Read From the Beginning
I had a request for the blog title, and it is true in the sense that Gunsan and the surrounding area are considered the breadbowl of Korea. Although if you drive five minutes from the city you will find either a mountain or the ocean, and there aren't more pigs than people. There are just a lot of people.
I must say that I had a productive Friday. I got to school, in the snow, and enjoyed the snow out the window while I painted my nails. Then I enjoyed the snow while I watched some TV on my computer. Then I enjoyed the snow while I knitted a hat and listened to an audio book on my iPod. Then I continued to enjoy the snow while I chatted with Laura Gibbons my roommate. Then I got to enjoy both the chat and the snow while I ate a whole sweet potato, freshly cooked who knows where and handed to me in a plastic bag. Now I am enjoying the snow while typing this blog post and will likely enjoy the snow while I finish a TV show and then enjoy it as I walk in its midst to the bus stop.
Next week will likely be more of the same, although I can't say for sure about the snow, or the sweet potato (I never realized that sweet potatoes are in fact sweet), and likely my nails will not need to be painted until at least the end of the week.
It sure is rough being an English teacher in Korea.
I have to leave in a few minutes to find out how much "vacation school" I'm going to be teaching during the upcoming winter break, but just wanted to share a hosik experience I had last week, which included:
- Making a quick stop with Mr. Song at his Secret Garden. He owns a couple acres of land in Gunsan (close to our apartment) that he has turned into a wildflower extravaganza... he is apparently one of the leading wildflower experts in Korea (he's the head of a sizable internet group), and grows over 300 varieties throughout his garden. Of course everything is pretty much dormant now, but the garden still offers a nice retreat, and I can't wait to see it in Spring.
- Hiking straight up a mountain for 3 hours (yes, don't ask me how, but the mountain was uphill both ways--more like up-cliff, actually).
- Feasting at a raw seafood restaurant.
Now the raw seafood restaurant works like this: you walk in, take your shoes off, and look at the fish and eel and octopus and squid and jellyfish you are about to eat, swimming around in a tank. Then you think "nice fishtank." Then you realize that those are actually the fish you are about to eat. And then you eat them.
And yes, when I say fish I do mean octopus and squid and jellyfish and eel and oysters, and eveyr other kind of seafood you can imagine. All raw.
My basic rule of thumb is if a Korean eats it, I eat it. I kept my rule, but not easily. I mean, the raw fish was nothing, and the raw squid was actually pretty tasty. But when it came time to eat a thing they called "young octopus," I had to hold my stomach down. "Young octopus" is a whole octopus that is very slimy, and looks half-formed, and has large eyeballs that stare up at you and say "Why? WHY? WHY?"
On a different note entirely, some of you may have noticed that we've switched over to Flickr for our photo hosting... not quite as integrated with our website, but our lousy hosting plan just wasn't handling the images very well. Anyway, the "Photos" link at the top of the blog will now take you to our flickr "photostream."
Despite, or perhaps because of, my week requiring me to do absolutely nothing, it seems to have been one of the more stressful ones since coming to Korea. Mostly because at one point I thought my principal was going to take away all my vacation time and make me teach vacation school the whole time. This however was skillfully averted by Ms Park, who also did not want to come in on her vacation to teach, and so I am back to having many weeks of vacation. Apparently the crisis ended when she was able to make the principal laugh. Whether he was laughing himself thinking I should teach nine weeks of vacation school, or if Ms Park told a funny joke, I shall never know. But I am very grateful for her skills in getting me out of lots of work. I guess the principal still expects me to "better myself" like the other teachers do during the holiday. Ms Park goes to the library to study English. I shall work very hard to practice my English at home with Jordan. Perhaps I will watch some movies for extra practice.
