I spent the morning of my last full day in Korea in my bedroom, painting my nails and writing letters to each member of my homestay family, then painstakingly translating them into Korean using my vocabulary and a lot of help from Google Translate. I snuck out to go for a "walk" which was actually an excuse to do some last minute gift shopping. My Korean family has been so hosptitable and welcoming to me, and beyond that they are all just wonderful people, and I wanted to give them a few parting gifts. When I presented the wrapped packages and the orchid for my host parents, my host mom asked me to wait until "the party" later. A few hours passed, and I was called into the living room, where a sweet potato cake, a watermelon, a bottle of sparkling white wine, and a cluster of gifts was waiting.
Without any foreknowledge of the other's plans, both the family and I had prepared gifts and written letters! Jun Myeong lit the candles that spelled out "I <3 You," and after some confusion for what to sing - since the birthday song clearly wouldn't work - we all just clapped and chanted/sang "I love you" for a few seconds before I blew out the candles. After, I helped Minnie install skype on the home computer. It was a very happy evening with the incredible family who had taken me in this semester. I hope we have more evenings together in our future. I'm thinking of heading back to Korea at least for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, but I hope I can see the In family before that as well.
I am nearing the end of my grant year (two more teaching weeks and a handful of days after to pack), and I find myself viewing my life through two alternating and contradictory lenses.
My friend Beilin introduced me to the term "graduation goggles," which she heard from the show How I Met Your Mother. According to a HIMYM wiki, "Graduation goggles is the nostalgic feeling one has about a time or someone in their life when it is about to end, even if the time was completely miserable." As my first year in the professional world, away from friends and family, away from my comfortable university bubble, and living within a culture and language I didn't understand, it's no surprise this year was one of the hardest of my life, but I certainly wasn't completely miserable. The isolation I sometimes felt my first semester (mostly due to location and a bad homestay match) was pretty painful, but my second semester has more than made up for it. Anyway...
*note* as I sit writing this entry in my apartment family room, my host mom just ran over with a huge jar filled with a thick, golden substance, plunged a tablespoon in and promptly shoved it in my mouth. It was honey. A tablespoon of sticky, ultra-sweet honey. I'm going to miss this insanity!
...the g. goggles are on in full effect, with each fractured, hallway conversation with a student and each potential last meeting with an ETA friend leaving me prematurely nostalgic and projecting forced "meaning" and finality all over the place. My host family is all goggled up as well - Ohma is teaching me how to make every dish in her repertoir in preparation for a time in America when I miss her and her cooking, and Minnie got choked up when I gave her an English copy of To Kill a Mockingbird with a note to her written on the title page for her birthday.
The second lense is more of a purgatory view: I know what I have ahead of me in America *more on that in a minute* and my "to do" list for getting settled once I'm there is already trailing down 10 of the 17 floors of my apartment building, but I'm stuck here for another 17 days with this tearful "goodbye" permenantly on my lips.
In short, I never want to leave, and I can't leave fast enough.
As narrative-loving creatures, we crave finality - the denouement, the "happily-ever-after," or, for the indie film lover, the "gritty and not-so-happy but still well-filmed ending with a killer soundtrack" often mislabeled as realistic. I've been thinking about this since I read a great review of the documentary The Swell Season (about a band of the same name) in which NPR entertainment blogger Linda Holmes addressed this obsession with endings. In this case, the issue was with viewers accepting the ending of the romantic relationship between the band's two members, as depicted in the film. Holmes says, "it's very hard to get an audience to accept the detachment of a successful ending ... from a happy ending ...." Holmes seems satisfied with the documentary's honest portrayal of the ending of the romance, but even in this case, the "end" moves over to make room for the continuation of a friendship and musical partnership.
In the past few weeks, when I attended Fulbright Korea's farewell gathering, parted with my fellow ETAs and the KAEC office staff for the last time, and began to psychologically prepare myself to say goodbye to the rest of my family and friends in Korea, I've discovered both my own heavy dependence on neatly tied-up endings, and how little my expectations - of relationships sustained despite growing distance and of smooth transitions from one phase of my life neatly to the next - resemble the reality of leaving.
Now and in my future, I will leave people and places that I care about, I will vow to keep in touch, and meet up again, and return, and despite my attempts and promises, I will lose a great many of those people and places forever. (Perhaps this inability to acknowledge an end is why a few of my relationships have had tumultuously dragged-on endings....)
This idea reminds of some people and places I lost upon leaving Harlaxton College in the winter of 2007. As a parting gesture, the seven members of my British Poetry Since the Rennaissance class went to the Angel and Royal Inn for some whiskey and wine and poetry. We sat in the fire-lit pub, warmed within by the spirits and good company, and read our favorite poems from the class. I read Tennyson's Ulysses, but right now I am remembering lines from the piece that Dr. Janice Fuller, a wonderful professor and friend, read that night, T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding:
"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right ... is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph."
***
Another excerpt from the poem ties nicely into this next bit:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
Indeed, I will return to America, Kentucky, and my family and know them in a much different way having lived in Korea with two Korean families for a year. I will also return to the location of the last phase of my life in order to begin the next; I was recently hired as the new admissions counselor for the Honors College at WKU! I am so excited to return to Bowling Green, but I know my new life there will be much different from my college years. As a recent college grad, I count myself lucky as all get out to have a job like this so soon! I get to work with people in an academic setting, frequently in and out of the office, and at my beloved alma mater!
***
I'm going to tie this entry up in yet another "goodbye." I never did write about Thailand, or any of 1,000 other fascinating things I did or experienced, but I want to concentrate on relishing these last moments and understanding what they mean - an end. Not a neatly tied-up end, but a messy bundle of emotions, necessarily unsatisfying goodbyes, and some promises made with hope but doubtful realities attached. I am so happy I kept this blog and posted so many pictures on my picasa account. I know having it later will make my imminent nostalgia more poignant for better or worse. To anyone who followed my journey through the year, thank you for reading and for your support!
