Happy Children's Day!

So this entry is about two days late, but alas. At least I'm writing it. Things have been going... relatively well for the past five days. This will also be really long and rambly, I think, unless I institute some sort of organization scheme on it quickly, so here goes.

Thursday and Friday's Classes
were surprisingly good. None of my lessons were too unbelievably boring, and I instituted a new participation policy in third grade that is (so far) working like a charm. I used to have index cards with students' pictures on one side, and name on the other, which I used for learning their names. Now, I have a new set of cards, with just names on them, which I'm using for randomized forced participation. Like I said before, I previously didn't have the heart to just call on students who I knew weren't particularly good at English, so now I showed them the stack of cards, let them watch me shuffle it at the beginning of class, and just call whoever the next card is. It ensures that everyone gets called on equally, and removes the puppy dog/averting eyes element from selecting the next participant. Now there's a lot less repeating and a lot more individual speaking, which the students hate, but which is better for their overall conversational development, and that's what should matter most to me. Oh yeah... Thursday night Mr. Jerk (I mean, Mr. Hong) from science high school treated my co-teacher and I to dinner (traditional Korean fare... not delicious) in Naju. It was nice of him, and he didn't seem like such a bad guy. I gave him a bit of a hard-time, and he was good-natured about it, so I've let it go completely. His criticism, if insensitively delivered, inspired me to force my students to speak the limited amount of English they know, so it all worked out for the best.

Special Class on Friday
Have I mentioned, lately, that I now actually live for my special classes at good school? That's not entirely true... I live for my third grade classes (there are 6 of them every week), and then the pinnacle of the week is my after-school advanced class on Friday. For the first 45 minutes, they're evenly divided by ability level and we all study together, usually a song. This week we studied vocabulary for description. Then, for the second hour, they're divided by grade level, and I teach the 4 third grade boys, and my co-teach teaches 1st and 2nd. I came up with this plan because a. The third graders really can learn a lot more if they're challenged at a higher level in a small group, and b. I hate the first and second graders. Co-teacher is a saint for agreeing to it, so now I get to have a small group English conversation for 45 minutes a week. This week we studied the R. Kelly/Usher music video for "Same Girl." It worked well because the video explains the song really well, and the lyrics aren't that difficult, except for some slang I had to teach them. Plus, the song is a dialogue between Usher and R. Kelly, so I split them into pairs and made them practice the dialogue. But one of the boys left early, so poor HW (my favorite student) had to practice with me. Hearing him valiantly try to say "Straight up, dog?" and "Daaaaamn" with proper hood pronunciation was probably the highest point of my life. It will, no doubt, be one of my most long-last memories from Koera.

Three-Day Weekend
Saturday: This was a three-day weekend, but perplexingly, I accomplished about one-third of what I did last week. Strangey. I can't even really remember what I did, which doesn't bode well. Ah yes! I ran! You can read a semi-detailed account of it at the other blog if you like, but I did Saturday's run on what I thought was the actual race course, and discovered that it must not be the whole race course, because I finished it much faster than I ought to have. Nonetheless, it was a hard good run, in the middle of the morning in the sun, and I definitely needed a nap afterwards. The highs have been in the 70s and mostly 80s lately, which is surprising and (so far, at least), mostly pleasant. My host sister's school was having Sports Day on Saturday, so I also stopped by there to see what was up, but didn't see her. The rest of the day was, if I remember correctly, phenomenally unproductive. I also went to the gym, I suppose.

Sunday: Sunday was equally unproductive, but a little more fun. I spent a lot of time this weekend reading. I'm still slaving away at Moby Dick, but towards the end of the week last week I started to fall behind in my daily reading for the first time, so I had a lot of slack to pick up this weekend. I was 50 pages behind when I started on Saturday, which meant I read a total of 350 pages in the past three days. And it was rough. I mean, as I get further into the book and I get more of the narrative, it becomes more interesting, but there's still so much stupid stuff mixed in that it's hard to read for more than an hour at a time. So Sunday, if I remember correctly, was spent mostly in bed, reading Moby Dick off and on. After lunch I got up with the intention of going hiking, but I wasn't really enjoying it. I stopped halfway up to read for awhile, and as I was doing that it started unexpectedly raining. It was just drizzling, actually, but then I started to get a little chilly in my t-shirt, and bored with the book, so I decided to head back down. At which point it, of course, started pouring. It wasn't too bad when I was on the trail, but once I emerged, I got solidly drenched, and quickly. It was a 25 minute walk back to my house from the mountain, and I was dripping, but I think I smiled most of the way, amused at the sheer absurdity.

After that a shower was in order, and I got into my PJs and climbed back into bed with the Moby Dickster. I was just starting to get phenomenally bored with it, around 5pm, when the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone, particularly anyone to ring the doorbell, but then host sister runs in my room and is like "Briy... student." I put on a t-shirt over the tank top I was wearing (with my open-flied boxers) and emerged from my nest. Random aunt (Dad's sister, maybe?) and her son were visiting, and she looked amused, but I peered out to see fave ever student (HW, who wrote last week's adorable letter) sitting on the stairs outside. Grandma, aunt, and nephew had been driving me nuts all weekend, so I went back inside, put on real clothes, grabbed my umbrella and my student and made an exodus.

(Side note: Grandma is in one of those phases where she likes to take an active role in my life, by summoning me to meals I don't want to eat, bursting into my room for no apparent reason and speaking Korean, asking me where I'm going and when I'll be back, and telling me I'm coming home too late (at 9pm). Ha! Then the other day she demanded that I lend her my necklace and earrings, because she was going to Seoul with her boyfriend. What?)

Me: What are you doing?
HW: [thinks hard for 10 seconds] Seeing you.
Me: Well alright.

That's the right answer. It later came out that he'd been studying in the library with other friend and then left him there to come see me, and he had an hour before they were meeting again. It was still raining, so I brought him to the coffee shop nearest my house, and we had a nice little English chat. He mostly told me lots of random gossip, but he's always super-polite and earnest in his efforts to speak English, which is why I appreciate him so much. We finished up and I walked him back to the bus terminal, which is right next to my house, where we met friend.

