Yes, I'm still alive...

So that hiatus proved longer than anticipated. My humblest apologies. My school computer recently blocked the blogger website so I can't blog at school, and I'm still waiting on a replacement power cord for my duh-duh-duh-Dell. But life has been good since you heard from me last...and as of today I've been here just over 4 WEEKS!!! That's a whole month gone! I can hardly believe that I have only 11 more to go!

I'm blogging right now on Hil's new fancy-schmancy HP Pavilion. She blew her first paycheck on a computer, I blew mine on a DIGITAL CAMERA!! So now my blog will be colorful. I haven't taken any pictures of the apartment yet because its not clean :( But someday soon it will be. Probably tomorrow even. Anyway. Here's an excerpt of an email I recently sent to my uncle...it pretty much sums up my thoughts on Korean driving:


"Korea is loud, busy, crazy and dirty! There are so many people and none of them seem to follow any laws/rules/patterns of behavior regarding safe and proper traffic flow (pedestrian or car). I never realized how many expected behavioral norms we have in the States. For example, we stop at red lights. Why do we stop at red lights? Because we're supposed to. Why do people stop at red lights in Asia? Oh wait. They don't. Not conducive to getting them where they need to go. Pedestrians? Oh, you mean targets. They should walk on the sidewalk to avoid getting hit. Wait, there's no sidewalks? Then they'll just have to walk down the side of the very narrow street. And there's a rule about which side of the street you walk down right? With traffic, against traffic...oh, no. You walk whichever way suits your fancy at the time. Maybe right down the middle of the street.

General Rules of Korean behavior:
1) Do whatever you want whenever you want
2) When you are impeded from doing what you want, honk or yell loudly, perhaps shove or push, and just maybe, hit them with your car

ITS CHAOS! CHAOS EVERYWHERE!"


For a country of millions and millions of people, they certainly don't operate very efficiently. And they could use some efficiency. Perhaps a study on Frederick Taylor's theory of scientific management. But I digress..


Tomorrow after church Hil and I (and some people from orientation and church) are going to the east coast for a retreat. It'll be a nice escape.


Okay, here are a few pictures from my first night on the town with my new camera! These are pictures of Leigh and Hil at Yongsan, an electronics market-area in downtown Seoul:





















Yes, I realize that some are blurry, and I assure you that it is because of user error :)


More after the retreat! Love you all!


Jess

Nothing like blogging in my very own classroom!

Hey yo!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Korean Experience. Pull up a comfy chair, a hot cup of coffee, and settle in. I think it's going to be a good one.

I can't believe I'm already in my third week! Life goes fast in Korea! Maybe it's being surrounded by elementary school kids all day - they move at the speed of light. You blink once and suddenly one's been stabbed with an exact-o knife. They don't use scissors here, but every single-digit youngster has an exact-o knife tucked into their Hello Kitty pencil case. God forbid they ever start a revolution.

This is my first week of teaching the sixth-graders (nearly) all by myself. Its still difficult because of the fact that up until now they've had everything translated for them by my co-teacher. In my opinion, its mostly unnecessary. In my experience of learning languages, you're never going to understand every word in a sentence right off the bat. But they don't need to understand every word - in most cases, they just need one or two. I know my co-teacher means well, but these kids are smart, and in my opinion its time to cut some of the apron strings.

For today's lesson, I had them review our unit topic (How was your vacation?) and then make mini-books about their summer vacations. It involved both reading and writing full sentences and also caused them to have to be creative with their thoughts. This is great for Korean children because so often in their schooling there is one "right answer" stressed, and its routine memorization of the right answer. I'm still trying to convince them that when asked "How are you today?", "I feel terrible today" or "I'm great" are just as correct as "I'm fine, thank you" which is the phrase that they teach all Koreans to say all the time. For crying out loud, these people could be having a horrible day and you would have no idea.

But the lesson went well. They were very creative for the most part, and it kept their attention, plus they got to keep it to take home. My 6th-graders are good kids when they pay attention and feel encouraged. My 5th-graders are best when they're challenged and/or involved in competition. The 4th-graders are great when you interact with them personally and play learning games. The 3rd-graders are good at looking cute, but as far as English, you might as well be trying to teach them differential equations - either way, they'll probably spend the lesson picking their noses and giggling/hitting each other.

In other news, I think I'm becoming less of a bumbling Korean culture idiot. I will always be easy to pick out here, I will always be a foreigner - no Westerner will ever be Korean enough. But once you embrace that, it's pretty smooth sailing. If people on the subway or the bus or in the grocery store are talking about me, its not like I'd know anyway. And I've never really been one to care about how others view me (I come from the "If you don't like me, that's your problem" school of social interaction). But I am learning more about everything here...in order to survive, you must adapt.

This weekend was fun - we had our first weekend out on the town. Hil and I are getting braver with regards to riding the subway, so we went to go visit my orientation roommate Leigh who lives near downtown Seoul. She took us out to dinner and then to the Kyobo bookstore (ITS HUGE, and its a good thing, because there are always 5 million people there). Its basically like a Barnes and Noble, except there are no chairs. None. So if you want to sit and read, you pull up a nice spot of carpet in front of the Microeconomics section and just sit in the aisle. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was in the way, but that's just how it works here. And how many people in a given day need an English Microecon book in Seoul?

Saturday we went to Insadong (more people in a small shopping district) and Itaewon (where all the foreigners hang out, and consequently the most dangerous neighborhood in all of Korea). We saw a bunch of other people from orientation and shopped for awhile.

