Through the Eyes of the Waygook: Wrong word

I'm about 90% sure my Korean co-teachers do not speak a word of English outside of school. Their syntax is usually really good but its typically off when they use a word they get off of their smart phone translator, because their words are a little more eloquent than colloquial English. For example one of the teachers outside the English department who attends the conversation classes after school says that she has "rheumatism" which any person outside of med school would call joint problems. Hangul is also very blunt, and that carries over too. Meats are not given a new name post-packaging like beef, pork, or veal; they are simply called by what they were at the farm succeeded by meat or food (Example being cow meat). Here's a little blurb about how this can be hilarious:

CT1: Last night I ate dog food for dinner.

Me: Oh really, what was the occasion? (run out of money?)

CT1: My husband's parents came for dinner. 

Me: Do you not like his parents?

CT1: I prepared it for them, it is easier to digest than pork.

Me: Really, how do you prepare your dog food?

CT1: I just open the dog food package and put it in a bowl on top of rice.

CT2: You mean dog meat.

This may have been extended/ exaggerated a little bit FYI.

Reacquainted with cheese

This past week I've been pretty neglectful of my bloggy-woggy and I apologize for my few loyal readers. The past week I was without an internet connection yet again and I now have an internet connection that I'm paying for all by myself. Growing up one day at a time. But I digress. In this realm of social-purgatory I had to occupy my time in other ways, and fill the void in my schedule. And I crammed that void with cheese, and, man, it felt soooooo gooood.

I feel in Korea I have taken  my keen and healthy eating habits to a new level. Back home my one weakness was cheese. Here cheese is very expensive and  when you measure things in beer you don't buy anything beyond the bare necessities. Last Monday was a little different. I had been deprived of the internet for 3 days at this point and was a little high strung. And that's when I found cheese, on sale nonetheless, from "Denmark". When I got home I opened the package and found out they were cheese strings!!! Obviously these were not name brand cheese strings, they didn't even have a cartoon on the plain white package. That creamy salty flavour could sit on my tongue for my whole life if it wanted, or until legit-legit cheese re-enters my life.

When the weekend rolled around I went out for a friends birthday to Pasta Vanita, a classy little place that takes Italian and adds a very unnoticeable Korean twist, until you see the price. I had the pollo risotto mixed in tomato sauce with oven baked cheese on top. Then after a few hours of drinking and singing in the local Noraebong (Karaoke Bar) we went out for Kimchi Pajeon, oven-baked kimchi covered in, you guessed it, cheese. I wish I could remember the taste but all I remember is the texture of the crispy end pieces and the goopy inner pieces, some of the best drunk food I've had in Korea thus far. The following day I had a delicious cream of broccoli cheese soup which kept the cheese bender going until today. I say this because as I type away I'm peelingaway the last cheese string in my refrigerator.

Hopefully you'll find a cheap way back to me again, cheese. Because I love you about as much as Canadian beer and my family.

Showing Some Love!

I've been ranting a lot lately about how awful working with some of my co-teachers is and frankly I feel like I need to show'em some love.

My co-teacher with grade 3s and 4s is so organized in terms of resources she not only threw me a lifesaver, but an entire cruise ship of book report formats and folders for my afternoon classes that are so aesthetically pleasing I'm still beaming from the sight of them. I'll be carrying the reports on a USB key until I retire. She's really on top of her game. We'll be working on interviewing grade 6 students who will be, for lack of a better word, my interns and/or afternoon coffee-fetchers for the rest of the year. Pretty exciting. I'm pretty ecstatic about my afternoon classes and I feel the resources my CT has given me prior to are gonna make these classes so much better. The best thing about her is her teacher talk - although she can be a little blunt in sensitive situations she's tons of fun when we talk about the kids. She is starting to replace the less pleasurable co-teacher in terms of explaining my new roles and she's doing a better job. If there are any issues with my renewal I feel her and my fave CT will back me any day of the week, no problem.

My fave co has now upped the ante for me: I now need to submit lesson plans (Yippee! there's not a grain of sarcasm in that statement. Yet.) and ideally run the entire class when I'm with her. This still means I'm only doing one lesson plan a week but its a skill I need to harness if to avoid a major reality check upon returning to Canada, which will happen eventually. But the reins are in my hands, she only plans on speaking as a translator. This means I'll have to talk slower then I do now, but I feel this is a habit I need to develop when I'm teaching by myself.

