The Farther One Travels, The Less One Knows

Hey all, Look at that, one month to the day! I am a consistent blogger once again!

We're now entering what is, if I'm not mistaken, the fourth week of the current semester. There's not too much that exciting going on. I bought some decent beers (Duvel! Kozel! Fuller's London Pride! Erdinger! Leffe Brune! Hooray!) and some packets of curry spices from HomePlus so my belly is happy. I bought a really expensive pair of flip-flops a few weeks ago, but I'm justifying it by the fact that I waited the whole summer to buy them. I quit one video game and bought a couple others. I joined a fantasy football league. During Chuseok, I actually watched football. Sunday NFL games are usually on from 2 AM Monday morning until about noon Monday afternoon here so there's no point trying to find a way to watch them. This year Chuseok fell on a Monday, however, so we had Monday and Tuesday off, giving me the perfect excuse to go nocturnal and watch the opening weekend of football (sans the Thursday opener, sadly). Getting up at 2 AM to watch football until 3 PM and then try to get some sleep might seem a little crazy, but it seemed worth it at the time. Could have been the football withdrawl, I don't know. Maybe it was the whole September 11th thing. Spending the tenth anniversary of September 11th in a foreign country was a little strange, especially since it kind of lasted for close to 36 hours with the time change. Personally I was kind of glad to be able to avoid it--I don't like to revisit that day. But remembering the date with a day of NFL football seemed appropriate somehow. And I've got my reservation to see the memorial when I visit New York in February. Anyway, I'm just glad the Bills won the only one of their games that I'll probably see all year, and handily. I take back most of the awful things I've said about Ryan Fitzpatrick. (I'm sure he understands.)

There hasn't been that much fascinating, interesting stuff to report. I did go to the Daegu International Bodypainting Festival, which was a fun event for a shutterbug like myself. There are so few creative arts festivals or museums outside of Seoul that it's surprising that something as daring as the Bodypainting Festival is going on in boring-ol' Daegu. Earlier this summer I went to the fine arts gallery in Gwangju, which is associated with the  big Gwangju biennial, so I was expecting big things. Most of the art there was so boring (Ooh! It's the same damn waterfall that Asian artists have been drawing for centuries!) that I wanted to impale roadkill on rusted cars, light it on fire and photograph it. (YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO STEAL THAT IDEA.) The Bodypainting Festival isn't especially avant-garde--a lot of the work looks like it would be at home in a sci-fi/fantasy video game--but it was still cool to see the creativity at work. I also liked the fact that a lot of the work was done by local design students. And of course the whole nakedness thing is a little brash for Daegu. Some other people I know who had visited past festivals complained that they were a little creeped out by the number of older men at the festival ogling the models while they were preparing for the judging and performance, but I honestly didn't see anything too unseemly along those lines when I was there. Maybe the models were in a more completely prepared state when I was there--I can imagine that the preparation in outdoor tents must feel a little more revealing before the base coat goes on, no matter how hard the artists try to shield the models from the public eye. The promotional videos they showed at the event showed a few male models in the competition, but there was only one at the event this year. Not that I'm complaining. I think what shocked me the most wasn't the nudity aspect, but the fact that at the end of the show the models walked through a crowd of drunks and down a dark asphalt path to get back to their outdoor prep area. Trust is a beautiful thing. Trust, and a lack of lawyers looking for lawsuits.

The bodypainting and costuming was quite beautiful, too. Let's not forget that.

I guess the only other big news is that I officially intend to renew for a third year. I don't think anybody should be surprised by that decision. If anything I was more worried that something was going to happen to yank the rug out from under me before I could renew. There's been a lot of crazy rumors floating around among the foreigner population here lately. A lot of teachers are concerned about the fact that the province of Gyeonggi-do defunded GEPIK, after instituting a hiring freeze earlier in the year, and now all the teachers in the province seem to be in limbo. (I still don't know what the relationship is between GEPIK and EPIK in other provinces, but given the separate acronyms I've been led to believe that there's some sort of significant separation.) There also seems to be a general trend in the country towards viewing teachers in general as having special privileges and not working as hard as other Koreans. In a way it's kind of comforting to see that there's more than one country that can be driven by crisis to hate teachers, even one that worships education. And worships spending long hours at work. Korean sources like to blame Korea's low labor productivity rates on large concentrations of workers in service industry positions and the informal economy, but I'll bet it also has something to do with the number of hours Koreans are at work, which is the highest per worker in the OECD. Part of Korean business culture seems to be that no one goes home until the boss goes home, which isn't just a great way to depress your productivity by guaranteeing that your workers are spending a lot of idle hours browsing Naver, but also a great way to instill a crab-bucket mentality when it comes time for a recession.

