Way of the Waeguk

Epiblogue

2009-12-31T09:18:00.000-08:00

Me: “What would you do if you were a doctor and a patient had blue skin?”

Mr. Song: “I would hit his cheek.”

Me: “What?”

Mr. Song: “Then he would be red.”

If it were one year ago, I would be barfing in the shrubbery of a hospital with a Korean nurse smacking me on the back. In the morning, I would board a plane to Jeju Island, the hottest vacation spot in Korea. I can’t believe that was already a whole year ago. Okhee liked to say, “When you are twenty, life goes 20 miles per hour. When you are thirty, it goes 30 miles per hour. When you are forty, 40 miles per hour.” Coming home from Korea was like applying a little pressure to the brake pedal, which was really nice and, I think, a little necessary.

For me, the only adjusting to home required was overcoming jetlag. I wasn’t hit with a wave of nostalgia, nor was I bogged down with reverse culture shock. As soon as our car left the airport, everything felt oddly normal. The best part of coming home was the moment I walked in my basement door and my dog looked up at me in wonder, as if I had risen from the dead. I spent the next few months getting a fix of delicious home cooked meals, holding my year old nephews upside-down, fruitlessly job searching and consoling myself with minesweeper, and going out, or staying in, with my closest friends both at home and elsewhere. There was no catching up period with them, it felt immediately like old times except for the occasional moment when I wondered if I was annoying when I couldn’t stop bringing up Korea in conversations. But because I know how quickly the past can decay into blotchy memory, I have been trying to keep Korea fresh in my mind. Post-it notes covered in Korean vocabulary surround the toilet paper holder, so that the more frequently I use the restroom, the better my Korean. I cooked a Korean meal for my friends, and overestimating the noodles, ended up eating kkongkuksu leftovers twice a day for the rest of the week. I even dream I am in Korea every now and then, although half the time they are nightmares that I forgot to lesson plan for my middle school class.

This year, instead of Jeju Island, I am getting ready to embark on a new adventure. Apparently the job searching and minesweeper paid off, because I was accepted to an Americorps position with a non-profit that helps Mexican immigrants. In February, I will head to Burnsville, North Carolina to start. I hear that it is one of the most beautiful areas along the Appalachian Trail, with hiking and white water rafting, small town folk with a friendly southern drawl, and the hip city of Asheville a short drive away. Another draw, though, is that home will not be too far either, so if a holiday should come along, or if I should start missing my Springer Spaniel, this time I won’t be in a different hemisphere. I will be a hemisphere away from Korea, though, and I will have to postpone my visit until my one year commitment ends. The old, green mountains in Burnsville might look a bit like Korea’s, although I’m sure I will be hard-pressed to find kimchi in a 50-mile radius, not to mention a train with karaoke rooms or middle schoolers calling out my name on the sidewalk. One thing that is like Korea – I have very little idea of what I’m getting into. I’m hoping that, like Korea, I’ll be very glad I did.

The End

2009-10-15T11:28:00.000-07:00

“Oh no! I forgot to have children!”

-Korean T-Shirt

I am a sucker for emotional goodbyes, and I like going out with a bang, so when I realized that my end of the school year was an entire two months before I would be leaving the country, I was a little disappointed. As much as I love Korea, I wasn’t crazy about the idea of lingering past my welcome, teaching English camp to students from other schools and loitering in Waegwan while my ex-patriot friends were on trips. This way, though, I managed to get two endings out of the deal, and being in Korea, I even managed to get two dramatic endings.

The last weekend of my school year coincided with the most anticipated festival of my entire year in Korea. It also coincided with the obligatory wrap-up meeting for the hundreds of foreign teachers in my program, but I assured my provincial education officer that no one would be going since every foreigner I had met planned on attending this festival. It is worth a tangent here to discuss Korean festivals in general. As you could probably gather from my last entry, Koreans don’t only work hard, and they will take any excuse they can get, especially if the moon is involved, to create a festival. Unfortunately, I missed the annual Body Painting Festival, but I hit up a performance at the Daegu Opera Festival and a really strange break dance theatrical performance involving a black light musical number from Ghost Busters and a really sad marionette at the Daegu in Motion festival. I traveled to Jinju for the Lantern Festival, where larger than life cloth reliefs of samurai fighters, Disney characters, and lotus flowers lit the river, an actual size temple lantern stood adjacent to the bridge and a lantern dragon on the shore turned his head from side to side breathing fire. The bonfire as high as my house that my friends and I stumbled upon on the shore of the Nakdong River was accompanied by fireworks, traditional Korean drumming, and a roast pig to celebrate the first full moon of the lunar new year, and the Korean government dismissed me from school for a two day festival of Chamanism in Gangneung where we drank unlimited ladle-fuls of free makoli and hammered our own rice cake and the only thing they asked in return was that we march in the featured foreigner section of the parade swinging lanterns that we later sent floating down the river.

The festival that took place on the last weekend of my school year was the Boryeong Mud Festival. My friend, self-appointed foreigner liaison, arranged four busloads of foreigners, and a handful of Koreans, to ride the six hours to Boryeong. The rain was no hindrance to our frolicking in the mud, which was rumored to be naturally healthy. We smothered ourselves in it and crawled into the mud fight ring where strangers were shoving each other full force like a slippery mosh pit. At one point, someone grabbed my ankles out from under me so that I almost ended up sitting on some poor boy’s face. The rain was a hindrance when we tried to watch the girl pop sensation, Son Ya Shi Dae, perform on the stage set up on the beach that evening. By the time they rambled through the typical opening ceremonies, we were soaked to the bone and shivering and gave in on the band that apparently never showed anyways. As we were darting through the puddles back to the beach house, we were surprised with the most grandiose fireworks show I had ever seen. Because ‘face’ is so important in Korean culture, I have read that Koreans will dig themselves into debt to impress. As we watched millions of Korean won exploding colorfully through the curtain of rain, we were definitely impressed.

The beach house doubled as a time machine back to college life. Over two hundred people were drinking and dancing, and the DJ kept up until six in the morning. Meanwhile, the open doors of the unairconditioned condo let in a battalion of mosquitoes that easily defeated the exposed sleeping foreigners wedged into the rooms like puzzle pieces. After fighting for pillows and square feet of floor, I ended up curled between a boy’s feet and a snoring man with my arm for a pillow and my extra T-shirt for a blanket. After cleaning up the wreckage in the morning, it was a weary ride back to where we would be teaching the next day.

My last week of teaching was going great. I prepared a class party with a game, a cheesy goodbye speech that I wrote in Korean, a class photo, and 4 watermelons to serve to each of my twenty classes. The students were showering me with cards that, according to the music teacher, they had made in music class, as well as candy and little stuffed animals. One class even asked me to go out of the room, and when I returned they were blasting Auld Lang Syne and poster they had all signed.

All went very smoothly at my main school. My final two days would be at Yangmok, my second school. While I loved my Yangmok students, I wasn’t crazy about teaching there because it was always a little more chaotic. Instead of my own English room, I had to move from classroom to classroom with my armful of teaching materials, and I usually didn’t find out about schedule changes until the last minute. The previous week, I had showed up to Yangmok to several surprises. Yangmok was about to rebuild the middle school, and when I showed up that Wednesday, they were in the process of moving their entire school into a different building so that their old school could be demolished. As soon as they settled into their new (actually very old) classrooms, I had to go in to teach. I found that my Korean co-teacher, who had been a long term substitute, had quit and for the last two weeks of school I was working with a brand new teacher the students had never met. Additionally, the computers were not yet set up in the classrooms, and with my lesson plan revolving around a PowerPoint presentation, I had to create a new lesson on the spot.

I was slightly worried about throwing the party at Yangmok with the hectic disorganization and with 16 watermelons getting delivered each day. Hyo Jin and some of the teacher’s assistants helped me order and slice the watermelons, and my first class went great. During my second class, though, the head English teacher called me out into the hallway.

“Did you know about the swine flu?” he asked. My heart sank. I knew exactly what was about to happen. One of three other foreign English teachers in my town, who had slept in the same beach house as me and hundreds of others, had caught the swine flu at that miserable Mud Festival. I was told to go home immediately. I asked if I could at least say goodbye to my students, so I went from classroom to classroom repeating my goodbye speech and writing my email on the board. My poor students were just torn between feeling awkward at seeing their teacher cry and germophobic. Still, they managed to scribble some really sweet goodbye notes for me to read over during my five day quarantine in my one room apartment.

Summer went by quicker than I expected. The remainder of July I taught English camps, first to a group of sixth graders from around the county and then to a group of elementary school teachers. Instead of one big farewell party, I spent the beginning of August spreading out individual goodbyes to my traveling friends, and in my final two weeks when I thought I might feel lonely and bored, I divided my time between packing up my things and constant adventures with ‘Anchovy Poop.’

Although I studied some on my own, Okhee was my main source for learning Korean. Every day, she would teach me a word or two in Korean in exchange for a word of Spanish, which she wanted to learn in hopes of visiting Spain one day. Whenever I impressed her with my Korean, putting together a difficult phrase or slipping in some provincial dialect, she would tell me “Hasan haseyo” – come down from the mountain. This saying comes from when Korean monks were said to isolate themselves in the mountaintops for intense study and meditation. When they felt learned and enlightened, they came down from the mountain to put their wisdom to use. Therefore, it was especially appropriate that our final excursion was in the mountains.

Seorak Mountain is among the highest peaks in South Korea, at 1,700 meters, so when I was told that we were taking a three day trip, I imagined two or three days of serious hiking from the bottom of the mountain to the top and back down, probably sleeping in a lodge, but possibly even camping. I should have known better. I was traveling with a group of 4 ajumas – the strong married woman type, not the bow-legged ancients. We drove about five hours to the mountain and then continued to drive 1,100 meters into the mountainside. We stayed at a temple where we ate delicious food and frolicked in the stream, where I fell in fully clothed after chasing Okhee’s flip flop downstream. That was the extent of our first day’s work.

The next morning, we rose with the sun and began our hike at seven. In the beginning, it was a nearly flat leisurely walk, and I was getting a kick out of all the ajumas decked out in walking sticks and visors. Okhee had even bought new pants for the occasion. People descending, though, began to tell us that the temple we were headed for would stop serving lunch soon. Because one of our partners was struggling, Okhee and I raced ahead up what had become a steep and strenuous climb to the temple to save lunches. After a hearty monk lunch, I realized that this was our planned turn-around point. Their idea of climbing a mountain was to drive up the first kilometer, hike up to not the peak, turn around and head back. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Okhee was an adventurous spirit like myself.

The two of us pushed forward to the top. The trail was labeled with three summits, and the first of the summits, we were told, was only an hour uphill. But the peak turned out to be a bit of a tease. After reaching this first peak, which did not end up being much of a peak at all, we decided it would be worth the extra 600 meters to the second peak, which ended up being only a snack shop along a ridge toward the actual peak. We finally reached the true top of the mountain two hours after lunch. Beyond the Koreans posing with the altitude sign, the view was unbelievable. In one direction, I counted thirteen layers of tan rocky peaks; in another I saw the East Sea spreading into the horizon; in another, a peak rose into view from the communistic expanse of North Korea.

Assuming that the descent would take about half the time as the climb, we figured that we would return to the temple just as it started to get dark. We stumbled down the steep slopes on sore knees, making good time. As the grade lessened, though, so did our speed. What we forgot to take into account that the first half of the hike had been practically flat, and would take just as long in the opposite direction. We would not make it back to the temple in daylight, not to mention before the temple dinner. We tried to call our companions to ask them to save us some food, as we had done for them at lunch, but we weren’t getting reception on the mountain. While Okhee was beginning to panic on the quickly dimming trail, we were sure the others were twice as worried. With Okhee limping on an arthritic joint and leaning on my shoulder, we lit the rocky path directly in front of us with our cell phones. We finally hobbled back to the temple, stinking and starving, under a sky illuminated with stars. What we never expected to find was an empty room awaiting us.

The three other ajumas had taken an alternative route home, and similarly had no reception on the trail. Although the map had shown the other path to take only an extra hour, it had taken them up and down ridges until 10:30 at night when they finally showed up to the room where a worried Okhee and I were ravenously chowing down dried fruit and nuts. Compared to them, our excursion to the peak and the five hour trek back had been a shortcut.

Despite meeting multiple times over the last couple weeks, ‘Anchovy Poop,’ who usually united only once a month, came together once more for my last night in Korea. We ate Korean barbecue and drank soju in a mud-walled charcoal sauna as a final send-off, and in the morning a couple members even surprised me for one more farewell at the bus station.

