TAKE 2

Back in Korea I’ve moved into a new apartment and will start my teaching duties today. It’s been extremely busy since arriving in Korea, staying at Jungwon University to meet the new ETAs and yesterday traveling to Daegu with my co-teacher and principal. Just dashing out a quick note to say I’m back. I renewed my Fulbright grant at Dong-do Middle School, a highly ranked middle school in Daegu. Moving into a new apartment is harder than I remembered. Shopping on my own after getting the apartment code I was overwhelmed by the number of things needed to set up a life: bedding, dishes, cooking utensils (so many!). I didn’t even buy food in the end because I had exhausted myself agonizing over frying pans and the high prices of cotton bed sheets. 

Trials of living alone aside I have felt and feel almost ecstatic to be back in Korea and especially to be back in Korea with these people. This weekend I was so impressed and warmed by my class of renewees and the new ETAs. I was reminded in Goesan (the small town where orientation takes place) how breathtaking Korea is. It has been a raining, misty kind of week here. Monsoon season is supposed to be over, but no one told the weather. Walking outside the university we could watch as moisture seeped up from the ground and met the wetness in the sky. We watched the clouds get caught in the cups of mountains, lingering and growing to cover the entire valley in fog. Coming to Daegu, about a two and a half hour drive, we drove through three separate rain clouds, each one lasting only a few minutes. My co-teacher and principal both seem like kind people. On the way back we stopped at a roadside stand to by steamed corn, famous in the area. I am filled with the feeling that I am in the place where I should be.

On libraries, new beginnings, and eating alone

I have been trying to write about February. I wanted to tell you about this month that loomed so monumental in my mind while being in all other respects so minimal. February is a short month, an odd month, forced to change every now and then from 28 days to 29. It is the most abysmal month of winter in many places (I include Korea in that list) and the most difficult month to spell. Yet it is also the month of the Sochi Olympics, the month of Valentines day. February was the month of my middle school's graduation ceremony and the last month of our ample winter vacation. For me, this month had another meaning; for me this was the month to make it or break it.

I had a choice between living in Gumi with my host family for the month of February or living in Seoul, as many of my friends were doing. I chose, for a variety of reasons, to stay in Gumi and spend my time studying for the GRE and building relationships in my placement city. It was a difficult decision, no less because staying in Gumi meant self-managing my time, whereas in Seoul I would most likely have taken language classes. By staying in Gumi I wanted to test myself, to see how well I could sustain an energetic and productive life entirely on my own schedule.

Now, in early March I can say I did enjoy that time. I loved it. I had the freedom to study hard and the freedom to sleep. I had the time to visit friends and the time to read. I had the time to make new friends, to make new habits. Of course, not everything happens simply because you have enough time. Coming back to Korea from my visit to the States and my vacation in Taipei and Hanoi left me in the right mind to make the most of my time.

However, this time was not always pleasant. In the midst of my school's graduation, as I watched a performance of Apink's "No No No" and waved balloons for my favorite 3rd graders, my co-teacher leaned over and told me that 25 of our students were not at graduation. They had been banned for participating in the beating of several 2nd grade students just two days earlier. The news was both sad and shocking. Our school has always been rough around the edges, but I never expected something so intentionally brutal. At the same time I know that school gangs are a nation-wide problem in Korea and that for many students the choice might be between participating and suffering from bullying themselves. Over the next few days I discovered that, of the 2nd grade students, one had broken his collar bone, one had a ruptured ear drum and another had to have all his teeth moved back into place. In many ways, I became more anxious to return to school.

Saying goodbye to my other 3rd graders was sad in a very different way. I have about 245 students in the 3rd grade alone, so it's difficult to get to know any of them very well. I know I taught them only one semester and that only about 16 lessons. Of the few students who really shone and made my lessons exciting to teach, I had little belief that they would wish me a tearful goodbye and ask to stay in touch forever. Yet many students came over for a quick hug or a handshake. I was so touched that they wanted to say goodbye, especially those who told me they missed my class in the last few months.

