R.I.P. Naguib Mahfouz

I just heard about this last night and was saddened. Truly, one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century in any language.

My First Day

Yesterday marked my official return to the life of an EFL teacher (or a linguistic imperialist, depending on how you look at it, but more on that later), as I had my first day of classes at the Elite English Academy in Cheonsang. To shamelessly dust off a cliched American idiom, it was like riding a bicycle. The techniques I developed for teaching (for example) the difference between countable and uncountable nouns came back easily, as did my classroom persona and "teacher voice." And while the majority of the students are very sweet, there are always the troublemakers. Let's just say that my culturally biased preconceptions that all Korean children are well-disciplined have been completely shattered. They're just like kids anywhere, with very short attention spans and absolutely no sense of shame about they say to me or to each other. All of them found the appearance of my hair (specifically the sideburns and side-part) hilarious. Admittedly, my hair is very different from virtually every Korean, but I was surprised by how amused they were. It's almost as funny as how the director, Mr. Park, and the other Korean teachers keep telling me, "University of Chicago, very good school!" I don't think they have the slightest idea of what the U of C is like, not to diss my alma mater in any way; I think it's just a school that they've heard of and are therefore impressed by. The students, and teachers, also have a lot of trouble understanding how to pronounce my name ("Stephen... like Stee-ven") because it doesn't sound like it looks. Korean is basically a completely phonetic language, so they all want to call me "Step-han."

All of the classes except one are thirty minutes long, which is almost too much time for a lot of the younger students to sit still and concentrate. The day passes remarkably quickly because of this schedule. I realize that I have only taught one day of classes thus far, but I think I am beginning to see some of the flaws in the hagwon system of English teaching. First of all, the students come to the school after having spent the first half of the day in "real" school, every one of them at their parents behest, and if it weren't for their parents' wishes I imagine most would not be there. And from what I am told, most Korean parents send their children to English hagwons simply to keep up appearances in the neighborhood (Erving Goffman, eat you heart out). Therefore, the students' committment to learning English is very low, with a few notable exceptions. But really, can you expect much more out of 7-12 year olds? Probably not. Second, and much more importantly, it seems that many of their learning techniques are based in rote memorization. I can't be sure, but I imagine that this extends to other subjects as well. The problem is that while repeated drilling of grammar points and memorization of conversation pieces gives the students a good idea of how the language should sound, it does not help build true comprehension. The students understand very well how their textbooks are structured, so when I ask a question from the text, they immediately know what the answer should be. But if I stray from the text and ask them a different question that isn't written out directly in front of them, they either stare blankly at me or respond as if I had asked them the next question in the text.

One final note regarding discipline: corporal punishment is apparently still a hallmark of the Korean educational system. The Korean teachers at Elite don't hesitate to beat the students with switches if they misbehave. Now, I have absolutely no desire to partake in this sort of discipline, nor am I expected to by the school (in fact, I'm specifically prohibited by a clause in my contract). However, because Korean students are used to being hit when they step out of line, they take great liberties with the non-Korean teachers whom they know will never hit them, and they don't respond easily to non-corporal disciplining. Thus, it makes the job of controlling the classroom that much tougher. But then again, I imagine it's not that different from teaching elementary school in the States.

So, I survived the first day. After class, I returned home and cooked some spicy octopus with somyeon noodles, delicious! And it all begins again today.

Check Out the View!

With the arrival of my second bag yesterday, and the digital camera contained within, I am finally able to post some pictures of my new environs!

I don't know the exact names of these mountains, but I am told that they are the beginning of what the Koreans call the "Yeongnam Alps." This is the view I wake up to every morning, directly off of my balcony:














Today, the sky is a little too hazy to truly appreciate them. They are especially beautiful when the early morning mists are hanging low over the feet of the mountains. I'll try to get a picture of that scene and post it soon.

Directly to the right of this view is what a lot of the rest of Cheonsang looks like:














As you can see, I live on the top (20th) floor of one of these high-rise apartment buildings that dot the Korean cityscapes, aptly named "Highvil." The majority of the Korean population live in apartments like these. How else to fit 50 million people into a nation only slightly bigger than Maine? Once again, portions of Invisible Cities comes to mind.

