32 /

The most I utilise years of voice lessons lately is in being able to belt over ten children screaming at the top of their lungs. (A secret power I only call on in times of great need.) My youngest class is all about songs. This is our latest jam:

Also, what is it about children and dangerous things? Today a light fell down from the ceiling in the middle of class and shattered everywhere. EVERYBODY started screaming like someone had just spontaneously combusted. I immediately ran to the back of the classroom because you know those kids are going to start poking around the glass no matter how freaked out they are. And they were SO freaked out. They were scared out of their minds. And you know something: they couldn't keep away from the glass anyway. It was like a horror movie. I was like SIT DOWN GUYS SIT DOWN PLEASE so they did, and then I tried to motion to them to stay in their seats while I left the room for a second to go ask the teacher next door for help. As soon as I left they started screaming again at the top of their lungs. REAL FEAR. AND THEN they got up to go look at the glass some more! I literally had to place myself between this little horde of terror and the broken light. LITTLE KIDS DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE. 

I should really update more, but I find that I usually want to talk about the same things over and over again. Time has been slowing down around here in my last few weeks. It's also rainy season, which I'm not enjoying. I can say that the humidity doesn't get to me that much, but I don't like rain. It makes everything smell weird. 

Creepy middle-aged woman encounters have also risen. To be honest, I have creepy/questionable encounters on the daily (or at least encounters that would be creepy back home) over here, but for some reason lately it's been mostly with older mom-types? I don't know why. When I first moved into my apartment, within the first couple of weeks this woman came up to me when I was trying to get inside, said a few words to me and patted my butt. I haven't seen her since. In the past two or three weeks though, I've had at least three other similar encounters.

1. Scary old lady stalking around my apartment building. When she saw me walking down the street, she slowed to walk behind me. I heard her footsteps quickening as if she were starting to run, and when I turned to see what she was doing, she stopped and laughed at me all crazily. I left to go grocery shopping for a pretty long time, and when I came back she was still there? It looked like she'd been just circling the block. She noticed me again, stopped, and just started at me. WTF

2. My ride on the bus is generally not my favorite part of the day to begin with. My bus driver is crazy. He whips around corners, accelerates to go over bumps in the road, cuts other cars off at dangerous speeds, plays chicken with motorcycle drivers and pedestrians, swerves down the highway, etc. Generally it's hard to make the experience more stressful for me, but yeah -- the other day this woman got on the bus, turned around in her seat, and stared at me for twenty minutes. Every bump in the road. Flying up five feet in the air going over speed bumps. Eyes left me maybe twice. Am I secretly a mythical creature or something

3. This morning while waiting for the aforementioned demon wagon, a lady came up from behind and started firmly patting my hips. I turned around like HELLO????????? totally startled (thought I had some kind of horrible bug on me) and she motioned to my shirt, then reached over to pat me some more and look at the pattern. Lol I love it here sometimes. Sometimes the only thing you can do is smile and nod. I know a lot of fellow TaLK program people have had experiences with random women coming up to them and launching into some sort of tangent in Korean. I think most of us are getting pretty used to it by now. Honestly though, I think I could be here for years and never, ever get used to some of the things that happen here. I've always been able to accept them as just... What goes on... But I'm still surprised at times that these things go on.

The most redeeming thing about teaching for me has been the fact that in a classroom full of little kids, it's okay to laugh at stuff like this:

This is as highbrow as it gets for first and second graders. Corny maybe, but I love it when they laugh. We have SUCH a good time sometimes.

... Sometimes.

31 / Good Day

Today was actually a great day at school. :)
It didn't start out that way, but at the end of the day some of my boy students came in with a HUGE VACUUM and started cleaning up my room without being asked. :O !! I didn't even know what to say. Usually these kids are throwing stuff around and making things messier. Wow.

