How it's going

Today was a little rough. It started out fine, did a bunch of nothing this morning and went in a little bit early for a weekly meeting with the other native English teachers. Classes went fine, yadda yadda yadda until Timber asked me if I was still glad I’d come. I am, I really am, but I miss home and my friends and family, and more than even that, I miss medicine. I didn’t think I’d be saying that so soon, but it’s true. I’m actually motivated to study, and glad I have so many notes on my computer to print out and review. I’ve even looked on amazon to see if I can have some books shipped to me once I have some money. I want Dr. Tan’s especially (I think the systems are really fun to play with) and have a whole list going on a variety of subjects. I figure if I can stop watching the “style” channel on Korean T.V., I might fit some learning in before I go into school at 1pm. On Saturday, Timber and I had to go to this seminar about how to teach English with all the other foreign teachers at all the DingDingDang schools around Daegu (there are about four). It was generally uninteresting. At one point, they had us all “drilling” phonics. About twenty English speaking adults, 21-29 years old, saying “A, a a apple, B, ba ba boy, C, ka ka cat…”. I looked over at Timber, rolled my eyes and wrote on her seminar handout “I’m (almost) a doctor.” She smiled and wrote on mine “I’m a head chef.” Then we continued “D da da dog, E e e elephant…” So that’s about where it is, we are teaching incredibly basic English to students who mostly don’t want to be there for the sake of their very proud parents who are competing with other very proud parents to try and get their kids the most (not best, mind you) education possible. Some of the kids go to school from 7 or 8am to 9 or 10pm, sometimes even midnight. They go to regular school, then several different academies: art academy, English academy, music academy and so on. I really do love language, and if I could share it with the kids who do want to learn, it would be a great job. Mostly though, it is 40 minutes of book after book. “Ok everyone, grammar books out!” “Are there any apples? Yes, there are some apples. No, there aren’t any apples. Grammar books away! Phonics books out!”

So after Timber asked if I was still glad I came, I got discouraged, sad and maybe even nostalgic though it wasn’t all that long ago, about needling people and actually helping them. Last year I used an hour of someone’s day to dramatically change their perspective even if it was just from being in extreme pain to being in moderately less pain. Now, I am using 40 minutes to have kids monkey “dialogue book” back to me. So, I went on a walk during one of my infrequent breaks. I realized a few things that I hope might help me in my time here. First, my intuition or whatever you want to call it, brought me here for a reason and I need to figure out what that reason is. I do want to learn the language, and something about the medicine, and simply live in another country, but I know there is a larger lesson for me somewhere in all this and I will be happy to find the a ha moment when I do. I’m looking for something, but I’m not sure what. I also realized that I can use this time to plan next year, and see if I can’t do something really spectacular with the money I should have saved in Korea and that fancy national license I got in the mail. While I was in school, I didn’t feel that I had adequate time to discover what I really want to do with this shiney new profession of mine. I’m relatively certain of its capacity to heal and where it can be taken but not entirely sure of where it is I personally want to go with it. I got a fancy new gadget, read the manual and am overwhelmed by its variety of functions. I was telling my sister before I left that living abroad and teaching English was my last plan in what used to seem like a long list of plans. Now, I genuinely have no idea what I want to do next. I used to think I was a planner, and now I think I’m not so much a planner as someone who likes to have a lot of plans lying about. That last three years of school just zipped by, and now here I am in Korea, drumming my fingers wondering what to do next. Not having something specific to look forward to makes grammar book pretty intolerable, and this is only week two. Something that OCOM definitely taught me was to seek opportunity, and perhaps instead of planning my next step I can learn how to do that in a larger way here. When we do acupuncture or prescribe herbs, we are looking for that space in the pattern that is slightly amiss and then toggling with it to redefine perfection—we seek these spaces as opportunities to heal. Maybe I can expand that microcosm to seek opportunities in my life now that will help me to figure out what’s next. Or, you know, I can just take suggestions.