In Which Lyn Gives a Brief Post

Hi all,
I wasn't planning on posting at all today. If I write too long this may turn into a slightly angry/angsty I hate Christmas rant and I don't want to do that. I just wanted to apologize for my disappearing for almost a month. I got sick and started avoiding the computer like it was the sick one. I'll do a real post within the next few days after I get over my normal holiday anger-issues. That's all I wanted to say, let you all know why I was gone. I didn't die :) Hope everyone had/is having a wonderful holiday season. Go read Hannah's happy post below this and feel warm fuzzy holiday feelings (and get rid of any negative ones this post may have unintentionally brought about) :)

~Lyn~

즐거운 크리쓰마쓰- Joyful Christmas

Steph says "Merry Christmas!"

I love Christmas. It's my favorite holiday, and I take the time and effort to make sure it's perfect. I finish all my shopping by the end of October, so that I have time to do others, I do all the baking, all the wrapping, and a good portion of the Christmas card stamping.

It's been a very strange Christmas without all of that (although somewhat relaxing, not having someone around you stressing out, even though you're doing the majority of their work). Josh and I got our three-foot Christmas tree while he was here, and we decorated it together, but it hasn't had much in the way of presents under it.

Then on Tuesday, I got sick. Really really sick. Fever, chills, it was bad enough I had to call off work on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were painful to get through, even though Friday was our Christmas Luncheon. I was afraid that I was going to have to make a last minute cancellation of my Christmas cocktail party, or at the very least scale back on everything I wanted to do. However, when Christmas morning came around I went over to my friend Shanna's for a fantastic brunch with a fantastic group of people before hurrying back to my apartment for some quick shopping and lots of baking! In 3 hours I made pumpkin pie, brownies, sugar cookies, spiced wine, and homemade hot chocolate. I was still cutting out sugar cookies when the guests arrived, but I was finished not long after


Hannah's Second Annual Christmas Cocktail was a success, even without the usual players (like my kitchen-aid electric stand mixer). Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the food was enjoyed (even though I have an unholy amount of leftovers!). Yeo-Yeo got a new water bottle (an extra big one so she'll have plenty of water while Mommy's in Japan!) and Steph got a little Christmas Moose to keep her company (she was less than thrilled).

Christmas in Korea is strange, at least from an American perspective. Everything stays open and life continues pretty much as usual. Yes, South Korea is a predominately Christian country, so most people celebrate Christmas, and many do go to Church (and on Christmas Eve there was a parade of people downtown with giant Jesus banners) but it doesn't seem to have the commercial or social significance American Christmas does. Koreans also seem to be very private in their holidays, they are celebrations in the home, not large public spectacles. I'm only really basing this off of Chuseok and Christmas, but it wouldn't surprise me if this held. Perhaps my favorite Korean Christmas tradition though is the Christmas cake. There are tons of adorable Christmas cakes for sale and they all come with candles. Before you cut the cake you sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and then blow out the candles. Kind of a fun tradition!

Well, I help everyone is enjoying their holidays! If you're getting blizzarded on where you are, stay safe and warm!
~Hannah

The Fish Returns

On December 1st I received the best possible early Christmas present ever. Josh flew into Korea and we got to spend two weeks together. We didn't get the chance to leave Gwangju, but we had a great time exploring the city and Mudeong Mountain. We spent a couple days exploring art street, downtown, and my neighborhood, spent a couple nights out with friends, We spent one day visiting the Gwangju National Museum (a fantastic museum that has a lot of cultural artifacts), the Art Museum (which has a retrospective of some Korean painter and some neat carvings). We also visited one of the temples up on Mudeong Mountain, and had a minor adventure where we weren't sure we'd be able to find our way off the mountain, thanks to both a lack of planning and a bus driver who wouldn't let us on. It was dark and cold, and we were a little concerned, but fortunately the next bus driver let us on with no problems! I also brought Josh into school on three different days, and he had the joyous opportunity of getting to meet mine and Lyn's students, who asked such amazing questions as "why are you here?" "Are you a Casanova?" and "Where is Britton's hair?" I loved being able to take him to all the places that I talk about, and introduce him to all my friends here. He left the morning of the 15th, which was a very sad day.

Christmas and winter break are both coming. Our break is from December 31st to January 5th. I'll be in Japan staying with my friend Meagan from Elmira. I'm very excited to see her! It doesn't feel much like Christmas here in Gwangju, not enough Christmas lights or anything, but I have a small Christmas tree in my living room which makes things feel happier. We don't get any time off for Christmas, what with it being on a Saturday. South Korea is a predominately Christian country, it just doesn't place the same emphasis on Christmas that America does. After our short break we start intensives, so our hours will change to 1-7, and will be like this for about a month.

That's all from here! I feel like it's a disappointing update after I made you all wait so long to hear from me, but it's what you'll have to deal with. I hope everyone has a safe and relaxing winter break!

~Hannah

Happy Hanukkah!

This post will turn into an angry rant if I start talking about my classes this past week so we'll skip that part :) In other news, I now have a Grade 3 class. It's interesting dealing with the littlest brats in the school, they're like little monkeys. What happened was Britton's Grade 3 class was too big for him to be effective so I got half of them, but they re-converge into one class for the Korean teacher. I think it's a little confusing, but what can you do. Once again skipping the angry rant because I'm in a fairly good mood :)

So this week many exciting things happened. Josh is up to visit Hannah. She has been ridiculously adorable about the whole thing. She was literally vibrating in her seat the night he flew in, and then she counted down til she could go home and see him on the following nights. It was adorable. On Thursday was Britton's birthday. He, Heather and I went out to dinner to celebrate. We went to the First Nepal, which is delicious. However, I discovered a sad fact. The reason that my favorite dish makes my mouth itchy and my stomach hurt is not because of the spices (for the itchy) or my stomach just being odd. No. Sadly, one of the things needed for the dish is cashew paste. I'm allergic to my favorite dish. Again. This needs to stop happening.

Anyway, the real birthday party was on Saturday night. We went out, Britton, Heather, Van, Da Hee, Woo Hyeon and me, to this amazing Japanese restaurant. It was delicious. Then all of us, except Van, went out to a bar. We ended playing a card game. Hannah and Josh came to say hi, but they were at a good-bye thing for the Wonderland teachers who are leaving. It was a fun night. Then I managed to get myself up this morning to talk to my family as they were having a Hanukkah party. That was fun. Though I missed those who weren't there too. And then today (Sunday) I had my own Hanukkah party. My friend Ellen came, along with Britton, Heather, Hannah and Josh. I made latkes, and they were yummy. And then we played battling dreidels, which was also fun. All in all this weekend has been awesome. I'm not looking forward to Monday though because I overslept Korean class on Wednesday and I'm worried about getting in trouble on Monday. However I'm not really sick anymore so I guess that's a plus. That's all I have to say! Happy Hanukkah!

~Lyn~

Don't Touch That, Don't Touch That, sit DOWN sit DOWN

My third graders have turned my discipline techniques into a song complete with an interpretive dance. They do a damn good imitation of me, and it's pretty cute to watch them shimmy as they chant my most repeated phrases "Sit down, don't touch that, stop throwing things, be quiet, stop talking." They're a hyper bunch, but even with their begging for candy and puzzles and the sheer amount of time I have to spend herding them (it's like herding cats. I taught them that phrase today) they are still one of my best classes, academically and behavior wise.

Honestly, not much has happened since my last post, things are very routine, and not even my complaints change. Even with the N. Korea tension, things in Gwangju are still proceeding exactly as usual.

My big announcement for this entry is that I will be beginning radio silence for about two weeks, I'm sure Lyn will update at least once in that time but you won't be hearing anything from this fish. At this end of that two week period you'll get a big, long update in which I recount all the fantastic adventures I plan to have in that time period.

I hope all is well back home! Don't worry about us here in S. Korea too much, I'm sure the US media has been making things sound scarier than they are.
Keep calm and carry on!
~Hannah

Kids these days

First and foremost and most important. I would like to remind everyone reading our blog, Gwangju is 4 hours away from North Korea and we have our own airport. I'm not sure if the news is over there, I don't want anyone to worry at all. North Korea did fire on an island off of Seoul that does belong to South Korea (kinda near the spot in the Yellow Sea where the incident was last year). However, this is NOT an attack on mainland South Korea, nor is it a declaration of war. Don't get too alarmed please. We are fine and people do not seem overly worried.

Second, I went to do my Korean homework today and realized that when we were going over the workbook stuff in class on Monday I had already done more than half of it. So what I had thought would take more forever (pages 112-123, minus 118 and 119 in our workbook) actually didn't take much time. YAY. On that note, Korean class seems to be going ok. It's hard because apparently the first half was supposed to focus more on reading than it did and our teacher this time around is getting a little thrown by our low reading level. I'm getting to be alright with reading and, when I'm not semi-incoherent because I have a cold, I'm one of the better readers in the class. Though, keeping in mind that one reads with a French/Australian accent, one doesn't speak English or Korean, and the last has a 7 month gap between taking 1-1 and 1-2, I'm not sure if that's saying much. In addition, I've been sick the past few days, so any happy thoughts I had had about my reading ability died pretty quickly as my coherency when I have a cold is interesting.