We had a good lesson too. Instead of vocabulary, we worked on pronunciation today. Always hilarious. I definitely feel for these kids when we do something like this, because I'm hopeless at different consonant sounds in Korean. These were the exercises we did. They'd repeat after me, then I would say a word and they'd have to tell me which of the options I meant.

coffee vs. copy
rice vs. lice
feel vs. fear
vote vs. boat
zoo vs. jew vs. chew
ship vs. sheep
tail vs. tell
pass vs. path
bees vs. peas
lips vs. ribs

It's about 50/50 for them hearing the differences when I say these words, but they can't often replicate them themselves. "Bees and peas!" becomes "Bees and bees!" lol

The best is "I feel fear." That comes out like I don't even know what.

Also, the place where I cut my finger really badly is totally healed now, except that it's also totally numb. You win some you lose some.

30 / Couple Weeks Recap

Good Things at school:

1. Kids' immediate and in-your-face joy when I use Korean words.
2. Moment of brilliance in 5/6th grade where they managed to brainstorm 30+ occupation vocabulary words I hadn't taught them.
3. Watching Tom & Jerry with my youngest students.
4. Going home at the end of the day.
5. It's really cute hearing what everyone wants to be when they grow up. (: Animal doctors, teachers, etc.

Bad Things at school: (that sound ridiculous when they're written down, but are so infuriating when they happen)

1. Flies the size of bees. Bees/wasps that I swear are the size of small birds and give me a fight/flight reaction.
2. Humidity is starting to kick in. It's more humid inside my school than outside of it.
3. This morning a couple kids told me and my coteach they would rather "have a punishment" than "learn English". :C why does this affect my mood
4. Kid threw a huge handful of flashcards in the air to avoid doing work.
5. Kids have learned from him and now pretend they have "something to clean up" in order to avoid doing work. (Meaning they knock over stuff in the back of the classroom and then take fifteen minutes picking it up in slow motion while ignoring me.)
6. Had to ask my 3/4th grade to put their heads down for five minutes after awful lesson. They understand this English perfectly, but start playing dumb when I tell them not to play games under the table or to be quiet. Patience tested.
7. Kid brought a tough wire to class and started trying to stab another kid. I try to intervene and he starts kicking him instead. End up having to leave my class, now all going wild, to go and get help. Come back and some get thrown out. :c
8.

So pretty much this has been a rough couple of weeks.
There's going to be a lot going on before I go home, and I'm looking forward to all of it... I have plans to go shark diving at the end of the month, and then I'm heading to a mud festival with friends in July. It may be a symptom of my enduring culture shock, but the smallest things from life back home (that I may or may not have actually enjoyed while at home) seem REALLY AWESOME right now.

29 / Because I Have To

It always really blows my mind sometimes how much time passes between updates when I remember I should be updating. I feel like we saw and wrote about the tanuki like two days ago? Apparently not.

Harrison went home yesterday & things have gone back to normal, or as normal as they can be. My apartment is back to feeling very empty. When my students saw me today, the first thing they asked about was him. I wonder if they'll miss me half as much :p

Then I went home with a stomachache. I got my stitches out today and didn't feel well on the bus*, so I was walking around all nauseous. I feel like for a person already prone to that kind of thing, Korea really brings out the random  in me. Lolllll

*death machine above the law 

---

So my... third? month of teaching is nearing an end. It doesn't feel like three months. I don't know quite what it feels like, but I can say that the thought of two more months is somewhat daunting at this point. I don't dislike being here. I like my school, the other teachers, my students. I greatly appreciate what has been given to me and what I feel I'm taking and contributing, even for all the obvious difficulties. I guess it's just that the difficulties are so hugely obvious it's sometimes hard not to be a little blindsided by them. In many situations I feel like I am personally the largest, most obvious difficulty of them all.

I still really have no idea what I'm doing, though I've been here long enough that I begin to make very educated guesses. My reading is quite fast now -- not to say my comprehension is any better -- and I understand simple conversations in Korean though I cannot replicate them. I am still for all intents and purposes like a baby, so that's not really news. :p I did come here really hoping to get a different insight into language acquisition than I had before, though, and I can say that I very much am. I don't know that I am applying this insight to actually teaching language however. I still often feel that no matter how much I plan, the actual activities matter so little. Something works one day, and then if I modify it to include new vocabulary it totally falls apart. Sometimes I think I've made a breakthrough with my kids and finally understand how to get through to them, and then as we progress it's clearly just a lot of optimism on my part. At least I can say that I empathize with them: people shout foreign words in my face all the time too, and no matter how many times it doesn't seem to stick. :p

Here's some pictures & stuff.

