School Time

Hello friends across the globe,

I'm sitting at home for my random "discretionary holiday" and realized we had yet to explain the school system in Korea. Last semester we were just learning how things go and now that we're a month into the school year we seem to have a better (but not great) understanding of the Middle School System-at the very least we seem to understand our two schools.

So, the school year goes from March to February. The students get a month off in August and then another month in January. They come BACK to school for one week in February when they have Graduation ceremonies and then have the rest of February off for Spring Break. Strange, i know. It certainly was annoying for our trip to Thailand as it got cut short by a week. Ah well.

BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR.

So, March 2nd we arrived back at school and started the School year with the new students. Middle and high school are both three years here-as I think it is in some schools in the states. Middle school is 7th, 8th and 9th (the age range is the same) and high school is 10th, 11th and 12th. When they are referencing a grade in either middle or high school they get called 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade. This was super shocking to me. When I first met my co-teachers they kept saying "oh the 1st graders are so exctied to meet you" and I kept smiling and saying "yes, I'm excitied to meet them too" and In my head I'm thinking "WHAT?!" All was clarified when I asked "so, what age is 1st grade here?" Anyway, School starts in March and goes until December.

DAYS OFF and FUN SCHOOL THINGS:

I've already mentioned the major vacations but there's (obviously) very different days off in Korea than their are in the US. (you know, being a different county and having different holidays.) My favorite, so far, is Children's Day. YES! they have a children's day! How many times I asked as a child "Why don't we get a children's day" and being told...well, you all know the answer. Anyway, I come to korea and they have a children's day AND we get the day off from school. It's like a teachers day too! (which they do have and I'll get presents on) Anyway, we also have Buddha's Birthday off (both are in May). I think that's all the big holidays in the Spring Semester. They don't get days off for Easter because, although there are many Christians, it's not a christian country like the U.S. claims not to be.

Also, from talking to my other friends at middle schools, it seems every school has a Science Day where all the students spend all day doing science experienments and getting judged, and then there's an Art's day which is the same thing but for Art. And they also go on a three day field trip somewhere. The whole school. Every year. And, the third graders get a special trip at the end of the year. (I'm gonna try to get in on that.)

TEACHERS and CLASSROOMS:

Every teacher is in two departments. The department of the subject they teach and then a second deparment where their office is that is related to some sort of school function. So for example, I am in the English department AND the Club Activities department. Teachers do work for both departments. So my desk is with the Club Activities Department and their are teachers from various subjects. In my office there are 7 of us: two korean teacher, one music teacher, one chinese teacher, and three English Teachers. Jamie is "in the Research Department", but we don't actually have any responsibilities within the these departments.

So, teachers have offices', not classrooms, from where their base of operation is. Infact, for the most part, the students stay in their homerooms or classrooms and the teachers go to them. The exceptions are things that are location related like music, art, dance or science, but even those teachers don't live in their classroom. The students have homerooms and homeroom teachers, but the teachers go to the classroom. The classroom space pretty much belongs to the students. It's super interesting.

STUDENTS in the SCHOOL:

My first week in the school was shocking. Students literally seem to rule the school. The best example is recess. Students have lunch/recess from 11:30-12:30. they can do whatever they want whenever. They go to lunch anytime during that hour and then go outside anytime they want. They can aimlessly wander the halls, play out in the yard where there is no teacher assigned to control them (although there are teachers assigned in the lunch room) they hang out in their homerooms playing on the computers, they hang out of the windows screaming (literally). It's pretty hilarious. However, once the bell rings, they're in the classroom. In fact, there is no warning bell to end lunch (there is at Jamie's school, though). The bell that rings at the end of lunch is the bell to START class and I have never had a class be late. I think that's pretty impressive. Anyway, one day I'll get a video of it for you to see.

CLEANING

Every day students have to clean. I think it's a great idea and important for them to do (especially because they're super annoying about throwing wrappers or banana peels on the ground) but like most teenagers, they don't really clean very well. It's mildly painful to have to supervise them as it's like pulling teeth to get them to even notice the dust, but I really like that everyday for 20 minutes the students spend time cleaning the School.

OK. that's enough time thinking about school on my day off. Please let me know if I should elaborate on more things.

Exciting things about Korea:

The Rainbow

The Korean Rainbow has 7 colors. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

I've met people who tell me the Western Rainbow also has 7 colors, but it's news to me.

Easter

Yes, they color eggs for Christmas but the eggs are given out at church. There is no easter bunny, no peeps, no cadbury creme eggs, no chocolate rabbits. It's a solemn holiday-as it should be. I'm sure it will change ultimately.

The Produce Truck

Just like the Ice Cream Truck but with produce. Twice a week this guy with a super loud bell pulls into our apartment complex. He sells various food stuffs: eggs, produce, rice-wine, bread and other kitchen goodies. It's great. Actually, there's trucks like this everywhere. Usually they just park on the side of the road and sell one product. I've seen them selling: tangerines, crab, flowers, apples, and grapefruit. If they're driving by, people just flag them down.

Yellow Dust/ Yellow Sand/ Asian Dust

All the same thing and known locally as "hwan-sa", this is a major springtime phenomenon that plagues east Asia this part of the year. Winds that blow down from the north of China toss up tons of dust from the Gobi dessert. This dust is then carried thousands of miles to the Koreas and Japan, carrying pollutants and even microbes (yes! microbes!) into the lungs of millions of folks. When it is bad, the sky is actually a hazy yellowy-orange color and you'll see most Koreans sporting face masks. We had a pretty bad bout of it a couple weeks ago and we didn't really notice it too much, but soon after many people seemed to get sick over the next week (nothing serious though). Anyways, kind of a bummer to finally make it out of winter to be greeted by decreased air-quality, but apparently it gets better by summer (just in time for the rainy season)!