We had a further even more adorable conversation on instant messenger later that evening. Highlights: We both agree that we prefer very cold weather to very hot weather, if pressed to choose. He wants to see a white Christmas, but asserts that if there is one, we will both be very cold, because we don't have boy&girl friend. (ha!) He wants to go to American university, because if he is near Florida, he can visit me. I warned him that Florida never has white Christmas, but he countered with: "I will be okay, because in Florida there is you." (haha!) He's a really sweet kid. I love him to pieces.

Monday: Yesterday was awesome. No school because of "Children's Day" (lamest holiday ever--Korean kids are such spoiled brats). It was the last day of the weekend, so obviously time to really buckle down on my to-do list. The only task I was really actively dreading was lesson planning, but I already had a sneaking suspicion I was going to be lazy and re-use a different lesson today rather than make the new ones I'll still have to make for Thursday, so I called up Meghan to see if I could interest her in some procrastination. She's always game for not lesson planning, and it turned out to be one of the most productive procrastination days ever. She took me to an amazing clothing store she'd discovered IN TOWN, where I'm going to buy a million new outfits as soon as I get paid this month. I actually FIT INTO some Korean clothes, which was awesome. Then we headed to an electronics store to check out the selection of Easy Bake ovens, but then were really expensive. We hit a few more clothing stores, and I tried on a mini-skirt that was waaaay small, and then we had a late lunch and parted. I finished my 350 pages of Moby Dick for the weekend, but not a whole lot else. Ah well.

Today's going fine so far. My third graders were a little annoying, but I made them speak a lot of English. I had first grade do a word search, which actually doesn't in any way resemble a conversation activity, but it helped me maintain my sanity. I had yesterday off, and I'm going to have Thursday off too (Buddha's birthday), which makes me feel like it's already the middle of the week and I'm dragging my way towards the weekend. I also have next Monday off, don't know why. (I was supposed to be off from May 3-May 12, the entire week, but then "spring break" got cancelled, by "popular opinion"... not sure whose.) It's sort of fine with me... I don't know what I would have done for the whole 9 days besides study Korean.

This week's cultural sharing with the family: the tooth fairy. Host sister lost a tooth, so I explained the whole under put it under your pillow and get mad cash thing, and then gave her a dollar. I'm not sure how she actually interpreted what I said (I'd be interested to know) , but she took the money. I'm mostly just hoping she'll tell host brother and he'll intentionally try to knock out some of his teeth. It would be worth it.

Tomorrow... pictures.

crawling out of the cave

Man, this week sucked pretty bad. At least it's over. 

So... I woke up feeling okay enough on Thursday to go to the gym and lift weights in the morning. My sore throat had morphed into a garden variety cold, which was annoying, but surviveable. My students were pretty good, but the school thwarted me, unsurprisingly. First co-teacher made me feel really guilty about making her feel guilty, or something like that. She was like, I had a terrible weekend, because I felt so terrible about Friday's demonstration class, because it was my fault, etc... So I felt guilty for making her feel bad? Whatever. I just want to forget it. But, in an all-star move, she e-mailed Mr. Jerk and politely reamed him, prompting him to apologize very sincerely and satisfactorily to her, and also send me an apology email. There was definitely more than a hint of "I'm sorry YOU got so offended by my helpful suggestions," but I don't care. I didn't need his apology, but I appreciate that she asked him to, and anything that alleviates those insidious creeping hates in our hearts is good, I guess. Whatever.

I made it through classes on Thursday, but then we had an unfortunate teacher field trip... to see flowers. Don't get me wrong. I don't hate my fellow teachers. I really love my co-teacher, and I actually actively like a couple of the other teachers. I just don't like spending time with them when I could be spending time with students (or my bed, for that matter). We sent the students home three hours early on Thursday so that we could all drive to a city (an hour from my house) and walk around looking at flowers and eat dinner. Needless to say, my 24 hour antihistamine had already worn off by 2pm when we left school. It was just such a disorganized disaster. Apparently the principal was in charge of organizing it, but we didn't seem to have a plan. I sat in the car for 30 minutes while we tried to meet up with our caravan. We went up a mountain, got out and looked around for 5 minutes, then decided we needed a snack, so we went back down. We couldn't find the place we wanted to go to, so there was more sitting around. My nose was running, I had to pee, and I just wanted to go home. The weather had been hot previously, but the day was actually chilly, and I had only a thin jacket, which prompted the other teachers to constantly say "Oh, aren't you cold?" (Yes, I'm cold. If I'd known we were going to be outside for 5 hours, I'd have worn more appropriate clothes. Just kidding, I would have QUIT.) The cold made me have a really bad attitude toward the whole thing, which was unfortunate, because they're all nice people. I just get bored being there, because no one talks to me, I can't follow the conversation, and inevitably, we're always eating something gross, and I spend the time thinking of the many other more productive things I could be doing. Alas. 

I survived the picnic, and unsurprisingly, went straight to bed after school and slept straight through. Then, on Friday morning, the most perplexing thing happened... I woke up injured. Not sure what I was doing in my sleep--nothing THAT exciting, I'm sure, but when I woke up I felt a scary twinge in my back and then anytime I bent it it was perplexingly painful. I tried stretching it, but it's my very lower back, so it's kind of a hard place to stretch. Friday was another long day (5 classes), and I was still fighting the cold, so I again went straight to bed afterwards. The high point of Friday was receiving the following letter from my favorite student (the adorable one from the previous post). Co-teacher and I teased him into writing an English letter, but we didn't think he'd actually do it: 

Dear my sister, 

Hi~ now it's dark. How are you? 

Don't hurt. You often hurt so I worry about you. I wish I could hurt for you. 

Sister, why don't you teach me checkers game? I always wait. 

Will you race 5k? Really? 5k is very far if you want to give up during race you can give up. You don't have to finish. 

These days I cannot concentrate so I worry about middle exam. But I can concentrate for your class, because your class is fun. You make me happy so I am happy during talk to you. Oh... my letter is terrible. I cannot write down letter well. 

