Coffee Helps

“Uh, yes, so…” begins my director, “we’ll have a meeting tomorrow to confirm everything, but you’ll be teaching 6 extra classes, working an extra hour each day, and designing the programme for the new first graders. Also, you are now the only teacher of your 5th grade class, so you’ll have to call their parents regularly and keep them up to date with progress or problems. You’ll need to set homework every few days for all your elementary students, and mark it in time for your next class with them. Oh, and your kindergarten classroom is the one on the second floor, please set up levels 4, 6, and 9. Level 9 has not arrived yet, it will come on Friday, so you will have to learn all the material at the weekend so you can teach it on Monday. Please give me a list of the materials you need for all art classes in March, and email me the worksheets you will use for your weekly beginner class. And (brief pause and glance around) you must clean this room as well. But not now, because the parents of your new students are coming in to pick up uniforms and you need to come and meet them.”

I look up icily at her from my desk, over my first coffee of the day, trying not to state the obvious (1- that I am clearly in the middle of the 2-day process of cleaning the classroom, hence the empty shelves and the contents in various piles all over the place, and 2- that I very obviously did not receive a substantial enough pay rise this year). “Fine,” I reply brightly. “OH!” she says, staring down intently at my head. She peers more closely at me. “Oh, so many white hairs!” she tells me in a shocked voice. “I never really looked up close before.”

“Let’s go meet the parents,” I suggest before I shake her till her teeth rattle for having the audacity to point out that I’m going grey after heaping enough pressure on me to finish off the greying process by the end of next week. We go downstairs.

“Have you seen Hayley’s head?” asks Jennifer cheerfully, as we encounter my colleagues lingering in the entrance hall. “So many white hairs! Look!” I am powerless to do anything as I am surrounded by ooh-ing colleagues who then proceed to pluck the grey hairs from my head as I stand there meekly with my head bowed, like a sheep being shorn. There are now so many grey hairs that I fear they may be in danger of leaving a bald spot, but they assure me that the grey is evenly distributed across my entire head, which is always comforting to know. “Beauty is painful,” says Sarky Teacher sternly when I emit a feeble “Ow!”.

I will be glad when the kids come back to school…

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Say what you want about the trials and frustrations of working in a foreign culture, but it has done something very important and useful for me. It has made me almost blasé about sudden changes of plan or last-minute information that I would once have expected to receive several weeks in advance.

It drove me absolutely insane when I first got here. I wanted to hit people, seriously! Or at the very least, I wanted to throw childish tantrums and stomp my feet and pound my fists. Or cry. I remember slamming a door violently on at least one occasion, and secretly crying angry, frustrated tears on another. The lack of communication has not changed, and I have come to realise that it won’t, ever. It’s just a difference. A big, confusing, maddening difference (to both sides), but no one’s fault.

So, I suppose I must – at some point – have decided to just accept it, get used to it, and deal with it. It occurred to me, when I re-read that “explosion” post I linked to in the previous paragraph, that the same sort of scenario with the graduation photos is almost certain to have happened last month, but I have absolutely no recollection of feeling angry or upset. I just remember breezing in to have my photo taken at some point, and casually sticking my head into a classroom occasionally to see if I was meant to be teaching in it, or, y’know, whatever. I had no more information than I did that first year… just two years of experience, and the relative calm and unflappability that apparently comes with that. I think that’s a pretty good thing to have developed, as a previously panicky, highly-strung type! Thanks, Korea.

So anyway, on a related note, I arrived in work this morning and found myself being dragged into the office while I was still attempting to remove my shoes and earphones. Ummmm, so… said Jennifer in the way she does when she’s about to inform me of something she figures I might have liked to know quite a bit sooner, tonight you will present the graduation ceremony in English and I will translate into Korean. 

I looked at her for a moment before speaking.

WTF?!!! Arrrghhh!!! Not on your life! Why the hell are you only telling me about this now? 

