Korea
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
college graduate's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 | | 1:08 pm |
Togo to go
10 million people took to Korea's streets last night to watch the match against Togo. This year marks Togo's first year at the World Cup. When I show my students where Togo is by chalking in its slim shape on the world map painted onto my classroom chalkboard, they all ooh and aww about how small it is. "Smaller than Korea!" they say, rather enthusiastically. When I ask them what they know about Togo, they say not much, "dark skin," "poor," "tall," and "ugly." I ask them what people in Togo are called, and they say "African." "Yes, as you are Asians. But you are also Koreans." When I asked one class what language Togolese people speak, I got "African" in response. "Yes, and you speak Asian fluently." Then I show them a BBC article about how all schoolgirls must shave their heads. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4311308.stm Together, we brainstorm the pros and cons of this law. Then, they comment on how the 'after' picture looks much better than the 'before.' The stadium in Franfurt was almost entirely red, entirely Korean, VISAs from Togo to Germany being too difficult to get and flight tickets too expensive. Togo. I may have been wearing red light up devil horns, just one of many in a sea of coordinated clapping, but I felt for Togo. They were just happy to be there. | | Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 | | 8:19 am |
The Red Devils
Last night Korea cheered for Australia as the team faced Japan in the World Cup. I was washing my face when I heard the muffled yelps from my host mother pounding the arm of the couch as Japan scored the first goal. Around 10:45pm, my host dad came home from school. He questioned his wife for supporting Australia, maintaining that we should back our neighboring country. In reference to Korea's tangible distaste for all things Japan, he remarked, "Colonialization happened in the past. We need to let bygones be bygones." At which point his wife attacked him with the remote control. However, he kept accidentally substituting "America" for "Japan" and "Americans" for "Japanese." For example, "Most Koreans don't like America because of what happened in the past," or "Most Americans don't care about the history between the two countries." I didn't correct him. The sun is out and this morning the teacher's office is teaming with chatter about tonight's game. There's lots of talk about "ouri nara" ("our country") in comparaison with the clipped Korean pronunciation of places like Scotland, Togo, Brazil, Ireland... Tonight, while Korea faces Togo in Germany, all of Korea will watch across the time difference. Starting at 4pm, roads will be blocked for outdoor screenings of the 10pm game. My host family will watch the match in a local cinema. I'll be at the University by our apartment. And of course, to borrow more of my host dad's words, "If we're not wearing red, what will people think of us?" | | Monday, June 12th, 2006 | | 1:39 pm |
just LOOK at this!
Friday afternoon I left school straight after my classes for the day ended at 12:40. That's right. 12:40. I took the bus to Gwangju's Biennale City Art Museum for the opening of the 19th city wide juried art show. Through four sprawling galleries as big and spacious as warehouse lofts, I found my work in a room of other sheaves of calligraphy. I wandered back downstairs where I met my teacher and the other students from my academy at the awards ceremony. 8Ball showed up with more glitter dusted roses, and together we browsed through the galleries, all of us following the teacher like ducks in a line. "Look at this, just LOOK at this!" he would occasionally say, stop, and point. The second floor gallery is filled entirely with calligraphy much taller than eye level. 'Time' is all I can think of, walking into this space. How much time this all took. I imagine all of the artists sitting over their works, all of the time. I had a pleasant chitchat with one of the ajumas from the academy about why these days my skin is breaking out (a chance to learn some new vocabulary). Then she gave me the catalogue of the show's works, a present. Mine's on page 240. 