Laurie Johns Weblog

the view from my bed at night–I will miss this more than anything here

I dont believe in accidents. I believe that things, indeed, happen for a reason, not in a cosmic, out of this world, inexplicable way, but that our actions and thoughts are responsible, ultimately, for delivering us to our own doorsteps. It is no accident that I find myself here in the worst place and maybe mental space, I have possibly ever been.

On Saturday I went to Gwangju to meet Boram. Boram promised to take me to a Hagwon (private academy) to inquire about taking some drawing lessons. We had actually never met; she had answered an inquiry I posted on Facebook about drawing classes.  Boram and I planned to meet at 6:00 so I had some time to look for the Seventh Day Adventist store I had been told that might have some whole grain bread. Unfortunately, Saturday is the religious day for Seventh Day Adventist, so the store was closed. There were also many ex-pats in Gwangju staying at the Windmill motel, and I was invited to spend some time with them.

We (the other ex-pats and I) were walking around Kumnamno (pedestrian street in Gwangju) talking, shopping, looking for a place to eat and this guy from Kansas was asking me all kinds of questions about my degrees etc and I was trying to answer these questions when I realized, in that heart-stopping, slap-in-the-face sort of way that some realizations happen, that it just sounded like bullshit to my own ears and I should just stop talking…that most of the things I had done in my life were just  excuses NOT to do something else and that I had never really, seriously applied myself in a committed way to any of those things I was explaining to him that I had done or been (with the possible exception of a yoga instructor–which, curiously, I did not even mention). Korea was, yet, another decision made on a whim and I realized in that moment  that I probably wasn’t going to feel fulfilled until I figure out a way either to integrate all the various things I had “studied” or masqueraded, or to seriously commit to making time and space  for the creative pursuits I kept putting off in order “to make a living.” I left the group early to meet Boram feeling, honestly, like a real loser, a fake, a has-been, but also knowing that I could not run from this realization–that it had caught me almost mid-sentence in my own untruth.

Within the first two minutes of our meeting Boram asked me , “Can I ask you something? Why do you want to take drawing lessons? I think you can already draw.” Had she seen my paintings on the website? “No,” she answered, “It’s just a feeling I have about you.” Those words, that sentiment, uttered by Boram (a 22-year-old girl I had just met), was exactly the thing I had been missing in Korea. There was something so fine and so special about her, and it wasn’t the correctness of her supposition that moved me (afterall there was a part of me that felt “if this girl thinks I can draw, well than I can”), it was the confidence she displayed in her own intuition.

At the Hagwon she negotiated everything for me including the price and I walked away with 10 drawing lessons for $100 and felt really good about it. For the past 25 years, I have taken so many roads around what I been inclined towards. And here, again, I find myself in Korea focused, mostly, on darkness, afraid to trade it for what is right and what is light. Studying drawing here seems less like a decision made by default and more like a step down a path with heart. I suddenly feel an obligation to myself to honor the need in me to express myself in creative ways and to stop waiting for affirmation or permission from others to do so.

I am not sure I will see Boram again, but something tells me that I will. And even if I do not, I don’t think I will forget the moments I spent with her and the otherworldly affection I felt for her. If the right person told me she was an angel, I would believe them, but not because our encounter was planned by the heavens, but because she seemed to have materialized from my own image at precisely the moment I needed her. I couldn’t have invented her more perfectly. And only she knows, though I would be curious to discover, what significance it holds for her.

Solstice Poem

When the light around you lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside,
 
When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,
 
When one voice commands
Your whole heart
And it is raven dark,
 
Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world,
 
Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light,
 
Know that you are not alone
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night corner.
 
Invoke the learning
Of every suffering
You have suffered.
 
Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
 
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.
 
A new confidence will come alive
To urge you toward higher ground
Where your imagination
Will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!
          – John O’Donohue 
            To Bless the Space Between Us

Chick Peas are Popping in the Night Kitchen

I polled my friends on Facebook with this proposition  “is it possible that I am really just a negative person?” It wasn’t exactly fishing for compliments, but I was hoping they would say, “no” and “that doesn’t sound like you.”  Sally called me Pollyanna and Haleh said I was a quintessential optimist…and that got me thinking…maybe my  over-inflated expectations got me into trouble…The other day when Pilson came running over to me I was almost certain he was going to ask me to dinner. He, instead, asked me if I had an umbrella. And remember the apartment owner? He told me his wife was a traditional Korean painter and that she wanted to make a study with me, and I falsely assumed she wanted to paint me when what she wanted was an English lesson. Could it be somehow that my supositions are out of whack with this culture and that my optimism creates certain anticipated delights?