That’s what I would’ve said a couple of years ago.

OK, cool, I said calmly, masterfully suppressing my fear of parents for the time being, uhhh, I’m presenting the entire ceremony? I mean, intro, awards, names, speeches… everything? 

Everything, said Jennifer, passing me a copy of the programme and script. Well, the Korean script, with the occasional sentence in English. Oh, this was going to be foolproof.

Before I’d even had time to adjust to my new reality, I found myself with a microphone in my hand, rehearsing with the director and the principal on the stage as I frantically scribbled translations. I tried my best to follow all the discussions in Korean, lest I miss out on another essential piece of information and find myself writing, choreographing and performing a solo musical number with 5 minutes’ notice.

I am extremely nervous, of course, but the main thing to note is that I received the belated, undeniably important information in the same way that I might if I were being told that we were having noodles instead of rice for lunch. That – amongst other things – is what Korea has done for me. I am very grateful to it!

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Oh, help.

I can’t really write anything tonight because of all the tears, so suffice it to say that the whole saying goodbye to the kids thing doesn’t get any easier from one year to the next.

After our last lesson together, and hugs galore, two of my girls came to my classroom with a parting gift from the whole class.

They’d each written me a little goodbye note with no help from a teacher, complete with a snapshot of each one of them on their first day in my class.

In floods of tears already, I put the CD in and found myself watching a year of memories thoughtfully and painstakingly put together by the very sweet Korean homeroom teacher. So yeah. I am officially an emotional wreck tonight. I can only let you watch this by way of explanation (although the quality isn’t nearly as good after uploading, but you’ll get the idea!). It’s a gift that I will treasure forever…

Goodbye

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When you’re a kindergarten teacher, you laugh every single day. If you don’t, you may not be doing it right!

I’ve found that it doesn’t matter what sort of mood you happen to be in, you will always be forced to laugh out loud at some point whether you thought it possible or not. You can be feeling tired, angry, sad, irritable, or just plain fed up, and still you will find yourself throwing back your head and laughing loudly.

For me, it’s usually one of two things: an amusingly unexpected observation by a sharp-witted child, or the sound of them laughing hysterically/uncontrollably. Both are capable of snapping me out of a bad mood entirely, or at least of making me temporarily forget why I was angry or annoyed. Just this morning, I was feeling irritated with my boss for springing something on me at the last minute again, and could not have felt less like watching a movie with my youngest class. I felt tired and grumpy, and foresaw half an hour of wearily repeating “Don’t speak Korean!” and pausing the action every 2 minutes to check that they understood and explain when they didn’t. Instead, I left half an hour later grinning to myself, in a cheerful mood that lasted me throughout the whole day… simply because I enjoyed the children’s delighted laughter at the movie, which really captured their imagination. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, by the way – watch it with kids if you have the opportunity! It’s about a scientist who succeeds in making a machine that can convert water into any food of his choosing, so by programming it and launching it into the clouds, he can make it rain food. The kids were overjoyed by this idea. They listened intently, and were able to explain everything to me when I paused to check comprehension. And when they started to laugh uncontrollably, clapping their hands at the burgers and steaks and hot dogs raining from the sky, I couldn’t stay in my grumpy mood!

This afternoon, I was sitting at my desk doing some planning for my elementary school classes, when I heard giggling coming from outside my door. I ignored it at first, but it gradually became full-on hysterical laughter, and I was intrigued. I opened my door, and followed the laughter to the classroom opposite mine, where two of my youngest girls had apparently been left to catch up on some written work they’d missed when they were off sick. These girls are really smart and very sweet, and I listened as they continued with their conversation, which was so amusing to them that they just could not control their laughter. Eventually I started to laugh, too, alerting them to my presence and making everything even more hilarious to them. I only thought to record the scene towards the end, when they were calming down slightly, but it still makes me smile:

IMG_2308

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Who could fail to be happy at work when that’s the sound you can hear all around you?! Another perk of the job: laughter. Every day.

