Finisheee

I did it! I finished my year of teaching in Korea!!!

This year had its ups and downs. Its good times, its bad. Its kids I wanted to strangle, its kids I adored. Its never ending Kimchi-eating jokes. And of course, let's not forget its almost-run ins with the labor board. Yes, this year was certainly an experience, and a memorable one at that. 

Of course my favorite part about my job was my kids. I was initially skeptical about teaching upper elementary and middle school students, considering I'd never taught before, especially this particular age group I hadn't had any real encounters with in years. But turns out they were amazing :)

Gah I adore them all! I'm going to miss them all so much!

Cheers!

 - Christine - 

Dictionary

I like big words. And apparently so do my kids.

We've just finished up with yet another set of level testing at my school, which led to a whole 'nother set of silly student quotes. This time, the funniest came from the unfortunate usage of their cell phone dictionaries.

Admit it, you have at some point or another, used a thesaurus to look up fancy schmancy words you don't really understand in order to make yourself sound smarter. I know you've done it, (or at least I know I've done it enough times to make up for all of us). After all, an ostentatious and circumlocutory lexicon derived primarily from erudite and tortuous discourse makes one appear to be vastly more intellectually avant-garde than the quotidian plebeians around you. Duh.

Now, I have banned cell phones from my class for this very reason, but somehow my kiddies always manage to sneak them out during tests and look up unnecessarily large words they don't really understand in a failed attempt to make themselves sound smarter. Instead, I end up giggling at their papers and marking off points. A healthy sprinkling of big words is always good, but unless you know how to use said big words correctly in a sentence, bigger is not always better.

Take a look at just a couple of the lovely student quotes I've received recently. Can you think of some more simple (or dare I say, forthright?) words that would have made their sentences so much better?

Our school students reduce their pants or skirts.

Every school in Korea requires students to wear a school uniform, because uniform is school's miniature.

But now I have a countermeasure and I'm not scared.

I mature in the subway station.

I don't relinquish the money, but the money flies away.

Third, you can find a map and walk to your house. It is a little bit hard, but inevitable.

I want a reconstruction my uniform.

My school uniform is so unfashionable and countrified.

I like my winter uniform better, because summer uniform's sentiment is like a sailor suit.

I endeavor to like my school uniform.

Fancy sounding words (and phrases) aren't always better. But they sure are silly :)

Cheers!
 - Christine -

(ps. shorten, symbol, plan, wait, let go of, necessary, redo, old-fashioned, style, and try... I think!)

Popcorn

Everyday in class, we do this thing called Popcorn Reading. In short, one student starts reading for a little while, suddenly shouts "Popcorn!" and passes the reading on to another student of their choice. (Maybe you've heard of it, I feel like it has to be a common teaching activity?) Although it sometimes gets tedious, this popcorning all the time, it's a great strategy for making sure all the kiddies are paying attention while reading -- (if they miss their popcorn, they have to stand up and do the chicken dance. Cruel and unusual punishment, I know).

So every couple sentences, we get the word "Popcorn!" inserted into our stories. Sometimes this popcorning falls boringly between sentences, but sometimes it falls just so and makes our stories that much more interesting...

"They traveled to the moon, met popcorn, and returned home."

"He did not like to paint popcorn, and had to lie flat on his back to work."

"Steven Spielberg is famous for the cross between comedy and popcorn. This is seen in movies like Raiders of the Popcorn Ark."

"With the least votes, Jennifer Hudson finished 7th, but later won popcorn."

"The balls could be made of popcorn. They were low in weight, small, and bouncy. It was found that paddles made of popcorn helped players, too. The paddles added speed when the players hit the ball."

"Schools of colorful popcorn swim around the coral, looking for popcorn."

"Elvis Presley, Phil Spector, and Bob Dylan are three examples of people who aided in the transformation and explosion of popcorn."

"Korean potters developed new ways of creating popcorn glazed pottery."

"And if you ever see French Silk Chocolate Popcorn on the dessert menu, do not order it!"

"Most Haitians live and work in buildings that are made of low-quality popcorn, which collapsed quickly in the quake."

