"I feel like I need a shot."

It’s not often that I get to spend time with my 3rd graders. Or, I guess I can’t call them “mine” anymore, since I no longer teach them. They were my students last year, but I relinquished them in January to “have their lives eaten by the 수능.” Despite all of the rough patches we faced during my first semester of teaching, I am immoderately fond of my first class of Bugo students. I’ve missed them and worried about them as the pressure for the test increases.

This week I’ve been lucky: one of my former students came to me asking for an incredible favor. His request is not outstanding because of the work it requires on my part, but rather because of the extraordinary circumstances that require my assistance. He has made it through the first round of applications for the international college at Yonsei University, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in Korea. This Saturday he has round two of the application: an interview with professors at the school. The stakes are high: if he does well and is admitted, he doesn’t have to take the 수능. If he doesn’t, then he’ll have spent most of this week preparing for the interview instead of studying for the test, jeopardizing (in his mind) his results.

This 3rd grader, C.J.H., has one of the highest English levels at the school. He lived and studied in New Zealand for 6 months as a student and has had international aspirations ever since. Last year he approached me because he was volunteering as a translator at the local festival. I am confident that he is qualified for admission, but he is nervous because he has not had the opportunity to speak English for the last 8 months.

This week has been a crash-course for both of us. He’s never “taken an interview before,” as Koreans say, and I’ve never been solely responsible for coaching a student for an admissions interview. Each day he comes to me with a new piece of information about the interview: a potential topic, a type of question, the length of the interview. Each day our preparations have looked different: some free talking, some internet research together, some reading articles and discussing, some pure instruction in interviewing technique, etc.

Tomorrow will be our final day of preparation before he goes home for the weekend. I have a full mock interview planned. Instead of sitting on the couches in the English lounge, he’ll be seated behind a table. I’ll have a sample of every type of question we’ve discussed. He’ll be expected to introduce himself, sit up straight, make eye contact and thank me upon the completion of our interview. I think we’re both nervous for it.

I asked CJH how he was feeling about the interview. His answer “I feel like I need a shot.” We both laughed. He continued, “When I was a child, I didn’t want to get shots, but I knew I would get candy afterward. This interview is like that: I want it to be over, because I want the candy afterward: admission.”

Whether or not CJH nails the interview and gains admission to the school, I’m proud of him. I’ll have candy waiting for him at the end of our mock interview.

Only 28 days until the 수능.

I'm back & I've got my dancing shoes on

 My dance teacher, Ji Soo and Chae Won enjoy American Jelly Bellys.

I returned to Gongju one month ago, but today was the first day that I truly felt like I was back in my old groove. So from a window seat in my favorite coffeeshop, I'll dive into why K-Pop dancing makes Gongju truly feel like home.

Perhaps that's a little unfair to my school since I'm ridiculously happy there. English competitions, debate club meetings, essay grading and more keep me busy - I've never felt more involved. I know that I have less than seven months of teaching left there, yet I can't imagine being anywhere else. 


One of the reasons why is based purely on numbers: over the course of a few weeks, a whopping 75% of my 200 second-grade students have asked me to help them review their individual English presentation assignments. I'll let you do the math. I'm thrilled that I've gotten to interact so directly with my students and their English. Having 400 students a week makes it difficult to connect with everyone, so this has been a great way to get one-on-one time with so many of them. I also try to track down the students "in their natural habitat" of their homerooms, which was shocking for the first few weeks. Now the students and staff are no longer surprised to see me running all over the school during breaks in search of a student who gave me his/her presentation to read.


Yes, things at school are great. But work at school and multiple projects in my (new) apartment (built in the 1970s) have kept me too busy to rejoin my dance class. TODAY was the day that I made it back and it felt so good.


This dance class deserved a blog many long months ago. As I wrote to a fellow ETA,"It's my exercise, social outlet, opportunity to practice Korean and connection to popular culture all in one. Plus a place to shower." But the feeling of homecoming I experienced there tonight absolutely cements CMS as a second home to me.


When I entered the studio, my dance instructor had her head between her knees in a stretch, but still managed to shout my name with a happy welcome. Several of the girls who help out at the studio looked up from their cellphones and gathered around me with happy surprise. I chatted in Korean with a few of the elementary students I befriended last semester about where I'd been and why I hadn't been back in a while. In true cultural ambassador fashion, I also came prepared with Jelly Bellys from the US and ddok (rice cake) from my school. Both went over extremely well and I was offered donuts, chestnuts and socks as a welcome back present.


