waygookin

According to my temporary driver's license, I am officially a Californian. Tonight marks my one-week anniversary in the Bay Area, but I find myself feeling just as foreign here as I ever did in Seoul.

The thing is, in Seoul, everyone knew I was foreign. If I got in the wrong line at the post office? Whatever, she's white and can't read the signs. If I stared at the bus routes while six buses passed me because I couldn't figure out which one I wanted? No big deal, she's just trying to sound out the names of the stops. If I totally screwed up restaurant protocol and mistakenly ordered a sock instead of a dinner? It's kind of cute; the foreigner thinks she knows what she's doing. It was expected that I'd make incredible mistakes on a regular basis, and I actually had a blast laughing at myself.

When I announced I was moving to Cali, nearly everyone agreed that this would be much easier than moving to a new country. After all, the language, the currency, the alphabet, and the fast food restaurants would all be exactly the same as Ohio (with the exception of In-N-Out burger and its unnecessarily complicated secret menu). Unfortunately, I've stumbled across some subtle differences that make me feel like I might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says "I most certainly do not belong here."

It's just little things, really. Like when the girl at the grocery store pushed my cart out to my car and helped me load my bags into the truck, I asked her if I was supposed to tip her, and she kindly told me she couldn't accept tips but was just trying to be nice. I felt like an idiot for even asking. Then today at the DMV, the clerk asked for my passport to apply for a new driver's license, and I hadn't even considered that she might want to see that. After waiting for an hour to be helped in the first place, I had to drive home and get my passport, and by the time someone could get around to helping me when I returned, it was too late to take the written driver's test.  The clerk told me I'd have to come back another day to start the process over, and I must have looked like I was about to cry because she changed her mind and let me take it anyway.

Multiple times throughout the day, I find myself feeling about two inches tall as I realize that things aren't done quite the same way here. Thus far, I haven't done anything law-breaking (to my knowledge), but the menial things I just can't get right keep me feeling resolutely in the "out-of-state" camp. In Korea, it was obvious I didn't quite belong and I was stumbling my way through everything. Here, I feel like I'm simply too dumb to complete basic tasks.

If I haven't mentioned it recently enough, I miss being in Seoul. But tonight after making a fool of myself at the DMV, I made soup in the microwave (because I have one!), sat on my couch (because I have one!), and watched a movie on my tv (because I have one!). I suppose once I get to the other side of that ominously steep learning curve, life here won't be so bad.

Having the amazing city of San Francisco a thirty-minute drive away helps quite a bit too. Courtney and I took the ferry over on Sunday morning, and we chatted with some of the most delightful people I've ever met. A Chinese woman who knitted Angry Birds hats, a man selling surprisingly difficult wire puzzles, a hippie photographer who invited me to let me stay at his commune up north whenever I'd like, and a cab driver who offered to pick me up at my apartment any time I wanted a chauffeured ride into the city. I bought some melted wine bottles for my apartment and Courtney stole a set of chopsticks from the best dim sum restaurant in the state before we sat along the water, contemplating whether the Golden Gate had been photoshopped onto the skyline. I'd seriously consider becoming a panhandler if it meant I could spend every day in that city. And oh the languages! One of my favorite things about being in Korea was being surrounded by words I couldn't understand. In San Fran, I swear I heard a dozen languages in an hour. I love knowing I'm smack in the middle of a ton of different cultures, yet for that moment, we're all experiencing the same thing (man, I'm sounding pretty hippie already, huh?).

This post totally derailed from where I had planned for it to go...

... but isn't that the way life is sometimes? And it's those unexpected turns that end up taking you where you never knew you wanted to be.

Romance, passivity, and belligerent drunks (not in that order)

Today is White Day in Korea. For those of you not cursed enough to live in a country where they celebrate three separate gag-me-now holidays, allow me to explain. Back in February, we celebrated Valentine's Day, but here, they call it "Red Day." On Red Day, girls are required to give their men something covered with hearts, then the men return the gesture (I've heard they're supposed to return it three-fold, but I have no proof of this) exactly one month later. One month after White Day, all the depressed and lonely singles tear themselves away from their tear-soaked pillows to cry into a bowl of black noodles on Black Day.

