A year in Korea

googlicious

One great feature of this blog, for me anyway, is that I can visit any page that people have used to visit this site.  So if there's a link from another blog or an article to this very website, I can check it out.  Fortunately, this includes google searches.

Most people that find my site usually seach something like 'american studying in seoul' or 'yonsei hasook' or 'sinchon boarding house.'  My page comes up pretty early in the search for things like that, and i've recieved several emails from people inquiring for further details about topics that i've discussed.

After over a year of writing on this blog, I have come across the amazing discovery that not only has someone googled "ajuma pictures," but that my site came up one the list (number one at one point).  So it got me thinking:  I've discussed the essence of ajuma quite a bit on this blog, but it isn't anything i can describe.  If you've spent time in korea, then you know the old women with perms that cut in front you in line as well as I do, but if you haven't experienced them, then there isn't much I can do for you.  That being said, these creatures, known as ajumas, need to be documented, so I'm making it a goal of mine to have a photo page dedicated to ajumas.

I got home in 16 days... I'll miss the ajumas.

deadblog

well, I certainly haven't been helping the situation, but I things have been pretty dead around here.  The traffic of people reading has declined pretty sharpy compared to other months, and the same goes for posts and comments written here.  I'm not complaining, i'm just stating that the world must recognize that the whole 'yearinkorea' is coming to an end.

I've been thinking about keeping the blog after I return.  If there are any faithful readers out there, then they may be interested in how a person readjusts to life back in the states after a year in korea.  To me, that seems to be half of the idea.  You leave, which is crazy, but you come back, which is so completely odd that you can't quite wrap you head around it.  That's what i expect anyway.

I seem to have pulled a John Kerry (re flipflop) with my understanding of what being here and returning is going to be like.  First, it seemed like going abroad would be so strange that coming home would be so comforting that it would feel fantastic and familiar.  Now, I've gotten into such groove here, that I can't help but thinking that going home is going to be humiliating.  Things that were second nature will suddenly be foreign.  I'm great with the chopsticks now, but does that mean that my fork skills will have declined?  Maybe not literally, but metephorically for sure.

So, because of all this, I'll keep this blog up at least until I start school again next September.  That gives this site a good six weeks of existance after I return.  Should be enough, right?

Job and a movie

So, as I'm counting down the days (i've lost count how many left) until I leave for the states, I got myself a basically full time job.  I will be teaching english for the next two weeks.  Thats the plan and i'm sticking to it.  That being said, there's not much news over here.  All my friends are gone or leaving, so things have been less than exciting.  Reminds me a bit of when I first got here.

But I do want to leave a recommendation of a movie I saw a couple nights ago.  It's a korean film called Joint Secuirty Area that I found really amazing.  It adds a human element to the big ideological struggle going on at the DMZ, but is also historically informative, as well as violent and suspensful.  If you have netflix, you can probably get it.  Otherwise, check movie madness if you're in PDX.

30 Days

A storm's abrewin!

The typhoon, Ewiniar, just landed in Seoul this morning.  It's pretty much only the left-overs, but when it ran into the quasi-tropical island called Jeju, just south of Korea, apparently eight people were killed and mayhem ensued.

It's fine in Seoul, just stormy.  The summer season here is pretty nasty.  It seems like Seoul has developed it's own climate system, where all the cement and buildings insulate an oppressive heat that makes the people here quite fussy.  When I was a kid, in Oregon (where, if you don't know, it rains sometimes), I always thought it would be amazing if it would rain and be hot out.  It would be like always running through a sprinkler on a hot summer day.  Well I shouldn't have wished for that, because I have realiezd that running through a sprinkler on a hot day isn't fun at all.  It's pretty miserable actually.

I can't wait to return to a place where summer is actually a desireable time of year.

*****

In other news, since my window of opportunity to go to China has closed, I'm left with little more than the urge to travel.  I'm not exactly sure what's going to go down, but my latest thought it to take a little excusion through 'oori nara'  aka  Korea.  I've set out a tentative itinerary, so i'm going to be checking out a couple of things in the next few days while figuring out how it's all going to work.  Ideally, I pick up another short term gig, and then with the time remaining, check out Korea.  In a lot of ways, it's better than going to China.  I've spent almost ayearinkorea, but have barely seen any of the place. 

