This segment describes the underlying pressure of living in Korea. The footage is taken from the Seoul metro, ECC Dongjak, and a beach in Unawatuna, Sri Lanka. The song is from Mauro Picotto’s Double Album.
Even more ridiculous than the telephone interviews were the student evaluations that we were asked to write each month. Each student had their own “student card,” which provided a quantitative score of their skill in the following categories: writing, speaking, grammar, pronunciation, and classroom behavior.
Come the last week of each month, our Korean partner teacher would provide us with the updated version of the student card and their new scores for the month. The foreign teacher would then provide their own score and average the two numbers together. These averages would go on an individual student evaluation sheet, along with a brief paragraph description of the students’ performance, and was sent home to the parents.
Individually, this might not seem like such a difficult task, but the fact of the matter was that each foreign teacher was accountable for about fourteen different classes and a typical class would contain about eight or nine students. Consequently, each foreign teacher was accountable for about 120-140 student evaluations each month. Doing these student evaluations became a dreadful chore on par with the phone conversations, and much like the phone conversations, the quality of these evaluations underwent substantial degradation as the months passed.
During the first few months, I took my responsibilities as a teacher very seriously and put a lot of effort into each individual student evaluation, straining to accurately portray their writing ability as a decimal and encapsulate their essence in the span of a four line paragraph. Here is an actual example of one of my first efforts at writing a student evaluation:
Emily is an extremely bright and dedicated student. She has the ability to perform and a consistently outstanding level. I sometimes feel as though she feels a bit shy and tends to offer short responses to questions in class. From her written work, it is fairly obvious to me that she has a great degree of ability. I would encourage her to be more outspoken during class so that she may really develop her verbal capabilities.
It took me about eight or nine minutes to really formulate a paragraph that I felt was an accurate portrayal of this particular student’s academic performance. Multiply eight minutes multiplied times 120 students, and you have 960 minutes total. 960 minutes divided by sixty minutes gives you sixteen hours. Sixteen hours/month spent on student evaluations is absolutely ludicrous. I spent the majority of my weekend during that first month, grinding through evaluation after evaluation, until I could no longer associate the students’ names with their faces and my mind became a jumbled blur of decimals, adjectives, and Korean faces. After that first weekend, I decided that it would be in my best interests to become more “efficient” in the manner at which I approached the student evaluations.
I managed to decrease the average time spent/evaluation from eight minutes to about thirty seconds, and subsequently, I managed to cut back the total time spent on doing those stupid evaluations from an original value of sixteen hours, to a more manageable 1.5 hours. Granted, in the process of becoming more efficient with my time management skills, a certain amount of aesthetic value was lost with regard to the paragraph descriptions. Here is an example of the type of evaluation that I wrote during the third month for the same student:
It was not long until my supervisor approached me with a copy of one of my student evaluations and abruptly explained to me that this was not satisfactory and I would need to fill the confines of the allotted space. In response to her unfair request, I referenced chapter five of my “how to pass high-school without working very hard,” the chapter entitled “How to stretch a three page paper into a five page paper through a combination of font and margin manipulation.” This is the evaluation that I came up with:
Well, it wasn’t too long until my supervisor came to me again. Surprisingly, my font manipulation tactics managed to avoid her criticism. Instead, she told me that the comment that I had made was not only the same comment I had made last month to the same student, but that I had also used the same comment for about thirty other students.
After I pointed out to her that it wasn’t exactly the same paragraph because I had changed the word “Emily” in each of the other students’ paragraphs, she bluntly told me that “I had to write a different paragraph for each student,” and then walked away.
After that month, I more or less decided to play by the rules with regard to the student evaluations and I made sure that each and every evaluation would be like a snowflake, unique and beautiful.
After that, my supervisor more or less left me to my own devices.
Taekwondo and my dojung were a vital aspect of my experience in Seoul. I don’t think I would have had the mental or physical strength to make it through if not for my dojung. This clip was shot at Woosung Taekwondo in Dongjak-Gu.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about Korea but there have been so many curious occurrences and I feel like it would be a real shame if I didn’t jot some of them down.
