The bigger picture.

Earlier today, a post went up over on Tumblr, which is rather complex and in many respects, an opinion I personally consider to be very valid. But I took some time, after my initial response, to gather my thoughts on the subject.

First and foremost, let me just say that I'm not here to debate the merits of native English speaking privilege. I think anyone who's put any genuine thought into the subject understands what being born into English grants you in this world, and what it, conversely, costs those, like our students, who are not born into it, but for absolutely no good reason I'm able to see are expected to learn it. Those are facts, not opinions, as far as I'm concerned. And like I've always told my students, I'm damn lucky I was born into English, because there is no way in fuck I could ever learn it.

I think it's also important to note my particular perspective on things at this point. Essentially, I am bailing out of this English baloney. You're never going to catch me saying that my job for the past five years has been pointless, or not "real". I don't think learning a foreign language is ever pointless -- it opens you up to considering and reconsidering things that you've always felt to be "natural", it makes you question communication and community, society and culture. It makes you question language. I think it's one of the most valuable things a person can do in their lifetime -- and I say that as a currently very invested second language learner, as well as a teacher, as well as a person who has devoted a lot to language.

However, I don't really see the point of that language being English. Other than the obvious reasons English is championed as the "global" language, as a privileged language, as a language of status, which I trust my readers all to understand enough about for me not to have to go into in detail right now (here's a bit more of my thinking about it, though).

What would I, if I were king of the world, ultimately like to see happen to English education in Korea? I would like to see it diminish, almost completely. Frankly, I would like to see it turn into an elective course open to those students who, for whatever reason, have a genuine interest in or need for English -- those who have dreams to live or travel abroad, or become diplomats, translators, or those who want to read English novels in English -- those who just find the language to be beautiful, or interesting. I would like English to become a choice. I would like to not have to look into the faces of my students when they ask me why the have to speak English in Korea and not have an answer for them, because I would like for every student who is in the room to want to be there.

That's the dream. But it's not reality.

The reality is that these kids need English to survive. Not real English, mind you, but test passing English. Job interview English. Resume writing English, to be reviewed by people who probably don't speak that much English. They need college entrance English, job security English.

Which is why I personally find the removal of the native English teachers from the public schools to be a band aid on the back ass end of the problem.

Make no mistake about it -- the removal of our positions from public schools is about budgets. It's about finally taking a hell of a lot of wasted money out of poorly utilized investments, and funneling it back into other areas of need. Which I would fully support, if it weren't for the only real good we are doing here to begin with.

This year, I'm working with a special group of about twenty students after school twice a week. These boys have dreams, interests and passions like the ones I described above. They want English -- they want to attend foreign and international high schools, they find speaking in another language to be fascinating and a lot of fun. They want international jobs, to travel, to interact with the world on a global scale. They want real English.

For two hours a week, we sit in the classroom and pore over English articles, have English discussions, and work on the boys' own written pieces in English. I'm not talking English writing exam essays -- I mean real written pieces in English, that communicate something that the boys have to say. They're putting to good use not only my native knowledge of the language, but also my training in writing and editing and my background in journalism.

The point of the class, from my own perspective, is to get these kids to see English as more than just an exam or a score -- as a communication tool, which is all a language ever should be.

And that is the dream of the native speaking English teacher in a Korean school. That's what we've heard touted at so many seminars and orientations and district meetings as our job and our responsibility.

But then the kids are shoehorned into our classes, without knowing so much as the alphabet or, frankly, giving even the slightest shit (and really, why should they?). And the kids are taken out of our classes at random to study the test material for their English exams in Korean.

