Test Day

       Today was test day, so I just got to spend my day giving the monthly speaking tests.  Except for my class of four-year-olds whom, while they drive me crazy, are arguably (and I came to this conclusion today after becoming frustrated when some 10 and 12-year olds couldn’t spell their names or tell me how they were – really?) smarter than some of my older classes. 

       Anyway, so every day after my baby class, I play with this kid Dennis who likes to pretend he’s shooting me with a gun and then I chase him or shoot back or say things like “Do you want to die?!?”  And today he was trying to provoke me so (and this kid is like 8 or 9) he points his finger to me and goes “come here baby” and then runs away so I’ll chase him.  Maybe this doesn’t translate well in writing, but trust me, it was hilarious.

       Later on, after I finished testing my Backpack 2 class, I went back into my classroom where the class troublemaker says “Teacher!  My baseball! Behind the board!”  On a side note, I’ve long since given up on questioning why things like baseballs are in my classroom or how they come to end up behind my board.  Instead, I just climbed over my board, jumped down, got the baseball and climbed back over, amidst the sounds of amazement coming from my students.  “Ohhh!  Woah!  Teacher!  Wow!”  After I climbed back over, I just said, “I’m a Ninja.  No, seriously, I’m a Ninja in America, it’s my secret job.”

       I hope they believed me.

       Later on, in my Exploring class, after I finished testing I walked into my class to find one of my students chanting, “When I say Yo, you say Da!  Yo!  Da!  Yo!  Da!”  because they tease one of the students and call him Yoda.  So great.

       The most random part of my day however was when I was walking home and a few random girls spotted my dog and started making noises to her.  So I looked up and smiled and then I was about to walk away and she was all “ahhh wait” and then pulled a random ice-cream bar out of her purse, handed it to me, asked me where I was from, and thne was like “ok bye!” 

        What?????

        Thanks for the random free ice cream.

Climbing Stairs

My Saturdays in Korea are always amusing.  I set out to refill my bus pass and ended up buying a Tamagochi (that’s right, Tamagochi – for a dollar – thank you Asia) and hiking up a mountain.

One of my first impressions of Korea after merely walking around Yeosu a few times was “gee Koreans really must love hiking and mountain climbing” for every other store is a sports-wear shop.  They are seriously everywhere.

After a few weeks here my boss took me and one other foreigner to go hiking with her mom.  I should have put “hiking” in parenthesis.    Turns out, by hiking, she meant climb a bunch of hard plastic stairs that have been forced upon nature.

So I thought, “this isn’t hiking, why do people need special clothes, and shoes, and expensive aluminum walking sticks just to climb a bunch of stairs?  This must just be a weird mountain; they can’t all be like this.”

Wrong. 

They are all like that.  My boss, one other foreigner and I formulated a hiking club and every time we have gone “hiking” we’ve really just climbed some stairs.  Silly Korea.

So today I followed a sign to what was supposed to be an “ancient ruins park” but I knew better because Japan destroyed all of Korea’s ancient ruins some decades ago.  There are no ancient ruins.  But I wanted to see what they claimed was there. 

Turns out, it was a mountain.  And much to my surprise, there were no stairs!  You actually had to hike!  It must be pretty rare and somewhat dangerous or something because when I got to the top there was a man sitting in a booth with a walkie talkie - I guess in case someone couldn’t handle all the actual hiking and there was some sort of hiking emergency. 

The highlight of the hike was when I passed a bunch of middle school-aged boys who said “hello!  Where are you from?”  I could have answered in Korean but instead I said “New York.”  And they said “New York?”  And then they did the Statue of Liberty pose in order to confirm that they had heard me correctly.  I love that.

I Think This Post Is About Headphones, But I'm Not Entirely Sure

I went to Seoul this weekend with my roommate Meg.  Our ultimate goal was shopping with a side goal of hanging out with dudes that we met in Yeosu a month or so ago.

So we get to Seoul around 4 on Saturday and we go to Forever 21.  I know you're thinking I should be shopping in traditional Korean shopping outlets, and I assure you that I do 95% of the time, but there's something about Western sizes that is too tempting to resist sometimes.

So we have clothes in our baskets and we're so excited to try them on when the one Korean dude calls Meg and is like "meet us immediately now by the subway."  So we're like "uhh....." and then we hesistently put the clothes back on their shelves and go meet the dudes.

We go for dinner and notice the one dude is carrying around headphones in a white bag that he tells us cost him 35,000 won and I say "damn, that's expensive for headphones."  And he says "No!  It's a good deal."  He was very excited about the headphones.

As the night goes on I'm out-drinking everyone as usual and still remain the most sober of the four of us (thank you Penn State) and we end up at a Makkoli bar.  I hadn't had Makkoli yet so was excited to try it, especially after my palatable experience with Sake a few weeks prior.  Apparently, Makkoli is drunk out of a bowl.  So we're sitting there, literally drinking bowls of alcohol and I'm finding this to be absolutely hilarious.  Did I mention there was a huge artificially tree in the middle of the bar, just there for no reason?  This bar was great.

Finally we get back to our hotel and the dudes accompany us.  When they leave the one dude forgets his headphones (not the headphones!).  So Meg texts him to tell him. 

Meg: "Hey, your friend forgot his headphones, we'll leave them at the front desk of the hotel."

Jay:  "That is the kindest, most inspiring thing I have ever heard, that is so incredibly kind, I am touched by your kindness."

Meg:  "Umm......ok....."

My guess is he couldn't handle the bowls of alcohol, otherwise, what?

Lost In Translation

I was on my way yesterday to see some street art when, at the bus stop, a bunch of young teenage boys started talking to me.  They said “aregatto” to which I responded, “Isn’t that Japanese? Aregatto?”  And then they laughed and pointed to their friend and said, “She’s Japanese.”   This is a big insult, Koreans hate the Japanese.*

They kept talking to me and asking me questions and then their bus came so they said “Goodbye!  Long time no see!”

Long time no see?  Where did they learn that???  And why did they think that was the context to use it?

It’s like some of my classes will randomly shout out “fire in the hole!!!” with no contextual basis.  I’ll be teaching a lesson and out of nowhere one of them will yell out “fire in the hole!”  Thank you video games.

The worst is my one class that somehow picked up the word ‘kinky’ and now use it is all the wrong contexts. 

“Teacher you’re kinky.” 

“Teacher, that’s kinky.” 

No, no it’s not.  Stop saying "Kinky!"  You’re twelve and you’re using it all wrong!

“Teacher, you don’t have to get kinky about it.”

*To a preposterous extent.  I have classes who tell me they would like to see Japan just get obliterated by some natural disaster or otherwise.  I say “and what about the women, children, and innocent civilians?”  And they say they’re all terrible and they could care less.  Ouch.