Part of Your World (Part I)

Hello, dear readers! I do apologize for the lack of posts. In fact, I have quite a few nearly finished, but I lose track of things and the weeks are long and full of hyper children, and such excuses. Thus I bring you a post with a bit of heft to it! With some actual information about what I do and what my life is like. Fun! I am settled in and watching The Little Mermaid, so let the merriment commence!

I'd wager this is a lot less pleasant than she's making it look. 

I work at a private academy known as a hagwon. There is really no Western equivalent of a hagwon - essentially, it's a small, specialized school that parents pay for their children to go to in addition to regular school. There are hagwon for all different kinds of things, from science to music to art. I think there may even be cooking hagwon. This school I teach at only provides English education, though our kindergarten service (from ages 3-5) is a legitimate kindergarten, with crafts and science and games and math.

I am one of seven native English speakers at my school - four men, three ladies. (Interestingly enough, that's an unusually high male percentage for one school!) We sign year-long contracts and typically stay just one, but people have been known to extend, or just find another school and get another experience. Working for a private school is more work and longer hours than public school, but you get to know your students better, and the quality of English spoken by the kids is much, much higher on average. I also tend to need a lot more structure in my life as a rule, so I made my choice thus. :)

My school is great. Along with the native speakers, there are Korean English teachers as well. Unlike many schools, where you have one co-teacher for all your classes, I have a different Korean co-teacher for every one of my classes. So I get to experience a bunch of different approaches to teaching at once! Baller.

Treasure beyond measure.

Children here are unusually susceptible to emotional control via stickers. I'm not even kidding. Bad grades, candy, calling parents, speaking privileges, general advancement: all okay ways to motivate. But throw stickers into the mix and MY STUDENTS HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO WEEP OVER THE REPERCUSSIONS. O_o I mean, I won't pretend it's not convenient, but this lasts into middle school! Maybe even high school! Stickers!

And the parents are hilarious, because more often than not, if they can afford to send their children to a private English academy, they are very emotionally invested in how the kid fares. Like, that "Tiger Mom" thing? It's legit. Sometimes I get a little nervous around the parents, I'll be honest. But! Most of them are just happy you're there to help, and a few are really excited to meet you. Of course I have already gotten myself in awkward social interactions because of this.

...but how is it my fault when someone comes up to me and says, "Hello! I am Jane's mother!" and I respond, "Oh, nice to meet you! I'm Victoria-teacher!" And they give me a surprised look and say, "...오, 영어 안합니다." And then my co-teachers laugh at me. Well, maybe you shouldn't come on so strong with the English if you only know the one sentence. :(

I am the queen of not knowing what's going on, though, so it's all par for the course. I don't know if y'all are aware of this, but South Korea is, like, on the other side of the world! With all these different cultural norms and expectations! I was provided with a good deal of warnings and suggestions before I came, but let's face it, you have to experience this kind of thing firsthand.

Won't stop me from trying to share it with all of you, though.

So, in America, tattoos are still seen as somewhat edgy and contentious, but social discourse about it is normal. An ever-growing generous percentage of young people consider or have some ink. It perfectly acceptable to ask someone about their tattoo. It is pretty rude, but perfectly common, to voice your opinion about it, even if it's negative. Everyone with a visible tattoo has heard a little something from someone they don't really know. "I don't like tattoos." "Why would you do that to your body?" "You know that's forever, right?" "What will you look like when you're old?" But the point is that American ink is not just for sailors, bikers, and prison anymore! While many people are surprised by my own (humble) ink, and a few are rude, most people are just polite and curious. People get it.

In South Korea, tattoos are kiiiind of linked to the mafia. Not even joking. Someone Korean who is openly sporting a lot of tats is, uh, questionable. And while no one thinks I'm in the mafia, I still tend to cover up my tattoos. While it wouldn't cost me my job or any friendships, there's a good chance some parents would think it was really unprofessional, and it would ABSOLUTELY be a distraction in class. So I always dress to casually cover them up. I do wear shorts sometimes when I go out, and when people notice my leg tattoo, they have mixed (but always surprised) reactions. Mostly middle-aged men seem to do the disapproving, while old people seem to think everything about my blundering un-Koreanness is endearing.

