Midnight (or later...) Musings

Well, it is currently 2:01 in the AM standard Korean time, even though the timestamp on my blog will lie and try and convince you that it is some normal hour of a Tuesday afternoon. In the past couple of days, I have found myself eager to write, but not really sure what to write about. In actuality, the last couple of days I have started to realize just how much free time I have here. I’m only teaching 21 hours a week, and even with prep time for my classes, actual working hours work out to less than 30 hours. That leaves me with about 138 hours to kill every week (and yes, I did just do that math out in my head, just because I have the time) and only so many of those can be wasted lying around, wrapped in my floral-pattern blanket and pretending to sleep.

Basically, I realized, I need a hobby. I’ve been reading more in the last couple of weeks, which has been good, but just that hasn’t seemed to cut it. Then, there is the movies; I’ve been downloading at a torrid pace and have been watching something I haven’t seen from one of the thousands of top 100 lists out there on the internet (including The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Casino, Fargo, and 12 Angry Men, to name but a few). But again, while entertaining, watching a movie or TV show just isn’t the kind of stimulation that I’m looking for at the moment.

I’ve tried starting a short story or two, but keep getting stuck, maybe because I still don’t quite feel comfortable enough here to start writing about Korea like I really know the place. So tonight, I went back to my trusty political manifesto. After about an hour of writing and some real hard thinking, I realized that if I want to do it right, the project I originally envisioned is going to have to be a lot more involved. But maybe that’s a good thing- I do have the time, after all.

Well, the next episode of How I Met Your Mother just finished downloading, so I guess I should go try to fall asleep to that, but just a quick story before I sign off. I was teaching one of my Interview classes the other day and conducting a raucous discussion on the importance of physical appearance in Korean society. One of my students raised his hand and explained (in rather broken English) that people shouldn’t care about outward appearances, then told a fable to back up his opinion (good to hear, after spending 90% of the class reminding my students that all good opinions are built on a foundation of strong reasons!).

Now, this story might seem mundane or boring for my average reader, but here is where it gets interesting. The source of the story was…THE TALMUD!! That’s right! His explanation went a little like: “There is a story in the Talmud that says…” I nearly passed out right there in class. Of course, I couldn’t really understand either the moral of the story or what it was about, but I was pretty sure I’d heard the world “Talmud” right. When I asked the student where he’d seen or heard the story before, he looked at me like I was stupid. “What, Teacher? Everyone studies the Talmud here!” And just about all of his classmates started nodding their heads in agreement.

Apparently, the Talmud is as common a school book in Korea as The Great Gatsby is in America. “We all have a copy in our houses!” another student called out, holding her hands about six inches apart to demonstrate the thickness of the volume. It took me about 10 minutes to wipe the smile from my face. I’ve been telling this story to everyone that I can here, but because no one is Jewish they don’t seem to really understand the magnitude of this image of every little Korean boy and girl sitting curled up on a sofa with a mug of rice tea and a copy of the Talmud on their laps. I guess you learn something new every day.

Swine Flu Prophesies...

Well, I’d been in Korea for nearly a month and a half with little medical issues to speak of other than a little intestinal abnormalities, but anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me knows that is a pretty normal thing. Sooner or later, my luck was bound to run out, I guess, and it turned out to be sooner rather than later.

I woke up yesterday morning with a dry throat, but because I tend to sleep with my mouth open (a very arousing image, I imagine) that isn’t terribly uncommon for me. After going for my usual run and hitting the shower, I headed out for work. I only had one class to teach because my evening one was cancelled as a result of the middle school exam period this week, so I was looking forward to a relaxing evening. About an hour into my three hour lesson, my nose began to start running. Then, almost instantaneously, a headache kicked in. Before the end of class, I was thanking the gods that I would be done for the day after three hours, because I was beginning to feel downright crappy. After doing a little bit of post-class paperwork, I headed home, watched some online television, had a long-awaited Skype session with Lavi, and then went to bed. When I woke up this morning, the headache was still present in force, along with an increasingly runny nose, sore throat, body aches, and a general feeling of worsening crapiness.

