Anne Merritt

On landing a university job in Korea

2011-12-25T23:44:00.002-05:00

This was my journey, step by step.

September

Do you need a masters? Okay, but do you need a masters? Do unis hire couples? Unmarried couples? Read depressing debates on eslcafe. Learn about the decline of quality jobs, quality students, quality work environments from a handful of online ranters with a lot of self-appointed expertise. Remind yourself they’re only ranters when discouragement comes nagging at your ear.

Consult with every contact you have in the university sector, even the lukewarm friendships kept limply afloat by Facebook. Prod these people for tips, insights, ideas on how you and your partner can apply for these coveted jobs.

Read emails from the two people who responded. “Okay, the application season starts around November,” you and your partner say together. “Lots of time to prepare.”

Meet a woman at a dinner party who already started applying to university jobs, interviewed with universities, and landed two job offers. Listen as she makes it sound easy-breezy. Feel resentment and inspiration in equal parts.

Discover later that she has a Masters from Harvard. Panic.

October

Scour job sites and university webpages, trying to find contacts and application information for the 300+ postsecondary institutions in Korea. Spend a lot of time reading websites very slowly in Korean.

Polish your resume. Scan and upload every possible document required. Solicit a letter of recommendation from your supervisor who, swamped with work herself, asks you to just write it yourself and come back later for the signature. Spend an hour on a letter with just enough tiny English flubs to sound (you hope) like a non-native speaker. Or at least, not like you.

Write a cover letter. Edit. Read your partner’s cover letter. Edit. Write a combined cover letter, emailing drafts back and forth. Write a Korean translation of your cover letter, imagining that employers will be impressed. Type it out at an approximate speed of 4 Korean words/minute.

Send applications. A lot of them.

On weekend hikes together, discuss your plan B, if you don't get jobs, if you have to go back to North America. Suggest backup options in an upbeat way. Privately dread them.

November

Send applications. Every day. Every day.

Scan job sites compulsively. Fill out surprisingly detailed application forms as required by different universities. Raise your eyebrows when asked to provide your parents’ occupations, your undergrad student number, the name of your church leader, your height.

Downplay the subject when friends bring it up, especially in big groups. “Yeah, we’re trying,” you say sheepishly. “It’s tough, it’s really competitive.” Nod appreciatively when your friends say don’t worry, you’ll get it, you’ve got great experience. Wonder what people will say about you if you fail.

Send more applications. Cold-call universities. Each day, in the free time of your lunch hour, in the free periods on your teaching schedule, send emails, write applications, research universities and colleges. Let personal emails pile up. Fall behind on world news. Dig through the teetering laundry hamper for clean-enough clothes.

Land an interview! Two interviews! Plan your outfit, makeup and hair a week in advance. Make a cheat sheet of TESL methodologies in case asked about them. Spend the train ride quizzing each other on potential interview questions.

Interview with one charming panel of department heads. Celebrate with tex-mex in Seoul. Interview with one dour panel of department heads. Comiserate by spending too much money on junky British women’s magazines in Seoul.

December

Another interview! And another! Ask your patient employer for more unpaid leave. Plan another outfit that you end up tugging all day, worried the blouse neckline rides too low.

At the university, sit in an interview waiting room with ten other applicants, each seemingly fun and peppy and charming and slightly more qualified than you. “I hear they’re interviewing 60 people.” Sweat.

Get a job offer. Then another. Spend ten minutes on the bus wondering if, as a result of all your university job daydreaming, the offers came your way serendipitously like in The Secret. Spend twenty minutes on the bus scolding yourself for thinking about The Secret.

Jump up and down with your partner. Go out to dinner. Smile a lot.

Get a very polite rejection. And another. Sulk just a bit.

Accept the job from the charming university. Tell your friends. Feel gooey and proud when they congratulate you and get excited for you.

Contact the coordinator at your brand new job. Receive an email detailing the mountain of paperwork needed for your new visa. Let the scrambling begin again.

Reacting to Kim Jong Il's death: "Can I come to Canada?"

2011-12-19T20:32:00.001-05:00

Tae-nam, 15, student:

(smiling) “Do you know Kim Jong Il? He is die die die die die.”

Hyo-won, 15, student:

“Is Obama happy?”

Yumi, 21, university student:

“His life was always comfortable because he took so much from others. I’m disappointed that he wasn’t punished before he died. Instead, his death was comfortable, like his life.”

Jae-Eun, 31, English teacher:

“People are not surprised. He was not a healthy man. I think on the news, we would see pictures and videos that were much older, showing him in good health.”

Mimi, 34, Art teacher

“My daughter asked if we were sad because someone died. My husband and I didn’t know how to answer that.”

Mi-Ran, 14, student:
"I don't know. Teacher, I have a test today."

Ji-won, 26, math teacher:

“Nobody knows what will happen next. Maybe the son is kinder, maybe he is more selfish. But, we know that the government doesn’t want to lose any power.”

Chung-hee, 14, student:

“Maybe there will be a war now. Can I come to Canada with you?”

A very witty history of the English Language

2011-12-08T07:10:00.001-05:00

This video is titled The History of English in Ten Minutes, but if you're like me, you'll watch it a few times to get all the rapid witty asides, layered on thick in each minute-long chapter. Puns, pop culture references, and a good jab at Dan Brown, all narrated by the very funny Clive Anderson.

The animation was released last July by England's Open University. How did it take me 6 months to come across it?

TESL Methodology in a (Rhyming!) Nutshell

2011-11-30T08:52:00.001-05:00

I made study notes.

I made them into rhyming couplets.

They're about 90% iambic. I want to remember them easily, after all.

We're in the middle of an interview junket for university teaching positions. I've heard scary stories of deans grilling applicants on grammar terminology and TESL methodology. Panicked, I whipped up a crib sheet overview of the Big Ideas. It was verbose, as I tend to be, so I shrunk 'em down to simple, easy-to-memorize rhymes.

For the record, neither of our first two interviews grilled us that way. Still, I'm prepared. Rhythmic and prepared!

Classical Method

It’s vocab and grammar, not Listen and Speak

Oft used with dead languages: Latins and Greeks

Direct Method

“Learn L2 like L1” said Maxmilian Berlitz,

“with vocab and flashcards, a repetitive blitz!”

Audiolingual Method

Learn structure and vocab through “building block” scripts

Using everyday language, like a phrasebook for trips

Communicative Language Learning

Never mind being perfect, just be understood

With real-life simulations, like ordering food

Natural Approach

Krashen's i + 1's how learning naturally goes;

language one step tougher than what a student knows

Total Physical Response

In this class you’ll be active and play Simon Says

To learn vocab through movement before turning a phrase

Suggestopedia

If learning’s efficient when students are calm

Use drama, games, rhyming, while listening to Brahms!

Dogme

Engage with fresh topics drawn from students’ choices

Don’t bore them with textbooks, just use your own voices

Silent Method

Language is modeled through Cuisenaire rods

It’s the students who speak, while the teacher just nods

Affective Filter

Students are timid and slow to progress

When their learning’s impeded by boredom, shyness

15 small truths about eating in Korea

2011-11-20T08:27:00.001-05:00

1. If you have even the slightest hunch that the meat you're eating is pig's feet, you're probably correct.

2. Here, cherry tomatoes and mayonnaise are key ingredients in a fruit salad.

3. "Hamburger steak" is exactly what you're picturing.

4. Puffed rice snacks that are surprisingly tasty: onion, chocolate, and shrimp flavours. Puffed rice snack that is unforgivably bad: banana.

5. In the public Korean saunas, it is common to take a seat in the communal changeroom and have a snack, naked. Most locker rooms have a booth selling foods that I don't personally consider to be nude-appropriate, like hard-boiled eggs, dried squid, and yogurt.

6. Sometimes, even in the most rustic-looking Korean dishes, you'll get a taste of mustard. Go with it.

7. Barbecued kimchi is absolute heaven.

8. Apple kimchi, though frustratingly rare, is equally heavenly.

9. Most Korean food is soft enough that you can slice it with a spoon. See #3, hamburger steak.

10. When you order a noodle dish that comes with half a hard-boiled egg on top, eat the egg first. It's meant to coat your stomach and get it warmed up for some digesting.

11. A genius little Korean snack stand invention is the cup/bowl. A soft drink will come with a deep bowl-like lid, usually filled with chicken nuggets and some spicy sauce. Genius.

12. If you're sick, don't let anyone see you eating an apple. I've never been told why, but it's a very common belief that apples aggravate illness.

13. Chopstick trouble? Many restaurants can provide you with flexible little bands that loop around your chopsticks. They're for toddlers, but hey, so is spilling food down your shirt.

14. Never agree to play a food-related game with teenagers. Nine times out of ten, it's an awkward kissing game where two kids bite either end of a Cheeto like the Lady and the Tramp on their spaghetti date.

15. If you've been in Korea for longer than 2 days, you've probably eaten Spam. Don't fight it.

Peace between Englishes: do it for the children

2011-11-08T00:14:00.002-05:00

The memory is as vivid and painful as middle school gym class traumas.

