Summer Camp Finishy

My current view:

Well. It is official. It. is. finished.

Summer English camp at 포천초등학교, that is.

I just finished cleaning up my classroom, took out the trash. Another couple of hours in the A/C before it’s officially the weekend!

What’s on the agenda? Laying low this weekend. Half day of work Monday before a few days off. Hope to catch up with some of my former WA girls in Seoul during the week. And Friday: en route to Bangkok, Thailand.

How did I get here? When I met Alexis, one of my first Pocheon friends, we’d sometimes imagine how we’d feel at this point. A year seemed so long. And honestly now that It (i.e. The End) is almost here, where did it all go?

Exactly ten months ago today I experienced arguably the longest day of my life, a trip to the other side of the world, the beginning of an… experience (to say the least). I was thrown into the proverbial pool and had a decision to make. Again and again and again. Sink? Swim?

Life hasn’t gone swimmingly every second this side of the international dateline, but I can say I’ve managed to stay afloat in more ways than one, I’ve made some cool friends (“My Korea Friends”, I call them: a hodgepodge, a mini-melting pot of characters and personalities and people in similar pairs of shoes), and I’ve done super cool and crazy things I never imagined I’d have the chance to do. Make kimchi, eat ricecake, drink makgeoli, then dance around a huge field in the middle of the city with a few hundred random strangers? Check. Fall around a big inflatable pool filled with mud and about twenty other mud-covered individuals? Check. Ring in the New Year on a frozen beach while letting my hopes and dreams for 2011 float into the sunrise? Check. Learn to really love sleeping on the floor? Check check check.

What awaits? A little less than a month of travel (including a visit with Tubtim, one of my former students who is Thai). And a little more than a month of teaching. October 1: contract finishy. Can’t even think about it. It is so exciting and scary and sad. The saddest part is that I have these adorable children (well, adorable when they are not running through my office screaming at the top of their lungs playing hide-and-seek with each other and closing my internet browser windows… and even then, they are pretty cute) that I’ll likely never. see. again. But our lives go on. Yes.

I’ve learned to take risks (not as in engaging in wreckless behaviors but going farther outside of my comfort zone than I was previously… um, comfortable doing); I’ve tried things I wasn’t so sure would interest me (and had a blast). Honestly, if the job opportunities (teaching English) that exist in Korea were available all over the world, I don’t believe I would have come to Asia. But coming here was an opportunity that happened. I went with it, and I’m happy I did.

After a visit to the post office this week, I’ve begun thinking about those special people whose paths I’ve crossed who most likely will never know what a great help they have been to me. I call them My Buffers. As in, those who have protected me from shock, helped me out in otherwise difficult situations, have made life easier.

One of these in particular is a security guard at the post office in Pocheon. When I step inside, she always comes right over. Some people in town will brush me off or practically refuse to do business with me when I attempt to communicate with them with my VERY limited Korean, some English, and mostly hand gestures. Most will meet me halfway. But she goes above and beyond, always managing to figure out what I need, gives me things like bubble wrap and tape that I’d have to pay like $2.99 or more for at home, and makes the effort to communicate in English (without ever apologizing sorry sorry sorry that her English is so very very bad).

There are so many kind souls around this place that I’m thankful to and for… Kim Yuna, the 3rd/4th grade English teacher at my school who does everything for me that most co-teachers do for NETs, has been the go-between between myself and the administration/others at my school. She’s also the one I had at times early on become the most frustrated with since she is always delivering messages (messages both good and… well, sometimes unfavorable). Park Eunseon, who, despite her limited English, pregnancy, and responsibilities to her newborn and family, has seen to it that I am doing well and has taken excellent care of me from the beginning. Last year’s 6-5 class substitute teacher who is one of the cutest older Korean gentleman I’ve met and has always seemed concerned that I am doing well here. Our encounters are usually limited to: “Eat a lot.” and “Yes, it’s delicious.” But he’s done more and cared more for me in our limited interactions than most others in our workplace have since I’ve been here.

And countless others.

This has been the ride of a lifetime. It’s not over yet, though!

And who knows where I’ll be another year from now? (No, seriously. If you do know, give me a clue.)

Until next time, enjoy some photos from summer camp (and a photo or two of a man wearing gold shoes at the local bowling alley).

Finally Joined a Korean Gym; Ran Out of Excuses Not To

So it took me over 9 months to join a gym.

I’m not going to rattle off my long list of “reasons” (*cough* excuses *cough*) why it took so long. Instead, let me share with you how good it feels to be running again, to be lifting weights. Maybe I’m just imagining my arms firming up, leg muscles becoming more defined. Is it too early to tell? Maybe. But it’s not too early to feel good about making healthy decisions.

There are a few aspects of my life I can’t control.

I can’t control what’s served in the school lunch, but I can control what I choose to eat.

I can’t control the monsoon, but I can join an indoor gym.

I can’t control afterschool/weekend teacher trips, but I can workout at 6am.

I can’t control the hills I encounter every day, but I can work on my leg muscles and do more cardio.

