Notes from the ROK

A Response to The English Teacher

2010-05-02T04:02:00.000-07:00

I came across this article by The Korean, a blogger whose writings and insights I have enjoyed reading and learning from over the years. I tried to post my response directly onto his website, but it was too lengthy; therefore, I've posted it here.

Dear The English Teacher,

I've returned from Korea, where I spent the past three years of my life, gathering a collection of experiences and memories, which, tonight, relate directly to your letter to The Korean. A few reactions.

As far as I think I understand your curiosities as to what you can tell your students "when they ask how much improvement they will see if they go to the US to study English," one question must be asked: In what mode of "study" do these students aim to engage? If they, like many of my own students have expressed, wish to finance a trip to America to sit in a Starbucks and read through a grammar book, that is, while being surrounded by English speak, then my suggestion for them is to go to Itaewon. If, however, they seek to join communities in the States where active engagement in the culture can happen, where challenging and meaningful aspects of interpersonal relationships may most likely take place, then the kinds of questions that we, as educators, must ask, change: "What kind of communities do your students wish to join? What are their interests and values?" What kinds of things do they wish to accomplish once they have learned English proficiently?”

To my knowledge, Koreans tend to ask the wrong questions with regard to English language-learning and their children. Take, say, two popular questions that mothers (who, for the most part, manage their children's education) usually ask: "What's the best way for my child to improve his English skills? And "How can my daughter speak like a Native English Speaker?" Children are, by their very nature, highly curious beings, who, if given the opportunities and resources, will acquire a second language quite easily. It's about nurturing their instinctual creative inquiries, and not just about English, but about culture, politics, literature, games, films, and so on and so forth. Nobody, not even linguists, can give a solid and generalizable answer to the question of what the "best" method of English language instruction is, because there isn't one.

Which brings me to The Korean's reply to The English Teacher, which, despite the reservoir of praise it has received, warrants a response that I hope will point out and thus help us understand the profundities that The Korean has unearthed.

To begin with, we must look first at the epithet, The Korean. We should remain very skeptical about blogs in general, but particularly about writers who claim, however tongue-in-cheek, tacitly, or however ironically, that they possess expert opinion on an entire culture.

With that said, I would like to talk about "how The Korean learned English" and his "guaranteed method of achieving fluency in another language." First of all, it's not hard to see that "The Process of The Korean’s English Acquisition" is not an instructive narrative about how he learned English. Instead of trying to provide an answer to how he became fluent, The Korean's response is cries of understatements, punctuated by a running list of academic achievements. This makes it easy for readers to make the false connection between "scholarly" success and successful learning of English (i.e., if I do what The Korean did, then I will learn English like he did).

The Korean begins by stating, "It must be first said that I am not a genius," a rhetorical flourish that many of us have heard used many times before, often uttered by the educated classes, in an attempt to be modest. The implication in this statement is rather obvious, so I'll move on.

The Korean proceeds to explain how he has always been an "A-minus student during the 2.5 years in...high school in California," an educational system that he characterizes as "deplorable," without providing a spade of evidence. America's K-12 is deplorable--a dictum--because he says it is.

Moreover, The Korean acculturated into an America that was not "particularly conducive to English learning by immersion." In fact, his school was "filled with many, many Korean speakers who staked out their own corner in the schoolyard to hang out among themselves, speaking Korean.” Still no sign of how he learned English.

[aside]: The Korean further indicates that he "began [his] American schooling at the beginning of the second semester of the tenth grade," and recalls "the despair of [his] first few months at school." He writes: "I was literally Charlie Brown in a classroom as my teachers spoke “wah-wah-wah.” Well, you weren't literally Charlie Brown: you didn't suddenly lose your hair and find yourself with four fingers; you might have been Charlie Brown, in a figurative sense, but you certainly didn't transmute into a Peanuts caricature.

After grazing over the fact that The Korean "scored 100 percent on [a biology] quiz--the only one in the class to do so," the narrative finally arrives at a concrete detail with regard to how he managed to "master" English, namely, through rote memorization, "like a good Korean student." He memorized over 30,000 words, a strategy I've seen many Koreans and Korean Americans use, in the past as well as in the present.

And for those who live in relatively nice neighborhoods, with parents who earn enough money for index cards, pens, tutors, etc., learning 30,000 words is not a difficult feat. Of course, there are those who live in impoverished neighborhoods whose parents earn just enough to battle solvency, whose schools don't get enough funding to pay for textbooks, and students whose internal motivations are so shot that they don't see the point in studying. Yes: there are even Koreans who live like this. There are African Americans who live like this. There are Mexicans and White Americans and Native American students who live like this. Indeed, The Korean is not a genius, and "far from it," as he suggests. The Korean is privileged, like many Koreans who can afford to move to the States.

I agree with The Korean on one position, namely, that one of the factors that "set him apart" was motivation. It is certainly true, as evidenced by the vast sea of research on second language acquisition, that internal motivations play a significant role in successful SLA. And I commend the Korean for his dedicated efforts and success in learning English. I disagree, however, with The Korean's third suggestion that rote memorization is "the best and most efficient way" to learn English.

According to The Korean, he has "always gained greater proficiency in [other non-English foreign] languages at faster clip compared to other students who were in the same classes as he, which confirmed to the Korean that his method is indeed the best one.” His use of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is insulting to his readership, to say nothing of the thousands of people who may have already followed his advice. Of course, it was not necessarily "his method" that elevated his grades--that much is certain. There could have been a number of variables involved in the outcome, but The Korean did not mention these in his blog entry.

Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind The Korean's caveat regarding rote memorization: "The Korean’s method is only for those people who want to have a mastery (which, according to the Korean’s own definition, equals college-level proficiency) over a second language in a short period of time.” Also noteworthy, though, is the high probability for The Korean, an A-minus student who graduated a Berkeley Bear, to fail a college-level Russian proficiency exam if all he were to do was to memorize a Russian dictionary and a grammar book. I would likewise do no better on an Arabic test under the same conditions. To quote Noam Chomsky: “As participants in a certain culture, we are naturally aware of the great differences in ability to use language, in knowledge of vocabulary, and so on that result from differences in native ability and from differences in conditions of acquisition.”

Having taught a wide spectrum of Korean students in the ROK and in the States, I can attest to the realities of English fluency in both countries. And for someone to be able to move to America at the age of 16 and to matriculate into UC Berkeley, and maybe I'm not understanding something here, takes more than a handful of privilege--it takes a rich history of solid education. Therefore, we can safely assume that The Korean had a pretty good working knowledge of English by the time he came to America, though we can only speculate on how good his English actually was. Many Koreans are familiar with English grammar from as early on as elementary school (and nowadays, kindergarten), particularly for those who are A-minus students.

The Korean’s central argument for upping one’s English skills is fine, and for some, may work well. But we must come to terms with what happens when memories fade. A number of Korean Americans who ended up at fancy universities in the humanities and social science departments, for example, have opined in various blogs that acing the SATs and being disciplined in high school did nothing to prepare them to think and write critically in college. Koreans are perhaps one of the most disciplined people on the earth (hyperbole--probably not), and they often confuse discipline with intelligence. Any disciplined student with just the right amount and mix of internal motivation can do well enough in high school to get into, say, Berkeley. This ought to be a truism, but it is not.

So The English Teacher, the advice you give to your students depends wholly on what they value, and what their goals are, as far as English is concerned. Many Koreans I've come to know in the past several years have expressed viewpoints that accord with that of The Korean's: "What is fun is the result of learning." And that's fine. Such perspectives are not uncommon in Korean communities, and I’m not here to analyze values—I am here to provide another perspective, to contribute to the body of discussion on matters related to ESL. One question to keep in mind is whether or not Koreans will, in meaningful ways, contribute to society. Will they choose social engagement in ways that will better the community? Or will they focus instead on the "infinite amount of fun when you finally put the finished product to use"?

Dispatch from Campbell

2009-06-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

"...Powerful enough to harm you, confuse you, destroy you, or to reshape, build, and elevate and enlighten. See yourself as being in the process and wait for the results. You have so much time ahead that you don't want to rush it, like trying to understand the ending of a book before you read the beginning and middle." -P.A.

. . .

August 2008
Some things are hard to remember. Two years ago she was just another foreign country: Asian, exotic and promising. What she promised exactly, what was so luminous, lingers still in the dark. Sitting at the dining table in my mother’s living room in Campbell, my hometown—as a visitor, vacationing—I feel I can write about Gwangju in the way that I could write about Campbell living in the ROK. Gwangju: A home, a living breathing presence in my life. Campbell: A shelter, a box where old books, clothes, and fragmented memories squat, hunkering, hungry.

The house is old and white guarded by Mediterranean Cypresses. The front yard has a small patch of grass in the shape of Virginia and motor oil stains on the driveway. Minor amenities that mean so much! We live in a tree-lined neighborhood across from the Winchester Mystery House, a street given over to suburban style single-family detached homes built in the 1950s and 1960s. Leaves over puddles, and buttonballs from California Sycamores. My girlfriend Mogyoh and I are summer guests and South Korea is 5,193 Nautical Miles away (9,618 Kilometers).

It was an arbitrary choice to move to Gwangju among several quiet, hidden cities in the peninsula. I have a handful of relatives in Seoul, but I didn't factor that in when making my decision to live abroad. I can't recall how I made the decision. What I wanted was to be far away from the latest cultural trends that resemble America, from Urban Outfitters people, to radio music, from Out-dated HBO references to corporate food chains. I wanted a little town, a really I'm-in-Asia-town. And I found her, shy and reclusive Gwangju.

[Gwang (광, hanja 光) = light and Ju (주, hanja 州) = province.]

In the Camary through cool streets where shopping plazas are aplenty, I spot a drive- thru. I am in control, behind the wheel, like a nightrider. It has been a while—both driving and Del Taco. Not that Del is really that good, or authentic, but it has its moments, especially after sundown. The parking lot is the color of hard taco shells and Mike is dragging on a Camel…the California air mixes nicely with the smoke. Then there's Mogyoh, her eyes starlit by the American splendor of midnight fast food with, unfortunately, NPR droning on about Obama's American values in the background—that muted talk of important world news. I pay with a twenty—the smell of money and atomized grease—and we anticipate the whole ride home.

