Hi again friends,
I promised this blog would be about people, so here it is.
People at my work (they all have English names. Everyone who learns English in Korea – which now seems to be almost everyone takes a second English name).
Michael (the principal) is a very tidy person who worries about little things that aren’t important, and sometimes misses the broader picture. When I first met him at the airport, I thought that he was nervous because he was speaking English, but now I have heard him speak to people in Korean, and his voice sounds the same. Overall I think he is a very reasonable employer (knock on wood). Unlike a lot of people I know here I am required to show up almost immediately before I start (at 9:10, and leave when I am done work (at 4pm, not wait around until my hours are finished). When I arrived at my apartment on the first day I found my fridge stocked with milk, eggs, juice, and butter, and my cupboard with special-K, cooking oil, and happy time white bread. Even though these are not my food preferences it was very nice to have something to eat in the house because at the time I had no idea where to get anything. During my first week here Michael took me out for lunch a lot, because I was supposed to be at the school, but I don’t think he knew what to do with me. I went to the school (which is situated on the 5th floor of an office tower) every day, and read teachers manuals that Michael gave me, and looked around hopelessly for the textbooks and teaching aids that they referred to. I read these manuals in empty classrooms: no supplies or decorations I started to wonder how what I was going to do with a esl kindergarten class if I didn’t have any crayons ect. I had absolutely no idea what was going on!!!! I kept trying to figure out who the other Kindergarten teacher was going to be, and kept thinking that I was being introduced to her. No one cared that I had no idea what was going on (so much so, that it seemed like everyone had no idea what was going on). But everyone seemed fine with this, so that put me more at ease. Actually my first week wasn’t stressful at all.
The other person who I started to become more aware of in my first week is Victor. Victor is a retired Chinese language teacher who has published two educational books for Korean’s on learning Chinese. He was born in China, and moved to Korea at age one. At Ivy academy he teaches very part time, and does things like taking care of the plants, bringing people coffee, and Chinese tea, giving people candy, folding origami ect. I think Victor teaches at the school because he knows Michael, and he wanted to continue working in a more part-time environment. The school has about 100 plants inside it. I think if Victor wasn’t there it would have somewhere between 0 and 5 plants. Another thing Victor does is practice English with an mp3 player and headphones. Sometimes I walk by him, or sit near him, and overhear him saying random things in English. At first I was a little weirded out by it. In my first week I heard very little English, so when I heard Victor repeating phrases it popped right out at me. I couldn’t figure out why a Korean/Chinese man would be talking to himself in English. I got used to it though. However, last week I was sitting near him, and I heard him say a series of boys locker-room talk starting with “she’s my kind of girl”, and then again “she’s my kind of girl”, and then “I really like her”, and then again “I really like her”. He repeated everything with exaggerated expression (probably what he was hearing on the mp3). I found it hard to not laugh, but it was more entertaining for me to keep it inside. He went through about 5 boys locker-room expressions, and then moved onto other randomly unrelated slightly dated English slang. Victor is really nice to have around. Because he works less he is always relaxed. He is helping me learn a little bit of Korean by making me mp3 recordings (which he swears by as a method for learning languages). Not surprisingly his English pronunciation is much better then his comprehension (deceivingly good). In the second week victor showed me photographs of paintings that he does in his spare time. He does them on ceramic tiles. Many of them are very beautiful. I will post a couple in this blog.
Last week I saw Victor on my way home from work at the plant store. I will describe the scene as everyday-joyess. Victor with a bunch of A-jee-ma’s (Korean middle aged women – but this needs more explanation-later) analyzing the usefulness of a plant shelf. Everyone was relaxed, and chatting away. The plant store here is interesting. The plants for sale are out on the sidewalk. Off to the side are tons of extra pots (some of them broken). You can pot your own plants for free if you don’t like the pot your plant comes with. On the store side of the sidewalk are many dead and dying plants thrown hap-hazardly in piles (waiting to have their pots, and earth recycled. Victor helped me choose 2 plants for my apartment that are hard to kill. They were also very cheap.
