Eli was shocked at this transformation, having largely occured while he was still off in Germany. Sometimes we run together, but not really together. For short legs and years of sedentariness are hard to overcome, and even though I’ve caught the running bug, I’m still quite slow. So Eli will run on ahead, and then the nice warm feeling that comes with running goes away and the ugly, critical and obsessive aspect of me is so loud, in my head. It launches me right back to middle school P.E. class, where I was always either dead last or the penultimate when it was time to run the mile. Even the chunkiest girl in school whizzed past me on occasion.

I’m worried that putting myself into a race situation, a natural step for anyone into running, is just going to totally ruin it for me. What’s worse is that for both races, I am part of a team. The friends I’m running with are totally cool, and would never intentionally make me feel bad for slowing everybody down or anything. Eli reassures me, with his hippie sensibilities, that it’s not about being the fastest – everyone goes at their own pace. But I will still notice when my pace is slower than anyone else’s.  I will feel bad and resentful and weird. That part of me is just less malleable than my exercise habits.

I don’t know why I’m so slow. (Well, besides the whole “not being in shape” detail). I feel this urgent squeeze in every part of my life right now: I want so desperately for time to catch my breath, process all I am taking in, enjoy and rage and cry or whatever it is I need to feel at the moment. 시간 없어. The world spins so fast and I can’t call a timeout. I have trouble with the question “how old are you?” – an important question in Korean society, because that number determines the very nature of how people talk to you. I still think I’m twenty-six. But that was years ago.  What happened in all that time? What have I done, exactly?

I was recently talking with a good friend of mine about the evils of Facebook. Facebook is the absolute worst invention for self-obsessive, critical types (save, perhaps, blogs). A person who had been in my creative writing workshop classes has now published her second book. I downloaded it and burned through it in a day, hating the book and tallying all its flaws. Confusing perspective, obvious Mary Sue-ism, and cliches too numerous to count. I really think I can write a lot better than this girl, and yes, I know, I am catty and awful. Also, I have zero books and no author page. While I waste time hate-reading and quietly snarking, she is writing and networking, being published and recognized, winning the race.

I’m not sure what it is, but this awful nagging, critical monster in me has intensified as of late. I lash out against people, against (poor) Eli, against myself. I can’t stop my brain from obsessing, analyzing, measuring and comparing. Oddly enough, the only times I feel free from that craziness in my brain is when I run. Alone, that is. Just me and pavement, dirt, rocks and wind. There aren’t many runners at all in my town, so I rarely encounter anyone else that will make me wonder if I’m running fast enough, if my form looks bad, etc. Some of the old villagers will see me and sometimes cheer me on, and that feels good.  Otherwise, the only thing I’m thinking is, should I take this path or that one? Watch out for that little pile of fertilizer.  The immediate physical decisions demanded by a run feel much more solvable than the long-term intangible ones.

I do want to evolve into the type of runner that can handle it, that sense of humanity, which to me can be oppressive and scary. The catalyst that sparked my interest in running was the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, a book that has inspired so many people to just drop whatever it is they are doing and run out the front door. In the book, McDougall describes a tribe of super-runners called the Tarahumara, who run ultramarathon distances. He talks about what separates the Tarahumara from competitive runners who do it for competition and glory. When the Tarahumara run, it’s not out of a compulsion to beat the guy (or girl) in front of them. They run out of love for running, and for each other, too. It’s a social glue for the Tarahumara – everybody runs, the men, the elderly, the women with babies on their backs. It’s not a contest; it’s a celebration.
 
With luck, someday I can learn to run freely with the rest of the world.

Ringleader: “Teacha! Today, we not Electric Fan. We team name is ELECTRIC GAY.”

Other boys: “NO!”

Me: “Really? G-A-Y?”

Ringleader: “Yes.”

Me: “Uhh, why?”

Ringleader: “We must Electric GAY.”

I took it to an Apple repair dude down by the Yongsan military base in Seoul. I had to basically slay a dragon and solve miscellaneous quests to get to this damned place, and I went there because I thought the dude there would be most likely out of anywhere else to speak English. He does not, but through my co-teacher’s assistance over the phone, I was able to ascertain that changing the keyboard will be expensive – as in more than I want to pay for my stupid mistake – but not as expensive as Eli, in his Apple wisdom / nerdery, thinks it should be. Plus, I’ll be getting a new keyboard with 한글 characters on it, which will be useful when I want to hunt and peck in a language I don’t even know, versus type like a normal person in a language I sorta kinda know.

