asia
A few weeks ago, my country school had its Sports Day. It was very thrilling and I got to go home early.
So last week we got to skip two days of school to go to Korea's largest festival. The festival, as I understand it, centers around an ancient shamanistic tradition of celebrating 3 deities. We took part in welcoming the deity to the festival. It comes in the form of a tree, where it lives, which the people cut down and parade through the city. We were behind the tree, with out lanterns, dressed in our Korean hanboks. And unlike most places I have been, the Koreans really love when foreigners take part in their culture (ie: wear their clothes, eat their food, celebrate their festivals) and everyone was very happy to see us and wanted to take our picture. I posed for several during the parade. It is nice to know that I will be in some random person's scrapbook of the festival. Please enjoy these pictures of random people that we took:
Jordan working on his wishes.
This lady wanted to take a picture with me, even though she didn't have a camera.
Jordan and Matt enjoying the time off from school, perhaps a little too much?
This last week we went up to the far north-eastern province of Gangwon-do to take party in the largest and longest-held Korean cultural festival, Danoje. We spent the night and were taken on tour as part of the special week-long foreigner program (the festival itself is a month-long afair).
Here's a little video of the experience (pictures will be up shortly):
Friday was Teacher's Day here in Korea, so to celebrate we went camping with our friends--Matt and Mihye (England, Korea), Jim and Carol (New Zealand), Edwin and Laura (Canada), and Vicky (England). Actually, to say "camping" is probably a bit of a stretch, since we slept in cabins complete with toilets, showers, TV's and, um, our Wii, and had an ice cream (and beer) man located conveniently down the road; but hey, let's not split semantics ;). We had two cabins, with guys in one and girls in the other, and spent two nights.
Anyway, the weekend was a lot of fun. It rained the whole time, but that didn't stop us (slash Edwin) from playing around with making fires and roasting hot dogs under the nearby gazebo, or playing scrabble and bickering over the validity of "ick," or being slaughtered by the girls in Pictionary, or learning how to really play Charades from masters Matt and Marisa, or trading every bit of trivia (slash "what do you call a man with X on his head" jokes) we knew as we fell asleep in the Manly cabin.
Marisa, our grill, and our cabins:
At Edwin's campfire. Left to right: Me, Marisa, Carol (being blocked by Marisa), Mihye, Matt, Vicky, Laura, and Edwin (the next couple of photos are courtesy of Jim):
Learning the intricacies of "water, log, fire" from Matt. He doesn't realize that his log's about to be washed away by my double river action:
Getting demolished in a girls-vs-guys game of pictionary. Our mistake started at "how about best 2 out of 3" and ended with "best 5 out of 9?"
The setting, half an hour outside of Gunsan:
More pictures here.
At least for me, May has been the month of incredible relaxedness (see I even have time to make up words). It started with preparation for midterms, which meant that I didn't have to teach. Then we had midterms, which meant I still didn't have to teach. Then we went on a somewhat wild goose chase in Seoul to get a document from the American Embassy and I missed two days of school. Then we had a day off for Children's Day. This week, my first graders were gone for "training," then my second graders left for a trip. So by Wedensday I had no students to teach. Today was rough, I had to teach four classes. But tomorrow is Teacher's Day, so we have no school, and I don't have school on Monday either. Then my country school is having Sports Day next Friday and Thursday is practice day, so I don't have to teach again. Then the last week of May is the festival for foreigners, for which I get to miss another two days of school.
I will now count all the classes I've taught this month...In the last three weeks I have taught 19 classes. Normally I teach 21 every week. And May isn't even over.
Other small May benefits have been cropping up too, like getting grape soda for Sports Day and a pile of rice cakes for Teacher's Day. I have also started digital scrapbooking since I spend hours sitting at my desk staring at my screen. This, it turns out, is quite fun, so I'm hoping that May turns into a never ending month of happiness. In fact, I've been having such a good time being a slacker at school I haven't started celebrating the month of my birthday, which I could start celebrating anytime, but I've just been busy celebrating May Slacker Days.
To celebrate Teacher's Day tomorrow we are going "camping" with some friends. We're going to barbeque and hope it doesn't rain. We're going to bring the Wii in case. This is camping Korean style.
