Lessons 2&3

Lesson #2
I am lazy.

Lesson #3
The Three Pillars of Korean Society

1) Spicy food
The first one I lucked out on. Or perhaps Korea lucked out on me with. I love spicy food. On top of that, I’m a rather un-picky eater. I will eat anything (except for bugs- dead or alive). This has been an enormous aid to me here. I have delighted many of the other teachers at lunch by happily devouring (almost) everything I’m served at lunch, while showing perfect grace with my chopsticks.

2) Soju
Korean beverage of choice. A cross between a mild vodka and Japanese sake. It’s actually quite tolerable to take shots of. Which is good, because that is the preferable method of drinking it. Aptly named – the “one shot.” Other acceptable methods include pouring it into your beer, sipping it (mostly for women and done discreetly), or plunking the shot of it into your beer and downing it like a one shot- this time it’s a “bomb.” Like a sake bomb! However, instead of sitting at a dim lit sushi restaurant with a group of your loud friends, you’re sitting cross-legged on a cushion with a table of loud Korean men.

3) Singing
Karaoke, or noreh-bahng in Korean, is the ultimate Korean past-time. I thought I’d made it an entire year without having to sing at a faculty function until a few weeks ago when they began an impromptu singing session at a restaurant. After an hour or two of revelry at the school dinner, a make-shift microphone was made out of a cup and spoon, and one of the teachers who was soon to be married rose to sing and happily burst into song. (That’s the thing that’s so intimidating about singing with Koreans. They belt it out like they’re on American idol). Soon they were urging me to get up and sing a song. I was terrified. Not only were we in a restaurant, but there was no music. A friendly, but pressing teacher (who doesn’t speak English), offered to sing a song with me, but the only song he suggested was “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” After 10 minutes of cajoling and chanting, and pleas from my co-teacher (why don’t you get up there and sing yourself?!), they gave up. On the way home my co-teacher so comfortingly told me that I should have sang a song because it is a very important part of Korean culture. (Once again, I didn’t see you up there busting out a cappella.

Last Thursday was another special teacher outing. Our school won a cash prize for earning the title of Top School in our district and the principal decided to use some of it for a day trip. This time, I was warned a day in advance that I would need to sing. I settled it with myself that I would sing a Christmas carol. 'Tis the season and everyone is allowed some leeway in terms of musical ability with Christmas carols. All day I wondered when they would decide to sing. All buses are equipped with karaoke here, so I wasn’t safe anywhere. But the trip down to the coast came and went. Seafood feast came and went. Trip to migratory bird sanctuary came and went. I thought I was in the clear. We were on our way home and I hadn’t yet had to sing. But, I knew that when a lively male teacher who’d been up and down the aisle with bottle after bottle of soju started digging around in the overhead cubbies that I wasn’t off the hook. I silently prayed that he wouldn’t be able to find the microphone or the book of songs. He found them both. The bus was transformed into a karaoke room. I panicked and chose a Britney Spears song and waited for it to come up in the queue. And so, clutching the back of a seat at the front of the bus with one hand, and a microphone with the other, I sang.

Back by popular demand

Yes, I've been lazy. I want to say that I've had nothing to write about for the past two months, but I know what kind of response that excuse will get. Mom, your hints (so-and-so mentioned how much they liked your blog, such and such asked about your blog) finally paid off. With the international spotlight on Korea the past week, I can at least reassure everyone of my safety, right? No, I did not happen to be visiting Yeongpyeon island last week. I'm alive, and well.

In regards to the recent events involving the two Koreas, there have been no rushes on bottled water and canned good, no bomb drills at school, no civilians walking around with posters telling Kim Jong-il to go to hell. Admittedly, there was a moment following the artillery exchange when I was worried. I had just arrived at my primary school on Tuesday afternoon (day of the attack) to prepare for my after- school conversation class. The TV was on in the teacher's room, but as it was in Korean, I didn't even bother to glance at the screen. Then , my co-teacher tapped my shoulder and said, "It seems North Korea will attack South Korea." Well, that's some news," I thought. Confused, all I could think to say was , "Really?" "Yes, they made a bomb." A quick glance around the room showed all the other teachers sleepily sitting at their desks, working on their computers, or casually chatting with each other. A typical afternoon. No one looked the least bit concerned. I turned to the TV, and saw images of fires rising from the island. Judging that my co teacher's interpretation skills had missed the mark (just a tad, and not for the first time) I did a quick search on Yahoo and found a summary of the afternoon's events. Since then, I've heard no comments from any Koreans on the matter. True, it's possible they don't bother speaking to me about it because of their limited English, and obviously I cannot follow the Korean media on the matter, but what I've seen from my perusals of American news makes the whole thing seem like it's happening somewhere else. Nevertheless, I am registered with US embassy in Seoul.