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It has occurred to me that although I’ve been living in Korea for what feels like forever now, I’ve never documented one of the biggest parts of my life here: my home.

Now, to be perfectly honest with you, this is mainly because I am a disastrous mess who generally lives in something approaching squalor. The conditions inside my miniscule apartment are really not something I want any of you to see. At any given time, you can find clothes strewn about the place in an artistically haphazard manner, a sink piled high with dishes, books and papers and pens in the most unlikely of places, coffee cups lurking where you least expect them… sorry, Mum, I have not improved since I was a teenager.

I think it’s partly down to the fact that I’m not home very much, and when I am, I tend to be exhausted and capable of nothing other than sleep. There’s also the fact that the apartments with which we young(ish), single, hagwon ESL teachers in Korea are provided are the size of your average conservatory (or perhaps laundry room) back home, and it’s very hard to keep your entire life in a room that size without it becoming cluttered and disorganised.

But the main reason is that I am indeed a messy, disorganised, chaotic and twirly kind of person. I am trying to get better. Living in a room that looks like a badly-run second-hand shop is not a particularly cheering experience. And so I have spent the past couple of weeks – Operation Pull Self Together – having a determined clear-out, dumping all unnecessary gumpf and then cleaning the emerging surfaces underneath. Section by section (as I cannot clean or tidy for more than an hour  at a time without losing my mind), my apartment has reappeared, and a few days ago I woke up in the morning to the realisation that it was, at last, a home again. It’s amazing how much more enjoyable you can find simple things like reading a book or drinking a cup of coffee or cooking a meal when you’re doing them in a nice, clean, tidy apartment where you don’t trip over things every few seconds!

Anyway, I’d better take some pictures and show you the inside of a typical foreign teacher’s apartment in Korea before my messy genes kick in again and everything inevitably descends into chaos once more.

All of us have this little “entrance square” (it would be completely misleading to use the word “hall”), which is where shoes must be removed upon arrival. You can’t wear outdoor footwear indoors. The first thing that now jumps out at me from photos taken inside friends’ places back home is that they’re wearing shoes in the house. I looked at one friend’s picture of his wife holding their new baby the other day and all I could think was “she is sitting on the sofa wearing her shoes!” as if it was the most astonishing thing imaginable. Funny how you get used to cultural differences.

This is my room. When I say my “room”, I mean that it is my bedroom, my living room, my guest room, my dining room, and my office.

Please note that I did not decorate or furnish this apartment!

It also – quite bizarrely – contains a fridge and toaster oven because there’s no space for such luxuries in the “kitchen”.

Wardrobe... check! Fridge... check!

I say “kitchen”, but it’s really more of a cupboard with a sink in it, and a couple of gas burner rings. If I could change one thing about my home, it would be the kitchen. I miss my huge kitchen from my house in Ballymena, with its many work surfaces and proper oven and stove and dishwasher and cupboards and table and chairs… but you can’t have everything, I suppose!

This is the bathroom, and it’s fairly typical of ‘bath’rooms over here in that it contains no bath whatsoever.

And yes, that would be the shower over the sink, there:

No room for cubicles and curtains in these apartments! No, simply switch the water flow from the tap to the shower, and wash while holding the shower head in your hand. This does mean that your entire bathroom gets soaked every time you shower. Most people keep waterproof  ’bathroom slippers’ inside for this reason, but as I generally shower in the morning and don’t return home for over 8 hours, I’ve never bothered. I really don’t mind the wet room/handheld shower thing as much as a lot of people seem to. And anyway, it’s easy to keep the bathroom clean when you can quickly hose it all down at the end of your daily shower! The only annoying thing is when you forget to switch the water flow back from shower to tap, and then turn it on to brush your teeth or wash your hands, usually while fully clothed. This happens with surprising regularity even after all this time (including just before I took those pictures, hence the water all over the mirror).

