Man, I’m getting super lazy with journal entries. And everything else, for that matter. I think I went on one walk all of last week and maybe did one day of my regular strength routine. I told myself the rest was required to recover from my illness, but really…it’s not like a walk and 50 crunches put people at death’s door. It’s time to actively combat this trend.
Since I last wrote, life’s been pretty busy and I actually haven’t had computer time. On Thursday, I had the morning off from school (ALL my students had tests all morning!), but we had to leave for the ETA conference in Cheonan by 11 am. We took a really wild roundabout way there, following my crazy vp, and I think my co-teacher was pissed ‘cause it shouldn’t take 2.5 hours to drive to Cheonan. I mean, I took a bus from Seoul tonight and it only took me 2 hours! I have no idea what he was thinking.
The conference itself was not especially informative or interesting. We started late, of course, and the entire afternoon consisted of everyone reading their reports. We didn’t even give real speeches—we read. Considering that half of these speeches (that, timewise, took up ¾ of the workshop) and the comments were in Korean, it was incredibly boring for us ETAs. I spent the time reading the other ETAs’ reports and writing notes back and forth with Cara. I don’t think I’ve written notes since I was in high school. Juvenile, but how else am I supposed to stay awake and alert? We received a 110 page booklet of everyone’s reports—the co-teachers’, written in Korean (only one complied with the Board’s request for English translations), and ours, written both in English and Korean. I didn’t give mine a title because that was not mentioned in the nonexistent instructions I received. So imagine my surprise when I open up to my report and see this, in big letters: “To be a Good Teacher! In Korea.” I cried, actually. Too funny. I learned later that these booklets are going to be sent to all native English-speaking teachers in the province. I’m probably going to be sent home for trying to pose as a native speaker.
On the bright side, though, I do have a few new teaching ideas from the conference. I think I am going to completely do away with the books next year and do topic-based lessons. It’ll be a lot less work for me—I’ll just level the lessons based on the age group—and it will make a lot more sense. Plus, I’ll be able to teach them things I think are useful that they couldn’t learn from anyone else. I’ll keep my original plans in place for now—the end of the semester is approaching so rapidly!—and just implement this new plan in the fall. I’m excited to get it all figured out.
After the conference, we had a nice dinner out. I talked a lot to this lady who is on the provisional board of education, I believe. She is really curious about my decision to stay here another year—I guess it’s pretty unusual. She kept asking me why I wanted to teach another year, especially in a place like Hongsan. I actually got a round of applause at the conference itself and made everyone else look bad, too. Oops. She was really nice, though, and I think she’s going to implement one of my suggestions—the one to have regular meetings. I was thinking about it later, though, and I don’t think I was specific enough. I envision the five of us (or more, next year) meeting informally one afternoon a month at each others’ schools. We’d observe a lesson and then chat about things that work, things that don’t, and generally just give each other support and an outlet for frustration. I fear it could just become a monthly meeting like the one we had on Thursday. I will have to get in touch with her.
Laura, another ETA, came home with me that night. She doesn’t work on Fridays. We’ve been talking all semester about a visit, but it didn’t transpire until now. She was enormously popular at school—the kids even hung out of the building to shout hello, which they’ve never done with me! I guess a couple of the little kids said she looked scary, but overall, the comments on her beauty outweighed those. And she’s pretty good at Korean, so the other teachers were really impressed. They’re going to hate me now in comparison.
So it seems that lately Korea is getting popular in America. That is, people seem to be recognizing that there’s more here than nuclear war. Someone sent me this Stephen Colbert clip recently in which he becomes jealous of Rain (a popular pop singer and actor—I’m a fan J) and then makes up a song about kimchi and so on. You can see it here: http://community.livejournal.com/life_in_korea/52173.html. I am surprised this would go over well at home—who knows anything about Rain or kimchi or bibimbap in the U.S.? Maybe it’s funny even without the context—I wouldn’t know—but it’s damn funny to see my adopted country in the news. I also saw some MadTV spoofs of Korean dramas online, and those were pretty good, too. Unfortunately, I don’t have the links for them. Again, I’m surprised to find that American audiences would understand what’s so funny here, but I suppose the situation itself is funny, even if you don’t know exactly what it’s making fun of. Like how I love Will Ferrell’s Robert Goulet impression, even though I’ve never seen or heard the man himself.
I spent last weekend in Seoul, but the recounting of those adventures will have to wait until tomorrow. It’s bedtime (aka Goong time) in Hongsan!