In other news, I regretted not being home for Thanksgiving, but I celebrated as best I could. I bought 2 giant pumpkin pies and an apple pie at Costco to share with the teachers on Thanksgiving day. Koreans are big on sharing food, and I thought I should pay them back for the shampoo, soap, and toothpaste I got in excess for the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving back in September. The pies were demolished in true Korean style. Short of forks and plates, the apple pie became a free-for-all for hungry fingers. Oh, did I mention that this feasting went on at 8am? I planned on getting the pies out after lunch, but someone got curious and peaked in the box early.

That was the extent of the real Thanksgiving food that I ate that day. Without an oven it would have been impossible to make any of the other favorites. So, for dinner I dined at Outback Steakhouse with my friends (two of which are Australian and swear there are actually no Outback Steakhouses in Australia). We drew Secret Santa names over plates of ribs and baked potatoes and said cheers with our glasses of long island iced teas. Not quite Thanksgiving dinner, but western no less.

Though there is no Black Friday in Korea, Christmas has come commercially here just as at home. Many stores have decorations up and some have Christmas trees. To add to the holiday feel, it snowed for the first time 2 nights ago. Only a dusting on cars and small piles on the street corners were left by morning, now only puddles, but it was pretty exiting to me while it lasted. We'll see how I feel about it in a month or two.

And in 3 months, I'll be going home. Not quite soon enough for me to start getting sentimental, but I've decided to give myself a little blogging goal to motivate me to write more often the rest of my time here. Each time I write, I'm going to include something new that I have learned since being here. I don't know how enjoyable this will be for you, but it'll be nice for me to look back on. So, here goes...

Probably the lesson that has taken me the longest to learn, and one that I frequently still forget, is this: people, especially Koreans, are not necessarily going to knock themselves over to give you praise for your work. I've exhausted my friends' ears with complaints about how my co-teachers never tell me if I did well or not and worries about how I must be a bad teacher since no one ever tells me I'm a good teacher. But, aside from trusting in myself (I know I'm a good teacher, whether or not they tell me so), I've learned to accept praise and signs of gratitude in more subtle ways. After all, Koreans are very indirect. So, when my vice principal expresses regret that I'm not re-signing my contract and says he would like to see me again in a few years, I should feel appreciated. When my co-teacher texts me that she has a business trip and won't see me today, I should feel cared for. When I get showered with 20 excited hello teachers down the hall, I should feel like a good teacher.

hair today, gone for the past two months

I went to get my haircut today. I'd given up caring much about my hair back in July when I decided Korea would be a good place to try out a lighter shade of blonde. The hairdresser I saw lived in Australia for a number of years and spoke English, so we had no trouble discussing the shade I wanted and selecting sample magazine photos that evening I went in for the coloring. After a good 40 minutes beneath a pile of slimy hair heavy with gobs of chemical goo, my mind full of images of me with bright blonde hair just in time for summer vacation, I was rinsed, washed, and dried. Alas, no beach blonde. Instead, I was face to face with a sick pineapple head. The ungodly shade of yellow-orange next to my pale face made me look like a creature from the depths of the sea. The kind with transparent skin that emit their own light. My hair was like a torch crowning my watery face. My mind raced with thoughts of how many different hats I could acquire by daylight, though my body remained calm. How is the color? she asked. I casually admitted to it being a bit too orange for my skin tone, and she promised she could darken it up by adding more toner. After another dousing of chemicals, a wash, and dry, I was in the ballpark of my original color- dark blonde. For 50,000 won ($45) I should have been pissed that I essentially just gave my hair a chemical bath for nothing, but I was so relieved to again be part of the human race that I happily paid up and shot out of there. I'd been to hell and back, and I vowed not to dye my hair ever again in country where the color doesn't even naturally (or unnaturally for that matter) occur.

