35 / Till Tomorrow

Wait, the last time I wrote was seriously Sunday?
Where is time going? :/ I have three and a half weeks left in Gunsan.

This week at school was pretty much like the last couple. Nothing of note really happened. It's still raining/cloudy regularly -- that or blazing hot. About an hour ago there was this crazy storm, and before that some guy was beating at the doors downstairs for like half an hour yelling and making noises.

I don't have school tomorrow, so I'm going to film something about whatever I get for lunch. (: Then over the weekend on Sunday I'll be going shark-diving and plan to have lots of pictures taken. You can rent an underwater camera at the aquarium. I just hope I remember to actually use it. I've never been very good about taking pictures, even in places or situations I'd like to have them of. I think that's mainly because it makes me feel very outside of what's happening, but maybe in a shark tank that'll be good for me? Who knows.

34 / Not Really About Anything

I woke up Saturday with the idea that I would "video blog". This extremely vague piece of inspiration led me to wander outside with my flip camera. In my mind, this was a really great idea and would no doubt give you better insight into my life, Korea, etc. Unfortunately, two things:   

It was so hot outside. For real. Why I thought I could make intelligent commentary about my surroundings in that heat I do not know. 

Turns out, walking around and appearing to talk to yourself in public and/or discreetly film people and things as if you're a waygook spy is seriously a rollercoaster. One minute I was like hey, I don't care who sees me with this camera! I'll film whatever I want and blame my awkwardness on being foreign like I do everytime! and then I'd be ducking away from people like omgomg im not filming you i'm sorryomg. So in essence, I came away with a small clip about nothing in particular. I think I withdraw money from an ATM, show where I buy some groceries occasionally, drink a lemon smoothie, buy water, and go get lunch (kimchi bokkeumbop, which was delicious and had an egg on it.) 

I think that this particular video will remain as something I show people once I get home, so I don't know why I'm telling you about it really, BUT the point is that I will be putting more videos and photos on this blog. Right. 

Apparently tomorrow is July 4th. I guess I should do a lesson about that. So we'll be doing Independence Day straight into Halloween y'all. Why did I decide this week was Halloween? I don't know. Teaching makes me crazy. I also love Halloween, and I'm still homesick so I think a lot about going back to school, and... School also happens to be in fall. So there you have it. 

33 /

Apparently I only updated this three times last month? I didn't think I had much to say, but I didn't realise I said that little. So I'll do my best to keep things current this month. It should help me pass the next couple of weeks, I think.

Today wasn't my best day at school. I say that pretty often lately.

But next week is honorary Halloween, so that should be fun. (:

I think tomorrow I'll blog about food.

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.