Autumn Adventures

It's officially autumn here in Korea, but I fear it won't last much longer. I have been spoiled with over a month of lovely low-70s temperatures and almost no rain, which has made for many wonderful outdoor activities and adventures. The leaves have been showing off their vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds, and the rice fields have been exhibiting their tall blades of gold and green preceding their near-future harvest. During my entire life I have tried to get excited about autumn, but when I enjoy warm summers and dread winter, autumn has always bummed me out. This year has been a slight improvement, partly because the summers in Korea are not so nice, and I have had a lot of fun this season. But then Mary likes to remind me, in a creepy, sadistic voice, that "Winter is coming!"

Aside from my collection of easy jobs I have been working since my return to Korea, I have been able to partake in some fun activities, the most prominent of which is being the newest member to an ultimate frisbee team. We have two teams here in Pohang that compete in a nation-wide league composed mostly of foreign English teachers. This is the first year Pohang has had teams in the league, and with the exception of a few players, we are all new to the sport. So naturally we were expected to be mediocre at best. But what people from other Korean cities didn't realize is that Pohangsters (yes, that is what we call ourselves) are the most awesome group of foreigners in all of Korea. So of course our two teams have been kicking major butt this year, beating some pretty tough teams! I have struggled with the high amount of running/sprinting involved in this game, but despite that, I feel I have fared quite well for a beginner. The league keeps stats on all of the players, and I can proudly say I have averaged 2.8 points per game!

I have also done a fair amount of dressing up in fantastic costumes. The first of which was for a joint birthday party for two friends. A recent craze among the Pohang foreigners has been to purchase cute animal costumes. You can choose from around 50 different animals from a website, and our community probably has all 50 represented! (I was given a flying squirrel costume for my birthday) So these two friends decided to ask everyone to wear their animal costumes for their birthday party. It was an adorable night of the cutest and happiest animals the world ever saw.

Then came Halloween. Two friends of mine had the brilliant idea of gathering a big group of foreigners in downtown Daegu (Korea's third-largest city) dressed and painted as zombies to do a zombie walk through the city streets. Approx. 100 of us showed up with faces painted and clothes representing various forms of zombies (I was a disco zombie) and we walked for about 45 minutes through the busy streets with one purpose: scare the bajeezus out of Koreans! Luckily for us, Koreans are easily frightened. We had them screaming, running, hiding, and then of course taking photos with us. We were quite the sensation, and fortunately the general public was more pleased and entertained than disturbed by our antics. Halloween is hardly celebrated or acknowledged here, so this was just one more thing we foreigners could graciously share with this country.

Like Mary says, winter is coming. And I can't help but be reminded about my dismal chapter last winter in Korea. But there are things to look forward to, such as the mosquitos leaving, being able to snowboard on the weekends, being able to stay home watching movies and not feel guilty, and spending the holidays in Taiwan. And lastly, I am looking forward to seeing this election season end! I cannot wait for news headlines to stop being about election polls, I cannot wait for the end of needing constant fact-checking because people can't seem to tell the truth, and I cannot wait until I can stop hearing the same political platforms that I've been hearing for the last year! Korea has a presidential election in December, and most people still don't know much about the candidates because the real campaigning has hardly begun. Doesn't that sound nice? Sounds like a dream come true to me!

I am going to spend the last remaining days of autumn enjoying this weather, enjoying the end of frisbee season and having picnics and walks along the beach and not having the moisture sucked dry from my skin by bitter cold.

My ultimate frisbee team, the Pohang-Overs

Psychedelic face paint courtesy of Mary

Disco Zombie

Pohang's Scariest Zombies

Slack-Lining at the Park (yes, I am balancing on a thin strap)

Cute Animal Party

Mary and I performed at a Breast Cancer Awareness Talent Show (hence the pink shirts)

Memoirs of a Kindergarten Teacher, pt. 3

For my third installment of my Memoirs of a Kindergarten Teacher series, I have a new kindergarten job to report on. Instead of teaching my own class of students, a class of structure and high academic standards, I am now a traveling kindergarten teacher, visiting approximately twenty-eight kindergarten classes a week, providing twenty-minute English lessons to students who understand practically no English.

Every twenty-minute lesson is structured the same way: I ask the students, "How are you today? Are you angry? (and I make an angry face with devil horns on my head) Are you sad? (I make a sad face and pretend to cry) Are you hungry? (rub my belly) Are you tired? (pretend to sleep) Or are you HAPPY?? (I put a huge smile on my face)" Then the kids are supposed to yell, "YES! HAPPY!" Then I ask, "How's the weather today? Raining? (NO!) Cold? (NO!) Cloudy? (NO!) Sunny? (YESSS!)" Often when I ask the kids how they are doing, the most common response is, "SUNNY!" Clearly some of these students are not understanding my question. But they are so gosh darn cute, so whatever.

