Assholes
I've had a visitor for the last few days so I haven't had much time to maintain the old web log. The weekend and the beginning of the new week were full of excitement. I have a couple pictures, videos and stories to share, so check back the next few days because I plan on sharing some if it with you all.
I'll get to the weekend adventures tomorrow, but tonight I want to tell you about a little cultural thing that I just learned about a little bit ago. It is such an integral part of my daily life that it baffles me that I have been ununderstanding (learned that word from one of my students) it ever since I arrived.
When I first arrived, I learned how to greet people and how to say goodbye. I learned some of the accepted and expected body language cues to look for and offer up. For example, I always bow to parents when I meet them and then they bow back. Even though I may not be able to fully articulate a level of proper respect for elders upon first meeting them, this conveys everything I need to say in a simple gesture.
So even though I felt like I had mastered the art of greeting Koreans, I was still lacking in a major department: when I greeted children. Since I work in a school and the majority of the human beings I know on this continent are children, I find myself greeting children on a pretty regular basis. Some children occassionally bow to me, some wave, some say, "Hi," some say "Annyong" in a mocking tone, some stick their tongues out at me or make another funny face, some ask me to buy them food, some call me "Kyle Teacher," and some just ignore me when I say hello. I may not have perfected the children greeting, but kids are fickle bitches and I figured I had gotten as good at the task as I ever would.
But there was one thing that started to get to me a little bit.
The bell rings and I allow a line of kids to head to the bus and I head to the teachers' lounge. As I saunter through the hall, weaving through leaving students and students making their way to class, I make eye contact with a sweet and smiley 10-year-old girl. Her English is fluent due to her year spent living in Canada and after teaching her for awhile I feel like we have a pretty strong bond, both as teacher-student and just simply as friends. I know her well and am excited to see her smiling face. I see that she is studying and, at the risk of disturbing her, I say hello and nudge her arm. She looks at me with a deadpan stare and shakes her head back and forth. It reminds me of a look I used to get as a young boy when my mother would catch me with a taut rubber band in my hand about to snap my sister in the face in the middle of a silent church. The countenance is not pleasent and the head shaking makes it worse. The first time my jovial salutation was met with this morose response I was shocked. Then the shock turned to emmbarrassment and then guilt - not the normal range of emotion one usually feels when greeting their students.
The first time it happened, I thought it was a one-time occurrence and I had done something else to piss this girl off. But then it happened again and again with some regularity. It even happened a couple times in public when I saw kids with their parents on the street.
It is hard to explain what it is like to get a look of disdain and disappointment from a kindergartener. Especially with the emphasis on respecting elders in Asia, I was blown away each time this happened.
To my surprise (and to be honest, somewhat delight) I found out through a drunken conversation that I was not the only foriegner to get the stink-eye from the Korean children. My co-workers were equally as baffled as I at the way the kids felt comfortable mocking our greetings with a head shake and a stare. The same conversation reappeared at the office and one of our Korean co-teachers overheard and giggled a little bit. She explained to us that it is an equivalent of the hand wave. Just as the hand goes back and forth in a familiar western greeting, the Korean head going back and forth can sometimes signal a hello. It seems to only be kids, and usually kids who are too lazy to lift their hand or open their mouth to say hello (or smile!) but I now see that it is pretty accepted gesture. It is not meant as any disrespect, but for well over a year I had been taking it as a slap in the face.
So there you have it, I feel like I've been living in Seoul forever and I am pretty acclimated to what is going on around me, but I didn't learn how to wave until a few weeks ago.
I'm gonna upload some stuff to youtube and see if I can figure out how to link it to this page and I'll do a nice posting about eating bugs tomorrow. Here's a little teaser from the weekend. WE checked out an art gallery on Sunday in Insadong that had some weird art. All of the titles were the names of popular music and Pearl Jam was blaring over the stereo, but the constant theme running through all of the pieces was genitals. This was a big picture of a bunch of differnet asshole paintings. Thought this was a good metaphor for my life in Korea: surrounded by assholes...
