INFUSIONVolume 9, Issue 1

Fulbright Korea

PUBLISHING ADVISORJai Ok Shim

Staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDawn Angelicca Barcelona

MANAGING EDITORSJonathan BalmerArria Washington

MONITORSErin Deskin

Breanna Helland

DESIGN EDITORMatthew Walters

ASSISTANT DESIGN EDITORHannah Shannon

PHOTO EDITORTiffany Chu

PUBLISHING COORDINATORBen Harris

WEB MANAGERMorgan Kinsinger

SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATORJessica Hall

STAFF EDITORSNikki R. Brueggeman

Breanna DurhamAnna Faison

Monica Heilman

Abhik Kumar PramanikRebekah Morton

Janine PerriKristen O’Brien

Stephen Speers

City Lights. Kelsey Hagenah. Seoul

Sun Shine In. Chase Fitzgerald. Jinju

Contents02Letters Director Shim &

Ambassador Lippert

Foreword Dawn Angelicca Barcelona

Jumping Hannah Shannon

On Homesickness Ji Yoon Noh

Rural Parallels Jonathan Balmer & Leanndra Padgett

Sam MoserSeoul Poetry

Nikki R. BrueggemanLessons Unlearned

Kristen O’BrienThe Way Back Home

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06

12

15

22

25

30

Allana WooleyMissed Connection 38

Claire CambronTouches of Empathy 40

Emily ShoemakerUnspoken 46

Letter fromDirector Shim

Jai Ok Shim,Executive Director of

Fulbright Korea

Dear Readers,I am proud to introduce Volume 9, Issue 1 of

the Fulbright Korea Infusion. Each new volume of Infusion is an opportunity for the voices of a new grantee cohort to be heard and for the talents of a fresh editorial staff to be showcased. Their unique perspectives and experiences add depth to our understanding of the Fulbright Korea experience, and I am happy to add these pieces to the Infusion canon.

The winter issue of Infusion is published near the year’s midpoint for many Fulbright grantees. This is a time for reflection, but also for exploration and speculation about what the remainder of the year might bring. Though these pieces may differ in tone and in form, they are united in fact and in spirit by the shared mission of the Fulbright Program, and the articles, photos and very design of this magazine demonstrate

the personal interactions and cultural ambassadorship upon which the Fulbright Program was built.

Since its first issue, Infusion has strived to represent the diverse experiences of American Fulbright grantees and alumni. First published in 2008, Infusion has grown from its modest roots and become a magazine meant to record Fulbright grantees’ diverse experiences. The élan, fortitude and implacable curiosity of our grantees will become clear upon a close reading of this publication. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Jai Ok ShimExecutive DirectorKorean-American Educational Commission

Congratulations to everyone at Fulbright Korea on the publication of the ninth volume of Infusion magazine. Infusion showcases not only the creativity and passion of Fulbrighters in Korea, but it also represents the best of the people-to-people ties which form the heart and soul of the relationship between our two countries.

Because each issue offers the reader a unique combination of writing, photography and other art forms, Infusion always lives up to its name, transforming the well-trod streets of everyday experience into new avenues of reflection, inspiration and celebration.

As you continue to uphold the spirit and traditions of the Fulbright Program and build upon its legacy, remember that all of us at the U.S. Embassy are proud of the work you do and share in your dedication to strengthen and deepen the U.S.-Korea relationship.

Sincerely,

Mark LippertU.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea

Letter from theAmbassador

Mark Lippert,U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea

3

ForewordIn this third winter edition of Infusion, we see

how Fulbright Korea grantees are both enamored with and challenged by their daily lives in Korea. It is during the winter season—which marks the halfway point of our grant years—that we often start to reexamine the way we approach the limitations of living in a foreign country. Many of us come as strangers to the language, culture and people. It takes a lot of practice to fit more comfortably into our roles as cultural ambassadors before we can locate ourselves in the landscape of Korea.

I first came to know Korea through a book—Dictee, by Korean-American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. I often think of the student in Dictee who struggles to learn a new language. She reflects on the limits of language to express even her most basic emotions through the few words she has mastered. Over the past year and a half, my elementary school students have used raw determination to bring me closer to their worlds, to teach me things about themselves and their country with new vocabulary words each time we talk.

It is with the same determination that our contributors select the right words and

photographs to bring readers as close as possible to the Fulbright Korea experience which often feels too elusive to describe. As Emily Shoemaker notes as she gives speaking tests to her students, sometimes the perfect words come to us, and sometimes they don’t. Total command of a language is not always necessary to know the kindness of others, as Claire Cambron sees when support comes to her in various forms after a life-changing discovery. We lean on the people we meet here, and the communities we come from, in order to define personal histories created by life’s lessons—those new and those revisited.

Whether we have transformed our language or cultural limitations into small accomplishments or we are still exploring our potential as cultural ambassadors, we are using this time in our grant years to integrate our learning experiences into tangible realities. This issue marks only the start of the influence we will have on our communities and the impact Korea will have on us in the months to come.

Please enjoy reading Infusion, Volume 9, Issue 1.

Dawn Angelicca Barcelona Editor-in-Chief

Working the Crowd. Bryan Betts. Jeongeup

Autumn Laughter. Bryan Betts. Jeongeup 5

JumpingHannah Shannon

Boredom never suited me well. When bored, I tend to become irrational and prone to poor decisions. The sort that leave me with broken phones, terrible exes or expensive bills to the mechanic. The problem is that I grow bored easily. Patterns are nice for a while, but eventually they become tedious.

At first Korea cured my boredom. Everyday experiences seemed adventurous for a while, but a pattern emerged once again. Each day consisted of school, students, classes and dodging cars on my walk home. I needed something to do.

I suppressed the urge to jump into the first thing I could find, ignoring advertisements for dancing clubs and suggestions from my co-teacher to try swimming. After a few days I found my answer. Every day I saw a large banner that read “오천 태권도” in Korean and “Ocheon Taekwondo!” underneath it. It seemed to me that the answer to my boredom was literally staring me in the face.

In the U.S. I had studied a myriad of martial arts. I had never acquired a black belt, but I had always felt that if you added the three belts I did have—one from yeunyendo in middle school,

one from two years of tangsoodo in high school, and one from my six-month taekwondo stint in college—together it would have equaled one black belt. After all, black is just a conglomerate of all the colors of the rainbow.

When I walked into class on the first day and surveyed my fellow students, I immediately felt a surge of confidence. I would probably outdo all of them. Most everyone else in the class was half my height and probably a quarter of my weight. I grinned with the secret knowledge that I would soon outshine my classmates and, in time, gain their trust and secure my leadership over them.

In all my self-congratulating, I had forgotten to take into consideration two very important factors. First, I was an outsider. Blonde hair and blue eyes in a country of blacks and browns stands out. Second, I had failed to consider that I may be attending taekwondo with my own students. These guys knew me as teacher but I did not have that role here. This placed me in the awkward position of “not friend” but “not teacher” either.

On that first day, it became obvious that the other students had a system, a caste. At the top stood the team players, mostly sixth graders

who practiced in the back room. We plebeians could not compare to them. Sure, I could kick above my head and do a split. But could I do that in midair while aiming for a target the size of my coach’s curled fist? I could not. These gods ranked far beyond me and likely beyond what I hoped to achieve. When their coach closed the door, separating them and their skill rather clearly, I knew that I didn’t need to worry about them. They no longer counted in the caste.

Next came the older kids who stood in the back of the classroom, practicing alone. Some threw spinning kicks to the bag, while others practiced hooking their feet behind each other’s heads, hoping to send their friends to the ground. They spent a few minutes gawking at me before the teacher sent them back to the bags with a sharp command in Korean. I felt solidly the separation between me and them, but surely a grown adult could do better.

Young ones straggled below the experienced students. Most of them were too young for elementary school English, and too young to be taught to kick in a straight line. Here, at the bottom of the pyramid, I had found my unlikely brethren. Together we would work our way up the ranks until we too stood at the top, looking at those below with equal parts scorn and sympathy.

After a few brief moments of stretching the teacher barked something at us. I watched as my brethren lined up at the back and the teacher placed cones around the room for laps. Excellent. Once upon a time, I had run a mile or two on a daily basis. I was ready. Before I could prove my superiority, I had to prove that I deserved my place here at all. This became particularly clear when, confused by my lower belt, but obvious status as “elder,” the students tussled for a moment, trying to decide where I should stand. To save them the anguish of having to tell a teacher what to do, I kindly

7

UP. Erin Hassanzadeh. Hapjeong, Seoul

took my place in the back, between the red and green belts.

At the coach’s whistle, we ran. And we ran hard. The moment of confidence over my ability to run well quickly dwindled as I began to feel a sharp stabbing kick in my ribs. This made it difficult to overtake the kids as they raced around the room, pushing each other, trying to jump in front. It annoyed me. How was I to prove to them that my physical skill was worthy of attention if they wouldn’t look? Still, I knew better than to try and push them away or yell at them. You don’t gain popularity by shoving down a seven-year-old.