I came to Korea with an open mind, knowing nearly nothing about it, hoping to like it, and expecting some adventures. I never foresaw, as a middle school English teacher, just how adventurous my life would be, and I definitely could not have known that I would fall in love with the country. I am sure that there was infinitely more for me to learn and love if I had stayed, but I felt ready to come down from the mountain. If my metaphorical coming down from the mountain is anything like my literal one was, then I am looking forward to a lot of challenges and laughter in the days ahead.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

2009-10-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

Commercial:

“Very delicious milk (God’s blessing). Let’s drink this milk. If you eat this, you’ll never die. This milk is made of God’s tears. You must believe it because believing God.”

– Tyler, 6^th grade English Camp student

I will start by getting this off the table. Koreans eat dogs. It is probably my number one on my list of things I hate about Korea, beating out banks that open for a mysterious few hours a day, a baffling absence of public trashcans, and the beating of students. But it’s not all Koreans and it’s not all dogs. Supposedly, the law restricts boilable dogs to a particular breed, so the stew that you might order in a restaurant is not the lapdog with a ruffled dress and pink dyed ears that you saw a Korean girl in high heels walking down the sidewalk. Except in rural areas, where it might actually be that dog. At least, as my friend’s student pointed out, Koreans don’t eat monkey brains and insects like Chinese people. Oh wait, unless you count the silkworm larvae that street vendors sell by the cupful.

Now that that is out of the way, Korean cuisine as a whole is very near the top of my list of things I love about Korea. While I had my moments of yearning for peanut butter, home made brownies, and real cheese that melts when heated, I am now sitting at home craving a plate of hot ttukpokki. The defining characteristic of Korean food is spiciness, and among the first words I learned to say in Korean was, “It’s hot!” Koreans were always surprised to see an American able to devour the red pepper laced food, but what made it particularly difficult to eat was not the spiciness in and of itself, which I found to be delicious. What was difficult was that they did not usually drink anything with their spicy meals. The hot, sometimes spicy soup was meant to be thirst quenching. Furthermore, nose blowing is a strict cultural taboo, which can be an embarrassing dilemma if you are not accustomed to eating a food named “tear noodles.” The teachers once took me for some exceptionally spicy tear noodles during our lunch break and we managed to slurp them all down, grunting, red-faced, and sniffling back our runny noses.

The national food, which should also probably be the image on the Korean flag, is kimchi. Kimchi is spicy pickled cabbage, and Koreans eat it with every meal. The first time I tasted kimchi, I was not particularly excited at the prospect of eating it every day, but the more I sampled the fonder I grew until I couldn’t fathom cooking without it. Okhee told me that as a little girl, her greatest desire was to travel to America. Then one night, she dreamt that there would be no kimchi in America, and she was sure she would never survive without it. Koreans have proudly claimed kimchi as a (unproven) preventative of stomach cancer and the avian flu, and they had high hopes for kimchi to fight the swine flu, but it seems to have run away with its tail between its legs. According to the Kimchi Field Museum in Seoul, there are 187 varieties of kimchi, which were traditionally fermented in ceramic pots, but are now mainly stored in kimchi refrigerators if not imported, embarrassingly, from China. Because Koreans consume such vast quantities of kimchi, they are recognized internationally for having bad breath. They brush their teeth after every meal, and students and teachers even keep spare toothbrushes at school. Despite their infamous breath, they have yet to develop an effective toothpaste. Although they have an array of flavors, including mint, pine, and green tea, my “2080 Toothpaste” was marketed with the slogan “keeps the 20 teeth healthy til 80 years old.” Needless to say, I obtained my first three cavities in Korea.

Another trait of the Korean diet is that it is very healthy and balanced. A Korean would probably never grab a chocolate Poptart for breakfast. Every meal includes rice, soup, kimchi, and a smattering of other side dishes along with the main dish, including breakfast. There were days when my favorite part of the day was school lunch. Even on days when it was spent sitting in awkward silence amongst the teachers, the cafeteria food would fill my stomach and brighten my mood. If one side dish was unappetizing, dried anchovies with almond or pig blood sausage (on special occasions), it would be balanced with a hearty curry rice or seafood and noodles. With the tray divided into five sections for rice, soup, and three sides, you could always count on something good. Since recuperating from financial depression, Koreans proudly serve side dishes as a reminder that they have the luxury to do so. Often, a fancy meal for a large group will be an entire table spread with 20 or 30 different side dishes, people reaching over each other to the opposite end of the table in order to try all of the foods presented. Even the cheapest restaurants with menus made up of ramen noodles and fried rice set out a serving of kimchi and sweet radish. When I wasn’t whisked away to group dinners, which was often, I frequented these restaurants, where gimbap – rice and vegetables rolled in seaweed – sold for under a dollar.

Korea does not offer the array of ethnic cuisines that the U.S. does, and I took opportunities to eat Indian or Mexican food as a rare treat. The most prominent foreign cuisine was American food. Because the majority of Koreans are of the belief that Americans eat only hamburgers, fried chicken, and pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the restaurants that popped up the most were McDonalds, Popeye’s Chickens, and Pizza Huts, and Korean takeoffs of them. While I found the Korean McDonalds slightly improved from ours, offering shrimp burgers and green tea McFlurries, they botched pizza in every possible way. After demolishing a perfectly good cheese pizza with onions, canned corn, sweet potato paste, and hot dogs, they would charge $25 for a small pie. For the more cultured, there were T.G.I.Fridays where a steak cost more than a pair of XL skinny jeans, but in Korea, I preferred to eat as the Koreans eat, including a Dunkin Donut every now and again.

The set-up of Korean restaurants varies as much from America as the food. When you walk into a restaurant, the first thing you might notice is that everyone is probably sitting on the floor around a foot-high table. The next thing you might notice is that they are most likely eating from a communal bowl. My favorite thing about a group-centered society is that they share everything, no questions asked. If you are sitting in the teacher’s lounge and you want to eat a cookie, you had better have a cookie to offer everyone around you. If everyone is given a tangerine, each person will open the tangerine and split it into sections to pass around, despite everyone already having their own. Once, my friend and I were in a bus at a red light with our windows down. The bus driver in the lane beside us tossed us a tangerine through his window. Another thing you will quickly pick up on in a Korean restaurant is that the waitress will not come to you until she is summoned. When you are ready to order or need a refill, some restaurants are equipped with a buzzer on the table to alert her. Otherwise, you can simply call out “Yogio!” across the restaurant, which politely means, “Over here!” Even though the waitress is at your beckon call, there is no need to leave a tip on that meal that probably cost under five dollars. When you splatter black noodle sauce all over yourself or let a piece of pork slip through your fumbling chopsticks, you will notice that there are no napkins. There is usually a box of thin tissues, or if not, a roll of toilet paper. And if you order barbecue, which is my favorite thing to eat out as it cooks over hot coals in the middle of your dinner table before you wrap it in a sesame leaf and pop it into your mouth, you will notice that in place of knives there is a handy pair of kitchen scissors to cut your meat.

In Korea, with eating often comes drinking, and with drinking always comes eating. They go hand in hand, Koreans preferring to sit on a restaurant floor for several hours picking at spicy food and throwing back soju with friends rather than spend a night barhopping. Perhaps it’s because of this combination with food, or maybe it’s in their Korean blood, but Koreans can drink like fish. While Korean beer is nothing to brag about, soju is a much more popular alcohol. Soju is a rice alcohol that tastes like slightly sweetened vodka, with about 20% alcohol content. A half liter bottle costs about a dollar, and when you ask any Korean, from a frail old man to the skinniest young lady how many bottles they can drink, the answer usually ranges between 3 and 10. They typically drink soju as a shot, and the majority of our orientation was dedicated to teaching us proper drinking etiquette and preparing us for the huge dinners we were expected to attend with our school staff. I ended up going to dinner with the entire school staff once or twice a month, and it was common practice for one person, usually the principal, to go around to each person, pour them a shot, and have them pour him a shot of soju in return. For the person making rounds, that is a lot of shots. I even witnessed my principal and female vice principal exchange a ‘love shot,’ their arms linked as they downed a shot of soju in front of all of the teachers.

I was lucky enough to go to two weddings while I was in Korea, a traditional Korean wedding, which was beautiful, and a ‘modern’ wedding. Modern weddings, attempting the grandiosity and refinement of Western weddings that they have seen in the movies, take place in wedding halls. Often with the façade of a white European castle, these wedding halls host multiple weddings on each of its multiple floors simultaneously so that, as Okhee put it, “it is like a vending machine that spits out a married couple every twenty minutes.” On top of the cheesy photo op with the bride beforehand, the announcer narrating the quick walk down the 20 meter aisle while the laptop played an mp3 of Here Comes the Bride, and the audience, half of whom were standing in back due to a lack of chairs, chattering throughout the ceremony, they managed to Koreanize the traditional wedding grand finale. Instead of “You may now kiss the bride,” a dry ice steaming tower of mini champagne glasses was wheeled down the aisle as the announcer called out, “Love shot!”

Just because Koreans can drink their weight in soju doesn’t mean that they can hold their liquor. Ranking immediately behind dog eating on my list of things I hate about Korea is street barf. For some reason, it is not built into Korean etiquette that vomit should be confined to bathrooms, nor are there many shrubs or trash cans available in the city. Therefore, every time I went into the city for a Friday or Saturday night, I inevitably passed a drunken Korean crouching along the street while their supportive friend smacked them on the back as they regurgitated. On Sundays, I often had to sidestep around dried puke on the sidewalk. Fortunately, I never encountered vomit on the trains or subways. Ingeniously, Koreans have turned designated drivers into a business. Rather than drive home tipsy or call a cab while leaving your car in the downtown parking lot, you can call an official DD, who magically appears and disappears when needed, to drive you and your car home for you.

One nice thing about the custom of eating with alcohol is that, since most Koreans drink in restaurants, there is no need for an open container law. I have fond memories of running to the corner store for a bottle of makoli before a long bus ride and of drinking fiber beers with friends on the bank of the Nakdong River in Waegwan, a couple stars poking through the polluted sky. Cocktails in a bag became a popular niche market for foreigners, and for $5 you could carry a Ziploc of mango margarita as you window shopped through Daegu. Although not nearly as hip as bagged cocktails or ‘So-mek,’ a mixture of soju and beer, my drink of choice in Korea was makoli. Makoli, as well as its close relative, dong dong ju, is an opaque, milky rice wine and naturally sweet. Although it can be bought by the bottle in 7-11 or Family Mart, it is best served in certain restaurants in a pot with a ladle. Another item high on the Things I Love about Korea list is its mountains, and what makes them remarkable is not their size, but how pristine they are. Despite South Korea being a crowded country with high rises piled into the valleys, only maples and pines spring up from the mountainsides. Nevertheless, the popular hiking trails are stocked with public restrooms and makoli restaurants. I was at the top of a mountain notorious for its tall, golden wild grass, and as my friends and I wandered the path through the six foot high grass reeds, I came upon a lady trying to help her friend stand up off the ground. At first, I thought naively that her friend had been hurt and tried to help. As it turned out, she had just overdosed on makoli. I have no idea how she ever got down from the mountain.

Another time, I was in a park with a group of friends in the middle of the morning. We were smiling at a group of older men and women singing in a nearby shelter when they called us over. They poured us a cup of makoli and fed us kimchi and before we knew it they were singing and dancing and clapping around us, red faced and making jokes that we couldn’t understand.

Food brought me closer to a lot of Koreans. Even as I attempted to learn Korean and the rules of Korean culture, nothing I did was appreciated more than eating Korean food with vigor. In the school cafeteria, Jang would coach me on how to eat meat with bones still in them and the proper way to mix bibimbap while my food vocabulary expanded faster than all of the rest of my Korean words together. Although it doesn’t make for stories quite like playing Frisbee on an island or traveling across the country to see a park of penises, many of my greatest memories in Korea involve eating and drinking. And in a country that is wrapped up in a high-pressure world of academics and quickly advancing business, there is something moving in watching a ragtag crew of elderly folks passing around a bottle of rice wine and dancing through the morning.

"Sek-shee"

2009-09-21T09:42:00.000-07:00

Add-On Story, adult ESL class:

“His girlfriend broke up with him.
He was very sad.
So I bought him a pet cow.
I think a pig is better than a cow.
I think a cow is better than a pig, because beef is more expensive.”

“Sexy,” or in Korean, “Sek-shee,” is a new and elusive concept in South Korea. Much more popular and achievable is “cute.” I think that one of the phrases I found myself uttering the most was, “That’s so cute and Korean.” Fuzzy sheep and monkey hats that tie under the chin, socks with babies whose lips purse out of the fabric, smiling ice cream cone fans, and sunny side up post-it notes are the norm. Baskin Robbins servers wearing little white elf hats are cute. Pop songs and music videos are cute. Young couples are sickeningly cute.