As it turned out the toner ended up to be more of a band-aid fix that dissolved throughout the summer. Though it never faded enough to be as bad as the first time, there was something noticeably off about the color of my hair until a few days ago when I received the box of self hair dye in the mail from my boyfriend. I've never been more pleased to be a ruddy dark blonde.

With my color looking fresh (and natural) I thought it was time to invest a bit in the style I'd been neglecting. So today I went along with my friends to a new salon they'd recently had good experiences with. I got a hand massage, tea, a slice of cake, a special treatment to help repair the damage from the dyeing, and an impromptu manicure all on top of a decent haircut and all for around $10.

Today I started caring about my hair again... and apparently about this blog.

Taco Thursday

There is no such thing as summer vacation in Korea. At least not for a lot of kids. And for those kids, at least not in the endless afternoons full of snacking and boredom, kids wandering the neighborhood aimlessly, crumpled summer reading list at the bottom of a trampled backpack sort of way. As my co-teacher put it, parents see summer vacation as an opportunity for kids to get ahead. After all, getting ahead is the driving force behind the Korean education system. So, instead of skateboarding around the mall, hoping to get invited to someone's house with a pool, or sitting idly in front of the television, many Korean children are attending classes, camps, and tutoring sessions through July and August. I had spent the last 4 weeks preparing for English summer camp. One week at each of my schools. I was unsure what to expect, but I assumed it wasn't supposed to be the bobbing for apples, making lanyards sort of summer camp. So, while I included a higher proportion of games, songs, and videos into my lesson plans, I made sure to keep clear learning objectives throughout.

I was pleasantly surprised then this past Monday when I started camp at my main school. Already unstressed because I was only responsible for 1/4 of the week's activities, I relaxed even more to find that the atmosphere resemebeled...well, summer camp.
I immedietely cut out the boring vocabulary worksheets (orginially designed to take up time anyway). Throughout the week we designed outfits for Lady Gaga, painted pieces of recycled "folk art" and made recipes for disgusting sandwiches. And today, after giving a rather enlightening powerpoint presentation on American food, I itroduced the taco. Of course, they are familiar with this infamous Mexican food, but I thought I'd explain it better. In fact, the taco is mentioned at one point or another in every text book, though the recipe in the book says to cook the meat in tomato sauce. I did my best to show the morph from traditional Mexican street food turned American favorite. Natuarlly I mentioned Taco Bell (no, they don't have Taco Bell here) and tried my best to explain its value in the taco world. I showed them a commercial from the 90s of Shaq's Taco Neck syndrome. Then... we made tacos!!

I was in charge of the recipe and all the cooking was left to the students. They all proved to be pretty steady with a knife as they chopped piles of onions and bell peppers to cook witht the ground beef. Things continuing smoothly as the beef was added to vegetables in the frying pan. I circulated and added spices to the meat while the students stirred away and began passed around the tortillas. I thought we had this one in the bag. All that was left was to chopt the lettuce and tomato to top off the tacos. But, instead of chopping in up into toppings, each group began preparing a communal salad with the vegetables. It finally made sense why there were cucumbers on each of the tables. And thousand island dressing. Koreans and their communal side dishes. Oh well, I guess it will be beef burritos with a side salad.

Now, you can blame me for forgetting the hot sauce at home, but I know Koreans by now and I'm going to bet that they would have squirted ketchup and mustard on their tacos with or without the Tapatio. I watched in nervous amusement as they piled on the beef and condiments. If that's as gross as it looks, I will be responsible for soiling the taco's good name in the eyes of a room full of Koreans. I focused on the humor in it to avoid the guilt. At the very least they were impressed by my folding skills. Since most of them put so much meat on their tortillas I had to fold them burrito style to keep it together.

One of the students presented me with one of the meat pockets and I was eager to taste it, see how badly we'd messed these things up. I prayed that if nothing else, the meat came out decently seasoned, since techinically that was my only hand in the preparation. Then she quickly took it back, evidently having forgotten to add the ketchup, and re-presented it to me. Well, if I came here thinking we were going to enjoy authentic mexican food in the basement kitchen at a Korean middle school, it was my mistake. I took a bite. Not half-bad. though some bites tasted more like a sloppy joe then a taco, the meat had the right flavor and the tortilla- well, a tortilla is a tortilla. And everyone seemed happy as they dug into their salads with chopsticks, stuggled to keep the filling inside their "tacos," and sipped soda from communal bowls. (Then again, what student wouldn't be happy to be cooking and eating instead of studying). We had Koreanized the taco. And, having just given a presentation on how the US had effectively Americanized the taco in the exact same way, I felt I'd learned a lesson if no one else had.

