I decided to quit taekwondo today. I realized today that I don’t really enjoy it that much anymore—I’ve just been going because I feel obligated to do so, for some reason. I’m not a quitter by nature. It’s become so much of a pain to arrange when to go and it ends up sucking away so much of my evenings that I’ve come to dread it and have been skipping close to half the sessions, anyway. Might as well make it official and save some money. Too bad I already paid for this month…
I didn’t have school today. It’s the school’s birthday, so everyone had the day off. It was nice to be home and laze about—it’s been over a month since I’ve last done that—but I really wish the school had the sense to have a Friday birthday. Honestly…getting a random Thursday off is USELESS. Except it does exempt me from five classes, which is nice. I have Tuesday off, too…another useless mid-week day. I was hoping to secure some extra time off and get a long weekend to go to Ulleongdo Island with my friend Alyssa, but I never asked. I chickened out. I really don’t like to ask people for things. I would probably venture to ask in America, but here, where it’s such an ordeal and I can’t really casually inquire, I just don’t. It’s not worth the trouble and the risk of offending someone. So here I am, getting some R&R instead. I was briefly considering the idea of going hiking or to a museum in Gongju, since I was planning to be home this weekend, too, but then I decided to go on another trip, so a day at home to catch up on things seemed to be very much in order. I really didn’t do much worth mentioning today, except passively quit TKD—I read some Korean, studied a bit, finished reworking some lesson plans to include in this year’s Elementary ETA handbook, added my own rural- and elementary-specific insights to twenty-some pages of the ninety page 2006 handbook, ate a lot, went on a long walk in the sunshine and watched farmers plow their swamps of soon-to-be rice paddies while discovering an entirely new countryside loop and dreaming of the rides I’ll take on my foldable bike here next year, read some of my new book outside…I’m currently reading My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk and I really like it. I must admit I picked it up solely because the cover cried, “2006 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER!!!” and I am a sucker for prestige. It’s good, though…offers interesting insights into East-West conflict in the context of a murder mystery. Namely, the plot revolves around this question of innovation. In the West, we take it for granted—new is always better and we’re always working to improve everything. Well, except general societal conditions…but anyway, in this worldview, in the one in which I primarily operate, innovation is revered. In the East, however, new is not always viewed as better. There is this strong tradition of reverence and respect to ancestors and elders and the overarching attitude is humility before their achievements. In my book, this is embedded in a strongly religious Islamic society, but the comparison can be drawn over much of Asia, I think. I see this attitude somewhat in modern Korea, too. Sometimes their way of going about things seems so cumbersome and inefficient and unnecessary, but most of it stems back to these Confucian ideals of respect to one’s elders. I can see that there are positives and negatives about both worldviews. In the West, our obsession with modernity means both that respect for the accomplishments and contributions of elders are disregarded and that history is quickly washed over. We are always looking to the future. Traditions—at least, as I think of them in Korea—are not so strong here. We’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves and our world. True, this leads to some positive developments, but we have lost our reverence for old. People and things over thirty, it seems, are so often discarded! In the East, overdue respect to elders can be just as stifling. How can things become better if they never change? But at least everyone is afforded security according to accomplishments. And now in Korea, of course, there’s a marriage of sorts of both. We see the old traditional modes of behavior surviving somewhat among apartment high-rises, cell phones, and changing world attitudes. Both systems are valid, in my opinion. The struggle is co-existence. It’s sometimes hard for me to live in an alien system, but then again, sometimes it seems like it’s not that different after all. And it’s not, really—we’re all just trying to find a way to live with each other in greatest harmony. We take what works.
Tomorrow it’s a regular school day, unfortunately, but then I’m going to meet my friend Janaki down south to visit a famous Korean temple and some equally famous green tea plantations. Too bad I’m backtracking back down to where I just was last weekend, but it’s all good. This time I’ll get the rural experience. I am looking forward to seeing the southern countryside in full bloom and catching up with my friend over some Choco Digets. I can’t be too mad about working when I have this to look forward to!