Day 288 - NKR Classes

This past Saturday I realized it's my favorite class of the week. The students there are so motivated, so attentive, so eager to learn. It's wildly different from my regular teaching gig, where I have to make my lessons more like entertainment with a few grains of English in them and my students are apathetic to say the least. With my regular students, I deal with that apathy and behavior issues. With the NKR classes, I can choose any topic and they'll be so enthusiastic about learning it that they're impatient. I'm so glad I have the opportunity to work with them because they a part of Korea that not a lot of people get to interact with. I feel really lucky to be one of the few that gets to help them out.

Day 276 - Jeju Spring Conference, Homestay, Goals

FIRST

First. Hello, fellow F'brighters. I'm still not sure how to feel about you all reading the blog intended for my family and friends back home in the States, but right now it's a mixture of Wow Dude That's Creepy and My Life Isn't That Interesting, so, um, next time you do a guest reading of my entries, I guess you can open with that?


JEJU

Over the weekend, I went to a teaching conference held on Jeju island for my program. It was fantastic, especially fantastic because it was free. Most of the time was set aside so that we could relax and enjoy the scenery, which was like an entirely different country compared to mainland Korea. Blue water, green palm trees, bright flowers, volcanic rock beaches -- it was definitely a welcome change from the gray and dull brown that I see in Nonsan. We did a little sightseeing as a group but there's so much more to do there that I plan on going back on my own time, maybe with Hallie and some of the other Nonsan foreigners who were thinking about making a weekend trip.

It was especially nice to be around 90 familiar faces for Easter. A group of us went to services on Sunday, followed by a kimbab picnic and a trip to one of the waterfalls. It wasn't a particularly traditional Easter holiday, but it was definitely made a lot better by being surrounded by friends!

Again, no pictures because I'm writing behind a proxy. sooooorrrrryyyyyyy


HOMESTAY

My new homestay. Things are Not So Bad there. The mother is so enthusiastic about learning English. She's a straight-up housewife. I don't think she really ever leaves the house, so she has this shelf full of English study books and I think she just memorizes words in her free time. She also wants me to be more like a member of the family than the last homestay. By that, I mean she treats me as her own child, not a guest. I had a few pieces of laundry in my laundry bag when I left for Jeju, but when I returned, they were all washed and folded in the dresser. Including my underwear.

(In Korea, our program has heavily stressed that you are never to give your underwear to your host mother, even if she offers to do your laundry for you. It's highly offensive, I guess, so I was shocked to come home from Jeju and discover that she not only did Surprise Laundry but also my underwear. Which was not only in my laundry bag but in a separate lingerie bag WITHIN that laundry bag.)

The cats are okay, I guess. White Cat puked under my bed and crapped in the bathtub. That makes me feel not fantastic. Gray Cat is pretty chill and just likes sleeping on my bed and mreowing at me a lot.

The kids are nice, the younger twins. The other day one of them was eagerly showing me how he got his six pack after I mentioned to host mom that I wanted to join a nearby gym so I could continue exercising. I'm not even sure sixth graders should have six packs. Disturbing.


GOALS

One of my Big Plans when I came to Korea was to travel and see as much as I could while I was living here, both Korea and the surrounding Asian countries. However, I'm kind of a timid person and I have trouble seizing opportunities even when there's an open door so I haven't really done anything like that yet. Yet. I'm planning a weekend trip to Taiwan with another F'brighter during our midterm testing period. My school also has a school trip for the students to Jeju, so while they're gone I hope to get down to Indonesia for a week to see my college friend who is also on an English teaching grant with F'bright there. This weekend, I'm finally going to start knocking things off the "To Do In Korea" list by sight-seeing Seoul with DY -- we made a deal where he'll show me the palace, Insadong, and the history museum, then in return I'll go with him to his friend's wedding. Quid pro quo.

I've also been inspired by Amy (http://livingontheflipside.blogspot.com). I've never even met her, but I found her blog about two years ago when I decided I wanted to come to Korea and started searching for ways to do so. She's been able to start a great language-exchange group up in Cheonan. Now, when I first came to Korea, my Statement of Purpose talked about improving relations between US military and ROK citizens, because the media had made it seem as though that was a bad relationship. In reality, it's an old relationship -- these days, it's more that the ROK citizens view the native English speakers as the "bad foreigner" in Korea.

