Wednesday, February 23, 2005

An update

Well, things are still going well in South Korea. The country's growing on me I guess. I like the fact that I can walk around anytime and feel safe, but I'm not a fan of the garbage everywhere. It has it's finer points and weaker points, just like any other society. I'm still working at Doryang school, there are 6 blocks in which to teach. They begin at 3:40, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40, 7:40 and 8:40. I only teach 4 classes so far and observe the other two. It works out pretty well actually. I observe during the 5:40 and 8:40 blocks so my teachings spread out. I teach three little boys first block. They are all rowdy little boys, but one in particular, Harry, is the one I call the evil little child. He just has it in his eyes, you can see the evil lurking there! I'm not even exaggerating. He is constantly running around class, ignoring me and generally distracting the other boys. He's a smart boy, but he must have ADHD or something, he's wild.

My 4:40 block is my favorite. I teach one little girl named Selina (trust me, not all classes are this small, classes are normally 6-12 students, I've lucked out). She is about 9 years old Korean age, which means 7 years old Canadian. She's a cutie but doesn't speak much english at all. We're going through her alphabet sounds. I'm breaking the rules sort of. Generally we only teach the alphabet names and then the kids memorize words. They are not taught how to sound out words at all. It's stupid I think. Since it's just me and Selina though, I'm trying to get her to learn the sounds as well. It's going good so far, she's got A through P down pat. She can sound out simple words like fun. We're working on Q-S right now. I'm not looking forward to teaching her V though. I've started introducing it a little bit since it's in some of the words she's been learning, but it's hard. There is no V sound in the Korean language. It also sounds a lot like B, P and T to her. Like I said, we're working on it, it'll take time, but I like doing it. I can actually see when she gets something. It's a nice break after dealing with boys running around the room screaming.We intermix our lessons on alphabet sounds with easy concepts like big/little and colours. Big and little is really easy with me in the room. I'm bigger than almost everything. It's also helpful to know that when dealing with capitol letters and lowercase. We just call them big and little. Yesterday we spent most of class looking out the window at the vehicles passing by and saying, "blue truck," "white car," "grey and chocum (little) white van." We also learned the word for tree, sky, sun, moon (comes out when sun says bye-bye), road and street light. You use what you can when teaching! Trees are green chocum brown, the sky is blue but yesterday it was blue chocum white (clouds). Now, we'll just see if she remembers anything today!

My friend Jenn came up this weekend from the city she lives in Masan. Jenn and I knew eachother from University in Abbotsford. It was nice to see a familiar face. She came on Saturday but then we had to head straight to my school for a speech contest. I was the judge. Speech contests are not so much fun. I had to sit there for 2 hours listening to 80 kids tell short stories. Some were really good, some really sucked, all were really boring. Poor Jenn had to sit through it as well. At least I knew some of the kids. After that we went out for dinner at a traditional Korean restaurant. They're really good, you are brought raw meat which you cook yourself in this firepit in the middle of the table. You are also brought out salad, a soup, vegetables and other goodies. It's really filling and reletively cheap. We then went out to one of the western clubs in town. It was a beach party themed night so we wore our summer dresses, and froze our asses off in the process. It still gets really cold here at night. The beach party was fun once inside, but getting there was interesting. It was a good weekend, Jenn went home Sunday evening and I'll be going to visit her next month.

Now, some of you may know this, but most won't. I had started Taekwondo a few weeks ago and was really liking it. It was a good way to get me out of bed in the morning and I was actually feeling productive. Then I went and blew out my knee. I was jumping to kick the bag with my right leg and was supposed to land on my left leg. I did land on it, but totally at the wrong angle. There was a pop, a lot of pain, and I was down. I walked around on it for about a week, staying off of it as much as possible, icing it and keeping it elevated. It had begun to feel better, but as of this last weekend I had lost the ability to straighten it or bend it fully without pain. Not good. So, off to the doctor's I went. An x-ray showed no damage, which means soft tissue damage (ligaments or cartilidge). To determine exactly what's wrong I'd have to get an MRI done, which is expensive. The doctor suggested an alternative for the time being. I now go to physical therapy monday to friday for 3 weeks. I'm on medicine (penecillin and anti-inflammatories) and I have some ointment stuff.....(I don't know what it does, I just do what the doctor says). Physical theraphy was not at all what I expected. When I picture physical therapy (now I never went in Canada, but I'm assuming) I picuture doing little exercises for my knee. Not in Korea. Here it's like going to the spa for my knee. I pretty much lay on my back and nap for an hour. It's great. First a really hot pad is placed on my knee, I sleep for about half an hour while my knee gets really hot. Then that's removed and these four suction cups are placed on my knee. They vibrate and move, send electicity through my knee and pretty much give it a massage. That lasts for about 20 minutes. Then I get an ultrasound done on my knee, then I go home! It's marvelous, very relaxing and makes my knee feel awesome. Hopefully it'll work.