You can't debate the merits of having a native speaker of a language handy -- you just can't. There is so much work that I do at my job that has no direct interaction with the students. I've written about it before -- how I spend a great deal of my work day assisting the Korean English teachers themselves, editing exams, checking exam answers they are unsure about, editing their classroom materials, explaining idioms, answering questions the students have come up with that they don't have the answers to. Those tasks are endless, but they are assisted greatly by the fact that I trained in writing and language for four years and worked as an ESL teacher before coming to Korea, and generally know what the fuck I'm talking about. We don't need to get into the minute details of what would make a better English teacher, Korean or foreign, because the quality there runs the gamut on both sides. But the general presence of a native speaker should be only beneficial.

Which is not to say that native speaking teachers are automatically more useful that Korean English teachers. As the original writer of the post referenced above pointed out, Korean English teachers understand learning English. They understand learning English as a Korean, and the particular nuances of how and when their students will need to engage the language. That is something that a native speaker will never understand. And a good Korean English teacher will wield great skill in addressing those issues, just as a good native English teacher will in their own quarter.

But I guess what it always comes back to for me is this: The kids need this language to survive. In the most superficial sense possible, but they do. And some of them need it on a more real level than others. And as long as that's a fact, I think it's important to keep an eye out for those kids like the ones in my after school classes. The ones like, for example, Jihoon, who don't have the time or money to attend hagwon, because they are busy helping their parents run the family restaurant. Kids like Jihoon will be competing with kids who have had the very best English education money can buy since the time they could walk, for a very limited number of places at the international high schools like the one Jihoon wants to attend.

And my other students will be competing against the same kids after high school to pass their university entrance exams, and after that, to get their TOEIC scores up to compete in the job market.

And what will they miss out on, in comparison to those kids attending 100% English hagwon with 100% fluent English teachers, when their English teachers can't correct their writing essays for the exam with accuracy? Because they can't pay for better.

This is not a Korean problem. This is a worldwide outlook on institutionalized education that needs to fucking change. Test scored and standardized exams, one singular methodology of the way kids are supposed to learn (with many branches and theories, that all come back to the same base) -- labeling kids as "disordered", because they don't fit inside a very tiny little box, and one very particular way of processing information, and even bigger problem with class, and view of physical labor in relation to intellectual labor. It's complicated. It's more complicated by language and racial hierarchy and neocolonialism and, above all else, capitalism. It's a huge subject. But when we narrow it down to the very specific field which we are dealing with, I don't get it.


I'm not here to champion Western methodology over the Korean education system, or talk about the crappy native English teachers, or the crappy Korean English teachers. The truth is, I believe the job demands the best of both. And I believe the best should be expected from both. But the problem is not going to go away with the casting out of foreign teachers from the public schools. The problem is only going to end when Korea lets go of mandatory internal English.

Maybe letting us go is a step in that direction. Only time will tell, and soon enough it won't be any of my concern anyway. But I'm sorry to say that I don't see the merit in that first step being taken at the expense of the kids who can't pay, but who will still suffer the consequences down the line.

Prison museum, Tibetan cafe, apartment chatter.

Yesterday, some friends and I were meant to head up Inwangsan for a bit of a spring hike. Well. The rain saw to it that that plan was ruined, so we decided instead to drop in on the Seodaemun Prison Museum and then head over to Samcheongdong to hang out for the rest of the day.

The prison museum seems to have mellowed out a lot, compared to what I've read in other accounts, and according to a friend who came along who had been there years previous. While I don't think what happened there should be understated, judging by the amount of kids we saw running around, it may not have been the worst decision. Instead, the most gruesome parts of the museum are now represented by the accounts of survivors played in a video interview projected on the wall, which I think lends it all a bit more weight than than seeing mannequins positioned to reenact the scenes anyway -- to hear it from a human being's mouth, who lived through it.

It was a cold, dreary day, which definitely added to the somberness of the experience. Afterwards, despite failing to complete our hiking duty, we went back near Gyeongbokgung to warm up and fill up on  전, 전병, 들깨국수, 막걸리 and various assorted other. 

In good spirits, we headed our friend turned tour guide, who lives in the neighborhood, then took us over to check out a Tibetan cafe associated with Rogpa, which works cooperatively to support the Tibetan community. I was promised the best Chai I've ever had, and it certainly was delivered. 

