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.