A Christmas without sunscreen

I'm adding Christmas to the long list of things that snuck up on me this year, the list includes small innocuous things like the 4kg that returned to my belly over the last couple of months, also the months September, October, November and December. Then more important stuff like my ability to travel across an unknown country by myself fearlessly and the employment of time management skills I vehemently refused to learn all through high school! Is this what living is?


It's -8 in Buyeo today and my body felt like lead as I tried to drag it out of bed on Friday morning for the last day of school. I am off to Pohang this weekend for Christmas and to spend time with family, since that is what Christmas is about. It doesn't feel anything like Christmas this side, I am not sure if all those years of hearing "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" ever made me actually want this. There won't be snow in Pohang so that might make it better? worse? I don't know.

I'm awfully homesick and jealous of you all. I hope you all have a blessed Christmas with your families, the sun and the mountain. I hope you eat a lot but don't forget to leave space for dessert. Don't fall asleep in midnight mass and sleep lekker long after lunch. May the Love of the Lord Jesus Christ keep you safe and happy, and if you're not into that sort of thing I still hope you are safe and happy.


Love from Pohang
Vasti

The song of ice and fire

or "11 of approximately 48"
or "Winter has arrived"
or "Let's stay warm, but not too warm"

SNOW! I saw my first snow on the 9th of December 2011. I took a picture, I touched it and I even tasted it! I have lived, and now I can go peacefully into the void. I joke; it was great but not that great. I must say, I think I hyped it up a little. Mostly it was cold. The most exciting part of seeing snow was not the pictures, it was walking out of my apartment rushing to catch the bus and having my breath stop in my chest and my body stop all together so that I could watch little white flakes fall from the sky onto my clothes. It’s nice because it’s new. It was like I got to discover something after I had not discovered things for a while. I think this is part of the value of travelling. Seeing new things, pushing your brain out in new directions, making space for things you previously had not had space for. As someone who spends a large part of her life in her head, I was used to only stretching my brain with new ideas and new challenges. The soft caress of stretching your brain with new natural scenery is gentle and powerful and wonderful. It's a light refreshing yoga session for your brain as opposed to the weight lifting you do at university or the cardio you do keeping up with the news and peoples personal dramas. I just kept my eyes open and absorbed as much as I could all the way to work. When I got to work the cheer of kids mucking about in snow kept my heart light and made me smile through the cold. So even though I don't have eyelashes to speak of, I will still try to catch some snowflakes on my face and send you pictures that will hopefully show how my soul feels.

FIRE! On the 12th of December there was a fire in my apartment building. It took place in an apartment below mine, either on the third floor or the second floor, I'm not sure which. It took place in the late evening, here's how it went down. I take a nap and wake up to the smell of smoke, I think, 'not my smoke problem, I didn't cook, I didn't use a heater, I don't smoke so I'm fine'. However none of my windows are open so where could the smell be coming from... I investigate. Once I step out of my bed room the smell of smoke is even stronger and it becomes clear that the 'not my problem' approach is not going to be helpful. I search my apartment for a fire that I know is not there (just in case) and minutes after I complete my search my upstairs neighbour rings my bell and starts asking me things in Korean. The only words I understand are 'restroom' and 'where' so I direct him to my bathroom and try to tell him that the fire is not in my apartment. I think he gets it, turns out he is also getting smoked upstairs, assumed the fire was one floor down and politely came to ask me to put it out. Once he finds out it’s not my fire he calls the fire department. This whole time I am in my apartment, doing a quick clean so that I am not completely embarrassed when the fire department shows up. Ten minutes later, voilà...firemen, in those universal firemen uniforms but with writing I don't understand. Curse my poor Korean. The fire men walk up the stairs past my apartment to the source of the call and my neighbour sends them down to me, apparently he was unconvinced by my insistence that it was not my fire. The firemen gather at the door to my apartment and then politely ask me if they can walk on my floor with their boots. I do not take kindly to this (it's cute but something's burning, someone might be dying, this is not the time for niceties), but I am polite and after a quick inspection and some frantic hand gesturing on my part they realise I am not the cause of the smoke. At this point my eyes are stinging from the smoke in my apartment. The fire men move downstairs and I try to do something helpful, I can’t think of anything and the smoke is making me cough so I open the windows and doors and flee. I go down the stairs and out of the building where I meet an assortment of neighbours in pyjamas standing and chatting in Korean while the fire fire-fighters walk up and down the stairs carrying fire extinguishers. I still don't know if the fire was on the second floor or the third. I start to panic, what if I can't sleep here tonight, where do I go? What if the fire is blamed on me and my school expels me. I think of people in Korea I could call, everyone seems too far away or too unfamiliar to call up in the middle of the night with nothing more than panic and speculation. I call my mother. She says "Oh my word girlie" and "Shame man" and "sjoe, are you ok?". She says it in a familiar and comforting way while I try not to sound panicked and let off steam about how these things will happen to no one but me. She asks questions I can’t answer but it's nice to have someone to talk to and I appreciate that she doesn't panic with me, that would have been a disaster. 