Afterwards, we headed to a music bar to fill the table with empty bottles and annoy the proprietor with requests. Eventually, the Incheon faction had to stumble out into the cold to catch the next-to-last bus back home, which wound up being the last bus, when Smalltown, who suddenly really had to pee, disappeared around the corner for just long enough for the rest of us to watch the bus fly past. We killed the next thirty minutes down in the warmth of the subway station, before finally boarding the completely empty bus, only to realize too late that the two fellas had ended up up situated, both, in broken seats, which kept spontaneously flinging them forwards, and then dropping them back. This inspired a lot of humorous small talk with the folks who boarded the bus after, a bit amused at the spectacle. 

A good way to end the day. And we'll get back to Inwangsan soon. 

All this northwestern Seoul trekking is not for nothing, it has to be said. B and I are a bit divided over the location of our new place, and I'm championing an area a bit further north of the river than the one he's in favor of. I won major points this weekend, when I pointed out how quickly both Gangnam and Seoul Station can be reached from the orange line (both likely candidates for B's future work sites). Now I'm wooing him with the surrounding neighborhoods, slowly but surely, and the friend we visited who lives there did her part admirably by casually bringing up how low the housing prices are. 

We'll see. 

But for now, we're trying to work out the logistics of his lease being up in June, and my contract not finishing until October. I'd be alright with him coming out to Incheon for a few months, if it weren't for the fact that I feel a bit sketch moving my boyfriend in on my school's dime. I suppose it is technically my apartment, and I can do whatever I want, but the ethics of the situation are a bit questionable to me. 

So instead, we're trying to see if we can come up with 전세, and if we can manage that, we'll be able to move B into a new place when his old lease is up, without him having to pay a large rent on his own for several months (or without me having to pay rent on a place I'm not living in, alternatively). The problem, besides figuring out if we can scratch the money together, is that 전세 doesn't seem to be nearly as common as it used to be, and most places (at least where we've been looking) seem more keen on collecting both a sizable deposit and 월세 each month. But if we can work it out, it would be a nice solution, so that B doesn't have to find a new, short term place, and pay for it. 

It would also be nice to be on 전세 and not to have to pay rent for the time while I'm in school. Obviously. And to have the stress of the apartment sorted, and several months to get all of my stuff moved over, long before the stress of everything else that comes with finishing up my contract will bring. 

Marching ever forward. Hopefully, some of this will start to be resolved soon. 

People who are not in international couples: Stop.

Now that my Korean is improving, Busan is getting into the (much appreciated) habit of sending me little bits and bobs in Korean that he thinks may be of interest. It's nice to be able to have access to these kinds of things, without relying on him to retell things to me that he has read, seen or heard. But it's creating a bit of tension on the front of the foreigner vs. Korean way of seeing certain issues. Opening up more dialogues obviously means opening up more room for differences of opinions, and expanding our the interaction of our different cultural understandings, or views from our differing respective positions.

It's not always cultural. As with most things, a big part of it is just our personalities, and as usual with us, there are sometimes things we take opposing positions on that are inverse of what one might expect. B, in general, is a little less critical of all things media and government related than I am, whether that be the American or Korean media or government.

He sent me the above a couple of days ago. It concerns a story told by a Korean girl who had been dating a foreign guy for eight months, when he suddenly announced that he was going back to his country, and broke it off. She says she knows it's natural for couples to come to an end, but to have things end so suddenly was what was difficult for her.

That's a fair enough response. But the comments underneath are what annoyed me. First of all, that it seems like he just came to earn a lot of money and have a vacation. And then another commentor said that whenever they see a Korean woman with a foreign man, they always think they will wind up with a Korean man in the end, because foreign men will always go back to their home countries.

