Sword on the Subway

This week was a hectic week. I worked six hours more than usual, plus it was Halloween, so I had to do a bunch of preparation for that. I had to decorate my classroom, perfect my costume, help the students make candy bags, plus find time in there to have a social life.

Monday because I had to teach an extra class, I was late to my Korean class, which was kind of embarrassing, to come in and interrupt the lesson. Then as usual I went out for dinner with my classmates after class. That’s where I practice all of my conversation skills. So, I didn’t get home until very late, then the next day I did the same thing.

Wednesdays I don’t have class, but this Wednesday, I kind of had a date. I went out to dinner with a boy one of my friends had introduced me to. It was an interesting dinner. He was really shy and Korean, and I am really shy and American, so there were a lot of barriers to be overcome. I was so tired that my Korean skills were not at their best. But in the end it turned out to be a pretty fun evening. Thanks to him I found a Kyobo book store in my neck of the woods, that probably has a pretty nice English section. I’ll have to go back and check it out another time.

Thursday was our Halloween party at school. It was pretty fun, the kids were all really cute in their costumes. I however, managed to walk away with the best costume prize amongst the teachers. I even got a cookie for it. I went dressed as a ninja, and I was a pretty convincing ninja if I do say so myself. I dressed all in black, I had a sword and a belt, I had the mask I had bought when I was in Japan. Then after work they announced that my classroom had won the best decoration prize too…my boss presented me with a bottle of wine…my co-workers weren’t too bitter about my win because I gave the bottle of wine to them to enjoy so it was like everyone had won.

Thursday night, while we were in our Korean class, the power suddenly went out. However it only went out in our wing of the school. Apparently we had been running a few too many space heaters, and blown a circuit. So we sat there in the dark for a little while, until our teacher found a new freezing classroom for us to study in. I was so tired that it was a good thing our classroom was so cold. It kept me awake.

Friday after work, I went home and did nothing. I cleaned my apartment. Did some laundry. Watched some TV…It was relaxing and refreshing. I need at least one evening a week to detox from my weeks here. I love my life in Korea, but it definitely isn’t conducive to relaxation. I learned in my Korean class that in Korean there is a word for someone who dies from overwork…Apparently it happens often enough that they needed a word for it. That’s just sad. I’ve decided that if I am going to stay here for a while longer I should work on sleeping more and eating right so that I don’t add to the statistics.

Saturday I just hung out with friends all day. We went to the temple in the morning, went shopping in the afternoon, had pizza in the evening, then went to the Halloween Performance of NANTA at night. I of course went decked out in my ninja costume, which meant that I was carrying a sword around with me all day. In about a week and a half Seoul will host the G20 summit, so they’ve really upped security everywhere, especially in the subways, so I got a lot of calculating stares from all of the police in the subway, until they realized that my sword was a wooden replica of a drama prop, and I don’t look like I would hurt a fly. Good thing I didn’t wear my ninja mask on the train. For a while I was afraid they were going to stop me and question me about why I had a sword, but no one said anything, they just gave me stranger than normal looks.

Well, that was the extent of my week. One of my favorite people that I’ve met since coming to Korea goes back to America tomorrow, and I’m very sad about that. Korea is going to seem a little more empty without her, hopefully the economy will remain bad enough to force her back to Korea…

The World at Dusk

This week was another week like every other. Teaching, studying, watching too many Korean Dramas…

I went out to dinner with some people from my class a couple of times this week, it was pretty interesting. Because everyone is from different places all over the world, the only language we all have in common is Korean, so we are all forced to practice our Korean. I can feel my conversation skills slowly getting better. I still have a long way to go, but I’m not as hopeless in conversation as I was a little while ago. My favorite classmate is this girl from France. Sometimes I get to practice my French with her too. We were walking to the subway station on Thursday, and anyone listening to our conversation would have been really confused, because we were alternating between French, Korean, and English.

My kindergarten class, which was once so wonderful with my 6 students, has finally increased to its full capacity of 10 students. It’s been a bit stressful, and the classroom feels so crowded, but the students all seem to get along pretty well. The only problem is this one student who apparently lacks all muscle control. He can’t sit or stand still. I took him out in the hallway to lecture him this week, and as I was yelling at him about standing still, his legs were slowly sliding apart and he was sinking to the floor. I don’t even think he noticed. He’s not a bad kid, but it’s so frustrating to be yelling at him every ten minutes to sit still, and on top of that the kid can’t be quiet. He’s such a talker that he has the best English in the class, but it’s really annoying trying to teach.

Friday night at work, we all had to stay an hour and a half late for a meeting. Our boss sat down with us, and invited us to air our grievances, mostly about the communication issues on the staff. I doubt that anything will be fixed by it, but it was a nice gesture that he sat down with us and listened. It’s definitely quite a change from ICEV where we were told we couldn’t even vent our grievances amongst each other while on school property. It’s nice to be in a better place.