And here is what the interior of the apartment looks like:














(Living room)














(Kitchen)
It's definetely a step up from my monastic cell at Chicago, and although I think it's a little smaller than my flat on Jugoslavska in Vinohrady, it's much cleaner and quieter. Next time, pictures of "downtown" Cheonsang (it's all downtown, but whatever...).

The Things I Carried

So, I was hoping to go out exploring Cheonsang today, but as it turns out the rain I anticipated yesterday has now arrived. Even though everything is still muggy and sticky, it is a little cooler today. At any rate, it gives me a good excuse to unpack the one bag that did arrive, and to recount here (mostly for my own memory's sake) the books and music that I chose to bring with me.

Choosing which of these items to bring was probably the most difficult part of packing. I mean, these are most likely the only pieces of entertainment I will have with me for an entire year (exempting, of course, anything I may buy here, but that's besides the point), so it was with some amount of forethought that I made my selections.

Books: I couldn't bring much due to weight restrictions, so I limited myself to paperbacks, and then basically to novels (am I really going to break out Distinction on a cold, lonely winter night? I don't think so).

1. Rushdie: Fury, The Moor's Last Sigh and Imaginary Homelands. These are the only Rushdie works that I have in paperback. Fury isn't his best, but not his worst either. Moor's Last Sigh is actually one of my personal favorites, I think it is woefully underrated and his best attempt at writing something like One Hundred Years of Solitude (on another note, I like how it rewards those of us who paid attention to the characters in Midnight's Children). Imaginary Homelands is a must-have in my opinion, a great collection of essays, many of which are chilling in their premonitions.

2. Pramoedya: Child of All Nations and Footsteps, books two and three in the Buru Quartet. I thought I had packed This Earth if Mankind also, but apparently not. I really need to buy House of Glass; anyone who wants to make my day could send me a copy! Pramoedya passed recently. Anyway, these are some of my favorite "colonial" novels, and Pramoedya has the most amazing story of personal/literary hardship I think I've ever heard.

3. Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart. So much has been said about this novel that it's not really worth me adding my insignificant two cents, but basically it's one of the most perfect novels ever written.

4. Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities. See my first post.

5. The Marx-Engels Reader (the Robert C. Tucker edit). How could I live without my Marx? Answer: I couldn't. And yeah, the signs at Incheon warning against bringing seditious literature into Korea made me sweat a little about this one.

Music: These are the actual, physical CDs I brought with me, in addition to a whole slew of music on my laptop (I am still behind the times and do not own an iPod). I was surprised at how many actually fit in the case, so many that I don't anticipate missing anything (but that will probably change). Here are some highlights:

1. Getz/Gilberto. One of you (hopefully) reading this knows why this is the most sentimental album I own.

2. Marvin Gaye: What's Going On. Absolutley beautiful music, even with the heavy Christian overtones.

3. Biggie: Life After Death. It's controversial to say so in certain circles, but this was Christopher Wallace's true opus, not Ready to Die. On a related note...

4. 2Pac: Me Against the World is far and away 'Pac's best album. That's right, I said it.

5. Horace Silver: Doin' the Thing (Live). Along with Getz/Gilberto, one of the only jazz albums I have that survived my collection's decimation from Colombian thievery in Chicago.

6. Otis Redding: Very Best Of... Life without Otis is incomplete. "Try A Little Tenderness" never ceases to make me jump around my room like an idiot.

7. Prince: 3121. A birthday gift, and unfortunately the only Prince I own. It's good though, worth a listen.

8. Various "coke rap" artists and general thuggery including Rick Ross, Da Backwudz, Lloyd Banks, J-Zone's Ign'ant Mix (worth it for Master P's rendition of "Let's Get it On" alone), Mobb Deep (The Infamous and Hell on Earth), CNN, Lil' Wayne (Tha Carter II) and the Clipse/Clinton Sparks mixtapes. Good old-fashioned senseless tales about slangin'. And speaking of senseless tales...

9. DJ Eleven and Matthew Africa: Dirty Raps: The Best of Too $hort. Oak-town's finest, along with Slick Rick the best storyteller ever in the game. Nasty, nasty music.

10. Roots Manuva: Brand New Second Hand, which has it's time and place. If only all British rap sounded like this.

Also, lots of Ghostface, OutKast, early to mid-nineties hip-hop, Redman, Common, and random mixtapes. I'm sure there will be some that I never touch, and some that I play out completely.

