School Opening Day

It's not what it sounds like.... Dogye Elementary School seems to have been open since at least the Korean War (1950 - '53). Instead, yesterday our school was "open" to teachers and administrators from all around Dogye Eub (an administrative region somewhat smaller than a county).

For days, everyone at school had been freaking out making artsy name tags, cleaning every last shoe-locker and polishing every last trophy. When we arrived yesterday, it felt more like we were walking into a sales convention or wedding reception than our school.


The entrance to the gymnasium.


Inside the gymnasium were scores of displays of students' artwork and stories, and teachers' methods, like the games we use in English class.


There were also a couple of banners (Koreans love banners). We were surprised to see that this one featured Melanie! And no, that's not a prison behind her. Those are the gym's offices.


After lunch, Kim Sun and I taught a demonstration class for about twenty other teachers and the elementary school supervisor for Samcheok County. Kim Sun - who just finished her "English Education Degree" - had planned this down to the last word (even my words), and was visibly nervous before we started. She's actually a great English teacher, and with her more than any other Korean teacher, we have a good natural dynamic in the classroom - both letting the other teach in their style and being there to support the other on pronunciation or complex directions or whatever. But yesterday she was just putting on a show, and had me relegated me to the talking stooge. In all of the feedback I heard, from Koreans and foreigners alike, was that I should have more of a role in the class. I don't know why Kim Sun set up that class the way she did - to show off, I suppose, but she is actually the one co-teacher I work with that doesn't need to hear that I should have more of a role in class... several of my other teachers really do need to hear that. Oh well. Hopefully she impressed whomever she was trying to impress.


After the demo class, we went into the freezing cold gymnasium, and Chantel (one of the three other foreigners who lives in Dogye) was asked to give a speech about her impressions of the demo class, the school, teaching in Korea and Korea in general. No need, apparently, for preparation, or for a translator. I would guess that less than 10% of the audience understood more than 10% of what she said.


Nevertheless, here she is trying to take the task seriously.


And here are the other foreigners trying not to laugh at her attribution of the children's good behavior to their nutritious lunches.


After two hours of not understanding anything in the gymnasium, we had had enough and scurried away to this restaurant for an awesome dinner. All of that, including drinks, for 8,500 won each (US$6.36).


And a bunch of happy campers after a good meal.

Vegetarian Mis-adventures in Korea-land

We had our first big vegetarian failure in Korea tonight with the Tuesday Night Eating Club. We went to a Chinese restaurant downtown and foolishly thought that with the help of a Korean-American friend who is nearly fluent in Korean we'd be able to find or order dishes without beef, pork, chicken, dog, fish, crustaceans, cephalopods or any other animal, but that turned out to be too much to ask. We thought we'd try the yachae bokumbap (vegetable fried rice), and u dong (thick noodle soup).

Here's the u dong. Notice the tentacle in Melanie's chopsticks.

Several minutes into trying to suck down some of the noodles Melanie pulled a full prawn out - eyes and whiskers and all. We tried to keep putting it down for a bit, but it just wasn't happening.

The bokumbap looked more hopeful, and tasted great, until Melanie got something chewy and we realized there was beef in the black bean sauce. You'd never guess from looking at it would you? There's a lesson in there for vegetarians in Korea.

So we left a little nauseous and more than a little disappointed that we paid ~US$10 to get that way. On the way home I picked up the always reliable economic assistance kimbap and an asian pear and am feeling grateful for them both now.

Day 2 - Hospital

Day 2 at Dogye Elementary School was notable mostly for being entirely uneventful. We got picked up at 8, got there at 9, sat around for 3.5 hours, ate lunch - grilled tofu from home with kimchi and rice with millet from school, without chicken and beef stew from school, sat around for another hour, and then "Samcheok Education Office go." Okay. We were driven the 45 minutes back to Samcheok, the town we're living in, and introduced to the county Superintendent and many "School Inspectors" -- again, they're huge on titles here. I swear, people that seem unable to say anything more than "thank you" and "okay" in English can rattle off their titles and the titles of everyone else in their office without batting an eyelash.

The great thing was, we were introduced to the administrators with every other foreign public school teacher in the county. After 5 days in this very foreign land that was desperately needed. Melanie visibly relaxed upon seeing our friends from orientation. I didn't realize how much I needed to talk with someone in actual sentences until we went out for dinner and drinks later. As we were being herded (we've all taken to calling the people that guide us around schools and serve as our translators our "handlers". It's a surprisingly accurate label.) out of the meeting hall in the county office, we strained our necks to yell back to each other "6:30 at Dunkin Donuts - dinner!" "Okay, see you there!" That's actually not an exaggeration. It was like a scene from a bad movie with family that had been held separately by captors and then were pushed past each other in a hallway of a dank cave. But before we would have our dinner, Melanie and I were herded to the hospital.

At the beginning of 2008, Korea implemented new immigration policies for foreign teachers. Something about a pedophile teaching in Thailand. Anyway, we had to jump through a bunch of hoops in the US to secure our visas, and a few remain for us here. One is a medical test, supposedly for HIV and drug use. Which is why I was surprised when I was herded (there's no other word that describes it) to a chest x-ray machine. But somehow being in a world where I don't know what's going on 99% of the time puts me into an acquiescent state. So chest x-ray I had. And a blood test, pee test, vision test, height, weight, blood pressure and pulse, and colorblindness test. Because we can only imagine what would happen if Korea started letting in colorblind teachers. All that for the discount price of 35,000 won (about US$30). Seriously, it was a cheap physical, and I can't remember my last, so it was probably a good thing (no visible tumors in my chest... that's positive!), but when we found out that our friends Kate and Chad had been herded to the same thing and had said only blood and pee and gotten just those for about US$10, we were a little frustrated. But it's all part of the experience. Just gotta role with it. Roll with the hour commute, roll with sitting around in the teachers' office with nothing to do all day, roll with them wanting to charge us $35 a month for lunches we can't eat. Actually, we're not rolling with that one. But this whole experience is a fantastic exercises in releasing control.

After the hospital we met 11 foreigners downtown at the Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robins are the two foreign chains we've seen in town so far. No McDonalds or KFC... it's refreshing to know there is a limit to the penetration they've achieved, retreating though it is. Six of us went to dinner at a neighborhood place -- sitting on the ground, served by the owner, big Korean menu on the wall. We ate huge communal dishes - one "tang", a very peppery soup with mushrooms and greens - and one "galbi", a very spicy beef rib soup/stew. I like spicy food. I had one sip of the galbi broth and it made me hiccup three times! We drank two bottles (very moderate by Korean standards) of soju and talked for hours about our first five days outside of orientation. It was absolutely blissful to chat it up with people sharing our experiences. After a few hours of alternating hysteric laughter and sighs of consolation, we agreed to form a Tuesday night eating group. That will be awesome. I'll bring my camera in the future to share what I can of the food with you.