Here we go a caroling

On Sunday, after IEC's service, some of the members of our church met up with member from the Jinju church (and other foreigners who are not church affiliated) and went caroling. Krista, a new(ish) girl and I both made the comment that it was odd that the first time we caroled was in Korea, but there you go.

It wasn't quite what I was expecting, because in order to do something like this, which is considered a religious event, you have to get a permit from city hall. Simon, the pastor at Jinju church, was able to get one. But that meant, unlike the traditional caroling that I was picturing, where we walk in a big group from place to place, we all stayed on this stage-like place near a bank downtown.

We had the permit for an hour, but we were a little bit late because we couldn't find where we were supposed to go. So we stayed for about 40 minutes. It was cold and windy, but still fun. We sang 1 or 2 songs that I had never heard before and got stared at a bit from the Koreans walking by. We mainly got ignored, but it was still fun. The only bad part was that my brother and cousins tried to call me, but I couldn't hear them and then my phone died so I didn't get to talk to my family while they celebrated Christmas. Oh well, maybe I'll get to talk to them on real Christmas.

Seriously I don't know why it posts them vertically - I didn't even rotate it in editing. Bizarre. Anywho, this was our set list. We didn't sing all of them, but we did quite a few.

After singing, Krista, Keung He and I went to a coffee shop and sat and talked for a couple of hours, then we went to some stores to find Krista a small table for her apartment. We found one, then went to a bookstore. Krista wants to learn Korean and Keung He offered to do a language exchange with her. I'm going to join as well. While we were looking for a book, a lady came up to me and asked if I found my table. I didn't really know what she was talking about, then I remember that we never got Krista's table out of the back of the cab. Luckily, the cab driver was a super nice guy and had actually brought the table inside the store and left it at the check-out counter.

Me and creepy thumbs-up Santa who "dances" when you get near him. We also got accosted by a giant snowman who gave us lollipops with super long sticks.

After that, we dropped off the table at Krista's apartment, then went to dinner at a gamjatang place. It was very crowded, but the people next to us were very nice and told us what we should order. We had soup, ramyan and rice mixed with kimchi and seaweed things. I really like the soup, but could do without the seaweed rice.

Keung He took lots of random pictures while the guy was making rice at the end.

After dinner we went grocery shopping because I needed a few things for the dessert I was going to make for church (after the cookies didn't work out) and then we all went home. I like those girls and we all said it's nicer to eat with other people, so we'd have to meet up more often. All in all, it was a nice day.

Cookie Fail

This week is the last week of advent. On Tuesday, my church is having a Christmas day party. It's a sort of potluck and then we're having a gift exchange. So, I decided for my potluck offering, I would try to make peanut butter blossoms (or for those not in the know, the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's kiss in the middle).

I decided on those because I knew I would be able to find all the ingredients here, plus they are relatively simple to make. I decided to make a trial batch on Saturday to see if I could do it. I started off by going to E-mart (the walmart of SK) to get supplies. I needed measuring spoons (check), measuring cups (could only find the kind for liquids but decided to try it), a wisk (check), spatula (decided to get a rice scoop because it was $3 cheaper) and a bowl (check). I didn't get potholders, which were on my list, but that worked out ok.

Then it was onto the ingredients. Saturdays at Emart are crazy. Lots of people, no order to where they are going, and all kinds of shoving. I try not to go there on the weekends, but I am lazy and didn't go during the week, so I didn't have much of a choice. The upstairs wasn't too bad, but then I went into the food section downstairs and it was like everyone in town decided that was the place to be.

I didn't have a problem finding most of the stuff. Brown sugar here is more granular than ours, and doesn't stick together, but it can't be that much different. Then I ran into a snafu in the flour section because everything is labeled "rice flour" or "wheat flour", but I couldn't tell if it meant "whole wheat", especially since most of them were in brown paper packages (alas, they were not tied up with string). I decided to go for it and got a small bag labeled "wheat flour". Luckily, it was what I needed.

The next issue came out of left field. I was looking for Hershey's kisses, which I know for a fact they have here. I have seen them in my local store, but didn't buy them because they are like $4 for a little pack. Emart didn't have any. I looked all over the candy aisle and some other places too. I almost decided to get abc chocolate, but it's not very good quality, so I got mini Hershey bars and decided I would break them up and put little chunks in the top of the cookies.

