Hopes and prayers

Today was a pretty full one.

This morning was my turn to lead the morning worship service at my school. This is something all the teachers are expected to do, whether they are Christian or not. This means selecting and announcing a hymn, reading a scripture of choice, and then offering a prayer.

I actually found myself not being that nervous about it, until my host mother kept asking me if I was nervous a couple days before I had to stand up and give it. Her turn was the day before mine, and she mentioned a couple times how preoccupied she was. But she said I didn't have to worry, since I would be speaking in English, and most of the teachers wouldn't understand me. This made me think that the prayer was the biggest worry for her, since in my case, though I would read the scripture aloud in English, everyone had Korean-English Bibles and would read the scripture I chose in their own language.

On the way to school this morning, my host mother offered this advice: "Be relaxed and easy. Be like you are calling your mother." I was a little confused at first, thinking that she meant that I should think of my mother in order to be relaxed in front of all the teachers. Then I realized she meant to pray to God as if He were my mother. I was a little worried about the prayer. Picking a song and a scripture is relatively easy. But enough people would be present that understood English, including the school's minister, to make me worry about my prayer being too short, or at least to keep me from starting out with "Dear Mom."

But it went fairly smoothly. I stood up when the time came (I heard a few gasps of surprise; I guess despite the fact that this was mandatory there were still teachers who weren't expecting me to do it), and read off the hymn number in Korean. I was encouraged by the "Joayo," of approval I heard behind me (good). The hymn, incidentally, was "Amazing Grace." Despite a Mormon upbringing, it was one of the only non-Christmas hymns I could find in the Korean-English hymnal that I recognized. (I looked for "The Spirit of God Like A Fire Is Burning" but it wasn't there). "Amazing Grace" was also slow enough that I thought maybe I could sing along in Korean. But some of the syllables were sort of unusual and difficult to sound out so I just stood there and followed along with my eyes. Then I read out the chapter and verse of the scripture I'd chosen (1 Corinthians 4:5) in Korean, and then read the scripture in English. This was followed by a short prayer, which midway garnered an "Amen" from the minister, when I asked for the students to be blessed with health in mind and body (I'm sincerely a little afraid of them going crazy from too much studying, and a lot of them have been spending class with their heads on their desks lately, since they don't take sick days ever). After the announcements were done, Mr. O came over looking very excited and complimented me, saying he was very surprised that I knew so much Korean.

In general my classes went pretty well today. Only two teachers showed up to my weekly teacher workshop, since everyone is pretty busy preparing for the final. We discussed an article I'd selected about a Native American tribe in California protesting the expansion of the Shasta Dam, and I'd meant to spend the time talking about Native Americans, since the teachers had told me previously that they were interested in learning about American culture. But as usual, the conversation took on a life of it's own, and my host mother, Mr. Im and I went from talking about fish hatcheries to how I like to prepare salmon, to what turkey tastes like. Eventually I learned that lettuce in Korea (or maybe everywhere, I don't know) has been scientifcally shown to have a chemical that makes one sleepy after eating it, causing many Korean high school students to avoid it--instead they opt for sesame leaves to wrap their barbequed meat in.

The day took a turn for the worse, however, when Mr. Choi, the man who came to my school before Chuseok, showed up again. I'd just gotten back from class and sat down at my desk when he tapped me on the shoulder, and I remembered how I'd been quietly dreading his return. He'd not intimidating per se, but I didn't really trust him, since I'd decided that he was being dishonest in order to talk to me (I didn't believe he was going to San Francisco, much less believe that he really needed me to provide him with tourist information gleaned from the internet). Too make matters worse, he came with cakes and juice for me, the cakes obviously a little expensive. I made it clear I didn't really want to accept, but did eventually, since I thought it would be very rude not too. He said he'd brought me lunch, and I said I was really busy, and he said he wanted to ask me a few questions. Then he pulled out a bunch of xeroxed maps of the San Francisco Bay Area. I sort of enjoyed looking at all the familiar cities and roads on the map, but I was pretty uncomfortable most of the time, and trying to think of how to throw him off. He asked me some sort of random, dead-end questions, like, had I ever been to South San Francisco? Then he took out a book that he said was his English studying material. It was a large pamphlet that had something to do with U.S. military tactics for disarmament. Then he pulled out some other materials, which I recognized as the kind of English-language stuff that the U.S. Embassy distributes--a summary of American literature and a booklet of the U.S. constitution, etc. He tried to make a gift of these to me but I told him I already had them. He also took out an ID wallet that had some kind of U.S. military shield on one side and what looked like someone's business card in the plastic window. It was a man's name, and he had some kind of military association, but I couldn't make out a rank or department. He told me that this was the name of his English teacher, a man that he'd met on the U.S. military base in Seoul, who had taught him English for three years and now lived in Washington D.C.

