MERS and current events

(A 12 year-old's depiction of a virus)

So, you may have heard about the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in Korea. I'd like to preface this by saying, it's not quite as bad as the media might be churning it out to be. From what I've learned, it's not airborne and you can only contract it from very close contact with someone who's infected (likely as a caretaker). Basically, they'd have to spit in my mouth for me to get it. Besides, Chuncheon hasn't been touched. It's mostly hit Seoul and a few cities South of Seoul - all of which I've been avoiding like the plague (probably a poor word choice).

The things I've found to be true are that a doctor who contracted it in the Middle East ignored the quarantine and went to a conference anyway where he could have potentially exposed thousands of people. Also, apparently some Ajumma in Busan decided she ain't got time for no quarantine and waltzed out of the hospital. That one I just heard in passing so it may or may not be true. Truthfully, it hasn't been handled well by the government and Korean stubbornness is not helping. (Stay home people!) Word is that government initially wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps but the Seoul Mayor released the names of Hospitals that had seen cases anyway. Thankfully, people are being told to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough (something that is sadly a bit rare in some parts).

The cases that have led to deaths were mostly people with weak immunity or pre-existing conditions. It's still devastating that it's happening, I don't mean to downplay that. But it's not exactly spreading like wildfire.

So, Mom and Dad, I'm perfectly safe. Though we may have to worry about the Chos who live near one of the cities that had a case of it. (And I would recommend any research to be on the CDC website and not these web articles trying to turn Korea into the Zombie Apocalypse).

Now that it's being taken more seriously, a lot of schools and events have been shut down to lower the chance of exposure by limiting travel. I'd been looking forward to a 6K obstacle course run for months but (understandably) it's been cancelled much to my disappointment.

Even though MERS is a still a pretty serious thing, my kids find it funny. This is no surprise... everything is a joke to them.

Coincidentally, our current unit for the 6th graders is called "What's wrong?" and teaches how to talk to a doctor or tell someone you're feeling sick. For some reason, my 6th graders just cannot handle the word "Medicine" and it comes out as "MERS" every time. And anytime I ask for examples of illnesses, MERS if the first one. So, basically, I'm not making much headway for this lesson.

The younger kids have been playing a tag game in the hallway too where they shout "MERS" and try to cough on eachother. And I'm over here like...

"That's hilarious, guys!"

I just hope it doesn't cause too much trouble when I fly out for my brother's wedding. It would suck to spend my whole week in the States under quarantine.... 

Anyway, MERS aside. things have been good. 

A few weeks ago I got to visit my best friend's parents on the American base and it was awesome. My friend, Rebecca (affectionately called "Cho") and her parents have moved around a lot for her father's work. For the past several years her parents have been living in Korea but on the American base. So, with Cho back home in Utah and me here in Korea, we've kind of switched families. Cho spends the occasional holiday with my family and now I'll be visiting hers as much as I can. Me and Cho used to take road-trips to Vegas to visit them pretty regularly so it was nice to see some familiar faces from home. 

I don't know what took me so long to finally visit (I guess mostly I just hate long bus rides and we never could find the time between everyone's jobs), but I'm glad I finally did.

They took me out to Chili's for some good ol' American food and then showed me around the base. They even bought me some groceries from the American grocery store and offered to send more if I ever need any. 

I got this mild feeling of culture-shock being around so many Americans and hearing English being spoken everywhere. I even got cat-called in the Chilis on my way to the bathroom and was so shocked, I just stared at the guys like they were aliens. 

I was pretty wiped from the bus ride so they let me take a nap in their guest bedroom and then we just chilled in their apartment, caught up, and ate Mr. Cho's homemade galbi.  The Cho's were really concerned over me and kept giving me loads of parental advice, it made me feel pretty at-home.

At one point, Cho's grandma popped out of a room speaking rapid Korean and grabbed me in a hug. I had no idea she lived there. I guess she wasn't feeling well so she mostly stayed in her bedroom.

And their dog, Buffy, who's slightly racist towards white people actually warmed up to me. It was a shock when she actually jumped into my lap. Usually she just barks her head off.

I tried taking pictures for Cho to taunt her about Buffy loving me more. But she just looks really freaked. 