Your brother

See why I love Korea? :) Several things about this letter are instructive. Point #1: He calls me sister because of Confucius, indirectly. Koreans have a very strict age-based hierarchy through which they interact with each other. On the internet, I refused to constantly be addressed as teacher. But my efforts to convince students just to call me Brittany proved fruitless, so I settled eventually for older sister. Point #2: In Korean, the words for "hurt" and "sick" are the same, so he's actually saying that I'm often sick. Not that I emotionally or existentially "hurt" often. Point #3: I can give up on the 5k? He would not be a good Biggest Loser coach. Point #4: I AM a good teacher. My class IS fun. Suck it, Mr. Jerk. 

So yeah. I woke up on Saturday around 6am and decided to give running a try. My back was still tight, but I was hoping it would loosen up if I stretched and got moving. That... didn't happen. I ran for about four minutes before I gave up and started limping home. By then it hurt a lot more, and we were having a weird cold spell, so the 45 degree weather wasn't helping either. I made it home and collapsed depressed back into bed, convinced that I was broken and I wouldn't be able to run ever again and I wasn't going to be able to finish training for the 5k... etc. I called my Dad, the expert on running and back pain, and he listened to my teary description and diagnosed me with muscle spasms. I've had back pain before, but never like this. He told me to give it a rest and take ibuprofen. I'd had a lot on my to-do list for yesterday, but I just couldn't bring myself to do any of it, so I spent most of the morning in bed feeling bad for myself. April was a pretty crappy month from a weight loss standpoint, so I was definitely ready to start over, so to find myself incapacitated by a random injury three weeks before the big race was depressing, to say the least. 

Saturday afternoon I went to DVD bang and watched a really sad movie that my favorite student recommended. It was a lot like A Walk to Remember, only with a hot Korean guy, and no annoying Mandy Moore. Ideal. After that I took the bus to Gwangju to meet my co-teacher for dinner... TGIFriday's. It was delicious. I came home and went to sleep, having accomplished roughly nothing, but feeling marginally better. 

I woke up early this morning in a much better headspace. I started in on my to-do list as soon as I woke up, and worked myself into a pretty good mood. Around 10 I went out to run an errand and, on a whim, stopped and got a haircut. I know I need a clean slate for May, so I chose a pretty short little haircut, but it's cute enough, especially since the weather's starting to warm up. Now that I have newly thin and cute neck and collarbones, I don't mind showing them off a bit. Plus, I had some pretty big weirdly-colored chunks still from the purple streak period last year, and my hair was feeling pretty unhealthy, so cutting off a lot of that was good for it, I think. I'm looking forward to having long hair, but I've got time, and I'm happy with it. It's just the change I needed.  I'm now almost completely done with my to-do list for the day (except for pesky lesson planning!), and I feel accomplished. 

As well I should... because I read seven books this month! As you may remember, one of my goals for April was to read 50 pages every day, and 100 pages every weekend day, which was a resounding success. Yesterday I finished Rory Stewart's The Places in Between. It was non-fiction, which is unusual for me, but the genre IS starting to grow on me. It's nice to mix it up, anyway. So this is a memoir by Stewart, a Scottish journalist who decided to cross Asia completely on foot. This book focuses specifically on his walk through Afghanistan, about nine months after the American invasion. It's pretty interesting... there's not too much history, and the anecdotes are enlightening. It only got boring a few times. It was sort of unsatisfying for the same reasons, though... there wasn't enough history to answer the questions prompted by the anecdotes, and the interactions recorded were so brief that it just felt like a lot of snapshots. I also found the narrator curious. He spent a lot of time complaining about walking, which was vaguely annoying, since it was entirely his choice, and that was his shtick. He was also really pissy at times about the shitty hospitality, which was interesting. Granted, the Afghans he met (and most of the people in Asia, apparently) made a big deal about how they were the most hospitable people in the world, so I could see why he would want to point out the difference between what they say and how they act. But it also seemed sort of ridiculous to undertake a journey where you had to rely entirely on others for shelter and food, and to bitch about not being wonderfully received everywhere as a foreigner in a recently invaded country. I guess any complaining was annoying to me, because I'm like, "Then quit. It's your choice. You're doing this to write a book so you can win an award. Spare us." Maybe I'm just a bitch. :) Whatever. 

The good news... that was book #16, which means I'm now caught up for April, and I should finish #17 before Thursday. 

draining

These are my two students who came over for lunch. I'm not sure what's up with my face. I think I'm trying not to laugh. The one in the middle is my favoritest ever (HW), who talks to me on the internet all the time. The one on the left is his best friend, and he's really standoffish but funny. He's the one who explained that I was scary because he thinks foreigners eat Koreans. They're really cute.

This is a token picture of me cooking with chopsticks. That's actually just the pasta I'm half-heartedly stirring. :)

Awesome, huh? It looks delicious. The meat was pretty flavorless, but it all came together decently.

Here's an action shot of me chopping vegetables for the spaghetti. I also chopped green peppers. You can see the knee injury post-washing. And those are my new shorts.

Here's my awesome knee injury pre-washing. Thank you, awesome sports photographer Meghan, for getting this shot before you got me tissues. It's the same knee I scraped up before, and which had just started to heal. It bled fast, and dramatically, but it doesn't actually hurt too bad now.

I think I'm making a "What the Hell are you guys DOING?" gesture here.

This is just a great action shot. Kudos to Meghan. It was so bright that she couldn't see anything on the viewfinder, so she warned me that she wasn't sure the ball was actually in any of the pictures.

Another super action shot. I love that kid. He's really awesome.

Seasoned basketball players will be able to spot the problem here easily. No one's REBOUNDING.

Look at that follow-through. Who says white (Asian) men can't jump?

Me and co-teacher before Demonstration Class From Hell. Isn't my board cute? This is, btw, an arms length picture. In case you couldn't tell.

This is the shirt the seamstress made for me, which I love. Especially the lace at the bottom.

There's a word in Korean that means, to the best of my interpretation, "draining," and Koreans use it a lot, usually in the following context: "아... 힘들어!" Kind of the way Americans (at least students), tend to often say they're tired, Koreans will exclaim this in the middle of basketball games, English lessons, and other stressful or tiring situations. And, it's probably the best way to describe last week for me. I was actually pretty happy all of Thursday and Friday morning. I had the demonstration class on Friday afternoon, so I was pretty ahead on lesson planning, and my kids were really good and cute on Thursday. On Thursday, we were told that, although all of the other English teachers in the city were invited, only about 4 or 5 of them would actually be making the trip all the way out to my rural school to watch. Which was sort of fine by me.

