Noraebangin' and Teachin'

It’s been over a week since my last blog, so there is quite a bit to catch up on. It’s hard to know exactly where to start, so I’ll go back to the beginning of last week.

The school week once again found me with nothing to do. Since classes didn’t start until just yesterday, I was faced with another week of having nothing to do. We did have some crazy weather though, two days of snow, two days of sun, one day of warm wind, and one day that a sickeningly humid… crazy. My typical day would look something like this. Show up to work around 8:45am. Check in with my co-teacher, and then go to my classroom in the English Center. At this point I would basically sit around and stare at the computer, check my Facebook continuously, chat with people and just generally wait around until it was time for lunch. At 12:05 I would go back to the teachers’ office, and then go to lunch. Lunch differs daily, but you can always count on having rice, some kind of soup and of course, Kimchi. Always Kimchi. Some lunches are more exciting than others. Some have fish mixed in, others have unknown ingredients, some have tentacles… all are pretty damn good. After lunch I would go back to my office, and wait around until 5 when it was time to go home. There were a couple of days where the after lunch activities varied. On Thursday and Friday for example I had to come help make up new level tests.

Wednesday was the most eventful day of last week. Wednesday found me getting through lunch, and then, at 3 going and playing volleyball with the staff. This is always a fun event. Sadly I will no longer be able to participate as I will be working from 1 to 9, but it was fun while it lasted. After we finished volleyball everyone went to their respective offices and packed up for the day. At 5, when the day was over we all got together and went and had a full staff dinner. The Wednesday before we had had a male staff dinner, this dinner was for the entire staff. It started all 60 or so members of the staff piling into a number of cars and driving to the other side of Namchang, where there was a nice pork BBQ restaurant. We started the event off with introductions of the entire staff. Starting with the first grade teachers, then second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. Then they introduced the administrative staff, and last, but certainly not least, the foreigners. While everyone else was able to just stand up and bow, we had to go to the front of the restaurant (which was completely filled by us), be introduced, bow and then we could go back to our seats. While we were up there Matt was kind enough to remark to me under his breath, ‘this kind of feels like the end scene of Star Wars,’ at which point I had to do everything I could not to start laughing my ass off. Once we were sitting back down it was time to eat.

A note on Korean BBQ: For anyone who has never had the pleasure of having this kind of food let me paint a lovely picture of the surroundings and goings on. The Restaurant will usually contain a number of tables, all low to the ground, with cushions to sit on. In the center of the table will be either a small BBQ type thing in which hot coals are placed, or a burner of some kind. Someone will come and light the burner, or add coals and then bring you a plate of raw meat. In this case pork, but there is a number of varieties. Once you have your meat someone at the table, usually the oldest, will start cooking it on the BBQ. Side dishes are also brought out and things like onions, mushrooms, garlic and kimchi can then be added to the grill along with the meat. Once it has cooked to an appropriate degree, the person doing the cooking will pick up a slab of meat with tongs, and then, using a pair of sheers/scissors, will cut the meat into smaller, more manageable pieces. You then let it cook a bit longer, to your own taste, and then pick it off the grill with your chopsticks. Reaching over people is perfectly normal and acceptable. Once you have your meat there is a number of ways to eat it. Either simply dipping it in sauce, or more commonly, placing it on a leaf of lettuce or some such thing, adding some additional ingredients like sauce, kimchi, onions, garlic or whatever, wrapping it all up together in the lettuce and then eating it. Once the plate of meat has been consumed you finish the meal with rice and soup. It’s amazing. Oh, and did I mention the beer and soju. Those flow freely… very freely.

