Isn’t that odd? Part I: Korea At School

In lieu of doing a post called: Boredom, Part II, I figured I’d try to write about something interesting— like, say, observations of Korean weirdness. I know I have mentioned a few things in the past (students staying at school until 10pm, seas of red electric crucifixes, the ridiculous presence of phonebooths in ‘the most wired place on earth’ and how Koreans actually use them, etc.). But, I’ve come up with a few new ones, namely: those things that I’ve grown so used to seeing everyday that I don’t notice them as completely and singularly, Korean, anymore. While beginning to jot these things down, I noticed that there’s a lot of them, so they will be condensed into sections, starting with Part I: At School, since this is, technically, where I spend most of my time.

Also, writing about such things allows for a list, which really saves me time on having to connect things in an eloquent way and…well, saves time on thinking. So, here goes!

l Everyone at my school (myself included), has been wearing a winter coat all day long since the cold weather started because Korean schools don’t currently find heating hallways as cost-effective . This has allowed for two subsequent observations: 1). Korean women collect winter coats. Some of my co-workers have a different coat for every other day of the week and others have a new coat for every day. They’re usually very cute, manicured-looking coats that don’t offer a lot of warmth. And 2)., the wearing of my coat has officially upped my status of looking ‘slightly homeless’ to ‘full-on homeless’ while at school, since 1). I can’t be bothered to work on looking presentable that early in the morning and 2). the added hobo coat just pushes me over into the full-on homeless category. My students still manage to take me seriously, some of the time, so if they’re fine with it…I’m not changing it. Also—it’s really comfy and warm!

l You can’t wear real shoes inside the school. It’s been suggested (mandated) that I only wear slippers while inside. But, being the renegade that I am, I’ve continued to wear my real shoes everyday- mainly because I don’t see the point of wearing slippers if I have to walk outside, on dirty pavement to get to the side of the school where the language lab is. Truly- teachers will walk around in fluffy animal slippers that have disgusting gray munj on the soles and still find the gall to stare at my very normal-looking brown boots as if I am committing some horrible foreigner crime.

l About once a week, someone will bring in treats to share with the other teachers in the teachers lounge. Most often, it is either a huge box of clementines or an assortment of rice cakes. It is considered rude to not partake, even if one isn’t hungry or doesn’t especially like eating the provided treat (granted, most of my friends don’t seem to mind them and admittedly they do look delectable, but I find Korean rice cakes to be excessively bland in taste, --imagine what raw biscuit dough must taste like).

(my friend Alex and I sizing up the rice cake spread in Insadong)

l There is no coffee-maker in the teachers lounge, rather a multitude of Maxim packets—instant coffee that consists of about 70% sugar and 30% coffee-like substance, for which it is normal to put into 2-sip Dixie cups and shoot like tequila.

l The other week, my co-teacher hooked up her furry slippers via USB to her laptop to warm them up. Provided, she wasn’t lying on the floor, but it still looked every bit ridiculous.

l Occasionally, random (sometimes vagabond) salesmen are allowed into the school to sell their wares. The first salesmen I encountered was selling socks and stared at me for about a minute, deciding whether or not to pursue the ask. He didn’t.

l Things that I observe my Korean students doing at school:
Between classes: They will inevitably be doing one of five things: furiously jumping rope in the hall (for exercise), practicing K-pop dance moves in front of the large mirrors on the stairwells, brushing their teeth in the bathrooms, eating dok boki (out of small Styrofoam cups) or ice cream cones – either from the vendor down the street or from the school’s snack shop or screaming (and I mean *screaming*) and running down the halls in large herds.
During class: intently examining their faces in their standard-issue little (though some are large) plastic mirrors about every five minutes, using what I can only describe as ‘face rolling tweezers’ as they say to “get small face”, i.e. to reduce the size of their jaws. I tried to find an image of these things on google by typing ‘korean small face tool’, but feared failure when the first image to come up was a map detailing forest fires in North Korea and the second, a picture of what I guess to be a British band called The Small Faces. Further down the page however, appeared a quite intriguing picture of a Korean woman sitting in a plastic bowl and naturally, decided to do some investigation. It took me to a website called Digital Chosunilbo (English news about Korea) where they thoroughly detail the array of low-cost Korean aesthetic tools, among them what I had initially searched for, officially called a ‘face massage roller’.

“What are you doing just sitting there doing nothing? If you moved your hands even once, you could make your face look smaller. “ (Available at GSWatsons for W11,500)

By the way, what I thought to be a Korean woman sitting in a large plastic bowl is actually a Korean woman sitting on a ‘pelvic correcting basin’:

“This is not a basin that holds water. It closes the pelvis after it has expanded during pregnancy while lifting a droopy behind and straightening a crooked pelvis. The device offers much more stability than a sofa or a chair and welcomes rears of up to 100 cm in diameter. While reading or watching TV, any user can get the three daily sittings of 15 minutes out of the way. D&shop W29,800.”

That’s all I can gather up for right now, though I’m sure more Korean weirdness at school is bound to pop up in the remaining months…so be sure to stay tuned!