Seoul / General Update as told in a letter home

Thus., Aug. 16th, 2007

I should preface the following update by saying the following. I am in Seoul right now. Seoul is a rather large city. I do not care for rather large cities because they are stressful and draining. This is especially true when you cannot speak the native language of the city, and often have no clue what is going on, or at least only a clue, which can be even more frustrating. Also,forgive the rambling.

I would like to write more in the future, and I have compiled a list of things to write about. Some of these I will try to write about very soon, but I’ve been quite busy lately, so I’m afraid an update of all I’ve been doing for the past few weeks will be a long time coming. My time will not get any less busy as tomorrow I am going to the hamlet to meet my homestay family as well as meeting my co-teacher and my principal. (Though my principal may or may not be around.) With this, of course, comes a whole new set of adjustments to make, which I fear will interfere with my blogging/emailing even more than these have been interfered with in the past. Besides which, I have to prepare a speech to give to the school I’m teaching at and my first lesson plan. So many things to do…

I will, however, update you on what has happened since I left 강완대학교 (Kangwan Univ.) and arrived in Seoul. I must vent about this or I fear I shall take my frustrations out on my school officials I’m meeting tomorrow. I have already cried a little about my situation, and I fear doing so again tomorrow. Both the venting and the tears would make a bad impression.

We left Chuncheon on Wednesday (Korean Liberation Day!). I was excited to come to Seoul because, despite the fact that numerous of the other ATEs had already gone on weekends, I had always stayed around the dorm to either rest up, study, or go on one of the more local outings planned for the weekend. We arrived at Yonsei University (one of the top three universities in Korea, and ostensibly Christian) around 11:30 and carted our luggage up some rather steep hills. The guys did this at any rate, the girls’ dorm being right where the luggage truck parked. We were given W 20,000 and a metro transit card worth W10,000 and sent on our merry way to explore the city.

At this point, I met up with some friends and went to have lunch. I wanted to have Mexican food, but ended up settling for Japanese Udong instead. Tasty and filling, but I wasn’t all that interested in having Asian food in such an international city. I would be eating it all year after all.

After this, we hopped on the subway to head up to Kyobo, a huge bookstore with a very nice English language selection, comparable to a small Barnes & Noble in the United States perhaps. Here I purchased a Korean grammar, its accompanying workbook, and a Korean language dictionary. I figure these will be nice to have at my homestay as I will not be able to really develop my reading and writing skills out in the countryside, though my speaking skills should go through the roof.

After this, I went to Myeongdong (the shopping/fashion district) with my friend Jon. He wanted to pick up some pants at a department store he remembered down there. I tagged along for a while, but soon got bored and decided to head back to the dorm where I would meet up with him and some others later for dinner.

And here is where my trouble started. Myeongdong is a rather large place, and because of the generic nature of the street vendors, it’s very easy to get turned around. So I got lost. Give me a map and subway card, and I can get you anywhere in a city, but put me at street level and I’m useless. Not entirely, but I felt that way. At any rate, I finally found the subway station, got on the correct line for Yonsei and got off at my stop.

At this point, I proceeded to walk for ages through the subway until I arrived at the exit which would point me towards Yonsei. Out of this, the signs suddenly stopped and I had to use my Boy Scout intuition (i.e. guess) which direction Yonsei was. I guessed right, but unfortunately the subway lets off on the Front Gate side of Yonsei.

For those who are not familiar with Korean university layouts, there is usually a front gate where administration buildings are and various side and back gates where university housing and class buildings are. My dorm was at North Gate, a good 30 minute walk from Front Gate. Since I didn’t know how to say North Gate, however, I decided that I’d try out the walk. About a minute into said walk, I felt a little pitter patter on my head. “Ah,” thinks I, “It will rain a bit. No matter. My text books are securely wrapped in this paper bag and God granted me skin to repel water. All shall be well.” Cue the lightning. Cue the thunder. Cue the drenching storm. 20 minutes left to go.