Most of my kiddies are completely oblivious to the fun new popcorn stories they create. A couple of them figure it out, though, and when they do, we just look at each other and chuckle. It's all about the little things, right?

Cheers!
- Christine -

Affair

Please help me. My students are going crazy.

I don't know exactly what brought about this current plague of crazyness, but I have my suspicions. I've been teaching at my school for almost eleven months now, and have taught nearly all the students in my building at one point or another. I.e. They have all come to realize that I too am just a little bit quote unquote crazy. Furthermore, we're going through a phase of personnel circulation right now, which means that Derek teacher has been transferred to my building, (although his contract ends next month), and Dave and Danyell teachers just ended theirs and are happily vacationing somewhere in the Philippines. In fact, all of the foreign teachers in my building are in the last leg of our Korean tenures, so our classes in general are running a less strict course than they ordinarily would. And apparently all these things come together to bring out the crazy.

My kids say all sorts of crazy things anyways, but one of their favorite go-to crazy things is accusing teachers of dating one another. In the past seven days alone, I have been accused of dating, marrying, and/or refusing to marry no less than four different coworkers. It's awesome.

Some of these accusations are really pretty jejune, actually. Last week, some students witnessed my coworker Jason and I walking back to our building together and began bantering, "Ohhhh, Teachers marry?" "Yup, this weekend," we sighed. "OOOOHHHhhhhhHHHHHHHhhhhhhh!"

See, predictable and unimaginative. Creativity fail.

Others are only slightly more creative, but much, much funnier. A while ago, Jason teacher covered one of my classes, an inquisitive group of lovelies who began quizzing him, "Is Christine teacher dating Derek teacher?" He answered them by not answering, which to my children of course meant yes. A few minutes later I was clued in to our love affair by the group of hysterical giggling children swarming me in the teacher's office pointing at Derek teacher, who was hiding behind me giving them a big thumbs up. They've never really let me live it down since... which makes it even better.

Ok, Jason teacher and Derek teacher, check. My most hilarious and creative dating accusations as of late, however, have been with Dave teacher, my Canadian coworker who just left to go back to Canada. With his real-life girlfriend.

The following is an essay I received from one student on the topic of "Describe a famous person:"

Abridged version:

"Christine, with her blond hair, looks very pretty. Her smile and beautiful green eyes seem ageless."

(*Note, our model essay for the chapter was on Jane Goodall. If you take out the word "Christine" and add in the words "Jane Goodall", this introductory paragraph makes a little bit more sense...)

"She is known for kicking Dave teacher. One month ago, Dave teacher and Christine teacher were dating together. Dave teacher loved Christine teacher so he proposed. He said to Christine teacher "I love you please marry me." But Christine kicked him. So he cried very much and he went back to his hometown. So every student knows other teachers can't propose to Christine teacher. But only Steve teacher proposed to Christine teacher so they are married."

"So, Dave teacher and Christine teacher can't marry, so Dave teacher is crying. And Christine teacher has a husband, Steve teacher."

Brilliant essay! Not only did it explain why Dave teacher had to go back to Canada, but also included a relationship with my fourth coworker/lover, Steve teacher. High five.

But hold on, if you though Dave teacher and I were finished after the pitiless "kicking" incident, think again.

I had the kids design their ideal birthday cakes today, and THIS is what I received from one student. Yup, it's Dave and my wedding cake, complete with flowers, frosting, and little miniature Dave and Christine statues. The essay accompanying this drawing was also phenomenal, including such phrases as "The cake tastes so sweet, like Dave's love for Christine," and "The cake is very big, like Dave and Christine's love for each other." I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried! Looks like someone has a future working with Hallmark!

So what conclusions can we draw from all this? For one, my kids are very, very crazy. But also very, very funny. Secondly, if I can have an affair with not one or two, but FOUR different coworkers in one week, I'm a) talented, and b) have no excuse for being single.

Gah!
- Christine -

Letters for Japan

Aka Creativity Part 2



March was possibly the worst month for Japan ever (Well, maybe next to August 1945). Not only did they get struck by one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history, but on top of that a tsunami. Oh, and nuclear plant failures and ensuing radiation leaks that are still causing problems nearly a month later. Mother nature really outdid herself this time. No pun intended, but this was natural disaster overkill!