The date is December 6. I have been seeing this girl named Dong-Mi. She is absolutely great. She is cute, honest, and intelligent.
She came over last night and at about 4:00 AM, my roommate returned home with a girl. They spoke for a little while and then went into his room. Shortly thereafter, I heard music emanating from his room and I realized that he was singing songs to her - they were Christmas carols and he was playing accompaniment on his sythesizer. To make matters even more strange, the girl would occasionally add a drunken sounding accompaniment. This went on for quite some time. Finally I had to knock on his door and ask that he keep it down.
My roommate is another addition to a group of teachers that are less than normal. About one month ago, we were sitting in the kitchen when he told me that he had seen two ghosts in his room. One of the ghosts was a woman and the other ghost was a young girl. They were apparently quite “friendly,” because all they did was stare at him for a while. Apparently, this was the second time that he had seen the ghost in his room. The first time, the ghost had manifested as a spider on the floor, which seems to me like an odd manifestation for a ghost to choose. I tried to take things in stride and I simply nodded my head and inquired whether or not the ghosts had been Korean. He said they had been.
Several weeks later, he told me that the ghosts had returned, only this time, the ghosts had not been as polite. They had been more aggressive but he could not explain how.
The final ghost appearance occured about one week ago. He had been sleeping when he was awakened by a spinning blue light on the ceiling. Apparently, this was another ghost, I told him that in my opinion it was probably just an acid flashback and he seemed to acknowledge this possibility.
His sexuality is another facet of his character which is a source of interest to me. He seems to be heterosexual until he gets drunk. At this point he says that he vastly prefers the company of men, adding that he loves going to gay clubs, and that he sometimes thinks that he is gay. When he makes the latter point, he is always quick to point out that although he has a strong feminine side, he has never been attracted by the thought of anal sex.
Last Friday I was hanging out wiht him and another teacher when he told us that one of the other teachers at ECC “has a very strong feminine side,” and that sometimes, he(my roommate) “just wants to reach out and grab his breast.” The situation became increasingly interesting when I found out that he had actually grabbed this teacher’s breast in the past. Finally, yesterday, I was speaking with the victimized teacher in the staff room when my roommate walked by, slapped him on the ass, and said teasingly while wagging his finger, “You were asking for that one.”
In this clip, I attempt to convey a sense of my embrace of Seoul. The footage was shot in the Seoul subways, Namdaemun market, and my apartment in Dongjak-Gu. The music is courtesy of G.O.D.
I would like to say that I spent my four-day vacation in a productive manner. I would like to say that I visited the parks, palaces, and museums in central Seoul, wandered through the crowded markets and department stores in Namdaemun and Dongdaemun, partied in the Night Clubs of Hongdae, but in reality I mostly stayed in the PC-Bang and played video games with Jake and Bill.
My vacation began in earnest on Saturday. Jake accompanied me to my new apartment in Sillim, only about fifteen minutes away from the school by subway. I lugged my large bags (with Jake’s help) through a winding maze of small alleys and side streets until we finally lit upon a nondescript apartment complex.
Ariana, an Iranian girl from Canada had been formerly occupying the apartment, but she was heading back to Canada to finish up her last semester at University. I was fortunate enough to procure her small boom box from her for the affordable price of 35,000 won.
The room was adequate. Like every other room in Korea, it had linoleum floors, which did a tremendous job of collecting hair. Although Ariana had been kind enough to sweep the floors before she left, she had neglected to sweep under the bed. Upon moving her bed later, I was a bit dismayed to find that her hair had accumulated to such a great extent that it made it seem as if there was a small dark lawn growing underneath the bed.
The accoutrements were Spartan: one single bed, a medium sized dresser, a small refrigerator, a small desk, one chair, one television, a gas stove, a small amount of kitchen ware, a small bathroom that contained a washing machine, sink, and showerhead. I was pleased to see that Ariana had left some rice, sausages, and eggs in the pantry and refrigerator.
