Week 4

I had every intention of writing again sooner, but I suppose nothing particularly noteworthy happened in the past two weeks…

Today is my four-week anniversary of working at my school. Gasp! Friday will be my one- month anniversary of living in Korea. Slightly larger gasp! We started a new semester Monday, so I’m getting new classes and a fresh start, which is fantastic. I really, really enjoy my MWF classes already! Wednesday’s are newspaper day, so everything’s a lot more laid back and we get to have fun and talk about current events/whatever random articles happen to appear in the newspaper that week. Today I spent time trying to explain the concept of a Kindle to eleven year olds, and then we talked about decorating and colored. It was fantastic! We were coloring rooms, right, so one kid turned his entire room into a giant face with a nose-shaped chandelier, an ear on the wallpaper, and an eyeball hanging on the door. Creepy, yes. Creative, absolutely! So many students were fascinated with the idea of using different contrasting wallpapers for every wall (and in some cases additional different wallpapers on the floors and ceilings), which would probably be frowned upon in real life, but was so damn cute! I will definitely be using the coloring technique in the future!

(If you’re into the whole creativity and schools thing, I was recently introduced to this video by a pretty fantastic kid in Busan and kind of loved it…)

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

In other news, I am quite frustrated at my listening/speaking books this semester… I swear they’re trying to make my children into, like, ohmygod, valley girls! For the past two days I’ve had to play this dialogue about a couple of classmates meeting in a mall, and there’s this one line that makes me cringe every time I hear it. There’s a short pause between lines, then this girl goes “SOOOOoooooooooooOOO, where are you going? *Insert painfully annoying valley girl twang”. It’s so frustrating! I know people in the States talk like that (admittedly maybe even me…), but I don’t want my untainted Korean kiddies to pick that up! The concept of the valley girl just makes me angry! Dumb should never be “in”, especially in a society already built on gender inequality. So frustrating! The very next dialogue is all about this girl who has a huge crush on this new transfer student from Sweden who has beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair. Awesome. Because 12 year-old’s aren’t already boy-crazy enough, I’m glad my textbook legitimizes their obsession even more. Grrr. End rant.

I spent last weekend in Daegu and will be going back to Busan this Saturday for a Busan Giants game. I’m pretty excited about the game and hanging out with people, less so for the three-hour train ride there. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at the public transit system here, though and made it to Daegu last weekend all by myself, complete with transfers and all. Win! Fun story, so after I met everybody in the Daegu station last weekend, Mary handed me her box of leftovers since I hadn’t had lunch yet. There I am standing with this half sandwich and two onion rings in a takeout box, and this really short man walks straight over to me, reaches up, and takes my onion ring. No words, no please, thank you, no nothing. He just reaches up, takes my onion ring, and walks away like nothing had happened. We all stared at him for a good twenty seconds, wondering what had just happened, and what exactly you should say to a tiny man who steals your onion ring. It was fantastic! Reason #534 I love Korea!

Anyways, I’m settling in quite nicely and getting used to the quirks of living in Korea. And I figured out my Internet situation, so should you want to skype/email me (which I’m sure you do!), feel free.

안녕히 가십시오

- Christine -