Intensives are finished!!

It's been a pretty crazy few weeks around here. I've been teaching another intensive class. The movies class was a for credit class that was only open to university students. The class that I just finished was supposed to be something similar to that. My school asked me to choose an American novel to teach in a two week class.

I thought about the various options I had, and decided that, all things considered, "To Kill a Mockingbird" would be a good choice. It is set at about a 9th grade reading level. I spent quite a bit of time trying to explain to three different people exactly what it would mean for me to teach a class about a novel. The students would have to have a high enough English level to read about 30 pages each night. Every person I tried to explain this to assured me that they understood, and that they wanted a class for high level students.

So. I prepped out this entire class. The first day of class, the administration managed to change my schedule and cancel one of my days of class because they had other KBU duties that they wanted me to participate in. So I scrambled around and reworked the class schedule. Apparently my class was quite popular, and quite a few students had tried to sign up for it. The school capped the class at 10 students, but at the beginning, there were definitely more than that who showed up. In all of the students, there wasn't one single student whose English was good enough to read even a single chapter of the book.

It was definitely an interesting two weeks. Each day I scrambled, trying to find some way that I could actually teach something that would be useful to my students. We never did actually read the book, but we watched the movie and had some good discussion about some of the main themes. I hope that my students learned something. It definitely stressed me out a lot though. Especially since I never knew who would show up. By the end of the class, there was only one student who showed up. It was actually fairly discouraging, but it is finished now. I have to teach one Sunday school lesson tomorrow, then I'm officially on vacation!!

Next week is the Lunar New Year, which is a big huge deal here in Asia. I'm not exactly sure what all the celebrations will entail, but all of my other Foreigner friends have time off from work, so we have some general revelries planned!

This afternoon, some of the guys from my church came over. Two of them are Texans, and they have been missing American style barbeque pretty badly. I made pork barbeque, corn bread, garlic carrots, creamed corn and chocolate chip cookies. And of course, the inevitable Southern sweet iced tea. We spent almost 5 hours sitting around laughing and talking. We all laughed so much that our faces hurt, but we also had some really serious conversations. I can't think of anything better than good food, good friends and good conversation to start off a vacation.

Next week I'm going to be catching up with friends I haven't been able to see much of because of my insane work schedule, and get ready to leave for China. It is pretty crazy to think that in one week, I'll be in yet another foreign country... It will be interesting to see if Korea feels like home when I come back to it after being away for three weeks.

Anyway. Hopefully I'll have time next week to catch up on some of the blog posts I've been meaning to write, but just not had words left for at the end of the day. And there will definitely be adventures to report from China!

The Subway

I've been pretty much all over the city of Seoul this week, doing various things. My primary method of travel is the subway, although I did spend about two hours on a single bus ride from the southwestern part of the city to the northeastern part where I live... That was an adventure ;)

I talk a lot in conversations with people back in the States about how crowded the subway is and what it looks like and such, but I thought I'd show a few pictures. I didn't actually take any of these pictures, they are all from a google search... But they give you a pretty good idea of what goes on in Seoul!

This is an empty subway train. Doesn't it look nice? Padded seats that are heated in the winter, clean and shiny, plenty of space between the seats...

Sometimes the subway looks like this. There are a lot of people, but it certainly isn't anything unreasonable. The subway isn't so terrible when it is like this. 

Unfortunately, it can also get like this. 

And this. This is what it is like every morning when I go to work, every night when I come home, almost anytime I go anywhere on the weekends and practically all the time when I am closer to downtown. There are times when it is literally like a tide of people getting on and off. I couldn't stop moving with the flow if I wanted to. Sometimes, if there are enough people getting off, I just have to get off with them even if it isn't my stop, then fight my way on the train again. 

This is certainly an extreme example of what the traffic can look like in the area where you get on and off trains, but I've definitely seen it like this before. Sometimes people will be so packed in that you can't really move until another train comes and frees up some space temporarily. I try to avoid the stations that are notorious for that, either through poor design or ridiculous traffic flows. 

