What's my age again, what's my age again?

“HOW OLD AM I?” Everyone’s curious for the answer.  The students gasp and immediately begin to discuss a range; my English teacher colleague just happens to walk by the classroom and considers this to be the perfect moment to observe my class.  “17!” the joking boys at the front of the class giggle.  17 in “Korean age” (tack on an extra 2 years) is fifteen in “American age.”  “26!” “34?” “25.”  With an emphatic slap on the touch screen, the PowerPoint advances, and the students gasp and begin to whisper.  “I’m 23!” I boom at the class.  I explain my choice to tell the students my age is two fold  - it diffuses the first or second question many Koreans will ask when meeting someone new, and at the age of 23 I am not so far removed from high school life.  I want to frame myself as relatable.  I poke fun at and mime the 120º, 90º and 45º bow variations that are required when meeting older and therefore more respectable people.   It’s a good laugh for the students, whether they could understand my English explanation or because this young white teacher is trying to breach a deeply ingrained cultural belief and just doesn't get it.   Satisfied with his observation, my colleague exits the back door and would later ask me to take all of his Friday classes.  

Quiet before...the quiet

I think the beard throw them

Joker class - the boys on the right all picked American nicknames for class

            Trying to grapple with the cultural positionality that accompanies my age is one of many internal dialogues that have clouded my head space over the past week.  Since I last wrote, I’ve A) awkwardly meandered through an introductory lesson with over 150 of Korea’s brightest science students, B) slowly chewed through a handful of Korean-only dinners with my host-grandmother and her two rambunctious grand kids, and C) had squid soup for three consecutive meals.  In each scenario, or maybe just constantly, I’m acutely aware of what it means to be me: a young (but not too young) white American male teacher; someone who is undeniably foreign teaching, speaking, and only able to understand a foreign language. 

Before I use this space to make judgments about what I believe my role could be here in Korea, let me back up and share the highlights of my first week in Changwon. 

When I arrived at the office on Monday morning, the shock of my new job finally hit me.  Hundreds of new faces, bowing and offering the most formal greetings I could butcher in Korean, and finding a tired second year class waiting to be taught during first period.  I had arrived at the exact moment that formal evaluative parties were confident that I’d find success.  I felt undeserving and disoriented, yet excited. 

             Symphony music echoed through the hallways as the weary yet surprised students filed into the classroom.  I had queued up Beck’s Guero, which softly bumped in the background.  The second bell chimed, class began, and I tried masking my shaky voice with an artificially loud one.  Lesson objectives sounded modest enough – elicit student input and investment in getting to know me, convey the purpose that they were here learning English and why an American was slotted into the native teacher rotation, and to gauge English ability through quizzing students’ writing, listening, reading, and speaking abilities.  The range of English ability and self confidence ranges greatly – one student lived in Canada for 4 years and is practically fluent; at the same table, one student could do nothing more than copy down one of six questions from the board.  “Scaffolding” a lesson – making it accessible to language learners of all levels simultaneously – will be the name of my teaching game.

In between classes, I frantically sifted through hundreds of google drive documents; old lesson plans from former ETAs, and planned what lessons I wanted to teach.  Little resonated with what I wanted my students to gain from my presence here.  Lucky for me, there are some double-edged conclusions of teaching at a science high school.  Because science takes precedent – for admission, for curriculum weight, and administrative oversight – I’ve been given the green light to teach whatever material I see fit as long as I incorporate a speaking test that’ll make up 10% of their overall grade.  Roughly, I plan to spend the first semester focusing on happiness; defining, measuring, and improving happiness for a demographic statistically in dire need of such direct mental health management. The challenge will be to authentically engage the students and “sell” the idea of happiness…through the subject they devote the least attention and effort to.
            Teaching means learning.  Each class has a distinct personality and collective energy.  I try to read it quickly and match the high intensity classes with a booming voice – the rogue biology teachers patrolling my hall slowly slide the traditional classroom doors shut as they pass.  For the low energy classes, I over-accentuate my gestures and darn a jester’s demeanor.  It’s been taxing (especially for that Friday marathon), but validation for my efforts is validating.

