Jean in South Korea

Life’s a sweet fruit.

In about a month I’ll be leaving for Vietnam for two weeks – I’ll be into Ho Chi Minh City and out of Hanoi, seeing multiple cities in between. And before then, I’ll be going to Busan, South Korea with my friend Alischa and Boryeong, South Korea for a festival that is called MudFest. I’m stoked.

And then one of my last weeks in Korea is Korean Thanksgiving – Chuseok and I have the entire week off. I’m going to Shanghai from Saturday to Saturday that week!!! Then, I come back to my Korean apartment, hang out on Sunday, go to work Monday and Tuesday and then fly out back home the next day. And somewhere before leaving I have to make it out to Jeju Island, one of the loveliest islands in Korea I’m told.

I’m so excited for everything: for Busan, for Boryeong, for Vietnam (!!!!), for Shanghai, for the rest of my time in South Korea, and for my (triumphant) return home.

It’s interesting how the American media focuses on the threat of North Korea more than the Korean news, I don’t really hear about it too much and the South Koreans don’t seem too concerned about it, or at least not any more than they have for the past 5 decades.

I also like that while Kim Jong Il is the the American news, more and more South Korean pop stars are becoming more popular in America. I just found out a little while ago that Rain, a very popular Korean singer/actor, won the “Biggest Badass” award at the American MTV Movie Awards. It’s interesting and makes me happy.  I just watched the newest Wonder Girls music video in English, “Two Different Tears,” and it definitely has potential to be a hit in the United States, if it isn’t already. I was shocked when I found out that Rain won the award because I didn’t know that Ninja Assassin was even popular in America and that Rain was becoming popular.

A few weeks ago I was reading an article in The Korean Times about how the South Korean ice skater, Yu-Na Kim, was going to start doing international promotional work for a company that makes and distributes Korean food. Maybe there will be a Korean restaurant on the East coast of the United States sooner rather than later. Which makes me happy because to be quite honest, a life without tteok pok ki, bibimbop, and kimbop is one not worth living.

Before  Lost premiered there had never been a scene with an Asian man kissing a woman on American television. Now, 5 years later or so, Rain is winning Biggest Badass and journalists are commenting on how so many American women find him attractive and the male in Shakira’s music video, “Did it Again,” is of Asian descent. I’m sure there are way more examples of this shift in Western perceptions of Asian men, which is pretty cool.

A few days ago my dad sent me a link to a BBC news piece about schools in Finland.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm

The piece discusses that even though Finnish students spend the least amount of time in school out of all of the countries in the industrialized world, Finnish schools are among the best in the world, often having the best test scores on international tests, or the second best to South Korea. Koreans, however, spend the most amount of time in school in the world and the Korean government wants to revamp the education system, according to another BBC piece (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8605789.stm). They want to make it less about memorization, creating “exam machines,” and more so about fostering imagination and ingenuity. I hope that happens. I really really hope that happens. I have students in the 3rd and 4th grade who are so creative and funny, along with being smart, and it’s sad to think that for some of them, that ingenuity may leave them as they spend more and more time studying over the next decade.

I really liked that the Korean government is taking this seriously, but I was disturbed by a similarity between the BBC piece on Korea and that on Finland. In both pieces, especially the one on Finland, the journalist placed an emphasis on education as a means of fostering a stronger economy in both countries. I understand that that is a goal of a country’s education system, but it shouldn’t be the only goal. I remember watching a lecture by British historian and comedian, Mark Steele, about the French Revolution. He said that one of the most radical ideas was that everyone had the right to be educated, and for no extrinsic purpose, like to better the national economy, but for the intrinsic benefit of knowledge and education; that everyone had the right to be educated because it gives people a fuller and richer life and human experience. Shouldn’t that be the purpose of education: to improve the overall quality of life? I understand that economic factors play into this, but the BBC piece didn’t say that a better education leads to better politicians, more informed voters, better doctors and teachers, a stronger sense of culture, more advanced science and literature, better music – it only talked about it’s benefit to the economy.

My bachelor’s is in history and without any other credentials, it doesn’t necessarily help me economically. I can get a job that requires that the applicant have a bachelor’s degree, but very few jobs are specifically looking for history majors. However, despite it’s lack of economic viability, I’m very satisfied with my degree. Through obtaining it, I learned so much about my own culture and society and Latin America’s. Because of my four years of studying history in college, I now have a better sense as to why the world is as it is today and I feel less disoriented than I would without those four years and that I feel made the four years of hard work worth it. And now that I’m out of college, what I learned will help me in any future career that I choose and I’ll be more equipped than if I didn’t have it.

