Day 3: Badger Blogging Blitz

[Badger Blogging Blitz (BBB) 2014: Ashley ...meanwhile in Korea..., Vicky Outside the Pyxis, Maggie The Traveling Flamingo, Drew The Hungry Partier, Rebecca Rebe with a Clause]

Today is Wednesday, March 26th. The weather today is cloudy with a chance of rain (high 72, low 41 degrees Fahrenheit). Woke up ten minutes before my alarm clock. Drat. 

Daily Recap

Teaching the younger grades is always a huge reminder about how kids are kids. They are so "pure of heart" as my co-teachers say. High energy classes and a productive afternoon today. 

6:00AM: Alarm clock goes off. I hop into the shower, get dressed, and listen to NPR's hourly newscast as I reheat the eggs from yesterday (now double microwave eggs). I take my calcium supplement and end up packing some toast and dried fruit I got from the Gwanghwamun market last Saturday into my bag to eat once I get to school. Boil some for water for coffee and into my travel mug it goes.
7:05AM: Walk to school. "How Did This Get Made #78 Crossroads (w/ Jeff Rubin)" plays on my iPhone. One of my go-to podcasts, How Did This Get Made? always makes me laugh. My favorite comedic actors discuss insanely bad and occasionally insanely good movies.

Day 2: Badger Blogging Blitz

[Badger Blogging Blitz (BBB) 2014: Ashley ...meanwhile in Korea..., Vicky Outside the Pyxis, Maggie The Traveling Flamingo, Drew The Hungry Partier, Rebecca Rebe with a Clause]

Today is Tuesday, March 25th. The weather today is overcast and warm (high 66, low 46 degrees Fahrenheit). I woke up feeling rested; I slept like a rock, the perks of a previously long day. 

Daily Recap

No lights and a cloudy morning, the hallways were so dark! Today was great class-wise, plus there were oranges in the teacher's room for snack. I was disappointed to find out that I was assigned more after school classes for April, even though I thought I had only agreed to teach extra classes for March. Lost in translation. 

5:45AM: Alarm clock goes off.  NPR's hourly newscast and I check my email and social media. Peanut butter and jelly toast with black pepper chai tea (water boiled in sixty seconds with my electric tea pot) for breakfast. The scratchy toast and steaming hot tea feels good on my throat. I make some microwave eggs but end up saving them in a tubberware for dinner perhaps.

6:40AM: Walk to school. It is a listen to "High School Musical" kind of gray morning. Zac Efron gets it.

Day 1: Badger Blogging Blitz

[Badger Blogging Blitz (BBB) 2014: Ashley ...meanwhile in Korea..., Vicky Outside the Pyxis, Maggie The Traveling Flamingo, Drew The Hungry Partier, Rebecca Rebe with a Clause]

Today is Monday, March 24th. The weather today is cloudy and cool (high 63, low 39 degrees Fahrenheit). I woke up feeling reluctant. Monday, you bastard. Koreans have a name for Mondays - 월요일 병 - which translates literally to "Monday sickness." 

Daily Recap

Today was a good day, despite it being Monday. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the 6th grade classes responded to the spelling activity, and I got to try several new games with my after school students. Lunch was fantastic per usual and my co-teacher SK and I had some good laughs today.

5:45AM: Alarm clock goes off. It's crazy, I know. I always lie to people when they ask me what time I get up. I listen to NPR's hourly newscast via iPhone before pulling myself out of bed. Fried eggs, toast, and a banana for breakfast. I wash down my calcium supplement with a glass of water (which I boiled via electric tea kettle the night before). After the dishes are clean, I drink my last yogurt drink and play an old episode of NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour "The Shambolic VMAs And Hollywood in The White House" as I get dressed, etc. I head out, grabbing the garbage bag that's been sitting by the door for the past week. 

6:35AM: Walk to school. Sunrise is around 6:30AM, and this morning was beautifully crisp. By the bridge, they're making good progress on the building they've been working on the past few months. Brickwork is finished and I suspect they'll be done in a couple of weeks.

