The Adventure Picks Back Up...Day 5 in Korea

Once again, I woke up around 6:30. This time, I decided to stay in bed anyway because I knew that I would need lots of energy for the first day of school. I got up around 7:30 and had a breakfast of stick coffee and some kind of sweet junk food. I'd tell you it's Korean name but my ability to read Korean is not quite that good yet.

The director had called the night before and told me that I would need to be ready by 9:30, so I showered, shaved, and put on some nice clothes for my first day. Mr. Lee called around 9:45 and asked if I could meet them at the gas station near the apartment. I agreed, of course, and ran down the hill from my apartment to the very same gas station where the man had given me the free bottle of water. I was still a little embarrassed about my earlier blunder there, so I waited out by the sidewalk next to the highway. Unfortunately it started raining and I had to run and seek shelter underneath the awning that shielded the pumps from bad weather. When the car pulled up, I made a mad dash for it and jumped inside. The director, Mr. Lee, and Jake were all sitting in the car. Both the director and Mr. Lee apologized for the rain. (This was a big sign that they'd both had experience with Western culture because Koreans typically don't apologize for things out of their own control, or so I've been told) I told them that it was okay, and we began our journey to Seongnam. 

Jake informed me that he'd stayed up late watching the Olympics. I think they'd watched swimming and/or judo that night. I love judo. This is why:

Some of these throws are just beautiful

 I'd investigated bus routes to Seongnam the day before using Google maps and was told that it would take close to 50 minutes to reach Seongnam by bus. Luckily, it only took 20 minutes by car. This was very good news to me because it meant that if I was running especially late, I could always take a cab to work. (Cabs are pretty cheap here)

When we got to the school, the director told me that we would have to rearrange the "teacher's room" (this was the room we ate in when I first got there) It had several small desks for students, which we pushed up against the wall. The director had me clean off an office desk. Once I'd finished cleaning it, she told me that that desk would be mine. Score! I had a desk! The director gave me some workbooks and a schedule and showed me what classes I would be teaching that day. I was a little confused by the schedule, but decided to trust her judgment on the matter. She told me to study the workbooks and familiarize myself with the lesson for the day for each class. 

I was studying the workbooks when I saw a man come in with a large metal box. I figured that it must contain some sort of delivery. He started talking to Mr. Lee about something, so I just turned around and kept studying the workbooks. The man left, and I heard Mr. Lee say, "Patrick. Let's eat." I turned around and there were 2 big plates of food with some side dishes to accompany them. On the plates were large servings of some kind of meat that looked a lot like chicken fried steak, along with some corn, sliced pickles, rice, and some sort of yellow vegetable. The accompanying dishes had kim chi and some sorts of vegetables. Mr. Lee handed me a butter knife and a fork and told me to begin. (I noticed that he had a butter knife, too, but used chopsticks instead of a fork. I guess after seeing how poorly I handled my chopsticks, he decided it would be better to give me a fork). The whole thing looked something like this:

I was happily stuffing my face when I saw Mrs. Yoon (the director) walk in, sit down, and start eating off of Mr. Lee's plate. Once I realized that they considered one of those plates a meal for 2 people, I decided to slow down and try not to look like a complete fat-ass. I left a good amount of it on the plate, and Mrs. Yoon ate what I did not eat. The meat was a pork cutlet that had cheese on it and was fried. It was so good...

After the meal it was time for my first class. I was told that they were middle school kids. I walked into the classroom and was very happy to see that they were the kids that I'd met on the first day. Awesome. I already had my shoe in the door with this group.
The class started and Mrs. Yoon introduced me. I began by saying "Good afternoon!" They just sat there and stared at me. I introduced myself and told them about how happy I was to be there and to be teaching them. They continued to stare. Things did not seem to be off to a great start... I told them where I was from and said that I was very eager to teach them about my country and my language and very eager to learn about their country and language, as well. The staring continued. Mrs. Yoon started to yell at them in Korean for being so quiet. She then told me that it was a good idea to start the class by getting them to practice their English. She began to ask them about their weekends in English. They were very hesitant to respond, so she started to strongly encourage them in Korean to participate. She also told me to give them lots of homework if they did not participate. This got them talking a bit more!

After asking each of them about their weekends and making sure that each kid had an English name, I tried to get them to read a dialogue from their workbook with each other. That didn't work well, either. Luckily, I had Mrs. Yoon there and we read the dialogue out loud to each other to show them how it was done. They found this to me quite amusing and it lightened the mood a bit. I was finally able to get some of them to read the dialogue out loud to each other. We did some work in the workbook that was related to the dialogue, and that lasted for the rest of the class. They had a small break between classes, in which I got them to teach me some Korean words. They enjoyed this even more. Mrs. Yoon came and informed me that there was an error on the schedule with my next class. She asked me to stay with the current class that I had and run pronunciation drills with them. They had 2 sets of 30 English words that they had to learn, which we read aloud. I was surprised at how quickly some of them were able to correct the errors in their pronunciation. I was especially surprised that I was able to get them to distinguish their "L's" and "R's." (I'm not joking. This is a challenge because they have a certain way of saying them in relation to other words that is a habit that they have to break. Part of this is because there is only one character in the Korean alphabet that represents both) The kids are not fond of pronunciation drills, but they'd improved significantly by the end of the class. I felt so proud that I gave them another break and got them to teach me some more Korean words. This way they got to see how I had a lot of trouble pronouncing some of their words and it made them feel a little better about it.