Because sexiness is so new in Korea, it is taboo for couples to kiss or walk with their arms around each others’ waists in public. They don’t gaze lustily into each others’ eyes. Instead, they just walk around being cute. They hold hands. They flirt. The boy makes fun of the girl and then she pouts in a squeaky voice. I don’t know how Korea gets away with this one, but matching couple shirts are cool. They are omnipresent – couples wearing T-shirts with matching corny love quips, couples wearing matching polo shirts, couples wearing matching winter coats, couples wearing matching sneakers. It was horrifyingly cute. Sexuality is a funny thing, though, and it would spring up in places and in ways I never expected in Korea.

For a woman to bear shoulders in Korea is scorned, although some youth can probably pull it off. They do not wear low cut shirts or tank tops, even if they are exercising outdoors. Once, I was spending the night in traditional Korean housing with my friends, ‘Anchovy Poop,’ and they were joking that with Okhee’s perm all mussed up and the fake long eyelashes she had glued on for the month she was looking pretty sexy. To complete the picture, I reached over and pulled her T-shirt collar down over one shoulder, and one of the younger women shrieked and grabbed her friend’s arm in disbelief. They had a good laugh about it, but it was something they would have never considered doing. Before I knew that shoulders were such a faux-pas, I went exploring my town in a tank top. A Korean pulled over and tried to take me home, not because he thought I was a good catch, but because he was an old man thinking I was a prostitute. Woops. And yet, mini-skirts are A-OK. While a shoulder might imply prostitution, a skirt ending just below where the cheek meets the thigh means a chic young lady.

That prostitution is so acceptable also seems a contradiction to the taboo of sexuality in Korea. Although every little kiss is hidden from the public eye, everyone knows that the buildings with double-striped spinning barber shop poles along highly trafficked streets are not actually barber shops. It is understood that many young men pay for a prostitute before entering the army for two years after high school where it might be hard to meet a nice girl. Even some singing rooms have pretty ladies that men can rent to sing with and enjoy.

Although it is not discussed, men are not the only ones who have fun before tying the knot. When I asked a co-teacher if she’d had sex before marriage, she replied, “Of course!” It seems to be a little bit more rare than in the U.S., though, and I’m not sure if this more traditional thinking about sex or if it’s simply because they tend to live with their parents until marriage. There is a solution to this problem, however, for those youngsters who wish to do the deed, or even for those who wish to cheat on their spouses. It’s called a ‘love motel.’

When I traveled to another town for a week in the winter to teach an English camp, the Korean government put me up in a lovely motel. It had red mood lighting, plastic ivy in the overhead light fixture, a pornography channel on the television, and a spotty couch. There were even ropes hanging down over the entrance of the parking garage to conceal the license plates of the men parked there from their wives! When my parents came to visit me, I was sure to find them an equally accommodating place to stay. Before they arrived, I tried to make a reservation at the Mirage (pronounced Miragy), but when I told the receptionist that I needed a room for 5 nights, she simply said “OK” without typing or writing anything down. Apparently, not very many people book the Mirage in advance, or for five days straight. Although it lacked the ivy and the spots on the couch, I had no doubts what the Mirage was. When I was walking down the alley to the entrance, three of my students from the previous school year saw me and waved. As I turned red and waved back, they stifled a giggle as they hurried past.

Even prostitution and love motels are a fairly contained space for sex in Korean culture. What really shocked me was the school talent show. Any form of sexual expression, or really any expression, is jailed up by the long gray skirts and pants of the school uniform, the dress code limiting hair length and banning makeup or accessories, and, in some classes, separation of girls’ and boys’ seating. At the school festival, though, no uniforms were required. And they were allowed to dance. After the initial shock of watching my naïve middle school girls undulating in cut-off skirts and heels, I went on stage for a cheesy performance, with eight cavalier 6th graders as my back-up singers, of “Where Is the Love?” (which was nowhere in the league of embarrassment that I felt at the 8th grade graduation ceremony in which my co-teachers dressed me in too-small red bellbottoms, a sequined scarf, and a fro and made me sing ‘Dancing Queen’). Following my act was Ms. Lee, the notoriously strict P.E. teacher who sat next to me in the teacher’s lounge in an Adidas sweatsuit reviewing her dance moves when the other teachers weren’t around. She walked onto the stage in a hot pink, midriff flaunting belly dance outfit. Every student began to cheer as she started to shake her hips. Before the song was over, she had shimmied, writhed, and gotten down on all fours to pelvic thrust. For the grand finale, eight gussied up students joined her onstage.

By far the most absurd outlet of Korean sexuality I was fortunate enough to witness was Hyesindang Park. For my birthday, four of my friends joined me for the excursion to Samcheok. Even though Samcheok is a small remote area in the northeast province, it is well-known for its beaches, a cave, and most notoriously... the Penis Park. According to the legend, a virgin drowned off of the coast of Samcheok. Since her death, the fishermen were bringing up empty hooks. After they urinated, though, they found that the fish were abundant. In order to please the virgin and sustain their luck, they dedicated a park to the girl. A park full of penises. Hyesindang Park was a pinnacle of masculinity and sex. Immense wooden penises sprouted from the ground in traditional and abstract forms, sometimes with Zodiac animals carved into the staff or nails hammered into it or even a fetus resting inside attached by an umbilical rope. You could sit on penis benches, hit a penis gong, and of course, gawk at the giant phallus cannon that bobbed up and down over a trickle of a waterfall. We frolicked among the erect statues until we found ourselves standing on the coast in awe. Suddenly, not a penis was in sight, except for a questionable lighthouse. We dove into the crisp water, dodging sea urchins and scrambling over rocks and accepting a plate of freshly caught sushi from the only others enjoying the scene, a group of teenagers fishing and cooking ramen on a hotpot. In a way, Hyesindang Penis Park seemed like the least Korean place I had ever seen, so out of place in the land of innocent monkey hats and ice cream fans. But in a way, it fit perfectly in the country that never failed to surprise me with its randomness and absurdity.

Mouse Disease

2009-09-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

Acrostic Poems, After School Class:

Judy is not
Ugly even though she looks a
Duck,
Yeah.
– Judy, 1st Grade Student, Seokjeon Middle School

Do you like
Apple?
No, I like melon.
– Dan, 1st Grade Student, Seokjeon Middle School

On top of all my adventures in South Korea, I was lucky enough to travel around Asia a bit while I was in the neighborhood. Before my big trip in the winter, I had heard that a lot of people living in Korea felt that they missed it as they traveled around. For me, it came as a refreshing break as well as an eye-opener as to how different all of Asia is. Had I not traveled, I might have made the grave mistake that all of Asia, or at least East Asia, is like Korea. It isn’t. As far as I could tell, all of the countries I visited – Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, and Japan along with Korea – had about two things in common. They were full of Asians. And they all led to ridiculous escapades.

My first step out of Korea was in Taipei, where a couple of my college friends waited outside my gate at the airport waving my name on a sign. Although I was more or less all on my own in Korea, venturing into a ‘foreign’ country alone seemed much more overwhelming and I can’t say how glad I was to have my Chinese-speaking friends as a guide. As we made our way to their small city, I was hit with a wave of tropical island air. Palm trees lined the street. Everything was flatter and more spread out, and there were parks everywhere with young boys and older women were playing basketball. Taiwanese food was delicious, but a very different delicious from hot peppery, garlicky Korean food.

During my week there, I did many of the same activities that I would have done in Korea, such as going to a local festival, visiting a temple in the mountains, and relaxing in a hot tub. But unlike the understated wooden temples of Korea, the temple was gigantic, relatively new, and spilling over with intricate reliefs of dragons, and unlike Korean jimjilbangs, the hot tub was a natural outdoor hot spring in which we sat not naked. En route from the temple to the hot tub we needed to catch a bus, and when the one we thought was ours passed us by we chased it down until it pulled over for us at the side of the road. It wasn’t until we sat in an open seat in the back that we realized that the people singing karaoke around us were not Taiwanese. We had joined a Japanese tour group.

I had another confounding bus experience when I attempted to travel on my own while my friends worked to a park that the Lonely Planet recommended for spotting macaques. A convoluted series of taxis, trains, buses and subways took me about six hours, and when I was finally dropped off at the park entrance I didn’t see a park anywhere around me. It took another hour of walking through the residential area to find a path that might or might not have been the park. After a discouraging hike, I was about to turn back when I heard a rustle in the trees. There was my monkey. It was my first time to see a monkey in the wild, and I couldn’t believe how the creature, about the size of my Springer Spaniel, politely ignored me as I followed it closely down the road and took pictures from under it as it picked fruit out of a tree. Every country has its advantages and disadvantages, of course, and each country I visited made me lament the lack of wildlife in Korea, where magpies and banana spiders dominate. When I returned to the elusive park entrance, I realized I had no idea how long it would be before a bus returned for me and it was getting late, so I walked about 45 minutes in the dark on the shoulder of the road overlooking the shoreline to the city to catch my bus, subway, train, and taxi back to my friend’s house.

Compared to the difference between Taiwan and Korea, Southeast Asia could have been on Neptune. After waiting three hours for my friends, two fellow ESL teachers – Megan and Nate - flying in from Korea to meet me in Bangkok, we departed from the airport around 3 a.m. to catch our 6 o’clock train that we rode, tired, sweltering, and starving aside from the exotic fruits that we bought through the window during stops, to the border of Cambodia. We narrowly escaped a swindle in buying our visas to cross over, and at immigrations we overheard a guy our age speaking Korean. What really blew my mind was when we asked him where he was from and it turned out to be the same tiny farm town where I taught middle school two days a week – Yangmok.

Our three hour taxi to Angkor Wat was probably the most realistic impression of Cambodia that we got. We stopped to buy banana chips at a convenience store and were shortly after caught in a flash thunderstorm that left the cattle and schoolchildren walking along the side of the dirt road scurrying for shelter. Although the town of Siem Reap felt like a tourist resort, it was more than worth the extensive journey to see Angkor Wat. The reason that pictures don’t do justice to this ancient city of temples is because there was more to them than just beauty, although they were certainly beautiful. They were also shrouded in a feeling, and as I walked through the stone corridors I couldn’t help imagine the civilization that once inhabited them. Or the first person that stumbled upon as they were trekking through the jungle hundreds of years later. I think if it had been me, I wouldn’t have told anyone about them and instead spent the rest of my years frolicking through my secret stone kingdom with massive silk cotton trees weaving around the walls. I also, embarrassingly, couldn’t stop feeling as though I were running through the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, and I half expected a ‘Temple Guard’ to jump out from behind a corner and steal my tokens. I encountered my second wild monkey here, and it merited the term ‘wild’ much more than the Taiwanese monkey. After I got too close with my camera, it lunged at me full speed trying to bite and raced after me down the walkway hissing.

Unfortunately, my friends and I budgeted our time so that almost as much of it was spent in transportation as in relaxing and taking in the sights, but two plane rides and another long taxi ride later we were in Phuket, Thailand. There was no question that the beach was beautiful, but we’d found ourselves in yet another tourist hot spot and at night Nate and I were drinking Piña Coladas with retired American couples in Hawaiian shirts. It was liberating to walk around in a tank top again, and the fresh mango, pineapple, and fried banana chocolate crepes were definitely something I wished I could bring back to Korea with me. We happened to run into a few of our friends from Korea who were staying at a nearby beach and took a ferry with them to Phi Phi Island, which had also erupted in hotels, night clubs, and tattoo parlors since my brother had visited the gorgeous, isolated island a decade earlier thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio scampering across the rocky cliffs shirtless in ‘The Beach.’

We topped off our trip with a couple of days in Bangkok, again settling into the most touristy area of the city, but at least it wasn’t the red light district. I did enjoy the rows of cheap clothing and souvenir markets without the persistent, heartbreaking children that had been trained to push products on us in Cambodia, and street vendors were selling hot Pad Thai at every turn for under a dollar. We walked across the entire city for what was probably the best and definitely the most authentic part of the whole trip. We met my Thai friend who had been an exchange student at my high school and whom I hadn’t seen for five years, Bom.

I do not think that I missed Korea once during my two weeks of travel, and there were plenty of things that I liked better about Taiwan, Thailand and Cambodia than Korea, such as open spaces, wildlife, fresh fruit, tropical beaches, and in many ways, more liberal societies. When I returned from the trip, though, I was relieved to be back in a country where I already knew the ropes of how to get around and what to order in a restaurant and could speak the language a little bit and, finally, to sleep in my bed. It was a good affirmation that, halfway through my year, Korea was not a trip but my home.