After around 2 hours the meal was complete and most of the Koreans were intoxicated to some degree. I myself, having partaken in the drinking as well, was feeling pretty content. This could only mean one thing, it was time to go to a Noraebang. A noraebang is a place with rooms you can rent out with your group, in which you sing karaoke style. Copious amounts of alcohol are of course available and everyone is expected to join in with the singing. So here is the situation I found myself in: I am in this small room with 20+ Koreans. Matt and I are the only foreigners. I am having flashbacks of my experience the week before and am not wanting to repeat it. There’s a crazy light show going on, involving lots of colors and a strobe light. The principle and the vice principle are singing a duet. There is a rack of beer on the table. People are pushing me up to the front telling me to dance and sing. This is, by far, one of the weirdest, craziest, most fun experiences I have had. I don’t know how I managed to make it out of there while maintaining some level of sobriety… but I found a way. I also ended up singing a number of songs with Matt, most notably ‘All you need is Love’. This ended with Matt and me holding the microphones, while swaying back and forth with all of the Koreans, arms around each other, at once.

Finally it was time to leave the noraebang after a couple hours. However, Koreans being the hardcore drinkers they are, were not ready to call it a night. At this point I was reasonably buzzed, to slightly drunk. I really didn’t want to get any further than that, but, if you want to be respected by your peers in this country you can’t back down. So, I had to get tricky. We went to restaurant where we ordered eel, beer and soju. The eel was damn tasty, the beer was about what you’d expect, and the soju was as awful as ever. I can handle drinking beer, that’s not a problem. It’s the soju that kills me. It’s nasty stuff, totally sneaks up on you. It’s nowhere near as bad as pisco, mind you, but it’s still pretty rough. Matt kept reassuring me that as long as I could keep with them, keep my cool, and control myself, I’d be in. So I did the best I could to avoid the shots, took only half shots when the time came, and resorted to some other trickery, and in the end I was able to maintain and still feel pretty good by the time it was time to go home. We left at 11, which was imperative because the pizza place closed at 11:30, and if there’s one thing we really needed it was pizza. So we grabbed some pizzas, went back to my place, ate them, and then turned in. Song Ho, my co-teacher, was pretty drunk, so he stayed at my place and slept on a mat on my floor. It was quite the evening, and the next morning came far too soon, but I felt pretty alright all things considered.

Friday was another exciting day. For one thing, I got my alien registration card. This allowed me to set up a bank account… though I still have no money to put in it… oh well, soon enough. It also happened to be Matt’s birthday. So after school I went home, took a shower, changed the clothes, and headed into Ulsan. The night started appropriately enough at a pizza place. From there we moved on to a local bar. We stayed here for some time. There was around 30 people there that night. We got there and had some beers starting at around 8:30. By 11 or so I was really hungry, so I talked Gerard into walking to McDonalds with me. Nothing is better when your drinking than fries and a couple of cheeseburgers. While we were there we talked to a couple of Korean men who were kind enough to inform me that I was handsome. Strange this country. We made our way back to the bar and hung out there until around 12:30 at which point is was, once again, time for a noraebang. This Noraebang experience was a bit different in that it was mostly foreigners there. This didn’t detract from the experience; it just meant I knew more of the songs. Unfortunately this also meant that I sang a lot more. Which was really a pity for everyone else I’m sure. But regardless, I had a really good time. I think we made our way back to Namchang at around 4AM. We were somehow able to cram five people in the taxi, which was great because it meant we barely had to pay anything.

I woke up the next afternoon, around 1:30, feeling really good. I wasn’t expecting to feel good, but I was actually pretty well rested. It was nice. Everyone else was waking up around the same time too. I got on facebook and talked to Cat who asked if I wanted to go grab lunch with her, Clare and Gerard. I was really hungry, and they were getting a seafood soup at a place next to my house, so I was all over that. I met up with them around 2:30 and went into the restaurant where we were treated to a heaping bowl of soup which consisted of homemade rice noodles, clams and shrimp. SOOOO GOOD! And only 5000 won per person. What a fantastic country. After that we went and hung out on the roof of my apartment for an hour or so. It was really fun. There was a St. Patrick’s Day party that night at one of the foreigner bars in Ulsan, so we decided to meet up and go check it out later. I went home and did some laundry, and then met up with Gerard at 9. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee and then went to Ulsan. This was my first foreigner bar experience, and I have to say, I really wasn’t impressed. It all goes back to my theory about hanging out with other Americans when I was in Chile; if I’d wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have gone to another country. So, while it was pretty fun, I was happy to leave at the end of the night. I can easily imagine avoiding places like that in the future. Just really not my scene. It was like looking around the bar and being back in the States, then looking out the window and being in Korea… I found myself looking out the window a lot.