Cutest dog ever. 

It was a short visit, but I'll definitely be going again for a weekend sometime and Mrs. Cho even offered to cook up a Thanksgiving dinner for me and some missionaries in November. 

As for teaching, I've finally made some headway with my difficult after-school classes. I realized that some of my kids who were having the hardest time were the ones who just wanna color and play. So I decided to start incorporating some crafts into my lessons. Last week we learned about faces and body parts with the "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" song and then did a little puppet-making craft with paper cups and whatever supplies I found lying around. I made my the kids ask for their supplies in English as we went so we could incorporate some vocab.

Here are some of the first-graders with their creations:

Yes, that girl is dressed as Elsa. Korea will never get over Frozen.

Their teacher randomly showed up for class. That's never happened. I don't know if she was there to help or just making sure I'm not some psychopath. 

The kids were really into it and I even got some of them to help with clean-up which never happens. Little Yusong who's in 2nd grade stayed after her class as usual and swept the entire room for me afterwards. She's my little teacher's pet. I'm starting to suspect she just doesn't like her next class and is stalling having to go.

During crafts I played the songs we've been learning in class and was surprised to hear the kids all singing along while they worked. I think we've finally found our rhythm and the kids were so much more chill too. 

Lately, I've been really into torturing my kids with songs when they start to look too bored. Even though I hate singing and dancing, I've been making them stand up and sing and dance with me just to get them energized. It works for the most part even though some of them get really embarrassed.

One of my fourth graders who rides the bus with me has caught on that I can understand some Korean but none of the other kids believe him so I just go with it to troll him. Sometimes he'll talk to me in Korean and I'll respond with English or gestures. The other day he asked me a question in Korean but his sister jumped in with "She doesn't speak Korean, stupid!" and translated the question for me so when he tried to insist that I do speak Korean, I just played dumb. It's been really fun to watch the struggle. He keeps begging me to speak Korean so his friends can see, but I've been refusing. Finally in class the other day, he asked a question in Korean and I nodded and he shouted "I knew it!" but no one else was paying attention. So much fun. It's preferred that we don't speak any Korean in class so that the kids can get more comfortable speaking English with us, so that's part of the reason I avoid letting the kids know I'm studying Korean. Except my 1st graders... there's no way I could survive that class alone if I didn't know at least a tiny bit of Korean. 

My 6th graders are fun and I wish we got to play more games but Mr. Hwang's been working them pretty hard so we never get a chance. Last week we finally had a little left over time and were learning directions so I did a little drawing activity. I used their vocab to give directions on how to draw a snowman but didn't tell them what they were drawing until it was over. The finished products were pretty interesting:

The only one that actually turned out.

The kids all laughed when they saw their results and took turns showing me their mutant snowmen. It was a good ice-breaker after lots of homework and writing-heavy lessons. Some of the girls are getting really chummy with me and keep wanting to tell me all about their favorite TV shows and singers. 

It's funny how the kids try to avoid doing their work by luring me into random conversations. Like I'll go over to a girl and ask her  "are you finished with your worksheet?" and she'll be like "My cat just had 7 kittens!"

Or little Choyeon who has a hamster named "Pudding". Every day since I came here has included an update on Pudding. Pudding makes an appearance in every single assignment she does as well. Choyeon's weather wheel featured Pudding in every kind of weather, including a tornado. And then one day, I walked into the classroom and found that someone had snuck in while I was away...

I wonder who it was. 

Then there are times during the lesson where I'M the one who can't keep it together. Like when this came up on the CD-Rom and I had to pretend like nothing was wrong:

And another time a guy got on the bus with the word "Acne" printed on his shirt and I busted up laughing but no one on the bus spoke English so they all just thought I was crazy.... waygook problems.

Anyway, hopefully some of my new methods will continue to work out. I'll be starting my second year soon and it's so weird to look back at old e-mails to my family and realize it wasn't that long ago that I was struggling so much. Now everything I used to find weird about Korea seems so normal and teaching hardly stresses me out at all. It's crazy what a difference a year can make. I'm glad I'm doing one more year now that I've sort of come into my own. I'm feeling pretty good about it all.