Foot-sucking Fish and Maegok Elementary

Spontaneity is usually not my forte. I am a planner with a solid agenda set days, weeks, even years in advance. So, to meet a stranger on the subway and subsequently join him at a sushi restaurants with 9 other strangers is an event for me. Here is how the night panned out:

I was power-walking through the stifling labyrinth of the subway at 11 at night with sunglasses and headphones (to prevent the inevitable stares I attract), on my way to see a friend for a few minutes before I needed to hop back on the metro to ride all the way home when I distinctly heard a man shout "foreigner." Since I'm usually the only Caucasian in a 20 mile radius, I turned around and found myself facing a 20-something-ish Korean guy looking so excited it made me nervous. The look on my face prompted him to spit out an explanation faster than I could decipher: he is an English teacher too and he has only been in Korea for a week. He is Canadian-Korean, has no nearby friends, knows no one and is astonished to bump into me. If it were anywhere else in the world, I'm sure I would have kept on walking but he did indeed look lonely and desperate (and since when are Canadians ever dangerous people?) so I ended up giving him my name for him to find me on Facebook. Sure enough, the next morning he sent me a message inviting me to a sushi restaurant that evening with some other English teachers (whom he had not met either). I had a rousing evening planned of mopping the floor and just generally acting like a bump on a log, so I figured why not and headed into Downtown Daegu after I finished classes.

How can I explain the comforting feeling, the welcoming sensation of hearing "hey what's up?" instead of "Anyong haseo". I felt like I might as well have walked into a restaurant back in the States! All told, there were about 10 of us hogging the tables at a small, crowded sushi restaurant. We exchanged the basics: names, schools, which program we are affiliated with and what subway stops we are close to. And then it was Korea-bashing/whining time! We talked about what luxuries we miss most (cars), what foods (wheat bread and de-boned fish), Korean oddities (we have all fallen into the squat toilet at least once and all of us laughed about peeing on our pants by accident). We exchanged teaching horror stories and made fun of our stunted, Konglish (Korean-English slang) vocabularies: "Katy, you soy sauce pass, yes" or "From Canada. Canada." (repeating words is something burned into your brain when you are teaching elementary school children).
This particular restaurant had a conveyor belt that rotated plates containing 2 pieces of sushi each. According to the color of the plate, that's how much you would be charged. Every so often a random slice of cake or piece of fruit would appear on the belt, but they all looked a little suspect... as though they had been rotating a few hours too many. And by the way, it is much cheaper to just order a plate of sushi. These 2-piece plates can be about 2,000-5,000 KRW each, much more expensive than ordering from the menu. One of my greatest disappointments in Korea thus far is the sushi/sashimi selection. There isn't any salmon or tuna in the roll, usually just some bland, unidentifiable white fish and a lot of spicy mayonnaise sauce and ham. Sushi/sashimi is a Japanese food versus "Kimbap," which is the Korean take on it (no raw fish, ham, egg and a lot of fattening sauce). The evening was a success regardless of the food though because I was in good company.

After dinner, we all decided that since it was a Thursday night and we had class the next day, staying out late was a bad idea. the slow shuffle back to the subway was underway when one of the girls, a kiwi (New Zealander) named Dianna suggested going to Dr. Shin's Fish Cafe. You cannot hear the title "Fish Cafe" without being intrigued, so she hastened to explain that it's a coffee shop where you can buy books, lounge in armchairs and, naturally, have your foot callouses be eaten off by tiny, translucent fish for around 6,000 KRW. Sign me up!
Some of the crew I met up with. They gave us these little shot glasses filled with jelly-like substance and a dollop of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. There were slices of plain white bread on the counter and you could make yourself some toast before getting your feet sucked on 0.o

I posted a video of the experience HERE. I apologize that you can't really see the fish... but I took some photos too, which are much clearer (posted below). I'll attempt to describe the sensation: place your feet in a tub of tepid water that is ankle-high and imagine the slippery/slimy feel of about 200-300 little fish bodies caressing your feet. Spread your toes and imagine them darting and wriggling in between the crevices to pick at the particularly crusty morsels on the webbing between your toes. The fish had mouths that were only a fractions of an inch, but you could feel a slight pull each time they would suck on your foot. The bigger fish had mouths the size of a pencil eraser and about as much sucking force as someone sipping through a straw. It was ticklish and disturbing. And I can't wait to do it again!

