A sample lesson, in play format.

THE SETTING. A run-down classroom in a run-down school in a Seoul exurb. 

THE PLAYERS. A beaten-down teacher and the group of fifth graders he tries to teach.

Curtains up on the classroom. We start in the middle of the lesson, about present continuous verbs.

TEACHER: Alright kids, let's open our books to page 113. Do you see page 113?

(silence)

TEACHER: Page 113? Yes?

(silence)

TEACHER: Okay really guys, page 113.

STUDENTS: (mumble something incoherently in Korean)

TEACHER: Great. Now please read the first sentence aloud. 3...2...1!

STUDENTS: (on cue, as this is the only way to get them to speak) We are going to the jew to see the ryans.

TEACHER: (blanching just a little) Okay...let's try that again. Repeat after me, "zoo".

STUDENTS: Jew.

TEACHER: Zoo.

STUDENTS: Jew.

TEACHER: ZOO.

STUDENTS: JEW.

TEACHER: (with a resigned sigh) Fine. Let's try another one. Repeat after me, "lions".

STUDENTS: Ryans.

TEACHER: (holding the 'l' for exaggeration) Lllllllions

STUDENTS: (mimicking) Rrrrrrryans.

TEACHER: (jumps out the window)

Oh HELL no! I did NOT leave the South Side for this!

Please pretend there is a screencap of Tim Meadows in Mean Girls pulling a fire alarm and saying "Oh HELL no! I did not leave the southside for this!" here.

Last Tuesday was...a day. I don't know if there was something in the Coco Puffs (or rather, kimchi and rice) that the kids ate for breakfast, but they were actin' like they had lost their damn minds yesterday! At first I thought it was just me...I was a little grumpy, over tired, feeling sick, and generally having one of those "But I'm not even supposed to BE here!" mornings. According to many of my other teacher friends, though, it wasn't just me...it seemed to be a Korea-wide phenomenon. Perhaps there is something significant about October 14th that I'm missing.

The morning started off like most crazy mornings, with me trying to teach students who CLEARLY do not want to learn. Which, btw, is just the greatest feeling ever. I officially apologize to every teacher I ever had in the past for being a jerk in class. It is NOT fun from the other end. There was shouting and playing and general dicking around going on in most of the lessons, but it was the period of time before my 4th period class was to start that really made me just give up on the day.

A couple of boys were roughhousing, as they do, and generally seemed to be walking that line between fun and actual fighting that I've managed to tune out over the last seven months. Because that's just how it is here. Then all of a sudden, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of the boys was really struggling and that the noise coming from the two of them had been cut in half. I looked over and one of the boys had the other boy (who, incidentally, is my favorite student, Goatcheese) in a headlock. Fairly standard practice. But then I saw that Goatcheese was flailing his hands, trying to get out of the head lock. His eyes were bugged out, and he was CLEARLY NOT BREATHING. I was like oh HELL no and took the agressor kid over to my coteacher and told her what was happening. She said something in Korean, the kid nodded, and went to take his seat, and we started class.

And that was it. If I hadn't looked over, or if they were in the hallway or on the playground, this kid could have DIED (or at least passed out), and no one would have said a thing. I don't understand it...this is exactly why you have to watch children! I get it, boys rough house. It's a thing. BUT STRANGLING IS NOT OKAY. PEOPLE. TEACH YOUR CHILDREN NOT TO MURDER OTHER CHILDREN. Good lord!

To Shanghai or not to Shanghai?

This right here is the question. photo via

As some of you might already know, yesterday, I was offered a teaching position in Shanghai, China. The job is with a company that will for now remain nameless, and will be essentially equivalent to hagwon jobs here in Korea - that is, I will work mostly afternoons/evenings, and during the day on Saturday and Sunday. I will, of course, have two consecutive days off each week (Monday and Tuesday at most branches). The schedule will change in the summers and winters during Chinese public school holidays (much like it does for Korean hagwons) to support more intensive classes for the students. The classes will be smaller, with students of a more similar language ability than what I'm teaching now in public school. The job looks pretty good on paper - the pay is super competitive for China - but I'm still undecided about whether or not to take it. That's where you come in, blog! Here we go:

• On the one hand, I miss my friends and family, a lot. And I really feel like I should be starting grad school sooner rather than later.
• On the other hand, this job in China would give me seriously good experience that would help any application to grad school and potentially the Foreign Service (the career goal I have been working toward since basically high school)
• On the other other hand, I'm starting to let Korea get under my skin. If I'm feeling this way 7.5 months in, can I really hack it for another year?
• On the other other other hand (this is getting really handsy...), if I can't hack two years away from my friends and family, I SERIOUSLY  need to reconsider this whole "Foreign Service Officer" career path...
• On the other other other other hand, this place offers FREE MANDARIN LESSONS, which is probably the most important language to learn today (with the debatable exception of Arabic)
• On the other other other other other hand (seriously this is getting ridiculous) hagwon jobs are NOTORIOUSLY painful and generally unpleasant here in Korea...what makes me think that this one will be any different?
• On the other other other other other OTHER hand, did I mention free Mandarin lessons? And isn't all of this just stuff I can put up with until my time comes, knowing that it will be really good for me (character-building and all that) in the long run?

