Finally, My Very Own Blog

I had been dying to go snowboarding ever since I got to Korea, and last weekend I finally got the chance when I was invited by my coworker Whitney to join her and her friends. Funny enough, my first reaction was that I didn't want to go because I had been hoping to be able to sleep in that weekend....doh! Another weekend of making myself even more tired, but snowboarding is worth it!

Turned out to be a great trip, although one of the most exhausting days in recent memory. After a very long week, and only about 4 hours of sleep, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 5 am and headed up to Yong Pyeong Resort for a day on the slopes. After a 4 hour afternoon session, we took a 2 hour pizza assisted recharge and went out for a few more hours of night boarding. By 9:30 at night we were all pretty much spent, but honestly I was pleasantly surprised that I had lasted that long. It's amazing how energy just seems to come back when you are doing something fun!

In terms of snow conditions, skiing in Korea is much like skiing in Southern California -- lines are too long, runs are too short, and there are too many people on the slopes. The snow was mostly man-made, but not too icy. And it was a warm sunny day, which always makes me happy. I didn't try anything harder that the intermediate slopes, partially because I didn't have the energy to do anything too tough, but also because I don't have health insurance and really didn't want to risk any injury. But I did well, practiced my carving a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.



A major difference between Korea and US -- here, most people carry their boards on the lift instead of having one foot strapped in. I like this way MUCH better, because even after I was totally confident on a snowboard, I still managed to occasionally fall coming off the lift.

Afterwards we headed back to the SWEET condo that Jay had hooked up for us (thanks Jay!). It was two story and very cushy. Too bad we were only there one night! It was a very welcome sight after such a long exhausting day. But oddly enough, our day was not over yet. At 11:30, Whitney the danceaholic talked us into going to a "hip hop club event" at the resort. It was some sort of television deal promoting up-and-coming talent, and some of the performers we saw were quite good. But the crowd was sparse and most of them were young, so it felt more like a middle school dance. Except for the cigarette girls in mini skirts. They never had cigarette girls at my middle school dances.

As we left the restaurant where we ate lunch on the way home, we stopped to buy some roasted chestnuts and corn on the cob. The stand was also selling Bundaege, which is steamed silkworm larvae. Yes, bugs, basically. It's a popular snack with older Koreans, who mainly like it for nostalgic reasons -- before Korea became a more wealthy nation and food was more scarce, it was a common food source. And they still sell the stuff everywhere, and the smell is repulsive. Here is what it looks like:


Honestly, I have been curious about the taste since I arrived in Korea, but was waiting for someone to pressure me into trying it, because I don't think I could do it on my own. Everyone in the group except Cary was Korean, so when they found out I hadn't tried it yet, they insisted that I taste it, in spite of the fact that they all think it's awful. And once the man and woman selling it caught on that I had never tried it, they promptly filled a cup and passed it to me. How could I refuse then?

At first the flavor was actually kind of good, but after about three chews the texture became really noticable and I remembered exactly what I was eating. I could only stand to eat one.


I knew I had to try Bundaege before I left Korea. Now I have, and I can rest easy. By the way, they sell it in cans, so if anyone wants me to send some home, just let me know!

Recently, our boss, Mr. Han, took the entire staff for a day of ice fishing. Naturally I was excited because it was something I had never done before...not a lot of ice fishing in California. Turned out to be a fine day, although the warming weather left about 3 inches of shush on top of the ice, and most of use had not worn water proof shoes. So the feet drenched in ice water was not so fun, but I enjoyed myself otherwise. Harry caught one fish, but he was the only one. No luck for the rest of us.

One of the best methods for dealing with culture shock, in those moments when everything about the foreign country is driving you batty, is to identify the things that you will miss when the time comes to finally leave. I am sure that over the course of the year, I will have a huge list; in fact, my list is already starting to grow. I will miss the brilliant public transportation system, I will miss having kimchi served at every meal, I will miss the fact that I have three decent corner markets within a 5 minutes walk from my apartment. Oh yeah, and the fact that I am getting paid more to do a fraction of the work I was doing back home, with a fraction of the stress. I love that part.