33 days

I returned yesterday from what turned out to be a four-day gig in Suwon, a subarb/small town outside of Seoul.  I had been hired to be an "english speaker" along with about 10 other native english speakers from places like New Zealand, UK, Canada and the U.S.  The reality of it all is that we were teachers in name only, and that our physical presense was more desireable than our ability to help Korean children learn english. 

The whole camp was supposed to be 5 days, with a thousand new kids everyday.  Kids would come in from the the town, pass through 'immigration' where they were greeted by the teachers (korean and foreigners).  Some kids reacted with delight when they saw us, our exaggerated smiles, and hand puppets, but other kids after only one glance would start crying their eyes out.  The ages seemed to be from 3 or 4 to about 9 or 10.  A lot of these kids were babies who could barely speak Korean.

The camp was made up of different stages, where the kids would rotate in groups of 60-100, from stage to stage.  Just to give an example of how little I actually did, or how I wasn't really teaching at all, the stages that I was at were, Swimming Pool, Water Guns, and Photo Zone. 

As you could probably infer by the names, the Swimming Pool was no more than me splashing kids with water.  I would just run around and see little kids and splash a bit of water on them.  If they freaked out I would leave them alone, if they were into it, I'd splash more.  Thats it. 

Water guns included a bit more education, but it was mostly vocabulary like 'shoot me', (at their request), 'don't shoot me', and 'water gun'.  After saying hello, we would hand out the guns, and all hell would break loose.  I had 50 korean kids chasing me, getting me soaking wet.  The only way i could hold them off was by shooting them in the face with a super soaker, which was amazingly satisfying.

And Photo Zone was the weirdest one.  This was me standing behind kids, four at a time, and posing with them.  It was rediculious.  The kids would be yanked out of line and pulled infront of me for the photo, but were so mesmorized by the process of being put infront of this random foreign guy that they would stand with their backs to the camera staring at me.

This is where the analysis comes in.  The whole thing was rediculious.  I got paid a ton of money for all this, and in reality, didn't do a thing.  Every foreign english teacher there had a Korean assistant who would translate and assist in our efforts.  For perspective, they worked twice as many hours a day and got paid a third of what we white teachers got paid.  They didn't seem to hold a grudge against us (i think I would have) and were really cool, but I couldn't help feeling bad about just sitting there getting my photo taken when they had to wake up two hours earleir than us to set up the camp.  It's the breaks I guess, but it was a pretty concrete example that where one is from and what color one's skin is can lend quite a bit of favortism in this world.  Apparently there was a foreign teacher who got hired for the job, but was let go before the camp started because he 'looked asian' and for Korean moms who want there kids to learn english, an asian-american doesn't cut it in the photo zone.

And thats what it all came down to.  I was the foreign guy who brought in the bucks.  When I saw the brochure for the camp, it said "all activities done with real native english speakers."  Done deal, right there.  The parents of the kids probably don't care how much english their kids learn, they want them to be in the physical presense of white americans.  That's my this job was mostly me walking around saying "hello!" and "high five" (korean kids LOVE the high five).

It was a strange job, but he pay was amazing.

****

For an update, I don't think I'll leave Korea before I go home.  I was seriously going to go to Beijing ( i almost bought the ticket), but the job thing fell through, so it would be a bit risky.  So i have a month to figure everything out here.  I'd like to get another job, but it's pretty short notice right now, but we'll see what happens. 

Reader's Digest Version of My Life

I can't find a plane ticket home at a later date, so I don't know if I can take the job (that runs to the 19th of August, while my plane ticket is for the 10th), which means I don't know if I can go on my trip.  If I can, I decided to go to China, Beijing specifically.  I have ten days.  I'm thinking (should I actually get to go, it all depends on getting a job with the right dates) Beijing, Hohhot and maybe one other place.  I will be in China for 10 days with beijing as a hub.  Any suggestions?