This class of 8-year-old students was sweet, funny, and inquisitive. One day, I wrote on the whiteboard, “what is your favourite…” something or other. Each one started giggling, the loud and rocking laughing fit that never goes away without a fight.

“Teacher, bad spell!” They crowed. They pointed. They laughed on and on. For the rest of the lesson they were a little rowdier, a little slower in their work, a little snarkier in their jokes. My upper hand had fallen. At the end of the lesson, I explained to them that English spelling is sometimes inconsistent, that many words have two different ways of being spelled. They nodded, they stopped snarking at me, but the confusion on their faces were clear.

Now I could have sat them down the next day to talk about British and American English (and its little-used cousin, Canadian English). I could have explained world Englishes and run them through drills on traveled/travelled, tire/tyre, center/centre. We could have branched out into weeks of lessons. Rubbish in the bin! Trash in the garbage can! Truck in the parking lot! Lorry in the carpark!

I didn’t plan any such lesson.

Why?

Because they were 8 freaking years old, and had only recently learned Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

Really, do we need to be chucking these regionally-specific terms at them? Are we so nationalistic, such gung-ho peddlers of our nation’s parlance that we’ll pretend your average Glaswegian won’t understand “candy,” or a Californian will scratch her head over “at the weekend”?

We’re halfway through the fall semester here in Korea. It’s that time of year when the September intake of ESL teachers start getting irked by all the American spelling and vocabulary in Korean textbooks.

“I’m giving my elementary school students a lesson on the Queen’s English,” a Brit will say semi-jokingly. “I’ve made a whole PowerPoint for the Grade 5 class on British and American spelling,” another will chime in. I sigh.

Should English language learners study these differences? Yes, of course. When they reach a high enough level of comprehension, I’m confident they can take on these nuances without much confusion.

But come on, elementary school students? Kids who are still learning past simple? Students who consult dictionaries when listing off the months of the year? These students need to understand the tiny cultural divides of the language they barely grasp as it is?

I say no.

I say, come on teachers. When planning these World English lessons, ask yourself how much this will benefit the students. Touch on the different spellings or synonyms, fine, tackle individual words when they come up. But a whole lesson telling students that their already tiny vocabularies have a set of synonymous twins?

I’m a pretty basic Korean speaker. If my tutor came in one day and proclaimed that 15% of my tiny Korean vocabulary can be said or spelled in a totally different way, my brain would melt.

So please language teachers, declare peace between world Englishes until your students reach a level where they can take it all in. That may take years, but hey, language acquisition is no cakewalk, no matter where your teacher is from.

Heck yeah, Japan!

2011-10-26T09:56:00.003-04:00

It was everything I thought it would be!

The shopping malls were as sterile as hospitals. The fish was briny fresh. The billboard models were simultaneously sexy and infantile. The fashion was eclectic and neon. The salarymen, after dark, were tipsy and jovial.

I loved Japan. Five days in Fukuoka just made me jacked to visit again.

I like a neighbourhood grocery store with a sense of humour.

Duckboat wranglers.

Space candy

Greatest park sight ever. I never could deduce how the hat stayed on.

Stunning temple. That hike was hot, sweaty, punitive, worth it.

Street noodles. This is not your dormmate's ramen.

New friends. They gave us Asahi. We gave them our paper fans from a pachinko parlour.

A Fukuoka Hawks baseball game, where a crowd inciter led cheers through a megaphone.

The 7th inning balloon release where spermy-looking inflatables swiggle skywards towards the diaphragm-like stadium dome.

Sashimi at the fish market.

The CREEPIEST way to learn the alphabet in Korea

2011-09-29T02:47:00.000-04:00

Last winter, I caught a nasty flu.

People told me I looked tired, weak, terrible.

Around Day 5, I started getting compliments.

"You have a V-line!" one usually timid coworker told me, pressing down her own cheeks with either palm.

V-line, dontcha know, is the Ideal Face Shape: a pointed chin and sleek, non-chubby cheeks.

I had never heard the term before then, but it seems that Korea loves using alphabetspeak when describing, of all things, body types. If you look around, you'll notice that those health drinks hawked by foxy Korean starlets are always pushed for their "S 라인" properties. That is, they will help your body achieve the coveted S-line, a curvy womanly body.

I had to look these up online. It's a weird system, but I was really hoping there would be more.

And there are! The good, the bad, and the shamefully flabby.

B-line: big rack, big belly

D-line: pregnant, or pregnant-looking

M-line: on men, taut six-pack abs

O-line: round like Chris Farley. Shame on you.

S-line: a buxom, curvy body, when viewed from the side.

V-line: a slim face with a narrow chin

W-line: sizeable breasts

X-line: long legs and arms with a narrow waist

On hoping to "just pick up" the language

2011-09-05T21:38:00.004-04:00

First, you will learn “hello” and “thank you.” For weeks, you will marvel at just how far you can get with those two bits of speech, how people smile at you for attempting their native tongue.

You will learn the word for “foreigner,” hearing it constantly from young children and old ladies as you pass them on the street.

You will learn how to say “how are you?” You will learn “good” and, later, “tired.” It will be months before you learn any other possible answers to that question. It will be half a year before you learn that here, they don’t do the “how are you? Fine thank you” small talk of your home country.

You will buy a textbook, phrasebook, and/or dictionary. You will camp out in coffeeshops on afternoons off, learning materials in hand, hoping someone will approach you and offer some conversation practice.

On the bus, you will eavesdrop on bickering couples, giggling schoolgirls, businessmen on the phone with their wives. You will rake over each sentence in your mind, cheering on the inside when you recognize a word. Those words will be the simplest nouns, “house” or “friend” or “food.”

You will learn to ask “how much is this?” long before you learn the numbers necessary to explain a price. Most salespeople and waiters have calculators on hand anyway, to punch out the number and show you.

You will learn three different ways of saying “okay,” but still, “okay” will be the first word out of your mouth when you’re agreeing with someone.

You will learn how to order food, order beer, buy chocolate bars from the corner shop.

You will learn how to say “I like _________,” and spend days milking this milestone, rattling off lists to cab drivers and market vendors. “I like Michael Jackson.” “I like Santa Claus.” “I like beer.”

You will not learn the days of the week or months of the year. You will not learn to tell time. You will not learn any numbers past 10. You will not be able to translate “head, shoulders, knees and toes.” Not for months and months.

If you’re an ESL teacher, you will learn “sit down” and “be quiet.” You will learn “textbook,” “pencil,” and “eraser.” When the students all chirp a word proudly, waving worksheets in the air, you will deduce that it means “finished.”

Your peers will keenly teach you swear words. Before you can count to ten, you will know how to say f**k, sh*t, f**k off, and at least one nasty line about someone’s mother.

You will learn “I don’t want” after being approached by aggressive vendors in the market, or children selling roses on the street. You will learn that there’s no point trying to say it politely.

You will learn “delicious,” and say it happily after every meal.

You will learn “I love you,” and smile every time you hear a voice whisper this to another in an unassuming crowd.

The morning commute of an ESL teacher

2011-08-24T09:08:00.000-04:00

I brought my camera to work one day.

I was going to make a great day-in-the-life photo essay of my workday.

The battery died before I even passed the front gate.

I had snapped some photos of my morning walk for context. It was all ho-hum stuff to me, the surroundings I glimpse every day. A squat doorframe, crates of empty soda bottles, motorcycles parked in an alley. My eyes scan past them each morning. It was only when I stopped to take photos that I saw these images standing alone, each revealing a quirky little insight into Korean living.

Enjoy.

Korean Snacks, Vol II: Rehydration

2011-08-08T23:05:00.008-04:00

Korean summers in a word: thirsty.

I'm not much of a soft drink person, and tend to avoid sugary convenience store drinks. Still, when the temperature has climbed to the point where stepping out my door is akin to opening an oven door, I need refreshment. Like, every 5 minutes.

Korean marts have zillions of drinks, ranging from the familiar (Coca Cola) to the odd (black bean tea, which I didn't have the balls to sample in this experiment). I've culled a selection of uniquely Korean drinks for a taste-test. Thirsty? Read on. Also, don't laugh at the wallpaper by my desk.

Ryoo

It looks like some kind of iced tea, which I always love. Ingredients include oolong tea, ginseng, and something that translated on Babelfish as "tangerine mouth."

The Look: Overbrewed green tea

The Smell: Sourdough bread

The Taste: Earthy and wheaty, like the mildest beer ever brewed. It's not at all sweet and definitely tastes healthy, like a homeopathic elixir from an oriental medicine clinic. For all I know, it could be curative. I imagine it would be good served hot, like barley tea.

Surprise!: This was the first drink I sampled after sweating my way home from the convenience store. It is thirst quenching, I'll give it that.

The Verdict: Probably an acquired taste. Still, I wouldn't pass it up on a hot day.

Aloe Nectar

The Look: Pale green and cloudy.

