Happy Holidays Beautiful People!
So, I'm still in Korea, fancy that. Life here is becoming more routine and less hilarious, which is fine—all of that amusement can be tiresome. A couple of weeks ago, actually, I was so fed up with Korea that I wanted to hike north, through the land of Kim Jong-Il (maybe have a bit of a chat with the little, dying man), a nice hike through Russia, and then a refreshing swim to the land of Palin…The sound of Hangul-mal (Korean language) was like finger nails on a chalk board, and the superficiality and artifice that seems to drape over every single thing in Korea were really, really starting to rack my nerves. My good eighth grad girls were caught drinking at the elementary school (and one of them vomited—at the elementary school), the ninth grade boys have severed themselves from any notion of respect and "normal" social behavior, and my sixth graders have started to draw phallic symbols on everything and anything in sight. Oh, the joy of teaching middle school.
Please, do not worry or have many negative thoughts toward this country! After a bit of ranting, I will share some incredible acts of human kindness and beauty, and some fun times in Korea.
One of the more entertaining and god awful boring things I've done in the recent past was a teacher's "Retreat" to Chicken University—at first I thought maybe we were going to a school of poultry science or something, but no, it is actually called Chicken University!!! Haaahaaaa. I guess it's a place where people from a large Korean fried chicken chain, under the name BBQ chicken (BBQ= Best of the Best Quality) come to train and be surrounded by chicken-ey things. Mom, you would have loved it, there were huge roosters everywhere!! I will post pictures soon. Well, this "Retreat" was not what I expected; it involved all of the teachers and administrators sitting around a table, with a lot of chicken and other food, for SEVEN hours…talking about how to discipline the students (which, you can tell from the first paragraph has worked incredibly well). They did this all in Korean, of course (which I am not angry about, only two of them speak English). In the few instances that I did know what they were talking about, I would pipe in with a suggestion and promptly get shot down, or looked at like I am a crazy, naïve white girl who has no say in how to discipline the students. So why was I there!!! Aaarrrggghhhhh….I wasn't happy to say the least.
With that said, any of you who were "bad seeds" in your schooling years have any advice for how to deal with these hellions?? I'm pretty sure these students are more like the American "bad" students of the eighties and nineties than they are similar to anything the Korean teachers are familiar with. P.S. after SEVEN hours of bickering, there were no conclusions or decisions made. It was all a grand waste of time and energy. I did get out some wonderful poetry though, classics I'd say. Here is one :
I am so bored,
This is worse than orientation,
At least I have Somaek and apples.
Let's just send all of the little F@#$#ers to boot camp!
Beautiful, isn't it? I was truly inspired.
After staying up until 1 A.M. talking about students we awoke the next morning at an ungodly hour and went for a hike, which ended up being Very Danger. It was a short hike, on Dodomunsan, which means "Crying Pig Mountain." It should have been peaceful and quick, but the teacher who led us was keen on going off trail—which was cool, apart from the two older ladies with us and my aging principal. He brought us to these cliffs that, if someone had fallen or slipped, would have killed one of us. The way down was less treacherous, and it was enjoyable overall.
That same week as the teacher's conference I spent four days with the seventh and eighth grade students at a kind of camp, where they learned about Korean history, did team building stuff and generally practiced good ol' Korean camaraderie. It was very fun, I got to rock climb a bit with the kiddies, and we all bonded. I was the only non-Korean there with three schools present, so I was part of the entertainment for the few days. Fun fun. I think that week straight of only Korean interaction is what helped drive me to my state of discontent. That, and missing the excitement around elections…GOOObbbaaammaaaa!!!
Since then, things have looked up! I've gone on some more hikes, visited some fellow teachers and celebrated Thanksgiving! A couple of weekends ago, three of my friends and I visited Mt Seoun (or Seounsan) in a neighboring city. It took us a long time to get there (about 2.5 hours on a bus, in a car it would have been about 40 minutes), and we were hungry once we arrived. (annnddd, we were a bit lost, I was the organizer…never a good thing. I thought we were getting dropped off at the bus terminal, but apparently the bus doesn't stop at the terminal, so the bus driver kind of dropped us off in the middle of the street once he realized we were still on the bus, and we had to wander a bit to get our bearings). We stopped in a restaurant that was closed, so we left, but then the owner yelled after us and told us we could eat there still! It was so nice of him, and it was a great place to eat. For 9,000 won (about $7) we could eat as much as we wanted from his buffet. And this was no ordinary buffet. It had all of the Korean side dishes, like kimchi, veggies, little shrimpy things, condiments, and other Korean faire. The best part, though, was the huge array of raw meat to choose from. There had to be about twelve different types of pork and beef, in different marinades and different cuts, and we could take as much as we wanted. We just grilled it all on our table and did the lettuce wrap thing. It was delicious, nutritious and extremely kind of the old man.
