Some Great Opportunities : )

Over the past few weeks I have had a few opportunities to participate in professional development workshops and learn more about the Korean education system. The first opportunity was held at my school. My co-teacher and I taught an open class. About thirty teachers came and observed us teach a lesson. Some of the teachers stood in the room, some outside (they took the windows out so people could look through from the hallway) and our school also used a video camera to broadcast the lesson into the school cinema. It was pretty exciting to have so many people watching and critiquing our lesson.

Following the lesson my school held a workshop and in typical Korean fashion, without prior notice, I was asked to speak about team teaching in Korea. That little speech was a blessing in disguise because following the workshop I received two wonderful offers. First, I was asked to make a presentation about team teaching at a conference for all of the elementary English teachers in my province. Second, I was asked to participate in a research study that a professor at a local university is conducting next spring. The professor is a South African lady who has been in Korea for eight years teaching English at the primary level. I have been speaking with her regularly and am very excited about working with her this spring. We will be studying the effects of putting students into reading groups in their English classes. Differentiating instruction is a fairly new concept in Korean education and is very rare in their English as a foreign language education. Differentiation is a concept that I learned a lot about at Dayton and a concept that I will continue to study in reference to English Language Learners (ELL) over the next few months.

This past weekend I made a sixty minute presentation at the Chungnam Province Elementary English Education Conference. I was a bit overwhelmed by the length of the presentation, but it went really well. I was able to show some video clips from my open class and explain how I incorporate many team teaching strategies into my everyday lessons. The director must have liked the presentation because I have been asked to do it again two more times in December!

This sort of opportunity is great practice for making future presentations and helps me to build my professional portfolio. Thank you Korea : )

Meghan Teacher

It has always seemed funny to me that Korean students bow to their teachers, but also call them by their first names. Usually students use the word teacher in Korean (선생님 : sangsengneem) to refer to their teachers, but when there is more than one teacher being refereed to the teachers name is used. In Korea, the family name is said before the individuals name, so the students will commonly say the whole thing. At school, I'm just called Meghan. During student teaching in America I was usually "Mrs. Manning" because my students didn't understand the difference between Miss and Mrs. I can't say that I am really used to either Mrs. Manning or only Meghan. I will just stick to answering to teacher for now.

My school life is the one of the best parts of my Korean life. I have recently picked up extra teaching hours and am teaching a class of mothers. The mothers will only call me teacher, which seems very funny to me. I love teaching my mothers class because Korean women are so enthusiastic and they ALWAYS bring food to class. Before every class they make me a cup of green tea and always bring fresh baked goods that they pick up at a bakery on their way to school. They all picked English names to use in class and love sending me text messages signed Cindy and Nancy. Angela makes me laugh because she always forgets her English name and has me pronounce it so she can remember how to say it.

My mothers have about a high school English ability, but most of them are in their thirties and have forgotten a lot of vocabulary. Last week we practiced talking to a friend on the phone and this week we "went shopping" at a stationary store. We pretended to buy more pencil cases than we would ever need, but it was really fun. I am constantly amazed at how much people can communicate despite having such a spoken language barrier.

A Very Korean Halloween!

This past weekend my host family and I held a Halloween party for the kids, their friends and the local ETAs. It was sure to be a great party, considering we have been talking about it and "planning" for at least a month. I told my host mother that we could eat American food that I would prepare. I thought that this gesture would take the pressure off of her and assure that we would not be eating squid for lunch.

I wanted to include Hee Won and Sungchan, my host brother and sister, in on the preparations. HeeWon helped to make ants on a log. The whole family watched. They tasted celery and said it was their first time. My host mother said we looked funny making it. I told her that minus the raisins that celery and peanut butter is a pretty typical snack that you could find in America. Despite my efforts, I think that dried squid will still top her snack list.

We also made dirt dessert, with mashed cookies and candy worms. Unfortunately I could not find a supermarket in town with pudding. I had to buy yogurt a lot of Hershey's chocolate syrup to create a proper pudding taste. I would say that it turned out pretty tasty.

The festivities began with getting dressed in costumes and my friend Julie applying makeup to the zombies and my host father who wanted to be a dog.

We headed outside where we walked up to a small opening on the mountain behind our house. We put out the pumpkins to carve and each adult took charge of a pumpkin or two. The children were amused for a few minutes, but like typical American kids they spent more time having sword fights than they did helping to carve. My friends were already complaining about the situation like a group of jaded mothers. The children came back to help with the final stages of the pumpkin carving and were really excited to have completed their first jack-o-lanterns.

