C'est l'Halloween, C'eeeesstt L'Halloween

Weeelllll it is if you're in Canada anyway.

Here in Korea it's ACE day!!

Yay!

A-number one!

so.... What the heck is ACE day?

A better question would be: What is ACE?

I'll tell you.

ACE is the brand name for a kind of...




wait for it...




wait for it...




cracker.


A little anti-climactic? It gets worse. There is nothing special about ACE crackers. Absolutely NOTHING that warrants a day being named after them. ACE crackers are just like Ritz crackers, except less salty, more square, and owned by geniuses.

Can you imagine having RITZ day in Canada?

So what happens on ACE day?

You give all your friends packages of ACE crackers. And you're really excited about it.

"Teacher! Today is ACE day!! Here! I give you ACE!!"

I received five boxes of ACE crackers today.

I did not give any boxes of ACE crackers as I was unaware that cracker holiday exsisted.

However, I DO have advance warning about Pepero day, which is on November 11th.

What is Pepero?

Chocolate covered cracker sticks.

Yesterday I put the word love on the board and asked the grade sixes what words they associated with love.

Pepero Day was often the first thing they called out.

I am now eating a persimmen. It is delicious. I don't think I've ever eaten one before living in Korea.

Having an "I love Korea" moment.

The expat community where I live (and maybe elsewhere, I don't know). Has this saying, that you either love Korea, or hate it, and it changes weekly! Right now I love it.

Mon-Wed was pretty sketch.

Sometimes ten more months here feels like an ETERNITY.

Sometimes I'm already dreading going home!

Last night I had a dream that I went back to Canada. I broke my contract after 2.5 months and went home.

However, I had to live with my mother and step-father, because I was broke, and my little brother was in the same situation!

So my little brother and I were living at home again, and my mother felt like a failure, because she raised two children who refused to work and she still had to support us.

The dream was pretty convincing that I should stay here for a full year!

(Not that I've ever seriously considered leaving early, I knew from day 1 that I couldn't afford to break my contract. I won't either, unless something dire happens, like North Korea decides to do whatever, or something bad happens at home).




Today as a warm-up game, I played 'guess how many coins are in my hands' with the grade 3's. I had ten coins, I'd put some in my closed hands, shake, and ask the kids, 'how many?'. I was expecting a medicore response to this, I just wanted to say the phrase 'how many' and have them use numbers, but THEY LOVED IT.

I was like, really?

'3 coins teacha?'
'higher'
MEMEMEMEMEME!!!! (all raising their hands, jumping out of their seats)
'2 coins?' (a student not getting the 'higher' concept even though I'm POINTING UP)
'AHHHH NOOOOO NOOOOO (all the other students)
MEMEMEMEMEMEME
'4 coins?'
'higher'
'5 coins?' (They would only go up by one, they were so scared to miss the number)
'higher'
'6 coins'
'that's right'
YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I can't even express how extravegent their reactions were compared to the lameness of the activity we were doing. It might even have been the most successful game I've ever played! We ended up playing for ten minutes longer than the original two I had alloted this activity. When I finally moved on, they were broken-hearted.

Man, they're cute!

I know it makes me a bad person...

But I can't help but laugh hysterically at my grade sixes right now.

They are in PAIN.

Today we usually teach the grade sixes, but we taught the grade fives instead (I didn't question this change, my schedule hasn't been exactly what it's supposed to be yet!).

However, we do have to teach the worst grade six class after lunch.

My co-teacher explained that they would be very tired today, and would probably not want to study.

I asked 'why?'.

She explained that they had just completed three hours of physical exercise.

I asked 'where?' (thinking they had been climbing a mountain, the normal reason why students would get that much exercise).

NOPE (do you notice a trend in these entries?)

They had in fact been running their little legs off to complete a physical education test in order to GRADUATE elementary school!! (Their school year starts in March, so they are relatively close to graduating).

I asked my co-teacher what happens if they fail. She said they do not fail. One female student said she was 'not used to physical exercise' and so she was 'exhausted'. (and I thought in my head, a have a student who knows the word 'exhausted?' weird). Anyway, they are all walking around hitting their thighs and looking very sad.

ALSO something finally made sense to me today.

I had one grade five class before that was talking to me about Micheal Jackson. So when I saw the girl who was doing most of the talking at lunchtime, I smiled and said 'Hi Micheal Jackson!'. She looked at me with the most stunned expression, and stared at me unmovingly until I became uncomfortable and walked away.

But TODAY, I had the grade five classes in a different order than usual. This girl was sitting in group 2 in the THIRD grade five class I taught...AND she was sitting in group 2 in the FOURTH grade five class I taught. Or rather her identical twin was.

