December post?

As my dear, wise, and loving older brother Benjamin has pointed out to me, I have not posted anything for December yet. So here is a short attempt, anyway.

Korea is still treating me just fine. I'm enjoying weekends of sight-seeing, culture immersion, and shopping. This weekend I am planning on doing a lot of my Christmas shopping with my good friend Tiffany, as well as some girls from work. We might also hit up Forever 21 for our own shopping. :)

Work has been quite stressful this week. Tension has been high in the school because a new English school has opened up around the corner and we've lost some students. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude about everything, but the Christmas break is coming at an impeccable time.

I finally got to part ways with my Class of Terrors, and, let me assure you, no tears were shed upon this departure. I also had to let go of my favorite class, but I think it was a fair enough trade because I inherited two really, really good classes, full of students who are sweet and obedient. Now ALL my classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday are enjoyable. Praise God.


What else, what else.........................

I'm really enjoying teaching my students about Christmas. Either they all really love Christmas too, or my enthusiasm is contagious. At any rate, my classroom is totally decked out in Christmas decorations. We had a paper-snowflake-making day, and my second graders attacked my door with pictures of Christmas trees and Santa Claus. I have tinsel hung up and wrapped around anything you can imagine in the classroom, and tomorrow I do believe we are going to make paper stockings to hang up with each student's name on them, for when Santa comes, of course!! Santa and I, we're friends. So I managed to convince him to come to Suwon on Dec. 22 AND Dec. 23 to deliver presents for the kids (granted, I hear he's going to be relatively cheap this year and probably only leave some candy in the stockings). It should be a fun last two weeks.

Tiffany and I are planning our vacation for the Chinese New Year (January 29). We're leaning toward Taiwan right now. Our first choice had been Thailand, but there are some protests going on there right now that closed the airports...plus it's a little too far away for a four day weekend. Our other option is Japan, but we both agree that Taiwan would be a little more interesting and cheaper. I'll let ya'll know as those plans progress.

I hope this update is sufficient for now. More interesting posts later, I promise!

Love,

Melissa

Pictures ^.^

November

Before I came to South Korea, I had all these grand plans. Goals, if you will. One of these being that I was going to spend time every day writing-- journaling, blogging, poetry, short stories, etc. I've been doing some but not every day, and I've definitely been neglecting both this blog and my "regular" blog.

Maybe that's because nothing particularly exciting is going on. I guess that statement in and of itself proves to all of you that I am completely settled and comfortable in Korea. My friends and I always talk about how we keep forgetting that we're on the other side of the world because this feels so natural to us now. Natural and familiar, even though things are SO different. Instead of taking classes, I'm teaching classes. I don't have a car anymore, I either walk or take the bus/subway whenever I need to go somewhere. My lunch/dinner meals consist of "weird" food-- for example, for lunch today I had triangle kimbap (imagine a ball of rice with sauce and egg in it, surrounded by a seaweed sheet) and kiwi, and for dinner I had pork spine soup. Again-- completely natural to me.

I honestly believe that if I weren't super close to my daddy/Kathy, my brothers, and some of my best friends-who-are-more-like-siblings, I would never leave here. This is just such a neat culture. PLUS...I love having a full-time job. I love that I don't have to pay for rent and that my utilities are like $50 a month. Everything is so cheap here too, but good quality. Okay, not everything-- fashion and/or hygiene things are pricey, but very good quality.

This weekend I'm SUPER busy. On Saturday, I'm going to the DMZ with Patrick and Alison. We have to be at the tour bus at 7am on Saturday, which means we have to leave HERE at 5:30am. Ugh. That night we're going to my friend Annie's birthday party. Sunday I'm going sight-seeing/shopping in Seoul with Tiffany and Marina. I'm sure the weekend is going to fly by fast-- they always do here.

