I spent the last few day signing the backs of worksheets and blank pages in textbooks and notebooks. Every time I sat down in between class, a line of students wanting my signature instantly appeared. Students have been coming by my office all week with presents; there were a few material items, but it was mostly letters. Wonderful, precious letters full of broken English that they wrote themselves, letters they couldn't have written when I arrived a year ago. I've been torn between wanting to spend the week behind the lens of a camera, capturing every last detail of my school and my kids for posterity, or just enjoying these last few days.
Today was my last day of school and oh, it was hard. I knew I was going to cry when I left and I did. After I untangled myself from students wanting one last hug, one last reassurance that I wouldn't forget them, I sat down on my bus and silently cried, tears running down my cheeks while I watched my school and the town disappear. What I wasn't prepared for was walking into my classroom for the last time, one last quick trip to throw away the last of the trash from my office, and starting to sob. Great, noisy, undignified sobs because despite all the frustrations, I've been so happy here.
The boys were a bit rambunctious and the boy to my right was being crushed. He kept shouting, "Help me, please! Help me, please!" It's a fitting end of my year here: we started studying Chapter 12: Will You Help Me, Please? today.
After school, I went out for samgyeopsal with friends. We ate at an outdoors galbi restaurant along a pedestrian road near our apartments that is overrun every night with dinners. We had beer and pork and kimchi and a metric ton of cooked garlic (that might have just been me) while we talked and toasted Korea and watched squids bob for freedom in the tanks at the restaurant next door. A good way to celebrate the end of a good year.
I bought my plane ticket home this week! Actually, after much fanfare and hair pulling, my school bought my plane ticket home, as per my contract. I leave Korea on Monday, September 28th, which is only ten days away. I was originally planning traveling around SE Asia after my contract was up and making it home in time for Christmas, but abandoned those plans at the last minute for fiscal responsibility. Instead, I'm heading straight home for two months, visiting with family and food, then heading back to Korea in December for another year.
I've started telling my students I'm leaving, which has sucked about as much as I thought it would. On Wednesday, the day my ticket was bought, 긴원 and 다니, two of my favorite sixth graders, came by my office at lunch. We've been playing with Scrabble tiles during lunch recently. The kids pour the tiles out of my table and spell out the names of their favorite singers: FT Island, G Dragon, Shinee. The girls poured the tiles out onto the table and asked if I was leaving Korea. I told them I was going back to America in a few weeks, and instead of getting into their usual argument of 2PM vs. Big Bang, they wrote this:
Ow, my heartstrings. They asked why I was leaving and I explained that I missed my family and needed to go home. 긴원 gave this some though and suggested that I just call my family and tell them come live in Korea with me. That way, I can see my family and can stay in Korea. (Also, it gets around that pesky confusion of me living alone while unmarried, a rarity in Korea.) Then she grabbed my hand and said, "Teacher, promise remember me," and my heart just broke. I solemnly took her hand in mine and promised that I would never ever forget her. Yesterday, I was sitting outside by the playground after school, watching my students play. As the students ran past they shouted, "Hello Teacher!" A few stopped to show me things and joke with me (Kids: Teacher, it's raining and snowy. Day: *remains sunny and warm* Me: Oh no! Raining?! Snowing?! Kids: *laugh uproariously at the gullible foreigner*) and my little 4th grade girls run up for a hug. Damn, I thought to myself as I left, I'm really going to miss this place.
So, I've been studying Korean in earnest (albeit on and off) for a couple of months now and, well, it's slow going. Korean is so different from English or any other language I've studied that I barely even know where to begin. I have a textbook that I haul around with me and pull out when I have a spare moment, and I've spent hours writing the same words and sentences and grammatical concepts over and over again:
가다 - to go, 가다 - to go, 가다 - to go, 가다 - to go 나는 서울에 가요. - I go to Seoul. 나는 학교에 가요. - I go to school. 는/은 - object markers, 는 - if the previous syllable ends with vowel, 은 - if the previous syllable ends with a consonant 너 - you, 너 - you, 너 - you, 그 - he, 그 - he, 그 - he, 그녀 - she, 그녀 - she,그녀 - she
And really, I'm no closer to being able to understand what people are saying around me than I was a few months ago. I understand the idea behind immersion learning, but without a basic understanding of how the language works, you don't get far. Once I learned how to count, I was able to figure out the basics of number classifiers just by listening to how other people ordered things, but only once I knew the numbers. And other examples are few and far between. I get by okay by speaking phrases and nodding a lot while not really understanding the answer, but sometimes I despair about actually being able to use Korean on any sort of a functional level.
My fifth graders are working on possessives and on Monday my co-teacher gave them a worksheet that included, among other things, six Korean sentences to translate into English. I was walking around, helping the kids with the other sections when I realized I didn't know the translations for those sentences. Crap, I thought to myself, as I turned to find my co-teacher and ask for a translation. Then I paused and really looked at the sentences: 이것은 너의 연필이다. // 이것은 너의 것이다. 이것은 그의 컴퓨터이다. // 이것은 그의 것이다. 이것은 그녀의 가방이다. // 이것은 그녀의 것이다.
And I realized - dude! - I got this. I know what those sentences mean. I'm not just inferring based on being able to read a word or two, but I *know* what those *sentences* *mean* and I understand the underlying grammatical components. In a perfect combination of acquired knowledge and sheer exposure to Korean, something clicked.
이것은 너의 연필이다. 이것 = This. I know that from the phrase how much is this. 은 = means the word this is the object of the sentence. I learned that out of a textbook. 너 = you. I ought to know that one; it's one of the hundreds of words I've written over and over again while studying. 의 = possessive marker. I knew the lesson was about possessives, which means that something has to turn the you into your and 의 was the only unknown in the sentence. 연필 = pencil. My students like to teach my Korean, usually by pointing to an object on my desk and telling me the Korean and English word. I've have dozens of different students teach me the word for pencil. 이다 = is. My students shout BINGO이다! whenever they see the Bingo boards on my desk. "Hurray," they're saying, "it's BINGO!"
이것은 너의 연필이다 = This is your pencil.
I'm no closer to being able to understand Korean than I was last week, but I feel like at least I'm making some progress.
The fall semester starts on Friday, which means I'm stuck sitting in my office for eight hours a day with nothing to do all week. I'm taking advantage of the down time clean my office, catch up on Cracked and make my grocery list. (Note to self: buy tomatoes.) I'll miss the free time when the semester starts again, but right now I just wish I wasn't so bored.
I took pictures of my office now that it's clean. One of the best things about my school is that I have my own office. A lot of English teachers I know either share an office with the Korean English teachers or have a desk in the teachers' room (along with the vice principal), but there was an empty room across from my classroom and my school converted it into an office just for me.
My office is shaped like an L. The left hand photo was taken standing at the door and looking at the long part of the L. There isn't much use for the table since it's not like I have meetings, but it makes the office feel less empty. The right hand picture is my desk, which is in the short part of the L. The cabinets behind my desk lock, so I use them to lock up candy and other goodies that I would rather the students not find and beg me for.
Another view of the table and bookshelves, this time taken from my desk. The bookshelves mostly have art supplies left over from English Camp and textbooks/teacher's guides. My little girls like to stop by my office during lunch and primp in the mirror while they talk to me. Next to the bookshelves you can see the space heaters that made the winter bearable.
My desk. Normally it's a bit more cluttered than this. The fan on the printer was given to me by a student and was a godsend this summer when my office felt like a furnace. The post-it notes on the computer have students' names written on them. I'm terrible at remembering Korean names, but the kids disparately want me to know their Korean names. I make them write their Korean names down on post-it notes and then stick them to my computer so I can glance at my cheat sheet when I'm talking to them.
A close up of the notebook on my desk. I found at a grocery store while on vacation a few weeks ago and I use it to jot down notes when I'm lesson planning. Before I would use whatever piece of paper was handy, which made my desk pretty cluttered after a week. I love the Konglish (I love fruits juice!) and the happy cannibalistic strawberry juice. In general, I just love Korean stationary.
Back in February, Amber sent me a care package that included a stuffed panda. I put the panda on my desk and my students went crazy over it. A couple of fourth graders names him Keomdungi (검둥이) and drew a picture of him on the back of a worksheet. Poor Keomdungi tends to get roughed up a lot (the students have tough love approach) and he's already lost a leg once. Luckily, I was able to repair him with some super glue.
Today was my last day of English Camp! The goal of the 5th & 6th grade camp was reading and eh, we did read every day, but I just don't feel comfortable teaching reading. I know that I learned how to read at a very early age and that I haven't stopped since, but I don't really know how to teach someone else how to do it. You look at the page and read the words and then - voilà! - comprehension, knowledge, enlightenment. I can't even begin to figure out how to teach reading comprehension and when you take a kid who perhaps doesn't have the strongest reading skills to begin with and add a whole new language, you get a quagmire. Combine that with students who would. not. look up a word unless I beat them over the head with a dictionary, and by the end of the week I was ready to throw my hands up. We did read a story every day, but we mostly played a bunch of games and watched Finding Nemo.
I justified Finding Nemo by watching it in English (with Korean subtitles) and giving the kids a worksheet asking them question about the movie, even if I did have to prompt them on most of the questions. (Me: What's that? Kids: It's whale! Me: Look at question 10. [Name 10 animals that live in the ocean.] Kids: Oh yes Teacher!) My students loved it, as did every other student in the library, including those working with a tutor and complaining about how they wanted to go to English Camp. Whoops. Had I known English Camp would be held in the library before the day it started, I probably wouldn't have chosen to show a movie, but I wasn't about to rearrange my entire lesson plan once camp started and I was spending every moment trying to get ready. I did think this line was particularly apt:
On the last day of English Camp, as a review, I gave the kids a bunch of letter posters (I printed PowerPoint slides with the letters of the alphabet in different fonts) and let them decorate them.
Sarah arrived on Friday, but my vacation didn't start until Tuesday. On Monday, I had to go into school and teach my last day of English Camp. My first English camp was with the first and second graders and we studied the alphabet. I'm not sure how effective it was; half the kids clearly already knew the alphabet from their hogwons and the other half were floundering because trying to cover the entire alphabet is a lot for one week. Due to construction (all the classrooms are getting new floors, hopefully ones that don't give people splinters) class was held in the library. It's a nice library, very modern, but it was also full of crazy Korean robot children who spend their summer vacation studying in the school library. Every time I did something that was even remotely noisy, like play a game or speak in a slightly raised voice, I would have an instant audience of forty or fifty kids, only half of whom were my camp students.
I had some alphabet letters that had originally been bought for the English room. They were meant to be used on a felt board, but we just glued then on the letter posters.
I gave all the students English names on the first day of camp. I wasn't planning on it, but everyone seemed to assume they would get English names out of the deal and it certainly did make it easier to learn the kids' names. Coming up with a list of English names off the top of your head is surprisingly hard, so I used a website that randomly selected three popular English names and let the kids pick which one they liked best. The list was based on the most popular names in America for 2007 and wow, people name their kids some weird and gender-ambiguous names. There were a few traditional names like Jack and Amy, but there was also an Ashlyn, a Brayden, a Riley (boy) and a Kennedy (girl).
The idea was that the kids were suppose to decorate the posters with things that started with the letter. Some kids did better than others. Steven glued random letters onto his R poster. It ended up spelling ROJ.
To make each class a little more fun, I found a bunch of alphabet clips from Sesame Street and played them as we started. The kids loved them, and a few of the more outgoing boys would come up to the stage and dance to the music. My mother (of four children) always swore that Sesame Street was a really fun show, but I never believed her until now. I ended up spending a lot of time going through the archives on the Sesame Street website and wow, there are some really funny skits and some really talented musical guests, like Anderson Cooper reporting live from GNN or Tilly and the Wall singing the ABCs.
Audrey just drew some flowers and a heart around her (upside-down) Ss. I didn't have the heart to tell her the poster was upside-down.
I taught the kids to fist bump me when they did a good job or finished an assignment and they loved it. My siblings and I have been fist bumping each other and shouting, "Pound it!" for years, so it only seemed right to teach my students to do it too. The kiddos were *very* enthusiastic about the fist bumps and I spent the rest of the week nursing sore knuckles.
Caroline, on the other hand, did very well. Not only did she draw a glass (one of the examples from the textbook) and grapes (not one of the examples, she's just that smart), she wrote both words out phonetically in Hangul. She also wrote out G phonetically in Hangul (지 = gee). Gee is the name of a popular Kpop song that came out this spring. When we learned the letter G, half my students immediately started singing the song. I always appreciate it when Kpop helps with my lessons.
Sarah came with me to school on Monday and sat in on the class. The principal quickly learned that there were two - count them, two - foreigners in the building and came to the library to meet Sarah. The first time he stopped by we were in the middle of class so, after some mutual bowing, he left, but the second time he came by during a break, so I was able to introduce Sarah, my 미국인 친구 (American friend). Then he came back a third time, this time with a camera, and took a few pictures of me and Sarah. I imagine the photos will show up on the school website soon. What a great promotional picture to show the parents - look! we have TWO American teachers at our school, at least for a day. My kids were also fascinated by Sarah. When they first saw her, they hid behind me and asked, "Teacher! Who dat?" One of my second graders, Audrey, likes to tell me what color things are. "Teacher," she says, pointing at my shirt, "green! Brown (my skirt), red (my glasses), pink (her dress), blue (another student's shirt)." On Monday, she marched right up to me and Sarah and started telling me the colors. "Teacher, green (my pants), black (my shirt), purple (my glasses), red (Sarah's shirt)." Then she pointed at Sarah's blonde hair and said, "Teacher, yellow hair!" "Yes," I told her, "that is yellow hair." Sarah and I laughed about it for the rest of the trip.
It was a good activity, even if most of the kids didn't really grasp the whole point. Happy students are happy!
It's summer in Korea, which means it's hot and wet and probably raining. All Koreans will proudly tell you that Korea has four distinct seasons, which is true. What they don't mention is 장마, the East Asian monsoon that inundates Korea with rain from late June to early August. This week was especially wet, with major rain storms Sunday, Tuesday and Friday.
On Tuesday, after eight solid hours of torrential rain, the storm drains and gutters near my school couldn't no longer handle the water and the path behind my school, which leads from the middle and high schools to the major apartment complex in town, flooded. When I needed a break from lesson planning, I hung out my office window and watched the middle school students shriek as they realized they would have to wade through calf deep water to get home.
The rain was hard enough that my school has some minor flooding. We don't have an an air conditioner at my school, so we rely on opening windows to make being inside bearable. Usually this works pretty well: all the classrooms have sixteen large windows (half of one wall) and the hallway is lined with windows. If all the windows are open and you leave the doors open, you can get a nice cross breeze. Add the six 선풍기 (electric fans mounted on the ceiling) in the classrooms and it isn't too bad. This means that on Tuesday, despite the heavy rain, all the windows in the school were open. Tuesday afternoon the rain started blowing sideways, right through the open windows and into the hallway on the top floor. By the time we realized what had happened, there was an a quarter inch of water in the halls and we got to bail out the hallway with dustpans.
Update time! Things have been super busy for the past few weeks and they're not likely to settle down for couple more. Reasons #1 why I've been looking a bit crazy about the eyes:
English camp: There is a six week summer break from July 20th to August 28th and during the break I will teach three English camps. There are specific goals of the camps (for example, the first and second graders are studying phonics), but it's less of an actual class and more fun times with the American teacher. We play a bunch of games, sing a few songs and hopefully the kids learn some English, or at least get a chance to use what they already know. I won't be teaching with my regular (beloved) co-teacher because she has a training program during the summer break. Instead, whoever ranks low enough on the totem pole and is available will show up to be my co-teacher. (I found out TODAY that the vice principal will be my co-teacher for an entire week, which is okay because at least he speaks English, but also stressful because he's my boss.) All of this means that I'm in charge of making the lesson plans and developing all the necessary materials.
I spent about a week in a mild panic over the lesson plans. (I seriously spent about a week staring at my computer with the crazy eyes and accomplished almost nothing.) I downloaded a bunch of sample lesson plans from other schools' camps and read them all and just could not process everything. Too much, too fast, too much and I was completely overwhelmed. Then I bought myself a cute little notebook (it has a panda lying in a field of clover telling me "you need a refresh") and started writing things down and breathing a bit deeper and lesson planning is going much better. That doesn't, however, mean it's going quickly. In the past week and a half, I've written the (super super detailed) lesson plans for half the camps. I've also stayed late every day this week. I'll be finished with the lesson plans by the time the first camp starts, but I'll still have to create all the necessary materials, which I had hoped to have already started by the end of this semester.
Part of the reason I'm so worried about these camps is that I've taught English camps before and it was a less than pleasant experience. I had a month of English camp during the winter break and the one time I wrote about them I said:
Part of the reason winter camps are going so well is that we always have all the materials we could possible need, primarily because I have five hours to prepare the day before. Need 180 flashcards for a game? Sure, I can make those. It's not like I'm doing anything else with my time. I'm going to run out of things to prepare soon, though. I've already started on next week's lessons.
The next week the camps collapsed into a disaster of awful, which just goes to show that you shouldn't be cocky on the Internet. The first and second grade camp, the only one where there was a textbook, went fine, but the rest were a disorganized, ill-prepared hot mess.
I think I know why they were such a disaster and can learn from those mistakes. I was looking at the lesson plans for the winter camp today and I scratched my head because, seriously, what the hell was I thinking? There was maybe thirty minutes of material to fill nearly two hours. And not only was there not enough material, it wasn't presented in a way that was conducive to learning. I think that was in part because my former co-teacher (who created most of the lesson plan) had no idea how to make a lesson plan, something she demonstrated practically every day, and in part because we were both new teachers and neither of us realized how much we relied on the textbook to provide structure for the lesson. Take away that structure and everything collapses in on itself. To compound matters, during all this Ji-Won failed the national teachers examination (for a second time) and just checked out for the rest of the year. She stopped coming to school, leaving other teachers to cover her position, which meant that I was in charge of creating everything we needed for the three hours of class, usually the afternoon before. I was staying late and coming early in a desperate attempt to get everything done by myself and even though I knew we didn't have enough planned, there wasn't any time to come up with more. It was an exhausting and disheartening few week. Luckily I left for two weeks of vacation the last day of camp and came back to Korea rejuvenated and no longer wanted to punch someone in the teeth, but you can see why I'm a bit stressed. Not to mention that it's a colossally huge amount of work that I only have a few weeks to do.
A few weeks ago I was telling a friend how stressed I was about the camps and she brushed me off as neurotic and high-strung and once I was done punching her in throat (no actual punching was involved), I did admit that she's sort of right. Things will go better this time. I know what went wrong the first time and I'm correcting those mistakes. I'm worrying and stressing about things now, when I have time to do something about them, rather than the day before the lesson. I'm a much better teacher than I was seven months ago. I know a lot more about how to plan a good lesson and I have a whole list (a literal list; it's in the panda notebook right next to the activities about food) of things I can fall back on if we start to run short. Things will be better this time, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried now.
There are truths universally acknowledged: a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife and fourth graders are adorable. I teach third through sixth grade, but fourth and sixth grade are my favorite. I have a rotating group of fourth grade girls assigned to clean my classroom (no janitors in Korea, they use the children instead). Half of them hate it because my classroom is always a mess (although hopefully my new policy of if-I-see-you-throwing-things-in-my-class-you're-staying-late-to-clean will help with that), but the other half love it because it means fun times with the English teacher. Also, sometimes I give them candy.
This is 예림 and 유지. 예림 (Ye Lim, English name: Tiffany) is on the left. 유지 (Yu Ji, English name: Alice) is on the right. They don't actually like cleaning the English room, but they love to come by my office after school. We talk, usually about makeup (which they are obsessed with and I am woefully uninformed about) and I let them play games (usually about makeup) on my computer. I justify it by making them explain the rules to me in English and they make it worth my while by showing me a Fair Isle knitting game on Naver (Korean Google).
This is 윤주 (Yun Ju, English name: Judith). She is easily one of my best students of any grade. I am constantly taken aback by how *advanced* her English is. She's all quiet and demure in class and then - bam! - she breaks out a fully formed, grammatically complex sentence. With the rest of my fourth graders, I'm just happy if their sentences have a noun AND a verb. She used 'widow' in conversation one day and when I asked how she knew the word, she told me it was because she's reading the Bible in English.
Only girls are assigned to clean the classrooms, which, of course. Korea? A patriarchal society? What makes you say that? (The boys do have chores, but they're assigned things like crossing guard duty in the morning, not cleaning.) 강석 is the one and only boy in the cleaning rota and it's only because he was shanghaied. The poor kid was just walking down the hallway one day, minding his own business, when a group of girls rushed out, grabbed him, drug him into the English classroom and put him to work. He was a good sport about it.
재희 loves to teach me Korean. She usually stick with nouns, things in the classroom she can point to. I have learned to words for pencil (연필), pencil sharpener (연필 깎개), scissors (가위), eraser (지우개) and window (창문) a hundred times. She's always super excited when I write anything in Hangul (Oh Teacher, very good job!) and together we cover the whiteboard with writing. On the board, you can see the day's vocabulary: sun (해), name (이름), desk (책상), the name of my school, table (서탁), dog (개), girl (소녀), phone (전화) and radio (라디오).
On Friday, my cleaning crew discovered that there are some English board games in the back of the classroom. We never use them because the classes are too big (a 4-6 player game in a class of 38 doesn't work well), but they're great for a couple of 4th graders. The girls chose Boggle Jr. which was perfect for them. The fourth graders are just starting to learn to read and write, and since the curriculum completely ignores phonics, I jumped at any chance to teach it. (I have a big long rant about phonics and how they don't exist in the public school curriculum. I think I understand where they're coming from. The Korean English teachers are often woefully unqualified to teach English and phonics are confusing, especially if your native writing system is a one-letter-one-sound-no-exceptions system like Hangul, but if the children don't learn to sound out words, their only alternative is to what? Memorize the dictionary? Good luck with that one. A few months ago one of the vocabulary words for 5th grade was elevator. I gave the kids a worksheet with their vocabulary words written in English and told them to translate it. Only a handful where able to translate elevator, which is funny, since it's the same damn word in Korean. They had just never seen it written before and they couldn't figure out how to sound it out.)
With that being said, English phonics are incredible confusing. Take for example wood (above) and tool. Both have "oo" as the vowel sound, but the vowel sounds aren't the same. My poor babies were so confused. "But Teacher," they told me. "Wood. Tool. Not same same. Why?!" Kiddos, the answer is that English is the language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary. Also, we like to screw with your minds.
A few weeks ago, I told a friend that I love taking photos because it means I had a blog post without having to write anything. Of course, I always end up writing something anyways (I'm not good about shutting up), but it is easier, especially when I'm swamped at work because of two %$&@#* open classes in two weeks.
Roses, incongruously juxtaposed against the urban sprawl of modern Seoul. (The bee says, "Bzzzt!")
One of my tiny precious 4th graders (the one who always wants hugs) gave me a bracelet made of random Latin letters. It happens to spell out SSK. Any knitters reading this will know why that's funny. It also spells out ZOG, which is such a coincidence since ZOG! the Maleficent is the villain in the B-movie of my heart.
Sixth graders! I needed a photo of students for my open class lesson (Q: What do they do? A: They are students!), so this afternoon I stuck my head into the music room and snapped a quick picture in between songs. A few weeks ago my dad asked me why I kept throwing the peace sign in the photos I sent home. I told him, "Well, when in Asia, do as the Asians." (I started out doing it ironically, but now I think it's just that thing I do when I see a camera.) He asked if it was true that Asians, or at least Koreans, have a Pavlovian reflex to make the peace sign when they see a camera. Since I quite literally stuck my head in the classroom, shouted, "Guys!" to get the kids attention and snapped the photo, I think it's safe to say that yes, yes they do.
Telling my students, "한국말 몰라요!" (translation=I don't know Korean) and watching their brains slowly implode. "But Teacher," they wail as they try to process me telling them I can't speak Korean IN Korean, which means that I can - in fact - speak Korean, at least a little. "You Korean speaking now!" I just smile, repeat myself and watch steam slowly pour from my kids' ears. They like the sneak up behind me and shout, "Teacher! Hello Korean speaking!" in an attempt to trick me into using Korean, therefore admitting that I DO speak Korean and allowing us to drop this ridiculous English speaking façade. This, plus my habit of answering question asked in Korean*, has my students CONVINCED that I actually can speak Korean and won't, just to be mean.
*This actually isn't that hard. There's a very finite number of questions I am regularly asked in class and it's not that hard to learn the necessary vocabulary to be able to understand them. Blah blah blah something in Korean 아니오 책 means, "Teacher, I have forgotten my textbook." I don't have to be able to understand what is undoubtedly a sob story about how the dog ate the textbook to be able to understand that sentence. No (아니오) and book (책) are sufficient. Plus, it's really not that difficult to guess a lot of what they're saying. While speaking the same language is nice, it's not actually that necessary for basic communication, and little kids are ridiculously expressive. Blah blah blah something in Korean 아니오 책, plus pointing down the hallways means, "Teacher, I have left my textbook in my classroom. Many apologize and, with your permission, I shall go fetch it. Be back, prepared for class, in a jiff." I nod, wave towards their classroom and tell them, "Okay, but next time, remember your book before you get to class." The student runs off, the entire exchange was conducted without either of us having the slightest clue what the other person was saying, the other students stare at me and exclaim, "Teacher! He Korean speaking! You understand! WHAT?!" All I'm saying is, kid, if you're doing a little jig and pointing down the hallway, I don't need to know the word 화장실 to know you need to take a leak.
[This was originally an email to some friends, since a few people have expressed some concern over the growing amount of crazy going on in North Korea and my proximity to them, but I figured I might as well post it here. It has been a crazy week in Korea.]
North Korea is getting a bit uppity with its weaponry. On Monday, North Korea tested something nuclear underground. On Tuesday, they launched some short-range missiles. On Wednesday, it was reported that a previously closed factory had reopened and was making weapons-grade plutonium again. The international community was all, "Oh bugger! I think North Korea is up to something!" and threatened to actually enforce the Proliferation Security Initiative, which would allow the US and other members to search and seize North Korean ships and ships entering North Korea territory. After dragging its heels for six years, South Korea finally joined the Proliferation Security Initiative on Wednesday, prompting Kim Jong-Il to respond, "Please, I will cut you," announce that North Korea was no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and threaten to invade South Korea if they so much as LOOKED at our cargo ships, Chiiiiiiiiiina, South Korea is touching me! Make it stop!
The situation is obviously tense, especially since North Korea has that bomb and Seoul is really close to the DMZ, but ultimately, unless the Dear Leader has actually gone off his rocker, North Korea isn't going to attack. South Korea would crush the North like bug. South Korea has a large, modern standing army and international support, while North Korea is struggling to feed its people. My friend Tony visited North Korea last year and he said the juxtaposition at the DMZ was staggering. On one size you have the ripped, six-foot South Korean soldiers holding the latest in weapons and on the other side you have the North Koreans who, while definitely being a bit more crazy about the eyes, are a foot shorter and holding weapons that are a few decades old. Plus, the political climate has changed since the last time North Korea attacked and this time, Russia and China (probably) aren't going to back them. And this is what North Korea does. They make threats to garner international aid, and while these are definitely bigger threats, in all honesty, this is probably more of the same. So yeah, an attack is most likely not coming and unless there is an actual attack, I'm not leaving. I'll just plan on not taking the DMZ tour any time soon. In general, this latest posturing is barely making the South Korean news because...
Last Saturday, Roh Moo-Hyun, the former president of Korea, killed himself by jumping off a cliff. He was under investigation for corruption and bribery. If the North Koreans aren't making much of an impact on the South Koreans, it's because they're all too preoccupied with Roh's death. It's a big damn deal. There has been an huge outpouring of grief over this man's death. I have never wanted to be able to read the newspapers more than I do right now because I don't understand WHY his death is so important, but I can tell that it obviously is. One Korean blogger compared it to JFK's death. (ETA: Ask A Korean has a great retrospective of Roh's life and his importance here.)
Roh's death has even affected my kiddos. I've had several groups of students try to explain what happened. Just for the record, watching a 5th grader try to explain suicide in broken English (with motions) is disturbing. (It went like this: “Roh Moo-Hyun mountain hiking. He fall. HE DIE!) On the other hand, listening to them explain corruption is hilarious. (A 5th grader told me that Roh was being investigated because he got a very expensive watch.)
Mourners for Roh Moo-hyun (노무현) near Gangnam Station in Seoul the night before his funeral. Each gu set up a memorial for people come and pay their respects to the former president. The line at Gangnam was five people deep and stretched at least a block.
A few weeks ago, when the Swine Flu hysteria was at its zenith in the US, I mentioned to my dad how relived I was that the first confirmed case of H1N1 virus in Korea was a Korean and not a foreigner. This was back when there only was one case of the Swine Flu in Korea, before the outbreak in Japan and before the H1N1 virus was any sort of threat to Asia. It was just a passing thought.
The reason I mention this is last week, a batch of 30+ native English speakers arrived in Korea and spent a week in training. One of them had Swine Flu. On Saturday, the Korean government started rounding up all the foreigners from the training and sent them to quarantine. Indefinitely. No one can get a straight answer, which could be a sign of something shady, but is most likely the result of the Korean medical system and the Korean government's way of dealing with foreigner (personal rights? telling people things? what's that?).
You'll note that I said that the government began to round up the foreigners. Not the Korean instructors who spent the week in the same close quarters with Patient Zero as the quarantined foreigners. Just the foreigners. Korea is a xenophobic society. Not on an individual level - I have personally faced very little discrimination - but as a society, Korea's not sure what they think about us, but it's not good. What I'm worried about is that this will escalate from quarantining people who have legitimately been exposed to an all-out witch hunt.
When I showed up to work this morning, before I'd seen the buzz on the Korean blogosphere (there's been no mention of the 50+ quarantined teachers in the news, but several of the quarantined teachers have blogs and it's all the English Korea blogs are talking about), my vice principal hurried up to me and asked how I felt. I told him I felt fine. He asked again, wanting to know if I was coughing and if I knew what the symptoms of the Pig Flu were. I told him no, but that I felt fine. He let it drop and I went about my business. (Keep in mind, I haven't been in the US for eight months and I haven't left Korea since before the Swine Flu outbreak. I have absolutely no greater chance of being infected that any other teacher at the school.)
This evening I read that the Ministry of Education is checking up on foreign teachers. Another source is saying that all public school teachers who arrived in May will be quarantined at home for a week. Another person said the Ministry of Education called his employer and asked if there were any Americans working there. There are several reports of hogwons (private academies that are super popular here), including some in my area, closing and their teachers being told not to leave their apartments. Quoting the Hub of Sparkle: So is this the latest xenophobic witch hunt? Last year, it was diseased American cows. This year it’s diseased American teachers?
I'm not really worried. I'm certainly not worried that I might catch the Swine Flu and from what I've read, the worst that could happen to me is that I get an enforced vacation and spend the week obsessively watching K-dramas and sleeping in. (When I put it that way, *cough, cough* I think I might have the piggy flu. Quarantine, yes please, make mine a double.) It's just annoying. It's annoying to be singled out for no valid reason. It's annoying that more fuel is being added to the already present xenophobic fire. And it's sure as hell is annoying for the teachers who are stuck in quarantine, all of whom where fresh off the plane and some of which weren't even at the training conference and where just tossed into quarantine because they were a foreigner and, don't you know, we all have the Pig Flu.
This is my computer at work. I'm teaching the 5th graders how to tell time in English (Lesson 6: I Get Up at Seven Every Day) and I made a PowerPoint with a bunch of pictures of clocks and the time written out with various bits missing. The yellow bits of paper are the sticky part of a Post-It note, which I stuck to my screen so I could align the pictures in the EXACT same spot on each slide. Because the very slight difference was harshing my PowerPoint mellow.
Happy 스승의 날! (There's all sorts of celebrations going on in these parts.) Today is Teacher's Day in Korea. I personally felt like that should result in me NOT having to be a teacher for the day, but that's not how it works in Korea. Instead, I was inundated with gifts (many many fake carnations, two heart-wrenchingly cute and grammatically suspect letters and several boxes of Vitamin C powder; either my kids think I'm looking a bit peaky or they just think that since I don't like kimchi, I must be on verge of death) and after class, all the teachers went on a hike and had dinner. A three hour long hike up a mountain in the rain. I've been cranky and NO NOT WANT about the hike all week. I don't like climbing mountains under the best of circumstances and hikes that don't end in the Great Wall of China are dead to me. Plus, school outings are always really awkward because no one will talk to me. (And yes I know that it's because I'm the foreigner and there's a language barrier and insert anthropological thoughts on insider/outsider culture here and I'm not really offended by it, but the end result is still the same and you never feel as lonely as when you're all by yourself in a big group of people.) Suffice to say, I wasn't exactly a happy camper when I showed up at the base of the mountain this afternoon. Shows you what I know; I ended up having a great time.
Instead of climbing the mountain, I "hiked" to a coffee shop with two of the kindergarten teachers. And by hiked, I mean we walked down the street to the taxi stand, caught a cab to Beomgye and spent the afternoon sitting in a cafe drinking mocha lattes, which is much more my scene. What happened was all the teachers were loitering in the parking lot at the base of the mountain, waiting for the stragglers to arrive. I was standing a bit apart when one of the kindergarten teachers sidled up to me and asked if I wanted to hike. (Her name is Hyun Ji, she's twenty seven, from Busan and until today, I didn't realize she spoke English.) I told her no, not so much, and we tried to avoid being seen. At one point we ducked behind a car. We were eventually caught and shooed down the trail, but Hyun Ji told me to walk very slowly and when the others teachers had industriously trekked out of sight, we abruptly about-faced and "hiked" to the main road, where we hailed a taxi and ten minutes later we were ordering our coffees. Hyun Ji and Joo Mi both teach kindergarten and speak some English and, combined with my Korean, the help of a cell phone dictionary and a LOT of hand motions, we were able to have a nice conversation while we waited for the others to finish their hike. We were even able to have a basic English/Korean lesson, and I know have two napkins of scribbled notes that I need to study. (We also weren't the only teachers to skip out on the hike. On our way to catch a taxi to the restaurant, we ran into one of the 6th grade teachers, who had gone shopping and was waiting for another teacher to come pick her up. And two of the 4th grade teachers were half an hour late to dinner. *g*)
Not only did I score enough Vitamin C to keep me healthy through the summer and manage to avoid getting soaked (I ended up merely damp), now I have some friends my age to talk to at school!
¡Very Belated Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Or, as it's known in Korea, 어린이 날. No, that doesn't mean May 5th. It means Children's Day, which was Tuesday. On Monday, I asked my students what they were doing for Children's Day. I got the expected roars of "CANDY!", "PRESENTS!" and "NO SCHOOL!", but one little boy told me, "I will receive the presents from my parents." I hope he made off like a bandit. <3 Children's Day is a national holiday in Korea, which meant I was free to spend it celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
Tomitillo, a new Mexican grill in Seoul, held a Cinco de Mayo festival. There was Mexican beer (something beside Hite and Cass, yes please), half price margaritas and ₩2,000 tacos! Plus, live music. Decent Mexican food is expensive here, so I was excited. I wasn't the only one. The celebrations lasted from noon to eight. I showed up at three and wound up in a very long, very slow line. It was almost all expats, which caused the Koreans passing by to stare at us with open bafflement. Luckily I met up with Marie, Greg and Robin, so I wasn't too bored while I waited in line for an hour and a half.
The food was, well, the food was okay. By the time I reached the front of the line, most of the food was gone. They ran out completely by five. I think the organizers were surprised by the turn out and the quantity of food people bought. I spoke to a manager who told me they had prepared 700 tacos that morning, which would have been enough if each person had only ordered one or two, but after months of very shelling out ₩30,000 for On the Border, I know everyone in my group was planning on ordering 16 tacos a piece. (Actually, Marie wanted 17 margaritas. Alas, they ran out of tequila before we got any and I we had to make do with Dos Equis and Negra Modelo.) I will definitely be going back when they're not swamped, especially since it's just down the street from Kyobo, one of the better English bookstores.
6-4 class girls running (well, jumping) during a Sports Day race.
Friday was Sports Day at my school. It was a big deal; the kids practiced their performances for weeks. Every Monday morning all the students would gather in front of the school to practice the calisthenics routine and my 4-4 class was canceled for all of April because their teacher scheduled Sports Day dance practice during class. *disgruntled look* On Thursday, I asked my fifth graders what day was it tomorrow. They chorused, "It's Friday!" Then I asked them what classes they had on Friday. They stared at me, perplexed, trying to figure out how to explain Sports Day. Finally, they settled on this: "Teacher, class one, PE. Class two, PE. Class three, PE. All class, PE!" I love making them explain things they don't know the words for and seeing what they come up with!
