Yesterday was the first real day of winter. There was a bite in the air in the morning and it stayed cold all day. This morning I woke up to frost—almost snow—on the ground. Gone is my hope that it won’t be that cold here during winter after all. Guess it’s a good thing I don’t spend that much time outside, anyway! Also, I looked at the Bozeman weather forecast and it was something like 2 degrees earlier this week, so all in all I am rather contented with the weather conditions here. What is most surprising to me is that the cold hasn’t really bothered me so much yet. I used to be the one that was always cold, even in California! Now everyone else is always complaining about how cold it is, but I guess I am either dressed well for the weather or am developing thicker skin. Or it’s the ol’ layer of fat settling on my girth. People here think it’s because I am from Montana, which is such a joke for anyone who knows me from home. I am the biggest baby about cold. I think it’s more likely due to the fact that I’ve experienced so little truly cold weather in the past four years that it’s a novelty and so I am less liable to complain. I have actually been afraid that winter here would do me in and I am glad to see that it might not lick me after all. Granted, it’s a little early to tell, but I am optimistic (for once!).
Though things are not as bad as I anticipated in terms of Korean weather, the whole teaching thing—my job, you know—is not going that great. Basically, up to a quarter of my classes in a given week will be really excellent. At least a quarter with be chaotic and completely unproductive the entire time, and the remainder are in disarray most of the time. It’s not a heartening statistic. And unfortunately, the bad lessons seem to not occur at random, but to specific classes, time and again (read: third and sixth grade). I am sorely tempted to blame them, but I guess it’s not their fault, really. They’re only children. I am older and supposedly wiser and should be able to teach them no matter the circumstances. I was reading a fellow elementary ETA’s blog earlier this week, and she was also sharing some third grade horror stories. She concluded in saying that if her students were acting up, this indicated that she hadn’t succeeded in engaging them and she needed to employ different strategies until she met with success. While I agree with this to an extent, I also feel there’s a limit to how much I can really do as a teacher. I mean, I only see the rascals two agonizing times a week, so I can’t really change their behavior that much. If they are allowed to act up on a regular basis, then it will be difficult for me alone to inspire a change in attitude. Also, I feel like I’ve tried just about everything at this point. They don’t like songs, they don’t like dancing, they are too busy ignoring me, mocking me, or trying to be funny to even listen while I am trying to explain a game, let alone play the game itself…I really don’t know how to go about this. It is their fault, the little shits. I feel badly about it…I should be able to teach them more. The girls are all good (I have many friends among the third grade girls…I Bin, my TKD buddy, for one) and the boys probably would be okay too if there were fewer of them. I think I must have at least fifteen rambunctious boys in there and they only feed each others’ tendency to misbehave. I am anxious to see what Kim Eun Soon will do with them. Her current class went from a last-place tie with the third grade as recently as two months ago to my favorite, most obedient and energetic class. I hope she will help me work a miracle or I just may leave Korea simply to avoid teaching these particular kids!
In other news, we have a new teacher at school. He’s here to replace Kim Keun Hwak and is probably as old as the Korean peninsula itself. A nice man, but….i feel bad he’s stuck with such a horror show of a class. I doubt he has the energy for it. He was trying to help me today and it did go better than yesterday, but we’ll see. I am not very confident that he is the help I am looking for. He is a nice man, though. We had a small party for him today at the school after playing some volleyball. The usual bbq chicken covered in fruit glaze, a meat and vegetable surprise, and pizza for me. It was nice and I definitely devoured that pizza. I don’t think I’ve had pizza in at least a month and though it was not that great, it was comforting. The new teacher gave us all these strange “Wellbeing” bracelets and necklaces. The package has pictures of people doing all sorts of hardcore sports with these things on. I don’t see how wearing them will make me healthier or more athletic, but I’m not very surprised there’s a product like that here. These Koreans are health obsessed, but in really weird ways. They are convinced that all sorts of things are good for health (how many times have I been urged to do something ridiculous with the loving phrase “it’s good for health!”), even though I am pretty confident there is no medical basis for this. Rice water, for example. I’ve been told time and again that I must drink all of the water I mix with burned rice in this particular Korean dish, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not that great for you. It would probably be much healthier to start eating the skins of fruits, where all the vitamins are, but no…we skin all our fruits and I’m still not sure why. I cut up apples for me and the little ones last night and they were so fascinated when I started eating the skin. Ye Eun even asked me if it was good…she had no idea! People just don’t eat apple skins here…it’s so odd!
