You Jin

Several weeks ago I was walking through the park back to work for my second shift.

The afternoon was golden and warm and the universe seemed most harmonious.

People were staring, as usual, but I took their stares as compliments to my sunlit golden hair and long trendy skirt.

My heart was light as my backpack and although I’d been up since before dawn I felt strong and not in dread of the portending junior classes.

In my headphones Ricky Martin was finishing up “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” a song about a woman who turns his world upside-inside out.

Almost through the park I looked over to see a woman huddled on one of the benches. Her shoulders were shaking. She could be laughing. But she seemed to be sobbing.

Her eyes met mine as I passed.

Passed by and kept walking, steps slowed but continuous.

What can I possibly say to her?

I can’t even speak Korean.

She’ll think I’m crazy.

She won’t understand me.

She’s a stranger.

I’m a stranger.

I have to go to work.

I don’t want to sit down and then rush off.

There’s nothing I can do for her.

I’m scared.

So went the logical voices of reason and cowardice and self-preservation inside my head.

And as my ponderous, conflicted steps approached the crosswalk, the song in my headphones changed.

Entering the mix of determined denial were words too apt to refute.

An argument too astute to ignore.

“When you feel like you’re alone in your sadness, and it seems like no one in this whole world cares, and you want to get away from the madness, you just call my name and I’ll be there.”

Third Day’s “Call My Name.”

A song that doesn’t command outreach or even mention God.

A song that could be a promise between any two people.

But a song that convicts—no one should be alone.

A song that tells me God never forsakes me, that He attends when I am silent and weeping or when I say His name aloud.

When I call and when I don’t, He is there. I know that.

But not everyone does.

Paul writes that God is not far from any of us. Sometimes it seems He is.

And many a lost soul has no idea of His proximity. Many doubt His very existence.

From where do these people get their hope?

From where do they maintain reason to live?

How do they even survive at all in this brutal world that is so often not the warm autumn sunshine?

“When you feel like you’re alone in your sadness, and it seems like no one in this whole world cares…”

How many people just passed her by, that woman weeping on the bench?

Across from a subway exit, this place was frequented all day long by passers-by, school children, business men and women, ajummas with their grocery carts and old men on their strolls. Young mothers with baby carriages and toddling children, teenagers with their gazes fixed on their phones.

How many of these had walked right by without stopping to even ask this woman if she needed help?

And would I be one of them?

God carried me to Haiti and back seven times. He rode with me to Missouri and flew with me to Paris. He stayed by my side through South Carolina, through heartache and pain and suicidal contemplations. He wept with me and sat with me.

He sang with me and rejoiced with me in victories and restoration.

He encouraged me into honesty and vulnerability and endured my rages, impatience and cursing.

He brought me to obstacles and then vaulted me over them, or held my hand and balanced my teetering feet on firm ground.

He brought me to Korea and walks with me every day.

He did not bring me so far so I could walk with blinders.

I knew that.

The idea that she might not know, the weeping woman on the bench, that thought turned my feet around and sent me back the way I had come.

The others walking through the park probably thought I was some foolish, lost tourist walking in circles, and my own cold logical side yearned to flee back to the crosswalk and carry on towards the school—the reason I’d come here in the first place, right?—but the grateful child loved by her Father persisted.

I wanted only to share the love I’d known with the woman before me.

I might be her only chance.

“Call my name, say it now. I want you to never doubt: the love I have for you is so alive.”

Okay, God.

Here I go.

I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know what to do.

Please help me.

She watched me approach.

When I’d passed I’d wanted to believe she wasn’t crying. I hoped now to see she was fine and well, just caught in a sneeze or laughing over a silly Kakao message.

But she was crying. And she was alone.

As I came closer, angling in towards her, she shook her head.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said.

Clearly she didn’t want me there.

But I hadn’t walked back those few hundred feet to back out now. The shortest distances are often the most difficult to cover.

“Are you okay?” I asked, because even when we know the answer, such are the words. So goes the eternal script of human outreach.

She nodded, tears still leaking out of her eyes.

“Because you look very sad,” I said, leaning in, drawing one hand down in front of my face. So goes the behavior of an ESL teacher: you will forever use pantomime and slow deliberation, whether addressing a beginning student or native speaker.

She tried to smile, the way we try to hold up the flower with the broken stem by propping it on the vase-rim just so. The flower always droops right back down and no one is fooled; there was no light in her pooling eyes.

“Can I pray for you?” I asked, touching her shoulder.

“No,” she said.

