People Stop and Stare...

"...they don't bother me. For there's nowhere else on Earth that I would rather be."
 -My Fair Lady

I'm making this blog post just so I can look back on it a few months from now, when I will probably be burnt out and disillusioned, and remember exactly what it is I'm doing here and why I'm doing it.

Basically, two weeks ago was one of the happiest weeks of my life. Why? Nothing particular happened in it. I didn't go anywhere, and I wans't on vacation. I was just in a good mood the whole time. My classes went well, my kids were great, my fellow teachers were friendly and generous, and I finally feel settled in here and at home. In fact, now that I'm teaching, I feel like a contributing member of our school's little family and no longer just a burden on my co-teachers. Students yell out "I love you!" and "You're beautiful!" when they see me in the hall. Other teachers invite me to their offices or desks for coffee, grapes, pumpkin, apples, honey tea, or chocolate two or three times a day. Miss Doh found out I liked the school lunch's chicken and rice soup, so she had the nutritionist pack me up a whole big pitcher of it to take home. Speaking of the nutritionist, Jung Mi Gyung, she is super nice and invites me to her office all the time. So does the school nurse. Kids come to talk to me in the teachers' office, clustering around my desk and giggling.

Yeah, I know it won't always be like this. Pretty soon, students will probably see me coming and think, "Ugh. English class again..." And the other teachers will get tired of giving me free food. When I'm no longer a novelty and my friendships have been built and settled. But I always want to look back on that week and think about how happy it made me, and how lucky I am to have such a great school with so many supportive people who have made a real effort to reach out to me and make me feel at home in this country.

Pohang Visit

I'm behind, as usual, so here's a post about last weekend's trip to Pohang. I went there with my friends, Sandy and Geoff. We went to visit some other friends who are teaching in Pohang, namely, Sam, Courtney, and Daniel. There are quite a few people in Pohang, actually, as it's one of the larger cities in Gyeongbuk, but we kept our party small. The weather was humid and rainy, a lovely combination, but the trip was still a lot of fun. This is another picture-heavy post, so I'll just put most of it under the link. But first:

It turned out that the day of our trip was also the day of some sort of festival in Yeongcheon. I felt a little bad missing it, but what can you do? I did manage to snap a few pictures of the cloth figures dressed in traditional clothing that were all over the park.

Another cute pair.

Their sign reads:

건강하세요!

Which, I believe, means:

Be healthy!

This area is known for its herbal medicines, and I'm pretty sure that's what this pair represents.



Ok, now "read more."

Nobody Expects...

… well, yes, the Spanish Inquisition. But also, the things that happen to me here in Korea. At least, I don’t. You already heard my story about the trip to Daegu with Su-jin. Now listen to this story about my not-so-simple trip to the grocery store. So, after a day of sitting around school, I decide I am a little low on food and should go to the store. See, my co-teachers are scandalized that I can’t cook. Su-jin was shocked. Mr. Lim was concerned; how would I eat and get enough energy every day? Turns out sandwiches are a foreign concept, as are microwave dinners. So, I had been avoiding buying food on our many shopping trips so they wouldn’t see the type of sad, American “culinary preparation” I was capable of. And now, on my first night to myself, I figured I would just slip out and buy a few things at the local Yes Mart (a small grocery/household goods store). While there, as I attempt to discern from the pictures just what it is I’m buying, another young woman approaches and asks if I am also a foreign teacher. Turns out she’s from Canada and is teaching in Yeongcheon through a sister program to EPIK which handles after-school classes and tutoring rather than public school classes. We talk a little, and it’s nice to have an English-speaking person to cling to, so we hang out as we shop, even though she buys actual food and I buy potato chips and processed cheese. She explains in the course of our browsing that she lives in Yeongcheon, but she went out for a walk and got lost and ended up here. Somehow she needs to get back to Yeongcheon. Yeah, she started at 4:30. It’s almost 7:40 now. Shocked and confused, I tell her this IS Yeongcheon, and did she really walk for three hours looking for a grocery store? Cause I seem to pass one every three minutes. She has no idea where she is, where she lives, or how to speak Korean, and now it’s dark out. I just can’t let her randomly wander off into the night, so I tell her I’m sticking with her until she finds a taxi or something.

She does have her address written down on a piece of paper, so we pull it out to look at it. I suggest she ask any old Korean off the street, as I have had a good experience so far with finding friendly, helpful people. She asks a guy on a moped who’s making a delivery. He doesn’t speak any English, but he gets all caught up in our cause, goes back into the Yes Mart to borrow a phone from the cashier and calls the landlord of the girl’s apartment. They discuss how to get there, but he has to make his delivery, so he tells us “Wait here – five minutes.” He knew those words in English, anyway. We wait awkwardly for two minutes when someone suddenly greets me. I turn around. It’s Mr. Lim. He just happened to be walking by.