The day started a little awkwardly when I was late to the festivities. I got to school at 8:30 as normal and the vice principal told me to be in front of the school at 9:30. I went up to my office to get some work done and at 9:20 I heard the national anthem begin to play. I rushed downstairs, but by the time I got to the front entrance, the principal had already started a lengthy speech directly in front of the main doors. I considered sneaking out a side entrance and mingling with the crowd (I wasn't sure where I was suppose to stand), but since in Korea you don't wear your street shoes in school and my shoes were kept in a cubby directly behind where the principal was standing, I was stuck inside. I awkwardly loitered in the hall until the school nurse found me, realized I had no clue what was going on and took me under her wing for the day. She plied me with kimbap and coffee, and we hung out in the administration office so we could still watch the opening activities.
Sports Day started with a synchronized calisthenics routine. I had seen the students practice it before, but I didn't realize it was going to be set to music! It was like interpretive dance, or possible Thai Chi to music. Whatever it was, it was amazing. It was also a little eerie watching a thousand children who all already look a bit the same, what with the same hair color and skin tone and matching white outfits, all move in unison. It also raises the question of could we ever pull that off back home. I don't think so. Korea is a far more collective society than America.
There were your normal Sports Days events, such as tug o' war. The fourth graders played a version of tug o' war involving a tire with ropes attached. The vice principal (who is fluent in English) asked me what the event would be called in English. I badly wanted to tell him that if it involves a tire and a dirt field, it's called "wrastlin' wit a tire", but I restrained myself and told him tug-of-war. Then the sixth graders came out and played a more traditional game of tug o' war, and I had to explain that really, English doesn't have an official term for wrestling over a tire.
There were also less orthodox games, such as sticking third graders in hula hoops and making them run around. As someone who actually teaches third graders, I think this is BRILLIANT and would like to be able to use this in class. "Jinho, if you don't sit down, I will stick you in a hula hoop with a group of your peers and make you camper about traffic cones, so help me God!" (Number of words in that sentence my third graders know: 0)
There were also races. Each class (four per grade, except for sixth grade, which has five) had a race to determine who the fastest boy and girl was. The youngest children ran a short 60 m race, but the students got older, the races got longer. The sixth graders ran more of an obstacle course than a race. There was a tumbling section, hula hoops and hurtles. After the grade races, there was a school-wide relay race. The fastest eight students from each grade formed four teams (two boy teams, two girl teams) and ran a relay race to determine who the fastest students in the school were. There was also races for the parents, who were surprisingly intense. Several of the fathers wiped out completely and had to limp off the track.
In addition to the regular Sports Day events, each grade had a special performance. The kindergartners dressed up like the Korean flag and danced (while waving actual Korean flags) to the song "Dokdo is Our Land." Which, of course they did. Indoctrination starts early here. (Dokdo [English name: Liancourt Rocks] is a group of small islands in the East Sea that both Korea and Japan claim sovereignty over. Due to the bad blood between Korea and Japan, it's a BIG DAMN DEAL to the Koreans and they feel STRONGLY that Dokdo is Korean territory and they will not hesitate to tell you about it. Even my little fourth graders have asked me if I know that Dokdo belongs to Korea. I can guarantee you that those kindergartners have been taught about Dokdo and how it belongs to Korea.) The sixth graders performed a dance with colored flags. They were originally suppose to perform buchaechum (Korean fan dance), but the teachers decided to switch with the fifth graders and my sixth grade girls were PISSED about it. I can understand why; buchaechum is so much cooler than waving colored flags about.
The second grade and fifth grade's special performances were traditional Korean dances. The second graders (top photo) performed a dance to a traditional Korean songs that, I must admit, sounds a little like someone strangling a goat. (My office is next to the music room, so after seven months here I'm pretty well versed in traditional Korean music. Most of it I like, but oh, this song is horrible.) The fifth graders danced the buchaechum. The outfits they're wearing are called hanboks, and are the traditional Korean outfit. The students wore their own hanboks; each outfit was different. I made an absolute fool of myself cooing over how pretty they were.
This is Korea, so no Sports Day would be complete without a Taekwondo demonstration. The best of the fourth and fifth graders gave a Taekwondo demonstration in the gym after lunch. It was set to music, including Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Queen's "We are the Champions." The kids were really good. Maybe I should think twice about reprimanding them in class. *g* There was also a Chinese dance troupe that performed, hence the Chinese on the banner behind the kids.
I talked with my fifth graders a lot during Sports Day. I ended up watching the festivities next to where they were sitting, and the second I moved away from the nurse, I was instantly mobbed by students. They crowded around me, challenging me to games of 가위바위보 (kawi bawi bo = rock-scissors-paper!), stealing my camera and asking me as many questions as their limited English would allow them. Since we weren't in the classroom, I used my pidgin Korean, which sent them into paroxysms of delight. (Oh my God! Teacher said 안녕하세요 (hello). Aaaaaaaah!! Let's go tell all our friend and spend the next hour begging her to say it again. Aaaaaaah!!) Because my classes are so large, I rarely get a chance to interact with students one-on-one for an extended period of time, so this was a good chance to get to know some of my newer students.
![[if it keeps on rainin' // levee's goin' to break]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2595/3730420935_638909eb9b.jpg)
