Well, a brief-ish post today. I spoke last time about how we were losing some of our old core staff members, like Naomi (Kyong-Hee Hong, is her Korean name). She's a sweetheart, and basically a dear friend of the majority of the English staff who had worked at our Hagwon over the last two plus years.
Well, we decided to ask her to go for dinner tonight, alongside another friend and former co-worker from our school, Dave, whose blog is featured here. Dave's a smart guy, and a lot of fun to hang out with, not least because he shares Jennifer's and my mutual love of Settlers of Catan. Settlers has become the mainstay at our on-again, off-again games night with the folks from work, and it reminds us of home, where we first started to play it.
Dave, Jen, and I went out to our second Bluewings game of the 2009 campaign, against Jeju United. Once more, Suwon lost. I think this is a case of Championship Blues, or the like: Suwon won the K-League title last year, and played recently against David Beckham's LA Galaxy team. They're also in the Asian Football Championship Tournament, so I can understand some sluggishness. Still--losing to Jeju? Gah.
It was nice to relax a bit this weekend. I'm still teaching Kindergarten, but I had a breakthrough with one of my reticent kids. His name is Rick, and while he's cute as all get out, he was a problem child at first: I suspect his English is limited, and he was actively refusing to take part in class. His mother gave him heck, I think, because he came in after two weeks of rolling around on the floor in class and actively took part.
Well, paid attention, at least, even if he didn't understand. This week, though, I was able to get him to repeat words, and, better yet, to point to material in the books we were reading that was the same. It's moments like that, when my kids have an "Ah-ha!" moment that I feel like I'm doing something of worth.
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On that subject: I had an odd weekend. I read a coworker's blog, where she discussed having trouble connecting her personal perspective with her work here. I can respect that: there's a lot of strange decisions going on in our school, and at times it's easy to fall back on the "It's just Business" motto. I know all about that: I even fell back into that mentality at times, if only to protect my mental stability from the pressure of trying to get these kids to care.
I nearly broke down this weekend. Seriously, literally, and totally broke down. I was on the verge of giving up and going home, I was literally that angry. Our new curriculum took a month for us to sort out, and I was tired of having to come in early every day to fix things. I was ready to give up.
Jin, one of our Korean team-mates, fixed things, after a lot of work, and I feel better now. But it feels as if I'm struggling to swim upstream, all the while somebody's attaching a rope to my feet from the other direction.
I'm obssessive compulsive--I need organization, especially in my work space, in order to function. I need it that way so I can keep my brain focused, and thus not go completely nuts when things go wrong. I admit to being a perfectionist, as well, so when things get disorganized, I get mad.
It was frustrating, to say the least, this last month.
I am glad, though, to have spend an hour or two trekking with Jen around the highlands near Kyung-Hee Dae University, near our school and apartment. The mountains in this country are utterly gorgeous, and incredibly peaceful. One can easily lose hours climbing over the hills around one's own house, and its easy to see why hiking is so popular, here.
It was a mini-date with my wife, which we needed, I think. We talked about a host of subjects, about life, work, and faith. I maintain my spirituality as a private matter--I don't discuss it with my coworkers, as my perspective would take some serious discussion to describe, not to mention, it comes across as seriously heretical to most Christians. I am what is called a Gnostic Christian, and the closest to my interpretation of my faith is the Universalist and Quaker traditions within the mainstream church. Of course, calling the Universalists "mainstream" sounds funny, but you get the idea.
I hold to the belief that God exists, not as a personal being (i.e., an incarnate "old man in the sky"), but as the fundamental spirt of all that lives, what John Shelby Spong calls "the ground of being." As such, I tend to distrust literalism and strict dogma--perhaps this comes from some innate distrust of authority engendered on me in my youth, but who knows, right? For me, like the Gnostics, God is to be found in the shared experience, those wonderful moments when the universe seems to click, and you have an "ah-ha" moment on some deep, fundamental level about life and the meaning of life itself. I've experienced that only a few times, and it leaves me shaken to my core when it does happen.
But a fundamental part of my faith is the belief that I, being constrained by an inherently subjective perspective (I don't accept the idea that God will tell me everything, and even if God did, I would be biased by said subjectivity), have the right to tell others what they should think. As Albert Camus said, I cannot tell others what is right, but I can rebel when I see something I think is wrong. In short, I don't talk much about my faith because I worry that I might interfere in the path and development of others. So long as their path does not prevent others from pursuing their own truths in turn, I find myself unwilling to interfere.
Perhaps that is an odd perspective, but it is my own... and it was nice to talk with Jen about it this weekend. We fell in love because we were both thinkers and loved to have good, rational arguments about things. I still love her for that, and I hope that I can, in my small way here, encourage my kids to do as I was taught: to question everything, and try to grow.
Or, perhaps, in seeing my old friends, I am feeling nostalgic.
Peace,
Chris
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