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.

The Crescendo

The school year escalated to its height this past week with our performance on Tuesday. It was an interesting six very LONG hours. First we had a dress rehearsal, then we shoved all of the children into two tiny rooms with ten already very stressed out teachers, and expected the kids to be quietly amused whilst awaiting their turn on stage. We spent four awful hours in those cramped quarters, with only a short respite to go out on stage and let the kids make fools of themselves in front of their parents. The whole day was like slow semi-organized torture for both the kids and the teachers. I don’t see how it could possible have been enjoyable for the parents either. They had to sit through three hours of kids who were so petrified that they couldn’t talk loud enough to be heard even with the aid of a microphone.

After the performance had finally ended, all of the exhausted staff filed out of the performance hall after handing the children over to their parents. Then instead of getting to go home for a nice rest, we all had to go out for a staff dinner. Which means I spent the evening eating meat and watching my co-workers get progressively more and more drunk, until about 11p.m. when I could stand it no more, and left. I then had to sleep because the next morning I had to wake up at 6:45a.m. in order to go take the analytical writing section of the GRE. I took the test. I don’t think I did very well. I kind of choked on the first essay. I think I did a lot better on the second one. I haven’t written an English essay in years. Now I have four months to study for the other two sections of the GRE, then a terrific graduate school essay to write, and letters of recommendation to find. It’s going to be a long year.

Yesterday I babysat for some really cute kids. They go to church with me. Their mom is Korean and their Dad is American. It was interesting to see how the two cultures mix in a household, and in the kids themselves. The oldest girl was 5 years old, there was a three year old boy and a one year old boy. The 5 year old seems pretty well balanced. She can speak both Korean and English fluently. She speaks English to adults, and Korean to her siblings. The three year old was my favorite. He is very linguistically confused at the moment. He can’t quite tell which language to speak . Luckily I could understand his mix of English and Korean, and he understood my mix of English and Korean. It was a lot of fun being able to speak Korean to the kids. I like speaking to the three year old crowd. That’s about my speaking level, so I didn’t feel like he was judging me.

I also saw an interesting movie yesterday. It’s called Late Autumn or 만추, it’s a Korean film, but it takes place in America and the stars are Korean and Chinese, so they communicate with each other in English. However, the girl talks to her family in Chinese…I don’t speak Chinese, and all of the subtitles were in Korean. I could get the gist of it, but the subtitles were going too fast for me to read them all. But I gleaned enough to understand the film. I don’t think the director meant it to be as funny as we found it, but the English dialogue was definitely funny. I highly recommend it.

Ringing in the Year of the Rabbit with a Rather Painful Bang

About three weeks ago, I woke up at 4am with a terrible itch on the side of my head. That itch turned into pain, and soon I realized that I could no longer hear in my left ear. I took some ibuprofen, waited for it to kick in and went back to bed. When I woke up for work my ear still hurt ridiculously badly. I told myself I could make it through the workday, then I would go to the doctor after work. I started teaching, informing the students that my ear was really sick, so they had to be very quiet. About an hour into class, I was checking a student’s workbook, when all of the sudden I felt this excruciating pain in my ear, it started making these frightening popping noises, and when I reached up to touch my ear there was reddish goo oozing from it. I dropped everything and ran out of the classroom. I sent my co-teacher to watch the students, then I went to the bathroom and cried for about five minutes, not because of the pain, but because it’s scary to have blood suddenly start oozing out of the side of your head.

Once I had managed to compose myself, I went back to the teachers room, and asked someone to take me to the hospital. When we got to the doctor’s office, he stuck a camera in my ear and said, “aigoo!” a Korean expression of shock and dismay. He then proceeded to suck the fluid out of my ear and poke my already sore ear with sharp metal instruments. As I got up to leave the office, my ear started to ooze yet again. So he suctioned it out again, to no avail, three minutes later it was oozing again. I got a fun pack of medication at the pharmacy (six different pills…no labels) and went back to the school to get my stuff to go home. As I was telling my supervisor that I was going to go home and rest, I was clutching an already bloody Kleenex to the side of my head. I still had tearstains on my face, and she said “go have a good rest, try to come back for your class at 2.” I didn’t go back at two. My ear didn’t stop oozing until Thursday morning.

