I'm not sure how long or enlightening this will be. I've worked an average of 12 hours the last two days. We're doing finals next week and I had to write 8 different tests. Actually, I have to do one more tomorrow, for our youngest level. That's right, final tests for 7 and 8 year olds, no kidding. One of the cutest students I have is this fragile little thing in that class who I always look out for. She's a bit younger and a lot smaller than all the other students. She looks like she might have been premature and hasn't quite caught up. Even though she's as shy as can be she's a complete angel and I try to keep an eye on her. She doesn't speak any English at this point but is just mimicking the other students. Honestly, I don't even know how much Korean she can write. She has an older sister who's about 11 or 12 in one of my other classes who is also a really sweet kid. This is only the second time I've had the beginners and I'm realizing how drastically my approach has to change with kids at this level. I also realize the need for much smaller classes when you're dealing with kids of this age. We have nine in the class, 5 would be closer to ideal. Besides the tiny angel, Mary, I have another student, a boy, who is also beginning English for the very fist time. I really would like the opportunity to spend more one on one time with each of them, but I've got books that I'm supposed to get through (their not bad, just too much for this amount of time) and 9 kids total. At this age you've got to keep them interested and occupied at all times or you have a major distraction waiting to cause the whole class to erupt. It's fun. I wish I didn't have quite so much material though. One of the books has songs and even though I had to drop all remaining cool I had out the window to do it, I've not become quite the chant and song leader. I wouldn't have gone into it so much if it weren't for how well the children, especially at this age, respond to it. I have to say, I as petrified of singing for as long as I remember, but kids here really go for it. More importantly it is one of the best listening tools for children who have not developed (my seemed to be ingrained, mortal fear of singing) inhibitions to belting out tunes. The thing is, between the tapes and listening to me, the kids can't always grasp the sounds, but the music provides an alternative way of hearing the sounds and words, it takes them time but they have fun and now I have them singing things like (from the book of "M") "My master likes to make a mess with mud" in relatively good pitch, harmonies come later...
Currently I'm listening to the new Trail of Dead album that I just purchased on iTunes and just finished a personal vendetta influenced review of the band on Pitchfork.com . I have to say, I like the guys and I'm impressed by the album. I'm a bit biased because I know one of the guys in the band, but I love music and even with all the still-persistent comparisons to Sonic Youth I still find their music much more engaging and screaming of life than much of what SY has put out in the last few years. Long live the drums the never end, Conrad's (where the hell is Jason's vocals this album?) and the sustained guitar until my ears fall off!!
Travel plans are still coming together. Unfortunately I'm holding off on a camera until I get to Japan where I will in fact buy one, even if it's a cheap little shitty one. I've got Tokyo worked out aside from some of the exact details, but I have my accommodations taken care of and all of that. I'm still working on Thailand. I have to find out where I'm going after I fly into Bangkok. I looked at one nice hostel in Bangkok, 8$ a night. Wow. I feel like such a selfish human being taking advantage of that after what the country just went though. My only consolation is that my money is helping to fund the largest part of their economy. I still feel a bit like a bastard though.
One last thing, my good friend Christopher has decided to take the plunge into this strange world I've found myself in. He's ditching his life back in Austin and heading to Europe for a similar life as I hope to find. Chasing that ex-pat American dream of being permanently lost while simultaneously trying to find yourself. After doing a month-long meditation retreat in France, he's going to spend some time touring around before he begins his TESOL right after I finish. We've made plans to spend a week in Cologne Germany before I head down to Spain where he's got a free place to stay. Right on. I know nothing about germany in all truth, but what the hell, sounds great. We talked about the possibility of not finding permanent work in Europe, if it happens, we think we might try to head off to Japan together which would be awesome. The idea of doing this with someone would be great. In another great bit of news, my friend Star is also going to to try and make things happen in France for a while. She's going back and forth at the moment out of concern but it is a possibility.
