Monday, March 14 - Friday, March 18, 2011
Instead of breaking each of these days down, I'll just say that this has been one craaaaazy busy week! This post is going to be a bit longer than the rest because there's a lot to share (and I'm probably still forgetting to include a lot of it!).
Our school, a private ESL school for kindergarten, elementary and high school students, is located in a low-rise building on a pretty busy street, about a 25 minute walk from our neighbourhood. We spent our first day meeting the other teachers (both foreign and Korean) and observing classes. By Tuesday, we were left to our own devices as teachers. All of our co-workers are really easy-going, super cool people. There are a few Canadians and Americans, some Brits and a girl from Ireland. The support system here has been great! To be honest, it doesn't feel much different from being at a new job back home (aside from all of the Korean kids and the Korean teachers). Actually, it didn't even really feel like we were in Korea until we went to the downtown core for the first time on Thursday night. Lots of flashing neon signs and a LOT of people walking around in the shopping district (I haven't done any clothes shopping yet, but everything seems suuuuper inexpensive!). I'm still not used to the celebrity status that white people have here, especially when we travel in a pack. People have no shame in staring at us, waving and saying "Hellooo!" or even calling out "Wegook!" (=foreigner), not in a mean way, but still...I miss going unnoticed by passersby and blending in with a crowd...
Right, work! Here's a little breakdown of how the school operates:
Kindergarten students are at school from 9:40-2:45 each day. The day is split up into 7 periods/classes. There is a main foreign teacher (again, foreign meaning "us"), a secondary teacher (also a foreigner) and then a Korean teacher. I'm the main teacher for two kindergarten classes, so I go back and forth between the classrooms X number of times, depending on which day of the week it is. Mike isn't the main teacher for any kindy classes, but he's a secondary for a few and is a main teacher for more elementary classes. Each class has different workbooks/subjects and I'm responsible for the main story/reading books and conversation books, while the secondary teacher is responsible for things like grammar and phonics, though of course those things inevitably come up when I'm teaching my subjects. I also get to teach science, art and math, which are all awesome, obviously. The kids also have cooking class once a month (where they have to wear little aprons and chef hats...soooo cute!), and P.E. and music classes (taught by a different teacher).
The kindy kids are also separated based on age, and how long they've been at the school. For example, I teach a 6-1 class (which means they are 6 years old, and it's their 1st year at the school/learning English) as well as a 7-3 class (7 year olds who are in their 3rd year at the school). For reasons unknown, each class is also named after a prominent historical figure (my 6-1 class is Beethoven and my 7-3 is Washington; other noteworthy figures include Edison, Picasso, Newton, etc.). The 7-3 students speak English quite fluently and don't really seem any different than a kindergarten class from back home, except that ages here in Korea are different than what we're used to. Koreans start counting their age from when they were conceived, not from when they were physically born. So as soon as they take their first breath outside the womb, they're already 9 months old! And to make it even more complicated, they also become a year older at the beginning of each New Year (January 1st). So, say you were born at the end of December, come January you can be considered a 2 year old...or something like that. Anyway, what it all boils down to is that they categorize themselves by their Korean age, so being in a 6-1 class doesn't technically mean you're 6 years old, you could only be 4 or 5 years old, which some of my students definitely are.
Regardless of their ages, Korean children are all freakin' adorable!!! Especially the ones who are in school for the first time and don't quite grasp the fact that us wegooks don't understand Korean. After getting your attention by saying "Teachaaa!", they'll sometimes yammer on about something, and you just nod your head and they think they're having a convo with you lol. It's difficult when one of them is upset, or starts crying though, because you can't really ask them what's wrong, well you can, but they can't tell you, at least not in English. It's usually pretty simple to figure out; most of the time they're just tired, want their Oma (=Mommy), or are angry because "So-and-So" took their crayon...so depending on the situation, you just give them a little cuddle, and they seem to perk up. Oh yeah, that's one thing that's really different here: you are actually encouraged to show affection to the kids (patting them on the back -not just in the literal sense-, picking them up, hugging them, etc.). Parents actually get mad if they find out that their kids don't get their hair tousled or something often enough, because they think it means the teacher doesn't like the kid. Veeeeery different from back home. Made us a bit nervous at first, but they have cameras in each of the classrooms (also a little weird) but it's for our safety I suppose. Most of the kids are super cute so you want to high-five them and hug them back anyway, so it's not too bad lol.
At 3pm, the elementary and high school students come in, and classes run till 9pm. They've already been at regular school all day, and then they come to our school to learn English and do more work. Depending on the day, they'll stay for one or two hours, and they have different subjects too. I'm the main teacher for four (I think...) classes, and then secondary teacher for a couple others, while Mike is mostly a main teacher, as I mentioned before. I'm usually finished at around 6pm, and Mike finishes a bit later because he doesn't teach as much kindy as me, and so starts later in the day. I really like the elementary classes because there is less of a communication barrier with them, like you can have actual conversations with them, discuss things, etc. Plus, when I teach Science, it's ACTUAL Science! (My kids are learning about the properties and states of matter right now...from a text book that has a sea otter on the cover, of all things! =D But also =( at the same time...). They're all ridiculously smart too, even the kindy kids really. Their parents are all pretty strict about education and learning. Like after the kids are finished at our school, they'll go to other types of schools/academies, like math school, or science school, or a piano lesson, or taekwondo, etc. I understand that those types of classes are important because after sitting down all day, the kids really need to do something physical. It's just crazy because kids aren't getting home till like 9pm (even the kindies!). And they go to special schools on Saturdays too! Adults are way over-worked as well, which, I suppose, is one of the reasons South Korea was able to move up from being a developing country into a player in the big leagues in a span of only about 30 years...and in 20 years, Asian kids are going to be sooooo much smarter than North Americans...but still, I just don't know at what cost...
