Kian in Korea

English Village

2006-08-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

My English Village Group
Originally uploaded by kian esquire.

On Friday we took a bunch of kids to an "English Village." English Villages are little theme parks/camps that have an educational bent, and there are a few of them in Korea. The one we went to, Paju Camp, just recently opened. It was built at a cost of 90 billion won! That's $9 million! It definitely looked like it cost as much. The Village itself and the area it was in were both absolutely beautiful.

The entrance to the camp is themed like an airport border patrol area- the staff, all English teachers, ask a few questions and give the kids a visa to enter. Entrance is only 1,000 won ($1), but you also have to pay to participate in most of the activities inside.

My group of kids were the ones who couldn't actually afford to pay for anything beyond the entrance fee, so we wandered around the camp and participated in some of the free activities and watched the street performers. Everything is themed to provide some sort of language learning experience- the restaurants even give mealtime lessons.

We only did the "One Day Experience." There are also camps of varying lengths, where you can go to get an immersive experience without having to travel all the way to somewhere where English is spoken. I spoke to a few of the teachers walking around- the native teacher staff is numbered over 150! Some are street performers who do lessons on the fly, others actually teach the longer-term campers in classrooms, and others are somewhere in between.

I actually applied to a job at this camp when I was originally looking for jobs here in Korea, but I think I ended up not taking it for some reason or another. It would definitely be a different experience because the camp is in the middle of nowhere, but still only an hour away from Seoul, like me. I think the job would have been more fun (and the scenery definitely a lot prettier than my scenery, but working at the English Village would definitely leave out a lot of the 'Korean experience,' if you will.

Time Flies!

2006-07-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

I don't know where the time goes! Here're some brief updates on stuff:

School is out for the summer, but that doesn't mean I don't go to work. Most days I sit in the office and work on other things, like making materials or lesson plans for the upcoming semester's classes. Some days, though, I go to other schools for "English Camp." English camps are an attempt to immerse the kids in the language for a period longer than their 45-minute classes at school. They are fun for the kids and it keeps them practicing even while school is out. It's also a relief for the teachers because usually the kids volunteer to come, so you have fewer disciplinary problems to deal with. Some camps are just regular work, but this week I have a camp that lasts 3 days and for which I will payed an extra 300,000 won! Some teachers get lucky and do enough camps that they can make an extra million won or more, but others, such as myself, do not. This is the only paying camp I'm doing during this vacation period. However, there is also a month off in the winter, and the same camp system applies then, too.

The monsoon season continues apace. Last Friday, I saw the most rain I'm sure I've ever seen in my life. In the morning I was teaching at a day-long English camp, and on the way home around 4, it looked like the end of the world. The streets were shin-high in water and the torrents poured down relentlessly. Bizarrely, everything is dry again by next day. It's bizarre because it's so humid. My laundry, even when it's not raining, takes several days to dry.

After monsoon season, there's suppose to be about a month of really horrendous heat and humidity before fall starts setting in. I've been to some places that are probably as humid as it is here, but somehow it's a lot worse here. It's not just that you sweat. The air is acrid from the piles of garbage everywhere (I don't understand the sanitation system here, so I can't really write much about it) and the shallow sewers. The air pollution, a combination of Seoul being surrounded on three sides by mountains, is oppressive. So when you sweat, it's not regular watery sweat. It's thick, it's greasy, and it smells bad. I will never complain about Southern California's air pollution again.

Fortunately, I will be able to get out of town to escape the smell, if not the heat and humidity. August 12th through 20th, I will be on vacation. My plan is to travel through the countryside. Since Korea is so small (only the size of Southern California), and so well connected (busses and trains connect everywhere in the country to everywhere else, and nothing takes longer than 4 or 5 hours by train), it should be easy to do a tour. Some things I plan on include: a temple stay, where you live and work and meditate in silence with monks for a day and
spend the night with them; and going to Jeju Island, which is Korea's answer to Hawaii. Expect thousands of pictures.

Last Friday I accomplished something amazing and incredible: I got my yellow belt in taekwondo! As a child I was a white belt for over a year and then gave up. Now I'm one step closer to that black belt! If you get a black belt, you actually get a card to carry saying so. In Korea, if you go to class every day (which I have been, hence the yellow belt in three weeks), it can take less than a year to go all the way to the top. Hopefully I'll be a card-carrying black belt before I get back to the USA.

