Au revoir Korea, Hello NYC

Though I may be the worst blogger out there, I have returned to say goodbye to Korea. It’s been a great year – I tried many new foods (who thought I would actually like octopus?), attempted to learn a new language, learned about Korean culture, traveled throughout East Asia, celebrated two birthdays and met amazing people.

I am going to miss my students a lot, though I know that they are in good hands with their next native English teacher. Saying bye to them was definitely not easy. Almost every class ended with a photo op during my last week (see right). On the very last day of class, one of my classes refused to leave the classroom when the bell rang. Instead, they decided to sing me three songs: happy birthday, a Korean thank you song for teachers and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”. It was adorable! However, when the bell rang to indicate the beginning of the next period I shooed them out – I didn’t want to get in trouble for making 45 students late on my last day of work. Luckily, some of my students actually wrote my email address down and have gathered the courage to email me. “Please don’t forget me FOREVER ^*^,” wrote a particularly cute student, Jessica (her English name).

Though I don’t see myself visiting Korea in the near future, I definitely hope to make it back to Seoul and Daegu at some point. In the meantime I’ll keep busy with life in the city and grad school. Hello NY!

Pohang: steel and seafood HQ

Oeosa Temple

It’s finals week, which means that students have 4 days of intense examination while teachers get out at noon and pary the afternoons away. On Monday, we all headed over to Palgong Mountain for a delicious grilled beef lunch. On the way over, the teachers I was riding with invited me to a “secret” trip to Pohang post-lunch. So after a hurried lunch, they made some excuse so that we could skip out on the drinking/singing rounds and instead start the one hour journey to the coastal city of Pohang.

Pohang was great – we hiked up some mountain/hill to get to Oeosa temple, which overlooks a pretty lake. Good thing I was wearing my Converse instead of actual work shoes.  The temple was built during the Silla dynasty and according to legend, two priests competed for the revival of dead fish with their power of Buddhist discipline. One of the two dead fish came back to life and of course both monks claimed that it was their power that revived the fish. Thus the name “Oeosa,” which in Chinese characters means “my fish” (…. or something along those lines).

We headed over to a huge fish market where my coteachers choose some crab from one ajuma and some fish from another ajuma. The fish were still squirming as their heads were chopped off and they were gutted right in front of us. It was pretty gross yet captivating at the same time. Maybe I should have pursued a profession where my non-squirmishness would come into use. The fish was served as sashimi and the crab was steamed and served as our second course. 맛있는 음식을! I was kind of weirded out when one of the teachers started emptying all of the green goo out of the crabs into a bowl. When she proceeded to mix rice into the goo and serve the concoction to me in one of the crab shells, I was a bit grossed out. But it tuned out to be delicious! I think the green stuff was seaweed … or at least that is what I am telling myself.

I feel a little guilty that the teachers are having such a good time while the kids are struggling through hours of exams, but then I remember that the kids really don’t seem to care about these tests. Two second graders came to visit me last week and I asked them how they felt about their upcoming exams. The girl said she didn’t really care about their finals because: a) if she studied her scores would only increase by 10 points, and b) these exams are insignificant in comparison to their college entrance exams. So I guess finals week is a win-win situation for both teachers and students.

H1N1 Madness

So talk of swine flu is taking over my life….

When I get to school on Monday, I’m told that the entire 2nd grade (which is 1/3 of my school) is shut down because too many girls had H1N1. In fact, I was told later that day that a girl in one of my classes just officially found out that she had swine flu. On the principal’s orders, every teacher was supposed to ask their homeroom class how many girls had swine flu symptoms (cold, cough, and fever). So my coteacher asked his class right after I taught them and more than 10 of them raised their hands! Seriously?? Why don’t these kids just stay home if they have a fever? I understand that Korea is serious about school, but if they are going to freak out over things like H1N1, doesn’t it make sense for them to encourage students to stay at home instead of infecting the entire school?