8Ball and I spent the second half of the afternoon drinking German draft beer next to a driving range at which point I decided to spend my kids' final exam time in Beijing. In a land of beer akin to sparkling water, this was such a Friday afternoon treat. Despite the gangsta-sounding nickname, 8ball is in fact ridiculously intelligent. When he's not finishing his thesis this week, he'll be busy translating German news regarding the world cup for a Korean broadcasting company. Next weekend he'll translate English into Korean at the Summit for Nobel Peace Prize Winners when they visit Gwangju on Saturday. And of course also watching the big Korea/Togo game with me tomorrow. I met Lisette for a dinner of canned corn pizza. Luxury. She came into town to take the GREs and we did it all. We saw "You are my sunshine" in a DVDbang. I can't recommend this movie enough. It's Korean. It made me want to stay in this country and settle down with a nice farmer. We picniced in the park. We even had dinner with a guy she had met on a flight from Beijing to Seoul, fake Louis Vuitton briefcase and all. Will my habit of willingly getting into strangers' cars or accepting gifts from strangers end with my flight out of this country? This morning I told my host dad over fried eggs and toast that I had strange dreams about America. "The sun was shining in America 15 hours ago," he said. "While you were sleeping." | | 10:59 am |
We're all family (as excerpted from a recent email to Mara, my medical school sister)
Maybe this will be interesting from a doctor's point of view: it's common and accepted behavior for Koreans to ask young boys, like ages 2,3,4 to see their "peppers." It's a cultural thing apparently. I really had to conatin myself last night at yoga. We were sitting around drinking tea when these two little kids popped into the tea room yielding waternelon slice shapped popsicles. My two favorite instructors, who happen to be brothers, were charged with looking after the peanuts while the mom was in class. The six year old (five years old American age) told me all of the English words he knows while his little bro (three years old American age) lightly punched him in the face. Apple! punch. Then the yoga instructor who I love like a brother asked the kid to show him his pepper. They all laughed with the realization that this would be classified as pedaphilia in the states. Kangaroo! punch. Even though the yogi positioned a tea cup on the low table and gestured towards it as if the kid should pee into it, the kid was reluctant and the pepper was not shown. Banana! punch, punch. I'm told by other ETAs who live with young boys that this is extremely common. May this be a lesson for you in case you ever serve a predominately Korean clientel. | | Monday, June 5th, 2006 | | 1:07 pm |
It all comes out on TV
Yesterday I came home from a day trip to Mokpo and found the whole family busily making tofu for elementary school science homework. My host dad explained that his aunt used to make a lot of tofu, especially in the winter. Ironic, that now it's made as an elementary school science project. Then we sat down to watch "Six Days and Seven Nights" while my host sisters went to bed and my host mother sat on the floor ironing a stack of summer shirts riddled with folds after their winter in the closet. The rather second rate movie was playing on tv and I had the vague sensation that I was just killing time, waiting for something while watching. It ends with Anne Heche's character ditching her fiancee in favor of staying on a Hawaiian island with Harrison Ford's character, a guy she's known for less than a week. As Heche and Ford embraced, my host father commented on what a strange and not normal ending it all was, "She did not think of her life 30 years in the future." I told him I thought it was ok and that she'd be happy on the island. Host mother laughed and took the loosened shirts back into the bedroom. The movie was followed with the last preliminary game before the world cup. The match was between Korea and Ghana. The Koreans cheered and banged their cymbals, shouting "deh han min gook! (korea!)" right through Ghana's national anthem. My host father commented that "These days, Koreans are getting more and more rude." Ghana won, 3 to 1. Mokpo was great. I met Rachel for a bike ride on some reclaimed land. We ate delicious raw fish, Japanese name "sashimi," Korean name "hwui." We went shopping and ate patbingsu. I already miss the red beans. | | Thursday, June 1st, 2006 | | 1:52 pm |
Thoughts on being in love with a place, part I of many to come.
