I garner a lot of attention as a foreigner in South Korea. Children stare and point as I walk down the street or shout out the three or four English words they know. One night Aaron and I took the train home and met some Korean teenagers while waiting for a taxi. They told Aaron he was handsome and called me beautiful. They also complimented us on our fashionable clothing and then one of the boys claimed to be a Korean superstar.
Older Koreans have accosted me at a park, a train station, and a street corner. They are not hostile, but merely curious why I am in their country. Of course explaining my presence can be difficult since our languages don't even have the same alphabet. I mean I understand the whole Tower of Babel and the division of languages but seriously couldn't we all have had the same alphabet? It would make life so much easier.
I've never felt so different in my life or felt the truth of that phrase about sticking out like a sore thumb (which by the way does not make much sense. does a sore thumb stick out any more than a perfectly normal one?) It is readily apparent from my physical appearance that I am not a native in this country. I am tall for a woman and my hair is not jet black. I am a curiosity.
It is a novel experience. I was three when my family moved to Germany and 5 when we left so I don't have any vivid impressions of the country or the people. In England I blended in well enough as a long as I kept my mouth shut. Besides, the English are happiest when everybody minds their own business; they are not a welcoming people.
Some days I can laugh at the children as they stare open mouthed at me and other days I want to lecture them on good manners. I think it will be nice to return to the US and blend in again.

Since Halloween is this Friday the entire staff here, all 5 of us, has been busy planning games, prizes, decorations, and food for our school party. Christine who is sort of the headmistress told me to forget about following the books this week and focus on the party. Because you see this is not really a party if by party you mean a time to slip into some fabulous outfit, eat tasty, but seriously unhealthy food, and have a drink or two. No, this is a performance. The kids are going to demonstrate their English skills in order to impress their parents and convince them they have made the right choice in our academy. We are prepping the kids beforehand, introducing new vocabulary, and choosing games that will showcase their speaking skills. Korean parents want results immediately - one little girl was pulled out by her mother because her English wasn't improving quickly enough - so we are trying to give them some. Hopefully the kids will be excited about showing off. The teachers are just stressed.

A Collection of food

After finally figuring out how to add pictures to my blog, I have decided to share some pictures of the interesting food I have eaten in Korea. This is some kind of fruit. One of the guys at our school who is there to take care of the computers and other random tasks gave it to me. He does not speak English so I don't really know what it is.


I think these were supposed to be french fries, but they were dry and a little sweet.





This is an iceflake - the cup is full of ice and they pour jam, red beans, and white marshmellow like things on top. The beans were a bit too much for me.






To be honest I am not really sure what this is. It looks like bird seed and had light, salty taste. A random vendor gave it to me for free.

All My Children (well at least some of them)

Teaching children is an adventure. I am rarely bored- frustrated, impatient, exhausted, yes, but not bored. This week has been rough. My kindergartners have acted like little monsters, mimicking everything I say, unscrewing their pens, and throwing the pieces at each other. They also discovered a new trick; one child will lay his head on the desk as if distressed and the others will tell me that he is sad. The first time I believed them, but fortunately I am smarter than them and did not fall for it a second time. Quite an accomplishment really - outwitting kindergartners.
I have a first grader named Paul; he is probably 12 or 13, but in first grade because the kids are arranged by ability not age. He is a real piece of work. He can transform a fairly well-behaved group of kids into an unruly, disrespectful, and mocking mob. Paul is not loud but he talks constantly and draws the other kids into conversation. I tell him to stop and immediately afterwards starts talking again. He calls them names, pretends not to understand me, and carries himself with an I'm -too- cool-for-school- kind of attitude. The younger children are impressed and mimick him adoringly. Needless to say I am not so impressed. And he never does his homework. Ever.
But for kids like Paul there are kids like Sam and Ariel who make my job worthwhile. Sam is an adorable 7 year old full of boundless energy and enthusiasm. He loves the class and learning English. Unlike many of my students he is quite bright and catches on to new concepts quickly. Like any teacher, I work for those precious moments of illumination when the mental light bulb goes on. Sam becomes quite excited when this happens and that is a lot of fun to watch. Sometimes all his energy gets him in trouble because he has a very difficult time sitting still and staying quiet. The other day Sam told me he does not eat snakes. I was relieved to hear this :)
Ariel is the same age as Sam, but she is a girl so she can sit still much better. She is so tiny and sweet and eager to learn. In everything she is very intent and deliberate - opening her bag and removing books is quite a ceremony.
Sometimes my work feels so futile; I wonder if they care, if they understand anything I say, if they enjoy the class. I struggle to make them pay attention and do their homework. Am I doing any good? But then I remember those moments when they understand or those students who genuinly want to learn and I find fulfillment in those things. Often they are small, but I suppose that is the nature of the job.