As you can see, I've got quite a lot to think about. It's becoming this gigantic, handsy monster, and I could really use some honest opinions. What would you do if you were in this situation? Would you take the leap? Or would you get the career officially started by going for a masters? Halp! (he said because it is 2006 apparently)

Weighing my options

I've officially crossed the 7 month mark here in Korea, which means that I've only got a short while to really figure out what I'm going to do come March 5th, 2011 - the day after my contract officially ends. The first order of business will naturally be to return to the states to visit some friends/family I'll not have seen for a year or more, but that's not really a viable long-term plan. As appealing as "hobo riding the rails" sounds, I don't think it'll really work out for long-term career goals. America's train network just isn't that great.

Thus, I'm left with a few options, and I figured that you, Blog, would be as good a person as any to talk to about all this.

So here it goes: Nolen crosses (possibly) a line in sanity and continues to talk to inanimate objects about life things (oh also I'm doing it in a listicle form. Blow me):

1. Option 1: Stay in Korea for another year (though not at my school). The reason why I couldn't stay at my school is manifold and complex, but suffice it to say they have become a gigantic assache, and one that I do not think I will put up with much longer. The volumes of administrative bullsh*t I'm left doing, the last-minute nature, and the generally contemptuous attitude my school takes toward me just cannot make it worth my time, especially not in my crappy old apartment with a landlady who refuses to fix the broken water heater. On the other hand, there really isn't anywhere else that pays as well as Korea does. Sometimes I do like it here, I suppose...at least, more often than most of my friends. I could almost certainly tolerate another year in Korea if I were in a different school in a different place. But I don't really want to just "tolerate" a place...I want to actually be happy! 
2. Option 2: Grad school back in DC. I'm also actively applying to two grad schools in the District of Columbia: George Washington and Johns Hopkins, both for International Affairs/Relations. The pluses of this are pretty obvious: I'll be back in Washington, which I miss terribly, with many of my friends, whom I miss even more. I'll also be getting along with my career, which might help this feeling of mid-20s ennui that is enveloping most of my generation. The cons: grad school is EXPENSIVE, yo. We're talking something like $50,000-$70,000 for the two years it'll take to get my MA. Also, I am fairly certain that my application will be something like infinity times more competitive with another year of Overseas Experience to add to my resume, and I KNOW that there are fellowships that will be much easier to get with that added boost. So it might behoove me to continue on this two year pre-grad school path.
3. Option 3: This is a new one. Recently I've considered the possibility of teaching another year overseas, but not in Korea. And after much thought and consideration (read: wikipediaing) I landed on Shanghai, China. It's got a decent climate with four seasons; it's a big, cosmopolitan city; and the cost of living in Shanghai is relatively low (compared to Seoul or Tokyo, or even Beijing). It's also a chance to experience Chinese culture and hopefully learn Mandarin, an infinitely more useful language than Korean (sorry, Koreans). On the downside, it's another year away from my friends and family back in the states, and it's a HUGE unknown. At least in Korea or America, I have a pretty good idea of what I'm getting myself into...China? Not so much.

So that's where I'm at, Blog. Thanks for listening, though I'm not sure how much it really helped. We'll see.

I cannot believe my students.

This was supposed to be a fun post about my actual birthday celebrations that did not involve Miss Havisham. But I need to get this off my chest just now.

Picture, if you will, a group of students just finishing the second-to-last day of their summer camp. They are excited about their English party tomorrow, where they will get to watch a movie and eat food and just have fun. But they will also have to do some learning! And one of them asks me "Teacher tomorrow workbook?"

And I say "yes" in a kind of sympathetic, I'm-sorry-but-we-have-to tone of voice. And they groan, as kids are wont to do. And I think the matter is settled, glad that someone had the presence to ask about it before they just straight up didn't bring their workbook.

Now flash forward to this morning. I'm at the front of the class, getting ready, writing the schedule for class on the board. The first thing I write is, of course, workbook time - get it out of the way so that we can have fun! Behind me, I hear a gasp. I turn, and see 7 confused faces (in a class of 7). Now I'm a little confused. They know what a workbook is - we've been using it for the last two weeks, for crying out loud! So I ask them to show me their workbooks.

More confused silence.

Now I'm getting frustrated. I ask them where their workbooks are, and one of the students tells me "Teacher workbook home!"

I'm stunned. Every damn one of them, apparently having gone outside their minds, has left their workbook at home.

So now I'm going Breakfast Club on their asses.

Yeah, Molly Ringwold. Yikes.

No movie, no food. They get to sit there and write lines. And I get to continue to be upset about this.

School's out for the summer!

Well, almost anyway. But for me, I only have one more day of teaching, and then it's off to America for a wedding (not mine, of course). And I'm pretty excited about that. Even though this semester has only been about 5 months long, it's seemed MUCH longer than that. It feels like an eon of attempting to corral kids who don't speak English and just want to play; of repeating the same damn sentence 8000 times with the kids and then getting stunned silence when they are asked to reproduce it on their own; of being shocked at the English they know; of actually realizing that it's not that they don't know English - they just don't want to talk in class; of being frustrated with administration; of ultimately enjoying (most) of this job. But you guys, I'm ready for a break.

