The last ten minutes of the Friday work day are the worst. Classes are done, but we sit around for ten minutes. It's not enough time to get any actual work done. We're like students, sitting around, pulling on our jackets and packing our bags, hoping the person in charge doesn't catch our eyes, doesn't tell us to unpack our bags and get back to work.
The final bell rings, but no one moves.
"Dinner?"
"Dinner."
Like parrots in the morning, we call out. Rather than checking to see who else has survived the night, we question across the distances to confirm a mutual desire not only for food--for time together. With an only sometimes verbal agreement, we head to The Galbi Place.
The Galbi Place has an actual name, but I've never taken the opportunity to learn it.
A man who I can only assume is the owner smiles at us as we walk in. He ushers us to a table and we file around it. There's a ritual with walking inside when you live somewhere that gets cold. You pull off your jacket, your scarf. These are folded and passed down the line, forming a pile on a chair or someone's bag. Hats and gloves are removed. Sweatshirts linger the longest, pulled off later into the evening. We're brought half frozen white towels. We wipe off our hands, scrubbing them with cold clean. We're given cups and water, filling them and passing them around the circular table. Little dishes of sauce are placed on the table. The owner brings the coals.
Wearing gloves and using a large hooked piece of metal, he carries a metal bucket, full of tube shaped coals glowing red. He puts it under a slatted piece of metal in the center of the table. Side dishes are brought out: kimchi, spring onions, boiled eggs, kimchi soup, and a plate of mushrooms, onions, garlic, and lettuce.
N, our DK (Designated Korean), talks to the owner, even though we all know the words by now. Anchangsal. Galbisal. He, or his wife, brings out clean white plates loaded with sliced pieces of beef. There are scissors, a pair of tongs. Someone takes the tongs and uses them to grip a piece of pork fat that looks like an inch long slice of Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. We all separate into roles, with no specific week to week pattern. Someone rubs the pork fat over the metal grill. Someone hails the owner or his wife and orders maekju--the amount varying depending on how many people actually came. Someone opens the maekju and people pour in the glasses marked 'Hite' and "cass.' We pass these around the table. Either using chopsticks or improper manners, mushrooms and garlic are added to the grill. The scissors are used to cut the onions. We pass around flat bowls of kimchi soup.
We wait.
As things cook more, chopsticks are grabbed. Sometimes, they're used to turn over pieces of meat, once or twice, but never a third time. People straighten up in their seats, leaning in, and holding their chopsticks. They look hungry. They wait, eyeing pieces across the grill, picking out which one looks done enough, which one they want to pull over to their side, which one they want to lay claim to.
Bits of residue cling to the grill and blacken. The metal surface is cleaned and reslicked with the piece of pork fat. More meat is cooked. The mushrooms slowly fill up with liquid as they cook.
Everyone has different ways they like to eat galbi. B pours extra peppers into his soy sauce, dipping the pieces and devouring them. N eats quietly, as though trying to keep the rest of us from noticing. M eats pieces of the meal separately, taking a piece of meat, a piece of garlic, a piece of onion, a mushroom. He'll make a little stack, putting a piece of garlic in the center of a mushroom, and then putting a piece of meat on top, letting them all soak together. I take onions and meat, mushrooms when I can, and wrap them in a leaf of lettuce. Sometimes we all just eat a piece of meat and call it done.
When we finish one part of something, we're brought more. At least once we're given more mushrooms. We order several plates of meat throughout the night. More bottle of maekju. Between rounds of meat, while things are cooking or we're waiting for more, we attack the side dishes. We pick at the kimchi and spicy bean sprouts. We attack the egg, running our spoons along the side of the container to scrape off the bits clinging to the sides like suds when the bathwater is going down the drain.
We eat.
Eventually we lean back. The owner takes the coals away. We get an ashtray that is similar in shape to a bottle cap, plain metal, and normal ash tray sized. A wet paper napkin sits in the bottom of the ashtray. Cigarettes come out and we pass them around the table. N has golden cowboys, Marlborough Lights. A has some Korean brand. Sometimes M has red cowboys, Marlborough Reds. When I remember, I throw my pack in my bag. I don't always bring them.
We're never given a bill, but rather the owner or his wife gives N a number, a total. We divide it between ourselves and then count cash, arguing about who is paying in larger bills, who has smaller bills, who is giving five for someone else. Who is going to pay someone later.
But, before that, for a time, we sit. We smoke. We finish our maekju, our cider, our cola. We talk. We complain about work and swap stories about students we love, the ridiculous, unintentional thing someone said in class. The time we cursed and our kids never let us forget it, or on happier days, the time they didn't even understand. We digest galbi, excessive amounts of grilled beef, and burp lightly from the overly bubbly beer.
We relax.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Club
I slump down in my seat. It's heated from underneath. I'm thankful. My breath still condenses in the air. The doors are open. When I look out the window at the station, it seems surreal. I'd once seen CG pictures of a Korean train station. It looked just like this, though it might be the sleep trying to creep into my eyes.
Across from me and next to me, the metro car is half full of similarly sleepy people. As a whole we smell of grease, alcohol, tobacco smoke, and sweat. We're washed up and worn out--like jeans thrown into the dryer without fabric softener. We look at eachother, but no one says anything, even people who got on the train together. We sit around and acknowledge the truth of who we are. We are not beautiful, elegant damned creatures dancing under dark lights. We're tired.
At 5:15 in the morning, the Seoul Metro Subway starts up again. The doors close and we go home.
Earlier that day I'd met up with a friend of a friend. L and I had a mutual friend back in Philadelphia, where we both had been made. We went to the zoo. After dinner and going to a norebang, she commented about a friend mixing that night in Hongdae. I'd already missed the last train home, and was still green enough to not want to venture the bus system back to Suwon. L and S--then new, now a friend--seemed to agree to accept responsibility for me that night. We took the last train to Hongdae.
Hongdae is the area around Hongik University. It's the place to go. There are streets lined with clubs of all types. I don't know how much of the world is like this, but Korea seems to value organization in city design. The restaurants are here. The clubs are here. The antique shops are here. The cell phone stores are here. Yes, there is as much mixing as there is in anywhere, but there seem to be neighborhoods with excessive amounts of one kind of thing. Hongdae has clubs and venues and shops.
We went to a club.
There are two kinds of directions people give you when you go somewhere new in Korea: landmark based and lazy. Landmark based is fairly self explanatory. For example, to get to my apartment, go to the park. Cross the street in front of the library. Walk over the stone path on that median like area that is right after you cross at the light from the library. Once you hit the street, turn left and walk down. Cross to the other side of the street at the first available opportunity. Keep walking down the street. At the grocery, turn right. I live in the second apartment building on the left. There is also the lazy method. This method involves saying things like "It's near the Itawewon metro stop" or "Get off at Dongdaemun and ask for directions." There's a subset of the lazy method called "The Lazy Phone Method," where you are instructed to call people after you get to one destination. This was even worse before cell phones where the directions were between phone booths.
