Culture

First of all - Aunt Nellie, I was looking back through the blog and noticed a post by you I had missed earlier... sorry! Actually yes, I have met a few parents, but it's been pretty coincidental. Everyone knows who I am, so sometimes random people will approach me. The mother of one of my fourth grade boys came up to me at the bus stop because apparently she works at the restaurant that's right next to my stop. She was really nice - she gave me a little fried dough thing shaped like a fish with red beans in it.

Also - Uncle Tom, I hear you were not happy with my lack of posting. I will try to update more often!

I hope everyone had a great time at the pumpkin party!

So a note on red beans. I don't know if I've gone into detail about this, but Koreans LOVE red beans. They are under the impression that red beans = dessert food. I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten some kind of pastry full of what appeared to be chocolate only to bite into it and discover mashed up red beans! It's actually pretty good, but you can imagine my disappointment when I'm expecting chocolate and I get... beans. What a letdown.

I really enjoyed my teachers' training on Monday. Learning more things about Korean and Korea has definitely helped improve my teaching the teachers. For example, I inserted a little cultural tip on Monday. The book we're working with had a sample dialogue on how to get someone's attention (i.e. "Theresa?"), and I got to thinking about the differences in America and Korea when it comes to politely asking for someone's attention. In Korea, if you're sitting at a restaurant, you have to beckon the server over... no one will just wait on you if you "look ready" to order. How do you do this? 여기여! Yeogi-yo!! Essentially, this means "here!" Kind of rude in English, isn't it? I don't think you'd get great service if you just shout "here!" at a waiter/waitress in America. I have a hard time even calling out Yeogi-yo! in Korea because it just feels so wrong.

So I talked to the teachers about what's okay when you want someone's attention in English. If you know them, saying their name as a question works ("Theresa?"). I told them that yeogi-yo is actually kind of impolite, and they were so surprised! I explained that "Excuse me?" is the best way to get anyone's attention if they're someone you don't know. Koreans also really don't apologize for bumping into people, so I demonstrated how to use "Excuse me." as an apology.

There's also a major difference in nonverbal attention-getting. When you want someone to walk over to you, in America you extend your hand out palm up and curl your fingers at them repeatedly. This is really rude in Korea! That hand gesture is reserved for beckoning dogs. Instead, Koreans extend their hand palm DOWN and sort of flap their wrist/fingers toward themselves. I explained to the teachers that in America the first way is normal and if they attempted the Korean way, people probably wouldn't know what they wanted. This wrist/finger flap thingy works for taxis, too. Don't stand in the street and stick out your arm a la New York - this is a gauche foreigner move that I'm guilty of. Stick out your arm and do the flapping thing. Again, I demonstrated for the teachers and encouraged them to be very assertive when flagging taxis in America.

I think they really enjoyed the culture stuff. I know the vocab/dialogues, etc we work on are useful, but I'm trying to think of what I would want to know if I was just a tourist in a new country - these are the basic things that you might not know. In Korea I can get away with doing culturally inappropriate things because I'm obviously foreign so I get a little more slack, but Koreans in America wouldn't get the same consideration because it's not as obvious that they're foreign.

Photo montage

Buddhist temple at Haiensa

More temple pictures

Joon, our Buddhist monk guide. A very nice guy.

My friend Gena celebrating the 3am wakeup call.

Me and Gena and another woman at the temple stay. Pictured: temple attire. SO fashionable.

Seokseong 3rd grade - Jason (Eungi), Thomas (Donghyeon), Evan (Jonghyeok), and James (Donggeun). The 3rd grade girls took this picture while we were waiting for the after-school class to begin.

Me with the 3rd grade Seokseong girls: Ruby, Sydney, and Alice. Presh.

Joseph (Kim I-Kyeom), Seokyang 3rd grader. Adorable, yet a total pain at the same time.

Mr. Kim getting ready to play some volleyball at Seokyang.

Ice (Lee Jae-Lin) and Cole. Ice comes into my room roughly 20 times a day - "Hi!" "Hi!" "My name Lee Jae-Lin!" "Ice!" Twenty. Times. Every. Day.

Don't know their names or ages, but these Seokyang girls like to escort me to the bus stop occasionally. They hold my hands and walk me out of school. They asked me to take their picture when they saw my camera... at least, they said "SomethinginKorean, please." (I know "please" in Korean) and pointed at my camera, then posed.

Cole (Heo Hyeon-Woo). Again... Seokyang 3rd grade. He drives me bonkers, but how do you stay mad at this face??

