I had a really bad day. A really, really bad day. But it had some good moments. Here are some pictures. Highlights.
Below, little Dahye, and half of Paul.
Below, some of my Goldrush kids: Stephanie, Jamie, Christine, Daisy, Sarah, Gina (in front of me), Nick (the poor lone boy in a class full of girls).
Last day of the Winter term, today. That means… break? Oh, no such thing. Monday, it all starts over. More crazinesses.
This is Jin’s Dragon.
I told my student David today that he explained some vocabulary words so well, in English, today, that he should be an English teacher. He smiled politely, and said, in almost perfect pronunciation and intonation: “Thank you, I don’t want to do that.” I was pleased.
It’s the last week of the Winter term. As has become my habit, I tried to take pictures of my some of my classes, to remember my students by. I don’t try to force them… some classes are more enthusiastic than others, and I feel uncomfortable insisting. But here’s a few who cooperated, to one degree or another.
The Goldrush2b kids: Thomas, Dexter, Kevin, Alex L, Peter P, Peter H (in front), Tommy (way in back), Silver, Jenny, Stephany, Lisa, Sophia.
Sydney, waxing eloquent, and Eunice, saying something funny (undoubtedly).
Eldorado1a kids: Sincere, Ellen, Julia (in back), Joseph, Mad Steven, Small Steve (NBA Steve).
My student Eric was giving a speech. Harry, another student, leapt to his feet and, pounding his fist confidently on the table, proclaimed, "Off topic you are!" It was pure Yoda-speak. And I began laughing uncontrollably, which left Harry a bit uncomfortable. So I had to explain that Yoda, in the Star Wars movie, is a very funny-speaking character, but that, if you study his language carefully, you realize he's basically speaking English words with Korean grammar. Which means that Korean students can "do" Yoda, sometimes, without meaning to. I'm not sure my kids fully understood or accepted my explanation completely. But they realized they could make me laugh by ending sentences loudly and confidently with verbs.
"Homework what is?" they demanded, at the end. Good students. Funny students.
Dahye writes in her journal, and describes playing with her friend. Then she concludes, "It was so fun that I didn't know time was flowing!" I thought this was a good line.
My student Jenny has adopted the custom of saying "Wow, Fantastic!" as a sort of catch-all response. It can mean anything from, "I don't understand anything you said" to "I don't care" to "I'm very happy!" All of those. So, today, during class, as a kind of joke, I gave a 45 second speech that consisted of nothing but the words "Wow, Fantastic!" You know, with different intonations, gestures, rising tone, falling tone, questioning, stating, exclaiming, muttering. This was a big hit, and the students in the next class heard about it, and demanded I do the same for them. It became the thrill-du-jour. But now, of course, I have the phrase stuck for ever and ever in my brain, both Jenny's mindless version and my own highly variable one.
Wow. Fantastic.
In other news, Ellie writes, "All over the world, terrorizers are terrorizing people." This is SOOOO true, don't you think?
My student Jenny K. said this today, as if it had a specific and important meaning: "I'm very uuuu." I have no idea what she meant, but it was very funny.
My student Jin wrote a story about a grasshopper and some ants. It's based on an old folktale that we'd read the text of. But in his version of the story, the grasshopper does well for himself, and he writes back to the ants, "Dear blockhead ants, I am in Hawaii now and very happy." Or something like that. It was cute.
My student Emily S. created an "alien from Saturn" character for a little almost socratic-style dialogue, and the alien's name was Nanarishtititana. Which is a perfect name for a Saturn alien.
Today in E1aT1 class, we were discussing animal rights. Toward the end of the class, Jenny N, who often makes no sense at all, said, in a distressed but clear tone: "But… teacher! We don't need to learn this, because we are not animals." I laughed so hard at this — I'm sure she understood she was making a joke. We had a lot of fun.
As I mentioned, we think about America when we say brands like 'Starbucks', 'Boeing', and 'McDonalds'. All these are famous. And how does it make us to speak English? The answer is: naturally. Actually, it is because we are colonized in culture. We can't feel that we are colonized but we are colonized in American culture slowly and we start to learn and use English slowly.
The attitude barometer, episode 2:
Jenny is an intelligent student, and she tries hard, at least occasionally.