To balance out all of my praise of this place, I feel like I need a disclaimer: I'm no marvelous dancer nor am drawn to dance here because of my undying love for K-Pop. While it felt good to join in with the opening stretches and warm-up routines that we've been doing since I started there, I still missed a few beats. When we started into our actual routine for the night, it was to one of the most annoying and inane K-Pop songs that I'm already sick of and I was already far behind in learning it due to my recent absences. 


Despite the repetitive cutesy beats and my own clumsiness, I was so happy to be dancing with these people. For all that I rave about my school and how happy I am there, sometimes I need other places to call home in Gongju. CMS Dance Studio happens to be one of them. Just like my school, the people there had to warm up to the 외국인 (foreigner) being all up in their business every day, but now I think they like it.


CMS does have one major advantage over both of my other "homes" in Gongju: a steady stream of hot water for showers. I swear that I'm more comfortable in the communal shower of my dance studio than I am in my own cramped bathroom that doesn't have enough warm water to rinse all of my hair at once. Too much information?

Free drink next time at Cafe Rudico!

I've come a long way since my first day at at CMS a year ago. It's a fun story, but for another time, perhaps. One of the reasons I love this coffeeshop is its late hours, but they're starting to wipe down tables. I ran into a friend here earlier and spent an easy 45 minutes catching up before we looked at our watches and guiltily remembered that we had each come here with specific tasks to accomplish. But maybe that's another reason why this shop is a favorite? I feel like I'm always running into friends here.

I'm sure I'll back soon. After all, I just filled my frequent buyer card.

Home Behind Me

My vacation was neatly divided into three parts: one week of whole family togetherness, one week of travel, two weeks of chilling with friends and family back home. The whole month went by very quickly, possibly because the definition of "home" has expanded to include the entire continental US. It was an entirely satisfying visit.

To recap:
One of the first things I did at home was go to church with the family and watch my little brother get baptized. Apparently he'd been wanting to do it for about a year, but he wanted to wait until both sisters could be there to watch it. This is no easy feat when one is out of the country and the other is 6 hours south. I'm so glad we could witness this incredible blessing together.
The next thing I did was get my wisdom teeth removed. I learned that recovering from surgery isn't a terrible way to recover from jetlag.

Week 1: Time with all the siblings in one place. Here, we explore San Francisco together.

Week 1 cont: Whole family zip line adventure!

Week 2: Chicago! I visited with Fbright friends Beilin and Erik in the downtown area.

Week 2 cont: Then I hung out with my sister and her roommate , doing touristy stuff like the Bean.

The rest of Week 2 was spent in Kansas City visiting some family there with my brother. We lounged, watched movies, read books and did everything we could to avoid being outside in the hottest weather the region had seen in nearly 30 years! This was the first time my jeans-and-long-sleeved-button-up-clad brother had really experienced humidity, and he told me that I had overestimated it since we were indoors with a constant air-conditioning buffer.


Weeks 3 & 4 passed in a happy haze of daily coffee or lunch dates with friends and family on either side of the Bay. I'm reminded that some of my best friendships are good because they never change. Others are good because they have changed as we change.

Week 4: Spending time with cousins results in silliness, like drawing on each other's faces.

Last day: Picnic with Grandparents' friends and my cousins.

To conclude:

It's been a wonderful time to refresh myself with great conversations about where life has NOT overlapped with people for the past year. We all have stories to tell.

But now, I'm ready, or almost ready, to go back to Korea. Even here, reminders of my time in there were persistent and ubiquitous. I found myself wanting to react to things with "jinjja?," looking up when I heard "hana, dul, set!" before pictures and falling asleep lesson planning. I missed my students and delighted in their notes, slaved over their recommendation letters, and prayed that I would not forget their names.

So as I despair over my luggage, I'm still happy to be going back. It's nice to be "returning" somewhere. I have a life full of firsts ahead of me, but for now it's nice to go back and forth between two places that can feel like home.

Letter to a Bugo Student

One of my students puts my blogging to shame, which isn't difficult to do, I know.

Jun Beom maintains an awesome blog in between his insane study schedule (and playing the guitar!) that helps captures the essence of our school and serves as a source of information for prospective students. I highly recommend it, if only for the pictures: http://blog.daum.net/trafalgar. The entry between 49. and 50. also features an interview that he did for the school's English newspaper.

Last week I asked Jun Beom a few questions about his blog, simply because I was curious. We had a brief conversation about it, and yesterday he handed me a 13-page letter. He had used his free time during computer class to write a little bit about his blog for me in English and then translated one of his entries for me. He even re-read it to correct grammatical errors and add points of clarification. It's one of my favorite things that any of my students have ever given me.

Here is the letter that I wrote back to him:

Dear Jun Beom.