We had Lazy directions. We walked around and asked around. Outside of clubs were men who represented the kind of club it was. Outside of hiphop clubs were men in basketball shorts and backwards baseball caps at angles. They wore chains. Outside of dance clubs were men in popular looking clothes. The rock club had a guy with jeans and spiked hair by the door. These men try to convince you to enter their clubs. They talk to you, they make offers. If you are a woman--and this has been the only time in my experience in Korea being a foreign woman was the best thing to be--you would be invited in with promises of no cover charge or free drinks. Or both.
We stop by one guy, who seemed to have pretty good English.
"Do you know where JR is?" L asked him. He insisted the place is closed, invited us into his club, and then told us where JR was just to be safe. He gave Landmark Based Directions.
We found it.
The club was about what one would expect. We paid our money, went in, took our free drink, and did as people do in clubs. In my experiences, no one I know goes to clubs to meet people. They go to clubs with their friends and dance. They talk to their friends. They see people they know, friends from the club, but no one I know actually ever takes someone home or hooks up or any of the things people do movies and television shows when they go to clubs. We danced. We talked to each other. We took breaks and sat down. We looked at the people around and talked about them. We danced. We talked and danced. We combined all of these activities, talking, sitting, and dancing, with one another in as many ways as we could. (Not that many if you do the math.) Then I spotted a schedule for the night on the wall.
Earlier, S had told me that "we don't be out all night, we'll just go to a jimjjilbang* later." When I saw the schedule, I realizeed L's friend wasn't going up until 3:30 (or was it four?) for a set until close. It dawned on me what this meant: I was going to be out all night.
As I write this, I'm trying to remember the last time I was actually out all night. I've been at events and slept very little. I've had sleepless nights at home. I can remember time during my second senior year at university when I had an unintentional party--one of those kinds where everyone everyone ends up sitting around in their underwear--where people one by one drifted off to sleep and I got them all set up in places only to realize I had to be at work in an hour. Once I had an actual party, during my first senior year, where something similar happened, but instead of work, it was to light a show. I've seen the sun rise, but I'd never actually been out all night before.
The night wore on, as it is wont to do. Not sleeping is a lot like drinking to excess**, there are many distinct points in the night, you remember it all well enough, but then there's a point where several hours blur together and you don't not remember what you did, but the world seems to be sort of quiet and fuzzy and you're just not actually paying attention to anything.
I reached that point.
At some point during it, S took me by the arm and informed me that we were going home. I nodded. Home seemed like a good idea. My home was over an hour and a half away, but somehow I knew that my bed would be soft and warm and waiting for me. We walked towards the metro stop. Someone bumped into us. As in physically bumped into us. His name was Peter. A disturbingly large percentage of the important men in my life are named Peter or William. If this was a piece of fiction, I would go on to explain how this person became important, but he didn't. I haven't seen him since. No foreshadowing here!
This Peter was high, a unique feat in Korea as pot doesn't exactly exist. He and his friend, Daniel I think, told us this story of how a friend just came to Korea, bringing with them bounty and love and pot. Our following adventure lasted all of five minutes and involved getting Peter white cotton candy. We're back on route to the station.
L, S, and I bid our goodbyes. They got on the train going in one direction and I sat down on the one going in the other.
It's now 5:15am. I sit with the other refugees from the clubs, from the Hongdae night. I take the line to another station and transfer to the line one--the dark blue line, heading to Cheonan. Standing outside I am cold. Around me, Sunday morning has begun. Hikers head out of town to enjoy the foliage. Men in business suits go wherever men in business suits go on a Korean Sunday morning. Kids in uniforms, arms as heavy with books as my eyes are with sleep, are on their way to study.
The train pulls out of the station.
The slashes of sky between the utilitarian elegance of the station and windows of the metro car are that lightening shade of blue that comes before the sun. The clean looking man next to me smiles at me. He points to the map and then to me.
"Odio?"
"Hwaeso-yok."
He nods and then pantomimes sleeping, speaking in Korea while he does so. I nod and close my eyes. I nap on and off, opening my eyes just enough to see the cityscapes bleed into countryscapes and back again. The sky burns. The man next to me wakes me up a stop before mine. The sky is a sickly bluish grey. It doesn't look like rain. It looks like early.
I shiver as I unlock my bike and destroy the distance between me and my apartment. I drop my bag by the door, awkwardly shove toothpaste in my mouth, and fail to actually do anything with it. I spit. I close the final distance between me and my bed.
I hear people walking to the church down the street. The birds. Cars.
I sleep.
*More on this soon.
**And I manage to mention drinking again. I don't really have a problem
Across from me and next to me, the metro car is half full of similarly sleepy people. As a whole we smell of grease, alcohol, tobacco smoke, and sweat. We're washed up and worn out--like jeans thrown into the dryer without fabric softener. We look at eachother, but no one says anything, even people who got on the train together. We sit around and acknowledge the truth of who we are. We are not beautiful, elegant damned creatures dancing under dark lights. We're tired.
At 5:15 in the morning, the Seoul Metro Subway starts up again. The doors close and we go home.
Earlier that day I'd met up with a friend of a friend. L and I had a mutual friend back in Philadelphia, where we both had been made. We went to the zoo. After dinner and going to a norebang, she commented about a friend mixing that night in Hongdae. I'd already missed the last train home, and was still green enough to not want to venture the bus system back to Suwon. L and S--then new, now a friend--seemed to agree to accept responsibility for me that night. We took the last train to Hongdae.
Hongdae is the area around Hongik University. It's the place to go. There are streets lined with clubs of all types. I don't know how much of the world is like this, but Korea seems to value organization in city design. The restaurants are here. The clubs are here. The antique shops are here. The cell phone stores are here. Yes, there is as much mixing as there is in anywhere, but there seem to be neighborhoods with excessive amounts of one kind of thing. Hongdae has clubs and venues and shops.
We went to a club.
There are two kinds of directions people give you when you go somewhere new in Korea: landmark based and lazy. Landmark based is fairly self explanatory. For example, to get to my apartment, go to the park. Cross the street in front of the library. Walk over the stone path on that median like area that is right after you cross at the light from the library. Once you hit the street, turn left and walk down. Cross to the other side of the street at the first available opportunity. Keep walking down the street. At the grocery, turn right. I live in the second apartment building on the left. There is also the lazy method. This method involves saying things like "It's near the Itawewon metro stop" or "Get off at Dongdaemun and ask for directions." There's a subset of the lazy method called "The Lazy Phone Method," where you are instructed to call people after you get to one destination. This was even worse before cell phones where the directions were between phone booths.
We had Lazy directions. We walked around and asked around. Outside of clubs were men who represented the kind of club it was. Outside of hiphop clubs were men in basketball shorts and backwards baseball caps at angles. They wore chains. Outside of dance clubs were men in popular looking clothes. The rock club had a guy with jeans and spiked hair by the door. These men try to convince you to enter their clubs. They talk to you, they make offers. If you are a woman--and this has been the only time in my experience in Korea being a foreign woman was the best thing to be--you would be invited in with promises of no cover charge or free drinks. Or both.
We stop by one guy, who seemed to have pretty good English.
"Do you know where JR is?" L asked him. He insisted the place is closed, invited us into his club, and then told us where JR was just to be safe. He gave Landmark Based Directions.
We found it.
