So long, farewell, anyoung hee gyeseyo (or you stay, I go).

One spring morning, we woke up to the brightest and clearest day we had seen in Korea this time around. Decided to visit a park along the inlet that we had seen on our Costco runs. Taking a wrong turn, we wound up on the opposite side of the expressway from the park and discovered a seaside-y sort of place full of seafood restaurants, seaside walkways, and street vendors. Upon further investigation, we found a tiny amusement park with an arcade (including Time Crisis!), a mini aquarium, and two old naval ships which we could go into. One ship had previously belonged to America and had been through WWII in the South Pacific, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War before being turned over to the Korean navy in the 1980s. Not feeling like eating octopus, we drove to the nearest Burger King in Dangjin.

The next weekend, being four days long, gave us enough time to visit Andong and Cheongsong-Matt’s old stomping grounds. Drove for nearly five hours directly east. We easily found a love motel in Andong and enjoyed exploring the area again. The next day, we drove the forty-five minutes to Cheongsong, along a road we had never been before. Cheongsong was a great trip down memory lane! It has changed so much, with more posh coffee shops (for rural Korea) and some more restaurants. Heard someone calling out Matt’s name as we walked down the street. Turned to see one of Matt’s old students running towards us—he actually remembered him! We tried to find Matt’s old landlady, but she wasn’t home.

Spent the rest of the day hiking around the foothills and around town. Cheongsong and Andong were more beautiful than I had remembered, with clear skies and huge green trees. Returned to Andong along the bus route, finally stopping at the giant grasshopper park we had seen many times from the coach window. It was getting dark and was quite scary, being the only people there. Finished off the night successfully eating 1 kilogram of pork, not recommended to eat that much in one sitting!

Before returning to dreary, dirty Shinpyeong, we stopped at Korea’s highest stone pagoda, located right in Andong. I was a nervous wreck the entire five hours home, hating Korean drivers who love to come to a sudden crawl inside a tunnel and then go crazy after the tunnel to make up for lost time.

Started cleaning the apartment, cupboards and such, a week early, which was good because it took several hours at a time to do minor tasks. One day had to drive an hour away to the pension office, just to spend half an hour filling out paperwork. By the time we returned to Shinpyeong, we had to go to work. Another day we had to go to Dangjin to open a bank account in order to transfer money to America. What a mess that was!

South Korea has often been applauded for its technological strength of late. I don’t really get how that could be. Many of the computers are ancient, still using XP and a really old version of Internet Explorer. Anti-Virus programs are never updated as soon as the free subscription runs out. Many of the websites consist of broken links. When Matt asked why Korea has the oldest versions of everything, he was told it was because no one had the money to upgrade, even though most of the upgrades that can be done are free.

Non-the-less, it was still surprising when Matt spent an entire day going around to local banks trying to find one that would transfer money out of the country. Instead we had to visit other banks in Dangjin and set up new accounts. This isn’t easy, it takes hours to fill out the paperwork, go to your other bank and transfer the money to the new account, go back to the new bank, and fill out the wire-transfer forms. We were at this for two hours producing ATM cards, bank books, Alien Registration cards, passports, and bank numbers, only to be told that we couldn’t transfer money because we had transferred from different banks in 2012! After another two hours, we were able to transfer money, with the warning that we couldn’t do it again this year because we had already transferred the limit, which I can unfortunately say, isn’t true.

After returning to Shinpyeong, we headed to work, where the students were a mix of sad and happy that we were leaving. I was for one, relieved, especially after our boss had decided to forgo the insurance from the car wreck, making us pay $400 for the car. Upon questioning an unclear statement from our boss, he flipped out and accused us of being argumentative and we were the subject of scorn for the next few days.

We were told to leave the apartment a day early, so we did. The boss “kindly” gave us a ride to Dangjin bus station and made sure we had purchased the tickets out of town before giving us a surly goodbye and driving off. We waited around the bus station for several hours, sat on the bus for another two hours, and arrived at the airport, exhausted. Concluded that it would be cheaper to stay at the spa in the basement of the airport and catch a movie at the movie theatre, rather than pay the $30 taxi ride and $50 hotel fee. Didn’t catch a movie in the end, because apparently, it costs $18 to leave the spa for longer than an hour.

Plane luckily arrived on time, and we fought old Chinese ladies for over-head space and foot space thanks to their yen for duty free crap. In no time we had arrived in China, where we had made it in time to get a free hotel room!

It was a grand hotel with a beauty pageant and another conference going on. We tired ourselves out waiting for various south East Asians to check in. They were all herded to the basement rooms (no windows), while we westerners were ushered to the higher floors. We giggled at the window between the bathroom and the bedroom and settled down to sleep, only slightly disturbed by the scratching and gnawing of a rat in the closet. Woken up early to catch the shuttle bus past abandoned hotels and four-story houses for the next part of the journey to the UK.

Just Some Very Korean Things

As we only have twenty-one more days left to go, and have cleaned the bottom of the sink for the thousandth time, I want to write a blog about some of my pet peeves about being here.

In no particular order:

-Cleaning the sink. Now, we clean the sink every day after doing the dishes and empty out the two-inch deep food trap, just like normal people. But what isn’t normal, is the three-inch deep dirty water reservoir underneath the food trap. I have no idea what the purpose of this thing is, maybe it is a way of trying to break down grease or something. There is a pipe that sticks up out of it which is corroded in pink slime and nothing will get at that, this slime loves to creep up into the water reservoir while I’m at work and stink the place up. WHY?

-These bathrooms. Korean bathrooms are wrapped in plastic and tile, the idea is that they can be hosed down instead of scrubbed. This means that there is a drain placed somewhere outside of the shower. Smart idea, even if the one hose (the shower head) isn’t long enough to reach the entire bathroom. It means, that the shower drain isn’t banked well and most of your shower water goes all over the bathroom floor. Also, it means that when you use a public bathroom after cleaning, you have to wade through inches deep water and hover on a dripping wet toilet, which isn’t too clean… yuck!

-Korean makeup (Won’t even go into the animal product testing).  It is becoming widely touted as the best makeup. Maybe they send the good stuff abroad, but this stuff you get here is just a step up from the stuff we used as kids. It doesn’t last too long and smears easily. This means that my co-workers come to work with an obvious foundation line, and are constantly reapplying the darn stuff. My students are continually applying tint, a watery dye that gets all over their hands and teeth—making them look like old ladies.  We won’t even go into how terrible the nail polish is, at least the “nail remover” works.

-Appliances. I’ve mentioned this before, but it is worth mentioning again. They are so noisy! The dishwasher lets out this high-pitched whistle for an hour of its two hour cycle (we’ve stopped using it), and acts like an ancient machine, having to prewash the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. The washer isn’t much better.  Also the fridge has this awesome “The door is open,” high-pitched wail, but it only comes on as I’m cleaning the fridge, not when the door has accidently been left ajar.