After ~~black~~ yellow-belting it up, I took off for a weekend in Seoul with other native speaker teachers. We met lots of new people who very hospitably let us stay with them instead of spending money on hotels, and they showed us around. We ate Arabic and Italian food to our hearts' content, danced, and shopped. Next weekend, if all goes according to plan, I'll be visiting the Demilitarized Zone.

Weekend in the Islands

2006-07-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

Beach Bum
Originally uploaded by kian esquire.

This weekend a friend and I took a trip to Boryeong, a city two hours south of Seoul by train, to hit the beach and do a little island-hopping. Immediately after leaving city limits, I realized what a good idea the trip was going to be, and that it was a mistake staying in town on the weekends.
One of the first things you see when you get out of the city are rice paddies. A little further along, you start seeing forests. Shortly after that, you have a realization: These are the first trees I've seen in ages.

In Incheon, there's not exactly a plethora of landscaping. It's all cement. Seoul is a little bit better, but not much in the areas that I've seen. But as soon as you get out a ways, it all changes like I didn't expect at all. Green fields, big forests, and an overall beautiful landscape covers everything. The air stops smelling sour and the humidity eases off a bit. Suddenly Korea feels a lot more idyllic than it's been.

Our first stop was in Boryeong, which is where we were planning on taking the ferry to visit a couple of islands. Korea, I've learned, actually has thousands of islands surrounding it, some slightly inhabited, some not at all. The islands are a world apart from the rest of Korea. The people who live in the islands do a lot of farming, they speak with a completely different accent, and seem much, much more relaxed than their city counterparts.

Anyway, we walked around in Boryeong a little bit, and then headed to the ferry. We didn't know what the islands actually had to do on them. It turns out, on our first island, Hyoja-do, that there wasn't actually anything. Except for at the dock, we didn't see any people, either. In the entire island, we bumped into two old ladies peeling garlic, and a man and woman who ran the convenience store. It turns out that we had gotten off at the wrong island. The island across the way had restaurants and a place to stay. But, we had been tromping around on the island for over an hour and the ferry had long gone. No matter! A fisherman delivered us across the straight to the next island on his boat.

Wonsan-do was much bigger than Hyoja-do, which we managed to see all of in an hour. "Much bigger" doesn't mean all that much, though. The only ambient noise was the splash of water, the cuckling of roosters, and the occasional dog barking. Like the earlier realization that I hadn't seen green in forever, the quietness here suddenly made me realize how completely loud the city is.

The next day we headed back to Boryeong to spend some time at the beach. The water was warm, the sand was soft, and the sun was shining. The weather's been cloudy, rainy, and muggy in Incheon for as long as I've been here, so this was the first good weather I've seen since leaving home. Sitting on the beach felt so good, and we had a lot of entertaining Korean people to watch.

And that's that. After the beach we came back to Seoul and then I headed back to Incheon, and I have vowed to spend my weekends out of the city, exploring the beautiful Korea I didn't even know existed until now.

In which I destroy the souls of children

2006-07-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

I made two little kids cry today. In one class. Within ten minutes of each other.
"Kian, you monster!" you're thinking. "You fiend! How could you?"
More accurately, how couldn't I? It doesn't take very much to make these kids cry. They cry over anything and nothing, and they'll keep crying, forever, until lunch.
For example, the first student I made cry was a little girl. I asked her a question, and because she's shy, she mumbled her answer under her breath. I asked her to repeat it, louder, but she wouldn't. Instead, one of the girls sitting next to her did. So I said, "No, you. Louder please." Tears welled up, but I thought maybe I was imagining them since there is no way that could have made her cry. Wrong!
I have this little trick to make the girls talk louder, and that's to ask them to scream at the top of their lungs. Usually it takes two or three tries before this is anything above a whisper, but afterwards they have a much better idea of what I mean when I ask them to talk louder. And it's fun. Who doesn't want to scream in class?
So I tried it with the whimpering girl. And then she cried.

