Though sarcasm is not native to Korea, my kindergarteners are starting to catch on that when I say 'super cool' what I actually mean is 'stupid and time consuming'.

See, I am teaching them something.

Children in Hanboks

Despite my annoyance about having my holiday plans severely limited, I couldn't stay in a bad mood Friday when all the kindergateners came dressed in their Chusok finest. Every single one of them (except Kris who forgot and moped about it all day) came dressed head to toe in the traditional Hanbok. They were absolutely adorable! I certainly wasn't expecting it and I am so glad I just happened to have brought my camera.

To the left you have Abigail, Paul, and Lukas. 3/5ths of my Apricot class.

Paul and Abigail being all cute.

Kids being cute.

Those skirts are a pain in the butt.

Kevin getting his shoes adjusted.

In class

P.E. class

Playing traditional Korean games

cute

Me in my Hanbok

Lucy, Lynn and I

Lynn, Sean, William, and I.

getting ready for a picture

Picture!

making some sort of Korean sweet. It was duk (which is basically rice made the consistency of marshmallows) with a center of chopped peanuts and sugar. Pretty good.

A guy with traditional instruments came to show the kids and then he made us all play. Here is the way-gook band.

Lynn, Mrs. Kim, and I started a band. We're thinking about going on tour.

Kid bands.

The Ups and Downs of Homogeneity

When you were little, what cautions did your parents always leave you with? I'm sure it varies for everyone, but most of you probably had some form of the classics: Look both ways before you cross the street, respect your elders, don't talk to strangers.

Well, that last one seems to not be so important in Korea. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I would say that Korean kids are encouraged to go up to strangers and pester them for candy. Its a strange existence when xenophobia is not instilled on that level in the young. Everyone is so friendly and in each other's business. Its how I imagined small town America would have been in the 1950s. Maybe today, I don't know. The only reason I've ever gone to small town America was to either do a gig there or to drive through (I guess with the exception of my summer in Arizona).

On a field trip the other day, one of the little girls I was supposed to be looking after strayed over to talk to a middle aged man in a shady corner. It was making me nervous because in America, the situation would be viewed with a certain amount of wariness and the man would know it. He would then work to end the conversation because he would feel uncomfortable or he would know he was making someone else uncomfortable. Not in Korea. In Korea, this situation is viewed with an air of 'isn't that cute? He's taking time to talk to that little girl'. In this situation, I was the one who had to calm the heck down.

This has a lot to do, I think, with the sameness of Korea. I don't think those kids would be so willing to talk to foreigners that way, but since it was a Korean man then they knew to expect certain things from him.

Despite the fact that I strongly believe America's diversity is one of its greatest strengths, there is something to be said for living in a society with no surprises. People here feel a very strong bond with each other to the point where the honor system actually works (this may have more to do with the group-oriented nature of East Asian cultures than Korea's homogeneity but it could be some of both). People in Korea never have to make allowances for different religions, or different cultures or even for different dietary needs. Here everyone has had the same upbringing, everyone likes the same things (mostly), everyone eats the same food.

Not to say that Korea is a boring place, or that it doesn't have things from other cultures, which it does, but that - for the majority - Korean people like to be Korean.

This also leads to unexpected problems for the foreigner. For example, there is no way I'm going to find make-up here to match my skin tone (not really that big a problem, but still).

I have to find a specific pizza place that sells normal pepperoni pizza without putting things on it I would consider to be not compatible with pizza - mustard, potatoes, squid, hard-boiled eggs, and mayonnaise to name just a few.

I can find shoes just fine, but my co-worker, Jonathan, has trouble finding a men's 13 size shoe for obvious reasons. He and William also have a hard time getting their hair cut because they are both black and have hair textured in such a way that it baffles Korean hairstylists.

I, too, have been having trouble getting my hair cut but only because I want to get my side-swoopey bangs again and here everyone has bangs that go straight across their forehead. It looks great on Korean girls but I'm pretty sure I'd look stupid. Korean hairstylists just assume that you want it the way everyone else has it. Not being able to communicate what I want will be a problem.

