Happy Pepero Day! 11/11/11

First of all sorry, I know I have been slacking on updating my blog! My school recently changed their whole afternoon class system, meaning I have about 9 new classes of children with 9 new books of material to teach them. My hours have also increased a little. My Kindergarten hours are still the same but my afternoon classes increased a bit. I now finish at 7:10 Mon/Fri and 6:15 Tues/Thurs. Anyway,  this along with a lot of weekends full of traveling have kept me pretty busy, so I will go back in time and talk about some stuff that has happened over the past month and a half.

The Loot

A heart made of pepero boxes

November 11, 2011 was Pepero Day. Never heard of it?  Peperos are these long chocolate covered stick candy's that are about 90 cents for a box of 12. Of course there are also more deluxe and giant versions that you see around the holiday. The reasoning behind the date of the celebration is the fact that 11/11 looks like four pepero sticks! And since this year it was 11/11/11, it was actually the Centennial Pepero Celebration! The company Lotte which is behind the original peperos claims they were not at fault for creating this holiday, it was actually two teenage girls in Busan who started it by exchanging pepero boxes on November 11th in order to wish each other to "grow tall and slender like a Pepero". Most people don't buy that the real reason behind a candy giving event was truly two girls trying to remain thin, however. Whatever the case of its origins, the event is outrageous. Days before the 11th we saw many moms coming out of the supermarket near our school with their shopping carts literally filled to the top with Pepero boxes. I still have no idea what they were planning to do with all of them! Family Marts (the sort of mini stops Korea has on every corner) all had giant Pepero displays out front complete with spotlights and balloon arches. On the actual day I was given so many boxes of Peperos, giant Pepero sticks, and even some delicious donut type sudo Peperos that I had to make a whole shelf in my pantry dedicated to them.

This holiday is a good opportunity for me to bring up some other very different events and things I have noticed while living in Korea before I get too used to them and forget they were actually odd to me in the first place. It is already becoming alarming how normal I find having rice with every meal, how I do a sort of head dip bow to most elders, and how I have recently began craving kim chi!

One of the first shocking things I encountered was that they do not wear shoes inside public places, including schools. Instead, children keep a pair of "slippers" on shelves there, or (gross) slip on a pair of the communal slippers you'll find at every school, hostel, and Korean restaurant. All apartments have a lowered platform when you first enter made just for taking off your shoes before coming inside. Some Koreans even hang bags outside their doors which they keep their shoes in (I'm guessing the ones that don't smell so great). These "slippers" that people put on vary from what we would think of in western culture, to plastic type slip on shoes my kindergartners wear with power rangers or hello kitty decorating them, to the soccer sandals myself and the other foreign teachers sport, to heeled nice looking ones that many of the Koreans clomp around in. I'm still not sure how taking off a pair of flip flops and putting on soccer sandals every day is more appropriate inside, but I now do so automatically and have noticed I've even stopped wearing shoes inside my own apartment- something I've never worried about before.

There are certain gestures that are used in Korea that I had to become used to as well. As I mentioned above, they bow deeply to their elders or authority figures when saying hello and goodbye- however I've only had a child bow to me when their parent was standing near watching. When accepting or giving something, like change at a supermarket, they place one hand on the forearm of the other arm which is giving the change. This is also to show respect. The farther up the arm you place your hand, the more respect it is said to convey. To call someone to you, you do not crook your finger as we are used to doing in the Western culture. Rather, you gesture for someone to come with your whole hand, plam down. At our school the foreign teachers refer to it as "the claw". This took be a few weeks to get used to; at first I kept getting confused that someone wanted me to sit down whenever they made this motion towards me. Koreans also have a unique was of sitting, or crouching. They do a sort of squat when resting, especially the older ones. It looks easy enough to do until you realize their heels remain touching the ground and it is almost impossible to imitate- and definitely not comfortable to those of us who haven't grown up doing it.