The Smell: Very sweet! Like Sprite.

The Taste: Sugary and a bit grassy. It's slippery going down, with the pieces of aloe floating around. I'm sure the sugar kick comes in handy if you're sweaty and dehydrated. I couldn't find a brand that was 100% juice, and I wonder how different a pure juice would be.

Surprise!: I thought the gobs of aloe would be squishy like tapioca in bubble tea. They're crisp and sweet like bits of apple. Thumbs up!

The Verdict: Yes yes yes. I'm sure it's jacked with more sugar than juice, but it's darn tasty.

Nostalgia Rice Drink

I've had a version of this traditional sweet rice drink before in my school cafeteria. It was aggressively sweet then, but hey, cafeteria food isn't exactly a hallmark of cuisine, right? Round two.

The Look: Murky puddle.

The Smell: It's a malty, molasses smell, like dark beer.

The Taste: Still cloying at first, but the aftertaste is pretty nice, like toasted rice. That sounds weird, considering the drink is ice cold, but I don't mind it.

Surprise!: There's a good tablespoon's worth of rice floating around at the bottom, which amps up the nutrition I guess. In the name of science, I sampled a spoonful. Don't. Eat. The. Rice. It's like wet newspaper. Just swallow them in a glug if you want the energy.

The Verdict: I bet it would hit the spot on a hike when you want some calories to keep you going. For everyday? Meh.

Milkis

I've never seen anyone buy or drink Milkis, but the can is pretty cute. There have been great marriages before between dairy and fizz, right? Root beer floats? American Yoo-hoo? Bring it on.

The Look: Milk. Right down to the bubbles at the top of the glass.

The Smell: Soft-serve vanilla ice cream.

The Taste: Like a root beer float without the root beer. Like cream soda with a stronger vanilla taste.

Surprise!: I hear it tastes great paired with soju (Korean rice alcohol). That's my Friday night sorted.

The Verdict: Capital-R refreshing. Really sweet (notice the theme here?) but definitely tasty.

For more Korean snacks, read the first installment, Korean Snacks, Vol I: Vegetable Donuts

An open letter to my Estonian readers

2011-07-29T21:24:00.000-04:00

Anne Merritt. Clothes on.

Dear Estonian audience,

I'm not the Anne Merritt you're likely searching for.

Last week, I was excited to look at my blog stats and see a sharp spike in traffic coming out of Estonia.

I visited the country four years ago, and loved it. The cities were like cosy snow globe towns dotted with witty anti-Bush graffiti. The food was fresh and hearty. The people were polite and kind. I've been encouraging other travellers to see the Baltics ever since.

But why the sudden popularity in Estonia?

A curious parallel was noted in the blog stats. Earlier this month, around the same time that my readership rose in Estonia, a pattern of keyword searches also emerged.

"Anne Merritt porn."
"Anne Merritt porno."

Very curious.

I Googled it (wouldn't you?) and found that there's another Anne Merritt on the internet airwaves, doing sexy stuff for a very zoomed-in camera. The video is short, but seems to be making quite the splash on Baltic adult film sites.

The real kicker? This other Anne Merritt also has brown hair, pale skin, and a big nose. If you only knew my face from thumbnail author photos, you'd be forgiven for thinking she and I were the same person.

We're not the same person.

I'm sure you're disappointed that your x-rated Google search brought you to a blog where I talk about teaching, moon over Korean pop music, and eat weird things.

But if you can, stick around a while. I'm glad you're here.

Terviseks,

Anne

Five MORE Reasons to Love K-Pop

2011-07-06T22:12:00.003-04:00

Last winter, I wrote a blog post about my favourite K-pop videos, and why it's perfectly fine for a grown woman to love them.

Well, it's high time I share Korea's summer soundtracks, along with more reasons to listen to K-pop. Not that you need them. It's cultural immersion. Right? Right?

1. K-Pop stars, they're just like us

Some wild pop scandals in the news lately. First, MC Mong is arrested for evading military service, now Big Bang's Daesung commits manslaughter? ESL teachers, if your students are acting listless, bring up these scandals and the girls will talk til their jaws are sore. Communicative English!

2. You can learn some Korean.

Nae-ga che jal ah ga. Nae-ga che jal ah ga. Look at you, speaking Korean. Phrases like these may not be superduper practical when it comes to getting around Korea or asking questions. But hey, robot-rapping "I am the best" will break the ice.

3. They're playing their own instruments now!

Well done, CNBlue.

4. It's going west!

Remember the K-pop concert in France that had to add a second date because it sold out within hours? Remember those images of screaming Parisian tweens holding "TVXQ 사랑해요!" signs?

K-pop is spreading, and groups are tweaking their sound for western ears.

I think 2PM really owes us an apology for this Eurotrash video and it's disappointing dance sequences (did you know that 2PM are insane dancers? Watch). Still, the song is catchy, and has "non-Korean audience" written all over it.

5. You can pick up some moves.

Skip to 1:22 and tell me that doesn't look cool. I'm certain that this move is going to be the new Shock. Well done, B2ST.*

*pronounced "Beast", in case you were curious

On Summer Rain

2011-07-04T10:08:00.001-04:00

Photo by: FFrame

It's not the kind of rain that falls hard.

Instead, it drums calmly on rooftops and parked cars. It comes at night, always at night, to pool quietly on subway steps. To swell slowly in flowerboxes, old cardboard, doormats and toy trucks left forgotten on the balcony.

It's not the kind of rain that cuts humidity.

Instead, it soaks a mouldy wetness into the city. It hangs around in hot wet sidewalks and brown puddles. I picture it as eggs poured over a bowl of flour by a baker's hands. The flour fans up, hangs in the air, and settles down finely again. By morning, the heat settles down finely again.

The students carry hand fans shaped like Batman masks, fans with pop star pictures, fans shaped like fat pink strawberries. In my classroom, they scavenge the cupboards and drawers for spare paper to shape into cups and fill with water. They slouch even more these days.

My face, constantly, is the boiled-shrimp pink of overexertion. Five times a day, people ask about my health. Here, I sweat between my fingers. The small of my back, the arches of my feet. The pages of my books are all wrinkled from touch.

At night, the barest breeze goes down the long corridor of my street. People come out slowly, always moving slowly these days. Kitchen doors hang open, and cooks in rubber aprons squat on their stoops, peeling sweet potatoes and snapping green onion stalks in two.

On balconies, you can spot the bobbing silhouette of a working housewife. You can hear the slap and drip of laundry washed by hand, the splash of thankful arms in cool water.

Korean Massage, Soreness, Cucumber in my Hair

2011-06-27T00:44:00.001-04:00

Photo by uggboy

"A naked 300-pound woman squirted 2 bottles of baby oil onto my back and started massaging as fast as a carwash. Relaxing? I had to hold in for dear life!"

That's how my friend Lisa described a Korean sauna treatment to me, years ago. I stayed away, for ages.

Yesterday, lured by the low low massage price at my favourite Korean sauna, I bit the bullet.

Some notes:

the good

Price price price: the equivalent of $20 Canadian for a 45-minute facial, body scrub, massage.

Though the rest of the sauna runs at a relaxville snail's pace, the masseuses hum around very efficiently. Car wash, indeed.

My masseuse grated up a fresh, ice-cold cucumber and pressed the pulp onto my face, It felt superb.

My chronically stiff shoulders feel pretty darn good.

I'm as smooth as a baby's bottom.

A friend later called me "glowing."

the bad

More than a few people looked over to gawk at my pink foreigner skin, which was pink as a shrimp platter from all the firm scrubbing.

Not gonna lie, there was a bit of pain as my masseuse lay her elbows into my vertebrae. I usually say "the deeper the better" when it comes to massage, but this was... pointy.

It was a little embarassing, just how much dead skin came off during the scrub.

the strange-ee

My treatment table was covered in vinyl Burberry plaid.

The rinsing off portion involved throwing warm buckets of water.

Some parts of my body do not like being scrubbed like a kitchen soup pot. My armpits are sore.

The massage involved a lot of punching. Not to say it didn't feel nice....

The verdict? Thumbs up. Go. Experience it. Share your story with me, please.

Notes on Crying in a Foreign Country

2011-06-19T09:33:00.001-04:00

Photo by iwolkow.de

Four years ago, in a hostel in Vietnam, I turned on the TV in my plywood single room and found an English movie. I started sobbing ten minutes in.

The scene was dramatic and contrived. The kind I'd watch on any other day and think "yeesh, laying it on thick there, aren't we?" But that night, the grandmother hugged her granddaughter, the violin music swelled. I cried like a baby.

That day, I had barely spoken to anyone. I'd walked and walked, dodged motorbikes to snap pictures of the traffic, slurped noodle soup and iced coffee from kind street vendors. I had stopped to sit on park benches, pen in hand, and scribbled great conversations with my journal. I had eaten dinner alone in a tiny, empty restaurant, reading a book I didn't like that much.

Being able to cry that night, to care for characters and cry for them, felt amazing.