I bought my plane ticket home for Christmas yesterday. I intended to buy it on Monday (pay day) but I discovered that I couldn't use my Korean debit card online, since I'm a foreigner. I went to the bank yesterday to get it sorted out but I couldn't do anything about it, so my friend Gina used her credit card to buy my ticket for me and then we transferred money from my account to her account. I was SO happy that my card ended up not working, because if it had I would have purchased my ticket on Monday for 1,554,700 Won. Because I had to wait until Tuesday, I ended up buying my ticket for 1,054,700-- 500,000 Won cheaper!!!! So basically, for those of you unaware of the exchange rate, I was GOING to buy my ticket for $1165 but ended up getting it for $791 because of this amazingly fateful inconvenience (Go God!). The ticket prices were going up and down and I was afraid to wait too long to buy my ticket because it had gone up to 1,888,000 Won at one point. Craziness. So yes. I am only coming home for a week, sadly, but it will be great. I'm spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my parents in Alpena. Then I'm driving down to Lansing so that I can have the honor of standing in one of my bestest friends' wedding...and of course, see some SWEET people that I love and miss dearly. After that's over I'm going back to Alpena for the rest of my trip. It will be psychotic and exhausting and I'm going to sleep a ton when I get back to Korea, but it will be worth it. Fo sho.

Time for bed. It may be only noon Michigan time, but it is 2:02am Korea time. ^.^

Life as a teacher

I've been accused of having too much fun here in Korea. So I thought I'd give ya'll a glimpse of my daily schedule so you don't get the misinterpretation that all my time is spent shopping, getting my feet eaten by little fish, and traveling. :)

I usually leave for work around 1:30pm. Usually, I walk there, and it's a 20 minute walk. When I get there, I have two hours to prep for two-three classes (depending on the day) and eat lunch. Prepping involves thinking up comprehension questions, branching out questions (basically going on tangents to talk about things that the students are interested in so they'll talk more...for example, reading a story about how a seed grows, we end up talking about Halloween in America. Follow that path!!!), photo-copying quizzes and worksheets, coming up with fun games/activities so the class won't be boring, etc. Then I have my first class.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I teach three two hour classes. The first class on those days is my level two class. These kids are absolutely insane. I have to shout half the time to be heard above their collective roar. I have to ask them several times to take out their books. They are definitely a handful. I am exhausted after this class and I'm usually losing my voice by the second class that day.

My middle class that day is my level three class. I love these kids, they're definitely my favorite. Here's a class photo:





These kids make me laugh so hard sometimes. They are completely willing to contribute to class discussions and I rarely have to remind them not to speak Korean in class. They are all very well-behaved and they are very sweet too. Today we had some pretty entertaining discussions. For example, one girl in class asked me today, very seriously, if I thought that Jesus loves ghosts. Another boy, when doing a poster about Korean traditions, drew a picture of kimbap (the Korean version of sushi) eating George W. Bush. Sooooo entertaining.

My last class is full of angels. They are the perfect students. I only have five of them in this class. All girls. They always study, they all get A's, they never complain, they answer and ask many questions. The material for this class is frustrating because there isn't enough to cover in 2 hours. Sometimes I'm assigned two pages to cover in one class period for reading, which is supposed to take one hour. It's hard. I have to get creative and come up with things for us to do that are still meaningful and relevent but not just busy work either. Today I had them bring in family photos and we had a class discussion about our families. It was fun to hear about their families.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I teach two three-hour classes. My first class is also level two like my troublesome class on Mondays, but these kids are very sweet and much more well-behaved. It helps that there are only 8 in this class, whereas the MWF class has 15. On Tuesday these girls had made a snowflake/star thing to hang up in class. They wrote me a thank-you note with it. Made me smile. :-)

My second class is my junior high class that I wrote about before. This class is hard because they don't respect me and they won't speak or answer questions even. The three hours stretches on forever...seriously.

My job isn't just confined to these 8 hours though. I am always required to assign and grade five essays a month, one-two a week. It adds up. Sometimes, at the end of the week, I find myself with 30 essays to grade (and they have to be graded within a day or two after finished). These essays aren't easy to read either. Sometimes they will be pages long and have all sorts of ungrammatical, nonsensical sentences.

I also, once a month, have report cards due. These are extremely time-consuming and I am usually only given like two days to complete them. I have to calculate grades and write comments that will be helpful for the students and parents.

I usually get out of work around 10pm, but then I go to the gym for an hour. When I get done there, I come home (today I got home at 11:30) and I have to cook and eat dinner.

