This is an archive, edited for clarity and to remove the more cringeworthy parts, of blog posts I wrote on my website while living in South Korea from September 2011 to August 2013 (presented chronologically). Eventually a lot of these posts, along with posts from other friends' blogs, were compiled into a self-published book for fun, entitled Dae Bak!, which remains an illuminating portrait of life in South Korea at the time.

August 31, 2011

I would not have imagined that the first person I would see in South Korea would be Pierce Brosnan, but yes, apparently he is making some handsome pocket cash by renting his mug out to a Korean casino, with giant ads in Inchon Airport as well as billboards on the Inchon highway. Everyone gets their passport stamped and grabs their luggage, and we all stroll down the airport corridor, at the end of which is a frenzied crowd of school representatives waving signs with our names on them. I should note that on the plane the two guys sitting next to me were having a conversation in which they decided that the worst thing possible would be to have a “middle-aged man” as their co-teacher. I don’t remember how they reached this conclusion, but it sprang back into my mind as I realized that the person picking me up was…a middle-aged man. Not that I necessarily minded, as Mr. Ahn is a very kind man in appearance and mannerisms. Still, there was something disconcerting about how little he was talking on the way to the car. Was he the silent type? Did he not speak English? As I waited for him in the basement parking garage, I began laughing at myself for the situation I was presently getting myself into, standing in the middle of a foreign country of whose tongue I did not speak and entrusting myself to someone who didn’t seem to speak my language.

“Our school about one hour and a half from here,” and away we went on a wonderfully awkward car ride full of silence, aside from a few short exchanges and the barking Korean commands emitting from the GPS. I quickly discerned that “pay toll” and “kilometer” are English loanwords in Korean. After a while, I decided to use my last resort. “Say, you don’t happen to speak Chinese, do you?” I know that some Korean schools have Chinese in their curriculum and was hoping to compensate for my lack of Korean prowess with my semi-proficient Mandarin. “People in our province usually learn Japanese.” Oh. Silence continues. Eventually we reached what I mistakenly took to be Yangju and stopped to eat at a restaurant. I had been told repeatedly that it was crucial to eat anything I was offered at this juncture, and so I dug in to my first authentic Korean meal, despite my stomach being too upset to contemplate being filled. Surprisingly, this particular dish was rather mild and not as spicy as I had been led to believe, even with the expected addition of kimchi. I quickly pour my new Korean friend a glass of water (as etiquette dictates) and pick up my chopsticks to eat, eager to please. The first thing I come to realize is that Koreans really do eat even faster than Americans, and I am left embarrassingly trying to finish the last half of my bowl on an angry stomach while Mr. Ahn sits looking onward. “Take your time.”

Walking out into the parking lot I made two observations: 1) Every car in South Korea is made by either Kia or Hyundai, and 2) there seemed to be a noticeably large military presence in the area. When I say “noticeably large,” I’m talking soldiers on the side of the roads with their guns pointed at some invisible target, army trucks speeding past in both directions, and an obscenely large tank randomly parked in the middle of the street. It was all the more surreal due to how ordinary everyone seemed to treat it. I later read that this region of the province has had problems with North Korean soldiers secretly infiltrating the area by way of the giant mountains that surround everything. We continued driving for a while and I realized that we probably hadn’t even reached Yangju yet. Suddenly we were in the middle of a small but bustling “downtown” district with tons of tiny shops crammed into tall buildings, and Mr. Ahn offered to buy me a breakfast for the next morning at “Paris Baguette,” a chain he declared, tongue-in-cheek, to be “very Korean.”

We got back in the car and soon ended up in a seemingly non-descript neighborhood, which I now call home. Actually, now that I’ve lived here for a few days and peeked around, there’s actually a lot going on around here, including some open-air restaurants, convenience stores, and Presbyterian churches with gigantic neon crosses (apparently a Korean favorite). Mr. Ahn helped me set the passcode on my keypad lock mechanism, bought me a few rolls of toilet paper to christen the place, and then bid me adieu, adding that a female teacher would pick me up in the morning to go to school. My doorbell rang two hours later and I opened the door to find the aforementioned female teacher. I wondered if this was my co-teacher, but as our conversation went on I realized that her English was not much more proficient than Mr. Ahn’s, though she was certainly more talkative. After she left, I went to bed…and promptly woke up two hours later thanks to jetlag.

