Thanksgiving weekend!

Well, in the States, Thanksgiving weekend is huge! We get a couple days off, and several years out I have spent my time flying hurriedly through some assignment or another, be it Nanowrimo, my thesis outline, or you know, whatever.

This time, of course, I didn't have time off, but I did have an excellent weekend, complete with some serious mountain trekking. (I don't want to say climbing, because I wasn't climbing, but walking, or hiking, even, seems a little less potent. It was definitely a TREK.)

First, I had an exciting Thanksgiving dinner, Korean style, in Songchong-dong, where my coworker's sister lives. There's a traditional restaurant there that serves duck, which is the closest thing to turkey (except chicken) that we could find. So we ate a really delicious, traditional Korean meal, complete with traditional Korean excessive drinking. (Which was not such a good idea on a Thursday night.) I think perhaps the goal of the traditional Korean meal is to cover every inch of the table in some kind of dish or bottle, and if the entire table isn't full, then it simply hasn't been done correctly.

The two girls on the left are my coworker and her sister. Then the guy in the back is Jannie, probably one of my favorite people ever. I don't know everyone at the table, but there is Simon on the right, who went home this week.

Anyway, we had an excellent time chowing down. Here's Becca and I... Native Speaking Queens of Little Fox, stuffing our faces after we just found out that we only have 4 (nonconsecutive) days off for the holiday season--as opposed to our contacted 5 (consecutive) days. But, as I hear, welcome to the world of Hagwon teaching. I giggle now to think that I specifically requested a hagwon job--but that's international life. You never know until you get there. There are some things you just can't plan for. "The Tao is content with the most base places, like water it moves to the lowest places and rests." (I can never quote that right, but the meaning stays the same.) Technically Korea is Confucian, but these two things influence each other very closely. Korea is the country of zero complaints. You can't complain to anyone to their faces. So the goal is to get things to change by talking around. Shame is a very powerful weapon, but if you yourself cause shame on another, the shame really lands on you. Thus everyone tries to fit into their own molds perfectly, and let society collectively place shame on the people that can't.

Or so I imagine. It's easy to imagine that society moves as one consecutive unit when you are quite outside of it. Anyway, more on my Jirisan trip later... for now I just wanted to post about Thanksgiving, and give you some pictures. There are Jirisan pictures posted on Facebook, but I'll put them up again here in a few days.

Wordcount no longer soaring, but I've decided to get myself out of this rut!

So here in Korea there are a lot of foreigners with very little time. So some people have made up special tour companies that run really jam packed tours on weekends. So instead of moping around that it's thanksgiving and I don't have anywhere to go, I decided to book a trip to a hot spring and mountain in Jeolla-do. At only 90,000 for the whole weekend, I figure I can't go too wrong. (Though after you factor in the ticket to Seoul, and the overnight stay so that I can be ready at 6am, plus all the things I will likely want to buy, it will be more, but ah well. No problemos.) I'm excited to be doing something touristy, to get my mind out of this work-sleep-tv-work-sleep-write mode. It's getting colder, and the leaves have mostly fallen off the trees. But it's still in the 50s. Today it's raining, but I think tomorrow it is going to be quite sunny, and almost 60. That feels nice, at least.

They also have some Christmas trips that I'm thinking about doing, mostly because I REALLY don't want to be alone on Christmas. I would feel slightly horrid for not going to church, but I'm sure it would be okay. I mean nobody likes Christmas-and-Easter-only people anyway. There are a couple of skiing trips, which seem fun but not exciting.. and then there's a trip to Jeju, which is the vacation island of Korea. You have to fly there, and it's quite expensive... so I'm iffy on it, but I'm not sure if I'll get to Jeju at another time. I'm not sure. I want to make the most out of my vacation time, and keep myself busy so that I can meet people and see Korea... but Jeju is kind of a summer phenomenon. (Which is a double edged sword... get the cool stuff and be swarmed with (Korean) tourists, or go in the winter and see it differently, but freeze your butt off.) Anyway it's something I'm considering, despite the exorbitant 450,000 won. We'll see how this weekend goes, and then I can decide how I like these jampacked adventures.

