My Children Full of Angst (and Hope!)

I wrote this entry about a week ago after I got home from meeting a friend for drinks. We only had a few, so I was pretty lucid when I got home, and this was what came pouring out. Needless to say I am really enjoying teaching, namely because it is such an amazing opportunity to observe a slew of complex little people. They're so adorable, redeemable, and relatable. There's really only 1 or 2 I'd like to stab, and I think thats really saying some thing for me (haaaa). Seriously though, the kids are awesome, and Korea is treating me well. I'll take some pictures of the school soon so you can better see what this place I'm working in is really like. Enjoy.




What is it that I am experiencing? I feel the strangeness of a foreign world coalescing around me. I feel neon lights and concrete structures, small Korean faces that hide burdens, responsibilities, and obligations behind their small almond shaped charcoal colored eyes.
My children full of angst, and hope as well (and yes, they are "my" children now). Because that is what children do, they hope, it's an automated mechanism, they do it, and they don't know why. Unlike adults. Adults wonder why they should, and often don't.

I enter into the school building. It is above a bank (how appropriate). It is small. There is a tiny little elevator--Korean people sized. It's covered in pale silver metal decorated with these opaque sort of cloud like formations. I enter. I hit four. I turn around and peer out of the glass behind the elevator that is a bubbling window protruding from the building out into the street. I see: other Korean buildings, Korean letters, Korean words, Korean pictures rising with me, until we are eye level, until I can look straight in the face the inundation of information. I turn away.

Into the school. A glass door. All things are glass here. Through one glass door, I say hello to the front desk, two people, a manager, and an admin assistant. A bucket full of lollipops, a couple of air conditioning remote controls strewn about a desk full of keyboards and paper. Swing a right. Into the teachers room, through another the glass door. Everything is glass here, observable, and indiscreet. Into the glass walls of the teachers room--3/4 opaque, with a thin line separating the opaqueness of the bottom from the opaqueness of the top. Sometimes small eyes peer through, wondering what it is we do in there, unwilling to peer blatantly from behind the clear glass door. I have a small desk space. I cover it with water bottles, forks, bags of instant coffee (my inner pretentious coffee snob sneers), packets of crackers, dry erase markers, schedules, simplistic English language books (How many days are in a week? There are seven days in a week.). It is my cubicle without walls. And I find it an enjoyable un-private haven. Behind me rests a communal desk often littered with sticky rice soy bean balls (mmmm), korean pastries, ki bim bap, rice noodles, or sticky rice sticks slathered with peppery sauce.

Into the classroom. Small pocketless desks arranged 8x8. A front row and a back row. In those rows the sexes are divided. Girls in front. Boys in the back. Sometimes it's reversed, but not usually.
The children: little Jack who always smiles. He has this little face that once smiled at lights up like the sun. Little David who loves his tae kwon do (David please sit down no more tae kwon do, oh you're good, no more, sit down!). Little Ryan who cannot pay attention I suspect he's smarter than he shows, because sometimes he has this alertness that contradicts his perpetual distraction. Big Ryan who comes in shirt to his uniform always open displaying a loudly colored shirt beneath, slams the door, looks up guilty, then brushes that guilt away--big Ryan whose father got angry and broke his cell phone--he told me in his English diary, he told me he was sad. What do you even say? Judy who is smart, but quietly angry--not with me--I wonder with who. Vivian who always tries so hard to speak who understands a good 80% but says only 40% back. Little Sam who got a nose bleed today. He always looks so afraid, I wonder who it is that instilled that fear in him. Little Gina always talking, little Gina who always has the answer, little Gina who always has her hand raised. Little Gina also goes to another school. At that school she learns robotics. She was on TV for one of her inventions. Sometimes she gets so anxious it makes me scared, and reminds me a bit of little Liz. Nicole who likes to argue, who likes to get her way, but when reasoned with who acquiesces and respects me, in her funny way. Rose who likes to tell me her name, but never does her homework. Rose who is a bit odd, and doesn't fit in with the other children in the right way. Little John whose cute and excitable, never does his homework, and never listens to a word I say. He has this little smile though that just sort of melts me. Top who is quite sweet, but over worked and over tired and under interested in learning English. Dong Ju who likes to laugh at how I fail to correctly say his name, in spite of the pride inherent in keeping his Korean name, his English is better than he likes to let on. Yoo who twitches every time I talk to her. I think she does that for everyone though. Joe who is such a ham, he looks up words to find witty sayings to spout out to me in English--I let his class get away with murder b/c they're my last class of the day so they get me when I'm tired, and they charm my irritation away.

These are just a few of my children full of angst (and hope). They are sweet, and over worked, and some seem a bit under-loved as well, but in spite of these things they persist and thrive. They are so cute, and so well intentioned, and so complex, and so unaware of what is in store. Life is small still. Small in the way only a child's world can be. Small because the smallness has been imposed upon them, not chosen. What will they choose for their futures? I speculate, but it's only been three weeks. I most certainly do not really know.