Shortly after graduation I travelled to Seoul to visit my friends. I went twice in February. Once when I couldn't bear to study any longer and again as soon as I finished the GRE. Having a place to stay in Seoul was wonderful (thank you friends!) and as my friends were all taking classes or doing internships during the day I had a lot of time to do the touristy things in Seoul that I hadn't had time for on other weekend trips. I went twice to the National Museum of Korea, whose smoky paintings captured a facet of Korean life new to me. The museum is truly spectacular with three stories of art and artifacts from prehistory to the modern era and entirely free. In my two visits I have only conquered two of the three floors, but I was able to see the evolution of Korean calligraphy, Korean paintings — from portraits, to landscapes, to insect studies —, a re-created 'sarangbang' or Korean scholar's study and artifacts from every kingdom of Korea up to the Japanese occupation. I highly recommend a visit to anyone who will be in Seoul.

Beyond museums I spent time in cafes from the college areas of Hongdae and Idae to the tourist-turned-artistic-area of Insadong. Around Insadong I also visited the Hanok village, an area of Seoul where traditional Korean houses (circa. the Joseon Era I believe) have been preserved and are still lived in. It happened to be warm and sunny on this day, and the streets — which ask tourists to be quiet in respect for the residents — were full of screaming school children. Later I met some old friends for dinner in Myeongdong, a popular shopping neighborhood, and visited the new Seoul Museum of Modern Art, which was having a free night. Although it's not the same as living in the city, I was able to do a lot on my visits, so I now feel very comfortable in Seoul and have crossed a lot of items off my bucket list.

In Gumi school has started again. Some things are new, some are not, but the greatest change is in my confidence as a teacher. It has only been a week, but I feel that I have stepped up my game on all levels of teaching, from lesson planning to execution to classroom management to connecting with students outside of class. It has only been a week, but I have really good feelings for this semester. I again have about 700 students — 7 classes of 3rd graders, 7 classes of 2nd graders and 6 classes of 1st graders. My returning students have been surprisingly polite in class. Not sure if this is due to our continued rapport, my new classroom management plan, or some strain of first week shyness. The new 1st graders are a joy to teach. They are so eager to participate and several of the classes I've seen so far seem to be quite high level. I also have a new co-teacher for my 1st grade students who I like very much. She is both kind and efficient. I'm excited about what we can do with our classes for the rest of the semester.

I've made a few lifestyle changes for the new semester as well. I joined a gym halfway through February and have been going everyday when I can. I'm really enjoying the classes there. After a yoga class I always find my mood and motivation lifted. I've also decided to stop volunteering at the Hana Center in Daegu. This was a difficult decision to make since I really enjoyed working with my mentee and the community feeling of the center. However, commuting to Daegu once a week while working a full teaching schedule was a strain on my time and my relationships with my host family. This semester I am adding a club class to my teaching schedule, bringing my teaching hours up to 22 a week. With the added prep time and knowing my difficulty in commuting last semester I just couldn't commit to doing the program again in the spring. It would be unfair on everyone else involved for me to commit when I was unsure I could fully participate. If I stay in Korea another year, without the obligations of a host family, it is something I hope I would be able to return to.

However, whether I will be in Korea past this July is still undecided and as such I am suddenly pressed upon by the many things I have yet to do here. It's for this reason that I want to keep my weekends this semester free. If last semester I was committed to getting my bearings in Gumi, this semester I hope to roam more. I had an epiphany of sorts this February while visiting Seoul. As I said, I had a lot of alone time there as well as a lot of time in the evenings talking to my friends. But it was while I was sitting, eating alone in the restaurant of the National Museum of Korea, looking forward to drinking wine with my friends later in the evening when we were all done with our work, that I realized this is what I want to do with the rest of my semester. If during the week I am 100% committed to my school, during the weekends I want to commit myself 100% to teaching myself. I had such a feeling of comfort in my solitariness then — full of the pleasure of intellectual pursuit and the sure knowledge of my kind friends waiting for me later. We're always a bit alone in Korea, even and despite the ever present circles of host family, school family and Fulbright family. Yet there are some moments of clarity when you can turn that aloneness into something new — freedom, comfort, a new discovery. Those are the moments I will cultivate this semester and those are the lessons I want to learn.

WHAT I'VE BEEN GIVEN

Peeking out from behind the trees is my school, Shinpyeong Middle School. Both this woman with her fields, and my school are about a five minute walk from my host home.

Sunday I took a walk through the woods behind my middle school. The middle school sits at the top of a hill — the highest point in the neighborhood — and just above it sits the wood. A narrow dirt path and steep stairs made of logs and earth meander across the area, each curve harboring a small field or garden. I haven't been in Gumi long, but this is one of the things I know I love: that at any moment urban apartments may give way to farms and you can taste the difference in the air. Above my middle school a farmer is growing pumpkins, red peppers and morning glories, the fields themselves clinging dangerously to the hill.

I was walking here when I saw an insect — something long and scurrying — and I wondered what it was called, whether I could get a better look, maybe take a picture if it was interesting. And as I thought this my second thought was that I ought to thank my uncle, an entomologist, for giving me this interest.

My life so far has been rich with engaged and interested people who have given me so much to think about.

My grandparents on either side showed me that learning is not something stationary, but is happening to us at every moment if we only allow it. They taught me to learn from books and then that books come in many forms — sometimes they look like paper, other times they can be found in fossils or in a single word.

My parents showed me that nature is everywhere you look. They taught me to look at the tree and to ask its name, but also to look at the tree and see its shape and to know the name of the shape that belongs to just that tree.

I think how different my world would be if I were not looking at it, were not reading it through the eyes of my friends and family. Without them, these woods would be much emptier. I am so grateful.

These thoughts come as I am struggling with a difficult life decision. This last week I had several epiphanies. The first was when I realized late one evening that, while I would love to be a professor, there is so much more to consider before going to graduate school. The more I read about graduate school right now the riskier it appears, and while I value finding satisfaction in my work, there are other occupations where I could find that same satisfaction. The second occurred as I was leaving my school Friday afternoon and some students ran yelling past. I realized then that I love my students. I was afraid that I might never have that realization, but I did and I do.

Now, these two epiphanies aren’t necessarily related, but they could be. Both realizations are part of my learning process this year, the stress being on process — something that is intrinsically moving and changing.

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night I never knew I liked the night pitch-black sparks fly from the engine I didn't know I loved sparks I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15930#sthash.f7xpWePR.dpuf

I used to wonder how teachers could find it in them to care about all their students, even — especially — the troublemakers. How could teachers persistently wish for each and every student to succeed? Yet in becoming a teacher I have learned that teachers are always watching. I see my students all the time in and out of class. They are so active, so loud, and yet so often lost in themselves. They're just kids. I want them all to succeed, even — and especially — the ones that cause trouble. I know their behavior isn't about me, but about something they're going through.

It's good to know — as I'm trying to sift through my values and find out where they will lead — that I can still discover things that I care about, things that maybe I didn't expect.

Inspired by a fellow ETA...

Korea Bucket List 

2013

• Eat the best spicy-chicken-in-a-cup in Korea.
• Participate in a traditional tea ceremony.
• Drink watermelon soju.
• Drink kiwi soju.
• Eat honeybread.
• Visit the DMZ.
• Be proposed to.
• Make a fool of myself in Korean.
• Climb a mountain.
• Eat chicken’s feet as a midnight snack.
• Make friends with a child at Samsungwon Orphanage.
• Visit Jeju-do.
• Spend the evening at a Makgeoli bar with friends.
• Climb Geumo San.
• See a Kpop concert.
• See the green tea fields of Boseong.
• Catch a fish at the Hwacheon Ice Fishing Festival.
• Run into my students at a coffee shop.
• Start an English club class.
• Go to a jimjilbang.
• Visit the Cheonjeon-ri petroglyphs.
• Watch films at BIFF.
• Watch the sunrise from the East Sea.
• Live in Seoul.
• People-watch from a floating cafe.
• Take photos at a Korean photo-booth.
• Go to a cat cafe.
• Eat king-mandu.
• Take a bike trip in the countryside.
• Celebrate Chuseok.
• Find MY Korean Noraebang song.
• Step in a fossilized dinosaur footprint on the southern seacoast.
• Walk through Changdeokgung Palace in Seoul.
• Get fanatical about a Kdrama.
• Purchase a full skin care regimen.
• Take my clothes to a tailor. 
• See a traditional fan dance. 
• Walk across the sea at Jindo. 
• Go to Gumi’s Dream Festival. 
• Go to a hot spring in the winter. 
• Eat ramen with my host sisters. 
• Watch a 4D movie. 
• Visit one of the UNESCO historic villages, Hahoe and Yangdong. 
• See the Tripitaka Koreana: the most complete collection of Buddhist texts and laws engraved on wood blocks in the 13th century.
• Spend a day speaking only Korean.