Although one of my precious littles gave me some chocolates today, that was the extent of my celebrating today's holiday. I had a glaring lack of men lining up to be my... shoot, what would I call that? They wouldn't be my Valentine... my... white... guy? But then again, it's not really the whites that celebrate White Day... although that would be pretty funny, if they made a holiday just to acknowledge all the foreigners.

Wow, tangent much?

Anyway, so I didn't have a date today (I mean, clearly). Instead, I went to dinner with my new friend, Bo. Bo and her husband are in Korea short term, training to be sent to Syria on missions. They joined my bible study last week, and Bo and I decided to become friends, beginning with dinner tonight. We met in the middle of our houses in a part of town neither of us were really familiar with, and after stopping to snack on some street food, we settled on a random Korean restaurant.

If I had been paying better attention, I could have told you what kind of food we were eating. It was a little like a cross between dak galbi and sam gyeop sal, which I realize means absolutely nothing to 95% of the people reading this. Basically... spicy, bacon, veggies, rice cakes? Cooked on the table and surrounded by a thousand side dishes; pretty standard in Korea, also pretty delicious.

**Note: for the rest of this story, you will need the following two vocabulary words: ajumma is an older Korean woman and ajusshi is an older Korean man.

Although Bo and I had a lovely conversation about nearly everything (we talk faster than the Gilmore Girls), the conversation wasn't the most memorable part of the meal. When we were picking at the leftover rice at the end, an ajumma two tables down told Bo that we were talking too loudly. This happens to me quite often; in fact, I was poked in the side and told to quiet down on the bus just yesterday. However, this time, we weren't really being that loud. The restaurant was full of people, and the only reason our conversation stood out was because it was in English. The ajumma told us to quiet down, Bo replied (in Korean), and the woman's husband decided he had a few things to say. He started arguing with Bo and reaching for the soup ladle on his table. Bo grabbed her phone out of her purse, and the ajusshi focused his intoxicated eyes on me.

Bo and her husband, Abe, live really far from where we were having dinner, so I thought maybe she was just calling him to help calm herself down. I was doing everything I could to avoid the ajusshi's glare; I have honestly never seen so much hatred pouring out of a single person. Wiping tears off her cheeks, Bo told her husband about the ajusshi who was yelling at us, that he was calling her a bitch and threatening to chuck the soup ladle at her if she didn't shut up. When Bo hung up the phone, the ajusshi and his wife stood up, and the man started screaming at us. The whole restaurant got completely silent and watched the drunk old Korean man yelling at two young foreigners. He came around to our table and reached for one of the spatulas, but he must have changed his mind right before he actually threw it. Bo yelled back at him in Korean and English... but she was the only one.

Imagine this scenario happening in the States: a very obviously drunk old man starts shouting at two young women in a restaurant. He threatens to throw things at them and calls them horrible words. Would the entire restaurant sit idly by and watch this unfold? They do in Korea.

A few months ago, this video caused an internet sensation. In it, an ajumma on the subway was offended by a teenage girl who crossed her legs "the wrong way." No one came to the girl's defense when the ajumma started screaming at her, and the situation escalated. If you watch the video, you'll see the ajumma grab the girl by the hair around the 24-second mark. She then proceeds to whip the girl across the subway car by her hair while the girl shrieks in pain. As awful as that situation is, watch the video again and ignore the ajumma. Instead, look at the bystanders.

Not until the very end of the video, after the teenager has been assaulted, does anyone stand up for her. In my mind, though, that's not the worst part. Look at the bystanders' faces. Look how embarrassed they seem at the thought of witnessing such an act. Instead of protecting the innocent, they're humiliated that people are causing a scene.

This, it seems, is the way Korea is. Aside from the occasional joke, I don't talk a lot about Korean culture on this blog. Partially it's because I'm trying to respect my new surroundings and don't want to criticize unnecessarily, but partially it's because I don't feel I'll ever know enough about another culture to pass judgment. There are a million things wrong with America, so who am I to say what's "wrong" here?