Before anyone asks, yes, we do get sick days. 3 sick days. So I'm saving them in case I get the flu and can't physically get out of bed for 3 days (because that has happened). Plus, we don't have subs so it's hard on the school when a teacher is sick. One of the Korean teachers came in last week with a fever, and there's been a small cold going around. It makes for an interesting class "And a noun is *coughcoughcoughcoughcough*"

So, I'm updating, in part to say, yes, we're fine, and in part as a safe-ish place to rant a bit. Now, I know that it's not only the kids here, but also in America, so I'm forced to think it may be a generational thing, but the lack of respect for the teacher is ridiculous. I don't want anyone reading this who may be thinking of teaching in Korea to get scared off by this, and I certainly don't mean anything negative towards our school or the kids in generally. Also, I'm the first to admit that I don't really remember that much of elementary school but I don't really remember this many kids being so disrespectful to the teacher. It wasn't until I hit High School that I became brave enough, and pretentious enough, to even think about correcting a teacher on something beyond a small spelling mistake or copying error. But I've had kids tell me flat out that I'm wrong when I say something as simple as "a verb is an action word" now it wasn't that statement that was disputed, but something along those lines. It wasn't even a "Sandy taught us different" which I have gotten a little of and I do understand. Or a "but my parents said..." which, again, I understand. It was just flat out, we don't like you therefore you are wrong. It was a bit jarring. Also, even the more disrespectful students that I remember, you don't go through your teacher's papers or desk. Hide board markers, sure, they're kids, but to actually come into my classroom and find my desk a complete mess because the kids were looking for the attendance sheet I was angry.

It's also a bit hard for me that I have one or two students in each class that make it impossible to teach the rest of the class. This is not in every class. I have a decent understanding with the majority of my classes. And don't get me wrong, I do love teaching, this hasn't changed that. Though it has reassured me that I want to stick to a High School elective (Latin). But the fact that one student can so de-rail the entire class from the back of the room. It's a bit surprising how much power one or two students can hold. Complaining aside, I'm still glad to be here. Most of the kids are cool, getting mobbed by grade 3 girls (Britton's class mostly) before school is always amusing. They're hilariously pushy. And they think that when Hannah and I don't get coffee together we're fighting. It's cute.

Over the weekend we had a Thanksgiving dinner, complete with a huge turkey, at Britton's apartment. It was fun, even though I had to leave early because of that sick thing I mentioned. I'm going to go cleaning crazy over this coming weekend because I'm starting to spazz about the mess in my apartment (and really, it's not that bad for someone who is not me). I'm also bringing Lysol wipes into work tomorrow (if I remember) because I got moved to a different computer and the keyboard and mouse are both GROSS. I typed with my fingernails so I didn't have to touch it too much. Ew. Again, that's probably just me. That's all I can think of, I need to sleep because of Korean class in the morning.

~Lyn

Lyn to the Rescue (again)

My life has been pretty boring as of recently. The wedding was really interesting, but I wasn't as excited as Hannah was about it, so she did the blog. Plus, I spent most of the wedding spacing out a bit and playing peek-a-boo with small children. I also spent the entire reception picking at my food (I apparently have major stomach anxiety with large crowds I don't know) and making faces at Mr. Lee's adorable small child. I don't have Korean friends (yet, that may change shortly...maybe) so I don't get kidnapped. However, I am known to come to Hannah's rescue on occasion and save her. It's happened a couple times, nothing really huge (except that one time I saved her life in sophomore year ;) I'm that cool).

So tonight I was sitting, reading stuff on my computer, waiting for my next episode of Hellcats to load when I got a Skype message from Hannah:

[9:59:30 PM] Hannah Kolesar: lyn...
[9:59:51 PM] Lyn Berman: yes?
[10:00:03 PM] Hannah Kolesar: can i ask the most awkward favor ever?
[10:00:10 PM] Lyn Berman: go right ahead

I was expecting something like asking for a back massage, or something along those lines. Maybe a followup to one of the questions I had to answer so she could make a poster to show her Grade 6 students what she was talking about when she explained their project. Instead I got this:

[10:00:19 PM] Hannah Kolesar: can you come kill my dinner for me?

Those abalones from the blog yesterday still were not dead. So I got my coat on, slipped on a pair of flip-flops and trekked across the parking lot to her apartment. Once there, with the aid of a spoon and a newly sharpened knife I got the abalone out of it's shell and cut of it's head so that Hannah could eat her dinner. While she had her back turned after noticing it leaking (either blood or stomach juice, not sure which). I'm not gonna go into any more detail but I was highly amused by the situation. That's about all I have to say. So I will end my story there.

~Lyn~

Hannah and the Tortured Abalone:

A continuing saga about you, your seafood, and animal cruelty.

I went to emart today to buy some food and some useful kitchen supplies, like an extra sauce pan and a casserole dish. I wanted a pie plate (a glass one, I did successfully find a metal one) but it's actually really hard to find oven-things here in Korea. Most homes don't have ovens, and most Korean food is fried/cooked on a stove top. Needless to say I did make a successful and delicious apple crisp. As soon as I can get shortening (or a decent recipe for a pie crust that doesn't require shortening) I am going to start pie baking.


Oh but the abalone.
Abalone are delicious. Korean's like to eat them. You can buy them in giant pick your own tanks. You will then take them home alive, rip them still alive from their shells, and hack them to pieces before they can flee too far in terror and then eat them raw or in soup. Or you can grill them in their shells still alive. I have had them both ways. Raw they are kinda gross. Grilled with sesame oil they are delicious. I just have some ethical issues. Mostly in that I don't like torturing my food before I eat it and it takes them a long time to die when they are being grilled alive.

But today I noticed emart had some prepackaged and shrink wrapped abalone. I grabbed a two pack and thought "how nice of them to kill my food for me." I continued to shop. I bought pecans! I bought hot chocolate! I checked out, bagged up my purchases and grabbed a taxi home.
I got home. I started unpacking.
I picked up my package of shrink wrapped abalone to discover they were very much NOT DEAD but ALIVE and squirming and flailing. My first thought was "THROW IT IN THE OCEAN" but I am several hours from the ocean. My second thought was "FISHTANK WITH STEPH" this of course would not work given the saltwater/freshwater differences. So I sat there. And watched them squirm. And listened to them gurgle. Then I stuffed them in the fridge and made tacos, hoping they would die quickly.

That was five hours ago. One is still alive. I open the fridge and it gives me a sluggish wiggle. I am going to be haunted by the ghosts of abalone past.

Becoming vegetarian in 5...4...3...

The Swallows and the Trumpet Cannons

Two fantastic cultural experiences today! The first was a Korean wedding! A female teacher at MunHwa's sister math school was getting married and invited everyone to the wedding!

Weddings in Korea are SERIOUS BUSINESS. Imagine America's wedding industry, amplify it by 1000 and then turn it into fast food. There are wedding halls that you can rent that are just conveyor belts of weddings. They have the ceremony hall, the reception hall, a photo room, and attendants all provided. It even comes pre-decorated. The ceremony today lasted about 10 minutes total. My mom wanted to know if it was a religious ceremony, but I honestly cannot say. After the ceremony they walked back down the isle and the hired attendants shot streamers out of trumpet shaped cannons. We left the ceremony hall, went to the reception hall across the lobby way, and when we came out another wedding was being preformed. The bride and groom didn't even make it to their reception, because they had to take photos in their traditional Hanbok. They had already taken official wedding portraits, and those were used to decorate the reception hall. The wedding started at 1150 and we were out of there before 130.

The luncheon was delicious, although Korean weddings don't have cake which is a bummer. I sat with my Korean coworkers, and ended up being asked when my wedding was. It was then suggested that Josh and I have a fake Korean wedding when he comes to visit. Don't worry Mom, I'm ok with waiting awhile.

After the wedding I came back to the apartment, did some laundry, cleaned a little, worked on my project for national novel writing month, nothing exciting. At 5pm I headed back into Sangmu to meet with my friend Do Yeon. We went to a traditional Korean concert. They were singers and a drum player. Their were back up singers and two main "actors." The story had something to do with a swallow with a broken leg. The kind brother helped the swallow and then the swallow rewarded him gourd seeds. The gourds contained good things because the man was so kind. There was also an evil brother and a woman who was maybe singing the part of the evil brother? I dunno, I was a little confused, but it was still very interesting, very fun, and a great experience. Even though I wasn't sure what exactly was going on I was able to understand what emotions the characters were feeling, even if I didn't know why.

The anthropologist in me wants to carry a notepad everywhere to take notes constantly, but I feel like maybe that wouldn't go over well.

My classes are frustrating. I feel like I'm simultaneously getting better and worse at teaching. I feel more confident and my lesson plans are improving, but my classes grades are dropping. I feel responsible for the kids lack of success, but I don't really know what to change. Obviously some kids (like the ones getting zeros because they don't do any homework and turn in blank tests) are themselves to blame for any problems, but I just don't know what to do about the rest of them. I hope this next week goes better.

At least my weekend has been successful!
~Hannah

Pepero: 빼빼로

If you are in America, Happy Veteran's day!
If you are in France, Happy Armistice day!

If you are in South Korea, Happy Pepero day!
Who needs war when you have chocolate covered cookie sticks?

Naju

Don't forget to read Lyn's post below mine!