I’ve known all of this for quite some time. But the right thing is not always the easy thing. The first spurt of my year here, I was in vacation mode. Gotta eat/do/try everything. After life here started feeling more like, um, life, I cooked up all sorts of reasons why joining a gym wasn’t for me. I could work out in my apartment. (Yea, right. To the one workout DVD I have saved on my computer?) It would be a waste of money. I wouldn’t go. I should start eating healthy BEFORE I get active again or else it’s a waste. Wrong wrong wrong.

The gym is literally a 3 minute walk from school, so I’ve been going immediately after school, before I have time to change my mind.

You gotta do what you can. Whatever you can. And although I sometimes indulge in sweet and sour chicken or tempuraed sweet potatoes or a double helping of chop jae at lunch, running 5k after work is the least I can do. The afternoon is a key time to work out, as the 4-6pm window is usually when not-so-healthy food decisions occur.

I once read that it takes 16 days of doing something in order to make it a habit. It’s been a week. I have 84 days left in Korea. I’d like to leave this place feeling more energized than when I arrived.

On another note, there are a few contraptions at my gym that I’ve only seen here. Sometimes I feel like I’m competing with the guy next to me as we stare into the mirror, game faces on, lifting weights. I made friends with a few nice ladies this morning in the locker room. “See you tomorrow!” People watching at a gym here is great. There are funny little moments that happen, subtle nuances, and from time to time a totally “I can’t believe he/she did that!” or two.

Right now I’m off to walk into a cave, ride a boat, and sing karaoke on a bus with some teachers until tomorrow night, though. More to come.

Plans for After Korea

I haven’t updated in awhile. There’s so much to say.

Probably the most important thing I’ve got to tell you is that I love hard-boiled eggs with a pinch of salt. I never in my life thought I’d be the girl who boils up a half dozen eggs and brings them along to school or on weekend trips as a snack.

Hm, what else is new? Lately Pocheon City has seen the arrival of more native English teachers, and we’ve got quite a motley crew of foreigners around these parts. One of our most fun nights out involved a Korean barbecue this past Tuesday night in a part of town about 15-20 minutes south of where I live followed up with a stop at our local GS25 and then noraebang (“singing room”– the Korean version of karaoke where you rent a room with your friends and sing your lungs out and bang tamborines around for as long as you want to pay the hourly rate).

The next day, out of work a few hours early, about fifteen teachers from the area along with most of our Korean co-teachers got together in the afternoon to learn how to make Korean traditional snacks and how to properly pour/drink tea.  It was a fun time, although I think that by the time we were all huddled on cushions on the floor around teapots, most of us were ready for bed due to the previous evening’s noraebang.

Lately I’ve had more and more people ask what my plan is for after this year, whether or not I will renew my contract, etc.

It seems that  a lot of English-teaching jobs in public schools are being cut, at least in my area. Some of the positions will open up for a March 1 start, and some schools will be discontinuing their Native English teacher program, as I believe is the case in my school (although the answers I’ve received are all very “maybe”).

I’ve enjoyed my time in Korea, and I would like to come back and experience a different school. It really is what you make of it and although I haven’t had the most ideal of work situations in terms of my “main” coteacher, I’ve learnt a lot about how things go here. As slightly (okay maybe more than slightly) disfunctional as my partnership with the one coteacher is, I couldn’t imagine working with anyone else under any other circumstances. Learning to adjust and adapt my methods, my behaviors, and my attitudes (as much as I am comfortable with and of course in accordance with my principles)… well, learning to do this, I think, has made me stronger, more flexible. More tolerant. More respectful of things which in the beginning served no purpose other than to apparently confuse and frustrate. When it matters, I stand my ground. But I’ve learnt in which situations it’s important to give.

My timeline over the next several weeks/months is as follows (we’re still not on summer vacation here):

• two more weeks of class before the kiddies are out for summer
• two weeks of summer English camp for grades 3 through 6 that I’ll be teaching with three other English teachers (two of whom I currently coteach with), one at a time
• four days of desk-warming (hanging out in the office)
• sixteen days traveling Thailand
• the new semester begins: three weeks of class before we have a 5-day weekend for Chuseok (Korean harvest holiday in mid-September)
• two weeks and two days of class before my contract ends (October 1) and I fly home

In October, I will once again participate in a Habitat for Humanity build in El Salvador. I also ask that you keep me and my team, the Habitat staff, the masons, families and local volunteers with whom we will work in October in your thoughts and prayers.

I’ve begun working with a recruiter to find a job in Korea that starts in February or March of next year, so between October and the springtime, I will be at home, catching up with family, friends, and hopefully working in a yet-to-be-determined job. (Anyone have any leads?)

There is just so much to see in Korea, and I really do enjoy the adventure of making a (temporary) life here. Once you get over the initial hurdles of culture shock and adjustment, life here is easy. There are still things that are so uniquely Korean that I’ll never completely “buy into”, and some minor frustrations pop up from time to time, but my mission here is not yet complete. So in the words of Brett Favre: (maybe) “one more year!”