I haven't talked the grade 6 teacher in a while, she's been sick lately and she isolates herself in what is by far the best classroom in the school, frankly I'd probably do it too. But I walked through her class on my break to get to my office and she was speaking English for almost a whole minute! This is groundbreaking!

Now, outside of school, I have just started playing in the Spring ROKU League with a stellar team. Despite losing a tough game saturated with politics on rulings and a tough zone defense, we pulled off two victories out of our 3 games separated by an hour a piece. A long, long day to say the least, just ask my legs. Our philosophy is to utilize our speed and solid fundamentals to win our games, and, with the trust I have in my handlers, I personally run with the belief that dumping wins games. Everyone on this team has energy and extra room in their heart for fun-loving teammates. I can wait to see how the rest of the season heats up. I like our chances to make a run for the pennant, but anything can happen, and nothing's impossible.  

There's the love, pay it forward.

Korean Kid: Up Face

I haven't decided how I feel about this pudgy square-headed boy; he always participates but he isn't the brightest and when his weaknesses are poked fun of he loses a bit of control. For a grade 3 he is a man among boys and has the pride of a king. He has never hit one of his classmates but fake punches when they set him off probably just to watch them cower. He has every right to act this way, being above school law like every student athlete, as a member of the prized baseball team. He's been working with the throwing coach since I've been here. To be fair though, I watch baseball practice from the time it takes me to walk from the main entrance until I'm out of the parking lot. He's a good kid very vocal all the time and boisterous 50% of the time, but there's a willingness to learn another language. If you make it fun.

I call him Up-Face because of his square head reminding me of Carl Fredricksen from up. Sure he doesn't have the thick-rimmed glasses so many other Koreans do, or the hunch, but he's got same hair style under his baseball cap. He's got a grimace that's uncanny to old Mr. Fredricksen's too. Despite a rising temperature he still wears this Michelin Man coat to further flaunt his stout stature and conceal his wittle pot-belly which can still be adorable when your nine.

My first associate teacher had this habit of spilling to me and my fellow teacher-candidate what she thought her students would grow up to be; not knowing the rites of passage of Korean students nor the opportunities being laid out before them I won't take a stab at it. But I'll tell you this, like Mr. Fredrickson, any kid who gets the opportunity to meet him will enjoy his company, eventually.

Reflecting on History

I always thought that history was one of those courses that was a last minute add-on to the curriculum that just stuck. It’s great non-fiction, for the most part. But now, I’m doing a correspondence with a Grade 3 teacher from back home about Korea as a country and its population.  How it worked was the students came up with questions and sent them to me for an answer. I was actually really upset about how little I knew and also how much I rely on Wikipedia for basic things I’ve forgotten or never bothered to find out.

Reading questions such as:

What trees grow there?

What’s Korea’s national animal?

How many statues are there in Korea? (This answer is up in the millions but I don’t know what a single one is called or what it honors apart from Buddha.)

What are some popular drinks? (Instantly Soju popped into my brain but I don’t think that’s approp for grade 3)

What types of animals live in Korea and what’s your favourite?  (There’s a bird that reminds me of a Mockingjay from The Hunger Games but I don’t know the name of it and spent a frustrating fifteen minutes scouring the internet for “black and white bird names”)

I guess I’ve become intimidated in regards to asking questions about things I feel people my age should already know, or don’t need to know. The latter is kind of embarrassing as a society, we should always be trying to better ourselves and what better way than to improve our knowledge or diction even if it only comes in handy for one question on trivia night, ever. We learn these things from all the voices around us. That’s how I know what it is to be Canadian. History shapes mentality and mottoes: “do whaddya gotta do” “eat or be eaten” “whenever you puke on your shirt put $50 in the front pocket of your suit.”

I look at some of the kids I taught during placement who were African-Canadian, Indian and Somalian and there a different set of values because it correlates to their history and lifestyle model. I look back and I bet I couldn’t, still can’t actually, name 30% of all the countries in the world and these kids could; maybe, its travelling prior to arriving here or maybe it’s the stigma that their parents have pinned to neighbors, teachers, and realtors from different countries that we generally label as The Middle East and Africa. This behaviour is exactly how my grandfather was when he was alive telling my younger cousin not to wear his hat a certain way because that’s how black people wear it, too bad they were Indian.

Learning your history is gateway into sociology and vice versa. Without it there’s no sense of identity in a country: (preach time) you won’t know what your ancestors fought for, you won’t know why healthcare is free, you won’t know your national animal and you even won’t know why it’s your national animal. You’d have to rely on the fisherman’s tales of your ancestors. As much as I like those stories I don’t think they’re anything to build an identity around.

