Archive for ‘January 2010’

Things I miss about America:

Food

• Mexican food: Korean's don't really know how to make ethnic food, so unless there's a legit Mexican in the kitchen, the food usually tastes terrible
• Ranch dressing and ketchup: living in Pittsburgh for 4 years, I have grown a refined taste of Heinz ketchup and can easily taste an impostor such as Hunt's. It seems all they have here is impostors. And asking for ranch with my fries, I get some sort of weird, possibly homemade, not that great tasting, white ooze. Not that swell.
• A good sandwich: I don't think a Korean person could make a sandwich to save their lives. I recently had one that was alfalfa sprouts, egg salad, mustard, crab wrapped in ham, and I think tuna. Gross. I really want a good deli sandwich, the kind where you get to pick your bread and toppings and cheese, with the little toothpick in each triangle piece, and a huge pickle on the side.
• Diet coke: all the seem to have here is Coke Zero. They made Coke Zero to taste like regular Coke, but I do not like regular Coke, I like Diet Coke, therefore want something that tastes like Diet Coke.
• Bacon and cheese: you cannot find regular bacon in a typical grocery store, I have to go to Costco to get it. And finding cheese is hard, even in the big food stores, they have "pizza cheese" and Kraft singles type things. Occasionally you can find Parmesan or mozzarella, but it's ridiculously expensive.
  
• Raspberry jam: all they have here is strawberry. Sad face.
• Good beer: Cass and Hite are the beers of Korea, and they basically taste like something a few small steps up from Natty Lite. And getting imported beers in rare, but expensive if you do. I had a Paulner Hefe for dinner tonight, and it was 7,000 won.
  

Internet

• You know how in America you can watch your favorite TV shows on their network website, or catch up on old episodes in good quality on hulu.com? Well, once you leave America, that option is out. Some sort of copyright laws prohibit me from watching my favorite shows, so I have to watch them in poor quality from places like fastpasstv.com, and wisevid.com
• I don't get EPSN360 either, so I could never watch a college football game online.
• Pandora is also out of the question. So my outstanding taste in new and interesting music that Shayla relies on me so much for has begun to dwindle.
  

Appliances

• Oven: god I miss baking, making things like enchiladas, potatoes, casseroles, and any other random recipe I Stumble upon. I can buy a little mini oven, one that looks like a slightly bigger version of a toaster oven, but they are upwards of $100+ which I'm not really looking forward to paying.
• Microwave: yes that's right, I have no microwave. So unless I like my leftovers cold, I try to avoid making that much food. I really should buy one, but again, money, and the fact that I have to where to put it!
• Drier: I have a washing machine (one that has no hot water) but alas no drier. They can cool washer/drier combo machines here, but ya like my school would fork out for that? So instead I have to line dry my clothes so they have that weird crunch to them.

Social life

• Being polite to people on the streets: never happens here. Korean mentality is "if I don't know you, I don't care about you, and I am willing to push you out of the way, spit entirely too close to you, and fall asleep on you on the subway." Heaven forbid if I should smile at someone on the street, I just get a cold look in return. Even a lot of foreigners do it, they are turning into Koreans!
• Magazines: I wish I could find magazines in English. I miss Glamour, and Vogue and all those magazines that try to help me dress fashionably for less but wind up repeating the sames things in nearly ever issue, just changing the colors.
  
• Current events: I don't have TV, and don't read the newspaper, so keeping up on current events basically doesn't happen for me. I didn't even know the Olympics were coming up, or the State of the Union.

Language

• English: I miss it. I miss being easily able to read street signs and building names, being able to tell the taxi driver where I'm going, being able to answer the phone, going to the doctor or pharmacy by myself, ordering food accurately, reading the buses.

Medical

• Doctors here seem pretty incompetent. They rely only on Korean medical knowledge and make no attempt to learn from the outside world. Doctors' offices are kind of dirty. Misdiagnosis are common, they look at you for 2 seconds and decide what's wrong. If anyone back at Pitt remembers me complaining about that Asian doctor Dr. Tsai, it's like having a whole country full of them. There are a few good places, with good services for foreigners, but they are expensive and not close to where I live.
  

