The Week(s) that Was: School Festival and Pretend Thanksgiving

Instead of posting last Sunday night I was busy sitting in a bus terminal in Seoul for 5 hours. We got to the terminal at 4:30pm and asked for the next bus back to Naju, which turned out to be at 9:29pm. I sat against a column the whole time and wound up getting back to Naju around 2am. I had a pretty unproductive and lethargic week — maybe foreshadowed by my weary Sunday evening– but let’s talk about the week before this one instead, it was much more fun!

School Festival:

I’m really disappointed that my school festival videos won’t load because they’re pretty epic. My two favorites are of a group of my students doing a fully choreographed dance to a K-Pop song and the other is a robot daft-punk solo act. If I can ever figure them out I’ll be sure to post them. But for now, these are some pictures from my school’s festival!

Please look at the kid on the right, hipster waiting to be born.

Drumming act that went on for a really long time

The catcher for my baseball team showin' off THE PIPES

This was before they started jumping on me and trying to steal my wallet =p

I love E-Waun. He told me looked like "this guy" and routinely puffs out his belly and provokes everyone to slap it (he never backs down)

Pretend Thanksgiving:

Most of the ETAs gathered in Seoul last weekend to have a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by the US Embassy. It was in the National Folk Museum and the newly anointed ambassador to Korea was there to greet us. The food was okay (but considering I hadn’t had mashed potatoes in 6 months I ate way too much) and the company was, as usual, classy.

*

I had a pretty off week for some reason (besides bowling in Mokpo last night where my team killed it!), nothing bad happened to me but it just was a very lethargic few days. It’s about to be the start of a new week and month so I’m ready to start off fresh tomorrow. I think I’m stressed out by all the planning I need to do before the semester ends…but this time next month I’ll be on a beach in Melbourne and playing with koala bears so I can’t complain too much!

The Week that Was: The Test, Daejeon, Pepero Day and a Flower Festival

THE TEST

I only taught three  days this week because my 3rd graders had exams on Wednesday and the CSAT (College Scholastic Ability Test) was administered on Thursday. The CSAT is, as you’d guess, the Korean equivalent of the SAT; unfortunately, thanks to the incalculable pressure that parents and the country puts on academics, the CSAT is far more scary than any four-hour exam I sauntered into as a high school junior.

The CSAT is taken by seniors in high school and serves as a primary indicator for what university they will attend. In short, if they don’t kill it on the CSAT their chances of attending a top university (and getting a top job and being successful and being happy and being relevant) is basically squashed. And as much as Korea would like to look the other way at their youth suicide rates they still published a few stories from students’ committing suicide due to test-based anxiety.

The test takes somewhere around 9 hours and devours the entire day. Listening sections are held in the morning and airplanes are not allowed to fly domestically during those times, so students are not disturbed. Parents pray outside of schools and students learn their fates in a few weeks.

DAEJEON

On Wednesday I went to Daejeon to visit some ETA friends. I hadn’t been to Daejeon in over two months and even though it was only a day trip I was excited to go. I went to Amy’s all-girls high school in downtown Daejeon where they were having a morning ceremony to commemorate the 3rd graders that were about to take the CSAT.

Quiet, our leader (ahem, nun-principal) is speaking!

The 1st and 2nd graders making a procession to wish the 3rd graders good luck!

Su Chin (girl on right in orange) really took a shine to me

Last one on the train, next stop: Naju

PEPERO DAY

Friday (11/ 11/ 11) was Pepero Day in Korea. Pepero is a snack in Korea that is basically a non-salted chocolate covered pretzel. They’re good to snack on and stick-shaped (hence the holiday on 11/11). A handful of my students gave me boxes of Pepero and little notes. I love them.

Angellina is by far my best writer (good thing she wants to be a writer when she grows up!)

Yeah there was a lot more Pepero before I took this picture (on Sunday)... I just happened to eat half of it already =p

FLOWER FESTIVAL

Since I haven’t spent a lot of time with my homestay family I’ve been trying to make a concerted effort to recently. It was my host brother’s 16th birthday on Friday and on Thursday, after we went out to dinner, I told him to pick out a few birthday presents. He picked out some shower gel and purple headphones (to which I asked, is this for your girlfriend? I ragged on him for a bit about that despite his vehement denials).