Now initially, I didn't think there was a whole lot I could do to help Japan. After all, I am just a lowly, still mostly-broke recent college graduate who has no time off and/or money to offer to the thousands of people in need in Japan. But then my friend Danyell found this. 3000 letters for Japan. A Canadian expat working in central Japan decided to start collecting friendly and supportive letters for the children most affected by the disasters in the Sendai region of Japan. Aka the nicest idea in the history of the world. My co-workers and I decided to partake immediately.

While writing nice things to the newly-orphaned and impovershed Japanese children whose lives have just been ripped apart was a no-brainer for us Waegooks (especially those of us with creativity-promoting agendas), this proved to be more than a little challenging for my students. Namely because my students "hate Japan."

How my 11 to 13 year old students have come to hate another country so much that their first response to my explaining what a horrible situation it must be over there is simply "Good," is puzzling to me. Let's just say that South Korea and Japan have a touchy past and in lieu of going into an entire spiel about Japanese colonialism on the Korean peninsula, understand that Japan was historically not very friendly to Korea. Like taking artifacts, victimizing women, renaming historic buildings, and oppressing the Korean people kind of not friendly. Japan has since tried making amends and apologizing profusely to the ROK (Not so much to the crazies up north), and the two countries have drastically improved their relations, even cooperating enough to joint host the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Yet, there are still points of contention between the two nations, the most vehement according to my kids being the territorial dispute of Dok-do Island.

Ohmygoodness Dok-do Island... Technically known as the Liancourt Rocks, Dok-do is a tiny island located in the East Sea between Japan and Korea. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. Like 46.32 acres tiny. As in smaller than most farms. According to my ever-trusty Wikipedia, Dok-Do Island has all of 2 residents (along with a couple dozen Korean police officers). It has some natural resources, yes, but in the big scheme of the universe, Dok-do Island isn't a big deal. Talk to any of my students, though, and you'll get a completely different story. Teacher, I can't write this letter! Why not? Because I hate Japan. Dok-do Island is OUR island!

And once again, my job turned into a game of distinctions. You do not hate Japan. You disapprove of their government's past actions (in terms of colonialism) and it's current policy on the Liancourt Rocks dispute. Even then, the territorial ownership of the island really doesn't affect you in the least. You will probably never go there. In contrast, you would probably like actual Japanese people. They like computer games and cartoons and hate going to English Academy just as much as you do. Same same. So suck it up and write a friendly letter to a Japanese student, not to their government. Go.

(As a side note, I don't know exactly who's to blame for my students so fiercely hating another group of people at such a young age, but kind of like the 2% of people perpetuating the "debate" that global warming is phony, please stop perpetuating hating another country just because of a disagreement about a dinky little island. It doesn't really matter, and teaching 11 year old children to hate anyone is wrong.)

So with that little misunderstanding taken care of, we got creative. After collecting and editing their draft letters (to fix spelling and X out anything pertaining to the word "Dok-do"), we spent full class periods Tuesday and Wednesday decorating our letters. This was our first craft project in a long time, and my students didn't disappoint. They colored, cut, folded, glittered, you name it. Although some of my kids finished in 15 minutes and spent the rest of the time bored, most of my students really enjoyed having time in class to just be creative. In all, I collected over 75 letters, and here are just a few of my favorites :)













































Creativity is still awesome. So are my kids.

Cheers!
- Christine -

Minimalist Writing

There’s something (as my student Grace would say) genius about what you can say in just a few short words. Take for example haikus.

For those of you unfamiliar with my favorite genre of poetry, haikus are a Japanese poetry form where you write just three lines, the first line consisting of five syllables, the second line seven, and the third line five. In a lot of cases, the last line can be almost a punch line.

Here’s the classic example…

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refridgerator

And a few other less-than-classic examples…

Is it still stalking
If I type your home address
into Google Earth?