So, I walked the 20 minutes to the dorm. Cars passed me right and left, paying me no heed, as an obviously foreign chap wearing a Detroit Tigers hat and drenched from head to foot must obviously love to stroll through torrential rain hunched over a paper bag desperately trying to keep its contents dry. I arrived too late to meet my group. Luckily, the books were mostly dry.

I sauntered over to the girls’ dorm, still wet, to see if anyone was going to dinner. (Note: This was not so I could pick up girls. As the ATEs are mostly girls, the natural place for girls to meet was the girls dorm.) They were and said they would wait for me to change. They didn’t, but, in fairness towards them, I did take a shower. Luckily again, the group I had intended to meet arrived late as well, having gotten their hair done and this taking longer than expected. And so, I proceeded out with them, finally, to get my long awaited Mexican food. It was good, and a definite pick me up, though not like home. Later on, we had 팥빙수 (Patbingsu) with a friend of a friend who lives in Seoul. I had a Sapporro from a local convenience store. And we walked back to the dorm in the warmish weather.

I slept 7 hours solidly and arrived at Thursday morning still exhausted. We were to make our way to the Fulbright Building by 9:15 am somehow. We were given directions, but no times on how long it would take by either bus or taxi. My roommate Matt and I opted for the bus route. A nice Korean man let us know which stop we would need before he got off at his own. We followed his advice, saw many of our fellow ETAs milling around in the area quite confused in their own right, and eventually we all managed to find the The Program Building. The Program in Korea is quite proud of the structure as it is the only Program organization in the world to own its own building. They reminded us of this several times, and it seems to be the legacy that our director has left to the Program, besides being a pioneer for the ATE program in her own right. It is an impressive feat. Owning any land in Seoul seems to demand respect.

There were several meetings. One on diseases in Korea and how to avoid them. This was given by Dr. John L., who works out of Yonsei University’s Severance Hospital and is the ATE program’s primary care physician. Quite informative, though I think I could have passed on the second sexual education talk. Another presentation on the specifics of our contract with our schools. Another on the specifics of what our host families will be like. In between all of these, I was given a prize for a 팥빙수 eating contest I had won at the talent show some of the ATEs put on before we left Chuncheon. It was a green purse filled with random items including a CD, Pepto-Bismol, Motrin, Trident, a hair “scrunchie”, some pencils, etc. Needless to say, I was elated, and proceeded immediately to “regift” (as it is called in Korea) some of the more feminine items to my fellow ATEs.

After all of these meetings, we were told to make our way to the U.S. Ambassador’s residence for a pool party that the Deputy Ambassador was hosting for us. (The Ambassador could not make it himself, as he was still in the states, but he has promised to host a Thanksgiving dinner for us. Given that it will be hard to find Turkey in the hamlet, I am most grateful to him.) While proceeding through the subway, a most peculiar lady began following us. We think she may have been a bit mentally absent. Some of the girls were disturbed by this, but I took the strangeness in good humor. I was with friends after all, and it makes me braver in that kind of situation to have friends around. I feel like I can put on a good face for them.

At any rate, we eventually made it to the Ambassador’s residence. It was “guarded” by Seoul police officers who let us pass through with even asking us any questions. Waegukin priviledge I suppose. The food at the gathering was rather scrumptious. American food. Burgers, hotdogs, cheddar and jack cheeses, Triscuits, Coca-Cola (from Atlanta, GA!), berry pies, Nestle Carnation ice cream sandwiches… Heaven. Say what you want about the McDonaldization of the world, the big corporations pushing out the little guys, but when you’ve grown up on stuff like Nabisco and Coca-Cola and Nestle… when you see that again, and taste it and haven’t had anything familiar for a month and a half? Well, I missed it a great deal. And it was good. A swim in a swimming pool (Koreans don’t like be in the water too much except for bathing.) and good times with friends. A complete homelike experience.

