Four years ago I was doing pretty much the same thing I am now: staring at my computer screen and contemplating life abroad. The difference is, I was fresh from wrist surgery at Imakiire Hospital in Kagoshima, having shattered my distal radius in December 2007. How could I possibly feel nostalgic for such a time, when I was facing my own mortality for the first time ever…?

That cycling accident had been my first serious injury and the first time under the knife, and yet, I saw it as an opportunity (not just in retrospect, but at the time). I took the chance to slow down, read some running books, and blog on Japan more often. In doing so, I finished the majority of texts that had been sitting on my bookcase for many months, discovered barefoot running, and took the time to reflect on my days in Japan.

The truth is, I do miss Japan now… and I don’t. I don’t miss the bureaucracy of teaching at AEON, and being pointed at and ogled. But I miss the hot springs. I miss the safety of the country. I miss finding new adventures. Sadly, even if I were to fly back into Narita, it wouldn’t be the same. There’s only one first-time Japanese experience for everyone, and I’ve had mine. It was delightful, but the awareness it produced stuck with me, and I’m now more world weary than I was in 2006.

One thing I do miss about Japan is teaching. Not the steady paycheck or the simplicity of the job, but the students. Just like Loco in Yokohama, my soul is healed by children. It’s impossible not to feel better about yourself standing in front of a group of ten wide-eyed ignorant minds whose loftiest goals are to laugh and eat dinner. When I left AEON in 2007 I wanted something more professional, more stable. I found SNBL in Kagoshima, and it worked out… for a time. I missed the classroom, and the interaction. So I left for Thailand to try educating some different nationalities.

I’m tutoring children in San Francisco too, but it’s just not the same. My kids here are so distracted, so angry, so unconcerned about what I have to offer them. For me, it all comes back to Japan, when I was faced with that first group of Japanese college students and got a taste of what it was like for them, facing an unknown foreigner. I reveled in it.

Is this all one massive ego trip I’m describing? Perhaps, but don’t I have the right to choose a profession that would allow me to feel better about myself? Teaching in Asia does that more often than not.

More of my time has been spent checking out new Japan expat blogs and remembering what it was like, to be fresh off the boat and new to the world of the rising sun. Truthfully, Japan may be my favorite place in the world to live, even as an eternal outsider. The safety, the job, the food, the people, the adventure, and the language… all are factors pulling me back across the Pacific. I just hope I can find circumstances that will allow me to go back.

I had one of the most depressing and culturally insightful classes with some of my higher-level students this week. Unlike in some hagwon, where foreign teachers are not allowed their say when it come to class format and textbooks, my boss really values my input; I have had total creative control of the gold classes for months, which includes choosing their course book. Naturally, when I came across one at their level featuring Calvin and Hobbes, I just had to go for it.

As it turned out, the comic in question was a prelude for a discussion on the positives and negatives of childhood. My students knew most of the simple vocabulary, but as any native speaker is aware, adding a preposition like ‘up’ to the end of verbs can completely change their meaning. However, it didn’t take too long before they understood what Calvin was saying, and the highs and lows of an American elementary school student.

At some level, we know that children are all born with a fresh slate, and could almost be interchangeable ‘parts’ across cultural lines up to a certain age, e.g. Korean toddlers will be fascinated by the same shiny objects, pointing and giggling in much the same way an American, African, Spanish, or Japanese infant would do. But, I think around age 6 or 7 (based solely on my experience), they cease to be children of the world and instead begin their transformation to adults, influenced by their environment, their parents, their culture.

I say this not to imply one culture’s values are superior or inferior to my own; they’re just different, and sometimes, really, really frustrating to wrap my head around.

Let me set the stage again. Eight students. Five boys, three girls. All with a reasonably high level of fluency for their age. When they looked at the fifth panel, featuring Calvin dull-eyed and waiting for the clock to run down, there was an understanding, a muttering of consensus. But when we came to the sixth and final image, highlighting the wordplay and leaving the reader with a sense of hope, it might as well have been alien to them. Being excited about coming home from school? Why is Calvin smiling as though his worries are over?

How could any kid not feel a sense of relief at the end of a school day? I honestly thought that final panel would be completely cross cultural.

To my American readers, I’m sure you heard the President extolling the virtues of the South Korean education system at the State of the Union address. For the most part, he was completely right; Korean students do score better than their American counterparts in nearly all areas (except when it comes to higher education, but that’s the subject of another blog). But at what cost? My kids get up at 7:30 or 8:00, go to school for several hours, walk over to the hagwon for English study, then possibly to another academy for extra classroom study.