Anyway, now that I've pushed myself into actually booking a reservation, I feel like I can climb myself out of this winter rut. I can do it. I've been saying inshallah a lot lately, but I can do it.

Authors, Moral Responsibility, and Research...

So Nano is drawing to a close soon, and I'm sitting at 42k. This is a lot better than before, and I know that once you get to 40k, you sail through. It's about 82 pages now. I didn't realize how LONG that was. Man! My characters are fumbling around, and my plot is somewhat disjointed, with varying degrees of character development, but at least I'm plowing towards the end. I won't get there, but my goal is to get there by the end of the year. Hopefully that will keep my mind off of not having a break for Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Anyway, I started this thread on the Nano boards because I was somewhat disillusioned by someone I saw posting on the spiritual and religions forums. This person was asking every religion "What questions do people ask when they come to your place of worship"? Not a bad set of questions, I guess, but then I thought about this person and their novel. They were writing a novel of a spiritual journey, and didn't feel like researching it thoroughly. Do they know about these religions at all? If they have a character going through a religious transformation, shouldn't they be morally responsible for presenting these religions as they *really* would be? Shouldn't they maybe attempt to visit a mosque, mandir, or temple?

And shouldn't they know that people that practice Islam are MUSLIMS, not ISLAMS?

Maybe I'm taking that a little bit too seriously. I mean, I guess it is my area of expertise. But I really do believe that when you write a story, you are creating something. Creating irresponsibly is dangerous. If you don't seek deep to find the facts around what you are trying to say, you do a lot of things. You loose your credibility, even if your message is a good one. You risk offending your own reader base, and when you do this in a world where it is socially acceptable, you propagate the incorrect ideas. You turn your good will into something that just feeds a bad image.

How can you portray anyone if you don't know the first thing about them? Am I wrong to think that this is morally irresponsible? (Maybe I'm taking it too seriously. I mean, this is Nano, not college--the point is to write words, not get everything right.)

Anyway... just some thoughts. I'm really not looking forward to work today, and I slept in accidentally. It's almost 1 and I'm not dressed, nor have I cooked myself anything to eat. Sigh. But I did get a hug on Saturday. A hug and a few good conversations. It's amazing how when you are starved of such things, how one hug can float you through a whole day.

It's been a minute since I last posed.

I've not been doing too many touristy things. Mostly I've just been riding my bike around, trying to keep my apartment clean, and watching as the weather slowly gets colder. (It's nice and warm these days though, back up to almost 55.)

Yesterday I went shopping and bought some new clothes... boots with fuzzy insides, a sweater that shocks everything it touches, and a cute little black shirt with a bow tie around the neck. I feel like a real teacher, haha, buying all these teachery clothes.

The past couple weeks have been a struggle. I don't want to lie about that. I also don't want to let it overshadow the things that I am liking, and the fact that I finally feel like I'm making some solid friends. Everyone tells me that the 3-4 month mark is the hardest, and that once you plow through it, things will lighten up. Even though I had a good sociable weekend, I am still frightened to go back to work. I feel exhausted even thinking about it.

This week made me want to throw in the towel. I am having issues with a few of my classes, but I am so reluctant to get angry with students. I always feel very ashamed with myself when I get angry. But I feel ashamed with myself if I do nothing, and then the students start to think that they can push me around whenever they want. I start to let a few difficult classes overshadow my whole day. And truthfully, now that I'm sitting down and writing about it, I don't have too many bad classes. It's just that they're not NEW anymore, so controlling them isn't like a new and interesting challenge. I just get tired. In one class in particular, I have a difficult student. I've tried my hardest to be good to him, and be patient, and calm, and blahdeeblah, because I know that he has a mental disorder. But now I can't ignore his bad behavior anymore. Disciplining this child makes me physically sick, but not disciplining him, letting him behave terribly, also makes me sick--because then I am letting the other students down. I'm siding with a difficult student at the expense of the other students, just because I *think* he is sick. Nobody even told me he is. That's terribly shameful in this country.

