"Hey everybody!
Buy this book! It's really great! There are essays in there from the most distinguished authors on the planet.
http://www.jstwrite.com/index_files/Page2844.htm"
-Guest Blogger Dr. Stevil
Friday, October 26, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Scenes of Gunpo
Today we walked on nearby Surisan and tooled around in Sanbon, the closest shopping square.
Un-hustle and Un-Bustle
Today was a wonderful, restful lazy Sunday. I just stepped back from the movement and restless hustle of life lately. Thank God! :)
North Korea was an amazing place, surprisingly pretty, but it meant a weekend spent mostly on the bus.
Then this week miscomunication hung in the air like a haze... It felt particularly acute this week somehow. The days blended into a rolling, evolving, meeting and class that were scheduled, cancelled, and then uncancelled. No one knows when my Christmas vacation days will be, exactly, so I can't plan a trip. Steve and I and friends want to go to China and take this amazing opportunity to see the Great Wall and explore. I went into school and asked cheerfully and modestly one morning this week about the timing oif my vacaction, and left the room more confused than when I entered it. Multiple options were discussed, but the school administrators wouldn't approve any one schedule. Including weekends, I get three weeks off in January, they just won't commit to which three weeks. It is an amazing blessing to get this vacation time at all. However, as the calendar days tick by and the timing of the vacation day issue does not resolve itself, I have begun to get annoyed!! I cannot plan a trip, or save to buy an air ticket to China, without a schedule. Basically, I am going to literally pay for the school's disorganization, in the for of a higher priced air ticket. Grr. :(
Then Thursday was a really good classroom day. Several classes, particularly the higher level third grade and sixth grade classes are really starting to challenge theselves and speak more, it's exciting. However, then Friday morning was the old "Who's on First" scene to the extreme! Ready for confusion? Mr. K., the teacher who cannot speak ANY English who is subbing for my co-teacher during her maternity leave came and told me at 4:30 on Thursday, when I had already made work/prepared for the next day that English classes were cancelled Friday morning for a school race, "unless rain." Philosophical issues aside (sports are more important than learning English?) Friday's classes turned into a logistical quagmire.
Then, Friday morning, of course, it rained. So, I prepared to teach, but when I saw athletic equipement in the halls I went, five minutes before school on Friday, and asked the fifth and sixth grade teachers about the schedule. The teachers said "cancel 5 and 6." But the sixth grade teachers said "no cancel 6th grade."Later, when I showed up with my books and a newly made game and worksheets to teach sixth grade English to some very confused teachers and students, I wondered what was happening. One sixth grade teacher tried to tell me it was fifth grade time (in half English). But by then I thought that all fifth grade English was "cancelled," and had announced that to all the students. Ridiculously confused yet? I certainly was. It turns out of course that the teachers I spoke to confused the English word "cancel' with the Englsih word "switch." they had just wanted to switch classes, but couldn't comunicate that.
Although the meaning of the miscommunication eventualy bore itself out, I spent a lot of time on Friday feeling frustrated and isolated!! Where is the English speaking co-teacher a foreign teacher is supposed to have to guide and support them? I felt trampled by the school staff, their lack of support, and there unrealistic assumtpions about how many new Hangul words I can learn/retain a week. Communication is a two way street, but it feels ironic sometimes that they say they want to be "welcoming," to me and "help" the students learn English, but then most of teacher's themselves seem to me to be making little effort to learn more or communicate in English.
Yes, Friday was definitely NOT a high point in my year so far.
So...this weekend I tried to take it easy, stay local, and look at the things around me that are available and interesting in my new Korean hometown. School is a great challenge, greater than I expected, frankly,and the school staff keep hurling the proverbial ball of communication back into my court all the time. All I can do is make the best of that. And get creative but realistic, and quickly. This year is not going to be as flexible and as much of a learning experience in creative teaching as I'd hoped. But I am sure going to learn about communication and self-advocacy. I have to just to stay afloat.
At any rate, I took some wonderful time to myself Friday night and realized that I am I am lucky to have a safe, cozy corner of the universe to live in and a wonderful boyfriend to come visit me. Saturday night plans were ever changing, but in the end we tried the new Korean b-b-q place that opened on my street. We were quite the curiousity item in there, particularly as Steve is bald (very few Korean men are bald except for monks). The place is clean and yummy and the two of us enjoyed as generous portion of BEEF galbi and veggies, plus beer, for about US $12! Score!
So, life here in Gunpo is never boring, and never unchallenging.
North Korea was an amazing place, surprisingly pretty, but it meant a weekend spent mostly on the bus.
