So my new homestay family consists of two host parents only a tad younger than my own, a host sister my age, two younger host sisters (one of whom is a 2nd grader, or Junior, at my school) and a host brother in middle school. My host parents are both extremely nice, but they speak only a bit more English than I do Korean. This is actually a blast, because every piece of information we want to convey requires a great deal of charades and phone-dictionary consultations and is celebrated with a high five! My extremely gregarious and energetic host mom has told me that she knows I must miss my parents, and she will be my Korean mother. Whenever I try to wash my own dish, she takes it away, points to herself, and says "엄마" or "oh-ma," which means "mom." My middle host sister, who is also my student, is the one who called to invite me to live with her family. She is extremely smart and sweet, and speaks the best English in the family.
For breakfast this morning, we had what, to me, was a full supper: bulgogi, rice, kimchi, and doenjang jjigae (soybean stew). I had to smile and hold my fingers in a pinching position while saying "a little, a little" in Korean three times to get my host mom to reduce my portion to a 1/4 of a cup (this is for a girl who does NOT eat breakfast, mind you.)
The apartment is on the 17th floor, and my room has a gloriously large window facing east that lets in morning light. I also have a little window nook with a tiny comfy couch! The best part of the technicalities: my apartment is a mere FIVE MINUTES' WALK FROM WORK!!!! and also in Cheonan City proper, so I can now take buses more often than every hour, AND buses will go to my apt later than 9:00 p.m.! Woo!
Everything is different at school now too. I have a new co-teacher, Mr. Han, and there are five new English teachers. In my gyomushil (teacher's office), the English teachers are Mr. Han, my friend Yoon, and a new teacher, Alice, who is really nice and gave me chocolate after I made press pot coffee for her. There are also history and Korean literature teachers who are very nice and who speak great English. All of these people are pretty young, which makes everything feel a bit different. Last semester, my co-workers were amazing, but the age difference sometimes added to the barriers already existing due to culture and language. Plus, with my newly improved Korean skills, I can cobble together shoddy sentences and contribute a bit more to the communication effort with the new people in my life now, and I'm so glad!
My class schedule is different now, too! I'll be teaching the 1st and 2nd graders in leveled classes divided into beginner, low-intermediate, high-intermediate, and advanced, and I will only see each class once every two weeks. I'm pretty bummed about that part, because it means I will not be able to connect to my students in class nearly as much, and I will have to teach the same lessons for two weeks (booooooooring), but the leveling will make the class so much more meaningful to the students (since I can actually teach to specific abilities now!) and so much more fulfilling for me.
Well, I'm gonna head back to the apartment now for dinner. Tomorrow I have another day of planning at school while they try to hammer out a final schedule for me, and at night I'm heading to Seoul to meet Eddie! (another factor making my life sooooooo much easier and happier this semester!)
~ later that night ~
I just finished an evening that made me say to myself, "WOW, that's how living with a host family should feel!" My host mom invited me in for oranges, tea and rice cakes for snack around 6, and I spent the next 5 hours in the living room. My oldest host sister, Ja-hee, joined us, and we talked about everything from my family background and my brother getting married to Ja-hee's belly dancing classes (!) and my host parents' upcoming trip to Jeju Island. This was done in my broken and their slow Korean or their broken and my slow English, but surprisingly effectively. My host dad came home and joined us on the floor, cracking peanuts and passing them around the table, until he saw my Korean language workbook that I had brought to the living room. Theeeeennnnnnnn, the studying began. He would point to a sentence, and say in English, "repeat after me please:" and in this fashion, we worked our way through the instructions and examples on each page. I answered and wrote the questions, and then we read them together too. When reviewing times (which is really difficult in Korean, since 2 different sets of numbers are used for hours and minutes), I kept stumbling on 8:00, and he kept making me repeat it until we and the rest of the family were cracking up. The delivery fried chicken came for dinner and we ate it with a Czech beer. Then we sat and watched some T.V. while my host brother played Starcraft and my host dad hula hooped (which to a Westerner might seem strange, but in Korea, it is a very popular means of exercise.) I feel so comfortable here, and I am so happy! Assah!
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