Imagining my studio apartment in 광주 makes me miss it, especially that familiar smell of old wood and laundry on the clotheshorse. The washing machine in my complex is communal and looks like a vestige from The Forgotten War. It does a number on my clothes, eroding them, turning my once thick Haines into gossamer sock puppets. And where my socks hang, there are a million and a half South Koreans, and thousands of alleys, like this one here, which have defined my walks to and from work.

I made mental maps of the city’s geography by visiting restaurants and teahouses, hofs (Korean bars) and Fam ily Marts. Ten minutes from my house was Mt. Moodeung, and in the good weather, there were always families wearing hiking gear and straw hats roaming the mountain trails and public gardens. And just over the mountains were flats of countryside, three-dimensional facsimiles of Bob Ross paintings.

Here are a few pieces of scenery from my neighborhood:
(a) My residence
(b) The alley in front of my building
(c) My favorite restaurant Hwang-Tok-Il
(d) The vestibule of Hwang-Tok-Il
(e) Gimbap Nara / Family Mart

The living room is large and lit by a lamp with a 60-watt bulb. I set our food down on the coffee table as we situate ourselves in front of the television. Michael Phelps jiggles his triceps before the Men's 200m Freestyle Semifinal, and I gut our warm bag of Del. The swimmers, hungry dolphins, lunge. A hard taco, just like I remember from the old days, and while Mog-yoh observes, I obvert it, just so: an infomercial, an introduction. She immediately loses interest in names as she wolfs her Spicy Jack Quesadilla with rice. New tastes. Mike brings us a couple of bottles of Tsingtao and it goes down, all very nicely.

-“Do you guys have Mexican food in Gwangju?” Mike asks.
-"Not in Gwangju. Yeah. Seoul,” Mogyoh says opening a packet of hot sauce.
-“How is it?”
-“Seoul?," she asks with her mouth full.
-“No. Your—the food.”
-“It’s really good."
-“Yeah. We can do much better than this, though. This is American Mexican, not Mexican Mexican.”

Mogyoh laughs because they are communicating; we're becoming a family.

After Mog-yoh heads to bed, Mike and I play Wii Golf late into the night, invoking a 1990s video-game argot developed and maintained by adolescent brothers of the privileged American classes at that time. I watch my younger brother. And there. At the peak of his youth, I see a grown person. Mike is 22 and tired for his age, but this postprandial Wii brings out the kid in him, in the both of us. In this Bay Area locale, he does not fit in with his skinny jeans and Red House Painters sag in posture (most Campbell men his age possess an I-Listen-to-Kayne-West-swagger). I watch him swing. He’s growing into his body, his mind.

When I ate at my first Gimbap Nara I included a 20 percent tip. The cashier, a medium stout man sporting Zōris made a scene out of me by announcing to the crowd of lunchtime customers that he had just received a tip. A TIP! I didn't know that tipping in Korea was not the cultural norm, something I should have looked up, and perhaps did, but did not remember at the time, and was made a fool.

But the learning curve came, and before I knew it, I figured out that crying Emo! (maternal aunt) or Yuh-gee-yoh! (Over here!), for example, is how you grab the attention of the servers, servile, always in a motherly way. Also, if you’re a regular, or if you’ve ordered a good deal to eat, if your party is big, or if there's something in your food that’s alive but not supposed to be, then there will be service, something on the house. Sometimes it’s extra beef, a platter of scrambled eggs with garlic shavings sprinkled on top, or a hodgepodge of fruits, cut up fancy. Other times, it’s a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola.

The backyard is a swimming pool at night, the cypress trees underwater obelisks. Mike and I are taking a break and this is going to be a memory, I think, the seemingly insignificant kind that lasts a lifetime, the kind that follows you into empty bathrooms in bars and restaurants, after you’ve had a few in you, where introspection and mirror vanity happen.

-"I suppose she told you that I was getting back into old habits, or something to make me look small," Mike says, the accusation in his voice rising.

I don't reply to this; instead, I look at the oval lawn, the pencil pines that look black lined up against the fence, and at my toes. A trifle dizzy, I ash. I tell him that that's not what she said, that she is just concerned is all and that she doesn't have the education or the diction to make it sound thoughtful in the way he expects or desires.

-"She can’t and doesn't want to understand. She's selfish. That's it," he says. He grows younger with each word.
-“Do you have a plan?” I ask softly. “You know, so that people don’t worry so much, so you have a goal, direction...”
-“A plan? There's a plan. It’s just a matter of following through with it, I guess.”
-“Do you want to stop?”
-“I do.”

There's a tranquilizing balance to watching Mike smoke—which is like like watching a sleeping child, makes me feel secure, the moment precious—and the cool of the night. I explain that he needs to finish his cigarette so we can head inside, finish the 18th hole and go to bed.

My contract with BCM stipulates that I come in twice a month to conduct interviews, assign prospective students appropriate English proficiency levels and get them registered into the right class(es). “Come in. Have a seat,” I say. It’s Friday afternoon in the middle of July, the heat is smoke, the humidity unbearable. Before me is a girl in her early twenties, covering her face with a Hello Kitty binder, save for her eyes, which hide behind purple-framed glasses. A cherub for a face, pimples her stars.

-“What’s your name?”
-“Allow to introduce me. Eun-Kyung Kim, English nickname Sunshine,” she begins.

California’s genius loci is bright and languid. A pair of scrawny black squirrels sit outside my window. It’s almost ten and I’m still in bed. Mogyoh has written a note and placed it on her pillow. My eyes follow the Hangul characters, and as I phonetically sound out the words in my head, the translations start again: “Went for a run. I borrowed your socks. The green ones. I love you.” I fold the note back into its hexagonal knot and lay back down, looking up at the almost homogenous whiteness of the ceiling.

I can hear the sounds of my mom leading her own life: closing drawers, washing the dishes, pushing in chairs, watching a Korean TV show. When I was a child, I would overhear my parents doing adult things and always wondered what that world was like. Aquatic-themed decorations, secret candies, wild games involving silverware in uncanny shapes and sizes, and blue soda pop. I follow the sounds to the living room and greet her in Korean. She laughs at my country dialect (Satoori), and I am obliged to laugh with her.

During my first year in Gwangju I learned Satoori from the neighborhood kids who loafed for hours every Saturday morning at the local Family Mart, and from the folks at the senior citizens center I used to visit Sundays. The Family Mart boys were no more than ten years old, sported a variety of mushroom cuts, and some had mullets. They taught me about the price of milk, popsicles, and water, Ramen, Q-tips, and mosquito repellent. I picked up elementary and middle school slang, which often included adult profanity. Yes, we drank milk-flavored soda, and savored our honey-dew ice cream bars over the politics of bb-guns and the smell of armpits. I was an unusual specimen for them with my fluent American speak and Korean face. At the old folks home, the elders taught me how to play Go-Stop, and I learned from them during loud, at times, drunken games, the dialects of the South.

Mom offers me a Dr. Pepper—oh how I’ve missed you—but as I accept the drink, and hear myself in a clear Korean voice saying thanks, and how I am sitting down in an over-sized San Francisco 49ers beanbag, I realize that the first requirement of stability in a human being is the desire to share a refreshing can of soda with his mother on a Sunday morning, girlfriend out jogging, younger brother in the shower. I am a farmer in his fifties, untidy and sleepy, but cheerful.

Sunshine continues to hide behind Hello Kitty after her introduction is complete.

-“Oh I’m so embarrassed, so shy, what do I do?” she says in Korean, brightening.

I ask Sunshine why she wants to study English.

-“Ah. Actually….” She lowers Kitty. “Actually, I want to good at English.”

But why, I ask, searching for reasons.

-“Actually” she begins, drawing out the long Y. “In Korean, we have to good at English.” She reveals a nose. “For job.”

I ask what she wants to be.

-“Actually. I want to English teacher.” She takes a few moments to assemble a sentence. She resumes: “Yes, I want to English to kids because I love them. Berry cute!”

When she smiles her eyes are black half circles and she reminds me of my mom because they both share the name Eun-Kyung, and, despite the 30 years between them, they both make the same grammar errors, and use similar tones of voice.

My mom’s name didn’t carry any real meaning for me until Korean names became part of my daily vocabulary, part of my way of identifying people, giving them significance, a place, a reality. But in getting to know my students, establishing friendships, and defining new loves, I’ve adopted new perspectives on my mom’s personality, her psychology. What I had labeled loony as a kid is now beginning peel; it was her Korean-ness and not lunacy that I perceived as rude and strange, many years ago:

I am ten, Christmas shopping with Mike and Mom. The smell of Macy’s and divorce. But Mike and I are ignorant and happy. We’re eating Hotdog on a Stick as we traipse through the men’s cologne section, and I remember the mix of Hugo Boss and muzak, musk and memes. Mom buys a bottle of that after-shave that comes in a small, white milk bottle with a red sailboat logotype. And a wallet dad will never use and complain about. We’re waiting in line when she cuts to the front, and naturally, people are confused, livid. And her children are helpless accomplices. A suit points my mom to the back of the line and yells something at her but calls her miss, which is nice of him.

The idea (and practice) of standing in line, or taking turns to make purchases is not a convention Koreans follow, especially if you’re considered old (30, 40...). This also goes for the rules of the road, for door manners (It's not a custom to hold the door for the caned, crutched, the bleeding). I’ve asked my students about this, and the consensus is that Koreans can’t stand waiting patiently for anything. It’s part of the Korean personality. We’re on the move…Quickly quickly! is the national motto, they say.