And then, a comment that I don't necessarily have the language skills to interpret correctly. Directly put, it means, "Don't marry a Korean man. Sad. Go abroad and marry a foreigner." (The word 불쌍하다 can be translated as "pitiful" or "pathetic", but those words in English sometimes have a harsher connotation than the way the word is used in Korean, so I'm being generous.)

It's not horrible. Certainly not in light in the things JTBC and MBC have come out with recently (and no, I don't have the energy or the desire to rehash that bullshit yet again). It's not even that these are not fair points. It's just that I don't really care to hear the opinions of people who don't know shit about shit anymore.

I don't know what B expected my reaction to this to be, or even why he sent it -- he probably didn't have any further motivation than, 'Oh, here's a thing about foreigners.' But he didn't seem to quite expect me to respond the way I did, which was to say that I wish people who live in Korea, who speak Korean, who hang out with Koreans and who stay in Korea would stop expressing opinions about foreigners, and specifically Korean/foreign couples, like they know what they're talking about.

There's not a start to a new school year that goes by without at least one ajumma coworker feeling the need to extend a protective wing over me, when they find out my boyfriend is Korean, and warn me that Korean men usually aren't serious about foreign girlfriends. As if they somehow might know more about my boyfriend and his motivation for being with me, not to mention the general habits of Korean men who date foreign women, than I do. I'm always tempted to ask them how much experience they have with the subject, and furthermore, how many foreign female/Korean male couples they personally know. But the question would merely be sarcastic, because we already know the answer to that. Don't we?

Which is not to say that it doesn't happen. Of course, it does. Just as it happens that Korean girls sometimes get dumped with little to no warning by foreign boyfriends who decide, for whatever reason, that it's time to go home. And part of that is the risk that we take -- the same as many other risks, like being cheated on or being dropped for any other number of reasons. So what?

As I put it to B, when he asked me to explain more, this isn't about being defensive of foreigners. I get just as irritated when Korean men (or women) are the target. Because it goes back to a point I've discussed many times before, which is that people need to stop thinking that interracial, intercultural or international relationships are public property.

If I were Korean, and dating a Korean man, would my coworkers, upon finding out that I have a boyfriend, feel the need to warn me that sometimes men cheat? Without knowing anymore at all about my boyfriend or our relationship? How far overstepping of boundaries would that seem? And why is what they're doing different?

And why do people constantly feel the need to start sentences with, "Whenever I see a Korean woman with a foreign man...." or, "Whenever I see a foreign woman with a Korean man..."?

Whenever I see a woman with a man...

That is fucking ridiculous. And it is no less ridiculous to do it just because a couple is interracial.

As I put it to B, he's met a lot of international/interracial couples through me. How many of those couples have or would ever just up and abandon their partner, because their plans changed? How many have just left to go back home, either at all, or without extensively discussing all factors involved with their partner, as an equal?

Does it happen? You fucking bet it does. But you need more than supposition, one example and seeing interracial couples walking down the street to talk about it intelligently.

But then talking about things intelligently is not the general public's forte.

스포츠 토토와 부산 이야기.

B's looking for part time work. I'm not exactly sure what he's up to, but I think this whole us moving in together thing has tripped some kind of a wire that neither one of us is ready to discuss directly quite yet. But at any rate, he's thinking about the long term. And he's looking to earn some extra money, as well as expand his catalog of skills. And he's been getting a lot of bites, recently. Friday night he came to meet me a bit later than expected after a six hour meeting with an overly enthusiastic math academy owner who wants to pay him a million a month to set up a website for the kids and teachers to be able to interact. He's got another offer for a similar education system with a gyopo.

So when his phone rang on Saturday morning and he hit play on the music, ran to the bedroom and closed the door to take the call, I tried not to make too much of it. B's not good at not behaving suspiciously, but the things he blatantly behaves suspiciously about always wind up being completely asinine, so I usually just save myself the trouble of trying to figure it out. If I wait long enough, he'll come around hinting about how he had been acting suspicious, huh? Do I want to know why? Huh? Aren't I curious?

