Level Up!

Today is the last day of the traditional Korean school year. Tomorrow we have the day off for a national holiday (I THINK I remember being told it was Korean independence day) and then on the 2nd everyone goes back to school a grade older and wiser. We haven't seen any kind of class schedules yet so we'll have to see how these changes work for us foreign teachers, which classes we keep, which classes we don't, and what the redistribution of students is like.

So as some of you know, my Dad's been working in Taiwan for... about a year now, assuming I can do my (I can't.). Last weekend he had to leave the country for a long weekend due to stipulations with his work visa, so he came to Korea to visit me!

Friday he came into school with me, and the reaction of the students was... incredible. When Josh was here they just acted like their normal out-of-control selves. But my father... his sheer present scared them poop-less. Even on a test day I have never seen them so quiet and well-behaved! Although there was a pig-pile of third grade girls who proceeded to scream "WE LOVE HANNAH-TEACHER!" and then ask my dad and I if we liked each other. Mr. Lee, our supervisor, also took my dad on a tour of the school. WE HAVE PICNIC TABLES ON THE ROOF. The things I still don't know after six months...

Saturday I took my dad to the National Museum and the Folk Museum. Then we walked to Emart and check out the market behind my apartment. You can buy live weather loaches to make soup with for like, a dollar a scoop. If you didn't know, a weather loach is a type of fish. Emart was a little disappointing as they did not have their squid tank out.

Sunday we grabbed breakfast with some of my friends and then went up to Wonhyosa Temple on Muedong Mt. We took a taxi to the top, and then hiked the entire way down before grabbing a bus back into town. Monday morning he had to fly back to Taipei to keep working.

Other than that bit of excitement it's been pretty routine. I'm getting by and counting down the days til I'm no longer a teacher. I'll be finished in a little over four months, and I am very, very excited for that day to get here. We got our new schedules today, and I have almost entirely new classes, so it will be interesting to see how everything works out. There's also CCTV in our classrooms now and while I feel generally apathetic about it, hopefully it will prove helpful in getting the students to behave. Now I have tests to grade and an apartment to clean before my single vacation day!

~Hannah

If only all my students were third graders....

I received this note on my desk today:
Teacher~ happy blantine day!!! Teacher! sorry~ I dont have clcalate!!!


Now I'm going to do some grading and fail about 15 6th graders who didn't do the assignment! I am still finding the classes harder and harder to get through, and the countdown to July is in full swing. I'm afraid that my frustrations are showing through and the students can tell just how annoyed with everything I am.

In other news, my dad may be coming to visit this weekend from Taiwan, which is something to look forward to.

The Korean Hospital Experience

Well, I guess this counts as a culture experience, right?
The anthropology of upper respiratory infections! YAY!

It's funny being the only foreigner in the hospital, especially one with an appointment. The entire staff pretty much knew who I was. They took one look at me and would say "oh! You're Hannah!" (except they say my name more like "hey-na")
So here's how the hospital waiting room is set up:
First, you check in.
Then you sit down.
Then you wait.
Then you wait.
Then you keep waiting.
Then they call your name.
After they call your name, they point you to a waiting room, which has between two and three chairs set up outside it. You sit in the chair farthest from the door, and as the two people before you move through the room, you have to move chairs, or you get yelled at.
When you finally reach the door you duck behind a curtain and viola! There is your doctor and you get to talk to them.

My doctor spoke decent English, but a lot of her English medical knowledge was jargon. So when she asked me if I'd had any major surgeries, and I said I had my gallbladder removed, she was like "oh, a supertechnicaltermectomy?" Yeah...
She listened to my lungs, asked me a couple questions, and then prescribed me five pills. Initially she prescribed me tylenol, but I quickly explained I was allergic. Actually, and I didn't think of this at the time, but she didn't seem surprised by the allergy. She simply asked "vomiting or skin rash?" From there she showed me the English information about all the pills she was planning to subscribe me and let me ok the ingredients list, which honestly gives me an amazing peace of mind because I was so afraid of not knowing what was in the medication I was taking.

