Log43: The New Semester

The new year has begun, and I have already begun teaching.

Let me simply say that the inner serenity which was once a distant dream has thus far been both a haven and a vanguard during this new beginning.  

Last year when I was frightened and unsettled, I groped around for a suitable teaching persona which I could potentially grow into.  Knowing nothing about grassroots education (aka teaching) I wove a garish chimera whose design included persecutor, vaudeville, and a trying mentor.  Time and failure proved to be the best teachers as I tried to preen the outfit, and by the time winter vacation rolled around, my arms and feet began sliding into the sleeves and shoes of pedagogy a bit more comfortably.  

While the design is of course constantly in the works, perhaps it is this familiarity with an old costume I wore that has vouchsafed my easy transition.  I had at least some template of expectations and standards to which I could refer this time.  I knew the classroom, I knew the environment, and I knew how to walk in my unique ensemble.  I didn't know the students nor their comportment, but I knew myself much more.  I knew how to carry myself, and how to effectively communicate my ideas to my students.

This year I teach all first and second grade students, totaling to more than seven hundred.  Though the second grade students all learned from me last semester, they are in new classrooms with new classmates and still have voids in unanswered classroom dynamics and friends.  As for the first grade students, few, if any, know each other at all.

I have seen the consequences of giving a poor first impression on the first day versus a great impression on the first day.  In the former, your students see your hesitations and doubts because they are written all over your face.  In the latter, your doubts and locked away in a safe and forgotten for the time and your decision and word is final and unquestionable [not as a matter of myopia or wisdom, but simply confidence].  In a rather unforgiving environment where student motivation is as varied as snowflakes and only a few in each class care to learn the subject, much less actually comprehend it, the effects of those first fifty minutes last well into the semester and, perhaps if you do it right, into the livelihoods of students many years down the road.

I have yet thrown out anyone in my first grade students' classes.  I can't tell if this is a good or bad thing yet. :) Though I may have been astringent, I can tell that I have grabbed the attention of many of the students.  Simply put, I feel good about where I am with teaching right now; at least, with the first week.

Furthermore, with teaching much more grounded in my mind, my heart, and hence my life, I feel a vigor within me that I did not feel last semester.  I was always too exhausted last semester, too tired to do anything else.  

This year I feel very different.  There is a life and a jubilation within me, an excitement and positivity that goads me to strive on and experience all I can.  Perhaps closely tied to my resolutions to think more positively and strive on diligently, I look forward to a semester of unforgettable experiences, both in and outside the classroom.

Thanks for reading!  I hope you're all well!

Log42: Back

Back in Jeonju, and I teach tomorrow.  The new semester begins.

I'm exhausted.

Here we go...

Log36: Welcome Back!

Here I am, Friday evening (by choice; really, it's not as sad as some of you young folk may think it sounds) back in the homestay, relaxing, reflecting and cleaning my room after having just completed my school's winter English camp this afternoon.

Before I tell you about my winter English camp, let me say a few words about being back in Korea.

Many colleagues told me that as much of the United States--in all of its individuality diversity liberty and brimming glory--as we might enjoy, there would come a time when we would return to Korea and arrive with a curious sense of...home.  There would be a sigh of relief, a smile of warmth, a gravity that settles us in the most relaxing way possible.

Sure, it varies and depends on the person.  Sure, it matters what kind of traveling and travel experiences you have before you arrive back in the land of the morning calm.  Sure all those other potential causes and explanations matter to some degree.

But I was willing to give credence where it was due.  And I have been happy to say that my arrival in Korea--nay, more specifically, Jeonju--did feel like a certain home to me.  I felt an ownership of the city, I felt I had come back to a community, I felt as if I had created a bond with the city itself; like I had been a dandelion seed that flew across the Pacific, landed in a more rural region of Korea, and began growing my nascent roots (or what might be barely conceived as roots).

This is not to say this is my new home, because home, to me, has always been where the family is.  And my family, right now, is in California.  That has been, is, and always will be, home; where the family is.*

*1) For this reason, I cannot recall a time in college when I called my dorm room my "home."  I would always go back to my "room," but it was a "home" in as much as any other space I occupied temporarily would have been a home; in as much as the dining hall, the basketball gym, the classrooms, the campus grill, would have been a home.  I became attached to the entire campus certainly, but shied from calling a single room my particular space, or home.  
2) Now my own home which I will come to occupy and own will have a different tincture to the title of home. The title will be imbued with a different color, respect, and meaning.  But the kind of home that I now refer to, where you know that even at your worst the home will remain imperturbable, adamant in its position to be your touchstone and guide, is a home that never yields to give you a sense of ease and comfort and confidence.


