어서오세요!

On Saturday, I met up with a Leah House from home! We grew up in the same church, but hadn't really kept up with each other since high school. She is studying in China for a year and was here visiting her Korean friend! I was a little nervous to meet up, since we hadn't talked in years...but there was SO much to talk about! First of all, it's just strange to meet up with someone from home in a foreign country. We caught up on each others lives and what we'd been doing.

It was actually really cool, because we'd both now, been to both China and Korea. It was so interesting to compare cultures! I'd forgotten many of the things that she brought up. It was fun to reminisce about old memories. It was also fun because she brought up names of people from our church growing up. It was fun to laugh about things that only people from home would think was funny.

Leah is practically fluent in Chinese. It was so strange to hear Chinese come out of a white person's mouth! She brought along two of her friends. One was Chinese, so she spoke with her some of the time in Chinese. Her other friend was Korean, so I thought it was kind of fun to practice my Korean on her :) So, here we were sitting at a restaurant speaking Chinese, Korean and English! How cool is that!? Of course her friends spoke perfect English, which put my basic Korean to shame. They thought it was fun ( or maybe funny!) to help me practice Korean.

We had a great reunion, even thought it was only for one night :( It was so cool to see someone from home!

Mean Teacher

Yesterday, I had to be the mean teacher. At the end of the day, one of my girls did something that she knew she shouldn't have done. I looked at her and told her not to do that. She was angry at me and out of her anger she spouted off something sarcastic to me. I put on the mean teacher face and got really stern with her. I calmly said some things to her in a really firm voice. Everyone in the classroom got really quiet and the girl got teary. I really don't think the girl had ever had anyone be that direct with her before. She went to her desk, put her head down and cried.

I felt bad that my firm voice scared or upset her... I don't like being the mean teacher very often, but it needed to be said. What happened next though was the most interesting. She sat in her chair until it was time for her to go. I just started playing with the other kids, being my normal self. The girl kept glancing up to meet my eyes to see if I was angry with her. Of course I wasn't.

It makes me sad when I see other people just keep glaring at the kids when they do something wrong...maybe even an hour later! I guess my philosophy is discipline and be done with it. They don't need to keep being punished!

When everyone else had left, she still had big tears in her eyes. When I asked her if she knew why I was upset, she nodded. Most of the time when she misbehaves, she denies it and gets really mad at me. This time was different. She knew she had done something wrong and she just wanted to hug me! So surprising! I just hugged her as she cried. I think for her it was such a relief to know that I still loved her, even when she messed up!

It reminded me of the way God loves me. Of course I do things wrong, and he may even discipline me, but he really just wants me to come and hug him, admitting what I've done. These kids are beginning to teach me a little more about unconditional love. I truly do think that I've learned way more this year than I could ever teach.

1 month from today I come home for Christmas!!

Smiling Experiment

Everyday I walk by a car wash on the way to school. The same worker is there every morning. He's kinda goofy and very friendly. Everyday when I walk by he gets really excited to say hello to a foreigner and waves vigorously! Other teachers have said he does that to them too. Funny thing is, I oddly look forward to that "hello" on my way to work. When he's not there, I'm subconsciously disappointed!

In this city, or I suspect any city, people are not very friendly. Passerbys look down at the ground and purposely don't make eye contact. I'm conducting an experiment. I've decided to try to smile at everyone I pass, just to see their reaction. As I figured, most just look away, but some are so caught off gaurd that they'll smile back and even follow me with their eyes as I walk past. I think people are so surprised to be smiled at by a stranger that it's almost shocking! Whether someone is what other people would call attractive or not, there's something about a smile that is captivating and makes them stand out.

In my afternoon classes, I usually have a lot of extra time after we finish all of our work. I've been struggling to think of things to do. They're so incredibly bored by the textbook work, and to be honest I am too. It's been my complaint about the Korean education system that the students are only memorizing and have no individual thinking skills or creativity, but...I wasn't doing anything to help that. Yesterday I was trying to think of any way to get them thinking. I think the most learning takes place when they are interested in a topic and actually care about it. So, I taught them how to have a debate. My question was, "Are hagwons (any kind of private school outside of their regular public schools, like our English school in the evenings) good or bad?"

They debated it for a while and really came up with some good thoughts. They were shocked when I told them that there are none of these "after school schools" in America! Most of them came to the conclusion, "Teacher, I don't know." They saw the good and bad aspects. It was just so cool to see a lighbulb click on in their brain and see them thinking for themselves! I try to make the regular work as interesting as I can, but there's only so much you can do with grammar! So, it was cool to see them genuinely interested and excited about this discussion. I need to think of more topics like this for them to debate!

The subway during rush hour is pretty miserable!

Lady carrying something on her head.

At the palace.

Old man taking a nap on a bench in the afternoon.

The market by my apartment.

The typical auction type little grocery store.

A random one-man band on the street. No one else seemed to notice!

This is the usual experience at the big grocery store. The meat department is complete chaos, with each counter trying to yell louder than the other to get you to buy their meat or fish.

Our Grandpas

In my ten year old class today, we had to read a newspaper article. It's called Kids Times and is supposed to be current events, written in children's language. Either most of the articles are too hard or aren't very very interesting. Today's though, the article sparked a good conversation. It was about the recent Earthquake in Turkey and what Korea was doing to help. One of my students informed me that Turkey helped South Korea in the Korean war. That lead to a conversation about the war. It's pretty humbling to have my 10 year old students teaching me world history, in their second language! Amazing!

I told them that my Grandpa came to Asia to fight in the Korean war. They were impressed by this and began telling me about their grandfathers who also fought in the war. It didn't occur to me until then that most of the grandfathers probably did fight. It was a cool realization that our grandpas fought together in the same war, half way across the world!

Then we started talking about the boys in our class and how they will be drafted into the military for 2 years after college. I asked them how they felt about it. They both said they didn't want to. When I went to the DMZ, the tour guide said that most Korean moms cry when their sons get the draft letter. So sad. One student said, "I wish it was like the USA, where men don't HAVE to join." :( I don't know what the answer is. I just remember how young the soldiers looked at the DMZ. Those will be my students in less than 10 years...