Archive for ‘August 2010’

I realized recently that I have been posting a lot of things about my life, and what I do on my free time. That's all fine and great, but when it comes to what I cam here to do I'm always leaving stuff out! I am a teacher after all. I mean, I'm not a full blown, spent five years in college, got a degree, licensed teacher. But I am educating children, so I consider myself to be one, and will put it on future resumes.

When I first came here, my class couldn't speak a word of English. Okay, maybe a few words, like "teacher" and "bathroom." Well, Thomas couldn't say bathroom, he would just say 시 (or, "pee" in Korean). My class had to start pretty much fresh, going from the alphabet, to small words, to simple sentences. I've been with them for 10 months now, and they have improved such a tremendous amount. I'll try to give you an idea of what class was like for the first four months. There was a lot of speaking Korean, even though it's kinda forbidden in the school, they were young and couldn't speak English if they tried. I got different kids starting at different months throughout the year, so after we finished a lot of the alphabet, Thomas and Daniel came in, so they were a little behind everyone. Elliot would barely even speak, and would slouch away if you tried to touch him. They could barely read any words, not even "the" or "and." We had a phonics book that would use words like "cut" and "tap" but they had no concept of rhyming words, or that rhyming words often had the same spelling. Every day I would point to the word "mop" and only a few of them could recognize it. It took most of them a month to learn how to spell their names.

And it wasn't like I was just teaching them English, they were so young they didn't even know how to write numbers properly, or deal with other students, or themselves for that matter. I've been having to teach them life survival skills as well. I've been teaching them not to cry in class, that they need to ask for help when they need it, not hit each other, not to freak out when something doesn't go right, some of them still can't write numbers properly. I've taught them the importance of sharing, and helping your friends with their work sometimes. For a long time, the girls would finish their work and would have to help the boys. I mean, the boys handwriting is still pretty bad, and nothing seems to help, but at least I can read it.

But they've come a long way since then. All of them can read pretty well (with the exception of Thomas, who can barely read "the" and "or"). We have book, and every Thursday they have to read a page that has about 15-20 lines, things like "Look at all the toys, they are on the floor. The blue ball is on the floor, the fast car is on the floor. Let's clean up the room, it is messy." So it's not the most advanced stuff, but I think it's pretty impressive. I probably couldn't read that when I was five. Side note, I recently saw a report that says that kids who learn a second language by the age of five are statistically smarter than students who didn't. Interesting little fact, no?

Anyway, my kids and I can have a pretty good conversation, they can tell me what they did over the weekend, what they had for breakfast, where they went on summer vacation, if there is a problem in class, if someone gets hurt the other students can explain why. Every once and a while they don't know a word in English, so another student will explain it, or I will look it up in the Korean dictionary, and try to explain it to them. I attempted to explain the word "born" to them, because Elliot was born in China, but they didn't understand. I was like "Ok, when you're mommy has a baby in her stomach, and then the baby comes out, and she can hold it, that's being born" but that concept still is a little too advanced for them.

We have started learning small bits of grammar as well, such as plural and singular, countable and uncountable, verb conjugations for "he, she, it" forms. They are too young for me to explain why we do things a certain way, so instead I'm just trying to ingrain in their tiny little brains to do things a certain way. Sometimes things just don't stick though. We just finished learning about the days of the weeks, the months, seasons, and "first, second, third...etc." Some of them understand pretty well, we have calendars on the walls, and I wrote the number of them month on them. And I've told them about 50 billion times that there are 12 months in the year, and it says "12" on the December calendar. But when I say "true or false: there are 7 months in the year" some of them still shout out true. It can be exasperating sometimes because I'm only given so much time to teach certain things. We just learned months, but unless we have time int he class to review, we won't really talk about that again. So I try to go over things enough so that it sticks, but sometimes, with some students, it just doesn't.

I have high hopes for them though, they have advanced a lot since they first got here, and I think they will keep up a pretty steady pce for the rest of their time here.

What a fun weekend I have had! First, on Friday, we had a pajama party at school, so all the kids came with their pajamas and teddy bears and blankets. We had a little snack party in the classroom for a half an hour, then I read them a few stories in a little makeshift tent the Korean staff put together. After that it was just sort of a free for all. We let the kids go to different rooms, they could watch a movie in the library with Jeff, or play games with Lindsay, or get their nails done in my class. of course all the girls wanted to be in my class, and a few boys! I probably painted about 20 girls/guys fingernails in that time. It was fun, but I started to get a massive headache which wound up lasting the rest of the day and night. Because I wasn't feeling well I decided to spend the night in.

