Foreword
By Matthew Walters, ETA ’14-’17, Editor-in-Chief of Infusion ’16-’17 The end of the grant year invites a range of emotions: a sense of accomplishment, teary-eyed wistfulness and, perhaps most prominently, nervous anticipation for what comes next. That next step could be graduate school, another year in Korea or a year of searching. Regardless of what we’re wrestling with, many of us have our eyes anxiously fixated on the future. This kind of restless uncertainty is in our nature. But we’re going to be okay. Very little can be as challenging as taking on a different culture and career halfway around the world from our friends and loved ones. And yet, in the midst of this immense challenge, we have all experienced moments of growth and clarity. These moments equip us to handle our uncertain futures. From revelatory cafe interactions—such as in Sarah Muscutt’s “Niceness” and Eugene’s Lee’s “Eastern Medicine in a Gangnam Cafe”—to staying afloat in the classroom, like in Katherine Moncure’s “A 45-Minute Exercise in Stalling,” the lessons we’ve learned about ourselves will direct our paths in the coming year. Equally comforting is the fact that we will not be alone in the challenging decisions we must soon make. We will inevitably forge new friendships just as we did in this past year. The 60-year-old coworker in Candy Lee’s “Mr. Yang” and the five-year-old playmate from Heidi Little’s “One More Time” are just examples of the unlikely yet beautiful relationships we have all established. These bonds have undoubtedly changed and enriched us. Finally, we cannot forget that the future brings not only worry, but a sense of wonder. As Rachel Fauth recalls a pivotal day in her experiences through “Damyang,” we, too, must take credit for the bravery and receptiveness we’ve honed during our time in Korea. We are ready for whatever is next. The future is frightening, but it is ours. I hope that the stories in this issue remind you of what you have accomplished and embolden you in a time of vulnerability. Please enjoy Volume 10, Issue 2 of Infusion.
A 45-Minute Exercise in Stalling
By Katherine Moncure, ETA ’16-’17 Today is my second day of tutoring with North Korean defectors, and I have absolutely nothing planned. Yes, I know that’s pretty bad. During the week, I teach at an all-girls high school and last week I tutored older students, but today I’m switched to a room with five boys somewhere between ages seven and nine. I’m already sweating. These little boys can barely hold themselves in a chair. I take a deep breath. They ignore me completely, speaking in Korean and wrestling each other as my friend Emma and I try to get their attention. “Okay! Yay! Okay! Hello!” We both have absurd smiles glued to our faces as one of them glances at us, then keeps speaking Korean. Emma and I pat on the desk and their chairs, and a couple more students break their conversations to look toward us. A young Korean woman walks in to help, and she calls them each by name and gets them to be quiet for about 30 seconds. “My name is Katherine! Katherine!” They stare blankly and then gradually slip away. “My name!” I try to shout over them. “My name is Kae-suh-reen! Kae-suh-reen!” “Chicken!” they all laugh. “Chicken chicken!” “Kae-suh-reen!” I reply. But honestly, “chicken” is English so it’s close enough. * Whenever I have a crazy lesson, I always think back to my first time in a formal classroom. It was senior year of college, when I volunteered to teach second graders immersion-style Spanish using a lot of hand motions, repetition and context. Our official training wasn’t until after the first week, so the organizers pulled together a short meeting to make sure we weren’t totally clueless before starting. Still, I felt like I was going in cold. I arrived at school that day to find out that the teacher I was supposed to assist (and the one who had a lesson plan) was in a meeting that day and there was a substitute instead. The substitute teacher was a small, middle-aged woman who sat in the corner of the classroom. “Do you know Spanish?” I asked her. She laughed. “No. Good luck.” Before I had time to react, little kids streamed into the classroom and I could feel my heart rate increase. There were 23 of them, so I figured I could kill 23 minutes on names? * The little boys struggle to move to the carpet, and I quickly realize they cannot stand still in a circle and act like miniature adults, as I assumed they would. I think we can get them to learn Simon Says, and Emma and I start yelling the names of body parts. “Head! Head! Nose! Nooooose!” I shout about my nose as if I’ve just discovered it on my body, right there below my eyes. Sticking it up in the air, I jab it with my pointer finger, momentarily going cross-eyed to look at it. Two boys are still in their chairs—one has completely given up and has his face down on the table, refusing to speak to anyone. Another boy is half on the chair and half on the floor, his feet slowly sliding across the tile. Two kids on the carpet start wrestling again, and one of them pretends to have a gun. I pause from trying to play Simon Says. Oh no, toxic masculinity already setting in. When I look at the boys as a group, they remind me of the musical scene from Charlie Brown Christmas, where all the Peanuts flop around in a weird sort of dance. Except right now, these little boys are pulling at each other’s shirts, and this is not a musical. This is the real life version. I glance at Emma, who seems to be just as lost as I am, and when I turn back to the boys, one of them is on the floor crying. * After finishing “me llamo,” I looked at the 23 little kids on the floor in front of me. I had nothing left, and I had contributed a total of 23 minutes of service to public education. They looked back at me. I looked at the clock. It hadn’t moved much. Someone once told me that a good transition for young kids is standing up or sitting down. “Levántate!” I yelled and motioned with my hands to stand up. Feeling like a magician, I commanded the sea to rise. Once the whole class was up, I paused and said, “Y… siéntate!” They all sat down again. “Levántate!” And up again. “Siéntate!” And down again. “Levántate!