After 46 days (so one of my students calculated) of sitting in a freezing cold, empty staff room with only the occasional holiday class to justify my salary, speaking to no-one and doing very little, I am now back into the routine of sitting in a stiflingly hot, crowded staff room with only 2 or 3 classes a day to justify my salary, speaking to no-one and doing very little. Not to worry – it’s the end of the school year next Wednesday followed by a 10 day Spring Break when I will be alone at school once again, though happily the weather is much warmer.
Yesterday I was finally cajoled, tormented and bullied into joining the teachers’ weekly volleyball game. My track pants and trainers, which have come in very handy while cleaning and lounging, had the briefest encounter with their intended environment. I may as well have been wearing 6 inch stilettos for all the running around I did. I stood at the back, positioning myself as best I could behind the tallest and most energetic members of my team, hoping the ball would not reach beyond them. If it did, my instincts kicked in. With a swift dart of the hands to protect my head and a deft shuffle of the feet to evade the ball’s trajectory I managed to avoid serious injury. By the end of the first game I was a trembling wreck and an obvious liability so was allowed to help flick the numbers over on the score board instead.
There’s nothing like a good team game to make you feel like you really don’t belong. I joined the team huddle, where I assume they were discussing strategy, added my palm to the pile in the centre, but remained silent during the rallying cries as they were in Korean and haven’t the vaguest idea of what English people shout on such occasions. After the games I also failed to enjoy the sliced pig’s feet that were served, being forced, as always, to ‘try just a little bit’. It tasted like meat. Whoopee. I may spend my time in the Spring Break recalling the excuses that kept me out of P.E. lessons for my final three years of secondary school.
I gave up smoking yesterday evening. Waking up this morning my first thought, as always, was ‘cigarette’, but today it was ‘cigarette? I don’t need one!” and felt liberated from the chains of addiction. Though it’s early days yet, I know from my extensive experience of giving up that temptation comes through other smokers or stressful situations. As I only know a handful of people, all of whom I meet infrequently and only one of them a smoker, that shouldn’t be a problem. The greatest stressor in my working day is deciding what to wear in the morning, so that shouldn’t trouble me either.
To fill the huge tracts of time that torment the non-smoker, I plan to get out more, get physical. It feels like I’ve had a long winter hibernation (though winter has been short by British standards) and now, it seems, spring is here again in Namhae. For the last week or so, temperatures have begun to stretch into the teens and most days have been bright and sunny. Time to dust off my hiking boots, kick start my scooter and get out into the countryside to fill my poor abused lungs full of fresh sea air.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Beginning 2009
So here I am, a wet Tuesday in February, all alone in an empty staff room. It’s 10am and I know that by the time my class arrives four hours from now I’ll be lulled into a state of torpor. I also know that after five minutes with ten excitable fifteen year old boys I’ll be running on full adrenalin and before I know it my work day will be over.
I could blame the Korean Education Board for their ridiculous solution to the injustice of holiday time variation between provinces – i.e. give all ‘guest English teachers’ (yes, we are GETs) a meagre 14 day holiday allowance a year despite the annual 14 weeks holiday the students have. I could blame myself for signing the contract without considering the implications of that. I could blame the Principal of my school for not being one of those who creatively interpret the higher authority’s rules.
Instead, I’m making the most of this situation I’ve found myself in. With the weather ranging from bitterly cold to tediously tepid I decided to let my scooter sit in the garage until spring. Instead I have walked the length and breadth of Namhae, discovering new side streets, new buildings, new views of the landscape. This is no great feat. I can walk to the edge of town in twenty minutes. From any given point I can see one of many familiar landmarks on the skyline so I can never feel the uneasy thrill of thinking maybe I’m lost.
On my mini-treks through the town, and in my daily life generally, I rarely speak more than a few words, mainly ‘hello’ in English or Korean. That is about the extent of shared language between me and the good people of this little backwater. Of my very few fellow ‘foreigners’ – who are almost all contracted through less stringent employers – all but two are back in their homelands for the winter. Consequently, I spend most of my free time alone, holed up in my room, watching films, listening to Radio 4’s drama collection, or writing stories.
This silent, solitary existence might sound a bit depressing, especially to the gregarious, communicative types whose idea of quality time alone involves a newspaper and a lock on the bathroom door. But I find it quite pleasant. I’m happy with my own company and long ago discovered the joy of not understanding the inane chatter of people around me. I can drift in and out of the social world like I was on some kind of drug.
Occasionally I’m jolted back by colleagues who insist on including me in their activities. Each day, one or two teachers are obliged to put in a few hours planning and preparation in the staff room. Lunch is the highlight of the day. Eating, for Koreans, is a very social thing. During term time we all eat in the school canteen – a set menu hot meal. This isn’t optional; permission to skip this communal event must be sought from the Vice-Principal. Sandwiches eaten solo at your desk or nipping out for a snack while picking up a bit of shopping is tantamount to slapping your colleagues’ faces.
During this long, quiet winter break the canteen is closed so one of the teachers will ask something like ‘who is taking the bullet today?’ and someone will volunteer to pay for everyone’s meal from a local Chinese or Korean take away. When the courier arrives on his scooter, stacks of hot dishes produced from a big, shelved box will be arranged on a couple of desks cleared for the occasion. The courier will be back later to collect the dishes and chopsticks and spoons left for him on the porch.
I find it frustrating sometimes. The conversation in which decisions are made about the what and when of lunch is just one of the many unintelligible background sounds I’ve tuned out. Sometimes people will decide to go out to eat together. Sometimes they will decide to end their working day around 1pm and go home to eat with their families. Sometimes they’ll order a take-away. The arrival of the courier is the first warning I get that I am expected to share a meal with my colleagues. Seeing the dishes unpacked is the first sight I get of what I am expected to eat.
I remember when I was spoon feeding my children when they were babies and thinking ‘what if today they really, really want the puréed vegetable risotto they had yesterday and just don’t fancy this macaroni cheese I’m forcing on them today?’. They, as I do now, ate because they were hungry and because they understood that choice is a luxury rarely afforded to the mute, I am mute, here. I’m also very patient, tolerant and will eat just about anything offered to me in good faith.
Of course well-intentioned people have offered solutions to my perceived problems. If I were a different person no doubt I’d respond differently, take some other action, change things. Instead, I’m me and I recall those long ago times when I was a wife and mother in another small, more familiar town. My life bustled along at a fantastic pace; an endless round of shopping, laundry, cleaning, socializing, making dinner, managing children, making a living. I dreamt of a life where I could shut out the incessant clatter, stop the relentless drive of domesticity and work and just sit, think and write. I believed that if I had a different life, one where I was free of mundanity, deaf to the daily babble and could see only the interesting and the fascinating around me, I would find inspiration to do something more. So here I am, mute, deaf, silent, still, the world around me as alien as Mars. Nothing much to do but write.
But now I have a class in 15 minutes and still have things to prepare for it. Even with just two hours a day required to make a decent living and with fewer distractions than Terry Waite had in Beirut, I still feel rushed and diverted from my timeless little world. I sometimes think it might be quite nice to be taken hostage and held in solitary confinement, but I’ve learned to that it’s best to be careful what you wish for. My wishes often materialize.
I could blame the Korean Education Board for their ridiculous solution to the injustice of holiday time variation between provinces – i.e. give all ‘guest English teachers’ (yes, we are GETs) a meagre 14 day holiday allowance a year despite the annual 14 weeks holiday the students have. I could blame myself for signing the contract without considering the implications of that. I could blame the Principal of my school for not being one of those who creatively interpret the higher authority’s rules.
