The Good, the Bad, and the Potato Salad

This week seems like the longest week since I came to Korea. Usually time just flies here, but this week crawled by. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have any special plans for the weekend, so there was nothing to look forward to. Monday started the week out on a bad note. All of the native English teachers were called into a meeting with the Vice-Principal, where we were informed that we needed to have all of our lesson plans for the semester done as soon as possible. We’ve been in school for a month now, and they just decided to tell us we need to submit formal lesson plans? Why didn’t they tell us this in the beginning? Plus, once we submit them to the vice principal, what is she going to do with them? She can’t speak English, so I know she’s not going to double check them. Then a few hours after the meeting we were told that we would now be in charge of cleaning our classrooms. I do this anyway, I always make sure the paper is picked up, the desks are straight, and the floor is swept. However, I was informed that I need to mop the floors, and once a week I need to wax the floors…that’s right, I am supposed to wax the floors. First of all, I don’t know how to wax floors. Second of all, I went to college so I wouldn’t have to do things like that for a job, and third, none of the Korean staff is asked to do anything like that. I think the last part was the most insulting to me. I’m used to being discriminated against because I’m foreign, but this is the first time it has ever gone to that extent.

On top of that Mondays are the day I have to stay until after 8pm. So I couldn’t even go home after school, and let out my anxiety. I was planning for my night class, when one of the Korean teachers came in and asked me if I had eaten dinner yet. I said “no” and she told me to go hurry and eat, because all of the other teachers had already eaten…that was another slap in the face, they hadn’t even bothered to walk to my office and see if I would like to eat with them, instead they just left the poor foreigner to go eat dinner by herself. That was the frosting on my cake of a day, and I just broke down. I spent the next 20 minutes crying in the office and hoping that no one would walk in and see me looking like a baby.

Once I mentally adjusted to the newly added stress and responsibility, I got along fine. That’s how I cope with massive amounts of stress, I break down, then adjust. I’m fine now. I don’t hold any ill will towards my co-workers, I didn’t wax the floors in my classroom, but I did clean out all of the desks and sweep the floor and dust the visible surfaces.

On Wednesday I had my French tutoring session. This time I got paid in strawberries and Korean melon. Yay!!! I like getting paid in fruit and vegetables. My student is gradually warming up to me, she talked a lot more this week, and even spoke to me in English after the lesson was over. Who knows, six months from now we might be friends. I really need to find some friends here my own age. I like my co-workers but they’re all older than me and most are married or engaged. There is one who’s not, and I like hanging out with her, but she’s still ten years older than me. Then I have a couple students that always want to walk home with me and hang out with me, so all of my friends here are either ten years older than me, or ten years younger than me. Where are all of the people my age?

On Thursday, I went with one of my 16 year old friends to sign up for Hapkido lessons. Unlike Muay Thai, I won’t be learning how to kill people with my elbows in this martial art, but I will be learning how to defend myself next time someone tries to attack me. I need some form of exercise, and I really enjoyed Muay Thai, so I figured another martial art was the way to go. I start classes on Tuesday. When I was taking Muay Thai, I didn’t wear the uniform, basically because it was a pair of short shorts and no shirt, and I didn’t think that would be appropriate. With Hapkido, however, I get to look like an actual martial artist, which is exciting.

Saturday, after teaching “Sabbath School” I came home and did a deep cleaning of my apartment. It was oddly satisfying. Then I went to the grocery store and the dollar store to get some things I needed for around the house. Sunday at church we would be watching the General Conference broadcast from Salt Lake, and in between sessions there would be a potluck meal of sorts. I decided to make potato salad. I spent the evening boiling and cutting eggs and potatoes, then blending until everything looked perfect. I put it in a big container, and brought it to church the next day. I put it out on the table, and I think everyone tried one chopstick’s worth of salad, said it was delicious, then moved onto the next dish…note to self, potato salad is not a hit with the Asian crowd. Oh well, now there’s more left for me. I’m going to be eating potato salad for the next week.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad week (except Monday, but now that I’ve adjusted to the pressure, I just feel foolish for crying). The weather is getting better, and as I walked to church today I saw little violets (my favorite flower) sticking out of the cracks in the sidewalk. By midweek, the cherry blossoms should be in full bloom, and spring will be making it’s gentle brief appearance before we are tossed into the inferno of summer.

