Week 4-5

I have to admit, my habit of using texting (which is cheaper than calling) is causing my writing to decrease in quality. I'm sorry.

Last Weekend

I go into Seoul on Sunday with Mike and Melinda to a traditional market (the name escapes me). I find lots of things that would make perfect gifts for some people at home, but I have allotted my money for the remainder of the month (as payday is not until April 10th) and have to pass them by until I can afford them. Mike checks out early. Melinda and I go to Itaewon (with two inconvenient subway transfers) to see an English bookstore and have dinner. I don't buy anything at the bookstore, though I am tempted by a used copy of Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I can't justify it, as I have read it once before, and though I would love to read it again someday, I still have unread books at my Officetel (apartment). Dinner is incredible. It is at a nice little sitdown place called the Flying Pan, with soups and sandwiches, lattes, and desserts. The chairs are mismatched in an artsy way, the staff has a smattering of English, and by the end of our long conversation, Melinda and I realize how at home we feel in this place. This restaurant would be just as popular in Portland Oregon, or in North Florida (where Melinda is from) as it is here in Itaewon.

Monday - Friday

I finish After Dark by Haruki Murakami. I really think he will be one of the few authors, whose entire collection of novels I will read. I begin David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and fall in love with it in the first fifty pages. It is ten times more enjoyable to read than Oliver Twist.

This week at school is the monthly test. We give 1st-8^th graders a couple of hours to complete an examination of all they are supposed to have learned this month. Though my fellow teachers tell me I will have lots of free time to get things done, I find this not to be the case. I have to fill out more paperwork than usual, fill out scantrons with student numbers, do evaluations of my pre-kinder students' progress, and grade the writing section of the students' exams. I stay two extra hours after work on Monday night, making my workday 12.5 hours long, and have barely enough time to run home and grab something to eat before my appointment with my parents on Skype for 10 pm. I feel my cold symptoms increase throughout the week. I can't tell if I am not recovering well from the last cold or if this is a new cold. In any case, I have to skip out on going to Jimjil baan (steam bath) with Melinda and Katie to go to sleep early, even though I would really like to go. I make a deal with one of my classes, that if everyone in the class finishes a major seven page assignment, I will give them $7 towards a pizza party. Three of the seven students do not finish the assignment and the rest of the class is miserable for it.

This week in pre-kinder, I feel really settled in my class. I love these kids and can tell they love me and trust me, which is a big step for 5 year olds who have never seen an American before. There are some problems with fighting (one student stabbed another student's hand with scissors! Luckily they are the “childproof” kind with the rounded plastic tips) and I try a new seating arrangement of rows in order to prevent further fighting. It works and my students are more attentive than ever. BUT, my school has succumbed to always pleasing any complaint parents make, and I am hinted at that I should change my seating arrangement (when speaking with a Korean boss, you can't ignore a hint). I find this an irritating request, but don't want this to be one of the few battles I will get to fight this year without being labeled as a “troublemaker” (which they have most certainly done with a couple of other teachers). So this following Monday, I am back to the old seating method, where I will put my most aggressive kids at the very front of the room.

R7 (the older, advanced, and typically moody class full of teenagers) grows on me. They are a challenge, but I really am starting to like them.

One of my fellow teachers, who is fairly new to the school, screams at one of his students. I am angry that I can hear every unreasonable word he says through the classroom wall. My students are distracted from their writing exercise due to his screaming. As he has worked at other hagwons in Korea for the past two years, I think he has no excuse to act this way. He should know by now how to interact with students. I am almost resolved to walk into his classroom and ask him to talk to his student privately after class, when he has had time to calm down. The worst moment of it is when he screams at his student to stop crying (after having provoked him to do so). I see he is pulled aside after school by one of the admin and hope for the student's sake that he will be reprimanded.

Friday Night

I go out with the girls (Kristina, Dayna, Katie, and Melinda) after work on Friday to Rhythm and Booze, the foreigner bar in Bucheon. I order a 10 dollar sad excuse for nachos and am disappointed. I am introduced to Abbie, a girl who works at another hagwon in Bucheon, and who seems to already know half my coworkers somehow. She helps me count my blessings, by sharing the horrors of her hagwon. She has to give three months notice and isn't guaranteed a letter of release to work elsewhere afterwards. She has to work from 1 pm until usually midnight and the school requires the teachers to use their prep time to create the schools textbooks! She has to bus to work or cab it because her officetel is so far away. And she her officetel sucks—no real shower, just a spigot on the wall, and the floor heating doesn't work, so she just has an electric blanket in her bed. I am treated like a queen by comparison. I tell her she needs to get on Dave's ESL Cafe and report the school. She says she'll wait until she gets home to report them because she's worried that they might make the remainder of her time in Korea miserable if they discover her report.

