Korea vs High School: Socializing

I like to think that I'm a nice person, a relatively happy person, and an approachable person. In the past couple days, though, I'm starting to believe that maybe this "bubbliness" is too much for some people. That, or people are just downright RUDE. Not just any "people" but other foreigners here in Korea.

The reason I bring this up is because, yea, in the past couple days I've noticed some pretttttyyyyy rude foreigners. Example numero uno: I was walking home from the grocery store on Sunday... I was walking on the sidewalk (totally normal) and saw this foreign chick walking towards me. We were the only ones on the sidewalk and so, naturally, I smiled as in saying "hello" without actually speaking. Girl did not EVEN respond. She just kept walking! What?! I saw her later in our apartment/villa complex and I wasn't going to say anything that time, but she said "hi" so I responded, albeit begrudgingly because she ignored me earlier on in the day.

Example numero dos: on Monday evening, as the three of us were walking home from work, we saw a foreign guy walking towards us. It was daylight and it was a small street, so I said "hello!" nice and loud and clear-like as he was walking past us. This guy did NOTHING. Absolutely nothing! He just kept walking. I watched him pass and he didn't even BLINK, guys. RUDE!

I've heard a couple stories from people who have been here for longer than a year and they have said that when they first got here, everyone was super friendly and wanted to get to know everyone, but now foreigners try their hardest to straight up ignore other foreigners that they do not know. This reminds me of high school where you had your own little click and did not want to talk to anyone else. Kind of like the group of friends you already have is good enough and taking on anymore friends might be bad or something. There could be a bunch of different groups crowding the hallway that would never interact with a different clique. The only time people from different cliques crossed paths were if they happened to be in the same after school club or sport, but even there, they would try to stick with just their friends.

That's sort of how it is here. Like I said, I think I'm an approachable, nice person, so I'm guessing it's just other foreigners don't want anymore friends or they just refuse to socialize with people who are not in their group of friends. So rude.

Here's a picture to brighten the mood:

David and Kevin of Elephant class being elephants!

Oh, and here's another:

'Baller' and 'holler' on a spelling test. :)

Mixtape of Sorts

The following blog post will include a couple different things. I'll head them so you can pick and choose what you'd like to read :) I know, I'm nice.

Learning the language, or ... not.
I have a friend that is in France and keeps a blog as well. It's a really good read. The last couple posts have been about the language and how many foreigners there don't even try with the language and how she gets compliments on being well-versed in French. I think that's awesome, that she is learning her third language and doing freakin' spectacularly! These posts always get me thinking, of course. I've been here for 11 months now and I barely know any Korean. I know a few phrases and words and I can read Korean, but it's definitely not something worth writing home about. I do feel bad about not learning Korean like I said I was going to, but it's too late now... Anyways, yea. That's really all I wanted to say about that: I feel bad that I don't know more Korean, but, hey! I can read it! That's pretty cool, eh?! And I can say "I love you." Always important. :)

One more.
Guys, I have one more month here. I can't believe it. A sorority sister emailed me asking what I was doing in Korea and I told her and then I said that I had been here for such-and-such amount of time and that in five weeks it would be a year. Then I stopped and had a minor freak out. In FIVE weeks I would have been in KOREA for a whole YEAR. HOLY SHIT! Part of me can't believe it, then a different part of me is like, "Well, duh, it's about damn time this year was up." I'm so so soooo mixed about how I feel about it, it's ridiculous. I'm happy that I came here because I got to myself better and a different culture and new foods and new friends, but then I'm like a year! A year in Korea! I had heard that I might not be able to do more than a year, then I came here and met many people who had been here for 2-6 years and I was confused. Then I had the chance to experience it for myself and I've figured out that, yes, Korea is a good country, it's a great place to teach and the people are nice and the food is delicious and you aren't alone, but it's definitely not my [kind of] country, if you get what I'm saying. I've had a great time in this year, but I'm ready to move on... I'm pretty sure. I'm gonna miss my friends, that's fo' sho'.
Side note: I admire anyone and everyone that has stayed here for more than the first year. You guys are amazing and I am so glad that you love it lots!