May your lives be full of blossoms and springtime as well.

Birthday Festivities and Linguistic Incompetence

This week was a pretty good week. Monday I worked my 12 hours. The poor students don’t want to be there any more than I do, so I try to make the class really fun for them, but usually they just want to socialize with their friends, and socializing in English isn’t their idea of a good time. I even created a dialogue about Justin Bieber, and it still didn’t work. I guess I should try a Korean pop star this week.

Tuesday was my birthday. I got to work and there was a present on my desk from the other English teachers, and a bowl of 미역국 (traditional birthday seaweed soup). I’m not a huge fan of seaweed soup, but it was my birthday and my coworker had made it especially for me, so I ate the whole bowl. Then right before lunch they brought out a cake, and everyone sang to me and I got to blow out some candles. My students kept singing to me in the hallway too, it was fun. After school I went out to dinner with one of my co-workers and we commiserated about being non-SDA in an SDA school. After dinner I went home to enjoy a peaceful night of solitude. Then I heard a knock on my door. It was the teacher who is in charge of the foreign staff. He brought me another cake and enough toilet paper to last me through the end of my contract. He told me that he was really thankful that I don’t complain and cause them a lot of trouble like the other foreign teachers do. A sincere compliment is so much better than any material gift (even 50 rolls of toilet paper).

On Wednesday I got to school, and one of my students had bought me a Spongebob calendar for my birthday. She’s a really sweet student. She’s in the lowest level, but she always studies and works hard to improve her English. I even walk home with her sometimes after school. There are a lot of annoying little things about my job, but I really like the students. Even the annoying one that does nothing but cause trouble in my classroom, I like (although I like him a lot more the weeks that the other foreign teachers have to teach him and he just comes to torture me during break time).

Wednesday nights now, I tutor a girl in French. It makes me feel really stupid. I studied French for 5 years, and in my barely two years in Korea, my Korean has now surpassed my French. I guess it’s true that if you don’t use it you lose it. I’m really glad that I’m helping this girl to learn, because it helps me to review, and to relearn what I have forgotten during the years that my French has been lying dormant. This way when I apply to grad school I can honestly say that I am still proficient in French.

My weekend was pretty uneventful. I went to Seoul and wandered around the Electronics market with a friend. I wanted to buy a region free DVD player, because all my DVDs are American and they won’t play on Korean DVD players. So we went to Yongsan electronic market because my friend had bought her DVD player there. However, apparently region free DVD players are illegal…the store owner told me that the police were cracking down yesterday, so they were “sold out.” Sad. Why is it illegal to pay money for a device to allow me to watch my legally obtained DVDs…it’s frustrating. I guess I’ll just have to keep using my computer.

Work, Work, Work, with a dash of K-Pop

It always amazes me how quickly time passes in Korea. I suppose because everyone is constantly on the go, there’s not much time for slowing down and enjoying life. By Thursday I will have been in Wonju for a month already. Thursday is also the official two year anniversary of my arrival in Korea. I still find it hard to believe I am here sometimes.

I worked about 48 hours this week, which is going to be my normal apparently. It’s a lot of work, but I’m enjoying it for the most part. I think I even managed to break my bad student. By the end of the week he was behaving much better in class. I get a new batch of students on Monday. Hopefully, I will be able to crack down with them from the start and convince them not to speak Korean in my class. It’s nice for me, I’m getting a lot of listening practice. But their parents are paying ridiculous amounts of money to send them to a private English concentration middle school so that they can practice their Korean.

This week was pretty stressful. I had a lot of planning to do for work, and the people whose job is was to help me, weren’t doing their job. Which was a big headache for me. It’s all over now. Thank goodness. I had to spend all week planning the Sabbath school lesson for Saturday. Which was supposed to be a shared task with me and my group of students. But the teacher in charge of the program never sent my students to see me. Everyday I would ask her to send them to me at lunch, because I didn’t know their homerooms. She said she would do it, and they never came. Finally on Thursday they showed up. By then I had pretty much already planned the entire thing myself.