Today, I arrived at school expecting to teach 6 English classes, wondering why my classroom heat had not been turned on (again) and when I inquired, found out there was an all-school festival and all my classes had been cancelled. Maybe I should have been thankful, except teaching them would be much better than what was now expected of me, which was to sit in my 25 degree classroom all day in front of a space heater freezing, or, maybe even to attend the festival which seemed a little awkward considering they didn’t invite me or have the foresight to tell me that my classes had been cancelled. Did they wish for me to attend the festival? I had no idea. But it seemed awkward at best, and downright inconsiderate and rude at least.

Maybe I should have been pleased and grateful that I was able to travel to Gokseong (I left a note on my desk saying I had gone to the bank and came back later to trade it for “went home–am freezing”), afterall, I had been hoping for another wall Calender and the girl at the bank gave me one. But, I just really don’t know what to think. My co-teacher, Ms Kim, couldn’t have just forgotten to tell me. Maybe it is somehow related to the strange notion of saving face, not addressing a difficulty, hoping and pretending it doesn’t exist. Maybe it has something to do with Confucian hierarchy and the notion that all relationships are not equal and that strangers are non-entities who cannot be put into the system. Maybe I am like that stranger…I dont know. What I do know is that after I endured an afternoon of freezing at my desk, I came home to cook because cooking nourishes my soul.

But, today I broke the coffee press. I wasn’t even using it to make coffee, which is probably why it broke, because I was cooking and the green tea was steeping, and I didn’t really want that green tea anyway, which is probably why I forgot about it and when I swung around to add potatoes to the soup, my arm knocked the thing off the table…glass and green tea in my workspace…but I just kept working…saving face…chopping the thyme and rosemary from my kitchen plants recalling how they corrected my contemplative work at Pierce Street Coffee Works last summer (when I was looking forward to coming here)…because I was pulling each rosemary leaf off, one by one, until someone came over and showed me how it was done in one fell swoop…and then I had that memory in my kitchen with onion smells and green tea underfoot and I no longer felt so awkward and out of place…and now I am just wondering, not why Koreans fail to regard me, but how I’m going to make coffee in the morning.

I just want to be happy

Negativity

Is coffee good for the liver?

Teaching English in Italy

Yoga retreats Thailand

That about sums up my life right now.

getting ready for school

Today was the last day I will see the kids at Gokseong kindergarten until after February, so I tried to look cute for them. I’ve been cutting the back of my hair and letting the front go. There are so few opportunities to get “dressed up” especially now that I have to dress for the cold at all times of day. The warmest place I have found is the bus and, by luck, the heater is under the 3rd seat; the one I claimed from the beginning. I brought Sam (guy from New Zealand) to my school today and the students wanted to know if he was my husband. He, of course, because he is too young to know better, asked “how old do you think I am?”  Sam, they don’t think you are old….they think I am much younger than I am! Oh well, at least Pilson knows better. Our conversation today went like this (and if you are wondering why I am recording my conversations with Pilson, its to keep my attention on the little positive I encounter):

Pilson: Lollie

Me: Hi Pilson!

Pilson: Oh, Lollie, Lollie, wait (he says while running towards me). Do you have an umbrella?

Me: An umbrella, why yes Pilson, I do.

Pilson: Oh

Me: Were you going to give me an umbrella Pilson? Well, that is really nice of you. Have a good evening. Bye!

Pilson: Bye Lollie.

In the orange chair

Seriously, I sit in this chair a lot–reading, writing, watching movies, surfing the net and staring at the wall. The only way I can justify my sedentary lifestyle is by running, so now that my school has purchased a space heater for my long hours of deskwarming, I am not freezing all day and can bear the thought of running outside. So, again, I begin and I feel so much more myself. There are two things I know about myself, I require movement and meaningful, creative work.

Its not easy for someone who has  been blessed with the fruits of consistently being considered special to live in a culture where foreigners are an inferior species. No one here thinks I am special, at least not in a positive way. Two weeks ago I screamed in the administrative office at my school. I was so fed up with not being taken seriously that I screamed and when I told Carol about it and how compliant my administrators were as a result, but how awful I felt because no one acts like that here, really, they are are all so cheerful, she said “Laurie, no one acts like that, because people are not supposed to act like that.” I knew she was right and I don’t know what was lost by my behavior, but I knew that I no longer cared and I was going to have to act on a realization I made a long time ago about my time here. But that was going to require a great deal of effort on my part. I was going to have to, as I stated in an earlier post, no. 1 start laughing, and no. 2 concentrate on a creative project because I would never feel fulfilled in my job nor would I be happy to waste an unfortunate degree of time warming my desk as so many ex pats are required to do. Krista suggested that if the students are disinterested or unruly to simply sketch or write and if they interrupt me to say “Oh what, sorry I didn’t hear you; I was doing something important.” It’s an excellent reminder to apply myself in ways that hold meaning for me.

My Saturday session with Juyeon was really interesting. It was her birthday and because I brought her a small gift she felt compelled to gift something back, so she ran downstairs to buy some “hot bread” from a street vendor.  They are actually these deep fried fish-shaped breads with bean paste centers. I have been meaning to try them. Something she said also sparked an interesting conversation and I felt that for once I was able to tell a Korean something about their own country that they had not considered.

A few weeks ago she remarked that my wallet was old and worn and she thought I needed a new one. I tried to explain to her that I loved that wallet, that my mom had bought it for me years ago and now the leather was soft and beautiful to me and that a paperclip worked well in the place where the zipper was broken. She thought it absurd. So Saturday, it was my earrings she noticed, how they were old fashioned “not beautiful” like hers. Hers were big hoops with a man-made stone heart threaded through. I noticed them the last time I was there and  considered giving her one of the 8 pair I brought with me. Fortunately, I gave her a t-shirt instead.

I removed my earring and asked what it was that she did not like about it. She explained that it belonged to an older time and it was just the opportunity I needed to explain how having older things requires that you care for them. I picked up my leather backpack with the oil stain and explained that I have had it for over 20 years and I that I love it in the same way I love the wallet. I then drew a picture of the street in front of my school and the candy store beside and how each day the children visiting this store threw their wrappers on the ground and how I wanted to tell the principal that he should make an announcement asking for them not to do this and also how I want to arrange a field trip with all of the students to pick up the trash they have made. How the school was only 5 years old, but not well maintained at all and even how the stairs and halls in her own building were not clean. I also explained how the things in my apartment were imitation and would not last long and would need to be replaced much more quickly than if they were made from wood. She said she felt ashamed and I did not mean to shame her as she did not mean to shame me about having “old” things; its just a difference, a fundamental one, between us. I did not tell her that I have cultivated these notions over many many years however and as a result of having people in my life who have helped me to gain this understanding. This fundamental difference is, however, what makes Korea, ultimately, a very difficult place for me. That, and not being special…but I am learning what if feels like to be most people and it is a good lesson for me, but a difficult one.

installing “grass”

Okgwa Elementary

Yesterday when I arrived at school I thought they were putting down sod. It turned out to be very green and very plastic grass. Today they were dousing it with sand…? I can only equate the entire folly with the 1960s and the marketing ploy that got women to believe formula was superior to their own breast milk. What possible reason would a country that enjoys above average rainfall have for using plastic grass. Maybe I will investigate when I am finished being gobsmacked by it.

No need to pinch my cheeks cuz I’m freezing in my classroom.

Walking home is still the thing I look most forward to, because even if they heat my classroom, they turn the heat off at 4:00 and the temperature drops immediately. Today I watched The Botany of Desire (on the big screen–for you Jen!) wrapped in my down coat with my scarf around my face and gloves on.

 It seems I run in to Pilson every day now too. Pilson is the owner of the motorbike shop I see on my walk home. Today our conversation went like this:

P: Oh Lollie (he actually pronounces my name pretty well, but I like this sort of standard for it)  you leave in school now?

Me: What? Do I live in the school now?

P: no answer…just a hopeful glance that I can save him from the embarrassment of not being understood by me.

Me: (Thinking quickly…of course he isnt asking if I live in the school because he would be making a joke and that would not be possible…oh, I know what he means.) Yes, Pilson, I am leaving the school now.