So I thought I would give you a little insight into what exactly I am teaching these little bundles of joy. My kindergarten class (the 5-year-olds) have 4 books that we go through in a day. First book is our Hats On book. This book is designed to give generally vocabulary to the kids, teach them to associate English words with pictures, basic sentence structure, and what not. I have to do one unit a week, and each unit is eight pages. So I span it out for a week, about two pages a day, more or less depending on what the material is. If it's things Like sentences, I like to spend more time on it to make sure they at least kinda, sorta, maybe understand it. I spend about 40-50 minutes in this book each day. So last week, we learned how to say "I have a ..." so I have to teach them the meaning of the word "have" through examples, then I ask each student to tell me something they have with them, and the girls kind of make it a contest to see who can say the most impressive thing, while the boys make it a joke to see who can say the silliest thing. So Dorothy will say something like "I have a red crayon and a blue crayon" while Thomas will say something like "I have a box." The hardest part is getting them to deviate away from the examples in the book or the examples I give them, and have them thing creatively for themselves. Also in the Hats On book, they work on letter sounds and spelling. Luckily at the bottom of every page, it gives you a list of words or sentences that kids should try to work on. The last page of the unit though, simply has three numbers, with three pictures next to each number, and no instructions. When we get to that part, I basically say one of the pictures and the kids have to circle the right ones. I'm going to be honest, most of the boys in my class aren't that bright, and they don't really care about learning, so whenever we do something in class, and I need to make sure everyone answers, I have to write in my book, and they basically copy it. I've found that in the Korean system, they are more concerned about making sure the kids do their book work correctly, than the kids actually learning the language well (very frustrating).

The next book is called Activity Phonics, which mainly focuses on word sounds and letters of the alphabet. Each unit usually focused on one letter, and is usually four pages long. The first page is always the letter page, and it has picture that start with that letter. Sometimes though, I can't tell what all the pictures are. Take the "Q" page, I can see a quail, quill, quilt, question mark, queen, I am assuming the ducks are quacking. But then there are random things that I'm not sure if they are supposed to start with Q or not, like the thing the ducks are on, or the magnifying class, or the random chandelier. So most of the time I have to wing it. To give you a bit of understand of the minds of my kids, they know full well we are working on the letter Q, so I ask "Ok, what in this picture starts with Q?" and they will say "bird!" to which I will have to remind them that bird does not in fact start with a Q but with a B. Along with letter sounds, we also learn about uppercase and lower case letters in this book, which they have to circle/underline/color, depending on the instructions.

Then we have our Little Phonics book ("Teacher, blue book?" is what they say). I absolutely hate this book. This book is entirely too difficult for them, which frustrates me when they stop listening because they don't know what's going on. Like I said before, the kids have to complete their work every day, very important, and if they don't do it, or if they spell something wrong and I miss it, I get in trouble. Anyway, this book deals a lot with spelling, simply things like"hen, pen, jam, ram, jet, net" three letter words. There is a lot of fill in the blanks, and spelling, and they are simply too young to put two-and-two together in their tiny little brains. This would be a typical class conversation with one of our activities:

Me - "Ok Miffy Class, the word "pen" does it end with "en" or "et"?"
Class - "et!!!!"
Me - "What?? "pen" ends with "et" it sounds like "pet"???"
Class - "Noooo!"
Me - "Ok then what is it, "en" or "et"?
Class - "et!!!"
Me - "pet?!?, this word is pet?"
Class - "nooo, teacher! "en"!!!!
Me - Ok, so how to you spell "pen"? p-p-p-pen"
Class - "b"
Me - "B??"
Class - "nooo, P!!!"
Me - "Ok, P, what comes next? p-en, p-en"
Class "A? T? E?"
Me - Yes! E! Ok what next? Pen-n-n-n"
Class "e-t?"