Oh, well this is awkward.

Well, God, I tried.

I’d never had someone refuse a prayer before.

Whether a believer or not, in times of desperate heartache, people will accept any possibility of betterment, even prayers to a God they don’t acknowledge.

This woman said no.

Now what?

Upon reflection, I don’t think she meant to reject prayer. She simply wanted to convey her lack of need. She didn’t want to bother anyone. She didn’t want to weep in front of a stranger. She didn’t want anyone to see her cry.

We never do.

But sometimes a stranger is better than a friend.

Assured we will have no further contact, that in the jungle of concrete we are safe from their witness, we disregard decorum.

Regardless, she said no to my request, and I did not want to push upon her a prayer for my own benefit.

(How often do we pray to please our own ears, or impress those listening, rather than for intimacy with God?)

Regardless, I stayed.

Because no one should have to cry alone.

“When you feel like you’re alone in your sadness…”

Moving sideways towards the remaining bench space, I asked if I could sit down.

I sat, backpack on and phone still in hand, music paused.

She sat, legs crossed and one hand holding a cigarette still shaking. Tears still coming, along with the occasional shuddering sob, muffled but wracking her hunched shoulders.

I sat and contemplated the tragedy of life.

How many people sit alone with no hope, no prospect of tragedy’s termination, no light at the end of their dark tunnel?

Beside the woman I murmured prayers.

I don’t know who she is or what she’s going through, God, but you know and you can help her.

I don’t know what to do. You know. Comfort her.

Help me to help her.

Give me words.

She looked at me and looked away.

I suspected she was experiencing the same inward struggle as I—wanting to both tell me to mind my own business and to sob her problems onto my shoulder.

So I sat beside her, murmuring.

Then I was quiet.

I stared out towards the sunny park, admiring the blue boundless sky that reached far beyond the apartment tops, relished the breeze kissing my face and the green of the trees and the grass.

My soul was quiet.

After a minute or two I spoke words of reason.

Shaking my phone gently I asked, “Can you call someone?”

I did not want her to be alone, nor did I have words for her. I hoped someone she knew could comfort her in her own language and watch over her. Also I had only a few minutes before I had to move on—I had to teach class.

The woman nodded and reached for the phone.

Classic misunderstanding.

Unsure what to do I simply obeyed the natural gesture, and tapped the Contacts tab.

I opened up a new contact page for her and handed over the phone.

She began to enter in her phone number while hiccupping tears. Her shaking fingers tapped numbers into the name space.

“Here,” I said, and tapped the space below. She corrected her mistake and typed in her name first, then her number.

 “You Jin Joung?” I read.

I saved her contact and then called her. We watched her phone ring with the unknown caller, phones in our laps.

I ended the call.

“I’m Rachel,” I said.

“Rechel?”

She saved my number.

She began to ask me questions. I answered willingly because I was afraid to ask questions of her, this solitary weeping woman.

This woman who could have been anywhere from 25 to 35, with her smooth tanned skin and lush caramel hair pushed back from her face oversized sunglasses. This woman with thick sweeping lashes and wide eyes and unstoppable tears.

She wore an oddly childish t-shirt dress, gray and casual, hitched up high on her crossed legs. A massive purple bruise blighted one thigh. Her feet were bare, free of the high-wedged plastic sandals with leopard print soles.

“Where from?” she asked.

“Mi-gook saram,” I replied, “American.”

“Job?”

“Son sang-nim,” I said. “Teacher.”

“Family?”

“In the United States.”

“You are alone?”

“I have new family in Korea. New friends.”

“You have friends?”

“Yes.”

“How many friends?”

I had to contemplate this one.

“Three,” I answered, holding up three fingers.

She nodded.

“You go to church?”

“Ne. Yes.”

“I don’t have church, just Jesus.”

Praise God.

Then she asked the inevitable question.

“Why Korea?”

I hesitated and looked around at the sun-soaked park again. The rustling green trees and the soaring blue sky, the fluttering, puttering pigeons in their magnificent diversity, no two alike.

I recalled the answers I always give: money, experience, a good place to start.

And I said something new. “This is where I need to be.”

I looked at her wide brown eyes. “Sometimes Jesus says ‘Stop, Stay.’ Sometimes he says go.”

She nodded and started sobbing again, her shoulders shaking and tears pouring out.

I don’t know if those words struck true or echoed some conflict in her soul, or if they merely coincided with another fit of sadness, in the way grief washes in predictable yet disarming as the tide.