Finally, the biggest problem I found with the homogeneity of Korean society is that they don't often appreciate thinking outside the box. Things that are different or not to their tastes are dismissed out of hand. A good example would be when I came to work with henna on my hands. The kids went crazy. They thought it was the weirdest thing they'd ever seen which is understandable if you've never seen it before. But the way they carried on you would think I had a disease on my hand.

Though the younger, urban, generations embrace all things new and different, just outside the city people are not so accepting.

Teacher's Day

Along with Children's day (May 5th) and Parent's Day (May 7th), Korea also celebrates Teacher's Day (May 15th) which I am all for. I got all sorts of gifts today ranging from various cakes and pastries to lipstick and a pen with a giant fuzzy heart on the back of it.

I find it amusing that three months after I become a teacher, there is Teacher's Day. My co-workers, who have been working at our school for a lot longer than I have, all were showered with presents - socks, cologne, face wash, and foot scrub, to name a few.

I was a little surprised because the fuzzy heart pen was given to me by a kid who I saw maybe three times a week for 30 minutes. But he is the only student I've seen outside school so I guess that was what prompted it; I've actually met his parents.

I also discovered today that Korean children, like all children all over the world, have their own unique games. The one that most caught my attention is a game in which two combatants grabs one of their feet with both hands and, when the referee says, proceeds to try and to make the other one fall. Its kind of like jousting except minus horses and plus body slams.

In India, their game of choice was a form of 'Eeney Meanie Miney Mo' where everyone put down their hands and when your hand goes out you have to grab the ear of the person across from you with that hand. It ended in a tangle of bodies where everyone had a hold of someone's ear. Lots of fun.

The plan for the weekend is to have a picnic/sports day in the park, which should be fun. We plan to descend on a group of unsuspecting Koreans and try and teach them, with gestures and our pathetic collective Korean vocabulary, to play Ultimate Frisbee, which is one of my favorite sports. I think there will probably be some soccer in there also if Ryan has his way (he is Argentinian an not immune to South American Soccer Frenzy).

There was talk of ending the day with the new Robin Hood movie which, to be honest, I am not too excited about. I was until I heard that Russel Crowe and Cate Blanchet were starring. For a role as legendary as Robin Hood, you need a new face, not the Gladiator and the Elf Queen. There was a great BBC show recently about Robin Hood and I thought the guy who played the lead role was amazing. If you're going to re-make movies endlessly at least get some new actors. I may be judging the movie too harshly but that's what blogs are for, right? To be judgy and narcissistic. Check and check.

on a non-judgy-and-narcissistic note, Rosa Rio, Tampa legend and Silent film organist died at the age of 107. I saw her perform while I was working at the Palladium Theatre in St. Pete and I thought she was amazing. She told all these crazy stories about New York in the 1930s and 40s and about working with people like Orson Wells on soap operas. I'm so sad that I only got to see her once and never got to talk to her in person. You should read about her life in the article, its really interesting.

Speaking Korean and why J.K. Rowling hates the Tories

I'm not sure if I covered this before but our kids aren't supposed to speak Korean in class which is a really hard thing to enforce. Sometimes its great because if the kids are scared of you enough, the whole room is silent - many kids don't know enough English to casually converse with it so its win-win. And some kids have astonishing transformations where one minute they won't speak at all and the next they are chattering away in broken English.

But this also bring on a whole new issue with the tattle tale thing. When I first started working and I was with the kindergarteners, every once in a while a kid would shout "Teacher! Daniel is Korean!" I would turn around and stare, sorting through appropriate responses in my head. Since these are Kindergarteners I made an effort to get my sarcasm in check. I just ended up uttering an "Okay..." because I didn't know what else to say.

Eventually I got the idea that they meant Daniel was speaking Korean and they were not telling on their classmates for being Korean.

One of my students has a problem with this rule. She likes to talk. But she doesn't speak English that well. This is her main motivation for being such a good student. She wants to be able to chatter away to foreigners as much as she chatters away to Koreans. She has gotten really good at charades.

Yesterday, she managed to ask me through the couple words she knows and grand gestures where I was born (are you imagining the charade for the word 'born'? 'Cause it was spectacular). I told her Washington DC and she was very impressed. She wanted to know if I lived next to Obama and if I had ever been shot. She informed me that Washington DC was the gun murder capital of the world (which I knew) and she wanted to know why we had so many guns. I tried to explain that the British had ruled us until we used guns to overthrow them and so they were more a symbolic possession than anything else. I don't think she understood. All she knows now is that America has guns because of the British.