And so, it isn't so terrible in Korea that the teachers and students alike can't wish that everyday were summer vacation just like home.

Baskin Robbins uniting cultures around the world

This past Sunday I went to lunch with a co-worker from my main school. It took nearly a whole semester for me to be invited to a teacher's house, and she isn't even an English teacher. Actually she's more of an academic director. From what I gather a counselor/development coordinator. She invited me to lunch with her family and I accepted. When the day came, I have to admit I was less than excited. Her English is not great and I resented spending my free day trying to communicate and fill awkward silences. I have to do that everyday at work. But, I was happily surprised with the day I spent with her and her family. It turns out her 19 year old son attended High School in Indiana and is fluent in English. I felt bad at his parent's unending requests for him to translate everything, but was relieved that the day wouldn't be spent in frustration and smiles of defeat when meaning was lost. We joined her parents and brother and sister-in-law for a duck lunch at a restaurant where I learned that her father is a former English professor and her brother possesses decent English skills as well. Of course, I was shocked at the amount of food brought to the table. I wonder if the day will come when I am not flabbergasted when they bring in the stone pots of stew to finish the feast. It's always just as my legs are starting to go numb from sitting on the floor and I'm tugging at the waist of my shorts.

After lunch, we went to my co-worker's parents' home to have a celebration for her mother's birthday. Her father showed me his photo album of his time in the United States with his colleagues. I saw him at Harvard University, by the Golden Gate Bridge, and at the Grand Canyon. Then he showed me his study. His section of Nathaniel Hawthorne was impressive and later explained when I saw the copy of the book he had written (in Korean) about the author. After that he led me to his wife's sewing room. In here the walls were full of fabric stuffed animals that she had sewn. They were actually quite interesting and in the back of my mind I was hoping she would offer me one to keep.. Though she didn't end up giving me a stuffed bird, she did present me with one of her latest projects- a doll that she was sewing for UNICEF. Someone explained that each purchase goes to vaccinating a child in Africa. She wanted me to have one and she would put on the UNICEF website that it was adopted by me. Finally the grandfather showed me his golf room. At first I was just shocked that their apartment home had space enough for a sewing room, let alone a tennis room, but one has never seen so many tennis shirts in one closet! That's pretty much all there was aside from the tennis rackets propped in the corner. When we returned to the living room the others were chuckling and I gathered they were laughing at the grandfather dragging me around the apartment. "There is nothing to see," they translated with smiles.

But I begged to differ. There was plenty to see! And plently to eat. The pound cake I had brought as a gift and a watermelon were sliced up and put on the table as the candles were lit on the ice cream cake. It was from Baskin Robbins, and much to my delight, it was mint chocolate chip! It thrilled me that there I sat in an apartment in Korea, celebrating a near stangers 70-odd birthday, sharing my all-time favorite cake and the exact same birthday cake I used to eat every year at my own grandparents' house.

Just another month teaching English in Korea

The month of June has slipped away and I realize I've only written one post to document it's passing. And it was about sewage. So, lest you think I've lost interest in sharing my experiences or else I've truly got nothing better to write about than the rotten air, I'll list my excuses and then attempt to recall some of the past few weeks' highlights.

I didn't travel anywhere this month in an attempt to save money for summer vacation. It didn't work as well as I'd hoped. Nonetheless, the extra free time lent itself to thinking about preparing to plan for English Summer Camp. I am responsible for 2 weeks of summer camp, one at each of my schools. Since I can use the same lesson plans for both schools, this totals to 20 hours of teaching. As I don't have grades to write or final exams to prepare like all other teachers in the world, I can't complain about the end of semester stress that I'm catching wind of. But, I have been busy finishing up lessons in time for the exam, preparing review games, and thinking about summer camp.

