Disclaimer

I have been trying to write this for a while now. I’ve mulled over it in my mind too many times and still don’t know exactly the right way to articulate what I’m trying to relate. No matter what I say, I come across as a naive feminist who does not want to accept a reality that is evident not only in Korea, but also in the US and every other country of the world: men are mostly in charge, and it’s just part of human culture or our makeup or how God intended it to be – whichever way you choose to look at it.

The topic I have tried to write about is complex and beyond my writing abilities, so forgive the lack that is to follow. Working with Josh has been an incredibly rewarding experience and we both consider ourselves very fortunate to have this opportunity in our marriage. When I write about the disparities in the way that we are commonly treated while living here, it is not to set us up against one another. Quite contrarily, Josh and I have enjoyed understanding how we fit rather uniquely together in our marriage and are well pleased that such situations as follow have only helped us to understand each other more comprehensibly and supportively.

Boys Rule

A key part of being a woman in Korea is being beautiful, paralleled by wealth and followed by being a trained candidate in the ways of a housewife and mother. Smartness is an attribute, but seemingly not as important as being beautiful – really nothing is much more important than that. Being a beautiful Korean woman is composed of having a thin figure, having small feet, and long hair. The thinner she is and the more western her facial features are the better.

At work Josh is smart, has good ideas and is listened to, while I am beautiful, which for me is not any kind of compliment when my education in ESL/EFL is brushed aside and ignored all too often. I am told, “The parents of your students like you because they say, ‘She’s so yeppa, yeppa!’ beautiful beautiful!” Josh is praised for being an incredible teacher with all the qualities needed to succeed in Korea or anywhere else in the world as an English teacher. “Josh is just like, wow!” our directors say. He is given presents and I am not, but parents point at my face and then with a thumbs up say, “Yeppa, yeppa!” which I suppose should be some kind of consolation, but for me is not.

In our marriage I am the one who is more confrontational. When our cell phone company over charges us, I’m the one who calls and displays my persistence with the operator. Here in Korea, Josh has to do all the dirty work. We realized a couple months in that anything coming from my mouth was second rate compared to what he said. After meeting more foreign teachers here in Korea, we recognized that ours was not an isolated situation. Male teachers here will jest about how badly the female teachers are treated compared to the men. They laughingly make comments like, “Yea, the girls at our school have to work twice as hard as the guys. I get praised for doing practically nothing!”
I don’t consider myself a far left winged woman liberalist, but I do see double standards when they exist and get aggravated when I find myself helplessly caught in the middle. I find joy in Josh’s success, and nothing I am writing is meant to negate that; however, the frustrations I sometimes feel cannot be ignored or brushed aside because they are part of my experience here and need to be noted.

Korea has a culture more complex and different than I could have imagined. Witnessing their clash of traditions and modernism is fascinating to see as an outsider and not easily understood. Korea was closed to the outside world for 200 hundred years longer than Japan was and has experienced a surge of wealth and significant western influences only since the 1950’s and more distinctly since 1988 when the Olympics were held in Seoul. Upon first arriving and living in South Korea, everything seemed very modern and consistent with the ideals and values of most first world counties; nevertheless, the longer we are here the more we begin to realize that Korea is in a distinctive struggle between reconciling its traditions that have existed for thousands of years with a rising middle class and the push of the upcoming generations to do away with their traditions and become more like the west, or more specifically, with their perspective of what the west is.

It will be very interesting to see how the culture in South Korea changes and molds to fit such diverse perspectives between the generation that is aging now and the upcoming ones. In what we’ve seen and experienced since we’ve been here, it will be a while longer before women are viewed as a whole lot more than a figure of beauty in this society. Much of their culture is beautiful and it would be shameful to see lost in the apparent race here to become more western. I don’t think it would matter how long we lived here, we would always be outsiders looking in, so there is much that I still cannot grasp about my experiences here so far, but I am enjoying the process of trying!

Still nothing

I wrote something and then deleted it. Sorry, no updates. I think what I had written was too slanted.

Sigh . . . sorry, I want to write something, but there’s just nothing I can right now.