The club was about what one would expect. We paid our money, went in, took our free drink, and did as people do in clubs. In my experiences, no one I know goes to clubs to meet people. They go to clubs with their friends and dance. They talk to their friends. They see people they know, friends from the club, but no one I know actually ever takes someone home or hooks up or any of the things people do movies and television shows when they go to clubs. We danced. We talked to each other. We took breaks and sat down. We looked at the people around and talked about them. We danced. We talked and danced. We combined all of these activities, talking, sitting, and dancing, with one another in as many ways as we could. (Not that many if you do the math.) Then I spotted a schedule for the night on the wall.
Earlier, S had told me that "we don't be out all night, we'll just go to a jimjjilbang* later." When I saw the schedule, I realizeed L's friend wasn't going up until 3:30 (or was it four?) for a set until close. It dawned on me what this meant: I was going to be out all night.
As I write this, I'm trying to remember the last time I was actually out all night. I've been at events and slept very little. I've had sleepless nights at home. I can remember time during my second senior year at university when I had an unintentional party--one of those kinds where everyone everyone ends up sitting around in their underwear--where people one by one drifted off to sleep and I got them all set up in places only to realize I had to be at work in an hour. Once I had an actual party, during my first senior year, where something similar happened, but instead of work, it was to light a show. I've seen the sun rise, but I'd never actually been out all night before.
The night wore on, as it is wont to do. Not sleeping is a lot like drinking to excess**, there are many distinct points in the night, you remember it all well enough, but then there's a point where several hours blur together and you don't not remember what you did, but the world seems to be sort of quiet and fuzzy and you're just not actually paying attention to anything.
I reached that point.
At some point during it, S took me by the arm and informed me that we were going home. I nodded. Home seemed like a good idea. My home was over an hour and a half away, but somehow I knew that my bed would be soft and warm and waiting for me. We walked towards the metro stop. Someone bumped into us. As in physically bumped into us. His name was Peter. A disturbingly large percentage of the important men in my life are named Peter or William. If this was a piece of fiction, I would go on to explain how this person became important, but he didn't. I haven't seen him since. No foreshadowing here!
This Peter was high, a unique feat in Korea as pot doesn't exactly exist. He and his friend, Daniel I think, told us this story of how a friend just came to Korea, bringing with them bounty and love and pot. Our following adventure lasted all of five minutes and involved getting Peter white cotton candy. We're back on route to the station.
L, S, and I bid our goodbyes. They got on the train going in one direction and I sat down on the one going in the other.
It's now 5:15am. I sit with the other refugees from the clubs, from the Hongdae night. I take the line to another station and transfer to the line one--the dark blue line, heading to Cheonan. Standing outside I am cold. Around me, Sunday morning has begun. Hikers head out of town to enjoy the foliage. Men in business suits go wherever men in business suits go on a Korean Sunday morning. Kids in uniforms, arms as heavy with books as my eyes are with sleep, are on their way to study.
The train pulls out of the station.
The slashes of sky between the utilitarian elegance of the station and windows of the metro car are that lightening shade of blue that comes before the sun. The clean looking man next to me smiles at me. He points to the map and then to me.
"Odio?"
"Hwaeso-yok."
He nods and then pantomimes sleeping, speaking in Korea while he does so. I nod and close my eyes. I nap on and off, opening my eyes just enough to see the cityscapes bleed into countryscapes and back again. The sky burns. The man next to me wakes me up a stop before mine. The sky is a sickly bluish grey. It doesn't look like rain. It looks like early.
I shiver as I unlock my bike and destroy the distance between me and my apartment. I drop my bag by the door, awkwardly shove toothpaste in my mouth, and fail to actually do anything with it. I spit. I close the final distance between me and my bed.
I hear people walking to the church down the street. The birds. Cars.
I sleep.
**And I manage to mention drinking again. I don't really have a problem
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Snapshots 01
The air is wet. It's home made whipped cream: heavy and just sweet enough to taste it. It rained last night. The roads aren't slick, but everything is darker than normal. The sky is a white-noise grey. No one out. The 1.2 kilometer path around the man-made lake is an unnatural empty. I'd run there at one AM, being passed by adjuma, passing lazy couples in no rush to return to their lives. The trees are bare, but the yellow leaves carpet the ground, thickly layered on top of one another, like when you drop a file of paper. With the trees, the sky, the street, and the lack of sun, the cold air hitting my face and creeping under the seam between my gloves and my sweatshirt, with my legs stretching not quite long enough with each revolution of the wheels on my bike, with the grey, dismal sense of endless subdued colors, I think: Maybe this could be home.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Drink
I celebrated my twenty-first birthday the same way most people I know have: with a cheap bottle of novelty something or another. In my case it was vodka. This particular vodka was named after a Buddhist lama who was known for being a drunkard. This was not my first adult drinking experience. Like most of my friends and peers, I was versed in alcohol before my twenty-one. When I was eighteen, I got drunk for the first time with my friends the day we moved in to our apartment. We had a bottle of Jamesons. He and his sons became good friends of mine as an undergrad. We got together once a month and never regretted a night we shared. The first time I was hungover was a year and change after my twenty-first with a few ill-advised bottles of wine and not enough water.
Crouched over my toilet and deeply wondering if there's anything else left in my stomach to even come up at this point, I remember these earlier transgressions and wonder if it is possible to die because you simply want to. I attempt to will myself to do so and fail. I stumble back to my bed. One of my friends snores in a familiar way. I kick a 1.6 liter of Cass Red (6.9% alcohol by volume) out of my way and fall down. I toss a blanket over my friend, wrapping the second around me, and pulling the third on top of both of us. I turn on my side and stare at the wall. When I close my eyes, I have flashbacks to the summer after my freshman year of high school when my boyfriend took me to Hershey Park and made me ride the leprechaun with him. It's one of those ferris wheel looking things, but it spins so fast that centrifugal force holds you in your little cockpit like cell. That was the only time I ever threw up from a ride. I still hate that thing. And not just because it reminds me of my ex. If you're reading this, get a haircut. And shave. Seriously, your hair does not look good at that length.
I tell myself, as I always do at this point in the evening, that I am going to be more careful. No more mixing soju and maekju. No more soju even. No more Cass Red.
A week later I figure two out of three isn't bad.
Drinking is part of life in Korea. There's a whole webpage dedicated to pictures of people here so drunk they black out and collapse, sleeping wherever they sat, stood, or fell down. Walking through my neighborhood after eleven on any given night is a game of "Dodge the Drunks." Drinking here is serious business. It's a commitment through a night. It's an activity unto itself and the most popular sport among foreigners and locals alike. Most of my "Wacky Korea Stories" are either from a handful of unique events--meeting up with a friend of a friend in Seoul, my extended family visiting--or related to how much I drank in a given Friday night and the aftereffects of it. My first Friday in Korea, when one of my Korean coworkers and I walked arm-in-arm down the main drag near Suwon Station, a dirty neon lit boardwalk of paving stones and the reality of cyberpunk Asia that Ridley Scott never wanted to show on film. She told me I was "fucking cool." One of my American coworkers celebrated his last night in Korea and we ended up at a norebang. Holding one another so he wouldn't fall down, we belted out "Don't Stop Believing," beautiful screaming and true emotion laying each word so poignant* the midwife was standing by. A girl in a bathroom sitting on the ground crying and me just sitting next to her and giving her a hug. Her showing me off to her friends and declaring me "Her American," before I could make my way to a cab and hand the driver my ID, pointing to the address, and saying "Barri juseyo," in total nonsensical broken Korean. Standing up and sitting down again when I realize standing isn't such a good idea. The birthday of one of my coworkers and dancing with her on the bar floor. Bathroom floors. Singing. Cabs. Stumbling home. Salvation. Hold out. Central. Cash. ATMs. Family Mart. Cigarette after cigarette passing around the circle, through my lips, and into my lungs. Realizing I know the exact taste of soju.
