Good morning from a cool Korea!
Yes, I know that some may be thinking, "It's about time, eh?" To which I must reply ... "Yep." haha. I feel that the last 3 weeks have been a flurry of activity with seldom a moment to spare that I hadn't allocated to something small here or there. And I think that the occasionally elusive "writer's spirit" had once again taken a break, so here I am finally getting back into the swing of things, and today you'll an overview from the past 3 weeks ... of primarily a number of highlights.
I'm continually creating a workable rhythm for my life here, and that's what keeps me pretty busy. About a month ago now, I changed how I study Korean. I've begun to meet with 2 Korean homeroom teachers from Haba who are not fluent in English. Whereas with Dianne I felt that I was the only of us really benefiting from our study sessions, this time around, not only am I learning Korean from these teachers, but I'm also helping them to learn/perfect their English. And so far it's been working out pretty well, I think. I find that one consistent problem has simply appeared at times when I want to ask something like, "Why?" or "Is this always the case?" I'm such a constructivist when it comes to learning and understanding that it's been a little difficult to curb my curiosity and be satisfied with learning a little bit at a time rather than probing all of the littlest aspects and trying to construct complete, comprehensive frameworks for everything I encounter. Basically, due to the specific limitations of our ability to entirely understand one another and communicate everything in the most accurate detail, I'm learning a lot about how I learn and simultaneously being stretched and challenged to assimilate this language differently than I would often like to be learning it. I'm consistently seeing small improvements in my own comprehension of the language, but as always, this is gonna take a while.
Additionally, after our second time together, I was given my very Korean name. Woo hoo! Here it is: 이민준, which sounds like this: "E Min Joon." It was during that time together that they picked the Korean name for me, and I chose English names for them, so now they will call me Ben or Min Joon, and I will call them either HyeRim and JiHye or Maggie and Tina, respectively. Also, just for those who might be curious and, of course, to pad my own ego, Maggie and Tina chose my name based on its meaning. "E" comes from my own last name; if you were to write out Graves with Korean letters, you could use "E" right before the terminal "s" sound. This they snagged for the Korean family name spot. "Min", as I understand it, means something like "warm" or "soft", and "Joon" connects to the idea of "bright" or "light." So, if you're putting the pieces together correctly, you already see it's a very cute name ... because it basically compares me to a warm, comforting light. Awww. Yep. They said that was one of the first impressions I made on them at school. So any of you at home, feel free to start calling me Min Joon anytime you feel like it. haha. Here's my last note about this new studying: this has quickly become one of the most consistent and regular parts of my schedule because we've been getting together between 3 and 5 times a week, so this week, for example, we will study Monday, Wednesday and Friday (which makes each of those days exceptionally long since I'm at school from 8:30/9 until 6:40, and then we study from that point until 10 or 11 each night), and on Thursday the teachers are going to teach me some Korean cooking. Woot!
Here are 2 cool things that happened 2 weeks ago that have helped in this whole language-learning endeavor as well: getting an iPod touch and learning about international language keyboards for Mac. For some of you in the know this is nothing new, but over the past 6 weeks or so, I had been working with my mom to ship some things to me -- including a new iPod and external hard drive. After countless frustrations and complications (or so it seemed), it all worked out, and the package arrived a week ago Tuesday. Now, I feel that I've been a nay-sayer for a long time about the perks of having a touch screen device, but now after getting my own, all I can say is, "Wow. This is awesome." hahaha. I think that the best aspect of this iPod comes from the flexibility and transportability it offers. Now I have a Korean keyboard that can come with me anywhere. Additionally, and this is maybe even better, now all of my flashcards are digital rather than paper! Woo hoo! I pretty much spent most of the first Saturday (commingled with other projects throughout the day) transferring all the paper cards I had made into electronic ones, and now I have all of them with me. This will completely flip (for the better) how I study. Additionally, I finally looked into typing Korean on my computer, and I found out that after 3 clicks, I had activated the ability, and now I can simply type Korean whenever I want to :). Granted, I don't have all the Korean characters on my keys ... and I'm hesitant to simply use permanent marker on my keys ... so the typing is slow, but I'm slowly memorizing the locations. This has been a huge development because during chats with Korean friends, I can now try to write and mimic what they're doing. Woo hoo again! 2 thumbs up for Mac!
