Confidence Shoes: The Key to Success

First day of classes successfully completed! At first I was terrified. All I’d heard from other teachers were phrases like, “don’t let the students eat you alive” or “don’t show fear. They can smell fear and will destroy you.” And also “fear is the mind-killer.” (actually, I made up that last one. I don’t think my fellow teachers know about Dune.) But the point is, I woke up in the morning with that horrible feeling that I was about to fall flat on my face and then be fired because I sucked so much.

I spent so long prepping in my apartment, that I forgot about and subsequently missed the staff meeting at the office. I rolled in long after it was over, and the first thing that happened involved several staff members mobbing me to make sure I was okay. Fortunately, I didn’t miss much. Except free Krispy Kreme donuts. So, actually, that means I missed a lot.

After finding my classroom, I proceeded to nervously set up. And then, after yet another peer popped in to tell me it was going to be okay and after my boss popped in to give me chocolate (I love my job!), I put on my confidence shoes. Perhaps you think this is a clumsy metaphor. No. I have confidence shoes. Black high heels that click in an intimidating manner as I pace around the room. Suddenly, I am tall, glamorous, and completely in charge of the room. No, students, I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. (Dune quote again, in case you didn’t know.)

Anyway, once the students showed up, my confidence shoes took over and I think it’s safe to say that I was a pretty effective new teacher. I teach entirely elementary students, which I’m pretty excited about. Middle schoolers are awkward because they’re going through…well…middle school. And as we all know, middle school is pretty much the worst thing ever. A lot of my fellow teachers have elementary students at 4:00 and then middle schoolers at 7:00. I get all elementary all the time! That, of course, also means that I have to be incredibly energetic for six hours straight, all while walking around in my confidence shoes. By the end of the day, I was pretty exhausted.

My first class is sixteen students, which you’d think would be the harder class to manage, but you would be wrong. I have four boys and twelve girls, all of whom are at that age where the opposite sex is a disgusting thing that should be kept as far away from one’s person as possible. The four boys keep to themselves, but are constantly squirming and poking each other. At this point, though, the cold, dead stare is enough to quiet them. And if not that, there’s always the threat of being seated next to the meek and mild-mannered girls. At the beginning of class, we played two truths and a lie to get to know each other, and by the end of that activity, I had most of the students pretty loosened up and excited to be there. Since they didn’t know me, they were nervous to answer questions.

I’ve already picked out the shy students, the super smart students, the middle-students, and the potential trouble-makers (hint: they’re also the smart students.) Probably my favorite part of the class is the Critical Thinking Project at the end. You really get to see the creativity of the students come out. They have to divide into groups and discuss a problem and how to fix it.  The boys did a skit about stress that involved a bully, a nagging mother, and a scary teacher demanding they do more homework. Some of the girls did a presentation about the importance of exercise, for which they drew some really adorable pictures of sad, overweight people who became happier by doing a daily regimen of squats and jogging. At the end of class, they all thanked me, and said they couldn’t wait to see me on Friday for our next class.

My second class has only five students, and yet they put the two biggest troublemakers in the school together in that very class. These two boys are virtually inseparable, and also incredibly smart. Fortunately, their budding bromance is also their weakness. All I have to do to shut them up is threaten to separate them. The one plus of having them together, though, is that they compete for right answers. But that’s also a downside because if I call on the one boy, the other gets pouty because he wasn’t called on. I love that they know the answers, though! In fact, all of the students in my second class are really smart. One boy even got a perfect score on his in-class quiz, a fact which made all of the other students envious and also made me quite proud.

Of course, Korean students are incredibly curious. So as soon as they had the chance, they wanted to know all about me. Teacher, how old are you? Teacher, where are you from? Teacher, do you have a boyfriend? Is he Korean? He isn’t? Why don’t you like Koreans, teacher? Is that ring you’re wearing an engagement ring? Why aren’t you engaged? Etc. I don’t mind answering questions. I managed to make them understand that questions are fine…as long as they aren’t in the middle of class. Even when my students misbehave, I don’t think it’s on purpose. I think they’re just full of energy and curiosity, and I really want to encourage that feeling! Learning should be fun! I do my best to maintain a comedy routine throughout class.

