English Major Away: The First Month in Daejeon: Long Hours and a Dusty Respiratory System

Hello again! I know, I know, it’s been a long layover between posts. Believe me, when I look back and see that my last post was about Mount Bomunsan, it seems like I haven’t updated in years. But hey, I’ve been busy. To a point. This week, I kept telling myself, “Now Jake, if you’re going putz around during your off hours, you could at least do something productive, like working on your blog.” You know what I did instead? I read the news. I’ve read so much news this week that the politics of health care reform is actually starting to dribble out my ears because my brain is too full. It’s really pretty disgusting. But I must say, I’m happy to see someone in power in my home country finally growing a pair and making something happen. Thanks, Pelosi.
Anyway, on to the real topic at hand: where the hell have I been for the past two weeks? The short answer: training. I told you in my last post that all EPIK teachers in Daejeon were going to have to undergo a mandatory orientation AFTER the mandatory orientation that took place in Seongnam City back in February. For me, this involves an hour-long commute, followed by an hour and a half or so of sometimes helpful information and teaching practice, followed by the commute back home. This is why I haven’t been having much in the way of adventures: I’ve simply been too tired. Even after Korean lessons last Saturday (and a dinner where I ate a little too much extra-spicy Chinese soup and felt the consequences for a couple hours) I barely had the energy to try to make friends. Poor little old me, too sleepy to drink beer and have a good time. Just kidding, I’m never to tired for that.
I also promised a long time ago to keep you updated on the English Drama Club that Seonmi and I are running. I’m happy to report that it’s a total blast, and generally the most fun I have each week. Getting Korean middle schoolers to roar like lions, much less stop punching each other for more than thirty seconds, is a tough trick, but it’s tons of fun. I’m happy to report that the script for our competition performance is completed and will be posted up here very quickly for your (constructive) feedback and endless praise. I was told to find a script, but the best I could find frankly sucked ass, so I decided to write one myself. It’s based on Shakespeare. I do love me some Bard.

Anyways, this post’s creative nonfiction might get a little more fiction-y than non-y, mostly because it’s about a rather surreal experience. Last Saturday the worst “yellow dust storm” on record hit Korea and, as far as I can tell, gave us a preview of what the apocalypse will look like. Even today, walking to school, I spotted some cars that were caked in the stuff. Yellow dust is a result of massive deforestation and industrialization in China, and blows in across the Yellow Sea (hmm… I wonder if there’s a connection there…) and bathes Korea and often Japan in a sickening yellow light. So I decided to try to convey the experience in this installment of EMA.

(picture from Google Image search)

This week’s wee story is called:

***

IS IT JUST ME OR IS IT YELLOW OUT HERE?

Nobody bothered to tell me about the dust storms before I came here. Maybe nobody thought it was important, or maybe people thought that my impression of the country would be tarnished if I knew about them. It’s not. I’m really not bothered by it anymore, but I definitely was the first time it happened. I was walking back from school on a Saturday morning, being, I’m fairly certain, the only Westerner in Daejeon to go to work at a public school on that particular Saturday. It was fairly sunny out, but the wind was whipping mightily down from the mountains. It seemed like a pre-rain wind, and I’d forgotten my umbrella, so I was hurrying home. Suddenly it got dark. Not just rain dark, not even thunderstorm dark. No, this was more like the alien-ship-entering-the-atmosphere-in-Independence-Day dark. A supernatural dark.

Great, I thought to myself. I don’t even get to explore Korea for a whole month before the Apocalypse hits.

With the wind pushing and pulling me every which way, I picked up my pace, thinking that maybe if I got to my apartment before the Four Horsemen rode down from the sky that they might miss me and pass by. As I half-jogged down a side street lined with fruit vendors, often bustling on a Saturday but now all but deserted, I began to notice that everything seemed to have changed color. Even the haze that seems to perpetually shroud the furthest-off mountains had become a dirty yellow; for some reason my mind rested on radiation from a nuclear fallout and I wondered for a second if Kim Jong-il had finally pushed the button he’s been bragging about for so long.

“It’s yellow dust. It comes from China,” a friend of mine explained later in the day, when I asked why it had suddenly turned yellow outside. “It’s from all the industry and deforestation over there, and it gets carried across the sea.” And so we reap the benefits of China’s staggering march of industry whenever it gets too windy outside. Awesome.

As I neared my home, I heard thunder. I had known that rain was on the way that Saturday, but nobody had said anything about yellow dust choking out the sun immediately beforehand. Later I thought about weather graphics, the smiling suns wearing sunglasses, the angry-face clouds, and tried to imagine one for a pollution-dust storm. It would probably have fangs. Or tentacles, or horns. Or all three.

As I reached the door to my apartment I had just started to feel the effects of the stuff in my throat. That feeling would linger the rest of the weekend, as would a slight yellow haze in the air. I thought to myself, I will never, ever, ever complain about any kind of precipitation again.

Yeah, the stuff was gross, and more than a little scary, but at least it wasn’t the end of the world. This time.

***

Anyways, that’s all I have for now. I’ll be posting the script for my drama students, a madcap fifteen-minute romp through the basic plot structure of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directly below. And for your enjoyment, some pictures of my apartment and classroom! And also a bathroom in a park!