We shared perhaps fifteen minutes together, and then I had to rise for class.

“Will you come with me?” I asked, pointing to my watch. “I have to go to school now.”

I had told her I had a little time before teaching.

She nodded and stood up, discarded her cigarette and slipped on her sandals. Together we left the bench and headed for the crosswalk, me already considering what I would say to Jack and Sienna at the reception desk. Perhaps I could just lead her right into the staff room and sit her at my desk, away from anyone’s gaze, at least until classes changed.

But at the crosswalk she stopped.

“I go home,” she said.

“You’ll go home?” I raised my eyebrows. “Okay. Call me if you need me,” I said.

I wondered if ever again I’d hear from this woman, who for some reason I still had no idea was crying on a deserted park bench in the middle of the afternoon rather far from her home.

She nodded and I bent to give her somewhat of a hug.

“Good luck,” I said and then we parted.

She walked away down the sidewalk and I crossed the street, recommencing my commute.

Across the road going up the sidewalk I told God I didn’t want His job.

“You listen to that all day long. You hear people crying and witness tragedy constantly. I could never do it.” I clenched my hands. “I would die from grief—I’d suffocated under the weight of all that misery!

“Thank you, God,” I breathed, “for being who You are.”

A few days later I texted her, You Jin, greeting her in Korean and introducing myself.

“Annyeonghaseyo! It’s Rachel from the park. How are you?”

I didn’t expect a reply but prayed for her, and shared our brief encounter with a few people. I both wanted to talk about You Jin and our unorthodox meeting, and to keep the encounter entirely to myself.

It’s been over a month since we met.

Tonight as I was reaching the end of my solitary enjoyment of Back to the Future III, I received a Kakao talk message from an unrecognized name.

“Who is You Jin?” I asked myself, trying to recollect if this was a student or church member or some other acquaintance.

“Hi,” she said, this unknown person.
“Hello,” I answered, “How are you?”

“Fine. Thank you.”

“Have we met?” I asked.

“In Daejeon,” she answered in Korean.

“Where?”

“At the park. Bench.”

I had time only to type “Oh!” (as my Korean typing is exorbitantly slow) before my phone began ringing. The caller was You Jin Joung.

We had a delightful brief conversation.

Her English is better than I remember, or perhaps she simply speaks better when she is not miserable.

She is in Seoul, she said, with family.

“Alone, in Daejeon,” she said, “Family in Seoul.”

“Oh, good. Very good.”

(Obviously I am very adroit at conversation.)

“I like Ray-eechel. First American friend.”

“I am so happy to hear from you! You sound good?”

“Oh, really?”

“You sound happy.”

She did.

We concluded this brief exchange with prospect of further communication.

“I call Ray-eechel sometimes. Ray-eechel is my friend.”

“Yes, I would like that.”

“Okay, I will go now.”

“Okay, have a good night.”

“You also, have good night.”

“Okay, bye!”

“Bye.”

I don’t know as I will ever meet You Jin again in person. She has moved back to Seoul where apparently she has family; she is not alone.

I am not sure if she will call often or if our exchanges will develop beyond extremely small talk. If my Korean improves then this is quite possible.

I don’t know what is happening in her life or what was happening that led to her isolated misery on that park bench in the midst of sunshine and busyness.

But God knows and God knew.

I pray that I will always follow God, off the course of my own schedule and away from the expected and comfortable. I pray that nothing will ever be more important than sharing His great love.

We cannot know the full impact of our actions or our words. Sometimes we will never see the after-effects of our interactions or fruits of our labors.

Jesus did not promise us immediate results, earthly recognition or a nicely typed report cataloging cause and effect.

He did promise us the Spirit to give us words when we have none and boldness before the unknown. And He promised that if we call on His name, He will answer. If we seek Him, we will find Him.

“Just call my name and I’ll be there…the love I have for you is so alive.”

I don’t always go out of my way or perceive the lost and desperate before my eyes. But when I do, God pours blessings of love, peace and joy over me with abundance so that no matter the awkwardness, the delay or the physical discomfort, those few minutes or hours spent beside someone in need are far better than whatever I had planned.

“I’ll give you all that your heart could ever want, and so much more.”

Praise God for being who He is, able to hear the sound of every breaking heart, catch every falling tear and answer every unspoken call.

The love He has for us is so alive. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLc_nJGxvWc

Doing my Best

I have much to say but am simply too exhausted to write more than a few highlights. 

Last week was our final full week of this term: tomorrow we have the ultimate three days, then recuperate (hopefully) with a four-day weekend before commencing the final term of 2015 on Monday, November 3.

