Christmas in Korea

Before I start, here is a requisite dose of cuteness from Kindergarten:

Christmas in Korea was a pretty quiet affair. I went to a friend's house for Christmas dinner, and since all apartments of foreigners are minuscule by definition, we ate in her kitchen/livingroom/diningroom/foyer on the floor. She spread out a little picnic blanket and we all had little cushions to sit on. Everyone brought some food - though most everyone brought some desert so the sweets far outnumbered the actual food.

The eight of us at the feast ate our way through two chickens, a large amount of mashed potatoes, a large salad (provided by me!), steamed vegetables, and a large assortment of pastries, cookies, and breads.

Maria, our hostess, lives in the boonies (and by 'boonies' I mean 'not close to a subway station' which, to me, is a deal breaker) so she had her boyfriend D.H. (the D.H. stands for his Korean name which I have now forgotten. His English is very good because he works for a company that sells scents to perfume manufacturers and the like. You know the new car smell? Yep, they make that) pick Leslie and I up from our neighborhood.

We were halfway to Maria's when it became obvious that traffic was going to make us ridiculously late. Its normally this way on Saturdays, but I guess it was a little worse because it was Christmas. D.H. suggested we abscond with our cargo (the chickens, vegetables and cookies destined for our Christmas dinner) to the east coast because he didn't want to sit in traffic another second and no one else was going that way. We were enthusiastic about the idea until we realized that Maria would murder us all with a blunt object. So, we resigned ourselves to sitting in traffic all day.

I spent the two days leading up to this gathering ingredients for gingerbread cookies. Since nutmeg and cloves are not really very popular in Korea - in fact, I couldn't find them anywhere I looked - I had to travel all the way to Itaewon and the foreign food market (run by an Indian family) to find them. Even then, I found only whole cloves and whole nutmegs. At the time, this didn't bother me because I figured I could find something to grind them with. I did not consider how HARD nutmegs are. My finger still aches from the good hour it took me to grind even a quarter of a teaspoon of powder from those stupid things. The cloves were easier once I figured out that the stems were not worth grinding. I used fresh Korean ginger (sold at the supermarket on a counter filled with all sorts of seaweed and ginseng) which was not nearly as hard to grind. The end result was well worth it, however, because after the painstaking process of chilling the dough, pounding it flat on the microscopic counter space in my kitchen, cutting it out and cooking them in a borrowed toaster oven, I had a huge bag full of DELICIOUS gingerbread cookies shaped like, of all things, cars, fishes and dogs. Not sure what these things have to do with each other, but they came as a set and I don't question Daiso*.

The school also had a Christmas party which, as I was informed the day before, I was supposed to play Rudolph. Matthew, my co-teacher, was supposed to be Santa. So the kids sat down in the playroom to eat all their delicious food and sang some christmas carols (or really, sang gibberish to the tune of Christmas carols) while they ate.

I like this picture because Christina has just discovered I am taking picture of everyone while she has her mouth hanging open.

This I am posting to placate their vanity should they ever see this page.

Matthew and I, after eating, got dressed in the staff room. We both had on santa-esque suits and hats but I had on a pair of glasses with a huge red nose and antlers, and a scarf wrapped around my head to hide my hair. Matthew had a huge white beard (and mustache!) and glasses on. Not his glasses, though he has some, but Mr. Kim's glasses. We finished up the outfits with lipstick on Matthew's nose and my cheeks. I hope this picture does us justice:

When we came running in the kids were all shouting who they thought we were. Of course, it wasn't hard to guess. There aren't that many teachers and many of them were there in the room. Still, Matt and I bravely maintained our facade. I had to guide Matt into the room because he couldn't see through Mr. Kim's glasses (I was his seeing-eye reindeer!). We were responsible for giving out presents from under the tree (the parents had all sent them in over the course of the last week) and had to pretend not to know which kid was which. They left one kid for the end because he is very badly behaved and Christina called him out in front of all the other kids, saying she wasn't sure that Santa had a present for him because he had such bad manners. I felt sorry for him, but I know that's just becasue of my culture. In Korea, social controls involve the whole population. The way you get a kid to behave is point out that his behavior is not acceptable to the society as a whole. In America, we would probably have taken the kid aside and given him a one-on-one talk about how his behavior was not acceptable. In Korea, the punishment for being bad is having your entire peer group know it, bringing ridicule from those you want most to accept you. To you or me it may seem harsh, but its worked for thousands of years over here.