That's all for the moment, it's late, I'm tired and am completely spent from 10 classes today. Hope everyone is well.
-c.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Countdown
I've got 12, count 'em, 12 working days left before my ass gets a real break! And I'm the first to say, I am working for it. Today I went in at 8 in the morning, stayed till 6:40 and then worked another 3 hours when I got home. I'm trying to get a little ahead on the crunch time when I'll have to write a whole bunch of final tests next week which always suck a huge amount of time. Lately, the thoughts of getting off the plane in Tokyo and heading off to a real sushi dinner with lots of warm sake and warm bubbly feelings welling up inside me is all that is keeping me going. The days are flying and I'm doing alright, but damn, I'm ready for a real break.
This may not be too long, it's late, but I've been trying to write all week and simply have not had the time. It snowed here last Sunday, a lot (for here). Beautiful. It was the most amazing thing to wake up and have this unusual white glare pouring through the windows. By the time I finally made it out of my house, several hours later, there were a few small snowmen build up outside of various stores and kids throwing mis-constructed snowballs at each other that had a tendency to self-destruct before they reached their desired target. I went out to get my haircut with Minnie in the university area near my house. She wanted to stop into this little store. She said "just a second" but I forgot about the Korean time difference. I finished my cigarette and thinking that she would only be a couple more minutes decided to construct some ammo to great her with when she emerged. 10,11,12.... no Minnie. I go to another spot, 16,17,18 snowballs neatly arranged in a haphazard pyramid, still no Minnie. So eventually I dust the snow off my jacket and gloves and go inside frustrated. By the time I was able to pull her outside I'd entirely lost my motivation and the snowballs were left resting in their offensive position for some lucky and energetic Korean to take advantage of. So it goes. I went on to get my haircut too short and then went home to make pasta. That was my Sunday in its entirety.
The rest of the weekend wasn't really that exciting but still pleasant. I haven't talked about SU:M since I started the blog again. I've mentioned (or is bitch the word?) about having not found a real artistic community here and the difficulty of my living location. Well, a few months ago I happened upon this little coffee shop/art cooperative. Since, we've been going regularly and have become friends with the guys who run it. They have coffee and all that, but they also have a little gallery showing university students work that rotates about every month and are entirely open to us letting us use their place as an impromptu living room. I actually had a semi-successful birthday party there in December. I actually wasn't really that lucky getting new faces out, but I did get most of my friends there for some drinking and dancing which was nice. Saturday we showed up late with a bottle of Vodka and wine in tow and met a few of our friends up there (Chloe and Yamur). Fun was had by all, really a nice gently evening. We headed out about 2 and that was the bulk of our Saturday night. Sort of like a dinner party minus the food and the house, but really a nice familiar environment.
This is actually a rather uninspired writing so I'll curtail it now until another time. Hope life finds all well. Oh, and, I finally got to see Garden State... I had such huge hopes that they were really unrealistic, but I still really enjoyed it. Ahh, the romance movies of the generation of skeptics and cynics, gotta love them (and their soundtracks). Go see it if you can. Don't expect to fall out of your seat laughing, just expect an evening of drinking and laughing with close friends and the tears that follow in the privacy of your 8th glass of wine crowded with your head against the corner wall with someone you care too much about.
-c.
Music: Mates of State
This may not be too long, it's late, but I've been trying to write all week and simply have not had the time. It snowed here last Sunday, a lot (for here). Beautiful. It was the most amazing thing to wake up and have this unusual white glare pouring through the windows. By the time I finally made it out of my house, several hours later, there were a few small snowmen build up outside of various stores and kids throwing mis-constructed snowballs at each other that had a tendency to self-destruct before they reached their desired target. I went out to get my haircut with Minnie in the university area near my house. She wanted to stop into this little store. She said "just a second" but I forgot about the Korean time difference. I finished my cigarette and thinking that she would only be a couple more minutes decided to construct some ammo to great her with when she emerged. 10,11,12.... no Minnie. I go to another spot, 16,17,18 snowballs neatly arranged in a haphazard pyramid, still no Minnie. So eventually I dust the snow off my jacket and gloves and go inside frustrated. By the time I was able to pull her outside I'd entirely lost my motivation and the snowballs were left resting in their offensive position for some lucky and energetic Korean to take advantage of. So it goes. I went on to get my haircut too short and then went home to make pasta. That was my Sunday in its entirety.