*

Last year, I boarded the subway from Istanbul's airport, sank into a patchy vinyl seat, and choke-cried all the way home.

My parents had come to visit for a week, and seeing them off at the airport made something snap. A well of pent-up homesickness, traveller's frustrations, family worry, general quarter-life panic, all came uncorked and gushed out of me. Twenty seven years old, and I couldn't stop crying. Fucking keep it together! I whispered to myself. Out the window, I watched power lines bob by, the sag and anchor of the cables strung between poles.

A man in the next seat over watched me. He probably had children my age. On his face was confusion, kindness. In Canada, your train-mates would pretend not to notice a woman clenching and unclenching her purse straps, weeping quietly. Not here.

I racked my brain for something to say in Turkish, shook my head and mumbled "My family. My mother and father." His face creased with sadness, and it struck me that he probably thought there had been a death, a sudden tragedy that knocked the feeling right out of me, there in the middle of a train ride. I wanted to explain more. I didn't have the words. I ducked my head and thanked him.

He didn't turn away until I got off the train.

*

Yesterday, in the teacher's room, a deskmate slipped through the door and sat down quietly. I was at my computer, typing. It took me ages to notice, she was crying. Slumped over the desk, head in hands, sniffling. She had put on headphones, and I could hear the tinny chorus of a pop song. Her long hair hung over her shoulder, tenting her face from the world.

I looked around. Teachers were buzzing in and out, running photocopies, brewing instant coffee. No one else had noticed.

I racked my brain for the right Korean phrase. "How are you?" "What's happening?" "Are you not at peace?" But then what? Her English was as basic as my Korean. Would we cobble a shoulder-to-cry-on situation out of hand gestures and hodgepodge Konglish?

Still, no one had noticed. If they had, they were pretending not to. I didn't know if this was the cultural norm, if acknowledging someone's tears would be more embarrassing than the crying itself. I had seen colleagues shoot rice liquor, croon some terrible karaoke, stagger into taxis. Tears, never.

I was still sitting at my desk, eyes glued to the computer screen, when she slipped out again.

I hadn't even seen her go.

Only in Korea

2011-05-31T10:06:00.001-04:00

I met a friend-of-friends tonight: a flight attendant on her first Asian layover. She spoke with such animation about these Korean quirks that have become so familiar to me, I forget how odd they seem from fresh newcomer's eyes.

I've been sitting on a few bits-and-pieces photos for a while, forgetting how unusual they really are. In no particular order:

I did an interview with a local radio station, and they sent me this whale soap as a thank you gift. Whale soap. Like, from the blubber. Korean whaling is a really murky issue, and as an outsider, it's especially hard to get the facts straight. I can't quite bring myself to use the soap yet.

A few weeks after Buddha's birthday, paper lanterns still line a dank alleyway. The weather has been drizzly, and I love seeing these sudden pops of colour.

Yellow dust is a spring phenomenon where wind currents carry sand and grit from the Gobi desert over to the Korean peninsula. Before coming to Korea, I didn't know "dust" could be a weather forecast. The grime that's marbling that puddle is a pretty sickly shade of yellow, up close.

still not convinced, e-reader

2011-05-22T08:57:00.001-04:00

Photo by kodomut

I was really saddened to learn that one of my favourite places in Toronto, the Flying Dragon Bookshop, will be closing its doors.

On their blog, the owners addressed the rapidly changing market in books and rise of techy literary mediums like e-readers, and how "at the end of the day we realized that for us, it was all about the books and the tactile, sensory experience they provide."

I've seen more and more e-readers these days, especially among expats and travellers here in East Asia. I've heard some excellent arguments in favor of the device, that it saves trees, weighs next to nothing, and frees up packing space for travel-bound bookworms.

Still, for me, the tangibility of a book trumps convenience. I love the weight of a book in my hands or on my lap. It's a feeling as familiar to me as a hug. I love the aging of books, the lines and scars they collect like bodies, the way a battered tome in a secondhand shop carries a bit of mystery with it. I love the fact that a book is more that just the story on its pages.

On the train today, with a fat book taking up tons o' purse-room, I thought about some great memories and surprises in tactile books.

My mother's name handwritten on the inside cover in her 1970s Margaret Atwood paperbacks. She was a med student then, her handwriting studied and precise. She doesn't write that way anymore.

My old travel guides scratched with notes, pages fat from ticket stubs and pamphlets pressed between them, the flecks of dirt and food, the smells and familiar weight, the spine sagging when the book collapses open.

The receipts and stubs pressed into the pages of secondhand volumes. The grocery lists in someone else's handwriting. The odd photograph. The terrible poem I found scratched into a battered paperback of Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot.". It told the story of a backpacker's ill-fated romance with a Chinese bartender, titled "The Demon of Nanjing." Voyeuristically awesome.

The lending of books, that subtle but pivotal point in a friendship. Two of my dearest friendships kicked off with the borrowing of Martin Sloane and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, respectively.

In fact, I've seen romance stem from book exchanges too. Boy lends girl his favourite book. They meet for coffee and discuss it. Hollywood makes a film adaptation. Boy and girl are skeptical as to how the story will lend itself to the medium of film, but plan to see it together anyway. The theatre gets dark. Hands touch in the popcorn bag. How are people supposed to date anymore?

How about you, blogworld? Any good book memories to share?

Korean snacks, Vol. 1: Vegetable Donuts?

2011-04-28T08:37:00.001-04:00

Stereotypical Canadian moment: in bouts of homesickness, I daydream about Tim Horton's maple glazed donuts.

It's become my homecoming snack of choice, the first thing I buy at the airport arrival gate when coming home from abroad.

Korean donuts, while tasty, don't quite compare.

They have more rustic donuts, chewy rice flour balls fried up and sold hot in market stalls.

Then they have Dunkin Donuts. Like, everywhere.

I've never been wild about the DD, but I'll pop in for bagels sometimes. A month ago, I saw a new promotional donut line that made my eyes bug, Wile E. Coyote style: vegetable donuts!

For weeks, I'd stare at the sign in the window and scratch my head. How? Why? How?

Finally, I bit the bullet and held and afternoon snackventure for one.

I chose the olive, broccoli, and tomato carrot donuts. Bring it on, say my skeptical tastebuds.

Carrot and Tomato

I had the highest hopes for this one, as these veggies are naturally a bit sweeter than others. I was praying for a carrot cake flavour.

The Look: Orange, glazed, flecks of green herbs

The Smell: Low quality pizza sauce

The Taste: Like store-bought croutons. Despite the sugary-looking glaze, this donut was quite savory. The weirdest part was the disconnect between the salty flavor and the airy yeast donut texture.

Surprise!: The couple ahead of me in line bought THREE of them.

The Verdict: Pass.

Olive

An olive donut: the impossible marriage of two favourite foods. Surprisingly, the olive donut isn't part of the new vegetable promotion, but a regular in Korean Dunkin Donuts. Here goes nothing.

The Look: Glazed, sandy-coloured, could definitely pass as a non-veg snack.

The Smell: Sweet.

The Taste: To my relief, it seemed this guy was made from mild olive oil, not olives themselves. It tasted like a plain yeast donut, though the dough was a bit more slippery and chewy than one would expect. It reminded me of foccacia bread, but a bit sweet.

Surprise!: I ate the whole thing.

The Verdict: Success!

Broccoli

I saved it for last, as I was most skeptical. Even after the olive donut success, I couldn't imagine any good partnership between donut dough and broccoli.

The Look: The freakiest looking of the three. This donut was pretty dry-looking, with a mint green icing, eerily flawless all around. It reminded me of prop food that they use in theatre.

The Smell: Organic face wash.

The Taste: Not like broccoli, which was a relief. It didn't taste like anything at all really, but had a solid cakey texture. The icing had little flavour too, but left that bad shortening aftertaste. If you could chisel the stuff off, this donut could multitask nicely as a dinner roll. I would totally sop up pasta sauce with that thing.

Surprise!: Not at all sweet. Dinner donut?

The Verdict: Take off the icing and you've got a good snack.

Awesome Blossoms

2011-04-17T08:28:00.001-04:00

Springtime.

Springtime in Korea.

The weather is perfect, sunny and warmish, with a crispness in the breeze.

Have I been writing much? Heck no. I've been outside. I've been hiking, strolling, patio-drinking, paddle-boating and lingering around the market. I've been making lovey-eyes at the cherry blossoms.

I've been gushing to family and friends back home about the cherry blossoms, how their blooms just get bigger and bigger like fireworks. How they make my dreary old bus stop look like a postcard.

I've been to forgetting my camera at home every darn day.

Finally, I remembered it once.

Bear in mind, there are huge parks and promenades in Korea packed with cherry blossoms. They're incredibly pretty. These photos are not from those sites. The day I finally dug out my camera was just a typical day, walking to work, walking around the neighbourhood, coming home. These are the blossoms on average streets, just outside my door.

