Say 김치!

How I've managed to live in this country for six months and NOT write a post about kimchi is a mystery. So here it is...

Kimchi is incomparable to anything in the US. I don't mean this in terms of taste as much as I do superstition surrounding the food. As a staple, bread may be our closet equivalent. Nonetheless, we do not:
1. Think that we will become ill if we don't eat bread
2. Find it impossible to eat our meals unless they are served with bread
3. Worry about vacationing abroad due to the prospect that there may not be bread

I'm not exaggerating. Koreans eat this stuff like there's no tomorrow and they're pretty horrified when they hear of the"terrible rumor" from abroad that it's is disgusting. It's actually fine. And in case you don't like one kind, there's more than 100 to choose from! And if that's not enough, they've also managed to work it into every other food dish imaginable - kimchi soup, kimchi dumplings, kimchi pancakes, kimchi fried rice, and kimchi sushi to name a few.

K-Pop

If you find yourself teaching middle school in South Korea, you better know a thing or two about "K-Pop". Teenagers are obsessed. Instead of participating in my lessons, 90% of them would prefer to paint band names on their desks very meticulously with little jars of whiteout. I can't tell you how many times I've approached a student inquire why they're not working and, much to their (and my) dismay, accidently ended up with not yet dry masterpieces all over my hands. Not to worry - students simply take out their x-acto knives, scrape everything off their desks, and start over with a blank canvas. ^^

I have a neat trick...

Recently, February 14th to be exact, I turned 24. What's so special about that? For starters, I was born in March. The year was 1987 and if you do the math you'll also notice that I skipped age 23!

How did I pull off this amazing feat? In Korea, age reckoning is different than in the US. Newborns begin life at age 1 and become a year older each Korean New Year or 설날, which occurs on the second new moon after winter solstice . I think there may be some rare exceptions, but this is generally the same date as the Chinese New Year.

Imagine my disappointment when I discovered there was not going to be a humongous national birthday party with endless amounts of cake. Apparently Koreans prefer to spend the holiday quietly at home with their loved ones. Lame.

In remembrance of the old year and honor of the new, here's some pictures from the past winter, fall, and summer (haven't seen a spring) in Korea.

WINTER!

Walking around my city.


...and skiing at a local resort.



FALL!

Hiking in Chiaksan National Park.


...and watching the sunset.



SUMMER!

Visiting a temple outside of Jeonju.


...and admiring the ever so pretty flowers.

Babies!

Korean children are hands down, the cutest things ever. Unlike in the US, where parents try to keep their children from imposing on other people (generally that is), in Korea they're pretty much allowed to run free doing whatever they please.

This unbelievably darling little tot waddled up to me and my friend in a restaurant. Her parents barely took notice as she rummaged through my friend's purse, fetched out her water bottle, and had a sip. Nor did they seem at all creeped out when I picked her up for a photo session!

I love it every time a child wants to come say "hello!" to the foreigner, but not everyone appreciates invasions of personal space. Once, I was sitting in silence in a cold room in a bath house when two children came in and started screaming and throwing ice at each other. After a minute, the old man next to me grabbed one of them by the back of the shirt, pulled down his pants, slapped ice into his crack, and told him to leave. No hard feelings. The kids bounced out laughing. I, too, found this hilarious, but I can't even begin to imagine the kind of harassment suits this man would face in the US!

엔 서울타워 (N Seoul Tower)

The N Seoul Tower looks a bit like something out of Tomorrow Land in The Happiest Place on Earth.



Standing at 236 meters (the Eiffel Tower is 324, and the Empire State building is 381 m) it's not monstrous, but still affords a nice view of the city.



Distances to various cities were posted in the windows of the tower. I'm so far away! How depressing! ;_;



In case you can't figure it out, that's the Korean emotion for :(
And on a completely random and unrelated note, here's the emoticon for listening to music with headphones! d(^_^)b

Attending a Korean Wedding

Towards the end of January, I was lucky enough to be invited to a Korean wedding. I didn't follow most of what went on, but here's a quick recount...