Fine, you might say. So they can’t relate to the sense of jubilation at getting out of school. But what about when they’re finally released from the academy at night? Surely they must be looking forward to going home, getting dinner, watching TV?

Well… as my students explained to me… not really. In fact, for them, home is almost worse than school because their parents pressure them to study so much it makes them feel like no time is their own. The weekend is the same: more time off from actual school means more time to hit the books at home.

I have to confess, when I heard that in the classroom, I felt like crying in sympathy for them. I had always thought of my students as pretty happy-go-lucky. Looking at them now, I’m amazed they’re able to be so upbeat with so little time to just be children.

Having just completed one year in Korea, I thought I’d give prospective expats an idea of how much one can pocket and live on in a year here. You hear stories all the time about how Korea is the country to go teach EFL if you want to make money, but has anyone actually run the numbers by you? Well, I will. No commentary. Just income and expenses. Rounded for your benefit, and given in KRW, South Korean Won. I also excluded my consistent monthly expenses: TV, 6600; Internet ~30000; prepaid phone, 10000; water 1-2000; insurance, 35000.

August
Arrive in Korea with 2000USD. Everyone should bring at least 1000USD, as your first salary might not be paid until 4-6 weeks after arrival. I arrived August 7th and was first paid September 15th.

September
Income:

• 2,100,00 (after taxes)

Expenses:

• Wired home: 1,300,000
• Power: 10,000
• Gas: 12,000
• Major Travel: Busan and Japan for Chuseok holiday week

October
Income:

• 2,100,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 1,100,000
• Power: 10,000
• Gas: 20,000
• Major Travel: None

November
Income:

• 2,100,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 800,000
• Power: 80,000 (heat lamp)
• Gas: 35,000
• Major Travel: Busan and Seoul (imported Thanksgiving dinner)

December
Income:

• 2,100,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 1,000,000
• Power: 135,000 (heat lamp)
• Gas: 60,000 (began using floor heat, ondol)
• Major Travel: Busan (xmas party) and Seoul (New Year’s)

January
Income:

• 2,100,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 0 (used for xmas gifts, food)
• Power: 35,000
• Gas: 180,000 (way too much floor heat)
• Major Travel: Daegu

February
Income:

• 2,100,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 650,000
• Power: Unknown
• Gas: 270,000 (I must have been out of my mind, but I was warm)
• Major Travel: Seoul (Lunar New Year)

March
Income:

• 2,100,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 950,000
• Power: 20,000
• Gas: 190,000 (still cold)
• Major Travel: Seoul

April
Income:

• 2,100,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 900,000
• Power: 35,000
• Gas: 100,000
• Major Travel: Gyeongju, Seoul 2x
• Other: 300,000 for dental work

May
Income:

• 3,300,000 (took on morning adult classes)

Expenses:

• Wired home: 1,500,000
• Power: 0
• Gas: 40,000
• Major Travel: Busan and Japan

June
Income:

• 3,300,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 1,500,000
• Power: 0
• Gas: 25,000
• Major Travel: Ulleungdo and Dokdo

July
Income:

• 3,300,000

Expenses:

• Wired home: 2,300,000
• Power: 0
• Gas: 35,000
• Major Travel: Boryeong Mud Festival

August
Income:

• 5,400,000 (end of year bonus)

Expenses:

• Wired home: 2,200,000
• Power: N/A
• Gas: N/A
• Major Travel: Seoul and Daegu
• Other: new DSLR, shoes

As you can see, my international travel for the past year has been limited to Japan; I didn’t even go home for Christmas. If you’re thinking I didn’t get out too much, you might be right, but I didn’t include travel to small towns near me when roundtrip transportation was less than 40,000 – this included quite a few cheap adventures. Obviously, there were other small expenses like visiting the doctor, getting a massage, and overpaying for EZ Shop food, but you can get a general idea of what one can pocket after a year in the country: ~14,000,000 (currently ~13,000USD). I never starved myself to save money, I felt comfortable, I went out, I lived. Want to try teaching English in Korea?

Some of the business practices I’ve seen my hagwon doing, and why I believe Korea has more of a relationship-based culture vs. a legal one.

In the meantime, with my videos from the Boryeong Mud Festival still in the buffer, I thought I’d discuss something that’s been going on for a while in one of my classes. Naturally, I have some problem students. Some are completely disruptive to class (mostly younger ones), some just aren’t smart enough to be in the class they are in and slow learning for others, and others just simply don’t care at all about English. But even when they don’t care about English, I get the sense they’re alive by the fact they sometimes listen to me and do their work.

