Winding-Down

Well, here we are in 2012.
Christmas was great, I roasted a chicken in a mini-oven and we all watched the music video to Cliff Richard’s “Mistletoe and Wine.” New Year consisted of me drinking a lot and having to escort The Slob home, after she temporarily forgot how to use her legs.
January has been weird. I bought my ticket home (The Slob and I are on the same flight: Seoul, Tokyo, London) and I started selling stuff I didn’t think I’d take home.
Recently received a message from the University of Bath, my PGCE interview is on the 28th March. Obviously very exciting and unnerving, having had two years out here I wonder if I’ve learned anything practical at all in regards to teaching. Having said that, I am quite sure that, in the same way that you can be sun burnt and not notice until back inside, I will arrive back in England with a harder shell.
A friend of mine said recently “leaving is so tough, I’ve become entrenched and don’t want to de-trench.” I can’t think of a more pithy way to put it, the last month has felt like digging.
That being said, I am finding myself looking at my last few weeks here with an unshakable feeling of near-morbidity. I refer to any administrative task I have to complete as “getting my affairs in order” and keep thinking about “last times”. Last meal at restaurant “X”, last train trip to “Y” etc. It is a little strange and not always uplifting, but I’m trying to use it to be reflective.
I have never been so out of sync with my surroundings, so clueless, so unbelievably frustrated and confused as I have been out here. Certain things are madness: age hierarchy, social conformity, homogenous ethnicity and subsequent intolerance/ignorance etc.
It would be worth mentioning that these are cultural differences that I knew I would encounter, and have played only a minor part in my adventure. There are so many great things that I prefer to dwell on such as: helpfulness, eagerness to learn, jimjilbangs, race-meets, affordable and punctual public transportation, safe-streets and the list goes on.
It is going to be a big step, leaving this place. It provided me with a springboard into what I felt I ought to be, it pushed me out of my comfort zone so much that I felt compelled to do other things that I wouldn’t have ordinarily leaned towards. Dan’s enthusiasm for running got me hooked, my Ukulele-based friendship with Dale showed me that music isn’t a closed-club, and I have realised, through bona fide teachers like Euc, that teaching is a great profession with a lot of rewards. I’ve learned so much.
This time last year I was back in England on a visit, and I remember quoting Philip Larkin’s “The Importance of Elsewhere” as a literary reminder of the joys of expat-anonymity though accent, and of the difficulty of assimilating to the familiar surroundings of home. This time I’ll borrow from his poem “Days”, as it explains very succinctly, the mundane nature of passing time.

‘What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.’

The Battle of Watery-Loo.