But this is wrong; passivity is wrong.  When a girl is getting attacked on a subway, someone should step in. When two girls are being threatened in a restaurant, someone should step in. Those who silently stand by while someone is mistreating another human being are just as guilty as those who are actively doing the mistreating. I'm going to hop off my soap box for now, but my blood has been slowly heating up against global injustice, and you can expect a lot more of this from me in the not-so-distant future. A *lot* more.

The ajusshi and his wife walked past our table and stopped to put on their shoes. The man kept screaming, but suddenly, Bo's husband appeared. He stood directly between the ajusshi and Bo, staring at the old man without saying anything. Before I realized it was Abe, I was honestly in shock that someone had tried to come between us and the drunk couple, but as soon as I recognized his face, I started crying. Abe and a friend had been a few blocks away having coffee, and they left everything and ran to the restaurant when Bo called. Without question, Abe stepped straight in front of his wife, protecting her from the man who was threatening us. The ajusshi and his wife stumbled out into the street, and Abe sat down to comfort Bo.

That's a husband.

I've been learning a lot about relationships lately - the good and the bad. Recently, I've found myself surrounded by couples who really just have me in awe of their respect and love for each other. Although that usually makes me feel sad and broken, like I'm somehow not good enough for that, I've realized lately that not only do I deserve that too, but that it's worth waiting for.

So I guess White Day did end up being quite romantic after all, drunken ajusshis aside.

I never thought I'd see the day

My job is easy. I play with the most adorable kids in the country, the school makes all my lesson plans, and Hana deals with all the parent crap. I contractually can't work past five-thirty, my apartment is included in my salary, and I'm pretty sure Korea's never heard of No Child Left Behind. The other day, I was talking to a bunch of Korean friends about their jobs, and a tiny thrill of fear ran through me. I don't have a job! How will I pay my bills? ... then I realized that that thing I do Monday through Friday is, in fact, a job and my means by which to support myself.

Every few minutes, I change my mind on how long I'm planning to stay in this country and what I'm going to do after I leave. If you asked me - right now - what my plan is, I'd tell you that I want to finish out my year, couch-surf across southeast Asia, tour Israel and see all the places in the Bible that sound interesting, go home for Christmas, do a DTS in Africa (thanks, wifey), and find a non-profit that is just crazy enough to take me on staff. But that's right now. Usually I'm slightly more practical, and I think I'm leaning toward getting my master's and teaching elementary school back in the good ol' US of A (probably in the south, seeing as I've picked up more southern colloquialisms than I knew existed thanks to Jeanne and Tiffany). As an education major, I spent much of my time in college bashing the quality of the American education system and lamenting the fact that we've never taken a page out of Asia's smarty-pants textbooks to really teach our kids what they need to know. Like almost everything I thought I knew, though, I've changed my mind on this one.

I hate the Korean education system.

When I took my job here and started preparing to pack up my life, I had to explain Korea to a lot of people. My limited knowledge at the time told me that students went to regular school during the day then to a hagwon in the evenings. I always said it in a "bless-their-little-hearts-they-learn-so-much" kind of way, but the depravity of it never really hit me. Now that I'm in the thick of it, though, it's disgusting - and time isn't the worst part.

Education in Korea is really just about show. Korean parents want to get their kids into hagwons with "native English speakers" regardless of whether those speakers are actually good teachers. They pay insane amounts of money to parade a blonde white girl in front of their children for a few hours a week, and most of the parents can't speak enough English to actually confirm their children are learning something useful. Our school is slightly better in that we are all licensed teachers in our respective homelands, but still, it's all so focused on appearances that it makes me sick. The school provides all of our worksheets because none of us care to cover what we do in clip art. Everything the kids fill out has to have borders and pictures and everything must be printed in color. The content takes a backseat (think like the back of a greyhound bus) to the presentation. I made some extra math worksheets to use as time fillers, and I was instructed to never, ever send them home because the mommies would throw a fit. Right, because an accurate indicator of your child's progress is a starburst in the corner of the page.