Koreans Gone Wild...ish

2011-03-27T09:03:00.003-04:00

We packed comfy clothes and a pile of books for our overnight trip to Seong Jung beach, just north of Busan. The laptop came too, full of movies. The plan was for a relaxing weekend.

The plan wasn't to share the beach with a heaping mob of university students, out to Seong Jung for their orientation field trips.

There were hundreds of them, spilling out of cars and motels and the tiny train station. They took over the beach in huddled groups, proud and bubbly in their matching T-shirts bearing slogans that, um, I didn't quite get ("Quick Fast"? huh?)

Now, if I were on a beach with hundreds of Canadian university students, I would buy earplugs and kiss that lazy weekend goodbye. My first thoughts would be "shoot, that Family Mart is going to sell out of beer," "shoot, someone's gonna vomit in the sea real soon," and "shoot, that guy with the guitar has been playing a slowed-down acoustic Hey Ya for 20 minutes."

Isn't that what carefree university students do?

Not in Korea, friends.

These groups played games. Big, sober, active games: races and wrestling and Duck Duck Goose. I saw many rounds of the popular hopping game where players, jumping in the sand on one foot, try to knock each other down. Boys were in and out of the still-wintry water, picking up an unsuspecting friend and carrying him, despite resistance, to be dunked into the sea.

Around the student revelry, wet-suited surfers bobbed around the low waves. Young families built sandcastles and flew kites. It was such a scene of good clean fun, I wondered if things would get really Animal House after dark. Our Korean friend, a university student, has told us about dorm life, with noisy parties and cheap rice liquor concoctions designed to get you drunk, fast.

The cheery students crowded the Family Mart (nonotthebeer!) to buy rounds of wholesome hot dogs. The one bar on the strip, whose unfortunate name was "Let's Get Drunk," was empty all night.

In fact, the only people out after sunset were couples like us, strolling up to the tiny clifftop temple, buying weak fireworks from beach vendors, wrapping cold fingers around a shared cup of hot chocolate.

Good clean fun.

Gotta love Korea.

Dogwalking: this is how I scare people

2011-03-02T22:33:00.004-05:00

No Korean dog stew jokes, please.

I ruined a great kickball game this weekend.

I was dogsitting a little, volleyball-sized pup. I was taking it for a walk past a park where the same group of men meet weekly for a kickball game. The matches are always intense, the players grunting and sweating like in a Powerade commercial.

Along I came with little Nola, a white perky thing trotting along on her 4-inch legs. She scurried towards the game with doggy curiosity, ears perked and nose sniffing at high speed.

One man saw her coming and leapt back, his arms drawn into his chest as if he’d stepped under a cold shower. Standing eight feet away, she blinked up at him in a cuteness overdrive move that would make most folks melt.

The rest of the team noticed her now. Their bodies tensed and bristled. They muttered my favourite Korean term, the gong-like “huuullllll.” Translation: “yikes.”

Grown athletic men, recoiling fearfully from a waggly-tailed pocket pup? Huh?

I’d love to present some anthropological research here, explaining the phenomenon. Truth is, I’m stumped, and any online search with “Korean” and “dog” in the same query will lead to some, um, odd finds.

Could it be that, because Koreans live primarily in compact apartments, they’re not used to having or interacting with domestic pets?

Could it be that most pets stay indoors, and people just aren’t accustomed to seeing animals on the street?

Could it be that the foreigner/puppy combo is just too darn weird?

My colleague told me a funny story once about the student homestay she did in

Canada

, where she wrote “likes pets” on her application. She was thinking of pets in the Korean sense; a kitty-cat, a purse dog, a docile bunny or fish. When she arrived at the family home, two huge, excited golden retrievers came bounding up and scared her half to death. She said that at the time “I couldn’t see how something so big could be safe to have in the home. I thought they were like bears, and they were going to eat me.”

On our later walks, I noticed older people beckoning Nola, patting her head calmly. I noticed young children stopping in their tracks when they saw her, grinning shyly as they reached to pet her. The kids would usually pull their hands away in the end, scared and giggling. For them, petting a dog seemed to have the same dangerous allure of a high diving board.

We would pass other dogs on our walks sometimes, little fluffy things in doggy sweaters and booties. I watched owners carry their dogs down the street, something that puzzled me. Maybe they were carrying the dogs to a park, where they could run about without cars and motorbikes whizzing by. Unless a kickball game is on.

Two Massages

2011-02-23T00:09:00.003-05:00

The first began with an impulsive turn down a side street in Chiang Mai. I had followed a sandwichboard sign with "Massage" written in pink and green chalk, like daily specials on a cafe menu. The place looked like an old hotel lobby, mid-renovation. The low ceiling was propped up by wooden columns, painted white and peeling.

The woman behind the desk wore pink pyjama shorts and a tight black T-shirt. I asked her for a half-hour massage and she nodded stiffly. When I paid, she slipped the money quickly into a lacquered box. I could see that it was empty. She caught my eye and pointed to a saggy recliner. I sat down while she assembled a plastic shower bucket of oil and lotion in unmarked bottles. With a warm, damp cloth, she rubbed my right foot gently, then the left. My foot twitched and she smiled, meeting my eyes shyly.

"If you feel very wonderful and relax, will you stay one hour? Two hours?"

Thai people are famous for their smiles, which are bright and certain and proud. This woman, though. She smiled with uncertainty, her forehead creased and her teeth biting just slightly on her lip.

"I can't," I told her. "I'm meeting a friend soon."

She nodded and started kneading my feet.

When a neighbour shouted something through the doorway, the woman jumped up and ran to a boxy cassette player on the counter by the door. She hit play and scooted back.

It was Whitney's Houston's greatest hits. If she saw me grinning, she didn't ackowledge it, but I swear, she was rubbing in time with the music.

*

The next was full body number, and the masseuse led me behind a screen to undress. "This, you put on," she said, handing me a thin white sarong. I tied a makeshift dress and looked down. My pink underwear, beneath the sheer cotton, was screaming.

I asked to use the bathroom and she motioned down a corridor to the back of the building. A woman knelt on the tile floor there, scrubbing a bowl with a soapy cloth. A little boy was running towards her, naked, wet and grinning. She smiled and pointed me quickly to the bathroom.

When I came out again, hugging my sarong around me, the woman was gone and the boy stood there, wrapped in a towel and watching me. I grinned and he let the towel fall to the foor, hands on hips like a cowboy. Looking anywhere but at his nakedness, I started down the hall. The tiles were clammy and hospital blue, with faded Snow White stickers down the wall. They were a few inches lower than the boy's eyes.

He stretched his arm and legs out, blocking the corridor.

"What your name?"

"Anne," I answered. "And what's your name?"

He bobbed his head, shimmying his thin shoulders. "What your name name name name?" I knew he didn't understand what the sentence meant. It was a thread of sounds that made him giggle. He bounced and grinned, but he still didn't let me past. How to handle a naked child that isn't your own? I cupped his shoulders gently, trying to guide him to one side, but he squirmed free and resumed the barricade, wiggling his bum and singing, "apple, apple apple apple."

When a woman's voice called, his singing stopped. He grabbed the towel off the ground, gave my sarong a quick flutter, and bounced off through a doorway. I walked back to the massage table, mouthing quietly the word. "Apple, apple apple." Say them enough times, the word just sounds goofy.

How to Put on a Student Play in Korea

2011-02-20T00:02:00.005-05:00

Write an 18-role version of Alice in Wonderland in simplified, ESL-appropriate English. Don't worry, your coteacher will give you 90 minutes' notice to do it.

"Audition" the students for the roles. This part is a bit backwards, as each student, who is shy to speak English aloud and who has never acted before, will be vying for the smallest part.

Cast the students. Announce the main role of Alice last. Try to fall asleep that night without the image of Dae-Hun's panicked and crestfallen face haunting your dreams.

Do read-throughs. Lead the students in vocal exercises and face massage in hopes that they loosen their mouths and enunciate for the stage. Spend the rest of the class playing Ace Ventura clips off YouTube in hopes that they get into the spirit of goofiness.

Shucks, no one told you that one of the students is leaving camp early and can't be in the play? Cast yourself begrudgingly as the Queen of Hearts.

Block the play. Point out to your fleet of first-time thespians that even if they're not speaking, they should remain in character while onstage. Cracking open a Pepsi, sending texts, and smacking their friends upside the head all break the suspension of disbelief.

Ask the students to make their own costumes. Pick your jaw up off the floor when, the following day, they present Broadway-caliber props and accessories handmade with felt and cardboard.

Take the students' advice to incorporate K-pop dance numbers into the play, in order to add movement. Regret this decision an hour later, after watching Beast's "I'll be Back" video eight times to study the choreography.

Run-throughs onstage. Beg the petrified cast to come downstage and stop standing as far away from the audience as possible. Urge them to loosen up their stiff performances by doing Ace Ventura impressions from the wings.

Performance time. Walk onstage and ignore the chuckles from the crowd as the narrators describe the Queen of Hearts' "mean face and big head." With Alice and the White Rabbit, dance to Beast's "I'll be Back" at the end of the scene.

