Seoul Education

As summer comes to a close, so has the "intensive period" at my school, thank goodness. Normally my school is a typical Hagwon, an English night school for kids to go to after their regular school. However, now that kids are on summer vacation, many parents don't believe it is necessary for children to have a break, or in some cases they don't know what to do with their kids, so they put them into full time summer school - which is now us. Since schools here are all about making as much money as possible, rather than the welfare of the kids, we must change our hours to accommodate as well. So for the last 4 weeks, I've been working 8am to 7:30pm, and have been moving apartments afterward. We're still not fully settled. We're still waiting for the cable guy, and the laundry hot water..... hook-up guy. Last week I had to run home in the pouring rain during my lunch break, just to let the internet guy in because of course, I'm at work during their working hours. It is taking forever just to settle in once and for all.

Everything else is going well. We're both very busy. I've been under the weather a little bit (for a change), but I'm feeling much better. Although, today, a little girl in my class said to me, "teacher, you look like a ghost", I said, "I look like I've seen a ghost?", and she said, "No, you LOOK like a ghost". Right. I didn't even know how to respond, so I said, "YOU look like a ghost........." I know, I need to work on my retorts. I'm not exactly in the most verbally stimulating environment. I thought teaching English would actually improve my English. Instead, I end up talking like a caveman all day, just to be understood! Although, that's basically how Ian and I have always communicated anyway.


As for Ian, on goes the saga of his kindergarten culinary mishaps. I think this week it was nachos with ketchup and mustard. I have also begun teaching kindergarten four mornings a week. In Korea they go by "Korean age" which actually begins at conception, so the "four year olds" I teach are actually 2 1/2, and they jabber away at me in these squeaky little Korean voices, while I grin and blankly nod back. They are very cute but a lot a work. Almost everyday we both come home with stories from our schools to keep each other entertained for hours. I'm sure teachers in any country have very funny stories about the kids they teach, but in Korea, situations are just that much more extreme. Instead of "Teacher, how do you spell cat?", it's "Teacher, how do you spell huchupewt?" I'm sorry, what? "You know, when cat eat and it say, 'huchupewt!'" Every break, instead of chips and cookies, the smell of dried squid and fish puffs wafts through the hallways. The scary thing is, it's actually starting to smell good. I'm still too scared to touch most of it though.


Speaking of education, I have now officially learned how to read Hangul (Korean
alphabet). It took me a grand total of two hours, which either means I am in fact, a genius, which I have always suspected anyway, or that it is just a ridiculously easy alphabet to learn. While I firmly stick to my own beliefs, the fact that Korea is approximately 100% literate may tempt others into believing the latter. There are a total of 24 characters, most corresponding to a sound from the English alphabet. So really it's a matter of memorizing which symbol corresponds with what sound. It does, however, get tricky due to the fact that most symbols correspond to more than one sound for the simple reason that they're interchangeable, since Koreans cannot hear the difference. Starting with: R/L (we all knew that one) B/P, CH/J, K/G, S/SH, P/F, and so on. So a lot of the time when speaking with a Korean person who knows very little English, so most of Korea, we find ourselves having to reverse letters in our heads to understand what they're actually saying. "Pig? Hold on, that doesn't make sense.....Pick? Big?" AND so on.

As easy as it is to learn to read, Ian has just somehow never gotten around to it. In fact, he even becomes a little bitter whenever I look up at a sign and proudly announce what it says, just cause I can. However, the problem still remains that although I can sound it out, it is still a Korean word and therefore, still meaningless to me. Sigh.... Oh well, that's not the point though is it? Occasionally I'll come across the Konglish version of a word and I'll say, it's like hitting the Jackpot. "Baw Bee Coo, Ba Be Cu, Gasp! Barbecue!!!" At this point Ian will roll his eyes to show his appreciation. It has almost become an outright refusal on Ian's part to even learn it anymore. It's like because I can do it, he wants to learn something different that I equally cannot do. So to compensate for his shortcomings in the literacy area, Ian has decided to just go the whole mile and actually LEARN Korean. Now I gotta give him credit for that. That's hard. So Ian tries to learn a new word everyday and tries to show off for me, to the utter confusion of every shop keeper, store clerk, bus driver, homeless guy (just kidding, they don't have these in Korea) and the utter embarrassment of me, by trying to fit every single word he knows into a greeting and good-bye. We'll go into a store and I'll spend a few minutes walking around and as I'm ready to leave Ian will be just finishing up his greeting and moving onto the good-bye, which he usually finishes about three blocks later. Whoever said you need to sit in a classroom for twelve hours to learn anything?....Never mind, I actually forgot for a second where we were.