Study Sessions
I’m 12 years old and staring at a Spanish test. The words are twisting together so that all I can see are blurs on the paper. I think I may actually be crying. I don’t even understand what I’m supposed to be doing, all I know is that I need to pass this test so I won’t get a bad grade in Spanish. I failed the last two tests though, and I don’t think I can pass this one either. I can’t do it. And I can only cry at how stupid I am. ****** The test in front of me has strange words swimming across it. They make no sense. I know that it is English, and I know that I recognize a few of the letters, but the rest is a mystery. What sound is that supposed to make, and what sound is my teacher making? She’s standing at the front of the classroom, reading from a paper with all the words we are suppose to know. But I don’t know, I don’t know any of them. My paper blurs, and my eyes sting. I know I’m too old to cry. I know that I can’t let anyone else see. But it’s not fair. I’m good at everything else. I pass all my other classes, so why can’t I pass this? Maybe I’m just stupid. ****** I’ve been in Korea for two weeks now, and I’ve been studying Korean for equally as long. I’ve mastered the alphabet, though in truth I had studied that before I even set foot on this continent. Back home I had the help and encouragement of half a dozen Korean students from the adult English classes I taught. They praised me for memorizing the alphabet so quickly, and they were excited to teach me words and phrases. It felt good, exciting. I couldn’t wait to get to Korea and show how much better I was with this language than I had ever been with Spanish, or Latin, or French. But two weeks in and all I could do was grit my teeth and complain as loudly as the students beside me that this was unfair. Why would the teacher cover their mouths when speaking the vowels and consonants? When would we ever be talking to someone without seeing their mouths? And when would I ever need to know exactly what vowel sound they had just made? How unfair was this test? And why, when I had been so confident the weeks before, could I not get it now? What was wrong with me? ****** There is a new English teacher today. She smiles at us and says hello. She shows us pictures of her home and her friends, and she talks about something. She seems nice, but I have don’t have a clue what she’s saying. Everyone around me is nodding in agreement, sometimes they even ask something, in Korean, or in English. But I don’t. I don’t ask anything, not to her. I couldn’t understand her anyways. A new picture is on the screen and there are people in it doing taekwondo. One of the students asks, in Korean, who they are. The new teacher doesn’t understand but our teacher, the Korean teacher, says something. The new teacher laughs and says something too I think. I don’t understand. I want to though; I want to know how she knows these people. I turn to my friend and ask him. When he doesn’t answer I ask again, and then a third time. Finally, I hit him. Why won’t he listen to me? The new teacher comes over and scowls at me. She says something I don’t understand. I do understand she is angry. She crosses her arms. And I cross mine. I hate English. ****** In a brightly lit and very cold room a woman hands me a certificate of completion. I have finished the intermediate Korean course offered at city hall. I smile, and shake her hand, laughing towards the man with the camera. My teacher pats me on the shoulder and says something in Korean. I don’t know what. But I smile and laugh and pretend to understand. After the ceremony, and after the dinner, I take a long bus ride out to my little village. Once off the main street the path becomes windy, and dark, and I have to wedge myself into the corner of the seat to keep from falling over. Outside the window the few lights from the small houses that line the road blur past, until suddenly we are once again washed in the yellow street lights of a main street. I get off the bus and wrap my scarf tighter around myself, shoving one hand into my pocket while the other one clutches the certificate. My fingers ache in the cold, even with the gloves. I want to drop the stupid thing just so I can get my hands warm. I want to leave it in the frozen mud where it will get buried under leaves and dirt, and by the time the spring comes again it’ll be unrecognizable. I don’t deserve it. I didn’t learn a thing in that class except that I am as bad at languages as I remember being in seventh grade. Instead, I take it home. I pack it in a box in the laundry room, along with all my Korean books, and both sets of notebooks almost completely filled. There’s no point in pretending anymore. I’m never going to understand this. ****** It’s the start of the new semester, and I’m on top. My new teacher likes me a lot, and my coach is proud of me because I helped to win the last match. She tells my teammates it’s because I never do anything halfway. When I get into the ring I go at it with all I’ve got, even if it means I might make a mistake. I put as much force as I’ve got into
