Just some Updates

Ok, so, the important stuff....

I am not too keen on Korean food so far. Their veggies are very different from home.

As you can see from the picture, some dishes come with some rice and LOTS of veggies. I do not recognize 90% of them. Radishes are popular here, frequently yellow, and I do not know how they are made, but they are sweet. Not bad. For me, preferable to others. Sometimes used in a nice cold soup.

So far I like dagalbi, which is very spicy chicken with thick rice noodles and cabbage, shabba shabba (something like that, anyway) which is beef cooked at the table in a broth with veggies, and tang sa man du, which is a plate of sweet and sour pork dumplings. Lunch is available for free at school, but it is straight up cafeteria food. Occasionally not bad, but rarely good.












Ms. Wan, Ms. Lee, Anna and I (right to left) went to Woljeogsa Temple over vacation. Beautiful scenery, beautiful buildings. No photos in the museum, and I did not take pictures of the Buddha out of respect. It was a story tall, beautifully made and housed (in an ornately painted building like the others). There were candles with Chinese script on them that glows as they melt down, I will have to remember to ask Anna where I can get some of those.

I finally got cable, which was my first experience of descrimination here. They did not want to install it because too many foreigners leave without paying the bill. Mr. Lee, the school administrator, called and arranged it for me. After all that, I barely turn it on, thanks to Korea's killer internet service. It really is very fast and very reliable, and there is plenty to download online.

I had a bit of a delay getting my plane ticket refund. It took a while and 3 of us explaining that when you buy a ticket online in the US, you only get an online receipt. The school did not want to accept that, but as I had nothing else (except my baording pass, which, thankfully, I had not yet tossed) eventually, I got my money.

Even with Ralph and Anna, I am still feeling isolated. Basically, I can barely communicate. It sucks. I am overthinking things at work, putting too much into it, and driving myself crazy as a result. As some one told me, aptly, you can not be an over acheiver here. Extra work is not seen as extra, nor appreciated as such, and may come to be expected as the norm, as has happened with some of the things that the foreign teachers have done as a courtesy. However, being new, I had a LOT dumped on me and expected of me. Even Anna said she thought it was a lot, which made me feel better. I was afraid it was just me.

After I kind of lost it a bit and had to leave the room (only Mr Hong and Ron were there) to compose myself, I think people started to realize that asking me to change up entire plans and expecting me to whip up schedules when I didn't even know the number of lessons in the semester was unrealistic. And it clearly got around, because I found out from another teacher that my co-teacher had heard. She hoped she was not to blame, which she was not, though I was feeling overwhelmed by everyone. If you want a certain lesson planned, tell me that first, before I make a lesson plan from where the kids left off! If you need a plan for the semester, you have to give me a schedule.....you get my drift. It is very Korean. I knew to expect this, but it doesn't make it any easier when I am emotionally overwhelmed. My last job was good training, though, because Adelphia changed their policies every 5 minutes, and if I did not know that, I got blamed for it. Even if the policy change was announced before my shift, on my day off and was never emailed. For a communications company, Adelphia was an epitome of miscommunication. But I digress, as so many people love to say these days.

I have a coffee shop that I like, called Maidu. They are very friendly, upbeat, and it has a nice atmosphere. I guess there is one closer to home, but I do not know where it is, so I take the bus or taxi to the one by Lotte Cinema. I was sitting there looking out the window about 3 weekes ago when I figured out my first Konglish, using one of my books to help me with the words. Lots of things are written in Konglish, which means that if you sound out the Korean letters, they sound like ( or are SUPPOSED to sound like) words in English. I do not have Korean letters set up on my computer, but suffice to say that after many consultations of my book, I deciphered: ALL TIME GAHM RENTA (no "L") which I surmised to mean 24 hour game rental, A.K.A. PC Bang (pronounced bahng). Of course, the graphics were obvious, but I was proud of myself nonetheless! I also heard my first K-rap. It is......upbeat K-style. Ralph and Anna have seen some videos and understand some of the words, and had a good laugh while telling me about it. Ralph thinks is is hilarious that the girls in the videos prance around in one piece bathing suits and that the rappers are in old schools style American cars that you never see on the roads here. They sing about how hard life is at home with mommy and daddy, I guess. I don't think there are many ghetto hardened gangsters here that have to worry about drive by shootings, even from a scooter.

I have tried to get furniture, but there is way too much orange pleather here. Koreans love leather and pleather and orange is big. So is a fluffy purple. I don't think pleather is at all comfy, so thus far the only furniture I have added is my Swedish Poang chair that cost about 30% more than at Ikea in the States. And I had the shopkeeper knock $15 off the price. Ah well. So, want to see my apartment? I am not cleaning it up especially for you!






I've included a shot the road outside the school as well as a shot of the school itself.

I love my second graders-they are excited, happy, and friendly as can be. I am learning their English names quickly. I had 2nd grade Science today, albeit from the Korean "Tips for Daily Life" which is a book that I hate. It is useless, as far as books go. They might as well say, this is your topic, now go figure out what you are going to do, because this book is only the roughest of outlines, a mere suggestion. Besides which, Tips is a social studies type book, not science. Grrrr. Science went well, today, though. Anna sent me some stuff that helped a lot, though I guess they had seen the presentations last year, although I thought they were geared specifically for second grade.

The third graders are a tough bunch. Everyone acknowledges that the third grader immersion class this year is tough. The kids are unruly and don't want to talk to the teacher, pay attention, or keep quiet with each other. I am going to have to get tough on them right away. That's hard to do, because you really have to watch your back. You have to use the other kids as witnesses, kind of, to show that you gave kids a chance, and you have to make them keep each other in line to keep from getting punished. I have been told that you need witnesses, because if a student complains about you, the school will believe the child over a foreign teacher. That is going to be strange for me. We shall see.

Ok all, it is 9 o'clock and time for me to veg on tv or a movie or book or something. Maybe tomorrow I will write about getting caught out in the storm and the cell phone drama :)