Seokyang

Seokyang 6th grade, left to right: Michael, Jake (orange), Chuck (blue hoodie), Christopher, and Thomas. Jake is my unofficial 6th grade translator... he's super good at English.

Seokyang 6th grade - we had a English competition in the gym

Ppali ppali!!

So I realize that it's been a full week and a day since my last post. Sorry about that - everything has been ppali ppali (hurry hurry!) lately. The weekend temple stay was good. I had more than a few problems with transportation, but it ended up going fine. Made it to Daegu, then we went to Haiensa for the actual temple stay. I have now complied quite an extensive list of why I will never be a Buddhist monk.


1. They wake up at 3am and go to sleep at 9pm EVERY DAY.
2. They always sit on the floor, usually in lotus position, for literally hours.
3. They bow 108 times (like on the floor prostrate bowing, not head/waist bowing) every morning before dawn.
4. They meditate for hours every day.
5. Each year they do a week long mediation. They meditate 14 hours per day for seven days straight. Not a joke or a mistranslation... my group questioned our monk extensively.
6. They keep the heat on waaaaaay too high.
7. It's a 40 minute hike up a mountain to their living quarters (I know, we hiked there).
8. They drink tons and tons of green tea every day.
9. They are silent during meals and while walking.
10. They wake up at 3am every day. This deserves two spots on my list.


So yes, on a temple stay, I did most of the forementioned things. Meditation, green tea, 3am wakeup call, silence during meals, walking in a single file line, 30 min meditation, 108 bows... the works. A temple stay is not for the casually interested or easily bored. It's especially not for the out of shape or inflexible. Seriously. But I did have a good time and it was a good experience.


This week has been business as usual pretty much. School is becoming more routine, which I think is good. I've been struggling with my Seokyang classes because they're so rowdy all the time. Finally on Monday I cracked down hard on my sixth grade. I learned my new favorite Korean word, "gamji." It means writing sentences for punishment. I made the sixth grade write "I will not talk in class" 120 times and assigned them the pages we were supposed to do in class for homework. I also put Google translate to good use on Tuesday... I put it up on the overhead screen and Mr. Kim also translated (I assume that's what he was doing). Now I think they know I'm serious. The 3rd, 4th, and 6th grades all got a stern Stephen Hawking lecture via typing. I'm glad because I didn't want to punish them without any warning, but I can't warn them because they wouldn't understand. Now they know that if they act up there will be consequences. I don't want to go punishment-crazy, but I have to do something. From what I understand from other teachers and things I've read, Korean kids are used to pretty strict authority figures, so they will expect the same out of their teachers.


The 3rd grade was really grinding my gears, so I warned them a few times then finally said they have to come in during recess and sit quietly for 10 minutes. Gotta love kids - when they filed in, two little girls came up and hugged me around the waist... "Teacherrrrrr, I looooooove you... 5 minutes? 5 minutes?" Sorry, your cuteness will not faze me.


Wednesday in the 3rd grade one of the little girls got socked in the face by her seatmate. Now, the kids are always hitting each other... they tackle, wrestle, and punch each other, but this one actually cut her lip on her teeth. Blood is kind of a problem. She started tearing up, so I made the boy go stand facing the corner. After a while I went to get him, and when I turned him around, his little face was streaked with tears and his eyes were red and he was sniffling. I felt like a complete and total monster. I made a third grade boy cry. Or hey maybe he was crying because he punched that girl and made her bleed. Either way I never, ever want to see one of my students cry like that again because I can't just hug him like I really, really wanted to. I just had him go sit down and gave him a tissue. I think he got over it though... I went around giving high fives for a good job on homework, and when he low fived me I let him push my hand onto the desk, pretending he was super strong and he laughed. Even now though, a few days later, picturing his little face makes me kind of sick.


Today I'm going with Joo to Nonsan to meet his family. I'm very excited to see what they're like. The kids here are SO CUTE. I've been teaching the kindergarten and 1st/2nd grade some kiddie songs, and the 3rd and 4th grade the hokey pokey. They LOVE the hokey pokey. It's actually starting to become a distraction because all they want to do is "hokey pokey Teacher, hokey pokeyhokeypokeyhokeypokey." NO! Learn how to say "This is my family." I started "The Eensy-Weensy Spider" with the kindergarten yesterday, and when I dropped by their classroom after lunch they all said hi and started waving, and one little boy started doing the eensy-weensy spider hand motions.