Seven steps to filling the stomach:

Seven steps to filling the stomach:

Food being the necessity of life that it is has made me pursue the knowledge of how to communicate with my fellow Korean peninsula dwellers that I need nourishment and, more importantly, that my wife needs food or else the proverbial feces will undoubtedly hit the fan and chaos will reign masterfully over our lives.

Much like Applebees, Denny’s, IHOP, and dozens of other semi fast-food chains in the U.S., generic pictures of the establishment’s food options are printed all over the menu in wonderfully detailed food porn. I am certainly not a master of any language, and especially not Korean, but I’m now confident enough to enter one of these establishments and order a satisfying meal. The words that have saved me are simple and yet at the same time beautiful. Just follow my advice when starving in Korea and all will be made well.

Step 1: Find a restaurant with lots of glossy images (sometimes while under the influence of being culturally overwhelmed it may seem a bit hard).

Step 2: Disregard whatever it is the person attending you may be saying and find a seat.

Step 3: Look through the menu carefully; don’t be confused by the fake stuff (I still don’t really know what that means).

Step 4: Get the waiters attention by saying, “Yogi,” which means over here or here- I am not sure which.

Step 5: Point at your selection and say, “Eeka chooseo,” which literally means this will have (“I” is inflected like Spanish is in some cases).

Step 6: Enjoy

Step 7: Pay and remember to say thank you, “Kam sa han mi da!”

josh

Life goes on and on

La Bottega Del Arte is a small café in Kong-Dong, which is the central hangout for university students across from the back entrance to Chungnam University. Kong-Dong is a criss-cross of busy streets lined with more bars and coffee shops than anyone could visit in six months’ time. This popular hangout for students at all times of the night, is about a ten minute walk from our apartment, and we spend much of our weekends walking the streets here, drinking coffee in the late afternoon with a book in hand and allowing the hours to drift by until we order a beer and munch of chips, popcorn or rice snacks – whatever the particular location offers as a side dish.

La Bottega has become a regular stop on the weekend for us. Most of the cafés here are franchises and lose that individual personality and creativity that we love; that’s the main thing that sets La Bottega Del Arte apart from all the rest. Privately owned by a hippy couple, the style is eclectic with random pieces of art hanging from the walls, plants everywhere and shelves lined with little bits of this-and-that. Chi-Song, the wife, speaks a little bit of English and is typically the person running the café of the weekends. She has a miniature Doberman Pinscher named Kak-Chi who inhabits her own seat at the bar and barks ferociously at every customer who comes in the front door. Chi-Song has studied coffee for a decade now, specializing in hand drip. Beware everyone, by the time we come back Josh will have added coffee expert to his list of qualifications.

We were here three weeks ago when Josh asked Chi-Song if she knew of any good Korean authors translated into English. She confusingly looked around as people typically do when they are desperately searching for words in a non-native tongue. After asking us to hold on, she rushed away behind the bar for a few minutes. She returned to our table with the request that we come back the following day at seven o’clock in the evening to meet with her friend who is an English Literature professor at a university here in Daejeon.

We did come back and spent hours discussing Korean history with Young Son, a man who speaks stumbled English and takes long pauses between phrases collecting his ideas and deciding on what words he can use in his somewhat limited English vocabulary to convey his thoughts and concepts. He is always well dressed and looks fifteen years younger than he actually is.  Traveling all over the world, studying abroad in various countries, and being a college professor for some ten years or so: Young is a naturally interesting person to spend an evening with.

The following weekend we were pleased when Young called and invited us to join him for dinner along with Chi-Song and her husband. We went to a new Japanese restaurant near our apartment and even nearer to Chi-Song’s apartment that happened to be just down the street from ours. After dinner we all went back to La Bottega Del Arte for a lesson in hand dripped Costa Rican and Yemen coffee. The café was closed, so we spent hours in a cozy back corner sipping coffee alone with Young and learning about Confucianism and Christianity’s friendship here in South Korea.