I did go back to work on Tuesday because I felt obligated. It was our lunar new year event which means we all had to dress up in traditional Korean garb and play Korean games. The kids were really cute, and I didn’t really have to do too much, so it wasn’t too bad of a day, despite having to constantly wipe the blood/pus mixture from the side of my face. After work on Tuesday I went back to the doctor’s office to get more drugs. In Korea they only give you enough drugs to last until they think you need to come back for a check-up. So I went back and he poked me in the ear again, and it hurt. He told me my hearing would come back “soon” (I have yet to see this “soon”). He gave me a prescription for 6 whole days worth of drugs because the doctor’s office would be closed for the Lunar New Year holiday. So I went and got more medical fun packs, and went to my Korean class.

I had two doctors visits, and two trips to the pharmacy in a two day period (aren’t you proud I actually went to a doctor). I came away with clean ears and 6 different kinds of medications, all for the low, low price of 13,000 won. Which is about $12. Nice.

Wed-Fri I didn’t have to work because of Lunar New Year. It was really nice. On Wednesday I stayed in my apartment all day and “rested.” I realized I’m not very good at resting, so I cleaned my porch because I was really bored, and did laundry. Thursday I went to Gyeongju with some friends from church. Gyeongju was the capitol of Korea during the Silla Dynasty (57 BC-935 AD). So it’s a really old city with lots of tombs of ancient Korean kings. Everywhere we went there was another burial mound, it was like Starbucks in Seattle. All of the buildings had the old Asian style roofs. It was a really neat city, it’s what I always thought Asia would look like. It was also nice to be out of Seoul for a few days. There were no skyscrapers or high rise apartments. We walked around looked at old stuff, went to a Buddhist temple, ate southern food (Korean style). Thursday was actual lunar new year, so everything was closed. For dinner we called the McDonalds delivery people (Yes, they deliver McDonalds in Korea). It was a fun low key trip.

Sick and Sniffly and Stressed

I spent this week feeling alternately ill and bitter. Korean society isn’t one that believes in resting. Last weekend I started to feel slightly sick, like I was coming down with a cold. In the end I did come down with a cold, quite a rough one at that. Sadly my contract of indentured servitude does not allow for things like illness. So despite the fact that I couldn’t breathe properly and couldn’t stop sneezing long enough to say entire sentences, I still spent my entire week at work.

Even if you just have a cold, and the best medicine would be a day of rest they send you to a doctor, and then tell you to come back to work. All week, all I really needed was a day off, but there was no time for anything like that. So I went to work as usual. Then since I was “well” enough to go to work, I figured I was well enough to go to school. So I would go sit in my Korean class and pretend to learn. However, it is very difficult to concentrate on a different language when the inside of your head is so fuzzy that it’s difficult to think and speak even in English.

It was definitely an interesting week. My students weren’t that great. They were a bit hyper, which is understandable. These poor kids have been in school since last March with only a week of vacation in the summer and a week in the winter. They are 5 years old. I’m 25 and I am completely sick of school. I have no idea how these poor kids are coping with everything. And they have about 20 more years of solid education before it will all be over. I heard President Obama applauded the Korean educational system in his State of the Union address this week, but if he understood what their system actually entails, he wouldn’t speak so highly of it. Sure it’s probably better than the American educational system, but at least American kids get the chance to be kids. These poor kids are in school from the moment they turn 4 until they are 24. They are put in huge classes, and expected to study 12 hours a day. Their science and math scores are through the roof, but their creativity and imagination are phased out around 3rd grade. So far out of the three places I’ve lived in the world, I would want my own children to be educated in England.

A few days ago, Korean Immigration started sending me daily text messages reminding me that my visa expires in 30 days. I really should figure out what I am doing come March. I’ll let all of you know as soon as I do. I’m hoping to stay in Korea for another year, but that’s all in the hands of Korean immigration right now. If they will accept me without a new criminal background check. Keep you fingers crossed for me.

This week I was having another American craving. I really wanted burritos. Alas, the fixings are a bit hard to come by, but I made due. I went to the grocery store, and managed to find tortillas, lettuce, salsa and a small extremely expensive block of Colby cheese. Alas no refried beans or sour cream were available. So I got some chicken and fried it up fajita style. Then I found some plain yogurt to use as a substitute for sour cream. When all was bought, cooked, and finished, it was delicious and practically like home. Although rather a bit more expensive.

