Don't be afraid, you're already dead.

the end of the year is nigh.

I dig new years eve.
I think it's because I'm a sucker for nostalgia. I like the whole self-reflection aspect, thinking back over the past year, the great times and the shitty times, the lessons learned, the changes you made and want to make. All that noise.
I get that it's just another day, it's just the turning of a calendar page, that the whole idea of a "new year" is abstract and contrived, but that's not important. It's a time when a lot of people feel they get a new start, and there's a real optimism there that I'm just into.

2012 has been real.
I moved to Korea, by myself. Some people think that's "brave", but it's not because it wasn't scary for me. I've always been quite independent. I'm good at upping to a new, faraway city, it's one thing I feel comfortable doing.

What was scary was accepting a job as a teacher, not knowing what age my students would be, or how many classes I would have, or whether I'd physically be able to stand up in front of a room full of adolescents and speak with some kind of authority. And so at the beginning, I was just acting. Pretending to be a teacher until one day I realised I was one. I have loved it.  I didn't think I liked kids before I came here -how ridiculous is that? That's almost like not liking people! (Wait...). These kids are awesome. Teaching has been awesome, getting to know my students has been awesome and those few students who started the year afraid to open their mouths but who now hang back after the bell rings to come up and say "enjoy your lunch, teacher!" are awesome!

What was scary was approaching a table of strangers, after psyching myself up for twenty minutes while sipping on a beer alone, introducing myself and asking if I could join them. This was three days after arriving, roaming around Bucheon on a mission to find the foreigner bar I had read about online. It might not sound like much, but that really took guts for me! And of course, they were all great people, and took me and and showed me a good time, and I met more new people, and they're all still my friends today. It's sweet when you do something scary and it pays off.

But by and large, coming to Korea hasn't been scary. I came with a job all secured, with accomodation sorted, with a sister who had been here before preparing me for some things and internet forums preparing me for the rest, with knowledge of cool music venues and decent restaurants from blogs and knowing there was a community of foreigners to meet. Next year, on the other hand? Next year is kind of terrifying!

I finish up my contract at the end of February. Then I have a few weeks to travel, and then I'm home. Home will be great for the first couple weeks and then I will go stir crazy, but realistically, it will probably be about two months before I take off again. This time on a one year US visa. Whereabouts? I have no idea. Maybe Portland, maybe San Francisco, maybe New York or Philly or anywhere else. Wherever I can find a job related to my masters. That's going to be the scary part for me. Applying for a real job, a job I'm qualified for but totally inexperienced in. Ugh.  I'm scared that I won't find one, and scared that I will! But I'm huge excited for moving and being back in the US and making more new friends and hopefully seeing some old ones too.

New years resolutions? Don't be afraid, you're already dead. And be more punctual. Yeah.

tabula rasa

I'm glad I'm not in your moleskins, not on your blog.

I don't belong there.

I'm not one of those girls.

I mean, those girls seem fine. In fact, I'd love to grab a beer with your ex. Talk shop. 

But I was never your girlfriend the way they were your girlfriends. I was never an exercise in how you presented yourself to the world, and I'm thankful for that.

sick

I have a kidney infection. Apart from the whole pee thing, I've also got an intense pain in my side  and was in agony yesterday until I made it to the pharmacy, walking doubled over the whole way, to get some painkillers.

So, I mentioned it to my co-teacher, saying I must go to a doctor after work. However, she says in Korea I have to go to a urologist or a women's clinic, not just any old doctor. No problem, I say. Oh but there is a problem. And she tells me in a hushed voice, that actually urologists and women's clinics also treat.. "sexual diseases" (by which I assume she means chamydia, HPV, pregnancy etc.)and it would be very "shameful" if a student or parent spied me entering such a premises  and therefore insists on driving me to one on the other side of town.

Who knew kidneys could be so scandalous?

(On the awesome side, FOUR DOLLARS for a consultation and prescription of antibiotics? Unreal!)

Heel, boy.

Reasons I want a dog:
1. They're super cute!
2. I like having a thing to love. I'm actually really good at it.
3. I like being loved back! And licked!!
4. Winter is coming and we can snuggle up on rainy nights.
5.  I'm finally at a place where I'm totally ready for one. I think.


