Summer is Here and My Students are Hilarious (and Disturbing)

After the weather this week I think we can safely say that summer is officially here! Daegu is known for being the hottest city in Korea and it’s definitely living up to the hype. Because it’s situated in a geographic bowl all of the hot air gets trapped in the valley and none of those nice coastal breezes can make their way in. It’s 95 today with a high of 98 projected for tomorrow. Yikes!

I grew up in Louisiana and most recently lived in North Carolina, so I am used to some merciless heat and humidity, but it’s different here because the air conditioning is non-existent. That’s right. It’s 95 degrees and my classroom is NOT air conditioned. All of the windows are open (they don’t have screens, by the way, so there are always bugs), but unless your classroom has windows on both sides (mine doesn’t), it’s hard to get much of a cross-breeze going. There are these rotating fans that hang from the ceiling that we use instead of air conditioning, but they won’t let us use them right now because “they haven’t been cleaned yet” and they are dusty. Apparently a little bit of dust for a few minutes would be hazardous whereas the “yellow dust” (toxic pollution from China) that we are breathing in from the windows being open is no big deal. Hard to argue with that kind of logic.

Aside from the heat, Daegu is so much prettier in the summer. This is a path where I like to run.

It feels a little weird for this to be summer because we still have two full months of school before our summer vacation. So while everyone back home is graduating and getting ready for summer trips we are still in the middle of the semester. Apart from being sweaty all of the time things are chugging along like normal here in the ROK. I realize that we do a lot of blogging about traveling and fun new experiences we have, but not a lot about everyday life, so I thought I’d share a few recent teaching experiences.

I teach 3-6^th grade in an elementary school and my students are generally pretty low level, but I have this one magical 6^th grade class where at least half of the students have really good English. They are really positive and motivated and can do so much more than my other classes.

Our last chapter has been about jobs and how to say, “I want to be a police officer” or whatever. I wrote a bunch of jobs on the board and then had the students read them, trying to explain any words they didn’t know. When I got to “waiter” and they gave me the blank-faced stare of ignorance so I said. “When you go to a restaurant, the waiter is the person who comes and asks what you want.”

My boy, Min Woo, interrupts me and says, “Oh yes, yes, teach-ah. I know.” And then, doing different voices for each character: “’Hello, what do you want?’ ‘Oh, I’ll have the foie gras’.”

Oh em gee. Most 6^th grade kids who actually speak English don’t know what “foie gras” is. I was dying.

Min Woo is a particularly bright student, but some of the others are equally amusing. Later on I taught the same lesson to a different class of 6^th graders. While playing a game, one boy couldn’t remember the word for astronaut. I patiently waited for it to come to him.

“As… As… uh”

Encouraging nod from me.

“Ass-pilot!” Triumphant.

Burst into very unprofessional laughter.

While my 6^th graders are fun because they understand more and can interact at a slightly higher level, it’s hard to beat the cute factor of the third graders. Except for this one girl who really creeps me out. One morning I was teaching them animal names. I showed a slide with a picture of a cartoon penguin with a little bowtie. The students were all exclaiming, “Oh! Cute!” Then this one girl in the front row mutters in a creepy-deep voice, “Mmm…delicious.”

I told this story to a few other teachers and they mostly thought it was funny, but also that I might have misheard her. I conceded that this was possible. Until yesterday when I taught her class again. We were singing a youtube song about the colors. There’s a little yellow bird flying around the tree in the video singing sweetly. Once again this little girl said, “Oh, delicious.” This time the other students around her looked shocked. “No! Not delicious!” But she just smiled creepily and said in her husky little voice, “Yes, very delicious.”

All I can say is I am not turning my back to that girl. Ever.

My Parents’ Visit to Korea: In Which I Almost Become a Human Kite

Sorry we’ve been silent for so long! My parents came to visit for almost two weeks and we’ve been so busy hosting them and showing them around Korea that we didn’t have much time left for writing.

