Mr. Zellers Goes To Korea

I know this is very similar to another post I wrote, but it’s different, so I wrote it:  What punishments did we have in school?  I can barely remember because I was too boring to get into trouble.  There was losing points for participation, standing in the corner, suspension (more like a reward), ISS (in-school-suspension), detention.

Every week, I see a new punishment.  Tardy students may have to kneel on the hard floor with their hands in the air or they may do “Our Walk” where everyone throws their arms over each others shoulders, and does a duck walk for however long the teacher dictates.  Standard punishment is a lecture, whereas the next step is striking them with a bamboo stick or other instrument (dalrod, recorder(flutiphone), etc).  If that doesn’t get through, submit them to a one-on-one lecture that ends in them crying.  Other punishments will be favor-forms, getting signatures from teachers by doing favors or errands for them.  even resorting to push-ups or running laps around the track.  Many teacher-student conversations will be filled with instances of the teacher acting like their going to hit the student, and finally they do. Usually, they only hit the calf, the palm, or the upper arm.  I’ve also seen students picking up trash until they fill the plastic bag they were given.  various chores may also be handed out. cleaning erasers, erasing the board, sweeping, emptying trash may all also be asked.

If you think of another punishment from America, please tell me. 

I’m tired of the college mindset.  People keep doing the bare minimum, avoid the hard stuff, and tell themselves that they’ll succeed in life, that they’re going far.  It seems that every language learner I meet in Korea is lying to themself.  They’ll tell themselves that they’re practicing reading, but skip over any writing drills.  They’ll listen to you intently, but they’ll never talk about themselves.  I’ve started to realize that its because they, like most of us, are afraid.

The point of communication, to me, is to convey my ideas to another person’s mind, intact.  The catch is that, people who don’t talk are boring.  They don’t have a history, they don’t have dreams, they don’t have crushes, or jobs, or interests.  They don’t have hates, enemies, or even favorite foods… in essence the listener has no tangible personality outside of their visible actions.  This is where most learners fall.  They want to practice the safe exercises: listening, and reading.  And they are afraid of output: speaking and writing.  They will ask you how they can improve their English, or their Korean… but I’ve learned over a year of this, that they are waiting for an easy answer like: Buy this book, read it one time, and you will magically speak English perfectly.  That’s not how it works.

I’m constantly reminded of the advice I received from Ron Mazellan, prof. at IWU, before coming to Korea.  (paraphrased:) “You’ll do well, JD.  You were an athlete, you know how important it is to go out everyday and practice. Even if you hate it today, you do it.  You have no choice if you want to succeed.  And still, you understand that you’ll fail.  You’ll have that big match, or even that small one, and you’ll make a mistake.  You’ll lose.  This is why athletes are amazing: They get right back up, they don’t complain, and they work EVEN HARDER! They’ve learned their flaws, and they know how to get better.  You see, Joel, When you fail, it’s not about losing.  Failing is a chance to LEARN.  To see where you need improvement.  And that’s why you’ll succeed, because you know that.  Even if you forget, it’s in your mind somewhere, cooked in through years of experience.”

Okay, that’s the spirit of what he said to me, at least it’s how I remember the conversation.   And to master anything, especially a language, it takes steady, even daily practice. You don’t have to spend 5 hours every day.  Maybe 20 minutes.  And if you don’t practice at all, and just study the books, you won’t succeed.  Language learning is about failure.  When I fail I learn something new.  When I try something new, I fail.  Just this week, I tried to make a joke to the class and I misspelled a word.  It turns out I accidentally wrote “Penis Study” on the board without knowing that specific word for “Penis”.(Reminder: I work at an all-girls middle school).

We’re all gonna fail, but seriously, I mean seriously…. you can’t sit on the bench for THIS LONG. Get off your ass and stop lying to yourselves about how good you are.  Show us. 

I’ve lived here for a year now.  I’ve seen a lot, but as I’ve always been, I still don’t care much for historic landmarks or scenery.  About 8 months ago, during a dream, I heard a whisper: “Open your eyes.” and I woke up.  Not quite sure of its meaning, I continued.  I’ve never been one to literally keep my eyes open, and at first I thought that was my mind’s intention… to open my eyes and be more alert.  But slowly I’m starting to realize that I meant for myself to see more sides to the things in my life.  Not physically, but more that I wasn’t seeing this world from the right perspective.

If you pay attention here, you’ll see that new shops open every other month.  Entrepreneurs and others start a new business.  Then, you start watching these new businesses, and the others, and see that they close down about as often.  There was an amazing Western style hamburger restaurant that closed after only 6 months or so.  Many foreigners here are mourning its closing.  As such, a few other places I sometimes visited have also closed.  I thought it was a fact of Korea… that people wanted to work for themselves, but due to location and demand couldn’t sustain the business that they chose to start.