At the end of work, all of the teachers went out to eat and then headed to the branch’s favorite bar. We’re right by Gangnam, so the nightlife is really lively. We also found out that classes are cancelled today, due to the enormous typhoon headed straight for Seoul. So far, it’s just really windy today. I’m secluded in a coffee shop for the purpose of internet, but then I plan to hide and ride out the storm.

Until next time!

Tarico

Culinary Adventures!

Man, this lack of internet in my apartment is really cutting into my ability to pursue this blog undertaking. I, unfortunately, have to wait until my Alien Registration Card comes before I can set up cable and internet in my apartment. Korea’s bureaucracy, unfortunately, seems to operate along the same timeline as the DMV, so I have about a month before that magical card comes. In the mean time, I’ll be taking full advantage of my shiny new Korean smartphone.

As I sit here in reflection sipping my fermented rice beverage, I realize that today was a day of culinary exploration.

At about noon, I met a friend at Kwangjang Market, one of Korea’s many open-air markets. We had heard tell of a special culinary event for foreigners, and, being both hungry and foreign, decided to check it out. After being photographed performing and saying a series of very silly things that will no doubt end up on TV for the whole of Asia to laugh at us, we were handed 5,000 won and a stamp book with the charge to eat as much food from the vendors as possible. And so we did.  Fried potato pancakes, sushi rolls, tofu and kimchi dumplings, rice cakes cooked in hot sauce, and something else that I think was pig liver. It seemed that all the normal parts of the pigs had been used for something else, so the vendors were serving up pig tongue, pig foot, pig intestine, and pig blood sausage. Thus, I assume that when the nice lady handed me a slab of meat that tasted like liver, it was in fact pig liver. Also on display at the market, were fresh fish, dried fish, enormous tubs of chili powder and hot peppers, and…fabric. Apparently, Kwangjang is famous for its fabrics, especially its silks.

Rice cakes in hot sauce, blood sausage, kimbop, and pig head and feet. Delicious!

Enough spice to set a person on fire.

Having collected our stamps and prizes, we wandered out of Kwangjang and into a large park inhabited entirely by old men. Perhaps you think I am exaggerating. I am not. These old men weren’t even doing much. They were mostly just sitting around, talking, smoking, and playing the odd game of shogi. And, no, these guys weren’t homeless. A good number of them were dressed in some pretty swanky suits. In fact, upon closer inspection, I realized that even the nearby subway station, Jongno, was overrun with old men. Just. Sitting. I guess this is what they do with their free time. In retrospect, it was pretty cool. I hope that when I’m their age, I can chill out in a park with all of my buddies, smoking cigarettes and laughing at the rest of the world.

In the middle of the park, we found Jungmyo Shrine, a state shrine established in 1395 to house the spirits of deceased kings and queens. The architecture was actually pretty simple, but there was a path leading throughout the shrine that visitors were not supposed to walk on. According to signs posted in Korean, Japanese, and English, the pathway was reserved for the spirits. Unlike any of the other Confucian states in Asia, Korea still maintains its royal shrine and each year they have two very elaborate rituals wherein they offer sacrifices to the deceased royalty. There’s also a nearby shrine to the spirits of nature (I think???), which used to be connected to this shrine until the Japanese built a road in between them during the occupation. I have a really awesome booklet full of information about Jongmyo Shrine, but out of fear of boring my audience, I shall refrain from disclosing it until a later date.

Jongmyo Shrine. Behind those doors are the ancestral tablets of the deceased kings and queens of Korea.

You thought I was kidding. No. That path is for the spirit.

At the conclusion of our adventure, I went home and decided that I’d give Korean pizza a try. I decided that, of all pizzas, cheese pizza was probably the safest. Not so. Apparently, when you say “cheese pizza”, you really mean “cheese and corn pizza”. It was pretty gross, but once the abominable corn was removed the pizza was pretty good.