Now before I go on, I should take a few moments and update you all on the current state of affairs at my school in regard to illness. Since I stepped foot in Korea, I don’t think I’ve gone a day without hearing or being told something about H1N1, the dreaded swine flu. Before even leaving the U.S., for a little while it looked like my plans for the year might have to be changed because of swine flu’s high level of contagion combined with Asian governments’ tendencies to over blow pandemic scares worse than your average 12 year old girl’s fear of spiders. One of the reasons I had to arrive in Korea so much earlier than I was scheduled to start teaching was because of the country’s mandatory 9-day quarantine period for all people entering its borders. Even around other new recruits, I was forced to wear a medical mask for the entire week of my training course.

And things haven’t gotten any better since then. At my school, all students are required to have their temperatures taken by this ridiculous heat-sensing machine that looks more than a little like the first-person view from the original Predator. All faculty (me, included, of course) are required to take our own temperatures upon our arrival at school each afternoon. Before class, we need to sign out a bag containing a hand-held thermometer and face-masks from the front office, and then in the middle of each of our classes we are expected to make rounds and take each students temperature for a second time. If anyone has a fever or looks sick, we have been given strict orders from the higher powers to send the student home immediately. If all of these details haven’t proven it to you already, they are taking the swine flu very seriously here; in my first few weeks on the job, I got more emails about H1N1 and temperature-taking policy than I did about teaching.

So you can imagine that when I woke up feeling just about the whole list of flu-like symptoms from the CDC homepage, I thought it might be a good idea to tell my school about it. Because today was supposed to be my off, I called my faculty manager and asked him what he thought I should do. He recommended I come into work to check my temperature and see if I had a fever, and then from there go see a doctor to get some medication. I couldn’t tell if it was just because we were speaking on the phone, but he didn’t sound all that concerned.

I met up with my friend Andy and biked to school, laboring much more than usual in my condition. At school, I went immediately to the faculty management office and took my temperature: 34.2° Celsius, which translates to roughly 93.5° Fahrenheit. Suspiciously low, but not abnormal for the not-a-so-good thermometer I was used to using there. The other faculty manager at school seemed to take the faulty thermometer’s word as gold, though, hurrying me out of the office and informing me that I didn’t have to worry about the flu. On my way to the stairs, I passed by the Predator thermometer, so figured I would try my luck with it to see how close of a reading it gave me to the first. When I put my face up to the meter, the temperature immediately shot up to 38.4° Celsius, or 101.1° Fahrenheit. The machine then began to beep loudly, and I almost hit the deck, assuming some kind of alien killing machine was going to come out from the supply closet and hunt me down like I was Carl Weathers. “Holy Crap!” I thought. “That isn’t such good news!”

It took a few minutes of conversation with one of the school staff members to figure out that apparently the machine wasn’t working right and had a habit of doing what it did to me. Phew.

Not quite sure about what my temperature was but at least relatively confident that it wasn’t as high as the Predator insisted, I headed down the street toward an area where I was told that there were a lot of medical offices, apparently some place I could find an internal MD. While the average person might not see a doctor for a common cold back home, they don’t sell any real medicine over the counter here, so you have to see a doctor, even for some Benadryl. Having not yet insured myself healthilogically, I was a bit concerned about what the cost of that procedure might be, but I was assured by some Canadians that it would be cheap, at least in comparison to the "ridiculously" high rates we pay in America (I guess that’s the price of freedom).

Using my newly acquired ability to actually read Korean, I located a medical office on the fifth floor of one of the buildings and went up to get seen. After an interesting and vague interaction with the women behind the front desk, I was seated and told that the price might be “very expensive…as much as 20,000 won! [$20]” and that I would have to wait 30 minutes. I happily agreed.

I sat down and waited. Everyone who was there in the room before me was seen. Then everyone who had come to sit and wait after I’d arrived was seen as well. It was becoming clear to me that my foreign status was acting as a roadblock for my chances of receiving some medical advice. Just as I was about to make a fuss, one of the nurses came over and told me I could go in to see the doctor.