I know that when I come out the other side of this, I am going to have one serious backbone. But I am terrified of doing the work. I don't know if I can. I feel weak a lot. The comforting thing, though, is that at least I don't feel like my work is pointless. I am growing as a person out here, even if it's not the way I expected it to be. I don't know if I'll want to be a teacher ever again after this year, but I do know that my inner self will be better for it.

And I feel better now that I'm writing about it. Lately, it's been all Nanowrimo, and burying myself in episodes of Private Practice. But Saturday and Sunday were good sociable days. I discovered a small coffee shop, where I could get a cup for 1000 won (about 80c), and I had a friend over for chicken noodle soup (which I can now make on my own.) Then I had a good time partying, and danced my little heart out with a Korean friend. I met her through some of my coworkers and their group. She's a lot of fun and she can dance really well... and even though her English is pretty weak, she still has a great personality, and you don't need to talk to bond on the dance floor, haha.

On Sunday I met up with a guy who is also doing Nanowrimo. There are three of us in Daejeon, and this guy is a pretty interesting fellow. We had a good long chat about the different places in the world that we've been, homesickness.. the like. It helped me out. Then he showed me around one of the downtown areas (the one farther away from me) and I did some serious shopping after that. Now I have fuzzy warm boots and my feet won't be cold!

So I'm struggling through the fall... as I always do, but I get the feeling that things are going to pick up. I'm thinking about looking up one of these planned 'weekend trips' that some companies offer here. Might be a good way to see some of Korea and not have to do it alone. :D

Things about Korea that I love love love

1. Riding my bike at 1:30am with the Transformer's soundtrack. (An excellent piece of music, I must say.) Seeing tiny little buildings heaped up on each other, and tiny little roads that climb up hills, and things that look, smell, and feel like countryside right in the middle of a city.

2. The Jimjilbang and the sauna.
The Jimjilbang is a Korean spa. Many are open 24 hours, and they have one co-ed sauna area where you wear uniforms, and then a gender separate bath. There are different tubs with jets and different sauna style rooms. I laid in one of the tubs last night, in a steam room. The room is full of water vapor, and it is really-really-really hot--probably like 120 or 140, and when you walk in you can barely breath. But then there is a pool of cool water. And, best yet, the walls are decorated with shining rocks, crystals and river stones in different colors, that make pictures of waves and trees. It's nice because you are alone in there, usually. Outside in the bathes, all the Korean women stare at me. For a couple reasons, I guess--one because I'm a foreigner, and two because I'm alone, since I usually go to the Jimjilbang with my male coworkers. (We chill in the saunas and then split up to go to the spa part, of course.) I haven't met any girls that seem to like it yet.

3. The badass female bartender at Sponge
The most famous bar in Daejeon, where all the foreigners go, is called "Western Bar Sponge." It's a lot of fun most of the time, but it's the place where you are guaranteed to see just about everybody teaching/studying on this side of the city. And there is this bar tender, who looks like she could break me in half, with this epic mop of curly hair, an amazing smile, and hugs for everybody. Her english is minimal, so I can't really tell her that I think she is the coolest person ever. But she did give me a hug last night.

4. Kimbap, Donkasu, and--well--most Korean food.
I say this all the time, but man do I love the food here. It's just all so good. Spectacularly good!

5. Feeling awesome when I say something in Korean, and somebody understands.
I am pretty proud of myself for being able to chug out a few sentences and read at 2 months. I am not really confident, and I wish that I knew more, but I do feel pretty awesome when the light goes on in my head, and I actually communicate with someone--no matter how halting and choppy it is.

6. Laughing hysterically with my good classes.
Some classes are just adorable. Some classes just rock, and they make me laugh so much that I just break down with them. When I have enough energy, these are the best classes, and I just love it.

Hahaha funny Fat-Maggie story and other amusing Korean language mixups

I have this one kid in one of my older glasses who is spherical. I think I've talked about him before. But it's not that he's spherical--it's that he ROCKS it. Like he is fat and proud. And I love it. He's such a jolly kid. He's got a lot of spunk. He's hell to try and control in class, but whatever. At least he's a happy kid. This is also the kid that asks me EVERY DAY if I like Lamborghinis. Every day. "Teacher do you know Lamborghini?" >.< "Yes, I like Lamborghinis. I still like Lamborghinis. I like them just as much as the last class when you asked me 7 times."

Anyway, on Tuesday this kid asked me: "Teacher are you wedding?" I wanted to reply "What, like having a wedding right now?" but I didn't. He meant "Are you married?" Then I said. "No." And he said, "So you don't have a baby?" (I get asked about being pregnant a lot, I guess maybe because Koreans don't have stomachs, haha.) Anyway, so I replied "Nope, I'm just fat." And he gave me this HUGE grin and just started laughing uncontrollably. In a nice way. Like "YEEEAH welcome to the club! We rule!" Haha, when that class is good they make me happy. I see them outside of class, too, which makes me feel like I have a life.

Also, the other day I was teaching "The Christmas Carol" to a class of middle schoolers, and I was trying to get them to tell the story again.

So I said "So... Scrooge (they all called him Scroogie) went back to the past, and what was he doing?"
"He was at a party."
"And what was he doing at the party?"
"He was doing.... pretty girl dancing with!"
It took all my power not to collapse into laughter. Ahhhh funny mixups.

It's been too long since I posted anything!

I've been having a low key week. I'm trying to focus on socializing, but it's tuckered me out just a little bit. Work has been a big effort these past few days, and the weather is getting grimey. I'm behind on my word count, but not by too much. It's sitting now at about 15,000.

Today we have a big meeting with Center 1 and Center 2, and we are discussing the "Presentation" portion of class for our older levels. The first meeting we had, I was all full of ideas--like a brainstorming meeting in College. I soon realized that this wasn't exactly how things were supposed to work. I left the meeting confused and set back. We have to make an outline of one story, but so far my work hasn't really been good enough--but people don't want me to loose face, so instead of telling me what I did wrong, they just say "I'll do it for you." Not exactly the best way to learn, but whatever.

The boss is proposing this change to our presentation system to the big corp for my school. To me, that is a good example of Korean business culture. Nobody does anything without the consent of their superiors. Foreign teachers complain a lot about having to always answer to the Korean teachers. The Korean teachers always have to answer to the boss. The bosses always have to answer to corp. It goes on and on. Everything is so regimented, polite, unchanging. Your quality is measured by how well you fit the mold you were placed in. This is very Confucian, very Taoist--"The Way is like Water, it fits to any shape, and is content with the lowest of places."

Sigh. I wish I was as enlightened as the Tao these days.

Speaking of the Tao... interesting tidbit that I researched on Wikipedia. The Korean symbol, one that is seen on nearly ALL Buddhist temples (besides the swastika) is a blue, red, and yellow swirl that looks like this. I was intrigued about this symbol, because it's uniquely Korean. Turns out that it is the Korean Yin and Yang--except it is a trinity instead of a duality. The Chinese yin and yang symbol, with the light and dark swirls, represents heaven and earth, day and night, male and female, and a whole slew of other dual balances. Dark is on the bottom, but is rising, and light is on the top, but is falling. It is in constant motion, and there are dots within the opposite side to say that nothing is entirely pure. This is a symbol of Chinese philosophy, usually associated with Taoism, but I don't know if it was actually made before or after the supposed writings of Lao Tzu (founder of Taoism.)

Anyway, the Koreans adopted this symbol, but changed the colors. They use red and blue. You can see it on the South Korean flag. (I don't know what the black bars mean, but I should find out, shouldn't I?)  This symbol is called the Taegeuk, or 대극. Buddhism arrived in Korea over several hundred years, spreading into different kingdoms at different rates. Korean Buddhism adopted this symbol, but added the third lobe--the yellow one--which represents humanity. So instead of just having heaven and earth, there is heaven, earth, and humanity placed in perpetual balance. It is called the Sam-Taegeuk, which literally means "Three-Taegeuk".

