Day 345 - Malaysia and 6 Month Anniversary

Malaysia was amazing!

Getting out to the camp site was not a fun time involving a bumpy, scary plane ride to get out to the east cost. Once we arrived, there was a stomach-turning car ride to get to our boat, which sped us up the river to the camp site. Along the way, we saw lots of monkeys and birds. Later that night, we saw crocodiles, flying foxes, and the next day we even spotted wild orang-utans! While trekking, we were able to get up close to sleeping kingfishers and a whip scorpion. Definitely cool. Not so cool? The fire ants.

Camping itself was crazy times. I hardly got any decent sleep from the variety of noises and the animals drifting around and in our door-less camping hut. Monkeys roamed the camp site one night and rats scurried around the entire time.

The Malaysian guides were awesome and hilarious. The other travelers were also cool -- everybody had a different story. One night I shared a beer with a New Zealander who was cycling around SE Asia and we swapped stories about teaching in Korea while a German doing contract work in Kuala Lumpur told us about the last time he'd visited Borneo during the flood season. Really interesting people.

The pictures are pretty amazing, so I'm disappointed that I'm still stuck with this school connection and a proxy... someday I'll dump a bunch of photos.


Today also marks Doyup and my 6 month anniversary. I can't believe it's been that long, but time in general seems to go quickly in Korea. I've been here nearly a year but it certainly doesn't feel like it! Last year at this time, I was stressing about cramming both my Korean language skills and my suitcases. I was stressed about finding appropriate school and leisure wardrobe and excited to meet my homestay family.

Now, I'm carefully considering what I *won't* put in my suitcases to keep them as empty as possible when I visit home next month. I'm signing up for the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at the beginning of July and counting down the days until I move out of my homestay and into an apartment. I almost never wear the expensive teaching clothes I carefully picked out, opting more often to put on whatever's lying on my bed (usually jeans and a sweatshirt, although I'm dressing nicer in the warm weather now since my summer clothes are almost exclusively sundresses).

That got a little off topic, but whatever.

Day 339 - Malaysia-bound and Upcoming Grant Renewal Events

I'm in Incheon International airport now waiting to board my flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia! I'll be meeting my friend in the city tonight, then we're boarding up again to catch a quick flight over to the *other* half of Malaysia, where our rain forest camping trip will be held. Exciting times, exciting times.

I always get wishy-washy during the planning-stages of travel, which is pretty much why I never traveled during college when almost every middle-class white kid does their obligatory European study abroad. I definitely wanted to, but it was always "right now isn't the most convenient time" or "I should have more money" or whatever. Getting the grant to teach in Korea helped me open up to how easy it is to travel, especially since being in Asia with a steady income and little responsibility means laughably affordable plane tickets to crazy, adventurous-sounding places like Cambodia and Mongolia.

Not a bad way to live the younger years of your life.

So I'm really looking forward to meeting up with Ashley in Kuala Lumpur, since I envied her south-east Asia travels throughout my senior year of college. When I was stuck in a research lab dreading every day, she was putting up a new Facebook album nearly every week of her doing amazing things in different countries.

After complaining to a friend about how much I wanted to travel and how I envied everybody for seeing the world while I wasn't, he gave me some good advice: "Don't get jealous, get even."

So now I'm trying to be more adventurous, and meeting Ashley for a rain forest camping trip surrounded by crocodiles and monkeys with no electricity or running water in a third-world country sounds like a good way to "get even".



In less exciting news, my grant program has accepted my intent to renew my scholarship in Korea for a second year and email confirmation has been sent to my school, so in the next month before I head back to Americana for a few weeks, the following two amazing things will be happening:

1. I will be finding an apartment.
(read: NO MORE HOMESTAY!)

2. My original co-teacher will (tentatively) be returning.
(read: Chill, fluent-English-speaking, Western-style co-teacher whose 10 years of experience with my grant program will make my life in Korea infinitely more comfortable and convenient, both professionally and recreationally)


Just one more hour until boarding, so it is time for me to scarf my Subway sandwich and carb-load just in case it turns out I don't like whatever "native Malaysian cuisine cooked by locals" they serve at camp. (That particular line is why there is a pocket of my backpack stuffed with Pepto-Bismol.)

