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As I've finished up teaching in Korea, this blog will no longer be active. You can keep up with me HERE, though! See you there.

How to Give Gifts from Korea like a Teacher: Play a Game

After teaching English in Korea for an entire school year, my brain is set to generate

fun or clever ways to teach and entertain, so I decided on a really fun way to distribute Korean gifts to my friends back home. 

Pencil Cases, Tea & Soap

I wanted to bring a bunch of fun writer/teacher gifts back, but I wasn’t exactly sure which gifts would be received the best. In the end, I bought a bunch of things I thought were cool, funny, or very Korean, but I didn’t want the responsibility of choosing the perfect little gift for each person( approximately twenty). Gift giving and receiving is much different in the US compared with Korea. In the US, people are expected to be slightly emotional when they open gifts, which, to me, can get kind of exhausting. In Korea, most people don’t show emotion even when they are really excited about a gift. They also don’t open gifts in front of the people who gifted them.

When I thought of a way to encourage my friends to make these gifting decisions for me, instead of feeling ashamed, I cackled to myself with glee. Call me lazy if you want, but I turned gift choosing into a game. I wrapped up all the presents in Korean wrapping paper and brought them to my get-together. Instead of handing out the gifts, though, I had each person take a number from a bag, then I spread out the gifts, wrapped in intriguing paper and shapes, for all to see.

Next, I explained the rules: Each person could choose a gift in order of the number they drew from the bag. Then, the person who drew number one would choose from all the gifts, open one, show everyone, and then keep it. The person with the next number would choose a gift and go through the same routine, only they could choose to either keep their gift, or trade it with a previous person(s).

Let’s just say that curiosity piqued from wrapped gifts isn’t exclusive to child’s play.

It turns out that most people liked what they opened so only a couple people stole from each other. Because I wrapped the gifts a couple days prior to the gathering, I couldn’t even remember what I put in all the packages, so even I wanted to watch them being opened.

Juice Box Soju

I thought it was hilarious to watch people open things like Korean toothpaste( which I had gotten 3 tubes of as a gift from my school), juice box soju, and little calendars with awkward English on them. Like the toothpaste, each gift had a short story behind it, thus prolonging the entertainment and providing topics for conversation.

Despite there being about twenty gifts, only one person really despaired when they opened theirs. It was a Korean origami-like project that was supposed to turn paper into animals. I have to admit, that was just evil of me. Or, was it purposeful to tickle another part of our brains?  Naw, it was just evil. I wouldn’t have wanted to open that one either. But, in the end, my poor friend wouldn’t steal something from another person. I guess we’re all adults, either that or she was afraid of facing the wrath of one who really liked their gift. Since there were leftover gifts, though, I offered those who were unsatisfied with their gift to choose another.

Andong Soju

It was great fun! If you ever have a chance to do this, I highly recommend it.

A list of what I brought back:

Korean toothpaste

2 cute calendars with awkward English

2 mini notebooks with awkward English

2 Korean money erasers

Green Tea from Jeju Island

Juice box soju

Andong distilled soju ( the real thing)

Children’s pencil cases

Adult/subdued pencil cases

Korean origami-like paper to make animals out of

Goofy socks both “sleeping socks” and thin decorative socks

Innisfree Jeju Island green tea soap

Innisfree hand cream

A big notebook (line free) with cutesy characters on it

Ginseng candies

The Aftermath

Beguiled Out of Coffee Shop Writing Time

I am fortunate enough to have my own living space, yet as a writer, I still need that push to get out of said living space and into a work space, both physically and mentally. I’ve always wanted to find a cute little coffee shop and become a regular, build a relationship with the owners or the baristas, and have them know my drink. That kind of thing.

Korea is crawling with coffee shops, so I figured finding a suitable working space would be the least of my problems. Turns out, I was wrong. My biggest obstacle to writing was being “foreign” and English-speaking, and not for the reasons one would think.

