Loose Feet

It's been awhile since I've had the chance to sit down and think about the past month. It's been about a month, really. China has swept me up into it's culture, it's drama, it's busy world and I haven't looked back since. There are many things I could say - there are many things I should say, as I have had many adventures, but  now is not the time for recounting. Instead I would like to muse for a moment.

Mark, a handsome young Chinese rockstar of a guy I met at the hostel, has been taking me around the city and teaching me the ins and outs of Chinese culture, music, history, even rebellion. I have spent most of my time here with him learning and enjoying Beijing, and I know he will be a big influence in my decision of where to spend my next year working. He has a lot of big ideas for a country where freedom of ideas has not yet become a solid concept in the average mind.

The other day, we went out for breakfast to a small Chinese restaurant. It should go without saying here that I was the only white person in the restaurant, and got a lot of strange looks when I walked in with Mark. None seemed too unfriendly though, so we sat down to eat. Mark was telling me about how when he was a child, he was allowed the privilege of reading more than most other children in his village. His father had been a teacher and a headmaster at one of the local schools, and thus had access to the library at all times. That meant that Mark could go and read books whenever he wanted to. He told me about some of the different books that he had been reading, and commented that at the time when he was still a child, the cultural revolution was still strongly felt. Tienanmen Square was on the cusp. Many of the books that were in the library, therefore, were written by Mao. There was no comment made on Mark's behalf about Mao or what he thought of the guy. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I saw an older Chinese man perk up at the mention of Mao. He listened to our conversation, and it was clear that he understood part of it. I didn't think anything of it until suddenly the man stood up and came over to our table and sat down next to Mark. He started lecturing Mark in Chinese and Mark tried to tell him to go away to no avail. They had a bit of fight...I couldn't understand any of it, but I heard Mao in each sentence. Finally the man stood up and left.

I looked around and everyone in the restaurant was staring at us quietly. I felt so awkward but Mark was really mad and told me that the man had yelled at him for talking about Mao. In so many words, he told Mark that he knew nothing about Mao, and that Mao had done so much for the country and the people. He called Mark a betrayer and told him to stop brainwashing me. I couldn't believe it. It was the reality that I have only been reading about in my face. But it didn't stop. A few minutes later, as we had moved on to a new conversation, the man came back and pointed his finger in Mark's face (a very rude gesture) and started yelling in both English and Chinese -- saying things like 'Mao saved us all', and 'The people had to struggle', and 'Look how bad it was, Mao made it better'. And then he left, for good.

China is still in the thick of making and dealing with it's history and it's reality and it was really shocking to see this. In it's own way, this was one of my best experiences of the real China that I have had over the month that I have been here. Even Mark was really blown away by what the man had to say to him. There is still a mentality that has been completely engrained in people's minds and noone can be sure when that will change -- or if it will change. People still go and visit the embalmed body of Mao everyday - and not just a few, but many many many. This is, to me, both fascinating and frightening. But it is a big part of the reasoning behind why I think, more and more each day, that China is where I need to be spending the next year of my life.

So much to say, so little time...

I arrived in Beijing this afternoon. I had this idea in my mind that when I got to the airport it would be this noisy, crazy mess of people running around everywhere speaking Chinese and trying to take my money. It wasn't like that at all. It was relatively quiet, really. Immigration was no problem, walked right out and got into the taxi....And then it got a bit strange.

I gave the taxi driver my information for the hostel I am staying at, a place called The Chinesebox Hostel -- which has been fantastic, but more about that later. The taxi driver had no idea where it was. It's located in the Hutong area of Beijing, which is one of the older areas comprised of tiny little alleyways. He kept calling and calling but noone was picking up and I started to sweat. I was thinking in my head that I would get dropped off on the side of the road somewhere and would be paying wayyy too much money to get to my bed. Go figure, I'm a huge worrywart and it all worked out. Eventually, he turned down some small little street and parked on the side of the tiny road -- and there it was! Two huge red doors with lion knockers and a very handsome guy came out and brought me in and got me all sorted out.

I sat down with the two guys at the front desk (I'll just say this...Chinese men are handsome) and they got me all sorted out. I told them where I wanted to go and they got together my train tickets, my airplane tickets...everything. Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to stay in all these places. Looks like I'll be staying here in Beijing until Friday. Then off to X'ian for the weekend to see the terracotta warriors. After that I'll take the train to Shanghai for one day, then fly to Hong Kong for 4 days. Then I'll come back to Shanghai for the weekend and Sunday night will take the train down to Hangzhou to see Penny for Christmas.