Then principal intervened. She was mad that people weren't going to show up, so she called the supervisor and complained, so the supervisor in turn called all the schools and insisted that everyone who didn't have a really concrete excuse come to see my demonstration class. Thanks a lot, principal. So, in fact, there were about twenty people watching, in addition to the camera recording the whole class. I was really nervous, and at no point did I forget about the teachers lining three walls of the room, but I thought it went smoothly enough, and my ninth graders were really excellent, and they all spoke a few words of English, so I was proud and satisfied.

I should interject here that I didn't even want to do this demonstration class. My co-teacher got stuck doing it because she's the youngest English teacher in the city, and even then she tried really hard to get out of it. But before I knew how much stupid paperwork and stress it would add, I was sort of positive on the idea. I figured it might be a little fun. Only after I'd agreed was I informed of some of the downsides: 1. Paperwork. 2. Evaluatory meeting afterwards. 3. Written critiques.

My co-teacher had also told me that the meeting would be no big deal. She reasoned that, because all of the other teachers who came had refused to do the demonstration class, they knew perfectly well how undesirable and difficult a task it was, and they would just make some general positive comments. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. There was a guy there from the super high-level science high school. It's the only science high school for the entire province, so it's really selective in its admissions. Plus, students who want to go to university for science have to take a special English exam, so they're some of the best overall students. This teacher, who we will henceforth refer to as Mr. Jerk, was... well... a jerk.

He spoke English really well, and the entire offensive portion of the meeting took place in English. To give you an idea, he started out with: "So, I noticed that during the game portion of the lesson, the students were speaking to each other in Korean. Was that part of your strategy?"

I wish someone had taken pictures of my efforts to control my facial expressions during this meeting, starting right there. I was expecting general positive stuff, and some simple critiques, not that kind of shit right off the bat. Oh, a little background: the lesson was practicing reading large numbers in English (up to 100 million). This is really hard for Korean people, because they don't even think about numbers in the same terms... They don't divide them into 3-digit segments, or work in thousands. They work in ten thousands, so far as I can tell. So it's a pretty difficult concept. The activity was a team The Price is Right game, wherein they had to guess the price of an item on the Powerpoint and give their guess in English. (Because 1 dollar is = to about 1,000 Korean won, the price of, for example, a laptop, is about 1,400,000 won.)

The thing that troubled me most about all of his comments was that my co-teacher didn't really defend us. And I didn't understand why. She mostly said: "I see your point."

His next question (he was literally one of two people who spoke during the entire meeting), was also phrased in an unpleasant way. "So, is big numbers part of the textbook curriculum, or is it one of those unrelated topics you mentioned?" (My co-teacher had mentioned in her beginning spiel how, if it made sense for me to review the week's grammatical lesson, I did that, but if not, then I taught some other relevant topic.) She said that it was not part of the textbook, but was obviously an important skill, and one that students had a hard time with.

But he wasn't finished. "So there's no continuity between this lesson and the next? Just random topics?" Co-teacher: "Well, there's continuity between Brittany's classes on Thursdays and Fridays."

(In the meantime, I'm writing down a bulleted list of his criticisms and looking only at my notebook so I won't explode. I'm also writing little notes like, "If you're so damned good at teaching English, why didn't you do the demonstration class, jerk?")

Then, the straw that broke the camel's back. He was saying something about how each student only managed to say a few words in English during what was supposed to be a conversation class, and they weren't even able to make sentences like "Your guess is too high. That price is too expensive." My co-teacher made another calm "I see your point," and added something about "working with the level of our students," when he said something to the effect of "Well, have you just given up [on them speaking English]?"

At which point, I'd like to tell you that I snapped and told him off, but I didn't. I didn't speak through the entire meeting. Co-teacher had assured me I didn't have to, and I really wasn't sure I'd be able to summon the necessary amount of restraint and obsequious respect that Korea is known for (thanks, Confucius), so I just stayed quiet, but I do kind of regret that. I think I would have felt better if I'd spoken up, if only then, to assure him that we hadn't, in fact, given up. So anyway, I was livid.

Then he turned to me and condescendingly said, "Sorry, you won't be able to understand this," and proceeded to speak in Korean. I could, unfortunately, pick up such choice phrases as "too much teacher-talk time" and "more student-centered," which made me want to throw up. Thankfully, it ended shortly after that, and my co-teacher could tell I was really upset. Mr. Jerk, too, must have noticed, because he came over and condescendingly said: "I'm sorry for what I said. You did a great job." He was already walking away before he finished the sentence, but thanks a lot.

So after the meeting co-teach explained a few things to me. He's an acquaintance of hers, with whom she's eaten dinner a few times. (He's married with kids, but they were in a study group together at some point.) At first she didn't know how upset I was, so she was just reassuring me that he's kind of an aggressive person, and rude. He felt comfortable saying things in a very frank manner because they know each other, and because she's one of the only teachers who is younger than him. Also, he wants to be an administrator, so he's the kind of person who will work his way up through the ranks by being outspoken and obnoxious. Plus, he simply doesn't grasp the realities of Rural Middle School versus Non-Rural Elite High School. She explained that she just took everything he said with a grain of salt, knowing he was just talking to hear himself talk. She also explained that she didn't bother refuting what he was saying because a.) he just doesn't get it, b.) they've had the conversation before, and c.) the other teachers couldn't understand what they were saying in English, and they all just wanted to go home anyway, so it would have been a waste of everyone's time. Co-teacher also tried to reassure me that any criticisms were directed at her really, since she's the official teacher, but this wasn't any consolation. I designed the flawed lesson plan and activity.

So yeah, I probably just would have called Meghan and ranted to her, but then co-teacher noticed I really was upset, so she made me talk about it, and I started crying. I was crying for two reasons:

1. I was really really frustrated, because I didn't even want to do the damn class in the first place. Then I was reassured that the meeting would be no big deal, and everyone would be nice. Which was not what happened. Not only did Mr. Jerk dominate the discourse... not a single other teacher said anything. The supervisor made some vague compliments, in Korean, but no one disputed a thing he said. And all of the non-negative stuff was in Korean. I could tell that they were compliments, but not the content of any of them. I didn't need compliments... I was proud of my kids. They'd mastered big numbers. But I also didn't need Mr. Jerk's condescension. So I didn't even want to do it, I stressed out about it for weeks ahead of time, and then it turned out so f-ing badly.

