I tell you, not understanding the language of the country you’re in can play with your emotions like nothing else. For example, let’s take a simple scenario: volleyball.
Say you’re playing a game of volleyball with your fellow teachers. Actually, for unbeknownst reasons, you’ve started playing volleyball every single day. Sometimes, you play twice a day. Occasionally, they make you serve for an hour straight, so your wrist varies between bruised, swollen, painful, or after the weekend’s rest, back to normal.
You try to keep up your spirits. You wish somebody would tell you the reasoning behind the sudden vigorous devotion to the game of volleyball. You continue to go to practice, even though your notification of practice usually goes something like this:
(Time: roughly anywhere between 8am and 2pm. Scene: You are sitting at your desk, lesson planning. Or maybe you’re walking to a lesson. Or maybe you’re packing up your books at 4:55, ready to go home for the day.)
“Excuse me, Amanda.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, today… (volleyball hand motion) today… six o’clock… (hand motion numbers) game.”
“Volleyball, today? Again?”
“Yes, today.”
“But… we played volleyball yesterday. And the day before that.”
“Yes. But you have to go today.”
“But I have plans tonight.”
“I’m sorry, you must go. Principal says you have to be there.”
So you go. And turns out, it’s a game! So you get a little excited, okay, this can be fun. I mean, you’re here, you’re in Korea, you’re the only white person for miles around, you’re playing with a bunch of teachers as they hoo- and haa- and scream, “Fighting!” and “Powaa'” and “TEAM A TEAM A” and “OOUUUUUTAAA'” and it’s entertaining, right? Sieze the day. Look at the bright side. If you have to be here, you have to be here. Try all that positive brainwashing stuff until you decide you’re going to have a good time. Just take it for what it’s worth and go home afterwards.
But then you start to play.
The Principal is in the back row, the PE Teacher is in the center, and the other girl on the team is shoved in the back corner where she can serve and be invisible. You were put in the back corner, but then switched with this other teacher who is not as good as you. There is a really bashful player in front of you, but he never really gets a chance to touch the ball because the PE Teacher is a ball hog who runs all around the court, stealing people’s glory and putting the ball in the middle where the front- center guy will hit it up before the PE Teacher can spike it down to the other court.
This is pretty much how it goes every time. PE Teacher steals it, Principal screams in a high voice, front- center guy batts it into the air, PE Teacher spikes it. You’re irritated but you go along with the show.
However, scenario change. The ball enters your area and you start to hit it but the PE Teacher is running at you, you stand your ground and are about to hit it when he runs into you, you both biff it and the ball is lost. The Principal starts screaming at you, pointing and yelling, the same thing over and over, angry at you for messing up the play. All you want to do is defend yourself, or tell her to back off, or tell the PE Teacher to quit being such a ball hog, but you can’t.
You just have to listen to this woman scream at you in a foreign tongue, which is terrifying, and then continue to play this stupid game until it’s over.
The game goes from fun and entertaining, to a nightmare. You’re on the brink of tears. Everyone is screaming words you can’t understand and everything sounds angry and the whistle is never ending and you feel frazzled and irritated and angry.
The whistles go and you severly warn yourself that you are not to cry during this game, and it goes and goes and goes.
However, for no matter how bad it gets, you still have Moon: the best, most amazing, most happy and excited office administrator ever, who gives you a salute in the hallway every time he sees you, who cheers the loudest and for every point the team makes, he jumps up on his feet, throws his arms in the air and shouts “OOOHHHHH!!!!!” at the top of his lungs.
You decide that you’ll continue to play, for Moon.
***
What makes it all worse is that I don’t like volleyball. Really, I don’t. Unless I’m on a beach or sand court, drinking a delicious IPA and possibly running back and forth from the food table to the court, summer sun and the boombox beating, enjoying time with friends, joking and laughing, what’s the point of volleyball? Unless it’s a game where you don’t care who wins or loses, because everyone will go home happy either way, what is the point!?
I like soccer. But my Principal doesn’t believe that we, the teachers, should have the liberty to play soccer: instead, we have to play volleyball, under her severe direction, every single day. Apparently when she’s there screaming at us, we won’t feel we have the liberty to talk about her behind her back.
Furthermore, despite our having a game this afternoon, which I angrily walked out of afterwards, Mr. Choi sprinted after me to say, “Amanda, where are you going?”
“Mr. Choi, I’m going to my desk.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Well, the Principal wants me to tell you that we have volleyball practice tonight.”
“But… Mr. Choi… we just finished a game.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. 6pm tonight. You have to be there.”
Volleyball, you have become my mortal enemy.