While we were up in Seoul last weekend to get our certificates of residency from the American embassy, we decided to stop in for a service at Yoido Full Gospel Church. Yoido has the largest congregation of any church in the world, with over 850,000 members--it will probably be the first true "Gigachurch." They have around eight services on Sunday (we went to the 3pm one), and have live translation into 8 languages via headsets. For those of you who are interested, here's a look inside the church:
So, as you may or may not have realized from our twitter activity, Jordan and I spent the weekend in Seoul. We had a long weekend, or I should say Jordan had a long weekend, Thursday and Friday off for exams, Monday off as a gap day between the weekend and Children's Day (a national holiday in Korea). I had school on both Friday and Monday, but thanks to the crazy hours of the American Embassy, got to skip both for an extended weekend.
Friday saw the failure of performing our tasks at the embassy since it decided to close for Korean Labor Day (as far as we can tell, the only place that did, our students remember had exams). We then had a tasty Mexican lunch in Itaewon and stuffed ourselves so full that we couldn't do anything for the rest of the day.
Saturday we enjoyed a rainy day visiting Changgyeonggun Palace:
In the afternoon we visited Insadong for some shopping:
And got to see Anika and Jon, friends of mine from Bethel, who currently teach in Seoul:
On Sunday, the sun came out and we visited Changdeokgung Palace:
Which had a Secret Garden:
And in the afternoon we attended yeouido Full Gospel Church, the largest church in the world. Monday morning saw us successful at the Embassy (which miraculously decided to open) and a brief shopping trip to Namdaemun Market before we got back on the train for Gunsan. The trip ended wonderfully with a stop for schwarma from an Iraqui man which was luckily just by the subway station.
Today we had a great picnic on the roof with many English teachers friends, complete with a quiz game. Tomorrow it is back to school, which may be a little rough after such a lovely holiday.
To see more picture from Seoul, click here.
Today's title comes from this morning's "English Possible" on the radio.
I'm at school finishing up the end of a busy week. I spent almost the entire week at my desk uploading an organizing old pictures on flickr. Yesterday offered a brief change of scenery when I had to go into the classroom to help monitor exams. The Koreans have a big cheating problem. Mostly because when they catch cheaters, they don't do anything. This becomes a problem for me in class because I acutally want the students to do their own crossword puzzle, not wait for the one smart kid to do it and then have 35 students copy the answers down. I want to explain to them how this makes the whole thing pointless, as I've only made the crossword puzzle for their own enjoyment, so if they're going to copy it they might as well just sit there. However, I think that doing things for enjoyment in school is completely beyond the comprehension of my middle school students.
So anyway, I caught a cheater in my first exam period, although then I didn't know what to do because the other teacher in the class didn't speak English and I didn't want to disturb the students taking the exam by making a big hubub. What to do? I eventually had to go have a big point and say, "this student is looking at this student's answer card." All the students laughed, the teacher gave the boys a stern talking to, and all went back to normal. With this kind of reaction I don't know why all the students aren't cheating.
Luckily the three exam periods kept getting shorter, the first was 45 minutes, then 40 minutes, then 35 minutes, because it really was one of the most dull things I've ever done.
In the evening we had a meeting at the City Hall with the other English teachers. When word comes down about these kind of meetings, it's always shrouded in mystery. First we hear about it from one of our friends, who somehow found out because someone has a very organized co-teacher. Then word will slowly come to you from your own coteacher. Although, what the meeting entails is never disclosed. Yesterday my co-teacher found out she had to go too, at the last minute, and was quite unenthused about the prospect. She had no idea what was going on either.
When we finally arrived at the City Hall, we found a big, fancy meeting with all the foreign English teachers and the mayor. How thrilling! We watched the most fantastic movie about Gunsan, in which the used the most words I've ever heard to say absolutely nothing. It was really quite a feat. I'm going to have to see if they've put the movie online because it really as stellar. Then we watched a movie which demonstrated the skills of the foreign teachers; Jordan and I were big stars in this one. I'm not sure about using this as a example though because the lesson of me they taped was the first lesson I ever made and thus not particularily good. After some question and answer with the mayor, we all trooped off for a fancy Korean dinner where we got gift bags with rice (grown in Gunsan) and a fancy Gunsan pin (and something in a box I haven't opened yet). Dinners like these are always amusing as the alcohol is free flowing and everyone gets rather "relaxed" as they say.
