The Way to Heaven

Scene: A blustery Incheon sidewalk. Empty coffee cups and discarded flyers dance across the stage. A car honks its horn in the distance. Two Korean men in medical pajamas, one of them also wearing a back brace, smoke cigarettes in the alley between two buildings.

Enter Stage Left: our hero, Wayne. A youngish, curly haired, pensive, and rotund lad from America. He is lost in thought far away, as if he'd just returned home on his break to find out that the electricity in his apartment was still off and now he has to confront his boss about why the fuck he hasn't paid the bill yet and taken care of this. He is walking quickly.

Enter Stage Right: An elderly Korean couple, probably in their 60s or 70s. The man is smiling perversely and carrying a leather bound Korean bible. The woman walks a little bit behind him and nods at whatever he says.

The three meet.

Korean Man: Hello? Hello? Anesayo?

Wayne: Yes? Yes, hello.

KM: Excuse me...are you...Christian?

Wayne: Yes, yes, I am a Christian, yes...I am Christian.

<KM extends his hand, and the two shake hands conventionally, but at the last second when the embrace would normally end the Korean man grabs hold of Wayne's thumb for a few seconds too long>

Wayne: <twisting away from the man> I'm sorry, but I-

KM: Do you know the way to heaven?

Wayne: I'm sorry, but I have to get to work...

KM: Do you know the way to heaven?

Wayne: Yes...I am Christian...but I have to go to work...

>Exit Stage Right

You Got To Have Powaaa!

There's this part in Back to the Future II that Lee and I always thought was funny, where MJ Fox is trying to get his hoverboard to slide across the water and the battery dies or something, and one of Biff's gang, this Asian guy living in the far distant future (was it 2005 or 2015? I can't remember) and who's decked out in a helmet and a flashy jacket and all that jazz yells at his would-be prey: "You got to have powaaa!" in a really funny Asian accent.

I was reminded of that scene when I came home today.

No power.

Fuck.

The delightful soul who lived in my apartment before I arrived wasn't a big fan of things like, oh, I dunno...paying bills. So since I've arrived I've received several stern-looking letters with Korean versions of 'past due' and 'delinquent' written all over them. Everytime I get one I just pass it on to my boss, Jason, and hope he takes care of it. Well, apparently he didn't...

Jason assured me earlier tonight, when I called him from a pay phone in front of Wal-mart, that the power would be back on tomorrow morning or tomorrow night, at the latest...of course there's a problem with that, you see, I still have to deal with to-night, b/c, you know, it's not yet tomorrow night...nice.

Whatever. I can deal...and I slept a coupla nights sans power when I first arrived, anyway. I have Jenn to thank for that, too, btw. And the hot water worked then, so I was still able to take a shower.

I guess I'm just glad I brought a battery powered alarm clock with, or, well, maybe not. At least then I'd have an excuse for oversleeping manana...

Korean Candor

Koreans can be refreshingly/disturbingly candid about a stranger's physical appearance...I knew that already, but had it reinforced today.

One of my co-teachers said that she had been called 'the ugly teacher' today by one of her kids, and I'm not sure but I think I may've gotten that once before myself...it's hard to tell sometimes what the kids are saying b/c of their accents...'ugly' could just as easily be 'angry' or 'crazy' (one of their favorite words b/c it's a curse word here in ROK) or a million other things. She didn't seem to care, and that's the right attitude to take.

My honor's kids love the fat jokes, and I don't really mind b/c it's not like it's a revelation to me, and I even encourage it sometimes, but if my skin wasn't kinda thick already (from all the fat, natch) it could get old, fast. Today we were talking about the innumerable ways in which a pencil is different from an eraser, and we were doing a Venn diagram on the board.

One of the smarter kids chimed in with the fact that pencils are 'not fat' (he later was introduced to the term 'thin') and that erasers are. I wrote 'thin' on one side of the diagram and then wrote under erasers on the other: 'fat like Wayne teacher.' They got a kick out of that.

But anyway as I was leaving class I said my usual 'goodbye munchkins' and the ones that like me said something to the same effect, and then as I was opening the door to walk out June-Sung, probably the brightest kid in the class, says 'Goodbye fat man.'

