Struggles in Korea

Mind you, Korea has not been all culinary delight and easy living. Language courses have been especially brutal. In going over the vocabulary cards I made for the first week of classes, I noticed that the second set of words we received was twice as big as the first set. This exponential model continues, not necessarily in terms of vocabulary, but in terms of grammar and phrases and general language conventions. We've gotten to the point of giving and receiving directions (a la "Donde esta la biblioteca?"), but at this point I just can't process anymore new information. I could really use a week of review and practice, but we press ever onwards towards fluency and we cannot stop to smell the directions to the 화장실.

Another issue I'm dealing with, quite frankly, is the cafeteria food. It really is quite awful and unoriginal. It was interesting at first, of course, when everything was new, but the shine is off the apple by now, and having had off campus food, I realize just how bad the on-campus food is. I've given up on Korean "breakfast" (which is the same as every other meal--kimchi, rice, bland soup, and some kind of meat concoction, usually poorly prepared fish or pork). Fortunately, the school is providing us with toast and milk in a back room, so I've taken to eating this in the morning. Every morning except Tuesday, however, when everyone on campus eats "Western" breakfast, which consists of bread (but no toaster), jam, a salad with oil and tomatoes, and some pork or fish or else eggs mashed with potatoes or pickled eggs. (I thought this might be particular to our cafeteria on campus, but our Songnisan breakfast also had the salad option for "Western" breakfast.) They also occasionally try to put together "Western" lunches and dinners. Today's lunch, for instance, consisted of spaghetti, which was actually strange combination of pasta and slightly spicy sloppy joe mix. It tasted good, but I was really hoping for the spaghetti. Cheese and dairy is almost non-existent here, so if anyone is thinking of sending me something, a nice block of jack cheese would be spectacular.

And then there's the other struggle...

"Cultural Ambassador vs. Cultural Tool"
Many of our workshops here focus on how part of our responsibility as Program ATEs is as cultural ambassadors. As such, we should realize that many things in Korea are just different. For instance, the hierarchy in Korea, although democratized, is still fairly rigid in terms of customs. People still bow to their superiors and use polite formal verb-stem endings when speaking to them. We should accept these differences and live with them, and even embrace them it seems. But sometimes I wonder...

An extending ATE told me about an experience she had with a Middle Schooler during her last year here. The child is a trouble maker, she says, but she is of the opinion that he's just being cute. For instance, he will ask if she is the king of the classroom, and she will respond, as a teacher probably should, "Yes, I am king." Then he will declare a revolution against the king. (He used advanced Korean vocabulary for this, so the other Korean teachers were impressed.) He will also swear at her when singing happy birthday to her, using that foulest word in the English language, and even has a cheat sheet of Korean insults translated into English. These latter insults usually don't come across very well, i.e. "Teacher, you lecture to me very badly," but the sentiment is there. He leads a gang of children at the Middle School. Gangs are mostly harmless here, especially in middle school, and more like groups of friends that just hang out all the time and act angsty.

The above I could just trot up to middle school insolence, especially in a country where children mature much slower compared to American children in terms of maintaining a certain naivete about how the world works. (I have not experienced this immaturity yet, but rely on the good report of those who have come before me.) But then she related an experience with this particular student that troubled me greatly. The student had just come from art class where he had been working with foamboard. He presented his creation to the ATE and said, "Teacher, gift!" She looked at it and found that it was a very artfully recreated scene of the second plane crashing into the WTC on September 11. Then the student gave the ATE a thumbs up and smilingly said, "Teacher! Great day!"

When the ATE related the story, she was laughing about it (I'm not sure why), and said, "What do I say to that? It's good art?" Troubling.

I understand that we're supposed to be cultural ambassadors, that we're supposed to be respectful of a foreign culture, but I'm not exactly sure that means we're supposed to take cultural insults against our country. No matter someone's feelings towards the United States, the WTC incident was a terrible tragedy, not a great day; just as, though I feel we ultimately are doing more good than bad in Iraq, I acknowledge that the war itself is a tragedy of enormous proportion.

So, what would I have done? I probably would have stopped class and made the issue into a teachable moment. There is a shocking lack of respect for foreign cultures and ideas in Korea, and though the Koreans as a nation may choose not to adopt the foreign cultures and may disagree with them, they should at least be respectful of them. Respect is something that I feel should be able to transcend borders, and it should probably be something that is taught throughout primary and secondary education.

It was just shocking is all. I do not think I will be a very good "cultural ambassador" if it means having to take children driving a knife into a wound in my country's history that I still feel quite deeply.