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