At Kenyon I remember thinking that spring has the effect of making you capable of falling in love with inanimate objects, the world is just that beautiful. Well, it's summer in Gwangju and I couldn't be swoonier. This past weekend I took a bus ride to Boseong, the green tea capital of Korea, with two of my favorite weekend travel companions, Ben and Sarah. Rachel met us later and we ran into two other ETAs, putting a sixth of the ETA community in the vacinity of Boseong by happen chance. I forget this land is the size of Indiana sometimes. We saw rows and rows and rows of low lying green bushes neatly arranged, making the hillsides look like they'd been straightened with a widetoothed comb. Then we took a cab to the tiny beach town of Yulpo where we booked a room in a nice hotel with a clean floor and lots of futons, lounged in green tea baths, ate green tea fed pork, shot off fireworks, sat on the beach, drank red wine from dixie cups, and bought tea sets. I couldn't have felt more clean. Yesterday was election day, so I had no school. Korea gives the day to it's civil servants as a holiday. I met 8ball for a movie and he met me with roses. Red with water drops still on them and pefectly packaged Korean style in a rather large netted and ribboned bouquet. I carried them through the streets downtown, to the movie, to dinner of pizza topped with an unfortunate mayonnaisey salad. I couldn't have felt more Korean or more stared at. Today I have no class because it's a nationwide practice test for the high school SAT. While my kids sat hunched over the desks, I met an English discussion group at Chosun University. This group of about 10 students get together everyday at 8 in the morning to speak English. Everyday, someone new gives a presentation and then they all break down into discussion groups. Some are majoring in English or Education. Others in Mechanical Engineering, Art, or Art History. We walked through the rose garden for a photo shoot. The rose garden, I learned, annually costs the University 100million won to maintain. A group of special needs elementary kids and an ROTC class co-opted us for photo shoots of their own. We saw the library, where WooSeon maintained a lot of studying is done and JeongSik more than implied guys only go to chat with women. DongJin, the art major, then offered to show us around the art building. In front of a large splattered canvas of flattened cardboard boxes, he explained how this work represents how he feels about Korea. "So you don't like Korea, then?" YoonYeong asked. "I don't think I'm Korean, but a person on this earth," he replied. Then, in and out of mostly painting studios, we saw students sleeping in cots, on tables, and a few painting. These kids and their self-structured language club have something like the Korean equivalent of the show "Friends," which they inevitably watch to practice English. They get together to practice English (with which they're all basically fluent), but really because they just like each other a lot. We ate rice, we drank coffee, and took pictures of each other all morning. I couldn't have felt more at home. | | Thursday, May 25th, 2006 | | 8:49 am |
fish cutlets
"I feel like a foreigner when I'm with him," 8ball said as he waved his chopstick at SangHeop. "I'm just some guy who can speak Korean." 8Ball's Korean and fresh out of his military service and amazingly fluent in English. On SangHeop's suggestion, we were eating at a fusion restaurant called 'Daisy,' somewhere on the edges of east Gwangju. SangHeop, a middle aged regular at the weekly American Corner discussions is possibly one of the most informed people I've ever known. I think he consumes the media. He also knows seemingly everything about Gwangju--where to go, what festival's on, where to park, and always what to eat. I'm usually uneasy about the idea of fusion food in Korea because of it's mayonnaise content (do most Americans like mayonnaise?). Not so at Daisy. We ate the special: small pieces of fish cutlet wrapped up in either a thin sheaf of white radish or a transparent piece of wheat pancake with sesame sauce and sprouts and shredded cabbage and green onions, all do it yourself style. Every huge bite is your own little creation. All of this course, followed by rice with caviar and shredded, salted seaweed. It was one of the best dining experiences in Korea. Then we drove to Choson University to wander around the rose festival, beautifully illuminated at night by lights hidden deep in rose clusters, making it so the flowers seemed to glow. The affair was all flash bulbs and posing. I just read "Kitchen," by Japanese contemporary writer Banana Yoshimoto. This woman writes food so well. A pork cutlet saves the day and the love interest of the novella's protagonist. It's true that most books are successful because there's a grand meal in the first or second chapter. The reader gets closer to the characters when seeing what they eat. "Kitchen"'s protagonist feels most at home, most safe, most happy, in kitchens. The story was loaded with beautiful Japanese food. Living in Korea has made me so much more appreciative of "the meal." Buddhist monks eat silently. They also eat everything in their bowls, slosh them around with water, and then drink the water and remaining scraps. Everything is appreciated. The old class of intellectuals in Korea, the Yangban, also took meals without talking. They thought of their dignity at all times. Today, the more audibly and vigorously you chew, even if just feigning the crunch with something as tragically not crunchy as rice, the more you let everyone around you know how much you're enjoying the meal. I'm reminded of the time Mr. Kim called me from Texas to ask if I had eaten breakfast. | | Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | | 8:00 am |
