Peace Be The Journey

So, I realize that I haven't updated this since late June, so I'm going to spend just a few minutes catching you up.

-Summer English Camp for the elementary school was chaotic, with absolutely no adherence to the lesson plan I'd made for it :-P At the middle school, it was a little more chill. I actually might have taught the kids a thing or two there, but we ended up just watching American movies with Korean subtitles.

-Hung out at the church here during the Summer English camp they had for the kids in the community. Fun stuff, got to know some really cool people from California and the East Coast. Even got to jam with my boy Eugene, which is something I haven't had the luxury of doing very often ever since I arrived back in May.

-Visited home for approximately 10 days. Loved it :-) Getting to see my family and friends again was like taking a huge breath of air after being underwater for so long. I honestly couldn't ask for a better community of people to come home to.

-Flew back here to Korea on the 15th. Now trying to get readjusted to the time change, and getting ready to start the middle school next week, along with the elementary school the week after.

Now, on to the reason I started writing this post in the first place.

So I recently watched "Cool Runnings" again for the first time in years, and it still had all the Disney charm it was known for back in the day (it was released back in 1993). The movie itself was pretty good (if you aren't familiar with the storyline, simply check out http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106611/plotsummary), but one scene in the movie really stuck out to me.

Near the end of the movie, when the Jamaican team is poised to medal in the Winter Olympics, the team's driver Derice (whose father was an Olympic sprinter) asks their coach Earl (played by John Candy) for the reason why Earl had cheated during his time as an Olympic bobsledder, and consequently been disgraced and kicked off the Olympic team, even after winning two gold medals previously. Earl responds with this:

"Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without it... you'll never be enough with it."

The reason this stuck out to me is because of how much it goes against what is taught to these kids that I'm teaching. The vast majority of them seem to have been taught by their culture that it's the things you achieve that define you. And if you don't achieve what you're going for, then you've either done something wrong, or (the more popular opinion for the younger ones) someone else did something wrong.

Now, the American part of me understands where my place is here. I'm the visitor, the tourist, the foreigner here. I have to see things through the lens of the cultural reality here, instead of my theoretical idealism. I can't possibly expect everything here to run the way I think it should.

And then...there's the part of me that recognizes this possibly goes beyond just one culture's methods of raising its collective children. Maybe it has something to do with the consumer mentality we've all been sucked into. Maybe what I'm seeing here isn't the source of the problem, but rather the byproduct of it coming from outside the borders. Maybe we've all been brainwashed already! *** >_< ***

Now, to try and catch myself before I begin ranting again, let's refocus. The reason this stuck out to me as much as it did is because over the past three months, every single time I've tried to play a game with these kids to get them to loosen up (as well as using the games as ways to help the kids learn the material), at least in the elementary school, there is always, ALWAYS at least one kid that ends up crying because he or she didn't win. Always. And I want to shout in the classroom at the top of my lungs, "WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING! IT'S NOT EVEN THE MOST IMPORTANT THING!" But I don't, because I have to adhere to the rules and boundaries of the social reality here, and that is that if these kids don't learn to excel in competition, they'll be left behind with no one to care for them. I know it sounds grim, and some of you might be thinking, "Stop being so dramatic. There's no way the situation there is as bad as you say it is." You're entitled to think so, but you'd be wrong. Sorry.

I titled the post "Peace Be The Journey" because that's the meaning of Cool Runnings. I know it's cliche, I know it's overplayed, but please don't forsake the joy of the journey for the intended goal. If you do, you only end up with half the reward, sometimes not even that.

Peace be de journey... ~_~