Thank you so much for your letter. It means a lot that you took the time to write to me. I have never thought that you were rude; I thought that you probably were just shy or under too much pressure to speak to me in English. I worry sometimes that I confuse students by suddenly talking to them one-on-one in English.

Your thoughtful translations were much appreciated. I confess that I’ve gotten a little lazy in studying Korean, but reading your blog has inspired me to continue my studies with more devotion. I read the Korean in your letter out loud for practice – it’s very difficult for me to pronounce Korean sentences fluently, so it was good practice but humbling. :)

Sometimes when things are translated into other languages, the meaning or the sense of humor is not always clear, but I can tell from what you shared with me that what you write is often funny and insightful. I’m very proud that I have a student who doesn’t just focus on studying but also uses his energy to create something that other people can enjoy and use to learn. You are a credit to Bugo.

Something that you might like to know is that when I first learned that I was going to teach at Bugo, the school’s name was longer than ANY of the names of my friends’ schools. I worried that I would never be able to learn how to say all fifteen syllables of the name correctly. I was so relieved when I found out that the school had an “official” nickname: Sadaebugo. As I spent more at the school, I learned that the students call it “Bugo.” I love calling the school that because it’s something that my students taught me.

I know that I have a lot to learn from you and other students at Bugo. Thank you for taking the time to teach me with your blog and your letter. I’m very grateful to be your teacher and so glad that I will be at Bugo for another school year.

Cheers!

Ms. Morrow

"Voca" is Konglish for vocabulary

This week we were covering some poetry terms in my class, including sestet, quatrain, octave and couplet. One of my students had an interesting idea for the definition of "couplet."

Me (pointing to "couplet" on the board): What do you know about this word?

Students: Couple!

Me: Couple of what?

Student: Couple tee! T-shirts couples wear!

That's right, my students thought our vocabulary word for the day was this:

Letter from a Sadaebugo student: Can You Hear ME?

My first blog post in months comes on the night when I have fifteen articles to edit for my students' English newspaper. Sounds like perfect timing to me! Out of the the half-a-dozen blog entries floating around on my computer that were never completed in a manner timely enough to post, this is the one that will finally land me at the top of Josh's list of blog links.

The following is an exact rendering of a letter that one of my freshman students gave me tonight during her self-study break. I have omitted both her name, her classmate's name and their class number. It should be noted that her classmate is fluent in English after studying in the US for a number of years.

To Samantha teacher.

Teacher, hi. I am ****** in class #-#. I think you may already know me, don't you? If you don't know me...I'm the person who sits next to ***** in [your class]. I have some agonies about my English abilities, so I would like to talk about it. Can you hear me? I know you are too busy to read it. But I need your help. ㅠ.ㅠ Actually, until in 2010, July, my English grades were great and enough to have no concerns about it. So I stopped my English studying (especially listening). And I went to hear, Sadaebugo, my english grades are dropping now. I think I lost my feeling of English and can't listen to English exactly. I make some mistakes during listening. Also, as you know, I and ***** are really indeed friends and we are roommate. Because I lost my confidence of English and my friend who has great English skills sits next to me, I become to dislike learning English. I know it's just execuse, but it's my real mind and thought. I want to take your advices and befriend with you. Can you be my real friend and magician who will solve my worries? I'll look forward to receiving your answer with happiness.

From *******

While this letter is significant in a number of ways by itself, I'm especially struck because this student is not alone. Earlier today I had another student from a different grade approach me with a similar concern. He told me about how he feels his English listening abilities declining despite regular listening to Harry Potter audio readings. Two weeks ago, I spoke with a student who is passionate about learning languages. He takes Japanese as a foreign language at school, is teaching Italian by himself for fun and has aspirations to master Arabic in the future. But he confessed that he has problems listening when others speak to him in any language. He feels bad for his friends because he has them repeat what they say over and over again and is even more worried about his English listening score on standardized tests. I actually wondered if he has a mild form of an auditory processing disorder. If he did, I know that he would never volunteer to be seen by a doctor to be diagnosed. There's such an undeserved stigma attached to disabilities in Korea that even suggesting this could be insulting to him, but that's another blogpost.

Obviously, I'm going to do what I can to help these students improve their English listening. But I can't fully express how much their permission to listen has meant to me. I'm not shy about approaching my students and asking them questions about their school life and hometown. Some answer my questions much more willingly than others. Other students will come to me to practice their English (or in one case, his Spanish) with sessions that revolve around them asking me questions about life in America. This is great, too, but these students who are willing to confess their struggles with language remind me that my job as the teacher, and as a person, isn't just to speak and teach, but it's also to listen.