Now, one could argue that anything after a twelve-hour flight in a three-seater would look and feel like a home.  Trust me, I could not agree more.

Yet, I guess I have become familiar with the city to some capacity.  I have met different kinds of people in a variety of lifestyles here: I found my barbershop (beauty shop, really) where the Korean middle-aged women come to shoot the breeze about their children and nephews and husbands and they see me and urge me to eat one of the pastries they brought in; I work at a school whose teachers I spend time with daily and whose students I run into often and engage with smiles laughs and all; I attend orchestra rehearsals whose members come from all over the province and span jobs ranging from pediatrician to elementary school teacher; I frequent a coffee shop whose owners and workers I have become friends with; I often take taxi rides simply because 90% of the taxi drivers in this city are disproportionately kind, interesting, and engaging people who seem to actually care whether you have a nice day or not; I live in an apartment placed smack in the middle of all these different parts of the city, with a family who both abide by and repudiate the many stereotypes of a modern Korean family.

I have come to love this quaint city for all its peculiarities and idiosyncracies, a place visibly teetering between modernization and the old guard, between wanting to develop and holding on to its title as the immovable and eternal bastion of traditional, historic Korea.

This is what happens.  Dammit.

I'm too tired now to say something about English camp.

Next time...

Much love; thanks for reading.

Log21: These are the days...

These are the days that I've been missing

Give me the taste give me the joy of summer wine

These are the days that bring new meaning

I feel the stillness of the sun and I feel fine

Sometimes when the nights are closing early

I remember you and I start to smile

Even though now you don't want to know me

I get on by, and I go the extra mile

These are the times of love and meaning

Ice of the heart has melted away and found the light

These are the days of endless dreaming

Troubles of life are floating away like a bird in flight

These are the days

These are the days

These are the days

I've thought you said that love would last forever

Leave and that the tears would end for good

I told you that we get through any weather

Maybe that didn't work out

But we did the best we could

These are the days that I've been missing

Give me the taste give me the joy of summer wine

These are the days that bring new meaning

I feel the stillness of the sun and I feel fine

 

-Jamie Cullum, "These are the Days" (introduced to me by my dear friend Gerberbaby)

 

Aside from the romantic undertones of this song, these are the days I've been missing in terms of weather.

 

That is to say, the weather here right now, and over the past couple of days, have been near perfection.  I say I have been missing that because I have been spoiled rotten by California, both northern and southern.

 

Yes, my dear fellow Californians, the weather has been almost as good as California; like those autumn days in Claremont when you walk over the leaves on Marston Quad on a Thursday mid-afternoon and listen to the wind whisper into your ear; like the early winter days of Palo Alto where the sun shines in all its glory but the breeze has just the right amount of bite, that hint of icy that gives you the perfect excuse to you wear your favorite coat or jacket and anticipate in all your childish giddiness the winter that is to come; like those unreasonably busy days when you have so much to do and so much to prepare for, but you make some totally irrational excuse to forget all of it and just go throw the football around, or shoot some hoops, or just lay in the grass and watch the clouds roll around, because you have to, because it's necessary, because otherwise you would be doing the world and all its wonders some great injustice; like those days when you try and you try to accept the reality before you--the sights, sounds, scents, senses,  tastes, thoughts, ideas and emotions--but cannot help but wonder if heaven would resemble what lay in front of you; like those days when you look around stupefied, trying to understand how everything seems so damn beautiful, so wonderful, so happy and so right when you know they aren't and they shouldn't be, and how the only thing wrong with what you are seeing is that there is nothing wrong; like those days when you just ask say to whatever you believe in or whatever look up to, "Thank you." 

Because you genuinely do.  You mean your thanks.  You are grateful, infinitely, for the things you have.

Funny just how much better-than-decent weather can do to you, eh? (Maybe that's why Pomona has had some of the happiest campers in the country..)

So maybe it's the weather.

Maybe everything does just seem better in light of the sun shining and the breeze blowing.

...

...

...

...

...

But could it be?

Could there be a change?

Could I possibly be starting to maybe sorta kinda ish perhaps possibly qualifier qualifier be starting to tolerate, even like, or even--*gasp*-- enjoy my classes here?!

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Maybe it's the weather. ;)

I wouldn't want to get my own hopes up, hahaha. :)

More to say.

Thanks.