On Saturday, when school started, we didn’t have the pianist they had promised me would be there, so we had trouble getting the music started, then I couldn’t lead the music because I don’t know any of the songs, so no one knew what was going on. Eventually, we tried to sing a couple of songs, then moved on to the lesson. That part I felt was a success. I can teach, I can lesson plan; that’s what I’m being paid to do. I am willing to teach anything, but I can’t lead a group of children in singing songs about the Savior that I personally feel are extremely irreverent, and somewhat disrespectful. Luckily, I was informed that my somewhat disastrous attempt at a song session has earned the foreign teachers a reprieve from ever having to do song time again! I’m glad I could be of assistance. I feel that Saturday school will be a lot less complicated in the future. Other than song time, I generally enjoy the 2 hours I have to teach on Saturdays. When exam period rolls around and I don’t have to go into work, I’m going to love it even more.

On Wednesday night I had my first tutoring session with a 15 year old girl from church. She really wants to learn French, so I volunteered my somewhat rusty skills. Because I would feel incredibly guilty, and it’s illegal, I refused to let her mom pay me. However, after the session, when it was time to go home, she gave me a bag of seaweed and fruit. I was really excited. I love seaweed and fruit. She also told me next week that she would force me to go home with some kimchi…Yay!!!

This weekend, I spent in Seoul celebrating my birthday. I didn’t really do much. We went to a famous coffee shop where they filmed one of my favorite Korean dramas. Then we had some Indian food, which was delicious. Afterwards, we went to a Noraebang, and pretended we knew all the words to some popular Korean songs, and even a Japanese pop song (Our favorite “One in a Mirrion”). Then we went to a bookstore, and bought some K-pop CDs and I bought a French book, so I don’t feel like such an idiot when I’m tutoring.

Then, after church today, there was a linger longer, which is code for “all of the military families bring American food, and all of the deprived English teachers eat way too much and feel very sick, but very happy for the rest of the day.” All-in-all it was a stressful, but very good week. I’m pretty happy in Wonju. I like the school I’m at and my co-workers. I have a lot of really good students. I might even start doing Hapkido with one of them after school. I am happy. But right now I’m too tired to feel very happy, so I’m going to bed. Have a great week everyone.!

More Insight into the Korean Psyche

This week has been an interesting week. I’ve still been working hard to adjust to a completely Korean environment. It’s not easy, and sometimes I am completely overwhelmed. I had some students this week that were horribly rude to me. I understand that they don’t want to learn English. They aren’t old enough, and haven’t seen enough of the world to understand how much it could help them in their lives. But even if that’s the case, what kind of person behaves so impolitely to a person who traveled 7000 miles to teach them. I would never have had the audacity to do something like that when I was in school. I understand that they don’t see me as a real teacher. I’ve been in Korea long enough to know that most of my predecessors screwed up my chances of ever being taken seriously as an educator here, but I am a human being, and it would be nice to be treated as such.

This Saturday after teaching Sabbath School, I went to my own church, practiced singing with the choir, then climbed into a van and drove to the East Coast. All day yesterday, and all day today I spent speaking Korean. My Korean skills are still lacking, so it was a very stressful couple of days for me. When I don’t understand things I feel overwhelmed, but I learned lots of new vocabulary words, and got a lot of speaking practice in.

While we were traveling, I had to opportunity to talk with one lady from church. She is in her late fifties or early sixties. A lot of people in Korea are very concerned about the situation in Japan. Mostly because if something does go horribly wrong with their nuclear plant, and the winds change, it will blow straight in Korea’s face. I’m not too concerned about that. I’m more worried about the Japanese people, and how they are recovering. However, I don’t have the built in prejudices against the Japanese that most of the older generation Koreans have. At one point during the car ride, this lady explained to me that most Koreans hate the Japanese because of the horrible things that the Japanese did to them during the Japanese occupation prior to WWI. That was over 70 years ago, but they still can’t forgive them. The woman even described the recent events going on in Japan as their 운명 or fate. I’ve seen a lot of racism in my life; I’ve even dealt with a lot of it first hand since I came to Korea, but I’ve never seen people act so cold in the face of someone else’s tragedy. It’s really disappointing to see this flaw in the people I love so much.

Koreans are generally such a warm-hearted people. If you are their friend, you become their friend for life. I guess this admirable quality has the not so admirable reverse effect as well. If you are their enemy, you are their enemy for life. That being said, today, some of the people I attend church with invited me over to their home to get to know me better. When we arrived, we walked through a gate, then followed a path that led to the side of a building. We then climbed several sets of cement stairs until we reached the roof. On the roof of the building was a small home. It was an extremely humble dwelling with a small bedroom, living area, bathroom, and a tiny kitchen, barely larger than my apartment now. The whole three person family lives and sleeps in those two rooms. There was no furniture apart from heavily laden bookshelves, no electronic gadgets of any sort. However, the parents and their son are so happy. They cooked me a delicious meal, and urged me to eat more until I had kimchi almost bursting from my ears. I think we all get so caught up in a world of electronics, and media, and new gadgetry that we forget what it was like to just be happy to be with the people we love. I’m grateful that I was able to spend my afternoon with this family, and I hope that one day I can aspire to be as happy as they are with a family of my own.

I hope you will all be grateful for what you have, pray for the people in Japan, and not let prejudice blind you in the face of other people’s suffering.

Living in the Real Korea

I feel very blessed this week to be living in a small city in South Korea where there are no earthquakes, tsunamis, or violent revolutions. As I look at the news, the devastation that is being wreaked upon other people, I feel incredibly lucky to be living the life I am living. With all of the earthquakes taking place all over the world, I took the time to look at a fault line map, and I am happy to report that no major fault lines run through Korea.

Since I have moved to Wonju, I have come to the realization that for the past two years, I was not actually living in Korea. I was living in an international bubble that can be found in all major cities in the world. Of course I was surrounded by Korean people, and Korean food. The customs were strange and interesting to observe and attempt to follow. However, if I ever needed that taste of home, that friendly American embrace, it was right around the corner. The local shops all carried peanut butter and Oreos. Mexican and Indian restaurants were a short subway ride away. It was the fun of living in a foreign culture without any of the isolation from everything I’ve ever known.

Wonju is different. The school I work for doesn’t allow students or teachers to wear shoes inside, there are no western toilets in the bathrooms, and no custodial staff. Every day after school I watch as the students, after a long day of studying, pick up their brooms and mops and clean their own school. I thought I got stared at a lot in Seoul, but here it’s amped up. However it’s not the rude disgusted stares I was used to. They are stares of curiosity. There aren’t many foreigners living in this city, especially foreign girls, so I am a bit of an oddity. My students are constantly telling me how pretty I am, and asking about my hair.

I went to the supermarket yesterday to go grocery shopping. It was strange how spoiled I was in Seoul with easy, if expensive, access to any food I want. In Seoul the local stores sold tortillas, salsa, and cinnamon. Those things were no where to be found. However, I did invest in some delicious dumplings. The school I am currently working at is a vegetarian school. Previous to this year, I had always relied on my school lunches for my weekly supply of protein. However, this school doesn’t meet that requirement, so I have declared Saturday and Sunday to be meat days. I have meat dumplings, tuna fish, and even some pork. I go back to being a weekday vegetarian first thing tomorrow morning.

Today, I went to my new church for the first time. I was a little nervous because I’ve never attended church in Korean, but it went pretty well. There are a lot of words I don’t know, but I’ll learn. The people there were very nice, and took me under their wings immediately. One nice lady sat next to me all through church and told me all about the trip she’s taking to America in July. They’re going to see all of the church history sights. Should be fun for them. Apparently her son is studying dentistry in Michigan.

After church I was talked into joining the makeshift ward choir. There are only about thirty people who go to the church consistently, so they needed everyone they could get. It was fun singing in Korean. Before I left I had already exchanged numbers with some people and arranged to meet up with a bunch of people for a trip to the east coast next Saturday. It was a good day. I am slowly becoming adjusted to the peace and quiet lifestyle that Wonju offers. It’s so nice after the bustle of Seoul. However, it’s time to stop lazing about and use my newfound free time to write an awesome graduate entrance essay.

원주: The Adjustment Period Begins

This week was an extremely eventful week. I’m not even sure where to start. Monday was my last day of work at LCI Academy in Seoul. There was no morning kindergarten, I had no classes to prepare for. All of the things I really needed to do were outside of school, such as going to the bank and transferring money to my American bank account. However, all six of the foreign teachers who were leaving were told that we couldn’t go take care of anything until noon, then we had to be back by 2pm. Even though there was nothing for us to do at the school, and if we all went to the bank at the same time, it would take FOREVER. But logic seems to play very little part in the planning that goes on at LCI. Oh well, I finished everything I needed to, and successfully fulfilled my contract with LCI. Monday night I went to my last Korean class at Yonsei University (at least for the next year). Then, Tuesday morning, I loaded my possessions into the car of a Korean man I’d never met before and drove to start a new life in Wonju, South Korea.

I settled into my new apartment really easily. It’s a lot better than my other apartments except for one respect…the shower. There isn’t one. I’ve seen this in other people’s apartments, but I’ve never had to live with it before. There is a hose attached to my sink and I have to use that to shower. Most apartments have a hook on the wall you can hang it from, but the hook in my bathroom is located in a spot that I cannot possibly stand under…showering has been a bit awkward this week. I’ll have to figure out a way to suspend it from the wall.

Now for the school. It’s a very interesting dynamic. I start out each day by singing a hymn I’ve never heard before, reading a passage of scripture from the Bible, then praying with my coworkers. I like the tone it sets for the day, but it’s a little awkward right now. I’m afraid I’m going to pray wrong or something…even though I know there’s not a wrong way to pray. After morning service, we plan for our classes until 8:30 when the first class starts. Each class is 45 minutes long. I teach on average 5 classes a day. The rest of the time I get to spend prepping for my classes. It’s a strange thing to actually have time to prep for classes. I can create worksheets, and since I have technology available to me in my classroom, I’ve even been making PowerPoint presentations. The schedule is still a little confusing to me, but hopefully the more I do it, the easier it will become to figure out.

As for the students, I really like them. There are some really low level classes, and some really high level. There’s one class where everyone in it is practically fluent. Two of the students don’t even have an accent. I really enjoy teaching them. One of my favorite things about teaching middle schoolers is that I can use my vast knowledge of K-Pop to get them involved in talking in class. This week we had a debate on whether Big Bang or 2PM was a better Korean boy band.

My co-workers seem pretty nice. All of the Korean staff is really busy with the start of the school year, and I feel bad stopping them to ask questions. I hope things will calm down a little bit once we get into the swing of the school year. There are supposed to be four foreign teachers, but right now they’re having a little bit of trouble finding a fourth, so there are only three of us. One of them is from the Philippines. She is really nice. I don’t think she’s actually a native English speaker, but she’s fluent. The other is an interesting gentleman from Georgia. He speaks very quickly with a southern accent. I sometimes have difficulty understanding him, and I assume that the students do to.

I haven’t explored the city very much yet. But I intend to explore a lot this week. I start attending the Korean church next Sunday too. I had to go into Seoul for a meeting this weekend, but starting next weekend, it’s full on Korean mode. I hope they will speak to me in Korean. If I can make church friends it will really help me in a lot of ways.

End of Part 2, Please Insert Disc 3

I would like to tell you a story that began about four months ago. Last November I was on a train on the way to my Korean classes, when my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but I answered it anyway. It was this Korean man. He asked me if I was looking for a job, and having decided only days before that I was going to leave my current job, I said “actually, yes!” He asked me a little information about myself, then asked me where I would like to teach. I described my ideal school and location, and he said… “Hmm, I think I have exactly what you want.” A week later I had an interview. Two ladies from the school drove all of the way to Seoul to meet with me for thirty minutes during my lunch break.

We decided to hold the interview at a coffee shop down the street from my school. We went inside and they asked what I would like. So, of course I told them. “Actually I don’t drink coffee, or tea.” I was delightfully shocked when one of the ladies replied, “Really? Neither do we!” So we all got hot chocolate and sat down for the interview. They were really nice ladies, and the interview seemed more like they were trying to convince me to come teach at their school than a job interview. After the interview I felt really good about the two teachers I had met, and consequently the school. However, as they were wrapping things up, they added that the school was a private religious school…in fact a 7th Day Adventist School. I really don’t know much about their religion, but they seemed like really nice people. Contractually the foreign teachers are not allowed to drink, smoke, or do anything that would mar the reputation of the school…easy. So the other teachers I would be working with would be upstanding people.

About four hours after the interview, I got a phone call from the recruiter who had made first contact. The two women had been so impressed by me, that they wanted to hire me immediately. The next day I had the contract in hand. I thought about it for about a week, then decided to say yes. The idea of teaching in a 7th Day Adventist school is a little scary. I’ve never really been discriminated against on the basis of my religious beliefs, and a lot of Korean people have very misinformed opinions of the Mormon Church. However, I did a little research, and the standards between our two religions seem similar. There’s even a clause in the employee handbook saying that I must dress modestly. I hope that my religion will not be a problem with them. I feel more comfortable around them, knowing that they have the same religious standards as I do. I hope they will get that same feeling from me.

After I verbally accepted the job, the hard part began. Due to the stupidity of some of my predecessors, immigration laws were changed this past year. Before you just had to supply your original degree, and a state level background check. Because people had been faking their degrees, and committing crimes in other states, beginning in 2011, all teachers entering the Republic of Korea are now required to have a notarized copy of their degree affixed with an apostille (Basically an international notarization), as well as a federal level background check. I was able to secure the degree certificate easily enough. However the Federal (FBI) background check was a different story. I submitted all of the paperwork back in November…I still don’t have my background check. I stressed out about it for a LONG time. Thinking that if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be able to stay for my third year. After almost three months of waiting. I called immigration only to find out that because I was renewing a current visa, I wouldn’t need to submit it until 2012... When I told this to my recruiter, he said “oh yes, I know.” I wish he would have told me, then I wouldn’t have had to freak out about it for so long.

Two weeks ago, I gave all of my paperwork to my recruiter, but I still wasn’t sure that everything was going to go okay through immigration without the background check. I’ve been in Korea long enough to know that if one person says something, even if they are in a position where they should know what they’re talking about, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true. However, on Saturday I went to my new school for orientation. They returned my Alien Registration Card and my passport. Stuck inside my passport on what used to be the last blank page, was a beautiful sticker renewing my visa for 12 more months. I am now secure enough to announce to everyone that I will be staying in Korea for one more year (Don’t ask me about my plans after that).

Now let me describe my new school. This Tuesday, I am moving out of Seoul to a “small” city called 원주(Wonju), population 300,000. It is in the beautiful Korean province of 강원도(Gangwon-Do), nestled amongst some mountains. It’s a really pretty place. The school is a private middle school with only about 400 students. I will be one of four foreign teachers who teach all of the students. Apparently it’s quite a famous private school in the province. The students have all been studying English since they were in kindergarten. Many of them have even studied abroad in English speaking countries. I’m pretty excited to teach them. The classrooms are big and filled with materials I can use to teach. There are even computers and projectors. In the teachers office, I have the same materials at my disposal as the Korean staff does. I feel like I’m on equal footing with the rest of the teachers. The people that met me and gave me the tour were so nice. They took me all over, and seemed really concerned about my feelings. They apologized for the mess of part of the school, and assured me that it would be cleaned up my Wednesday, when school starts. The vice-principal spoke to me entirely in Korean and seemed delighted when I responded in my limited Korean. The reason I decided to leave Seoul was because I wanted more opportunities to practice my Korean. I spent almost all day Saturday speaking Korean.

The vice-principal and one of the English teachers gave me a tour of the town, then showed me my apartment. My new apartment has four rooms…I have a bathroom, a bedroom, a laundry room, and a kitchen. They all have separate doors. It’s like I’m living in a place where humans are meant to live. There’s even a closet, a TV, and…get this…a microwave! I haven’t used a microwave or a TV in two years now. I don’t even know if I remember how to use them. My apartment is on the fourth floor of the building. According to Korean superstition, the number 4 is bad luck because it sounds like the Chinese character for “death.” So, the elevator in my apartment is numbered like this 1,2,3,F,5. After the tour of my apartment, they took me to the convenience store on the first floor of my apartment and introduced me to the store clerk, then asked her to take care of me. It was really cute.

I really like the feel of the place where I’m going to be spending the next year of my life. It feels like the perfect job. This could all change once I actually start teaching, but my first impression was excellent. I’m still a little curious to know how the recruiter got my phone number back in November, but it seems like I needed to find this job. Well. I’m off to try to throw everything into my suitcases…wish me luck.