While at home, I picked up a copy of Game of Thrones. The tagline for the book and the TV series it inspired is “winter is coming.” But that doesn’t fit at all in this case.

The first day of my visit home looked like this:

The last day of my visit looked like this:

You don’t need a groundhog to see that winter is on its way out.

There are no groundhogs in Korea. There are, however, numerous Koreans who will gladly tell you that Korea has four distinct seasons.

Spring is on its way, slowly but surely. The frozen peninsula that is South Korea in the winter will start to thaw soon, and my lovely southern city of Busan will be first to warm up.

With the end of winter comes the realization that I’m halfway through my second and final year in South Korea. Here’s to making it count!

Except I’ve come to the conclusion over the last few years that I almost never stick to a resolution for an entire year. This year, I’m trying a new strategy. This year, I don’t have any specific resolutions. I just have a mantra.

Take Initiative.

This two-word phrase which will no doubt drive me toward Greatness came to me courtesy of Lazy Dog, a sad cartoon puppy on one of the articles of clothing I’ve come to think of collectively as The Konglish in my Closet.

This sweater isn’t much to look at. I bought it at a second-hand store in the Busan neighbourhood of Seomyeon for a measly 5,000 won (less than five dollars). The clerk was particularly excited about this sale because it meant that he could throw in their absolutely wretched matching bright blue sweatpants for free. His eyes lit up when he realized this, and he ran to the back room of the store to retrieve them — obviously, he wasn’t about to put such horrid clothing on display with all the other, normal clothes. He doubled back to the til just as quickly to make sure I wouldn’t leave without taking them off his hands.

The sweatpants had elastic ankles that ended at my shins, and the insides left blue cotton bits all over my other clothes the one time I washed them. Suffice it to say I never warmed to them, nor they to me, and neither of us seemed to mind when we parted ways on the day I moved apartments.

The Lazy Dog sweater, on the other hand, has become an integral part of my Sunday routine.

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When I don’t feel like going outside, when I just want to sit around my apartment streaming American TV shows or reading the Hunger Games books, this is the sweater I wear. As long as I have the sweater on, I don’t leave the apartment. This is an unspoken rule.

But Lazy Dog is dangerous. Lazy Dog can make a weekend hermit out of me, which carries the potential hazard of transforming my tiny apartment into the setting of a week-long, round-the-clock hermitage. Lazy Dog’s self-loathing “why bother” approach to life is both contagious and addictive. Sometimes, I put on Lazy Dog, and I don’t take Lazy Dog off for 24 hours. This is a problem.

Lazy Dog, you poor wretched beast. In the spirit of the new year and all of its potential, and also because I fear becoming you, I hereby proclaim 2012 the Take Initiative Year.

"What are you drinking? Why, it's me, sir! Enjoy me, but take heed: my insides could scald you." (At a Dunkin' Donuts in Busan.)

Thing 2: The Ceiling of My Apartment

It was a bit of a shock the first time I woke up and noticed the giant robot face with a gaping maw directly above my bed. Now that I think of it, I didn't start obsessing about Things In Korea With Faces until I moved into this apartment. Perhaps having the face of my own apartment be the last thing I see before falling asleep at night might be messing with my subconscious a little bit. But I don't know about that. What do you think, Mr. Ceiling Face?

Thing 3: Peanut Buttered Roast Squid

"Eating me is like a punch in the face," he seems to say. Peanut Buttered Roast Squid is an angry guy. His little sidekick, Tofu Boy, is much nicer. (A street food vendor in Nampodong, Busan. )

Thing 4: A Monkey’s Butt

This advertisement for "HANG Plus Anal Hospital" is displayed inside Sinpyeong subway station in Busan. Those poor, poor monkeys.

Incidentally, this is also the cover art for the wildly unpopular new children's book, "Curious George and the Hemorrhoid Treatment."

Thing 5: This Guy

Meanwhile, in Busan…

(You can find other Things in Korea with Faces here and here.)

photo from Reuters

“Kim Jong-il is dead.”

I’d just finished teaching my lesson on Christmas, and the students were loudly filing out of the class for lunch. I had to ask my co-teacher to repeat it a few times before I was sure of what he’d said.

“This morning. Kim Jong-il is dead.”

At lunch, it seemed to be all anyone was talking about. They spoke in hushed Korean, but the words “Kim Jong-il” were repeated often. It seemed nobody was sure whether to be relieved or worried about the news. It seemed they’d all decidedly to be both simultaneously.

“I remember when his father, Kim Il-sung, died,” my co-teacher said. “I was a child in school. I thought the world would be… changed.” Her eyes were wide with excitement and shock.

North Korean tradition holds that Kim Jong-il was born in a log cabin in the wilderness of national symbol Mt. Baekdu, and that the event was marked by the ostentatious appearances of both a double rainbow and a new star in the sky.