Moral of the story: though it is healthy and way good for you, running does not indeed solve everything. Especially if you are specifically running away from your problems.

Me: Have you ever read Hamlet? (Student shakes her head no). Well, long story short, Hamlet was a prince who wanted to kill the man who killed his father, but didn’t know what to do.

Student: Kill him! Why not?

Me: And then there was this girl whose name was Ophelia, who fell in love with Hamlet, but he was really mean to her, so she killed herself.

Student: She’s stupid! Why would she do that?

This American Life had a relatively recent episode about the chilling effect of immigration policies around the country. In general, I am still a strong backer of President Obama – and should I be back State-side during campaign season, I will be knocking on doors. One major disappointment has been the administration’s handling of immigration policies. More people have been deported in the first term of Obama’s administration, than in the entire eight years that Bush (43) was in office. It does appear to be a mix of state policies and federal incentives, but still, this was something pretty unexpected. I’m hoping to put the pressure on the President to ameliorate some of the worst effects of this during his second term.

The episode of This American Life is called Reap What You Sow.

My parents were immigrants, and they were lucky enough to be from a country where immigration to the U.S. was strongly encouraged for political reasons (thanks, commies!). I hope for the same opportunities for others, especially since Mexico (well, certain parts anyways) seem to be descending into nightmare territory. I’ll bear in mind the woman who pulled her son out of a good preschool where he’d been thriving, and the woman house-ridden with fear, the next time I start bitching and moaning about something trivial.

* packing for Malaysia, which is happening tomorrow (oh god where did the time go?) Thus far I have twenty skirts and no underwear in my backpack. I should probably rectify this.

* jogging – ! – every day this week! I know, I can hardly believe it too. We’ll see if I keep this up when I get back from my Malay vacay, where I fully intend to stuff my face with food and lay on the beach all day.

* saying goodbye to the teachers, including the Dog Lady. Update on that: when I got back, she told me, “I’m afraid I can’t give you the dog because he is too dirty.” Apparently, he has fleas. Phew!

Today I gave her a dog mug and some doggie treats as a going away present. She thanked me and said I should come visit her at her new school sometime, which is nearer to her hometown. “By that time, the dog will be clean, and then I will give to you.” D’oh.

* pinning pretty things on Pinterest. For hours, to the detriment of everything else I need to be doing right now. If you’re on it, add me!

As part of a class lottery prize, I threw pizza parties for the winners (plus friends). Today’s winner, Josh, brought along Ben, Henry (the four hour rock concert kid), and a few other buddies. I offered to put on a movie while they wait for their pizza to arrive.

“NO! We want conversation – we must practice Englishee!” declared Henry. In high school, he explained, they will have “many stress,” so they should practice right now while they’re “comfortable.” Then he imposed a rule on the pizza party: “if Korean speaking, then go outside and thirty pushup!” The other boys laughed and kept mum as Henry gamely stammered through conversation – his English comprehension is great, as is his eagerness to participate, but his speaking ability is pretty solidly Konglish-ee. Naturally, at some point he slipped up and said “왜?” instead of “why?” and got called out by his buddies. To show he meant business, he proceeded to take off his jacket – and then vest, outer shirt and tie. (Of course, I’m thinking, why is this student stripping in my class, and is the principal going to walk by right now?). Then he ran outside, slapped SNOW on his arms — fyi, it is friggin’ COLD as BALLS in Korea — did his thirty pushups and runs back inside, picking up right where he left off.

What he lacks in ability, he makes up thirty-fold with enthusiasm. Fueled by energy drinks.

The pizza boys hung out in my classroom and chatted for a long time. Mind you, school lets out early for this abbreviated week, so this was their precious free time they were spending, time that could otherwise be spent playing Starcraft, or something. Instead, we sat around and chatted about music and other things. It was pretty hard for them – “힘들어!” they exclaimed, as they frantically thumbed through the dictionary and tried to think of the precise word (we’d given Henry’s rule a rest by that point). But we worked through it, with Google Translate and lots of body language-ee, and talked about all sorts of things. Mostly music.

One thing that has surprised me is how a lot of the students are listening to the same bands me and my friends listened to back in my middle school days. Because I’m old-balls, that will have been fifteen years ago, which in music terms is long enough for a musical style to be considered retro enough, I guess. Or maybe that’s the length of time needed for, say, Nirvana to cross the ocean. (I wish I’d kept my old Kurt Cobain memorial shirts. Damn.) These boys went to see Green Day in concert a few years ago, and that just blew my mind, because how old are those guys by now? In their forties?

