Fake It 'til You Make It

Finishing up my third week in Korea feels like a solid dent in my time here. It's kind of scary that I've already almost been here a month. It doesn't feel that way. I'm still just constantly bumbling around, but every now and then there is that day where I feel on top of the world and it propels me just a little bit further.

A present from Jack

There were a few days I went to work and was like "I have no idea what the fuck I am doing." I have no idea how to teach kids who know so little of our language that I have to use all kinds of circumlocution to explain rudimentary American concepts we take for granted. Example: I had to give a lesson on The Mayflower and the First Thanksgiving to a class one day. Now mind you, I work at four different campuses, which means I don't even get the luxury of creating a lesson plan. Sometimes thats a blessing (no work to do to prepare for classes) and sometimes thats a curse (walking into every class I teach with only about an hour of prep time for 6-7 classes a day...not an hour each...an hour for all classes). This was one of those accursed times.

Some of the vocabulary for the lesson were phrases like "religious freedom" and the topical content was obviously about Pilgrims and Indians and leaving England and such. Now, to put this in context, these kids come from a rather homogenous society. There is religious diversity to be sure, but it certainly isn't the huge issue it is in America. So to teach a unit on religious oppression and colonization to bunch of 10 year olds with a beginner grasp on the English language was an almost impossible task. I basically had to call in one of the Korean teachers to interpret for me. The closest the kids got to Thansgiving was "a big dinner" and I was over the moon in ecstasy that they at least got that.

Students actually learning! Yay!

So yeah. There are those "I have no right to be teaching these kids anything" days. But then there are also those "fuck yeah, I am so awesome at this!" days. I definitely had one of those days at my Shinchon campus this week when Jack, my favorite student ever ran into the teacher's office and gave me an ice cream cone and ran off and I was like "Awwhhhhh!" He is absolutely the most adorable kid ever. His class is a 1-on-1 class and so we do lots of random fun stuff to kill time because his English is already phenomenal even though he's only like 9 (7 in America) and we fly through the text book. He taught me the Korean version of rock, paper, scissors and I taught him how to make snowflakes and masks.

Then I was grading papers for random students and I stumbled upon a batch of papers about me and they were adorable to read. They were from an all girl class I teach at Shinchon and they didn't have a lesson plan so I decided just to get them interested by teaching them about what all teenage girls are interested - music. So I taught them about American music genres and they taught me about Korean genres (significantly fewer Korean genres), and then I read their papers and it was like "oh my god! They remember what I taught them!" It was a really good day.

Korea has mochi. I think I'll be okay.

But you never know with this job. It's so heavily based off how your students are feeling that day. Some days they come in eager to learn and laugh and want to have fun. Other days they don't want to do anything and it's like pulling teeth. This is good and bad because it means I never know what to expect and can't just expect "Oh no! I have to go to my least favorite campus to day!" Some days my least favorite campus becomes my favoirte and vice-versa. Some days I know what I'm doing, other days I panic and have no idea. This is definitely a job where you have to be extremely adaptable and can't take anything too personally.

This sort of "I have no idea, I want to go home"/"This life is amazing and I am king!" dichotomy ends up playing out the same when I'm off the clock as well. Last weekend I felt so lost and confused and alone, but this weekend I actually felt like I was living in Korea. Like this was my home now. I got up Saturday morning, cleaned my apartment, did my laundry, went and refilled my MyB tron-looking thing so I can ride the bus, went to KS mart and picked up some bread, eggs, jelly, and crab snacks, went to Daego and bought some bowls, plates, silverware and a bathmat, and even had time to stroll through Dogye market and properly ask for some mochi in Korean ("Dduk, ju se yo?).

This is what you get for sixty cents an hour.

I was planning on just relaxing at home and reading all night or something, but then Caitlin texts me and asks me if I want to go to a PC bang, which is...kind of the Korean equivalent of a LAN party place? Idk..never did LAN parties, but I'm assuming it's similar. We went and she showed me how to play Starcraft for the first time. Dude, I know Eric Elzy is going to be disappointed, but I suck at Starcraft. I may try and go on my own and play through the campaign when no one is busy so Caitlin doesn't have to be so ashamed of me anymore. lol. It's super cheap...like 700 Won an hour, which is like sixty cents. And they've got nice reclining chairs, good sound systems with headphones (if you want to use headphones...I didn't. you can still use the speakers without them.), fast gaming PCs, large monitors, and snacks! Caitlin got me a soda drink called Milkis which is like a milkshake soda and it is absolutely delicious.

Beer by the gallon  =3

After playing for two hours, we paid our buck-fifty and went to meet up with Casey (someone Caitlin works with) and grab dinner. We ended up going downtown to Sangnam and I immediately got this feeling like "okay...this is what Korea is supposed to feel like." Cute Korean girls walking everywhere, drunk guys stumbling through the streets attempting to speak English to us, lights and sounds and music everywhere. It was awesome. Someone was handing out flyers for DJ Shannel at Club Eden and I recognized her from being an act at Ultra or something this year? So I made a mental note to check her out. We went to this restaurant on the top floor where we bought a gallon of beer and a seafood stew of some sorts. Made me miss gumbo, but was pretty delicious in it's own right. Everything in Korea is just so damn spicy.

I do enjoy how centralized eating is in Korea.

After killing that, we went to the only American bar I had yet to go to: O'Briens. It was pretty cool. Bunch of guy playing pool and it felt authentically Irish-American, minus the asian bartenders. Casey ended up being really cool and we did a carbomb together (forcing Caitlin to try one as well) and I was feeling more at home by the minute. We talked about everything from lives back home to God and the Universe (or maybe the "universe"...I'll let Casey explain that one). I definitely finally had that feeling of fitting in. I know it'll probably be fleeting and next week is just as likely to be rough as it is to be easy, but these moments definitely make being here worth it.

We finally left the bar and rode a taxi back to Caitlin's apartment where Casey swiped me into a bike (Changwon has a thing where you can pay 20 bucks a year and borrow a bike from any location in the city to ride to any other location. It's pretty awesome) and I said my farewells and took off. Riding through Changwon at 3am on a bike definitely felt good and it was a pretty solid end to a feel-good weekend. We'll see what next weekend holds...