2. It's a testament to my increasing humility that when I started to get upset, my first thought was that I'd only get upset if he were right. I assumed the grain of truth was what was bothering me. I know that I don't take criticism very gracefully, although I've certainly gotten better, so I immediately assumed that he was right--I MUST be a bad teacher because my students can't speak fluent English. And there were things about which he was right: 1. Ideally, students should speak in English at all times, even during group work. 2. Too much "teacher talk-time" is bad. 3. Activities should be student-centered.

But the more I thought about it, the more I decided he was just a jerk.

a. My students simply aren't able to converse in full sentences with each other in English. It would be impossible for me to enforce all six groups speak only in English, and they would just be irritated and not speak at all. Maybe it's possible at science high school, but if they were good enough to do groupwork in English, they wouldn't need a conversation class.

b. In my classroom, the fact that every single student actually spoke a few words of English, generated by themselves, is actually the frigging accomplishment of the year. When I taught the Price is Right last year, I didn't force every student to say at least one big number, so this version is much better. I'm going to try to have each student say at least one sentence in every class, but some students are so painfully shy or unconfident that I hate to do it. I walk a fine line trying to make the students feel comfortable enough to try.

c. It's true. I do have about 4 or 5 students who are able to make sentences, and who would benefit from more speaking-based activities, but the other 25 students would then do absolutely nothing during that time. And the higher-level students are all in different groups, because the groups are divided by ability level.

d. But whatever. Perhaps he just felt that he needed to say something, or to give us some advice. Which is fine. But the "Have you given up?" comment was just out of line. Co-teacher explained that if it had been someone she didn't know who said that, she would have been furious. But coming from him... whatever. But I just think it was an asshole thing to say. If he wanted to say an asshole thing like that and not have me take it to heart, he should have said it in Korean. He made the decision to use English knowing that it would allow me to hear it, so perhaps he should have considered how I might interpret what he was saying. I am not his friend, and although it's cool in Korea to be a complete asshole to people younger than you, I'm not Korean.

I've only now gained this perspective though. I cried for about an hour after the meeting on Friday, alternating feeling like a terrible teacher and just being mad about the shitty situation, and I actually started crying again in front of a couple of my students, which perplexed them. Friday after school I skipped my run and crawled straight into bed with the remainder of a bag of Hershey kisses, and didn't get out until Saturday morning at 5:30 when I went jogging to try to shake it off. I finally had to try to explain to host mom why I was so upset, because I didn't get out of bed for dinner the night before, and she was really cute and supportive in broken English. She offered to go to the science high school and call Mr. Jerk out. It was nice.

On Saturday I had a picnic with the third graders (the class I had the demonstration with), so I brought pizza, cheeseburgers, and ice cream to school. (They finish around 12:30 on Saturdays.) They wanted to eat inside, despite it being a beautiful day (70 degrees), but then I got to play basketball, which was awesome. And Meghan was nice enough to help me carry all the food to the picnic, so she was also there to be sports photographer.

Then today my favorite student and his best friend informed me that they were going to stop over to my house for a visit, so I said I'd make lunch. I recruited Meghan, and we went all out for an Italian-American fusion meal. (By which I mean we made bowtie pasta and spaghetti sauce, and bought garlic bread at the bakery.) We did, however, challenge ourselves by purchasing and preparing some Korean meat, which was a first for us (and good practice for upcoming Mexican lunch party). We agreed that, considering what we had to work with, it was pretty good. And my boys didn't hate it, so whatever. Everyone enjoyed the smores we had for dessert more, though. Then, they actually hung out for about 5 hours, playing a Korean board game while I did the dishes, and then voluntarily (if haltingly) speaking English after that. It was pretty awesome. It made me feel like I'm not actually a terrible teacher.

In other news... I bought a new pair of shorts yesterday, which was awesome. As I've mentioned, the weather is improving drastically lately (highs in the 70s all this week, according to my weather widget), and I now have 0 pairs of pants that fit. I have 4 skirts, but especially because school picnic is tomorrow, I needed something comfortable. There's a semi-new Unionbay store in town, and I saw them outside and decided on a whim to try them on. (Usually this is too intimidating. I don't know what size I am, and most little stores don't have big sizes or dressing rooms. It usually requires a lot of trying to speak Korean, and embarrassment.) But yesterday was gold, and I got a cute new pair of knee-length shorts for thirty bucks--well worth it. And now I know what size I am. Success.

Lastly, I read up a storm this week, particularly on Friday when I refused to get out of bed. I already mentioned Cat's Cradle, but I also read:
13. Jennifer Weiner: Good in Bed. Reading this book was a weird experience. Mari sent it to me. The main character is a plus-sized woman, and this aspect of her is important to the plot, but she's still a sort of normal person. Judging by the title, the premise presented on the back, and (although it's ill-advised) the cover, I sort of assumed it would be a light read, but it... wasn't. It ended up being quite heavy (pardon the pun) in parts, which was unexpected. It was also irritatingly like a fairy tale in some parts, something the author acknowledges in her interview at the back. (I'm sure if I could only make friends with a famous and rich movie star a lot of my problems would be solved too.) I also think it had a detrimental effect on my weight loss efforts, with its message of fat acceptance. I agree that loving ourselves at any size is important, but I'm not sure I'm able to go all the way to fat being something to celebrate. It was long, and enjoyable enough to read, I guess, but certainly not a great book.

14. Augusten Burroughs: Running With Scissors. This was a book that had been on my list of things I'd been intending to read for a long time, but hadn't yet gotten around to. Now I have, and I was pretty disappointed. This book suffered from the same problem, for me, as The Glass Castle... It's a memoir about severely dysfunctional parents, and it just makes the reader uncomfortable. Burroughs is, at least, able to be judgmental about his parents and not defend them in an infuriating way, but it left me wondering why I was reading it. It wasn't hysterical, or even very funny, the way I've heard it described. David Sedaris is much funnier. And if it wasn't intended to be humorous... well, why else do I want to read it? I have my own problems. It was short enough, and kept my attention, but it wasn't really that interesting.