On Friday I was walking back to the school for the meeting, and it was dusk. I’ve never walked to the school at that time of day, and the way that the setting sun hit the buildings made them look completely different than what I am used to, and it hit me, I am living in South Korea. I’ve been here for long enough, that I’ve become accustomed to pretty much everything around. However, every once in a while, the light will hit something differently, and I will look around me in wonder that this is where I am living. A semi-shy girl who spent the first 20 years of her life living in the Midwest, where the population is nice and spread out, and you can walk down a street without seeing a single person. Now here I am in a country crammed full of people who don’t look anything like me, and act nothing like me. I’ve become so used to everything here, that sometimes I’m surprised by my own foreign reflection as I pass a window. The other day I found myself referring to an American made movie as a foreign film…When I do finally decide to come back to the US, it’s going to be a rough transition, I already feel it.

Saturday I celebrated two of my friends birthdays. We went out to lunch, then wandered around Insadong. We then went to see this show called JUMP. It was hysterical. It’s a martial arts comedic performance. They have all of these people who are well-trained in Taekwondo, and they act out this story. I spent the whole 80 minute show in tears I was laughing so hard. If you ever come to Seoul, I definitely recommend it. After that we went to dinner with a bunch of other friends, then spent two hours doing karaoke…I usually get burned out after the first hour, but I stuck it out trying to be a good friend. After that we went and hung out in this funky area of Seoul called Hongdae for a while. It’s where all the artsy type college students and musicians go to hang out, and it’s a pretty interesting crowd on the weekends. By the time we were finished there, the public transportation had shut down, so we had to take a cab back to my apartment. The cab driver was a pretty chatty guy, so I spent the whole 30 minute cab ride talking to the driver in Korean. It was probably my favorite part of the whole night.

The Great Kimchi Crisis of 2010

A great and terrible tragedy has struck the Korean peninsula. It is disrupting the daily lives of all of its citizens and has thrown the country into complete turmoil. Due to the heavier than normal rains of the wet season, the lettuce and cabbage crops suffered massive devastation. Anyone who knows anything about the Korean palate knows that everyday, with every meal Koreans consume kimchi. There are many different kinds of kimchi, but the most common it the cabbage kimchi. Due to the rains, the prices of lettuce and cabbage have skyrocketed, and by default the price of kimchi. Some schools have even stopped serving kimchi with their school lunches. They are hiding the kimchi in the grocery stores, and you have to ask for it behind the counters. Much like rising gas prices in the United States, the price of kimchi has become a daily topic of conversation. I don’t ever buy kimchi, so it hasn’t really affected my, but it’s kind of fun to hear my Korean co-workers complain about it so much.

Other than the price of kimchi, things haven’t been too exciting around here lately. This week I studied my Korean, taught…On Tuesday I tried to go see a friend of mine perform his traditional Korean music, but I was too late to catch the performance, so I just met up with some other friends who had seen the show. I made a new friend, and managed to spend almost an hour talking to him in Korean…I’m sure it wasn’t very impressive conversation, but it was good practice for me.

The next day I made sure I was on time, and managed to catch my friend’s show. It was really cool. There were hundreds of people there to cheer his band on. He plays the Korean Flute, I can’t remember the traditional name for it, but it has this haunting mournful sound, it’s really beautiful. They also all play the drums. If you ever get a chance to see a Korean drum performance it’s really impressive. It’s so loud it vibrates your chest.

Thursday I had my Korean class so I headed to campus. On my way there I got a call from my musician friend saying that he would be performing on my school’s campus that evening. Sadly I had class, so I couldn’t go, but I met up with him on my way to class and practiced my Korean a bit more. It’s fun having Korean friends with which I can practice my conversation skills. My new Korean class is a completely different dynamic than the other ones I was in. There are more students, and the teacher is moving at a really slow pace, at least it seems like it to me. However, everyone in the class converses in Korean. Even at break time in between class we all talk with each other in Korean, almost never switching to English. It’s going to be really good for my speaking, which is my weakest point.

This weekend I hung out with some friends. We went K-Pop CD shopping, which is always fun. Then we went shopping in Myeongdong. We decided to cap off our evening by going down to the Han River and watching the displays at the 2010 fireworks festival. Apparently it was a bigger deal than we had realized. The subway was so crammed that it took us a half hour to emerge from underground. Once we got outside, the normally spacious park was crammed full of people. We scouted out a spare bit of grass, barely big enough for the three of us to sit on, and then waited for the display to start. When it finally did we stayed for 15 minutes, and left in disappointment. It was not worth battling the hundreds of thousands of people who had shown up to see the show. I expected a lot more from the continent that invented the darn things.

Today was general conference which means I got to stay home and watch church on the internet. I love days where I don’t have to leave my apartment. It rarely happens, but when it does I take full advantage. I made French toast with banana milk, some alfredo, and since I ran out of peanut butter, I invented a new sandwich which consisted of a banana, strawberry jam, and syrup…it was actually quite good. All in all in was a pretty good day. Tomorrow starts another week. But they all go by so quickly that I’ll be writing an e-mail again before I know it. I love you all. Have an amazing week, and join the Korean nation in prayer that the kimchi prices will drop.