Several months later I spent a long weekend in Japan. This time I was with my co-teacher Okhee, so I gained insight not only on Japan, but on Korea. I noticed obvious differences between the countries – Japan’s crazy, anime hairdos (despite their extremely more liberal appearances, Okhee insisted that it was a more conservative society), traditionally low housing rather than high rise apartments, expensive food that was greasier and saltier than Korean food, and some order to walking on the sidewalk whereas Korea has no designated side that they tend to walk on and people will walk straight towards you until you pick a direction to veer off towards – while Okhee noticed subtler differences, such as Japanese hanging laundry outside instead of on glassed in balconies and the men not sitting with their legs spread wide open on the subway. We visited Osaka and Kyoto and I insisted that we should be laid back travelers rather than model our trip after the typical Korean package tour - racing around to as many tourist attractions as possible in order to get a picture holding up the peace sign next to each one. Still, we crammed in quite a few sights in our three days, such as the golden temple, Kinkaku-ji, a deer park where we fed special wafers to the fawns that were following us around like Snow White, and Osaka Castle.

As we were walking through the airport in Osaka, there was a saying on the wall that was something along the lines of, “The memories you make are worth more than the stars in your guidebook,” so we decided to make that the motto of our trip. Even more than the towering pagodas and serene rock garden, we enjoyed the several Japanese people who led us down the sidewalk chatting when we couldn’t find our way, the restaurant owner who spread the plastic sushi displayed in the window across our table because we couldn’t read the menu, and the pocketknife toothpick sword that Okhee bought the school principal as a souvenir. My favorite was when we decided to have a picnic on the Imperial Palace lawn with takeout fried rice. Open spaces of grass are a rarity in Korea, and Okhee, who was sitting on her jacket, turned to me after eating and said, “I want to lie down, but I am afraid of getting mouse disease.” Apparently Koreans have justified their lack of grass to sit in with rumors of mice that scurry about trailing disease for all of those foolhardy enough to loaf about on the lawn to catch. After rolling around in the grass, I put a clover in Okhee’s hair, and learned that in Korea a flower in your hair signifies insanity. Soon after, we were laden with clover necklaces, rings, and flowers poking out of our hair in every direction.

The entire trip we had joked about how great it would be if our flight home was canceled and we could stay in Japan rather than returning to work on Wednesday. Our tune changed when we arrived at the airport after an hour long bus ride and with only pocket change left in yen to hear that there might be storms in Busan where we were supposed to land, and that our flight might take off anyways with the chance that it would return to Japan. Even though this trip had only been three days, we found Waegwan to be as welcoming as ever.

Loss

2009-08-31T20:00:00.000-07:00

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-Elizabeth Bishop

I have always been a master at losing things, and with all of the items I misplaced in Korea, I may have even earned a doctorate. Unlike all of the Korean teachers, I had more teaching materials than I could carry, and I probably looked like a bag lady as I trekked to class each day balancing 30 students’ nametags, a grocery bag of stamps and candy, a pile of worksheets or cards and dice for a game, the key to the English Village dangling off of one finger and my USB off of another. Each time I darted back into the teacher’s lounge for a forgotten item after ascending two flights of stairs to the classroom and back, Okhee would smile and say, “You make me really happy.” This was short for, You make me really happy when you forget to bring things to class every day because it makes me feel not so old when I occasionally forget something myself. I don’t think she could be as careless as me if she were 92.

I lost my wallet twice. The first time, during winter vacation when my co-teacher wasn’t around to help (and I was a little too humiliated to tell her anyways), I panicked quite a bit, checking in at the apartment security office and trying to explain my problem to the train station management. Finally, after buying a new wallet, replacing my alien registration card, canceling and replacing my Korean ATM card, and having my parents mail me a new bank card from home, I returned to school to find my wallet waiting for me in my school mailbox. The second time I lost it, I already knew the ropes. So, I waited patiently for some kind person to again return it to my school mailbox. They didn’t. I pulled out my backup wallet and made my rounds to the bank and the office of immigration, happy that I still hadn’t managed to lose my passport or my apartment key.

Then, I lost my apartment key. Because my USB held my life in digital form, particularly my lesson plans and class activities, I attached it to my apartment key so that I would never be able to leave it at home when I went to work. I knew the risk involved in this and surprised myself every day when I returned home and felt my key safely at the bottom of my purse, wondering when I would finally forget it. I chose the most inopportune time to do so.

I am an avid Ultimate Frisbee player, a sport still largely unheard of in the States, not to mention in Korea, where I would explain it as ‘a plastic plate that you throw like this’ and gesture until someone would finally exclaim, “Oh, you throw it to dogs!” So when Jeju, Korea’s famous island that is especially popular with honeymooners, hosted an Asia-wide Frisbee tournament, it was a rare opportunity. I was unbearably happy that weekend in May running across grassy fields, which are hard to come by in Korea, flanked by turquoise ocean and a snow-capped volcano among Frisbee lovers from all reaches of the globe, from England to China to Guam, and including the most bad-ass Korean I have ever met, who played on my team despite the six-month-old fetus in her womb. I had left for the airport straight from school on Friday and arrived home battered and smelly late Sunday night. So when I realized that my apartment key was dangling from the USB port of the English Village computer in my locked school, I almost broke down. In the apartment security office with my backpack at my feet, one guard searched frantically for the phone number of the handyman for my unit while the other shook his head and said, “You’ll have to sleep in a jimjilbang tonight, and we can fix it tomorrow.” Tears began to well up in my exhausted eyes, when the other guard chirped, “There he is,” and a man with a briefcase of miracles finagled my front door open.

The second time that I left my key in a computer, I was much more resourceful. After teaching a day-long English camp in a small town about an hour away, I returned home keyless and called my friend to tell her not to come to Waegwan for the night after all, when I noticed my kitchen window cracked open. I hung up the phone and slipped the glass aside to create an opening about the size of a computer monitor and at about the height of my chin. With my legs jutting out into the hallway, I thought of the security guards on the other end of the motion-activated camera having a good chuckle before wriggling my way onto the kitchen counter.

My favorite loss, which was really a very unfortunate loss but led to a great fiasco, was not actually mine. When my friend Anne visited from China, she and another friend of mine ventured into the podunk town of Danyang. Although there were a few tourist activities around the village, tourist season was long over and far from starting again and it was very clear that we were the only foreigners Danyang had seen in a while. We chose Danyang to visit for its caves, and the two that we saw were incredible, with winding passageways and huge stalactites. In the morning, though, Anne realized she had lost her camera, and we didn’t find it retracing our footsteps from the previous day. Before leaving Danyang for good, we decided to stop into the police station briefly to find out if anyone had turned it in. Although we did not find the camera, we managed to put the entire Danyang police force into a frenzy over Anne’s camera. The officer at the gate, who had interrupted his university studies in Indiana to serve his obligatory term in the Korean military and therefore spoke great English, escorted us inside and set everyone in the station on a hunt for the woman in charge of lost items, who eventually had to be picked up from a different location. They brought us coffee and sat us down for an interview so thorough that it included questions such as “Do you remember which company’s taxi you rode last night? No? Well, did it have any distinctive features?” and “Would you mind drawing us a picture of the camera case in question?” The best was when they asked if we had a photo of the camera and, having happened to have had a ‘photo war’ taking pictures of each other taking pictures the day before, we in fact did have a photo of it on my other friend’s camera. Much to their chagrin, we did not have the cable to download it onto the Danyang police station computers. When what had meant to be a quick stop to see if anyone had turned in the camera reached the scale of a missing person investigation, we couldn’t help but laugh. “Have you ever done this before?” asked the officer. We shook our heads and he grinned. “Neither have we.”

Then, I lost a student. I think that it was the hardest thing that I went through while I was in Korea. It was the beginning of summer and Okhee was working at my main school. One morning, she got news that over the weekend three boys from my second school, Yangmok, had waded into the reservoir on the school property to cool off, but that none of them could swim. Somehow, they had slipped into the deeper water, and while two of them had escaped, they weren’t able to help the third and he didn’t make it. It took me a moment to grasp what she had told me, but once I did it worked its way deeper and deeper into my conscience throughout the day. The worst part was that I didn’t know which student it was because I only knew them by their English nicknames and not their actual names, and so I couldn’t refrain from cycling through the faces of my students imagining each of them as the one. I cringed at the thought that it was one of the students who participated and joked in class, the kind whose name I learned the first week of school. I cringed when I thought of the less prominent students whose absence might have slipped my attention if it wasn’t pointed out.

I dreaded going to Yangmok the following week. I always began class by passing back name tags to help me remember the names of my more than 600 students, and when one student was absent another would often giggle, “He die!” Although unrealistic, I kept envisioning myself calling out the name of the boy and hearing in reply “He die!” without the accompanying laughter. Because of exams, it ended up being two weeks before I returned to Yangmok, and it wasn’t the disaster I had imagined. I let students find their own name tags that week, and one name tag was handed back to me. The name was Nick. Several weeks before we had played ‘The Price is Right’ and I left the classroom one laminated hundred dollar bill short. It was Nick who popped his head into the hallway after me with a smirk on his face. He pulled the bill out of his pocket and said “My money,” but he gave it back to me, of course. From that day on, every time I passed through his hallway he would yell after me, smiling, “Where is my money?”

The day that Okhee had informed me of the drowning, I had all of these thoughts pushing at the back of my mind, but I was also preparing for my first class of the day. I had felt heavy all day, and each time one of my students would excitedly call out my name I would smile and forget, only to remember how much I love my students and feel that much worse at the thought of one of their lives being taken. When school ended, I needed the chance to be alone and grieve for the boy. I walked down to the riverbank and sat under the bridge, where I was alone for about two minutes before an old man, the owner of the cow tied to the bridge beam nearby, squatted beside me to ask where I was from. He asked me about my family and job and told me about his second hand store and his cow and his children who were grown, proudly demonstrating the English he had learned in the army. At that moment it clicked for me why friends and family are so cherished in Korea. In a land where privacy is near impossible, it becomes a lot more difficult to cope with problems on your own, and much easier to rely on loved ones for support. Just then, my phone interrupted the chatty old man. In Korea, there is a concept called ‘kibbun’ which is not perfectly translatable into English, but it basically refers to a person’s mood or well-being. Okhee was on the line informing me that she had sensed that two teachers from our office had bad kibbun that day, and she wanted to cheer them up. Then she thought of me, and was wondering if I would like to join them for a bowl of noodles.

Ajuma Dance Party

2009-08-18T16:46:00.001-07:00

Okhee, explaining Easter: "It is when Jesus died on the cross and was re...?"
Yangmok 2nd Grade Student: "Recycled?"

In Korea, there are three types of people. There are men. There are women. And there are ajumas. Technically, an ajuma is any married woman. To me, though, an ajuma is the short, permed hair, gigantic visor-wearing, 4 foot tall powerhouse of a woman.

Aside from farming or street vending, most of these older ajumas are retired or housewives, so during the day they can be found scattered about the sidewalks - hanging out with grandchildren, doing some serious shopping, or sitting cross-legged on a table drinking 'makoli', rice wine, and playing Go-stop, a traditional card game involving gambling and vigorously throwing cards down on the table. When they walk, they don't walk with the weathered hunch of Western elders. Instead, they walk bow-legged with their backs thrust forward and their faces jutting upwards to look at the world that is now theirs to do with as they please.

With a combination of societal preference for age and a lingering sexism, young women are often reduced to a submissive role in society. A wife is still referred to as an 안애 ('anae'), or 'inside person' because she is traditionally restricted to staying in the home. Then one day, she cuts off her long hair and buys some MC Hammeresque pants and she is free. In society, elders can do whatever they want, and no one will stop them. In fact, it is so rude to condemn the actions of an elder that it is said that a few decades ago Korean airplanes had a higher rate of crashing because it was more honorable for a co-pilot to allow the plane to go down than to point out the higher ranking, elder captain's error. Ajumas tend to take this new found power and run with it. Some use it for good, others for evil.

