It pays to get in a car with strangers!
Parent conferences turned out not to be so bad. Unfortunately, most of the parents of the good students came and not enough parents of the students who need the most help. But the advantage of that is that I didn’t get yelled at for kids having bad grades and if the parents wanted me to focus on one particular thing with their child, I’m now at least aware of it. My students also had to write essays this week. Each class had two different topics they could choose from. I asked them to create a rough draft and email it to me for revision. I didn’t get many, but some were funny, some needed a lot of work and I was glad they were trying ahead of time, and one started talking about stem cell research! Hello! She’s 12! When I mentioned to another class that President Bush was going to be in Korea last week, one student said, “Oh yeah, for APEC.” I nearly fainted! Okay not really, but for a ten year old, that was pretty impressive. While I’m talking about how great students can be, I have to mention that I am impressed with how well they share here, too. It was not uncommon for American students to say “but it’s my last one” or “but I didn’t have breakfast” if someone asked for a piece of their snack. Here, they bring an extra set of chopsticks or whatever, and share with everyone.
I’ve been asked about the earthquake that Japan felt last week. Korea and Japan have water between them, as some of you may know. Japan hardly felt the earthquake this last time, and I didn’t feel the earthquake in Japan the first time I was here, so no, for those of you wondering, I did not feel the last one, either. I think earthquakes are fun anyway—I was in the 7.4 and 7.2 twin earthquakes in California in 1992 and actually had a good time with the whole ordeal. One coat hanger didn’t stop moving the entire week we were there because there were so many aftershocks.
One of my first weekends here, I was trying to hail a cab, but the one who stopped and asked me where I was going drove off in the middle of my request because he couldn’t understand me. A nice gentleman was standing behind me and saw the whole thing happen. He said, “Where are you going?” and I wrote it down for him. He was bringing his friends home, and his house was passed mine, so he said, “If you don’t mind, I wait for my friends, I take you.” Against everything I’ve ever been taught, years of schooling about strangers and talking to them, much less getting in the car with them, I said ok. I sat with my hand on the door handle the entire time. But the friends were polite enough, even opened the door for me. Stone, as the guy’s English name turned out to be, spoke a tiny bit of English. (As it turns out, he owns the Red Mango yogurt store at the corner by my school. For those of you who know me, you know what a HUGE fan of any sort of frozen dessert I am). Nonetheless, after just 5 or so minutes, he pulled up at the nearest corner to my apartment, I said thanks and hopped out, and that was the end of the story. I saw him a few times after that because we live in the same area, just waved and said hello. Well I went to dinner this past week with Brian and Andy. When we were finished, they wanted to drink more, and I wanted Red Mango, so we split. I walked into the yogurt place and who do I see but Stone! He gave me free yogurt (pretty exciting) and then I sat with him to chat. He told me that he needs an English tutor for he, his wife, and his children. They can read and write, but they need the most help with conversational English. Get PAID to talk? Are you kidding? That and keeping in touch with people are probably my two favorite pastimes. What a DEAL! He said he wants a few hours twice a week and would pay me above the average. I told my dad that it, quite literally, pays to get in the car with strangers.
This past weekend I met my third “friend-of-a-friend” here (a fourth is in the works in the next couple of weeks). My buddy Tom works Dallas, went to LSU, but is from Baltimore, and so is his Korean friend Gus. Gus moved to Maryland when he was in fourth grade, not knowing so much as the alphabet (his cousin gave him a shirt in 5th grade that he wore to school, not knowing what it said, that read, “Itty Bitty Titty Committee.”). Now, Koreans tell him they envy how well he speaks English. We went to check out the largest palace in the city, and it was pretty cool. They weren’t really elaborate as far as gold and trinkets go, like Versailles or whatever other homes of royalty you may have seen. Their paint jobs, on the other hand, were incredibly pretty. Their furniture was nice, but not extremely elaborate.
