Hi everyone,
It's Tuesday evening here and I just thought I would fill you all in on my last week and a half. My friends seemed to think that my last letter didn't sound like me and got a bit worried about me. Just bear in mind that I'm writing this for 50 people, family, friends, children, grandparents, colleagues and Koreans. It needs to be censored to some degree but yes it's still me. I shall try to throw in a few northernisms as proof.
I started teaching on my own last week and it's been so tiring. I'm teaching from 9.30- 7pm with an hour for lunch that I spend with the kids and a half hour break later on to plan work. I know I will get into the swing of things but at the moment i'm bringing home folders of work to plan for the next days class. I've also turned overly organised. I realised that I should have a word with myself when I was sat on my bed at 2am on weds night, labelling folders with colour coded tabs and writing lists divided into shopping, personal, kinder class, elementary and homework. I need to calm down. I've also turned into a neat freak. I've always liked things to be clean but I've never been overly tidy but i'm verging on OCD! The girls I work with came into my apartment the other day and couldn't believe that anyone was this neat! As horrid as my apartment is, I love it and it's my little palace!
The mosquitoes. My bites have subsided and they seem to have left me alone, I'm starting to take it personally and spend my nights wondering what I did wrong! Cintia, my co-worker gave me her mosquito net and I LOVE IT. This one sheet of white net has made my green faded room look glamorous, I feel like a princess (in my palace!). I have used a whole can of mosquito spray in a week, sorry mr o-zone but some things are more important to me. My boss (who still hasn't smiled yet) looked at me with a half confused and half despairing face the other day when I started screaming in excitement that the fogging van was going past. The fogger, for those who don't know, is a van that shoots out fog that kills the insects. The children run behind it (which can't be healthy) but they seem to survive it unlike the mosquitoes, which hopefully don't.
I went out last Saturday to Gangnam, it's the land of the beautiful people. Imagine a mixture of Soho and Oxford street but with neon lights and Korean writing. I stood outside the subway station waiting for some people I was meeting just staring at all the tiny, beautiful women in stunning clothes, they dress so well here. It does nothing for my self esteem, I am about twice the height and width of these women. A korean woman said to me yesterday "You have beautiful big eyes and curves" I told her that she was welcome to carve them off and have them herself.
Anyway, I went to a bar in Gangnam called monkey beach. I didn't really like it because it was like just being at home, (same drinks, music etc) I'm desperate for a culture shock but I had fun and danced on the tables with all the girls I was with until 6am. I went to the toilets (I nearly typed restroom then, I AM BRITISH, I AM BRITISH, i need to remind myself of that) and whilst I was fishing around in my bag for my lipstick a girl came over to me, stook her face right in mine and went "I know you, I do, how do I know you". I stepped back a bit confused and realised that I had done my TEFL course with this girl in Leeds. It was so strange. There are about 40,000 English teachers in Korea, most are Canadian, Australian or American, so to meet this girl was scary!
I went to the shop the other night because I had a huge craving for a beer. As I was coming out of the shop, two western guys who were sat at a plastic table outside (the equivalent of Tesco express here has chairs outside so you can eat and drink what you have just bought) They invited me over to sit with them and drink my beer. Whilst I was talking to them some korean business men came over and sat right up against us and just listened intently to us. I was very confused and just looked at the people I was with with an uncomfortable/ confused smile on my face. They said "oh this happens all the time don't worry about it". They sat listening to us for two hours and probably couldn't understand a word.
For some reason I had a sterotype in my head that all the korean children would be well behaved and 'nice'. They are exactly like UK children. I have one class that I hate teaching, they don't speak very much English and they are sooooooooo naughty. I was nearly in tears yesterday because they were running rings round me and as many tactics as I tried, they just wouldn't stop. I have other naughty classes but normally I can handle them and even make them warm to me on occasion, this is certainly not the case with pink class. I was once told by a teacher that no matter what school you teach in, there is always one 'smelly' child, I've found her and she's in pink class!
In the morning I teach kinder classes which are fun but tiring. The children's uniform is a sailor suit, it's very cute but quite an odd uniform choice! I have to plan things to keep them entertained so last night I spent my evening making halloween themed bingo and a clothing related wordsearch. I have two kinder classes one with 5 students which is ok and one with just two girls who I love. I took them outside to play a few days ago and after a few mins I heard giggling coming from behind the slide, I peeked behind and the pair of them were standing there naked from the waist down laughing! I decided that no amount of teaching experience can determine what to do in that situation so I just gave them a disaproving but slightly amused look and walked away.