Now a little aside about Emart's layout. The store itself is 3 levels. The 1st (street level) floor has clothes and accessories and shoes. The 2nd level has house supplies, appliances, sports equipment etc. The B1 level is where all the food is. One thing that is awesome is that it has flat escalator things so you can go to various levels with your cart. You can check out on either the 1st or B1 levels. The bad part (and which I always forget until it's too late) is that if you check out on the B1 level, you are stuck. You are not allowed to go back "in" the store to take the escalator back to the ground floor. You have to take an elevator. There are 3 elevators but they are constantly packed. One reason is because, in addition to the 3 levels of store, there are 6 levels of parking (3 above and 3 below). I have never seen a completely empty elevator in Emart.

Another quirk (at least to me) is that Emart, in the last year or so, stopped giving out plastic bags. They have paper ones, or you can bring your own. The other option, when you have quite a few things, is to go over to the side and box up your items. They provide flattened cardboard boxes and tape, you go over, put your box together and fill it with your stuff.

Today, I had a full cart. The check out lady wouldn't give me bags and told me to box up my stuff. So I went over to the boxing area and was immediately uncomfortable. There were too many people all around, shoving and grumbling. A nice old lady was next to me and I cut some tape for her and she was very sweet. I ended up with a huge, heavy box and a smaller box and kind of jammed them in my cart. Then I waited for an elevator for not quite 10 minutes. The guy next to me got impatient and went around the back, so I followed him. There were more escalators, unfortunely, they only went down to parking levels. But I had already gotten on one, so there you go.

Luckily, this level also had a boxing station and nobody was there. So I took out my huge box and broke it into 2 smaller ones. Then I snuck into an elevator on this floor (the people on it were not happy) and made it out! The exit is blocked by stone squares so you can't take a cart out to the road. So I had to unload my boxes, run over to cab, put one in and run back to the others. The cab driver was nice though and drove right up next to my apartment building so that I could unload them.

After the Emart debacle, I decided to take a break for awhile and watched some of the Two Towers on TV. Then I started making magic. I actually mixed up the dough with fairly little trouble, especially considering the fact that I don't have a counter and was mixing on my stove top. Then it came time to bake them. I don't have an oven, only a toaster oven. So I could fit about 6 cookies to a sheet. Oh, and as I menitioned already, I don't have a counter, so the toaster oven is on the floor.

The first batch taught me that I couldn't put them in as balls because the tops would burn before the bottoms would cook. These also broke apart some. The second batch got burnt in the back. The next ones were ok, but the chocolate didn't work quite like I'd wanted it to, so I ended up just making peanut butter cookies.

What you can't see is that these are sitting in my living/bedroom on some cardboard boxes because there was nowhere else to put them.

They don't look pretty, but they taste ok. I suppose they could have turned out worse! I decided I would take them to work instead of the party though, because I didn't get that many out of the batch of dough and I realized that they aren't cheap to make!

Thursday seminar

My uncle recently mentioned in an email that I hadn't posted in awhile. Sorry about that, but honestly, sometimes I don't have anything interesting to add, and usually I just forget, or wait until it's really late and I don't like writing super gibberish (that's even more gibberish than usual!).

On Tuesday, my boss mentioned to me that I would have to attend a mandatory foreigner seminar on Thursday morning. Apparently there is one of these every year, but my last boss didn't make me go (and he didn't make the girls who work there now go this year either). I think the main reason for these is to keep tabs on the foreigners. Public school employees don't have to attend. Before they start teaching, and randomly during the year, they get other training things they have to go to. We don't get that. We generally get thrown immediately into teaching.

I had to get up early and get to the university on the other side of town by 9:30. Being a person who likes to be on time, meant I was there a little before 9:30, not knowing that the seminar didn't start until 10. Luckily I knew some other people and was able to chat while I waited. Right before we went in, a girl I knew from last year, who now lives in Geoje, showed up. We sat next to each other and caught up during the program.

While we waited for the program to start, they had an episode of Tom and Jerry playing on the big screen at the front of the auditorium. After about 15 minutes, the program started. The first speaker was the head of the English department (I think) at the university. His English was really good and his topic was about the differences in speaking and the difficulties of teaching English to Koreans.