Once again I was kidnapped by my Korean friends. What was different about this weekend was that I actually knew where I was going and who I was going with in advance. I went to the city of Naju and spent the night at a place dedicated to natural dyeing. It was part museum and part workshop. It explained how all the natural dyes were made, sold handmade crafts, and offered you the chance to buy a blank item and dye it yourself. It was me, my friend, two mothers, and 4 children ranging in age from 14-5. Out of this group only two of the people seemed to speak English, my friend and 10-year-old Yu Bin, who you may remember from my entry at the Buddhist temple. It made things difficult, I was frequently asked if I was enjoying myself/what was wrong because I was spacing out, but I couldn't follow the conversation to any degree, so I just gave up at a certain point. This whole weekend was full of observations about cultural differences.

The first huge thing I noticed was when I was picked up at 4pm. I got into the back seat of the car with Yu Bin and her little brother Tae Jin (the 5-year-old). Neither child was wearing seatbelts and they spent the entirety of the 40 minute car ride standing up, wresting with each other, leaning into the front seat, crawling into the trunk, and all sorts of other things that are so not legal in the states.

When we got to Naju I found out that we were staying at the actual Natural Dye museum. It has several guest rooms, which are all nicely sized, as well as a refrigerator and kitchen. The first order of business was to unpack the food. There was a large group of us, yes, but I had never seen so much food unpacked for an overnight trip! I wanted to ask if we'd really need three containers of spam, but I refrained. Koreans always seem to be eating. They eat before meals, they eat their meals, and then they eat after meals. I still haven't adapted to "eating like a Korean" and am always afraid I'm going to offend my hosts by looking like I don't like the food. Usually I just get full faster than everyone else! The exception to this is breakfast. I'm served a giant meal, and all I really want is the rice. Breakfast in Korea doesn't have its own special set of food, it's just normal food, rice, kimchi, "Korean pancakes," and whole fried fish. I always pass on the fish because as delicious as it is, it is impossible to eat with chopsticks. This particular morning also included spicy meat soup, which was way more than I could handle first thing in the morning, so I just ate my rice. It led to a lot of questions, but really, I'm just not that hungry in the morning, especially not for spicy things. They do know how to soup up their ramen! (pun intended). There is also Soju and beer served with every dinner.

So, moving on from food. The next day we hung around the museum before having the chance to dye our own item. The color of the day was blue, so I am now in possession of a fantastic blue scarf. Also available for dyeing were pants, t-shirts, slippers, aprons, and visors. The blue dye was made from some kind of leaf, but I'm not sure which kind. It was fun though.

From the dye museum we went to a traditional cultural center, that had displays of important Korean traditions, like torture devices, games, and arts. We walked through that and then went and picked GIANT PINK BEANS in a garden. You steam up the beans with your rice and eat them, but first they needed to use my height to pick the beans. Korean gardens are really cool because they over trellises and then the fruits and veggies hang down. It's really neat, but also strange to walk through a hanging gourd garden.

And now for a quick and speedy CULTURE ROUNDUP:
- Korean rooms are heated through the floors! The floors get pretty toasty pretty fast, and it makes sleeping on the floor kinda like sleeping in a pool of lava.
- Anime is STRANGE. I watched one with the kids that related entirely to a mutant psycho rabbit killing people. It was defeated by the power of love.
- Casual physical contact (as in, the hitting kind) is very common. I've seen it among the children at school but I didn't quite realize how common it was even for adults. The five year old hit me in greeting every time he saw me (I have a bruise on my hip). Also, rock paper scissors (or scissors rock paper) is a huge game here, and the punishment is a literal slap on the wrist. Again, I'd seen this with the kids, but it was strange watching a mixed group of adults and children wailing on the losers wrist.
- King Kong Refill. I don't know what is is, but it exists.
- I bought a sweatshirt at Zara's, which is a high end department store. It has a raccoon with a top hat and antlers on it. Only in Korea.

Art :)

Sorry it's been so long between posts, this week, and last week were exhausting in their own ways. But, I'll start with the fun stuff. Today I went to the Biennale (I think that's how it's spelled) which is a Modern Art Museum in Gwangju with Britton and Heather. It was so much fun! There were some crazy things, some cool things, and some weird things there, but all in all it was awesome. There was a room full of pictures of kids with teddy bears, all old black and white pictures, which was awesome. There were videos of random things playing everywhere in these little side rooms. There was a cool area that was like walking through an apartment only there was no furniture or outlets, they were designated by dark shapes where they would go. It was pretty interesting. There were a few grotesque things, like this one area where they kept children out of that had photographs of people who were murdered and above the photograph a mannequin head with nails driven through to show where the damage was (I think). There was a room plastered with front pages of newspapers on what was reported after 9/11. And a lot of other things. It was an great exhibit. Afterward we went out to eat at an Italian restaurant that was alright. Then I came home because I'm exhausted.

My classes are starting to settle down, finally, and do varying degrees. As usual my B week, which I just finished with (and I think I'm counting the opposite weeks as Hannah as my A and B weeks...anyway) was exhausting, but fun. They like me and respond to me a lot better than my A week does. I showed them some School House Rock Grammar to help them with some grammar points. The Grade 4s loved it, and the Grade 6s were amused, but my Grade 5s were blank. This week my Grade 5s were so unresponsive and quiet, it was like they were replaced by pod-people. They're usually one of my loudest classes. My grade 4s are finally used to me so we go through lessons fairly well. My Grade 6s were acting up a lot this week though, I don't know what was wrong with them but I hope it was just a one week thing. They were ridiculous. The week before, my A week, some of them are finally starting to get used to me and understand what I expect. My Grade 4 student who told me in class a few weeks ago that he hated me was very well behaved that week. My Grade 5s, as usual, were fun. The boys just need to settle down a bit and we'll have a great time in that class. My Grade 6s apparently asked Mr. Kang if they could changed Foreign teachers because I'm mean and take too many points, but he said no. Luckily they are not overtly hostile so I can deal with them. I had them write their own monster stories because of Halloween. I got 2 vampire, 1 frankenstein, a handful of originals and, like, 5 Zombie Apocalypse stories. I was amused.

Speaking of Halloween, I managed to scare some of my students with my retractable fangs my mom sent me. It was great. They were all freaked out, which kinda made my day a lot. They were also all fascinated by it. After my Grade 5s finished their test they made me turn out the lights and tell them a ghost story. Since I had my clunky heels on I did "The Legend of Sleepy Hallow" complete with sound effects from my shoes. They got into it and when one of my student's phone vibrated mid-story I got a few shrieks.

Other than that, life seems to be settling down for me, which is nice. Korean class finished so now I need to figure out if I want to take the second half or not. I probably will. That's all I got for now.

~Lyn

Dracula Time

My costume inspiration


Halloween is always, without a doubt, the one time of the year that makes me feel homesick. It happened in college, and it's happening now. Halloween is Ross' favorite holiday, and it's been a very massive bummer that for the last 5 years of my life I don't get to celebrate with him.


The last two Fridays have been Halloween parties for both A and B week. Lots of fun. The kids were really excited. Some have had Halloween parties with other teachers, some just liked the sounds of it. We talked about Halloween words, Halloween traditions. I was going to play Halloween bingo with some of my classes, but there were some serious issues with the copy machine and I abandoned that endeavor. I did Hansel and Gretel with some of my classes, and Sleepy Hollow with another class. All my tests were done on Thursday, and then Friday was all about snacks. I got Chocopies and lollipops for all the kids, in some classes we played games (or wrote Halloween stories as a whole class). I had a highly censored conversation with some of my 7th graders about how Halloween is celebrated in college and how people usually dress for Halloween in America. I dressed up as a baby seal with a fish on my head, a la my pillow. Koreans seem to like putting food on the heads of their cute animals.

Mr. Lee, our supervisor, was out most of Friday, because his wife was having their second baby! It was a boy! No definite name yet.

I'm hoping to attempt an apple pie in the near future, but first I need to go to emart and try to find a pie plate... Trips to emart always make me wish this residence was a little more permanent. It feels like home, I call it home, but I'm trying very hard to keep it in the same mentality I kept my dorm rooms. That said I'm always wishing I could spend a little more of my hard-earned money on nice things for my place (like a new set of curtains). Well, I have no real plans for the weekend, and my life is pretty safely uneventful. It is a nice change of pace to having my classes secretly recorded! I am frustrated because I have twice as many students as Lyn and Britton, and there are actual problems with the majority of my classes not having enough desk space for all the students. I mentioned it to the school's director, but he said there was nothing he could do. I need to revisit the issue, because students keep being moved into my classes, and its just not going to work, maybe if I had a bigger classroom, but not the way things are now.
To everyone back in the states, have a happy Halloween!
~Hannah

I'm back!

Ok, so, first things first. My internet connection is all better now. There was an unnecessary connection box that was messing it up, but it's all hooked up correctly now. We'll see if this holds out. The fun part is that he didn't speak English and had to call Mr. Lee to communicate.

I decided to try bribing my classes this week. I've discovered I like baking, so I told them the class that loses the least amount of minus points would get cookies. it was the best behaved I've seen them. That might have had something to do with the fact that most of the problem children have been transferred out of the my classes. It was a little annoying that I had NO warning about the kids leaving my classes, and that one of them I was finally making progress, and now it's all gone. But what can you do? Fun connecting note the guy came to fix the internet connection while I was in the middle of baking, so that was fun.