Aside from the mini-crisis with the principal, the week consisted mostly of my lunching out with the ladies. On Tuesday I went out with the three women in my conversation class. They took me to a traditional Korean restaurant where they brought us about 500 mini plates of food. I see now why the Koreans kept talking about our dishwasher when we moved in, there are so many dishes I can't comprehend cleaning them. The conversation at this lunch focused mainly on when I would be having babies (they were shocked when I said it would be at least five years, I wonder what they would have done if I had said never) and what chores Jordan does. The women here seem to have heard that Western men do things around the house and always ask me what Jordan does. I then give them an impressive list of things, while they oooh and tell me he is very good (and handsome!). After lunch we went to the cinema to see the new James Bond, which was well received, although one of the women prefers Pierce Brosnan.
Yesterday I was invited to a housewarming party. Ms Park was very excited to use the word 'housewarming' because we had recently been discussing it. The party started at another traditional restaurant in the country that is actually owned by one of the teachers at my school. There were about 20 women who were invited, and I learned that the women who moved was treating us all to lunch. The restaurant was very cute, although it smelled bad because they eat this one fermented bean that smells terrible. I always cringe when we have it for lunch because the whole cafeteria smells bad. I eat really fast on these days. Luckily, we ate in a side room which didn't smell like smelly fermented bean. We had a big pot on the table with lots of vegetables in it which they turned into soup. I ate a mushroom which was not tasty. I ate some tofu which was. We then went back to town to view the new apartment. Everyone was very impressed by this "luxury" apartment and we walked around oohing and ahhing. After some fruit and tea it was time to go home.
Today I went to lunch with all the English teachers at the school, four of whom I teach with and one who only teachers third grade so I don't know her. We went to a so called "Western" restaurant, which means we got to eat with a fork. I was glad the food was at least a little western since my ability to eat Korean food is rapidly decreasing the more I eat it. These ladies wanted to know about Jordan's cooking skills, and Ms Park told me I should talk lots so they could practice their listening skills. This conversation ended with Ms Park telling the other ladies my life story in Korean. Good times. In all I've decided I like going to Korean parties because I'm not actually expected to be social. I can just sit there and smile.
It's going to be rough next week when I have to go back to teaching and can't sit around knitting hats, making Christmas tree ornaments and going out to lunch. I've scheduled a viewing of "The Grinch" in all 18 of my classes. We'll see how it goes. I might have to switch to Frosty half way through.
My family has a long standing tradition of reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol aloud every year, sometime in December. It's quite a good tradition, so we decided to continue it... with Mathew, by fishlight. We ordered pizza, made some fresh-out-of-the-juicer apple cider, lit our fake fire (and some real candles), and had a very good time.
And so, without pomp or even realization by me, my first semester in Korea has ended. I thought I had one more class today, but as I got up to go Miss Kim informed me that there is no fifth class. What the rest of the school is doing I don't know, I will watch some Veronica Mars for a few hours before the weekend actually starts and I can leave. We have three days of school next week too, although as far as I can tell I won't be doing anything but watching more tv shows and doing some final preparation for my vacation school which starts a week from today (also known as the day after Christmas). I have most of my plans done though, as I hurried through them this week because I thought I'd be teaching next week. Now I just have lots of free time.
My Sauter uncles, aunts and cousins should be excited to know that they will be part of an activity in my vacation school where the students will have to reconstruct my family tree from clues I give them. Many other thrilling things are planned like playing Scattergories and watching High School Musical.
This week involved going to to class and watching the Grinch many times. I played Frosty in my last class and they were the only ones who did not stare quietly at the tv. The Grinch put my students in a spellbound daze, Frosty made them turn to their neighbor and yell loudly. I don't know if it was the movie or the class that was the dud, all I know is that I would rather watch The Grinch 5 million times than watch Frosty twice.
At some point there was talk of more snow this weekend. It seems fairly warm at the moment, although you never know what will blow in from China, or wherever our weather comes from. Even if it did snow this weekend, it would likely melt before Christmas actually arrives.
The school is unusually quiet. Maybe today was a half day and all the students have left. Many of the teachers seems to be missing as well. There's not much to do in Korea but wonder what is going on and hope that at some magical moment in the future it becomes clear. Or watch Veronica Mars.
