OH it's Halloween!!!

Fridays (for me) are the toughest days of the week. Hands down.  This is unfortunate. Fridays are supposed to be pleasant just by their positioning (to the weekend) alone. Furthermore, Thursdays are a prelude to “pleasant Fridays” so naturally these generally are expected to be good days as well, but I can’t have a proper Thursday knowing that I have to “survive” Friday in order to get to the weekend.  Sheesh. I’m not one of “those” that lives for the weekend, but I guess my point is, I can anticipate a “challenge” (or 2 or many) on Fridays. I teach 14 completely different classes and 10 of those classes have the honor (or maybe curse. Haha) of having me, as their teacher, twice a week. While the other 4 classes I only see once a week.  This gives me a total of 24 hours of actual classroom instruction. I have 4 particularly challenging classes and wouldn’t you know, they all fall on one day.  Can you guess which day? Hence, my lack of enthusiasm for Fridays. However, last Friday was great. The school put on a big Halloween bash for the kids. It was awesome. Kids were reduced to tears the entire day, I was able to hand out candy without having to extract a correct answer to a question like a dog trainer rewarding a puppy for completing a trick and I got a little mini break away from having to regulate a classroom of screamers, name-callers, desk-jumpers, glue eaters, marker-hurlers.... 

Anyhow, I spent the prior week getting my students pumped up about Halloween, which isn’t a holiday that’s celebrated here in Korea, so this complicated things a bit. I still don’t know whether they fully grasp the concept other than it’s a day when it’s ok to ask random strangers for candy and they give you candy. At least I was able to get them to say "trick-or-treat" instead of "give me candy". My kids are still trying to trick-or-treat me for candy.

Here's a couple pics from the day. The upper elementary kids had their party, which is shown below and then later, the youngsters had theirs. I wish I would've gotten snapshots of the little guys but alas, my camera decided to stop working.

(click bottom right corner to view full screen)
To be fair, I stuck my tongue out first :)

T is for Teaching

Or maybe it’s for Exhaustion……..I can’t really remember.  I’ll just go ahead and begin by saying that teaching is greatly underappreciated (teachers are way awesome - just had to throw that in) and I definitely underestimated the labor involved. I’m specifically referring to the unceasing demand for stimulation. Uh, if I could get some help over here ..... I'm looking for the “off” button on these kids (I’ll settle for “pause”?) …..no? nothing?  It’s definitely a mental workout. Teaching is the ultimate labor of love...I suppose that's why I'm here :)

Teaching in Korea is crazy (for lack of a better word). Primary education is rigorous and taken extremely seriously. It is highly competitive, starting at middle school age. There is a lot of emphasis placed on learning English. A bit of an obsession, actually. Kids (mostly elementary and middle school) in SoKo will attend their regular public school in the morning and afternoon and then go directly to English Academy (and do not pass Go). Academy is a supplement to their regular schooling but to my surprise, it has as much bearing on their education as the regular public school, because A. the parents are now forking over hard earned money for additional school, B. academy provides concentrated learning, specifically English, on a more individual basis, C. parents have become somewhat disillusioned by the English programs in the public school so they rely on the academy to help fill the gap, and more importantly D. is there such a thing as getting too much English?!

The kids have a slightly different view:

Academy = more homework

More homework = no play time, so;

Academy = their nightmare

I can't help but sympathize. Most of these kids aren’t finishing up with school until 10 or 11 at night. A classroom full of middle school students + too cool for school attitude + going on their 13th hour of school for the day = The most PAINFUL 45 mins. of my entire existence and after about 25 of those mins. I'm wondering if maybe this thing isn't even on........ummmm helloooooo?!? Wow, tough crowd tonight.

If you don’t speak Korean, how are you able to teach these kids?  I’ve gotten this question a lot. Well, I’ll be completely honest, there’s a lot of stickers involved.  Seriously.  I’ve found that bribery is not only essential but also a very effective teaching method (sorry mom). The younger ones are a little more, how should I put this .... not as complicated and more forgiving, I mean we're talking where anything that's of real significance is settled by rock, paper, scissors. 

