open fire

this week, i had the pleasure of hosting two open classes for my kindergarten classes. i initially thought that an open class would mean parents would come in to observe a regular old day of class. this made me nervous, but the maybe only the kind of nervous that makes you sweat a little. well, i later learned that we actually had to "perform" elaborate activities, songs, and choreographed dances. now this is the kind of nervous that makes me want to cry. i am not a performer. i never joined the drama club for good reason. i don't like memorizing things. i don't like all eyes on me. i don't like singing and dancing in front of staring and judging parents. my supervisor changed our lesson plans for each class just about every day. i had to memorize who to call on for each activity. i had to memorize what numbers to count to during one of our scripted games.
me: so i count down from 10 first and then basically count down from a descending number each other time?
supervisor: no. you start by counting down by 10. then you count down by 9. then you count down by 5. then 3.
me: so it doesn't really matter. as long as i start with 10 and then count down from any descending number, right?
supervisor: no. you start by counting down by 10. then you count down by 9. then you count down by 5. then 3.

everything was pretty much scripted out for me. i don't think they trusted me to wing it. grrr. so the open classes came and went. for my first class, the mothers reminded me of the korean version of housewives of orange county. they were decked out in bright colors, gold, pumps, and disapproving looks on their faces. it's funny. you know when someone has a booger hanging out of their nose, but you don't want to explicitly say, "hey you have a booger hanging out of your nose," so you do that subtle brushing your nose with you finger move? well, i thought i had a booger cemented to my nose all day because 3 of the korean staff at school kept doing that to me. after several mirror checks, i realized i had no booger. they were just trying to tell me to take out my nose ring. without actually telling me. so, in order to avoid another all day game of charades i took my nose ring out for the next open class.

my second open class was much better, but it was far from fun.

i'm really not into having people watch me while i work. but it's funny, i'm actually getting used to it. by the end of this year i may crave attention at all times. well, i'm glad that it's all over. every week at school seems to bring about fun new adventures. we'll see what happens next.

e-mart thinks i'm fat

e-mart is our local walmart/targetish one stop shop. it's big and convenient and there are free samples galore. it also feels like there is an employee for every customer in the store. if you have a question, just turn around and you will find a bevy of eager ajumas longing to show you the way to the best shampoo deal. if you don't have a question, it's ok. they still have answers for you. i like e-mart for their cute stickers and stationary. korea is a very cutesy place, and anyone who knows me knows that i'm into "cute". they also have fun deals like buy batteries and get a free pack of moist towelettes. or get a free can of spam with your laundry detergent. i don't like e-mart because they really don't want me to buy desserts. i tried to buy an ice cream bar and one of the million employees told me i couldn't. jared tried to buy donuts once, and again we were denied. today, i was so excited to buy a bag of mini twix bars. no dice. the cashier said something to me in korean, smiled, and slowly placed the bars underneath the register. i can't figure it out. i have gained some weight since coming here, but damn...

why can't everyday be saturday?

things have been well for the old man and i. we have settled into our jobs pretty well. now, we are focused on the daily joys of classroom discipline. it's a delicate balance of letting kids be kids without letting them go so far as burning the building down. any tips?

we have been doing a lot of traveling around the south of the country on our long weekends. we went to the south west province, jeollanam do, several weeks ago and saw a bamboo forest and a green tea plantation. a few weekends ago, we went to a sea town, tong young. from there, we went to two small islands. the island that we slept on was like stepping back in time. there were no cabs and the buses stopped running at 4pm. it seemed as though people were fishing or hiking earlier in the day, and then they would start getting wasted at 2pm. so, we joined in the festivities by drinking soju and loitering on a dock. good times were had by all.

we spent a few separate weekends in busan. i really heart busan. there is a yummy turkish restaurant that i've been having dreams about. i will go broke shopping there. i kind of love young korean style. too bad i'm an old lady. dan k took us to a lotte giants baseball game in busan. it was pure fun. $7 gives you a general admission seat of your choosing. you can bring all the food and drink into the game that you'd like. i saw one woman take up 4 seats with her makeshift kitchen. i really love the weekends. sigh.