Reports of his death, however, hold no such epic portents, other than the fact that the news was announced on South Korea President Lee Myung-bak’s 70th birthday. I’m told that the air raid signal that went off during one of my lessons was accidental and not at all related to the historic death of our dictator to the north.

Today is one for the history books, but it remains to be seen how this change in the North Korean regime will impact the future.  Very little is known about the Dear Leader’s son, Kim Jong-un; even his age is a mystery. The South Korean military is on alert and all active soldiers on leave are being called back to their bases.

As it is now, South Koreans are reacting in myriad emotions ranging from unbridled joy to fear and anxiety.

But judging from the celebratory K-pop dance moves my students whipped out this afternoon, the nation is certainly breathing a collective sigh of relief — even as it is bracing itself for whatever comes next.

A couple of months ago, popular TV show Glee aired an episode titled “The Asian F.” In it, Chinese American Mike Chang is dismayed about getting an A- on a test. He and his father refer to it as an “Asian F.”

Grading my speaking tests this week, I realized just how apt this term is.

Last week, I conducted speaking tests on my grade 1 and 2 (North American grades 10 and 11) students. I handed in my final grades on Friday. As I’d never ran speaking tests like this before, I kept careful record of my evaluations, and reminded myself that I would probably have to scale the grades to better fit the school’s grading format. And I was okay with that.

Today, I learned that the school doesn’t normally allow any grade submitted to be under 75% for speaking tests.

That is to say, the lowest possible grade a student can receive in one of my classes is a B.

This was far more grade scaling than I’d expected. And it’s not just at my school. After checking with other public school teachers, the base grade varies but it is standard procedure across Korea to not allow failing grades for speaking tests.

In Korea, for a lot of tests, a B really is an F; it’s as low as you can get. This is Korea’s own personal brand of “no child left behind” policy. It is basically impossible to fail English conversation class.

In a culture which so highly regards education, where high school seniors spend 12 or 14 or 16 hours a day studying, the driven students work tirelessly for perfection.

But what about the other students? The ones who make up that base grade of 60 or 70 or 75 percent? The ones who have no reason to bother trying, as they can get a B grade without uttering a single word in English during a speaking test? What motivation do they have?

I know that I am not a real teacher in Korea. I am technically a “co-teacher,” as it says on my job contract, despite the fact that I have taught most of my classes solo this year. This is not my country; this is a country with a separate set of customs and values. I know about cultural differences, cultural clashes, and the ways in which North America and Korea are different, and that’s all okay.

But a failing grade should be a failing grade. If a student shows up to a speaking test and fails to say anything — not even one word — in English, they should receive a failing grade. End of story. As it is, these students will instead receive a mediocre, passing grade. They will feel no motivation to get better. No motivation to try harder, to listen in class, to even stay awake in class. They will coast through school until they graduate, and they will have learned very, very little. Something here is wrong.

So now here I am, scaling my grades up by over 10%. Because I made a compromise with my co-teacher, the kids who did not speak any English during the speaking test will get 60% instead of 75%. Maybe this drop in the base grade will serve as a warning to students that they might want to actually try next time. Or maybe not.

Call me a hard-ass, but if you fail to put in any effort, you should fail the test.

“Excuse me, we are students. We have school assignment to take picture with a foreigner.”

They all stared at me.

“Can we take picture with you?”

Feeling ragged and more than a little awkward in my sudden spotlight, I hemmed and hawed before I realized I really had no choice. I would either be the friendly accommodating foreigner or the antisocial foreigner who has no interest in mixing with enthusiastic, global-thinking Korean university students showing an interest in other cultures.

“Erm, sure,” I responded.

They crowded around me as I worked to push away my table — seemingly to make more room for my new friends, but actually to hide the massive half-eaten brownie I’d been gorging myself on just before.

After more than a few awkward moments of shifting around and camera-adjusting and one of the girls nervously murmuring “hurry up, hurry up,” the self-photo was taken and the girls were gone as quickly and randomly as they’d appeared.

Afterwards, I had time to reflect on what had happened. I’d been annoyed at first, but I held no ill will towards the girls. They’d been polite and straightforward. It was the assignment that baffled me.

What university professor gives a “find-and-photograph-a-foreigner” assignment to their students? Who was it that decided to turn me into a prize in some bizarre multicultural scavenger hunt? I felt like there should be some other component to this assignment — should I check my clothes in case they’d surreptitiously tagged me for future tracking and scientific research purposes? I really hoped the assignment was actually supposed to involve having a conversation with the foreigner, rather than just pulling a paparazzi hit-and-run.

Then I had a vision as clear as day: there stood the professor in his lecture hall, assigning his foreigner scavenger hunt homework.