In the afternoon I have elementary school level and they come to kids land when they finish government school. I teach them real english like tenses and what verbs are etc which is so refreshing after saying "blue skirt, red shoes" all morning. They are only 8-12 years old but they are much easier to teach. Yesterday I was teaching my eldest group of three girls. It got to 15 mins from the end of class and they had worked really hard so I let them listen to my mp3 player. They started talking about music and said that they liked Britney Spears so i'm currently cutting up the lyrics of 'toxic' so they can listen to it next lesson and put the lyrics in order. I like classes like that.
What else? I've made my apartment look acceptable, I went to Tesco (it's called homever but it sells tesco branded things) the other day and found the equivalent of a £1 shop (equivalent of the 50p shop here) in there and bought cushions, photo frames candles etc. I spent under twenty pounds and managed to make the whole place look more acceptable. As many of you know i'm desperate to get a cat when I get back to the UK. Tesco has a pet shop in it which has a white persian kitten with blue eyes and a yellow ribbon in it's hair. I go in every time I leave the subway station now and look at it. Don't worry I won't buy it. As Ellie put it the other day "stop buying animals and abandoning them around the globe Ingham".
I've made a friend all by myself! Obviously I've met quite a lot of people though the teachers at my school and I knew a few people before I came here, off facebook but I have actually met someone who arrived on the same day as me so he's in the same boat, it's much more fun speaking to someone who hasn't got a clue too than walking around behind someone who's been here for years and knows everything.
When I met up with him on saturday I had been watching Mama Mia that morning and it had made me feel a bit homesick (Julie Walters reminds me of home for some reason). So when I was walking through Seoul there was a girl with a sign saying "free hugs". We both had one and it made me feel lots better, I may stop by her next week.
I've found my kind of bar. I love it. It's in the centre of Seoul's student area and has no name. It is upstairs up some old ricketty wooden steps and inside it looks like it's about to collapse. The walls are all cracked and painted black. This aside, it's lit by candles and paper lanterns, it has big chunky wooden tables and benches and it serves the most amazing cocktails. It has huge windows the length of the bar which are always open so you can look down onto the street from your table at the neon lights and amazingly dressed students. I love it and even though it's 15 mins away from my house on the subway it's my official local from now on.
Happy birthday to Jack, sorry I still haven't posted you a present or a card chicken, I haven't had chance but I've not forgotten. Actually, can someone forward this to him or David because I don't have his email address.
My wonderful aunty Chrisitne is booking her flight in a few days to come for christmas and new year. I'm very excited and am going to spend from now until then making my spare room look pretty.
My friend Doug has arrived in Seoul ( about an hour from here) and is enjoying everything so far I think. He has chocolate from the UK for me so I'm ready to bound over to visit. Mmmmmmmm, real chocolate!
I'm becoming increasingly aware of my British roots. My accent has been replaced by some neutral English accent. Nobody understands me when I say "water" and ALL Americans make a point of laughing and mimicking me when I say it. I drink tea when everyone else drinks coffee and my colleagues are extremely intrigued by me making it and putting milk in. I have also bought sparklers for guy fawkes night and explained to Cintia, who is far too excited about halloween for her own good, what bonfire night is all about.
Cintia's dog is due to have puppies soon so we will have a grandmother party on the roof in celebration. What's making me laugh about Cintia is that when i'm sleeping under a sheet with the window open and shorts on, she's in full pajamas with the heating on and a quilt. It took me a week to realise that, when I was thinking that nobody wore short sleeved as some strange cultural thing, it was actually just because they were all freezing.
I am ill, I have a very sore throat, i'm very hot and I have a headache. When I went into school today Deborah took me to the chemist who gave me some kind of tablets that did the trick. When I got into class I told them to be quiet because 'Emily teacher's head hurts'. They didn't really understand so I drew a picture of a girl, labelled it 'Emily teacher is ill' and had a speech bubble saying "ow" pointing at my head. One of the cheeky but lovely boys in my class (June) came over, took the board marker off me, crossed out 'ill' and wrote "dead". I didn't feel like it but I had to laugh at that.
Anyway I won't bore you for any longer. My camera is being fixed before the weekend so I will send some photos over at some point soon. I've attached one that I took on my phone of my awful board writing. It was always my pet hate in school that teachers never wrote neatly and in straight lines, i've turned out to be the worst of the lot. Try and spot the mistake I made too! Oooops! I already have children over pronouncing 'U' in a true northern way, I shouldn't really teach them grammatical errors too.
Thanks to everyone who's been emailing me and to gran for posting me things by snailmail, I'll let you know when they arrive.
much love
Em x
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