6-a-1, 'alf dozen of an udder

it's a week into march which means i now have over six months under my 'i-am-living-in-korea' belt. which i can hardly believe. when i think back on what i've done it certainly seems like it would fill a 6-month-sized container, yet time, an infamously unreliable unit, feels to have gone by a maddening speeds. i think this six month reflection type post is due as some sort of obligation to the people back home to validate my time spent over here, but i'm having a really hard time wrapping everything up into some kind of 'lessons learned' type summary. the fact is that my thoughts aren't really bending backward into time, they're marching forward. but i'll give it the ole college what for!

i guess the normal thing to do is comment on how much i've changed as a person. the problem with this is i'm not sure i have. my personality, which i assumed would be a crutch coming into this thing, is surprisingly well suited to adjusting to a new environment. on the job, i seem to project a kind, open personality that allows me to be popular with both faculty and students. i give all credit to my parents as i'm simply doing my best to be polite and respectful, and i guess that just comes off as having a good personality. i'm not the most outgoing person, but honestly, you don't really have to be. you're thrust into a situation where people are naturally trying to find you. and when 99% of the people are asian, the 1% is pretty easy to spot. foreigners naturally accept other foreigners, and koreans find you an interesting novelty. its an easy social system even for someone as awkward as i am. it doesn't hurt to have a strong stomach for alcohol, too - it ingratiates you to both foreigner and korean alike. alternatively, i think its more important to be comfortable in your own skin. being able to spend time with yourself being crammed into tiny living quarters. allowing yourself the freedom of just wandering about and diving into any old place and grabbing a drink by yourself. without this i'd think you would need a constant network of support or you'd simply fall off the deep end. which begs the question, am i homesick? well, i don't want to disappoint or devalue any family and friends back home, but not really! maybe its another personality trait, but i don't feel the usual pangs of feeling left behind, which i credit as being the real pain of homesickness. maybe if starr continues to steal all my friends this will be more of an issue...it's not that i don't miss people (or places for that matter), i just have a pretty simple belief that the bonds most missed are also the strongest. except for maybe grammars! which i'm not allowed to go to anyways via friendship restrictions. shucks!

i don't even really want to talk about the job. i sort of did already in a previous post and i don't have much more to add to it. i will add a little bureaucratic addendum though that's newsworthy. gone are my last three co-teachers - goodbye miss yun! goodbye ji-won! goodbye minjin! - and in their place are three entirely new ones. like relationships can be so easily switched out like that, korea...is there nothing to be said about building rapport? is there no championing voice for classroom chemistry? one is a teacher who previously taught 6th grade homeroom at kwancheon, so i know her at least. another is a transfer from another school where she also taught homeroom, and the last is a contract teacher whose previous experience was reading grammar from an SAT prep book for high school boys (the description sounds boring enough, can't imagine what the actual class was like). which is to say, none of them have experience teaching elementary level english. so at 6 months in korea i find myself having a level of seniority among my peers that i never imagined possible, being looked to for advice, having to take on a disciplinary role that i took for granted not having to do before. having just done about 7 classes, i can tell there is going to be what i'll refer to as a 'growing period' where we figure out just what the hell is going on in the classroom. currently its a little bit too much like anarchy to really last. still, all three new co-teachers are incredibly friendly, as seems to be the norm here, and their english is in good working order so im confident we can work it out.

i'm actually pretty excited to get back into the school year. deskwarming for the past 2 months did little more than kill my savings. i could feel myself, and others around me, dipping into what i could only describe as a spiritual malaise. we all knew we were dissatisfied but at what? each other? korea? i think it was just the ridiculous amount of free time we had. it came too easy. with so little in the way of cost. we were, in fact, getting paid for nothing. but it didn't feel good. the classroom, with all the hellish little kids screaming their heads off and refusing to pay attention, feels good. i can't explain it but it's true. i'm sure in a week i'll be praying and begging for more deskwarming, but for now im optimistic about the new school year.

which brings me back to my original sentiment - that my thoughts are more inclined toward the future these days rather than the past. and the reasons pretty simple: if the first 6 months seemed to pass by so quickly, then it seems logical that the next 6 months might do just the same. which leaves me with the big question of "what next?" what next, my dear readership? options are boundless. (grad school for web design? montreal for french pastry school? west coast employment? working visas in australasia? renew my contract in korea? cincinnati...) how does one transition from severe change to something else that isn't equally so? how do you simply "get on" with you life having challenged its borders? these are just some of the sub-set of questions i'm sorting through. and who knows, maybe in 6 months the answers will seem obvious. maybe i'll finally start feeling those pangs of "missing out." maybe i'll be ready for a little bit of normalcy. the answer then will be easy. but right now, 6 months isn't looking easy. its looking like that abyss that looks back at you. and it has those dark empty eyes that some korean girls have. like there's either nothing behind them or they just go on forever. either way its terrifying and i have a hard time looking at them...