It's nearly impossible to have friends outside of work because no one has this same crazy schedule that we at Youngdo have. I'm extremely grateful for the fact that I get along with every single teacher at work. All of us hang out together on the weekends. I go shopping with the girls. We're not good, close friends yet but we have fun. The weekends go by in a blur...

In spite of all this extremely time-consuming work and even the frustrating moments that these kids give me...I absolutely love my job. I am so glad that I chose to come to Korea because so far, it is so much better than anything I could have expected. Which is saying a lot, since it's only been two months! I guess I could be in the "honeymoon" phase still but I don't think that's the case. We'll see!

This weekend, we're having a Youngdo "picnic" (Koreans refer to every school or work outing as a picnic) at Jebudo island. Apparently this island is famous for clam-digging and sunsets. I'm excited about this!

Time to go, essays to grade. :-)

I've made it this far already?

I had a minor victory of sorts today. Last week I was told by my boss, Lynn, that I was too nice to my students. She had me observe another teacher (Annie) to see practical ways to be strict while still being nice. It was kind of a hard thing for me to hear, because as we all know I am a perfectionist, but I think it improved my teaching methods.

Anyway, last night we had conferences with the parents and I guess all the parents gave me good reports! One of the students in my loud/crazy class, Peter, said that he hadn't liked being at Youngdo at first but now he's really starting to enjoy class and he told his parents he can tell that I am trying really hard to be strict and fun at the same time, so they think I'm a good teacher. That made me REALLY happy.


On Wednesday I was teaching my senior level students about noun clauses, and I ended up having to use some good ole Syntax knowledge to explain things to them. I worked out a handout for them that I made that showed the syntactic process of the question word moving around in the sentence. I didn't actually draw out the trees but I gave them five steps in how to make a question out of a noun clause. For example:

1. David arrived two days ago.

First step: What question word do you want to use to ask the question?
--> "When?"

Second step: What part of the sentence answers the question word? Replace that part with the question word.
--> "David arrived when?"

Third step: Move the question word to the beginning of the sentence.
--> "When David arrived?"

Fourth step: If the question word is next to the subject, then insert the verb "do" (tense matching the other verb in the sentence).
--> "When did David arrived?"

Fifth step: If there you inserted the past tense form of "do" in this sentence and there is another verb, change the other verb in the sentence to the present tense.
--> "When did David arrive?"

Ta-da.

I know. I am a linguistics nerd. But it really helped them understand, so it made me really happy to put my Bachelor's degree to good use!!!

Tomorrow is my first pay day, and for THAT I am thrilled. I'm going grocery shopping ASAP as I have been living off of rice for the past two weeks (except for the occasions when my amazing colleagues give me food, like bagels and apples!). I am probably going to buy a cellphone when we go into Seoul on Saturday. I have to pay some bills. I have to save money for my plane ticket home in December. But I will be happy because I get to have galbi and other non-rice food again! :)

I'll try to post more pictures soon too.

Progress

Teaching this week has been remarkable. First of all, on Tuesday I got my quiet class (even the Troublesome Trio of boys) to participate and talk in class by playing a vocabulary game. This class actually turned out to be pretty fun once you get them out of their shell.

Second of all, I've been doing report cards. I finished two of my classes' report cards last night-- it took me an hour to do each class. This proved to be challenging in some ways. It was hard to think of something to write for the students who don't stand out in my mind. It was also hard to think of a nice way to say that certain students were awful and deserve F's but our school can only give D's. I enjoyed doing the report cards for my good, favorite students.