And so here I sit, still sipping my fermented rice beverage, thinking about how awesome Korea is.

Myeongdong Cathedral

I swear, I'm still alive!

It's hard to make time to post anything because in between all the things I HAVE to do, there are still the things I WANT to do. But, fortunately, I want to keep all (two? three?) of my loyal readers informed.

First of all, without going into too much detail, I've managed to locate an apartment. It comes pre-furnished and is really really small (like, small dorm room small). But it has a kitchen, washer, bed, fridge, desk, mirror, dresser, and tv. I have zero complaints. Okay, one. The bathroom has a distinct mildew smell. But that's what bleach is for, right? The landlord, it turns out, is Catholic. The building is decorated with giant portraits of the BVM, and he was suuuuper excited to find out I was Catholic too. After we agreed that the apartment would do nicely, he helped me move in, and then took me shopping to buy a few things. Right now, though, I'm still staying at the hotel because it's less lonely.

I've also managed to find a church! Before I came to Korea, I was worried that my experience would be like it was in Japan. In Japan, I found a mission church, but the music wasn't very good, and, as we all know, I'm kind of a church music snob. So, while the community was great and the priest incredibly sweet, I got so distracted by the music that I had trouble concentrating on what really matters at Mass. Not so in Korea. I decided to go big right from the beginning. I went to Myeongdong Cathedral in downtown Seoul. Amazing.

Myeongdong Cathedral, as seen from the streets at the bottom of the hill. Note all the people. Those are not tourists.

At 9 am, the cathedral was packed with people of all ages to the point that it became standing room only. By the end of Mass, people were lining up outside so they could get inside for the next Mass. The priest gave an excellent homily on the importance of the Eucharist, and at the offertory, every single person stood up and gave money to the poor. Even the music was good! At the end, they sang O God Beyond All Praising, and I actually burst into tears because I was so happy. I guess I really missed Lit Choir. It was a standard Roman Catholic novus ordo Mass done the way Vatican II intended. I don't know if all churches in Korea are like this, but since the Cathedral is the center of Catholicism in Korea, I think it's safe to say that the Church is in excellent shape. South Korea, this tiny little peninsula of crazy ambition and economic prosperity, has more church-going, devout Catholics than Europe.

Here's a bit about the area. The Cathedral is on a hill in the middle of the busiest shopping district in Seoul. On the way there, I pass every kind of shop, each of them blaring Korean pop or featuring at least one yelling shop owner trying to convince passersby that he has the very best product. Even that early in the morning, there are shoppers out and about and enough flashing neon lights to cause an epileptic fit. And pervading all of this is the ever-present smell of kimchi. It's a great place to eat and shop, but not really the environment one would expect to find a church in. However, Myeongdong Cathedral is on a hill. The higher you climb on the hill, the more the sounds and smells of the city below vanish, until finally you're in front of the Cathedral and all you can see around you are trees and the vague outline of the convent where the nuns work and pray all day. Behind the Cathedral is a statue of Mary, where most people go to light candles after Mass. It reminds me fondly of the Grotto at Notre Dame.

View from the top of the hill. It feels like you're in a completely different world. 

And with that, I'll stop. I was going to talk about the subway and my adventures with spicy food, but I'll save that for later.

Theresa

Medical Exams and Classroom Management

As I said in my last post, I really haven't been able to explore much. Sunday was the last free day I had, and I spent most of that day prepping for work, trying not to get lost, and experimenting with food. Since then, I've been training at Chungdahm. The goal, they say, is to be able to survive my first day. At first, I was off-put by that. After all, I want to be the coolest, best, most brilliant teacher ever! Setting my sights on the first day seemed so limiting. But now I see the wisdom of that. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let me tell you about my Monday.