I did not go to the Kimchi festival yesterday. I wanted to sleep in, badly, I've been exhausted all week. That plan failed a bit because my body decided to wake up at, like 7 am, but I still tried. I did however go to the "Foreigner Dinner" last night, with Hannah and Mieka and DuYeon. I met some cool people there. The dinner was good, I was a problem child again because it was pork, but I don't eat it so I got these really good, spicy, cold noddles. I think I made some good new friends! Especially this one woman, Ellen, from CA, I see myself hanging out with her sometimes. YAY! Anyway, moving on. After dinner a group of us went for drinks and I ended up staying out really late, just talking with this awesome group of men from America, England, Ireland, South Africa and I think I'm forgetting a country. Oh, and for some of it there was a Korean man there who had pretty good English, knew MunHwa fairly well, and knew Tyrone. He was fun to talk to. But by the end of the night it was me, Seth (the other American), two Irishmen and two Englishmen. The conversation was amazing! We talked about everything from history, to politics. I got into a rather long conversation with one about tennis and soccer. It was a fun night, I'm glad. Everyone was so nice, and open, and welcoming. And I finally made contact with the guy who does the Running club here and joined that Facebook group, so now I have people to run with at least one day a week.

Apparently the Kimchi festival runs for a few days. And I'm going this afternoon, I think, with some of the guys I met last night. I'm kinda excited about that.

I can't think of anything else to say, other than the fact that I highly encourage everyone to take a couple days, unplug the internet and just exist without it for a few days a least. As much as I disliked not being in contact with my friends, not having it was actually a pretty good thing. I ended up liking it a lot, haha. That's all.

~Lyn

Say Kimchi!

It's 750 am. Hannah rolls over, looks at her alarm clock, and says several words that will not be repeated here. "Do I really want to go to the darn kimchi festival?" She asks herself, pulling her baby seal pillow in closer. "What's so special about making kimchi anyways." A few minutes of grumbling later, Hannah's instant coffee is cooling down while she deliriously showers, hoping she can get to the GIC for the 910 bus departure (she does).

So that was my morning. I am very glad that I went to the festival, and also very glad that I went early, because it meant that I got to see the opening ceremonies, which meant I got to see "Kimchi: The interpretive dance!" (People with large vegetables danced around the stage... it was weird). There were people dressed as cabbages walking around, but they disappeared before I could take there picture! I had my kimchi making experience (pretty easy when all you have to do is massage the ingredients into a cabbage), and my kimchi is now sitting happily in my fridge! I also stole the apron they had us wear when we made kimchi, because stealing things is cheaper than buying a t-shirt! Then I walked around the Biennale, which is like there art museum. They had an exhibition called 1000 Lives. Most of it was interesting, some of it was freaking weird. Also, because I went with the GIC I got to meet some new people. It was fun! There's a larger foreign population than you'd think here in Gwangju, and not just teachers, there are also a lot of college students.

Of course, the kicker to the first part of this story: As soon as I got back from the festival and was snuggly in my apartment I got a call from my friend Mieka. They were just getting to the festival... so I totes could've blown off the GIC and gone later... but I guess then I wouldn't have gotten to see my interpretive dance.

Classes are going well, aside from the fist fight in my 5th grade class on Weds... I yelled (really yelled) for the first time at the two boys who were fighting, and now the class is scared of me. The trouble makers in 6th grade are doing better. I had Halloween parties for all my kids on Friday, it was a lot of fun. I gave them all chocopies and lollipops. I'll be doing it again with my classes next week!

Tonight is the monthly Foreigner dinner, so I'll be heading out to that shortly!

~Hannah

In Which Hannah Explains Where Lyn Went and Rambles About Some Other Stuff

Firstly: The internet in Lyn's apartment up and died. That's about all I know of that particular situation, but I'm sure you'll get a full update once that issue is fixed.

It's been a rough weekend here on my end of things but I have decided that, as the focus of this blog is Life in Korea, this is not exactly the place to delve into it. I have my friends and I have my paper journal for all dealing with these moments.

I had my first experience with a Korean pharmacy on Thursday. I've had a horrible cough (probably an upper respiratory infection) for about two weeks. I've put off getting any medication for it because I've been really nervous about accidentally taking something with acetaminophen in it. I had my Korean teacher write me a note to give to the pharmacist that would ensure I didn't get something I couldn't take. The way the pharmacologist determined what medication to give me? He had me hold different pills in my hand and with each pill he swung this top on a string over my hand. When the top spun a certain way it was the "correct medicine." It appears to be working.

I've been taking tea classes with one of my Korean friends at her place of employment. I'm apparently in the 'advanced class' because I have my Korean lessons during the time of the beginner class. It's filled with old women who think I look like Sandy and ask me to get things off of high shelves for them. They are very patient with me, and slowly but surely I am getting the hang of proper Korean etiquette!

I've also had students correctly identify a puppy, and while grading essays I got to make a comment that "It is inappropriate to write essays in crayon." This essay was for a 6th grade class. I've also been giving the unfortunate news that the three major troublemakers in my class will still be in my class this upcoming week. I am once again filled with dread about dealing with my B week classes. I'm at my wits end and just the thought of dealing with that class makes me feel so defeated. I guess we'll see.

~Hannah

In case you were interested...

The 6th grade class that I complained about in my last entry?

One of the transplant students (and also my favorite student ever) recorded the class on his cell phone the other day. He brought that to his parents, saying that he didn't want to come back to the academy. His parent's brought that to the school. I was asked to name the students who were on the recording (the three boys I've had the most trouble with), explain exactly what was going on in the class, and then they had me listen to the recording. It was all in Korean, so I couldn't understand what exactly the boys were saying, but apparently it was pretty vulgar. It was bad enough that Mr. Kang is now considering kicking the boys out of the academy.

I have mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, I am of course thrilled with the prospect of getting rid of these insubordinate troublemakers. On the other hand, I'm afraid that this will reflect badly on me as a teacher, and I certainly don't want to come across like a pansy who is incapable of controlling her class.

So I guess we'll just have to see where this goes. On the bright side, they replaced my awesome work computer with a crappy one, and our Korean Class midterm is tomorrow!

Oh... wait...

~Hannah

Hell Week, Awesome Weekend

First of all I would like to point out and apologize because the date/times on our posts have been way off. I fixed it. On to the actual post.

So, this week isn't as bad for me as it is for Hannah, but it's still my worst week, sort of. I'm a little odd with my classes. My B Week classes (this past week), are my less advanced classes. They like me better then my A Week classes on the whole, but they are ridiculous to control. And by ridiculous I mean nearly impossible. My A Week classes I like better because they listen a little better, but for the most part they don't like me. It amuses me. Anyway. I'm glad that I'm done with this week, it was worse then normal.

On Saturday we went to the Gwangju Food Festival. It was AMAZING. They had food from Greece, Japan, Thailand, The Philippines, Russia, North America, Nepal, Nigeria, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China. The food was delicious, though in some cases kinda random. For instance, North America (i.e. USA and Canada) had Mac and Cheese, Biscuits and Gravy, Cookies, Brownies and Ice Cream and Pierogis while Russia had Russian Cup Cake, Apple Pie and Cabbage Vegetable Rice. Not to say all were random, but those two definitely threw me for a loop. As well as Greece having Hummus and Lemonade in addition to Kabobs (yummy, though disappointing soulvaki) "Greek Salad" (which wasn't real Greek Salad but America's version of it, sad kittens), Lentil and Rice Pilaf, and Rizagalo Pudding.. Vietnam's was the best, though, hands down (even if Greece managed to win the contest, Greece was disappointing). Outside with all the food was a flea market, which we went to towards the end and there wasn't much left, but Hannah got two comfy shirts for cheap. There was also a booth to try on traditional clothes. We both tried them on. Hannah, I think, already put her pictures up on facebook. I will after I post this. They were surprisingly hot, they look so light and flowy, but we were both sweating. Inside there was a bunch of booths and displays for various food companies and different food items. There were also displays of food and they were so cool! I took a lot of pictures of them because the presentation was so awesome. All in all it was a lot of fun.
(UPDATE: I put up my pictures and added one to the post)

Getting there was a little interesting, we had to take the 59 bus downtown (sort of, there's a festival going on so the routes are a little wonky) where we caught the 1000 bus. We took that to the bus terminal which put is in the right area (I can't spell it for the life of me, but it's where Petra lived and I think Hannah's mentioned it before, starts with an S, anyway) and from there we grabbed a taxi. We were about to do this in reverse order to get home, but catching a taxi proved a little difficult. There was a comment made about us feeling awkward because we felt a little like hookers standing on the corner like that, then we saw a 1000 bus drive by and decided to just walk to the bus stop to wait for the next one. This turned out to be a problem because when we got to the bus stop there wasn't a sign for the 1000 bus. So we kept walking. That area is GORGEOUS. It was a really nice day out and the view was great. We ended up walking almost the entire way back to the bus terminal before we found a bus stop that had the 1000 bus on the sign. So we waited there. We were going in the right direction so we stayed on it. When our stop was coming up we pushed the button and stood up to start walking towards the front of the bus. This failed to get the bus drivers attention and he drove past 2 stops before finally stopping to let us off. Being adventurous that day we took the 98 bus (which came first), which also gets us in the area of home, but the 59 stops right in front of the apartment so we usually stick with that. Anyway. We finally got home with plenty of time to get ready for our next plan for the night, Britton's welcome back party.

