Round Two

Hitting my one-year mark in Korea has kind of felt like an old house settling. Rather than feeling anxious about another year of Korean surprises, I feel really comfortable and used to the routine. Although, there have been a ton of changes to throw me off. Most of the friends I've had since my first month or even orientation are leaving and new people are rolling in. This year is bringing a ton of new dynamics, but it's fine. Abandonment issues aside, I've kind of learned to roll with it. And I'm even learning to like meeting new people - something I'm not naturally inclined to do. Liking people in general is something I struggle with. It's a wonder I have any friends.

Speaking of friend. Here was our send off for Cyndi and Rachel who are both leaving :/ We spent the day biking, canoeing, and singing at the Norae Bang.

While waiting for the canoes, we played the most intense game of Jenga Korea's ever seen. Even drew a crowd near the end.

I got a new neighbor for starters. Erica, the other EPIK teacher living in my building, is leaving and being replaced by Ife from D.C. I liked Erica but she had a pretty serious boyfriend so I really didn't see a lot of her. So, it'll be interesting having Ife around. She seems cool and I'm a little excited to have another foreigner out here on the outskirts. I took her out to some of the little cafes around Udu-dong and we may have terrorized the guys at Coffee Tong but it was a good time. I hope quiet little Udu-dong is prepared for double the Waygooks.

I've also been told by the missionaries and the bishop that a new foreign teacher just moved to Chuncheon from Utah. ( >:( There can only be one!!) I'm used to being the token Mormon in the teacher community so it'll be an adjustment having to share the ward. Korea's really spoiled me making me think I'm special. This will be good for me. And it might be nice having another Mormon around. (But, I don't think I can handle it if she's prettier and more likeable than me. I kid... kind of... )

With the one-year mark, I've suddenly started rediscovering my old passions. I think since the school year is back right where I started, I'm a lot less stressed. It's nice knowing I've done all these lessons before and I'm past the awkward new-teacher phase. Because of that, I've found myself getting back into art, biking, and writing. I even signed up for an oil-painting workshop in Seoul in a couple weeks.

My social life is good too. I've started making friends with more Koreans recently (I usually hang out with other foreigners). I met Hojin, the owner of my favorite kimbap place, shortly after moving to Korea. My Korean was terrible but she was always super patient with me and helped me figure out the kimbap menu. Over time, she kept trying to start conversations with me and as my Korean improved we got to know each other a little more. Finally, a couple weeks ago, she told me she wants to be friends because I come by so often (my kimbap addiction is making me friends now) and invited me to get dinner sometime. The dinner was a little awkward because my Korean is way better over text than it is when I talk to people. Eventually, she called her friend to join us and he spoke perfect English. Her friend goes by Danny and for some odd reason has an impeccable British accent but has never been outside of Asia. He credits his Hagwon teachers who were from England. He also bought my bike from me and we've hung out a bit since then. And Hojin and I have a shopping trip planned. I'm pretty excited about these new friendships.

I also joined a bike gang:

Lately, me and Veronica have been really into biking. We're planning to work our bike trips up to the point where we can ride to Seoul by the end of Fall. I decided to switch out my rusty mountain bike for a fancy new road bike, which I bought from Jimmy - another avid biker - and after a conversation with him about biking, the Chuncheon bike club was born! Our first biking venture was this past weekend:

I think we ended up biking a total of 40 or more kilometers that day. It was amazing and the people we went with were great. And we only had one bike crash that day. Which has motivated me to maybe think about buying a helmet.

Biking in the rain... not so good. 

I also have plans to start rock-climbing with Veronica and possibly join in some other sports. It's gonna be a very active next few months.

Oh, and the bugs are invading at full force:

 Did I forget about this part of the Summer or should I call pest control?

Also, I'll never get over the styles here.

As for teaching, I've really started to see some rewards from all the work with my kids. Over Summer break, Mr. Hwang asked me to tutor my low-level students every day for three weeks. This meant missing out on the desk-warming that foreign teachers normally do, but I was psyched at the chance to help my kids catch up. I'd always wanted to get the chance to work with my low-levels one-on-one.

The class started out kind of rough. I wanted to emphasize phonics but the kids found it really boring so I had to mix it up with other vocab and activities. Eventually, we got on a good schedule though kids would come and go at random due to other summer camps so it wasn't very consistent.

Somedays only 2 or 3 kids would show up so the lesson I'd planned went out the window. I usually filled these days with things like Epic Bingo, Pictionary, and paper airplane contests along with our usual phonics:

(This one I really pulled out of my butt, but the kids went nuts for it. I got hit with so many of those airplanes, but I didn't even care).

I did have one kid fall asleep on me at one point. That was a first. She came to class acting really tired and told me "Teacher, 3 o'clock until 4 o'clock - I sleep." And I told her no but she could sleep during the 20 minute break. When break-time hit she made a nest out of the wheely chairs on the stage and passed out until 4 o'clock as promised. Me and her little sister tried to wake her but she was comatose (or just really determined to sleep until 4). This left me with just Nojoon, who barely talks. So the lesson was a bit awkward.

I bought a Pikachu stamp in Japan, which I used as a rewards system (10 stamps got them two pieces of candy). And it actually worked pretty well. If they won a game, turned in a worksheet, or used a new word correctly, they got a stamp.

