I know my Korean has improved because last night I managed to sidetrack my Busan tutor for a full hour. “Next time just sign up for a free talking class. You’ll save money!” She told me. With both of my online tutors, we usually start off with conversation and since I’m starved for human contact I have a lot to say. All at once I realized exactly how my online Chinese students feel— they have so much they want to say once they become stronger in English and their desire to communicate increases ten fold. Now I too can intimately understand. She and I got to laughing as I made…

When I was a freshman in college, I detested that our time and money was being wasted in required weed out chemistry classes run by a professor who wore Hawaiian shirts and made girls cry during office hours so I arranged a meeting with the head of the department. He came to the meeting in sweatpants, gaslit me, and afterwards sent me a scathing email in which he copied his superior and summarized everything he had said along with false quotations from me, and then told me never to speak to him again. Can you guess one reason why I switched my major from chemistry that year? When I read…

E asked me to make a few videos for the online curriculum and I excitedly flexed my video editing muscles. Deep in the midst of centering a screenshot C told me she would be working half days since she had to attend a ten day teacher training she had voluntarily signed up for a month ago and has since regretted. Before leaving she gave me a gift: “I went to Jeju last weekend. This is for you.” She deposited a cute set of Jeju themed sticky notes into my open palms. “Thank you so much!” C is good peeps. Later I noticed something strange in the design: the tiny “I…

Barista Violet is my favorite person. Amid the news that school has been delayed another week due to the Itaewon club virus outbreak, I can do nothing but keep going to work at an empty school. That won’t stop me from buying coffee on days I arrive early! I ordered an “extra size” latte and then attempted to tell Violet in Korean that I don’t want much milk: “Umm.. the milk is few…? Small?” I tried, knowing she would catch me. “You want me to make it with less milk?” “Yes, how do I say that? Can you repeat yourself?” She busied herself making an espresso and talked to me…

I came to South Korea to teach and do things and for the last five months I have neither taught nor done things. So, it’s been an ongoing challenge to balance the lack of doing with the reality of being. It hasn’t been bad persay and I’m certainly so grateful to be in South Korea during this time! The desk warming reality is only truly negative in that it harkens back to my cubicle days which I left for a good reason. To put it in perspective for myself, I imagine a reality where I would be working at the Atlanta job but during a home office pandemic setup. The…

The most useful and interesting thing I did today, which was consequently the only useful and interesting thing I did today, was this: Alone in the women’s locker room, or so I thought, a voice spoke Korean. “지금 나가실 거예요?” I turned around slowly because as unlikely as it was, it appeared I was being addressed. My brain was misfiring because context is a second language learner’s best friend and the bodiless echo didn’t register until too late. An older woman stood dripping outside the communal shower door. “나가요?” She simplified, using a walking finger symbol to ask “are you leaving?” “아. 네.” Oh. Yes I am. “Can you bring…

I have to be honest– I’ve written and erased several posts. I want to keep positive for you instead of falling into a black hole of speculation. So let’s focus on the accomplishments this week. My Hong Kong tutor told me I have a talent for writing quickly. Most of her students need three hours to churn out the same essay I can write in under an hour. I agreed with her and added that when I studied Korean 1 at Hankuk University last summer, I was also very quick in writing compared to my classmates. It’s easy to write in any language when I have a lot to say.…

I will spare you the gory details of how Busan “friend” became Busan foe but know that it ended with me changing my phone number, C alerting school security to keep an eye out and offering to help me file a police report, and my Korean army of friends offering to call him and threaten him with the police. So yes, it has been a difficult two weeks. Not only deciding and telling him that it would be best we don’t see each other anymore but also the terrible, terrible fallout that had me Googling “knife self defense”. The day it all came crashing down I had first called C,…

The last ten days have been a grind and I hate to admit it but a small part of me just wants this semester (non-semester) to be over so I can start over again in fall. Eating CU kimbap and cold noodles at my desk while losing hours of time to the internet is getting really old. My routine was luckily shaken up today, for all of ten minutes, as all the teachers filed outside while the pesticide company sprayed classrooms. C accompanied me down and I talked her ear off. I heard male music teacher tell the other teachers my name; I think one of the newbies was asking…