it's been awhile

It's been awhile since my last entry. I've mostly retreated into a world of computer games, music and daily monotony while counting down the weeks left on my contract (10 more now). It's amazing just how much has changed while I've been living in this hibernation state. A teacher has come and left on a short term contract, my boss' two children have returned home and another of the teachers has finished up her contract and left. The boss' son, who is in charge of recruitment for the school, held a meeting where we were invited to talk about our problems with the school. This was a stressful ordeal, but after some drama and a second meeting a lot of our concerns were addressed and we were able to successfully communicate about some of the issues that have been making things difficult for too long now. We've also gone through the rainy season (June-July) and the hottest month (July-August) now, which has been the muggiest weather I've ever experienced. It wouldn't be half as bad except that we have no air conditioner in our apartment and our building is between two other buildings that cut off most of the air flow that we might get by leaving our windows and door open. In fact, it's been so hot and humid here that my hair has actually gone curly. It's weird and everybody assumes that I went and got a perm (which guys actually do here) and I hope that as the weather dries out it goes back to normal.

We're happy that we've managed to survive through the worst of the weather and we just returned from a week of vacation in Japan. Our trip started on Saturday night, as we dropped Sophie off with Leta's tutoring student Jungja's family in Gwangju. We bussed up to Seoul that night and stayed overnight. We took a plane from the regional airport Gimpo to Tokyo's regional airport Haneda and went into the outskirts of Tokyo for dinner. Then we flew to Aomori airport and Leta's father picked us up and brought us back to Ajigasawa. We spent a night there and in the morning took a train up to Hakodate to see Leta's sister Anna, who had just given birth. We spent two days there and then went back to Ajigasawa for a night before we headed off again to the annual English camp that Leta's parents organize just outside Aomori City. We thought that we were going to have to fly out on Friday, but thankfully things worked out that we were able to stay until Saturday. We flew back on Saturday and were able to get back to Naju before midnight. It ate up at least a month's worth of savings, but the trip was worth it as we got to see both of our nieces. Leta's sister had her baby (Erin) and got out of the hospital just as we were arriving and her brother's child (Emma Grace) is more than a year old now, but it was our first time seeing her. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see Leta's sisters Sarah or Mary because they were down at the family's beach cottage in Takayama. Leta hadn't been back to her family home in Ajigasawa in almost as long as me, though, so it was a good chance to talk with her parents and see things. We got a chance to swim in the ocean while there, which was great since it's been about a year since I got a chance to swim even tho I got sunburnt badly with blistered nose and scaly back and the works. I also got a chance to meet the two short-term workers that are staying with the Elliots right now, which is always fun. One of them who I got to know the best was from Northern Ireland and had a lot of the same interests in music and games, so we ended up talking til really last most nights I was there. We argued about the morality of downloading music without paying for it and he explained to me the social dynamics of Catholic and Protestant cultural interaction in N. Ireland. The friendship was pretty much instantaneous and the lack of social interaction in my life kept the conversation going pretty steady the whole time we were there. Leta's brother Luke also brought the board game Axis and Allies, which provided a good chance for heated competition. We played it in most every spare minute while there. One of the nights that we were at the camp we went into the city for the famous annual festival called Nabuta. It turned out to be more a parade than a festival, with nonstop flute and drum music that repeated the same beat and tune on a six second loop for over two hours. It was exciting at first, but got really repetative about an hour into the thing and disturbing by the end. The floats in the parade were pretty amazing and all the people seemed to be having a good enough time, but after awhile it was all the same and standing in one spot got tiresome. It would have been fine except for these dirty sickly looking clowns dressed in drag that walked alongside the parade harassing children. Some of them wore skanky bras and fake bare butts on the outside of their costumes. Clowns are disturbing enough when they're clean and smiley, but these abominations walking along forceably kissing up to kids' faces were enough to infect the dreams of even the most fearless. So yeah, the parade wasn't that great, but it was definitely worth seeing once. I understood why Leta's dad waited in the car and napped rather than go see it.

Anyways, more has happened since my last entry, like finding out that our insurance had been canceled after traveling for hours to see the doctor and other such hilarity, but nothing much worth going into detail over. I'm excited about the day as I'm going to get to meet two new teachers that have just arrived and start work today. It's going to mean a change around here, which I can only hope will be for the better. I will end with talking about two of the students that I tutor right now and a couple of the stories that they told me before I went on break. One is a second grade middle school student (8th grade) named John who as far as I could tell spent all his time studying. Lately, though, he's opened up to me more and revealed some of his hidden rebelliousness. He told me about how he was deathly shy growing up and that throughout most of elementary school he would shed tears whenever the teacher would call on him in class, but that in middle school he has learned to fight and use bad words. He also revealed to me very cautiously that he has been to the PCbang (internet cafe) a total of ten times in his life, which he truly believes that his mother would disown him and kick him out of the house if she knew. His parents believe that computer games infect your mind and coerce your will into abandoning all interest in studying. He told me that the hardest part about concealing trips to the PCbang is that the smoke-saturated atmosphere makes your shirt smell. He recalled that the first time his mother had smelled the smoke on his shirt, she had asked him where he'd been and confronted him about going to the PCbang, but that he'd managed to explain it away as some strangers smoking in the elevator. It was funny how closely his stories resembled somebody on the other side of the ocean trying to cover up going to the bar. My other tutoring student is a man named Mr. Jin who teaches gym at an elementary school in Naju. He told me about how he had spent several years teaching on the islands near Mokpo, traveling for hours every day by car and boat to get to work. He said that the big school had had 75 students, but the smaller one had only 6. He said that this job made him sad because more than half of the students that he taught were very poor and lived with their grandparents without parents. He went on to explain that these were not orphans exactly, but that they were the children of divorced parents that had moved away to the cities and started new families. Apparently, it is very common here when two people with children divorce that neither parent takes the children because those children would have no established role within the new family. They would be the oldest, but they would not share the blood of both parents and so they would be of a lower status than the true children and apparently such a contradiction is important enough that parents actually abandon their kids over it. It's hard to believe that this type of attitude can exist without breeding crime and sociopathy.

It's time to go meet the new teachers now, though. I look forward to this last stretch of the contract more than I thought I was going to, as more SSUers are coming to teach in Korea and these new teachers come to our school. Here's hoping that everything changes for the better.