Hitherto Listless.

Things to do today:
- Correct work to be returned to advanced class tomorrow.
- Plan lesson for advanced class.
- Write embassy internship cover letter.
- Update resume.
- Pay for reserved plane tickets for Jeju Halloween.
- Pay for reserved plane ticket to Taiwan.
- Find out yearly school schedule so I can plan my vacations.
- Run.

Things to do in the very near future:
- Shop for a Halloween costume.
- Make copies of Korean language class textbook.
- Reserve plane ticket home for Christmas.
- Buy a suit for Xiao-Jie's wedding.

Busy.

Slapdashery.

Not having a pen isn't what pisses me off. Not having a pen and using it as an excuse for not doing the work is what pisses me off. When I walk around the room and see that you haven't touched the page in front of you for 15 minutes and you shrug and say "No pen", that's when the nice, entertaining foreign teacher goes into a rage blackout. And this is going to continue to happen every class until I remember to ask if everyone has a pen right at the beginning and, if they don't, send them out of the room.

To date, this pen thing is the only thing that makes me lose my cool. Maybe it's because it's like they're rejecting all work, period, no matter how quick or easy it is, rather than refusing to do something that's too hard or too boring. These girls don't even give learning a chance. They've obviously decided that there's nothing worth learning at school, so just switch off your brain and hope you don't get punished today.

As usual, that rant went on longer than it should have, violating the supposed theme of today's post. So here we go to get back on track:

Koreans should never... ever... try to learn a romance language. A student was trying to demonstrate to me her knowledge of French. Do you know what "au revoir" becomes in Korean?

Ohh heu ba heu.

That is the official, romanized pronunciation of "au revoir." It's in the textbook. There are no R's or V's in Korean. Let's try another one: "Tu es libre?"

Tui e li beu heu?

I don't understand why "tu" becomes "tui" because that sound EXISTS in Korean. The only explanation is that it's part of a government conspiracy to make Koreans sound like total morons in all Western countries to discourage emigration.

(Changeover)

The process of cultural adjustment is sinusoidal, and I think I'm experiencing the first lowpoint of my stay here. The cheerful front I put up at home is increasingly harder and more tiring, my motivation to learn Korean, not to mention my Korean itself, is dwindling, and work is not only monotonous, but often discouraging, as my recent reports about my lesson this week should have shown. Getting out more or having more fun doesn't fix this disposition; I need a mental break from Korea.

[Meanwhile...]

"Baby Got Back" is incredibly popular in this country. Whereas you might hold a fondness for it that necessitates a knowing chuckle when you hear it unexpectedly at a college party, 45 year old Korean women have it as their cellphone ringtone simultaneously with rebellious, dew-ragged teens blasting it from the interiors of their riced-out Hyundais (now that's got to be redundant). There's absolutely no question as to whether they understand any of the words or not. They don't. I don't think they could even grasp the concept if they did. Talking to a Korean about "junk in the trunk" would be like trying to describe color to a blind guy. They simply have no point of reference.

Zombies: Addendum.

I hate to keep harping on this, especially when I have to bump ridiculously long posts that took a lot of effort to write from the top, but I keep getting interesting results back from these classes doing the "Perfect School" lesson.

Today, one group's best idea for a better school was to hire a "fat teacher." Considering I have all the groups make their lists of ideas side by side on the whiteboard, this first ranked item was sandwiched between 4 others all requesting a "handsome teacher." So I thought it was a joke.

Turns out the truth is a lot stranger. It once again took my co-teacher to step in to explain the students' rationale. Fat people are honest and patient, which I guess makes them the opposite of smart people, who are, as previously established, "arrogant and selfish." So I asked, incredulously, "Why not just write 'hire an honest and patient teacher'? Why do they have to be fat?" I don't think they understood the question.

Article 2: One group asked for a sexual education class. I was ECSTATIC! This is honestly the first inspired answer in over 200 students and a pretty good one to boot. I actually got to tell them that I think it's very important that teenagers learn about the human body, sex, diseases, and other concerns related to health. My co-teacher with her jaw open can go fuck herself, the liberal hippie train is coming to Korea, baby! Next stop, teaching them about having "partners" instead of husbands and wives. (That's for you, Rafiq! Holla!)

