Let me paint you a picture of my daily commute. I leave my two story apartment when the sun is already in the sky, and run down the stairs as fast as I can without making excessive noise. Failing to arrest my forward momentum, I burst out the front door like water over a seawall, nearly pulling my arm out of its socket as I fail to let go of the handle. The taekwondo building directly across from my apartment building’s entrance is closed and padlocked, and there’s no movement in the small alleyway.

I take a left turn, walk a few steps, and then make a right turn at the creepy convenience store I’ve avoided going into ever since the man inside yelled at me for buying his products two years ago. This street is busier, with one or two cars coming every few minutes, and it’s lined with stores that are still closed or preparing to open. CP doesn’t have any sidewalks, so amidst the muffled noises coming from inside the barred and locked storefronts I walk in the street dodging parked cars, moving cars, and the odd person or two shuffling along. I pass by two chicken restaurants, a bank, a small grocery store, a coffee shop, a shoe shop that hasn’t received a new shipment in what seems to be years, and a barber shop whose only patrons seem to be  my students.

After a few minutes I arrive at an intersection where I can continue going straight, or turn right. I look straight at the road leading out of town, and marvel at how the trees that mark the boundary between my town and country road it look so different now that they have leaves again. I turn right.

I pass by the marketplace, so deserted most days that trash and dust roll down the street the way a tumbleweed does in every western movie you’ve ever seen. Today it’s filled with people from the five day market selling every agricultural product you could possibly imagine, ranging from potted herbs to potted trees, tomatoes to pumpkins, and live chickens, dogs, cats, ducks, and even rabbits. They cover the whole plaza and spill out onto the street in an effort to make the most of their selling space. They pay me no attention as I sidestep their wares, trying my best not to get hit by one of the cars with an ill-tempered driver who would probably not think twice about running over a squash, let alone me.

I make it out of the marketplace, and pass by the butcher shop on the right, which during the day has an unfortunate tendency to blast Lady Gaga but is currently closed and silent, and then I pass by Sloth’s Coffee. A little further to the left is the entrance to CP High School’s campus and after my morning adventures, I am quite content to cross the street, leave the rest of CP behind, and begin my day at work.

When I leave my school in the afternoon, before I start my morning commute in reverse and hurt my already sore throat by screaming “GOODBYE” at the students milling around the soccer field, I like to pause at the main building’s entrance and stare out at CP. The mountains look so large,  the sky so wide, and CP so small, that it’s easy to forget that there are people who exist outside of the mountains that encase us and embrace us. I breathe in, breathe out, then walk down the stairs.

Some pictures of the events taken by the lovely Waygook Photography.

I had a really cool experience yesterday.

I know that at this point I mostly use this blog to blather on about my school, so most a lot of people don’t know what I do from day to day. Mostly I just teach or lesson plan, however I also study Korean and volunteer with various organizations. One organization where I both volunteer and study Korean at is the GIC, the Gwangju International Center. The GIC is a nonprofit organization that provides services to international residents in Gwangju or the surrounding areas and promotes cultural exchange between local and international residents.

The GIC is currently in the process of relocating, and fundraising to cover the relocation effort. Every May, the GIC hosts a May Concert that showcases local and international talent, and this year the proceeds of the May Concert were going to the GIC. They needed two people, a Korean person and a foreign person, to host the event, so they asked me to co-host the event with a very nice Korean English teacher.

I’ve actually never hosted anything before, so it was a very new experience for me. I received my script on Monday and spent all week frantically studying it, then on Sunday as the concert started I walked up on stage with my co-host, smiled at the audience that I couldn’t see because of the blinding stage lights, and said

“여러분, 안녕하십니까.”

A ripple of surprised laughter rang through the audience, which quieted down as I continued to give our introductory remarks in Korean. After I finished, my co-host took the microphone and smoothly introduced the concert in English. You see, as I said earlier one of the GIC’s  core tenants is promoting cultural exchange between local and international residents, and thus the GIC had asked me to host the event in Korean, and my co-host to host it in English. We continued on this way, alternating between English and Korean, with little trip-ups, and slightly unnatural cadences, for the rest of the concert.

In case anyone forgot that I teach teenagers… this should remind you.

During my “create your dream school” lesson, a group of boys created “Dating School.” There were many interesting aspects of Dating School, but the one that drew the most chuckles from the students during the presentations were the three clubs: night club, dance club, and “how to skinship” club. Skinship, for those of you that don’t live in Korea, is the term that Korean students use to describe physical displays of affection.

After each group presented, I gave the other students a chance to ask the group a question. After a few questions about how pretty the girls at Dating School would be and hemming and hawing, one boy raised his hand and, affecting a serious tone, asked how long it would take to master the skinship club. The group who created Dating School conferred with each other and decided it would take about three years.

The current 2.5 reminds me of last year’s 2.5. That is to say, they’re ridiculous.

They’re about two lessons ahead of every other class due to weird scheduling and cancellations, and they won’t have a single cancellation for the rest of the year, so I decided to give them a game day and we played Scattergories. The letter was “J” and they had to name “something you eat raw.” Team four wrote “John.”