I feel as though the purpose of school and knowledge should be to give the student more insight into the world around him or her and to encourage him or her to build on that knowledge. Yes, a country needs to consider economic concerns, but that shouldn’t be the only concern when said country is educating its youth.

So, it turns out that Japan is awesome.

Last Friday was a national holiday in Korea for Buddha’s Birthday and about a month or two beforehand, my friend Lauren and I thought why not go to Japan? We left last Thursday night after work and came back yesterday, Sunday, in the evening, and it turns out that Japan is pretty awesome.

Heeding the advice of many people, we stayed mostly in Kyoto, which was an excellent decision, but that’s not where this story starts, so we’ll get to Kyoto when we get there.

Before leaving, Lauren and I got a ton of awesome advice about Japan. My friend Danielle who studied abroad there and speaks Japanese sent me a 4 page e-mail that helped us to get around Japan, my friend Jose who was there for 2 weeks gave us a few recommendations, and different people who we know in Korea gave us bits and pieces that were extremely helpful. Almost everyone recommended Kyoto, saying that it’s an extremely historical city and most people’s image of Japan in based on Kyoto.

We arrived on Thursday night to the Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan and headed over to our hostel in Osaka that we were staying in for the first night. We got dinner from the convenience store, as it was late and there were no restaurants around that were still opened. We probably went to sleep somewhere between midnight and 1am, only to wake up around 6:30 to get ready to meet my friend in the city of Fuji. Two weeks ago in Taiwan I met a mountain guide from Tokyo named Tomo and Lauren and I met up with him and two of his friends in Fuji. They then drove us to Mount Ashitaka, a mountain right next to Mt Fuji – this time of year Mt. Fuji is still relatively snowy and only recommended for very experienced hikers, so Tomo took us to Mt. Ashitaka instead and it was really gorgeous. It was a clear day and the path, while occasionally steep, was a lot of fun.

Afterwards we walked around the park that the mountain is located in and then around 5:30 or so we parted ways and Lauren and I took the bus to Kyoto.

We found and checked into our hostel around 9 or 10PM and got dinner at a local restaurant. The food was amazing, though the portions were a little small. Lauren had sushi and I had vegetable and tofu tempura – tempura is essentially deep-fried food. After dinner we made it back to the hostel and crashed after making tentative plans for the next day.

The next morning we woke up early and had breakfast in the hostel. There we met a girl, Eunice, who was traveling alone. She had graduated from college in California the week before and was traveling throughout Japan until the next week when she would meet her family in Korea. Her parents are immigrants from Korea and her father works in California, but for the Korean company, Samsung. He was going to be given an award the following week in Korea and her entire family was going to Seoul for the ceremony, but she wanted to explore Japan first.

We invited Eunice to come along with us while we explored Kyoto. First we walked to two Buddhist temples near the hostel. The first one is famous because it features 1,000 hand carved statues of Buddha that are all about 5 feet and five inches, as well as an 11 foot statue of Buddha. It was incredible. Most of the statues were carved in the 13th century and they were so detailed. All of the statues had 42 arms. Each pair of arms were in different positions or holding different items, to represent the different ideas and beliefs of Buddhism.

Afterwards we walked to a temple that my friend recommended. This friend, Danielle, studied abroad in Japan a few years ago and she recommended that we go to the Kiyomizu Temple. To get there we had to walk through a mausoleum that was essentially a giant grave yard, but it was interesting because all of the tombstones were interesting and intricate. When we got there, we understood why Danielle recommended it – out of all of the Buddhist temples I have been to in Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, the Kiyomizu Temple so far has been my favorite. There are multiple buildings and they are all beautiful, intricate and pretty large. The temple features a few gardens and several shrines. While we were there, we saw a short play that was based on ancient Japanese Buddhist rituals and the people participating in it were wearing traditional Japanese clothing and a few of the men held kitana swords.

Lauren and I noticed that while Korean Buddhist temples are usually either darker colors or are blue and pink, Japanese temples are often bright orange. It’s interesting to see how one religion developed differently in so many different countries – not just in terms of the color of the temples, but what the temples emphasize and how the culture of each country influenced how Buddhism was practiced in that country.

After spending a couple of hours between the two temples, we felt “templed out” and took the subway to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. My dad recommended this because a friend of his who was a landscaper based a lot of his ideas on the gardens he saw in Kyoto and I can see why. The garden we went to was huge and featured traditional Japanese and European style gardens. A lot of the flowers were in bloom fortunately and it was really beautiful.