"A nine! a nine?" the shopkeeper cried in astonishment after I told him my shoe size. He looked at me with an expression that seemed to ask "are you even human?" I only wanted to try on the cute and incredibly inexpensive boots he was selling - they were $7.50!! But alas my monstrous feet got in the way. This second incident at a Korean shoe store signaled the death knell of my shoe-buying desires. Its really quite tragic because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, they have adorable shoes. But those beautiful ballet flats and elegant boots are forever beyond my grasp because I have German / Norwegian blood in me and those illustrious ancestors bequeathed their enormous feet to me. Sigh.
Besides the shoe-incident, it was a fun and successful shopping excursion. On Sunday after church Aaron and I went to "Fashion Street" in Seoul. Tiny boutiques, mostly selling women's clothing are cramped together on a few narrow and somewhat dirty streets across from a university. There were clothes stores, shoe stores, hat stores, and stores with American imported brands like Calvin Klein and Hollister. Our guidebook had promised a place to buy one of kind designer pieces for affordable prices. I'm not sure about the designer part, but the prices were great. I found a very nice black coat for under $60 and brown tights for $5. Everbody in Seoul wears tights and every tiny little street side vendor sells them.
Koreans have a fetish for the "I woke up this morning and threw all the cleans clothes I had left on-look" I've also noticed a Western / country theme - plaids, brown leather, ruffled shirts, floral patterns. Neither look really works for me so I didn't really have much luck besides the coat, but it was fun just to walk around the neighborhood which was full of stores, restaurants, and trendy college kids. If only Hillsdale had been in a big city :)

The Hobbits

The Koreans love food, I mean really love it - they are like the all the Greek and Jewish grandmothers in books or movies who are always urging you to eat more. This obsession with food can be sen from a brief narration of our hike yesterday. Aaron and I went to a Korean national park with a group from our church. In the morning we stopped for breakfast at a traditional Korean restaurant that served kimchi and beef soup at 7:30 in the morning. Spicy beef soup mind you. That was a little rough on the stomach- fortunately they had rice, nice, mild-tasting rice. After breakfast we settled down for a two hour bus drive. The Korean sitting in front of Aaron and me gave a us a bag of full of crunchy-sweet things (I'm not really sure what they were since the words on the bag were all in Korean) A little later they passed out the lunch we were supposed to carry up the mountain - two cucumbers, two clementines, a soy drink, a package of beef jerkey, two chocolate bars, a water bottle, and a handful of mints. To this we added three packages of kimbobs, a kind of role made with seaweed, rice, and other fillings like pickles, cucumbers, ham, and chicken.
The hike was beautiful, but pretty intense. We climbed for a solid 4 hours and often up flights of almost vertical stairs. Fortunately, we had enough food to sustain us :) On the way up we saw a Buddhist monastery , complete with their oddly shaped roofs and elaborate painting, and a number of trees whose leaves had changed to a luminous orange. At the top the view was spectacular - I saw other high mountain peaks all around and a clear, blue sky above. We finished up our lunch at the top. Someone in the group had brought a pear and he shared with the rest of us. We also tried some kind of nut that has a potatoe like consistency on the inside and a smooth texture on the outside. After such a strenuous hike up we took a gondola down and then had to wait for the bus. Lest we starve to death during the 45 minutes we waited for the bus our Korean friends provided more food. First Mr. Jin, the director of my school, bought some "fried sweet potatoe bar."It was a bad translation. They were like dried french fries with sugar instead of salt. For some reason the Koreans are adverse to salt.
Then some random vendor provided us with free food that looked like, well, birdseed. I kind of liked the crunchiness of it. Lest we waste away after finishing the bird seed, Mr. Jin bought a Korean dessert - it involved a cup of ice topped with jam, whipped cream, and some strange crunchy pieces that looked like tiny beans. The beans were a little much for me.
Finally the bus arrived to rescue us from our starvation and take us to dinner. Well, we did play Korean football which is a combination of soccer and volleyball before that, so we went almost two whole hours without eating. It was tough.
Dinner involved pieces of lettuce in which we placed raw fish, peppers, sauces, mushrooms, and a number of other unknown dishes, spicy fish soup, rice, and a rice-based alchohol that surpassed any of the wine I have tried in Korea. Koreans are not know for their wine. On leaving the restaurant a member of our group, an older gentleman who speaks a tiny bit of English and was very kind to us throughout the day, gave me some more potatoe-like nuts. You know, I needed my strength to walk from the restaurant to the bus. Ironically, dinner was so spicy and salty that Aaron and I both wanted something sweet so we bought icecream and chocolate in our city.
I have decided that the Koreans are like hobbits; they eat all the time and are very short :)