Off the Cuff

I follow my blog statistics like a farmer monitors crop growth during a drought. Every minimal gain in numbers is a tiny triumph, a comment cause for celebration, a new follower a major victory. My second-most read blog (with 141 hits so far) is Lexicon, a blog about the joy of learning ghetto slang. My first most read blog (with double the blog hits of all my other blogs combined, at 2,149 views) is How Super Junior Changed My Life: A Blog with Pictures! This is a little bit dismaying--The blog with the most views is not one of the blogs about grappling with poverty or trying to understand the dichotomy of words and pictures to communicate. No, the blog with the most views is the one with pictures of handsome Koreans. Blogger statistics reveal the majority of people who come to my blog (from as far away as Singapore, Indonesia, the U.K and Germany) do so on google image search for "super junior" "super junior wearing hanbok" "Suju" and "sj". I guess in the end I find it a little funny. But far be it from me to ever try to manipulate blog statistics by posting ridiculously cute pictures of Donghae offering you (yes, you, female fan) a rose:

Or Kim Heechul playing with a kitten:

Or  Li Seung ki holding a baby:

Or Kim Hyung Joong being, to quote Zoolander, "Really, really, ridiculously good-looking."

Far be it from me to do that. That would just be tacky.

Korea

Reading back through my old blogs I realized that I really didn't talk a lot about why I was in Korea so much as I talked about what I was thinking about why I was there (As it turns out, a lot of the same stuff I think about in St. Louis: social justice issues, the complexity of language, the nature of friendship, and, erm... Korean boy bands). I also realized despite the fact that I vowed to myself to add more pictures, I actually posted very few. To elucidate my audience on why I was in Korea (I was doing more than just haphazard vlogging, I promise!), I thought I'd post some of my pictures with a little commentary below.

  I left for Korea on September 11th (an auspicious date, no? I flew back on December 7th, another auspicious date, but honestly my flight was so inexpensive, I wasn't about to complain) to begin a three month teaching stint. While I was in Korea, I was both teaching lessons and writing academic papers about the pedagogy behind my lessons, the differences in education between South Korea and the United States, and how globalization should affect my future teaching experience. Despite being busy with teaching and writing a lot of boring papers, I had an extremely tremendous time. I came back in December in order to graduate and begin looking for a job, but I must admit that since I left, I've felt a quiet ache to go back.

I taught at a school called Jun-Dong Elementary. Unfortunately, for the time period I was teaching there the school itself was under construction, so we met temporarily in metal bins.  Honestly, these big metal stackable bins were a lot nicer than a lot of poor urban schools I've been to, which makes me simultaneously angry and depressed, but that is a complicated, wordy topic for another time.

This is my co-teacher for the fourth grade English class (I taught 2-6th grade classes), Eun-hwa. She was entirely sweet, the type of person who you immediately feel comfortable and confiding. I had three other teachers that I worked with, two in the fifth grade and one from my second-grade observation class.

Here's my class! Even now, looking at these grainy little pixelated faces, it's hard to withstand the awwwww-dorableness.

Here are some more pictures of my students (Min Hee and Chae Eun at top, "Ladykiller" aka Min Woo,Chae Eun 2 and me, Tae Jin and Gunho, and You Moon Jung, Sun Chae, and me in the last picture).

I have a very special connection to the boy in the last picture, Sun Chae.  Even though he is Korean Sun Chae has very pale, white skin and naturally red hair. Before I ever came to class, his teacher told him I would mistake him for an American, to which he put his head down on the desk, and, I am told, "Laughed uncontrollably." Even before I got there, Sun Chae was waiting for me to come.

My first week in school, Sun Chae was very shy to talk to me. He would come stand behind my desk, so closely I could feel his breathing. When I turned around to smile at him and say hi, he would run as fast as he could to his desk, blushing with embarrassment. By the second week, he got up enough courage to speak to me--but only in Korean. He would come and show me his work, pointing out details and asking me questions, and I would give him a sad shrug and say one of the only phrases I knew in Korean, "Han gu goh moh tahm nee dah (I don't speak Korean." He would sadly shrug back, finish whatever it was he wanted to say, give a pert bow, and scuttle back to his seat. It wasn't until my third or fourth week before he gave a last-ditch effort to communicate with me by emptying almost his entire English lexicon in one excited burst. As it turns out, it was a good bank of words for connecting with me.

"Teacher," he demanded one day, "Teacher you know Spiderman? Spiderman good!."

"Yes," I practically shouted. "I absolutely love Spiderman! You know Batman?"

"Teacher, Teacher, Spiderman, Batman, Hulk! Justice League! CAPTAIN AMERICA!"

Thus a friendship was sealed.

To end the blog, here's a little video of my girls singing Super Junior's Sorry Sorry

Sorry for Another Blog about Super Junior, I Still Try To Make These Intellectual and Stuff

Having grown up disdainful of American pop music, especially of the boy-band variety, I never realized until tonight how loud and resonant a stadium full of screaming girls can be. That is to say, I finally saw Super Junior perform.

Perform is the key word. I did not see them sing. Tonight, just before I went out with my English coteacher, I noticed a long, long line of teenage girls stretching up a hill, and then down a hill, and then up part of a third hill by my house. “Good gracious,” I thought, “I must be near the pubescent girl factory.” I asked my friend Megan what was going on and she replied nonchalantly, “Free Super Junior concert.” Friends, never have four words had such an immediate impact on my plans. The next part of my story is pretty boring, but it involves me running up and down hills for a while and then standing in line for an even longer while, only to find out that the “concert” that I was attending was actually a five-year celebration party/variety show.

What does a five year party/variety show look like? Well... it involved some sorts of competitions that I didn't understand because I don't speak Korean, and also some question and answer time that I didn't understand because I don't speak Korean, and finally some tearful speeches that I also didn't understand for the aforementioned reason. It also involved a lot of screaming.... Friends, it may be hard to believe (it was hard for me to believe myself), but the excitement of being in the same room as tanned and dapper Choi Siwon wears off. After about an hour of confusion (interrupted by occasional video medleys with pictures of Super Junior over the past five years, interrupted by the sound of 10,000 girls screaming, I was beginning to get bored. I started going over my school assignment in my head, and realized, with a fright that at that moment I was procrastinating from watching Super Junior by thinking about homework—an exact reversal of my pattern for the past two years!

I think the strangest part of the night for me wasn't going to the performance and actually finding myself disinterested, but it was more people-watching girls after the concert. Super Junior fan girls are rabid, to put it mildly. All of them were pushing and shoving, moaning audibly and screaming as Super Junior passed by in their cars. A group of about twenty girls chased after the cars, throwing themselves at the windows and banging on them, screaming words in Korean that I couldn't understand not because I don't speak Korean, but because they were rendered unintelligible by the sheer volume of desperation.

The nature of their affection was a little alarming to me. I mean, it was clear to me that Super Junior did not have the same affection towards the girls as the girls had for Super Junior. Super Junior was not waiting out in the cold to see them, nor were they buying posters with the girl's faces to hang on their wall. Even I was not entirely unconvicted as I sat their waiting with a friend-- I realized that Super Junior was never going to trowel the internet searching for cute pictures of me (incidentally though, if they ever did, I hope they find the one beneath this paragraph)

I actually recognized a little bit of myself in some of the girls. I remember in high school I once wrote a journal entry about wanting to fit in with my peers. I wanted them to know me and like me, but every time I spent time with them, I felt myself to shy to talk to them, or presenting myself to them in a way that felt false and left a sour taste in my mouth. I wrote, “I just think that if they knew me, they would like me. I don't know how I could show them my true self hidden beneath this skin, but I wish I could just inject myself into their blood like a heroin. Suddenly, they would understand deep inside who I am and they would like me.” That same longing for acceptance that I felt so poignantly was seen again tonight in the girls chasing after the band.. Their screaming and arrhythmic pounding against the car windows was unintelligible, but wholly understandable as, “If you only knew me, you would accept me!”

PS: Hey guys, this is Renee's fangirl side speaking. Most of this blog is really introspective and thoughtful, but just so you don't get fooled, it's still Super Junior for lyfe! I just wanted other SuJu fans to know that Kangin came from military service to make a final speech with the band. 11 members reunited! It was touching! Also, I mentioned on facebook the other day that somehow I got 20 views from this blog from a link on Choi Siwon's twitter account (how did it ever get there?). I am totally going to pretend one of those views was from Siwon. Dear Siwon, if you are reading this, I want to hang out with you and talk about Africa. I have a pretty tight schedule here in Seoul, but I think I would make accommodations for you. Love, Renee.

How Super Junior Changed My Life (a blog with pictures!)

I love Super Junior. Super Junior is a fifteen member Korean pop group that I've been listening to for the past two years or so. I first heard about Super Junior from my flamboyant friend Simon, who went to China with the goal of finding, "The cutest boy band imaginable." What he found was Super Junior, whereupon he promptly posted the following music video on his myspace page:

Sitting up late at night watching it for the first time, I had no idea of the future impact it would have on my life.

Super Junior does not play good music. On an purely intellectual level, their music offends my sensibilities. They don't write their own lyrics, and the backround music is a mash of synthesized chords jumbled together in sterile studios for maximum mass-produced enjoyability. The members (all fifteen of them!) do have some talent, but their primary selling point seems to be not their singing, dancing, or showmanship, but rather their clear-eyed smiles and dazzling good looks.* Somehow though, despite my better judgment, that blend of cheesy lyrics, studio-produced computer beeps, and unspeakable attraction (multiplied by 15) won me over, and I found myself feeling insensibly happy.

So how did this all "Change my life" as the title of the blog proclaims? Even as an avid fan, I think the majority of their music is too vapid to have a lasting impact on my life. I suppose that if you calculate hours lost to my sister and I browsing the internet for details of their life ("Carissa, look, Heechul has a cat." "Look, Carissa, I just found a PSA SuJu did on Saving Engery." "Siwon's religion: Christian. It looks like he's OK for us to marry now, Carissa."), there is probably a minute impact on my life. But in the end, Super Junior is what introduced me to Korean popular culture, and made me notice the brochure for the program to teach here. Before Super Junior, all I knew about Korea was the bullet points of the Korean war, and that I really liked the kimchi and bibimbap served at the delicious, albeit greasy diner down the street from me. After Super Junior, I wanted to live in Korea... and now I do.

I told my friend Su-Chong today that I feel like I'm living somebody else's life. The sort of adventure that I'm having here feels like the sort of think I've only ever wanted. Every morning when I wake up, I have this slow groggy transition from the messy world of sleep to the realization, again and again, that I'm actually living in Korea. Little things excited me still, like seeing black squirrels, buying kimbap and waffles from street-side vendors, or bowing my head as a greeting. So much of Korea still has the flavor of the utterly exotic to me.

Even better than the exotic are the things that have now become like home. Just like in America, I have friends that I love, a multinational church where I worship, and school full of students whose futures are being shaped by the things I teach them. In ten years from now, I probably won't still listen to Super Junior. But ten years from now, all the people I've met here will still be indelibly stained onto my soul, giving me pause before I say or do or think.

-Renee Badenoch

PS: For those of you who are interested, here is a Super Junior playlist my sister compiled on youtube. It is a great way to get introduced for the uninitiated (although I would have included "Dancing Out" and "Victory Korea"), and even includes songs by some of the Suju sub-groups. http://www.youtube.com/user/lazygamingcook#p/c/3715C926FA642841/0/R8AZ1NLd-mk


*Super Junior is not as blatantly exploited for their good looks as other Korean boy bands. Big Bang recently released a music video that was nothing Taeyang--a member with a physique that would put Edward Cullen to shame--singing shirtless in an inexplicably raining warehouse. I don't speak enough Hangul to understand the song, but I imagine that the gist of it was, "Did you notice my pectoral muscles? What about these chiseled bricks of abdomens, eh?" I couldn't watch the whole thing, because I felt bad for the guy singing it, like I feel bad for prostitutes.