Awesome... I'm almost on schedule. Two more books, and I'll be on pace. Oh yeah, and here's a link to all the pictures from this weekend, if you're interested.

eta: Oh yeah, the coolest thing that happened last week was probably getting new toothpaste. Recently I've been trying to save money in small ways, like using the host family's toothpaste. Host mom likes providing for me, and because of Korean culture, she feels like it's her responsibility. And I knew they had a million tubes of toothpaste, so I just asked her for one. And she gave it to me happily. The only problem is that it tastes exactly like Comet. (In fairness, I've never tasted Comet, but as Meghan said, it has such a distinctive smell that one can fairly easily imagine what it would taste like.) I suppose I should have anticipated a problem... there was, after all, a picture of a pine cone on the tube. I guess in America this probably wouldn't happen because pine scent is so clearly tied in the public consciousness to (non-mouth) cleaning fluids. The first few days it was really rough... My mouth tasted like a (clean) toilet bowl, and I felt a little queasy for an hour after I brushed. But now I've sort of gotten used to it.

a minor setback

ETA: Here's a link to the pictures from the You-Know-What Museum. Don't look if you don't want to be shocked.

I have a lot to report, so let's make this concise and meaningful.

Yesterday was actually a really pleasant day, until last night, when my internet randomly decided to stop working. The laptop no longer recognizes any nearby networks, which worries me. This is perplexing for several reasons, actually... I informed host mom, but first she tried to convince me that it was a problem with the Naju network. I countered with "then why does the upstairs computer work?" She's like, "Oh, right." I asked her to call the company tomorrow, which she might do eventually, but I'm worried that they'll tell me it's something computer-related. Korea is apparently not a very Mac-friendly place (I've heard horror stories), so we'll just have to hope it all works itself out. Not having internet every second of the day at home wouldn't be the end of the world, but it also wouldn't be as convenient. But it would also mean I couldn't Skype anymore, because my headset broke. Plus, it's just not convenient to try to Skype on the family's computer, because the best times to Skype are early morning and late at night. So until it gets fixed, my home internet options are fighting with host brother or paying money to go to PC bang, both of which are not ideal. Oh well, such is life.

So anyway, I've made a decision about the future. Not knowing what was going to happen, and feeling torn in two directions, had been looming over me for the past week, so I knew that what I needed was to buckle down and make a choice. Until I made the decicion, I was unable to get excited about either option (staying in Korea or leaving), because I was too busy focusing on the prospective loss of one or the other. Which was just depressing. But after lots of soul-searching and navel-gazing, I've decided.

But how I decided is interesting, so I'm going to tell you that first. I decided to opt for drastic measures, as anyone who knows me knows I'm wont to do... I decided by playing "Rock, Paper, Scissors." (Just kidding. But that is how decisions are most frequently made in Korea, in case I haven't already mentioned that.) I had committed to making the decision this weekend, but I didn't want it looming over me all weekend, 'cause there were plenty of other things on my to-do list after: "1. Decide life plan." So I decided to hike to the top of my local mountain at 5am the next morning, and not come down until I'd made a decision.

I was out of my house by 5:15 am, and on top of the mountain by 6:15. (It took me about 15 minutes to walk to the starting point.) I brought breakfast and a notebook, so I indulged in a granola bar and yoghurt while starting to make lists. And I won't bore you with my thought processes--I've mentioned pros and cons before. But I've decided I'm going to go ahead and at least try to extend. Like I said in my last entry, I have no idea how likely it is that this will get approved, but I've decided that I'd at least like to ask. This wasn't an easy decision, or one I came to lightly, but it's made, so now I can move forward. As a reminder, this means I can come home for a month in the summer, and then for good probably around early January.

And when I get home in January, I'll move in with Kate for a semester, enroll at UCF full-time and finish my English degree, and work a part-time job just enough to pay the rent. (Or, if I find a great part-time job that will provide enough insurance, I'll just take the one class I need to graduate at UCF and work.) I'll be applying for Teach for America this fall, and I'll start looking into grad schools as well. If I decide I'm not ready to go to grad school yet, or I don't get into TFA (or decide it's not for me), then I'll look for a full-time teaching position in Orlando or possibly Fort Myers, and have plenty of time to do so.

Let me conclude by saying that this decision makes me deliriously happy. I know it's disappointing for some people, and I don't want to disappoint anyone, but I'm almost certain it's best for me. Now, I'll be able to enjoy the next 3 months rather than spending the whole time sad about leaving, and then I can come home for an awesomely long visit during the summer. Then I can come back and have another great 4.5-5 months (it's really only that long, if you can believe that), and then come home to America for good, satisfied that I've done everything in Korea that I wanted to do. (Good co-teacher will have left, all the students I love will have graduated, and I'll be completely ready to leave, I'm sure.) I'll come home, get to live with Kate, and during spring, I'll get acceptance/rejection from TFA and grad schools, and decide to go or stay in Florida for a couple of years. This sounds just about perfect to me. I'm really happy with it.

And, there's always the (not entirely small) chance that Naju will say no to my extending, which I would also be happy with. Then I know I tried to stay, and I can come home satisfied too. It's a great burden lifted to have this decision made, and to be able to just get started on the work of putting it into motion. On today's TDL is creating a Future Action Plan (henceforth, FAP), to get me ready for every possible eventuality. Included in this is, among other things, applying to UCF as a 2nd-degree seeking student and looking into subbing in Orange and Seminole Counties. I'll post the FAP here for your perusal when it's finished. :)

On another note, I'm rocking my reading goal hardcore. I read my allotted pages everyday this week, and finished another book:
11. Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys: This was another 400+ pager. (So was last week's Cloudstreet, so it didn't help me make up any time.) It was number 11, and to stay on track I need to finish 5 more during April, which is unlikely. But I will definitely read two more in the next two weeks, and then I'm sure I can pick up at least one extra, which will mean I'll only be 2 behind. That's my new goal for April. The next few on my desk are much shorter, too. Anyway, as for Wonder Boys, it was... okay. It was compelling enough... the story was pretty interesting. I never got bored with it or wanted to put it down during "reading time." But I didn't think it was phenomenal. I'll put the movie on the list of movies I want to watch when I get back to America, because I like Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire, but it didn't strike a chord with me the way Cloudstreet did. I'll probably still read his other book, just because I like reading multiple books by any novelist I don't hate straight-off. And perhaps it was the subject matter. I was discussing with Tim how I usually don't like books about writers, and especially books about college professor writers (Richard Russo's Straight Man is one notable exception). I think my biggest problem with the book was that neither character was particularly likeable. An almost revoltingly irresponsible, washed-up, fat, pothead professor is bad enough, but even the student James Leer wasn't that complelling. It irritated me that I didn't know if he was actually a compulsive liar or not, and he just wasn't that interesting... Chabon didn't develop him enough for me to get that into him, and then his perfect little ending seems odd. And the main character's ending seems contrived too.

