A successful teacher?

Yesterday, I had one of my classes write questions to interview each other. One pair used 'What job do you want to do?' So I overheard little Brenda (E5) saying she was going to be a 'successful teacher':

Me: Ok Brenda, what do you mean by 'successful'?

Brenda: Good.

Me: So what is a successful teacher? Am I a successful teacher?

[pause]

Brenda: A little, teacher.

[much giggling from both of us]

Me: Ok Brenda, what does successful mean?

[more giggling]

Brenda: Students can understand teacher every word.

Lesson learned: Don't ask students questions like this. They actually tell you what they think. Glad to have learned that lesson with the cute little ones, rather than the awkward middle-schoolers.

Eventually I will post some photos from Christmas. But now, its time for work.

Santa, do you like red clothes or rainbow clothes?

So I know I just posted an entry last night, but I wanted to share these. Here is some of the cutest/best writing I've had so far. I haven't edited at all - this is exactly how these pieces were written.

Cutest santa letter so far:

Hello, Santa. I'm Sally. I'm 15 years old. I am NoByeun middle school student. I am quiet. I can't shout loudly. So I want loud voice and brave. I cannot talk to everyone. My dream is elementary school teacher so I need to brave and loud noise. Santa, please help me. ^-^ Santa, I believe you live Santa country. Come back my house again and give me brave and loud voice.

Santa, Merry Christmas

Also adorable - from a little girl who used to grab my arm every lesson and say 'My teacher arm is always big':

Merry Christmas Santa.

My name is Sarah

What is your real name?

Do you like red clothes or rainbow clothes?

I want see your Rudolph.

And Santa I want a magic lamp, i-phone and money.

Santa Clause please give them.

Because I want have that.

Santa one years. I'm fight my drother, mom, father, children and my friend. Santa I promise a not fight and good next year.

Merry Christmas!! Oh! and I want a pet~

bye~ Santa

Sarah

An old story from one of my favourite elementary students, Jenny. This girl is pretty much always this funny:

Long time ago, there is very strong girl. Her is Jenny. She fight with cow and elephant and rhinoceros, but one elephant is her friends. She was cut the hair, so elephant don't know who are Jenny! Oh my god! She fight with him, but........... She went to the sky with elephant.

And possibly the best, most original piece I've had from a middle-school student I only taught 3 times. I asked them to pretend that their father had brought a dinosaur egg back as a gift from a business trip, and the assignment was to write about how to look after it.

It's impossible present for 21C people, except almighty god. Anyway, you want to have a Tyrannosaurus for your huge pet or fierce emergency food. First, you should change temperature hotter and hotter. The dinosaur egg is bigger than your body. So you must protect his warmth with big fire and blanket like a hen hold her eggs. Then you should make friends in the neighborhood of him. Once upon a time, dinosaurs' mom arranged their eggs like circle. So you had better make circle with your egg and toy eggs. Your egg feel comfortable. At last, you have to talk to him. It's very important point for you. If you don't tame him, he punches your notse when he hatches. Everyday you touch his egg shell, talk about politics, economy, literature, etc. Finally you greet him with a good-night-kiss. Few months later, you can meet your huge friend.

This is prolly my awesomes shirt

An entry on Korean is well overdue. Last Saturday the weekly class at the YMCA finished, and while I'm far from being able to hold even basic conversations, I have picked up enough to understand why my students struggle so much with basic grammar, spelling and pronunciation: Korean is a wee bit different from English. Obviously I'm a big geek, with a big love for phonology, but I will try to keep this light and non-techincal. Well, I'll settle for 'decipherable'.

Let's start with the pronunciation. Of course this is my favourite thing. In brief, syllables can have at most consonant-vowel-consonant. The final consonant can only be l, m, n, ng, p, t or k. To put this in perspective, English allows up to three consonant sounds at the beginning AND end of a syllable (e.g. 'strengths'). Also, they don't have any fricatives (long consonants) except s – so that's no z, f, v, or th sounds – or diphthongs.

In case you're thinking this means Korean is easy to pronounce, you are very wrong. They have a 'j' sound that is not voiced (making it sound more like a 'ch' to us), plus a geminate (double) 'j/ch' sound AND an aspirated 'ch' sound. The same pattern exists for the 'b/p' sound. I could happily study the differences between these sounds, but I find it extremely hard to hear, or produce, correctly. Many of the vowels are also nightmarishly similar to each other for English speakers.