I have been doing a lot of angst-filled postings about my personal life/ what I want to do with myself after Korea. I have not received any feedback to confirm this but I am sure that it must be annoying, so I am going to write about poo, instead.
Now, before I lapse into childish giggles about my own love of defecation (in the appropriate contexts, of course) should explain that I’ve been having some plumbing problems.
The Slob’s apartment has become my second home as it is much bigger, closer to downtown and has a nice sofa. My “almost moved-in” status has been a source of irritation and love (in equal parts) for her, I’m sure. I have also had to reign-in my bachelor toilet habits such as leaving the seat up when I visit the porcelain shrine, in my own apartment I only do this because I sometimes like to stand in the doorway and see if I can achieve the correct trajectory with my tinkles to hit the toilet. This is really only possible in Korea due to the “wet-room” style of bathroom in which a quick blast of the shower-head can sluice away all evidence of this juvenile, yet entertaining, one-player game. I digress.
Having a shared bathroom is a test of one’s relationship, especially when you’re prone to enjoying a few beers and a burrito (I’m looking at you, Cantina) it used to be easier for me to hold my demonic gases inside until I left for my apartment in the mornings, alternately goose-stepping and letting off noises that sounded like a cross between a strangled duck and Glen Miller’s “In The Mood” (in B flat) as I did so.
The gaseous mutterings are easier to contain than the solid Balrog of desperation that comes knocking in the morning (especially after a night of boozing) and though some people can hold it in, my digestive system has made it very clear that it has a quite uncanny act of being active at just the wrong time (see the post “Following Through On My Commitments” for details.) There comes the game-changing day when, looking longingly into each other’s eyes, you say the words “I need a poo.”
After doing the deed, the relief was exquisite. The satisfaction only lasted until I depressed the flusher and, rather than whisking the behemoth away to the place they call “plop-land”, it merely filled the bowl with more and more blue water. The effect was unnerving; “it” started to rise up, menacingly, like that genetically-modified shark in the tunnel in “Deep Blue Sea”. I was suddenly left with an inch of dry-porcelain between myself and a potential flood, where I would possibly have to deal with “it” laying prostrate on the tiles, like a freshly caught brown trout.
Grabbing the plunger, I went straight for the heart of the matter and when I had plunged enough to hear the hacking cough of the drains, I let go.
Whoosh! Down it went, looking at me ruefully as it disappeared beneath the waves. I sprayed some air freshener and was about to close the lid when I noticed something in my peripheral vision.
A malteaser-sized ball had mysteriously floated back from the crypt and was now lazily doing circular laps in the bowl.
I flushed, and flushed and plunged and flushed and then, out of desperation, sprayed bleach on it. Nothing.
Eventually I tried plunging and flushing at the same time, I trapped it in a corner and prepared to send it to it’s end. Plunging with all my might, I hit the button and pulled away the plunger only to see half the behemoth crawl, zombie-like, back out from it’s watery grave to join malteaser (who I posthumously nick-named “Dylan”) and do a grotesque synchronised swimming routine in victory.
After more plunging, swearing and bleaching I finally sent them on their way for good. I had been in the toilet for at least thirty minutes and returned with a glazed look in my eye to The Slob.
“I’ve been dying to use the toilet, what took you so long?”
She giggled at my story, and went hesitantly to do her own business. It was only after the flushing I heard a muffled “Oh no!” from within.
Picking up the trusty plunger, and laughing, I went back into battle.

Autumn

If I only wrote seasonally it would account for my lack of blogging, I have somewhat broken my promise to write once every two weeks.
Things are changing a lot right now: I’m plagued by a monstrous Vice Principal who has made it her goal in life to ruin any sense of self-worth I have (thankfully I’m immune, not having much to begin with) I am also back in a relationship, and am very happy to have found myself in love again, not that I ever stopped.
The biggest thing that has changed is my desire to stay here. Quite frankly, I’ve lost it.
By “lost it” I don’t mean that I can now be found in the nearest Homeplus Store, shouting at the cereal, I just mean that I’ve lost any professional will to stay in Korea.
I will never slate Korea, or talk negatively about my time here. I have a massive amount of respect for the country, and the people. Sometimes you just have to accept when it is time to move on, and do so with dignity.
The main thing that has been holding me back has been my own lack of clarity regarding what I want to do next; the thought of staying here and teaching does not appeal, mainly because I’m totally unfulfilled in my job.
Some students are very attentive and kind, some are little brats who could probably do with a crash-course in basic manners and the rest just float in-between the two extremes. With an average of forty students a class, it is hard to tell.
The question that has haunted me since day one is this: am I a teacher?