I actually found this part somewhat interesting. We talked very briefly about word order, the fact that Korean doesn't have articles, and some phonetic differences. One of the ones we talked about the most was the "bright" L and the "dark" L. I had never heard of those terms. He said the bright L is the l sound in "love" or "letter". Basically when L is followed by a supporting vowel sound. The dark L is l sound in "jingle" or "bell" or "film". So when it is followed by a silent vowel or consonant. Emily (my friend) and I debated this, because we were saying that it's really the preceding vowel that controls the sound. Either way, the "dark" L sound is difficult for Koreans to pronounce because they don't have this sound in their language.

He also briefly talked about some customs and how we shouldn't be offended when asked personal questions because that's typically Korean. He said that asking "Did you eat" or "Did you have lunch" is a polite thing to say. It is kind of a greeting like "how are you?" and is based on the fact that 50ish years ago they didn't have enough food, so asking if someone ate was a way of checking up on them.

His talk ended and we had a short break. Then we went back in and got to watch a video about Korea and things you can do, and of course Gangnam Style. Then we saw 15 minutes of college kids dancing. Seriously. (The best part starts about 2 minutes in when the guys start break dancing).

After the dancing, another guy got up and read from the materials for 20 minutes about immigration issues and what documents you need etc. This information is only helpful for people BEFORE THEY LEAVE their home countries. Also, this is stuff the hagwon owners should already know as they are the ones who really have to deal with immigration.

As he was talking, staff workers walked around and handed out forms. We had to fill them out with the name of our school and our names. After he finished the immigration talk, we got to leave. They stamped the forms, kept one end and we had to turn in the other to our bosses. Apparently last years was much longer, so I got out lucky. For some reason, I didn't feel that lucky. Oh well, it could have been worse :)

Learn Something New Everyday

One thing that's great about teaching is that you often learn new stuff on a regular basis. Either you have to teach something different and you do some research, or you have to explain something and you never thought about the material in a specific way before, or your kids (students) tell you something you didn't know.

The other day I was teaching how to write before/after sentences. The text book would give prompts and then the kids had to write full sentences. For example, (get dressed/take a shower) (after). So the sentence would be: After I took a shower, I got dressed.

Before they wrote the sentences, we went through each example and determined which event went first. Some, like the above example, were obvious. Others were more interesting. One question was (lock the door/leave the house) (before). Well, to me (and I believe most Westerners, but feel free to correct me), first you leave the house, then you lock the door. To my students, that is not the way it works. We ended up having a 5-10 minute conversation trying to figure out why.

What it boiled down to, is that an individual apartment isn't "the house" according to them. The apartment building is "the house". So they lock the door (to their individual apartment) before they leave the house (the building). I'm glad we talked about it and figured it out. I think these like these are the cause of some cultural issues. If you don't take the time and figure it out, you end up thinking the students don't understand, or that they're stupid, and they think you're an idiot or a jerk for not listening and then they get frustrated.

The other example was dinner and dessert. To me, dessert is a separate meal of sorts. You finish dinner, then you have dessert. To my students, dessert is encompassed in the meal of dinner. You don't always have dessert, but if you do, it's included with dinner. So you have dessert, then finish your dinner.

I love learning little facts like this. It's part of why I like being in other countries and I think it helps me learn how to be more tolerant of other people and their customs. Or at least makes me pause and let them explain before I give judgement.

Motivation

I have fallen back into my old routine - which I didn't intend on doing. I don't have to go to school until 2 pm, and I live 3-5 minutes away depending on the traffic light. So I don't leave my house until 1:50, which means I don't have to get up until late in the afternoon. Which then means I don't have to go to bed until 3-5 am. This is a problem.

I often set my alarm earlier than I need do. I'm not talking crazy times like 8am, because let's face it, that's not realistic :) But 11 am isn't too bad, all things considering. The vast majority of the time, I grab my phone and sleep for another hour plus instead of getting up and out of the house. This is a problem.

I have always been a people pleaser. In grade school I did the best in classes where I liked the teacher. I get up to meet people for lunch, or coffee, or whatever. I used to get up for jobs. I have to have a reason. And the reason can't be because I should. I need a person, or people or some other good motivating factor. This is a problem.

