Hello all friends and fam, it has been good to get your email and comments!! I have friends all over the world right now-Sheena from Boulder is in Vietnam, Dave is in Prague (he is going around the world and visiting me in Seoul at the end of the line), and Morgan away on a semester at sea... I think about everyone in Boulder and Back East all the time, and Florida of course.
I am getting in to the Korean groove, after some awkward bumping around in limbo of transition. School is going really well after the first week- My 2 bosses, Danny and Diane are weird but cool- not perfect English, and kind of robot like and dorky, but defiantly trustworthy and reputable. When teaching ESL you never know what you are going to get, but I have lucked out. They are very concerned with my diet and family history, and are letting my teaching strategies evolve naturally.
The Kids are great- 10-15 , and a few younger cuties. The young ones are amazingly adorable, and like to draw me pictures and garbled stories. Figuring out what to do with those ones is hard, because they understand so little English. Still, they are not bad and are more diligent and bright than their Western counterparts as far as I can tell. They all have much more pressure on them to excel, as you probably know. Asian culture seems to demand a lot from the children, so we try and make classes fun as we can. They often have already had a full day of school before they come to our English school.
Some of the older ones are a pain-- the boys won't stop shouting and punching each other in the back and the girls wont stop giggling. However I am gradually figuring out how to engage them and get them talking to each other in English. Some are very bright and are eager to communicate, others are so shy its hard to get one English word out of their mouths. Some of the older groups are very good and could easily read a novel like Harry Potter. They all are very innocent, and generally tame. They are all obsessed with their cell phones.. the boys like computer games and tanks, the girls like cute things, pencil boxes, hello kitty and so on. The girls and boys will not work together under any circumstances. It is cool getting to know where the students are coming from, what their lives are like, and what kind of thoughts are boiling in their pre-adolecent heads.
There is the feeling of North Korean threat just 10 miles away-- Its almost a 1950s cold-war vibe. Nuclear Bomb has come up in class, as have terrorist, guns, airplane hijack and so on, during free form activities and word association. The general South Korean attitude about the North is not fearful- They have been listening to the North's rhetoric up close for years, so the recent news has not turned any heads. When I bring it up, Koreans tend to kind of roll their eyes and look at you like you should know better than to be worried. Hopefully things will continue to open up in the North with the Sunshine-like policies already in place. The Asians know how to wait out a radical King if anyone does.
Life here is good, and relaxing. Everything is compartmentalized, miniaturized, cuteified, colored bright or pastel and radically comfy. Its a very aesthetically oriented culture, and the wisdom of the ages has not perished with time. We saw this last night up close when Johua, Janika and I met up with some Canadian friends at a traditional bath house. I really wish everyone could see this one part of Korea!
It is basically a huge bath house which contains separate whirlpools for guys and girls, and a huge common area (in which everyone wears shorts and t-shirts) that is centered around 2 logs and a big TV.. From here you can enter many Saunas.. the hottest one is about 95 degrees Centigrade! so cozy. The saunas are all traditional looking inside, and decorated with colorful rocks on the outside. The floors everywhere are filled with Koreans lying around on wood block pillows and matts, everyone just relaxing. There is a restaurant inside, a PC room, DVD room, massage room and so on.. Yet it is still highly traditional in ways. One room is a circular sweat lodge style sauna where we talked with lots of Koreans.. you have the strangest conversations with people there.. they actually made Joshua get up and dance at one point. Was really fun. We all felt great afterwards- I don't know why this hasn't caught on in the states. Perhaps Americans could not handle being so laid back?
More Pics top come... Monastery, Seoul, ect. I know you can't leave comments unless you are a blogger so email if you like at sunmoon.starsrain@gmail.com (I gave my email to some students today upon request.. should be interesting to see what I get!) Happy New Year everybody!
Luv, Annie
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