But trouble started again. I lost my Detroit Tigers hat. Those of you who know me know that that hat has not been far from my head for about two years now. I was with a group of friends to go to Insadong to try some Korean teas, but I lost them too trying to make a call with a phone card that for some reason didn’t work. I was trying to call a friend at the Ambassador’s to ask if they had seen my hat. I went to Insadong by myself hoping, just hoping, that I would see my group in a window. No luck. So, tired, I hung my head and started the long journey home. Got off at my Yonsei stop, got a little lost on the street level again, but found my bearings. Got on the number three bus to take me back up to the North Gate (a Power that Be told us which bus would take us up; I was glad for this after last night’s fiasco). Missed my stop, but got off at the next one. By this time feeling incredibly lonely and wanting to either cry or sleep or the former until the latter overtook me. I saw a couple of the Powers that Be at a convenience store, but they didn’t seem like they wanted to talk. Pity, as I could have used a good talking to from someone who had already been through the loneliness factor. Bought a Powerade. Walked up the hill to the dormitory and began typing this.

There are supposedly 5 or 6 odd stages to Cultural Adjustment/Culture Shock. One of these stages is the Crisis stage. In this stage, the expatriot feels lost and frustrated and emotional and isn’t hungry and sleeps a lot and has a high amount of anxiety and, especially, misses home. It can last a couple of days. It can last a week. It can last a month. In the most severe forms of this, the expatriot will lash out at nationals. He or she is usually frustrated that despite the nationals best efforts and his or her own best efforts, communication still proves impossible and certain needs, or at least comforts, cannot be met. I thought I had hit this stage a couple of weeks ago. I thought I had pulled through it. Now I find I am still in the midst of it. I am still coping with the fact that, though I may be smart, and healthy, and sound of mind, my spirit has been broken here and needs mending. This will come with time. It must.

Hopefully, my feelings are symptomatic of my presence here in Seoul, one of the largest metropolises in the world. I hate cities as I said. They only amplify my anxiety and, ironically and as so many smarter people before me have indicated, my loneliness. I hope I will feel better when I come to the Hamlet. It is a farming town, famous for beef. Pop. 3000. People may not be any better at English there, and my Korean certainly won’t be better, at least not at first, but at least I will not be a non-entity there. At least, there, someone will be able to see that I am lonely or at least uncomfortable, and will make an effort to console me.

Do not get me wrong. Besides the getting lost, I have had a decent time here in Seoul. I would like to come back sometime when I do not have meetings to go to and required appointments. I would like to visit the city. Also, several good things have happened since I last wrote to you all. I have graduated from language classes. I have earned my Yellow Belt in TaeKwonDo. I have made a Korean friend who has even told me that we can exchange drinks using only one hand despite his being older than me and in many other respects within Korean hierarchy my superior. He gave me a t-shirt as well. World Without Strangers (WWS). A nice sentiment, and in some ways true. I was that optimistic when I first arrived here. I hope that I can regain that optimism again.

Tomorrow, as I said, I will meet my co-teacher and some school officials from the hamlet. I hope to make a good impression. Tomorrow is Yonsei Day, a national holiday of some kind. I must look my best. And so, good night.

Love,

Jeremiah

Taekwondo: The Final Days

I have been remiss to mention this, but now that I have admitted my pain in reality’s public, I feel it is ok to admit it on the Internet as well. My feet have been sore ever since we began side kick in TKD. I have been keeping my feet wrapped up because of the blisters on the bottom of my feet, but these have callused for the most part. The real pain comes on the tops of my feet whenever I try to walk or run. The common consensus among our pre-Med ATEs (who really know very little, but the most) is that it’s a muscle cramping which I should just rest. I haven’t been resting them though, and I finally reached a point where I was hobbling no matter what I did. I even took to using an umbrella for support like a cane. For this reason, on the last day of TKD, I basically just watched while others learned two new sweet kicks. And JUMP KICKS even. Ah, well.

Since it was the last day, the kwanjangnim took us out to dalk-kalbi. We bestowed him and his assistant with gifts of libidinous value—a bottle of Jack and Scotch Blue respectively, both very expensive in Korea. A fitting gift, since he came around to each table and made sure we were all partaking of the soju he proffered us.

TKD was probably the most fun part of orientation for me, and definitely the biggest stress reliever. I hope to continue it in the hamlet. For now, however, I will rest my foot so that I won’t have to hobble to bow to my Principal and Co-Teacher.