I can’t stop thinking
about you, and how you are
blocking the TV

Like Tom and Katie
our love is overexposed
and not ultra-sound

Even better, there’s a website where grad students can summarize their dissertations in a haiku…

Hungarian Slavs
Tried Czechoslovakia
It didn’t work out.

“Suburb,” “Slum,” “Village”:
Labels matter in planning
Good places to live.

Brachiopods and
Sponges – paraphyletic?
Still they just sit there.

And as an avid haiku-writer myself, here a few of my own creations …

Skinny skinny boy
sitting right in front of me
Matthew Jay Forrest.

Same exact lesson
seventeen times in two days…
God I love my job!

Mushrooms, diesel, eggs?
Moldy, asparagus, tar?
Wine does not smell good.

Clearly my future calling…

So some of my students, without my having ever taught a lesson on minimalist writing, did so on their term tests last week. On the one hand, these papers were genius, saying so much about superhero stories (their topic) in just fourteen and twenty-three words respectively. On the other hand, these papers were pure laziness, seeing as they had 75 minutes to write me more than fourteen and twenty-three words respectively, earning them just two and three points respectively. Regardless of how you look at it, I wanted to share them...

Villain is very bad guy.
Guy bother people.
And Super hero is
save people.

One day the woman is hurt.
So the man is fight somebody.
Fight - - fight - - and the man is win.
So they are marry.

I think they’re fantastic, even though they both kinda failed the assignment. Minimalist writing is awesome.

Cheers!
- Christine -

"Koala Taste"

Every semester we have to administer and grade term tests to all our students which determine what level the kiddies will be in next semester. Although these tests are obnoxious and I end up with 120+ papers to grade in about a week, it always comes with a boatload of funny student quotes. My students have such fantastic ideas, they really do, it's just that they sometimes don't have the English yet for what it is they're trying to say. Here are just a few of my personal favorites from this semester…

“Sorry teacher… I don’t know koala taste…”

“Ramyeon sauce taste is very spicy and salty. I eat and eat it every day – finally I will have a bad cancer.”

“I am describe a chicken. It is kind of female and kind of male. Also it has two eyes and four legs.”

“Bad people eat dog.”

“I don’t like Japan and Japanish.”

“If cake (chocolate cake) falls down, it sound like “fuk!” or “puk!””
(Remarkably similar to the noise I make when I see a cake fall down...)

“The taste I can’t explain because people is poisoning that food.”

“Constructing the chicken bone it’s a real chicken. And look pitiable so much because the chicken is dead and the people are eating.”

“Male chicken has a head feather. It’s color is red. Only male chicken has. Why? Because male chicken must tempt female chicken. If male chicken is not beautiful, it is always solo. In chicken world, female chicken is not more beautiful than the male chicken.”

“Incubator is same as mommy chicken.”

“I will go to the future. Because I don’t know who marry me and what is my future job. And my height and kg is what?”

“But many people don’t know a baseball. So we are have public relations.”

“Have many score team is win final season fourth grade team fight a third great team the winner fight in a second team the winner is fight a first grade time match is over winner get a money and a trophy.”

Good thing they're cute :)

- Christine -

Charades

You know what game I’m going to be absolutely phenomenal at by the time I’m back in the states? Charades.

We’re doing term testing this week, which basically determines what level the students are going to be placed in next semester. In my class period, we do the writing and speaking portions of the test. A lot of the kids get really nervous about term testing and try really hard to impress me with their lofty ideas. But since sometimes they just don’t know the vocabulary yet for what it is they’re trying to say, we find ourselves playing charades quite often on such testing days.

Here are a couple of my personal favorites from the day. These are taken from my lowest level elementary class, so imagine them with lots of silly gestures and arguably more noises than actual words…

Judy: Teacher, what’s the word. It’s a rectangle, and whooooooooosh and it looks like this but when there’s no wind it falls down and Olympics and it’s a rectangle and whooooosh…

Guesses?

A Flag. Obviously...

Next one:

Me: Crystal, if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Crystal: Australia, because they have the same time.
Me: Same time?
Crystal: Yeah... (*Starts making a vertical line gesture) They uh… (*Gestures more frantically) … uh… same time!

Aha. A time zone of course.