Glad that's cleared up...

Question?

Today one of my co-workers took the same bus to school that I take. We walked to school together from the bus stop. She is a really sweet lady. I think it's just taking me longer to warm up to this school BECAUSE the lauguage barrier is so much higher. It's often easier for us to ignore each other rather than battle to make ourselves understood.

She told me that she is taking English lessons twice a week, which is AMAZING considering how busy regular teachers here are. (as opposed to irregular teachers like me, I'm fairly busy, but I manage to leave work at work for the most part, which is a huge blessing).

On the way to school she pointed at her face and said 'yellow skin' and at my face and said 'white skin' and then she said 'question'. So I knew she was asking me a question about white and yellow skin. And that was as far as my knowledge went. It's really hard to formulate relevant answers when the question is that vaque. I told her that I was caucasian and that she was Asian, and that seemed to satisfy her.


Also, I mentioned in an earlier blog that I thought I might have to do something this Thursday. I got to school today and was told that my classes were canceled, but if I wanted I could come to the 'garble garble' centre with grades 3-6. I decided to go, because the four hours I spend with the vice-principal on a regular day is enough thank you!

I heard agricultural centre. I was picturing us looking at exhibits of farms or something, while maybe the children did a project, discovery centre style.

Nope.

(I'm NEVER right!)

It was actually the 'cultural' centre (no agri). One of my students asked me my seat number on the way there. So I'm thinking 'movie?'.

Nope.

It was an event which maybe 15 elementary and middle schools attended. Each school had a group of students performa different act.

These acts included:
-Elementary school boys performing skipping manuevers with hula hoops and ropes. Some of their stuff was pretty good, but their OUTFITS killed me. (white leg warmers, black knee-length spandex shorts, with a sparkly blue stripe up the side, and a small racer-back belly shirt. That's right. Boys wearing belly shirts. It was especially cute on the little boy with the potbelly!

-AMAZING drumming. Mr Beeler (my high school band teacher) would probably have given a limb to have any one of those kids in his percusion section (not that I'm dissing my high school percusionists, I dated one:) Anyway 30-40 of them would get on stage, facing fowards, with NO condutor, and just be so in unision and SO perfect, and play 15 minute songs, with no sheet music or anything. I was completely blown away. They make drumline look like amateur night, and they're ten.

-Little grade three girls wearing really slutty outfits and belly dancing. It was actually kind of sickening. I'm thinking, 'somewhere, some lady, is saying to these little girls, 'and thrust! and gyrate! and swivel your hips like you want to...' well you know.

During the show, the grade fours were getting restless.

"When finished teacha?"
"Hungry teacha! When is lunch"

They ask, looking at me with sad little faces. HA, like I know! I thought we were going to build mud huts or something.

I just need to express my indignation

Today at a teachers' after-volleyball snack event I stuck my chopsticks into a plate of red saucy stuff. And this male teacher whom I've never seen before shoved my hand away and into a different plate.

I'm not ALLOWED to eat red saucy stuff?

I don't get it.

AND my vice-principal poured me soju into a tiny cup. I said stop and motioned with my hand when he was at about 1oz. He ALSO pushed my hand away, laid his nasty chopsticks over my glass (as a deterent to me making the 'stop' motion?), and continued pouring soju until the cup ACTUALLY overflowed.

FINE

If people keep touching my hands during snack time I WON'T GO ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Korean Aerobic Class

I feel like I could just post the title and have a self-explanatory post, but I will elaborate..

Last night was the first night I mustered up the courage to attend an aerobics class at the gym. I've been to the gym a few times to lift weights and use the cardio machines, but at heart, I am an aerobics girl.

Korean culture is fairly conservative when it comes to how much skin women can show on the upper halves of their bodies (on the bottom half however, daisy dukes and belt skirts are completely acceptable).

It's strange that I can walk down the street and practically be able to see buttocks all around me, yet be chastised by old women for showing my shoulders. Most Korean women wear shirts/dresses that cover their shoulders and never dip below collarbone level. Cleavage is a four-letter word here.

HOWEVER when these semi-conservative women go to the gym they turn into 80's flashdancers of ill-repute!

I wish I knew how to post pictures here, because the outfits I've seen at the gym would literally cause your mind to explode.

