Blogger Notes

Korea – Week 3

This week started off with a stunted attempt to go to church. I wanted to visit Yeoido Full Gospel Church an Assemblies of God congregation with the world’s largest membership. For no good reason, the church doesn’t have exact directions on their English website. I guess, like, you know, they’re the biggest so of course everybody knows where it is, right? Right. Cut to act three, even if they do know, they can’t explain it in English if you get off the wrong subway stop! I spent a few hours at Yeoido community park watching people enjoy the summer afternoon. Further attempts to resume next week…

My first week of a real teaching schedule was quite an adventure. I had my lesson plans for the 1^st and 2^nd grades (US 10th/11th) worked out pretty well so those classes went pretty smoothly. However, Monday was my first teachers’ class. Basically, most of the non-English teachers haven’t had to use English since college and they thought it would be fabulous if I led a conversation class for them…except they weren’t really ready for conversation. In an American classroom, you typically jump in and ask people to challenge themselves from day one. Until recently (and still only 50% of the time) that wasn’t the case in Korea. My “fun” lesson plan fell flat. I’ll have something boring for them next week. ; )

I only had three days of teaching the girls this week because of special activities on Thursday and Friday. I think in general, most of us in the West buy into Asian countries’ PR campaign about how well mannered and studious the kids are. This would be a good time to point out that I’ve never seen so many kids going god-knows-where all times of the night on public transport on a weeknight (except NYCity.) I had the misfortune of teaching one of my classes without my co-teacher and quickly discovered that students have no qualms about brushing their hair, chatting and texting during lessons! I’m still deciding if I’m more impressed at their gall or offended that my lesson wasn't keeping their attention…

Wednesday night, Liz and I met another teacher living in our building. He’s a (tall) Mexican kid from Chicago who in four days of living here already figured how to get rid of his trash! While this may be an issue of common sense in the States, Korea has an elaborate trash disposal system a step down from Japan’s, in which food, recyclables (categorized by type) and general trash have to be placed separately. This, in addition to purchasing approved trash bags!

Thursday was my school’s anniversary. For some reason in Korea, that’s a cause for celebration. The girls were off the hook for a day. Students from different programs came up with activity areas. Student art and sculptures were on display. Some classes sold snacks. I spent some “free-speaking” time with the English Club. Some art design students offered nail painting with detailed designs. Japanese class students had a Japanese area. The hospitality industry girls were acting as waitresses and mixing cocktails. Yup, cocktails. Our school is serious about the hospitality! We have a mock hotel reception area, bedroom, ballroom and cocktail bar. (See Exhibit A.)

All in all, it was a pretty wild day at school. The only American comparison I could think of is an afterprom party. I decided to go ahead and leave at 415 or so. From what I understand, I missed the dance team, cheerleaders and teachers’ performances! Maybe next year. lol!

Friday was physical fitness day. Anybody else remember those horrid Presidential Fitness Tests we had back in the day? Same concept except they only have to run 50 meters! Once again, I had no classes. I spent most of the day hanging out with one of my co-teachers and occasionally timing the girls as they did push-ups. Since it was the day before Chuseok, the most major Korean holiday all year, we had a half day.

My super cool thirty-something coworkers treated me to lunch at T.G.I. Friday’s (again!) Thank God I love that place…then off to the movies to see Mama Mia. I was beginning to get a sore throat but I still felt ok.

On Saturday, I traversed down to check out a palace and be touristy. It was…touristy. Basically, there were very old buildings. And a conservatory built in the 1800’s or so. The most interesting thing to me was observing how the modern city of Seoul has built up around the palace site. Directly across the street is a large private hospital. Around the corner are several convenience stores. The contrast was notable.

Other than that, I spent Saturday warding off a flu/cold combination and wishing I was out having fun! I’m (95%) better now but “I was sick” was pretty much my resounding refrain for “What did you do over the holiday?”

And on that note, I’ll wrap it up. ; ) More to come!

Love and hugs,

-taryn

Ok, the truth is, I can’t really break it down like I want to in the emails I send to my parents and former coworkers. I mean, some stuff everybody doesn’t need to know cause it just sounds petty…or ghetto. Take your pick.

With that out of the way, I gotta admit, I haven’t felt homesick yet. People keep asking me if I’m homesick and I’m not. Not at all. I wish they would stop asking because it’s making me feel like some sort of social anomaly, an emotional handicap, a rootless nomad…all of which could possibly be true…so let’s stop talking about it already.

In other random news, I’m beginning to thing the words, “pretty”, “beautiful”, “sexy”, et al. have no meaning in Korea. Sorry, call me shallow but ain’t no way some of the folks I’ve heard called “beautiful” out here would get the same back home…myself included.

While I’m on the subject, it would be worth pointing out that the concept of “sexual harassment” hasn’t been introduced in my lovely land of residence. I’m not even mad about it. I’m hella amused. For some reason, nobody’s told the babies that yelling, “Teacha, sexi!” while complementary, isn’t really appropriate in the classroom. lol!