On Saturday it was homestay grandmother’s birthday so we went to a chrysanthemum festival in Hampyeong. The festival wasn’t anything special (haha that didn’t take me from taking pictures) but the time I had with my family was awesome. We didn’t do anything too exciting but just being around the boys, roughhousing, letting them play with my iPod and teasing them made me really feel like a part of the family.

Homestay cousins. They're not the friendliest but they're still really cute.

Paper dolls outside of one of the museums

Bee

.

All in all I had a really nice week. My lesson on the human body (and gruesome injuries) didn’t go too well– so I have to tweak it– but I’m not getting too discouraged about it. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but over the last few weeks I’ve been keeping a positive attitude and it’s really paid off.

This week I have a full slate of teaching and then a weekend in Seoul! The ETAs are having Thanksgiving dinner with the embassy and I couldn’t be more excited for copious American food.

The Week that Was: The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

I don’t have any pictures from last week so this post is going to be brief.

THE BEST OF TIMES:

Due to various school functions and the Fulbright Conference, over the last few weeks I haven’t taught five consecutive days in over a month. My first full work week in seemingly forever actually turned out to be my best week of teaching in Korea thus far. Over the course of this semester I’ve felt defeated, inadequate and dispensable at times (often times due to my own dreary attitude) but last week I was running on all cylinders.

I’ve tried to talk to other ETAs about their schools and successful lessons but I realized that everything is overwhelmingly relative. No school or set of students are the same and even though my curriculum is light years away from the rigor of an advanced urban high school I think middle school teachers are forced to deal with different and incomparable challenges (low levels where explaining simple tasks are near impossible, lack of motivation, etc.).

With my lesson on the Present Progressive Tense (that the majority of them are bound to have forgotten already) I don’t think I’ve unlocked the key to English fluency in my students, but I do feel like I’m learning how to manage my classroom and fill the niche of a conversational English teacher in rural Korea. Silly videos, screaming and running around included.

THE WORST OF TIMES:

I threw up three times on Saturday night. Once in a hallway, once in a vehicle and the other time I can’t remember. I had a hangover until 8pm on Sunday and it just beats out my 18-hour sleep after Halloween 2008 as the worst night ever.

I’d like to maintain some semblance of respectability on the blog so I won’t post the hazy details here. If you’re interested though shoot me an email haha.

***

This week I have Wednesday and Thursday off from school because of exams. I’m debating on whether or not I should travel but some of me wants to stay around Naju because I’ve spent so little time with the host family / would save money. We’ll see. Thanks for reading.

The Week that Was: Students, Sports and Halloween

After the Conference I decided to make a concerted effort to learn my students’ names. I’m taking all (except for the 3rd graders because I won’t have them next semester) of their pictures and going to try and memorize as many as I can. I’ve picked up a lot of names thus far and think I can learn the majority of them by the end of my grant year!

Da Ho's (on the left) parents own the local Pizza School franchise. I hope he majors in Advertising.

On Saturday I played in a volleyball tournament with my campus’ faculty. The best teachers from our middle school, high school and vocational school played against two other local faculties. I didn’t play particularly well, I’m just tall (comparatively) and they stuck me up front. It was the first time I played volleyball competitively and I had a blast– even if I did hit the next like 5 times and screw us over.

The All Reds.

The biggest decision I made this week– aside from booking my flight to Tokyo for early January– was to not go to Seoul for Halloween. After consecutive weekends of traveling I decided to stay in Jeollanam-Do for the festivities. I regret not going to Itaewon, Seoul’s foreigner district, for Halloween but we were still able to have fun in Mokpo.

Just some Jeollanam-Bros dressed up for Halloween.

 

No comment necessary.

I haven’t been studying Korean lately and am really going to try and get back into it this week. I’ve been in a little bit of a funk lately and I’m excited for the start of a new week and new month!

The Week that Was: Friends, Art, and Inspiration

FRIENDS

On Tuesday afternoon one of my closest friends in Korea, Korena (I know, it still gets me too sometimes), came all the way down to Naju to visit. She unfortunately missed her train in the morning and was unable to observe my classes but we still managed to tour the campus– a campus that has around 1200 Koreans on it with about 15 of them being females. Due to this lack of exposure Korean adolescents have difficulty grasping the concept of a male and female being platonic friends (“Teacher, teacher! Girlfriend? You girlfriend?” questions flooded our senses). After we shook off the students and left school we walked downtown.

