How Did I Miss a Pop Video With Hot Korean Girls and Hints of Bondage???

I hear this song everywhere. And my host sisters sing it ALL the time. Ok, enjoy!!

Noraebang With Teachers Last Night

So I went to Daegu last night with some of the teachers from my school. Daegu is the third largest city in Korea and only about 25-30 min East from Gumi via train. We got dinner (bibimbap!) and then went to a bar. It was me and 5 other female teachers (ranging from early 30s to late 40s? Koreans look younger than their actual age, so they could've been a little older). After drinking beer and eating dried squid we went to a noraebang and sang korean songs and drank more beer. The older teachers were amazing singers! I could only sing the choruses to a few select Korean songs, but I did do the dance for "Sorry, Sorry," which is posted below for the Americans who haven't seen or heard this song. ^_^

Oh Toilet Paper Troubles!!!

So today I discovered that I can indeed flush toilet paper down the toilet at my home and in the school.

For those who don't know, in a lot of places in Korea you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet b/c the pipes can't handle it. In Chuncheon we couldn't flush it in the dorms. So I thought we couldn't here in Gumi.

But I finally had that conversation with my host mom. This also cleared up her question about why the tiniest of tiny waste baskets next to the toilet started to become full more quickly when I moved in. Oh cross cultural misunderstanding. Who would've thought that even wiping your ass could be so complicated?? ^_^

Thoughts on Looking Like Everyone Else

Obviously I knew that by coming to Korea, I would look like the majority of people (for once in my life). And I knew before arriving in Korea that my minority status would switch. In the USA I'm about as American as they come (I believe in freedom of the individual over the good of the whole, diversity, democracy, etc) but I am a minority by race. In Korea I am a cultural minority but my face is SOOOO Korean.

Yeah, let me repeat that, my face is SOOOOO Korean!! I confuse many Korean people, actually let me take that back. I confuse ALL Korean people!! The first thing out of every Korean's mouth when they hear me speak for the first time is, "Aren't you a Korean person???" (in Korean of course) I get this in taxis, department stores, grocery stores, in school, etc etc etc. Here ethnicity and culture go hand-in-hand. Here it is a very foreign idea that a person who's face looks so Korean is not really a Korean.

Foreigners here who look foreign (esp if you are white) are treated like super stars. Korea is a very homogenous place and so if someone clearly sticks out as foreign, they are greeted as someone special. However if you don't look foreign and you speak English, you are treated with skepticism. And apparently if a Korean person speaks English with a good accent, to other Koreans they are considered snobbish. Hence I get dirty looks all the time when Korean people (especially middle aged women) hear me speak English.

Most of the time I can't communicate with most people. I can speak a little Korean, but nothing on the level that can express complex or abstract thoughts. So when I see foreigners, sometimes I feel a sigh of relief knowing that there are people who I can probably talk with. But they look at me as just another Korean person, and not an American.

So the combination of these different things has led me to feel as if I am a ghost sometimes. I'm nothing special to Koreans or Westerners, and so effectively they don't really see me. And who I am is not what I am projecting to these people, and this projection is not anything that I can control either. In the USA I can better control the personality that I project to strangers b/c our surrounding symbolic system is the same. Here, my face says it all, whether I want it to or not. It wouldn't matter how I dressed, how I carried myself, my mannerisms, my face is Korean and so I am assumed to be Korean, and a snobby one at that. It is a very interesting dilemma.

This hasn't really bothered me yet, if anything it amuses me. I may have the quality of a ghost from afar, but then I retain that element of surprise when I actually have to talk to people. And then when I drop the adopted bomb, hehe, oh man. But that will be a topic for another posting. ^_^

Zombie Korean Children

This what I see every morning when I get off the bus. It's like Night of the Living Dead, just with adorable Korean kids.

Hmmm... I don't know what this means....

So I asked all of the kids to write me a self introduction so I could better know what my students like and don't like, what music they listen to, what they watch on television, etc. And this is one boy's response I got:

"I like a Furry and Music and so on. My hobby is watch animation. I love animation and Furry."

Ummmmm, I'm pretty sure that he is not the type of American person I am thinking of that likes animation and furries.... I wonder if there are furries in Korea? Hmmmm..... a year of misunderstanding begins!!

Another good response was simply, "I like girl."

Difficulty Adjusting, But Not B/c of Korea

So, this was my first week of teaching, and the kids and faculty at my school, Bong Gok Middle School (봉곡중학교), are frigin' amazing. There really haven't been any moments that were too awkward, well sort of (I'll get to that). The first day was hard b/c I had 4 classes back to back and so I had little time to reflect and adjust my method of running the class. Needless to say, I think I sucked. The teachers were pretty honest with me if they thought I wasn't doing such a great job. And in the end I prefer this b/c if they say I'm doing a good job, then I know they're being honest. The next day I started my second round of teaching and I made changes in the first class and things went soooo much better and the suckage diminished.

Then tragedy struck. So for those who haven't heard, Steph's James passed away on Tuesday morning from a sudden still currently unknown reason. If you know Steph, and you need her info to contact her, just email me. For everyone else, please, leave no comments on this post. It has been wildly difficult being in Korea this week. Steph is one of the closest people to me, and has been for the past 8 years. If I had been in the States, I would've been at Logan Airport within the hour, T granting. So far adjusting to Korea has been relatively easy for me. Despite all of the cultural differences, I've been trying to approach everything with an open mind and a smile. I really didn't think that I would experience too much homesickness. But I really wish I was back in the USA right now. And one of the most exhausting things is greeting all of my students (all 750 of them) with a cheery hello and saying that I'm great when they say, "Teacher, hello how are you????" I cried in the teachers' office when I found out, and that definitely made everyone else feel really uncomfortable, especially since no one in the office at that time could speak English. (so if you can help crying in front of the teachers, I recommend that.... unless you really don't mind feeling reaaaallly awkward)

So yeah, it's been hard splitting myself in two, one side belonging to my students and Korea, the other side belonging to Steph. Again, please, leave no comments on this post, I appreciate it. Ok, time for bed.... I need my rest in order to match the energy of my students. And believe me, even for me, it is hard!!