Catharsis Through Story

Preface:
This shitty essay was written about 3 weeks ago. I was asked to write an essay for a workshop. I pretty much wrote it all in one sitting (I was told one day ahead of time) and revised it once. I haven't read it since or changed it, so it remains shitty. I thought I would just post in anyways. Some thought did go into it, so I may look back at it in a year or two and laugh or appreciate it.

An American Story Teller In Korea.
A Personal Story.

Teaching in Korea for any native English speaker is going to be a life altering experience regardless of background or where one comes from. Every individual story is going to have its own unique wrinkles. My story certainly has its own characteristics that set it apart from another teacher’s, and that is what I’m hoping to share with this short essay.
When I was asked to write this essay, I was not given any parameters and with only a day’s advance, I did not have much time to write a polished essay. Luckily for me, my tendency to procrastinate during my college years has prepared me for writing last minute essays. At first I thought I would write an in depth analysis about the differences and difficulties an American would have to adjust to when coming to teach in Korea. I wanted to prepare a quick comprehensive guide that future Americans could use. I quickly threw that idea out because I would not have enough time to get enough research gathered to write an intelligent paper. I needed to think of a paper topic that would be intriguing enough to hook a reader’s attention, without having to condense hours of research into an already busy work week. Then I thought of a great idea while taking my one and a half hour bus ride to work in the morning. I could just write about my experience and my philosophy. With this topic, the only research I would need to do is search my own soul and hopefully have enough eloquence and time to write an articulate and interesting paper.
“Story teller” is basically what a teacher’s duty is. It is the job of a teacher to infuse his or her personality into a story; mix it with enough creativity and life so that his or her students will absorb the moral of the story. That is how I viewed my teachers during my high school and college years. I graduated in 2009 from the University of Minnesota with strange little degree called Studies in Cinema and Media Culture. People often ask me to clarify what that translates to, and as I do not have a concise answer to that question, I find myself typically giving an extended explanation. Basically the major skill my department wanted to teach us were critical thinking, being able to understand our surroundings, and having enough skill to take that information and turn it into something. This is why I think the job of a story teller and teacher is such an important job.
My story is unique in that I come from America with a Korean-American background. I had a slight understanding of how difficult it would be for an American to come to Korea and live here. America is land of many luxuries that allows Americans live in excess. I knew there might be obstacles that I would have to overcome that maybe some other foreign teachers might not face because of my Korean-American background. A big part of me did not want to come to Korea because I was afraid of the challenge. However, I had a powerful encounter with a Korean student during a short stay in Korea earlier this year. I visited a hakwon one of my cousins worked at as a special guest. I did not have much prepared for the visit, so I simply asked the students to ask any questions they had about America. Most students asked me simple questions about Hollywood and if I like the Simpsons. However, one female student caught my interest as she asked critical questions about the current social situation in America and how it differs from the social situation in Korea. I was more than happy to answer those questions, give her some historical background, and compare Korea and America with her input. It was about as pleasant a philosophical conversation I could have with someone who I did not speak the same language as. After the students left the classroom I let her teachers know how intelligent the student seemed to me. To my surprise, her teachers informed me that they consider her one of their lower level students. I asked them how that could be and they replied that her math and science scores were too low for her to be considered a high level student. The news stung when I heard it because I am someone who never excelled at math and science, but was always able to keep an intelligent conversation going with my versatile knowledge and the power of free thought. The ability to think creatively and outside society’s boundaries is not a skill that can always be taught. Sometimes it is a natural gift, and I felt strongly that the student I met that night had that gift.
I returned to America in the spring completely changed from my time in Korea. I wanted to leave my comfort zone, and my journey gave me more than I asked for. I was crushed by the cultural differences, I was left bruised by the isolated feeling I had everyday, and Korea even supplied me with my first heartbreak. I wanted to shake off my depression and so I continuously searched for something that would lift my spirit. I made many dinner and lunch plans with friends and met a lot of new people. I hoped that during those meetings, I would get to share a story and get a good story in return. I reconnected with some old high school friends and during those times of conversation is when I felt like my happy self before my trip to Korea. One of my friends that I reconnected with had just gotten back from China where he taught English. I shared my story about the intelligent student with him and he informed me that he saw the same thing happening in China. He told me that he was thinking about going back to China to give students with the ambition of free thought an outlet to express their creativity. His words made in impact on me as I wished the same for the student I met, but I did not know what I could do for her. I slept on my friend’s words for a couple of nights, and then it hit me that although I might not be able to help that specific student, I could go to Korea and try to give other students that are in the same situation a platform to express their creativity.
I am still trying to find the person I was before my first trip to Korea, but during those few hours I am working and interacting with my students, they become my main focus and I am able to put my issues into the periphery. I am their story teller for the forty minutes I have them and to strengthen their minds is my task. I have had the chance to meet other native English teachers since arriving in Korea and not all of them are here because they feel that education is the path to a better future. Most of them are here to make a few extra bucks with taking advantage of a free vacation. I, however, am not here for a vacation as my initial trip to Korea taught me that this is not a comfortable place for me. I am here for one reason and that is to promote critical and free thought. I do not know if I will make an impact, but I will never know unless I try. If I can make an impact on just one life, I will have accomplished something great as a story teller. If I can progress the lives of a couple of students, I will have paid back the debt I have to the story tellers that came before me. I still have some time left in Korea and I do not know where this time will take me or what sort of difference I will make here. My hope is that I can return to America and feel like I have accomplished something, and hope that my students can someday become story tellers and pass on our story to the next generation of thinkers and dreamers.