The best part is that my girls decided to share their sickness with me. I’m fairly sure I just have a bad cold, but the teachers at my school are convinced it’s H1N1. After hearing crazy stories of Eastern medicine from some of my friends (think using suction cups to take blood from your back), I think I’m just going to stick to American meds and bear it out. Unfortunately, sick days don’t exist here. My host mom keeps making all of these Korean remedies for me. So far, I’ve had boiled mushroom broth in honey (gross) and honey citron tea (delicious). She’s trying to get me to switch out my over-the-counter drugs for some herbal powdery medicine that she admits tastes horrible…. not happening.

Gwangalli Bridge, Busan

I just hope I get better before I head over to Tokyo next week for my brother’s wedding! The airports are so picky about sick people right now and I don’t want to be given a hard time in Tokyo or Busan.

On a lighter note, I went to the Int’l Fireworks Festival in Busan last weekend. The fireworks were nice – it was a 45 minute show, so pretty long. But the crowds were insane! The last time I’ve seen so many people in one place must have been Times Square on NYE.

Chuseok

The food offered to the Kang family ancestors

I spent Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) with my host family at their country house that’s about an hour out of Daegu. It’s traditional for Korean families to go to the father’s parents house and then the mother’s, so we spent most of the time at my host father’s country pad. The Friday before Chuseok, I helped  the women clean and cook and then Saturday morning they set up the spread you see on the left as an offering to their ancestors. The food ranged from rice and fruit to octopus and dried squid. Then the men and children did the jaensa, which is essentially a routine of bowing and offering various foods to each ancestor.

Jaensa at the second tomb

After this we headed over to the tombs of two ancestors, a grandfather who had passed away a few years ago and an uncle who had passed away only 3 months ago. At each grave, the men offered some food and drinks, but what I found the most bizarre was that at both graves, my host uncle lit a cigarette in his mouth and stuck it into the base of the grave before they carried out the jaensa. The uncle even got two cigarettes! Guess he was a heavy smoker.

Host mother and father

So I’m glad that I got to hang out with my host family for Chuseok, even though the only English speaker in my family skipped out on the celebration to study (typical), which left me gesturing and using my broken Korean to try to understand what was going on.  Oh and my host family even bought me a hanbok (=traditional Korean dress)!

It was kinda huge, but the sales associate insisted that I have to buy a big size because I am so tall.  I guess my host mom disagrees because she mentioned something about going back to the store and when I left the house, she took the dress (I’m guessing) back to the store. Apparently the colors of the one I choose are traditional but the cut is pretty modern.

As I was leaving the country house on the Saturday of Chuseok weekend, my friend called and we decided to hop onto trains to Busan. Trying to find a ticket on the day of Chuseok was pretty hectic, but my host mom came to the rescue and found a ticket for me. We spent time at Haeundae beach and the Busan Acquarium and luckily the weather was amazing. But since we only had 2 days and because many things were closed for the holiday there’s a lot we didn’t get to see, so I definitely want to go back soon.

I spent the last weekend in Gyeongju for the Fulbright Fall Conference. It was great to see all of my friends from orientaiton again and it was helpful to hear their lesson plan ideas too. We spent our entire Sunday hitting up every possible tourist attraction in the city (Fulbright arranged the tour). Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom and because it is over 1,000 years old, there’s a lot to see. Sadly, most of the historical sites were destroyed by the Japanese, but many sites have been restored. We saw the Seokguram Grotto, Bulguksa Temple, Gyeongju National Museum, Anapji Pond, Cheomseongdae Observatory (oldest observatory in the world!), and the Cheonmachong tombs…. all in one day! Interesting but exhausting.

PIFF

After the conference, I headed down to Busan with some friends to check out the Pusan International Film Festival. We got tickets to see an independent Philipinno film, “Lola,” which was about everyday life in the Phillipines (in Tagalog w/ English subtitles). The plot involved the trial against a man who stabbed another man over a cell phone and the main actresses were the grandmothers of the accused and the victim. The movie was very low budget, so it could have used some more editing and the camera was quite shaky, but it was pretty good. So overall, things have been pretty easy lately – I’ve worked only 6.5 days in the past 3 weeks!

Heart and Seoul

Even though I’ve been at my school for over 5 weeks, my girls still freak out when they run into me in the hallway. “Oh teacha!” they exclaim and then they look at each other in surprise, as if they forgot that I walk down the same hallways as them. Finally, one of them will remember to say “hi!” before they run off giggling like crazy. It’s adorable.

Swine flu prevention

My girls had midterms this Mon-Wed, so I went up to Seoul with April for the week. After spending 3 hours on the subway, we finally got to Incheon for a bboy festival (bboy = break dancing) which was pretty awesome. Of course, before entering we had to walk through the Flugun Gate, just in case we were carrying H1N1. The swine flu scare is getting ridiculous – so many festivals have been cancelled because people are scared to gather in large groups because of the flu. I guess the fact that 3 kids at my school have swine flu somewhat substantiates the fear, but it’s really getting ridiculous. My coteacher offered me a mask to wear at school the other day but I politely refused. I’m pretty sure that my girls would understand even less of what I am saying in class if I muffled my voice with that. Though it’d be fun to wear!

Anyways, we saw the final rounds of one of the breakdancing events and then we also got to see a hip-hop concert. I didn’t really know any of the groups, but I’ve heard of some of the more famous ones and I’m sure my girls will go crazy if I tell them how close I was to Epik High and Drunken Tiger. The artists were a combo of American, Korean and Korean American, so I could understand what they were saying about 1/2 the time. Also, one of the teachers at my school told me that one of the members of Epik High grew up in the States and went to Stanford. Guess that’s why he didn’t really have a Korean accent.

Little India in Incheon, Korea

The festival was in these fair grounds in Incheon that has an “around the world” theme, so there were restaurants and shops from all sorts of places which was pretty interesting. Of course I found little India!

There was so much other stuff we got to do as well. In most cases, it was just that we happened to be in the right place at the right time. Like when we were checking out Ewha Women’s University with a former ETA who now is doing her masters in IR @ Ewha, we ran across a rehearsal for a fashion show. So we stuck around to see the show later that night and it was really amazing. There were lots of celebrities (none that I knew)  and I think all of the designers were Ewha students.  And after the fashion show, there was a reception with tons of amazing food! Score.

Deoksugung Palace

We also checked out the Deoksugung Palace near City Hall. It was amazing because the palace had been built with a combination of Western and traditional Korean architecture. Most of the Western buildings had been torn down or burned down, but the contrast was still evident.

Still Deoksugung Palace

We also tried on hanbok (=traditional Korean dresses) at this booth outside of the palace and we had great timing because the people running the booth told us that they were looking for a foreigner to participate in the changing of the guards ceremony. April and I rock-paper-scissorsed for it, but she won so she got to put on some more traditional stuff and hit a drum 3x to announce the beginning of the ceremony.

Actually, my host family just bought me a hanbok because I’m joining them for Chuseok (= Korean Thanksgiving) this weekend (also another long weekend!) at their country house. Koreans generally go back to there parents’ homes for Chuseok and perform ceremonies to honor their ancestors, so I’m off to the Kang family’s hometown!

April & I in hanboks

The new & improved me

On my day off of school (got to love the random days I get off for practice KSATs) I explored Seomun Market, a huge traditional indoor/outdoor market in Daegu. It has everything you could wish for, including a building dedicated to hundreds of hanboks (= traditional Korean dresses) of different colors and styles and of course an entire section of the outdoor part of the market that is dedicated to tons of smelly fresh fish, eel, squid, etc and even smellier dried fish.

You can buy octopus in a bowl

... or in a box

Chopping of the head ... yum

There’s also plenty of octopus! I’d never tasted octopus before coming to Korea but it’s actually pretty good if it’s cooked right. At the worst, its tough and chewy, but when done right it’s delish. Apparently eating live octopus is also big in Korea and I’ve been told it’s a must-try.

Poor animals T T

The thought of the tentacles sticking to the side of my mouth gives me the chills but I would at least try a bite if I came across it. Look at the adorable black puppy in the middle of the animal farm Oh, and then there was a part of the market with these awful animal cages. There were 2 or 3 vendors with a few cages of chickens and then also a couple of these adorable puppies, kittens, and even some bunnies. Check out the pic on the left – there’s a dead chicken just chilling there, right next to the poor other animals. And these cages were packed! Especially the chickens, which were literally sitting on top of each other. I asked my teachers at my school about the animals and they told me that no one buys the pets because most of the puppies and kittens die when they are still very young due to neglect and thus diseases =(.

Ajuma buying a chicken

So sad… Neverthless, the chickens are a hot commodity. Check out the ajuma (= elderly lady) on the right buying a chicken. The vendor took the chicken to the back of her stand, presumably to slaughter it, but I couldn’t stand to think about that so I walked away. So who knows, maybe the ajuma was taking the chicken home to be her pet? Or to lay eggs?? =(

Moving on to something less depressing … my host mom is taking English at the Wall Street Institute (she repeated the name a few times, I guess bc it’s supposed to be a prestigious English hagwon? Though I’m assuming the name was chosen before the recession hit…) and I’m also continuing Korean classes, so communication with the host fam is getting somewhat easier. The conversations my host mom and I have are usually ridiculous and result in me staring at my host mom in disbelief at something she just said (usually a mistranslation on one of our parts) and then just smiling and nodding as if I totally understand and agree with whatever she is saying.

Last week, she went to her middle school reunion and when I asked her how it went the next day she hesistantly said it was fun. A few minutes later she said it was a bit weird because her boyfriend told her that he still loved her and asked why she didn’t feel the same way…. this is one of those moments when I was like what??? Your BOYFRIEND? She just said, “Yeah, my boyfriend. And I thought it was strange.” The next day (I guess she had been thinking about my reaction overnight) she consulted her dictionary and explained that it was her boyfriend from middle school. Still weird, but much less shocking.

Today she also told me that though she’s not good at cooking, she does have a 6th sense for being able to tell if a woman is married or not just by looking at her (not sure how this topic came up?) and she can tell if a place has a good jee or not. My host sis explained that places can have good or bad jees (i.e. temples are built in places that have good jee … or maybe vice versa – a place has a good jee bc there’s a temple there. Not sure). Apparently my host mom is  talented in rando things but it’s too bad that cooking isn’t one of them.

She also loves anything that looks/tastes bad but is supposed to be healthy. For ex, my host dad came home with a whole case of these jars of black goo the other night and my host mom gave me one and told me to try it. She warned me that it would taste awful, but she said that it’s very good for my health. So to appease her, I put the bottle in my room with no intention whatsoever to ever open it. Then she asked me today how I liked it and I had to admit I hadn’t tried it. My host sis finally explained that it’s some sort of liquid ginseng and that each little bottle is 180,000 won! I immediately gave it back to them and insisted that I probably wouldn’t eat it anyways. The crazy things that they do for “good health” …..

Before

I also just got my hair cut & straightened! Notice the clock in the after shot – 11:30 PM.

I spent 6 hours at the salon! It took ridiculously long and I cut my hair super short.

After w/ my hair stylists

Along with my new do, I have to come up with a new Korean name for my class. So far, I’m thinking Bora (pronounced somewhat in between [bo-ra] and [bo-da]), Minhye [Min-hee], Minji, Yuri, or Eunsuh.  Any votes?

Systematic failure?

I know we had been warned about major differences between the Korean & American educational systems that we may encounter, but some things still shocked me….

1. One of my coteachers uses corporal punishment in his classroom and he has repeatedly suggested that he should continue to use it in the classes he “coteaches” with me.

After I discussed my “no hitting” policy to the first class we “cotaught” together (quotations bc the coteachers’ role in the classes I teach is very lowkey), he came up to me after class and told me that though corporal punishment is technically not allowed in the school, he often hits the girls with this stick if they are disobeying him. And he said it so casually!!  I politely explained that maybe (key word!) I can handle disciplining my students during my classes. Unfortunately, his English level is lower than my other coteachers, so it’s hard to judge his tone and if he understood what I was implying. Either he is obstinate or my suggestion didn’t register because he also reminded me today that if my girls are bad, I should consider hitting them with his stick (!!!). I used the pretend he is joking/once again suggest that I can handle the disciplining for my own classes approach.

2. I have 1 deaf student, 2 epileptics, + 3 otherwise special needs children in my classes (+ the however many more whose disabilities have not been acknowledged/registered)

Apparently, my school has special education teachers, but they have just assumed the policy of  “reintegrating” the special needs students into the “regular” classrooms. They tell me it is better for those with disabilities to be around “normal” level students. And when I asked my coteachers how they approach teaching those students (especially the deaf student), they looked at me in confusion. “We have gotten used to having them in our classrooms. We don’t do anything special for them,” they told me. So, how do the students learn? Their answer: well most of them cannot learn much, but that is just the situation. — I was definitely shocked to hear that!

After I insisted that I would like to learn more about their disabilities, I managed to get a list of the special needs children from the special ed teachers with a discription of their particular situations (all in Korean of course). Get this – my deaf student is not even on that list! Apparently, her parents have requested for her to be treated as any of the other “normal” level students are treated… meaning that she has never received any sort of special attention from someone trained to deal with hearing impaired children!

The coteacher who helped get this information/translate it for me told me that it was nice to finally see such a list so that he could learn more about his special needs children – just hearing that was heartening. One of my other coteachers has decided to pay special attention to the special needs students in the classes we teach together, which is a huge help because I can continue to teach to the rest of the class while those individual students receive 1-on-1 attention! She told me that she’s never paid special attention to these students before, but now that she has talked to them individually, she can tell that they want to be helped. With her help, one of my students even wrote: “Akta, I have a learning disability. Can you help me anyway?”

I’ve been told that I will soon just come to accept that the system is failing these students…. but I’m not so sure.

“Teacha teacha, pwetty!”

Today was my first day of teaching at the Daegu All Girls’ High School and I am exhausted! The girls (all 1st grade high schoolers) are adorable but they are very chatty and constantly distracted. Koreans may study for many hours but the Korean classroom (at least the ones I’ve seen) are run by the students, not the Korean teachers. The girls are allowed to be on their phones, to use their electronic dictionaries to do their homework for them, and to stare at themselves in the mirror all hour. Nevertheless, they are very sweet and smart! They also have a hard time with the  r/l sounds because the nearest equivalent in Korean is a letter that stands for a sound sort of in between “l” and “r,” thus the difficulty with the word “pretty.”

I had my girls fill out a survey today to evaluate their English writing level (they’re supposed to be experts at grammar and writing because this is what the Korean English teachers teach them in order to prepare them for the Korean SAT), and these were my favorite answers:

Why do you want to learn English?

- “English is funny.” (I got a few of these…. guess I never thought of English as particularly funny before)

- “I want to look so cool.”

- “Because English will help my “DREAMS COME TRUE” –>aw, so cute!!

What specifically do you want to learn?

- “Interesting class. Teacher! You are so pretty!!! ^ ^ “

-”Funny. Enjoy. Happily ~“

- “I’m hungry TT. Next time is lunch time.” –> …. um, okay

- “I want to learn playing the violin.”; “I want to learn Chinese. I want to learn Korean history. I want to learn playing the guitar.” –> ….. what?? I though I was teaching English class?!

-”Maybe most of Krn students are tired of learning Grammar, studying how to get a good grade on exam. So… I think … I insist…. this class would be the time when we can always have fun. Free talking!”

My not so favorite answers:

- “I learn English for the test. People will use my English score to judge me.”

- “Our government is force to learn English. ‘No may. Yes must.’ Otherwise. No job. No University. No good grades.”

- ” ‘You must learn to English,’ said to school.”

- “Because school comple to me to learn English.”

Hopefully I get more positive responses tomorrow.

“Colorful Daegu, City of Hope”

So I have been in Daegu, my placement city, for almost a week now. I arrived last Monday and I begin teaching this upcoming Monday. Life with my homestay family is …. interesting and always unpredictable. I have three siblings – the eldest is my host sister, Jiye who is a 3rd year high schooler.

My host siblings + cousin

She is by far the easiest to communicate with because she studied as an exchange student in Seattle for a year and she’s very extroverted (+ she’s the president of her/my high school’s student government). Then there’s Doyeon, who should be in the 2nd year of high school, but she’s taking a year off to do meditation and attend art school because she was too stressed out. She pretends not to speak or understand English, but I think it is mainly because she is shy. Seunghoon is my host brother; he’s 9 years old (elementary school) and he just pretends I don’t exist. I don’t think he understands why an American stranger who can’t even talk to him is staying in their apt. Anyways, he’s pretty adorable.