I explain the situation to him (hastily explaining to him that I am the not the one that’s lost – I live two block away. It would be pathetic even by my standards), he looks at the address, and points out the right direction. But we have to wait for the delivery guy to come back, ‘cause it would be rude to just disappear. So we chat a little with Mr. Lim. When the guy gets back, Mr. Lim speaks to him in Korean and the end of it is that Mr. Lim will walk her home, and I will accompany them, for my health. To compound my new friend’s embarrassment, Mr. Lim insists on carrying both of our heavy grocery bags (we bought milk and stuff). To compound MY embarrassment, he looks in mine and asks me what I bought. So much for keeping my eating habits a secret! Her apartment is only 15 minutes walk away –- she had just been wandering in a huge circle for three hours – so we drop her off and then walk back. Mr. Lim tells us a little about the joint Chinese and Korean history and actually it’s a pleasant walk, especially once we convince him to let us carry our own groceries. When Su-jin first told me to think of him as a grandfather, I had a hard time. My experience with grandparents is a little lacking, and Mr. Lim intimidated me. But it’s starting to grow on me. I realize more than ever that I really lucked out with kind, generous co-teachers, even if they do predict my sudden collapse from malnutrition.

First Impressions

This is actually an old post that I wrote up, but never posted. It's from last Tuesday:

Today I was thrown into a Middle School Grade 1 (American Grade 7) class with no preparation. Well, they did say to expect this sort of thing. Fortunately, I had a few resources at my disposal. I told them my name and where I lived. There was a map, so I showed them where Minnesota was and told them a few facts about it. Incredibly fortunately, my mom had just emailed me some pictures of our family, so I threw them up on the screen and did some questions. Who is she? She is my sister. Etc. Everyone was naturally surprised and interested to know I had an adopted Korean sister. I just went on in this way with all the photos I had. The kids did ask me some questions, though not many. Mostly “How old are you?” and “Do you have a boyfriend?” Although, I've also gotten "Do you like candy?" and "Is Obama handsome?" Around that time, I ran out of steam and there were five minutes left in class, so Mr. Lim let me go.

There were a couple of important things I noticed. First, I noticed that, while a few students were brave and spoke out, many students didn't say anything, even when we were repeating words as a class. And several were sleeping or chatting. It was hard to get their attention without disrupting the rest of the class. I have to find a way to get everyone more engaged. I also noticed that while I try to engage specific groups, I’m leaving the rest of the class with nothing to do, so I have to find ways to keep the other kids working while I make the rounds. Group work is the obvious solution, but I’m worried about keeping them speaking in English. Maybe it’s better, though, to keep them occupied than worry about whether they are speaking English 100% of the time, since the level is fairly low. Also, they may be braver if they don’t have to worry about shouting out answers in front of everyone.

In happier news, Dong Yun is never in the teacher’s office, so I haven’t gotten to be friendly with her, but she happened to come in for a second today, and I made a point of stopping her and asking about her weekend. She asked what I do after school, and I told her I sometimes hang out with American friends, then I suggested that she and I hang out sometime. She looked very happy at that, so we set up a meeting for tonight in a nearby café. I’m really glad it worked out. Everyday I feel more and more how kind the people in my school are.
Also, I noticed how the students all gave me the canned “Fine, thank you. And you?” answer when I asked how they were. So I think my first lesson for Grade 1 will be how to answer that question with a bigger variety of answers.

Weekend Trip

This is a picture taken at Manbulsa (Temple of 10,000 Buddhas) on Manbulsan (10,000 Buddha Mountain). From the parking lot, you can view the largest of the 10,000 Buddha statues as it towers above the treeline. And yes, there really are 10,000 Buddha statues, but most of them are very, very small. I went to visit the temple last weekend with Su Jin as part of my "tour" of Yeongcheon. And yeah, this is mostly just a picture post, to make up for my previous lack of pictures.

Before the cut, the Korean for today is the requisite washing machine photo. I figured mine out, cause it's a pretty simple machine. On the right side of the picture are the power button (on top) and the start/pause button (on bottom). On the left side, the button with the finger says:

코스 or kosu or "course."
This is for selecting the cycles, shown above in a sort of oval. You just press 코스 until the light underneath the desired cycle is lit.
표존 =pyojon = regular cycle
울 = ool/wool = delicate cycle
Those are two I use most.
And now, on to the photos!