Days 29-30: And Now They're Radioactive Raindrops!

Saturday, April 9 - Sunday, April 10, 2011

After a night in of pizza and video games (yep, we're fourteen years old, apparently) we woke up to sunny skies and a beautiful 17 degree Celsius day! We started the morning off with coffee and donuts at Paris Baguette, a little coffee/pastry chain that is as ubiquitous here as Tim Hortons is back home (well, almost). And though I hate to admit it, their version of a Chocolate Dip trumps the Timmy's counterpart. We then headed to the Bu (downtown Uijungbu) to do a bit of shopping of the shoe variety. While I love the fact that my Sanuks will not be taking up space in some trash heap fifty years from now, I do NOT appreciate them succumbing to their biodegradable nature within my first week of being in Korea. Now I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Asian people, or at least the women, typically have incredibly small feet. Which means it's next to impossible for a giant like me with their 9/9.5 sized feet to find shoes here. So, a big shout out to Converse for making unisex shoes (and having a store in Uijungbu, of all places) so that I won't be forced to wear slippers or barefoot it for the next 11 months. Yipppeeeee!

We started the night off with some Chinese food (I know, we're in Korea, but we have Korean food all the time!) and then had our first (and most definitely not LAST) nori-bong experience! Now I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with nori-bongs, so I will do my best to describe their awesomeness to you. Nori-bong literally translates into "Singing Room" and for all intents and purposes, it's basically  a private karaoke room. So, instead of making an idiot of yourself in front of a bunch of random people at some bar, you get to make an idiot of yourself in front of your friends only (who are probably used to you being an idiot, so no worries there!). Most nori-bongs are equipped with at least one large flat-screen TV, some crazy disco lights/lasers, a mini-stage/singing/dancing area, some comfy seating, and...if you're lucky...some tambourines! (Unfortunately, I have yet to find a cow-bell...). Now, you can sneak your own drinks in, but the more drinks you buy at the counter, the more free time you get for the room (at least that what seems to happen when we go). They have a very extensive list of English songs (I'm thinking over 500, maybe?), from the most popular to the most random (i.e. The Little Mermaid's "Under the Sea" to Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It") and before you even ask, yes, myself and one of the other teachers sang both of those songs, and totally rocked them =) . Now, if you're not the one singing and you don't really wanna pay attention to your friends as they belt out a tune, you can always amuse yourself by watching the corresponding video; which of course, is not the song's official music video, but rather some very feminine looking Korean men, or a bunch of animated characters, doing some group dance-thing reminiscent of the Backstreet Boys. The nori-bong experience is similar to playing Rockband back home, except 1) you have myriad songs available to you from the start; 2) you don't get pissed off if your fellow band members suck and cause you to fail a song, and 3) you don't get noise complaints from your neighbours! All in all, it's a great way to blow off some steam and it's just all around good fun! Nori-bonging is pretty much a national sport here in South Korea, and if there's one thing I could take back to Canada, this would be it. Okay, well, it's a toss-up between that and dok galbi. Oh, and some of my Beethoven students =).

We had a pretty lazy day on Sunday, partly due to us waking up with the beginnings of another terrible cold, and partly due to the fact that nori-bongs and bars are pretty much open 24/7 here, so it was a pretty late night/early morning. We cleaned up the apartment and Mike vacuumed without being asked/told (which, apart from his raspy voice and stuffed up nose, was a pretty good indication that he wasn't feeling like himself). We then went to a little Italian restaurant for dinner with some friends, and it was amaaaaazing! Though there wasn't really anything Italian about my steak and salad, aside from the grape tomatoes and vinaigrette dressing, which may or may not have even originated in Italy...Regardless, it was the best Western meal I've had here so far! We finished up with a dessert waffle topped with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. While it had nothing on Lynne's waffles (see some pics below for the best dinner ever!), it was still pretty delicious.

Mike's mom's infamously delicious homemade waffles that I've told most of you about, probably more than once. I'm pretty sure there's a waffle buried under there somewhere...

Mmmmmmm...waffle, vanilla ice cream, real maple syrup, strawberries, bananas and chocolate sauce, oh my!

While feeling under the weather didn't keep us from going out for dinner, the radiation rain almost did. Yep, that's right, radiation rain: Raindrops laced with radioactive elements from the nuclear reactor leak in Japan. I swear, between yellow dust from China (more on that later) and radiation rain from Japan, South Korea is like the mistreated, younger sibling that gets all the crappy hand-me-downs.  It wasn't a big concern here in Uijungbu, but places along the south and east coasts were taking some pretty serious precautions; closing down schools, making people stay in their houses, etc. My only concern was that I'd develop one of those lame superpowers, like high-pitched screaming, or the ability to turn myself into water vapour or something. Unfortunately, a wicked cool superpower has also yet to manifest, but fingers crossed it's just lying dormant until some sort of catastrophe strikes and I need to bust it out.