“Be careful,” he’d say. “And be alert. Foreigners can be found just about anywhere, if you know how to look for them. Try big chain coffee shops and fast food places. Starbucks is a good bet. And don’t be afraid. They’ll be just as wary of you as you are of them.”

And then another vision, this time of the assignment the way the professor envisioned it:

A street full of people at rush hour. A glint of light flashes off somebody’s watch — it’s a foreigner. She dodges out of a Family Mart and quickly scurries into a building. Then another one. He scrambles out of a cab and zigzags past a cell phone store and then around the corner out of sight. He’s there and gone in a flash — you might not have even noticed him if you weren’t on guard.

Finished with my coffee, my book, and my confusion, I pulled on my jacket and stepped out of the coffee shop to scurry my way to the subway station, zigzagging between people along the way.

Suffice it to say that conducting over a hundred speaking tests in one day means that they tend to blend together. Every once and a while, though, something will stick out from the constant barrage of phrases like “Let me introduce my,” “I will tell you about,” and “it is very nice.”

Halfway through a Grade 1 class of speaking tests, a student steps out of the classroom and into the hall where I’m conducting the tests.

“Let me introduce my family,” he tells me.

I couldn’t tell you what the next several sentences of his speech were, although I’m sure he must have listed the number of members in his family, their ages and/or jobs, and where they live.

After a few sentences going on in this fashion, he stops abruptly. I look up to see him glancing nervously at the classroom window, where a few of his friends are peering out at us. They are looking on excitedly. A strange, unnerving quiet has settled over the classroom, like the calm before a storm.

Then, egged on by his friends watching, the student turns to me and bursts out, “And then me, I am cutey guy, sexy boy yeah!!” As he shouts this, he strikes what I can only describe as a 1950s-era sex symbol pose: one hand behind his head seductively, the other on his hip. He does a few Elvis pelvic thrusts for good measure, thanks me for listening, and then struts back into the classroom to the thunderous applause of the students inside.

In other words, I’ve stopped caring about how much taller I am than most Korean women. It took me over a year to get to this point, and the heels are really low heels, but still. That’s progress.

I’m not even that tall. At just over 5’8, I’m taller than my mother, but shorter than my father and both of my brothers. I’m on the tallish side for a woman in North America, but not tall enough for it to be worth commenting on, or for me to have ever seriously considered a career in women’s basketball.

In Korea, I’m tall. Like, tall-tall. As in, when I meet a new class of students or a new co-worker, the getting-to-know-you questions I’m asked always touch on my age, where I’m from, if I can eat kimchi, if I’m married and/or have a boyfriend… and how tall I am. It’s one of the go-to questions.

There aren’t that many Korean women who are taller than me. When I see them, I tend to get a shocked-and-awed look on my face like I’m seeing a celebrity. I try my best not to point and stare. And then I notice the six-inch heels that the woman is inevitably wearing, and after I do the math I realize that she’s actually shorter than me.

And so I have spent over a year flat on my feet. I have worn Chucks, Skechers, sandals, and occasionally black flats with the tiniest hint of a raised heel. But those days are over now.

These boots are made for me towering majestically above you. And the heels aren't even high. Basically, it's just me, towering majestically above Korea.

As I sit here, drinking a sweet potato latte from the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street, I think about how I towered a good foot and a bit over the lady at the cash register, and it really doesn’t bother me much anymore. Sure, I have to watch my head when I’m walking down stairways with low ceilings or when there are random objects hanging menacingly low nearby, but cash register lady has her own problems. She can’t reach the top shelf. She’d have to get a chair or something.

So that’s it. I’m giving up on height denial, and I’m wearing my new boots with pride.

I am foreign woman. Hear me stomp.

I’m walking tall.

This is not my mug. I’m hoping that some people won’t bother to read this caption and will therefore walk away from this post with the assumption that I must be the World’s Best Teacher. Serves them right for not reading the caption. Not like you, you sly fox.

I’ll start off with my number one cardinal rule of teaching:

1. Morning classes suck. Drink coffee.

I can say with absolute sincerity that, before my first cup of coffee, I am a terrible teacher. I am lifeless, grim, and incredibly bitchy. The lesson here: if you are caffeine addicted like me, do not attempt to kick the habit while working as a teacher. I hate the instant coffee that is so popular in Korea, but it’s what they offer in my office so it’s what I drink. I would chew used coffee rinds for a caffeine fix if I had to. God, coffee is amazing.

2. Start every class fresh.

If you have the class from hell, it can be really easy to write them off for the rest of the year. This will result with you heading into that class each week with the mindset that you are walking into a losing battle; in doing so, you are dooming yourself to failure.