Picture from http://www.roketship.com

And so you have it:  my home. It’s small, but it’s fine… for now! Things I miss include kitchen space, a dishwasher, powerful water pressure in the shower, windows, and space to entertain. But on the other hand, it’s free, it’s big enough for me to live comfortably, it’s fairly modern and clean, and it’s five minutes from work.

Oh, and it’s in South Korea, for crying out loud!

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I am a guilty person.

It’s not the sort of guilt that means I should rightfully be in prison. It’s more the kind that has me feeling bad about the slightest little things on a daily basis: a careless comment that I worry might have hurt someone’s feelings; a white lie that I fear will give the wrong impression if uncovered; a thoughtless action that I’m scared has made another person think badly of me. I still feel almost unbearable guilt for helping my dad to drown a rat when I was about 14… I swear I can hear the wretched thing’s squeals in my ears when I think about it. I feel guilty to the point of tears when I think of the incidences when I’ve made a child at school cry. You get the idea. I have a permanently guilty conscience, and often cause myself sleepless nights of torment over things that the potentially offended party probably never even noticed.

This time, though, I really did do a very bad thing. And they say confession is good for the soul, so here it is…

Having had a very busy couple of days at work, it completely slipped my mind to book my train ticket to my now weekly appointment. I need to book in advance as I travel at rush hour, straight after work, and all the trains are sold out. I didn’t realise my oversight until I was in the taxi to the station yesterday, running late, and after some whispered cursing and frantic attempts to find a ticket on the website using my phone, I resigned myself to going to the desk and pleading pathetically in the hope that they’d let me on to a sold out train (this has actually worked in the past – you have to look vey lost and scared and confused and foreign. Fortunately I am good at that, through years of genuine experience!).

Unfortunately, the taxi then got stuck in traffic, resulting in me arriving at the station a mere 4 minutes before the departure of the last train I could take in order to make my appointment. I wouldn’t have time to queue at the desk. And if I missed my appointment they’d charge me for it anyway, without the required 24 hours notice… and it’s a lot of money, let me tell you!

I ran full-pelt to the station doors, having an internal debate. 2 minutes to departure.

I looked at the ticket queue, which was approximately 6 miles long. I ran past it. 1 minute till departure.

Oh, shut up! I said desperately to my conscience as I hurtled down the steps and launched myself across the platform and into the train seconds before the whistle blew and the doors swung shut.

I was a criminal. An illegal stowaway, dodging my 22,000 won fare. I stood nervously in the between-carriages area; wondering what to do. I wanted to find a ticket inspector and explain, and pay, but I was scared of the consequences. A big fine? Or worse, a big scene, with a non-English-speaking inspector and a load of Koreans staring at the cheating foreigner in disgust? Oh, lord, I’d have to fling myself out of the window to my certain death if that happened.

I stood there in mounting anxiety for several decades until I saw a ticket inspector at the far end of the carriage in front of me, and I turned and fled into the one behind me, striding purposefully as if I was in a hurry to go to the toilet.

The toilet!!!! What a brainwave. I hastily slipped into the first one I came to, bolted the door, and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like a murderer on the run from the cops. I felt like it, too. Why hadn’t I just swallowed the fear of an embarrassing scene and gone straight to a ticket inspector to pay? Now I was a bloody criminal hiding in a toilet cubicle, and it was far too late to confess to having no ticket without it being obvious that I’d been trying to get away with it.

And so it came to pass that I spent the entire hour-long journey going from one toilet cubicle to the next in desperate avoidance of train staff. It was like being in some sort of sitcom farce except it wasn’t at all funny and I just wanted to go back in time and pay the huge cancellation fee for my missed appointment rather than endure the fear and anxiety.

After what seemed like a lifetime, the train pulled into the station and I almost fell out on to the platform, so anxious was I to flee the scene of my terrible, terrible crime.

Bad person, bad person, bad person, chanted my guilt to the rhythm of my footsteps as I jogged up the stairs.

Dishonest, dishonest, dishonest, it added to the beat of a train chugging into the station.

You suck, you suck, you suck, it jeered to the melody of the music I put on to try and drown it out.

Honestly, I nearly went up to the desk to confess that I’d arrived there as a fugitive, and ask them to take my 22,000 won for the sake of my sanity. All that stopped me was the fear of an embarrassing scene (or, y’know, arrest and death by beheading or dismemberment). I left the station and headed for the subway, feeling like every single person was looking at me with contempt, silently judging me. The guilt was about to crush my brain into smithereens. It was so bad that when a homeless man stretched out his hands to me, I fumbled frantically in my bag and reached him the first note I found instead of spare change – anything to appease that infernal guilt. Only when he looked at me in surprise did I realise I’d given him 5000 won instead of 1000, but I just smiled at him as if I’d meant to do it, and felt marginally better. Then I saw possible redemption.

I turned back and distributed the remaining 17,000 of my unpaid ticket fare amongst the homeless man’s also-homeless buddies. Not because I am a selfless and generous soul, you understand, but because I needed to do something to prove to the universe that I wanted to make up for my dishonesty. I actually tend to disagree with giving money to beggars, preferring to give them food or buy a Big Issue or something rather than fund their addiction problems. But, as my guilt reasoned with me, the money wasn’t mine. It belonged to the rail company, and they were bound to prefer that it was spent by homeless people on soju and cigarettes than remain in the pocket of a cheating thief.

That, my friends, was my first and last illegal train journey. Never, never again. I’m telling you: criminals must be seriously stressed-out people living in constant mental anguish. Either that or I’m a bit neurotic. But that can’t be it…

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Warning: total sentimentality overload.

It’s no secret that I love Dr. Seuss. I mean, how could anyone not?

I use his books often as a way of introducing my kindergarteners to English spoken more quickly than we normally talk to them, as you kind of have to read the stories quickly in order to hear and appreciate the rhythm and rhyme. The children may not be able to follow all the words, but the pictures and beat keep them focused while their brains pick out the words that they recognise and help them to understand what’s going on.

Anyway, last week, with the help of The Cat in the Hat and The Foot Book, I attempted to draw their attention to the rhyming words. They didn’t quite understand what I was trying to show them, so I didn’t force the issue. I just let the Mighty Seuss plant the seed, and have been surreptitiously dropping sneaky rhymes into lessons at every opportunity since then. Look at your book. Ohhh, look rhymes with book! … See you later, alligator! … Okey-dokey!

One of the best things I’ve learned in this job is that children are magical little sponges who soak up absolutely everything that goes on around them. One little boy in my 2^nd year kindergarten class didn’t speak a word of English for his entire first year, and everyone had assumed he didn’t understand what was going on around him. He was well-behaved and quiet, and just sat there, day after day, listening to the songs and stories, watching the movies, observing his friends doing the action activities. He answered questions with a shrug or a blank stare. Then, one day last summer, I rewarded the class for good behaviour by giving them all a lollipop and letting them dance to their favourite song. I patted his head as he continued to sit quietly while the others bounded to their feet in excitement. He looked up at me with his usual serious expression, and then said in a clear voice: Teacher, thank you for the candy. This is my favourite one. I don’t want to dance. I just listen and watch my friends, it’s OK?

I nearly fell over in shock. Most of them start with a few random words, and then start putting two or three together at a time, until one day a sentence comes out. This child didn’t speak for over a year, and then spoke casually to me in practically fluent English as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Since then, he has become one of my best students, and one of the ones who chats to me the most comfortably outside of class. You really never know what’s going on inside their heads – but I’ve learned to assume that they’re taking everything in, even when there’s no evidence of it.

Anyway, to return to my original story, I came into school this morning and found myself being showered with cards and chocolate gift bags from all directions. Perk of the job. As I was having a healthy breakfast of instant coffee and heart-shaped milk chocolate at my desk, one of ‘my’ girls came in with her Valentine’s gift for me. It was the card she’d made in my art class yesterday, which they’d all taken with them to give to their ‘sweethearts’ or parents. This girl had instead written something inside hers and brought it back to give to me. I gave her a big hug and opened the card to read her message… which was this.

L ~ O ~ V ~ E      I love you.

L is for love because I love you

O is for octopus many arms for hug you

V is for very very VERY big heart

E is for excited when is time for Art

I write the rhyme words, she said proudly, in case I’d missed it.

I couldn’t help it: there were tears. Fortunately this little girl is wise beyond her years and understood that she had not made Teacher sad. She observed my bottom lip wobbling and my attempt to hastily wipe the tears away, and said Hayley Teacher is happy cry?

I have been alone on Valentine’s Day, and I have been in relationships on Valentine’s Day, and now I am a kindergarten teacher on Valentine’s Day. Only one of those statuses has made me feel as purely and unconditionally loved, happy, and valued as I do right now. And yes, the wee sods are going to leave me and break my heart in less than a fortnight from now, but the annual painful goodbyes are a small price to pay for everything that comes before them and makes them so difficult.

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying good-bye so hard.” - A.A. Milne

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About halfway through my alcohol-free month of Project Pull Self Together, I am pleased to report that I am a much happier Hails. No doubt this is partially to do with the relief being experienced by my body, particularly my poor liver and sleep-deprived brain, but I have also been making a conscious effort to do more with my free time than grow roots in a bar or fritter away the evenings on Facebook.

I have rediscovered the joy of going walking in a foreign land. This may sound a little strange given that I am now well into my third year in Korea, but after my first action-packed year of exploration which saw me zipping up and down the country on trains and buses with my backpack like there was no tomorrow, I fell out of travel mode and gradually settled into my comfort zone. There are a few small, specific areas of Daejeon in which I live my life, and I no longer visit anything beyond them. I have my home, my workplace, my neighbourhood, my bar, my restaurants, my friends’ places, my market. I live in a little bubble of dull but comfortable familiarity.

So, in keeping with Project Pull Self Together, I decided that this was a waste of being lucky enough to be living in an exciting foreign country, and have been getting my promised daily (well, almost daily) exercise by pulling on my trainers after work and going for a brisk walk with some upbeat music for company. I just pick a road and start walking, and see where I end up, taking pictures of interesting things I see along the way. Like this restaurant’s front door, for example, which I found amusing on so many levels.

(If you think maybe understanding the Korean writing would help things make more sense, it doesn’t – it just says “Thanks for visiting”. Sorry.)

Tonight, I decided to return to the walk that is by far my favourite so far, along the river that I only realised last week is a mere ten minute walk down the road from my apartment. By the time I get there after work, it’s my favourite time of day: dusk. There’s something so peaceful and pretty about that brief interlude between day and night, when it’s neither light nor dark. The reflections of the city lights on the semi-frozen water are just beautiful.

I love water. I always have – I was the child who would get told off for swimming out too far in the sea, and who had a near-drowning incident thanks to some reckless jumping and diving in a resort pool, and who was always the first to suggest a water fight in the summer. I go walking in the rain, and even dancing in it. And failing all that, there’s nothing that makes me feel calmer and more content than walking beside seas, rivers, or lakes.

When darkness falls, you’ve got all those beautiful shimmering lights to look at, too.

As I was taking pictures, some teenagers approached me to practice their English and ask me what I was doing. They couldn’t understand why I was photographing scenes with no people in them. They asked if I would take a picture of them, which I did, but I much prefer the one I took after they politely said goodbye and began to make their way across the stepping stone bridge towards the bright lights on the other side.

When my feet started to get tired, I left the river path to begin my walk home, snapping some shots along the way of things that are so common to me nowadays that I would never usually think to take pictures of them. It has occurred to me that when I leave Korea, I might regret not having taken pictures of these familiar, everyday sights, so I have resolved to start doing so!

Ajummas Crossing

Cars get cold, too.

Pharmacy

Street sofa

Corner shop

Fruit 'n' neon

Almost home, I called into the supermarket to pick up some ingredients for the spaghetti dinner I was suddenly craving, and bumped into a friend who lives in my neighbourhood. We walked home, chatting, and decided against our planned separate dinners-for-one. Instead, we went to her cosy apartment and made dinner with the food I’d bought, finishing off the meal with some of the fabulous cheese that is somehow always present at her place (she’s French… I think they need it for survival).

Day by day, I am rediscovering the little things I loved about life before I got swamped by the scary waves of inexplicable sadness and despair.

Life is still good. I was just too hungover to see it.

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To understand what I’m talking about today, you’ll need a brief crash course in Korean. Ready?! OK.

In the Korean language, there are three main ‘registers’ or levels of speech – which one you use depends on your relationship with the person to whom you’re speaking.

The highest register – the most formal one – is used when speaking to a superior, generally someone you don’t know very well, and whose position commands your respect. Your employer, for example, or an older person you don’t know. The verbs all end with “-mnida”.

The middle one is polite but not formal, and is used most often in daily interactions in shops/restaurants/taxis, with colleagues, on the phone, etc. The verbs all end with “-yo”.

The lowest register is very informal and only to be used when speaking to children or friends. And “friends”, incidentally, means something different in Korea – you are only “friends” with someone if you were born in the same year. If someone is even one year older, they must be addressed as “older brother/sister”. (For this reason, one of the first things you’ll be asked when meeting someone is your age, and if it happens to be the same as the asker’s, you’re likely to hear “Ah! We are friends!” even if you are just meeting for the first time. This makes it nearly impossible to teach the meaning of the word “friend” in English classes, by the way!) In this form of speech, the verb endings are left off altogether.

So, for example, to tell people at work that lunch is ready (“there is food!”), I might have to do it in three different ways. To the grand and somewhat regal school principal, I should politely say “Eumshik isseumnida!”. To my director and those of my colleagues I don’t know very well, I should say “Eumshik issawyo!”. And to my “friends” (and the children, if I spoke to them in Korean), I could just say “Eumshik issaw!”.

It’s pretty insulting to speak to the wrong person in the lowest register, so – as a foreigner – you generally avoid it where possible.

Anyway, I realised for the first time the other day that although the cooking lady (who speaks no English whatsoever) uses the lowest register when speaking to me, she generally uses the middle one with all the other teachers. This was an unsettling and somewhat worrying discovery. And of course, once I realised it, the ending-less verbs started leaping out of every sentence at me like a taunt. Why am I being singled out? Why does everyone else get respect, and not me? Did I do something to upset her? How can I fix it?

Eventually, today, I mentioned it to a colleague. Have you noticed that the cooking lady speaks to me like a child and everyone else like they’re adults?! My colleague had not, possibly having more important things to occupy her mind. She listened out for it during lunch, however, and I shot her a meaningful look when the cooking lady said anything to me. Himdeulaw (are you tired)? she asked, patting my hand kindly when I came in yawning after class. Himdeulawyo (she’s tired), she explained to my colleagues when they looked over. Mashissaw (it’s delicious), she said of the large alien-like fruit she had just finished chopping, sliding a plate of it towards me. Mashissawyo, she said to someone else a few minutes later, offering them some of the fruit.

My observing colleague began to grin to herself, obviously amused.

Well? I demanded somewhat hysterically after lunch, grabbing her wrist and dragging her to the side. You heard it, right? It’s only when she’s talking to me! What does this MEAN?!!!

My colleague started to laugh. You are a child to her, she explained, not very comfortingly. My expression may have indicated that this explanation was unsatisfactory, so she hastily straightened her face and continued. Remember when we went to a wedding and there were four of us in the back of the car?