On Thursday of my first week boxes started arriving with supplies, and some of the textbooks I had been looking for. On Friday Amy (the head kindergarten teacher) showed up, and throughout the following week I discovered that she had the rest of the materials I had been looking for in my first few days. The funny thing about the whole situation is that no one thought to tell me that supplies, and someone who knew something about teaching Kindergarten would be arriving before I had to teach my first class. This is very normal in Korea. It is either not important for employees to know anything about what is going on at their work-place, or the method of communication is so subtle that I miss it. I think this has something to do with a resistance to use the word no (or aniyo). Rather then “no”, or “not now, but later”, you get an ambiguous response which means either: “could be”, or: “no”.
Amy is a pretty cool Korean woman. She is not married, but she is pretty strong willed (compared to other Korean unmarried women I have met – more on this later too), which is a good thing, because she does the best job I can imagine possible at making sure we have what we need for the Kindergarten classroom. On Friday of my first week she got all of the 3 classrooms decorated, and unpacked the supplies that I didn’t know we had. When there is a problem with something she usually confronts Michael about it which is great, because she has a better idea of what little kids need to learn then he does. For instance, she recently told me that she convinced him to put a gym in the school (which is pretty much where I run half my classes (so that we can act out the stories, and songs ect.) I went out for dinner and drinks with Amy the Friday just passed. She told me that she spent a year studying English in Australia, which probably contributed to her relatively assertive (for a young Korean woman) attitude. She wants to move to Australia and raise her kids there. She says she doesn’t like the Korean education system, because kids work too hard, and too long, and don’t have any time to play, and be creative. She also said that everyone was so focused on getting into a good University that by the time they make it they don’t care about studying any more. This, combined with the fact that everything is open super late makes University into a big party, where all people care about is a little bit of freedom, and very few care about their fields. Her perspective on this was interesting to me, because most English speaking Korean’s I have met are in fields that they don’t really enjoy. I know this is also true to some extent in Canada, but it is true almost without exception here. My night with Amy ended pretty early. I realized after that she probably would have stayed out later if I had pushed her, but I am not used to being that person in a social situation. She is 28 years old, but she told me earlier that she had a pretty strict curfew of midnight. I think when she breaks it she gets in trouble with her mom, but it seemed like she kind of wanted to, but I didn’t take enough initiative to push her to do it. Oh well. Next time.
Well, those are the big ones at work. There are also 2 Australians and more Korean’s that teach at the Hogwan (after school English for elementary students), but I don’t see them much. There is also Rachel, the vice principal, and Michael’s wife. I don’t communicate with her much. She asked me to help pick wallpaper for the classrooms. She is very animated, and talks in a cute voice. There is also the secretary (can’t remember her name). She is really nice. She told me about where a lot of the food comes from in Korea. Interestingly, my obsession with food, how it is eaten, and where it comes from is completely normal here.
Then there are the kids. In the kindergarten I teach all girls. The 6 year olds are little angels. There is a bossy girl in the 5-year-old class who says things to the other kids in Korean, and all of a sudden they are crying. It is a bit of a weird situation, because I don’t really know what is going on (and for that matter, neither do they – they are 5!) There weren’t enough kids for the youngest class, so I also have a 3 year old in the 5-year-old class. All of the other kids are learning how to communicate very basically in English. The 3 year old just says things like Elephant at somewhat random times. It is an interesting situation. This last Friday was crazy hair day. I did a really good job at that. They take lots of pictures of us at the school, so I’ll get a copy of some of them, and post them. You can see my kids (and my hair).
I teach one Hogwan class per day. I have brothers in it who were given the English names Kevin, and Josh, but insisted on inventing English names for themselves that aren’t actually English, and don’t actually exist: Gagami, and Tando. I like their spirit, though sometimes it gets out of hand. I’m glad I only have them for one class a day.
Well that is people work. I’ll have to cover other stories later.
Cheers to everyone,
Love Cassie.