Hopefully you can now see a little why when they write 'Matrix' in Korean, it comes out as 'Ma-tuh-rik-suh'. The 's' sound is also sort of between the English 's' and 'sh' sounds, so sometimes things sound a little lispy to an English ear. All of this leads to the peak of accidentally offensive Konglish: the 'shitty joo' instead of 'city zoo'. It also explains why I experience ridiculous levels of mishearing on a daily basis – snake vs. snack being a common, and often amusing, example. Getting the kids to say 'watched' (instead of 'watch-i-duh') is one of my favourite activities: my little ones are even starting to get it.

The grammar is also very very different, though my understanding of it is much more basic. I know that the verb comes last, even though I always forget that when I try to speak. And I know that most adjectives are actually verbs, in terms of grammar. So their word for 'tall' is actually a verb meaning 'is tall'. Realising this was so helpful for understanding my students' writing. Beyond that, I don't know much at all, but I'm sure the fundamental differences only get bigger with more study, given the sentences produced by even advanced-level English learners.

After trying to get my head round this stuff enough to actually make a few Korean sentences, and understand people, I have concluded that language is all about lines. In my head, Language looks like a colourful, messy blob, consisting of the full spectrum of what is possible. Each language carves up this space into meaningful units; and learning a new language means redrawing those lines.* When you learn another European language, the lines match up relatively often – with Korean it sometimes feels like they never do. You have to approach every new piece of information with as blank a slate as you can, and try to remember that the shape of your own language is far from the only way. I know this idea isn't ground-breaking, but even Arabic wasn't as challenging to my poor mono-lingual brain as Korean, and I feel like I am just now gaining a full appreciation for what my professors were on about when they talked about defining the boundaries of 'possible Language'.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the title is prolly the awesomes slogan I've seen on a t-shirt. More on Konglish another time.

* Vowels are probably the most concrete example: you can produce an infinite range of vowels phonetically, but to make any of them meaningful in speech, you have to define the boundaries that separate one vowel from another. Word meaning is also pretty easy to understand in this way if you imagine 'meaning' as space that is divided by words. Sentence meaning and syntax always hurt my head with their messiness, which makes both seem extra blobby in a vague and ill-defined sort of way.

Going native...

I've started to notice recently that I am, somewhat unsurprisingly, changing to fit Korea better. A few things I really didn't think would happen:

1. I like drinking hot water - I used to think this was the weirdest thing, but it just makes more sense to drink a glass of hot water when its cold outside.
2. I suck my teeth when I'm thinking – They do this all the time. I've started doing it too. It's not attractive. I also do the whiny nasal 'aa-aa-aaaaaah' sound and nod my head vigourously when I understand something. Again, not exactly fetching.
3. I'm obsessed with cute things – My (always faulty) cheese filter is gone. No trace is left. I love the cute-ness. The kids, the socks, the stationery: I love all of it.
4. I like heated toilet seats – I was vehemently opposed to this at first, but then its like 'Damn this bathroom is cold, and this seat is so toasty. Nice.'
5. I don't have a heart attack when scooters try to mow me down – They zoom about and everyone ignores them. Especially my heroes: the ajummas.
6. I may not be able to live without kimchi – I'm not alone in this: last Saturday, after hours of dancing, four of us waygook girls managed to polish off a plate of the delectable fermented cabbage in approximately 45 seconds.

Thought I'd also share one of the funniest classroom moments so far:

Me – Have you heard of Lady Gaga?
Lizzie – Teacher wait.
(Looks up a word in her phone dictionary)
Lizzie – Teacher, she is my idol.

Damn that kid – that might have been the only fully grammatical sentence she ever produced in my class.

...plus c'est la même chose

Birthday What with my birthday being so close to Halloween, and one of my friends here having a birthday the same week, it seemed only right to have a joint birthday night out the following weekend, thus allowing me to convince myself I had a week long birthday!

Sunday afternoon I went to a climbing competition at Palgongsan with Cat and Simon (who have a car....woo!) and Anne (who has good chat...woo!). I'd never actually seen a climbing competition before, and it was really good fun. The audience reactions were wonderful: more than one person shouted 'Nice-uh!' and generally got really into cheering the climbers on through the difficult sections. Palgongsan is also insanely beautiful: 'san' means mountain, so while the climbing was on an artificial wall, we were surrounded by mountainous views. And this being a Korean mountain, there was an impressive temple nearby too. Possibly even more entertaining than the climbing was the sight of a huge crowd of people listening to a truly bizarre selection of songs played in a jazz-pop style in the courtyard of the main temple. Oh Korea. (For Facebookers, Simon's put up an album of photos from this little daytrip - I am tagged in one photo so if you are my friend, you can click it and see the whole album. If you are not my friend I'm not sure what to suggest.)

