hanbok, dobu, and cha

On Friday I spent the evening with my co-teacher and two 5th grade homeroom teachers. This was our first outing together so I was pretty nervous I would do something stupid. Korea is all about customs and social practices, especially while eating and drinking together.

For example:
1. You can never pour your own drink so you must constantly watch one another's glasses so they never go empty. You must pay special attention to the glasses of your superiors. (probably explains why koreans get so drunk, it is impossible to refuse)
2. Young people (me) must wait to eat until elders have begun.
3. You must pass and receive everything with two hands (not just at dinner, everywhere) from your elders.
4. You may not blow your nose at the table.
5. Of course shoes are ALWAYS removed when entering someone's home or a restaurant with floor seating. Students and teachers wear slip on shoes or sandals at school.
6. Countless others I have not offended anyone with.

These customs are more than niceties, they are a way of life. In my fifth grade class we were playing a simple "pass the ball" game. When the student catches the ball, they must say an english phrase. When the game ended, a student passed the ball to the teacher with....gasp....ONE HAND. He got a scolding I'll remember for the rest of my life. You would think I would have learned from his mistake, but I went on to hand a Japanese souvenir I'd purchased to the vice principal with ONE HAND. wooops!

Dinner too, is quite the affair. At a traditional Korean restaurant everyone sits on the floor in private coves and they bring out at least 15 small dishes or more depending on how many people are dining - mostly pickled and spiced vegetables, always plain rice, and soup. There is usually a special dish as well, usually a small amount of meat, fish, or in our case, very spicy tofu (dobu). Everyone shares everything. anti-double dippers, BEWARE (dad). Conversation at dinner was a bit strained as the two fifth grade teachers are very shy about speaking English. Luckily one of them brought along her adorable children, aged 2 and 5, so that cut the tension a bit. When the plates were cleared, we brewed our own green tea (cha)- delicious!

After dinner we ventured to Hamji Park in Chilgok where another 5th grade teacher was conducting a middle school orchestra. There were about 10 other middle schools performing, all dressed in the traditional Hanbok costume, the Korean equivalent of the kimono. "Charles" orchestra played several traditional Korean instruments-huge drums or buk, gayageum, a long wooden instrument with 12 strings, and a flute looking thing whose name i forget. the best part were the three women up front made up like dolls who sang in strange but beautiful shrill voices.

All in all I think it was a fairly successful first outing. I'm hoping with time communication with the teachers will get easier- either they won't be so shy about speaking English to me or my Korean classes will start paying off!

Korea Ketchup

Us at a Samsung Lions baseball game in Daegu

In honor of our two month anniversary of leaving the states, I thought I’d treat you all to a blog post. But where to begin? If you’re at all familiar with the brutal EPIK application process Jamie and I went through, you’ll be happy to know that we did not end up in the middle of no where. We live in a suburb of Daegu, the third largest city in South Korea, called Chilgok. It is about a 40 minute bus ride away from the city. It is quite a large suburb however, and has all the necessities and a substantial downtown full of restaurants, cafes, phone shops, even batting cages. It has been difficult to find other foreigners in Chilgok, though we do know they exist as every public school is now required to have at least one native English teacher in addition to hagwon, or private academy, teachers (bringing the grand total of native English teachers in Korea to over 43,000).

We have two studio apartments that are about 7 minutes walking from eachother and 2 minutes walking to our respective schools. Jamie’s apartment is in a newish building and is very clean and nice looking in a feminine kind of way (wallpaper with huge roses, pink detailing, etc), but quite small. My apartment is bigger, but was quite dirty when I moved in and there is a serious lack of natural light. Both are completely manageable and I’ve definitely lived in worse, but it’d be nice to have one place we could share.


Jamie's apartment

my apartment
Our rice cooker

Jamie and I both teach grades 3-6 and have three co-teachers, two female and one male. My co teachers are between the ages of 28 and 35 and speak really good English. Jamie’s are…older and speak varying levels of English. In fact two of them are currently in the hospital so he has had complete control of the 5th and 6th grade classes for the past few weeks. My classes are about 50/50 with my co-teachers. There are usually 3 sections to each class so we divide them accordingly. The system seems to be working well. The students are great and really excited to have us here. They love saying hi to us in the hallways and are delighted when they see us outside of school, which they often do since we live so close to school. That said, I find the job challenging. Yes the children are under control discipline wise and they are speaking the phrases we tell them to, but I wonder how effective my presence really is. Anyway Korea has decided we’re worth our weight, which is great, because we are making excellent money.

So far we have had one break which we spent in Japan with our friends Jackie and Zach, who are teaching in Ulsan. We flew from Busan to Fukoaka, took the train to Hiroshima, then Osaka, Kyoto, and finally Nygoya. I will post about this later on, maybe with pictures..