We spoke with Young about our teaching jobs when he asked. After listening to us talk for a little while, he offered to introduce us to some of his friends at different universities when our teaching contract is up. This was an invitation that we didn’t take lightly and thanked him sincerely for. University positions are greatly coveted here, and one learns rather quickly why. Twenty in-class teaching hours maximum per week and right around five months paid vacation every year. Just in case that’s not sensational enough, the pay is much better and you’re teaching adults, which for me is delightful.

We’re slowly finding places that fit us and people who interest us. Our weeks are full of teaching and weekends of rest. We’re greatly looking forward to another weekend trip to Seoul in April to celebrate our two-year wedding anniversary. Spring has beautifully arrived and the cherry blossoms are starting their much-anticipated immersion into the world after months of dormancy. Small patches of green dot our bus ride to and from work, and they’re growing every day. Elderly women are hoeing and tilling their small plots of land that are located between high-rise buildings and mutually owned by several families that use them to plant and harvest vegetables in the spring through the fall.

I’m learning here how much I love my husband and to the extent that I depend upon him for emotional support and self-worth in life. He has no choice but to be my everything while we are here because I have nothing or no one else.  This experience is the most beautiful thing I could have every wished for in our marriage and I cherish it daily. In my mind, this job is not ideal, but it doesn’t really matter because I’m learning so much about myself and things that I need to improve upon to become a better teacher and if I gain even just that in my career this year, then it’s all worth it.

How to Communicate in Any Language while Speaking English

When it comes to communicating in a foreign country, culture and tongue – Mandi may whole heartedly disagree with me on my approach but regardless of what she says and how she feels about it, I am right on this one –there is much more to it than sending vibrations up through our body and manipulating these vibrations with our larynx, tongue, and vocal cords.
First off, let’s get it straight, gesticulating is key with any of the following extremely helpful tips, oh and always remember to smile-you don’t want to come across as being just another, “North American Scum”(thanks LCD sound system). Once you get the hand motions down you can tone down your decibel level and begin to break down the English language to such a degree that it is easy to digest. Omit all unnecessary intransitive verbs, irregular verbs, adjectives, proper verb conjugations, adverbs, and definitely leave out all of the articles; they just get in the way. Oh, and remember to consistently stick with the present tense. Tenses always seem to throw people off.

“Tomato, English, Korean what?” I projected my voice loudly while looking at a produce man who was assembling a heap of weird looking vegetables. He responded to me with an awkward look on his face.

“TTTTOOOMMAAATTTOO,” I said while waving the waxy, overly ripened red tomato in the air. Once again he responded to me with an awkward look that was then followed by a lengthy lecture in Korean about only god and the produce man knows what.

“TOMATO, English, Korean what?” I said again.

He looked at me and said, “Tomatooo.”

I responded with, “Anio, anio!” (Korean for NO, NO)

Pointing at the tomato  this time I said, “English tomato. Korean what?” I finished this try off by shrugging my shoulders and showing the palm of my one empty hand.

Produce man didn’t respond at all as if to say, “You idiot, I just told you,” and then he slowly let out a sigh that sounded a bit of defeat- if defeat has a sound that is- and in a very clear manner he enunciated the word, “Tomatooo”.

I must have looked like I felt, frustrated, because he said it again and this time even more clearly than the first time, “Tomatooo”.

We went back and forth a few more times until we came to a realization that we both must have been retarded and had probably been beaten as kids one too many times on the head. Simultaneously we must have reached the same conclusion because at the same time we shrugged our shoulders and he went back to packing weird Asian vegetables and I walked away utterly bewildered and totally confused in search of something I could recognize.

Communicating is all about the attitude, the tone, the vocal projection and well let’s be honest the desperation with which you beg for directions. Another aspect of communication we tend to forget is “luck”, the luck that the person you are desperately trying to pry life saving information from is a fan of Baywatch reruns or the current global favorite, CSI.
From a linguistic standpoint, while attempting to communicate with Korean speakers, I tend to revert to some sort of motherese complete with big smiles, making vroom-vroom sounds for the bus, exaggerated intonations and even slowing of the tempo.

On the other hand, a neurolinguist who would listen in on my desperate plea for directions might diagnose me on the spot with some severe language disorder and possibly request that I see a speech therapist.
The day after the tomato incident I asked the director of my school what the Korean word was for that red, tasty, vine fruit known to us English speakers as tomato.