I had to choose two "students of the month" which was very hard. At first, I chose Tom and Joan. Tom is this incredibly sweet 6th grader who is extremely smart, always does his homework, always answers in class. He is such a sweetie, always asking me questions about my life and seeking every opportunity he can to speak English. Joan is the "lifesaver" in my class of dead middle schoolers (the Stephanie Morel clone, actually)...she's the only one who talks so she always answers my questions, she's very smart and a very hardworker. So I turned their names in yesterday and today I was told that I can't have Joan because she was student of the month last month (I guess everybody loves her!). So I debated for a long time and finally ended up choosing Christina, one of my 4th graders. She is probably the nicest girl ever, always smiling, and she is so eagar to participate in class that it comes down to her standing up and jumping up and raising her hand. She has gotten perfect scores on all her tests too. So...I think she was a good choice. :)

Today we talked about why Koreans (or other people) come to America. There were the answers like "to study English" or "to work" or "because America is rich." My favorite answer, however, came from my student Jane who said, "Because that's where Melissa teacher lives, and she is very famous!" Cracked me up. This particular class is insane but so sweet. Another girl in class, Sarah, asked me about this exchange program that YES is putting on in Canada. She asked how close Ontario is to Michigan (my students are all convinced that Michigan is part of Canada)and I said that it was the province that was directly above Michigan and that I had been there many times. She got very excited and told me that she will do the program if and only if I'm back in America at that time so she can come see me. Ohhhh kids. Definitely made my day.

In my second class of the day, my students gave me my Korean name. My name in Korean is "Emily" apparently. Except it's pronounced "Eee-mah-ree." I don't know Korean characters on this computer, otherwise I could write it out in Korean. So that is what they are calling me now.

More of my lion-ness came out today. There is one boy in my first class that always talks to his friends instead of paying attention in class. Today I handed out the vocabulary test and told everyone to be quiet and work on their exams. This kid was playing with a little finger skateboard and totally ignoring his test, and occasionally turning around to talk to his friend behind him. I told him four times to turn around and work on his test. After each time, he would turn around and work on part of his test, then turn back around. Finally after the fourth time when he turned around again, I took his test away. Everyone else in the class was finished with their test by this time. He turned and his jaw dropped and he went, "Teaaaacccherr I'm not finisssshhhheed." I said, "Yes you are. I told you four times to work on your test and you didn't. So you're done." He pouted and said, "Teacher is bad." A few minutes later he was completely undaunted by this act again. Oh well. Hopefully this will teach him a lesson. Hopefully.

That's all the stories for today. :)

Pictures!

By request of my dearest "Apa" (Dad), here are some more photos.

The pictures of the food are just some yummy Korean dishes, the first one with the egg is "bibimbap" and the second one was just dumplings, multi-colored ones though!! The pictures of the buildings are the palace is Seoul, it was huge! And the last one is of me and Alison drinking Starbucks in Itaewon (the "foreigner" area of Seoul). Enjoy!

Settling in

I feel like I'm getting used to living in Korea. There are some things that are very different about living here, but I'm starting to forget about the culture shock of it all. However...here are some of the big differences here that I am not too fond of yet.

First of all, Korean drivers! My students told me one day that they heard that America has very strict driving rules, which I never would have thought about before coming here. It seems to me that the "rules" of driving in Korea are really just guidelines. Stoplights, for example. Apparently it is perfectly acceptable to run red lights here. Today I went to this giant grocery store (Home Plus) with Alison and Patrick and we had to take a cab. Our driver was insane. Not only did he speed like a mad man, he went straight through every red light without even slowing down, he weaved in and out of traffic (including pulling into the other lane to pass cars), and he honked his horn at other cars who were driving normally. Patrick was sitting in the front seat clutching the "oh crap!" bar above the window and Alison and I were in the back trying hard not to laugh hysterically. I have never feared for my life more. Fortunately we got to Home Plus safely. Don't worry, Daddy-- most cab drivers aren't THAT bad and I'm generally safe in them. ;-)

I also am not a fan of the bathrooms here. I found that I have a place to put the hose in my sink so it can kind of act as a shower head, but I still have to bend down to get my hair wet. You know something is low to the ground when I of all people have to crouch to get under it. I'm getting used to it but I will not miss Korean bathrooms I don't think.:)

Actually, I think those are my two biggest grievances at this point. :) I went to an English-speaking church this weekend where all the "foreigners" were extremely kind and invited me to sit with them and eat lunch with them after the service. This weekend was Chuseok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving, so I had a nice long weekend. It's back to work tomorrow, but thanks to all this extra time I got caught up on all my essay grading. Yay!

The students...