So you may remember reading about kimchi in my blog. Recently there has been a serious spike in the price of cabbage as documented in this online news article, and it's really screwing with everyday life and the Korean economy. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/asia/15kimchi.html?_r=3&hp


Koreans eat kimchi every day three times a day. They love their kimchi. We're still getting it at school, and since there's such problems with it lately I feel really bad if I waste any so I've been eating all of it every day. Hasn't been so bad really... I think I'm getting more used to Korean food. This is good because the other teachers keep giving me food.


The funny thing is, the Korean teachers are really nice, and I think they're expressing this niceness via food. The problem is, I find about 90% of the food they give me to be not exactly my style. To date I've received a bunch of grapes, about 30 mushrooms, pork cutlets, a persimmon, multiple rice cakes, countless sweet potatoes, and pumpkin porridge with beans. None of these foods really appeal to me, but I want to show my appreciation so I do my best to eat them.

An uneducated take on the Korean language

After checking the date of my last post, I realize it was a few days ago. I'm getting busier at school, so I've found my blogging down time has seriously decreased.

Not much has happened. I think my classes/lessons are starting to improve. Now that I've had a few, I know better how long each activity will take so it's helping me plan. For example, I think this week's teacher training was a total success. It's the third one, but it's the first one that I really feel made some progress and I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing. I've picked up some Korean, and it's been incredibly helpful. Knowing some hangul has really helped me learn what's hard for Koreans and why. For example, most Westerners know that people who speak Asian languages don't really distinguish between "r" and "l." I finally know why! (At least, for Koreans.) The hangul symbol ㄹ is translated into the Roman alphabet as sort of a cross between r/l. The symbol ㅂ is b/p. You might remember how I mentioned that Buyeo (부 여) used to be called Puyo/Puyeo. I think (remember, this is not fact, this is just what I've hopefully deduced from the very, very short time I've been in Korea) that this is because in Korean there are no separate "b" and "p" sounds, so you can't actually phonetically translate it into Roman letters. There's also no "v" at all. Imagine trying to explain the difference between b, p, and v! Also imagine it in reverse - when I speak Korean ("speak"... i.e. say hello, Buyeo, etc.) I have to kind of jam b/p and d/t and r/l together. Buyeo isn't really BU-yeo, and it's not PU-yeo, it's like B/Puyeo. Let me break down the Buyeo symbols, then you too will know some Korean!

Like I said, it's 부 여.
ㅂ is b/p
ㅜ is u as in you
ㅇ when you see this "o" shape, it's silent unless it's at the end of a word, then it's a "ng" sound like Seokseong
ㅕ yeo as in yo man!

So now just sound out 부 b/p-u 여 silent-yeo and there you have it! And the best part is every time you see the ㅂ, ㅜ, ㅇ, or 여, they will always sound like the sounds I've just described. I think there's exceptions, but pretty much unlike English, what you see is what you get. ㅜ is always "u." In English there's really no good explanation that I know of for why "apple" and "father" both have "a" but they sound completely different, which makes learning English so hard.

So you see, if you were to try and write a word such as "library" in hangul, even though it's got the different "r" and "l," in hangul they would literally be the exact same symbol ㄹ. So if Korean is your native language, you probably think in hangul (just like I think annyeong haseyo instead of 안녕하세요 even though they're the same thing) so it would be massively hard to get out of the ㄹ box, you know? So essentially I think knowing these sorts of things can help me identify problem areas for my classes.

Okay, quick quiz: what's this Korean word? It's crucial to their everyday lives.
밥

You should know ㅂ by now, and I'll give you a hint: ㅏ is ah. Sound it out! Start with the upper left and read left to right, then down to the bottom.

Okay okay, it's bap/pap, aka RICE! Congratulations, you can now eat rice in Buyeo if you so choose.

Linguistics aside, I really feel like I'm taking control at Seokseong and I like it a lot. My lessons are getting more exciting. Yesterday with the 3rd grade and today with the 4th grade we learned how to ask, "What do you need?" and answer the question. I made a game where everyone gets several cards with things like "a pen," "scissors," "a pencil," etc. written on them. We arranged the chairs in a circle facing inward and everyone but one student sat down. The one in the middle had to choose someone and ask them, "What do you need?" The student sitting down would look at his/her cards and say, "I need a pen/pencil etc." If the student standing had the matching card, he/she had to give it to the student sitting down. Then they switched places. If the standing student didn't have the card, he/she said, "Sorry, I don't have any." (We also included, "Here you go." "Thanks." "That's okay.") Then everyone had to group in the center of the circle and I'd say, "Go!" and they'd dash for the chairs. Last one standing was the middle person. There was a LOT of squealing. The fourth grade were total angels - third grade was acceptable.

