The possibility of a four month slump

or "Part 7 of approximately 48"

or "creative differences and konglish"
or "the inaccessibility of problems"
Some pictures, finally!
and a little Poem from Randall Crisp

This letter has been a long time coming, I have been super busy and super lazy and that is not a combination that results in meeting deadlines. So, many things have happened in the last two months but I am awful at remembering them well, here are some thoughts on some snippets that I do recall.


When I applied for the position as an English Teacher in Korea the question that came up the most was "What do you expect to be the hardest obstacle to over come while living in Korea?". The obvious answer was "The language barrier" and in some ways that is true. For instance, I have a new (and deep) respect for menu's with pictures. I think signs in multiple languages are better than good directions in one language. I think it's strange that I can count to ten in five languages when knowing how to say "left" and "right" is so much more important. On the other hand I am shocked at how far you can get in Korea with only three Korean words. One of the reasons you can get by fairly well in Korea with only English is that Koreans LOVE English. They are clearly spending a lot of money on importing the language to their country, but apart from that they also use English a lot in advertisements, pop culture and music. This morning on the bus I was subjected to ABBA's greatest hits. This brings me to one of my favourite things about Korea: Konglish. I'm sure you have heard about Xhinglish in SA, iPenut-butta and what not, well in Korea they have Konglish. Its the Korean attempt at English, and it is fun. Hangul (the Korean language) is spoken in two tones. formal tone, and informal tone. Since tone carries a lot of the meaning in Hangul lots of the wording can be indirect, almost like speaking in proverbs and idioms all the time. So often things that that get translated are just strange and inappropriate. For example, on the wall in the Lotteria (korean fast food hamburger place) there is a sign that says "When you touch me you will know what true happiness is" which I am guessing means something like, "pure joy in every sense" or something more appropriate that didn't translate well. Any way, my point is that it is every where. Kids walk into my class with t-shirts on that are really not what kids should be wearing. My friends saw a toddler walking behind her mom on the beach and her top said "Bitch please, I'm fabulous". One of my students came into class wearing a t-shirt with a black cat on the front. Underneath the cat is read, "Our pussy's, Our choice". A fifth grade boy had a top that read "I don't want to be here, You don't want to be here, (and on the back) let's go home together". Clearly their parents have as much English as they have. It's fun though :-) My favourite Konglish experience was from my co-teacher. We were working together during the grade three camp and the kids had to make a poster of their groups theme. After a heated discussion in Korean and a lot of moaning in one of the groups, my co-teacher went over there and gave them a second sheet of poster paper. I asked what had happened to the first sheet, she took out her phone and after a minute or so she turned to me and said, "They are having creative differences".  

So, every one has been asking me if I miss home, and I don't want to sound like a terrible person but no, I don't. I haven't really experienced home-sickness that much while I have been here. I've had some cases of Sinclair-sickness and some definite cases of boerewors-sickness but home I've been able to deal with. How ever among the foreigner community I have been hearing rumours of a four month slump. That's apparently how long it takes for your "honeymoon" period with Korea to come to an end and then you start regretting ever coming to this godforsaken country and you start really wishing your kids would stop saying "Nice to meet you" every day as if they didn't already meet you when you arrived. I have not yet hit the four month slump, and can you believe I am already five months in. Here's what I think made the difference. I am, by nature, a boring person. I like to read  books, and think about myself in the future, with robots, dragons or aliens and I don't really need to be entertained much more than that. So I spent the first couple of months just hanging around, being over whelmed and loving it. Now the real fun begins, I get to leave my safe little town and go see the rest of Korea, and this is an exciting prospect. I think everyone else sort of rushes in and does everything they can do in the very first couple of months, and then at month four they are tired and feel like they don't have much left. Remember Korea is a small country, you can explore it in a few months. I have set aside this year to focus on personal growth and debt management, maybe next year I will do the rushing around like a chicken with my head chopped off thing :-) Ai, I think my slump will come some time late next year, and then I will be chewing your ear off about how miserable I am.