Third graders (high school seniors) have a reputation as morose, depressed, and unmotivated students.  Traditionally, students only attend their first and second year of high school before graduating early and attending some of Korea’s top universities.  As I understand it, students are only allowed to apply to 3 schools during their first application cycle.  Rejection means returning to high school, reapplying, and facing the flurry of external disappointment and internal self-doubt.  Whereas the first and second year classes have 80 students each, the third year class is composed of 14 students. 7 boys and 7 girls – double the number of third years from previous years.  These students are forced to broaden their university application list (re: safety schools).

                Again, as the youngest teacher, I get the least desirable slots for teaching.  After one day off from boarding school where the students most likely self-studied at home, a short night’s sleep, and mandatory 6:30-7:30 taekwondo class, students entered my classroom five minutes early!  And then slept.

"Good luck!"

The sight of students passed out before I even begin teaching is unsettling at best.  Figuratively rolling up my sleeves, I shook the room with an artificially loud voice, painted the entire classroom’s floorspace with my pacing and prancing, and ended class  with students far from their previously catatonic states.  The English department chair had observed this class expecting to witness my “epic fail”.  As we returned to the department gyomoshil, she calmly told me she’d lift her observation duties for my classes.  Quiet pride, small victories. "By the way, you're 23 in American years. In Korea, that means you're 25."

Rejoice - pictured passed TFO, third from the left, now revived.

I'm supposed to be a state department "cultural ambassador".  

Here's a moment of blink 182 zen my student's appreciated me sharing.

   And that's about the time she walked away from me 

Nobody likes you when you're 23

...

My friends say I should act my age 

What's my age again? 

What's my age again?

I'm like "안녕하세요, 안녕, 안녕하십니까!"

“I’m a transient being,” I’ve told those kind enough to listen to my stories.  It’s cliché, it's a half-baked descriptor.  But it’s true, and I identify with my line.

When I stumbled upon the website GeoGuessr I lost track of time – “Embark on a journey that takes you all over the world” read the page entrance tagline.  Half-game, half adventure, the website propels players into a random stationary Google street view mark, the objective being to guess and pin the location on a small world map.  The game captured my attention because I’d been playing the analog version for some time.  To travel is to have privilege.  With that privilege should come critical thought about what it means to be a visitor, a guest, to try to or abstain from attempting to assimilate.  Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had my share of fetishizing a host culture and treating myself while abroad without worry.  There’s still merit in such a way of travel, though, for inevitably we confront situations that are different and thereby inherently uncomfortable.

Feel like playing my Geogessr?

Eating an "Ankaa" in the Kumasi bus terminal, Ghana

30 meters from my door, Changwon, Korea

Market square mosque, Egypt

Amasaman junction back road, Accra, Ghana

Outside Tista's house, Platanillo, Costa Rica

Need juice?  Jugo de Naranga bicicleta, San Jose, Costa Rica

 

Embracing the “challenge” of living abroad for a year or more while serving as a Fulbright ETA – although problematic even in this framing – is a concept I’ve flirted with for years.  Living it day to day means a constant buzz competing thoughts of self-awareness and knowing that I’m here on government business – literally.  It’s exciting mental gymnastics, balancing “assimilation”, lesson planning, and wondering whether the students are gaining knowledge and language ability from me.  And wondering what I am gaining from them, this place, this culture (this is somewhat of a selfish endeavor, right?)

Blog nomenclature - I'll admit, part of the reason I've held off from blogging "right from the get'go" is the fact that I lacked a catchy title.  Something that featured literary tools like alliteration and rhyme...tools that I will no doubt spend a lesson with my students exploring.  "Where's Waldo" should come to mind, but what's "Güero" all about?  You can urban dictionary it if you're drawing a blank.  Or, if it sounds faintly familiar, it's time to re-listen to Beck's 2005 hit - "Qué Onda Guero".  (Side note,  I saw Beck for my first concert back in the spring of 2006 at San Francisco's intimate venue The Fillmore where he opened up on a dark stage with merely a puppet set of the band front and center.)  Together, there's a travel blog name fit for me - when you (if you ever?) think "where's that skinny white guy Robert?", think "Where's Güero?"

