Let's start with some small talk. Work has changed once again. Next week marks the end of my first three month stint of work since everything settled down. There is always a shift every month as our work books finish and we role out the next one, but our elementary text books are on a three month cycle, and that's over. We've also had some students come and go, meaning our classes have split or consolidated, meaning the schedule has been changed. For the better? Doesn't seem so from the outside looking in, but it remains to be seen. For the worse? Could be, but probably not. A lateral move, then. The worst part is I've lost my favourite classes, the High I-1/-2 classes which are the highest level we teach here. They're moving into debate which means that splitting the class between two teachers isn't practical anymore. Bryan has five years of elementary under his belt so it definitely makes sense for him to have them. The plus side is I don't have to stay until 7pm on any more to teach the one class, but it's not much consolation. The second worst part is my Mondays and Fridays now have zero breaks in them because I've taken over both storytelling classes, historically my least favorite classes to teach. Again, it makes sense to have one person worrying about one subject, but due to the increased class size and the lack of English with the co-teachers they are a real chore. Since I get no prep time on those days I should probably be able to convince my supervisor to let me leave early however. The silver lining here is that I have never been more prepared for storytelling and teaching the increased kindergarten classes I see before me. Two weekends ago (good lord time flies, what the heck) one of my co-teachers suggested we meet for coffee and talk about how to approach some of my lessons. This came in the same week that I had the rest of the English department observe one of my storytelling classes for the first time so it might have been a "suggestion" from on high, but at any rate it was very helpful. I felt kind of embarrassed because it became clear that my envisioning of the task was waaay off from what it was supposed to be, meaning I'd been stressing out a lot about a task imaginary for pretty much four months. I'm pretty sure it's due to the fact that they are only in their second year, I believe, of having foreign teachers at this academy, so they don't quite understand the dynamic. I of course have even less idea than they do on this matter. The preface to these meetings to talk about how I can improve is always, "I know your English is far better than mine so please don't take offence," this coming from a career educator talking to someone with 2 weeks practical experience teaching adults in my home country. Man, travel writing must have been so much easier when communicating on a daily basis with your family and friends wasn't as easy as looking at the phone in your pocket. I'm sure I've said most of this over the phone to a significant percentage of people who would care about this already; it kills some of the spontaneity trying to recapture the turn of phrase you used, or trying to avoid saying the same thing twice. If I was writing a letter to someone, trying to capture myself and send it through words to another, to properly express what I feel and think, to answer the unasked questions so as to avoid the lag time wreaking the moment... Well, I think I'd find it much easier to paint a proper picture in a reasonable amount of time instead of being motivated by boredom and naval gazing. Anyway, I have been given some much needed advice on how to engage young minds over the last few weeks. While it is far more taxing on my free periods (not at all a bad thing, I came to this country to get away from refreshing Twitter) it has also made the job far more pleasurable when the kids are smiling and laughing instead of groaning and talking. Funny that. Coming up with crafts to keep a book entertaining is not my strong suit, neither is group songs or getting dirty or looking silly or any of the other aspects that make up teaching young learners, but here I am. I am still trying to figure out how to keep the kids under control, but I'm hoping that will come. I believe I was trying too hard to have the kids like me that they realize there's no bite to my bark - the bark I am just now putting to use. Turns out I don't like yelling at tiny people. Not even yelling, raising your voice. But I like even less having my class disrupted by a little shit who is ruining it for everyone else, so here I am. We shall see if I can undo some of the damage my smile has done. This is certainly a downpayment on my parenting abilities, I can feel it already. I just want friends, not subjects. I want to take people on a journey they want to be on, not clawing my way to get them where they need to be. I stopped trying to force people to do things a long time ago, not really sure I want to go back... I am also more and more sure that I will be looking for another job come the end of my contract. From the stories my new foreign teacher friends tell me I have found a very, very good school to be apart of, but this is not where my strengths lie. There is a chance that I will come around, unearth a new appreciation for kids education over the next many months, but I doubt it. I want to leverage this into a career, set up actually DOING something with my life since everyone seems to have bought in to that being what humans do at this stage in their life. We'll give their way a go, but don't take divesting all my earthly possessions to live in the jungle off the table just yet. If your emails start bouncing back, you'll know where I went. Being able to talk to my students is, y'know, kinda important to me? I like them to be able to ask me questions, I like to tell them things they didn't know before, I like to get to know this proto-people. It's is kind of fun puzzling out the question your kindergartener is trying to ask you with their limited, limited, limited vocabulary. But I guess I want to see the effect of a days work in their eyes a bit more. With kindergarteners you're repeating and repeating and repeating and they still don't get it. You can't finish a chapter and move on, you have to put them in an environment of learning and hope it seeps in. I'm pretty certain I don't want to be doing that in my own country so I'll probably be moving on, the risks of the recruitment process and all. And would you look at that, my small talk has run quite long. I've been keeping a list of interesting talking points that