"i been walking the streets at night, just trying to get it right..." week update

i started at a new office this past week (after taking my first sick day on monday. sick days suck when you don't have cable. now i know for future reference. got to watch some stupid korean vampire movie and play solitaire. i'm a real party animal). i now go to maegokdong twice a week, near old downtown. i originally thought i would be teaching 4 classes--1 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon. but now i'm teaching 5 50 minute long classes in a row in the afternoon from 1-6. my first class is actually across the street from the community center where the rest of my classes are. so i have to take sort of a short lunch to be at the school by one. then at 12:50 i have to literally run across the street --crayons, flashcards, bag, papers in tow--to be at the community center on time for my next class.

my first class on tuesday had about 15 students. but i was told that there will be 30 students next week. i guess "told" is too generous of me, i was sort of made to infer (through hand gestures and the dry erase board). great. the more non-english speaking hyperactive children, the merrier! second class had 7 students. third class had 1. fourth had 2 (twins. my first class has twins in it too. they didn't believe me when i told them i was a twin too. just like people don't believe my name is jamie). last class had 2 peeps. so it wasn't really too demanding. of course since i just started i'm feeling quite optimistic and motivated--highly ambitious lesson plans with lots of copies, coloring, games. at some point i'm sure the lesson plan will just deteriorate into uno, go fish, and bingo.

okay, i wrote all this earlier in the week. by my last class thursday, the kids were demanding games and being increasingly rude about the fact that i didn't want to spend the whole 50 minutes playing tic tac toe and hangman. dude, i'm a native speaker and those games are boring. and i'm so sick of uno, or "one card-uh" as the younguns here call it. guess it's too much to teach them a spanish word when they still refuse to say the colors or numbers in engrish. i tried to find a website that will ship board games internationally--i would kill and/or maim to get my hands on twister--but no luck. but next week i'm cracking the whip. we'll play games, but the games that i want to play. it was also interesting because 4 of my classes are in a tiny joke of a library that anyone may frequent. so people are milling about while i'm trying to get the class' attention. muy distracting. i had more moms in the classroom on tuesday than children, all judging me and asking me about my materials. the kids can also choose whether they would like to lounge around on the couch reading korean comic books or sit at a table and feign interest in me and my crazy foreign language. this is only really problematic with the teenagers. i suppose if i were their age and i was just beginning to understand the concept of free will, i too might choose to read a comic instead of learn another language.

because i am now at maegokdong twice a week, i'm only at the miracle library for 3. this is actually great. the sitting around not doing anything but thinking about how useless i feel has now been compressed into a sunny and manageable 3 days instead of a passive aggressive yet soul-crushing 4 days. on monday i didn't really do anything except organize the yong-o books. you don't even alphabetize them or do any sort of dewy decimal system, they are grouped by book size and whether they're hardcover or softcover. sweet. skewed interpretations of organization rule!

wednesday was storytelling. for some reason, i felt very proud of myself this week. whether i feel like a real teacher or not sometimes (most of the time), there are moments of clarity when i realize that being here has effected some very real changes in me. the confidence i have now in front of groups of complete strangers (okay, only little kids. i'm still about as socially awkward as i've ever been) is nothing short of astounding. i remember how paranoid i would be in my first weeks here just sweating and stressing out over english storytelling hour. all the eyes of the little people focused on me for one hour. a lot of pressure to be entertaining, which i've never purported to be, especially to the esl demographic. surprisingly, both the epiphany and the resultant pride carried on throughout the rest of the week.

anyhoo, english game hour at the liberry had been on thursdays, but because thursdays i'm at maegokdong now, they moved english game hour to friday morning. so all the regulars who normally come on thursday (last week i had about 20 tiny bodies and their respective mothers in various circles playing uno, scrabble, go fish, war and boggle) weren't there. instead i had maybe 3 parents and their kids of all different ages sitting around sighing and otherwise audibly expressing just how "jamie obsoyo" (not fun) these games were, while getting the chocolate they're not supposed to have in the library all over my go fish cards. if they had any idea how difficult it is to find games here, they'd afford a little more respect to my "n is for narwhal", etc. cards. one of the mothers even said "this game is a little bit boring." sorry, lady. all the other kids that i actually like go ape-shit over these animal cards. get out of my english game room, and take your damn baby with you! yup, i said it just like that. actually, i just laughed nervously and apologized. what do you want me to do, you and your infant are both too incompetent and/or young to play any of the games or listen to accompanying explanations. even children's scrabble, where the words are spelled out on the board for you. it's just like matching shapes, but these shapes happen to be english letters.