Not that I'll have much of one! I will basically arrive in America and hit the ground running. AND I'll only be there for a week, which is not enough time by far for the amount of travel time it'll take. And then I come back to Korea and - SUMMER CAMP. Summer camp, for the uninitiated, is a little different here in the ROK. It's not the fun, lazy days involving crafts and swimming and campfire songs and all those other horrible things from our childhood.

This is not summer camp in Korea.

No, summer camp here is an entirely different animal. Korean summer camp = school. Yes, that's right. Just when they thought they could have a break from all the school they have during the normal year, what do they  get? MORE SCHOOL!!!

This is Korean summer camp. Please ignore the implicit racism of me using a photo 

of Chinese children. I couldn't find a good one of Koreans.

Yep, summer camp here = school. Poor things. Same thing in winter, too. Fortunately for them, their camps are usually only a week long (though many of them will also go to academy/hagwon in the summer for double classes. If you know a hagwon teacher, ask them about their summer schedule! It SUCKS). Unfortunately for me, I get to teach the same lessons 4 weeks in a row! Hurray!

So I am busy with the end of my semester, trying to regain my focus for teaching, and making worksheets. I just finished a powerpoint presentation on Shapes and Colors using Bauhaus/Neoplasticism art. I am REALLY excited for this. Because I am a giant nerd.

The other thing I am doing for summer camp (and hopefully next semester as well) to ensure my success is actually planning ahead. I want to have worksheets ready and powerpoints done so that I can be relaxed and at ease in the classroom. I want to plan some games for the students to play so they will have more fun in my classroom - apparently I am just not fun enough. The good news, though, is that I think I've got some good plans that should be relatively easy to implement. Also, the fall semester is about a month shorter than the spring semester (September - Christmas as opposed to March 1 to the end of July). And after the fall semester, is winter break! 6 glorious weeks of downtime (aka winter camp and vacation). Hurray!

So I suppose this is a much more update-y post than you've become accustomed to. But it's what you're getting this time, so enjoy!

I MADE DINOSAUR SOAP

One of the bizarre perks of this job are the random trips you get/are forced to take with other English teachers. This leads to large groups of (largely white) English teachers roaming the Korean countryside awkwardly, generally having adventures. Take yesterday, for example. Yesterday, all the teachers in Osan and Hwaseong were pulled out of classes for the day to take a bus tour of some Historical Points of Interest that Should Not Be Missed in Hwaseong-si. These included the tomb of King Jangjo and Queen Hyoui, a memorial to the Jeam-ri massacre of 1919 (by the Japanese occupation, of course), and a visit to a soap-making herb garden.


Yes that's right. I got paid yesterday to take a field trip to go make some soap. Aren't you jealous?

Naturally, the soap-making was turned into a contest to see who could sculpt the best soap. Can you guess who won? It was not me! But shockingly, for those of you who recall how much I HATE arts and crafts, I took second place! By crafting a surprisingly good dinosaur. LOOK AT HIM IN ALL HIS MAJESTY!!!!

So majestic.

H

He is from Jurassic Park! Probably!

RAWR!

New dinosaur home

And now for the dilemma: So I have this really awesome soap dinosaur residing in my bathroom, generally threatening to eat the faces off of my enemies, and he needs a name. So I am going to ask you, fair blog reader(s, though that may be a little hopeful), to help me choose a name!

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!!

Or you can just leave a comment. Whatever, loser.

Young Love in the English Room

Today was not shaping up to be the greatest of days. The day dawned cloudy (though that might have been the thick layer of pollution) and seriously humid for about the fourth day in a row. Another day of threatening rain, but receiving none; one of those days where the atmosphere is pregnant with expectation and everyone seems just a little thrown off. Add to that the serious loss of South Korea to Argentina and my continued struggles to transfer money back to America, and I was in a very unpleasant mood. I wasn't snapping at people, more a general lethargy combined with a scowling depression. 

The morning didn't go particularly well, either. The atmosphere in the classroom was leaden from the humidity, lack of circulation and general disappointment, and it seemed like pulling teeth to get my students to participate in anything. But trudge on we did, and I made the decision to skip my lunch and try once and for all to do something about my money transferring problems.

One of the scarier parts of that particular issue was the fact that I had been carrying around 3,000,000 won in cash with me for about a day - yesterday I had tried to transfer the money, but was handed the cash from my bank and told "We can't wire money overseas here. Try the other bank next door". So I went there, and thinking my ARC would be better than my passport (we had to have our passport to get the ARC, after all), did not bring my passport. Of course the one thing I actually needed was my passport. So stuck with nearly $2500 in cash, in my bag, I raced home assuming every passing stranger was secretly a bandit who could smell the money and terror on me and would rob me in an instant.

So no lunch. Which did not help my mood any - I am a VERY unpleasant person when I skip meals, as many people who have ever known me can attest. Instead, I tried in vain to find a cab, walking most of the way to the bank before one would stop for me. Now I know what minorities in New York City feel like. But I got there, sticky-sweaty mess that I was, and got the money wired. Which was a huge relief. I picked up a sangwich and found a cab and headed back to school for my afternoon classes.