This is one of my classes. Good class. We have fun. These guys are 9 (in Korea, one year of life is counted when you are born so they are 8). They may look like a subdued bunch but Andrew, top row/2nd from left, is a desk jumper so don't be fooled.

Last week I posted this riddle to one of my intermediate classes:  What vegetable do you throw away the outside, cook the inside, eat the outside, and throw away the inside?

They were promised duk bok ki (a favorite snack food among Korean kids) for guessing the correct answer.

The duk bok ki ladies dishing it up (below). 13 to be exact.

My final thought: Altho, each day brings new challenges and some awkward moments; there have been just as many awestruck moments and hilarious moments. Having been fortunate to experience Montessori primary education, I am able to appreciate self-directed learning and truly believe that as a child, you possess a natural propensity to progress forward and grow.  This has become/will be for the year, my common ground with these students and I find comfort in that :)

Chuseok Concluded

In the interest of concluding this post of our Chuseok weekend, I may (I will) just construct a photo montage instead. I know I know. I’m probably committing some kind of “blog faux pas” by doing so, but there seems to be an obstruction in the way of the creative juices.

Photo montage begins .... Now!

We met up with fellow Americans, Paige and Annie for a day of palace touring...

 ..which then led us to these little critters ...

... followed by a slight detour to Myeong-dong shopping district (I don't know why the picture quality is so poor. Boo!) ...

 ... where you can find a plethora of t-shirts in "English". (I'm just wondering what "they" were trying to say ...hmmm)



Seems so much more appealing when it's written in Old English Text

I'll try to resist the URGE!

Could it be?!? We stumbled upon this little treasure while walking around Hong Dae. That became our 2nd Mexican meal in Korea. Krissy and I had Mexican for my "last supper" in the states and she and I joked around that it would be my last time having Mexican food for a while. Yeah, we had a good laugh. I'm not laughing anymore.

I end with this photo. Koreans take their karaoke very seriously. If you look closely, this was a 5 story building with little individual karaoke rooms. I'm sorry, but Sing Sing has nothin' on Korea. Notice the girl in the upper right corner by herself. Watch out! Korean Idol in the making.

Our day of exploring began at this palace ...

... with these sweet children.

We then journeyed to the War Memorial of Korea (the largest of it's kind). Unfortunately, the museum was closed that day in honor of Chuseok, however the memorial grounds were open to the public, which is an entire outdoor exhibition, housing Korean War monuments and an extensive collection of military equipment used during that time period. 

Walking through the grounds was rather powerful and I was moved by several of the statues depicting the hardships that were endured during the war.

It is hard to believe that the conflict was not that long ago. The amount of civilian and military lives that were lost is overwhelming. A war that has been coined “The Forgotten War” in the U.S. (overshadowed by the Vietnam War), is very much remembered here and still families are separated by the division of the North and South.

I thought this was a very touching statue (below)

As we were leaving the memorial grounds, this lady approached us. She wanted to tell us something but we couldn't understand her. She reached into her bag and handed me a red crayon and began repeating words as I wrote them. We weren't able to communicate with her completely, however the few words that were exchanged between us was all that was needed to be able to grasp her sincere gratitude towards America.

(pic from Rebecca)

Chuseok ... Hosteling, Touring and Eating

Hostels give me the creeps (generally speaking).  When I think of hostels, I immediately think of bed bugs (hmmm…perhaps that’s where the phrase “sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” originated from).  Of course, I have absolutely no basis for associating the 2 things seeing as I’ve never actually stayed in a hostel ………..
Until now! I have to say tho, my first hostel stay (ever) exceeded my expectations (never mind that I had the bar set so low, my little niece Maddie could’ve kicked it over).  I'm pretty sure experiencing a hostel is a prerequisite to "earning" a traveling rite of passage, however this was not our aspiration. In an effort to be budget-conscious, stay in a cool area of Seoul and be able to get the 411 (the dirt) on touristy sites and other neat-o things to do, we chose to hostel it up in Hongdae (Hostel).

(Women's quarters)

Not too shabby, right? This is what 20,000 won will get you ...

I thought this was very sweet ...