Good friends that have stayed as long as I have are now gearing up for year three, and they are all vying for positions in Universities, a pretty good gig as far as holiday-time goes and a status-boost.
While I admire their aptitude for wanting to teach EFL in another country, I just don’t see myself continuing and still feeling that I’m moving my life forward in the direction that I want to be going.
It is with a strangely excited feeling that I announce: I’ve applied for a PGCE course back in the UK, stating in September 2012.
There are still loads of things to consider and overcome before I can even get on the course, I have to remember that I am competing against people who have had more experience than me and are living back in the UK at this second, able to observe lessons in a state-run school (something I am yet to do) and, of course, people who might just be better at interviews than I. I still have it all to do, and I know that it is going to be seriously hard work.
On another note, I feel good that I have found my purpose, for now. There is a sense of quiet satisfaction I have when I know that I’m committed to something, I felt it when I sent my documents to Korea back in 2009 and I’m feeling it again now, though I feel the stakes are much higher. I will be able to teach English Literature and Language to kids who at least understand me, and I will make some sort of difference in their lives as opposed to the burned-out, garbling human-textbook I am out here.
This being said, I’d like to think that I have an edge over some people out here who have perhaps not had to dig deep and rely on their own fortitude to get them through the day in a strange new country. Others who perhaps wouldn’t be able to control a room full of screeching kids who mostly don’t understand a word of English. I like to think that the hard lessons I’ve learned out here will stand me in good stead for when I have a class of my own, and that I’ll never be quite as frustrated as I am here.
There will be other things to tackle, I’m sure that I’ll find things to regard with disdain and take issue with. I just hope that I can always draw on the good things that I learned here, and never forget the tough life lessons that I learned while I was teaching in Korea.
For now, I am sitting at my desk and can hear the high-pitched babble of Korean 1st graders outside my door. They’re not my ideal audience, and I’m sure I’m not their ideal teacher. I can only do my job, for now, and hope that when it is over that I don’t miss it as much as I’m sure I will.
Now, if you need me I will be in Homeplus…

Lift-Off

It has been a very long time since I posted anything and I apologise, it has been a rough month and a half.
Without being too “woe is me”, I have just endured a break-up that has knocked me about a bit.

Possibly the hardest part is moving on, and that takes time and patience and the willingness to accept that you’re going to feel quite shitty for a while. In this case it came out of nowhere and has left me looking inwards quite a lot, blaming myself for trusting someone else so much with my happiness.
Now, usually when a friend of mine breaks up and they are slumped in their house listening to Phil Collins (and wanking, though possibly not simultaneously) I am a fan of getting them on their feet and taking them out on the piss to get them excited about being single again.
Now it has happened to me I recognise that a lot of my attempts at healing others through merriment has only a limited effect; booze and bad-behaviour only get you so far. If you’re not feeling enough without it then you’ll never feel enough with it.

In short (and I feel compelled to keep it short because I hate self-indulgence) I am hurting still, but I’m coming back up again. For a while I was as happy as I could be but it has to be a two-way street, and it never really was. I am a resilient person and sometimes you have to take the attitude of: “I tried, I couldn’t make it happen and I will learn from this.”

I’ve actually got some new developments of a more positive nature to report too:

I have, at the age of 23, purchased my first musical instrument. A soprano Ukulele.
Now, my musical skills have long been a source of amusement and shame (in equal measure) for my family and I. At the age of 9 I took up the clarinet and was given the honour (nay, the privilege) of sitting in the seat of third clarinet. As Eddie Izzard quipped: “First clarienet plays the melody, second clarinet plays the harmony and third clarient plays the notes that are left over.”
He proceeds to do a very funny mime of someone waiting a very long time for one or two notes, playing them and sitting back down again. This is almost a carbon copy of myself in the Fair Oak Junior School orchestra, except I missed the said left-over notes quite often and would put them in usually in the most inappropriate part of the song by mistake. Usually at the end.
I then attempted the trumpet, saxophone, keyboard and all with the same horrible result. I had just not grasped one very fundamental problem with all of my musical adventures: I was crap.

The drums were my first instrument in Secondary school and I loved them, I wasn’t especially good but I had rhythm and enjoyed smashing the living hell out of something twice a week. It was around this time that my best friend Simon was showing the world just how fantastic a drummer he was and so I turned to practicing with him to try and get better.
Thing is, Si had his own kit. I needed my own, too if I was planning on getting better. I asked my parents to facilitate this arrangement and I was told, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off. It was understandable, my track record with instruments was not good and the prospect of me banging away to “Enter Sandman” at night filled my Mum and Dad with dread.
It was not long after this, however that I discovered my own voice.
I’m not an especially strong or able singer, but I can hold a note and once I realised this I began singing in musicals and, later, Open Mic evenings.
The problem with singing is that, to be a vocalist you must be amazingly good to be taken seriously. If you can play an instrument adequately and hold a note however, people are far more forgiving of you being mediocre…providing you play songs they know.
So, it is with some trepidation that I announce I’ll be playing my first ukulele gig on 23rd July with a Kiwi friend of mine who is a far superior musician to me. I’ll just have to play the notes that are left over.