Then this week miscomunication hung in the air like a haze... It felt particularly acute this week somehow. The days blended into a rolling, evolving, meeting and class that were scheduled, cancelled, and then uncancelled. No one knows when my Christmas vacation days will be, exactly, so I can't plan a trip. Steve and I and friends want to go to China and take this amazing opportunity to see the Great Wall and explore. I went into school and asked cheerfully and modestly one morning this week about the timing oif my vacaction, and left the room more confused than when I entered it. Multiple options were discussed, but the school administrators wouldn't approve any one schedule. Including weekends, I get three weeks off in January, they just won't commit to which three weeks. It is an amazing blessing to get this vacation time at all. However, as the calendar days tick by and the timing of the vacation day issue does not resolve itself, I have begun to get annoyed!! I cannot plan a trip, or save to buy an air ticket to China, without a schedule. Basically, I am going to literally pay for the school's disorganization, in the for of a higher priced air ticket. Grr. :(
Then Thursday was a really good classroom day. Several classes, particularly the higher level third grade and sixth grade classes are really starting to challenge theselves and speak more, it's exciting. However, then Friday morning was the old "Who's on First" scene to the extreme! Ready for confusion? Mr. K., the teacher who cannot speak ANY English who is subbing for my co-teacher during her maternity leave came and told me at 4:30 on Thursday, when I had already made work/prepared for the next day that English classes were cancelled Friday morning for a school race, "unless rain." Philosophical issues aside (sports are more important than learning English?) Friday's classes turned into a logistical quagmire.
Then, Friday morning, of course, it rained. So, I prepared to teach, but when I saw athletic equipement in the halls I went, five minutes before school on Friday, and asked the fifth and sixth grade teachers about the schedule. The teachers said "cancel 5 and 6." But the sixth grade teachers said "no cancel 6th grade."Later, when I showed up with my books and a newly made game and worksheets to teach sixth grade English to some very confused teachers and students, I wondered what was happening. One sixth grade teacher tried to tell me it was fifth grade time (in half English). But by then I thought that all fifth grade English was "cancelled," and had announced that to all the students. Ridiculously confused yet? I certainly was. It turns out of course that the teachers I spoke to confused the English word "cancel' with the Englsih word "switch." they had just wanted to switch classes, but couldn't comunicate that.
Although the meaning of the miscommunication eventualy bore itself out, I spent a lot of time on Friday feeling frustrated and isolated!! Where is the English speaking co-teacher a foreign teacher is supposed to have to guide and support them? I felt trampled by the school staff, their lack of support, and there unrealistic assumtpions about how many new Hangul words I can learn/retain a week. Communication is a two way street, but it feels ironic sometimes that they say they want to be "welcoming," to me and "help" the students learn English, but then most of teacher's themselves seem to me to be making little effort to learn more or communicate in English.
Yes, Friday was definitely NOT a high point in my year so far.
So...this weekend I tried to take it easy, stay local, and look at the things around me that are available and interesting in my new Korean hometown. School is a great challenge, greater than I expected, frankly,and the school staff keep hurling the proverbial ball of communication back into my court all the time. All I can do is make the best of that. And get creative but realistic, and quickly. This year is not going to be as flexible and as much of a learning experience in creative teaching as I'd hoped. But I am sure going to learn about communication and self-advocacy. I have to just to stay afloat.
At any rate, I took some wonderful time to myself Friday night and realized that I am I am lucky to have a safe, cozy corner of the universe to live in and a wonderful boyfriend to come visit me. Saturday night plans were ever changing, but in the end we tried the new Korean b-b-q place that opened on my street. We were quite the curiousity item in there, particularly as Steve is bald (very few Korean men are bald except for monks). The place is clean and yummy and the two of us enjoyed as generous portion of BEEF galbi and veggies, plus beer, for about US $12! Score!
So, life here in Gunpo is never boring, and never unchallenging.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The Waiting Is The Hardest Part
Forgive me for not being on here in forever! I've been busy waiting. And trying to get this blog to open in English, as opposed to Korean, when I visit the PC bang. And waiting:
In September I waited for:
1. My Airfare reimbursement (3 weeks)
2. My moving allowance (2.5 weeks after I'd moved
3. Steve to get back from his business trip to Africa (that waiting stank)
4. Home internet service to be installed
5. The former occupant of my Officetel to retrieve his belongings and recycle the random stuff he left in the corner
6. The #6 purple bus to take me to the subway station across the rice paddy field from my school
7. My first pay check-which went to last years' teacher, by mistake !!!!!!!!!!!! (AAH!)
8. My alien registration card to come in the mail (STILL waiting!)
9. Being assigned a night children's English class at city hall.
10. Attendance lists so I am not calling little Su-Jin "Su-Jeoung," and vice versa...
11. Myself to wrap my head around my schedule and get a clue.
My schedule is starting to make sense, the kids names are still a mystery, and a clue? Well, I have hope anyway!
In September I waited for:
1. My Airfare reimbursement (3 weeks)
2. My moving allowance (2.5 weeks after I'd moved
3. Steve to get back from his business trip to Africa (that waiting stank)
4. Home internet service to be installed
5. The former occupant of my Officetel to retrieve his belongings and recycle the random stuff he left in the corner
6. The #6 purple bus to take me to the subway station across the rice paddy field from my school
7. My first pay check-which went to last years' teacher, by mistake !!!!!!!!!!!! (AAH!)
8. My alien registration card to come in the mail (STILL waiting!)
9. Being assigned a night children's English class at city hall.
10. Attendance lists so I am not calling little Su-Jin "Su-Jeoung," and vice versa...
11. Myself to wrap my head around my schedule and get a clue.
My schedule is starting to make sense, the kids names are still a mystery, and a clue? Well, I have hope anyway!
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