the great divide

Some differences between American and Korean schools:
1. Dress code. It's casual here. As in, teachers can wear t-shirts and jeans to school. For the most part, American teachers are expected to be in things not made of denim or casual khaki material. Except maybe on Friday, but even then you still have to wear a non-t-shirt top. 
2. Physical contact. Students can be all huggy here- not like couples huggy because that's really weird, but friends upon friends. Friends have seen students get beaten, but the roughest I've seen at my school is a teacher play-strangling a student. And that's still shocking to me. We would SO be fired and sued in the states. 
3. Topics of conversation. My teacher made me tell students what the English term for nose picking is. And then he had them write it down. Today, he had them write down penthouse. I should probably stop talking in class. Also, it's acceptable to talk about alcohol and getting drunk with students. Not about them really getting drunk, but joking that they do. It's going to  be rough re-adjusting to schools at home if I go back to them. 
4. Where the teachers go. There's a "teachers' room" where all the teachers have a desk. In my school, there's one room for the entire faculty. I've heard that others are broken up by grade level. I like this system. I think it can help prevent teacher cliques. 
5. Time between class. 10 minutes. wtf.
6. The bell system. It's not a bell. It's a song that announces the beginning of class, and another to signal the conclusion. 


This weekend was a friend's birthday... but I'll come to that later. First, last Friday was a mass exodus to a teacher's apartment for charades and pictionary. Quite interesting. And crowded. But it was good to see some people who I don't see often that night. 


Then came Saturday. Okay, so the first weekend in Daejeon after being dumped in the city (you know the Futurama scene were a truckload of pandas is emptied into the streets?) some of us met to get dinner. 1 person had a preference that we sit at tables with chairs, so we ended up at one of the first ones we encountered. We didn't know how to order, the servers couldn't help- and while we were all floundering, this Korean guy comes up and offers to help. In English. So to thank him for helping us, we tried inviting him out which turned into him inviting us out and taking us to this DELICIOUS place that served what he called "lamb steaks." It was lamb on metal skewers in some sauce (that was of course, spicy), and it came with 3 different spices to dip it. The spices smelled amazing and strangely comforting. The guy made us to to a bar next door to wait for him while he had some sort of business meeting... then we eventually ended up somewhere else in the city because someone wanted to meet other friends. The night ended with everyone going in different directions, and on the walk to the subway I saw an Indian restaurant. I'm so going. 


This week is short thanks to the Korean holiday, Chuseok. They call it the Korean Thanksgiving. From what I understand, they celebrate the harvest and also honor their ancestors. Tomorrow is the last day of school for the week, and then Thursday I leave for Seoul! 


Yesterday a student's family members gave boxes of fruit to some of her teachers. I walked home with a 7.5 kg box of what I think would be called the Asian pear... it's huge. It's yummy. It was heavy. I would've liked to share some of it with teachers once I realized what it was, but I don't know if it's considered polite to open something in front of others. What I did do though was buy 50,000 worth of fruit and candy for the faculty to bring this morning. They seemed to appreciate the gesture. 


You can find Chupa Chups here (something my Spanish teacher introduced me to in high school), so I bought a tin for the teachers and a tin to share with students. My middle schoolers understood I wanted to share... my elementary kids not so much. After trying and failing to explain that I was sharing, they deducted that it was candy and I wanted them to eat it. Good enough. I found a good website that explains the construction of Korean, so I'm looking forward to start piecing together sentences. 


Something that makes me happy: one class has girls who are excited- or are good at pretending to be excited to see me, and I was thinking the boys hated me because I made them participate. But now those boys are starting to say hi first when they see me, and the shyest one is starting to stop me in the halls to try and say something. CUTE. Seriously, I need to step up my game in Korean. 

In the PC BangsBANGBANGpewpew- May I have your name? 이름이

I'm optimistic about teacher training now that I have gotten to actually use the books. My co-teacher approached me this morning and we hashed out how we'd like to utilize the materials, and basically we share the same ideas for how to be prodcutive instructors to the teachers. It's never the people I get upset with, it's the differences in culture and the language barrier that is sometimes the hardest to deal with. But we always seem to get over any hitches (hopefully there's no grudge being harbored for something), and I certainly hope that we continue this trend.

After consistently forgetting the papers that have students' photos and names, I finally brought one to a class and I consulted with students on how to pronounce names. It will be a long. long. time before I know everyone's names by heart. So many sound the same- one student was asking what my favorite Korean name was, and I said just that. They're hard to pronounce with the subtle differences of this vowel or that vowel, and I wonder if English names are difficult to remember for Koreans. The whole damn school new my name in 2 seconds, but I'm just 1 person. Some of the teachers have taken on English names, and they say I should call them by that, but I don't think they understand that it's important to me and other English teachers I know that we learn their names.

Yesterday, a teacher handed me about a foot of 떡(ddeok), a type of rice cake. It was plain, warm, and it looked like a giant fat worm. And they wanted me to chow down. This was about 1 minute before class. I love ddeok, don't get me wrong- but stuff like this, and the sweet potato the vice principle gave me a couple weeks ago... it's so random! :)  I had to throw most of the ddeok away since I couldn't eat it, and by the end of class it was funky and cold. It's steamed or something, so it's initially sticky, but when it cools you get that kind of pudding skin. Nasty.