This was the case on Saturday morning. As usual.

He came out of the bedroom, looking smug. "I rejected."

"The job?"

"응. You know, he was so sorry. He begged me. He said we can't find another person like you."

"Uh huh."

I was at the kitchen sink making coffee, and when he didn't get more of a response than that, he came across the room. "Don't you want to hear about it? About why he can't find another person like me?"

"I have a feeling I'm going to whether I want to or not."

"아, 진짜! 리즈!"

A bit embarrassed, he wandered off to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. When he came back out, I put down two coffee cups on the table in front of us and we sat.

"Anyway, I said no to that job. I told him, my conscience won't let me." He closed his eyes and patted his chest, over his heart, to emphasize his sincerity on this point.

"Uh huh."

".... I said, 'I'm sorry, but I can't take this job. My conscience says no.'"

"...."

"Don't you want to hear why my conscience said no?"

"If I say no, are you going to wander off for a few minutes and then just come back and tell me anyway?"

"야!" He swatted at me, and laughed. "Yes. So I'll just tell you anyway. Do you know what 스포츠 토토 is?"

B then explained to me that, essentially, he had been offered an illegal-as-fuck job maintaining a website for some gangster fuck who makes money off of fixing bets on sports matches. A lot of money. B had been offered 10 million a month for this job. And for whatever reason, had actually discussed this bullshit with this shady fuck, as if he were considering it.

"Are you out of your damn mind? I did not come to Korea to get a steady job and wind up mixed up with some shady ass criminal shit. No."

"But I could buy a big house!"

"No you fucking could not. You could live some bullshit high life until these fucking people sell you, who are a dime a dozen, out because you would be the one who is traceable as fuck in this whole situation, and just as fucking disposable. And then my ass gets yanked out of that big house and deported, if not thrown in jail for some kind of association bullshit. No."

"You would come visit me in jail, right?"

"No I fucking would not."

"What?! How could you say that to your boyfriend?"

"You land your own ass in jail for being greedy as fuck when you already have a good paying job, a college education and a viable skill set, and that is your fucking problem -- not mine."

"리즈야!"

"I'm not playing."

"Anyway, I turned it down."

"Fucking right you did."

"Lots of people do! It's not crazy! But I turned it down because--" Hand over his chest again. "My conscience."

"Okay."

"Do you know why my conscience?"

"Because it's illegal as fuck? And by the way, is that what you meant when you said you'd have the chance to 'travel abroad'? That you'd wind up fucking exiled to China or something?"

"... Maybe. Anyway. My conscience! You know. A lot of people do suicide because of that kind of thing. When they lose their money. So I thought, I'll be indirectly killing people. So I thought, I'd better not."

"Well, thank God for that."

Later that night, we had a few friends round for dinner, and sitting in the big room after dinner drinking and talking, he recounted the tale again for everyone. And it suddenly occurred to me to ask where the employee he'd be replacing had gone.

"To the army."

"... To the army? How old was he? Was it some university kid who was doing it before?"

"No. Just a programmer."

"How old is he?"

"Thirty one."

"Thirty one and he's left now because he's gone away to the army?"

"Yeah."

I looked around the room at everyone else listening in, all of whom were cracking smiles and stifling laughter.

"[B], how many men do you know who go to the army when they're 31?"

"Sometimes they do."

"And you don't find that at all suspicious?"

A long, silent pause, as he looked around the room at everyone's faces.

"... He went to jail, didn't he?"

Then suddenly, MJ, the tiny 25 year old female web designer in the room, piped up: "That's really good money. I want to do it..."

He showed us the website, which is quite innovative, with a fake front page and all. And then, he logged into the management server -- the part where the bookers control "the game". I didn't catch all of the details (a primarily Korean room meant primarily Korean conversation), but basically what I got was that if someone's winning too much or too often, the owner tweaks the system to shut them down.