All in all, it took a night's sleep for me to get over the shallowness of their responses and to stop being frustrated at the students. Give blame where blame is due. Zombies can't be held at fault, they don't even have brains. Being upset over these kids' critical thinking abilities is like getting pissed at a can of spam for not being able to pole vault.

Oh Those Pohang Nights...

Let me tell you about a swell weekend. And may it entice you to visit scenic Pohang for yourself in the future.

Sarah "Bonecrusher" Kwon arrived at the Pohang bus terminal one cloudy, late Friday afternoon. She was greeted by Jon "Jung" Hung who had just been spared a $7 cab fare by an awkwardly silent ride from his unexpectedly generous host grandfather, which is nothing to sneer at if you convert from dollars to mandu.

After a tearful embrace and an Irish jig, Jung and the Bonecrusher went off to score some kimbap (think sushi without the sushi), but had to make it hasty due to a tight schedule. For that very night, they were to be transported to a magical world of scintillating symphony music and retarded children with ADD. These are both lies. The music was, for the most part, familiar and repetitive (Mozart) and the kids weren't actually retarded. But the experience was wholesome and also added another member to their party: Mariah "Mariah" Perrin.
(Music performed by the Pohang Symphony Orchestra, free tickets courtesy of host mom.)

Mariah and the Bonecrusher soon became fast friends (is that redundant?), and before long it was agreed that she would spend the night at Mariah's apartment to spare her the expense and experience of staying in a porn motel all by her lonesome. (Although we found a promising one called "Motel Hole-in-One" near the bus station.) Jung tried to tag along, but it was made clear that this would be a private slumber party. However, before all this occurred, there was much important business to tend to: heavy drinking, ice cream consumption, and noraebang! It was at this point that Traci "Stretch-It-Out" Kutaka also decided to join in the festivities. All three tasks were completed successfully with no loss of life, except when the women sang Superfreak and Jung died a little on the inside.

This pseudonym, third-person shit is too hard. The next morning, Traci, the Bonecrusher, and I met up with Rachel and had a pleasant lunch at I don't remember where. WAIT. TAKKALBI! YES! Wonderful, delicious takkalbi. We desperately needed a fix after being away from Chuncheon for so long. We shot over to the bus station after that and met up with George, who is quickly becoming top of my list in the "good sport" rankings. This guy is always up for anything. We wanted to work out where we'd be staying that night (obviously the 5 of us wouldn't all be crashing at Mariah's), so we went to check out a hotel recommended by my co-teacher: Hotel Valentine. Yeah, still sounded sketchy, but it's a step up from "Hole-in-One."

Turned out the hotel was REALLY nice, as far as cheap places to stay go in Korea. Fit 5 people easily... probably could have snuck in 3 or 4 more if we needed to. Floors were clean, bathroom was clean, complimentary bungee cord for XTREME EMERGENCIES because apparently what you do if there's a fire in Korea is throw yourself out the nearest window. (Ah... never in my life have I had a more opportune time to use the word "defenestrate." But honestly, there's no way to use that word seriously and not sound like a ridiculous literary douchebag.) Once we chucked our stuff, we headed down to the convenience store to get some snacks for the beach. Oh, did I mention the hotel was beachside? So who wants to visit Pohang now?

Don't start thinking marble sand and azure waves though. Pohang is, after all, basically one big steel factory. The beach is part of a bay and, in fact, looming dark and dirty on the opposite side of it is the behemoth POSCO itself, 3rd largest steel producer in the world, eternally spewing its putrid earth-bile into the air. Scrap metal washes up on shore, and the ocean is an ominous looking black tint, as if something large and unfriendly is lurking just below the surface. Nevertheless, us scrappy yanks made the best of things and parked our backsides on a nice patch of sand and got to work snacking and chatting. At a defining moment of the weekend, someone realized that we had 3 iPods between 5 people. Bear with me here. We decided to share headphones and have ourselves a little dance party on the beach. Now picture this scene: 5 foreigners in a circle on the beach, dancing to music that no one else can hear, and who are, in fact, not even listening to the same music themselves. Now, let's all say it together. They look... like winners! No, sorry, the correct answer was "ridiculous."