I wasn't dishonest when I informed him that the food he'd brought me was considered dessert in the U.S. and that I would eat lunch at the school cafeteria before I ate the cakes. I really did want to eat soon, since it was getting late and the food would be gone if I didn't get there in time. I thought he would take this as a clue to go, but instead he said he would come with me and eat with me. I was a little bewildered, but I couldn't think of how to say no, and got up to go to the cafeteria, while he lagged behind getting his papers together. In the hall, I ran into Mr. Im, and told him that there was a man that wanted to eat lunch in the teacher's cafeteria, and was that possible? Hoping that Mr. Im would set him straight. Mr. Choi caught up with us, looking a little irritated or unsettled, maybe at my prompt abandonment of him, and Mr. Im asked him his name and what he needed. I went into the cafeteria--sure enough there was only one side dish and some soup--bright red with hot pepper---left along with the rice. As I was getting my food, Mr. Choi came in and told me he would just sit with me and drink his juice while I ate.

I was surprised to see that when I lifted a clump of rice to my mouth with my chopsticks, my hand was visibly shaking. I didn't feel afraid, but apparently I was much more nervous than I'd realized. I ate without saying much, deciding to just take it as it came, and Mr. Choi got out his maps again and asked me if there was an army base in San Francisco. I actually couldn't really tell if he was asking me or telling me, and I said I wasn't sure. He went on to ask about aircraft carriers and warships, and I just kind of shook my head and said I didn't think there were warships in the San Francisco Bay, though of course I wasn't sure. Then he admitted that he liked the U.S. army, which didn't really come as a surprise, since he was using booklets from them to study English. I was sort of neutral about this fact. It didn't really make me feel better about him, but it did explain his unusual questions. (Though I could easily let my paranoia run away with me, there's no reason to believe that he was asking those questions out of anything but curiosity).

At one point I asked him why he was going to San Francisco, maybe betraying my skeptcisim, and he just said something like "Travel" and then took out his map of the U.S. to tell me he'd heard that the United States had different time zones. At one point in our somewhat one-sided question he did ask, "Everything okay?" with a sort of nervous laugh, but it didn't occur to me until later that maybe he was noticing that I wasn't very happy to be in his presence (or more accurately, I felt rather trapped and uncomfortable).

When I finished eating and told him I had to get back to work, I was very busy, he said something a little jumbled about a "mistake" and he was sorry to come here, and then said something about going to Seoul. I just looked at him and said, "You are going to Seoul?" and he sort of stuttered some more, and sort of jabbed me in the arm a couple times in a way that I think was meant to be apologetic. I said that I was sorry, I was just very busy, that Tuesdays were very busy for me (which is actually true), and went back to the teacher's room. I started sorting through my student's notebooks from the previous classes. He came in after me and gathered his stuff together and then said good-bye, and left. I felt relieved to finally see him go, but still sort of nervous. Even the food he'd left bothered me, so I put one of the cakes on the main table in the teacher's room for other people to eat, and tried to focus on grading assignments. It felt unusual to be so nervous, but at the same time, I generally find awkward social situations like that sort of nerve-wracking, or at least I'm often more likely to just go along with whatever than to tell a stranger off, especially a persisent stranger (maybe why I didn't just tell him from the get-go that I wasn't ever going to have time to talk to him about San Francisco). Even getting Mr. Im somewhat involved earlier was almost an act of desperation, though I'm glad to say I probably appeared fairly calm. I'm hoping that Mr. Choi's not coming back, that his talk about Seoul was some kind of way of saying that he wasn't coming back while saving face, and that he doesn't just show up some other day that isn't Tuesday.

My host mother just came back from school a few minutes ago. She saw the pound cake the man had given me, sitting on the kitchen table waiting for someone other than me to eat it, and laughed. We talked about the man a little--she called him strange, I called him scary. She thought he was sort of funny looking, especially his hat. She'd actually spoken with him before I came back from class and saw him, and she said that his Korean was strangely accented, as if he was speaking Korean with an English-speaker's accent. She thought maybe he was doing it on purpose. I told her about his interests in the U.S. military, and she told me that other teachers in the teacher's room had been curious about him. Apparently I'd turned red at some point, and they'd encouraged her to go over and talk to him and see what was going on.

I'd left the school at 6 pm feeling like I'd had a bad day. Seeing Mr. Choi had been unpleasant, and before I left I was hurrying to get the bulk of that day's schoolwork graded. I won't go into my mishap with the squat toilet in the high school's restroom. But when I got on the bus I encountered one of my students, who was on her way to academy, and then when I gave up my seat for an older woman she tried to refuse and then, as the bus got more crowded, insisted on holding my bag. Later an old woman with a small boy got on, and the woman in my seat generously held him on her lap. Then, as the bus lurched around, I accidentally stepped on the foot of the old woman who was standing. I instinctively mumbled some apology in English, and we had a little miscommunication as she thought maybe I was trying to get off and she was in my way, and sort of climbed up on some of the railings to clear the aisle. Then the seated woman interjected and started talking about me kindly, and then my student, who was standing behind me, leaned over and told them that I was a teacher at her high school. They continued to discuss me in warm tones, and it sort of felt like the opposite of what has caused me frustration lately. I was again being talked about in Korean, understanding only the gist of it. But the fact that it was two total strangers on the bus, who for a change seemed pleased with me as an American capitalizing off of their country's maybe unfortunate Western obsession, made it somehow a comforting experience.