We finally made it to where we wanted to hike, after a long cab ride, and hiked a bit. People on the mountain were extremely nice too. One kept taking pics of us and told us he would e-mail them to us (which he hasn't yet….) and we were fed pretty well on the way up as well. After we finished the hike, we couln't figure out the bus schedule, cause it didn't appear to go to where we needed to catch a bus home. There was a temple at the base of the mountain, so we checked it out, and a Korean woman started speaking to my friend Sarah. I approached her and asked her if she could call a taxi for us, and Korean hullabaloo ensued. About ten Koreans immediately came from the woodwork, and in about ten minutes we were in somebody's car headed for the bus terminal. These people are crazy, and nice. Crazy nice. The best thing about that little interaction was when the woman showed us her "studying English" notebook, and the first thing we see is the word "lusty" and how it used in a sentence and then translated into Korean. Hilarious.
Well, this is getting pretty freaking long…but I'm gonna keep writing.
Last week a few of the Americans in town and one Canadian and I celebrated Turkey day in my apartment (which is extremely small). It was nice, we had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, mac and cheese, apple Danish things, and some wine. There was a small incident with the wine. I'll include one picture, to give you an idea, you can ask later if you'd like. It was clumsily hilarious.
So, I'm still in Korea, fancy that. Life here is becoming more routine and less hilarious, which is fine—all of that amusement can be tiresome. A couple of weeks ago, actually, I was so fed up with Korea that I wanted to hike north, through the land of Kim Jong-Il (maybe have a bit of a chat with the little, dying man), a nice hike through Russia, and then a refreshing swim to the land of Palin…The sound of Hangul-mal (Korean language) was like finger nails on a chalk board, and the superficiality and artifice that seems to drape over every single thing in Korea were really, really starting to rack my nerves. My good eighth grad girls were caught drinking at the elementary school (and one of them vomited—at the elementary school), the ninth grade boys have severed themselves from any notion of respect and "normal" social behavior, and my sixth graders have started to draw phallic symbols on everything and anything in sight. Oh, the joy of teaching middle school.
Please, do not worry or have many negative thoughts toward this country! After a bit of ranting, I will share some incredible acts of human kindness and beauty, and some fun times in Korea.
One of the more entertaining and god awful boring things I've done in the recent past was a teacher's "Retreat" to Chicken University—at first I thought maybe we were going to a school of poultry science or something, but no, it is actually called Chicken University!!! Haaahaaaa. I guess it's a place where people from a large Korean fried chicken chain, under the name BBQ chicken (BBQ= Best of the Best Quality) come to train and be surrounded by chicken-ey things. Mom, you would have loved it, there were huge roosters everywhere!! I will post pictures soon. Well, this "Retreat" was not what I expected; it involved all of the teachers and administrators sitting around a table, with a lot of chicken and other food, for SEVEN hours…talking about how to discipline the students (which, you can tell from the first paragraph has worked incredibly well). They did this all in Korean, of course (which I am not angry about, only two of them speak English). In the few instances that I did know what they were talking about, I would pipe in with a suggestion and promptly get shot down, or looked at like I am a crazy, naïve white girl who has no say in how to discipline the students. So why was I there!!! Aaarrrggghhhhh….I wasn't happy to say the least.
With that said, any of you who were "bad seeds" in your schooling years have any advice for how to deal with these hellions?? I'm pretty sure these students are more like the American "bad" students of the eighties and nineties than they are similar to anything the Korean teachers are familiar with. P.S. after SEVEN hours of bickering, there were no conclusions or decisions made. It was all a grand waste of time and energy. I did get out some wonderful poetry though, classics I'd say. Here is one :
I am so bored,
This is worse than orientation,
At least I have Somaek and apples.
Let's just send all of the little F@#$#ers to boot camp!
Beautiful, isn't it? I was truly inspired.
After staying up until 1 A.M. talking about students we awoke the next morning at an ungodly hour and went for a hike, which ended up being Very Danger. It was a short hike, on Dodomunsan, which means "Crying Pig Mountain." It should have been peaceful and quick, but the teacher who led us was keen on going off trail—which was cool, apart from the two older ladies with us and my aging principal. He brought us to these cliffs that, if someone had fallen or slipped, would have killed one of us. The way down was less treacherous, and it was enjoyable overall.