She smiled and explained that this one would be easy for me. And then she said it:
TOMATO

-Josh Morris

Thoughts on a cold Monday

I’m tired in the sense of, “I can’t keep up this schedule for another 12 months,” kind of way. Nine classes a day with no planning period. Prep for classes on your own time before and after teaching hours. Koreans are incredibly hard workers, and it’s something I really admire about the people in this country, but being a part of the system is tiring. I’m sure many Korean would think our jobs are cake compared to theirs especially when considering our salary, which for WON is a very good one; it’s when you start transferring over to the dollar that things gets a bit shabby.

I want to do an excellent job every day, and I’m not. I don’t have enough time to do a superb job. I want to complain because I get frustrated, but then I think about how absolutely blessed we are to have stable jobs that make enough (even with the poor exchange rate) to cover our bills back in the States and still save a tad. Saving money was a novelty back home, something we thought about and said, “Yea, that would be nice to actually be able to save money one day,” and now we are and I just can’t complain even though there are some legitimate complaints to be made and heard.

Our director always talks about “the grass is greener on the other side” syndrome he says runs rampant here among English teachers. It’s true, but there’s a reason why. Korean directors think that all foreign teachers are ungrateful, lazy, party addicts, and foreign teachers make widely general statements that every director is trying to take advantage of us and find any way possible to withhold money from our pay checks. Of course everyone in this scenario is little right and a little wrong. So many people come here to make money and teaching is the means by which they do it. Many foreign teachers will openly and honestly admit that they know nothing about teaching and consider themselves pretty bad at it. Of course this always frustrates me and then I start to understand why directors have a bias. This whole explanation could go on and on, and there’s really no point. This is the first work environment I’ve been in, however, that once you’ve met someone the question, “So, how much money do you make?” comes right after, “What’s your name?”  and “Canadian or American?” which is commonly responded with an unenthusiastic ,” Oh yea, ok,” like the person is trying to say they’re sorry that I’m an American, but they understand it’s not my fault or anything.

I’m an ESL/EFL teacher. I’m not here solely to make money – I actually love teaching, and I don’t have my head buried in the sand when it comes to it. That’s what I feel like saying aloud multiple times a week and sometimes several times a day. I need adequate time to prepare for classes in order for them to be successful and worth the one thousand dollars a month that parents are paying for them. I need to feel like I’m teaching and not running machinery, please. I’m not one of the foreigners who is going to come into work hung-over. I’ll always be on time (thanks to Josh) and will work afterward because I need my classroom to be excellent for my own pride and professionalism, understand that please. I will work hard, but not until I’m worked silly.

It’s amazing being here. I am honored to be in this country teaching children. On the weekend, I especially love what I’m doing, but today is Monday, so give me a break after reading this.

-Mandi

The nonsense brooms and my disdain

I hate these brooms; they make no sense to me. I’m smiling in this picture because I am trying to be nice about it, but there is nothing to smile about. This broom alone makes having a small apartment worth it. I have asked countless amounts of Koreans why they don’t have taller brooms and no one knows why.

The two questions I ask almost all Koreans I meet:

1) Why do you use the peace sign in every photo you take?

2) Why don’t you have taller brooms?

Inevitably the answers:

1) Oh, I dont know. No Koreans know.

2) Oh, yes, good. I don’t know. No one knows.

I need answers to these two mysteries. Until then, I will enjoy the cute peace signs and mourn the act of sweeping our apartment.

