On Saying Goodbye
Today is Friday, and during my afternoon free period, I open Google maps on my classroom computer. Over the past three nights, I dreamt that I was back in the United States. Flat, gray lines wind across a two-dimensional New Canaan, marking the quiet streets. The town looks both tiny and spacious, the lines uncrowded and interrupted by large patches of light green, representing parks filled with trees.
In Oberlin, I try out street view. Google now has a 360 feature where you're no longer looking at photos pasted together, but instead, you can look around and up at the sky as if you're really there. It's a sunny day in early fall, and the sky above Tappan Square is a perfect, cloudless blue. I click my way over to the Science Center. People are grouped on the sidewalk, waiting to cross the street between classes. Two students with blurred faces perch on bikes, and one looks up with a frozen wave at the camera. I wonder if I would recognize any of them in person, but I'm not sure. The Oberlin in my memories is moving, filled with sunshine, rain, snow, mud, and people I love. I move away and glance at a map of Austin, wondering how different it'll feel when I'm back.
"Hello Teacher!!" A student bursts through the front door and hovers near my desk to chat with me before class starts. I close the map and ask her about her day.
Teachers often give off the impression that they love all their students equally, like parents with children. But my last class on Friday is definitely my favorite. "Teacher! You glow!" Someone shouts from the back. "You shine!" "Teacher, oh! So beautiful!" In any other context (or country), I would see this as an embarrassingly obvious attempt to win me over. But with these girls, they seem to take genuine pleasure in shouting praise. The compliments are relentless. When I do my usual countdown to get them all quiet, they join in like a chorus, stopping after "one" in complete silence. Today, we are finishing one-on-one speaking tests, and the students eagerly shuffle to the front of the classroom as I start the second half of Matilda.
With 480 students, it's taken me nearly a month to finish the speaking tests. The prompt is simple: Tell me about your semester. You can talk about anything.
A few different topics come up. One student talks about her new puppy, and another tells me about making a best friend. Unsurprisingly, a lot of students talk about stress. "Teacher, I'm so tired these days," or "I study hard, but I got a bad grade on the first big test." In one class, a student tells me about arguing with her mom. "I want to study, but I don't do well. So my mom and I are fighting..." She pauses, and tears are now dripping from her eyes as she looks at me. I am about to ask if she needs a moment, but she continues talking, simultaneously crying and articulately hammering through the remainder of the two minute test. The student after her cries too.
Out of all the tests, five students cry in front of me. One tells me about how her mother got sick, but she couldn't visit her because she lives in the school dormitory (where the top students stay) and she had to study. "Mom is better," she sighs. "So it's all okay now." I'm stunned. All I can offer them is hugs and fiercest encouragement I can muster. "You are so much more than a number," I say. But in the continual pressure to perform, I can only hope that the message might stick.
Another student, one who likes to borrow YA books from my class and always asks for more time to read, tells me about getting sick from the cafeteria food. Her stomach is sensitive, but her parents make her eat the school food because she lives in the dormitory. "My stomach hurts," she clutches it with one hand, "I don't eat enough." After the test is over, she doesn't want a hug, but she does accept a choco pie that I slip to her at the end of class. I wish it was made of iron.
Some students tell me they like my class, and one of my first graders says that she didn't want to come to Wonkwang Girl's High School until she read an article about me in the local newspaper. The next class, a girl tells me that she didn't like English until she went to my English camp on Memorial Day, and this completely catches me off guard. My only goal for that day was for it to not be a catastrophe.
I finish the speaking tests with a little time leftover to watch Matilda with my students. The movie ends perfectly, the credits rolling right as the bell rings. My students shout a few more compliments as they stream out the doors on either end of the classroom. One girl pops her head back into the door frame. "I love you!" she shouts, and I laugh. This would never happen in an American high school, no matter how good a teacher is.
After class, I sit at my desk, thinking about the inevitable: I have to go to the post office by myself to mail a package of stuff home. I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, muttering to myself, "Okay, I'll go. I'll go. I'll go. I'll go." This is why Korea is hard.