I did a double take, froze in my tracks, chuckled and then turned to him and tried to communicate that that wasn't the politest thing to say, all self-effacing and our congenial relationship aside. I'm not sure if it got through, but, well, welcome to Korea, baby, or rather: 'Fat Man.'

So, what's an average day at SLP like?

Tuesday, March 21st:

9:30 (that's AM, folx) - I arrive and start trying to put together the shit I'll need to teach my pre-schoolers.

9:40 - Sophia, one of my fellow teachers and the sort of 'pit boss' of our crew tells me that Joanne-teacher, my co-teacher, won't be here today b/c she's sick. One of the experienced afternoon teachers, Joey, will fill in.

10:00 - I go upstairs and try to lasso a bunch of little crazy gremlins and get them to change theirs shoes, put their bookbags away, and sit in their seats.

10:10 - I'm halfway through the ridiculous morning song/'warm up' routine, in which I and one of the kids leads the rest of the class in a mostly mumbled rendition of various kids' songs. If video of this ever surfaces I may have to move away from civilization.

10:30 - I escort the kids, in a semi-line, to the bathroom for the first of what will be many bathroom breaks during the day. We do this like every half hour, for four hours, seriously.

10:45 - I realize that the struggle to teach the kids how to act out a scene and introduce their friends with the complex phrase "Hi, this is Myung bin," has been in vain.

11:00 - 11:25 - Break Time! Fuck yeah! The kids get to play for a bit.

11:15: I'm watching my class as well as Joey's b/c he has to go get some material ready. Yoon Hee rushes out to me in the hall, gives me a pathetic and desperate look, and then proceeds to pee all over the fucking place. Shit no! At first I start to walk her towards the bathroom, but that's quite a hike and she's dripping the stuff everywhere, so I let her finish, then we stroll over. I leave here there and grab a mop to go clean up.

11:45: My kids definitely know the difference between p/q, b/d, m/n, etc. So how to spend the remaining 10 minutes of Activity time?

11:55 - 12:40 - Lunch/play time. Fuck yeah!

12:40 - 1:10 - I repeat the same boring activity, but in Horse (Joanne's) class. These kids are pretty dumb and they're all riled up after lunch, so it takes a good bit before I get some response on the b/d question...

1:10 - 1:40 - Instead of story time today we have a birthday party! Fuck yeah! It's graham crackers and tangerines for everyone, plus a pretty sweet chocolate cake with these kiwis on top...nice.

1:40 - 2:00 - I try to clean up after the munchkins, get them to put their shoes, coats, and bags on, and of course I forget to do the wrap-up (summary) for the umpteenth time in a row. Then I escort them downstairs where they line up to board their bus and also to run around, kick and punch each other, and scream at the top of their lungs.

2:10 - 3:40 - I spend 10 minutes prepping for my afternoon classes, walk down to the corner Tostore with AJ and get something to eat, then spend the remaining hour or so figuratively twiddling my thumbs.

3:40 - 4:20 - My honor's 2.1 course. For level two these kids are fucking Einsteins. But they can also be little bitches, too, and today I'm being observed by Julia, one of my bosses. The lesson today's not that interesting, either, I mean you can only talk so long about the different kinds of clothes you wear in the different seasons. I thought I did pretty good based on what I had to teach, and Julia did too thankfully...she said to me later "It seems...you are, very patient teacher." I didn't know whether to take that as a compliment or not, so I did...but maybe I do put up with too much shit from the brats. You gotta slap em around (figuratively speaking) every now and then or they won't be afraid of the hammer coming down sometime. Something to work on, I guess...

4:20 - 5:00 - A regular level 2 class, with only 5 students, but it's still a bear to teach. These kids are soooooo dumb and soooooo afraid to talk...the only two who do pipe up like to fight with each other, too...but today it went ok. We played a game, they were happy, I was happy b/c things went a little more quickly...

5:00 - 5:50 - I spend 15 minutes planning preschool for tomorrow and then dick around on the computer, stare at the wall, or count the hairs on my arm...anything to pass the time.

5:50 - Quitting time! Fuck yeah!

The Japan Visa Run

Well I did the Japan visa run this past Thursday & Friday, and I actually made it back with everything I needed, didn't really get lost on the way, and didn't lose anything valuable. Maybe optimism IS the way to go.

