Raising Funds, Hating Hostels

The second weekend I was up in the great frozen north (Seoul to my Daejeon, that will only refer to Canada when I am back in the States), there was no rehearsal, just a fundraiser for the choir on Saturday night, and me helping a choir friend move her newly-adopted cat from Itaewon to the pseudo suburb she lives in south of Seoul. I chose to stay in a hostel this time, rather than brave the restless natives at R's apartment.

The fundraiser was loud and musical, and a good time was had by most, though the MC crossed the lines of both decency and common sense a few too many times for my taste. What do I know, though, I grew up under Plymouth rock. My sense of humor is... attuned differently. Anyway, we worked and earned money and that was good. At around 2 a.m., two friends from Daejeon and I taxi'd over to the hostel. We were all abed around 3 (not wholly unusual for people on hagwon time) and thought not too much of it.

At 7 a.m., the whooping cacophony of disturbed cormorants woke me. At least, that's what I assumed it to be. I have never heard anything quite so shriek-some as seabirds when disturbed, but the actual cause of the noise gave the seagulls a run for their money. It was a toddler. ("Man often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it" and all that. Ha, Universe. Ha. And, just because you're special: ha.) Apparently, a whole family (3 generations, all rabbit's friends and relations, etc., etc.) was in the room two doors down from us. Several of the people in said family were under 3 feet in height and astonishingly vocal. The repeated cry of the local species was a variant on the Korean omma-will (like the whippoorwill, but louder). This child was one of the same species R is raising, which almost whispers the "om" and then bugles the "MA!" Their m.o. is to run with frantic, stompy tread as fast as they can, a horrific tattoo dopplering past the doors of those trying to sleep. Once at the end of the hallway, they stand facing back down the way they came, and release their piercing cry, "omMA!" (Korean for "mother"). There really isn't a font size differential big enough to impart the sense of impending apocalypse this cry brings out in the unwary.

To address this un-neighborly display, I executed the Zombie Shuffle. I am not the most graceful person I know, and my coordination (such as it is) is not in peak form at ungodly hours of the morning. Apparently the omMA who beheld me shambling the shamble of the undead was sufficiently concerned that I might sate my obvious and unholy hunger for living flesh with her children, and she put them away. Hallelujah, indeed.

Don't people know that hostels are for university students and serial killers? What a world we live in, internet.

After the hostel, I had to meet my soon-to-be-cat-owning friend in Itaewon at 11:30 or so, and we, after a lot more hills than I thought were entirely necessary, collected the cat and its 50 pounds of baggage (mostly two enormous containers of litter) and hopped on the subway. The cat, having infinitely better manners than any of the human offspring of my recent acquaintance, was wholly silent throughout the entire hour-plus journey. The kitty litter itself was less well behaved, making a frantic bid for freedom down the stairs in the station where we had to transfer. Naturally, it was the open container, so on landing at the bottom of the steps, it deposited a great deal of its contents, making a tiny ski slope for the weary commuter. As though we had not gotten enough stares for being white and in Seoul and carrying a cat-carrier, we were now the founders of Mount Litterloaf. The nice people selling walnut cakes at the top of the stairs lent us their broom, though, and we soldiered on.

At long last, cat and accoutrements arrived in... well, wherever we were going. It's a nice area, and J (my friend) has an apartment much nicer than mine. The cat was phenomenal. She was totally silent the whole way there, and as soon as she was freed from her carrier, she was right at home. She was like a dog. She sniffed everything and then rolled over on the floor, demanding attention for her not-so-noble girth. She is a low-maintenance lady. Once happily ensconced, we left her to dominate the house while we headed back to Seoul proper for a friend's birthday party, which was delicious in every way, and then I took a train home, which is a mercifully baby-free zone. Huzzah!

Distractions, of the 200 round variety

I'm not sure if or when this will make it into the US news cycle, but North Korea fired on South Korea today, a few hours ago now. It's making it difficult for me to concentrate on my work. They fired on an island off the western coast, an area long contested between the two countries. North Korea fired 200 rounds of artillery at the island and its surrounding waters, and South Korea fired back 80 rounds and sent a couple of jets up. 14 military personnel and two civilians have been reported injured, two of the military guys critically so.

I don't know anyone on the island, but I do know people in Seoul, which is frighteningly close to the border. One of my best friends in this country is in the U.S. military, stationed in Seoul, and another friend is in the Korean military (C, of C-is-a-soldier fame). I do not even know how much I should worry right now, but knowing how much not to rarely helps anyway. This news comes hard on the heels of reading articles all about uranium enrichment capabilities being higher than expected in the North. Oddly, I do not feel the confluence of these two news issues is terribly calming, nor helpful to me in getting a working memo on the winter intensive courses completed. The other teachers, however, are just going about their days, laughing at things, planning classes, acting normal. It is the foreign teachers who are all clicking over to CNN every few minutes, checking the CIA world factbook to find out how many troops North Korea actually has, and if we would know if they mobilized, talking about whether China will really get into this hardcore, or if they'll just maintain a kind of lend-lease agreement with the North. Maybe we are just alarmists. I hope we are just alarmists.

In the interests of full disclosure, part of me just wondered if I will be able to get home in less than a month. The airport from which I am scheduled to fly is right up to the west of Seoul. I kind of miss the built-in geographic security of having oceans between me and potential-or-declared-enemy powers, and I really don't want an active warzone to get between me and that security in the next twenty-eight days.

So hi, Internet. These are my thoughts. Now I'm going to go talk about team-building exercises for students.

So much Seoul

I overnighted in Seoul for two weekends in a row, and after the summer of Pirates, that was just too much. I shouldn't have to do it again until the weekend of my departure, so I guess that's all right, but boy, it makes me feel old to have to say I'm not down with it. Here is my harrowing tale of adventure from the first of the two.