-Packaging. Korea makes it mandatory to recycle. I’ll not complain about that. But why do they allow manufacturers to make packaging that is non-recyclable? I have to pay a lot of money for these tiny garbage bags, I don’t want to have it filled with non-necessary packaging. Non-recyclable plastic bags house anything bought in pairs, many takeout containers are non-recyclable (luckily there are still restaurants that will bring you actual dishes to return).

-My paycheck. Ok, so it isn’t much different than the US in this case, but still irritating. Health care has gone up, and I get quite a chunk of my pay taken out each month, yet I still have to pay nearly $100 for a checkup and medicine. I’m always dubious about these checkups—wait for an hour in the waiting room, and spend less than five minutes with the doctor who sticks strange things into your body and shoves you out of the room without a so much as a how do you do.

-Childrearing. Even though Koreans are so easily embarrassed, they have this no discipline policy with their children. Sure, at home they’ll beat them senseless (if our upstairs neighbor is any indication or the bruises on some of my students), but in public the children are nightmares. It goes beyond the “give me” temper tantrums –these kids deliberately pull items off the shelf, run around your tables, knocking food over, and run out in front of cars. I’ve seen a kid swing a racket at another kid and smack him in the face—the mother didn’t even bat an eye.  Public parenting policy is just to ignore the kid. Or better yet, if you are playing badminton, just bring the annoying four year old into the gym, put him on a treadmill and leave him unattended. Somehow the kid actually survived and didn’t break anything.

-Supermarkets. Most of them are Mom and Pop stores and carry the exact, same thing. However, you never know how much anything is. There are no prices anywhere and prices change drastically every time you buy it. One day, juice will be one dollar, next the same juice will be five. Also, every supermarket overcharges on produce, so expensive and most of it is covered in mold!

-Feminine products. What is with selling a package of four tampons for $12!?! I feel like this is early 2000s Russia. Luckily, I can go to Costco and get good old American brands for less. Located in the baking isle of the markets, you can choose from seventy thousand different kinds and scents (except for unscented) types of sanitary napkins. There will always been a salesperson to help you through the traumatic ordeal that is choosing the pads. I’d rather have someone help me through the horror of no one being able to wrap a used pad and dispose of it properly.

-Selfies. I know they are incredibly popular everywhere, but please tell me they aren’t to the extent of Korea! My students must take a selfie every five minutes (that is not an exaggeration). It is like Whack-a-Mole trying to get these kids to keep their phones in their bags for a lesson.

Please don’t feel sorry for me, this is just so you can be in Korea with me.

Catching Up With Korean Culture

Back in Seoul!

I’ve really been neglecting the blog.  So much has happened, I don’t even know where to begin! Bring on the novel!

We went to Seoul for Lunar New Year in February, which I don’t remember entirely because I had a terrible cold. We went around the old stomping grounds—some things have not changed and some things have. My apartment is still there, as well as the school, but the Smiling Jesus homeless shelter has gone and is being replaced with some high-rise.  Many new buildings are going up, just as many of the older buildings are emptying. It was great to be back in the city, but not as nostalgic as we had anticipated.

The weekend after Seoul, we went east to visit Matt’s friend, Tyler. He is now married to a local and lives in her parent’s “old” apartment, built in the 1990s. It has nearly the same layout as our apartment which was built three years ago. We reveled in the mother-in-law’s taste in decorating: a different wallpaper pattern for every wall.

After we recovered from the new bird flu, we put in our sixty-day notice at our school. This comes after many, many trying and mind-boggling “policy” changes at the school. Not wanting to stay a moment longer than we had to, we suggested an end date of the 15^th of May—cutting the month practically in half (exactly 60 days).  Ten days later, the boss says that the accountant doesn’t like having to calculate unfinished months, so could we possibly stay until the end of May—they pay for the ticket change fee, etc (up to $200 each). We agreed, but after several attempts at changing the ticket, we were told it wouldn’t be possible.

Two days later, it was found out that new teachers could arrive on the 25^th of May, so could we call the ticket agent and beg to change the flight to just one week ahead. I questioned the feelings of the accountant, but they just asked me to change the ticket. The fee would come to $230 each which was too costly for them.  This past Monday, it was concluded that they’ve “had a change of heart,” and “may” be willing to pay that price, but they’d let us know for sure and shrugged off our warning that the longer they wait, the more expensive the tickets will be.

This constant indecisiveness is one of the deciding factors of turning in our notice. These bosses cannot stick with a decision. First it is “don’t play games in your class.” (not defining what they mean by games), and then a week later “The students are complaining, you better play many games from now on.” To be followed with, “The parents are complaining that you are playing too many games, so no more games.” Lately, our fearless leader has been having trouble motivating the Middle School students and has made a deal that if they work hard in her class and for twenty minutes in Matt and my classes, they can have 25 minutes of uninhibited phone time. She failed to communicate her thoughts to her husband, who then comes and has a go at Matt and I for allowing free time. Her husband says “don’t listen to her,” but then the wife has a go at us for not listening to her. We talk to them until we’re blue in the face, but the only decision is to listen to whoever told us last.

Wednesday, I taught a group of six graders. They are the oldest in their school, so that means they get away with EVERYTHING. No teacher wants to teach them, so the fresh graduate teachers, who are already overworked with odd jobs from other, older teachers, are put in charge of these guys. In short, no one stands up to these spoiled monsters.

Our bosses have continuously told me to send any of these students out of the room if they curse in Korean—apparently mothers have been complaining that we allow such a thing. Usually the kids curse, I threaten, and they stop. But Wednesday would have put a sailor to shame, so I threatened again and shortly after, a kid made another student angry, and the irritated kid screamed “She-Pal!” So, I sent him out of the room. The boss comes back and says “Well, he told me he was angry, so it is ok.” I told her I didn’t care, but to just figure it out and stick with a decision, so I could do my job. She ignored me.

This week has been possibly the most Korean culture has confronted us than in the entire of time we’ve lived in Korea.  

On our way to work Monday, we were nearing an intersection. There was a car, going incredibly fast, and no indicator, it of course, suddenly turned left, into our lane. Matt slammed on the breaks, but it was too late, we connected with the driver’s rear tire. Our driver’s front bumper was pretty crumpled, but no one was hurt. Of course a bus decided to come barreling down the road, so we had to move the cars.  The ladies in the other car, saw their opportunity and called their fathers. We called our boss.

When we all were gathered, the fathers tried to blame us for the accident and scam us out of money. We called the insurance, but apparently, older males usually win the insurance battle, even if they are no where around at the time of the accident, just because they are older males. There was a lot of shouting from all sides. Incredibly infuriating, and we still don’t know what has happened with it.

They have special lady parking.

