A Plague o' Both Your Houses!!!!

I won't lie, the title that I chose for this post is completely deceiving. I used the Shakespearian reference to introduce the newest character in my life: Juliet, my Korean tutor. I was referred to her by my boss, who met with her for quite some time during his stay here, in Incheon. He gave me her name and number and told me her name was "May." The entire time I was communicating with her via phone calls, I had been calling her May, oblivious to the fact that she had changed her English name to Juliet. I was completely confused when I received an email from the address "Korean Juliet," and thought that maybe May had set me up with another tutor. When I finally met Juliet, I realized through voice recognition that May and Juliet were one in the same.
Anyway, she had sent me some websites to get started on my own, practicing reading and writing mostly. She was impressed that I had actually listened, and studied before meeting with her. She also was saying that she is very happy to teach people like me because there are many foreigners in Korea that come to this country and have absolutely no intention of learning the language. I have come across many expats who have that exact mantra: something to the effect of, "I'm just going to basically party in another country with other westerners, and not bother learning the culture while I'm here." I hope to show Juliet that we are not all that way.
My boss described her English as being "good enough." That choice of wording is definitely not generous enough for Juliet's capabilities. Her accent is very minimal and she has very few grammatical errors; her English is phenomenal in my opinion. We are now going to meet once a week for about two hours. She said if I am doing well that we can change it to twice a week. She charges 40,000 won/month. This is less than $40/month...for a private tutor. That is insanely cheap. Not to mention that she gave me a book and a syllabus. She told me she had a feeling that I would be very good at speaking Korean. Not exactly sure how she would have gathered that, but I took it as a compliment nevertheless.
I'm very excited that I met Juliet because she not only will help me learn Korean, but is another opportunity to have some local friends. I don't think I would get as much out of this experience if I did not meet more Korean friends. Her and I are having lunch together on Saturday and then going to a yoga class together. She works for a Cultural Activities center and this will be the center's first go at yoga. She wants me to meet her young friend who teaches the class, she apparently also is 22 and "has the same hair style and fashion as me." She said that we would really like each other. Who knows? I'm always down for yoga.
We met at Juan station--which looks like the Spanish name for John, I know, but is pronounced "Chuwon." I left early because I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take me to get there. It ended up taking less than 10 minutes by cab. I had a lot of time before we were supposed to meet so I shopped around a little bit in the underground shopping center. The stands in the subway stations and markets have loads of knockoff designer things that have something just a little bit off about them. For example "Marc by Marc" sans Jacobs is everywhere. While leafing through the bargain sweatshirts today, I came across a Boston Masschubatts sweatshirt. That is not my typo, that is what it said. Then I came across a cubs sweatshirt:



Click on the image if you cannot see the small print. Note: Major League Baseboll. 5,000 won? Don't mind if I do! This way I can wear this awkward Cubs knock-off if I ever (for what reason? I don't know) venture to Wrigley. I know half my family is probably yelling at the computer screen for this blasphemous post about the Chicago Cubs. It's not even real, get over it.

Snow Day

I found out today at around 12:30 that due to the snow, classes that night would be cancelled. According to my boss, this was the first snow day in the history of our branch, possibly even in the history of CDI. My initial reaction was utter relief and excitement, just as I would have felt growing up, after incessantly calling the emergency weather hotline and finding out I would not have to attend school that day. After the initial elation, I realized I had absolutely nothing to do all day; no plans, no errands I needed to run, and no one to hang out with...oh yeah, and no TV. Hence, I am writing my second blog post of the day.

A lot of my family members have asked me questions directed more specifically about my job. So here is a basic breakdown of my week. I have 5 different sets of classes, at 4 different levels. My biggest class has 16 kids and my smallest has 6. Because the classes are by level, I have a wide range of ages within the classes. My lowest level class is definitely my easiest because they are more than willing to talk, and they are actually very competent speakers and thinkers. That particular class is also the most fun, I laugh and joke with the kids all the time.

Each day, I have two classes; 4:30-7:30 and 7:40-10:40. The three hours goes by quite quickly with a small break in between each hour. Every teacher at every branch follows a specific curriculum and structure for each class. This makes my own workload quite light; I have maybe about 30 minutes of prep work per day. It also allows for only a week of training to be sufficient to start solo in the classroom the following week. We do various activities ranging from speaking, listening, reading stories, answering comprehension questions, and critical thinking projects. It’s not much different than a grammar school foreign language class in the states. The only difference is that the teacher, myself, does not speak the students’ first language.

The policy of “no Korean in the classroom” is hard on the kids because many times they get extremely frustrated when they are trying to get a point across, but are unable to find the vocabulary to do so. However, they are extremely compliant about following this policy. I was shocked to see how willing the kids are to speak solely in English, even on their breaks. One of my students wrote a love note to a student in another class and used another teacher as the messenger. He showed the letter to me (which is a whole other story) and the entire thing was in English. They will even refer to each other by their English names. Overall, the kids have really amazing attitudes considering that they are in a 3-hour “extracurricular class.” The last 3-hour lecture that I had to sit through in college I watched dvds on my laptop throughout each class and it was STILL boring and tedious. In other words, I keep that in mind, and therefore very rarely get frustrated with the kids that aren’t completely enthusiastic to see me. I can empathize. Although I really hope they don’t think of me the way I thought of Professor Trach...yikes.