They just had a lot of separate buildings with different functions, and what is certainly a hot commodity in this city, a lot of space. There were two museums on the grounds, but we only went into one. The translations into English were pretty good! After Gus and I finished the museum (pictures coming soon!), he wanted to take me to a bookstore. Turns out, it was the same one I’d been to before, but I got a couple of books that they had in stock that have been recommended to me recently. When I ship things home, I’m going to need a box just for books! I needed to finish my Christmas shopping, so we went to Insa-Dong next, which is the part of town best known for traditional Korean arts. We saw a comedy show (didn’t look that funny, but what does this English-speaker know!) and just some neat little shops I hadn’t noticed the first time I went there. Then we headed over to meet Amy at Seoul Station because I’d heard that there’s a massage place for $25. It’s a sauna (or as they say here, sow-nah). What they mean by “sauna” is not what you may think of as just a room where you can sweat your brains out, sitting in a towel, then take a shower and go home. It’s a public bath. $7 to get in for steam rooms, oxygen rooms, and all that type of jazz. For such a conservative culture, it’s pretty ironic that all of these people have no qualms about running around in the buff in front of complete strangers. Women of all ages, shapes, sizes, and degrees of personal grooming were completely stripped, talking to each other, running around as if they didn’t even notice their naked-as-a-jaybird neighbor. This part of the sauna is homogenous. The men, too, have their half of the sauna for parading around exposed, a sight I’m not sorry I missed. There’s a restaurant on the top floor in the heated room where people sat around (coed and clothed at this point) talking, reading, and other activities they consider relaxing. Also on that floor, Amy and I both opted to get the “sports massage” that they told us would last about 30 minutes, and Gus went for the steam bath on another floor. Our massage really lasted about 50 minutes, but not without a violent cracking of my neck. When it was over, my masseuse told me that he tried to give me a chiropractic massage and my spine is aligned incorrectly, so I should either go to a chiropractor or do yoga. He said I would be sore for 2-3 days. Yowsa! Still though, a grand total of $32 for nearly an hour massage—can’t beat it! After releasing our tensions, we all had a hearty Italian dinner (Amy and I have an understanding, and that’s that we don’t eat Korean food on our weekend outings together) and then went our separate ways to head home.
For the fourth straight week in a row, we are pretty busy with school-related activities, in addition to the normal teaching. This week, I am training to teach the appropriately named Bridge English. It’s a course for our more advanced students who have progressed in their Memory English, but not enough for an “Interactive” class just yet that teaches English as a second language (ESL) rather than as a foreign language (EFL). It is a “bridge” to the next level. I wake up at 6am, get my books and notes together, eat, dress, make myself appear awake, meet Andy at 6:45 and walk to the subway together. It takes about an hour and a half to get to the training center by train (if I had a scooter, it would be no longer than 40). We train from 9a-2p with a 40min lunch break. We head back to school, prep our lessons, then teach til 10p, getting home around 11. So we invest about 15 hours of our day to school, and we only get paid for 6. That’s okay though, we got a free lunch! And we only have to do this for three days. We took our first test today, and the entire class of 9 trainees passed. The training the first two weeks we got here and had several days to study had between a 20 and 30 percent attrition rate, so today’s results are good.
Copyright 2005 Olivia R. Reed
I’ve been asked about the earthquake that Japan felt last week. Korea and Japan have water between them, as some of you may know. Japan hardly felt the earthquake this last time, and I didn’t feel the earthquake in Japan the first time I was here, so no, for those of you wondering, I did not feel the last one, either. I think earthquakes are fun anyway—I was in the 7.4 and 7.2 twin earthquakes in California in 1992 and actually had a good time with the whole ordeal. One coat hanger didn’t stop moving the entire week we were there because there were so many aftershocks.
One of my first weekends here, I was trying to hail a cab, but the one who stopped and asked me where I was going drove off in the middle of my request because he couldn’t understand me. A nice gentleman was standing behind me and saw the whole thing happen. He said, “Where are you going?” and I wrote it down for him. He was bringing his friends home, and his house was passed mine, so he said, “If you don’t mind, I wait for my friends, I take you.” Against everything I’ve ever been taught, years of schooling about strangers and talking to them, much less getting in the car with them, I said ok. I sat with my hand on the door handle the entire time. But the friends were polite enough, even opened the door for me. Stone, as the guy’s English name turned out to be, spoke a tiny bit of English. (As it turns out, he owns the Red Mango yogurt store at the corner by my school. For those of you who know me, you know what a HUGE fan of any sort of frozen dessert I am). Nonetheless, after just 5 or so minutes, he pulled up at the nearest corner to my apartment, I said thanks and hopped out, and that was the end of the story. I saw him a few times after that because we live in the same area, just waved and said hello. Well I went to dinner this past week with Brian and Andy. When we were finished, they wanted to drink more, and I wanted Red Mango, so we split. I walked into the yogurt place and who do I see but Stone! He gave me free yogurt (pretty exciting) and then I sat with him to chat. He told me that he needs an English tutor for he, his wife, and his children. They can read and write, but they need the most help with conversational English. Get PAID to talk? Are you kidding? That and keeping in touch with people are probably my two favorite pastimes. What a DEAL! He said he wants a few hours twice a week and would pay me above the average. I told my dad that it, quite literally, pays to get in the car with strangers.
