I’VE ALWAYS DEPENDED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

Not all people are the same and stereotypes are bad. I know logically you can’t and shouldn’t paint an entire people with the same brush, but for ease of explanation we sometimes do. There are many kinds that make up a world but I’m going to make a general statement that pretty well covers how I feel about the Korean people even if it isn’t true for all of them. I love Koreans. They are the kindest people I’ve ever met.

Those who’ve know me a long time know that I don’t say things like that. I can’t really say I’ve ever come out and made a general statement like, “I like people”, or “People are good and kind”. But some things happen to me that make me put on my rose-colored glasses and I like the fit of them. I like the positive energy that I’m infused with through my contacts with Koreans. Maybe people have these experiences in North America but I wouldn’t know. I only know what happens to me in Korea.

I went to Seoul today. I waited almost a half hour for a bus and I hate waiting for a bus. I had a brief fight with a woman on the bus. She was a little older than me and was with an old man who had the seat in front of mine. I got up and offered her my seat. She said no. I said please and pointed to my seat. We did this 3 times I think when she finally took my seat. Both her and the man gave me a big thank you and a big smile. It’s nice to be an ambassador of good deeds representing the foreign community here in Korea. Another half hour on the bus to Ilsan and then an hour on the subway to Seoul. I met Robert and we hung out for a few hours. I wanted to go to Seoul to check out some textbooks for my students because I don’t like the ones the school board uses. The exercises in them are explained in Korean so I’m not sure what they say. It’s an ENGLISH class. I bought some books and their accompanying teacher’s guides which should help me teach since I really have no clue how to teach. (That’s a tough thing to admit when your job is being a teacher). I figure I can learn from the teacher’s guides. The school has said they will reimburse me for my purchases. The school only wants me to buy 1 textbook and then they will copy it for the students. It’s kind of funny that the school will break copyright laws.

I visited Starbucks twice while in Seoul, had Italian ice cream, had dinner again at Platters which is a 50’s style diner, and walked around a bit. All in all it was a very pleasant time. And as usual I enjoy spending time with Robert. We never seem to be at a loss for words. He also gave me a few pointers on teaching which won’t hurt me to follow.

While at Platters one of the ancient mysteries of Korea was solved. I’ve always wondered why I see so many print advertisements and posters that are 99% in Korean but seem to have one or two words in English. It makes no sense to me. This is Korea. People speak Korean. People read Korean. Why have English. As we were paying the bill there was a flyer by the cash register for a Korean musical. I took a look at it and it was all in Korean except for two paragraph headings. One said, “Synopsis”, and the other said, “Cast and Characters”. Everything else was Korean. Bizarre. I commented on it to Robert like I always do and he suggested I ask the person who was cashing us out. She speaks English quite well so I asked her. She and another Korean man who works there explained to me that there are words in English that do not translate into Korean and there is no Korean counterpart for them. I know they use English words for some things like “terminal” and “canoe”. It seems that there is no Korean word for “synopsis”, “cast”, or “characters”. I find that strange and they are not new inventions like the television or computer for which the same words are used in Korea. They also said Koreans like English (even if they can’t read it). So, this mystery of the English words is finally laid to rest.

I took the subway back to Ilsan. In Ilsan I had to take a bus. I have taken the bus from Ilsan to Paju once, and it was bus #8. I had a list of bus numbers that supposedly I can catch from outside my apartment to Ilsan so I assumed they travel from Ilsan to my apartment. One of them was bus #200. I showed the bus driver my address so he could say whether this bus went to my home. He wasn’t sure and he asked the people on the bus. They told him it did.

One of the people on the bus asked me where I lived when the bus driver was asking everyone. She was a young woman from Greece who lives in Paju and works at the English village. (I’ll explain the English village later). I spent the bus ride chatting with her. It seems that she’s in Korea because her boyfriend was transferred here for a year. He works about 5 hours away so they live in different cities. She doesn’t live in the same city as him because she can’t find a job. Jobs for foreigners from non-English speaking countries are not plentiful. She can’t be an English teacher because she doesn’t come from an English speaking country even though she’s fluent in English and has a master’s degree. So she’s working at a pub in the English village.

We had a very nice chat and the bus ride just zipped by. The driver notified me that I should get off the bus because this was the place I wanted. I was skeptical while looking out the window but I figured he knew what he was talking about. I got off the bus, looked around, and realized I didn’t have a clue where I was.

It’s 11PM and it’s dark and the streets are relatively quiet and I’m lost. I looked lost. Then a Korean young woman who had also got off the bus asks me in perfect English what I’m looking for. I tell her but she doesn’t really know where it is as she’s new to Paju. I’m turning in circles trying to get my bearings and she says she’ll call her brother who has a motorbike and ask him to come and drive me around to find my apartment. I had told her that my previous time I took bus #8 so she said her brother would drive the bus #8 route. Her brother came and I went on his motorbike. We found my apartment. I can’t explain or emphasize enough just how kind this is. I spent about 20 minutes standing on the corner with the woman because she couldn’t contact her brother. She didn’t leave me to my own devices. We passed the time by talking and it seems she has a boyfriend (it was my night for meeting young women with boyfriends) who’s from Canada. To be exact, from Nova Scotia.

Do people really do things like this in the real world? This isn’t the first time a total stranger has gone out of their way to help me. It happened to me my first day in Korea. I can’t really explain how good things like this make me feel. It is absolutely wonderful to experience these kindnesses. I think (and I hope) that they rub off on me in a small way to make me a better person.