Wednesday was April Fools’ Day. A favorite day for Korean children. They come up with all sorts of shenanigans, like putting their clothes on backwards, moving the desks around, writing on the blackboards—they laugh for hours about this. We decided to pre-empt the students and changed the schedules on all of the doors. The kids didn’t really notice, but the teachers did and our boss lost it. It took us three times of saying “April Fools’!” before it registered that it was a joke and neither she, nor the receptionist had messed up.

We’ve also been going to the gym to blow off work steam. If we’re lucky we can get there before anyone else does. Koreans love to exercise in freezing temperatures and with sad, wailing, ballads. It’s a real downer. If no ballads are playing, the old people usually turn on a TV to a really loud talk show for old people. Their “must get things done fast and inefficiently” culture is reflected in their exercise routines. They put the machines on a low weight setting and go 90 miles an hour. Bounce, bounce, slam, slam, clang, clang. I’m surprised the machines don’t break! The gym also has a driving range, so there is the constant “thwap” of golf balls on the wall.  Also curious, the weights are always disappearing from the gym, one by one. It is good though, I turn my irritation to workout motivation.

Spring is here. So we go from blinding yellow dust, to thick fog and rain mixed with yellow dust. Soon the eggs that the yellow dust has brought will hatch, and the insects will start feeding on the trees. In the meantime, the tulip trees are blooming, and they are pretty. 

English Books

Last Tuesday, the full-time Korean English teacher quit. Apparently, he had sent a text message one hour before he was scheduled to work. This is the third full-time Korean teacher in the four months we have been here. Not wanting to scare mothers, our boss has taken it upon herself to teach all of the classes and run the business.  And I thought things were stressful before!

As a result, many of our classes have been combined. This is very confusing for everyone. One class is the perfect example of chaos and confusion. Five girls have been put together into a class. Three girls are in the middle of book one, one girl is in the middle of book two (but is smart enough for book three), and one girl has just started book three (but needs to review book two).

I ask which book to use, I get “Use their normal book of course!” (They have this way of making you feel crazy for questioning these things). I explain to my boss that they are using three different books, perhaps it would benefit all of them to use book two. This is impossible because parents will complain that their children are re-doing books and jumping ahead. So, we just need a new book. So now it my responsibility to go through the hundreds of sample books to find a suitable book.

Fantastic. None of the books have been kept in order, so grammar, reading, listening, high school, middle school, math, Korean, and used books are mixed together. As I am searching, my boss comes in and picks a book off the shelf, “Use this one.”

“Okay! Great!” Not even dwelling on why she couldn’t have just chosen that in the first place and saved me half an hour. The first unit is this: “Hi, I’m Anna. What’s your name?” “I’m Dan.” “Where are you from?” “I’m from America.” “What’s your favorite food?” “My favorite food is a hot dog.” The next page goes on to give four countries and different variables to favorite (sport, food, hobby, etc).

Grammar mistakes aside, I have to teach a class who cannot even remember “I like blue,” four different lessons in one unit. Yeah, that is not going to work well! Not only that, there is no writing at all, not even a vocabulary match-up. I go in search of a better alternative, finding a listening book that focuses on only one of those topics at a time and has some writing and a vocabulary section. I propose this new book to the boss.

“Yeah, that will be too difficult for them.” The boss replies. I explain how I feel about the book she had chosen, but she insists the book I have chosen would be too difficult and to just stick with the book she has chosen (Even though the listening book uses the exact same language with better grammar just broken into clearer lessons). I begrudgingly agree and set about trying to figure out how to teach the bloody book.

Ten minutes later, the boss comes back in, goes to the shelf and says, “See, you have some reading books here and some listening books here. You can choose one you think is best for that class.”

“Ok…what about the one I just picked out?” She again reiterated it was too difficult and pulls out a reading comprehension book, “This one is good.”

“Yeah, I can see that this is good, but they cannot even identify the words “pink” and “purple,” I don’t think a reading comprehension book is the way to go.”

“Well then you can choose the book! Just check it with me!” Face palm. It’s pretty much been like this for all fourteen classes.

I'm Living In a Children's Book

I have a class of six boys between the ages of eight and nine. They are the result of two classes combining together. Three of the original four kids get along well. The fourth boy is very, very odd and really has to work through some emotional issues (case and point, he’s severely addicted to Uno and has a mental breakdown if he cannot play it)—I think parents telling him “no,” would probably be a good start. Anyway, no one likes this child--except our boss. The second class was made up of two eight year olds, one boy is good-natured and determined, while the other kid is from one of those families—everyone groans when you talk about one of the three brothers. This last boy is toxic in a class of more than two.

I really wanted to do something fun with this class and most students like “running dictation.” In this version, I have written a numbered list of vocabulary words, I call two names and a number. The two students run to the back of the room where the list is, find the number, race to the front and write the word associated with the number. In a normal game, I’d make the team to do a Chinese whispers sort of relay, but since they aren’t exactly team oriented, I decided to skip that part of teamwork and just break them into groups for points. To make it “fair,” I wrote down team names on a paper and made the children blindly choose their teams—I wasn’t monitoring well, thinking probability would be in my favor—and the three best students, who like each other, got on the same team. That left the good natured kid with the emotionally disturbed boys. While Cooper and Bobby scowled at each other, Ted threw his hands in the air and went “Yeah! Fighting Team B!”

Ted volunteers to be first against Tyson. I call out the number, they run to the list and dash to the whiteboard. They are writing when Ted glances over to check his opponent’s progress. Tyson drops his marker and starts screaming, “Hacking! Hacking!” As far as I can figure out, this is Konglish for looking/cheating. Nothing I do calms him down while Ted just stands there with his spaced out smile and shrugs his shoulders, now teammates are fighting. Get that broken up and move on to Bobby and Dustin.

They run to the board, Bobby forgets how to write a U –the vowel we’ve been studying for two weeks. He starts to glance over, but Watch Dog Tyson calls him out. Bobby ignores my prompting, goes limp and drops the marker and scuttles back to his chair where he does his weird limp, blank stare and cries a bit. He is unresponsive to any comfort and the students are starting to poke fun, so to divert their attention I call on Cooper and Curtis. Number one down.

I call a number, Cooper runs to the board and realizes he doesn’t know the word and runs back, by this time, Curtis knows the word and is starting to write, Cooper takes one look at Curtis. Where Bobby goes limp and invisible, Cooper gets animated. Red gathers at his neck and creeps up his face, his already big head balloons out and his eyes turn black and jump  from his face, his fists ball up and he crushes whatever is in his hand. He screams “No!” I’m afraid he’ll billy goat Curtis, but instead sits down in a pout, breathing heavily.  Number two down.