Then I was whisked away to bloodwork and the xray room and sent on my way. I was told I could come back at 2 for my test results, so I jaunted around downtown until two, when I hoped another bus back to Chonam.

Then I waited.
Then I was called to the chair.
Then I worked through the chair line.
Then I entered the room and was told I had to wait for my doctor to come back.

Fortunately she showed up shortly after and lead me through the labyrinth of a hosptial to get me my updated prescriptions and show me my chest xrays. The xrays were clear, but the inflammatory agents in my blood were elevated to three times the normal level. Not 100% sure what the means, but I'm guessing it's a viral upper respiratory infection. Whatever it is I need the antibiotics to fix it.

So that's part one!
Then I went to the pharmacy!!
The pharmacy involved three steps.
Step 1: Hand over your prescription, then sit down.
Step 2: Get up, pay your bill ($5!), get a number, and then sit down again.
Step 3: Disregard your number, listen for your name, receive your pills and your instructions, and then peace out!


And that's my hospital saga. Before I close out this post I will close with two fun facts:
Fact 1: The pharmacy I went to was the "NEW YORK PHARMACY" and it's emblem was the statue of liberty.
Fact 2: EVERYTHING in Korea is done on a number system, like a deli. The post office, bank, hospital, and pharmacy all function on a pull tab number system. On the one hand, it's way more convenient then standing in line, you just pull your number and relax til it comes up. On the other hand it makes me want to finish every interaction with "and I'd also like a half pound of provolone."

Hopefully, this is the last I'll have to experience of hospitals in the next six months!
~Hannah

Doctor Fish, Fish, Calling Doctor Fish

Mieka, Angel, and Hannah in front of what I am told is the only Hangul Starbucks sign.

I went to Seoul for Lunar New Year. The highlight of this trip was going to the aquarium, seeing the awesome fish, and the sample fish manicure tank. Basically you stick your hands in a tank and then what appears to be your standard Chinese algae eaters suck off all your dead skin. Was it the best thing ever? Yes. Will I be finding a spa that will let me cover ever exfoliatable inch of skin in fish? Absolutely. Is anyone surprised? If you are, I'm thinking you're one of Lyn's friends, not mine.

So Seoul was fun. Did some shopping, found pants that fit me, and checked out the main areas of Seoul. We stopped to get tea in a little tea house, which was awesome. The tea was very delicious, and even though it was somewhat traditional, it was nice because they didn't make you sit on the floor (which I still find to be very uncomfortable!). We skipped over the museums and the palaces on this visit.

One of the best parts of the trip was a breakfast stop at a place called The All American Diner, where I was able to get a super tasty Belgian waffle.

Intensives are now over so it's back to the 4-9 schedule. My least favorite 5th grade class has been removed, which makes my life a little easier. Of course, these past two days have been really hard given that I am, yet again, sick.

I'll have to update everyone on the whole saga when it concludes, but the long and short of it is that I keep getting spontaneous fevers (two in the past two weeks) and when I take deep breaths it burns. So I figured I'd do myself a favor and go see a doctor. Basically you have to go to a hospital here, "going to the hospital" is completley synonymous with "going to the doctor's." So I made the attempt today at the same place we had our health checks done, and if I may be frank, Chonam University Hospital is the most frighteningly unorganized medical institution I ever did see... I have an appointment for 11am tomorrow... so let's see if round two yields any results... or if they actually let me see a doctor this time...

That's about it. I hope everyone in the states is enjoying the snow, we never did get our One Good Snow Storm here in Gwangju, and now it's up in the 40s.
~Hannah

In Which Lyn Writes a Shorter Post

Hello again!