At this point, I should mention that I am no stranger to being stared at. It happens. I don't exactly answer to your typical expectations of womanhood, in Korea or anywhere else, and I embraced that noise by the time I was twelve. But as you can imagine, it is a lot more intense over here in East Asia, where I'm taller than most men, curvy, inked, and a little sassy.

The best reaction-to-me story happened on the subway a few weeks ago. I stood up to leave and there was this audible gasp from about half of this subway car (because, you guessed it, I'm a lot taller than they were expecting). If that wasn't awkward enough, I then hear an old man's voice right behind me go, "EeeeEEEHH!" I turn and there is this little weathered man gesturing to my leg tattoo and speaking rapid fire Korean. I couldn't really tell if he was angry or curious or joking or what because...well, I have the same problem with the elderly everywhere. But there was this long pause where everyone in the car stared at me expectantly. So in Korean, I just went, "...I'm sorry?" And the ENTIRE CAR BURST OUT LAUGHING, including the old man. There was even some clapping, and these two punk teenagers threw me some thumbs up. And I got off the train.

Well, I had more to say, but this is getting unwieldy. Stories about cultural differences? They're endless. I suppose I shall just have to have continuations of this post. They could all be The Little Mermaid-themed! After all, I do feel a bit like someone tossed me a pair of legs and pushed me onshore and told me to adapt. I haven't brushed my hair with a fork yet, but then again, they prefer chopsticks here.

See you later, blogfans and Toriaphiles!

These used to be merpeople. Gyuh, Disney.

P.S. Ursula is freaking me out a lot more than she did when I was a kid. All those shriveled up souls she keeps around, moaning and staring piteously at her? Duuuuuude. :[

The Darndest Things

On my first day, when I was just sitting in and watching my coworkers do their thing, one of the children in the youngest class (they would correspond to our three-year-olds, but age is determined differently in Korea) was crawling around on the floor.

"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm a snake."
"A snake?"
"And a cat. Hhhssshshrrrow."

And then I died from impossible levels of cuteness.

Teaching here often feels like an onslaught of lovable energy, born of frank curiosity and the combination of politeness and affection that you just don't find in American schoolchildren (speaking as a former American schoolchild myself). In the States, for various reasons it's often seen as inappropriate to be overly familiar with your students: to hug them, to tell them your care for them, to ruffle their hair. In South Korea - especially with the kindergartners - you are encouraged to do so. And trust me, it's easy to do here. Because they are precious.

I was forewarned about this, but it is still heartily amusing to me how the students think all of the white teachers look the SAME SAME SAME. I teach in a school with six other native English speakers (6 Americans and 1 Englishman), and I feel I should point out that I bear resemblance to none of them. Still, my students are convinced that one particular coworker and I have the same hair. And we don't at all. I have thick, fluffy rusty-blonde hair, and she has long, shiny brown hair. When we point this out, the younger children just laugh and say things like, "But your hair isn't black, teachers!" And you can't really argue with that.

On a related note, a student stopped me in the hallway with some revelations on my second day at the school.

"Teacher! I have to tell you something important!"
"Oh? What is it?" I asked, expecting some secret or a misdeed on the part of one of her peers.
"Your eyes are almost blue and your hair is a sunset!"

These are important things.

Actually, just last week an entire class of mine started yelling at once because I bent down to do something, and they realized that my hair was not brown, but "gold". This was a ten-minute interruption of children yelling, "Gold! Gold hair!" and "I want your hair, give it to meeeee!" I brought it up again yesterday, asking why this had been such a big deal. In the words of one student, "You get a lot of money with this hair." I am not even kidding. Basically, because a lot of celebrities dye their hair lighter colors, my eight-year-olds were convinced that this is how you make serious money.

No one had informed me, but I'll let you all know once the cash starts flowing in.

No matter how tired, grumpy, achey, or homesick I am, I go to work every day with a bounce in my step, knowing that these kids will be waiting for me to get there, will beam when I walk through the door, will share their candy and stories and more quotes worth hearing and joking about. This is a very blessed life I live.

And just because a quote post wouldn't be complete with the subject that comes up about once an hour, every day of my life here:
"Teacher, you are so tall. You are tall like my house."

<3