Something I have recently discovered is so cool that it merits its own writing. About a half block from my apartment is Shingu Elementary school. It has a fantastic recreation field, which runs the length of the street perpendicular to mine. There is a soccer field, a basketball court, and some playground equipement. And a track runs around the length of the soccer field. Not an icky dirt track, but one of those nice rubber ones that absorbs the shock when you run. It really is an impressive little sports field for an elementary school.

When school is not in session, the field becomes a public multi-use space. It is used by soccer teams of various ages and nationalities (two teams I dubbed the British Isle Hotties and Middle Aged Americans were there last weekend). It is used by joggers and walkers. It is used by families with children, people with dogs, dudes playing basketball. It is even used by people doing Tai Chi and yoga.

But the best part about the field is that is stays in use until late at night. The first night I went, I was there doing yoga at 10:30 p.m., and didn’t feel anything but perfectly safe. Tonight, I went down at 11:00 p.m., and there were at least 3 dozen people there. About a dozen people jogging or walking (including a few elderly women walking backwards, a popular exercise that is said to improve specific muscles and balance), some boys playing basketball, a family having a picnic, a dad teaching his kids to play soccer, a solo soccer dude, a few girls stretching, and my favorite, singing Tai Chi lady. It was so cool to be out there so late with so many others, and feel totally safe. When I left at midnight, there were still almost two dozen out there.

And here is the strange part -- the field itself has absolutely no light. None at all. It really is a dark field. However, the places surrounding it provide just enough light so see what you are doing. In fact, on of the main sources of light is the colassal neon cross from the nearby Gwanglim Catholic Church. There is enough light to do sprints without worrying about tripping over something, but not enough light for people to clearly see each other’s faces unless you’re right up close. It’s absolutely perfect. There is something so cool about moving around in a fairly small space with so many others, but still having a sense of privacy. I just can’t describe it. I especially love it because its one of the few times that the fact that I am a foreigner is not as obvious. Of course, the swinging blonde ponytail gives me away, but I’m thinking about getting a beenie to cover it up.

So I am still thrilled about the fact that I just did laps, and totally enjoyed it. This was something I almost never did at home. I usually prefered to jog or walk after dark, but never felt that safe doing it, especially on a deserted high school track. Plus, by the time I was home from work and recovered enough to get some exercise, it was nighttime. The best choice was working out in a gym, but I would rather be an out of shape fatty that work out at a gym. The result was that I rarely got regular exercise. And now I can’t wait until the next time I can put on the headphones and head out to the track.

Today I taught a 7 year old Korean girl the correct way to say that she farted.

It was a level three class - meaning third grade level American curriculum. There are only 3 kids there - Annie, Jenny and David. The assignment had been to write a journal entry about something embarrassing that had happened to them. As I ask them to hand in their journal, Annie, an *adorable* girl that is one of the brightest and most delightful students I have ever taught, starts giggling incessantly as she pulls her notebook. I ask her what is so funny, but in the midst of her giddiness, her English went out the window and she just continued to giggle and spit out some unintelligible words. What's wrong....ah! I quickly gathered that she was worried about other students seeing her embarrassing story. Bear in mind that the only two students in the class are her close friend and a semi-crude boy who really could care less. But whatever. So I have her give it to me so I can read it quietly, wondering what it could be that she was so ashamed of. The first sentence says:

"One day I was on the bus from school, and I broke gas."

Ok, now I know why she didn't want to share it. This kind of thing is pretty embarrassing for any little girl.

I must say that I was impressed that she didn't revert to saying farted, but instead attempted to use the more polite phrase. Or maybe she didn't know the word "farted." But politness aside, the only thing I could think about at that moment was that "broke gas" is not the proper phrase! You can say "passed gas," or "broke wind," but you can't say "broke gas!" Sure, people will know what you mean, but its not the right way to say it!

This sort of conflict comes up on an hourly basis when teaching language to foreign speakers. As they are natually going to make a ton of mistakes, I often let some things slip so as not to overwhelm them with corrections. What usually goes uncorrected, especially in the lower level students, are the things that are *close enough,* meaning that a native speaker would generally know what they meant even if the grammar was a bit off. And “breaking gas” fell into this category.

