Munsung's fall festival

This Wednesday was Munsung's annual fall festival. It was a pretty big deal--the children were planning for weeks. Each class (there are 10 classes in each grade) had to plan activities for their classroom, so that meant cooking, designing games, decorating the room, creating fliers and posters, etc. Two or three of the 9th grade classes did movie viewings--you paid 500 won (about 50 cents) and you got to watch a movie (they were showing American horror films) with popcorn and a drink. Many classes had games like darts or other throwing games. Some classes were turned into cafes where they were making healthy shakes, spaghetti, dumplings, cotton candy, and so on. The class to make the most amount of money won some sort of prize. Since I am pretty much the only teacher not to have a homeroom class, I got to walk around from 9:30-12:00, checking out all the classes. The kids were DESPERATE to make money, resorting to physically pulling me in a classroom so I could play a game.
At 1:00, we moved locations to a high school about a block away, since Munsung doesn't have its own auditorium. From 1:30-5:00, we watched performances by the kids. There were many singing and dancing acts, plus some skits and a traditional drumming performance. In the last hour, the head PE teacher had to basically bar the doors to prevent students from leaving--they were all queuing up, trying to get home. It was fun, but after a while, it was so tiring and we just wanted to leave. Kids kept lying, saying they needed to use the bathroom, and would jump ship.

The kids lounging in a classroom before the festivities began. Just liked the lighting here.


Some of the 9th graders in front of a colorful fruit tree...? I don't exactly know what the object of their activity was.


Making carrot health drinks--was too afraid to try.


Here is a reason why I have less pictures of my female students--whenever I put the camera on them, they tend to run.


And I'll end this post with a 45 second video of some of my students in their dance performance. GOLDEN.
How are they so awkward in class and like this on stage?

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Crazy students

Here is a video to accompany the post below.

Celebrity Skin

Every other Saturday, the students have to come to school and study/participate in activities. Earlier this week, one of my co-teachers informed me that all of Munsung will go to Olympic Park and do a big walk for two hours or so, instead of coming to school. I'm never required to come in for these special Saturdays, even though all of the other teachers are. Anyway, I had wanted to visit Olympic Park and I stated that I would go, too. My co-teachers were pleasantly surprised and very excited, especially when I said that Dean would come with me. "Sally", my head co-teacher, had met Dean at a teacher's workshop for the district a few weeks before, and had told all the other teachers that he was very handsome and friendly.

Let me just say that Dean has a LOT of the desired traits for Korean males--tall, clear skin, low voice, nice eyes, and a sharp nose. I can't take him anywhere without people asking if he's a model.

Anyway, we stayed out with our friends very late the evening before, so we got started a lot later than we had planned. The subway ride took about an hour and by the time we got there, most of the students were finishing up the walk. So we decided to go to Lotteria (a Korean-style burger joint), which was close to the meeting point for the kids. As the students finished up, many began migrating towards Lotteria to grab something to eat, and it was then that the madness began. At a public school, a foreign teacher is often treated as a celebrity figure. Being the youngest teacher by about a decade has also fueled this for me--I'm closer in age to my kids than I am to my co-workers. So I always have the students that come up to my desk just to say, "Pretty!" or "You think I handsome? I smart and handsome!" and occasionally take a picture with their cellphone camera when they think I'm not looking. But the incident at Olympic Park was INSANE. Students, hearing that Dean and I were at Lotteria, began arriving in huge groups just to stare through the windows and basically freak out the students from another middle school that was also visiting. When we left, we were basically followed everywhere. Cameras and phones with cameras were appeared in the hands of hundreds of students (there were 1,000 students from my school there), we were trapped, the kids were giggling and screaming, shaking our hands, and basically being insane.

Dean teaches at a middle school fairly close to mine, and many of my students have friends at his school. So somehow, they got wind that I had a boyfriend at Seil Middle School, and the students there told my students that Dean was really handsome. The students had been pestering me about my "boy-pu-ren-du" (boyfriend) all semester, and so they were really, really excited. The other teachers didn't come up and talk to me, except for Yunhee and Sally. The rest hung back and looked extremely amused as Dean and I tried to break through a circle of snapping photos only to become trapped in another. It was a crazy morning.

I did get to introduce Dean to some of my favorite students--I have some boys and a big group of girls that speak very well and that are genuinely fun teens. It was great conversing to them outside of the school environment. Many were dressed fantastically, and the teachers explained that--since they wear uniforms all the time--this is one of their few times to show off in front of each other. I saw some girls in 3-inch heels and skirts--apparently, they walked the entire 1-2 hour course in them. Even many of my boys were decked out in their snazziest dressy-casual wear, making them all seem so different from when they are in their wrinkled and stained uniforms.

Oh, and Olympic Park is really pretty. After the kids had finally said their goodbyes, Dean and I planned on walking around the area but it was SO COLD and windy that we had to leave.

Dean shaking his head in amusement at the crazy fandom that is Munsung Middle School.


Some of my first year students. The girl in the pink and the two on her right are in my "JA" after-school class--they are fantastic.


Me with some more of my first year students. The girl in the red-tangerine jacket is also one of my students from the "JA."


Stalker camera phone students. The boy in the background is also one of my favorite students. He goes to an English-language academy after school, so his English is quite advanced. He hopes to get into one of Seoul's prestigious foreign language high schools next year.


The mob.

Late Update!!

So I realize that this entry is long overdue--my apologies. I would update at work on my off-periods, but blogger.com is a blocked site at my school.