Reasons I don't want a dog.
1. I'm leaving Korea in six months -what then? I'll miss it if I leave it here, but it'd be a hassle to take it home and I kind of planned on going travelling alone.
2. I'm super selfish. I like being able to go out with my friends all weekend without feeling guilty that it's waiting for me at home.
3. Having a dog can be expensive.
4. They make your apartment super messy and smelly and you find their hair EVERYWHERE.
5. I can't even commit to a brand of fabric softener.



Huh. I guess I feel pretty much the exact same way about dogs as I do about boyfriends.

Let's talk about sexts, baby

Okay so I'm late to this party, or at least to posting about it. I'm listening to a re-run of a talk radio show from this afternoon and they are talking about the current teenage phenomenon of "sexting". It frustrates me to hear these same arguments played out. Although at least this is one thing that actually does happen as opposed to the outcry over mythical "rainbow parties" and the jelly bracelets that depict a girl's sexual reportoire. Because of course the only teen sex scandals the media is interested in are the ones that involve girls behaving badly. Circle-jerking rarely gets airtime.

So what? Girls and young women take photos of themselves partially or fully naked and send them to boys, as a means of flirting. And in some cases, the images end up getting circulated around the whole school/town/internet. Now I'm not saying this whole things is no big deal. Yes, sexting is problematic, especially when you are talking about underage girls and the distribution of what then becomes child pornography. [Though the case of charging underrage girls for taking pictures of themselves is ridiculous... talk about not granting them ownership of their own bodies!]. The images can also be used manipulatively to threaten and bully those in them. And while these issues may be taken seriously at the legislative and schoolboard levels, in the domain of popular media -television, radio shows, magazine articles, it seems that the danger of the sexting craze is the potential shame that is bound to occur if other people see your body, and the very idea that girls would want to send pictures of themselves to boys at all is made out to be horrifying.

The warning seems to be that naked photographs are extremely personal, that they should kept private and that because of the easily shared nature of digital media, should not even be sent to partners/boyfriends and the like in case things turn sour/a phone is lost and suddenly the whole basketball team/boardroom has seen your tits.

It's not bad advice really, but sometimes you want to live a little. And if a saucy text ends up in the wrong hands, so what?

They are just breasts. Most women have them. We are bombarded everyday with images of breasts, or at least an airbrushed, silicone-pumped [per]version of them, on television, bilboards, online. They are nothing new.

Are women's breasts de-valued everytime they are seen?

Are women de-valued everytime their breasts are seen?

Yes, it can be embarrassing when something we expect to be kept private is made public, be it a photograph, email, or old diary. But the idea that our very bodies are something to be humiliated by is wrong and damaging. That something so mundane as taking your clothes off may affect your reputation, impede your chances at employment or promotion, and simply de-value you, is awful and instead of flat out warning girls not to photograph themselves we should also be pointing out that your life does not end once people have seen you in [or out of] your undies.

And of course, through all of the discussion, nobody talks about boys sending naked images of themselves to girls. And yes they do. Maybe not as much, maybe just as much, but oh yes they do. And nobody cares. Because once he's doing it of his own will, a shirtless picture of a young man, even with his pants down is not considered as damaging to his reputation, or as humiliating, or as wrong. Unlike young women,his worth is not based on his sexual purity. His naked body is not even considered as sexual as a naked girl's body. Boys who send overtly sexual messages are not wearing down the moral fibre of society, it's not cause for concern.

No, instead, the media's account of this problem is that girls are going wild, that their sexuality is dangerous, and that they will end up as the victims in this. The fear is that sexting is only symptomatic of what the girls are actually DOING with boys, even though this is not usually the case. How about we start having some real conversations with girls and young women, and hell, older women too for that matter. Coversations about their sexuality and how there is nothing wrong with expressing it, and even maybe better, more authentic ways of expressing it? What kind of models do young women have for this? There is such a narrow range of idols provided to girls in mainstream media, and most of them eventually strip off for Maxim anyway. Or Playboy -an empire that markets fashion and jewellery lines to preteen girls. And then we act surprised when they start to take their clothes off and pose? Maybe they feel that such behaviour is the only way they can compete for male attention because they are quite aware of the images of women boys are used to seeing every day. Why don't we talk to girls about more meaningful and less risky ways of relating to boys, and how they don't need to depend on their bodies? How about we discuss what to do if sexting does result in your picture all over Facebook and how, while it's natural to be embarrassed, ultimately other people's reactions to your body say more about them than you?