Day 334 - Cute Trainer at New Gym

At the gym the other day, I was on the treadmill minding my own business when all the sudden some dude walks up to me and says "SDKJF Lindsay?!"

It was Cute Trainer from my old gym! He works at my new gym now. Funny.


In other news, Malaysia next weeeeek.

Day 326 - Tickets Home and Forward Thinking

TICKETS HOME
Yesterday I got an email from my program with the information for my plane tickets home to America this July. Since I'm extending my grant for another year, I'll only be home for a month. In just 51 days, I'll be on my way home. I've already got a list of food I want to eat and things I need to stock up on before coming back to Korea in August!


FORWARD THINKING
I applied to stay at this same school -- yes, the school I am constantly complaining about. I talked to the other English teachers this week, explaining that things can't continue like this. What I mean is the disrespect and complete lack of manners. It's to the point now that I realize they're probably not going to be enthusiastic about what we do, but they still enjoy seeing me because it means they're not memorizing standardized test prep.

Last semester didn't seem so bad. Maybe because this semester I resolved to actually *teach* them something. Next semester I'm going to go back to just giving them a period to be high school students. They enjoy playing games, they enjoy the contest with the other classes, so I'll focus more those than trying to salvage their English skills in the waning years of their educational careers (again, probably not going to college, so they're done in 3 years, tops).

In other news, North Korean refugee classes are coming to a close -- just two more and a field trip with the kids to the Seoul zoo. While that volunteer opportunity is wrapping up, Doyup has approached me, asking if I would be available for his military English class. A handful of the soldiers at his base are studying English for a military scholarship to go to the States and one of the big things they're studying is "English for daily life", or conversational English. They're excited to meet a real, live native speaker to use these skills on, so that would be a fun opportunity to take advantage of living in Nonsan.



In ooooother news, I'm planning a jungle safari in Malaysia with my college friend during my long weekend in June. How many people can say *that* for their job?! She's doing an English teaching grant with the same program as me, but in Indonesia instead of Korea. She mentioned last year wanting to travel more before going to grad school, so I suggest she check out my program. Now we're both out in Asia, soon to be trudging through the rain forest in search of elephants and orangutans. Small world.

Day 312 -- Examples of Student Reading vs Writing

What my students can read or translate:

"There were some places of worship in the city, and the deep notes of their bells echoed over the town from morning until night. The sun was shining brightly and cheerily, and the air was warm. The streams were flowing with bubbling water and the tender songs of birds came floating in from the fields beyond the city. The trees were already awake and embraced by the blue sky. Everything around the neighborhood, the trees, the sky, and the sun looked so young and intimate that they were reluctant to break the spell which might last forever."


What my students can write or speak:

"hello~
My name is Jong Woo Nam.
I'm hobby is computer games.
but have to study.
because I'm go is good a university.
So I'm jest a minute my hobby computer game perform
So me sad.
University success it's me hobby to one's content joy."

Day 310 - More Teaching Woes and a Cute Student Encounter

Despite drastically dumbing down my lesson (the 2-3 kids in my class who have any kind of English skill to speak of complained that it was elementary level) the majority of the students still said it was too hard. Since I'm drawing dialogue, grammar, and vocabulary directly from the book at this point, I don't know how much simpler I can make things. The co-teachers are starting to get pissed at me; I get frustrated that the students can't handle even the most basic English, and maybe the co-teachers think that I blame *them* for the students' amazingly terrible English skill. Which I don't at all -- I know how impossible it is to teach them, so I can totally empathize with their situation!


