I suppose I should start with talking about work... the whole reason why I'm actually in Korea. :D I've finished my first month of teaching! I can't believe it's gone by that quickly. I'm starting to get into the groove of it. I have some great classes, and some that make me want to die, but generally, the kids are great. I sometimes forget how young they actually are! The oldest kids are 14... and sometimes I also work with the six year olds. And gosh, those are really cute, really young kids. I feel like I'm starting to build some relationships, but I don't really know if I like this teaching role. I miss being able to interact with kids on a more "hanging out" level, in a mentoring capacity. Makes me think about my career choices as I move forward with my life. I'm liking this, though. I can definitely do it for the next 11 months!
I've started a quote book of all of the funny things my students say or write. This week, my favorite was this. It's from a question on the monthly test that I gave to my 7 year olds.
Q: How many fingers do you have?
A: I have a face.
Hahahaha. I don't know why I thought this was so funny, but it still makes me laugh out loud. They're so damn cute! And my Korean coworkers are great, too. They're so youthful! One has a 17 year old son... and I wouldn't have put her past her mid-30s! Crazy. They're great! It's a fun group!
The weeks fly by... especially now that we have our Hump Day Celebrations every Wednesday. Low-key evenings out with other foreign teachers from the area. It's a nice way to spend a Wednesday evening... knowing that there are only 2 more days until the weekend. Every Friday night, too, we head out to the local restaurants/pubs/bars to sit and chat for hours. Something else that's been an enjoyable weekly event is soccer. On Sundays we get together to play soccer and it's just great. Some people are really good, and the rest of us just have fun. It's a great time. :D It's been great to have this type of experience... to be really social in a group of people with whom I share a common language! It's a bit more like Senegal (as far as just sitting and hanging out goes), but I understand what's going on around me! Who would've thought!
While I understand the English that's going on around me, I'm having trouble with this whole not-speaking-Korean thing. It really gets to me. And there have been a couple times that I've gotten really frustrated with how little I speak, and I just end up feeling bad that I'm in someone else's country without being able to say hardly anything. But then I remember that I've been here 6 weeks, and I'm really trying to learn a lot. I practice nearly every night with my computer programs, and I'll use as much as I can when I'm out and about at restaurants, shopping, etc, etc, etc. I'm getting more comfortable with what I know, and Koreans seem to be impressed with what I'm learning, so that's very encouraging. My goal is to be able to come back to America, go into some little Korean grocery store and talk to the owners and just say something even as simple as, "I'm really excited to have a Korean grocery store in the area... I lived in Korea for 12 months teaching, and I didn't learn much, but I was able to get by." :D In Korean. So, we'll see. 11 more months to be able to learn that. Hopefully an attainable goal.
Last week? 2 weeks ago? Who knows... Well, anyway, we went rafting, and it was a great time! We drove for a few hours to the north (yes, toward North Korea) into the beautiful scenery that is South Korea... And when we finally arrived, we changed into our suits, put on our hot water shoes (bright yellow) and our life preservers and helmets, and cruised down the river.
Look at those hot foreigners!Well, not all of us are foreigners. The Koreans that we're meeting are just great, too. Really fun people. :D (Tomorrow, we're heading to Caribbean Bay, the water park!) But here's another shot of us in the raft. (Our guide was the most ripped Korean I've ever seen!) What a great time.
In other news, along with my lack of language skills, sometimes I just feel like I don't really have much in common with Koreans... They're very quiet, distant, and respectful if you don't know them. And that's been so different from my experiences in Senegal. And I know it's not fair to compare them, but I needed a little bit of ... I don't know... something else today. So, I went into Itaewon, the foreigners' quater in Seoul, to do something a bit different. I really wanted to buy some new earrings (which I found...) and some black beans (for veggie burgers)... AND HUMMUS. How exciting! I was walking around looking for Africans to chat with, and while I found a few Nigerians, the more exciting part was going to the mosque!
I went up to the top of the hill to find this mosque that I had seen from the bus stop... because I knew it would be fun to see it. I asked a few different people how to get there... I asked the guys at the Turkish Kebab shop, and the travel agent (who found really cheap flights to Thailand for Christmas... I'll be going back to book those soon hopefully!) who was fasting for Ramadan... Up on top of this hill, there were tons of foreigners, but most of them were African, Pakistani, or Indian. I was the only white person up there... and I felt more at home there than I've felt yet in Korea. There was even an African restaurant that looked like it served Ghanaian/Nigerian food. (We'll definitely be hitting that one up soon!) I chatted with some of the store-owners before going up to visit the mosque. I had brought along a scarf, so I covered my shoulders, and went up to see it. The building is beautiful, and it stands prominently on top of this hill overlooking the city, so it was a beautiful view.
There were lots of Korean tourists there, and many Muslim men going to pray. The Korean tourists were there in very short skirts/dresses/shorts, so when they saw that I was purposely covering myself up, a few different people came up and asked if I was Muslim, where I was from, etc. They seemed very intrigued that this white Western woman was wearing relatively culturally-appropriate attire at a mosque all by herself. There was a sign that was advertising a Koran recitation competition that I would love to see next week, but I'll be at work... I really just felt a lot more at home there. And not for any religious reasons, it just felt so much more familiar. I spoke a little French to the Moroccan men I saw there, and said "Salamalékoum" to just about everyone I saw... and it just reminded me of Senegal and really being able to talk to anyone I wanted to. I miss that a lot. Sigh.
In any case, I had a great day. And I'm looking forward to my day tomorrow and also to the funny stories that teaching will have to offer me this week. :D
Fulbright is moving forward... ndank-ndank. I'm crossing my fingers, but I'm not very hopeful. I'll keep you posted. Let me know how things are going with all of you back at home. Love you and miss you!
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