The second kid to cry, a cute little boy, was a little more justified, but barely. There's a 'punishment' we use in class that's really more of a joke than anything, just to keep people participating. If they are caught not participating, they have to come up to the front of the classroom and write their names in the air with their butts. Most of the kids do it with great fervor and everyone gets a laugh out of it. So, he comes up to the front of the room, looking fine, and then won't shake his butt around for about twenty seconds. And then he cries.

I don't even know how they do it. They go from zero to crying nearly instantaneously. Are all kids like this? I don't remember.

The Love Motel

2006-07-14T23:52:00.000-07:00

My Motel
Originally uploaded by kian esquire.

I purposefully didn't write about the hotel that I stayed in for the first two weeks I was in Korea because I didn't want to worry anyone. Now, though, it's time for the dark truth to be known.

I was staying at a Love Motel.

First off, they aren't actually motels, they're hotels. This one was new, and actually, quite luxuriously decorated inside and out. It's not the accomodation that's seedy, though, it's the purpose.

Anyone who's lived in Asia can tell you that there's no such thing as privacy, even at home. Korean men and women stay at home until they're married. This presents... shall we say... obstacles to young couples in love. In this atmosphere, a budding entrepreneur decided to cater to this market of people who needed a place to spend a romantic night, and now, Love Motels are absolutely everywhere. I mean everywhere.

Because my parents read this and I'm embarassed, I'm not going to go into much further detail. But let's just say that the hotel offers free rentals of... saucy movies... and there is a vending machine that sells, uh, toys. And your room includes, er, contraceptives, free of charge.

I'm told that while I and most foreigners find this to be extremely gross, for Koreans Love Motels are just a fact of life that everyone takes advantage of sooner or later.

Now you know.

Kids at school

2006-07-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

Kids at school
Originally uploaded by kian esquire.

When I say that the kids at my school are absolutely adorable, I mean this: They are rambunctious, big cheeked, and always happy to see you.

Little geniuses, all

2006-07-14T23:39:00.000-07:00

Little geniuses, all
Originally uploaded by kian esquire.

Because nobody quite understands just how lacking the English skills of my students are, I present to you a writing test taken by a 6th grader. He didn't need to actually think to come up with these, he only needed to listen to his teacher and copy down what she said.

To be fair, his English teacher doesn't speak English very well, so that's part of it. Keep in mind though, that they have textbooks that are actually decent and they've been studying English for 3 years at this point.

Settled

2006-07-08T19:23:00.000-07:00

So, after being here for three weeks, I've decided that instead of switching to a high school, I'm going to stay at the elementary school. There are a few reasons, but the main one is that I just want to get settled somewhere. I like my job and coworkers and students, and if I change to a high school I'm going to have to give up the month that I've invested here and start all over again. In my opinion, it's better for my sanity that I stay put. Now, three weeks into my trip, I can finally relax about the future. To celebrate, I bought a plant for my bedstand. I've decided to name him Kabob, for reasons that will be clear once you've all seen a picture of him.

My internet is still not installed. I don't know why the phone company thinks it can tell me that they'll be by my apartment "sometime Saturday or Monday" and I'll just hang out all day until they come. Hopefully they'll come right after work on Monday.

Strange Korea Facts:
1) For some reason, young Korean couples think it's charming to go out wearing the same outfits. I've seen this seven or eight times already, and when you go out shopping you will often see the man and the woman mannequins in matching outfits, too.
Going out shopping also revealed that there's not often a difference between men's and women's jeans. Because of the way Korean people are shaped (i.e. no hips), stores just carry different styles and the women buy the smaller sizes and the men buy the larger sizes.
2) Koreans take their games very seriously. There are two channels on my TV devoted to gaming- one is all Go, all the time (or at least in the evenings when I tend to watch TV), and the other is about video games. Or rather, it's not so much about video games as much as it shows them playing video games.
There are "PC Rooms" everywhere. They occur in the same frequencies here as Starbucks and McDonalds do in America. People stop by, usually pay 1,0000 Won an hour, and play video games or use the internet. It's where I am now. Nothing stops these people from getting their gaming in. Last week, sitting right next to me was a guy who was actually attached to an IV.
3) People wear the same clothes over and over again. I didn't notice this until I saw one of the teachers at my school wear a frilly, flowery dress two days in a row. Then, all of a sudden, it was everywhere. The students, the other teachers, people who work in stores by my apartment, the kids in my Taekwondo class. They wear the same exact thing, over and over again, for two or three days (maybe more, but I can't keep track longer than that). I knew that I was in a somewhat poor area, but are these people that poor?
No. As it turns out, this is a byproduct of the fact that until not very long ago, Korea was a very poor country. The younger generations now are the very first to actually have enough money to do and buy whatever they want. But, because of their past, Koreans are very frugal. So, they save extremely high percentages of their income and spend relatively little on anything else.

