She is as good-natured and honest a person as I have ever met in my life. Every day she makes a point of saying 'hello' to me at the earliest opportunity, and should I neglect to take the time to return her warm greeting, should I be so self-important as to ignore her, she playfully ignores me back and feigns anger (her thick arms crossed over her barrel-chest and a scowl on her face) until I make amends. I am ashamed to admit that I don't know her name. All the teachers ever call her is 'the ajumma,' and that term fits her well.
You might translate the word 'ajumma,' as 'old woman,' but it would be a poor translation. The term 'ajumma' connotes much more respect than that. An ajumma is a woman usually over the age of forty, and it is that accumulation of years that justifies most of the high-degree of respect Koreans reserve for such women. I guess they figure if she's made it this far in this life, she's a force to be reckoned with. That certainly holds true for the tough, sweet, self-confidant woman who cleans ESS Best Jr.
The Ajumma is full of little quirks. She abhors open bathroom doors, scraps of paper left under the lecterns and empty chalk cases (she fills mine whenever I run off to get something from the office). The Ajumma enjoys pranks, teasing me and little rituals. Her favorite ritual with me takes place almost every day by the third floor receptionist desk as I count down the last five minutes till class starts. Those five minutes can be tense, and I need something to focus my mind, so I plunk a few coins in the coffee machine. I guess purchasing things comforts me.
The Ajumma hates coffee, but every day she watches intently as I put the two 100-won coins in the little red-and-white Maxwell instant drink dispenser and wait for the machine to brew me a cup of what could possibly pass for real coffee, or, well, maybe to someone who was from another planet and never drank coffee before in their entire life and was perhaps hallucinating or drunk or both. Anyway, every day I get a coffee before class, and every day The Ajumma stands nearby with her arms crossed, watching me.
I feel her eyes on me as I pull the steaming cup of un-coffee from the machine, and those eyes widen as she realizes I intend to drink the stuff:
"Coppee mashayo?" Are you going to drink that coffee? She asks.
The two f's in 'coffee' are p's because the Korean language has no character for the f-sound and replaces all f's with the hard, aspirated p-sound. Coffee is, of course, a Hangulized English word. The Ajumma sounds bewildered, or slightly concerned, as if she can't believe I'm drinking that crap yet again.
"Hmmmmm," I reply. "Coppee mashishoyo." The coffee is delicious, I lie. As I say this the ajumma grins and giggles warmly, probably because she knows I'm lying. I feel sheepish, and I immediately attempt to cover my lie and prove my resolve by earnestly offering to buy the ajumma a cup of her own coffee-flavored sugar. The giggling stops and the ajumma waves me off with a look of disgust on her face as if I just offered her a fried cockroach and batshit sandwich on rye.
"Anmashiyo," she scoffs and giggles once her back is turned to me. I smile.
Sometimes our conversation goes on from there, and I honestly believe that The Ajumma has taught me as much Korean as anyone since I arrived here eleven months ago. She and I lean on the receptionists' desk and chat as the children pass by on their way to class. The topic is almost invariably food, as that is where most of my vocabulary is focused, and I tell her how my girlfriend and I made Dwenjang jiggae the night before, or how I tried Chal guk-soo for the first time last weekend.
The children say 'hello teacher' or 'hello Jones teacher!' as they pass us by, and periodically one or two of them get in my face and assault me with 'hellos' or beg for stickers. The Ajumma notices my distress and usually scatters them with broad strokes of her hand and a few harsh admonitions delivered in a low growl or a series of sharp, staccato Korean words that I take to mean, 'get your ass to class.'
She has a soft place in her heart for the children, and dotes on them whenever they let her. However, many of the children barely notice her as she mops and scrapes the floors, walls and bathrooms in ESS Jr.
