Dear Korean Children (aka Korean Kids Say the Darndest Things)

I have been in Korea for a month now. I know I haven't been posting very regularly, and I apologize for that, but what I thought was whirlwind of activity at the beginning that would subside as I got used to things here I now realize to really just be the pace of everyday life.

The Koreans are known for their pali pali (faster! faster!) pace of life and you can see it in everything. Time for a meal? Suck down those noodles as fast as possible and get out of there! Drinking with buddies after work? That bottle of soju will be emptied in 30 seconds flat. Taking a taxi? Dear god, hold on for your life! Taxis are nuts here. I mean, riding in any sort of car is crazy, as there don't seem to be any sort of laws regarding driving practices (need to turn left across 5 lanes of fast moving traffic? No problem! Just go for it, everyone will swerve around you!) but taxis can really be quite terrifying. First off, each taxi driver has installed no only a high-tech GPS, but a high-def mini TV, and who knows what else in his cab. So as your driving, the GPS is talking in Korean, while the driver is watching some Korean drama show (or, most recently the World Cup games) while yelling into his cellphone, and driving like a maniac. It's like a rollercoaster ride, with no protective harnesses.

Oddly enough, this fast-paced lifestyle does not seem to apply to walking, ANYWHERE, EVER. Koreans walk everywhere as if it were the last place they would ever want to be, as if they were walking to the gallows and were trying to prolongue those last few precious minutes of life by walking as slowly and purposelessly as humanly possible. There also seems to be no sense of "sharing the sidewalk," and instead of walking in a straight line, they meander to and fro as if they were not entirely sure of what side of the street their destination was actually on. This gets pretty frustrating when it's 95 degrees, 200% humidity, and you're late for work. Just TRY getting around an ajuma (technically the term is for any woman who is married, but is usually used in reference to the little old spunky grandma types who will seriously take you down if you cross them) when you're in a hurry. As if her sole purpose in life were to block your way, she will slowly and calmly, but with unbelievable deftness, move directly in your path as you frantically zig-zag back and forth, trying to find some way around her. Perhaps as Korean women age they develope sonar, and are thus able to amuse themselves by frustrating foreigners through anticipating our walking patterns and blocking our every move.

But taxi drivers and ajumas aside, Korea really is an awesome place. One of the things that makes it so great is the kids. Korean kids are adorable. And I don't mean just like, "aw, that's cute... look, a puppy!"I mean "DROP EVERYTHING AND LOOK AT THAT KID! I WANT ONE! I WANT ONE NOW!!!" And kids are everywhere. And I know you're thinking "Ariel, you're a teacher. You work at a school. OF COURSE kids are everywhere!" but I don't mean just at school. Maybe because I'm a teacher I notice it more, but it seems that anytime I go out I see families and kids EVERYWHERE. In discussing this with other friends I discovered that Changwon is actually one of the "youngest" cities in Korea, according to age statistics. The average age for the city is only about 30 years old. It's a popular place for young, new parents to come to raise their children, and boy is it evident.

Korean kids also LOVE foreigners. They love to practice their English and show you what they know, and even the ones that are too shy to take the initiative always have their parents right there, pushing them toward the random foreigner telling them "say hi! Hello!" You get quite used to random kids coming up and yelling "HELLO! HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE THANK YOU AND YOU?" before giggling embarrassedly and scampering away. It can be a bit shocking if you're not used to it. It's like drive-by English, with random words being shot at you instead of bullets. Sometimes you can actually get one of them to stay long enough to have a conversation, which invariably goes something like this:

Random Korean Kid: HI HELLO!
Me: Hi. How are you?
RKK: I'M FINE THANK YOU AND YOU?
Me: Haha, I'm fine. What is your name?
RKK: *pause* My name is... Park Kim Lee! (or some variation, sometimes a random English name)
Me: It's nice to meet you. My name Ariel. How old are you?
RKK: *pause* uh.... I am 7 years old!
Me: That's great! What's your favorite sport/food/movie?
RKK: *pause* *confused look* 매먀눟 먀혀... (having gone off their memorized English Script, they are now at a loss, and usually run away at this point)

Surprisingly, despite being quite talkative on the street, in the classroom it's nearly impossible to get them to speak. Or at least, to get them to speak Korean. They'll chatter away contently in Korean, but the second you come over and try to get them to say something in English, they clam up as if English was the most vile language to have ever crossed their tongue. They almost need to be tricked into speaking English, through games, competitions, or often bribery with candy or stickers.