I wasn't feeling too optimistic when I boarded an overheated bus early Thursday morning which I hoped was bound for Incheon airport. Of the four teachers at SLP who'll be doing the visa run, I was the first to go, so I had only the reticent Jim and a packet of documents/instructions to guide me from my little corner of Bucheon all the way over to the Korean embassy, excuse me, consulate in Osaka. The SLP 'guide to the visa run' seemed to tell me everything I needed, and Jim was full of his usual soft-spoken and world-weary advice on the day before I left (example: "don't get in the taxis unless you absolutely have to. The first thing Japanese taxi drivers do is lock you in and put 5,000 yen up on the meter (that's about 45 US greenbacks)." <--actually that was good advice, I didn't get into a taxi in Japan but from what I could tell by observing others, what Jim said was true), so I had some reason to feel like I might pull it off Thursday morning when I hopped on the old 302.

But I had a feeling something would go terribly wrong, and I'd wind up in Singapore or something and have to pay for a ticket back. But nothing like that happened. The 302 dropped me off at Incheon just as planned, I got on the right plane, and when I got to Osaka it was reasonably easy for an English speaking gaijin (I think that's the right word) to navigate around.

All of the Japanese people I met/asked for help were very kind and knowledgable, which is a good combination, and with their assistance and the aid of a couple of maps I found the train which took me downtown, and the Korean consulate, without a problem.

Finding the hotel was a bit tougher, you see, a lot of the part of Osaka where I stayed is criss-crossed with these narrow one-way 'streets' (actually they're more like alleys). There are a few large thoroughfares but these little one way backroads dominate the landscape...I didn't realize this going in, and based on the brochure the SLP people gave me I was sure the hotel would be on a large city street...it wasn't, and so I got a bit confused and even briefly lost. But I eventually got there and everything was ok, and after I got settled in I set out to explore.

Unfortunately it was raining, which made night-time walking a bit of a hassle, and I of course didn't know a soul in the city, so I didn't stay out late. I did have dinner at this little cafe and was served some sort of spicy meatball dish with mustard on the side which was really good...I don't know if it was worth 900 yen, but it was good.

The next morning the sky had cleared and I wasn't due at the embassy until 1:30, so I set out pretty early with big plans explore the city. I saw a lot...I guess, though I didn't see what I wanted to...what I mean is that I meandered up and down these aforementioned alley-streets for hours, without really taking much in even though I passed by a lot. There was just so much, and I didn't have much time. The few sights that I did set out for, the Sony building and the Art Museum, well, I got mixed results. The Sony building was this white, futuristic, seemingly-windowless building that was cool enough to look at, I guess. The art museum I know I got close to, but I couldn't find an entrance, and so that was a bust. I saw the 'Namba Walk' which is this enormous underground shopping mall that seemed to stretch for miles...but I wasn't really interested in shopping for clothes and everything was so damn expensive, anyway.

I don't really know how to effectively communicate all the shit I saw, so as I did with an earlier post, I'll just go through some of the notes I took down in my nerd-notebook I carry around with me.

"8 minute walk" - the hotel brochure said the hotel was this far from the nearest subway station. I just thought it was representative of a different mindset out here...

'Smoking areas/vending machines' - smoking's as big in Japan as it is in Korea, maybe bigger.

'Street walking on left' - in Japan they drive on the wrong side of the road, just like the Brits, and as a consequence they tend to walk on the wrong side, too. I noticed while walking that I kept running into crowds of people on the right side of the sidewalks, and realized why. When I shifted to the other side things went a lot more smoothly...

'2x the cost' - shit is fucking expensive in Japan. The aforementioned plate of meatballs, which was far from filling, cost 8 or 9 bucks, and later that night when I ordered room service (score!) to fill my fat ass up, it was another 12. Oh, and the food sucked, of course...

'ALL the women are gorgeous and whores' - probably the best part about walking down the street in Osaka was the eye candy. I think maybe b/c I was hanging out in a rich section that I had access to more high class scenery than, say, on a farm in Hokkaido or whatever...or maybe Japanese women are just all beautiful. I only saw one fatty, and dare I say it? I woulda hit that. And to top it off, they all where short skirts and low cut blouses in the middle of fucking winter. You see that in Korea sometimes, but everyone in Osaka was wearing that sort of outfit.