On top of that, there seem to be a lot more stories and rumors kicking aroundabout Koreans just plain not liking foreigners. Personally I don't take a lot of stock in those stories. I think a lot of things that prompt Westerners to think that Koreans are "racist" are just cultural misunderstandings. I'll admit, Korea is a fairly closed society. It's difficult to forge close friendships with the locals (at least by Western standards) and Koreans don't really embrace foreign influence the way some more blended cultures with longer histories of foreign influence, colonization, international trade and immigration do. But I think foreign teachers also do things to reinforce some of the negative stereotypes that already exist here. I don't think there's a good reason for Koreans to believe that we're all child rapists with AIDS (and I've seen the evidence of what Korean men get up to in Southeast Asia--don't think we don't know what you're doing at those clubs in the Philippines, guys) but a lot of foreign teachers don't seem to have gotten the message that just because you can have an open container in public and find prostitutes at juicy bars doesn't mean that you should. And since we're foreigners, we're going to be held to a higher standard than drunk old farmers because we're a lot more visible. It may not be fair, but it's the rules of the game. The same way that foreign English teachers might panic when they hear a story about a vigilante spying on foreign teachers trying to catch them breaking the law is the same way that Koreans will overreact when they read about a foreign teacher assaulting an older couple on a bus in Seoul (warning: the linked video is not a happy video). It's important not to let rumors, innuendo and the worst elements of a group color your opinion of a whole culture or collection of people, especially when it seems like there's so little communication and exchange of ideas between the two groups sometimes.

But, long story slightly shorter, it appears that I've been invited to stay another year. I'll admit that there were a few days there where I was contemplating asking to be moved to a different school in a bigger city. I love my school to death, but my town is a little isolated and it would be nice to have a few more Westerners to mix with. But in the end the rational decision won out. I know my last blog posting was a little glum, but with the world economy being what it is it makes more sense to stay and keep the stable job for another year, and it made more sense to stay at my school than to roll the dice and possibly end up at a crappy school. I'm trying to make more of a concerted effort to get out and meet people, so I'm sure this current social lull will pass in time.

Speaking of which, lately I've been thinking about what I should do with my spare time when I'm here next year. My accounting courses will be finished by December, which will give me a helluva lot more free time evenings and weekends, and I'll have enough lesson plans prepared for school that I shouldn't have to do more than some minor tweaks to them when I'm at work during the week. I know some other teachers have tried stuff like taekwondo school and belly dancing classes but I'm not sure if either one of those is my speed. I know there's a kendo school next to my school, but I think most of the participants are elementary kids and my own female students, so I don't think I want to get involved with beating (or more likely, getting beaten by) little kids and a bunch of Korean schoolgirls with a bamboo rod. I may give Korean lessons another try if I can find a language exchange partner to help with some additional practice outside of class. I've been thinking about buying a new acoustic guitar and finally learning how to play, especially since I saw some of the acoustics here that are available for under $150. (Unfortunately I don't know the quality of any of the brands available in Korea. I'm familiar with Samick and Cort, but a lot of the cheaper acoustics are made in China and I don't recognize any of the trade names used here. I do know Samick and Cort manufacture guitars for a lot of good American brands--I have Korean-made Schecter and Danelectro electric guitars back home and they both rule--but I'm also a little wary since my first guitar was a Samick acoustic and it's a piece of shit. Admittedly it was a really shitty Samick, and $50 less than a similar low-end guitar from Yamaha. But I've gotta say, I've seen a lot of good-looking guitars at dirt-cheap prices here, and unless there's hidden manufacturing defects you can usually hear or feel if there's something you don't like about an acoustic guitar.) At some point I'll have to review for the CPA exam, but I don't think that takes an entire year. I've thought about working on a screenplay (why abandon entertainment when you can keep pulling at the scabs?) but I have the age-old problem that I don't feel like I have an idea that's solid enough for a feature screenplay. (And I don't have enough access to American TV to write a TV spec. Maybe I should invest in some more NBC comedies from iTunes...) I suppose I could spend more time watching football (cough cough I mean soccer, sorry) but Arsenal is off to such a bad start that I would consider switching allegiances to Barca if Korean TV ever showed La Liga. There's also the age-old issue of money. Next year I should have more cash saved up for vacations and such, although I'd prefer to take it home with me and invest it or spend it after I've paid all the moving costs from coming home. (At some point I realized that it's the same price--and distance, as the crow flies--to fly from Seoul to New Zealand as it is to fly from LA to New Zealand. That kind of put a damper on my dreams of trekking the Milford Track as a goodbye trip.) But next year I'll also have to pay Korean taxes, start paying back some loans and pay some moving expenses when I return home. Anyway, I guess not knowing what to do with your free time is a good problem to have. Especially in the country with the longest work hours in the OECD. Better not let the locals see me enjoying myself...