My internet time is running out, so until next time, 안녕히 가세요!

First Taekwondo Class

2006-07-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was one of my first real experiences here where the language barrier was completely standing in the way of my getting what I wanted. I found a Taekwondo place near my house but neither of the guys running it spoke any English. To save myself a lengthy explanation, say the following sentences out loud.

1. How much do classes cost?
2. How many times a week do I come?
3. What time is class?

Now imagine that you need to ask someone from Mars these questions.
OK, are you imagining? That's how long it took. Like twenty minutes.

Fortunately, your narrator is really good at this kind of thing by now. Finding out the cost was easy enough- "How much?" is right there in my Korean phrasebook. "How often are classes?" wasn't, though, and for this I needed to be creative. I took a nearby calendar and touched every day of the week. Sensei caught on (Actually, you call him Sonsangnim, which literally means "high person" and "teacher," and it's what the kids call me at school, too), and pointed to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Score. That's a lot of Taekwondo for your buck. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote "7:00 --> 8:00 ?" on it, as my way of asking when the classes were. He nodded, and wrote the actual class times.

Please don't let the above paragraph fool you. There was lots of stuttering, sitting quietly and looking at each other befuddled, and then finally calling in a boy who spoke maybe seven words of English to translate.

Finally, Sonsangnim looked at me and said "Uniform!"
This was going to be trouble, I could tell. If I remember anything about sports, it's that buying the equipment for and subsequently giving up every single sport I'd ever tried would bankrupt many people. But then, he elaborated: "크기!"
Although I had no idea what "kugi" meant, the motions he was making with his hand indicated "size?"
Personally, I identify as a "medium," but he wanted to know my height in centimeters. As if. So, on top of challenging me linguistically, this man wanted me to do math, too. After converting my height in inches to 400 centimeters and realizing that that was definitely wrong, I asked for a calculator and I am a size 170.

How much was the uniform, you ask?
Free.

So, I went back today for my first class. The classes aren't organized by age or level or anything- there were kids that looked like third graders all the way up to high school age boys and girls, and then me. Class is in Korean. Fortunately, when the teacher says "Bla bla bla" and everyone kicks, I can figure out that it means to kick. In addition to kicking a few things, I learned that it really sucks to do pushups on your fists instead of your palms. I imagine that this will make my fists really hard-core so that I can punch things more easily. I did pretty well all in all, and the kids in the class kept saying "wow" and clapping.

That doesn't mean that my Ninja Skills are fully developed. It means that they are amazed that American people can do anything other than eat white bread and ask for the restroom (our stereotype, as I've learned).

Anyway, after an hour of kicks, punches, practicing my stances, and doing cartwheels (one-handed cartwheels, thank you, and I did them well), I was pretty beat and class was over. It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

I'm some kind of mutant, apparently.

2006-07-02T22:14:00.000-07:00

After one of the kids said that I look like Angel (from the X-Men movie), I've decided that it is absolutely permissable to say that all Asian people look the same, because they clearly think the same thing about us. One little bastard disagreed, though, and said I look more like The Beast. Very funny. I'm not that hairy.