A kind ajuma is like a mother to all of society. I have had ajumas passing on the sidewalk pause to call me beautiful and stroke my arm, laughing. They have fixed my skirt when my underwear was peeping over the top, and in the winter bundled me up, zipping my coat and securing my hood. The not-so-kind are like society's mothers-in-law. The stereotype of the evil mother-in-law is the same in Korea as in the U.S., except magnified by about ten times. After slaving away to please their own mothers-in-law, ajumas get their payback, asking their daughters-in-law to prepare feasts or make long visits at short notice, and most importantly, asking them to bend over backwards for their precious sons. But to a much smaller extent this abuse of power can carry over into the public. This type of ajuma sharply elbows through a crowded sidewalk, shamelessly cuts to the front of a long line, and throws her purse down on the subway seat you were heading towards. One particular ajuma sold fruit on a sidewalk corner that I passed nearly every day, and never failed to angrily yell at me to buy her watermelons as I walked by. Recently, a perhaps senile ajuma, although senility is scarcely recognized in Korea's elderly, forcefully grabbed me by the wrist and dragged behind me down the sidewalk rambling in Korean that I needed to buy food from her as I tried to wrangle my arm free.

Older men, called ajoshis, are also above social norms, although they don't wield their privilege quite so unabashedly as their female counterparts. For example, a busfull of Koreans, who like their transportation quiet, would turn around and glare at a couple of chatty youngsters sitting in the back. In the same bus, a loud and drunken ajoshi would be politely ignored. These men may pass the day hiking in the mountains or playing Mah Jong, and they seem to evade the 'creepy old man' stigma that gets tacked onto Western men for hitting on young ladies. The change from a young man to an ajoshi is not nearly so drastic as the metamorphosis to ajuma, and usually men pick up their ajoshi mannerisms, like ritualistically hawking wads of phlegm onto the sidewalk, at a young age. The main difference may be that an ajoshi has finally learned that women, despite the vernacular of oppression and sexism, effectively rule the household... and perhaps the world.

On a more serious note, what differentiates the social positions of the aged in Korea from Western society is not really power, but respect. In the West, when grandma starts putting the eggs in the dishwasher, we stick her in an assisted living home, or when grandpa makes some off the wall, politically incorrect comment about society these days, he is just a senile old man. Koreans find this appalling and even barbaric. When Korean grandparents can no longer care for themselves, they are rewarded their own bedroom in their son's home, and their opinions trump everyone else's. In fact, they are honored long after they are dead with consistent memorial services and religious ceremonies. Perhaps a dose of this reverence for age could take the edge off of Westerners' fear of growing old and dying.

Last fall, I was at a Lantern Festival in the city of Jinju. Cloth lanterns as big as grizzly bears bobbed in the river, a lantern dragon breathed actual fire on the riverbank, and an actual-size lantern temple glowed bright red and turquoise. What I will remember most about that night, though, is when we stumbled upon a stage of performing ajumas. They were wearing brilliantly gaudy silver-sequined dresses, waving their arms and shaking their hips to a catchy old Korean trot. In Korea, old age is not over the hill. Old age is the time to shine.

Bangs

2009-08-12T04:50:00.000-07:00

Question for a letter to Obama:

"Do you know Do Do bird? I know Do Do bird. It can't fly and it's fat. I've never seen a Do Do bird, but I saw through a picture. It was cute but it was a little dirty. I'm interesting that Do Do birds are not afraid people. Ummm... Last, Michelle is so beautiful. From: Korean people"

– 3^rd Grade Student, Yangmok Middle School

One of the greatest aspects of living abroad is that everything is different. Even menial tasks such as riding a subway or buying produce can be exciting because they are different from what we are used to. One of my favorite differences in Korea is the array of social activities. I am not referring to novelty activities, such as ‘Billibow,’ a bar whose novelty quickly wore off on me after all the local foreigners flocked there every single weekend to shoot a billiards ball down a long table into a triangle of half pint bowling pins. I always thought that the opposite combination of the games would be much more fun – bowling a cue ball across a fuzzy green billiards floor. What I’m referring to, though, are the typical places that Koreans frequent with their friends. The ‘Bangs.’

‘Bang’ is the Korean word for room, and they come in an excellent variety. The first ‘Bang’ that I encountered was a ‘PC Bang.’ In the past when I traveled to Europe and South America, there were always internet cafés where homesick backpackers updated their families alongside students diligently researching. A PC Bang, while technically an internet café, is nothing like that at all. When you walk in, you may think that you have mistakenly stumbled into an attack by North Korea. The sounds of young boys and grown men blowing things up and shooting warlocks intermingle with the cigarette smoke permeating the air. Computer gaming is such an essential component of Korean culture that a TV channel is dedicated solely to the game of ‘Starcraft.’ Perhaps the most out of place I have felt in Korea were the moments spent quickly looking something up in a PC Bang.

Another Bang is the DVD Bang. This Bang would not likely succeed in America, as it is simply a room to rent and watch a DVD at about 10 bucks a pop. The reason that it has become popular in Korea is the lack of private space, particularly for young couples who are shunned for the slightest ‘Public Display of Affection.’ Therefore a DVD Bang is more accurately a room to pop in a movie, dim the lights, and go to town. Needless to say, I have never utilized a DVD Bang. Neither have I experienced or even seen a Manhwa Bang, but it is apparently a Bang for comic books, similar to the Japanese Manga. Japanese culture is in many ways a strong influence on Korean culture, particularly in the way of cartoon characters and comics. The TV drama that took hold of the nation and could be seen playing in train station waiting areas with all eyes fixed on it unwaveringly, Boys Before Flowers, was based on a Japanese comic.

The Jimjilbang is a really unique bang, and, I would venture to guess, the Original Bang. The Jimjilbang is connected to a public bath house, which is basically a nude sauna. Even though men and women have separate areas, in a country where it is taboo to show your shoulder or wear a low cut shirt, it was pretty surprising to walk into a locker room of naked young girls and floppy old women casually strutting around, combing their hair, and brushing their teeth. Many mothers bring young sons into this haven of female splendor, but judging by how middle school boys giggle, for example, at nude sketches in an art exhibit, they don’t stay desensitized for long. I was pleasantly surprised by how little their eyes lingered on my foreign body and quickly felt at ease ‘Jimjilbanging’ with Koreans. Although the scale of the sauna can range, the first one I visited was a paradise of relaxation. The room was scattered with hot tubs, cold tubs, warm tubs, herb treated tubs with what appeared to be a giant tea bag brewing in them, dry saunas, steam saunas, mineral rooms, and a massaging waterfall. You can even order an old woman to scrub your skin as vigorously as a mother with a greasy pot and a Brillo pad. Once your muscles have been warmed and pounded into putty and your skin rubbed raw, you can throw on the pajamas loaned to you at the door and retire to what is technically the Jimjilbang – the sleeping room. The Jimjilbang is a giant room where everyone sleeps on the floor with a blanket and a headrest, although you can expect to get as much sleep as you would at a middle school girls’ slumber party. Once, my friend awoke me at 3 in the morning to tell me that the teenage girls loudly whispering with their legs entangled in hers had kept her up all night and that she was taking a taxi home. If you survive the night, though, you can eat eggs for breakfast while watching morning cartoons before taking a final dip in the hot tub.

My favorite of the Bangs is hands down the Noraebang. In translation, we would label it karaoke, but you never have to embarrass yourself on a stage in front of a crowd of strangers. At a Noraebang, a dozen people cram into a small room with a bottle of soju, two tambourines, and two microphones turned up to a thunderous volume. This way, you can clock in triple or quadruple the singing time and only in front of your friends, who can’t distinguish your voice in the echo of backup music and tambourine clanging anyways. The selection of English songs is quite random, including songs like Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music for a Film’ or The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter,’ but lacking many staple Stevie Wonder or Backstreet Boys tunes. The English lyrics that Koreans have learned are even more surprising, and, aside from their fascination with ABBA, are usually songs I’ve never heard of in my life. One of the greatest joys of the Noraebang is the footage backing the lyrics on the TV screen. Sometimes they are innocent but odd images – a bullfight or an Olympic runner falling down. But when I went with Anchovy Poop teachers to practice ‘Dancing Queen,’ which they would later make me perform with them at my middle school’s graduation ceremony wearing red bellbottoms that were too small and a fro wig that kept sliding off during our choreographed dance, a naked girl appeared on the screen touching herself inappropriately. I learned that certain Noraebangs rent women for men to sing with and enjoy. But this is not the only type of Noraebang. Charter buses are also equipped with Noraebang systems and the bus drivers don’t seem to mind their passengers drunkenly belting out ballads in the aisles, and on the cheapest train line, Mugunghwa, the 4^th car - which I refer to as the ‘party car’ - consists of not only a snack shop, arcade games, and a massage chair, but also its very own Noraebang.

This brings us to the final Bang. Big Bang. When I arrived in Korea, Big Bang was the craze that swept the nation. Big Bang is a chart-topping, K-Popping, sometimes hip-hopping group of 5 heartthrob boys in skinny jeans and faux-hawks. Korea embraces its celebrities whole-heartedly, and Big Bang and others can be found in advertisements, on their own TV shows, adorning ‘character socks’, and scribbled onto the desks of my middle school students inside of hearts. Because these celebrities are so highly worshipped, there is a great deal of pressure on them, and therefore an unfortunate rate of celebrity suicide. Part of this pressure is a push for global success, and Koreans speak as proudly of ‘Rain’ as if they were his mother because he made Time Magazine’s 2006 list of World’s Most Influential People. Although there is a quick turnover in Korean pop culture, Big Bang still seems omnipresent, and learning to sing one of their songs was one of the most useful skills I picked up during my time in Korea. Although sexy and cutting edge is working its way in, K-Pop, like most everything in Korea, can best be described as cute. Because the songs blare from cell phone stores and clothing shops and often have English choruses, it is almost impossible to avoid getting them stuck in your head, whether you like them or not. But I have found that much like kimchi and many other things in Korea, no matter how you feel about it in the beginning, K-Pop somehow works its way into your heart.

Anchovy Poop

2009-08-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

Epitaph Assignment:

“R.I.P. Be Happy. Smile. OK?!” – Anna, 1st Grade Student, Seokjeon Middle School

“Give me the money. Give me the food. Don’t reading. Look people die. Give me the sport car. Give me the gun. Watch out. Hahaha.” – John, 1st Grade Student, Seokjeon Middle School

What is smaller than a little anchovy? Anchovy poop. They call themselves this because that’s how small their love for each other is. Yet despite their love being miniscule and fecal, this group of teachers has stayed like family even though they have been scattered across the province.

In the Korean educational system, teachers must relocate schools every 4 or 5 years. This is effective in evenly distributing the less desired work of rural schools since teachers earn “points” depending on the distance of the school from the city. It is also effective in distributing stress, since as soon as teachers adapt to a school they have to transfer, moving all of their materials, learning new school policies, and making new friends. My teaching time was divided between two schools, Seokjeon and Yangmok. Because their school year is the reverse of ours, a new school year began in February, the middle of my year in Korea, and my world was a little shaken when all of the teachers I had become close to at both schools left to be replaced by timid teachers who, in the midst of getting their own bearings, had no desire to approach an English-speaking foreigner.

During the 8 day long orientation for native English teachers, we were given no hint beyond province as to where we would be living or what kind of school would employ us for the coming year. They bussed us to Daegu and lined us up in front of our teachers and vice principals and then matched us up like a gym teacher assigning square dance partners. Most of the Korean teachers bowed or awkwardly waved to their new native English teachers, so when mine giddily applauded, I knew that I was in good hands. My first impression of Jang, my main co-teacher, was that she was about 30 years old, so when she told me she’d been teaching for 20 years, I was shocked. She immediately took me under her wing, showing me around Waegwan and taking me grocery shopping. About a week into teaching, I still hadn’t started work at my second school, Yangmok, and I was curious about my co-teacher there. When I asked about Okhee, I couldn’t believe my luck. “She is nicer than me,” said Jang. And actually, she was right.

Even though Jang is not the outgoing ball of cheer that Okhee is, I felt almost closer to her for it. She made no attempts to avoid awkward silences or blunt truths, such as the first week of class when I showed a picture of my parents and she remarked in front of the students, “Oh! Your mom is better than you.” Overworked and exhausted, she never complained as she mothered me through my first weeks of Korea, helping me to open my bank account, buy a cell phone, obtain my alien registration card, go to the hospital when I was sick, and struggle to get a feel for teaching middle school students. In the classroom, although in theory we were expected to lesson plan and teach together, she provided exactly the assistance I needed. When she was present, the students were alert and participated, and at the end of class she helped me as I clumsily gathered my array of teaching materials. I already had a strong affection for her as a guardian. When one day in the cafeteria she stoically tried to convince me that my chicken soup was dog meat, it began my affection for her as a friend. Soon, she was making sexual jokes and asking me what it was like to kiss men with facial hair and linking arms with me as we walked through the school. I missed her incredibly when she changed schools in the spring, and our infrequent visits would remind me why. “Laura,” she would say, “I have only known you for a short time, but you feel like an old friend.”