One of Thousands of Coffee Shops

One day, I decided to wander down the street with the hope of finding something close and I came across a little shop called Santiago. From the outside, I couldn’t see any patrons, so I poked my head in to make sure they were open. A woman waved me inside and I ordered an Americano, then I sat down at a table tucked in one corner and pulled out my laptop, notebooks and pencil case. 

My Favorite Pencil Case: Owls!

I got to the halfway mark in my coffee cup with no new words typed into the document on my computer when the lady brought me another Americano in a to-go cup. At first, I took this to mean she was closing up shop and wanted me to pack up, but then she sat down and tried to talk to me. I don’t speak much Korean and she doesn’t speak much English, so it beats me how I got roped into practicing English with her middle school son on the next Sunday after several hours of gesturing and guessing. Also, my phone, one’s lifeline in Korea, was almost dead from trying to translate bits and pieces of this two hour non-conversation conversation. I left soon after and my brain felt like I’d just slaved over a chapter, only I hadn’t written anything at all.

Santiago Coffee Shop in Gyeongju

The next Sunday, I showed up at the specified time, or at least what I hoped was the specified time. Her son waited for me with an anxious look on his face. We proceeded to talk for an hour. Actually, I asked him questions for an hour and he answered them with short sentences, none of which could really be elaborated on. I couldn’t coax any more words out no matter hard I tried. By the time it was over, I felt like a mouse in one of those sticky, glue-like mouse traps. My heart was beating wildly at the fear of never seeing freedom again. His mom was going to beguile me into making him speak more elaborate sentences.

The lady’s eager demeanor was so sweet that I wanted to keep helping her son out, not for his sake, but for hers. But, I knew I couldn’t commit. I enjoy teaching and I would have loved to practice speaking under different circumstances, but the time I have in between teaching is all potential writing time. I get cranky when someone or something distracts me and tricks me out of it. Though, I think sometimes there’s a fine line between trying to please and just saying "no thank you" when you’re a visitor in someone else’s country.

In my situation,I knew just enough Korean( which isn’t saying much) to overhear the boy tell his mom that he really doesn’t need this and would prefer not to do it. That made two of us. What a relief. So, I packed up my things, bowed, thanked her for the coffee, smiled a lot, and took off for home.

I haven’t been back.

I thought being a non-Korean in a Korean coffee shop would be perfect. No one would bother me. They’d get my patronage, and I’d get epic amounts of writing done on my manuscript. But no, that wasn’t in the cards, not at Santiago.  However, since then, I’ve found several other worthy coffee shops to get my brain- grinding writing done in. The baristas are friendly without being hoverers and once in a while, they bring free drinks to my table. I have a feeling they are “practice” drinks, but it’s awesome and appreciated nonetheless.  And at these coffee shops, I don’t feel tricked out of my writing time. 

Free and Delicious "Practice" Drinks

Does this happen in other countries?

Heated Floors Are the Best Invention

While the year is coming to a close, winter is here to stay for a while. In Korea, most homes have an ondol, a special heating system in the floor. As it’s been consistently around -6 degrees Celsius in the mornings, and the river on my way to work is beginning to ice over, I think an ondol is one of the greatest inventions ever.

                                 

Each morning I’m reluctant to leave my apartment and each morning, I tear up without fail as the wind whips at my face. At school, I practically turn into an ice cube because so many windows are left open, a practice that I still don’t understand. 

                                              

In fact, on Christmas Eve( yes, we were still in school), I was sitting in the cafeteria next to the principal, desperately trying to operate my chopsticks. The flat metal sticks kept twisting on me as soon as I’d try to grasp at something. After curious eyes watched me for a few moments, the principal and the teacher across from me each took one of my hands and squealed. Then, they proceeded rub feeling back into my fingers. A few minutes later, I was able to eat my lunch. Needless to say, the first thing I do when I get home from school these days is to turn on the ondol.