My apartment

2006-07-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

So, after two weeks of staying in a hotel, I finally moved into my apartment yesterday.
So, I don't know any artful way to explain it, so I'll just say it: it's small.
By small, I mean:
1) From anywhere in my apartment, you can see everywhere in my apartment.
2) The air conditioner (and having air conditioning is a huge gigantic perk) cools the entire place down in less than five minutes, so I guess my concerns about the energy bill are unfounded.
3) My bathroom is... my shower? It's hard to explain if you've never seen such a thing before. The shower head is connected to the sink. The water goes down a drain in the floor in between my sink and the toilet. You can sit on the toilet while you're taking a shower. Miraculously (and it's clearly a miracle because I cannot understand the physics that allows this to happen), the toilet paper stays dry, even though nothing else does. Some very intelligent Korean engineer came up with this, I know.
4) My closet is in the kitchen.

Really though, it's a very comfortable room. It's reasonably new, it's clean-ish, and it's all brand new furniture in there. A few ferns here and there and it will be completely livable. Tomorrow they are coming to set up the internet connection, so I will finally be able to upload the pictures off my laptop so you guys can see what stuff looks like here.

Life gets easier

2006-06-28T02:11:00.000-07:00

So a few things are looking up.
One of my main concerns when it came to changing schools was that I felt guilty for leaving my co-teachers and students after they were all so excited for me to arrive. Well, it turns out that not one, but both of my co-teachers are actually leaving at the end of this semester. One's leaving the country and the other is either not going to be an English teacher anymore or is leaving the school, I don't remember. So, I don't have to feel guilty about leaving them anymore- they're leaving me, haha. It's honestly a relief.

I got my resident alien ID card a few days ago, which means I was finally able to get my bank account, which means that today, I actually got paid! Money! It's only a fraction of my regular monthly salary since I started on the 17th, but compared to how little I've spent since getting here, the amount is shockingly large. I have been eating out every night, going everywhere I want and buying everything I please for the last week and a half, and it's not even a third of even this paycheck, which is less than half of what I'll make per month. This is some of the easiest money I've ever saved.

I seriously love some of these kids. There are some that are so cute that I just want to steal them and bring them back to America with me. I never really thought I was a kid-friendly guy, but apparently I have it in me when necessary, or at least when I'm in a position of authority! Today I gave one 6th-grade class English names. By the end of class I already remembered most of their names, unlike the two Korean names I learned in the ten days that I've been here. On Friday I have the rest of the 6th-graders and they too will get fantastic English names like Charlie, Spencer, Sheila, and Gloria.

I got a haircut today, too. I was concerned that I was doomed to bad hair because what do Korean people know about cutting thick, wiry, Persian hair? I was wrong! There's an Aveda salon right by my hotel (I move into my apartment in a few days, by the way), and I am definitely going there every time I need a haircut from now on. It only cost twenty dollars. And, either because I'm a foreigner or because I'm a "handsome boy," or both, I also got free aromatherapy and a head and shoulder massage. And in South Korea, you aren't supposed to tip. They don't even accept tips.

The only rough patch today was teaching my adult class. Two hours a week I am supposed to teach a class for the other teachers at the school. However, for some reason, the other teachers are afraid of me or of English, so only seven teachers showed up. Well, one of them left in the beginning when she found out I'd be giving a "level test", which means that I had them write one paragraph about themselves so I could get an impression of what level their English was at. I think they are afraid of showing that they are bad at something, to somebody who is as young as I am. What they don't know is that I'm dead nervous myself, because some of these people have been teachers for longer than I've been alive, and I don't want them to think that I'm a bad teacher. It's nuts. But, now that the hard part is over, I can start preparing lessons and having fun with everyone.

I miss friends and family and food from home, but I'm getting adjusted to stuff here. I figure I can afford to have a wholesale rejection of Korea once a week and go to a McDonalds or Pizza Hut, and then feel better about myself.

Korean Age

2006-06-25T04:38:00.000-07:00

In Korea they count their age differently than we do in the west. You have two ages- your Korean Age and your Actual Age. Your Korean age is one or two years higher than your actual age, depending on when your birthday is and when in the year it is.

For most of us, when you're born you are zero years old, and a year later you are one. In Korea, a newborn baby is one year old. And instead of turning two on his birthday the following year, he turns two the following new year's day- even if that's only a few weeks away.