... and since I've been meaning to post this anyway, here is the piece I wrote and submitted to Infusion Magazine, a publication of Fulbright Korea:
Reflections on “Growing Up” in the Winter 2010
I walked past two magpies scavenging in a chopped field on a path next to the reservoir behind my host family’s apartment complex. Hopping and tilting their heads, their beady black eyes searched for forgotten grains hidden under scattered, dry stalks. Another hop, a dip of the head, long black and white tail thrust up in the air, and one magpie raised her head again, gripping a pearl of barley in her jet black beak. A field that appeared so barren to me –lifeless compared to the shining gold affair that glittered on my last walk there a month before, when autumn was still lingering – had yielded what was perhaps a feast in magpie standards. I imagined the magpie would return nestward with her treasure and excitedly regurgitate the meal into her chicks’ mouths. Perhaps I just needed the image of a nurturing home after three months living as a guest – provided for but still not a part of my host family – and five months away from my own home. I missed my family.
I walked by the reservoir often after I returned to the apartment from my first real job as an English teacher at Wolbong High School. As a teenager, I used to fantasize about this part of my life, when I’d have a self-sustaining income and live in an exciting new place, far from the too-familiar city of my childhood and removed enough from my parents and teachers to live in the luxury of independence. But reality dimmed the idealistic glow of my high school daydreams a bit. In the early winter of 2010, I was a “grown-up” with my own job, money, responsibilities, and adventures, and I was achingly homesick.
That afternoon, on the other side of my path from the barley field, the naked, gaunt, brown trees danced in the distorted mirror of the rippling water, which also reflected the white-streaked, winter sky. The sky was blue like my mom’s eyes, a pale shade that appears clear and chill, but to me holds a warmth like home. The sky and the water surrounded me and the lonely trees, and the color that reminded me of my mom made me feel warm and rooted despite the weather.
Farther down the path, the apple trees that had been heavy with fruit a month before were relieved of their burden. Their branches, which should have been springy again, seemed lightened in a sad way that made me think of empty wombs and nests, and my mother’s blue eyes the way they might have looked when she remarked on the phone that this was the first Christmas season she and my father would spend alone, buying and ornamenting a tree and baking cookies to prepare their own nest for my brothers and I to return to, only for a few days. I remember when the idea of leaving the nest thrilled me, when any suggestion or command ruffled me. I chose to fly far away to the other side of the world, where the birds – cranes and magpies now – sing songs I don’t know. Did I need to leave home, to get all the freedom and space I could ask for, to realize how connected to my home and family I am?
The piece ends with a rhetorical question, and as Eddie pointed out to me, this experience in Korea has generated so many of those for both of us. Perhaps the impact of this experience won't become clear for a while to come.
“Of course anyone who knows me knows I change my mind once every couple seconds, so we'll see what actually happens.” –Me, April 12. Fateful words.
I have in fact changed my mind about 4 of the plans mentioned in my post from a mere month ago. I should just stop immortalizing my fleeting and fickle ideas in the blogosphere and stop opening myself up to criticisms of “Flaky Francis!” (kind of like “Negative Nancy”? My apologies to all readers named Francis or Nancy who are actually steadfast and optimistic.)
One fact regarding next year’s plans is set in stone now, though. I am moving back to Kentucky in July! I won’t even begin to speculate what I will be doing there or how long I will stay, although I suspect I will try to attain employment and / or admission to graduate school. I might just move into one of those teepee-shaped motel rooms and collect twine though, who knows?
Regardless, I’ll be back in the bluegrass state, which means more time to spend with family and friends, more time to sip bourbon on porches and catch fireflies, more time to pile into cars and head to Rosine for the Barn Jamboree, and more time for hiking and exploring the woods and hills of my beautiful state. I know this is a sappy and romanticized account of life in Kentucky, but I’ve missed home for a year, so I’m allowed to fantasize about my unrealistically perfect near future there!
- Reflections on my time in both rural and tourist-infested Thailand, and
- News on "What the heck is Eileen doing next year, really?"
Until then, I'll leave you with this observation: gift giving in Korea goes far. Today, my host mom told me that her father enjoyed the mug wort rice cakes that I gave her and that came from Eddie's vice principal's wife's friend, who made them. As a side note, mug wort rice cakes rolled in dry bean powder, despite sounding nasty, are actaully delicious!
I taught a fellow Fulbrighter's awesome "similes and poetry" lesson, and below are some of the hilarious responses I got. I gave each team a topic, and I selected my topics from Korean culture. A key, for those unaware of the latest idol craze or tasty traditional treats:
Hyun Bin, the current national male heart-throb, was the star of my favorite Korean drama, Secret Garden. Just a mention of his name will illicit squeals throughout my school's halls.
I used this photo of Hyun Bin in a bathtub (?) to inspire one group's poetic muse. See the results below!
My personal favorite Korean star, Won Bin, was the star of the action film, Ajussi, or The Man from Nowhere as it was released in the U.S. See Won Bin references in the below poems.
I bought socks with Won Bin on them... :)
"Hodu kwaja" literally means "walnut snack." Cheonan is famous for these little, doughy, red-bean-paste-filled goodies.
The 수능 or "su-neung" is the Korean SAT. Students can only take it one time a year, and most only take it once. It is extremely stressful for the students, who see it as their one chance to make or break their future success.
Hyun Bin’s abdominal muscle is like a chocolate bar.
It is brown and tasty.
Hyun Bin’s eyes glitters like star.
Hyun Bin’s body line is as perfect as sculpture.
Hyun Bin is like a God.
They are having a lot of fans and world best.
Hyun Bin’s abdominal muscle looks like a chocolate bar.
Hyun Bin’s self is as handsome as model.
Hyun Bin’s nose is like knives.
It is sharp and high.
Hyun Bin’s backbone deep like river.
Hyun Bin is as handsome as Won Bin.
Hodukwaja is like brain.
It is round and cute.
Hodukwaja wrinkles like a grandmother.
Hodukwaja is as delicious as bread.
Hodukwaja is like ball.
It is round and flat.
Hodukwaja is like heart thief.