The running ended and I turned my attention to the coach, assuming that we were about to start practicing kicks. In all my classes in America, after warming up, students practice kicks and forms in straight lines spread out across the room. The teacher takes time and care demonstrating each kick, correcting positioning and technique among the students. Not once during kicking drills does one consider that their target may be moving. Apparently, in America, one assumes that their opponent will likely be staked to the ground during a fight.

In Korea, however, it seems that people expect their opponent to move, causing them to move too. Also, the teacher expects that you already know everything about kicking. No sooner had we lined up than the coach shouted out the name of a kick. I watched anxiously, desperately trying to understand the technique.

I began to panic. Soon my turn would come and most likely, I would shuffle forward awkwardly between static kicks instead of executing beautiful ones like the others. All the feelings of grandeur and confidence left over

from the running began to vanish. The sound of massive praise I had imagined moments before faded in my mind. In its place, I imagined the teacher yelling at me for my incompetence, or worse, sighing sympathetically at my obvious inferiority to her little assassins.

When my turn came, I lined up with my partners at the front of the line. At the coach’s shout I kicked my leg out, executing what I still believe to be an excellent roundhouse kick. To my right, Na Mu, the second grader who would eventually become one of my best friends in Korea, leapt into his second, third and fourth kick, leaving me shattered in my mediocrity. This was no good. I continued my awkward steps until I made it to the end of the line. My height did not give me the immediate physical prowess I had hoped for, but it did allow me to make it across the room in half as many kicks as my partners. This, at least, prevented me from appearing too out of place.

As I had predicted, the teacher gave me a sympathetic smile, but offered no real advice. The older kids who had stopped for a moment to watch simply returned to performing triple kicks in the air. I could feel my position in the caste sinking again.

The kicking continued for the rest of the class. Slowly, bit by bit, I pieced together how my students moved swiftly and fluidly across the room. The well-meaning second grade boys standing beside me showed me the way with their repeated demonstrations. All the while, they talked in Korean, no doubt asking how I didn’t already know this. Whenever I didn’t answer, they simply smiled and looked at each other as though to say “Well, she’s not one of us, so what did we really expect?” I was surprised

9

to find that I was reassured by their attitude toward me.

I had done nothing in class to demonstrate to them that I was a teacher. In fact I had subconsciously made a decision to be “one of them” as best I could. True, I wanted to prove that I was better than them, but only in the sense of physical skill and prowess. Not in a way that would make me seem aloof or above their friendship. As their hands patted my arms sympathetically, I realized that I had made a very good decision. Surely I could be better than them without being above them, I thought. As we returned to the front of the line to once again leap, or perhaps hop, across the room, I wasn’t even sure I would be able to prove that I was better.

Eventually, this drill in humiliation ended and we moved to stand along the back wall while the teacher took out mats and stacked them in the center of the room. No doubt our teacher meant to train us for the many walls we would have to fly over in our lives. Even the tiniest students cleared these mats easily. I hopped over them, but my new companions sprang themselves up like gymnasts.

After this initial jump, our teacher stacked the mats again, adding new mats until they reached as high as my shoulders. This was beyond most of the students’ skill level. Even the older, taller students barely skimmed the top of the mats. The youngest students ran at full speed and launched themselves with a fury found only in the smallest of humans. Few managed to get higher than they had planned on, and after their feet left the floor

their faces did most of work. Many of the attempts ended with a resounding smack as the face of a six-year-old sent the tower tumbling over.

The boy in front of me, a measly blue belt like myself, went running at the mat, but stopped just short of touching it before skipping to the side of the room. The teacher looked up, shaking her head and called for me to come forward. I eyed the mat warily, having the sudden realization that this could be my chance. I may have failed to kick in a manner expected of my perceived status, but no doubt I could clear this mat with ease. Not even all of the highest ranking members of the students had managed that.

My moment had come. The sounds of cheers and praise revved up again in my mind. I recalled briefly lessons learned during my circus training years in college. I had never really needed to vault myself over something like this. But, I had watched closely, observing what my fellow comrades had done or had failed to do. The method seemed to involve running as fast as one could, jumping as high as one could and landing as gracefully and soundlessly as possible. Missing the mat, or landing too hard, caused laughter from the peanut gallery rather than admiration.

I looked my new teacher in the eye, set my jaw and ran. When I was close enough to reach out and touch the mat, I launched over the mats, narrowly avoiding kicking someone in the face. My hands never touched the mat below me. Instead, I reached out in front of me, bracing myself for the very likely chance that I would hit the floor or the ceiling, face first.

Hannah Shannon is a 2014-2016 ETA at Ocheon Elementary School in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk-do.

11After the Match. Hannah Shannon. Ocheon

Neither happened. I landed upright and the floor shook beneath us all. Behind me, some of my new comrades gasped while others cheered and laughed. A fourth grader of mine shouted out “Teacher! It’s good!”

I had done it. Perhaps, I had done it accidentally, and not with nearly as much grace as I had intended, but nonetheless I had done it: I had proven to them all that I was someone worthy of attention, and a healthy dose of awe. Even the coach gave me a congratulatory pat on the back before leaning forward to tell me “천천히1” — slowly. She demonstrated that I should have used the top of the stack to aid me in gaining height while also keeping me steady as I came down the other side.

This piece of advice didn’t dampen my mood. The teacher had noticed what I had done, had praised me and had considered me worthy enough to try and help. The students had cheered for me as they had for each other, showing me that they accepted me among them, already forgetting their uncertainty. I felt accomplished, I felt fulfilled and I felt like a student. A student who would, over time perhaps, still prove that I was a more capable athlete than any of them.

1 Cheoncheonhi

On HomesicknessJi Yoon Noh

1 Gohyang, Hometown2 Ani, No

It’s 9:15 p.m. in Jeju, South Korea, and I’m sitting on my bed, about to start another episode of The West Wing. I’m 15 hours ahead of Chicago, and I do my usual calculation: 9:15 a.m. minus three hours. It would be about 6:15 a.m. there. My parents are probably waking up to the sound of their alarm now. Winter in Chicago is bleak, so there’s probably not much sunlight to welcome them to a new day.

I recall how remarkably fast my parents are at getting ready in the morning. Their routine is mechanical. They brush their teeth and get dressed. My mom packs lunch, while my dad heads down to the garage to take the dog out and start the car so it can warm up before driving to the dry cleaners. By 6:20 a.m. they are out the door. I used to wake up for school when I heard the sound of the garage door rumbling to a close. I’d get ready in an empty house and prepare for the day as my parents began their 50-minute commute to another suburb, where they cleaned clothes for 12 hours a day, six days a week.

It’s 9:19 p.m. now in Jeju, South Korea, and 6:19 a.m. in Chicago. I hit the “video call” button on Kakao messenger and the familiar jingle signals over 6,700 miles, virtually connecting me to my parents.

“Ji Yoon-ah,” my mom endearingly answers.“Hi, Omma.” My mom’s natural tendency is to yell when

she’s on the phone as if the connection will get stronger if she gets louder, but it never does.

I don’t call my parents often. We mostly keep each other updated through our family chat room on Kakao. I send pictures of various parts of my day, and my mom replies with a picture of our family dog, Ivy. Today was different, though. Today, I needed to hear my parents’ voices.

Since I moved away from Chicago in July, I had been struggling with homesickness. I had spent five years in Chicago. There, I rode my bike to church, jogged around The Point, and shopped at the grocery store where the owner shared his peach cobbler recipes with me. It was in Chicago that my favorite bike shop owner became a close friend and mentor. There, I developed rituals and cultivated relationships that have shaped my identity today. I chose to temporarily leave Chicago to experience Korea, and to finally live in the country that others assumed was my “home.” The place where I was born — my 고향.1 I’ve been in Korea several months now; the semester is coming to a close. And yet, I still feel like a foreigner here.

“Are you well?” my mom asks. “I’m okay. Today was a little bit difficult.” “Why? Were your kids bad?”“아니… 2” Immediately, my voice breaks. “It’s

just… no. I’m just really homesick.” I swallow hard in order to hold back the tears.

It’s 6:25 a.m. now, and my mom patiently listens to my sobbing: how I’ve been missing home; how lonely I’ve been; how thankful I am

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3 Hyangsubyeong4 ‘Ulgo shipeul ddaen uleodo dwae,’ “If you want to cry, you should cry”

Ji Yoon Noh is a 2015-2016 ETA at Seogwipo Middle School in Seogwipo, Jeju-do.

that they moved to the U.S.; how hard it must have been for them to immigrate.

While in Korea, these moments of loneliness and homesickness have helped me understand the sacrifices my parents made as immigrants. They sacrificed living near their families, their comfortable lifestyle, their privilege as members of the majority, and their ability to fluently speak the predominant language and to communicate with their daughters. How painfully difficult their transition from locals to foreigners must have been.

“Hi! I’m here, too!” My dad abruptly chimes into the phone conversation. Usually, I would be annoyed by this. But today, I weep even harder at the sound of his voice.

