Changes

So ... I've decided to start a new blog. With only a month left in Korea, it seems rather silly for me to keep this one. So we're relocating to -- http://phnomenal.wordpress.com/

While you wander on over, enjoy my new favorite K-Pop song ... "Bad Girl" by B2ST

See you on the other side!

xx

Pictures are worth a 1,000 words

I finally made a photo album! I'm ashamed that I really haven't taken that many photos while I've been here, but with only four months left (a fact I'm desperately trying to forget) I'm trying to take a lot more photos, so I'll be sure to post some ASAP!

Nevertheless, here is the URL for my Picasa account. I've already posted my Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam photos(I swear, I'll write some posts about my trip soon!):

http://picasaweb.google.com/117427996082914135236

(I know the address isn't particularly catchy but I don't want strangers looking at my stuff!)

In the meantime, enjoy!

Love,

xx Kenisha

My experiences in a nutshell

The greatest website ever. It's done by some English teachers here, and these comics are maybe some of the funnies things I've ever seen. Believe me, few are exaggerated, and although you may not understand most of them unless you actually come to visit, you should enjoy the site nevertheless.

http://roketship.tumblr.com/

This is my favorite:

사랑해,

xx Kenisha

Look, I'm not deaf...

Admittedly, I've never lived or been in a situation where I've been linguistically uncomfortable prior to coming to Korea. Growing up bilingual, and confident in my French has taken me pretty far both at home and abroad. Sure, I've had to ask for clarification time and again, but at the end of the day I always know what's up. Like 98% of bilingual children, I'm grossly spoiled and take it all for granted. Now, after living in South Korea for nine months, I intend to hug every single immigrant I come across while I'm at home, and give them a hearty "Congratulations" because this is certainly not easy.

Let me paint you a picture:

Scenario #1: After living in the same location and teaching a mere 50 meters away, I'm 100% confident that I can pronounce the name of my middle school. Nevertheless, I get in a cab today, and after I tell him where to go, he started saying something to me. After looking it up on my handy English-Korean dictionary I realize that he is saying "backdoor." I just laugh it off and say "yes, this is a backdoor."Nope. He starts yelling at me even more in Korean, because, duh, that's the way to get people to understand you. I keep saying "I don't know. I don't understand Korean" (in Korean, obvs) but this man isn't taking it. Needless to say, he takes me to the wrong place (I mean, really wrong. Like "take me to Time Square" and he took me to "Austin, Texas" wrong - they sound NOTHING alike). Clearly, this is the ignorant waygook's fault and he yells at me further, and mumbles some stuff about America, women and respect. (At one point, I thought he was asking me to have butt sex with him, and I almost jumped out of the cab) All was very unclear. Now, you could easily replace this taxi driver with a (a) bus driver, (b) nurse, (c) flight attendant, etc. and the situation would go pretty similarly. (And before us Yankees think we're off the hook, on my flight over here I witnessed the exact same thing with a flight attending literally inches away and screaming in a poor Spanish-speaking man's face.) Utterly unacceptable. I'm not deaf, I just don't speak your language!

And Scenario #2: This may be a bit more my fault, but let's go with it anyway. For whatever reason, my bills weren't being addressed to me. One day, I happened to bring a random note I had found in my mailbox to work, and asked a student to translate: "Kenisha Teacher. Bad." Apparently, I had missed my water bill payment for four months. This delinquency hadn't gone unnoticed and now the government was threatening to shut off my water. So, simply because I couldn't read my bills, I had spent the last four months paying for some random person's water bill and had to go two days sans shower.

To Korea's credit, I'd say more often than not, the second I enter a building people get excited to take on the language challenge and we've both wiped out our dictionaries before I've even hit the counter. But for the few people in the "ignorants who Kenisha will now steer clear of" category, you're killin' it for everyone else! (Let it be said, that this is also true for the millions of Americans, like this total asshole.)

Moral of the story is: for all my ancestors, and the millions of people who have the cojones to move and live in another country ... my hat is off to you. Oh, and given the opportunity I'd love to throw Tim James in the middle of rural South Korea and see how he likes it.

사랑해 (sa rang hae -- "love you"),

Kenisha

Kenisha: World Traveler!

So after my winter camp, I was busy scampering around southeast Asia for a bit more than three weeks. We went to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and I can honestly say that it was the most amazing experience of my life. Let's recap:

Countries: 3
Days: 23
Travelers: 4
Distance travelled: 9,934 km (for Americans, 6,203 miles)
Average temperature during vacation in SEA: 95*F
Average temperature during vacation in Korea: 10*F
Scheduled flights: 4
Unexpected flights: 2
Ridiculously long bus rides: 3
Overnight trains: 2
Cruises: 1
Vehicles which broke down on us: 4
Buddhist monks: hundreds, but still not enough
Times I freaked out after seeing a monk: hundreds, but still not enough
Pounds gained: 4
Pounds I regret gaining: 0
Tarantulas I saw: 3 too many
Number of hotels: 9
New bags I had to buy because I bought too much random stuff: 1
Thai fisherman pants: 2
Harem pants: 2
Cheesy tourist shirts: 4
Pad Thais consumed: 9
Hours spent in the Beijing airport: 10
Elephants ridden: 1
Peices of clothes I got tailor made: 3
Pairs of shoes I got tailor made: 3
Price of all clothes + shoes: $200
Red Zao (Vietnamese minority tribe) outfits purchased: 1
Fire shows where the performer's clothes caught on fire: 2
Sunrises watched: 2
Price for the entire trip: priceless (love you Mastercard)

While the trip was absolutely amazing, Cambodia blew both Vietnam and Thailand right out of the water. I'll write about each country later (in order of which I liked the most) and I'll have pictures too, but I just thought I'd whet your appetitive!