Also, every other native-born Korean I meet thinks they’re a personal matchmaking service. One way or another, they try to find out if you have a boyfriend and insist that they know the most decent, available guy that you should meet. This includes students.

Just today I got, “You should meet my middle school English teacher. He’s a very good guy.” and “My P.E. teacher likes you,”—which, unfortunately, is probably true. Lawd. Lawd. I’m not even trynna go there with workplace romance! Dude’s 39, which is already too much going on AND according to Mr. Paek (a.k.a. My Korean daddy), dude has a girlfriend!

Come on now! I’ma need him not to be in my mouth like he is. I’ve watched too many K-dramas and Bollywood films to know that a guy who offers to carry extremely light objects for you—light as in, 7 pieces of paper and a miniature shopping bag—is trying to do more than welcome you to the neighborhood. And he know he’s wrong cause when Mr. Paek stopped me in the hall, he conveniently dipped out!

Right, so Mr. Paek, rocks. He’s 50, hella old school and every now and again he drops some necessary knowledge, such as the girlfriend thing. He always asks whether or not I’ve eaten, whether or not I called my family, whether or not I have someone to go do this or that with me…He’s like my real dad only more willing to have a conversation. What’s not to like?

I’m digging the traditional culture and am SO glad my mom was pretty strict about enforcing the “respect your elders” thing with us. Thus far I’ve been able to avoid any major faux pas.

I’m daily amused or interested by something. We’ll see how long it lasts but for now, I’m just trying to make it to payday!

I had intended to start another blog once I actually got to Korea but I think this one will serve its purpose well enough.

Basically, there will be both the friendly letters that I send home to family and "what I really think" a.k.a. All The Things You Don't Feel Like Explaining To People Who Don't Get Your Sense of Humor and/or Don't Share Your Point of View.

Good times.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, shall we continue?

[This is a copy of an email I sent to family and friends back home.]

Korea - Day 14

Week two was pretty light. I'm SO fortunate to have a school where I was encouraged to do planning rather than be thrown into teaching on day one.

The first couple of days were filled with greeting: greeting the principal of my school and our sister school, greeting the other teachers, greeting the students, meeting the church pastor.

I also had to get a health check (as per government requirements). It was nothing physically invasive but answering, "Do you have any communicable diseases?" etc. when the little man who was asking the questions looked like he was embarrassed for me, was quite an experience.

So far, I've only eaten cafeteria food once and that only for posterity's sake. (I get the feeling the principal had something to do with that since he asked what I thought of it!) Every other day so far, one or more of my coworkers has taken me out and treated me. I think I'm going to owe a lot of people lunch when I get paid!

I'm still adjusting to my small living space but I'm hoping it'll teach me how not to accumulate useless stuff. Liz (the other teacher in my building) and I met up with a couple of other English teachers in our neighborhood for dinner a couple of times last week. One of the other girls is having a tough time with her head teacher and it reminded me how truly blessed I am.

On last Wednesday, Liz and I were invited to an orchestra concert by one of my coworkers. His daughter was performing. Unfortunately, what we thought would be a 1-hour subway ride turned into nearly two hours of transport! We were extremely late to the concert (45 minutes) and after watching the performance on monitors for 15 minutes, we decided to make our way home since it was already after 9pm! That's when things got interesting.

I should point out that our neighborhood is pretty calm for a major metropolis. We actually have tree-lined streets and a little park with hiking trails around the corner. Downtown Seoul is a completely different story. We transferred trains to one of the most central lines at around 1015pm and experienced rush hour traffic!

Liz and I missed the first two trains that came by because we chickened out. Basically, the train was like that video of rush hour Tokyo without the professional pushers. After the second train, we bolstered up, got near the front of the line and got shoved all the way into the train! We rode shoulder to shoulder with random strangers for 15-20 minutes before the train emptied out enough where we had some room. Still, we were standing up until our next transfer.

All in all, my second week in Korea was interesting but mostly uneventful. Shopping has been quite a challenge because of the language barrier and made worse by limited selection. Trying to stock my apartment with basic necessities feels like a part-time job most days. (At this point it would be appropriate to mention that after being so excited about my local KyoChon chicken, they did duly disappoint. Seriously, their chicken wings were winglets! I think they killed the little guys before they hit maturity. *sigh*)

My school has asked me to spend 4 of my working hours doing an afterschool English club in addition to 3 hours of teachers' conversation class. They're definitely trying to squeeze out every penny's worth of work from me. I feel like a one woman English academy! Various teachers randomly stop me in the hall to ask for correct pronunciation and grammar, no joke!

Next week (the week I'm writing this) is my first week of teaching so there'll be a few more interesting details then. Sometime between now and October 1, I'll be settled in [and begin to finish tackling my screenplay!]

Hope everyone's doing well.

Love and hugs,
-taryn

p.s. Just thought I'd include the photo of my bathroom for kicks. Yes, you too can wash clothes, take a shower and use the toilet all at the same time, courtesy of a connection from your sink---that is if the mildew and gaudy mirror decor don't attack you first! :p