Which actually turned out to be a pretty decent part of the day. It was as if someone had flipped a switch - the kids were energetic, probably too energetic. My second class of the afternoon proved VERY difficult to control. But my second class of the afternoon also has my favorite students - namely, Goatcheese.

Now his name isn't actually Goatcheese. It's Gum Gongmin. But I call him Goatcheese. Not to his face! But when I am talking about him to friends. He's my favorite student, and I think I am one of his favorite teachers - he's basically a small anime character come to life. Every time I see him, it's "Hi Teacher!" and some sort of attack (the other day he tried to knock me over with a bear hug). When he came into class today, though, he was SO EXCITED to tell me about the result of his math test. He'd gotten a 100! I was seriously proud of him, even though I have never talked to him about math, and probably would have ruined his perfect score if I had.

But what made this especially exciting for me was that he was clearly excited to tell ME about it. I felt like Sally Field winning her second Oscar for Places in the Heart. You like me, you really like me! That was such a cool feeling.

AND THEN. He was equally excited about his result as he was for Kang Eunyoung, who had also scored a 100. Now Goatcheese and Eunyoung (I need to come up with a better name for her. You know, better than the one her parents gave her) have spend most of the semester "fighting" with each other - but the kind of elementary school fights boys and girls have. The kind that just give them an excuse to be close to each other. So I have been teasing them for the better part of 3 months about how they are in love - and you know what? I think I'm right. For Goatcheese, at least. He just seemed so genuinely excited about Eunyoung's result that it seems hard to come to another conclusion. 

Goatcheese is the class clown. And Eunyoung is definitely one of the pretty girls. So while they play now, I just don't see them going anywhere in the future. It'll be one of those John Hughes romances, only without the nerdy girl getting the jock or the nerdy best friend getting the girl whose nose he's been under since, well, forever.

They'll go their separate ways when middle school starts, she with her friends and he with his. They'll probably meet again one day, twenty years from now, and smile at each other. But it will be like two ships passing in the night. With a flicker os something once lost, they'll remember the carefree days of elementary school. But of couse they will be just too far apart by now. Already on their separate ways, down different paths. They'll be starting on their own lives by then, and there's no going back to those days. 


So maybe that was the promise of the morning. That what we have is the burden of the past, the oppressive knowledge of better times gone bye. But I'm not sure. I think that keeping those times with us - by remembering the past - we allow ourselves a more enriched present. For them, the memory of their lives way back when - not wishing they could go back but remembering - will be what they hold on to. 

Because that is something to hold on to. 

These are my confessions

Just when I thought I said all I could say, my chick--

Wait. Those are Usher's confessions. Sorry. Here are my confessions:

I don't think I'm cut out for elementary school teaching. I mean, I like the students and all, and they're pretty fun to play with, but GOOD LORD I need slightly more mature conversations. Even if it's about terrible pop music! I happen to like terrible pop music!

The bigger problem for me right now is crafts. I don't like arts and crafts. I am possibly the least crafty person on the face of the planet. Don't get me wrong! I am an excellent appreciator of art. I can design the CRAP out of a room with appropriate resources. Just don't expect me to actually MAKE any of the art.

And when it comes to using glue sticks and scissors? Forget it. My hands end up coated in that wonderful non-stick crap they call glue and somehow the moment I grab a pair of scissors it looks like I'm trying to cut things with my feet. It's just embarrassing. I am fairly certain that a pre-schooler would have done a better job than I have of decorating my classroom.

That's a Big Deal in elementary school too, this decorating business. My coteacher even said to me (about some typed labels I was making for my personal folders came out looking like they had gone through a shredder) "It's like you don't care!" And you know what? For those folders, she was right. And for all of the decorations for this room, she's been the one with the initiative to do them. If I had it my way, it would be simple and clean (not that there is a single spot in this school that even remotely resembles "clean"), and probably pretty tech-focused. Maybe a few select English posters on the wall, but I'd prefer more books than pictures in my classroom. In elementary school, though, that's just not something you can get away with. The visual stimulation is kind of important to keep the kids interested in what's going on in the classroom. But that's just not me.

Guys I cannot stress enough how much hate I feel towards glue sticks and scissors right now. Scissors less so because they have functions other than horrible arts and crafts projects. But the glue sticks? ABSOLUTELY NOT. It is like they are this terrible creation sent to earth by Satan, designed for the sole purpose of sticking to NOTHING but your fingers. And don't get me started on macaroni and glitter. Macaroni = food and food alone. The end. Period. And there is no reason whatsoever for glitter to inhabit this world. All that ends up happening with these terrible projects is that SHIT. GETS. EVERYWHERE. And I cannot stand that. Yes, I am not the neatest person in the world. But I do clean up after myself! And I don't particularly like the trashy scraps getting all mixed up in with my work-in-progress. Which inevitably happens when I am doing arts and crafts. I will have construction paper scraps sticking out from under whatever I'd tried to glue down (using approximately half a tube of glue stick), and somehow will be covered in glitter EVEN THOUGH I DIDN'T USE ANY. RAGE.

So there you go. Arts and crafts. I feel very strongly opposed to them and that, ladies and gents, is why I am quite simply not cut out to teach elementary. Or summer camp, apparently. Except Space Camp. I could probably teach at Space Camp. That would be fun.