We all know the conflicting messages this culture sends to girls, it's nothing new. They are told that being beautiful, sexy and desirable is so important, while simultaneously being told to be innocent and chaste and not act on any desires they have themselves. No wonder many girls equate their sexuality with looking sexual. You can look without touching, you can be sexualised without being sexual. Until we start having conversations about this, girls are going to continue to think think healthy sexual expression is about looking sexy, wanting to be wanted, and getting kicks out of turning on the boys without actually owning their own sexual wants.

Maybe some people are just worried that in this case, for once, nobody is actually making any money from the sexualisation of girls and women?

Overly cynical? Perhaps. But pornography is an obscenely lucrative industry. And just as record companies argue that file sharing could destroy the music industry, those in the porn business may feel they are losing a buck for every naked picture a girl sends out for free.

social moreos

After lunch, I have to go to the bank with my co-teacher. I stop in the 7/11 outside the school gates to pick up Oreos because oh my, I am craving Oreos. I open the box and offer my co-teacher a cookie.

"No thank you. There are parents around and we are teachers.. it is wrong image if we eat on the street."

"Really?" I ask, confused but slowly biting into an Oreo nonetheless.

She looks embarrassed for me.

"Yes, it is not behaviour of teacher. But you... you are like a child, not a teacher!!" She laughs.

Ain't nobody too grown up for Oreos!!

three nineteen

When I close my eyes, I’m there again and I can feel it all.

“Wilson is next. Doors open on the left, at Wilson.”

The El began to slow down and grind to a stop. I stood and held the handrail, until I jerked forward, back again, and hurried out the sliding doors. Outside was cold. Chicago cold. I made my way down the steps and out of the El station.

Sometimes the Wilson stop creeped me out a little. Despite the recent attempts at gentrification, it was a poorly lit neighbourhood. I could hear the homeless man under the El tracks singing as usual before I even turned the corner. He always sang so cheerfully and I always wished I could be as cheerful as him in his situation and then I resented herself for envying his hard, lonely song.

I walked the street briskly, turning left on Malden, and down to the end of the street. I couldn’t wait to be out of the cold and pressed the buzzer for 319, waited for the buzz of the door and entered the checkerboard foyer. I would jog the first couple flights of stairs, and walk the last one slowly to catch my breath.

The door was always open.

Old diaries

Old diaries

Should be disposed of carefully.

Do not lay them

in a muddy grave

-they will rise through the soil.

Fire, or acid, should do the trick.

schminnocence

When people talk about kids, they throw the word "innocent" around a lot. I've noticed this even more since I started working in an elementary school (in Korea, by the way). Innocence is considered  an inherently good quality for a child to have, and is often spoken of by adults in awe, like it's some ideal and magical state that one way or another crumbles and is lost by the time we hit six or seven, or earlier. How precious! How fragile! How ridiculous
.
So innocence, what is it?  Lack of guilt, a perfect conscience, a clean slate? Lack of knowledge, naivety, gullibility? Purity? Goodness? I have heard the term used to express all of these.

People would have you believe innocence is something to be valued and something to be protected and something which cannot be regained.
(Just like 'virginity', another bullshit term which only serves to commodify sexuality. What's the term for someone who hasn't been snowboarding, who has never had a foot massage, who has never driven a car?

"You're just a virgin who can't drive." -Way harsh, Tai, but the words speak volumes. There are no labels for people who haven't snowboarded, been massaged, driven, yet we ascribe the term 'virgin' to somebody who lacks this one specific experience. And a particularly heterocentric one at that, as usually it's applied to someone who has not yet had a penis in their vagina, or a vagina on their penis, no matter how many dicks they have sucked or clitori they have licked to orgasm.) -Okay, I digress a little, but like 'virginity', innocence is something we are seemingly born with, something pure and special that is associated with youth, that we want our children to retain for as long as possible and that once it's gone, we are forever changed. (barf.)