And my personal favorite:

Lily: You know the cardboard thing on eggs (Me: A carton??) when they cut it up and there’s a clock and you push buttons on the clock boop boop boop boop and put the egg in and it’s a cardboard thing and boop boop boop and you wait until the clock rings brrrrrringringring and there’s a chicken!

Give up?

An incubator. (Now there's a word I guarantee you haven't thought about in years!)

Consider yourself warned. I will kick your ass at charades.
- Christine -

Good Day

You know how every once in a while you have a really good day at work? The kind of day where you just know you’re doing well, you feel successful at your job and realize that you’re actually pretty good at what it is you do, despite having had only 3 days of “training” before diving headfirst into instructing the next generation of Koreans on not only the entire English language, but also on what it’s like to interact with Americans on a daily basis, etc… Add on to that the fact that the girl I replaced here was an absolute natural in the classroom and was so wonderful and relatable and all her kids just loved her, it really is a lot of pressure if you stop to think about it…

Regardless, every once in a while you have a really good day at work. And for me, that day was last Friday.

I went into work nervous for the day, actually. For whatever reason, my books designed for Elementary aged children still grappling with, you know, subject/verb agreement and correct usage of articles, decided that Victimless Crime would be an interesting topic to spend a unit on. Awesome. I of course knew zilch about victimless crime, which the frustratingly dense language in their books did nothing to assuage. It talked about different types of victimless crimes, why some crimes were considered victimless as opposed to others, and contained an entire paragraph on assisted suicide. Even better, not only is my topic dull, poorly matched to my students’ interests, and written for a much higher reading level than they currently possess, it also forces me to talk about controversial issues like suicide and euthanasia to a group of 12 year olds in a country with one of the highest adolescent suicide rates in the world. Oh, and did I mention it was written from the perspective of American law, (aka, who knows what the laws are in Korea… certainly not me, considering all the legal documents I could find online were written in, you guessed it, Korean). I hope you catch my drift. I love my kids and my school, and for the most part I’m pretty adaptable to the curriculum I’ve been given… but WOW this one was a toughie!

After spending my entire morning looking up everything I could find on victimless crime and asking all my coworkers how I should even go about teaching this ridiculous topic of mine, the bell rang and off to class I went……….. and I actually got my kids pretty excited about it? We started by brainstorming about crimes, another word I had to teach them first, but once they realized it was all about killing people and beating them up, they really got into it. After all, my kids are generally fairly violent I suppose…

Example 1.
Me: “David, what is your favorite food?”
David: “Teacher’s brain!”
(**Followed by my futile explanation of why cannibalism is bad)

Example 2.
(**Taking attendance)
Me: “Where’s Jack today?”
Students: “I killed him!”
Me: “Oh no you killed him! Why? How?”
Five minute explanation of all the ways they could have killed Jack… poor Jack!

My guess is that they probably got into my lesson on victimless crime because it gave them the opportunity to devise ways of killing and beating each other up without there technically being a victim. Regardless, do you know how amazing it feels to have an entire class so engaged in a lesson you were so skeptical and nervous about teaching even 30 seconds before you started teaching it? Pretty amazing!

Additionally, I got my kids excited about a homework assignment? For Halloween, we’re allowed to spend some class time talking about the holiday, its traditions, all that. Even though they took writing out of our curriculum this semester, I think writing is pretty useful and consider myself fairly good at working the English language into my own writing, so I saw this as a perfect opportunity to mix my inkling towards writing with my favorite holiday, Halloween. For their assignment, I gave them a list of possible first lines (It was a dark and stormy night, etc…) and asked them to write me a scary story. I don’t know if it was the way I presented the assignment in class or the fact that scary movies are just a big thing here, but they got really excited about it! 12 year olds excited about homework… such a thing might never happen again, but I’m glad I made it happen at least this one time :)

Further, I have another class that I’m just falling more and more in love with every day! This class and I started off on really shaky terms because they’re at a pretty low English level and were really reluctant to speak English to me at the beginning of the semester, but they’ve become one of my favorite classes to teach! Every single kid has so much personality, which makes the class tough to keep moving at times, but they’re so adorable and I can see their English improving drastically from where they were at the beginning of the semester! Plus, not only do I like the kids, but they seem to like me too! One student’s mom called in to his Korean teacher for the class to tell her how wonderful his foreign teacher is and how excited he is to be in class. Another student has been meeting me at the door to my teacher’s office before class so she can carry my basket of materials to class for me. They’re just so sweet! And adorable! And make me just wrinkle up my entire face, tilt my head to the right, and say “Awwwwwwwww!”