The next morning, Alex, Megan and I went down to Hongik University to go to their Free Market. We got Mexican food before hand at Dos Tacos and the burritos were bigger than our heads! The market was really cool, it's nestled in a little park right near the entrance of Hongik University. There were a bunch of stalls with handmade jewelry on the street, then when you go into the park there were a bunch of vendors selling things like paintings, handmade leather goods, handmade notebooks, key chains, shirts, bags. There was so much stuff we had to circle around a few times to make sure we saw everything. And it was boiling hot outside, even in the shade we were sweating hard core. Nothing in America can prepare you for the humidity of the East. I wound up getting a few things, a cool tree painting that was also a clock, a notebook, and a few necklaces. Then on the way back through Hongdae, we decided to get piercings! We passed a shop with a bunch of Korean biker guys outside and we decided to go in. We ask how much, and it was only $10 which was cool. So I got my upper ear, Megan got her third holes on her lobes, and Alex got her nose.

We headed off to Korean class after that. I'm really excited because my teacher says that I should move on to Level 3 in September. I'm excited and nervous, because that class it taught in only Korean. My reading comprehension is pretty good, and my vocab, but my listening and reading out loud isn't too great. I can make small conversations, and try to piece things together, but listening to Koreans talk is hard!

After class we decided to go to Itaewon. We went to a cool little restaurant in Noksapyeong called Berlin, where we all got some drinks. I got a Frozen Key Lime, and it tastes exactly like key lime pie, it was great! We also got a few appetizers to stave off our hunger. Then Daniel and Lindsay met up with us for a while. After Daniel left we went back to Itaewon to a nice little Indian restaurant where we got to sit outside and eat. Drinks weren't good, but the Chicken Tikka Masala and the garlic Naan were. Next we went to a cool spot called the Bungalow. This place has this wooden swings to sit in, and the floor is covered in sand. It was like being on a tropical island. We met up with Ruth and Walker, along with Frank and Miguel. Here the drinks were good, I got something called a Cassis Frappe, and it is now my drink of choice. We stayed at the Bungalow for maybe an hour, then we all parted ways. Lindsay, Megan, Alex and I decided to hit up Ladies Night at The Loft (which is kinda a shady place, but the music is good and girls drink for free, so ti has it's perks). We met up with Daniel and some of his friends, we had some drinks and danced for a while. We left to go find Miguel up on the hill, but he was no where to be found, which was quite aggravating. By then Megan was pretty drunk, and Lindsay and Alex were tired, so they all went home and I went back to hang out with Daniel. We left sometime around 1 o'clock. It was a pretty fun night, went to a lot of places, had some good food.

And this morning I woke up and guess what I did! I bought a ticket to go visit Tim in Thailand! I'm so excited! I have a vacation for Chuseok, which is like the Korean Thanksgiving. So I'll be leaving on Tuesday morning, and coming back Sunday night. It took me a while to find a good ticket, because most of them were either really expensive, or the timing was bad. But I found one this morning, and after a little trouble with the credit card company I was finally able to book it.

So I recently found out that I live very close to the community center for my area, and they have a huge sports/exercise complex! It's just a 5 minute walk form my apartment. Rhea, Grace and I decided to start doing Taebo (태보) there two days a week. For two days a week, for four weeks, it's only $28, which I would say is a pretty damn good deal. I'm on my second week, and it's really fun. It gets hard, because we move around so much, and by the end we are all dripping with sweat. And the best part is, I can understand a lot of what my teacher says. A lot of the moves, like back kick, uppercut, side jab, are all Kanglish (English words slightly modified to the Korean language), and if you look you can basically follow him. But when I listen I can understand him saying things like "come forward, go back, 4 more times, other side" so I'm excited that I can understand that much! Next month I'm going to start doing it three days a week (for only $38 a month!), so hopefully that will keep me away from the night life on Fridays.

The place also offers classes like belly dancing, dance-aerobics, yoga, pilates. And they have a nice looking gym as well. Daniel is thinking about joining the gym, but I have to ask a head manager for approval because he doesn't have an ARC card.

