terrifies me.

Sometimes, I overhear Park Mi-Ran speaking to the other teachers in Korean, and she makes the noise at 1:15-1:17 in this video (mixed in with her normal Korean speech). And everyone seems to think that it's normal.

noodlenoodlenoodle

One morning, I woke up to see the frost and my fingerprint oils making this strange deer/antler man on my window.

Im Kyung-Hwa, my #1 gossip girl. "You should know as many men as possible before you get married," she says.

Left-to-right: Kim Shin-Jung, Im Kyung-Hwa, yours truly. Coffee together after my aforementioned fish encounter.

Kim Shin-Jung, me, Im Kyung-Hwa on top of the mountain named after the meeting point of the two branches of the Hangang. This is totally my favorite.

Gawking at the 500-yr-old ginko tree.

Park Mi-Ran, the immovable force.