Lost and Found
“Sometimes, you have to be lost to find yourself.” I don’t imagine that the people who routinely photoshop this quote next to running feet and mountainscapes mean it literally. Certainly, you can find yourself through writing, taking a course for fun, picking up painting, or as I had hoped, by signing up for a week-long yoga retreat in Cambodia during your winter break. Having already spent six months in Korea, I expected to have attained complete enlightenment by now. Last July, I whisked myself as far away as I could possibly imagine, and envisioned myself obtaining wisdom and clarity commensurate with every mile I journeyed out of my comfort zone. But so far, rather than “coming into my own,” I was feeling even more unsure than before. And so, with dreams of zen master teas and headstands, I booked a trip to Siem Reap, where I was certain to find the inner-peace I craved. I arrived at the retreat center–a Utopian paradise of fresh-water pools and organic gardens–and tried yoga and meditating and yoga with varying degrees of success. Often, I was so fraught with anxiety and the anticipation of a sudden, majestic calm that I couldn’t concentrate. Then, I literally got lost. It was on the last day of my stay at Angkor Zen Gardens. Now essentially desperate for “inner peace,” I took up the suggestion of another traveler to meet with a “Wellness Coach” downtown. All I’d have to do, she told me, was bike into town and find this guy at a local hostel who would, on the spot, give me both advice and a new lease on life. I regretted it instantly. The first few minutes of the half-hour ride to town, I had to fight to not turn back. What am I going to say? This is ridiculous. He probably doesn’t even exist. But gradually, I smiled to myself as the adventure went on. I greeted dogs that wandered down the bumpy dirt road. I felt the chill breeze blowing back my flannel and refreshing my increasingly damp skin. The sun was shining on my face as I approached a tuk-tuk driver to help me navigate my small, handwritten map. “You know this spot?” I asked in unnecessarily-broken-English. “Oh, it’s so far!” he laughed. “Towards the airport.” I thanked him, happy for the long ride ahead, and hopped on my bike with a dwindling sense of urgency. I began to notice the ripples of the river, partially shaded by glimmering branches on either side. As I did, I stopped obsessing over my state of Zen.I impulsively pulled over at a gorgeous French-style cafe and parked my bike. Seated outdoors with my Kindle, I enjoyed a quiet lunch alone, for what felt like the first time in my life. Full and content, I crossed motorbike intersections and followed increasingly winding streets until I finally arrived at a cottage-style house. I opened the door tentatively. “He’ll be back at 2.” The employee apologized. No problem. I lost myself in a coffee table book about mindfulness for 30 minutes until I heard a chatting couple pulling into the driveway. The man, middle-aged and balding with kind, wrinkle-lined eyes, stopped, confused when he saw me. “Hi, I’m here for a wellness chat?” I said hesitantly. “Oh….” The couple whispered to themselves about room availability and he checked his calendar. “Can you come back tomorrow?” “No, I’m leaving in the morning.” “I’m afraid we just don’t have a space available today, dear, thank you for stopping by.” After exchanging some remarks about the town and other pleasantries, I backed out of the hostel. I hopped on my bike, took a deep breath, and realized I already had what I needed. “Finding oneself,” it turns out, isn’t as much of an answer, as a question. It’s like a scavenger hunt with no prize: the point is just to look, and see what turns up. My tiny biking adventure made me realize that truth and peace and calm are in the searching, not the end-result, and that people come back from traveling with a renewed sense of self simply because they left. It’s been a few months since Siem Reap and my close encounter with the mindfulness guru. From time to time, I still feel unsure and, depending on the day, more or less confused about who I am. But now, I also notice small successes throughout the day, like an effective lesson or bonding with my host family. I appreciate the creepiness of the tentacles in my soup and congratulate myself on being able to instruct a taxi driver to my home. Each day that I am here, I am learning to embrace this big, incredible chance to be lost. And maybe in doing so, I’m already found. Maeve Wall is a 2015-2016 ETA at Sadaebucho Elementary School in Daegu.
