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