Well. That’s my week. I’m going to spend the rest of my evening resting up for the two days of work I have this week. Huzzah for Lunar New Year, it’s bigger than Christmas. Happy year of the Rabbit everyone!

The Cold Puts a Damper on One's Excitement

This week was another dud on the excitement front. It’s too cold and snowy outside to really do anything outdoors, and doing anything inside away from home means a considerable amount of time trekking through the snow and cold to get to said indoor location. So, for the most part this week, I was at work, Korean classes, or home. So, alas, another uneventful week to write about.

My Korean class this semester is a lot more difficult than the last three. I guess I’m getting into the advanced levels and I am expected to speak Korean well. It’s hard. I am trying though. I’ve started keeping a vocabulary notebook next to my computer for when I watch Korean dramas, so I can learn new words. Here are the words I learned from watching dramas this week: miracle, disappear, lover, selfish, precious, enemy, intuition, kidnap, offense, suspect, escape, quit, breath of life, disappointed, and unforgettable…Add the word amnesia to that list and you’ve pretty much got Korean dramas in a nutshell. But oh how I love them.

This Friday we took my kindergartners to a recording studio to record the song they’re going to sing for their parents at the end of the year concert. They have trouble singing loudly when they are dancing, so they recorded them singing and then they will lip sync at the concert in true K-Pop fashion. I’m pretty excited. I’m going to try and sneak some K-Pop dance moves into our Lion King dance and see if anyone notices.

On Saturday night I was supposed to go ice skating with some friends, but we decided that we didn’t feel like it, so instead we went to the board game café. Honestly, Korea has the best entertainment facilities. If you are bored in Korea it’s because you’re too lazy to try to find something to do. In the US, if you’re bored you can watch TV, or go hand out with your friends, which means eating or seeing a movie. However in Korea, when you want to hang out with your friends, you can eat, or see a movie. But, if you don’t want to sit in a theatre full of people to watch a movie, you can go to a DVD room, and watch it in your own personal theatre. If you don’t feel like watching a movie, how about a karaoke room? Singing now your forte? Then why don’t you go to the closest board game café and challenge your friends to a game? I suppose because there are so many people here, they have to think of lots of ways to entertain themselves or they will go insane. I love that they have board game cafes where you can go and sit at a comfy table and play monopoly to your hearts content, surrounded by people who are doing the same thing with their weekend.

On Friday night I wasn’t feeling 100% so I stayed home and made a stop motion K-Pop music video with Ken. It was fun. If you want to watch it I put it on YouTube.

Enjoy! It was so much fun I think I’m going to make another one. So stay tuned. Maybe Ken can break into the K-Pop dance scene…

Santa is Korean...No English...

This week started out a bit stressful. I spent all day at work alternately teaching and studying for my finals. After work, I went to school, studied for another hour, and then took my last two finals. I was much better prepared for the second two finals, and it definitely showed in my scores. For the Writing and Speaking tests we took on Thursday I got 86% and 84%. For the Listening and Reading tests we took on Monday I got 93% and 100%…not too bad if I do say so myself. I beat all of the overseas Koreans in my class on those two tests. If only I could match their speaking skills, I would be unstoppable.

Tuesday was my last day of Korean classes for the term. It was a little sad. We all kind of bonded with each other over the course of the term, and now a lot of people are leaving Korea, or moving on to other things. After class on Tuesday we all went to this German place, and just hung out for almost two hours. Even our teacher came, as much as we annoyed him at times, I’m pretty sure he liked us. On Tuesday, my teacher handed me a tiny piece of paper and told me I needed to go to this room at 8:20. Turns out he recommended me for a scholarship, so I had a surprise scholarship interview. There were a lot of candidates, so I doubt I’ll get it, but it was nice to be nominated nonetheless.

The rest of the week went on as usual. It was odd having free time after work on Thursday, but I think that this week is going to be even more odd. I have to do a lot of studying to prep for level 6 of the language program, so I should be using my free time for that…however I’ll probably end up watching Korean drama instead, because that’s what I do.

This week wasn’t very eventful. I am growing ever more frustrated with the child in my class that cannot behave, and is in turn corrupting all the hard work I put in to get the other students to behave. I’m so frustrated that there’s nothing I can do. There’s no principal I can send him to. If I send him to a Korean teacher he just gets baby talked to and told not to do it again. I can’t punish him, he doesn’t respond to yelling, he rarely listens when I’m talking to him. I’ve run out of things to do except ignoring the kid, but I don’t want to completely give up hope on him, or else he will stay like this for the rest of his life, and he will never have any friends.