'completely Wester - uber-Western' - I didn't feel like I was in the 'East' at all...I mean it felt just like New York or Chicago, only the people looked a little different and the architecture was different. I don't know if that's a revelation for you, dear reader, but Japan is definitely part of the West...or at least downtown Osaka is.

'ABC stores sell shoes' - I kept seeing these signs for 'ABC Shop' and of course if you're from where I'm from you know what that meant to me...actually they sell shoes. Not that liquor was that hard to find, if you wanted it.

'Bon Jovi look' - apparently the hip look for Japanese teens is to channel Bon Jovi circa 1985 with the shaggy red hair. I musta seen hundreds of these guys...things went from funny to pathetic pretty quickly.

'people still stare but there are no little girls saying "hi!"' - when I walk down the street in Korea I'm quite the spectacle...it was basically the same thing in Osaka, but people only looked, they didn't speak. Of course I wasn't there very long, maybe if I'da stayed longer I would've heard those little 'hi!s' that I get here all the time.

'McDonald's everywhere' - seriously, everywhere. I also saw a coupla KFCs.

Oh yeah, one more thing. On the second day, after I'd picked up my visa and finalized all the paperwork to make me legal in Korea for a year, as I stepped outside the consulate the wind picked up. I started down the stairs that lead back to the street, and as I was descending the giant Korean flag in front of the building got caught in the wind and was blown over towards me. Before I could do anything about it, the flag had wrapped itself around my head, and I had a humiliating moment or two as I un-furled myself from it. Dare I say it? Another of God's little jokes.

For good or ill, it's official: I'm caught up in Korea for a year. More soon, I hope.

More From Korea

It's Quiz Time, kids!

1)When you order a pizza in Korea, what gets served with it on the side?
a)kimchi
b)sweet pickles
c)cocktail onions
d)a smaller pizza

2) "Goose Goose" is
a)an expression meaning "unwelcome foreigner"
b)a bar
c)meat served on sticks which is sold on the street
d)the name of one of my students

3)There is a TV channel devoted to...
a)Chinese Checkers
b)cheap porn
c)Korean televangelists
d)all of the above

The answers are forthcoming, but if you're dying to know I guess I'll put them in at the end.

My first week here has gone pretty well. My plane touched down at Incheon Airport about this time 1 week ago, and certainly I feel a lot better now than I did then. As I wrote before, the first couple of days were pretty crappy...I was still suffering through my jetlag, everything at work seemed baffling and overwhelming, and I didn't really know anyone. But all that has changed, for the better.

The first day of classes was Thursday, and it was not fun. The preschoolers are just horrible, they have at best a minimal understanding of English and of course they're more interested in playing or talking to one another in Korean than listening to me. But it has to get better, right? And besides, as one of the other teachers told me, for them we're basically just babysitting for a few hours and hoping that some of what we do gets through to them...the theory is that just some exposure to English will be good for them.

But my afternoon kids, for the most part, are just great. Maybe it's b/c I contrast them with the morning brats but for whatever reason I actually look forward to seeing them. It's just getting through the morning that's tough.

Ever since I've arrived I've been scribbling down in a notebook these things that strike me as comment-worthy, and here's what I've got so far:

"Bizarre red crosses everywhere" - there are apparently a goodly amount of Christians out here, and I remember on the ride from the airport last week that as I looked down into the valley I saw dozens of these glowing red crosses jutting up into the sky...for whatever reason Koreans keep the crosses illuminated and don't realize how tacky it looks...whatever, it's their country.

"bad drivers" - maybe I'm seeing it b/c I expected it, but no one here knows how to drive. You have to be really careful when you're crossing the street.

"smells in the hall" - I remember as I walked to my hotel room the first night I was here I was suddenly overcome by this incredibly strong and pungent odor coming from one of the rooms. Korean food stinks, or, well, it can stink, and I've crossed into these pockets of poison many times since I've been here...but what compounds the problem is the Korean system of ordering deliveries, which works the same way in America except there's a pick up service the next day, so after the person has finished their kimchi or whatever they put the bowls outside of their room in the hall. This compounds the problem.

"highways are still highways" - my apartment overlooks a freeway and every morning when I walk to the window to look out I'm greeted by a traffic jam. It's nice to know there's traffic everywhere, I guess.