We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was me, Hannah, Britton, Heather and two of Britton's friends, Van and Da Hee (I think I spelled that right), who we hadn't met yet. They are so cool! Van also likes tennis and we had a mini-discussion on that. YAY making new tennis friends. After dinner Van had to leave but the rest of us hung out for a while longer. It was a good time. All in all it was a good day. Today (Sunday), I cleaned my apartment and realized that I can't do it as thoroughly as I would like because I lack the necessary supplies which made me sad. I have to find them at E-mart. I think I'm going go running with the running club later, but I'm not sure, I'm awaiting a text. That's all I have to say for now!

~Lyn~

Brought to you by the letters H, н, and ㅐ

It's hard to believe but in a few weeks I'll have been in Korea for three whole months! I'm settled in and I've stopped noticing how Asian everyone is and how much I stand out. I haven't really gotten homesick yet (although, like I said in a previous entry, I've been getting "people sick"). Overall things have been going really well. I have finished writing all my grad school essays and now it's just time to edit them. I promise that when they are all sent out that this blog will not turn into me complaining about having to play the waiting game.

Last night I made my new favorite dinner again (beef, mushroom, garlic in balsamic vinaigrette over pasta) only this time I made it with Hanwoo, Korean style beef, instead of imported American beef. It was fantastic. The other night I figured out how to work my shiny new rice cooker and made some shrimp scampi over rice. Also delicious. If you hadn't guessed, I'm enjoying cooking for myself. I also plan on kicking the baking up a notch, I also found a coffee shop that sells European style hot chocolate, the thick creamy delicious kind like I drank in Russia. It was a fantastic find.

Speaking of Russia: A new girl name Lala has joined our Korean class! She is from Azerbaijan but speaks a little bit of Russian, which means after a refresher course I should have someone to practice with! Korean class is going well, we're learning how to tell time, and we all know that analog clocks are the bane of my existence. I really appreciate Korean class not just because it's helping me learn Korean but because the more I know about the language the easier it is for me to empathize with my students (I'm constantly reminded just how hard learning a new language is) and it also allows me to see why they make some of the grammatical mistakes that they do. I feel like I'm more patient and better at explaining their mistakes when I know why they're making them.

In other food news, I have found the foreign food mart, as well as a great little restaurant called 'The First Alleyway' which serves American/British food and is run by English-speaking foreigners. It's delicious! I also received an amazing care package from my cousin Jessica filled with all sorts of American foods I've been missing. As much as I love cooking, some nights I just want comfort foods. When I finish this post it's off to make some banana bread (with a recipe I found online... we'll see how this goes!)

The past two weeks have been a little rough for me, and one of the main issues has been the crazyness that became my schedule. Each day has six 45 minute periods, and we have an A Week and a B Week. My A Week used to be: recording, 4th grade, recording, 6th grade, 7th grade, recording. My B Week used to be: 3rd Grade, 6th Grade, 5th Grade, 6th Grade, 7th Grade, recording. B Week has always been somewhat hellish for me just because the classes are so packed together, leaving me little to no time to make photocopies, print things, grab a snack. On top of that B Week is the week with my worst classes. I love my 3rd Graders dearly, but they're a handful, my two 6th grade classes have tons of behavior issues (they're all so insubordinate!). My 5th graders and 7th graders are both calm and well behaved. My B Week classes all had between 18-21 (except the 3rd graders).

A Week was my favorite weekend. I was close with three smaller classes filled with great kids. I had fantastic relationships with all of my students and it was just fantastic.

Weds of last week I found out that my 4th and 6th grade classes on A Week were being dissolved. I was getting a new 4th grade, a new 6th grade, I was getting a 5th grade class that was a composite of my old 5th grade class and new 5th graders. I had been warned by Lori that my schedule could change at a moments notice, but that did surprisingly little to prepare me for the upheaval of it actually happening. It was very hard to loose all but my 7th graders and get my happy small sized classes replaced with more classes of 18-20 kids. Two of my best students from my A Week 6th grade class were moved to my worst B Week class. It's hard to deal with now, I've lost a lot of the footing I had, and also lost my place in many of my classes because the addition of so many new students has made things difficult. The larger classes also have more behavior problems across the board. Needless to say I was not happy about the change.

So I just finished B Week, which is always depressing and discouraging. I really hate my 6th grade classes this week. Especially my second 6th grade class... the one they moved my good students to. There are a lot of behavior issues in that class, but there are three boys who make teaching the class impossible. They are loud, rude, and insubordinate. They throw things. They verbally harass the other students, and apparently they have taken to the habit of calling me vulgar names in Korean. Nothing seems to work for disciplining these kids. It affects the other students abilities to learn, and they can tell that I've just giving up. I spend so much time yelling, taking minus points, trying to get them to just behave and it doesn't work. The first day in that class the two transplanted students had looks of shock and horror. I had never yelled at them, never had any of the behavior problems I did in that class, and we had such a great relationship all together. I actually had to speak to the Korean teacher about the problems in that class. I hate it.

Some fun news though! I have employed Dinosaur comics in my teaching. I printed out a comic, whited out the dialogue, and then made photocopies. My students had to create a story for the comics and describe what was happening using emotion vocabulary. In this weeks 7th grade class we've been having a lot of fun. I've had between 9 and 5 students, with the average being 4 students this week. Many have been absent because they need to study for the big exams they all have this week. So I've had the students who have come creating dinosaur comics, writing stories, and the past two days we played a fantastic bastardization of scrabble. Not only was it fun, but I think it helped get these newer students used to me. The class is usually 20 students, so it's nice to interact with some of them one and one and now we all know each other better. I've also done penpals with some of my more advanced classes. They're writing letters to students at the school where my mom works. I got the first batch of American letters yesterday and it was so much fun to read through all of them. I can't wait to give them to the students!

There's a big festival tomorrow in Sangmu which Lyn and I will probably attend, so you will probably get an update about that soon.

The title of this post has to do with my name. In the three languages I know how to write my name (English, Russian, and Korean) there is always a character that looks like an H! In English it is of course the H, in Russian the N, and in Korean it's the A. If I can ever figure out how to type in Hangul I'll show you.

Sound of Settling

To start the post off, this weekend was AMAZING. My best time here so far, and I have plans for more awesomeness to come. But before I get to the weekend, a quick update on my classes :/ On the upside my students are getting used to me, on the downside they are getting used to me. This is both good and bad. In some classes it means that the students now know I'm serious about taking points. On the other hand it means they are more comfortable talking back to me because they know I'm fairly easy going about most things. My grade 4s this week informed me that I am the meanest foreign teacher in the entire school. I am not only stricter than Britton, but I also take more points (a lie), and "Hannah-teacher doesn't give a lot of homework" (another lie). I was advised that I have to stop being an American and I need to turn into a Korean to become a better teacher, another student then jumped in to say that I just needed to stop thinking like an American and start thinking like a Korean. The thing is, from what I've seen, the Korean teachers are a lot stricter/give more homework. But my grade 5s are having fun and talked me into not working from the book next time we see each other because they want to learn Latin (I LOVE THEM). I'll be doing the root-word unit with them, except altered because they are a little less advanced then the other students I've tried it with. My Grade 6s are finally starting to understand why I've been torturing them with prefixes/suffixes and root words. Which is a plus. All in all I'm getting used to teaching, definitely, and I love it. Even when the kids tell me they hate me (which is actually really funny, because it's only 2 or 3 of the boys, the rest of the class seems to like me).

This weekend I had my apartment warming party thing. I was a little nervous actually because I've had bad experiences planning parties and then no one showing up. I had nothing to be worried about. Hannah, Britton and Heather showed up first. Then Woo Hyeon. And we hung out talking for a little while. Then Mieka, Du Yeon and Prisca (a new friend) showed up and the party really got started. It was great. We ended up playing scrabble in pairs. Mieka and Hannah paired together, I was paired with Du Yeon, Woo Hyeon and Britton, and Prisca and Heather. It was so much fun, and hilarious. We had a good time, and somehow Hannah and Mieka ended up winning (and then failed 3 times at a high five). But all in all it was a success. Before the party Hannah and I hit E-Mart to get party supplies and cleaning supplies. I also got a fish. If he survives the week I shall name him Andre (because Hannah's fish is Steph, and Andre Agassi is married to Steffi Graff, so yeah...everything comes back to tennis!), and while discussing this at the party I learned something awesome. Mieka seems to be a tennis fan too! And she plays! I'm psyched.

So then, today (Sunday), we went out to brunch. There was wonderful planning and we ended up going in two groups, Heather and Britton went (and invited me but I was being a lazy bum and skipped out), and then me, Hannah, Prisca and Mieka. We all went to First Avenue which is delicious food. The other three got full English Breakfast. I got a strange breakfast burrito thing, with Spanish rice, egg, some sort of yummy salsa, all wrapped in a tortilla. It was so good. Then the four of us went shopping/wandering around downtown. I had a great time. So yeah, this weekend was the best weekend ever, so far. I have friends! :) I also learned about a running club group thing that meets every Sunday and goes for a run, then goes out to dinner. I'm joining and I'm excited.

Onto the less good portion of recent times. Our school is RIDICULOUS! Hannah's classes got all switched around and some new ones added and Britton got some new classes too. And I have to most open schedule they should add people to already huge classes (like they did with some of Hannah's classes) or give so many classes to just one teacher. It's crazy! And not only that. But we didn't find out things were going to be switched around until a couple days before they did, and they didn't even tell us everything. Apparently it's normal to find out these things at the last minute, but it sucks. Classes should be reorganized because right now they are really lopsided and mixed up, and then distributed evenly. But that might not happen. Oh well, such is life. We just have to deal with it. A good life lesson. That's all I got.