Yikes. Lots of translation, confusion, craziness involved in all that. But I'm pretty sure it'll be a lot of fun.

OLA being finished, I thought I'd share the last of my photos with my students -- my favorite students, that is.

Me, Ellia and her two friends -- the girls that I like to call "Stalker Girls" because whenever Ellia would visit me, they would always join in the fun. Luckily they were very kind :)

I find with every day it's getting harder and harder to leave. I know I've been regaling you, probably even overloading you with tales of my students, but they keep doing all these wonderful things that I need to share with someone.

I went up for a quick meeting today with one of my students, a girl named Ellen who's going to be helping me out a lot when I return to Korea with a womens group I want to put into action (more about that later though). When I came back downstairs to the office, I was shocked to find this...

One of my old students, June, had gone out and bought a bunch of Nutrigrain bars and left them on my desk. Okay, so it's no big deal, just Nutrigrain bars, but it meant a lot to me. A few months back, my mom sent me this huge box of chocolate and I ended up giving out a lot of it to my students -- and by a lot, I mean a lot. My students basically know me as the candyman, which is fine. They do their work, they get rewarded. Some of the students thank me, some of the students hog the candy like pigs. It's a mixed basket of reward, really.

My OF7 class had been great. They used to be my favorite class. But then with one of coworkers being fired, we mixed all of the classes up and I lost them to another teacher which was really a huge disappointment. The kids in that class always said hi to me, always gave me hi-fives. They were like my kids...haha...

One of the students was a little boy by the name of Ronaldo (yes, like the soccer player). Ronaldo is by far and away my favorite student in the entire school. Ronaldo thinks that his English is not good, but whenever he comes into my class, he speaks in English for the entire 65 minutes. And his language skills have improved significantly. He has made the greatest improvement out of any student I've met in Korea. He is polite, he is kind, he is funny, he has respect for his teachers, and he  is dedicated to being a smarter, better human being. And he is not afraid to tell you that (he told me that -- he also told me that he hates stupid people. Me too, Ronaldo, me too.) Usually, in Korea, a lot of students are embarassed to talk to you on the street. They run away from you, or hide their face. Ronaldo always comes right up to me and makes a stupid face, then asks me how my day was and gives me a high five and then waves goodbye. He is awesome. I am so proud of that kid. I only wish I could meet him again in 20 years and see what he's doing then.

I also have Robin -- aka "Fat Cheeks". He has the fattest cheeks I've ever seen on a little kid. Let's imagine a squirrel here, really. It's hilarious. I've never seen Robin not smile. Always a happy little dude. So between the smiling and the fat cheeks, he can barely open his eyes. He always waves and says hello and asks me how I am. He too is so incredibly polite. I don't know how much his English has really improved -- the language is pretty difficult for him. I do know that he is one good kid, and he will continue to cheer people up for years to come.

And then there's June. June's the one who gave me the nutrigrain bars. June's the pretty boy, but again, one of the most polite kids in the school. He tries really hard. His work was always perfectly done. Whenever I ask him a question, he thinks long and hard and then replies in the best way possible. My coworkers came in and told me how he asked them all where Charlie Teacher's desk was and then left the bars there in a neat little pile. I chased him down and found him waiting outside, and told him thank you. He stuck out his hand and gave me a good handshake, which turned into us making up a secret handshake followed by a high-five. Awesome.

These are my favorite kids.

It has to be said that these kids never ask for anything from me. They never ask for chocolate or candy. They just do their thing - mainly as well because they know that if they work hard for me they will be rewarded. That's what makes it all the more amazing. They do it on their own perogative. I have a lot of other students that I basically have to beg to get to do work - and forget about chocolate. That dreamworld doesn't exist for them...Anyway, it was just nice today to get something in return. It showed a level of appreciation and maturity that just reinforced what a great kid June is.

I'm turning into a sap...

This is MW6. From left to right: John, Chloe, Luna, me (Charlie), Carrick, William, and Kevin in the back.

MW6 almost made me stay in Korea for another year. I almost would have done it if I could have spent every day teaching them.

Okay, it was my job to teach them -- I told them a lot of stories and got some vocabulary through to them. But in reality, they taught me -- a lot.



