For the Children

Hi! Three months later. While the days have become a little bit of a routine at Phoenix Charter Academy, today was different, because it was the 2013 Benefit Gala. Since PCA is a nonprofit organization, an event like this makes perfect sense. We raised a lot of money - I would guess maybe around $20,000 plus? - though I could never give you an exact amount. Someone else was keeping track; that was not my job.

My job was A/V for the show. Now, I wasn't really in the background so much as tucked into a corner of the stage and running back and forth between there and the projector room, which was past a hallway and tucked into another smaller room. All the materials were prepared for me: Powerpoint slides, music, and even a short film. My main duties were to make sure everyone can see everything in a pretty fashion in the right order, and that the sound was going at the right volume.

That sounds simple, except that the game plan keeps changing because one of the two MCs like to improvise quite a bit. I didn't mind, it kept the show lively. So did the hanging projector which didn't seem to like staying in one set space, so I had to readjust it a few times. So there were about 200 to 300ish people put into this small to moderately sized space with a stage. There were some cocktail tables in front with dainty chairs, but most of the people were standing. Food trays with deliciousness were scattered all around the space, with drinks, tshirts, raffles and other paraphernalia at the edges.

There was dancing, a silent auction and a live auction and some speeches. The speeches were the most moving parts for me. Here we were, in a recovering economy, with so much pessimism going on everywhere, but there are still people out there willing to invest in underprivileged teenagers on the off chance that most of them will turn out okay (despite horror stories like juvey time and drugs). It also reminded us that the day to day work that we do - for me, fixing computers, but for the teachers and tutors, urging young adults to go back to class - has a deep impact, and we are actually making life and circumstances much better for a lot of people.

While the planning was a collaboration between 3 women and took months, the actual implementation only took a few hours, and the modest school building was transformed into a place to entertain and to be entertained. The raffle prizes were impressive, too. Red Sox tickets, Celtics tickets and the signed basketball, cooking classes, trips to different states, and even a band playing live at your house for an hour and a half. The school staff with maybe a handful of students and interns, about less than 150 people, put all of this together - after teaching 5 hrs of classes - within 4 hrs. It amazes me how efficiently people can work and the amount of things they can accomplish when they agree on something.

For me, there was even a short personal span during the day when I accompanied my supervisor and 3 female students to a CVS to shop for pantyhose. The 3 girls were friends, and 2 of them were a lesbian couple, my supervisor did the driving, and then there's me riding shotgun. They were talking about teenaged girl things: gossip, boys, condoms, the tiny variations of colors in different products. This work place is truly like no other, and I can see why the people who can endure the long hours and emotionally demanding workload retrieve so much satisfaction from it. They defy statistics and normal logic in the most steadfast and optimistic ways possible. It's hard not to grow to at least like them a lot.

A Wistful Letter

Goodbye, South Korea. You were kind of good to me.

There's too much going on inside you, and when crowds gather, everyone pushes everyone. I'm too short and impatient for that. Being outside of your structure has its benefits and drawbacks. While we are easily forgiven for any social faux pas that we commit, we are also not considered real people. Sometimes, when some people realize we don't speak Korean, we are simply dismissed with a hand wave. The older citizens of this country tend to be very pushy - and while most are well meaning, there are those who are downright condescending - like anywhere else, I suppose. I never enjoyed bowing. I could have, but didn't care about your fashion standards. My luck with jobs in you was also not great; I know some other people had a much better time than I did.

However.

You gave me an honest living for twenty months, and I met many friends here. I had many adventures that I will hold dear to my heart for many decades. Your kids taught me more words in your language than your adults did. I would still enjoy teaching. Isolated from American politics and the Western way of thinking for a while, I realized the effects upon me from where I grew up, who my parents are, and the small actions that I took. Both apartments that you provided me with were very easy to live in, and I felt at home. You gave me a cat. I experienced both rural Korean life and small city Korean culture. Your food was great. Your citizens are unexpectedly helpful at the most surprising moments. Your country is safe. You taught me that in struggles between individual and society, sometimes it's not so bad when society wins.