For the last month, I've had a bible study every Tuesday morning. I got up, got dressed and made it to the church every week. In part I enjoyed the study and actually was motivated to learn. However, the fact that other people were there and relying on me to show up (even though I knew it would still happen without me) helped push me to not hit the snooze. The study ended yesterday and the next one won't start until mid to late February. This is a problem.

I thought about taking some sort of class - like a TOEFL or other test, or getting a masters in education or working on a teaching certificate. The main problem with all of these is that they cost money. And not a little bit of money, but semi-significant money. And the honest fact is, even if the money wasn't much, it's still money that I don't have. Not to mention my apartment isn't conducive to me studying which means I would have to go to a coffee shop or the library to work/study (which isn't a super huge problem unless you factor in the coffee money). This is a problem.

I need something and I don't know what it is. I'm planning on joining a gym soon, so hopefully that will help, but honestly, I need some reason to go there too. Once I get into a routine I should be ok, but starting that routine is where I need the push. A lot of it is mental. Coming back isn't what I was expecting. I still see some people, but it's not quite the same. So I'm a little bit sad and missing that connection that I used to have. I'm sure I'll adjust and get to a good place soon, but right now I need some motivation.

Any suggestions?

Winter Wonderland

Jinju is in the southern part of South Korea, so it doesn't snow here often. Lucky for me, I left warm, sunny GA/NC and ended up in freaking snow. It snowed on Wednesday night a tiny bit, but didn't stick. Then, Thursday night it snowed again...and stuck. Then snowed some more on Friday during the day. The forecast is calling for more this weekend as well.

Now I don't mind the snow in general. I think it looks beautiful and I would much prefer snow to sleet or freezing rain or wintery mix. The problems that I have with snow in Jinju are that 1 - bathroom windows are usually open. This includes my bathroom window. In my house. If I don't keep the window open, it never dries. So even when there is actual snow falling from the sky, my window is open. Which means the toilet seat is freezing. 2 - People here don't understand the snow. It's like when it snows in Atlanta. Smart people become stupid. One of my friends posted that his apartment manager was "clearing" the snow by spraying it away with a hose. The kind that squirts water. 3 - Unlike Southern drivers who go unnecessarily slow when it snows, Koreans, especially bus drivers, pretend that nothing is different. Meaning they run right through that red light, as usual, and skid to a halt at the bus stop. The also continue to do the "slow stop" where they don't actually stop the bus completely and just want you to hop on or off, even though the steps are super slippery due to all the snow and water.

That being said, the kids are all super excited because they got to build snowmen and have snow fights. There isn't enough for any type of sledding yet, but maybe there will be later. Also, all of these pictures were taken from friends' facebook pages - thanks for letting me steal guys!!

GNU campus

Olivia's first time in snow

Jinju castle covered in white

Beer bottle eyed snowman

Cup arm snowman...and mouse?

Now the question is, I wonder if we will have a white Christmas?

Beat Downs

I think I've mentioned in a post long ago that while Korea has "banned" corporal punishment, they still totally do it. At my old school, I had students tell me about being hit in class by teachers. I've had some foreigners tell me about seeing kids get smacked upside the head by other teachers. I was pretty sure something went on at my old school, but it was always behind closed doors so I never knew for sure.

At my current school, I've seen it. So far I've seen kids stand in a squatting position and hold it (like yoga), stand with their arms straight out in front of them and hold it (again like yoga) and the last (and most painful in my opinion), they held out their hands palms up and got smacked with a stick. It was very surreal watching this because that would never happen in the US (although it probably should a bit). My director is never cruel in his punishments (in that he doesn't go overboard), but the kids get the message not to mess around.

It's an interesting dynamic because while I see this director actively punish the kids, he is also much more loving and friendly to the kids too. He plays around and jokes with them. They aren't afraid of him by any means (unless they didn't do their homework). The strangest part of all of it is really the kids who aren't being punished. They totally want to see other kids fail. They will tattle on each other and then watch while the "bad" one gets in trouble. In some ways I can understand it - they did the work and want the kid who didn't to get punished. But I am so sympathetic towards other people that I still try and protect the "bad" kids by making them do extra homework, or by rewarding the good kids with candy or no homework.

And while it may have happened and I'm just unaware of it, I will let you know the first time a kid gets punished because of me :)