I'd planned to go to Everland (a big amusement park up near Seoul) on Saturday and just stay into Sunday for rehearsal, maybe burn a few DVD's of Pirates that night. As it turned out, the Everland trip kind of fell apart at the last minute (a bunch of people cancelled and it was going to rain), but I had a place to stay and I needed to go to a place in Seoul (Yongsan) to get double-layer DVD's so I could burn Pirates and get it off my computer for once and for all (calloo callay). So I took an evening train on Saturday, made it to Yongsan, got DVD's, had dinner with a friend, and went to my director's new apartment to stay the night.

Director R has a baby. Perhaps it is a toddler. It toddles. It does not speak coherently, so I call it a baby. The baby, like all babies, is the devil. Also, it hates me. I guess I could should call it a "she." We do not have a working relationship. She is definitely her father's child, as such small lungs could otherwise not possibly produce the mind-shattering shriek she lets out at the slightest provocation (read: none whatsoever). To add a shiny bow on this package of drooling charm, she bit me. I was trying to prevent her from first sticking her finger between the magnetically attached part of my power plug and my computer (which would have resulted in a shock, as the other side of it was still connected and electricity does not discriminate well between drool-soaked-baby-finger and other conducting materials), then from touching the very-hot transformer leading to said plug, and then from pulling a glass of wine off a shelf onto her head. Apparently, for frustrating her plans, my finger had to be sacrificed to the sharp-toothed demon of child entitlement. Next time, I'm just going to let her zap herself.  It will be educational. (Some day, I imagine I will have a better working relationship with children under 12, but at the moment, my plan is to donate all the ones I find to my sister, and she can ship me all the adolescents she doesn't get on with).

Anyway, Shrieky McShrieksalot All the Time with the Shrieking was up the next morning at what seemed to me the crack of dawn (I lead a very decadent lifestyle, as you know, dear reader), and she used her increasing mobility (which, at a walk, I must admit is way better than the creepy tripod crawl thing she used to do, during which I could only imagine her holding a cleaver and giggling maniacally) to walk over to the sofa on which I was sleeping, yank the covers off my head, and poke me with her frigid, razor sharp claws of death. (That child has no sense of personal space. Respect the bubble, kids).  I'm sure I was eloquent and distinguished and made my position on her actions clear in grammatically correct and stylistically enviable prose. Actually, I'm pretty sure I said something regrettable at that moment, but I don't actually remember the exact words. One can only hope the baby will not, either.

So that was my Saturday night into Sunday. I was not the most rested I have ever been during rehearsal, and afterwards, I helped a friend help another friend with an English thing he needed some help on, and he bought us dinner for our trouble, which was nice, and eventually I collected my things and escaped from the hellion with no further damage to my person or equipment. Huzzah!

Running Rampant and Unchecked

(The subject of the titular verb is "sociology." The unchecked part implies that nothing so mundane as an education in the field checks my curiosity and speculation).

A few weeks ago, an ex-student of mine invited me to his school concert, and it was such an experience that I have at least two, perhaps three blog posts to publish as a result. This is the first, and it is pretty much awesome about Korea's support for the arts in schools.

The kids I saw were doing music and dance stuff with their whole school all day. Their teachers and administrators attended and supported them, and it was like a party for the performing arts. Coming as I do from a country that seems to cut budgets for the arts every month, it was wonderful to see all the students rocking out, many of them dancing.

First of all, it was a side of them I very rarely get to see. My students spend all the time I see them in class doing (home)work, taking tests, or falling asleep while they're supposed to be doing one of the other two. I work for a hagwon, so there's not really the geographic cohesion that other teachers have, which makes it likely that they'll see their students on off-days, out and about and being normal. I hear, sometimes, about their extracurricular lives, but I have only seen two students out in the world in all the time I've been here (now three, but only by invitation, and it was at a school function).  So it was great to see them not just doing something non-academic, but having such a good time. Those who weren't performing were cheering wildly and having fun of their own. Some people had made a video for in between sets that showed all the different groups preparing their stuff, which was fun to watch, even for me (though I didn't understand it, it met all the requirements of such things: exaggerated movements, fun pop music as background, sped up dancing of a ridiculous nature, teachers acting silly with their students). It was nice to know that somewhere in their hectic lives, they are having fun.

Two, many of them are very talented, and it was awesome just to be in the audience! I was especially impressed by the dancing, which was not part of my performing or observing experience in high school. Several groups and one notable individual performed very demanding routines, and many of them were boys. Perhaps it has been only my experience, but in that, the gender divide in the West does not encourage this quite the same way. There was a particularly fantastic group from the second grade of the middle school (about 8th or 9th grade US, I think) who were five boys, four of whom acted as puppets and the fifth who was the marionette master. It was remarkable. They were extremely coordinated and athletic, and the crowd loved it. Maybe now, if I were back in the States, I'd see us doing more of this as talent shows on t.v. become more popular and star more dancers, but when I was their age, that was... uncommon. I'm happy to see performance doing so well here as a part of kids' experience in school.

My student is a guitarist and was on last, performing with his bandmates two songs, a K-pop number I actually know and like (!) and an American song (surprise!). There were some technical difficulties, but generally, I thought they did very well. (The music bits reminded me a lot of pops concerts at my high school, so that part was sort of expected - but they did REALLY well!)

The sociological component to all this that burst out of me so forcefully that I found myself taking notes during the concert (you can take the student out of the U of C, but...) has to do with gender relations, double standards, and what constitutes "sexy" versus "sexual" across cultures. It's a bit of a jumble and I'm still putting it together (some stuff got in the way of my together-putting, which I will talk about in a different, totally unrelated blog post, soon!) but as soon as I have something worth committing to... screen (?) I will have it up here.