Packing, ick.
I have decided that the last week that I'm here, I just want it to me, the turtles, my backpack, and the stuff that was here before me in this apartment. With that said, I have four weeks to get everything out of here/thrown away. Now that I've officially said four weeks to do that, my stomach is slightly knotted. My parents have reminded me over and over and over again that I'm lazy. I agree with them, I am! I hate packing! I hate getting ready for stuff, it's time consuming and boringgggg. I'm secretly (or not so much so) hoping that I'll be able to throw away most of the stuff that is here! I hope hope hope!

Travels
Since I'll be leaving in five weeks, I should probably start thinking about where in northern Vietnam I'm going to go and where I'm going to stay in Vietnam and Rome. Have I even looked into it? Ehhh, not really. Surprise? No. I did ask a friend of a friend about her stay in Vietnam and she had some excellent tips, but I have yet to look into it on my own. Fail. I really should probably get on that. If any of you guys have any tips or suggestions, holler at me. PLEASEEEEEEEE!! I beg!

School Update
As I reported in the last update, things with the kids have been going pretty well. Zebra class and I are get along great, when we both get our way without fighting! Yay! Elephant class is still my favorite because they just LOVE to learn. They want to be at school and they want to be with me, I love it... well, except for one kid who has been giving me the HARDEST time. When I talked to her mom, who I know personally, she told me things were rough at home, so I get it. I get that L's life sucks right now, but do you have to make mine suck, too?! I mean, come on! After I talked to the rents about my issues, they suggested I ignore her, which I did all day Friday and it worked out for me. The other kids and I just pretended she wasn't there when she decided that 12:08 would be a perfect time to throw a fit. That's gonna be my new angle... I'ma straight up ignore the dickens out of that child and shower the other kids with my love and attention! Evil? Maybe (*shrugsies*). Worth it? Most certainly (HOORAY!).
This week we have Thursday off of school for Children's Day. Not sure what that is, but I'll take a day off since we haven't had one off since the very beginning of March, and that was barely a day off. Then we go back to school for Friday, have the weekend off, go to school Monday, and have a day off on Tuesday for another national holiday. I have asked multiple times if we could have either Friday or Monday off, for a four day weekend, but boss lady has told me that the parents complain and then gets a super sad face on and says "I WISH I WISH!!" Ugh. That's all I have to say to that: ugh.

End.
I think that's about it, folks. I feel like I wanted to write about something else, but I have forgotten about it in the four hours it has taken me to jot this post down.

Peace, love, & chicken noodle soup (which I'm currently nom-ing)

Just Call Me "Indie"

"Indie" for "Indecisive"

Yes, folks, me... I couldn't even figure out what to update my blog about! And my nickname, given by Nate, pretty much sums up the past month (aka since my last update).

Anyways, I've been trying to figure out my next step after Korea. Yes, I have booked tickets to at least DC, but that's as far as I've mapped out my next quest. I had a job interview in Kuwait that was looking like it would be heading in the right direction, but due to my indecisiveness and my lack of knowing what I want to do right this minute, I decided to stop with the interview. It was for a nursery teacher position, which would mean doing this same thing I'm doing right now, again. I love babies, but not enough to "teach" them anything. So that was one decision I was able to make after much consideration and stress. Exciting.



