Dear Changwon (Part II)

Sunset from my apartment window

An especially clear day.

I have officially been here for ONE WEEK. It doesn't sound like a lot of time, but the past week has been a complete whirlwind of activity and excitement. On the one hand I can't believe that it's already been a week! I feel like I just got here yesterday. At the same time, I've gotten so used to my apartment, and the walk to school, and other little things that it feels like I've been here forever.

Most of this past week I have spent teaching. On Monday I met the supervisor for the education office, and then the principals, vice-principals, and other teachers at each of my schools. Since mostly Korean was spoken, the meetings sort of went something like this:

Come into the room, greet everyone, sit down. Everyone speaks Korean while I sit there totally lost. After about 5 minutes of this, everyone gets up, we all shake hands, and leave.

This happened about 3 or 4 times on Monday. The one exception was the meeting with the education office supervisor, where my contract was drafted. There was a significant amount of discussion in Korean, every now and then punctuated by a quick question for me about paperwork and documents. Finally, my contract was decided. It turns out most of the discussion had been about my payscale. In my new contract I actually get about 300,000 won ($300) a month MORE than I had originally thought! Sweet! I love Korea!

After all the meet-and-greets I had to go to the hospital to get a medical check. This is an important step in getting my mystical, magical, and perhaps even mythical alien registration card (cue the choir and dramatic spotlight). As everyone continually tells me here, once you get the alien registration card, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Right now, without it, I can't get phone or internet lines set up in my apartment. I can't get a cellphone. I can't open an international bank account to send money home. Sigh.

So, medical checkup. I had been warned that this could take hours, and would be confusing, and certainly the latter was true. I was taken by Mrs. Choi (my wonderfully awesome Korean co-teacher) to an enormous, pristine hospital. There was a waiting area with rows of cushioned seats, a long counter in front, and nurses all around. Mrs. Choi told me to go ahead and sit while she talked to the nurses. 10 seconds later, she had me get up and go to the counter where the nurse handed me a paper cup, and made some rather interesting gestures indicating the bathroom, and what I needed to do with this cup. A paper cup. Like those little dixie cups people have in their bathrooms. No sample jar. Well, ok then... I did my thing and put the cup back down on the counter, where the nurse immediately stuck a little strip that looked like those testing strips for measure the acid level and toxicity of liquids into the cup. Huh, ok... Mrs. Choi told me to sit back down in the waiting are. But then, 10 seconds later, it was back up to be weighed and measured. Then sit back down. Then back up for an eye test. Then sit back down again. Then into a small changing room, where I was told to strip and put on a gown. I came back out in the gown, and Mrs. Choi, horrified, quickly rushed me back into the room and explained that I was only supposed to undress my TOP half, not take my skirt off!!! Oops... ok, skirt back on, and then into the x-ray room. Stand here, head here, arms here, done. Back out, changed back into my clothes, and sit back down. Then back up to the counter so they can draw blood. With a syringe. As in, horror movie, enormous, needle with a pump on it syringe. And also right in front of everyone else waiting there (good thing I'm ok with needles, and am used to giving blood!). Then sit back down. Then into a room with a doctor who asked me "have you ever had heart disease?" No," I answered, and then I'm back out in the waiting room and the whole ordeal is over. All in all, everything took about 10 minutes, with me being shuffled along and guided and pulled in each direction like a good little sheep, lost and bewildered. Really not too bad, considering... just a little strange.

The next day I was to begin teaching. My two schools (Nam Middle School on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Sang-Nam Middle School on Wednesday-Friday) are only about a 15-20 minute walk from my apartment (although, the first time I tried to walk it, as a test, I got completely lost, and had to go back and get Alistair to help me. It helps that Nam Middle School is an enormous PINK building, which makes finding it easier. Alistair is great.)

The school system is organized very differently than in America, and my job is a little different as well. First of all, middle school here is the equivalent of grades 7, 8, and 9 in the states, so the students are about 13-16 years old (Korean age, remember). They call the grades 1-3, so sometimes it gets confusing when I tell people that I mostly teach 3rd graders. I have 4 classes per day, so 20 classes each week, and each class is different, so each class only sees me once a week. They have other English classes, so they students have more than one day per week of English, but they only get one day with me, as my role is sort of more for exposure to native English speakers than anything else. This is kind of cool, because it means that I don't really have to focus on the boring grammar and structure of English teaching, and can focus instead on more cultural and interesting topics. Each class has 30-40 students, so with 4 classes a day that's 120-140 different students per day, and 400-600 different students per week!

This makes it pretty daunting to learn names, or even distinguish different students from each other, which is why lunch time is my favorite part of the day. Lunch is awesome. The food is really good (and always very Korean) and I get to eat with the other teachers, which is nice. The lunch period lasts about 1 hour, with the first 20 minutes or so for eating, and the remaining time for "rest and tea." In Sang-Nam Middle School, my main school, I have an entire room all to myself, with my desk and computer. After I eat, I return to my room, and leave my door open. Every day I have had curious students come in to talk with me. I LOVE THIS. It's the best part of my day, having these one-on-one, or small group discussions with students. One group of girls wants to start a "Book Club" where we read Twilight in English together. Another group wants to come over to my apartment and have me cook American food for them! (They told me to just give them the grocery list, and they would buy everything for me. I told them there was no way I could let them do that, and that instead we would all go to E-Mart together, and they could teach me how to navigate E-Mart in exchange for dinner).

All of the students seem completely delighted to have me there. Every time I walk down the halls, or students walk by my room, or see me at any time, I am greeted by enthusiastic cries of "HELLO!! HI!!" and they seem absolutely delighted when I smile and respond to them. In class they are generally pretty good (the girls are better behaved than the boys, and the classes are separated so there's a pretty noticeable difference). The worst behavior issue I had to deal with all week was a boy who kept falling asleep in class. I had him stand up at his desk, and when he fell alseep leaning on the wall, I had him come stand beside me at the front of the class. I am a terribly strict teacher, I know. But this certainly beats kicking kids out of class for selling drugs (yes, this happened in my class in America).

And while the students are wonderful, my co-teachers are even better. At Sang-Nam I have my main Korean co-teacher, Mrs. Choi, and then there are 4 other Korean English teachers who I rotate through classes with. They're all women, and are all fantastically nice. When they heard that I was interested in learning how to cook Korean food, they decided that we should all get together as a group once a month to cook a dish all together. Our first group dinner is this Tuesday, and I'm so excited! They are all wonderfully nice, and very helpful in the classroom, walking around, dealing out some punishments and discipline, and helping students understand what's going on. I'm so relieved to have lucked out and gotten fabulous co-teachers.

So, to recap, EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL! And I swear that what I write isn't being censored by the government, or my school, this is really the experience I'm having. I keep expecting something to go wrong, since everyone has told me about how hard it is to get anything done, and how aweful co-teachers can be, and how bratty the kids are.... but I just simply haven't found that to be the case! Everything is fantastic, and I love Changwon.