Ted wants to go again, despite seeing his two teammates bite the dust. I call out the number over Cooper’s hyperventilating, the boys race to the front. Tyson finishes first. Ted stops mid word, gives a blank smile and a shrug and sits down. Man three down. I’ve made a huge mistake. However, looking at Cooper’s cartoonish face, Bobby’s corpse-like appearance, Ted’s blank smile and shrugging shoulders, and Curtis’s slightly evil glare over the retainer protruding cheeks, I can’t help but laugh. I have to take longer than necessary erasing the three letters off of the board.

Playing Uno, the Korean Way

 Seems like all I’m being paid for is to watch the kids play Halli Galli, Go Fish, and Uno. Like any game, each person has a different way to play, but these kids take it to a whole new level when it comes to Uno.

First, don’t shuffle the deck… who cares if you’ll get all yellows. If you are young, go through the deck and find all of the good cards and give those to your friends (if your teacher is playing, give her all terrible cards). Step two, deal five cards, not seven. Dealing here is giving five cards to one player, then the next, not dealing one card at a time to each player (the cards really never get mixed).

Play “rock, paper, scissors” for five minutes to see who goes first (there will be some confusion as to whether to say it in Korean or in English. Also, they will argue over someone not making a clear selection or waiting until seeing what everyone else has chosen. This means they will start over. Finally, when the first player is chosen, he or she may then choose the order… however some students will complicate things and try to continue “rock, paper, scissors” to find the exact order (similar to a star), meaning they’ll never remember the complicated pattern they’ve just created, because they can never remember the order, no matter if it is counterclockwise or clockwise.

Now that almost fifteen minutes has passed, the game can begin. But first, you show your good cards to everyone (some students will actually lay their cards face up on the desk). The dealer turns a card over—let’s say it’s a green three—here is when it gets tricky. Anything goes. If the player doesn’t have a three, wild, or green card, he/she will put down any card. If the students are feeling cranky, they will call the player on this, if not play will continue on that card. Some students will put down all of their cards of the same color… all of them. Some students may put down all of their same number cards. Another thing that could happen is, let’s say a red two is played, a student will put down a yellow six followed by a red six because they want to keep the red theme.

When a special card, such as reverse gets played, you can ignore it, or play a skip card to cancel out the reverse. If more than one reverse card is played at once, get super confused by the order. If there are three reverse cards played, argue for three minutes on the direction. Skip cards, as mentioned before can cancel things out, such as reverse and plus cards, however, not another skip card. Skip cards can also be ignored.

Plus cards can be built up (each player places a plus card on top of the last). If a draw four wild card is placed, ignore the color completely and place a draw two card on top, then choose the color, after everyone yells at you for not choosing a color.

They’ve added another rule, that the person who doesn’t shout “uno” first, must draw a card. This means, that when a player is down to two cards, there is a standoff on who is going to say it first, this could take up to a minute. If the person with one card says “uno,” first, the other players must take one card each.

Not only are the “rules” completely impossible to follow, the students don’t seem to grasp the strategy of the game. They will miss obvious plays, drawing more cards while they have at least three cards they could have played. This means, I win every time I play with them and that includes playing with official rules while everyone else plays their way. Ok, so I loose when they play drop every card of the same color… but any other time, I win.

Have fun if you are going to play the Korean way. Don’t forget to check your phone every few minutes. Especially if it is near your turn, you have to make everyone wait for you.  If you have fringe, you must flatten it and check yourself in some sort of reflective surface before your play. Oh, and scream at the top of your lungs at every possible moment. Boys are not excluded from any of these activities.  Oh and never, ever, ever dream about playing Uno with a deck of cards other than Uno cards! It is sacrilegious. 

Health Check

Every year, I have to go for the required government health check. It usually takes half an hour; it’s degrading, but mostly painless. This was the first year doing it without anyone’s help.

We wake up to a dreary, rainy morning and drive the 45 minutes to the bigger hospital in Seosan. Enter the hospital through the underground parking garage. The basement houses a GS 25 convenient store and an overpriced kimbap restaurant. One thing to mention about Asia, there aren’t any cafeterias in hospitals, so all able-bodied patients go outside of the hospital for food. That being said, I still flinch every time I see patients of all ages sitting in wheel chairs with IVs attached scarfing down instant ramen noodles and a coke at the 7 Eleven.

                                                                                                                                 

Once on the main floor, nothing is in English or our level of Korean. The information desk is empty, so I attempt to find out if I pay first and where the health check office is. No one speaks English. Call the boss (from the phone they had lent us for such an occasion), but no answer, it’s too early. Finally get the translator on the phone to work properly, but even that isn’t coherent enough. They keep asking “where have sick?” Fasting, along with the early morning, is wearing on the nerves and I’m on the verge of mania.

Finally, someone seems to understand and says, “two floor,” while holding up three fingers. Go up to the 3^rd floor to be directed to another area. Then go through the whole rigmarole again before someone understands the translation and gets a form. That takes 45 minutes in all. We sit there, nearly passing out, before they call me. First, they test the blood pressure, which is surprisingly normal, and then they check for color blindness (pinks and browns are getting harder to distinguish these days). I’m made to wait as some older lady comes demanding attention. I stand, in the middle of the room, waiting for a nurse.

She comes to whisk me off to check my chest size (why?), height, and weight. A serious explanation of how the hearing test works lasts several minutes, and I’m a bit apprehensive as it starts. But I hear the sound in the left ear and then the right ear and let it be known correctly. Then it is over—it was a three-second test. I struggle to distinguish the English letters on the eye chart as my head is spinning from blinking florescent lights, caffeine deprivation, and low blood sugar. I don’t even think of the fact that Koreans cannot even pronounce most of the letters on the chart.

Now it is time for the blood test. This is always the worst part. Usually, one can find my vein and the nurse rolls the needle around, or randomly pokes until she finds something, only to go for my hand. This time, I try to suggest that the vein in my hand is better, but the tourniquet goes on, the phlebotomist flicks my arm a couple of times and sticks the needle in—no pain. I sit there in a mixture of hunger and disbelief, forgetting the usual need to pass out.

Out comes the needle and I’m given an alcohol-soaked gauze and taken to the bathroom to give a urine sample. I am mid squat, thanking my lucky stars that I’m not  in danger of passing out in the squat toilet, when blood starts dripping from the gauze. I quickly finish my task, wrap some toilet paper around my arm and duck out of the stall to run into the next patient, who turns green looking at my arm. I wash up, grab some towels, and am bustled away to the x-ray lab before I can ask for a bandage, as the other patient notifies the phlebotomist that I’m gushing blood. Suddenly I’m surrounded by patients and nurses as they attempt to put a tiny bandage on the bloody arm, each spouting advice in Korean, while an older man sitting next to me starts doing those reverse arm presses off of the chair. My wound is clotting by the time they get my arm clean and the bandage on. I look around and notice I am the only patient in there not doing some sort of “exercise.”