But we FELT like winners! And if that's not the most important thing in American society then send me back to the railroads and I'll build this country up right the second time. The iPod dance party was an important appetizer, whetting our hunger for boogie that would ultimately be satiated later that night. But before that could happen, we had another engagement: Soccer.

Not playing of course, but watching a professional Korean National League soccer game. I have a co-teacher that is rather obsessed with our city's soccer team, and he has since brought me to three of their games, all of which have been more exciting than the last. Well, we get ourselves to the stadium and realize tickets are a tad pricier than expected, $15 instead of $5. I didn't think this was a crippling difference, but the look of horrified despair on the Bonecrusher's face told me everything. Drastic measures had to be taken. I clenched my fists and silently begged the gods for a miracle. Yeah, ok, so my co-teacher shows up and pays for all our tickets. Extreme guilt follows and we try to force money on him, but he will have none of it. He's also brought soda and about a dozen rolls of kimbap for us to eat at the game. Crazy!

I'm losing steam here, the length of this post is out of control. Pohang was ranked second in the league last season while the team they played that night was ranked first, so you could say they were rivals. Tension was high, and Pohang ended up winning 3 - 2. It's been a while since I've been to a sporting event where things actually make me jump out of my seat with excitement.

So now comes the highlight of the weekend, or perhaps my life: my very first visit to a Korean booking club. What is booking, you ask? Well, let me paint you a picture.

Imagine a huge room, dimly lit. Tables take up roughly 80% of the space, and are bussed by well-dressed waiters in suits with earpieces and microphones. Ornate desserts adorn the tables as well as bottles of beer and soju. The other 20% is the dance floor, positioned at the very front, like a stage, and was completely empty upon our arrival. Borderline elevator music floats lazily in the air.

I was pissed off. There were flyers for this place all over the downtown area, and Saturdays are advertised as "Sexy Dance Night." I had psyched myself up for some god damned sexy dance and there was no trace of dance to be found, much less any sexy. Luckily, I was rolling with a fine crew, and the intoxicating taste of groove we got at the beach lit a fire in our hearts: we were determined to fill our bellies with funk that night, whether anyone else in that place was or not.

But wait, before we knew it, music starts playing, strobe lights start to strobe and we beeline it onto the dance floor. It's decent music, and we dance pretty hard, but something is strange. No one else is really dancing, just sitting at their tables watching us. Watching.

After a couple of songs it seems like some people are breaking out of their shells and coming down, but a majority of them are girls. Girls everywhere. Yeah, there are some Korean dudes trying to crip walk over in the corner, but mainly all the girls in the club have filed down to the stage. And the guys... they watch. Why do they watch?

Because every 12 minutes, the music cuts out, the house lights come up... and that mind-numbing, pansy-ass elevator music hums back to life. Everyone flees the stage like cockroaches seeking shelter when you turn on the bathroom light. Why? Because it's booking time!

The waiters descend upon the girls like birds of prey, and without saying a word, grab their wrists and lead them, docilely, to different tables. The men have been watching the stage and sizing up the women, deciding which ones they like. They can then summon a waiter and tell them which one they want once the dancing ends. I don't know the precise cost of booking a girl, but some guys had 5 or 6 at a time at their tables while others only had one. I assume this means they are the "high rollers" of the booking world, but it's all just pathetic to me. I think everyone in our group felt the same way, because the way we started behaving was a blatant display of our utter lack of respect for the establishment and everyone there.

Jumping around like fools, dancing on the raised portion of the stage, girls on girls, guys on guys, I was wearing a black beater and carrying a purse for a while. We were flipping off this exploitative behavior by being as flamboyant and unavailable as we could possibly look and, in my opinion, they got the message. Despite being some of the hottest girls in the club, and definitely the best dancers, not a single one of our group got booked.

So, didn't that sound like a splendid day and a half? If you have made it all the way to the end of this, then you deserve some sort of cash prize. But in the absence of cash on the internet, I'll compensate you with an e-card. Just leave a comment with your email address and how many times we've made out (I'm trying to get a total lifetime tally) and I'll send it right off.

If It Ain't Broken...

I'm teaching a lesson this week on "The Perfect School". Students get to be the new principal of their school, with unlimited access to funding and creativity. I thought it would be an appropriate topic considering they just finished a grueling 4 days straight of midterm exams and are now, with nary half a day's break, right back in the swing of things: class until 5pm and mandatory, supervised self-study until 10.

I was excited to see what kind of things they would get rid of outright, what they would decide only to tweak, and especially what would not even occur to them to change. It tickled me to tell them of our homeland where students go to school for 8 hours a day and then basically get to do whatever the fuck they want. Do you realize that students don't even play sports in this country? Unless they're continuing to develop a gift or talent discovered at a younger age when they actually had free time, their life from 16 to 19 is school and only school. High school here is a far cry from the juvenilely blissful indulgence of our own interests and curiosity that I'm sure we all took for granted.

But the more classes I do this lesson with, the more discouraged I get, and once again I find myself needing to slam the Korean education system. I explain the lesson, distribute the handout, go over the instructions and example questions, ask if they understand, receive the resoundingly monotonous "yes", and let them go to work. The instructions I give them are as follows: write whatever the hell you want that you think would make school better. Literally.

Instead, I get one of two things during the individual work phase of the exercise:

1) Despite my instructions that they can write anything they want (free ice cream at lunch, 10 minute classes, pop star teachers), the student has numbered the example questions and is answering each of them with one word answers. "What kind of teachers would you hire?" "Handsome." "How would you make classes more interesting?" "Colorful (classroom)." "How long should classes be?" "Short."

2) The student has sat there staring at a blank piece of paper the entire time, and this accounts for almost 1/4 of the class. As with any assignment where they're not doing work, I walk over and try to get them enthused. I joke with them, and they say "ok, ok" and pick up their pen and hold it against the paper. I walk away and come back 5 minutes later to see that still nothing has been written.

I could understand this if I was teaching a class on grammar or some obscure aspect of American culture that had no impact on their lives, but essentially this class is designed for them to list WHY they hate their lives and what it would take to make it better. This is me giving them a genie in a lamp, ready to make them Sultana, and them staring at it impassively, waiting for the bell to ring so they can leave.

I don't think these are bad students, not in the sense of being misbehaved or disinterested. I thought and still think this is a lesson that would work with our traditional conception of "bad kids". I can't speak to the experience of being a teacher in the states, but all my memories of the bad kids in school were ones who basically preferred talking to learning. Nothing was really that impossibly difficult in middle school or high school, it was just a question of our relative attention spans. But I feel like this exercise would cater to even the lowest of the low level students. It is inconceivable to me that you can give someone in prison an assignment saying "write down what you would do if you were set free today and had enough money to do anything", and having them throw their hands up in the air in frustration at how hard the question is. Anyone with emotions or an opinion should be able to do it.

That's why I don't think these girls are bad students. They're zombies.

More or less every response from every student reflected the third item in the aforesaid categories of expected responses: obliviousness to problems. Now before you chastise me for judging what does and does not constitute a "problem" for a student in a foreign culture, let me explain. The reason why their answers showed that they don't know why they are miserable is because their answers did not actually solve the problems they are having. They were either outrageous fantasies or trite, self-indulgent desires. Being able to use cellphones at any time during the day was a unanimous response. "But then in class you'll just be talking to your friends or texting and never pay attention," I say. Blank stares and then, "It's ok, it's ok. We love cellphone!"

Now take, for example, the criteria to be a good teacher:
1) Handsome
2) Kind
3) Fair
4) Tall

These are the top 4 answers from the last 3 classes, a sample size of about 100 students. I typically ask "What about 'smart'?" To which every class has vehemently responded "NO!" After some consultation with my co-teachers, I find out the reason the students are giving is "Smart teachers are arrogant and selfish. They expect too much from us."

The Korean education system has bred the creativity right out of their students. When your only answer to how your 14 hour school day can be improved is "Make the classroom more colorful", then you, m'am, are a zombie; a brainwashed shell of a human being. School is not a place where you come to learn, for your own interest or personal improvement or whatever. And it's not a place where you need to have conscious thought. School is a place where you come and people you have no respect for throw as many facts at you as they can and hope some of it sticks to the inside of your skull. Whatever sticks, that's how smart you are, and that's what determines everything you can be in life.

Make Like A Tree...

I seriously think my co-teacher just throws a different random spice from his cupboard into boiling water every morning, brings it to work in a thermos, and calls it tea. Every morning I get a paper cup with different plantlife in it: today it was rosemary. I belched in class and it felt like I had just eaten an entire rotisserie chicken.

Mushboombastic.

Here's how it was explained to me: "Pine tree mushrooms are $400 for one kilogram, so we are having a secret lunch. Please don't tell anyone."

Well, lunch turned out to be pine tree mushrooms and river snail soup. Yep, there were hundreds of those little bastards floating in that soup. It wasn't particularly good.

But the mushrooms... were like an orgasm in my mouth. And I don't mean like, someone else's orgasm taking place in my mouth, which would connote a negative taste. I mean if my mouth were also my genitalia and was capable of an orgasm localized to that area of my body, that's kind of how these mushrooms tasted: like my mouth was ejaculating.

Apparently these are the most expensive mushrooms... drum roll please... cue lightning... IN THE WORLD! *maniacal laughter* These delicacies of Asia, most popular in Japan, can sell for over $2000 per kilogram in the early season when their quality is highest grade, and I was tossing them down my gullet like swedish fish. Normally small talk might get in the way of devouring these fungal nuggets of gold, but hey! Sorry! Don't speak Korean! Now run along and leave me with my precious.

One Cup Pity With A Pinch Of Disappointment.

Ok, I understand that these girls are in the lowest level class in their grade, meaning that they represent the worst students in the school... but honestly, when you can't focus on a game of BINGO for more than 20 seconds, something is wrong with your brain. I was even offering a candy prize to the winner. You would seriously rather stare blankly into space for 15 minutes than participate in one of the lowest-brain-power, least-effort-required games known to man with a chocolate incentive to boot?

So I played pronunciation Bingo with my kids where they fill in their boxes with words from minimal pairs. I had literally said two words, I swear to God about 20 seconds had passed, and this girl starts filling in every space with her pencil until her notebook page is solid black. Then she holds it up to her friend triumphantly and goes "Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! Every bingo!" Then she assumes her typical slouched position and goes into total mental hibernation for the rest of class. Unbelievable.

I guess while I'm on the subject of pet peeves in class, I absolutely can't stand it when students are dismissive. It takes EFFORT for some of these girls to be as ignorant as they are of what is going on in class, and that's not a frustrated and bitter exagerration. Here's what I mean: every morning I ask the class "How are you today?" and everyone will scream out answers ranging from "Fine" to "You are so gorgeous!" Then, over the course of the class, students will lose interest and go into cranial shutdown like I said before. I'll walk right up to a student 10 minutes later and ask her "How are you?", a question that I am absolutely certain she understands. It takes her 3 seconds just to realize I'm talking to her, and so I repeat the question... "How are you, today?" She honestly has not even tried listening to the question, and immediately, I'm talking milliseconds, turns to her friend and asks "What did he say?" Her friend will either translate "How are you?" into Korean or, more commonly, have absolutely no idea herself.

So what's the response when a student has no idea what's going on? It's rarely the reticent silence that you'd expect in an American language classroom, or even the sensible "I don't understand." Many of them answer "How are you?" with "Ok, thank you. Goodbye."

Blatantly disrespectful. It's simply telling me "I don't know why I'm here, I don't want to be here, and you can't make me learn anything I don't want to. Now move along."

I'll spare you my bitter commentary on the Korean education system until a later time. Better to leave this post oriented on the hollow, disillusioned products of their infernal machine.

Fin.