That same week as the teacher's conference I spent four days with the seventh and eighth grade students at a kind of camp, where they learned about Korean history, did team building stuff and generally practiced good ol' Korean camaraderie. It was very fun, I got to rock climb a bit with the kiddies, and we all bonded. I was the only non-Korean there with three schools present, so I was part of the entertainment for the few days. Fun fun. I think that week straight of only Korean interaction is what helped drive me to my state of discontent. That, and missing the excitement around elections…GOOObbbaaammaaaa!!!
Since then, things have looked up! I've gone on some more hikes, visited some fellow teachers and celebrated Thanksgiving! A couple of weekends ago, three of my friends and I visited Mt Seoun (or Seounsan) in a neighboring city. It took us a long time to get there (about 2.5 hours on a bus, in a car it would have been about 40 minutes), and we were hungry once we arrived. (annnddd, we were a bit lost, I was the organizer…never a good thing. I thought we were getting dropped off at the bus terminal, but apparently the bus doesn't stop at the terminal, so the bus driver kind of dropped us off in the middle of the street once he realized we were still on the bus, and we had to wander a bit to get our bearings). We stopped in a restaurant that was closed, so we left, but then the owner yelled after us and told us we could eat there still! It was so nice of him, and it was a great place to eat. For 9,000 won (about $7) we could eat as much as we wanted from his buffet. And this was no ordinary buffet. It had all of the Korean side dishes, like kimchi, veggies, little shrimpy things, condiments, and other Korean faire. The best part, though, was the huge array of raw meat to choose from. There had to be about twelve different types of pork and beef, in different marinades and different cuts, and we could take as much as we wanted. We just grilled it all on our table and did the lettuce wrap thing. It was delicious, nutritious and extremely kind of the old man.
We finally made it to where we wanted to hike, after a long cab ride, and hiked a bit. People on the mountain were extremely nice too. One kept taking pics of us and told us he would e-mail them to us (which he hasn't yet….) and we were fed pretty well on the way up as well. After we finished the hike, we couln't figure out the bus schedule, cause it didn't appear to go to where we needed to catch a bus home. There was a temple at the base of the mountain, so we checked it out, and a Korean woman started speaking to my friend Sarah. I approached her and asked her if she could call a taxi for us, and Korean hullabaloo ensued. About ten Koreans immediately came from the woodwork, and in about ten minutes we were in somebody's car headed for the bus terminal. These people are crazy, and nice. Crazy nice. The best thing about that little interaction was when the woman showed us her "studying English" notebook, and the first thing we see is the word "lusty" and how it used in a sentence and then translated into Korean. Hilarious.
Well, this is getting pretty freaking long…but I'm gonna keep writing.
Last week a few of the Americans in town and one Canadian and I celebrated Turkey day in my apartment (which is extremely small). It was nice, we had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, mac and cheese, apple Danish things, and some wine. There was a small incident with the wine. I'll include one picture, to give you an idea, you can ask later if you'd like. It was clumsily hilarious.
I've also participated in the national sports of badminton and ping pong, and seem to be alright at both. But, I am not a fan of competitive ping pong. Or should I say, table tennis. The boys here are way too competitive. Whatever taste I had for poker is now totally gone, and I'd rather never speak about American football ever again (since I was such a fan before!!). I'll stick to playing with the girls I guess, they are way more fun.
Okay, I'm getting sick of writing now…sorry to rattle your ears/eyes. I hope the Holidays are treating you all wonderfully and with great cheer and all that jazz. Miss you mucho, wish I could be at home during this time!!! Let me know how life is going for you all!! Peace and Love, Alex p.s. I did start a blog, it is http://www.arexinkorearand.blogspot.com/, it is a bit random, and so far has a lot of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons. But check it out, leave me some love, maybe it will entertain you a bit. I'll try to update that more often than I write e-mails. I will also post e-mails to the blog.
Okay, I'm getting sick of writing now…sorry to rattle your ears/eyes. I hope the Holidays are treating you all wonderfully and with great cheer and all that jazz. Miss you mucho, wish I could be at home during this time!!! Let me know how life is going for you all!! Peace and Love, Alex p.s. I did start a blog, it is http://www.arexinkorearand.blogspot.com/, it is a bit random, and so far has a lot of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons. But check it out, leave me some love, maybe it will entertain you a bit. I'll try to update that more often than I write e-mails. I will also post e-mails to the blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment