This Past Weekend

This past weekend was uneventful for the most part. Saturday, I went into Seoul, had lunch with Paul at a dumpling joint in Insadong, bought some Christmas presents for family and friends. It will take a while for them to get back home so I figure I will start sending them out in November. I think everyone will really like what I have gotten them. They're things you really won't find anywhere else in the world, real handsome pieces. After that, Paul and I came back to Ganghwa. I made some Indian style curry, and some Gin and Tonics, and invited my neighbour over for dinner but not come. Later Paul broke open his bottle of Jameson he had gotten while he was in Ireland last week. I found it funny that a Jameson is much more expensive in Ireland than the U.S. Its 46 euros, apparently which is absolutely appalling. But, it was definitely good to have some decent whiskey. There isn't too much of that out here on Ganghwa. Sunday, I stayed on Gangwha and went to church at Sts. Peter and Paul, which is always an interesting experience. The liturgy there is very High Church, with full Catholic vestments and incense and Anglican plain chant. The service is thorough Anglo-Catholic, like the Advent in Boston. However, despite the extreme English atmosophere, including all the old hymns, it is in Korean. It is very odd. Well, its time to get to some teaching

At the Zoo

Today's weather is rather brisk and is the first day I have worn a sweater. Sometimes the evenings have been chilly but this is the first time I have had to wear one during the day. The sun is very bright, the rain from yesterday has fully disapated, and it is, in my opinion, a very pleasant autumn day. I mailed a second batch of postcards out to those who didn't get one for whatever reason the last time I mailed them out. I also did a little writing this morning and made some progress on my current project but nothing really substantial. I don't know if I have the patience and the fortitude to complete what I have set out to do but it passes my time and keeps me from being idle, which is something I am always in fear of being. I have four classes to teach this evening, two high school and two middle school sections. The high school section should be very easy. My students are both very cooperative and actually have pretty strong English skills. However, the two middle school classes today are the same group of kids from yesterday, with whom I always have difficulty. Today's lesson is animals and animal names. I have prepared a matching game involving animal pictures and text. I will also have them listen to "At the Zoo" by Simon and Garfunkel and have them fill in the missing animal names on the lyrics sheet I have made out. I really hope I can hold their attention. I think I may be able to is I keep my energy level very high and be an absolute goof. Well, I just hope it works out.

Today is Still Rainy

I have just come back from dinner, and before that, I completed teaching my Second Grade Middle Schoolers. And man, are they annoying. None, not one of them can direct their attention toward me for than thirty seconds. Every game, activity, or lesson I have planned stimulates no interest in them and their effort, even compared with the other Middle Schoolers, is absolutely deplorable. I can understand not having strong English skills. Its my job to improve those skills but when the class is wholly uncooperative and has not even the slightest inclination to exert any type of effort, I don't know what I can do. I feel that I am failing these kids. I want so badly to teach these students properly but they have to meet me half way by giving me at least their attention and that's not happening. I spend 90 percent of my time trying to settle down the class. The pushup method of discipline, which works well with other classes, does not work. When I discipline them, they either laugh at me and do nothing or do unsatisfactory pushups, and never more than five. Tonight I had to get down and show them what an actual pushup is, and did 35 myself. I challenged the boys, who thought is was funny to see me doing pushups, that if anyone could do more than I, I would buy that person ice cream at that school canteen. Well, after a number of students dropping at under thirty, this big ox of a boy, was able to beat me by five. During this whole competition there was utter silence among everyone, which to me was absolutely golden. However, what educational value is there to pushup contest? I really need to figure out how to handle this bloody class. Oh well.

Today is Rainy

Today is rainy which is sort of a bummer because I had intended to go hiking. I have not been able to go this week, partly because of busy-ness and partly because of my own laziness in not getting up early enough in the morning to have a decent hike. But today, I intended to go hiking, got up early enough for a full morning of hiking, but alas, the weather was poor. It has been raining on and off the whole day and a thick mist has settled in the valley. It was not a good day for a hike. So instead of a vigorous morning of hiking, I neglected getting dressed until the last possible moment before work, made myself a coffee, settled myself snuggly under my blankets, and read the whole morning. I have been reading Charles Dickens' Bleak House, which though I am only about 200 pages into the thousand page novel, appears to becoming quite good. It is interesting to compare it with the Pickwick Papers, which I read this summer past, and is his first novel. Bleak House is one of his last, written in the 1850s. His development as an author is extremely apparent. The characters are as rich as ever, from eccentric Mr. Jaurdyce to the simple cockney street urchin, Jo. However, in Bleak House, each character plays an integral part in driving the story foward. With each character, the air of mystery unveiled at the novel's opening is in the first two-hundred pages not only not cast off, but is in fact, deepening as the story progresses. What is the true nature of the wards brought into the Jaurdyce household.? What place do they have in twisted web of the ongoing legal cause of Jaurdyce v. Jaurndyce? Dickens is able to draw us into the story, guessing as to what is really going on. The Pickwick Papers, despite its brilliant character development fails to integrate them into a cohesive story. It is a work that rests on its constituent episodes rather than the whole. Bleak House, from what I read, seems to be work, though episodic in some respects (as a serialized novel, it had to be) but seems to be able to be judged well as a whole.

I'm Back

I have returned. After some issues with accessing my blog at school, I am back. I will not attempt to summarise the events of an entire two month period. However, in the this brief amount of time, after a few serious trials and many small ones, I have not only begun to settle in to life in my village but have, in a sense, grown to love all the wild eccentricities that characterize rural life in general and especially rural life on a small island in South Korea. My neighbors, some of whom are civil servants and policeman, some of whom are business people, and most of whom are farmers and day laborers have all become my friends. All are accomodating and all want to make my life in their community the most comfortable it can be. Mr. Kim, a civil servant, who is my immediate next door neighbor not only makes an effort to come by my apartment and say hello several times a week but will have me over for dinner fairly often. By western standards, his hospitality would be considered extraordinary. In many neighborhoods, including my own in New Bedford, neighbors hardly see each other. In the morning they slink out their doors and in the evening, having come back from work, they slink right back into their homes just like they had gone out. This sort of behavior is unheard of here; at least in my village. Every person, including myself, is a member of a real community where people look after each other. For instance, this morning, as I was waiting for the bus to Ganghwa-eup, the main centre on the island, Mr. Kim came out of his house, and went very far out of his way to give me a ride 'on his way to work'. It is absolutely remarkable. Since the first day I have been here, locals, people with whom I would not have come into contact through work, would come by, and give me gifts of produce and seafood. I still have five pounds of salted shrimp as a testimony to their hospitability. Sure, I may gotten ill as a result of their pickled raw crab and sure, I may have not enjoyed eating live squirming octopus tenticle but ultimately it was all an expression of something that is severely lacking in my own culture: hospitality. This, I believe, is a major hallmark of truly civilized people. Our own Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments express this same ethic of hospitality. Sodom and Gommorah were destroyed not for their vile sex acts, as many people have supposed, but rather, their inhospitality to the three angels of the Lord. It isn't very hospitable to rape your guests. And Jesus, came as servant, the very paradigm of hospitality. We are reminded of this selfless hospitality on Maundy Thursday, when we wash each others feet, and symbolically offer ourselves in service to each others. These Koreans, despite all their backwardness and general craziness, have retained something that we westerners have sadly lost.

First Few Days Illustrated

I have arrived.

I apologize for the delay in this update. As many of you know I have had not regualr access to the internet. y post should become more frequent (hopefully a couple of times a week) now that they have set a computer in my office. I still don't have any access in my apartment and probably won't. But at any rate, my flight over here besides being godawfully long, was rather uneventful, I did manage to take some very nice aerial shots of the Japanese coast taken as the plane was preparing to land at Narita. Those will be posted here either today or very soon.

My first night here was, to put it very bluntly, terrifying. The flight did not get in until around ten Saturday night so by the time my baggage was claimed and I had gone through customs, it was roughly 11:30. After customs, I immediately changed my currency and then proceeded to the lobby of the terminal where I was greeted by the taxi driver who was to bring me to my apartment. The man was insane. Traffic lights were merely a suggestion. We flew through the central area of Incheon, down the coast, through forrests of neon signs and gas stations, over a number of bridges, and eventually arriving in the most isolated area one could imagine. It is pitch black and well after midnight. We finally arrive at my apartment after much travail. The taxi driver drops me off and one of the teachers, Joo-Nam greets me, shows me the apartment,talks to me a few minutes, and leaves. I am alone in a foreign country in apartment in what appears to be a remote village. The whole night I am struck with a feeling of total isolation and lonliness. The extreme jet lag definitely did not help. I was a complete ball of nerves and was unable to sleep for more than a few hours. However, when I awoke just before dawn and saw the the exact moment where the sun rose above the mountains behind my building, I knew that I had made the right decision.

Later that day Joo-Nam brought me to the schools, showed me around the area, and even bought me lunch. The countryside here is very broad, covered with rice paddies, and punctuated by a mountain here or there or an ancient fortification. Here it almost seems that if time stands still. I know it is a cliche but does reflect my impression of this place. It is one of the most beautiful and strangest places I have ever been.

Monday morning I arose, put my spot coat on and headed out into the torrential rain. As I was leaving my landlady came running out, shouting something in Korean. And as I as expressed to her in in gesture and slow English and a few Korean words, she pantomimed the opening and closing of an umbrella. With that I said, " chong mal kamsa hamneeda," and she ran back in and got me an umbrella. She and everyone else I have met here have more than hospitable. And when I arrived at the school, I was introduced to the principal, who gave the impression of being the the monarch of the school. The power structures here seem to be very well definined at least in comparison with the United States. I was also welcomed by the faculty who gave me a round of applause as a entered the teachers' room and then each in turn greeted me with a bow and then a handshake. It was a very odd feeling. As an American I am definitely not accustomed to that kind of hospitality.

Later that day, I taught my first class...first year middle schoolers. Their English is not at the level that I was initially told but it was not so bad. I had each student greet me and tell me their name in a full English sentence. Most had not trouble with that. Later I showed them a picture of the Public Garden and had them tell me in English what they saw. Most had extreme difficulty with that exercise so I gave them alot of help and eventually everyone was able to come up with something. But it seems I have alot of work to do. And with that, I think I should end this post. Until next time, anyoung hai-seyo.