My Two Teachers

In our classes its open season on almost any subject, granted that its discussed in Korean. Love, ettiquete, spicy food...our class has worked its way through discussions on all of life's many sacred and profane subjects subjects with the two teachers we meet with each week. As my Korean improves bit by bit with these teachers, I am actually becoming able to learn about Korea through Korean. No longer am I forced to always resort to "Do you like..." questions and deductive reasoning to guess at someones opinion. So as you can imagine, these two women have been at the center of most of my Korean-culture-learning experiences this semester. At the same time, these women are almost night and day.

Our Tuesday and Wednesday teacher grew up in Seoul and attended University there (a sign that she either studied pretty well or that her parents were pretty well connected). Overall I'd say that of the two she's better adjusted to foreigners and diverse opinions. And take her ideas on marriage: the other day in class she told us about her boyfriend, and we all raised an eyebrow at that. After insisting that she is not having an extramarital affair, she explained that its just what she calls her husband. Not even in the United States have I heard of anyone doing this. Her logic goes something like this though: whenever you call someone husband, it implies that you are going to serve them as a wife. They have a more equal relationship, share in housework, responsibilities, and he routinely makes her ramen, so it feels odd for her to call him her husband. While I am still not ruling out the possibility that this was just an elaborate story to cover up the accidental admission of having an affair, its bizzarro world for Korea any way you cut it.

And what a liberal opinion on drug use she has. When the foreign monk in our class admitted to doing drugs (before he became a monk), she didn't freak out. She asked a calm set of questions about American norms and then even gave the monk a concerned yet calm congratulations on quitting. She also had no reservations about going into 15 minute explanations when asked how to say things like: "I have to poop", "I have to pee", or "We made out." All of these conversations are performed at mind-bending speeds that many of us catch only in bits and flashes. They are also conversations where the teacher talks to herself for a majority of the time. But we've come to think of our questions as the slaloms that steer her.

Our Wednesday and Thursday teacher grew up in the country in the same general area as our school, in what I assume was a pretty traditional family. Despite teaching foreigners for some time she often seems thrown off by anything outside the pale of traditional Korean values. One of the American girls in my class recently started dating a Korean student two years younger than herself. After a long class discussion about age and dating with our class, our teacher took me aside, concerned, and asked if it really was normal for a girl to date a younger guy in America. After explaining that it often happened, she laughed and said "strange." And then there was the discussion about tattoos and the American man who tattooed his entire body to look like a lizard. She thought it wasn't unusual for Americans to do this and even flicked out her tongue like the lizard man himself had done on a talk show she had stumbled upon at some point in the recent past.

While presenting my essay on Pittsburgh in class a few weeks ago (that I've posted below) my teacher stopped after reading that my ancestors had come from Italy and Slovakia and said, "then you're not American." I told her that I am American and this is when she started getting confused. The other Americans and I tried explaining that if you are born in America you are considered American. Then our teacher said this must be true for Europeans, but not for Asians. She insisted that you are always Korean or always Japanese or always Chinese. At this point things got too complicated for us to say anything more than, most Americans think Asians that are born in the us are Americans too. I don't know if she bought it, but we gave her enough to be confused over America for the next few days.

I imagine its hard conceptualizing the diversity of America and our idea of American identity when you come from an country as ethnically homogeneous as Korea. And being in Korea this past year has made me realize what an odd country America is. We can have such a diverse population and while many people may feel they are not part of the American experience, I think that many of us share some basic common values in diversity and personal freedom. And all Americans, of course, like pizza and basketball I am told by a student down the hall. Which I guess makes my teacher correct, I must not be American then.