Go out and Learn about stuff it’s never too late!  

You always remember your first Vice PrinciPALs

I had the luxury of having two Vice-Principals in my first semester as a teacher. Both were very kind, in a sense. Unfortunately, they have moved onto greater things in life. This obviously means I get to meet more Koreans obsessed within whatever educational admin-people do for a living (is it typing?). Just kidding, I'm sure their jobs are just as important as training the leaders and athletes of tomorrow. But I digress...

My female Vice-Principal, who retired, reminded me a lot of my Nana. She was very kind and always smiling away. She stood outside every morning, rain or shine, greeting all the students and teachers. Her English wasn't the best but she tried to talk to me about teacher-related things, or compliment me on my tie or my exquisite physique - never winked when she said stuff like that though. She seemed like a very genuine person and I never heard her raise her voice.

Now the male Veep was a completely different administrator. He liked telling jokes, drinking, sleeping, and his English was pretty minimal. He was an old grump I would say, actually kind of like Grandpa. That's not weird at all is it? Either way every time I talked to him outside of school he was rosy-cheeked. I can't really blame him. One month into my tenure at the school I heard through the grapevine he was due to become the principal of another school in the next year, so he didn't seem as caring as his counterpart.

Our first Encounter:

My first Friday in Korea was my first day going to my school. I met my evil Co-teacher and she took me to a hotel since my apartment wasn't ready yet. I pulled out my presents that I had bought in Canada for the Principal and Vice Principal: maple syrup and shot glasses, respectively. When she told me there were two Veeps I was a little disappointed to separate the two ever-so-Canadian shot glasses. When I presented them to each of them, out of the decorative box, the wiser Veep looked at it completely disinterested, and the grump said, "Oh Soju" with a big grin on his face. At least I won one of them over.

Spoiler Alert: I'm lesson planning the whole year in the next two weeks.

I know, this is ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as it sounds. These lesson plans are for 2 classes I see once a week starting two weeks after my all my lesson plans are due. I'd like to say I'm an eighth of the way through this malarkey but I'd be lying. I feel I could have done more today, but I had a rough day yesterday, and a took a while for me to fall asleep, and here's my story.

Yesterday I went to school looking forward to meeting new specialist teachers I'll be sharing an office with this year, planning out the month with my favourite co-teacher, and continuing to develop a rough syllabus to the classes I'm teaching by myself. None of these really happened at all, at least not the way I wanted them to unroll. None of the new teachers in my office speak English and a 2 week holiday has damaged my co-teachers' English too. Not to mention I'm the only mainstay male in the office now. Then I'm told we don't have any classes today, which wasn't a major surprise, but I'll be working with the grade 3s and 4s this month, which was a surprise. And then the 3-4 English teacher gives me the breakdown of my afternoon classes:
Monday: Phonics with below average Grade 6 students.
Tuesday: Conversation Class with English Teachers.
Wednesday: Story Telling Class with Grades 5 and 6 scholarly, or so I'm told, students .
Thursday: Conversation Class With English Teachers.
Friday: Story Telling Class with Grades 3 and 4 interested in improving their English.

This didn't seem half bad because I can half-ass Tuesdays and Thursdays by summarizing an article related to the news, being superficial, or education and let the wicked witch go on a tangent about something (I've stopped listening but I still manage to correct her).  And I've come up with my diagnostic reading tests for both classes and an ice breaker game, which is three weeks of planning done. After the breakdown the 34CT (awfully robotic abbreviation) explains I can do whatever I want with the class, but she wants a complete lesson plan, for the year, done by next Friday. I practically shit myself when I heard that. Once she showed me what she thinks a lesson plan is I was no longer afraid of this daunting task. A table for each month listing the week of the lesson, the book I'm reading, the activity around it, materials I'll need, and a spot for my signature. Peace. Of. Cake. I've been plugging away and I'm actually enjoying myself mostly because my library is organized. I'm using workbooks and specific stories to help scaffold learning, I'm currently drafting unit plans, I almost feel like a full-time teacher.