My dad’s voice reminds me of how much resentment I had toward him. Resentment that built up over years of miscommunication and mistranslations. The time I attempted to explain to him my plan to become a social worker ended with my father insisting that I become a CIA agent. Tears would well up during conversations like these, when shame and frustration overwhelmed me. I mistakenly accused my father of patronizing my dreams. Why doesn’t he understand? I’d assume. Why doesn’t he hear what I am saying?

In reality, though, he couldn’t understand. Today, resentment towards my father

coalesces with the homesickness that I now realize my dad and I share. For different homes, but the same sickness.

Living in Korea has been a grieving process. I’ve been grieving the loss of all of the things my parents sacrificed when they immigrated. How they must have felt the same visceral aching that envelops all those who suffer from homesickness. And I’ve been able to experience, firsthand, what

my life could have been if we hadn’t immigrated. I was angry when I first realized that I was robbed of a childhood in which my parents were available on weekends. A childhood in which I didn’t have to translate for them during parent-teacher conferences.

Although I have been grieving, I have been simultaneously healing. Living among Korean natives has allowed me to better understand where my parents come from, what rituals they followed in Korea and the relationships they had cultivated. I’ve been getting a better glimpse of their homeland, so that I can understand who they are and ultimately, who I am. While I grieve, I am also struck with gratitude for their sacrifices.

“Hi, Dad. I’m sorry for not calling you more often.” I try to get my voice back to normal.

“Things must have been difficult lately.” “Yeah. I’m feeling a lot of 향수병.3” I use

the Korean word for homesickness to show off. I want my dad to know that I’ve been improving my vocabulary. “You must have felt it a lot when you moved to the U.S.”

I hear my mom chuckle over the speakerphone. “He’s the king of 향수병.” I laugh to show solidarity. At the same time I wipe away tears.

It’s 9:36 p.m. in Jeju, South Korea, and 6:36 a.m. in Chicago. Our conversation doesn’t go on any longer. They never extend beyond 15 minutes. I say I have to go and my mom insists that I eat well and take care of myself. Before I hang up, my father reminds me to be strong; to rely on people, to struggle together and to build community.

“울고 싶을 땐 울어도 돼.4 Weep and be brave,” he says.

Untitled. Robert 제임스 (James) Little. Jeju, South Coast

Rural Parallels

15

Jonathan Balmer&

Leanndra Padgett

In our grant years and our first years teaching in the United States, the similarities of four rural communities, two in Kentucky and two in Korea, unfurled before us. Their unique identities did as well. We grew to delight in the fact that kids are kids everywhere, and marvel at what made each town wholly its own.

“Diverse communities living in peace,” the Kentucky poet-farmer Wendell Berry said, need “an understanding of the necessity of local differences, and respect. Respect…always implies imagination—the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls.1”

From the Commonwealth of Kentucky to the Land of the Morning Calm, or the Morning Calm back to the Commonwealth, we caught glimpses of the living souls in these places. Souls which were alike: all rural, all prone to invisibility, but all distinctive, each their own.

“Them Koreans gonna know what it is when I’m talking about going muddin’?”

“You might need to explain that one, Tyler.” Them Koreans. He was trying to goad me into a

correction. I wasn’t taking the bait.“Do you know what I’m talking about when I

say going muddin’?”“Yes, I’ve been on an ATV before.”“Really, Mr. Balmer? But you’re such a

Yankee! I bet you’ve never shot a gun.”I had shot a gun a few times—and grew up

a mere one state north of Kentucky. Tyler must have mistaken me for some poor lost urbanite, mystified by the sight of horse farms and appalled at the ubiquity of chewing tobacco: a stranger to his town. Really, I loved the Commonwealth. I had lived there for five years.

October, 2014 Franklin County, Kentucky, The United States

1 “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.” The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

“Let me see that draft. We have to send these to Ms. Padgett tomorrow. She needs to give these letters to her students in South Korea soon.” We had set up a letter swap between Korea and America.

Tyler’s draft was a rhetorical blitz of boasting “Our biggest state, Alaska, is 17.23 times as big as your country. We have farm equipment that costs $100,000,” cries for help, “Our leaders don’t know anything. We might end up a communist country like your friends the Chinese” and misguided attempts at gratitude “Thank you for inventing the Thai Smile restaurant. It has the best chicken fried rice.”

“Do you mind if I make a few suggestions?”“My computer’s broke! I got work tonight. I

don’t have time!”“Monday, then. No later!”I knew he had two jobs. The bell rang.Encouraging cross-cultural learning proved

more difficult than I thought.Reading the letters from Leanndra’s class in

Korea, I saw that many students asked about New York City and California. My students, if they asked anything about Korea, asked if the internet was really the fastest in the world, or mentioned they owned a Samsung phone. Both sets agreed school was a bore.

And both sets—students from Franklin County and Hwacheon-gun—lived in relatively rural areas. Yet their windows to one another’s countries were urban- and media-skewed. My students’ visions of Korea included the bizarre pop sensation Psy and shots of metro Seoul bustle in a Marvel movie featuring a Korean

doctor in a supporting role. Her students’ ideas of America included Maroon 5 crashing L.A. weddings in their “Sugar” music video and Taylor Swift in an East Coast mansion in her hit “Blank Space.”

Rural places share mutual invisibility across cultures. It is easy to be an outsider to a rural place, special to be in the know. October, 2014 Hwacheon, Gangwon-do, Republic of Korea

“How are the students?” my friends and family from back home asked me.

“What about Korean students?” my new Korean friends and host family wondered.

“They’re fine!” I would say.“They’re cute and sweet. But, sometimes, it’s

hard to keep their attention. The boys are either too loud or want to sleep.”

No matter who I explained this to, American or Korean, the listener would nod, smile knowingly and imply that, “Yes, boys will be boys,” or “That’s what you get in a middle school,” and end with a variant of “You’re a saint for working with that age group. Good luck!”

Though I’m no saint, I first realized my love for middle school education while student teaching in Scott County, Kentucky in 2013. Though it required creative classroom management, days at school always left me with a smile on my face. For instance, I discovered that the best way to keep Justin2 on task was to make a boundary on the floor with painter’s tape and tell

2 All names have been changed

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Looking Up at Halla. Kelsey Hagenah. Mt. Halla, Jeju

him that it was his own fish tank and that he had to stay in it to survive. He and his classmates kept me in stitches and won my heart by showing me home videos of pet ferrets, giving me nicknames and constantly demonstrating that they were not yet too cool to want the teacher’s attention. Whenever I saw them in Kroger or Wal-Mart, they met me with smiles and cries of “Hi, Miss Padgett!” I was pleased to find that Korean middle schoolers were not terribly different.

In Hwacheon, the classroom management remained exciting. Several times I walked into a classroom to see Ji Hoo, the largest first grader3 in the school, sitting in front of the storage cupboard with a guilty smile on his face. Inevitably, when I asked him to move his desk, one of the smallest boys in the school would tumble out, smiling and disheveled — free from his broom-closet prison once again.

Students still sought my attention and affection, leaving me notes and candy and joking with me in class. And they were still shocked, and often pleased, to see me around town.

My favorite part of my daily routine in Korea was the ten-minute walk home from school. As I crossed the bridge into the small, river

valley town each afternoon, I was often passed by boys riding two to a bike. One would pedal while standing upright and the other would sit on the seat, a vision of balance. I trailed girls walking in rows, blasting K-pop music from their tablet-sized smartphones as they headed to a convenience store to grab a snack before hagwon.4 Some were shy, of course, but others were willing to engage in limited conversation outside of the “English Zone” I inhabited for much of the week. I rarely left my house without hearing, “Hello, Leanndra Teacher!” in the streets of our idyllic little town.

In Hwacheon, one of thousands of rural Korean villages where everybody knows everybody, the downtown economy seemed to be largely supported by the after-school purchases of teenagers. There was no escaping the middle school demographic, even if I had wanted to. And I didn’t.

Middle school is such a special time of life. A time in which the first graders look like infants and the third graders look like adults. When some of the girls are wearing their skirts way too short and some of the boys smell like cigarettes after lunch, but when no one can keep a straight face

3 The Korean middle school’s first grade is equivalent to the American seventh grade4 Private academies in which many students study after school on a daily basis

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when someone farts (the expression that third grader wore when he knew he’d been caught in the act!). The time in which a Pixar movie at the end of the semester still holds everyone’s attention. Even the most disinterested of third graders were captivated by Tangled, especially enjoying the fact that swashbuckling hero Flynn Ryder’s real name is Eugene.5 A time when all the girls, and many of the boys, can sing the English lyrics to Frozen’s “Let it Go.” Caught in the snares of adolescence, the students are at once loving and rebellious, needy and independent, moody, ornery and loveable souls.

