Eighth Month Slump

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I’ve now been here almost 9 months. My life has turned into a routine. It used to be each day learning or seeing something new. It’s turned into a kind of culture shock phase in which too many small things annoy me that really shouldn’t.

Now I’ve lived here long enough to see patterns emerge and have the opportunity to be bothered by bad ones or just accept them. An example: I am on the subway standing at the door and waiting to get off—the only person. There is a person waiting in the station to get on—only one. The subway doors open for around 14 seconds every time they stop. The girl waiting rushes onto the subway without waiting for me to get off. What is the rush??? There’s no one else getting on! You will not miss the subway, as I’m the only one getting off. Now I’ve taken the opportunity recently to lightly hip-check people who do this. Do I have a right to be annoyed at these impatient “irrational” people? Yes. But there’s not really a reason to. It’s a 10 second encounter that happens maybe twice a week. I find myself fuming about it for 2 minutes afterwards. It’s just negativity about something I can’t really control. There are a few other things that get on my nerves like that lately, but let’s try to keep negativity out of this post.

The last month has been stressful. First, the Christian and American holidays (my family celebrates) are coming up, which has made me miss them! It was also renewal time. I had to renew no matter what, because the Daegu Dept. of Education is subsidizing my TESOL course and that was one requirement. I had been planning to switch with the girl who works at the high school in my compound, but she decided to stay there. So I had to decide if I wanted to stay at my school or put in to transfer to another school. I had really wanted to move to a high school, but there were many factors that I had no control over (which school, where I would live, coteachers, etc.), whereas I knew that my school is pretty good.

In the end I decided to stay at my school for another year. Unfortunately, during the process, I began thinking what I plan to get out of another year here. Lately, I’ve realized I don’t feel like I am really making a difference in the world. I only see my students once a week. It’s made me think about my career prospects again. Before, I was almost positive that I next wanted to teach in South America or return to Central Europe to teach ESL. Now, I really don’t know. I’ve been thinking about the residents at the home for people with mental illness where I used to work. In some ways, it was more rewarding in that fewer people are willing to take a job like that—I’m needed there. Here, English teachers are a dime a dozen and the end result is that students cram for exams and never really use English beyond that. The English they cram comes from textbooks that are sometimes not teaching current/correct English. Example from my grade 2 (middle school) textbook: “This is not fair. There’s something in my steak.” Since I’m staying another year though, I have some time to think about what to do next.

In addition to the stress of my deciding about my renewal I found out that I am the only one of my group of friends who will stay in Daegu. I’ve known most of them since I came to Korea, some from the first morning I was in the country! Luckily a few of them will stay in Korea but move to different cities. From my many previous moves, I know goodbyes are rough, so I’m already dreading having to say so many in February.

I’ve also maybe been too busy. I bought a guitar a few months ago, and I’ve been practicing on my own. The newness is kind of wearing off. I’m also taking 2 Korean classes a week and trying to study around them. I feel like I’m running out of steam with Korean, but because I’m in one paid class, I feel forced to do work, which is overall is a good thing. I also went to the first meeting of a Daegu knitting club last weekend and met some really cool women. I started knitting a scarf, so now I’m addicted and can’t stop knitting! I’ve also been going to salsa when I get the chance, which I still think is a lot of fun!

This post was a bit of a downer, but there are a lot of good things going on in my life. This weekend I’m going to Seoul, and I’ll visit the DMZ, so look out for the next post about that! The few pics you see are from 2 separate hiking trips--the weather wasn't great on either so sorry!

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