The surprising thing about the Ajumma is she isn't particularly gifted in the art of cleaning. For one thing, I've never seen her use soap or bleach of any kind on any surface in ESS Jr., and when it's my turn to mop the teachers' office, there is never any such solvents on hand. Hell, there's no hot water! As perception usually trumps reality at ESS Jr., actually cleaning the school isn't nearly as important as the perception that it is clean.
Like I said, I do the same thing in the teachers' office once a month. All the teachers have to spend one day a month cleaning the office. We draw lots and get assigned a day to complete our task. You can either vacuum or mop. I always mop because the Korean teachers loath it. Gavin finds the monthly ritual odd and Dave finds it repulsive. I agree with them both, but I still do it out of some sort of unthinking, automatic loyalty to my employer. Until I walk onto that 747 pointed at LAX, I am an employee of ESS Best Jr. Academy and I too am a slave to perception.
Of course, there is a term associated with those people or societies who are heavily focused on perception: Narcissism. I see evidence of it wherever I go in Korea. It presses in around me in the form of dozens of ads for plastic surgeons that line the walls of the subway stations. It is Ms. Ha's obsession with her makeup. It is the mirrors strategically placed beside the teacher's office and fourth floor landing and the way almost every single person who passes those mirrors can't help but check themselves out, including me. Thankfully, there isn't much to check (Yeup, still ugly!). Actually, if the issue here were just pure narcissism, it would be nothing more than endearing, but it's not.
In Korea, narcissism is coupled to an obsession with organization. How can you strive for absolute perfection if there is no standard to measure people by? No, only by holding people to arbitrary yardsticks can the urge to be perfect find an outlet. Enter the test.
A test is a miraculous tool for separating the 'haves' from the 'have nots.' ESS is obsessed with tests. Ms. Ha gives a test to my Advanced Four class every day. Oral tests, written tests, math tests, listening tests, you name it and ESS has a test for it. Korean children take a great deal of tests. In fact, sometimes I wonder what ESS is more interested in teaching: How to speak English, or how to take English tests. What I hate about tests is their arbitrary, limited scope.
A test is no more than a set of questions revealing more about the test-creators' beliefs on what constitutes intelligence than the actual intelligence of the person taking the test. Tests undermine learning by limiting what is considered important. Tests put blinders on children by hyper-focusing them. Tests undermine teachers by destabilizing students' faith in their lessons. Hey, Mr. Jones, if you really know what you're talking about, why did I fail this test?
Perhaps because the test was designed to make some people failures, I might say. Perhaps because the test and Mr. Jones measure intelligence in different ways. A test cannot tell you who you are or what you are capable of. It simply tells you that you and whoever made that test disagree on what constitutes 'knowledge.' A test shows what you don't know and probably don't care about, not what you do.
Like I said, from the time they are small children, Koreans take oodles of tests. Recently I found a prospective student taking her first test in the 'language lab' at ESS. This test would 'measure' her intelligence for placement in ESS.
I can't help but wonder what she was thinking right then.
Over the course of her life, she will take hundreds of tests, maybe thousands, culminating in the TOEIC tests that will help her land a job.
Last weekend Hyun-jeong and I made a trip out to Dongbaek island. Dongbaek is known for being the sight of the 2005 Asian Pacific Economic Conference, or APEC. Busan built a spaceship-esque building called Nurimaru to house the various heads of state (including W), and you can tour the building and see the chairs in which those heads rested their asses while discussing the fate of billions of people.
Hyun-jeong and I avoided Nurimaru and headed for a spot she found on the north side of the island by a walking path made of plastiwood snaking along the rocky coast. We walked behind a Korean family out for a late-afternoon stroll while making our way towards the spot: Two teenage daughters walking with their grandmother. The old woman wore a handmade white cotton hanbok with a simple pink and green flower pattern. She gracefully picked it up as she slowly ascended the stairs, the light cotton fabric blowing the warm breeze. Her granddaughters wore tight blue jeans studded with rhinestones and lowcut tank tops. They had stylist handbags over their shoulders and two-inch high-heels on their feet. The periodically stopped to wait for their grandmother, and stared at Hyun-jeong and I as we walked hand-in-hand past them.