Long story short (too late!), if I am teaching here for another year, it will really need to be high school. Or middle school. But not elementary school. I just couldn't do it again.

MIKA! MIKA! I WENT TO SEE MIKA! (and also World Cup ROK-Greece)

MIKA LIVE IN SEOUL. Yes, Virginia, this will be a photo dump.


Saturday woke up grey and rainy. Perfect weather for staying inside and having a Glee or Battlestar Galactica marathon, but I had other plans. You see, Saturday was The Day. The day I had been waiting for for several months - MIKA was playing a concert in Seoul. So a friend of mine grabbed our umbrellas and headed for Olympic Park, the centerpiece of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games and what I am sure is a lovely place to walk around when the weather's not quite so crappy.

You can see it was raining. A lot.

But that did not deter hoards of Mika fans from showing up and going crazy!

Except, of course for the people in my section, who seemed to have taken an entire bottle of Ambien EACH before the concert. Everyone else was up on their feet except for them. My friend and I were not just the only two foreigners in the section, but we were also the only two up on our feet for the entire show.

This is the giant cankle that rose from the crowd during the performance of Big Girls (You Are Beautiful).

And now some performance shots:





Final bows after the encore (Grace Kelly):



And now for the World Cup! Korea vs Greece - and Korea ran ALL OVER Greece. Great times.


Here we are, decked out in our Reds gear. We were one of only a handful of weigooks to stay for the game afterwords


A bit smaller crowd for the game, but it sounded about 10 times louder. ESPECIALLY when Park Jisung scored the goal to put Korea up 2-0. It was like the second coming


And here is a terrible shot of the jumbo screens we watched the game on. All in all, a great experience.

My Procrastination

I have a not-insignificant amount of work to finish this evening. So of course, I am doing a great job perfecting my procrastination skills. Here's how it goes:

Step 1: Turn on computer

Step 2: Open MS Word & the appropriate document to complete. Wait the 5 minutes it takes Word to open on this infernal machine. WHY WON'T YOU OPEN FASTER???

Step 3: Wonder how much it would cost to get a new computer. Or a new version of Word, since yours was pirated obtained legally

Step 4: Stare at the blinking cursor. Forget, then remember, what exactly you were supposed to be doing here. Oh right. Lesson plans. UGH

Step 5: BOO LESSON PLANS. Become all put-upon that you have to do so many lesson plans by tomorrow. It's not like they're even going to resemble the lesson that actually goes down in the class! WEH WEH WEH

Step 6: It's awfully quiet in here. Turn on teevee. Find something in English. Failing that, find something mildly palatable in Korean. Search the channels at least twice - what if you missed something??? Also turn on music. Consider carefully what music you will put on! It could be the most important choice of the evening! What will your last.fm followers think??

Step 7: Dag, you're hungry. Go out to the convenience store to pick up something to eat as a side dish for your dinner. Sabor de Soledad doritos? Peanut-corn puffs? Sun Chips? WHO EVEN KNOWS! Return, make dinner.

Step 8: Sit back at computer. Stare at the blinking cursor, not wanting to risk getting crumbs on the keyboard. Don't let that stop you from surfing the interwebiverse, though!

Step 9: Put on an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Promise self that you will also plan lessons while watching BSG

Step 10: Do not plan lessons. Put on second episode of BSG.

Step 11: EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL ALERT!!!!!! WHAT IS IT WHAT IS IT WHAT IS IT??? OMG IT'S FROM FACEBOOK!!!

Step 12: Go on Facebook IMMEDIATELY to determine the level of importance of the email. It is super important.

Step 13: YES someone has a new photo album. Look wistfully at the water pictures and desire greatly that you should go to there soon.

Step 14: Remember you are going to America in about 6 weeks. Check airfare online. STILL SUPER EXPENSIVE

Step 15: Since you're on the internet, might as well check out what's new on BBC News. Many fascinating stories about Burmese elections and Nikki Haley and dire warnings from the IMF about British/German/Spanish/Hungarian/Everyone debt.

Step 16: Wikipedia Hungarian debt, then Hungary, then somehow end up reading about Charles Shulz. Hooray Wikipedia links game!

Step 17: My eyeballs hurt

Step 18: Why do my eyeballs hurt?

Step 19: Probably cause they are some little bitches

Step 20: Decide that this needs to be blogged about ASAP.

Step 21: Feel vaguely bad about not planning lessons, but feel worse about your eyeballs.

Step 22: Write long-winded blog post about procrastination that gets entirely too meta towards step 20. Ish.

Step 23: Scour IM list for people to chat with. Start several conversations and immediately get WAY too involved in them.

Step 24: Remember Word is still open. Which is probably why your eyeballs hurt, jerkass.

Step 25: Plan a couple lessons. Feel so good you need to take a break.

Step 26: Repeat. Be successful.

Yes folks, that's right. You are in the presence of a WINNER. Try not to get excessively jealous.

In which I go hiking and get the meat sweats

Before we get started with today's entry into the wonderful world of Nolen, let me apologize for the lack of photos. I promise to look for a new camera this weekend so I can actually show you all everything.