Besides lesson planning, I've also been jogging a few evenings a week. It still feels silly taking the bus to go jogging, but not too many people run outside here and the traffic is dangerous, so it's best to run on the path by the river. You have to dodge a fair amount of senior citizens and strollers and giant bugs, but its pretty pleasant altogether. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to continue these evening jogs as rainy season is coming (a 3 week period of tropical downpours) followed by even higher temperatures and humidity levels. But by then I should be sweating enough just walking down the street to take care of a day's workout.

Other than that, I've just been lazy. I blame it on the heat, but my friend, insisting that our lethargy is due to lack of iron, hosted a steak night at her apartment the other night. True to her Australian roots, she managed to pull off some pretty tasty steaks with her one electric burner and 6 inch frying pan. My contribution was a pineapple cheesecake that was doomed from the start. With no oven and no mixer of any kind I attempted to make a dessert from scratch. I was devastated, though hardly surprised, when the filling melted to soup 2 minutes after removing it from the refrigerator. Somewhere between the wafers of gelatin and the vegan German instant whipped cream I went wrong.

Let's see... what else has happened this month? There was the day we were talking about wishes and I instructed the students to draw a picture and write what they plan to do for summer vacation in one box and what they wish they could do in another box. As I went around to check their work, I found one student had written in the second box beneath a picture of an airplane "I wish I could fly to North Korea and dead Kim Jong Il." This is the first and only passionate expression I have heard from a Korean in regards to their unfriendly neighbors to the North and the recent rise in tension. I helped had to laugh at the student's cheekiness, and at myself as I helped her change "dead" to "kill," but refrained from calling on her to read her response aloud.

Then there was the day I ate lunch instead of going to my last class. No one informed me that lunch was moved to from the 5th to the 6th period that day, and no one bothered to come get me from the cafeteria when I failed to show up for my 6th period class.

With last minute schedule changes always popping up, and me being informed maybe 50% of the time, you can see why I wasn't very concerned last week when no one was in the English lab after the bell for one of my classes. After 5 minutes went by, one of the students ran in apologizing. "Sorry, teacher. Crying."

So one of the students is crying? I couldn't see how that detained all 25 of them, but I've learned to live with a lot of gray areas. And all I had planned for the day was a movie so the tardiness wasn't a major issue. "Math exam," she offered in explanation. Oh, so maybe one student is crying she failed the math exam, and a group of them are comforting her. And the rest are still finishing the exam? I've also learned to live with filling in they gray areas myself. Then the students started trickling in. All but one or two with red eyes and tears on their faces, cradling their elbows with bright red wrists dangling in front of them. What in the world? A massive beating. The only explanation I got was "math exam." I didn't feel like a horrible teacher anymore for playing a movie the whole period to give myself a break.

All in all, summer vacation may be just around the corner, but the more stress levels rise at school (for students and teachers alike), the more my 8 days off is looking pretty meager.

Heating up the pool

I miss the smell of a cool morning performing the opening act for a beautiful, clear, hot day. The smell of still air and sprinklers. You can sense this type of day before you even go outside. It makes waking up, which is always a long and painful ordeal for me, a little bit cheerier and the start of my day a little bit less sluggish.

Though the weather is warming at an alarming rate here as the short Spring melts into Summer, I'm finding there is something lacking in the freshness and zest of the season here. Perhaps being landlocked, its the cool air from the sea that I'm missing. Perhaps, there being no lawn in Korea (save for the cemetery), I'm getting nostalgic for the smell of damp grass and sound of sprinklers clicking. Many will laugh at my idea of hot weather just as they laughed at my chattering teeth and concerns with frost bite back in February. Fair enough. The Bay Area isn't exactly extreme when it comes to weather. But that's just one more thing I can say I learned here: an appreciation for pleasant weather. That, and pleasant smells. Because the truth is, putting the absence of dew on the grass and fresh ocean air aside, Korea really stinks. And the heat is making it worse.

The dark window in my cave apartment is no big tease when it comes to beautiful mornings. The fact that I break a sweat just getting dressed is promise enough of a nice, hot day. But the morning air that manages to get in my screen isn't cool or fresh. And the smell that hits once I get outside is a far cry from dew drops and salt water. In Korea, the sewage brews like morning coffee. I don't know what goes on beneath those metal sewer grates that dot the streets and alley ways, but it isn't treatment. I dread July and August when the humidity will clog the air. We'll all be swimming in a steamy public park bathroom.