I feel like Stephen Hawking here. Not because I'm super smart, but because I like to communicate through a computer. Especially at Seokseong - my computer is hooked up to display the screen to the class, so when I'm on my own I'll leave Google translate open and if they don't know what I'm talking about, I'll type it in. Also we have "conversations" in between classes. One of my students told me via the computer that I was a very good Korean teacher! Not quite sure what that means because I am not actually a Korean teacher... I think she meant my Korean is very good. Probably, "Teacher, you have good Korean." and Google messed it up. Either way it was some kind of compliment so that's sweet. The 5th/6th grade hasn't seen me in a while since I was gone last Friday and they were on a field trip last Thursday and the week before, so they've missed that I've learned several important classroom words in Korean (Eyes up here! Scissors. Volunteer. 1-10. etc.)

I'm going out of town this weekend. I'm headed for Daegu, a city about an hour east of Daejeon. My friend from IU is there, and we're going to stay at a Buddhist temple Saturday/Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes... I googled it and it looks cool, but Kevin said one of his friends did it and it was "horrendous." Lots and lots of bowing and waking up super early and well, doing Buddhist-type things. I'm looking forward to the experience. All this out-of-town-ness makes the weeks very, very long though so hopefully I'll get back at a decent time on Sunday.

"Orientation" is Korean for "death by lecture"

I have finally, finally, FINALLY returned from orientation. It was touch and go for awhile but I made it out. This was easily the worst orientation I have ever gone to for anything in my life. It was a just a perfect storm of awful: short notice, missed my field trip, missed my soccer game (which, incidentally we won 1-0!!), had to travel 3 hours to Asan in order to even get there, didn't get paid overtime, am about to work 12 days in a row, was forced to eat rice for breakfast, was on total lockdown for three days straight, and I didn't even have a bed. Yeah, I went all-out Korean on the room thing... we were assigned roommates and rooms, and for some bizarre reason, all but four of the rooms had beds. It's kind of an old-time Korean thing to sleep on the floor so this isn't super strange, but the deeply irritating part was that nearly every single TWO PERSON room had THREE beds. Yes, three. Was I allowed to sleep in another room? No. Was I allowed to move a bed into my room? No. Was I allowed to move a mattress into my room? No. Why? "It is not Korean culture."

It was three very, very long days. I took the 7:30am bus from Buyeo to Asan, then another bus to the Sucheonhyang University, then a taxi to the Korea Financial Institution. We had the opening at 11:00am and went until 9:00pm with two hours for lunch and dinner. Saturday we had a cultural trip to Independence Hall, which was essentially just museums, then lectures from 2:00-9:00. Sunday we had lectures from 9:00-5:00. Breakfast was from 7:00-8:00, so even though we didn't have to be ready until 9:00, we had to be up for breakfast by 7:30 because that's when they'd start clearing away the food.
Okay now enough complaining. I really enjoyed our cultural trip... I don't know much about Korean history, so it was cool to learn some stuff.

I'll write more about it later, but for now please enjoy the assortment of pictures.

My certification of completion for orientation. Quite fancy, actually.

Saturday night of orientation. Lucky us - there was a noraebang (karaoke) underneath the Korea Financial Institute. This is how serious Koreans are about their noraebang. Louis, who's Korean-Canadian, and I performed two duets: Ain't No Mountain High and One Sweet Day (Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men). I picked the former and he picked the latter. Next day at orientation I was chosen by my peers to receive a fancy-pants bookmark because of my singing ability! Those of you who have been lucky enough to hear me sing might be pretty surprised to hear that, hahahaha. It was tremendously fun.

Me and Celina at Independence Hall in Cheonan. The guide said this sculpture is supposed to represent two hands praying for peace.

My kindergarten Seokseong class. You can't really see their adorable faces so well though.

Kevin on the spinny/bouncing ride at the Great Baekje World Festival. This is a pretty accurate representation of how Kevin looks most of the time - fingers poised in Asian peace sign mode.

Parade at the Great Baekje World Festival.

Blake, Kevin, and Chris on the pirate ship. Kevin is afraid of heights and kept claiming his side "went higher" than our side. Please observe that apparently no one wanted to ride with the foreigners.

Pirate ship. Looks quite small from this angle.

This is what I'm surrounded by every day. Adorable.

Parade for the Great Baekje World Festival.

Independence Hall - orientation group