My next indecisiveness came with "Well if I'm not going to teach in Kuwait, what am I gonna do?" Easy, I'm gonna go to Kuwait and live with my parents. Uh... what?! Live with my parents again!? *SWOOSH* Here comes Indie to the rescu- uhh, wait... nevermind. More stress. Why would I want to live with my parents again, other than it being a free place to be? The other reason is because if I stick my head out far enough and try, I might be able to find good tutoring gigs that will bring in some money flow without being on a (EEPS!) contract of any sort! Okay... Then I thought "Well, shit, man, I can't live with them and save up money forever! I need something else!"
I sat back and talked with Katie and the rentals and came to the conclusion that I want to teach. I do. I want to. However, I do not want to teach the English language, and I do not want to teach babies which is sort of (I say sort of because that's not necessarily true, but I really just do not want to teach anyone how to speak English... I'M horrible at it, why would someone want to learn how to speak from me?!) the only avenue I have with just my bachelor's. SO I think I'm going back to school, guys (think = pretty sure)! I want to teach and I want to travel and a really great way of being able to teach what I want, who I want, and where I want is being a certified teacher! :) Excellent.

our walk home from work

That being somewhat "down pat." I had to figure out summer plans, which are still in the process of being organized.

MOOOOOOOOOVING right along... I've gotten used to the kids in the past month (thank goodness, right). And I'd like to think they have gotten used to me and sort of being in a classroom. Since I see the same kids everyday, all day I try to break up the monotony of studying English for the babies, and we do fun things, too, but they are also learning to recognize when to be "serious" and when to have fun so it's a great time! That was a long sentence.
We had a field trip today to a Transportation Museum. It was relatively boring and uninformative for the babies, but we had a great time at lunch time and after lunch time! It was such a beautiful day, in fact there have been lots of beautiful days as of late, and so we played around outside. It was mostly havoc, but it was nice seeing the little kids being little kids and not being told to sit properly for five hours out of a day, ya know?

That's pretty much it, though. Here are some pictures to lessen the boring-ness of this post. :)

Jason super excited on the bus

Museum

Reppin' license plates from the States

After-thought: I guess it doesn't seem too indecisive, but trust me guys, this is an issue for me. Even trying to figure out if I'm going to go out to dinner with friends is a pain in the a$$. Oh yea, dollar signs. What?!

Peace, love, & Polo mints

Oh, and also, I have a month and a half left. Weird.

In the past two weeks... Warning: it's a semi-long one

With my departure date slowly coming into view, I've been doing a bunch of thinking. Mainly, it's "Man, I'm gonna miss Katie Dale." This is a very true statement, but I'm also going to miss our other friends, too. We have cool friends, we like them. Then I find myself thinking that I'm going to miss Korea, which is also true. Korea is a pretty cool place, I guess. I was talking to a friend and he mentioned that to be here, you need to be positive. So true! You've got to be super positive, which can be super hard at times because you find yourself faking that positivity and that gets tiring. Other than being tired of always trying to be upbeat, Korea is a pretty okay place. It's a good place to start off living on your own and they have an endless need of English teachers, so there are always jobs.
Anyways, *shakes head to get back into groove*, I'm going to miss it here and whenever I start feeling like I'm going to miss something, I sometimes start to doubt my leaving. But it's okay! I was unsure of my leaving for a bit, but then I remembered that I'm ready for the next step. I'm excited to move to Kuwait and make some more monies to fund my 'round-the-world extravaganza (that had best happen)! The next 11 weeks or so are going to fly by, so I'm going to try my best to take advantage of the time I have left to experience more of Korea, so when I do leave here, I won't regret that decision. That was a lot of USELESS RAMBLING, per usual.

Here's the real scoop:

We've got new kids. I am in Zebra class now. I bounce back and forth between Zebra (6 years old) and Elephant (5 years old) everyday. Tuesday and Friday, I have Apple class and Day Care for one period of the day and, on Wednesday, I have a break (much needed break). The kids are somewhat cute. Mostly, though, they just wear me out. Zebra class are all best friends now and it can be difficult teaching them anything at all.
Last year (3 weeks ago) when I was in King class, I was convinced that teaching English was somewhat tedious and easy. Now, with kids that don't speak any English at all, I find that teaching English is, in fact, quite difficult. They don't understand me and I don't understand them. It's frustrating, but when they can finally read "can" and "cat" I feel accomplished and proud.
Here is my Zebra class:

Ian

Ella
Juana

Julian
Annie
Lita

StephanieMore on their personalities and my interactions with them on some other post.