To be honest, I had absolutely nothing to complain about for not only did I get a furnished apartment, I got the only single accommodation at my Institute. The one glaring fault in the room was that it contained only one window that was partially obstructed by metal siding. I soon found out that the apartment owners had placed the metal siding in front of the window to obscure the view, which was of a plain brick wall.
Essentially, there was a two-foot by 8-inch gap through which light could enter my room, and the sun was properly angled for about a two-hour span every day. Basically, the time that I spent at home was a fluorescent tinted limbo until I managed to find a small lamp at a nearby corner shop.
Despite the darkness of my confines, I was happy to be able to finally unpack my bags and have a place to call home. I rearranged the furniture for a little while, and then headed to meet Jake and Bill at the PC-Bang. I arrived there at about 4 in the afternoon, and with the exception of a thirty minute break in which we ate at the McDonalds across the street, I stayed at the PC-Bang until 9 at night, at which time I took the subway back to Sillim and watched old episodes of 3rd Planet from the Sun until I fell asleep.
I have just moved into my new place in Chongshinday, and I am happy to say that it is quite nice by Korean, and even by American standards. The room is spacious and it seems as though they lay new linoleum on the floor and the kitchen shelves are new as well. Things have been absolutely up and down in my three months here.
I have just recently gone through a very difficult time, with the passing away of John Daigh, the departure of Robin, and the overload of classes that I have been forced to teach. But the pain has receded as has my schedule and I am in good health. I am currently waiting for the other foreign(we are the foreigners over here) teachers to arrive at my house to drink maekchu(beer) and soju.
I purchased two bottles of champagne and one bottle of jinro wine. Each bottle cost me 2000 won(approximately $2), so I’m afraid that drinking substantial amounts of these liquids is a dubious proposition at best. At any rate, I am happy now and that is good.
Last Thursday, all of the faculty at ECC gathered together at the Hotel Shilla for a celebration. It was pretty interesting. At first, all of the Kindergarden teachers gathered at one end with the middle school teachers on the other. The foreign teachers were all gathered in the middle and I felt as though I was at some strange 5th grade dance.
The Koreans were pretty much keeping to themselves as were the foreign teachers. I found it difficult to try and make conversation with the kindergarden teachers. Then, Jay, Domo’s(the owner) right hand man, took about three shots and started singing a horrible song on the kareoke machine. The waiters brough trays of beer and scotch and everything began to liven up.
I sang Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode” in an attempt to get everyone even more riled up and either it worked, or they felt embarrassed for me and decided to make me feel like it was working. Either way, I had a blast.
On another note, I think that I’m beginning to see that other level that my parents always referred to as the “real world.” There are some very peculiar politics going on at my school, which I am struggling to come to terms with.
There is this teacher from New Zealand, who has a wonderful sense of humor and who is great with the younger kids. Unfortunately, he will not adhere to the school dress code and insists on wearing t-shirts and blue jeans. He is a great presence though and he always prevents me from getting frustrated with my students.
On the other hand, there is another teacher who is a 45-year-old alcoholic. He chain smokes and he is a lecher. I have already gotten into one confrontation with him when he was very drunk and I felt that I was on the verge of punching him out. He really makes me uncomfortable in the office (mostly because of our confrontation which was honestly his fault because he was intoxicated while at school!).
Although he comes to work drunk, he adheres to the dress code. Also, he is somehow successful and manipulating the supervisors by getting angry with them and complaining. How he does it is beyond me because I think that he is completely void of any charisma or tact. Anyway, last week they fired a teacher. I think you can guess that it was the first one I was talking about. It blows my mind.
The women in Korea have a uniquely difficult position in life. From what I’ve managed to gather, the ideal Korean girl has large eyes, is thin to the point of anorexia, has flawless skin, does not talk very loudly, covers her mouth when she laughs, does not have sex until she is married, does all of the household chores, and lies on her back doing nothing during sex.
Also, from what I gather, a Korean woman can expect to marry a man who drinks on a daily basis, acts grumpy most of the time, is selfish and uncaring at home, will sometimes yell expletives, and will physically abuse their family in order to keep them in line.