I must show Mogyoh as much of America as I can, and there's no better way to do it than going to Great America. We go, early in the morning, and walk out of the park when the sun is brown. After a day of riding roller coasters and what feels like an 80 mile walk, the four of us are tired. Mom gazes out the window, moving her lips but only discernibly, as if she is subconsciously mouthing her thoughts. Mike and Mogyoh are in the back talking about the time Mike saw Sufjan Stevens for his 21st birthday. As a Stevens enthusiast, she is enthralled by the very idea that Americans can see Sufjan Stevens. Live.

-“And…and…is he charming, just like in his songs on the Youtube?” She asks.
-"He’s pretty cool,” Mike answers coolly.

Mogyoh and I wake up after a long dream of traveling to a foreign country, step outside, and decide to go for a walk. It’s that time of day when the sprinklers spray reclaimed water onto Campbell’s front (side, back) lawns. A couple in their 40s speaks Chinese to their Greyhound and their baby. The husband has on a maroon Stanford windbreaker, Bermuda shorts and a pair of white Nike’s with his gray socks pulled up mid-shin. His wife is in a gray jogging suit and pushes the stroller. Cushioned knuckles stick out of the sleeves of a baggy hoody on which is an emblem of the American flag. I’ve been thinking about fatherhood and how I would like to raise a child (…children) some day with or without marriage. Mogyoh and I walk behind them.

-"Those are untimely Christmas decorations and that's a mailbox," I curate.
-"That? That's a mailbox?"
-"Yes."

It’s a guided tour of a neighborhood I do not know, and yet I can't help but feel a sorrowful weight, watching these storage spaces for different sets of children, for dolls, furniture, unused gift-wrap. Mom and Mike have moved twice since I moved to Gwangju. I'm as much of a stranger to these parts as Mogyoh is.

-“I like this neighborhood.” she says. "What do you think?"
-“It’s quiet. It's suburban.”
-“You don’t like it?”
-“I like it fine. I like 광주.”
-“Having a house here would be comfortable” she says.
-“You mean live here?"
She blinks in threes, remaining reticent.
-“Do you think you could live here?” I refine.
-“No. It’s just very nice and if I could find work, it would be fine.”

It’s funny. At one point, these houses, these people, these two-car garages, which were once devitalized and vapid are wonderful, and I am glad to see them again because there is glee at the mundane. We run through several sprinklers, dotted t-shirts, then, with dovetailed hands, run home.

Downtown Gwangju is lovely, like American strip malls, and at night, it is packed with young, over-dressed hipsters, mostly college students. Coffee chains and bars serve overpriced coffee and weak Long Island Iced Teas respectively, and the independently-run haberdasheries—yes haberdasheries—glow and resound with the latest trends in fashion and music. The signboards are lit up in different neon and primary colors that make you think of romantic movies about lonely Americans in Japan. Horny young men beam at the sight of short miniskirts, which give way to shiny black stockings and high heels. Layered black mops fall into their eyes, and I feel old on many occasions. Living among urbane Korean men, I age.

Equally young, girls put on weekend shows downtown, with puckered lips and extraordinary eyes—all shades of brown—and their youthful wallpapers of acne are painted over with foundation two shades lighter than their actual complexion. They lock arms, parading, and in the corners of their mouths, ridiculous grins. Night life is exciting, for possibility hangs in the air, yet there is almost always a certain disquiet about it all.

-“Your grandmother asked when I plan to move to California,” she says.
-“I didn’t know she did,” I reply, trying to sound uninformed.
-“She did.”
-“Are you bothered by it?”
-“Why is it that people here constantly ask me when I will move here?” her voice extends.
-“I don’t know.”
-“What is this trip about?”
-“What is this trip about?”

It is a warm and bright evening and Peter and I are sitting in a small fluorescent-lit Mexican restaurant in Fullerton, playing out new conversations over glass bottles of Coke, waiting for our order to be called in Spanish. Peter's hair is longer and his face calcified, accentuating his cheekbones. A new pair of glasses and a new car. A girlfriend and a Masters program in philosophy. He is an old friend, a good man, and I am lucky to be enjoying a meal with him.

-“It’s a vacation. A break from Korea,” she explains in a thick, almost didactic tone.
-“Yeah.”
-“It’s supposed to be fun.”
-“It is fun. We’re having fun."
-“And your friend, the one that’s so happy you’re visiting, the first thing she asked me, the first thing she asked was ‘Do you think you can live here?’”
-“And....”
-“And I wanted it so much,” she says. “I had this image of California. I’m not blaming you. I’m just tired.”
-“Okay.”

We share stories about girls and work, dating and money, but all the while, over tortas de carne asada and burritos al pastor, I can't free myself from my perceived ineptness in communication. I have a hard time understanding who I am in this visitor’s context. I seek conversations of depth, those that are expected with friends like this, those that make you examine yourself, that spawn a renewed sense of immediacy, but things seem forced. I am boring, a loaf. Compared to him, I feel static, without ambition, and so I try not to be a stranger and do a Daniel Plainview impression. It is a hiccup, shot before picking up velocity, falls, sinks into the poo from which it rose, and rots from the inside, like my Myspace account.

-“Will you sleep?”
-“No.”
-“Then what will you do?”
-“I’ll find a hotel.”
-“That’s ridiculous. That's...” I say standing, akimbo. “Let's talk about this?”
-“But it will go better if I go,” she says. “You have everything here.”
-“I want you to be here—with me.”

Her stomach rumbles, we are hungry again.

Collisions

2008-11-11T21:02:00.000-08:00

A doctor student of mine told me recently that heart disease just passed automobile accidents as the number one killer in South Korea. I asked another student who works in an ER at a local university hospital if what I had heard was true. He cited a few death and injury statistics, which was nice, but I didn't feel any better.

It's not uncommon to see men--possibly fathers--riding scooters (sans helmets) with infant children on their laps. And there are women--probably mothers--who drive sedans with small children crawling on the dashboard, or sticking their heads out of the window.

About a year ago, I started noticing that people here don't wear seat belts, and my initial reaction was not one of shock but of understanding: "Yes, it's a cultural thing and I'm not here to judge." Then I realized the absurdity of my reaction rested on the assumption that the laws of physics don't apply in the ROK.

Some taxi drivers actually tell you that it's not necessary to strap in if you sit in the back. Seven times out of 10, the buckles have been removed or shoved underneath the seats. I hope to Christ it wasn't for aesthetic purposes.

As with gravity, so also with death. Roadside collisions in Korea, like anywhere else in the world, are horrendous; however, passengers, as a moral duty, can reduce injuries by taking initiative.

I would like to dedicate this blog to Matt "Ki-la" Lee, a coworker of mine who recently lost a close friend to a car accident.

acerbic, frenzied, insightful, raunchy

2008-06-23T04:25:00.000-07:00

Saddened, I scrolled through several websites earlier this afternoon surveying adjectives that journalists have been using to describe the late George Carlin.

I found George doing stand-up on cable television when I was at the spry young age of 17. For me, he was the first "authority" figure in my life who gave me a lasting lesson on intentionality and responsibility about swearing, and I am thankful.

In the second grade, I asked Andy Holland during lunch one day: "Why the fuck do the football lesbians never let us play?" I had recently heard some fourth graders use "why the fuck" and "lesbians" a week prior. Of course, I had no idea what any of these words meant, save for the fact that employing them made me sound like a pirate, and a tough one at that. Andy looked up from his jigsaw puzzle, puzzled, and shrugged. It happened that Jennifer Walters, a fellow classmate, was standing right behind us when I profaned the name of future bros. "Oooooh!" she yawped. "I'm telling!" And she ran. She ran, like a girl who'd grow up to join a high school drama club, to tattletale.

Mrs. Curry lectured our class after lunch about the dangers of language and about deportment in school. Fanning myself with binder paper, a billion beads of sweat and shame ran down my neck. Mrs. Curry continued, saying things like "Some students seem to think it's alright to use bad language..." After a while, I started to feel bad, then livid. I decided to give Jennifer Walters a mean look, a how could you look.

As an English conversational teacher, students ask me all the time if I know any good curse words, and if so, if I know how to use them real good, like a real American. When such situations arise I introduce my class to George, then, just to make them feel at home, I ask them to @$*^ themselves.

Mike Pearl, welcome to Gwangju!

2008-03-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

Just recently, Mike Pearl arrived in the heart of the ROK (Gwangju) to teach at BCM and to take in the environs of the Korean Peninsula. It's been refreshing to have someone from California to talk to, to reflect with, and guide. If you were to question Mike as to what he hopes to gain from living here, and we'll assume he's considered it, he'll probably tell you there's no telling what stories and revelations will develop, when he will leave (if at all; if the peninsula allows it) and how all these variables will, in the end, change him. But give him time. Things are novel and strange, unnamed and untrodden. His perception of and relationship to newness gives me, in a sense, a feeling of balance, of orientation, which is nice and not.

Mike and I met for the first time about three years back at a Cheesecake Factory in Fullerton. About half a dozen of us 20-somethings gathered there to celebrate somebody's birthday. If memory serves me right, the birthday was neither mine nor Mike's. Anyway, we all sat out on the patio, late in the evening, listening to suburban parking lot noises. Maria was our server that night, a slender girl from New Jersey with a worldly air. Besides being gorgeous at first sight, she had sass and a peculiar way of being engaged and detached while taking your order. She smiled with her eyes while her lips remained deadpan, self-aware. She wore her blond hair in a bun, and a small white oxford adorned with a pea green necktie.

When she walked away, there was on every one of our faces a she-is-attractive-yes-she-is look. Mike was the first to point it out and we were all glad he did. His response couldn't have been more wistful, more honest: "Yeah. She's hot." I remember meeting his brow, nodding: "Yes, I believe she is," I replied. We all gave her a big tip that night, mostly for making us feel giddy like little boys.

Keep up with the happenings of Gwangju at Mike's video blog here.

Calculus

2008-01-06T03:51:00.000-08:00

Oronte Churm inspires me to write honestly, clearly and with gravitas. Mr. Churm lives in the United States, near a large woody state university where he teaches in the English department. Over the past few years I've had the privilege of reading his dispatches at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and recently came upon some more of his writing at The Education of Oronte Churm. He recently wrote an insightful piece about the American military service, which I recommend.