Anyway. Yesterday was finally time for some school bonding. Most of my other teacher friends had gone through this (some several times already), and now it was my turn. Yesterday, we went hiking. Hiking, for those of you who don't know, is basically the national sport in Korea. It consists of medium to large sized groups of people walking up predetermined, well-defined trails up and down a mountain, often times as fast as you can, pausing only briefly at various scenic outlooks along the way. Like everything else here, hiking can only be described as super dynamic.

Initially, I was looking forward to the hiking - it's something I particularly enjoy doing, and it would be nice to spend some awkward time with the coworkers outside of school. But last week I got a pretty severe cold which has decided to return with a vengance. So I was definitely in the mood for hiking. Add to that the heavy rains from the previous 36 hours making the ground basically a giant, sucking mudpit and the clammy conditions outside, and it made for just a great day all around. But we all climbed into cars for the half hour (ish) drive to Suwon and the mountain anyway.

Of course, about 10 minutes into the drive, I took a Korean Transportation Nap, which seemed to help my disposition a bit, and when we arrived, my co-teacher and I and a couple of other teachers decided to just do a short walk around the pond. Which was actually rather pleasant! The area was beautiful, and the humidity was bearable and the conversation was less awkward than it usually is.

Along the trail, my coworkers pointed out a few interesting things to me: First, along the beginning of the trail, there was a lined path filled with pebbles, on which one walks without shoes, the idea being that it acts as a foot massage. I elected not to try this one, but mostly because I didn't want to deal with taking off my shoes and putting them back on again. Tired and lazy = missing out on cultural experiences. Ah well, there will likely be a next time. As we walked by the pond, my coteacher pointed out to me the Biggest. Effing. Koi fish. I have ever seen in all my born days. Seriously, these things were about the size of a steel worker's forearm! As we walked back from the pond/dammed portion of the stream, we sat down by what is apparently a foot bath. At least, that's how it was explained to me. So, not wanting to miss out on another experience, I took off my shoes and socks and plunged my feet into water that must come directly from the icy tail of a comet floating through deepest space. What I'm trying to say here is YA'LL IT WAS COLD. It is a shocker that my feet did not fall off right then and there. Of course, one of the teachers with me challenged me to a contest to see who could keep their feet in the longest. I lost (but since I got to take my feet out sooner, who is the real loser here?).

So we continued our slow meander back, stopping here and there, including at a honey farm. Seriously. Right there, on the side of the trail, was a woman who was selling honey that came directly from the SWARM OF BEES RIGHT BEHIND HER WHY WASN'T EVERYONE RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES???? Ugh. Bees.

I did not go up to the honey stand (but they brought me back a sample anyway! hooray! Also, it was DELICIOUS), but my coworkers did end up buying some. Honey: fresh from the bee's butt (is that how it works? I assume so).

And then it was dinner time. Well for us, because we were like an hour ahead of everyone else, it was pre-dinner snack time. And you guys, it was fantastic. We had a soup made out of fresh acorn jelly (which normally I'm not the biggest fan of, but made fresh it ROCKS...kind of earthy, nutty, and a little salty taste all at the same time) and a potato pancake with zucchini cooked in it. Great stuff.

NOW it was dinner time, and this time it was the entire school (well, all the teachers and admins, anyway) eating. We went in this restaurant that specializes in grilled meat and sat down for yet another edition of Gigantic Korean Dinner. Of course, I was lucky enough to end up next to the principal, which is always an awkward time. See the thing is, he speaks no English and I speak like two words of Korean. But this doesn't stop him from talking to me! Oh no, he talks my ear off! And I have NO IDEA what on earth he is saying. So that's awesome, and then dinner came. We had: Scallion potato pancake with squid, acorn jelly salad with sesame leaf, turnip kimchi, real grilled meat (I had not realized just how much I missed the wonderful smoky taste of meat from a grill) in K-style tacos, tofu, some kind of steaming tofu curd, bean curd, more grilled meat (some beef, some pork I believe), and then even more meat.

I ate So. Much. Meat. It was wonderful, and then it was awful. You know that overheated, uncomfortable feeling you get when you eat too much meat? Yeah. I was there. We call it the "meat sweats". It's a thing, look it up!

And then it was time for us to make our surreptitious exit from the restaurant so as not to get roped into a night of excessive drinking and further awkwardness with the principal, and sped off home to lay in bed and recover from the meat sweats. Shudder.

Awwww teaching moments!

Sometimes being a teacher can be really frustrating. Like yesterday, I finally had to make a student leave my lowest-level afterschool class. He'd been a disruption from day 1, and had been entirely resistant to any attempt to engage him in the lesson or discipline him. It was getting to the point where not only would he be extraordinarily rude to me, but he was encouraging the other students to follow suit - effectively halting the lesson. I am sure that with more one-on-one time, he would get better, but I am one person at the head of a room of 20 5-year-olds...the second I turn my attention to one of them, the other 19 get out of hand. And I don't have the time or energy to be corralling each one of them individually. Ultimately, because the class is optional and the student clearly did not want to be there, I asked him to leave. He is welcome to come back next class, but on the understanding that his behavior is much improved.

I'm also pretty sure this is every one of my old teachers getting their revenge on me.