anyhoo, after english game hour i went on my lunch break and ran into a woman who used to be a helper in the library. one of the most genuinely nice people i've met here so far. she orchestrated my birthday lunch in which i blew out candles on an actual cake and ate spaghetti with my library friends. her daughter also made me two playdoh pictures that are framed and currently hanging proudly on my apartment wall. anyhoo, she saw me in the kimbap place i had sworn off (they still tell me the correct way to eat, but are less preachy about it now as i'm a constant source of entertainment for their young children wandering haphazardly around the restaurant). 20 minutes later she reappears with a large thermos of coffee and some rice cakes in foil. i thanked her profusely and went back to work. you cannot walk into an office here with any visible food items without people swarming you or all eyes immediately going to the food (i tried this once with chocolate. a nice, one person portion for myself. i ended up with about a square centimeter. i hate sharing. i'm not a child). such was the case with my rice cakes.

a lot of times my coworkers don't even say hello or goodbye to me because they're embarassed about their english, but as soon as i walk through the door with something wrapped in foil, interest is piqued enough to stumble through such niceties and inquire. so i tell them it's a gift, i don't think they understand. i drink all the coffee and leave the rice cakes sitting at my desk. at 6 pm when i finished my new drama class, i come back to my desk and only the foil remains. they didn't even throw it in the trash, they left it for me. great. i should just bring that tuna that they gave me for lunar new year back to the office and then i don't have to worry about what to do with it. but i actually like the rice cakes, so that was a bummer. same thing happened with bag of candy i received after my plays. i came back over the weekend and the bag had been stripped of all the chocolate gems, leaving only the crappy korean taffy in its wake.

so my first new english drama class on friday (beginners begin tomorrow). i have an hour break in between "english cafe" (1-3 pm in the coffee shop/bookstore. not a single human came in during that time. i got a lot of reading done), so i got together the materials to make nametags and looked at the class roster for the first time. 20 students. holy shit. and 21 on monday. holy holy shit. my coworker told me i was exceedingly popular after the last performance. ha! in a regular class, this would actually be a blessing, a nice contrast to the bleak numbers i'm predicting for my days at maegokdong. but for a drama class, that's a lot of fucking students! let the games begin. but at least this time around i have korean helpers (granted, one old girl ain't so great at engrish herself). one of my last drama classes had 15 students and it was so difficult to come up with that many characters and lines for them. but now 20 and 21. yikes.

anyhoo, the korean helper shows up with her infant child strapped to her back and things were going swimmingly. again, the confidence i mentioned from earlier in the week was flowing. i actually made a lesson plan and stuck to it. that so rarely happens. i make lesson plans but then throw them out the window as soon as i'm presented with the reality of bodies in a classroom. but not this time.

anyhoo, students are broken into groups figuring out the plots and characters of some fairy tales and the korean helper and her baby are walking around barking out commands. baby starts crying in baby speak "feed me." so during class, homegirl goes to the back of the room and starts breastfeeding in the class. only in korea, i suppose. assah! friday was a good day, besides my rice cakes being eaten and being told my games weren't fun.

in other news, a mother and who i presume to be her son live on my floor at sidae. this man is probably in his 20s. occassionally i see him and his mother waiting for the elevator on my floor. anyhoo, he's a grown man. it is muy importante that this fact is established. each time i see them together, she is fawning over him somehow--picking lint off of his jacket, tying his shoelaces, straigtening his tie, even picking dandruff out of his hair, all while whispering sweet nothings in his direction while he blushes awkwardly and self-consciously. but this past week mommy dearest outdid herself, because--much to his horror and my not-so-easily veiled laughter and judgement--she decided to pick the kimchi or whatever breakfast was out of his teeth, all in full view of a complete stranger. ha ha ha ha ha ha. it's one thing to live with your parents into your late 20's, i can respect that i guess, but it's completely different to have your mother pick your teeth or wipe your ass when you're that age (which i don't think it would be a stretch to assume). especially when you have all your wits and faculties about you. which he appeared to have. he seemed like a nice, fully capable young man.