Yep, aside from hair style changes - I think Billie's hair was green and short back then? - they still look pretty much the same as they did in their "Dookie" days. Ahh, memories.

When I mentioned Girls’ Generation, Henry scowled. “I hate idol groups,” he said, which surprised me a little, as during class he is usually mooning over ‘beautiful girls’ and all. “I want punch their faces! Then they must have more plastic surgery.” Ha! “Teacher, we don’t like Kpop idols. We are musicians.”

Unfortunately for prospects of the kids remaining together in a band after middle school, they have wildly divergent tastes. Henry’s into “metal” these days: “Rammstein! Marilyn Manson!” (Ahh, yes, that was middle school for me too.) Josh is more into things like Maroon 5 and Jason Mraz; Ben prefers Adele.

We swapped music recommendations. They showed me some Korean indie metal bands, and Henry wrote me a general list of bands I should check out. I’ll post more on those later. For awhile, I was stuck on what to recommend to them. They seemed pretty knowledgeable about a lot of Western music, even more than a few of my American friends. Henry found out about the Sex Pistols through independent research, after learning that people don’t really consider Green Day and Sum41 to be “real” punk. The internet is an incredible thing – wire threads linking a youth in farmtown Korea with Johnny Rotten in 70s England.

For some reason – maybe because Josh mentioned playing the violin, and being bored by classical music – I suddenly remembered the existence of Andrew Bird. I showed them this youtube clip, and they were duly impressed:

I also told them about the Flaming Lips, which was probably a terrible idea, because I’d sort of kind of forgotten a frequent concert schtick of theirs in which the band members enter the stage by emerging from a giant LCD display of a woman’s vagina. D’oh. (I hope I don’t get any weird questions or concerned parents calling later). I found a more or less vag-free video, featuring Wayne Coyne running around in the hamsterball, the confetti jets and dancing mascots on stage. Henry’s eyes shimmered with awe and envy, taking in all the props and the chaos and energy of the crowd: “I must have this for my band!”

Wayne Coyne doing his bombastic rocker thing. Credit to MMMNast @ Flickr.

I’d told the students about the time I’d gone to see Andrew Bird in concert, and along with my friend Krissy, met him (as well as the lovely St. Vincent) outside the venue afterwards. I didn’t tell them that Krissy and I had first met each other in middle school. We’d bonded over doing things like tormenting our English teacher with endless note-passing, and skipping lunch to hide quietly in the library (so hardcore.) We were a lot like my kids, except way worse at math. Krissy ended up getting expelled in the middle of French class for stabbing a boy with a pencil (by accident…goes the claim ;), and so we fell out of touch, until randomly meeting up again in college and becoming the closest of friends. I’m luring her and her sister halfway across the world to come visit me in April, as it turns out!

“Your friendships don’t have to end with graduation,” I want to say to my kids – the world is so big you can run the length of it millions of times without repeating sights, but small enough that someday, you’ll find yourself running smack dab into your friends when you least expect it.

Thursday is the day my students officially part from the school and from each other. I’m gonna miss these guys. May my kids be as lucky as I’ve been thus far: getting the chance to fly around the world, to live all the craziness and wonderment out there on this nutty blue marble, while habitually wending my way back to my flock.

Sandhill cranes flying at sunrise in New Mexico. Photo credit: Tyler C. Lingley.

**Note: Staging a “comeback,” in reference to Kpop, appears to mean “releasing a single,” and can apply to bands who still have singles on the charts that are being blasted over the speakers in front of every store in Korea. You apparently don’t need to “go away” in order to have a comeback. I’m not sure why this is, but I’m guessing it has to do with the cutthroat nature of the Korean idol industry. If you’re a famous pop group that decides to rest for maybe a week or two, not touring or making another song or anything, you risk falling from the limelight and having five nearly identical groups spring up in your place. Valerie Cherish wouldn’t stand a chance.

Oh, man. I think I'm gonna have to offer a "Craft" themed camp next go around!

Thankfully, I’m feeling like I’m slowly but surely getting better at this job – just in time for budget cuts, natch – and last week was probably my professional peak, in terms of being a super-awesome-cool English teacher. I did a detective / murder mystery themed camp, of which there is a gigantic thread over at waygook.org, and of that megathread of posted materials, I used maybe…1%. I have unfortunately developed this sick aversion to using other people’s materials these days, even though it would save me so much time and sleep (what an idiot I am).

