This has some advantages; I am surrounded by French pastry shops and have good access to wine and soft cheeses. There are also disadvantages. For example, I live very near a Global Village Centre, designed to help we non-Koreans learn our way around banking, bill-payment, transportation, garbage routes etc. I went to their introduction to new foreigners, only to find it was three hours of lengthy explanations (including bus and walking tours) all in French. I understood very little, despite the fact that I had been provided with my own young Korean girl who kneeled beside me and offered whispered translations from French to English. She held my bag and stroller during the bus and walking portion of the introduction, but I can't really say for certain where I went or what I was supposed to have learned there. I was presented with a very large binder full of important Seoul information, all in French, and I think that my Korean classes that starts next week (as well as my traditional Korean paper crafts class) will be held in French as well.
I have trouble following the parent meetings at Jamie's school (luckily his teacher speaks English to me) and the mothers I see in my morning and afternoon visits to the school merely nod politely at me as they burble to each other about potentially useful things like how strange the principal is, where to find the best housekeeper/nanny combo, and how they manage to be 8 months pregnant and still show up to drop their children off every morning with perfect hair, makeup, and high-heeled-silk-blouse posture. I have tried to make contact with these prancing women. Perhaps pointing out, in broken French, the size and quantity of the earthworms in the gutter, wasn't the right way to begin. Perhaps nursing my crying baby on the steps of their gated garden home as they were introducing their upcoming social events (tennis picnic, champagne brunch, fashion tour, horseback riding spa day?) might not have won me any prance-points. But I have tried to go on their walking tours, I have tried to enter into a shared discussion about the difficulty of moving with kids, sending your first-born off to his first day of school, or learning Korean.
During my twice daily excursions to drop-off and pick up Jamie, I tend to speak to the other two or three English-speaking women who have also decided for various reasons to put their tiny children in an all-French school, and we talk about how we don't know French, while the prance women gaze at us from the corners of their eyes and wonder how we manage to mother two children and still show up to drop our eldest at school looking like we had lost a fight with an angry troll. I wouldn't have thought that my culture shock would come from being surrounded by wealthy French women rather than the fact I now live here in Korea, but c'est la vie I suppose.
For Jamie, the culture shock is not so much the French, but the school. Five days a week (half days on Wednesdays) off he goes, stuffed bunny in his school bag, to a world away from his mommy and his baby sister. I don't really know what he does in that world - he plays with a stroller, his frog-teacher (I think she brought in a frog that day) put his slippers in a basket, he used the big boy potty one or five times, he eats egg sprinkles for souper, Mister Xavier (his English teacher) may have sung a song and the words were blah lal la blah like that. Did he watch a show about a turtle? Did he run on the beds at nap-time? Did he read a picture book with a little girl whose name was Cece? He says very little about it, and very little he says makes sense. But off he goes every morning through the gate and out he comes every afternoon wearing the same clothes he went in with. His teacher reports that he is calm, and quiet and doesn't yet join the group, but he doesn't cry and comes when she calls. I guess that's good for now.He has 177 school days in the year, and has finished 6 already. I cross them off on his calender and try to bear it - but it is very hard for me to be without my tiny boy. He sleeps by himself all though the night, he uses the potty on his own, he tidies up all his toys when he is done with them, and he goes off every day to a world without me. He still won't walk up and down the hills, but he happily lists all the things that "when I am bigger I can do that." I am glad he is getting bigger, and that he is bravely facing all the new challenges in his life, but his mommy might not be ready to be away from him yet. I bring him snacks for the walk home after school; I ignore "don't kiss me mommy" and give him many hugs; I try to arrange fun things for his Wednesday half-days. (Last week the kids and I went to Children's Grand Park for the walks, fountains, playgrounds and free zoo - Jamie "loves penguins, they have no teeth"); I try to remember that this is good for him, and that I get to devote more time to Iris, but I spent almost three years with Jamie by my side and I am not fully prepared to face this new world without him. However, it's important not to lose both the crabs and the crabbing bag, as they said in olde Korea, so Aza Aza Fighting!