The final thing I would like to talk about is related more to my running.

I want to give back. I love running but the incentive isn’t there anymore to run races. It has to be for something bigger than personal record times, which is why I’m doing this http://joerunskorea.wordpress.com/

In September this year I will attempt to run four marathons in four different cities in four days.

The proceeds will go to research into Multiple Sclerosis, which is a big problem in Korea and around the world. I aim to raise as much money as possible by putting myself out there in a challenge I know not many (sane) people would attempt.

If you want to help out in any way possible email me at Joeyriles88@gmail.com, I would love to hear from you.

Signing off, time to start getting on with it all again.

Publication

http://www.seoulstyle.com/health.php?aid=0000000401

I recently got my mug in an online magazine.
Predictably, I am writing about running.
Enjoy!

Static

I’d start off with an apologetic statement about how I haven’t written in a while. I’d give some hand-wringing, unlikable-but-worthy excuse and hope you all forgive me for having lapsed in farting my thoughts out into the World Wide Web.
Fact is: no one really cares. Blogging has always felt like shouting from a cliff top with a minimal amount of clothes on: invigorating, but you wouldn’t want your friends to see you.
This is not a swipe at any people who actually enjoy reading my stuff, I welcome you with a curious look on my face that would more usually be seen on someone who has just overturned a parking fine, and found a fiver under the sofa all in the same hour. In other words, I greet news that people out there read this blog with an element of disproportionately-happy incredulity.
It has also not escaped my notice that people who stumble upon this blog (without the need for stumbleupon, the online equivalent of walking backwards down the street and swapping people’s newspapers every two minutes) is that they came to read about life as an EFL teacher in Korea.
No doubt they will have been disappointed, I have not offered any “here’s what I would do if your co-teacher brings a badger to your lesson” advice and I certainly haven’t tried to bemoan the system or sing its praises. I just think that adults are adults and they can make up their own mind about what they think. I’m old-fashioned like that.
In the past month and a bit I’ve been busy and on a huge comedown from starting my second year of teaching in Korea, this is not always the best way to approach a post but I would like to list a couple of things that I’ve learned. They are as follows:

Familiarity breeds contempt, it also harbours a lot of comfort. It depends how you look at it. Staying at the same school has been a bit of a strange shift in that I have become a fixture, rather than a novelty. I teach the same grades and the same syllabus, and I enjoy the freedom my school gives me to teach off-topic stuff.
On the other hand, I am less tolerant of some of the quirks of the Korean school system; this is compounded a little by having a nagging sense of irrelevance about what I am actually teaching.

“Hey kids, today’s lesson is about crystal meth!” *Jazz hands*

With no real idea of how it happened, I have also become a fantastic grump. Anyone who knows me will testify that I’m a cheery, friendly person most of the time. This can be chipped away at until you have a tuft-haired, stone-faced stress-machine who will mutter obscenities under his breath and castrate wrong-doers with a worn-down ruler.
Granted, being called “handsome” by screeching twelve-year old girls every morning is not the worst thing that can happen in any job. It has just lost its novelty, making the feeling of alienation even more pronounced.
I walk down the corridor with my hand raised preemptively in greeting for the bouncing, uniformed children who have not quite figured out how to navigate their small bodies through a corridor large enough to land a jumbo jet, without hitting obstacles. They sprawl out of their classrooms as the bell goes, swaying and crashing into each other like big atoms, the entire time shouting “Hi teacher! HIIIIIIIII!!!!!” I suppose I should be honoured, not terrified.
Maybe part of the issue is that I’m professionally bored, I don’t feel stretched or tested in the way I would like to be and my inner task-master is telling me to get to grips with myself and get a real qualification. It isn’t a gripe against the kids, or the school. I just feel that I’m going to be ready to move on soon, and with that feeling comes all the angst of what to do and how.