The rest of the weekend wasn't really that exciting but still pleasant. I haven't talked about SU:M since I started the blog again. I've mentioned (or is bitch the word?) about having not found a real artistic community here and the difficulty of my living location. Well, a few months ago I happened upon this little coffee shop/art cooperative. Since, we've been going regularly and have become friends with the guys who run it. They have coffee and all that, but they also have a little gallery showing university students work that rotates about every month and are entirely open to us letting us use their place as an impromptu living room. I actually had a semi-successful birthday party there in December. I actually wasn't really that lucky getting new faces out, but I did get most of my friends there for some drinking and dancing which was nice. Saturday we showed up late with a bottle of Vodka and wine in tow and met a few of our friends up there (Chloe and Yamur). Fun was had by all, really a nice gently evening. We headed out about 2 and that was the bulk of our Saturday night. Sort of like a dinner party minus the food and the house, but really a nice familiar environment.
This is actually a rather uninspired writing so I'll curtail it now until another time. Hope life finds all well. Oh, and, I finally got to see Garden State... I had such huge hopes that they were really unrealistic, but I still really enjoyed it. Ahh, the romance movies of the generation of skeptics and cynics, gotta love them (and their soundtracks). Go see it if you can. Don't expect to fall out of your seat laughing, just expect an evening of drinking and laughing with close friends and the tears that follow in the privacy of your 8th glass of wine crowded with your head against the corner wall with someone you care too much about.
-c.
Music: Mates of State
Saturday, January 15, 2005
welcome to Blogger!! new post!
Well, with just a few weeks left, literally, I'm going to to try and revive the whole blog thing. I started that other one but the format and the look of it all just didn't inspire me. Not to say that I haven't been going through a bit of writers block and that in truth I simply haven't felt that much like writing of late, but that is beginning to change. I started to read through the blog of another teacher up in Seoul and it made me realize that I'm wasting this all if I don't get some of it down. Memories can fade, need to get them on paper (so to speak) while I can.
I'll try not to rehash too much what most people already know. My last day of school is February 4th and I leave for Japan on February 7th. I'll be there for about a week and hopefully be spending a lot of time with a Japanese friend I met here who should show me the ropes. I'm hoping to catch at least one good rock show, go to a hot-spring submersed in snow covered mountains and eat a hell of a lot of good food all the while trying to maintain a reasonable budget. We'll see how it goes. By they way, if anyone knows anyone living in Tokyo I would really love a place to crash at so I can save some dough. I'll probably be in Tokyo that Monday, possibly Tuesday and then the following weekend. The Faint played there last night, what I would have done to be able to go...
After Japan I have to have an overnight stay back here in Busan, then I catch a plane to Bangkok. Thailand as of right now is still a little up in the air. My Korean friend Cindy has been working with her sister for the last 4 months in Phuket, but with the recent disasters I'm not sure what to expect. I'm planning on spending a healthy amount of time on the east coast which wasn't affected. I'm not sure if it will drive rates up or what, I'll just have to play things it by ear when I get there. I'm not planning on spending too much time in Bangkok, that's all I know.
Ok, so from Feb 14-25 I'm in Thailand, after that I fly to Athens to spend time with Katarina and see some history. On the 26th I get somehow to Prague to do the TEFL course. That is four weeks and then I make it to Spain, broke to stay with a Frenchie I met back in Spanish class and try to find work. I'll be in Madrid but would really like to try to find a place in Barcelona. Ultimately, by that point I'm just going to broke and tired so I'll probably take any steady work I can find anywhere, as long as I can stay in Spain I'll be happy (relatively at least) cleaning toilets.