I should write about since I landed that first night, but I've never really gotten to them. I should do little updates as they happen but I doubt I'll change THAT much to make that appealing. So that means I should do an omnibus update with a whole bunch of those, but if too much time has passed then I just don't feel the writing spirit I need to enjoy putting "pen" to "paper" (finger to plastic?) I could talk about how unfortunate it is to write in Canadian at early levels since all your kids learn about are their "favourite" things, their "neighbourhoods," and their "colours." I can talk about my first experience playing Magic with Koreans. I could talk about randomly getting approached at the Daiso (Japanese dollar store) and exchanging phone numbers with a lady for reasons I still don't fully understand. I could talk about Korea's fascination with the French, and churches, fitness, plastic packaging, or their curiously intelligent holiday set up. And I probably will. It will be when I don't think it will take 2000 words to explain but will take more than the previous paragraph I just wrote. As for me personally, I'm still doing a lot of the same soul searching I was doing before I left, at the intersection of introversion and boredom. I was hoping to find some inspiration here, and I can't tell if it's not here to be found or if I haven't looked hard enough. If it wasn't for my Sandwich Realization I'd think it wasn't out there for me to find. What is my Sandich Realization, you ask? Well, I've told a few of you about it already, but probably less than memory would say I have, so I'll spell it out here. Early on in my time here I was about to go buy groceries and I realized I just really, really wanted a sandwich. Nothing special, just some deli meat, cheese, veg, a nice mustard perhaps, on really any kind of bread. Sandwiches hold a very unique place in my heart. When I go shopping I always make sure I have the essentials for a sandwich. You can eat them at any hour of the day, you can get your main food groups involved without too much trouble, you can make it simple to solve your hunger problems or you can go all out and make a work of art. My father taught me how to make a great sandwich on a lazy Sunday and I am proud of my pairing skills. Arthur Dent is a bit of a hero of mine for perfecting the art. But a sandwich is also the lowest common denominator of Western Food. It's basically a cold burger. You make them in a few seconds for lunch before going to work, they go in your kids backpacks, they feed whoever's in your kitchen come lunch time without a second thought. They're simple, versatile, and filling. And I wanted a sandwich. So I head down to the local grocery store to try my hand. After a good long stroll over every inch of the place, I had my selections and went home. I had: -some slightly sweet, corn-based bread called "breakfast toast" -a bag with three little bags of grated pizza melting "cheese" -a buttermilk based spread trying to be butter -something slightly less insulting than Spam claiming to be garlic ham -a box of cherry tomatoes -a bottle of honey mustard dipping sauce -a bunch of what I thought was but turned out not to be spinach I put assembled all the pieces. I took a bite. I finished eating. My soul continued to yearn. And that's what you get for trying to make a sandwich. You will spend more than you want and you're expectations will be missed. Because they don't DO sandwiches here. No matter where I am, I have always felt I could default to a sandwich. I could live on those happily for years and years. I kinda did that in college anyway. I didn't need much, but I did need a sandwich. And what did I pass at the store? Fresh fish, dried squid, red pepper sauces of every variety, sweet and salty seaweed, a whole isle of instant noodles in a place that only had ten, a million varieties of rice, and a range of mushrooms I'd wouldn't've believed possible. But not the wherewithal to make a sandwich. Their basic unit of food is the rice bowl with side dishes. That's why the cheapest rice cooker is $80 and can tell the time. I was trying far too hard to to recreate a reality that, while "achievable," was at root misguided. I wish someone had said to me, at some point in my life, "Hey, do you know that there are places in the world where people don't really eat sandwiches?" I am totally aware of the diversity of the dinner table that our planet has to offer. I get that. I know that. But it appears that, behind all the best dishes a country could put on their menu to showcase their culture, to show what they do better than anyone, I thought they still had a few slices of ham, a nice mustard, and lettuce. I am sure that there are people, in fact I know a few personally, who would find this shift in defaults a paradise. But the lesson I learned was that I should find my own paradise. It's not that I should return home immediately because their basic unit of food is the sandwich. I dared to dream bigger. I learned that everywhere does NOT have the same basic unit of food. If rice and meat with spicy veg is here, then what else could there be? And now, finally, we get to the truly important part. The understanding that there is a place where the simple, lazy, boring, basic unit of food in some place is something delicious and exciting to me. And I believe that place is Italy. I eat cheap noodles and canned tomato sauce frequently. I adore pizza on every single level. These are the banal food stuffs I eat to not die. The servings I could be eating could be made from the cheeses with a history that make vineyards blush. From the tomatoes that inspired the sauces that have swept the globe. My every day could be paradise. So I've decided I need to spend some time in Italy some time in my future. I've always been amazed by the fact that, no matter where you go on vacation, there are already people there who actually live there, every day of the week. So I think I'll stop dancing around the issue and actually give it a shot. Why stare at vacation photos and wish? There are all sorts of reasons, but they have no hold on me as evidenced by the fact I'm writing this in sandals on the roof of my apartment building in Seoul, South Korea. I've still got a few more years here I think while the getting is good, but my eyes have begone to wander. Before life catches up to me, before things come into focus, if I'll still up for a wander after reaching something approximating financial stability, I do believe you'll find me in Italy. I've even started learning Italian on my phone. -Dave