Saturday

On Saturday morning, I go to Holly's Coffee and read David Copperfield for over an hour. I stop into a small grocery store Melinda has dubbed “More Than You Expected Mart,” and find she is right. Its a pleasant little store and I buy some brown N5 hair dye for 7 dollars. My hair is growing out and the line between my natural color and the reddish brown dye is showing too much contrast. Being a pro at box dye, everything turns out well, and I feel happy in the result of the deep brown. After this I get a text from Melinda about going into Seoul to do some shopping. After much back and forth texting, we settle on 3 pm to meet up. Katie, unfortunately, doesn't have a cell yet, and when I go knock on her door she is in the shower. She tries to get ready quickly, but we don't get to Bucheon Station until about 4 PM.

So Melinda, Katie and I go into Seoul to Hongik University Station, a major shopping area. At first my eyes are sparkling in admiration of all of the beautiful things to buy here. Most of it is relatively cheap in cost, with unique boutique dresses, blouses, shoes, earrings, necklaces, barrettes, makeup, purses. As time passes I get embittered seeing that there is no chance of me being able to buy any of the stuff I like. The necklaces are too long (designed for women with no chest), the shoes go up to size 8 in American sizes, and, of course, the clothes are way too small. The makeup is too pink. Though I somewhat prepared myself for clothes not fitting, seeing how beautiful and unusual everything is, I really feel miserable. I want to cry when I realize I am not able to even try on shoes here.

I find out that there are good tailors for cheap in Korea, and that with a picture of what I want I can have some really wonderful clothing made for me. I hope that sometime soon I will be able to have some clothes made for me. Melinda says the only jeans she has bought in Korea were made by a tailor whose client never came back to pick them up. They have beautiful embroidery on the leg too. Melinda and a few other of the American staff at school have expressed a desire to have a Hanbok (traditional Korean dress) made. I personally would rather have a tailor-made suit than a Hanbok.

We go to dinner at a Korean restaurant in the same Hongik neighborhood (which has recommended itself to us with three floors packed full of customers). For fourteen dollars a piece we have a feast of spicy chicken (in a kind of thick stew) and another tray of barbeque pork. These two entrees include all the traditional sides of pickled daikon radish, kimchee, cold rice noodles, and cold seaweed soup. There is raw garlic on the side of the pork tray which I put into my mouth and swallow whole with a glass of water as if I were taking medicine. (If you don't know, raw garlic is extremely beneficial for the body.) We also have water, coke, and they provide a service (i.e. complimentary) drink of some kind of rice wine or plum wine (can't tell which).

When we're on the subway, I really feel as though I am getting the hang of getting around and even feel confident enough to assert that I think I could do it by myself, provided I have a map. I sit in the front seat and remember all the Korean phrases required to get me home: I tell the cab driver “GS Bequigym” meaning GS square, a landmark near our apartments (Korea doesn't use streetnames, but rather landmarks for two reasons: they think it disrespectful to the land, which was here before they were, and secondly, because they want to make it difficult for the North Koreans to find their way around, if ever the South is again invaded). I also remember to tell the driver the phrase “Jik jin” meaning straight ahead, once we arrive to GS Square, and “Yogeo” meaning something like, stop here. And finally “Kansalmida” meaning thank you.

From the cab we go to Melinda's, who has the nicest apartment out of all of us, with the most closet space, living space, and even nice built in shelves in her shower. I think I will ask Grace if I can have her place when she finishes for the year. We watch “How to Marry a Millionaire” with Marilyn Monroe (who is hilarious when she bumps around blind as a bat because she is embarrassed to wear glasses), Betty Paige, and someone else whose name I should be able to remember. Melinda does a fashion show of the beautiful clothes she bought in Hongik. I am a bore and pity myself because I can't have the beautiful clothes she has.

When I get home, as if to intensify my misery, I try to put together something cute to wear out of the clothes I have. Nothing works, nothing matches, and all I can see is what I don't like. I look in the mirror at my body I really do begin to cry this time.

Sunday

I sleep until four on Sunday, get up and go through my fridge to make something to eat. I realize bad garlic has contaminated my vegetable drawer. I pull everything out, increasing the mess in my apartment. I make fabulous potatoes with onions, and throw a fried egg on top. I reminds me of Sundays at home. I take extras over to Mike who on Friday had a temperature of 103 degrees was still required to stay at work. Even though I have been to his apartment once before, I have trouble finding it and walk up and down the block several times before I find the right building.

On Sunday evening I receive two separate invitations to dinner and feel a strong sense of community as a result. I decline both as I have eaten, but still feel warm and fuzzy inside. I blog for several hours listening to Edgar Meyer play the JS Bach Cello Suites. I am not ready for the new week and should clean my apartment. I expect I will stay late after work tomorrow to fill out progress reports for my 1st-8^th grade students, in order to avoid feeling overwhelmed during my workweek.