You taught me to live alone. You taught me to begin to pursue what I want, or even to begin to think about exactly what it is that I want.

Thank you.

These were all the thoughts running through my head as I repacked my luggage in front of the check-in counter to adhere to the "only one" rule, and then went to the ticketing counter to pay an extra $75 for the second luggage. These are the feelings falling from my steps as I went through security, then when the personnel at immigration took my Korean identity card away from me.

If I could hug a whole country and donate my tears, I would. There are surely things that I haven't done and seen yet, and someday, I will come back and pursue them.

For all my friends I met here, you better stay in contact - I am getting a smart phone and downloading Kakao Talk for sure!

A Taste of Chaos

Do you think it's lucky or a misfortune that SeoCheongju TOPIA gives me so much to write about? After the last post in which I thought I was going to be fired, more strange events have been happening at my work place. Thankfully, this news has nothing directly to do with me.

This past Monday was a very hectic work day, because both the head teacher and another teacher were out, both due to illness. I imagine some people had to cover the second teacher's classes, and the academy owner himself covered the head teacher's classes. This doesn't mean that the owner actually taught, mind you. He just took all the classes to the second floor to have them sit in the computer lab and do their online homework. He said that teachers shouldn't bring their kids down to the computer lab while he's conducting classes there (in Korean). It wasn't until after another teacher told me directly what he said that I understood he meant me.

In this back drop, the real story happened during seventh period. By eighth period, we were told no kids were allowed on the second floor because of something that happened. While most people were teaching, apparently the father of one of our lower level students stormed in with his wife to talk to the teenager's homeroom teacher. Two teachers went to talk to him, one male and one female. Whatever they said to him must not have satisfied him, because he took one of the academy owner's trophies and cut himself accidentally while smashing it. When I came back from class to sit down and try to plan the next day, a different female teacher told me that she was commanded to clean up the blood that the father had smeared everywhere. A male teacher helped her. She said that the father was really crazy. When one of the receptionists had me leave, the father was red faced, pushing past the vice academy owner demanding to see the male teacher who had initially went to talk to him. The teacher went out reluctantly, full of fury at the lower level student.

Then I was instructed to go monitor the same class that the lower level kid belonged to. I told them that nothing was really happening, but that they were to continue to do their own work independently. When I offered to help anyone who asked, a group of three boys had me help them do a crossword puzzle that was part of their reading class homework. I led them on, giving them small hints here and there for them to figure out since they couldn't do it using the clues the book provided alone. At the end, the atmosphere of the class was much more relaxed, and those three boys finished their crossword puzzles. One of the receptionists came in to pass out the academy announcements for April, which included tuition fees information and such. When the bell rang, we were all glad that the day was over.

Today, the father came again to negotiate with the academy owner - with a friend, in a suit. According to the head teacher, he had filed a complaint to the Board of Education against TOPIA. He said that none of the teachers at TOPIA paid much attention to his son, and that none of us can teach. Therefore, someone from the Board came by to do an inspection. Before the man came to inspect, however, the head teacher ushered a Canadian male teacher, an American Korean female teacher and I into the break/meeting room to tell us that we must leave the premises until the vice academy owner calls and tells us to come back. The reason for this is that we three were, for some reason, not registered as TOPIA teachers in the paperwork for the Board of Education. So the three of us leave and head to a coffee shop to talk for an hour.

Everything is fine when we come back. There may still be a lawsuit between TOPIA and that parent. Oh, and I'm not getting fired. I pressed the head teacher to give me the details of the "final warning letter" and he wrote out that I just got the letter because the academy owner gestured and supposedly told me to go calm down a crying child who failed a test, but since he was gesturing and not saying anything, I misunderstood -  not to mention at that time, I didn't yet know why the child was crying, because I asked her and she kept crying and refused to talk to me. I only found out later because one of her classmates told me. Basically, as long as I keep my head down and give the academy owner no reason to think that I'm deliberately disobeying him, I'm good to go. They also really need people, because the turnover rate is so high.

This means that I'm going to attempt to stay for the rest of the six months and then decide what to do from there.