The x-ray technician calls my name and asks me to take off my bra and put my shirt back on again. I come out in my tank top, but she makes me put on my sweater too. The x-ray takes two seconds, and I have to get dressed. The nurse checks my arm and with a satisfactory nod, leads me passed more reverse arm presses, to the doctor’s office. The doctor starts speaking Korean to me and I say, “no.” He curses in Korean and sits in silence. I look at him, “I’m hungry. May I go?”

He sighs and asks, “Where are you from?”  “America.”

“South America?”  “USA”   “Ah, USA, ok, ok, ok. North.” I nod.

“You ummmmm surgery?”  “No.” silence while he marks something on the chart.

Tobacco?” “No.” “Drinking?” “No” “Driving?” “Yes?” Salience as he thinks about how to say the next thing in English. He shakes his head and marks things down on the chart, “Nice to meet you, bye bye, see you next time.” He chants like a school boy. “Umm yeah, nice to meet you.”

We pay and eat kimbap in the hospital basement.

Back in the ROK

Took a three-month hiatus from blogging while Matt and I visited Idaho. We had big plans to see and do many things, but between family obligations and so many activities in my home area, we didn’t get around to as much as we had hoped. If you’re interested in our adventures, you can read his blog: http://lametayel.tumblr.com/ 

After almost a year of searching through terribly paying jobs, obviously crazy bosses, and impossible employment standards (no Americans here, no Brits there, no males anywhere), we had a couple of promising job offers in the dreaded hagwon (private afterschool academies) setting in South Korea. We were lured into a school owned by a Canadian who has owned an academy in S.K. for quite some time now. Three weeks after accepting the job, we are now in Chungcheongnam-do, a rural province south of Seoul.

View from old town towards our apartment complex.

We arrived a week ago Saturday night. Our bosses, a married couple, picked us up at the airport and drove us the one and half hours (or would have been if they hadn’t got lost) to our new home. They quickly showed our exhausted selves around the apartment before promising to collect us the next afternoon.

Our apartment is a spacious three-bedroom, two bathroom epitome of South Korean culture. Accessing the building is quite difficult. First, you have to go through a blind intersection, in which cars park in the middle (in order grab a bite at the convenient store). Then you have to choose which parking lot or garage you want to park in and carefully back into a spot, or if you are Korean, just park any old place and block four spaces. If you are of normal weight, you’ll have to crawl through the trunk of your car to get out of the vehicle.

Now you can squeeze between or crawl over parked cars to get to the doors of the apartment building, using a key card to enter. If it is windy, you have to physically wrench the automatic sliding door open and closed again. You wait for the single elevator that services the 18-story building and protect your nose from the kimchi smell until the 11^th floor. Another keycard (we have three key cards together for this place) will let you into the apartment.

There are four closets on either side as you enter the apartment, however none have tension rods in them to hang up coats. After the closets, you have a handy switch to switch off your gas or all of the lights in the apartment (except for the lights in the living room), then you have four switches to control various lights in the bathroom and entry.

There is a bathroom to the right, which has an actual tub with a shower, but no shower curtain rod. If you go straight instead of going into the bathroom, you will end up in a bedroom (empty save a fold-up cot and a tennis racket) and a glassed-in balcony that runs the length of the apartment.

If you turn left from the entry, you will be in the kitchen/living room area. We have a couch and a 32-inch TV. Black and cream tiled gives a feature wall. The kitchen has a full sized refrigerator, a cupboard for a kimchi fridge, a four burner hob, a gas oven, a vegetable washer, a cloth sterilizer, and a dishwasher. Next to the kitchen is a room that houses the washer and a water spout for cleaning.

If you go through the living room, there are two more bedrooms (one has its own separate balcony). One is the master suite, consisting of a complicated lighting system. Our ensuite closet and bathroom is equally annoying with a strange motion sensored light that seems to only detect ghosts. Our master bath has a heated toilet seat with so many buttons for various streams of water, that is it quite terrifying.

At least Koreans but a tarp between the ground and their soybeans.

So what besides the kimchi fridge screams Korea? There are two intercoms to open the downstairs door and the apartment door which are conveniently located right next to each other and three steps from the apartment door. The washer is off the kitchen, but the drying rack is in the master bedroom. There are several sterilizers, but everybody dries their food on the street. Not to mention the tiles, wall paper, as well as wall outlets, are crooked, and the paint is chipping but the light fixtures have crazy amount of detail that can only be seen when the light is just right in the early afternoon. Oh, and there is a big plastic cover in the middle of the living room’s wood floor that has “AIR CON” in big letters. It’s Korea in a nutshell.

On Sunday, we were taken to the school to get a crash course on the classes we were to teach the following day. By crash course, I mean: “here is your schedule, here are the previous teachers’ notes, I think your books are here, you’ll teach from 3:20 to 10 tomorrow, make sure they have more fun than learning.” After this half hour “orientation,” they whisked us off to Lotte Mart to get our groceries. I hate shopping with people, even though they were trying to be helpful, you could tell that the guy was not having the most fun following us around. By the time we got back, jet lag had hit us and we were lucky to get the groceries put away.

No time during the week to do anything but work and sleep. We’re teaching between eight and nine, forty-five minute classes a day. More on school in a future blog post, after I’ve been there for a bit. However, I can tell you that it is clear no one has any clue what is going on at that school, considering the teachers weren’t even correct in noting the pages covered, let alone the books used. We’re quite excited for this new adventure. 

I'm so excited! I just can't hide it! You know, you know Gyeongju! (Part two)

After resting in Seoul for a day, we headed down to Gyeongju. Yes, we finally made it! We found ourselves a cheap love motel for the night, and headed out to explore the city center. The city is built around grassy burial mounds. One is on display to the public.

We then wound our way to the famous observatory. In promotional photos this tower looks quite tall. Imagine our dismay when it turns out to be only a few meters tall and the cost to go stand in front of the tower is about $2.50/person. Instead we snapped our photos from afar and enjoyed the free beauty of the sunset, trees, large fields of lowers, and large ponds full of blooming lotus flowers.

Tombs. 

We followed the map to another famous photo spot, Anapji Pond. We arrived at dark, the peek tourist time to take photos of the pagodas on the water. Exhausted by our several hours' walk, we caught a cab to our motel and feasted on water, soda crackers, and bananas.

Field of flowers and sunset.

The next morning we packed our bags and headed for Bulguksa, an old temple. It looked much like all of the other temples in Korea. And it is arguable if it is worth the four dollars per person to see it. And no photos are allowed of Buddha. Some what disappointed and very hot, we decided to skip the hike to the Seokguram Grotto and took the bus up the winding mountain road. Unfortunately it started raining so the legendary view of the ocean was blocked. But we hiked our way up to the Grotto, to a Buddha that looked like any other Buddha and again, no photos. But plenty of overpriced and badly taken photos were for sale at the stall below the grotto. It is funny how commercialism creeps it's way even to the most humble religions.