Jet lag is a terrible thing. Korea is thirteen hours ahead of the East Coast, meaning that my nights and days are completely reversed. In terms of functionality, I'm pretty functional. That's what coffee is for. No, the real problem is that I wake up at 5 am every morning, and spend the next 1.5 hours trying desperately to go back to sleep. So far no luck. Anyway, Monday rolled around and I arose, exciting and slightly nervous for my first day of work. Rather than let a bunch of stupid, loud, incredibly lost Americans loose on the Seoul metro system, Chungdahm sent a bus to pick us up from the hotel. We spent the morning hearing from our trainers and stumbling our way through a basic understanding of company philosophy.

The day would have been super-special-great if not for a little thing called a medical exam. Apparently, Korea takes TB, AIDS, and drug use seriously. Huh. Who'd have thought, right? So after class, they dumped us at a doctor's office, where we were subjected to all sorts of fun tests. We also had to wear little uniforms, which I suppose made things much easier for the doctors, but also made a number of people uncomfortable, due to lack of underwear. We had also been required to fast since the night before. By the time I was finished giving blood, giving a urine sample, having hearing, eyesight, and blood pressure checked, taking a chest x-ray, having my proportions measured, having my teeth checked, getting an EKG done, and confirming that no, I do not in fact have a heroine addiction...I was very, very, very hungry. My achievements for the rest of the day involved eating a lot of food and passing out at 8:30 because I was too tired to even watch Avatar.

Tuesday was training. And prepping for today, Wednesday.

Today, we had to mock teach for the first time. For me, this was, quite literally, my first time teaching. And...it was terrible. Our trainers place us up in front of the class and then instruct one of our fellow classmates to act out a disruptive behavior, the idea being that the poor, bewildered teacher must somehow navigate the lesson and deal with a smart-ass Korean middle schooler at the same time. I tried, I really did! But by the end of my poor attempt at a lesson, the entire class was talking about pepperoni pizza and not about how to pick out a topic sentence. *sigh* My afternoon lesson went a lot better, though. The lesson had to do with context clues, and I was able to illustrate a pretty good example involving Queen Elizabeth II and Obama.

So here I am, procrastinating for tomorrow by writing a blog post. Tomorrow, I have to teach another lesson. Something about technology and the media. And hopefully not about pepperoni pizza. Wish me luck!

Tarico

No Madness To This Method

Phew, what a crazy week. And it's only halfway over! Much has happened since my last update, and most of those things involve training at Chungdahm. I haven't yet had the opportunity to explore Seoul, unless of course you count navigation of its extensive metro system as exploration. I have done a bit of culinary exploration, though. After our training on Monday, for example, a few of us ventured inside a restaurant that served all of its food on a large shovel. And shovel down that food we did. It was delicious. Beer is also readily available. Last night, we found a place that chilled its beer by serving it over dry ice. The pitchers smoked dramatically, making all of our beer dreams come true.

But it hasn't all been food. Mostly it's been training. I suppose that first I should explain the Korean education system. It's highly competitive and incredibly stressful. A typical student's day begins at 8 AM. They attend school, where their teachers do their best to cram as many facts as possible into the students' heads. After school, they go to after school activities. This can be anything from sports practice to violin lessons to cram school. After those activities, they come to Chungdahm, where they study English in a complete immersion environment for three hours. By the time they get home, around 10:30 or so, it's time to do homework and study, which they do until about 2 AM. Then it's time to sleep and start it all over again. All of this is to prepare students for a giant exam at the end of high school, the results of which determine where they will go to college. If you don't get into a good college, you don't get a good job. Period. And this test is about 90% of your application. Don't fail, kay?

Chungdahm, as one of the best English hagwons (cram school) in Korea, has a very specific curriculum. Instead of forcing their students to memorize grammar points and vocabulary the way the schools do, Chungdahm emphasizes discussion and development of thinking skills. Instead of lecturing, we're encouraged to ask the students tons of questions and lead them to making conclusions instead. We teach skills like reading comprehension, something that's really obvious to English speakers but completely alien to Korean students. They're used to being told what to think, and Chungdahm doesn't do that. The part I'm most looking forward to is the discussion section at the end of each day's lesson. The students are given a problem (such as pollution, crime, health care, etc.) and told to form an opinion and then tell everyone how they would solve that problem. English education at Chungdahm is all about learning to be expressive and think and not at all about memorization or pointless exercises. I can already tell that it's going to be hard, but I'm excited nonetheless.