Next, we played a version of bobbing for apples. I read about this game online. First, you poke a hole through an apple and slip a string through. Metal chopsticks worked great for this. Then you hang two apples next to each other and the participants have to see who can get a bite out of the apple first. It was a challenging game, but it was really fun for both the players and the spectators. We all looked a little silly trying to hard to bite an apple, but it was much better than having our faces in water on a chilly day.

Following a group picture we headed inside for our "American" food. Elijah had stayed inside to prepare the food (I was sad that she didn't join us) and everything was all set out when we returned. We had yam pizza, boiled yams, yam salad, lettuce salad, ants on a log, and dirt dessert. It was a wonderful meal.

I cannot forget to mention that when we returned home we put the pumpkins in the foyer. In our home this is also the place where we have one of our statues of the holy family. Our new jack-o-lanterns were appropriately placed right alongside the statue.

The kids left for church shortly after we returned home and the big kids stayed home to hang out together. My host father accidentally went to church with a dog face still painted on and I secretly thought it was hilarious. We enjoyed some blue jeju soju (my new favorite kind) and spent the rest of our night singing karaoke at the local norebang.

On the Upswing

During orientation we were showed a graph that displayed the typical cycle of "happiness" a person will go through during a year long immersion experience. At the time that I saw this graph, I was in my honeymoon stage of my year in Korea. I was loving everything from the sour cafeteria kimchi to practicing my few Korean phrases at coffee shops with my American friends. I had just landed in Korea and everything was wonderful.

I went through another honeymoon stage when I moved to Cheonan. My school was adorable and my homestay was great. I believed that I was living a charmed Korean life. The chart showed a slow decline from the honeymoon stage to the freak out stage, which was supposed to hit about October. This chart was exactly my experience. Around the beginning of the month, my rose colored glasses cleared up and I was seeing Korea for what it really is. Everything started to bother me from rude questions from strangers to getting sick from too much rice. I was becoming bored with teaching directly from a textbook and I was desperately looking for more to do during my free time. I started to realize that my clothes were going to become stretched out from being hung dry all year, that I was going to have to wake up everyday (including weekends) for an early morning family breakfast and that my host family would always treat me like I am 12 half of the time instead of 24, my Korean age. My host father and I got into our first big disagreement over me not wanting to confession in Korean. I didn't want to be at school because I found it frustrating to co-teach with someone I do not share many philosophies of education with and I didn't want to be at home because I didn't want to talk about how I have a unholy soul. My freak out stage put me into a funk.

The next step on the chart is recovery. I have finally reached this stage and with careful planning I have created solutions to each of my "issues." My host father and I sat down and discussed my spiritual health and I was sure to not let anything get lost in translation. We came to a consensus on my well being and everything at home is much more comfortable.

I spoke with my co-teacher about having more responsibilities at school to help my boredom and I am currently tutoring a group of students for a speech competition and another for a writing contest. The ability to work creatively with these students is really rewarding and helping to balance out the textbook boredom.

I have started volunteering at a North Korean refugee camp, The Heavenly Dream School, with some other ETAs. I am sure that this experience will be a highlight of my year and I am looking forward to sharing stories about the middle school class that I am teaching at the camp. The travel time to and from The Heavenly Dream School is a great time to catch up with other ETAs and speak in English.

For my mental and physical health I have started taking yoga classes at a local yoga center. The class is a small group of middle aged Korean women and myself. This was my first week, but they have done a great job of welcoming me into their group. We have great konglish conversations about breathing, their children, and of course, the swine flu. Today after class we had a tea party in the studio. We put our mats in a circle, drank green tea and ate cookies. It was really cute that they do that together. They also invited me out to dinner with the "ladies" next week for a traditional Korean meal. That pretty much means, there will be lots of food and lots of soju.

Overall, I am happy to be heading out of the recovery stage and into the plateau of happiness in Korea. I am almost a third of a way through my year. I have had a great experience so far, but I still have so far to go. There are lots of fun things coming up and I want to enjoy each of them to their full capacity :)

Less than two months until my family arrives in Korea!! Griswolds take Asia!

ETA Conference

This past weekend was the first ETA conference of the year. It was a four day extravaganza held in Gyongju, the first capital of Korea. The city itself was at one time the largest in East Asia, but most of it was destroyed during Japanese invasions and now it is home to about 300,00 people. I traveled with some of the other Cheonan ETAs by train to our destination on the southeast side of the country (we live in the northwest). Our ride was about four hours, but it was an exciting ride because at about every stop on the way at least one or two of our friends joined us on the train.