I put everything into a small suitcase and pull it over to the post office, amid a few curious looks on the street. When I get there, I take a numbered slip and wait for my turn. "꾸러미 주새요." (I want a package, please.) I point to my suitcase. The attendant at the counter asks where I'm sending it. "미국," I say. I am momentarily proud of myself before she says something I don't understand at all. I stare at her. She pretends to spray her face with an imaginary bottle. "What...? I don't need face spray, thanks."
She looks at me. She sprays her face again. I feel like an infant.
There's a voice behind me, "Teacher, can I help you?" Turning around, I see one of my students whose face I recognize but name I can't remember. She's slightly shorter than me, with braces and big, brown eyes. "Is it okay for me to help you?"
"Wow, yes. Please!" I thank her profusely, my new post office goddess saving me in this time of routine crisis.
"She's asking if you have any cosmetics in your bag."
We move my belongings to the corner where boxes become packages. There's a table with rolls of tape lined up, stacks of crisp KoreaPost cardboard, bubble wrap, and an assistant to put everything together. Opening the suitcase, we transfer its contents to plastic bags stuffed inside the box. Hiking boots, a yellow scarf from a gift exchange, my winter coat, and large, knit sweaters spill from the edges. My student folds a flannel pajama shirt and gently places it next to some wool socks that were once soaked with rain. All that's left in the suitcase is a pair of contacts and a spare toothbrush. "Those can stay," I say.
The whole process takes about fifteen minutes, and in the end, costs less than 40 U.S. dollars. When we walk outside, heat is still wafting up from the concrete even though the afternoon sun has gone.
"Teacher, my name is 서현."
"Seo Hyun," I repeat, exposed.
"But you can call me by my English name, Jenny!" She smiles.
"No! No, I can use your Korean name.. Sun Kyeong?"
"Seo Hyun. But really, I like Jenny!"
God Katherine, get it together. I feel extremely white right now.
We walk down the sidewalk and across the street - we say goodbye, and then realize that we're both going in the same direction. Through some slightly stilted small talk, I discover that she lived in the U.S. when she was a little kid. She likes New York bagels, she tells me, and I almost stop in my tracks. Seo Hyun asks me about my favorite Korean foods, and I ask her about hers. "Do you know 컵밥 (cup-bap)?" I don't. "Teacher, are you doing anything right now...?"
So Seo Hyun and I and my rolling suitcase make our way over to a hole in the wall restaurant near the school. Two ajummas sit behind steaming pans of 떡볶이(tteokbokki), and they praise my ability to read Korean as I order two cups of rice mixed with kimchi, American cheese, and tuna. Seo Hyun tries to pay before I reach my card over her, and the two women smile. "진짜 예쁘다." Really pretty.
There are four low wooden tables, and Seo Hyun and I sit on the floor next to the white, papered wall. It's covered in words and drawings, messages left from students, and groups of friends who initialed their names. Seo Hyun hands me a pen, and I hesitate. Seo Hyun and Katherine were here, 2017, I write in small, black letters. Smiling, she takes the pen and writes the same message in Korean. Over our rice and tteokbokki, we talk about her favorite classes and where she wants to travel in the future. I try to think of a mental list of topics in case the conversation runs dry, but it doesn't. Instead, she shifts to questions about New York City and Donald Trump, about places I've traveled to and why I decided to come to Korea. I answer honestly. "I just wanted to experience another culture for a year, and teaching was a good opportunity for it." Seo Hyun nods and seems to understand this. It doesn't follow the typical script of being intrigued by Korea or passionate about students, but she smiles anyway.
After dinner, the two of us meander down the narrow street next to the school. "I'm going this way," and I point up the hill that leads to my apartment. There's a lot of thanking back and forth before Seo Hyun sighs and says, "Okay. Well, goodbye Teacher. I will remember this!"
"Me too."