Take home third prize: gift certificate for the whole cast! None for you, though. Reward the class with choco-pies. Reward yourself with three.

Thailand by Fork and Spoon

2011-02-06T07:40:00.001-05:00

I have 300+ photos from my Thailand trip.

Temples, beaches, monkeys, elephants, blah blah blah.

Let's get to the good stuff.

Phad ka paew from my favourite spot in Ayutthaya. The chef remembered me from when I lived there and used to stop in for lunch.

Phad see yew with egg tofu.

Tom yam hedt and fruit shakes.

Fish! Stuffed with herbs and roasted brains n' all.

Dragonfruit

Okay, I didn't eat these peanuts, but how cute is this monkey?

Noodle soup with fish balls. Yep. Fish balls.

Yam kai dao (a spicy egg and veg salad) with green curry behind it. Mine was better.

Som tam! Papaya, peanuts, shrimp and tomato salad. Looks cooling, Sets your tongue on fire.

Brown rice

Tom ka gai

Banana pancake. Dangerous.

Papaya and unripe mango with chili sugar.

Thailand Revisited

2011-01-20T09:27:00.002-05:00

In a few days, I'll be off to Thailand.

Five years ago, Thailand was the stepping stone into the life I live now. It was my first trip to Asia, the first foray into teaching ESL, the first taste of expat life. Going back will surely be a big nostalgic saunter.

The more time passes and the further I get from that experience, the rosier it is in my memory. Now, when people ask me about my time in Thailand, I get all moony. I saw beautiful places and people. I made some wonderful friendships there. I taught students who inspired me, whose progress made me beam. So many things I took to be the norm, I saw turned on their western heads.

I rode easily on motorbikes, a side-saddled passenger.

I ate bugs, pan fried with lemongrass.

I sat on a battered computer chair, playing with someone's pet tiger cub.

I saw so many kinds of unhappiness, far from the normal scope of my comfortable young life.

I saw so many kinds of happiness, the kind I couldn't quite fathom, which grows out of having little, having loss, smiling anyway.

...see? There goes that rosy nostalgic walk. Easy to get carried away, there.

As the trip gets closer, though, I've been remembering more of the uncomfortable stuff.

The self-consciousness of being so foreign, so scrutinized.

The ebbing system of logic where truth and deceit are malleable.

The prick of discomfort when a friend, in a whirl of thin stories, asks you for money. Again.

The nebulous relationship between western men and Thai women. The economics, the gender politics, that oft-repeated question of "who's exploiting who?" still never sitting right with me.

When I talk to friends about the trip, I wonder aloud how the place has changed in five years. The truth is, I'm sure I know how it's changed. The country and my old town are a little more wifi'd, a little more built up; the tourist bubble has expanded a little wider.

The question that gets louder as the trip gets closer is this:

In five years, how have I changed?

It sounds flaky, I know. The kind of flaky undergradspeak that I would have scribbled in my travel journal when I was first in Thailand. But I'm so curious of how it will be, seeing the place again through the eyes of a woman five years older, five years more immersed into travel and teaching and living abroad with curiosity and sanity.

Will it be greyer compared to all my technicolour memories? Will it be noisy and buggy and wild, like any other tropical urban sprawl? Will I beam around, silently thanking every familiar sound and smell for pointing me eventually to the path I'm on?

Let's find out, shall we?

Table for One: on Korean Coffeeshops

2011-01-12T09:36:00.001-05:00

I spent a freezing few days in Seoul, shifting from coffeeshop to museum to coffeeshop to confusing subway maze to... wait for it... coffeeshop.

I'm not a java fiend per se, but the streets were slippery wind tunnels and my only company was myself.

Does that sound a touch Debbie Downer?

Really, it was a fun few days, waiting for my friends to arrive in Seoul. I had neighbourhoods to wander and books to read. I had the end of 2010 reflect upon, and the approach of 2011 to ponder. All in all, it was a good recipe for two days spent drifting in and out of coffeeshops. A soft chair, a book, a window, and something hot to drink.

To me, a coffeeshop is the perfect place for reading and writing, for people-watching. It's a place to reflect on recent happenings, or to plan future ones. They're great sites for chatty catch-ups with friends, or slow Sunday mornings with a loved one and a fat weekend newspaper between us. Mostly, for me, they're solitary hangouts. In Canada or abroad, I like it that way.

How terribly un-Korean.

My Korean peers do very little alone. On weekends, couples and girlfriends prowl the downtowns for shopping and errands. They fill up the coffeeshops; fill them to the rafters, until every plush chair is taken, and every tiny table is a mess of cups and napkins and folded arms. They linger for hours there, laughing loudly with friends, speaking softly with partners, looking at photos, snapping more photos, looking at those new photos.

Then there's me, alone and content. I feel like a tourist into the very lives of Korean twentysomethings as I watch their excited conversations, listening for recognizable Korean and eyeing their fashion with an outsider's curiosity.

Solitude isn't really done here. Not in a country where unmarried offspring live with their parents well into their thirties. Not in a country where toothbrushes are sold in six-packs and menus price their meat based on 2, 3, or 4-person servings. Communal is the norm.

So when I'm sitting happily in a coffeehouse chair with my big waegookin nose buried in a book, I know it's an anomaly.

I bumped into a coworker in a cafe once, while writing in my journal by a sunny window. She hovered over my table, lines of worry on her forehead, while her friends beckoned at the door with takeaway cups in hand. She had places to be. Still, she stood close.

"So, you're meeting someone? Oh. You're meeting someone later though, right?"

She left, her ears full of my grinning assurances that yes, I was fine, no, I wasn't lonely, no really, I was alright. Later, I tried to picture the scene through her eyes, of a foreign woman far from her family, claiming in chipper tones that a paperback and notebook were "company enough."

On the streets, when I see people walking about alone, they're usually going to or from something. People rarely stroll leisurely, taking in the streets and sounds. On buses and subways, Koreans are forever buried in their phones, texting friends, filling that limbo of solitary time.

We all face that limbo at some point, after all. The difference between Koreans and I is that, at my table for one, I'm relishing it.

Five Reasons to Love K-Pop

2010-12-28T05:14:00.004-05:00

Confession: every morning before work, I turn on Channel 20 and watch Korean music videos as I get dressed and make breakfast.

The official reason is that I can practice Korean with the lyrics that appear, karaoke-style, in Korean script at the bottom of the screen.

Let me say, I'm hardly suffering here.

K-pop may be saccharine, repetitive, and sometimes far too sexy for the kids and tweens who parrot the dance moves in school talent shows. Still, I like the stuff.

I'll tell you why, and share some favourites. Get ready to get hooked, then feel like a nerd because of it.

1. It takes me back...

..to my teenage years of the late 90s American boyband machine. The high-budget videos, the trademark haircuts, the dance moves and lyrics grazing the surface of innuendo but never quite falling into coarseness...

2. It explains a lot about my students.

This is why every English textbook sentence beginning with "You don't..." will be sung by the students. "You don't know me! Y-you don't know me"

Umm.... 'kay?

This made little sense until I heard this song. K-pop's English-rich choruses are a mixed blessing. Korean youths pick up a fair bit of the language. Unfortunately, phrases like "shut up, boy!" are hardly versatile.

3. The drama!

My life is easy and comfortable. Life in a K-pop video is dramatic and awesome.

4. It's K-fashion, hyperbolized

Korean fashion always seems to me to be a dress-up game of characters.

While I was always taught versatility when it comes to clothes, you rarely see Koreans buy something with dress-it-up, dress-it-down possibilities. Jeans are either baggy and paired with big T-shirts, or tight and paired with silk. Coats are either wool and feminine and worn with dresses, or Goretex and practical and worn with track pants.

Music videos mean fashion gawking at its finest. This one represents Korea's exaggerated B-boy style well. It also trots out a few more weird sartorial gems. Belts around necks! Leopard-print vests! Cosby sweaters!

5. Admit it, this it catchy stuff

A cynic may read this as "gets lodged cruelly in your brain, playing over and over until you want to scream." Well yeah, if you hate K-pop. But pop music in general is all about catchiness, no?

This one gets in my head and stays there. Also, the video has just a dusting of Austin Powers to it. Coolness.

Names my students called out in a game of Jeopardy, when asked to identify a photo of England's current Prime Minister (10 point challenge)

2010-12-23T09:03:00.006-05:00

David Beatles

David Beckham

David Robert Pattinson

David Canada

David Camera

David Cameroon

David Co-bama

Anne Teacher's Father

Obama's Father

Ban Kyi-Moon

Hi, my name is...

2010-12-13T18:05:00.000-05:00

Imfinethankyouandyou?

2010-12-01T02:24:00.001-05:00

Each morning, my low-level students and I go through a pretty bland speaking exercise.

“How are you?”
“I’m _______________.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m ______________ because ______________.”