After searching for a little while, we found an entrance to the beach and climbed the fence. We made our way to the waters' edge and set our things down. A group of Korean children gathered and played in the surf while Hyun-jeong and I took photos and felt the cool ocean water on our feet. The 'beach' was little more than wave-worn stones no smaller than my big toe. There was glass everywhere, but thankfully most of it had been rendered harmless by the rolling, stony surf.
Nearby, a group of four old sisters swam in a pool under a giant boulder leaning over the ocean to our left. They laughed as I took pictures of them, the full moon behind them, rising over the sea east of Haeundae, glowing in the final rays of sunshine filtering through the early evening air.
They shared yams and cold, sweet watermelon with us. Their warm smiles and kind manner melted a great deal of the homesick negativity that had been building in me these last few weeks. Hyun-jeong and I agreed that it was a charmed evening. Our spirits were high and the sun had set as we scaled the rocky shoulder of Dongbaek and headed to Haeundae for beef soup and icecream.
The credit for the above photo of the lights on Dongbaek goes to Hyun-jeong.
Well, here are the Korean Files for the week. I only have two.
"She is rich, and it is before" (...she becomes poor? T-shirt).
"Every chick and LOC" (Lost Octopus Catcher)
I just bought my tickets to Argentina, and Mr. Yi is going to buy my tickets back to Atlanta next week. I can't believe it. One year, and it's over. America still seems so far away, like I'm not even close to being done, but I am. I can feel it in my bones. I'm finished with my time in Korea.
Exactly one year ago, I woke up on August First at my parents' house in Atlanta. The birds were chirping and the air was quiet and heavy with the promise of another hot Atlanta summer day. I lay in bed for a few moments contemplating the tremendous life change I had recently undertook. A month earlier than that, I had handed my resignation letter to George Clark, my chief photographer and boss. I remember George reading that letter slowly and looking up at me, as if confused.
"Korea, huh?" He harumphed. "Why do you want to do there?"
With the help of my sister and her friends, I moved all of my things into the basement of my aunt and uncle's house and looked towards a new chapter: Teaching in Korea. That August morning marked the first of thirty days I would have to get ready for a journey to another country halfway around the world. It proved to be a busy month.
I found myself in a similar mindset the morning of August First, 2006. My computer came to life with Apple's trademark chord and I reached down to turn on the power converter so as not to wear the battery out. While I waited for my machine to wake up, I thought about that morning 365 days earlier. I thought about how I felt: Excited, relieved not to be working in Hattiesburg anymore, maybe a little frightened, but certain that my decision was the right one and I would be rewarded with rich life experiences and personal development as well as a healthy financial benefit.
Many of those rich life experiences have come to pass. I have grown considerably as a person, and I finally am starting to feel comfortable wearing the title of 'adult,' though I still have much to learn before I can fully appreciate the complexity of that term. However, the future is not the strait-forward, blazed path I had before me one year ago. As I have decided to go into business as a freelance photographer, the future is bright, the future holds promise, but it is a promise without contract or guarantee, it is promise that I have to make only to myself, and those promises can be the easiest to break. I have talent, but where will that lead me?
As I lay there in bed, I realized what has changed, and that is from now on, the path is not marked anymore. I will have to blaze it myself, and if I get lost, it's nobody's fault but mine.
Only one thing is certain right now: In three weeks I'll be sweating in Atlanta, eating a real bacon cheeseburger at The Vortex and drinking beers with my friend Jennifer while I look forward to a couple of relaxing weeks in Argentina. What happens next is a path yet to be made, much less walked.
Well, I just returned from the ESS Jr. summer camp. I'll be sure to share the experience with you next weekend, because it is literally going to take me all week to get all my thoughts down. Only two or three more entries left in SoKoNotes. I hope you have been with me the whole year. It's been a good one.
Peace. --Notes
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