Being a native English teacher in a rural area, this hits close to home.

So when I realized this, my Statement of Purpose changed and I want to improve relations between native English speakers and ROK citizens. I think the best way to do this is through Korean language/culture classes. My program is great in the sense that it prepares its teachers the most for life in Korea -- some programs don't offer language and culture classes.

Too long, don't read; long story short, I want to start a language exchange club in Nonsan where the foreigners can learn Korean and Koreans can practice their English. I think this would do good things for both parties and it fits well with my Statement of Purpose.

Now I just need to actually do it, instead of think about what a great idea it is.

Day 269 -- New Homestay

Despite being ridiculously sick, my co-teacher came by yesterday to help me move my things to the new homestay. I'm living with another TOEFL class student, Hyeon Soo. His mom's a housewife, I don't know what his dad does, he's got twin 6th grade brothers and two cats. Hurray kitties! My room is a bit smaller than my last one and there's no closet, so I'm kind of concerned where I'll be able to put all my stuff. The apartment is in a good part of Nonsan -- there's a lot of restaurants, banks, and a few bakeries, one of which has a little cafe where I can study. There's also a gym nearby that I'll check out, although DY says it's smaller and older than the gym I used to go to. He adds that he's good friends with the trainer there, though, so maybe he won't get so peeved now when I ask for weight lifting help.

I have no pictures of the new homestay yet because I am once again writing behind a proxy, but maybe after the Jeju conference I'll put some up.

Speaking of Jeju conference, I just want to vent about how frustrated I am about this. I told my co-teacher FAR before the school year even started that I needed tickets to Jeju. She didn't get them early enough (she waited about a month, actually) so now I'm forced to fly out of Incheon. I live like 5 hours by public transportation from Incheon. And I'm leaving wicked early in the morning, so these two factors combined means I have to leave today, find a cheap hotel, and spend the night alone in Incheon so I can catch a flight early tomorrow morning because my co-teacher procrastinated getting tickets.

FRUSTRATION

Day 266 - Tree(?) Museum, Not-Happy Homestay Developments

DY did, indeed, redeem himself. He said he thought a lot about what it meant to be a foreigner living in the middle of nowhere (i.e. Nonsan) and decided that sometimes things must be kind of rough. Progress! When I got back from teaching the NK refugees this weekend, we went to the tree museum in Gongju. I think that translation is not quite right because it was more of a botanical garden. With animals. It was a good time though. There are some pictures, but I'm writing this through a proxy so I can't use Flash.


In less ideal news, Friday night I came home to hdad screaming at hmom. Immediately uncomfortable, I went straight to my room and shut the door. He kept screaming louder and louder until I heard a loud *thud*, followed by the crash of a door bursting open. Then crying. The host sisters wailing and saying "don't, don't! dad, don't!"

I left earlier than necessary the next morning for Seoul with some clothes stuffed in a backpack. I stayed at friends' places over the weekend, too uncomfortable and scared to go back. I informed my liaison and things are in the process of changing my homestay. Until then, I packed an emergency bag this morning with my important paperwork and clothes and over the next few days I plan on moving my things out bag-by-bag and keeping it at friends' apartments.

Day 260 - Boyfriend Fight :[

Doyup has, lately, been less than impressive. He has family, friends, old classmates, baseball, badminton, work buddies -- a lot going on. I don't think I'm a particularly needy girlfriend, but if my boyfriend tells me we're going to have a date day, I make sure I'm free at the specified time. Instead, lately, I've been spending hours waiting for DY to get back from last-minute social engagements or errands, and then the date ends up being canceled and I've wasted my day waiting instead of meeting my own friends, traveling, or taking care of errands.

Things finally came to an argument last night. I told him about how I was excited to be seriously weight lifting again. He was upset, however, because the reason I'm seriously weight lifting again is because the new trainer took an interest in me after watching me break a massive, nasty sweat during my 5km run. This prompted him to ask me if I like running (oh helllllls no) and we talked about the differences between Korean and American perceptions of beauty. IN KOREAN! OH YES.

So I told him how I was interested in weight lifting and I did weight lifting in America, but was too shy to do it here in Korea because that is NOT how girls here work out. Girls here walk on a treadmill for 90 minutes at a leisurely pace without breaking a sweat and call it a day. Seeing me DRENCHED in sweat and eyeing the weights must've been hilarious to him.