And that's about when I go crazy. Luckily I have a few good spellers, and Becky has at least gotten the bright idea to look at the spelling in her book and yell it out loud. And then we have pages like this one, where they can't understand i->ig->wig-> they first don't know how to spell wig, and then don't understand that on the exact line below it (where there is still the picture of the wig!) that you should write the same thing as above. So instead of the page coming out somehting like this:
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->ig->pig
i->ig->pig
i->in->pin
i->in->pin
i->in->fin
i->in->fin
Sally will write something like this:
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->ig->wig
i->in->wig
i->in->wig
i->in->wig
i->in->wig
So I definitely have to help them step by step, letter by letter. And a lot of them still can't write the whole alphabet, since they kept adding kids to my class halfway through the term when we already learned the alphabet but I don't have time to go back.

We also have a math book. This one is hit or miss, sometimes the work is too hard, but right now, we're simply working on counting and writing our numbers, so the kids do it pretty fast. But when we have to match up, or color patterns then they get confused and I have to show them step by step (which of course takes more time). And finally we have a reading book that we do, we get a new one every two weeks. I don't really know if my kids are reading, or if they are just memorizing what I say. The books are a little advanced for them, things like "I see the elephant, it looks big." I'm pretty sure I couldn't read that when I was five, and that was in my native language. I think most of the girls are actually learning how to read, but the boys, ugh. Thomas is doing ok, but I think he's memorizing, Daniel is doing a lot better than before, but John, oh jeez. Seriously, this is how he read the sentence about the elephant "I the the elephant e the big" not even being sarcastic, and every time I tell him what the words are, he just doesn't seem to be picking it up.

I try to get the kids as entertained as possibly, purposely writing or saying the wrong answer so they can correct me, having them yell out answers, having tables compete, volunteering to help teacher, playing games, but some days all I have time for is book work, especially days where everyone is misbehaving and not paying attention to me. But that's a whole 'nother blog!

So there you have it, my morning schedule with the class (in the afternoon we do something like science or art or practice our performance). We have to do about 7-8 work book pages, plus attempt to go through our reading book, all in the span of about 2 1/2 hours. Plus, I'm supposed to find time for them to have play time, but a lot of times they take to long in their books and we don't have time. I really wish they had more time to get out and have fun, I feel like they would be a lot less restless in class, but here in Korea, it's all work and no play, even when you're five!

You would think that being in a country with a completely different language, you would pick up the new language really quickly. Well, when you hang around people that only speak English, and you work at a school where they are supposed to only speak English, and the natives speak so fast you have to clue what's going on, and there is barely anyone that can translate select words into English for you, it is very hard. I have two books I use to teach myself Korean, but even the books are different. They have saying that people don't really use in modern day, plus Korea has a system of respect where you have to use different endings to your sentences, depending on who you are talking to (i.e. elders and superiors). Plus it's a whole new alphabet with sounds we don't really make in English. So once you learn the basics of how to survive, going beyond that gets difficult.

Luckily I have Grace, and she really helps me out a lot, but I still have a hard time hearing what she says, because some of the letters in Korean are so subtle, you can barely hear them. And some letters sound almost the same, but change depending on where in the word they are (like the g/k-sound ᄀ or the d/t-sound ᄃ). And then there are sound that are almost similar (ch-sound ᄎ and j-sound ᄌ). And the vowels, holy crap, no book in the world can help you with the vowels. There's ᅡwhich is easy (sounds like ah), but then it goes to ᅮ (sound like oo like "soothing"), next is ᅥ(sounds like the o in "song"), then ᅩ (which is the basic "oh" sound), and finally ᅳ (which is more like "uh"). Now typing it out, they all sound dissimilar, but when the Koreans actually say them, it's really hard to differentiate, especially when they are saying whole words.

So far I can say this in Korean:
Hello.
My name is Colleen.
I am American.
I am from Portland, Oregon.
Where are you from?
I'm sorry.
I don't understand.
I don't know
Yes.
No.
I am a teacher.
Take me to my apartment please. No, go straight, take the next left/right.
Where/ where is...
What/ what is this/that.
I like/ I don't like.
That's expensive.
This/that.
Here/there.
Cat/dog/mouse.
Give me a gimbap please.
What's your name?
How much is it?
Can I have a bag please?