Back in Gyeongju, we grabbed ourselves a coffee and decided to catch the next bus out of town, which turned out to be the bus to Busan. We easily found a cheap-ish love motel near Haeundae Beach (One of the most famous mainland beaches in Korea). And I mean, cheaper than regular family hotels and cleaner than either family or love motels we've seen in Korea. It was the perfect love motel with dim red lights, a round bed, a condom next to the bed, lotions, oils, a large computer, and a large TV set to the Japanese porn channel.



We decided to buck the traditional love motel activities and instead walked around Haeundae Beach and watched a large crowd gathered in front of a stage that had a movie screen and a few speakers. The speakers played K-pop and the screen played beer commercials while everybody just watched, didn't dance. Very surreal.

Yonggunsa

We left the zombie crowd and found the 90s rap crowd (Korean rap is still a baby, hence the 90s refernce), the non-descript flute solo, some drums, and a few other performances that were actually quite impressive, considering this kind of thing rarely happens in Seoul.

The next day we packed up, ate breakfast on the beach, and then headed up to Haedong Yonggunsa, a temple built next to the ocean. Again, it is just another Korean temple. But this one is free and has better views of the ocean, plus some slightly difference Buddhist idols to take photos of.

We were rained off the beach and so caught the bus back to Seoul. We spent the next day hiding from more rain and dreaming of the beaches of Jeju and the forest and flower fields of Gyeongju.

We Just Love Having You Here

Skipping the Philippines and going to Jeju for the summer holiday turned out to be the best thing in the end. One, we missed out on all the flooding in the Philippines. Two, we got to see the best place in Korea.

Everyone seemed surprised that we were going to spend five whole days on the island. Turns out, that almost wasn’t enough! Perhaps, if you have your own vehicle it would be enough, but we took taxis and buses the whole way.

Seogwipo Harbor.

We arrived in Jeju City on August third, and took an Airport Limousine down to Seogwipo in the south. We found our hostel above a 7-Eleven across the road from the ocean. We immediately started exploring the area, walking the famous Olleh Road that goes from West to East along the coast. We stopped at Sojeongbang Falls, a small waterfall. We only stayed a few minutes because the tide was coming in and the waves were splashing up the cliffs. We thought we had better take the cues from the cockroaches and run up the mountain

After filling ourselves up on black pig BBQ and beer, we passed out in our bunks, only to rise early and most literally, climb into town to find an open coffee shop.  It made the hill on Home Street seem like an ant hill, especially without coffee! Once armed with coffee, we walked to Cheonjiyeon Falls, around the harbor, crossed over the bridge shaped like a sail, and onto Saeseom Island (nothing special, just more walkways).

We then hiked back up to Jeongbang Falls, only to climb down several steps. But it was worth it in the end, as we got to play in the falls and walk to where it flows out into the ocean. It was a great break from the heat of the island.

But we could not escape the heat, so we headed to Swesokak black beach, a pool blocked off from the ocean. While swimming, we marveled and how naked we felt in our bathing suits next to the fully dressed Koreans swimming about (every beach was like this, Koreans fully dressed in shorts, long-sleeved shirts, and sunhats swimming in the ocean).

Our next adventure was exploring the south west area of the island. We walked around the World Cup Stadium, a surprisingly beautiful building for Korea. We then got back on the Airport Limousine bus to go to Jungmun Beach. We stopped along the way to see Cheonjeyeon Falls. We stumbled back to the main part of town to scarf down a burger before trying to find our way to the beach, which turned out to be quite difficult. But once we found it, we had a blast riding the waves on the innertube, despite my taking out an entire family and getting caught in the buoy rope.

A man helped us get to Jeju City and found us a guest house in Samyang Black Beach. Samyang is famous for its sunsets, and it does have some beautiful sunsets! We enjoyed taking morning swims at Samyang and night-time strolls along the beach, avoiding the buried old people soaking their arthritic joints.

Sunset at Samyang

Our third full day in Jeju was spent exploring LoveLand, the sex-themed park. Which was surprisingly tame and, not surprisingly, very Korean. We then met up with one of my friends for dinner at Bagdad Indian Restaurant where we had a traditional Chinese tea for desert, compliments of the owner.  

The next day we awoke early and headed east to Manjanggul Cave. The bus ride is surprisingly long, for such a small island. The bus dropped us off about two kilometers from the entrance of the cave and we stubbornly refused the “expensive” taxis. We spent one kilometer questioning the sanity of the American who was trying to hitchhike in Korea, until she actually caught a ride and was kind enough to offer to share the car with us. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any room. But shortly after, a nice couple stopped and gave us a ride to the caves.

Manjanggul is a lava cave going 1 km into the island. It is very open, very well lit, and very touristy. We braved the cold and the damp and managed to make it to the end of the cave. After catching a small lunch of kimbap, we headed to the neighboring maze park.

We then relaxed our aching limbs at Hamdeok Beach. This beach was the best in terms of waves, but was very crowded and full of seaweed. We suffered some minor cuts and bruises from the sand and smashing into other ring-riders.

Our last full day in Jeju, we decided to try out the famous Hallim Beach to the west. We got distracted for four hours in the Hallim Tropical Park—a large botanical garden, including two lava caves. One cave is the only cave in the world where limestone and lave meet. Suddenly we remembered our main purpose for the trip and headed to the beach. It was a beautiful beach with sea-green waters and black lava rocks jutting out of the water. But those black lava rocks were under the water too, and very, very sharp. In a short time, I was cut from head to toe from the rocks, so we escaped back to Jeju City.

Beautiful beach, painful rocks!

In those five days we didn’t get to climb Hallasan nor did we go further east to Udo. We were sad to see Jeju in the plane window and even more depressed to say goodbye to the bright blue skies and green waters when we arrived in grey, depressing Seoul.   

English Camp Sports' Day Misadventures

Every lesson I have a group of students who are bandaged, bruised, or encased in plaster. I have always wondered if students are just incredibly daring, brittle, or uncoordinated. Judging from what I saw today at the English camp sports' day, daring applies to very few students. For children who begin learning taekwondo as soon as they can stand, these children have the slowest reflexes and the most uncoordinated bodies ever.

Now, I admit that I throw like a girl (I am not talking about softball pitchers). I hate running, my right leg comes up when I shoot a basket, and I am not about to get close to a sweaty armpit to intercept a ball. Also, my depth perception tends to be quite off and my reflexes tend to be a bit slow of late. So keep in mind, that this story is coming from me.

Today was rainy, so we had to stay indoors in the ancient gym on the 4th floor. This gym is long and narrow with splintering wood floors that give way too much for comfort. There is a stage at one end, with a projector and a sound system, student artwork attached to tacked up metal cages lines the walls on either side, ceiling fans hang down way too low, and hundreds of chairs are shoved to the back wall. I was very shocked to find out that this gym is still used as a gym.  