My super shy kid, Nojoon, did surprisingly well. A little background on Nojoon - he's half-Filippino, which usually means getting treated a little differently by the other kids. I taught his sister last year and she was so shy that she would only communicate with her homeroom teacher over text. Nojoon's a lot like her. One day in class, we were doing a milling activity where the kids had to survey as many people as they could. His class has a lot of energy and the kids got really into the activity and started running around questioning each other loudly. But they left out Nojoon. I know it was because he's shy and they didn't have the patience to get an answer out of him for the survey, but not a single kid even approached him. I saw Nojoon standing quietly to the side staring at the ground and tried to get some of the kids' attention to tell them to talk to him but they ignored me too. Eventually, Nojoon burst into tears. Mr. Hwang took him into another room to talk and later told me Nojoon had asked him why the other kids won't talk to him. The whole experience nearly had me in tears as well and I ever since I've tried to make sure Nojoon was included and even catered games to him to make sure he could get some points for his team.

The contrast since he joined tutoring sessions has been amazing. I finally got him to speak in class (and it was almost audible, even) and it turns out he's really cunning when it comes to card games. He wiped the floor with the rest of us at BS. And now when I ask, "How are you?" he doesn't just stare at me but answers, "I'm happy". He even befriended the other boy from his class who was in tutoring and was smiling a ton. His now-friend, Myeongso, used to be the worst. He used to only respond to me in Korean and try to sabotage games and cheat all the time. He couldn't read and would never even try in class. But now he's doing amazing. He can read better than any of the other kids who came to tutoring and he even helps the other kids understand the vocabulary. It's amazing seeing the transformation.

I got to really know the kids I was tutoring and we had some interesting times. One day, I was leaving school and the Li sisters called me over from down the hall. It turns out a magpie had flown into the school and hit a classroom window. The kids were crouched around it trying to feed it erasers (don't ask) and poking at it. I shooed the kids away and just stared at the bird, completely unsure what to do. It looked pretty dead... or dying. Its breathing sounded funny and it could barely open its eyes. I was sure its neck was broken. I told one of the kids to get another teacher but apparently no one was around. I felt around the bird's neck to see if I could tell if anything was broken but there was no sign as far as I could tell (not like I would even know). Eventually, I eased the bird into a standing position and it struggled for a minute before getting its footing. Apparently it was just dazed because it tried to take off right there but ran into another window. I grabbed the bird around the sides and carried it outside where it hopped into a bush, fully recovered. It was a miracle and the kids kept talking about it every time I saw them.

Another time the kids brought a stray dog into class. You can imagine how that went down...

Mr. Hwang's son joined us for the first week or so. Kind of felt like Mr. Hwang was tricking me into babysitting for him (especially since his son would show up an hour before class) but I'm over it. The kid was pretty smart and did pretty well anyway.

One of the girls found a pot of dirt on one of the shelves and planted a seed she found outside. She watered it diligently every day and it's actually started to grow.

Now what?

As we got further into the 3-weeks, I started to relax more and incorporate more games. We played basketball, bowling, and finished off with a monster craft:

and a scavenger hunt:

I've really perfected the art of the scavenger hunt over the past year. My kids love it and are constantly begging for more scavenger hunts. They've gotten really clever though so I've had to make them harder and harder. This was the best one by far.

I also abused my power as a teacher to get the kids to spend the last 30 minutes of class cleaning the English center. I loved ordering the kids around and watching them scramble even though, in all honesty, most of the mess was my fault. But the English Center's never been cleaner and I did reward them with more candy (their mothers probably hated me that day).

I had a weird day last Friday that felt like it was full of bad omens. First, at the bus stop I got attacked by a crazy man. He grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking me saying (in Korean with random English words thrown in): "Do you like Korea? Do you like Korean man? Are you Russian?" "N-no sir, I'm American" "You are beautiful like flower! Do you like Korean man?" "I don't know!!" Then he ran directly into traffic like a maniac and cars had to swerve not to hit him. I wasn't sure if I was witnessing a suicide attempt or if this man just really didn't give a s#@%. It threw off my whole day. Throughout that day I broke a table in my classroom, got chased by a feral dog into a rice paddy and apparently North Korea is threatening to attack South Korea again? I elected to stay in that night. I was done with life. Apparently we're getting hit with a typhoon this week so the weather's been crazy on top of all that.

Anyway, now we're starting 2nd semester. It's fun planning these lessons and seeing how much my teaching style has changed since the last time I taught them a year ago. Of course, I had everything elaborately planned and came to school early yesterday to setup before finding out I had a week of desk-warming and only my after-school classes to teach. Deskwarming makes me feel like I'm in isolation and slowly slipping into madness. I also miss the kids when I don't get to teach them. I miss getting handed frogs, or half-eaten pocket jelly candy, or getting meowed at by 1st graders. And Joonki flicking his water bottle at my roof and telling me it's raining when I catch him.

But I'm glad I get a break between all the tutoring and actual classes.

I got to enjoy our school musical ("Grease") yesterday instead of teaching though and that was pretty all right:

The kids were amazing, I'd been hearing them practice all Summer at their music camp next door while I was tutoring. The girls did really well despite being shy but the boys kind of stole the show:

We have one student in particular who played Danny and he's got some pipes on him. I think he has a future in show biz or as a K-Pop idol. The boys were acting and singing their hearts out, it was fun to see my little punks in that context. They were hilarious.

Random. But I always pass this little bonzai tree collection on the way to school and I love it. 

So, this blog post doesn't really have a point. But to wrap up, I'm looking forward to this weird new year living in Korea. Typhoons, crazy men, new foreigners, and all.