Naju doesn’t have much of a downtown scene to offer so we were able to cover the majority of it in the little time we had. I took Korena to “my place” for kimbap and ramen, our favorite dishes, and then we chatted at a temple and WaBar. We talked a lot about how our identities as Korean-Americans are being shaped through this experience. I’ll get to reporting on my findings one of these days haha.

Finally, we ate dinner at Anskar’s homestay and demolished plate after plate of samgyeopsol. After dinner we played with his 5 year old homestay sister on her trampoline and synchronized our choreography.

She warmed up to me...eventually.

ART

According to my school’s calendar Wednesday was “Picnic Day.” Without a trace of a basket or blanket each grade went on a field trip to different sites. The 9^th grade boys went on a hike while the 7^th grade boys went to a traditional cloth-dying museum. I opted to go into Gwangju with my 8^th graders and see the Biennale Art Exhibit.

After a brief and unexpected hike, we finally arrive at the venue.

.

.

.

While in Korea I've thought a lot about beauty and whether it's inherent or constructed. The scars were self-inflicted for personal gain.

Outside of school and visiting a big city, the last thing a hundred 14 year old boys want to do is wander quietly through a modern art / politically charged art exhibit; I was skeptical about going to the exhibit because I’m not a big museum guy but it turned out to be a really great day (that is before lunch and alcoholic vice principal came around). I’m sure the boys enjoyed themselves, probably for reasons other than what the artists intended, so I was glad to be there to buy them some snacks, learn some names and bond with them.

I don't know his name yet but with a pose like that the whole world's bound to know it sooner or later.

Kim Bom Joon thank you for always knowing the answers in class.

Yong Seok please stop making me laugh in class and then following me to the bar after school begging for snacks.

All 100 of 'em.

Fellow teachers. Mrs. Joo (far right) is my biggest help and the man in the middle is the librarian / former star of a 1970s American cop drama.

INSPIRATION

Over the weekend we had the first Fulbright Conference in Gyeongju for current ETAs. The conference created a four-day weekend and was advertised by a renewee as “spring break.” I was excited for both of those reasons but surprisingly the reason why I enjoyed conference was because of something completely different: it was energizing.

I usually can’t sit still for more than 20 minutes and as college showed me there’s no way I can pay attention in a lecture hall for more than 30. Workshops during orientation over the summer solidified this and made Saturday’s prospects very bleak (presentations from 8am – 4pm). The presentations varied from human trafficking to learning your middle schoolers’ names and while there were a few bland ones I’d say that as a whole I really enjoyed the day. Seeing what my peers were doing and their devotion to teaching was really inspiring; even though it’s exceedingly difficult to adapt most of their plans to my situation (very few low-level middle school teachers but seemingly a lot of advanced high school ones)  it was great to watch people’s passion and drive.

The evenings weren’t what I envisioned (we only went out once) but, along with a few lengthy and sincere conversations I had with people I don’t get to talk to too much, the inspiration from Saturday’s workshops will be what positively color my memories of our fall conference.

Fun Fact: On our rest stop from Gwangju to Gyeongju a few elementary-aged kids thought I was a famous soccer player. The kids really thought I was Cha Du-Ri. Like enough to ask me to sign their shirts. I signed about ten arms and had several pictures taken of me because the boys honestly thought I was Cha Du-Ri. I guess they didn’t notice all of the Americans (or my lack of Korean language ability) friends I was around, maybe if they did they would’ve realized haha.

That's just not fair.

***

Winter break plans have hit a few roadblocks over the last week (limited mutual availability and an unsuccessful internship application) but I’m still optimistic that things will come together. While Indonesia may be unlikely I’m still holding out for a few nights in Hong Kong and a few days on the beach in Thailand. And even though I didn’t get the internship with the KAEC (Korean-American Educational Commission) I’m hopeful that a few of my other interests (working with a junior researcher and contributing to an online start-up magazine) come through.

This week is only a four-day week because we all had off on Monday due to Conference. Halloween weekend looks like it will be in Seoul. So many buses, good thing I just snagged a netbook!