On Wednesday our co-worker Bradly had his baby, a beautiful little girl named Chloe. He has been on his paternity-leave since then and will return this Wednesday; thus we have been splitting his classes between us. My allotted duty is teaching his 8 AM Level 1 Adult class. 

They are a cheerful group, an agreeable four students who generally alleviate the stress of an extra class by their congenial natures. 

I had the responsibility on Wednesday of giving and grading their Final Tests, which was actually a pleasant task, as I could share in the pride of seeing a majority of high scores. 

There is particular satisfaction in observing the progression of Level 1 students, some of whom commence the class with the bare capability of maintaining conversation, and who complete the course with eagerness to talk in casual English. 

Hoorah for successfully passing students!

Of course I also gave my own four adult classes their Final Tests on Wednesday, and had the not-so-pleasant witness of some not-so-good scores, and the looming necessity of telling those students they must repeat the course.

Oh, to be the bearer of bad news, such is truly a burden we wish not to bear. 

We teachers also had the delightful task of writing comments for all of our Junior students this week: playing the euphemism game where we somehow convey honest feedback with positive language. 

I deliberated over phrasing as one attempts to solve a brain-teaser, tapping out and deleting words in even amounts. 

Determined to be honest and helpful, I commented constructively and noted positive characteristics of each student. 

Some of my Juniors have attitudes that could use adjusting, and cannot seem to speak respectfully no matter how I try to appease them with entertaining or simplistic adjustments to the curriculum.

No matter if I laugh off their sass or award them candy along with their perhaps more deserving classmates, no matter if I aid them with other assignments, spell out words or give hint after hint, there is simply a disconnect between gratitude and attitude. 

"I did the best I could," I said to my Korean co-teacher with whom I share my favorite class of fourteen-year olds.  

(You can decide yourself if the word "favorite" is used sarcastically.)

Like all Junior classes, this one is thirty minutes, and is usually comprised mostly of me calling on students to be quiet and do some work, at least write a few sentences!

Such wasted time is true agony to my serious teaching spirit which longs to attend to those students who would actually benefit from my assistance, rather than becalm the six boys making the room echo with their raucous cries and slaps.

"I did the best I could," I said to Jason, exiting the room Thursday night as he entered.

"Yeah, you did," he said in return. 

Usually after departing the classroom with best wishes and promise to see them again next time, always in positive if not beaming tones, I descend to the staff room and shake my head at Jason.

"They're just so frustrating," I say. 

But I always try.

This term I have tried.

And still some of those students refused to work.

Still some of those grammar concepts did not stick. 

Still some Juniors say "Does he has brown hair?" instead of my constantly reiterated "Does he HAVE brown hair." 

Still some cannot read the words of the dialogue without stumbling.

Still they forgo articles.

And still, some of my adult students failed their Final Test. 

Despite my advice and admonitions to ask for help, to practice with the workbook and listen to the recordings, to prepare ahead of time for Term Project and bring me their scripts for editing, despite all my reminders and encouragement, still they did not.

I cannot control them. 

My responsibility is not to babysit them or micromanage their lives. My job is not to tell them what to do or scold them when they do not listen (the adults, at least.)

My job is not to shame them when they are incorrect or shake my head when they make the same mistakes over and over again. 

My job is never to laugh at their efforts.

My job is to say, "Repeat after me," "Listen and repeat," "Let's try it again," "One by one," "It sounds like this," "Remember, articles are very important in English," "These words are irregular....."

My job is to encourage them every day, through every exercise, and especially on the days when success seems impossible.

My job is to smile at them in the morning when it's dark and chilly and rainy, when we're tired and the lesson is dull.

My job is to welcome them to class when they're tardy and ask them how they are doing.

My job is to refer to the book but mold the lesson to their needs.

My job is not to throw up my hands in defeat and dismiss the class as hopeless.

My job is to roll my shoulders and say, "Okay, let's try something else."

My job is to say, "Well, you all are having trouble focusing today so let's do something more fun..." and find that amusement.

My job is to tell them, "Stand up and stretch!" and gather them in a circle, get them moving and thinking in English away from their desks. 

My job is sometimes to look ridiculous so they laugh, and remember. 

My job is to do the best that I can, more than I can, as I have to constantly ask for help, and just never give up.

Some of them will repeat the course--but they won't fail. 

They will try again. And so will I.

"Well, that's not working. So let's try something else..."

That's my job.