While I was talking to this woman a car drove by and I hear my name being screamed. There is this kid’s head sticking out of the window yelling my name. I figure he’s a student at the school. Already I’m a known face on the street.

Yesterday (Saturday), I went into school at 8:30 as I was told I had to. I showed the head administrator or the “money guy” as I refer to him, my contract and where it says I don’t work weekends. He said “sorry” and I told him I’d see him at 3 when he was coming to pick me up to take me to visit his home.

I went upstairs to show the vice-principal my contract so he would know I just wasn’t skipping out but that it was part of my working conditions. He didn’t say sorry but understood that I didn’t have to be there. When I was at his desk I did discover something he does beside sit there. He watches Major League Baseball on the Internet. Busted! I asked him if he liked baseball which is a really stupid question considering he was watching it. He said yes and that was it. I hoped it could be an opening for a brief and friendly conversation. Oh well.

I bicycled back home and cleaned my apartment. It wasn’t messy but cleaning is no fun. I met the money guy downstairs at 3PM and we drove to his home. On the drive he asked me what kind of food I liked and I told him beef, pasta, pizza, chicken and things like that. His English is limited but we were communicating. He told me we were going out to eat at Marche. For those that don’t know it’s a restaurant in many countries in the world where they have different stations set up where you go and pick your food and they cook it for you. There’s a meat area, a seafood area, a pasta area, and so on. But first we went to his house.

I met his wife and his two children. His son is 5 and his daughter is 1. (That’s in North American years). They were a little shy around me, especially his daughter. We had coffee and they we went to Ilsan to eat. He knows I don’t like Korean food so he picked a non-Korean restaurant because of it. Kind, kind, kind. These people are kind. His wife speaks English a little better than he does but we all seemed to communicate quite nicely. It was great to be out with his family and after a while his son warmed up to me. He would take my hand when walking and I liked that. I chattered away at him in English even though he doesn’t understand. It won’t hurt to expose him to the language.

After dinner we went to the Paju English Village. This is an large area where the province built a replica of a village in England. It has a police station, a city hall, a train, many restaurants, and other things. The place was full of people looking at it. It looked like no English village I’d ever seen as everything was brand, spanking new and spotless. The purpose of this area is to have an “English experience” without leaving Korea. Children are to go there to camp and to learn in an English environment. Only English should be spoken there. Apparently they’ve hired “teachers’ to play parts in the village such as the policeman, the doctor, the post office worker, and so on. It must have cost millions to build and there are to be a few of them in the province I live in. It’s quite an ambitious project and I have no idea if it will work. It’s only been open a couple of months so we’ll have to see. It was just so strange to see this “English village” and all these Korean people walking around and taking pictures just like they were tourists.

During our visit there the daughter warmed up to me. We stopped for ice cream and she was letting me feed her some of mine. She held my hand when walking so I became friends with the whole family. The wife said I should come over and visit any time. I had a wonderful time with them and was very thankful and appreciative. When he drove me home he thanked me. It must be the Korean way. I said, “No. Thank you”. I have 3 people to buy nice gifts for when in Texas. The money guy and his family. The English teacher who has been most helpful, and Yoon-soo who is my friend. Make that four people. I will get something for the man who drove me to the airport and picked me up. I hope I can find something nice and typically Texan at the same time. I’m looking forward to giving them gifts as they’ve been so kind to me.

I watched my first DVD on my DVD player last night. I watched “The History Of Violence” and it wasn’t too bad. However, when buying illegal copies you sometimes have problems. During the last half hour of the film, the movie kept getting “stuck”. It took me an hour to watch the last half hour and caused me to not enjoy the movie as much as I would have. I was quite engrossed during the first hour.

So that was my weekend and a quite excellent one at that full of positive and enjoyable experiences. I did have one “strange” thing happen. A student called me Saturday afternoon. I think it’s the student who lived in Australia for 3 years. He asked me if anyone was visiting my home at the moment. I said no. He said that him and his friends would like to visit my home and speak English, or maybe I could visit his home. I told him that we would talk on Monday. I was quite floored and I’m somewhat undecided on how to proceed. It’s illegal to tutor here because the first foreign English teachers pretty much “raped” the Korean people by charging exorbitant prices for English lessons. The government cracked down and outlawed any teaching outside of your contract. I don’t know if they want me to tutor but I can’t. I did it in Gwangyang but that was through Kelly and they weren’t students at the academy. I can’t morally justify charging children I teach for tutoring. It doesn’t seem right. I probably wouldn’t mind meeting with them as a social outing and perhaps a way to meet some parents and get into more Korean homes. However, I wouldn’t want this to snowball to where I keep getting called to spend my free time with students. When the subject comes up tomorrow I’ll tell the student that we’ll talk about it when I get back from Texas. That will buy me some time to decide what to do.

I wondered how he got my phone number. I told the story to the money guy when he picked me up, and then it hit me. I asked the money guy if he gave my phone number out and he said yes. I thought it was strange that he would give it to a student without asking me, but perhaps that’s the Korean way. I didn’t say he shouldn’t of or anything like that.

It’s 1:30AM and I have an 8AM class. Oh boy, another opportunity to ride my bicycle. But first I am making up a sheet of questions that I’ll give the students to get an idea of their English knowledge, their general knowledge, and their interests. It was Robert’s idea to give them questions to learn a bit about them and I expanded it and am throwing in some knowledge questions like, “who is the prime minister of Japan” and “who were the Beatles”. It’s not a test but a tool for me to learn something. I’ll use the same questions in all my classes and I’m curious to see the answers.

A really good week and weekend. I expect this week to be no different but next weekend will sure be because I’ll be in Texas. Weird.