But that was totally mitigated (yesssss I remember fancy English words!) by the end of the class: one of my kids asked me to tie his shoe! I was all like "awww you depend on me! that's really unfortunate for you!"...especially because his shoelaces had become some sort of Gordian Knot. As I wrestled with it, wishing for my Sword of Damocles, I realized that even though I hadn't done too well with the kid I had to ask to leave class, there were 19 other kids in the room who I was reaching, and that made me pleased. Especially one of the students, whose "little-kid-ADD" I think has progressed into actual ADHD. Keeping him focused (and, more to the point, keeping him from not jumping of the desks all class) has been pretty difficult, but I found a video that REALLY worked (for him and the entire class!). For two minutes, they sat there in awed silence, breaking it only to count along with the video. It, of course, is the eminently trippy Sesame Street Pinball video, teaching counting to 12. Thanks, Sesame Street.

And then, at the end of class, one of my students gave me this drawing:



It reads: "Yeongeo seonsaengnim", or English teacher. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Sports Day! Assa! Fighting!

So this weekend we had Sports Day at my school. Sports Day, if I haven't already told you about it, is essentially similar to our Field Day (or Track and Field Day) in the states, only every school has one, even the middle and high schools, as opposed to just elementary school. I'm not sure if there are equivalents in other countries, so if you've never even heard of Field Day, or Sports Day, and are like "NOLEN WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN," well hold on a sec, jump off the caps lock, and I'll explain! JEEZ GET OFF MY BACK.

At Sports Day, the kids play in all kinds of events, from the standard foot races, to a game that involves throwing bean bags at a giant pinata to break it open. There are also some little dances done by the younger kids (which I think is unique to elementary), and is just completely adorable. And finally there are even games for the parents and teachers to participate in! Exciting!


The kids were divided into two teams, white and blue. You can see the white and blue flags above. At the older level, or possibly at schools with more kids than mine, there are more teams, and according to one of my high school teacher friends, they really go all out with their costumes. If she would actually put up the photos from her Sports Day, I would link to her! But she is lame. Stop being lame, Jill! Here is her write up of a high school Sports Day. Basically my kids played smaller versions of the games she talks about. Jill, you are still lame. Because you have this whole freaking week off.



All around the field there were tents set up. These tents were the Parents' Association selling concessions to raise funds. One of the things they sold were the sweet rice cake dessert things whose names I cannot remember but are delicious. So I, of course, bought some. In addition to these vendors, there were merchants from all around town selling stuff. And politicians talking to the parents. It was basically a free-for-all, completely ok'd by the principal. So that was a bit shocking to see, but I understand (from my co-teacher) that this is not the norm in Korea. Our principal is just a weird dude.


Here is a formation of the Youngs preparing to do one of their dances. Seriously these guys were so cute...I wish I'd gotten a movie of them.


This is the finish line of the track. In the corner, you see the flags for first, second and third places. What would happen is you finish your race, and then you go wait under the flag for your finishing position. They tally up the number of white and blue finishers in each position and assign points accordingly. One of the most exciting races was the scavenger race, where each participant was given a card with an instruction to find a person ("find your mother", "find someone from the parents' association", "find the principal"), and then race with them back to the finish line. Guess who was one of those people on the cards? That's right, everyone's favorite giant, pale, hairy redhead!


We only finished second, my partner and I. Second place is the first loser :( (Nah, I had a great time with the kids and they seemed to like it too). I mentioned before that there were also games for the parents - well after the races, it was time for tug-of-war! And let me tell you, these guys were SERIOUS about their tug-of-war. My team got pretty well schooled after handily winning the first round. Poor White Team (you can tell from the wristbands)


Lastly, Spring is finally in full bloom...though judging by the last couple of days, we decided to skip Spring and head straight into Summer. Finally some warmth! So here is a shot of my town looking nice and green.

A note on the title of this piece: "fighting" is not what the kids were doing at Sports Day. Rather, "Fighting" is a cheer you shout to root for your team, much like in English "football" matches. In Korean, though, there is no 'f' sound, so it sounds much more like "white-ing" when they say it. It's pretty much the coolest.

Part the Second

Sorry it took a week to get this second part up. I hope you all lived.

Fortunately for you, I am sitting in front of my computer, putting off making powerpoint after powerpoint for my lessons this week. So hooray blogging! It keeps me from doing my job.

SO. When we left off, I had just had a very pleasant weekend in Seoul, bumming around the place, and was about to embark upon my three day training camp with 199 other elementary English teachers from all over Gyeonggi-do.

It was quite a mixed bag...on the one hand, there were a couple informative lectures and one or two interesting people. On the other, there were a lot of boring-ass lectures and tons of seriously creepy individuals. Also, many people from South Africa (those last two are not related! I quite like my South African friends).

The good lectures were...good. The two that helped me the most happened on the second day of training, and while the lecturers weren't the greatest, they were at least entertaining. I got some good ideas for introducing active participation in my class, and some REALLY good ideas for classroom management, especially for the young kids.

The big problem with the lectures, for me, was the excessively high number of "lecture pumas" in attendance. Lecture pumas, for those of you who are not familiar with the term, are those individuals who take advantage of question time in a lecture to ask a question that is usually a) only VERY tangentially to the subject at hand, b) INCREDIBLY specific to that person's situation (and thus not particularly useful to the group), and c) very easily answered or intuited. These people are very closely related to conversation pumas, and make for exceedingly awful lectures during which I play games on my cell phone, sitting in the back.