Today when I was trying to work upstairs, I was visited by two cute little first grade girls. I don’t really know any of the first grade girls—they tend to be overshadowed by the equally cute, more boisterous, and more numerous boys—but they are so great. We were actually understanding each other pretty well, considering they only know the alphabet, numbers to ten, some random animal words, and a couple introductory phrases. I must give mad props to my Korean…though I’ve forgotten all about verb conjugation, I manage to make myself understood with my extensive noun vocabulary, even with my horrendous accent. And my listening comprehension is off the charts! Well, my charts, at least. Listening’s never been my strong suit in foreign languages. I’m pretty stoked that I have been able to communicate with my students after all. Granted, our conversations are very simplistic, but this also was one of my great fears about teaching here. I was really apprehensive about teaching in a situation where I couldn’t understand my students and they couldn’t understand me. I am gradually coming to appreciate how much can be conveyed by body language. I seriously think I must be psychic sometimes. I can’t understand intricacies of ideas, but I can pick up on basic intents and catch a few words here and there and that often suffices. It makes me really excited to go somewhere Spanish-speaking—I think I’d learn really fast there! And in the past, I’d always been held back by my fear that I didn’t know the language well enough. Now I realize immersion is the only way to really learn it. It’s funny that I can actually communicate with my students better than most adults here. I think it’s because they are not afraid of me and not so awkward, and also because they generally don’t try to convey any complex ideas to me. Whatever the reason, though, I am excited every time I find myself connecting with another student. It’s really motivating.
Tonight I had a nasty surprise in TKD when, after our usual stretching, the master announced that today would be a test! I am sure everyone else knew, but I had no idea! For the last test I did the first routine (il-bon), but it took me a ton of practice. I’d done the second one (i-bon) a few times because we’d been practicing routines all week, but we’d always follow it up with sam-bon (3) and sa-bon (4) so they were all jumbled together in my head. Luckily after all this practice and learning the first one, the routines make more sense to me so it’s not as hard to do all the moves and memorize the correct order. I had to skip my turn and I Bin quickly retaught it to me while the others went. I had to go last, but he said I did a good job. Yes! I’m that much closer to the next level! I Bin and I also had a cuddly moment while we were watching everyone else do their routines. It was really nice. Even though she says I’m fat, I still love that girl. I sat down with her at lunch today and I found out that she is fondly known as E.T. among her friends, while So Eun is Shrek, Young Seo is Chuckie, and Yuri is Gollum. What an unattractive group they chose for their nicknames! They told me I was Fiona. Yesssss. She’s hot, for a cartoon princess. The funny thing is, So Eun does resemble Shrek a bit, and I could see I Bin as E.T. Each of them imitated their namesake for me and it was hysterical. I found myself hating third grade a little less right then.
(For the record, I don’t really hate third grade. I actually like all the students, until all 26 of them come running and screaming into my room and I am responsible for teaching the hooligans for 40 minutes. Individually and recreationally, they are great kids!)
Another great thing about TKD today was overhearing some of my first and second grade students use their English with each other. This week, I taught them how to say “What’s your name?”, “My name is ____,” and “Nice to meet you!” They were saying these to each other and shaking hands vigorously. Needless to say, it was pretty darn cute and I was really happy to see that they had not only retained the material, but actually WANTED to use it outside of class. Another triumph for the out-of-place American teacher!
Oh, and the second grade students in one of my classes have started to call me Queen because I told them once that I was one. I have not been discouraging this.