Days 24-28: Raindrops Keep Fallin'...

Monday, April 4 - Friday, April 8, 2011

After making it through our first "end of the month crunch" unscathed, if maybe a little worse for wear, I was finally able to get things done early! (I know what you're thinking: Sarah, getting things done EARLY!?!?!) But that's just the nature of the job, I guess, so yay me. And a good thing too, because I finally had to give my body a break and take a sick day on Tuesday. I felt really guilty because it means all the other teachers have to cover your classes instead of having a free period, but my throat, lungs and congested nasal cavities and head just couldn't be put on the back-burner any longer.  Mike and I are just soooo sick and tired of being sick and tired! Anytime you start feeling the slightest bit better, you're full-blown sick again. Nyaaarrr! We're not too worried though; it's to be expected when you come to a foreign country (especially going from one of the cleanest cities in the world to, well, any city in Korea, really). Plus we got all the important shots before we left. And a lollipop for not crying =)

Nothing too exciting to report on the work front. Unless of course you count when my Washington Class broke out into song during the middle of a lesson on Wednesday. They were learning about how to talk about the weather ("It's cloudy! It's snowy! It's foggy!) and different ways to describe temperature ("It's mild! It's cool!), etc. I was showing them a flashcard for "rainy" and asked them to tell me what they saw in the picture. "Clouds!" shouted one of my students. "Raindrops!" shouted another. And then, as if on cue, they all started up a chorus of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"! I felt like I should maybe try to get them to refocus on the lesson, but it was just so random and surreal that I just pulled out my chair, sat back and enjoyed the show. They were just singing away, beaming at me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. After they got through the entire song, I laughed and clapped and then continued on with the lesson. I'm not sure why, but one of their previous teachers must have taught them the song. Regardless of how or why they learned it, it was amazing! So amazing in fact, that while they were doing Art the next day, I asked them to sing me the song again, and I took a video, which I encourage you to check out below. =)

My Beethoven Class cry total reached an all time high of 7 students on Thursday, and there could have been some repeat offenders in there, but honestly, I lost count by midday.  So yep, 7 students had a little crying fit today. That's more than 50% of my class. In fact, that's about 65% of my class. Wow. That's all I have to say about that. Oh, and that nothing incredibly bad happened (they were just extremely whiny) and they were all fine and even happy by the time they got on the bus to go home, so yay for that.

On Friday, my supervisor observed one of my elementary classes (standard new teacher procedure), the students of which range in age from 9-11 years old. Today's lesson was "At the Food Court" where the kids would learn about different types of restaurants and how to order food and what not. Before starting, I was introducing the lesson's vocabulary words, which included things like "spaghetti", "hamburger" and "taco". To go along with the pictures I drew on the board, I offered explanations for the new words (usually there's a Korean equivalent for a word, and when I'm 3/4 of the way done drawing a picture of the word or acting it out, I get a collective "Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh" and some head nods from the students, which lets me know they understand/have stumbled upon the Korean equivalent...but I'm pretty sure there isn't one for "taco"). Anyway, some of the students who had previously eaten tacos were trying to describe them (in English) to the other students. Apparently one of the kids wasn't a fan, because she said "It taste like crap". I wasn't quite sure if I heard her correctly, but with the supervisor being there and all, I figured I should probably sort it out, just in case. So I asked her what she said, and one of the other student's piped up veeeeery loudly with "Teachaaa...what is crap?". I thought "Oh, crap", stared at the kid and blinked a couple of times, while my supervisor hid his face behind his clipboard. I wasn't really sure how to proceed, until I saw my supervisor's shoulders shaking with laughter, so I just said it's not a very nice word, and that we don't say it, and moved on to spaghetti. It was pretty hilarious, even though I was kinda embarrassed and not sure how to handle the situation with my supervisor being there and all, but he gets a kick out of telling the story  to new teachers, and so do I, so it's all good.

Konglish of the Day

I feel like I haven't posted any Konglish in a while, so here you go. This is actually my favourite so far:

"Best friend. Love is thing which is pleased at subject that is not good receiving."

I found this at Daiso (dollar store). It was printed on a little memo/note pad with cartoon cat people on it (naturally). I didn't even know where to BEGIN interpreting it, so I gave the cashier a chunner (= one dollar) and brought it home.