LIFE NOW…

Recognizing that my last post was, in fact, over a year ago I address my readers penitently. A lot of things have happened since I last wrote in here and I have even been home to share some of my stories with friends an family, in the mean time. It’s been a rollercoaster and I’ve been happy to be aboard through it all. Life has only improved since my last entry as my second year introduced me to a new level of comfort. It was strange for me to leave America after two weeks and realize that I was actually getting back to my “regular life” as I did so. My Korean speaking has improved to a passable level though I constantly engender fits of laughter when they hear my outrageous accent and broken attempts at sentences. Things are pretty easy over here and the temptation to remain for longer rears itself from time to time, only to be squashed by the prospect of becoming so ingratiated in this lifestyle that going back home becomes impossible. As it is, I return to my role as scribe with a seemingly unsubstantial five months remaining on my tour of duty. This second year has progressed with extreme haste and I suspect that it will continue to do so as my severance from this country draws nigh. Thus, I commit myself with a greater conviction to chronicle my waning days as an expat in the Orient.

The most uncanny aspect of my second year here is the return of similar seasons, events and holidays that have already been experienced once within the my Korean surroundings. These yearly milestones that were once viewed with a degree of naïve intrigue have now turned the slightest pang of nostalgia and a great deal of “old-hattedness”. Though it’s only been a year, it goes a long way towards differentiating the mindset of someone like myself and someone who has only been here for a few months.

The food has managed to finally make a noticeable dent into my diet. I have long abandoned the struggle to maintain some semblance of an American eating regimen and, in some ways, have gained in this loss. Every so often I hear foreigners talk about how great Korean food is and, to be sure, it has a fair number of dishes that are rather enjoyable but my overall take on the situation that it has a lot of middle of the road food that, to its credit, edges toward the side of healthy.
Around the time I was leaving for the states, to run Boston and see friends and family, I was actually growing rather tired of the tedium of Korean cuisine. As you might expect, a large portion of the food is dominated by healthy servings of rice coupled with an assortment of vegetables but even the efforts at flavor err on the side of monotonous. For the most part, they only have a handful of flavoring ingredients based in either soy beans or chili peppers which is tasty but uninventive. The result is a lot of dishes that are spicy, salty or both and are filling but far from being terribly noteworthy. Most of the meals blend and meld with one another and become almost indistinguishable. Additionally, the notion of breakfast is, in a word, foreign to them and can only be found in few locations and is usually sub-par and overpriced (one Jersey bagel would knock this nation’s socks off). When I finally had the chance to eat food that wasn’t Korean, back home, I fell on the opportunity with incredible vigor. The chance to have pizza without shrimp and sweet potato, any form of Mexican food, a worthwhile steak at a reasonable price, a decent sandwich of any sort and even a beer that didn’t make Coors Light look like an inspired ferment is not something to sniff at when you spend a year in Gwangju- three and half hours from Seoul and anything remotely international.
Oddly enough, when I prepared to return to Korea, after my two weeks, I found myself almost excited to have the chance to get back to my rice-based diet. I don’t think this was because I was overly enthusiastic about any particular dishes but more because Korean food is an acquired taste- a taste that I had unknowingly and gradually developed during my time here. Since then, I have acquiesced to the simplicity of the food here, learned to deal with the absence of breakfast foods, avoided western-style food that will only disappoint and remind of what I’m missing, reasserted my college-like indifference toward bad beer and actually come to embrace certain aspects of their approach towards food, like putting egg on and in everything and using tuna as a primary protein in a great deal of meals. Now, while memories of hitting that wall of redundant rations still lingers I have come to appreciate what is currently available to me.

I’m still soaking up my celebrity status as the doppelganger of…well… any Caucasian male who has ever been on Korean television and wowing the locals with my patchwork Korean. While, in Seoul, foreigners are abundant enough to be counted as just another quantity, we still remain a novelty in the more traditional surroundings of Korea.
This is a double-edged sword.
The peculiarity of seeing someone who doesn’t have an Asian appearance frequently leads to a difference in treatment. Far from being disrespectful, most people in the city are intrigued at the sight of seeing something different and are often extremely friendly and willing to help you and interact with you. It’s rare that a day doesn’t go by where someone looks at you in passing and comments with a “Hello! How are you?” and occasionally, if you respond properly, an “I’m fine, thanks and you?” More often than not, they aren’t terribly interested in how you respond to this question as much as they are in just seeing that you respond. Either way, while occasionally a bit tiresome, these occurrences are rather enjoyable (though a number of other expats over here might disagree). Still, even as I grow more accustomed to the culture and attempt to assimilate in certain ways, so as to appear conciliatory to their lifestyle, and even attempt to address them in their language, that same notion of novelty remains an enduring barrier between you and the rest of the country. Arguably, in a direct contrast to the American tradition, having foreign origins ensures that you will always be on the outside, looking in. In a culture so deeply rooted in family traditions, there will always be an element of Korean life that remains relatively untouchable to a foreigner. In all reality, an expat teacher could settle in here and live a relatively comfortable life but, no matter how long he or she stayed, they would still be a foreigner in their country. While it has been far from condescending or even unkind, this is the closest thing I’ve come to something like discrimination. While I use that word, I think I risk putting a very negative image in my reader’s mind so allow me to illustrate a very common, though very harmless, instance where this comes into play:

There are times when we will walk into a restaurant, sit down and while we see chopsticks in abundance around us, we will be served the few forks they have hidden in the pantry with assumption that chopsticks are beyond our ability. Then, should we be at a Korean barbecue restaurant, where, yet again, everyone is carrying on with their grills, independent of any outside aid, the man in charge will not hesitate to relinquish us of the necessary grilling tools and proceed to cook it for us. Yes, this actually sounds rather accommodating of him, and it is, but it assumes we are unable to distinguish the dark brown of a cooked piece of meat and the bright pink that is typically associated with uncooked meat. Finally, Koreans will frequently aim to protect us from the fire and fury of spicy Korean food. They will frequently insist that some of the foods in front of us are very spicy and advise that we don’t eat it. This, of course, is usually right around the time that my compatriot, Chris, takes the biggest chili sitting on the table and thrusts it, headlong, into his mouth and then endeavors to consume it with as little as sign of discontent as possible to make his point. While much of Korean food is pretty spicy, Koreans seem to think they have the spiciest food in the world and that it is impossible to conceive that people of other nations may have experienced spicy things themselves.

None of this is really all that big of a deal but rather observational. These are mostly just superficial qualms but serve to demonstrate, to a degree, the image Korea has of foreigners.


While I feel like anyone who might be reading this is probably more interested in the cultural aspects of my experience rather than my time spent at work I will just take a moment to catch everyone up on my newest class acquisition for the year.
Our new year began in March and I have a dozen new kids in the Princeton Class of 2011 and I think I would be making a gross understatement if I said that this year’s class is a bit more work. I actually find most of my class enjoyable and do genuinely like every one of them, but I have a few tikes that give me a touch of trouble. One of them, Ralph, who looks, acts, talks, thinks and grunts like someone aptly named Ralph would, is actually pretty awesome. His only drawback is that, sometimes, he’s not always all there. He’s a glorified version of that student who will eat anything in front of him, given enough time free of supervision. Yet, as testament to his good nature, he is pretty much the class mascot and there isn’t a soul in the class who would ever root against him. Unfortunately, two of my other rapscallions have somewhat meaner streaks. Though they are both good kids, they have a voracious desire for attention and will use a wide range of means to acquire it. I have been lucky enough that they are typically in contention with one another and tend to go off the deep end in alternating sequences. If one of them is acting badly the other one wizens up and is savvy enough to take this chance to seem like the fair-haired child. Generally speaking, I describe the dynamic of these three with my Whack-a-Mole metaphor. I’m always busy with one of them and as soon as I take care of one I’m already bringing my hammer to knock down another (not literally folks, we’re working in metaphor here). Not to go into too much detail but during one of our most recent escapades, one of the latter two boys was in a right surly state and was in no mood to accept pedagogical criticism. After some window climbing, pencil and eraser grabbing and general tom foolery we reached a point where my boy Johnny was so full of vinegar that he had taken to taking running starts from the other side of the room and attempting to bowl me over. This was an acceptable state of affairs for the time being because it kept him occupied while I could continue trying to get through my books with the rest of the class. However, seeing that his efforts were in vain, it came about in his mind that the best course of action was to up the ante. This about the time the he grabbed a nearby chair, rose it above his head and prepared to take another running start. Two things occurred in rapid sequence at this point. First, I could see this boy was angry and he thought he meant business. Second, I saw that this was a guy who had run out of ideas. Knowing that we’ve had a few situations beforehand that ended badly for him(discipline-wise) I was able to talk him down from the “ledge” so to speak and when the mania had passed from his eyes we had one of our many talks and parted ways with yet another mutual accord. When it comes down to it, I remain thankful that these guys still fit the “Whack-a-Mole” model because if they ever organized and went into league with each other I think Princeton class would have some dark days ahead. As of right now, it’s just unfortunate but I’ve had to be slightly heavier handed with my discipline than I did last year, which is just something I don’t enjoy.

With the intent to get people up to speed in pieces with these new installments of S&L I think I will leave it at that and just bullet point some general things going on.

At the moment, I’m on the closing end of my training for a marathon in Gyeongju on October 17th and I’m pretty ready for the race to get here. After running Boston at home and performing unsatisfactorily, I’ve had a bit of a chip on my shoulder and I’m ready to get back into the mix. The marathon is in a city that Korea calls it’s “open air museum” because much of it is preserved monuments and such from the first millennium. We actually checked it out for the first time a couple of weeks back during Korean “Thanksgiving” which was an interesting trip that I just might write about, if the audience is up for it, at a later date. Either way, generally speaking, the city was situated in some pretty beautiful countryside and the sites were pretty interesting but I think it can be somewhat encapsulated in the observatory that was touted as the first observatory to be built in East Asia but didn’t stand much taller than 30 feet- mildly unimpressive.
Also, we’re in the festival season for Gwangju. The city is pretty famous for it’s Kimchi festival in late October and, while it’s not quite Oktoberfest, since I neglected to go last year because it coincided with the Kia Tigers winning the Korean Baseball Series, I plan on taking a look and seeing what I can see. The Tigers had a rough go of it this season and ended up coming just short of the playoffs so I shouldn’t have to worry about any important games getting in the way.
Oh, and if anyone could send word to the Rutgers Scarlet Knight’s Football teams could you let them know I haven’t forgotten them over there and they can start playing good football at any point I would really appreciate it.

A special thanks goes out to those who weathered the 1-year drought of posts. I will be returning to my blogging duties with the utmost vigor this time around. Not rushing to get out of here but, five months and counting