Basic stuff, but it always takes a while, and we always end the exercise laughing. When studying English, it seems, Korean students are overfed the Politeness Script of small talk.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine thank you, and you?”

They say it all in one breath, the words meaningless sounds as they tumble out. It’s English on autopilot. Their voices rise sharply to a forced squeak at the end of the sentence. I can picture my students back in elementary school, a stern teacher waving a ruler in a rising motion. “Your voice goes up with questions! UP!”

On the first day of any new class, I ask them this simple question, “how are you?” The same mumbled answer follows me continent to continent in ESL classrooms. “I’mfinethankyouandyou?” - a banal language-learning epidemic. I write “fine” on the board, and draw a thick line through it. “Don’t tell me you’re fine,” I say, feeling like a sitcom therapist. “Think about it. Take your time. Tell me, really, how are you?”

Here in

Korea

, my middle school students take this question seriously. Their answers are sometimes touchingly frank; stripped down in their limited English vocabulary.

“I’m bored because my life has no laughing.”

“I’m happy because I like my pretty face.”

“I’m angry because…. I don’t know!”

This is where I want them to be; to move beyond the regurgitation of memorized English sounds. I want them to start really working the language; moving words like puzzle pieces together, building sentences that are personal and genuine. So many of them have impressive English vocabularies, but the words are trapped in memorized soundbites, gleaned from television and K-pop and video games; “What is your name?” “Don’t worry baby.” “You lose! You lose!”

The thing is, as I push my students to take that leap from language parrot to language user, I know all too well how tough it is. As I prod my students for original answers in English, I know my Korean studies are full of the same easy, parroting method. I’m guilty of communicating in memorized Korean phrases; slogans also absorbed from the pop culture around me; “That looks delicious!” “Hurry up!” “I can’t breathe without you.”

It’s easy, isn’t it, the language script? It’s amazing how much you can get by with some memorized key phrases is your non-native tongue. In fact, a lot of foreigners in

Korea

get by for years with a handful of syllables committed to memory “go left, go right, one beer, thank you.”

But how great does the breaking point feel? It’s the place where the new language becomes a working machine in your head, each word moveable, changeable into new sentences, not ingested from a phrasebook but created, all on one’s own. It’s when you can really chat, not just point out the window and identify the weather, not just point to apples at the market and say “how much? Too much!”

Slowly, slowly, I’m nearing that leap too, but I’m happy that my students got there quicker.

Notes on the First 24 Hours After the Attack

2010-11-24T09:32:00.003-05:00

Today in class, as I was checking students' work, one boy tapped me on the arm.

"Teacher, North Korea vs. South Korea warcraft! North Korea vs. South Korea World of Warcraft!"

I studied his face, his eyes bright behind thick glasses. There wasn't worry in his voice; there wasn't any teasing either. He waited all of three seconds for my reaction before another student snatched his pencil, and the boy turned to grab it back, laughing.

When Yeonpyeong Island was being shelled by North Korea yesterday, I was sitting at my desk, watching the clock tick down the last five minutes of the workday. If my colleagues had heard the news, they didn't discuss it for long, because the office hummed along as usual. I didn't learn about the attack until someone told me online.

Last night, some friends and I swapped notes on the issue.

"Were your coworkers worried?"

"No. Yours?"

"No. They didn't talk about it at all."

We didn't discuss the attack for the rest of the night. Escalation? Evacuation? Another strike? They weren't on our minds.

I followed the story online this morning; the CNN reports, Lee Myung Bak's statements, all the buzzing expat message boards ("If shit goes down, I'll be at the border with a machine gun! When in Rome!" - sojuman5533). Today, Facebook status updates from teacher friends were all different versions of "Thanks for the worry, friends and family, I'm safe!"

My coteachers passed my desk, offering their usual chipper "good morning!" Business as usual, I assumed. But after the class with the Warcraft comments, I had to ask. I beckoned one woman over, pointing to a BBC news story on the attack. "What do you think about this?"

She shook her head. "Mostly, I don't want the students to worry," she said.

You're not worried at all?

"We have a long history of disputes between the two countries. This is another occurrence. It happens a lot here. You'll see."

All day, I replied to emails from concerned friends back home (from the presumably sardonic "Have you been kidnapped?" to the broader "So what's going on over there?" Korea was all over the news, statements about the UN, about President Lee's "severe punishment" comments. I got an email from the Canadian ministry of foreign affairs, telling me to follow the situation as it develops.

Then, I walked away from the computer, and it was just like any other day.

At the lunch table, teachers chatted about weekend plans and the upcoming winter break. Between classes, my coteacher asked me for book recommendations. Girls ran up to me in the hall, cellphones ever in hand, to show new photos of their pet dogs, sleeping.

Business as usual.

Chopstick Envy

2010-11-10T00:01:00.005-05:00

Today in the school cafeteria, we were served great big sheets of seaweed, wet and fresh, with the faint taste of saltwater. I waited in the cafeteria lineup, wondering how many I could stack on my lunch tray before getting called out as piggish by another teacher.

Closer and closer I got to this great, slippery plate of sea-awesomeness, as the teachers before me scooped up one or two modest pieces for their meals. As I was trying to figure out the Korean way of saying "yes I do need ten pieces, I'm iron deficient," my turn came. Joy of joys! I grabbed the metal tongs and scooped up a great wad of slippery, slimy seaweed.

Jeez Louise.

These sheets were HUGE! You could put them in a photocopier and run off administrative memos on these suckers. Unfolding a sheet was like like watching a clown pull one of those never-ending handkerchiefs from his coat pocket. Seaweed just kept coming, layer by layer.
The seaweed, laid flat in all its glory, covered half my tray. I looked down at the utensils in my hand; a spoon and two metal chopsticks.

Maybe it's boiled, and comes apart easily? I thought Yes, boiled seaweed. Sounds weird, but no weirder than scooping A4-sized vegetables into one's mouth.

I took my green pile to the staff table and found a seat.

Jung-ee, the meek history teacher, gave her signature shy smile as I sat down. Poking at my rice, I watched her carefully for seaweed-eating tactics.

Jung-ee took her chopsticks and, in a few twists of the fingers, had folded the sheet of seaweed into a bite-sized portion, which she popped in her mouth with a small smile. Somehow, the plant folded passively under her touch. She probably could have chopsticked an origami bird if I had asked.

I took my own chopsticks and folded the seaweed, which sprang back to it's flat shape. Defiant, are we? I took a deep breath and tried rolling the seaweed, cigar-style. The roll stayed intact, but I was left chomping the roll, bite by awkward bite, unravelling bits with my teeth.

I turned to the teacher beside me, Soon-nam, the bubbly math teacher who wears pink lipgloss and sparkly eyeshadow, even on staff hiking trips. Obviously, Jung-ee has circus freak dexterity. I would study someone else.

Soon-nam folded her seaweed, and I mimicked. She folded again, and I followed the lead, my knuckles turning white trying to keep the thing from springing open. She scooped the seaweed up quickly and put it all in her mouth. I tried to scoop, and tried again. Desperate, I took my spoon and cornered the seaweed ball, stuffing it frantically in my mouth.

Soon-nam looked up then, smiling as she swallowed. "You're so good," she said sweetly, "with chopsticks, so good."

Eight more seaweed sheets to go.

It's Harper, not Hawking: Canada Lessons

2010-10-21T01:12:00.012-04:00

For the first lesson with my new students, I prepared a little PowerPoint about Canada. Some beautiful photos, some pertinent facts, and a sprinkling of Justin Bieber just to keep them awake.

I thought it would be a standard lesson, but oh, middle school students can surprise you. I compiled some tips here for anyone hoping to do a Canada lesson overseas.

Get ready for Australia comparisons

I know that Canada isn't a global heavy-hitter like England or the States. I never thought, though, that Canada and Australia could be easily confused. I guess we’re both quieter English-speaking countries, rugby-playing, beer-drinking, but still, the mix-ups surprised me.

Canada’s capital? “Canberra!” shouts one boy. I shake my head, and his friend nudges him mockingly. “Noo!” he smirks, “Canberra, no! It’s Sydney.”

A photo of Toronto’s skyline? “Sydney operahouse!” they shout, pointing at the Skydome.

A picture of a raccoon? “Koala!” calls a girl.
Eesh.

Don’t show plain photos of animals…

… when you can show pictures of animals and their young! It’ll up the shriek factor when you show a romping polar bear cub or adorable baby seal. That may sound like a headache, but you know my classroom motto: shrieking students are better than sleeping students.

Make a teachable moment out of /b/ and /v/

These consonant pairs are a common hurtle for Korean students, for whom the /v/ sound simply doesn’t exist in their native tongue. You can easily work a little pronunciation practice into your Canadian culture lesson.

Repeat after me… vuh…vuh… beaver. Now, buh… buh…. Bieber. This will come up somehow.

Try not to laugh as they react to the Canadian Celebrity collage

It’s really hard to predict which bits of western pop culture make it to the Far East, and which get lost along the way. I learned something new when I showed my students some famous Canadians.