The subway does do a very good job of being easy to navigate. The announcements about the upcoming stop are in Korean first, then in English. At some of the larger stations, they also make announcements in Chinese and Japanese. When you have to transfer, there are clear signs marking the way in English and Korea with station names in Chinese characters. 

There are also signs above the door at every single station that tell you what the previous, current and upcoming stops are. This is quite helpful, especially when I'm someplace that I'm not terribly familiar with. 

This is a shot of my own little subway station. I climb these stairs pretty much every day. I can tell that this picture was taken on a weekend. I didn't go look at a calendar, but look at all of the Koreans in their hiking gear. My station is named after the mountain that is very nearby, so it is quite popular on weekends. I always feel a little strange on Sundays as I walk through all of the hikers wearing dress clothes and lugging a cello around ;)

The Seoul subway system is HUGE. In 2009, there were just over 2 billion passengers. There are about 7 million people who ride the subway every single day. It should be noted that this map isn't really an accurate map. In general, there are about 2-3 minutes in between each station. The trains come anywhere from every 2 minutes to every 25 minutes, depending on the line you are on and the time of day/day of the week. It costs about $0.80 to ride for about 10ish stops. The most you can be charged for a subway trip is $2.20. To ride from one end to the other can take anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours. 

As the last picture in this very picture-filled post, here are some of the places that I go regularly in Seoul. 

1. Where I live

2. Where I work

3. My church

4. Where my small group meets

5. Where I go each week for discipleship meetings with Becky

6. These are the places I have to go to find a store that is similar to a Wal Mart or Target instead of a small market.

7. This is where I go each week for a language exchange and is a good meeting place as well.

8. This is the foreigners section of Seoul. I go here whenever I need to buy spices or other Western style food or go shopping for any clothes. 

I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal ;)

It's been a little crazy around here lately. Christmas was pretty low key. I managed to catch a whopper of a cold, so I slept through most of the holidays. I was teaching a winter intensive class at my university called American Culture in Film. We had about three hours each day for class, so I'd lecture for awhile to highlight the various aspects of American culture in the movie of the day and teach any necessary vocab or idiom, then we'd watch the movie and have some discussion at the end.

There were several interesting moments in this class. We watched quite a variety of movies, ranging from 1937 to 2009. Most of my students really liked the black and white films we watched. All of my female students agreed that Jimmy Stewart was pretty hot ;) It was a lot of fun to watch my students watch the movies. Most of the films they had never even heard of before, so it was all new to them. They were really excited about ET and The Wizard of Oz. I did a poll to see what their favorite movie was, and it was a tie between A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Shop Around the Corner. I definitely wasn't expecting either of those to top the list.

Prepping and teaching a 3 hour class every day was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It definitely took a lot of time, because I had to watch every single movie in advance to make notes and create a lesson out of it. Between being sick and teaching, things have been pretty boring around here lately.

The one big exciting thing happening is the plans for my trip to China are pretty much all made! I'll be leaving in 23 days for a three week tour of six cities in China. I'll get to see a lot of my Chinese friends from my Purdue days, which I'm pretty happy about! The one difficult thing will be packing. I'll be visiting the Northernmost province of China that borders Siberia, and end up in the Southernmost province of China that is very near Taiwan. Siberia is a frozen wasteland that is ridiculously cold. Taiwan is a tropical climate. I think that this trip will prove the wonderful value of layers ;)

And finally, to end this incredibly haphazard blog entry, I give you a strip from the ever-class Calvin and Hobbes.



From the Republic of Korea, I wish you a happy Friday (or Thursday, depending on when you read this)!!

Happy New Year!

As the sun set in my little corner of Seoul, on the first day of 2011, it made me stop and think. This has been quite a year. It started with a lot of uncertainty and pain with the ordeal of the headaches and now I find myself settled into a new life on the other side of the world. Thanks to everyone who prayed for me and encouraged me and put up with me during all of the craziness of 2010. I'm blessed to have you in my life.

As Alfred, Lord Tennyson said in his poem, "In Memorandum":

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

IT English Class Party!

Several weeks ago, I decided to have my IT English students over to my apartment for an evening of American food and non-classroom English. The class is small, with only 6 students, so it worked out well.