Then I read them a book, having them repeat each word I read. Afterwards, we do a matching game based on the main vocabulary words we learn from the book. In an ideal class, the class's teacher will be sitting with the kids, helping them stay engaged in the lesson, and all of the kids will be participating happily. And sometimes I will get to teach this ideal class. However, more often than not, the teacher will be absent from the class, either literally or figuratively (by figuratively, I mean the teacher is physically present, but mentally she is focused on the screen of her smart phone and oblivious to the chaos being ensued by her students). When this happens, the students, who seem to think of me as more of a clown than an educator, run wild. And I mean wild. You think I'm exaggerating? After only a few weeks in this job, here are some of the things I have witnessed in this kindergarten jungle:

One boy pulled one of his slipper's off his foot and slapped his neighbor across the face. One girl pulled down her pants and shoved her bare bottom in the face of a classmate. Many students have run up to me and poked me in my private parts. One time all the students started chanting one word at me. I am not sure what this word was, but when I sternly said "Stop!" they proceeded to chant, "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!" Several students have broken into an ear-piercing scream for no apparent reason. One boy decided to just drop his pants to his ankles and grin at me. Kids wrestle. Kids do somersaults. Kids pull out the classroom toys and play. And all the while I am sitting on a tiny chair, saying "Shh! Quiet! Stop! HEEEEYYYY!"and finally resort to watching the clock until my 20 minutes are up. And literally, sometimes this will happen with their teacher present! I don't know if she thinks she is off the clock for twenty minutes and is purposely leaving all of the classroom management responsibilities to a man who speaks very little Korean, but if the class were to catch on fire, she might still be consumed by her smart phone (and eventually the flames!).

And this chaos leaves me with a dilemma: part of me wants to say, Whatever, I am still getting paid, whether or not these kids are actually learning. But as a professional educator who cares about teaching, I have a hard time not fulfilling the lesson, and I have a hard time letting these kids get away with such obscene behavior. But what am I to do? Well, I now know there are certain Korean phrases I need to learn, such as, "Be quiet! Sit down! Put your pants back on!" But if saying those phrases doesn't work, then what? Maybe I will resort to turning on a fan and closing all of the windows/doors in the classroom and see how they react. (for those of you confused by this statement, look up "fan death")

I don't mean to imply that this is how most of my classes are. The average class is somewhere in between the utter chaos and the class of angels. However, I do experience the chaos more than the serenity, and it makes me wonder what is expected of these English lessons.

Luckily I get to spend my evenings teaching well-educated scientists and businessmen who I can have intelligent conversations with. It provides much-needed balance to my life, the yin to my yang.

On a different note, in my last entry I pledged to find more to love about Korea. Yesterday, during a rock climbing excursion in the countryside outside of Pohang, an elderly couple slowly drove past us down the rode in a long tractor. The husband was driving while his wife was sitting on a stacked bundle of recently harvested rice grass. They were dressed modestly and had very weathered skin. They were born in a Korea entirely contrasting to what we live in today, an agrarian society where rice literally was the life source. A generation that lived through a Japanese occupation, a bloody civil war, a devastated country, famine, military dictatorship, and then modernization/westernization as fast as a blink of an eye. Despite the mad dash for the posh urban lifestyle of lattes and smart phones, this couple is continuing the lifestyle familiar to them. We waved to each other, and I found myself saying aloud, "I love that!" So there you have it, one more thing to love about Korea, the remnants of the old world, slowly driving by and waving from a tractor. It will be sad to see Korea twenty years from now when the old world is strictly just a memory or an exhibit in museums.

Fall has also been exceptionally beautiful, both with the autumn colors in the trees, as well as the soon-to-be harvest rice fields of gold and green grass painting the landscape everywhere outside of the city. Here are some photos I took recently:

The rice fields outside Pohang.

The rice fields outside Pohang.

The rice fields outside Pohang.

The rice fields outside Pohang.

Taken from Geoje Island, south of Busan.

Taken from Geoje Island, south of Busan.

Bogyeongsa Park
(Below-Right) Mary doing a handstand at Bogyeongsa

 

Posing on my new scooter

Taken at a temple in Gyeongju. 

 

And we're back!

Two months ago I wrote what I believed to be my last entry from Korea. I had a plan to spend only one year in Korea, then head home, plant my roots in the great city of Portland, OR, and begin my career as a high school history teacher. Little did I know that none of that would come into fruition, or not yet at least.