Best,

Yours Truly

Log18: This is where I be

There is much to be said about the wonders, tragedies, and mysteries of life.  But sometimes, one wonders what all our efforts to speak about these matters really amount to, because sometimes things are just inexplicable, unreasonable, mystical.

Best wishes.

In other news...

Welcome to Jeonju.  A bridge I across most days...

On the street where I live...

The high-rise apartment where I live...

The living room with my younger host brother. And yes, TJ, that is still the very Nalgene you gave me last year.

My accommodations.

Lifesaver.  My home believes the fumes from the AC machine is unhealthy.

My closet.

 

 My host brother: elementary 6th grade.

The products of our collaborative efforts.

The street my school is on.

My school.

Every hallway in the four-story building looks like this .

The foreboding stairs.

And in case you forgot.

Cheers.

Log11: The Journey Begins

I am currently in Jeonju, a city most famous for its culture and delicious foods.  More specifically, I am in a PC room (a huge computer lab which you pay to mainly play computer games, but in my case exploit 1. the air-conditioning 2. the fast internet connection 3. some alone time).

So let me just begin where I feel is right.

I. Jeonju Friends

I just got back from spending time with Micah and Clint, two of the three other ETAs who are in my city.  We went downtown and met for some coffee, just to see each others' faces and reacquaint ourselves with the familiar.  We really only spent 2.5 hours with each other, but I can honestly say it was energizing and really rejuvenating, just to be in the same room with them.  Clint has an attic to himself, and Micah has her own place in a guest house.  Both of them met Alec, my good friend and fellow Pomona + Fulbright Korea alumnus.  Alec, if you're reading this, I'm sorry we didn't get to meet up.  It's amazing how much good friends and acquaintances can do for you, even for just a couple of hours. 

II. The Family

But how has my time here been?  Overall I feel very lucky.  Let me tell you about my family.

First, they are all very good people.  The 15 year-old high school freshman, the 12 year-old elementary 6th grader, and the older parents are all kind and reasonable human beings, something which pleasantly surprised me since I expected something stranger than this.

The father and mother do not look their ages.  They are in their 50's but the father exercises religiously, and both are very health-conscious (especially the father).  The brothers seem to have a very typical big brother-little brother dynamic, though they seem to get away with more than my brother and I ever did when we grew up.  That said, our parents had the honor of being reputed as very strict (I say that without resentment). 

In any case, the intrafamilial relationships and principles have been delightfully akin to those within my family.  Each person is accorded his/her individual responsibilities and privileges, and afforded the independence not unlike a typical American family.  The children know what they have to do, so the parents trust them to do the homework, go to hakwons (학원: private after-school academies), play/exercise with friends.  The parents in turn like to spend time on their own as well; the father would sit in front of his laptop to work in silence, while the mother naps/reads in the master bedroom.  Meal times are also very individual; you help yourself and eat when you need to because each person has his/her own schedule and errands/tasks to complete.  Such an environment has actually been so eerily familiar to my own home dynamics that I've been second-guessing a lot of situations for fear that I'm misreading or missing some subtlety or deeper truth.  But I think they are as "chill" and similar to my family as they present themselves to be.  This is the reason I feel comfortable sitting here among strangers and not in my house.  Besides, my family does not turn on the giant air-conditioning machine in the house because its fumes are supposedly unhealthy for you.

So how have I, the foreigner/newcomer been fitting into this picture?

The children I think have been slowly adapting to my presence.  I've noticed the past couple of days that they have started to loosen up a bit, smiling more and joking around with me more.  Apparently I can give off a very intimidating vibe at first, so perhaps they got wind of that a bit.  I've been playing cards and basketball with them at night, so I think they've been getting more comfortable.  I do sometimes wonder if I should be much more proactive in getting to know them and spending time with them, but sometimes they just have their doors closed or are spending time with parents in the master bedroom, so I wouldn't want to intrude.  This has been an issue I'm still trying to negotiate since 1. I don't want to be nosy but 2. I also don't want to be the aloof stranger in the house that doesn't become a family member and who ultimately gives the family a less-than-rewarding experience in undertaking this.  My aim, after all, is to treat and be treated as a family member.  I still feel like a guest, and I can sense that my family still feels similarly.  That said, it's only been a few days though.  Also, maybe I shouldn't feel like I should "owe" anyone anything.

III. Teaching

All this aside, tomorrow is my first day teaching.  My co-teacher (he who is responsible for my welfare, adjustment, and success at school throughout the year) just read the Fulbright contract last night, and admitted to me that he didn't realize there were so many things he needed to have ready for me (bank, cell phone, schedule, etc.).  I hope these things get resolved sooner than later.