“Vampire!” they shouted at the picture of the admittedly pale Celine Dion.

“Hitler!” one girl called out at the image of James Cameron in a tux (!)

“aaa-oooo-ga!” they honk at Jim Carrey. (Apparently this is a Mask impersonation)

...and the Justin Bieber pictures? Well, the girls cooed in unison and fanned themselves Beatlemania-style. The boys nodded approvingly at Bieber's "Korean hairstyle."

Get ready for a “who’s bigger?” debate

Canada may be lacking in a few departments, but hells bells, are we ever big. The second largest nation, I pointed out to my students, who nodded agreeably. That is, until I told them that the Rebublic of Korea could fit into Canada 99 times.

Outrage!

I showed them a world map. More outrage! Accusations of tampering! Western cartographer conspiracy theories! One pushy girl took over my computer, used the Korean equivalent of Google image search to find a map of the world, and found…. Oh.

If you find a photo of Justin Bieber holding a baby raccoon…

…use it, then send me a copy. Guaranteed to win over the frostiest of students.

Travel Diary Lost and Found: a poem

2010-10-04T10:16:00.007-04:00

I found this little number in an old notebook.

It was written in 2007, when I had been in Korea for about three weeks and, clearly, was reading a lot of Leonard Cohen's work.

The rice wine is really tile cleaner,
the vegetable market is full of butchers,
and outside my very window, highrises just appear
like porn site pop-ups on the skyline.

But because it's Saturday,
and the bar isn't closing til we leave,
well chingu, I'd love a drink.

You see, I'm new here too.

Pack with Me: a guide for the Korea-bound

2010-09-17T23:40:00.002-04:00

I'm saddling up for another year abroad, and oh boy, it's packing time.

Packing combines some of my favourite trivialities; list-making, zipper operation, and hearing people say "gee, you pack light!" (with me, luggage-flattery gets you everywhere).

I'm in a good position, having already been to Korea before. I have a better sense of what to bring, and I'd love to share that info with the blogworld.

Below, my Dos and Don't for a Year in Korea.

Toiletries

Do: deodorant

Don't: body lotion, soap, shampoo, conditioner

Well, they do sell deodorant in Korea, but it's the delicate stuff. This Canadian needs industrial-strength to get through the humid, smoggy summers of urban Korea.

Really, though, it's the only toiletry you need to pack. Korean beauty products are potent and cheap. Just look around at Korean women. Aren't they always lovely? Have you ever once suspected them of using inferior moisurizers? Thought not. Travel with trial-sized essentials, and once you're in Korea, go to a Skin Food shop - the products are all labelled in English, and they're all great. You just saved yourself about three litres of space in your luggage.

Clothing

Do: bras, underwear, pants

Don't: shoes, socks

If you're an average-sized North American, odds are that you won't fit into Korean clothing, especially (ladies) on the bottom half of your body. Foot sizes, however, vary less than clothing sizes. If you have an average-sized foot in North America, you'll be able to find ample footwear in Korea. Shoes tend to be cheaper too, so don't put four pairs of boots in your luggage.

Outerwear

Do: winter coat

Don't: hats, mittens, gloves

You may find that Korean winter coats are tight on your lovely broad shoulders. Scarves and mittens will fit anyone, though. You can also easily wear Korean hats unless you have an exceptionally big head. I knew a Scotsman who had to order a helmet off the Internet because nothing in Korea would fit him. But that's another category...

Cosmetics

Do: foundation, powder

Don't: eyeshadow, lipstick, nail polish

Korean women (and boy band singers) are a well made-up lot. My makeup bag is still stuffed with Korean brands, and I haven't been there in two years. Their makeup is high-quality, and brands like Banila, Face Shop, and Skin Food are cheap. You may want to bring your own foundation and concealer, though, if your complexion is quite un-Korean. As far as makeup goes, their skin tone options don't vary much.

Books

Do: obscure new releases, Canadian lit, graphic novels, poetry...

Don't: your Jane Austen anthology

University bookstores are a good source of classic literature, in English. Most big cities have a Kyobo bookstore, which stocks a small English-language selection. The books here tend to be broad, though; think Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, not this year's Giller Prize shortlisters. If you like niche genres, bring a few titles in your luggage.

Food

Do: some favourite teas or spices

Don't: a crate of Kraft Dinner, three packages or Oreos, jars of your favourite salsa

Food plays a big role in homesickness, I know, but there's no need to fill your luggage with bulky, breakable things. My food packing list includes English Breakfast tea, cinnamon, maybe one bag of peanut butter cups. Portable, hardly breakable, small. Home Plus has Alpen and Cadbury and other western goodies; so do foreigner grocery stores in big cities. You can also sweet-talk someone from a US military base, and get access to the base grocery store. Those Pop-Tarts may come at a price though.

Mementos

Do: a few choics photographs

Don't: a milion framed photos, hand-written notes, a clay paperweight your nephew made.

A ton of mementos are just unnecessary bulk. To personalize your apartment, bring photos and buy cheap frames in Korea. Use a pashmina as a table runner, or bring some fridge magnets to personalize your kitchen. If you just want to decorate, ask around to see if any teachers are leaving Korea; you may be able to adopt some choice secondhand stuff.

Luggage

Do: a duffel bag or backpack

Don't: a suitcase with a frame

If you're in a bachelor apartment or one bedroom in a shared place, you'll resent that framed bugger for taking up precious, limited space. Collapsible luggage stores easily.

A Library in my Suitcase

2010-08-30T13:35:00.003-04:00

I'm a great book-hoarder.

No easy feat for an ever-moving person without a fixed address, right?

But I get books everywhere; as gifts, at garage sales, through tips from well-read friends. My pile of unreads is a teetering mess.

I'm off to South Korea soon. This is a place where the English section of a book store boasts Wordsworth Classics, a paperback pyramid of Tuesdays With Morrie, and little else. Not really a vast selection for a voracious reader.

I've learned that when moving abroad, it's best to bring a little library in your luggage to keep you busy. When you're a book nerd, assembling and packing that library is too much fun. The trouble is, though, that some books are better suited for going abroad than others.

Should I immerse myself in Korean literature and essays? Should I get revved up on travel with Theroux and Pico Iyer?

A book can be a wonderful companion when you're travelling. The right book can reflect the many emotions of travel and change. Reading On the Road while backpacking in England, I readily drank in the giddy sense of freedom. Reading A Portrait of a Lady in China, where I stood out as a single foreign female, I felt comforted.

Some books, I read in the wrong place at the wrong time. In busy Istanbul, The House of Spirits made me long for family. I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being when I was last in Korea, and the bleak and gritty scenery never synced with my bustling, neon-lit surroundings.

I'll be making my luggage-bound library soon, and I'd love some tips.

From my fellow travellers and fellow readers, what are the best books to bring overseas?

Listening to K-Pop, calling it "Educational": Language Learning From my Sofa II

2010-08-24T15:15:00.004-04:00

I'm moving onwards and upwards with the Korean self study.

I get my head around form, structure, and other mechanics with my Korean textbook.

I study my Korean-English dictionary on the Skytrain (which gets me a lot of smiles, oddly, except for the man who told me that I'm "part of the problem" - what?)

I use online tools to drill it all in, too, and I've found some great sites. Time to update my Korean self-study list.

Korean Class 101 is my hands-down favourite, despite the pestering daily emails urging me to upgrade my account. The site has hundreds of podcast lessons, where two teachers show you a simple dialogue, then walk you through the vocabulary and cultural elements. Each lesson has a pdf document where you can read along in Hangul and look the vocabulary.

The lessons are clear and simple, bordering on goofy (sample lesson title: "I like kimchi and I don't like you!"). Also, the chipper teachers, Keith and Sun, have a weird geeky flirtation going on. Maybe that's just me.

Korean-Flashcards.com emails me a daily sentence and a word of the day. It's rare that I understand the full sentence, but I can practice identifying its particles, pronouns and basic verbs. Also, I'm super-slow at reading Hangul script, so that in itself is great practice.

In terms of using online flashcards, I find that Byki.com is the best for practicing words and sentences. You can learn target vocabulary (clothes, basic opposites, etc) and then quiz yourself. It's a good source for those beginner sentences that one uses constantly, like "I am studying Korean" or "How do you say ____ in Korean?"

The internet is really pulling through with my language studies. At the end of the day, I always go back to the textbook as a reference. For me, it's crucial.

I know that a lot of language learners and teachers like to stay away from grammar. Maybe they're scared stiff of rote learning, maybe they've had one too many super-tedious grammar lessons. Personally, I would be inclined to agree if I was studying, say, German, whose grammatical structure is so similar to English, the syntax would be intuitive.

However, when studying a language that's so structurally foreign, like Korean, I can't move forward without some focused grammar study. Left alone, I'll just impose my natural subject-verb-object instincts upon the foreign language. That leaves everyone confused. A textbook that explains grammar and syntax is crucial for me. Every learner is different, but I think it's handy stuff.

Happy studies!