Occupying Seoul (Yeoido)

America always has a lot of media attention from every country in the world, mostly because our international policy is to stick our nose in for what we think is right and sway the other members of the United Nations on various issues and movements whenever possible. This is old news. So it's no surprise that the entire world also has an eye on our economic and financial troubles; everyone knows that the American unemployment rate is at an all time high.

As per the power of the internet, I had first heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement through a lot of pictorial jokes on Facebook, which probably came from some graphic designers and people on 4chan. I knew that many people have been angry with Wall Street and Obama since the U.S. government organized the bank bail-out, but it wasn't until one of my Facebook friends posted a link on my wall about the movement that I connected the two and really started looking into it. I didn't understand it, because that particular link didn't give a very good representation of why people were protesting, and that the speaker sounded like he might have been high on weed didn't help either.

This link, however, clarifies the picture quite a bit and was far more persuasive, but I only saw this article after I went to the Occupy Seoul (at Yeoido) protest to do a little on-the-spot journalism to see what it was about. For a disclaimer, I will say that this is the first time I've ever been to a protest. I was a little nervous about participating because I realized this was a controversial topic. I also wasn't sure what the entire ramifications were for a Chinese American foreigner like me to contribute to this cause in this country, even though I agree with the core gist of the message, which was that financial inequality is everywhere so we as a citizenry rely on our governments to regulate giant banks and CEOs and stem the corruption.

In addition, I am aware of the counterarguments against protesting against financial institutions and the entire Occupy Wall Street movement as a whole. Here is one example. This argument states that everyone should take personal responsibility for their money; the American economy is so terrible right now because the majority of people go into debt from overspending and neglecting their bookkeeping. My friend Amy also has another perspective here.

My opinion is that, while this is true, it is nearly impossible to do if you didn't start out healthy (like if you had some genetic disease or disability) or have a family, in which case spontaneous events may keep you from saving money. I am lucky enough myself to have been born healthy, and I worked since the age of fifteen and went to a state university, so I had saved up enough money to become debt free roughly a year after graduation. Second disclaimer: I had a lot of help from my immediate family and one of my ex-boyfriends. (We're still good friends, but that's a whole other story.)

I went with my friend Mary Garcia (not her real name) and she had this green paper sign that said, "American Citizen + American Education + American Student Loans + A Lack of American Jobs = Sad American". She also participated in a handful of interviews. I refused to say anything in an interview to any of the reporters because I am not protesting any Korean financial institutions, and as I've said before, I am not sure what the full ramifications for a Chinese American to be protesting on foreign soil are. I went to the protest because I agree with the core message of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, want to support those people back home (as is true with my friend Mary Garcia) and wanted to see how this event would happen, because I'm pretty sure this will be a memorable moment in history. Citizens in a handful of different countries banding together to protest the same thing is something that I haven't heard or read about before.

 It was drizzling, but a large crowd of Korean people were there. They were chanting "We are the 99%! Occupy Yeoido!" both in Korean and then in English. Many people had signs. Though a majority of them were in Korean, a few were in English. Some even had on Scream or Vendetta masks, to protect their identities. At times, there was a man rapping in Korean. A woman's voice was leading the protesters, and a bunch of old Korean women were kneeling under the cover of the entrance to a building. Between these women and the doors of the building were a line of riot control Korean police - just in case, I guess. There were some other foreigners there too, mostly Americans and a few from other different parts of the world. Reporters from several different news stations were going around interviewing people. There were more foreigners interviewed than Korean people, so I was all the more suspicious about what the Korean press was going to say about this event and movement.

One reporter, after interviewing Mary, asked for my phone number so she can follow up on the interview, since my friend lied and told her that she had no phone. I gave her my phone number with an "Don't make me lose my job now..." but asked to be anonymous and refused an interview myself on the basis that I don't know what my employers would think. There was also one man who pointed a video camera at me without asking first, so I very warily said hi and then basically waved him away. I assumed he only got the end of what I was saying when I explained to another man - who was a reporter, but wasn't taking notes - that I agree with this movement because there is classism all over the world, and government regulation may help every country's economy a little bit.

