So. I've been talking a lot about my travels
lately -- and there's even more to come soon -- so I'm worried that you think
that's all I do over here when in fact trips are the exception to the norm. So for at least a post or two, let's ground
things a little in my life in Korea.
Today I went to the wedding of one of my former language school
teachers, 전선영, so I've got language school on my
mind. I haven't yet given it the post it
deserves, so here goes.
There's the happy couple!
The first four months of our year here were dominated by Korean
class Level 1B (1급B반) at 한국어학당 (Korean Language School). We went for four hours every weekday morning,
studying two of three subjects each day: Listening & Speaking with 김홍상 (Kim Hong Sang), Writing & Grammar with 전선영 (Jeon Sun Young), and Reading & Pronunciation with 김민영 (Kim Min Young).
Got those names? No? We didn't either for a long time, so with
affection, we refer to them as Man Teacher, Glasses Girl, and Loud Girl,
respectively. You can infer why, I
think. All the class time plus studying
and homework took up a lot of our schedules each day, leaving the rest for work
at our children's centers plus various other groups we led or participated in.
With all of our teachers and one of our Chinese friends.
Each teacher was wonderful in his or her own way; each teaching us
(almost) the same thing with a slightly different method. Man Teacher was very relaxed -- just trying to get us talking with him
mostly. He also gave us our first
exposure to the touchy-feely way of teaching in Korea as he grabbed our heads
in exasperation, flicked foreheads for wrong answers, or in extreme cases, gave
noogies. These consequences always fell
hardest upon our Chinese classmates, sorry guys! Not sure why, unless perhaps they know that
those practices happen in China, too… Glasses Girl (at first) seemed very
strict -- demanding that we do tedious homework, correcting our penstrokes to
an exacting degree, and pushing us ruthlessly through our textbook. This makes it all the more interesting that
she became our closest friend of the three, eventually even inviting us to her
wedding (above)! Of the three, Loud Girl
is the most … hmm, the word in Korean is 재미있어요, but its
translation, "interesting,"
doesn't quite cover it. She would
teach us by yelling (okay not yelling, but saying with so much volume that it might as well be), the words
syllable by syllable, which we were then to repeat. Our punishments for missing a question or
forgetting homework were akin to what I would call a "low five." You never quite knew how she might react to
anything, nor what new fashion she might come to class wearing.
And then there are
our fellow classmates. All told, we have
four Americans, five Chinese guys, two Mongolians, two Indonesians, one
Colombian, one Thai, and one Pakistani.
It's an interesting group to say the least. And through the pressures of studying a
language together in a new country we all became very good friends. Even though the only language we all share is
Korean, I feel like we communicate in Korean quite well among ourselves (not
native Koreans) because we all have the same vocabulary and knowledge of the
language. Plus there's the camaraderie
that comes from being strangers in a strange land together.
Camaraderie!
All of us packed into a room with our silly teachers made for some
really fun days, but also some stressful ones!
There were plenty of times in class when you could be called out
(actually, almost every day) in the middle of class and be expected to know
what was going on. That could be tough
considering the class is being taught entirely in Korean. And even though, for once in my life, my
grade in the class in no way mattered, I still wanted to do really well. I guess once you've been a good student, it's
hard not to care about being a good student.
One thing that was more fun than our day-to-day learning was our field
trips! That's right, it's like being
back in elementary school, and it's really entertaining. We went to a contemporary art museum in 공주 (Kongju) and ice-skating in Daejeon, but the most fun was
our retreat to the mountains.
Ice skating: it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
We went up for the weekend to a retreat center with ball fields,
mountains all around, and cabins for us to stay in. First up was our "sports day,"
which included such events as Chicken Fight (lift one leg, holding its shin in
two hands, and hop around trying to knock other people over), Arm Wrestling
(what you expect), Spin Around Several Times Then Kick Your Shoe As High As You
Can And Catch It, 씨름 (Korean Wrestling), Guide A Blindfolded
Friend Towards You So You Can Eat His 떡, Kick Your Shoe
So That It Lands In A Hula-Hoop About 15 Feet Away, and a Relay Race. Ours was not always the best team, as we were
only level 1 in the language school which made it difficult to be informed
about what to do. But we had a blast
anyway! That night we ate 삼겹살 together and shared in (for those of you (no one) who know
the Earthbound euphemism) coffee and games.
Sidenote and interesting fact: every Korean party I've been to involved
sitting in a circle and playing goofy games.
I like Korea a lot.
Panorama from the pavilion at the top of the hill
Chicken fight!
Arm wrestle
More arm wrestle
Guide A Blindfolded Friend Towards You So You Can Eat Her 떡
Unusual 씨름
Five-legged race!
That is the best hat.
YEEEEAAAAHH!!! Retreat with 1급B반!!
For Thanksgiving, we
invited everyone over to our house, and invited them to bring food, potluck
style. This resulted in one of the
happiest nights of my life, with lots of friends, crazily different but
delicious foods from the US, Korea, and China, and fun. (Dad, this is the night your salsa became
internationally famous, I had several requests for the recipe.) We got to meet the families of our Indonesian
friends, and they have some CUTE kids and wonderful wives. Our teachers came and played Korean circle
games with us. Ah… good times.
Bringing up the Chinese food
Cooking up the Chinese food
Everyone that night = so happy.
The full feast and guests
It's good.
The one other awesome field trip we had was going sledding, but the
odd thing is that we weren't supposed to.
It was during the winter semester after our class had finished, and we
just wanted to bring our friends some brownies on a Friday right after
class. We had also heard it was the last
day for our Colombian friend, so we wanted to see him. But when we showed up there was Man Teacher
telling us everyone was already gone, to our class favorite restaurant, 마미하우스. Okay, if you can
read Korean, you might have just laughed, because that clearly says "Mommy
House." Anyway, Man Teacher offered
to drive us over, and on the way remembers that, no, actually today everyone is
headed off on a sledding field trip! The
bus is about to leave! We run onto the
bus and make some happy reunions with a Chinese and Mongolian friend, and then
are told we need to get off so they can leave.
But as we're doing that, saying the whole time that we want to go with
them, Man Teacher and Glasses Girl put on "hmmm…" faces and decide if
we pay the fee (about $10), we can come!!
And we got to spend the whole afternoon joyfully sledding down a hill at
a ski resort with our good friends, totally unexpected!
Need I say more?
Like that unexpected meeting, every time we meet up with our
classmates again throughout the year it's a joy to see everyone again. These are one of my biggest and probably the
closest group of friends I have here in Korea, so 한남대학교한국어학당, 감사합니다 (Hannam University Korean Language School, thank
you)!!! As my last hurrah in Asia, I
will be travelling to China with a Chinese friend from language school who
lives in Korea and meeting a couple others who have since moved back to
China. (One of them is quite the
character, he's the one in the video).
That'll happen after work ends here in Korea, so it doesn't count
against me!
Going to China with the guy on the left, to meet the guy on the right.
Thanks for reading,
next time we'll catch up with some more current work of mine!
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