Mystery: June 21, 2010
I have been struggling to find a nice and witty way to write about this, but words fail me.
So, for your enjoyment I submit the following note found on the floor of my classroom, by the back door, after lunch hour today.
I was intrigued. Unfolding the sorry looking piece of paper revealed a note that was longer by at least 100 words than any piece of formal writing I have had the dubious joy of receiving as an English teacher in Korea.
As far as I know, I am still in possession of all my footwear.
The only possibility of stealing my shoes would be if one were to remove them from my feet.
The sincerity of this note, however, did cause me to check again, just to be sure that they were still there.
I am not sure what to make of this note.
I shall keep you all (yes, you, dear readers) posted regarding this matter.
Even if the writer of this note is a little misinformed as to the whereabouts of my sizable land-boats are (UK 12 : Korean 310), I am touched by the effort that some boy went to in order to convey this information.
Until I manage to clear up this mystery I will entertain myself with fantasies of kids turning up at the bottom of the school's swimming pool, their ankles cast in concrete slabs - the work, it goes without saying, of a terrible gang of shoe thieves that has emerged at ShinSung High School; and of the opposing team of vigilante super nerds who have arisen to protect the hapless and up-sized Native Teacher in their midst.
Epic.
day 5: March 21~22, 2010
I must apologize for my lack of writing.
Oh hold on, who am i kidding?! The reason I really write here is not because anybody actually reads it... no, I write here just to write.
Anyways, so then without an apology - I have some more pictures to show you.
I kinda like them. I don't know; perhaps they will appeal to the voyeur inside you. Maybe by looking at them you will get some small pleasure from imagining that you can see the world through my eyes even for the briefest moment. I know that is something I always think about when I look at somebody else's work. While you look at a photo - particularly an instant photo of this nature - you have to ask yourself what prompted the photographer to respond to his surroundings by trying to capture that moment. What was it in that very second that generated the energy which, in turn, fired the synapse that triggered the muscles in his or her finger to contract just enough to press that shutter button?
Sometimes I ask myself why I even bother pressing that button.
I wonder if it is the fear of losing a thing or moment; or whether it is the joy of being able to keep it that motivates me.
Blah, blah, blah.
Enough said.
Enjoy.
Near my work a procession of very elegant trees are busy conducting what could really only be called an overture to spring (left). This year more than last, I feel that spring is taking its time preparing its thematic material. Soon, I hope I will be able to provide you with a few variations on the grandiose (perhaps Mahler-esque) Themes of Spring.
In the mean time perhaps I can give you shot I took earlier this week (right). Winter, it would seem, is as fond of building anticipation leading up to its final cadence as Beethoven was (the ending of the 9th) and is dying with all the enthusiasm of a Soprano (particulary the kind that Puccini likes to write - think Mimi of La Boheme who takes a full 10 minutes of precious audience time and about 3 attempts before she finally expires).
As you walk out of my school's front gate (Shinsung High School) you are confronted with the climbing slopes of Suri mountain. It snowed earlier this week again. I took this picture while walking down the hill (it's a 1227m walk to the bus stop from the school gate)
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One last picture for today, this is one that I have to show you - it is from a place close to where I live.
Okay, so I am walking home from school (after my 1.2km walk down the mountain and a 35 minute bus drive, I still need to walk about another 1km home from the bus stop at Isu subway station); anyway, I am walking home, on the last leg of my trip, and I decide to take a detour (possibly a shortcut) through small roads that are winding through a rather dormant construction zone.
I discovered the creepiest place on earth. Who would have thought that in the heart of Seoul there are whole city blocks of abandoned and gutted houses; condemned and waiting to be demolished.
I say its creepy, and at first, it is. Then you stop and think about it and you notice the details of the place -pictures that still hang on the walls, odd shoes tied in a bundle on the doorstep - and you remember that this was a place where people lived. A house is a funny thing. People actually live in them you know. And they don't just spring up from nowhere either. Houses are the result of dreams; of many hours of hard, hard work and of love. Houses are never born out of hate - they are built to shelter, sustain and comfort those that will occupy them. Even if a house is bought, many hours of deliberating over which house to buy will have been spent on it over and above the financial expenses. Many hours of life are sacrificed on houses.I think that is why thy are creepy when they are deserted. They are almost living things, which when left vacant remind us of our own mortality. Staring at an empty, abandoned house for too long feels like staring at a corpse.
I will upload some shots from my exploration into the houses soon - urban ruins are definitely cool.
Thanks for stopping by!