(I just cracked the Leffe Brune. OH MY GOD WHAT A GREAT BEER. Belgians rule at beer.)

Alright, I'm tapped. I'll be back in a while with more crazy stories. In the meantime, here's the obligatory parting song...

No Joy in Mudville?

Hey there. So, it's summer. Summer vacation, to be exact. Initially I didn't want to use my vacation this summer. My original intent was to save it so I could use it all this winter, which technically isn't allowed in the contract but a lot of school allow teachers to do it. After crunching some numbers and talking things over with my school, however, I realized that I probably can't afford to take a vacation long enough to use all of my summer and winter days off, and since there would probably be time over the summer when school would be closed or I would be sitting at my desk in an empty office with nothing to do, it made more sense to just use the vacation days instead of causing administrative problems or moral dilemmas for the school. What can I say, I am both a schmuck and a team player. I count those among my better qualities.

My first three days of vacation were put to good use. First I headed to Daecheon Beach to check out the infamous Boryeong Mud Festival. The town started the festival to promote their supposedly cosmetically beneficial mud, but eventually people (including a large number of foreigners) discovered that the festival is a marvelous excuse to roll in the mud and get really, really drunk. I stayed at a hotel with a gang of four strangers from Gyeongju (who turned out to be fantastically nice people) and despite my best intentions I don't think I spent more than thirty minutes without a beer in my hand. Luckily I had a good time and nothing stupid happened, although Facebook now has pictures of me shirtless, which is something I usually try to avoid. (I've lost a pant size since I came here--which is good because a size 34 is "extra large" in some stores in Korea--but according to the National Health Service I need to lose another nine kilos to stop being considered obese. Well, fuck.) I've also come to realize that I may be the only American between the ages of 18 and 38 who has no tattoos. What can I say, I've never had the money to waste on tattoos, or a decent body to display them on. (I did recently joke that when I finally pay off all my credit cards I'm going to get a tattoo on the hand that I reach into my wallet with that says, "Think again.")

The next day I got up early and said goodbye to the roommates, whom I never saw again. (That's a lie. I saw them again a few weeks later at the Pohang Fireworks Festival. They might be reading this right now on Facebook, actually. Like I said, nice people.) Since I was already in Chungcheongnam-do I figured I would do some traveling and see some of the famous Baekje sites around the province. You know, because the best thing to do with a monster hangover is to strap on a backpack and walk around in the sun in mid-July in Korea. I followed that up with a trip down to Mokpo, mostly just to say I've been to Jeollanam-do and check off Dadohae National Park from the list of sites in the front of the Korea Lonely Planet. The problem with my plan was that I tried to pack way too much travel into too few days. Buyeo was nice (if you look up "bucolic" in the dictionary there might be a picture of Buyeo) but by the time I got to Gongju the famous Baekje tombs were already closed. I spent the night in Daejeon but I mistakenly stayed near the wrong KTX station, and even though I got to the station by about 7:30 AM I had just missed the KTX to Mokpo and had to wait 2 1/2 hours for the next one. Since I got to Mokpo late I had to skip the boat tour to Hong-do and the rest of Dadohae National Park and decided to hike up the local mountain instead. Because, like I said, the smartest thing to do in Korea in the summer in the middle of the day is hike up a goddamn mountain. I went to Gwangju the next morning but by the time I got there I had pretty much had my fill of hiking, museums, temples, tombs and other assorted Korean vacation options. Honestly I was glad to be home in air conditioning. I silently vowed to never undertake a solo backpacking vacation in Korea again.