DY, however, was not amused. He got upset with me, which made the frustration I had boil over, and then my frustrations made him even madder, which triggered my 9-month-homesickness episode. (Foreigners typically experience homesickness every 3rd month of living in a country, i.e. 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, etc)

It was not a good night and I hate sleeping on an argument, but we'll see if he's gotten the message and really will make an effort to manage his time more effectively. Big test will be tomorrow for my birthday, but no worries, I have contingency plans in case he doesn't do so well.

On a happier note: yayyyy, part 1 of 2 completed as far as my workout goals!
(1) Work out hard with the buff dudes
(2) Get down to 59kg (1kg away!)

Day 258 - Pre-Birthday Celebrations

This weekend I pre-celebrated my birthday with Hallie, whose birthday was on Saturday. Friday night we went out to dinner (samgyeopsal, obviously) with Rosa and Stephanie, then got together at our other foreign friend, Michelle's, apartment for drinks and company and pizza and cupcakes. We had a chill time playing cards and chatting, then headed out to Watermelon Sugar for dancing yeaaaaah

Saturday, I went to Daejeon with Hallie, where we consumed entirely too much TGIFriday's western-food then met up with her friend to go to an awesome Western bar. I had forgotten how much I loved rum-and-cokes. At least 320492x more tasty than soju. Roughly.

And I baked.

It's sad that I made my own birthday cake, but Korea does not have chocolate-cake-with-cream-cheese-frosting.

Happy birthday to... me.

Cupcakes for Hallie's birthday :D

Wednesday is my birthday and I have dropped MORE than enough hints to DY so that he can redeem himself after the pile of fail that was White Day. Will he reconcile his less-than-impressive past, or out-do his previous disappointment? Find out Wednesday* on BRBKorea.

(*may not actually be on Wednesday)

Day 255 - New Semester Started

**A few more posts were backdated under this one. Sorry. I'm kind of anal about doing things like that, even though I clearly didn't write on those days.**

I've really been sucking at this blog lately. Don't worry, it's not you, it's me. I've been all kinds of crazy lately. Since it's the start of a new school year here, I've been trying to tie up all my loose ends. Some things on my plate:

--School: curriculum and lesson planning
--Finances: transferring money to the States, making a debit card
--Relationships: reestablishing my Konyang contacts, mailing packages to friends in America
--Personal: printing photos for a Korea scrapbook, working out, studying Korean

The new semester started on March 2nd. I was excited to have a fresh new opportunity with my students. Last year I really had no idea what I was doing and on top of that, I wildly over-estimated the English abilities of my kids. This made for difficult lessons, a really disjointed semester, and frustrations for both me and them. This year, though, I sat down with a text book (Side-By-Side, a conversation-based text) and mapped out what I thought the kids needed to learn and/or practice, as far as conversational English went.

So far, so good, although it's frustrating with the Monday classes. They're low level, large classes, and young, so it makes for a very difficult teaching environment. It's especially frustrating because these Korean students study English for 8, 10 years before they get to me, yet they can't introduce themselves or follow a simple conversation. Hell, some classes don't even understand when I say "Okay, class is finished! Time is finished! I will see you next week! Bye!"

It's bad.


Financially, things are just frustrating because my Korean isn't good enough to carry conversations at the bank. I know some basic words, but if there's a problem or if the teller asks me a question, there is a 50% chance I will have NO IDEA what she's talking about. Since it's money issues, it is pretty important to know what is going on. Same with the post office. I have three packages sitting on my floor right now, but I have to plan for 1-2 hours of free time so I can go to the post office and figure out what to do.


vis-a-vis Relationships: I'm currently trying to reestablish the contacts I had with Konyang students last semester. Things died during vacation while they all went home and enjoyed their break, and I went to Daegu for a month, so I'm trying to get back in touch with all of them.

IN TERRIBLE NEWS: Cute Trainer no longer works at the gym!!! He left and has been replaced with another cute trainer who is also younger but still not Cute Trainer. He is... um... New Trainer? Additionally, Other Guy will be leaving for his mandatory 2-year Army service on Tuesday, so it is sad times at the gym.


Ummm that's about it.