Before I continue confusing you with my stream of consciousness, let me clue you in on what’s going on with me, where I am right now, and what my daily life is really all about.  (boring warning, I sent out an email with the same contents below plus some photos!)

Around this time last fall, I was in the midst of finishing up my senior year at Pitzer College.  Between crunching hard data in SPSS for a sociology thesis and interviewing students for the Class of 2019 (today was their first day!), I spent a considerable amount of time and energy planning for my future.  At the top of my list was to become a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) somewhere in Asia for a year - a post grad introspective “gap year”, a change to challenge myself to adapt to a new culture and language, and the opportunity to gain the much needed skillets of teaching and dealing with screaming children were all aspects that sounded alluring.  With the help of a Fulbright application class and countless meetings with advisers, I ended up knocking out the application right after my birthday in late October.  Fast forward to the 31st of March, 2015, the notification that I’d been offered the fellowship caught me by surprise while in the pharmacist line while a friend was picking up his girlfriend’s birth control - could there be a more anticlimactic setting for such big news?

Next came my exit from Pitzer: commencement - a capstone moment that I only left myself a week and some to sense the gravity of before heading off on a mini-pre-Fulbright adventure: Egypt, Ghana, and Italy by way of some questionable airlines.  While in Ghana, I worked alongside one of my closest friends and a former partner NGO to help electrify a rural village outside Tamale (northern region) through funding from the Davis Projects for Peace Foundation.  Our blog posts can be found (here) and the PR announcement is over here!  Following Ghana I spent 7 days in Rome/Venice - restorative, romantic, rejuvenating - before boarding a Qatar Airlines flight to Incheon International Airport by way of Doha.  Aside from a short night’s sleep on the airport floor, my weary traveler complaints were few.

That was 6 weeks ago.  During those 42 blurry days, I lived with 68 other Fulbright ETAs (scroll down in this link!) in a ominous monolithic structure known as Jungwon University (중원대학교) out in the “rural” countryside of Goesan (괴산군).  Too much to recount took place during the last 6 weeks.  First, I successfully completed 80 hours of immersion Korean class (not counting the “optional extra class” office hours, and self-study), going from learning the alphabet to basic introductions, verb tenses, and common interaction language competency.  I adapted an alter ego in Korean class due to the fact that “Robert Little” is a very difficult name to say in Korean.   The Hangul letter "ㄹ" is meant to capture the sound of an L and an R put together - think of the Spanish pronunciation of "R" in "Maria" versus how Americans say the name Maria.   Additionally,  Koreans generally don’t end words with a hard “T”; a soft “ew” or other sound is attached.  “Lo-bu-tu Ri-tul” didn’t roll of anyone’s  tongue.   Instead, I adopted my middle name - James (제임스).  Anyways, I struggled to pass the class taught by some of Korea’s finest teachers, but had my efforts validated during graduation when the Fulbright Director Mrs. Shim presented me the “best effort” award.  Embarrassing but encouraging, the ₩50,000 reward paid for a round of much sought after craft beer at Seoul’s Magpie Brewing Company.

Aside from learning Korean to be an effective English teacher, I had to learn how to teach.  Bolstering this multifaceted skill set came in the form of daily lectures and workshops, and an exiting two week window to interact with 90 of Korea’s most talented and dedicated students.  The Fulbright English Program (FEP) enabled me to observe classes, help students with homework, study the way other Fulbrighters taught, and of course lesson planning / teaching myself.  As an ETA who expressed a deep desire to teach English through exploring sociological concepts and environmental issues, I was designated to teach the advanced and low-advanced cohort.  In reality, my first two lessons were far less ambitious - one focused on belief of the supernatural through the daily theme of “ghost stories” and the second focused on hyperbole and exaggeration through the daily theme of “comedy”. 