The one time I did end up using someone else’s stuff, though, it ended up being way too difficult and the students, who had loved every second of camp up to that point, started complaining bitterly. It was shocking, the change in attitude, and I sincerely felt bad about totally harshing the kids’ mellow* by introducing this extremely difficult, not-fun activity that was vastly different in tone to everything else we had done. It was my fault: I had been utterly wiped after prepping a week’s worth of materials, that involved: 1) creating a semi-realistic looking crime scene, complete with tape, hair extensions and blood; 2) requesting voice recordings from my friends back home as actors for a murder mystery “investigation”; and 3) taping envelopes with secret codes all over the damn school, pissing off the lurking security adjosshi who patrols the building after hours. So on Friday, I just went with a cryptogram activity posted by another teacher. I had incorrectly guessed that the students would be game for some crazy Da Vinci Code cracking nonsense; well, maybe they would have been, if it hadn’t been super hard and badly formatted. I actually sincerely regret that because it was the one sour note of a completely and utterly awesome camp. The kids were way into it, I was into it, and we were all a little sad when it ended. With my co-teacher’s help, I went through the feedback left by the students (in Korean, so they could give more detail), and a frequent comment was that “this camp was not a waste of time.” Though perhaps a bit clinical and cold-sounding in translation, this is probably the nicest and most validating complement I can get from burned out Korean middle schoolers. These kids guard their free time with the tenacity of dragons.

This week, I’m midway through a Superhero themed camp with my 8th graders. I chose the theme last summer, during the conclusion of my Greek mythology camp. One of my loyal camp attendees shouted out, “Marvel and DC!” and so the theme was decided. It’s going a little less swimmingly, as the students have been out of school longer and so the 8th graders seem to have forgotten a lot of English in the interim. Plus, I’m just not that jazzed about superheroes. Murder is definitely more up my alley (I guess that’s why my students love me, ha). I’ve been doing my best to bring up my own enthusiasm level, by showing up the first day in my Halloween wig and some Wonder Woman style bracelets fashioned out of foil tape. Still, I have to admit that I’m not feeling it as much this week. Hopefully the students don’t pick up on this.

Once this week is finished, then…I pack my bags and hop on an airplane, bound for…home. Home. Where is that again? Even though I talk regularly to my friends and family through the magical ether (net), it still seems like a distant memory. That was another life, a life in which I wasn’t staying up at odd hours pasting hair extensions to a papier mache ball dripping with fake blood, for the sole purpose of provoking a reaction from 13 year olds. Who was that person, who lived in Lawrence and used to go out to bars, and do things, and have actual conversations with other adults? What was she like? I guess I’ll find out in four days.

*for the record: these kids were not that kind of mellow. In case any education officials are reading this blog. Everything’s legit up in my English Zone!

Eli sometimes says he’ll grow up and be Adult (responsibility-wise, not porno-wise) after the end of the world. I think that entails settling down, buying a house, and working a job with a dress code, or something. He also says maybe he’ll do this after he turns thirty-two. Both of which are slated to occur this year. (I’m thinking maybe he’ll need to find a new deadline…)

Here are my resolutions, in order of urgency:

1. FIND MY PASSPORT, OMG, WTF. I’ve torn my apartment apart looking for the blasted thing. I think it’s in with a big stack of papers at school. My co-teacher asked me a couple times to bring my passport back to school so the secretary ladies could…I dunno, make another copy of it. I don’t know why they couldn’t just use an old copy, since it’s not like it changed in the last year, and now I’m ultra grumpy because it’s totally THEIR fault I’m a disgusting mess and can’t find it. I’m hoping some kid didn’t just see it lying around and walk off with it as a souvenir.

2. On a related note, clean my work space – both at home and at school. Right now, on my table, I am typing next to: a double pack of batteries, a cake decorating kit, origami paper half-way fashioned into a 3d snowflake, an empty tin of cookies, a flyer for my students’ NYE rock concert (awesome!), a sock, credit cards, a knitting project, my winter camp roll list, and feminine hygiene products (not used. I’m bad but not Courtney-Love-levels of terrible). I can’t even fathom how I’ve managed to rack up so much clutter over the course of 15 months in another country. I might just have to set it all ablaze when I leave. (Maybe North Koreans will take care of that for me!)

