The Last Week

I'm a little disappointed that I will fall short of a blog post for everyday in Korea, but this final week has been all kinds of crazy.

Friday was mostly a regular teaching day, but the morning was peppered with practice time for next weeks open class.

Spent my last weekend packing and cleaning and strategically buying groceries to end with an empty fridge. I did take my bike to Ansan station to get some Vietnamese pho. The migrant worker population has turned Ansan into a real global village -there is literally a map of Ansan's Global Village.

It made me think about those nasty comments I heard in Australia: "Isn't it funny that only white Western countries are the ones getting forced to be multicultural?" That comment echoes it own bigotry. The Pauline Hanson's of the world see their once white Australia becoming mutlicultural and their global scope is only limited to other white countries! Ha! The world was always multicultural! And as everyone integrates more and more this is the future, not just in white Western countries, but everywhere! Seeing Ansan's multicultural area gave me a lot of hope for the world. The workers who made the area what it is are migrant labourers -one of the most hated types of migrant, the so-call job-stealer. BUT! In response to the rise in migrant labourers there was a community that came to support them; cultural restaurants, boutiques, banks specialising in sending remittances, groceries stores, phone companies, translators, and support services. This market sprung up in the heart of all this and gained popularity since it had unique things you couldn't buy in other parts of Korea. So Koreans explore the area just like I would with my friends when we go to the Richmond Night Market. Multiculturalism is great for the community and for the economy, way to go, Ansan!

The Monday I officially sampled said open class to the director where we made the first of so many changes. The parents want nothing more than to see their kids (actually only their kid) speaking freely in English -but how do you prepare for something and make it look natural?

I based my lesson plan off that old Albert Einstein quote, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” My class is just that. No one student is brilliant at everything but everyone has 1 or 2 things they are incredible at. So I really wanted to showcase that for the parents.

In a Katimavik-style, I came up with five competencies they would showcase: Writing, Reading, Drawing, Singing, and Speaking. I knew that in each of those areas a different student would shine, so everyone will have something to be proud of.

When I had time, I also had to begin cleaning up my desk and preparing for departure.

The open class ended up going great! I put on my skyride-tour-guide voice and timed everything perfectly. In my welcome I explained the run down of the schedule, and why each element was important. I made special notes of what each student was uniquely good at:

"She has the best writing. She has better writing than most adults!"
"He's very enthusiastic to share his creative stories!"
"She puts so much effort into her drawings, and you will see, they all deserve a frame"
"She always comes up with the most original ideas. If I say 'name some fruits' she won't bother with apples or bananas, she's talking about persimmons and passionfruits!"
"He is such a great reader, he recognises woulds and pronounces them like a native English speaker."
"She is so comfortable speaking in English, and she is so funny! We are always laughing at her jokes."

That was at the beginning. Then throughout the open class each of those students proved my point entirely. The good writer was less nervous about her poor reading skills because everyone could read along with the powerpoint because her writing was so neat. The creative boy told a story about a talking police car, whose best friend is a sword, and basically reached the conclusion that 'crime doesn't pay'.  Our star artist got all the parents whispering and giving her thumbs up for her colourful pictures of unicorns and rabbits. Our clever ideas girl came up with some brilliant ideas for science "a saxophone is a solid, gasoline is a liquid, and a star is a gas"  -wow. Our great reader finished his story in under a minute! Our jokester said this about the Leaning Tower of Pisa "I think the Leaning Tower of Pisa is funny because it is in Italy and pizza is also in Italy so I think it is the Leaning Tower of Pizza and I want to eat it!" -everyone laughed.

It was actually pretty fun!

Afterwards they had their musical English performance, which was just really simple cute versions of Swan Lake and Snow White.

After the kids had taken a bow, the director said some words in Korean and asked me to come to the stage. She handed me a bouquet of flowers and asked me to say some words to the parents and students. I think I said something like "Wow! What an experience this has been. Thank you all. I feel really lucky to get to be involved with teaching these brilliant young English speakers. It has been so much fun and I will miss seeing their smiling faces!" A bit sappy, because Koreans really seem to like that, but also kind of true.

The kids all went home early with their parents and we went to have a farewell lunch at the Chinese restaurant.

After lunch I closed my account at the bank.

