My apartment is cozy and functional. Luckily, my experience at the dorms at UF prepared me for living in a small space. Utilizing every square inch is key. Doors are used as drying racks, kitchen cabinets are good for temporary storage for clothes until I can find a more suitable spot. (I had a sock plop into a pot of simmering black beans the other day... thank goodness it was clean :o) ) I will mention that my Spaghetti dinner with SJ and my friend Eunice was very successful! Because I didn't have an immersion blender, the sauce was more like chunky salsa, but it tasted fantabulous- everyone had seconds.
This $10 bag of Denmark (they translate the Dutch into Korean on the back!) mozzarella cheese was cheaper than the $20 tiny tube of Kraft parmesan cheese. o.0
Eunice had seconds...thirds...fourths...photographed it... hehe. She definitely appreciates my cooking.
I have also had time to strike out and explore my surroundings more. The essentials have been covered (the bank, the big box store/Walmart's Asian cousin, how to navigate the subway, etc.). I even signed up for 5 months at a local gym called "Red Moon Fitness". This experience actually deserves some storytelling just because of the freak occurrence that happened during my first workout.
Enter Katy: lone white woman standing about a foot and a half taller than the surrounding sea of grunting, sweaty middle-aged Koreans. My first obstacle: where do I change? Thank goodness the girl working at the front desk was the same girl (Her English name is Lucy) who signed me up. The previous day, SJ and I scoped out 3 gyms and decided on this one because it had the best equipment... and I haggled like a true car dealer's daughter and got five months for 150,000 Won (that's about 26 bucks a month; no sign up fee!! Mega deal.) Lucy smiled at me and said something in Korean. I smiled back, looking helpless and pointing to my clothes and shoes, at a loss trying to ask for the changing room. To make the scene more awkward, I had just come from my School (Maegok) and my mentor teacher (a man named Jay who I will describe in a bit) had given me toilet paper, a broom and a mop to bring home with me. So, I'm certain that Lucy believes I am employed as a janitor here in Korea. We flailed about with hand gestures for about 5 minutes before she took all my cleaning supplies and stashed them behind the desk.
I followed her into a separate room that turned out to be the women's locker room. She smiled... rapid-fired some more Korean my way and then left me with nothing but a key to locker 66 (I looked for locker 99 for 5 minutes before realizing my error) and a folded up set of work out clothes that would probably fit snugly on a 12 year old. Culture shock moment #4,672: There are no private changing rooms in Korea. Women quite abruptly shed every piece of clothing the moment they entered the communal room. I was blinded by the sheer volume of stark nudity around me!! Especially considering the typical age for this gym's clientele falls somewhere between 55 and 70. I tried to soothe my burning eyes and hustled out of there, double time.
I hopped on to a treadmill seeing as they are usually the simplest machine to figure out. However, each time I tried to increase the pace, my machine would suddenly lose power. I tried switching to a different machine when an elderly Korean man walked up and started pushing buttons, demonstrating the controls for the treadmill. By then I had already figured out that the first machine was broken, but I didn't want to interrupt this guy while he was making himself feel important. Unfortunately, the spectacle of a dim-witted American girl hopelessly button-mashing on a treadmill attracted an elderly Korean woman as well. She made the mistake of climbing on to the back of the treadmill while it was in motion (the Korean man kept upping the pace until I was in a dead sprint just to keep up!) when she lost her footing and was flung off the treadmill like a ragdoll, her head striking a dumbbell weight rack behind her. I completely lost my patience with the pushy Korean man by then and shooed him away, pushed the emergency stop button and got down on the ground beside the Korean woman. She was unconscious for a solid 5 minutes and paramedics ended up coming to take her to the hospital. Quite possibly the most awkward experience I have had in Korea yet... I have to admit with some shame that I was frantically hoping that the woman remembered the correct sequence of events when she came to... because to the casual observer I am certain it somehow appeared like it was my fault the woman fell. A freak incident... all because she was trying to be overly helpful. Yikes.
Concerning my teaching, this week has been sort of like syllabus week at school. I have taught some of my classes, but the lesson plans consist of introducing myself and explaining the rules to the kids, which are:
1.) No talking when teacher Katy is talking!
2.) You must raise your hand to speak in class.
3.) No touching your classmates.
4.) No cellphones.
Yes, even 1st graders have cellphones in Korea!