I made beef stew, Southern style biscuits, grilled cheese and sweet iced tea. The students had never tried any of these foods. When we all walked into my apartment, they all decided that American food didn't smell anything like Korean food. I'm inclined to agree with them ;)

The stew was in the crock pot and didn't need much done to it. My students mixed up the biscuits while I started on the grilled cheese. All in all, they liked the food. All of the biscuits were gone. There was only one bowl of beef stew left for my lunch the next day. There was a little bit of confusion about the tea, because it was black tea instead of green tea, but most of them liked it pretty well. Katie, it should be noted that I made the tea my way rather than your way ;) I didn't want to scare them off.

This is Min. He was always smiling and happy. He is one of those guys who is always nicely dressed and innately knows how to be a gentleman. His English wasn't the highest level in the class, but he always worked really hard and was always brave enough to try to speak. 

This is John. The first time I met John, he spent quite a lot of energy trying to make me understand just how awesome Manchester United was. I definitely understood the words and sentences that he was using, but I don't think he ever quite convinced me that I should stay up until 4 am to watch the soccer games like he did. 

Grace is applying to study at an American university next year. She always had something to say about whatever our topic was. When I first met Grace, I thought that she was going to be one of those sweet and quiet students who pays attention but doesn't really talk. That wasn't quite how things turned out ;)

Janet didn't want to have her picture taken that night. She wasn't the most vocal student, but Janet is a thinker. She works really hard to make sure that she understands the big picture and all of the details. It was always fun to watch Janet read. She would get really into it, and underline and circle and chew on her ink pen. I could tell exactly when she was struggling and exactly when she understood what she was reading.

Min Seok was one of my oldest students. He has already finished his military service and he is actually graduating soon. He is in my intensive class now, and it is his very last college course. I don't know exactly what happened to cause him to make this particular face, but he is a sweet, happy-go-lucky guy most of the time ;)

Last, but not least, this is Oh. He has also finished his military service, will graduate soon, and is in my intensive class. At the beginning of the semester, Oh was the student who seemed the least motivated. But somewhere around the midterm, he started to work really hard and his English improved quite a lot. He is much more willing to speak now, and he wins the award for most improved student in this class. 

I've got a golden ticket!

Here's a little soundtrack for this post :)

I've been teaching a winter intensive class on American culture in movies. We watched the original 1971 version of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" today. It was so much fun to watch my students watch the movie. It is sometimes easy to forget how much imagination and surprise there is in movies that you've grown up with. My students all agreed that the tunnel scene was pretty freaky ;)

One of the course requirements is that each student has to do a presentation on the movie. I had them look at the list of movies we were going to watch and rank their top five choices to do a presentation on, and then I put them into pairs based on their rankings. Two girls both wanted to do this movie, and they did an excellent job on their presentation.

They did a comparison of characters in the 1971 and 2005 versions of the movie and gave an overview of the plot with pictures for each key point. It must have taken them forever to make their powerpoint. At the end of their talking time, they said that they had a surprise for all of us. They pulled out a stack of chocolate bars that they had created labels for to make them Wonka Bars and handed them out to the class. Each person was supposed to open their chocolate bar, because someone would win the golden ticket!

When I opened mine, I was the lucky winner! I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, although there was a great deal of whispering and shuffling of the chocolate bars before they were handed out. The prize was some other snack food. I opened it up and passed it around the room and we all enjoyed the movie with our chocolate and snacks. All in all, a good time was had. I continue to be impressed by how my students handle presentations. They don't like them very much, but they tend to get far more creative with them than any presentations I ever saw in American schools.

Christmas ornaments

I got a new camera a few weeks ago, but between finals and being sick, I haven't had time to play with it. I pulled it out tonight and messed around with some of the settings. I rather liked the way these three turned out. They are some of my favorite Christmas ornaments that I brought with me from America.

These two are part of a set that I made when I was much younger than I am now. I have four of them here with me. I think there might have originally been six, but some of them didn't survive through the years. 

This is actually the first ornament that I remember getting. It has been my favorite for as long as I can remember. My dancers are missing a few appendages, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it. It reminds me of all of those Christmases I spent going to the nutcracker.