Confusing, right? An easier way to look at it: when you are born, you are on your first year of life. When it's your birthday, you've survived another year. In the west we tally how many years you've survived. In Korea, they count what year you're on. That much kind of makes sense. The adding a year on new year's day is the weird kicker that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So, my 'actual' age is 23. But now, in Korea, I'm 24. And when new year's rolls around, I'm going to be 25! But, I'll still be 25 years old even after I actually turn 24. And then, when I get back to America, I'm going to be 24 again. Koreans are often interested in if you think their age system is a good idea. I don't really know what to tell them!

One week down, 51 to go

2006-06-24T02:40:00.000-07:00

Well, today marks one week that I've been here in Incheon. It's gone by pretty fast. I've been having a pretty good time despite the fact that I've been sick all week, so I'm looking forward to enjoying Korea when I can actually walk five feet without breaking out into a sweat.

Every day brings about new challenges though. I was under the impression that anywhere you went in the world, you could find people who spoke English- especially in a country like Korea where learning English is such a big deal. But that hasn't been the case- almost nobody I encounter outside of my school speaks so much as a word other than "hello" "sorry." This has led to me being forced to learn basic getting around vocabulary, really quickly. So far this week I had been mostly uttering one word at a time, hoping they would get the gist of what I was saying, but as of yesterday I've graduated to actually conjugating a couple of verbs and being understood. I can also read the alphabet, although I don't know what the words mean.

On Fridays I teach 3rd graders all day. They're really cute- like, really cute, with gigantic cheeks and little tiny eyes. 3rd grade is when the kids at this school first start taking English lessons, so they don't know very much. What they do know, they don't pronounce in a manner that even vaguely resembles English. It's strange, but I was observing the class while the Korean teacher was doing a lesson, and I could not understand anything that was going on. Even the English teachers here speak very, very, very little English. I took two quarters of French in college, five years ago. Imagine me as a French teacher. That's what it's like, and that's why they bring in native speakers, so that the kids can hear what English is actually supposed to sound like. But when the kids (of all grades) hear my accent, it's so foreign to them that they can't understand what I'm saying. Fortunately, with kids this young it's easy to correct most of their errors. Theoretically if any of these kids moved to the USA tomorrow they'd be speaking English without an accent in five years. That won't happen when I start teaching high school kids- they've already moved past the age where they can become native-like in a language.

Next Wednesday I start teaching a two-hour class for the other teachers at my school. I'm really looking forward to that, because I'll be the "Major Teacher," which means I'm in charge of everything, as opposed to the "Minor Teacher" in the rest of the classes, where I don't make the lesson plans, I just provide an authentic voice in class and give my input to the Korean teacher. I think the first thing I will work on is their pronunciation. Koreans typically make the following mistakes: [th] becomes [s], [f] becomes [p], and [z], in some circumstances, becomes [j]. And, of course, the [l] and [r] debacle that is East Asia.

Some other things:
I know it's a Buddhist thing, but it's really weird seeing Swastikas everywhere.

I really like getting free food. Today I treated myself to Pizza Hut, and although I ordered one pizza, for some reason they gave me two. Pizza in Korea is, I'm afraid to say, absolute crap compared to pizza at home. I ate both anyway.

Some places will give you free stuff because you're a foreigner, but other places will completely rip you off because they think you're rich. The other teachers asked me what the average salary was for people in America, and when I answered "35 thousand dollars a year," they were shocked that it was so low. The average income in South Korea is $20,000 dollars a year.

Adjusting

2006-06-21T04:32:00.000-07:00

I think the kids were even cooler today than they were yesterday. It's cool how they are super eager to learn English now that I'm here. Sung said she was shocked to see some of the students who never bothered before totally trying hard to be able to talk to me. One of the kids is the school's basketball star and he asked me to come to the gym at lunch and play with him! I did, and they were all excited to have me play with them even though I stink at basketball.

One thing I really like about the schools in this country is how hands-on it is. In America you can't lay a finger on a student without worrying about getting sued. Here, the students want to hug you (well, me? I don't know why), you smack them on the back of the head (lightly!) if they misbehave, and when one extremely agile little kid intercepted a pass on the basketball court, I picked him up and raised him over my head to show him what I thought of that. These kids love any sort of attention as long as somebody is actually paying attention to them.