The whole group arrived at the Commodore Hotel and was greeted by Mrs. Shim, the director of Fulbright Korea. Our workshop included small group discussions about lesson plans, extracurricular activities, home stay issues and our overall experiences so far. We also had large group presentations from other ETAs about working with students outside of class, incorporating the arts into our ESL class and ideas for winter break.

The conference was a great opportunity to catch up with friends and discuss our experiences so far. I didn't realize how much I missed having extensive conversations in English or drinking at a bar filled with my friends. The conference allowed us to work and play. Following the workshop on Saturday some friends and I rented scooters and rode around town with a bunch of kids half of our age.

Throughout the weekend we were able to talk about some of the uncomfortable situations we have encountered and share many entertaining stories. It was really comforting to share stories and hear that the majority of my peers are having similar struggles as I am. Most of the stories either begin or end with the phrase, "only in Korea."

On Sunday, we traveled around Gyongju by bus from nine to five. We visited temples, ancient tombs and saw many traditional Korean artifacts. We learned that many of the sights and artifacts were replicates because the originals were destroyed by the Japanese. This was sad news, but we still tried our best to appreciate the artifacts for what they represented. Unfortunately for the person sitting next to me on the bus, I did not do well riding up and down the mountain on windy roads.

The conference concluded with a night full of storytelling and my first gin and tonic in Korea. Following a bike ride on Monday morning, we packed up our bags and headed back to the train station.

Chuseok: Part 2

After about two calm hours of reading and sleeping in the car we arrived at a stone cottage in a small village. The cottage was on a farm, built right next to a very old traditional Korean home. We were greeted at the car by one of Elijah's nieces and a family friend from China.

Serena, the friend from China was my age and spoke English. Before stepping inside the house, I knew this would be a completely different Chuseok experience.

When I entered Elijah's mother's home I was greeted by about eight visiting relatives. One of the aunts spoke some English and was very welcoming. Elijah's mother was adorable. She sort of looked like a Korean version of my Grandma Jeanne. She was short, always smiling and had the same short curly hair. Within a few minutes we were seated around a table on the floor sharing fruit and catching up (or for me, answering the initial questions: age, boyfriend, why Korea?).

After only being in the house for a few minutes I was told to go take a shower. I was happy to comply with this request and enjoyed being able to clean up and put on warm comfortable clothes. Everyone else in my immediate family also showered and we spent the rest of the night lounging in our sweats. I took an evening stroll around the village with some of the cousins, enjoyed a wonderful meal and participated in drinking some "healthy alcohol" with the adults. The healthy part comes from the fact that there are fifteen oriental medicines in this alcoholic drink. It wasn't the best thing I have ever had, but it also wasn't the worst (Dayton memories!).

I slept in an attic room with the other girl cousins and felt like I was at a middle school sleepover. In the morning I woke up to the smell of breakfast (maybe I am starting to like eating kimchi for breakfast??). We went on another nice walk around the house and all ate our meal together before the other family members would leave and head back to their homes.

My immediate family and I stayed for a few hours and explored Elijah's mother's land and some surrounding areas. We dug up yams and hiked up a small mountain to a temple that was built to honor a Korean general that stood up to protect his people during many of the invasions of Korea. As we walked, we talked about returning after the first snow fall and picked out where we would build our snowmen and what hills we would sled down. Later in the afternoon we said our goodbyes and returned to Cheonan. I am looking forward to another visit this winter.

Chuseok: Part 1

This past weekend was one of my most eventful yet. Chuseok, the Korean harvest celebration, was on Saturday and my family and I celebrated it by traveling to my host father and mother's hometowns. The week preceding the Chuseok celebration I was informed many times that it would be an uncomfortable situation for me, but I tried very hard to have a positive outlook and not prejudge the situation. We left after breakfast on Friday and headed to our first stop, Nonsan, my host father's hometown. After a two hour car ride of my host brother jumping around the back seat with his gun (seat belts are not common in the backseats of cars in Korea) we arrived at my host grandparents home.

Mark was not exaggerating that he grew up on dirt floors. Their house was a very rural and traditional Korean home. Halabaje (grandfather) and halmonie (grandmother) moved to the house that we visited after their kids were grown. It is down the street from their original house and the floors were covered. As soon as we arrived all members of my family went into the bedroom and changed their clothes into more comfortable "country" clothes. Elijah stepped into the kitchen to start cooking lunch and did not leave for almost the entire time that we were visiting. Many members of Marks family arrived and I was introduced to brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews. There was not much translating and therefore if I did not speak Korean, very little was said to me.

