oh, saturday mornings

So it's a Saturday afternoon, and I didn't have to get up early to go to class, which is amazing. So I want to write about yesterday, but I also want to talk about some other things, but I've got a lot of time, so I'm not worried. I don't actually just want this to be a log of everything I do every day... that might be interesting to you guys for a little while, and it might be interesting to me to look back on, but I'd prefer to talk about slightly more meaningful things.

Whatever, who am I kidding? It will be enough of an accomplishment for me to actually write in it on a regular basis. Like, every couple of days. It's actually really funny, whenever one of our Orientation Coordinators is talking about things that might go wrong, or awkward situations we might be in at our homestay, she concludes with... "and you know, whatever, you can blog about it later." It's pretty awesome, because I do!

I have found it useful to leave my computer on American time, and to set my alarm clock to Korean time to avoid having to do a lot of timezone math, but sometimes it really confuses me. Plus, I have to manually date and time all of my blog posts, because otherwise they are labelled with some time that's not either American or Korean time. For example, I just looked at my last journal entry, and I really can't figure out if it's dated correctly. Since my schedule is almost always the same, trips to the store and other errands are my way of telling days, plus the Key Club discussion topic. I've been carrying a journal with me that I use as my planner, and I try to jot down things I want to talk about, so I'll just have to work from that.


Yesterday's food was... crappy if I remember correctly. Actually, you can generally assume that's the case unless I mention it, and it has to be pretty spectacular for me to remember. A lot of people have been concerned about me, but I'm actually eating really well. Kimchi (cabbage) is good for you, if not overly tasty, and I usually get other vegetables too, and I almost always eat at least some of whatever "meat" they serve. I'm getting far more vegetables and protein than I ever got eating Taco Bell for every meal, so don't worry. : ) I'm just going to stop telling you about every meal unless it's particularly good. On a side note, I took a picture of one of yesterday's meals, which I'll post sometime soon. The last two days, I brought my camera with me, but I didn't take many pictures. I just can't get used to doing it. I'll bring it with me today though. There's a supplemental talk at 4:30pm (which is sooner than I thought!) and dinner at 6:30 with one of the OC (Orientation Coordinators [past ETAs running the program]) and one of the Korean RAs (a nice girl named Gwi-Ohk). Then... I don't have plans for tonight.

So anyway... yesterday's language class was frustrating as it has been for a few days. The first half was okay... we learned how to conjugate verbs in the present informal tense. (Korean is interesting. There's no conjugation based on subject-- "Kayo" is "I/you/he/she/it/(and I think) they/we go." Also, "I/you/he/she/it... am going." And there are, similar to spanish, three forms of verbs (like -ar, -er, and -ir), but that's still way easier than learning I/you/he/she/it/we/they forms for each. So it seems a lot easier, but Korean is also very firmly hierarchical, so if I was going to become a fluent speaker, I'd have to learn like three forms--one for speaking to those older than me, one for those my age, and one for those younger than me. So there's probably just as much to know, probably more, but thankfully, I'm only learning this one form mostly. We're also going to learn past tense at some point, I think. The fact that we're now spending two hours a day on grammar is nice, because I'm just beginning to understand something about the way sentences go together, but it's so frustrating to learn from someone who actually doesn't speak that much English. This is a million times harder than my college classes, because at least if I didn't understand something, I could ask. For example, yesterday I tried to ask if "miguk" (American) was a noun or an adjective. I even pointed to the words for noun and adjective. But she didn't understand my question. So like, not being able to get answers to simple questions can really slow down learning, in my opinion.