Democracy
Today my principal was awarded with a "best teacher award," one of ten given out by a national newspaper. His prize is a week long trip to Australia. The man is all smile and big red cheeks. This will have been the first full week of teaching I've had in at least the past month. What with sports day, Buddha's birthday, childrens day, teachers day, midterm exams... there hasn't been much time for lesson continuity. Next week's Wednesday is a public Holiday for election day, warranting another day off from school. Campaigning is in full swing. I went hiking last Saturday and was given multicolor business cards by a candidate and a team of supporters along the way. Went out to a delicious sashimi dinner with the first grade teachers after sports day last week, and another candidate circulated to every table, shaking hands while her immaculately dressed partner handed out her name card with both hands. Mrs. Yoon is glad her principal decided not to run for Public Assembly because if he had, all of the teachers at his kindergarden would have to dance on the street under a banner and display with his name on it, early morning and late at night. Korea knows it's public relations. | | Sunday, May 21st, 2006 | | 10:00 pm |
The Gwangju KIA Tigers
Korean baseball. Today, after a lunch with Liz and her newly wed co-teacher and her husband, we met Rachel at the Gwangju stadium to watch the show down between the KIA Tigers and the LG Twins. The whole affair was rather slapdash. The stadium looked minor league and there was essentially no ticket checking. However, the fans were fans--loving their picnics of fried chicken, buttered squid and beer, occasionally watching the field, but mostly just banging long balloons together in unison as coreographed noisemakers. Over the scoreboard, the American Flag flew with the Korean. We were stopped by a weirdly waiting posse of four Korean guys for photos as we snuck out before the game stretched into overtime. I really enjoyed lunch with the newly married couple, especially after reading the fabulous Japanese fiction I've been reading lately about young Asian couples falling in and out of love (particularly Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" and Banana Yoshimoto's "Kitchen"). Today is "couple day" in Korea, according to a friend from yoga. So this couple: he's 30, she's 26. He works in Seoul during the week, she works in Yeosu. On the weekends they reconviene at their brand new apartment in Gwangju. Seoul is a four hour commute by train from Gwangju, so he stays in a dormitory during the week. Yeosu is a two hour bus ride from Gwangju, so she stays at a one room apartment during the week. They just got married in February. Wow. In Korea, public school teachers rotate to another school in the province every four years. She's taking a test so she'll be able to teach in Gwangju. While Gwangju's the capital of the province, it's a separate educational district. With our rice we ate banana salad. | | Saturday, May 20th, 2006 | | 11:16 am |
Last night was a sing along accompanied by harmonica
What a great culture to commit songs to heart and then to share them at any and all appropriate times! Springtime in Korea is by far the best. Last Wednesday after my usual two hour chat with the American Corner Discussion Group, I went straight to calligraphy, drinking a carton of milk on the way. I called the host fam to tell them I wouldn't be home for dinner and readied myself for two hours of writing. I've been working towards having two pieces ready to hang in Gwangju's Art Exhibition and my teacher was less that pleased that I missed a week. He asked me why I didn't come and in perfectly elementary Korean, I told him I was in Japan. I see, he said. So, I put in my two hours and walked down the street to do some eye shopping before yoga. I ran into a friend who's working as a Chinese teacher in a local hagwon. As we're chatting, my host mother calls. She wants to know where I am, she just went to my calligraphy studio and my teacher said I left five minutes ago. And then there she is on the street with the kids (both wearing hankerchiefs around their necks because they're sick), and a pink bundle in tow. Concerned that I hadn't eaten dinner, she had made some pah jeon (green onion pancake) and sliced up some watermelon to deliver to the calligraphy studio. Enough to feed a party of ten, I took it all to yoga where it was consumed with vigor and gren tea. The culture of doing nice things for people . . . | | Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 | | 2:39 pm |
Japan - cultural generalizations part I