The moral of the story? Don't bet on games in Korea. And pay attention when your boyfriend goes to the other room and closes the door to take a phone call.

Dinner with the Co's: Justifying leaving.

Last night I went out with a couple of my oldest (work wise, not age wise) coworkers for 매운 갈국수 and coffee. It's no secret that the past year or so at my job has been less than paradise, and a lot of that is down to the other people in our department, who are various combinations of difficult to work with, along with all fairly self-serving. The one these two specific coworkers really can't stand is Old HT, the one infamous on this blog for her obsession with foreigners making bread. New HT, formerly known as Mousey Co-teacher, is such a mouse around them, the few times they've had interactions with her, that they were very curious to figure out why I had protested so much when it was announced that she would be the English department chief (and my main co-teacher) again this year, and why the VP decided to take her homeroom class away from her.

There are two other English teachers who are both head teachers over different areas, who they are both having a lot of trouble with recently, and that, all in total, rounds out our entire English teaching staff, save for two contract teachers.

So. It's not a great crew. And I've been taking the brunt of it for a while.

Essentially what happened last year was this: The three head teachers, including Old HT, realized that they could get New HT to do whatever they asked with zero protestation. They also, as head teachers, have a lot of business trips. So they miss a lot of classes. Ordinarily, they should have to arrange with other subject teachers to switch out their classes and make them up later. But they figured out that it was easier for them to call me in to sub for them instead. And then allow me to just teach my regular classes, in addition, and never have to make the missed classes up.

Add to this another subject head teacher who railroaded New HT into basically tricking me into teaching an extra class hour to other subject teachers for free, and I was being run over all year.

And then? A student started stealing money from New HT. And eventually, one day, stole from me as well. But I'm not New HT and I don't find that to be acceptable. So I told her, given that it was her homeroom students that are constantly in and out of the office, that she needed to figure it out. But she refused. She didn't want to "hurt the students' feelings" by accusing them. So I set up a camera, convinced that whoever it was had an office key. When I finally caught the little shit with a jacket over his head in the office during lunch time when the office was locked, I insisted that she should go downstairs immediately, contact the 학생부 and have them come out and search the students' pockets for the key, which whoever it was obviously had on them at the time.

But instead, she just phoned down to the main office to have our locks changed.

And then the other contract teacher who shared our office with us moved out. Now, her homeroom students were in the office during break time, during lunch time, and even during class time (she never wanted to make the students feel bad by telling them they needed to go to class) running around and screaming. Which, as you can imagine, made getting work done nigh on impossible. So I started scolding the students instead.

Upon recounting bits of this to my two other coworkers over dinner last night, one of them hit the nail on the head: "When the homeroom teacher is so generous, it makes all of the other teachers the enemy." And so it was with all of the other third grade teachers last year, whose complaints near the end of the year about her lack of discipline with her students grew to epic proportions. Her students wandered in and out of classes as they chose, and viewed any other teachers' attempts to control them as overreaction.

So. No homeroom for her this year.

This year, Old HT has decided she is New HT's "mentor". And happily announces this to anyone who will listen. Which is obviously embarrassing for New HT, and which made one of my coworkers almost fall over from the force of her eye roll at dinner last night when I shared it: "Who gave her that title?!" She's even gone so far as to tell New HT, quite directly, that her jeans are too tight and the other teachers are making comments about it being inappropriate in front of the students. Not only did she say this to New HT, but she also, for a few days after when New HT continued to wear the tight jeans, would make loud, sing-songy comments in front of other teachers about her jeans being pretty, but not right for school.

New HT now wears a long jacket over her clothes when she goes anywhere but to class.

But you know what? It's working great for me, so far. Old HT loves a power trip, and New HT loves to tattle on me. So when New HT tried to force me into several hours worth of unpaid overtime earlier this year, in an attempt to appease other teachers, and I flatly refused (after the sub teaching situation from last year, I do everything by the contract, and watch my hours like a hawk -- I didn't used to be that way, but when it becomes clear that miles are being made of inches given, you don't have much of a choice), New HT huffed and went downstairs to tattle on me for refusing to stay an hour after work finishes once a week without pay. But she returned to inform me that even the ten minutes I had agreed to was unfair, and we should rearrange.

