Well, I'm off on my 23 day adventure through Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. I'll try to post blogs and pictures as often as I can along my trip. We have a lot of fun things planned during our trip including going to an elephant sanctuary, sleeping in tents on a island, and eating tons of delicious food. We'll be following a path somewhat similar to this one:



Miss you all! <3

Christmas & enemas

I keep meaning to update this thing, but whenever it comes time for me to actually write, it just seems like too much work. I'll give you the overview of what's gone on recently.

Last week was my final full week of school before vacation, so I did Christmas lessons in all of my classes. I began the lesson by showing the students a short powerpoint about Christmas traditions in America. The first thing I taught them about was that many Americans cut down real trees for Christmas. I showed them pictures of people cutting down trees, a xmas tree farm, and how people put the trees on the tops of their cars when they drive home. All my students kept saying "chincha!?" which means "really?" in Korean. Then I showed them pictures of the some of the more extreme exterior decorations that people do. They were absolutely amazed. I got a lot of "wow"s and "Teacher, your house?". Finally, I showed them a YouTube clip of one of the houses that has their lights change to xmas music (don't worry, I explained that most people don't go to that extreme). The kids loved it, but the funniest part was that the song that was playing in the clip was The Carol of the Bells, and every class said how scary the music was. My co-teachers asked if it was Halloween music. I guess I never thought about it before, but the song is pretty creepy.
After learning some xmas vocabulary and playing a game, I had my 5th graders make xmas cards and my 4th graders complete a letter to Santa. The xmas cards were my favorite part of the lesson. I gave the students options on what to write on the outside of their card, and told them what to copy on the inside of the card. I had a slide up on the TV that said "Christmas Card Front" and "Christmas Card Inside" above what they were supposed to write. Not surprisingly, at least 5 of my students actually wrote those words on their cards. I also had "your name" in the place where students should write their names and had a few write "your name" inside their cards...but my favorite was when one student wrote "your mom" instead. I think he was confused about where he was supposed to address the card, so he was unknowingly being a smart ass. The best thing about the cards was how into making them the students got. They were told to bring paper to class to make the cards, and many of them brought whole bags of things to use. There were a lot of origami Santas and stickers and one student even brought in a pine branch that he glued pieces of to his card! I think the boys were more into it than the girls in some classes. One thing to mention about my students is that there are an unusually high number of them who are very artistically and creatively talented. I don't know if its a Korean thing, but I was amazed at some of the cards these kids designed.


Student making a Christmas card

This past weekend I went to go and visit Seth in Busan. I had a really great time, but of course it went by way too quickly. We did some shopping in an area called Nampo-dong that has a lot of upscale stores. In the middle of Nampo-dong is a street market where you can buy cheap sunglasses, bags, scarves, etc. We also went to the fish market that is famous in Korea. It's called Jalgalchi, or something along those lines. The market is pretty much as Korean as you can get. If anyone visits me, I will definitely be taking you here. All along the street are old Korean women vendors selling all different kinds of fish, stingrays, crabs, things in shells, eels, octopus, etc. At every stand you can watch the old women hack up the fish into tiny pieces. We also got to see the fisherman unloading the crates of fish right off the boats, which was kind of neat. Saturday evening we went to Seth's homestay to have dinner with his host family. At the end of dinner, Seth's host dad asked if we wanted to go to a nearby Christian university that had many xmas lights. I didn't really know what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a smaller, walk-around version of the old Core Creek Park light show, sans the moving pieces. Minus the fact that it was absolutely freezing, it was nice to get a little piece of Christmas here since nothing about Korea has been able to put me in the Christmas spirit.


Jalgalchi Fish Market




unloading the fish off the boats


Harbor


I <3 Busan


watching some 3D video at the light show


Me, Seth and his youngest host brother


Christmas lights at the Christian University

Christmas in Korea is definitely a much smaller holiday that in America. My Aunt Barbara sent this to me in an email, and I thought it pretty accurately describes Korean Christmas from what I've been able to witness so far...

