Springtime in Daegu

It's spring!! Flowers are blooming, trees are a fantastic green, and my kids are more restless than ever. Normally they're pretty focused on the lesson, or only need one sharp reminder from me to get their priorities straight. But recently, the swaying trees and bright blue sky visible through the classroom windows have been pretty distracting. I catch more girls staring wistfully out the window with their chin on their hand than I catch them carving 'Infinite 4 evar' or 'Big Bang is VIP' onto their desks.

That's a lot.

Although I don't leave my (apartment -> school -> apartment) circle too often, even I can enjoy the spring weather. Since I've been here, the trees have been rather lackluster and everything seemed so monochrome. Once the cherry blossoms started to bloom, that was the first sign of spring, but even then they were the only  color to be seen. Pale pink doesn't exactly overwhelm all the gray surrounding it.

Not the greatest photo, but I'm using an iPhone 3. Give me a break

When the cherry blossoms went away, I was worried that that was the end of spring. SO glad I was wrong.

My walk to/from the subway station

I live quite a ways away from downtown Daegu. For the first 2 months, I cursed the fact that I had to be ready an hour before anyone else, that after a long night out, my friends would be in their beds while I was still riding the subway back home. 

Last week, my friends came to this side of Daegu to meet me for BBQ and Iron Man 3, which was their first outing in my neighborhood since we arrived. Turns out I've been taking my scenery for granted. When Sarah told me she hadn't seen the moon since being in Korea, I was completely shocked. Walking from dinner to the movie theater, I could see what they were talking about. There are views of the city a mile in the distance, beautiful trees and flowers, and the biggest patch of open sky that you're likely to find living in a city of 3 million people.

Walk to Daegu Stadium

I think there's a temple if you follow this road, headed up the mountain

While I still get frustrated about the isolation I feel from my friends, I realize now that it's a trade-off. That isolation provides me with a more peaceful environment, somewhere I can go for a walk any time of day just to get out of the hustle and bustle of every day life. Not everyone has that opportunity.

I feel really lucky :)

안녕!

Anyeong!

Bye!

A spoonful of sugar would not help this very much

Today’s topic is Korean medicine/medical treatment for minor problems. So far, I’ve had two interesting experiences with it, and figured they were amusing enough to share. Feel free to disagree.

Story 1: Since I’ve been in Korea, I’ve had a cold. It’s nothing major, just a scratchy throat and stuffy nose, so I haven’t sought out professional treatment. It could be due to a number of things: not getting enough sleep (either because of my schedule or the time difference), Korean germs being different from American germs, or the fact that the weather is fluctuating constantly. Regardless, the end result is the same: I am sick. It is not fun.

My co-teachers are great, and hate seeing me miserable. One in particular, who is a bit older, told me that I should try ginseng; she and her daughter take a small teaspoon of ginseng twice a day, and it keeps them from getting sick. Thinking it’s got some kind of nutritional value, I say ok, I’ll try some. What I didn’t realize is that she meant right now. As soon as I said ok, she pulled out a jar from her desk drawer, along with a small spoon. She scoops out a spoonful of what looks to be molasses, which sparks the association of ‘sweet’ in my mind.

I was wrong. So very wrong.

I put the entire spoonful in my mouth, directly onto my tongue, and had to physically stop myself from vomiting right there in her classroom. It is without a doubt the most foul tasting thing I have ever tried, and I’m a rather adventurous eater. The best description I can give is if someone took wheatgrass, soaked it in mud, wrapped it in moldy cardboard, and somehow pureed it to the consistency of honey. Maybe with an extra handful of dirt thrown in. You know, for texture.

It tastes like the physical representation of self hatred and despair. I’m convinced that if it had been easily found in ancient times, Heracles would have forgone his 12 Labors because eating ginseng was punishment enough.

 It was pungent and bitter, but the worst part? IT LINGERED. I drank so much water trying to get that awful taste out of my mouth, but I swear my taste buds were still detecting the vile substance until lunch.

But after all of that, my co-teacher was so excited that I was trying ginseng, and was so convinced that it was going to help me get better, that she took me to a store to buy some after school. We found one that was mixed with honey (although it still tastes pretty terrible) and I bought a small jar (the pictures above are mine).