But I didn't quite know how to answer the smoothly uttered question, "what what why so what why so?" I don't think it's a translation from Korean, either. It's her own magical language, I guess. The way she uttered it, It had great English-question intonation, good pronunciation, and even the pragmatics were clear. Only the semantics were missing. Hey, 3 out of 4, right?
My student Gina was a veritable goldmine of one-liners today.
She said “아어에즈!” (which is apparently utter nonsense aeoejeu – kind of a howl of frustration – but they made sure I spelled it correctly, so I have my doubts, although Koreans take their vowels very seriously).
She said “Tiny green-skinned girl disappears!” somberly.
She observed that “A romance like wine is very expensive!” in response to a newspaper article we were reading.
And she announced, self-pityingly, “I memorized but I can’t remember” during the vocabulary quiz.
I decided to try some 잣죽 (rice and pine-nut porridge) for dinner (made from a little packet by adding water in a saucepan, boil, stir… just like any porridge I guess). It was pretty good.
My student Sydney “borrowed” my cellphone and snapped the following picture of me in class this evening.
At least I don’t look quite as geeky as I normally do.
She also drew the comic below. Not a great pic of it, but it shows Peter-teacher and Jared-teacher and Jared’s alligator (known by the monicker “Number Six”).
The new year approaches. In the hagwon biz, that means extended hours with special extra offerings for students who will be on their winter vacations from public school. Two weeks ago, I was asked if I would volunteer to teach a morning class three days a week to go along with the standard 2-11 grind. I was actually planning to say yes… mostly because, as I've observed before, even when I'm not liking work, I tend toward workaholism as a way to escape the fact that when I'm not liking work, I'm not liking life. Kinda circular, I realize. But it sorta works for me, at least some of the time.
But then, literally within minutes of having to give my yes/no answer to the question of whether I would volunteer, LBridge pulled another one of its "look at us, we couldn't manage to find our own butts in broad daylight" type mismanagement stunts. And so, in fit of pique, I said nope.
On Friday, I learned that a student had turned down enrolling the extra class, having stated to the person making the call that, since I wasn't the one teaching it, she wasn't interested. That was mildly flattering. And it was one of those little snarky revenge moments: "see, I showed them, ha!" But in retrospect, I don't feel very proud. Just kind of annoyed and sad with the whole process. I was planning to say yes, after all.
Anyway. I spent the weekend with a fever and so I was pretty disengaged from the world. Sorry I haven't updated for a while.
Another student, a 2nd grader, had to write something describing the differences between stars and planets. Actually, she showed a great deal of intelligence, not to mention good English ability. Of stars, she includes the observation "It doesn't have bumpy things." And in defining planets, she points out, telegraphically, "It becomes not a planet -> Pluto." Diagrammed exactly like that, with an arrow. And, perhaps without realizing it, she's using strong irony to point out the arbitrary nature of the classification of "planet." Isn't semantics fun?
One of my third graders was quizzing me about my marital status. This is not uncommon, but generally I am less offended than many foreign teachers seem to be by the seemingly personal nature of some of the questions kids tend to ask.
I always answer fairly honestly: Not married… actually, "widowed" (which is technically true, and is less likely to offend anyone's un-western sensibilities than to say "divorced," which is technically untrue, and the real, in-between reality of the situation would be infinitely difficult to explain to a bunch of kids, anyway). And no, I don't have a girlfriend. In response to this, the third-grade boy sighed deeply and said in a world-weary voice, "That's very hard to get a girlfriend." Such is life.
My day's trajectory followed one that is typical, for me. I was miserable, earlier in the day, sulking and grading and stressing in the staff room. Discovering, via the bilingual rumor mill whispered from desk to desk, of L-Bridge's latest affront to the concepts of humane management or post-medieval pedagogy. Plotting an early exit, in a fantasy-oriented sort of way.
But then, through a series of 6 classes, climbing slowly from 2nd and 3rd graders up through to my supersmart 6th graders, I suddenly find myself, at the end of my last class, feeling cheerful and happy, if not actually any more positive about my place of employment.