Hodukwaja is as sweet as love.
Hyun Bin is like a carving,
He is sharp and handsome.
His arm muscles are like a radish.
His acting skills are as fresh as a dewdrop.
Big Bang is like a big bang,
They are touchable and intense.
Their voices are like a sparkling universe.
Their existence is as shiny as a sun.
Kim Yeona is like a small fairy on the ice,
She is noble and beautiful.
Her spirals look like a weakness of the little bird.
She is as pure as the dew.
Hyun Bin in the bathtub is like a moon,
They are beautiful, but we cannot have them.
Hyun Bin's abdominal muscle shines like a magnet.
Hyun Bin is as dreamy as a trip to the moon.
The 수능 is like a turning point,
It is the challenge of my life.
Students study like monsters.
The 수능 is as difficult as a puzzle.
New Years' resolutions are made to be broken right? Right? (sigh).
So the 'writing on my blog once a week' one has not been happening... and the 'one book every two weeks?' NOPE.
Since I returned to teaching in the beginning of March, I have become a work monster by week and slacker extraodinaire as soon as Friday afternoon hits (read: this is what happens when Eileen's boyfriend moves to Korea and lives a five-hour train ride away....) Planning for my classes this semester has proven quite a challenge, but with extra work comes the increased possibility that my lessons can actually improve my students' English (Assah!) due to my newly level-tailored topics and activities.
I've also been busy preparing for and going to the Fulbright Spring Conference on the lovley semi-tropical Jeju Island, at which I gave a presentation on keeping students, classes, and lessons organized (no easy feat when you teach more than 1,000 different faces every two weeks!) The conference provided a lot of helpful teaching tips, but it was also an amazing time to reconnect with all my ETA friends who are scattered around the country.
The view from the terrace of our conference hotel
Beilin, Rachel and me with John Mark being creepy in the background
Mount Halla: at 1,950 meters, the highest mountain in South Korea. A group of hiking buddies and I attempted this, but the unexpected snow covering the trail and the miserable rain that dampened our day off turned us all around at the half-way point (except for Jenna, Sonja, and Sean, who are just tough!) Next time, Halla... I'll be back!
Hikers and our plastic ponchos before the hike
Future plans have also kept me super busy lately. Eddie and I are busy planning a trip to Thailand during my students' midterm week, May 6-15th. So while my poor, stressed students hunch over exams, I'll be bird watching from a kayak in Khao Sok National Park, learning to cook from a Thai woman in a mountain bungalow, riding an elephant, and bumming around on a tiny island with some sea gypsies! Assah! "Teacher mean!" Yes, I know ;)
I've also been going crazy trying to figure out my plans for next year and beyond. As of now, it looks like I'll be staying in Korea for another year, hopefully teaching elementary school this time. Eddie and I plan to live in a bigger city, Daegu, teach itty bitty babies their ABC's, and save money for grad school and some more traveling (I want to go to Nepal and India and possibly take a road trip from Korea to Europe via ferry around North Korea!) Then we'll head back home to Kentucky for a year. I want to move in with my parents (if they'll have me!) and soak up much-missed family time while applying to masters programs in library and information science. Of course anyone who knows me knows I change my mind once every couple seconds, so we'll see what actually happens.
I am also sooooo excited to be coming home this summer for almost a month! I finish teaching on July 15th (but who's counting?), and after a potential trip to the Boryeong mud festival, I'll hop on a plane to Kentucky. In August, I'll head to North Carolina to beach bum with my family a bit and then go to Asheville to be the maid of honor in Rhiannon and Alex's wedding!
It's great to have plans to look forward to when lesson plans fail, computers break and students go crazy. But sometimes my students' antics are just as diverting as planning my time away from work:
Imitation is the highest form of flattery? This student, who chose my name as his English name, brought on the charm again the next week when he answered "How are you today?" with "I am happy because I see you."
With her frequent worry about my whereabouts and state of being, as evidenced by the onslaught of queries - "Where are you?" "Are you hungry?" "Are you tired?" "Are you cold?" - and her determination to replace the rice, always absent from my bowl at mealtimes, with half a loaf of bread, I started in the past few days to feel the slightest bit frustrated with my host mom. I'm sure this jaded sentiment came only from the fact that I've been pretty independent (in spirit, if not in reality) for the past three to four years, and any time I felt that constrained sensation, I immediately reminded myself how profound it is that this woman is expressing the same worry and care toward me after only a week that she does toward her own children.
The best moments so far though, the ones that make me feel like part of this family, are not the meals or the checking-on-you text messages, but when my host mom makes me laugh heartily at myself. This came as a bit of a shock to me the first time a few nights ago, when I very discretely and with the help of my phone dictionary explained to my host mom why I would be shortly revisiting the western hospital in Seoul. My attempted secrecy was to no avail, for she nodded vigorously and explained to the whole family about my chronic constipation (hence, the lack of rice on my plate) in Korean, then proceeded to tell me that one of my host sisters suffers the same way, and commenced mimicking said affliction by grasping her buttocks and crying "Oh-Ma, apayo, apayo!" ("Mom, it hurts it hurts!") while the rest of the family, and shortly the mimicked sister and I, cracked up into laughter.
Tonight, we engaged in a brief accent mocking session during dinner - she highlighting my poor ability to pronounce the Korean-style "L" in my school's name, and me jokingly coaching her in her attempts to pronounce "full," which comes out as "puh" - before she started speaking in a bear voice. Apparently, when I speak in Korean (always poorly), my attempts at enthusiasm always come out exaggerated and grizzly, so when I explained that I would go to Daegu this weekend to celebrate an anniversary with Eddie, she threw her hands up in the air and repeated "Ah-ma Daegu kayo! Ah-ma KTX tago kayo" ("Maybe I will go to Daegu, maybe I will take the express train") in this throaty, dramatic bear voice. After a moment of shocked silence, my host sis Ja-Hee and I, again, cracked up at my expense. This is certainly a different way to unwind from a hectic day of teaching, but perhaps I like it because it reminds me of the teasing my own family often dishes out and receives. It's strange how much the opposite experiences of feeling alone among a group of people and feeling very included into a group of people can both make me miss my own people back home.