               What an ondol looks like underneath the floor

The ondol can be tricky( well, only if your Korean is limited). I’m still trying to translate some of the Korean settings so sometimes I have to roll around on the floor to find a warm spot, but it’s the best for movie watching and reading when it’s dark and cold outside. I know I said in the summer, I was dying for winter weather, and now that it’s winter, I’m ready for spring. But as it’s almost 2014 and spring will be here soon enough, for now I’m just going to relish my heated floors.

Well, January, I’m ready for you and ready for the light and warmth to come back. Happy New Year! 

Top Ten Moments of Awkwardness in Korea

Awkwardness gets brought to a whole different level when you’re in a foreign country. The language, the customs, everything is different.  Just when you think you’re trying to do the right thing and fit in with the crowd, something blows your mind and reminds you that you are not blending in as well as you thought.  Whether the following situations blow your mind or just make you laugh, here are my top ten awkward situations as a visitor in Korea thus far:

1. Getting on the bus going the wrong way, only to figure it out when the driver gets to the end of the line and gives me the, so, what are you doing? look. Thankfully, he didn't leave me in the middle of nowhere, in the dark. After a ten minute smoke break, he took me back into town on the opposite route without making me pay extra.

2. Standing in “line” at an ATM machine and repeatedly having older people cut in front of me like it’s no big deal.

3. Having random Koreans motion to me with their camera, then realizing they don’t want me to take their picture, they want me to actually be in their picture. I must be a strange sight to see, indeed.

4. Having to do a Breathalyzer test in a rental car on Jeju Island at a mandatory stop. Have you ever had to play charades with a police officer?  It took at least three tries to figure out what exactly he wanted me to do. I was not the least bit intoxicated.

5. Finding out that there is no toilet paper in the bathroom at school, or almost anywhere else for that matter. This means you must bring your own or steal tissue from the teacher’s room if you’re desperate. And believe me, even some of the teachers get desperate. Also, how awkward is it to have to decide how much toilet paper you need before you go into the bathroom?

6. Dancing with both the Vice-Principal( older gentleman) and then the Principal ( older female) while surrounded by borderline intoxicated co-workers at my first teacher outing( Noraebang/ Karaoke). Apparently my acting skills were phenomenal that night because my co-teacher thought I was having a blast. I was, in fact, mortified.

7. Being patted on the butt by the new female Vice Principal. She did the same thing to the other foreign teacher when she met her, too, so now I think she must just be a touchy person.

8. Watching kindergartners do a modified English version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs where one of the dwarfs introduces himself saying, “I’m sexy.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks. Have you ever watched Mean Girls? The “sexy dance” stuff is a real thing here, though the kids might not wear those kinds of outfits. Also, none of the parents or teachers watching seemed to think it was strange at all.

9. Getting caught, at an all teacher dinner, dumping soju( Korean rice alcohol) out of my shot glass into a bowl so that the principal can pour me some more for a toast. Everyone laughed at me, but I guarantee my liver was better off for doing it.

10. And last, but certainly not least, listening to one of my fourth graders swear in complete earnest, in the middle of her skit, and in front of her me and her entire class. To reminisce with me on that one, check out my previous blog post here: http://jenasadventuresinkorea.blogspot.kr/2013/07/classroom-incidents.html

A Day in the Life of Jena

If you’re curious about what one EPIK Elementary teacher’s schedule is like in South Korea, here’s your chance to find out.  Though none of our schedules are typical because each school and each grade level varies greatly, it gives you a little window into my world.

Friday's Schedule:

5:45am  Wake up and think, why body, why?  Roll over and go back to sleep.

6:15am  Alarm goes off. I get up five minutes later and make some ginseng tea and get myself awake enough to cook both breakfast and lunch. After braving it for three months, I stopped eating school lunches and now bring my own. It’s a pain, but when you have a gluten intolerance, food control takes precedence.

Breakfast is boiled sweet potatoes, a fried egg, and some greens mix from iHerb. Lunch is a marinara sauce, egg and veggie mess that I shove into my food thermos.