One of my fellow teachers commented that sometimes hearing my laughter or the funny noises I make in my classes makes the students in her class laugh. And that she laughs too. That's pleasant feedback. I'm aware that I make funny noises sometimes — it's one of my "gimmicks," I suppose, as a teacher. But I'm surprised, once again, to hear that others hear me laughing often. I think to myself, "really?" "Despite being really annoyed and pissed off at this place of employment, I'm laughing all the time?" Interesting.
And this process of stepping up, from staffroom gloom in the afternoon to late evening effervecence… is not uncommon. I don't think so, anyway. How does it fit in with the big picture? What is my life for? Am I ever going to really actually learn some Korean? Argh. In retrospect, argh.
Because it’s that day.
Misty rainy cold day, and man squats under umbrella working at a manhole.
These are the Indigo kids: James (with alligator), Kelly K, Olivia, Brian, Amy, Flora, Sally, Jessica (강도!), Kelly L (from LF!), Crazy David.
Violets: Gina, James, Jin, Stephanie (from LF!), Paul, Tammy.
The Awesome E2M2: Jimmy, Max, Andy, Willy, Sally, Irene, Scarlet, Cindy, Sarah, Floating Jay (in front).
The E1bM2: Anastasia, Kevin (hiding), bad-boy David, whats-my-homework John, Jack.
The Library Zombies: Richard, Annie, Ella, Hana (boggle boggle sorinae!).
The boys from “Worst Class Ever”: Yosep, Pete, Cooper.
The girls from “Worst Class Ever”: Minerva, Ellen, Jenis, Lynn, Ally, Lydia.
I finally have a plausible explanation. A student writes:
좀비천사 (jom-bi-cheon-sa=Zombie Angel Jared) battles 타락천사 (ta-rak-cheon-sa=Corrupted Angel Tommy) in singular combat, while 강도 (the “robber” Jessica, a student) is referee (심판) from her futuristic skeleton skateboard (note her long pony tail and vicious grin). As interpreted by James, in grade 3.
Who will emerge victorious? Tune in next week…
Actually, Tommy is one of my colleagues whom I get along with better than most. He’s a very laid-back dude. Still, he bears a striking resemblance to his angelic alter-ego as portrayed here. Note the slathery slobber and scary horns. Or…
OK, just kidding. ㅋㅋㅋ
My student Kelly, 2nd grade, showed me a picture she drew of me, the other day–at left. The label says “Jared Teacher” so I assumed the middle person was me. Striking resemblance, and all. But I said, “Who are those girls?”
“Those are your girlfriends,” she explained confidently. Girlfriends? I have two?
It turns out… I don’t have girlfriends. But if I did, I’d be happy with those girlfriends, I think–they look very cheerful and pleasant. And the one on my right is so tall!
She’s a pretty good artist for a 2nd grader, don’t you think? I also like the Aztec-lookin thing at the bottom. It’s pretty cool.
I overheard two of my students arguing, today.
“있어.”
“없어.”
“있어.”
“없어.”
“있어!”
“없어!”
“있어어어!”
“없어어어!”
I was pleased to understand flawlessley what they were saying, although I had no clue what they were arguing about: “There is.” “There isn’t.” “There is!” “There isn’t!”
So writes Brian, on a "mini-TOEFL" style test. He's discussing the disadvantages of having a humorous friend over that of having an intelligent friend. Which is to say, funny friends will lead you astray. But it's a delightful turn of phrase, which I'm guessing is a translation of a Korean idiom that happens to work well in English.
Hi! My name is Gina. Today I'll read a story that I made.
^.^ Please listen carefully please ^.^
There was a stupid boy named flobby dombniss. He was a farmer who grow cows.
One day snowflakes fall down to the ground.
He was growing cows in the meadow but he don't know what to do with it.
So. Do you think he took them to inside?
No, if you think like that, that is wrong.
You know what he did?
He gave all the cows mittens and hats to put on.
This is the end of my story. Did you enjoy my story? I hope so and thank you for listening to my story! Bye!
I had a happy moment today. I collected some homework from my students in the “Rainbow-Indigo” level that I just started with on Monday. They’re younger, lower level students, but not bad at all, and sometimes fun. And I was going through the papers, and found the essay pictured below.
Kelly was a student of mine at RingGuAPoReom (my last employer, that got taken over by the current one). I don’t know if you can make out exactly what it says: I thought summer program is boring. But Fall Session I look for in Ling Forum teacher Jared in the here. I’m so happy! and I have so many friends. It’s so fun and exciting. As you can see, if you decipher the syntax a bit, it’s pretty sweet of her to write that about me. I felt very pleased.