--

These things are delicious. Like... little steamed things with walnut stuff inside? I don't know what they're called, but I love them. It's l-o-v-e

We had shabu shabu the night before Harrison left. Mmm. It's like... boiling broth, and you cook your stuff in there. I don't know if it's Korean in origin. I think that you can get it all over Asia under different names. Like a big hot pot of goodness.

In a noraebang (singing room)... I perform only the classics, like I'm On A Boat and Hot In Herre.

28 / Tanuki!

Dear everyone,

We saw a real life tanuki last night in the park.

Unfortunately we did not get a picture because it was waddling away rather quickly and was only crossing the path for a moment. However, here is a picture we found online of what it looked like:

Also known as a raccoon dog. But that wouldn't have sounded nearly as cool for Super Mario Brothers.

Our Korean friend doesn't think it was actually a tanuki, but there's no way it was a dog or a Eurasian red squirrel, like he thinks. It was as big as a small pig.

I want to believe.

ps. two people trying to write one small blog post is complicated. also, index fingers are more useful for typing/life than you realize before you can't use them.

27 / Seoul and Incheon

On Saturday (May 7th) we took a bus from Gunsan to Seoul. The Seoul bus station is on the lowest floor of a gigantic department store (~10 stories). The department stores in Korea are a little different than the ones in the US. While both countries tend to organize at least somewhat by brand, in Korea this is a definitive feature. By this I mean that on each floor there are more than a dozen little branded divisions that all have their own sales clerks and are kind of only working for that brand. It is somewhat of a cross between a mall and a department store. We decided to eat at a restaurant on the top floor, where I had a dish with delicious little octopi in it.

The seafood here is awesome

Next we hopped on the subway to attempt to find a hostel that government of Korea website recommends. The subway system is incredibly nice by comparison with any subways I've ever been on before. The stations were all very clean, well maintained, and 20 years ahead of the US technologically. The cleanliness part was the most surprising to me, and always surprises me here--especially because Korea doesn't seem to believe in trash cans (they're inexplicably hard to find). Subway tickets in Korea are cards with RFID chips in them, so you only need to wave them by the machine (not swipe them). The price of your subway ticket here is dictated by what your destination is. Getting into the area with the trains feels futuristic because there are no turnstiles, but if you fail to wave your card when you walk through a gate will pop out and stop you. There are giant touchscreens where you can plan your journey and it will tell you the best way to get there. The train cars themselves are also clean and modern. LCD screens play soundless ads while at the bottom it tells you the next stop in multiple languages. The stop name is also played over the sound system with crisp clarity in Korean, English, and sometimes Chinese or Japanese.

The subways are also different from the US in that they're chalk full of Koreans

Finding the Hostel we set out for was a mess. The instructions were clear, but the landmarks they used were well hidden. We ended up wandering around in pretty much every direction from our stop before we happened upon an information area where they clarified how to get to the hostel. Turned out we basically had to go down a hidden ally, so that made kat and I feel better. The information people also made us aware that even though the Korean government website told us to find the Seoul Backpackers Hostel, it was actually called Banana Backpackers. Yet when we got there, the sign said it was called something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. This seems to be a common trend--that the government website is outdated, or just flat out incorrect. Anyway, we ended up staying somewhere different because it was full and as expensive as a regular hotel.

We ened up going out to explore the town that night. It was especially lively because a festival for Buddha's Birthday was going on. There were colored lanterns and lotus flowers, traditional korean outfits and parades. It was fun.

Cool owl lanterns

One of the parades

Awesome dragon made of paper in a parade 

There were a million of these all over the place

It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but there are several of these Buddhas and they are ENORMOUS. Probably around 4-5 meters tall for the Buddha itself.

