These past few days have been pretty excellent, especially now that I have my Internet connection. In some ways, I am sad that I am so dependent on the Internet, but hey…it keeps me from feeling lonely. Which has yet to really occur, but my coworkers are convinced I must be lonely all the time and miss my family and friends terribly. Friends and loved ones are very important in Korean culture, so I think they don’t understand when I say that I am used to being away from home. Though I guess it’s been two months now…Whoa! It seems like I just got here! Also, there is a definite group mentality here, so they also don’t understand that I might actually like to spend some time by myself. So whatever they think, I haven’t really been lonely yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time. I’ve been really busy so far, so maybe later, when I have more time, I will get really sick of this one-horse town. I am definitely enjoying what they call the “honeymoon” phase right now and I’m sure I will crash later and rant about how much I hate my host family, my town, and my school, right now I love everything about everything and it’s a great feeling. And best of all, I think it’s reciprocal!
My lessons the past few days haven’t been the greatest, but then again, I set high standards for myself. I have a vision of being a really superb English teacher and it will take some time to do so. I need to become more used to the classroom and teaching, and also develop more learning materials and classroom games and activities. There’s really an extent to how much I can make per day. As it is, I’m spending a lot of time at school making materials for my lessons (enough that a couple of teachers have told me I work too hard) and work for a couple hours each night, too. Which is my excuse for not writing in this blog often this week. But I digress. It’s interesting because I had this vision of Korea as being a country of workaholics, but from what I have seen of my village, at least, many things take precedence over work. For instance, at my school the teachers usually don’t work during the lunch hour, but take that time to enjoy tea or coffee and talk leisurely. It’s a very social place where relationships are important, I think. I’m glad they have welcomed me so warmly into this community.
Tomorrow I am going to Seoul to meet Bianca. I don’t know what we will do besides find this amazing Indian restaurant we’ve heard so much about, but I am really looking forward to seeing her again and talking about all that’s happened to us in the past two weeks. We’ve kept up some over email and such, but it’s really not the same at all and I want to hear what her take on the ETA experience so far has been. I definitely have some friends who have not been as lucky as I am and are really not content with either their homestay, their school, or both. I am really very lucky and I know it.
I am falling more in love with my students by the day. I smile here at my computer just thinking about them. It’s hard to describe what it’s like. I get out of the car in the morning and they’re there. Some of them just look at me shyly, while others immediately start waving frantically and calling “Hello! Jen sonsaengnim!” I am often ambushed by a horde of second-grade girls either outside the school or in the hallway, who rush to grab hold of any part of my body they can. There’s a definite competition for my hands, which makes changing into my school slippers difficult. A bunch of other students will approach me as I make my way upstairs to my classroom, again calling “Hello, Jen sonsaengnim!” In kindergarten through maybe third grade, almost all the students are pretty enthusiastic about me and basically burst with joy when they walk into the room for my class. The little ones are so precious. At least half of the older classes are that way, too. And there is a group of sixth grade girls (and a few boys) who visit me during every break (their classroom is just down the hallway). They are fun to talk to because they can speak a little bit of English. In class today, they showed me a bunch of pictures of Korean guys—singers and maybe actors, I’m guessing—and asked me to pick which one was moshisoyo (handsome). I guess they liked my reply, because they burst into cheers. And this is my typical day with my students.
Today, there was this one little boy in the first grade who was sooo cute. I actually sat by him yesterday at lunch, too, and he tried to talk to me and even brought me some water, too. So today, we were playing an alphabet game, and he started enthusiastically waving his “C” coloring card where, I now saw, he had carefully printed “Miss Jen” (I had written it on the board). Keep in mind this boy only knows the letters A, B, C, and D and the words apple, banana, cat, dog, and hello. So I’m sure he had no idea what he wrote, but I loved it anyway.