There is always so much to report! Last weekend, Dean and I were invited down to the Pusan International Film Festival by Jong-Man, one of the friends I made at TLBU. Jong-Man was part of the temporary camp staff and was the head camera man. He works at a film company in Daejon, which is about 45 minutes from Seoul, and we've kept in touch fairly well since camp ended. Since he goes down to Pusan (a port city in south-east Seoul, second largest city in Korea) for the festival every year, he wanted us to come along. So Dean and I took the KTX (a high-speed train) down to Pusan and spent the weekend there with Jong-Man and his fellow filmmakers. Pusan has a really different feel from Seoul--the subway system is a LOT smaller and the city feels less rushed and claustrophobic. But honestly, I was a bit relieved to come back to Seoul on Sunday evening. We've all become pretty Seoul-savvy in the past few months, so it was a great to know where we were going (Pusan is really, really spread out).

My students had their midterm exams Monday-Wednesday, so I had to come into work but I was allowed to leave at noon and I didn't teach anything! Basically, I just sat at my desk in the teacher's office and went on thefacebook or my gmail account. Very chill. One of my co-teachers, "Grace", went to Canada for a month to attend special English-teaching seminars and so I have a new one. Grace's desk is practically attached to mine, so I had a good relationship with her. But the substitute, Sunhee, or "Sunny", is fantastic! She's only two years older than me and she just graduated. Her English is great and it's just makes things a lot more fun and interesting having someone my age working with me.

Oh, I started Korean lessons! Aerim (part of temporary camp staff at TLBU, goes to university in Seoul) helped me find someone. She's a law student at Kongguk University and one of her fellow students offered to teach me for free. His name is Young-San and he speaks English quite well--he spent his obligatory two years of military service with the American GI's. He left the military a year ago and is a junior at Kongguk (but he's a year older than us). We have lessons only once a week this month because he has his midterms coming up. At our first meeting, we bought a textbook for me and I've been studying on my own. I can already read/write in Korean, so he was immensely relieved. Right now, we're just trying to build up my vocabulary and help me with some simple grammer and sentence forming. In the past two weeks, I've boosted my Korean vocabulary by about forty words, so that's encouraging! It's also just great to have Korean friends.


Here are some pictures from the past few weeks!

Me at Haeundae beach.

Dean and Jong-Man (on the phone--he was the coordinator for his group so his cell was ringing non-stop). We were high up by some tower and a really old bell??

During Chuseok holiday, a huge group of us from SMOE went to Lotte World, an amusement park in Seoul. Here's James (from Britain), Dean, me, and Rory (also from Britain) with some classy accessories.

Dean, Andrea, Liz, Kirsten, Erica, and I went to a big palace in downtown Seoul and took some great photos.


Aerim, me, and Liz out in Hongdae with a bunch of friends.

It's about time

It took me a while to sit down and write in this blog. Almost 2 and 1/2 months have gone by since I arrived in Korea, and it seems like a lifetime ago. This week, Korea celebrated its Chuseok holiday--basically, Thanksgiving. Classes were canceled from Monday-Thursday, so I work on Friday and then it's the weekend again!

Ok, here's the quick recap. I spent almost 6 weeks at TLBU in Goyang City outside of Seoul, teaching English at an immersion camp. There were 18 of of us, including Kirsten and Liz (roommate and friend from college). We probably put in close to 300 hours of work during the 5 week camp, so it was really a crash course in teaching Korean children. I had Daffodil class, which was the middle/upper intermediate level. The kids ranged from monstrous to absolutely lovely and amazing. Kirsten, Liz, and I made some fantastic friends amongst our co-workers, including our boss. TLBU is an English-language graduate law and business school for Asian students. They take a couple from each country--Malaysia, Japan, China, Vietnam, Singapore, etc--and they are all scholarship based. It was a really intriguing and unique program. The kids came from all over Korea and they stay in the dorms, so we were involved with them practically 24/7. There are so many things I could say about TLBU but I don't have enough time to write about it.

Me with my Session 1 kids--I knew them the best because I was with them for 3 weeks.

Three of my favorite boys from Session 1. Check out the bandaids on Sung-bong on the left--he had so many mosquito bites.

My girls of Session 2. Really, really cute.

Aaaaand 3 of my Session 2 boys.




So now I'm at Munsung Middle School in the south-west of Seoul. It's a fairly low economic area, so the majority of the kids speak *terrible* English. I teach extra classes from 3:30-5:00 on Wednesdays and Fridays, and those classes are a blast--those kids actually are paying to attend. There are 10 kids and they all speak fantastic English. They are motivated, funny, intelligent, quirky, and truly interested in learning. I only really teach 22 hours a week, so I usually teach 4 45 minute classes a day. I only teach the 1st and 3rd graders (7th and 9th in the US) and I only see each class once a week. Basically, I teach the same lesson ten times. It's a fairly low stress job and my Korean co-teachers (I work with 4 of them--one for each class) are fantastic. They translate a lot of what I say and they are so nurturing. The school as a whole has been overwhelming warm--they're always inviting me to dinner, offering to take me to the bank or a clinic (when I had a cold), etc. A lot of the teachers speak English pretty well, interestingly enough.

Munsung Middle School. It's a bad picture, but there are 2 wings. It's a big school! Over 1,000 kids.

Half of my classroom. The kids are practicing dialogues.


I have a million pictures so far, not only of my kids from TLBU and Munsung, but of all of us in the city doing tourist-y things and of our nights out on the town. Seoul is a city that never sleeps--there is ALWAYS something to do. An "early night" is coming back home around 2:30 AM--staying out until 5:30 or until the sunrises is not at all uncommon. So check out my flickr website for the rest of my photos--I update them every few days. Jen's Korean photo page. I also have a Veoh video page and I'll post that link as soon as I have a handful of videos up.

Leave comments if you please!

Love from Korea,

Jen