Walls and Paint
by Breanna Durham, ETA ’15-’16 Have you ever had the urge to throw paint on the wall? No paint brush, just hands plunged in color and then scrapping against blank barriers. I have no paint in my room, except for an old primary-colored set of face paint. That’s for the students I teach. So, they can express themselves in colors when words fail them, add some excitement to their usual routine during lessons. One student used the paint to make herself look like a mime. She sat up confidently in her chair, arching her back and lifting her head high. The careful brushes of black paint neatly fold around her eyes and mouth over a chalky white foundation. She checks herself in the mirror. I snapped a picture. I was told that the school needed pictures, confirmation that the students had done something, had progressed, and enjoyed the process. The combinations of them looked that way. I’d like to think that it’s true. However, the truth of it might not be as clean-cut. I still have the pictures, tucked in between books on my desk, waiting for a scrapbook to be made at the end of my grant year. There are plenty of other pictures, of when I traveled, of when I stood in front of my school, of when I joined an activity, of when I spent time with my friends. I took a lot. Others took a lot for me. You can see my gums in many of them because I’m smiling that wide. I don’t have all of the pictures. I deleted many of them. Many were lost by accident too. I comfort myself that I’ll have the memories. My next thought is that those fade. For the scrapbook, I’ve collected tickets, posters, bits of art made by my host brother, and the handful of diary entries that I managed to write. I think about burning the diary entries. They just sound angsty and overdramatic to me. I rarely write diary entries when things are going well. Diaries, to me, are more for purging emotions than remembering them. When I usually write, I write stories about other people and things. There’s so much out there to discover and so much that people should know. I want to know. I want to share. I want to connect. I haven’t written much lately. I can’t think of things and I have trouble focusing on the page. I’ve had spurts here and there, but nothing consistent. Usually, I come home really tired and my day starts much the same. And in the middle of my day, I’m busy teaching or planning. When I teach, I feel like the sun pouring out for the plants. My students often get excited. They easily burst out in laughter. Their voices shout and bounce off the walls until I tell them to bring it back in. If a lesson is good and the mood is right, I can get them excited about writing and speaking English. I laugh at some of the things they come up with for assignments. I love it when they write stories and perform skits. They’re a creative bunch. When I get to my office, I realize that I now feel more like a lightbulb with a switch. It’s likely that I won’t make the scrapbook. The only one I’ve ever made was a college photo album that I gave to my dad as a present. My parents worry. They want to know that I am happy and doing well. The album, filled with my smiling face would give some relief to them, even though I was states away. Now, I am a country away. On a national grant! It’s amazing that I can be here. It’s an opportunity to do something, to do anything that I can think of. And have support. And have a community. And help the community. And do something. Do something different. Move! I look at the white wall paper from my bed. It has silver-ish lines running down it, like a tree if I am feeling imaginative and happy, like crooked bars if I’m imaginative and not happy. If I am numb, it looks like nothing. I have a red marker, part of a birthday gift from my host family. The whole body of it is red. It feels smooth in my hand except for the cap. When I lift it, it makes a small pop. A tiny red triangular tip greets my eyes. You can see the red bleed into the white tubing like a sponge. When I place the cap back on, it makes a snap. I can’t paint the walls. They aren’t mine. Even if they were, what would people think? I turn and look out the window next to my bed. There are giant crane like machines working at the port nearby my apartment. I hear the soft rumble of their movement. They never seem to sleep. At night, the yard of them looks like a sparkling city, full of wonder. In the day time, it loses much of its magic. I see their colors clearly, faded yellows, blues, and reds. But still, it’s comforting to hear their rumble when I’m lying in my bed.