This is just a shorter post about the end of my vacation in Seoul. That is to say, Saturday. Oh Saturday. What a day. So, Ellen and I woke up with a plan. It was a good plan, a pretty plan, and like all plans it went out the window fairly quickly. Originally we were going to go see this artificial river thing (stream!), and then go to Hongdae (which is near a university and has a cool flea market like thing, and some other interesting places), and then I was going to go see a movie with Michael and she was going to....I forgot. So the first wrench in the plan was the movie was not showing, which was sad, but not too bad, it just mean that I got included in Ellen's other plans (which I still can't remember). Then Ellen said it would be better to see the river at night because it apparently lights up cool (or something, maybe that happened first and I'm just confused. Doesn't really matter the order). The point is, we went to Hongdae first (I really think I'm spelling that wrong).

So, we got out of the hotel and I wanted to get Japanese food for lunch. We decided to wait until we got there to eat and by then I was starving. So, in a fit of knee-jerk decision making we went to this burger restaurant called The Joe. BEST IDEA EVER! It was delicious! (oh, don't shake your head at us eating 'American' food while in Korea, sometimes you just want a taste from home, so there~!) Cheered by this happy development, and already feeling we were going to have an awesome day we promptly got lost (this may or may not have been partially my fault). So we ended up wandering around looking for this flea market, in circles, for a while. It was really fun though. The area was gorgeous, the day wasn't too cold, and we had a good time and took pictures. So then we went to a Cat Cafe (or was that before finding the flea market? No, I think it was after), called Tom's Cafe. For those of you who don't know. A Cat Cafe is the most brilliant idea in the face of forever! Basically, it's exactly what it sounds like, it's a cafe with a large number of cats wandering around for you to pet, cuddle and play with. There are large structures for the cats to play on, and you're given toys to entice the kittens to your side. The cats range from fairly young kittens to older more stately cats. SO MUCH FUN! Pictures are up on facebook (more to come from my iPod). So then we decide to wander around some more. And eventually decide to grab Japanese for dinner. We half-decided on Ramen, couldn't find the restaurant, and, half-an-hour (probably closer to an hour) later we go into a Japanese curry restaurant. Once again DELICIOUS!

So, after our adventure we head back to the subway to head for this river stream thing (I'm still unclear as to what exactly it was, it starts with a C though...). And what do you know, there's the Japanese restaurant we had been searching for! Much groaning was had, but we were pleased with our dinner so we just laughed and got over it. So then came the EPIC ADVENTURE OF EPICNESS IN THE COLD!!!! We got lost again. Turned around. Asked for directions. And got lost again. Called Ellen's friend who didn't know where we were. Ended up by Myeong-dong again and decided, Screw it, let's go get ice cream! Seriously, we wandered around for an hour or so trying to find this place, and we couldn't. So we went, got ice cream, and retreated, still fairly happy with our day, to spend our last night in our sketchy hotel. I ended up passing out early (oops, guess the walking tired me out a lot) so our full plans for the night went unfulfilled (nothing you would be interested in...just J-drama sillyness). All in all, it was a successful vacation, very fun, pretty relaxing, wish it was longer. Back to school tomorrow. Though, happily, I am armed with happy thoughts in the form of Audio books (Vol 1 and 2 of the complete works of Tacitus as well as Juvenal's Satires) and a podcast about the History of Rome. Let's see if I'm actually ready to go back to work....

~Lyn

In Which Lyn Reappears and Has Lots to Say (and Lots and Lots)

Hello one and all. Before I start this epic post I would like to say two things. First and foremost I would like to apologize to everyone for disappearing for a month. Intensives were far crazier than I remember them being and I went offline, almost entirely, for the month. Second and secondmost, I want to warn you that this is a month's worth of blog and I have a lot to say. This should be long, amusing and rather epic :D (and I'll try to keep the tennis commentary to a minimum. That said, the Australian Open ended last week and it was awesome and amazing (even if I had to follow it via radio rather than TV b/c there are no Korean tennis players in the ATP, damnit) and while my favorite tennis player did not win, my second favorite did, so I'm very happy).