Hiatus Over

It seems every time I write one of these things, I always have to preface it by stating how long it's been since I wrote the preceding blog. I haven't written since preparing for Korea, and since I've been here, I haven't had any extra time. This last weekend was the most relaxing weekend I've had since being here. Otherwise I've been traveling all over Korea seeing people. We've had a couple of weekends where we haven't traveled, but even those weekends we had deadlines to meet and places to be. It was kind of a bummer that Christmas weekend was the weekend we had nothing to do, but no major complaints. I wish I had a few more friendly and familiar faces around me at the time, but I got to Skype with my family and fully unwind. I think I got to watch 4 N.F.L games this weekend. I love watching my Steelers do their thing.
There are no classes this week and my school has been dead all day. We had a Korean blizzard yester-night. The inch of snow that dominated Gongju yesterday was enough to send cars into the side of the road and prevented many of my co-workers from coming to work. I was the first one to work today as everyone else was delayed. I actually have a lot of work to complete this week as my winter camp starts next week. It's going to be an intensive two weeks of winter camp. I need to have all my outlines prepared and materials ready. Our school is publishing a textbook for the two week camp and I am to prepare a chapter of the book. Daddy's going to be an author. I've spent most of my day reading up on old news that I missed out since I was so busy last week. I was originally told that I needed to have all my winter camp stuff submitted by Sunday, and on top of that I was forced to attend some training course after work. While I usually have some spare time at work or at home to keep up on news, I did not have any last week. I got to catch up on music news (this Paramore gossiping is so cute!), political news (Don't Ask, Don't Tell), movie news, and sports new.
It's already 3:20pm, so that means I've done about 6 hours of nothing today at work. Which isn't too bad considering most of my co-workers didn't even come to work or have been equally slacking. I really should have continued on developing my winter camp, but I have 4 more completely empty 8 hour days this week. Then it's New Year's weekend which I have no plans for as of yet. I'm hoping something comes up where I can be around people to start the new year. I feel as though I might get a little emotional as 2010 has been a very difficult year for me. I'm that it'll in my rear view where I can analyze is and use it as a growing tool. I'm bummed that I need to give Korea the first 3 months of my 2011, but after those 3 months I'm ready to gain some momentum in my life and take off. You'd think 2010 would have been a great year for me coming out of college with all sorts of momentum and everything in front of me. I guess we all need to fuck up, regroup, and try again.
I'm starting to feel like myself again, and it's about time. It has taken a long time to recover from my initial experience in Korea and my broken heart. I hear a lot of people look back at hard times and say that they wouldn't do it any differently. I would have done it differently. That's not to say that I haven't learned a lot and grown, but 2010 starting from February fucking sucked. There was a lot of excitement in February about going to Korea, but there was also a lot of anxiety and fear of the unknown. I took a leap of faith and trusted that things would be alright. Last time I take a leap of faith. Had I had a better grasp on the Korean people and Korean culture, I don't think I would've done it. I think so many people think about Samsung and their nifty little televisions and imagine Korea to be this advanced little country when they are actually a developing nation. I'm glad I got to experience living in a country that doesn't have everything we have back in America, because I know how truly lucky I am to be an American. My parents made some huge sacrifices by taking a leap of faith, and I'll forever appreciate that.