Enter one student who is completely lethargic. He might as well be a mannequin, he moves so little in class. Never answers my questions. Never acknowledges my presence. He hangs his head low, and acts as if I’m disturbing him when I try to get him to participate. In case you’re wondering, he isn’t simply tired; when my back is turned, he takes the opportunity to exchange a few words with his friends with plenty of energy. But as for me, he just doesn’t try.

As a student, there were plenty of times I was too tired to pay attention in class, and showed little interest about certain subjects. I had friends who felt the same way from time to time, but at the core, we all actually tried to learn something from our teachers, because they always tried to teach us regardless of our moods.

It’s not a matter of being worked too hard. He just doesn’t care at all. Even the Korean teacher is fed up with him. Last month, my boss and I discussed how best to handle him in class (he is being raised by his grandmother with his father out of town, but even that excuse is wearing thin after a year); in the end, he told me to simply seat him in the corner of the classroom and ignore him. This didn’t affect class in the slightest, as he pretty much ignored me and the Korean teacher at all times.

But I hesitated, because it felt like giving up. On the one hand I had given this kid plenty of chances to express the slightest bit of interest, and he hadn’t given me an inch. On the other hand, if the teacher himself gives up on a student, even if he is a difficult one, what does that say for education? I don’t want to be mean to him or deny him the opportunity to learn English, but nothing is getting through.

A little more background: his mother has passed on, his father lives out of town and rarely comes to visit. He’s been kicked out of every single hagwon in the area, and the only reason my boss has kept him on is as a favor to his father. He feels poor and unloved, naturally, and I can’t say I blame him.

Today he acted the same way he always does, keeping his head down and his eyes unfocused as I tried to teach him something so basic. But instead of simply ignoring him, I lifted his chin up and tried to force him to meet my eyes. Although avoiding physical contact of any kind would seem to be obvious protocol for teachers, I had just had it; nothing was reaching this kid, and if I had to forcibly pry his eyes and ears open to get him to learn something, I was willing to try it.

Naturally, my boss took me aside after the boy told him what happened. Not that my boss didn’t understand why I had done it, but informed me touching someone’s head in Korea is particularly rude. Then this kid finally did something to make me believe he was human: he began to cry. Crying about how he thought I hated him, how he wasn’t smart enough to be here, and how he thought he had done nothing wrong. I have to admit, I second guessed my behavior at that point. My boss jumped to my defense, telling the kid what he had done (being utterly unresponsive in class) was just as reprehensible as my actions, but in the end, he was a student, and I was a teacher. The Korean teacher said he should have listened to me.

I’m still very upset about what happened, knowing I pushed him too hard and probably should have just kept my distance. I just wanted him to try, but it seemed like nothing I said had any effect.

I’ve asked some friends for advice. One suggested getting to know the student personally and following his interests. It’s a sound suggestion, with one problem: there’s no time. I have exactly 35 minutes with this student a day, and others are in the class with him. There’s no time between classes to socialize (barely with my boss), and if I focused on him during class, others would feel left out.

What would you do?

I throw my opinion into the ongoing debate for incoming English teachers: public schools or privates (hagwons)? Most of the time, it’s a no-brainer: public schools for better vacations, stability, and sick days. But there are some reasons why you might want to risk a hagwon.

This really just popped into my head a few minutes ago, and it’s not exactly a topic I’m getting comfortable with: I’m getting old.

“But Turner,” you must be saying, “Surely you’re joking! You’re only 29!”

Yes, indeed. Since last week. And I see reminders of my youth every day, as I live in a town rife with ajumma and ajussi. I can still run with the best of them. I beat all the “kids” on the climb up to Seonginbong Peak on Ulleungdo. I still have my youthful looks and my amazing immaturity.

But, I’m not 19. I’m not even 24. And nowhere could that be made more obvious to me than in a situation like teaching English abroad.

Oh sure, we’ve got English-teaching expats living here in their 60s, but by and large the foreign community consists of early to mid 20-somethings. I was one of those when I started this journey. Give it enough time and I might become the awkward 30-something trying to socialize with a much younger crowd. Not that there’s anything wrong with making friends across ages and nationalities. Far from it. But at the same time, I firmly believe Asia is a Never Never Land for foreigners. We grow up, but, in a sense, we don’t really mature past the age of 24. How could anyone if he always finds himself spending all his time with one age group constantly sharing the same impressions (i.e. newbies coming to Korea and expressing the same surprise, wanting to travel to the same areas, etc)?