Last Friday was my last day teaching at Napo Middle School until March 5th, 2009, when we will start a new year. The Korean school year starts in the Winter (usually February, but delayed this year by holidays), rather than the fall, so the winter break here is equivalent to the summer break in American schools, and lasts two months (with a mystifying brief week in the middle to celebrate graduation); the summer break is only a month long.
My classes on the last day consisted of watching Transformers and playing Soccer (I proved to be quite out of shape, but was still able to make an amazing goal which won the hearts of the graduating third-year's forever). Anyway, in honor of the last day I have decided to finally post some pictures and a video of the school which I took about a month ago. See the flickr album for the full set of photos.
I really enjoyed teaching at Napo (the small class sizes and laid-back atmosphere are wonderful), and am looking forward to going back.
Vacation school season is upon us. I've taught three days and found them to be quite enjoyable. It's quite a bit different than my regular routine since I have 20 students for four hours everyday for ten days. It's definitely nice to see the students long enough to learn who they are, and it's an even bigger bonus because only the really good students get the privilege to come to vacation school. And there is no boring textbook reading since I planned the class. Of course this means that I had to spend lots of time making plans since all the instruction I had was "there will be vacation school." So we do many amusing things like playing games, writing stories, and watching High School Musical (tomorrow Step Up!). Despite all the fun games I have tried to get my students to play, their favorite thing to do seems to be to write stories. I give them prompts, or certain words they have to use and then let them write stories with a few friends. Needless to say the results are always amusing, particularly when one group drew my name out of the basket of words. Sacrificing myself for the enjoyment of the class is how I looked at it. On the upside I got to be a famous singer in Canada. On the downside one of the students in class was also written into the story as a famous singer who loved me, but alas only received kicks from the woman he loved. Everyone has a good time and the students are all well behaved and interested, so the time goes by pretty fast (especially when we play Scattergories and I give out candy).
In fact word of my stellar teaching skills has spread and today I had a guest Korean teacher in to observe me and my teaching. I feel quite guilty when this happens because I rarely have more than a small plan of what I'm going to be doing and don't often feel like it's that useful. But I've sure impressed Ms Park, whose friend came all the way from Jeonju (the capital of our illustrious province) to watch me work my magic. And believe me, there is magic.
Yesterday I completed my last day of vacation school, at least vacation school at my school. We had a good final class yesterday. I'd been having them write every morning about various topics and for our final class I had them compare and contrast American high schools to Korean ones. This wasn't an entirely fair question since they were basing their ideas of American high schools on High School Musical and Step Up, the two movies we watched in class. But all the students seemed to be in agreement that they would prefer to go to school in America because the students have more freedom. They don't have to wear uniforms, and they have free time to do things besides study. Several students wrote woeful tales of studying all day and night so they could go to college. One girl expressed the one difficulty of going to school in America to be that she didn't have enough clothes. The other day we had a debate about whether or not Korea was the best place to live. After a thrilling debate by my divided class I gave them a few minutes to come up with the best reason to defend their side. The Pro side Korea was the best place to live becauuse their ancestors had died for the country. The Con side said that students in Korea don't have any free time because when school is over they have to go to the academy and study all night. In any case, there seems to be some resentment amongst the students about all the studying they have to do. And I don't blame them. It just encourages me to spend all my class time doing fun things, since they seem to have the boring things covered.
We had a scavenger hunt around the school as our last activity, which seemed to be a big hit despite the fact that it was rather chaotic and several of the clues mysteriously went missing. They had no idea what to do because I guess they don't have scavenger hunts in Korea. And instead of following the clues, several groups would see a clue and grab it. Then they would show up at my desk claiming to be done. So I would ask how many clues they had. "We have three clues!" "Well," I would say, "You are supposed to have 14, so go look again." But everyone had a fun time running around and then we had pizza, so the day was a success.
Next week we have another English camp that includes all the best English students in Gunsan. Jordan and I will be teaching an elementary class together. Since we've never taught elementary students before and don't know what ages these kids will be, it should be an interesting time.