Coloring and Nosebleeds

Another week of teaching is just about over. Nothing too exciting happening...so here are some pictures.

I teach a "baby class" of five-year-olds every day after lunch. Some of the babies are so eager that they literally wait for me at the door until I show up.




This guy's ready to do some serious coloring.









Today, all of the "Big B's" in the picture were colored brown, and all of the "little b's" were colored pink. Challenging stuff, I know.





The students follow my example on the board. The result is usually a picture of a bear or a dinosaur or something. And they love it.





Some students have a bit of trouble following directions...or they're just rebelling against the curriculum by trying to be more creative. It's one or the other.



This poor guy just randomly had a massive nosebleed in the middle of class. Suddenly, blood was gushing out and dripping onto his desk and workbook. Not really sure what was going on. In any case, if it keeps happening, I might have to establish firmer rules about the cocaine use during snack time.

Gotta keep that breath fresh for the ladies.










The students often bring us presents. Usually it's just candy or chocolates. But every now and then it's a scarf made from genuine rabbit fur. I'm guessing at least 3 rabbits must have been sheered to make this one.
Outside of school, there's still not much going on. It's been really cold, and snowing almost every day. I hate the winter. I wake up most mornings wondering why I ever left Southeast Asia...


The biggest event of my week: Danielle cut my hair. It was definitely time. The bottle-smashing incident had left a bald patch and it must have looked pretty ridiculous these past couple weeks. Even so, you'll be missed, budding Jew-fro; it's always tough to say goodbye.

How to Use the Toilet

If there's something exciting happening here in Gwangju, I don't know about it...spending 9 hours a day working with kids basically drains me. But I'm having fun at the school...I'd even go so far as to say that it's extremely amusing at times. After two weeks of teaching Cornell Class, this Monday I was switched to Duke Class, which has the lowest level of 6-year-old students at the school. My friend Kenny was the most recent teacher of Duke Class. All that he told me about the class was that last week, after he told them that they couldn't leave the classroom, two students had intentionally peed their pants, and another student licked the puddle to "see what it was".

So I figured, at the very least, it would be an eventful week. The daily routine wasn't too different from Cornell Class...coloring, reading, it's all the same. By this point, I've memorized both "Sleepy Dog" and "Biscuit's New Trick". I think I'll put that on my resume. Even the kids are bored by the stories and can recite full pages from memory when prompted with just the first word. And this is saying a lot. It doesn't take much to keep these kids entertained. I can draw a picture of a car on the whiteboard and they will be rolling on the floor laughing. I'd say it's probably time for the school to buy some new books.

Duke Class is definitely a messy bunch. After snack time my Korean co-teacher usually has to wash snack off of most of the students' faces and/or clothes. Luckily, for the most part I am able to steer clear of the dirty work.

This instructional sign hangs on the wall in the bathroom right outside of my classroom. I have a few comments to make. First, Step 2's overall message, "I'm taking a pee" is pretty great. No real analysis needed there. But after a closer look, you'll notice that the "pee" is blue. What? Really? There's gotta be a few very confused Korean kids wandering around the school, wondering why they can't pee blue like the little dude on the sign.

But I digress. Apparently, the sign has helped out the kids in Duke class, as we were able to avoid any peeing/pee licking incidents during our first week together. I'm definitely not shocked that these things happened...I mean, sometimes, its a struggle to even get the kids to write their names. But when this happens I just remind myself that they are kindergartners, and it's okay for them to mentally check out every now and then. All things considered, the week was actually really enjoyable. That's all for now. Go Packers.

Freezing in Gwangju

So I'm halfway through my tenure as an English kindergarten teacher here in Korea. E removed the stitches from my head and the wound is healing up pretty nicely, it just looks like I got a shitty haircut now. Anyway, as you probably remember, Korea hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and Gwangju was one of the host cities to have a stadium built for the events. It took me about a week of living here to realize that the World Cup stadium is just a 10-minute walk from my apartment. Now, the stadium is the home of Gwangju FC of the K-League, which is in its offseason so unfortunately I won’t be able to see any Korean soccer while I’m here. The stadium is across the street from the Pungam Reservoir, which has a number of walking trails all around it. So after seeing a bunch of Koreans doing their power-walk thing on the snow-covered trails, I made a few attempts at jogging around the reservoir. In case you were wondering, going for a run with 2 inches of snow on the ground in sub-freezing temperatures really sucks. But there are some really cool ice sculpture-like structures around the reservoir, so I gave up on running and just started to take pictures instead.

Next to the reservoir is Mount Geumdang, which I kind of discovered by mistake. I didn’t realize that this mountain is really popular with Gwangjuians for hiking. I just saw a pagoda from the street and walked up to it, only to discover that from the pagoda, there are a number of paths through the woods continuing on up the mountain. I noticed that all of the Koreans who were hiking the mountain were wearing mountaineering shoes and had ski poles with them. But the beginning of the path didn’t seem that treacherous, so I decided to try to hike it anyway in my sneakers. Obviously, the Koreans knew what they were doing and I did not – many parts of the trail were just steep sheets of ice. After nearly slipping and killing myself about 30 times, I finally made it to the top. I knew that Gwangju was a pretty big city, but it really doesn’t feel that way because the area where I live and work is fairly residential. It’s actually the sixth largest city in Korea with a population of just under 1.5 million. But it wasn’t until I was at the peak of Mount Geumdang that could I fully appreciate the size of the city. There are large industrial and commercial areas extending out all around the city, and beyond these, the city is surrounded by a number of other mountain ranges...it's really quite amazing when seen from above.

For a city of 1.5 million people, downtown Gwangju isn’t too remarkable. Especially since I’ve just come from Thailand, where the nightlife is nothing short of amazing. But for a city that probably has less than 1000 foreigners living here, there’s definitely still a lot to do. There are three or four bars where many of the Expats go – Bubble Bar, Speakeasy, and Soul Train all have a bunch of other ESL teachers hanging around, along with a few Koreans. But getting away from these and entering a more traditional Korean club this weekend was…interesting. My friends Blake, Worthington and I were the only white people in the entire club, so I guess you could say that we kind of stood out. The club is packed full of Koreans, none of whom can properly dance to the beat of the music, but try their best to nonetheless. It goes without saying that this was wildly entertaining for us. There was also an endless array of house music, Korean K-Pop, laser lights, etc. The clubs stay open all night and the music never stops, so it’s pretty easy to lose track of time. When we left for good at around 4 am to find food, the place was showing NO signs of slowing down, let alone closing. Crazy Koreans.

One of the best things about Korea is the high-speed Internet, which is supposedly the fastest in the world. This, along with channelsurfing.net, allowed me to watch the Packers' beat down of the Falcons this morning, while I enjoyed some kimbap and bibimbap. So my Sunday morning consisted of a gluten-free Korean breakfast and some good old American playoff football, all while I sat at my computer in my pajamas. Now that’s what I call globalization.

Back to Kindergarten

I came to Korea under the impression that I would be a Winter Camp teacher here at the English Academy. The Winter Camp is a 4-week program for all of the hagwon students who want to continue their studying over the holidays, while many other students are either traveling or just taking a break from school with their families. For my first two days, I was teaching the Advanced section of the Winter Camp - a group of very bright eleven year-olds who are probably more informed of current World News than I am. But because the Academy has lost many teachers in the past couple of months for various reasons, our supervisors told us that we should expect frequent changes to our schedules, and to just be flexible about these changes. On Tuesday afternoon, I was informed that I would no longer be a Winter Camp teacher, and that I would instead spend my mornings teaching English Kindergarten, which consists of small groups of six year-olds, some of whom are already fluent in English, or are well on their ways to to becoming fluent.

So suddenly, I've become a kindergarten teacher. And because I have to do most of the same activities as the students in order to demonstrate them, it's kind of like reliving kindergarten all over again. I am coloring in between the lines, working on my upper- and lowercase scripts, and reading stories like "Biscuit's New Trick" and "Goodnight, Sleepy Dog." The first thing I do each morning is to write a "Good Student/Baby Student" list on the board, and establish two "Baby Chairs" in the back of the room. Amazingly, this is all it takes to keep the kids in line...no kindergartner wants to be a baby student.

The sections of the English Kindergarten are all named after Ivy League schools in America - talk about pressure at a young age. I teach Cornell class. My students call me Dan Teacher. Everything about the English Academy is state of the art. It's kind of incredible really. I teach a section of English computer typing, and each student has his own 23-inch monitor and brand new processor. At the front of the class, the keyboard is linked to a huge monitor so that the class can follow my fingers as I type. I never learned how to type properly, so my students are all going to learn to type as I do - with two pointer fingers and a thumb. But for some students, this was still quite a struggle. One boy named Jim couldn't quite figure out the art of pressing the keys without holding them down, so if the program asked him to type "ADSFSA" it would come out more like aaaaaaaaaaaaaa ddddddddddddddd sssssssssssssss fffffffffffffffff sssssssssssss aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. We're going to have to work on that if this guy's headed to the Ivy League like everybody else...

Along with the advanced technology comes advanced control. In every classroom, there is a little black security camera on the ceiling in one of the corners. And you are being watched at all times. There is literally a "control room" in the school, where a staff member sits and watches a live feed of every classroom. I'm not sure if this is used more to monitor the students or to monitor the teachers, or both equally. But in any case, I've had to go easy on the students when I beat them for bad behavior. Just kidding. As far as you know, anyway.

We get snack time for 20 minutes everyday; unfortunately it is almost always gluten. Glutenous spaghetti, glutenous tuna sandwiches, glutenous gluten, etc. But I've made the school aware of my allergies, and during this time I take a break and walk down the street to a "Mini Stop" convenience store and buy an individually wrapped Kimbap to eat as my snack. It's an inconvenience, but it's better than going all morning without eating. Needless to say, it takes a LOT of energy to keep up with thirteen kindergartners all morning.

By the end of the morning, most of us are ready for a nap. Some of my students actually do take naps. I miss being a little kid. The major concerns in your day are things like what game the teacher lets you play, what time snack starts at, etc. And while my day is not nearly as carefree as that of my students, it's still quite easy to feed off of their youthful energy. I'd have to say that spending so much time around such young kids has actually been rejuvenating. I can only hope I'm feeling the same way in a few weeks. For now, I'm enjoying going back to kindergarten.

Kimbap Nara

So I've been in Korea for 4 days now, I have three days of teaching experience under my belt, it's been snowing for two straight days, and I still have stitches in my head. But I'll cover all those things later, and for now just talk about food, and how I really haven't had much trouble with the gluten at all. I had no idea what to expect; since the opportunity to teach English here only just presented itself about 2 weeks ago, I didn't really do any research and just decided to kind of show up and see how things went. I assumed I would be doing a lot of my own cooking the way I had been in Thailand - somewhat of a hassle, but definitely still manageable. But upon arrival I did a quick Google search to find some advice from others living here on a gluten-free diet. The greatest revelation of all...Kimbap Nara, little Korean diners that have a few inexpensive options for us Celiacs. And these shops are everywhere - they are actually said to be "on every corner in Korea". Apparently there was one literally on the street outside of my apartment building. But it closed down a few weeks before we arrived, so we had to walk 2 minutes instead of 2 seconds to find one.

Entering the Kimbap shop, you find a giant menu on the wall written entirely in Korean. The range of dishes is clearly extensive; unfortunately no one in the shop speaks a word of English, which pretty much limits you to pointing and guessing. But E lived in Korea for 2 years in the past and knows just enough of the language to order and successfully receive the dishes that she asks for. Having lived in Asian countries before, this is definitely not as easy as it sounds. I remember my friends and I were all eating gong bao ji ding (Kung Pao Chicken) basically everyday the first few months that we were in China a couple years ago. Maybe because it was one of the few dishes that we knew how to order, or maybe because it was so loaded with MSG that we were all hopelessly addicted to it. Some questions just have no answers.

Anyway, the first dish that I tried, kimbap, the staple at these restaurants, is kind of like sushi. Steamed rice is rolled up inside of sheets of dried seaweed with a bunch of ingredients inside - you can choose from tuna, ham, imitation crab sticks, cucumber, spinach, carrots, and pickled radish among others. I stayed away from the ham and crab but didn't have any problems with any of the ingredients that I chose. The kimbap roll is sliced up into thin little discs that you eat with your chopsticks, and unlike with sushi, there is no glutenous soy sauce in the equation, so you're not even missing out on anything when you eat them. Best part about these delicious things is that they are like $2 for an entire roll. I'm finding that it's actually cheaper to eat in the restaurants in Korea than it is to cook for yourself...groceries, specifically meats, are quite expensive.

My favorite dish, dolsot bibimbap, is served in an extremely hot stone bowl, and consists of steamed white rice, a variety of steamed vegetables (cucumber, zuccini, soybeans, mushrooms, etc.), fried egg, and gochujang, which is a red chili paste. When the dish comes out you need to immediately start stirring everything together so that the rice and egg do not burn and stick to the hot stone bowl, but after about 2 minutes everything is mixed together and so delicious. I was a little bit worried about the gochujang potentially being glutenous, in my brief research I had read some mixed reports, but I haven't had any issues thus far. Living a gluten-free lifestyle in Korea hasn't been nearly as challenging as I imagined it would be...at the very least, the first few days have been extremely encouraging.

Welcome to South Korea

Let's see where I left off. Somehow, despite the fact that we had a three hour layover in KL, the four of us still managed to nearly miss our flight Incheon - I went into "get the out of my way" mode, running ahead, cutting through customs lines and telling all travelers ahead of us that my three other friends would be barging through momentarily and they needed to just kindly step aside. But once again we made final call for the flight, walked about a half a kilometer on the tarmac to board the plane since Air Asia couldn't be bothered to park their planes anywhere near the correct departure gates, and boarded with no issues. E changed the bandage on my head using the plane's first-aid kit, I got a bunch of confused stares from the Koreans on board, took some Valium and passed out.

We arrived at Incheon, cleared customs, made a quick ATM run to get enough Won to buy snacks and bus tickets, then caught the last bus to Gwangju of the night at 10:40 PM. Once we got to the city center, we took cabs to the address of our new apartments and were dropped off at 4 AM on the side of a snowy road with loads of luggage and some vague instructions on how to get inside. It took some scrambling, but we managed to get inside, get settled, and get some much needed sleep. Sunday was spent unpacking, doing laundry, buying groceries, and figuring out where exactly we needed to be in the morning for our first day of work at the English Academy winter camp. I should note here that I still don't have any winter clothes since I just arrived from Southeast Asia, and a package of my winter clothes from home is being held up at customs for some bizarre reason. So I have basically been wearing the same hoodie and sweatpants for the entire time I have been in Gwangju, where it is below freezing everyday.

The first day of teaching today was a long one, from about 8:30 AM to 6 PM, but definitely enjoyable. In the morning, I taught four lessons with my Advanced level class of seven students - We discussed choosing friends, I taught them about geography and winter weather, then we assigned roles and acted out the story of "The Rabbit and the Well". The kids are amazing and brilliant - they are 4th graders, all 10 and 11 years old, and were discussing extremely advanced topics. One of my students, Harry, was explaining to me a recent issue about a hacker in China using a DDOS program, that I had not even heard of. I felt kind of dumbfounded sitting there as my 10 year old student explained the situation to me - either I need to start following the news of the world again, or maybe I am teaching some new breed of superchildren. One of my students, Phillip, arrived late, and the class told me I should punish him, so I made him wear this hat for about 20 minutes.

We had 25 minutes to eat a quick lunch, which may or may not have been glutenous - the lady in the kitchen told me she had used "just a little bit" of soy sauce in everything. Thanks for that. But I loaded up on white rice and attempted to minimize my gluten intake, and I think I was okay. In the afternoon, I taught a kindergarten class how to differentiate the "b" and "p" sounds. The kindergartners had an extremely low attention span and I didn't really have to teach anything at all, it was mostly just about keeping them from wandering around the room and fighting with one another. Basically it was more like glorified babysitting than anything else, with three Korean aids in the room to assist me. One girl broke down in tears near the end of the lesson, and I can only assume that it was because of my hideous scarf and hat. But the heat in the school wasn't turned up all the way yet and I still have stitches in my head so she'll have to just deal with it for a few days.

After kindergarten, I moved on to another classroom where there were six new students waiting for me and I was given absolutely no curriculum or instructions, so we played hangman for 50 minutes. Perfectly fine with me. I was waiting for my next class to come in after this, but no one showed up, so I took a nap on a desk for about a half an hour. Again, perfectly fine with me. Next, I had two eight year old students, Ted and Paris, and I taught them a lesson about a family picnic at the park. There was an audio CD that comes with their textbook, so I pretty much just popped that thing in, pressed play, and let the kids do their thing. I had an hour and ten minute break, then for my last class of the day had three 6th grade girls and once again no curriculum. So we played Uno for an hour. The only English that I taught the girls were the words "skip", "reverse", and "draw 2", but I'd call it a solid first lesson nonetheless.

Once the school day was over, our supervisors, Simon and Bill took the four of us out for an amazing Shabu Shabu dinner. There is a hot pot in the center of the table, and plates of vegetables and raw meats are brought ought for you to cook yourself and wrap in rice papers. Later, you add rice noodles, and finally steamed rice and fried egg to the hot pot to soak in all of the flavors. And except for the dipping sauces and the Kimchi side dishes, everything is gluten-free. Now I'm back home, pretty worn out, completely stuffed with Shabu Shabu, writing a pleading letter to the Incheon Customs office to try and get my package of winter clothing released and delivered to me. But excited for Day 2 in the morning.