-Mandi

The Skinnies

Sou-Ji is leaving for college. She’s the secretary and although she’s only 18 years old, we love her, and she will be a greatly missed friend and familiar face in Daejeon. Michelle and Sunny took us (all of the girls who work at Kid’s College and Josh) out last night as a little going away party for Sou-ji. We were taken to VIPS – a buffet. I was imagining the typical kinds of buffets back in the States that consistent of a smorgasbord of foods that are not considered edible in my book, but this was nothing of the sort. We were seated quickly, but like most situations in Korea, indecisiveness ensued, and it took us another thirty-five minutes before anyone made a decision on what to order. For some reason no one understood how the menu worked and the girls kept asking us what we wanted. They repeatedly put the only two menus on the table in front of us as if we could read what they said and make the final decision for the entire table. All of these small subtleties have something to do with their culture and no one wanting to seem pushy, forward or intrusive. I respect all of that, but I was getting hungry, so I decided to go check out the buffet and leave Josh to patiently do the back-and-forth with our co-workers who were desperately trying to piece together short strands of English words to create somewhat coherent English thoughts, not sentences.

The buffet was magnificent. Shrimp, smoked salmon, escargot, fried chicken, veggie soups, fruits, pasta, pizza, a vast array of salads . . . need I go on? I came back to the table gleaming. “It’s amazing!” I said. “I want the buffet.”

“You want, um, seafood?” Min asked while pointed to a picture on the menu of an enormous seafood platter that consisted on prawns, lobster tails, shrimp, scallops and salmon.

“A seafood platter and the buffet? No. Are you?”

“Oh no, I . . . I’m get steak.” She replied.

I was confused. Why would anyone order a meal when there’s the buffet?

“Oh, we get buffet too. Both.” Min explained.

“You’re going to eat a steak and the buffet?”

“I am!” Announces Josh

Everyone at the table, aside from me, orders a steak that inevitably comes with multiple side dishes, as does every Korean meal. We all make our way to the buffet. Josh and I spot a weird western girl that we had seen on the subway a couple of weeks earlier and are momentarily distracted from the incredible display of food because we must stare at her and recall where we saw her last (she dresses Goth with blue hair in South Korea. It would be impossible not to notice her).
I pile a stack of French fries onto my plate only to realize they are sweet potato fries, but the buffet has salt so I’m in heaven anyway. Tomatoes with cheese and olive oil? Yes, please. Fruit salad, fruit and yogurt, everything even remotely western is on my plate, unless it contains red meat, of course. We have not even finished our plates from the buffet when the steaks arrive. I sit for a minute watching everyone dig into his or her steak and side dishes. I think about returning to the buffet for a moment, but I am so conscience of looking like a fat, greedy American, so I sit overly aware of being lady-like and polite. After a few minutes I decided to hell with it and returned to the buffet.

Fried chicken. I apologized to myself before I even put it on my plate, but it looks so good with this sweet and sour sauce Korean style and they pride themselves on their chicken here, so I breakdown and there the little strips are on my plate. By the time I arrive back at the table and am cutting into my chicken the Korean girls are pretty much done with their entire steaks, side dishes and the first plate from the buffet. Josh is cutting the last half of his steak very slowly and I can tell that he won’t be able to finish it. He has that lethargic, full look in his eyes.

“Ok, we go back to buffet.” Min declares.

“Dessert?” I ask hopefully.

“Uh . . . no, pasta. You have?”

“Me? Oh, no. I think I’m too full for pasta now.”

The four petite, I wasn’t-even-that-small-when-I-was-ten, girls go back to the buffet for several different kinds of pasta and pizza and croissants and more meat. Josh and I sit at the table and look at each other in some kind of amazement or confusion. We watch them eat several more plates full of food. I’m thinking that there is no possible way these girls are going to eat dessert now, but they do and coffee as well. Frozen yogurt, little cakes, and fruit with yogurt. It’s incredible. I’m actually somewhat annoyed. These astoundingly thin girls just piled more food into their stomachs than I could in three or four days and they are thinner that I could ever be. I am almost positive they could out-eat my brother. Josh knows exactly what I am thinking. He looks at me and in a low voice says, “That’s when you know it’s genetics and not diet.” I feel better about it all now. It just happens to be in their cards and not so much in my Anglo-Saxon-Greek mix.