The first Korean words anyone took the time to teach me here were "Maekju hana juseyo." Bring me one beer, please. "Maekju hana-do juseyo." Bring me one more beer, please. I'm not proud of any of this: I merely accept it as part of my life, as though it is a sin I need to write across my skin before I prostrate myself at the feet of my future and past selves and beg for forgiveness, as I do with any other action I carry out.
I'm a pretty weak person socially. I like people. I have a problem saying no to groups. When given the option between going home to my cold apartment lit in milk green fluorescent, and another maekju, another bottle of soju, I'll take the consequences of poisoning myself further.
Drinking as an activity unto itself fascinates me in the sheer foreign nature of it. Junior year, one of my roommates had a friend from high school come to a party of ours. He had a blast, gleeful as soon as he showed up. "You like each other!" He yelled as he saw my roommate and I being cute, preening one another in soft ways. "My friends drink and then they like each other. You drink and then have fun!" Drinking was always a part of something else. We'd have a party and it would work as a social lubricant. We'd have questionably themed events and people then had an excuse to enjoy what we were doing. Insulting organized religion. Seeing things some of us wish we could erase from our minds. Being so painfully nerdy it wasn't safe. Creating stories to tell. Mocking the dead. Mocking ourselves. We'd dance in the living room. We'd play games. We'd practice academic bulimia, binging with a single night and then purging in monastic studying practices. It was part of a celebration, a holiday, something that we would have done anyway.
I never drank to drink before. I actually kind of don't believe in it as an activity. I can't find virtue in it, I cannot construct a meaning for it. Part of me laments my actions, but I find myself carrying out the nights as though ritual. Pop the bottle, fill glasses around the table. Shot. Slam. Sip.
I don't know why the foreigners bring themselves to such levels of inebriation. I don't know why the Koreans do it. I know why I do it: It's ennui. It's not knowing what else to do. It's fear of exploring, fear of being alone. It's what everyone else does.
*Poignant, six months pregnant with feeling. -The Smothers Brothers.
Crouched over my toilet and deeply wondering if there's anything else left in my stomach to even come up at this point, I remember these earlier transgressions and wonder if it is possible to die because you simply want to. I attempt to will myself to do so and fail. I stumble back to my bed. One of my friends snores in a familiar way. I kick a 1.6 liter of Cass Red (6.9% alcohol by volume) out of my way and fall down. I toss a blanket over my friend, wrapping the second around me, and pulling the third on top of both of us. I turn on my side and stare at the wall. When I close my eyes, I have flashbacks to the summer after my freshman year of high school when my boyfriend took me to Hershey Park and made me ride the leprechaun with him. It's one of those ferris wheel looking things, but it spins so fast that centrifugal force holds you in your little cockpit like cell. That was the only time I ever threw up from a ride. I still hate that thing. And not just because it reminds me of my ex. If you're reading this, get a haircut. And shave. Seriously, your hair does not look good at that length.
I tell myself, as I always do at this point in the evening, that I am going to be more careful. No more mixing soju and maekju. No more soju even. No more Cass Red.
A week later I figure two out of three isn't bad.
Drinking is part of life in Korea. There's a whole webpage dedicated to pictures of people here so drunk they black out and collapse, sleeping wherever they sat, stood, or fell down. Walking through my neighborhood after eleven on any given night is a game of "Dodge the Drunks." Drinking here is serious business. It's a commitment through a night. It's an activity unto itself and the most popular sport among foreigners and locals alike. Most of my "Wacky Korea Stories" are either from a handful of unique events--meeting up with a friend of a friend in Seoul, my extended family visiting--or related to how much I drank in a given Friday night and the aftereffects of it. My first Friday in Korea, when one of my Korean coworkers and I walked arm-in-arm down the main drag near Suwon Station, a dirty neon lit boardwalk of paving stones and the reality of cyberpunk Asia that Ridley Scott never wanted to show on film. She told me I was "fucking cool." One of my American coworkers celebrated his last night in Korea and we ended up at a norebang. Holding one another so he wouldn't fall down, we belted out "Don't Stop Believing," beautiful screaming and true emotion laying each word so poignant* the midwife was standing by. A girl in a bathroom sitting on the ground crying and me just sitting next to her and giving her a hug. Her showing me off to her friends and declaring me "Her American," before I could make my way to a cab and hand the driver my ID, pointing to the address, and saying "Barri juseyo," in total nonsensical broken Korean. Standing up and sitting down again when I realize standing isn't such a good idea. The birthday of one of my coworkers and dancing with her on the bar floor. Bathroom floors. Singing. Cabs. Stumbling home. Salvation. Hold out. Central. Cash. ATMs. Family Mart. Cigarette after cigarette passing around the circle, through my lips, and into my lungs. Realizing I know the exact taste of soju.
The first Korean words anyone took the time to teach me here were "Maekju hana juseyo." Bring me one beer, please. "Maekju hana-do juseyo." Bring me one more beer, please. I'm not proud of any of this: I merely accept it as part of my life, as though it is a sin I need to write across my skin before I prostrate myself at the feet of my future and past selves and beg for forgiveness, as I do with any other action I carry out.
I'm a pretty weak person socially. I like people. I have a problem saying no to groups. When given the option between going home to my cold apartment lit in milk green fluorescent, and another maekju, another bottle of soju, I'll take the consequences of poisoning myself further.
Drinking as an activity unto itself fascinates me in the sheer foreign nature of it. Junior year, one of my roommates had a friend from high school come to a party of ours. He had a blast, gleeful as soon as he showed up. "You like each other!" He yelled as he saw my roommate and I being cute, preening one another in soft ways. "My friends drink and then they like each other. You drink and then have fun!" Drinking was always a part of something else. We'd have a party and it would work as a social lubricant. We'd have questionably themed events and people then had an excuse to enjoy what we were doing. Insulting organized religion. Seeing things some of us wish we could erase from our minds. Being so painfully nerdy it wasn't safe. Creating stories to tell. Mocking the dead. Mocking ourselves. We'd dance in the living room. We'd play games. We'd practice academic bulimia, binging with a single night and then purging in monastic studying practices. It was part of a celebration, a holiday, something that we would have done anyway.
I never drank to drink before. I actually kind of don't believe in it as an activity. I can't find virtue in it, I cannot construct a meaning for it. Part of me laments my actions, but I find myself carrying out the nights as though ritual. Pop the bottle, fill glasses around the table. Shot. Slam. Sip.
I don't know why the foreigners bring themselves to such levels of inebriation. I don't know why the Koreans do it. I know why I do it: It's ennui. It's not knowing what else to do. It's fear of exploring, fear of being alone. It's what everyone else does.
*Poignant, six months pregnant with feeling. -The Smothers Brothers.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Swim
Swimming lessons start in the quiet way things seem to start. There is no introduction, there is no loud sound. We just start. In the pool with a handful of women who all had at least one generation beyond them in their lines, I stood in my space doing water based warm up exercises. We're led by a man in a wet suit with a whistle. We form a conga line and half hop in a way I haven't seen since my hyper active gay high school friends would dance around my living room. Our instructor, wearing a red bathing suit, stands at the end of the pool and pulls on a black wetsuit. Like a cop on a raid, she has "INSTRUCTOR" in large white letters posted over the neoprene. We gather around her at one end and she began to talk in Korean. When she sees me, with that glassy eyed look I get when I'm not wearing my glasses, she only gives pause for a moment. The look of horror as she understood that, of all the instructors, she is the one saddled with the foreigner. Her look fades away, or at least it looks like it does because I can't see far past my nose.
I stand somewhere in the middle of the line. I watch the people in front of me swim, to figure out what I need to do. The instructor lady gives instructors. She has us swim a lap in some way, legs only, arms only, full freestyle, and then stops us and comments on how we swim.
I feel like I'm cheating.
I learned to swim once as a kid. When I say "learned to swim," I am using it in the same way I say I "learned to do a somersault" or "learned to play the recorder," or learned just about anything else in the non-academic parts of elementary school, or any P.E. class I ever had before university. We were vaguely instructed on how not to sink. I accomplished this with vigor. I decided to start swimming because I am overly fond of being surrounded by water. I sat at the school pool and watched people swim for a while, talked to a friend who used to work at a boy scout camp, and eventually experimented. I could get from one of the pool to the other no problem. I dubbed myself a swimmer and set out to have fun.
I never actually learned proper form or anything.
So I was in a fairly beginning swim class and I had absolutely no problem in water diving to the bottom of the pool, twisting between backstroke and freestyle (formless backstrokes and freestyles mind you), and generally making an underwater nuisance of myself. I felt a bit like I was lying, in this beginning swim class, but I also knew I had no right to be in a higher class, touting myself off as a strong swimmer or even someone who actually knew how to kick underwater.
After swimming, some people stay and do laps. I leave. I have a general need to head into work in the next two hours, and while that was time, I didn't want to risk being late. In the locker room I shower. Everyone stares. They don't stare for long, but they take their moment to acknowledge that there is a very pale, rather large girl in their showers. I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with this arrangement--I'm far from comfortable with my own body--but I accept it as the nature of things. I can't help but remember being in Russia and being told to go clean myself in the shared traditional bathing area. It was an acceptance of customs. I'll take things at face value, the kinds of things I would never accept in America. It's not a conscious acceptance--for the most part there's no forcing myself to do something different than I'd like to. I take the bowl of dondonju handed to me and sip from it before passing it on. I eat the meat filled stew that is put into my bowl. I take off my clothes when everyone else does. This is how life is, it's not as though my doing it will be a problem. My not doing it will.
There's a sauna in the locker room. It's one of the nicest things about the community center. I decide to try it out.
Two things strike me when I walk in: It is the absolute hottest space I've ever been in and it is positively full of naked Korean women. Before I moved to Korea, I drove from one end of America to the other and back again. When I was driving through the deserts of the Western coast, down the interstate in California, temperatures would top 112. I'd get out of the car and the air was so hot that, even though it wasn't humid, breathing wasn't easy. There was no breeze. No escape. It was that kind of hot. Breathing out was cooler than breathing in.
The room was also full of naked Korean women. And I mean full. Along the edge, there was a wooden bench hugging the wall. Every space was full. People sat on the floor. I stood by the door for a moment, unsure what to do. I couldn't ask about sitting. I could stare blankly and blink at the blurry world in front of me.
One woman moved and pointed to the ground near her. Another woman reached for my hand and pulled me in that direction. I walked. I sat on the floor with some of the other women. They talked around me and I realized it was kind of nice just to listen to them talk. There's a freedom in being in a place where you don't speak the language. Conversations become sort of a white noise. There's no point in trying to hear what they say. Your subconscious picks up on this over time and you just accept the noise around you as noise, soft and nourishing. More people come in. They talk about me for a bit, and then one of them touches my hair and says "Pretty." She gestures around the room and then taps her forehead, saying something in Korean. She touches my hair again and repeats herself. "Pretty."
I'm sort of used to Koreans touching my hair by now.
Someone leaves and I'm ushered onto the bench around the wall. There's a hierarchy here of both impressive age and time in the sauna. The longer someone sat there, the more they were pushed to the wall. The oldest women were sat there to begin with, others giving up seats. One woman next to me talks and gestures. She rests a hand on my leg. I stiffen at first and then relax. I realize that this is a kind of acceptance. Around me, people touch eachother. It's innocent touching, the kind of touching you do when you're with friends and talk. A touch on the shoulder, a brush of hands, a small physical connection to bring people into what's going on or to emphasize a point. Even if you're not part of the conversation, a look or a touch can remind you that you're part of the world and the moment. When you want to say something that's important, something you want people to remember, sometimes you touch them.
I leave the sauna after what couldn't have been much more than ten minutes. I feel myself drifting off, ready to go back to sleep, and decide I am beyond relaxed enough. I am dangerously relaxed. I need to get ready for a day standing, talking, and posturing.
I stand somewhere in the middle of the line. I watch the people in front of me swim, to figure out what I need to do. The instructor lady gives instructors. She has us swim a lap in some way, legs only, arms only, full freestyle, and then stops us and comments on how we swim.
I feel like I'm cheating.
I learned to swim once as a kid. When I say "learned to swim," I am using it in the same way I say I "learned to do a somersault" or "learned to play the recorder," or learned just about anything else in the non-academic parts of elementary school, or any P.E. class I ever had before university. We were vaguely instructed on how not to sink. I accomplished this with vigor. I decided to start swimming because I am overly fond of being surrounded by water. I sat at the school pool and watched people swim for a while, talked to a friend who used to work at a boy scout camp, and eventually experimented. I could get from one of the pool to the other no problem. I dubbed myself a swimmer and set out to have fun.
I never actually learned proper form or anything.
So I was in a fairly beginning swim class and I had absolutely no problem in water diving to the bottom of the pool, twisting between backstroke and freestyle (formless backstrokes and freestyles mind you), and generally making an underwater nuisance of myself. I felt a bit like I was lying, in this beginning swim class, but I also knew I had no right to be in a higher class, touting myself off as a strong swimmer or even someone who actually knew how to kick underwater.
After swimming, some people stay and do laps. I leave. I have a general need to head into work in the next two hours, and while that was time, I didn't want to risk being late. In the locker room I shower. Everyone stares. They don't stare for long, but they take their moment to acknowledge that there is a very pale, rather large girl in their showers. I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with this arrangement--I'm far from comfortable with my own body--but I accept it as the nature of things. I can't help but remember being in Russia and being told to go clean myself in the shared traditional bathing area. It was an acceptance of customs. I'll take things at face value, the kinds of things I would never accept in America. It's not a conscious acceptance--for the most part there's no forcing myself to do something different than I'd like to. I take the bowl of dondonju handed to me and sip from it before passing it on. I eat the meat filled stew that is put into my bowl. I take off my clothes when everyone else does. This is how life is, it's not as though my doing it will be a problem. My not doing it will.