So Gunsan is a nice place to live if you like seafood, like Marisa does. Yesterday Matt and Mihye took us to a sweet shellfish restaurant where we grilled our own food (one of the shellfish was as big as my head). Check out more pictures here.
Jordan's new co-teacher tells the story that she moved to Gunsan because "the lake charmed her." Previously a dweller of the capital city Jeonju, she packed it all in the reside beside (or somewhere near) Eunpa Lake. Before the spring, I thought the lake was nice, but having seen it in the spring I have to confess that I too have been charmed by the lake, and now may have to stay here forever.
In all the places I've been and seen, I haven't experienced anything quite like the tunnel of cherry blossoms that covers the road next to the lake. Trees that look like they're covered in snow, when actually they're covered in small flowers. I like to call it "spring snow" and it's infinitely better than the stuff that comes in the winter.
On Tuesday, as we were leaving class, Ms Park asked me if I had class during fourth period. When I said no, she said, "ok, we will go see my mom." It turned out that her mom lives right at the base of Wolmeyong Mountain (mountain in this case is like calling me a giant). She lives in an old, Korean style house that Jordan wouldn't be able to stand up in. The road was so narrow, that Ms Park had to fold in the mirrors on her SUV. The park had many stunning views and was being enjoyed by many people apparently also out on lunch break. We had an ice cream, and had our picture taken several times. After the walk, we went back to the house for lunch. The table was set with enough food for an army. There were various ladies hanging around the house, so I thought they were eating. In the end, once we all got settled, it was just me and Ms Park eating, not even her mom, although she made sure that we ate enough. This however seems like a sweet deal to me, so I plan someday to work near my mom so I can sneak out and she can make me lunch.
Doug and Patti also visited us this weekend. They were very lucky to come on perhaps the best weekend of the whole year. We had a great time showing them around our town, although Jordan decided this was also the best time to get sick with some terrible coughing thing, still to be diagnosed by the doctors. They are worried about him though, so he get's to see the doctors everyday.
Luckily the rain yesterday wasn't hard enough to knock the flowers off the trees, so hopefully we'll be able to enjoy them again this weekend.
This last weekend we ventured up to Matthew's town for a visit. Spring is coming, it feels very slowly, to Korea and so the countryside was filled with blooming flowers. Matthew took us on a nice walk to a temple, and then a hike through the brush and straight up the side of a mountain. When I finally arrived to a bench at the top I was greeted by a lady laughing and yelling at me in Korean (I was not properly dressed for hiking). She was so shocked at my feet in sandals and the fact that I was wearing a skirt, she talked to me for about 5 minutes. It was most amusing.
Koreans who know how to dress appropriately.
Follow this link for more pictures.
"Cleaning time is too short" Ms Park said this afternoon as we came out of the English room when the time was up. I pondered this for a minute or two, gave it a good consideration, but what I really think is that we should get rid of the twenty minutes and go home earlier, not add more time to our lallygagging schedule. Of course, I don't think I would actually get to go home early, and then the school would just be really dirty. Although if we never let the students come to begin with, the school might stay decently clean.
All the public schools in Korea have giant TV screens in every classroom (whether they work or not is another subject, but they are there). And every middle school in Korea with more than 100 students seems to have a gotten a brand-spanking new English room with giant flat, touch TV screen and many other fancy things ("tell us what materials you want, we will get them"). How did the Korean government pay for this? I recently realized it's because the schools have no janitors; the kids do all the cleaning. At first, I thought they just made the kids do the cleaning as some sort of "be responsible" lesson. But as the weeks have turned to months I've realized that the only marginally clean school could only be the work of the students. It explains why the bathroom floor is more dirty after being mopped than it was before.
I have joined the ranks of the other Korean teachers who spend the twenty minutes chasing and cajoling the students into cleaning, since I have to monitor the new English room. Although, I was just told to make sure the students don't touch the computers or destroy the desks, so that's what I do, while surfing the internet and thinking of amusing things to write on the blog. The four girls who do the cleaning in my room can be a bit lax at times, but then Ms Park will show up and boss them around and make them get out the vacuum and smelly spray for the desks. I don't feel bad when this happens because I have done my job of watching the equipment, and in Korea doing your job, and only and exactly that, is what it's all about. Just try and get someone to scoop a fish for you at Lotte Mart. After talking to five people over twenty minutes, all of whom claim,"I can't get the fish" the one person who can will show up, dragged out of their dinner break because they are the only one who was hired to scoop fish.