Fucking turns out, Old HT is good for something.

My coworkers, to whom I told only a fraction of all of this (and there is still more -- essentially I would have been more fucked than fucked if I didn't have the Korean skills to keep up with school messages last year), sat staring at me over coffee with their mouths hanging open.

My coworker who was gone for the last half of last year said, after a bit of a silent pause, "Liz. I respect you. You survived. No wonder you want to leave."

This particular coworker, while she was gone, acted as a "guest" teacher in a Canadian public school. She said that after three months of it, she felt like she could understand me so much better, and that it was no easy task to do what we do, and that the people who manage to adapt and live well working in another culture deserve respect, because it's not easy.

And I told them, it's not just these circumstances that are pushing me out. It's a lot of things, but overall mostly just the realization (although I always knew it on some level) that these jobs are not meant to be permanent. Every year, I'm a brand new foreigner all over again, as a new crop of teachers moves into the school to fuss over having to sit beside me at lunch, to compliment me on chopsticks and spicy food and inform me of all kinds of useful facts, such as the fact that sauce is sauce (which was the one from today), or that writing names in red is bad luck in Korea, or whatever the fuck else it is that it doesn't occur to them to think I might already know after four years and some change in this country. And it's fine -- I'm not going to go on a rant about it being racist. It's not that. It's that I don't want to still be hearing it at 45. Not over my fucking lunch. Not again.

I don't want to be dependent on a teacher who is younger than me and has no idea what they're doing to be in charge of my work affairs. I don't want to still be being interrupted in my own classes by housewives making an extra buck for a few months who decide to tell me that the lesson I've been successfully teaching for three years is "too difficult" for the students. I don't want to dodge invitations from every new principal or vice principal to go see Wolmido, which, in case I didn't know, is beside the ocean.

But more than that, as I explained to my coworkers last night, it's that I'm not challenged anymore. And that's why all of the things that seemed so small before are so magnified now. Before, I was too busy figuring out what in the hell I was actually doing -- in the classroom, in this country, with this language and this culture. But it's not like that anymore, and instead it's just an endless parade of the same things as the year before.

And I want more. I want more challenges and "impossible" things to do and figure out.

I motioned across the table to them both: "You both saw me when I first got here. You saw me struggle to stay afloat." They smiled affectionately and nodded. "But it's not like that anymore, and I need deeper waters."

"Speaking of that," said my very first co-teacher ever, "I'm learning to swim."

"And I," said my second, "Am changing my subject to Korean."

I guess getting burnt out is not just a foreigner thing.

Homemade.

You know what I did this weekend?

Ate a lot of great food.

As the finishing of my job looms ever closer, I've been cracking down on my budget. I need to get myself within a certain means of living if I expect to make it through the next three years without a proper job. But that doesn't mean I have to go back to eating egg sandwiches, like I did during the lean college years.

A friend and I spend the afternoon having coffee and dinner yesterday, and as she's moving into a budgeting period of life as well, we fell on the topic of how, theoretically, cooking Korean should be cheaper. The problem is, to get enough variety with Korean food, or to really eat it well, you need a lot of different ingredients. Fresh ingredients, which are often only available in bulk. Which doesn't work well for a single person, or even, really, a couple. Green onion, for example? I've never not thrown out at least half.

So I've been looking for cheap alternatives. I've heard a lot of talk around the internet amongst foreigners about iHerb, so I finally decided to check it out, and placed my first order last Sunday. On Tuesday, I got a phone call from customs to collect my passport number, and then the package arrived on Thursday.

This weekend, we had chicken curry and brown rice, hummus and pita bread, honey and almond butter and jelly sandwiches on homemade bread, and homemade popcorn. Busan's thrilled. And it was all dead cheap.