The two classes that are presenting the most obstacles are polar opposite. The first class is my MWF class that I have at 4pm. They are quite the handful but they are great. It is hard to get them to be quiet which is great when I'm asking questions or asking for volunteers to read-- they especially are good at having class discussions about the reading. But when it's time for the quizzes or tests they still don't quiet down and they talk to each other during the test. So far, no one is cheating as I can tell from their quiz grades but it still isn't good.

My other class that is a challenge is my TR class at 7pm. This class...does not talk. Period. One girl in the class does all the question-answering and volunteers for reading. I feel bad because I have to ignore her hand sometimes and call on people. In particular, there are three boys in the back of the class who just don't talk in English at all, even when I stand in front of their desks and ask questions directly to them. Finally on Thursday, I got so frustrated because they were talking to each other in Korean and ignoring me that I assigned everyone in class a question to answer and made it a requirement that they answer. Two of the boys answered their questions right away with as minimal an answer as possible, but the other boy tried to get out of it by saying, "I don't know." I pointed him to a paragraph in the book where he could find the answer and he finally answered when he realized I wasn't going to let him off the hook. These boys also haven't done any of their homework so far, including the online essays that are worth 25 points.

There are definitely some fun things about class though. In the previously mentioned rowdy class, the girls give me notes and pictures that they drew at the end of class that say things like, "We love you teacher!" and "You are very kind!" and things like that. They also tend to draw things for me on the back of their tests, which is really funny. The boys in that class are a bit smart alecky at times, but it's more of something I can joke around with them about rather than a nuisance.

Starting my second week of teaching today. Here goes nothing!

Teaching

I teach five classes, three on MWF and two on Tuesday and Thursday. So far I am enjoying my MWF classes the most. My first class is really rowdy and a bit on the obnoxious side at times, but they're cute. Yesterday when the bell rang, one of students ran up to me and said, "Teacher, I made this for you" and she handed me a folded up piece of paper. I opened it and she had drawn hearts and smileys all over the paper and then wrote, "You is very good teacher!" It made my whole night.

My other two classes those days are quieter and more polite. Yesterday I had one of the classes write skits to act out in front of class, and they had a ton of fun doing them so that was good. I'm trying to figure out ways to make class more fun, you know, teaching grammar can be a little dry sometimes to people who don't understand how fascinating it really is. :)

The other teachers here are very nice and helpful when it comes to things like knowing where to grocery shop or where to go for internet connections. I got to school three hours early today (story there) and so I am using the free wireless here right now.

This morning, Alison and I went to the Immigration Office to apply for our Alien Registration Cards. We just got back our hospital results last night (good news, neither of us have AIDs or Tuberculosis...phew!)and so this morning we had to take those along with our Passports and some other paperwork to the Immigration Office. They took everything and told us to come back on September 18 to get our cards. One step closer to being a legal alien...

That's about all the news I have for today. The good thing is that I love teaching, so this year won't be awful...woohoo!

Adventure # 2

Today Alison and I went to the Suwon Fortress. We had to take the subway there which, gratefully, was in English as well as Korean. When we got off the subway, we got on a bus to the fortress. The bus driver was very nice and told us when our stop was. We walked around the area around the fortress for awhile before stopping inside a Tourist Information Booth. There, these two Korean men sat us down to tell us the history behind the Suwon fortress. It was a bit random, since the one man was telling us the story and the other man behind him kept taking our photo. At the end of his lecture, he beckoned us to follow him. His English was very bad so we weren't really sure where he was taking us, but we ended up at the palace inside the fortress walls. There was a stage there with traditional Korean dancers, and inside the palace we got to see the old suits of armor and other war/kingdom stuff.