The first event was dodge ball. We used one soft ball. In the Korean version, as far as I can gather, the ball is thrown up by the referee and it volleyed by the team captions to their team. You are safe if you catch the ball or the ball bounces before hitting you. If you get hit (before the ball bounces) or drop the ball, you are out. If you are out you go behind the opposing team and if the ball crosses the line, you can throw the ball and try to get the opposing team members out. 

So, Matt and I painfully watched as fifteen screeching, cowering students rushed from one end of the gym to the other in one large huddle trying to escape the one ball. Once in a while a student was brave enough to try to catch the ball, but did not often succeed. Many times they dropped it and then proceed to fall over it. If they managed to catch it, the students either hit their own teammate in the head or hit the wall (knocking off the racks holding the artwork). And none of the students seemed to realize that they needed to take the good throwers out first.  

I don't know how many times, the children were saved from outs because they tried to dodge, tripped and some how the ball managed to brush between their legs instead. And just like in a cartoon, the student put their heads between their legs to make sure the ball really did pass through. This made their butts perfect targets for the good players. It would have been funny, if it hadn't been so painful to watch.

The next event was team jump rope. Since one boy got injured by the soft dodge ball and was laid up with a heat patch on his bicep, I stepped in. I haven't done team jump rope since I was 10. But, it was like riding a bike and I did quite well. So well in fact, that my shoes came off and I landed on the floor barefoot, receiving a pretty gnarly hunk of wood through my foot, thus ending my short-lived jumping career.

I have never seen a group of elementary students so bad at jump rope, they cannot turn the rope or jump. I don't know how many students were strangled. A rope ended up wrapped in the ceiling fan (with the student frantically turning in circles trying to untangle the fan, only managing to make himself dizzy and the rope even more tangled). Needless to say, Double Dutch was out of the question. 

Pre-Vacation

Matt surprised me by knocking on my door Thursday evening immediately after I had finished cooking dinner--talk about great timing for him! I put him to work on Friday by making him attend summer camp where I played scientist. I blindfolded a student, hid a piece of candy in the room and made the other students give the child directions through a maze of desks to find the candy. Turns out, the kids really will play this lousy game over and over for a worthless piece of candy.

My apartment is out there...

After camp, we headed to Myeongdong for some shopping and then to Jonggak for some Indian food. Saturday we decided it was high time to go to Namsan Tower. We skipped the Teddy Bear Museum inside the tower and headed for the observation room. We rode up six whole floors in an elevator that had an animation of flying through the tower, out of its top and into outer space. It was quite something and left all the westerners giggling.

Seoul Tower

We declined the 12,000 won green-screened photo and attempted to look out over the city. Unfortunately, the smog and the lack of recent window cleaning made for poor visibility, but it was still nice to look over a part of the city. We then looked around the many gift shops selling tower cell phone charms, vials with silk flowers surrounding miniature towers, eyeglass cleaning clothes with the tower printed on them, and overpriced cardboard coasters depicting the tower. Oh, and I must not forget the souvenirs from England and Paris. Korea really doesn't understand the whole souvenir thing.
After the tower, I took Matt to his first Outback Steakhouse. He had his first true bowl of soup and bit of steak in one year. A small plate of cheap steak, steamed veggies, fries and some pumpkin soup never tasted so good! We topped off the decadent day by catching the late show to the new Batman movie. The movie would have been more enjoyable if people could leave their hand phones alone for a few minutes.
Sunday found us back in Myeongdong where we stumbled upon an arts and crafts sale. We hung out listening to a guitarist and I managed to find something crafty that I actually liked. We later headed to Kongdae to eat some BBQ pork with Matt's Korean friend from Jinbo.
Matt followed me to English camp today, lured by the hope of playing kickball. But sadly, it rained and so events were moved to the gym. This deserves its own blog post. I have since sent Matt back to Cheongsong where he can go back to work and prepare for our week in Jeju.

How Many People Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

In the western world we have the light bulb jokes.  We tell them and chuckle. But here, it’s no laughing matter. It’s reality. So how many people does it take to change a Korean light bulb?

            

Well, first, I have seven light switches in my tiny studio apartment. It makes it nice and bright, but eventually one of the 30-something light bulbs is going to burn out. Curiosity caused me to unscrew one of the light fixtures to find a Christmas-light-like bulb held in by two screws. I know what you are thinking, WHY!?! Don't think about it, it will only cause your brain to overheat. 

The first bulb to go out was the bathroom light. Being a person from the western world, where any store has a whole isle dedicated to various light bulbs, I assumed that this light bulb could be purchased at the big shopping center. As you may recall in Matt's blog post, he took on this task for me. He took the light bulb to the shopping center and asked the sales associate for the light bulb. It was the wrong one. Luckily, they did take the light bulb back. So after wasting  several hours on this task, Matt finally gave up and asked maintenance. In the end, it only took one person to change the light bulb. But the question remains, why does it take maintenance to change a 60 Watt bulb!?!

The next light to go out was the kitchen light. Placed strategically above the sink very close to the cabinets. I would have gladly ignored it, but it is florescent and does that whole blinky thingy. So 10:30 at night, I climb up onto the counter and set about trying to figure out how to get the apparently simple light cover off. After fifteen minutes, the light cover finally came loose, flying across the room and nearly knocking me off the counter. Then there was a mass of wires and electrical boxes inside the light--it cannot be a simple florescent light. After finally figuring out how to unplug the light. I tried to then put the light cover back on. The light cover is held onto the fixture by dime-sized magnets. But the magnets are not attached to the light cover in any way. So ten minutes of struggling to get the cover to defy gravity failed. Again I need maintenance or a strong man to hammer the light fixture to the ceiling.

So in conclusion to this riddle, it takes only one person to change a light bulb, if you just realize that you cannot be independent in this country and have to call for help.

In other complaining news, last month the school had the brick walkways redone. For an entire month the pavement was torn up. And carefully relaid and torn up again. The problem wasn't leveling, as all leveling seems to be absent and makes keeping your feet dry in this monsoon impossible. Also, they are redoing the walls around the building, taking down the white wrought- iron fence and building a "pretty" brick fence. Except, the brick layers seem to forgotten the spade to smooth out the grout and the brick fence can now be described as "goopy." 

This week has been English Certification Week. Basically, students memorize English and Korean phrases on a paper. I point to a Korean phrase and the students must translate it to English. If they translate three phrases correctly, they can go onto the Korean teacher who says the phrase in English and the student must translate it into Korean. This is always exhausting as you hear the same phrases butchered. But this is even more exhausting as you have thirty children lined up shoving each other, hitting each other, screaming at each other, and trying to give answers to the students taking the test. I spend more time trying to get the students to calm down for five seconds than actually giving the test. 