Announcements

2007-12-31T14:55:00.000-08:00

These words are for 목요 (Mirabelle).

"I see the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory a slippery hold"
-Perfect Past, Vladimir Nabokov

1. Happy Holidays to everyone back in the States, Europe, Canada, Mexico and South America.

Acknowledgmint (sacrificed humor)

2007-11-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

Her brows relent and this is how it begins.

We're in my car, the music's just right--edgy yet soft, indy but not. It's gonna happen. Our mouths will meet and soon afterwards: slippery lips. But there is worry. I grew up watching commercials like this (and this) all propagating the same message: fresh breath will win kisses and more. So, naturally, in my head, I think she expects something minty or tingly (in the good way).

Slate Magazine writer Seth Stevenson reported back in 2001 that "in food, drug, and mass-merchandise stores last year, the breath freshener category was booming, up 15.3 percent, while the rest of the candy market grew only 3.2 percent."

American culture stresses the importance of appearance, cleanliness, and good health and breath mints have secured a place in modern Western lifestyle. Altoids were invented around the time of the French Revolution, Lifesavers came out in 1912, and the 1950s saw American Chicle, the oldest American chewing gum producing company, introduce Certs. Today, the list of corporate breath mints abound s.

But it's different here and in good ways. Koreans of Gwangju prefer to distill out the scent of food and other disagreeable breaths with fruity hard candies. At your average restaurant you'll find small "very cute looking" baskets full of jawbreaker-like things that come in a variety of flavors. You have your apple (both red and green), strawberry, grape, peach, watermelon, pear, lemon, orange, plum, pineapple and banana. Asians know how to bring out that sweet tang of artificiality in fruit flavoring is all I have to say. Try it. The next time you're in a Koreatown or a Chinatown, or if you find yourself in Southeast Asia, drop by a local market and pick up some fruity gum, suckers or lollipops and prepare yourself for a curiously strong explosion of joy in your mouth.

Mt. Jirisan

2007-10-07T02:47:00.000-07:00

I visited Mt. Jirisan National Park with some friends last Sunday. Here are some pictures that Suhyun took with her Dee-kah (A Konglish-borne sobriquet for digital camera).

Side view Mirror
On the road, the sky overcast.

Entrance
Here we (Eiffel, Suhyun, me) are at the entrance of Hwaeomsa Temple.

Statues
This is a sort of vestibule. On either sides are statues (as seen above), which, according to an elder we met, prevent evil spirits from entering the temple grounds.

108 steps
The reference is the number of defilements to overcome to gain Bodhi (enlightenment). I counted just to make sure.

Look at the building of a civilization and you will know its mind.
Koreans rebuilt their Buddhist temples after Japanese military forces destroyed most of them during the 1592 1598 invasions. "Alone in Kyoto" by Air caromed throughout and I almost couldn't take my experiences seriously. My intake of media has made it challenging to enjoy something as simple as visiting a Buddhist temple. Experiences are cinematic, on the brink of falling into cloying territory.

Golden
That's Suhyun you see in the corner. And in the center of the photo, that's you know who: Jesus.

A Portrait of an Artist
And this is Na-Young. She and her husband are artists. She's a sculptor and her husband's a painter. He runs an art Hagwon near BCM. They're planning to have their first child sometime in the near future.

Na-Young, me, Suhyun, Eiffel.

The Korean Gatsby
It's the richest man in Gwangju. I'm not exactly sure how he attained his wealth but it has something to do with ice, oil and plastics. Supposedly, he has over 100 cars and can park anywhere he wants.

Pure Water
We all took a shots of mountain spring water.

Here we are at Nogodan Peak.

Our next destination: Ssanggyesa Temple.

A Kiss and the Peace Sign.

Na-Young mocking me.

Lakeview

DROP

2007-08-30T23:33:00.000-07:00

I am on an exercise bike enjoying a non-impact cardiovascular workout. It's a an overcast Thursday afternoon and the rain has stopped. The cicadas are gone now, the air less sticky, the sun far away and dying.

I am stupid, a buffoon, a boob of a brown bear. I've placed my iPod in the cup holder directly in front of me. Here's the thing: it's not really a cup holder. It's a fixture designed to grip water bottles and other cylindrical objects like candles, insecticide and maybe girthy churros but certainly not iPods. Jesus, what in fuck's name was I thinking?!, resounds, ten times fast, when it falls ( Noooo!!!) onto the hardwood floor. People stop what they're doing, dropping weights, legs, arms and gawp. They are still gawping.

Today isn't the first time I've dropped it. It's happened over a dozen times, but each drop was always met by a jolt of relief, its square screen glowing blue like a small aquarium, letting me know it was alright, that it would beat on.

SUMMARY REPORT OF AUTOPSY
Name: iPod	Date of Birth: 6/3/2005
Race: Caucasian	Sex: Third gender
Date of Death: 8/30/2007	Body Identified by: Daniel Yoo
Case # JW514ECV59	Investigative Agency: Hands
EVIDENCE OF TREATMENT: N/A EXTERNAL EXAMINATION: The autopsy is begun at 2:30 P.M. on August 30, 2007. The body is presented without a black body bag. When first viewed, the deceased is nude, unsheathed. The earphones have been removed, are bagged to preserve possible evidence. No jewelry was included. The body is that of a normally developed white, 20GB iPod measuring 4.1 inches tall, 2.4 inches wide, 0.43 inches thick, and weighing 4.8 ounces and appearing generally consistent with the stated age of 2 years. The screen is cracked with what appears to be a hemotoma of blue ooze caked underneath the exoskeleton. The corneas are cloudy but something can be made out: Beirut...The Flying Club Cup..."A Call to Arms." The body is bald, smooth like eggs. The chest, abdomen and back are intact and symmetrical. INTERNAL EXAMINATION: Cellular circuitry, messy. SEROLOGY: JW514ECVP59 Drug Screen Results: Urine screen {Immunoassay} was POSITIVE Ethanol: 50 gm/dl, Blood (Heart) Ethanol: 7 gm/dl, Vitreous Jig Bumby, Ph.D. Chief Toxicologist Aug. 30, 2007 Manner of Death: Homicide by misfortune Immediate Cause of Death: Sharp force injury to the head as a result of a 3-foot plummet from an upright exercise bike's water bottle holder. Time of Death: Body temperature, rigor and livor mortis, and stomach contents approximate the time of death at 1:55 P.M. 8/30/2007

. . .

Father: So, what do you want for your graduation gift? There is so much I don't want, don't care for, couldn't care less what you give me, but I run through the list of things I think I need. I don't reallY need anything but, wait, yes! The answer comes to me, fluid, easy, a wave of -

Me: an iPod!
Father: A what?

He's coming to Irvine, flying down from Fairfield, to watch me graduate from college. It will be the four of us again--Mike, mom, the father man, me--going to that Japanese restaurant with all the nice cars parked out front with, usually, no Asians in sight. The restaurant is often full of wealthy White couples on lunch dates, but then again, I've only been there during the day so maybe the Asians, my people, the people who have moved to Irvine as a result of their transnational ethnic diasporas, flock there for dinner. But tomorrow will be different. At noon there will be Asians present during the lunch rush because that's when we'll be there, the Yoos, a party of four, reunited.

Me: It's a portable MP3 player.
Father: Ah. Ha, he feigns understanding.
Me: Yeah. You know, like a Walkman, only smaller, sexier, with microchips and things built in. It's made by Apple.
Father: Yeah. He still doesn't know. How much does it cost?
Me: Like 300 dollars, I think. But that's a ballpark so I'll have to check.
Father: Ok. I'll give you the money and you can go buy it with your friends or something like that.
Me: Ok.

We are here, at the Japanese restaurant, and as I had suspected, there are no Asians in sight, save for the servers, and, of course, us. A good 78% of the tables are all about the Chicken Teriyaki today. I kid you not: there are 7 tables surrounding us, all eating this Chicken. Teriyaki.

There is a youngish couple, probably late 20s, and they are all about the Chicken Teriyaki too. The girl's wearing one of those Tiffany's bracelets that many of the sorority girls at my school wear, a black tank top and a frilly miniskirt. Heels. He has on the Orange County power outfit among twenty somethings, circa 2005: a button-down with wide vertical stripes (pick any combination of three loud colors), purposely wrinkled and a pair of jeans, faded in just the right areas. I am better than him because I am not wearing that, because I am not with her, because I am not getting any, will not get any, now or later. But I am getting an iPod! The smoke from all the Chicken Teriyaki scatters the sun, bringing out bright beams of light, which hit the carpet at 70 degree angles.

We listen to people talk about capital, cars, and celebrity gossip (Item! According to Fox News, Tom Cruse jumped on Oprah's couch during an interview) as we silently sip Miso soup. I know what the fam's thinking: "This is nice." And I reply, "Yes. Yes it is fam."

The servers have nimble feet, moving efficiently, quietly, throughout the restaurant. They are large cats in androgynous black and whites.

I'm drinking Sake with my dad when I have a thought: Mom doesn't have bangs. She's never had bangs. For this reason, her hair's always falling into her eyes, like right now, as she picks up a something tempura with her masterful chopsticking. Then, out of nowhere, my father, what the fu--

his hand is reaching, and now touching the few strands of hair in front of her eyes, now tucking...around her ear! Does Mike notice? No, he doesn't, or does he? You can never tell with this kid, this sensitive, kind-hearted, soft-spoken little shit. Mom notices what just went down but she pretends not to. I didn't imagine it. I am certain. He stopped mid-meal, leaned over just so and touched, tucked, then leaned back into his chair. It was neither practiced nor forced. It was natural, like he'd been doing it for years, but why now? What is happening? Bah! I am much too hungry to care. I must eat.

Me: So. I'm getting an iPod, I say.
Brother: Oh cool. For graduation?

