so this is the new year

I've been getting snippets from my host mother and co-teacher about the new principal who started in March. I haven't gotten much of an impression of him directly since he speaks zero English, though I did have a nice attempted conversation with him once, while I sat in his office with a cup of green tea trying to make chit chat. He'd called me in to meet the foreigner who teaches over at Maesan Boys' High School, and then the foreigner (a New Zealander named Greg) left and I sat there and had to finish my tea. The conversation consisted of the Principal (his rank takes such precedence that I don't even know his name) speaking to me somewhat at length in Korean and me responding with awkward smiles and a mangled, "I'm studying Korean at the university."

Anyway, what I've been hearing is that this new principal is a bit more of a stickler than the last one. "Not generous," is how my co-teacher described him yesterday when she had to go ask him for permission for me to go to Seoul to meet my mother instead of sticking around for finals (which I don't typically administer--luckily he let me go). I know that back in March the teachers were somewhat displeased that a teacher from Maesan Boys' High School had been appointed our principal, as opposed to someone within our own ranks. Tensions have risen a little now that we see he's also somewhat reform-minded. He got the English teachers in a bit of a stir by suggesting that they all co-teach my classes with me, like they do over at Maesan Boys'. He's ordered the trees trimmed back in the yard, and even told one of the English teachers that he had to stop coming to school in hiking gear. That might seem strange, but keep in mind that hiking gear in Korea is a full-on uniform, not just any old clothes: black lycra pants and a windbreaker, usually red for some reason. It's not like this teacher just rolls out of bed and this is the most convenient thing for him. I mean, I don't know precisely why he likes wearing hiking gear, but he's not doing it out of laziness--and in general somewhat casual clothes seem to fly at my school, or used to. (Or in my case, business casual clothes that still manage to be unkempt get me through).

This new strictness made me nervous this afternoon when I let a class out of a few minutes early and, despite their careful creeping, heads kept below the level of the hall windows, they were still detected rushing down the hall to get into the cafeteria ahead of everyone else (Maybe it was the giggles and pattering feet that gave them away).

I forgot about my anxiety after I ate lunch myself and then strolled out into the sun. A clutch of girls, I'm not sure which class, were standing on the outer stairwell. A few of them had been standing there since the previous period, holding their arms over their heads as punishment for I don't know what. The girls waved. The ones with their arms in the air turned and waved their arms. When I circled back, returning from the little school store, the Vice Principal was scolding them for letting their arms drop. They stood still with little smiles, facing away from him. It seems like the schoolgirl tactic at my school, is that if you are caught misbehaving, you act like nothing's happened and hope that the authority figure just goes away.

I sat in the sun on the bench beneath the trees and ate a popcicle. Spring really has arrived.

the weekend circuit

Not too much is new here. The new week is getting underway and trucking along nicely. I'll have a little more breathing room this week because my Korean teacher at the University canceled our class today, and because final exams are looming I won't have an evening class on Thursday. I'm actually done with classes today already, but I'm hanging around because my co-teacher is taking me to the bank in a couple periods. I'm finally getting around to getting a new ATM card after my wallet was stolen. Though actually, I've been doing pretty well without a bank card. I don't think I've made any withdrawls since the first week of March. My school pays me in cash for my evening teaching, I got an excessive stipend to cover my Jeju trip, and my host mother has been slipping me gifts of cash in thanks for my frequent tutoring of my host sisters, so I've been doing pretty well in keeping money in my pocket for traveling and such. Since I hope to save a substantial amount of money by July, it's nice to know I won't need to touch the money in my Korean bank account for awhile.

I did have to borrow some cash from my host mother when I took my trip to Gwangju last weekend though. It was a good trip. On Friday afternoon I took the train an hour and a half north to Jeonju, where I met Joanne for lunch and then visited her afternoon club class. It was good to see her, and actually a lot of fun to visit her class. Since the weather was wonderful that day, Joanne devised a lesson where her students (high school boys) would have to participate in an English conversation and if they paused for too long, their peers could throw a water balloon at them. I ended up being the sort of catalyst for the lesson, as each boy had to converse with me for a minute. I was impressed with the level of her class. They all did quite well. No water balloon were broken until the period ended and a free for all ensued. Her students seemed to be a higher level than mine, but I wonder what results I might get too if I added a water balloon to the equation.

Friday night Joanne and I went down to Gwangju to meet up with some other ETAs. It was Tanya's birthday, and we had dinner at this great Thai place, then did a little of the typical bar hopping. Strangely enough, I ran into Mr. Chae, the stalker, at one of the bars. I knew he took trips to Gwangju but it was an odd coincidence that we ended up in the same bar. I went and sat at his table and asked him again for my wallet back. He gave me his typical denial, then offered to buy me a drink, which I of course refused. A few moments later he was scurrying out the door again. I have to admit I take some sadistic pleasure in seeing how uncomfortable I make him. The tables have turned, it seems. But next time I see him I think I'll just ignore him. It's pretty clear he either can't or won't return my wallet at this point, and though I've always been calm and civil when talking to him, if I keep bothering him, he might decide to retaliate in some way.