Instead, I try to get myself psyched up for the class. I think of it as a challenge that I will heroically overcome. I listen to peppy 80s-era rock anthems on my school laptop before the class and picture a movie montage in which I win the students over with my cheerful smile and unrelenting positivity: they see the errors of their past ways, dutifully study hard in my class, and then afterwards we all laugh over some witty English pun that I make and they all miraculously understand. Nobody ever falls asleep or sneers, and every student participates. The camera pans to the window, where a rainbow shimmers over a majestic mountain in the distance.

When even the 80s movie montages fail me, I watch videos of baby animals doing absurdly cute things. After 15 months of teaching, these are my coping mechanisms.

My point, though, is that I’ve had classes of students that were absolutely terrible one week, and then inexplicably really well behaved the next. Just remember this: if you walk into the classroom acting hostile and looking for a fight, then that’s exactly what you’re going to find. If you treat them like they can be good, then there’s a greater possibility that they will be.

3. Pick your battles – and be prepared to stand your ground when you find one.

If you fight every step of the way to make the students obey your steel will, or to make the administration do things the way you want them to, or to win any of the other myriad battles there are to fight, you will burn out. You could also end up burning bridges with your co-teachers, students, and the administration, and this is perhaps even worse than burning out. Be prepared to fight for the important things, but let the less important things go. Think big picture.

That said, when you are faced with a situation that you deem non-negotiable, stand your ground. Oddly enough, I’ve found prolonged awkward silences or calmly repeating a simple command over and over again for an uncomfortably long time work pretty well with high school students. If you keep it up long enough, the awkwardness will eventually get to the student and they’ll give up. It’s a battle of awkward will-power, really: who is most willing to make a spectacle of themselves and draw the scrutiny of the entire class for the longest period of time. Which segues rather nicely into my next point of advice…

4. Be shameless.

I am a clumsy person. I’m constantly tripping on things or stepping on things or walking into things. Also, I’m the kind of teacher who likes to wander around the room while talking without paying attention to where I’m going, so there are plenty of opportunities for my foot to snag on a rogue backpack or my knee to crash into a desk corner or my hand to smash into the blackboard while gesticulating wildly to get my point across (I do that last one a lot). I’ve become pretty nonchalant about these mishaps, and since I act like it’s not a big deal, the students don’t make a big deal about it. It’s just, “Oh, Teacher tripped over the crutches Jinho carelessly left on the floor for the third time in class today. Also, I wish there was a way that I could eat and nap at the same time.”

5. Dress for success, not for dumpster-diving.

This might sound superficial. That’s because it is. In Korea, appearance matters. If you dress nicely and put an effort into your appearance, people will notice – and they will let you know that they noticed. There is a noticeable increase in the amount of students paying attention and participating in class on the days when I straighten my hair. It’s unsettling. I’m almost certain that there is no correlation between my hair style and my ability to teach, but there you have it. (“Teacher’s hair looks nice I WANT TO LEARN ENGLISH.”)

What’s more, your appearance will have an impact on your relationship with the staff and administration. If you look professional and approachable, they will treat you as such. I’m not saying you should dress in business clothes – or even business casual – but wear something presentable. And a little makeup wouldn’t hurt either. You haggard wretch. (This is what I say to myself every morning when I crawl out of bed and start to get ready for the day – before the coffee, of course.)

After reading all of this, you may have come to the conclusion that the educational philosophy I’ve honed after a year-and-a-bit of teaching revolves around chugging coffee, wearing makeup, and not giving up every time I fail spectacularly. I will not respond to such accusations, but I will say this much:

This may be the best job I’ve ever had.

This day is exam day.

Exam day is a big deal. It’s the day high school seniors take the Korean SATs, the college entrance exams. The entire high school experience in South Korea is geared towards this one day. It’s not uncommon for high school students to spend fourteen hours a day at school, and then follow that up with a couple more hours of “self-study” at home or in special study rooms. All of these years of intense study boil down to this one day, this one exam.

The country literally shuts down on the morning of exam day. Planes are grounded and trucks are forbidden from honking their horns in order to cut down on noise distractions. People are encouraged to leave for work later in the day so that students don’t have to battle heavy traffic, and if they’re running late police cars act as escorts to ensure they get there on time.

People take all sorts of superstitious precautions to ensure success. Mothers go to temples and churches to pray for a good grade. They put sticky rice cake on the gates and doors of the building where their child will write the exam. During the last school lunch before the exam, my school’s cafeteria served cookies shaped like forks and axes, giving the seniors the metaphorical tools that will allow them to “attack” the exams and “stab” the correct answers.

Eat the fork, stab the answer

The day before the exam, high schools close down at lunch. The staff and younger students stand outside the exit to the school and form a line along the pathway leading to the street. As the senior students walk out, their peers and teachers applaud, cheering them on as they leave on their great journey. The students are armed with their rice cakes, chocolate, edible forks and axes. They are ready for battle.