Can you believe I’ve been here for six months already?! I sure can’t, and I’m the one who’s here. Over Easter I called home and my Nouna asked me what I thought about my experience so far, am I glad I came?
There was no hesitation in my reply. Yes. Absolutely. I had to come. I can’t imagine my life any other way, and that’s saying something since that’s never been the case.
It’s experiences like these that teach you a lot about yourself. One thing I’ve learned is that I’m quick to laugh and slow to anger. I also didn’t know how patient I am, not simply with loud and rambunctious kids, but also with basic human interactions and the daily experience of being misunderstood.
I also didn’t know I like kids. I knew I like the kids I’m related to, but they’re so little and cute, what’s not to love about a 3 year-old and 3 month old? But I love pretending and imagining and singing and dancing, I love being silly and uninhibited, and that’s what little kids do best.
I’ve always known I enjoy English. Words are way cooler than numbers, so I’m not surprised I enjoy teaching the subject. I even enjoy the tedious grammar lessons, although by the end of the day I normally want to pull out my hair.
The winter was a little rough, but just yesterday I took a two-hour walk around the city to see the blossoming cherry trees and people excited to be outside. My life in South Korea is great, and for this blog I thought I’d post the pictures I took yesterday and relay a few of the funny things my kids have said in these last six months.
We all know kids are hilarious, but then add a language barrier and my quirky ways to that mix, and I tell ya... I wish I had kept a record of the funny situations/predicaments/sayings, but here’s some of the more memorable ones:
Joel and Nick are really funny. Joel loves to whistle and always pretends to die when I sing along with him. The songs he whistles crack me up, and I just HAVE to break into song. Their response is to cover their ears and say, ‘No teacher, no!’ He’s whistled the theme song to Titanic, Hey Jude, the Mission Impossible theme song. Sometimes we act out a movie and the boys like to start by singing the 20th Century Fox theme. It always surprises me how much American influence they’ve been exposed to in just the 10 years they’ve been alive. They even know Singing in the Rain.
Matthew asked me, ‘teacher drink beer?’ I was so surprised with this question all I could say was ‘why do you think that?’ ‘Face red’ and it promptly got even more red. ‘No I don’t drink beer, I just walked to work and it’s cold outside.’
I asked Joel what his birthday was and his asked, ‘Why? You try to hack my account?’ I dare you not to laugh at that.
My students always comment on my green eyes and ‘golden hair’ though of course we all know it’s just a mousey brown, but i suppose when you compare it to Korean hair it might look golden. When Nick and Joel said something about my hair I told them that I have quite a bit of grey (and it’s gotten considerably more grey since I’ve moved here.) They didn’t believe me so I showed them. They quickly screamed the word ‘Azuma’ and Joel drew an old lady with a walking cane pulling one hair out, and Nick drew a thought bubble that said ‘Oh damn!’ It was classic.
One student was making fun of another student and told him, ‘shut-up made in China.’ The other student responded by saying he was made in Japan.
I laughed when a student called a skyscraper a sky-crapper. Honest mistake, how could he have known what crap was?
One day Katie, a 15 year-old student in my advanced class, came early to ask me what a condom was. I turned various shades of red before I settled on the answer that it has to do with sex. “I know teacher, but what?’ I don’t duck the hard questions, but this was clearly one of those ‘grey’ questions, if not ‘completely-over-the-line’ questions. I hemmed and hawed and started by saying boys have penises, and she says, ‘peanut?’ and drew a peanut on the board. ‘Uh, no, not peanut.’ So I drew a stick figure of a non-gendered person, then I made a big circle around the nether-regions. ‘Boys.’ Then I drew a balloon, ‘condom.’ Luckily for me the light came on and she said in an embarrassed, but also glad to know voice, ‘oh, it covers.’ ‘Yep, it covers.' And I thought, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t ask me any other question like this, because I feel compelled to answer, but I’m just not made to teach sex-ed.
Apparently she was sent as an ambassador of sorts, because the other girls in class wanted to know what it meant too. I asked them where they heard this and they told me it was in a reading in Mr. Shin’s class. I could only wonder, what the hell he was teaching them? The girls asked Katie the meaning, but she was too shy to say it aloud, so she wrote it down on a piece of paper and I watched that paper get passed around the whole class followed my giggles.
I don't know what this window display was trying to sell, but it seemed fitting to place the image here, after the condom story :)
One lesson I asked a discussion question, have you ever had anything stolen from you? The class was silent, then a single voice range through, ‘ya, my soul.’
We were working on two-word verbs, like pull out, pick up, drop off etc. and which verbs can be separated with possessive pronouns. Joel, smart as a whip, says, ‘oh, like knock it off - that’s what you say to us sometimes.’ It’s true, I just had smile and agree. ‘Yep, just like that.’
It’s funny the things kids pick up on. Sometimes Joel is a little moody and I ask him why he’s cranky. One day a new student in class, John, was upset about something so Joel asks, ‘why are you cranky?’ And then preceded to sing the party pooper song I taught them.
‘Every party has a pooper and that’s why we invited you. Party pooper, party pooper.’
I have a student named Tyson, and he could very well be the loudest student on the face of the planet, but he's also funny and smart so... Anyway, he asked how I like Korea and I told him it's great, I love it here. He told me he doesn't like to travel because foreign food makes his stomach itchy. Yeah, my stomach gets itchy too.
Well, I’ll keep a better record of the funny things that happen in the classroom, but until then, see ya. Oh, and thank goodness it’s spring!
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