Moving in

My jobby job:  First of all I want to say something about the Korean way of communication at the workplace.  There is none.  With that said I shall continue :)

So I am teaching, at the moment, just 15 classes a week and its all me.  Forty-five minutes of a pure JBrown class.  The other English teachers are in the room, but all they do is interpret once in a while and help keep the students in line.  Each class has about 30-35 kids.  I teach 7 first grade classes and 8 third grade classes.  The kids are 14 and 16 years old respectively.  Their level of comprehension is much, much, greater than their ability to talk.  But I also think that the strict discipline the school has them under makes the kids really shy about speaking up anyways.  When I walk around the room to see how they are doing in on their worksheets they cower and look at me through the corner of their eyes.  Like, "Please don't beat me!"  Did I do that when I was a kid?  I remember being nervous and not wanting the teacher to hover but I don't remember acting in the way they do.  The first graders are a little more rambunctious than the third graders and much more willing to participate as a class.  The third graders just kind of stare at me like.  Its like they're catatonic or something.  Like in Weird Science when Lisa freezes Wyatt's grandparents during the party and puts them in the closet (love that scene!).  My my-coteachers say that these kids think they are too-cool-for-school and only the dorks and nerds are the ones really participating.  Ahhh, so this is what it was like for my freshman and sophomore teachers.  Wow, sorry guys.  I feel your pain yo.  

The first two days of class were a nightmare.  An hour before my first class one of the teachers asked to see the material I had prepared for class.  This is after my assigned co-teacher (my co-teacher is the person in charge of all the logistical stuff for me as far as my job and life in Korea are concerned; apartment, bank account, paperwork, etc.) on Friday said that I wouldn't be teaching until Thursday of this week or so and I would just be observing until then.  So I freaked out.  I came up with some sort of half assed introduction-about-myself power point that included pictures I could gather from myspace and a rapid google search of Portland, OR.  I came to my first class with no training, no heads up, and wearing shorts and a t-shirt because I had just gotten my golden bag containing the majority of my clothes and ALL of my work clothes THE moment I found out I had to actually teach.  I walked into the room.  I began to sweat and the humidity here wasn't helping.  I wasn't prepared and I knew it.  I've never been as good at bullshitting as most all of my good friends are.  I think thats part of the reason why I like you guys so much.  And you know you are good at it too!  So class begins.  I'm stuttering, sweating, inserting an Ahhh and an ummm way too much here and there.  My powerpoint ends and I still have twenty minutes left of class!  Ummm, ahhh.  Quick you college grad, think dammit!  The other English teacher that is in the room says "Jason likes to travel . . .,"  so I pulled out a map and showed them all the places I've been and had them repeat the names of the countries.  Good call, thanks Vickey.  So that ate up eight more minutes.  Now what?  Question and answer time!  "How oldeh are you?"  "30." "Do you hab a girlprend."  "No."  Is all I get.  C'mon clock!  Work with me PPPPLLLLLEEEEAAASSSEEE.  At this point I stole Vickey's fan that looks similar to one you could buy at a cheap Japanese tourist shop and am fanning myself in a panic.  The bell rings.  Thank the good lord, Buddha,  Muhammad, and all the other deities in this world.  I like being in front of people.  I like teaching people.  I don't know what it is but I really, really like it.  BUT I like to be prepared and know what the hell it is I'm talking about before going into the situation.  This was, perhaps the worst, nope, the second worst 45 minutes of my life.  I had another class that day but was able to find more pictures and filled in s'more time with some other banter about the geography and climate in Portland, OR.  I don't know if they understood it all but it seemed to work.  Tusesday I had the worst and the best classes of the week.