Here are some helpful phrases to know if you find yourself in Korea:

I'm sorry - 미안합니다 (me-ahn ham-nee-da)
I'm American - 미국사람이에요 (mi-gook sar-am-ee-ay-oh)
I speak a little Korean - 조금 한글말 (cho-gum hang-gul-mal)
I don't understand - 몰라요 (mo-lie-yo)
What's this? - 이것 뭐예요 (ee-go mwo-yay-yo)
Where's the ... - ...어디있어요 (oh-dee-so-yo)
What's your name? - 이름이 뭐예요? (ear-yum-ee mwo-yay-yo)
Thank you - 감사합니다 (gam-sam-nee-da)
Straight - 직진 (chick-jin)
Left - 왼쪽 (win-choke)
Right - 오른쪽 (o-run-choke)
Take me to ... (in a taxi) - ... 가주세요 (ka-jew-say-oh)
Give me ... (when ordering food) - ... 주세요 (jew-say-oh)

When dealing with counting, that's a complicated story. There are two counting methods in Korea: Pure Korean number method which is used for counting amounts (like how many stickers I have given a child, or how many glasses of water you have. It's also used when telling time), and the Sino-Korean number method which is used for counting monetary amounts, saying telephone/building numbers.

Here are the Pure Korean numbers
1 = 하나 (hana)
2 = 둘 (duel)
3 = 셋 (set)
4 = 넷 (net)
5 = 다섯 (da-sot)
6 = 여섯(yo-sot)
7 = 일곱 (eel-gohp)
8 = 여덟 (yo-dorp)
9 = 아홉(ah-hop)
10 = 열 (yol)
11 = 열하나 (yol hana)
12 = 열둘 (yol duel)
13 = 열셋 (yol set)
When telling time you take the Pure Korean number, and add 시 (o'clock) to the end. But note that if you want to add minutes, you use the Sino-Korean method (makes perfect sense, right?)

1 o'clock - 한시
2 o'clock - 두시
3 o'clock - 세시
4 o'clock - 네시
5 o'clock - 다섯시
6 o'clock - 여섯시
7 o'clock - 일곱시
8 o'clock - 여덟시
9 o'clock - 아홉시
10 o'clock - 열 시

And here are the Sino-Korean numbers

1. 일 (eel)
2. 이 (ee)
3. 삼 (sam)
4. 사 (sa)
5. 오 (oh)
6. 육 (yuk)
7. 칠 (chil)
8. 팔 (pal)
9. 구 (gu)
10. 십 (ship)
11. 십일 (ship-eel)
12. 십이 (ship-ee)

When refering to money, you use the Sino-Korean numbers, but there are a few things added in. Instead of saying 10,000 won using 십 (as would be logical), you say 만 won (or 만원)
1,000 - 천원 (chon won)
2,000 - 이(2)천원 (ee chon won)
3,000 - 삼(3)천원 (sam chon won)
10,000 - 만원 (mahn won)
11,000 - 만천원 (mahn chon won)
12,000 - 만이(2)천원 (mahn ee chon won)
13,000 - 만삼(3)천원 (mahn sam chon won)
20,000 - 이(2)만원 (ee mahn won)
21,000 - 이(2)만천원 (ee mahn chon won)
22,000 - 이(2)만이(2)천원 (ee mahn ee chon won)
23,000 0 이(2)만삼(3)천원 (ee man sam chon won)

Are you utterly confused yet? It took me a really long time to work all this out. As long as I buy something for less than 100,000 won, I can tell what they are saying, but once you get higher that, I get confused. Ok, that's enough Korean for today!