I didn't actually play games on my phone (at least not while people were actually lecturing). But I did play dots with Ilana...it reminded me of HSEV 101 freshman year at CUA. Miss you, Jill!

The big upshot of this training center, job-wise, is that I left feeling much more confident as a teacher and ready to get back into the classroom. I also got several props on my teaching style during our demo lesson, both from other teachers and our evaluators. I still think my partner and I should have gotten best teachers - our game was WAY more fun than the brushing teeth business that the winners did. Whatevs.

Of course, there was much more to take away from the training camp than just new education confidence. Namely, I came away as king of all trivia (a talent which I most certainly inherited from my mother, who still routinely schools me in Jeopardy!). What happened was this: one of the teachers decided to organize a pub quiz sort of thing on Monday night, with some secret under the table gambling (each team of five tossed in 5000W as an entry fee, the winner takes the pot). It was 20 questions on various subjects, evenly spread out amongst the official GEPIK countries (US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa) and some hodgepodge questions. So 20 questions + 5 bonus questions = max score of 25. Guess whose team got a 23? Ya damn right. So that was a quick 9000W to toss in my pocket.

But there was a catch: the winning team also had to agree to host the pub quiz the next night.

I think I have found my new calling. Some of the questions were probably too hard, but the idea is that you shouldn't know everything in a pub quiz, right? I reworked the format so it would be 5 categories with 4 questions each, plus a bonus attached to a question in each category. Working out the questions with my team was fun, and hosting the pub quiz was a blast - I'm definitely considering getting one started (perhaps on a once a month plan) here in Osan for the waygooks in the area.

So those were the highlights of my training camp...seriously you guys there are some weird-ass foreigner teachers in South Korea. Like a significant number of people who...worry me...to say the least.

In great news: the weather seems like it is finally starting to turn! Spring is arriving in quick fashion, the cherry trees are in bloom (making me miss DC even more), and green is coming to the country side. Oh, and I just bought a 1TB external hard drive for crazy cheap. Sweet.

Surprise Camping Trip!

Haha suckas! I found out yesterday that the fourth and fifth graders are going on a school camping trip to learn about nature or whatever. They will be gone Tuesday (today) and Wednesday (tomorrow), the positive upshot of which is my regular classes are all cancelled. Hooray! I still have to do my after school classes, though, so it's not all a free ride. But that's the thing about teaching public schools in Korea: nobody tells you when random things like this are happening, so it's always a surprise! In fact, one of my friends stayed up late last night and got up early this morning to hammer out some lesson plans, only to find out that she didn't have any classes today. SURPRISE! It's so dynamic!

Similarly, I'm going to be gone next week from Mon-Wed at an off-site GEPIK orientation/teaching seminar. So it'll be some time again before I have a full week of classes. Woot!

In other news, I'm hoping to go to Seoul this weekend to see the Steve McCurry exhibit that is showing there. If you aren't familiar with the name, Steve McCurry is a very prominent photojournalist who has focuses mainly on Asia. He rose to fame in the mid-80s with his chronicle of the Afghan War, first by being embedded amongst the actual fighters, and then through his documentation of the refugee situation. He is most famous for his iconic photograph, "Afghan Girl", which the National Geographic magazine ran as the cover to its June 1985 issue.

You can see why it's so famous. And hopefully why I am so excited to go see this guy's work. Out of anyone I've seen, he really has a serious knack for capturing some essential humanity in all of his subjects. Captivating.

Another teaching post! Hooray!

Sorry no pics this time, they refused to move from my camera to the computer. Jerks.

You guys! I was paid a really nice compliment this afternoon by my co-teacher, 뮹주 (Myungju, or Emjee which is her English name). She told me that not only was I doing well, but that I seemed to be a natural at teaching the children. Even the other teachers on the floor were impressed by me. So that was a great little ego boost that I just had to share with you, internet.

And the smallest children I teach are steadily growing into the most adorable little bastards I've ever seen! Class is still mostly a loud playtime for them, but I'm trying to inject some English into the playing so hopefully it will stick. Also, I was taking photos of them so you could see how obscenely cute they are (seriously, I think Asian babies win for "cutest babies in the world"), and they got a hold of my camera. And the results were...well, that's for another post.

In other news, this afternoon I left work early to go back to Suwon to pick up my now-ready Alien Registration Card. Which is basically a green card. It's even green and everything! And after that, I hustled over to a bank to open a bank account cause Shakespeare got to get paid, son. Of course, I had no idea where a bank was in the vicinity of the Suwon Immigration Center, I only knew that I had until 4pm to get to one. I got out of the immigration center at approximately 3:57pm. You know the scene near the end of Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Where Matthew Broderick is trying to beat Jennifer Grey and his father home? It was basically like that, only I had NO IDEA where the heck to go. I was, in essence, running around a few block radius frantically looking for a bank.

BUT I AM FILLED WITH AWESOME, so obviously I found one. And it was only like 10 after 4! Also, it turns out that the banks are open until 4:30. So that all worked out. And now I have a bank account. Which means I can get money from my school, AND I can get a cell phone account and an internet account. I am finally feeling like a real boy!