I do. We were squished in like sardines in a can, and I was next to the cooking lady, to her apparent delight. She spent a few minutes stroking my hair and arms and saying affectionate things, and then held my hand in hers for the entire journey. My time in Korea has dulled my “Jeez, this is weird” detector quite considerably, so my only response was a mild “What’s going on?” followed by cheerful acceptance when someone asked her and translated her response for me. She sees you like a daughter because you’ve been here longer than all the other teachers, and she wants to look after you because you’re far away from your family. She misses her family now they’re all grown up – you are like a substitute child to her. She likes how you appreciate her cooking and that you brought her back a present when you went to Ireland.  She says she will cry when you leave Korea.

My colleague laughed again as she saw me remembering this. She just wants to be your substitute mother, that’s all. It makes her happy to fuss over you. She loves you.

And you know something? When you’ve had a rough few months with a lot of uncertainty and a bit of turmoil and loneliness, there’s something absolutely frickin’ beautiful about hearing that you’re loved like a child by the sweet, dignified, middle-aged mother hen who cooks the school lunches and doesn’t speak the same language as you. I did a sudden impulsive about-turn, marched into the kitchen, grabbed the startled ajumma around the waist, and gave her a bear hug as she shrieked in surprise.

Sarangheyo (I love you)! I told her. She laughed, and shooed me away with her drying cloth, trying to hide her smile.

I don’t care if she never says “yo” to me again.

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Freezing and hungry as I made my way back to the train station last night, the smell of kimchi jjiggae stopped me in my tracks and lured me into a little station eatery for some hot, comforting goodness.

I am comfortable here now. I can hop on and off the subway in various cities with no need to pause and check the map to figure out which transfer to make. I can buy my tickets or withdraw cash at machines without needing an English option. And perhaps most importantly, I can walk confidently into a Korean diner with no foreigners in sight, sit down, scan the menu for what I want, order, locate the chopsticks and spoons, know that the water is self-service and that the tumblers are in a little sterilizing cupboard thingy somewhere, and eat alone without worrying about what to do or how my chopsticks skills are being judged. It has been well over a year since a waitress felt the need to rush over to me with a fork.

The scowling ajumma (for they are always scowling… I believe I’d feel a little cheated if one smiled at the customers) brought me my stew and rice, and I inhaled deeply as I became momentarily enveloped in a cloud of kimchi-scented steam from the bubbling, boiling jjiggae in the familiar black earthenware bowl. I put in my earphones and let an episode of Frasier entertain me as I ate.

When I was almost finished, I felt a tap on my arm and looked up to see a woman in her forties mouthing ‘excuse me’. I pulled out my earphones and swallowed my mouthful of soup, looking inquiringly at her.

“Excuse me,” she said earnestly, “do you like Korean food?”

I looked briefly at my table, the side dishes of kimchi, pickled radish cubes, and squid all now empty, the bowl of jjiggae almost finished, the last square of tofu poised in my chopsticks. “Ew, dear lord, no!” I almost replied. Seriously, it was right there on the tip of my tongue. “I would not touch Korean food, how could you suggest such a preposterous and disgusting thing?”

“Yes,” I replied with a sweet smile. “I love Korean food.”

She giggled behind her hand, going “ohhhhh… wowwww!”, and then bowed respectfully to me before saying “thank you, goodnight!” and leaving.

I still think these moments are ridiculous and incomprehensible. I find the attention bemusing. But in a strange, inexplicable way, they have become part of my familiar, ‘normal’ daily life in Korea, and I know that when I leave I will look back on them with a fond shake of the head and a laugh rather than with irritation or annoyance.

I worry sometimes about getting stuck in Korea, never moving on. But however comfortable I’ve become, I will never ‘belong’ here… and these little moments remind me of that in the nicest possible way.

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