September, 2015 Bourbon County, Kentucky, The United States

Now that I’m teaching back in the states, people ask me, “What are the differences between Korean and American students?” To be honest, there aren’t many. Students are students. Now that I work in a rural, county school in Kentucky, I still wake up sleeping students and redirect restless ones. Though since returning to Kentucky, I have yet to be tricked into thinking that a hooded jacket, slumped over the desk and wearing a backpack, is a sleeping student. Hwacheon has you there, Bourbon County. Now I teach high schoolers, but the

difference is minimal; they are just bigger versions of middle schoolers.

In Bourbon County, the boys dip6 in class more than they smoke during lunch. The girls wear tight leggings instead of short skirts. But they still find flatulence hilarious, love to play basketball and enjoy the occasional Taylor Swift song (though Korean students definitely feel more strongly about her. One group of first grade boys would regularly miss part of their lunch to watch her music videos in the English Zone).

Okay, there are some differences. When I asked Korean students to write the answer to “What is your favorite season? Why?” they told me “Winter. Because of the sancheoneo ice fishing festival.” When I asked Kentucky students, at least one in each class answered “hunting season.”

They may not be catching sancheoneo, but my Kentucky boys also tell fishing stories, and warn me of the size of the catfish in Cave Run Lake. They are motivated to turn in assignments when their moms threaten not to let them hunt on the weekends. They discuss their guns and give me a hard time for mispronouncing the names of specific firearms. Hwacheon families own pepper farms; Kentucky students miss school to bale hay and birth lambs. But in the end, both sets of students are country kids with big hearts, living and working amidst rural beauty.

5 “Eugene” sounds similar to a common female Korean name6 Chew tobacco

A Walk After Rain. Emily Shoemaker. Sejong City

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Leanndra Padgett was a 2014-2015 ETA at Hwacheon Middle School in Hwacheon,

Gangwon-do.

Jonathan Balmer is a 2015-2016 ETA at Uiseong Middle School in Uiseong, Gyeongsangbuk-do.

Both graduated from Georgetown College in 2014.

November, 2015 Uiseong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Republic of Korea

“Ask me a question. Any question.”The boy wore a back brace. I was hoping he

did well on this speaking test. He came to my office every week to have Naver translator conversations.

“Does…Mr. Balmer have a gun?” He made a gun shape with his fingers the same way he had when he first told me his name, Park Gun Nyeon.

“No,” I stifled a chuckle. “Not all Americans own guns. I promise!”

Rural Korea is different from Kentucky. The 14-story apartment building I live in is a testament to that. I live in a place where winding alleys host the elderly who prepare the harvest of blackened garlic for sale in the graying autumn. Near my bus stop, as a tractor stalls traffic, boys flock to the PC room. Children loiter around the only fast food restaurant in town, Mom’s Touch. The 18-45 age demographic is conspicuously absent. Rural Korea has suffered an exodus of youth to an urban career promised land. Not enough land remains for the phenomenon of the suburb that thrives in the United States.

There is no question about if I belong. I truly am an outsider. There are five foreigners in Uiseong. All are English teachers. Some in Uiseong apologize to me that there is not much to do in a small town. They express their sympathy that I teach at a boys’ middle school. One said, “The boys, you know, they do not like to study.”

“He doesn’t like to study” found use as a synonym for “lazy,” sometimes with merit. But often I saw hints of other types of work, not laziness. Doubtless many boys who didn’t like to study were busy. Park Gun Nyeon missed two

weeks of class because he fell off the second floor of a building. “Fallen 5m,” the translator read. “Not a bird!” Gun Nyeon added, and laughed. There had been a fire back at Gun Nyeon’s house in March and his family was in the process of repairing it. The two seemed connected; the injury and the work on the house. But Gun Nyeon’s explanations about his injury seemed to shift. Family needs resulted in student efforts being turned away from school stateside too. Tyler’s two jobs come to mind. Evidence of students’ work lurked in varied places within the rural areas I lived. A routine responsibility in country quiet.

I once asked a co-teacher why he moved back to Uiseong from Seoul. He said,

“It is impossible for me not to. My family has lived in Uiseong for 500 years.”

In the United States, I had not even been to a city that existed 500 years ago.

Maybe I will never fully understand Uiseong, or any rural place. At the same time, I am convinced rural places’ oft-overlooked dignity deserves defense. Maybe, for some folks, there is something sacred about the land, the earth, which they know. There certainly was nothing more literally down-to-earth than a pastime called muddin’ or braving a fall from the roof straight to the ground. If Gun Nyeon laughed about it, maybe I can too.

the train doors opened, yielding

the train doors opened, yieldingthe day, splitting it open like an overripe fruit, spilling it outover the city’s skeletonof concrete bone

as the mad winds blewas the quickening clouds coagulated, stirringto wash the vomit (not mine, of course, but a homeless man’s,he, who shielded his eyes in shamewith a handand a bottle) by my shoe

as the hawkers sang wearymantras for the sakeof a pair of sunglassesand other things

as the monks beat wooden fishtheir hollow knocks and holyphonemes wrestling with theuniverse to promote a pigeonor two

and i, above all this, thought:did i leave myumbrella?

the music began on the waywith the scratchy overturesof the grandmother magpies

the stale cigarette sacrificeson the wet blossom altarsin front of the bank

intrigued (or bored) i stoppedand squinted my eyes to listen (ihad left my sunglasses at home)

before mea single chord emerges:a new apartment building

Sam Moser is a 2014-2016 ETA at Soeui Elementary School in Seoul.

Seoul Poetry Sam Moser

the music began on the way

서울시1

1 Seoul Si, meaning “Seoul Poetry” or Seoul-si, meaning “Seoul City”

23

Fungible. Robert 제임스 (James) Little. Seoul

Small Underneath the Sky. Cara Mooney. Gwangju

25

LessonsUnlearned

Nikki R. Brueggeman

It is 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. I shrink at Felicia’s question. After a recent presentation, the high school

auditorium is quieting down around us. I stand up and whistle in admiration—the loud noise filling the auditorium. It’s noticeable. People stare at me, as I realize that I may have made a mistake.

“Why are you so loud?” she hisses out. “I don’t mean to be…” I whimper, glancing at this

girl I call a friend. Felicia’s upper lip curls in disgust and she turns away, shaking her head. But the lesson remains: my whistle is ugly. In time I will unlearn the lessons of adolescence. But for now I feel the shame. By the end of the year, I no longer whistle...

It’s 1:50 p.m. on a Thursday, and I have no idea where the chicken ramen came from. It was not present at the beginning of class. Class 1-4 is supposed to be writing in their journals, but the ramen has caused the classroom to slowly descend into chaos. As I move forward to stop the circulation of dehydrated noodles, I see two girls in the back. Yun Ji is laughing nefariously, holding a pair of scissors as she snips them in the air. Suddenly she grabs a piece of her friend’s hair, eliciting a screech of fear.

“Put down the scissors and step away from Su Bin’s hair!” I cry out in panic.

As I walk toward the impromptu beauty salon, I freeze—seeing three students using my blackboard chalk to draw in their journals. “Why are you using chalk?” I mutter with confusion. They simply giggle and return to their art. A loud crunch fills the room—mixed with a rustling of foil. They have cookies now, and I have officially lost control of the classroom.

As my mind races about how to refocus the class, I realize there is one thing left: one thing that always grabs people’s attention. I let out my shrill whistle, filling the room like a train blowing into town. Silence descends. Mouths fall open.

“Alright… so…” I say softly, thinking I have won their attention—and disgust.

Then slowly, the students begin whistling, trying to imitate my unique sound.

“Teacher! Show us how!” says a girl with large eyes, gazing at me with amazement. A sound which was mocked in high school is met with curiosity from my students. Warmth envelopes my bones as I see wonder, not contempt, in their eyes.

***“Nikki sure has a strong set of lungs,” a family

friend says clearing her throat, throwing me a look of confusion and annoyance. It is a clear message: you should be quieter, even at play time. “I could hear her laughing from the other side of the house,” the woman states, before turning the conversation to another topic. Lesson learned. My laugh annoys people. I try to quell it, but this laugh will never be silenced. When someone mentions my deep unique laugh, shame fills my soul. I learn to hate my laugh...

“If you could make a rap song, what would you rap about?” I ask my second year students.

“What frustrates you in society?” I coax, holding the white board marker and praying for an answer in the abyss of silence.

Other classes have given thoughtful answers, ones that could provoke discussion and controversy on a national stage: Dokdo, pay gap, gender inequality. However, my second year girls have other issues on their minds.

“Bust size,” belts out one girl with fire in her voice. I pause and stare at her, shocked for a moment, then shrug. They are pushing the limits to see how I will respond. But the mischief inside me decides to record it on the board. Bust size it is. Snickers roll through the room as the girls

become bolder, realizing that instead of panicking I am playing along with their antics.

“What else?” “School lunches!” states a girl in the front

with thick glasses and a smile tugging at her. I bite my lower lip, to keep a professional teacher face, and write the prompt on the board. “Very good, good. Alright, I need one more,” I say as I finish writing.