I spent about 20 minutes sitting with the doctor in his office. From the beginning, he made it clear to me that he didn’t speak English very well (something he didn’t really have to tell me), and our conversation was certainly hampered by that fact. Still, he was a really nice guy and was clearly exerting a lot of effort to try and make sure he understood my symptoms and his recommendations, so I have to thank him sincerely for that. Basically, he told me that flu and the common cold have basically the same symptoms, so it would be hard for him to know if I really had the flu without me going to the local hospital to get a blood test. He prescribed me a two day dosage of five different medications and sent me on my way.

On my way out of the office, I stopped at the front desk to pay my bill. Based on the conversation I’d had originally with one of the nurses, I was expecting a tab of around 20,000 won. I took out my wallet, and the woman behind the counter said a number in Korean that I didn’t understand, then held up three fingers. 30,000? Okay, a little higher than she’d promised but still reasonable enough. I handed her my credit card and waited for the receipt. When she handed it to me and I looked at it, I almost fell over. The bill wasn’t 30,000 won; it was 3,000. As in roughly $2.50. For an uninsured visit to the doctor! I mean, how ridiculous is that? I’m not exactly sure what the pricetag would have been back home, but I have to imagine at least ten times that. I went across the hall and got my prescription filled for 5,600 won, bringing the grand total of my medical expenses for a rather nasty cold to…8,600 won. Wow. That is all I can say. Wowwy wowwy wow.

As it turns out, it probably is a good thing that they keep those cold drugs behind the counter; I’m not sure what exactly they gave me, but it took only three doses and about 12 hours for me to be feeling nearly symptom free from what I mentioned was a worse-than-average cold. Korea: the home of ridiculously cheap and potent healthcare services. Who knew?!

A very new year

This past weekend marked the beginning of the Jewish new year, and as a Jewish person I decided that I would do my best and celebrate the holiday as best as I could. Unfortunately, I work all day on both Fridays and Saturdays, so I was left to Sunday, the second day of the holiday, to do my celebrating.

To be completely honest, it wasn’t until a conversation with my parents a week or so ago that I even remembered that Rosh Hashanah was coming up. I guess this might provide some kind of hint as to the depth of my religious observance at the moment. In reality, though, I think the last year or so has represented the most dramatic change for my own personal religious involvement, and as a result has led to a serious change in the way that I look at Judaism and my relationship with it as a practical religion.

Despite those changes (and I imagine it’s probably fairly obvious in which direction those changes have pushed me on the observant<-->secular scale), I’ve felt a serious desire to reconnect Jewishly in the last week. I think part of that has a lot to do with the way that, at least for me, Judaism and especially the holidays has so much to do with family. The Jewish holidays are always a time that I love being home, with the familiar sounds of my brothers and sister arguing about something insignificant and the tantalizing smells of my mom’s chicken soup on the stove and brisket in the oven. And now, suddenly, I find myself thousands of miles away from all of that. Of course, being away at college the past four years meant that I wasn’t able to spend every holiday with my family, but even then there was definitely a different sense of distance.

For all these reasons, I was determined to find a Jewish service and meal somewhere in Korea. And who do you turn to when you’re a Jew somewhere very un-Jewish in the world? Chabad, of course! It took only a few minutes of browsing on the cyberweb to find out that there was indeed a Chabad House in Seoul, aka’ed as the JCC of Korea (swimming pool, workout facilities, and goyishe business ethic not included). When I read on their website that they would be hosting services and meals for both nights and days of the Rosh, I signed myself up for the second day.

Sunday morning rolled around, and I was up and out the door by 9 o’clock (very early for English-teacher-in-Korea-standard-time, mind you) to make the hour and a half trip up to Itaewon, where the Chabad House was located. Luckily, I had printed out every piece of map/direction information they gave on their website, because there was nothing resembling a sign or placard anywhere in the vicinity of the building. As I came up the stairs, I was welcomed by two white men standing outside wearing kippot, a sight whose strangeness is hard to explain to someone who has never lived in a place as different from their home as Korea is to mine.

