Finding a gym was at the top of
my priority list. Running I could do
easily enough on the street, but I needed to find somewhere I could go to lift
weights. Lucky for me there was gym less
than five minutes away from Wonderland.
I asked one of the Korean teachers to accompany me when I went to join
so that she could act as my translator.
When I walked in literally all weights tumbled to the floor as everyone
turned to look at the foreigner who just entered. Would I ever get used to standing out in a
crowd? A man hustled over to me, and
through the aid of my translator asked what he could do for me. I explained that I wanted a membership to use
the weights.
“But you are a woman?” his eyes rolled
over me as if unsure that his first assessment was correct and his comment
lingered somewhere between a question and a statement.
Yes, thank you Buddy, I’m not quite
sure I’d have figured that out on my own.
“I am,” I responded cautiously, not wanting to make enemies – yet. “Is that a problem?”
“No, but our weights are
heavy.” He pointed towards the room
where the men had picked up their equipment and resumed their workouts.
Hmmmm…weights heavy, I kind of
thought that’s what they were by definition.
“I think I can handle that.” In
college I had run track and working out was a part of my daily routine. Back then I could easily bench press 100
pounds multiple times and I could max out at 150 pounds.
“Are you sure? Most of the women who come in prefer the
sauna.”
Sauna, nope, I certainly wasn’t
going down that road again, but later in the year when the plumbing in my
apartment was being fixed I would be happy to know that I had somewhere else to
take a quick shower. “Yes, I’m sure, but
if using the weights would be a problem I can take my business elsewhere.”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary,”
he handed me a few forms to fill out which I then handed to my translator. When he told me how much it would cost to
join I looked at him cross-eyed. I don’t
remember the exact dollar number but it seemed awfully high. At that point, my translator put down the
form, grabbed my hand and started heading towards the door. “He’s charging you extra because you’re an
American.”
“What?”
But we didn’t even get half way to
the door before he chased after me, apologizing for his calculation error. Right!
The only error he made was calculating the fact that we’d be too stupid
to see through his scam. After a quick
negotiation, it turned out the price he quoted would actually be for three
months, not one. Since that seemed more
than reasonable I forked over the money and asked where the changing room
was. I walked my translator back to
school, thanked her for her help and then returned to the gym for a quick
workout before classes began.
I changed quickly, and when I
stepped into the weight room everyone stopped what they were doing to
watch. I quickly converted pounds to
kilograms (2.2 pounds equals 1 kilogram) and slipped the weights on a
barbell. As soon as I lay back on the
bench, every single man in room formed a semicircle around me. I had never been so popular in my life. Usually I felt invisible. Now, I wanted to be invisible, to disappear
into the plastic coating of the bench but I was very much the center of
attention. I hoisted the bar off the
rack, lowered it in a controlled manner to my chest and when I pushed it back
up without so much as a single bead of sweat forming on my forehead, I heard a
collective gasp. Growing up I had always
wanted to be Wonder Woman, and for the rest of my work out, I felt as if my
childhood wish had come true. Back home,
oodles of people were stronger than me in my university gym, but suddenly I
felt like the strongest person in the world as the men tripped over each other
trying to prove – and not always succeeding – that they were stronger than the
woman in their midst. I chuckled as the men followed me with their eyes,
assessing what I could do and wondering if they could do better. It made me feel awfully uncomfortable, but I
suppose that’s what happens when you don’t play by the expected norms of a
society.
Feeling somewhat refreshed and sore
– in a good way – I returned to Wonderland for my first day of teaching. The nerves I had carried around with me since
I landed in Korea had fled that morning and when I sat down at the desk I had
been assigned the only emotion I felt was confusion. I was expected to spend the next hour or two
planning my lessons, but I had not the slightest idea where to begin. The classes I would be teaching were all
introductory classes so it was safe to say that my students might be able to
say hello in English, but that would be the extent of our ability to
communicate.
I looked at the workbook that I would be
teaching from and glanced at some of the communal manipulatives and games. Then on my lesson plan form I jotted down a
couple of page numbers, a game and the concepts I would be focusing on and
hoped that would suffice until I had a better idea of what was expected of
me. If only I felt as comfortable, as
sure of myself, walking into a classroom as I felt walking into a gym. Perhaps that would happen over time. Thinking
back to the very first time I stepped foot in a gym, I remembered feeling
woefully inadequate. I could barely lift
a bar stripped of all weights. Maybe
there would come a time when I’d feel perfectly at home and competent walking
into a classroom.
“Are you hungry?” I looked up to see Kevin standing over my
desk.
“I could eat,” which really meant
that I was famished.
“Heidi and I going out to grab some
lunch, would you care to join us?”
“Sure, are going across the way to
grab some mandu-guk-su and cho-bab.”
“I don’t know what either of those
are, but I’ll give them a try.” Since
when did I feel so daring? I think it
was more that I wanted to escape from the lesson plans than that I wanted to
try something new. Running away from
lesson plans – now that was concept that would never change no matter how long
I taught. Writing competent lesson plans
and being a competent teacher are not – I repeat, they are not – synonymous
although all the politicians and administrators out there would love you to
believe differently. Through the years
I’ve known some really awesome teachers that scoff at doing lesson plans and
some really shoddy teachers that write brilliant plans. Now honestly, who would
you rather have teaching your kids?
Anyway, mondu-guk-su is a soup made
by boiling meat dumplings in a beef broth.