Random Korean pop culture note: I saw Yunjin Kim in a Korean music video on my flight to Incheon. I'm sure I'll see her all over the place before too long.

The skies look to be clearing out now, so I might pop out for a spell after all.

First Impressions of Daehan Minguk

The last few days have been a combination of being withdrawn from the world due to sleep deprivation and going through sensory overload from new places, people, smells and sights. Where to begin? My journey to the Land of the Morning Calm began Monday with a visit in person to the Korean Consulate in Boston (which is really a glorified title for one room in an office complex in Newton) to drop off my passport for visa processing. I ended up spending three days in Boston (well, Concord actually) with my aunt, uncle and two cousins I hadn't seen in years. I had the opportunity to visit the MFA and see the "Americans in Paris" exhibit, which I encourage anyone in the Boston area to go see, as well as the Korean artifacts wing, which is sort of tucked away behind the much larger Japanese and Chinese rooms but has some beautiful pieces nonetheless, especially a ceramic teapot crafted in the shape of a budding bamboo shoot with fully-formed shoots for the handle and spout. By Tuesday, the via had been acquired, my tickets ahd been booked, and it was off to Logan early Thursday morning to begin the onerous aviation process.

From Logan to Hartsfield (which just happens to be one of my favorite American airports, I think because the layout is so logical), and from Hartsfield to Incheon; everything along this lg of the journey went according to plan. I was one of very few, very obvious Americans on the flight to Incheon. However, I think I may have been the only one who didn't have something to do with some branch of the U.S. military (I somehow managed to get seated between an Air Force pilot and a Navy officer, both very nice individuals). It was one of those flights that is so long you forget where you are by the end of it or what your purpose for being on the plane was in the first place. Korean immigration was surprisingly hassle-free, as was the task of catching a bus from Incheon to Gimpo, which has specialized in domestic air travel since Incheon opened in 2001. Incheon is located on an island roughly 45 minutes from Seoul (the site of MacArthur's ill-advised yet somehow successful naval landing during the war) so it is was necessary to bus into the city to Gimpo to catch my flight to Ulsan. Here's where things went a little off-track. Due to bad weather in Ulsan, my flight has been "suspended," and so with some negotiating I was put on an earlier flight. Ok, fine, a quick 45-minute hop to the southeast coast of Korea, over before it began. But my bags did not arrive with me. And then I discovered that the flight I was initially booked on did in fact take off as planned, so what was the need to switch flights? I waited for my bags to arrive on the second flight, in vain as it turned out as they were still at Incheon being scrutinized by customs. No worries, I was met by my school's director Mr. Park, and his two children, who bought me a bulgogi burger and took me to his sister's house in Ulsan for the night as my room at the apartment in Cheonsang was still occupied by James, the Canadian teacher whom I am replacing, who was leaving early the next morning and was still busy packing. I was much to tired to be phased by any of these minor mishaps and just grateful to be out of the air and back on solid ground again.

Mr. Park's sister and her family were absolutely wonderful and if their kindness and generosity is any indication of the general Korean temperment, then I think I'm going to like it here. I awoke from a restless, jet-lag affected sleep to a traditional (and delicious) Korean breakfast of rice, mushroom and potato soup, gim (seaweed wraps), gimchi, and dongkas. And then it was off to Ulsan Grand Park for my first taste of the city. It is still very hot and muggy here as the summer draws to a close, although the clouds are threatening rain, which would be a welcome respite from the heat. Ulsan's streets are ridiculously narrow and I can't quite understand yet how drivers are able to naviagte them successfully, but somehow they do. The family and I walked through part of the park, which has many local trees and flowers, several small recreation areas for children, a butterfly house and a petting zoo... and that's only the half of the park I visited! The whole installation is enormous and merits a few more visits, of which I'm sure I will make. After the park, they took me to a noodle house for lunch where I had gimchi ramen, which provoked a vicious sweat. By the time I returned to their house, Mr. Park had retrieved one of my bags from the airport (although the other is still in transit, I am told it will arrive tomorrow) and he drove me to my apartment, on the 20th floor of a giant building complex which reminds me of Czech panelaks in an odd and unsettling way. Unfortunately, my camera is in the bag which hasn't arrived because I would love to post a picture of the view of the mountains I have from my balcony. Jet-lag finally caught up with me and I promptly made my bed and passed out for eight hours, awaking just in time to meet my roomate Jessica as she returned from visiting friends. And now, I have one more day to recover and adjust before teaching begins. Until then...