My transition between host families has been one of extremes. I got used to spending a lot of time by myself, and now I am a member of a busy, close family. And when I say close, I mean it. Put a family of five (plus another daughter who lives away from home) in a 17th-story apartment, and you will see a lot more interaction than you typically do in American homes. Not that this apartment is small, but there aren't really a lot of places to go to be alone. So I often see my 23-year-old host sister and my 14-year-old host brother sharing a chair and the computer screen while the rest of the family settles elsewhere in the living room with the news or a Korean drama on for the evening.
Saturday, my host parents took me hiking at the mountain near our apartment. Upon reaching the top, we found an assortment of Korean-style outdoor gym equipment - a sit-up bench, pull-up bars, and a hoola hoop. While my host dad hoola hooped, my host mom and I sat down to do sit-ups. When we were finished, she asked me in Korean how many I did. I told her "42," and she said. "I did 100." I sat back down and kept going. After hiking, we went to the grocery to get foods that I like and the ingredients for me to cook American food for dinner - BLTs, per Dad's suggestion!
Today, we hiked again, this time with my oldest host sister, Ja-Hee. At the workout park, I sat down to do my 100 sit-ups, stood up when finished, and answered my host-mom's question with "100, this time." She smiled and said "Today, I did 200." Drat.
I cooked the BLTs, and they were a huge success! As I was waiting for the bread to toast and the bacon to fry and the whole family was telling me how hungry they were, I was getting pretty nervous. After we started eating, though, all I heard was "Oh, tasty! Oh really tasty!" in Korean [*side note: one thing kind of strange about the Korean language, from a foreigner's perspective, is how frequently people verbally express their current feeling with one word. I can't count how often I hear "Oh, tired / hungry / full / hot / cold / stressed." So in translation, a meal in my home-stay sounds to me (as in, to a person who can't understand more complex utterances) like,"oh hungry, hungry!" "oh, delicious, delicious!" "oh full, full, so full!"] Also, the BLTs earned me the third and fourth English phrases I've heard from my host brother. The first was when I introduced Eddie to my host family on Skype and Jun-Myeong asked him "What server do you play on?" regarding Starcraft. The second was a bashful pre-BLT "Thank-you!" and the third an enthusiastic "Wonderful!" in between bites. He devoured two and a half sandwiches!
Above, counter-clockwise from the bottom left, are Jun-Myeong, 14, My host-mom who I call "Oh-ma," my host sister Ja-Hee, 23, my host-dad "Ah-pa," and Min-Hee (Minnie), 16, who is also my student.
My life and everything in it is just about as different from last semester as it could be! Yesterday, I moved in with a new host family, moved to a new teachers' office, and met some of the 5 new English teachers at my school. I'll start with the homestay:
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!
It is absolutely amazing to me that I've sat through 108 hours of intense Korean study in the past 18 days, but the most shocking part is how much fun I've had. My teachers, Lee Gyeong-Ryoon and Kim Seong-Soo, are great at presenting a ton of information and making it understandable, and my class, elementary level 1 (the lowest level of the 4 classes) is a blast. We know so little Korean (but so much more now!) that we don't have to get very profound or complex in our sentence formation for our classmates to applaud and offer up a very Korean "Wah!" (like the English "wow"). We are all humble enough to laugh at ourselves and eager enough to learn to take chances and play with this new, slippery language. I definitely cracked up at myself when my teacher pointed out that my page in our class's "Thank You" scrapbook featured, instead of the intended "it is raining" (비), a squirrel cartoon saying, "the blood is coming" (피). I then imagined this may be a karmic payback for buying all those shirts with the hilarious and poorly-translated English phrases...
Here is my stellar roommate and language partner, Beilin Ye, cheesin' it up while 김 선생님 ("Kim Teacher") teaches us how to describe what we did "in order to" do something else.
Class pictures with Kim and Lee Teachers, and Olenka and Michelle and Beilin and I reacting in shock and confusion to our perplexing textbook.
Studying this language has helped me understand the Korean culture so much better. It's amazing how much a society's worldview is reflected in the phrases and words it chooses to represent, as best as any language can, human thought and the world surrounding it's people. Confucianism plays a strong role in this language, which has at least 4 different levels of verb conjugation to use, depending on the hierarchical level of the speaker and the listener. I now know how to conjugate my measly handful of verb flashcards for speaking in formal interviews or military or business settings; with people with whom I feel familiar but must still defer to formally; with people with whom I feel friendly but still polite; and with peers, those younger than myself, and people with whom I can be most intimate and not at all formal. This lowest form is called "반 말" or ban mal, literally "rough speak," and it is advised never to use this with someone without express permission or without being 100% sure of their younger age.
Then there's the whole "Konglish" can of worms.... Many words were introduced to Korea along with the item/concept they represent from the English-speaking world, either directly or via Japan. Instead of inventing new words, Koreans just took the English and fit it into the consistent and logical pronunciation patterns of their alphabet, Hangul, which was invented in the mid-15th Century at the behest of King Sejong. Often enough, when my classmates and I ask for the Korean version of a word related to 20th century electronics or trends, it comes out as something like "텔레비전" = "tay-lay-bee-jeon" = television, "스웨터" = ("suh-way-tah") = sweater, "오토바이" = ("oh-toe-baa-ee,") = autobike/motorcycle, or "패스트푸드" = ("pay-suh-tuh-poo-duh") = fast food. The first time I stumbled upon Konglish was after an evening of drinking soju and beer and singing in a noraebang with a couple of my fellow grantees and coordinators during orientation. We had all gone back to the hotel we were staying at in Haeinsa, and while I took a tipsy shower, I stared at the Korean writing on the dispenser in the shower. My slightly blurred vision and newly acquired knowledge of Hangul made deciphering the sounds difficult, but I finally said, "shawm-poo reen-suh..." aloud before it dawned on me that I had "shampoo and rinse!" in front of me.