We didn't stay for the entire time but I'm sure many Koreans are still there. When we were eating dinner back in Daejeon at a fusion Japanese noodle place, we saw on tv that the protest at Seoul Station was much larger, and it is still going on. I have my photos from the Yeoido portion of the event, which I uploaded to Facebook and may upload to my DeviantArt as well. This was Lily, reporting not-live on her blog at a friend's apartment in Daejeon, South Korea.

Moments

No matter what language they're speaking, or which country they're in, kids are still kids.

The ground was wet from rain yesterday, so I didn't take the third graders out for gym. However, there is a room sized porch attached to my classroom, so I took them out there. Lining them up, I gave them a random work out involving punches, kicks, elbows, and touching their toes. Now they know what left and right hooks are, and also what uppercuts are. The ironic thing is that I can't realistically fight for shit, but I like to think of them as my pokemon - while they're not pocket sized, I reserve the right to breed little monsters.

A few of my sixth graders came to visit me after class for the heck of it. They started playing with sharp things on my desk like scissors and box cutters. And then they revealed that they REALLY like anime. We went through a good portion of the list: Dragon Ball Z, Sailormoon, Naruto, Bleach, Haruhi Suzumiya, Doraemon, and others. It dawned on me that cartoons are intercultural.

So I designed a word search for afterschool one day for them, and had a list of words for them to look for. It was getting really loud. Then they started forming teams, and used umbrellas to keep out others not on their teams. I confiscated the umbrellas, but admired their competitive spirits anyway.

Soccer is a really big thing here. Now those who know me know that I'm far from athletic. But their enthusiasm bleeds, so I try things out anyway. On the one hand, I'm not good at all. On the other hand, I'm twice the size of an average kid, so when I block, I pretty much knock them down. I also tried playing catch, and while this is with a tennis ball and not an actual baseball, I felt good for not completely throwing like a girl anyway. The vice principal was happy when I said I'm a Boston Red Sox fan, and that my favorite player is Big Papi. I guess the nickname doesn't stick much here, cuz it took him a minute to think of who that is.

I'm starting to learn more about their pop culture purely through the references that Mr. Jeong uses in his classes. There's a lot of comedy, they like Borat, and Michael Jackson, and there's a lot of food references as well. One of the most famous male comedians here apparently has a signature big bowl haircut and specializes in cross dressing. I think I've seen some of their skits on tv

Visiting the Consul

Hello! Visiting the consul comes only after you've gotten your VISA number from your recruiter. He may also have given you a form to interview with the consul and instructions on where to apply for your proof of residency. The proof of residency is for tax form purposes, but you can worry about that later.

After you fill out the form to interview with your consul, prepare:

• some money (about 60 dollars is a good bet)
• another copy of your university transcript
• your passport, and
• a passport photo

to include with the VISA application. If your recruiter didn't give you the address for the consulate, you will have to look it up on Google - type in your home city, the target country, and "consulate" (eg. Boston South Korean consulate) and search results should show their website, if not their address. Their address should be found either on the Home page or the Contact Us section, though there's a good chance that the site may be in a foreign language.

Since I reside in the Boston area, the Korean consulate that I went to is in Newton. This is their website. Because it's all in Korean, I could not access any of the forms that were on the website, and had to go visit in person to get anything done.

I had to make two or three trips. First, they had me fill out an application on site. Then, when they realized I didn't have an appointment, they sent me home with a health form to fill out and come back the next day at 10:30am.

2nd trip: When I did that, they asked for the passport photo and $45 in cash that I didn't know I was supposed to have, but decided to interview me anyway, because I sincerely apologized for being late as it was a really rainy day and the bus (there were only 2 bus routes to that address) ran 15 minutes late. So the interview was very short, where the consul asked pointed questions about why I wanted to be in Korea specifically, why I wanted the job, about my experiences, my family and my health. Then they sent me to the nearest CVS - with a Google map as a guide - to take a passport photo and obtain $45 dollars in cash to pay them for this procedure. When I returned with the desired items and dripping from the rain, they gave me a receipt and told me to come back 2 days later to pick up my VISA.

3rd trip: When I successfully did that, my quest was finally completed, thankfully.