In my next post, I'll tell you all about my activities and try not to wax poetic about how much I like my job so far.

Arrival and Such

Well, here I am.

And by here, I mean a hotel room with all the fun little Korean quirks one isn't used to. For example, if one wants to take a hot shower, one must first turn on the hot water. Cold showers are actually pretty refreshing, though, so I've been availing myself of those. There's also a smoking room attached to the bedroom because Korea is cool like that.

The flight over was pretty sweet. If you've never flown on an Asian airline before, you're missing out. Even the cramped hell that is coach becomes halfway decent when the young, attractive stewardesses keep supplying you with free wine, and politely asking if they can bring you more food. It helped too that the in-flight entertainment system had Street Fighter II and Pac-man. I am not good at Street Fighter (there are only so many times I can stomach being body-slammed by a muscle-bound resident of the U.S.S.R.), but I think my attempts amused the sweet Korean couple next to me, whose actions alternated between snuggling each other, praying the rosary, doing complex math equations, and beating Street Fighter. I watched all of these things unfold next to me, and they made me wish I spoke Korean so that we could be awesome rosary-praying, Street Fighter friends.

After making it through customs, I successfully navigated Incheon Airport to find the bus to Seoul (correction: the RIGHT bus to Seoul. Every bus goes to Seoul.), whereupon I met a few other Americans also here to work for Chungdahm. This particular bus, but probably also every bus, was equipped with a television broadcasting the Olympics.

One of my favorite things about traveling to a foreign country is watching its advertising. Not knowing the language makes it even better because you have to go entirely upon what you see. The result will either be a great triumph for the advertiser, or a hilarious cultural misunderstanding. For example:

1. Expedia no longer needs to aid of William Shatner to sell tickets. Rather, a large, man-sized bear with stars on its chest does the job much better.

2. Also, a well-dressed, young man would rather eat sausages than be undressed by two attractive young women.

The second message is, of course, my favorite, and as far as I can discern, that is exactly what the commercial says. Language barrier! Yes!

After wild gesticulations and poor pronunciation of my hotel name, I finally made it clear to a cab driver where I wanted to go, and, like magic, he got me there. I am now comfortably situated in a sweet room, eating sweets with a sweet roommate. This morning, we ventured out for breakfast at a patisserie and coffee at one of the many, many coffee shops that populate every region of Korea. Seriously. There are, like, five different coffee shops on every block. If there was any doubt in my mind about whether or not I'd like Korea, this just confirmed that I will, in fact, love Korea.

In fact, I think I'm going to go get some more coffee as soon as I'm done posting this. Which is now. Orientation starts tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Tarico

And so it begins...

Greetings, internet denizens! No doubt you have found your way here through some form of social spamming. No doubt also, you have heard my repeated insistence that "I will totally" make a blog, not actually believing that I would totally make a blog. Well, here is said blog, and here shall I record (with some semblance of regularity) my adventures while living in Seoul, South Korea teaching English.

 Today is August, 7. I leave on the morning of the 10th (Friday), and arrive on the evening of the 11th. For the next week after my arrival, I'll be finding an apartment, going through teacher training, and trying to figure out basic Korean so I can at least say hello to my neighbors (even if hello is all I'll be able to say). For the next year, I'll be teaching English while living alone in a city where I don't know anyone and don't speak the language. My goals are as follows: teach English like a champion, learn and speak Korean like a champion, make friends like a champion. Also maybe learn how to make Korean food, since it's so very delicious. I'm going to try to travel and make a few side-trips back to Japan to see my host family.

 Right now, there isn't much to tell because I haven't done much. That will soon change. For now, I hope you enjoy reading my future blog posts.