friday's letters/5

dear buddah,
thank you for being born, and thank you korea for recognizing it as a national holiday and therefore taking off work. we're heading out saturday morning on the motorbike and heading to a nearby island to go camping on the beach.

dear korea,
thank you for your amazing beaches that we can camp and build epically awesome bonfires on. we will be thoroughly enjoying it this weekend.

dear sister,
just saw the latest of your pregger photos. you have exceeded my expectations for not being on bed rest yet (she's tiny at just 5'1", i thought she'd be laid up by month 4!) AND my expectations of how cute we all said you'd be knocked up. can't wait to hold my niece in august!

dear hubs,
i think it's sexiest when you wake up early and make me breakfast. i won't argue if you decide to do it more often.

dear motorbike,
i'm not thrilled about the idea of sitting on you for two hours tomorrow and you making my butt more sore than an hour of squats. please be nice.

friday's letters/4

{this is one of my favorite kindi students...chocolate. whenever i asked him what was on his shirt he would get really excited and yell "it's SUNNY!" oh and timmy is behind him trying in any way possible to get in the photo}

dear boss,
thank you for surprising me by switching my schedule. a four hour workday on friday kind of rocks.

dear doctor,
i know that you were trying to talk about tissue survival rate or something (i kind of zoned out) but i couldn't help but laugh when you mistakenly said "your survival rate is 30-50%".

dear middle school students,
i know you don't think i'm funny but thank you for laughing at my cheesy jokes anyway. takes the stress of being a teacher away.

dear mogis,
i know i taste good to you but can you please leave me alone and possibly bug the hubs for awhile? i'm starting to get stares in class from scratching so much.

dear kindi student parents,
please stop changing your kid's names. a)it's already hard enough to memorize the names of the 200+ students that i have and b)when you change their names to genius, strawberry and storious, it's hard for me to keep a straight face during class.

yet another misunderstanding

i found out shortly before this incident that it is common for boys in korea to be circumcised in their early teens. they believe this is better because the child will understand why they have to get the surgery and they can be put under for it.  one day, i had one of my students who is around the age of 13 walk into my classroom limping. i asked the students what happened and half burst into laughter and the other half set to work trying to figure out how to explain this to me in english. one student volunteered,"teacher, he cut his..." and makes a cutting motion on his finger. i THOUGHT i understood but was confused as to why he was limping. when i asked them they shook their heads and kept making the cutting motion, "no, no, no....a part very important to a man." after i got the awkward "OH!!!!" expression off of my face, i explained that in the states we do that when the boy is still a baby. the conversation ended shortly after that but about 5 minutes into the lesson i had one student interrupt and say "i think the states way is much better teacher."

one year later

i can't believe that it has already been a year since we arrived in korea. the time seems to go so much faster here compared to back home. the other day jeremy and i were talking about how different life is now compared to when we first arrived.

some things that we had to face when we first arrived:

-eating ramen everyday because we couldn't read any of the menus. we still can't read half of it but now we can recognize what we like

-jetlag! getting up at 6am every morning. we figured we could walk around and see the city only to find out that koreans are not morning people. the streets are deserted till at least 9, if not later.

-staying in a love motel for the first two weeks. exactly what it sounds like. rooms can be rented by the hour or the night and mood lighting is always provided ; )

-sticking to the same two restaurants because they had pictures on their menus

-taking hours at the grocery store staring at labels i couldn't read and trying to find any food slightly resembling something i knew

-spending the meal avoiding the free kimchee on the table (i still do this)

-getting yelled at for crossing the street without a walk signal (they're really strict!)

- figuring out that there are no preservatives in a lot of the food. we have to race to eat certain foods before they go bad. especially fruit and bread.

-since there are no dryers we try to put all the fans on our clothes to get them to dry faster before the mildew smell sets in.

-waking up to the smell of kimchee, fish or whatever else the apartment above us decided to cook for breakfast that morning.

-buying a car for around $200 but having to push start it anytime it rained. (we got it fixed eventually)

-going to the bathroom outside at work. in the summer it was a race to see how fast you could pee before you were attacked by mosquitos

even though we don't have to deal with most of these things anymore, it just adds to the experience of living in a different country.

what's in a name

before walking into a classroom at my previous school, you could guess what about 80% of the kids names were going to be. john, sally, ann, jimmy. basically all the typical western names. at my new school, the names are a bit more unique which i love but i can never get the spelling right. when my student told me her name was donna, i excitedly wrote it on the board, how could i mess this one up? after writing it, the students started hysterically laughing. "teacher! you spell it d-a-n-a." the whole class was a lesson in korean spelling of western names. lincoln was l-i-n-c-o-n, ellen was e-l-i-n. then there were the ones that i've never heard before. i had an alva, lyon, rani (pronounced ronnie), claude (pronounced cloud), lina and zinee. the names will be easy enough to remember but the spelling may take me awhile.

Bad Days and Timmy Tim

just when i thought i was having a bad day, this little man strolls in, wraps his arms around you and give me a kiss on the cheek.

teaching kindi was probably one of the most challenging experiences of the year. for the first three months, these kids cannot communicate with you in the slightest. you might be able to get the alphabet out of them  and the rest is charades practice (which i have mastered over the year). but now looking back, i've realized that it has been the most rewarding experience. i have seen these kids go from no english, to being able to communicate and have small conversations with them. out of the 100+ kids i have taught this year, i'm going to miss my kiddos most of all.

Inappropriate or Funny?

john and his twin brother timmy (john is the one on the right)

you may have heard some of my stories about funny things my students say or do that wouldn't be appropriate in the states but since i'm in another country, and there's a major language and cultural barrier, it comes of as funny. the one student that has more of these "funny" stories than anyone else is john. he is one of my six year olds and one day in class we were playing a game where i yell out a color or shape and they have to find it in the room. i yelled rectangle and they all rushed to the door, i yelled white and they all run to the whiteboard. you get the point. the next shape i yelled was circle, and while everyone ran in a different direction, john ran straight for me and grabbed my boob. well at least he got the shape right. when asked by one of the korean teachers why he did that, his response was "they are bigger than my moms". touche john.

yesterday john threw a crayon across the room and when told to go pick it up, he casually walks by me and again, cops a grab. when asked why, his response was "because she was there." 

during these "incidents" i have to hide my laughter while i tell him that it is definitely not ok to do that.

thank you john for always keeping me on my toes