Back to the world of CLEA, tonight we gave our teachers the scrapbooks we made for them and mini tiramisu cakes to thank them for their tireless work and excellent instruction. Later in the evening a few classmates and I threw a surprise birthday party for Erin and Michelle, complete with pizza, cheesecake, and Apples to Apples:
We have one more day of class before our final on Sunday, then more class (don't ask me why) and a graduation ceremony on Monday. On Tuesday, we move back to our respective homestays, at which point I get to a "T" in my story. The other night, I called my co-teacher to find out if she had booked my plane tickets to Jeju Island for the Fulbright Spring Conference, and she informed me that my host family needs me to move out ASAP because my host sister -who is going into the 3rd grade of high school and facing the "Su Neung" SAT test in the fall- needs to have her own bedroom. This is totally a legitimate reason to ask me to find a different place to stay. I won't go into detail about how I felt about finding this out from a third party less than a week and a half before I'm expected to move, despite the fact that the conditions for which I am required to leave have been foreseen throughout my stay thus far.... I was certainly bummed to hear that my school had not successfully found me a new homestay, and that I would be heading back to Cheonan with no permanent place to stay and no new co-teacher (since the AMAZING Ms. Na has moved to her new teaching job at a boy's middle school near Boryeong). After only a few hours, though, my phone rang, and one of my favorite students (not that I have favorites... cough cough) asked me if I would like to come live with her family. I am so excited! She is a great English student and is very enthusiastic about learning, and with my renewed enthusiasm for Korean, I'm sure we'll have a ball trying to communicate! Also, her apartment is a mere FIVE MINUTE WALK from my school! Good bye, 40-minute bus rides; Hello, convenience!
I'm so excited to move and get the new semester started (not to mention implement my new curriculum, discipline plan, and lesson format,) but I am really REALLY going to miss the mighty marble Jungwon University, my 36-hours of class per week, and my ETA and Jungwon friends.
After a week divided into 36 hours in the classroom learning Korean, at least 10 hours of studying, and 6 hours in the gym, by Saturday afternoon, I was feeling pretty used up. BUT I was soooo excited to head to Cheongju to meet up with Eddie for the first time since he moved to Korea! He's currently at TaLK Orientation in a town called Jochiwon, where he'll be until he moves to his placement in a few weeks. We decided to meet at the Cheongju Station at six. I arrived about ten minutes early. I waited. 6:00 rolled by. 6:30. 6:45. By 7:45 I was worried sick. What if Ed had gotten off at the wrong stop or taken the wrong bus? What if something had happened to him and he was lost in Korea with no Korean language ability and no phone? I paced, I drank some hot chocolate, I walked laps around the bus station in case he slipped in and I missed him. Finally at 9:15, I had resigned myself to renting a motel room to get out of the cold. I was in a lobby walking to a check-in counter when my phone rang:
"Hello?"
"Eileen where were you?"
"Where areyou?"
"I'm back in my dorm in Jochiwon. I waited three hours for you!"
(at this point, after waiting a month and a half to see him and realizing it may not happen, I start crying)
"Where did you wait?! I've been here for three hours!"
"I waited at the station in Cheongju..."
"Are you sure it was Cheongju? c-h-e-o-n-g-j-u?"
"Yes, Cheongju train station, but you said it was a big city, and this Cheongju didn't look very..."
"Did you say TRAIN station?"
"Yea..."
"I've been at the bus station."
Still calming down and wiping my eyes, and still on the phone, I hailed a taxi for the 25 minute drive to Jochiwon and finally met Eddie outside the men's dorm of Korea University. After experiencing numb toes, frustration and worry already that night, we hugged and laughed and walked towards downtown Jochiwon for dinner. We marveled that we were a 5 minute drive away from each other, isolated, and feeling the exact same way. The next day, after crashing in Jochiwon for the night, we returned to the scenes of the mix-up. This is were Eddie and I, respectively, waited for each other:
In Jochiwon, after dinner, I introduced Eddie to the wonderful world of the noraebang. Notice the random Belgian/German-looking towers in the music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Duet.
The next day we took the train back to Cheongju. The train station, which I was previously unaware of, is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by freight containers. No wonder Ed was confused. We made our way to a shopping center where I helped him buy some jeans and a jacket. I used my (so very) basic Korean to tell the saleswomen "많이 봅니다, 아마 다시 옵니다," or "Many looking, maybe again come," and "조금 큽니다/작습니다," or "a little big/small," and "이고 얼마예요?" or "how much is this?"
We went ice skating and at the rink caused a bit of a stir. I guess it was exciting to have a foreign couple there. Three little girls insisted upon racing us several times, and one of them proudly proclaimed, "I am the winner and you are the loser!" in what I told her was very good English. Another called me "ajumma," which is the Korean for "adult woman / married woman," but is most often used to indicate the old ladies with purple-tinted perms. This took me aback, but I guess I'm too young to get offended by being called old, because I really just thought it was funny. Three high school boys asked to have their pictures taken with us too, informing us that we were a "good couple" and that Ed was "handsome man." So strange how foreigners get this celebrity treatment in Korea sometimes. Once a man on a subway in Seoul asked me if I was British. I told him no, and he said, "Oh, I thought you were Kate Beckinsale," which was kind of awesome.
Ed showing off his new Korean pants and jacket in the skating rink.
My new sweatshirt, featuring cat ears, plaid, quilting, a crazed-looking pink-haired girl, and the words "Cheer up! Sweet! Hey, that's not a big deal! Fighting!" Awesome, thanks Korea! This was taken at an Indian restaurant; nothing wraps up a day of shopping and skating like aloo gobi, naan, and 1000cc's of Cass beer!
On the bus in Cheongju shortly before we parted ways... until next weekend! I'm so excited that we now live in the same hemisphere and timezone! Hooray for short-distance relationships!!!!
With three free weeks in January, a penny-pinching budget (saving for Thailand and New Zealand later), and many friends gone off a-travelin', I spent a fair amount of the month reading and watching the Korean drama "Secret Garden" (this gets its own entry later), but my sporadic jaunts out into the world beyond my apartment, or as they say in Konglish, "ah-pah-te," were varied and eye-opening.