Big paper lanterns of kings and elephants and other things

The city that night

The next day my friend BC met us at our hotel and took us around his homeland that is South Korea. We explored the daytime version of the festival, walked up and down Insadong (a street to buy things and get streetfood), and went to a palace from the 15th (I think) century.

All of us in front of "some place where the king chilled" as BC put it

The inside of that place. I think the lightbulbs are an addition since the King's time.

Another place where the king chilled. "I guess the king needed a lot of places to chill," BC said.

A tree that was struck by lightning many years ago. Half of it is now petrified.

BC mounting a horse, theoretically

Festivities during the daytime. Their hats are crazy.

Me catching some mad air, as I participate in what I believe is some kind of traditional jump roping?

There were tents describing all the different types of Buddhism

The ancient buddhist game of ridiculously large Jenga

BC said that all they eat is bark

One of the many types of streetfood we tried. It's what the guy is making in this video. It's thin strands of honey and cornstarch wrapped around your choice of either almond, peanut, or chocolate paste. Very good frozen.

Later in the day, we took the subway with him back to Incheon where he's from. I'll post about that another time.

-Harrison

26/ Gunsan and Engrish

Ok, so I didn't get around to posting as soon I wanted. But that's ok, the engrish should make up for it.

On Friday we walked around the Gunsan shopping area, and kat just kind of showed me the city in general. I should post this more after the fact so I can remember more details...

First we went to the big department store in the area.

Lotte Mart

A couple notable things are:

• Koreans really like orange juice (it's the go-to juice here)
• Cereal is extremely expensive (2-3 times more expensive than in the US)
• Milk here comes in flavors anywhere you go (which is a lot more common in the US where maybe there are two flavors-chocolate and plain). It comes in flavors like banana, chocolate, cereal, strawberry, and different coffee flavors (these are all delicious)
• Cold prepackaged coffee flavored drinks (like the prepackaged starbucks' ones in the US) are popular here (coffee in a shop is also popular just like the US, but its around $5 for a drink which is absurd)
• The escalator things are really cool. They're inclined but smooth (not like steps), and are magnetized to your cart so you can bring it up and down the floors

Mmm... baby Einstein milk

Cool escalator thing

On the top floor there was a food area where we ate. There was a huge display case where you could look at plastic versions of the food and decide what you wanted. When you paid you got a number that would show up on an screen when your food was ready (shown below). The cups, trays, and everything were all reusable. You grabbed a metal cup from a UV sterilizing machine, and put it below the machine when you were done. Korean living seems to be very sustainable like that. It isn't too common to find things that are disposable.

Coffee shops and little food places in Korea take a lot longer to get your food/drink than in the States. If you get a coffee or pressed sandwich it can take up to 10 minutes. If that happened back home, I'm sure 9/10 people would be enraged.

Coffee is the best medicine

Next we took a cab to the main shopping area. Cabs are a very reasonably priced in korea. Kat and I could go pretty much anywhere in the metropolitan area of Gunsan for under $5 for a cab ride, and usually the distance we use it for is closer to $2.50-$3, which makes it very cost effective compared to the bus ($1.10). There is no subway in this city. A lot of cabbies have a screen to watch TV in their cab. Safety advocates would go nuts if anyone tried to do this in the US.

GPS next to a screen to watch TV. The counter is near his hand.

The shopping area has this strange ridge and recession zigzagging throughout the center of pedestrian mall. This was great for tripping when you weren't looking at your feet.

There was also a knock-off Starbucks

Ok, onto the engrish. We happened upon a small dollar-store type establishment, which is where we found most of this.

Good question

I trip. I frill.

It's the most comfortable way to move

This is a little extreme

I always forget the capitol of Morth Carolina

That classic NY tycoon

Zebra is deep

Hopefully we will go visit a PC Bang soon (I'm told bang is the korean word for room), where people go to play computer games. Here's a picture of the Starcraft 2 box from Korea:

I would really like to know what the syringe is supposed to represent

And that's all the interesting stuff from that day. Coming soon: Reuniting with my friend BC in Seoul.

-Harrison