This week I had a terrible craving for chicken Caesar salad. So I went to the store to see if it would even be possible. I easily found lettuce, and assorted veggies for the salad part. Chicken was easy to come by, I even managed to find a bottle of salad dressing that said “American Caesar” on it. Then I went on search for cheese, and in the back corner of the store, I found a whole block of feta cheese…it cost 10,900 won($10), but I didn’t care. I went home made my salad, listened to Christmas music, and spent the evening wrapping presents. It’s fun how just a small taste of home, can improve my mood and give me a small sense of Christmas spirit. Last year I had no Christmas spirit. This year, however, I am REALLY excited. Probably because my favorite little sister is coming to visit me, and unlike last year, I don’t have to work on Christmas Day.

This week I was trying to use Santa as a threat to get my children to behave in the classroom. So I told the kids that I had Santa’s phone number and if they were bad I would call him, and he would bring them rocks on Christmas. One of my students looked and me with this knowing look on his face and said, “But teacher, Santa is Korean…no English.” I didn’t fight the Santa is Korean thing, because to each culture their own, but I did explain to the student that Santa is a genius and he can speak any language in the world. After I explained that, they took my threats more seriously.

I hope you all have a wonderful week. And remember that the best way to spread Christmas Cheer is by singing loud for all to hear.

Love,

Jessica

In Which North Korea Does Not Blow Up South Korea

This was a pretty good week. I think. It all went by so fast that I don’t really remember what happened. I started practicing our winter play with the students in my class. It’s going to be an unmitigated disaster. The performance will require my ten 5 year olds to stand in a straight line and only move when it’s time for them to deliver a line, or complete and action. My students are a very energetic bunch of students. They can’t stand still in a line for 5 seconds much less five minutes. It’s not going to be a fun next couple of months.

This past Thursday was my speaking and writing finals for my Korean class. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had much time to study…it definitely showed on my speaking final. I went into the room for the test and the teacher asks me a question that I don’t understand. It was apparently about family reunions, which I only understood after clarification. It was rough, and I ended the interview by apologizing to my teacher. I think I did a bit better on the written test. And I actually made some time to study for the reading and listening portions this weekend, so I hope that they will go better tomorrow.

On Friday night I went to the really fancy part of Seoul to meet some friends for dinner. This is the part of Seoul with Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Mercedes parked all over the place. I thought I knew how to get to the place I was going, but I was mistaken, so I ended up wandering around in the bitter cold for over an hour. I tried to flag a cab but the cab driver refused to take me because I was a foreigner traveling alone. I even talked to him in Korean, so it can’t be because he was afraid to speak English. I was lucky enough to be raised in a place where I didn’t have to encounter racism, but coming to Korea has truly been an awakening experience on what it’s like to live as a minority. People often refuse to sit next to me on the train, cab drivers refuse to stop for me, I get lousy service at restaurants, people at stores ignore me until they have no other option but to talk to me. It hurts my feelings sometimes, but at the same time, I’m grateful that as a white middle class suburban female, I get the chance in my life to experience this racism so that I will NEVER treat anyone like I am often treated here.

Saturday I slept in which was glorious. I haven’t had more than 7 consecutive hours of sleep in about a month, but I slept for almost 10 hours on Friday night. It was amazing how much energy I had on Saturday. Saturday afternoon I went with some friends to the Embassy housing on the military base, and had Thanksgiving dinner with a family from church. They are both Foreign Service Officers working at the US embassy. One of them is one of the leading North Korean experts (you may have seen some of his work on WikiLeaks). We asked them about the North Korean situation, and neither of them seem to concerned, which was comforting, because if anyone knew, they would know. They briefed us on what we should do if something does happen. The place we have to meet to get shipped out of Korea is only a 25 minute walk from my house. Then they filled us with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie…all acquired from the military base…it truly is a magical place. Walking through embassy housing was like walking through suburban America…a car even stopped at a cr

osswalk and waited for us to cross instead of trying to run us over. It was shocking.

Saturday night guess what I did? If you guessed another K-pop concert then you are right. But this one was a pretty extreme K-pop concert. If you know anything about K-pop at all, then you know about Big Bang…I saw Big Bang!!! and 2NE1 and Se7en, and Gummy. It was a really good concert. My favorite Korean musician is TaeYang, and he is a member of Big Bang as well as being a solo artist, and I got to see him again! We were even closer to him this time. I may or may not have screamed like a teenage girl when he came over to our side of the stage.

Now that it’s December, it’s time to get into the Christmas spirit. So I would just like to tell everyone how thankful I am for the savior and his birth and all of the many possibilities that are available to us in this lifetime because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope everyone will take this Christmas season to think not about gifts, and shopping, but about what you can do to help others, and to feel the true peaceful spirit of Christmas that can’t be found in the crowded stores.

Big Bang Dancing it up on Stage...crazy costumes and all.

Even North Korea Couldn’t Keep Me From Harry Potter

As anyone who pays any attention to the news whatsoever knows, this was a bit of a rough week for the Korean peninsula. The week was going along as usual until Tuesday. During my afternoon class, I was teaching, and all of the sudden, the power went out for a second and we heard a big bang. I jumped, and all of the students laughed at me. We never did figure out what had caused the short power outage, and the bang, but it set me on edge. After class was finished and I had sent all the children on their way home, I entered the teacher’s lounge to discover all of my coworkers deep in conversation. North Korea had bombed an island of the coast of Incheon.

My co-workers who haven’t been in Korea for very long were really afraid, and one even left early to call her mom. For some reason, despite this being the worst attack since the Korean war, I didn’t feel any fear. I am a bit worried about what’s going to happen in the next few weeks. The whole city is going about business as usual, but everyone is definitely on edge.

This weekend I went out of town with some friends and their friends, and as I was packing for the trip on Friday night. I made sure to include my passport, all of my financial information, and my college diploma, just in case something happened on Sunday before I got back. Luckily nothing has happened as of yet, but it’s a strange feeling having to think about these kind of possibilities. I’ve never checked the news so much in my life. I hope that just like the last major incident in March, everything will quickly return back to normal, and we can all go about our lives again without having to worry about North Korea pulling the trigger.

This past Friday was a very happy day for me. Due to the extreme cruelty of the Harry Potter Release Date planning commission, Harry Potter 7 will not be released in South Korea until December 15th, almost a month after the rest of the world has seen it. I was devastated when I heard this, luckily I have connections. Once the military had released the base from its North Korea imposed lockdown, one of my military friends took us to the theater on the military base, and for only 5 dollars, I got to sit there for 2 and a half hours eating concession stand hot tamales, and watching Harry prance about on screen.

The theatre was filled almost entirely with Americans. It was really weird. I haven’t seen American teenagers in almost two years now, I forgot how annoying they are. It was nice to be able to disappear into a crowd for a few hours, but it reaffirmed that I’m not quite ready to go back to being a full time American yet. I am going to have a very rough readjustment when I get back to the US.

This weekend I went to Namisum, an island in the middle of Bukhankang. It was really pretty with lots of trees and fresh air. There was even some snow blowing around on the ground. We also got the go to La Petite France. It’s this whole little village in the middle of no where that some Korean guy who really loved Le Petit Prince built. There are little statues and buildings dedicated to parts of the book. It’s a really cute place, even if it is pretty odd to find it in the middle of nowhere, South Korea. I went with two friends from my Korean classes and two of their friends from work. There were two Koreans, a French Korean, a Korean-American, and me…an incredibly pale, very non-Asian red-head. It was really fun though. Almost all of the conversation the entire weekend was in Korean, and I managed to hold my own quite well. I was probably the quietest member of the group, but that also had something to do with the fact that I am completely exhausted. I am now going to try to alleviate that problem by going to bed. Good night.

Too Tired to Think of Creative Title

This is going to be an incredibly short post because I am completely exhausted and just want to go to bed. This week was much better than last week. I was pretty happy, not too many complaints about work. The child in my class who is driving me insane is starting to calm down a smidgeon of a percentage, he still drives me crazy, but slightly less.

School is going alright, but I’m so tired in class that I’m not soaking up as much as I would like. I have to give a three minute speech this Thursday about anything I want. I’m open for topic ideas.

This weekend I went to a co-worker's wedding. It was interesting to see the Korean wedding. There wasn’t even really an officiator, they didn’t say “I do” or anything like that. Basically it was a giant photo shoot in a big hall with an amazing dress, some of their family performed songs for them, and both the bride and the groom’s fathers gave them lectures, then they bowed to each other’s parents, and that was the end of the ceremony. They then had a wardrobe change, came downstairs, cut a fake cake, drank a glass of champagne, and called it a day. Apparently there’s a private family ceremony where the parents throw grain on their daughter’s skirt, but other than that, Korean weddings are simple and fast. They also have an amazing buffet afterwards, with lots of delicious food. I ate a lot of sushi.

I also went to another K-Pop concert…This time it was Lee Seung Gi. I’m trying to see concerts from all different genres, so far I’ve got amazing solo act, band, and now versatile momma’s boy. It was a good concert in which the entire cast of one of my favorite dramas made an appearance on stage. One by one all of the main characters in 내 여자 친구는 구미호 (My Girlfriend is a Nine-tailed Fox) came out on stage, and they performed the entire soundtrack. It was pretty awesome. However it went on for over 3 hours…

All in all, life is good, I’m still happy and trying not to stress out too much over what step I need to take next.

Top: The whole cast of the drama, it's fuzzy because I was far away.

Bottom: Lee Seung Gi and Shin Min Ah

스트레스가 많이 밀려요… Stress is Piling Up

This week I was in a pretty foul mood all week. Finally I came to the realization that I am in severe need of a vacation…sadly my next day off work isn’t for another month and a half. Oh well. This semester of my Korean classes will finish in about three weeks, so I should gain a little bit of free time then. I think big city life is finally starting to get to me. Every day I am pushed and bumped, and rudely swept aside by thousands of people. Being from the Midwest, I’m not used to these kind of cramped quarters, and while it was novel and exciting at first, I think I’m finally getting tired of it. I am not a city girl, I’ve decided.

This Thursday was Pepero day. Pepero as I’m sure I mentioned last year on November 11th, is a delicious chocolate covered cookie stick. I bought a lot of Pepero to give to my students. However, my students also brought Pepero for me, so I ended up leaving school with more Pepero than I started the day with. I even tried to give some away to my Korean classmates, but they all had the same idea, so we just exchanged boxes, and all left with the same amount. I don’t think I will be eating Pepero again until next November 11th. Although, next year’s Pepero day is going to be amazing. It will be 11-11-11.

Thursday was the beginning of the G20 Summit in Seoul. Luckily, for the ease of my life, it was on the other side of town, and apart from the amped up police presence in the subways, I barely even noticed that a bunch of world leaders were here. Although they did pull out a bunch of stops to make Seoul look like a more exciting and nice city than it really is. Don’t get me wrong, I love Seoul. There is culture, and fun things to do and see almost everywhere. But they went a bit overboard for the summit. On Friday night, I was out with some friends, just walking around an area, that I’ve been to a million times before, and all of the sudden out of nowhere we see a hot air balloon, so we go over to check it out, and lining the small stream are hundreds of lantern floats depicting scenes from all over the world. It was beautiful, but if it hadn’t been for the international press present in the city, it wouldn’t have been there.

Saturday I went out for Greek food with some friends found a purple coat, then went home and holed up in my apartment. I’ve started being really greedy with my little free time. I should probably stop that. Today I went to church. Apparently for the Christmas program, the choir is performing selections from Handel’s Messiah. I don’t know how I managed to do it, but I have made it through 25 years of life without ever having heard anything from Handel’s Messiah, needless to say, the sight-reading today did not go well, but I am determined that next week will be much better.

Today after church, I came home, made so tuna rice balls…they were yummy. Then I watched the first episode of the new drama Secret Garden. There weren’t any subtitles yet, as it just came out yesterday, but I was able to guess most of the plot. Then all of the sudden, the concert scene came on. I was shocked, I wasn’t expecting it to be in the very first episode, but there it was, I watched carefully, sadly unable to pinpoint us in the large crowd shots. As I was beginning to lose hope a five second segment appeared, it was at just the right angle to be right behind us, and there silhouetted against the lights of the stage were two very tall, obviously not Korean girls, which I am positive were my friends, which means that the slightly less obtrusive figure to the right of them is ME!!!! I made a 3 second appearance in a Korean drama…my life is complete.