A voice filled with frustration and intensity explodes from the back of the room. “Expensive snacks!” I turn and look at the girl, attempting to contain myself at her bold declaration.

“Expensive… snacks?” I repeat as the class giggles behind their hands.

“Too much air, no snack!” She cries out—angrily hitting her desk with her fist. Silence descends as they all observe me.

I cannot hold it back anymore. I burst into laughter, dropping the white board marker as I double over. Following my lead, the class descends into a chaos of screams, laughter and words of support. My laugh is loud, like me. It is deep and rolls over my lips. But it is not met with annoyance. It mixes with theirs like music. An orchestra of joy dances through the classroom. We laugh for almost two minutes before settling down.

27

***“Nikki is a very talented student, but she tends to be

unfocused and boisterous.” The report card comment sat blaring on the kitchen table. Translation: Nikki is lazy, she doesn’t try in school. At least, that is how my parents decoded the note. School was boring, like a cage for my spirit, but the lesson was taken — school is for studying and grades...

Even the most focused students cannot resist the first snow, and their distraction seeps into the classroom as flurries cover the city. They want to be outside, not learning English. We have finished the lesson, and now all that remains is the worksheet. But I have taught the same lesson six times now, and outside seems more interesting—to me and to the students.

“Y’all want go outside and play in the snow?” I ask.

The response is a chorus of “YES!” Students jump up, some forgetting their books as they race to the door. We end class 20 minutes early and enjoy the first snowfall, the worksheet forgotten.

In the first five minutes, I am tackled into a snowbank by a girl half my weight, but it feels as if

I have been sacked by a Seahawk defensive player. I scream as I am thrown into the snow.

The shrieks and screams continue as snow is shoved down my jacket — into my shirt — and my once well-kempt hair is plastered with snow chunks. I gaze at a group of girls as I pack one snowball together. I turn to them, watching as they giggle nervously at what is to come.

“Which of you always talks in my class?” I call out, eliciting laughter as the girls point at each other, selecting a victim. I decide to just hurl snowballs at all of them for good measure. As the lunch bell rings, I enter the school with 36 snow-covered students. Dripping on the floor and ice sliding down our coats, we are like walking snowmen. We trudge past my fellow teachers who are shaking their heads, chuckling and pointing.

“It sounded like you had fun,” comments one of my co-workers.

“Yes, lots of fun,” I reply with a smile. “School should be fun, or else it is a prison.”

My co-worker gives me a curious look, as if I have spoken French, but I just continue to usher my students inside.

Nikki R. Brueggeman is a 2015-2016 ETA at Sungsim Girls High School in Jeonju,

Jeollabuk-do.

1 Everyone!

***I want to sing the soprano parts, but my voice is

too low, as the music teacher informs me. I am quickly placed in the tenor section. A boys’ part of the choir. The sopranos are lauded as beautiful voices, while the tenors and altos are backup. The other girls look at me oddly. My singing voice is too deep to be entertaining, I tell myself. I drop out of choir the next semester, ashamed that I am unable to be an angelic soprano.

I want to hear myself think, but unfortunately I am teaching Class 2-6.

“Everyone! Attention! Ladies please!” Conversations in Korean. Laughter. Snickering.

“Yeoreobun!”1 I snap. The few attentive students look around awkwardly, refusing to make eye contact. They are ashamed of their class.

I could yell at them, but then they would pout. In truth, I want to scream, “JUST BE QUIET FOR ONCE,” an order for respect and silence. Something any teacher at the end of her rope may do in a moment of misjudgment. I have a loud, deep voice that catches people’s attention when needed. I can use it to punish — or engage. That is the moment I play a new card from my deck.

I take a deep breath.“We could have had it allllll…” I blare out —

channeling my inner Adele. My voice fills the room, the music blaring from deep within my chest. Instantly 35 pairs of eyes are on me, jaws open. Then it happens. A moment that I will recall in my golden years.

Thirty-five girls’ voices join me.

“ROLLING IN THE DEEEEP! YOU HAD MY HEART INSIDE OF YOUR HAND…” They are dancing in their chairs and moving to the a cappella music we have made.

“AND YOU PLAYED IT TO THE BEAT…”I finally have their attention. This voice

that I thought masculine and too deep as an adolescent is now motivating students into class participation — even if it’s not the way I originally planned. We sing the chorus, my tenor voice holding the key as the higher voices stretch the song. Just like my job as a teacher, my voice cements the room.

***I have learned new lessons in Jeonju. I have

learned not to mock or shame my students with loud voices and wild expressions. To let them be silly, wild and vivacious. Society tells girls to not be loud or “seen,” but I love to watch them break that rule. A rule that used to hold such power over me crumples at their feet.

It takes a lifetime to unlearn lessons taught during adolescence. Insecurities about my personality and voice have plagued me for many years. But here at a school filled with loud, boisterous and silly girls, I have found a haven for my whistle, laugh, personality and voice.

29

Bees’ Last Stand. Kelsey Hagenah. Cheongju

Organized Clutter. Tiffany Chu. Gongju

The Way Back Home

Kristen O’Brien

I listened to the tick tick tick of the clock and my legs and hands were starting to shake as I heard footsteps approaching. I heard the soft sound of voices coming from the other side of the door, and my twin sister, Allison, who sat beside me, turned to look at me. We both took a deep breath. Silence. We said nothing, but exchanged everything we were feeling in the split second it took for our eyes to meet and for the door to open. This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for, for over 19 years.

A Korean social worker, who acted as a translator, our Korean birth mother and our birth sister entered the room. Our eyes met for a moment, anxiously, as they sat across from us. I didn’t know what to expect, but I could never have imagined how normal our conversation would be. Our birth mother turned to us and asked, “What have you been doing with your life? How have you been? Have you been healthy?”

I took a deep breath as I tried to find the words to explain all the years we had spent apart. How could I summarize my entire life story in just a few sentences? I smiled as I

replied to my mother’s questions. “We’ve been well. We are in college right now and came to study at Yonsei University.”

Our birth mother gave Allison and me up for adoption when we were born. Because she didn’t give us names, a Korean social worker took it upon herself to name us. Our older sister explained our names to us. My Korean name is Bang Na Rin (방나린), and my twin’s name is Bang Ha Rin (방하린). When the first part of our names are combined, Hana (하나), they mean “one” in Korean. Our sister’s name is Bang Hye Rin (방혜린) and we share the second part of our names—Rin (린), which means “a shade of jade.” Our family name, or last name, is Bang (방) which is an uncommon Korean family name meaning “direction.”

My name, Bang Na Rin (방나린), now had a significant meaning behind it. The three of us, bonded by our names, were also bound by our interests. We shared a love for music and the arts. Hye Rin, seven years our senior, had majored in Graphic Design in college, which is exactly what Allison studied in college. At the time, Hye Rin

31

was working part time at a small graphic design company. Our mother was usually too busy to meet, as she worked long hours. However, she revealed that her biggest wish was for us to spend our time in Korea getting to know our sister.

Throughout the semester at Yonsei we met our birth sister frequently. It was difficult to communicate with our sister Hye Rin because we spoke limited Korean, but she revealed to us that she had been studying English at a hagwon1 in order to better communicate with us. We’d often explore Korean cafés together, go to concerts and even spend hours searching for Korean drama filming sites that were well off the beaten path. As we spent more and more time together, our sister’s English quickly improved and my Korean improved as well. My passion for learning Korean grew even more intensely as we became closer.

Everything in Seoul was so vibrant and fun, and because of our sister, we managed to have an authentic and unique experience. We walked through the city streets like locals, but we took in the sights with the eyes of a tourist. As I grew to know my family, I grew to know Seoul. It became more than just a city for me. It became like home.

Studying abroad had given me the opportunity to go to Korea searching for answers about my background, and while I found some, I never accounted for the possibility that even more questions could form. Despite the rewards of my semester abroad, I found myself even more confused and unsure about my identity. Upon my return to the United States, I felt myself longing to walk the streets of Seoul once again. I didn’t know if I would find another opportunity to return again, and my semester abroad started to feel like a far off dream. A distant memory.

***My twin sister and I spent our lives on Long

Island, New York, with our two loving American parents. Though we struggled to “fit in” in a mostly Caucasian neighborhood, I led a comfortable life and couldn’t have asked for more from my American parents. I never could have imagined studying abroad in South Korea during college, and meeting our birth family alone—without our American parents. Despite the beauty of Long Island, I never once felt like I belonged. I always stood out in a crowd and received curious looks due to my long black hair and small dark eyes. As a family, the strange combination of two young Asian girls with two Irish-German parents didn’t attract cursory glances—they attracted stares.

My parents had always been completely open about the nature of our adoption. Allison and I had always been aware that we had a birth mother and older sister living in Korea. On the other hand, we were only told that our birth father died before we were born. Shortly before Allison and I embarked on our journey to study abroad, my parents decided to show me a slip of paper. I can remember every detail about that day. My American mother sat us down on the living room couch, with a grave expression on her face.