I nod chewing. Again there is silence but it's a good silence because today is a good day. It's graduation day!

[ten minutes of eating ensues]

Father: My plane leaves at 6 so someone has to drive me to the airport by 5:30.
Me: But that means you'll miss my name being called, my walk across the stage, my handshakes with President Doti, the Provost (Ham something) and members of the board of trustees!
Mom: I'll drive you, don't worry.
Me: So you'll miss my graduation.
Mom: We will going. We stay for the first part and then leave when we have to leave.
Me: Well, you'll get to see Max Weinberg speak at least. That'll be nice.
Brother: Aw, Max Weinberg's your keynote speaker?
Me: Yeah.
Brother: Will Conan be there?
Me: Doubt it. He's big now, popular among the cool and the not. That, and he lives in New York.

. . .

I'm sitting among an anemone of black gowns. We are neither here nor there. We are neither students nor graduates. We are liminal and waiting.

Finally! We're standing and now walking. This is it, like waiting in line for a new roller coaster. I'm next to walk the stage, bitter, excited, needing to pee. The photographer snaps a shot and now it's only a matter of time before they call my name. I see Peter and Andy and Lauren and C.J. and René and Rachel (Dreamy, dark and mysterious Rachel with the bob, the Bjorkness) and other faces I know but have never talked to but should've.

Announcer: Danielle Woo.

I'm on stage, shaking hands with important people and others I don't know, sweaty palms. I am no longer liminal. I am a something. A graduate! Almost. Before I step off the stage, I see a mass of parents, grandparents, bored siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, aunts, bored uncles, cousins, all redundant, very loud, all clammy and glowing, surrounding a square cross section of a sea of black, digital cameras aimed high. My family's on the 405 probably.

A girl named Allison: Hey, congratulations--wait for it---Danielle Woo!!! Haw...hehehe!! They thought you were a girl...Gi-irl! She socks my arm, her Tiffany's bracelet jangling, and oh this sweltering sun and itchy-ass regalia. Allison must know, but more importantly, feel, my fury, a sock full of quarters. I think of shoving her, you know, not in an abusive man kind of way, but in a brotherly manner, but decide against it because...

Allison's boyfriend: Baby! Hey! He smiles a big businessman smile as he blows her a kiss. I am vexed. My family is not in attendance and Allison's boyfriend is a big frightening sonofabitch. This is why I don't push Allison.

Just in case you think this blog is a pretext to insinuate that it would be a wonderful, a truly heart-attack worthy surprise if one of you, perhaps even several of you, got me one of those snazzy iPods for my upcoming 25th birthday on Tuesday, November 27th because living in Korea is a lonesome existence and life without portable music makes it that much more unbearable...it's not.

On Eric Hawk

2007-07-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

When you've lived abroad for a relatively extended period of time (I'm coming up on 9 months), the construction of narratives for your friends changes dramatically. The way you find out about what's going on in the lives of others fluctuates, becoming increasingly contingent on timing. Time changes: what used to be a 20 minute commute up the i-5 to visit some friends is now a 13 hour flight across the North Pacific, one I won't be making for a while.

But through Myspace, I've found a way to keep up with friends' musical tastes, hobbies, their heroes and comments posted by friends. I feel uniquely close to them all.

The other night while I was brushing my teeth, I thought of Eric Hawk, an old friend from elementary school. He stopped existing around 1992. Let me tell you a little about my life when Eric and I were friends.

In the first grade, my best friend was a lanky Scot with a flat top named Eric Hawk, surely a future fighter pilot or fraternity president. I haven't spoken to him since we drank Slurpees on a sultry summer day in 1992, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

...

I spent the night at his "nana's" house over a decade ago where he introduced me to Hustler (It's weird when someone my age can say that he laid eyes on his first porn mag over a decade ago). Anyway, Mr. Hawk, with his pants around his skinny prepubescent ankles, choked up on his bagpipe and really went to town, so much so that I was afraid he might rip it off.

"Pull it out and make it feel good. Come on," he called out in little spurts. Call me callow, but at 6 years of age I didn't quite know how to make myself feel good. I mean, there comes a point in every boy's life when a strange and exciting energy erupts, when a desire for something that has not yet been put into words, takes over one's life--the beginning of sexy thoughts. And what follows is a deep selfish need to extinguish and thus satisfy this sweet new appetite. Eric had obviously been practicing for at least a week.

Standing in the middle of Eric's homely bedroom with maroon carpeting, I remember thinking that I felt nothing--maybe a little nausea--as I peered into the eye of a manicured vagina on page 56: truly a clinical sight, almost alien, like a close-up of a small deep sea creature without a name. Truth is, my Tweety Bird voice didn't start cracking for another ten years.

Eric finally finished. "You're missing out, dude" he said cleaning up after himself. He moved away a week later to live with his dad for a while. The town was an hour and a half north of Campbell (our home town), which precluded him from joining the Campbell Unified School District. But we were the best of pals and we weren't going to let distance keep us apart. We'll hang out every weekend, stop by on holidays and on and on we promised...

We met up only once before life took us in different directions. It was on a Sunday, I remember, that we had decided to meet at Forest Hill Elementary, our nesting ground. It was a bright day and the schoolyard was empty except for an old man walking his dog. I felt the heat of the asphalt rise into the soles of my shoes. Eric ran up to me and socked me on the arm: "Hey faggot!" he cried with brotherly love. He was bigger than before, sort of towering over me, and using slang I'd never heard of. Maybe his going at himself with his Hustlers had been the cause of his growth. That somehow, while I was reading Calvin and Hobbes and secretly fantasizing about Cheetara, Eric had been growing hair in places I didn't know existed at the time. Somewhere beneath his goofy gait and countenance was a man who knew a thing or two about girls, about women, especially naked ones.

We spent the afternoon talking about pogs and challenging each other to foot races and jumping contests. He won, of course, but I told him I would woop him at a round of pogs. I have this awesome slammer that will kill you, I warned with wrath in my heart. We didn't have any pogs but we did have about ten bucks between the two of us so we walked to the nearest 7-11 and treated ourselves to cherry Coke Slurpees.

His "nana" picked him up around 4ish and we waved our goodbyes, my Slurpee cup sweating in my hand. Eric stuck his head out of the window and yipped: "Call me!" I did, about a month later, but all I got was an automated message suggesting that I "please check the number and try [my] call again."

I haven't had any luck locating him on Myspace.

Blue skies

2007-07-14T02:08:00.000-07:00

I stepped out into a breezy afternoon, the sky painted over, a perfect uniform blue. The day was warm, like, a good 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but the constant currents of cool air made for nice long sleeve t-shirt weather. It was the first time I had seen the sky this blue, maybe ever. It was a nice feeling walking towards my favorite Gimbap Nara restaurant to grab some breakfast, enjoying the colors of the day.

People around town have been talking about how typhoon season is just around the corner. The main season, which affects Korea, normally runs between June and September. The southern part of the Korean Peninsula is the most vulnerable. That's Gwangju. That's me. But nothing's happened yet.

It's Saturday night--early Sunday morning--and I'm officially on holiday. For the next four days, I have the following four things planned:
1. Catch up on some reading
a. Weird English (Evelyn Nien-ming Ch'ien)
b. Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
c. What is the What (Dave Eggers)

2. Rest
a. sleep in
b. nap

3. Explore Gwangju
a. The May 18th, Memorial
b. Gwangju Lake

4. Write letters

If anyone has any recommendations for books, films, or interesting websites, let me know. I'm out of touch with all things American.

Top-notch

2007-06-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the smartest people I knew in high school, or at least about the ones who gave the impression of being bright. Back then, intelligence meant making the grades at the right time all the time. It meant working the system and hustling the exams. Those who did went off to very nice schools where I'm sure they did well and hopefully took responsibility for the privilege of their education.

The majority of my high school acquaintances and friends who applied and ended up as a Bear, a Bruin, a Tree, or a Handsome Dan came from families that were as stable as they get in Southern California. Fathers were around to kick their sons and daughters into high gear right around junior year. Mothers called around about the sundry SAT courses and college preparatory services which bled throughout Irvine. The students and parents in my town had an otherworldly drive to make scores and hit point levels that I often admired and feared but never possessed. I imagine several of these folks are making it into highly-ranked med schools, Ph.D. programs, and law schools by now.

For the most part, they belonged to the ambitious crowd: those who would ultimately end up as powerful guessers. And there's nothing wrong with being powerful or a guesser. Kurt Vonnegut writes: "We must acknowledge that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, now a hero in the Soviet Union, have sometimes given us the courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding" (A Man Without a Country).

A few friends of mine recently received some bad news from doctoral programs and law schools. These are the people who've challenged me to be smarter, to read good books, watch interesting films, to reflect, to question my worldviews and opinions so that I can stay sharp and on top of the important matters of the world: culture, human relationships, human rights, things like that. But these friends were late bloomers (academically) as the saying goes or they couldn't afford an Ivy, or were rejected by their first choice campus or they wanted to stay close to home. I consider these friends my better halves; a couple have become a part of my conscience. Could they have gotten into top-notch schools if they had had brand name institutions smiling on their vitae? I've come to realize that intelligence confers caring about the right things--though these right things are debatable--and the ones who do--the smartest of the smartest--aren't getting a chance to show their stuff.

I didn't have a clear understanding of the way institutions worked until I got to college and started talking to my professors. I wonder if I could have been one of the stellar Asians at my high school whose grades twinkled, whose 7 series Beemers will also one day twinkle, a little too brilliantly on my way to work, and blind me just long enough to send me and my bicycle flying into the bushes.

My friends are out now and as they try and make sense of the lives they were born into, I enjoy watching each of them, from Korea, find their place in the world.

Start-Select, Part 2

2007-06-25T04:30:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to tell you the second part of a blog I wrote back in April and have thought for months about writing it, but the working of overtime, the making of new friends, and the private tutoring of students have prevented me from sitting at my desk and taking my MacBook in hand. Now, with six months of Gwangju life behind me, I feel the pressure of time. I must write. I will write. More. Frequently.

