diet coke!!

yesterday, six of my coworkers, my directors and i went up to seoul for a workshop on teaching/learn about the company and korean culture. one guy gave us a presentation on the different types of high schools and the three major "ivy league" schools of korea that every single s.korean kid tries to get into. they have bootcamps for the kids to attend that help them prepare for (the korean version) of the act/sat test. the presenter shared some interesting facts about the camps with us. the kids wake up at 6, workout and study all day before going to bed around midnight. when they get to camp they are not allowed to bring their cell phone or ANY magazine (they specifically mentioned fashion magazines). this test determines their future for the rest of their lives. the presenter said if people don't get into a good school, they will never tell people what school they attended because they fear judgement and embarrassment. we also discussed discipline and ways to handle different classroom behaviors. one teacher asked about a student who he couldn't get to do anything. after describing the kid's behaviors to the presenter, the presenter labeled him as a "monster student" and went on to tell a story of a student an acquaintance of his once had who apparently had a student throw razor blades at him! i don't think that would ever happen at my school, especially with my kids, but i don't think i would ever want to step back into a classroom if that ever happened!

after the first half of the presentation, we were sent off to lunch. everyone felt like breakfast, so we went to this "americanized" restaurant that served all breakfast foods. kirsten, maria and i were very excited because it was our first time seeing diet coke in korea. usually, you can only find coke zero, and for some reason, that tastes awful here (basically fizzy water with the slightest taste of coke). the diet coke made my day.

after our presentation, we all had plans to stay longer so we could eat at a mexican restaurant located in the largest underground mall in the world (it's called coex). we had an hour to shop before our reservation time, so we all split up. maria and i decided to look around, but we soon became very overwhelmed by ALL the people. it also was a TON of korean (fashion) style shops, which means all the clothes are not organized by size or style. although i have found a few cute dresses while i've been here, i think i have given up on trying to shop in korea. i can't stand how unsystematic it is. we ended up in a bookstore with a decently sized english section and looked around for awhile. i found a copy of pride and prejudice and zombies in the bestsellers section and immediately wanted to call ellen.

today, amber and i went to the laundry mat so i could wash my towels and bedding (i don't mind if my clothes hang to air dry, but my bedding takes too long to dry). when i got home, i realized i left my detergent there, and i needed to wash clothes at home. amber and i decided that the walk to the laundry mat was too long (she has a cold and we were late meeting maria for coffee), so we hopped in a taxi. we think the driver thought we were crazy because we had him drive straight for half a mile, stop to pick up the detergent, and make a loop around the area we were in to drive us back to basically a few blocks from where we were picked up. he laughed as we handed him 3000 won (less than $3.00), but it was totally worth it.

last week, i made a deal with one of my louder classes. i give them five hearts at the beginning of their class and they all have to work together to earn five more to all get a sticker at the end of the day. if they can't be quiet or if one kid does something bad (hits another kid--this does happen sometimes, or talks after i ask them to be quiet), they get a heart erased. if they get ten hearts every single day i see them for three weeks, i'm buying them all ice cream. so far, it's worked, but two of the kids still don't like to listen to me. i'm still thinking of ways to get to those two, hopefully i'll figure it out before i see them next.

more things i've noticed about korean culture:
-since women don't EVER smoke in public (it reflects very poorly on them), you will often find several lighers in the bathroom sitting on the back of the toilet or next to the window. about a month ago, while waiting to use the bathroom, a girl came out and asked if it was okay that she was smoking in there (not because it was smoke, but because we could have viewed it as offensive). obviously, we weren't offended and told her that it was fine (although i DO hate smoke).
-when koreans make tentative plans with you, it actually means they are solid plans and you must do it, otherwise you are rude. this means if a korean says "we should get dinner sometime soon, i was thinking maybe monday." that means, "we're getting dinner on monday, cancel all your plans." this hasn't happened to me yet. also, if an elder invites you to anything, you MUST go.

just another week

this week went well. my kids are still all really good (most of them). the ones that are a little difficult aren't even that bad. one of my smaller kids ate half an eraser the other day. the same day one of my older kids up at the middle school level cut herself by accident right after class and was bleeding all over. i grabbed the first aid kit and rushed her to the bathroom. unfortunately, there weren't band-aids, so i made her wrap it in 5 paper towels...it ended up being a small cut (which is strange, considering the amount of blood i saw), but they should never allow kids to have exact-o knives in school.

yesterday we went to a fortress located close to the city. it's surrounding a mountain and we never really figured out the purpose of it. none of the tourist sites give any information other than how long it is (4.2 km long) and how old it is (1596). it doesn't even surround the city, it just surrounds a mountain. we walked one of the trials and ended up in a small village with a ton of little restaurants, but we didn't eat there because we had plans to get together with more of the teachers in a different area of the city.

chuseok

last thursday, another class of phonics was added to the school, so i got it. there are only two kids in the classroom (so far), but one of the kids is like five combined into one. yesterday i taught them the letter f. the most frustrating part of teaching phonics (or any of the kids, i guess) is their pronunciation. the korean language has a lot of "uhhh" and "eee" sounds in them, so the kids always add them to the end of a word. so when i was teaching them the word "fox" yesterday, they added an "uhh" to the end of it to make "foxuuuh". it's the most annoying thing to hear ever and the hardest thing to correct. i spent probably ten minutes with eight f words trying to make sure they wouldn't add anything to the end of it.

this past weekend was chuseok, a korean holiday, so we got a three day weekend!! i (along with a few other teachers) was invited to one of the korean teacher's house to celebrate. when we arrived, we helped him and his mom make songpyeon, a round rice cake with sesame and crushed red beans in the middle that you steam with pine needles. we watched his mom make the rice "dough" by adding rice powder and boiling water and mixing it together to get the right consistency. then you take a little of the rice, roll it into a ball and make it into a bowl-like shape so you can add the red beans. then you pinch the edges together so the red beans are in the center of the cake and roll it into a weird egg/ball shape with pinched ends. it's an old wives' tale that if you roll the cake perfectly, you will have beautiful babies.

when chuseok actually begins, the family sets out a table full of food on wooden platters. everything must be set in a certain order and there has to be an odd amount of food on every platter. for example, 1 fish was on a platter, 3 apples, and 15 chestnuts. they also put their spirital address for their family on the table so their ancestors know where to come. then the men (i think the women can too, but they were all preparing the meal for them after the ceremony, so they didn't participate) lit incense and poured some kind of hot alcoholic beverage in a cup, placed it next the spirital address and put chopsticks on two of the platters. they bowed (twice) and continued pouring more into the cup and moving the chopsticks around to various platters. after the ceremony, we ate a tofu soup, rice & kimchi (of course), and other foods that had been placed at the ancestors table, but only after it was all removed and put into normal serving plates.

the other day amber and i went to one of the restaurants around our apartments that serves spaghetti that is surprisingly really good. before when i have ordered this, i have just used my chopsticks to eat it, but they gave us forks. it was so strange, but the fork actually felt weird in my hand. 10 and 1/2 more months of eating food with chopsticks, but i'm actually already excited to get back to knives and forks. trying to cut food with chopsticks is difficult.