Looks like mozarella cheese sticks, right?

Oh yes and genius me! jk, but seriously I suggested that I differentiate some of the teaching materials for students, and my teacher gave me the OK! I'm so excited, but I just welcomed a fair amount of extra work. I've noticed that when we do reading exercises, classes seem to be split from those who have strong listening comprehension skills and those who really struggle. The reading selections are already pretty tough for the students, and I'm doubting how much they can auditorily decipher. Some students have a lot of trouble spelling, and 1 student that I've seen makes writing mistakes that people with a learning disability might make. So I get to remake materials so they're more accessible to lower level students. HAPPY.

My hour at the PC Bang is about up. Quality date with my boyfriend... Then it's off to Homeplus to buy myself the lamb bathmat as a computer seat. It's cute! It's pink!

see you tomorrow, bye, bye forever! bye bye!

I will always count myself fortunate for the students I have here. Some of the other English teachers I know are starting to experience behavior problems- the shiny new foreigner isn't that shiny now, or the behaviors are popping up for various reasons. Behavior management here is definitely different than what American schools are shifting to. Where I learned in the states to "manage" and "redirect" in positive ways, fellow English teachers have already seen the crap get beaten out of some of their students. 

My school hallway. To the right is the teachers' room. Way down to the right takes to to staircases to classrooms, and also out a door to a walkway that connects to the second building, where the English classroom is. 

I'm incredibly and infinitely thankful that it seems that the kids at my school don't exhibit these -or any- behavior problems. To boast, my students are sweet, if painfully timid sometimes- but I'm trying to string some kind of connection between our language barriers to make them less wary. I'm glad that the Korean word here and there excites them. (but how long will that last?) They've also been very generous- the random little gifts here and there stay with me. They'll be good memories to put in my box of "warm fuzzies" as a psych professor called it. Like today, 2 girls came in with grapes (concord grapes which I feel are too much work to bother eating, but so delicious!) to share with everyone. 

Today's flare up of anger and frustration: I was adapting the material from those books I was given for teacher training when I was told to just start from the beginning and type out each chapter for the teachers who have visual impairments. I had skipped the first few chapters because they were basic, and I felt that everyone who's coming already has this knowledge. But "Koreans like to go straight through books." I was feeling "come on. Trust me. I know what I'm doing. I have your best interests in mind- seriously!", but moving forward I'm just going to do what I'm asked to do. 


As for the 2 classes I'm now leading, the older group is much lower than the other one. Monday I used the same topic in both classes: music. For the more advanced class I moved on to talking about likes and dislikes, and the other one I stepped backwards and showed them different ways to say hi, bye, and how to ask how others' day, week, and weekend was. I need to learn how to say "easy" in Korean. 

The more advanced class actually has a gaping rift between ability levels. The girls pretty much show up the boys every time. So since I can't rely on any visuals (vision impairments, you see), I'm using a lot of "repeat after me", and "what's ---- in Korean?". But you know, this is all good practice for them anyway. 


I've got to stop posting twice a day.

billsbillsbills and hemorrhaging bank accounts

My first utility bill came in the mail yesterday: 36,000W for water, electricity, and I think the cleaning of something. I also have gas, internet, and my cell phone to pay. I was planning to allot 30,000W for my phone since we pay for each text and every 10 seconds of outgoing calls, but I think I overestimated because we don't have to pay for incoming text messages :D So for 6,000W I can send 300 texts. Not bad (the base monthly fee is 13,000). 


I'm actually looking forward to sitting down and budgeting different things, but I'm notoriously bad at recording what I spend. I always estimated at home and generally was pretty accurate. Maybe it's all the extra 0's here, but doing the same has been hard. Of course, I'm also not used to having cash. And the fact that it looks like play money makes me not quite register that this is in fact real money that I'm spending. 


My list of upcoming purchases is growing- a hand vacuum (spending 2 hours windexing my floors isn't something I want to do again), a (dry) mop- I'm bummed that Swiffer doesn't exist here, an electronic Korean-English dictionary, a new phone. meh. More stuff to fill the space in my apartment...


I searched for places in Daejeon to take Korean language classes, and based on what I found I determined it was a fail. Most of the times were during the work day, and many schedules were from a few years ago. If I had a good textbook or some workbooks, I could study on my own. Still looking.


Some teachers got me a stack of English resources for teacher training. I'm trying to adapt the material to something more immediately useful... like you see a foreigner in a store and you want to help. Here's some language to communicate!


Today I was trying to converse with some middle school students before class. I asked what "cute" is in Korean. They threw a bunch of words at me. After figuring out what cute was- I really don't know if I ever said it right, the people here typically laugh when I say something in Korean- I called all the boys cute. They SO swooned. Or laughed at me, I couldn't tell. 


