So, today's been rougher than the past few, which were rougher than the few before that. Not entirely sure why, but I've just been having a tougher time of things. The old tension I sometimes feel inside is surfacing for the first time in Korea, and I feel the withdrawal that typically accompanies it as well. I'm tempted for a moment to blame it on Nausea, but I think it's just happening to coincide with the book. It's been a really long week, and I think that's my problem. It's not that the weeks been long, it's that I know that the longness of it is completely subjective. It's as though somethings churning below the surface, and it is this churning that makes me anxious. The anxiety, of course, is self-perpetuating, and I need to take the off-ramp this weekend so that I'll be able to get going again on Monday.
The nice thing is that in Korea, detoxing is pretty easy after a long week. I'm going to go to KFC tonight and have some good food, and after that I'll be going to the sauna to try and soak the week out of my tired bones. I'm finding it tough to be positive, but I'm also laughing at myself for not being able to. I guess, in all honesty, that I'm feeling homesick again. Remember about two months ago, when I couldn't tell you whether the things I felt were here or there? Well, I'm there again, or here, or whatever. So, anwyay, I'm in some nebulous space for the time being, and hoping to shock myself out of it, or ease out of it, or write my way out of it. I'd like to be out by the end of the weekend, but I'm not setting a time limit, just taking a day at a time. For now, I teach, and try not to be a monster.
Tomorrow, I'll do my best to live as though I weren't in a funk. That's always worked best. If I try to figure out why I'm feeling like this, I'll inevitably have to go onto the turf of the monster to do so. I've been there, and don't plan to visit. It's a pretty useless place. I'll just move fast, make do, and hope that it can't keep up with me as I go for bike rides, relax, and read all weekend.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Banana Class
Ok. So here goes, the description of my life teaching. My first class every day is Banana Class. They're 6 year olds, Korean age, which means they're five year olds by our standards in the West. Koreans start at one and get a year older every new year. They don't really celebrate birthdays. To them it's an interesting day, but they get older each year at the same time that their friends do. Banana class is the toughest for me because they are my youngest students, and they haven't really reached the age of true pattern recognition yet. This makes it tough for me to teach them because I see the entire universe in patterns, logical or chaotic.
In the class, there are a wide variety of levels. Eric was my nightmare child when I first got here. He's probably the lowest level student, and he has a lot of trouble focusing. Within the past month, however, I discovered his artistic abilities. He's got an amazing artistic eye for a boy his age, and is also much more quick to retain information if he's doing something involving crayons. He's really latched onto me, too. He was the first student who clung to me and told me he liked me. I hate to say that it's because of this that I tried so very hard to get through to him, but it's true. I knew he was my biggest problem, and I've tried my best to get him back on the level of the other students. It's a bit of a fruitless venture in many ways, but I get so much pleasure out of seeing him get even the littlest answer right. He's really one of the best parts of my day.
Daniel is quite a character. My first memory of him is him coming to the teachers' room to return the pencil I'd lent him. He'd slyly slipped it into his pocket. He does things like that. We often have growling matches when I tell him that we're doing phonics instead of free-coloring, and he's a bit of a headache to handle sometimes, but if you could see the kid you'd understand.
Amy's a sweetheart, and has pretty good English, compartively. She and Jini can sort of be grouped together as the girls in the class. They keep me accountable, and were really the ones who showed me the ropes when I first started here. They know the rules and hold the other boys to them. It's funny how the class controls itself.
In the class, there are a wide variety of levels. Eric was my nightmare child when I first got here. He's probably the lowest level student, and he has a lot of trouble focusing. Within the past month, however, I discovered his artistic abilities. He's got an amazing artistic eye for a boy his age, and is also much more quick to retain information if he's doing something involving crayons. He's really latched onto me, too. He was the first student who clung to me and told me he liked me. I hate to say that it's because of this that I tried so very hard to get through to him, but it's true. I knew he was my biggest problem, and I've tried my best to get him back on the level of the other students. It's a bit of a fruitless venture in many ways, but I get so much pleasure out of seeing him get even the littlest answer right. He's really one of the best parts of my day.
Daniel is quite a character. My first memory of him is him coming to the teachers' room to return the pencil I'd lent him. He'd slyly slipped it into his pocket. He does things like that. We often have growling matches when I tell him that we're doing phonics instead of free-coloring, and he's a bit of a headache to handle sometimes, but if you could see the kid you'd understand.
Amy's a sweetheart, and has pretty good English, compartively. She and Jini can sort of be grouped together as the girls in the class. They keep me accountable, and were really the ones who showed me the ropes when I first started here. They know the rules and hold the other boys to them. It's funny how the class controls itself.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Another day
So it's been nearly a month, and I apologize. I've been reading too fiercely, living too much to pause long enough to write things down. I've finished three books, all of which I'd gladly recommend to anyone who feels like reading something that makes the mind spin round on itself. The first, I've already mentioned, was Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, an Italian writer whose literary essays I've sampled recently as well. It was an immense book in so many ways, and there were only about a hundred pages in the middle that got terribly cumbersome. I'm sure they would fascinate a grail legend afficionado, but I am certainly not one. It was a story about intellect striving to find happiness, about the tendency of human beings to complicate rather than simplify their existences. It has led me toward a more profound contempt for my more complicating notions of self and toward a more nebulous view of self. I am not yet sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, but it is interesting nonetheless.
The second was, without a doubt, the most incredible book I have read in years. Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated taught me a new reason to laugh and to cry each time I opened it. It taught me to read myself as a stranger, taught me to escape my language. I don't really know how else to describe it. It was profound, counfounding, and illuminating all at once. The words were like delicious crumbs on a meandering forest trail toward truth. It left me both hungry and satisfied.
I then turned to Vonnegut, whom, I must admit, I have not read thoroughly enough. Cat's Cradle was quick, smart, and relatively light. I read it so as not to lose the pace I'd accidentally discovered, to propel me through my current venture: Nausea. It's dense. It traps me as only a void can trap, but it is so perfect in so many ways. At times I can barely pick it up for its weight. At others, I open it to find myself unable to stop reading, as though it is dragging me toward heaviness itself. I will let you know when I've come out on the other side of it.
Teaching is wonderful. I don't know how else to describe it. I have to go do it now, and then I will write more to tell you why.
Regards,
Joe
The second was, without a doubt, the most incredible book I have read in years. Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated taught me a new reason to laugh and to cry each time I opened it. It taught me to read myself as a stranger, taught me to escape my language. I don't really know how else to describe it. It was profound, counfounding, and illuminating all at once. The words were like delicious crumbs on a meandering forest trail toward truth. It left me both hungry and satisfied.
I then turned to Vonnegut, whom, I must admit, I have not read thoroughly enough. Cat's Cradle was quick, smart, and relatively light. I read it so as not to lose the pace I'd accidentally discovered, to propel me through my current venture: Nausea. It's dense. It traps me as only a void can trap, but it is so perfect in so many ways. At times I can barely pick it up for its weight. At others, I open it to find myself unable to stop reading, as though it is dragging me toward heaviness itself. I will let you know when I've come out on the other side of it.
Teaching is wonderful. I don't know how else to describe it. I have to go do it now, and then I will write more to tell you why.
Regards,
Joe
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