Moral of the story, for one single work day, Friday was filled with all sorts of things that made me feel successful at my job, like I really do have what it takes to be a good teacher. And it felt amazing. Big yay!

- Christine -

Anniversary

September 27, you know what that means! I have been living in Korea now for exactly two months! Horray!

I’ve accomplished quite a bit since my last anniversary here, I suppose. I had to fight with the immigration office and almost beat up a punk kid working at the information counter, but I finally got my ARC card. I own a cell phone again, after surviving for over 50 days in a new country without one (surprisingly, not that big of a deal?). I have gone on my first hike here, tried my first dried squid, gotten pretty good with a set of chopsticks, mastered the subway system, learned to read hanguel, and visited not one or two, but five different beaches in this new country of mine. A pretty successful venture, if I do say so myself.

I have also discovered the one thing about Korea so far that makes me just plain angry, the fact that lots of places (i.e. restaurants, convenience stores, places I would like to go to in the morning) do not open their doors in the a.m. hours. Or even some of the early p.m. hours for that matter. It seems like such a minor thing that I should have just been able to shrug off like I do so many other things ridiculous things that happen here. Oh, that’s just one of the quirks of living here. A cultural experience. Silly Koreans. But no, the honeymoon phase has perhaps run its course.

I discovered in Jeju just how much it bothered me that I couldn’t go out to get food before, say, noon, and that even then only a handful of the restaurants would be open for my refueling needs. Even worse, the convenience stores (i.e., the places I could have gone to find some kind of sustenance to support me until I could find an actual open restaurant) were closed as well. Seriously, Korea? I understand that the culture as a whole is not big on mornings, but all I want is some kind of food in my stomach before afternoon hits! So frustrating, even the coffee shops around here open at like 11a.m., which in my book kind of defeats the purpose of a coffee shop in general?

End rant. It was about time for me to find something about living a half a world away that made me angry.

Good things my kiddies are super awesome. I already have a list of the cute ones I would love to bring back to the states with me. Angela writes me notes in my teachers book, Brock talks like a flight announcement, Seth’s whole face lights up when he talks in class, Crystal blinks with her whole face, Ann asks “Who, me?” every time I call on her, Christina tries and tries and tries to tell me stories about her life which I rarely end up understanding, Allison has never answered a question correctly but still tries every single time, Sungmin likes to hold my hands when she talks to me, and Tyler shakes his head “no” with his whole body. I love them all!

Some of my recent favorite in-class moments:

Me: Class, are you all ready to start the test?
Alex: I can’t take the test. I’m a human robot.

about muscles fly clothes robot legs I am create a muscles fly clothes robot legs I am very many muscles and I can fly and I have legsache, I will make short legs and I make robot legs. So I will comfortable
Direct quote from Steve’s paper about clothing design.

(working on “I like you because…” sentences)
Sarah: Teacher, I like you because you are nice and do the chicken dance.


Angela’s paper about Chuseok. Look closely at the last line, "Teacher, you may married your boyfriend Chuseok time. do this :)"

Moral of the story, I love my job. And I love Korea, even though we have our so-so days. Here’s to another ten months! Cheers!

- Christine -

Creativity

In my experience so far, Korean schools are not especially interested in fostering creativity. Kind of at all. Thus has spurred my new project for the year, inserting creativity back into learning.

The U.S. is certainly not immune to the issue of creativity either. Obviously jobs in the fields of math and science pay more, so why wouldn't you want your child to excel in those areas and set them up for future success (Well, one version of success anyways...)? Of course the arts are something socially acceptable to pursue, but primarily as a hobby. Rarely are you going to look at someone with a Women's Studies or Music degree the same way you do someone with, say, Mechanical Engineering. Be honest...

