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.
I went to Ansan Asia Town twice this week. (When Tina first called it Ansan Asia Town, I laughed and said, "We're in Korea. It's all Asia town," but according to the internet, she was right and the area is called Ansan Asia Town. My bad, Tina.) The city I live in, Ansan (a suburb of south of Seoul), has the largest foreign population in Korea, mostly laborers from SE Asia or Southern Asia. At Ansan Station, they formed Ansan Asia Town, a several block district full of ethnic restaurants, supermarkets and 3923590 places to buy an international calling card. (For any K-bloggers reading this, it's like Itaewon without the jacked up prices, American military presence or the Quiznos.) To get there, take Line 4 south (towards Oido) to Ansan Station. Take Exit 1, cross under the street and have at it.
On Wednesday, Tina and I went to the Thai market in Ansan Asia Town. Tina is Thai and wanted to make curry. I like Thai food and am incapable of cooking for myself. It was a good match. We bought several heavy bags worth of Thai food and carted them back to Tina's apartment. I chopped the vegetables (see above: peas, mushrooms and eggplant) while Tina did the cooking. We made Thai stirfry and oh my Lord, was it ever spicy!
Tina forgot that Thai peppers were spicier than Korean peppers, and consequently almost killed me. It was one of those meals where I couldn't stop crying and drank an entire litre of water, but it was too tasty to stop eating. I went back to Asia Town yesterday night with Marie and Greg. We ended up eating at an Indonesian restaurant because none of us had every tried Indonesian food before. We're pretty sure the place was a front for a brothel and as the only two women in the dinning area, Marie and I got a lot of interested looks. The food was tasty, even if we only got what the waiter could translate. (Rice. And chicken. And some fried rice called nasi goreng.) We were able to also order some fried fritter type thing (the internet tells me they are called gorengan) by pointing to another diner's table. We ate the fritters with a sweet viscous soy sauce we called Soylasses. (It's thicker than soy sauce, thinner than molasses. It's sweet, it's soy, its soylasses!) After dinner we wandered around for a while and salivated at all the other restaurant choices: Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, Filipino. I might even be able to find some Middle Eastern restaurants there. I want to do my own version of Man Bites World.