I have already mentioned Okhee, but I couldn’t possibly say enough about her. She carries her 4 feet with a swagger and she uses her dimples to sweet talk her way into anything she wants. Unlike Jang, who took a while to get to know, Okhee bombarded me with conversation as she drove me to Yangmok two mornings a week, so immersed in speaking that she frequently ran red lights. Also contrarily to Jang, Okhee became my friend first and, being perhaps even more disorganized and scatterbrained than me, had to grow into the role of my caretaker. On the first day of school she wrote this in an email to me:
“Even though I am much older than you, I am sure we can be good friends. Physical age is not important, right? I read the book ‘Tuesdays with Morrie.’ In that book, the old professor and the young student are very close friends, like soul mates.”
Although Okhee, in her late 40s, is no ‘old professor,’ age is a very important factor in friendship in Korea. If two people discover at first meeting that they are the same age, they are immediately friends and their demeanor towards each other instantly changes. If there is an age difference, elders are meant to be revered. The fact that I can get away with making fun of Okhee for being over dramatic and she can laugh is an almost unheard of pleasure here. As I said, almost every teacher I had become close to changed schools in the spring, and this included Okhee. I insisted that Jang at my main school and Okhee at my second school, since they were both relocating, should simply switch so that I could keep them both. Okhee actually took me up on it, becoming from that point on my main co-teacher.

Although Okhee has done innumerable things for me, perhaps the greatest was include me in Anchovy Poop. The negative side of a group-based rather than individualistic society is perceptible to any foreigner as they walk down the street. Strangers do not look each other in the eye or smile as they pass each other, nor do they apologize as they bump or elbow into each other in a crowd. Bus drivers, taxi drivers, and even cashiers can be quite unpleasant to their customers. To see the positive side of a group-based society, you have to be part of a group. Groups are usually established of classmates or co-workers, and without these connections it can be hard to make Korean friends, although brave Koreans may extend their friendship to foreigners if they want to practice English and learn about Western culture. A Korean in-group is called ‘jung’ and they have each others’ backs no matter what. In fact, friends usually refer to each other as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ and treat each other accordingly.

Anchovy Poop is a mix of young and old, married and unmarried Yangmok teachers. At school, they rarely addressed me, and when Okhee initially invited me to their outings they would smile at me warmly, and then I would sit back and observe as they gabbed, in Korean, about their husbands or their students’ officious parents. A breakthrough came one night at a dinner when Hyo Jin, the youngest member, drank a lot of wine. In the 3 months that I had known her, I had no idea that she could speak English. Suddenly, she was chatting away with me excitedly. Little by little, each of the members overcame their nervousness to speak with me and grappled with their limited English, my limited Korean, and our cell phone translation dictionaries to forge a friendship. One night at a restaurant, they had an odd request for me. They wanted to take a picture with a mug close to the camera and me far away such that it looked like I was sitting inside the mug. When I saw myself on the camera sprouting from a coffee cup making the typical Korean peace signs, I learned that this was my official initiation into the Anchovy Poop group.

There are 10 Korean teachers in Anchovy Poop, and exactly 9 of them changed schools in the spring, just as they began to warm up to me. Of the five oldest, the ‘mothers,’ Okhee and Sunny are the socialites and fashionistas of the gang. Yumi and Essuk are almost overbearingly friendly and might have the greatest laughs of any Koreans I know. Gyeongju, the music teacher, is a strong headed single woman who can sing like a diva and instigate a bus full of people to dance in the aisles. Of the younger clan, Ji Young and Yumi are adorable and can usually be found posing for pictures. They are under constant pressure from the others to get themselves hitched before it’s too late. Yoon Jung recently got married, bumping herself into the social status of an ‘ajuma.’ Mina is the shyest of the group, and recently learned to drive. She lived in my apartment building and was assigned the unfortunate task of driving me home after each outing. She would grip the steering wheel in terror, doubly nervous to be on the road and to be speaking English, although by the end of the year she was excited to have me as her travel companion. Finally, Hyo Jin, the youngest and the only one to remain at Yangmok, was the life of the party. This motley crew whisked me away to chaotic and hilarious adventures from Jeju Island to karaoke rooms to a charcoal sauna to Jeollanam-do, the south-western province, during which we spent more time all jammed into a single van on the road than sight-seeing. When Okhee broke the news to Anchovy Poop that I was returning to the U.S., they asked me, shocked, why I was leaving. I told them “Kachok” – family, and “Chingu” – friends. Ji Young looked at me wide-eyed and said “Uri-nun (We)…Kachok, Chingu…”

There are a lot of great things about Korea that make it worth visiting, like beautiful mountains, rocky beaches, and fantastic food. But there is no way I would have fallen in love with Korea the way I did if I had come only as a tourist. That is in large part thanks to my ‘jung.’ To me, their love was a lot bigger than anchovy poop. Maybe more like elephant poop.

Gyeongju

Okhee

Essuk

Sunny

Gang Yumi

Mina

Yoon Jung

Ji Young

Seo Yumi

Hyo Jin

남달리

Mirror, Mirror on Every Wall

2009-08-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

“Your blue hair is not only ugly, it is offensive.” – Korean T-shirt

Once upon a time, there was a Korean girl named Kang Han-na. Han-na was cursed with the unshapeliness of a walrus. Yet below her blubber was a sweet albeit insecure soul as well as a captivating voice that allowed her to dual as phone sex employee and secret vocalist for the untalented but beautiful pop sensation, Ammy. Humiliated by her girth and wounded by her unreciprocated love for her manager, Sang-jun, Han-na turns herself over to a cosmetic surgeon for a complete renovation.

The beautifully carved body emerges into a new identity, ‘Jenny,’ who pursues her own music career, wildly successful under Sang-jun’s management as Ammy, lost without Han-na’s voice to claim as her own, falls to the wayside. Sang-ju quickly falls for the secure and charismatic ‘Jenny’, oblivious to her past, and when the subject of plastic surgery is broached, he proclaims that he has no problem with it… as long as it’s not his girl. At a concert, ‘Jenny’ tearfully professes her secretive past. Although initially hurt, Sang-ju accepts her, insisting that his change of heart from before her makeover is not due to her stunning new looks, but rather that her newfound confidence has captured his affection.

This was the premise for a movie that we were required to watch at our week-long orientation, when we should have been learning methods and strategies for teaching ESL in Korea. This attempt at a Cinderella story, which was my first encounter with the Korean concept of beauty, left me befuddled as to its message. Although the movie was introduced to us as ‘200 Pounds Beauty,’ the Korean title translates literally to ‘Being Beautiful is Agonizing.’ What seems to truly agonize Korean society, though, is not beauty itself, but the grueling attainment of it.

Korea is, no doubt, a beautiful country filled with beautiful people, inside and out. Koreans rightfully pride themselves on this beauty, but they tend to focus on the ‘out.’ The population of South Korea is about 48.5 million people. I would venture to guess that at any moment during the day, the population of Korean reflections in mirrors nears a quarter of that number. Elevators are lined with mirrors, full length standing mirrors can be found in school hallways and subway exits, and the wall to wall mirror above my bathroom sink, since the shower is merely a showerhead on the wall across from my toilet, makes for the most self-conscious showers I have ever taken. Quite to the contrary, Korean men and women alike take no shame in publicly pausing to upkeep hairdos or makeup, or simply to revel in their reflection. Nor is it uncommon for middle school girls to whip out a hand mirror in class and comb down their perfectly even bangs mid-lecture. The Korean government is currently concerned that the recently declining population might injure the economy. If only there were a way to put all of those reflections to work.

Their fixation with looking their finest is understandable in a society so frank in expressing disapproval about appearance. Generally, Koreans hate confrontation and I have met Koreans who would rather pay for another person’s mistake than address them about it. But condoning appearance seems surprisingly un-taboo. Students openly call their pudgier friends ‘pig,’ to which there is never any protest. The math teacher at my school consistently begs Okhee to surgically remove the bags under her eyes. Koreans have admonished my fashion sense, asked me to wear makeup and change my hairstyle, and pointed out pimples. When I was given two days off of work during the midterm exams, Okhee, envious of my break, told me, “You look like you gained weight from vegging out for two days.”

Weight is a heavy issue on many Koreans’ minds. Most Korean women diet, which may consist of taking smaller portions of rice, or it may consist of skipping meals. Last fall, Okhee wanted to complete 180 deep bows to Buddha not because she is a devout Buddhist, but because she thought it might help her shave off a couple kilos. She is already one of the tiniest middle aged people I have ever met. Similarly, Koreans, decked out in hiking apparel and walking sticks, seem to climb the mountains less to enjoy the breathtaking beauty and more to work off the bulgogi they ate for lunch. In fact, at the top of most mountains you can see not only a stunning vista, but an exercise station. As for me, I consider myself to be a fairly fit American, and I have to wrestle my way into ‘XL’ Korean pants. My question is this - where do the overweight Koreans, who, although rare, certainly exist, do their shopping?

When Koreans exchange gifts, the wrapping on the gift is seen as important as the contents of the wrapping. This can easily be made a metaphor for the value that Koreans place on their skin. I think every single food I have eaten in Korea has been described to me as either ‘good for stamina’ or ‘good for your skin.’ Tattoos are illegal, but this may have more to do with gang correlations than treasuring pristine skin. Korean women are left flabbergasted when I tell them that I don’t wear makeup. My most unusual experience with skin care took place at school. We were brought into a room and given free lunches while a saleswoman spoke extremely quickly at us in Korean, showcasing beauty products. Because this was early on in my time here, I assumed that was a common occurrence, but it never happened again. At the end of her spiel, she gave us samples of a face lotion. When I looked down at it, it was all in Korean except for a single word. ‘Placenta.’

Unlike the American craze for a golden tan, Koreans pursue a delicate paleness. Even in the starkest heat, some Koreans walk around with not only a parasol, but long sleeves and gloves to protect their pallor. Due to the way Koreans idolize Western appearance, I tried to explain to my supplementary class of elementary school teachers that Americans often have different standards of beauty than Koreans, hoping to underline that beauty is just a social construction. However, when I contrasted ‘fake bakes’ with ‘skin bleaching,’ one of the teachers replied, “That’s because Americans are already white. We aren’t.” Koreans also have a fixation with face size. Whenever I take a picture with a group of Koreans, they shove me to the front complaining that my face is small and should be in the foreground so as not to accentuate the largeness of theirs. When I mentioned that Americans don’t consider this beauty standard, the same teacher retorted, “That’s because Americans already have small faces!” When I argued this, she came back with, “Well even if they don’t, they have large eyes and noses to make them look smaller.” I still had a handful of examples, such as the “V-line,” an especially cute Konglish word because Koreans pronounce the letter ‘V’ like ‘bwee,’ which is an obsession with a pointy chin (Koreans will like to use their fingers in photos to create a ‘V’ shaped lower jaw), but I already knew the answers that my further examples would incite.

The most clear-cut form of Koreans attempting to look Western is plastic surgery. Nose jobs to achieve the Western ‘high nose’ take second place to the extremely popular blepharoplasty, or double eyelid surgery. Although some Koreans are born with naturally creased eyelids, those that don’t pine for the fold that will not only make their eyes look bigger and more Western, but also facilitate finding a good husband and landing a successful job. These days, about 30% of Korean women undergo this surgery, and a growing number of men, and it has become a common gift from parents to their children upon graduating high school. It is not difficult to differentiate the ‘fake’ double eyelids from the real ones – the plastic surgery leaves an overly circular and sometimes too high up, often slightly creepy looking crease. My 25 year-old Korean friend is one of the most naturally beautiful people I know and hands down the most confident Korean I’ve met regarding looks. The other night at dinner she told me that she wanted to go under the knife, and I pleaded that she didn’t need it. Her reply was that all of her friends were doing it.

When Koreans ask me if my nose is silicone, my eyelids operated on, or my hair dyed and permed, I laugh. How can they look at my oversized Italian nose or my mess of hair and think that I paid money to look this way? Yet that is the reality – even though I see Koreans as stunningly beautiful, slender with smooth black hair and faces that look young into their 40s and 50s, they, for whatever reason, would prefer to look like me.

Once upon a time, there was a Korean girl named who was cursed with the unshapeliness of a walrus. She was a secret vocalist for an untalented but beautiful pop sensation. One day, the fraud was exposed and the girl became a beloved icon just as she was, while the handsome manager, who had loved her all along, swept her off her feet. They lived happily ever after.