We went on to talk about how much she disliked Japan (many Koreans are of this opinion due to Japan's annexation of Korea in WWII - and the 500 times they've done this kind of thing before - and their use of Korean women as 'comfort women'). It occurs to me now I should have used that situation to explain about the whole gun rights thing but I didn't think about it at the time.

on another note, my studying up on K-pop really paid off, the kids are delighted when I make a reference to a K-pop video and they break into delighted shrieks and occasional dancing.

Also, apparently the UK has a new prime minister who was chosen by the Queen due to a lack of a clearly defined winner. All I know about the new guy is that he's from the Tory party, is the Queen's cousin, and J.K. Rowling hates his guts. Last one's a deal breaker.

Pictures!

Today we had a cooking day which is basically an excuse for the kids to get covered in sugar. Its in honor of Children's Day, which is Wednesday and which we get off! I had a great time even if by the end of it I felt like I could use a shower. There were some great pictures taken that I thought I'd share with you so you can put some faces to the names I've been spouting.

Here is a picture of me and Min who is being adorable as usual.

This is Kevin. though his face is a little blurry I thought this picture captured the pure Kevin-ness of him - Dumbo ears and all - better than the other one.

And of course, to complete the set, here is the ringleader, Kris, the last musketeer.

Group Shot

Here is just a picture to demonstrate the pure cuteness of Korean children. Here is Melon class, whose homeroom teacher is William (also pictured).

Notice how every kid has a cute little apron and, on occasion, matching head gear. I am totally getting myself an apron for next cooking day. We were making cakes, which really just involved everyone smearing their neighbors with icing and then piling fruit onto ready made little cakes.

Misadventures with Korean Children

Its strange how affectionate little Korean kids can be with adults they barely know. Today it seemed like all I did was yell at this one kid - Felix. I told him to be quiet, I told him to stand in the corner, I told him to stop hitting Andy, I told him to pay attention for one freaking second. After the day was over and the kindergarteners were gone I figured I was free of him for a least a couple hours. But, of course, he ended up waiting for his big sister who was in the afternoon classes.

Through a crazy random happenstance, I had a free period and was trying to ignore the fact that Felix existed. For one thing I was sick of yelling at him and for another I was sure he was sick of me yelling. I manage to forget he's there as I become engrossed in the book I was reading and the popcorn I was eating (Korea does popcorn right, nothing but a hint of sugar on it).

Suddenly, I feel something pushing on my arm. I look down in time to see Felix push his head through the gap between my elbow and my side, like a dog. He gives me his cheekiest smile and proceeds to practically climb into my lap.

"Haven't you had enough of me today?" I ask him. Of course, he doesn't respond because he's five and doesn't speak a word of English. But he does make a sound which I interpreted correctly as an 'I'm bored' sound. That's how Felix and I communicate most of time - that is, when I'm not screaming at him - through grunts, charades and facial expressions. He's the smartest kid in Kiwi class and understands a lot more of what I say then the others do. Not like he acts on it or anything but I know he understands. The problem with him is that he's so smart he finished his assignment and gets bored, and when he's bored he likes to cause trouble; hence the yelling.

He continued to lean into me until I relented to his cuteness. I ruffled his hair and gave him some of my popcorn. Stupid Korean kids and their irresistible cuteness.

But thats how most kids act here. You can yell at them all day long but once you are out of the classroom you are their bestest friend.

On an only slightly related note, I was reminded the other day that Koreans actually add a year on to a persons age - or rather they count the time you are in your mother's belly as year one and they go from there. So, the kids I teach in Apricot are actually four years old as opposed to five. Which explains a lot.

Today, one of them, Kevin, started crying for no reason. He wouldn't let me open his lunch box for him and wouldn't do it himself. When I finally got fed up, I opened it for him. Now, the last time Kevin started crying it was because he'd just peed his pants so - having learned my lesson the first time - I was quick to take a step away. But this time he didn't pee his pants and there was nothing visibly wrong with him, only he kept repeating the same thing over and over again in Korean.

