Today Seth and I and two friends went food shopping after class. After finishing shopping, we walked out of the food store to see this kid standing there. As an American my first reaction was to be frightened. Luckily people aren't allowed to own guns in Korea. But seriously, what is this kid thinking? "Oh, I'll just go loiter outside of the food store with my rifle and handgun and see if I can frighten any foreigners today."??

English Winter Camp

(this post is a little belated)
After coming home from many days of vacation, I had to teach an English winter camp for three days at my school. I had about thirty wonderful students for four hours each day. My class was so much better than my regular classes because all of the students wanted to be there, and almost all of them had above average English skills. I barely had to repeat anything or have my co-teacher translate anything...it was heaven. I planned the schedule and material of the camp and decided to follow a winter theme for it. One day we learned about winter activities and winter clothing/body parts. Another day we learned about Hannukah and Kwanzaa (both of which none of my students or co-teachers had heard of). The final day we learned about American New Year's traditions and about writing resolutions. My favorite parts of the camp were watching Snow Day in English while drinking hot chocolate with my students (there were no subtitles but my students loved the movie anyway) and playing my Jeopardy game on the last day. Here are some pictures from the camp...













playing the dreidel game


making Kwanzaa mats

hello from daegu

Sorry I've kind of taken a hiatus from writing here (in case anyone still actually reads this thing). Its partially because I've been really busy the past two months and partially because those weird little Korean daily happenings just aren't as amusing to me as they used to be. I just take it for granted that I'm going to have weird things happen to me or have weird interactions with people everyday.
Right now I'm living in a different city in Southeastern Korea and taking a Korean language class for 3 weeks at Daegu University. I, along with about 8 other Fulbrighters, are living in the dorms at the university. I have class Monday through Friday for four hours a day. For the most part I really like my class. I started out my classes on an off note when I got placed into a class that was higher than my level. The first 15 minutes of class involved the other Japanese students grilling me with questions in Korean about where I came from, my boyfriend, my family, etc. I wanted to cry by the end of the first hour because I was so lost. Luckily my teacher knew I was out of my league and helped me switch to a class one level lower that one of my ETA friends was in. My new class is really interesting because among the 20 students in my class there are 8 different countries represented: Congo, Rwanda, Japan, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, USA, and UK. It's really interesting because at any point during class, people are speaking a number of different languages to each other. It's neat that our common language is Korean, so a lot of times that's how we have to speak with each other. During one of our breaks I was talking to the Chinese guy beside me and the Japanese guy behind me. I could speak to the Chinese and Japanese guys in English (with a little Korean mixed in) because they had studied it before. But the Japanese guy also spoke Chinese so he would speak to the Chinese guy in Chinese. When the Chinese guy didn't understand what I was saying, he would ask the Japanese guy in Chinese who would then explain it further to me in English. It's been a really unique experience. My Chinese table partner said to me on the first day of class "Tomorrow I will bring you China." I wasn't sure if he was talking about dishes or the country so he drew me a picture of a teapot and sure enough, the next day he brought me a Chinese teapot with a bunch of Chinese candy. It was really sweet.
My teachers are pretty good...one is better than the other. My one teacher has a very nasal-y Korean voice and yells everything she says, so that gets old really quickly. The other one is really funny and tells us really funny things about Korean people (such as what used to happen on the wedding night during a traditional Korean marriage). The best part about my class has been how much more I'm able to understand. I'm able to read almost entire passages and conversations in Korean and understand almost all of it. Reading and listening is much easier than speaking though, so I have a lot of trouble when it comes to putting what I know into an intelligible sentence. But I guess I have to put things in perspective and realize that I've come a long way for only living here for 6 months.
This past weekend was the lunar new year, or in Korean "Seol Nal". It's a really big family holiday in Korea and a lot of places close down for the weekend. On Seol Nal, everyone eats a certain type of Korean food ((I forget the name) and then they magically become one year older. I don't really understand the whole tradition, I just know that everyone turns a year older on that day. I decided to skip the host family's gathering at grandma's house, so I and a bunch of my friends met up in Seoul for the weekend for drinks and Western food.
Not much else new going on. This coming weekend my friends and I are trying to go skiing somewhere. I only have one more week of class and then its back to teaching in Cheongju until July.

just a naked Friday afternoon...

Today I went to a jimjilbang with my friend Kate. In case you don't remember, a jimjilbang is a giant spa that has sauna rooms, hot tubs and pools, cafes, sleeping areas, massage parlors, game rooms, etc. Many Korean people go there with their friends and family for a day of relaxation, sweating and nudity. I'd gone to the jimjilbang once before to sleep after a night of drinking (can't really come rolling into my host family's apartment at 3am) but only took part in the hot sauna rooms. The other part of the jimjilbang experience is the hot tubs/pools separated by gender. This part of the experience involves getting completely naked and parading around the changing room with everything hanging out for all of Korea to see. Anyway, one of my goals during my stay in Korea was to go partake in the naked part of the jimjilbang since it's something I would never in a million years picture myself doing. Today I decided to suck it up, strip down, and join the old naked Korean women in the hot tubs. Surprisingly, it wasn't as traumatizing of an experience as I would have thought. Of course Kate and I got stared at, but there wasn't any pointing or anything for once (who would've thought I'd get pointed at less when I'm naked?). I wish I could have taken a (censored) picture of what the hot tub room looked like. One part of the room held all of the different hot tubs/pools where kids were playing and older women were relaxing. The second part of the room was a bunch of mirrors with stools in front of them and buckets where a bunch of women were just scrubbing themselves down. Quite the sight to see. The most interesting part about the naked jimjilbang experience is that anywhere else you go in Korea, women are very conservative and covered up. Its hard to reconcile the two different extremes.

Anyway, I can now check off "spend an afternoon with a bunch of naked Koreans" off of my to do list...