In Elephant class, there is a total of 8 kids I think. One kid, James, just cries all the time because he hates English and doesn't want to learn. Fair. Another kid, Jason, is one of the teacher's kids and he just... oh man. He cries, too; when he sees his mom, when he doesn't feel like sitting down, when he can't ask for the bathroom or water in English, when Jessica teacher leaves the third floor at the end of the day, every morning, etc. One word: headaches. Even with those two, Elephant class is my favorite so far. They are so cute and squishy and they listen to me. When I ask and motion them to stand up and push in their chairs they don't turn to each other and just start talking, they do what I ask them to. They love to sing along with the songs and they do their work. They're beautiful and I love them. Here are my favorites:

Kevin - he is super smart and quiet
Ricky - also smart. He loves to talk and calls the crying kids "babies." And he smiles at me.

David - He's cute. When he sings, he belts it out. And he's super ticklish.

Those are my classes.

Two weekends ago, Katie and I decided that we should do some sightseeing of sorts, so we found out where we had to go to find the Seoul Tower and go up up up! We found it pretty easily, after a hike up a small hill, we got into a cable car and went up the mountain. It was so cool! On Namsan, they also have this thing called "Locks of Love," nooo not the hair thing. It's for lovers. Lovers take locks up there and write messages on them (lovey dovey) and then lock it up. It was really cool and sweet, but I'm a sap for those kinds of things. After looking around the locks, we went up into the Tower. It was pretty cool, really high. It had a good view of the city. We felt accomplished after our day trip to Seoul. This whole paragraph was crappily written, I apologize; I think I'm getting sick and my head is not all in one piece because of this.

in the cable car

locks
locks and the Tower

Peace, love, & kimchi.

Flights

With a lot of help from the padres (thank goodness), I was able to book flights! Needless to say, I'm super pumped now. :)

Seoul - Hanoi on June 4th
Hanoi - Rome on June 15th
Milan - DC on July 8th

Still figuring out: flight to CA? flight to Kuwait - one way.

Super stoked.

Peace, love, & kimchi


PS. I'll be keeping this blog for my other travels.

Positives

First two days back at school with a new classroom and new kids has been crazy hectic. Crying babies, fake smiles, pants soaked in pee, and crying babies EVERYWHERE. So I thought I'd write a bit about some positives going on.

1. The babies always smile after a bit, which happen to be cute smiles!
2. I have really cool coworkers. I super like them a lot.
3. My friends are pretty awesome. Near and far.
4. Snurtle and Hank are doing spectacularly (I think; they don't talk much)
5. 65 weekdays.
6. Korean food is amazeballs.
7. My boss saw the purple in my hair and did NOT freak out. YAY!
8. Seester sent me Reeses cups!
9. I found money in my pocket today.
10. It was cold today, but it was a pleasant cold. AKA it was a nice day.

There's tons more, but I think this is good for now.

Peace, love, & kimchi

9 Months

Oh hey! A whole month went by without a blog post from Sophia? Weird.

Not a whole lot has been happening around these parts lately. I told the boss lady I wouldn't be coming back for another 6/9/12 months, so my official leave date is something like June 2nd. My plans are sort of in place, but not really because I haven't booked anything yet :/. Anyways...

We had our big finale show thing-a-doodle on the 15th. It wasn't so bad, guys! I feel like it went a lot better than we all thought it would. Although, having all the Korean teachers leave us three in a tiny room without television and/or some sort of entertainment with 5 classes for about 2 hours was not the highlight of the evening. I was so proud of the kids! They did such a great job. I scored a DVD from it, too! Woot! So now I can watch it allllll. We started at the school to practice and I took some videos of that, and once I actually upload them, I'll post them here! After lunch, we made our way to an art museum where we did the performance. The two classes I was "in charge of," Elephant and King, were great! Elephant class did the drama The Three Billy Goats. Everyone remembered their lines and movement and songs! And King class did their speeches! Super proud of those rascals.

