“Jo-Yong!” I commanded the child still chirping away after two previous attempts of asking him to be quiet in Korean. There was still no effect on him. If this wasn't a common occurrence in my classrooms I would have been insulted. I had gotten over that by now and decided on a more direct route.
I slyly walked over toward him (he was still talking to his friend and not paying attention to me) as I asked the students to repeat after me, “What's your favorite color?” As the chorus of muddled voices sang back at different intervals I slammed my book down on his desk. All the students stopped and stared, a look of dread and confusion came over their faces and I was left in a very awkward moment.
What had I done? I've used this method before to get their attention and they usually laughed and we continued our lesson. I've actually found that some students enjoy the attention and know what will be coming, so they carry on like a running gag that hasn't realized its outlived its humor. So why were my students mumbling to one another in hushed Hangul?
It was somewhere between the echo dying from the slam of my book and the first above-whisper comment that I heard it: a slow droning siren. I looked at my students who looked back at me, and then realized that this sound wasn't too unlike that of the tornado warning system back in Champaign-Urbana. The first Tuesday of every month a siren would sound off for about five to ten minutes to test that the system still worked. It also began its slow Doppler rotation whenever a tornado watch or warning would arise. Is that what this was about? A storm was a-brewin'?
I knew that Ulsan was prone to be hit by typhoons by this time and imagined that this might be the explanation. I ventured my guess to my students. They seemed to be more interested in my impromptu performance of what a typhoon would look like if a crazed westerner with a red beard could create such a storm than answering me. Yet another communication breakdown…
Finally one child understood what I meant by flailing my arms around and making whooshing noises and promptly informed me that this wasn't the reason. She then made the international sign for September the 11th. That is to say, while holding one hand up vertically and the other horizontally she recreated the events of 9/11 in slow motion by careening her horizontal hand into the vertical hand and making an explosion noise topped off the performance by making the vertical hand into a fist, consuming the horizontal hand.
Got that? Well, if you're an American traveling with few working words of the native tongue you see this often, usually followed by an awkward political discussion. It can be very difficult trying to explain your stance on the American Electoral College when you can barely buy laundry detergent or garbage bags at the corner store.
I paused for a moment trying to understand what 9/11 had to do with a tornado siren. I was at a loss. I opened a window and saw to my disbelief that pedestrians were filing into the nearest store, cars were stopping in the middle of the road while the drivers walked into the stairwell of a nearby building, and policemen were rounding up anyone who wasn't taking the same actions . I still had no idea what was going on but it was starting to become clearer once I heard the jet fighters scream overhead.
I watched as the two planes flew around the city in tight circles. Perhaps feeling the need to turn this distraction of class into a learning opportunity I informed the nearest student to me that they were F-16s. He looked at me in disbelief (whether it was out of him questioning my ability to name a jet or out of the fact that I was hanging out a window while the rest of the populace was obviously running for cover I wasn't sure- I went with the former). I then pointed to the fact that there was only one tail fin, unlike the two found on the F-18.
He continued to look at me in disbelief. I guess I picked the wrong motivation…
Then as a Chinook helicopter flew into sight on the other side of the apartment buildings across town, I figured it was time to close the window and see if I couldn't get down to the bottom of this. I turned from the windows and din to find my class no longer a ball of nervousness like it was when the siren first began wailing but quietly chatting like nothing was happening. I was confused at this point and decided to press the subject.
One of the Korean teachers walked by at that moment and I flagged her in. She explained that this was a warning system for terrorist threats and that everyone was supposed to clear the streets. I asked if they do this on a schedule so everyone knows that its just a drill, remembering fond moments of classroom disruptions back on that lovely first Tuesday of every month in college. I was surprised to learn that this was not the case for the terrorist drills.
“But how do you know if its not a drill, then?”
“If it wasn't a test then we would have heard it by now, so there's nothing to worry about!” she giggled as she started walking out of the class.
“But…” I stammered after her, knowing that less than a minute had passed since I first heard the alarm and there were still people haughtily making their way to cover.
I turned to my class as the door closed behind her and asked, "Am I the only one who read 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf?' "
Damn, another communication breakdown...
Posted by Schaffer at August 25, 2005 03:52 AMwow. definitely not the same as the first tuesday of the month