This would be my first, first grade class.  The teacher I was paired with for this class is . . . to call her soft-spoken would be an understatement.  Like I said before the third graders are, um tame.  These kids, and this class specifically, is the quintessential loud, yelling, running around, hitting each other, 'problem' class you've seen in any movie where a new teacher is introduced to the school.  If you could take a step back and see the movement of the class it was if they were moving as one.  Like some giant, 14 year old Korean amoeba.  At any moment I was waiting for a paper airplane to appear out of nowhere and hit me square in the forehead.   My lesson plan was still shaky at best and I have never had to do any sort of classroom management, ever.  All the public speaking I've done so far has always been directed towards an adult crowd or in a university classroom setting where there were no amoeba's and no chance for paper airplanes.  Ms. Ha, to her credit, is a wonderful woman and did her best to control the kids.  So my lesson plan ended early again and these kids weren't listening to me, nor did they care about where I had been, or anything else for that matter.  They asked me the same two questions the other classes had asked me.  And still five more minutes of class left.  At this point I was running out of optimism and grim thoughts were running through my head.  I wanted to leave the room.  I really wanted to leave the room.  I stopped caring about how creative I could be in this situation and wanted to raise the white flag and call "uncle."  Then the bell rang.  But not after standing there for some time wishing that I had more tricks up my sleeves; wishing that I had some sort of training or warning about my sudden rush into my new teaching life.  I went to my office and didn't want to leave.  But my next class was in ten minutes.  I gathered my thoughts and took lots of deep breaths (thank you yoga) and went back into the lion's den.  But this next class was the third graders again and a new teacher.  

Ms.  Yoon is the oldest and most strict of all the other English teachers.  I work with three Korean English teachers in all.  As I began my powerpoint she began instructing the kids to write down new words I was introducing to them.  She asked me to explain in further detail what I was talking about.  I wrote out my family tree (going just back to grandma's and grandpa's) and explained to them what an uncle, aunt, cousin, and brother in-law was.  Ms. Yoon prompted me to explain other things that I had just glossed over in my three previous classes.  the students were engaged.  This was working!  Holy shit, I might be a teacher after all!  I gained confidence and soon began to smile again and have fun with the kids.  My lesson ended just two minutes before the bell.  I did it!  Walking out of class Ms. Yoon admitted to me that she had had a report from Vickey about my first class was nervous/not too happy about me.  But in the next sentence said that I had a knack for this and thinks that I'll be a very good teacher.  "The students really like you."  I was elated.  The rest of the week went fine.  The only other thing that has troubled me was getting the school to help me set up a bank account, go the hospital for my testing, and I still have yet to apply for my Alien Registration Card.  It has been like pulling teeth to get them to help me.  But after some repetitive whining about how I don't speak the language and that things could be lost in translation and saying "Well all the other native English teachers had help . . . "  I finally got just about everything that I wanted.  They still have yet to reimburse me for the plane ticket but I'm leaving that hurdle for next week.  

I feel like I'm in the future here sometimes.   Buildings are covered in signs on every floor.   Instead of the standard American buildings were you have businesses on the bottom floor and condos or apartments on the floors above, there are business buildings and then there are residence buildings.  I feel like I'm missing out on 80% of what Busan has to offer me because I fail to remember to simply look up.  After living in my studio for almost a full week now I just realized that there is a gym right across the street from my house!  Aside from the signs there are hoards of neon lights everywhere.  When night falls sometimes I feel like I'm living in a scene from Bladerunner.  

I live in a neighborhood of Busan called Jangsan (pronounced Gensan).  It's pretty much the richest part of Busan, richest in the sense that most of everything here is new.  There are literally hundreds of places to eat, drink, shop, bank, workout, you name it within a ten block radius of my place.  The grocery store is across the street, there are two coffee shops across the street and one just around the corner.  Yes my friends one of them is Starbucks.  Even South Korea is littered with 'em.  Oh and the coffee here is really, really expensive.  

• A "grande" cup of joe costs $3.70
• A "grande" latte costs $4.30

So if any of you amazing people reading this blog get the hankering, you can send me early birthday and Christmas presents for the rest of my life all within this year in the form of Stumptown coffee.  I will love you forever ;) 

Ok, so what was I talking about . . . oh yes my hood.   I still live fairly close the to beach (they call it beachee here).  It's like a mile or so away.  Makes for a good run to the beach, then on the beach, and then back and I can extend the sucker with a sweet park on a peninsula!  So my place . . .  I'll post pictures soon.   The whole building is only like four years old or so.  My studio measures about 12x27 and has wood floors.  It came with a bed, couch, microwave (with a toaster built-in), a small kitchen, and of course the bathroom.  There is no actual shower stall within the bathroom, just a drain on one side of the tiled floor.  My place is really clean and modern looking.  I love it!  Oh other thing about where I live.  So I live in this really modern studio in a really modern, ritzy part of town right?.  Well for the contrast my school is located in the hills in a really poor part of Busan.  This part of town reminds me a lot of Xela (Shayla), Gauatemala actually with its tiny roads; small buildings where half of them look like they are either being torn down or are under construction; the marts are tiny and every nook and crany is filled with a potential item to sell, and the people even dress the part as well.  The main difference here is the writing you see every where and the language you over hear while walking down the street.  The street markets even look similar where people have all their fish, spices, foods of all sorts, socks and shoes, and miscellaneous trinkets for sale (who buys those things anyways?).  I wonder if Guatemala would look the same as my neighborhood if all the sudden it were given trillions and trillions of dollars that didn't go directly into the pockets of its government.

