Korea meets Rhumba

This was fun! Yay cajon!

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 :)

Monthly Test

For monthly test, one of Stephen's students wrote a paper so delightful that it almost redeemed our hellish week of grading and writing report cards and whatever else caused us to work insane overtime on top of ten hour already-completely-energy-sucking days. During which time we mastered the fine art of complaining.

Anyway, look how cute:

Okay, I tried to sharpen the quality with my fancy macbook, but it's still hard to read. I'll transcribe.

The prompt:

Imagine you lost your pet dog in the park. What would you do in order to try and find it? Who would you ask for help? Write your answer with details.

The response:

First, I look around the park slowly. I see inside of the grass, tree, and my backpack. Next, but I can't find it. So I'll went the police office. There have a many children that lost there mom, but I can't see my dog. I'm so sad. Then I go to the city hall. They have a P.A. System to citizens. But steel I can't find it. Finnally I went home! I'm so sad. And I went upstairs to sleep in my bed. But one dog is sleep in my bed! It is my pet dog! I hug him and cry! And I promise to him. "I will more carefull to don't lose you again."

This KILLED me.

Okay, goodbye office. Thank God this week is freaking over.

-Andrea

exhaustion city

worked 13 hours today.

ate vietnamese food.

derek, i ate a shark fin dumpling. it was....okay!

exhausted.

probably will work 13 hours again tomorrow. at least. have 20 writing tests to grade. eight intensive prekindergarten grades to complete. all before 3:00 on friday. and 21 classes to teach between now and then. also, afternoon lesson plans to, er, plan, for tomorrow. plus friday's afternoon lesson plans which will need to be planned sometime between tomorrow afternoon and friday morning...but i need to do my prekindergarten grades. oh, and my writing tests.

BAAHHH!!!!

the vietnamese food was sooooo good.

and stephen and i have shared almost three bottles of cheong-ha (ehhh...i don't know how to make hangul on this computer. and that's the best roman spelling i can come up with. it's kind of like sake. it's good!!) tonight. which is the most alcohol we have consumed in a consecutive period since we've been in korea.

much needed, my friends.

stephen's smoking a cigarette.

ps: have i told you that our kids' parents get us gifts from time to time? usually it's some kind of fancy candy. today i got a starbucks drink. and stephen got...aftershave...from CHANEL. WTF.

I HAD PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY THIS MORNING!

Today we went to a Poly Schools workshop. The free lunch was awesome. I mean, of course there was the usual weird/gross things, but there was plenty of awesome things too. Really good raw salmon. mmmm. If you've got to work on a Saturday, it's nice to get a good free lunch out of it. I'm not sure what else to say about it. I'm kind of boring myself trying to think about what to say about it. We did go to one of those "Thinking outside the box" deals. We were signed up for a different class (Our director signed us up for classes) that was about a program we didn't teach so we skipped out and went to the fun one. So, you know, outside the box, right? We got to do the thing where two people make up movie lines and the other two act it out. [Teaching skillz growing!]

Can't talk much more about Korea besides school yet because we don't do much else right now. We are getting more efficient at getting prepared but, with the amount of teaching we do, by the time the weekend comes, the most fun thing to do is just lay around the apartment.

I should note that my class is getting better. Or I am, or both. A couple of weeks ago I was really frustrated with them. I'm learning how they work, and they're learning how to be students. I also prayed very earnestly and sincerely that first week. It's one of those things that is easy to explain in material/human terms once things work out, and if I had to guess what would've happened had I not believed and prayed, things may have gone the same way. But somehow I felt God's presence in this time of trial, if only so that I remember I depend on him always. Wow, that got thick for a second. Oh yeah, and Andrea's eyes are better. Now it seems like, of course they just needed a few weeks to heal. At the time, we were both a little nervous. So however you want to say it happened, those prayers were answered as well. Ok, done with the testimony for now.