You see, at the heart of my gleeful adventures in this great country was a loving relationship I thought I could walk away from at the end of my year. I'm not sure I have ever been more blind to reality, because it turns out that the last thing I wanted was to walk away from something so beautiful. Three days away from Korea, my girlfriend and I were already talking about my potential return. It didn't take much for us to decide that this is what we want, so I booked a surprisingly cheap ticket back to Seoul and returned for another chapter.

I only plan to be here for five months until Mary's contract ends. Then, who knows where we'll go in this oyster of a world! Due to the brief length of time I have here, I could not find any contractual teaching jobs at a school. So instead I have found a handful of different sources of income, all involving teaching, but to a variety of ages and skill levels.

Every day, around 10am, I am picked up from my apartment by one of three people (all of whom are in the same family) and they drive me to a few different schools to teach 20 minute lessons to pre-K and Kindergarten classes. On average I teach the same 20 minute lesson to eight different classes. Usually this lesson consists of reading a picture book, having the students repeat each word I read. Then we follow that with a matching game relating to the book. It could not be an easier thing to teach! There are minor struggles of course, like the kids not knowing a lick of English, which makes classroom management tricky. But really, I am spoiled to have this job! And frankly I'm embarrassed by how much I get paid for this, but I am certainly not complaining!

For an hour an evening, four evenings a week, I go to the big steel factory to teach English to a group of 11 men and a woman who work in the head office. They all appear to be in their twenties, and their English is strong enough for me to have conversations with them. And that's really what we spend most of our time doing, having conversations. They say their biggest struggles are speaking and listening, and that's what they want to practice. So I facilitate some ice breakers, we play games, we have discussions about social issues, and we have fun. It is a very laid back atmosphere in this class, and so far I am enjoying it thoroughly.

One of the most fulfilling parts about teaching this class is I have an opportunity to ask Koreans real questions about their culture and country and get substantial answers. One day, I asked them to think of one reason they are proud to be Koreans. Two men answered that Korea has never colonized other lands. One man answered that 60 years ago, dozens of countries banded together to support South Korea during their turmoil and provide aid to help the country get back on its feet after the war. And now, Korea has brought itself to a state of being able to provide similar aid to other countries who now need it. And the general answer among the entire class is that 30 years ago, South Korea was still considered third-world, but through a unified effort to work extremely hard, both in school and in their careers, and despite having no natural resources or a large population, they have managed to build the 15th largest economy in the world.

So the kindergarten loop and the steel factory are the only two jobs I have started working so far, but I also have two former co-workers getting me set up with potential tutoring jobs, one to two teenage sisters, and one to an elderly man. Those jobs will provide a significant increase to my wages, so naturally I hope they work out! I also have set up guitar lessons with two friends of mine.

When I made the decision to return to Korea, the only things on my mind were returning to my girlfriend and finding work. When I arrived, I hit the ground running! But now that I've had a handful of days off (this weekend was Korea's Thanksgiving, providing most people with a five-day weekend), I am realizing that there is so much more for me to take advantage of than just spending time with my girlfriend and working. This is like a 2nd chance to do some of the things I didn't get to my first time around. I am working half the amount of hours than before, and I am finding myself wondering, What can I do to occupy my time? I haven't figured out a plan as of yet, but one idea I have is to designate some of my free time for learning. Perhaps I will sign up for an online history class, or buy some more history books to study on my own. I have always been interested in learning more about Buddhism, and recently began reading up on it. Maybe I will occasionally visit a temple for meditation to experience that aspect of the religion. I can also devote some time to learning more of the Korean language. Mary is currently taking a class, maybe she'll be so kind as to share what she learns with me!

And of course there is always exercise! Mary and I have a goal to spend more time slack-lining in a nearby park. For those of you unsure of what slack-lining is, think tight-rope walking on a strap that is about one inch thick. Obviously it's great for building balance, but also works out your core. And although I absolutely loathe jogging, I also hate how out of shape I am as a jogger. So I am trying to motivate myself to make jogging a normal part of my schedule. I'd better get in that groove soon, because once it gets cold, it will be extremely difficult for me to get motivated!

I plan to keep my mind open for more ways to experience Korea in a new light than before. I want to take advantage of this 2nd chance. I would like to find new things to appreciate about this country and the culture. My general feeling during my first year here was I like it here, but I don't love it here. I would like to find things to love. And I want to keep my mind open enough to allow myself to love and not just dwell on the "like it, don't love it" attitude.

Hopefully my next entry will include a report of new things to love!