I went to stay with the lovely Jillian Moga at her home-stay in Cheongju for a few days to help her teach part of her school's winter camp. It was fun to team teach again and see how each others' styles had developed and changed since we taught together during Camp Fulbright back in July, and working with such a small group of students - 8 to 12 - was a treat. Her host mom, Adero, and siblings, James, Kevin, and Kristen, were super welcoming. We went out to celebrate our Fulbright friend Amy's birthday with Indian food and, in true Korean party style, noraebang (karaoke). Noraebangs always come with a song list packed with Korean pop and traditional songs, along with a few dozen pages of English and American songs, tambourines, beer and soju to order, and bizarre music videos that play behind the lyrics and absolutely never correspond to the song.
Jillian and I before going out for Amy's party!
My host sisters threw a surprise 20th anniversary party for my host parents, and I helped blow up the balloons they stuck to the ceiling and covered the floor with. Damhee decorated a sweet potato cream cake with chocolate and fruit for the occasion.
I went back to Cheongju to visit Jillian and her host family again, and Jillian and I went to see Adero's English kindergarten's winter performance. This school provides a well-rounded education for 3-5 year olds, with Taekwondo, mini violin lessons, dance, and more than three hours of English instruction, all for the modest fee of $800 per month. The show put on by these renaissance toddlers felt like a trip to Wonka's chocolate factory or Munchikinland with it's black and white checkered stage and at least 3 costume changes for each class of tiny people. The audience was packed with beaming parents toting glitter-covered bouquets for their star children.
I've been thinking a lot about Korean education lately, especially after a thoughtful forum Fulbright organized to showcase the research of grantee Michael Alison Chandler, a Washington Post writer who has spent part of the last year researching the education system here. Her blog provides a concise and informative look at the situation. Most students, perhaps after a misleadingly kaleidoscopic introduction to school life like the one pictured above, settle into study regime around the age of 10, dedicating hours more than their American counterparts to the school day and hours on top of that in private cram schools called hagwons. Most of the curriculum is based around rote fact memorization with very little critical thinking or creative expression. Most students do not know how to compose an essay in their own language.
From the perspective of a girl who grew up with long summers spent playing kickball in the street and hunting fireflies, the ability to choose classes and extracurriculars according to her interests, and a slight tendency towards laziness and procrastination, it seems most Korean children are robbed of a childhood. So when Jillian and I were heading out to go ice skating and Adero asked us to take Kevin and James (both in elementary school), we agreed. I admit I was reluctant for my "girls' fun afternoon" to turn into babysitting. That evening, after a day of zooming and shuffling around the rink, spending part of their taxi money on video games, and devouring a plate of tteokbokki, a spicy winter street-food that they rarely get at home, the usually quiet and docile boys skipped and giggled their way to the taxi, and Jillian and I were both so glad to have contributed to a day of good plain fun for them.
A few days later, I left Cheonan again for the Onyang hot springs. I met up with some fellow Fulbrighters, and we spent the day steaming and boiling ourselves in the herb and nutrient infused waters of the spa. We all got scrubbed, which is basically when you lay on a massage table and have your skin attacked by a woman wearing two abrasive, cloth mitts. There is no room for a shy attitude when getting a scrub, because that woman is determined to rid your entire body of dead skin, which comes off in little grey-white bits (gross, huh?) The next day, with our newly smooth baby skin, we headed to Boryeong for the sea-parting on Muchangpo Beach. Once a year, the tide goes out so far that a path to a small island becomes exposed, and we were ready to pull a 'Moses' and hike on out to it, except that our information was a year out of date, and the sea did not part. Bummer. Really though, it was awesome to see a snow-covered beach, and we took advantage of the famous Boryeong mud in yet another spa before heading home.
Now I'm settled back into the marble palace, a.k.a. Jungwon University, for my crazy-intense Korean class. Our first day was great, and my eyes didn't start to glaze over until after the 5th hour of class. My teachers seem very patient and fun, so as long as I can make myself study enough to keep up with 36 hours of new material each week, it should be a pretty darn productive month!
P.S. that second part of the title says "I study much Korean." : )
안녕하새요 to you all you in the blogosphere! Today is the start of new goals and a new perspective. Let's just say my attitude (toward life, Korea, teaching, cold weather, etc.) needed a little shakubuku, or, as Debbie from Grosse Pointe Blank puts it, "a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters reality permanently," and today is the day to get my spiritual feet bicycle kicking their way to my skull.
To put this in a Korean way, I have been focusing all my energy on "아이구!" or "Aigoo!" which is a very common expression among my high school students meaning "oh no!" "good grief!" or "egad!" Basically "아이구" expresses exasperation or dismay, and those are two feelings I have spent too much time focusing on in the past two months.
From now on, I am going to focus on "아싸!" or "Assah!":
"Used as a function word to indicate the occurrence of someone or something that is fortunate, joyful or just plan awesome; usually accompanied by a vertical trucker-honking-his-horn fist pump, or a hot-game-of-dice whipping finger snap"
Before ushering in this new 'tude, I'd like to thank Ed, my Mom, Jillian Moga, Emily Wilcox and all my other family and friends who put up with my driveling "아이구!"s and inspired and motivated me to pull myself together!
I decided some belated resolutions are in order, and my list came together as follows:
1. I will read 25 books this year (that's one every 2 weeks)
2. I will restart yoga (at home this time for savings' sake) 3 x a week
3. I will walk at least an hour 3 x a week
4. I will hike in at least 5 different Korean national parks this year
5. I will not say any bad things about Korea or Koreans (instead I'm going to recognize that it's just the culture shock rearing it's ugly, talkative head, and turn my attention to an "아싸!" moment...)
6. and most exciting your you, my many faithful adoring fans (hehe...), I will blog at least once every week!