Shambles

I was just about to write a blog about Super Junior, and how they began my twisted journey along the path of Korean pop culture that eventually led me to Seoul. Until I sat down at my computer and heard someone singing outside. By my open window, I could hear someone singing an opera. I think that it was a person singing, because they would start and sing a few bars, and then stop again. I ran down the steps to the courtyard outside, hoping I could find them. When I went out, it was silent.

"Hello," I sang into the night. "Hello. I heard you singing. Your voice tore through the air, and also tore my heart." I was quiet, and listened. No one responded.

Now, I came back and decided to write down things that I've thought of lately, but haven't written down.

First, another open letter:

Dear 100,000 dissolute looking smokers at KU,

Today I passed you in the cold morning. No longer did you look tough, rustling quietly in the cold. Instead, as you shivered, you looked like tiny moths, fluttering toward the all-too-brief flame of your lighters. Your hands trembled as you drew your shaky cigarettes towards your lips.

Your breath and smoke froze suspended in a white sheet around you. Walking through that ethereal haze, I saw you huddled together like old mystics, and I had my own moment of clairvoyance. I closed my eyes and saw you, loves, your bodies still twitching like moths, and your festered, blackened tongues lolling from your lips.

Friends, you and I are both lovers of beautiful things. Sometimes I sit in my room and light a stick of incense. I watch as the smoke rises in whorling eddies toward my ceiling. Imagine you step now from your dreamlike haze and come with me, to light incense, or candles, or anything else.

-Renee*

... Sometimes I think about meeting Super Junior. (This would have made more sense to my un-K-pop-initiated readers if I had written the blog I originally intended to.)
When I first started listening to them in 2008, even in my most unrealistic day dreams, I couldn't help but imagining meeting them with awkward blushes and stammers. Now, I don't really have crushes on them any more, but sometimes I can't help but wanting to meet them to become their friends. Celebrity is interesting that way, isn't it? Because it gives us a false sense of intimacy with people, so that part of me feels like I know Super Junior, even though I don't and probably never will. Part of me feels like we are already friends, even though we aren't, and probably never will be (I'm holding on to those probablies--I'm at least in the same city now, so there's no telling what could happen :)I think that the nature of celebrity is that they are mostly faces that people can project whatever they like upon. So basically people can project intimacy or friendship or whatever they want on the celebrity, and feel connected because of what they created that person to be in their minds. Then companies can use the celebrity to sell things like Kyo Chon chicken, and people put the projections they have of the celebrity on the product they are buying (i.e, "Kyo Chon chicken wants to be my friend.")

Anyway, when you read the following dialogues between myself and Siwon (my favorite SuJu member), you will probably notice a lot more of Renee than Siwon:


I especially want to meet Choi Siwon. I would say, "Siwon, you fufilled one of my dreams when you went with the U.N to Africa. When you were at the orphanage, did you see the sun reflected off of the children's faces? I live for that moment, when I am with children, and we clasp hands and spin together in the sun. When we stop spinning, and the world slowly comes back into place, I see the light catch and glow on the tiny hairs of their face, and it's the most beautiful thing in the world. Siwon, when the children laughed, did their heads tilt back? Did their teeth glint like diamonds? Siwon, when you held the children, did you smell their hair? Isn't that a nice smell, the smell of baby-oil and coconut lotion? Siwon, when you held hands with the children, what did their palms feel like? Did you trace the labyrinthine paths of lines on their palms with your finger? I've done that before too."

Sometimes I imagine that Siwon tells me about the girl he is in love with. He tells me how he feels reverent when he approaches her, as if she were made of glass. "I cannot believe her frailty," he says. "Her eyelids are like butterfly wings."

These conversations never last long, because then I start to tell Siwon about when Danny and I met, and I get lost in my memories of last summer. In my mind, I am spinning with children in the sun, and when I stop, there is Danny, spinning with me.

*OK, so this letter sounds insufferably preachy in some ways. I actually don't think that informed adults should be told whether or not they can smoke. It's their decision. But I like some of the language of this so much, that I'll share it, despite the things I dislike.