According to my TP1M class, today is the last time we’re meeting. I’m not sure if this is true, but because of the merger with ElBeuRitJi, it might be – things are rather vague and uncertain around here lately.
So, because of that, I was feeling kind of sad, as I wanted to take the time to express my goodbyes to them well, and maybe even come up with a parting gift of some kind, or at least a little note. When we last met, Uijeong drew some bizarre, picassoish portraits of some of the teachers here, and my feelings were a little bit hurt because she spelled my name wrong, although she apologized when I complained about it and said it was a joke. I snapped pictures of her portraits with my cellphone’s camera.
The lettering under Ryan says, roughly “If you don’t come to ElBeuRitJi you are traitors” (I don’t know the exact translation, but this is approximate). I guess the idea is to convey the enthusiasm which Ryan has been showing for the new school – he always is very gung ho about whatever he does, and has always been a hardcore pitchman for whoever the current management is, so this is a plausible paraphrase, I’m sure.
My students in my ER1T cohort were messing around with their cell phones today, and taking my picture, and I was mugging for them and acting goofy, and decided that turnabout was fair and so we did a class portrait.
Normally I’m reluctant about asking to take pictures of people – I guess it’s a weird sort of expression of my shyness or something, but in the mood of the moment, it seemed like good fun. The result is that for the first time, I will share with my readers a portrait of some of my students.
This is a picture of the ER1T cohort (mostly 5th and 6th graders, ages 12-13 – these are the young ones, but the really SMART young ones, and my absolute favorite class as far as level of fun and motivation).
Rear row: Taylor, Gloria, Jane and Harry. Front row: Maria, Ellen, Edward and Will.
I have this thing I’m doing, where I have the students call me on the telephone (or pretend to), and try to sell me something. You know, training the world’s future telemarketers, and all that.
So my student Lainy just tried to sell me a robot bee, which was conveniently (and temptingly) named Jared-bee. I immediately placed an order for 100, since they were only 80 cents a piece. I did this, despite the fact that the operation and/or functionality of the robot bee was not entirely clear… although honey definitely played into it somehow – useful for sweetening rice cakes, she said.
The weather has definitely warmed up a bit, and there are occasionally puffy clouds with cobalt-colored undersides that float around. Still below freezing at night, however. But spring seems to be getting ready to spring.
At this moment, I’ve prepared some ramyeon with added vegetables – cabbage, tomatoes and broccoli, and with an egg poached into it, for dinner. And I’m watching tv, where I just saw a bearded man reach into his pants and pull out a piece of pizza. Isn’t television amazing?
Here is a picture I took about a week ago on my cell phone, of a snowy street I about 2/3 of the way to work, walking from my home.
Julie: "Teacher, teacher, how old are you?"
Jared: "I'm six hundred and sixty-two years old."
Joey: laughs, says something in Korean.
Julie: "Really? That is very old."
John: "Jared-teacher is alien."
More laughing.
Julie: "Teacher. What year are you born in?"
Jared: "I was born in 1345."
Julie: "Ohhh." Begins calculating on her notebook. Says something in Korean. More laughter.
Joey: "Teacher ape-like alien."
Laughter.
Jared: "Yes I'm an alien. Remember, we discussed this."
Nodding. Laughter.
John: "You come UFO?"
Jared: "My spaceship looks like this." I draw a picture on whiteboard.
Julie: "Where are you from?"
Jared: "I'm from Mars."
Students exchange glances of confusion. "Mars-eu mwa-ye?"
David: "What is Mars?"
Jared explains with a picture on the board, drawing a diagram of the solar system.
Julie: "Ahhhh!"
Jared: "Ne. Hwaseong."
Someone: "Mars-planet!"
Laughter.
I have these little prizes I give to my students for good performance. Little trinkets I buy at Insadong, for example – never more than a dollar or two each. One thing I'd acquired were some cute little hand-crafted stuffed giraffes – I'd been inspired by that Korean language giraffe tongue-twister (naega geurin girin geurimeun etc.) I've managed to memorize.