Anyway, yesterday I was clearly upset after struggling through one of my worst classes. A little, mousy girl -- always quiet in class, but clearly tries her best and hangs on every word I say even though she doesn't understand 80% of them -- lingered in the classroom. I went about cleaning up after the students, collecting papers and erasing the white boards. She came up to me, unable to make eye contact, and softly stumbled through an attempt at an apology in English.

I was really touched that this girl -- a girl who never misbehaves in my class and always tries her hardest -- took it upon herself to apologize for her classmates' terrible disrespect. She was clearly at a loss with her English, so she switched to Korean, apologizing that they were loud and bad. I hugged her back and told her she shouldn't worry, that she's a kind student, that she should keep studying hard. Tearing up, she reached into her pocket and handed me the cookies she had probably brought to school as an afternoon snack, told me she loved me, and rushed out of the room.


For all the rotten, frustrating students there are, every class as at least one of her. Maybe they won't grow up to be international CEOs or translators or whatever, but I like to tell myself that I'm significant in their lives for *some* reason, even if it's not English.

Day 308 -- Taiwan and Teaching Breakdowns

Okay! So, about a week ago I had a big post typed up about teaching in Korea and how to do so, but I guess the proxy ate it because it never got posted. Shame.

During the quarterly exam period, I went on a trip to Taipei, Taiwan with another girl in my program, Shannon. It was just the right amount of time for it and I definitely recommend it for a layover or weekend trip. Any less than the 3 days we were there and we wouldn't have felt like we "saw everything", but any more time and I think we might've gotten bored (if we just stayed in the city). One country off the list! Others include:

Japan
China
Vietnam
Indonesia
Malaysia
Thailand (when things settle down)
Phillipines
Cambodia
and the cities like Hong Kong and Singapore.

I've still got a few more vacation periods so I want to knock off as many as possible for I go home for my month break in July!


Travel and recreational life is great. Teaching is not so much. The students are so poorly behaved and they're so resistant to learning English. Without motivation they'll never become skilled, without being skilled they'll never be confident, without confidence they'll never have motivation, and the circle continues. I'm not sure how to break the cycle -- I'm not teaching them anything that's not in their textbooks (I'm not even teaching conversational English anymore! I'm only teaching-from-a-text!) but they're still unresponsive.

Before, I thought maybe my lessons were too hard, that what I was teaching was beyond their abilities. So I changed my teaching style and concentrated on just practicing the vocabulary, grammar, and dialogue that they learn in their regular English class. They're still completely unresponsive just like before -- so if it's not me, then what am I supposed to do?

Frustration.

After today's class (Monday, which is my WORST day in terms of student attitudes) I just broke down. I told the co-teacher that if the students were going to be rude, disrespectful, and not attentive, that they needn't come to my classroom in the first place. I swore that if they continued behaving like they did today, I would not teach them -- I'd put a movie in and they can do without their native-speaker lessons.

The teachers empathized, apparently concerned that I was worried the students hated me. I could care less if they hated me or loved me -- so long as they're respectful and polite in the classroom. But I can't help them if they don't help me help them. Right?

I understand these students are not the best and brightest that Korea -- or even Nonsan -- has to offer. I'm not asking for smart students who can converse with me. Or even string together a sentence. I'm just asking for some effort. I do nothing in my class that I couldn't do in Korean because it's important to know how to explain things in Korean for these students. I am only expecting them to memorize two line dialogue: "Are you interested in (books, movies, animals, etc)?" "Yes/No, I am (not) interested in ___."


The teachers don't discipline them beyond slapping them with their whipping rods. So ridiculous and ineffective. Students are shocked when I kick them out or make them move seats in the classroom. Any kind of punishment that's not corporal, really.

ahhhhh what am I supposed to do with these kidsssss! I'm still convinced that if I just figure out what drives them, I'll be able to effectively teach them English. But until then! AHHHRGGGHFHDJKSLALV