Starting with New Years vacation...way back when. So, I, like Hannah, went to Japan for my vacation. Unlike Hannah I first decided to get in touch with my Jewish roots. I went up to Seoul on Dec 31st and went to the Chabad House for a very wonderful Friday night service. Now, this may come as a shock to none of you who know me, but one thing I have been vehemently missing is my Jewish roots. There is nothing and no one here that I can talk to about being Jewish. I've heard of friends who have friends who are Jewish (or rather, classmates who have friends) but I haven't met one Jewish person in Gwangju yet. This is terribly distressing to me, and I've felt disconnected and slightly at odds with my brain. So I took the opportunity to go up and celebrate Friday night. For those of you who don't know, a Chabad House is a mini-synogugage (excuse my lack of ability to spell right now) thing of the orthodox persuasion. It was a bit different than I was used to, the women were sectioned off from the men, it was super-fast Hebrew (though that might also had to do with the fact that the Rabbi is Israeli). All in all, the services, the dinner, and the company was incredibly fun and it was a good time. The after dinner singing was by far my favorite part, as was the Rabbi's wife trying to convince me that just because I could be polite in Hebrew I could speak it well. While there I met my new friend Sarah. She's an awesome, smart, scientist person who was in Korea visiting one of her friends, Keelah (who is now also my friend). She heard that I had no where to stay that night and offered me a floor. I accepted and after services we went out, with Keelah, to a club. It was really fun, there was dancing, and slight drinking, and I met two more new friends, Michael (from Germany) and Dido (from Rwanda) who I will talk about more later. After my most awesome New Years celebration I was ready for Japan.

My visit to Japan was more for catching up with my friends than sight-seeing. I did the sight-seeing thing when I went for Term III of my freshmen year. The plane ride over was fun, there was an adorable 5 year old Japanese boy who flirted with me most of the ride. I blew his mind when I thanked his father for helping me (the overhead compartments are not for short people) in Japanese. I stayed in a really nice hostel in Asukusa, right behind the major temple there. I forgot how big New Years was though. I made plans to visit with my old Japanese teacher, Mari Akane, on my birthday and since I was staying near the temple we decided to meet right out in front. BIG MISTAKE~! So, for three days (New Years and the following days) it is traditional in Japan to make a temple visit, and wouldn't you know, the major temple in Asukusa was a hotspot. SO CROWDED! There were police and everything to direct the flow of human traffic. They had to shut down the main road in front of the temple and everything! they even blocked off parts of the temple to control the flow of people. So, struggling like a salmon swimming upstream I make my way to the front of the temple. I am right at the gates, and there is roadblock there with a policeman. I try to indicate that I just want to slip through to the front of the gates, but he tells me, WAY TO FAST to go around and directions on how to do so. So like a stupid American I forgot how to ask him to speak slowly (for those of you who don't know, I'm passable in Japanese, sometimes). Luckily a mother and two teenage daughters took pity on me and led me around. We talked a little through my broken Japanese and their phone dictionary. I borrowed the phone to call Mari and we finally reconnected (only, about, 20 mins later than originally planned). We spent the day wandering around, window shopping, having a nice lunch (YAY Japanese food love!>

The month of January was intensive schedule, we work from 1-7 instead of 4-9, and we get almost twice as many classes in the day. It was busy and hectic and so much work. I love it here, I love teaching, I could without that schedule. My main redeeming class was my class of Grade 7s. I adore them. They are smart, and smart alecks, but they listened, participated, seem genuinely interested in learning what I have to teach, and they mostly do their homework. I can joke around with them, and get into more in depth stuff with them, and it's so much fun. Unfortunately I only have them until the end of February T_T because then they level up to Grade 8, or as they call it Grade 2. Anyway, above Grade 7 they don't see foreign teacher anymore so I shall lose my favorite class. The main good thing about intensives is that you have the same classes every week for a month so you can do projects and teach them things that run over into other weeks. In one grade 6 class I did a fairly intensive debate unit, and then how to write a research paper (insert laughter from any teacher I've had to write a research paper for. I humbly apologize for everything I ever put you through in my writing.) They failed a lot at writing them. A lot. I'm going to have to curve my grades that I give them. Oy vey. Anyway, with the other Grade 6 class I did listening/speaking/acting unit with RPing. I modified (simplified) an easy RP campaign and ran it for the children. As it was my first time doing this for them it didn't work out perfectly or anything, but it did work. They got into it, had fun, and gave me helpful feedback at the end (now I just have to figure out how to grade it @_@ oops). I will never like Grade 5 (I've discovered) that age is just too difficult for them to be allowed to exist. This goes for all 5th graders, no matter the nationality, they are all evil (unless they are related to me, because all my baby cousins are too amazing to ever be an evil 5th grader). I'm so confused as to my schedule for February so I will update with how my classes look after I figure out what my classes will be @_@.