Last night I had an amazing night out with Vickey, the English teacher that accompanied me for my first-class-ever-nightmare.  She took me out to see my first Buddhist temple.   You climb this hillside for a while, leaving behind all the buildings and noise that is Busan.  The road continues into the trees and ends in a parking lot that was bordered by a restaurant?  We hiked along this path for sometime and then reached the temples.  It was like everything I've ever seen in any asian tourist book with the intricate paintings on the walls, the stone statues of lions roaring and Buddha himself, the large clay tile roofs that fan far out over the facade of each temple, and holy moly I'm here seeing it for myself!  I don't know if I can write the words to describe what I saw at the temples so I might just leave that for the pictures that I'll post soon enough.  It was in all, the most relaxing bit of time here I've had since arriving.  All was silent except for us exchanging a few words once in a while and the click of my camera.  There were very few people there as well.  I saw about five people praying, a handful of monks, and another handful of tourists.  This in of itself was strange because there are just so many dang people here.  You find people everywhere and yet I managed to find a place where there weren't any . . . at the temples.  Then she took me to the Pusan (this is the old transliteration of Busan, not sure how long ago that was.  But wouldn't it be interesting if Portland was one day called Bortland?)  National University neighborhood.  This is definitely a more hip place than where I live and its a ways away from me too.  But there are tons of small shops, bars, and restaurants with hoards of people walking around (this was a Friday night).  She took me to this restaurant that serves jjimdak.  This is stewed chicken in a dark sauce with potatoes and clear noodles served with a bowl of rice and some vegies.  You order it in a huge bowl and you pick at it with your dinner mate(s).  This is perhaps one of the best things I have ever eaten.  I can't wait to have it again!  And guaranteed . . . for any of you adventurous folks who want to come visit me, I will share this dish with you no probs.  I was also introduced to two new wonderful kinds of alcoholic drinks here.  I don't remember the name of the first one (not because I was drunk) but because its really hard to remember the names of anything around here people, places, anything really.  The pronunciation is hard enough and then trying to recall it on top of that!?  Ok so the first one tasted like a really great, fruity white whine thats 14% alcohol, so a smidge stronger that your average wine.  The second and my fav was called . . . dammit can't remember that one either.  Wait for it . . . Seouljuenmae . . . I think.  I'll get back you you cats on that one.  This is made from pears and it rocks.  Man, sooooo tasty.  Both of these you drink from shot glasses and you generally sip from them.  There is a custom here in Korea where you do not refill your own glass of alcohol.  It is considered rude and disrespectful.  So your compadres are on the look out all the time for an empty glass.  Oh yeah!  Vickey and I met up with some of her Korean friends after dinner for drinks.  This is where I found the pear drink.  This was my first, time outside of school, just hanging out with Koreans.  It was so nice.  One of them was an English teacher and her boyfriend could understand most English, as long as we talked slow enough.  I can't wait to learn more Korean.  So far all I have is:

ney - yes

a-knee-o - no

Gan-bay - cheers

Kam-sa-han-mi-da - thank you

Je-su-yo- please

A-nong-ha-say-yo-hello

Yogi (like the bear)- here     (transliterations done by yours truly)

Bathrooms are generally really easy to find and are everywhere.

and I think thats about it.  

But I don't have to think about saying them anymore.  So my list will continue to grow.  Vickey  is going to teach me how to pronounce the Korean alphabet (hangul) this week and I'm going to teach myself how to count this week as well.  Yep.  I need to get out of my place now.  This turned out to be a lot longer than expected.  I hope you all are doing well.  BTW in case you can't tell . . . I HEART Busan.  

Hugs and laughs, 

Jason