This past weekend I met my third “friend-of-a-friend” here (a fourth is in the works in the next couple of weeks). My buddy Tom works Dallas, went to LSU, but is from Baltimore, and so is his Korean friend Gus. Gus moved to Maryland when he was in fourth grade, not knowing so much as the alphabet (his cousin gave him a shirt in 5th grade that he wore to school, not knowing what it said, that read, “Itty Bitty Titty Committee.”). Now, Koreans tell him they envy how well he speaks English. We went to check out the largest palace in the city, and it was pretty cool. They weren’t really elaborate as far as gold and trinkets go, like Versailles or whatever other homes of royalty you may have seen. Their paint jobs, on the other hand, were incredibly pretty. Their furniture was nice, but not extremely elaborate.
They just had a lot of separate buildings with different functions, and what is certainly a hot commodity in this city, a lot of space. There were two museums on the grounds, but we only went into one. The translations into English were pretty good! After Gus and I finished the museum (pictures coming soon!), he wanted to take me to a bookstore. Turns out, it was the same one I’d been to before, but I got a couple of books that they had in stock that have been recommended to me recently. When I ship things home, I’m going to need a box just for books! I needed to finish my Christmas shopping, so we went to Insa-Dong next, which is the part of town best known for traditional Korean arts. We saw a comedy show (didn’t look that funny, but what does this English-speaker know!) and just some neat little shops I hadn’t noticed the first time I went there. Then we headed over to meet Amy at Seoul Station because I’d heard that there’s a massage place for $25. It’s a sauna (or as they say here, sow-nah). What they mean by “sauna” is not what you may think of as just a room where you can sweat your brains out, sitting in a towel, then take a shower and go home. It’s a public bath. $7 to get in for steam rooms, oxygen rooms, and all that type of jazz. For such a conservative culture, it’s pretty ironic that all of these people have no qualms about running around in the buff in front of complete strangers. Women of all ages, shapes, sizes, and degrees of personal grooming were completely stripped, talking to each other, running around as if they didn’t even notice their naked-as-a-jaybird neighbor. This part of the sauna is homogenous. The men, too, have their half of the sauna for parading around exposed, a sight I’m not sorry I missed. There’s a restaurant on the top floor in the heated room where people sat around (coed and clothed at this point) talking, reading, and other activities they consider relaxing. Also on that floor, Amy and I both opted to get the “sports massage” that they told us would last about 30 minutes, and Gus went for the steam bath on another floor. Our massage really lasted about 50 minutes, but not without a violent cracking of my neck. When it was over, my masseuse told me that he tried to give me a chiropractic massage and my spine is aligned incorrectly, so I should either go to a chiropractor or do yoga. He said I would be sore for 2-3 days. Yowsa! Still though, a grand total of $32 for nearly an hour massage—can’t beat it! After releasing our tensions, we all had a hearty Italian dinner (Amy and I have an understanding, and that’s that we don’t eat Korean food on our weekend outings together) and then went our separate ways to head home.For the fourth straight week in a row, we are pretty busy with school-related activities, in addition to the normal teaching. This week, I am training to teach the appropriately named Bridge English. It’s a course for our more advanced students who have progressed in their Memory English, but not enough for an “Interactive” class just yet that teaches English as a second language (ESL) rather than as a foreign language (EFL). It is a “bridge” to the next level. I wake up at 6am, get my books and notes together, eat, dress, make myself appear awake, meet Andy at 6:45 and walk to the subway together. It takes about an hour and a half to get to the training center by train (if I had a scooter, it would be no longer than 40). We train from 9a-2p with a 40min lunch break. We head back to school, prep our lessons, then teach til 10p, getting home around 11. So we invest about 15 hours of our day to school, and we only get paid for 6. That’s okay though, we got a free lunch! And we only have to do this for three days. We took our first test today, and the entire class of 9 trainees passed. The training the first two weeks we got here and had several days to study had between a 20 and 30 percent attrition rate, so today’s results are good.
Copyright 2005 Olivia R. Reed
posted by LSULiv | 3:41 PM
2 Comments:
Getting paid to talk and free frozen yogurt... You have a Dream job!
Love you,
Dad
Did you ask Gus if you could borrow his shirt?
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