At Long Last!

Finally, after what I can only imagine was an Ulyssean journey through the rocks and shoals of Korean bureacracy, I have my visa confirmation number! One would think that this would make me relaxed, but no, it means that I now have to race to get my passport stamped by the consulate in Boston some time before next Friday (which is technically possible) so that I can arrive in Cheongsang at least a few hours before my first class (August 28th). I have already come to terms with the fact that I will most likely miss out on having some time to recover from jet lag and that I will be a virtual walking zombie for my first few days in-country. Ah, how much easier this would all be if I was teaching/emigrating illegally, which is, of course, a privilege of we white Americans (more on this in an upcoming post)!

On another note, this guy is making all of us globetrotting EFL teachers look like creeps...

Anticipation/Urbanophilia

Let's begin: I'm about to undertake one of my most favorite activities, which is violently uprooting myself from my current abode and dropping into a completely alien environment with absolutely no knowledge of the language, people, or culture of said locus. I am certainly one of those "grass is greener" people, never satisified with where I am and always looking forward to the next move. Perhaps it is the anthropologist in me, a desire to be a true participant in my observations, but there really isn't any other way to travel in my opinion. And strangely enough, I feel more at home in these places than I do at my "home." I also have an indescribable affinity for the "urban." Perhaps this is due in part to my rural upbrining; maybe I will always inhabit the role of the country bumpkin, eternally awed by the lure of the city. Incidentally, for any "urbanophile" like myself, I strongly suggest reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156453800/sr=1-1/qid=1155415428/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0971663-3076816?ie=UTF8&s=books), which in my opinion cuts to the core of the perspective an outsider brings to the cities he or she experiences. This time, my destination is the southeast coast of the Korean peninsula, a town named Cheonsang, just outside of Ulsan:















I would like to apologize in advance for the inevitable comparisons I will draw in this and future posts between Ulsan/Cheonsang and other cities I have lived in. Apologies are due because I feel that each city has it's own personality, it's own raison d'etre even, and to compare cities only serves to reveal one's own personal (cultural) biases. Each city also has it's own legibility, to shamelessly borrow a phrase from James C. Scott; I revel in those first few weeks after touching down when you begin to understand how to get from point A to point B... and then the following months when you discover that it's much quicker to take a shortcut via route C. Perhaps the most illegible city I have ever lived in was Rabat, Morocco:














The labyrinth of streets, sidestreets and alleyways in the medieval-era medina confused and delighted me. I could be almost certain that by taking a particular route, I would end up where I wanted to be, and then be pleasantly surprised to find myself in an area I'd never seen before. Rabat moves at it's own speed; there is no obligation to rush and every corner invites one to linger. Of course, to its residents, Rabat is easily navigable. But to the outsider, such as I was, it is a happy mess full of infinite diversions (and yes, I realize the Orientalist implications of this statement). Opposed to Rabat is Prague, Czech Republic, probably the most legible city I've ever lived in:















Within two weeks of arrival, I knew how to get to any location in Prague. Even though it is a city of 1.2 million, Prague seems tiny. One will inevitably run into the same people again and again in the oddest of places. This is part of Prague's mystery, a city of unbelieveable, "storybook" beauty as well as the most painful loneliness one can ever experience. It is no wonder that this is Kafka's birthplace; seriously, "The Trial" makes absolute sense if you've spent a good amount of time here. Sometimes it seemed to me as if nothing ever remained the same there, but I eventually learned that there was one constant: I knew that no matter what, someone, somewhere would be a complete asshole to me each and every day. Oddly enough, I found it endearing by the end of my stay. Both Rabat and Prague are miniscule when compared to Chicago:














America's "Second City," and with all apologies to my beloved Chi-Town, there really is an inferiority complex in relation to NYC, from then stone lions outside the Art Institute to the "Russian Tea Time" on Adams St. What I love about Chicago (besides the architecure and the food) is that people there are actually very nice to one another. For any American urbanite, it is easy to find your way around Chicago; it's layout makes sense to us, basically a grid system with clearly defined North, South, East and West sides.

How long will it take me to discover Ulsan's legibility? We'll see. All I know is that I will enjoy the process.