I've seen:
- enormous pleather bell-bottoms with slits up to hip-bone level (sometimes the slits are on the front of the thighs, sometimes on the side)the bell-bottoms can be neon, adorned with sparkles, jewel-toned, tiger/leopord print or all of the above.
-short shorts (sometimes jean, sometimes neon) worn with nylons underneath, and leg warmers
-and most confoundingly given the culture OUTSIDE the gym, sparkly bikini tops (always paired with the above-mentioned bell-bottoms)!
I've also seen:
-halter dresses worn over mini tube tops
-and well I could go on. The sexier the better, because what's more sexy than having sweat pour down your backless ruffled pink shirt, into you butt cleavage carefully enhanced by the hole right above your butt crack in your matching pink-trimmed navy blue bell-bottoms???

Not ALL the women dress like this. Some are legitimately there to sweat, and they wear the outfits the gym provides (I tried this outfit once, it's just a grey t-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts, but I found the t-shirt made of the hottest material ever invented, and the elastic band on the waist of the shorts irritated me).

But I don't get it! There are still men at the gym! So why is it okay (and downright NORMAL) to dress like a retro 'lady of the evening' at the gym and yet I can't wear a dress my GRANDPARENTS bought for me outside the gym?

Anyway, as I was saying,

Last night was the first night I went to aerobics class. I stood in the very back, in the middle of the room, so the post would hide my from the rest of the gym (the rest of the studio is windows into the free-weight section).

All of the women in the front rows were wearing their 80's flashdance gear, while the ladies in the back with me were wearing the gym-provided outfits.

My expectations for this 50 minutes class were as follows:
-a warm up with stretching
-and then a workout, consisting of, oh I don't know, jumping jacks, some simple chreography, some jumping around, you know, normal stuff
-a cool down with stretching

What I got:
45 minutes filled with as many songs as you can fit into 45 minutes. Intense chreography for every song, that completely differed from every other song. And all of the ladies (and men), bikini-tops to sweats, knew every single intricate dance move to every single song. There were spins, and jumps, and hip-hop hand movements, and MOST of all, hip-shaking, pelvis-thrusting, gyrating moves (which the men performed completely un-selfconsiously. In fact, some men arrived a little bit late, so they stood directly in front of me, as I inched closer to the back wall).

OF COURSE I was completely lost. But whatever, I was still sweating to death (this may be because in 24C weather they refuse to open the windows, or even turn on a fan). So I just tried my best. Which was fine when we were facing the front. However, every so often we'd turn (or more specifically, they'd turn, and I'd turn 3 seconds later) so that the people in the back were now at the front. I think you know how that turned out.

Oh and the last five minutes? It was a cool-down...I suppose...We humped the air for five minutes straight, sometimes pointing at the ceiling, sometimes pointing to the left/right, and sometimes rolling our heads as fast as possible.

And the weirdest thing?

I'll probably go again.

A sharing culture

I have heard this phrase over and over regarding Korean culture.

And in my short time here (two months and counting!) I have found it to be true.

No one eats unless EVERYBODY eats. Why on earth would you come to school with a personal snack? It borders on rudeness not to offer food to others if you are eating.

One of my friends brought a fruit-to-go to school (sent from Canada, they don't sell them over here). For those of you unfamiliar with fruit-to-go's, they are maybe 3x8cm of dried fruit. Not my idea of a good time, but anyway. Lisa offered a piece to her co-worker. Her co-worker immediately took the fruit-to-go, tore it into ten miniscule pieces, and gave every teacher in eyesight a scrap of Canadian food. Lisa was told, 'In Korea, we share'.

I see examples of this everyday. Students consistently offer me candy in the halls and if you give one child a candy, they either ask for another for their friends, or try to somehow share what they have been given (well I've heard about this, I don't personally use candy in my classroom).

Still, last night at the noraebang I was slightly taken aback when one of my co-workers took my personal 500mL water bottle from the table and poured himself a glass!

Noraebang with the teachers.

Yesterday (Monday)I was a tired piece of garbage, barely able to lift my head up long enough to say 'repeat after me'.

Of course, last MONTH I had promised to go to dinner and then a noraebang with the grade six teachers. So right after school Winnie and I drove to a restaurant.

It was the same group of teachers as the last dinner. Two of them were late because they'd missed a turn and were on their way to the next town.

Trying to find your way around Korea is RIDICULOUSLY difficult, even for Koreans! For one thing, none of the streets have names unless its a main road, and even then, barely anyone will know the name. So if you want to go somewhere you have to tell the taxi driver a place he will know. This could be a district (and then when you get to the district you can give specific directions, or you can get out and try to stumble upon where you want to go) or a 'landmark'. Landmarks in Suncheon include: McDonalds, a few other restaurants, the cinema, any apartment building complexes, usually schools, etc. If you go to a restaurant you really like and want to find it again, you take a business card. Then the next time you want to go to the restaurant, you can give the business card to your taxi driver. If the taxi driver does not know the restaurant, he will call the restaurant and get directions.