Anyway, there's a couple interesting tidbits about the things that I'm learning here. My Korean is still atrocious, and I'm quite lazy and don't feel like studying. I feel like I should step on it, you know. Get working because I only have a year--but then I realize that that's still ten months, and I get lazy again.

I bought this "Survival Korean" book. It has the phrases in English, romanized Korean, and in 한글. I've been practicing writing and reading what I can, but it's so daunting. Sometimes I play games with my kids, having them say a word and me trying to spell it on the board. Usually I'm good--but there are a lot of sounds that are so similar to my untrained ears. Like "ah" "aw" and "oh". I can distinguish "ah" and "oh", but when you throw the third one in there I'm lost--"aw" could be a, o, or u in the English language. Then there's "u" and "eu", like an "oo" sound and a harsher "ew" sound. Impossible, I tell you. But thank god I can read, I'll tell you that. Anyone who is considering coming to Korea to live should learn to read. It helps SO much. I pick up words and things, and I can properly understand how to pronounce things, because if I can spell it, I can say it with the correct inflection. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't read.

Anyway, I also got postits and plastered Korean words all over my house. It's helping I know that the word for toothbrush is chit-sol. And the word for key is yeolshwi.

But enough of this. Back to the word count!

Art and Writing...

Word Count: 2,062

On track with my word count so far, but getting up this morning wasn't any fun. I set my alarm for 9, but I hit snooze until 10:00, but then they are laying something in the in-construction house next door. It was a snooze time filled with strange crashes and confusion. I finally got ear plugs, but I wasn't coherent enough to use them. Then I was up long enough to make my coffee, but wimped out and slept for another half an hour--which made my coffee cold. How sad.

Yesterday I discovered a art/craft store in Unhaengdong. This was quite exciting, and I got two new markers... light blue, the Korean version of Prismacolor, I guess. 2,000 won (2 dollars) a piece, but I'm excited anyway, because they are going to work much better than my light blue highlighter. I've been meaning to do that for a long time. I also found little miniature wood hobby sets... haha, which might become my Korean obsession for the year--you know, minus turning my apartment into an indoor jungle.

Speaking of my jungle, I'm pretty sad because my beautiful pink flowers aren't doing so well. I have no idea what to do! I thought at first that I wasn't watering them enough, but now I think that I am watering them too much... they are getting sad and decrepit. But maybe they are getting cold? I don't know! It's terrible! I don't know the first thing about gardening, other than you need to put water in it. And it isn't as if I can ask the shop owner.

I went tooling around on my bike yesterday around 11. I love riding around at night. It's been one of my favorite experiences here so far. I put on my headphones, and I just ride through the streets. It feels so peaceful. Everything is dark. No one is around. For some reason here, it gets very humid at night, even though it is cold. The air is thick, and light reflects from it, so there are halos of yellow and white around everything.

Where I live is quite developed, as I'm sure you've seen by the photos, but it's a little cell of development. There is a small river/stream that runs along one edge, and then the other side is bordered by the small set of hills that I walk on. There is a huge, six lane road, but on one side of it is huge apartments, fifteen stories high, and on the other side it is rice paddies, farm fields, and the little river. It is such an abrupt change, and at night it is quite beautiful. Almost space age.

Yesterday I made it all the way to the Chungnam University area, which is a fun college town. The buildings are older, compressed, with wires sticking every which way. The houses are made from brick and look quite odd--Asian, but not Japanese or Chinese, of course. Distinct. The corners are dulled and everything is curvy, and the roofs almost look Ghanaian, flat with railings and places to dry clothes. I loved the neighborhood--especially since at 12:00 midnight there were still tons of people wandering around. In fact, I drove past a tiny cafe, and who did I see? Why, my coworker! How odd! I stopped in to say hi, but then I meandered off home. Small world, this. But I like it. It's good to get to know people.

I had a good weekend, but it was mostly Halloween partying and the like. Didn't see or do anything spectacular, but I'm excited because I'm heading into Seoul this weekend! And it's Nano, which means that I'm going to get my writing ON! Yay!