big brother and the whole damn family are watching

something that i didn't realize when i signed on to work at my school is that the bored mothers of my students would be hanging out on a regular basis watching me teach. yes, that's right. there are video cameras in all of the classrooms and parents come in all of the time to make sure that we are showering their children with English mastery skills and goodness. Needless to say, I absolutely love it. I also feel the need to mention that my home class is directly across from the parents watching me. so on hot days when i leave the door open i can watch the parent(s) watching me. it's pretty sweet. it doesn't really happen all of the time, but just a few times feels like too much. in a way, i understand that it's a way to ensure that your child is not being molested or abused or playing tic tac toe all day. BUT, come on. if anything, it certainly doesn't motivate me to become a better teacher. it just annoys me and makes me want to play tic tac toe all day. in korean.

happy one month

so, we've been here for a month. it's been a mixed bag of highs and lows. i finally had a weekend to relax. last saturday i woke up after 11 refreshing hours of sleep. i have finally stopped eating for two and have come to terms with the fact that the korean food is not going anywhere. i even filled out an application for the public gym. i wonder when i will actually turn it in. i have thought about it several times, but i'm not sure when it will actually be handed to the receptionist and be processed. one day at a time, right? it's been a delicate balance of adjusting to a new job in which i have no experience, a new apartment, and a new country. i really love the kids that i work with. they crack me up, when they are not being little bastards. sometimes they're the most charming when they are being little bastards. i enjoy working with them, but i'm learning that a teacher must have an immense amount of patience. i was never the patient type. maybe i'll learn. probably not, though.

i have been trying to find this korean language exchange, but it just doesn't seem to be in the stars. someone was supposed to email directions to me, but it never happened. so, i went to the bar that they go to after class, and they never showed up. hmm. i don't think i'm supposed to learn korean. so, instead of pursuing this further, we joined the dvd rental thing at o'brien's pub and have finished disc one of lost. i think finishing the series will be more productive than learning korean anyway.

going to korea. round 2.

well, i will be off to korea again. i have been in guam for the past 2 days to visit with halmoni. she's in very poor shape, but apparently she has gotten much better over the past week. so, today i must say goodbye to her. it's a very strange feeling. saying goodbye to someone that you know is going to die.

more travels

i'm heading to guam on friday night to see my grandmother. she's pretty sick. my boss has been gracious enough to give me some time off to see her. i haven't seen her since 2002. thanks bossman. i haven't been the greatest granddaughter, so i'm glad that i can see her soon. since being here i've noticed how important the family system is. this is especially true of our elders. i struggle with finding balance between my western upbringing, valuing individualism, and my korean heritage which focuses less on the self and more on the family unit. i love the idea of making it more about the family, but it's not easy to put into practice. especially since i love me so much. i think my time in korea will help me to appreciate where my family is coming from, namely my parents.

so, my travels continue. i realize that we've been here for a month, but it feels like a week. we've been going non stop: learning our neighborhood, our job, our mountains, our neighboring provinces. it's been great, but tiring. next weekend. i think i will lay in bed from friday until monday morning. maybe i'll get up to use the bathroom. maybe.

disturbed

ugh. i think disturbing situations should not happen all at once. they should be spaced out throughout one's day. maybe every 5 hours is a good amount of space. anyway, i had a good day at school. tuesdays and fridays are really long days, but i like the older kids that i teach. they're pretty cool for the most part, but i have one pretty challenging class at the end of the day. they are my oldest group and they speak the least amount of english. they actually don't really speak any english, though their reading is pretty good. it doesn't help that the book for the class tries to get them to sing songs about giraffes and going on picnics. i thought i'd end their friday with a game just to be a nice hope teacher, but that didn't pan out too well. this class clown student tried to steal my homework stamps and then he asked me what color my panties were. i was so pissed. and sad. in my mind, kids think about rainbows and puppy dogs. they don't think about panties and stealing. oh naive hope.

speaking of puppy dogs... today is market day. every 5 days (or every day with a 4 or 9 in it), they set up a pretty big farmer's market in between the school and our apartment. it is pretty glorious. i like to walk through and pretend that i am a local and then i push older women out of my way. but i love that farmers come out and sell all kinds of great produce. some people only have like 2 big bowls of greens to sell and they'll set up shop right on the corner of the street. one day i'll take pictures. well, anyway i thought i'd try to recover from my recent discovery of teenage hormones by taking a nice stroll through the market. it was nice. i bought a watermelon (yummy) and i passed rows of duk, a multitude of grains in every shape and color, greens, and fruit. i was slightly taken aback by man butchering the half pig next to the sock vendor, but it was nothing to write home about. well, i guess it is. anyway, what disturbed me was seeing a box of puppies and kittens huddled together trying to keep warm. the puppies must have been a few days old. they were so tiny. i stayed and pet them for a few minutes until the man who was selling them came to take them home. oh man. do you know those sacks that you put soccer balls in? well, just picture someone throwing a bunch of soccer balls into a sack. and now you have seen what i saw. except they weren't soccer balls. they were tiny puppies. and kittens. being tossed into a sack like soccer balls. i know i shouldn't judge, but that just wouldn't be me. i know that as a meat eater i don't have a lot of room to talk, but i really heart dogs and cats. so in an attempt to help myself feel better, i ran home and hugged my cats against their will for the next hour.