September 1, 2011

Ms. Cha, the teacher from the night before, showed up outside my apartment building the next morning and together we walked down the street and across the road to the bus stop. There were large gaps of silence interspersed with small, stifled English conversation, something that has become such a charming staple of my life here the past few days that it barely feels awkward anymore. I think Yumi was trying to ask me if my apartment – a modest studio – was disagreeably small, and while I think I accidently implied that I was unhappy with it, in fact I am perfectly content with it. In part this is because the apartment I lived in while I was an undergraduate was so shady and run-down from decades of abuse that almost anything else seems amazingly comfortable in comparison. Moreover, though, my apartment here has the basic amenities I need to feel comfortable (A/C, heating, washing machine, and refrigerator), and it’s in a great neighborhood not far from “downtown” Geoup-dong, which has tons of shops and restaurants. I’ve also already gotten comfortable with the concept of a “shoilet,” where basically your entire bathroom becomes a shower floor and you splash water everywhere. But I digress. I was not able to distinguish them at the time, but some students from our high school rode the bus with us and bowed with respect to Ms. Cha, and possibly me as well.

Despite being [relatively] close to Seoul, Yangju is a very rural city, and much of the landscape epitomizes what one’s conception of the “Korean countryside” is likely to be, with mountains surrounding everything and large patches of cultivated farmland. Even so, as I’ve said, there are distinct neighborhoods/districts (I’m not sure if there’s a distinctive Korean term to describe them) which take on the frenetic activity of a big city due to the ubiquitous high-rise apartment complexes and buildings filled to the brim with mini-shops (they could be described as “malls,” but the hallways are very small and they are usually not primarily occupied with chain stores). I first noticed Yangju’s harmonized combination of modern city life with quaint country living on our bus ride, as the space between Geoup-dong and our high school is mostly arable farmland occupied by hard-working, modest-looking farmers. When we got to the school, I began the process of bowing to anyone who didn’t look like a student, and I finally met my actual co-teacher, Ms. Kim, who speaks perfect English. She quickly became my savior, helping me feel comfortable in South Korea and ensuring that I was such. She took me around the school and introduced me to various faculty members – the school nurse, the headmaster, the administration office, etc. – before leading me to my desk in the teacher’s office.

In actuality there is more than one teacher’s office in our school, but the eponymous “Teacher’s Office” on the first floor has the biggest collection of faculty from all ranges of subjects: English, science, mathematics, art, information technology, ethics, and so and so forth. I met my immediate deskmates, Mrs. Choi to my right and Ms. Jung directly across from me. Mrs. Choi speaks perfect English and Ms. Jung does not speak English at all, but she has continually expressed a desire to converse with me. I set up my laptop and began emailing and Skype-ing to let everyone in the western hemisphere know I was still alive. I was also trying to decide how I could catch a little more sleep (at this point having slept during only four of the last forty-eight hours); it appeared that resting slouched over one’s desk was not entirely socially unacceptable in Korea, but it was the first day and I wanted to make a good first impression. Moreover, I have never been comfortable with sleeping in public places. In fact, I can only think of one time when I’ve ever dozed in public. Despite being tired, the day passed rather quickly. Ms. Kim took me to one of her English classes to introduce myself, and then I went to the school canteen for lunch with some of the other teachers. I enjoy eating the school lunch, not only because the mere act of it reminds me fondly of my time in high school, but also because it exposes me to different Korean dishes.

The only thing I still cannot completely wrap my head around when eating here is the ubiquitous kimchi, which you will manage to find in one form or another at every meal. Kimchi is such an institution in Korea that near-mass-hysteria ensued last year after speculation of a cabbage shortage. Don’t get me wrong, I can eat kimchi, and it’s not a food that makes me sick to think about (sloppy joes and refried beans fall into that category), but so far I have not been able to master blending its taste in with the rest of the meal, and so it sits on my tray, staring defiantly at me. At lunchtime I’ve already become accustomed to the Korean tradition of not drinking anything during the meal, which is actually something of a miracle for me given how spicy and hot the average Korean meal is. Also, not to say that it’s any different in this respect from America, but the teachers and students don’t sit together at lunchtime. I would like to fraternize with some of the students at lunch and get to know them better outside of the classroom, but I have not yet discerned if this would be some kind of scandalous cultural faux pas, given how integral hierarchy is to Korean culture. For now, my interaction with the students during lunch consists of them staring and waving at me from afar.