Sidenote: My taxi driver yesterday asked me to go to dinner with him. I pretended like I didn't know what he was saying:)

At the teacher's dinner, I was the only female drinking alcohol. They were very worried I would be hungover. After three shots of %20 alcohol. I told them (truthfully) that I'd be fine!

Dinner was kimchi mandu (love love love) and seafood soup. The soup came in a huge cauldron and you had to scoop it into smaller bowls. There wasn't a lot of seafood in the soup, but there were lots of long, fat, slippery noodles. It took me about 45 minutes to eat one small bowl! I had to pick up a noodle with my chopsticks, and then coil it into my spoon so I could eat it. However, the coiling thing is kind of hard with those slippery jerks.

So maybe I did get a wee bit tipsy considering my food to alcohol intake. I actually found the Korean conversation much easier to follow that way. Not that I understood any words..but it's easier to get a sense of the conversation when you are totally at ease. For example I understood when Winnie was telling the 6-4 homeroom teacher about the little boy who came in saying 'hey baby' and when I said 'what?' 'hello cutie'. I was laughing on the inside, but I got mad on the outside (although Winnie says I'm not very scary when I'm mad).

Then we went to a noraebang. I think I broke their eardrums with Bohemian Rhapsody. AND freakiest thing ever! I have this friend (a fellow 'native speaker') who sings 'Don't Stop Me Now' EVERY time we do karaoke together. And wasn't the last song that Will (who is Korean, but that is his English name) picks! And I had to sing with him! (Will also sang a rousing rendition of 'Livin' the vida Loca' I appreciated it as all of the other songs were Korean, with the men belting them out, and the women doing that odd shaky thing with their voices. They're ALL good singers, don't get me wrong, but I needed a little Ricky in my life).

Classtime!

Jailbirds?

Can someone please tell me why wearing black and white striped clothing in now the height of Korean fashion? I feel like I'm teaching in a prison sometimes because of the way my students are dressed!

Bowling and a walk

I have three hours to kill before the end of the day...so I might as well update this (for you mom:)

Friday night some friends and I went bowling.

Did you know, fellow east-coasters, that nobody else bowls like us? I was TRYING to tell the Americans and the Ontarions that bowling should be done with a small ball, and ten pins.

AmerOntr People: Oh, you use five pins.

Me: No...ten...(love you guys!!)

I'd only ever seen this kind of bowling on tv before, the kind where you have to put your fingers in the holes in the ball. I definitely felt like I was going to break my fingers every time I threw (heaved the fifty pound) ball with all my might.

AND as you might expect, I was TERRIBLE. But I DID get a strike!! (Which brought the score for my first string up to a whoping 34 points!)

Korea has been treating me pretty well lately. I am totally adjusted to my mon, tues, wed school (where I have a lovely co-teacher to team teach with) and am SLOWLY settling in to my Thurs-Fri school.

But MAN no one tells me ANYTHING unil the last possible second!

Today (Thursday) at the start of recess, a teacher asked me if I wanted to go for a walk (using mainly charades mind you).

She is probably in between 50-60 years old and she was DECKED OUT! She had white gloves on, a tracksuit, and a huge visor that obscured most of her face (it's very important not to EVER let the rays of sun hit your skin! Although...they may have something with that, considering how slowly Korean people wrinkle...hmmm...).

Since no one ever invites me to do anything at this school I said 'sure, I'll go for a walk with you' thinking that if I was late for my class after recess I'd just blame this lady.

I was a little curious as to where we were going to go, for how long, and what I was supposed to talk to her about using her limited English and my ten words of korean, but whatever.

So we go outside and she starts talking to her class who are all holding ginormous skipping ropes. They're not long enough for two people to hold the ends and turn the rope for the other kids, but they're WAY to long for these teeny children.

Suddenly, all of the students in her class are standing in two rows facing us.

I don't know why I still bother trying to figure out what is going on when random things like this happen, but first I thought, 'she is going to check their skipping ropes' then I thought 'she is going to make them speak English'. (sidenote, one time when I was teaching her students she said something sharply and they all raised their hands. She looked at me expectiantly. The students looked at me expectantly. I had no idea why their hands were in the air.)

Of course my guesses about the reason behind these mystery rows were completely wrong.

The teacher gestures for me to walk... and the class follows us in their rows. Ok, her class is coming for a walk too. Then the grade four class gathers from the four corners of the playground and lines up too. Suddenly the whole school is en route to a mysterious destination.