There's a sauna in the locker room. It's one of the nicest things about the community center. I decide to try it out.
Two things strike me when I walk in: It is the absolute hottest space I've ever been in and it is positively full of naked Korean women. Before I moved to Korea, I drove from one end of America to the other and back again. When I was driving through the deserts of the Western coast, down the interstate in California, temperatures would top 112. I'd get out of the car and the air was so hot that, even though it wasn't humid, breathing wasn't easy. There was no breeze. No escape. It was that kind of hot. Breathing out was cooler than breathing in.
The room was also full of naked Korean women. And I mean full. Along the edge, there was a wooden bench hugging the wall. Every space was full. People sat on the floor. I stood by the door for a moment, unsure what to do. I couldn't ask about sitting. I could stare blankly and blink at the blurry world in front of me.
One woman moved and pointed to the ground near her. Another woman reached for my hand and pulled me in that direction. I walked. I sat on the floor with some of the other women. They talked around me and I realized it was kind of nice just to listen to them talk. There's a freedom in being in a place where you don't speak the language. Conversations become sort of a white noise. There's no point in trying to hear what they say. Your subconscious picks up on this over time and you just accept the noise around you as noise, soft and nourishing. More people come in. They talk about me for a bit, and then one of them touches my hair and says "Pretty." She gestures around the room and then taps her forehead, saying something in Korean. She touches my hair again and repeats herself. "Pretty."
I'm sort of used to Koreans touching my hair by now.
Someone leaves and I'm ushered onto the bench around the wall. There's a hierarchy here of both impressive age and time in the sauna. The longer someone sat there, the more they were pushed to the wall. The oldest women were sat there to begin with, others giving up seats. One woman next to me talks and gestures. She rests a hand on my leg. I stiffen at first and then relax. I realize that this is a kind of acceptance. Around me, people touch eachother. It's innocent touching, the kind of touching you do when you're with friends and talk. A touch on the shoulder, a brush of hands, a small physical connection to bring people into what's going on or to emphasize a point. Even if you're not part of the conversation, a look or a touch can remind you that you're part of the world and the moment. When you want to say something that's important, something you want people to remember, sometimes you touch them.
I leave the sauna after what couldn't have been much more than ten minutes. I feel myself drifting off, ready to go back to sleep, and decide I am beyond relaxed enough. I am dangerously relaxed. I need to get ready for a day standing, talking, and posturing.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Swimming
"English?"
I open far too many conversations this way. I'm trying to learn Korean, I really am, but it will take me a while before I can ask a stranger, with confidence, questions I hope to be able to. The girl giggles and smiles and shakes her head.
"Aniyo," she says. This surprises me. Most people give me a "yes" or "no" in English. I frown and make some sort of gypsy inspired "opening the curtains" motion.
"Swimming? Pool?" I ask, putting my best Korean accent into the "pool," pronouncing it more like "puuru." The girl repeats the word "pool," but in a clearer Korean accent.
"Ticketi," she says and takes my hand, leading me over to a machine. She raises one finger and her eyebrows.
"Nee," I say. "Hana." 'Yes,' I hope. 'One.'
She nods and presses the machine and then holds her hand out for my three thousand. I pass her three one-thousand wan bills, which she feeds into the hungry machine. She then takes my hand and leads me back to the counter. She holds up her ID card.
"ID?"
I take out my alien registration card and hand it over. She hands me a little key on a piece of stretchy red rubber. "Key, card, switchie." I nod and it turns into a bit of a bow.
"Kansamaanida," I mutter. She points down the hall and I walk that way. I see the pool through a glass door. There's a locker room to the left. I walk in.
My eyes are immediately hit by several dozen naked or mostly naked Korean women. It's like the scene from a bad porn. Not that I've seen any. Okay, many. They range in age from probably mid-twenties to older women with short, permed hair. Adjuma. I make my way to the locker number on my red banded key. A women stops me. She's wearing a shirt. I realize I am thankful for this.
She points to my shoes and shakes her head. I bow and apologize and take the pink flip-flops off. So much for shower shoes. I get to my locker. I'm already wearing my swimsuit. I'm grateful for that. I leave my stuff in the locker and close it, slipping the key around my wrist. My glasses are also in there. I can't see at all.
I find the showers and try to douse myself in water. Rather than knobs or handles, there are buttons, like from the sinks in elementary school. The water shoots out at an uncontrollable temperature for a short period of time. Somehow you can get them to stay on longer. I don't know how to do this. One woman taps me on the arm and makes a gesture to the button. I shake my head and point to my eyes.
"Aniyo," I say.
She nods and does something to the button and the water stays on. I mutter another thank you. I have a feeling this exchange will continue to repeat today.'Aniyo.' 'No.' I rinse myself off and scrub a bit, trying to lose any little bits of things attached to me. I go to walk out of the locker room and the woman from before stops me. She points to her head and eyes, then someone else's swim cap and goggles. I shake my head. She shakes her head and walks off. She returns with a swim cap and goggles, handing them to me. I bow and thank her. I put them both on and head out to the pool.
In the ends of the pool, the older women stand around, talking. They giggle and joke, wasting time in the same way high school girls do outside of classrooms right after the bell rings. They're marked by that lazy listlessness of knowing they should be doing something, and trying very hard not to do it. In half the lanes people swim laps. I count them, finding the one that is most empty. Standing by the edge, I stop a woman and gesture to it. She nods and I jump in.
While I swim laps I notice what is happening in the other half of the pool. The impact equivalent of Richard Simmon's Sweating to the 80s is being led by someone who is either a man with a poor sense of style or a disturbing looking woman. At least, from the angle I see it at. I squint and tilt my head from side to side. Cleverly, I sneak over and get a kick board, checking to find out the gender of this instructor.
It's a woman.
She looks like she wandered off a hip-hop music video set. The kind from the early 90s where people wore huge pants and "exercise tops," i.e. bras, under oversized hoodies and flannels. All of this is black. It looks as though she is dancing for their amusement, Korean pop playing across the whole room. Some of them try to mimic her. I realize why, when I do my slow run on the occasional night, I keep getting passed by women who could be my mother. If, you know, my mother was Korean.
I swim my laps and have a jolly good time. I do not hit anyone. I like these goggle things.
I'd always been afraid of circular lap swimming. I was afraid I would be too slow, but it's okay. I regularly realize how much time I spend worrying about things that should not be worrisome. This doesn't stop me from doing it.
Afterwards I go back to the locker room and rise myself off again. One woman tries to explain to me in broken English that I should take off my bathing suit, but I'm not quite ready to join the nakedness. I know it's normal locker room behavior, but in American locker rooms, at leas the ones at Pitt, it was always sort of handled with attempts to not let other people see you. Everyone averted their eyes, stood in front of their lockers facing forward and putting on their underwear as quickly as possible. I remember the one time I glanced up, I saw a woman's tattoo, talked to her about it, and then saw her the next week at the start of one of my classes. I spent the rest of the term realizing I'd seen my professor naked. That really reinforced the need to avert eyes. The sheer openness it was handled with left me feeling uncomfortable for no good reason at all. People tell me about how open American society is, how closed Korean society is, but I really haven't seen this to be true. Boys can hold hands. Girls can hold hands. It's okay. According to someone I know here "[her students say] homosexuality is an American problem." I sort of feel like it balances out, in its own way.
Besides, this was just a test run. The pool seemed pretty nice. I got a membership and signed up for lessons. Plenty of opportunities to be naked around Korean women.
I open far too many conversations this way. I'm trying to learn Korean, I really am, but it will take me a while before I can ask a stranger, with confidence, questions I hope to be able to. The girl giggles and smiles and shakes her head.
"Aniyo," she says. This surprises me. Most people give me a "yes" or "no" in English. I frown and make some sort of gypsy inspired "opening the curtains" motion.
"Swimming? Pool?" I ask, putting my best Korean accent into the "pool," pronouncing it more like "puuru." The girl repeats the word "pool," but in a clearer Korean accent.
"Ticketi," she says and takes my hand, leading me over to a machine. She raises one finger and her eyebrows.
"Nee," I say. "Hana." 'Yes,' I hope. 'One.'
She nods and presses the machine and then holds her hand out for my three thousand. I pass her three one-thousand wan bills, which she feeds into the hungry machine. She then takes my hand and leads me back to the counter. She holds up her ID card.
"ID?"
I take out my alien registration card and hand it over. She hands me a little key on a piece of stretchy red rubber. "Key, card, switchie." I nod and it turns into a bit of a bow.
"Kansamaanida," I mutter. She points down the hall and I walk that way. I see the pool through a glass door. There's a locker room to the left. I walk in.
My eyes are immediately hit by several dozen naked or mostly naked Korean women. It's like the scene from a bad porn. Not that I've seen any. Okay, many. They range in age from probably mid-twenties to older women with short, permed hair. Adjuma. I make my way to the locker number on my red banded key. A women stops me. She's wearing a shirt. I realize I am thankful for this.
She points to my shoes and shakes her head. I bow and apologize and take the pink flip-flops off. So much for shower shoes. I get to my locker. I'm already wearing my swimsuit. I'm grateful for that. I leave my stuff in the locker and close it, slipping the key around my wrist. My glasses are also in there. I can't see at all.
I find the showers and try to douse myself in water. Rather than knobs or handles, there are buttons, like from the sinks in elementary school. The water shoots out at an uncontrollable temperature for a short period of time. Somehow you can get them to stay on longer. I don't know how to do this. One woman taps me on the arm and makes a gesture to the button. I shake my head and point to my eyes.
"Aniyo," I say.
She nods and does something to the button and the water stays on. I mutter another thank you. I have a feeling this exchange will continue to repeat today.'Aniyo.' 'No.' I rinse myself off and scrub a bit, trying to lose any little bits of things attached to me. I go to walk out of the locker room and the woman from before stops me. She points to her head and eyes, then someone else's swim cap and goggles. I shake my head. She shakes her head and walks off. She returns with a swim cap and goggles, handing them to me. I bow and thank her. I put them both on and head out to the pool.
In the ends of the pool, the older women stand around, talking. They giggle and joke, wasting time in the same way high school girls do outside of classrooms right after the bell rings. They're marked by that lazy listlessness of knowing they should be doing something, and trying very hard not to do it. In half the lanes people swim laps. I count them, finding the one that is most empty. Standing by the edge, I stop a woman and gesture to it. She nods and I jump in.
While I swim laps I notice what is happening in the other half of the pool. The impact equivalent of Richard Simmon's Sweating to the 80s is being led by someone who is either a man with a poor sense of style or a disturbing looking woman. At least, from the angle I see it at. I squint and tilt my head from side to side. Cleverly, I sneak over and get a kick board, checking to find out the gender of this instructor.
It's a woman.
She looks like she wandered off a hip-hop music video set. The kind from the early 90s where people wore huge pants and "exercise tops," i.e. bras, under oversized hoodies and flannels. All of this is black. It looks as though she is dancing for their amusement, Korean pop playing across the whole room. Some of them try to mimic her. I realize why, when I do my slow run on the occasional night, I keep getting passed by women who could be my mother. If, you know, my mother was Korean.
I swim my laps and have a jolly good time. I do not hit anyone. I like these goggle things.
I'd always been afraid of circular lap swimming. I was afraid I would be too slow, but it's okay. I regularly realize how much time I spend worrying about things that should not be worrisome. This doesn't stop me from doing it.
Afterwards I go back to the locker room and rise myself off again. One woman tries to explain to me in broken English that I should take off my bathing suit, but I'm not quite ready to join the nakedness. I know it's normal locker room behavior, but in American locker rooms, at leas the ones at Pitt, it was always sort of handled with attempts to not let other people see you. Everyone averted their eyes, stood in front of their lockers facing forward and putting on their underwear as quickly as possible. I remember the one time I glanced up, I saw a woman's tattoo, talked to her about it, and then saw her the next week at the start of one of my classes. I spent the rest of the term realizing I'd seen my professor naked. That really reinforced the need to avert eyes. The sheer openness it was handled with left me feeling uncomfortable for no good reason at all. People tell me about how open American society is, how closed Korean society is, but I really haven't seen this to be true. Boys can hold hands. Girls can hold hands. It's okay. According to someone I know here "[her students say] homosexuality is an American problem." I sort of feel like it balances out, in its own way.
Besides, this was just a test run. The pool seemed pretty nice. I got a membership and signed up for lessons. Plenty of opportunities to be naked around Korean women.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Punishment
Growing up, the ultimate threat in school was to put something on your permanent record. Punishments included extra homework, detention, or calling of parents. My sixth grade teacher handed out detentions like “fun size” candy bars at Halloween. We’d give up our lunch period to sit in her classroom and copy from the dictionary. It was wacky.
Here, it’s a bit different.
In my school, punishment works a bit differently. There are five various forms of punishment here.
1) Extra homework. To some kids, extra homework can feel like the end of the world. I put it as the least bad of punishments because extra homework is usually along the lines of “do another easy page of large text sentences you’d really have to do anyway,” or “write a few sentences about this thing we read about in class.
2) Going outside. The standard punishment at my school involve the teaching looking at a kid and saying “Outside.” The kid says no several times and shakes their head. They slump down in their seat as though somehow they will no longer be noticed. The order “Outside” is repeated until the student in question goes outside. A race against the clock starts. Our rule is five minutes. After five minutes, you pull them back into the classroom. They can come back in before five minutes are up if they let one of the Korean staffers yell at them—sometimes to the point of crying. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a fourteen year old boy enter a classroom sobbing. After the yelling is over they shuffle back into the classroom and mutter “Sorry, Teacher.” or “I will do my homework,” or even “I will not speak Korean.” (We have a theoretically strict no-Korean policy.) The race against the clock is for the teacher. I, at least, feel bad when I hear the kids get yelled at. -I'm- scared of the Korean staffers when they yell. I take it as my job, during this time, to listen for the sound of the staffers walking around the halls, and yelling at students, and let the clock get as close to five minutes as possible before last minute yanking a student back into the room. What’s really excellent is what they get yelled at about. Often times, either the kids or the staffers fail to communicate to one another about why the kid is outside. I love when someone talks during a test and I push them out, only to have them shuffle back in muttering “I will do my homework.” “Great!” I think to myself. “Now, can you shut up when you take a test?” I don’t say this outloud because a) they wouldn’t understand me, and b) we’re not allowed to say ‘shut up.’ I think kicking a kid out is a little counter productive, because usually it’s for failing a test or not doing homework. They miss the covering of the homework, which is a rather integral part to understanding what’s going on in class. But, it’s the Korean way. Or something.