My next class was filled with very small children. They were literally learning how to say greetings and how to introduce people. Because they were only about 7 or 8 and they had little to no experience with English, I got to use a lot of pantomiming and gesturing to get my points across. I found this to be fun, and very rewarding once they picked up on the meanings of certain phrases. At a couple of points in the class they started drawing pictures of me and giving them to me and laughing hysterically. I had to put on my discipline-face and get them back on task.

My last class consisted of kids who were about 9 or 10. Some of them were a little rowdy and I wasn't quite sure how to use their workbooks so I had to improvise some to cover my butt. At one point they got rowdy enough that I heard Mrs. Yoon yell at them from outside of the classroom. This calmed them down quite well. I sure was thankful to have her there that day.

After class was over, I found out that I was done for the day. Hooray! Mrs. Yoon said that I could get Jake to show me the way home on the bus or that I could stay. She said that if I was hungry, Jake could also show me how to get some street food. Since I was hungry and I typically enjoy talking to Jake, I chose the second option. Jake led me outside and asked me what I wanted. I described the spicy chicken stuff that we'd had the previous Thursday and he took me to a shop. He ordered a larger sized portion of chicken for me. Awesome.

I still can't remember the name of this dish, but it's so good...

 I got some of this stuff out of the little refrigerator in the shop. 

This is called Chilsung Cider (it's a soft drink). How do I know this? It says it in English on the other side of the bottle... (If you can read Hangeul, the bottle literally says "Chil-sahng Sa-ee-dah)

How much did all of this cost? 3,000 Won. You may be thinking "Holy shit, Patrick! That's a lot of money!" but in actuality, it's under $3. I love this country.

I consumed my meal at my desk while filling out progress sheets on each kid. I had to turn these sheets in to another one of the teachers whose name was Sue. She is a very pretty and kind woman who I later found out is originally from Japan. Awesome. After turning my sheets in to Sue, I found out that I did all of them incorrectly, but now knew how to do them in the future! It's always nice to work at a school where the other teachers are willing to help you out.

After a while, Mr. Lee came down with one of the older students and asked if I could help them. We moved all of the student desks out of the teacher's room and up to the 3rd floor. After that, we went to 2 different classrooms on the second floor and moved teachers' desks out of them and into the teacher's room. In one of the rooms, Mr. Lee and I had to pick up this freestanding book shelf that was loaded with books and carry it in. It was really heavy and it dug into my hand  very painfully the whole way to the teacher's room. When we finally got it in there, I was sweaty enough that 3 different people asked me if I was okay. This was yet another sign that I need to start working out more.

After we moved everything into the teacher's room, the place looked a lot more like an office. They gave me one of the computers that had been on one of the other desks. Mrs. Yoon asked me if I was satisfied with my work space and I pointed out that I had a desk, chair, and a computer which made me King of the Castle. She laughed. At this point, it was closing in on 10:00 pm and way past time to go home. Jake, Mr. Lee, and I headed down to the car while Mrs. Yoon locked up the building.

On the way back home, the family was talking in Korean for a bit before Jake turned to me and said "My mother says I should speak English." "To practice?" I asked. "No," he said, "for you." Mrs. Yoon then told me that when they'd lived in New Zealand, people would often speak English around them very quickly. She said that it was very hard to follow them and that it often made her feel like she was alone, even when there were many people around her. She said that she didn't want me to feel the same way. I'm very lucky to be working with such a kind family.

We talked for a bit about work, about our homes, and about The Avengers (for Jake). I found out that Mrs. Yoon had written a series of books in Korean about successful ways to learn English. Apparently, this series was on the Korean Best-Seller's list for a short time. Now when people ask me what I did, it can go something like this:

Person #1: Hey Patrick, what did you do today?
Me: Oh nothing. Just hung out with a FAMOUS KOREAN AUTHOR.
Person #1: Oh neat.
Me: Yep!
Person #1: Why did you give me a number if I'm the only person you're going to be talking to in this made-up conversation?
Me: Just wait. You'll see...
Person #2: Hey guys, sorry I'm late. Traffic was terrible!
Me: That's why.

They dropped me off at the apartment after instructing me to meet them the next day at the gas station at 11:10. I thanked them and wished them a good evening. The rest of the night was spent Skyping and blogging while sipping on a small glass of makgoelli. I could hardly wait to see what the next day had in store.