As it is with many things in Korea, if it makes my co-teachers happy, I’ll do it. You’ll find this attitude pretty common with foreign teachers here. Our co-teachers are our lifeline, oftentimes our main window to a Korean lifestyle, and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want to experience it.

Story 2: After eating lunch a few days ago, my stomach started to hurt. Those of you who know me are aware that stomach pain is pretty regular for me, and I deal with it just fine on my own. But this was different, and it was occasional sharp pain rather than a general ache. I ignored it for about 15 minutes, but when going to the bathroom didn’t help any, I decided to go to the nurse’s office. Because the nurse speaks hardly any English, I asked one of my co-teachers, who had a free period, to come with me to translate.

We managed to get my symptoms across to the nurse (who is the sweetest lady ever. We eat lunch together often), and the expected questions were exchanged. I had already ruled out the more extreme possibilities (like appendicitis), and suspected it was some mild food poisoning. I was expecting to have her examine my stomach, or maybe give me some medicine and send me on my way. Instead she had my lay down in one of the beds in the room, on my back, and put a heat lamp over my stomach. It was translated that I was supposed to lay there for 25 minutes, and could sleep if I wanted to.

It’s a good thing that I knew it wasn’t serious, because if it was, I would have been more upset about being told the equivalent of ‘sleep it off’.

But that’s not the interesting part of the story (I’m a terrible story teller. I know. Bear with me).

My co-teacher gave me a foot massage.

Now, it’s cold in my office. The school is on a strict budget, so the hallways and teachers’ offices aren’t temperature controlled. I’ve been wearing jackets and even gloves in my office to keep warm, but it’s cumbersome to type with big leather gloves. As a result, my hands are usually freezing. And my feet as well, because we wear slippers in the school, so my poor toes have only my socks to keep warm.

As I’m laying down in the nurse’s office, heating lamp on my stomach, mildly irritated by the pain, my co-teacher reaches over to get my attention and touches my hand. She exclaims that it’s cold as ice (to which I shrug, naturally). Then she gets up and begins to massage my hand in an attempt to get the circulation flowing. This didn’t particularly weird me out. I have given and received hand massages from time to time, and I find it very relaxing. But when she finished both hands and moved down to my feet, my entire body tensed. It’s not that I’m particularly creeped out by someone touching my feet, but that’s a line I’ve never crossed in a friendship setting. When I told her she didn’t have to do that, and made to pull my feet away, she grabbed them and continued rubbing them, saying that improving the circulation in my feet would help the circulation in my stomach. She was completely nonchalant, and in fact maintained a conversation with the nurse over the divider while she was doing it.

To set the scene again, I’m laying down in a nurse’s office, looking at stickers of Pororo and Winnie the Pooh, listening to two different conversations in Korean, with a 40 something year old woman I’ve known for 2 months rubbing my feet.

I was sufficiently distracted from my stomach pain. I thank Monica teacher for that.

(In case you were curious, I later discovered that my breakfast yogurt had been 6 days old.)

Those were my 2 quick experiences with ailments in Korea. Hopefully nothing serious happens here to require further updates ^_^

안녕!

Anyeong!

Bye!

Schedule

I’ve gotten many questions about the schedule of foreign teachers here. To be honest, every school is different (which is the standard answer for most questions about day to day school life). In the EPIK (public school) contract, we have 22 class hours and 18 planning hours every week. The school can go beyond the teaching hours with after school classes or teachers’ classes, but they’re required to pay us extra for every hour that we’re in the classroom over the 22.

So that’s the number of classes in one week that a foreign teacher can expect. However, how many lessons each teacher has varies greatly between schools.

This depends on:

1) How many grades do you teach? How many classes?

2) How spread out are your classes?

3) How many co-teachers do you have?

On one extreme, teachers might have one grade only and do the exact same lesson 20 times, meeting a different class of kids every time for their one English class a week. On the other hand, a teacher might teach multiple grades and have 20 different lessons, likely meeting the same kids when they’re at different points in the book.