There are some beliefs that I have come across over the last few months which I find humerous. I serve my children lunch every day and have noticed that at certain times some that were sick would refuse the kimchi or anything else in the spicy red sauce. I asked finally one day and they said it was becuase the spicy sauce caused grey hair if they ate it while on medicine. This is pretty interesting to me since almost everything served is in spicy sauce, not just the red stuff. One of the strangest beliefs I have heard recentally has to do with fans. Some (very few I am sure) have started believing that fans kill people by sucking out all the air in a room. This came in the wake of a few deaths cuased by chill that came from fans. To satisfy the minority that hold this belief, Korean fans now almost all come with a 3 hour timer that automatically shuts them off.

It is very common in a school setting, or pretty much any one, to be told last minute to do something. A good example is being at an assembly and suddenly being passed a microphone and expected to give a speach and run an activity. They see nothing wrong with this and we were even warned about it at our one 3 hour training session we went to about a month ago. Also, Koreans do not enjoy confrontation and so preface many statments with "maybe" in order to get around this. This took me quite a while to realize as well, I just kept thinking they weren't quite sure of the answer and would get back to me- then I realized whatever came after 'maybe' was the end of the matter.

Korean couple have started a new trend called "couples wear". Many male/female couples you see walking around town will be wearing everything matching from sweatshirts, to jackets, to hats and shoes. Men often carry "man bags" (usually nicer than any purse I've ever owned), so from the back it can be very confusing which is the male and which the female.

I'll end this list of oddities with one that many of you may be wondering.... do they still eat dog? The answer is basically yes. It is not common at all any more, in fact I have heard rumors that it is illegal to do so still. I ask my kids on occasion just to see how they respond and most of them freak out and look around frantically saying no, but I can't help to feel like some of them are more nervous about what other children will think then necessarily telling the truth. They will tell me that "maybe" their parents or grandparents eat it, though. All I know is about 10 seconds from my apartment is a restaurant that translated reads "Grandma's Dog Soup". I rarely see customers there but there is a truck that sits outside with two cages in the back. One of the worst moments I've had since being in Korea was the day I walked by on the way to the bus and there were two happy looking dogs in those cages. I was half tempted to try and set them free on my way back but by the time I got home they were gone. A friend of a friend who was placed in a much smaller town farther north had a horrifying story about the the first day he came to Korea. He is the only westerner in his whole town, and to honor his arrival they had a bif feast with the whole community. After the meal he asked what sort of meat he had eaten and was told much to his horror that he had just consumed dog. Makes me glad I work in a little more contemporary of a place.

Happy Halloween!

Friday October 28th

The Halloween celebrations started off on Friday with a party in the afternoon for our older kids. We were told to dress up so us four foreign afternoon teachers tried to hunt for any sort of Halloween costume possible on the island. It was a little difficult as Halloween is a relatively new holiday for Koreans; they have only incorporated it recently as they are adopting other western traditions. Also, Koreans are definitely not big on variation, so unlike America where everyone is trying to out-do each other with the most creative costume, 99% of the children were either in matching witches or wizards costumes, or were a princess. All the costumes came from the same store (Homeplus; pretty much the super super walmart of Geoje) so really the biggest difference between children was which color they had chosen. Anyway, we scrounged up some stuff last minute, for as cheap as we could, and ended up as a ghost, the guy from scream, some sort of vampire, and a weird ghost/zombie outfit I made about ten minutes before the classes arrived. We were pretty proud of ourselves for showing the Koreans how it was done, as all of the Korean teachers chose 'cute' costumes such as cats and bunnies. However, when the children bounded up the stairs about 75% of them screamed and ran away, and three started bawling so badly they had to be taken to the office to calm down and miss the festivities... needless to say we were told to dress a little more 'happy' on Monday for the kindergarteners celebration. I guess not only have the Koreans not added the trick or treating part into their Halloween celebrations, but they also aren't quite used to the whole scary aspect of it either. It was still a fun celebration though with a few games and a talent show where pretty much all of the boys showed off their Taekwondo moves and the girls performed a dance to RollyPolly by Kpop (the insanely big pop band here at the moment).



wonder why we made so many children cry...