I already did my reading for today, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, which I borrowed during the conference--believing, mistakenly, that I'd never read it. I have, but I'm still going to read it again, because for whatever reason, it didn't change my life the way it seems to change everyone else's who reads it. And it's not too long, so it's worth re-reading, and I should be finished with it by Tuesday, which gives me plenty of time to pick up an extra book this week. Cool.

And last but not least... a school update. Thursday and Friday of this week were... okay. Actually, they were pretty annoying, because of this damned demonstration class. It's next Friday, and once it's over, things will return to normal (at least for about a month, until the second one), and I can't wait for that to happen. I've had to do a lot of stupid paperwork, and agonize over and think about this thing a lot more than I wanted to. My co-teacher's really apologetic, but it's not her fault. Nonetheless, I find myself being more snappy with her. It just really threw off my lesson-planning schedule (which had been working so gloriously for the past month), and forced me to lesson plan at home, and get behind, which meant a lot of stress on Friday morning. Plus, then my computer in the teacher's office stopped working, and I had my first serious Mac-Windows conversion problems, all in the 45 minutes before class started. I was not in a happy place on Friday morning. (Note to self: Don't agree to do any demonstration classes next semester.) But my classes were pretty good, including the idioms one, and I got to have my first special "advanced" (quotations because some of the students are advanced) class, with mostly kids who like English, and it went pretty well. This class is one of the big reasons I want to extend, so I'm glad it was fun.

And yesterday I had a pleasant surprise when my favorite cute student (HW) and his best friend randomly showed up at my house for a visit, and I took them out for pizza. They both really like English, and tried pretty hard to ask me questions, which was nice. Case in point, they were doing that weird Korean boy cuddling thing in the booth of the pizza place, but then for my benefit they informed me...

HW: We're not gay.
MH: Yeah.
MC: I don't care. In America, they are lots of gay people.
~15 second pause~
MH: Are you gay?
MC: Yes.
HW&MH ~incredulously~: REALLY?
MC: No.

It was humorous, and got me out of the house for a bit on a really beautiful day, which was nice. Now... I have lesson planning to do (on a Sunday?! thanks a LOT, Demonstration Class!) There's just not enough hours in the day now that I'm exercising regularly, working while at work, having hobbies, and doing housework. But it feels pretty great. Like practice for my real life, my "orgastic future," (thanks, Gatsby) which continues to recede before me.

See you Wednesday! :)

I look like Emma Watson, and other lies we tell ourselves...

Well, I made it back from the conference. It proved to suck less than I had anticipated, which was awesome. I was stressed about the transportation situation, because I just hate flying now, since all those 14 hour Korea flights. But it was remarkably painless. Security was unintimidating, and the flight itself was literally 45 minutes... just barely long enough to doze off or get into a good book, which was fine by me. The weather was quite nice, and I got to room with my two favorite (female) ETAs, Meghan and Amy, so all in all it wasn't an entirely unpleasurable experience. 

This was helped, immensely, by the fact that the actual conference portion of the conference was remarkably short compared to previous ETA gatherings. From like, 2pm to 5pm on Friday and 9am to 12pm on Saturday. We had a few short speeches, and then small groups to discuss how to improve the handbook and Orientation for next year. Those were pretty painful at times, but not too long, and it really was over before I knew it. I ate too much at the first two American buffets, as I should have expected, which led to my stomach feeling a little sketch, so I almost skipped out on sightseeing with my friends, but I'm glad I didn't. We went to the Teddy Bear Museum and the Museum of Sex and Health, and they were both titillating in their own way. 

The Teddy Bear Museum isn't what you'd expect... if it were, I wouldn't have gone. Instead, the Teddy Bear Museum is full of re-enactments of important (and not-so-important) historical events with... teddy bears. Sometimes moving teddy bears. (Think fall of the Berlin Wall.) The other gallery is imitations of great works of art... with teddy bears. Anyway, it's obviously a must for any history major, and was well worth the cost of admission ($7). I can't upload pictures at the moment, but I'll do it tomorrow first thing at work, because you've just got to see it to believe it. 

The Museum of Sex and Health is just as exciting as you might expect, and I won't be uploading any of those pictures to this blog, because my Grammy reads it. (Sorry, Grammy!) It wasn't actually my choice to go to said museum, but the posse was really excited about it, and I went. It was strange, and would have been more interesting if I could have read the information provided, but the highlight was probably the two phone booths (one for men and one for women), where you could pick up the phone and hear Korean phone sex. (I'm not sure how interesting this is for Korean people, because presumably they could pick up almost any phone and hear Korean phone sex), but whatever. It was thoroughly... educational, including an extensive display about sexually transmitted diseases that reminded me of high school health class. 