Last weekend, we had the above banana bread for breakfast, and I've been keeping a loaf of the herb bread around at all times. The pitas are also homemade, as is the hummus. That's what keeps it all so cheap. Other than the banana bread, it's essentially just yeast, flour and water. I can even pick up packets of cheap instant yeast at the little green market that's a five minute walk from my place.

This week sometime, I hope to get some homemade yogurt going, which if you don't know, is just milk combined with a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt with active live cultures.

I know there is a lot that foreigners in Korea feel limited by without an oven, but my little oven is something I picked up at a secondhand store for 25,000 won in my neighborhood a few years ago, and it's served me really well. These days, more and more baking equipment and supplies are popping up at the marts, and I even got the bread pan I've been using lately at the Daiso in my neighborhood's subway station (along with a few other random baking utensils).

B's pretty happy with the influx of foreign food, and happy enough to stay in and eat curry for about six thousand won, rather than go out for 40. The truth is, I've just set into motion my diabolical scheme to start convincing him to be more choosy about the kitchen space when we start apartment hunting in a few months. If B thinks he's going to get good food out of a situation, he'll agree to just about anything.

Anyway, I put of iHerb for a long time because I usually can't be bothered with internet ordering things. There's something unsavory about it for me. But I'm completely converted now, and will probably be placing an order every couple of weeks. If anybody wants the code I got, which will give you $10 off your first order, just let me know and I'll pass it on.

Oh! And one more thing I forgot to mention: Herbal coffee (aka decaf that doesn't taste like dirt). I've been drinking it all day, and it's not a problem. And real, quality espresso which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm fucking hooked.

Back on Blogspot.

I've found myself lately with the urge to make posts of a certain length, with a certain amount of organization, spanning a certain range of topics. I can't be bothered to type them out on Tumblr, where anything longer than five paragraphs feels like an inconvenience to readers. The lit blog itself has taken a weird turn, in that it's being followed by a great number of people who I don't think even know who I am -- the interest seems to be less in me personally and what I'm doing, and more in just general bits about Korean literature. Which is fine. And yes, it is my blog, and I can do whatever I want with it, but it feels awkward. Like standing up in the middle of a public bus and announcing that I'm feeling a bit hungry, because today's school lunch wasn't quite to my liking. That kind of a feeling. If you can imagine that. Like it's not the time or the place.

So I think I feel Blogspot calling again. Finally.

I know people get confused with the constant blog rotation, and I don't know how to explain where it comes from, other than a very distinct sense of spaces. I tried, for a good while, to make a decent space over on Tumblr, but there's this weird obsessive insistence on "community" there that I just don't really want much to do with anymore. I don't think I've ever, for example, received an email from a Blogspot reader who wanted to know what I thought my blog contributed to the internet, and to personally request that I reconsider my presence on this blogging platform, because I'm not friendly enough with enough of their personal friends. Or weird messages implying that I'm somehow obligated to invite these people who read my blog (whose blogs I do not read, by the way) into my offline life, and to be polite and gracious while doing so, or else I'm a snob. Tumblr has a lot of great folks on it doing a lot of great things, but it also has a very bizarre (to me) nosy aunt/high school/small town quality to it a lot of the time. People automatically assume that because they read your blog, you are as obligated to them as if you had formed a personal relationship with them.

That's not a view that I, personally, share. And it gets a little tiresome for me, trying to navigate it. 

And as I move back toward more personal, perhaps "boring" posting habits, I also feel a bit guilty doing so using Tumblr's format, which forces your "followers" to scroll through every last thing you write to see whatever else is on their dash that day. This space is more comfortable for that, because people choose, specifically, to come here.

So. Whatever. We will see how it goes. I'm working on a couple of posts now about some widely differing subjects which I hope to have up by the end of the weekend. But it should be a pretty busy weekend, so who knows?