Today I had a student select one of these as a prize. She seemed pleased with it. But as it stood in its red-spotted glory on her desk and she studied it carefully, she uttered the following deeply-thought question: "How do I use this?"
Indeed.
How does one "use" a red-spotted stuffed giraffe? I was unable to answer her question unequivocally, and I wanted to turn it into an opportunity to use the language, too – we English teachers can be very sneaky, that way.
"What do you think it is used for?" I asked back. She shrugged, and several of the other girls in the class began to whisper to each other – so I extended the same question to the rest. "How should she use this?" I asked.
It wasn't, actually, a very successful class discussion, as class discussions go. We decided maybe she could use it as a christmas tree decoration, next December, or perhaps she could use some thread to attach it to her cellphone, as a sort of chunky-but-cute decorative device. And there was always the option to "play" with it, but with these older kids, that seemed like a kind of last resort.
This afternoon, I left work, and the sky was a deep cerulean. Not the par-for-course yellowish haze that makes me feel like I'm living in a sort of extremely cold version of Mexico City, sometimes. The result of two days of continuous snow and wind, with warmer temperatures that had meant very little of the snow stuck. But now it was much colder, and with the blue, sparkly sky and fragments of crunchy ice on the sidewalk, it was very Minnesotaey.
I've almost never run into anyone from the school outside of the school – Ilsan is too big and densely populated to accidentally meet people, maybe. But I was about halfway home when I passed a student, Isaac, on the street. It's an odd thing, how context defines behavior. In class, Isaac is one of those students who is brilliant but insolently lazy and imperious. Not a bad kid, but not one characterized by fawning politeness or traditional Korean notions of deference, either.
But here on the street, passing on the sidewalk, with no one else around, he executed one of those quick but deep bows Koreans reserve for their much elders. I nodded my head, hopefully the right level of return respect courtesy, and then waved "hi," American style and grinned at him. And puzzled on the what makes someone behave one way in one social situation, and another, in another.
I came home and had some rice.
My students have to keep writing journals, where they are supposed to make diary entries and/or respond to little pithy quotes with something reflective. One of my lower-level students, but still quite intelligent and talented, when confronted with a request to reflect on the idea of "to have one's cake and eat it too," wrote "cake's existence is have eat cake." This seemed truly profound to me. But that might just be the cold medicine, acting up.
The following was written by Paul, age 13, in response to a list of vocabulary words.
“I operated Jared robot 2.0. That Jared robot has toymaker inside. It is experimental, so it’s homebound. It is tower, then me. It went to the theme park and crushed all. It was amazing. Its hair was made of pom poms. I want to be exhausted from hunting that robot.”
My students take these regular vocabulary quizzes, one component of which is to use the word in a sentence. However, often times because of constraints on what can be covered in class, they’re left to their own devices in coming up with a good sentence to use for a given word.
The result can be some rather unusual sentences, either unintentionally funny or poetically incoherent. In the first category: “The dog appealed behind the tree.” In the latter: “this sheep is sink, soon.”
In other classroom humor, my most advanced class (an intimate five students)… we’re talking about some subject they’re not all finding terribly interesting – the US civil war, maybe? – and I look over and notice some rather insane 3-year-old-style scribbling/doodling on the broad face of the page of the book we have open. Just a mishmash of swirly lines and boxes and dark blotches all across the text. A brutal commentary on the quality of the text? Sharing his level of interest in the class?
So, I call his and his classmates’ attention to the scribbling. And without missing a beat, he says, “This is cubism, teacher. I’m expressing myself.”
This brilliant display of adaptive language skill is a genuine delight, and I can’t stop myself from laughing for the remainder of the class.
No matter how boring it is, I’m going to try to post something every single day this month. So prepare yourself, dear readers, for some truly banal content!
The drive from Minneapolis to Phoenix went well. Bernie really got into it – here's a photo: I've never tried posting a photo to this blog before.
We saw mostly clear, hot weather on the drive, but between Flagstaff and Phoenix met some spectacular thunderstorms and downpours, gorgeous summer "monsoon" as they call it in Arizona.
I stayed a few days at my sister's in Phoenix, watching the cat go through the initial stages of adjusting from a one-human household to a two adult humans, two child humans plus one dog household. I think she'll do fine, in the long run, but the short term involves substantial time camping out in her litter box and behind the refrigerator in the kitchen where no one could get to her.