"kids are still kids" - before I left a lot of people made comments about how Asian kids are better behaved than their American counterparts...complete and utter bullshit. If anything they're worse - I've never had an American kid say "I hope you die" to me, for example.

"woman's voice on elevators" - there's this one woman's voice who's constantly talking to you when you're on the elevator. She says "mushi mushi mush" or whatever very reassuringly over and over...it's weird.

"everyone is well traveled but me" - everyone I meet regales me of their trips to Mexico, Australi, S Africa, whatever, and I feel like a loser when I have to say New York and Chicago are as far away as I've been from home...but you have to start somewhere, I guess.

"a country w/o deoderant" - Koreans don't sweat. Ever. Never ever. And they don't get cold, either, but that's beside the point...they're like robots...but anyway, not sweating and not getting overheated means you don't need things like deoderant, right? So when I run out of the stick and a half I brought with me I'm fucked, b/c one of the teachers assured me I couldn't get any in the whole country...I guess I'll have to have it shipped from home.

"staring at me" - This is starting to get old. When I'm walking with other people, it doesn't happen, but when I'm alone on the street everyone has to look at me, and some people are downright gawkers. You'd think they'd never seen a roundeye before...like I said it's getting annoying.

"Kimchi everywhere. everywhere." - One week and I've already had enough kimchi for a lifetime. They serve it at every fucking meal, and I always try to eat it for some reason, I guess I think the locals will like me more if I do, whatever, but it is always disgusting...no mas, por favor.

"Worst couch ever." - I thought my old couch sucked, Christ, I'd give anything to have couch dread here in Korea. The one in my apartment has a bar sticking out from the back cushions and it makes sitting a living nightmare...it's about as comfortable as sitting on coals.

"Achilles' pain"- no, I don't mean the pain of being far from home, I'm talking about my Achilles heel(s), which were both scraped and cut and abused during my day of travel by a new pair of shoes that don't fit and caused extreme pain...and ever since that happened the wounds on the back of my feet have yet to heal, and they hurt everytime I take a step...yeah, it sucks, but what can you do? You wait for it to heal.

Alright, that's about it for the latest dispatch from Bucheon...my eyes are starting to get dry and I feel myself becoming less and less coherent...

Answers: B,B,D

First Impressions of Korea

Wow, what a week.

I'm writing from one of the thousand or so PC cafes that litter the landscape of the city where I live here. You seriously cannot go a block without seeing one...they're everywhere, but here people use them mostly to play World of Warcraft or whatever...I'm gonna try to use this one to record my thoughts on an incredible week.

Well, I left Raleigh Friday morning, and, well...the flight was hell. I was dreading the actual flight more than the transition from home to here, the struggles with a new job and with meeting new people, and with all the other shit that comes up when you move...and I was justified in that dread. It was absolutely horrible. The first leg of the flight up to Detroit was ok, I was a little cramped but the AC worked and I had a window seat so I could deal. And when I got to the airport there I didn't have any trouble moving around, getting something to eat, and boarding my next flight like I feared I might. But then the real shit began.

The middle portion of my trip was scheduled to last 14 hours, and to the credit of Northwest Airlines it and all of my other connecting flights were on time...but efficient or not 14 hours in a hot, smelly tube with ~400 or other pissed off and tired people is not going to be fun. For starters, my seat sucked, it was a B which means it was on the port side of the plane in the middle of two other seats. To my right was an incoherent, drunk, and sleepy Japanese man and to my left was a taciturn and immovable woman who also slept most of the trip, often with her feet propped up on mine. I didn't really bring anything to read and what I had I couldn't get into, so for most of the flight I either a)stared straight ahead into space and tried to avoid thoughts of suicide or b)watched the in-flight movies, which were - The Mask of Zorro, Yours, Mine, and Ours, and some other shitty movie. Now, you might be asking, why not just get hammered and go to sleep? I had every intention of doing so, and the guy with whom I'd spoken before I left for Korea, who was/is a fellow teacher at my school, assured me that international flights served booze for free. But for NW...this doesn't apply, and I sure as shit wasn't going to pay 5$/can for some crappy Japanese beer. And to top it off I've never been able to sleep just laying on my back, and since I was between two other people I couldn't lean to one side or the other, and for 14 hours I didn't get a single second of sleep.

