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Tuesday, February 10, 2009.
It has been a pretty eventful week. Last I wrote to you I was preparing for my first class. My coworker, Kelly, took the week off to work as a judge at some competition at a high school in Seoul, so I spent the week substituting for his classes.
Monday I had a 6th grade class and an 8th grade class. It’s amazing to see how different those two ages are. The level of maturity between them is astounding.
The sixth graders are loud, energetic, and fun. They are busting with excitement, and we were able to enjoy the class quite well. The eighth graders are a completely different story. Awkward, quiet, and shy, that class can be a bit more of a struggle.
A quick review of how our school works-each class is three hours long, with a five minute break at the conclusion of each hour. I am teaching two types of classes-on Mondays and Tuesdays class focuses on reading and listening class, and Wednesday and Thursday we have writing and speaking class. The reading class is much more structured, with every minute detailed on what activity we are to be doing. We read passages, and the kids to exercises making sure they understood what we read, plus adding to their vocabulary.
The writing class has significantly less structure, and more lies on us teachers in the way of discussion and lecture. We do more work in grammar, this clas more specific on different parts of speech.
Now that I’ve had classes teaching both types of class, I’m not sure which style I like more. They’re both quite different.
So I spent the week at work teaching Kelly’s classes. The majority of them were very good. I especially like the 6th grade classes. There is one that was just three boys, and it very much reminded me of my job working at the afterschool. The middle school classes later in the week were a lot better than the earlier part, I think in part because the students got more comfortable with me and were much more talkative. The middle school classes were all boys, something I’m assuming is structured as such on purpose.
My mornings were as I have spent them since I got here-picking out a random station on the subway and going to check it out. I’ve been doing research about where cool things are, and I found that there is a Russian district in the Dongdaemun Stadium area. Dongdaemun Stadium, I’m assuming, was a large part of the 1988 Olympics, judging by the huge stain glass ceiling bearing the five rings in the subway station. It has since been torn down to make room for the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Park. I only had a few minutes before I had to make my way to work, so I decided to come back the next day.
Friday night I got off work and decided to check out the famous foreigners hangout of Itaewon. It’s an area of town that is a little sketchy, with people from all over the world coming together to get shitty. Bars, clubs, prostitutes, street food, and homeless people characterize this pretty well. I was a little uncomfortable there, but I wound up being pulled into this one bar by some chick. The bar was tiny, and there was a woman sitting at the bar, a much older woman behind the bar, and the young girl who invited me in. I bought her and myself a drink, and we sat drinking them and talking. It was a pretty good time. After a while, and through our discussion, I came to realize that she worked there, and was using me to buy her overpriced drinks. Luckily, I had come to Itaewon without the intention of getting drunk, but mearly to check it out, so I hadn’t brought much cash with me. After one round, I left, and headed back to Kangnam, my district. The subway closes ridiculously early in Seoul, so I had to recruit a taxi. It would have been smarter for me to walk out of the bars area to hail one, but I wasn’t thinking ahead. We sat in the traffic of drunk people trying to grab taxis for a few minutes, and I watched my meter go up.
This taxi driver nearly killed me. He rushed through the city at ridiculous speeds, and as we approached red lights, he glanced quickly to each side and proceeded right along. True, there was very little traffic, but it was still pretty scary. In hindsight, I guess he does this all the time, and that’s not much different from how the taxi drivers do during the day, so this late night period of less traffic was safer, but at the time, it was pretty scary. I got home safely, and went to bed shortly thereafter.
Saturday morning I made it my goal to find this certain Russian restaurant. I headed back to Dongdaemun Stadium Station, and exited through the wrong exit. I wound up in a totally different area. I wandered around for a while and found all sorts of cool stuff. Apparently on Saturdays, this area becomes a huge market, with street venders and small stores selling everything. It was pretty cool, I’ll have to come back when I’m not jonesing for some Russian food. They were setting up for a couple of small concerts. One of the stages, I noticed, was definitely playing a song I recognized, but in Korean. I then realized that I was being Rick Rolled, in Korean.
I found the Russian area, filled with angry older Russian men walking around in fur hats, but it took a while to find the restaurant. I found a couple places that seemed tolerable, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. This was one of the few places I have felt unsafe in the city. I kept a close watch on my wallet in this area. We all know that Koreans don’t steal, it’s just not a habit they have yet picked up. But pickpocketing is a pretty big problem in Russia, and as I was in the Russian part of town, I was a little less comfortable. I eventually found the restaurant without event, and walk inside.
There was an older man sitting at one of the table, who started to greet me in Russian, but halfway through the Russian word for “hello” (it’s a pretty long word, for those who don’t know), he hesitated after looking at me. I responded with the Russian greeting back, and he offered me a table. They did not have a menu, and the owner lady, about whom I read online, came out and talked to me about what I wanted to have. My choices were quite limited, but of course I ordered the borsch. I also got something else I had never heard of before, some kind of meat and rice wrapped in cabbage. This was, of course, like we characterized all Russian food-food, inside other food, covered in sour cream-however, it was missing the sour cream. It was fine, though, because it was utterly fantastic. It being a restaurant in Korea, it was served with kimchi and a couple of other sides.
After I finished lunch, with plenty of awesome conversation in Russian, I left and headed to Korean class. Some volunteers have been doing free Korean classes on Saturdays for the past 9 years, for people of all levels. I, of course, went to the absolute beginner class, where we practiced the alphabet, pronunciation, and a few useful phrases, such as what to say to our taxi drivers. I met a couple of pretty cool people, and am looking forward to next class.
I don’t really remember what I did after class on Saturday, but it was uneventful. I probably wandered around.
Sunday morning I got up and headed to Itaewon, where I would be meeting a woman to buy a couple of things from her. I met her husband in a cab, a man from Ivory Coast, Africa. He took me to their house, and from her I got a microwave, bedside table, radio, and a garment steamer. I loaded it into a cab and went home. I spend Sunday having a very lazy day. Most of it I either slept, went grocery shopping, and watched a movie. Really wasn’t in the mood to do anything.
Monday I woke up, spent the whole morning at home, getting stuff ready for class. I went to work, where I taught my first class that was completely mine. It was a really well behaved class, and it went pretty well. I only teach one class on Mondays and Fridays. After work, Kelly and I went to a Mexican place and got some food, then a store and got some beer, then hung out on a playground and ate, drank, and hung out. I got home around midnight, and went to bed soon after.
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