Sunday night was a wee bit more relaxing than the madness of Halloween – just had dinner with Lacey, and got my second pair of awesome K-socks adorned with my favourite K-pop singer: G-dragon. (Do watch the video – it's quite marvellous.) I showed my socks to the kids at school on Monday, which got the rapturous squealing I'd expected, and generally had a lovely day at work followed by another lovely dinner at Cat and Simon's house.

The next weekend, Simon and I celebrated our birthdays again. Simon turned 30, so he really is 'ajushi' (old man) now, and I got called 'ajumma' (old lady) more than once. We celebrated all this ageing by eating fresh and simple Italian food and drinking excellent Italian wine at a restaurant run by an actual Italian chef. I'm no longer ashamed that my favourite food in Korea is foreign food. I do like Korean food, but its quite samey, and I'm just not willing to give up eating the food of lots of different countries. Of course, this being a Saturday, we went downtown for some fun and frolics, which included free drinks from our favourite barmen and meeting two birthday twins – one actually of the same vintage (1983 was a very good year). We finished off the night by belting out Alanis Morrissette at a noraebang. The next afternoon a few of us went to Hami Mami's for a breakfast buffet, and a cafe with English language magazines. A relaxing end to a very happy birthday week.

Seoul Again. Last weekend, Lacey and I headed up to Seoul for some shopping and sightseeing. We stayed in a 'love motel' in Sinchon the first night, and I now understand why people get a bit cagey about these – the one I stayed in my first weekend in Busan was absolutely fine, but this one was, well, pretty gross. We also learned that staying more than one night in a love motel is rather expensive. Because they rent those rooms out during the day. Ew.

So we moved to a much nicer hotel in Itaewon (the foreigner district) for the next two nights. I didn't like Itaewon last time, and it is still unsettling to be surrounded by so many non-Koreans, but after 3 months, a trip to the international food mart and book store were even more welcome, as was the Mexican and Arabic food. Actually, I think the eating might be the best thing about Itaewon. The Arab restaurant deserves special mention: we met fellow Sijans, Lia and Abby, there for lunch, and were the only white girls there. Most of the other customers were middle eastern men, and the owner seemed a little taken aback that four white girls would go so crazy for a buffet including hummus and falafel. We were politely, if awkwardly, informed that it was rude in Arab culture to waste any food, so we were to eat everything on our plates. This we promptly did. Twice.

We also found time to spend an obscene amount of time in Forever 21, drink some real beer in a brew-pub south of the river (while watching a Korean version of 'Cheaters' on the projector screen), and visit the Leeum Samsung Art Museum. The museum was really brilliant - I don't know why I only manage to go to art museums when I'm abroad because I always like it. They had a gallery of ancient Buddhist carvings and pottery and another two galleries of modern Korean and Western art. My favourite of the Korean paintings was a giant black velvet canvas, with a traditional Korean landscape picked out in diamante. It seemed to sum up Korea awfully well, though I certainly wouldn't want such a tacky thing in my livingroom.

Plus ça change

Just so you know, I ate cheerios with chocolate sauce for breakfast, and listened to girly folky country music. Then I was late for work. Just so you know some things never change.

So I thought I should do some kind of update on the last almost two months, so here are the highlights from October.

Busan is the second (or third. Damn you Incheon!) city of Korea, and we went to see the fireworks extravaganza they had to celebrate the end of their international film festival. This was the second time I've been to Busan with the intention of meeting up with other people who went on a different train, and the second time I've failed. It seems to be a black hole where fun things happen and people get very lost. Luckily, we were quite the merry troop on our own, and all the stress of getting from the train station to the beach melted away immediately that the first rockets went up. We'd spent a good couple of hours fighting through the biggest crowd I've ever been in, and settled for a slightly blocked view, but within about 10 seconds we all looked at each other and acknowledged that it had absolutely been worth it. There were all kinds of new fancy fireworks I've never seen, and tons that were just plain bigger than anything I've seen before. Definitely some very pretty bombs.