When I was undertaking research for my thesis (which I have yet to write about on this blog, whoops) I spoke to sex education teachers, sexual health educators and youth group leaders about their experiences with young people and their quests for sexual health information. The issue of innocence cropped up in numerous interviews.. when was too young to start providing that information and what negative effect may it have on them -there was this acceptance that education was necessary but oh wasn't it a pity they couldn't just remain 'innocent' a little longer?  Education is not a dirty word, knowing about sex does not make a kid less wholesome or more 'guilty' than knowing about flowers or pokemon.

When is innocence lost? The first time a kid tries to find out if they can reach the cookie jar when their dad's not looking? The first time they start to doubt the existence of the tooth fairy? The first time they accidentally see an erect penis when mom forgets to delete her browsing history? And what, suddenly they're not as perfect as they once were, they're tainted? Fuck that! It's called learning, it's called critical thinking, it's called curiosity. These are skills and values to be encouraged in kids, not considered some sort of perverse development that is threatening grown-ups' idealised notion of 'innocence'. 

I don't believe in innocence (apart from the judicial kind). Ignorance is another story. We're all ignorant about plenty of things, but gradually we learn more and more. Kids are ignorant about a whole lot of things. That's okay, it's allowed, they're new here and they'll pick it up as they go along. But let's stop pretending their lack of knowledge, of understanding and experience is itself wondrous and something to be revered. It's not. Their thirst for knowledge, on the other hand, is.

Teaching in the ROK

So, in case you didn't know, I'm currently teaching in Korea for the year. So lemme do a typical day in the life.


7:15am:
I'm awake.Yes!  Every day that I actually wake up on time, I'm super grateful for it. I am not good at getting up in general and last week I was two hours late for school. Did you know how much it fucking blows to be woken up at 10am by your doorbell, and you answer in your skivvies and it's your co-teacher who was half counting on finding pieces your raped corpse chopped up all over your officetel, and then having to go to the principal's office and apologise to like a hundred people? It blows a lot.)
I take the shortest acceptable excuse for a shower, spend at least ten minutes trying to find a pair of tights without numerous ladders, and vow to go through them  later and separate work tights from non-work (ie ripped) tights, but never do.

8:15am
  I generally summon at least two of the three elevators because I am a jerk like that. Then  swear silently as the elevator stops on every floor, the doors sliding open at a snail's pace to reveal nobody, because karma is a bitch. I check myself out in the mirror because I have been in Korea too long and forget how douchey I think that is.
My walk to school is nice, so long as it's not pissing rain. I found a new route a few months ago so now I get to walk through a nice tree lined avenue and a park rather than a dusty, traffic lined main road. I also like that I get to walk through a really affluent area and a disadvantaged one. There is a lollipop man outside a neighbouring school who always exchanges anyonghaseyos with me.

8:40(okay, 8:45-50)am
As I arrive to school, little kids run up to say hi, or bow or smile and it never fails to put me in a good mood. It really is one of the best parts of this job. And it's weird because I really had no affinity with kids before I came here. As a rule, I generally didn't like kids to be honest. That opinion was vetoed on my very first day. Maybe it's just Korean kids? Maybe it's just the language barrier and not being able to hear them call me names behind my back, but I really love the kids here. They're friendly and fun and they appear to be really nice to each other which weirds me out for some reason. And they love me because I'm a novelty, and I'm fine with that. Alright, I lap it up. I'm finally the popular girl in school and it's awesome.

9am
Generally, I have an hour before my first classes. I photocopy anything I need, make sure I have any presentations I'm using saved to my flashdrive and then just mess about online. Ten minutes before my class, the snacks appear and the teachers gather. I don't know who pays for or provides the snacks. I like to think it comes out of our collective paychecks but I'm not certain. The past couple weeks there have been bunches of grapes -totally different to grapes at home, these actually taste like grape-flavored things which has solved that lifelong mystery for me. In the past, the mid-morning snacks have also included big plates of: boiled potatoes, sweet potatoes, raw turnips, slices of Korean melon, slices of watermelon, cherry tomatoes, corn on the cob, kimbap, rice cake and strawberries.