After we were through with the gift giving, Matt and I went into the storage closet to change and came out demanding to know why no one told us Santa and Rudolph were going to stop by. We told everyone that we had gone out for lunch and had missed the whole thing. I even convinced Kiwi (five year olds) for a couple days that this was the case.

Apricot (four year olds), however, was having none of it. In an unprecedented show of deductive reasoning, Clare pointed out to me that I was, in fact, wearing the same shoes that Rudolph had. I tried to play it off by exclaming "Rudolph has my shoes?" but they were having none of it. They were too smart for me. I even got it on tape:

Clare is the one making dramatic gestures towards my footwear and Paul is there trying to make me understand that he thinks I was Rudolph. He's so cute and completely without guile. He honestly thought I didn't understand what he was trying to tell me and was upset becuase he likes to be able to communicate properly. His mother tells me that when he's at home, he gets frustrated when he can't form full sentences.

I have to work this week, but thankfully only for Monday through Wedensday. After that, we get a four day weekend and I am back to work. So, I am going to chill hard core this weekend. Can one actually 'chill hard core'? Oh, well, I intend to find out.

*Daiso is like a dollar store that sells things that are actually useful: pots and pans, kitchen equiptment, makeup, toiletries, potting materials, books, crafts, etc.

Smack Down In Apricot

Normally, Tuesdays are pretty fun because I have my Apricot class all day, but this week was definitely the exception. This week, we have two more kids added to the class, Clare and Ben (who has since changed his name to Big Kevin) to make a grand total of 7 students in the class when originally we only had three. Its not too bad, they are all good kids, but trying to get them all to do something at once is really difficult.

This Tuesday was the first day for the new kid, Ben, and Clare's first day with me (I get off on Mondays). All was going well until I brought out the stickers. I blame the stickers. I was giving them out – this took all my attention – when the first blows were delivered.

I look up and Lukas is on the ground wailing like he lost his arm and Kris is smiling at me with his best I-didn't-do-it smile. Lukas isn't really one to cry for no reason but I had a crowd of kids around me (stickers, people. Serious business) so I couldn't go to him right away. When I finally got to him, he was still crying and I could see the long, red scratches down his face. Kris looked guilty as hell. To his credit, when I asked what happened he flat out told me. He put his hands in a claw and gestured to demonstrate (never to pass up an opportunity for learning, I informed him that that was 'scratching').

I took Lukas out to the lobby where Rachel teacher usually is stationed to get him fixed up with her little med kit she keeps under the desk. She wasn't there and I felt guilty for always bringing her these types of things (usually, its Kevin who I bring there for a change after he pees his pants – not in my job description) so I decided to try and take care of it myself.

I'm halfway through that when the rest of Apricot comes out. At first, I think they just wanted to see what's going on, but then I see the huge welt on Kevin's head and the scratches and bruises all up and down Kris' face, I'm thinking: seriously, guys?

Apparently, since I was gone, they decided to go for it and had a battle royale right there in the classroom. I've left the classroom many times in the past and this has never happened. At this point, I turned it over to the Korean teachers. There was no way I was going to figure out what happened and there was even less chance that I would be able to reprimand Kris (the mastermind of this all, I was sure) properly.

We had to call Lukas' mom because the scratches on his face were very visible and even bleeding a bit. If I wasn't so good a compartmentalizing, I would have been worried about it. As it was, I was busy with P.E. class when they called and only thought about how much trouble I could have been in after the fact.

When I got out of P.E., though, both Christina and Lynn told me about the phone call. Apparently, Lukas loves Emily teacher. And he has been telling his mother this for weeks. So, when they called and said, “Emily Teacher let your kid get his face scratched up,” (although I'm almost certain they didn't phrase it like that) she was like: “But we love Emily Teacher! She draws funny pictures for my son!” and that was basically the end of the conversation.