The Bear and the Tiger

2009-08-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

Variation on a Foundation Myth

She gently padded her large foot onto the grey floor. As she squeezed through the subway door, a horde of people pushed impatiently into her rump. When her tail end finally popped through the entrance, she nestled into the last open seat. Children cowered from her behind their mothers’ legs, while cabbage-faced grandmothers glared at her, for little did Ungnyeo know, she was occupying the section of the subway reserved for the handicapped and elderly.

Ungnyeo and the Tiger had clambered to the summit of Mt. Taebek and pled for Hwanung, the son of the heavenly god Hwanin, to make them human. “Go to the capital,” he commanded them, “and stay there for 100 days. You must eat only vegetables. Do not allow even the smallest drop of anchovy oil into your diet. After this, you may become human.”

Ungnyeo slowly rotated the plastic green token between her great claws as she looked out the window. She could feel a breeze from the motion of the subway quivering her ashy brown fur. Her stomach growled. For a bear, eating vegetables was not a problem, but the lack of fish left her appetite perpetually unsatisfied. The Tiger was having an even more difficult time.

“I checked every restaurant in the area,” the Tiger reported as Ungnyeo wriggled through the turnstile. “Even the soups are fish based. I’m not sure how much longer I can take it.” The beasts plodded down the sidewalk, their howling stomachs like bicycle horns as they parted the crowd while scooters zipped around them so closely that they almost toppled to the pavement. At Namdaemun, they purchased ginseng and seaweed and radishes the size of rabbits and every other vegetable they could get their paws on from the market stalls. Instead of stars, neon lights of every color decorated the open air above them.

Days passed, the animals wandering through the mountain-contained sprawl of the city, dodging errant drivers and dancing cell phone saleswomen. Finally, the Tiger had enough. Against Ungnyeo’s urgings, he fled to the remoteness of the mountains, and Ungnyeo was left to face the bustle of Seoul alone. She became gaunt and fatigued, but her endurance was rewarded. After just 21 days, Ungnyeo shed her massive body and became a beautiful woman. She had only one more wish, which Hwanung fulfilled when he blessed her with a son.

Ungnyeo opened a Laundromat to support her new family. The time that she was not washing linen and clothing she spent toiling away in their cramped apartment. Ungnyeo awoke early each day to prepare rice and soup and delicious side dishes, and each night, when her son came home from private academy, the table was spread with a steaming dinner. Sometimes, Ungnyeo dreamed of returning to the mountains, but instead she sent her son to Seoul National University to become a great businessman, and soon Ungnyeo grew old and tired. The Tiger quickly forgot about Seoul and his desire to become human as he ran freely across the forested peaks.

* * * * *

In the actual myth, the bear and the tiger are commanded to survive 100 days in a dark cave with a bundle of mugwort and 20 cloves of garlic. Great happiness comes to Ungnyeo when she is transformed into a beautiful woman and blessed with a son, Dangun, who becomes the forefather of Korean people. This myth reminds me of the vision I had of Korea before I arrived. I imagined the Far East to be a land of Zen mysticism steeped in ancient wisdom and a slow appreciation of life’s simplicity and beauty. In rare instances I have encountered this sensation – at a temple, on a quiet mountainside in the morning fog. But the purpose for my variation on the myth, aside from describing the fact that Korea is not the most accommodating for strict vegetarians to live (I have several friends who have to forego staple foods like soup and kimchi because of the anchovy oil), is that Korea has become a quick-paced, crowded, often stressful country. Even the mountains are generally people ridden, sometimes equipped with concrete steps to the top with modern restrooms and even restaurants along the way.

Korea is advancing quickly, but its difficult past still has a strong hold on the Korean people. Although women are gaining in equality, and even sometimes considered more powerful than men in the family, the responsibilities of the household almost always fall solely on the woman, who is also expected to cook for and take care of her in-laws. The not-so-long-ago financial hardships have not yet been forgotten by Korea, and although Koreans are eager to show off their new wealth through Gucci handbags and abundant side dishes, they are at times more hesitant to indulge in travel or pursue a job that they like rather than one that will bring them financial security. Nor has Korea forgotten its unlucky history. A U.S. military presence, an influx of North Korean refugees, and tension with Japan, such as the current territorial dispute over Dok-Do, an island in the East Sea, are reminders that Korea carries the baggage of a historical victim. It makes sense, then, that Korea is a proud, hard-working, and progress-focused country.

How to Be a Middle School Student in Korea

2009-07-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

Invention:

“Sausage in glue case. If you hungry at class time, you can eat quietly.” – Stephanie, Alice, G-Dragon, 1st Grade Students, Seokjeon Middle School

When my job recruiter asked me where in Korea I wanted to live, I replied, “No preference.” When he asked me what age I wanted to teach, I again replied, “No preference.” But then my mind flashed to the merciless days of middle school and I immediately wished that I had requested either elementary or high school. However, starting from about a week into my job, whenever someone has asked me what I like best about Korea, my answer has been, without falter, “My students.”

Here are a few rules of thumb should you ever decide to join this extremely loveable class of people.

1. Get bangs.

The old American stereotype that all Asians look the same is completely false except when applied to Korean celebrities, who all have plastic surgery to achieve exactly the same face. There is a famous K-pop group called Girl’s Generation made up of nine young singers that might or might not be identical neptuplets. For the most part, though, I often stopped thinking that Koreans looked Asian at all when there weren’t other foreigners around to compare them with.

My students came in all shapes and sizes with all different faces and personalities, and I never had any difficulty differentiating them. Still, there is definitely a certain look to a Korean middle school student. A large portion of this can be blamed on the school dress code. All Korean students begin wearing school uniforms their first year of middle school, which are white button up shirts, pants for the boys, and skirts for the girls, although I had a handful of tomboys who cut their hair short and wore pants, which I always admired. Students are not allowed to wear makeup, pierce their ears, perm or dye their hair, and hair longer than shoulder-length must be worn in a ponytail. In addition to the look mandated by the school, some popular fads run rampant in the middle school classroom. In the winter, vinyl sleeve protectors are very trendy. They cover the forearm of the uniform to keep it clean and are often adorned with cartoon characters or smiling fruit or ice cream cones. Big glasses with thick, black rims are also very stylish. And bangs are a must.

2. Build up a high tolerance for pain.

Korean teachers are issued with a stick. In many cases, it is actually a wooden flute that is cracked and so now serves instead as more of a drumstick. Some teachers are more musically inclined than others. During my first semester, my desk in the teacher’s lounge was beside the P.E. teacher, a notorious bully. The first time she brought a student in, she wailed on him so hard I thought she might break the stick. Even with my headphones on, it was impossible to ignore the screaming teacher, the crying student, and the thunderous crack of the stick, and I felt sick to my stomach. Although beating is a common occurrence, I never got used to it. For lesser crimes, students have to kneel on the floor with their arms raised in the air, hold the push-up position, or go down on their hands and knees, nicknamed “OTL” because the letters resemble the position.

After introducing myself the first week, I asked the students to come up with questions for me. Usually they asked my age, my blood type, and if I had a boyfriend. One clever boy asked a much more relevant question. “Do you have a stick?” The most disciplining I ever did, though, was yell to quiet them down or ask them to change seats, and several students thanked me at the end of the year for being patient with them. I prefer to use a positive reinforcement system, which succeeded both in encouraging participation in the classroom and in encouraging students to follow me through the hallways yelling, “Give me the chocolate!”

3. Study like it’s your job.

When I think about my middle school days, I think of going to football games on Friday nights and hanging around the pool all summer and extremely awkward school dances. I worry that when my students look back on middle school, they will mainly remember studying. Korea is a very competitive country and parents put a lot of pressure on their children to succeed. Most of my students attend private academies called “hagwons” after they leave school, meaning that some students are in class until 10 or 11 o’ clock at night. During vacations, instead of going to the beach or watching TV all day, many attend educational camps. Perhaps their hard work will pay off, and when they are older they will be thankful that they studied as much as they did. But as middle school students, many feel like Monica, one of my hardest working students who, when asked to write questions for President Obama, wrote this:

“(Not very much like question) I read from a newspaper that you’ll make American kids more study. Please don’t. You don’t know how hard Korean kids studies hard. They goes to school at dawn, and come back home at almost midnight! And…well, you know, etc., etc…”

4. Treat the school like it’s your home.

I remember thinking of school almost as a prison, so this was an interesting concept to me. The role of Korean teachers is much more parenting than that of Western teachers, and students are often coming in and out of the teachers’ lounge to pester them. The teachers act as school nurses, guidance counselors, and are even concerned with the students’ love lives. I once had a student cry in my class because she didn’t know the answer to a question and felt ashamed, so I thought it would be best to move on and draw the attention away from her. Meanwhile, the Korean teacher stayed beside her and rubbed her back until she felt better. Rather than change classes every period, students stay with a single class and the teachers move around to the different classrooms. This way, the class is more like a family and their classroom more like a home. Just like in a Korean home, students and teachers are expected to remove their shoes in the school. They wear special indoor slippers in order to keep the school clean. No custodians are employed at the schools, as students clean the building after class each day, pushing around mops, wiping down windows, and even washing coffee mugs for the teachers. Students also serve food in the school cafeteria alongside the cooks. Whether this system is meant to foster a sense of responsibility in the students or to save money, I am not sure, but it is very effective at both.

5. Be extraordinarily sweet.

These kids are hilarious, clever, motivated, and sweet. When I labeled my students ‘sweet’ in an e-mail, my mom replied, “Wow, I would never use that word to describe a middle school student.” In the glimpse of them that she got during her visit to Korea, though, she agreed that it was the perfect word for these kids. Of course, they can be as ruthlessly mean as any middle schoolers, throwing things at each other, laughing at others’ mistakes, and outcasting students for whatever reason. The worst torture device, equivalent to the American ‘wedgie,’ is the ‘ddong chim,’ in which one puts his or her pointer fingers together and thrusts them into the seat of another student’s pants, right between the cheeks. Because touch is a much more acceptable form of affection in Korea, though, it is much more common for me to see students – boys and girls alike – holding hands or laying their heads in each other’s laps around the school.

Equally, although they had their moments, students were usually unbelievably sweet to me. Even though I thought that I would prefer elementary or high school, middle schoolers turned out to be the best of both worlds. They still had the energy and excitement of youth, but they were starting to acquire the intelligence and maturity to carry on interesting conversations. When I was floundering to get on my feet as a teacher, the students were patient with me. They would help me clean up or carry things without being asked, and if I was ever in a bad mood, I would simply walk through town knowing that I would run into students who would cheer me up. Some of my favorite students were the troublemakers in class who would drop their act and wave ecstatically to me outside of school. On the sidewalk, if I saw my students eating food, they would inevitably offer me some, at times even feeding it to me with their chopsticks. On my birthday, I was showered with small gifts and sweet, diligently written notes. My English class is not worth any credit and they receive no grade, so they are not brown-nosers or teacher’s pets. They are just genuinely great kids.

How to Be an Alien

2009-07-20T04:21:00.001-07:00

Questions for a letter to Obama:

"How much is the White House? Can you give me a pentagon?" - 3rd grade student, Yangmok Middle School

"Will you give me your daughter, Malia?" - 3rd grade student, Seokjeon Middle School

I am an alien. A registered alien, in fact. But I certainly do not need my alien registration card to remind me that I am an outsider. Whether strangers glare me down in the subway or approach me and stroke my arm as they call me “beautiful,” it is a rare and precious occasion to find myself amidst a group of Koreans who forget, for a brief moment, my alien status.

For some, becoming an alien is not an easy thing to do. Here are three rules to simplify the process.

1. Be prepared to make mistakes, be confused, and feel like an idiot.

As an alien in Korea, you will not always know what is going on or how things work. There is no way to combat this problem other than accepting it. For example, my apartment has an intercom on the wall, and at times a voice spouts off a string of very serious sounding Korean. My apartment has a floor to ceiling sliding glass door leading to the balcony, a window to my hallway, and a sliding glass door to the bathroom through which I can see the window to my hallway as I sit on the toilet, so before investing in curtains I already had a small paranoia that I was constantly being watched. It was not too big a leap, then, to suspect that the voice from this speaker was scolding me for doing something wrong, such as running my washing machine at an inappropriate hour or playing music too loudly. My co-teacher, Okhee, assured me that they were only announcements and not to worry about them. Soon after, the speaker came on in the middle of the night repeating what sounded to me something along the lines of “Da-da-da taygoimnida.” There was no way that this could just be another announcement, so I looked out the window expecting to see people evacuation. No one else was stirring. Upon investigating the situation, I found that the phone mounted on the wall below the intercom had three colored circles. The red circle had a picture of fire, the yellow circle had a picture of a gas faucet, and the green circle had a picture of an angry boy. The yellow circle was lit up. I first checked my gas to make sure that I hadn’t left it on, and then pulled on some jeans and went to the security office. Very distressed, I tried to imitate the voice from the speaker and drew the picture of the gas faucet on a scrap of newspaper, but the guard just waved me off as though nothing were the matter. When I returned to my apartment, the sound had stopped, but it recurred several times, always in the middle of the night. When it finally happened on a Sunday afternoon, I called my Okhee to translate to the security guard over the phone. He led me to a power box in my hallway and showed me how to flip a switch to turn my power off and on again, which did put an end to the voice from the speaker. I wasn’t sure how this would help if there was a carbon monoxide leak in my apartment, but I slept with my window cracked and made use of the power box until eventually the problem ceased.