I also spend most of the time chasing away students who have no sense of respect for their teachers' possessions or space. As I am giving this test, students walk up and start going through my pencil cup, taking whatever they want, taking the scissors and cutting whatever is available on my desk (thank god I caught a student before cutting my new headphones), hitting the keys on my keyboard to see what I have up on the computer (and slamming the keyboard when the password prompt comes up), trying to pull my headphones out of the computer from the head phone themselves, oh and unplugging the monitor from the back. These are supposedly the wholesome Korean kids, mind you.

The rising water has forced the drunks to the top of the bridge.

As you can tell, today is a day I am done with the rude children, the USA shirts that are colored with Korean flag colors, the inability to wipe up urine and poop, and just the general confusing Korean attitude of desperately trying to make a dime and not caring how many dollars they lose trying to make that dime. Perhaps the fact that the sun hasn't shown in a week and the rain hasn't stopped for a day and a half has something to do with my attitude.

As Ordinary as Apple Pie

Another weekend in Cheong-song. Helped Matt with English camp. We broke from the ordinary Cheong-song weekend to visit the neighboring town of Jinbo and celebrate its fireworks festival. We spent the evening wandering around tables filled with hamsters, goldfish, and light-up wands or bow headbands. Then we lounged at one of the many food stalls set up among the jungle gyms and swing sets while enjoying the taste of beer, the sounds of local karaoke talent, the sights of the fireworks,  and the smells of roasting corn, deep-fried corn dogs, kimchi, and steaming silkworm larvae. The rest of the weekend was spent hiding from the first monsoon rains pouring down upon Cheong-song and the giant spiders that were washed out of their hiding places.

Seoul, meanwhile, has spent an entire week steaming in preparation for the monsoon (which will come this weekend). Crops outside of Seoul are suffering from the drought while children inside of Seoul seem to gain power from the drought. It was a long week as the children literally ran around the classroom screaming, using their books as bludgeoning devices and megaphones, throwing spit balls at each other and much more. There are quite a few black and blue faces, swollen lips, and ace bandages. Students took the standardized tests on Tuesday, making it the perfect day for us subject teachers. But by Wednesday the stress of studying left the children in a frenzy. 

By the end of the week, I had had it with students' tantrums, whining, screaming, and just all things related to students. I was also irritated by the fact that among other annoying news, my cat died and I found out I have to move out of my apartment the day my contract ends and I have to be at school. And suddenly, everyone notifies me of all the things that have to be done now.  But this is ordinary. Just as it is ordinary to go to the bathroom and hear several girls in the stall next to you. I honestly don't know how they all fit in there, as the stalls aren't that big. But the lack of a western toilet probably gives some extra space.

The nice toilets in the school.

Finally, the after school classes are finished!  And to celebrate the coming monsoon (Koreans hate rain, so I don't know why they are celebrating this), my co-teachers bought their first apple pie. I showed up to their classroom to find them staring at the Costco pie (quite large) with puzzled expressions.

"Do you know how to cut this?" They asked. I repressed a giggle and told them to cut it like a pizza.

"Oh. Oops." Worried looks.

"How did you cut it?" I asked.

"Like the top." (checker pattern crust) "We can't take it out of the plate." This time I giggled, especially as they were trying to dislodge a piece from the middle of the pie with a paring knife. I carefully dished the square pie pieces onto foil squares and we enjoyed the teachers' first taste of apple pie. I then answered questions about how many people the pie would feed in America and how many apples are needed for the pie and if I knew how to make apple pies and what other kinds of pies there are in America. And I discovered that one teacher had wanted to taste an apple pie ever since watching "American Pie." I am still confused about this reasoning...

Tempers and Temperatures on the Rise

Rice paddies

English camp is next month and I am scrambling to get things done in time. I am putting way more effort into this than the previous camp. Mainly because this year's students  have a short attention span--so every minute must be planned for, or I will lose them. Also I must have an activity every few minutes otherwise, they're gone. I am also losing valuable planning time messing with Hangul Word Processor. It is worse than Word, if that is possible. And of course the two programs are not compatible, so formatting gets altered between copying and pasting. I must use this HWP because none of the other teachers know how to use Word (which is in Konglish, not English or Korean).

Also taking up much of my time are long teacher's meetings dealing with the growing problem of bullying. My co-teachers feel I must attend these entirely Korean meetings. Oddly enough, I am the only one paying attention to these meetings as the other teachers  are playing games on their smart phones, texting, answering their phones, or sleeping. I'm beginning to see where the children get their short attention spans.

The vice principal finally got involved with discipline when a sixth grader punched a third grader and measures are being taken to limit interaction between sixth and third grades. Though, no one seems to care to grasp the root of the problem. Nor do teachers seem to care when students shove, kick, and ostracize a student because they think they will catch her down syndrome.

There is a new student in second grade. She does not look 100% Korean and I hope the students don't single her out because of it.  This student's English is better than most of my sixth grade students and she is always happy to speak with me.

More and more students frequent my classroom to practice their English. Most days, I spend a couple of hours helping students with their homework or playing games with them. The older girls show me the latest K-Pop male bands, and the young students bring me gifts of  Angry Bird erasers, wilted flowers, strange insects, green apricots, grape-flavored candy,  and cough drops (which I give to the older students).

Last week, an acquaintance from Pullman camped out on my floor. The doormen in my building were not too impressed with this new guy. I presume they thought  I was cheating on Matt. I honestly don't know who they think Matt is. So for my reputation's sake and my possible fake marriage's sake, I had better not have any more males in my apartment.

This weekend I went to Cheong-Song to visit Matt. It was a much needed weekend in the country with blue (yes blue!!!) skies and somewhat fresh air (minus the smells of the open sewage in town). I ended up helping Matt with his English camp on Saturday. It reminded me of our certification days. And it was kind of fun interacting with middle school and high school kids.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out at the river watching the fish jump and the old people do this odd kimchi squat walk in the water with their heads in glass-bottomed dishes (third-world goggles?) picking up snails along the river bottom.

       This weekend I went to Cheong-Song to visit Matt. It was a much needed weekend in the country with blue (yes blue!!!) skies and somewhat fresh air (minus the smells of the open sewage in town). I ended up helping Matt with his English camp on Saturday. It reminded me of our certification days. And it was kind of fun interacting with middle school and high school kids.

       We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out at the river watching the fish jump and the old people do this odd kimchi squat walk in the water with their heads in glass-bottomed dishes (third-world goggles?) picking up water snails along the river bottom. I am guessing they were dinner.

      Temperatures are up to the 90s with high humidity as the monsoon pushes it's way through the country heading towards Seoul. It is making places like Cheong-Song and Seoul feel like a kettle on a stove.

(I am sorry for the retarded highlighting. It seems that Blogger is once again stupid and refusing to take away the highlighting that I did not select in the first place).