That is all, except for I love what the Blazers did on wednesday.  I wonder if Hollywood has any thoughts...

what to do...

Ok, so it's like this:  My flight is for August 10th.  I just got a job that pays really well that goes until august 19th.  Which means that I would have to reschedule my flight for say, august 23rd (to give myself some me time).  Which means that my visa will have expired, so I think i need to leave the country to get it renewed.  But where to go?

I should have thought about it before I even came to Korea, but this place is damn isolated.  It's not like, say, Austria, where you can't fall down without landing in another country.  Far from it.  The only country this place borders is practically a black hole.  It's like bordering outer space.  Is it there?  sure.  Can you go?  No.

So I have a ten day window to get out and get back into the country.  Obvious candidates for destinations include the ever controversial Japan and the big ginseng itself, China.  They are the closest, and it seems like while I'm in Asia, it makes senes to visit them.

There's a damn good chance I could end up teaching English in Japan.  It makes sense to visit before I go, at least I think it does.  I have some friends there, so it would be nice to be shown around a bit, maybe even shown a good time.  I travel Thailand and Cambodia by myself and that had mixed results.  The downside, of course, is that it is rediculiously expensive.  I'm bad with money, so making this more expensive isn't a good idea.

On the other side is China.  I've got some familial ties with China, and whether or not it's true, I feel obligated to check it out.  Not like a burden, but more in a sense of fraternity.  Supposedly China is the big up-and-comer that's going to knock the inflated head off the the U.S., so it might be nice to see before we go to war.  And, I heard it's still cheap.  Awesome.  I don't really have contacts there, but hey, who needs contacts?

what to do... what to do...

45

I suppose I'm long overdue for a post on the ol' blog.  I'm a teacher now, and a student no longer.  There's a list of Korean blogs, and mine is listed as "An American studying in Seoul," but I don't think that really applies any more.  Sorry if you've been misled.

I've been working at an English Academy for the last two weeks.  I'm just filling in for a guy who went back to Canada for about two and a half weeks.  I'll be finished on Wednesday, which will be nice because this job has it's share of headaches.  I would say it's 90% great, but the other ten percent is due to some seriously unruly kids.  I've taught at a couple different acadamies, of all ages, and the one thing that trips me up the most is how to deal with kids who have ADD.  A lot of people say it's an over diagnosed disorder, that kids are just hyper, but spend all day in a class room with a bunch of 10-13 year olds and you can spot the ones who simply can't slow down.  The hardest part is that I don't know how to react to it.  I tell them "hey, sit down, be quiet, do your work," but it isn't that easy, because they can't. 

I went off on a kid one day and made him stand outside the class because he was trying to take over my show, and the kids parents called my boss.  I thought he was gonna let me go, which would have been rediculious, but we talked about it and he said I'm just here temporarily, so chill out.  What the hell is that?  I understand i'm only here for a while, and that the long-term student/teacher roles don't really need to be established, but what does he want me to do, just play with them?  I don't know, it stressed me out for a while.  Other than those handful of kids, it's been really fun.  God bless the dysfunctional korean english education system for supplying me with fruitful opportunities to teach 'conversation.'  I'll finish this in two days and start a new job next monday.

In other news, 45 days til America.  I've been comparing my return to my departure and it feels similar, only without the hassle.  I'm in this temporary zone where I don't feel like diving in too deep with anything here (even though 45 days is still a long time), but I don't have to go through a visa process or anything like that.  The thing I'm worried about this time is making enough money to go home.  I have a great opportunity to gather some funds here.  If I got back and work some menial job, I'll make about 1/5th of what I make here.  Still, money aside, it will be good to see my friends again.

On the friends, note, almost all of mine are gone.  I was left alone on a saturday night for the first time in a while last weekend, and as checked my phonebook on the celly, I realized that I've almost outlasted them all.  There were kids here for spring semester that came here and have left already, while I've been just chillin.  It makes me wonder why I signed on for so long, and if it was necessary.  I could have been home for a week by now if the cards were right, in fact my original flight date has passed.  I can't decide whether I'm glad about it or not.

