Teacher's pet or domestic slave?

Dear, sweet Andy--one of the kids in my Monday/Wednesday/Friday first grade class--once wrote his weekly "picture diary" about helping his mom clear the table and wash dishes after dinner.  I told him it was really nice of him to help out his mom like that.

That was about two months ago.  Since then, all of Andy's picture diaries have involved manual labor and the sheer glee it brings him.  I figure either he's kissing up to me because of my erstwhile praise....or he's a modern-day Cinderella.  Or Cinderfeller.

Picture Diary

Andy,   12/12/08

After I finished my homework I fold the laundry.  I fold the towel, underwear and panties.  It was very fun.

No laundry-folding until you finish your homework, and I MEAN IT!

Stupid snot-faced kids.

I forget if I mentioned this on my blog, but a couple months ago my boss was really riding me for about three or four weeks.  One of my classes happened to have a high concentration of parents who Really Care A Lot About Their Children's Supplementary English Education....and observed classes and commented ALL the time.  I only started teaching these wee-wahs in September, but apparently they've nitpicked every teacher they've had at my school, asking for little tweaks and complaining about curriculum changes until the counselor--the Korean who serves as an ambassador between the teachers and parents--quits.  Seriously, there have been three or four counselors who have quit in recent months, and they've all had this one class.  The kids are totally fine; it's just the parents who are.....involved.  Ahem.

Anyway, for a while there my boss was talking to me every single day about little things she wanted me to change.  She started observing my classes, requesting changes in my syllabi, and all that.  It all ended okay; after a while, she was satisfied and moved on to some other poor teacher.  She has a habit of doing this; she'll focus on one foreign teacher at a time, heap criticism on them until they're drowning, and then move on.  The majority of her advice and requests are legitimate and helpful; it's just the quantity and frequency--and often, the style of delivery--that can make being in her hotseat so unpleasant.  Poor Roommate Kyle is currently in the hotseat.  I make him lots of cups of sympathy tea when we get home.

Anyway, the heat is off of me for now, and I haven't heard a peep from the parents of this one class in weeks.  Woohoo!  I'm writing about them now because I just graded a spelling and vocabulary test I gave them.  For being in first grade, they're pretty advanced in their English ability.  They're certainly nowhere close to native speakers, but they do pretty well.  Plus, they actually do their homework.  I can't tell you how much easier that makes my job.

For their weekly spelling-and-vocab tests, they have twenty words they have to spell, and they have to match definitions with eight of those words.  Plus, I'm a complete stickler for capitalization and punctuation; if there's a dash missing or a lowercase letter where there should be an uppercase letter, I take off half a point.  On this particular test, they had words like leather, brighter, Indian reservation, the Rocky Mountains, and--the piece de resistance--the Mississippi River.  (It was mentioned in one of our textbooks.)

And do you know what?  Out of seven first-graders, ONE missed that word.  She forgot one of the "iss"es.  The rest of them nailed it--capitalization and all.  In fact, with two bonus words, my little rockstars had an average grade of 100.

WHO ARE THESE MUTANT CHILDREN???

New pictures (with stories!) on facebook!

Go look!  You don't need to have a facebook account.

BILLY JOEL CONCERT AAAAAH!!!!!!!

On Saturday, I went to see Billy Joel in Seoul.  It was EPIC.  And I really should type out the whole story for y'all, but honestly, I don't feel like it.  Sorry!  HOWEVER, I put up pictures on facebook and captioned them copiously, so you should check out that album.  You can look at the pictures even if you don't have a facebook account.  I hope you'll go check them out!  It truly was an amazing experience, and I have some really fun pictures from it.

Enjoy!

Adventures in Grading: part epic punishment.

Picture Diary

by Polly

Today my family sat on the sofa.  We watched on TV.  It was very fun.  I was looking for it many hours.  I watched and watched.  Then my father came with my younger brother.  I said that I had to watch on TV.  My mother was angry to me.  "Polly, you must be nice to your father!"  I was so scared.  I had to go out of the house.  I walked slowly outside.  Tac... Tac... Tac...  I cried and thought, 'I don't know how to do.'  2 minutes went by.  I jumped 5 times on the ground.  My nose was cold, and my ears were cold too.  I wanted to go in.  Soon the door was opened and my mother said that I could come in to the house.  I was so sad in that time.

Sympathy for Korea's high school seniors.

Today is the college entrance exam.  High school seniors all around the country take this exam, which determines which college they will get into, which determines what jobs they'll get, which determines their quality of life for the next....oh, seventy years.  Korea puts a LOT of stock in credentials, and this test is one of the most pivotal things that a Korean citizen does in his or her entire life.

An excellent post on Roboseyo details the exam and its impact on society.  There's also an embedded video by SeoulGlow, wherein Michael Hurt, a celebrity blogger in Seoul, interviews high schoolers about their feelings on the exam.  The post and the video are quite compelling; I hope you'll take a look and let me know what you think in the comments.

Korea is trying to kill me.

A few weeks ago I had pinkeye.  A little over a week ago I caught a cold that made me hoarse and hack-y and snotty, and I'm STILL coughing so much at night that it keeps me awake for an hour.  Then, on Friday, I ate some pizza at Costco and got a wicked case of food poisoning.  I'll spare you the details, except to say that my body turned itself inside out trying to get rid of whatever was in that pizza.  I spent almost the whole weekend shuttling back and forth between the couch and the bathroom.

I'm pretty sure Korea's trying to kill me.

It's a good thing my immune system is so committed to its job, because I have Big Things coming up.  Well, one Big Thing in particular: BILLY JOEL.  I'm going to a Billy Joel concert (in Seoul!!!) on Saturday!  I forget how much I've told you all about that whole situation, so in case I'm being redundant, here's the short(ish) summary.

1)  Tickets were kind of expensive.

2)  I couldn't find anyone who liked Billy Joel enough to pay 88,000 won for the cheap seats.

3)  I did a search for people who like Billy Joel on facebook.

4)  I sent a bunch of people messages, asking if they were interested in going to the concert.

5)  Several of them replied ecstatically and wired me 88,000 won.

6)  I now hold tickets for me and 12 strangers to go see Billy Joel on Saturday.

How awesome is that???  It's a bit of a social experiment; I hope these people turn out to be as cool as they seem from their facebook messages.    :c)

Adventures in Grading, part Creep-tastic

Picture Diary

by Polly

Today I washed my mother's feet.First I'd like to wash my younger brother's feet, but my mom said "Polly, please wash my feet."  I didn't want to do it but I did it.  My mother's feet feet were beautiful but too big.  I want to have big and beautiful feet as my mother.  I will drink milk and do exercise to be like my mother's feet.  I want to go to the park after my feet are changed.I also want to swim in the river after my feet are big!

What the poo?!  I showed this to Kyle, who was seriously disturbed by it.  I pointed out that this was probably part of a foot-washing ceremony at church, but then Kyle noted that the picture that goes with the journal is definitely of a bathroom, complete with toothbrushes and a shower.  So Polly indeed seems to have been required to wash her mother and brother's feet.  But hey....if she's lucky, at least she'll end up with giant flipper feet when she's grown up!

....?!?!

Willpower: 1. Creeping obesity: 0.

I consider it a personal triumph that for the past month and a half I have walked past Paris Baguette, our local bakery, on my walk to and from school but didn't give in until today.

I win!

Incidentally, the chocolate croissant was delicious.

Korean marketing gimmicks are brilliant.

Last night, several of the teachers at my school went out for an wine buffet.  For 15,000 won (which, right now, is $10.78), we drank as much wine as we liked.  It was EXCELLENT.  It was an evening of sparkling conversation, quality people, and copious amounts of the loveyness that red wine always brings.

On our way there, we passed a dancing coffee cup.  It was dancing to the Wonder Girls song "Nobody," which is popular here to an unholy degree.  Not to say that I don't enjoy it, because I totally do.  (I can't help it!  It's INFECTIOUS.)  The video I linked to takes two minutes to get to the actual song, but the backstory is kind of cute, too.

Anyway!  Dancing coffee cup: check.  Naturally, I stopped to take a picture and a video.

The best part is, I didn't know that Jess and Eric were going to start dancing with the coffee cup!  And they didn't know I was taking a video!  Perfect serendipity, no?  And when the coffee cup starts air-humping Eric (I mean, who can blame it?): simply priceless.

Then, we drank some wine!

It was lovely.  If you'd like to see more pictures--and there are lots of great ones--you can see them here.

After that, we went to a noraebang!  A noraebang is an establishment with private karaoke rooms, and it's a staple in Korean entertainment.  You pay 15,000 won (or so) for an hour, choose your songs, and make a fool of yourself in front of your friends.  It's really quite brilliant.

Jess and I did most of the heavy lifting when it came to singing.  Kyle mostly spectated, occasionally rolling around on the floor or pretending to sing (then getting angry when we changed the song).  Fun was had by all!  I'd post a video of Jess and I singing ABBA, but I like Jess too much to do that.

I WILL show you pictures, though!

Strangely wonderful.

A couple weeks ago, I had an interesting adventure.  Carla, the then-newest teacher, and I volunteered to have our pictures taken on a Saturday.  One of the Korean teachers knew someone who was a photographer and wanted a couple foreigners for a day trip photo shoot, so we woke up bright and early to get in a car with strangers for a couple hours.  :c)  The lady who arranged it turned out to be the grandmother of one of my students, the lovely and adorable Lilly.  (Incidentally, Lilly's grandmother escaped from North Korea at the beginning of the Korean War, when she was four years old.  Crazy!)  There were about six people, including the teacher, whose day job involves intelligence with the Seoul police force.  (How cool!)  They took us down to Daejeon, and we visited a military (and police and firefighter) cemetary; it's similar to Arlington Cemetary in the States.

Most of the pictures involved Carla and I standing solemnly in front of graves with or without the teacher, in his dress police uniform, pointing out various things on the graves.  After a couple hours of that, we went to a grassy area and set up a little picnic with milk and cookies, then another one with vitamin C-and-ginseng energy drinks.  We smiled and laughed gaily while the Koreans took pictures.  It was....strange.  We found out halfway through the energy drink picnic that the pictures were for two photo contests; the milk company and energy drink companies were looking for pictures for a new ad campaign, and the prize is a lifetime supply of that product.  (Sweet!)  So Carla and I just might be appearing in an ad...haha.  Unlikely, but who knows!

All the photographers were between the ages of 50ish and 75ish, which provided Carla and I with an interesting and informative experience.  I've been reading a lot about traditional Korean values and ways of thinking, but since all the Koreans we know are either kids or twentysomething teachers who've spent time abroad, I hadn't interacted heavily with anyone who carries the old-school Korean mindset.  This group of photographers, though, finally gave me some exposure to that.  For instance, Carla and I were treated like royalty.  We were honored guests, and the whole day they treated us with deference and respect.  It was a really long day; we woke up at 7:30 and didn't get home until about 8pm, and it was quite exhausting and strange to have our pictures taken and be so formal for that long.  But despite that, it was really edifying to have the opportunity to interact with an older generation of Koreans in such a meaningful way.  They were extremely gracious hosts, and I came away feeling like they considered us to be dear friends.  In fact, Lilly's grandmother called me today and invited us to her house for lunch next Saturday.

The experience was really...well, strange.  Nothing quite compares to being asked to drink things and emote exuberantly while several people clamber around snapping pictures.  It was also quite a mental exercise to stay alert for cues about how to conduct myself with propriety.  But being brought into these people's world with such candidness made the experience really special.  That day was bizarre, fulfilling, taxing, and edifying; in short, it was exactly what I came to Korea to experience.

I PROMISE I'm not bribing them to write this stuff.

I got another complimentary writing assignment today.  I realize that I look completely vain by posting TWO of these on my blog, but they kind of crack me up, so I don't care.  :c)  The assignment was to choose a topic, write a topic sentence, then write detail sentences.

Lori teacher is beautiful. She is beautifull because she have golden hair.  She has preety eyes. She has long hair. I like her very much. She has white skin. She looks likea butterfly.

I must admit that I'm kind of enjoying my boost in perceived attractiveness in Korea.  Because I have very fair skin, light-ish European-shaped eyes, and light-ish hair (well...in comparison to Asian black hair), I'm already at an advantage in the looks department.  I'm not gonna lie: it's a nice little ego boost that a couple strangers I've interacted with--cashiers, et al.--have commented that I am "very peautiful."  Again, I emphasize that 90% of that is because of my European features and coloring...but hey, a compliment is a compliment!  I'll take it.

Luna's laudatory writing assignment brought up one other interesting phenomenon in the life of Lori Teacher.  Several Koreans have mentioned my "blond," "yellow," or "gold" hair!  My hair is red.  If anything, it gets mistaken for brown hair, but definitely not blond.  But in the same way that it's often hard for a Westerner to tell different Asian ethnicities apart, I think it's just harder for Korean eyes to see the differences between blond, brown, and red hair.  And I'm sure it doesn't help that "red" hair looks nothing like a "red" crayon.

I tell you what, though.  I feel somehow vindicated that my extreme paleness is actually an attractive thing in Korea.  Score!  "She looks like a butterfly," "she have golden hair," "she is sweety smell"....hey, I'll take it all.