Then I had the pizza party for my older elementary students to celebrate their month of perfect vocabulary quizzes. I turns out that class will basically be disbanded following my departure since none of the students could do a Tuesday-Thursday schedule. So now they'll have some positive memories. We just payed some English games and ate pizza -it was great.

The day faded away until is was over. My desk cleared, lights off, footsteps exiting for the last time.

I went over to visit the other two teachers and we talk and drank until the wee hours of the night. It was all part of my elaborate plan to stay up super late, then sleep through most of the day. Then I could take the train in the evening, stay up at the airport, sleep on the the flights and BAM! Canada!

As I write this in the Vancouver Airport waiting for my connection to Victoria I can report that some of that went to plan.

I sold my bike on Saturday. You can't actually sell them back to used bike stores. But I just explained to the guy I bought it from that I was leaving (I actually needed to get it out of the apartment) and I awkward stood there looking at him until he offer me 10,000 won -fine by me.

I wore as many layers as possible since I couldn't stuff my bags with anything more. The walk from the apartment to the train was hell. It was crazy hot in all those layers and I was carrying four huge bags. One backpacking backpack, one regular backpack worn on the front and a duffle in each hand. People looked in horror at me.

I must of scared the living daylight out of a guy when I tried to put my bag on the rack up top. It was the lightest bag but I must've been so tired because it just rolled out of my hand towards his face. Then another guy got up and gave me a hand putting them up.

I was a bit awkward but I'm glad it must've been obvious enough to get people feeling charitable. I met a really nice woman who lives in Incheon. She saw me with my bags and offered to help me. She carried them to a specific door where she knew the train would have a luggage rack. She even offered me water! Once we were on the train we started talking. She's a big fan of Justin Trudeau and wants to go to Canada to meet him, and no, not because of his looks. She google translated to me the words "I think leaders are important". That struck something in me. We were basically talking politics through her google translate app and she ended up asking to add me on facebook. I agreed and she saw my cover photo from the DMZ tour. This is where it gets even more cool! Her job is educating kids and young adults about the future of reunification in Korea! What a cool job!

Meeting her is quite symbolic of my experience in Korea. People have been so nice to me, so unselfishly generous and I could never communicate the words to properly express my thanks. In fact I wonder if I become someone else's funny story about the foreign girl who just nodded and smiled and said a broken thank you over and over. It made me think about the tourists who would wind up at Grouse Mountain and they spoke no English and I kept wondering "how did you get here?" when their trying to ask about how to get to specific hotel downtown. Now, that was me. At least now going forward I can admire the human ingenuity and bravery that goes into travelling with limited language. I think of those bigoted cries of  "Speak English!" that I hear horror stories of in Canada and Australia. Why are we so willing to attack for that and not celebrate for how far someone can go with little language comprehension? That sort of communication is universal, relying on pointing and making mistakes, walking because you can't say the name of where you want to go to a taxi driver. This was actually the experience I wanted from Korea, to survive in a non-English speaking environment -and I did it!

Shanghai had air pollution and I nearly suffocated in my layers. Seattle had an easy customs procedure and a nightmare of a security procedure. My layers showed up as foreign objects on the body scanner and I was felt up every way one can be felt up in public at the airport. The lady asked me if I was a traveller and I said yes "You sure dress like one." I told her I smell too, she said she'd smelled worse. Vancouver was sunny, so I thought I must've been on the wrong plane. I got a Double-Double at Timmies because I haven't even been able to say that with a straight face since July 2015. Disappointment struck when I realised I didn't even get a Roll-Up-The-Rim cup, dude!

This return to Vancouver was a little different from the previous ones. I guess Vancouver has always felt like the centre of my spiderweb. All the people in my life could at least be loosely connected to Vancouver, or at least Canada. This time I realised that there are so many people who matter to me who have no perception of Vancouver, or even Canada. Those names might as well be synonymous with mine, because that is how limited the influence of a place really is. I am endlessly thankful for my opportunity to experience the centre of someone else's spiderweb. I feel like travel is my way of gradually creating a map of understanding. I'm a hands on learner, I wouldn't have learned as much about the Joseon dynasty if the Seoulmates didn't show me these cultural sites.  I wouldn't be comparing political attitudes in different states without my experiences at Griffith university.

Vancouver has historically been the end of the adventure -which has alway left me with mixed feelings about coming back. But now, I see Vancouver as Go on the monopoly board, collect 200$ and keep going!

The adventures doesn't end, it's just changing shape!