9am-12pm
Classes. Periods are forty minutes. I spend the first five asking how the kids are, asking about their weekends, if they heard G-Dragon's new track etc. Then we review whatever it is we've been learning. Generally, I will do two activities -maybe a funny video followed by questions, or a presentation or some of the exercises from the text book and CD-Rom and then play a game of some sort.
If it's my co-teacher's class, I pace around and comment on students' pencil cases or doodles to keep myself awake between helping to pronounce or spell a word.
Before I came here I was extremely nervous about teaching, but I really enjoy it. It's fun, I like having the banter with the kids and the time flies.

12:10pm
Lunch. I still get a little excited every day wondering what lunch will be. Occasionally I'm disappointed, but usually it's decent and quite often it's great. Pretty much always includes rice, soup, kimchi, some kind of meat/fish and some kind of weird unidentifiable vegetable. Once in a while, we get something different -like spaghetti and garlic bread, which totally makes my day.

1pm
Sometimes I have one more class after lunch, but usually I'm free til 4.40pm. I do any planning I need to do for my next lesson and once that's out of the way I read and chat to friends. I don't usually need to spend too much time planning, but I do make sure I have cool things prepared, and have recently started making little live-action Panda videos for my classes which has been fun.  Students drop in to say hi, and I'll draw something on their wrist for them, or if I'm lucky (and it HAS happened) I get  a swarm of them around me -one giving me a neckrub, another doing my hair, another painting my nails and yet another fans me. Best. Job. Evar.

4:40pm
Hometime. If I have no dinner plans for later, I'll pick up some kimbap or mandu on the way home. More often, I meet friends later in the evening for dinner and sometimes beers and usually ice cream.Or if it's raining then you know, maybe I'm cleaning my place or doing laundry or painting my nails or skyping home or having someone with better rainproof footwear come over or watching torrents or looking at cute animal pictures or something.   If it's a Friday, there will usually be pre-drinks in the park or on somebody's rooftop before heading out to some bars. If it's a Saturday I'm probably only just leaving the house and heading into Seoul to do something cultural before winding up in Hongdae slurping soju from a paper cup. If it's Sunday... I don't even know what I do on Sundays. Some of the above.


So there we go. I love it here.

My first colposcopy!

So I forgot to blog about my most exciting cervical adventure yet -my colposcopy. Seeing as I've blogged about my previous pap exams (see Pap Rally and my most popular post of all, Ch-ch-check It) , I figure I should really provide an update for anyone who's maybe worried about their own upcoming colposcopy.

Basically, after getting irregular results from two routine paps in a row, I was booked in for a colposcopy at the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght last June or so. To be honest I was kind of nervous, for a start because I hate hospitals but also because I wasn't sure what to expect. The procedure is described as being like any normal pap, except the doctor inserts a thin rod with a hoop on the end, and removes a tiny area of tissue to be checked out. The literature says "it's slightly uncomfortable but completely painless" and my friend said "Oh my god, my sister had that and said it was hell, she could barely walk afterwards."

Thankfully my friend is just mean and the literature was right, the whole thing is nothing to worry about. Mine got off to a good start when I arrived to find a really nice, modern hospital without a trace of that creep hospital scent. I sat down in the waiting room, on a seat that made loud fart noises at the slightest movement. Then I changed seats, and watched someone else sit on the fart chair and get embarrassed and move. This entertaining process repeated itself until I was called in to see the doctor.

After answering a few questions, I changed into a gown, and hopped up on the chair that reclined back. Their was a TV on the ceiling screening pictures of waterfalls and forests and playing similarly "calming" music that was kind of funny. It started off like a normal pap, except there was another nurse present too who was chatting away to me the whole time. Then I got to see my cervix on a screen which was pretty cool!! The machine made a pretty loud noise, but really that was the most unnerving part of the whole thing. I also realised, afterwards, that she had given me an injection. IN MY CERVIX. Just think of where your cervix is and then think how long that needle must have been!! Ha, but totally felt nothing.
It took maybe ten minutes or less altogether, and truly was a piece of cake.

So yeah, I told you it was a boring post, but still I thought I should update you on my cervical goings on, I know you guys were hotly anticipating it, like a Breaking Bad season premiere.