So it's about time I let you know about how much life in Seoul costs. Some people say it's an expensive city, some people say it's cheap. I think it all depends on what you buy and what your tastes are. For the most part, produce you buy in the stores are pretty cheap, and if you frequent the multiple family owned markets located everywhere as opposed to the large chain grocery stores (like Home Plus or E-Mart) things are much cheaper. You can get pretty much all you need to make a decent meal at these little grocery stores: vegetables, fruit, soda, juice, cereal, milk, plus things like shampoo, toothpaste, laundry detergent, cleaning supplies. Cereal and meat tend to run a little expensive though, I can't usually find a box of cereal for under ₩5,000. Minute Maid orange juice is really cheap here. A bottle about 2 liters is ₩1,800 (or $1.50). Korea loves there coffee, so there are tons of brands of canned coffee. Some of them just add a straw and drink. These are pretty cheap as well ₩1,000 - ₩2,000 each. Getting coffee at a shop can be pretty expensive though. Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts can run up to ₩5,000 for a tiny cup that barely has coffee in it. As I said, Koreans love coffee, but they can't make a good cup to save their lives.

Going out to drink can run pretty high. If you stick to the college-esque Korean beers like Hite and Cass, you're night will be cheap, you can get a big mug for about ₩3,000. Getting better beers costs more money, and switching to liquor gets worse. I would say they average cost of a mixed drink would be ₩8,000 - ₩10,000 of course getting more expensive the more foreigners you find yourself surrounded by.

Taxis! Although the subway system in Seoul is pretty good, and you can get just about anywhere for very cheap, sometimes it takes a while to get there, especially if you have to transfer. Taxis usually start at ₩2,400 when you get in, and they increase a certain amount depending on the taxis driver's preference. You have to be careful though, if you're coming out of somewhere popular (like Seoul Station or Itaewon) there are taxi drivers standing out front, and they'll ask you where you want to go, but then they usually tell you some ridiculously high price to get you there. On New Years Eve, when trying to get a taxi, one guy told me it would be ₩30,000, but when we got into a random taxi, it wound up being ₩14,500. So if you know where you are, are how far away you're going, you can gauge how much it will take to get you there, so you don't get swindled.

For some reason, towels are ridiculously expensive here! From what I've heard, most Koreans use towels the size of a hand towel when getting out of the shower. Me personally, I like a little more coverage. A regular sized towel costs about ₩25,000 here, though if you're lucky you can find ones on sale. Sheets are also really expensive. I think this is because Koreans don't sleep in beds, the sleep on mats, so they have no need to have bed sheets. My apartment came with an ugly pair of orange sheets, which I am going to stick with, because the only sheets I found were ₩45,000.

Getting food from home can be expensive too. Cheese, whoa, a block of cheese was like ₩15,000. And that was from Costco. You can't even get normal cheese in most places, it's usually that processed Kraft-type stuff. Pasta sauce is another expensive item. Spices and oils are pretty cheap, but if it's not a main Korean ingredient, you'll have a hard time finding it.

Going out to each can be expensive. Galbi is usually about ₩20,000 when Grace and I go. If you go out for meat items, it's going to cost more, but if you get more traditional Korean food, it's less so. A typical gimbap roll that I would get is only ₩2,500 and it is enough of a meal for me, or a thing of dolsot bibimbap is usually around ₩5,000. Going to fast food places like KFC or McDonalds is a probably a few dollars more expensive than back home. Getting pizza varies. They have specialty pizza places like Mr. Pizza, where a medium costs ₩23,000. or there are other places like on by my house where a pepperoni pizza costs only ₩6,000.

Basically I've found that if you go places that a lot of people go, especially foreigners, it's going to be more expensive. But if you shop close to home, or you eat in the tiny restaurants in the back alleys, life is a lot cheaper.

Oh, and when it comes to utility bills, my gas bill is only ₩2,000 a month, and my electric is about ₩50,000. And luckily for me, if you loose a few bills in a row, it's ok, they just send you a warning letter after a few months, with about ₩2,000 in late fees, and you can pay it all at once! Way to go Korea for not being uptight on paying bills on time!