By the time we touched down in Tokyo I was dead, but the excitement of being so far away from home in such a (relatively) exotic locale revived me, somewhat, and I was successfully able to navigate through the Tokyo airport and board the last portion of my flight.

The last portion was far and away the best, I slept for most of my trip, the food and beverages didn't suck, and I was comfortable. So when we touched down in Incheon I was feeling pretty good.

Of course, I still didn't know if the bags I'd checked back in Raleigh had traveled with me all the way to Korea, I didn't really know how I was going to get through customs and immigration, and all I knew about who I was meeting at the airport was that his name was Jae Sung and that he'd find me, not the other way around.

Well, my bags came through, thank God, and though passing through immigration and customs was time consuming, it wasn't too much of a hassle. But then I was directed to this sort of loading zone outside of the customs area, where all the other Koreans were heading, and so toting three pretty heavy bags I lumbered outside into a flood of people.

Obviously I didn't know a s(e)oul. There were plenty of folks holding signs which read things like "Jason Chan" or "Michael Wilson" or whatever but there weren't any with my name on it. After I'd traipsed up and down the line of people I paused for a moment to get my bearings, and just a second or two later I met my first cabbie. I didn't know who he was at first, and he was very helpful, and I thought he might be Jason, but it soon became clear he didn't know who I was and he wasn't from the school. I know now that he just wanted to give me a ride to Bucheon, where I'd be living, b/c Americans are apparently the only ones who tip out here and of course he could use the fare...but at the time I thought he and all the succeeding cabbies that accosted me there had more sinister intentions...Lee's joking comment about the "white slave trade" didn't seem quite as amusing anymore.

But eventually I met Jason. I was again skeptical and asked a lot of annoying questions, I'm sure, but after he pulled out my itinerary and introduced himself so I could understand through the accent I knew he was the guy, and we left.

The trip to the hotel where I'd be staying that night was fairly short and peaceful, the only harrowing moments were the coupla times Jason tried to go the wrong way down one way streets (I kept the comments floating through my head about a nation filled with Asian drivers to myself). Jason told me everything I needed to know about my situation and he told me that since the girl who had been using my room wasn't leaving until the next day that he'd be putting me up in a hotel for the night.

And what a hotel! It's probably the nicest I've stayed in, and certainly is the nicest I've stayed in by myself (I stayed in one in Atlantic City with LBJ a while back that was really cool). The mattress was as hard as a rock, but I slept fine...after staying up an hour or so to watch the shitty porn on Channel 2. The engrish in the brochure was a fun icebreaker, too, let me quote:

"Morning furnitures in your room is not allowed." WTF is morning furniture?

"Please keep away our child from playing in labby." And so on...

The next morning Jason picked me up and drove me across the street, basically, to my new apartment building. The teacher who was vacating, Jen, was still there and cleaning up when we arrived...to be honest she didn't exactly finish the job, and my apartment is still pretty dirty, but hell, I'm used to living in my own filth so why not someone else's? That day, that day...let's see, that was Sunday, yeah, Sunday night I met Joey, the guy I'd spoken with over the phone.

He and his girlfriend/boss Sophia (that's her Korean name - she's my boss too, btw) took me out to this OK spaghetti place in a mall somewhere and then to a bar near her apartment. They were both pretty cool people and they put me at ease.

The next day, Monday, after a fairly sleepless night due to jetlag, I went in for 'training.' I used the quotations b/c, well, it seems like at SLP they don't really understand that it's best if you train the teachers to do their job before you force them to teach. On Monday morning one of my new co-workers, James, this middle-aged guy from Canada who's been here for 10 years and at SLP for 8, walked me through the SLP manual. I honestly don't remember much of what we discussed, I was so out of it...but it didn't matter b/c by that afternoon I was teaching my first class.

When Julia, my boss' boss, came to me that day and asked if I could cover a class that afternoon I was surprisingly non-plussed. I'm still not sure I can describe it, but maybe I just have had a 'fuck it' attitude about this whole experience...what I mean is, my thinking is something like "Fuck it, I've come this far, how much harder can it be?" And it really wasn't that hard and in fact my first class that afternoon went really well. I just wish they could all be like that one...

Gosh, there's so much more to post about this past week but it's gonna have to wait. With the promise of more to come, I bid my fair readers adieu...