Then I made friends with a few of these entrepreneurs, and other Koreans and I’m starting to see that there is a difference from what I thought.  Many of my friends want something more than working for Samsung, or working for (insert major company name).  And while I still see the lines of people waiting for their company busses in the morning, I meet my other friends who dream these big dreams.  It can be a coffee shop, or a clothing store.  It can be an internet start-up, or an art teacher working late at night in the art room on his own creations.  Whoever they are, they have dreams, and those dreams are big.  They aren’t satisfied.  They are studying and analyzing the competition.  They are taking notes.  They are planning and talking to people that would be potential customers.  They are studying English and Chinese and Japanese.  They’re not sleeping.  What was once an ideal life titled as “The American Dream” seems to me more tangible as “The Korean Dream”.

During my time in the American workforce, I never met anyone that was still reaching high.  I only kept meeting people who gave up, or were crippled by child support payments, or just happened to find the amount of security they were looking for.  In terms of the college students, I always listened to people talk big.  Those kids were always thinking about how they would be a great artist, or a great business man, or a great pastor.  But I didn’t often see anyone planning and reaching, or giving up sleep just to achieve their dreams.  I, for one, was one of those people without a dream.  I was doing what I was told, earning a diploma towards a field where I will be payed well and have job security.  I gave that up for the sole fact that I didn’t want to settle for anything, and I chose a path that wouldn’t let me.

I always thought the American dream was to want to be your own man, and to be something great and original.  But while sometimes that happened, I witnessed a very denounced lack of effort towards that end. Thomas Edison said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”  The Korean Dream is something real to me.  I see it happening all over. Sometimes these people own 2 or 3 businesses.  I’ve known at least one to close their 3rd just because it was too much work for them to handle.  My friends dream big, and they’re amazing.

I didn’t have any dreams when I went to college.  I didn’t have any when I graduated either.  I only have an inclination towards important things… but I didn’t know what those were.  Through living in Korea, I’ve been able to understand my culture, and more-so myself.  While my dreams are starting to form, their still vague and beyond my reach.  I am, however, finding the direction in which they lie, and trying to move towards them as best as I can.

 

At our school (Cheonan Girls Middle School), if you are late to school, they give you a paper.  On one side in very large red letters it says “Ask me to do something”. and on the other side it has 5 spaces for signatures.  The punishment is that if you are late, before the end of the day you have to do 5 favors for teachers, and get their signature.  So often I see students wandering around yelling “Saem, Saem, What can I help you with?” (Saem = Teacher).  I usually don’t know what to do, so I think of some random errand, or chore like: wash my coffee cup, or clean that dirty corner, or arrange that messy stack of things on the table over there.

However, if you are tardy to class, no one seems to be punished for that… only for 1st period. 

With the fighting in Libya and the Middle East concerning world leaders about the future supply and cost of oil.  Korea has been enforcing that 20% of cars not drive every day of the week.  To organize this, Monday license plate numbers ending in ‘1’ or ‘6’ don’t drive.  On Tuesday, those ending in ‘2’ or ‘7’. 3,8/4,9/5,0. You couldn’t do this in America… But there’s a lot of things you can do when your country is the size of Indiana and you can’t leave the country except by plane or boat.

Today many students were chanting “boochuh hansum” while raising their hands.  I asked them why… and they told me: ‘Boochuh’ means ‘Buddha’, and ‘hansum’ was actually ‘handsome’.  They were saying: “Buddha is handsome!”  WHY???

Then they told me ‘boochuh hansum’ sounds like ‘put your hands up’, so that’s why they were raising their arms.  It was soooo funny~ I guess. 

Often, when you learn a new language.  You start having problems with your first language.  My most common problem is what I call “Backwards Translation.”  This phenomenon is a result of literally translating the 2nd language into the first language.  In Korea, they eat medicine, and they eat beer and other liquids.  Often, when I speak english, I will say something like… “I was tired because I ate some medicine.” or “Let’s eat some beer!” Other problems are less noticeable: the korean word for “to be many” is “mawnee.” A very similar pronunciation to ‘Many.’  They don’t say “A lot”, “a ton of”, or “lots and lots.”  They say “mawnee,” and so I say “many” in several cases that would not be used casually.

This is not such a bad thing, because Koreans also often translate literally from Korean to English.  This helps me learn more about their language, and certain nuances that aren’t in a dictionary.  A long time ago, a student said to me, “Today night I will go home.” I later learned that it was a literal translation.  Koreans don’t say tonight, they say today night, tomorrow night, etc.  This week, I said “Good Morning” to a student, and she said “I have good morning too.”  My understanding was that in English, you are ‘wishing’ that someone has a good morning(I hope you have a good morning.) or (Have a good night).  But in the Korean language, I learned it is a statement about myself, that I am having a good morning… then I suddenly understood why students often said, “NO” when I said “good morning.”