The other factor is the co-teachers. If you have one co-teacher, lesson planning is pretty simple. More co-teachers mean more unique lessons. You might have the same grade with the same book going over the same page, but do a lesson 3 different ways.

Personally, I teach 27 classes and 14 different lessons every week. Of all the teachers I’ve spoken with, this is the highest number I’ve heard.

Factors that play into this are:

1) My school is huge. I meet with 21 different classes of 30 each during the normal school day (9am-3pm), 15 students for my after school class every day (3-4pm), and maybe 5 teachers for my teachers’ class once a week.

2) I have 5 co-teachers.

3) The students (grades 4-6) have English class 3x per week, but I only meet with each once, which means the same grade with the same co-teacher will be at different pages in the book.

It can be very draining to have so much planning to do in a week, especially because on the weekend I want to be exploring and meeting friends. But it’s getting easier now that I have more of a handle on my schedule, and am learning to utilize every bit of time I can. 20 minutes here and there help to iron out my after school lesson plan for the day, brainstorm a game for class, etc.

Now you all know why I’m tired and go to bed at 10 like an old lady… Sorry for lack of contact. Although that is what this blog is for, right?

I’ll go into more detail about my co-teachers and after school class in separate posts, as I can go on and on about them J

안녕!

Anyeong!

Bye!

Set low expectations people

First off, there's something I need to get out of the way. Every time I start a blog, I make 5-10 posts and then stop completely. I either just forget to do it, or get busy and intentionally put it off and off and off, until it’s been 3 months since I've written anything.

I really don’t want that to happen here. There’s an excellent chance that my posts will start being boring or mundane after a month (as I run out of ideas), but people seem to want me to write at least something. If you ever have suggestions for what I should write, or have specific questions about my life in Korea, you can contact me anytime J

Now that blog maintenance is covered, how about I explain the blog title? In the US, students call teachers Mr/Mrs (last name). That’s just the polite thing to do. In Korea, you address teachers only as ‘Teacher’. However, my case is a little different. Because I share all of my classrooms with a co-teacher  there is some confusion about which teacher a student is asking for help. It’s easier to have the kids call me “Katherine Teacher” (Kate Teacher is a bit too informal for my taste).

It has definitely grown on me, having 7-10 year olds chase me down the hallway yelling “Katherine Teacher! Katherine Teacher,” waving furiously when I turn around. Sometimes they won’t even say anything once they've gotten my attention. They’ll just smile when I say hello and then run away again. Occasionally, only with the younger students that I see the most often, they’ll catch up to me in the hallway and casually hold my hand, whether I’m walking to my office, class, or even the bathroom. This is, at times, unsettling. But it’s hard to be weirded out, or uncomfortable, when there’s a 8 year old with pigtails and no front teeth grinning up at you from your waist.

It's blurry because as soon as I turned the camera on her, she squealed and ran away. As usual.

But that’s the younger students. Older students have mixed reactions seeing me in the hallways. Maybe 85% of my students will wave to me, or bow slightly, and say hello. That’s usually the extent of the interaction. There are a few students (5%) who will follow me down the hallway, asking questions about where I went to university, what did I study, where have I traveled, and nearly anything else they can form a complete sentence about. The remaining 10% go out of their way to avoid me, or if passing me is inevitable, keep their eyes glued to the floor. I haven’t decided if this is because they don’t like me, or are worried that I’ll conduct an impromptu English test right there in the hallway.

As a rule, I never force my students to speak to me outside of class. I realize how stressful it can be to have to operate on the spot in a foreign language, and I’d rather them feel comfortable speaking with me; it doesn't exactly reflect well on me as a teacher if my students get tense and defensive every time I talk to them. Generally, though, they’re the ones to initiate conversation, and however brief the exchange, I always feel proud that they’re making that extra effort to communicate.

My after school class, 1st and 2nd graders

Group photo (mostly)

Boys are the same everywhere in the world

Sometimes students will flag me down to take a picture with them

... Like I said

Maybe it’s just the Angry Birds earrings… They go nuts over them.

So there you have it, my first post. I’ll try to update once a week, unless I have a particularly interesting story to share! We shall see...

안녕!

Anyeong!

Bye!