Outside of the language stuff, here are a couple other highlights: first, I got to go on my first school field trip. Apparently the students usually go on a field trip each month, but my first 2 months here were pretty full of many things, so we just didn't have any excursions planned. This time, though, we went to a forest/park area, and actually we didn't really see much of the park itself; instead, we spent a lot of time taking cute pictures of the kids around some trees, had lunch and returned to school. It was really nice to get outside during the day, and that was definitely a beautiful day to go out and about. One of the coolest aspects of this trip was simply lunchtime itself. During that time all the students just sat down on large tarps, pulled out their packed lunches and ate. This sounds like any other field trip I went on when I was young, right? Right. But ... the spread of food was markedly different from anything I would have seen back in my elementary school days. Kimbop, which I've described before, was the primary thing that each student brought out. All their moms had made some kimbop for them, and to the eyes of this foreigner, it was super impressive because somewhere in the back of my mind I was still thinking, "field trip lunch ... oh yeah ... peanut butter and jelly sandwich and chips and and apple." Nope. I'm in Korea. haha. Frankly, I think I also really liked that meal because by the end of it I had probably eaten some kimbop from a dozen or so of the students, and it was all really good. This guy's definitely a fan of the moms' food preparation skills and the kids' willingness to share. Mmmmm.
Next, right now at the school the kids are preparing for a show that they're putting on for parents. The show will happen in November, and I think it's some sort of talent/solely performance based show, so all of the 6 year old boys are learning one "dance", while the girls are learning their own. The girls are practicing a fan dance, and the boys are learning a martial arts-esque routine to music (for lack of a better description). I include this in my highlights section for 2 reasons: number 1, it's actually quite amusing to go downstairs to our gym and watch the kids learn and practice. From this point onward, the kids will be practicing at least once a day, so I've been consistently going down after I finish eating to stand in a back corner and just watch. Ahhh ... wonderful. Number 2, it's also amusing (in a different way) to watch the Korean teachers work with the kids. From observing the difficulty that the native teachers sometimes have in instructing/directing the students while speaking in Korean, I've gained so much encouragement for my own interactions with the kids; now I feel more comfortable, after a class when the kids just really didn't want to focus and stay on task, laying the bulk of the blame on the kids' age and not solely on my inability to control the class because I'm a foreign teacher and speaking only in English. Oh the joy of little kids!
Alright. I'll wrap up today with a few enjoyable/amusing encounters I've had over the past 3 weeks. 1. In the package from my mom not only came some electronics but also a few other random things from home including: Ticket to Ride! So far I've played it twice with the 2 teachers, and they really enjoyed it. Again I get to relish the joy of dashing hopes against the wall with my superior route-making abilities! Ok, ok. That's only mostly true. haha. 2. I recently realized that when the 5 year olds say my name, it's now different from what they had originally said. They used to say, "Ben teacher," but by now it's changed into more of a "Benny teacher," which is, of course, way cuter. Mmm, lovely kids. 3. Yesterday I realized that sometimes it's maybe better to not say something that try to offer warning in English; here's the story: Haba lies at the end of a side street, and because the roads end up being pretty narrow there, buses have to back up the side streets all the way to our school when picking up the kids. As I left the school yesterday, I happened to walk by a 10-12 year old who said "Hi" to me, and I, of course, greedily relishing that arbitrary encounter with my native tongue, replied "Hello." I quickly realized, though, that as the kid passed me, he was walking right in the path of one bus that had begun to back up the side street, so I instinctively called out, "Watch out!" At the sound of my voice the kid simply stopped walking and turned to look at me, thereby firmly establishing himself in the path of the bus and in a solid blind spot for the driver. Fortunately another Korean teacher was nearby, and she caught the boy's attention, and I think he realized what the bus was doing as well, so fear not, the child was not run over. But I did learn my lesson ... just because a kid can say and understand "Hello" doesn't mean that he will readily understand other things I say ... even if I'm looking out for his best interest, and maybe, just maybe, if I do say something, as the child stops to process my caution, he might end up only increasing the likelihood that he'll be squished by a bus. (insert sad face). haha.
Ok. Final notes for today: I recently reinstalled everything on my computer, which did end up fixing most of the problems I'd been having, but I did lose some things that I hadn't expected, so ... the Picasa album won't be updated for a little while with new pictures, but I"ll keep adding things to facebook as I can.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to check out some shots from our field trip, visit:
