Settling back into Korea

Every time I think I might post something good about Korea, Korea jumps up and slams me. I swear to God I was just about to sit down and talk about how it's nice to be back here. The air smells great around campus, the Tigers are winning and I'm in a place where I am comfortable. I know what to expect. You know, accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. And then something happens to get me turned right back around.

Today it was a phone call. Or two to be exact. Some dude phones me and when I answer with "Hello" he says, "Yoposayo!" Not like a greeting, but like an order. As if to say, "No! Not hello! Yoposayo!" So I sez, "Hello?" and he repeats the lesson, "Yoposayo!" Only louder. So in Korean I tell him I can't speak Korean and he has the wrong number. In any other country in the world that would be that. NOT KOREA!

He calls back. I say, (now with a facetious musicality to my tone), "Hello?" and he shouts "YOPOSAYO!" So in English this time I say, "No I haven't learned to speak Korean in the three seconds since you last called." He hangs up.

This has happened to everybody who's ever lived here, oh, a thousand times. The thing of it is this was probably an important phone call. I am trying to get my own internet installed so I don't have to share with the students this semester and was told it would be okay today. So maybe someone called and ordered it for me and that was a service technician.

Now here we go. I'm gonna accentuate the negative now and eliminate the positive. If this was a service tech. or somebody who found my lost Lotte Mart card or someone from immigration informing me that I need to do something else for immigration or SOMETHING important there is absolutely no doubt he would have known I was a foreigner. Not just because he would have my name and David MacCannell doesn't sound like ANYTHING Korean, but because I am not a person here, I am a foreigner.

This is my rant for the day.

I went yesterday, as mentioned, to meet with my supervisor here, Professor Jung. I just call him Jung. Or the Jung. Part of his job is to make things easier for me since he speaks English and I can't speak Korean. They have these liason officers at every school in Korea. They do things for foreign teachers like set up mail service, order cable, internet, change gas/electric and other bills into your name, talk to landlords, repairmen, students or neighbours or anybody that you might need to talk to who can't speak English. At least that's what the good ones do. And there are fewer and fewer of those.

Over the years here I've learned that it is far better an FAR faster to try to get things done on my own. I've had several problems here at Seokang College but most of them Jung doesn't even know about. Like my office for instance. Here in Korea you can expect a certain amount of stuff to be available in order for you to do your job as an English teacher. They have the basics pretty much everywhere. Like a photocopier, a computer, internet, a printer, scanner, desk, phone, mail. Here I have an office with a desk and a phone. That's it. But I've solved the other problems by using my computer at home; telling people not to bother sending me mail; copying hundreds of copies every week at my own expense; using my OWN printer and scanner; giving students my email address instead of my phone number and fixing other problems that may arise.

If I have a problem I just can't fix, then and only then to I go to the Jung. He's got it pretty easy with me lemme tell you. If you read my blog regularly, (and who am I kidding, nobody does), you will know that I had trouble getting into my room in the dorm last year. The Idon'tcaretaker was getting his jollies from locking me out. I told Jung about this and it only took him half the year to solve the problem for me. He made a 30-second phone call. All that work took him half a year to prepare for. So you can see why I try not to involve him.

However, this year I desperately need a good internet connection because I'll be watching the winter olympics in CANADA and I'll need enough bandwidth to get live streams of hockey or video on demand. When the kids are here in the dorm neither is possible. And I NEED to watch online so as to avoid the Korean coverage that will be Kim Yu Na and short track speed skating on an endless loop. I am going to try to catch at LEAST every game the Canadian hockey team plays. Go for gold boys!!! Also I can watch Tigers games, NFL football, the World Series etc.

So anyway, the point I am skirting here is that during the meeting yesterday I asked Jung to help me with this, I told him what books we'd be using and I mentioned that when I opened the door to my office the alarm went off. I needed to get that worked out. Every other teacher has a little keychain thingy they swipe in front of the alarm eye before going into their offices. Last year the alarm was just shut off for the whole year. Now they're thinking of giving me the keychain thingy. Only took a year. So far...

Anyhoo, Jung had a few phone calls to make. He had to tell the people in the bookstore what books my students would be needing so he made that call. Then he called the same Idon'tcaretakers who probably turned my alarm on just to get their jollies while I was on vacation and told them to get me a keychain thingy. Then he called someone in the computer center of Seokang College to talk about the internet. In all three calls I never once heard my name mentioned but within five words "waygook" was mentioned. That's the Korean word for "foreigner".

Now here's the thing: I know why he does this and it's probably not his fault. He's just trying to expedite the situation. You see if he called up and said, "Professor MacCannell needs Interchange Intro and English Firsthand 1 for his classes," the first question would NOT be something like, "How many copies will he need?", or "What are the publishers of these books?", or "How soon will he need them?" or something like that, guaran-damn-teed their first question will be, "Mek ken null? Is he a foreigner?" Jung would say yes and they'd say, "Why didn't you lead with that?" So really Jung is just trying to get past that oh-so-essential step and get some business done. But it still bothers me. EVERYBODY does that too.

My point is pretty obvious: why is it so important to preface everything I do or have done to me or for me with the fact that I'm not Korean? To give Korea some credit, they are pretty good compared to a lot of other countries in some of the ways they treat foreigners here. For instance I pay what Koreans pay for stuff I buy. It's not like that in Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, China etc. In fact in Thailand while golfing I met a guy who had worked sevaral years in China and said there they have about 5-10 different prices for different people: One if you're a country Chinese, one for city Chinese, one for Hong Kong Chinese, one for white guys, one for Japanese etc. Most things are not like that here. But there certainly IS a difference in treatment and service. And as I've been saying here I am perceiving that difference to be getting larger instead of smaller.

Just one last ditty then I'll stop. After my meeting with Jung I went downtown to Top Bookstore to get the teacher's casette for one of the books I'm using and to shop for other secondary resources. It's a great store. While waiting for a taxi about half a dozen Korean boys gathered to my right and one Koran girl ate a fudgesicle on my left. They were all about the same age, like 10ish, and I assume they were waiting for their parents to pick them up after school was let out. There's a middle school attached to Seokang where I work.

It seems like EVERY time I come within earshot of the students from this school they are trying to impress their friends by being rude to the foreigner so I wasn't feeling very good surrounded by these little bastards. But none of them said anything! It was the first time in a long time that had happened! I was impressed! I didn't hear the word "waygook" in the boys' conversation, nobody spoke any English to me to be funny, I was actually pretty upbeat until my cab came.

An older guy, 60 or 70, was in the back and saw me flag down the cab and waiting outside his door. It took about 5 minutes for him to get out of the cab. Then after opening the door and getting out he slams the door shut, walks straight toward me and tries to shoo me away like I were a fly. Angry face shooing and he said something unpleasant in Korean as he did it. So in English I said, "Asshole." Then I reached for the door and it was locked. The fucking scumbag actually LOCKED the door before he slammed it on me! Then he proceeded over to the children and stroked a few of the boys' heads and shared some words of wisdom with them. Is it any wonder things are like this? So, there went my positive Korean moment.

All that golfing and sightseeing was therapeutic for me. But I don't think it'll be long, the way things are going, before I need some more of it.

SIIIGGGHHH...