Daily life...

After a little more than a month, it has finally begun to hit me that I'm officially a resident of Seoul, South Korea.  Although this is my reality, I still get a thrill of excitement at the thought that I'm actually here.  As time goes on and I become more settled, I find myself noticing some pretty interesting things about being here.

First of all, I am absolutely loving teaching.  As much I would like to say that this is due to my altruistic love of enriching the lives of children and shaping the youth of Korea, I'd be lying if I said either of those things.  I like my kids, don't get me wrong.  They're incredibly entertaining and very different from kids in America.  The level of respect shown to teachers in this country still takes me aback, and the attitudes and levels of maturity are on a completely different plane than in America.  All these things are great, but honestly, what I'm loving is the complete absence of stress from my life since I took this position.  For starters, I teach 24 hours a week which boils down to 4 classes one day, and 5 classes every other day which means on any given 8 hour day, I have 3 or 4 free hours.  I'm coming from a work schedule that generally had me working a minimum of a 40 hour work week, plus a second bartending job on the side, so the 24 hour work weeks feel like a permanent vacation.  Furthermore, I'm only supposed to work 22 hours, so I get 2 hours of overtime a week on top of it all.  My teachers are constantly asking me if I'm doing OK, or if 'all this work' is too much for me, to which I have a hard time responding with a straight face.  What's more, the Korean culture not only allows you to sleep at work, they encourage it.  Some schools even have a teacher nap room--mine doesn't, but I do have my own classroom where I can turn off the lights and sleep in a quiet dark room.  Point being, my days consist of some teaching, a fantastic Korean lunch, and at least a 1 hour nap.  Because I have so much free time every day, I never need to worry about lesson planning after school, so I'm literally working and then coming home.  At 4:30, the day is over.

On one of these many stress-free work days, I tried to determine when the last time I've been so completely calm was, and I decided that this is the first time in my life.  I've been worried about getting good grades from about 1st grade all the way through college--stressed out and sleep-deprived--then was worried about if I would get a job, then I got a sales job which was incredibly stressful as I was constantly worried about making quota or dealing with beaurocratic crap, or I was in the service industry, where I was constantly scrambling to get enough shifts.  So, yes.  Finally, at 29 years old, I feel like I can breathe easy.  It's pretty amazing.  While I would normally say that this is probably doing wonders for reversing the aging process, I'm pretty sure the soju is counteracting any of the good benefits of this lack of stress.  However, the constant flow of endorphins makes it all worthwhile :-).

So, while this is all wonderful, it's not all rainbows and butterflies.  Now that I'm in a routine and have some down time during the week, it gives me a lot more time to miss Nate and other people and comforts of home, although Skype is pretty much amazing. What's great though, is that I'm a 5 minute subway ride from a few of my friends, and since I live in Seoul, there's always something to do!  So, when the loneliness kicks in, it doesn't stick around for too long.  Admittedly, without my friends, this experience would be nothing.  The people I've met here continue to amaze me, and sometimes I have to actually look at a calendar to prove to myself the short time I've known them.  Being in a foreign environment and not knowing the language and teaching for the first time, it's all very humbling.  I think all these factors combined with some generally amazing people has put our friendships into hyper-speed.  I feel like the level of friendship I have with a few of my friends would take years in a normal American situation.  It's quite an incredible feeling and difficult to describe, but it's certainly one of the coolest aspects of being here.

Anyway, daily Korean life.  Let's see... at first, it was really flattering being treated like a movie star.  People stop what they're doing to stare at me everywhere--whether on the street or the subway or a restaurant, and my school is no exception.  It's been a month, and the girls still SQUEAL and jump up and down and whisper to each other every time they see me.  As I said though, while initially flattering, it's getting old.  Any day that I walk to lunch or the bathroom, girls will follow me and say "Tee puh nee? Tee puh nee teacher?  Teacher?  Teacher?  Tee puh nee? " until I finally turn around, to which their reaction is to scream and jump up and down and run away.  It sounds cute, but try dealing with it 15 times a day.  Or, they'll actually muster the courage to say "Hi-ee"  and if I say "Hi" back, again, they utter an ear-splitting squeal and run away.  Also, any time in class I ask if there's any questions, inevitably, at least one student asks me something completely unrelated to class, such as  how I get my hair to look the way it does or why my eyes are a weird color or if my earrings are really Chanel.  It's actually kind of off-putting because I'll be talking about verb tenses, and it always throws me off. Needless to say, they are rapidly overcoming their shyness.  Be careful what you wish for I guess.