And the awkward moment of the day was one of the boys saying some awesome English in response to an assessment question: 
"What do you want?"
"I want Megan's cell phone number!"
I said maybe later, I have to finish assessing the other students, and he kind of rolled around the floor for a while muttering "oooooh nooo." I don't think it's against policy as my teacher mentioned he got texts from students, but it's weird to me. Email, ok. Phone? kind of sketch.


I did get the genius idea though to start a penpal system between students who are interested. I was thinking that I could practice Korean on them and they could respond in English. First, I need access to a language resource so I could communicate somewhat intelligibly. 


Next time I'll talk more about the students. I should. They're awesome. But all the students/campers I've ever had have been awesome. 

on the topic of good eats

Okay, so the most frustrating thing about being in Korea (at the moment at least) is that I can't cook here! I prided myself back at home for cooking. And this year I branched out a lot! I started using onions and garlic, I toyed with cooking Indian food (omg ADDICTED and it's totally better at restaurants), I added pork to the brief list of meats I would eat- chicken and ground turkey... so exciting... I freakin love produce sections in food stores. When Martin's opened up in Harrisonburg, it was heaven. I don't know the bottles and sauces here. The most common vegetables are really just edible water bottles. I've also been clued in that I need to weigh and price loose produce before going to the check out, but I don't know where to do that or how, so I'm avoiding anything that isn't prepackaged and priced. Yeah, I'm pathetic. 


I miss tacos. And tikka masala. 


In a moment of stupid lameness last night, I was proud of myself for assembling rice, mini weenies and mixing them together with chili sauce... into something like a sad man's bibimbap. And then John showed up with food that his host mom cooked, and I was totally schooled. Though I also included sliced plum and pickled radish. And  frozen dumplings (만두!) <-- spelling... seriously schooled.

That feeling of accomplishment after cooking an awesome meal is part of what I miss. Here, so many sides are pre-made, you can get away with just doing something to some kind of meat and tossing it in with the pickled this, pickled that, and fermented whatever. I would LOVE  to learn how to make some of the stuff I've had at restaurants, but right now sauces are terribly unknown territory. 

dalkgobi (닭고기)- the deliciousness that exists

the hot mess that I pull off

I also like having control over what goes into my food, though at home that was mainly because the restaurants are unhealthy. Here is the first time in a long time that I haven't been mentally calculating everything that I'm eating, but that's partly because I can't read the nutrition facts and because I really have no idea how healthy or unhealthy the food is. I need more vegetables in my life and less rice. I hate potatoes, but man would I love one. With some butter (margarine actually, I think real butter smells weird).


Add cooking to the list of things I want to accomplish here. I'm addicted to ramen lately. I think it's because it's about 98% salt. I need to stop eating it.


Also, I'm starting to consider looking into buying a guitar. I could use something to work on while I'm in the apartment.

beginnings

I could and possibly should write about the entire first month of being in Korea, but in all probability, I shouldn't... and that's a good enough reason to justify my desire not to.

I feel that I'm slipping into a good routine at work. I still mix up the middle school classes, I only know a handful of the students' names, but I'm pretty comfortable with the work. Last Friday, my second co-teacher asked me 20 minutes before leaving if I would take over his classes on Monday. Great! (seriously) It's funny that even just a few weeks of not being in charge, I already feel rusty at leading the students in a lesson. Plus, teaching here I hesitate to call actual teaching. I don't mean to be insulting to the school... it's probably a matter of adjusting to a school culture of auditory teaching and letting go of hands on/ active learning activities. I'll have to stay fresh with those by vicariously living through the teaching experiences of other teachers here.

We were warned many times about culture shock and its stages; a theory similar to that of grieving- and I really braced myself for the moment when my "honeymoon" stage ended and the bomb of shock would go off. But I don't know if I was ever in the honeymoon phase. Maybe because from all the warnings, I've been moving with caution. That's not to say I still didn't experience any culture shock, but I feel that it was more just the shock and horror of being torn away so suddenly from the people I knew. Now that day feels like a year ago, but I think the most isolating factor for me was that I don't think the faculty really understood what it felt like to be alone here in a new country. If the positions were switched, I don't think I would immediately consider those feelings. But YAY, that part is over!

Just over a month ago, I was on a plane, leaving home... Again, that feels like forever- yet I also feel like I haven't done anything here yet. My fear is that I'll somehow let my time slip away, and it'll be time for me to leave and I will have done and seen so little.

A darker note, I'm thankful for the people who came to Daejeon. They mostly all seem like a good crowd. My skeptical- well, cynical- mindset is still holding that caution sign up against everyone. Maybe it's my bad karma (considering what someone from home explained how she thought karma worked, it comes back to you in different ways) to not make friends easily, and have it be even harder to keep them (cue in you to think something may be seriously wrong with me- go ahead. think it). I might be too cautious, which would make me miss the window of making the connections. But I'm still torn I think between feeling that the risk is worth it and preserving my pride (and in turn remaining the loner). My good karma- should it exist-, I recently thought that it comes in the form of jobs. I've had great professional experiences, and I seem to always get the job I want. The trade off? Suck.

I love my faculty, I love the school, and the students are super cute. It's comforting to come here, and I'm grateful that everyone has been so welcoming. Now to learn everyone's names... and more Korean.