This was a job, I figured, for a Korean teacher. But when I tracked one down she just sat there and stared at Kevin for a while as he repeated himself over and over again. I asked her what was wrong, she gave me a bewildered look and shrugged. "I don't understand his Korean."

Here I stop and think to myself "how, exactly, am I supposed to teach him complicated grammar concepts in a foreign language when he doesn't even speak his native language?" All I say out loud is 'oh'.

Luckily, his mother was there (she's like the lunch lady) and she sorted it out. I never did figure out what was wrong, though. Life is a well of tears; its a fountain of despair and turning four is not all its cracked up to be.

I didn't do anything for April Fools day this year. Last year, I posted on Facebook that I was moving to Morocco and what ensued was hilarity times ten. It helped that my roommate (Dani - I miss you!) was helping to egg everyone on. I was considering posting something on here to mess with whoever may be reading but since I'm so far removed that reassurance is more than just a phone call away I will refrain.

Korean Children

I have always been surprised how people treat children in Korea.

A child in public is like everyone's child. If the kid were to start crying their would be 30 women coming over to placate it and another 40 sitting around clucking about how cute he is. People will play with stranger's children on the subway and give them food or candy.

At 10pm at night you can see children running around unaccompanied on the streets. Kids under a certain age are never punished. They can pretty much do whatever they want, be as loud as they want and everyone will think it's just adorable.

In school kids run in and out of the faculty room snatching things off desks and begging the teachers for candy. The other English teachers all roughhouse with the kids - tackling them, throwing them over shoulders, and even swinging them around by their ankles.

But then in school, when they get older, the pressure is ON. High school kids stay at schools from the time they get up in the morning until around 10pm. When I ask the kids what they did over the weekend all they have to say is that they studied. Period. They have violin lessons, piano lessons, math lessons, English lessons and sometimes even Chinese lessons after school. All this competition is to get into one of the few universities in Korea and, as I have mentioned in previous posts, these seem to be little more than four years of networking.

The gender dynamics are pretty interesting too. The little girls all take it upon themselves to keep the little boys in line. A couple times, before I could reprimand a boy for not paying attention or for goofing off, a nearby girl would yell at him in Korean and he would snap to.

The little girls in kindergarten will organize the boy's crayons or yell at them for not coloring in the lines. This seems to be a system that works pretty well, until you have class full of rowdy boys and no girls.

Anyway, I had something witty to say about this whole thing - something about trying to give a stranger's child candy in America. But I'm way too tired so why don't you fill in the joke here:

Here is something interesting: They have apparently found a new hominid species in Siberia. ..... Apply only where values of 'interesting' are directly correlated to whether or not your are an anthropologist. I personally thought it was amazing.

In which I go all Linguistic Anthropology on you

Apparently, in Korean, when you ask a question you put the question word at the end of the sentence. And its a well known linguistic phenomenon that people who learn a foreign language often take the properties from their own language and apply it to the new language.

A good example in this case is what is referred to in academic circles as 'Black English Vernacular' or BEV. It has also been called 'ebonics'. Both of these term I find amusing but for lack of a better work I will use 'BEV.'. The word 'be' in BEV can denote habitual action. For example: 'he be running' means 'he is habitually running'. And although it may sound like improper verb usage, it is proper verb usage in many African languages where verbs can denote both habitualness and one time action without a change in form. Yay for Linguistic Anthropology 101.

How this applies to Korea is that when one of the kids asks a question its always "Teacher, dog is what?" or "Teacher, do I read where?".

There are other small things that make teaching English interesting. For example, the pronounciation of R's and L's are always mixed up to the point where, when choosing an English name for a student, the Korean teachers will give them names like 'Rucy' instead of 'Lucy'. F's and P's are also mixed up as well as V's and B's. The word 'five' sounds like 'pibe'.

Koreans don't like words that end in a consonant, either. They will add a vowel sound onto the end of a word instead of pronouncing it the way it is written. Words like 'think' become 'think-eh' and 'dog' becomes 'dog-uh'.

