9/13: Second Week Teaching and Preparing for Chuseok (추석)

Playing yut nori (윶놀이) for Chuseok at Korean Class

Wearing hanbok (한복)which is traditional Korean Dress

  

Making songpyeon (송편) for Chuseok (추석)

Making songpyeon (송편) for Chuseok (추석)

songpyeon (송편) for Chuseok (추석)

Walking Around the traditional Market (various candies, kimchi, drying red peppers and plucked chickens)

Mortal Instruments in Hangul

Loving Korean internet and the ability to skype with friends!!

Well week one of afterschool was a bust so this week I came in prepared for battle. It was already established that in the morning, Juny would lead the class and I would serve as an assistant and help whenever necessary. I did basic things like the greeting and asking about date and weather and she would take over and do most of the rest. I would sometimes lead the listen and repeat sections but she is a strong willed leader who likes to take charge so as she was way more experienced I went ahead and let her.

In terms of after school I devised a reward system for the first and second graders where they each have a paper with their name on it and if they are good they get a stamp and with 10 stamps they get a candy. This helped with rewards and also let me take attendance. Then for the older kids their system was that as a reward they would get a ticket to go in our ticket bag and once every couple of weeks I would pull out a ticket and the winner would get a Chocopie (big S’more type candy here) and therefore the more tickets the better your chance of winning would be. I also thought that since my third and fourth graders were so active we would do a sports after school program where every couple of weeks we would learn about a sport and then play it. With the older kids we would work on making a movie to show at the end of the year since they loved dancing so much. Well, all of this went to sh**. The first and second graders liked the reward system and it worked for about 10 minutes before I had one kid start crying because someone took something from them, one kid was about to throw up and I had one kid with a bloody nose, HELP!!!!  I thought the third and fourth graders would like the sports unit but nope. I tried putting them in teams and when I told one kid (Jayden) to move he just sat in a chair. “Jayden, move” and his response was to lean back in his chair look me straight in the eye and go “No, teacher.” I started panicking and had no idea what to do. I wasn’t going to back down so we just stared at each other. Meantime the other kids see me losing any power I might have had and begin to talk and move around and get antsy and loud while I begin to get that teary feeling in my eyes realizing that I really don’t have any authority or any power in this situation. Luckily, one of the third graders in the class realized what was happening and went to get Juny who came to my rescue to get the kids in order. But at this point I was so deflated and went home after school and cried and cried wanting to come home. Everything I had planned failed miserably, the kids hated all the stuff I did, they didn’t listen or give me any respect whatsoever. It was terrible.

The only positive part of the week was my fifth and sixth graders who I really liked. We were doing a movie unit and although I was failing miserably at teaching them about movies we did have some fun watching music videos. I saw how much they liked the one from last week and I didn’t want to do only Korean videos so I put on some Wii Just Dance English videos which they liked for about five minutes. But five minutes is better than nothing. I had one kid who knew “Call me Maybe” and Carly Rae Jepsen and yet none of them knew One Direction or Taylor Swift so all that pop knowledge I have accumulated over the time went straight out the window and I had some Kpop learning to do. I also got to learn a little bit more about my kids when I had them draw  a picture of their favorite video and say what genre it was. All of them chose IronMan and all of them drew the same picture. So they like action movies and this whole group mentality is to the EXTREME!

I also got to play a little volleyball this week. I got invited to play with a female teachers team on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There is a league for all female elementary school teachers/staff and they asked me to play. It was really awkward at first until this short, large lady who I had never met before yells over “Julie” and beckons me over. It was time to eat (before practice). Someone had brought beer, ttopoki (spicy rice cakes) and kimbap (like a California roll) for snack. It was delicious but of course I ate too much. The volleyball was fun but their level was way lower than what I had expected and it was more of just pick-up fun volleyball than anything competitive. I began to realize that Koreans just want to have fun. No one cares if you are good at volleyball but it is about being together and laughing and trying your best. It’s a really great attitude. Well it was great, but then we kept going and going. We didn’t end until 8:30pm after starting at 5:30!!!

I finished the week up and then had a nice weekend. A huge Korean holiday is Chuseok which is basically Korean Thanksgiving and it was the following week. So at Korean class on Saturday we celebrated Chuseok. At first we all played yut nori which is a traditional Korean game where you throw this labeled sticks and if a certain pattern emerges you move a certain amount of spaces on the board. Then afterwards we got to put on traditional Korean Dress called “Hanbok” for females and go to make songpyeon. Songpyeon is mainly eaten for special occasions and Chuseok but it is like little dumplings made from rice flour and filled with sweet sesame paste then steamed with pine needles to get a really lovely fragrance and taste. I must have a hundred of them, they were delicious!!!

After celebrating I also got even more cultured when I went and hung out with my friend Abby, a New Zealander, and watched the New Zealand All-Blacks, the national rugby team. Rugby is interesting but has nothing on football!

Sunday was another good day as I spent a good part of the afternoon walking around the traditional market in Jochiwon and then going to see the Mortal Instruments movie.  Traditional markets are basically just farmers markets with a whole bunch of weird stuff for sale. They are really fun and a great way just to kill the afternoon. Plus the movie was really good. It was in English with Korean subtitles but what’s weird about Korean movie theaters is that seats are assigned which kinda sucks.

And so ends another nice weekend and back to the real world. Luckily it’s only a couple of days because of the Chuseok Holiday. Thank Goodness, I need a holiday!!