Final Exam and Reflections on Language Class

The final exam consisted of four parts. The first part was reading—25 multiple choice questions, some with fill in the blank grammar points, others with comprehension based on short paragraphs. This section, I feel, was very easy, and I may have gotten 100% on it. There was one tricky thing, though. I could not read the instructions for one set of answers in the comprehension section. This was worrisome as the question reoccurred with each paragraph. I was able, however, to determine what the question was asking using the good ol’ noggin. I noticed that, based on the paragraph, 3 of the answers were true and 1 was false. “Ah!” says I. “They want me to pick the false one. I can do that.” At least… I hope that’s what they wanted.

Part two was writing. This was more difficult as I can’t spell in Hangeul worth a lick, but I was able to show off some more complicated grammar structure based on what we had learned. That just means I was able to string some nouns together. Instead of, “The pen is on the table. The hat is one the table. The book is on the table,” I wrote, “The pen, hat, and book are on the table.” This is harder to do in Korean than you might think… but still not really that impressive.

Parts three and four were both conversation. In part three, I randomly chose a partner and we were told to wait our turn outside. Based on the intel from the others who went in before us, we determined that we would be given a situation to dialogue about (e.g. giving directions to the convenience store to a cab driver, or describing our rooms in the United States). My partner and I were each given a card. Mine had 10,000 won written on it, and a list of items of varying quantities. Ah! Grocery shopping. This I can do. Our dialogue commenced:

“Hello!”
“Welcome!”
“Do you have apples?”
“Yes, we have apples.”
“How much are the apples?”
“1,000 won each.”
“Do you have chocolate?”
“Yes, we have chocolate?”
“How much is the chocolate?”
“2,000 won each.”
“Do you have milk?”
“No there is no milk.”
“If so, then given me only apples and chocolate. Give me two apples and one chocolate. How much is that?”
[My partner goes to calculate on the chalkboard. The numbers we actually used were far more complicated.]
“4,000 won.”
“Here is 10,000 won.”
[Some more calculation.]
“Here is 6,000 won.”
“Thank you. Goodbye!”
“Thank you. Goodbye!”

We rocked it.

Part four was an interview with the teacher, which I botched completely. I stuttered out some nouns to indicate that I understood what she was asking me, and I just didn’t know how to respond. Of course it didn’t help that the first thing she said was “Introduce yourself.” In fact, as I recall, she said this English…

All in all, I think I did well, and it certainly wasn’t worth all the stress that a lot of us put into it.

As for the language class, I have a few parting thoughts. Language is hard. Korean is especially hard. When the Department of the Defense or the Foreign Service trains people in foreign languages, they rank the languages based on how long it takes to reach Level 3 proficiency, which they classify as professional level (i.e. you can give an extemporaneous speech in the target language on a variety of subjects and can read a newspaper fairly easily). For most Western languages, this takes six months of immersive study. For Korean, it takes two years.

It’s especially frustrating because, with the other languages I’ve studied, if something sounds familiar, it’s probably a cognate. Thus, I’ve trained my mind to search for the words that sound familiar and work from there. Unfortunately, now my mind tries to find cognates in Korean, and while there are loan words, there are no cognates. The entire first half of my language classes, whenever my teacher would say “next” I would hear “good job,” because, even though it actually sounds nothing like “good job,” by brain latched onto it as a familiar sound. When I hear something and think it’s English, I usually have to tell myself, “Think about the context. There is no way that word fits here, even if it is a cognate. Figure out what the word actually sounds like.”

Loan words are fun though. They give you an idea about what Korea was like before it met Westerners. For instance, “date” is a loan word. There was no concept of “dating”. They had arranged courtship, but not the sort of freeform system we are accustomed to in the west. Another interesting loan word is “juice.” Imagine a world without that! And “bread”, which is actually borrowed from a romance language, I think, as the transliteration is bbang (cf. pan in Spanish), imagine a world without that!