I have a friend who shall remain nameless. She is divorced from her x-husband and has a young daughter. One of my students had provided me with two tickets to see the Korean National Symphony Orchestra and I had decided to invite this friend.
We planned to meet in front of the subway station near the concert hall but she never showed up. I ended up wandering around the area, intermittently calling her hand phone, which she did not answer. Perturbed, I went to a bar and had quite a few drinks.
The next day, she called me, apologizing profusely. She explained rather nonchalantly that her x-husband had visited her home and they had gotten into a headed discussion about something that she referred to as “nothing important.”
The heated discussion soon turned into a full blown fight that culminated in him punching her in the face, knocking her to the ground, and taking her phone, which is the reason I couldn’t get a hold of her.
The incident repeated itself some months later, at which time I told her that she should call the police. This time she had been punched in the torso as well as in the face. She told me that she was worried what might happen to her daughter if she pressed charges against her husband. I responded by asking what might potentially happen to her daughter if this supposed man, who was coward enough to hit a woman, went unpunished.
School is finally settling down. Besides the kids calling me Hangook, which means bachelor, I think everything is pretty much fine. I’m beginning to learn how to work with these kids to get them to do the work.
Every group of children is a unique situation and I approach each of them differently. There is this atmosphere in each class that you can sense. Sometimes, a class is enthusiastic and compliant, and sometimes they are hell spawns. I’ll take one class for example. The class is called E1-4A, E1 means the book series, Explorer, and 4A means the edition of the book.
Every month, the kids are required to finish one book. The class consists of five students who I taught in 3A, and three students who stayed behind and are doing 4A again. The first day, I noticed that the holdovers were answering all the questions much to the annoyance of the former 3A students.
So the next day, I decided to use this observation to my advantage. I placed the class into two teams. The first team was the former 3A students, and the other team was obviously the 4A students who were repeating. I told them that I would place stars next to the team names for every question that they answered correctly. I told them that they had ten minutes to prepare for the “game,” which would be a spelling/definition competition.
I watched with satisfied amusement as they opened their books and began to study fanatically like little robots for ten or so minutes. They were quizzing each other on definitions, and reciting spelling out loud, it was great (I’m losing it). Anyway, they obviously took the game very seriously because they would get angry at their teammates for getting wrong answers, and they would point out if the other team got a question wrong.
So, in this way, I managed to get a group of ten-year-old children to unwittingly study their little Korean asses off for one hour. Hehe. I’ve stopped trying to force them to listen and learn because I realize that this isn’t really effective. So, I think that my new tactic is to simply try and find a way to refocus their energy in a better way.
I’ve been hanging out with the other teachers and some of them are very fun people. Last Sunday, I went with one of the Korean teachers, Debbie, to something that she referred to as a “meeting.” It turned out to be a group consisting of two Korean men and one Korean girl, and they read articles in English and practiced discussing them in English.
It was great because I felt like the smartest one there, but I think it was mostly because their English wasn’t perfect that I felt this way. They kept asking me what words meant and I would rub my chin for a bit and then say things like “well, that comes from the Latin root, which means . . .” Then they would ask me my opinion on the articles, and would watch intently as I would blab a several minute long monologue, which didn’t make any sense and, I’m glad that they weren’t perfect at English because I think that I sounded like a pompous ass.
On Saturday night, Blake and I explored Shillim (the area where I live). We couldn’t get into one club, I think because we were foreign, some areas of Seoul which are predominantly Korean, such as Shillim, are somewhat xenophobic. Actually, I’ve begun to notice that when I walk around Shillim, Korean men will try to stare me down. I’ve begun to counteract that with smiling at them and saying “Hello” in a cheerful voice. They are quite odd, because if I don’t acknowledge them, they will look at me with disregard, but then they look frightened the moment I say “hello.”