More interesting than the fact that Jeju Island has a sex museum is the fact that Jeju Island actually has two or three sex museums. I saw some pictures from ETAs who went to Loveland, another sex museum, and it seems much raunchier. Up until just a few years ago, I guess, Jeju Island was the #1 honeymoon destination for Korean people... as up until a short time ago it was difficult for Koreans to go anywhere else. It's picturesque, beautiful, and warm, and aside from its famous oranges, it's just a tourist attraction, which means it's literally covered with weird museums and stuff, and we only scratched the surface with Teddy Bear Museum and Sex Museum. (Another high point, the Africa Museum, where many Korean people go to have their picture taken with "a real African," as they will proudly tell you.) Jeju actually looks a lot like Florida... complete with palm trees and beaches, so if I'd gone there, I might have been able to forget, on occasion, that I was in Korea. I would also probably have to eat a lot more fish, so I'm happy with my Naju placement. :) 

That's about all I have to say about the conference. I came home today on another pleasantly brief flight, took a short bus ride to Naju, and then got started on my lengthy to-do list. I've done all my laundry, so now all I can do is hope that something will dry in time to wear it tomorrow. I've been having a really cute conversation with one of my favorite third graders on and off on messenger all day. High point: I look a lot like Emma Watson. (Hermione? How old is she nowadays anyway?) Okay, I've consulted Google Images and Wikipedia, and I'm pretty sure that all Emma Watson and I have in common is brown eyes and lighter hair, but whatever. I'm sure it was intended as a compliment. 

I haven't exactly finished my first grade lesson for tomorrow, but whatever. I'll slap it together in the morning. I found out that I DO get to have an after-school club class at my good school too (for two hours on Friday), including lots of students who I really like, and who actually really like English, so hopefully that will prove to be lots of fun. 

Oh yeah... there was one more thing. I succeeded in following my reading-every-day April goal this week, and successfully finished the 450-some page Australian classic Cloudstreet, which I absolutely loved. I'm definitely going to have to look for more of Tim Winton's stuff when I get back to America. I haven't felt this sort of immediate love for a novelist in a long time, and not often in my life, but something about the book really affected me. I just loved it to pieces. It's only my #10 book for the year, which puts me still behind pace, but I have a stack of six books sitting on my desk that I acquired at the conference this week, so combined with the 50 pages a day goal, I should be caught up in no time. I'm shooting for 4 books a month, so now I'm only 3 behind. Progress. 

You look sad...

Today was really kind of terrible, up until about 12:45. I'm not sure why it was so terrible... I woke up before the alarm, fully rested, at 5:40, to head to the gym, and had a pretty good workout. I'm sore, which is good, but far less sore than I was earlier this week, which is really good. I had a nice breakfast and arrived to school without incident. I was all prepped for class second period... and that's where things started to go awry.

The second graders (who if you remember, were last year's first graders), are so annoying. They're chatty, obnoxious, and disrespectful. The boys are especially chatty, and they don't care about anything, but the girls are obnoxious and terrible in their own way. They're the bane of all the teachers' existence, and they also happen to be my co-teacher's homeroom. She's completely fed up with them, and I'm just tired of it. They're lazy bad students, and the only way I can have a chance of getting them to get involved and volunteer is to work my butt off to try to make it fun somehow, but by the same token... they don't deserve me putting in all that effort, because they don't appreciate anything. But if I punish them by not letting them play a lot of games and just making them do work, then they're mad and even less likely to participate and more likely to talk. It seems to be an uphill struggle, not just for me, but for all the teachers.

But whatever, right? I only have to see them twice a week, for 45 minutes a day. Then they leave and I get to see my third graders, who are the epitome of wonderful. But I was just irritable after class, and my co-teacher kept talking to me about that demonstration class, and I just wanted to finish my lesson plans for Monday and not have to talk. I love her to pieces, but sometimes I'm just in the mood to be super-cheerful, I want to relax and do my lesson plans (or read my blogs) and chill out. So today I was really passive-aggressive, which was a shame, because she's such a wonderful lady. I'm not proud of it, but I couldn't help it. I can't handle it when people are like "Gosh! Cheer up!"

So yeah, I apparently didn't do a good job of hiding my irritation at lunch, because some students noticed. I was hiding after lunch in my English classroom, trying to finish up my lesson plans (which I've since given up on completely), when one of my favorite students, HW, came into the room. At first I assumed he came to play cards or something, because that's what they typically do in my classroom, but then he just stood next to my desk, and I determined he wanted to talk to me. Surprising. Lots of students want to talk to me, I'm sure, but few are willing to speak all that English. (He's a quiet kid who never volunteers or talks in class, but I know he's really smart, because every once in awhile, after class and everyone's gone, he'll ask me an awesome question, like "What's the difference between a king and an emperor?")

So today he started with, "You look... sad." And I said I was fine, but he wasn't giving up, so I explained that the 2nd graders are badly behaved, so I was annoyed. And he stood there, formulating, for almost a full minute, but I'm glad I didn't doubt him or interrupt, because then he started speaking in complete and almost grammatically perfect sentences. "The second graders are bad. I know. So, you must punish them." I almost did a double-take. I knew he was smart, but it also takes phenomenal bravery to converse with the foreigner by yourself. And we did it for about almost 20 minutes, consulting the internet dictionary every once in a while. He gave me some advice about my love life, explained that I'm too nice to second grade--that's why they take advantage of me, and told me about the students from my other school that he met at the winter English camp. He was, in conclusion, the most adorable thing in the world. I teased that if the second graders didn't start behaving well I would go back to America, and then he got super serious face and told me how sad he'd be if I left. "If you go... I will cry. I want to... no, wait... I want you... to stay." It was so cute I almost cried.

I don't know, it was just a nice moment. He doesn't play basketball at lunchtime, so I haven't had lots of other time for bonding with him, and because he's not outspoken in class, I might never have known about his wonderful English skills if he hadn't gone out of his way to come find me today, and not given up on the near-impossible task of communicating clearly. But he did, because he's a really great kid.

Which segues well into what I was going to say next, which is... I'm getting sad about leaving. Not really, I suppose, because I also only teach that wonderful class twice a week for 45 minutes. I genuinely look forward to teaching the 3rd grade classes every time, at both schools, but they only make up 6 out of my 14 hours. And the other classes usually tax my patience and offer very little pleasantness. This is why I wanted to teach high school when I first came... I like older kids. I think the prime age is third grade middle school and first grade high school, because after that they're pretty set in their ways, and they're a little scary. But I formed most of my personality for my life in 8th grade. I just don't like younger kids... There are exceptions--I have at least one really good student in almost all of my classes, but otherwise they're just immature. They're not my style. 

So is it worth staying in Korea after all of my friends have left just to have another half-year with the third graders? No, obviously. But still... it's sad. Most teachers say they remember their first ever students, and I'll certainly remember mine. Especially HW. :)