They taught me the joys of teaching. What it means to have a job that you feel is truly rewarding. No matter what, no matter how my day may have been going, they always put a smile on my face. Despite the fact that in actuality, their English was a lot lower then the level they had been placed in, they were still incredibly polite, interested and dedicated.

One student, Carrick, my favorite student -- the gangster in the red hoodie -- never understood a word I said. I've got to tell you a few stories about this kid, because he really won over my hard teaching heart. Often, I would tell a story, and he would laugh. I'd have to follow it up by asking Carrick, "Do you understand my man?" and he'd laugh again. And then another student, usually Luna or another girl Jinny, would translate and he'd speak in Korean for a few seconds to make sure he understood, and then would laugh even harder. I doubt anyone could keep a straight face in front of that kid.

One day, he went to get water and I was standing there with Dave, and I introduced him to Dave. He pulled up his sleeves, thrust his hand out and said in perfect English "Hello! I'm Carrick! It's nice to meet you Dave!" That's about all we got out of him. It was the most mannered moment I've seen out of a Korean student -- maybe out of any teenager -- yet.

Carrick and I worked so hard on saying, "Teacher, I have to go to the washroom, please." He got it down by the end of the semester and I was very proud of him. The week after we finished class, the teachers had to teach special mixed classes where the kids were put together by their respective public schools. Carrick was in a different class then mine - but I happened to be walking by his classroom when I suddenly heard, "Teacher, must have toilet!!!" I couldn't believe it, so I looked in to see who it was that was dying to do. It was Carrick. What an idiot. He came out of the classroom and started laughing hysterically when he saw me and then stopped and said, "Teacher, I have to go to the washroom please." I told him he could go, but only if wore the veil of shame (We've worked on that as well...if he does something stupid he has to wear the veil of shame and keep his head down the whole time...his idea, really!) I laughed to myself walking behind him the whole time...

Carrick liked to repeat things that made me laugh. On his first writing and speaking test, the question was: "If you had to go to a deserted island, what 3 things would you take with you?" Carrick answered that he would bring a knife, matches, and water. He would drink the water, use the knife to kill some animals, then start a fire with the matches and cook the animals. If he was there for more than a day, then he would get rid of his dirty clothes and just live in the animal skin. I laughed so hard when he said that...I couldn't picture this skinny little Korean soccer fan killing animals and living in bear skin. When I started laughing, he started laughing and it was downhill from there. Needless to say he did well. On his second test, the question was: "If you had to take a foreigner to any place in Korea, where would you take them?" Carrick came out all prepared and told me he would take a Canadian girl to Baekdu Mountain -- Canadian girls were tougher than other girls, he explained. They would go to Baekdu Mountain and see the sights, and if they got in trouble, Carrick would bring out his island knife and kill the animals and they could live under the skin for a very long time together. Again, hilarious. He ended the piece by saying, "Teacher, I love you!" -- Another classic.

I am so fond of Carrick. He's got a heart the size of the world and I know he'll go on to do good things.

There are other good kids in the class too. John was one of my students who, when he was telling about his favorite movie, "태국이" -- The Brotherhood of War", got so embarassed. He said that in the movie, one of the brothers sacrifices his life for his younger brother and dies. He said he started crying when that happened because his brother is always so kind to him and he know his brother would do the same thing. He also told me never to tell anyone because he wanted to be a 'tough guy'. Everytime John made a grammatical mistake, he'd hit himself in the head and get all flustered. I kept telling him that he is not stupid. On the last day of class, he came up to me as everyone was leaving and said, "Oh teacher thank you for not saying I'm stupid." It was pretty awesome, despite how small of a comment it was.

There was Anderson he's the kid all the way in the left hand corner in the 2nd picture. He was the most avid Harry Potter fan I've met to this day -- and I've met some pretty big Harry Potter fans. I asked him once whether the books or the movies were better, and he went into this long spiel about how the books were better because the images were in your head and Ron was ugly in the movie and....well, half of it was in Korean, so I didn't completely understand. But it was a whole heck of a lot of passion that I think often gets drained out of the students in exchange for a ridiculously long academic schedule, so it was really refreshing to hear him talk like that. And anyway -- when he had to write an essay about what his favorite movie is, he hemmed and hawed and ended up writing it about Harry Potter. But at the end of the essay, he included a small note that said "Sorry teacher that this is not long. I also like Michael Jackson and want to write about him but maybe next time. That is also my favorite movie." Who can say no to a kid who likes Harry Potter and Michael Jackson? Not me....