This isn’t glossed over by my family, either. My mother was in Chester recently, visiting a few friends who are in the EFL racket and their take on my doing a second year in Korea was one of bemusement; I will be just as unqualified after my second year as I was before I got on the plane in February 2010 and therefore still unemployable (as far as EFL teaching goes) in the UK or elsewhere. Obviously I haven’t let this turd-like titbit of information get to me at all –much less to the point of writing a blog about it—but I am now looking at alternative means to achieve my dream job.*
Anyway, the turbulence has been unsettling at worst and exciting at best, following the white rabbit down the hole isn’t always fun and sometimes it gets pretty dark, both in mood and lighting. This time two years ago I was writing on how much of a miserable bastard Larkin was/wasn’t and seeing teaching in Korea as an almost unattainable pie in the sky. It would be prudent then, to not be too opposed to the ‘toad work’ out here and see it for what it is: not without its issues, but far from unbearable.
A quick note to any people out there who care about my running:
The Jeju marathon was late March, Dan and myself both clocked personal records (him at 3.34, me at 4.01), we compounded our error strewn travel plans by missing the ferry home by a measly minute. Thankfully we were well received by some fellow foreigners who had also run that day, they let us share their cabin and serenaded us with Ukulele-adaptations of Todd Snyder songs, and alcohol.
The next race was the Changwon half-marathon. I ran in a personal record of 1.41, which nearly killed me. The weather was warm, the beer cold and the banter was great. A U.S Navy band played Stevie Wonder medleys in the town square, bliss.
The most recent race was the Jinju Marathon, my last full course of the year. I had to finish in four hours or less, I hardly trained for it.
EPB and myself were both aiming for massive reductions in our times and we stood at the very front of the corral, occasionally giving the local press a silly gesture or two. The gun went and so did we, across three bridges and through tunnels around the beautiful Nam River that flows through Jinju. I flagged around eighteen kilometers and tried to keep myself upright and running, it was hard-going. I was about ten minutes behind EPB and his high-five near the turnaround gave me a fresh boost, I unraveled my i-Pod and cranked up the volume on Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”, the endorphins making me think of a giant stage in the sky –perhaps even a real Zeppelin—where Jimmy Page is thundering out meaty guitar riffs while Robert Plant screams tunefully over the valley.

“Oh father of the four winds, fill my sails
Across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face
Along the straits of fear”
Such mini-hallucinations are pretty common for me; it helps if I go off to a place in my mind where I don’t feel the pain in my feet or the tightness of my breath. I can just run, slowly but surely, to the finish.
With one kilometer to go, I looked at my watch for a final time. I was on 3.49, I was going to make it, I just had to keep my composure. Sure enough, I suddenly started to cry.
This has nearly happened before; my final song is always “Chariots of Fire” (anyone who wishes to mock, go ahead) and I can’t help but imagine all my family in the crowd, waving, cheering and smiling. I imagine family members I never really knew, ones who have passed and ones who mean the world to me. This inevitably makes me “kick” and run faster, it has also been known to make me very emotional.
I’ve seen athletes get teary-eyed, from the comfort of my sofa, and always denounced them as “poofs”. I then realized just how overwhelming it can be when your body is nearly out of gas and you’re on your way to accomplishing something quite special.
I crossed in 3.53 and immediately collapsed, I was found by my fellow runners and given many congratulatory gifts of beer and chocolate (neither of which I could manage so quickly after running) before we headed to a restaurant and, finally, the bus terminal.
All in all, a great accomplishment and something I am proud of. Now it is time for the running to become the backdrop to my next steps, whatever they will be.

*My dream job has changed many times since I was capable of original thought (which, contrary to some unkind teachers was not circa 2001) I recorded my first professional desire aged six in a drawing which depicted me as a benevolent badger-keeper. I then cottoned on and switched to astronaut, then to soldier, track-athlete, rugby player, police-officer, and spy. It was then I realized that teaching/writing was for me.