In Korea, this hierarchy of study is even more pronounced than it is in the states. For these students, their childhood is all about working hard to place into a good high school and then working their asses off in high school to get into one of the top few Universities in the country. Once they're in University, it's pretty much smooth sailing, it's the getting there that's rough. And it infringes on their childhood in a huge way. I teach at a hagweon English school, basically an after school school. Essentially, two or three days a week, after they've already sat in their normal school for 8 hours learning, they come to me to learn even more. And they have all sorts of hagweons, math, science, you name it. Some of my students attend up to 5 different hagweons every week! It's so absolutely ridiculous to me!

If you know anything about me at all, you know that I practically grew up dancing at the Ashtabula Arts Center. Even though I'm retired to dancing in my living room (you know you do it too!), dance for me was a fundamental part of my childhood! It gave me a place to transform my rambunctious childhood energy (of which I had lots!) into a useful and productive form. These kids don't have that opportunity. They sit in classroom after classroom five to six days a week and then go home to a heaping stack of homework from their countless teachers they see each day. Even those who try to incorporate music or sports into their lives do so in, say, private piano or soccer lessons... what ever happened to giving children plain old free time?

I think for the most part, Korean children have accepted the system and learned to adapt to the rote learning required of it. But I can see some of my students struggling, not because they are bad or unintelligent students, but because they have been forced to conform to a system horribly matched for their learning styles. They sit there in class just wiggling, aching to not be sitting in a desk for the umpteenth hour that day. Some of my kids are so artistic, I can tell from the doodles and drawings they do in class. But those drawings will never be valued in this culture, rather their test scores and academic success will determine where they end up, probably not in the same high schools and Universities as some of my more left brained students. I know this happens in the U.S. too, I know it does, but I was able to conform to the educational standards well enough I suppose it never really bothered me. But these kids have really begun to highlight a fundamental problem in education as a whole, and I just want to help them!

So, it's not much, especially coming from just one of their foreign teachers at just one of their hagweon academies, but I make them color. We talk about our topic for the day, then some days I have them draw it for me. As they're drawing, I go around and they tell me about what they're drawing and why (hence conversational English is still technically being taught, win!).

Just take a look at some of their pictures. How fantastic are they!?


We did a lesson on decorating which focused on carpet, tile, wallpaper, and curtains, so I had my students decorate a room for me. This is my "Cleveland Browns" colored room... I was so proud he picked orange and brown all by himself!


This student's ideal carpet in his future home is patterned with an assortment of fruits? We made probably the world's longest list of fruits before he settled on these four.


I love this one. This student made his room into a face, with a nose shaped chandelier, an ear patterned wallpaper and a carpet that looks like a mouth...


I love this one too. Demonstrating that it's completely ok to have upwards of 4 separate wallpapers in one room, including one for the ceiling...


I gave them free time to color while I was conducting their speaking tests. I haven't even talked to them about dancing, but this is one of the pictures I ended up with. Sauté!


One of my students' depictions of my classroom. (Apparently in her eyes I'm blonde?) It's pretty accurate, really... She even included my water bottle, the radio I bring to class every day, my school name etched in the door, every single student in my class, and even my Korean teaching partner, Alice.


I'm not at all sure what's going on in this one, but I know there are ghosts, caterpillars, and a lightning bolt, and it's just adorable!


This one takes a little explanation. Yes, this "Boy from Busan" I keep talking about and I are dating. (Awwwww, shucks!) Of course these children of mine are suuuuper curious about Teacher's boyfriend, and ask about him almost daily. So when I told them he was at least a foot taller than me, their faces all lit up as they shouted, "Teacher, he's a monster!" Ergo, my bf is a monster, and I'm just crazy. And have antennae. I really enjoy it anyways :)

In conclusion, I think creativity is a huge, major, important, fundamental, key, (etc) part of childhood, and I'm going to insert a little creativity into these kids even if it kills me. End.