While waiting for services to pick up again (as might be expected, a minyan is hard to come by around here), I got a couple of minutes to mingle with some of the people there- a bunch of other English teachers like me (we make up the majority of the Caucasian population in this country) as well as a couple of American army officers from the base nearby. After a few more stragglers made their way in, services began again, led by one of the rabbis present. The services, which lasted about two hours or so, weren’t particularly engaging, but nevertheless they gave me some time to think about the year that was, which had included some rather important life-changing experiences for me. In the end, that is really what Rosh Hashanah is all about, so I think I got what I had come for.

After services were over, we went inside and enjoyed a nice Jewish-style meal, complete with challah and honey, chicken, couscous, and even some chulent! I’d been craving some Hebrew cooking, so it definitely hit the spot, although also made me appreciate just how much better of a cook my grandmother is than about anyone else on the planet.

Once the meal was through, we went back outside for a quick Minchah service before heading out toward the water to take part in Tashlich (which is, for those terminologically-challenged, a tradition in which we throw bread into a body of running water to symbolize the throwing-away of our sins). That’s right: Tashlich on the Han River. It was a sight to see, as can be attested by the crowd of Korean passersby who watched on in amazement, one of whom even grabbing his cell phone and videotaping the entire event to bring home to his disbelieving wife.

On the walk back toward Itaewon and the subway station, I engaged one of the young rabbis there in a conversation about Judaism. Over the course of 30 minutes or so, we talked about a lot, but mostly focused on the subject of intermarriage and the position of orthodox Jews in the world, particularly in Israel. As you can probably imagine, we didn’t quite see eye-to-eye, and I left the conversation feeling rather unfulfilled and frustrated, the tell-tale signs of a classic Jewish debate. All in all, though, I accomplished what I had set out to do—have a Jewish experience in a genuinely non-Jewish place—and so in the words of one of the great Jewish scholars, Tupac Amaru Shakur, “I guess it was a good day.”

I had a day off yesterday, and with my new ride of a beat up used bike, I decided to explore town a little better and check out a swimming pool about a mile and a half from my place. I’d found it online a few weeks ago but hadn’t had the chance to get over there, but more recently I’ve been itching to get back into the water, so I figured, “Heckity heck, why the heckity not?!”

The bike ride took me about ten minutes, and then it took about another five to actually find where the swimming pool was (I only knew it was in a general vicinity, right next to the local basketball arena and ice hockey rink. Yes, that’s right- Koreans do play ice hockey). I went inside and spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out what the deal was at the pool—hours, price, stuff like that—with the woman behind the counter, who spoke just about no English. After a while, I realized that she was showing me the schedule for classes, so when I explained that I just wanted open-lap swim, she flipped the page and showed me the hours for that. This kind of experience has been pretty common for me, thus far; there aren’t very many people here who speak any English, so I’ve had to practice my speaking-with-my-hand skills.

I went into the locker room, changed, and went out to the pool. The pool was Olympic-sized, with half of the water set up with lane-lines going across the pool’s width, and the other half being used by a huge water aerobics class, being led by a woman on the deck who was screaming into a microphone as music played in the background. As I was making my way to get into the pool, I noticed that everyone swimming was wearing a bathing cap, and sure enough, before I could even stick my feet in one of the lifeguards came over and pointed to my head, as if to say, “What, you were planning on jumping in with nothing on your head?” When I explained to her (once again, with my hands) that I didn’t have a cap of my own, she led me to the pool office, where this young swim instructor who spoke fluent English and looked really excited to see a white guy around gave me a bathing cap to use. Which was bright, neon green. Needless to say I looked ridiculous; even they were laughing in my face, but I figured I was going to stand out so much already in a pool of all Koreans that the neon green cap wasn’t going to make too much of a difference.