For those of you more familiar with American Chinese food, it is similar
to wonton soup, although the Korean soup is much better. Cho-bab is pockets of sweet tasting tofu
filled with rice flavored with sesame oil.
At a first glance they did not look appetizing, not even a little.
When we got to the restaurant, I let
Kevin order me some soup and I promised to try the cho-bab. I was expecting to hate it, but I
didn’t. I didn’t exactly like it either,
but it was better than most of the other Korean food I had tasted so far, which
meant that I would periodically return to it until I could barely remember a
time when I didn’t love it.
For the most part, my first week of
school passed rather uneventfully. I
survived my first week in the classroom but sadly, I do not remember any
specific moments either good or bad. By
Sunday, however, Steve had already made several new friends and had lots of
things to do where as I had not made any new friends and had nothing planned. I didn’t want to sit at home, so I grabbed a
map, looked for something to do and settled on a visit to Gyeongbok
Palace. Gyeongbok means, “Greatly
Blessed By Heaven,” and the Palace was originally built in the late 1300s by
King Taejo, the founder of the Joseon Dynasty.
But, as I would soon learn, one of the curious things about visiting
historical sites in Korea is they almost all bear a similar sign: “This is Such
and Such. It was built in the year xxxx
but it was destroyed by the Japanese in the year yyyy. What you see is a reconstruction of the
original site.” Yes, Korea was plagued
by Japanese aggression for much of its history and when the Japanese invaded
they always left a trail of destruction is their wake. The first time the Japanese leveled Gyeongbok
Palace it was during the invasion of 1592.
The palace was so gravely damaged that the royal family moved to the
Changdeok Palace and stayed there for quite some time. For nearly three
centuries, Gyeongbok Palace laid in ruins until the mid 1800s when the royal family
renewed its interest in the Palace and had it reconstructed. However, at the turn of the century the Japanese
returned, this time demolishing all but ten buildings within the complex. Between World War II, the Korean War which
divided the peninsula and Korea’s push to develop a modern economy, it took the
government almost eight decades to begin reconstruction once again. When I was there, this project was still in
its early stages and it is only recently that the project has been completed.
By the time I stepped out of the
subway it must have been one hundred and ten degrees and the humidity must have
been close to one hundred percent.
Within moments sweat exploded out of my body, dripped down my face and saturated
my clothes. I seriously thought, after
having walked no more than a block or two that I was going to melt. It wasn’t humanly possible to survive such
awful oppressive heat. Perhaps that’s
why the only other people crazy enough to have left home were all sitting in
their cars. I was practically the only
one crazy or stupid enough to walk on such a brutal afternoon. When I finally entered the Palace complex I
was as wet as if I had walked through a rain storm. I tried to wipe my face with the bottom of my
shirt, but waterlogged material doesn’t generally do a good job of mopping up
sweat. It just kind of moved the
moisture around and evened it out on my skin.
There was some shade inside the grounds, but the difference in
temperature was minimal. Desperate for something to drink I made sure that my
first stop was the refreshment stand where I purchased a cold bottle of water a
cold can of coffee. The Palace was
beautiful with traditional buildings strewn across the grounds and beside a lake
– add water anywhere and it is automatically more beautiful that it would have
been otherwise. Water is sort of magical that way.
While walking around, two high
school girls shyly approached me and introduced themselves, slowly speaking a
heavily accented English. They explained
that as an assignment for school they had to visit the Palace and interview
four foreigners. So far they had only
met one other American and they were hoping I would take some time to answer
their questions. This, as the months
unwound and I visited more tourist hot spots in Seoul, would become the norm. Middle school and high school students often
flocked to the foreigners to practice their English. Having nowhere else to be and nothing else to
do, I was happy to sit with them for a few minutes and help them out. One of the two girls – the one who seemed to
have a stronger grasp of English - pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of her
pocket along with a note pad and pen.
Very slowly she began to read, “What is your name?” I responded just as
slowly so that she would not get frustrated trying to keep up with me while
writing. “My name is Elizabeth.”
“Where are you from?”
“I am from New York.”
“What are you doing in Korea?”
“I am teaching English.”
“I hope my English is not too bad.”
“No, it is rather impressive.”
“Thank you. How long will you be in
Korea?”
“One year.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty- one,” although my birthday
was coming up the following month and I would soon be twenty-two.
“Are you married?”
At twenty- one? “No,” and it certainly wasn’t anything I was
even remotely considering any time soon.
“What is your favorite place to visit in
Seoul?”
“I haven’t been to many places yet,
so I guess here – Gyeongbok Palace.”
“Do you like Kimchi?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I’m sorry I
don’t.”
“What is your favorite Korean food.”
“That is a hard one,” not because
there were so many options but because I was yet to find something I
liked. “I’ll have to say cho-bap.”
“Do you like my country?”
Seriously, how could I answer that
with anything but a yes? It would be
insulting to say no. “Yes, I like it
very much.”
“Thank you,” the girl reached out to
shake my hand. “You have been a great
help.”
“You are very welcome,” I shook her
hand. “Good luck with your English,” I shook
the second girls hand and they both started to walk away giggling to themselves
and I couldn’t help but wonder if they were laughing at me or just at something
I said. It was a little disconcerting
but when you are different, when you stand out, people will often either laugh
at you or act like you are invisible. I
still haven’t figured out which I prefer since they both sort of leave you
feeling somewhat hallow inside.
At Gyeongbok Palace
At Gyeongbok Palace
Courtyard outside near Wonderland
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