DO NOT SPEAK KOREAN!

Holy Geez, is it already almost Friday? I can wear jeans tomorrow! Hallelujah! It's funny the things you come to appreciate when life is kind of insane. Yesterday one of our coworkers was going on about how much easier her life is now that she can print from her computer (she's not the only one who's been having computer problems...ugh, nightmare). Why do we have to be grateful for being able to print?! It's a school! We're teachers! We're SUPPOSED to be able to do our jobs!

Anyway, though, I am really totally stoked about rocking my new chucks tomorrow. I got grey ones. They're pretty :)

Lately I've been bothered about our school's philosophy. The number one rule at Poly Schools is you can't speak Korean. Speaking Korean is the most punishable offense. I hear and probably say "Do NOT speak Korean" several times a day. Which...is good. I mean, it's an English school. You can't learn English if Korean is your crutch. To be an effective speaker, you have to express yourself in the language you're learning. It's a really, really good philosophy, actually.

But it's kind of the way we present it...It's like we're drilling into these kids' collective subconscious: "Korean is bad. English is good. Korean: bad. English: good. Korean: bad. Korean: bad." It doesn't help that their visual resources are jam-packed with cute little white children. And their textbooks are filled with American culture. How difficult for a child to process!!! I feel like I'm part of an institution that encourages these kids to deny their heritage...And that's hard to justify.

Our school employs one cleaning lady. She's Korean, obviously, and she doesn't speak English. And, well, she's a cleaning lady. She's obviously way lower class than the super rich kids who attend this fancy English private school. Anyway, she has this really lonely job...She's surrounded by people who are nothing like her: foreigners, rich Koreans and rich Korean children. Even the people who speak her language don't really share her experience. Idunno. Anyway, she came into my prekindergarten class and my kids all smiled at her and said, "an-nyeong-ha-se-yo," which means "hello." And she smiled and said "an-nyeong-ha-se-yo" back. Without even thinking about it, I pretty sharply reprimanded the kids....and then it hit me. I might as well have been saying, "Students, we do not address the cleaning lady," on top of the whole, "hey remember your culture is bad?" sentiment.

At the time I felt really terrible. That must have completely alienated her. Geez, they can't even say hi? ...In retrospect, I feel conflicted about it. Yeah, I don't feel comfortable with the way we're punishing speaking Korean, and what kind of implications that might have on the development of these kids' cultural identities....But the cleaning lady totally shouldn't have interrupted my class, right? How disruptive, to just walk in and start sweeping in the middle of a lesson. And she knows they're not supposed to speak Korean. Why would she respond?

I kind of imagine her sort of watching the kids every single day and wanting to, I don't know, play with them, be part of their lives. They're so precious. We get to play with them, and have a relationship with them...And she gets to clean up after them. And I wouldn't blame her for disagreeing with the system, and deciding to interrupt the classroom as a way to sort of gratify herself. Kind of a little "eff you" to the place she maybe has to work for, but doesn't like.

Stephen and I are getting our first real paycheck tomorrow. We're really, really excited :)

Hopefully we'll do something neat and exciting this weekend so we have something besides work to post about. It's funny, we're in this foreign country so it seems like we're supposed to be having some kind of adventure...Nope. We go two places: to work, and to sleep. We are so much more boring than we were when we lived at home.

I love and miss you guys. I've been kinda homesick. Well, not really homesick, just peoplesick. July is going to be amazing.

-Andrea

ps: Amalt, thanks for the encouragement :)