Afterwards, we took the subway to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is a Shinto shrine in Kyoto that is made up of 10,000 bright orange arches. All of the arches have Japanese inscriptions on them and are well maintained, though several are very old. We couldn’t walk through all 10,000 of them, but we got through a lot of them and along the way saw multiple Shinto shrines.

After this, we decided to go to downtown Kyoto for dinner. The area was nice, though oddly enough Lauren really wanted sushi and we had trouble finding a sushi restaurant, which you wouldn’t expect in Japan. We wound up finding a restaurant eventually and I got tempura again, and it was quite delicious.

Unfortunately, after dinner Eunice was feeling tired so she returned to the hostel and Lauren and I walked around for a bit longer. We sat near the subway station for awhile because a street band was performing there. Then we walked around and walked towards what looked like another temple, but it turned out it was a park. There, we met four or five graduate students from New Orleans who were on a school trip to Japan for two weeks. We hung out with them for about two hours and left just in time to catch the last subway back to the hostel.

The next morning Lauren and I woke up and decided to spend the morning in Kyoto Station. We had to catch the airport bus in the morning and another friend of mine who had been to Japan recommended spending some time in the station because the architecture is amazing, and it really is. The building looks modern and efficient, but not cold and spiritless either. It’s a huge and really interesting station. We got breakfast at a restaurant there and walked around for awhile. It worked out especially because while it had been sunny every other day we were in Japan, it was pouring on Sunday morning.

Later on, we got on the airport bus and got on the plane back home. It was an amazing trip, but it was nice getting home. It’s interesting to see how Korea and Japan are similar, yet different. I felt that from what I saw, Koreans are a little more anxious than Japanese people and it was nice not getting pushed while getting in and off of the subway, like in Seoul. Lauren and I realized that we were comparing Japan and Korea and that most of these comparisons were in Japan’s favor, but then again we realized that we have been in Korea for eight months and we only spent three days in Japan; we’ve had much much more time to learn about Korea and have a more complex understanding of Korean culture than we do about Japanese culture obviously. Neither of the two cultures is better or worse than the other, just different and it was cool to experience the differences, along with the similarities.

At times the amount of material my co-teacher and I are supposed to cover in a single period feels overwhelming. Last semester, we had to use a text book for every class, now we use both a text book and a work book. I think that it helps most of the 6th grade classes we teach, and possibly 5th grade ones too, who were often bored, but it definitely makes the 4th grade classes feel overwhelming. I don’t think it’s too much knowledge for a single 40-minute increment, but that it is too many activities to complete in that amount of time. I often feel that while it may be helping the best students in the classes, it is just really hurting those who aren’t as good at English, putting them further behind and making them more confused as we have to spend less time on each individual activity in order to make time for all of them.

Definitely as of now, my 3rd grade classes are my favorite. I think that’s partially my own temperment, but partially because I feel as though the standards are the most reasonable. We don’t have to get through an overwhelming amount of activities, like with the 4th graders and the kids don’t feel as overwhelmed, and the activities are all age appropriate. I really don’t like the fact that the format for the 3rd-6th graders is identical, just with different material. A good portion of the periods consist of a dialogue with the new vocabulary, a listen and repeat section with some of the new vocabulary or expressions, sometimes a song or chant (the 5th and 6th graders, and often the 4th graders, are way way way too old for this), and a game.

Just to give some background information, English elementary school teachers in Korea have to follow a curriculum set up by the government for every single day of the class – there is no flexibility at all. The curriculum often seems to assume that the kids are perfect and well-behaved, when really they are 8-12 year olds, so of course they’re not. Speaking of which, today my co-teacher  was complaining about the 3rd graders talking a lot and I wanted to say, “Yeah, they were acting like a bunch of 8 year olds.”

There are a lot of great things in Korean schools and a lot of what I’m complaining about I think are also problems in the United States, but I really don’t know because I’ve never worked in an American school. One big difference is the value placed on education in Korea and how parents often make their childrens’ education their number one financial priority. It’s hard to imagine Korean parents fighting to lower their school budget, like what often happens in America. It’s not a coincidence that the countries that have shown staggering economic improvement highly value public education. In the years since many of these countries that value education have seen their economies expand dramatically, public schools in the United States have often seen budget cuts.

Many Americans completely disbelieve that maybe one day, possibly one day in our lifetimes, the United States won’t be the world power, even though it’s happening as we speak. We completely don’t believe it, while cutting back public education, both K-12 and public universities. The Korean education system is not perfect, but maybe Koreans are concerned about the educational system here and are voicing their concerns and one day that will change, but what won’t change is the value that the society places on education.