After going through a big glad-to-be-in-korea phase, I'm once again semi-bothered by it.  Namely, commuting in the town is simply terrible.  It's big, it takes a long time, and people are always  staring at me, bumping in to me, or just getting in my way.  It can be really stressful.  I was reading in my psych class about type A and type B personalities (optimism/pessimism, calm/stressed) and it's relation to early death and heart disease and I serious think that if I were to stay here for very much longer, the sheer stress of going to work would put me underground by 35.

Also, soccer mania in Korea has officially subsided.  After losing 2-0 to Switzerland, the passion that ran through the veins of this nation has turned into anger as almost every Korean i've talked to believes they were cheated.  I didn't watch the game, because it was at 4 in the morning, but from what I understand, it was a sketchy play that sounds like it was an unfair situation that resulted in a swiss goal.  Anyway, Korea, you lost by 2.  You can't forget about that.  I don't know if I believe it, but i've heard rumors of Korean's protesting at the swiss embassy in germany over the bogus outcome.  It makes sense, the only way Korea could lose in the minds of Koreans is that they were cheated.  I should have seen it coming.

A difference you can feel

I have witnessed the difference between collective and individual society firsthand, thanks to the World Cup.  My mom, who's in america, asked me, "so, do they watch soccer over there?  I keep hearing about the world cup on bbc."  Short answer, yes, they do have soccer in Korea.  Long answer, they have soccer here like nowhere else in the world.

The background story is that Korea and Japan hosted the world cup in 2002, and Korea made quite the good showing, making it to the final 16.  As far as I know, Korea has been hyped ever since then for this year's version of the international competition.  Almost every commercial on TV has footage of the last world cup for about 24 seconds, and then six seconds dedicated to a description of a new cell phone plan.  Let's just say it's world cup mania over here.

So I just got done watching the Korea-Togo game, which Korea won 2-1 (Let me say, R.I.P. to the US team that got absolutely murdered last night).  I was watching the game in the lounge room of my new apartment building with some Koreans that live here.  True to form, they carred the tradition that I've seen in the commercials, on the street, and prevoiusly at Yon Go Jan, namely, group cheering.

I can't do it justice right now, but if you hear, in any form (beit a car horn or a pencil on a desk) a rhythm that sounds like dum-dum dum-dum dum, it will inevitably be followed by anyone within audible proximity screaming "Dae Han Min Gook," which of course, means Korea.  If you watch the Korean games (any korean game versus another country), it will be constantly in the background.

We were watching the game and the five Koreans I were with were constantly doing the dum-dum dum-dum dum Dae Han Min Gook thing.  They needed no instigator, no hype-man if you will.  Just sheer motivation to cheer with one another.  Yet the whole time, I couldn't get into it.  It's not like I have a problem cheering for another country.  I realized last night that no amount of cheering is gonna get the U.S. past what is been called "the group of death."  And honestly, I'm going for Argentina to win the whole thing.  The problem is that I don't find cheering in a group for no particular reason exciting.  They loved it, while I found it annoying.  I could pass it off as cynicism, but I'd rather think it was the individual vs. collective.

And I've got evidence that it wasn't just the people I was with either.  As I write this I can hear cars honking their horns and people cheering, just because Korea beat Togo.  There's also this picture, that shows just how much these people were into it all.

The thing about it is that I don't think they even like soccer that much here.  I think they just like the idea of succeeding in international competition and the togetherness that comes with that.  I asked one of my students today why they like Park Ji-Sung, Korea's star player, and they said 'because he's handsome.'  Here, watching Korea play soccer is secondary to watching Korea play soccer together.

I have no source for this, but someone told me that some poll said that 93% of Koreans said "yes" to "Are you looking forward to the world cup?"   Maybe it's like that everywhere, but I doubt it's like that back home, and I wouldn't doubt it all that so many Koreans are hyped about this.

Go USA.

Finuto

Today is my last day of classes in Korea, as a student at least.  I have a few exams next week, when I will also be starting my new job that will last me the rest of June. 

It's been great, Yonsei.  A little dull, but good overall.