On some occasions, however, I'll get students who'll pull out all the stops with their crazy English.
Sometimes it's all I can do to keep from rolling on the floor with laughter:

One class we were studying vocabulary to go along with buying things at the "traditional market." I was trying to elicit vocab from them by asking "What things can you buy at a traditional market?" and writing their answers on the board. Students started yelling out things like "FRUIT!" "MEAT!" "POTATO!" when suddenly one kid somewhere in the middle of the class yells: "SLAVES!"

uh.... I don't think you can buy those anymore...

In another class, our lesson was about music, and I was eliciting vocabulary for famous, celebrity, well-known, that sort of thing. I asked the class "What do you call a person when everybody knows who they are?" A small boy at the very front of the class pipes up "MY MOM!"

hmmm... ok then... but the response I was looking for was actually "your mom!"

Sometimes cultural ideas and differences come out too. Just this last class I had the girls read a short story about some kids who get stranded on a desert island. As practice after reading, I asked them to imagine they were trapped on a desert island, and to write a letter home to their family. One girls letter went:

Hi Mom,
Don't worry, I'm OK. But, here the work is too hard. I need a man to help me. Please send a man.
Love,
Eun Jee

So much for feminism in this class...

So, all in all, Korea is still awesome, and I am still alive. Semi-New Years resolution: write more in my blog!

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.

Dear Changwon (Part I),

I love you, Changwon. I'm just going to come right out and say it. I know we've only known each other for three days, and I know we still have a long way to go, but I really think I love you.

The past four days have been amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable. Take your pick of superlative adjectives, I’ve felt them all. 8:30AM Thursday (US time) I got on a plane. Several layovers, one sore rear end, three extremely disappointing airplane meals, and a full 24 hours later I arrived in the Busan airport, South Korea. Travel is travel, so I won’t spend much time talking about it, other than to say, as emphatically as possible, WHAT IS UP WITH JAPANESE TOILETS?

At my layover in Tokyo, I wanted to freshen up in the restroom, only to find that when it came to relieving myself, I had to choose between the horrifying squat toilet (aka. porcelain hole in the ground) or some sort of SkyNet terminator/toilet hybrid.

Note the side buttons

None of these say flush!

Did I want a steaming jet of hot water shooting straight up into a place where hot water should never shoot? (I accidentally pressed this button) Or perhaps a general spray of the entire lower area, again with the scalding stream of water? (I pressed this button out of curiosity after the first one) How about a melodious flushing sound to cover up the embarrassing sound of ACTUALLY FLUSHING THE TOILET (I didn’t try this button, since there were other people in the bathroom, and I felt the yelps of pain were probably drawing enough attention)? And then to top it all off, in case I had made a real stinky, I could initiate the POWERFUL DEODORIZER, to mask the scent of my unseemly bowels (did not need). None of these buttons offered to actually flush the toilet, which was (of course) done with your typical hand lever hidden sneakily on the side of the tank (which took me a good 3 ½ minutes to find).

Anyway, Japanese lavatory eccentricities aside, it was smooth sailing all the way from Boston to Busan, where I was met by Alistair, my wonderful wrangler from Korean Horizons. My next statement deserves its own line, and special emphasis so:

ALISTAIR. IS. INCREDIBLE.

There. CAPS lock and emphasizing periods! That’s how much I believe in this statement. Alistair has been absolutely amazing in helping me along the way here. I want to recruit everyone I know to come teach in Korea, just so they could have the opportunity of working with him. I have heard serious horror stories about agencies here: how they just sort of cut and run as soon as you set foot in the country, how they completely ignore your cries for help, how they leave you high and dry as soon as the going gets rough, and all I can say is how glad I am to have chosen Alistair and Korean Horizons. I know this is starting to sound like some sort of paid advertisement (what do you think Alistair?) but it’s not, this is just my relief talking.