               On Saturday the 29th I made a very poor decision and was talked into going to Okpo Land Theme Park. This old amusement park sits on the ridge above Okpo city on Geoje. It was shut down in 1999 after its SECOND fatality where a young girl fell off a "chick shaped sky bike". The owner quickly shut it down and disappeared so as never to have to pay the family any money. It is rumored to be haunted so a group of people from Geoje thought Halloween weekend would be a perfect time to go check it out.

I'm not sure what the truth is behind the being haunted aspect of it, but either way wandering around a deserted and overgrown theme park in the drizzling rain and darkness was about the creepiest thing I have ever done. Cracked and falling apart merry-go-rounds and other giant character figures definitely did not help. I have never been so happy to get out of a place and back into a taxi home!

Monday was our kindergarten celebration, and as I said above we were told to dress a little more kid friendly, so I borrowed a friends' insanely huge rhino costume which was a bit more of a hit. Once again, aside from a strawberry, all of the girls were princesses and most of the boys wizards or "Taekwondo Boy" which just meant they wore their outfit for Taekwondo class later. We played games again and passed out A LOT of candy while the children shouted "trick or treat!" at us in a large circle. For most of them this was the only Halloween celebration they would have, unless attending some sort of Hallween party with their parents later. It is not common to actually go trick or treating and my kids were very confused when I tried to explain children walking around in the dark going from house to house asking for candy from strangers.

Ann 2

Yenny

Monica

Tommy

Not quite sure why they always must make this face in pictures..

Kids Club Happy Together Festival

Thursday October 27th was my school's largest event of the year; The Happy Together Festival.
The Korean teachers have been preparing for this event all month. They all had to learn a dance and then teach it to the children in the classrooms that they co-teach in. All of the children had to create and memorize a speech in English as well. Each class also put on their own musical or play type thing, depending on their age and level.

For most of the month of October I was told to replace my entire "theme time" (about an hour at the beginning of the class with a central focus on some given topic) with speech practice. I felt horrible for all my students as they had to repeat the same paragraph over and over, day after day while being instructed on what tone of voice to take, or gestures to make by my Korean co-teacher in order to make it as "cute" as possible for the parents. The closer the concert got, the more stressed the Korean teachers became. I am lucky enough to have my director as my co-teacher, since they got rid of one of the others in order to save money. This entire concert was basically a show for the parents in order to convince them that their children are getting the best English education their money can buy them.. since it is a lot of money. So Judy Teacher was more than a little stressed in the days leading up to the show. I had to bring a lot of crying children into the hall to be comforted after she snapped at them a little too hard for forgetting a line or making the wrong hand motion.

Harvard Class in Outfit Number one

Two days prior to the show anything at all educational was taken out of the schoolday and the children did nothing but run through their speeches, songs, and dances all day. On the morning of the Thursday performance we all boarded busses and went to the wedding hall that the event was going to be in for a practice run. The duties of the foreign teachers consisted of a quick introduction at the beginning of the children's performances, helping position the microphone when our class gave their speeches, and most importantly; smiling and waving at all of the mothers and fathers who attended. In true Korean form they also threw in last minute that we would be taking part in the final dance of the show. Luckily it turned out to be made up of very simple hand gestures and there was a teacher guiding us from the front row that we could watch. Each teacher had at least a small part in their classes' performance as well, and in this I got extremely lucky. All I had to do was introduce the plot of our play, The Little Red Hen, with a few sentences and then exit off stage. Antonia acted as a dinosaur in hers, Sophia was a shoemaker in her performance, and Elisti had to give a  speech that started "I am Elisti Cat, I am sooo sexy". Her class is the youngest and each of their speeches were about them being different animals. We figured that the Korean's must use the word "sexy" differently if they were making her give a speech that contained it, however when all of the parents erupted in laughter after she said that line.. we realized that must not be the case. This was nothing, however, compared to Devon's role in his children's act. His kids were performing the musical Mama Mia, and Devon had to be on stage the entire time and dance in everything from "Honey, Honey", to "Dancing Queen".