After having a few free days in the Seoul area, Megan, Lindsay and I decided to go traveling around Korea. We all got 5-day Korail passes, which basically let us get on any train at any time for 5 days. We started our trip by going down to the southwest tip of the peninsula to an area called 목포 (Mokpo). We quickly found a motel by the harbor, and it actually wound up being a pretty nice motel. For $45 we got a double bed, and a mat, plus a big TV, aircon, and a computer. We started exploring right away. We went down to the harbor and quickly bought a ticket to go to Oedaldo, otherwise known as "Love Island". The boat ride took about 30 or 40 minutes, and we were a little worried because there were some ominous looking clouds on the horizon. By the time we got there we were all pretty hungry, so we figured we would find a restaurant and get some fish or seafood. Well, "Love Island" turned out to be a total bust. We couldn't find a restaurant for a long time, and when we finally find one they had about 4 menu items, none of which I wanted to eat. We ordered food just for Lindsay, and it took almost 30 minutes to make, and they wound up making food for all of us. I kind of felt obligated to eat it since there was so much food, we didn't want to waste it. We walked around for a little bit and there was really nothing to see besides a "flower garden" which was really just a shrub garden.

We waited down by the shore for the next boat, so that was nice dipping our feet in the water. On the way back on the boat, these two old Korean men (ajushis) came up and started talking to us in Korean. Of the three of us, I am the only one with any sort of Korean conversational ability. It' turned out to be quite funny trying to decipher what they were saying. Basically, they found out Megan was from New York, and Mr. Lee told us his son lived in New York, and that he wanted to travel with Megan to go visit him. Ha, then we though that he wanted Megan to date his son, but it turns out he has a wife. So we chatted for a little bit, telling them where we were from, what we did, that we were on vacation. The guys even paid for our boat ride which was really nice. At the end he gave us the coins in his pocket, and after he wrote down what he was saying, and we tried to decipher it on our phone dictionary, he understood that he was saying "Here are some commemorative coins" lol. It was really enjoyable. I gave Mr. Lee my phone number and he said next time he came up to Seoul he wanted to eat with us. Sadly, I have recieved no call yet :(

After that we decided to go to the "fun" part of Mokpo, but turns out there isn't one. We went to a few different restaurants and got food and beer, even some "dried accompaniment" as they refer to their dried sea food product. In the end, we decided to get the hell out of Mokpo before it sucked us into it's abyss of boredom.

From there we went to Busan, and honestly, didn't do much. We got a cheap motel where we slept on the floor, went to the beach every day, read some books, and ate good food. It was quite relaxing. I wound up getting RIDICULOUSLY sunburnt. I couldn't wear a bra for 2 days because it hurt, and lindsay had to put my hair up for me. Sleeping was absolutely terrible, I was hot and cold and hot and cold. Terrible. The beaches were literally lines with umbrellas and Korean. You could rent and umbrella and a chair for 10 dollars, which was nice. But really, you could hardly see the same because there were so many mats and umbrellas. Apparently on the last day we were there, there were over 1 million people on the beach.

The last day we were there Lindsay's friend Brett (WHO WAS THE OREGON DUCK MASCOT! To see him in action click here) came to hang out. I honestly don't think I've met a funnier person in my life. We had such a great time. We went and got grilled fish, which was delicious, and it came with fish head soup which was also really good. We had quiet a lot to drink, then got some coconuts filled with alcohol. I'll tell you what, I felt absolutely BAD-ASS walking on the beach drinking tequila out of a coconut. Then we all go these cheesey temporary tattoos that all the Korean men had on, we all got butterflies on our chests, and Brett was trying to get with the girl doing it, very funny. After that we went to a night club (which was my first one in Korea). night clubs are a little different in Korea, most people dance in a group or by themselves, and it's not nearly at inappropriate as American dancing. In fact, people don't really touch when dancing. When we got there no one was dancing, so we got our drinks and literally started the dance party. Soon everyone was dancing, and Brett was spitting out these moves that the Koreans were going crazy for.

All in all it was a fun relaxing trip. I like Busan, and I'm glad I had already been, so I didn't feel the need to do the touristy stuff and just relaxed with my skin cancer.

The link for my pictures on Facebook is here.