An activity that I sometimes do with my students involves showing them a cartoonish picture of someone sobbing or smiling or looking angry, and asking them what emotion is being portrayed. I then ask them to complete the sentence "I am [feeling emotion x] because..." on a piece of paper, along with a drawing to help me understand what they are trying to express. A few of the more interesting and/or unexpected answers:
- "I am sad because my lover left me." Oh the heart wrenching drama.
- "I am happy because my poop came out." There was no doubt about this one, thanks to the detailed drawing accompanying it -- this was a girl by the way. Only in middle school, or only in Korea? Or both?
- "I am upset because my mother catch me on 19 website." Actually, all the boys at a certain table had some variation of this one. Remember that everyone is a year older in Korea, so a "19 website" is... well, I think you can figure it out. I can't say I was surprised by the actual occurrence--it was just the level of candidness that threw me; I wanted to tell them "I'm just your teacher! Don't tell me this stuff!"
- And one that needed a bit of correction: "I am in love with my sister because she is cute."
Jordan and I are the proud new parents of Faraday Magnuson, a very pretty bunny we adopted from some people who work at Osan Air Base; we plan to call her Farah for short. After a scary (for her) two hour bus ride and shopping trip at Lotte Mart, she is settling into her new home on our balcony. She enjoys eating hay, spinach, carrots and apples, hoping around her new home, spying things in the distance, snoozing in her house, and shedding lots of hair (apparently this is a once a year thing, since it's started getting warm she's started losing her winter hair). Once she adjusts to life on the balcony, we plan to let her hop around the rest of the house when we're home. Bunnies can be trained to use a litter box like a cat. And by train, I mean they do it naturally, you just have to find out where they want to do their business and put the litter box there. She is also one of the softest things I've ever touched. It is very nice to have a very soft bunny on your lap for petting. Farah is still a little nervous around us, but already enjoys hopping around us and getting small pets. We are very happy to have her in the family.
Michael Faraday was a famous physicst, who knew little math, but did amazing conceptual work with electricity. Farah is Arabic for happiness.
Here is a quick video about Faraday's first weekend.
So last Friday one of my classes was not wanting to participate: my thoughtful and creative attempts at discussion and activity were being met with nothing but yawns by the energetic students, and snores by the less motivated.
The lesson was on health and fitness (From the textbook: ... Mike: "It really shows. You look so healthy." / Mina: "How about you? You look like you gained some weight over the vacation." ...). Anyway, I will often search YouTube for an entertaining video touching on our topic just to get the kids laughing or what have you; on Friday I found one that was somewhat disturbing (okay, very disturbing, but that's what middle schoolers love) to go along with our fitness theme. I had not shown it to the students yet, and suddenly I was struck by a brilliant idea.
"Everyone up. Out of your seats. Yes, you too. Stand up."
Gradually everyone wakes up and stands, most of them looking somewhat confused and disoriented.
I then started the video:
They start laughing. I tell them that this is serious business.
"We are now going to exercise with the video."
The students look at each other in disbelief. I can't be serious.
I glare.
Some of the students start to move their arms and legs feebly.
"Pump your arms now! Let's go!"
More feeble movements.
I let them continue in this fashion until the video finishes. Everyone sighs with relief and begins to take their seats.
"No. Keep standing."
Confusion and suspicion radiate from the lethargic mob.
I then proceeded to give an impassioned speech on class participation, lethargy, and education in general: "... and if you are not going to interact with my lesson, then we are going to exercise with the poodles. And if you do not exercise with the poodles--energetically--you will leave the classroom. The poodles, you see, are a metaphor for life: just as you must exercise energetically with them, so you must participate energetically in class..."
It was clear by the horrified looks I was receiving that the students understood my message. And so I started the video again, from the beginning, and this time everyone pumped their arms.
The end result of all this is that when we returned to our lesson, and I repeated the question to which I had previously gotten no response, multiple hands went into the air. The students had decided that this was better than the poodle video. And I had decided that the poodle video was better than anything. It now resides permanently on my jump drive, in my pocket.
For your enjoyment, I have put together a playlist of popular Korea Pop (K-Pop) songs. This is what we hear in stores, on the bus, and what our students are crazy for. Good for your next dance party.