3) Detention. Detention only works for kids in the last “block” of the day. Our days are divided into three blocks. The last block of the day ends at 9:20pm. For kids in the third block, we’re allowed to dole out detentions. These kids hang around until eleven. I have never done this because I flat out consider it inhumane. Plus, seriously, eleven! Those kids should be sleeping around then!
4) The call home. I’ve never seen this happen. I’m told it does. I’m afraid of Korean women. I would never wish this upon anyone.
5) Between classes we have breaks. Kids are chosen in a way that I can only imagine involves eviscerating a goat to stand outside of our office. Depending on who is in charge of the punishment determines what happens next. The kids usually chant, in that monotone Buddhist way, where words become sounds and sounds lose their meanings. Sometimes the kids just stand there. Sometimes they hold a book in front of them or their hands over their heads. Sometimes they do squats. One day they danced. Our office is lined in glass, so we see the kids, backs to us, doing whatever series of calisthenics is accompanying their daily chanting.
As a kid, I was always afraid of punishment. The threat of it was enough to stop me. Now, when I look at my kids, I wonder where that fear comes from. I realize how little impact these things have on the lives of the children. The eleven PM thing is awful, but the kids are studying and that’s what they’d be doing anyway. They wouldn’t sleep for hours. The call home could, in theory, ground them, but these kids have school six days a week as is. They study constantly. They go to their regular school, and then haegwon after haegwon.* Some kids go to one for math, one for English, and then one for a martial art or music or art or science or more English or Chinese or anything. They don’t have much free time.
My youth was packed with activities. Not in that Millenial-Suburban kind of way. I’d stay after school every day for some club. I’d go early every day for orchestra. I’d study and do homework and play the bassoon for hours. I’d volunteer and spend hours writing at the family computer. But I always had time for my friends. Once I hit seventh grade, my friends became more important than a lot of these things. After school there was stuff, sure, but then there was the trip home with someone. Stopping for fries. Doing homework and drinking non-coffee drinks at Starbucks—they had the best chairs ever. I look at my youth and I know that they were as much the best days of my life as every day is. But for me, at least, there was never any fear of being kicked out of a classroom. Or having to hold a dictionary over my head while standing on one foot chanting “IWillDoMyHomeWorkIWillDoMyHomeWorkIWillDoMyHomeWork."
*Think “academy” or “institute” or “cram school.” Like Sylvan Learning Center. Or after school care.
Here, it’s a bit different.
In my school, punishment works a bit differently. There are five various forms of punishment here.
1) Extra homework. To some kids, extra homework can feel like the end of the world. I put it as the least bad of punishments because extra homework is usually along the lines of “do another easy page of large text sentences you’d really have to do anyway,” or “write a few sentences about this thing we read about in class.
2) Going outside. The standard punishment at my school involve the teaching looking at a kid and saying “Outside.” The kid says no several times and shakes their head. They slump down in their seat as though somehow they will no longer be noticed. The order “Outside” is repeated until the student in question goes outside. A race against the clock starts. Our rule is five minutes. After five minutes, you pull them back into the classroom. They can come back in before five minutes are up if they let one of the Korean staffers yell at them—sometimes to the point of crying. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a fourteen year old boy enter a classroom sobbing. After the yelling is over they shuffle back into the classroom and mutter “Sorry, Teacher.” or “I will do my homework,” or even “I will not speak Korean.” (We have a theoretically strict no-Korean policy.) The race against the clock is for the teacher. I, at least, feel bad when I hear the kids get yelled at. -I'm- scared of the Korean staffers when they yell. I take it as my job, during this time, to listen for the sound of the staffers walking around the halls, and yelling at students, and let the clock get as close to five minutes as possible before last minute yanking a student back into the room. What’s really excellent is what they get yelled at about. Often times, either the kids or the staffers fail to communicate to one another about why the kid is outside. I love when someone talks during a test and I push them out, only to have them shuffle back in muttering “I will do my homework.” “Great!” I think to myself. “Now, can you shut up when you take a test?” I don’t say this outloud because a) they wouldn’t understand me, and b) we’re not allowed to say ‘shut up.’ I think kicking a kid out is a little counter productive, because usually it’s for failing a test or not doing homework. They miss the covering of the homework, which is a rather integral part to understanding what’s going on in class. But, it’s the Korean way. Or something.
3) Detention. Detention only works for kids in the last “block” of the day. Our days are divided into three blocks. The last block of the day ends at 9:20pm. For kids in the third block, we’re allowed to dole out detentions. These kids hang around until eleven. I have never done this because I flat out consider it inhumane. Plus, seriously, eleven! Those kids should be sleeping around then!
4) The call home. I’ve never seen this happen. I’m told it does. I’m afraid of Korean women. I would never wish this upon anyone.
5) Between classes we have breaks. Kids are chosen in a way that I can only imagine involves eviscerating a goat to stand outside of our office. Depending on who is in charge of the punishment determines what happens next. The kids usually chant, in that monotone Buddhist way, where words become sounds and sounds lose their meanings. Sometimes the kids just stand there. Sometimes they hold a book in front of them or their hands over their heads. Sometimes they do squats. One day they danced. Our office is lined in glass, so we see the kids, backs to us, doing whatever series of calisthenics is accompanying their daily chanting.
As a kid, I was always afraid of punishment. The threat of it was enough to stop me. Now, when I look at my kids, I wonder where that fear comes from. I realize how little impact these things have on the lives of the children. The eleven PM thing is awful, but the kids are studying and that’s what they’d be doing anyway. They wouldn’t sleep for hours. The call home could, in theory, ground them, but these kids have school six days a week as is. They study constantly. They go to their regular school, and then haegwon after haegwon.* Some kids go to one for math, one for English, and then one for a martial art or music or art or science or more English or Chinese or anything. They don’t have much free time.
My youth was packed with activities. Not in that Millenial-Suburban kind of way. I’d stay after school every day for some club. I’d go early every day for orchestra. I’d study and do homework and play the bassoon for hours. I’d volunteer and spend hours writing at the family computer. But I always had time for my friends. Once I hit seventh grade, my friends became more important than a lot of these things. After school there was stuff, sure, but then there was the trip home with someone. Stopping for fries. Doing homework and drinking non-coffee drinks at Starbucks—they had the best chairs ever. I look at my youth and I know that they were as much the best days of my life as every day is. But for me, at least, there was never any fear of being kicked out of a classroom. Or having to hold a dictionary over my head while standing on one foot chanting “IWillDoMyHomeWorkIWillDoMyHomeWorkIWillDoMyHomeWork."
*Think “academy” or “institute” or “cram school.” Like Sylvan Learning Center. Or after school care.
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