This more or less brings us to the beginning of the week, and therefore the beginning of my real teaching experience. Monday I started on my actual schedule, which means that I got to school at noon, had lunch and then started working. The first day was level testing. Basically all of the students come in at different levels, so we have to give them tests to find out how much they know. My first group was all third graders, and mostly third grade girls. The good thing about third graders is that they don’t have an attitude… the bad thing is that they have waaaaaaay to much energy. Now, evidently I was not supposed to be giving this test alone, as I didn’t speak Korean and they didn’t understand much English. But this is Korea, and what’s supposed to happen is frequently lost in translation. So I found myself in a room with a bunch of Korean third graders who didn’t seem to understand me, and who kept asking me questions in Korean, which I couldn’t answer. This was two hour test also. A two hour test which no one informed how to give them. So I had to make it up as I went. It worked out well enough though. It was pretty crazy, but it was also fun. The test was in two parts, and the second part was an individual interview. There is something somewhat disconcerting when you sit down with a Korean child, ask them what food they like, and they just stare at you, without any comprehension. It’s at that point you realize you may have a problem.
The second group I tested was from 4th, 5th and 6th grade. This time I was fortunate enough to have a Korean teacher with me. So things went way, way smoother. Though I did have some problems with the interview questions. Some students were able to answer me in almost fluent English, on the other hand, one girl couldn’t stop laughing every time I asked her a question. Uncontrollable laughter, which I was informed, stemmed from the fact that she liked me so much. Silly children. By the time we finished it was 8pm, and it was time to go home. I was pretty worn out by this point, but not nearly as worn out as I would be the following day.

Which brings us to the following day, AKA today. Today was the first day I actually taught. Of course, I didn’t know I was actually teaching until I got to school. Yes, Korea operates on a need to know basis, but evidently you don’t need to know until an hour before you are supposed to do something. Awesome. So, since we had just received out books, hadn’t had a chance to look at them at all or anything, I decided it was time for some introduction and Icebreakers. So I put together a quick slide show about myself, made up some questions for the kids and hoped to God that this would take me through a full 50 minutes of class. It didn’t… but thank God for hangman. My first group was intermediate, older students, all in 5th and 6th grade. The lesson went pretty well, but I was left with more free time than I had wanted. I had one girl in the class who I can already tell will be a major pain in the ass. She is in 6th grade and she is anti authority. You say do something and she looks at you and says no. I had to get angry at her once to make her stop doing whatever it was she was up to. The second class was all intermediate 3rd graders… in other words, the most advanced 3rd graders. They were a lot more fun. They were all hyper, and loud and crazy, but fun. This class was almost all little girls. So far I have found out that little Korean girls love me. The bad side of that is that they all want my attention constantly. Which means a lot of screaming and shrieking. I’ve decided to go by Tim in my classes because it is easier than Ryan, so I constantly hear, ‘Tim, Tim, Tim, TIM, TIM, TIM!!!’ in piercing little 3rd grade Korean girl voices. Either that or ‘Teacha’, teacha’, teacha’ TEACHA’, TEACHA’!!!’. They are fun, and very cute, but I am sure that they will slowly drain the life out of me. The third class I taught was all the advanced students. This class was really easy because they all understood me perfectly and answered me perfectly. It was almost too easy. So I will have to up the difficulty in that class. My last class of the night was slightly less advanced, and also very loud. There were also some potential trouble makers in this group too. One boy sitting in the back of the room, with his super cool, long, side sweeping hair, decided he wanted to roll up his question sheet like a cigarette and pretend to smoke. Don’t even know what to do about that. Don’t even know where to start. Oh well.

So, what have I learned in the last couple weeks? Noraebangs are really fun. When the weather is nice Namchang is really cool. Korean food is still awesome. You can never be sure what weather you’ll have. And from my students; I have a beard, I have blue eyes, and I have a small head. Hmmm… Alright then. Well, that’s about it for now. Chao.