Worksheets aren't the only things that have to look nice. We went on a field trip on Friday, and by the end of the day, I had forgotten every word in the English language except "WTF?" The kids were shuffled through the exhibits with hardly any time to look at anything, then we sat out in the blazing sun to have our picnic. (I had plenty to gripe about regarding the lunches, but when I typed it out it seemed kind of petty, so I deleted it.) After lunch, we were told to wander around and look at the exhibits again until it was time to take pictures. Pictures could be fun, right? Yeah, no. The school hired two professional photographers to document the trip. Each student was posed in various locations, staring off into the distance or pretending to enjoy a fountain. I watched with a combination of irritation and amusement until I was told I had to be in the pictures too. The photographer lined us up against a brick wall that stood on a slight slope. She placed me at the top then trotted down to the bottom and instructed the kids to step out one by one and pose. I tried to slink out of the picture, but she caught me. "Teacher, you must look lovingly at the child who is posing. No, more. Like you adore him." Uh, what? We did this over and over and over again until she thought I had achieved an expression that appropriately conveyed "the sun shines out this child's ass." I desperately tried to make eye contact with another foreigner to confirm that this was, in fact, completely psychotic, but all the other teachers had already loaded the bus. The photographer instructed us to pose in a handful of other ludicrous ways; the kids were having a blast, but I'd have rather been giving myself paper cuts. Finally, by the grace of God, she let us leave. On the way to the bus, I found Jeanne and asked her what the eff was up with the photo shoot. She smiled wryly. "Welcome to Korea, buddy."

Additionally, I've gotten in trouble at work multiple times the past two weeks:
- One of the mommies (who is really more of a caricature of a human being) was upset that I was sitting behind my desk when her son entered the room. I did greet him, but my enthusiasm level clearly stated that I thought preparing for the morning's lesson was more important than kissing his feet, which is unacceptable. She complained to the principal who promptly told me that I'm no longer allowed to sit in the mornings.
- That same mommy (it's safe to assume all "wtf" stories include her) had a long chat with me about how I did not scold her son enough in class. She told me that scolding is the way love is shown to children in Korea and that her son cries after school every day because I scold the other boys more than I scold him. I got the distinct impression that she told her son to cause trouble to rectify this horrendous issue because she insisted that I punish him, sometimes even if he doesn't deserve it.
- In Korea, the standard form of discipline is to have the children stand against a wall with their hands above their head. I've never in my life seen this kind of punishment in a school setting (or any other setting for that matter), so obviously I didn't bring the idea with me. One of the normal mommies insisted that we use this method on her son (only her son) to prepare him for public school, but word got back to psycho mommy and she ran to the principal. Moments later, the principal was explaining to me that even though that may be how we punish children in America, it is unacceptable in Korea and I need to stop immediately. She politely told me that it was clearly my lack of knowledge about the culture that led to this honest mistake, and that I should use other forms of discipline. I asked her what would be the preferred method of disciplining the kids and she replied, "Oh, you'll come up with something."
- Yesterday, I printed out my weekly letter to the parents where I had mentioned that we were coloring Halloween pictures during snack time to decorate the classroom. At least that's what I thought I typed; unbeknownst to me, I must have written something about teaching the kids a barrage of curse words while forcing them to take illegal drugs based on the way the principal came running down to my room, waving the blasphemous letter over her head. She breathlessly asked me why the children were coloring. Because... they're five? She explained that if the parents found out the kids were coloring in class, they'd be furious and pull their children out instantly. Aside from the fact that coloring is the number one way children develop fine motor skills, it's just plain messed up to not let kids color pictures during free time. They're children.

Kids here really aren't allowed to be kids, and it's incredibly painful to watch. During the "free time" we had on the field trip, Hana and I snuck the kids around to a little courtyard and let the kids play in a patch of dirt. The space was no bigger than a standard driveway, but the kids went nuts. They'd pick up rocks like they were made of gold, and every single one of them seemed shocked that the leaves on the ground were colors other than green. You could tell these kids never, ever got to play outside by the way they were genuinely amazed that there were sticks and bugs in the dirt.

