"Lorrelbrade"

Hi again! It has been far too long since my last post! I do apologize for that, but since I am now entering my fifth month here, there is not much that is really that new or exciting happening in my daily life and I rather not bore you with my everyday routine, so instead i am saving some interesting/humorous stories to blog about.

I know I mentioned in my last post that I was planning on going to a cherry blossom festival... but that didn't exactly turn out as planned. It hasn't been nearly as warm here as it has for those of you in Toronto (even Ottawa so I hear) which lead to a lot of festivals being cancelled due to poor weather conditions (some of the cherry blossoms have yet to bloom...!) What would the point of going to a Cherry Blossom festival be when half of the trees haven't even blossomed?! So that, as well as our lack of planning, was the basis for our absence at the festival. Oh well, there are plenty of beautiful (half-blossomed) cherry trees around my apartment that I can look at... for free :)

Today was the first HOT day we have had since the beginning of spring! It was so gorgeous today I walked to work in a t-shirt and capris...only to arrive at my desk with a black over sized HEATER blowing behind my chair. Not only is that the biggest waste of energy EVER but why the hell was there a heater on full blast on practically the nicest day of the year?!!? Last week when it randomly snowed (crazy, I know) there was noooo heater in sight! It's just hard to understand their logic I suppose. Even during the winter season, they would keep the windows wide open in the hallway so I would clench my attendance folders and notebooks close to my chest and run from classroom to classroom! Now, when it's starting to warm up the windows are shut and the heaters are blowing. Doesn't make any sense to me?!

I'm sure I have said before that Koreans are very hard working individuals. I mean, other than the fact that these kids are in school 24 hours a day, construction sites are pretty much built overnight! The other day I walked into work and noticed 2 men moving around some of the furniture in the lobby just in front of where we (foreign teachers and secretaries) sit. The bell rang and I was off to teach my morning class. When I returned a mere 45 minutes later, no joke, there was a 20 ft tall brown wooden book shelf built into the wall and not only that, it was already FILLED with books!! I was only gone for 45 MINUTES!! How in the world......? Oh Korea!

Anyways, since I felt bad about not making it to the Cherry Blossom festival, some friends and I decided to go on a mission Friday night after work. We all met at the bus terminal at 930pm with the clothes on our backs and got tickets for the first bus out of Gwangju. At 945pm we were on a bus headed to a town south of Gwangju called Mokpo. Nothing really special in Mokpo, but we thought we would check it out and since it was only an hour away, we didn't even need to spend the night. Mokpo is right on the coast, however it was dark when we arrived so we didn't actually get to see the water. It is even smaller than Gwangju, so of course we stood out like sore thumbs but all of us new enough (minimal) Korean to request the cab driver drop us off at a bar downtown! We went straight to the downtown area, had a couple drinks, met some cool people and then headed back to Gwangju at 7am! Thankfully no one had any expectations because I'm sure we would have been disappointed... but all in all we had a pretty enjoyable time!

Actually a friend of mine who moved to Gwangju a month or 2 ago, was previously living in a very small town about 3 hours away where there were only 5 other foriegners!! Just to put it into perspective for you, Gwangju has just under 100 foreign teachers (I believe) and Seoul, probably over one thousand! Her Principal asked if they could take some photos of her and without questioning it, she agreed (assuming it had to do with her alien card and registration). About a week later as she headed out to the grocery store, she noticed huge billboards of her face on a bus and on the sides of buildings! They used her face as propaganda to win over more students by proving they hire foreign teachers even in such quaint locations! I'm not sure if that conversation with her Principal was none existent or just lost in translation. Either way she was mortified and long story short, she is now living in Gwangju, in hopes of escaping her unwanted and highly undesirable fame!

So in terms of the teaching part (you know, the whole reason why I even came to Korea) is going very well. I have noticed a change in myself in that I really don't care what these children think of me. At first, I was a little self conscious standing in front of a classroom teaching these kids something I just read myself about 25 minutes ago, but now I can say that Iam pretty confident in my teaching abilities however I am also not as much of a push over as I previously was. I end up making at least 2-3 students do push-ups every class (for either speaking when I'm speaking, using their cell phones or forgetting their books) and I am not at all afraid to send them to the office! On one side, I do sympathize with these kids in that all they do is study, however that does not give them the right to be shit disturbers in class. What I think annoys me the most is that they are extremely respectful to the Korean teachers yet they treat the foreign teachers like crap! However, being more stern with them has greatly helped and I think they are starting to realize that even though I'm a foreigner in THEIR country (they remind me of this everyday), I still have more power than they do! I actually made a boy cry the other day when I took 10 stickers from him for speaking Korean in class (that is a big no no)! It was soo hard not to give him the stickers back because, lets be real, I couldn't care less about collecting animal stickers! But of course I had to stand by my word. I do get those smart asses once in a while that do make a good point, but is still against the rules at my academy. For example, "Johnny, don't speak Korean in class!!!!" "But teacha, I AM KOREAN!" My standard answer is, "Not in my class your not!" haha no just joking. I typically explain that it is English class so we try to only speak English.

The language barrier hasn't really been THAT bad with teaching and all, but in certain situations it can be a huge inconvenience! Just before I began teaching my last grade 5 class of the day, I had 2 male students walk in and start physically throwing punches at each other, yelling and screaming in Korean! I quickly ran towards them and separated the boys but one was already crying and the other was acting like a tough guy giving the crying student dirty looks. I took them both into the hallway and tried to get them to explain what had happened. Well...that was a pretty big waste of time. They both couldn't form a proper sentence in English so basically what I got out of that confrontation was, "Carlton blew me over face pencil case my loose on ground". ?????????????
It can be very frustrating for me, as I'm sure it is for them too!

On a more humorous note, I have explained in past entries that Koreans have a very hard time distinguishing between the letter R and L. They interchange them all the time and it is VERY difficult to understand the initial word they are trying to pronounce. Especially a word like 'Rollerblade', some students pronounce as 'Lorrelbrade'... over time I have come to understand which word is being horribly mispronounced, but it is still somewhat difficult to unravel. When I was marking my students tests a couple weeks ago, my one class whom I assigned middle names too, wrote both their first and middle names on each test paper. My one student Mark (middle name, Ricky) wrote, "Mark Licky". haha! It was so cute and so hilarious! Today, I was using the computer in class which is attached to a huge projector so the kids can see exactly what I am typing, etc (the same class which asked if the woman on google with huge breasts that showed up after I typed in "CN Tower", was my sister). Anyways, something went wrong with the Internet and a message box popped up (written all in Korean of course) with 2 options to press. Either "L" or "R". Since I can't read Korean (yet) I asked my class which button I need to click on to get me back to the Internet page and literally half the class said "R" and half the class said "L"!! At first I was getting angry because I thought they were trying to mess me up on purpose and waste time so I didn't have to teach them anything for the time being (at least that's what I would do if I had a foreign teacher), but then I realized that they are actually trying to tell me which letter...but cant get it right! haha it was so funny and I couldn't stop myself from laughing out loud. After that, we spent the rest of the class pronouncing different words that begin with L and R! I made them repeat the word "ROLLERBLADE" 35 times.

Well that's about all I have for now. I recently booked my flight to Tokyo which I am super excited about! I am meeting my friend Sarah there and she is flying back to Korea with me and staying in my apartment for a week or so! I can't wait! I've only heard amazing things about Japan and Tokyo (the food being one of them)! I don't leave until May 21st so I'm sure I will have another blog post before then!

Miss you all and write more soon!

Signing off,

Gillian teacha xx