Pilson: Okay see you around. (Must be an expression he learned somewhere along the way, but its not entirely off, because he will, indeed, see me again tomorrow or the next day, or both, around)

Me: Bye Pilson!

One of the many drawings I am working on for Kindergarten

I have been doing lots of yoga lately, sometimes practicing twice a day, for 2 reasons really. One, I have a hamstring issue that has been exasperated by the cold weather in my classroom and two, to help me with my anger towards my school and the people running it. One afternoon I spent a long time online reading about all the things others find difficult about this culture. They were pretty much the same things that I have difficulties with.

The next day was my most difficult school, Ib Myeon. At Ib Myeon there was a “contest” in the third period which I was asked to judge. The students were expected to recite a memorized story in English on stage in front of an audience. I sat next to the principal. The contest was excruciating to watch because the students were ill prepared and the principal’s disappointment was easy to detect. But I had not been asked to help the students prepare and I am not in agreement anyway about the educational soundness of making kids memorize long texts that they have little understanding of. It seems fascist to me and very much out of step with current educational practices. Nonetheless, it’s how things work around here. Following the contest the principal had only one question for me, “Was I wearing street shoes in school.” That is when I decided I was going to have to start laughing or I was going to be angry all the time. I rolled my eyes, but answered the question, “No these are not my street shoes.” I have come to expect the little respect I receive.

Walking home from school is usually the best part of my day. There is a Korean mechanic (I don’t really know what he is, I think he may own the motorbike shop) that has been smiling sweetly at me and as I walked home wondering “will I see my boyfriend today,” he appeared and introduced himself and once he exhausted his limited English, we said goodbye. And I thought sometimes its better to leave things as they are, to not explore beyond the surface, to just take pleasure in the surface delights. Because it’s always on my walks home anyway that I encounter,  for the briefest moments, the kindness of a stranger and the excitement of the students. When I returned home to my “jip” (house) and sat down to yogatoday.com, Sarah reminded us to turn the corners of our mouths upward like a Mona Lisa smile and that it takes only 16 muscles to smile where a frown uses 42. And this was a reminder to me that I was exerting too much energy being mad.

That evening I received a message from my co-teacher Kim Mi Young:

A famous Korean English teacher will visit our school.

she want to show something to our teachers.

when foreign teacher teach english, Korean teacher have to do something for her.

But almost Korean teacher will have some trouble.

if you teach with her, our teacher can know what we have to do for english class.

she will prepare everything for 6th grade third class.

and she will explain about her class.

off to school

We’re referred to as waygooks here in Korea. It’s not pejorative; it’s just the way it is, like lots of things that we ex pats come to accept. I realized just recently that I have become somewhat serious here and maybe it’s a result of all the fighting I have to do here to make my needs known. My friend from England, Bryan, says “no one’s got your back, chief,” and I have come too close to the truth of that statement this past week, when I realized that my greatest advocates were living 7,000 miles away in Toronto.

There has been no heat in my classroom and it is very cold. In fact, in Korea they don’t heat the schools whatsoever, only the individual classrooms and offices are heated…except mine. This past week I was told that the students would not be coming to the English classroom for English, but that I would be traveling to their individual classrooms, due to flu. We have 15 cases, and 5 more will force them to close the school. Because I had been dressing for my own classroom (I actually wore 2 hats, fingerless gloves, two scarves, two pair of pants under my skirt, and my down coat which was once white) I was actually peeling off layers as I taught in the other classrooms and freezing in my own. Finally, when it became unbearable after school to do the mandatory desk-warming in my own freezing cold classroom, I simply left. Leading to a reprimand from my co-teacher and an obligation to greet the principal upon my arrival. My response: “if you want me to stay in school, you must turn on the heat in my classroom.” By Friday, I had gotten some attention.

I have always considered myself somewhat hardy and certainly flexible, however I do not respond well in situations where I am not given a choice and where it seems that my needs are the last to be recognized. So, I have spent the past month fighting two battles where my health is ultimately at risk and it is oh so very tiresome to have to say “I do not wish to be subjected to noxious fumes in my living space, nor do I expect to catch the death of cold in a school where all the classrooms except the English classroom are heated.” I am beginning to understand what it means to be in the minority in a place where there is no one, besides me, advocating for my rights.