After previous week’s long-winded, single story content, time to put on the brakes a bit and toss the net wide rather than sink the hook deep.

If I learned or remember anything from Fulbright’s 6-week orientation in the middle of nowhere, it’s the program’s doctrine that consists of three pillars: being the best Fulbright teacher you can be, the best guest you can be at your homestay while representing Fulbright, and visiting Fulbright friends to make sure that the bonds you formed at orientation last.

In reality, from day-to-day, it feels more like, ‘don’t make a fool of yourself in front of the kids, smile and nod at your host parents even when you don’t understand their accent, and try to remember where all your friends are placed so they don’t get offended when you ask them for the fifth time where they are (thanks Benjie for being on Jeju, which is easy to remember).

I was so low-key afraid that I made this handy map to ostensibly remind others when in actually I find myself needing it desperately.

Anywho, somewhere in the middle of the program, we were thankfully notified that life for the next year wasn’t just 33% Fulbright teacher, 33% Fulbright homestay rep, and 33% Fulbright friend—that we still had 25% of ourself left after the hefty Fulbright time tax cut to, uh, live life in this new and mysterious country?

“Find your fourth point,” the director of our program exhorted us, leaving many of us mentally scratching our heads wondering how that suggestion was different from the general life maxims of ‘not being bored’ or ‘using time wisely.’ Yet I found myself forcing a smile and nod as she said this, like Calvin trying to be good in late December with the holiday season around the corner.

Regardless, the phrase “Fourth Point” was thrown around enough where most of us have the phrase stuck to our mental USB drives like gum to my shoe, enough so where I’ll touch on a few.

3 Intended Fourth Points:

  1. Learn Korean. — There’s nothing quite like trying to use a new grammar form then being told that either a) you said that wrong or b) no one says that anymore. Still, things are going, like a snail going half the distance up the flagpole each new day (bonus point if you know when the snail will reach its goal).
  2. Dance. — $35 bucks for a once a week course in my second language is trash, but so were my other options. Current option chosen: stomp around in the extra bedroom and have host parents, age 60, peek their head in and see sweaty me watching a computer screen (with the tutorial), then shut the door again, judgmentally.
  3. Play Sports. — Who knew that I would play 11-on-11 soccer for the first time in Korea? I have a 닭발 or “chicken’s foot” when I kick though. Learning baseball terms in Korean is pretty cool too.

20 Actual Fourth Points:

  1. Learning not to accidentally bow to students in the hallways, but still bow to teachers, but only the first time in the day, and only if it’s before lunchtime…I think (Fulbright needs to write a chapter in the survival manual on bowing trigonometry with the time of day as the first derivative rate of a change).
  2. Pondering how many times it’s acceptable to say “네”—yes—in a single conversation to acknowledge you’ve hear the other person.
  3. Learning to not make accidental eye contact, ever.
  4. Running into students every weekend and switching rapidly from Korean to English because most of them still don’t know I understand their Korean in class.
  5. Determining when to suddenly reveal to my students that I know exactly when they’re saying my class is boring.
  6. Trying to remember if that Maroon 5 song is SFW or not.
  7. Learning what Panda or Rap God lyrics actually mean because students keep asking.
  8. Wishing kids singing Sugar or I’m Yours aggressively at me actually felt that way about the rest of class. Or hoping, really, that a future s/o would sing as passionately at me as some students do someday.  :,)
  9. Mastering the daily 12:55pm post-lunch conversation with the secretary sitting across from me. “Did you have lunch?” “Yes, and it was xyz.” “Oh, xyz? That’s good! What did you think?” “Hmmm, not bad!”…. Or something along those lines.
  10. Deciding that reading NYT or WSJ looks like work in the office, while Buzzfeed and 1Million dance studio videos decidedly do not.
  11. Taking the wrong bus and ending up in another city (or another island, if you’re visiting Mokpo).
  12. Playing chicken with local taxi drivers while crossing the street.
  13. Eating new foods like spicy grilled chicken feet, but asking what you’re putting into your mouth after—never before.
  14. Figuring out how to accept/decline invitations to weddings and outings where you’ve never actually had a full conversation with this colleague.
  15. Staring at the cashier until she mercifully gives you a grocery bag because you only know the word for “bag” and not “plastic grocery bag.”
  16. Laboriously converting inches to centimeters. See also: accidentally telling someone you weight 140kg when you meant pounds.
  17. Re-racking everyone’s weights. Being borderline OCD + Koreans’ lack of standard gym etiquette = turning into a dumbbell cleaning lady.
  18. Deciphering Korean graphic t-shirts. “I’m Not Sorry,” and “Give Me Peanut Butter” are two of the better ones I’ve seen this week.
  19. Saying no, I don’t need to go to the hospital, when you mention you might be getting a cold.
  20. Learning how to tactfully answer the bi-weekly “Are you…Korean?” inquiry.