~Dim
day 4: March 10, 2010
Actually I got it for a bit cheaper than I thought I would; but the price of the film makes up for it.
These days I am shooting digitally with a Canon 400D and various lenses (including the sweet Diana adapter which converts my DSLR into a nearly-lomographic creature).
And now I have the Instax to add to my collection.
I also have a Pentax 'something-or-other' (film semi-automatic-kinda-digital-thingy) which my father gave me, but for the life of me I cannot make it produce a single picture.
A mystery...
Actually, I was contemplating why I had so many different cameras and why I prefer using different ones at different times. My musings lead me down some interesting paths.
When one shoots with a DSLR you are investing in a moment that may or may not have value. Depending on how you shoot you may at any point choose to erase or even edit your picture later on. If you are shooting snapshot style pictures then with your digital camera you can capture every moment and decide later on which ones are the memories you want to keep and which are the ones you can happily relegate to their place in the recycle bin. Depending on what you are shooting, some memories may even need a little tweaking; a wrinkle eased out here and there; a spot or blemish smoothed over.
'Lomo' cameras (toy cameras, refurbished, hyper-promoted and released as fashion items) offer a different kind of appeal. There is no deleting analog film; no editing these babies (at least not before you have developed and scanned your film). Heck; there is hardly any focusing them. These cameras are free spirits - their pictures, heady with emotion and almost audible make even the most mundane locations seem an enviable place to have been.
The great thing about these cameras is that there is no way to remember everything you shot on a reel. So, you click and click away until, one day, while cranking your little camera's spool to the next frame it grinds to a halt signaling time to take the little canister to a lab and see what you got.
Developing film smells like alchemy to me. The excitement with which I receive my prints (digital prints on CD) and leaf (scroll) through them is really worth the effort of locating a photo-lab that still develops film.
So how does the Instax measure up?
Well I have found that there is a whole other dimension to shooting with this little camera. Suddenly I am plagued by a thousand thoughts before I can bring myself to snap the shot:
Is this picture worth it?
Is this the scene I want?
Will this picture measure up to the smiling, casual 'polaroid-dream' images that I see on TV and the internet?
Is this just going to waste money (about 60cents US per shot)?
Don't I rather want to save this one for later; a better shot; a more worthy memory?
It seems that my little Instax has introduced me to a photographic world of moral (and financial) dilemmas in which I am constantly asked to make decisions about the value of a moment, within that moment, and then, within the same moment to act on my decision. To snap or not to snap.
*click-----whurrrrr------60¢*
There must, I admit, be something said for the size of the final product. The Instax produces credit-card sized images that fit in your wallet or any business card holder. Something about that size is intimate. It somehow (probably also because of the price) seems to feel more precious and immediately affecting. Now, its not a case of taking a picture and remember the emotions of when you took it at some later date when you develop the reel; instead the first viewing of the image is one that you and other people around you can share only a few seconds after that moment that you thought was worth capturing. It does something to solidify the moment and heighten the emotions of in the memory. Maybe it is worth the 60¢ you just spent.
I feel as though, when I carry the misshapen, dumpy thing around with me (the Instax, that is), I breathe a slightly different air. My eyes are more alive in the moment. I am in the here and now, not gazing off at the potential of some scene for a photo-stitched, color enhanced, clone-brushed fate. With the Instax I am not worried that my spool will come back empty because I forgot to set my ISO/ASA setting correctly.
I am right here and now, debating whether I snap this little girl in the middle of the road with her umbrella; a sun caught in her hair, or not.
If you clicked the link (Fuji Instax Mini7S) at the top of the page you have probably noticed that this is not a camera that anyone who is really pretending to be interested in photography would like to be seen with. Its a photography-fashion nightmare. How could anyone who saw me with that thing take me seriously as a photographer afterwards? Perhaps that is a good thing though. It helps me be moderate when it comes to expenditures on film.
Well, thats enough rambling for today. Hope my thoughts will help you live in the moment too. With or without a camera there is no time more precious, or fleeting, than the moment you find yourself in right now.
Take it all in; feel it all; use it all up - and be thankful.
day 3: March 4, 2010
So, I was looking online for some help with ideas for how to teach these high school kids effectively when I came across a paper written by a Masahiko Minami.
The paper was written while Minami was a student at Harvard Graduate School of Education. It is concerning Asian children who were living in America and attending ESL classes in American schools; more specifically the paper discusses the responses of the students to the classes.
Most of the responses are positive, although it was a little bit sobering to see that the negative responses reveal that the learners are very aware of their teacher's short-comings in terms of preparation, passion and knowledge.