New Years Eve in Seoul was great. There was a big party downtown, from what I’ve heard it’s like Times Square. Instead of spending my last bits of 2009 in the freezing cold surrounded by drunk people with fireworks, I went to Itaewon instead. I spent the first half in a gay bar with a few friends because Daniel was in church. Grace came as well, and it actually took her close to an hour to realize that we were in a gay bar haha. After she realized she commented that it wasn’t fair that there were so many men there, and all of them were gay.The drinks were a little expensive, but whatever, it's New Years, right? Plus we could sit down which was a real plus seeing as how I was wearing 3-inch heels.

After hitting The Hill, Grace and I got coffee and met up with Daniel and his friends at The Loft. It was still Ladies Night, so we got to drink for free, and the music was good. Poor Grace though, she’s a really shy girl, and all these foreign guys kept hitting on her really aggressively. I told her to just pretend like she didn’t speak English, and one guy even told her that it was okay, and that he didn’t care! The bar was really fun though, I was wearing a great top that I normally can't get away with in Korea (because showing off your cleavage and shoulders are a bit of a faux pas here). Grace and I wound up going out in the freezing cold at 3am to get food, luckily all the little shops were open and we went to the closest one just to get out of the cold. We wound up staying until Grace could take the subway home, a little after 5:30am, and Daniel and I left finally around 6:15am. By the time we got home and went to bed, I could actually see the sun coming up.

I went to Costco right before NYE, let me tell you how much going to Costco sucks when you don’t have a car! Well first off, the place was extremely crowded, even for a Tuesday morning. I accidentally walked off with some old guys cart! I was hoping to get new bed sheets, which Rhea told me she found there for really cheap, but I didn’t see them anywhere. They did have blankets though, so I got one for Daniel because he was complaining that my apartment was too cold (I think it’s just fine!). I also picked up bacon, pasta, Alfredo and Marinara sauce, cheese, and a few other things. I found out when I got to the cashier that they only accept a certain type of credit card, which of course I didn’t have because I’m not Korean. Then they told me I couldn’t buy one of those huge reusable Costco bags, So I had to put everything in a cardboard box. When I went to take it out of the cart to go to the subway, it was ridiculously heavy! Needless to say there was no way I was going to make it to the subway, so I wound up taking a taxi.

We got our first big snow of the year, which also happened to be the heaviest snow in 71 years! It started early Monday, sometime after I went to bed. By the time I left for work there was already a few inches on the ground. After I left my apartment with my hat and scarf, I learned that it if perfectly acceptable in Korean culture to go out in the snow with an umbrella, duly noted for next time. There were a few places where I stepped and the snow came up past my boots! None of us were looking forward to going back to class, and luckily only a few kids actually made it in. I only have four of my twelve students, and one of them didn’t even make it in until close to 11am.By the end of the night, there was more than 11 inches of snow.

The afternoon classes were cancelled, and were all classes on Tuesday. But at the last moment they sprung these stupid Annual Evaluations on us. For each kid we have to fill out a five page form comments on their Social, Emotional, Physical, Intellectual, and language Development. And then for each section we had to hand write comments for them. So I have 12 kids, with 5 comments for each kid, that’s 60 comments! And the typed draft was due by Tuesday morning, with the completed forms due by Friday. It was a load of crap, there’s no way they should have expected us to do all that work during our break time. Because I’m sure not doing that after work. And the worst part is, I can’t even be honest, I have to fluff it up for the parents and make it sound like their kid is doing great, even when they’re not. For the most part in my class, the girls are all really smart and they always participate in class, but the boys never do. So it’s not like I can make them learn.

The kids had placement tests too on Friday. Both my class and Megan’s class had the same test, even though Megan’s class has been here for almost a year, and my class has only been here for 3 months (with half of them only being here for less than 2 months). So off course when you look at the scores, my class looked terrible. Hopefully it doesn’t reflect badly on them. I got a new supervisor, and I think she’s trying to give my class more class work than they can handle. Having 12 kids in class is really hard to control, and I have to make sure that every kids write down every single answer, so I spend more time checking their pages then actually teaching them. Plus, the work is hard, and my smart girls get it, but the boys don’t, they just write down what I tell them too, and unfortunately I don’t have time to go over it with them and make sure they understand. It’s a crappy situation.