So about life here. Things have changed a bit. I'm quite the homebody lately. We're on the winter schedule which means days that begin at 8:30 and end somewhere between 4:30 and 6:30. I'm teaching between 8-10 classes per day leaving me a bit exhausted. The good news is that I like all my classes this semester, even the problem kids from semesters past are being less of a hassle.
Part of the change is that the kids mature and grow so quickly and I'm just getting better at what I'm doing and working with kids. For the first time since I've been here some of the classes that I look forward the most are my younger kids with students ranging from 10-13. The largest reason has to be my confidence level with what I'm doing now. I was reading the other blog and his relating his first experience and they turned out to be exactly like mine. The books that we get are not always perfect and when I first got here I found myself flying through pages really quickly and the kids probably didn't get that much out of it. Now I can stretch one or two pages for an entire class and sometimes longer, reinforcing several skills in ways that don't make them bored. People who know me back home as the serious and sometimes pensive figure would hardly recognize me in my classrooms. I've taken my long suppressed ability to simply goof and turned it into my advantage in the classroom. I've even surprised myself with how much cool I've been able to shed with the children and I actually think that a lot of the time I'm doing a good job.
I'm still doing mostly speaking and listening classes and I've felt I've come a long way on this. In all levels, even up to the upper levels I have focus largely on phonics and pronunciation. It's so essential at all levels for these kids at least with certain sounds that simply don't exist here. Me, the chronic mumbler, I hardly mumble in the class now unless I'm proving a point. I've think I've finally gotten them listening to each other and themselves which is essential. There is constant negative reinforcement on speaking from their classmates and even the Korean teachers who often suffer from the same obstacles to correct pronunciation. An let me just say, there is nothing wrong with accents by all means. Yes, as westerners we find some more desirable, attractive and sexy than others, but ultimately it only matters if the accent is distracting or makes the language difficult to understand. What I try to do is just mellow it so that it can be understood. Luckily Korean is also a phonetic language so outside of a few essential sounds (particularly the f, v, ch, th), they're able to mimic a lot of things. Vowels are sometimes difficult because only about the half have direct correlates in English and the nonsensical nature of English writing makes it difficult sometimes for them to pronounce new words because so much of our language is filled with exceptions to already loose rules.
I think I've talked about it a bit before, but the written system here is extraordinary. It's I think one of the few, if only, written systems that was researched studied and created to be accessible to many people. And it really is, reading it that is. The grammar and sounds are extremely difficult as a westerner as most (I think) non-romance languages can be, but you can learn to read in a few days and it hold relatively few exceptions between reading and speaking. It also could be an easily adaptable language. With a few extra consonants and vowels added in it could easily be used for Japanese and other languages. Yes, the chinese characters, used here for special occasions and ceremoniously, are elegant, but it is based almost entirely on memorization. Furthermore, the meaning of some characters (used here, China for numerous languages and dialects, and for part of the Japanese writing system) change from region to region and language.
I'm going to abruptly cut this off, it's long enough, but more soon I promise.
I'll try not to rehash too much what most people already know. My last day of school is February 4th and I leave for Japan on February 7th. I'll be there for about a week and hopefully be spending a lot of time with a Japanese friend I met here who should show me the ropes. I'm hoping to catch at least one good rock show, go to a hot-spring submersed in snow covered mountains and eat a hell of a lot of good food all the while trying to maintain a reasonable budget. We'll see how it goes. By they way, if anyone knows anyone living in Tokyo I would really love a place to crash at so I can save some dough. I'll probably be in Tokyo that Monday, possibly Tuesday and then the following weekend. The Faint played there last night, what I would have done to be able to go...