Alright, enough about work. Let's move on to one of my favourite topics: food. I had my reservations at first, but the food here is delicious! And super cheap! You can get a big stir-fry dish with rice and/or noodles, vegetables, beef, etc., cooked up fresh by old Korean ladies, for only about $4! Plus you get all sorts of little side dishes with everything! And it's all quite healthy for you. It's pretty much cheaper to eat out then it is to cook for ourselves...which we haven't really done yet, because we've been so busy and everything. Kimchi (Korea's most popular side dish of fermented cabbage) is quite good, but depending on the restaurant/hole-in-the-wall, it's usually a bit too spicy for me. They do have some weird things here (weird by my standards, but not everyone's), like eel and what not, and they looooove their seafood, but nothing crazy like dog or cat (Fact: Less than 10% of Koreans actually eat dog, and it's so uncommon that you can only get it at very specific places and you have to put in a special order for it). I think I've already mentioned that you can smoke everywhere and anywhere in Korea...well, that goes for restaurants too. My allergies have acted up a few times, but I can usually keep them under wraps. Still, not cool. We've been mostly going out for dinner with the other teachers, but Mike and I went for dinner by ourselves for the first time on Wednesday, and we didn't get lost. I'm pretty sure Mike has a compass built into his head, but even so, there aren't really any street names to go by in our area (only main roads and neighbourhoods are organized by name) and everything still looks the same...
Speaking of our neighbourhood...it's a little off the beaten path and definitely in a more run-down area of the city (still perfectly safe though, Mom!). In fact, South Korea has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Uijeongbu as a whole seems a little run-down, but I suppose comparing it to Vancouver -one of the cleanest, greenest cities in the world- probably doesn't help its case. Besides, I think it's the dirty streets and dilapidated, abandoned (at least we think...) buildings that lend charm to the neighbourhood, and give one the impression of simpler times. The buildings themselves are all very different from buildings back home (I especially like the roofs, where the Asian architecture is most apparent); while newer and nicer apartment buildings have gone up in the neighbourhood, the older single-family houses remain, having been rebuilt time and time again with whatever their inhabitants can find and put to use. The weather has still been a little on the cool side too (Uijeongbu gets a real winter, unlike Vancouver), so things still haven't turned green yet. Spring here is apparently gorgeous, so I'm sure the city will become a bit more visually-pleasing when all the dusty brown everything is covered up. Not to say that Uijeongbu doesn't have its good side; there's a winding river that runs through the entire city, with a walking path alongside it, that lends itself some beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and city landscape.
On a different and completely unrelated note to what I've been blathering on about these last several paragraphs, Mike and I had our medicals on Friday. While I'm not very fond of hospitals and doctors to begin with (especially the kind in a foreign country), it wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be, aside from when Mike almost passed out, but I'll get back to that. So the same little man who picked us up at the bus station brought us around the hospital (he's apparently some kind of jack-of-all-trades that knows how to get things done. Or, he works for the Korean mafia, we're still undecided). Now Korean hospitals are quite different from Canadian hospitals. Firstly, the waiting room was paaaacked! This might not some very different from hospitals back home, but it was packed in a different way, as in none of the people appeared to be sick. Why, you might ask? Well, it's simply because by nature, Koreans are hyperchondriacs and go to the hospital for everything: Have a headache? Go to the hospital. Have a stomach ache? Go to the hospital? Have a very mild cough, that lasted for about 5 seconds and was most likely the result of some saliva going down your trachea instead of your esophagus? Go to the hospital. Have a papercut, and you ran out of bandages? Go to the hospital. Also, people might have been smoking in the hospital, but there was a lot going on, so I don't really remember. Secondly, it just didn't seem very much like a hospital at all; the atmosphere was all very informal, lacking the sterilized, disinfected feel of the white-walled buildings we're used to. Now, well this might make the hospital seem like a more inviting place, it really just felt like we were at some illegitimate Mom n' Pop hospital. Add to that the fact that the orderlies/people at the desk who took your weight and height measurements, blood pressure, etc. looked like they just walked in off the street (no uniforms required!), and it was just a tad bit unsettling. The actual medical parts of the appointment were much less scary than the atmosphere, just a chest X-ray (not quite sure what for), a quick dental check-up and a urine and blood sample and we were good to go. Except that we weren't, because Mike got all pasty-faced, light-headed, tunnel-visiony and almost passed out after giving blood, so we had to wait around awhile. He was fine after getting some fresh air and sitting still for a bit. I still think some juice and a cookie would've helped in this scenario (as in so many others), but apparently that's not how they do things here in Korea. So, assuming we don't end up having some kind of infectious disease that we didn't know about it, it should only be another couple of weeks before we can get a phone and the internet! Yippeeee!
Phew, well I think that's about it for now. Sorry if this post was so long-winded, I promise the next ones will be shorter!
But before I sign off:
While there have been a lot of "firsts" since we arrived in Korea, and I know there will be many more, these seemed worth mentioning:
First hug from a student: Rose, Beethoven (6-1) class
First gift from a student: A stick of gum, from Aaron, Washington (7-3) class
=)
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| Maybe if Vancouver colour-coded their walking and biking lanes like this, I wouldn't have had to use my bike bell every 15.5 seconds |
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| The new monorail, still under construction |
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| Need to cross the river? Use these handy rock bridges...they're everywhere! |
These next ones are from our neighbourhood, good ol' Dong-Makgol
 The main street running through our neighbourhood |
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| Yep, people live in here |
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| Here, too |
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| They certainly don't build roofs like this back home |
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| Lovin' the details |
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| Beautiful pots = kimchi cocoons! |
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| I mentioned I liked the roofs, right? |