Today as I was getting ready for physical therapy I kept hearing what sounded like someone practicing drums outside. I wasn't too interested in it, because it is always really loud here and I wouldn't be half surprised if someone was just practicing their drums. It kept getting louder though, and quieter and sounded like it was moving. I decided to grab my camera as I headed out the door for therapy and am glad I did. I found an impromptu parade going on. A group of people, obviously all together in a band, had stopped their van on my street and were putting on a performance dressed in all their traitional gear. I ran across the road to take a picture and was waved up by the director to come closer. I stood at the top of some stairs while they played and marched around. Then they stopped, all turned to face me and played another song. There were only about 3 of us watching. I took some pictures and then the director came up to me and asked in really good english where I was from. I told him, he got really happy and told everyone. They all cheered and started to play another song. The director then took my hand and ran me through them as they were playing. I was clapping my hands and dancing in the middle of them with him. It was awesome. Everyone in the band was dressed in really bright colours. There were two directors and one guy dressed up as a soldier holding a gun in the air. I'm pretty sure it was fake, but you never really know here. After this we all bowed to eachother and they started to pile into their van, off to their next roadside gig. The director ran back to me, "Canadian, Canadian!!" and gave me his business card. I'm not quite sure what he expected me to do with it, but I thanked him anyways and he went on his way. Until this point I hadn't really seen much of Korean culture, I was starting to believe that the only actual Korean culture out there was rude people pushing me in stores and people staring at me. I really need to get to a temple or something.

Anyways, that's my update. I'm still enjoying it here, the friends I've made are really nice. I'm adjusting to living amongst the Koreans, I'll never fully undersatnd them, but I am tolerating. Until next time, everyone take care!


The band, see the gun being held in the air??? I didn't really get it either. Posted by Hello


The impromptu parade......my dancing english speaking friend is the man in the black coat, brown hat, holding the metal drum thing.  Posted by Hello


Myself, Jenn and my roommate Marnie at the beach party....bartender in the background Posted by Hello

Thursday, February 10, 2005


Today I climbed a small hill/mountain by my house. This is a view of the next hill that I will climb. It's about twice the size of the one I climbed today so it'll have a much better view of Gumi.  Posted by Hello


The view from on top of a hill by my house looking down onto downtown Gumi. There is much more of the city around the corner to the left and further straight on. I'll venture into those areas later! Posted by Hello


A gazebo on top of a mountain by my house. It's a nice trail to walk up, there are clearings all along the way with benches and good views. There is also work-out equipment along the way. Bench presses at one clearing, foot holds for sit-ups at another. One day when I'm motivated I'll run the trail and do little work-outs along the way.....one day.  Posted by Hello


View of downtown from inside the gazebo atop the hill by my house. All hand-painted and there are a ton of them around. Talent eh? Posted by Hello

Thursday, February 03, 2005


The view from the top of my building towards downtown. I don't know the name of it but that is the highest mountain in Gumi.  Posted by Hello


The view from the top of my building. It's all apartments in the city I live in and the apartments are super small by my standards. My room is my sanctuary.  Posted by Hello


This is the view out of my front door onto the NOISY intersection below Posted by Hello

Krista is alive and well in Gumi!

Hello all!
Well, as many of you know through my mass emails, I have made it to Gumi, South Korea alive and well. Once I flew into Seoul I was supposed to take another plane into Daegu which is a city 45 minutes away from my town of Gumi. Well, it apparently snowed enough in Daegu for the airport to be closed (I guess Korea doesn't get that much snow since 2 inches can close an airport!!!). My flight for the final leg of my trip was cancelled! So, not knowing anyone in Seoul I was stranded at the airport at 5pm Korean time (1am my time). I had been up almost 24 hours, I was tired, hungry and now stranded! I didn't have any contact numbers for the director of my school who was supposed to pick me up at the airport and I definetly didn't know how to get from Seoul to Gumi which was 5 hours away. Luckily I met 2 really nice Americans who were in the exact same boat as me. They travel to Gumi all the time for business and knew how to get there by train and bus. I was just about to hop on a bus with them when I heard my name over the P.A. system "Krista Inrig Vancouver!!! messsage at info desk!!" It was my director Mr. Oh informing me that yes, I should get on a bus and that he would be there to pick me up. That was terrific since my first plan was just to get on a bus, find a hotel room in Gumi and track my school down in the morning (I had a number for the school, but no afterhours numbers). So, 5 hours later I was finally in Gumi, it was 2am Korean time which was 10am my time.....I had been travelling since 6:15am my time the previous day. I met my roommate briefly and finally fell asleep around 3:30am, I had been awake for 30.5 hours. I slept for....oh, maybe 6 hours then I was awakened by way too much light in my room and the street outside. I live on the second floor of an apartment on a busy street corner, not a quiet place. So, up I got and chatted with my roommate Marnie. She's been an ESL teacher for 2.5 years, she's Canadian too, from Lethbridge. I think we're going to get along just fine.

