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.
Niceness
By Sarah Muscutt, ETA ’16-’17 I stared at my 자몽에이드, which was sweating drops of water all over my clammy fingers. My thoughts did laps around my head, making me dizzy. How did I end up here, in this chair, drinking juice that’s too sweet and peeling a grapefruit with two girls I’ve only spoken to a handful of times? Why did I even have a grapefruit in my purse to begin with? That was perhaps the most pressing question. The absurd urge to laugh out loud bubbled up within me from some confused place, as the eyebrows of the two 언니s occupying the same cafe table moved just a little closer together on their faces. I could imagine what they were thinking. Why is this girl peeling a grapefruit? I didn’t have an answer, but I gave it my best shot. “The 자몽에이드 is too sweet, so maybe if I eat it together with my grapefruit it will balance the flavor better.” The explanation sounded dumb even as it was coming out of my mouth, but one of the girls had bought me the drink, so I couldn’t just take one sip and then be done with it. I was just trying to be nice. “Would you like a piece?” The tone of my voice ended on a note that was just a little bit too high to come out sounding like a normal question. The two girls looked at each other, then at the grapefruit in my sticky fingers. Their eyes found my face again quickly, nodding. “Yes, thank you.” I smiled sheepishly and gave each of them a section. The sweat that had been dampening my lower back began to dry a little. I continued to alternate between sips of the sickly drink and bites of the tart, juicy fruit as one 언니 began to describe her recent trip to New York. She was speaking in Korean the whole time, so I only understood maybe 40 percent of what she was saying, but I nodded and tried my best to focus on the meaning as her monologue continued. She must know that I can’t understand most of this, right? I vaguely caught references to her friend’s boyfriend’s friend and her various interactions with him in New York. She added morals about life and relationships to the story that seemed to fall at random intervals because of the gaps in my understanding. “I’m telling you, I don’t think it’s wrong to date people of other cultures, but you know, some differences just really can’t be overcome in the end…” My mind flashed back to a note I had written a few weeks ago—something I thought had been forgotten, until now. This is definitely about me. * My first week in my placement, I went to church with my host mom, but by the second week I had found my own church to call home, and from then on I went every week. At first it was just something to do, but the church members welcomed me with open arms and many of my 집사님 spoke fluent English. At church I found a piece of my identity from home, preserved, and I began to count on that little bit of familiarity to carry me through those first months of my exciting but draining new life. Every Saturday I sighed with relief as I slipped into my sanctuary, shrugging off my teacher persona which often felt so heavy and stained with mistakes by the time each Friday arrived. I latched onto the comfort of singing familiar hymns in Korean and felt the joy of becoming part of a community spreading through me like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. My Korean vocabulary of religious and spiritual terms quickly expanded. After a year I still can’t communicate with my bank in Korean, but just get me started and I can talk about the Holy Spirit all day long. I joined the choir, as well as the Korean Young Adult group, strangely abbreviated as “KAY.” It wasn’t long before I was spending all my Saturday afternoons in the KAY loft after service and lunch chatting, eating snacks, playing games, singing and praying with my new friends. The days with my small group members began to stretch longer and longer, as we shared dinners, birthdays and evening bowling outings. One week in March I confided in one of my 언니s in the KAY group. 