The nice thing is that my host brother attends the school and I'll probably be teaching him, and he has already begun to provide some insider tips and views on the school: the student body, classroom dynamics and teachers. 

I will probably teach about 15 classes of ~40 students each per week, in addition to a couple of teachers' workshops and an English club for advanced students.  I still don't know what my lesson will look like tomorrow, but that will be tonight's project. 

I am planning to be uncomfortably strict with my students though.  I wasn't able to pull that off the first time I taught (at Camp Fulbright), and I quickly saw the consequences in the second class.  I hope I can really make good on my promise to be strict, because otherwise classroom management--especially with unmotivated students who apparently are common--my year will be a very long one.  Apparently I already can give a very intimidating vibe, so I'll play that up but also be willing and able to stick to my guns and be stern.  I can loosen up later, but the first couple of weeks I will have to be strict.  Wish me luck, because I often am more willing to observe and watch others interact than to take a group of people by the throat and control them.  I am nervous, excited, and anxious.

I also hope I get a good schedule; one that affords me some afternoon time and extends my unofficial weekend even by a few hours.

IV. Music

Other than that, I really hope I find some musical venue very soon to get back into playing music on a regular basis and with a community of musicians.  I e-mailed a former teacher of mine (who plays for the top orchestra in Korea) and am looking around at the Jeonju Symphony Orchestra for opportunities, but I hope I find something soon because that will be a great way to really begin living rather than just come home after I teach and...what, read a book?!  I mean, that is something I've been wanting to do but I came to Korea for more than simply to teach and read good American books.

So that's what is currently preoccuping my thoughts.  Here is a quick retrospective of the past couple of weeks.

V. Saying Goodbyes Sucks

I arrived in Jeonju with my co-teachers and met my host family on Thursday late afternoon at around 4:30/5:00PM.  What preceded that can be deduced from the section title.

Clearly I had underestimated the just how close I had become with my fellow ETAs over the past few weeks.  Clearly I had underestimated just how difficult parting with these once-in-a-lifetime individuals would really be that day.  Clearly I had overestimated my emotional fortitude.

I don't mean to dramatize this, because I did not break down and bawl or sob.  And I'm sorry if that was anticlimactic for you.  But I can tell you leaving them was much more emotionally draining than I had assumed it would be.

All Wednesday we have our "field day" of games and "fun" physical activities with our regional ETAs and other extendees.  We spend Wednesday evening trying to have some last-evening quality times with each other, but knowing that we'll have at least some time Thursday to say our goodbyes.

Thursday comes, everyone is dressed to impress, and we begin the goodbye process in the morning.  Late morning we meet our teachers and principals; some arrive with gifts to welcome the ETAs, others don't (mine didn't).  While we have lunch with them, and I learn that my teachers need to get back to Jeonju ASAP for an evening workshop at which they must be present.  I start getting nervous because I assumed I would have time to say goodbye to the unquantifiably wonderful human beings I've met here and wish to bring back to Jeonju with me. 

The afternoon comes, and I have to be one of the first to leave.  The teachers don't attend the workshop and ask that I get my bags and get ready to book it.  I buy some time since we have our own ETA meeting, but I feel helpless and weak, so much so that when Grace reads me like a book and comes over to talk I act so strangely that I piss her off.  I told her later that I acted so strangely because I was fighting tears. 

I felt rushed, stressed, and flustered.  I felt torn between my obligation to not keep the teachers waiting and making the quickest exit possible possible and paying my thanks and saying my goodbyes to these incredible human beings whom I'm not sure when I'll see again.  So when all these thoughts and feelings became embroiled into a boiling level, it was too late and I was visibly upset.  I could feel the heat in my face, and began to notice other ETAs noticing my discomfort.  I couldn't help but show some twinkling of tears to these people with whom I had clearly grown much more than I ever imagined.  I told this to Grace who I pissed off earlier, and she was gracious enough to understand (no pun intended).

As I hugged each person, I couldn't help but notice something profound, and deeply anchored in each handshake or hug.  I felt among all these hugs and goodbyes was an immense strength, a tremendous gravity and magnetism that refused to let me tear away from these characters.  I can still recall that gut feeling so viscerally.

I was moved.  I am moved.  As I tried to compose myself for the first ten minutes of the car ride with the teachers, I couldn't help but be grateful for the chance to have met this group of individuals.  I couldn't help but thank life and the opportunities I have had to get to even feel this level of simultaneous connection and fragility.  That said, I also couldn't help but remember that all I had been doing the past few months, it seems, has been saying goodbyes.