They kept swarming the guy's feet! He would dip his big toe, and all the fish would zero in on it. He kept having to take out his feet so I could get some fish love.

Besides my intense bonding with strangers, I have been teaching Monday-Friday, 1st-6th grade for the past 2 weeks. It's astounding how much 1 year can change a child. While my 4th grade students are quiet, studious and still happy to sing silly Disney songs in class, my 5th and 6th graders shoot lasers at me with their eyes all class long. They make no effort to hide their boredom, and the class size is dwindling as they beg their parents to be removed from the after school sessions (I teach directly after regular elementary school hours end). As for 1,2 and 3rd graders...well they are basically on crack. I cannot enter a room of 1st graders without them screaming "Katy Teacher" in unison, barreling toward me and attacking me with hugs, running around me in circles or picking up some random object and trying to say it's name in English. I have students jump up and latch on to my arms to hang from them. I have students who will twist the projector to face me because they think I am a movie star and the projector is a spotlight. I have little girls that want me to brush their hair and boys who want to learn "bad" words (The "bad" words they know are currently: silly, crazy, loco, psycho, bonkers, and the very naughty word "stupid")

Click HERE for a video of my 3rd graders. I have a 10 minute break in between classes to prepare my lesson for the next wave of students filtering in. However, a few spare moments of quiet is difficult to find when certain students come to class immediately after the previous one leaves. These 3rd graders are definitely my brown-nosers. They are always early, always sit at the front and never stop raising their hands to answer questions even for a moment during my lesson.

My school is Maegok Elementary, and it was finished being built march of this year. Everything is new and working so I can't complain about my classroom, especially when I have heard horror stories from some of my fellow TaLKers. For example: Shaina has no Internet access in her classroom. When you are strapped for ideas or need a way to occupy the kids while you revive a frozen powerpoint lesson, there is nothing better than pulling up funny videos on YoutTube.com. The Internet is a classroom Godsend!

While I enjoy teaching because it's a new and different job from all the others I've had, I will say this: I would never teach elementary school kids. Mothers and teachers around the world, my hat is off to you. Young children are absolutely exhausting. They bicker, they physically fight, they cry, they get sick without warning... and more than anything they have very sensitive feelings, which I must be extra cautious with because I sometimes don't know what's going on because of the language barrier. Yesterday, a fight broke out between two little boys (with the older, bigger boy punching the other smaller one with glasses on the head) in my 4th grade class because one kept calling the other "crazy head" and "fat". The boy with the glasses was shaking like a leaf for the remainder of the class and now will not raise his hand to answer any questions for fear of being picked on. The Snell part of me wants to grab the older boy by the arm with a really hard yank and traumatize him in front of the entire class ...maybe by embarrassing him with hard questions and taking stickers away from his name of the sticker reward chart but it wouldn't be fare and children, like puppies, don't understand retroactive punishment.
This is the P.E. for Maegok. Those buildings in the background are apartment complexes, and they are pretty much what house all Koreans who live in the city. Most of my students probably live in those exact buildings.
Those are Korean Hangul letters at the top, but usually names are written in Chinese characters in Korea (2nd line). Why? Because the Korean alphabet is not very old! For a long time, Koreans wrote and spoke in Chinese simply because they did not have a language of their own. And by the way, you pronounce my school's name "May- go-cuc" but say it quickly, so "May-gok"

They had closed the gate, so I apologize for the fence. But note the colors of the school: orange and blue!!!!!!

So, what's the best part of being a teacher you ask? Is it the fact that you finally get benefits like full health care? Is it the the thrill of teaching something to a child and watching their eyes light up when they finally understand? Is is the satisfaction of having a job that impacts society because you are educating tomorrow's leaders?

Sorry, but no.

It's the fact that I get to wear orthopedic sandals at work all day. What could ever top that?
Koreans wear indoor and outdoor shoes. So when I com to school, I immediately take my shoes off and place them in a cubby and get to wear these extra squishy, leather flippy floppies that the school provides. Hell yeah!