… Siéntate!” We kept going like this for a while until some of them started to look confused. Thankfully, I remembered that we did “Simón dice” in our short training meeting. “Quieren jugar Simón dice?” I asked them. “Simón dice! Simón dice!” they chanted. This was an obvious winner. I let them take turns being Simón, but after about 10 minutes they got bored. We stopped, and one girl burst into tears. Apparently, she didn’t get to be Simón. Her scrunched up, tear-streaked face stared me down from across the circle. Uhhhhh, oh god, oh god. I could feel myself getting sweatier now, the magic gone, to the point where I was sure the kids could smell my nervous body odor. Kids can smell fear, right? “Ahh, pobrecita! Estás bien?” She continued to stare at me. “Estás bien?” I repeated, and I did a thumbs up and thumbs down hand motion. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!” she shouted across the circle. I shouldn’t speak English, right? That’s not allowed? “Quieres un abrazo?” I held my arms open, gesturing a hug. Reluctantly accepting, she stopped crying. I later found out that hugging students, or touching of any kind, is generally accepted as a Big Time Bad Idea in the United States. Who knew? * Emma checks her watch. 15 minutes to go. The crying boy gets ushered outside by the Korean woman who’s been
Mr. Yang
By Candy Lee, ETA ’15-’17 The first time we meet is marked by a large bouquet of flowers and the click click of his DSLR camera. It’s departure day at Jungwon University, and I’ve just met my co-teacher. I’m nervous; my first impression of him is that he is older than the majority of other teachers in the crowd. Later, when I learn he is almost 60, I will tell him he is so young for his age. At first, we speak in stilted English, with many gesticulations and repeated questions. I talk slowly and carefully, measuring out my language before speaking so I can slice off any superfluous words that might be difficult to digest. He shows me our gyomushil—ours, because it’s solely for English teachers, and in our small school, that means me and him. Our gyomushil is our sanctuary from the rowdiness that is an all-boys school. There are succulents on the table—he shows me how they grow and how much water they need. When a spider’s egg sac hatches on one of the plants, he gives them a day in our gyomushil before bringing the plant outside—just because he wanted to see how far the spiders could build their web. When it’s cherry blossom season, he brings in a fallen branch and places it in a cup of water to see it bloom. He identifies the horticulture on the school grounds; plucking unassuming garden weeds and telling me that in his time, people used to boil and eat them. He tells me he wanted to be a tour guide for English speakers visiting Korea’s national parks, but he didn’t think his English was good enough. His English teachers were German, and their pronunciation was very difficult to understand. The Korea he remembers is a very old Korea, one that lives solely through memories and history books. He has never ridden the KTX and tells me that his children frequent Starbucks although he himself has never been. Whenever I have a problem with anything tech-related, he goes to get someone else to help. Once I showed him how Google Drive worked, and it amazed him. When summer gives way to autumn, we go see the oksae during our lunch break and the danpung at Mudeungsan. He shows me a special tree that is used to make wine corks, teaches me how to differentiate pine trees based on their fascicles and takes me to an old friend who sings pansori for us. We go to the small island where he taught for two years and where the parents of his old students still call him to ask for advice. I hold wriggling abalones in my hands before eating them raw, drenched in sesame oil. We go fishing with a simple pole and bait, and every time I cast it into the water, I’ve got a floundering fish on the other end of it. They are sliced and cleaned of guts, then eaten raw with spicy gochujang sauce. Despite all our adventures together hiking and traveling, I would remember our gyomushil best. It was the space where we felt safe, where we would sit on the sofas and talk about politics and history with steaming hot tea in front of us. It was where I brewed coffee, and where I managed to get my co-teacher hooked on the delicious black beverage (no sugar for both of us). It was where drowsy wasps managed to fly in through the closed windows in the winter, attracted by the heat. He would bring in homemade yogurt made with the leftover school milk. We would eat cup ramen and go on shopping trips to Lotte to replenish our snack supply. If he disappeared mysteriously from the gyomushil, it usually meant he would return with some treat. Periodically he would go downstairs to the general gyomushil and bring back fried chicken and slices of pizza held on napkins. He asked me if I wanted sangchu because he was tending to the school garden. I went along once, and he identified all the plants for me: rows of purple and green lettuce, garlic, chicory, beans, beets, Chinese bellflower, green onions, carrots and potatoes. He showed me which plants would turn into tomatoes and which ones would grow into peppers. I would walk back to our gyomushil after, tracking in dirt from the garden. The second time we meet at Jungwon, he’s there empty-handed. We go to a flower shop and I pick out a plant—a huge, spiky succulent. The principal explains that it was my co-teacher’s idea to get a plant instead of a bouquet this year. Something that will continue to grow instead of something that will wither away. I can close my eyes and recreate our room down to the battered paper snowflakes taped to the window. Too soon, other people take our place in the third-floor gyomushil. But in my memories, we are sitting on the sofas, drinking our tea and coffee and wondering what sort of adventure we should try out next. Candy Lee is a 2015-2017 ETA at Yeongsan Middle School in Naju, Jeollanam-do.