"There are more Christians in South Korea (the Republic of Korea) than in other Asian countries such as China and Japan, so Christmas is a celebrated more widely. (Christians make up about 25-30% of the population.) However, the other 70% of people in South Korea are mostly Buddhist, so Christmas isn't an important festival (and not really celebrated by Buddhist people in South Korea).
Unlike Japan, Christmas is an official holiday - so people do have the day of work and school! But they go back on the 26th (Boxing Day). There's a longer official winter break in the New Year.
Churches are decorated with lights and many have a bright red neon cross on top (all the year!) so that goes very well with the Christmas lights! Most churches will have a service on Christmas day. Going to Church for Christmas is becoming more popular, even among non Christians.
Department stores put on big displays of decorations. There's also an amazing display of lights in the capital city, Seoul. The lights are all over the city centre including the bridges over the Han River.
Some people (especially Christians and westerns who live in South Korea) will have decorations at home including a Christmas tree.
Presents are exchanged and a popular present is money! Gift actually gifts is becoming more popular, but giving money is still very common. Korean's don't usually have birthday or anniversary celebrations. The main gift and money giving time is during Korean New Year (which is at the same time as Chinese New Year).
Santa Claus can also be seen around Korea but he might be wearing red or blue!
A popular Christmas food is a Christmas Cake, but it's often a sponge cake covered in cream brought from a local bakery! Or you might even have an ice cream cake from a shop like 'Baskin Robbins'!"

I've seen the Christmas cakes on display outside Baskin' Robbins...kind of hoping my family gets one since they're in the shapes of really cute snowman, penguins and polar bears.

My host family, even though they are Buddhist, have a mini Christmas celebration. We have a small xmas tree in our apartment and Tammy and I decorated the living room with paper chains. We are going to open our gifts xmas eve morning because that night we are going to grandma's house near Seoul and staying there until Saturday morning. As per usual, no one has given me any hint as to what we will be doing there, but Tammy did mention going out to dinner and noraebang when I asked her a few weeks ago. Nothing like some Korean karaoke to put you in the Christmas spirit.

Going off on a different tangent...I had an interesting day today. Today was my last day of school and I knew I had no classes but that I had to come in for some sort of closing ceremony (Koreans love their ceremonies, almost as much as they love their banners). Co-teach told me to come to school at 9:30am. I figured I'd be at school maybe an hour at the most and then I could come home and go back to sleep. I got to school promptly at 9:30 only to be told by my co-teacher that the meeting had been moved to 12. Thanks co-teach...ever heard of the phone? I asked her what I was supposed to do until then and she said "Just relax." So 2 1/2 hour later I'm sitting in my ice box of an office watching my third episode of Law and Order SVU on the computer when co-teach comes and tells me we are going to Pizza Hut for lunch with all of the English teachers. We ended up spending like an hour and a half at Pizza Hut where I found out that the meeting had been moved to 1:30. After lunch my teacher and I go to the teachers office for the meeting at 1:30 and find out that it was moved to 2:00! At this point I'm wondering if I'm ever going to go home. Co-teach then suggested that we go say goodbye to the principal since I won't see him for over 2 months. I don't know if I've told you about my principal, but hes a very intimidating Korean man who has been nothing but kind to me since I arrived at his school. He speaks very very little English, so we usually just sit in awkward silence when we are alone together. But he likes me because I give him gifts all of the time. Anyway, we go to see the principal and I tell him "Merry Christmas...blahblahblah." He then starts talking to my co-teach in Korean and the only things I understand are the words "tomorrow" and "I will call". Moments later in the hallway I found out from co-teach that the principal was saying that tomorrow him and I are going to go to lunch together by ourselves, and that he will call my cell phone tomorrow to tell me when. Ummmm WHAT?!? Does this man honestly think we can have an entire lunch together when neither of us speak each others' languages? So I'm currently terrified out of my mind about this meeting. My host mom says that she thinks he will bring his daughter or something and I'm praying that she's right. I am really flattered that he asked me to lunch, but I'd like him a lot more if he hadn't. At least it should make for a good blog entry.
Soooo after my minor panic attack, my co-teach also told me that the principal said I could leave and that I didn't have to attend the day's meeting. So I pretty much went to school to watch SVU, eat Pizza Hut and be forced into a very uncomfortable lunch date with my principal. Awesome.
This evening I met some of my former students from my teachers class at their English study group they started. It was so nice seeing them again, even though only three were able to attend. We spent a while catching up and talking about winter vacation plans. The group of them are using a textbook created by the English radio network that they all listen to daily (sidenote: my host mom also listens to this show at full volume at 6:30am 3 feet away from my bedroom door...I HATE that show). Today's topic of conversation from the textbook: constipation. I kid you not. They all memorized a whole short article about it. At the end of the article are the key vocabulary words from the text. Here are the words that I had to read aloud and have them repeat after me: constipation, digestive system, feces, stool, poo, bowel movement, uncomfortable sensation, fiber-rich food, dietary changes, laxatives, metabolism, relieve, enema. I mean, I don't know about you but enemas and bowel movements are definitely a part of my daily conversation in America. After each teacher said the memorized article aloud, we then had a conversation about constipation. I tried to explain to them that they should probably avoid asking someone in America if they were ever constipated.