At home, I used to whine about how America needs year-round schooling. It was partly because I was bitter that I had chosen to not go into the field that provides three months off in the summer; okay, so it was pretty much all because of that. But now that I've seen what school looks like on the other side of the world, I think I'd lead a protest against changing the laws. The three months in the summer aren't for teachers to drink mai tais by the pool (although that's a sweet benefit); summer vacation gives kids time to be kids. Yes, my five-year-olds know the definition of "onomatopoeia." But they don't know how to select the best stick for a sword fight, and honestly, that's more important.

*In other news, I've finally figured out how to link my blog to my facebook profile. There's an application called "Networked Blogs" and mine is now officially listed on there. You can "follow" it with your facebook account through the link on the right. I have no idea what special benefits this provides seeing as my posts arrive in your news feed anyway, but I'm currently the only one following my blog via facebook, and that's just sad. Make me feel loved. :)

Culture shock

I recently skimmed down my blog, looking at all my most recent posts, and I was a little disappointed. People keep sending me messages about how much they enjoy reading about my adventures and my exciting life, but most of my most recent posts are kind of depressing, or at the very least, really deep and thoughtful. I haven't written about phallic-shaped soap or impromptu adventures in flea markets for a couple of weeks now, and I don't feel like my blog is much "fun" right now. In fact, I'm in the middle of writing a post about how Korea's education system actually makes me miss Dubya's horrendous excuse for a learning plan, and it occurred to me that I might be hitting a bit of culture shock. That's fine; I knew it was coming, and my frustrations with the school definitely count as being "shocked by the culture." But I was reading a friend's blog this afternoon, and she mentioned hitting the negotiation stage of culture shock, and I got confused. A quick search on Wikipedia provided me with something, well, shocking.

There are stages of culture shock.

Like, documented, and stuff.

Like, other people follow the same pattern I'm going through.

(It never ceases to amaze me to discover that I am, in fact, normal.)

I really shouldn't be writing this post right now; I'm supposed to be making lesson plans for a project my kids are doing next week, but I'm so flabbergasted that I had to write about it. I thought culture shock was just that moment when you see a dog wearing boots or cough drops sold as candy, but it turns out it's a whole process! Mind. Blown.

According to Wikipedia, culture shock occurs in four phases:

Honeymoon phase: There's certainly no argument that I experienced this one. From the second I got here, I fell in love with Korea and all its quirks. I loved the over-priced coffee, the smelly and confusing subway, the kimbap... everything. I loved it all, and it loved me. Korea and I seemed made for each other, and it was beautiful.

Negotiation phase: This is when the rose-colored glasses come off and you realize that things aren't the way you're used to. It's when you go to the grocery store and can't find any normal looking eggs or soup without fish parts, and it starts to annoy you. I think I'm hitting this phase, even though it's early (according to wikiwisdom). The school was cute, but now it feels stupid and obnoxious. I'd literally fight someone for access to a Wendy's, and if I accidentally walk into one more of those damn hole-in-the-floor bathrooms, my head might explode.

Adjustment phase: Apparently this is the next one I have to look forward to, and trust me, I am. This is where life starts to feel normal - not over-the-moon exciting, but not pull-my-hair-out frustrating either. I'm just hoping I hit it sooner than six months in; I don't know if I can be grumpy that long.

Mastery phase: I may not be here long enough to actually reach this nirvana-like state, but it's the end goal. It's the phase where you really feel like you belong, like you understand the culture and it understands you and you fit together.

Hopefully my blog posts remain somewhat entertaining as I stumble my way through learning a new culture. You can rest assured I'll document it all - the good and the bad - with astounding exaggeration and as many pictures as I can.

(Random thought: I wonder if marriage follows these same phases? It certainly sounds plausible. Just wait til I get married, folks. The blog's going to be hilarious... and probably the cause of my divorce.)