Snippets of the Insane

My apologies for not having posted in a while. As I had somewhat anticipated, the daily routine of work and marking has quickly lost its novelty and my life here has become entirely naturalised. As such, I have not taken my camera out and about too often because not much seems all that crazy and special anymore. I feel kind of bad about posting long chunks of text without any visual reprieve so I promise I will make more of an effort to get some photos for future posts. In lieu of many pics today, then, I will just list a few easily-digestible non-sequiturial anecdotes that show just how zany life can get here in an eerily normal way.

1) We had to pinky-swear a police officer that we would be quiet
A few weeks back it was the birthday of one of my co-workers. She threw a party in her apartment which is a place very similar to my old apartment (the 3-story walk-up), only with a lot less stink. The tiny room soon became packed with about 20 waygus all drinking and generally making merry. We were just leaving for the bar around midnight when the cops showed up. (As is entirely logical, there is no legal closing time for licensed establishments here and bars in this country only close when there is nobody left to serve). The cops looked a little intimated to see so many large, well-dressed drunk whiteys but they made their best attempt to tell us to be quiet nonetheless (a finger to the lips is the international sign for ‘sush’). We nodded our acknowledgement and did our best body language for “we’re on our way out,” which the cops seemed to somewhat understand. My friend Matt and I were the first to get outside and were awkwardly waiting around for the rest of the crew in front of the building with the cops still standing there waiting for us. The one came up to Matt and said “I speakeee English; you quiet or jail.” Matt was like “OK sure no problem; WE LEAVE NOW, ” which the officer seemed to accept as a reasonable substitute for incarceration if we would be true to our word. He nodded and said “OK.” Then, just to throw some sand in our eyes, he held his fist up to Matt, pinky erect, and said “promise.” Matt chuckled and pinky-swore the cop, who solidified the deal by touching his thumb to Matt’s. Yessir, apparently the pinky-swear is an official, legally binding agreement here.
(N.B. I’m sure that’s not true but it sure was weird to pinky-swear a uniformed officer).

2) I ate chicken anuses – plenty of them
Street meat is one delectable treat that is ubiquitous around Asia but sadly lacking in Western culture. It’s great to be able to go up to a shack that has delicious smells wafting from it and consume some fantastic variant of mystery meat (usually on a stick) for less than a buck. Not long ago my friend Mike and I decided we’d try out something new – a bunch of identical pieces of a certain unidentifiable chicken part skewered onto a stick. The taste was a unique but not offensive brand of dark meat chicken and the texture was extremely rubbery and tough. I had no idea what part of the animal we were eating but something in the back of my head kept saying “you’ve seen this before and it’s hilarious.” After going home and re-watching the Hong Kong episode of my beloved travel show No Reservations it finally dawned on me where I’d seen this meat before. It is indeed chicken butt and is indeed a specialty dish here in Korea and around most of Southern Asia. I did not have my camera with me so I robbed this picture from the internet somewhere, but this is pretty much what a bunch of chicken anuses on a stick look like. I am a very adventurous eater and was not fazed in the least by having consumed this product, but many of the people to whom I relate this story retch or squirm or swear or some combination thereof. I must admit, it is a little weird when you can actually see into the rectum hole you are about to ingest. Dark meat indeed.

3) The Korean education system thinks it’s reasonable to try and explain biological evolution a 5-year-old child
A little over a month ago my kindergarten class got to go on every child’s favourite school-time adventure: a field trip! What’s even better is that it was an entire science museum exhibit dedicated to the life’s work of your favourite scientist and mine, Charlie Darwin. This is all well and good – evolution can never be taught too young lest crazy religious zealots try to hammer logic and rational though out of an impressionable young brain. Just how much new insight on humanity these kids took away from the exhibit, though, is debatable. This is especially true considering that some of the signs around the museum were offering the image seen here as a visual clarification of the process. I’m still not too certain why our species didn’t keep those dagger-hands when we had them (see stage 3). I am sure that we could at least have turned them into some sort of super cool mate-luring spandrel. Regardless of the educational value of the trip, one point that I again took away from this venture was that the Koreans really value a high-quality education from a very young age. Again, the debate over a lost childhood and overworking your 5-year-old ensues, but it is an admirable undertaking at the very least. If nothing else, the sojurn was a great day for me to get my own personal laughs out of the situation. Everybody repeat after me: “allopatric speciation!” Most children remain silent, blinking and confused, while the brave ones attempt it: “alo..prreee...sprrr(mumble)..."
(fade to silence).

4) This country is so sheltered from certain kinds of Western decadence that I often encounter hilariously inappropriate unwitting mistakes
Walking into class the other day I noticed one of my grade 3 students was wearing a polo shirt with the words “pleasant garden” emblazoned across the back. Nothing out of the ordinary here: there are all manner of nonsensical but innocuous sayings on t-shirts here that are always a little amusing if not overtly confusing. What made this shirt particularly hilarious was that directly beneath these words was a large reproduction of the image seen here. The craziest thing about the kid wearing this to school was not that he didn’t understand what it meant (he surely didn’t), but that his parents were so clueless that they purchased it for him in the first place. To top it all off, even the English-speaking, Western-familiar Korean staff at my school did not understand the faux-pas that had been made. It’s true that Korea is like 100% free of drugs, but it surprised me just how deeply this lack of exposure to the world of non-alcoholic intoxication permeates the culture. I mean, c’mon; even the crustiest, most conservative elderly folk back home know what a freakin’ pot leaf looks like.