“Kristen. Allison. I have something really important to tell you. It’s not that your father and I have been trying to hide this from you,” she paused nervously, as we awaited her words with confusion and worry. “But this is something we felt had to wait until the time was right. I think now is the right time.”

She lifted a thin strip of white paper off of the table, its own physical weight unbefitting its heavy content.

1 A Korean private educational institute where students can take classes in a wide array of subjects

Day to Dusk. Chase Fitzgerald. Naksan Temple

“There was this small piece of paper that was included with your adoption documents—about your father. There are some more details included about his death.”

The paper wasn’t even a paragraph, just three sentences typed in Korean. The characters were foreign to me, and all I could make out were the few handwritten notations in English. Real father. Stomach cancer. Insecticide. Suicide. My sister and I relied on these few English words to piece together our life story. Luckily, I had a Korean friend who translated the slip of paper into English: “I will inform you about the young twins’ biological father. As the biological father had debts and lived a hard life working as a vegetable vendor, the biological father’s mother passed away in 1992 in June due to stomach cancer and bladder cancer. After that, the

biological father’s life did not go well and he had no desire to live, so after 100 days since the biological father’s mother’s death on August 8, 1992. He was intoxicated and went to his mother’s grave and committed suicide by consuming pesticide/insecticide.”

Something inside of me felt obligated to feel sad, to feel hurt, to feel angry—to feel anything. But I didn’t. I accepted it coolly. As coolly as it was written in those three sentences on a slip of paper in a language that I had never seen before. They were facts. Was I supposed to feel sad over the loss of a man I had never known? Who knew that a single slip of paper could change everything, and define everything that I was? Who my family was? There was a sense of longing inside of me and a curiosity. I wanted to understand myself and to understand the

33In-between: Two Faces of a City. Cara Mooney. Gwangju

background behind the story that brought me to America in the first place.

***After my semester abroad in Korea, I had

one year of college left to complete in America. I was still left wrestling with identity questions. When I discovered I received the Fulbright Korea grant, I knew that it could provide me the chance to deepen my relationship with my birth family, improve my Korean and learn more about Korean culture.

I was placed in Gumi, three hours away from Seoul. My school situation forced me out of my comfort zone and led to a drastic improvement in my Korean. This enabled me to have some brief conversations with my birth mom and extended family without always needing my birth sister to translate between us.

I often spent my weekends with my sister and mom in their cramped home, and my favorite part of the weekends were Friday nights. We took long walks to the downtown area in Gongneung.2 We always ventured to the late night restaurants, where they served my favorite Korean food, samgyeopsal.3 The restaurants were almost always bustling, mainly filled to the brim with groups of ajeossi,4 their cheeks burning red with the consumption of soju.5 My mom and sister were always smiling—happy to share brief, simple, yet memorable conversations over grilled meat and beer. There was one conversation we shared that was particularly memorable to me. Nothing really significant happened, but sometimes simplicity is what we remember the most:

“Na Rin, you lost weight. Have you been eating proper meals?” my birth mom asked, as

2 A neighborhood within Seoul3 Three-layered pork belly meat, often cooked on a grill4 Middle-aged Korean men5 A popular Korean alcoholic beverage made from rice

she turned the meat over on the grill in front of us with silver tongs. She reached for a pair of big scissors and began expertly chopping up the meat into long rectangular pieces.

“Yes. I didn’t lose weight,” I laugh. “It’s just baby fat.” I point to the fat that has plagued my face for my entire life, but it was now gone, leaving a slightly pointed end.

“You look pretty. But eat more,” my mother proclaims, pushing chunks of the nicely browned meat closer to me. “You should lose weight, like your sister,” my mother says, turning to Hye Rin. Hye Rin chuckles softly, and I know this is a conversation that the two of them have all too often. I laugh at the contradictory nature of my Korean mother’s words.

After Friday night dinners, we’d return to our sister’s apartment, and spend hours watching my mother’s favorite ajumma6 dramas. My sister would sometimes bicker with my mother for the remote, so that the two of us could watch an American movie with Korean subtitles, but she often lost that battle. Our mother doesn’t like to read subtitles. I didn’t mind though, because it felt like family.

My sister and my mother were the reason I became so interested in older Korean singers like Lee Mun Sae and my sister’s favorite Korean

rocker, Kim Kyung Ho. She told the tales of her teenage years, and her fondness for dramas like Reply 1997, because they brought back memories of the days when she attended concerts and chased singers all over Korea. Despite the end of her fan girl days, there was a time when we studied abroad that she had gotten up before 4 a.m. with Allison to get a chance to enter Inkigayo, one of Korea’s most famous music TV program shows. They met up, taking the first subway, and stood in line for hours, just for the chance to watch SHINee’s comeback show.

As time progressed, I found fewer opportunities to see my family, but those memorable moments were highlights of my stay in Korea. As the year went on, my Korean sister began taking cooking classes, and my mom began a new full-time job. Seeing them was a challenge, and happened rarely.

It became clear to me that, although I was taking the time to get to know my Korean family, and was attempting to reconnect with my Korean heritage, my identity was still being called into question in Korea. I found myself at odds, unable to fully identify as American or Korean. I could walk on the streets in Korea without being immediately noticed. I felt comfortable and accepted walking around with my Korean

6 A middle-aged Korean woman

35

family, but the moment I opened my mouth, there were stares and questions. I could easily pass as a Korean by my appearance alone, but my beliefs and my thought processes are purely American. I didn’t ‘fit in’ anywhere, but I came to the conclusion that identity isn’t only about our physical appearances. It is also about who we are on the inside. I resolved that identity is personal and it is something that only I can define. Regardless of what anyone thought, asked or said—it was something that I needed to come to terms with within myself. This was something I struggled a lot with during my first grant year in Korea.

***For my second grant year, I decided to renew

at my school in Gumi. My love for my students and desire to continue improving my Korean in an immersive environment outweighed my desire to be near my family. This year, I can count the number of times I’ve seen my sister on one hand. She works six days a week, and I’ve come to realize that she is bad at staying in contact.

Finding my birth family has been a rewarding experience, but it hasn’t been perfect. My relationship with my birth mother has been almost nonexistent, and it isn’t only because of her work. There’s a distance between us—almost

a kind of coldness. She hasn’t taken the time to get to know me as a person—my likes and dislikes, who I really am. She often confuses Allison and me, and it wasn’t until recently that she has begun to notice how different we are from one another.

For a while I was confused, and then that confusion turned into hurt. I wondered why she wouldn’t cook me a traditional Korean meal like I had imagined, or show me her favorite places around Korea. I wondered why she wouldn’t take me to our father’s grave on his death anniversary, and why she never complimented me. I hoped she would be proud of me, and not just remark on how I looked. It seemed that we had never reached past that stage of getting to know each other. I tried to understand the difficulties my mother and sister faced with my father, and I knew I could only imagine how hard their lives have been.

My mother had to support a child as a single mother and had to give two of her babies up for adoption. My sister grew up without a father and her mother was rarely around. She had to take buses and walk to school alone, and she even had to come home to an empty house. She had few friends, and told me that she was very lonely as a child.

The angry part of me constantly questions: Why is it always me reaching out to them? My mother is the one who gave us up. Shouldn’t she be the one trying

They Used to Pick Every Grain by Hand. Mo Kinsinger. Changpyeong

Gazing Through the Fog. Kate Trexel. Tongyeong

37

Kristen O’Brien is a 2014-2016 ETA at Gumi Osan Elementary School in Gumi,

Gyeongsangbuk-do.

to reconnect with us? Then another part of me feels grateful. We’ve had some really happy moments and memories together, and despite everything, my older sister really does take care of us.

I’ve had all of these thoughts, but no solid answers. While the hurt I’ve felt hasn’t entirely gone away, acceptance has taken its place. As I spend more time in Korea, I’ve come to realize that we can’t always find the answers to our questions. The time I have spent and the memories I have are what I make of them, and though not all of them can be what I want, I can appreciate the fact that they have happened.

Living in Korea has given me the biggest opportunity of all: it has allowed me to explore the part of my life I never knew before. The fragments of my life that have been missing are finally coming to light, and falling into place. I’ve traced my roots and have reunited with my birth family, and I’ve spent two years in the country of my birth experiencing its culture. Though I don’t quite know where everything fits, and where every piece will fall, I now have all of the missing parts

necessary to assemble myself as a whole. The next time I’m asked to define myself, I can only come up with one answer: my identity is fluid. I’m Korean. I’m American. I’m Korean-American. I’m a Korean adoptee. The truth is, I’m still searching for answers, but for once in my life, I’m okay with that. I’m okay with being different. And for once, I feel like I’m home.

missed connectionyou let me sweat on you-w4m

masan, changwon-si

Allana Wooley is a 2015-2016 ETA at Masan Girls High School in Masan,

Gyeongsangnam-do.

I’m prone to getting lost. I hope you won’t hold this against me. To be fair, I think this proclivity could lead to a bevy of cute stories. “Well, friends,” you’d excuse yourself. “I’m sorry to cut the Baduk game short, but Allana has gone and gotten herself turned around again.” This routine could become our thing—me, getting lost; you, coming to my rescue.