Instead, I’m making the most of this situation I’ve found myself in. With the weather ranging from bitterly cold to tediously tepid I decided to let my scooter sit in the garage until spring. Instead I have walked the length and breadth of Namhae, discovering new side streets, new buildings, new views of the landscape. This is no great feat. I can walk to the edge of town in twenty minutes. From any given point I can see one of many familiar landmarks on the skyline so I can never feel the uneasy thrill of thinking maybe I’m lost.
On my mini-treks through the town, and in my daily life generally, I rarely speak more than a few words, mainly ‘hello’ in English or Korean. That is about the extent of shared language between me and the good people of this little backwater. Of my very few fellow ‘foreigners’ – who are almost all contracted through less stringent employers – all but two are back in their homelands for the winter. Consequently, I spend most of my free time alone, holed up in my room, watching films, listening to Radio 4’s drama collection, or writing stories.
This silent, solitary existence might sound a bit depressing, especially to the gregarious, communicative types whose idea of quality time alone involves a newspaper and a lock on the bathroom door. But I find it quite pleasant. I’m happy with my own company and long ago discovered the joy of not understanding the inane chatter of people around me. I can drift in and out of the social world like I was on some kind of drug.
Occasionally I’m jolted back by colleagues who insist on including me in their activities. Each day, one or two teachers are obliged to put in a few hours planning and preparation in the staff room. Lunch is the highlight of the day. Eating, for Koreans, is a very social thing. During term time we all eat in the school canteen – a set menu hot meal. This isn’t optional; permission to skip this communal event must be sought from the Vice-Principal. Sandwiches eaten solo at your desk or nipping out for a snack while picking up a bit of shopping is tantamount to slapping your colleagues’ faces.
During this long, quiet winter break the canteen is closed so one of the teachers will ask something like ‘who is taking the bullet today?’ and someone will volunteer to pay for everyone’s meal from a local Chinese or Korean take away. When the courier arrives on his scooter, stacks of hot dishes produced from a big, shelved box will be arranged on a couple of desks cleared for the occasion. The courier will be back later to collect the dishes and chopsticks and spoons left for him on the porch.
I find it frustrating sometimes. The conversation in which decisions are made about the what and when of lunch is just one of the many unintelligible background sounds I’ve tuned out. Sometimes people will decide to go out to eat together. Sometimes they will decide to end their working day around 1pm and go home to eat with their families. Sometimes they’ll order a take-away. The arrival of the courier is the first warning I get that I am expected to share a meal with my colleagues. Seeing the dishes unpacked is the first sight I get of what I am expected to eat.
I remember when I was spoon feeding my children when they were babies and thinking ‘what if today they really, really want the puréed vegetable risotto they had yesterday and just don’t fancy this macaroni cheese I’m forcing on them today?’. They, as I do now, ate because they were hungry and because they understood that choice is a luxury rarely afforded to the mute, I am mute, here. I’m also very patient, tolerant and will eat just about anything offered to me in good faith.
Of course well-intentioned people have offered solutions to my perceived problems. If I were a different person no doubt I’d respond differently, take some other action, change things. Instead, I’m me and I recall those long ago times when I was a wife and mother in another small, more familiar town. My life bustled along at a fantastic pace; an endless round of shopping, laundry, cleaning, socializing, making dinner, managing children, making a living. I dreamt of a life where I could shut out the incessant clatter, stop the relentless drive of domesticity and work and just sit, think and write. I believed that if I had a different life, one where I was free of mundanity, deaf to the daily babble and could see only the interesting and the fascinating around me, I would find inspiration to do something more. So here I am, mute, deaf, silent, still, the world around me as alien as Mars. Nothing much to do but write.
But now I have a class in 15 minutes and still have things to prepare for it. Even with just two hours a day required to make a decent living and with fewer distractions than Terry Waite had in Beirut, I still feel rushed and diverted from my timeless little world. I sometimes think it might be quite nice to be taken hostage and held in solitary confinement, but I’ve learned to that it’s best to be careful what you wish for. My wishes often materialize.
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