The main problem with that was, I still had five days of vacation coming. Shit fuck.

Korea has school year-round but for foreign English teachers the summer schedule can be kind of a joke. (For the kids, apparently, it's miserable. In my conversation classes I would ask my students if they were looking forward to the summer and the answer was almost always a unanimous "no.") Unless you're a part of an organized week of "English camp" you usually get stuck trying to plan new lessons every day on your own for a group of kids that have been press-ganged into taking your class because letting the English teacher shirk the whole summer would just be too un-Korean. Don't get me wrong, my school and my co-teachers did their best to schedule a decent summer program for me, and I had a lot of fun in most of my classes. Unfortunately my last class of the day had some sort of conflict with an "important" class, so sometimes with no warning I would go from having six kids showing up to only one. This was especially wonderful when I, for example, had planned the final class for a week-long project and brought video equipment and bought GODDAMN SNACKS and had one student show, after six students had clearly and unequivocally stated that they would be in class. I don't want to complain too much--it's the Korean government's dime so they call the dance--but it's also hard not to get angry when the native English teacher gets treated like an expensive piece of furniture, or when your class gets bumped for something "more important" like math or studying for some exam or a goddamn assembly to check the length of the girls' skirts. Not to mention that time I got locked inside the teachers' office and had to climb out a window to get out. Guess I better learn the Korean phrase for, "Is anybody in here?" one of these days. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut, though, since I keep hearing rumors about how Koreans are unhappy with how expensive and foreign and drunk native English teachers are, and how they keep trying to find ways to replace us with robots.



(The linked article and video, by the way, have to be my favorite of the Korean English-Teaching Robot stories I've seen online. See what they did there? They used a robot to stick a white face on a Filipino teacher! That's sheer genius. I mean, I would be perfectly happy if they replaced us with robots that work, or better qualified teachers from India or the Philippines. The problems are that most of the robots I've seen online suck, and Koreans want to learn English from a "perfect" native speaker, which usually implies a Westerner--preferably a white American. I'm not going to bust out the "R" word here, because that sort of accusation is usually only good for starting fights. But it's funny to see how whiteness has become a commodity in the age of globalization. For example, you can rent one of us in China. Who says we don't make anything in America anymore? We make and export whiteness!)

So after three weeks of playing the Dancing English Bear on a reduced class schedule (yet another reason I really shouldn't complain, but still do) I had my last five days of vacation coming. The problem here is that unless you plan well in advance it costs a minimum of $500 to get a flight out of Korea and my ass is broke. At this juncture I have a confession to make--the main reason I took this job is because I'm up to my ears in debt. I've never had a steady job because I've always been working freelance in entertainment or temping while I was out looking for better opportunities. Like many people, I was stupid, and carrying too many credit cards, in my twenties. (Worse yet, I was stupid and carrying credit cards in New York City.) A lot of expenses from film school (hell, from applying to film school) that weren't covered by student loans got put on those same credit cards. So by the time the economy went tits up in '09 I had no good job, enough student loans from film school in forbearance to finance half a mortgage in the Rust Belt, and a mountain of credit card debt. So I packed up and moved to Korea in the hopes that I could pay off the credit cards before I finished the coursework I'm doing online and had to start paying the student loans. It was the only way to survive, other than moving in with my parents in Buffalo. (I don't want to be disrespectful to my parents or the city of Buffalo, but honestly there's days when I feel like I'd rather filter buckshot through my grey matter than resort to that option.) So far I'm on schedule to pay off those cards, post a year's worth of student loan payments and still bring a chunk of change back to the US with me when I go back in 2013. (Better check with my school and make sure they're going to let me renew before I get too engrossed in that plan, I suppose. Usually renewing is a formality, but hey, I'm intensely paranoid.) Anyway, paying down those bills involves staying on a pretty strict budget. After last summer I started budgeting for vacations, but when I started crunching numbers for the trip to Malaysia I'm planning to take this winter (and of course the trip home to see friends and family) I quickly realized that, while most of the other English teachers here are jetting away to take a holiday in Cambodia or China or Thailand this summer, I was going to have to stay in Korea. And--sorry, I have to be brutally honest here--Korea is pretty fucking boring. After being here for a year and a half I feel like I've seen pretty much everything interesting in the country. Add to that the miserable heat and humidity in the summers and it does not add up for a good vacationing environment.