Sunday we went to afternoon church at a place that regularly has an attendance of about 70,000 people for their Korean services on Sunday. Their English service attendance, however, is around 100-150 per service (2 services), so it feels like what I'm used to. I signed up to go on a retreat with the church during Cheosok, Korean thanksgiving (Sept 23-25). It sounds like its going to be a good time - and the people there seem really awesome. One thing I really feel like I need right now is fellowship...I mean, considering the fact that I'm the only fluent English-speaking Westerner in my area of town (not joking), it might be nice to have some friends. Other than the Jehovah's Witnesses that come every Sunday :)

The mosquitos here are voracious. Voracious means 'very hungry'. And apparently they like the taste of American food (ie. me). And the pollution is killing me slowly. But other than that everything is going really well!!!

These verses have been on my mind as of late, and (SURPRISE!) were spoken about at church on Sunday:

"My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." ~Psalm 139:15-16

I think of God writing my life in the Book...

"Sept. 11, 2007 - Today Jessica will dodge 5 scooters on her way to school. A kid who calls himself "Bobby" will ask her why she hasn't had a baby yet. And for lunch...well, we'll just keep that a secret, shall we?"

I can feel Him smiling on me all the time. Maybe even laughing, saying, "You asked for it, my dear." I know...I know. :)

That's all for now. I must start coloring...oh the life of an elementary school teacher!

-Love you - miss you - thinking of you - praying for you -

Jess

While I'm at it,,,

Hil's blog is here:

http://www.hilaryinseoul.blogspot.com/

These kids are so cute!!

Today after class, one of my fourth graders came up to me and started to say something and then apparently panicked and ran away, covering her face laughing. She went up to my co-teacher (who speaks Korean) and then came back and asked me the following question:

"What kind of man do you like?"

This isn't so out of the ordinary because most of my kids know I'm single (thank you, informal Q&A) so I wasn't taken aback or anything. Plus, any interest in asking English questions is welcomed - I definitely don't want to discourage that. So I told her someone tall, someone nice...and she asked "A rich man, yes?" and we laughed for awhile. I said, "No - rich men are too self-absorbed", fully knowing that neither she, nor my co-teacher, would know what that meant. She asked "A handsome man?", smiling and laughing, covering her face once again and my co-teacher and I joined in. It appears as though my kids will be playing matchmaker for me for the next year :)

Yesterday after school, Hil and I went to the immigration office to get an alien registration card (basically an ID card). Its weird to think of myself as an "immigrant". Everything went smoothly (which never happens here) and there were SO MANY WHITE PEOPLE there. Like probably 12 or so. But when you're the only white person in your whole neighborhood, that's a lot to see at one time.

At the grocery store I managed to find cereal, peanut butter (A GODSEND), jam, spaghetti, milk, and wheat bread, which I think is just brown white bread. Maybe slightly burned white bread.

So I'm blogging in my classroom now, and 3 little third-grade boys are in here cleaning up (each kid has a chore to do at school - there are no janitors). They are absolutely adorable when they aren't shooting each other with the water spray bottles. I give them candy once in awhile when they don't get into too much mischief. Right now they're sweeping by spinning in circles in the middle of the room. They're pretty much hilarious.

Well, onto lesson planning. I think I have the 6th graders all to myself next week, we'll see how that goes. Some of them fancy themselves "too kool for skool" if you get my drift.

So if you'll excuse me, I have to go wrestle the spray bottles away from my third graders.

God Bless!

Jess

Finally...a computer that works!

Good afternoon!

Orientation ended on Friday, so on Friday afternoon we were all sent along with our co-teachers to our schools, which are all scattered around Seoul. None of us knew where we were going exactly (thank you, SMOE), so we couldn't inform others as to how to contact us...no known phone number, no internet access. I didn't know where I was let alone where I was going. Kind of stressful.

I got to my school...very small - smaller than any elementary school I've ever been to. There are only 4 classes of each grade. Its a cute little school and the vice principal speaks some English. He is a fun guy. And, I'm not trying to be stereotypical, but he looks exactly like an older Jackie Chan. Like Jackie Chan's dad. And since you now think I make huge generalizations about a diverse group of people, let me just say that everyone here LOOKS THE SAME. I see another white person maybe once a day. And they usually look just like me - confused.

English here is hilarious. There's no other way to describe it. Its "token" English, it makes no sense and is often spelled very wrong. The other day I was in HomePlus (like Wal-Mart) and I saw a sign for "baby feeling equipment". I think they meant "feeding" but there's no way to be sure. The Korean language is a phonetic language, so Korean words when spelled in English are spelled many different ways. Names of towns differ according to who wrote the sign. Some notable wacky English I've seen so far:

-Donky Fried Chicken (restaurant)
-Hey Nebraska! (t-shirt)
-"Star Funky" (t-shirt)
-Gum Sole Power (t-shirt)

There are so many more...I'll add to the liast as I encounter more. Until then, expect your Christmas presents to be random english word/phrase shirts bought here.

My power cord died for my computer, so my battery is dead until further notice. I just bought another power cord on ebay today so it should get to me in about a week. But that means all my blogging will have to be done at school, so it may be infrequent this week.

Today was my first day teaching, and I'll write more on it later, but I let the kids ask me questions, and some of the more popular ones they asked were:

1) Are you married?
2) Do you have a boyfriend?
3) How old are you?

And my favorite:

1) What's your blood type?

By the way all of the food here has been terrible so far. I think I'm not looking in the right places, but if it continues like this, I may go anorexic. I've already lost about 10 lbs since being here. None of my clothes fit and I look homeless. I am happy though!! Just also very hungry :(

Alright, teacher's meetingin 10, then I get to go home! Actually I'm going to Hil's, but you know what I mean.

As they say in Korean English class, "BYE BYE!!"

Jess