~Lyn~

Trunk Fish= Turtle Fish!

No 한글 tonight. It's actually rather difficult to give you those fantastic titles. My computer doesn't type in Korean, so what I do is pick the word, look up the spelling in my dictionary (if I don't already know it) and then run the English word through an online translator. I pick the correct translation and copy and paste the 한글 into the title. My keyboard has all the little 한글 symbols because I use can type Korean in Rosetta Stone, but I have no clue how to make that option available outside of the program.

Does it make me seem less impressive now?

Anywho! I just wanted to blog about my pretty fantastic evening. I met up with my Korean friends for dinner. We had planned this since last week, the idea was that we would go out for fresh seafood. I was under the impression that we were meeting up with a group of their friends at a restaurant. Nope! What we actually did was meet up with their friends (some I had already met) at the fish market owned by one of their friends. So it wasn't a restaurant at all, it was a special home cooked meal in a fish market! It was amazing and delicious! There is always so much food involved in a Korean meal. We had abalone, pork, crab, and crab ramen. It was all amazing. I felt really, really, really bad for the abalone (again). We grilled them alive and watching a snail trying to escape as it writhes in pain is sad and pathetic and fills me with a million different questions and ethical issues... issues I don't seem to face when watching crabs be boiled alive. Grilled abalone with sesame oil is really delicious... I had a good time. It's hard to communicate sometimes, but between there English, the handful of Korean words I know, and the power of charades (and my apparent ability to read people well... I've surprised my friends on several instances when I've answered a question correctly without translation simple based on inference) we understand each other most of the time.

Of course, we were in a fish market. So what did I do? Ran from tank to tank teaching them the English names of the fish (trigger fish! lizard fish! trunk fish!) The Korean name for a trunk fish literally translates to 'turtle fish.' Most of the fish seemed to have some kind of swim bladder disorder, but I suppose if they're just going to be dinner it doesn't matter if they know which end is up. The trunk fish was pretty solidly dead (and still in a tank).

So that was my Saturday night. It was a lot of fun and so special and unique! I'm just sad that I forgot to bring my camera!
~Hannah
ETA: I tried to change the date that this was posted on so that it would line up with the day I actually wrote the post (9/26) but that just put the post as "scheduled to be published" and so I'm adjusting the date so that it will actually post. Don't know what the deal is with this one.

Chuseok: 추석

You say that like "chew-sock." It's the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, only instead of pilgrims and indians and smallpox, there's ancestors, visiting your hometown, and Buddhists!

That's a gross oversimplification. Here's a link to the wikipedia page about Chuseok: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuseok

In short, Chuseok is the celebration of the harvest. You give thanks for receiving a good harvest. If you are a Buddhist you do this by sacrificing an obscene amount of food to the spirits of your ancestors (because they are the ones responsible for the good harvest). We get three days off for Chuseok, Tue-Thurs. I was invited by a Korean friend to spend Monday Night- Weds Afternoon at her home/her husbands home. So Monday at 9pm, right when I finished work (Lyn and Britton gave tests, I had snack parties! For everyone! Guess who was too lazy to make lesson plans?) I was picked up right from the school and we headed out! We drove about an hour out of Gwangju... I forget the name of the place, but it was a small city famous for their summer aqua festival (YOU STAND IN A RIVER AND CATCH FISH WITH YOUR HANDS!!! GUESS WHO'S ALREADY INVITED HERSELF TO NEXT YEARS???) Her family lives in an apartment in the city, and her husband's family lives shortly outside the city next to a rice paddy in a traditional Korean house.

I was a surprise guest, but my friend's mother was so thrilled to see me, even though she had an already full house (My friend and her husband, her younger sister, her younger brother, her older brother with his wife and two children, her parents, and of course, me!) she was so thrilled. They all really liked me and have invited me back, which is good because I was afraid of committing some horrible social faux paus (like when they took my chopsticks from me and gave me a fork). They kept asking if I was enjoying myself, because I was so quiet. I tried to explain that I'm just naturally quiet, but they kept comparing me to Lori, Petra, and Sandy. Compared to those three I'm a mute! I don't think they believed me when I said that I liked Korean food. I don't know as though I'd ever get used to eating a full Korean breakfast... having fish, mushrooms, rice, and kimchi (along with three or four other dishes) first thing in the morning confuses my western sensibilities (as does having the same meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). I feel like we were constantly eating! If we weren't eating meals we were eating fruit and if I wasn't eating I was being told to eat! The first thing we did when we arrived at the apartment was start eating! We had raw abalone. I don't really like it raw. Cooked and in porridge I like it. Also, killing the abalone doesn't look very nice and one tried to flee in terror and I felt really bad... I bet having your mouth cut out and then being sliced into tiny pieces sucks.
Both nights we spent in the apartment. I spent Tuesday with my friend's sister. We went to a traditional Korean market and I got to see all the fish and the chickens with their heads! I saw the river where the aqua festival is held, and then we went up to Woodland, which is like a forest park, and hiked around. It was amazingly beautiful. There were lots of little traditional style Korean houses. They're there partly for show and also as a vacation spot, so you can rent them. This means that there are big Samsung air conditioning units outside each traditional house! It was so hot Monday and Tuesday. The apartment unfortunatley has no AC, and the room I was sleeping in was like an oven (nope, no fans. You can't sleep with a fan in Korea, you don't want to fall victim to FAN DEATH! "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death).The forests in Korea are so beautiful. They remind me a lot of New England.

After that (and a voyage through the mushroom rotary!) we went back to the apartment and ate more. There was some napping involved, and Min Seo (my new bff) shared her donut with me. Min Seo is the 6 year old daughter of my friend's older brother. We didn't have a lot of direct interaction, but we had that connection, where you walk into a room and you can just tell there is another awesome individual in your presence. Min Seo would run into a room, look at me yell "hello!" then immediately yell "goodbye!" and run out of the room, shrieking with laughter the whole time. And she had a Mashimaro pajama top. We did some language exchange, I taught her some animal names in English and she taught me them in Korean. I don't remember them, of course. But I was forced to practice my minimal Korean skills and can now count from 1-6 and 10-69.

Around 3 I went to a traditional Korean tea house with my friend. We met up with some her other friends, including a woman who has been studying in Australia for several years. She was fluent in English, which made communicating easier! Then up to a different mountain for more hiking and some wading in a stream. A little shrimp tried to eat my toes! From there we dropped off the Australian friend and then went straight to the husband's home. It's a very traditional Korean house, there's no indoor bathroom (just a toilet over a hole in the ground), and there's not a shower or tub or anything. We ate dinner there (very delicious, although I was getting pretty sick of sitting on the floor at this point, I just don't find it comfortable!). Then we relaxed and watched TV. I was not invited to help prepare the alter to the grandfather's spirit, nor did I take any pictures of it after I saw it. It seemed to be a very personal thing. The alter has incense, a picture of the deceased, a little... totem thingy, and then enough food for the spirit to eat for a whole year... my friend and her husbands family had been cooking the food since 6am, all to prepare for the alter! It was incredible.

We slept back at the apartment. My friend had to leave early to go with her husbands family to visit the graves of the ancestors (they are Buddhist). I stayed with her family. They had a quick Christian worship service, but of course I just watched because I don't speak Korean! It was interesting though, very quick. They sang a hymn, read a very brief passage, sang another hymn, said a prayer, and then Min Seo's older brother recited the Lord's Prayer. Then we had breakfast, all this while sitting on the living room floor!

We headed back to Gwangju around 115, took us a fair amount of time to get back, because of all the holiday traffic. We grabbed some food at the Lotteria, which is the Korean version of McDonalds. It tastes like fast food (go figure). So while my break was not super action packed it was fantastically anthropological, and it was so nice to get away and spend some time with a real family. It reminded me of when I would go to my grandparents house during college just so I could be in a house and wander around rooms. It kinda felt like that. I'm treating the apartment very much like a dorm, and the majority of the things in here aren't really MINE. The bed, desk, dresser, etc. are all mine only in so much as the dorm furniture was mine. No matter how awesome my closets are, or how much I love my table and chairs... or my coffee table, I can't take it with me. So as odd as it may sound, being in a real home, with a real family, just being a part of the mundane day to day was so... nice and relaxing!