I work at Prime Language School. In Gumi there are four different Prime Schools all over the city. I like the school I’m observing at. It won’t be the school I teach at though, but I’m assuming it will be pretty much the same. I will be teaching 5 50 minute classes starting at 3:40 PM Monday to Friday. I don’t think the actual teaching will be all that hard, usually we go through two pages out of the books they are working on a day. The language barrier will be my biggest problem. They have tests once they finish a section on pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and memory. We usually talk for the first 10-15 minutes of class, just getting them to tell us quick stories about how their day’s gone so far, what they did last night etc. Right now the talking generally centers around me, how I like Korea, how much Korean can I speak and other random questions. They know how tall I am, how old I am, what food I like to eat, what my favourite colours are, if I have a boyfriend (giggles), his name (more giggles), how old Marc is, where Marc is….you can imagine. I’ll probably be teaching children around 11-12 years old. Well, they say their 11-12 but they’re actually more like 9-10 years old. In Korean culture the day you are born you are considered to be 1 year old. From there on, every Jan 1 the child gets a year older, not on the day they were born. So, a child born Jan 2 would be one year old until Jan 1 of the next year when they turned 2 (in Canada the child would only be 1 year old). On the same token, a child born December 29 would be one when he was born, but would turn 2 two days later on Jan 1!!! In Canada the child would be considered only a few days old, but in Korea it would already be 2 years old……weird, I know.

The teaching style is almost completely different from Canada (not that I know all that much about teaching styles in Canada, I’m just going on my vague recollection of elementary school). Everything is memory. It’s kind of sad I think. The kids can be pros on what is in their book, but that‘s it. Right now one of the classes is working on their M sounds. Generally half of the section contains about 16 vocab words for that letter, so the children will learn 16 words beginning with the letter M. So you’d think that they’d get that M sounds like mmmm. They do on some level, but they are more so memorizing the whole word Monkey rather than mmmmonkey. We did a test and put the word money on the board. They know all of their sounds, but for the life of them they couldn’t figure out how to say money until we broke it up for them and said each sound first. They hadn’t memorized how to say money yet. They can’t sound words out. They know what M sounds like only because they’ve memorized it. They can’t put the sounds of M O N E Y together to make the word money. To me it’s sad because they’re not really learning the language; they’re just memorizing part of it. In the real world they’ll do just fine in certain situations when dealing with the English language, but in others they’ll be totally lost.
We’re also allowed to discipline the students differently. In Korea status is everything. We are allowed to hit the kids!! We can’t slap or punch them, but we do bang them on top of the heads with their books or smack their foreheads with a pen we carry around. One teacher suggested that I use his method. He makes children who are being bad sit with their legs at 90degrees and back against the wall for 3 minutes with their arms straight out. The Korean teachers carry sticks that they hit them with. Now, yes we hit them, but there is definitely no bruising left and it doesn’t even hurt…it’s more of a method of embarrassment to the child. I was watching my roommate’s class and one of the boys started acting up, she went to his desk, pulled his hood over his head so he couldn’t see and started giving him light body shots!! He was laughing, the whole class was laughing, but he did settle down after that. It’s just a way of saying I’m in charge, so listen to me….I guess. Another oddity is that we tell the whole class everyone’s marks. Again, status is everything. If a child doesn’t get first, second or third on a big test, they will often cry. We write who is first, second or third on the board and those kids get stickers and coupons. The children will also know who got last and laugh at them. It’s completely normal, I feel bad doing it, but it’s expected. I’m sure I’ll get over it….but I don’t think I will completely. I think its mean. The kids tend not to have any internal motivation. If they know that they won’t get in the top three then they often won’t try at all. To them they don’t see any point unless they beat everyone else in the class. On the other hand, the majority of the kids tend to try really hard in order to be the top. There are pros and cons in everything.