Whether I love the attention back is beginning to be an issue! It's embarassing to walk down the halls and have the kids scream (scream!) every time I walk by. I can't lie, it's kind of fun feeling like a celebrity, but I'm worried the other teachers will get angry at me for disrupting their classes- but it's not my fault, I just walk past the door and suddenly there's ten kids running after me. I'm not even safe in the teacher's lounge. I was standing by the window to get some air and some of the sixth grade girls playing outside saw me. All you could hear for the next ifve minutes was "You're so handsome! I love you!" and the next time I dared to peek outside, they had drawn a big heart in the dirt and stood in formation alongside it. WEIRD!

I'm really starting to consider just staying at this school even though my original plan was to teach at a high school. I like it a lot and I'm actually interested in seeing what kind of progress I can help them make. I think it would be good practice learning how to deal with little children, too- it's not something I think I'm very good at right now. I'm sure in a month I'm going to love all these kids and won't want to leave. Also, the other teachers are starting to overcome their shyness with me and are actually trying to talk to me in English (most younger people know some English but they are extremely shy about making mistakes so they won't say a word). I'd hate to just be here a month when everyone is so happy to have me here (my co-teacher said she couldn't sleep at all the night before I came because she was so excited to meet me- I thought this whole thing would just be a crazy job, but I didn't realize that this is really important to Koreans to have native English speakers).

Other things: Taking your shoes on and off every time you go anywhere is really annoying. I bought my first pair of slip-on shoes (Vans!). These ones are currently my "inner shoes" for at the school, but as soon as I find myself some decent slippers (most of the male teachers just wear sandals like what you'd wear in a hotel bathroom, but with socks), I'm going to use those as my inner shoes and the Vans as my "outer shoes" because they are so easy to take on and off.

Today, after classes were over, all the teachers got together and went bowling (my team got second place, no thanks to me: I bowled 71 the first game and then 78 the second, haha) and then had dinner. We had samgyopsal (삼겹샬), which is fried pork slices cooked on a special platter in front of you. It's extremely fatty, but tasty. With it we had soju (소추), which is Korean rice liquor. It tastes like a very mild sake and has a very low alcohol content. Food is incredibly cheap. A full, big, delicious dinner will cost 3 or 4 thousand won, which is 3 or 4 dollars. Last night I had shabu shabu, which is actually Japanese and on the expensive side- 10 thousand won, but in America shabu shabu is like thirty dollars a person.

OK, that's all for now- if I stay at this PC cafe any longer I might run up a huge bill of, like, two dollars. ;)

First day at school

2006-06-20T02:25:00.000-07:00

OK, so I may ahve overreacted a little bit yesterday about having to teach in an elementary school. I actually had a lot of fun today. I got to school early so i waited by the back door and pracitced writing in hangul (my name: 기안). It didn't take very long for me to get mobbed by little kids, all eager to use their entire body of knowledge about English on me. "Hello! Hi! Nice to meet you! You are very handsome!" I especially liked that last part. Both the boys and the girls called me handsome, but the girls do so while giggling and blushing a deep red. The boys, if they're feeling particularly daring, will rub my arms (they've never felt arm hair before!).

Today I assisted my co-teacher Sung in four of her classes, all fifth grade (I'll also be teaching 3rd, 4th, and 6th graders). Each class asked me lots of questions, from the basic "How old are you?" (my Korean age is 24, not 23! You are 1 year old when you are born) and "Where are you living?" (I have absolutely no idea, that's where), to the random- "What's your mother's name?" "Who's your favorite footballer?" and from a student who was clearly fishing for a compliment, "who do you think is the most handsome boy in this class?" Naturally, in response to that, I indicated that the handsomest guy in the classroom was in fact me, and we all had a good laugh.

It's somewhat bewildering how th elittle girls will be walking around, and when they see me they will literally scream and point as if I was some famous actor. Speaking of famous actors, at lunch the other teachers said that I looked just like this or that one. I was extremely flattered to be compared to Daniel Henney, even though it's an extremely false comparison (He's only half Korean, so I guess to Korean people he looks... Persian? I don't know). Weirder still was how I look like French soccer player Thierry Henry. I can sort of maybe understand someone telling me I look half Asian, but I don't think I look particularly black. Haha. Both handsome gentlemen though, I guess I should just take it as a compliment. It seems that if you aren't fully Korean and you're at least marginally good looking, you look like everyone else on the planet that fits that description.