My Mom always says that if she had a nickel for all the funny things her students said, she'd be rich. Well, I say if I had a nickel for all the funny things Koreans say to me, I'd be rich, and I've only been here for five months. Here are some highlights from this week:
1. We were doing an activity in class that involved the word 'pickle.' One of my students was confused by this word until she said, "Pickle...Pizza?!" Of course, if you are a normal person, pickles and pizza don't really go together, but in Korea you always get a side dish of pickles with your pizza.
2. Speaking of side dishes, one of the teachers in my conversation class asked what side dishes we ate at home. I then received horrified looks when it was discovered that we don't eat side dishes at home.
3. When I get a ride to my country school on Thursday and Friday, we always listen to the Korean radio and every morning they have an English expression that the teach all the listeners (which I think is most of Korea). Last week it was "get off your butt," this week it was "speechless." Now I know why all the Koreans seem to know some strange expression (like Campus Couple, everyone gets really excited when they learn that Jordan and I are a "campus couple." I've never heard this expression before, but all the Koreans use it and are excited about it.)
4. The principal came to observe the new English room at my city school this week. Or course this meant that I had to have an alternate lesson plan which involved using the new and fancy touch screen/tv screen/electronic white board. At the end he said I was the "number 1 teacher," I guess because I smiled through the whole lesson.
5. Yesterday after my students asked me the usual question "do you have babies?" Ms Park started telling me how Korea was a good place to have babies. To try and raise my maternal status after claiming I wasn't having babies for a long time I told her how we were getting a bunny this weekend. This did not impress Ms Park and she explained that "babies and better than bunnies."
People always get nervous when they hear someone else is doing more than they are. And I guess our new President is no different. The following is from the Korean Herald:
U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday called for the United States to look to South Korea in adopting longer school days and after-school programs for American children to help them survive in an era of keen global competition, according to Yonhap News Agency.
"Our children -- listen to this -- our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year," Obama told a gathering at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here. "That's no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy."
Obama made his remarks while emphasizing the need for sweeping reform of the U.S. education system for which he earmarked US$41 billion out of the $787 billion stimulus package to cope with the worst recession in decades.
"We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day," he said. "That calendar may have once made sense, but today it puts us at a competitive disadvantage."
Let's see what I did in the Korean public schools this week.
I amazed myself by coming up with an exercise that got more than 2 people to participate, and had at least a little educational value. The fact that I got the entire class to do the exercise has not ceased to stun me. However, that was only one lesson. Yesterday I was trying to get my students to fill in a sheet about their favorite things. When I tried to get two boys to participate, they went and hid in the back of the classroom, so I had to kick them out into the hallway. Once, I tried an activity where the students had to get out of their seats. I did that only once since the students destroyed the activity in about two minutes. I was so shocked I just stared at them for another two minutes. I had never seen such chaos. I haven't let my students out of their seats since. So the Koreans may have more school, but they certainly don't have better.
Our actual school day is longer here in Korea than any I ever experienced, but I think that's mostly because we have an hour and twenty minutes for lunch and another thirty minutes for cleaning time. The school year may be longer, but I've never seen people waste time like we do at school. I remember fondly the couple weeks of school we had after exams in which we taught our students nothing, and were expected to teach our students nothing.
All the teachers teach straight from textbooks, often to classes of 40 (unless you're lucky enough to be one of the "country bumpkins" Obama mentions from days gone by and are in a class of 7). The teaching is for the most part so ineffective that any student who cares about their future then has to go to the hogwon all night (many students, middle school students, don't get home until 10pm). And who knows if the hogwons are more effective than the schools. At least the class sizes should be smaller.
The students I've met are mostly incapable of thinking beyond the textbook, unless you sit on them or twist their arm. Most students stare out the window during class, or take a nap because they're so tired from studying the night before, or work on homework for another class. In a class of 40, you'll have about three, if you're lucky, who will participate. It's quite common to get "the stare" when you ask a question. Do they understand, you wonder. Are they confused, you wonder. Are they even alive, you eventually ask.
I think the clear answer to the education dilemma, by observing the Korean schools, or any school, is better education, not more. Have we still not realized that more isn't always better? My students said it best when I asked them if Korea was the best place to live and they said, "No. We have to go to school all the time. In America they are free to do things that are interesting*."
*The interesting things being dancing and singing like in High School Musical
**Thanks to my Dad for sending me the article.