We both start walking in different directions, and she turns around and shouts goodbye one more time, waving vigorously before disappearing behind a fence. I look at the empty space for a moment before I continue up the road, dragging my empty suitcase that will soon follow me home.
In Oberlin, I try out street view. Google now has a 360 feature where you're no longer looking at photos pasted together, but instead, you can look around and up at the sky as if you're really there. It's a sunny day in early fall, and the sky above Tappan Square is a perfect, cloudless blue. I click my way over to the Science Center. People are grouped on the sidewalk, waiting to cross the street between classes. Two students with blurred faces perch on bikes, and one looks up with a frozen wave at the camera. I wonder if I would recognize any of them in person, but I'm not sure. The Oberlin in my memories is moving, filled with sunshine, rain, snow, mud, and people I love. I move away and glance at a map of Austin, wondering how different it'll feel when I'm back.
"Hello Teacher!!" A student bursts through the front door and hovers near my desk to chat with me before class starts. I close the map and ask her about her day.
Teachers often give off the impression that they love all their students equally, like parents with children. But my last class on Friday is definitely my favorite. "Teacher! You glow!" Someone shouts from the back. "You shine!" "Teacher, oh! So beautiful!" In any other context (or country), I would see this as an embarrassingly obvious attempt to win me over. But with these girls, they seem to take genuine pleasure in shouting praise. The compliments are relentless. When I do my usual countdown to get them all quiet, they join in like a chorus, stopping after "one" in complete silence. Today, we are finishing one-on-one speaking tests, and the students eagerly shuffle to the front of the classroom as I start the second half of Matilda.
With 480 students, it's taken me nearly a month to finish the speaking tests. The prompt is simple: Tell me about your semester. You can talk about anything.
A few different topics come up. One student talks about her new puppy, and another tells me about making a best friend. Unsurprisingly, a lot of students talk about stress. "Teacher, I'm so tired these days," or "I study hard, but I got a bad grade on the first big test." In one class, a student tells me about arguing with her mom. "I want to study, but I don't do well. So my mom and I are fighting..." She pauses, and tears are now dripping from her eyes as she looks at me. I am about to ask if she needs a moment, but she continues talking, simultaneously crying and articulately hammering through the remainder of the two minute test. The student after her cries too.
Out of all the tests, five students cry in front of me. One tells me about how her mother got sick, but she couldn't visit her because she lives in the school dormitory (where the top students stay) and she had to study. "Mom is better," she sighs. "So it's all okay now." I'm stunned. All I can offer them is hugs and fiercest encouragement I can muster. "You are so much more than a number," I say. But in the continual pressure to perform, I can only hope that the message might stick.
Another student, one who likes to borrow YA books from my class and always asks for more time to read, tells me about getting sick from the cafeteria food. Her stomach is sensitive, but her parents make her eat the school food because she lives in the dormitory. "My stomach hurts," she clutches it with one hand, "I don't eat enough." After the test is over, she doesn't want a hug, but she does accept a choco pie that I slip to her at the end of class. I wish it was made of iron.
Some students tell me they like my class, and one of my first graders says that she didn't want to come to Wonkwang Girl's High School until she read an article about me in the local newspaper. The next class, a girl tells me that she didn't like English until she went to my English camp on Memorial Day, and this completely catches me off guard. My only goal for that day was for it to not be a catastrophe.
I finish the speaking tests with a little time leftover to watch Matilda with my students. The movie ends perfectly, the credits rolling right as the bell rings. My students shout a few more compliments as they stream out the doors on either end of the classroom. One girl pops her head back into the door frame. "I love you!" she shouts, and I laugh. This would never happen in an American high school, no matter how good a teacher is.
After class, I sit at my desk, thinking about the inevitable: I have to go to the post office by myself to mail a package of stuff home. I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, muttering to myself, "Okay, I'll go. I'll go. I'll go. I'll go." This is why Korea is hard.