Finally, there is one cultural-anthropological observation I made that’d I’d like to propose a theory for. When referring to the future, the teachers always pointed behind themselves. When referring to the past, they would point ahead of themselves. In the West, I believe, it is usually the opposite. At least, it has always been the case for me that the future is ahead and the past is behind. I think it may have something to do with the way East Asian culture thinks about the best man has to offer, or at least how it thought about it for centuries. Usually in East Asian culture, especially in Confucianism, you are always trying to return to the times of the sages. Those were the days of harmony and prosperity. Thus, when you think of where you want your civilization to go, you always want to go to the past. In other words, you face the past and the past is thus in front of you. The future is behind you. You do not look at it because you want it to be the past. As I am a history major, I can appreciate this point of view, and I have tried to adopt my hand motions to this system, if only for the sake of clarity when I try to explain things to my host family.

Me: “Tomorrow, I need to go to the post office.” (Indicates in front.)
Family: “You went to the post office yesterday?”
Me: (Sighs…)

Procuring Supplies for the Year and TekBae (택배)

My second Camp Instructor at Camp the Program, Kiehl C., was generous enough to offer me his bike and his cell phone, including accessories, so I won’t not have to buy them when I arrive in the hamlet. Of course, he is asking for some money in return—a cool $75, $50 for the bike and $25 for the phone—but it is a mere pittance compared to what it would cost out in the hamlet. The bike is a 15-speed road bike, something I’ve been coveting for a couple of years now, and comes with tire repair kit, tools, helmet, water bottle, and lights. It does not include the pedals and seat, however, which he is taking to America with him as the pedals have clips specially fitted for his shoes and the seat is Italian leather/Kevlar and cost $200 alone. I will spend maybe 20,000 won for my pedals and seat. The bike itself was about $500 retail. Kiehl also taught me how to repair the inner tubes for the tires, something which will come in handy because road bikes inflate to very high pressures and thus can generate leaks fairly easily.

To get this item to the hamlet, I will be using a Korean courier service called TekBae. This service will get any item anywhere on the peninsula next day. (2-day service for islands off the coast). The amazing part? It only costs 10,000 won (about $10). To ship a bike. Is your mouth on the floor? Mine was.

Taekwondo Yellow Belt Test

With one week left to go in TKD classes, the Kwanjangnim decided that we are ready for our yellow belt tests. This consisted of performing the three blocks (low, body, and high), three punches (low, body, and high), and four kicks (front, side, roundhouse, and stretching) that we know. Curiously, he did not test our ability with all stances, just riding horse stance. Walking stance and long stance were left amiss.

The long and the short of it is, I passed. It was not difficult, though I did make a huge rookie mistake: I went right when I should have went left. When beginning anything in TKD, it is always to the left, but I went right. Like I said, rookie move.

Next week, we begin to learn our first form. I want to learn this especially well, as I feel it will be essential to making a good impression with the teacher in the hamlet.

Cultural Workshop: Comfort Women

Throughout orientation, and especially during Camp the Program, the Powers that Be have hosted mini-cultural workshops for us to expand our knowledge about Korea’s history and traditions. Unfortunately, I was too tired to attend any of them except for the one on Comfort Women, given by University of Chicago graduate Dr. Josh P.

Put delicately, comfort women were women collected from the East Asian populace by a variety of means (promises of work, money, or just plain conscription) for the purpose of entertaining the Japanese military in a variety of ways. But bluntly, the Japanese took female slaves and raped them, given that you take a broad view of both slavery (being held against one’s will, whether or not one is paid) and rape (forced intercourse). These were usually girls between the ages of 10 and 16.

Though, to be fair to the Japanese, not all of the conscripted women had to perform sexual acts. Some, perhaps the lucky ones, merely had to dance or sing or laugh at the officers’ jokes, but a good many of them were prostituted out. And, as I said, not all were conscripted. Often a family would not be able to support a daughter if they could not marry her off, so the promise of work from the Japanese army, no questions asked, was appealing to many destitute parents. There is some debate as to which country suffered the most from this conscription, as Japan controlled much of the East Asian sphere in the 1930s, but Koreans of course think that Korea was that country.