So, I stayed home. "Staycation," as we said back during the recession. (Yes, I am using the phrase "back during the recession" with a maximum of bitter sarcasm.) Started re-watching The Wire. Bought Portal and played through it. Thought about finishing the final level of Starcraft 2 but then I realized I didn't care. Climbed one of the local mountain peaks. Might climb another before the weekend is through. Became nocturnal. Ate a lot of mac and cheese from Costco. Did homework. Cleaned the sixteen square meters I live in. Good times.

I don't want to be too melodramatic about this, but lately living here and doing this job has felt a little like a self-imposed prison term. Debtor's prison, I suppose. Maybe it's because I've been spending too much time this week sitting in a four-meter-by-four-meter square concrete cube with only one window. (Or maybe it's because I've been spending too much of that time re-watching The Wire and playing Portal. Honestly, my concrete cube is a helluva lot nicer than the first place I lived in Brooklyn. Not being located over a chop shop in a rat-infested corner of East Williamsburg already put the current place ahead in that race. Jesus, I bet that shithole is a six- or seven-figure condo now, considering how that neighborhood has changed. Maybe I should go check it out this February and laugh.) Maybe it's because I can't see my friends and family except during visitation hours. Maybe it's because the inmates are always changing but the bosses are always the same. Maybe it's because there's this world outside that I know I can't be a part of. Maybe it's because, not unlike Alcatraz, I know I'm surrounded on four sides by water and fences and I can't leave until I've done my time. Maybe it's because Bill Fitchner is always chasing me while popping painkillers out of his pen. Maybe it's because I made a lot of choices that didn't work out in the past and now, no matter how right those decisions seemed at the time (all part of the game, right?) and no matter what I'd rather be doing now, I have to stay here and pay my debt to society (or at least society's banks) and hope I learned something from the experience.

I'll admit, if teaching English in Korea is like a prison, then it's the world's most pleasant prison. The kids are great, the people I work with are fantastic, I've got mountains to climb in my backyard, and the food's gotta be better that prison chow. I can drop my soap in the shower to my heart's content. Nobody's going to get pissed off and stick me with a shiv (unless they find that blog piece I wrote about Dokdo a couple months ago, heh...). And when it comes down to it, I could leave at any time with thirty day's notice for nothing less than the price of a plane ticket and the loss of a guaranteed income. And I don't want to leave. At least not until I've paid my debts (and I find out if the United States still has a sane president).

I think mostly I'm just afraid that I'm going to spend the next year and a half in this fantastic job experiencing things that I'll never forget--and probably never be able to come back to and enjoy again--counting the days until I can go home and start my life over again. You never realize you're going to miss a place until after you've left.

A friend of mine told me years ago that some cognitive scientist types figured out that college alumni donations go up dramatically when alumni reach a certain age, because they forget all the bad things that happened and only remember the good things. I guess there's something to be said for living in the here and now and not dwelling too much on the past or the future. Maybe I'll find something in the near future to help me get back into that space. I sure hope so.

Anyway, thank Christ this vacation ends on Monday and I can go back to teaching...

(And now, a song about that time you accidentally moved to New York.)