Before I came here, I had set out to accomplish things, you know, like coming to an understanding of my professional goals, connecting with family, and reporting to you, my American friends and family about it all. I came here to make decisions and to convey some of them to you in blog form. It's been a while, but:

About half way between Sacramento and San Francisco, there's Fairfield, the county seat of a city named Solano. And I'm headed there to have dinner with my father and step mom. On interstate 680 fat flats of countryside grab me from all sides. My ipod is set to shuffle:"Green Spring" by Midori Hirano comes on and I'm chewing away on a piece of beef jerky when I hit a bump on the road and it falls to the floor. Shit. I'm hungry.

I really am hungry. It's Saturday morning, nearing noon, and I haven't bathed or eaten. I'm considering taking a break from writing to find something to eat. But I can't. I'm getting into it. I can feel the flow, as the saying goes or doesn't, depending on how new-agey you want to sound.

It's sundown when I pull into the parking lot of a big white apartment complex. I can see my step mom at the far end of the lot wearing what appears to be an apron, red with white squares. I park. She opens the door, welcomes me with open arms and I fall into her. She takes my hand and we're walking. The sky is mix of lavender and grays.

There is something both comfortable and not, about a son meeting his father for the first time in several years. There's security on the one hand, knowing that in some capacity, there's some part of you, a larger, more experienced part, looking after you. And on the other, there's resentment.

I've decided to make myself spaghetti for breakfast. The water's boiling now and there's a happy grumbling in my stomach. Some people can work hungry. For others, hunger gives them insight into novels and paintings and perhaps a keener sense of the world. Hemingway titles a chapter in A Moveable Feast "Hunger is Good Discipline," suggesting good work requires self-denial. Sadly, I'm an American glutton here in Korea. If good work requires the denial of food, then this blog ain't gonna be appetizing.

My father's standing in the doorway when my step mom and I arrive. He is a dark spiritless man, of average height, and imperceptibly handsome. I can't remember the last time I saw him but I don't remember his hair being this white. Or shaggy, like a guinea pig's. He's wearing a white polo, probably one he sported when he used to go golfing, the collar wrinkled at its edges. His Bermuda shorts reveal a bandaged right leg. I wonder if it has something to do with the cancer.

"Hey there big guy." Did he really say that? I can't remember. He called me guy, I know that much. He ushers me in and I feel twelve again.

The interior of the apartment is homely, neither clean nor messy, with a stale scent of old books and kimchee. A white two-piece living room set and a big-screen TV jump out at me. So this is his life. His second since he left over a decade ago. I scan the room for anything that looks familiar but I don't see anything.

My father's standing awkwardly, arms akimbo, watching me as I judge his place.

"Sit down. You must be hungry. It's a long drive from San Jose."

"Sure. I'm hungry. The drive wasn't too bad. Kind of peaceful actually."

"So you're visiting just for the weekend?"

"Yeah."

"I still have your books. Crime and Punishment and...shoot, I can't remember the damned name of the other book."

I look at his deep-set eyes--lonely as hell, just as I remember.

"Did you ever get a chance to read them?"

"Yeah. I read Crime and Punishment a while ago," he answers picking at some banchan. He clears his throat and asks when dinner will be ready.

"Hold your horses, dear," my step mom shouts from the kitchen. Her English is at a free-talking level, which means she's all about the non-stop use of idioms.

"I think I'm going to start The Brothers Karamazov soon."

"Hmm. OK. Books are good," he pauses. "What's for dinner again!?"

"Potato soup and rice. I already told you. Do you even listen to anything I say?" Her voice sounds irritated in a loving way.

My father throws me a shrug and I force a smile.

I'm at the head of the table, my father to my left, my step mom to my right. Stacks of papers and books stare at the three of us from the other end. The food arrives and silence falls over dinner.

My step mom clears the table and retreats to the kitchen while my father and I relocate to the living room. She returns a minute later with a plate of apples and toothpicks. She sits on the floor and begins to peal and slice each one systematically, cutting them into small sections of different shapes for easy snacking. She stabs each shape with a toothpick and hands me one. I'm suddenly reminded of several classroom activities related to apples during elementary school. Mrs. Snider, the third grade ogress at Forest Hill Elementary, once planned a two hour lesson that consisted of forcing her students to eat different kinds of apples and then having them complete inane "Exploring Apples!" worksheets on measurements, tastes, smells and colors. Does anyone else remember this activity?

"Listen," my father starts. "You're the first born so I'm telling you this. I plan to tell Michael myself so you don't have to worry about delivering the news. Don't say anything. I'll take care of that." He coughs up something slimy-sounding but swallows it. I make a face. "It looks like my health's not too good. Some doctors say it's a kind of lung cancer."

"What do you mean, 'a kind of lung cancer?' What's the prognosis?"

"Eh. You know. It's what it is."

"'It is what it is?'" I can hear myself growing angry but I don't want to tell myself why. "I mean you do have paperwork indicating the diagnosis with details about the stage of the cancer and plans for treatment, right? Haven't you done any research about what's going to happen to you?" I say in sputtery outbursts. I let my eyeballs rest on the first object they see--apples.

"It's lung cancer but I forget the specific name," my step mom says as she takes off her apron. She puts her hand on my shoulders and leaves it there for a minute. She has long slender fingers, resembling the clinical beauty of physicians.

"It's not too bad. Anyway, we're going to fight it. It'll be OK," says my dad.

"We're going to fight it," she confirms.

Before I leave, for the first time, quite unexpectedly, standing in the doorway, I embrace him and whisper something into his ear (I tell him that he should watch Lost in Translation).

To this day, I wonder if he understood, as I did then, that that was the last time we would see each other. A few months after my visit, I took off to teach English in Korea. A month after arriving in Gwangju, on Thanksgiving, he passed. I flew home to attend his funeral on my birthday. Life's funny like that.

Virginia

2007-04-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Monday

Dae-woo, a native Korean from Seoul and mother of two Korean-American twenty-somethings living in America, was the first to arrive, promptly as usual, at 9:30am for our free-talking class. It was an overcast Monday morning with a stale hint of humidity in the air.

"It's true! Dae Woo announced adjusting herself in her seat at other end of the conference table. "The shooter's Chinese." She took some time to reflect on this. "I'm so relieved. Thank God he wasn't Korean."

Soon, the other free-talkers joined us—Hae-kyung, Hyun-ji, Na-young and Sally. They smiled with comfort as Dae-woo, their comparative elder, explained the rumors surrounding the Virgina Tech shooting.

As I listened to my students turn rumor into reality, I noticed something interesting in our treatment of tragedy. Insofar as we could empathize with the tragic event at a safe distance, sensing the fear, anger and pain of the students and professors who were shot, my free-talkers and I were able to say quietly to ourselves and to no one else: At least it wasn't and couldn't have been me. I'm neither a killer nor do I belong to an ethnicity of people who are killers; I'm neither a Virginia Tech student nor an employee there. It couldn't have been me.

Tuesday

At 9:30am Dae-woo walked in the door. She paced to her seat, sat down, placed her purse on a chair next to hers and asked me if I had heard the bad news. I said yes and I'm sorry, I wish it wasn't true and we have lots to talk about today. Hae-kyung, Hyun-ji, Na-young and Sally strolled in.

Cho Seung-hui was a Korean native who moved to America in 1992, according to several news sources. I handed out a few articles that I had printed earlier that morning. We read through them as our voices grazed over English sentences in a quiet register. The students expressed confusion and grief—both appropriate emotions for such an event. But a few said they also felt a sense of shame to be Korean. I nodded, asked questions and took notes.

Some of my students said Cho must have been crazy or that he "probably had some mental problems" (This was before any substantial evidence had been released about his background, his major, or speculation about his psychology). I asked my class if they knew the prevalence of "craziness" (i.e., psychopathy) in America. They gleefully yelled out numbers like "fifty percent!" "At least 70," "More than 30?" The finding I remember from my clinical psychology courses—don’t quote me—was around the one to two percent spectrum, if that.

. . .

To the foreign teaching staff, gun violence on yet another school campus can be catalogued along with the others, though this casual acceptance hardly abates the weight of the recent event. But for Koreans in Gwangju, the shooting struck the wrong chord. A Native Korean seized the lives of 32 Americans as well as his own. How will this incident affect the image of Koreans both in the States and internationally, especially in Southeast Asia and Australia (many Koreans study abroad in Australia and New Zealand)? Will we be treated like the Arab population after September 11? What about relations between the U.S. and Korea? Economics, trade? Will traveling or studying abroad in the U.S. be more difficult because of this? I wish I had had the answers to their questions. As their teacher, there was a sense in which I felt I should have had answers, several well thought-out and grounded ones.

As our trusted media punch out the details in the coming weeks, I hope we can arrive at a better understanding of what happened in Virginia, that we can foster international communication between the States and Korea.

My students and I wish to send our condolences to the Virginia Tech community.

Start-Select

2007-04-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

We treat people we love in life with an interesting abrasiveness: defiance, neglect, rudeness, superiority. Perhaps we act with carelessness some of the time because we “enjoy expressing our own selves in the security of their being present, being able to take it, forgiving us, continuing. We pride ourselves for the birthday present, or Christmas gift inordinately to assuage our very aware mind that knows our guilt. Mortality ends that and, if we are mortal all of the time why do we think we have multiple chances in the first place?” (Email from Paul Apodaca, September 9, 2006).

At lunch last Saturday I sat in a Gimbop Nara (Gimbop world) a little after noon watching films of yellow dust fall from China. I was finishing up a plate of spaghetti and banchan when my mom called and we had our weekly chat. She calls once a week—usually Saturdays—and we talk about family, finances and about how I’m doing, how she's doing, how Mike, my younger brother's doing, do you need anything sent over, are you eating everyday, that sort of thing.

We greeted each other in her native tongue and tacitly agreed to continue the conversation this way. We spoke at length about her sister (my Aunt Kristie), about Aunt Kristie's quality of life and what she plans to do about the kids, the house, and her job if her husband doesn't come back.