Many of the Comfort Women now abide as living testaments to the past at a place called Sharing House (www.nanum.org; www.comfortwomen.wordpress.com). Dr. Josh P. seems to have taken as his mantra “History ignored by books and politics soon will be forgotten if not shared.” True enough. What he has done is to record some of the Comfort Women’s stories and especially the songs that they would sing, which, though seemingly just drivel from popular 1930s melodies, have remarkable undertones when seen in the context of a life of forced sex and occupation by a foreign people.

These women have opened up their lives to him over time. One story was particularly painful. A young Korean girl was torn from her family and sent up to Manchuria. When the Soviets liberated that area, they let her free, but did not tell her where she could go. She could only speak Chinese, as she had lived in Manchuria almost her entire life. Eventually, she made it back to her family in Korea, only to find that she was a stranger to them and worse, a foreigner. She felt alienated, and eventually went back to her new home in Manchuria.

One woman at the Sharing House, however, talks about how she actually fell in love with a Japanese officer who was a regular customer of hers. He was a kamikaze pilot, and he taught her to sing a song in Japanese that poetically describes what he would have to do when he left her. She can still sing it to this day.

It was also strange, even slightly disturbing, to hear about how the Americans treated these women when we liberated Korea. The Americans understood the concept of a brothel, of course, and thus thought that the Japanese had just set up prostitution stations throughout their empire. Before the war was over, but as the Americans took different areas from the Japanese, the Americans would just leave the “brothels” running, never imagining that the Japanese had conscripted these women from their homes. Whenever Dr. P. would talk to one woman in particular, she would say that the Americans were always very nice to her. He later found out that the only reason she thought this was that the Americans would pay her for her services. The Japanese did not.

These days, the women mostly sit around Sharing House and watch television. They receive visits from media people and students and even just curious passersby. Once a week, they go to Seoul to protest at the Japanese embassy because the Japanese government refuses to apologize for the conscriptions. The Japanese view is that reparations paid in accordance with the 1945 treaty was supposed to cover all the atrocities the Japanese military took part in, both known and unknown. Many of the comfort women are still unknown today, in fact. They wait until their husbands die to avoid dishonoring them, and even then they risk being ostracized by the rest of their family if they come forward. Korea is a shame culture, and there is apparently much shame in being a comfort woman, even if you were a victim.

You can visit Sharing House if you ever travel in Korea, and I think I will visit someday this year. They have scheduled times when a translator can be there for those who only speak English. Maybe when I go, though, I will be able to talk a little with these living members of history myself.

Camp the Program Teaching, Part 2

My second teaching experience with English as a Foreign Language (not Second Language, as there’s a big difference) was quite a bit more successful than my attempt at teaching about American Folktales. There were two major reasons for this, I feel. The first is that the Advanced-Intermediate students were a lot better at English than the Low-Intermediate students I had before. The second is that I tried to dumb the lesson down quite a bit—lowered my expectations on comprehension, left myself enough time to explain things thoroughly, and made my production project fairly simple.

The lesson itself was on circumlocution, and by that I mean, we messed around with riddles. I originally thought that circumlocution would be too hard of a word to even bother trying on EFL students, as some of my Program colleagues didn’t even know what it meant. This class was reading The Giver, though, so I tried it anyway. I don’t know if any of them will remember the word, but they understood it well enough when I said, “It just means to talk around something.” Lots of head nods and “OK!”s to that.

As I said, I did the lesson on riddles. To hook them, I used a couple of movie clips from “Batman Forever”, a movie which none of them had seen. (I’m getting old. First my campers at Arrowhead Lutheran Camp didn’t know the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song, now this…) We then moved on to looking at some “Who am I?” riddles, which were a hit in general. I had some rather smart cookies who got some of the hard ones even, but the hardest ones no one got, mostly I think because of some gaps in language. After this followed a production section in which they were to write their own riddles. If they could stump me, then they would get a prize of a lollypop. Actually, I understood all of their riddles, but I let them think I was stupid for the sake of giving away candy. Maybe Rebecca H. is right… I am a softy. (Again, I’m getting old.) Smiles all around. A successful lesson. Still, my supervisor, Kiehl C. advised me to stay flexible in the future. Usually lessons built around activities tend to flop. This is worrisome, as I intend to be very “activity” based when using TPR in the Hamlet.