And the last two hours are absolutely miserable, because they try to teach us vocabuly by rote memorization, which is how then learn it. Literally, she holds up a card, says the word, then we repeat, she says it, we repeat, then she flips cards. We go through something like thirty cards like this, then we go through them again. And we aren't even allowed to look at the words the first time. Which is laughable. I am simply not an auditory learner. And these are words that are four syllables long. I've forgotten the first three before she gets to the end of the word. It's miserable. Then she goes around, shows us a card individually, and inevitably looks annoyed that we can't remember the words we've just heard twice. Words that sound absolutely foreign to anything I've ever studied. It's just such a waste of time! I understand that I need to hear her say the words for pronunciation's sake, but if I spent those two hours studying to vocab, I'd know it. Instead, I just come out annoyed and frustrated and having to learn them by myself in my small amount of free time. Irritating! And the class moves very fast, expecting you to have really absorbed the previous day's stuff. If you want to really be on top of it, you need to spend at least an hour (probably two) every night studying and practicing, but you only have like four hours free time in your whole day-- and they schedule optional interesting events during that time. I just wish there were more hours in the day, I guess. I don't want to spend all my free time holed up in my room studying, because then I seem anti-social, and they make SUCH a big deal about how you should make friends so that you'll have a support network during the year. I guess it's a matter of deciding what your goals and priorities are, and I haven't quite worked that out yet. I'm not worried about not passing the quizzes and the language class--the passing score for the quiz is something like a 50%. But I want to actually be a little confident in speaking some Korean by the end, which means I need to put in a lot of outside work.

We had the last of our teaching workshops with the boring guy yesterday. Some of what he said was interesting, but he was English and just came off really pompous. Plus, I'm doubtful that we could actually use much of his material with our classes, since we only see them once a week and we don't speak Korean, and he does most of his work with Korean English teachers. But... whatever. Some of it was interesting, and I managed to avoid falling asleep, which was good. Then yesterday I went out for dakalbi, which I'd had before... the meat and cabbage and rice cakes with spicy sauce... it's way good! This time it gave me stomach issues last night, but it's fine now.

Oh yeah, and yesterday's Key Club meeting discussion topic was divorce, a fairly hot-button issue in Korea. (Another hot-button issue: homosexuality. Many Koreans say that there is no homosexuality in Korea, that it's a Western problem.) One of the sad things we learned about in a culture workshop was... well, I just realized this is really involved, but I'll try to explain what I understand. Don't quote me though. Apparently, Korea is a very very homogeneous society, and a history of invasions and colonization have bred a fairly fierce sense of national pride and nationalism, in a way that's sometimes really uncomfortable for westerners (past ETAs) who associate nationalism with things like... oh, Hitler. Everyone who is not Korean is known by one word, which I can't remember, but which means 'foreigner.' One ETA put up a quote from one of his adult students that said something like 'We like foreigners. But we don't trust them like Koreans." And another quote: "Someone may come to Korea. She or he may look Korean, my learn to speak Korean perfectly after twenty years, may marry a Korean, but he/she will never be Korean." So they have very little exposure to outsiders, and one ETA (and likely multiple sociologists) theorized that they have no real constant OTHER in their society. (Creating an other is bad--it excludes--but it also serves many purposes for the non-other society, specifically providing a scapegoat. Even more simply, it may be easier to define US as not-THEM.) One phenomenon that may grow out of this lack of other is that some classes will have a student who is completely ostracized and mistreated--either ignored completely or teased mercilessly. Also, almost no Koreans have friendships with people older or younger than them. Because of the Confucian system, which stresses serious respect and deference for one's elders, it's socially awkward to be 'friends' with an elder, as concerns of propriety will get in the way. Thus, a person typically only associates and befriends those his own age, which means a Korean person has one set of peers and friends his whole life. Also, they apparently have monthly meetings, where you get together with everyone you went to high school with, so you never really break old friendships or form new ones. Thus, the ostracized person will tend to be ostracized for his or her entire life. An ex-ETA described this, and said that this may be a result of not having an other--Koreans have to create an other, and they choose and sacrifice one of their own for this purpose. This seems really weird and sad, but then again, we obviously have the same thing to a much worse degree with school shootings... Although at the same time one could argue that at least we view bullying as an aberration, whereas this sort of social isolation is sort of accepted as part of the system. Interesting, huh?

