My English Teacher's Name is Gillian...

So it has been exactly 9 months since I moved to South Korea and I still find myself learning something new everyday. It's definitely not easy living in a country you have never been before but living in a country with vast cultural differences where the absence of your native language is evident, makes your daily life that much more challenging. One thing I have realized over the past couple months, is that I cannot blame every misunderstanding on simply being "lost in translation". When a conversation with a Korean hits a road block and both parties are questioning the others ideas or intentions, there are 3 things you must consider.

1. Yes, something could possibly be "lost in translation".
2. The whole conversation could be a misunderstanding.
3. Yes, you heard correctly and now realize how brutally honest Koreans can be.

To help you understand what I am getting at, I will provide you with personal examples from each of the instances above:

1. It is almost expected that when attempting to learn another language, far different from your own, words, phrases and even ones intentions might be lost in translation. After a night of drinking with two of my taekwondo instructors, they began asking me and my other foriegn co workers how to pronounce certain words in English and vice versa. One word they so willingly taught us to pronounce in Korean, is the phase "Peyontae". Their English, compared to many other Koreans I have met, is pretty decent, however they were having some difficulty explaining the exact definition of the word "peyontae" to us and decided to look it up on their phone. The definition read along the lines of "to observe cute, round or chubby cheeks" and seemed appropriate to verbalize to an infant or baby. The next day at work, I was excited to share my new Korean lingo with my grade 6 students (who always remind me that I am living in THEIR country and should therefore learn how to speak THEIR language). So with a proud smile on my face, I walked up to one of my students and in Korean repeated my newfound vocabulary "You are a peyontae". This students face immediately turned red and most of the class burst into laughter (the other half questioning my mentality). Assuming my pronunciation was waaayyy off I asked them to assist me with my articulation... that was until one student declared, "teacher, why would you call Alice a pervert???" So..... I think by "round" he meant "vulumptuous", by "cute" he meant "sexy" and by "chubby cheeks" he meant... well not the cheeks I was thinking of!?

2. Obviously a misunderstanding is common practice in a foriegn country. This proves to be true ESPECIALLY when you are a teacher to young children who can barely pronounce the word "fine" ("I'm pine thanks" - its F-F-FINE...you are not a tree!) or constantly interchange the letters "R" and "L" or "B" and "V" even though they look and sound noticeably different ("I want to go lorrelbrading-- ROLLERBLADING! And it was a ROBBER who stole the money, not a LOVER!"). Anyways, like I said, misunderstandings are common occurances in my daily life but nevertheless are entirely expected. One particular instance happened the other day in my grade 3 class when I was asking each student about their weekend. I got the usual mundane answers, like "I played video games" or "I rode a bike" however one student caught me way off guard when he said, "I went to my grandfathers home and watched him burry corpses in his backyard". Uhhhhh...? I had to pause for a moment, clearly taking note that a student just told me he watched his grandfather dig graves for dead bodies in his backyard, but also believing that this MUST be a miscommunication. After asking this student to repeat himself 3 times, I came to the conculsion that his grandfather is a farmer and he therefore spent his sunday afternoon watching his granddad plant crops in the back... or so I hope...

3. And lastly what I have come to distinctively pertain to Korean culture is their abrubt honesty. A classic example of this occured last christmas where a foriegn co teacher of mine was given a christmas card by our Korean secretary/co worker that basically read, "Merry Christmas! Happy New year! Lose weight!" Koreans are not afraid to tell you when you look like crap (and no, they wont cherry coat it with "you look tired"), they will literally say to your face and without you inquiring; "You look bad today" or "Your face looks puffy" or "I've noticed you have more and more grey hairs everyday". It's almost inevitable that one will grow tougher skin just by living and working in Korea. Now, the surprising thing, is how one should respond to such an honest/painful remark. What I have found to be shockingly acceptable in Korean culture is to admit you were under the influence of alcohol the night before (even if you may not have been) and Koreans will be completely and utterly empathetic. Stange concept I know, where in North America, a real hangover would most definitely be covered up by a fake cough or sniffle over the phone explaining you caught a 24 hour virus, in Korea a cold or even the flu can be cured with tylonol and a face mask. A hangover on the other hand, proves that you are a socialable person and invites conversation about events of the night and future drinking arrangements.

Now, this brutal honesty doesn't just stop at friends or co workers but has also leaked into the younger generations, aka my students. Last week, I had my grade 6 class write a diary entry. Each week I assign them a topic for me to edit, grade and return to them the next class. Since I have been assigning these diary entries for the past 9 months now, I kind of ran out of ideas and recycled another foriegn teachers proposal to have my students write one page, introducing me, their foreign teacher, to a friend or family member. I sort of had a weird feeling about this one, mainly because this is the same class that has told me, more than once, that I have bad style and weird hair. Anyways, I would like to share with you some of what my grade 6 students wrote to describe me *the last 2 are my personal favorites:

"First, she is my English teacher. She said she is 23 years old but I think she is 30. So I think she is lie to us. Maybe I will like her much better if she doesn't lie to us about age and plays more games. She is sometimes funny but not always. At last, she is tall and her clothes are very strange and her hair is curly". - Kelly, grade 6

"My foriegn teacher's name is Gillian. She is 23 years old. She has curly hair. She is Canadian. Her fashion style makes her look very old because her style is like grandma. She is nice sometimes but sometimes she is angrily". - Emily, grade 6

"My foriegn teacher is tall. She smiles a lot. I don't like her clothing but she is kind and a little funny. She likes bagels and poutine." - Janice, grade 6

"This is my English teacher Gillian. We saw pictures of her childhood and brothers and parents. I think she was more beautiful when baby than now. She has dark face and not fat. She can speak English very well but she can't speak Korean well. She is kind because she gave us Canada money but I want a dollar. She is sometimes bad because she gave us strange cheese. She has a lot of earings than normal people. It looks TERRIBLE. I want her to put off them!!!"
- Sophie, grade 6

"My English teacher is my teacher Gillian. She is from Canada. Her style is like grandmother style. Her hair is much curl. It is like a snake or ramien noodle. She has 2 brothers. One is handsome the other is so so. She likes Korean food. She doesn't play a lot of games so she treats children badly. Sometimes she is kind though. She is tall so she looks like an ostrich"
- Owen, grade 6

Write more soon,!

Gonna go cry myself to sleep...

Miss you all!

Signing off,

Gillian "grandma style ramien haired" Teacha xx