1. people are polite. they appologize when bumping into eachother and for other daily inconveniences. 2. the old and unique is embraced. classy well worn leather shoes, for example. none of korea's love for cheap new pastel articles, brand new with promintently displayed brands. i was once at an antique/art street in gwangju only to see that the other browsers were elderly Korean men. clearly this is all tied to korea's murky history and a desire to cling to everything new as both status and not a reminder of the past. (this is going to be a killer essay.) 3. foreigners are not limited to guest workers, english teachers, military, prostitutes, traders, missionaries. in fact, they're pretty damn classy, stylish and international. this goes for western influence as well. japan does not love america and elevate americans to minor dieties. this is nice. 4. you can sit alone in a coffeeshop and not be weird. same goes for noodlebars and diners. in fact, many others in such establishements do the same thing. not the case in korea. 5. individual style. this dovetails off point two, the old and unique are embraced. for example, men in modish business suits with wacky waxed hair. school girls with dyed hair and fake tans. mix and match everything. 6. the omnipresence of bicycles, most of which with large baskets. 7. items like grapefruit and gingerale are in most corner stores, not the case in korea. 8. beer and sake in vending machines. You know you're back in Korea when an elderly woman next to you on the bus silently pushes sweets in your face. You also know you're in Korea when the immigration line is inundated with a flock of elderly white men in KOREAN VETERAN hats with their wives and plastic passport cases. I flew in yesterday and am back at school this morning. Travelling in Japan was the healthiest I have felt in a long time. No red pepper paste. Stylishly messy clothing. People not caring that you're a foreigner. This afternoon Mrs. Kim thought maybe I caught a cold in Japan because Japan is colder than Korea. Well thought-out, but no cold. Truthfully, she did hear me cough in the hallway. Back to life in the land of a thousand mothers. Japan was whirlwind. We met college kids out for a night of bowling and haircut comparing in Gion, absent-minded women who lost the way to the noh theater festival in Nara, a chatty sushi masterpeice maker with a curiosity for American geography in Kyoto, a pair of Thai/Japanese bartenders enthusiastic for karaoke duets with the foreigners, short shorts wearing elementary school kids with "we are learning to talk to strangers" interview papers for foreigners to fill out... I was busy feeding a stray deer a specially purchased deer biscuit when the kids approached us. Then the deer ate half of the kid's homework. Then one Sunday morning we woke up in Tokyo with no cash. It was precisely the walk until your legs can't walk any farther kind of trip I'd been looking for. | | Friday, May 5th, 2006 | | 4:13 pm |
Children's Day
Today is both Children's Day and Buddha's Birthday, two national holidays that happen to fall on the same day this year. Did I spend the day in temple or did I spend the day in hordes of pastel families and photo ops? Of course, the latter. Children's Day is a day for fite flying, picnic eating, balloons, and a giving in to every indulgence. ShiHyeon and EunJi got money and fried chicken rom their Uncle, money from their Grandmom, and a trip to a butterfly festival from their parents. At seven this morning, we all piled into the car and drove about an hour out of the city to HamPyeong, Mr. Kim's birthplace and home to an annual Butterfly Festival of epic proportions. A pair of forty year old parents, a set of under ten kids, and me. In the entrance to the small aquarium tent, there was a rather recently dead shark. We poked him as we walked by to see the still swimming animals. I soon became fascinated by picking out the sparce foreigners in the crowd. Mostly Southeast Asian or Russian "Guest Workers." Everyday on the drive to school I see posters advertising Vietnemese wives for single Korean farmers. After thirty years of military regime, South Korea's now in an economic place of hired migrant labor. Most Koreans, so preoccupied with the importance of education and the conveniences of the flowering middle class, would rather not actively choose dirty, dangerous, or deadly jobs ("the three Ds," as my students tell me). The festival was packed to the limits with picnicing families. Mr. Kim always enjoys pointing out families eating together on the grass with a comment along the lines of "they are enjoying a picnic together!" There's something so beautifully controlled about the Korean picnic. There's an appropriate time to begin eating and a time to stop. Life's been moving too fast recently. I've been getting five or six hours of sleep a night for no other reason than my being thoroughly Koreanized. I've been out singing and drinking with my American Corner discussion group, a hodge podge of various ages from war vets and retired teachers to college students. I've been staying later and later at yoga. Last night UnJu read my fortune on her CyWorld account (the Korean "myspace," but with more animation, cartoons, and overall cuteness). JiAe translated. This Sunday we have a date to go downtown and have our futures interperreted by a tarrot card reader. | | Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 | | 6:52 pm |
Is this really the same place?
