1) I woke up this morning to find a restaurant advertisement sitting in a frying pan on my gas range. Someone had pushed the flyer through the 1-inch crack in window above thee gas range, and it landed in my frying pan. Everyday my door is covered in ads for restaurants, internet or cable subscriptions, etc. I seldom take a second glance at these ads and usually there is a team of trash collectors that go down the street every few days to clean the advertisements off the street or tear them off the doors of uninterested residents.
That's one thing I've noticed in Korea - the excessive use of paper ads. Walking down the street everyday, I see young men or women flinging dozens of advertisements on the ground outside businesses, and I've even scene cards lying on the sidewalk advertising prostitutes or strip clubs. (On a related note, trash cans are far and few in between on the streets, so I typically see Koreans drop their trash onto the street).
Even though the street looks messy, and one could reasonably condemn Koreans for littering on a massive scale, somehow the streets are clean and paper-free the following morning.
2) I'm reading Chekhov's "Three Sisters" again. Here are some thoughts:
-Why do so many of Chekhov's characters turn into teachers and school administrators?
-Chekhov's plays are about the very act of living, how daily tasks, our everyday jobs and obligations wear us down.
-Is Natasha a symbol of time and modernism, slowly eating its way at the lives of the three sisters, pushing them out of the picture? Why does she gain so much power and at the same time the sisters descend into misery?
-What has changed between the first and second acts?
-What is the significance of the silly conversations in act two, such as the argument between Solyony and Chebuytkin on whether a Chehartma is a plant or a meat dish? Repetition figures into these arguments.
-Why hasn't Andrei become a professor yet? Is he burdened by his new wife and growing family?
I was thinking about the school teachers theme with respect to my own job. There is a lot of repetition involved in school - one teachers the same lessons year and after year, and one wonders if it really matters, will anybody actually remember it at all. Will my students remember me? And work in education is very taxing work, physically as well as intellectually, as one is always up and performing in front of a class. One must constantly live and focus all their energy into each moment to keep the class moving, and this can wear you down.
I think about the teachers at my school in Korea and especially the director and his wife. They work such long hours. Every month they attend special conferences in Changwon to discuss improvements to the Jung Chul curriculum and ways to become better teachers. Every Tuesday they have a special adult English class in the early afternoon. In preparation for the big national tests, they all work on Saturdays. And on top of all these long, almost 12 hour work days, they take very few, almost zero days off a year, with the exception of national holidays, of which there are about 10 a year. So ten days off per year.
And this hogwon has been in operation for about eight or ten years?!? How do the director and his wife stand the repetition, thee constant turnover of teachers and students, the mind numbing exercises in the classroom, the daily labors of pushing/fighting with/cajoling/threatening each student to retake a spelling test until he/she passes? How do they get through each day within collapsing under the weight of everyday life?
It's a natural environment to ponder the existential questions frequently asked by the characters in Three Sisters. And plus it was common for single women in 19th century Russia (and in America) to work as schoolteachers. It was one of a few respectable jobs available to them.
3) My students like to eat raw ramen noodles for snacks every day. First they smash the noodles up inside they bag, they shake in the salty seasoning that are so bad for you, then they pop chunks into their mouth like some people eat potato chips.