One Step Closer to my Dreams of K-Pop Stardom

This week was another exhausting, but mostly good week. I’m still having some trouble controlling one of my students. But I hope that eventually something will click, and he will realize that he has to sit down and be quiet or I’m just going to keep yelling at him every day for the rest of the school year. Other than that work is going well…the job part anyway. There’s been a bit of drama amongst the teachers lately. It’s caused this horrible division between the foreign and Korean staff, and I hate it. It feels like someone is always angry at someone else. I’m trying to play it neutral, but being Switzerland is really hard. I don’t want to upset any of the Korean teachers, so I’m being nice and helpful to them as much as I can when they come to me to complain about the other foreign teachers. Then the foreign teachers complain to me about the newest misunderstanding with the Korean staff, and I can see their side, but if I take it, then I’ll alienate the Korean staff…I hate dealing with drama, and being stuck in th

e middle of it.

School was pretty good this week. After class on Thursday as a class we all went out with our teacher. I wasn’t going to go, because they were going to a bar, but someone dragged me and promised we’d sit in a non-smoking section, so I went. It was interesting. I’ve never hung out with a teacher outside of the classroom before, except for that awkward subway ride a few weeks back. I didn’t stay too long, because I don’t enjoy being around people who are drinking, but I got to practice my Korean a little bit, and see my teacher in a different light.

Friday night I went to see my musician friend perform again. He really is a fantastic musician. Every time I go, even though it’s pretty much the same show, I still walk away in complete awe. I can do a lot of things well, but there’s not one thing in this world that I am simply amazing at, and I’m always in awe of those people who have found their niche, and can just do that one thing so well that it blows people away. Before the show I was waiting for some of my friends in the subway, and I witnessed Korean police using force for the first time since I’ve been in Korea. Some man was causing trouble, and he started shoving the police officer, so they had about four people forcibly restraining this guy, and he still managed to throw one of them to the ground. Good to see that the police here are top notch, especially with the G20 summit happening this week.

Saturday was an amazing day…quite possibly in the top ten of my life. It started out as any normal Saturday would. I slept late-ish got up and made myself some pancakes, got dressed, then caught the subway to meet a friend. We did a bit of shopping, then went to her side of town and hung out at her house for a little while. At 4 we went to meet a new friend. She just got to Korea, and we’ve decided to take her under our wings…basically because she shares our love of Korean dramas and Asian pop music. So we had dinner then all went to a K-Pop concert.

We saw a group called FT Island. They’re one of my favorite Korean pop bands; they even play instruments. Most of you have probably never heard of them, but just to give you an idea of how popular they are in Asia. While we were standing in line waiting to get inside we started talking to this Asian woman, whom we had assumed was Korean. However, she spoke flawless English, and turned out to be from Singapore. She has flown all the way to Korea from Singapore (a 6 hour $900 flight) just to see this group in concert. There were people from China and Japan, all of whom had traveled overseas just to see this group perform. You should you tube them, it’s definitely worth it.

Their concert was really good, and we had a great time, but what pushed Saturday into the top ten was what happened after the show. They played their encore, then the lead singer (who has an amazing voice) said that he had a friend who had come to the concert who wanted to come out and sing something for us. So this guy in a terrible shirt walks out, and I think, “Hey, I recognize him…he’s not a singer, he’s an actor.” So I was really confused because they started hanging all of these posters about this guys comeback album around the place and all of these girls appeared with signs that said OSKA on them, but the actor’s name isn’t OSKA it‘s Yoon Sang Hyun, so I was even more confused. Then through my limited Korean, I managed to understand that they were going to be using us to shoot a scene of a drama. Then this REALLY famous Korean actor walked into the room (Hyun Bin), and everyone starts screaming. So for the next half hour we got to be extras in a crowd scene for a Korean drama called Secret Garden. Dreams really do come true.

The drama starts airing this Saturday, and I don’t know what episode the concert scene will be in, but if we make the cut, I’ll definitely know, because I was standing by the only two ridiculously tall foreign girls in the audience… It was a really nice surprise ending to our happy day, and a nice welcome to Korea present for our new Drama loving friend.

So, now that I have been an extra in a Korean Drama, can I put that on my resume?

Have a good week, and bask in the knowledge that your degrees of separation from the world of Korean Drama stars just got one step shorter.

(Left= Hyun Bin, Right= Yoon Sang Hyun, Below= FT Island)

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.