Anyhoo, eventually the fire department leaves and my building is still standing, no one told me anything so I assume it's safe to go back inside. My apartment is still smoke ridden and I can barely breath. My clothes smell like smoke, my hair smells like smoke, my bed smells like smoke and I am frozen to the core and feeling utterly miserable.  I left the doors and windows open and climbed into bed, put my electric blanket on high and proclaimed my misery to the facebook universe. Immediately I get comments of support and suggestions for what I can do and I start to relax. I take a midnight shower which gets the smoke out of my hair but wakes me up like never before, I close my room door to the smoke in the main area of my apartment and climb into bed to chat with Sinclair and Ashika till I can't keep my eyes open anymore. I fall asleep at about 5:30am and text my co-teacher when my alarm goes off half an hour later... I will not be making it to school today :-(

My apartment is back to normal, I got the smoke out of everything. It has snowed twice since the first time and I don't hate snow (I need snow boots though). I'm okay, the year is winding down and I would be lying if I said I don't miss my varsity style vacations. A pox on all of you who make your facebook posts about beaching, braaiing and good weather! Not a very serious pox. 

Good night and good love!

Vasti

Double digits baby

Or "Part 10 of approximately 42"

or "Where's Vasti?"

It's getting colder in Korea, in fact it is getting cold quickly. Last week I was complaining a little about how the weather was changing but I am wearing my hard core winter coat to school every day now. Last week I was able to take it off when I got to school but these days I keep it on all day long. I need a more hard core scarf. As most of you know, I am a summer baby. I was born in February, the hottest month of the South African year. I like warm. Sinclair says the month you are born in doesn't affect how you handle temperature later in your life but he was born in winter, sweats buckets in summer and has an internal heater that never switches off so I don't even believe him (why would he say something like that anyway...). I don't think I am made for the cold at all and what's worse is that I have been losing weight since I got here and all of a sudden this seems like a very un-thought-through plan, I’m losing my insulation...

I wrote the last paragraph ages ago, back when I was on top of things and deadlines still meant something.

I keep living, which seriously gets in the way of my writing. Because of this I only get to think of all the cool things I want to tell you guys but never actually tell them to you because that would involve me using my free time productively and not just spending it recovering from the fun I am having. Also, there was a bit of a slump at some point, it all seems very blurry to me, lots of episodes of Law and Order SVU and not much being an active member of Korean Society. I have gained back more than half of the weight I lost and I would call that falling off the weight-loss wagon but there are rumours that no such wagon exists and that I made it up. 

So I have been Busy, but what have I been Busy doing? Lord knows, time flies so fast here... just last month I was flabbergasted at it being November and can you believe it...December! Who keeps doing this? Who is the bra (South African slang for person, often boy person, not to be confused with brassiere) that sneaks into my world and changes the calendar dates when I’m not looking... and why is he adding the days to poor Sinclair's calendar? Apparently on that side it feels like I've been gone many, many years (or that's what I gather from all the love msgs). Let’s investigate this mystery of the missing time by taking a look at my usual schedule.