Anyway, I had a good time drinking and talking with the girls, and exploring the city a little on Saturday. The weather was great all day Friday and Saturday. On Saturday I actually walked around in short sleeves for a little while. Sunday, the weather wasn't as clear but it was still warm. I returned to Suncheon Saturday night and on Sunday went to Gurye to see a pressed flower exhibition--essentially a bunch of 'paintings' made from dried flowers and other plant matter. They were really impressive. We spent a few hours there. A woman involved with the exhibition was excited about getting foreigners to attend and even had a shuttle bus for a bunch of us between Suncheon University and the exhibit, so about 25 foreigners from Suncheon went.

I've had less time for reading this semester, but I have been keeping up on it. Since the Jeju conference I've finished The William Saroyan Reader, Dead Man Walking, The Color Purple, and an anthology of Modern Korean Literature (all borrowed from other ETAs). I recently started Middlemarch by George Eliot, which I'm liking. I was unduly excited the other day when Seo Young gave me the 5th Harry Potter book which she'd borrowed from her school's library, knowing I'd been trying to get my hands on a copy. Sometimes there are real perks to having host sisters.

Cherry blossoms

Though it's only Wednesday, today is my last work day of the week. On top of that, this morning I found that the various tests that had been scheduled for today corresponded exactly with the three periods of classes I usually have on Wednesday. Except for the fact that I have to be picked up from school at 5 pm for my volunteer session at SOS, I essentially have today off.

I just got back from a walk and lunch. The peak time for the cherry blossoms is already almost over; the trees have begun to drop their petals. I had hoped to pay a visit to one of the special cherry blossom sites nearby, like Ssangeysa temple, but because I'm so busy it's been difficult to find a time.

As much as I would have liked to see the trees in Ssangeysa, in some ways it seems excessive. The cherry blossom season is a brief ten days or so, but every day this week I've been viewing the trees. They're everywhere in Suncheon, foreground and background. There are young ones on the street near our apartment in Yeohyangdong. There are great, tall old ones on the mountain behind my school, where I just took a walk. All of them have pale pink or white blossoms. It seems almost gaudy, inappropriate in some way, when I look at the mountain in the middle of town which has yet to shed its shabby winter coat of leafless trees and austere evergreens, and here and there a bright spreading of branches stands out like a cluster of feathers.

Still, I'm tempted, with these four hours to kill ahead of me, to walk down to the river and take the walking path, this time in the opposite direction from the bay. I want to stand underneath the pink trees and look up into their branches, so that all I see is pink. I want to see it, concentrated, before it goes away for the rest of the year.

In Japan I remember Naoko, Elliot's sister in law, talking about springtime in Seattle and saying how surprised she was to see the cherry blossoms last so long. At Reed, the circle of cherry trees at the center of campus bloomed for a couple weeks at least. It was beautiful, but we still looked forward to when the petals would begin to drop and we could have our own 'flower-blossom viewing' with free sushi for everyone. I wonder why trees blossom for so short a time in Korea and Japan, compared to the States. I'd like to see the petals against the background of green leaves, but it doesn't seem possible here. The petals are gone before the tree's leaves even sprout.

Tomorrow is 'Picnic Day,' basically a day when all the different homerooms go on different fieldtrips. My host mother checked to see if anyone was going to Ssangeysa, for my sake, but told me this morning that one of the first grade classes is taking a trip to Daegu, a city a little further north that I haven't visited yet. It'll be a long trip, from 7:30 am to 8:30 pm, but I can't really pass up the opportunity. I had been thinking about going to the river tomorrow in lieu of Ssangeysa. Maybe I'll just go right now. It's beautiful and sunny out. I can see the trees lining the river from the entrance gate of the school. It seems fated. I even brought my camera to school with me today.

And he ran away...

I've had at least four dreams so far involving either finding my wallet or confronting the strange man who I am convinced took it. The most recent one was Saturday night. In the dream I saw the strange man hanging around outside my school. He was leaning against a railing outside the main entrance, grinning in an obnoxious way, and ignoring the teachers and adminstrators who were telling him to leave. I felt momentarily nervous about his presence, then realized that I wanted to confront him. I strode out there and asked for my wallet back. He denied taking it, with a sort of blank, surprised, almost scared expression on his face. I shrugged, then yelled at him to never come back to the school again. At this point I was leaning over him and he was literally crumpling into the ground. I turned to leave, then called over my shoulder that he should leave the ETA at Suncheon Girl's High School alone, too (I learned at the Jeju conference that last week another ETA in Suncheon had run into him on a bus and that he'd come to her school twice in the same week--this was the week following his theft of my wallet).