I got in to swim, but found quickly that things were going to be a little difficult. The lanes of the pool were jam-packed, with about five or six people in each, so it was pretty hard to get up and down the length of the pool. I’m no Marc Spitz, but I also happened to faster than everyone else in my lane, but trying to pass people was nearly impossible with the congestion. After about 30 minutes of swimming, I got out, feeling like I’d gotten at least somewhat of a workout, but more frustrated than anything. The next time I go, I’m going to make a point to do it in the middle of the day when more people are at work, so hopefully that will make things a little better.

I got out of the pool, took a quick shower, and then went to my locker to change. I wasn’t sure whether or not the pool would have towels, and honestly I didn’t really have an extra one at home, so I basically just had to air-dry. Apparently I didn’t do such a good job of it, and as I was putting on my clothes a janitor came by, saw the puddle of water at my feet, and began lecturing me in Korean. It was pretty easy to tell why he was upset, but of course I didn’t actually understand anything he was saying. In any case, he seemed a little too angry for something that wasn’t a big deal (especially for a guy whose job it is to mop up the bathroom), so I just hurriedly put on the rest of my clothes and ran out of the locker room. As luck would have it, in my hurry I forgot to put back the locker key, so as I made my way out the door an alarm went off, and seconds later out came the janitor again, this time yelling at full volume. I realized my mistake, handed him the key, and scampered out of the building, a bit shaken but at least happy that I’d finally found a pool. I guess next time I’ll have to remember to bring a towel.

[Just as a preface, I wrote this blog entry two days ago, when my apartment suddenly decided to stop providing me with free internet. As such, you are essentially reading the past (as will be clearly evident from my last sentence). So just think of it as a little gift of quantum mechanics.]

So, once again I have done a terrible job of keeping this blog updated. But in either case, all this time means I have much news to report! I began teaching, and am just about to start my third week in the classroom. At the beginning, teaching definitely took some getting used to. At my school, all teachers are given a very detailed and jam-packed schedule that we are supposed to follow for each class. It makes planning out class a lot easier, but it took me a few classes to be able to figure out just how to manage fitting everything in.

The teaching itself has its ups and downs. I’d say that the two biggest factors that affect my enjoyment level of each of the seven different classes I teach every week are who I’m teaching and what I’m teaching. Most of my classes are prep courses for the IBT, or Internet-based Toefl, the foreign language fluency test that students take here (and everywhere else in the world) to get into competitive schools, international schools, and foreign universities in English-speaking countries. Those classes tend to be relatively dull, something along the lines of an SAT prep class, but the kids are much younger (most of my students are middle schoolers) so it’s my job to make class fun, or if not fun than at least not mind-numbing. My other two classes are called Interview and Discussion classes, in which I work with kids who are preparing to have interviews for some of the country’s top international middle schools. Those classes are definitely livelier, just because the whole point of them is to get kids to talk and voice their opinions.

In general, a lot of the kids I see are just plain old exhausted, and honestly I don’t blame them at all. Students in Korea who attend private English academies like the one at which I teach are in school from 8 in the morning until 10:30 at night. That’s right- that was no typo. These kids are literally in the classroom for 14 hours a day. By the time I get them, it’s 4:30 and they have already sat through a full day of school, so it isn’t any surprise to me that they spend the five minute breaks we give them every hour of the 3 hour lessons with their heads on their desks. If I am exhausted after teaching for six hours straight, you can imagine what my students must be feeling. But in any case, teaching has been going well so far and each class that I teach gives me more and more confidence and allows me to relax a bit more.

Outside of the classroom, life has been settling in well. Last week, I was able to put together and hang up a large set of curtains for my enormous windows, which made me feel like a pretty handy guy. Over the weekend, I did a little decorating my apartment with some posters I’d brought from home, so the place is starting to feel a bit cozier; as long as I have the Catalan flag above my head and Tupac and Ringo looking down at me, I think I’ll be alright. I also picked up a used bicycle today from a rather sketchy looking shop/lot that should come in very handy; just about everyone here has a bike, and with school only a 10 minute ride away it makes things very convenient.

I should probably hit the sack now, as I’m waking up in 7 hours or so to catch the Pats live on Monday Night Football (it’s actually Tuesday Morning Football here, but still it’s a party).