Hello, hello from a damp, rainy Korea! Yes, I am still alive and kicking … just in case you were at all concerned. I feel that my exciting interesting experiences are dwindling in frequency, so partly because I'm just caught up in the daily grind and partly because I don't have as much to share, it's now been a while since the last time I wrote. This email should cover most of the highlights from the last few weeks, so sit back and enjoy.
A few weeks back we had a Saturday event at Haba for students and parents. During the afternoon we took a short hike through the nearby mountain and returned to the school to have a barbecue with everyone. Toward the end of the event Don told me that this was the best turnout yet, and I think they've held this for the few to half-dozen years. The event itself was very interesting for me. I had known about it for a few weeks, and I was looking forward to seeing the students and their parents outside of the school day. When we were actually there, though, it was a little odd because interacting with kids during the school day remains markedly different from interacting with them outside that time and with their parents around. Maybe 12-15 of my students showed up that day, and of that group only 2-3 of them seemed to act the same way that they would during class. It made me wonder, "During parent-teacher conferences back home, did my teachers ever feel weird being around parents rather than students? Or is my situation stemming from the language barrier alone?" Regardless of the normalcy of my feelings, it did feel a little strange to be around the parents. And that not only came from the language barrier, but I also felt that, with each interaction, I was being tested to see if I really was teaching the children good things and/or if the kids would communicate with me only in English and what degree of fluency would they exhibit in my presence. I realize that was probably mostly in my imagination, but then again, if it wasn't … I must have passed because I'm still teaching here. haha. During the hike, I ended up talking with the aunt of one student both about her nephew and general teaching/being a foreigner things. She is a bilingual teacher for another school in the area, and so we chatted about what it's like working with foreigners. At many times, for better or worse, I am representing all Americans, so I have to careful about what I do. In her time teaching, she's worked with an American, an Englishman and a Canadian co-teacher, and she knows that it's silly to stereotype a whole country's population based on a single relationship, yet those kinds of interactions have affected, to some degree, how she perceives other foreigners teaching in Korea. As you can guess, one thing I took from this conversation was a renewed appreciation for how much of a token person I am right now. Also in the course of our conversation she kept telling me about awesome things or cool perks at her school for their native English teacher and asking me about specifics of my job and benefits and commitments. I'm not exactly sure, but I think there may have been some passive recruiting going on. haha. Needless to say, I was thoroughly amused by that prospect.
Whew. It's now pouring outside. How is it that I just so happen to choose to do laundry on the most humid days? I don't get it. Hopefully everything dries well. On the topic of laundry, washing (and specifically drying) clothes has been an interesting, rather frustrating piece of living here. I do have my sweet little washing machine in the kitchen, but this is my first year without a clothes dryer in a while. Growing up (and even to this day), my family would also hand dry everything, but since going to college and living in other apartments/houses around GR, I've grown quite accustomed to having a dryer. The most interesting aspect to me has been the reversal of what's the "easiest" to wash and dry. Whereas with a dryer, I never really thought about having too many socks or towels in a single load, now I have be careful to space them out … since my drying rack only has room for so much at a time, and if things don't dry quickly enough, they smell gross. Thus I've been consistently doing a load of laundry every other weekend (if not more often). Ugh. What a pain. But at least I have a constant supply of clean clothes, right? Right. haha. This paragraph's small, so although I'm changing topics, I'm just gonna keep going. (That should have probably been an aside, but that's ok, no? C'est la vie.) The past few weeks have been full of some pretty awesome cooking adventures -- both for Korean and "American" food. Twice now I've made some Korean food with HyeRim and JiHye, and both times it's turned out pretty well. One Thursday they showed me how to make Kimbop, which is the food I mentioned in my last message. We made a couple different types of Kimbop, and it was rather simple. We bought a kit from the store that had most of the ingredients that we used, and then we had to prep a few other things on the side. I haven't yet attempted this on my own, but in the near future I should give it a go. For the second meal, we made/ate Donkus, which is essentially a pork tenderloin. For this meal we had the dunks and a few other things that we wrapped up in rice paper. For those of you who haven't worked with rice paper before (which I imagine is the vast majority of those reading this), it's a very funny thing to use. It comes in crisp, dry sheets, and one must dip it in hot/warm water to soften it before wrapping other things. And, of course, when it's softened, it becomes rather sticky. Wrapping up all the food was fun and quite the challenge simultaneously, and it made for some funny situations when the food started to unwrap or the paper tore before consumption. The last food adventure came about 2 weeks ago now. I invited JiHye and HyeRim and HyeRim's husband over for an American meal because during the dunks meal, we talked a little bit about what an American meal would look like. They were under the impression that dinner would be some sandwiches and other small things, and I eagerly corrected them from this misconception. Perhaps during lunch someone might usually have that kind of meal, but a traditional dinner is much more. Getting the ingredients and implements necessary for that meal required a trip to a larger supermarket across the city and a fair investment of time and talents and money, but by the end of it, we had a sweet meal of goulash, mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli followed up with some ice cream and danish for dessert. Mmm. It was delicious. Also, in typical Ben style, I made enough of all those things to eat them nearly every day for the next week. Goulash and mashed potatoes for breakfast … kind of awesome. haha.
Hmm. Other than those things, there haven't been too many other highlights from the past weeks -- at least ones that relate to specifically being in Korea. Next week we have a big performance with all the kids at Haba, so on Thursday night I get to see a bunch of sweet songs and dances and whatnot. I'm planning to video as many of them as I can so that you'll get to see the kids in action, but we'll see how that goes. Also during the past couple weeks I've bolstered my interest in podcasts -- specifically ones that deal with science and technology and other cool things. If you're looking for something cool to hear/watch, I recommend checking out the Ted Talks and WYNC's Radiolab. The Ted Talks cover a very wide array of topics (from things like how to properly tie your shoes to the brain's basic functions and everything in between) from the perspectives of different speakers -- different experts in their fields. I watch videos, which last somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes a piece. Radiolab, on the other hand, is a radio show (so only audio) that has the same hosts each time, and in this show, they typically spend about an hour talking through specific topics and interviewing experts and others to gain a deeper, broader understanding of the topic at hand. These shows have been exceptionally fascinating and handy to have around when I'm walking to school or doing the dishes or cooking or something. The day I made the big meal, I'm pretty sure I went through about 3 hours worth of the shows, and it was like a drug. Intellectual stimulation and addiction at its finest!
Alright. Time for some Korean studies! Woo hoo! Have a fabulous day … and don't forget to fix your clocks. Welcome daylight savings!
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to watch some of the cooking videos, I've uploaded them here:
Kimbop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaoKPkhVPVM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVzgckNvYT8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD-bxNBGDcw
Donkus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoWdbz0L5Y8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FbR8uxgBWw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh3wZr2uoj8
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