Its also confusing for them to learn English because they have way more vowels than we do. Or I should say, Korean spells out how each vowel sounds and they don't vary from that sound. In English, vowels sound the way they sound, until they don't. We have r-controlled vowels (as in 'torn' as opposed to 'ton'), long and short vowels (dog versus hippo, igloo versus isolate) and diphthongs such as 'ae' (which is pronounced 'eye' until its not) and 'au' ('ow'). And then some vowels are ignored all together - like in the word 'you' and 'like'.

Don't even get me started on trying to explain the whole 'gh' thing to the kids. Why 'laugh' and 'enough' have F sounds while 'thought' and 'through' don't. Because there is no reason. Language is born from speed and laziness, not logic. That's why the most irregular verbs are the ones most often used in any language. People use them so much they change them beyond recognition. (For example: Latin: sum, ero, esse, fui, sim; Spanish: soy, era, fui, sere; English: am, is, are, were, be, had been, will be - all forms of 'to be'. Oh yeah, I can conjugate in three languages).

I started in on this language thing to tell a story and then totally got carried away. Okay, here goes. One day, a kid came into the teacher's lounge crying. He was a boy about 8-10 years old and I can't even remember what he was upset about. But he was explaining it to us (three foreign teachers) and we were all sympathy. My co-teacher held out his arms to the kid and asked "Do you want a hug?"

The little guy just stared at us for a long time and finally said 'Teacher, hug is what?". Like he'd never had a hug before in his life. He was just so darn pitiful we all started laughing.

Wow. Long explanation for a story that you really had to be there for. I'd say it won't happen again, but I'd be lying.


On a completely unrelated-to-Korea note, I am super excited for this movie to come out, even if it won't be as good as the comics. One of my favorite actresses is in it (at the end, 'oh, thats not that bad'). What do you guys think? Personally, I'm getting sick of Micheal Cera.

The Geography Quiz

Lo and Behold! I have found the holy grail of intellectual redemption! We have all heard tell of a mythical country of people who are, in fact, worse at geography than Americans. Fear not, my brothers and sisters! For I have been diligently searching the globe for these elusive people of legend. Today, I believe I have found them!

To be fair, this hypothesis is only using my experience thus far with Korean children. But still, at 11 years old I knew what continent I lived on.

It started out innocently enough. I asked what the capital of China was, thinking that this would be an easy one. I mean its right there. They stared at me blankly for a while until I got the impression that what they were having trouble with was the concept of a 'capital city'. So, I gave some examples and asked an easy one to start us off - what is the capital of South Korea? I figured at worse they would guess the only city they knew - Seoul - and we would be on track.

Again the blank faces. I decided this was too tough a concept for them and told them that Seoul was, in fact, the capital of S. Korea and Beijing was the capital of China. I went for more general geography next - what are the names of the continents? Since continent was one of their vocabulary words I knew they understood what I was talking about. But between the nine of them they couldn't come up with a single one.

Most people would let it go at this but I, apparently, lack what most would call 'self preservation instincts' and I pressed on.

What is the continent we are on now? I asked, thinking surely they would know that at least. More blank faces. I was wracking my brain trying to see what about this they didn't get when one little girl raised her hand and said 'Asia?'

I was all over that poor girl like - excuse the expression - white on rice. I was so excited I'm pretty sure I shouted at her; something nonsensical like 'YES! ASIA! YES!' and gave her overly exaggerated thumbs up. But that was the last glimmer of hope in an otherwise dark afternoon. I tried to get them to name other continents and, when that failed, I tried to get them to name other countries in Asia. Fail. They got the concept, I think, because they were shouting out names of countries, just not the right ones. Unless Canada, the US and Madagascar all moved and forgot to give me their forwarding addresses.

Towards the end of this discussion, when I was fruitlessly trying to get them to understand that the US was in North America, not Asia, they started shouting out a word that sounded like 'EYE-ti'. Once one of them started on it the rest shouted it too, until they were all saying it. Obviously, they thought it was a place in or near America (although with these guys that could mean anyplace from here to Jupiter) but I couldn't understand what they were trying to say. Then they all started flopping themselves about, moaning and saying things like "its where many people die"(direct quote).

Wondering why I've never heard of this mysterious land where people die and are apparently unable to control their bodily movements I have them spell it out for me.

H-A-I-T-I.