Guess I didn't have to worry about being late for my next class if we're all coming!

We all trip along merrily to who-knows-where. I notice all of the other teachers, the vice-principal and the principal, are all wearing tracksuits and have whistles hanging around their necks. I am dressed in business casual.

The students are very good and stop at road crossings. When the green man turns on, they RUN across the street as fast as their little legs will carry them (which is probably a good thing considering the fact that red lights are not deterents to motorists).

Ten minutes later we arrive at our destination. A non-descript area, that is very similar to the school playground.

The students skip with their ropes. Ten minutes later we return en masse to the school.
It seemed like a very short trip to necessitate full-on gym gear on the teachers' part. Oh well.

On the walk home a chain of five grade five girls links arms with me. We are soon walking forward in a very haphazard way, as one of us is always directly in the path of a post, tree, or fire hydrant. I don't have the heart to disengage myself.

Period three starts ten minutes late as we were all just getting in from our lovely, pointless walk (and it really WAS lovely, it must be around 25C today, which feels pleasant to me now).

The teacher in this room tells me 'vacation tomorrow, you know?'. I had no idea but I'm not complaining. I asked her whether I had no class or no school (sometimes when we have no class we still have to come and look foreign). She told me she didn't know. So through some extensive charades I asked the vice-principal. I THINK he told me to stay home. So I am going to. And I hope that I am understanding everything correctly!

I also think:
That the grade five teacher doesn't want me to do games with the students
That I am going on a school trip to the aquarium in Busan next Friday
That SOMETHING is happening on Thursday
and that I should maybe try and learn Korean!!!

It boggles my mind...

Some of the kids look at me with blank stares when I ask them to open their books...

and some of the kids know such random difficult words.

My grade fives were talking about Micheal Jackson, and one of them said 'plastic surgery is bad'

Really? You can't answer me when I say 'what is your name?' but you know plastic surgery?

The best one was today.

I had them filling out sheets that looked like this:
_________ is stronger than_________
__________is older than__________ etc.

Most kids were putting:
My mother is older than me_ or whatever. However one little boy wrote:
?????? (I didn't understand this word) are older than homosapiens.

I laughed in my head for a long time. Homosapiens??

Wow.

I love the kids, I really do. I don't know if teaching is for me (pretty sure it's NOT since it's a 9-5 which is too much work for me) but I do enjoy them.

Seoul

I got back from Seoul a night earlier than planned, but I couldn't keep up with my crazy friends! I wasn't in much of a party mood, and they sure were.

However, even though I cut my trip short so I could lay in bed and sleep (and read this WICKED book)[I'm lame] I had a great time in Seoul.

Where I live is about as far away from Seoul as you can get (it's a four hour bus ride, South Korea is 100x smaller than Canada, with twice the population).

I live in a very traditional area with hardly any foreigners. I get stared at ALL the time. I'm such a circus freak.

But in Seoul no one batted an eyelash! Because I wasn't the most abnormal girl to ever breathe!

There were black people and white people and all kinds of people and at least 50% of the people spoke English completely fluently and EVERY single korean person I talked to could understand me! (even the hookers; who knew hooker hill would be so full of them? Why did I go to hooker hill? Total accident. I'm not used to big city living haha).

Although, on the flip side, I'm getting way too comfortable in Suncheon saying exactly what I think all the time because no one can understand me. I would say stuff in Seoul and be like 'oh no, did I just offend someone? Think Jennifer!!'

But to conteract any negative benifits of being understood.....there were western restaurants!! I had alfredo pasta and nachos with REAL CHEESE and refried beans and guacomole and a frozen margarita and quesadillas and I didn't even feel SLIGHTLY guilty about ANY OF IT!!!

All in all I'm glad I'm living in Suncheon, but it was so nice to get in taxis and have them take me exactly where I wanted to go, and receive exactly what I wanted in restaurants.

Seoul was a great break from the Korea that I know. I know I will go back soon!

Almost the end of the day!!

I still have no idea what I'm doing for my grade fives tomorrow, and only the vaguest idea for the 3's and 6's, but I'm happy today is over. This week has FLOWN by. Friday is a Korean holiday (not ENTIRELY sure why...A grade six boy explained it to me...something about the sky opening and the first country being created). But the WHY is not important. The IS is important. Friday IS a holiday and I am leaving for Seoul Thursday night. YAY!

Ok.

I KNOW you're bored with me talking about the weather.

But I have to say.

It's 25C today.

And I am wearing a sweater and wool pants.

And I am totally comfortable, with NO AC or even a fan.

How sick is that?

Does THAT tell you how HOT i was for an entire MONTH.