After lunch, a bunch of students burst into the teacher’s office and begin crowding around different desks (I have come to realize that this is a daily occurrence), with one particularly adventurous group consisting of several girls and one guy talking to me in slow, methodical English. After saying I like rock ‘n roll, the guy asks me if I’ve heard of Green Day, and then proceeds to belt out “Do you have the time / To listen to me whine?” in perfect English while pantomiming a guitar. Needless to say, I was impressed. The bell rang and the students headed off to class, and things quieted down again. Ms. Kim then came around after her class to take me to the bank so that I could exchange my wad of American money for South Korean won. Doing so made my money seem like it had been multiplied by 10,000. Then we got in a car driven by another teacher (Ms. Kim has had her driver’s license for eleven years but has never driven an automobile) and headed for a small medical clinic so that I could get a health examination, which is required to obtain an ARC (Alien Registration Card). This turned out to be more involved than I had initially believed.

I had the simple height/weight test, eye test, and blood pressure test, followed by a blood sample, X-ray, and yes, a urine sample. The thoroughness was astounding. Ms. Kim was giggling and laughing the entire time, which put me at ease. For this battery of tests I ended up paying 70,000 won (over $60). After paying, we got back in the car and headed back to the school, listening to more Elvis Presley hits along the way. By this time, the school day was nearly over, and I was not confident I could find my way back to my apartment alone. Luckily, one of the science teachers, Mr. Lee, lives across the street from me in a flat above the Presbyterian church.

Did I mention that there are churches everywhere in Korea? They probably aren’t as innumerable as in America, but when a Korean church exists somewhere, they want you to notice it; hence, almost every church has a gigantic cross perched atop it, some supported by a curved framework of scaffolding that makes them look like miniature television transmission towers. I guess this is probably because the limited space on the Korean continent dictates that many churches are situated in normal malls/office space rather than in an actual cathedral, so they don’t really stand out unless there is a giant cross to catch your eye. Also, around here at least, Presbyterianism is the big sect, not Lutheranism or Catholicism.

So yes, Mr. Lee lives in an apartment sandwiched above a church and below that church’s giant cross. Does his home life and what he does in his apartment take on an added sanctity and significance because of this? Probably not, but it’s interesting to contemplate. The math teacher Mr. Kim tagged along for the bus ride home, and although neither he nor Lee speak above a modicum of English, their friendly and disarming manner makes this a minor point in our friendship. Lee took me over to the route information posted on the bus stop wall and pointed at the “7” and “79” lines, giving a thumbs up, and then at the “78” and “118” lines, making a cross with his hands. So I could take either 7 or 79 to get home. Simple enough.

When we reached Geoup-dong, we decided to eat at the open-air barbeque restaurant across the street from my apartment. This was my first experience with Korean barbeque, so I let Mr. Lee and Mr. Kim handle the intricacies of cutting the pieces of pork into sections and placing them over the hot coals in the center of the table. The restaurant owner came over and handed me a fork, which I found amusing but a nice gesture all the same. There was limited discussion, though not for lack of trying.

September 1, 2011

To be honest, I was actually dreading my first weekend here. After school ended on Friday, I went out to eat at a place close by, creatively titled “Korean Barbeque” in English, with Ms. Kim, Ms. Jung, and Mr. Kim. It was as enjoyable as the dinner I had had the night before with Mr. Lee and Mr. Kim, and even more so because Ms. Kim was able to translate bits of the conversation into Korean and vice versa. Ms. Jung and I entered into a pact to see who would improve the most in the other’s native language after three months time (I need to start hitting my Korean textbook hard). After I got off the bus (one stop later than I should have, I might add), I was convinced that I would not see or talk to anyone until Monday, since I did not have a cell phone or access to the internet. On Saturday, however, I decided to take the bus to the shopping center next to the school. I was in desperate need of shampoo and shaving cream, two essential things I forgot to pack.

I walked through the tiny halls of the shopping center peering through the glass doors into every shop, looking for a place that would sell toiletries. I came upon a store that looked like it specialized in selling organic home products; it was even better because the woman who ran the store was talking on the phone with someone and thus wouldn’t be able to try to engage me in conversation in Korean. After scrutinizing and comparing shampoo brands, I picked one out with a nice dispenser bottle and an agreeable price. I approached the counter, paid for the shampoo, and offered up a “thank you” in Korean. My first transaction! Bolstered by this success, I went off to look for some shaving cream, which I knew would be easier said than done. I ducked into a small grocery store, perusing the aisles up and down. I was going to give up when I finally spotted a little cart by the checkout aisle that had razors and blades. Buried underneath all of this was a small, dust-covered bottle of Gilette shaving cream. I quickly bought it and hopped on the bus to go home so I could put these things to use.

Later, Ms. Cha dropped by my apartment to take me shopping for household necessities. While I still needed many things, my mind was honestly completely obsessed with finding replacement bedding, first and foremost. The teal quasi-Care Bears-themed sheets weren’t cutting it, both in style and in comfort. It was a bit of a task when I realized that Koreans use a different classification system for bedsheets (Single, Super Single, and Queen). But I’m getting ahead of myself. We took the bus to a neighboring town which had both a Lotte Plus and an E-Mart, both gigantic superstores. For whatever reason Ms. Cha has an affinity for E-Mart, distinguished (for me at least) by the use of Greek-style typeface in its logo. If you’re expecting a paragraph that talks about how amazing and different Korean superstores are from Target and Wal-Mart, sorry to disappoint; it’s a slightly different shopping experience, but not something I was shocked by. Thus, I’ll spare the details of a mundane shopping trip to pick up window cleaner, laundry detergent, and the like.

Sunday I had no plans or prospects, so I hopped the 7 bus line in order to find the Yangju subway station. After the bus hit that stop I decided to stay on and see what else was in Yangju, not realizing the 7 line crosses the Yangju city limits into Uijeonbu, and ultimately, into Seoul. For fear of getting lost I stayed on the bus even as I gradually realized I was getting farther and farther from familiar territory, which at that point in time was a very small, confined area. I also believed that the bus route was circular, which was obviously not true. Thus, after the last stop on the 7 line, the bus simply turned around and hit every stop in reverse. I ended up sitting on the bus for two and a half hours, staring out the window wondering where I was most of the time.

After the bus finally came back into Yangju, I got off and headed for Lotteria, which I had spotted the evening before. Lotteria is yet another manifestation of Lotte, the multinational Japanese corporation also responsible for Lotte Mart and countless other endeavors that creep into daily life here. Lotteria is a Japanese answer to the American fast food chain. I wasn’t having withdrawal symptoms from American food, merely just curious to know what a cheap cheeseburger tastes like in East Asia. After staring at the menu on the wall for five minutes, I finally gathered up the courage to step up to the counter, at which point I realized the menu they have at the counter for dumb foreigners to point at was arranged completely differently.

After another two minutes of looking and feeling like a dumbass, I pointed at the simple, no-frills cheeseburger. The girl behind the counter queried, “Cheeseburger?” Two other employees quickly crowded behind her. “Just cheeseburger or set [combo meal]?” “Uh, set please.” “Take?” “Excuse me?” “Take?” The girl started gesticulating wildly and I eventually realized she was asking if I was ordering for take-out. I communicated that I wanted to eat at the restaurant by repeatedly saying “Here” and pointing with both index fingers at the floor. Thankfully, none of the employees looked annoyed during any of this, more so just amused.

September 9, 2011

The first week of classes, although not very long ago at all, feels like a blur to me, if not just because I came home after school every night and fell asleep almost instantly. To fill some time in the introductory lessons I gave students English names and also opened it up to suggestion from them, which was either a great idea or a terrible idea, depending on your perspective. My naming process was rather simple: If the student’s appearance reminded me of someone I knew in high school or college, I simply named them after that person. If they didn’t remind me of anyone, I would pick a random letter in my head and think of a name that began with that letter. If their Korean name sounded vaguely like an English name, I would use that. There were also a few standbys I used in almost every class: “Steve,” “Lee,” “Kim,” “Sam,” “Romeo” and “Juliet.”