Of course that was only the beginning of a stupendous night out that included standing in the sea, having our photos taken with three little Korean girls who were very excited to speak some English, being told repeatedly by the barmaid in a soju hof that we were all 'very cute-uh' and 'sexygirl' (it definitely sounded like one word when she said it), hanging out with some Korean students (who thought I was younger than I am....oh Korea, thank you), and running to catch the first train back to Daegu 5am. Good times indeed.

Fish feet One of our post-Korean class wanderings included a trip to a very unusual cafe in Daegu where you can stick your feet in a fish tank. And the little fishies eat the dead skin off your feet. The cafe itself is a lovely place to chill out (even if the only English language book was 'Eats Shoots and Leaves') and the non-lactose-intolerant among us tucked into the all-you-can-eat supplies of toast and other baked goods. The fish thing is quite a strange sensation, and you could definitely feel when one of the bigger ones was chomping away at your foot. Overall, it was ticklish and funny, if rather ineffective at making your feet soft or lovely. Later that night I had a kettle thrown at my head by an angry English hooligan type. It was quite an eventful day.

Halloween was as ridiculous as I thought it might be. Every foreigner in town gets dressed up, and the Koreans stare at this bizarre activity. On the 5 minute walk from the subway station, we got four 'wow!'s and one 'assah!' (a Korean exclamation – means something like 'woop'). I think this had very little to do with my somewhat homemade 'zombie climber' outfit, and more to do with the 'goth from clockwork orange' and 'hamburgler' I went out with. It took a good bit of chat with fellow revellers (and looking through facebook albums!) in the next few days to put together the whole night because we kept running between places and chatting with, well, with everyone. Suffice to say, it was awesome and crazy in the best way.

Redressing the balance

While looking for something non-work related to read this evening, I stumbled across a blog written by a Daegu expat who I met a few weeks ago. The blog is extremely vitriolic, and while the views expressed have clearly been thought through, it didn't sit well with me. Put simply, there were lengthy discussions of racism in Korea, and the general bad treatment foreigners receive here. I'm not going to wade in on any big debates because I've only been here a short time, but it made me want to share my own very positive experiences of Korea, just to set the balance right in my own little corner of the universe. So here's my top five moments in no particular order:

The moment my rowdiest middle school boys looked up the word 'cheeky' in their electronic dictionary. They could not have been more entertained that a teacher would call them 'impertinent'. These are the same kids who named 'Jen Monster' as the most scary Halloween character. They are probably my most fun group to teach, though I doubt much learning goes on in that classroom.

Having my bag pulled out of my hands on the subway, and then being pulled into a seat next to an ajumma. This one requires some explanation: the red line subway in Daegu has a high proportion of older passengers. They are of course more traditional, and they don't like to see a person standing up and holding a heavy bag. So having got up to allow an older lady to sit down, a gentleman across the way promptly grabbed my bag from me and perched it on his lap. Once he'd left, the lady next to him pulled on my jacket to make me sit next to her. She then smiled at me and looked generally pleased until we left.

Being given a Korean name. Having learned that some expats are given a Korean name, I was very keen to have one. So I asked our favourite barmen at Go Go Vinyl to name me. They said they would think about it, and when we wobbled past later that night, they said they'd come up with one: 최 미 나 (Che Mi Na). I know I'm easily pleased, but it definitely made me smile.

How are you today? Every day I ask my students how they are, and they have to give me a reason why. The little ones often say something like 'I'm really really very very always always much-i much-i... terrible... becau-juh... many school homework-uh.' Last week it rained pretty heavily, which doesn't happen much at this time of year. So when I asked one of my favourite elementary students 'How are you today, Sally?' she answered 'Today teacher, I am dirty.' Turns out rain is dirty. Who knew?

The moment an ajumma apologised to me. I have been shushed on the KTX (high speed) trains more times than I can count. They like trains to be quiet here, and my voice just carries. On an early morning train back to Daegu from Busan, an older lady shushed me after I'd spoken on the phone for only a few moments in my best 'indoor voice'. I then grumbled to my friend that it was completely ridiculous when I really hadn't been noisy. A few moments later she stood up, looked me square in the eye and said 'I'm sorry sister'. Oh my. I said it was ok of course, and made sure to smile and bow politely when I got off the train, but I was really confused by this whole encounter. I asked a friend about it and she said that using family terms to address strangers is common in Korea, but usually it corresponds to the relative age, so an older person wouldn't normally call me 'sister'. Maybe it was a mistranslation, but it definitely didn't feel like the disrespect we foreigners are supposed to get all the time. It felt like a genuine apology for overstepping the mark. Wherever you are in the world, that's a nice thing.