So to get started, I'm going to walk to school in my warm boots through the beautiful new snow we got this morning, get a lesson done, deal with some bidness, and head home to blow up 20 balloons for my host parents' surprise 20th (China) Anniversary party tonight! 아싸!
I've had a lot of free time in the past week and a half that I've been back in Korea. Of course, I planned to finish one lesson plan for next semester and study half a chapter of my Korean textbook each day, and of course, I have finished one lesson plan total and not touched my text. Why is my generation sooooo good at procrastinating? (Notice how I pin it on all of my peers as well so I don't have to stick out as a solitary lazy bum...)
I have been reading a ton, probably more than I have, for fun at least, in years. Another "thank you!" shout out to my super sweet bro-dudes for the Kindle! As a testament to my love for the convenient lil device (or perhaps the addictive, totally pulpy Girl Who Played With Fire), this evening I rode five stops past my apartment on the last bus home from dinner before looking up at the end of a chapter and noticing absolutely nothing familiar in the snowy, six degree night outside the window. I crossed the icy street, clambered up a plowed snow hill and into a convenience store, and had the cashier call me a taxi, laughing at myself the whole way.
I have gotten out a bit after my jet-lag and an airplane-canned-air induced cold cleared up. I went to Seoul to meet up with my friend Janine and eat some Indian at the always lovely Yeti. We went to see "Nanta," a popular Korean show incorporating "samul nori" or "four instrument" traditional percussive music into a story about chefs preparing for a wedding and substituting knives, cutting boards, and other kitchen utensils for instruments.
I also headed to Gongju to visit my friend Sam. We took a walk at the beautiful city reservoir (which has nice hiking paths all the time but so much better coated with snow!), got some coffee and ate a great samgyeopsal dinner her host mom and sister prepared. It's so good just to have the time to catch up with people after being so used to all being too busy to get together.
Today Jillian and I met up for some coffee shop hopping (let's face it, if you don't want to shop or see a movie and it's too cold to go hiking, there's not a lot else to do in Cheonan....) We hit up the place with the decent chicken salad, Art Cafe, and the place where you get free cake if your order two drinks, Coffee Story, and then we headed to the Fry Pan to eat fried chicken and salad with Dave and Cornelius, two second-year ETAs. Before I went home, I browsed around the stationary store at Yawoori (mega mall area in the downtown) and got me some Hangul stickers for my keyboard and FINALLY installed Korean on my computer:
sooooooo, just in time for my super intense, 36-hour-a-week Korean course in February, I can now type 한국어! Now I'm off to soak up more of this absurd free time before the chaos comes rushing back...
On my second day back, I'm still dizzy and jet-lagged, but also refreshed after my trip home. I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas present than seeing my family waiting for me as I came through security at Louisville airport on Christmas Eve (although the Kindle my brothers got me was a great second place)! I don't think I've ever felt so at home, and I know that appreciation comes from being away.
We had a wonderful Christmas Eve, even though I pooped out during A Christmas Carol after dinner and stayed home from midnight mass. Christmas morning was cozy, and it was probably more fun to watch my family open their Korean-style Christmas presents than to open my own, which is not to say that part wasn't pretty fun too!
After Christmas, I spent a hectic week and a half trying to see as many people as possible. I felt a bit like a chicken-sans-head, but catching up with my family and friends was just what I needed after being away so long and feeling a bit disconnected. It's almost unnerving how much people's lives change when you leave for a few months: my brother Tom bought a jaguar (which I got to drive!!!!), my brother Alex is engaged and living in a new apartment, a handful of my friends graduated, some are moving away or have moved and already adjusted to new lives, and everyone is beginning or continuing their own adventures with jobs and graduate school programs. I guess I almost expected time to freeze back home and for my stateside life to be preserved for me as I go on my own adventure. That shows how egocentric my perspective can be! : P
This is at a dinner with Mandy, who is beginning her shining journalistic career at the Advocate-Messenger in Danville, Ky, and Dunja and Jennifer, who are heading to Brazil and Argentina, respectively, for Fulbright ETA positions in the spring. I printed a sweet coupon off Restaurant.com and we had an awesome dinner at the Fleur de Lis Cafe with a $50 discount!
Other highlights of my time home included heading to Henryville shooting range with my brothers, their friends, and Eddie then to Rich-O's for excellent pizza and beer:
and cooking samgyeopsal, or Korean-style grilled pork belly, for my family:
Repacking was very hard after what felt like only a few days. I was just beginning to settle into a sense of familiarity, and I felt pretty frustrated with the limitation on my time at home, which was constrained by contract only, not by responsibilities to my school or other obligations. I felt like I was being robbed of the people I love with every pair of socks I jammed into my suitcase between Christmas presents for my host family. I left Louisville in poor spirits, having left my parents and Eddie in tears. But I arrived in Portland for my second layover and some GREAT NEWS: Eddie called to tell me he has been accepted to the TaLK program and will be heading to Korea for orientation and training as an elementary school English teacher in February! I'm so excited to have him so close so soon! His province, Gyeongsangbuk-do, is to the East of mine, and we'll probably be separated by at least a 3 hour train/bus ride, but it is a beautiful province (I've been to Gyeongju, a city there, a couple times), and the distance will encourage us to meet up and travel to cities throughout Korea.
Overall, I think going home and then tearing myself away has taught me something about myself: as much as I have romanticized the idea of having the life and mentality of an international wanderer, I happen to be a person firmly rooted in my home and my family. I've realized I would rather know my home and miss it while I'm away than float through life with no anchor.
Only THREE MORE DAYS of school left then I'm packing and heading HOOOOOOOME for the holidays! I am so excited to see my family and friends, and I can't believe I'm finishing up a whole semester of teaching. I've learned so much about what not to do that the spring can only be better, and I've been lucky enough to have hundreds of extremely intelligent, sweet and generally cool students who have been very patient with me.
I've already said 'goodbye' to most of my classes, and I was extremely sad to let my 2nd graders go since I won't be teaching them in 3rd grade next year (Korea is on a Spring-Fall school year). Tying up the loose ends of teaching really allows me to sit back and reflect on all the work I've done, and on how great these kids I work with really are, and I didn't do either of those things very often in the thick of it all.