Alistair picked me up, in person, at the airport (holding up a sign with my name on it! Just like in the movies! I’ve always wanted that!) and drove me back to Changwon. Keep in mind that this is at 9:00PM on a Friday night. The guy gave up his Friday night just to come pick me up and help me get settled. (and that’s just the beginning!) A 30 minute drive later, we were in Changwon where we met my co-teacher Mrs. Choi who showed me to my apartment.

Studio apartment, this is the main room.

Kitchen/laundry. No oven :(

I'm on the 11th floor. This is the street view from my window.

Nice view, huh? The whole city is surrounded by mountains.

Mrs. Choi is also absolutely wonderful. I was already pleasantly surprised that I would be able to move into my apartment, since I had been told I would have to stay in a hotel for the weekend. Mrs. Choi had everything set up. She had even bought me some bread, jam, cream cheese, and milk so I could have breakfast in the morning (this is a big deal, since Koreans don’t eat breakfast food like Americans do). The next day (Saturday) we arranged to meet so she could show me where the school was. She brought her family along, which was wonderful. She has two young children, a boy who is 7 (Korean age, in America he’d probably be 6) and a daughter who is 2 (again, probably like 1 ½ in America)* and her husband, who was too shy to speak any English, but I suspect he knew enough to follow our conversation. She showed me the location of her school, Sang-Nam Middle School, and then informed me that I would also be teaching at another nearby school (Nam Middle School) for 2 days each week. This was news to me, but overall not a huge deal, since the schools are pretty close to each other (and I get an extra 100,000 won each month for teaching at two schools!).

*In Korea, apparently everyone turns a year older on January 1st. So, if a kid is born in February, he/she is already said to be 1 year old, and then they turn 2 the next January 1st. This gets confusing when you realize that if someone is born in December, even December 31st, they are 1 year old, and then turn 2 on January 1st. So, theoretically, a 2 day old infant could be 2 years old in Korea.

After seeing the schools, Mrs. Choi invited me for lunch. I readily agreed, eager to try my first Korean meal in Korea (I’ve loved Korean food that I’ve tried in the States). After some quick discussion in Korean with her husband, she pulled into a restaurant called… Bennigans. An American chain restaurant, serving American and Tex-mex. Sigh. Perhaps she was worried that I wouldn’t find Korean food palatable, or that I wouldn’t know how to eat in a Korean restaurant, and was trying to help me save face (saving face is a big deal in Korea). Either way, I enjoyed the company of her family more than I enjoyed the meal, and appreciated the gesture, despite my disappointment at not having yet eaten real Korean food.

After lunch I went back to my apartment, and decided that I should try to buy some groceries, so I headed off down the street to E-MART, the huge department/grocery/anything-you-could-ever-want store just down the street. Now, here is an instance where I let my expectations get the best of me. I was completely unprepared for E-MART. Grocery shopping in the US is generally a pretty stress-free endeavor. Supermarkets are fairly quiet and low-key, with patrons casually strolling down the well-organized aisles which are clearly marked for convenient, hassle-free shopping. This is what I have come to expect. E-MART sounding so close in name to American stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, I expected a similar experience…

Oh, how wrong I was.

E-MART was a teeming throng of bustling customers, all pushing and elbowing their way through the mob to get their desired items. Aisles were short and haphazardly placed, and of course, nothing was in English. In addition, at the end of every aisle was a sales person, apparently hired by companies to try to sell you whatever item is in that aisle. You know how sometimes grocery stores will have those tables set up for free samples of new foods, and you might casually walk over and try a small, toothpick-skewered piece of that new brand of hot dog? OK, imagine that. Now imagine one of those at the end of every aisle. Now imagine that they’re not just selling hotdogs on toothpicks, they’re selling toilet paper, and dish detergent, and everything imaginable. Now picture them all screaming at you in Korean to buy their product as you walk by. And you’re being jostled by an angry hive of hassled Korean shoppers, who just want to get their stuff and get out, and don’t care that you are a lost little American who can’t read the product descriptions and don’t know where anything is, or what it’s called, or how to ask for help.

And that is E-MART on a Saturday.

(to be continued…)