Was this all because I was "pampered" or not "independent" enough or "clingy" or "weak?"  Was this because I am too "sensitive," "emotional" or "incompetent?"  I don't think so, 1. because I know I wasn't the only one moved and 2. I think it points to something else.

Obviously I'm biased in framing my emotional responses this way because who wants to portray himself as a weak emotional unstable being, but I think that what I felt and how I behaved that day is, at least in part, a testament to what I consider important in my life and what I derive from it: people. 

What makes this world both so beautiful and so tragic is the people.  We learn to live together through dialogue, engagement, argument, and reconciliation.  There is wonder in our interactions, there is fantasy in our disagreements, there is sanctity in the joys we share.  Through the ironies and paradoxes of evil and holy juxtaposed, each living moment is a constant struggle to stay alive in the trenches of every day life.  That we can survive and brave the sufferings we do and live to see another day is a product of never only our individual strength, but always also the existence, support, and work of others around us.  We need each other.  Together we experience fear, sorrow, joy.  Together we survive, and together we move forward.

Such is my conviction, and with a deeply seated core that sustains me I would like to think that the things I felt that day were justified.  Of course emotional response can never -- not even through neuroscience much less psychology -- really be rationalized or explicated so one could say I'm undercutting my own argument, but if one were to take me seriously I think my internal convictions merit some credibility.

Okay, I still have to catch up on the weeks prior, so maybe I'll continue that tonight when I get some time.

More to come, thanks for reading.

Best,
YK

Log10: Just how bad I am at Blogging

I am very bad at blogging and keeping people up to date.  Period.

I think one of the reasons is my tendency to take a lot of time to 1. reflect 2. formulate the words befitting the reflections 3. assemble these befitting words into remotely sensible prose.  Surely other broader factors--such as lack of time in front of a computer--also contribute, but the decision to even begin blogging has always seemed somewhat of an enterprise.  I often wish to know I have at least some amount of time in order to blog, and 98% of the time such allotment just never comes.

In any case; what have you/I/we missed (and I say "I/we" as well because through it all I gain tremendous benefit from these ruminations because through the processes of deliberation, reconciliation and meditation I derive a greater sense of self, a greater understanding of the world, and a greater appreciation for the time I have been given) include the following (note that today is the 20th of August):

Thursday, August 12: My birthday and celebrations

Friday, August 13: Trip to Seoul

-the hotel

-the Embassy

-Ambassador Pool Party

-Evening with friends: beer, drinks

Saturday, August 14:  Trip to DMZ

Sunday, August 15: Family in Seoul and date with Mom

Monday, August 16: Language classes graduation, presentations and awards at Korea University

-Return to Goesan

Tuesday, August 17: Morning meeting, then evening ETA talent show (for which I played flute and pulled off some semblance of flute/beat-boxing)

Wednesday, August 18: ETA Field day with extendees (various field games with regional groups), final goodbyes

Thursday, August 19: Departure Day

-Meeting Principals, VPs, and co-teachers

-Final goodbyes to ETA friends (that sh** was difficult)

-Arrival in the city of Jeonju and meeting my host family

Friday, August 20: Today

-Woke up around 9:30AM

-Ate breakfast, then practiced flute, got internet in my room, then listened to the host father speak about his life for 1.5 hours, then explored the city a bit, got one of the worst haircuts I've ever had (had to go to another place to rectify the situation, to the extent that looking like a newborn got a couple of razors in his hand, sat on your head, and just started swinging his arms recklessly as if to maintain balance can be rectified), started connecting the ETAs via e-mail/chat, hung out with the host brothers, and voila.

And guess what?  Yeah, I'm too tired to write about all this stuff.  And tomorrow apparently I may go hiking early in the morning with the family which is why I want to sleep now.  Great, because hiking is my favorite thing to do.

Here's how my host family subverted my expectations and utmost concern though: they don't go to church.  And I so unnecessarily worried myself over it.

I thought I was about to say something else...

Ah yes.

My host family consists of the mom, the dad, and two boys, a high school freshman and an elementary 6th grader.  Henceforth in my blogs, I will write of these figures with an "h" to precede their respective titles (h for host): hDad, hMom, hBrothers, hBro1 (older), hBro2 (younger).

Okay, time to sleep.  I have so much to say, but so little time.

But there's never enough time for anything.  Ah, the beauty and bane of life, no?