Sophia's Class

Outfit Number Two

I do not think these boys are not going to be pleased when they
see pictures of themselves in these outfits when they get older

Thursday afernoon we were allowed to leave our classes 30 minutes early and taxi to the wedding hall where we were told to stand at the door and bow and greet all of the parents coming in. After that we waited in a screened off room with our children, stuffing them with as much candy as they wanted in order to keep them quiet until it was their turn. I think the show went very well except for one major oddity- the costumes. When I arrived Thursday I was shocked to see my kindergarteners in some belly-baring cowboy and cowgirl outfits. The girls AND the boys had on tons of makeup and their hair was perfectly done. Some of the girls even had extensions in. I still have yet to figure out what cowboy apparel had to do with a play about a little red hen anyway.. Even our director went all out. She had gotten her hair done at some point with giant purple flowers in it. She matched this with a polka dot dress, patterned tights, and heels that were covered completely in glitter. Korean fashion at its best!

Outfit number two for their dance was some sort of elvis ensemble; still quite funny but made a little more sense. Some of the other classes were equally gaudily dressed and I can only imagine the reaction the children will have in the future when they see what their parents and schoolteachers made them wear when they were little.

All in all I think the show went well. It was one of the first times all the foreign teachers really felt appreciated; they brought us on stage at the end to take a bow and many of the parents handed us flowers. Afterwards there was a HUGE buffet at the hall with some of the most delicious food I have seen since being in Korea. We all sat so long at the table eating that eventually the Korean teachers had to tell us it was time to go. The best part was, our boss had to pick up the tab! It was great payback for the past week of stress she had caused us.

The entire event was filmed so hopefully I will be able to get my hands on a copy of that DVD, it should be good for a laugh!

Busan International Fireworks Festival



 Busan International Fireworks Festival

The Busan International Fireworks Festival was from October 21st to October 29th. I went to it on Saturday the 22nd. I rode the bus from Geoje to Busan with a couple friends who were also headed up to see the show. The trip by bus is only about an hour and a half, and Busan is a great city full of lots of westerners and some great shopping- there is even rumored to be an American Apparel somewhere there, although we could not find it. The only problem was that I was still phoneless at this point. I spent many hours Friday night trying to get a "pay as you go/ no contract" phone after receiving my Alien ID card FINALLY on Thursday. It was a little difficult since I was by myself and none of the workers at any of the three cell phone stores I went to spoke even a little English. Finally with the help of Google Translate and a couple young Korean girls who happened to be in the shop at the time and knew a little English, I got what I hoped was what I wanted. There were a couple set backs however. Number one, as I went to pay he informed me since it was now after 8:00 pm (this is after I waited over two hours in the store) the cell phone would not actually work until after the weekend, and also, it was all in Korean. I was so tired and desperate to get out of there at this point that I just took it anyway and figured I could easily switch the language setting on the phone, as that is what many other people have done here. Turns out, after I had all of my students in my afternoon classes give it a try (I said whoever could switch it got five stamps) that it was not possible, so in the end I had to go back and get a whole other phone... another long process.

But anyway, that is another story. The way that it affected Busan was that after parting ways with the friends I had rode the bus up with in order to meet up with Morgan and a few of her friends from Jinju that were already there, I found myself in the pouring rain, in a big city I had never been to before, without a phone. After a couple hours wandering the streets and asking random stores if I could borrow their phones, I was finally able to meet up with everyone.

After that I had a great time. We took a trip to the world's largest department store, called Shinsegae Mall, which had over ten floors of clothes as well as its own ice rink inside. That night we joined the crowds and crowds of people that had also come to Busan for this event and watched the fireworks display on Gwangalli Beach. It was amazing- insane fireworks set to great background music. The rain even stopped just in time. This particular Saturday ended up being one of the two largest shows of the event in which USA, Japan, Poland, and China went head to head with four seperate 15 minute displays to prove who reigned supreme in the art of pyrotechnics.

