So, Friday I moved from my dorm at Dongshin University in Naju to my apartment for the year in the Bu Yong Apartments complex, also in Naju. My primary co-teacher wasn't available to help me move, so I grabbed a taxi from around the corner (which are super cheap in Korea). It was about 7000 won for the trip and then some gesturing with the doorman got me my keys ("uhm, a confused white girl will be showing up today with luggage...give her the keys to 1107.").
Saturday, I navigated to Gwangju from my new place. A nice boy at the local PC Bang took me to the bus stop. About 4 different Koreans in the past week have walked me a siginificant difference to make sure that I know where I'm going. Koreans are astoundingly helpful. In Gwanju, I met an expat who showed me some more of downtown, introduced me to two of her friends, and we all went to the Kia Tigers baseball game. They've been pretty good this season, althought unfortunately, not at the game this Saturday. We lost 15 to 7, but had one crazy good inning of 5 runs. I think American baseball is boring...and now I know why! In addition to taking waaaaaay too long between everything, American baseball doesn't have the terrific organized cheers from the fans that Korean baseball does. It got me so excited and I was right in the game, chanting along as best that I could and standing up every time Kia hit the ball.
The field is also much smaller...I think the outfield was removed and the stands weren't very high, so it felt pretty intimate. Some of the people we met at the game shared chicken with us When the game wound down, we went our separate ways and I got home and in bed.
On Sunday, I was invited to an art opening at the Gwangju International Center (GIC) downtown. I had gotten pretty cocky about my ability to get to Gwangju and played my gameboy on the bus...and was an hour late and 9000 won short after getting lost and taking a taxi to the downtown area. I finally met my doppelganger, Tamara, and a friend of hers at 3pm and we checked out the opening. The art was made by both Koreans and foreigners and covered most mediums. I think my favourite was an abstract splatter painting done in a way that really highlighted the texture of the materials. I think the artist was American or British, I can't remember. I /do/ remember that he works on the Gwangju News, a local news magazine in English. Anywho, I got to see art, eat delicious art opening food, an then traipsed around town with Tamara and Huey. We had some pretty neat conversations and saw the river and U-Square. I was really happy to get beyond the downtown area and meet two new, ridiculously kind people.
The first day of school, my co-teacher from the middle school picked me up. She's a very nice, very smart woman who has been teaching for 26 years. I met the principal of the middle school, was shown four different offices very quickly and then was carted over to the high school by another co-teacher. I teach four, 50-minute classes every day, split between two different schools. On Monday and Thursday, I teach at Gwangnam High School, with one co-teacher the first day and another one the second day. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'm at Nampyeong Middle School.
Most of my classes have been introducing myself to the students, descibing my family, my college, Pennsylvania, and differences between American and Korean culture that I've seen. EVERY SINGLE CLASS asked me where I live in Korea (which is not rude to ask a teacher), what age I am (not rude here), what singers I like, which Korean singers I know (Big Bang, a 7 member boy-band, makes them go CRAZY), and which actors I like (Johnny Depp is a good answer!). Because I've only taught (how to draw) one-on-one, it was a new process to keep going forward without checking with each student. Of course, I speak too fast a lot. I tend to pay more attention to the students who speak more (the goal is to get everyone talking!) and my natural response has been to make eye-contact with the students who looked like they were paying attention and understanding. Again, something to work on. School is...a lot of learning for me. Learning where both of my schools are, where the rooms I need to go to are, how to understand English with a Korean accent (frustrating!), learning to pronounce and memorize Korean names, and just learning how to teach! And I guess I never realized what a performance teaching is the whole time. It's a steep learning curve right now. I need to balance doing what I need to do for teaching with having a life and enjoying Korea.
Teaching is strange because I'm not sure how much is being understood. I know for me, hearing Korean is an overwhelming flood of sounds. I remember the first day I went to German III and there was no more English...I didn't know it was coming and I was taken aback. It's exciting and challenging to learn a new language...but it's frustrating and strange. I try and use gestures, draw pictures, and make sure of words. Many of the people I talk to will keep talking fluently in Korean without trying other means to convey what they're driving at. It's that feeling of completely not understanding something that obviously has so much meaning for someone else. It's not just the communication difficulty...it's knowing there's meaning in there, but not having it work for you. Having it seem natural and intuitive for one set of people and like impossible noise to the other...and seeing so clearly the fluency and disfluency. The word order here is different. Structurally, it's closer to Japanese. The letters are different and they use a different, uhm, palette of sounds. It's hard for me to say my students' names (I've been asking them to bring in name cards to their next class with me) and memorizing them may be more difficult. I had a boy who I thought was saying his name was "Han Solo" but it was An Sun Oh (which is pretty easy to say compared to other names).