We had a long weekend off of school at the beginning of May because of three separate holidays that just happened to be back-to-back. May 1^st was Labor Day and although school was still open, certain types of government workers were given the day off, including the foreign English teachers. May 5^th was a holiday called Children’s Day (basically what it sounds like – a day celebrating the value of children) and May 6^th was Buddha’s birthday, both of which are national holidays where schools and businesses are closed. It worked out so perfectly that we had all of this time off while my parents were in town visiting. Many schools made May 2^nd a temporary holiday so their teachers could have a 6 day holiday, but neither Jonathan’s nor mine did. There is a similar holiday situation in June where we have holidays on a Wednesday and a Friday and many schools are making the Thursday in between a temporary holiday. Again, neither Jonathan’s nor my school are. Frown face.

We spent my parents’ first few days in Korea seeing Seoul and eating tasty food that we don’t normally have access to in Daegu. My parents were still getting over their jetlag so we didn’t do a comprehensive tour of Seoul, but we did try to hit the highlights. We went to Changdeokgung Palace and Seoul Tower, ate fantastic Western food in Itaewon, window-shopped in Insadong and stayed in Myeongdong, where I took full advantage of the 3-story Forever21 to stock up on clothes that actually come in my size.

Because of the holidays, everywhere we went was exceptionally crowded. My parents flew into Incheon Airport near Seoul and I took a train up there to pick them up. Normally we don’t worry about reserving train tickets in advance because the high-speed KTX train runs every 15 minutes or so all day long and even if you can’t get on a train immediately, you can be pretty sure there will be tickets available within a few hours. In fact, the longest we’ve ever had to wait for a train was about an hour, even on holidays. Because of this we were completely unprepared for what happened when I tried to get my parents back to Daegu and found that all of the tickets were sold out for the entire day. We ended up having to buy tickets for 5:50 the following morning and find a hotel to stay in that night.

Eventually we made it back to Daegu, where we showed my parents around downtown and in our area. On Children’s Day we took them to Palgongsan, the highest mountain in Daegu, and did a short hike up one of the gentler sides.

For Buddha’s birthday we traveled to Gyeongju, which is about an hour from Daegu by train. Gyeongju is the ancient seat of the Silla dynasty and has a lot of special meaning for Koreans. Much of the significance was lost on us since we don’t have the sense of Korean history that we do of our own country, but we still enjoyed a truly gorgeous day exploring Gyeongju National Park and the Royal Tomb Complex, the very old, but not very tall Cheomseongdae observatory and the Anapji royal pond garden.

Royal Tomb Park. The hills behind us are burial mounds.

This tomb had been excavated so you could enter it.

World’s shortest observatory.

Anapji Royal Pond

On Wednesday, Jonathan and I had to go back to school, so my parents hung out in Daegu for the next few days while we worked. On Friday my parents actually came to school with me and observed/participated in my classes. I was able to do a special lesson introducing them and then talking about Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in the US. It was perfectly timed because in Korea people celebrate Parent’s Day on May 8^th (the day before my parents came to school) and Mother’s Day in the US was May 11^th, so it made for a perfect topic.

The following weekend, we all trekked out to Busan to check out the Yeongdo Lighthouse which Jonathan had read about. It was a bit of a hike to get out to the peninsula, but well worth it. The scenery was stunning (I’ve always had a thing for rocky coastlines), the water was this gorgeous color I didn’t know existed in Korea, and the weather was perfect. When we got out to the point the lighthouse was on it suddenly became insanely windy. Like, I was actually afraid I was going to be picked up and carried off the cliff. It was equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.

The wind was insane, but the coastline was stunning.

I legitimately thought I was going to picked up by the wind and carried off this cliff.

King of the Rock

Other than that, we spend the rest of our time enjoying each other’s company and introducing my parents to the BBC’s Sherlock which they’d been missing out on. They left on Monday which was bittersweet. It was wonderful to see them and to get to share our world with them, but it also reminded me of how very far away we are. Saying goodbye this time wasn’t nearly as hard as when we left in August though. We are planning to visit home for a few days this coming August, which is really only a few months away. We’re trying to squeeze in a brief but good visit to both my family and Jonathan’s in our two weeks of summer vacation because, BIG NEWS, we have officially decided to renew our contracts and stay in Korea for one more year!

Meanwhile in Korea… what we’ve been up to while you’ve been doing your holiday stuff

The past few weeks here have been extra busy for us – mostly due to a lot of fun things, but also some hectic work weeks with special events and upcoming winter camps to prepare for.

Since our last post, we celebrated Thanksgiving with an impressive potluck dinner hosted by one of our fellow American teachers. (We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, macaroni and cheese, broccoli casserole and good old stovetop stuffing – just goes to show you, where there’s a will, there’s a way.)

Then we celebrated my 26^th birthday – the first birthday I’ve celebrated in a long time where I didn’t look back on the previous year feeling like I could have and should have done so much more. And my sweet husband worked so hard to make it a special day, by somehow finding birthday decorations and hanging them all over the apartment while I was sleeping. And that night I had dinner with some friends at a restaurant downtown I had been hoping to try. It was pretty low-key, but good.

My birthday was on a Wednesday. That Friday, Christina came all the way from North Carolina (well, technically from Pennsylvania at the time) to visit us. I took the KTX up to Seoul right after school on Friday and then the airport express train out to Incheon to pick her up. We spent the night at a guesthouse in Seoul (Itaewon) and hardly slept at all because we had so much catching up to do.

We spent all of Saturday in Seoul trying to cram as many sights and experiences as we could into a short time period. We ended up buying tickets for a hop-on-and-off tour bus to help us get around more conveniently and make the best use of our time. This ended up being a good idea – we were able to see a traditional folk village, Changdeokgung Palace, Seoul Tower, and Insadong as well as a quick look at various memorials and monuments.

Pretty garden we found behind the Korea House in Seoul…don’t think we were supposed to be there.

Sneaking.

Traditional Korean House

Inside the palace

View from Seoul Tower

Insadong shopping area

On Saturday night we took the train back to Daegu and showed Christina our home sweet home. Since we bought a queen-size bed last month, we moved the twin bed we used to sleep on into the extra room and Christina had her own bed and room to stay in while she was here. Christina was super sweet and brought an entire suitcase full of American goodies we requested as well as presents from family and friends. She also brought a kit for an entire gingerbread village which we all built to get us in the Christmas spirit.  We also put up our Christmas tree. And felt compelled to take memorable Christmas photos. (The one on the bottom right is me trying to figure out if I was making a peace sign or not).

On Sunday we were able to take Christina to a Korean wedding – a teacher from Jonathan’s school was getting married and as he mentioned in his last post, weddings in Korea are very different from weddings in the United States in that it is not at all strange for people who barely know you to attend the wedding. This wedding was almost exactly like the one Jonathan and I attended in October, which further confirmed the stereotype of the “Korean wedding factory.” It was cool that Christina was able to attend an event like this during such a short stay in the country, so we were excited that the timing worked out so well. And afterwards we got to enjoy the enormous buffet, so Christina was also able to sample a wide variety of Korean dishes in one place.

She looks like a doll.

Sadly, Jonathan and I still had work as usual during the week that Christina was staying with us. But thankfully, she was able to do some exploring on her own and with our friend Laura who lives in Daegu, but is not working right now and had some free time to hang out with Christina and show her around. While we couldn’t do too many touristy things during the week, we tried to make the most of our evenings and took Christina to all of our favorite restaurants, shopping areas, and parks. She even got to attend a stage production of the Sound of Music that was entirely in Korean. We also made sure Christina experienced the great Korean cultural tradition of the norebang (like karaoke, but you get your own private room). I have discovered that I rather enjoy the noraebang because you are only in a room with other people you know and nobody cares how bad you sound. Though singing with Josh and Laura is a bit intimidating since they sound like superstars.

This was before the main lights went off and the disco lights came on. Also, Jonathan was there, he was just taking the picture. Being the photographer did not get him out of singing a captivating rendition of ‘Oops I Did it Again.’

The following weekend, Christina, Jonathan and I went to Busan. Despite being only 45 minutes away by train, this was the first time we had made it down to Busan. I understand now why people love it so much. Busan is the second largest city in Korea, so it is significantly bigger than Daegu with more skyscrapers and more of a big-city feel to it. It’s also located on the coast and the beach and water are gorgeous. The weather is milder there and the coastline is stunning.

Near the beach there were walls designed for you to pose and take pictures.