Mondays: 

Wake up at 6:00 (not really but let’s go with it)

Turn on the water

Do a short workout

Pack a lunch, eat breakfast (I have special K but I wish it was oats*)

Take a shower, wash the dishes. 

Lament the cold weather, check facebook, emails, smurf village crops (which I have forgotten to do today so they will wither before I get home).

Get dressed and leave for school at 8:00

Get to school at 8:45

Classes till lunch and then lunch at 12:10 (lunch is delicious, always, I love Korean food, I eat too fast and get tired after lunch) then classes again till 2:40 (you're probably waking up now, it's 7:40am SA time)

Back on Facebook watch other people complain about how awful Mondays are. I don't feel it. It's Tuesdays that are awful!

Prepare for Tuesdays, although you can never prepare enough, Tuesdays have classes with grade ones and then an after-school class of screaming banshees (the worst of the grade ones and two together in one class for forty gruelling minutes) But back to Mondays.

Just after three ya'll arrive at work and I start chatting to Ashika, Randall sometimes my mum, sometimes Aunty Emmy. Lately Ferron has also been alive in the mornings, so we can also get our chat on. Sinclair goes to work late so he comes on about 30minutes before I leave for home. Ok, so one hour of distracted work/distracted chatting/facebooking. Now it’s 4:30 and I have to pack up, my bus leaves at 4:50 so I leave school at about 4:45.

Get home at 5:35 - Lament the cold.

Drop my bags, pee (I don't know why but I always have to pee when I get home. No matter how much I peed at school...one of life’s weird little stuff I suspose.)

5:45 -Make a rushed dinner, usually just veggies and 두부 (Korean tofu) cause it's quick an easy. Eat a quick dinner and pack my Korean studies bag: pencil case, text book note book, cup for tea or coffee (they only have paper cups and I feel it’s wasteful) put off all the lights and then

6:20 off to Korean classes for two hours of intensive Korean study and exhausting gossip with the other foreign teachers. We like to complain about the Chungman Education Department, I do it because it makes me feel a little more like a grown up, but I’m sure some of them have legitimate grievances. I only have that one about them not telling me about orientation in time so I had to miss time with my mum.

Korean Classes ends at 8:30, I walk home for about 25 minutes and then get home just before 9:00 at which point I am exhausted. Like bleeding eyeballs exhausted and I pretend to do stuff, mostly sit and stare into the distance and make lists in my head of stuff I should be doing before I fall into bed for sleepy time. 

Tuesday:

Didn't get enough sleep, don't feel like working out. So get up 6:45

Facebook and check mail from bed (god bless ipads), get up, Lament the cold, make breakfast (still not Oats), eat slowly and berate myself for skipping my workout, promise to make it up to me. Everything pretty much runs like Monday mornings.

Get to school and have fun with my older grades, make sure the younger grades know that I am not here for fun, I am here to get English into their heads by any means necessary; THIS IS ENGLISH CLASS! (said as if English Class and Sparta have something in common). I have the grade ones today, last semester I sang “head, shoulders, knees and toes” with them every day. When I got back to school this semester and I tested them, I found out just how hard it is to teach without speaking the same language. I tested them on “head, shoulders knees and toes” and found out that they didn’t understand the function of “and” in the song, so they had just learnt four basic body parts: “head”, “shoulders”, “knees-anne” and “toes”. Adorable but frustrating. The last class of the day is even more traumatic, it’s the mix of grade ones and twos. They can listen, repeat and even do worksheets but they cannot follow instruction. If they learn nothing else from me this year, I take solace in the fact that they all know what “SIT DOWN!” means. They don’t get very noisy though, if they did I’d make them get down on their kness-anne for two minutes with their hands on their heads. I have found though that if you ask kids to close their eyes they also stop talking... weird but useful. Today class ends at 3:30 and I am exhausted and worried about being lame in chats but I do it anyway, also my co-teacher usually pesters me on Tuesdays about signing registers and drawing up weekly summaries. The day goes fast and I have to run for my bus. I sometimes make it, sometimes don't make it. Missed it yesterday. Get home at 5:35 and chuck my bags on the floor! Tired, but skipped my workout so I have to sneak it in before Korean classes. Put the water on, put some food on the stove and jump into a workout. Push hard, work hard, Life's hard, get tired. Take the food off the stove, jump in the shower while it cools WORLDS FASTEST SHOWER.