If I could go back, and change things, I definitely wouldn't have chosen to go to J.L.S English Academy in Jeonju. Nothing good came out of that. If I wouldn't have gone there, I would have never met Jinlan Song and I wouldn't have had my emotional foundation shaken like a Haitian earthquake. Maybe I'll write a full blog about that someday, but this doesn't seem like the blog to do it in. That story has earned a blog of its own. Maybe it's because I'm inexperienced with the fairer sex, but I'd like to think when a girl tells you the things I was told and offered the things I was offered, it's a big deal. I talked to her after she broke my heart and during my recovery process and she did promise me that it would take about 6 months to fully heal. I don't know if I'm just feeling better because I was given a deadline, or if she is a maestro of broken hearts, but it's about 6 months now and I'm feeling a lot better.
Everything this time has been about 156.76% better. That's after some rough calculations and rounding down. I've finished 3 months already, and the time has really flown by. That's pretty impressive seeing that I was in Korea for about 3 months last time, and it felt like 8 years. This time I actually have a worker's visa so I'm legally allowed to stay in the country for more than 3 months. I can only hope that my next 3 months will go by as quickly as my first 3 months. Then I'm going back home and having a mother fucking hamburger. I want to spend about a month working out and dieting to try to get into better shape. I lost 25 pounds net before I left for Korea. Which is pretty good considering that I was also lifting pretty hard so I must've gained some mass as well. I think a month of intensive dieting and working out will get me a lot closer to the conditioning I want to be at. I had nothing to do and was dealing with a broken heart before I left, so I went all out. 2 workouts a day totaling for about 6 hours at the gym and of course a strict diet. I was told, and I fully agree, that reshaping your health is about 80% diet, 20% exercise. I cut out almost all the sugar (minus a cup of orange or apple juice in the morning and some natural sugars from fruits), a lot of the fat (sometimes you just have to have a little fat when searching for protein, and I love peanut butter), and about 99% of my carbohydrate while eating in small portions every 3-4 hours. I've never done anything that dramatic with my health before, but it really works and I loved doing it. I was hoping to continue that trend in Korea, but being unfamiliar with my surroundings and having a full time job makes it really difficult. Therefore, I'm hoping to have about a month in America to really focus on my health and body. I'm doing to need some time to adjust and find a job anyways, so I'll use that time efficiently. I'm hoping to find a good job, work hard, put a dent into my loans, travel Europe, and then to school again in the next few years. I have a wonderful family and all the support I need to accomplish that vision. Right now, I have a ton of motivation behind me as well. I just hope that fire can remain lit for the next few years. I think if I ever need to re-start that fire, I can go look for someone to break my heart again. A broken heart is something everyone should go through as it is one of the best worst experiences you'll ever have. A few days after my heart was broken, I was able to chat with Anthony and Colin from Circa Survive. I was desperate and searching for an explanation and when I asked Anthony for advice the first words he said to me was, "that's awesome." My initial reaction was, "what a jerkoff!" but he as he continued to explain his stance, it made a lot of sense. Colin also confirmed that I would come out a better person. As I am just finishing my metamorphosis and breaking out of my cocoon, it is making even more sense to me now.
Well, I think I've avoided working enough today. I've got about an hour left at work so I think I'll waste my time doing something else. Hopefully I have enough time this week to write one more of these this week. If I don't, I'm sure I will in about 3 weeks when my winter camp ends.