Praise God, He reaches us wherever we are. 

Praise God that He is not far from any of us (Acts 17:27).

My job, as a teacher, is not to be far from my students.

My job is to do whatever they need to succeed--even if that means teaching them again. 

And as I feel inferior, here for four months and still unable to say how old I am or how I am doing or even understand 98% of the Korean language, while around me are foreigners from around the world who learned Korean from English-Korean classes, having studied English as their second or third language. 

As I feel overwhelmed in my social awkwardness, shy and boring, as I feel gawped at like an animal in a zoo, as I feel too worn out to think or hold open my eyes, God reminds me of joy.

This morning at church a sister prayed for the congregation.

Not every day is happy or joyful, she said, but every day is a blessing, and every day there is a reason for joy.

God has saved us and is with us. 

The work is hard, the hours are arduous and often there is no one to affirm I'm doing it right.

But I will keep doing the best that I can, because I'm not just working for myself, or for one student, or even all the students. 

I am working for God, and praying that through these efforts, He may reach hearts. 

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." ~Colossians 3:23

For Mom

October 17.

The year is 1963….

Forget that. The year is unimportant. Taking precedence is the event: the nascence of life, specifically, the life of one little girl.

She says that she was a fat baby. I agree with her father in saying she was “pleasedly plump.”

After the baby-fat was shed she would never be chubby again.

She is ever slim.

She’s great at public speaking. In high school her professor was unsure how to handle her superior skill; she was leagues above the rest of her nervous, stuttering classmates. In a world where the general public fears public speaking more than death, this is indeed impressive.

Her sewing skills also developed early and with fanfare: her high school Home Ec teacher was impossible to please but she nevertheless learned to cut and pattern clothes, capable of producing charming outfits from yards of plain fabric.

When my brothers and I were young she would often dress us in matching outfits she had made, ensembles in which we’d be photographed for special occasions.

She (almost) never smiles with her teeth for photographs. She smiles with lips closed over imperfect but not unpleasant teeth.

She’s never had a cavity.

She can sing soprano.

Before the age of twelve she finished piano lessons, so she can play, but not elaborately. Playing piano for a church service is never her first choice, and is preceded by arduous hours of preparation, refusing to curse but coming close.

She’s got a much better vocabulary than the popular four-letter words.

She saves her voice for song and for teaching.

She’s taught every grade and subject, from toddling youngsters to graduating seniors. She’s led Bible studies and directed vast programs, overseeing every detail of Vacation Bible School, Sunday School and Youth Group. She substitute taught in the local school districts and chaperoned our field trips.

She’s a hostess. She always welcomed our friends and kept an open house.

She became pseudo-mother to more than one youth, and is proud still today to be called Mom by those she didn’t birth.

She is also proud to elaborately decorate the house for hosting, particularly at Christmastime, when she fills the place with lights, candles, greens, and delicious scents.

She bakes a lot for holidays. She makes pies with superior crust and filling,  and can spend hours on her feet making cookies, bars, macaroons, cakes, pies and her favored chocolate-dipped coconut balls.

She enjoys sweet things, even white chocolate.

She never drinks alcohol. She has perhaps the world’s lowest tolerance and won’t touch even wine. Yet she enjoys tomato juice.

She’s a homebody. She’s always lived within 50-miles of home, save for one errant semester in Virginia. She’s comfortable there, at home, producing and creating: magnificent cards and paper arts that shame Hallmark, scrapbook pages fit for frames, cross-stitches and quilts and table-runners to give as gifts, and occasionally dresses, vests, bathrobes and pajamas. Outside she likes the gardens: weeding and pruning, staining the knees of her pants to raise beauty from the earth.

She starts her day with coffee, vitamins, and her Bible.

Her large mug she fills half with coffee, half with pseudo-cream, no sugar. She’s dependent on this caffeine dose; without it she can expect a migraine.

Actually she is prone to migraines and spells of dizziness without seeming cause.

Despite these debilitations, however, she perseveres.

She’s dependable. She’s punctual. No, she’s early. She will always be ahead of schedule. She will come to school or church or rehearsal whether the weather is fair or foul, whether the roads are heavy with snow or slick with ice.

She maintains the tenacity of the postal service ideal.

She loves brain teasers and word games. She loves using logic to solve puzzles. She enjoys Canasta and Solitaire on the computer. She likes Yahtzee and Scrabble.

She’s read everything Elizabeth Peters has ever written; she’s partial to tales of ancient Egypt.