Besides the insane crowds and the fact that the weekend ended up with three of us Geoje residents splitting a 120,000 won taxi home (as all the busses were full hours before) it was a wonderful experience! It is fun to do these different events knowing that I am only spending one full year here, and may never be back, so these truly are once in a lifetime expereinces.

Inside the Shinsegae mall looking up



Seoul Global Gathering

How many kids can fit on one bus?

October 7th- 9th



Last week all of the foreign teachers were called into a meeting by our very somber looking director. When she began talking about their poor financial situation and how so many schools are going bankrupt, our first thought was that our school was going to be closed down and turned into a chicken restaurant- something that had happened to another foreign teacher we knew. Luckily the situation at our school is not quite that serious yet, but they are hurting for money. Because of this they were getting rid of one of the afternoon teachers and dispersing all of her students into the other classes, so my class sizes doubled and even tripled in some cases. Sounds very similar to the situation teachers are dealing with in the U.S. Also, since it is a private school and there are many competing ones in the area Kids Club has to fight for every child that is enrolled. This means that every child that goes home at the end of the day and tells their parents they do not enjoy school could potentially mean a loss of business if they decide to move them to another one. It is a fine line to walk between actually educating these children and keeping the work easy and fun enough that none of them feel "overly challenged". This meeting seemed to be sort of suggesting to us to lean even more towards the latter. It is a frustrating situation to deal with but I guess I need to just let go a little bit and realize that this a just a job and it is not up to me to be concerned about whether or not we are truly doing the children a bit of an injustice. Another piece of this is the cultural aspect that male children are not ever really disciplined. I have heard that there are many Korean orphanages full of all male children due to the fact that many mothers find it very difficult to raise them without being able to properly discipline them. This adds some insight to why many of my male students have zero respect for me and often yell, tip desks, and even hit me with their papers during class... but even these lovely students must be treated well enough that at the end of the day they go home with only good things to say about our school. If the students, especially the males, decide they no longer want to attend, the mothers will usually allow them to either drop out of the after school club or switch Kindergarten schools. 

'Coincidentally' after this meeting we suddenly had a lot less educational things and more socially driven events on our calendar; starting with a picnic at a park in Okpo on Friday. Fine by me! We got to spend the day playing at a park (actually less playing, more posing for pictures pretending to play- their website is a very important marketing aspect of the company for them and its focal point is us foreign teachers) followed by a huge feast of everything the children's parents had packed us for lunch. They pack extra for all of the teachers, plus we are given whatever leftovers the students dont finish, so the result was a blanket covered in fruit and Kimbop. Kimbop is the closest thing they have to sushi here, it is rice and seaweed but the filling is always a piece of crab, ham, a couple pickled things, and some veggies. It's not bad and they make a tuna version that I eat a lot.

the spread

After school Friday I took the bus to Jinju, and then headed very early in the morning to Seoul with Morgan to meet up with Shireen and her friend Tom to attend the Global Gathering music festival. This is basically a huge techno concert, one of the biggest in the world along with the Global Gathering festival in the UK. I was not previously a huge techno fan, but it ended up being a great show with many different acts on different stages around the venue, and a huge crowd of people from all over the world. It is always nice to be around some more English speaking people even if just temporarily.

The amount of money I quickly dropped in the less than 24 hours I was there, along with the 2 hour subway ride it took to go about 15 minutes across town (it turns out Morgan has about the same sense of direction I do.. or should I say lack of... and this coupled with the signs almost entirely being written in Korean created quite the challenge when trying to transfer from station to station) made me very happy that I have been placed in a smaller town in the Southern region of South Korea. Places like Seoul are a lot of fun to visit, but I just don't think I am cut out for living in that sort of atmosphere- or constant smog- permanently.