Much love from Seoul
I'll get to the weekend adventures tomorrow, but tonight I want to tell you about a little cultural thing that I just learned about a little bit ago. It is such an integral part of my daily life that it baffles me that I have been ununderstanding (learned that word from one of my students) it ever since I arrived.
When I first arrived, I learned how to greet people and how to say goodbye. I learned some of the accepted and expected body language cues to look for and offer up. For example, I always bow to parents when I meet them and then they bow back. Even though I may not be able to fully articulate a level of proper respect for elders upon first meeting them, this conveys everything I need to say in a simple gesture.
So even though I felt like I had mastered the art of greeting Koreans, I was still lacking in a major department: when I greeted children. Since I work in a school and the majority of the human beings I know on this continent are children, I find myself greeting children on a pretty regular basis. Some children occassionally bow to me, some wave, some say, "Hi," some say "Annyong" in a mocking tone, some stick their tongues out at me or make another funny face, some ask me to buy them food, some call me "Kyle Teacher," and some just ignore me when I say hello. I may not have perfected the children greeting, but kids are fickle bitches and I figured I had gotten as good at the task as I ever would.
But there was one thing that started to get to me a little bit.
The bell rings and I allow a line of kids to head to the bus and I head to the teachers' lounge. As I saunter through the hall, weaving through leaving students and students making their way to class, I make eye contact with a sweet and smiley 10-year-old girl. Her English is fluent due to her year spent living in Canada and after teaching her for awhile I feel like we have a pretty strong bond, both as teacher-student and just simply as friends. I know her well and am excited to see her smiling face. I see that she is studying and, at the risk of disturbing her, I say hello and nudge her arm. She looks at me with a deadpan stare and shakes her head back and forth. It reminds me of a look I used to get as a young boy when my mother would catch me with a taut rubber band in my hand about to snap my sister in the face in the middle of a silent church. The countenance is not pleasent and the head shaking makes it worse. The first time my jovial salutation was met with this morose response I was shocked. Then the shock turned to emmbarrassment and then guilt - not the normal range of emotion one usually feels when greeting their students.
The first time it happened, I thought it was a one-time occurrence and I had done something else to piss this girl off. But then it happened again and again with some regularity. It even happened a couple times in public when I saw kids with their parents on the street.
It is hard to explain what it is like to get a look of disdain and disappointment from a kindergartener. Especially with the emphasis on respecting elders in Asia, I was blown away each time this happened.
To my surprise (and to be honest, somewhat delight) I found out through a drunken conversation that I was not the only foriegner to get the stink-eye from the Korean children. My co-workers were equally as baffled as I at the way the kids felt comfortable mocking our greetings with a head shake and a stare. The same conversation reappeared at the office and one of our Korean co-teachers overheard and giggled a little bit. She explained to us that it is an equivalent of the hand wave. Just as the hand goes back and forth in a familiar western greeting, the Korean head going back and forth can sometimes signal a hello. It seems to only be kids, and usually kids who are too lazy to lift their hand or open their mouth to say hello (or smile!) but I now see that it is pretty accepted gesture. It is not meant as any disrespect, but for well over a year I had been taking it as a slap in the face.
So there you have it, I feel like I've been living in Seoul forever and I am pretty acclimated to what is going on around me, but I didn't learn how to wave until a few weeks ago.
I'm gonna upload some stuff to youtube and see if I can figure out how to link it to this page and I'll do a nice posting about eating bugs tomorrow. Here's a little teaser from the weekend. WE checked out an art gallery on Sunday in Insadong that had some weird art. All of the titles were the names of popular music and Pearl Jam was blaring over the stereo, but the constant theme running through all of the pieces was genitals. This was a big picture of a bunch of differnet asshole paintings. Thought this was a good metaphor for my life in Korea: surrounded by assholes...
Much love from Seoul
posted by Kyle at 12:35 AM
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