Part of my confusion was I didn’t see myself as a 29-year-old. I hung out with 22, 24, and 25-year-olds and just overlooked the fact they were younger, and had completely different perspectives on life. They might stay a year, go home for ten, and return to find themselves slipping into the same patterns. Think of how you behave around high school friends you haven’t had contact with in a few years; you can’t help but revert to your school persona, try to take the characteristics of the individual who knew the other standing in front of you. And that’s alright. It’s perfectly natural.

But when you do it after so much time in a foreign country, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to do anything else. You’re living a life many back home would envy, but isn’t the reverse true as well? And isn’t part of growing up, however painful it may be to accept, learning to spend more time with those of a similar age, as your interests slowly diverge from those of the 20-somethings? I think it is.

Today is a holiday in South Korea: Buddha’s Birthday. My original plan was to enjoy a temple visit, but the weather did not oblige. So, I sit inside my clean apartment and think of things to write. Once you get out of the habit of blogging, it’s hard to start up again. This past month, I’ve had friends move away, new people coming in, life changes, better weather, and moments of Zen. I’ve talked about the bitterness one can develop after teaching English for twenty years in Asia. While I don’t think I’m quite there yet, I can see how the path I’m on in Korea might one day lead me to that state of mind.

I taught in Japan for a year as my first experience abroad. My first experience with English as a foreign language. My first experience being the dumb foreigner. And I learned a lot, for better or worse. It was just too easy to be paid to do something that came naturally. So it was to be admired (ogled, anyway) or an attraction for locals. When you’re not challenged in your personal life or your job, when you don’t see any reason to change because it wouldn’t affect your life in the slightest (i.e. you will always be the foreign English teacher in Japan), you truly are in a social stasis. No growing maturity. No intelligence. You might even slip backwards at the lack of stimulation. After two years in Japan, that’s how I felt, and why I wanted to escape while I was still aware enough of my situation. A few more years, and I doubt I’d be able to see myself for what I had become: a charlatan in a shirt and tie walking through the streets of Japan like I owned them, when in fact I was always in a class of my own (not the good kind).

So I left. For Thailand, China, New Zealand, back to the US for a few months, thinking I could just settle into a high-paying job with all my “experience” in Asia, enjoy the perks of success, get a fancy apartment, date a model, and enjoy the rest of my days. A bit of an exaggeration, but I think that’s what I had in mind. But when you give up two years of your life fresh out of university, you sacrifice more than those two years; you forego all the opportunities that an entry-level job and the connections with the people you would have met bring with them. Of course there are other chances, other jobs, other career paths I could have explored, but I wanted the easy road to success, and deluded myself into thinking it could be that easy: a lottery ticket, an interview for a job for which I wasn’t qualified…

Looking back, I’m pretty sure I knew exactly why I chose to move to Korea and teach. I can say all I want about my wanderlust kicking in and wanting to try life in a different country, one having aspects of Japan but still culturally unique, but in the end, it came down to cowardice. I wasn’t willing to get my hands dirty and do what I needed to do in the US to work for success, when I knew there was a job out there waiting in which all I would have to do was stand and talk. Nothing difficult. They would even pay me to come over there. When I knew that option was available, when all potential recruits see that choice, your work ethic for anything else essentially vanishes.

Why try in your home country? There’s an easier solution. Why try in Korea? They pay you either way. That’s what Japan did to me: their English educational system taught me to stop learning, stop trying. Though you can certainly survive as a mindless English speaking foreigner lacking ambition of any kind in Japan, Korea, China, and a handful of other countries, this “skill” doesn’t carry over too well when it’s time to go home and actually work for a living.

I’m being overly cynical about this whole process, but I can’t help it: I want newbies to learn from what I’ve done and the mistakes I’ve made. Namely, it’s perfectly alright to teach English for a year or two in Asia… after you’ve had some kind of experience in the real world and you know there’s something for you to go home to. Otherwise, you’re really screwing yourself over. Age doesn’t matter, but many in their early to mid 20s come to Asia, high on life and thinking they’ve hit the jackpot. Working and traveling is a jackpot. Teaching English is far from it.