I saw you on the streets of Masan. You were wearing olive hiking pants and sitting on a low garden wall. I was wearing an old college shirt and mesh running shorts. You were calm. I was frantic. You were self-assured. I was lost. It was my first weekend in my new city and I had gone on an exploratory run, and found no one and nothing of note but you.

I made my move. Showed you a Hangul address I could barely read. “Where...it...is?” I mangled the attempt at Korean. No matter—we were vibing and you understood my plea. Following your gracefully extended fingers, I indulged in a final searing gaze and tore myself away to clamber into the suggested taxi.

I don’t need to tell you the next part. You were there. You saw what happened. The mangled pronunciation of my home address and crumpled 5,000 won bill weren’t enough for the apathetic driver—he shooed me out. It’s an embarrassing thing, being rejected in front of somebody you like. As you stared into my soul (~swoon~), something shifted in your eyes. Suddenly, you

were in this as much as I was. Committed. Out came a sporty little scooter. Kind stranger, you took me home.

Winding through the streets of Masan, a 60-something ajeossi and a 20-something foreigner, we made a visually arresting pair. People stared, sure, but who can judge true human connection in a world so otherwise jaded? I clung tighter, awash in your radiating calm. We reached my apartment and I disembarked, suddenly bashful. Perhaps you wanted payment? Nope, you refused. My number? You never asked. Maybe the language gap caused you to pause, believing the obstacles to be insurmountable. Not so, I say today. Too shy then, I let it drop. We smiled, waved goodbye, and parted ways, hearts full of regret and longing.

Noble stranger man, I really think we had a connection. Perhaps our easy geniality has been lost in the intervening months. However, I can’t help but believe that, with your superior directional capabilities, we can find it again. And if you ever just want to get lost together—well, I can help with that.

hmu a3

39

아저씨 // Ajeossi. Erin Slocum. Jindo

Misty Mornings. Erin Slocum. Hwaeomsa Temple, Jirisan

Touches ofEmpathy

Claire Cambron

The morning I am to leave for my placement city, I wake up unusually stiff and sore. I step out of bed and a familiar jolt of pain radiates from my glute to my foot. Not this again. Dread rushes over me as I remember my last episode. It took a full month for the pain to subside then. Maybe this time the recovery period will be shorter, now that I recognize it for what it is: sciatica. I pop two ibuprofens and do my best to hide my limp throughout the closing ceremony, lunch and departure to Cheongju.

***It’s three weeks into my homestay and I am

inexplicably happy. My host family is generous and kind, and I’m really hitting it off with my host brother. My co-teachers are incredibly thoughtful, and my students are an endearing combination of adorable, funny and frustrating. But at night, I cry. It hurts to shift my weight, and every sneeze or cough is agonizing. I wake up every two hours and desperately try to stretch out my back to stop the aching. As much as I try to hide the pain, convinced that it should dissipate any day now,

people begin to comment. My co-teachers notice my limp and the grimace that crosses my face every time I kneel down to help a student at his or her desk. My host family notices how difficult it is for me to position myself on the floor for dinner. They are worried, and so am I. My pain has not lessened; it’s only worsened. It’s time I see a doctor.

***Over the next several weeks, I visit and

re-visit two orthopedists, a general practitioner and an internist. They each perform different physical examinations and order new x-rays and blood draws. One doctor thinks it’s a herniated disk. The other thinks I just have tight hip flexors. One prescribes rest. The other prescribes exercise. With each new result, we eliminate yet another possibility from our list, but to me it seems like the answer is getting further and further out of reach. It’s emotionally and physically draining, but small moments keep me going.

***My co-teacher Mrs. Won, whom I call

Ally, insists on picking me up from my physical

41

therapy appointment so I don’t have to walk to the bus stop. I visit with her husband and their precocious two-year-old daughter on the car ride home. For a while I forget the reason they picked me up in the first place, but then the car stops and I begin the painful struggle of climbing out of the back seat. Ally sends me a Kakao message later that night to check how I am feeling.

“Claire how are u doing? I hope you are doing fine! ^^ Don’t worry. Everything will be alright. <3”

***I visit the hospital, again, to discuss my

MRI results. I play with my other co-teacher Mrs. Kim’s baby as I wait for the images to be processed and examined. The doctor eventually calls me into his office. He speaks English, but I find him less accessible than the last doctor. He laughs as he tells me my MRI reveals nothing unusual. I don’t think it’s very funny. He looks at me and shrugs, “You seem fine.” Never mind how I feel. He orders another enigmatic blood test and tells me to return in one week. I don’t want to talk to him anymore, but I comply. On our way home, we stop by Starbucks and Mrs. Kim orders me a latte.

***I am lying in bed watching Gilmore Girls.

My face is sticky from crying earlier; it’s been a stressful day. I’d rather be outside playing badminton with my host brother, but I can’t move fast enough to hit the birdy. Any abrupt movement wrecks my back. Gilmore Girls makes me miss my mom. There is a knock on my door. “잠깐만요,” I grunt as I slowly, carefully, inch myself out of bed. When I open the door, my host brother Jang Hyeon says, “Claire, here. Eat!” He holds out a

chocolate ice cream bar, and I am reminded of how much his small gestures comfort me.

***When I return to the hospital, the doctor

tells me that I’ve tested positive for HLA-B27—a risk factor for ankylosing spondylitis. Ankylating splondiferous what? He’s not sure that’s what I have, but he’s transferring me to an internal medicine doctor who will pursue a diagnosis with me. She orders an x-ray of my sacroiliac joint. She explains that A.S. is a very slow progressing disease, and she doubts we will be able to arrive at a diagnosis for at least another decade.

That night, I go home and read about A.S. It’s a rare autoimmune disease that results in inflammation of the joints and muscles and, eventually, bone fusion—most notably, vertebral ossification. “Bamboo spine.” It affects mostly men in their mid-twenties. One to two percent of HLA-B27 carriers actually have the disease. Forty percent of the affected population has acute iritis. I click on the “images” tab and begin browsing through photos of case studies. Some of the pictures frighten me. Just as I begin to panic, the phone buzzes.

“Claire~~~ How are u feeling today? I hope everything will be going well…”

***At home, my host family pays careful

attention to me. Having limited language overlap, I usually struggle to connect with Appa, but his frequent inquiries of “아파요?”2 make me feel closer to him. Despite my many hospital visits, my host mom knows I’m still in pain. My host sister Chae Yoon, who speaks the most English in the family, tells me, “Omma wants you try

1 Jamgganmanyo, One moment2 Apayo? Are you in pain?

Post-Suneung Light. Robert 제임스 (James) Little. Changwon

43

Claire Cambron is a 2015-2016 ETA at Jeungan Elementary School in Cheongju,

Chungcheongbuk-do.

Korean medicine. Very good.” On Saturday, Omma closes up the restaurant early to take me to an acupuncturist. We sit together and watch the baseball game in the waiting room, turning to each other to acknowledge each exciting play or funny commercial. In the appointment room, she laughs when I ask her to take a picture of me with my thumbs up and my hip full of needles.

***One month after the doctor first brought up

A.S. I go to the hospital by myself, prepared to discuss another uneventful test result. Instead, I am diagnosed. It appears that the bones at my sacroiliac joint have already started to fuse. The inflammatory markers in my blood are over four times their normal range. I am told my severity level is a three out of four. What does that even mean? I am prescribed medication and sent downstairs for another x-ray. They want a view from a new angle…

As I change out of my gown post x-ray, I struggle to make sense of my last conversation. Images of men so hunched over that their necks run parallel to the ground rush through my mind. Tears begin to well. Three out of four… Bamboo spine… Will I be able to run again?... Fused! I’m too young… I am brought back to reality by the x-ray technician who has just entered the changing room. She is desperately trying to tell me something. “죄송합니다. 몰라요3”I tell her apologetically. She pauses for a second, deliberating her next move, and then leaves.

I pack up my bag, but just as I open the door to leave the x-ray technician returns. She holds out her phone. The screen reads Ankylosing Spondylitis. “You?” she asks. When I nod my head

to confirm that I am the patient they are screening for A.S., she grabs my hand and holds it, looking into my eyes. “Me too.” We stand there for a few moments. She is a young woman, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties. She is pretty and healthy-looking. She looks hopeful. Choked up, I manage to say, “감사합니다. 4” I hope she can tell how much I mean it.

***“I hope you will get better by taking the

medicine steadily… please take the medicine every day. Make sure not to forget to take it, even if I know you don’t. <3”

***I am doing much better now. My pain is

subdued and my inflammation is down. I am hopeful. Yes, this experience has been difficult, but it has also been incredibly meaningful. I am amazed by the support I have received from people I have only just met. Empathy, I have learned, can be communicated in many ways beyond words. It doesn’t rely on shared history or common interest. It can transcend language and cultural barriers. My struggles have helped me truly appreciate empathy, and recognize it in its simplest forms. Although I no longer require the help I once did, I find that I still experience it every day.