I managed to spend some time messing things up on my sister's computer, in the name of trying to help her fix it. I'll blog this bizarre technical experience seperately, perhaps – I've definitely reached a new low in my level of respect for Hewlett-Packard.
Jameson and Dylan, my nephews, are great fun to interact with and watch. It was particularly fun to see them playing "dog" – where Jameson led his compliant and cheerful brother around on a leash:
This morning I left Bernie the cat in Phoenix, adapting to her new home, and drove to L.A., across the smoggydusty desert. It was a sad parting, for me, as I've grown quite attached to my cat, but my commitment to go to Korea to try my hand at teaching is complete, now, so I'm glad to have found a new, caring home for her.
Dateline: Berlin
Last night Bob and I visisted his friend Torsten in Leipzig, they have this really nice loft-like apartment northwest of central Leipzig. Bob and I had spent the afternoon walking around some of his old neighborhoods in the lightly falling snow, and we saw the Thomaskirch where Bach's bones lie. We had coffee, cakes and hung out with Torsten, his wife and two kids – 4 and 6, very cute speaking german which I of course didn't understand, but I'd utter an occassional Ja or Neh just to play along. At one point, however, the little girl was talking about Dinos (dinosaurs) which I was very proud to have figured out before Bob did. She was saying the Dinos would fall into the cup at the table, and Bob said it wouldn't fit, and I improvised "kleine dinos" which was a big hit for a brief moment. The high point of my german-speaking career so far.
We took the train into Berlin and got in about 10 pm. Bob and I walked from the Ostbahnhof to the U-Bahn station at Warschauerstrasse, and parted ways – he to catch a night train to Liege, and I to find my hostel. I had bit of an unpleasant experience on the U-Bahn – I'd bought a short-trip ticket (Bob had said that's what I should buy and I didn't look at the directions carefully), and these two men were inspecting tickets on the crowded car, and pulled me off. I explained "ich nicht sprache.." or something like that, they switched to broken english, told me my ticket was invalid, and said I had to pay 40 euros. I suspect my ticket was, in fact, invalid – but the whole thing with the two men smelled like a scam.
They had very official-looking identification cards, and one guy had an electronic hand-held gadget that looked rather legitimate. But there were things about their style of presentation that struck me as very unofficial: they said I owed 40 euros fine for riding with an invalid ticket, but made no move to collect information about who I was – until I began to resist. If there's one thing officials always do, it's fill out lots of forms and documents. When I refused to pay, saying it seemed unreasonable or something like that, they said they'd have to call the police. The one man got out a cell and called the police (although his dialog – in german so I understood very little – again seemed short on the sort of detail one expect from officialdom). Maybe the call was just staged? Anyway, then they began sayng that when the police got there, the fine would be 390 euros.
"Really," I said. The whole thing stank – I was nervous, alone on the U-Bahn platform with the two men, but there were people on the other side. I didn't think they'd assault me, and of course, I was only half-confident that they weren't for real. But I figured worst-case scenario, I'd end up explaining my refusal to comply with the men to someone in a german police station. There was a point when we just stood there, for about 5 minutes. Nothing said. That was the moment when the one man finally asked to see my passport – which I surrendered to him only when he handed me his "ID card" – which as I said did look quite official. But even then, he made no move to record the information from my passport, and, more interestingly, he made no move to look for my date-of-entry stamp. Very unburocratic.
Another 5 minutes of silence, a train came and left. We were "waiting for the police." Then, suddenly, the one man turns to me and says (approximately), "you seem an honest man, sorry for the bother. Just go out and buy a valid ticket – you can be on your way." I'm almost certain it was a scam.
When I got to kurfuerstenstrasse station and got out to find my hostel, I was even more alarmed by the desolateness of the neighborhood – only prostitutes and shady-looking characters standing under overhangs sheltering from the falling snow. It was like 11.30 at night. I walked nervously around the block to where my hostel was, and was very relieved I'd found it. Things are much better this morning – I walked exploring, up to Potsdamerplatz and thence to Checkpoint Charlie (which I found rather by accident). Now I'm in a Starbucks on Friedrichstrasse in what I think is the former East. No relic of communism here, certainly.