After this, we walked to the wall. The stairs to the top of the wall were EXTREMELY long and steep and we felt quite dehydrated by the top as it was very warm today. The view on top of the wall though was beautiful, you could see the entire city of Suwon. I wish I could post pictures, but those will come soon enough. :)

We took the bus back to the subway station after this and we somehow ended up getting on the wrong train back! We got on the "rapid" train instead of the normal train, so it took us straight from Suwon to Anyang, completely skipping our stop. It was only about a 15 minute train ride though, and we didn't have to pay to get back to our stop. We finally got back around 4:30 and decided to explore our area of the city some more. We walked downtown and decided to go into this Korean restaurant that appeared to have pictures of their food on the menu. We thought this would be relatively safe so we went in. The menus turned out to be entirely in Korean, and our waitress didn't know any English either. We asked her if she had an English menu (by pointing at our menus and saying, "English?") and she went over to a fellow customer and dragged him over to talk to us. He pointed at the three sections on the menu and said, "Meat, noodles, drink." So we ordered off the "noodle" page and waited in confused expectation for our food. We both ended up getting some Korean spaghetti dish, so that was fine.


Tonight I think we are going to retreat back to one of our apartments and watch some "Friends" on DVD and eat green tea ice cream. :)

My first "official" teaching day is on Monday. So exciting! I'll be sure to update about that as soon as possible.

Love you all.

I'm here!

I arrived in Seoul after a long (21 hours to be precise) trip from Michigan. The plane rides were not actually that bad, even the 13 hour flight from Detroit to Tokyo. I spent a lot of the plane ride reading (my amazing best friend made a care package of letters from my other amazing friends...spent much of this time crying), doing some Sudoku puzzles, sleeping, watching movies ("Made of Honor"...for the third time), etc.

I was waiting at my gate in Tokyo for about 15 minutes before this Korean guy, Seihyon, started talking to me. That was pretty cool-- making a Korean friend right after getting off the plane in Asia!

I arrived at Incheon airport and made my way through customs fairly easily, and when I came out there was this big sign with my name on it, and I found out that I wasn't the only teacher arriving that day. Another girl, Alison, had flown in from Boston about an hour earlier and she was at my same branch so we rode to Suwon together. We've been hanging out constantly ever since!

My apartment is a lot nicer and bigger than I expected. Once I get internet access in my apartment I'll post photos of it. The staff from the school have been very kind, driving us around, helping us out, etc. They left some food/drinks in my apartment as a welcoming gift. I had some adventures the first night...trying to find my apartment after going to the phone down the street...blowing up my alarm clock because I forgot that I needed a converter in addition to the adapter for the outlet...haha.

I had orientation all day yesterday, which was pretty cool because I got to meet all the new teachers at the other branches. We practiced teaching and that got me really excited about getting started here. I got my class list today and I have about three or four textbooks per class...kind of overwhelmed, we did some lesson planning today and I think I spent a good 10 minutes just staring at the books. I get my very own class room (room # 8) and a desk and a white board and everything. It was pretty exciting.

My two biggest adventures took place today. This morning Alison and I had to walk to the school to meet Lynn, our supervisor, so she could take us to the hospital to get our physicals. I was not excited about this, since I was informed that it involved getting my blood drawn. As many as you know, I have a death-fear of needles. Last time I got a shot, I nearly fainted. Anyway, we got to the hospital and proceeded to get an X-Ray, which went fine. Then we had to have a urine test, which proved to be extremely difficult for me since they didn't have TOILETS in the rest room, they had a hole in the ground in the stall. Then came the infamous blood test...............I didn't pass out, it went well, I have a very small bruise on my arm now but that it is the most damage I had.

The second adventure...after work, Alison and I decided to go to the Lotte store to get groceries. This was pretty fun, we didn't know what half of the items in the store were but I managed to buy some Diet Coke (yay!), rice, shrimp, noodles, milk, and dish soap. We successfully purchased our groceries even though the cashier didn't speak any English. THEN we had to carry our groceries home, which happens to be about a 20 minute walk. It was a nice walk today when we didn't have heavy bags, but tonight, in the dark, it was a bit harder.

I have to wait about a week to get my health test results back, and then I can apply for my Alien Registration Card. When I get my ARC, I can get a bank account, internet, and a cell phone. Until then...........I have to carry cash, walk down the street to this place called PC World (actually pretty cheap for internet use), and rely on the school's phone to call home.

I'm still adjusting and I miss everyone a ton, but so far I'm very glad I took this adventure. :) This weekend Alison and I are planning on visiting the Suwon Fortress and maybe going into Seoul.

More stories to come!

Coming soon...

...my adventures living in Suwon, South Korea!