Couples Housing

They let us out! On Friday morning our “tour guide” David brought Jamie by for a visit and just before he left he informed us that my test results came back negative and that we could get out. Thank god! He ordered us breakfast, gave us an hour to pack up and then brought us back to the university. It was so anti-climatic. When we got back, we step out of the cab and he says to us, “OK! It's your choice if you want to go to class. Do what you want. Bye!” That's it. No check in from the illusive supervisor, no report on the week. In seconds we were free. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. It was just interesting.

We finished off our week (day) of orientation by watching the practice lesson plans of the other teachers and thankfully we got back in time for the Tae Kwan Do performance. It was amazing. Lots of kicking and breaking boards of wood interspersed with ridiculous skits and adorable dances. That night we played card games with our friends Chrissy and Dave (I'm hoping they'll be recurring characters so remember their names). When we woke up the next morning we put on our suits, packed up our rooms and loaded up the buses. We had a closing ceremony where again we were warned about H1N1 and told that we wouldn't be able to teach at all this coming week! They said that we would go to school every morning to check in and show that we were healthy and then we would just go home. So funny! Anyway, we took it in stride (we didn't care at this point anyway). They then served us a delicious buffet and took us to our district offices to meet our co-teacher.

Part two: The district office:remember when I joked about not being given Couple's Housing?

Arriving at the district office was real cute. All of us western teachers are standing there in a group in the parking lot waiting to be introduced to our Korean Co-Teachers who are also standing in a group in the parking lot. Everyone looks very excited and you can tell that everyone is trying to decide who they want as a co-teacher. Anyway, we get paired up and instantly swept away to our schools and new lives in Korea.

This is when the fun begins. Shortly after the crowd started to disperse I see a western man trying to contact John Pak (our “supervisor” with SMOE). Having just seen him hug a woman goodbye I'm a bit curious - upon examination it turns out that he wasn't given couples housing with his wife. Great. Jamie and his co-teacher are waiting to be picked up so I go over and ask about our housing. The co-teacher is obviously confused (it turns out she was actually just filling in so she had no idea what we were talking about). My co-teachers arrive and I ask them if they know about the situation. Their response is not encouraging. No, they say. They didn't know I was married. They had prepared a room for one person-with a single bed. At this point more people from Jamie's school show up and now their on the phone with S.M.O.E and there's about 6 people trying to figure out what to do. Finally it seems like we've been placed in the same building. So we decide we'll just see what this looks like and we head out to our schools.

We arrive at our apartment building and yes, thankfully Jamie and I have been placed in the same building, 2 floors apart. The rooms are just that. Rooms. It's an open room with a kitchen area that includes, a range, sink, and a small fridge. The bathroom is the only separate room, it has a washer, toilet and shower...but the shower is more like a shower head attached to the sink. Not actually a distinct space. Shannon's room is considerably larger than Jamie's. Shannon thinks it's funny that the rooms were so obviously prepared by men vs. women. Jamie's room was prepared by a man, as he was showing the room he pointed out the arm chair, the cable television and the big bed (he was also very proud of the curtain). In my room, prepared by my female co-teachers (both mothers), they bought me sheets and pillows (and a pig stuffed animal), cleaned my whole room top to bottom, left me with towels, plates, laundry detergent, orange juice and water. Anyway! At this point the numbers have grown, I have my two Co-Teachers, the Vice Principal and the Man in charge of Administration (he set up the room). All 5 of us traipse up to Jamie's room where there's the equivalent people from Jamie's school. They all talk trying to figure out what's happening and how to handle this situation. Ultimately we just told them we'd decide on Monday whether or not we want to keep our rooms or move to a bigger apartment.

In the mean time we get taken to visit our schools. Shannon's school is literally across the street. We can see it from our windows. Jamie's school is a 15 minute walk down the street but there are 2 buses that go that way. There's everything in walking distance, including, but not limited to, a Dunkin' Donuts (we've already tried the Garlic and herb coffee roll and Red Bean Paste filled donut), 2 bakeries, a grocery store, shops galore. You get it. We live in the city.

Well, that brings us to today. We slept in Jamie's room last night and I think we've decided to just keep the two rooms. We'll use Jamie's room as a bedroom and Shannon's room as everything else. Not great, but now we have a guest room! Come Visit! We debated having them get us a new apartment (and they would), but it's a gamble. It might be considerably farther away from our schools, we doubt there would be as much space as the two rooms combined and this really isn't so bad.

Well, that brings us to our “exciting things about Korea” section:

• Chinese food is just as popular in Korea as it in the states; instead of being “Americanized”, though, they are “Koreanized”

• Dunkin' Donuts are very prevalent in Seoul, and they are waaay nicer than in the states

• You can set up your debit/check card to draw fare money from your account for busses and subways

• The trash disposal system is very extensive in Seoul, and you need to separate EVERYTHING – the collection system is based on how much trash one produces and everyone must purchase special trash bags (one for general waste and one for food waste); recycling is highly encouraged and free

We still have a whole lot to learn and experience so keep checking in for more updates!