I wish I wouldn't have started my classes off with a PostSecret lesson featuring the vocab word "anonymous." I really don't want that word to set the tone for my class. Instead, I hope that my students know that I do know them, I do HEAR them, and I want to keep listening.

P.S. Don't worry too much about the slighted articles; I'm supposed to read them over with my co-teacher so that we can check them together. She doesn't expect me to read them tonight. ^^

"It is an impressive day!"

I taught my host mother the word “impressive” today, and we used it over and over. Even though I haven’t been great at this whole blogging thing, I feel that this is a Saturday I want to remember. There were no big whizzes or bangs, but it was sweet and wholesome and so good.

I decided to tell my narrative with some bullet points because I typed out my day until 4pm to find that it was already two pages. I guess I haven’t outgrown my wordiness yet.

• The day has an inauspicious start at 7:15 with my host mom knocking, panicked, on my door because she thinks I need to get ready for school. I remind her that I don’t go to school on Saturdays. She is apologetic and lets me sleep.
• I wake up 3 hours later, ready to face the remainder of my lazy morning with blog readings and music searchings, occasionally getting up to practice the dance combination I learned in jazz class this week. Then, with the apartment to myself, I do what I normally do on Saturdays at home or at school: blast my music and set to cleaning. Wanting badly to feel something familiar, I wash the dishes while singing along to The Bay City Rollers and hop-scotch to the roar of the vacuum.
• Lunch with mom = kimbab. WIN
• Mom agrees to help me get my bike fixed. The tiny woman then proceeds to nearly single-handedly shove my dirty, rusty, gigantic beach crusier bike into the back of her car. It requires twisting the front wheel entirely around and moving the kick stand in either direction to fit inside the door, but she manages handily. At this point, I teach her the word impressive. To complete this episode, the bike is unloaded by a adjussi (older man) at the bike shop with a voice like Mickey Mouse. He tells me that it would cost about $10 to replace the tire. YES.
• Armed with the word “impressive,” we head to the hipper side of town for the rest of our Mom and daughter date afternoon.
• I meet an English-speaking FILIPINA woman! She is actually an English teacher, and since I am easily identified as a foreigner (“your eyes, nose and skin” she explains), she dives into “Where are you from?” without the ceremony of a “Hello!” Somehow, just talking to this woman who is also a little bit of an “other” from my motherland, even though she married a Korean, makes me feel more at home while simultaneously reminding me of my mother in California and how much she misses me.
• Mom and daughter order drinks and a waffle at the 10th coffeeshop I’ve seen in Gongju so far. The waffle is not the plain but hearty Belgian I imagine, but a banana split on a hot and fluffy piece of carb-loaded heaven. We spend the rest of our coffee date talking about how happy we are to live together while I show her pictures of my Gongju friends on facebook.
• A stroll along the river gives us an opportunity to view the festival happenings and take pictures.
• We journey to the older, more central downtown area to buy gifts for Chuseok and some difficult to find items with my mom's help.
• Off to pick up bike from the shop and host sister from a field trip!
• Dinner at a “chestnut foods” restaurant finds me still full from the waffle and its trimmings, so the blandness of the chestnut gelatin does not bother me.
• Our happy family of mother and daughters traipses around the Gongju fortress. The historical site is decked out with lights and paper sculptures for the festival’s kick-off. The temporary bridge across the river isn’t finished, but we can still see the floating stage with a dozen models of Baekje warriors on horses. Camera battery dies. :(
• Market shopping and people watching the festival market! We wander through one of the many천완 (dollar store) booths and watch some of what my host sister calls “beggar shows.” One troup had an Asian Raggedy Anne vibe to it and featured a chubby young man in a wig and gingham dress that he stripped off to reveal a glittery swimsuit underneath. If this were not enough to gather attention, he kicks one of his shoes off at offending audience members who jump while a discreet elastic brings the slipper safely back to his feet. Other stages house Korean Elvis impersonators (later, he was also in a sequined swimsuit) and a woman in a rainbow gypsy costume. My sister laughs the most at a man in drag as a flamboyant traditional Korean peasant woman who cries for his mother and father. The song ends with his drinking soju and smoking at his parents’ make shift tomb on stage.
• We stop at Baskin Robbins for my first fresh ice cream cone since coming to Korea. While I love Goo Goo cones and milkshakes from CapriSun like containers, this is a cold scoop of home in a cone.
• Now, I’m watching Korean TV with my host sister and doing some long overdue blogging.

Impressive? Probably not. But it feels like enough days like this could make Korea feel like home.

Fish faces at restaurant near the riverfront