Now, this having been said, I have been musing on the fact that this paper is written in a kind of mirror-image world to the one I find myself in. The students that took part in this study were all Asian children living in America. They were the minority group in a foreign land. In my world, I am the minority living in the foreign land. Many of the students record being very happy in the ESL classroom; feeling at home there, as it were, because there were many other limited-English-proficient (LEP) learners in that class. Of course this made it easier for them communicate without the fear of ridicule or judgment.
From the responses recorded in the paper I was able to distill the following two points which seem to be foremost in the minds of the learners that participated in the study:
- A good ESL classroom is a kind of safety zone for them; a place where they can be accepted and acknowledged.
- A good ESL classroom is a place where the cultures of the world are communicated and experienced in such a way that allows a LEP learner to gain a sense of ownership and belonging within them.
It is also worth noting that a key observation made in the paper is that the ESL classroom is a place where the learners "can relax a bit and relieve some of the tension they feel in other classrooms". This is due to the fact that in the ESL classroom students should feel less pressure to perform in the target language and more comfortable communicating.
Most of the negative responses recorded in the paper could be summarized thus:
ESL classrooms lack direction and seem to go nowhere; they are pointless.
This could be due to lack of experience or preparation on behalf of the teacher, or it may be due to a miscommunication of expectations regarding the class. I will not pretend to know what teachers of ESL in America teach in their classrooms but I can imagine that it must be pretty frustrating to sit in a class learning nothing but pointless conversation niceties and frivolous phrases rather anything of value.
Now, the question is this:
If what makes ESL classroom in a foreign country the most popular class is (1)the sense of acceptance and acknowledgment, (2) the interest value of dealing with foreign psychology (culture), and (3) its being a 'low-pressure' environment for students; how can I, operating in the LEP students' home country, recreate the above environment in my classroom?
Perhaps some smaller questions that I should also look at would be:
- How will I balance 'interesting-ness' and (without using a textbook) avoid the sense of this all being 'pointless' in the face of their other subjects?
- How will I create a 'low-pressure' environment when, in other subjects, importance is measured by the associated pressure?
- How will I create a safe environment for my learners when they are not all on equal footing in the other classes that they attend directly before and after mine?
If you guys have any thoughts let me know.
Oh and by the way, you can find the paper I was talking about HERE.
Give it a quick read in your spare time.
day 2: March 3, 2010
How do bloggers do it?
I have written one post and I feel like I might be running out of things to say.
I have created a 'getting to know you' worksheet for my new high school students to do. If any of you teachers out there would like to grab it from you me, you can get it from my SCRIBD account.
Get it HERE
Let me know what you think about it!
Have fun!
day 1 : March 2, 2010
Hi.
Thanks for stopping by my little corner on the internet!
Perhaps I should start by introducing myself. Here is a little picture of myself; I think its always nice to be able to put a face to a voice (or text). Welcome to my first blog ever.
My name is Dimitri; I am 29 years old and am currently making my way through the world by teaching English in South Korea.
When I read blogs I kinda hope that somebody would put me out of my misery and let me know what I might expect to see on their page, so that is exactly what I will do for you!
You will probably encounter a fair amount of photography. I love taking pictures - both digital and analog ( the analog variety being classed under the general category of "lomography", shot through toy cameras with plastic lenses).
You are likely to spot my music popping up now and then, if you watch closely - as well as some drawings - did I tell you that I have a Bachelors degree in music?
I specialize in flute playing and composition.
I have an odd collection of flutes from all around the world. Keep your eyes open; they may also appear up here at some point.
I also write a lot of music and like to share what I create with instrumentalists. If you play an instrument and want a piece written for you, drop me a line!
Every now and then I might pop some writing up... perhaps something that I am pondering, or that you may like to ponder with me. If you like that kinda stuff let me know!
I'm thinking that by now (if you have even read this far) you will have figured out that this intended to be a melting pot of my creative output; and also a chronicle of my life here in South Korea.
Today, the 2nd of March, 2010, is my first day at work in a new job. I am now a high school teacher.
The school I am working at is an all boys high school with lovely grounds, surrounded by the pine forests that cover the foothills of Suri mountain in Anyang city, GyeongGi province. I must admit that I am a little nervous about what to expect, but time will tell; of course, as it tells me, I will try to let you know too.
Okay, as I wrap up my introductory post I should probably let you know that I know nothing about blogging. I don't know how to do it.
Please be patient with me and write comments, if you have any.
Thanks!
Happy browsing!
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