you can bowl in naju!

I haven’t written much of an entry about my life lately, mostly because I haven’t been inspired about my life here. In fact, Leta and I have been discussing the idea of leaving before our contract was finished possibly as early as late May. This is mostly because for awhile the weeks seemed only to get longer and longer and the weekends more and more pointless and dissatisfying. Life became boring and I became increasingly anxious about the idea that we’re only just approaching the halfway point in the contract. So at some point last week, my boss asked me to stay after work because she had something to talk to me about. She told me that two of my coworkers had made it known to her that we were considering leaving before our contract was up. Immediately the fighter pilots scrambled in my brain as I prepared myself for a difficult conversation. Thankfully, it was by far the most professional and productive conversations I’ve ever had with my boss. She told me that they had said I was frustrated with her always yelling and being angry and the kids being hard to control. She explained that this was part of Korean style of teaching and that fear of her wrath was the way that Korean kids were kept in line in the classroom; that this was simply how the trade worked here. I told her that it was true that the yelling has made me nervous and that the job is overwhelming at times because I don’t know how to interpret her anger. She also explained that the academy was not her business, but the church members’, and that the effect of us leaving at any time before replacement teachers could be found would be disastrous for the academy. I told her that there were many personal factors behind the consideration to leave, but that we had by no means decided that we wanted to leave yet. I also assured her that we had never considered the option of walking away from the job without giving necessary notice. The terms that we had come to were that, if we decided to leave before our contract was up, we could work together with our boss in an amicable arrangement that accommodated everybody’s interests. Sweet.

At this point and especially afterwards, things seemed to start getting better. At least, my perception of my life seemed to change for the better. My boss started being noticeably more reassuring towards me. I started tutoring her two nights a week at 9-10pm and we’ve been working on her subject/object pronouns and possessive adjectives; I, mine, my kinda stuff. She decided she likes my “style” and has started coming into classes and saying things like “you are good teacher.” More importantly, she’s (mostly) stopped swooping into the room on huge tirades that she leaves before I get any explanation of what transpired. So that’s cool. One day as I randomly decided to take out the food garbage before my shower, I ran into a foreigner who happened to be walking past at the exact same moment. I’ve only ever accidentally met another foreigner in Naju twice before this incident and never so close to home. I approached him and he introduced himself as Scott Williams from New Hampshire. He is one of seven new foreign teachers to move to Naju working for Dongshin University as part of a new program teaching English. He looked like he was in his late 30s-early 40s and said he used to work for some branch of the Canadian government and was stationed in Prague. He also said that none of these seven new teachers knew anybody else around or anything about the area and I gave him my contact information. So, Naju now has almost twice as many foreigners and I have a possible connection to the university. I started realizing that, although this job/life makes me feel trapped at times, it’s not all that different from most other circumstances that I will likely find myself in, except that it pays well enough that the money is there to escape it. So, I started hoping again that the weekends might possibly hold new and exciting opportunities.

Yesterday we went into Gwangju to celebrate one of the other teacher’s birthdays. I wasn’t necessarily expecting an exciting time, as Gwangju seems more or less tapped for ‘new things to do’ in the same old places. We were meeting with a friend from the city and going for dinner at TGIFridays. I was a little worried that things would be tense between us, as I had openly confronted the two teachers who ratted us out to the boss about not coming to me first about telling the boss about our plans. Thankfully, things were just fine. As we waited for the friend outside the restaurant, this guy in his early 40s also sitting there holding a book introduced himself. He told me my eyes were beautiful and that I looked the same as Tom Cruise. He told me he loved Jesus forever and that he also loved the author of this book he was holding. It was one of those sketchy conversations that you only keep going with because you don’t want the person to try to talk to any of your friends. After some small talk and a few more unreciprocated comments about my beauty, the friend arrived and we went inside. The friend had come with Korean friend and we were introduced. The guy, whose business card I just remembered was in my shirt pocket, is a mechanical engineer for Samsung named Hee Jong Park. He told us he was most recently working in Dubai in conjunction with a Belgian and Arab company to build the largest tower in the world, which he assured us would be one kilometer tall. He quizzed us about who had made the two existing tallest structures in the world, the twin towers in Kuala Lumpur and some tower in Taiwan, and looked dramatically distressed when we didn’t know that it was Samsung. The guy would turn out to be a really dramatic guy and it was never clear what was intended as humor and what could be written off as quirkiness. He asked us whether we knew how to get an elephant into a fridge in only three steps and when we guessed immediately, he was shocked and insisted we must have ‘heard that one before.’ So the menus came and he immediately told us that the Korean menus sported all sorts of promotional offers that the English menus did not. We all ordered and when his food came, he let out a distressing groan of disapproval. He opened the menu, which had pictures of every meal, pointed at his picture and dramatically conveyed his disappointment to the waitress. When she left, he explained that his dish didn’t look ANYTHING like the picture and he was appalled and unhappy. Now, I wondered how it was that anyone would expect their food to look like it did in the picture, but when we looked at the menu it appeared that his plate looked almost exactly like the picture in the menu. The only difference was that there were carrots and string beans as the vegetable instead of broccoli. He complained again when the waitress returned and eventually the manager came out to hear his complaints. The friend he had come with insisted that his plate looked exactly like the menu and he was being a big baby. At this point, though, they started to offer us free drinks, free extra bread and completely overlooked the fact that we were thoroughly abusing the all-you-can-eat salad bar. We got free coffee/tea after the meal and they sent us home with a big oatmeal roll each on our way out.