I felt like I spent a lot of money, because each bus trip one way was about $3 in cash so I had to go to the ATM a lot, having gotten used to just using the debit card. Overall, it was $18 in bus fare plus $45 for the transaction, that's $63, plus $10 for the passport photos, and $2 for the ATM fees when I didn't have cash on me, the total rings up to a solid $75 dollars. However, most of this was because I was drastically unprepared for this visit - my recruiter didn't tell me anything about how to get a VISA, just sent me the form for interviewing with the consulate, so after reading this, you should come by fewer obstacles!

And Now To Wait

After sending all of your documents to your recruiter, assuming that she doesn't find anything that you missed and have to correct, you will now wait. You're almost done! There are only a few more steps to this process before you're set to fly to your designated country to work.

During the wait, you would be wise to do a little more research on the country where you will be staying. I will be staying in South Korea, so I got my hands on this book and a Korean dictionary. The Culture Smart series is great for me because I'm awkward enough in settings where I have a good idea of the customs, so reading up on them beforehand makes it less likely for me to embarrass myself completely.

There are other cultural sources to rely on aside from books. For example, Youtube can provide examples of music from that country, or maybe even short documentaries from people who have been there before. Google can bring up blogs from other people who are also teaching abroad, where you can read to compare and contrast their experiences. From here on out, aside from the final bit of processing to go through, it becomes a rather anthropological experience.

There are other things to plan as well. For example, if your recruiter has told you when to be at the designated country, now is the time to book your flight. Planning ahead means you have the time to compare prices and figure out which airline is the best for you, and whether it will be a direct flight or you will be making a stop in between. It's generally cheaper to use an airline that's native to the country. For Korea, I bought my ticket using the Orbitz website with Asiana Air, choosing a direct flight because it will save time. Considering it's a 13 hrs flight, you can also plan on getting some reading material or games to pass the time.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs before, there's also a tiny bit more of paperwork to do once the recruiter gives you your VISA number. That will be what my next entry is about.

I also used this time to tell everyone concerned where I'm going, why and to say my goodbyes. I reassured everyone that I will be coming back, and it was kind of heartrending all around. My words here cannot justify the depth of the emotions to be felt: how much I will miss everyone, especially my boyfriend, and my anxieties and excitement concerning the future. I feel alive.

Working Abroad: Why and Paperwork

While there are plenty of blogs via the net about people's adventures and sights once they reach their destination, there's no such information about the process of everything before getting there. I would have found this data really useful, so for anyone who's thinking about going abroad, this is the right place for you. I'm here to add a voice to all the pages about teaching abroad that are made by recruiting organizations.

So why do you want to work in a foreign country?

My reasons were heavy, but simple. I could be staying at home with my partner, relatively near my parents and sister, working a retail job. But I graduated at the end of 2009, and by 2010, millions of people are jobless. I worked at Target for a year, searching for another opportunity the entire time. When I started to apply for a teaching job abroad, these are the things I was thinking about.

I would be away from my partner and family for several months to a year, depending on the contract for the program and recruiting company. Am I okay with that? I risk being distanced from people I care a lot about, and not liking the new environment where I am stationed. On the other hand, I get to explore and be immersed in a new culture, exciting just because it's novel. It would be international experience for my resume, and would change my outlook on many subjects. So is the risk worth the potential gain?

Once I thought about that for awhile and made my decision, the research began. I was lucky, a friend referred me to this program because he's in it and patiently answered a lot of my questions. Still, the other question I was answering was, which country should I work in? I've never traveled for work before, so I was mainly considering "First World" countries, places where the quality of living wouldn't be too drastically different from Boston, Massachusetts, in the USA, where I'm from.

At first I considered China, but the quality of living there is lower, so then I chose South Korea. Next up is choosing a program suitable for you. Many of these programs have pages online where they advertise, so some facts to look for are:

a. length of contract (months? a year?)

b. room and board provided for? if not, how much?

c. wage and salary pay

d. benefits

Once you've decided on a program and recruitment company, contact them (usually through email) and the application process begins. The program I am with is called EPIK (English Program in Korea) through the recruiting company English World.