As my main intent in living abroad was to experience another country as fully as possible, it would have been lackadaisical of me not to experience the bad as well as the good. I would like to say that I am content to be lackadaisical, but you who know me know that this is not the case and that I do not like to be lacking in daisics.
In Korea, the accepted and expected way of dealing with life is to behave as if everything is "happy," even if it's not. I don't know what they do when someone dies. What I do know is I am not allowed to give any student a grade lower than a 4 (meaning "satisfactory") in any of the areas I grade, even if they usually finish less than one assignment a day, space off during every class (or, worse, won't shut up), hit other kids, refuse to eat more than two bites at lunch (yes, I serve and supervise that, too), scream at me, hit me, or do any number of other things they would never do in front of a Korean teacher. And I know that the majority of marketing ploys here center on the terms "happy," "friendly," "happy," "smile," and "happy." All jesting aside, probably anyone who will read this really does know that honesty is one of my most important values, and here I find myself in the land of willful oblivion, where every forcedly positive progress report I write carries off with it a piece of my integrity. I admit that I am afraid of how much a year of this will change me, simply by force of habit. And I wonder, honestly, if they maintain this outlook of "everything is so happy" all the time? Because, sometimes, life sucks, and that's just the way it is. And I pose the likely unoriginal argument that it is just as important to acknowledge this completely as it is to search for the good in every situation.
An update on this post: a friend who is wiser than me recently reminded me, quiet gently, that I might be forgetting how important the concept of "face" is in Asian cultures. In many countries, and I don't think South Korea is an exception, even deserved criticism of such things as academic achievements (or lack thereof) can be a slap in the face akin to "you're a bad person." Although it is difficult for me to get used to this concept, I can learn. Even if I get really frustrated with the method, I can learn how to work with it. Thanks to the person who reminded me that other cultures can, in fact, be fundamentally different from my own.
But to switch to a positive note (not because it's become habit, but because I like happy--perhaps the Koreans simply have the means to the same end as I better figured out than I), I learned a wonderful and effective Korean phrase last week: in reference to one's ability to arrange one's hair or make things, Koreans might say you have good "hand skills." Isn't that awesome?!