Oh! We also watched Korean fishing programs... so it was almost like being at home! We also watched some very, very weird Korean karaoke show.
I think that's it! If I forgot anything I'll make an edit!
Happy Choseuk everyone!
~Hannah

Why Our School is Weird

So we currently are on break for three days. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It's a little ridiculous that we have to go to school on both Monday and Friday when the other academies, from what I've heard, had Monday off. But such is life. I had really meant to update this on Monday, and here I sit on Wednesday finally doing it. Oops. Oh well.
Last Saturday I had originally planned to go with Hannah to the GIC to make the rice cakes even though it was Yom Kippur and I was fasting so I wouldn't be able to eat any of them. However, I woke up with a major migraine and stayed home. Hannah came over Saturday night and I made us pancakes and that was fun and delicious, and she brought me some rice cakes and they were not as good, but still kinda tasty. The reheating job was probably not the best. Then on Sunday I went with Britton and Heather (his girlfriend) to Kuma World (i think that's how it's spelled). It's the HUGE electronics store, and furniture, and other stuff. But I was only interested in the electronics. Then we went to the main E-mart which is right next door to that. I now have an external CD player and a wireless router. I am happy about that, except that it's been making the skype connection wonky (seriously mom, stop calling me, I'll call you when I fix it), but I'm figuring it out.
Monday was test day for me. I took the Friday last week to finish up the units I was working on and make sure the kids really understood them. So, Monday I did get better test scores from these classes, which was great. I really think I MIGHT be finally getting through to some of the Grade 5s I have this week. Plus it helps that some of them might be moved down to a slower class. The class is just too mixed. I try to move at the pace for the majority of them, but I'm leaving some kids behind, and I can't slow down for just one or two kids, no matter how much I may want to. And we really don't have an option of after school help because some of them go straight to Math School when we're done with them. It's frustrating.
Speaking of frustrating things. Since I no longer have my Grade 7s (YAY) I have an extra recording period, as I mentioned. For the past few days it's been taken up with me reading vocab words slowly and clearly, enunciating every single letter, ugh. It's kinda fun on some levels, but on others it's just annoying. I also get to record with the secretaries, they say the word in Korean, I say it twice in English. That's fun, they're adorable. Anyway, I'm off to go exploring and mail letters.

~Lyn

Song Pyeon (half moon rice cakes): 송편

It has been a long week. A long, long, long, long, long week. The children have been out of control, discipline issues were rampant, I had five classes straight through with no breaks, by the end of the week I was croaking (so much trying to talk over kids/yelling), exhausted (no sleep weee), and stressed (will the grad school applications never be finished?).

Ended up going out with some Korean friends (as in, they are Korean) Friday night. It was a nice break.

Today I went to the Gwangju International Center (GIC) and made song pyeon, little half moon shaped rice... well... it's a rice pastry and it's filled with either a sweet sesame mixture (that reminded me a lot of the filling for kolach) or red beans. The dough was either white (straight up rice dough) or green (mixed with 'vegetation' not really sure what they were getting at, but they are tasty). It reminded me a lot of making pierogies, only in miniature. They were tasty. Unfortunately they decided to have us count off and divide the tables by number, so I was with three people from CA (who are in our language class) a British woman who was just taking pictures, and a Chinese/American woman. The British woman was very into her picture taking, the Chinese/American very focused on her song pyeon making, and the three Californians were only interested in talking to each other (believe me, I tried to be conversational). It was a fun time, and then afterward I wandered downtown and art street. Saturday seems to be the day to go to art street! In addition to the normal shops (not all of which were open, sadly) there were also street vendors. Art Street was also really busy, which was nice, I felt less awkward not being the only person around. I bought myself a really nice set of placemats with some really nice chopsticks. While on art street I ran into one of my coworkers! We had a brief chat and then parted ways, she was out with a friend and husband. I also saw three of my 6th grade students. It was rather awkward, I said hello and they muttered and looked away. I wasn't even trying to talk to them!

Next week we have a 3-day break for Choseuk, which is like Korean Thanksgiving. I was offered a very, very unique chance to spend some of it with a Korean family. Expect a full report when I return!


And now everyone's favorite amateur anthropologist pulls out her giant list of "things American's will find strange" and finally decides to share them with you:

- My very first day in Korea, when I was sitting in class with Sandy, a kid pulled out an exacto knife. A freaking exacto knife! Coming from a country where any kind of knife can be considered a weapon this shocked me so much that my first reaction was to demand that the kid hand it over. I have actually gotten used to this, kids whipping knives out in class. They use these exacto knives to sharpen their pencils

-Physical contact with the students is allowed. So that means you can hug the kids, pat them on the shoulder, separate a fight, etc. It also means that sometimes your third graders will give you back rubs. It feels like child exploitation when they do it, but not only do they volunteer, they just come up behind you and start beating your back. They are surprisingly good at it. Apparently they are taught from a young age how to give a proper back rub so that they can help out there elders. Which leads us to...

-The children will feed you. Not 'they will give you food' (which they will). THEY WILL FEED YOU. They will say "HERE TEACHER" as they shove things in your face. God help you if you have food allergies or don't like something or have an aversion to grubby child fingers because they just shove it in your face with no explanation as to what it is or if they washed their hands after coming out of the bathroom.

-Your washing machine will drain itself onto the floor. Do not be alarmed. Keep an extra pair of chopsticks handy in case you need to pull disgusting things out of your drain

- (This one's for you, Dad) All the trashcans have lids. All of them.

- (This one's for you, Bridget) Koreans compost and recycle all plastics/glass/metal. There is also a clothes donation bin outside of every apartment.

also, if you are interested

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049825&id=1326450018&l=4104c93786

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2048838&id=1326450018&l=795ff8479e

Those are the links to my two facebook albums of Korean pictures. The second look is a more irreverent take on the little odds and ends of Korea (and my hamster), whereas the first link is actually serious pictures. Feel free to look at one, both, or neither!

Enjoy your weekend, and have a happy Choseuk!
~Hannah

Many Things

HI!

I will start my entry off with a minor apology. I'm a bit overtired because I woke up at 5AM to watch the Men's Finals of the US Open (YAY, the US Open made me SOOO happy this year) which you probably don't want me to babble about (I shall try not to, but YAY). This entry will probably have a lot of babble anyway because I'm tired, but I can't sleep until my laundry is done, such is life (and it wasn't even worth it really to get up because the US Open Live wouldn't stream here and because of the rain delay it wasn't anywhere else, so I was stuck listening to the radio. So sad, I wanted to see the beautiful backhands that both of my boys were hitting MAJOR winners with).

Anyway. Sadly, Lori and Petra have left us to go on their next big adventure. I know that they will have fun, but I miss them. I didn't get as close to them as Hannah did, but that's to be expected. The only two up sides to them leaving are that I now have my own apartment and am unpacked, settled in and finally calmer. AND Britton is back too, and I missed him so that's awesome :) (I totally had to say that because he read this :P just kidding, hehe). Anyway, a huge plus with Britton here, he got my Grade 7s, I DON'T HAVE GRADE 7S ANYMORE! YES! I mean, I am happy I no longer have to deal with the two classes that gave me the most stress. Now I only have one really bad class, and I think I scared them enough today (-10 pts for Korean, -5 pts for speaking at all without being called on) that they will be a little better.

I am ridiculously happy to have my own apartment and no longer be living out of my suitcase. I am completely unpacked, decorated (there are ducks EVERYWHERE) and if you are interested I will either post pictures here later (if you ask) or you can check out my facebook page where the four pictures are. I am absolutely in love with almost everything about the apartment for the sole fact that it is awesome, and it is mine. The only thing I have a problem with are the knives, but Britton will come fix them tomorrow (they are sad).

In more school news, because last week was Rosh Hashanah, I did a New Years unit with my Grade 6 and 7 last week (then Britton save the Grade 7 class from the King Arthur unit I had planned, because really? They didn't know who King Arthur was? Blasphemy!). The Grade 6s loved it, the Grade 7 girls were interested, the boys should be wacked repeatedly with a notebook so they stop sleeping in my class (seriously, two of them fell asleep). This week I was going to do the unit with the other Grade 7, but Britton has them, so YAY. My Grade 6s are learning about the founding of Rome (don't judge me!) and my Grade 5 class, because the next book for them was sold out, is doing an inpromptu lesson on the Greek Gods. However, the class is so out of control all we've gone over is who the 14 Olympians are (I count Hades and Hestia, not everyone does) and the myth of Hades and Persephone. I was going to do birth myths, but decided not to (didn't want to get into Dionysus and Athena). Anyway, out of a class of 19, only 7 did their homework today, so I lost my temper and scared them (see above about taking points). Other than that class, I love my classes. This weeks Grade 6, and the other Grade 5 are a bit rambunctious but they are cool kids. I'm starting to hit my stride teaching I think.

Because I don't have the Grade 7s I have an extra Recording period. I like recording by myself. It's fun with someone else, but by myself is a bit more fun. I don't know why. Maybe I just really love talking to myself. Maybe I'm crazy. Hm.

In other news, Hannah and I are also students! We had our first Korean class today. There were three other foreign teachers there (I think all three were from CA) and one older woman who was French, but lived in Australia for a number of years (and that's where her husband is from) so she had an Aussie accent. She's here because her husband is here (teaching?). Anyway. The teacher we had today is apparently not our teacher, she was filling in because our teacher was busy. However, she was Lori and Sandy's teacher! This made me (and maybe Hannah too?) nervous because both are very smart and good at languages, and I'm only half one and it's not the language one. I spent a lot of the class trying very hard not to parallel things with Japanese and any other language I know. Which was kinda hard. But, I really really want to learn this language so I shall persevere! I will probably complain a lot about how Hannah is better then me at it, I am not good with modern languages, give me a dead language any day. The Korean alphabet seems like something I can pick up though, so that's good.

Speaking of dead languages, I have been in contact with UMass Amherst about the Masters in Teaching Latin program I want to get into. So far, sounds good. And the prof that I was e-mailing seemed to think I'd be very good for the program, so happy thoughts!

I can't think of anything else to say that doesn't relate to tennis (YAY NADAL) so I shall end my entry here. I think I wanted to say more about Korean class, but the thought has now passed out of my brain.

