Musings of a small-faced, masochistic woman-child

I could say today was amazing, and I could say today was terrible, and I would mean it either way.

One of the highlights of the day right now is savoring a piece of the Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate that Christina Rho, my predecessor at Cheonan Wolbong High School, left for me in the ETA teacher closet. Dark chocolate has been harder for me to find here than flip flops in Antarctica, and darn it if the insanely good mixture of bitter and sweet doesn’t sum up everything I feel right now.

This morning during my planning time, I took a gift-wrapped bottle of Jim Beam (I wanted to get Maker’s or something nicer, but bourbon was almost as hard to find as the chocolate, so I went with what I could find) down to my principal’s office. He gave me a hiking thermos with a compass on top because he knows that I like hiking (but I think it also happens to be the standard gift for school visitors, haha). He made me tea.

Then he asked me how much I can drink. I told him, "probably not as much as a man, but probably as much as a woman" (which is a total lie either way depending on the man and the woman, but I thought it an appropriately Korean / diplomatic response) and he laughed. He asked me what I like to drink, and then told me he could easily drink half the 1/5 of bourbon in a night, but it is very expensive in Korea. He implied that of course, I must like soju (Korean rice whiskey). I told him about my dad and brothers going to Scotland to taste Scotch at various distilleries, and he was very impressed by their dedication to booze. He told me that when the weather gets rainy, or when I feel sad, I should come to him and he will make us drinks to make me feel better. I wasn’t sure if it was implied that this would be at school, but I think it’s entirely possible.

These conversations that I have with different people throughout the day are painstakingly simple. Between my pathetic attempts to string together poorly-pronounced Korean words (accidentally saying “sweet tasting” instead of “to listen”) and both parties speaking in very slow English words arranged in a way that gets the point across, grammar-be-damned, we all sound like 6-year-olds. But the feeling of accomplishment when the message is conveyed is so worth it!

After lunch, my new friend Nicole, the Chinese character writing teacher who chose that English name after Ms. Kidman, and the school nurse, Mrs. Yu, invited me to the nurse’s office for coffee and a chat. We talked about the Korean vs. American education systems, and I discovered that in Nicole I have a fellow teacher who loves hiking as much as I do!

After my second class of the day, the same class that went WILD when I showed them a picture of me with my brothers during my “getting to know the teacher” slide show (shout out to you boys, my 16-year-old students think you are both HOT STUFF, and they started chiming “I like Tom!” “I like Alex!”) I left my new hiking mug behind. After running out with my co-teacher to buy a cell phone, I came back to my desk and there sat the mug, next to a note that said, “You left your cup in my fifth class. So we brought your cup. We are 1-5 class! Say goodbye ♥..♥ P.S. you like are doll!!” Apparently a doll with a “small face” as I am often informed I have.

I know, I know, this is all a dream come true right? Sweet, adoring students, an awesome and laid back principal who made a standing offer to numb any pains I may have with alcohol, a super helpful co-teacher…. But the bitter exists too, and within all of this. On the way home, I got lost. This is not a big deal, and sometimes I even enjoy the sensation, followed by the victory of placing oneself. I wound up finding my way about an hour later, after stubbornly refusing several offers from helpful passersby to call a taxi for me [which elicited thoughts that I might be a masochist, since the $5 fare would have had me home, showered, and relaxed in less than half the time I spent stalking the same 6 bus stops]. I think the problem was that it ties together all the confusion and contradiction of being a foreigner in a strange land.

At home, as a newly-employed graduate setting up my first independent phone plan and mapping my bus route home from work, I would figure everything out for myself. I would negotiate the phone contract, fill in the paperwork, get the map, know the route numbers… At home, I would be able to talk to my co-workers in an educated and intelligent way during lunch.

In Korea, my co-teacher settles with the mobile phone company while I sit and sip my complimentary coffee and smile; my 16-year-old host sister draws a very simple and easy to follow bus map and writes out the numbers and transfer stops in color-coded ink; and I worry that my co-teachers and students must all see me as an infant not even able to express basic needs in the language I am living within. Maybe I took the “you’re a doll” comment to heart in a negative way, and though I’m sure that was not the writer’s intention, I do feel like a cute, clueless toddler in need of constant nurturing and care. I feel my independence, the “toughness” that I can barely claim back home, being stripped away.

When I got home, I called out to the empty apartment, and hearing no reply, sighed in relief. I could MAKE FOOD FOR MYSELF. I could do SOMETHING for myself. Two chopped leaves into my independent salad later, my host mom appears magically and begins whipping tupperwares out of the fridge and dishes out of the closet. Within seconds, the meal that I had intended to be a simple lettuce and tomato salad topped with the toasted sesame dressing I bought this weekend was suddenly steamed tofu and mushrooms with sauce, brown rice, and an array of deliciously seasoned vegetables.

And suddenly, it all flipped around again. The bitter became the sweet as I shoveled the food into my mouth as fast as chopsticks would allow. The hunger leftover from a lunch barely touched beneath strained bi-lingual conversation came alive, and I ate every bite. The simple gesture of kindness from my host mother, sharing food, providing for a stranger, reminded me how LUCKY I am to be surrounded by such amazingly patient and compassionate people, and how transcendent of language and culture barriers those qualities are.