Splash Landing

Arriving back in Korea for round two was something I had never envisaged.
Maybe it’s testament to the kind of flakey person that I am that I never really think more than a few months ahead; worrying I’ll make some commitment or plan that—when it comes to the time of reckoning—I manage to forget I made in the first place.
Nevertheless, plans I have made.
I plan to do more running, a lot more. A lovely gift of Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running has enlightened me into how the process of running and writing and how they compliment and galvanize each other.
Admittedly, my version would probably be less prosaic (What I Talk About When I Think About Saying “Fuck It!”) and that is why I’ve decided to make a serious goal as far as my running goes.
Two full marathons, four half marathons, six ten kilometer races. This is my quota until Christmas, and it is the bare minimum of what I plan to do.
The weekend just gone was the Seoul Half-Marathon and it was the first race of the year for myself and my running pals Dan and Euc.
Dan, who I have mentioned briefly in my other post Running With Son Gee Jung, is obviously mad as a hatter still. Euc is new to the game, he’s an athlete but not accustomed to running for long distances.
All month we trained hard, getting Euc up to speed and building his confidence. The weather was beautiful and unseasonably warm and we’d all just got custom made shirts with our club logo on them. Our stupidly optimistic attitude made us deserve what happened next.
Being British, I am used to the weather being utterly unpredictable and contrary, like my Gran. Our newly-garnered levity was eroded quite fast by the kind of rain you’d expect to see on a November evening in Dublin: horizontal, unrelenting and making you want to run to the nearest pub.
We tried to keep out of the squall for as long as possible, then we got called to the starting corral and immediately became utterly drenched. I had Mumford and Sons blaring on my i-Pod and was getting as excited as was possible in such conditions whilst Euc stared stonily ahead, looking like a man who had just decided to throw himself off of a tall building.
“Lovely weather for it!” I chirped, patting him on the back.
He gave me a look that said “Riley, we’re friends and all but, fuck off.” This was mainly due to Euc having had a bit of a bad day previous, hanging his head out of a taxi door to puke while we were still moving (my Guinness-a-day program clearly isn’t for everyone.)
The gun was barely audible over the rainfall and the hundreds of people in plastic bags, an idea I scoffed at initially then later regretted, and we streamed out of the stadium and onto the riverside path of the grey and brooding Han River.
I could detail the entire race for you if I wanted to, but I don’t. All I’ll say is that I was, at one point, wondering when the Ark was going to show up. We ran through silt-filled puddles that went above the ankle, my VFF’s becoming like a pair of flippers. My i-Pod’s earbuds were so clogged with water that it sounded like Led Zeppelin were playing “Kashmir” at 20,000 leagues under the sea. We also ran past parks that I’d assured Euc would be “full of people, cheering us on” in a bid to enthuse his running bug.
The only person I saw in the park that morning was old, senile and wearing a coat with probably nothing else underneath; clearly the weather was not a deterrent, though he probably had better things to do than cheer us on. I’m quite glad he didn’t; if there’s one thing worse than no support when you’re running, it’s a cock, flapping gaily in the breeze and in your peripheral vision.
Dan and I kept pace together the whole way, a feat for me considering his ostrich-like legs, until around fifteen kilometers when my heel suddenly started hurting.
I signaled I would slow down and we separated. The heel was just one of many complaints; my feet were cut to shreds because of the wetness and silt and my chest was heaving with the constant ingestion of rain.
I just about got the pain under control and raced hard on the approach to the stadium, my watch ticking away at one hour forty six. I found out later that my time was indeed, one forty five (starting it early has its benefits) and once back “inside” the stadium’s corridors I realized that warming up was near impossible.
Euc ran in a little later, clocking around two twelve, a great achievement considering the conditions. He was not a happy man, however.
Epilogue:
In the cab ride from the race, we had hauled our shivering forms into sitting positions when the driver (deadpan) asked a wet and miserable Euc
“Do you not have an umbrella?”
Myself and Dan were curled up in twin fetal positions, howling with mirth. It seemed the perfect end to an imperfect race.
Next stop: Jeju Marathon-27th March. Yikes…