Community

Just finished some soondae and tuna kimbop for dinner that I got bought from a couple take out places near my apartment. Soondae is Korean blood sausage. Kimbop is a seaweed roll with rice, ham, radish, tuna, egg, carrot, and some other things I am sure I am forgetting. It is delicious, cheap, and you can find it anywhere. It is like the Korean version of deli food. In fact, I would choose tuna kimbop over any tuna sandwich any day. The soondae came from a place I have been frequenting in the past week that serves traditional Korean street food. It is fast, greasy, and delicious. I still have to memorize the Korean word for delicious. My students told me Friday that it was “ma-dee-saw-yo.” I am washing it down with some kind of milky, fruity alcohol. Someone at the ex-pat bar told me about it but I can't remember the name. Good stuff. I have been thinking a lot lately, probably ever since I got off the plane in fact, about two things: the sense of community here and the way that cultures adapt to their setting. I will try to cover these thoughts the best I can but I sense that I will be returning to them often throughout my time here.

One thing I truly love about Korea and especially the school where I work so far is their understanding of community. In the United States, we have a great sense of rugged individualism and independence. We want to be our own people. Our country is adapted to personalization. In America, you can “have it your way.” In Korea, they emphasize the importance of doing things as a group. They have a very explicit understanding of human bonding.

Where I work, you do not simply go to lunch, grab food, and eat at your desk like so many teachers in the United States. Instead, you announce to everyone in the office that you are going to lunch. They either offer to join you or decide to stay a few minutes and go later with another group. No one goes alone. If someone looks like they might go alone, usually another teacher will offer to stay behind so that they will not eat alone. The rules extend throughout the meal. You must wait for everyone in your party to finish eating before you get up and leave, unless you have something very pressing to do and you excuse yourself. In America, we do understand that eating together is important, but we do not voice it as often or make it a rule. I have been invited to eat with the vice principal at a nice restaurant as well as one of my co-teachers. Coworkers learn to get along with each other outside of work. This is not as common in America, but I sense it is more common at the smaller, perhaps charter, schools. You are strange if you eat alone here. I absolutely love this part of Korean culture because I love people. I hate eating alone and always made it a point to try to eat with others when I was at the duplex in Michigan. Mankind's history with cooking begins around a campfire. This means that eating has been a communal thing for a very, very, very, long time. Instead of shrugging off something so fundamental to who we are, Korean culture chooses to embrace it.

Koreans also have a deep understanding of why we do, or perhaps why we should, drink. Granted, I haven't been out drinking with any Koreans yet so my opinion on this matter is still very fresh, but I have gained some sense of their ideals from where and the way beer is served. I also gained some insight from one of my students. I asked her what the drinking age was in Korea and she did not know. Either she was blindingly ignorant or it just did not matter. Regardless, she told me drinking usually begins in college for Koreans, but then she followed up with something that I found illuminating. She said that Koreans begin drinking in college because “they need to make friends and become familiar with others and that is the way that you can get to know each other.” I found this to be a very mature opinion on why we drink coming from a girl that is probably far too burdened with studying to even consider drinking. Not only that, but I have noticed my English students tend to use familiar in a different way than we would. When we say familiar, we mean to get acquainted, but when Koreans say familiar, it seems to me that they mean they become like family. Drinking cements us together.

On the other hand, I had a class create a bucket list on Friday and one of my better English speakers raised her hand and told me that before she dies she would like “to drink until she has no memory.” I told her our word for that was “blackout drunk,” which I wrote on the board. She got red and said she only wanted to do it once. We all laughed and I told her it was an awful idea. This scenario would have gone very differently in the States. Here, I have the sense of maturity about drinking and while I cannot speak for all Korean students, mine are too busy, tired, and scared of expulsion to drink. Americans kids will drink and keep it hushed. Korean kids will verbally fantasize about drinking and then not.

I suppose tonight I will stop with community, then tackle some of the adaptations in the next post. One final thought on community for now: I have not yet described my apartment. I sleep on a floor futon to the side of my living room/kitchen. Other than this one room I have a bathroom and a laundry room. It is essentially designed for one person only. Today I realized how ironic this may be. The first time I have ever lived alone is in a country that puts a high value on togetherness. I wonder how common it is for Koreans to live alone?