I know there are those out there with college loans to pay off, kids to support, and savings to build. People who have no intention of staying longer than their contract allows and returning to the real world. But some get caught in the vortex and end up living the rest of their days unchallenged, and often bitter. Too black and white? Am I challenging those who start dating locals, finding themselves pregnant, and settling down while doing the same job? …a little. You may think a job is just a job, and your personal life is quite fulfilling, but what of the rest of the world? Do all the people around expect you to change? Their opinions don’t matter, but their perception of you certainly does; to them, you will always be the same.

This is a little more depressing than I had intended. Let me just say that although I’ve benefitted from my time abroad in terms of experience, I don’t believe I’m going to have an easier time “making it” at home due to it. I came to Korea to teach English knowing full well I’d be excited at first, then slowly fall into a routine until the job became practically pointless in my eyes. That’s already happened. And I’ve even agreed to stay until October to make a little extra money. How hypocritical of me.

I just wish teachers out here were actually teachers. I wish job experience out here actually counted as experience. I wish we were motived to learn rather than be apathetic about our students, employers, and ourselves. I wish maturity could be measured in interviews, so we didn’t have drunk foreigners parading through the streets of Hongdae and Itaewon on a regular basis. I just wish there were higher expectations of everyone.

Of course my title is a bit of an overstatement. Nor is this blog really a rant about how crazy my kids can get at times. Still, I’m a little surprised how disorderly Korean kids (if my students are any indication) can be in the classroom. A few Thai public school kids were “worse” – all-out fistfights during class – but, by and large, most were respectful and attentive… I’ve certainly never received 100 bows before. In Japan, there weren’t any troublemakers at AEON, with the exception of children too young to know better. But in Korea, well…

I’ve tried to keep my students in the dark about just how much Korean I know (next to none). I’m sure I could fool the youngest classes into thinking I’m fluent, but that isn’t my goal either. If I speak any Korean in class, they simply repeat it as though they couldn’t believe their language could come out of my mouth, and keep speaking Korean for several minutes. The balance, as I see it, is letting your students believe you can speak perfect Korean, but choose not to. This has the effect of making them speak English, but should they swear or start talking to themselves, they would be more aware you could understand them.

Sometimes, though, even this level of control or rather, uncertainty, isn’t enough. Most of my older students just don’t listen to me when I tell them to do something. When they have a question about getting water, going to the bathroom, or something they can’t express, they simply dart out of the room, spouting “Korean teacher”. I can understand this, but they don’t even try to say what they want. And again, with the language control, I tell them I know what they’re trying to say, but I want them to express it in English, not run off to my boss.

The Korean teacher understands this perfectly well without having me to tell him. Every week, students are twice evaluated based on their behavior in his class, and my class. You can imagine his surprise at some students receiving an A+ for K.A. (Korean Attitude), but a C from me. It’s what they deserved. One student wanted a pencil sharpener, so I asked her to ask my permission (in English) to go to the next room and get it. Instead, she simply jumped up, and ran out of the room after I had said “SIT DOWN!” Others just keep talking after I tell them to be quiet, that it’s obvious they’re the ones talking and they shouldn’t start again 30 seconds after my warning.

Mostly, of course, this behavior is because they’re kids. I understand that. But at some level, they don’t see me as an authority figure. More like an English-speaking monkey in khakis.

Teacher: “Have you ever eaten cats?”

Student: “No… I have… never eaten cats!”

All well and good. No cats were harmed in the making of this lesson.

My students all have western names for the duration of their stay at our hagwon: Laura, Peter, Fred, Chris, etc. One happens to be Sam, a lower-level student who can understand some basic phrases and a few hundred words, but not much beyond that. So, naturally, when a lesson on food popped up, I thought of a creative way to teach a phonics point:

Teacher: “Please repeat, ‘What are you eating?’”

Sam: “Teacher, NOOOOO!”

Why do I tease one of my students like that? It’s certainly not to bully him, but rather to show I’m capable of joking around during a lesson. Since the students laughed, I know they understand the difference between “sandwich” and “Samwich”. An important phonics lesson for beginners. Still, I hope none of them get the idea to take a bite out of the little guy.

My next lesson in cannibalism comes from one of my highest-level classes. They’re able to form complicated sentences and improvise conversations on a limited scale. We still go over the basics as according to the textbook, and that includes lessons on personality:

Teacher: “Please repeat, ‘Jenny is talkative.’”

Hun: “I am not delicious! Jay is delicious!”

I think the humor in the situation comes through rather clearly for these students. Let’s just hope they never make it over to New Guinea:

I’ve started teaching workers at the nuclear power plant from 6:30-8:30 AM, meaning I really shouldn’t have stayed up to write this blog. Good night.