So I know it has been a little while since my last entry but to be honest, I've settled into such a routine here that not much has changed. Last week we had an (extra) long weekend- Monday AND Tuesday off, so the last 3 days of work were pretty uneventful. I have now officially remembered all of my students names (it took longer than expected) but living in a homogeneous society, it's not like I can differentiate between hair color, eye color or even skin tone!! Plus the first month of working, all my students were wearing those SARS masks so literally all I could see were straight black bangs, and their eyes. haha.. that made things MUCH more difficult! Especially since my little ones haven't gone through puberty yet, I even had trouble deciding which student was male or female! Anyways, that time has come and gone and now I'll only have a slip up once in a while... between names that is!
All my students still can't fathom the idea that I was actually born with naturally curly hair! You should see their faces when I tell them I DO NOT HAVE A PERM! Not only that, but when I tell them my hair is naturally brown (not black like theirs) they can't believe I didn't dye it. You should see the look they give my co worker Leigh (who has blond hair). She has had students ask her to rip out pieces of her hair so they can go home with "gold". It's quite hilarious actually. My grade 6 students asked me if they could touch my hair to see what "real" curly hair feels like and they patted my head as if I were a small, delicate puppy!
On another note, I recently found out something that when thinking back, makes A LOT of sense. When I first arrived to teach at my school, I thought "Gillian" might be too difficult for my students to pronounce so I wrote "Gill" on the board instead. 9 out of 10 times I did this, my classes would crack up, and I figured it was because they had never heard that name before. Well I was badly mistaken. I was just told that in Korean "Gill" (pronounced "Geel") means "female genitals"- to put it politely. So I am basically calling myself...well... you get the point!
Today I had the most terrifying class experience EVER!! If you know me at all, you would know that I am deathly afraid of bugs, more specifically spiders or cockroaches! eeeeeeek! Well, as I was in the middle of teaching my grade 3 class, I looked down by my feet and noticed a HUUUUUGE disgusting half cockroach, half tarantula, half DRAGON looking bug! I was absolutely HORRIFIED as I watched all its 6 legs crawl quickly across the floor, under the desks and over my students shoes. I immediately gasped and ran to the back of the classroom! I didn't know what to do?! I knew that if I told my students there was a huge bug crawling around the classroom they would start jumping and screaming and I really didn't need the headache! I also wasn't about to kill it either- not for humanitarian reasons or anything, there was just no way in hell I was coming in contact with that dragon looking thing! My students were silent and looked at me like I was crazy! "Teacha, why are you running around classroom?" They all just sat there staring at me, waiting for some sort of justification for my ridiculous and random outburst... but I couldn't tell them the truth, in fear of creating chaos. So I thought fast and told them that we are going to play a game which I had to somehow develop around me standing on a chair in the back of the classroom! One thing I learned about myself being here is that I am a fast thinker... when I need to be. I told the students to collectively think of a word and they had to try and get me to say the word by using similar words (ie: if the word they were trying to get me to say was "King", they could say words like, "Palace", "Queen", "Crown", etc). Only when I figured out which word they originally chose, then I was allowed to come off of the chair. It worked perfectly. Muahaha! The bell rang and I was a goner!
Anyways, I know in some past entries I have innocently joked about the fact that dog is considered a delicacy here, ("That dog was delicious")... but just in the past week I have had 3 close calls to actually eating it myself!! There are many restaurants in the area where I live and I've only been going to the same 2! Ryan (my co worker) and I thought we should be adventurous and try something different just for the heck of it. Well that was quickly shot down when we walked into 3 different restaurants with no pictures on the menu. It would be like pointing to gibberish on a piece of paper saying, "I want THAT". So the forth restaurant we checked out did have pictures on the menu... it was brown meat that looked like beef or pork. I was a little more hesitant than Ryan, but rightly so, since the waitress came up to us with a smile saying "Not many foreigners enjoy dog". My stomach literally turned and I was out of there faster than you can say DOG! The next 2 restaurants were the same situation, however we asked the the waiters before hand what kind of meat they served. When we finally arrived at the last restaurant the woman behind the counter told us they serve Duck and Ryan was ecstatic about that. I was too, however, I kept thinking, what if she actually said "dog" and we just heard wrong. I was really uneasy about it... but nonetheless, had a delicious Korean meal.... duck or dog, it went down well!
Well I really don't have much more to blog on about. I leave for Vietnam in 3 days and can't wait to get there already! I'm really happy about bringing summer clothes and lying on a beach! The weather here though has warmed up quite a bit as jackets are no longer needed. Tonight actually felt like a cool Florida evening! When I get back from my trip I am going to start visiting a Korean Orphanage downtown that I have heard is in need of English speaking volunteers. A friend of mine went down there last weekend and had a great time interacting with the children, playing games and reading them books. I'm going to try and go once or twice a month... I mean it's something different to do on the weekends other than drinking! I'll also feel like I'm doing something valuable and productive with my time.
That's all for now. I'm sure I will have many more stories from Vietnam upon my return.
Miss you all!
Signing off,
Gillian xx
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