Rowing Upstream

They told us it’s normal to be wildly divided on how we feel about being here, and I’m already convinced it’s true. Yesterday was arguably the best day of the entire summer; today I feel thoroughly spent, insecure, and bleak. Reality has arrived. When I come home from work at night, it’s to nothing. No cats. No mail. No phone messages, with the promise of dinner or ice cream or skating or a trip to the lake. No debriefing the day or catching up on a project or dashing off to some obligation, desirable or not. And, right now, no internet, which is another whole can of worms. Just endless hours of utter solitude. Which is not entirely bad. I spent a very happy morning yesterday intermittently reading fiction. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. I can watch DVDs I’ve had for years, but if the computer dies (and it’s threatening to), that pleasure is over.

Today has been a long and many-faceted example of equal and opposite reactions. It was my first day at school, and things were generally ok. They gave me a somewhat functional laptop to use, but are no longer providing teachers with cell phones. I think I made a good first impression on the teachers and administration, but they seem to expect me to just intuit the curriculum and what I’m supposed to teach. The kids are friendly (I got a lot of startled looks, giggles, and handshakes)—and not all boys, as I’d been told—but not very motivated students. The other teachers are young and nice, but there’s no English classroom and no materials. Planning lessons is difficult because I have absolutely no resources to draw on, either at school or at home. Besides my tree in the front window, I’m really missing my massive collection of children’s books. But I digress. The classrooms have computers, projectors, etc, but I’ve been warned some of them don’t work (which really throws a snag in planning anything involving technology). I was informed today that I’ll be charged 100,000 won/month for utilities and more in the winter (which strikes me as a ridiculous sum)—I’d been thinking one advantage of this tiny place was saving money in that department. On the other hand, I’ll be teaching in an after school program that pays extra money, so that may relieve some of my worries. And I don’t know if it will be like this every day, but the cafeteria served up big hunks of tofu with lunch, so I didn’t go hungry.

I’m primarily troubled by the complete lack of information about how to do my job. At orientation, they kept saying our co-teachers would give us the details; now all I hear is “didn’t they tell you that at training?”. I’m scheduled to teach the after school advanced English program tomorrow; I still don’t know the curriculum. I have my schedule, but just room numbers (if that’s what they are)—no levels, no background information, no idea whether I’m expected to present content or just help the students work with it, no answer to my question of how many different lesson plans I need to write per week (do I teach the same thing to everyone? differentiate within grade levels?). I feel like I should be preparing something, but in the absence of parameters, I’m dangling in the wind.

I’m also frustrated that everything I want to do in my “apartment” requires creative improvisation. Tonight’s vegetables were cut with a small camping knife on the styrofoam tray that came with the bananas. (Koreans LOVE excess packaging) I feel like I have so much junk at home, but most of it has an indispensable use. I did take some small steps toward a proper home tonight by picking up a colander, 2 plastic cups, dish soap, a hand towel, and a little rug to dry my feet when I leave the bathroom after showering (there’s no stall on the shower; everything gets drenched), and all for under $10.

Mama said there’d be days like this.