A Whole New Meaning to Variety

This weekend I went to Dongdaemun market which is right outside the East Gate of Seoul.




From what I had read of the market, it was supposedly bigger than what I saw, so we may have only hit the outskirts of it. Being a tourist is very much a trial-and-error experience. We followed these people with the giant garbage bags full of stuff, assuming they had gathered items from the market.



We came across all sorts of things: clothes, electronics, shoes, artwork, basically anything under the sun.






A lot of it consisted of piles of junk on a blanket or towel that were up for sale: old cell phones, cameras, key boards, nintendo remotes, etc.



The market even had a "pet" strip. I seriously considered buying one of these little bunnies...

FLAIR

On Christmas Eve, some of my co-workers and I went out to dinner and then to a local bar called “Flair Bar.” No, the flair does not refer to obnoxious buttons on the waitstaff’s uniforms, but I suppose more so the literal meaning of style of the bar. I soon found out this entails shows put on by the bar staff, otherwise known as choreographed dances as well as Tom Cruise style cocktail shows.






The girls, unfortunately were not as into it. Note the girl in the hat...these are basically stuffed animals that you wear on your head and are extremely common in Korea.



If you are unfamiliar with the phenomenon that is K-Pop, that was just a small taste of it. Here are pictures of some of the favorites, the Wonder Girls and 2pm




If the pictures do not explain it all, K-Pop is a genre of contrived pop bands that can best be compared to The Spice Girls or N'Sync...on speed. Every Korean loves K-Pop and it is absolutely everywhere. The music crosses gender, age, and class. It unifies the nation that is South Korea; no one can resist these sassy pop groups.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

What better way to start off the week than receiving a random present from one of my students? He just walked up to me and handed me a calendar, saying, “here teacher, a calendar,” and wandered back to his seat. This act was not that surprising to me considering that during break time, a handful of kids always come straight to my desk to offer me food. I mean, it would be rude to decline, right? One of the guidelines for eating here in Korea is sharing with everyone, which works out really well for people like myself and Beth Rahn, constantly asking “can I try that?”
Besides sharing food with me, there are a number of other quirks that my students have such as the obsession with creating love matches between people within the academy. For example, my one co-worker and I have shared a lot of the same students because we teach similar levels. Because he is male, automatically he is my boyfriend, according to them. Moreover, him and I get off work early on Fridays. I usually will wait for him at his door so we can walk out together (keep in mind this is before most of the students have left). Some of our mutual students saw me waiting and literally went nuts...in their minds he had pretty much given me a promise ring.
This week, they have apparently gotten sick of saying that I love my co-worker and moved onto someone else. My student, Cleo, said in class today, “Jamie teacher loves (mumble mumble).” I finally deciphered the words to be Carl Flint, who is an evil American character who hit a dolphin with his boat in the story that we’re currently reading (implications about Americans? not so sure). I laughed out loud and thought that it was so completely clever that every time we discussed the character during our reading comprehension section, I referred to him as my husband. This was one joke that they laughed at. Most other jokes fall on deaf ears. Joking toward the class is simply a way to entertain myself...in other words....I crack myself up quite often.

Sardines

The public transportation system is pretty nice here; clean, easy and relatively efficient. I hadn't experienced the subway during peak rush hour until this weekend. It is pure insanity. As the train approached, we were essentially herded into the car, bouncing off everyone around us. I was able to get my arm up to take a picture:



This does not even capture how packed it was. I could not stop laughing the entire time we were on the train because it was the strangest feeling being so close to all these people. At one point my feet were not on the ground, I was suspended, wedged in between two people. All of us joked about not having to walk to work, but instead just floating there with the crowd. It doesn't really leave you with much choice as to where you're going. I would imagine people many times are forced to get off the train simply because the 20 people surrounding them carried them out.

Finding Nemo

On Saturday I went to Noryangjin fish market in Seoul which is basically 66,000 square meters of fresh seafood, mostly live. As we walked on the overpass, I knew we were close as the smell became more and more potent. The odor was no where near as bad as I had expected, though. We obviously left smelling like seafood, but since it was so cold outside, and inside the market for that matter, I was not overwhelmed with fishiness. I have no idea how you would choose between the vendors; each row had about 15 different stands, all selling the same type of sea creature. This is the view from above:




Anything that lives underwater, right at your fingertips.






Picking a live fish to have killed in front of you really takes shopping for food to a whole new level. The vendors will basically just throw the flailing fish onto a scale and whack it with a stick that has a hook on the end. Kind of savage, but interesting to watch. I couldn't help but scream "Oh my god!" each time that I watched this. The vendors would then mock me by saying "oh my goddd" in a squeaky annoying voice. I tried to contain my ditz comments, but it just came out, like tourettes.

Some of the fish were already dead, like this monkfish whose entire internal organs are exposed. Apparently you are supposed to eat the whole fish including the guts?




The most jarring image was this shark head. The seller flipped it over to show us the teeth, probably because he read from my face that I was totally stunned. It literally gave me chills up my spine.



I sampled some raw squid before we headed out; salty, chewy, and slimy...interesting.