The toilet paper policy at school is BYOTP (and other places too, apparently, but I haven't run across it) and the have floor urinals. Take a urinal. Put it on the floor. I saw them at the hospital, but I thought maybe it was an attempt to ease peeing in a cup. It is fun to pee in the bowl the is perpindicular to the floor, though. There are no bells for classes. There are little songs that sound like a keyboard demo. And I use a microphone in class. Because public school teachers keep going until 7,8, 9pm and they can't be losing their voices.
The high schoolers my first day really liked performing for me...one boy did AMAZING beat boxing, one boy sang a pretty little song facing the corner, and two girls came in the teaching office to giggle a lot and sing a bit from "we are the world." On Wednesday, the class asked me to guess who was the strongest, who was the kindest to poor people, who was the best student and who was the most wealthy. I don't know if I was accurate at all but they seemed pretty excited about it. I was a little weirded out when the kids asked me where I live, but as an incredibly safe country, I don't have to worry about being potentially stalked and assaulted like at home. I looked to my co-teacher for guildance, like "uh, how do I say 'that's not appropriate'?" but he simply stated my address. There are stepping stools built into the elevators at my apartment so that tiny children can use the elevator alone as they please. Because Koreans don't have the same history of creepy-crime-violence that we do. And a class I had this morning asked me if I smoke cigarettes. I paused, again waiting for my co-teacher to say "Hey, that's not appropriate," but it wasn't coming...so I said yes. And we talked about Korean and American cigarettes for about 10 minutes. One student asked if I went to church. Not wanting to get into being a Jewish convert and knowing that, again, this wasn't a rude thing in Korean culture, I just said "no," and the response was pretty much, "oh, ok," with maybe mild surprise from some students. About 35-40% of Koreans are Christians.
On the way home Tuesday, I accidentally paid for a little girl's ice cream cone. It was cute. I was busy in my wallet, trying to get out the right bill and I signalled to the girl behind me to go ahead and pay for her ice cream. The positively ancient woman sitting on the floor did some pointing, I nodded, then I paid and got back less change than for the price of one cone. I left while the woman was trying to get across to the very confused 4 year-old (again...children bop around alone a lot) that she didn't need to pay as I already had. When I stepped outside, what had just occured actually clicked in my head and I was quite glad.
I've realized how ineffectual my gestures are. When you don't know any of words being said, some gestures just don't do much. Yesterday, I was trying to tell the vice principal of the middle school that I liked the squid at lunch (people ask me if I like Korean food--a lot. It's like passing a cool test because I like kimchi...kind of like the veggimeatavitamin or whatevs in Australia). I made a gesture to him for squid that, admittedly, looked like how a jelly-fish swims. He looked up a word in his phone-translator and asked if I meant ramen noodles. I said, "no, it's an animal" and then drew him a quick squid. "ahhhhh. squid. [korean word for squid]." Ha, my memory sucks. I can't remember the word I learned for rice-cake yesterday, although I know it has a strong 'k' sound in it and is one syllable. It's eaten in the summer and tastes a bit like sweetened bread. ::looks it up:: oh. tteok.
I need to make a syllabus for the month for the high school, make a powerpoint for the lesson on Monday, and finish a game I'm making for class at the middle school tomorrow. At the high school, I work from a book. At the middle school, I keep an eye on what they do with the other teacher and just get them to talk as much as possible (well, that's the plan for now).
On Sunday, I'm visiting a temple near by with my doppelganger to do some sketches! Hurrah spending time with a cool kid and doing some drawing. It will be so good.
Oh, wow. I think this entry is finally finished. I started typing this in an e-mail draft on Monday. I can't post it from school, though. I can read my blog just fine, but the pages to edit it in any way are blocked. ::shrug::
Finished Thursday, 10 September 2009, 1pm
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