A related incident involved me receiving a “thank you” card 2 weeks ago on what is called “Teacher’s Day” in Korea. (It seems to be another Hallmark type deal-y for which you’re supposed to purchase flowers and cards). I received all manner of funny sayings and odd translations of appreciation over the course of the day, but none was stranger than a specific store-bought one that read: “Always for You: I want to spend some time with you just the two of us.” I’m pretty sure no grade 2 teacher back home ever received a card from their students that said that. Again the level of inappropriateness here is staggering but I just find it so funny that simple mistakes like this are made completely unknowingly by both students and their parents alike.

It would seem as though knife-handed early hominids, pinky-swearing cops, anal cavities on sticks, and sexually suggestive teacher’s day cards are all just par for the course here. Comprehensively I think the weirdest thing about these varied crazy encounters is that they all seem so... well, normal. After only a few weeks here you truly don’t even bat an eye anymore when you see things like army guys walking hand-in-hand down the street or heterosexual couples dressed 100% exactly the same (right down to their ankle-bands). As my Asiaphilic friend Christian succinctly puts it: “white people in Korea are just like ghosts floating through the future.”

And we’re laughing the whole time.

Teaching II – Elementary

Boring alert: very few pictures!

Contrary to the hype, the rest of my non-kinder day is really not all that exciting. The feeling of the squeezies is replaced by a genuine sense of accomplishment in seeing your kids’ progress and the intermittent lulls in class attention and energy are slightly less excruciating. Otherwise, I am in the same classroom all day with the same tiny chairs and the same weather, season, and number-related vocabulary words adorning my walls.

I have to say that there is a lot of honour and pride that goes along with the job. There are few better feelings in the world than watching the eyes of a young one light up at having received an answer to a burning question or in hearing an enthused “really?! Cool!” when they encounter some nifty new fact about the world around them. Indeed, imparting knowledge on the younger generation is an exciting and empowering experience I had honestly not anticipated. (Strange realisation – I am no longer part of the youngest generation on this planet). The amount of influence you have over these kids is truly something. Indeed, the pressure is high and it’s very important that you’re on top of your game and man enough to handle real-life sit’ations every minute of the day lest you lead these kids astray or warp their fragile young minds.

To be sure, teaching non-kindergarten youngsters is not without its share of annoyances. Some kids don’t care at all about their studies because this isn’t real school to them and their parents are just making them go. I have still not figured out the specific system but I believe that the hogwan is akin to what an after-school music or art class would be back home. That is, you can send your kid there for an hour or three after or between their real public school classes against their will. The kid gets additional learning (in this case in generic school subjects like writing and social studies) and your bank account gets smaller. I am teaching what is, in essence, an after-school program. It just also happens to be school. So while kids back home are playing soccer and karate and taking piano lessons after school, these kids are going to school #2. After school #2, though, they still have these more exciting extra-curriculars to attend as well. Mostly this jam-packed day means your average 1st grader usually goes to bed around 11 or 12 after a damn hard day’s work and gets up again at 7am to do it all over again. (See my earlier note about Asians taking over the world sometime soon).

Doing this job makes me realise that the Korean hogwan (or at least mine) really does trust an undergraduate degree from a Western institution as a true indicator of teaching ability. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t reflect on how important my job is to these kids or just how much of an impact my quality-of-teaching and energy level on any given day (or lack thereof) has on my children and the education they receive. This fact is an important one to keep in my head in order to keep my laziness and apathy in check but it can also make for some pretty exhausting evenings when I am tired and would otherwise want to just assign busy work or let the kids chat.

Sometimes I can get frustrated with the quality, style, or content of the material I have to teach. I am lucky enough not to have to design my own lesson plans, so at least there is less work to do on the prep side of things. The flip side of this pre-designed curriculum, though, is that I have to teach the exact page numbers and topics it says I have to teach on any given day. I have 3 different Social Studies classes a week and the texts for such are all über-American. While it’s nice for me to learn new things about the American constitution and how Mexicans are integrating into Colorado society, I feel that these kids would be better off learning about something with which they have more familiarity. Having a Canadian teach Koreans about the American Midwest is, well, strange at best.

All of the kids in my Social Studies classes are in either grade 1 or grade 2 and each of them is more or less completely fluent. The quality of their thought processes is on par with about a grade 4 or 5 back home and the striking thing is that this is their second language. I’m sure I’d be even more amazed at how smart they are if I could converse with them in their native tongue. My other 2 classes, though, are lower level kids around the same age who just started learning English last year. The respective pros and cons of these two types of class are thus: the lower levels are a breeze outside of the class because there is very little (or very simplistic) marking to be done. The in-class hours can be a tad tedious, though, because of the strain on both the kids and I to communicate with each other effectively across the language barrier. The more advanced students, however, are engaged and interactive in class, which makes the hour go by much faster. These classes each merit me a few hours of paper-marking each week, though, so I guess in the end it all evens out.

As I conclude this elongated, fairly dry account of my daily life here I realise that no matter where you are or what you are doing in this world, there will always be factors both good and bad upon which you can dwell to construct an opinion about your life. I suppose that this sentiment is quite fitting here in Korea – a country whose flag embodies just this sentiment with the eum-yang symbol as its central element.

I am sure that forever after I will look back on my life here with feelings of both frustration and admiration but I believe that it is this mixed sentiment that comprises a large and necessary part of all human experience. “Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so” may well be right. I have both qualms and passions about certain aspects of my work and at the end of the day it both frightens me away from and seduces me towards a future career as a teacher in some capacity. No matter which way you slice my side of the job, though, I still think I’d still prefer to have had a carefree childhood like the one I did than to be up past 11 doing homework in a foreign language when I was still in grade 2. If you’re still reading this and you have anything even remotely more productive you should be doing, go do it now. With these super-brainy, super-studious, fluently English children entering the workforce in the next 15 years, you won’t have a job for long. Slacker.