Sunday afternoon I ended up re-enacting the dream in reality. The owner of the Jung-ang Bookstore, the bookstore where the Korean lessons for foreigners take place, called my host mother and said that the strange man, Mr. Chae/Choi, had appeared. I was actually still in bed, but I splashed some water on my face, got dressed and we drove there. I walked into the bookstore and saw him over in a corner reading a magazine. I walked over and he looked up at me with an expression that I can only describe as one of fear and dread, even though I smiled and greeted him politely.

I said, "I think you have my wallet."

He said, "I don't know."

I said, "You were the only one who could have taken it. You were sitting by my things for a long time and then my wallet was gone."

He said, "No. Wallet, I don't know."

His English was much worse than usual, from nervousness I think. I calmly kept on, but he kept denying it. Then he tried to say something about being interested in San Francisco and how his best friend was American and why would he take it? But he was acting so guilty I wasn't dissuaded. For someone who is very good at completely ignoring polite social cues, for him to act so unhappy to see me after he'd pursued some kind of friendship with me so persistently, there had to be some significant reason for the change (me being somewhat rude to him that night I saw him wasn't enough for him to act so uncomfortable upon seeing me).

Finally I just said, "Fine. Please bring the wallet here to the bookstore or back to my school." Then I turned around and left.

The reality differed from the dream in a few ways, but in both cases I walked away feeling completely in control and somewhat vindicated. The bookstore owner told us later that the man disappeared from the store immediately after my host mother and I left. The police haven't gotten back to us yet about their progress, and I don't know if they'll be able to accomplish anything, but if Mr. Chae flees at the sight of me, I'll be pretty satisfied.

Ahhhh...

It's Friday and I'm very happy.

It's also the beginning of the second month of the semester. March went fast. I feel much more relaxed at the moment for some reason. Maybe because I just had a nice weekend in Jeju for the Fulbright conference, but also because I have less deadlines and worries at the moment. The first month was hectic and I had lots of little things to keep tabs on. Right now I'm relatively stress-free. I have to remember to go to Yeosu airport this week and pay for the plane tickets for Mom and I for Jeju in May, but that's the only thing sort of dangling over me at the moment.

So yes, the conference in Jeju was great. It was good to see other ETAs and I did have a few requisite moments of 'I wish I'd gotten to know you better, and now we only have three months left and you live four hours away.' We only had one full day of actual workshops, so the rest of the weekend through Tuesday afternoon was just sightseeing and hanging out. I'm looking forward to going back to Jeju Island in May with Mom. She's coming in just three weeks.

The weather has also been great lately. It's suddenly pretty warm. I've graduated out of my puffy winter coat and if this keeps up I'll be graduating out of my slightly lighter coat as well (if you know me well you know I get cold easily, so this is saying a lot). All the trees are in bloom now, too. I found out this morning I have a four day weekend next weekend so I may try to go to Ssangeysa temple on Thursday. They have a famous road lined with cherry trees, and of course it really overflows during the peak times, but the 14th will be sort of the end of the peak times and a weekday as well, so it might be a good time to go. In any case, I don't get four day weekends very often at all, so I should take advantage of it.

What other news? A couple days ago I went to SOS for my volunteer work as I do every week and it went well. I devised a new game to play (a sort of variation on the old memory game Concentration) and the classes went smoothly, even though I think the game was a little too difficult for the youngest ones. Another highlight was that Ha Young, who is a first grader in middle school now, showed up again. I think I hadn't seen him in about four months. He was the student that used to ride back to my neighborhood with me because he went to hagwon in Yeonhyang-dong. He's pretty good at English and pretty talkative. He went to England for an English program back before my winter break even started, thus the extended absence. On Wednesday, he immediately tried to fool me into thinking he was a new student. It almost worked, too. I wonder if he knew how different he looked. He'd gotten taller and slimmer and I think maybe even his voice sounded different, though maybe that's my memory playing tricks on me because his voice seemed higher to me and that seems counterintuitive. But the sly smiles he kept shooting my way and his way of calling me "Teacher" gave it away. It was nice to see him again. I think I've been feeling closer to all my students this semester. Maybe part of it is I've gotten a bit more comfortable in the classroom (though I'm not necessarily a better teacher for it). I will miss these kids when I leave this summer. I need to remember to bring my camera to school and to SOS once it gets fixed.

Tonight I'm going to relax and read and maybe rent one of the Korean movies I've been meaning to watch. "Oldboy" has been getting a lot of acclaim internationally, I've been trying to rent it here but it's always out. Cheers to the "Korean wave" of pop culture reaching America.