Here are some of my students from 1-9, also known as Recycle Generation, with me 'n Big Red:
Outside school, recent highlights have been a weekend trip to Gyeongju to proctor an English test and some lovely banagrams time with friends, going to see HP7 with my awesome Cheonan buddy Phebe (but not in 3D, so I'll have to go again...) and volunteering with the lovely Jillian Moga at the Asan animal shelter:
Tonight I made Ryan-family-style Christmas sugar cookies with my host sisters, and my host dad dug out their old Christmas tree that they haven't put up since the girls were young! The cookies were difficult, because my host family is one of the rare Korean families with an oven, so the bakery sections in grocery stores are extremely limited. My efforts at two different stores to get food coloring resulted in one saleswoman trying to sell me hair dye, and another explaining to me in a very condescending tone and a smile to match, "You see, Korea and - where are you from? America. Yes, Korea and America are very different places. So you might have this... food color... in America, but we do not have it here. You see?" So we had to improvise a bit with the decorating; I got sprinkles and cranberries for color, and we put chocolate chips on some cookies. Here are some pictures of tonight and my host dad's birthday a few weeks ago:
So, three more days of normal routine, then I'll be pulling an all-nighter to pack and implement my fool-proof anti-jetlag plan, heading to Seoul to finish up Christmas shopping, and hopping on a quick 14-hour flight home! I'll be home for Christmas, and not just in my dreams! Heheheheh... Thought I should end with a bad joke since I started with one...
NOTE: this is called "cheating" because my thoughts are too fragmented to make these lovely little nuggets into any cohesive or crafted writing, so I'm just presenting the raw materials.
Student quote:
“This bubble gum is so pink. Then, my tongue is pink. I think it has very good American taste!” (On the Dubble Bubble sent to me by the wonderful Mac McKerral!)
Student response to "Where have you traveled?" exercise using present perfect tense:
“I want to going America. And I walking on the street in timesquare eating sandwich. I have perfect job and so busy working women.” - not quite grammatically faithful to the lesson, but I loved it.
Student response to "Why do you feel lucky."
“I feel lucky because my family can feel happy, I have good friends and I think I’m the perfect girl : )" - I am so pumped about this student's self-confidence. Her nickname is "Army," I'm not sure why, but she's a stellar student.
Just walked into my 1-7 class. they said, "teacher, self-study?" and, faced with the total irrelevance of my lesson to their success with finals, i said, "okay." wow am i a pushover...
[*Author's note: next day, walked into 2-8 class and said "this is our last class together. I will show a video and then give you time to study for finals." they said, "ooohh noooo teacher, we want lesson!" and then loved my "winter holidays and celebrations with football review game" lesson to pieces. you win some, you lose some.]
Had to tell her host mother that she hasn't worn the nice fleece pj pants she was given because her butt is too big for them... in gestures
Is thankful for her AMAZING family, her KICKASS friends all over the world who she loves and misses DEARLY, this crazy ride she's on for a year, and so thankful to have found the man of her dreams!
Being a Cultural Ambassador on the way to school...
host dad: (grabs water bottle from my backpack) what is this?
me: oh it's not trash, I'm going to reuse it. I fill it back up.
host dad: where?
me: at school.
host dad: no, I don't think that's okay. I think you must only fill it up at home. the water filter at home is the best in the world, I think.
me: oh, okay. (puts water bottle back in backpack.)
Has the BEST best friends in the world, and a hot pink box full of chocolatey and beer-soaked jonas brothers goodness to prove it. i love you Caitlin Zakem and Mandy Simpson!!!!
Was flattered in class today when, during a "perfect girlfriend/boyfriend" exit ticket assignment, a student pointed to his friend and said, "his perfect girlfriend is Eileen Teacher," until she later realized that without her scarf on they could probably both see halfway down her shirt. oh jeez.
Cheated and opened her birthday box from home five days early... bananagrams, tooooons of dark chocolate, assorted lip balms, ginger altoids, cozy socks, a new planner and more! thank you Alex Ryan, Thomas Michael Ryan, Rhiannon Payne, and Mike Ryan (Mom and Dad) for making my (early hehe) birthday overseas WONDERFUL!
Is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO pumped to find that she and her stellar roommate Jennifer Dooper are mentioned on Harlaxton's website for their fulbrighty-pants! I still miss you, oh house of Gregory Gregory, and I'm sorry for the orange juice stain!
Can't think of a better day to hear the magical words, "oh, i forgot to tell you, but your next class is cancelled."
Almost cried in front of a class today after a series of bad-morning events topped by her internet crashing instead of facilitating her fill in the lyrics lesson. saved by her students, who went along with her back-up plan of collaborative story-writing with a plot that involved her breaking out of prison using a teleporter and punching "bad students. "
Two thoughts on her school on a monday morning:
1. how freakin great is it that they turn on the seat warmers on the TOILETS in the fall?
2. errors in translation sometimes occur due to a poor understanding of slang, like when they decided to hang a banner on the school wishing the 3rd graders well on their national standardized test and the only English words are "Happy Ending!"
Is loving her life in Korea. that being said, she is REALLY tired of being evaluated based on a culture that is obsessed with fitting in and following trends. she will eat rice when she feels like it and wear long sleeves when she is cold, not when people recommend that 4 cups of rice at lunch will make her happier and when the calender dictates that "winter fashion is now IN." jeez.
canNOT believe she has to wait until December 16th to see the new HP movie... but you better believe she's going to be hitting up Cheonan's Yawoori theater in costume, hopefully flanked by students she can harrass into going with her ;)
Had a ROCKIN Halloween conquering Gyeryongsan with her awesome teacher friends Melanie and Jane, and of course, Makgeolli Dude! Now to conquer the dreary "L twins" of Sunday afternoons: lesson planning and laundry...
Is homesick and missing her BG people for the upcoming most hallowed of holidays... also wanting to head to three bros and get apple pie shots to welcome the fall weather... :(
