Conversation: an uninspiring title, but a thrilling entry nonetheless

So, now that I've successfully completed all of my conversation classes at least once, I figured I could write a little bit about it. In total I have four conversation classes, one for first year, one for second year, one for teachers who don't teach English, and one for teachers who do. The first one I had, of course, was the one with the first years. Not having any clue what was going to happen, I just went to the class (last period on Monday) prepared for anything (in actuality I was prepared for nothing, but sometimes this is the same thing). There were about 15 students aged 14 (although I believe this means they are actually 13, apparently you are a year older in Korea, which means I am 24 turning 25, a fact I don't find enjoyable). So pretty much that first class consisted of us all looking at each other and the students giggling. I did manage to have some sort of conversation for 30 minutes, that's how I know how old they are. I tried in vain to learn their names. Once I mispronounce them they start laughing and can't stop long enough to teach me the right way. Their favorite subject, it turned out, is English. Who knew? So after a half hour of students either laughing at me or staring at me like I'm from another planet, I was a bit more prepared for the second years who I met on Friday.

The year difference in their ages was apparent, as this bunch was not nearly as wily or giggly as the first years. They even managed to make several sentence answers to my questions. Although, I was much better prepared this time, so in this class we made name cards and I had them draw things they liked as well, to talk about to the group. Some had some very nice artwork. The girls like eating, sleeping and some famous Korean people (some of them like sports too, or guinea pigs). The boys like various movies, have dreams to be doctors, scientists and soccer players, and some like to sing. One of the girls wanted my phone number so she could send me messages. Unfortunately, I haven't memorized my phone number yet.

I repeated this exercise yesterday with the first years, and although several of the boys started drawing random pictures of each other and some of the girls didn't finish, the results were still quite good. One of the boys likes sunflowers, and one likes roses. One of the girls likes Oprah Winfrey, although I think this might be because she (meaning Oprah) is black. Anyway, there was a discussion about black people (African-American we call them, I said, Negroes!, they said) and there's a nice drawing of a black woman on her name tag. I am optimistic for both these classes. After all, these are students specially selected out of 300 to be in my class, so most of them are willing to speak English and able to do so. Next we are going to talk about movies.

The adult classes are quite fun and a good way for me to learn about Korea. There are three women in the non-English teacher class. They apparently have only been speaking English for a year, as the teacher before me started teaching them. Considering this, their English is quite good. Today we had various questions about beauty and I learned that one of the women had plastic surgery on her eyes (very common in Korea, I guess the women want double eyelids, I'm not sure why), but only takes 10 minutes to get ready in the morning. Apparently they don't have eating disorders, but the men (the young men) like to lift weights to get buff. We also discussed mirrors because disconcertingly, there are several giant mirrors in the halls and in the classrooms, yet another indication of how important appearance is in Korea. Although they did say that even though they don't like piercing beyond the ears, they wouldn't leave a shop if someone had a lip piercing, etc.

I only have two English teachers in my last class. Ms Park, my coteacher, and Miss Doo, my favorite. Apparently Ms Park has some sort of book with topics in it for the class, although I haven't seen it yet. It's really easy to find already made lists on the internet though, so I'll probably bring my beauty questions to that class tomorrow, just in case :). From our last class I learned that Ms Park is moving apartments (to a bigger one, of course. I asked and apparently she thought this a silly question, her children are gone from the house though, so it seemed she could have been moving to a smaller one...) and Miss Doo lives with her parents (which is what all the unmarried women do, the teacher in my other class likes this arrangement because she can save money), but is lonely, likes to hike in the mountains and always has enough underwear (her parents own an underwear store).

Due to the personal style of these classes, I've been enjoying them very much and look forward to teaching them.