I have been cooking at home now for a while, trying to get in some healthy and nutritious meals to support my weight loss programme. It has not proven easy, there are so many dishes to be cleaned after every meal, I feel like it would be okay if I were cooking for two, but it's just me, how can so many things get dirty. And I usually only start cooking when I come back from a workout, which is at about 7:30pm or 8:00pm. At which point I am starving. Here are some problems with cooking when you're really hungry: 
1) You make way too much food 
2) You burn your tongue trying to eat it straight out of the pot 
3) It's always delicious but you cant tell if it's your cooking skills or your hunger that makes you think that. 
Any advice would be appreciated. Healthy recipes with very little ingredients and things you think I will find in Korea can be emailed to me. I will try them and send you a picture of my completed meal. I do not have an oven though, I have gas stove and I love it. I am excited to cook with gas when I am back in SA. I hope it's not expensive. 

There is peace in my soul here in Korea, and for someone with a history of anxiety problems this is a very big deal. I was pondering why I have this lightness of spirit and this calmness here, and not back in SA and my answer is that I cannot access problems here. It may sound strange but all the problems that might be getting me down are in Korean and I can not speak Korean. When my mom came to visit she was going on about Julius Malema and I was thinking "pshhh... that man makes me stress no more". He's not all up in my grill like he used to be in SA. Also, I don't know what keeps my co-teacher up at night because her problems are in Korean. If my school was in financial difficulty, I would not know, because it would be in financial difficulty in Korean. Yes, sure I could try and find out what's happening here, google translate all the schools notices but... I really don't want to. These problems are around me abut they do not affect me because I have the choice to access them or not. Oh what bliss lies in only hearing Julius Malema jokes and never the awful things he actually says...I think I could apply this when I get back to SA though, I mean I would hear all the junk that you get bombarded with in SA, but I think I will learn to tune out what I don't want to hear, focus on what I need to hear to achieve my goals and continue to live as stress free as possible. 

Some sort of notice board at my school, I have no clue what it's about :-)

Another thing I know counts towards my being happy here is all the support I am getting. I have never been a hater myself, but I am glad I don't have any haters either (Haters:people who are not on board with my plans, people who do not want to see me succeed for any reason, probably because they are hating though!). Leaving behind people you love and making the best decisions for yourself is hard. Especially when the people you love have well trained puppy dog eyes, but I have only been hearing supportive comments since I got here. Korea still has a very sexist ideals, a lot of Korean women are marrying foreign men because they feel like foreigners allow them to be independent and don't only see them as home makers. Many Korean women struggle to get into high powered positions and my principal who is a woman has a very tough time in a profession that is male dominated. She has to be extra hard and unfortunately sometimes I suffer because of that. But when it was explained to me that because she is a women she has more to prove, I cut her some slack. Plus she paid me a massive compliment by asking me to work more hours at her school and less at my second school :-) Sinclair is not sexist, and since I grew up in house where my mom was the primary bread winner and my father was humble and lovely, I have never really been able to grasp the concept of having more to prove because I have the potential for massive boobs and the ability to squirt kids out of my womb. Sexism really makes no sense. Anyway, I was saying.. support. Thank you aunty Sherry and aunty Julita for helping my mom buy some stuff to bring over for me. Thanks Emmo for sending me baked beans :-) Thanks Aunty Patricia for the most wonderful pamper hamper; that face cream is heaven in a tube. And thanks every one who takes the time out of their day to send me an email or comment on my face book pictures. I am happy to say that I don't know how it feels to have the ones you care about not want what is best for you. 

Randall wrote me this poem, I don't know why but I will share it with you. He's one of my readers, I'd call him a correspondent but he owes me an email from since forever! 

her name was Bashti

she was a Teacher

  with bietjie sand in her hair

  and her sandals lamin in the rain somewhere

she taught in english

  and sometimes dyslexic too

  but we dont judge her korean

  cos it sounds... uhm... damn

I hope you are  well and that you didn't miss me too much in my email absence. Remember, it's important to only miss me a little each day, other wise you'll get burn out and just give up on the whole missing thing all together. That would break my heart, it's nice to be missed every once and a while.

I hope you're well and that you're happy

Brace yourselves for summer as I brace myself for my first snow ever

Love you

BYE!

Bashti Teacher