my poor legs

we had the day off yesterday for "children's day" (yay children!), so jared and i decided to not be lazy for once. we went to bulmosan (a nearby mountain) for a little hike, or so we thought. after a 15 minute cab ride, the driver dropped us off and pointed to the mountain. i gathered that he said something like, "go ahead, you can climb it". i thought, "no problem". we'll find a trail, and climb to the top. it will be lovely. well, after about 20 minutes of searching for a non existent trail, we decided that we would climb the vertical hill through the trees and bushes. we climbed through thick brush and at times, i felt as though i needed a machete. it was a lewis and clark moment, except i was less concerned about exploring and more concerned about not getting eaten or killed by an animal or a mountain person. we did this for a good 20 minutes before deciding that we didn't want to end our lives in the woods.

we were on the verge of giving up, but we saw what looked like a trail in the distance past a bunch of farms. with the help of a korean farmer, we were able to get past an electric fence and climb bulmosan. hurrah! hiking is intense. i can't really feel my legs today, but i give the experience an A+ anyway. we came down a different way and were pleased to run into a really pretty temple. we were pretty beat by the end of our trek, and were thrilled to learn that there was no public transportation anywhere near us. so, we continued our hike on the highways of changwon. thankfully we were able to get a cab before we passed out.

we rewarded ourselves with mr. pizza and beer tonight. i'm really into undoing the good that i do for myself.

finally

we are finally singing, "now our house is a home". jared and i have been in changwon for 2 weeks now, and we are finally feeling settled into our new lives. we completed our first week of teaching on friday. korean kids are so cute! my students are from kindergarten through 6th grade. the school is pretty organized so the curriculum is all laid out for us, which is good, because otherwise, i wouldn't know what i was doing. they work us pretty hard, but they have been decent employers so far. speak to me again about this in a few months.
jared and i went to incheon yesterday to pick up our kitties from the quarantine office. our family is complete again! life wasn't the same for us without our two little friends by our sides, and we are relieved to report that they do not seem crazy or traumatized from the trip. reiko's limp has even healed from his "bed rest" in quarantine.
so, how has life in korea been for us so far? i think i've felt every emotion possible since i've been here. i was very sad to leave my peeps at home, and i questioned our decision to come here for the first two nights. i was also frustrated by the fact that i couldn't communicate with people. i felt as though i should be able to. well, i'm getting over that. i'm channeling my 5 year old self that was able to talk to my korean speaking grandmother. the words are s-l-o-w-l-y coming back, but they're coming. i realize that being self conscious about my korean speaking abilities is a waste of time. i can't help that i don't really know korean. i'll try my best, but that's all i can do.
changwon seems like a pretty cool town. it's a small city surrounded by mountains. we live downtown, so we are close to most things that we need. at night the city reminds me of times square because there are neon lights stacked on top of more neon lights. every building has a bunch of businesses stacked on top of each other. there are tons of restaurants, bars, 7-11 type stores, coffee shops, and other random electronic stores. our apartment is across from what may be the dirtiest building in changwon. BUT behind this are pretty mountains, so i can't complain too much. so far, what i have seen of korea is a lot of beauty and nature, but it's often marred by neon lights or some type of man made obstruction. i'll take it though. we have a farmer's market that comes on everyday that there is a 4 or a 9 in the date that makes me want to cry tears of joy. i bought 3 pounds of homegrown strawberries for $3. this is probably my favorite part of our town.
top five korean experiences so far:
5. every single meal - i love korean food! except for our "traditional korean meal" of a bunch of baby octopus in pepper sauce
4. seeing two men waiting for their perms to set in a hair salon
3. walking into a pharmacy, pulling out my korean phrasebook, and saying "i have diarrhea" in broken korean
2. watching a movie through an intense water fountain show at our local lake, Yongii Lake
1. seeing our serious director get drunk and jump up and down with excitement