“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.