Here's Jinny...who hates English but told me she loved talking to me. She told me how she wants to drive a car so she can get far far away from schools in Seoul, but she knows if she drove a car she'd crash it. She really did hate English, was never afraid to tell me that, but somehow her English was quite good. She was always able to translate for Carrick or William when they didn't understand. She got my jokes and often made jokes at me. Whenever I told a bad joke too, she'd always go "oooh" and then give me the thumbs up. Smarty pants man...She was so adorable. She wrote me a great goodbye letter that will accompany me on my travels.

I will miss MW6 so much. They will travel around with me wherever I go for years to come. They taught me that not everyone's out to get you. That there are kids out there who are interested in hearing what adults have to say. And they reminded me that learning's not all about the book. It's about what you need to know sometimes when you're 15. That you're not cool -- but one day you probably will be cool. At least we can hope. These kids give me that hope.

I've come to realize suddenly, in the last week of being in Korea, how much of a home Seoul has become for me. I am really comfortable living here, and I am really going to miss it. Despite all the phonecalls I've made, and all the times I've sat around steaming over the flack I've taken under certain circumstances in the city, I do really love it here.

I love the barbecue restaurants with the live grills in front of you, and the plastic sheets over the front doors to let the smoke out. I love the people who are loud and crazy but so unafraid to be so. I love to walk through major streets with crowds and crazy bumpers only to get to a tiny apartment at the end of a maze of twisting streets that is warm and homey and full of friends. I love the food. I love that there are always people up doing something. The lights, the sounds -- always there to remind you that life is going on around you, and maybe you should be part of it. I love the kindness, the dependency and yet the celebrity status you get just for speaking English. You can always get lost, but someone always wants to find you.

Don't get me wrong, there are things I hate. Korea is kind of like a bad relationship -- love/hate, it comes in waves, for sure. Right about now, I'm in the romantic, old hubby phase.

It's the first time I've lived somewhere and not been in school. It's the first sort of professional, adult life I've had...and I don't know if I'm really quite ready to leave it yet. I have such an amazing support network here of people of all ages and all mindsets and I love that.

Yesterday I went out for dinner with my business class -- only 4 of the students showed up, all men, interestingly. We had a fantastic time. Talked all about life at home for me, and life here for them. What I would miss (spicy food, Korean bbq, handsome men) and what I wouldn't miss (the subway, the smell of garbage, old men). What I was excited for (diners, thick rye bread, different beer) and what I wasn't excited for (...hard to say...) The Nepalese food was amazing, highly recommended if you're ever in Dongdaemun in Seoul -- a  little placed called Everest tucked away in the corner somewhere. T.S said it was very famous with foreigners, and there were a lot of foreigners there. I was just surprised because it seemed like one of those places that someone would have to introduce you to. Anyway it was delicious. I really love Indian and Neplaese food. We sat and talked for a long time. It was strange at first -- I mean, can you imagine, one white 24 year old girl with 4 older Korean businessmen. But it was great. It felt so nice to talk to them. There was no condescension involved at all. They spoke to me like a friend. And when I told them about my return to Korean in the end of December, they were all very kind and told me I could stay in their respective houses. That's one thing that I think may be a bit different in Western culture. Immediately they all offered their homes to me -- but I don't think that is as common at home..,but maybe I'm just forgetting more and more what life is like at home. I'm not sure. Anyway I will really miss them and will definitely be giving them a phonecall for another dinner when I come back between travelling.

PS. Incase you may not know, I'm going to China from December 8-December 30. Then I will return to Korea for 12 days. I want to celebrate the New Year with my girls, Habiba and Ksan, and to say goodbye one more to some of my closer friends -- yes, including this business class. Then I will leave on January 11. Not too sure where I'm going. I have a oneway ticket to Singapore...and I want to see my brother in Denmark. That's about all I got down for now. Yikes!

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I become sure that I'll be returning to Korea for another year. I really am happy here, and I'm making money, travelling independently, and enjoying my life...all the while learning a lot about myself and my relationships with people. I'm so sure I'll come back that I'm leaving a suitcase full of stuff with my dear love Habiba.

All this to say that I'm leaving in a week, and yes I'm going travelling....but I'm pretty sad to say goodbye too.