TOUGH LOVE

No one ever said teaching was easy, but in the course of this week I've come to think of teaching in the same manner as extreme sports like ultramarathons and cave diving. All three require specialized knowledge and preparation, but it is the performer's endurance that is tested. In teaching I can plan my lessons, my classroom management strategies, my routines and goals — but what matters is how I execute those plans while actually teaching. In the classroom, the real test is keeping the class engaged. This week I'm engaging the students by increasing discipline and pacing.

Last week, my biggest difficulty was with students talking and becoming distracted throughout my lessons, so that I was constantly having to call their attention back to me and ask them to be quiet. The problem came both from my newness as a teacher and the nature of the lesson. I was doing an introductory lesson aiming to tell the students about myself and learn a little about their English levels (and personalities).

Since I was already planning to make journaling a part of our classroom routine I decided to have the students introduce themselves by making covers for their journals including their names, a picture of themselves and several sentences describing their personalities and things they like. For practical reasons it made sense for the students to make the journals as well. (I was not buying 735 journals, nor was I planning on making 735 journals by myself either. Someone told me that in teaching 'never do anything yourself that the students can do' and I think it was very good advice.)

However, making the journals required several separate steps as well as some translation from my co-teachers on the trickier instructions, both of which drew the class's attention away from me. Once we moved into the actual drawing and writing things went much smoother and the final results ranged from thoughtful to hilarious.

A sampling of my favorites (students' names removed for privacy):

One of my more eloquent students. Love the attitude in the portrait.

And then I get journals like this. Trolling indeed.

Sometimes those that don't follow the directions are most revealing. I am charmed by this student's stag beetles.

One of the best drawings I received and a classic self description. All students like chicken.

And of course there are a few odd-balls. I'm not sure what makes this one so good, the flying oranges, the tiny chorus line, or the emphasis of "I feel good ~ and cool ~".

MOUNTAINTOP PHOTOS

At the top

Our team

AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH

A week ago at 8am I stood on top of a mountain and shouted in my head "We lived on the medieval coast/ south of warrior kingdoms / in the ancient day of the winds / as they blew all things before them." The mountains spreading before me fulfilled every image of Asia I have dreamed or hoped to dream whether reading poetry or watching the films of studio Ghibli.


During orientation we've talked a lot about our goals for the upcoming year. What do we want to take away from our time in Korea? Where do we want to spend our energy? And one of the phrases that keeps coming up is personal growth. Yes, we're here to teach, but we're more than teachers. We're also people and we're here to live and to see how far life can take us.

Last Thursday when we saw the mountain we were planning to climb I never thought we would make it to the top. But then we made the halfway mark and I thought, I can do this, and suddenly we were there. There are so many ways to grow, but maybe nothing is more tangible than stretching your muscles and finding your way closer to the clouds. No wonder temples are so often built at the top of mountains, literally above the rollick and tumble of everyday life.

Personal growth has been on my mind a lot in the last few days as we filled out our placement request forms. These forms don't guarantee we'll be placed where we want — placement is complicated — but our preferences do carry some weight. So I had to consider, how do I want to grow? and where will I be able to grow the most? I found three main desires. First, for my students, I want to have time to get to know them outside the classroom as well as in the classroom. I want to have the freedom to teach club classes and camps. Second, for Korea, I want to become in some small way a part of this culture, by exploring the land, by continuing to study the language and hopefully, by taking up the study of Korean folk dance. Third, for myself, I want to develop discipline by writing, and stretch my comfort zone by traveling and meeting new people.

With those goals in mind I filled out my placement form. Environment preference: mountainous.

EATING KIMCHI...

...is something I was looking forward to before coming to Korea. I was looking forward to mouthfuls of kimchi because of its name, kim-chi. The two rounded syllables make for one tasty word. However, now that I've arrived I've realized what I really want is to enjoy kimchi and that is going to take some work.

I think this might be like a lot of things during my year in South Korea. Everything from speaking to teaching to eating will take practice. Thankfully, that's something I can do. Of course, having just arrived in the country yesterday most of what I practice lately is staying awake and not getting lost in Jungwon University (our home for the next 6 weeks).

At least getting lost isn't so bad when the campus is gorgeous and, honestly, just plain huge. Usually I'm not impressed with simple size, but Jungwon feels legitimately monolithic.