"Anyway, emo (see definition 14) will be OK. She found God.” Mom paused. “Oh, and Mike saw Katy at Sabrina's funeral" she explained.

"Hmm." I acknowledged and withdrew. I guess she expected me to say something. I didn't.

"Yeah, too bad about Sabrina," she continued. "There’s too much pain and terribleness in the world. God can help us."

"Maybe." I was distracted, trying to imagine what Sabrina's funeral must have been like, bringing to my mind faces of long since past high school friends, of people I briefly knew during the summer before college. I remembered the smell of that summer with vivid detail and missed it.

"Anyway, things at home are OK. Business is good these days and Mike will be fine." Her speech has lost its snap. Most of her power—her sass—came from her voice, which when I try to think back to my childhood, seemed to carry a certain buoyancy and hope for family morale. She divorced my dad almost a decade ago and took custody of us, Mike and I, the kids. These days, mom sounds weary from work and worrying about Mike. Somewhere in her voice, perhaps hidden in one of her speech organs—maybe in the glottis—there's solitude.

“Hey guess what I learned how to say the other day.” I tried to make her laugh by showing off my Korean skills. I told her my new word and a resigned chuckle echoed from her end of the line. She laughed at my 5-year-old proficiency like I was learning to speak for the first time. “Very good,” she congratulated me. “You know how to say shit head.”

“I learned from you and dad. Fighting all the time.” We talk about him like he’s history, ancient history.

“That was before God. Before God.” She apologized.

“Yeah I know. Things are different now."

"One day you will meet Him and He's really wonderful you know. Changed my life." She said.

"He sounds like a great guy. Really powerful."

"Yes I know! He is the most powerful. You'd better find Him. Your life is full of pain if you don't."

"I have to go. " I lied.

"Ok. We talk next week."

"M-hmm. Talk to you then."

My father and I got into a fight on the phone before he died, before my step mom told me about the cancer. The conversation began with "Hi, it's Daniel," and ended with "That makes me more of a father to him than you." The argument was over whether or not Mike was mature enough at the time to receive his step mom’s old Corolla. Father worried that giving Mike his own car would mean drunk driving episodes, stumbling home at dawn, doing God knows what with only God knows whom.

[insert the body of our argument here]

"I'm the father, dammit."

"I've been looking after him since you left and since you haven't bothered to put forth any effort to communicate, to act like you wanted to be around us, that makes me more of a father to him than you." I almost yelled, my baritone resembling his somewhat.

"Oh screw you." He reflexed.

There's futility in arguments. We assume that we'll change the other person's mind. Both parties, it seems, usually stand their ground unwilling to budge, loath to admit that their system of beliefs might be peppered with bullshit. No matter how sound the argument is or how many times you get the other person to contradict himself, there's usually resistance. Fifteen minutes goes by and you realize you’re involved, on some level, in a reservoir of ad hominem arguments, forgetting about direction or purpose.

“Can you put my step mom on the phone?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“No.”

“Are you afraid we might have a reasonable conversation and that she might decide to give Mike the Corolla?” I asked hoping he could detect my sarcasm.

“No.”

“Well, you can put her on now or I can call back later when you’re at work.”

My step mom and I talked on the phone for a good half hour. She started by asking me about work and about Mike’s health. She apologized for my father’s tone and behavior. Before our conversation ended, she explained that I could fly up to Fairfield in the summer, probably June, and drive the car back home. I thanked her. My father never came back.

A week later, my step mom called to tell me that my father had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer. “It doesn’t look good, Daniel,” she explained. “Please don’t tell anyone, especially your brother and mother. Promise me.”

I promised, lying.

Truth is, I didn't say anything to Mike or Mom but I did tell my closest friends, my confidants: wonderful good- hearted people I'm lucky to have met.

I also paid a visit to Paul Apodaca, my mentor. As usual, I sat in his large marshmellowy office sofa, saturated with the smell of cigarettes and old rugs, waiting for him to say something wise. He did. And, for the first time, quite unexpectedly, right before I left, standing in his doorway, he embraced me with his warm bewhiskered arms like two huge caterpillars. He smelled like his sofa.

Soon, June rolled around and on the night I booked my plane ticket to San Francisco, I detected those familiar scents of summer 2001: man-made lakes, cake batter perfume and crepuscular sprinklers.

To be continued…

W E B L O G

2007-04-07T18:23:00.000-07:00

Oronte Churm's Dispatches From Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency grabbed my attention a couple of years back and I’ve been following his writing ever since. On a vague and uneventful night in Irvine, when I was a university student, I thought about sending him an email. You know, to say hey thanks I like your dispatches and can you answer some questions about graduate school. I sent a message to the mysterious Churm, he responded and I was rather glad.

In December of 2005 Mr. Churm began a blog at Inside Higher Ed, an online publication about academe. More recently, he gave me an opportunity to write a little something as a guest blogger. The little something I wrote made me a lot nervous but the experience helped me understand that I want to grow as writer, seek more opportunities to create and continue to write about things that matter most to me. That's where I'm headed.

Thanks again Mr. Churm.

On Jeong, My Level 4 Class and the Yeosu Archipelago

2007-03-11T00:25:00.000-08:00

My Level 4 (10:30a.m.) class last month was special. They shared with each other what Koreans call Jeong. And I found in each of them an endearing quality, which, in one way or another, motivated me to shift the class into a higher gear. I have a handful of friends and mentors who are teachers and something they all have in common is that each of them has relayed to me the same thing about good classes. The relative success of any given class you teach is dependent upon luck. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a committed class, curious and caring not only about the subject but also about each other and their community. I've decided to dedicate this blog to my February Level 4.

The following pictures are from our day trip to Yeosu, a city stretched out on the southern coast of South Korea. With two rented cars, several digital cameras and fine weather to accompany us, we explored the Yeosu Peninsula and admired one of its 317 neighboring islands (49 inhabited, 268 uninhabited). Here's what our day looked like...

Keira driving.

These are boats sitting in a harbor and the sky is hazy.

Here we are walking (on a bridge) to one of the 317 islands.

Still walking.

Evan, me and Byung-Gook.

Some of my Korean friends have informed me that should I decide to wear sunglasses in public, the public will assume I've had some Blepharoplasty work done. Here we are next to a coastal bat cave.

Evan likes to laugh. At everything. His energy puts people at ease and encourages his classmates to speak English without shame or fear. He's a sophomore at Chosun University, majoring in Civil Engineering. He hopes to one day plan and construct a high rise.

A nice photograph, I think (From left to right): Hyo-Ji, Ji-Eun and Heh-Kyung. They just started their first year in college.

Byung-Gook, Keira and Su-Hyun. Byung-Gook has a goofy sense of humor. He's majoring in Aerospace engineering and regularly worries about his physical health. For this reason, he eats well, goes to the gym regularly and avoids places with jagged edges. Keira, in front of him, majored in fabric design and interior design. She studied abroad in the Philippines a couple of years ago to learn English. Su-Hyun is a first year university student somewhere in Seoul. I regret to say that I didn't get to know her very well. She always wore two things: a smile and flannel.

An middle-aged fisherman took us for a ride on his motor boat.

Our skipper took a picture of the entire Level 4 after the boat ride.
Back row: Evan, me, Sally, Ji-Eun, Byung-Gook
Front row: Keira, Su-Hyun, Heh-Kyung, Zinnia, Hyo-Ji.

Simulacrum.

At the end of the day, we found a Chinese restaurant and ate Jajangmyeon. Afterwards, we found a park on top of a high hill next to the beach. We drank beer, snacked on crackers and played Mafia. This was the view atop the grassy knoll.

On our drive home, we stopped off at the beach and lit some fireworks.

What Came of the Naengmyeon

2007-03-10T22:42:00.000-08:00

One of the last meals I remember sharing with my mom and my brother before moving to Korea was a bowl of mul (water) Naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles). A couple of weeks ago between classes (it was a Thursday night), I had myself some Naengmyeon for dinner. Served in a large metal bowl with a tangy iced broth, raw julienned vegetables, thinly sliced and seasoned beef and half a boiled egg, I was ready to eat. To add some zing to the icy broth, a spicy mustard and vinegar can be added. You can be sure I spiced up my broth the way I spice up my Mexican dishes.

Everything went down fine but they didn’t stay down for long. After my last class ended, I went home with a fever, entered my bathroom, bent down over the toilet and brought up my dinner. This lasted all night.

A couple hours after my first spew, a horrendous pain came over my abdominal area and I could feel my head beat in loud nauseating pulses as my body shivered. Never in my life had I experienced this kind of physical pain. Every time I escaped to the bathroom, the light looked like a faint dangling lime feeding a diffused olive light into the room. Hallucination, I thought: wonderful.

One time during the night, though I can’t be sure whether it was night or early morning, I puked up some stuff that neither resembled food nor vomit. It looked alien. I thought that was the end of it. Nothing else could come out, I thought. I was wrong. A moment later, I thought of something my friend Peter used to say whenever I used to feel queasy: “lukewarm ham.” The next time you feel barfy, think of “lukewarm ham” and tell me how things turn out. For me, another alien, mucilaginous mixture came pouring out of my mouth.

Afterwards, I shuffled to my bed and collapsed onto my icy cold sheets. I looked at my hand phone (that’s what Koreans call cell phones). The neon wattage indicated it was just after 3:30. Three-thirty a.m. It was at this point during the morning I contemplated the possibility of death. I knew I hallucinated a little, I could barely walk without falling over and I threw up almost everything save for my intestines. Drained of all mental and physical energy, I was at the mercy of involuntary memories. My father came into my thoughts. I wondered if he experienced this kind of pain before he passed. My stepmother reassured me that he “returned” peacefully with a small stubborn grin over his lips. I felt a strange oneness with him even though we were never close. Invisible threads of memory connected me to him and I was able to recall, rather viscerally, very early memories from childhood. Exhausted, I fell into an exquisite sleep.