So, we got lucky this year. The Lunar New Year was on February 3rd, so we got the 2nd, 3rd and 4th off (that's Wed, Thurs and Fri for those of you without a calender in front of you), so essentially we got a 5 day vacation. I am in Seoul with my friend Ellen for the whole thing. We came up Wednesday (we got here in the afternoon) and we will leave Sunday afternoon/evening. So far it's been amazing. Wednesday, after checking into our kinda sketchy Hotel (it's a love hotel, but it's cheap and fairly nice, if rather sketch), we went out and explored Myeong-dong. We shopped, we wandered, we had a great time. On Thursday we split up. I met up with my friends Michael and Dido (who I met on the Solar New Year) and we went to this cool temple/palace thing that I don't remember the name of but it started with a G. I'll double check on Sunday when I post about the remainder of this vacation. Anyway, the history-geek in me loved it, and it was fun hanging out with two awesome guys :) We went to a lovely Greek restaurant for lunch (OMG SO GOOD! Yummy Slouvaki the best I've had since I came back from Greece), and I worried them because I don't eat a lot. Afterwards I went and met back up with Ellen at the COEX mall, and then we came back to our sketchy hotel (there are two mirrors on the CEILING!). Today we went to the National Museum of Korea (guess who's idea that was, MINE! *is a geek*) they were having a special New Years celebration thingy. There was traditional music, performances, and this really cool calligraphy drawing thing. There will be pictures on facebook (I forgot my camera cord in my apartment). After the calligraphy drawing (really, I can't explain it, I'll post pictures) I got interviewed for a radio show. It was nifty, and the guy was cute! Then we went into the museum and wandered a little, mostly in the paleolithic/neolithic/bronze age room. I missed all my classics friends when I wanted to crack jokes about pottery, or stone tools looking like normal stones, or the bronze age and vikings and mermaids. I took lots of pictures inside of the cool pottery and carvings. I had myself a nice little history geek-out. It was tons of fun. Then we went to two market areas, which I forgot the name of and Ellen is not sitting next to me anymore so I can't ask her, and we shopped. I got a messenger bag (finally), and new, really warm, sweatshirt, and presents for my three male cousins so I'm going to send the Hanukkah package finally (my bad...). In my defense it's REALLY hard to find something NOT cute. It's so cutesy/girly here. Anyway.

I hit my 6 month mark last week (I think). I can't believe it's been 6 months! It's flown by, but at the same time it feels like I've been here forever. I love it here, I'm having a good time teaching (most of the time), and life is pretty good at the moment. It's the year of the Rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac, so this is my year (as someone kindly pointed out I was born before the Chinese New Year, so even though I'm 1988 I'm not a Dragon, I'm a Rabbit). I will make the most of it and so far it's looking like it will be a good year! Happy New Year (both Lunar and Solar because I missed the Solar one)! I will try to not wait so long between posts again! Happy thoughts (and because it's the end, YAY KIM CLIJSTERS, YAY NOVAK DJOKOVIC! YAY BRYAN BROTHERS! YAY ESTHER VERGEER! YAY WONDERFUL AUSSIE OPEN EVEN THOUGH NADAL LOST IN THE QUARTERS) Ok, I'm done. Thank you for reading my epic post of epic proportions!

~Lyn~