In addition to teaching 19 elementary classes a week, I am also responsible for teaching 3 classes where the students are the other teachers! That'll be fun because I am completely responsible for the curriculum, so I get to teach whatever I want and I'm totally in charge.

So, after classes were over, Sung, the principal (in Korea principals are actually really really important bigwigs), an administrator and I all went to get a look at what will be my apartment. Let's just say that it's tiny, and that calling it tiny is a silly understatement. The bathroom and the shower sort of exist as one entity. There's a toilet, a sink, and the shower head is attached to the sink and drains into a drain in the middle of the room. My main concern, to be honest, is where will I keep my magazines? They'll get wet! Otherwise the studio is fine because even though it's small, it's not like I'll be hanging out in my apartment all day long. It should just be a place to sleep and hang out in betwen doing other things.

So in light of having a good time at this school, I'm not sure if I should reconsider my demand to move to a high school. It's what I originally wanted and what I was told I'd get, but maybe I just didn't know? I have to think about it more. I'm still leaning towards moving to the high school on July 19th, but I don't know how that will play in with my living situation and all that. So much to think about!

Dear God No

2006-06-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

My school has squat toilets.

First few days

2006-06-19T02:54:00.000-07:00

So I've been here two or three days now (it depends on what side of the international date line you're on), and it's been a very interesting experience, and it's definitely been a lot to deal with in one weekend.
First off, I met five other English teachers who are teaching in the same region as me. We spent Sunday in Seoul, just tromping around and seeing the sights. We stumbled upon the Seoul Mosque (I'll post pictures later), and it was very weird seeing the Arabic calligraphy and tilework and minarets in the middle of a completely different place. Most of the people praying there were Turks and Arabs, and only a couple of Koreans. The girls had to stay outside but they let us guys in to watch them do their prayers. There weren't very many of them. I'd like to see the place on a Friday.
The mosque was in Itaewon, which is a popular district for foreigners in Seoul. Judging by the haircuts, most of them were American servicemen (the military base is smack in the middle of Seoul), but there was a good share of everybody. There were a lot of Middle Eastern restaurants there, so when I get hungry for some kebab I'll know where to go!
Today, we met our Korean co-teachers and went to our respective schools. This proved a little bit of a problem for me, because when I was applying for jobs, I took this position because I was told that I would be teaching in a high school. It turns out I got placed in an elementary school. This is a problem for me because I am not particularly good at dealing with children. I spoke to Ryu, who is my contact at the Ministry of Education, and told him that I was expecting to be placed in a high school. He promised to get me into a high school in a month, on July 19th. That's better than not getting one at all, but I'm livid because I made it pretty clear to all parties what my expectations were at the outset and I more or less received a guarantee that I'd be accomodated. I e-mailed my contact back in Canada, Shane (who hired me) to let him know of the problem and I really hope that it gets taken care of soon. Other foreign teachers are already in their apartments and getting settled down but my situation is (for me) still completely up in the air. I'm actually in a hotel right now, where I'll be until July 1st. And then I move into an apartment, and then I'm probably going to have to move again when I get put into a new school. Not cool. But, I don't really have any other option so I'm just going to try my best to resolve this situation.
Lunch today was interesting. For an appetizer, we had some kind of omelet with octopus, oyster, mushroom, and shrimp. Lunch itself was clam and noodle soup. I can't claim that it was horrible and disgusting, because I actually sort of liked the octopus, but I'm not a huge shellfish fan. Seafood is called mulgogi, which means "water meat", and I find that kind of funny. They eat a lot of seafood and pork here, and I'm curious what on earth the Muslims at that mosque eat when they go anywhere.
Tomorrow is my first day, I'll be observing the other teachers in the classroom. Next time I write hopefully I'll have some kind of resolution to this school mixup!

One Week to Go

2006-06-09T00:08:00.000-07:00

On June 16th, I'm flying to Incheon, South Korea where I'll be teaching high school students English. This blog here is where I'll be posting pictures and experiences to share with everyone back home. Come back in a week for more!