So during the three hours that we ended up staying at the restaurant talking, I got into a discussion with the Korean whose nickname he said was Hee-boy. We laughed and he wanted to know whether it was bad funny or good funny. We told him it sounded like he was son of He-Man and that it was a cool nickname. Anyways Heeboy wanted to know how I’d come to Korea, so I explained the whole escape from Calgary situation. He was surprised to hear that the job market in Canada as a whole wasn’t all that good. He asked about my major and what I wanted to do with my life and after some talk about how I didn’t know, I mentioned NGOs. He got really excited about this and explained that he had done some work organizing university students in conjunction with NGOs to educate people about tsunami awareness and community preparation after the disaster several years back. I got the familiar feeling of the conversation inevitably tilting towards socioeconomics. I started explaining that I didn’t know what kind of NGO work I would consider getting into, but that I thought maybe I would eventually like to get a job with the UN. He got really excited about this, too. He asked me if I knew the three stages of revolution. I told him to enlighten me and he told me that, 1) people start connecting internationally, 2) people start investing internationally, and 3) people start moving and living internationally. I think he meant globalization rather than revolution, but it was enough food for thought to stoke my mind and to explain “my philosophy” (as he later called it). I felt that people connecting internationally was an important step that had not fully happened, or perhaps happened at all, before international investment began to occur.

I felt that in the framework of this 3-step ‘revolution’, the class structure became extremely important. The rich, or those people referred to by the Communists as ‘the bourgeoisie’, had been connecting and investing internationally to some extent since long before there was any international connection to speak of between the average worker. In order for this ‘revolution’ to occur in a truly meaningful and productive way, workers and the average person needed to connect internationally and recognize common interests. I realize that this is the same sort of language that fueled International Communism, but the message itself wasn’t the evil in that situation it was the organization exploiting it. I talked about how workers from Korea, China, America and all around the world had more in common with one another than they did with the rich from their own cities and their neighbors on the other side of the train tracks. This becomes even more true as the investment market globalizes and investors’ economic interests spread further and further from home. The investing classes have already realized this commonality and that is what facilitates international investment and trade, but workers and the common people by and large do not recognize this commonality of interests. There is in general a pervasive sense of xenophobia between people of different nationalities. Educating people to recognize the interests that they share with people from other nationalities and areas of the world is the next important step in globalization. In some ways it seems unrealistic, but it is an essential development which will prevent wars and combat economic exploitation. Increasing access to open networks of communication (the internet, etc.) and the creation of public communities of information such as Wikipedia are the types of developments that set the basis for international cooperation at the public level. We ended this conversation with him commenting about wanting to become more of a ‘world citizen’ and talking about the concept of the ‘digital nomad’ (which, by digital I think he meant modern) and of living and working outside national boundaries without feeling the pull back towards some ‘true home’. We realized it had gotten dark outside and everyone sort of collectively decided it was time to leave.

We all walked towards the subway terminal and Heeboy explained to us why mechanical engineers were needed at construction sites: for VHAC. He looked dramatically distressed when we couldn’t guess that this stood for Ventilation, Heating and Air Conditioning. We got talking about salaries and after some whispers and looks of shock we determined he only made 1.5x as much as we did. He’s also a mechanical engineer who works 6 days a week, usually at least 12 hours every day from 6am until after dark. He expressed that we were truly lucky and made a lot of whispered comments about how compared to most Koreans we had it really good. He actually wouldn’t let up about this until I had assured him that I truly understood him. At this point he parted ways with us and we all told him genuinely that it had been nice to meet him. We took a subway downtown to get some coffee and go to some board game place, but as we suspected it had closed down. They went shopping for a bit and I went to see if anybody I knew was at the bar. There wasn’t, so after standing around at a few different places wondering what to do we headed back to Naju.

The birthday teacher had wanted from the beginning to find somewhere to bowl, but nobody we had met along the way knew of anywhere to do so. I had known there was a place to bowl in Naju for a long time, but nobody ever expressed any interest in going there with me so we’d never checked it out. Sure enough, even as we rolled into Naju at 11:30 at night the place was open for business. As we walked in, we all realized how idiotic we had been not to have explored this place before. The place had eighteen lanes, shoes that fit us and balls that fit our hand and finger size (tho my thumb is bruised and swollen today). It was also no-smoking and didn’t serve alcohol, so you didn’t see the normal crowd of seedy old men around as you do anywhere else around town that boasts its “Hof & Soju”. Everyone had a great time, nobody fought and we all agreed that we should make bowling something of a weekly event. Bottom line, we found something fun to do in Naju besides go to a karaoke room or go out to eat. I guess it isn’t that the situation has suddenly changed for the better, but the combination of a few minor turns for the better and the more positive attitude that this has inspired has got me feeling okay about our life here. Knowing that there would be a possibility of negotiating our way out of the contract early with the understanding of our boss helps us feel less trapped and will make life easier to deal with. Now I need to go, because the boss found out about my hurt back and insisted I meet with her brother-in-law today because he’s some sort of physiotherapist or something. This post is long enough anyways.