Remember, this is an obviously oversimplified watered-down version of what I was told by a non-Korean who had lived here for a year. But it's interesting. Oh, and to come full circle... the Key Club topic of divorce... divorce is really frowned upon, and one reason the ostracized person may be chosen is that he may be a child of divorce (or fat, or slow, or ugly, etc.)
Oh, did I mention they tend not to recognize learning disorders, even very serious ones? Or that most students aren't tracked by ability level, so the classes are very multi-level and large? Just something to think about. It will make lesson planning exciting anyway.

So I wasn't sure what to expect when our small group of 7 or so Korean students and 3 or so Americans sat down to talk about it. But it is, of course, limited by their vocabulary, so we pretty much concurred... Divorce is bad, especially for kids. Most people agree that one of the problems is that people don't take marriage that seriously anymore. They aren't sure they are meant to be, decide to get married anyway, and then if it doesn't work, throw in the towel. I gave the example of Britney Spears, which everyone appreciated. Anyway, it ended up being a very non-controversial conversation. Not sure if I mentioned... at the end of every meeting (they're every day except Sunday), one member gives a 10 minute speech (in English) on a topic of their choosing, then takes questions from the audience. The OC's told us that the topics are sometimes controversial, but the last two were pretty tame... whales and last night's really funny "How to Seem to be Taller" - apparently a serious issue in the vertically-challenged country of Korea. :)

This weekend I'm going to work on my lesson plans for Camp Fulbright. (Did I explain this? Camp Fulbright (CF) is where they bring a group of 100 4th-9th graders to Kangwon University [where we are] and give us each a chance to teach two 45 minute practice lessons to them, one per week.) I volunteered for an extra lesson, so I get to teach three, because I figure the more chances I have to be in front of students who have no idea what I'm saying and to practice speaking slowly, enunciation, and using appropriate vocabulary, the better. We create lesson plans (based on hundreds of examples provided to us). I'm really excited for it, but kinda nervous. When I figure out what I'll be doing, I'll post my lesson plan here, and may ask for some help. I'm thinking American Pop Culture jeopardy for one of my lessons, so I might ask for ideas for clues.

So yeah... the more I hear, the more nervous I get about finding out my placement. Like, most people have a semi-similar experience... most people see somewhere from 300-500 students (all of the students at the school), so they see each class once a week, meaning they come up with one or two lessons each week. That would be fun, but I feel like I'd have a way better time, and feel like I was able to accomplish more, if I could see the students more than once a week. And there are some amazing exceptions like... one ETA taught in a Buddhist school. One taught in one of the most prestigious high schools for science in Korea, which has like 80 students. So she saw all of them three times a week, and was asked to do a lot of grading, and provide a lot of individual feedback. Which is a lot of work, but was probably really rewarding, and she was able to form relationships with her students. If I'm seeing 300-500 students each week, I won't even be able to learn their names, let alone get close to any of them. And I really came to Korea to teach English... I'm not super-interested in travelling around Korea, although it would be fun to go away for a few weekends, and maybe go somewhere during winter break. But I'm not interested in travelling around Southeast Asia. I really just want some serious teaching experience, and I feel like if I was able to get a small school like one of those, and see the students at least twice a week, it would be a better experience.

Still, I can make requests, but in the end, my placement is out of my hands, and I'm determined to make the best of it wherever I end up. If I end up in a big school, I'll volunteer to teach a couple of extra club classes and do my best to get to know my students anyway. I'll make lemonade.

Okay, it's 3pm, and I really should do something productive today. I was up late watching The Office with a friend last night, so I didn't get up until ten, and I still haven't done much today, besides this amazingly long blog entry. Still on the agenda: study, read, laundry (maybe), possibly the supplemental lecture, more studying (Kongbuheyo = I study), and dinner. Woo.