Art

In addition to wasting time on the Interent and weekend journeys into Seoul and the rare drunken night with coworkers, I've been trying to get back into my former creative self. It's been going slower than I'd like, but it's happening, so that's relatively pleasing.

I'm working on a comic book (I came up with the concept for the series and the characters and wrote and finished issue 1 inside a month, and still haven't finished issue 2 since I started on it in August), the writing of which has been suffering and ignored and put off because of my usual winter creative drought (I'm trying, but it's hard), but since Bryan delayed so much on the character drawings, I've decided to try sketching them on my own. This has led to a sort of rediscovery of my love of drawing, and I've been sketching and even drawing in fountain pen in my sketchbook on my breaks from work. The kids are all very impressed by my drawings and many demanded photocopies since I wouldn't give up the originals. Makes me feel good. But I feel especially good that I'm starting to figure out some good approaches to drawing my comic characters, and if Bryan persists in being too busy with other things to work on the comic, I may eventually be able to draw it all myself.

To this end (and also because I wanted 'em), I ended up in Hongdae yesterday, the area around Hongik University, which is full of art shops. I bought myself a mannakin and a wooden hand for reference purposes. Here they are saying hello:


Hopefully they'll be useful. Now if only the next 8 to 12 weeks would pass so I could get my Manga Studio for Dummies book...

Being a minority

If nothing else, being a white foreigner in Korea is teaching me a lot about discrimination and racism. I've been white all my life, but I've only been white in western countries, which is very different from being white here. Here you stand out a lot, and sometimes that can be a bad thing.

Aside from the country's own rules (including restrictions on banking for foreigners) and shops overcharging us (example: in Insadong I asked the price of an instrument, the guy asked his boss, who told him, in Korean, 80,000 won, and the guy turned back to me and said, "100,000."), there have been occasional examples of extreme, pure, individual straight-out racism, which I will now recount.

Emart has started to really annoy me. I'd been grudgingly accepting the little things, like cashiers failing to give me the sale price of some items or charging me the extra 50 won for a plastic bag after I said "anyo" ("no") to the bag question and then not giving me the plastic bag (presumably pocketing that extra five cents and feeling smug about putting one over on the waeguk... I tried pointing this out with a combination of English and my non-existent Korean to one cashier who tried it on me, who got upset and acted angry and frustrated, so I gave up). But on my last excursion it was overt racism, and that got to me somewhat..

Emart, like many other grocers, regularly has staff manning stands giving out samples of various foods. The staff are uniformly polite, using the higher form of politeness ("ni-da" endings rather than "yo") and bowing to the customers who ignore them. I've always been polite to these people, giving them a smile, an "anyang ha-seh-yo" when I approach and a "kam sahm ni da" when I leave (that means "thank you"), so I guess I'm not really acclimatised to the standard way of shopping, but that's not the point. I'd sampled a few things, but I was obviously not just there to nick free food as I was carrying a basket full of groceries.

In the seafood area, a woman was manning a stand offering small pieces of sashimi, which is quite possibly my favourite thing in the world. She was bowing and smiling at every Korean who walked up, picked up a toothpick, stabbed a piece of fish or five and ate it and walked away. There was plenty of fish left there as I approached. I gave her a smile and a greeting and reached for a toothpick, and she gave me the dirtiest look I'd ever seen from a grocery store employee, leaned over, covering the fish with her arms and hands, and shouted, "No!" at me.

I was rather surprised.

Looking back, there she was happily serving more Koreans their sashimi samples.

...

Of course, it's not all bad here, and many Koreans are very nice. Even in the Emart, which seems to be worse than other shops, I've met a couple of employees who were extremely friendly, smiling surprisedly when they see me buying kimchi, and one who even tried to talk my ear off about Canada when I got a bag of ginseng from her.

An example of Korean niceness:

I have a bike, a hand me down from Jen, which has not seen any use at all so far because it suffers from a myriad of problems, the worst of which being that both tires cannot be inflated - the valves don't close. It having been too cold to do any biking anyway and me being timid about the whole language barrier thing, I hadn't done anything about it, until today, when I decided I shouldn't be spending so much time indoors.

So I walked my bike on its floppy tires down to a bike shop, where I saw, as I was approaching, the shopkeeper leaving the place and locking the door. I glanced at my watch, which told me it was 4:45, a very unusual time for a shop to close. So I walked around a bit hoping that by the time I came back he might have returned. After meeting one of my students (one of my bad students) leaving a store, I came back and saw the shopkeeper with a heat fan set three inches from his body and watching television.

I went in and asked him if he spoke English, which got me a laugh and a "No English", so I found the words for "to repair" in my phrasebook ("suri haeyo"), which he seemed to understand. He got up, motioned for me to bring the bike over, I pointed to the tires, and he inflated them, discovering for himself that the valves leaked. So he pulled them out, fiddled with them, replaced something, and fixed them up, on both tires, then waved me away as he closed the door. Didn't even give me a chance to ask how much. I was ready and willing to pay, but he wasn't interested.

That was nice.

A story from my "good" class

One of my classes is an absolute joy to teach. The kids are attentive but not boring, they care a lot, they're respectful and playful, and they're really smart. Sally, one of those kids, is an absolute doll... she listens, always participates, writes down EVERYTHING, is a keen learner...

We have one exercise where they have to verbally create sentences using templates. On Friday, one of them was, "I want to know everything about... because..."

Her example was, "I want to know everything about USA because I want to go to USA." She had written it down, too.

I asked her, "Why do you want to go to the USA?" Her answer: "Because I want to learn English."

I told her, jokingly, "Ah, you should go to Canada. We speak much better English over there, and it's so much nicer!"

I kept teaching, and on my next pass by her desk I happened to look down at her book. She had written in "Canada" beside "USA" in her sentence.

For some reason, that makes me feel good. Respected, perhaps.

Kids aren't all bad.

I have a camera!

There seems to be something about Western body hair that fascinates Koreans. In addition to my students' inability to keep from touching my arm hair when I'm not looking, as I was purchasing a camera at Yongsan today, the effeminate clerk assisting me demonstrated the detail of which my particular model is capable by taking close-up photos of the hair on my hands and face.

Afterward I went to Itaewon, the foreigner/club/fashion district, to set up the two-plus-month-long process of ordering a book (Manga Studio for Dummies, which I should have just asked my parents to ship over before they sent me stuff), and walked around the fashion markets for a while, accosted on all sides by pushy tailors. I have been hoping to get a replica made of the Doctor's suit, so I allowed one to pull me into his store, and with his broken English he talked endlessly, refusing to let me leave. He insisted I tell all my friends about his store, and wouldn't allow me to go without giving him my name and phone number. Looking back, it was probably so that he'd remember me and give me the same price offered in case I returned, but at the time I was confused and mildly frightened at his persistence, so I scribbled my name illegibly, mumbled that I had to go, and scarpered while he was puzzling over the letters.

Strangely, one of the pushy suit-sellers I passed by chose to accost me (me specifically, nobody else) in French. So I responded with a "Non, merci," which led him to draw me into conversation, asking where I was from. I don't think he expected an answer; he was probably just trying to have some fun by confusing the foreigners. I haven't met any Koreans who speak French, and nobody at all with a reason to.

One thing that Korean merchants can't seem to understand is this:
You cannot haggle over hat size.

7 1/4 is not an acceptable replacement for 7 5/8. I cannot adjust the size of my head to suit their stock. Price is negotiable. Head size is fixed. But they don't seem to understand that, and the notebook in which I write and draw things that I can't say in Korean has pages filled with Korean merchant-written alternative suggestions to my large-print, circled "7 5/8". I oblige them by putting their tiny hats on top of my crown, and they always seem genuinely astonished that they won't fit. I shall continue to look when the opportunity arises, however... surely there is one haberdasher in Seoul who understands the needs of "big-size" customers.

Meanwhile, I have a camera! Hooray! Pictures of my apartment come now.

Here is the Great Hall and kitchen.


Below we have the living room. Note the convenient proximity to the bedroom.


And here we have my office, elaborately furnished and decorated, of course.


And here's the view: Gangseo-gu at night.


That's all I've got for now. Good night!

Flower Handsome Boy

For the last two weeks, three of the girls in what was once my quieter middle-school class have not been able to look at me without breaking into a fit of giggles. My assumption was that one of the three has developed a crush on Teacher, which I believe has been confirmed today, when one of my giggly students said, to the extreme embarrassment of her friend, "teacher, someone say you.. um.. flower handsome boy."

Now, of course, handsome is nice, but flower boy? Are they calling me hot, or calling me gay? I asked if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and the class was generally unanimous with "good thing", though the boys had some broken-English qualifiers to add. But who can believe students?

So I looked it up when I got home, and the only mention I find online Korean-wise of "flower boy" is in reference to Super Junior, one of those manufactured boy-bands that the girls are crazy for whose name I always see my students writing on the back of their test papers with hearts all over them. Apparently the members of Super Junior are "flower boys" and the major item of controversy about them is which one is handsomest.

So my assumption is that it means good-looking in the way that makes twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls swoon.

I'm sure they mean it as a good thing, but it's not exactly the look I'm going for.

I'm not sure how to close this. Just another bizarre occurrence in the foreigner's life.

I just walked home from work through the thickest fog I've ever encountered outside of a rural highway at three in the morning. I literally could not see the building across the street from me. Car headlights suddenly appeared seemingly from nowhere twenty metres away. Only a few seconds later could you see the rest of them. It was like going to Laser Quest when the fog machine off switch is broken. And yet the crazy Korean drivers continued along at speed, occasional delivery scooters zooming at you from the shadows, half-invisible and ready to deal accidental death. There is absolutely zero visibility from my fourteenth-floor window.

What a country.

Saxophone!

Yesterday, I went to the Nagwon Instruments Arcade with Nick (coworker) and Matthew (friend from training who lives on the opposite side of Seoul). Matthew and I had planned to go there for a while now, since my chops were itching and his fingers curling and we needed instruments. Alas, he hasn't the money for his piano until two paydays from now, but it's worth taking a look anyway, so off we went.

The instruments arcade is massive. Tiny shops crowded with all manner of musical devices. It is honestly a musician's Mecca. Yes, that's right, a musician in Seoul will invariably turn toward Nagwoon at specific times of the day and offer prayers. We spent far too much time looking around and trying things out. Nick bought a guitar tuner, and Matthew found an incredible range of prices for the digital pianos he'd been looking for. I tried several saxes, trying to find something reasonable below 800,000 won ($835ish). I was looking for a tenor because my chops are very out of shape, I don't own a tenor, and I wanted something that would give my mouth a challenge - it's easier to blow on the smaller instruments, as my experiments on the sopranos proved.

There were a couple I found for 600,000, but they weren't fantastic. So we were heading out to Insadong for a little exploration, and we talked about instruments, when a random fellow foreigner overheard us and approached.

"Excuse me," he said, "did I hear you say you were looking for a saxophone? 'cause I've got one I've been looking to sell."

It turns out that this guy had bought an alto sax in Nagwon a couple of months ago, spent a lot of time trying out all the instruments he could find, bought a fantastic mouthpiece and a great case which doubles as a backpack and two boxes of reeds and cork grease, and played it plenty - until he realized that he really, really missed the trumpet. But he couldn't find anyone to buy his sax, because there's not a huge foreigner demand for wind instruments, and no Korean stores need to buy used items (or if they do, it's not easy to communicate in Korean, and they don't generally give good deals to waigooks).

I tried out his horn (he'd brought it with him), and it had a very nice sound and a lovely mouthpiece. He was hoping to let it go for half what he paid, and I coincidentally had withdrawn 400,000 won before we left on the off chance I might want to buy something - so I pulled out that wad and now I have an instrument!

The four of us exchanged numbers; turns out this fellow lives near Incheon, which is actually fairly close to Gangseo-gu, and knows of a lot of jazz clubs in Seoul.

Hooray!

I've been playing for much of the time since I got up, and it's been wonderful. I'm a musician again. I just need to find myself some music...

But now, time to get some work done. The teenage girls are screaming outside the SBS building, as they have been doing since the morning, the sky is horribly dark and grey, and it's a balmy five degrees outside and eighteen in my apartment, and I'm going to see if they've got any reasonably-priced tangerines at Homever. I've got a saxophone, I'm drawing again, and feeling my way through my writing projects. John (my head instructor and a great guy, who is a fellow movie/comic/zombie nerd) has promised to talk to the hap ki do place he knows of three subway stops away from here. My head has stopped hurting from the beer and the hard liquor that had a dead baby cobra in the bottle. Things are looking good.

If only I didn't have report cards to finish tonight.

Tears and violence

I made a kid cry today!

I'm a bit proud of that. Because he very much deserved it.

In my youngest class, I've several students who stand out in some way - either they're very good, or very bad, or very annoying, or outspoken, or whatever. Two of my more notable students were involved in this incident: Peter, a child who I consider my absolute worst student since he rarely does his homework and never pays attention in class, and Jack, who participates and talks and is pleasant to have but isn't the most gifted of my kids.

During the break, Jack was goofing around near Peter's desk, and he bumped into it, knocking down Peter's pencil case and scattering the dozens of tiny origami stars which were located therein. Peter saw this and lost it. He stalked after Jack menacingly, which could have been construed as playful if you happened not to look at his wrath-filled eyes. Jack was backing off, not fully realizing how enraged Peter was, and I gave a warning, "Peter, don't touch Jack!" But I was ignored, and Peter threw an angry punch at the unsuspecting child.

Immediately I rose up in righteous vengeance like Jehovah in the good old days, seized Peter's arm, and bellowed, "PETER. DOWNSTAIRS. NOW." And dragged him from the room. I stopped him near the stairwell, and saw that he - the aggressor - was crying. I guess he hadn't expected consequences for that kind of ridiculous behaviour. He and Jack were sent downstairs and stayed there talking to the administrators for a good half-hour while the rest of my class was eerily quiet until their return. Never before had I had as easy a time with that group of children as after I chewed Peter out for hitting Jack. I put the fear of Teacher into them.

Let's see if they stay good.


It occurs to me sometimes that my job, especially with the younger classes, is not so much teaching the kids as it is getting through the material as best I can while maintaining as much control as possible in the classroom. In the better classes I feel like they actually learn, but with the rowdier ones and the one wherein most of them do their best to make themselves invisible and inaudible, my job is more just getting on with everything within the prescribed amount of time while making sure some of the kids understand what's been happening.

Of course, I mainly feel that way when I have to deal with behaviour problems.