The room that I teach in is actually Maegok's music room. So there are instruments everywhere. It's spacious and smells like new paint so we have to open the windows or else risk getting all the children high off fumes. On Tuesday I spent the day creating powerpoints and working on lesson plans. While I was working, some random 3rd graders came in and asked if they could play the piano. Can you say child prodigy? When the little girl started to play I had to fight back applause and tears, it was stunning. And with well-honed Korean modesty she told me that she isn't that good and her parents tell her she needs much more practice before she can become famous.
The little boy was a ham. He kept trying to block out the girl who was playing the piano (and she was so shy it didn't matter because she kept hiding!) The girl in the orange outfit is dressed for P.E. And as is the case with the the majority of the world, Korean children adore soccer above any other sport.
My big, beautiful classroom which is barely large enough to hold some of my classes! I teach 1st-6th graders, 6 different classes total. that's almost 200 students. I expect some of them to drop out before the semester really kicks off, but so far no one has.
My mentor teacher, Jay (Jae Hyuk Choi). He is in his 40s if you can believe it! He lived in Australia for about a year, so he is much more Westernized than any other Korean man I have met. Great guy to have around: he steals toilet paper, cleaning supplies and pens from the school supply room for me :)
SJ! Acting like she is one of my 1st grade students.
Tiny desks and even tinier toilets! I nearly fell off when I tried to use the girl's restroom with a toilet only 4 inches off the ground.So far, I have taught 1st and 3rd graders (today I get to teach 2nd and 6th graders). Lately I have been feeling under the weather with some kind of chest cold, so it's difficult to speak, nonstop, for 4 hours to kids with the attention span of goldfish. But it's also a boatload of fun :o)
I played singing and clapping games with the 1st graders and used SJ's translation skills a lot. The 3rd graders were a pleasant surprise though because they understood most of my instructions as long as I spoke with exaggerated articulation and hand gestures. I divvied out names cards that had the student's Korean name and English name and spent the class teaching everyone how to pronounce their crazy new English names. I have never met a "Sweymey" in my life; some of the English names these kids have are hilarious and sometimes resemble the names we give to pets: Jet, Max, Rufus.
In Korea, common courtesies such as letting someone know about a party in advance are unheard of, so it was so typically Korean of Jay to casually mention that we were going for a walk in the park, then to dinner THEN to a tea house after work. With the entire school. Including the Principal and Vice Principal! I was under dressed and had prior plans with a bag of frozen dumplings and the book "Love In The Time f Cholera" at my apartment, but something told me this party was specifically planned for SJ and I and not going would be a blemish on the remainder of my time here in Korea.
What a night it turned out to be! Some 30-40 teachers and staff attended. We went to 2 different beautiful parks and strolled around soaking up the greenery. We even watched a water fountain show (think tiny Las Vegas Bellagio Hotel water show) at a park with a lake before heading to a traditional Korean restaurant to have dinner. I should have known that I wouldn't escape the evening without being recognized as the newbie in the crowd, and sure enough the Principal busted out a bright pink ice cream cake, a bouquet of beautiful summer wildflowers and a birthday cone-shaped hat that I had to wear the whole night. Only Jay, SJ and a Korean English teacher could understand me, so mostly I just smiled, giggled and tried to bow a crap ton throughout the evening.
Going to a tea house after dinner was an amazing experience! The tea room was spacious and had an excellent view of the surrounding park. But the most glorious part of the evening was the fact that it was a full moon. We were able to watch the moon rise over the distant mountain tops while we sipped our green, peppermint and chamomile teas. There was dried apricot and persimmon and pumpkin seeds at the center of the table to snack on, and everyone was in high spirits and exceedingly friendly. At around 9 when the conversation was dying down some, one of the men at the table clinked his glass and called me to the center of the room to stand. I was mortified when he hushed everyone, turned to me and asked
"So Miss Pretty Katy, who is the most handsome man in this room?"
Can you guess who I pointed to? It should be obvious: the Principal of course! Shameless flirtation and flattery will get you everywhere in life. He turned tomato-red and laughed hysterically, shaking his head but looking wholly pleased with my answer. The guy also asked me who "Miss Maegok" was (like Ms. America) and I pointed to a very quiet, very beautiful woman at the center of the table who turned out to be non other than his daughter in law! Score!
It turned out to be a marvelous evening, and I look forward to attending many more impromptu staff outings in the future.
Smile and say "kimchi!"
p nut
ReplyDeletewe are smiling as we read along
we are so proud
love you much
mom and dad