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.