I'm 260 US dollars deep into a commitment with my calligraphy academy. Gwangju, the self-proclaimed artistic and cultural hub of Asia, will hold it's annual art exhibition and contest on May 22. Upon my teacher's urgings, I'll have two works on display. This means two hours everyday Monday through Friday, of sitting cross-legged on the floor, practicing my skills. I saw a movie about a drunkenly famous Korean artist at the end of the nineteenth century who insisted that you should pull and not push the brush, like you're letting it move on its own time. I like to think of that. Sitting cross-legged on the floor last night after yoga, we drank Bo I Cha, Bo I tea, green tea fermented into a small pellet which is then dropped into a small teapot of hot water. It was such a thick dark drink! BoRi Teacher: Elisabeth, how is it? Me: Wow, really thick. BoRi Teacher: What? Me: Thick, heavy. BoRi Teacher: What? Me: Delicious! (end scene) Then we launched into a discussion of salaries. Am I just not concerned enough to ask people how much they make? Do most Americans really care/know how much they/their friends/their family members make? I maintain that talking about money and religion are comparatively guarded topics in the States. This afternoon, the host fam and I went to a reception at a Korean Buffet for Mr Kim's friend's mother's 70th birthday. Plates at least half a foot tall. The whole affair culminated in karaoke and an open stage of elderly relatives in hanboks dancing. The way the 70 and over crowd in Korea dances is a great site for me. I like watching older people dance in Korea almost as much as I enjoy watching Korean men eat. The former involves shuffling and clapping with gusto accompanied by open mouth smiles. Then members of the younger generation hoist their grandparents and parents up on their backs and continue the dance piggy-back style. In regards to Korean men eating: with gusto. The more visible and audible the chewing, the more delicious the meal. Then I headed over the the international center, where I watched a slide presentation given by an English lecturer at a local University. The slides were all taken by her brother in 1960, when he came to Korea to repair and install telephone lines with the US army. Korea in 1960, I was so ignorant. After fifty years of Japan's occupation and half a decade of civil war, the mountains were entirely deforested. This was the most startling contrast from today. I think it's safe to say that most Koreans pride themselves on the beauty of the peninsula. Back in the fall, I was often asked if leaves changing colors in Ohio were as beautiful as leaves changing colors in Korea. Hiking is a huge past time and every self-respecting family takes Sunday picnics in the countryside or any available piece of nature. The reforestation project of the 70s and 80s must have been enormous. Arbor Day was even made a national holiday. The American and Korean flags flew together in the shots of Seoul and big AntiCommunism signs were painted on bridges and buildings. In general, lots of dirt roads and shacks. It's incomprehensible to me, looking at a flat screen SAMSUNG monitor, facing a slew of 20 story apartment buildings out the window. | | Monday, April 17th, 2006 | | 9:06 pm |
| | Friday, April 14th, 2006 | | 8:18 am |
yesterday
I stumbled upon a yoga club class on the school roof. While I was waiting for the bus, I caught a kid checking his hair in a minivan's tinted window before noticing me, furtively waving and running into the bank. He emerges with a friend. Together they walk into a convenience store and come out with a pink yogurt popsicle which was presented to me with two hands and a slight bow. A batch of weird text messages about being "gloomuy" from a guy I met in Harlem last weekend--dance club, not neighborhood. Skipped calligraphy to spend two hours napping under a heat lamp at the neighborhood public bath. One of the bath women who I remembered from my visit three months ago scrubbed me down like no tomorrow when she noticed my akward attempts at exfoliation. My back is like 1,000 count cotton. Grandfather yoga instructor staring at me while hunched over and eating bread dipped in whipped cream after class. I looked in my tea cup and then eye contact was made and then he brushed my cheek and asked if I had any questions. Um. Then ChungSung did a demo on TaiGuChen, flowy dance like chi-harnessing movement. We discussed more Marukami. | | Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 | | 2:38 pm |
more advice....
Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures. Goodbye, My Junior. --- Well, maybe you think that your hair and socks are pretty but they aren't. How awful they look like! --- You a skirt very short. --- You must believe all your teacher's saying but art teachers saying is one ear hearing and other ear forget it. --- First, you should give your respect to senior and teacher. Second, you should be able to live with friends. Life of this school is so hard that you can't live alone. --- You have to study and call your mom everyday but not often go home back because your family is not well. You have to love Divis because Divis is beautiful teacher. | | Friday, April 7th, 2006 | | 12:50 pm |
more advice, this batch from girls
Dear first year, Please be quiet. ChangPyeong High school don't play boy and girl. Three years is very short as if water flow. Only study, study hard then three year later good result is waiting, I'm fingers crossed you. We make the best high school. --- Dear 1st year students. First, Hi~^^ Welcome. I'm second year student, girl, and study science. To be honest, I'm not a good student. But I want to advise something. It's April, so this school is comfortable place. But maybe you are separated from your family first time, you feel nervous, lonely, tired, and sleepy ^^... But I think you cannot say that because it's too weak sound. It just my thought, you feel tired, don't forget you should study. Everyone feel that. So you are strong this time, you can get more than your friends. Good luck. You know, it's not long time. --- You don't behave frivolously. For ecample, when we walks out the window, you don't shout. You must study hard in ChangPyeong High School, then you can go to the good college. I hope you choose the right way. and fast fit at a residence hall. --- our school is austerity. your activity must always careful. | | Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 | | 1:33 pm |
second years write advice to first year students
Dear first grade student, Hi I'm man I'll give you some advice You should do what I say Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul Don't touch girl's soul --- If you don't avoid it you enjoy it, do your best --- see you, babies --- I am writing to give you advice about life at ChangPyeong High School. Maybe you have a dream. If you haven't a dream, you make it right now. And think your dream at everyday morning when you wake up. Everyday work will give you stress. But don't forget smiling. Finally, STUDY hard. Bye~ --- Don't afraid!!! Progress, fight and conquest! --- Dear First Year Student... I-'m second grade... K-ind of study will improve your grade. I-'m study hard this time... L-ive actively. L-ive happily. Y-ou must success you life... O-h~ I'm sorry this letter so hard that you can't read... U-h~ sorry... | | Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 | | 12:32 pm |
Mrs. Tak: I saw you in my dream last night. Maybe you had a husband. | | Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 | | 2:13 pm |
The best of it all
Finding "Divis Time" written big and bold and permanent on the cover of a student's notebook. Daily "Power Badmitton" time at the start of the student's lunch period with three of ChangPyeong's eleven female teachers. Today's post toothbrushing conversation about marriage. My age, 24 Korean years, is prime time. Even HyeongHwan, one of my favorite students ever, brought up marriage the other day. He said he sometimes thinks about where he will be in a year. "You will find a nice gentleman and I will finish school." The kid's stressed as usual about the upcoming third year test and asked me for advice. I told him life doesn't stop after the test and he said "where there's a will there's a way?" Yes, HyeongHwan. "If she can do it, he can do it, I can do it?" Yes, HyeongHwan. Maybe I need to listen to the advice my students aggressively give themselves. So, back to the toothbrushing basement room reserved for the female teachers. After clarifying whether Americans usually eat fish stewed or fried, we broached the topic of marrying for love or money. ChoiYeon pointed to two teachers and said they married for love. I asked if she did, knowing full well that her husband is a doctor (also born in the year of the pig, like me) and is currently living and working at a hospital two hours away. She visits him with their kids on weekends. "Maybe no," was her reply. Then she kicked back her head in laughter. The way my calligraphy teacher talks to me like Im Korean. None of this dumbed down slaph dash of English and Korean banged into a mold of complete incomprehension. I spend two hours there most days after school, working toward May's art show. The poem I'm copying over and over and over is about raining pink flowers, sun, wandering around drunkenly, a beautiful place, and wondering. Mrs. Yoon has framed one of them under the glass on the living room's new coffee table. The worst of it all: My growing extreme distaste for the English education industry. Read more about it here: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/archives/result_contents.asp?id=200603220043&query=english%20educationSometimes it's hard to find the whole affair and my position therein anything more than usury. At these times, I use right back, accept gifts like small oranges, and give right back. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
elisabethdivis's journal