Step 1: Forget entirely about Thanksgiving until your brother sends you his "Happy Thanksgiving" via the Facebooks.
Step 2: Briefly consider feeling sorry for yourself. Banish such thoughts and decide to walk downtown for lunch. It's a beautiful day!
Step 3: Forget that you left your wallet at home until you're about to buy your food. Gibber wildly and flee in shame. Eat lunch (with pudding!) at home and return to school.
Step 4: Back at home, it's time to assemble your feast! In this case, the feast consisted of fried chicken, creamed spinach, and more pudding.
Step 5: Noms.
Step 6 (and essential to a truly "pro" Thanksgiving experience): TaeKwonDo. Smile when your Canadian friend wishes you a happy Thanksgiving and learn to kick butt.
Step 7: Step out into a surprisingly snowy night and let yourself laugh with the sheer joy of thousands of fluffy ice crystals floating all around you.
Step 8: Feel grateful for all of it:
The family that (despite a 14+ hour time difference) sends you timely well-wishes for holidays you completely forgot about
The absentminded forgetfulness that nevertheless led to a really nice walk
The beautiful day to walk in
Fried chicken and pudding
taekwondo with awesome Canadian friends and 6-year-olds that give you an encouraging thumbs-up when you have to demonstrate something for the class
And the fact that you still get giddy with joy when you walk into a gentle downfall of snow
Living here has been a massive learning experience, and not always a joyful one. Sometimes I feel like I'm wading through deep tar, just trying to make it through the school day… but there's something hardwired into Thanksgiving (after someone tells me what day it is) that asks me to find the things I'm grateful for, even when it's a normal day of work-home-dinner-taekwondo-home. Maybe especially then.
So what am I thankful for on this completely average day in November?
So, so much.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Oh, the teacher feels...
Today I told my favorite 2nd grade (8th grade US, for those playing along at home) class that I didn't get to teach them anymore (my schedule is strange, so I only teach the high level 2nd grade classes for 2 months, then 2 months with the lower level students). A few of my students were genuinely upset by this...
Now I'm sad.
It's weird, because I'm on the tail end (hopefully) of an unpleasant and stressful few weeks of work, and I've spent more than a few hours fantasizing about getting out of here... but at just a few words from a few students who crowded around me after our last class together ended-and the stricken looks on their faces when I told them I wouldn't be here next year-I'm actually regretting that I didn't renew my contract.
It's such a stunning about-face that I might have mental whiplash.
I have a wide variety of reasons for not renewing, both personal and professional, and I know that all of those reasons are still just as valid as they were yesterday. It's just... this is the first time I've made the connection between myself and the teachers I had in middle school: the good ones, the terrible ones, and the one who changed my life. It's strange to look at them as an adult and as a teacher (albeit one with much less training), and it's even stranger to look at myself (now, as a teacher) through my 15-year-old self's eyes.
Heck, it's weird to really think of myself as a teacher here, because my role at this school often feels like "bad joke/babysitter/waste of time/proofreader".
Okay, I went on a helluva tangent, but the POINT is: my students gave me a gift today, without even realizing it. I might be a minimally-trained, mildly frustrated, continuously nervous sort-of-English-teacher, but they reminded me that even if my presence here isn't helping them ace their tests or get into high schools, they're still learning things from me. And I get to be a part of their growing-up stories, which is pretty frickin' cool, all things considered.
Moral of the story: I have some awesome students, one of whom is apparently going to visit me in America (Not likely, but I would certainly let her).
Now I'm sad.
It's weird, because I'm on the tail end (hopefully) of an unpleasant and stressful few weeks of work, and I've spent more than a few hours fantasizing about getting out of here... but at just a few words from a few students who crowded around me after our last class together ended-and the stricken looks on their faces when I told them I wouldn't be here next year-I'm actually regretting that I didn't renew my contract.
It's such a stunning about-face that I might have mental whiplash.
I have a wide variety of reasons for not renewing, both personal and professional, and I know that all of those reasons are still just as valid as they were yesterday. It's just... this is the first time I've made the connection between myself and the teachers I had in middle school: the good ones, the terrible ones, and the one who changed my life. It's strange to look at them as an adult and as a teacher (albeit one with much less training), and it's even stranger to look at myself (now, as a teacher) through my 15-year-old self's eyes.
Heck, it's weird to really think of myself as a teacher here, because my role at this school often feels like "bad joke/babysitter/waste of time/proofreader".
Okay, I went on a helluva tangent, but the POINT is: my students gave me a gift today, without even realizing it. I might be a minimally-trained, mildly frustrated, continuously nervous sort-of-English-teacher, but they reminded me that even if my presence here isn't helping them ace their tests or get into high schools, they're still learning things from me. And I get to be a part of their growing-up stories, which is pretty frickin' cool, all things considered.
Moral of the story: I have some awesome students, one of whom is apparently going to visit me in America (Not likely, but I would certainly let her).
Monday, September 9, 2013
Maybe I'll actually make this a thing!
Hey there! It's been awhile. I had a hard time trying to blog last semester, since I was having a pretty awful time at my school and didn't want to be the constant complain-y foreigner. Also, my laptop was broken.
Now I have a bright, shiny new laptop, and my vacation to Vietnam helped recharge some of my usual annoying optimism, so I'm ready to make a fresh, new go of it. So here are some tidbits:
New semester means new students. I'll be teaching second grade instead of third grade (Korean middle school; think 8th grade and freshmen in high school, respectively)... the first graders are a constant in my life that brings equal parts joy, frustration, and sore throats from trying to get 20-35 chatty 13 year olds to listen. Fun!
After the stress and general feeling of "why am I here again?" of last semester, I made an unofficial resolution to spend more time with my family... and September is the perfect time! We have Chuseok (pronounced kind of like chew-sock; basically Korean Thanksgiving) in about 2 weeks, and the pre-Chuseok tradition, which involves maintaining ancestral grave sites. Aside from that, I got to see two of my cousins a week ago. It was just completely awesome... like every reason I wanted to come to this country summarized by a day spent with 2 people I don't know all that well... yet.
Random little blurbs from school:
Found an excuse to play a clip from BBC Sherlock for my students (I was teaching the phrase, "please talk more slowly." Also, Benedict Cumberbatch), and one of my second grade classes begged me to play it again because, "Teacher, he has a VERY NICE voice!" The fangirl in me was pleased.
One of my co-teachers (I didn't see him much, and I still don't I guess) told me he wasn't going to be an English teacher next year and started laughing maniacally, the kind of laugh that isn't really all that happy-sounding but contains a lot of triumph nonetheless. Apparently teaching English is much more stressful that teaching other subjects in Korea. Not 100% sure why.
My school is holding an English Festival in October... Still not entirely sure how I'm supposed to be helping them prepare for it, because the meeting where we discussed it was entirely in Korean too rapid for me to follow. But, I do know that I'm supposed to help somehow, and that's a start!
So, there's an update on some of my life... Sometimes I feel like I'm losing some of my English ability, because at my school I speak and write at a much different level for my students, and outside most of my communication is in broken Korean. So, sorry if the style and grammar of this is a little off; hopefully it'll get better as I write more.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Weirdest First Blog Post Ever: a Rambling Confession
I came to an important realization last night after reading through a bunch of my old Facebook notes (Remember when that was a thing? Ah, the good ol' days...): I've been worrying WAY TOO MUCH.
Okay, so I'm pretty sure I can feel my brother rolling his eyes at me from halfway around the world ("You? Worry?? NEVER."), and I don't want him to hurt himself, so let me explain:
I arrived in Korea in February of this year to start my placement as an EPIK (English Programs in Korea) teacher. After my orientation and the necessary "settling in time", I decided to start a blog, partially to document and share my life in Korea, and partially because I've always wanted to give it a shot. And thus this blog account was born!
...but that was about 2.5 months ago, and this is my first post, which brings me back to the worrying.
You see, my first few months here have been kind of rough on me, for a variety of reasons: culture shock, the stress and excitement of meeting my Korean family for the first time as an adult, trying to figure out what's going on in my school... ever, classes and students and teachers... the list goes on. The upshot is that I was pretty stressed out and a bit down on myself, and I worried that if I tried writing anything, it would end up being really depressing and no one would want to read it. I worried about being seen as a failure, or that people would think I couldn't handle it here. So, I kept putting it off.
But while I was reading my old Facebook notes, I realized that most of what I wrote was written during times of stress, trouble or confusion, and in writing about those situations, I was able to extract some meaning from them. I also got some extremely interesting responses from friends who had similar thoughts and experiences, and that's what really got me interested in this whole bloggy business: the idea of sharing experiences with people, of learning about them by revealing something about me.
And just like that, Facebook motivated me to finally write a blog post. Didn't see that one coming.
I also stumbled across a comment from a friend, who said, "If you want to write, then write. It's not your job to impress or entertain everyone who reads it; just write what you want to write." It's like he was reading my mind AND my future.
Well, it's only been several years since that bit of advice, but I'm going to take it (better late than never, right?). Let's do this thing.
**P.S. Don't worry, not every post is going to be quite so rambly and strange (probably). I just really wanted to start this thing, and had no idea what an "appropriate" first blog post looks like, so this is what I ended up with.**
Okay, so I'm pretty sure I can feel my brother rolling his eyes at me from halfway around the world ("You? Worry?? NEVER."), and I don't want him to hurt himself, so let me explain:
I arrived in Korea in February of this year to start my placement as an EPIK (English Programs in Korea) teacher. After my orientation and the necessary "settling in time", I decided to start a blog, partially to document and share my life in Korea, and partially because I've always wanted to give it a shot. And thus this blog account was born!
...but that was about 2.5 months ago, and this is my first post, which brings me back to the worrying.
You see, my first few months here have been kind of rough on me, for a variety of reasons: culture shock, the stress and excitement of meeting my Korean family for the first time as an adult, trying to figure out what's going on in my school... ever, classes and students and teachers... the list goes on. The upshot is that I was pretty stressed out and a bit down on myself, and I worried that if I tried writing anything, it would end up being really depressing and no one would want to read it. I worried about being seen as a failure, or that people would think I couldn't handle it here. So, I kept putting it off.
But while I was reading my old Facebook notes, I realized that most of what I wrote was written during times of stress, trouble or confusion, and in writing about those situations, I was able to extract some meaning from them. I also got some extremely interesting responses from friends who had similar thoughts and experiences, and that's what really got me interested in this whole bloggy business: the idea of sharing experiences with people, of learning about them by revealing something about me.
And just like that, Facebook motivated me to finally write a blog post. Didn't see that one coming.
I also stumbled across a comment from a friend, who said, "If you want to write, then write. It's not your job to impress or entertain everyone who reads it; just write what you want to write." It's like he was reading my mind AND my future.
Well, it's only been several years since that bit of advice, but I'm going to take it (better late than never, right?). Let's do this thing.
**P.S. Don't worry, not every post is going to be quite so rambly and strange (probably). I just really wanted to start this thing, and had no idea what an "appropriate" first blog post looks like, so this is what I ended up with.**
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