My life here never ceases to amaze me...

In other news, my winter vacation has officially begun!! I don't have to return to my ice box of a school until March 2nd, with the exception of my 3 day English camp at the end of January. Here is what my winter vacation looks like:

Dec 29-Jan 20: traveling to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand with Seth
Jan 25-27: English camp
Jan 28-Feb 5: Busan to help Seth with his English camp
Feb 5-Feb 28: Korean Language Class at Daegu University where I will be living in the International dorm and taking Korean classes for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week

The best part about my 2 month vacation is that we continue being paid by our schools the entire time.

It's going to be a beautiful, beautiful two months.

reason #483

Reason #483 why I love my life:
These are 4 of my students who are also Tammy's best friends. They were supposed to be studying for their finals tomorrow, but instead they decided to videotape themselves singing a Korean pop song. I could hear them yelling from my room but I didn't know what they were doing until they all came running in and showed me this video. Its super cute, but the funniest part is the end when the little 12 year gives the camera the middle finger. Tammy was taping, so its kind of all over the place. Please enjoy!

Soju! Mekju! Makali!

Two things happened in school today that I thought were worth mentioning.

In my one class I had today, I was bent over two girls helping them with their worksheets. I must have had some stray hairs hanging out down because both of the girls grabbed strands of my hair and pulled them out of my head. They then continued to hold them up to the light and play with them on their desk after I left them. I was told that this happens sometimes in Korea, because people here only have dark hair so they aren't used to seeing blonde hair. But it was really strange once I actually saw kids do it. Kind of creepy.

The other thing that happened today was that 3 of my classes were canceled and all of the students got to go home early so that the teachers and some parents could play kickball, volleyball and dodgeball together. It was a lot of fun and pretty hilarious/pathetic. 95% of the women who played with us either ducked or screamed when the ball came towards them. Most of the games were played by the few men we have at our school. It was kind of frustrating for me at times because I actually want to play and know that I can at least hold my own if I'm given the chance. As per usual, I didn't know what was going on half the time...still unsure of who won the games. I was the most confused during dodgeball because apparently Korean dodgeball is very different than the American version. There is only one ball used and you only get out if you're hit by the ball, not if your ball gets caught. They also have this crazy rule where once you're out, instead of sitting down you go behind the opposing team and you can hit them from behind with the ball if it comes to you. The game wasn't as fast paced as our version, but the extra rule makes it so much fun. Again though, the guys pretty much dominated the game. After the tournaments we all congregated in the school cafeteria where, of course, there was beer and Soju and Makali and kimchi waiting for us. At the end of our mini meal, there was still a lot of alcohol left over, so I grabbed a bottle of beer, Soju and Makali for my host dad, since the way to his heart is through alcohol. I lined them all up on the kitchen table when I got home for him to see when he came in the door. I was laying in bed and heard him come in. Suddenly I heard him gasp and say, "Soju! Mekju! Makali! Ohhhh yeahhhh." Probably the greatest thing I've ever heard him say.