Something Like Dreaming After Throwing up Buckwheat Noodles

•
A Saved Email from December, 2, 2006
•
On Returning to Something You already Know

At 5 o'clock a largish group of us got in my uncle's minivan and headed to the funeral. The place looked like a small warehouse in an industrial part of Fairfield, California. Rows of cold wooden seats, a large wooden cross, a coffin, and a garish selection of Primroses, Daisies and other flowers I didn't know the names of were neatly arranged for the service. A carousel slide projector illuminated a couple dozen images of my father's life onto a blank wall next to the wooden cross. A couple dozen. There was something disquieting about watching a slide show of the life my father and stepmother shared—kissing, holding hands and smiling together—in the presence of mortuary muzak. Nevertheless they seemed happy, whatever that meant to them. Then, some images of my brother and I appeared. We must have been 8 and 5 respectively.

Swathed in borrowed uncomfortable clothing, surrounded by strange familiar faces from the past, I sat in the front row between Mike and my stepmother. My father's dead body/my dead father's body rested in the coffin maybe five feet in front of me. His countenance looked like it was painted on carefully by some artless professional whose entire life consisted of making the dead seem noble, at peace, yet alive and at rest. Directly in front of the coffin was a picture of him, smiling at me. Cries caromed up towards the ceiling and fell back down towards the floor.

The ceremony was conducted entirely in Korean. My adoption of Korean helped me to understand some of the things the elder discussed as he lead the ceremony. Most of it—my comprehension of his words were probably flawed and choppy—seemed to praise the virtue of Protestantism. He spoke at length with a commanding baritone, never forgetting to mention how faith in his God guaranteed a peaceful death. I asked myself if, in the broad sense of the word, I had faith in anything. I didn't know and didn't much care. I watched my stepmother's hands tremble as small bits of tissue paper escaped her fingers and fell onto the floor.

My father's best friend took the stand and gave a small eulogy…Spine tingles and wet eyeballs. In Korean, the phonetically spelled-out translation of "she/he has died" is "do-lo-ga-shoh-suh-yoh." It's literal translation in English is "He/she has gone back." Several assumptions can be made here. As this phrase came into the language prior to the introduction of Christianity in Korea, we cannot say for sure to what realm the deceased has returned. But a cursory reading about death from a variety of religious and philosophical perspectives suggests that the idea of humans returning to a previous state of nonexistence—a realm we already know—is not an uncommon one.

More memories from the past entered into my dreams, powerful, fragmentary and vivid.

At a Johnny Rockets in Hollywood

Peter and I sat sipping root beer as a tepid Los Angeles air breezed through the fifth story veranda of an outdoor Hollywood mall. Over the hum of people eating around us, jangles of ring tones and people screaming into their phones spread over the mall . We saw the Shins open for Belle and Sebastian that night. The people who sat in front of us brought with them a basket full of Trader Joey cuisine. Jealous with hunger, we craved their food. After Belle and Sebastian played a good four songs I gave up hope that the strangers seated in front of us, endeavoring to share their moveable feast, would turn around, smile, and ask if we would care for any of their fondue, turkey sandwiches, gourmet Kettle Chips and champagne. The music was good.

Salt Lake City, Utah

There was a biting frost in the air as a group of Chapman students waited for the cross walk to give the green light. I was a freshman in college then, far away from campus, attending what I thought was a purely academic conference (fool!) and there were many people with whom I would become good friends. Fresh-faced, we were eager to make new friends, seek romances, and carouse. Some of these freshmen are now married, others are in law school, and many exist merely in Myspace form.

...

The window was pale with light when I finally awoke. The pain had subsided but my stomach was empty. My hunger and (especially) thirst needed to be sated and slaked. I got up, drank four cups of water and wrote this blog.

A Nice Little City

2007-02-24T04:19:00.000-08:00

When I arrived in Gwangju the circus was in town.

At 4:55pm on October 26th, 2006 a few stars were frozen in the sky and the cold currents of the Korean Peninsula helped me to understand the utility of owning a frock coat, a piece of clothing I purchased purely for style in California. On my way to check out my new workplace, I spotted a circus tent from a distance. As I neared the blue and red draped edifice, three Crab-eating Macaque monkeys, shackled in chains, presumably waiting their turn to perform, sat scratching each other atop a large metal cage. Through the chinks of the tent I saw flashes of what appeared to be humans, dressed in tight-fitting red spandex, running, jumping, contorting and twirling in the air like Twizzlers. I heard the sounds of chimes, marching drums, carousels, a happy magical crowd and the torture of elephants, tigers and lions.

A Late Start

When I set off to write my first blog nearly three months ago, I found it difficult to express my reflections about living in another country. I was a brand-new English teacher then, and my boss assigned me to five conversational classes and two Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) classes (speaking and writing). Having just arrived—fresh off the bee-hyeng-gee (airplane)—I was just getting used to my new surroundings: the sights, smells, sounds and the Jeolla dialect of Southwest Korea. Things were too new, too fresh in my mind to make sense of them through words.

After several months of living in Gwangju, after a number of unexpected deaths, a variety of life experiences and wonderful moments teaching and making new friends, I’ve decided to articulate some of my thoughts using blogger.com. Though, to be sure, I might not be ready to start this blogging about my life abroad business. Any time my writing seems awkward, ill-phrased, clumsy or off the mark, please leave a comment, criticism, or diatribe about my writing, about me personally, or about anything you wish to share with the Internet community.

Some disclaimers: I will attack the people of Gwangju on purely racist grounds. I see this as entirely justified because their blood runs through my veins. I’m no serologist but I know reasonable racism when I see it. I’m kidding. I will also attack non-Gwangjuians out of hate. Also, I will parenthetically provide Revised Romanizations of Hangul characters as a way of translating certain words and thereby making communication more interesting (or so I hope).

All in the Timing

The conception of time in South Korea, as it is in many Asian cultures, is past-oriented. Koreans respect, and to a certain degree, revere their ancestors, their traditional values, and their cultural history, much of which are rooted in folk beliefs, folk tales, Buddhism, Confucianism, and, to a certain extent, on Taoism. Many of Korea’s cultural metaphors thus come out of these roots. Several such metaphors, for example, use dog (geh) images as a way of conveying a number of emotions, both negative and positive. While Americans have the popular “fucker” (or the sometimes more popular “mother-fucker”) as a general term for a person who is annoying, obnoxious or base (synonyms include dick or asshole), Koreans have the word “geh-sek-ee” (the translation for “sek-ee” is a newborn or very young animal; thus, geh-sek-ee = dog runt, or some close approximation). Dogs, however, are also viewed as loyal and kind companions. And some Koreans enjoying eating them even though the sale of dog meat is illegal. But the Korean police force are like gentle bears from your soft childhood dreams when compared to those power-hungry American brutes who kick in your door (and sometimes your head), if you're up to no good or if you're a minority. If you're curious, I have not consumed any canine flesh and don't plan on it. But I digress.

I’ve been teaching conversational English and TOEFL classes at a BCM Language Center for the past four months. Located on the fourth floor of a squat gray building in the middle of a busy Hagwon district, BCM’s Gwangju headquarters is home to five “foreign” (i.e., Western) teachers who teach conversational English classes and two Native Korean teachers who are responsible for Introductory English classes. Together, we seven, along with a couple of secretaries, are responsible for a little over 200 students, doctors, nurses, college professors, stay-at-home mothers, and other professionals.

For the past two months, I've taken the helm of teaching four morning classes (7:30am - 11:30am) and two to three night classes (6pm - 9pm), each lasting 50 minutes. As you can see, I only have afternoons off. I usually spend my free time eating lunch, preparing lesson plans, reading, napping, running, and taking Korean language classes.

I live in a small studio apartment in a wealthy neighborhood called Dong-Myung Dong. Blue wallpaper patterned with white daffodils span my walls. I have a bathroom, a bed, a desk and a kitchen equipped with a small fridge and stove. I also have windows.

Back to the Beginning

When I arrived in Gwangju, Halloween was just around the corner. I remember walking through downtown for the first time with my new coworkers, buzzed on Soju, noticing millions of fliers for Halloween parties at nightclubs all over the city. Some people were dressed up as the masked killers from the Scream films. I felt out of place and dumb.

These days, when I walk through the same streets I did four months ago, I recognize familiar faces and sometimes they recognize me. I'm able to go to restaurants and order food, explain how I want my hair cut, give directions to adults and small children, and engage in light rounds of badinage with cabbies. But I'm always unsure of my ability to communicate. I second guess myself or forget simple vocabulary words I think I should know. For these reasons, I've been able to empathize with my students and understand their frustrations when it comes to learning English.

The acculturation process is an intense, eye-opening one. So far it’s taught me how to be a more interculturally competent. A key mentor in my life gave me some advice before I left. He advised me to remain quiet for the first couple of months in Korea. Observe your new environment and its culture…examine and understand its social boundaries and rules, he said.

His advice was helpful and for good reasons. It taught me how to navigate around and through this insider/outsider identity situation I find myself in every day. It's funny. Not until you're willing to share your thoughts with your peers, your friends and family--until you begin writing for others--do you begin to feel more intimately attached to your own ideas, opinions and experiences.

I find myself rummaging the past to generate lesson plan ideas, to entertain myself during meals, and sometimes to bring back old emotions for the hell of it. For the first time, I've begun to compartmentalize my life into different chapters. And writing helps me arrange those chapters in some discernible order.

Digital Photographs I Did Not Take Except For the Last Picture, Which I Took With My Macbook

Unlike some of you blog-savvy barnacles, I haven't yet mastered the fancy ways of laying out pictures and texts. You'll have to settle for this homely design.

This is my 8pm Free-talking class. We are having fun and not in a classroom. We are sitting in a Soju Lounge.

Starting from the very left: Amy, Judy, Jean, Sunny, Hyun-ah, me.

My 10:30am. Level 4 class. These are bona fide Koreans studying hard and being smart, just like in the stereotypes.