Well, we walked around and because it was Chusok, the Korean Thanksgiving, there was a little festival going on. There were midgets, which really cheered me up because I haven’t seen any midgets in Korea and I was starting to worry that they kept them locked up somewhere. There were also carnival games and I ended up winning a Pokemon key chain because I knocked over a wooden block with a baseball. We also walked by the interesting red light district, which I did not realize, existed in Shillim. Anyway, we ended up drinking quite a bit of Soju and had a fun time.
I need to wrap it up now, but I just wanted to say that I hate the insects here. There are three kinds of insects here: mosquitoes, flies, and these weird little things that look like small flies. They are all over the place. They are all really slow (I’ve postulated that this is because the Korea male population has more Soju in their veins than blood, subsequently, the insects that sting them are always a bit drunk), but they are nasty. I’ve tried to hit them, and missed, and then proceeded to watch as they dive-bombed my head. One of them took vengeance on me (I swear this is true), the night after I killed three of them. I woke up at about 4 in the morning because the damn thing flew straight up my nose. I’ve been having nightmares that he hatched eggs in there, but this is impossible, right?
School progressed and I gradually found a sense of rhythm in my daily motions, or at least this is what I liked to believe as I struggled to overcome a fundamental inability to relate to children. It began during those first few moments when I observed Debbie teacher don a mask of professionalism in her approach to teaching, and decided to move in another direction. I would be different from average. I would attain a level of friendship with my students that other teachers could only gaze at as if they were examining the skies. I really believed this nonsense and perhaps that is why I soon found myself drowning in oceans of children’s shrieks.
If my few months were to be broken down into a symphony, the first movement would be replete with flowing rivers of rich melody in a major key played by the string section (my overtures of friendship towards my students). This would be countered with a banshee-like cacophony of sound coming from the brass section (the children taking advantage of my weakness and calling me insulting names in Korean which I could not understand). The second movement would involve choking sounds as the string section would stand up and try to strangle the brass section with their bow hairs.
It was not too long until I made the executive decision to convert from a socialist to a totalitarian dictator with my younger classes. Our age difference made it easier for me to place an emotional barrier between us that allowed me to establish myself as an authority figure. My first policy initiative was the “rule of three.” Upon the initial infraction, the culprit’s name would be written on the board and a large “X” would be placed next to it. Upon the second infraction, a second “X” would be added next to the first, and the student would be forced to stand in the corner. Upon the third infraction, a third “X” would be thrust into the mix and the student would be forced to leave the classroom. Even if the student’s had no idea what I was talking about when I first explained the policy, they caught on extremely quickly as they began to observe their fellow classmates being rudely thrust out of classrooms.
Before too long, I had managed to utterly pacify my most rowdy classes and I could subdue students by simply looking in the direction of the board when they began to feel restless. During my first three months, ten out of the twelve classes that I was teaching contained students between the ages of 6-12 and my “rule of three” was enough to subdue all of these classes. Once I had figured out how to solve the problem of disciplining my younger students I began to focus on a far more difficult task - how to discipline my two older classes. One of these classes consisted of four thirteen year old girls and the other consisted of six thirteen year old girls.
When I was in middle school, I overheard two teachers discussing trends in student behavior. They both agreed that the most difficult students to teach were seventh graders, who existed on the cusp of childhood and adolescence - a phase in which a barrage of mental, physical, and emotional changes creates an entity unrivaled in its malignity. Seventh grade was the time during which I lusted, hated, envied, disregarded, coveted, abused, and was abused with such great intensity that it was all I could do to prevent myself from crying and screaming on a continual basis. If I had been forced to attend two schools and learn a foreign language from some strange creature that could not communicate nor empathize with me, I probably would have acted the same exact way.
God smiled kindly upon me in one of my classes, and I was blessed with a group of six thirteen year old girls who seemed genuinely interested in learning English and committed to paying attention in class. God must have then grown weary of smiling and decided to play a few rounds of golf during the other class, in which I came to know what it is to be an inanimate object. As I made a futile attempt to teach grammar to the group of four thirteen year old girls, I witnessed as they gossiped about the latest teen sensation, checked their e-mail on their cellular phones, and drew pictures in their notebooks.