A random funny thing about Korea is, in the supermarket you have guys in the fish aisle or wherever, just yelling out constantly about deals I assume, or how good the fish is or whatever. Because I can't understand any of it, it sounds like they could be angrily calling people names as they walk by. "Hey you, get back here! Check out these deals you son of a.." As we're walking out, I like to imagine that they're yelling, "The Americans are escaping! Get them!" It's hard not to turn around to make sure there's not a swarm of ninjas running at us. That's just one of the fun things I like to do in my spare time.

Sealions

Today in pre-kindergarten we learned "favorite." We also got to draw a picture of our favorite teacher.

Well, I was really flattered.

This girl has some amazing artistic talent for a 5-year old.

Right? I mean, it doesn't look like me, but look how good she is! Agh, I'm so proud.

These are my kids. I adore them.

Alice.

This girl's English name is Sophie, but she refers to herself, loudly and proudly, as "Soapy." We are working on her /f/s and /p/s....sort of.

I have to admit, this one is my favorite. I mean, look at him.

Brian is a little monkey. He's always climbing up my legs or sneaking onto my lap if I'm sitting down. Today he whispered in my ear, very earnestly, "I love you Teacher." And he's my best reader. And he likes Hercules. A whole lot. I want to keep him.

This is Helen, the little girl who cried almost every morning last week and broke my heart every single time. Look at her now! She loves school :)

Dana is not as sweet as she looks.

But I sort of want to keep her too. Such a cutie.

Silly faces :)

In the course of two weeks, I have been given wisdom and stamina that I never before had imagined. Seriously, didn't see that coming.

In the first week, Stephen and I ended our days slumping in our seats, staring at nothing, braindead, exhausted, actually spitting out gibberish when we attempted to communicate. When we found a bit of energy we used it to ask ourselves, "How are we going to work these days for the rest of this week? Oh. my. God. How are we going to work these days for an entire year?"

Last week I couldn't stand to stay at the office if there was work to be done. The thought of staying was horrendous. I mean, I couldn't do my work anyway because I was braindead. Last week I needed a beer, and I needed my head to be hitting a pillow. This week, I can stand being there. I'm not tired. I want to be there. I can wait to eat. I can wait to change into comfortable clothes. I can wait to sleep. I'm not really sure how to articulate how amazing this is. I mean, I expend SO much energy during class. And after ten hours of it, I can focus on grading and lesson planning. My body and mind are responding to all of this the way your muscles respond to 30 minutes of cardio every day. What a relief! And with that being said, I'm still sleeping like a baby before 11pm.

Also, last week when a child cried I was emotional. In the way you're emotional during a movie about the Titanic. I'm being dramatic, but only a little. I mean, I could not handle crying children. What do you do with it? It just cries harder when you tremulously touch its shoulder and say "um. are you okay?" When a child misbehaved, I threw my hands in the air, thinking, "Jesus, why do you CARE what color pencil you get??" These children were aliens to me, and I wanted them to be little adults. But, of course, they are neither. They're kids. And their world is so different, and so amazing. And even if at first you're offensive to them, if you don't know how to be comforting, if you don't discipline them in ways that they understand...they'll let you come around. Kids are egoists, but they're gracious in ways that we aren't.

While I get better, my students are getting better too. My crier smiled for the first time two days ago when I picked her up to demonstrate the concepts "up" and "down." She didn't just smile--She shrieked with delight and she held onto me! She started talking more, engaging more in the class activities, responding to positive reinforcement. I didn't realize I could feel such intense joy as all of this happened.

I'm learning a lot from my coworkers. How do you handle the pencil situation? You just have one student hand out all the pencils while everyone else closes their eyes and holds their hands out. When you open your eyes, somehow it's easier to come to terms with the color you got. No trading allowed. Also, you get rid of all the pink pencils for good.

Most problems can be easily turned into a completely stupid, time-wasting game. At first you're scared they're going to see right through you. But somehow, the students become disciplined. And suddenly, completely stupid, time-wasting things become absolutely brilliant.

Anyway, it occurred to me today that we're committing ourselves completely to this. Ten-plus hours a day for an entire year. Kids and grammar are my life. And I'm pretty okay with it.

-Andrea