Thursday, May 1, 2014

Korea Part VII: Standing Out In A Crowd



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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