Back to school

Now I'm back at school after quite a long break. I'm usually a little nervous at the start of the week, since it means I'm navigating a whole new lesson, but this morning I was a little more anxious, having been away for five whole days. Today I'm doing an acrostic poem lesson (if anyone remembers this from grade school, it's when you write a 'poem' describing yourself, with each adjective starting with a letter from your name). It's going pretty smoothly. I give students who finish early a word search puzzle, after checking over their poem. Some of them seem to think that 'jealous' and 'embarassed' are positive adjectives; and I don't think they're confused about what the words mean, since they get them all from their dictionaries. Since they're using their dictionaries, and adjectives that start with K and J are few, they also use words that seem archaic to me, like 'jocund' and 'jimdandy.' I don't mind, since they seem to be increasing their vocabularies.

So Saturday was fun. Spent about five hours with the third graders. First we went out to lunch (the ubiquitous bibimbap) then to Baskin Robbins for ice cream, which we took to a cafe where you can sit in your own private room. They enjoyed talking, and asked me a lot of questions about American high school, revelations to which they usually responded with sighs and envy. They were particularly disappointed that Korean students never get any kind of graduation party (Oo Jong had seen a graduation party in an American movie once). We also talked about how both Japan and China are trying to claim areas of Korea as being theirs--there's a dispute over an island that is siuated between Korea and Japan, and China is trying to claim that the ancient kingdom of Cogureyo (not sure of the spelling) which Korean history names as one of the three original kingdoms of Korea, was actually Chinese. The students seemed very despondent about it. They feel like Korea has no power in the world, so it just has to submit to unjust claims such as these (though the articles I've read, in the Korea Herald and the New York Times, seem pretty astute to China's motivations).

After this we tried to go see a movie, but since the timing wasn't right, we went to an arcade. I made another attempt at playing Dance Dance Revolution. It took me a little while to convince one of the girls to play with me, and then it became clear that the game was malfunctioning (after it took our money). So then we played some driving games and shooting games. There was a sticker photo booth at the arcade, but they knew of a better deal, so we walked to some sort of indoor marketplace that had a variety of different photo booths. And we ended up taking like five different pictures. Maybe I'll post some when I figure out how. They sort of defy description.


We were all thirsty from the hard work of posing, so we went to McDonald's to get something to drink. I've yet to actually eat at a fast food restaurant here, but Koreans have taken me to both Burger King and McDonald's to get drinks or desserts. I managed to buy them their drinks (they'd insisted on treating all day), and the transaction went pretty smoothly. (Chocolite shaykuh, banilla shaykuh, cola, ohrange juysuh.) I even caught on when she conveyed to me that they were out of chocolate shakes. But at the end the clerk asked me a question and made a gesture that I didn't quite understand. It appeared to me that she was pointing to some kind of Ron McDonald donation box, so I shook my head, and she looked at me wide-eyed and said, "Anio?" (No?). And we stood there awkwardly for a moment. Then a Korean guy popped up and asked me if he could help (in English). I tried to explain to him that I didn't know what she was asking, and though his English was pretty good, he seemed confused as well. Then she repeated herself, and he turned me and said, "Four thousand." And I felt silly, because I'd been standing there the whole time with a 10,000 won note in my hand, and it'd never occured to me that she'd just been telling me the price. Even though I know numbers in Korean at this point, I'm still not good at hearing them, I guess.

I took the drinks to the girls, and a few moments later the English-speaking guy popped by again and asked me some questions about myself (Where are you from? What state? What do you think of Korean high school?). The girls were pretty impressed with his ability--mostly he spoke confidently and in full sentences. It turned out he was self-taught, too, which was somewhat notable as he didn't really resemble a business man or teacher, the professions I've been told benefit the most from knowing English.

Saturday night I met Jairus and some of the frisbee folks because Abi is leaving Suncheon on Wednesday. Abi is an American who my host mother is friends with, and Abi's the one who invited me to play frisbee initially. She's really nice, it's too bad she's going back to the States now. I got to see a bit of the expat scene, which was interesting. I think there must be at least fifty westerners in Suncheon, probably most of them teaching English at private academies, though I have met a few that work for the University. They are all very different, and many seem pretty different from me, but at the same time, I feel like I'm undeniably part of their group. It will be interesting getting to know them.

Sunday it rained pretty hard most of the day, so unfortunately, no frisbee. I rented a movie and watched it on my computer with my host sisters (and host mother, for part of it). Catch Me if You Can. At one point when Christopher Walken, who plays Leonardo Dicaprio's loving father, was talking to his son, my host mother turned to me and asked: "The father bad?" I said, "No..." But couldn't really explain. How do you explain that Christopher Walken is just sinister, even when he's playing a kind character?

Reading: Still working through Mark Twain. Started "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde.

Fiction written: worked on that failed short story for part of Saturday.