Day 0: Badger Blogging Blitz

It's a Badger Blogging Blitz! Starting tomorrow, five fellow Badgers and I will blog every day for week, responding to the same questions about our lives in South Korea. I'm very excited to be part of this group of bloggers, as well as our larger group of University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni teaching English in Korea, because their experiences, thoughts, opinions, and theories - conversations with them - have been a huge source of support while living in Korea.

My goals for BBB are to provide more details on perhaps the more mundane aspects of my life in Icheon, South Korea (home of rice, ceramics, and peaches in the summer). If you have any additional questions, please do send me an email or leave a comment on this blog! If you have any questions you'd like the whole BBB gang to address, we are looking for reader questions for Day 6 and 7, so please don't hesitate! 

To be included in every BBB post:

1. Answers (to the two pre-determined daily questions)

2. A recap of the current day

Badger Blogging Blitz (BBB) 2014:

Ashley Wendorf: ...meanwhile in Korea...

Vicky Lee: Outside the Pyxis

Maggie Flamingo: The Traveling Flamingo

Drew Binsky: The Hungry Partier

Rebecca Thering: Rebe with a Clause

*2012 Badger Blogging Blitz

True Korean Teacher Dinner

My first teacher dinner with the Doji staff was filled with beer, soju, sam gyeop sal, mul kimchi, two impromptu speeches, and noraebang. I had a really great time eating (like the best time eating) and after the main part of the meal was done, I was so happy to talk with some of the Doji teachers. I met four teachers who are my age -- How old are you? Twenty-five?! Friends. -- and it was great to chat about twentysomething stuff with them.

Everyone got febreezed on the way out the restaurant door (to get rid of the grilled meat smell?) and we headed to the noraebang, which is basically a private karaoke singing room. It's funny, but this was an obligation. One of the teachers told me that Doji was too small of a school to hope to sneak out of singing and go home. Everyone was expected to sing, especially my co-teacher because he's new and Korean. For the last song, we all stood in a half circle, held hands, and the mic was passed verse by verse down the line. Five hours later, I'm home. Wednesday, you may have killed me. 

The highlight of my day: waiting outside by the front door at Doam. My Doji co-teacher would pick me up for the teacher dinner. While I stood there, one of the little second graders came hopping towards me. "Oh, hello," he always says when he sees me. My teacher friend KH comes out and I dunno, we three just stand there and talk in broken English. Then, one of my fifth grade students joins us and gives me a picture he drew and colored -- "Hero Cookie Man." I was also really happy to receive a very pretty basket of flowers at the teacher dinner. It's the simple things that get me through the social things ::

Korean Elementary Schools, what they're made of

Unlike American elementary schools, Korean schools have a distinct look. "Korean school spotted," is on of my favorite in-my-head catch phrases when exploring a Korean city. It's an insanely easy and comforting game haha. 

A massive, dirt playground is a key feature. Doubling as a soccer field, a track, a performance-dance space, a bus drop-off and pick-up area, and a parking lot for parents on special days, all the Korean elementary schools have one. Bordering its outside edges are monkey bars, slides, swings, and other playground equipment. Doam and Doji also have basketball courts. Trees and statues of various Korean figures, such as King Sejong, line the side of the dirt playground that the main school building sits on.

Doam Elementary School 

First week at two schools, Doji thoughts

[On February 18th, I was told by my employer, Doam Elementary, that I would start working at a second school, Doji Elementary, two days a week. Three days a week, I continue to teach at Doam.]

Happy White Day! Students at my new school kept coming into the English classroom with candy, and I finally made a comment about it to my Doji co-teacher Seong Ho. He told me that it was White Day, similar to Pepero Day. A second "Valentine's Day" where boys and girls give sweet candy instead of chocolates is how he described it. I liked that they were comfortable enough to approach me since I met three of my classes for the first time today - and I'm the first native or foreigner English teacher at Doji in either two or five years. I've been told both so...