After the shower, I gobble up all the lovely rushed food that I made and I run out the door for Korean classes. I get to Korean classes still a little hungry and gobble up the delicious snacks they have to offer (Korean snacks should get an email to itself, remind me of this when I say I have nothing to write about). I drink coffee all the way through the lesson and still feel pretty tired when I get back home. At nine I get into my house, think about doing the dishes but that would involve me putting the water on again and waiting for it to get warm, there's no way. I change and crawl into bed, early rise in the morning.

Wednesday:

Wake up at 6:00 for a Skype date with Sinclair, This usually puts me in good mood for Wednesdays, even though sometimes I am so tired that I cancel them. We usually only Skype for one hour because at 7am my time it's midnight in SA and he has work in the morning. Then I either turn around and nap for a bit, or I get up and start packing a bag and some snacks, getting showers and breakfast done, dressing and general prettifying.  

Sinclair: bored, tired and unaware that I take
pictures of him while we Skype.

Wednesday is an easy day at school, I have four classes in the morning and then I am free just after lunch. After lunch I clean my classroom cause it gets pretty filthy, the kids only ever tidy. I repack all my resources, the kids mess that up in the week too, one lesson with crayons and I know I will be scrubbing my desks on a Wednesday. Then I lay out the work I need to do for Friday, which is another long day. I usually spend part of Wednesday in the staff room making photocopies, talking to teachers and showing face, sometimes just reading on the couches, there is a sweet spot that always gets sun, then it's back upstairs for chats and work on personal things like budgets, emails, life planning, over thinking my morning talk with Sinclair and more chats till home time. At this point I’m super tired. I trudge down to the bus stop with a miserable look on my face and sleep on the bus on the way home. Panic about missing my stop every time, make my stop every time and hit my apartment at 5:45 I’m not sure what happens to my bags. Too tired to think, too tired to work out, I’m lucky if I eat supper, usually just drink whatever liquids are in my house and eat whatever does not need cooking. Lay about my apartment for a few minutes until I have to go down to Korean classes. Korean class I a haze... I participate but remember very little. People’s faces are blurry and the way they keep looking at me like I’m strange gets on my nerves <-- OK I’m exaggerating a bit here :-). But you get the gist, I’m tired. I walk home... get there at about 9:10 and SLEEP. The night takes me and I awake on Thursday morning with something akin to a hangover.

Thursdays:

Thursdays are at Guam, my second school these days are filled with stress but not of the teaching kind. I have a draak of a co-teacher here(and not in the dragons-are-awesome kind of way). She doesn't let me teach the kids at all, she feels competent in English and so she isn't really behind the native speaker programme, nor is she behind the teach English in English programme, so I sit in her class for hours on end and listen to her shout at the kids in Korean and when I try to speak to her about it she bursts into tears and says "I'm not bad person, I"m not bad teacher". Ai, with some people you never win...but on the upside she doesn't expect me to prepare lessons or even participate so I get to zone out and find peace in my mind. I can't do my own work, and I have to sit in on her class, both our contracts require that we teach with each other in the class, but it's peaceful and I spend most of my Thursday's at Guam working on the newsletter that I send to you... yes this one, Yes I am at Guam as I write this. Guam is also the school with a gym so... workouts before I even get home! I pack in some workout clothes and do my workout at three in the school gym. Guam is not only closer to Buyeo than Hongsan is but they also let me leave earlier during the cold months so I get home at 5 :-) woohoo! And no Korean class... Woohoo! But I can’t sleep or i'll throw out my pattern so I try to do productive stuff. I will make food slowly, eat slowly. Clean Wednesdays mess, shower in a normal amount of time. Sometimes go out for a long dinner with Ernest, talk about how long days are and how quickly time flies... too relaxed and relieved to lament the cold. Get to bed early and sleep....

Fridays:

Wake up feeling ready for the day.

Wake up at 6:00 

Turn on the water

Do a short workout

Pack a lunch, eat breakfast

Take a shower, wash the dishes. 

Lament the cold weather, check facebook, emails, smurf village crops

Get dressed and leave for school at 8:00

Get to school at 9:00

Long day at school again today, but I can handle it... or at least I think I can till the after lunch slump hits and I’m over everything. Then I still have to teach two grade four classes and the dreaded Kindergarteners (cue scary drum music)! 

The Kinergarteners are balls of energy. They storm into my class on a Friday at the end of a long day which is at the end of a long week and they cannot understand English and they cannot sit still and they don't understand that I’m tired and they have all the emotions of fully grown people but with none of the self control. They are exhausting! If I give kid A a thumbs up but I don't give kid B one then kid B starts crying... and I don't know why he's crying because he can't speak English and I can't understand Korean well enough yet. And then the other kids start shouting at me about making B cry and the whole class turns against me and their eyes turn black and their mouths open wider than humanly possible and their wails fill my ears and the classroom and the world and over the din I shout IT'S JUST THE ALPHABET GUYS! IT'S NOT THAT HARD!

When they leave at 3:30 they take all my energy with them. I lay slumped and exhausted in my teachers chair like a rag doll that has had its stuffing taken out...And I think about what excuse I’m going to make to my fellow Buyeonese for not boozing with them tonight. Breathe slowly and slowly prepare myself for Sinclair’s last minute realisation that he can't skype with me this weekend. One of his many family members are having a birthday, he's cuddling with his male friends (they call it braaiing but it my head they're having sleepover style pillow fights and play wrestling with each other, most of them are pretty cuddly), he's going to play golf and then drink a bottle of whiskey, I don't know what it is but something always comes up :-) Sometimes the things that come up are on my side. I celebrate all Korean holidays and festivals and whatnot, so if stuff is happening here, I’m in it to win it. In fact I’m especially in it if there is something to win. And that brings me to the weekend...wait let me finish off Fridays. 

So I get home, the bus trip is a long and tiring hazy dream blur and the walk up to my apartment is ten degrees steeper than it was on Monday and the apartment itself is further up the hill, I don’t know how they do this but Korean technology never ceases to amaze. I put my bags down and flop down onto my bed with an unrealistic idea of how much time I have ahead of me. The weekend feels like days and days of rest but rarely is this the truth. Weekends, much like Korean women's skirts, are extremely appealing from a distance and always shorter than you expect them to be. Friday evening runs into Friday night... I do sweet blissful nothings, unless I get called out for boozing. Even if I don't get called out for boozing I know I’m going to get drunk dialled and guilted about sleeping Friday nights in, I am not the oldest Buyeoan, so I have no excuse, as I am often reminded. I’m trying to hide from them that I’m actually a really boring person so that I still get invited to do fun stuff that involves delicious food, if that ever comes around. What’s that blissful feeling of warmth and cushy pillows? Is it sleep? Yes, it is... come to me my love.

Coffee in cute places

Weekends: Each weekend has its own thing. For the past two weekends I have been hosting people at my flat. Last weekend it was Maryam and Natalie, two girls from another town in my province. The weekend before that it was Petra and two of her friends from Pohang (which means I have not had a weekend Skype with Sinclair in over two weeks). Sometimes I go out with friends to neighbouring provinces but this is expensive for someone who is trying to save as much as I’m trying to save. They always end up shopping for clothes which I find a little boring to be honest...clothes smothes, nothing fits me. I miss Mr Price. I'd much rather go stationery shopping and the other girls find that boring and my enthusiasm for pens a little creepy. What’s weird though is that I would be down for super girly stuff like movies and manicures and massages but they don't seem into that either... just shopping and eating in pretty places.  We have pretty places in Cape Town and I can read the menus :-) I digress... ok, so weekends have no structure really but what I do insist on is getting home before two on a Sunday. And if you visit me, I'd like for you to bugger off before 2pm as well. Then I get to work. I do try to keep things tidy in the week but on Sundays I clean. I clean house then I clean body and nails and hair, clean out my bags and my cupboards and put washing in the machine and do sleep prep. Got to be peaceful on a Sunday night. Sometimes I Skype with Emlind while I do my hair. 

Me at one of the entrances to Gyeongbukung Palace

Other activities that go down on weekends are things like:

Going to the Seoul for shopping/partying/exploring/banking.

Going to the Seoul National museum

Going to Gyeonbukung (Gyeongbuk palace)

Me at the SA restaurant in Itaewon

Going to Itaewon (A refuge for foreigners of every sort, there used to be an American army base here and thus a lot of Americans and then stores that catered to Americans and then as more and more English was introduced people from other countries would spend weekend in Itaewon. Eventually they built stores that catered to their nationalities and now it is like a foreigner owned place in Seoul. There are international markets there and there are popular foreign food restaurants. There is a place called Braai Republic which is a South African restaurant but doesn't sell any South African beer and has a massive Zebra skin up on the wall and feels fake. Honestly, I would have preferred a Nando's. At least when the craving hits I can go get some potjiekos, even though they import their meat from the US and Australia. The highlight of going there was sprinkbokkies! This is a ridiculously long bracket, I didn't mean to do it, sorry)

Saffas in korea

Going to Pohang: Pohang is Petra's city. I've been there three times, four maybe but it's massive. So I will end up going there many more times. Buyeo is much smaller and you can see all the touristy things Buyeo has to offer in about two wekends. Petra's city has a cinema! And a beach! And KFC and McDonald's and all sorts of western things. Most importantly, it has free accommodation at casa da Petra.

Not all my weekends are action packed, sometimes I like to stay home all weekend. In fact I’ve been dying to do a Lord of the Rings festival and the colder weather will not only keep me indoors but also help me sympathise with the fellowship wrt their decision to get out of the snow storm and brave The Mines of Moria. I’ll see if I can throw together some butternut soup and make day of it J more fun times in Buyeo.

Casa de Petra

So that’s my week. Whodathunk it would take me four weeks to write it down? I have noticed that I may seem a little crazy, a little bit like I am doing too much and wearing myself out and just taking on a lot. So I want to add something that explains a little, I'm being sincere and I think it's important for me to say this. I love being here! I love being tired and then having energy and then running out of it. I love being angry at myself and hating workouts and missing home. I love every moment of the difficult co-teacher and the wailing kids and the fact that I haven't had a peanut butter and jam sandwich in months. I love long walks in foreign places and the fact that the police don't carry weapons and I particularly love feeling like a human being. You see the thing is, for a while around 2007-2009 I didn't feel like a human being. I didn't have proper feelings of exhaustion and rage. I didn't really feel much, and if I were not so well rehearsed in loving people I would have probably stopped loving all of you and you would not have been able to keep me from the black abyss that was clawing at my soul (a Jesus also comes in handy here). Depression like many illnesses and disabilities makes you feel separated from the healthy world, a world that healthy people take for granted and a world where it is easier to find peace in your spirit. The benefits of sound mental health are not discussed enough and the small, crippling consequences of poor mental health are not easily translated. Not being able to gather the strength to berate myself for skipping a workout is worse than anything I could say to myself after skipping a workout. Not being able to care about my own well being is a gabazzillion percent worse than just choosing not to care. These things sound weird, strange, and awful if you're reading them properly...but they are part of me. So while I will lap up any sympathy you send my way, don't for a moment think I am unhappy. When I say that life is hard I mean it and I would not want it any other way. 

Wishing you good mental health and a wonderful festive season (if those two are not mutually exclusive)

Your friend/niece/cousin/daughter/sister/mentor/girlfriend/student/servant

Always

Bashti Teacher