But for some reason, I couldn't let this one go (pun NOT intended). How to discreetly correct her without revealing her embarrassing moment to the other kids....as much as I wanted to use this as an opportunity to teach them all the proper phrase, imagine them going home and telling Mom and Dad what they learned from Nicole Teacher today! Not going to happen, but I HAD to correct Annie.

My compromise was to write the two proper phrases in her book for her, so in my red teacher pen and neatest handwriting, I write "break wind" and "pass gas" in her notebook. I point it out to her, she nods her head in appreciation, giggles some more and hides the incriminating story away.

Many of the more obscure phrases, sayings and slangs that I teach the kids to say are the types of things that they will probably forget completely before they ever get the chance to use them. Will Annie ever get a chance to use this phrase again? And if she does, will she remember? Who knows, but I did what I could. I can go to sleep at night knowing that I taught one student a useful slang phrase...I mean, who doesn't talk about farting? Everyone talks about farting (admit it, you know you do), and is she spends any amount of time speaking English in her life, I have no doubt that she will need to know this phrase someday. And hopefully she will remember the caring teacher who taught her.

So the rest of Annie’s journal story also enlightened me to one similarity between Korea and the US that I have not read in any of books about Korea: after Annie “broke gas,” another student next to her on the bus noticed the smell and asked the eternal question – Who did it? And Annie did exactly what you would expect of any rationale person:

She blamed it on the bus driver.

(Note: I wrote this a few months ago and am just posting it now. I am happy to report that Annie DID remember what I taught her about the right way to say she farted – it came up in another journal, and she used the correct phrase -- “passed gas.” I am very proud.)

A funny work story I wrote a few months back.

It was Monday, and I had 3 hours without a scheduled class. I wasn’t allowed to leave, and I knew I couldn’t sit and write email, because apparently if a teacher clearly doesn’t have anything to do, they find something for you. I was fully prepared to sit in my classroom and pretend to do unnessesary lesson plans, but it wasn’t long before one of the admin came to get me - “Nicole? You need to do SLEP tests.” Shit. I had heard about these. Mainly, that they were tremedously boring.

SLEP (I have no idea what it stands for, maybe Students Lacking in English Proficiency) is a computer-based listening and reading comprehension test that is used to evaluate a student’s language level. Apparently my school got them from some other school, so I don’t know who wrote them. Before using them on the students, my school was having several of the English teachers proofread them for grammar issues. Which is good, right? Right. Nothing worse than having an English school give a test with grammar mistakes. So as boring as it was, I found plenty of things that needed fixing, and not all of it was grammar related.

You know how there are certain types of humor that DO NOT translate between cultures? Well, it was clear that who ever wrote this particular test knew that well. In fact, while it was a totally valid test with almost perfect grammar, I am totally convinced that it was written by two 20-something American or Canadian stoners who were disgruntled about the fact that they had to write the test, (most likely because it wasn’t in their contract). And since they had to do it, they decided to have some fun with it. But the beauty was that everything funny in it would most likely be totally over the heads of any Korean. Almost everything (more on that later).

One section was a map section that tested listening skills related to directions and place names. There was a simple neighborhood map with four cars. The students listen to short dialogues, and have to figure out which of the cars the people are in, based on what they are saying. The neighborhood on this particular map had a bank, an airport, a convenience store, a police station, a doughnut shop, a pawn shop across the street from a gun shop, a courthouse, a jail and a liscense plate factory. Um, a ghetto, perhaps? (Which, by they way, was a vocabulary word I had to explain last week. Seoul does not have anything close to ghettos, so it was tough.) Here are some samples of what the dialogues contained: “How much money do you think the pawn shop will give me for my wedding ring?” “Let’s stop at the doughnut shop after taking this prisoner to the jail.” “How can you be craving chocolate after eating all those microwave burritos at the convenience store?”