은비 언니 and I sat with heads close together whispering about my crush on one of the guys, thoroughly enjoying the chance to act like middle school girls again. “I wrote a note to him in Korean confessing my feelings, but I was too scared to give it to him on Valentine’s Day,” I told her. Her face was serious when she said, “You should try anyway.” “Really?” I scrunched my face in skepticism. “Yeah, I would definitely want to know if someone liked me, no matter what.” “Oh, okay, fine If you think so, then you give it to him.” I was taken by surprise when she agreed without hesitation. I pretended seriousness as I ceremoniously handed the note to her. She carefully unfolded it. Do you like me? Check “yes” or “no.” We both couldn’t help but erupt into giggles. Meanwhile, my crush was stuffing his face with snacks on the other side of the loft. Startled by the outburst, he looked up, always wanting to be part of the fun. Butterflies tickled my stomach as 은비 언니 carefully tucked the note into her purse. After the delivery of the note, I waited, feeling a bit foolish. I knew it didn’t mean anything and cared little about the outcome, but the suspense was entertaining nevertheless. I was prepared to dismiss the note and the boy, but I held 은비 언니’s kindness of serving as my messenger in my heart like the feeling of five o’clock sun on a summer day. * I sat
One More Time
By Heidi Little, ETA ’16-’18 “Il, ee, sam, sa, o, yuk…” I count up the numbers as I hear a rustle and giggle behind me, small, fast feet pattering across the wooden floor, a door opening. I know if I open my eyes I will see her, long black hair flowing, eyes shining, smile widening as she runs to find her hiding place. A minute ago, her small face looked up at me, coaxingly. “Soom-ba-kkok-jil, Hide-and-Seek,” she said. “Han beonman, just one time,” she said, delighted when I nodded my head in agreement. I finish counting and start moving from room to room in my host family’s third-floor apartment, searching. In the living room, I glance at her futon bed lying in front of the TV, the place where she showed me Big Bang’s “Fantastic Baby” and “Bang Bang Bang” over and over again. Her childish voice declared that G-Dragon was the most “sexy,” a word she probably doesn’t fully understand; I didn’t at five years old. The only figure watching TV now is a large, golden furball of a cat, relaxing as it knows the threat of being picked up and cuddled by small arms is temporarily suspended. I glance from the living room into the kitchen, noting the familiar white rice cooker on the counter and heavy, red iron pot on the stove. Maybe we will have potato soup tonight. One of my favorites. Some nights when the family is busy, though, we eat ramyeon. Not much of a cook, and not knowing how to light the stove, the first time making ramyeon for her and me to share involved a call for help. I laugh as I remember handing her my phone, knowing she could speak to her mother better than I could in my broken Korean, recalling how she stood by instructing me as I prepared our food, dishing out noodles and broth into her small, metal bowl—child-size chopsticks, spoon and fork at the ready. Now, the kitchen is empty. I pass into my host parents’ bedroom. Wooden lid piled with a disabling amount of clothes, an electric flyswatter resting on its bench, an upright piano stands in the corner of the room, inviting me to sit down and play. Finding myself living in a Korean home with a piano was a small miracle to me, and she liked it too. Standing or sitting next to me as I played, she would request her favorites from the song books I had carried with me from the States. “One, two, three,” happily beating her own tune on the keys above me to the waltz-like rhythm of the song. Now, the piano is quiet. “Heiding!” I hear her yell, her special pronunciation of my name. She is getting bored and wants to be found quickly. I exit my host-parents’ bedroom, passing down the hallway to my bedroom. Stepping into the room, I enter one of my own hiding places. Here the worry and stress of adapting to a new country, a new culture and new people is assuaged by an eclectic, but cozy, ensemble of cream-and-baby-blue wood furnishings; a purple and blue, zebra-striped rug; tall, fringed floor lamp; Union Jack bedspread; and rainbow, pony print valance. My hiding place has been disrupted before though. “This isn’t your room; it’s my sister’s. This isn’t your house, it’s mine,” she said in Korean, her young words stinging more than she possibly could have known or intended, as I contemplated how I didn’t belong. But now, the words don’t sting, tempered by the hug she gave me after coming back from a long trip, the card she wrote me in misspelled Hangeul and scrawled English: “Saranghaeyo. I love you. Welcome to Korea.” I find her. She is tucked under my bed, waiting to come out. As she emerges from her hiding place, she looks up at me again, coaxingly. “Han beonman, just one more time.” These words, now so natural to my ear, echo in my mind, and I too want just one more time; just one more year in Korea. Heidi Little is a 2016-2017 ETA at Seogwipo Girls’ High School in Seogwipo, Jeju-do.