Another incident occurred in the historic city of Gyeongju. My friends and I had spent a long weekend there touring the temples and tombs. It was our first outing long enough to be considered a trip, and we had heard that after going on a trip, it was typical to bring back food to share with the teachers at your school. We discovered a famous snack called “Gyeongju bread,” a sandwich of barley bread resembling sand dollar sized pancakes stuck together with sweet red bean paste, each individually wrapped in plastic. We loaded shopping bags full of them, and the next week I handed them out to all of the teachers, the principals and vice principals. Because I teach at two schools, I couldn’t distribute the second batch until a few days after returning from Gyeongju. As I sat down to share them, my co-teacher Jang sniffed the bread and asked if it was fresh. In the U.S., if something is individually wrapped in plastic, it generally means that it is loaded with preservatives, so I had never anticipated that the breads should require refrigeration. Surely enough, one of the teachers looked down at her half-eaten Gyeongju bread to find it spotted with mold.

You don’t even need to make mistakes like this, though, to feel a little self-conscious. Just as I think some things that Koreans do are ridiculous, some of my actions that I find perfectly ordinary, Koreans consider absurd. Going for a run on the path along the river, at least as a girl, chomping on an apple while walking down the sidewalk, or simply having a beer without buying a table-ful of food always take Koreans aback. During a school field trip, I picked a few flowers and tucked them behind my own and a few teachers’ ears only to be laughed at hysterically. I later learned that wearing flowers in your hair is considered a symbol of insanity.

2. Compromise

I know far too many Westerners who spend all of their free time drinking beer in foreigner bars. I don’t understand why they came to Korea to do that. There is much better beer available in the states. If you come to a foreign country, you should really try to learn about and experience the culture, even if it sometimes means compromising your usual behavior. My co-teacher boasts that I can eat spicy Korean food better than she can, and a group of elderly people clapped for me on the sidewalk in Seoul for speaking basic Korean. Even the smallest things are overwhelmingly appreciated.

That said, it is no better to abandon all of your beliefs and customs and become so immersed in the culture that you become resentful of other foreigners for detracting from your ‘Korean experience.’ I have been guilty of this phenomenon, and in the opposite vein, have been overly enthusiastic and friendly to foreign strangers. With this common confusion of how to react to other foreigners, my friends invented a game similar to “Slug Bug” or “Punch Buggy.” The first person to spot a foreigner when we are in public has a right to punch his or her friends, and bonus punches are rewarded if the foreigner sighted looks romantically involved with a Korean.

Really, though, it is often just as rewarding to share aspects of American culture with Koreans as it is to learn about Korean culture from them. Shockingly enough, Hollywood and the news do not always convey a full or accurate picture of Americans. Many Koreans outside of the cities have had limited contact with Westerners, and they are curious. As I was assisting one student with an assignment, she stopped me midsentence and said, “Oh! Your eyes are brown. I thought Americans had blue eyes.” They also marvel at my arm hair and, humblingly, snicker at my armpit sweat, which they don’t seem to have. On Thanksgiving, I “roasted” a chicken on my stove and baked sweet potato pies in my toaster oven for my co-teachers. On Halloween, my friend Megan wanted to make caramel apples with two Korean girls. She bought a big bag of candy caramels and we melted them on her stove before dipping in apples on chopsticks and rolling them in crushed peanuts. Unfortunately, the caramel on caramel apples is not the same as caramel candies. Instead, it was painfully chewy and became harder as it cooled until one of the girls asked, as politely as she could, “So… Americans like this?” Eventually, they ended up peeling off the caramel and holding it in their hands as they ate the apples. But after the caramel apple disaster, we taught them to carve a pumpkin while watching Edward Scissorhands, and they took to that much better than the apples. Chances are, they won’t forget either any time soon.

3. Don’t forget your ray blaster.

At a camp I once taught, the principal of the school gave a speech to the middle school students in which he referred to English as a “weapon” that they should wield to reach success. Man, did that make me feel like a colonist. That is one reason that I try to “Koreanize” as much as possible. Really, though, my weapon of choice as an alien in Korea is the electric fan. Koreans believe that a fan left running overnight in an enclosed room will cause “fan death.” The superstition is that the fan will create a vortex or suck up all the oxygen, leading to suffocation, or possibly kill via hypothermia in the night.

Actually, you can leave both your fan and your ray blaster at home. Most aliens are safer in South Korea than where they came from. The only thing you may need to fight here is xenophobia. The swine flu certainly hasn’t helped. It is as though “swine” translates into Korean as “foreigner.” While several people I know have complained about racism here, I prefer to think of how well Korea is dealing with foreigners considering the newness of their presence. It takes a long time for a traditionally homogenous country to accept foreigners living amongst them, and while I have felt racism during my time here, I am generally treated more like a guest than like an outsider. My friend Josh had a really touching experience as a foreigner. I was speaking to his co-teacher, Mr. Park, at Josh’s farewell party the night before his return to America. Mr. Park admitted to me, and to Josh, that he used to be racist against Americans because of his strong patriotic beliefs. His relationship with Josh, though, had been so good that he had come to perceive all foreigners with a more open mind. Even though Mr. Park did not like to drink or stay out late, he was out drinking with Josh until four that morning as a gesture of appreciation and camaraderie. Another of my friends taught an English camp with me, and one of the students wrote an article about him for the camp newspaper. She wrote that the only black person she had met before him had been unkind and that that was how she had come to think of black people until she met Landon, who was kind and had a warm smile. So rather than feel attacked by the xenophobia in Korea, my best advice to any foreigner is to welcome it as an opportunity to make change.

Waegwan

2009-07-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

Sunlight spreads across my face and awakens me before my alarm. I can hear roosters crowing out my window. From the balcony, I can see only fog, like I am in an airplane flying through a cloud. But by afternoon, I can see that I am on the rim of a shallow bowl of mountains. I can see both rice fields and high rise apartments, interspersed like oceans and continents. I can see the Nakdong River, the longest river in South Korea, and at night, I can see crosses on churches lit up red as though they belonged in Las Vegas.

“Waegwan,” where I live, literally means “Japanese dwelling,” a vestige from the Japanese invasion. “Waeguk” is the Korean word for foreigner, which often follows me around like a theme song. Despite living in a town whose name almost matches the word for foreigner, Waegwan quickly became my home. Whether Waegwan is a city or rural community has always been a puzzle to me. Although my paycheck confirms that it is ‘rural,’ the Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins, the health center complete with a pool and climbing wall, and 20-story apartment buildings leave me uncertain. The handful of Koreans whom I have asked the population of Waegwan have given me answers ranging from 10,000 to 100,000. I can’t tell you whether this variance is due to Koreans’ difficulty in translating large numbers to English or a lack of an organized census. But Waegwan’s ambiguity between country and city is what appeals the most to me.

While some might complain that a small town is boring, Waegwan is fully equipped with bowling alleys, singing rooms, shopping, a sandy riverbank to run along, and a small mountain to hike. This mountain has been a bittersweet presence for me. Anytime I am feeling down, I climb to the top where dragonflies and magpies are gliding through my breathtaking view of Waegwan and the two neighboring towns, and happiness comes out my ears. It is also the only place in Waegwan that I have found solitude outside of my two-room apartment. But the mountain has also been a source of disaster. When a couple of friends joined me in the hike to the top, we got a late start and the sun began to set during our descent. I thought that I was clever and found a shortcut to the bottom in order to beat the darkness. As we slowly shuffled down the wet leaf-lined path, though, it became more and more difficult to see. Although I didn’t tell my friends this at the time, I had seen a snake before on the mountain, my co-teachers had warned me never to hike alone in case of dangerous men, and a soldier had cautioned that there were still small land mines, nicknamed ‘toe poppers,’ remaining from the war on the mountainside. Using our cell phones to light our way, we didn’t see an end to the path anywhere near, so when we saw an opening through the trees we decided to take our chances. We ended up tiptoeing past a hole that may have been an open tomb (Koreans traditionally bury their dead in the mountains) and were spit out onto a farm where we circumvented the crops and scrambled down a steep hill of briers to finally return to the road, happy to be in one piece.

The greatest small town charm of Waegwan is the friendliness of the people. Koreans in all parts of the country are known for their kindness and hospitality to the guests of Korea. It is unlikely, though, that in a large city your grocer driving past as you carry a heavy load down the sidewalk will pull over to drive you home. Any time I walk through town, I can hear students yelling my name and waving emphatically – even the ones who sleep in class – and young children, less exposed to foreigners than in the city, will stare in wonderment and say “Hi.” I am by no means the only foreigner in Waegwan, though. Aside from a small handful of English teachers, Waegwan is home to some 3,000 U.S. soldiers.

Camp Carroll, the army base spanning across the center of Waegwan, is like an unreachable oasis. The luxuries that can’t be found in Waegwan – peanut butter, Mexican food, size 9 shoes, a movie theater – are rumored to exist within the barbed wire-topped walls of Camp Carroll. But the closest I can get is to gaze into the base from my 7^th floor balcony and yearn for their Taco Bell and their water park. Unless I make friends with a soldier. My attempts at this, however, have only ended in pursuit by men largely outnumbering English speaking women in Waegwan. I am sure that many soldiers are honorable men and upstanding citizens, but unfortunately my impressions of them have been of men who stick to the foreigner clubs and ‘juicy bars’ operated by Filipino women just outside of Camp Carroll’s main gate, who talk loudly and disrespectfully on the trains so that when I asked my students where they learned to say “Fuck you, man,” they tell me that they learned from soldiers, and who have lived in Korea for almost a year and know only the Korean words “Anyeong haseyo,” and “soju.” But perhaps some of my resentment stems from their experience so different from my own. I want foreigners to be able to think of Waegwan as the sweet old ladies squatting on the sidewalk selling onions and a festival of fire held on the riverbank to ward off bad spirits in the first full moon of the lunar new year. Not ‘juicy bars.’

Introduction

2009-07-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

My intent is for this blog to read slightly more like a book than like a daily journal, so think of each entry along the lines of a chapter. It is my story of the year I spent teaching English at two middle schools in South Korea.

Whether through economic globalization, Hollywood and mass media, or the Lee Myung Bak administration's legacy of importing foreign English teachers by the planeful, Western culture has taken off in Korea like a catchy pop song. In fact, I had an student whose English nickname was Beyonce, and several, including a sixth grade boy, named Britney Spears.

Learning Hangul, the Korean writing system, was immediately helpful to me without understanding a word of Korean, as I found that the Korean letters adorning buildings spelled out "Dream Mart" and "Honeymoon Hotel." The Korean language is laced with English words such as computer ('compu-teoh'), coffee ('coppee'), and 'Konglish' such as 'handphone' for cell phone and 'mense' for menstrual cycle. The best part about shopping in this country is not the low prices nor the warm greeting from every employee in the store, but reading the English on the T-shirts. I bought my friend a shirt that read, without any spaces to separate words, "Wearejustflowersinspace," and recently purchased another asking, "Hi God...Where is a pungent My Boyfriend?" Of course, language isn't all that is permeating the culture. Aspects of Western food, fashion, ideology, and lifestyle are gaining momentum in South Korea.

One of the questions Koreans ask me the most is why I came to Korea. The first time I heard the question, I was not prepared with an answer. When offered the job, I hadn't considered why I wanted to do it, I just knew that I did. Surely the Koreans did not want to hear that I came to Korea because the government was recruiting English teachers at perhaps three times the rate of any other country of which I was aware. So, I came up with another truth, which is now my standard answer. "I didn't know very much about Korea, so I came here to learn more about it."

And learn I did. So, considering the growing presence of Western culture in Korea, I thought it only fair to reciprocate by sharing the knowledge and experiences I have gained during my year of teaching. Of course, this is by no means intended to be a definitive commentary on the Korean culture. Afterall, what is culture anyways? Wearejustflowersinspace.