Korean Carry-Out

I have never been so certain of anything before as I am that wherever life or strange impulse may take me, children are always children and its sort of wonderful. I have never felt so amazingly back in my element as I do here. As I blunder about in the strangest, most foreign place I have ever been, at least I am doing something that I do better than anything.

I've been running away from teaching and working with children for many years and for even more reasons. Parents are awful, the pay is awful, the work expected from educators is almost impossible and education in and of itself is slightly awful, especially the ridiculous expectations that a child is just an adult in training. I've run from all of this again and again. But I find myself continually running back. I love children. I hate to love them, but I love them.

I have never in my life witnessed rough housing as the little Korean boys rough house. Its glorious. All of them are little martial artists (this is not just me being racist. Most Korean boys attend a taekwondo academy from a very early age) and when they shove each other about, they do a damn fine job of it. People sometimes talk about children bouncing off the walls, in a metaphorical sense. When I say these children bounce off the walls, I do not mean it metaphorically. I mean that they hit the wall and fly away from it, propelling themselves into another wall or child, mostly intentionally.

And when they are finished bouncing off the walls, they are ready and willing to bounce off the floor, off the ceiling, off the desks and off each other. And no one gets hurt or even cries. I witnessed one kid fall face first to the ground and heard a sound, not unlike a nose or ear or skull being shattered. An American kid would have cried, pitched a fit, or at the very least, pouted. But the Korean kid just rocketed back on to his feet, with only marginally less violence than when he'd fallen, and immediately took out another boy via an elbow to the eye socket. The kid who's eye socket had been gorged looked nonplussed and ripped a lung from another child. This child nicely reached for his lung back, carefully placed it back in his chest and then snapped the fingers of new kid. And they are all like seven years old.

And they throw each other at each other. That sounds like I mean that they hurl themselves at each other, as though I am being poetic or failing to be poetic. But, such is not the case. The case actually is that one Korean ninja boy will actually physically lift another Korean boy and pitch him (as one would pitch a projectile) into another boy. Its a scene.

Even when they aren't mercilessly beating one another, Korean children are dealt a pretty rough hand. Once they hit middle school, they spend about seven hours a day in public school, just as the average American child does. But when school finally ends, most Korean children (especially well off Korean children) have to attend various academies (hagwon, in Korean). There is an academy for almost everything you can think of. Homework academies, math academies, piano academies, taekwondo academies and academies like the one I work at, English academies. Children may attend up to three or four academies after school, often not getting home until 10 pm. Its awful really.

The reason for the crazy academy system is mainly that the Koreans public schools are really utter crap, which as with everything in life, comes down to the fact that there isn't much of a budget for education in Korea. Only four percent of one's income is taxed here, which is great for a foreigner like me, but obviously has repercussions for the longer term citizens.

The government makes its money in strange ways. Your trash has to go out in a specific, highly expensive trash bag. Each one costs 1,000 won (roughly 1 dollar). The reason? Funding for garbage collection. This sounds good, but the reality is that not everyone can afford such expensive trash bags, so people don't buy them and trash gets dumped on the sidewalk in the wrong bags and the trash man doesn't pick it up and so there is garbage everywhere.

In spite of all the less than perfect stuff I am learning about this new country, Korea is great. That sounds trite and worthless as far as an explanation of how this whole experience is going, but hopefully you know me well enough to realize that "great" is not a throw away expression with me. I wouldn't just use it as conversational filler. The food is wonderful, the people are wonderful. What more could one ask from a brand new city?

I should add a quick note here that the people are wonderful in every way except a slight prejudice against disabled people that briefly almost cost me my job, due to my missing finger. This has been righted by something so inane I barely care to talk about it but luckily typing and talking are distinct. So I will type it. Basically, I wear a glove on my left hand, one of the fingers of which is stuffed with toilet paper so that it looks like a finger, as obviously I don't possess sufficient fingers to fill a glove.

When the children ask why their teacher is wearing one glove I tell them that my hand is hurt. Its really stupid. The thing flops about obnoxiously and I have to constantly hold it with the two fingers on either side of it, rendering my left hand almost utterly useless. I think the part of all this that annoys me the most is that I'm pretty sure Michael Jackson is the pop star who liked to wear just one glove. And of all the people I could be emulating while working with children, I especially do not want to be doing anything too reminiscent of Michael fucking Jackson. But, when in Korea...

This remains the sole hitch in an otherwise rather cushy post. Classes are 35 minutes each and on average I teach about 8 classes a day, starting at 2 pm and ending at 9 pm. I realize I said earlier that the average school child doesn't get out of school until 4, so be aware that before 4 pm, our English academy teachers Kindergarteners, which is cute as hell but also comparably noisy.

The teachers, me and Chris, (Chris is a Canadian who is quite fun and who drives me to work every day) and about seven female Korean teachers get fed a traditional Korean dinner, which is rice, onto which you ladle soup (which I love more than I can really thoroughly impart in this medium) and tons of side dishes. The side dishes are things like Kimchi, fish, beans, bean sprouts and usually at least one thing that is headily objectionable, like mini shrimp with the shell still on, or gelatin from acorns.

Most of the side dishes are cooked in red pepper paste or have been pickled. I do not exaggerate when I say that Koreans pickle almost every single substance that passes into their body. And anything that manages to escape being pickled is smothered in red pepper paste. If you do not like pickled things, you might be okay with the red pepper paste. Likewise, if you don't like the red pepper paste, hopefully you will enjoy pickled things. But if you don't like either of those things, do not come to Korea. You will starve to death.

Ultimately I love it. I love being Teacher Ari (usually this comes out as Teacher Ali; I think I'm managed to pick the hardest nickname in the world for a Korean child to pronounce), I love the little city and the little cars and the little people.

Everything here possess a tedious amount of adorableness. Everything is cute. The fucking skyscrapers are cute. The lunatic bus drivers are cute. And I happily stick out like my fake, gloved finger made of toilet paper does when I forget to clutch it between my other fingers.