Still. I blame the stickers.

Korean Fashion

I've been trying to make a post about Korean fashion for a while and I only got around to it today.

Let me just say that Korean women really dress nicely, in all situations. Even my co-teacher who does the P.E. classes (Christina) wears spike heels every day (have you ever seen someone jump rope in three inch heels? 'Cause I have). The one time I saw her in a T-shirt I think she must have had the flu or something.

They also have this cutesy fashion going on. Bows, ribbons, ruffles and pink are everywhere. They sell matching outfits for mothers and grown daughters and boyfriends and girlfriends.

Guys wear skinny jeans (a little more mystery in life would be nice) and leather jackets. Women wear baggy shirts and leggings, giant hair bows, really short skirts and at least three inch heels.

Now that I'm trying to explain it, I can't think how to accurately describe the Korean sense of fashion. They wear the most cutesy outfits without irony and it seems to work. They also completely disregard comfort and safety when selecting their outfits. They could be going to a soccer game and they would still wear stilettos, booty shorts and a giant pink bows on their heads.

That was a terrible explanation, but its the best I could do at the moment.

It should also be noted that things like the color pink and cute animals are not the sole domain of the female populations. Its perfectly acceptable for a little boy to like pink, none of his classmates will think its strange.

This weekend is shaping up to be another great one. My friends and I had a sports day yesterday that was a great time despite the fact that I bashed in my toenail when I kicked a soccer ball wrong. Fresh air and sunshine is sometimes hard to come by in our busy schedules so it was a nice change of pace. We ended the day by seeing Robin Hood which I'm not sure I liked. The actors did grow on me, though.

Today, we are going to the Lantern Festival in Seoul which is in honor of Buddha's Birthday, though its actually next Friday. Looks like it's going to be fun!

ON SHOT ONE KILL

More team building took place tonight. I got the impression that they had such a good time at the impromptu dinner the other night that they decided to arrange a potluck with all the teachers.

I made tacos! And they were a big hit; everyone took some home with them. The other English teachers made Caesar salad, pasta and red sauce, brownies. The Korean teachers brought it various Korean dishes - the names of which I know not. We had the same pork wraps there were the last time and this weird salad-type thing that had everything in it. And I mean everything. There were: grapes, shrimp, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, red peppers, corn, apples and some other things I could not identify all in a creamy yogurt-like sauce. Debbie made these things that tasted like potato pancakes but had no actual potatoes in it.

Rachel was drinking again - she seems to be the office lush - but shes a funny drunk so its okay. After about a bottle of the rice wine we were drinking she started treating the little dixie cups we were drinking out of like shot glasses. Lynn, another Korean teacher, was not helping anything by yelling "ONE SHOT ONE KILL!" at Rachel every time she got another cup. This, by the way, is my new favorite saying.

The best part of the evening was when we were all full and just trying new combinations of foods. Jonathan had brought sour cream for the tacos and Rachel put a LOT on her taco. So, in order to... I don't know, spread the taste around? she put, on top of that, some pasta and some red sauce in the taco shell. Then the other Korean teachers, liking the taste of the sour cream, started putting it on the corn bread. The Americans at the table were all shaking their heads, telling them not to try it, and were all completely disgusted when they ate it. Christina, a Korean teacher, then put the sour cream on a brownie. I actually tried it and it wasn't so bad.

Jonathan was thoroughly repulsed by this but was not about to be out sour creamed by a girl (especially after the other teachers had said, in Korean, that he wasn't manly because he wouldn't drink and didn't eat very much).

So he got one of the fried potato pancake-like things in his hand and asked for the sour cream. Because, normally, you have sour cream on potato pancakes. Immediately, all the Korean teachers were shouting at him like they were trying to talk him of a ledge. They were so grossed out by the prospect that many of them refused to watch. The ones who did gave a collective groan as he downed the thing.

Its so weird how taste buds are so different from culture to culture.

Something I really like about Koreans is that they are not self-conscious when they eat. They just shove food in their mouths as gracelessly as they want and no one judges. They really liked tacos.

By the end we were so full I felt like I could have rolled home.