L'Shana Tova
~Lyn~

Sister: 자매

I had an amazing weekend, but I'm starting to feel a little depressed. Why? Because Lori and Petra are leaving Saturday morning. We've been cramming in as much time together as possible before they leave, but it's hard because I have work and they have to clean out Lori's apartment (Petra has moved out of her place and is staying with Lori so that the new teacher's at Petra's school (a couple) have a place to stay) and they also have to pack for their trip to Germany. I've gotten very close to my "big sisters," I'm sad to see them go. Fortunately I got an AMAZING last weekend with them! It started on Saturday morning. Lori and Petra have both heard so much about Josh that they demanded a chance to skype with him and make sure they approved of the relationship. After that they told me to come over later in the evening, so I did. A decent sized group had congregated to say goodbye to them, and we ate pizza and then went out. A few blocks from the apartment is a bowling alley and a Nori Bang (Korean Karaoke). First we went to the Nori Bang, and then we went "backwards bowling." Due to an injury, Petra cannot use her left hand (which is her dominant hand), so the point of backwards bowling was that everyone had to use their 'wrong' hand. It was fun. I'm just as bad at left handed bowling as I am at right handed bowling.

The next day I had more "sister" time. We all went up to the bamboo forest and I met a Korean couple that Lori and Petra have befriended. We went to a traditional Korean style restaurant, which involved sitting on the floor (in a skirt! whoops!) and just eating rice and side dishes! It was interesting, and fun. We also tried bamboo wine, which tasted a little like watered down whiskey. Overall we didn't spend too much time there, but it was neat to see the forest and know what is around the area.

Teaching is going very well, I'm back on the easy week. I had a great moment with one of my 6th graders yesterday. Overall I'm pretty lax on discipline. I don't waste a lot of time telling individuals to pay attention or doling out 'minus points.' My logic is that if they are paying attention it will reflect in their grades because they will know the answers to the tests and know how to complete the homework. So the other day while reading a story that they would be quizzed on (all announced) over half the class failed to pay attention or ask any questions. And then they failed the quiz. The great moment occurred the following day when I handed the graded quizzes back and the students apologized and promised to pay more attention. The rest of the class they had perfect behavior!

I've been super busy working organizing grad school stuff, which is kinda dominating my life. I'm not going to weigh everyone down with that stuff here in the blog, but if you're interested in hearing about it, feel free to ask me! I've also been doing a lot of thinking about Korean relationships and cultural differences and definitions. I will probably make a long scholarly post on that, but I want to write that more like a real paper and less like a blog post, so you will have to wait awhile to read it, sorry!

Hope all is well with everyone. I miss a lot of people, but as you can probably tell I'm having a great time, even if I'm getting sad about the thought of Lori and Petra leaving.

~Hannah

Cell Phones

We now have cell phones! And Hannah taught me how to pay the bills, which I will have to do when I move across the parking lot thingy. But that's less exciting. Anyway.

We got paid on Tuesday, I think, and on Wednesday we started our search. The language barrier has been a little difficult, but it was the most difficult, for me at least, during this shopping trip. The first store we tried said that the cell phones were 200,000 Korean won, about 200 USD. That's a bit ridiculous. Neither of us could decide whether the guy just misunderstood what we were saying or if it was a matter of taking advantage of the "stupid foreigners" but we moved on. The second store sent us back to the first store, so we went to a new one. This one we seemed to be making some progress, and the guy opened up a translator for Korean-English and English-Korean so we could communicate a little bit. However, the trip was cut short because we had to go to work. On Thursday we left early and returned to the last store. The workers were really nice and, with the use of another translator thing, we got rather nice cell phones. The phones were 30,000 and the plan was 24,000 so all in all we paid 50,500 won for cell phones and such. That's about 50 USD, which is way cheaper then I can think of for a phone in the states. It was exciting, and I'm glad to have a phone :)

In other news. I did a quick e-mart run on Sunday, Saturday it was pouring all day and I didn't end up leaving the apartment. The funny thing was that the taxi driver who took me back to the apartment was asking questions, like they do here, and one of them was if I was married. It was so random, and highly amusing. And then on Monday when I was on the bus on the way back from work there was this cute guy on the bus. He started talking to me, asked where I was from, the usual questions, mentioned that he was a policeman, and told me that he had gotten on the bus just so that he could talk to me and asked for my number. I, at the time, didn't have a cell phone and told him this, so we ended up exchanged email addresses. I'm still rather amused by this and am not sure if I'm going to email him my new number.

I'm sort of settling into life here. At least the teaching aspect of it. I will soon, hopefully, but doing the mundane settling down thing that Hannah has down. Lori leaves next week, and I'll get to move in and unpack, finally. On the other hand, I will miss her and am sad she is leaving. I am excited to see Britton again, he comes next week too, I believe. Hannah and I start Korean speaking classes at the GIC soon so hopefully this language barrier will lessen as we learn more. That's all I can think of to write now.

~Lyn

Person: 사람

Some random pictures from the Gwangju Folk Museum, because everyone wants to see lots of pictures of things that aren't my hamster.

It's 1230 am, I had dinner an hour ago. This new schedule is throwing me for a massive loop. I go to bed around two, drag my butt out of bed around 10, crawl onto skype and drink coffee from an animal mug while conversing with people from home. So far my skype dates have been limited to my parents, Josh, and Ashley, I know there are more of you out there! If we video chat you get to see the famous butterfly wallpaper!

Also, if anyone loves me and wants to send me some bisquick and hamburger helper... I'll pay you in love!

With Mr. Lee's help I have a mattress pad coming to me in the near future, very excited about getting a squishy and comfortable night's sleep! So far this week has been very low stress, I have four recording periods, which is where I sit around and write short scripts that will later be recorded and given to the students as speaking tests. This means I only have two classes, and they are my two favorites: my 4th graders and my favorite 6th graders. The 4th graders are very strong students and so much fun. One girl gave me a gift the other day, a little pink bar of soap shaped like a baby shoe! My 6th graders are all so nice and most of them are very strong students. We went over nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and proper nouns in class, and then today I had them diagram a few sentences. After about three sentences I stopped, but with time left in class they asked if they could do more! They LOVED diagramming sentences.

I'm all set up with a bank account and debit card, now I just need to get paid so that I have money to live off of and to buy a cellphone with! I'm working on being more frugal, I found a reusable water bottle in the apartment which I've been filling at school as opposed to buying water every day, making coffee at home instead of buying it daily (also cutting back on my caffeine intake!) and cooking. I'm already an established cook, I know my way around a kitchen and I know how to make some tasty food, but I'm really, really enjoying cooking for myself and experimenting. I made rice pudding the other night (it was quasi successful),and have been making cheesy garlic toast as a favorite snack. Tonight for dinner I made some spaghetti and to make it a little more exciting I heated up the sauce with some shrimp, gouda cheese, mozzarella cheese, and dill. It was fantastic! I try to make enough so that I have left overs and can get a lunch out of it too. I actually really, really need to go grocery shopping again. I guess this is good news for me, if bad news for you readers, but my life has gotten into a fantastic little routine and is working towards becoming all normal and mundane. I of course find this awesome, I've been looking forward to living on my own and being all mundane and self-sufficient since high school. Language classes start on September 13th. My grasp of the alphabet is great, so hopefully I will have a decent time learning Korean. All I really want is to be able to communicate on some base level, I don't expect fluency.

Well, I guess that's all the news from here, at least on my end of things! Take care everyone!
~Hannah

Longer post to explain prior one

So, I meant to write this about 5 hours ago, but I got distracted. Anyway, on Friday the AC at work died. Lori was the first to notice because her classroom is apparently a little hotter then ours most of the time. So she came down and told Mr. Lee it was broken in her room. The next period I noticed mine wasn't working either, but it wasn't too bad. By my second Grade 6 class, though, it was horrible. Never again will any of us under-value our AC. Fridays are test days for my classes, so I didn't have to do anything too much in class, and I ended up letting my last two classes go early because it was too hot to function. Some of the students in my last class, my Grade 7s, stayed because they wanted me to grade their tests right there. So I left later than Hannah, she saw me walking and I missed that bus and had to wait for a later one, which wasn't too bad. I got ice cream because it was too hot.

On Saturday we had Hannah's housewarming party. It was really fun, I got to meet the other Foreign English teachers who Hannah had already met. It was cool to meet them. It was a tiny bit awkward because most of them have known each other for a year or so, so they reminisced a bit during the party, but on a whole it was fun. We had plans to see Toy Story 3 today, but nobody knew if it was playing, or where, so they got canceled. Instead, Hannah and I had a lazy day. We did a load of laundry in the afternoon, then I stole her at night for a night of cream soup, garlic baguette, crackers, and the original Karate Kid movie. It glitched a bit so we're finishing that tomorrow after work.

As Hannah mentioned, tomorrow our schedule goes back to the 4-9 schedule. For those of you who are used to talking to us after school, this may happen a little less, we'll see (maybe just for me, I can't really speak for Hannah...). I get to keep all my classes, I'm a little excited, but at the same time there are a lot of kids who drive me up a wall. I think I'm getting through to them, but that's because I'm very strict and don't make exceptions. I wish I could be a little less strict, I hate being so mean, but it's what gets through to them, so I'll go with it. Oh well, that's it for the night, I'm done grading, I know what I'm doing tomorrow, so I'm going to read for a while.

~Lyn