Not sure who they are but they looked
kinda famous?





Lantern Festival/ Oktoberfest



Digging for Dinosaurs

Wishing Tree

 September 30th- October 2nd

Hanboks (I think?)

My School had a field trip Friday morning with our kindergarteners, which was great becuase it meant we did not have to teach! We boarded three tiny van/busses with kids sitting on Korean teacher's laps and on the floor and anywhere else they would fit, and headed to Okpo to visit the "Geoje Museum". This turned out to be a rather small building, pretty much a two story room, filled with old relics from around the island. I can't tell you what exactly since the entire tour was given in Korean, but following my class around listening to incomprehensible speach is still better than doing math. Every once in a while a Korean teacher would feel bad for us and let us in on some snippet of the conversation, or I would have my kids translate if something looked sort of interesting, but pretty much what I know now is that they tied pieces of paper to rocks and trees for wishes, and something about a boat. Oh and there must have been dinosaur bones here, becuase my kids spent awhile digging in a sandbox for plastic dinosaurs, and I'm guessing that's what that was all about.

During the daytime

Fire Breathing Dragon

At night

Tunnel of Lanterns

 Saturday morning I traveled to Jinju for something called the Lantern Festival. It seems Korea has many festivals taking place all over throughout the year, which is perfect for someone like me trying to absorb as much as possible in 12 short months (the longer I'm here the faster the time seems to go!) The festival is basically made up of a giant floating bridge that you pay a dollar or two to cross through a sea full of blown up floating animals and other characters. The bridge was sort of one long traffic jam but the rest of the festival was pretty cool, especially when it got dark and everything lit up! There was a dragon that spit actual fire, a glowing peacock with flapping wings, and best of all (besides the waffle stands of course) long tunnels full of thousands of hanging lanterns.

I think this picture says it all.. I was struggling

 We had heard from some other foreigners of an Oktoberfest Festival starting the next day in somwhere called Namhae so we decided to check it out. Namhae is a German village about an hour bus ride and half hour taxi ride away from Jinju. It is a small town created by Korean's who had gone to Germany to work, married, and then decided to return to their homeland with their spouses. This is the second year they have had an Oktoberfest and it was a lot of fun. Our taxi ride took us on a windy road that went so far away from what looked like civilization that we started to get worried that the driver had not understood us. But then suddenly we came over a hill and saw both sides of the road lined with parked cars. The taxi dropped us off at the bottom of a mile long steeply inclined hill that we then had to hike up. Once we finally got to the top though it was worth it. There were booths of food, free samples, and of course beer. Morgan and I participated on stage in a beer chugging contest with two other foreigners and a Korean. We thought what a great opportunity for a free beer! But it was not worth it. I truly must have graduated college becuase I only got through about half before the Korean in our round was already done! After that we met up with some other foreigners who were sitting near the stage and throughout the night watched magic shows, kareokee contests, and other performances. It was a lot of fun but we soon had to leave to race back to a taxi in order to make it to the bus station before the last bus left for the evening.

Not sure what this guy was about

Magic Show

 The long weekend was definitely a success but concluded with a bit of a fiasco... On the way home from Jinju Sunday I fell asleep on the bus to be awoken by the bus driver ushering all of the passengers off. We then were quickly boarded onto another waiting bus of people which sped off. I still am not sure WHY we were made to switch busses but about ten minutes into the second bus ride i suddenly realized I had left my backpack with all my belongings underneath the first bus in the storage compartment! I got off the bus at the next stop and began trying to mime what had happened to any bus station worker who would listen. Luckily a very nice Korean guy who spoke English overheard me. The Koreans as a whole are usually very helpful to foreigners, and this was a great example of that: this guy spent the next two hours of his day acting as interpreter for me as the bus holding my backpack traveled all the way back to Jinju and back again. I have never felt more relieved then I was when I finally had it back in my possession and was able to board a bus HOME!