My host father raises pigs so even though we live in the city, he spends most of his days and even nights in the country. The entire Kang family used to live in the country and Jiye tells me that they come from very humble beginnings.  At one point in their lives, the kids had to live with their grandparents in the country while their mom and dad worked in the city because of money issues. I went out to their country home (now occupied by their grandmother) a few days ago. The country is absolutely gorgeous and all of their relatives are so nice! The pig were smelly but there were lots of cute little piglets that reminded me of Wilber from Charlotte’s Web.

Abandoned elementary school from a few generations ago

Jiye, Doyeon, Seunghoon and I explored the villages that their families live in for a couple hours and we stumbled across a lot of interesting stuff.

Obelisk that says "Study and die."

The grandfather once attended the elementary school on the right (now abandoned), where he learned basic reading/writing and Chinese calligraphy.  We also went to the Buddhist Haeinsa Temple while we were out in the country. On the temple grounds, we climbed a hill and found the obelisk below that says, “Study and die.” So typical Korean. No wonder the students in this country are always so stressed out.

I’ve also visited my school – Daegu All Girls’ High School. It’s huge — 2,500 students, but I am only teaching 1st grade of high school. That still means that my classes will average 45 students per class! The only other negative thing I’ve noticed about my school is that my coteacher has repeatedly insisted that I focus on reading comprehension to help the students prepare for the Korean SAT. But Fulbright has specifically told us that our job is not to teach to the KSAT because we are English conversation teachers, so we’ll have to see how he reacts to my lessons. The kids have actually studied English for many years, but since all of their classes have focused on preparing them for the KSAT, they’ve only learned to read and write English. Speaking and understanding spoken English has been ignored for the most part – that’s where I come in as native English teacher. Also, my coteacher told me that he doesn’t like activities and games in the classroom, which I love and intend to use all the time – so I’ll have to see how that goes too.

Sticker photos w/ my host sisters

Life when Jiye was not in school was so much better/more exciting. Now that school has started (and now that her KSAT is less than 3 months away), she is at school or hagwan (private tutoring) from 8am-11pm Mon-Sat. I’m so glad I was not a high school student in Korea! They are seriously over worked.

Kim Jong Il’s Homeland

Two days after the 2 American journalists returned home with Clinton, we road tripped 2 hours up to the DMZ. It was a pretty weird experience because after 2 hours of very windy mountain roads, we finally arrived at a South Korean military base only to find out that we only had only 10 minutes to look around. The guy in the picture below gave us a short briefing, though it seemed like a lot got lost in translation, and then we squeezed onto a really small balcony that peered over the DMZ and into North Korea.

S. Korean soldier posted at the DMZ

It was eerily silent and though we couldn’t tell where the DMZ ended and where North Korea began, we could see some buildings and what seemed to be little villages in the distance. Pictures of North Korea (or in the direction of the DPRK) were strictly prohibited, but Jenny and I did get to pose with this sweet soldier. Since 2 years of service is required for all Korean men, it was interesting to hear his perspective on his posting. I suppose if I had to serve in the army, the DMZ would definitely be on the top of my list of best places to be posted. The military base was also really into camouflage – everything was camouflage, but what’s better is that most of the buildings are cars were a cartoonish camouflage, like this SUV.  Pretty awesome.
Then we headed over to the World Peace Bell Park in Hwacheongun to grab some bibimbap for lunch.

Carolyn & I at the peace museum

The park had a really pretty garden and waterfall area and the area around the park was very serene. Next to the park is the Peace Dam, which was built on the Bukhan River for the sole purpose of protecting the ROK from the possibility of an intential flood attack from North Korea, which has a dam built on the same river. The river leads to Seoul, so it’s a pretty critical security point.

The provincial government gave us permission to ring the World Peace Bell

Also at the park is the World Peace Bell, which also has an interesting background – it was cast from metal from empty cartridges used in the Korean War and in other conflicts throughout the world (e.g. Palestine and Colombia).

Jenny, serving up some dongdongju

Pajeon (eggs, veggies & squid!)

We also made another delicious discovery the other night – dongdongju (a rice wine), which is served with pajeon (“Korean pizza”). Yum!