Since the 15th, we were wrapping all the books and stuff up, hurrying the kids to finish them so we could mark them up and send them home last Thursday with all the kids. Yep, last Thursday was the last day of the school year! So sad. I'm gonna miss King and Robot class a tremendous amount! But, no worries, because 7 of the students from King class will be back for elementary classes this new school year!

So even though Thursday was their last day, we had to go in on Friday. And Saturday. Friday, we were taking down our classrooms and doing a general cleaning of the floors. Saturday morning we had to look "presentable" for the parents during orientation. We literally stood up there for 5 minutes. All we had to say was who we were and what classes we will be teaching this year. Katie will be in charge of Robot (which is Puppy class moving on up) and the newest Puppy class. Peter will be in charge of King (which is Zebra and Elephant moving up). And I will be in charge of Zebra, Elephant, and Apple (Zebra = new, Elephant = last year's Apple class, Apple = day care??). So yea.

My new schedule consists of me moving around the third floor a lot! I'll mostly be teaching Zebra (6 years) and Elephant (5 years) Language Arts, Learn to Read, English Village, and Science. And I'll be making weekly visits to Day Care and Apple class. Should be fun! I'm a bit nervous just because I don't know these kids and the kids I do know speak no English! It should be interesting, that's for sure.

Anyways, we went in today, Monday, to set up our new classrooms. We spent most of the day coloring, cutting, laminating, and cutting. Needless to say, my hand is officially sore. We have tomorrow off because it's some sort of holiday and we have to go in Wednesday to finish our rooms, lesson plans, etc and we start teaching Thursday. Yikes! I'm super nervous. I hope it goes well!

So that's pretty much it. All the new, boring news that is happening here! :)

Peace & Love!

Five Things

1. It's a beautiful 40 degrees here.
2. It makes me miss warmth.
3. I think the world is going to shit. There are some things that make me doubt this, which is why I am not 100% sure about it.
4. I sorta miss my friends in the States, but they have made it easy for me to not miss them.
5. I love my turtles. And my friends here.

Evil Laugh

You say you want a gift from Korea?



You got it!

RR: Random Ramblings

1. Peter teacher has been here for a week and one day! It has been the greatest week and one day ever! The kids love him, the staff loves him, and it's just been great! Love it.

2. King class Peter left :( sad day for me. Loved that kid. His family moved too far away to make the commute everyday to school. Le sigh.

3. Our end of the year performance has been pushed back a week to February 15th, which is great! The whole entire school has been working uber hard on this the past week and one day! Every free moment has been dedicated to rehearsing dramas, speeches, and songs. Today the boss lady sat in with me for Elephant's drama and King's speeches. It didn't go too bad. I was impressed. The kids impressed me. They have come so far in the time that I've been here. :)

4. Boss asked me to stay on another year, I said "no" cos of the Italy cruise, then she said she'd give me 3 weeks off if I stayed for a year, then I said "ah shit, guess I'll think about it." Needless to say, I was obsessing over it for about a day. I've decided another year ain't gonna happen. I'm gonna cross my fingers and see if she'll let me stay til at least October/November. I doubt she will let me stay and still give me time off for the cruise, but we'll see.

5. Katie's dad came today! And this Wednesday-Friday we have no school because of the Lunar New Year! Exciting. Then we come back and have three weeks left with King and Robot then they move on to elementary school and then everyone moves up a floor. Scary/exciting. I'm gonna miss King and Robot a tremendous amount; I've become very attached to those kids.

6. Pretty sure that's it. Peace, love, and cookies.

Sarah, Cindy, and I on picture day!

Peter and I! <3