Her mind candy is Young Adult fantasy: she’s a fan of Twilight and The Hunger Games, Divergent and other realms of vampires and teenage drama.

She likes to go to bed early and get up well-past dawn. But she never sleeps well: there’s always a book ready at her bed-side.

She doesn’t have a smart phone nor demonstrates interest in obtaining one. She texts with precision with her sliding keyboard.

She’s recently become comfortable using a webcam.

Her favorite color is purple and her favorite flower the pink and white tiger lily.

She loves their fresh scent as well as their speckled petals.

She enjoys walking but can’t walk fast.

She can roller skate and ice skate but rarely does either.

She has the unfathomable patience to sit and stitch pictures with thin threads, forming masterpieces from innumerable tiny crosses; to trace, cut and piece together uncountable bits of fabric into a bed-size quilt of eye-arresting patterns; to bead tiny pearls and sequins onto the bodices of gowns; to stitch pockets and embellishments on vests; to sort 1,000 puzzle pieces from jumble to image; to measure, mark, cut and layer, emboss and fold hundreds of cards to gift and sell well below their worth; to sit with a student and go over the alphabet, the grammar, the number line, the math problem, over and over until a light bulb clicks on.

She is a person of indescribable complexities.

She’s terrified of snakes: even one flattened in the road makes her cringe.

She likes her bacon crispy and her favorite pizza is alfredo chicken, mushroom and broccoli from Fremont House of Pizza.

She appreciates good a cappella because she knows firsthand how difficult it is to sing.

She knows most hymns by heart. Only for the truly obscure does she need to glance at the hymnal.

She detests gory movies and is sensitive to touching ones.

She loves Gone With the Wind in book and movie form, The Ten Commandments and classic musicals.

She reads constantly, but always starts the day with her coffee and Bible.

She doesn’t like her birthday, or Mother’s Day.

For the first time last year she permitted hair dye to lighten her locks with a few highlights. Perhaps her hair is not as bright as it once was; there are a few silver streaks now.

Today we recognize that she is now one year older, not as young as she once was.

She’s an empty-nester, now, three children grown (sort-of) and moved out of the house.

Yet still she works full-time, teaching Monday through Friday from 8 AM until 3:15 PM. She teaches Sunday school each week and sings in the choir, attends service on Saturday and Bible study Thursday nights.

She’s a good correspondent and always ready to mail a package around the world.

She doesn’t say “I love you.”

She lives those words every day, instead.

So today, we wish her Many Happy Returns, thinking how blessed we are to know her.

Perhaps your birthday is not your favorite day, but we are glad you were born, Mom, and thankful for all the chances we’ve had to spend with you. 

Just Another Manic Monday

Today was excessively long.

Mondays are always long, due to the obvious premiere of the week after a too-brief weekend, when 4:45 comes earlier than it should, and my weekly duty of Conversation Club.

Each day one of the teachers serves as facilitator for All Day Club, a program aptly named as a club which runs all day, allowing students with extra motivation and free-time to stay at the institute from 9:00 to 3:00 learning English.
The first fifty minutes (9-9:50) are when one of us foreign teachers has duty: it is casual, but requires preparation and of course, presence.

Thus on Mondays my usual two hours of preparation/breakfast time (8-10:00) are cut in half. But this once-a-week occurrence is none so bad, and is then blessedly over-with until the next not-so-anticipated Monday.

Actually, Conversation Club is enjoyable. Last week I challenged the students to tell their favorite color and explain why. Thus followed an interesting discussion of color symbolism and associations. This morning we played a game inspired by Scattergories, in which every space on the board was a different topic and they had to answer a thing beginning with the letter M. Hooray for creativity!

Today, however, my expected 8:00 hour was eliminated as well, when one of our teachers did not show up.

Teacher Bradly, a friendly blue-eyed experienced ESL teacher from Canada with a remarkable penchant for Shania Twain and an actual tendency to say "eh?," married a Korean woman last year and is expecting their baby at any time. The due date is October 21, but only God knows when their little girl will come. So when Bradly did not arrive at 6 AM, and was still absent at 7, my co-teacher Martha and I assumed the time was nigh: Baby was here!

Whether our suspicions were true or not, however, did not matter so much as that Bradly's 7 AM class was awaiting him: someone had to teach. As no one had been notified to come in as substitute, we had to improvise, and awkwardly the three of us (Ron, Martha and myself) sidled into the expectant classroom to announce Bradly's absence, and their own merger into the Level 1 class next door. Martha teaches Level 5 at 7 while I teach Level 4, both highly inappropriate for these Level 2 students. (Our institute's adult program runs from entry Level 1 to graduation Level 6.) So the class, in what seemed reasonable good humor, relocated across the hall to Teacher Ron's room where his few Level 1 students waited.