During the last two weeks, three monumental events took place - the Fulbright Placement Ceremony, reception of host family demographic info, and “D-Day” (the departure day).  Most impactful, the placement ceremony determined where I would live for the coming year.  I had had my heart set on being placed on the southern island called Jeju - more than just culturally and geographically isolated from Korea, the island understandably has a unique relationship with resource and service availability compared to the mainland.  Before leaving Pitzer, I had fund-raised to buy a professional set of bike tools in the hopes of starting a “Green Bike Program” where students and community members could use my knowledge to fix their bikes while sharing some Korean with me.  Jeju is a vacation and biking destination, but has limited access to bike maintenance, and I thought it would be a sure fit. 

The placement ceremony operated in a dramatic fashion - placements were announced in order of geographic attitude from north to south.  A step forward, bow, and acceptance of school information on a thin slip of paper proceeded a public “pin the Fulbright on the giant map” exercise.  I had believed that there were 4 spaces on Jeju Island, which is why when the 65 northern Fulbriyhters were called before me, I was shocked that “Changwon Science High School” accompanied my name.  I stepped forward, pinned my location on the ceremonial map, and spent the night reevaluating my plans for the year and researching what the town and school had to offer.

“In my opinion, you just received the best placement in Fulbright” read the first Facebook message I received from the former ETA at Changwon Science High School (CWHS).  I’ve yet to validate this lofty claim, but my research did yield some promising information.  Changwon (창원시) is the capital city of Gyeongsangnam-do (경상남도) and is Korea’s self proclaimed “environmental capital”.  With a history of heavy industrialization, the city that is home to over one million people is home to South Korea’s most comprehensive bikeshare program - the NUBIJA (누비자) - “Nearby Useful Bike, Interesting Joyful Attraction”.  A mouthful for an afterthought acronym, no?  Changwon Science High School is the province’s most prestigious high school.  Students from this school attend some of Korea’s top universities including the MIT of Korea and the Ivy League “S K Y” schools.  In two weeks, my students will be heading to Italy for a Science competition (I’ve already been asked to prep the student pasteboards and abstract deliveries after school!).  My future school website shows a promising commitment to sustainability - the architects mounted solar panels and wind turbines, and the curriculum includes one “environment” class.  Yes I hope to observe it, yes I hope to guest lecture!  A significant portion of my identity lies in the time I spent at the Green Bike Program back at Pitzer and with my major field group (Environmental Analysis) - I’ll report back with my assessment of whether Changwon or the NUBIJA fill my identity voids.


Finally, I’m currently composing this email from my new home in Changwon.  I was brought here by my Fulbright English Co-Reacher, “Rona” who picked a host family for me last minute when the previous host family dropped out.  The option to live with a host family was integral for my decision to apply to Korea, and I had been told by a previous Fulbrighter that the family that had dropped out was one of the best available.  Rona informed me that I’d live with two math teachers in their late 30s and their two boys, Korean ages 10 and 7 (meaning ages 8 and 5).  When we arrived at the house, both of us were shocked for different reasons.  I’ve been known to start many stories with the line “when I lived in Ghana” before diving into a pretentious but authentic and wistful riff about a simpler life; when I lived in Costa Rica, the family of 4 shared an outdoor covered bathroom space with shower water a good 2º f higher than freezing.  I’ve lived in rough conditions, but Rona was shocked to see some of the facilities at my new home.  I brush my teeth in a kitchenette sink with no mirror, and my bathroom has a comically short mount for the shower head just above knee level (there’s a stool, though!).  After dinner, we discussed moving me to a house that is not “too humble”.   The living conditions here don’t bother me too much - Sure I was shocked, but I’ve had worse!  What surprised (and honestly scared) me was the lack of time I would have with my parents who spoke broken English.  As high school teachers, the two of them will leave before I awake and return after or approximately when I head to bed.  This means I’ll be spending the hours after I return home until I sleep with the grandma who commutes to the house every day and the two rambunctious boys - both of which speak not a word of English!  During weekends, it’s typical for Fulbrighters to travel, meaning there could be significant amounts of time where I’ll go without seeing my host parents.  At first I was devistated, but now I feel like I can accept this challenge of a rough homestay and language barrier - go big on Korean language and culture or go home!  Still, the bathroom situation really irked my co teacher Rona and I might be moved.  Nonetheless, I’m bound for a number of adjustments, some more overwhelming than others.  I’m trying to wield the power of perspective to my advantage.