We stay at the restaurant laboriously trying to communicate with our co-workers. After quite a while, we decided to find a bar and hang out a while longer. This process lagged on as no one could decide where to go and they kept asking us where we wanted to go even though we had never been to any of these places and only vaguely knew where we were. Min eventually decided on a place, because she is the least indecisive in a culture that almost demands indecisiveness. It’s a clean little spot on the fourth floor. It’s smoky, but not dingy. The waiter brings over a menu that Min opens and starts pointing at enormous platters of fried foods and fruit. She speaks in Korean for a minute and then asks Josh what he wants. He takes her to be joking, and laughingly points at an oversized platter of cheese sticks, fried chicken, mounds of fries and fruit slices.

Min nods, “Ok, you want?” She’s pointing at the picture on the menu.

Josh is smirking, “Yea, ok, that one.”

We both think they’re joking because it had not been but an hour ago that these girls piled plates and plates of food into their stomachs. But to our astonishment she orders this grossly oversized portion of food and one small pitcher or Korean beer for the table. Josh and I laugh because there is nothing else to do, and they don’t understand what’s funny and we couldn’t possibly explain so we pass it off and say,

“Nothing. Nothing’s funny.”

No internet at home

Our internet has been down for three days at home, so sorry there have not been many updates. I will post as soon as we have internet again. I don’t have time from work.

-Mandi

Santa Clause? Really?

We’ve heard a lot about this bar / lounge called Santa Clause here in Daejeon. It’s supposed to be the main hang out for foreigners in our area. “That’s seriously the name?” is my typical response when people tell us about this place. Since this was the first weekend that I wasn’t sick since we stepped foot into South Korea, we though we would give it a try.We’ve been here for five weeks now, so I guess we should start meeting people. There are some foreigners living in our same apartment building, but I’ve never seen them. I hear them at various times of the night once they’ve drank too much and their voices carry through the cheap walls of this old apartment building. Sometimes I run out into the hallway when I hear them out there, because I think that maybe I can catch a glace of what they look like before they make it through their doors. I don’t know exactly what I would say if I did catch one of them. Yesterday I caught two Korean girls by surprise because from inside our apartment it sounded like they were speaking English. They looked at me strangely and then said, “Hi,” and started laughing. It was an odd moment so I just closed the door going back inside our bedroom without having gained any new friends.

It’s within walking distance . . . that’s my first thought when I think about Santa Clause, so that tells you how overrated it is. You can chose songs for the play-list, which is sort of cool, I guess. But it’s actually only cool when the songs you chose play, because for the rest of the night you have to listen to the songs that other people chose which, last night, consisted of country, early 90’s rock, and an overabundant amount of song about getting high, drunk and treating women like meat. Everyone there was strange. The sort of people who we would never befriend back in the States, so we sat there for a while wondering why we were there. That’s something we’ve noticed here and have heard about from our directors: A lot of people who come here to teach are misfits back home, but they think they will be cool here, or something along those lines. I know I sound uppity and snobby right now, but it really all just means that we miss our friends who are like us and understand us. Won’t you please come visit?

Josh and I played Jenga at Santa Clause for two and a half hours. That was fun. The people – weird, the music – terrible, but my husband – fantastic.

“Oh, good song, finally. Hey! I know what movie this is from! Don’t tell me . . . Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind”

“Yep. Do you know who the director was?”

“Yes. Umm . . . hold on. Lemme think. Ok, give me the first letter of his first name”

“He’s from France.”

“I know.”

“First name: M. Last name: G.”

“Don’t tell me, don’t tell me!”

“It sounds like the name of someone from work.”

“Michel Gondry!”

We smile at each other because we both realize that this is useless information that Josh cares about and because of that I now know director’s names because he talks about it too much and we are both thinking about how much we love each other and how wonderful this experience is and how we are best friends and the moment is really good. We’re in this terrible little bar filled with strange people speaking English, but we don’t care because we have each other and that’s enough.

We left Santa Clause and 1:30 in the morning and found another place, with fewer people and only Koreans. We get chocolate martinis. I pull out my recycled notebook from my purse, Josh gets his moleskin from his coat pocket, and we both start asking the bar tender questions about Korean and vigorously writing down anything we understand or think could be useful information.  It was 3 when we finally walked home in the freezing winter cold, ran across the streets, almost got hit by a car and finally made it back to our little one bedroom apartment that for the next year is our home.

The games got intense.