I put everything into a small suitcase and pull it over to the post office, amid a few curious looks on the street. When I get there, I take a numbered slip and wait for my turn. "꾸러미 주새요." (I want a package, please.) I point to my suitcase. The attendant at the counter asks where I'm sending it. "미국," I say. I am momentarily proud of myself before she says something I don't understand at all. I stare at her. She pretends to spray her face with an imaginary bottle. "What...? I don't need face spray, thanks."
She looks at me. She sprays her face again. I feel like an infant.
There's a voice behind me, "Teacher, can I help you?" Turning around, I see one of my students whose face I recognize but name I can't remember. She's slightly shorter than me, with braces and big, brown eyes. "Is it okay for me to help you?"
"Wow, yes. Please!" I thank her profusely, my new post office goddess saving me in this time of routine crisis.
"She's asking if you have any cosmetics in your bag."
We move my belongings to the corner where boxes become packages. There's a table with rolls of tape lined up, stacks of crisp KoreaPost cardboard, bubble wrap, and an assistant to put everything together. Opening the suitcase, we transfer its contents to plastic bags stuffed inside the box. Hiking boots, a yellow scarf from a gift exchange, my winter coat, and large, knit sweaters spill from the edges. My student folds a flannel pajama shirt and gently places it next to some wool socks that were once soaked with rain. All that's left in the suitcase is a pair of contacts and a spare toothbrush. "Those can stay," I say.
The whole process takes about fifteen minutes, and in the end, costs less than 40 U.S. dollars. When we walk outside, heat is still wafting up from the concrete even though the afternoon sun has gone.
"Teacher, my name is 서현."
"Seo Hyun," I repeat, exposed.
"But you can call me by my English name, Jenny!" She smiles.
"No! No, I can use your Korean name.. Sun Kyeong?"
"Seo Hyun. But really, I like Jenny!"
God Katherine, get it together. I feel extremely white right now.
We walk down the sidewalk and across the street - we say goodbye, and then realize that we're both going in the same direction. Through some slightly stilted small talk, I discover that she lived in the U.S. when she was a little kid. She likes New York bagels, she tells me, and I almost stop in my tracks. Seo Hyun asks me about my favorite Korean foods, and I ask her about hers. "Do you know 컵밥 (cup-bap)?" I don't. "Teacher, are you doing anything right now...?"
So Seo Hyun and I and my rolling suitcase make our way over to a hole in the wall restaurant near the school. Two ajummas sit behind steaming pans of 떡볶이(tteokbokki), and they praise my ability to read Korean as I order two cups of rice mixed with kimchi, American cheese, and tuna. Seo Hyun tries to pay before I reach my card over her, and the two women smile. "진짜 예쁘다." Really pretty.
There are four low wooden tables, and Seo Hyun and I sit on the floor next to the white, papered wall. It's covered in words and drawings, messages left from students, and groups of friends who initialed their names. Seo Hyun hands me a pen, and I hesitate. Seo Hyun and Katherine were here, 2017, I write in small, black letters. Smiling, she takes the pen and writes the same message in Korean. Over our rice and tteokbokki, we talk about her favorite classes and where she wants to travel in the future. I try to think of a mental list of topics in case the conversation runs dry, but it doesn't. Instead, she shifts to questions about New York City and Donald Trump, about places I've traveled to and why I decided to come to Korea. I answer honestly. "I just wanted to experience another culture for a year, and teaching was a good opportunity for it." Seo Hyun nods and seems to understand this. It doesn't follow the typical script of being intrigued by Korea or passionate about students, but she smiles anyway.
After dinner, the two of us meander down the narrow street next to the school. "I'm going this way," and I point up the hill that leads to my apartment. There's a lot of thanking back and forth before Seo Hyun sighs and says, "Okay. Well, goodbye Teacher. I will remember this!"
"Me too."
We both start walking in different directions, and she turns around and shouts goodbye one more time, waving vigorously before disappearing behind a fence. I look at the empty space for a moment before I continue up the road, dragging my empty suitcase that will soon follow me home.
Comments
Post a Comment