There were two ceremonies. The first was held in a church (more Koreans are Christian than Buddhist so this is not uncommon), was widely attended (300 people or so), and mimicked a western style ceremony. The second was held in a small chapel-like area, was only attended by a few guests (mostly curious foreigners like myself), and followed a traditional Korean ceremony.

Here's the couple in their tux and white dress. Western wedding couture is all the rage in Korea. I can't fathom why because, as you'll see from the next picture, Korean hanbok is SO MUCH COOLER!!!



The couple at the second ceremony pouring tea for the groom's parents. There was A LOT of bowing a pouring tea.



The groom's parents are throwing chestnuts which must be caught in a sheet held by the bride and groom. The number of caught chestnuts represent the number of children the couple will have. In this case, they're supposedly having like 7 (much to the bride's chagrin). On the wedding night, the chestnut-babies are left in the marriage bed and the happy couple consume them together.



At one point, the groom has to carry his bride around the room. Apparently this is harder than it looks because the clothes are super slippery!

I TALK TALK ENGLISH

Perhaps I should talk about what I've been doing all winter. After the semester finished on December 22nd, I had to start teaching English camps on the 23rd! While it was a bit depressing to work clear through Christmas and New Years, being busy prevented me from feeling too lonely around the holidays. Above is the banner from my first camp- the aptly named "I Talk Talk English Camp" held at my elementary school.

Unlike teaching during the year, the camp lacked a ridiculously lame textbook...so I got to do whatever I wanted! a.k.a. make ice cream, decorate for Christmas, do morning yoga sessions, etc. Most activities went over well, but the kids (10 boys and 4 girls) were just out of finals (yes, elementary school kids have finals) and SUPER hyper.

Morning warm-ups in preparation for yoga. I'm reviewing vocabulary ("put your HANDS on the FLOOR")



No recollection of what I'm forcing them to do here. If I had to make a guess, I think we're playing the Samantha-enhanced game of red light/green light and they're in transition between a crab walk and a crawl.



I wasn't sure how to handle the kids during a particularly rowdy afternoon, so I called off class, took them into the gym, and made them do "running dictation". Having been informed of this game many times by veteran teachers, I was always hesitant because it struck me as some sort of punishment. I'm not a good judge of what's not fun for Korean children because they were OBSESSED with it. Literally. I've never seen such ruthless competition for pieces of suck-on candy in my life.

In Running Dictation, you post a sentence at one end of the gym - e.g. "Your English teacher is beautiful." Then you put the students into pairs and have them stand at the opposite end of the gym. One person is the "runner" and the other the "writer". When the teacher gives the signal, the runner hurtles him or herself back and forth across the gym trying to memorize bits of the sentence and dictate them back it to their partner. The first team to get the entire sentence down correctly wins. Sounds easy, but for kids who barely know their alphabet let alone whole words, a short sentence will make for a ten minute game and very exhausted competitors.

It's priceless to see the look of anguish on a runner's face when he or she shouts "P!!!!!!" and their writer jots down a B, frantically erases it, and changes it to a V. It's even better when a team triumphantly shows me their finished product and I tell them there's a mistake...at some unspecified location in their sentence. Muhaha!



I used to have this notion that teachers were like mothers in that they were required to love all their children equally. Either that's not true or I'm going to be a shit parent. Here are my two most awesome students from the third and fifth grade.





I'm now pretty convinced that ESL is most effective when the focus is not actually on the English itself. When I had to teach from a text books, my kids zoned out. When I taught a cooking class, they really tried to understand what I was saying (seeing as not understanding meant the potential demise of their batch of ice cream). Just some food for thought (har har) but I think it would be totally awesome if extracurricular classes in the US were offered in other languages. Like how awesome would it be to take ballet class IN FRENCH?!?!? Maybe there's not really a market for that sort of thing, but I think its a cool concept.

Sadly, I don't have many more pictures. I do like this one from the closing ceremony. I was given the duty of awarding a certificate of attendance to each student. A lovely chance to practice reading Hangul, the kids took delight in hearing very badly bastardized pronunciations of their full names. I just like it because I think I look very official standing next to my co-teacher under a Korean flag with a bunch of students gathered around.



My name is spelled wrong on the certificate. Tee hee!