After Japan I have to have an overnight stay back here in Busan, then I catch a plane to Bangkok. Thailand as of right now is still a little up in the air. My Korean friend Cindy has been working with her sister for the last 4 months in Phuket, but with the recent disasters I'm not sure what to expect. I'm planning on spending a healthy amount of time on the east coast which wasn't affected. I'm not sure if it will drive rates up or what, I'll just have to play things it by ear when I get there. I'm not planning on spending too much time in Bangkok, that's all I know.
Ok, so from Feb 14-25 I'm in Thailand, after that I fly to Athens to spend time with Katarina and see some history. On the 26th I get somehow to Prague to do the TEFL course. That is four weeks and then I make it to Spain, broke to stay with a Frenchie I met back in Spanish class and try to find work. I'll be in Madrid but would really like to try to find a place in Barcelona. Ultimately, by that point I'm just going to broke and tired so I'll probably take any steady work I can find anywhere, as long as I can stay in Spain I'll be happy (relatively at least) cleaning toilets.
So about life here. Things have changed a bit. I'm quite the homebody lately. We're on the winter schedule which means days that begin at 8:30 and end somewhere between 4:30 and 6:30. I'm teaching between 8-10 classes per day leaving me a bit exhausted. The good news is that I like all my classes this semester, even the problem kids from semesters past are being less of a hassle.
Part of the change is that the kids mature and grow so quickly and I'm just getting better at what I'm doing and working with kids. For the first time since I've been here some of the classes that I look forward the most are my younger kids with students ranging from 10-13. The largest reason has to be my confidence level with what I'm doing now. I was reading the other blog and his relating his first experience and they turned out to be exactly like mine. The books that we get are not always perfect and when I first got here I found myself flying through pages really quickly and the kids probably didn't get that much out of it. Now I can stretch one or two pages for an entire class and sometimes longer, reinforcing several skills in ways that don't make them bored. People who know me back home as the serious and sometimes pensive figure would hardly recognize me in my classrooms. I've taken my long suppressed ability to simply goof and turned it into my advantage in the classroom. I've even surprised myself with how much cool I've been able to shed with the children and I actually think that a lot of the time I'm doing a good job.
I'm still doing mostly speaking and listening classes and I've felt I've come a long way on this. In all levels, even up to the upper levels I have focus largely on phonics and pronunciation. It's so essential at all levels for these kids at least with certain sounds that simply don't exist here. Me, the chronic mumbler, I hardly mumble in the class now unless I'm proving a point. I've think I've finally gotten them listening to each other and themselves which is essential. There is constant negative reinforcement on speaking from their classmates and even the Korean teachers who often suffer from the same obstacles to correct pronunciation. An let me just say, there is nothing wrong with accents by all means. Yes, as westerners we find some more desirable, attractive and sexy than others, but ultimately it only matters if the accent is distracting or makes the language difficult to understand. What I try to do is just mellow it so that it can be understood. Luckily Korean is also a phonetic language so outside of a few essential sounds (particularly the f, v, ch, th), they're able to mimic a lot of things. Vowels are sometimes difficult because only about the half have direct correlates in English and the nonsensical nature of English writing makes it difficult sometimes for them to pronounce new words because so much of our language is filled with exceptions to already loose rules.
I think I've talked about it a bit before, but the written system here is extraordinary. It's I think one of the few, if only, written systems that was researched studied and created to be accessible to many people. And it really is, reading it that is. The grammar and sounds are extremely difficult as a westerner as most (I think) non-romance languages can be, but you can learn to read in a few days and it hold relatively few exceptions between reading and speaking. It also could be an easily adaptable language. With a few extra consonants and vowels added in it could easily be used for Japanese and other languages. Yes, the chinese characters, used here for special occasions and ceremoniously, are elegant, but it is based almost entirely on memorization. Furthermore, the meaning of some characters (used here, China for numerous languages and dialects, and for part of the Japanese writing system) change from region to region and language.
I'm going to abruptly cut this off, it's long enough, but more soon I promise.
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