Disorientation

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Trip Start Aug 26, 2007 Trip End Aug 25, 2008 Next
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  Incheon, Korea Rep.
Thursday, September 20, 2007

We were sitting in a room hearing about what to expect in Korea. Most of us didn't have a clue what life would be like there; we spoke no Korean but had had no occasion to speak it; we were curious about the Korean school system but have never seen a Korean school. But if anyone had bothered to draw the curtain, they could have looked out over the rolling green hills and sweltering farmlands of the country itself, to the distant apartment monoliths, all covered in bizarre Hangul script, and full of those mysterious Koreans.

The plane from Sydney to Seoul-Incheon was basically a Korean plane. The staff and most of the passengers were Korean, Korean was the language of choice, and the tea was green unless you specified black. All the other westerners on the flight seemed to be tall, awkward white boys. it was an influx, an invasion of the gangly. and most of them, and the other western-types aboard looked distinctly like teachers.

Off the plane and out into the airport. My name was written on a sign holed by a Korean girl waiting for me, but in amidst the sea of Korean girls with signs i missed it completely. A van rushed us through sultry nighttime Korea to a hotel wedged into a grid of neon-lit hotels. This was to be my only glimpse of Korean life for a week. Massive apartment complexes, narrow shopfronts, and every available horizontal or vertical surface illuminated with advertising in that funny mysterious script. It seemed like an endlessly reiterating Asian cityscape, but when morning i could see that the buildings continued only for block, and then gave way to great, steep ridges of green, swathed in i mist.

And then 'orientation' began. It felt for all the world like quarantine; a gradual, triviality by triviality introduction to life as a teacher in Korea. Beyond the closed gates of this Hyundai training complex was Korea itself, but for an entire week we were forbidden from setting foot out in it, or even looking at it. Instead we ate Korean food in the cafeteria, nodded to the Koreans in the hallway scuttling by, and sat in lectures. We had no idea where we were or what we should do, other than to eat, nod, listen. When free time came around i found myself infantilised, and waited blankly for the next instruction to come.

Down in the cafeteria we had our brief social interaction. Over trays piled up with bowls of strange and odourous Korean dishes. pickled cabbage, rice and soup were on the menu for every meal. A week of this and i was already starting to feel a little ill at the smell of Korean cooking.

Looking around the tables i found friendly faces to share my disorientation with. I also found dejection at the bunch of misfits that had been gathered to teach in my area. Was this the best that could be found? I had thought i was coming to a fairly competitive, sought-after job. apparently not. one of the trainers told me quietly that people only come to Korean for 1) money 2) travel or 3) to escape something back home. I wondered how many murders had been committed by this lot, how many bookkeepers were clamouring for their money. my confidence ebbed away.

I complain complain complain about that first week of orientation. But already it was teaching me things about Korea. Firstly that privacy and independence are rare and precious commodities. We had out own little rooms, we could lock the doors, but that was the extent of our free, private space. and what could we do with it? the room felt little bigger than the inside of my head. And that is usually about all the free and personal space available in Korea. No one is prying or trespassing, but in a land of concentrated humanity, personal boundaries inevitably constrict into the interior.

Also i learned something of the great considerateness and earnest hospitality of our Korean hosts. Stifling as the week was, it was born of their desire to ease us into their crazy country, to prepare and equip us. And though the seminars from 9 til 8 every day dragged a bit, and though a number of the speakers seemed to trail off into irrelevancy, this excess of word and time was born of a desire to give us all that could be given. We wanted for nothing during this week. Except privacy and independence. And some contact with Korea. 

But anyway, that was coming. Friday came around and a collection of well-dressed Korean teachers converged on the Hyundai complex. They gathered up their respective 'native teachers', and a dazed and confused lot we were, blinking in the sunlight, uncertain of where to go, what to do, when to bow or what to say. One by one the teachers disappeared into cars and off, out into Korea...

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