“John? John. Like. You eat humans? Do you know what a cannibal is?”
“Of course.”
“Well no points for you, you wouldn’t eat humans raw.”
“But that is not a human. John is the name of my dog.”
“… still not giving you any points.”

I had my students create their own countries. The results were a little weird.

Political System: Dictatorship
Industries: milk, beef, cheese
Official Language: Korean
Marrying Age: 18. Because NH wants to marry right now.
Military: Option
Educational System: 13, must
3 Things that are Legal: Must have cow, milk a cow, bow to cow
3 Things that are Illegal: Hate milk, hit the cow, raise other animal.

Political System: Anarchy
Industries: Troll’s underwear
Official Language: English and Troll
Marrying Age: No limitation (but can’t marry troll)
Military: Mandatory (both men and women)
Educational System: Have to go to school until 20 (but, troll cannot have school)
3 Things that are Legal: You can kill troll. Trolls can kill people. You can have weapons.
3 Things that are Illegal: Trolls cannot marry people. Murder. Trolls cannot suicide.

Political System: Monarchy
Industries: Time machine. Eco-friendly products.
Official Language: Korean and binary.
Marrying Age: 18 -> because ideal is grown enough at about 18.
Military: None.
Educational System: Students must go to school up to University or College (24)
3 Things that are Legal: 1. Time travel 2. Can dropout only if a person is studying. 3. Can go camping anywhere important in time or to the environment.
3 Things that are Illegal: Don’t Destroy: 1) Time 2) Environment 3) Humanism

Political System: Anarchy
Industries: medicine, plant, fruit, ant, sand
Official Language: animal sounds
Marrying Age: No limit
Military: Optional
Educational System: to survive in nature
3 Things that are Legal: watering the flowers, plant trees, produce butterflies
3 Things that are Illegal: pick up plants, stomping on ants, catch butterflies

Today I walked into 1.6′s classroom, and they obviously weren’t expecting me. At least half the class jumped out of their seats, then after staring at me for a few seconds turned to each other asking “Potosky? Potosky?” Somehow the whole class nonverbally came to a consensus that yes, Potosky, because then they started chanting “POTOSKY. POTOSKY” while chucking their textbooks onto the ground.

I have a special place in my heart for classes that choose to keep playing the review game when I say that they can have the rest of the class for individual study. I also have a special place in my heart for classes that when playing team games (jokingly) heckle the other team.

2.8 fits both of these categories. When I asked one group what “technophobia” meant, the other teams started shouting “FEAR OF TECHNO MUSIC. FEAR OF TECHNO MUSIC.”

I saw Perks of Being a Wallflower yesterday at the Gwangju Theater. The Gwangju Theater is a really great indie movie theater that opened in 1934, making it one of the oldest movie theaters in Korea. They don’t normally show recent releases, rather they show a mix of older foreign and domestic movies. There is only one screen, and when you walk in it’s musty and dark with two floors and leveled seating, and it feels more like you’re going to see a live performance than a movie. When I went to see Gone with the Wind there last fall I felt like I had walked into a different time period – albeit one with great projector technology.

Perks of Being a Wallflower was painful to watch. I spent the entire movie with my coat up against my face wincing. It was so well done – a great mix of sadness, awkwardness, and laugh-out-loud hysteria. It was a return to the awkwardness and heartbreak of high school, and a reminder of how everything was exaggerated. Breakups were the end of the world, the embarrassment from trivial incidents never fully went away, days passed by in neon colors and our friends were the ones who made or broke our experiences. Without giving too much away, the movie is about Charlie, a wallflower who had trouble interacting with others, and the friends (mostly Sam and Patrick) that welcome him into their fold. It made me hurt for an interesting reason – I didn’t identify with Charlie as a wallflower in that during high school I wasn’t popular but I had friends, but because I am a teacher now, and I’m sure I have students like Charlie. The scenes that hit me the hardest were the ones where Charlie interacted with his high school English teacher. Charlie is a student that is naturally bright at English, but a shy introvert who refused to raise his hand in class… if the teacher had been less attentive he might have missed Charlie completely. During their interactions, you could see the pain on both of their faces. Charlie thinking that no one noticed him, and the teacher worrying about Charlie.

Mr. Anderson: You know, they say if you make one friend on your first day, you’re doing okay.
Charlie: If my English teacher is the only friend I make today, that would be sorta depressing.

Charlie spends the first three quarters of the movie recounting his friends’ issues, and hanging around in the background helping them. By the end of the movie you finally realize all of the things that have happened to Charlie to make him the way he is, and how as a wallflower you would never realize this about him.

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.”

How many students do I have that fade into background? Inside every mind is a complete other world, shaped by experiences that are foreign to me. I teach my students once a week if I’m lucky, for fifty minutes. How many of my students are struggling wallflowers, getting by from day-to-day and like Charlie counting the days left until graduation. Am I giving up on my students, and students I haven’t met yet, by deciding to pursue another career path at the end of this year?