Here's comes a rant though. This past weekend my cellphone has been unable to phone out or send text messages. So I asked my evil CT to help me because she got it with me before I found out she was evil. Obviously, because I was speaking at a regular speed she didn't understand me so I tried calling someone on my phone to get the automated message for her to translate:
"Maybe, uh, just take it to the phone shop and the girl will know what to do."
"What did the message say?"
"Go to the phone shop and she will fix your phone."
"The girl at the store doesn't speak English though... can you come to help me communicate with her."
"How about this, you go today by yourself and see and I will come tomorrow with you."
"Alright."
Turns out all I needed to do was put money onto my plan. She couldn't have explained that to me? Thank goodness the girl at the store knew the words "pay money for phone." Now that this problem was solved I was pretty happy the Wicked Witch didn't even show up today.

After school on Monday, frazzled as can be with the feeling of loneliness and stress of planning, I went shopping for groceries as I usually do on a Monday and got some pretty good deals and treated myself to a delicious Asian pear. Then I went home and watched some episodes of Californication and then the episode of Sons of Anarchy where ______ dies!!! Most shocking thing so far in that whole series. Tragically though, my computer and/or my wireless source are not built for streaming lots and lots of high-quality drama my laptop froze right before this character's final heroic battle. I was crushed, refreshing the page, restarting my computer; nothing would bring it back. Rattled and distraught, I thought this was a good time to go to bed. So I tucked myself and started to read A Picture of Dorian Gray to try and forget about Sons. Little did I know there's a murder there too, bringing me back to Sons. I tossed and turned, and even counted sheep to try and fall asleep I was just too wired. I managed to fall asleep eventually but I woke up grumpy this morning.

Tuesday is a relatively light day for me this semester, thankfully, so I did a good chunk of work before caving into watching the final part of Sons... and then the next episode (keep that one under your hat, please). But I really like this pre-planning stuff it makes me feel organized and fully prepared so maybe, when I need to relax, I won't need to lesson plan and, spoiler alert, cave and watch some more Sons.  

Starting Tomorrow: Travelling between two worlds.

Tomorrow is the first day of school where I plan on teaching something!! This hasn't happened since. . . December. I can't wait to actually do something besides watch a movie. Downside, I'm back with the Wicked Witch playing the role of tape recorder half the week. But I'm always excited to see the Grade 5s, but now they're in Grade 6! Craziness. Working with the witch might actually benefit me with classroom management because she's runs the tightest ship in the school as far as I know and the first day is the most important one for that stuff. The fact is she's a control freak, precisely why I am a tape recorder.

Here's what I'm expecting to deal with again for the upcoming month from Wednesday to Friday. The children enter silently to an easy-listening song from an artist who thinks Billboard top 100 is actually a billboard. Once seated, the students will sing, if they don't she tells them to. After she's satisfied she will say "Okay, attention everyone" and then talk in Korean. Meanwhile, I'm standing on the opposite side of the class because there's no where for me to sit other than a student's empty desk. Then we have the Powerpoint presentation for numb-nuts. Being the Grade 6 teacher she should be aware that they've had English classes for 3 years prior, but her presentations are flash cards: One word, one picture, even if the word is abstract like "Believe." My duty is to pronounce these words clearly and have the students repeat them. There are never sentences, just words. She has a 3rd grade class too which I don't teach but I've watched through the window and they just sing a song and then she speaks Korean, and no one else talks. She's a stickler for order and that's what she gets. Her seating plan revolves on their grades which plummet from start to finish. Team A is usually 4 kids, if she's lucky, by the end of the year when in the beginning it was 10 and Team C or D dominates the room. Maybe its because kids feel like she's wasting their time, I know I feel that way. I've thought about just blowing her off, but that'd be far too unprofessional for a person due to sign his RENEWAL CONTRACT MONDAY!!! Where would I go while I'm blowing this teacher off you ask? Let me tell you.

Kids are spunky and packed with energy which peaks in between Grades 4 and 5. Some cynical teacher told me that being an educator is like being a used car salesman, you have to get them to buy the idea that this is important and necessary, even though it sucks. I don't know what it is, but these kids tend to eat of my hand unless they really struggle with English.  At which point my Grade 5 CT will help them out. She's my favourite one without a doubt. We split the workload and she gives me a lot of running room with whatever game or activity I plan. I wish I could tell you more about it, but its the fact I'm not confined to this strict regiment of saying one word and we share a long a desk. The biggest difference is the students, they enjoy coming to class. I think the most they've laughed was seeing a picture of Moby, because apparently bald people are hilarious in Korea. Either way, I'm looking forward to kicking of the new year, despite the stickler. So long as I get to travel upstairs to the land of the free and the fun, I don't mind being a tape recorder.