Fortunately, today was a Review Day (as is every fifth day), when the majority of class is spent on Pronunciation, Dialogue translation, and Conversation; there is no new material to teach. I'm sure the two classes got along fine, despite the abrupt convergence.

As we now knew Bradly to be absent without probability of appearance, we could prepare. For some illogical reason, the institute has decided against hiring a substitute for his five-day paternity leave, and so each of us teachers will be taking over his classes. This is not so difficult for some of us: I am to fill in for his 8 AM Level 1 class, simply adding my workload to 5 adult morning classes rather than 4, inconvenient but certainly doable. However, to cover the 6 and 7:00 classes, one of the teachers who finishes close to 10 PM must come in early, a prospect unpleasant even to consider.
Nevertheless, we know our portending schedule, and so this morning, when Bradly didn't come, we adjusted ourselves.

I scrounged under his desk to find his papers for class, pulled out his Adult binder and headed up to meet his 8:00 Level 1 class. Two students awaited me, I greeted them with words of explanation, and we commenced Review Day with cheerful smiles, the best way to conquer Monday mornings.

The class went well: much of it was spent talking casually and laughing together. The students were interested in me and I in them, as we had not met before, and they were a genial bunch (the four who attended.)

At 8:50, the end of class, I zipped back down the stairs (our staff room is on the third floor, our adult classrooms the fourth) to wolf down a few more spoonfuls of my breakfast and copy a few more game boards for Conversation Club. Amazing what one can accomplish in ten minutes!
One minute before 9:00 I was back in the same classroom to greet the next group of students, the five ladies and two gentlemen who comprise All Day Club. Most of them are Level 1.

After a few minutes of weekend chit-chat, we commenced the Scattergories-esque game and I circulated between the three groups of players to aid and commend accordingly.

When the games had finished we discussed alliteration, ways to rearrange words, add adjectives and verbs to create acceptable answers (ones beginning with M) and acrostics.
Then at 9:50 I bid them adieu, ("Have a Marvelous Monday!") and again tripped down the stairs to finish those last few bites before my 10:00 Level 1 class. Whew.

It was a good morning.

All of the teachers agree that our adult classes are what keep us going, most days. This term I am blessed with highly cooperate junior (children's) classes, all of my students are above the age of 12 and most are quite reasonable. I do have a slew of young teenage boys from whom extracting work is a trial, but overall that second-shift of classes is none so bad. But generally, junior class material is unimpressive, dull, and lessons can range from tedious to scream-worthy.

It was a good morning with students who are faithful, ones who come to class before 6:00 every single morning and persevere through difficult pronunciation and impossible grammar.
It was a good morning with students who are patient, who don't complain when my tongue twists on pronunciation I'm meant to exemplify or completely forget what I'm saying mid-sentence.
It was a good morning with students who cooperate when their teacher is not up to par, or when their classmates' attendance (or lack thereof) has made the classroom echo with absence.
It was a good morning reflecting on how blessed I am: blessed to live only ten-minutes' walk from the school; blessed to have a functioning alarm clock to rouse me from the cozy bed in which I am blessed to sleep; blessed to have coffee in my thermos and clean water in my bottle; blessed to be here among welcoming people who don't resent me for my ignorance of their language and culture.

Every lesson is headed by a "Word of Life": a verse from the Bible. Although I disagree with some Seventh Day Adventist beliefs, I am glad to teach for one of their institutes (SDA Daejeon Dunsan) because of blessings such as these, those reminders of God's ceaseless mercy.

And those words helped carry me through the rest of this Manic Monday, as I finished up a morning of five formal classes and one club, going from 6 until noon, edited Term Project presentations for some of those students, then headed upstairs at 12:35 to meet my dear friend for our bi-weekly Korean/English lesson exchange.
Learning Korean is difficult, especially after working all morning, but what a blessing to learn and be taught by such a patient friend, a woman who graces me with her trust, intimacy, coffee, and lunches, who accompanies me to the phone shop and to the doctor, who prays with me.

It was a good two hours studying Korean and aiding Young with English.
It was a wonderful twenty minutes spent sitting with my dear Korean co-teachers in the quiet in-between, before the other foreign teachers returned for the afternoon junior classes.
What a blessing to feel such warmth! The literal warmth from Hyuna, who hugged me on her lap and rubbed my chilled hands (it was a cold good morning!), and the smiling warmth of laughter and conversation and welcome from Jason, Ace, and Karl, as I disrupted their work with my chatter.

