What a busy first week we had! On Wednesday, we observed our first moving camp in Jincheon. Moving camp is one of the many programs our school has and it involves us going to small schools that don’t have English teachers, and we do one-day camps with their students. I followed a group of 5th graders and their English was pretty impressive. George is one of the teachers and he is really good. He was up on a chair, expressive, loud and the kids were riveted during the entire class. I hope I can teach like that! I really enjoyed being in the classroom- it makes me excited to start teaching.
After moving camp, a bunch of the teachers went out to Pizza Hut in Cheongju. It was fun to get to know the teachers a little better, and a few from the Korean staff that came along too. We had ice cream at Baskin Robbins for dessert. Just a regular old American night.
We had an early morning on Thursday, another moving camp. We left at 8:20 for Dae-gu elementary in a city that sounded like Tanya. It was a 2 and a half hour drive from CBFLIS. Even out there, the school looked exactly like the one in Jincheon. We met the teachers, had a few words from the director and ate some mandarin oranges. I began the day by observing Jeffrey’s class. While he was setting up, a Korean teacher stepped into the class. She proceeded to explain something in Korean. She talked and pointed to her food. We smiled politely. She spoke louder. We smiled more. Louder still, with more pointing at her foot. Smiling while we shake our heads. Finally she waved her hands in front of her body and I imagine she said something like, “Wow, so you didn’t understand a thing I just said, did you?” And she left. Jeffrey looked at me and said, “Isn’t it strange how we think if we repeat what we say over and over, and speak louder, eventually the other person will understand?” It’s so true! We later found out that she was warning us about a boy in her class with a twisted ankle. Oh boy. This is only the first of many communication barriers we are bound to experience while in Korea.
There is a rather large animal cage outside and below our building. It houses about 10 chipmunks. One morning this week, we awoke to find a small deer in the cage. Jeffrey told us it was a water deer, a small deer with fangs and beefy hind legs. We went to visit him today, but found he was no longer there. I guess we’ll never know. Maybe we ate him already…
On Friday morning, we had a meeting with the director of our school. He handed over our signed contracts, 2 books about Korea and a set of 3 korean CDs. Lots of bowing and smiling. Brenda, one of the Korean teachers said something funny during the meeting. “When I saw your marriage certificate with your application, I was surprised. It looked like a prize, and I was jealous because I don’t have one.” What do you say to that?? Brenda just turned 30 and she’s not married yet and apparently it may have something to do with her name. She went to a sort of palm reader who told her that her name was not marriage material. Clare became Brenda and her Korean name changed as well a few weeks before we arrived.
Fridays are short work days, so a group of us took the bus into Cheongju after lunch. I nearly got run over by the bus as it rounded the corner. I need to be a little more careful. Pedestrians do NOT have the right of way in Korea and street signs/lights are more of a suggestion I hear. Once in town, a couple of the guys went to the dentist to get a ‘scraping’ or teeth cleaning. Daphne, Luke and I explored an underground mall. The walls were lined with tiny clothing, shoe, purse and jewelry shops, and there was even a large saltwater aquarium with sharks in the center!
Luke and I had our first experience of Korean barbeque. We took our shoes off at the door. (On a side not, all this taking on and off of shoes may get expensive. The teachers' lounge, the Nature Room, the Game Room and the dorms all require you to take off shoes and I’ve already walked through 1 of the 2 pairs of black socks I brought!) We sat on mats on a heated floor, and we were served plate after plate of thinly sliced beef or galbi that we cooked in front of us on a big burner in the center of the table. Most of the side dishes were really spicy, but the meat was tasty.
After paying for the meal, we headed over to HomePlus for some groceries. It was a whole new experience shopping on a Friday. What luck we had landing on a food tasting day! Workers stood at their stations clapping and yelling, all vying for our attention. It seemed to make no difference whether we understood them or not, they would talk on and on about their product. Oh HomePlus. I’ll let Luke tell you about the dancing workers in our next post. Until then.
Love Korean style BBQ!
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