3. Blog more often than once a century. I say this every year. Ha!

I definitely want to write more letters, but I feel bad forcing people to decipher my handwriting. Maybe I should include a kind of cryptogram key to help the receiver out.

5. Work on music. Part of the clutter I’ve managed to accumulate while here includes musical instruments (yes, more than one. I know, it’s sick). The guitar I strum with occasional frequency, but the keyboard…yeah, that thing. It’s been standing up on one end, gathering dust. Every now and then, I feel bad for it and rotate it so that it’s standing up on the other end. I think I’ll purchase a stand for it, and that will magically make me start playing it more, because buying more things is always the solution.

6. Learn more Korean, so that I can at least have one transaction in public that doesn’t descend into a terribly lengthy game of Charades or Pictionary. If I feel that I am leaving the impression of mere mild mental retardation, that will be a major success.

I’m sure there are more resolutions I can create and not follow, but six is a good number. Happy New Year, everybody! If you’re near a Koreatown, try and eat a big bowl of ddeokguk (rice cake soup) to herald the new year:

Simple and delicious! Recipe at maangchi.com.

Today, after 7th period, all the students convened in the gym for a concert. “Oh, the students are performing again?” I asked my co-teacher, thinking it was a little repeat of the smashingly entertaining school festival we’d had in September. “No, it will be parents.” Zuh? I guess the parents of some of the 7th and 8th graders started a band, and decided to entertain the kids, in a mandatory way. One of the 9th graders whined to my co-teacher that she didn’t want to go, and my co-teacher responded, “You must.” (Of course, she bailed – convenient business away from school, I suppose).

I strolled in a few minutes after 3:00, as it is a Korean teacher’s prerogative to arrive fashionably late to everything (especially class). A few of the 9th graders strolled in with me. Henry, who is probably my favorite student ever, is this kid whose favorite trick used to be playing guitar with his teeth. Then he did it too often, I guess, and when I asked him if he was going to do that for the school festival, he rolled his eyes and went, “Teacha! Very very hurt! Pain!” (I guess he’d been asked one too many times.)

I sat at the back, with the few other teachers who hadn’t made other excuses to duck out, and the homeroom teachers, who were tasked with getting the restless students to stop hitting each other for a few minutes. The parents walked on to the stage and picked up their guitars. Yes, they were a rock band. I expected something like a choir or a classical concert, or something – actually, I really had no preconception of what a concert by parents staged in a middle school would really look like. There is just no similar analogue to that happening in the States. I just…can’t even picture it, as a hypothetical. Even the one girl I saw who kept slapping her friend with a folder every five seconds – even she was a much better audience for the parents than any middle schooler would be back home.

Anyway, the parents picked up their guitars and immediately launched into a song, an old-ish Korean rock song that I have heard so many times since arriving here. Henry, who sat behind me, groaned really loudly. “Every band always THIS song!” he said, and made a motion as if to strangle himself. He would alternately rock out with his buddy behind me, and then complain loudly about how boring the parent performance was. He was awesomely catty and bitchy, and I was nearly in tears from laughing at this kid. At one point, he leaned over and whispered, “wait a minute – soon, friends coming, and we burn this place down! YEAH!”

These are the only parents who should be allowed guitars. (Yes, I may actually be sadder about their divorce than I was when my own parents split up. )

The parents’ concert was really fascinating and bewildering, from my perspective. One of the students’ mothers sang a poignant, hyper-emo ballad, in English, and though she sang well enough, it felt a little awkward: yo lady, what are you doing baring your soul to these monsters? I guess it’s different when you birthed one of said monsters, but still, the other ones don’t have familial obligations to sit politely through your show. At one point there was a brief intermission with a magic show, and Henry just could not stop freaking out about how bizarre it was. “Magic show??! In concert?! Why? Very very mistake!” and between the weirdness of it all, and Henry being hilarious, I just about died laughing in that gym, and it really turned around a day which had been kinda shitty. I am definitely going to miss these 9th graders when they graduate and go off to high school, especially Henry.

Henry, by the way, invited me to a concert that he and his buddies are putting on, at the end of the month. He’s going to play guitar (not with his teeth), and he promised me two American pop songs, “so you can understand and enjoy!” and kept insisting that it would be a billion times better than this totally lame parents’ concert (aww, poor Moms and Pops! They honestly weren’t bad at all – it’s just that you surrender any semblance of “cool” when you birth a child). Henry talks a big game, and I’m totally looking forward to it. In all sincerity, really, I can’t think of a cooler place to be on New Year’s Eve.