***“Claire, I’m glad that I’ve met and worked

with you. You are meaningful to me because you are my precious friend!”

3 Joesonghamnida. Mollayo, I’m sorry. I don’t know4 Gamsahamnida, Thank you

Right to Left, Top to Bottom Katrin MarquezCara MooneyEmily ShoemakerRobert LittleKelsey HagenahAllana WooleyMargaret ClevelandRobert LittleCara Mooney Chase Fitzgerald

45

Left to Right, Top to Bottom

Margaret ClevelandMargaret ClevelandErin HassanzadehKatrin MarquezKelsey HagenahRachel BrooksRobert LittleTiffany ChuTiffany ChuKristen O’BrienErin Slocum

UnspokenEmily Shoemaker

“Tell me about your first year of high school,” you say to the student sitting across from you. It’s his end-of-semester speaking test and he smiles at you nervously, eyes darting to the stopwatch on the table. You start the time.

“Today I introduce my high school life,” he begins slowly, shifting around in his chair. “First, every day early wake up. So tired. Take subway for… for about one hours. When I arrive school, I play badminton. Homeroom teacher with. In the… the… teacher, what is gangdang?”

“Gym.”“Play badminton in gym. Then I go to

classroom and…”Though halting at first, your student warms

up into his spiel as he goes. Just like the dozens of students you tested earlier today, and yesterday, and the day before that.

Before these speaking tests you hadn’t realized that most of your students live at least a full hour of crowded, miserable bus or subway rides away from school. It is a facet of their daily existence that you hadn’t really thought about, and that bothers you. You find yourself wishing, as usual, that you had gotten to know them more personally earlier in the semester.

But there were so many of them, and you were so focused on worksheets and lesson plans, and back then the sounds of their names kept slipping through your

memory like water through your fingers.Next semester you will not teach these

students anymore. This is your third school. You know the drill. They will be busy with their new classes, and you will be busy with your new classes. There will be hallway greetings and lunchtime chats but things will never be quite the same.

With each new semester you’ve learned to spread your emotions a little less thin. Maybe this time, you think, you will finally be able to find some peace in the goodbyes.

You step toward them for the first time in the setting summer. You dance, twirling and pushing and stepping on each other’s toes as the leaves catch fire in fall. You love them as the embers fade into white winter ashes; then the soft smell of spring seeps into the air, and it is time for you to bow out and let them go.

Before you came to Korea and became a teacher you had no idea how much these kids were going to mean to you. How much you would look forward to their smiles and waves, how many snacks you would conspire to eat together, how hard you would laugh at their animated commentaries and hilariously blunt answers to your delicate questions.

How much you will miss the familiarity and trust shining in their coffee-mahogany-midnight gazes once they are gone.

47

You are ten years older than these students. Sometimes it feels like much more, but also sometimes like much less.

“I satisfied with my high school life,” the student in front of you avers, much steadier in his words now, “but also there is some problem.”

“What’s the problem?”He sighs. “The friends at this school, they…

they study very well. So good at study.” He scratches his head sheepishly. “But I am not good at study. I don’t like study. So hard for me.”

You pause. As you did for students earlier today, and yesterday and the day before that.

“Tell me more.”There are many nuances of life that you won’t

ever be able to properly communicate, to fully share with your students, but sometimes you get glimpses of the world through their eyes.

Peeks through body language windows. Sounds and syllables and offhand sentences are coin edges dragging through a scratch-away sticker as the insights flash by and reveal just a little bit more of the gift beneath.

In hundreds of speaking tests, your students always tell you whether or not they “study well.” That they got bad grades first semester because they didn’t study. That their grades are improving now because they are studying more.

You have never once heard a student say, “My classmates get better grades because they are smarter than me.”

You have never once heard a student say, “I failed because I am stupid.”

And you can’t know for sure what this word choice means to them, but to you it’s an important one. You know that at their age you didn’t understand that intelligence is far less valuable than initiative. This lesson took you

years and years to internalize, and yet—time and time again—falls so casually from lips wrapping around foreign words on the other side of the stopwatch—mouths so much better at spinning a new language from muscle and breath than you think yours will ever be.

You are forever intrigued by how your students choose to express their life experiences in English, this non-native tongue. The way they translate their thoughts into words that are shallow from the words that are deep.

Day by day, you learn to understand a little bit more of everything left unspoken.

“Lastly I will say about my friends,” your student is finishing up with confidence, no longer glancing at the stopwatch. “First, Seon Ho. Seon Ho is very good face. First impression was cold, but he talk to me and now we very close.” You knew that, because they always sit and make trouble together, and you let out a short huff of amusement. Your student grins and continues without apology. “Next is Do Ahn. At first he looks like serious student. Very good at study… but real is no. Real is crazy boy.” And then you are laughing, because the idea of your loudest and most mischievous kid being studious for even half a second is the most ludicrous thing you’ve heard all day.

Your student laughs with you as he finishes his list, and after a quick wrap-up you show him his score on the test. He leaves. One more down. The next student comes in—this one ranked second in her grade. With the same nervous smile, she glances at the stopwatch.

“Tell me about your first year of high school,” you say, and start the time. She launches into a description of a daily schedule that includes

Waving Out. Bryan Betts. Jeongeup

classes, club activities, night study at academies and only three to four hours of sleep a night. The sentences are longer, the grammar is better, the words are bigger.

The meaning is the same.You sit back and listen.

***Your school sits on a hill in a touristy part of

town. You descend to the street below, filled with hanoks1 and cafés and ddeokbeokki2 stands. All the familiar sights and sounds and smells that lead to the subway. For you, this little neighborhood is a bridge between work and home—but you know it is also much more than that. Avoiding cars as you pace over cobblestones, you think about all the different paths that are layered into this road by your students as they travel.

You think of Jun Tae, walking to his daily hour-and-a-half commute home to Paju. Of Ji Won, going to help take care of her amnesic grandmother. Of Min Hyeok, heading to an after-school math academy because his grades are low.

Because he doesn’t want to go to business school. Because he wants to be a baker.And you think of all that your students have

told you about their lives over the past semester. Words spoken or written or Korean or English or loud or quiet.

“My parents made me to be accountant, so I come to this school. But actually I don’t want accountant. I want to go to wood-carving school.”

“Something in my first year of high school was very hard for me. Because I have secret love. But I do not know

1 Traditional Korean house2 Korean snack food made from soft rice cake, fish cake and sweet red chili sauce

Sometimes you find those words. Sometimes you don’t.But usually, you’ve noticed, it’s enough to just

be there. Day after day, week after week, month after month, teaching and learning and living and breathing together in the same space.

That, really, is the reason you came to Korea. To say things that can only be said without ever

speaking at all.You reach the end of the road and turn left,

the subway entrance just ahead. You trudge down to wait for your train, just as you did earlier today, and yesterday, and the day before that.

It arrives with the usual rumbling, the slight screech of metal as it slows to a stop. You board, and as the doors close, someone suddenly hollers across the platform behind you.

“Teacher bye! See you tomorrow!”You turn and catch sight of a student waving

at you. Smiling, you wave back. The subway car shudders to life and slowly

begins to pick up speed again, the student panning sideways as colors flash and edges slide out of focus. The platform lights snuff out as you enter the tunnel, leaving a reflection of your own face staring back at you in the window glass.

Tomorrow is the last day of speaking tests.You wish it wasn’t.

49

Emily Shoemaker is a 2014-2016 ETA at Daedong Taxation High School in Seoul. She previously taught at Dodam High School and

Mireu Elementary School in Sejong City.

her mind, so I can’t do anything. I am too scared. Teacher, love is so hard.”

“I like P.E. It is best class, and I better than the other girls, so I like it. My dream is be a soldier.”

“My special day is March 5th. I will remember it forever. On that day, my father… my father went to the sky.”

“Teacher. I am so afraid of my future.”In the days and weeks and months you

have known them, these kids have told you so many things. Some days their words make you frustrated. Some days they make you angry. Some days they make you laugh and some days they break your heart.

But every day, you learn little by little how to better meet your students in the middle of the time-distance-culture gap stretching between you, and for that you are nothing but glad.

You know, deep down, that this next round of goodbyes won’t be any less difficult than the ones before. You agree to accept that difficulty with each new semester. Each new student who walks into your classroom, and you will always be sad when they leave again.

But you have also learned how meaningful the short time you have together can be, and maybe — just maybe — the goodbyes might not be such a bad trade in the end.

There will always be too much you want to share with your students and too little time. You try your best to ensure that they always walk away from you with a new piece of information, a new way to think about the world. A new way to perceive the fractured yet whole, individual yet shared experience of being human. You are forever searching for the right words with which to do so.

Cover photo: Cafe Kranzler. Kristen O’Brien. German Village, Namhae

Artwork on previous page: Just Peachy. Tiffany Chu. Goesan

Designs: On the Move. Hannah Shannon.

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