Will Korean students find that as funny as I did? I doubt it. But it is true that many Koreans think America is a very dangerous place to live, because our crime rate is astromonical compared to theirs. I have heard of students who honestly think that everyone in America carries a gun. (Was Bowling for Colombine released in Korea?) In fact, it is totally illegal for citizens here to have guns and knives. Even the cops don’t have guns, and Seoul is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Pretty amazing actually. I have never felt this safe in a foreign country before. This is the kind of city where if you drop money accidentally, someone will pick it up and give it back to you. (find crime rate stats) No wonder they think America is such a scary place. And it doesn’t help that most Koreans who move to the states go to DC, New Jersey or L.A. But I guess we can also thank the people who write these tests for perpetuating the stereotype. Who knew?

Ok, so speaking of stereotypes of Americans, here’s another one that found its way into the same test. There was a long dialogue listening comprehension section. It involved listening to a story/dialogue in small parts and answering questions about it. The particular story I heard was about two men named Toby and Bubba who are sitting on the couch watching TV and eating chips. They want to watch Geraldo Springer at 4, but decide to watch Lifeguards and Strongman Competition in the meantime. Then an informercial for a company called Trimco comes on. Trimco is selling a low calorie “food substitute” and a home-liposuction kit. This prompts Bubba and Toby to debate whether or not they are overweight. Of course, they both decide they are, although Toby prefers to think of himself as bigger boned than most people. And bear in mind that this dialogue is being read by native speakers in semi-monotone, over-enounciated, too-perfect English. Hysterical. Anyways, Bubba wants to order the kit, but Toby tries to talk him out of it. Bubba gets angry, accusing Toby of trying to prevent him from being happy. Then he accuses Toby of wanting to go home and secretly order the kit himself so he can lose weight first. Toby gets angry at Bubba and storms out.

And sure enough, both men call and separately order the food substitute and home-liposuction kit. During the course of the phone calls, we learn that the food substitute comes in various flavors: Chocolate, ham, and salt. It used to come in Mango, but customers were developing a rash so they discontinued that flavor. Bubba asks about the new “South of Border” flavors, and the rep tells him that they do have a new line of flavors for their Latin customers: Salsa Verde, Mestizo, and Chindala. During the dialogue, we also get to learn about what liposuction is (“a big needle that sucks fat out of your body”) and that some of the side effects are vomitting, fever and death. So not only do Americans pawn their wedding rings for guns, we’d also rather spend our money of fat sucking needles than excersice.

By this point, I am debating whether or not I want to enlighten my Korean boss to the crude humor that has been snuck into his tests. But how do you explain that to someone who struggles to speak English themselves? In the end I decide just to leave it alone, because my twisted sense of humor overrules the responsible teacher who hates the negative stereotypes we are stuck with. Plus, it may result in them requesting that I rewrite the test, which I’d honestly rather not do at this point.

But there was one section at the end that I could not let slip through. It was a reading comprehesion section where students read a short passage and answered questions. The particular story was about settlers traveling by wagon across the plains. Even though the Indians warned them not to keep going, they were convinced that they could make it before winter came. But they were wrong. The first paragraph of the selection describes how the family ran out of food and had to eat their pack animals. Then they boiled and ate everything made of leather. And then, one day, Pa went to the cemetary, and came back with....an arm. And there is an entire paragraph describing how the hungry settlers cooked and devoured the arm, ripping the meat from the bones, crying because it tasted so good. One of the comprehesion questions was “What do you think the settlers will most likely do the next day?” And the correct answer was “Go back to the cemetary to get more food.”

I am totally serious about this. My school is one of the most respected and expensive Hogwans in Seoul. We have children of some very high profile people, including judges, doctors and lawyers. The Korean staff speaks very good English, but whoever was setting these tests up neglected to catch the passage about graphic cannabalism. Well, I guess that’s why they have us proofread them, right? Or perhaps they didn't there was anything wrong with it. But I can’t help but wonder about the school where the tests were borrowed from. Is there a Hogwan out there where students are reading this, and wondering what the hell is wrong with Americans? And whoever wrote the test is probably still laughing about it.

So nevertheless, I pointed this passage out to my boss, and it is being removed from the test immediately. So while I did not work to end the stereotypes of Americans as gun-totting lard asses, at least you can thank me for every Korean that does not think that we Americans are savage cannables.