yesterday was a busy day. erica, fike and i wanted to climb a mountain, so we went to jiri mountain (jirisan). it's the second highest mountain in korea. perhaps this is something we should have taken into consideration when we didn't arrive at the park until 3 pm, replete with north face clothes and fleece and some naive ambitions of hiking for a few hours. the smallest hike was an hour, but you didn't really get to see anything. maybe we should have expected to hike for at least 5 hours, but koreans tend to exaggerate everything. our food is too spicy for you, our alcohol is too strong for you, our mountains are too big for you. so if they tell you it's the second largest mountain in korea, that statement doesn't have any real weight to it. but i suppose this time they were right. damn! since we'd gone to the trouble of taxi, bus, and another bus we figured we should see part of this high mountain, whatever it took. so we paid $25 and had a taxi drive us to the top. that's some funny shit.

fike had been making fun of erica and i for wearing all these layers of clothing when the weather down at the bottom was downright pleasant, but then we got to the top and it was 12 degrees. sooooo cold and so windy. i was convinced these small children would be carried away with each violent gust of wind. alas, they all stayed grounded. then a cloud descended on the peak and we were surrounded by snow and whatever else one includes in a listing of cloud contents. the only viable recourse in this situation was to sit inside and drink beer while looking through dirty glass at the belated winter wonderland unfolding before us. it was quite pleasant.

later that night erica and i took a bus to gwangju to go to the foreigner bar there where a foreigner band--"i wanna know what love is..."--was playing rockabilly music. so we show up a little late and they weren't kidding. it was indeed a foreigner bar. like juliana's, but on crack. the czech beer was only $4. the music was good, but there was something really unpleasant about the whole scene. i dunno. sometimes being surrounded by people that you undoubtedly have things in common with (hey, you're foreign, so am i! hey, you drink beer, so do i!) and who you should probably be able to relate to on some level feels more crushingly isolating than being surrounded by people who don't speak the english. quite the conundrum. coming to this conclusion with increased frequency as of late....i think i have a sort of crippling perception of myself as someone possessed by an inherent un-relatability. i don't know if that's a word. this is only exacerbated by my already seemingly aloof character. great. anyhoo, erica and i stayed in a french countryside themed love motel. she is the quietest sleeper in the world. i thought she might be dead. but i wasn't concerned enough to check her pulse. i suppose that makes me a bad friend.

other things.

koreans are impatient. i touched on this briefly in my last post, but dealing with ticket stands and buses only reinforced it over the past two days. i'm standing with money in my hand speaking to a woman behind a counter, and people just wiggle their way in front of you. it's like if you saw a dog on the street and it was blocking your path, you would sort of nudge it out of the way with the toe of your shoe. when i was going to actually board the bus, there was about a 4 inch space between me and the bus door. homeboy sort of pushes through that space to get on the bus. i just don't get it. and i will continue to ask the question, how do you not think that's rude? anyhoo, it's becoming really fucking annoying. and it's everpresent. atms, food counters, buses, etc. anywhere where you would expect there to be some sort of order. i wonder what would happen if there were a fire in my building. maybe best not to think about that....

i'm in the middle of what is the what by dave eggers. ordered it from amazon a long time ago and then forgot about it. but it showed up on my sick day (thank you, jesus!). for someone with an admittedly short attention span when it comes to reading, i am overwhelmed by how much i like this book. lots of other people who use big words and write for newspapers and magazines said good things about it with big words for their respective newspapers and magazines. with each page i'm increasingly incredulous (hey, that's a big word!) at just how good this book is. so there. that's my endorsement. i would tell you what it's about, but you could just look that up elsewhere on the internet[s]. i'm sure dave eggers would be very grateful to know that i, jamie leigh mcgeorge, give his book a stamp of approval. congratulations, senor eggers.

one last thing. i'm wholly aware that i say/write "anyhoo" too much.