                                                 Hot food thermos

7:10am  Shower time. I give myself enough time so my hair can dry before I plunge into the coldness outside. I choose a warm, but versatile outfit that works for both class and a school musical performance I’m going to in the evening.  Before heading out the door, I double check to make sure I have everything I need for the day. There will be no coming back to the apartment.

7:54am Rush out the door, already behind schedule. I’m walking to school because I know it’s the only exercise I will get today. I usually ride my bike.

                        Part of my walk to school with the performance hall in the distance.

8:37am  Arrive at school. I down lots of warm tea ( because it’s freezing in the school) and prep for classes.  No class first period. I briefly phone check Twitter, Facebook, email, and see what’s going on in the world.  

9:50am  Sixth Grade class. Last comparatives lesson. At the end of the check up, I ask them about four situations they might come across in the US where they need to know which is longer, colder, faster, etc. I chose comparing temperatures, car speeds, hiking trail lengths, and heights of people. In Korea, they use Celsius, kilometers per hour, kilometers, and centimeters.

                                                Outside my classroom

10:30am   Break. Tea time. Also, I play a game where I try to guess( in my head) what all the Korea teachers are saying to each other.

10:50am  Two more sixth grade classes. In between classes, my co-teacher jokes about one time in the US when either he or his friend only had a car that said mph instead of both mph and km/h, so when he drove in Canada, he was constantly trying to figure out his speed. How annoying. When I took my car to Canada one time, it was hard enough constantly looking at the smaller km/h underneath the mph on my car’s speedometer.

           

                                      My old car- see how tiny the km/h numbers are?

12:20pm  Lunch. Students try to peek in my food thermos to see what I brought for lunch this time. One fifth grade student says: “Teacher, diet?” Me: “No.” Little do they know that my lunch fills me up way more than the Korean lunch ever did. That darn white rice makes me hungrier than if I didn’t eat it.

  

1:10pm  Finish up the last sixth grade class.

2:10pm  Free talking class. Today we’re practicing how to ask a lot of questions for needed information. We’re solving a mystery riddle: "Jane is dead. There’s some glass and water on the ground. Richard is asleep on the couch. What happened?" The boys go crazy when they figure it out. They want another riddle.

3:00pm  Take a deep breath. Almost there. I prepare for Monday and message a fellow EPIK teacher in Busan about starting up a writer/editor group.

4:40pm  Quitin' time. My main co-teacher pokes her head into my room and asks, “Are you not leaving?” We walk out together, catch a cab and head to another neighborhood to get dinner before the concert. The lady who takes our order knows what I like and my co-teacher thinks it’s funny. I’ve only been there maybe four times, but I guess it’s hard to forget a girl with hair like springs in a small-ish city in Korea. My co-teacher insists on paying for dinner, so I am determined to buy us coffee.

5:25pm Head to Dunkin’ Doughnuts. I buy buy plain coffee in a shop full of doughnuts that I can't eat while my co-teacher runs home to change her coat. Twenty minutes later or so, I start to wonder if she’s changing more than her coat. Her place is super close to the shop. When she finally comes, she confesses that she brushed her teeth and couldn’t decide on what to wear. I buy her coffee and we head off for the performance center.

6:30pm Concert starts. The boy next to my co-teacher is so obnoxious at times that I wish his mom would do something about it. Besides that though, the concert is incredible. I think back to when I was in fifth and sixth grade. In comparison, our school orchestra was terrible. I’m blown away.

                                                                 Program

                                        Concert hall before the performance begins

8:20pm Time to go. When we make it outside, my teacher says something like, “I would have said something to that boy if his mother hadn’t been there.” I laugh and tell her he was driving me crazy, too.

8:30pm Brisk walk back to my neighborhood. I time it right and catch the bus so I can go to an atm and get cash to pay for my volleyball uniform and stop at Daiso for essentials like notebooks and a lint roller. At times like this, I wish I banked at NH which has atms everywhere in the smaller towns and cities. Oh well.