It was a good half hour scribbling down test questions for junior classes, reviewing those term project edits and going over lessons while bantering with co-teachers.
It was a good ten minutes walking home through the pristine September sunshine.
It was a good forty minutes of rest lounging on my bed, snacking and sipping coffee with my feet under the blanket.
It was a good twenty minutes of final preparation, making word searches and printing copies before class.
It was a good two hours of teaching four junior classes.

It was a good ten minutes of cuddling again with Hyuna.
It was a good twenty minutes of preparation for the dark and early of tomorrow's 6:00 class.
It was a good ten minutes homeward listening to my co-teacher's much-needed vent.
It was good to take off my shoes and put on my flannel pajama pants.
It was good to pop bread up from the toaster and make an always-pleasing PB&J.
It was good to sip tea and check my email.
It was good to turn on Netflix--and even better to close it out for the need to write.

It is good now to turn towards sleep.
It's been another Manic Monday. Made extra manic by the mishap of Bradly's phone: it died in the middle of the night and failed to awake him this morning with the usual alarm. (No baby yet!)
But no matter how manic, no matter how exhausting or even atrocious the days may be, they are gone in a blink.
This term is nearing its end, and where has it gone?

It's been a series of Manic Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and blessed Sundays.

Here's to tomorrow and its mania--a too-early alarm and the start of a new unit, and two extra, blessed morning hours in which to breakfast and prepare.
Here's to Tuesday.

Monday, it's been fun.

Le Premier

Introductions: I have finally started a blog.

안냥하세요!

This is the standard Korean greeting, used for "Hello", "Goodbye", and the rhetorical "How are you?"
Literally it means "Are you at peace?", and so should technically be followed by a question mark.
However, I am an English teacher and so allow myself grammatical incorrectness; I am also a writer and so allow myself poetic license.

The more one studies English, the more one recognizes the absurd number of inconsistencies and situational discrepancies which make learning a language so challenging. English is ranked among one of the most difficult languages to learn because of its bastard background. I mean this literally, in that English is the illegitimate offspring of Latin, French, and German, reared in a country fought over by several different people groups and slowly unified by creation of a common language and king. It has continued to develop, filled with unfathomable extraneous letters and syllables, awkward homonyms, synonyms, and idioms, and a vast array of irregular verbs.

Short story: English is tough.
"Difficult, Teacher!" is a phrase I hear often from my English as a Second Language (ESL) students.

In return to this truth I reply, "But it's not impossible!"

This exchange is also a good summary of my life: Difficult, but not impossible. The reason for the possibility is God's grace.

Teaching English in a foreign country where one cannot speak or yet understand the language is awkward. Living in a place where one's looks deviate from the norm and attract constant stares is also awkward. Miscommunication and this status as "exotic other" can be tiresome, frustrating, and wearing on one's nerves.
Lately every time I catch eyes following me in the blatant "Look at that strange creature!" fashion, I mentally retort, "Keep watching: I might do magic!"
I have yet to say these words aloud, thankfully. Although their exact meaning might be lost, the tone of utterance would be clear. And I would only confirm the suspicions of many that foreigners are rude barbarians who redden too quickly, sweat excessively, and disregard civility.

Praise the Lord, God's grace includes many wonders, including patience and ever increasing empathy and compassion. Those qualities are what dam the flow of impatience and intolerance, granting instead gratitude and humor.

I am starting this blog as a regular greeting to those who are far away and so graciously think of me, pray for me, and send letters and cards. It is a genial letter of response in which I will share of my experiences, from mundane to thrilling (mostly in-between.)

This week will mark my fourth month in Korea, and the close of October my fourth month of teaching English for SDA Language Institute in Daejeon. I teach juniors (children) and adults, from 6:00 AM until 7:15 PM (yes, I have time off in the afternoon). The schedule is grueling and the teaching can be exhausting, if only in effort to keep smiling and encouraging the students and co-teachers. But, God is good all the time, and for every challenge He pours out blessings, if only in the satisfaction of that title: "Teacher!"

I never wanted to come to Korea; I never wanted to teach in a boxed-in room; I never considered life in a tiny studio apartment in the midst of a city in a country of an unknown language--but here I am.
This is my life now.
And although it is awkward and exhausting and fraught with frustration, I am glad to be here.