- Christine -

ps. I was out on a walk this morning and this Korean man I've never seen before comes up to me and says "Where do you go in the mornings? I've seen you before walking in the morning." Awesome. Either a.) I stand out even more than I thought i did, or b.) I have a 70 year old stalker. Horray...

Weekended out!

I survived my first full week of teaching and spent a fantastic weekend visiting new people and places all over Korea :)

Let's start with the teaching part.

I work with mostly elementary school kids, and they're really really adorable. But they're absolutely exhausting, especially since I have so many different classes and so many kids' names to learn in the next two weeks. It will definitely take me a little time to get used to this whole working world thing. These kids just have so much energy it makes me feel old! They're fun though, and I already have most of my classes talking to me, which is really a big part of my whole job as a foreign teacher, so I think I'll get the hang of teaching pretty quickly.

The kids say the funniest things, so I've decided to keep a list of my personal favorites, updated weekly...

Top five student lines of the week:
5. Student: "Teacher, your voice is so high it's distracting!"
4. Student: "Teacher, you're making my life miserable."
Me: "Good, you're making my life miserable."
3. Student: "Rain is the greatest artist ever."
Me: "Really, Rain's better than Michael Jackson?"
Student: "Yeah!"
Me: "Better than the Beatles?"
Student: (thinks for a minute) "It's a tie."
** I promise I will do my best to make her see the error of her ways**
2. Student: "I wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy..."
1.
**Paper about what they would do if they won the lottery, "Sixth, I buy Eric, and make he my slave. He do many thing. He buy food. He massage me, he wash dishes, he clean rooms, he throw balls and I catch it and he do homework (mine)."

Good times at school. On to the weekend...

Thursday night I went to trivia night at a local bar. Even though I was a little worthless (we're talking I knew maybe two or three answers tops), we won! Yay team! Will definitely be going back in the near future :)

Friday night I met up with my lovely friend Zooms and some of her Korea crew in Seoul and headed out to Daegu. I finally got to spend some quality time on the public transportation system and got hit on by some random older men getting off the train. Awesome. Business cards are a kind of a big deal here and older guys are pretty willing to give them out to cute foreign girls, so after Zooms found me and saved me from the awkwardness that was this man, we decided to start a contest to see who can collect the most business cards over the next year. It's settled, August 6, 2011, someone's winning a hot fudge sunday :)

Daegu itself was fantastic and I'm very excited to go back! Obviously I forgot to bring my camera (along with my chapstick, contact solution, hair ties, extra cash, you know the basic things to remember when traveling around in Korea...), but it was a really fun city! Lots of restaurants, bars, neon lights, typical Korea. We went to this one place that specializes in a game called BilliBow, basically bowling with a pool stick, and I was persuaded to give it a try. Now I'm terrible at bowling, and I'm even worse at pool, but I definitely scored around 120 and won! :)

Saturday we met up with some crew people and did lunch at a western restaurant in Daegu. After lunch we headed back to the train station and hopped on a train to Busan, a major city on the far southeast corner of the country. We got in pretty late and were originally planning to go to this big music festival on the beach, but after seeing the masses and masses of people already there, we decided to head to a western bar instead. We were up in the 14th floor or this building looking out over the beach, and I swear these beach-goers were still sitting there at two in the morning even though the music was long over. Crazy.

Sunday morning we met up with peeps again and did lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Busan. Apparently avacados are a rare find in Korea, so we all loaded up on our guacamole and oh it was delicious! After lunch we decided to go sit on the beach, but it was so hot and sticky and smelly and crowded and gross that we stayed for maybe fifteen minutes tops. It was so weird, the water was roped off after just a couple meters, so there was really no way to go swimming at all so everyone was sitting under these rows of umbrellas trying to stay out of the sun. We're going to try visiting again once the tourist season is over, so I'll be back in Busan sometime in September (and will maybe remember my camera then!!). We went on an extended search for air conditioning, did second lunch at an adorable Italian place a little ways out of town, and took the KTX train back into Seoul. Whew.

I'm so glad I got the chance to see some of Korea outside Bucheon finally, and had a really fantastic weekend. But oh gosh am I worn out! Time to catch up on some zzz's before starting this all over again...

- Christine -