9:10pm Get home. I make tea and organize my thoughts for the next day. I have a volleyball game and I need to figure out the food situation.

9:40pm  Food stores are inadequate. I walk to the closest store and plan to buy some more sweet potatoes and salt. I come back with all of that plus chocolate.

10:00pm  Prep for tomorrow morning. This includes things like charging my second phone battery, boiling my water stores for the next day( no joke), and reading  emails, etc.

                                                     Daily water store

10:20pm  Rare TV show time. I get in a few laughs while watching two episodes of ‘New Girl.' I end up eating the entire bar of chocolate, 2 kiwis, and some Kettle chips that I hauled back from a Costco in Ulsan( really healthy, yeah?)  So much for going to bed early.

12:30am Bed. I wrap myself up like a cocoon and wonder how good my volleyball skills will be in twelve hours.

What Hot Feels Like In Korea

I now understand that when the travel brochures suggest certain times of the year to visit places, they are really not pulling your leg. I don’t recommend coming to Korea in June or July if you’re put off by heat and humidity. It’s really something else if you’re not used to it.

In Korea, it’s so hot that…

1.     All you want to do after work is immediately toss down your bag, plug in and turn on the air conditioning unit, then pull off your clothes, mop the sweat that hasn’t already dripped onto the floor, toss them in the laundry bin( there will be absolutely no re-wearing them) and slump down on the floor to watch K-dramas or movies. No worthwhile thought processes are possible until the room temperature drops to at least 28 degrees and the sweat stops bubbling out of your pores.

2.     You’d rather starve to death than try to make dinner. The thought of moving makes you want to cry.  Though, at least tears might possibly cool your face down a little bit. It’s too much work to feed yourself. You take slow movements as you eat because any faster ones will cause immediate sweating and you’ve already taken two showers today.

3.     You’ve become anti-social because you don’t have a car and the thought of leaving your air conditioned bubble actually creates anxiety.

4.     You’re starting to gain a little weight, which is usually a winter thing, right? Why? Because exercising has become a thing of spring, which your body has conflicting feelings about. On one hand, it’s dying to move faster than a slow stroll, yet the effort it’s going to require to cool you down is almost not worth the effort. You can’t exercise in the early morning because it’s just as hot as during the day. Exercising at night makes you heat sick, too, and then put that together with elusive sleep and you have one cranky teacher the next morning.

5.     On vacation, your favorite food is bingsu( Korean shaved ice) because shaved ice makes you feel like your core temperature has dropped ten degrees even though it probably hasn’t changed at all. It’s all about the perception of change. You eat it twice a day, almost after every meal. This may also be the reason for some of the weight gain as the top is usually covered in ice cream or gelato. You could care less about the gelato, though you consume it with vigor anyway, because it’s cold. But you eat it after the shaved ice has become nothing but a puddle of flavored liquid at the bottom of your bowl. Thank goodness you have a friend to eat it with because if you ate bingsu by yourself, you might become obese by the end of the summer and it’s no good eating a giant bowl of it in a café by yourself. You already get enough stares for being a foreigner, you can’t imagine how the stare number would escalate if you polished off the whole thing by yourself.

Seoul

East side of Jeju Island

Jeju-Si

Rishi Tea Cafe in Itaewon

Seoul

6.     By the beginning of September, you praise the heavens for the relief that the drop in temperature of seven degrees brings. The breeze feels glorious. You emerge from your apartment like a butterfly from a chrysalis. You’re reborn, energized, made new. You can smile again. You have a sudden desire to meet up with all of your friends in one day, including the ones who lived close enough, but too far away. They’re the ones who you texted and messaged in the state of barely functional, alone,  in your underwear, and  sitting in front of the fan on high.

         Everyone can be decent now, both in attitude and attire, though, because autumn is coming.