Busan is home to the largest department store in the world Shinsegae Centum City, so of course, we had to check that out. We had dinner in their huge food court and had scrumptious mandu (dumplings) and cooked-to-order seafood noodle stir-fry. (I’m pretty sure Christina was really impressed by my ability to sort of read the menus and order in Korean). Next we checked out the Hobbit movie at the movie theater up on the 7^th floor of the department store. Then we headed off to our next adventure, our first stay at a jimjilbang in Korea.

The jimjilbang (Korean bath house) is an entirely unique experience from anything you can find in the US (or most of the western world). The jimjilbang is a series of baths and saunas (separate floors for men and women) that everyone enjoys together. In the nude. For some unknown reason the jimjilbang is open 24 hours and there is a common area separate from the bathing areas where anyone can spend the night if they wish to (not in the nude.) Access to the spa facilities and the overnight stay at this jimjilbang (Haendae Spa Center) was 10,000\ per person, about $9.

Being new to the jimjilbang experience, we weren’t entirely sure how it all worked, so here’s the run-down. First we went up to the lobby area and checked in at a desk, paid, and received a ticket. Then Christina and I went into the women’s locker room and Jonathan went upstairs to the men’s floor. As soon as we walked in the door we were treated to the sight of many a naked Korean woman. There were women getting things in and out of lockers, drying their hair, doing their make-up and some even sitting on benches watching tv. Totally naked. We gave our ticket to an attendant who gave us a uniform to wear when we finished in the sauna. It was like a pair of loose scrubs except the bottoms were long shorts rather than pants. We put all of our stuff in lockers and then headed into the bath room.

The bath room was basically a big open space with showers along one wall, and pools with water of various temperatures in the middle. Along the back wall was a cool pool and along the sides of the room were long rows of counters with individual stations that had mirrors and shower heads. Off of this main room were several small saunas made of different materials and of different temperatures. (There was a clay sauna and a wood sauna and maybe some others). The idea seemed to be to shower off and then move to one of the stations and scrub yourself (and your friends) down with an exfoliating mitten as hard as you possibly can. After all the scrubbing you move through the various temperature pools and saunas.

Sure, being naked in a room of a hundred other naked women was kind of weird. And I didn’t have a bunch of fancy bath products with me so I wasn’t able to exfoliate as fully as I was expected to. But now that I know what’s up a little more, I think it’s something I could get into it. It’s relaxing. Though I think it would be boring if you didn’t have anyone to talk to.

After bathing we changed into our uniforms and headed upstairs to the room where everyone sleeps. This was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had. We each grabbed a blanket (or 3) and a pillow that both feels and looks like a small brick. Then we laid them wherever we wanted on the stone floor of this big room that more or less looked like a hotel lobby. People were just sprawled out on the floor sleeping everywhere. It was one of the most uncomfortable nights I have ever spent…besides the hard, hard floor digging into your bones and making you wake up to change positions every 30 minutes, it was almost impossible to get away from people snoring. The Korean people seemed to have no trouble sleeping.

The next day we got up and headed to the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, a seaside temple in the northeast part of Busan. We took a bus right from the beach area up to the temple. It was the coolest temple I’ve been too so far in Korea. I highly recommend a visit to this temple anytime you are in Busan. We went on a Sunday morning and the bus ride only took about 20 minutes from Haeundae Beach.

Buddha by the sea

We figured we’d better rub this belly now while we had the chance, but hopefully these powers can be put on hold for a few years.

This buddha was called in the brochures the “Santa Clause Buddha.” I suppose you get to ask him for things you want and he gives them to you? I was just disappointed you didn’t get to sit on his lap.

The goddess of the sea

The pigs of wealth and prosperity

Finally, a picture we are all in!

After a few hours at the temple we caught a train back to Daegu for Christina’s last night with us. It was so great to have her visit and to show her around Daegu and a few other bits of Korea. In some ways it made me feel more at home here because I was the one showing someone else around instead of being new to everything myself. It also made me pretty homesick when she left since she will likely be our only visitor this year and we are only four months in. Eight more months is a long time to go before seeing the people we love the most. But I am so thankful she was able to come and that we could cram so many fun things into a short visit. Now we have a few weeks of winter camps and desk-warming before heading out on our next adventure – winter vacation in China, New Zealand and Australia!