The first week (or two days) at my new school went well. It was reminiscent of my first week at Doam back in September, minus jet-lag and culture shock. I had classes, met the principal (who is referred to as the royal director), and was introduced to the various teachers as we ran into each other in the hallways. It was nice not to be completely lost - a sign of growth for sure. I am an expert at what it's like to be a native English teacher in my section of Korea.

Pop sad, then happy

[On February 18th, I was told by my employer, Doam Elementary, that I would start working at a second school, Doji Elementary, two days a week. Three days a week, I continue to teach at Doam.]

I'm revisiting some of the hard feelings the night before I start at my new elementary school. It's not necessarily the extra work, though that is a sore point (eight different textbooks and all these 4-1, 4-2, 3-1, 6-2, 3-2, 5-1, 2-1, 6-1, 5-2 classes to keep bloody straight), but it absolutely is the fact that all the time spent coordinating and tweaking lessons is the result of someone who thought this was a good idea. It's not fair to the students and it's not fair to my co-teachers. I truly don't mind being busy. I've been super efficient with my time and I'm getting it done. I just need to shake the annoyance and I'll be set to go. 

So, to finish off finely wording my complaints about teaching in Korea, let me just say how thankful I am to have two hard-working co-teachers and how much fun I have talking and interacting with my students. Kids are amazing. Also, I'd send a warning letter to the next Doam native English teacher in a heart beat. 

Moving on, I thought it would be fitting to address what makes me pop sad and pop happy. Inspired by NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour segment titled "Pop Culture That Makes Us Cry & Somali Pirates" and a tweet from one of my favorite twitter accounts posing the question and judgement of the question, "how often are you supposed to cry?" here are my lists: 

Being Difficult: Teaching in Korea

First off, the Korean school system is a hierarchy. Very roughly, the principal sits at the top, then the vice principal, next the head teacher, after that regular grade or home room teachers, and finally special subject teachers (English, music, science, art, and physical education). Decisions are made at the top and information is trickled down from there. My co-teachers are often the last to know about things because it is the responsibility of each higher party to relay the information downward. Why they don't just send out staff emails bewilders me. 

This makes for a lot of scrambling on a daily basis for Korean teachers, because not only are they learning information about schedules and classes - by American standards - inconveniently late, they are dealing with that information constantly, constantly, changing. In a normal school week, we have at least two or three changes where English classes are cancelled or two classes are switched or a class we don't normally have that day, surprise! One of the more common conversations I have with my co-teachers:

Me [five minutes after class should have started]: "Sooo, no fourth graders today..."

My co: "Oh, I forgot to tell you. We will teach them tomorrow." 

Pain for Gain double take:

I have one of the highest pain thresholds of anyone I know. My earliest memory of pain: hand slashes broken glass. Shock ridden, I didn't start crying until several seconds after the fact. By then, the blood had begun trickling down the length of my arm. I had felt the pull of my skin when the glass tore through it, but I cried out because it was the first time I had seen my blood, so red, pour out of me. I was going to die. I ran like hell for my parents. 

Looking back, the pain was there, but I was forward-thinking, past the cut, at the blood pulsing out of my wound and splotching onto the concrete in perfect little circles. I was focused on watching what it meant, if the blood didn't stop. I never acknowledge pain face-to-face. That's how I got through two major reconstructive foot surgeries, twice re-learning how to walk, and the worst timing in the planet for appendicitis -- I flash forward to when it won't hurt anymore with ever so cool a head and, hey, might as well squeeze in a nap while I lie here and get a root canal. 

I've never broken a bone, gotten punched in the face, or been physically abused in any way. I've never had to know pain to be anything but an inevitable part of life. I am thankful for that. Whether it's been running into table corners, sore muscles from exercise, or my body doing its healing thing, my pain threshold has let me categorize pain into something greater than the pain itself.