Occasionally, I would grow weary with being ignored and attempt to get their attention by saying, “Come on guys, lets pay attention,” which they seemed to interpret as “Look up from your cell phone for several moments and humor me before deciding to talk with your friend about makeup while I try to teach you English.” When good cop didn’t work, I made the very serious mistake of attempting to utilize my “rule of three.”
One girl, Lisa, was particularly chatty and one day I decided to make an attempt to discipline her. As she rattled on to her friend, I stood up and wrote her name on the board with an X next to it. This got her attention and I calmly explained that if she continued to disrupt class, I would be forced to move her to another seat (I didn’t think having her stand in the corner of the room was appropriate). Inevitably, she began to talk again and I abruptly stood up and asked her to switch seats.
“Ok, ok,” she said as she nodded and put her hand up as if to say, “Fine, I’ll take you seriously, now sit down and shut up.”
I remained standing and pointed at a seat in front of the class. Lisa responded by shaking her head and looking down at her desk. The frustration of the past five weeks welled up within me and I decided to walk forward, and pull her forward several feet, so that she was no longer seated next to her friends. Problem solved.
A strange thing happened then, Lisa moved her seat back to its original location and continued to talk with her friends. I began to get that same overwhelming feeling that I had when I walked into my first class, and I reacted in the same manner: by leaving the classroom and tracking down the first Korean teacher I could find. It happened to be Jefferson, who was seated in the teacher’s room, munching on a plate of Kim-Bop.
“Yeah? What is it?” He asked, his mouth full of Kim-Bop.
“Its Lisa. I asked her to move and she won’t listen to me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Well, I was hoping you could talk to her.”
With a sigh, he got up from his chair and waddled down the hall. He entered the classroom and the group of girls all giggled in unison at his appearance. I decided then that if my authority had not already been compromised by the fact that I had to get another teacher to bail be out of this difficult situation, it would be compromised by the fact that my teacher had a better relationship with these students than he had with me.
“What’s the problem?” Jefferson asked with a smile, which lead me to believe that I was on the losing end of some inside joke. Lisa and him had a short conversation in Korean and I knew that the end result would be Jefferson telling me to ease up on the students as he headed back to finish off his Kim-Bop.
To my surprise, he beckoned her to move her seat. Her grin evaporated and in a matter of seconds, her face was in her hands and she was sobbing uncontrollably. I began to feel increasingly nervous. What had I done? I was only trying to get her to stop talking, I didn’t expect her to act in this way. As I stood there, befuddled, she continued to cry and her friends began to console her, shooting me venomous looks every so often for good measure. Jefferson stood there, dumbfounded as well and I was pleased to observe that there were some things that crossed cultural boundaries, like the inexplicable and irrational behavior of teenagers.
Jefferson offered me a confused look before shrugging his shoulders and walking out the door. I was left standing in a classroom with four thirteen year old girls who wanted to stab me with their mechanical pencils.
I sat down at my desk and re-opened the textbook.
“Okay, let’s all turn to page 82,” I ventured. My request was met with a fusion of quiet sobs and conciliatory whispers. For the next few minutes, I sat there blankly and watched as Lisa continued to cry and her friends continued to console her. I would like to say that at this point, I learned the folly of my errors and never made a Korean child cry again, but that would be a lie.
I more or less spent the rest of the class making a feeble attempt to complete the lesson and couldn’t have been more relieved when the bell finally rang and I could escape the scene of the crime. My last class of that day went smoothly, as if the students could sense that something serious had transpired in the previous class.
When the final bell rang, I walked outside and saw Lisa speaking with one of the supervisors in the hall outside. Alarm bells began to ring in my head as I walked into the teacher’s room and saw Jefferson sitting at his desk, looking thoughtfully at his right hand.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Jefferson answered in his typically verbose manner. “Lisa stabbed me with her pencil.” Pausing for a few moments in order to let me appreciate the full effect of the incident, he added, “These girls are crazy.”
I nodded my head in acknowledgment and prepared to make my telephone interviews before heading out for the day.