As I said, the students also could have their say in choosing their names, if they wished. This lead to some rather peculiar choices:

At least three students (in separate classes) chose “Kobe,” or “Kobe Bryant.”
“Tom Cruise”
“2NE1” (The name of a contemporary K-pop group)
“Pepsi”
“Leonardo,” with the understanding that it is short for “Leonardo DiCaprio.”
“S-Line,” a Korean in-joke; “S-Line” is an English term indigenous to South Korea that describes the ideal female body form.
“WiFi”

I actually appreciate these types of names because they are easier for me to associate and remember than the simple, common names I gave out. Halfway through I realized that I should have given names based on historical figures (Einstein, Washington, etc.), Shakespeare characters (Macbeth, Hamlet, etc.) etc., just to have fun with it. I figure that these names are still dynamic, so maybe in the coming months I’ll give some of the students more creative names…

Surprisingly, students sleeping in class bothers me less than I thought it would. For that matter, students doing their makeup, doing other homework, and/or reading during my lessons bothers me less than I thought it would. Coming from America, where teachers and professors get bent out of shape over that kind of thing (and rightfully so), it almost frightens me how quickly I settled into the South Korean teacher’s mindset, which willfully eradicates from conscious thought the reality that, at any given time, half of the class isn’t paying attention. And this, mind you, isn’t even the clandestine sort of classroom rebellion seen in American schools, where students use their cellphones to text under the desk, or position their arms in such a way that they can sleep while still appearing to take notes. South Korean students seem more open in their personal distractions such that it is difficult not to be impressed at the sheer bravery of such displays, such as when students bring their own pillows to class to rest their weary heads upon. Some of my students even just pretend to be sleeping when I ask them a question. As I said though, I don’t really mind.

During my first Wednesday at the school, I was interviewed by the school’s English Newspaper Club. The club apparently experienced a tumultuous history prior to this, having been headed by a teacher who hadn’t allowed the students to actually produce and publish a single issue since inception (said teacher was subsequently fired for reasons unknown). At first the prospect of being asked questions by twelve high school students was daunting, until I remembered that I was operating in my native language and they weren’t, and thus they were probably more nervous than I could imagine. This suspicion was confirmed since many of the members had to be “prodded” to ask me a question at all, even though they all had their questions written out on paper before them.

The questions were largely retreads of common inquiries I had received since arriving in South Korea, such as how I was dealing with loneliness and what K-Pop artists I enjoyed. The only question that sticks out clearly in my mind is, “Did you hear anything about Korea when you were growing up as a child in America?” After being asked this, I thought about it for a few moments before responding with “Not really, sorry,” and then quietly laughing since I couldn’t even think of a comfortable white lie to pad the truth with. The girl looked a little disappointed (maybe it was just my imagination), but having reflected on it more, I feel that me not knowing anything about Korea as a child is no more offensive than a South Korean high school student not knowing anything about Wisconsin (which is to say it’s not offensive at all).

The inverse of the newspaper interview occurred two days later on Friday, when I interviewed thirty first-year (sophomore) students who wanted to join my Friday conversation class, for which there were about fifteen open spaces. In order to interview all thirty students within the allocated fifty minute time span, I interviewed two students at a time, which in retrospect might not have been such a great idea. I mainly regret this because the students had vastly different levels of English skill, and it was more than once the case that a highly proficient English student was interviewed concurrently with a student who had much less experience speaking English, compounding their nervousness. I tried hard to make everyone feel at ease, but the setup of a competitive interview naturally leads to feelings of anxiety. A few of the students fell to pieces and weren’t able to say anything at all. For the most part, I stuck to a few basic questions: how their week had been, what their aspirations for the future were, what they liked most (or least) about Korea, and what they planned to do for Korean Thanksgiving.

Using the question about their future goals I was able to ascertain why they wanted to learn English and how determined they were to do so. Many students had interesting aspirations, such as practicing traditional Korean medicine, becoming a counselor, working as a U.N. interpreter, starting their own company after high school, etc.

My first-year conversation class is a joy and I am sad it’s the only interaction I have with the first-year students, given that they are eager to learn and can speak decent English. Apparently the large disparity between the first-year students and the other students is due to our high school becoming “good” (as everyone I’ve talked to about this has put it) in the last year thanks to an increase in government funding. Thus, admissions standards are increasing and kids with their noses to the grindstone are replacing the kids who have their noses to their desks (because they’re sleeping, of course).