In other news, I finally mustered the courage (and the vocabulary) to venture to places on my own that require me to speak Korean, namely restaurants.  It wouldn't seem like that big a deal, since you would think you could just point to an item, but it's not that simple since I don't eat pork or beef.  I have to actually special order things, but first, to avoid confusion, I have to enquire as to whether or not the items I want contain said meat products.  It's nothing fancy, but last week, I tried it out for the first time, and it went perfectly!  No confused stares, comprehensible responses to my questions--it's pretty satisfying to know that the few bits of vocab and sentence structure I've learned actually work.  It's now to a point that I find myself wanting to go to restaurants just to try out new things, even when I have no desire to eat.  Hopefully I'll get over that before my pants don't fit any more...  What's funny though, is that my friend, Alicia, is adopted Korean.  She's actually taken Korean lessons and makes a huge effort to use the language, but where I get stared at, she gets glared at.  It's like, people are mad that she looks Korean but doesn't know the language.  Or maybe they think she's dumb?  Anyway, it seems like there's always some confusion when she tries to order for us, but they try so much harder to understand me because I'm clearly Western.  It's kind of a weird cultural thing I guess.  Another great tool when trying out your newly-acquired Korean skills is Konglish.  Yes, Konglish.  This is when you say English words the way a Korean would read them.  So, for instance, I have a hard time pronouncing the Korean work for chicken, but if I say "chee-kuhn" they get it.  I have a hard time using it because I laugh at how stupid I sound, but it has helped me in some tough situations.  Also, my chopstick skills are amazing, and I wake up every day craving kimchee.  I think I'm slowly becoming a real Korean ;-)

So, those are my observations for the time being.  I'm heading to China the first weekend in May, and I can't wait!  It's unbelievable that an exotic place like China isn't any bigger of a deal than a trip to Chicago in the states.  I'm sure I'll have lots of new things to report after that!  Take care, everyone.

XOXO

Tiffany

Pictures of my new home!

Buddhist temple at the entrance to the campus

Entrance to the high school

Standing on campus facing the school playground in the distance

Office I share with 5 other English teachers

My English classroom :-)

Weeknight night life in my neighborhood--it's always bustling!

Street food stalls lined up on my street

Close up of a street food stall.  Everyone huddles in and eats there.  Best and cheapest food ever!

My bathroom.  The shower isn't separate, so everything gets wet.  Makes cleaning super easy though.  P.S.  Ugliest toilet seat EVER.

Kitchen

Different angles from my tiny yet fabulous apartment :-)

Sweet Buddha, I'm a teacher!

Among all the excitement of being in a foreign country and meeting so many incredible new people, it is easy to lose sight of what I officially came here to do—teach English! My first day of teaching was last Thursday, and thus far, it’s been an adventure!

To back up a bit, the last few days of my orientation were pretty rough. We learned a lot about Korean culture, and one of the key elements was that things change very last minute and we are just expected to “roll with the punches” as they say. To illustrate this point, some pretty upsetting things occurred the last few days of training. First, my good friend here got kicked out for failing the drug test. I realize that’s a pretty serious offense, but the treatment she received was pretty brutal. On that same day, 7 people from my training class were told that they got moved out of Seoul and into the middle of the countryside. Needless to say, we were all very apprehensive about where we would be placed, so the atmosphere was really tense over the last few days of training.

I, however, got extremely lucky! I am currently residing in Gangnam, which is definitely one of the best possible areas to be! It is south of the river and is basically the haute couture part of Seoul. This is where people come to buy their Dior and Gucci and drive fancy cars. It’s also the place to come for the best clubs and bars. This is what I’ve been told anyway. I’m one of few people in the entire program that got placed within central Seoul, so this makes my placement even luckier! The only downside of living in this area is that everything is more expensive. Food and such are still cheap, but not as cheap as in other areas. My apartment is really small (about twice the size of my Paris apartment for those of you that saw it), but I can walk to my school in less than 5 minutes, and I am in the thick of all the action. Everyone else I’ve talked to has a pretty substantial commute—one girl even travels an hour and a half every day—so again, I’m very lucky. I am, however, under a constant microscope. As a foreigner, I get gawked at everywhere I go, and Koreans are not at all shy about staring. Because I’m so close to my school, I see my students outside of class constantly, so I need to be on my best behavior at all times i.e. no getting blasted on Soju and stumbling home. But not to worry—on those nights, I just stay with friends :-)

So, teaching! Wow! It’s been craziness. I’m teaching Freshmen at an all girls private Buddhist high school. It’s so different from anything in the states for sure. There’s a huge temple at the entrance to the school, which is the first thing I saw last Wednesday when I went to meet my new colleagues. The position itself is quite different from what we were prepared for, but then again, I seem to be the exception to every rule thus far. In training, we were taught how to co-teach with a native Korean English teacher, meaning that we aren’t entirely responsible for the class, and we are certainly never teaching alone. How large a role we play in the classroom is left entirely up to the Korean co teacher. I, however, do not have a co-teacher. I am entirely responsible for my class and represent 15% of their total English grade. As someone who has never taught before, this came as a bit of a shock, especially when they told me Wednesday evening (the day I arrived at my school) that I would be teaching a full day on Thursday. Every other person I talked to didn’t even begin co teaching until Monday. By this point, I had already taught 10 classes. I am also the only teacher in the entire school that has their own classroom. In Korean schools, teachers move to the various rooms while the students stay, but I have my own room which is connected to my office, and the students come to me. So, yes, I seem to have gotten the cushiest native English speaking position in all of Seoul, but also the most responsibility.

Teaching itself has been pretty good. I’m actually pretty impressed with how well my classes are going, although admittedly, we’re only doing introductions for my first 5 days which isn’t really teaching. The classes that I have are divided into beginner and advanced. Normally, all the classes are blended and you have to employ different teaching techniques to be able to teach all the levels together, but I only teach one at a time (again, cushy). Thus far, I’ve only taught beginner classes, but I only have each class once a week, so I only need to plan two lessons for each week, a beginner, and an advanced. Because each class has 20 students and I teach 5 classes a day, I am responsible for roughly 500 students. I find this number overwhelming, especially given that I need to learn their names—Korean names—which are incredibly long and difficult to pronounce.

The biggest challenge in my classes is that culturally, the ideal female student is expected to be silent. Apparently, I have a class of perfect Korean girls, because they do not talk. At all. Clearly this is an issue in a class entitled “English Conversation” where my sole duty is to get these girls talking. Last week, I saw 200 terrified faces staring at me, silently pleading with me not to make them speak. Seriously, these girls are terrified to speak in front of me. I’m hoping my advanced students are more talkative, but it has not been easy. I made two girls cry last week. As an introductory activity, I had the students create nametags and illustrate them with things they like to do. To prepare them, we drilled and practiced saying “My name is ________” and “I like __________” We went over all the different vocabulary and I had them pair up and practice before they made their nametags. Then, all they had to do was introduce themselves to the rest of the class using these two expressions. One girl had tears falling out of her eyes and was shaking so hard I could hardly understand her when it was her turn. Another girl came up to me, bowing profusely, begging me not to make her do the activity. Needless to say, it’s pretty rough. I really want my class to be one that they look forward to attending, not the one they dread all week. The expectations for these girls are really high—they attend classes 6 days a week, they attend school from 7:00 AM until 4:30 PM, then they attend private academies from 6:00 PM-11:00 PM EVERY DAY. This doesn’t even take into account the obscene amount of homework that they are given daily. High school is also the time when they prepare for their exams, and the pressure on them to do well is unreal. It’s insane. Point being, I want my class to be one hour a week where they can relax and have fun, not cry. Hopefully they’ll relax a little as time goes on.

My colleagues have been fantastic. It’s obvious that they want me to be happy. I office with 5 other English teachers, and any time I ask a question to the room at large, all 5 of them will converge and start talking in rapid Korean, and then give me the most thorough answer possible to the most basic question. They also say that the students are the same way in their classes as they are in mine, and that they’ve heard nothing but positive things from the students, so that makes me rest a little easier.

I guess the long and short of it is that I continue to be very very happy here, and things actually seem to get better and better. I realize this is a new position, but I really am enjoying teaching. The days fly by, and it seems to really suit my personality. More updates to come.

XOXO
Tiffany