Love you
xx Kenisha

KISSING! WHAT!

I owe everyone a million "I'm Sorrys" for being so MIA with the blog lately. I had an outrageously lazy winter camps, went traveling for awhile, and have been doing nothing but watching Friends since I've been back (have you ever seen it? I just started 3 weeks ago, and this show is hilarious). Nevertheless, I'll tell everyone what I've been up to lately. This will probably take up a few posts but nevertheless, let's do this chronologically...

I did two winter camps: (1) listening-based, and (2) conversation-based. The listening-based class was rather interesting, to say the least. I tried to do a bit of listening here and there with the book, but mostly had them play games based on topics, make ice cream, and sing relevant/interesting English songs - because, cmon, that's what I'd like to do to learn a new language. I was rather impressed by how much more confident my kids had gotten and some of their English had improved even after only two weeks (go Kenisha, go Kenisha go!). Second away from breaking my arm from patting myself on the back so hard, a student COMPLAINED ABOUT ME. What would she complain about you ask? My outlandish good looks? Too much fun? NO! She wanted to study more. Korea is borderline crazy when it comes to school/work. After winter vacation I spent a week discussing what students had done over vacation, and 98% of my students said that "studying and going to hagwon" was one of the number one thing they did (hagwon is afterschool school; so after school finishes, they go to hagwon until about 11:00pm where they study even MORE ... this starts when they're in kindergarden and goes until college). One student studied English for more than 8 hours. Every. Single. Day. There are few things you can make me do for more than 8 hours a day-- one is listening to Frank Sinatra, and the other being, well, sleeping. I wondered, are these kids really improving? The answer is a resounding ... NO! For instance, my overly studious student was still unable to hold a conversation with me, even when I spoke in my simplist and slowest English. She could probably recite every single dialogue from the textbook, but ask her to describe her city or the weather, and past "its nice" and she's drawing a blank. It'd idiotic, me thinks.

So I took a step back and really looked at the education system here. Almost any foreigner who spends more than two months here would agree that their system is seriously problematic. I show videos of really common things (shark attacks, bungee jumping, beatboxing, etc.) and they freak out because its something that most of them have never seen. WHAT. I know they have all three of these things in our province alone. I showed a Taylor Swift (what? I teach middle school) video the other day which involved kissing and my students flipped. Not only can they not fathom kissing, but they couldn't even look at the television screen. While this is probably a good thing (no one likes teen pregnancy) these kids are seriously sheltered which can't be good. There is also an outrageous amount of pressure on these kids. The month following KSAT (which is the entrance exam for college, and what students work their entire life for) is calling "Rain Month" because so many people ... kill themselves by jumping off the building. Its not completely unheard of for parents to kill themselves and everyone else in their family because a child doesn't perform well on the exam. Two of my own students were caught at the last minute trying to kill themselves because they had done poorly on their finals. They are only 14. FOURTEEN. When I was fourteen I was focusing on swim practice, what jeans to wear tomorrow, and what mall I'd wander with my friends that weekend. School should be important but I mean, cmon, this can't be healthy. Don't get me wrong it has its positive attributes: students are super smart (my third graders are already learning calculus), dedicated and motivated to levels that are far too uncommon in American classrooms.

Enough ranting, to my conversation class... I will never have more respect for my Chinese conversation teacher ever again. My class was, wait for it, THREE HOURS of conversation class. This is a difficult feat when you actually speak the language, let alone can barely hold a conversation about weekend plans. Nevertheless, my kids were amazing and on the last day we had a proper pizza party, where they got me a cake and we watched "Devil Wears Prada." Unemotional Kenisha even welled up a little!

Anyway, I got a new camera so I'll be able to post more photos now PLUS I have tons of photos from my Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam trip!

I'll post more stuff later,
Love you all!!
xx Kenisha

Really, I kid you not...

So, this wouldn't be a true Korean blog unless I talked about ... dun dun dun ... FAN DEATH.

Fan death, for those who are unaware, is a Korean urban legend reality. According to Koreans, fans are serious culprits in some heinous deaths. If you leave a fan on for too long you will die from one of two things:

1. hypothermia, because the fan will lower the temperature in the room so low that you freeze to death

and/or

2. suffocation, as the fan will take out all the oxygen in the room, and you won't be able to breath.

If you're thinking "Hey, we have some weird superstitions in America too" then take my word for it, they don't compare. There was never a New York Times article on the death of seven due to walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror and getting bad luck. There have, however, been very serious articles in Korean news papers about the perils of untimed fan usage.

Silly Koreans ...

We also got over a foot of snow in the last two days, and in true Korean fashion we had NO SNOW DAYS. When it comes to education, Koreans don't mess.

Love/miss you all, ^^*

I'm ashamed to be doing this...

And I don't want anyone to think that I've become one of "those bloggers" BUT I couldn't resist...

"Treeless Mountain" I must say is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. And, HEY, it's Korean. Its about as accurate a portrayal of Korean life as, say, Precious is for the US but its really good. Let's see: adorable Korean kids, interesting non-Seoul views of Korea, "modern" Korea, cute kids, and did I mention, cute kids? Just take my word for it, its a grand film, so I recommend watching it, and thinking of me!!

It has snowed a foot today, and its only 5:00pm.

Love, ^^*