For lunch we had pigs feet. I had heard that Koreans like to enjoy pigs feet and was secretly praying that I would never encounter a situation when I would have to "enjoy" them also. Coming to Korea as a person that does not eat red meat and introducing many different kinds of meat into my diet was a personal challenge that I have overcome. The pigs feet made me feel like I was on the television show Fear Factor. Elijah was at the end of the table pointing at her face trying to tell me that I need to eat lots of pigs feet because they are good for your skin. (I looked it up online and studies show that pigs feet are a superfood- great for skin!) The gooey texture of the feet was the most difficult part for me to deal with. The feet were boiled and put in a soup with ginseng root. The broth of the soup was very good, but I needed to force every bite of the foot down. You know that something is difficult to eat when you are washing it down with big bites of super spicy kimchi and gulps of lukewarm corn water. But I did it with a smile.

After lunch I went to a rice mill with Heewon and Mark for the first step of our songpyeon (a traditional Chusoek food) adventure. I will profile that process in another post. My day was filled with lots of songpyeon, random Konglish conversations and children running away from me in fear because I am a foreigner. It also included my host father telling me that I should not read because it will make me bored (despite the fact that I assured him many times that I am reading a great book), my host mother asking me over and over in Korean if I am bored, yet denying any attempt I made to help her in the kitchen and the children running around shooting BB guns outside.

As a foreign female in her twenties, I am in a tough situation with my role in the family. I am not Korean and do not speak Korean, so cooking like a woman my age would is out of question. I am not a child, so I do not spend too much time with the children. I am sometimes sent to spend time with the men, while the women cook, but I do not smoke cigarettes, so I tried to avoid some to those situations also. Thank goodness for books. I make judgment calls all day long about when is a good time to be a cultural ambassador and when is a good time to take a step back and let everyone be. I don't think that there is a role for foreigners, so I am trying very hard to create my own place. So far I am learning that it is best to buy children ice cream, go for walks with the men and children after dinner and offer a thousand times to help cook. I was given one task- to peel the shells off of a hundred quail eggs.

I was told at dinner that I would be sleeping in the "wife room." Mark's parent's house had only four rooms, the kitchen, one extra bedroom/tv room, their bedroom, and the main room where the fridge and kimchi freezer are. Tables were set up on the floor in this room for all meals. As I sat on the floor in the main room I wondered where the "wife room" would be. I ended up sleeping in the grandparents room on a mat with my host mother and next to her sister-in-law and child. The children and their dads slept in the main room and the grandparents slept in the extra room. I fell asleep to a woman breastfeeding beside me and woke up to my host father telling me to go wash my face and go put on make-up.

After breakfast the men changed into suites and so I went and changed into a skirt and tights. I was startled when I came out of the room and the women were all yelling at me in Korean to go change. I had to wear my clothes from Friday for a second day, despite my hike in them the previous day, and had no idea why. Just as I sat down to read a little I was told to grab my camera and come outside. I was put in a car and told that we were going to the mountain. "The mountain" is a very loose term considering 70% of Korea is covered in mountains.

I learned on our drive that we were going to visit the tombs of my host great-grandparents. Only the men, children and women that were not cooking attending this outing. When we arrived at the mountain, we hiked up to two tombs, and I noticed that my host uncle was carrying a box. I thought that maybe there were flowers in the box? Next to the tomb, a mat was unrolled, and the box was unloaded. Of course, food and soju! It was 10:00am and we had just finished breakfast. The food was set out and the family prayed together, a Hail Mary and an Our Father, followed by a bow to the ground. Then, grandfather poured a cup of soju on each of the graves! We all sat down and enjoyed the food together. Just when I think that I cannot eat anymore, they come out with more and more food.

We stayed at that grave for about twenty minutes and then we headed on to the next. We said the same prayers, but did not eat at the second sight. Third, we were onto a "water grave." After a quick stop for some ice cream, we arrived at the lake where some of the family members ashes had been spread. The ritual was performed and we were onto our next stop. At the next site, great grandfather's brother, Heewon found a four leaf clover. The next stop, another brother, was behind a farm. This was not like any typical farm. This was a pig farm where dogs were raised on the side and sold to restaurants. I know they eat dog in Korea, but another hope of mine was that I would never have to actually see the dogs that they eat. Tons of puppies and big dogs all caged together next to piles to trash, animal cruelty at its best. The dog farm was our last stop and we returned home for lunch. At lunch the soup was so spicy that tears rolled down my cheeks. After at least trying it a few times and the physical sign of tears that it was too hot, I was excused from eating it.

After lunch we departed for Hongsam, my host mother's hometown.