| Marie and Lorraine in Korea |
| Excerpts from emails.... |
| We started teaching the day after we arrived - no training or anything! It was very nerve-wracking and I was absolutely terrified! It was especially hard because we were so tired and so bombarded with new sights and smells and didn't know how to teach. But it went ok. We have taught three days now and soon we will be experts! :) At least that is what we hope. We teach 4-7 classes per day, depending on the day. We start at 3:15 in the afternoon because the children here go to regular school during the day and then hogwans (like tutorials) in the evening. They generally do english, science and math hogwans everyday which keeps them very busy. Education is extremely important in Korea - you need to do well in elementary school to get into a good highschool and do well there to get into a good university. Once in university it is a breeze but it is very hard to get there. Therefore Korea has the highest teenage suicide rate in the world! Very crazy! -Lorraine 03/07/2003 |
| Teaching is pretty strange here, too. Lorraine and I have been questioning our purpose, as it's very difficult to believe that anything we try to teach the kids will stick, without the benefit of translation. However, we found out that it doesn't actually matter. The parents generally don't care how much the kids learn. What they want is bragging rights, ie. "My son goes to [hogwon name here] and his teacher is beautiful." One of the foreign teachers we've met was checking out a school to see if she wanted to teach in it. Some of the parents saw her while she was there. Later one of the Korean teachers told her that the parents thought she was a great teacher. When she pointed out that she'd never even taught there, the Korean teacher said, "It doesn't matter, you're beautiful." Naturally everyone here thinks Lorraine and I are AMAZING teachers :). At least the pressure's off. - Marie 16/07/2003 |
| So Life here is good, mostly. I still have trouble with many of my student's names, but you try memorizing a class list that, among others contains the names Jae-Won, Jae-Song, Sae-Jung, and Jung-Min. Or how about two kids named Min-Ho and Myung Ho, and there are other M-names in there, too, I just can't remember them. Today was frustrating. We usually go to work and hour ahead of time to prep for classes, which start at 3:15. Yet, at 12:30 today, the director's wife called to ask if we knew that classes started at 1:15 today. We, in fact, did not. Lorraine was still in the shower. Communication does not seem to be a high priority among Koreans. As you know how anal I am, you can guess the effect this had on me. But our directors are so nice, so what do you do? It's going to be a year of flying by the seat of our pants, I think. Yay. -Marie 28/07/2003 |
| Well, I got back from a lovely trip to China just two days ago and I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you all about it. ... We arrived in Beijing on wednesday morning. We went with a group of about 23 english people - from Canada, the US, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It was a great mixture! We were picked up at the Airport by our tour bus driver (who was absolutely insane and almost killed us dozens of times - which might be a slight exaggeration!) and our cute, little tour guide, Linda ......After the Jade factory we headed for the GREAT WALL!! We ended up climbing almost to the top - about 1500 stairs in all - and we paid for it with rubbery legs and sore calf muscles! But it was an amazing experience. We also were pronounced heroes for making it up! -Lorrraine 04/08/2003 |
| ......Afterwards we went to see the Ming Tombs. Well, actually we just saw one, that of Emperor Dingling (unfortunate name, I know). It was pretty cool, we went really far underground to see the tomb, but there really wasn't much to see down there, just big red reproductions of the coffins. Afterwards we went to the Summer Palace. The gardens were beautiful. I wouldn't mind being Chinese royalty if it meant I could hang out there every summer. .....Our next stop was Tiannanmen Square and the Forbidden City. The square is huge. It was very strange to be in a place that has been such an iconic symbol of recent history. Although the hawkers crowding around with postcards and kites and the Asians asking for pictures sort of muted the impact. The Forbidden City provided the Chinese with another great opportunity to stare at the white folk. It was incredible. Twenty of us would stand in a circle, listening to our tour guide, and people would just crowd around us and stare. Then the guide would move us to a less crowded area and we'd be surrounded again. And the suovenir hawkers never let up. They can be persistent. It actually got difficult keep from getting frustrated by them. -Marie 05/08/2003 |
| First, I'd just like to take this moment to gripe a bit. Prostitution is pretty bad around here. Something like 60% of males go to a prostitute once a month--sick. Anyway, the only white people in Changwon are English teachers, engineers, and Russian prostitutes. This means that we can't go out after dark without some Korean male asking us if we're Russian. We could be wearing the baggiest, sloppiest clothes ever, minding our own business and still get asked--they don't discriminate at all. Last night, 7:30pm, in the supermarket of all places, a man yelled out "Russia? Russia?" as we walked by him. I'm developing a complex. Oh, and I should tell you about how Koreans are still pretty racist (this probably isn't so true in Seoul or anything, but we're living in the most conservative area of the country). Some other foreign teachers found some flashcards: the "pretty" one was of a white, blond woman, while the "ugly" card had a black woman's face on it. Some kids think Black people are that way becasue they eat their 'dung', as it gets called here (a little aside: Korean kids are very fascinated by dung). So this is my story: I had some of my kids draw pictures of things they like doing. One boy, Moo Jin, wrote "I like hitting..." and drew a picture of the Russian flag. I looked at it, first interested in the fact that he knew how to draw the flag, and then saw the sentence. I asked him about it and he nodded and wrote "and juda" and drew a picture of a Star of David. I was shocked and asked why he liked hitting Jews. He said they were bad. Whoa. I told him he was wrong. I was pretty upset actually, so he scribbled it out. I don't think he really knows what he's talking about, but still. This place is crazy. Marie 11/08/2003 |