Or "Part 8 of approximately 42"
or "Judith Turner visits Korea (JT in the ROK)"
or "An even more pimped out school"
or "Toilet humour"
Hello dear readers,How are you all? As a group, and a single entity, how are you? Do you guys ever get together and discuss my strange emails and reminisce about hearing all my nonsense first hand?
The last email was late and thus did not contain an update as much as a status report. You deserve an update so here it is. As you already know I am well, still fascinated by this country and its people and my ability to function well so far from all that I know. What I’m going to tell you now is a story of anger and disappointment and then some joy at the end. So let me begin...I only get 8 days of summer vacation. 8 days is hard to come to grips with when you are fresh out of university and used to getting four months a year off. I can barely remember what I did in university vacations, two months of summer vacation seems like enough time to fix the world, surely I could have done it with all that free time. I feel guilty for not doing it...but back to my working-persons vacation. Obviously the ideal would be to have all eight days consecutively (with one weekend somewhere in there) unfortunately I have two schools which end and start at different times and have two separate summer camps which resulted in my having to split my vacation into three days in one week, then a week of camp and then four days and a public holiday and then one week of camp and then one day and, wait for it… a week of orientation. I know you’re thinking “Why did she have to go to orientation, she had been there for like four months already.” That’s what I thought too, but it’s mandatory for everyone to attend orientation and I missed mine by two months. So now it was catch up time :-(
Orientation was awful, not only was I in lockdown for a week with lectures everyday from 9am to 9pm but it also started the day after my Mom arrived in Korea. When I got the news I was devastated. While my sister and Mom were gallivanting around Korea I was stuck learning how to DRAW UP LESSON PLANS! Something I have been doing since I was fricken 12 years old! Really, I planned my first workshop/lesson in youth at church when I was twelve and then continued to run lessons and workshops for the next 10 years of my life! Apart from the fact that I couldn't run in the sun with my lovely mother I was also slightly isolated from the rest of my SA peeps. I wasn't available to Aunty Emmy or Ashika or Randall (my usual early morning-chat crowd) and for the first time since I got to Korea I was unable to speak to Sinclair for something like four days straight. Sinclair and I don't call each other every day but there is always an email or a quick chat or a facebook poke or something every day. That's how you make long distance work... So ya, that was a hard week and one of the reasons I fell off the email-every-fortnight plan. But I'm back on and not at all bitter and angry, so let’s talk about more cheerful things.
So after gallivanting around the beautiful East Coast of Korea with my sister, my mom jumped on the KTX (Korea’s bullet train) and met me in Deajeon, the biggest city (sort of) in my province. We didn't stay there long though because we had to hop on a bus to Buyeo, my little town. My mom says it's bigger than Stellenbosch but I don't agree. What we do agree on though is that it looks a little like Korean Salt River. Being the capital of the Beakje dynasty means that Buyeo is very old and you can tell by the buildings and design. However Buyeo is beautiful and on the very first night my mom arrived in Buyeo I took her to Korea's oldest man-made lake (Gumnanji Pond). It's small for a lake, a pond actually but it's beautiful at night because it is lit up from the bottom and there is a temple right in the middle of the lake with a bridge leading onto it. Gumnanji Pond is also the venue for Korea's annual lotus festival. My mom missed it by about two weeks but the pond had been spruced up for tourists coming for the festival, it looked lovely. We went at night though so it was quite dark.
While on her visit my mom cleared out my storage cupboard, chucked out all my pots, cutlery and crockery (we bought new stuff) and helped me make my kitchen more ergonomic. I must admit to waiting for her to join me in Korea before making some decisions about my house. There are still lots of things I need in my house, a full length broom being pretty high up on my list...Korea doesn't have full length brooms and I don't know why. So even though I sweep with my little (quite useless) broom I often end up vacuuming my linoleum floors. It's weird. I bought colourful kitchen utensils and yellow pots. I feel a little like I went for style over pragmatism but I'm young and the only person who will have to suffer the consequences of this decision so I don't mind. My favourite thing of all my new purchases is my dish rack. It really frees up some space in my kitchen and makes washing the dishes less of a chore, that's a pretty big deal, washing dishes is a pain. I still have not figured out how to keep my apartment clean but I have perfected the art of laundry, even the drying and the packing away. Now I just have to learn how to manage all the other junk :-(
More on the catch up front: last semester my beautiful little school 장암(Jangam), was taken away from me. You haven't even seen the pictures yet. I have a new second school now. The schools name is 규암 (pronounced gyu-hum(silent h)) and it's MUCH bigger. There are about 500 kids (my little Jangam had 70 kids) so I have to get used to an entire horde of new snot noses. Anyhoo, at Guam I only teach grade sixes and grade fours, which is kinda nice cause I don't really like the little-little ones that much, and I only teach four classes in the morning so I have the rest of the day free to lesson plan or... wait for it... gym! So ya, Guam has three floors, two wings, a Gym, a track, a cinema (you read right), an indoor playground, a whole room full of extra resources, a cafeteria the size of a restaurant and special section of the school for kids with learning disabilities. The Korean word for special needs kids directly translates to "students who need more love". I was extra nice to the special needs kids in my class after I heard that. Koreans use the integration system in their schools. Special needs kids attend normal classes just like everyone else and then some. They aren't kept separate. In fact the special needs teacher at my main school looked disgusted when I told her we have special schools in South Africa. She said integration is the only way. I can see the benefits of integration but South African schools are so under resourced. I mean I don't know of a school in SA that has a cinema and calls it an audio visual room. The audio visual room at The Settlers High School was a box on the balcony of the school hall.
So two embarrassing but also adorable things happened to me this week. The first involved my co-teacher with whom I have had a rocky relationship, her actions in this story are so cute. I’m glad we've warmed up to each other.
So I got a terrible mosquito bite right behind my knee...awful! As you already know mosquitoes in Korea are not like mosquitoes in South Africa, they are hardcore and their bites become bumps of doom (I rarely got bitten in SA)! I've lost some weight and now my pants are a little more loose than usual so every time I moved my pants would rub up against my bite and the whole thing was just an awfully itchy affair. After teaching three back to back classes I needed some serious itch relief, screw not scratching cause it makes it worse, screw marks left on my legs, it was a fight to the death and this bite was going down. Unfortunately my classroom has glass doors and anyone who walked passed would only see me with my hand down my pants jerking around like mad with a satisfied look on my face and I was not gonna risk that so I made my way down to the ladies staff bathroom. It's lovely in there, heated toilet seats and classical music, the perfect atmosphere to satisfy an itch, if I had had the forethought I would have brought a scented candle. Unfortunately my plans were thwarted by the presence of my co-teacher brushing her teeth. I couldn't just back out; walk into the bathroom, see her, walk right back out again? No, that would be suspicious so I took a cubicle instead, zipped down my pants and started scratching. After about a minute my co-teacher, standing right next to my cubicle puts on the tap, runs the water, I assume she is going to rinse her mouth but she doesn't, she just keeps brushing and I realise that she thinks I am having difficulty peeing so she run the water to... you know... boost my performance. The pressure! But I don't need to pee. I don't have a pee at all, I can't even force myself to pee. SO AWKWARD, what to do? The longer I wait the harder she thinks I need to pee but exiting seems a bit strange too. Eventually I just bite the bullet and left the cubicle without a single dripping sound. I did however wash my hands, I'm not sure why, I hope she doesn't think I'm weird.
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| Translation: Guam Elementary School |
The second story involved my male co-workers and my ego (mostly my ego). So it's autumn in Korea (I'm wearing two jersey's) and it's getting colder (and a scarf and stockings under my pants), but the sun is still shining, in fact the skies are blue. When the sun is directly on my skin, it's not that cold, but the moment I go into the shade little patches of chicken-skin crawl all over me. Also it's cold in the mornings so I wear my coat. However, the Koreans aren't showing even the slightest bit of response to the weather, my kids are running around in shorts and t-shirts, living it up like it's summer. My classroom also gets pretty warm cause one side is all windows and the heat gets trapped inside. So I was on my way to lunch and as I leave the class I realise that it's a little more chilly outside my class than inside but it's not unbearably cold and I don’t go back to get my coat. I'm walking to lunch and the fourth grade teacher joins me and asks me if I'm cold. Now there is something you must understand about Korea and in particular Korean men; they are just like men everywhere in the world. They are always in some or other pissing contest and I don't like to let people win. So some things you will hear often when you come to Korea (esp from the men) are: Kimchi is too spicy for foreigners, Summer to too hot for foreigners, Hangul is too difficult for foreigners and obviously Korea gets too cold for foreigners. So despite the fact that I could feel the cold on my skin I said "No, I'm not cold". I wasn't that cold, it was manageable. Then at the lunch table the VP ask me if I am getting cold and I say "Nah, I'm fine" and on my way back to class the grade five teacher asks me, "Are you getting cold?" and I said, no, no, no. They tried to make me get my jersey but I said No, No, No. I should have learnt from poor Amy, bless her soul, because then I saw myself in the mirror and realized… I had the most noticeable nipple stand imaginable. Like I had two pistols pointing out at the world, they must have been so embarrassed around me. I didn't know if I should laugh or apologise to those poor men. Anyhoo, I hope they forgive me, I wore my scarf over my boobs for the rest of the day...it was the best I could do.
Next time we will talk about k-pop and I will convert you all to lovers of bad Korean pop music, for now here is a taste
Roly Poly, T-ara -it's called Roly Poly but if you listen carefully (not that carefully) you'll hear that they are actually saying loly poly. K-POP rocks!
Love you all
to bits
Even those of you who don't love me back (but you guys a little less than the others)
Stay happy and look after Cape Town for me
Bashti Teacher
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