The grass is ris!
(Well the grass has not risen but it will, waiting for those cherry blossoms to brighten up the world!)
Ah there is so much happening. All the time. And I have acquired so many fabulous toys in the last month to keep me very entertained. Like a keyboard and a guitar and a scooter and a fancy I pod touch. Having money that I can spend on anything, (besides plane tickets and worries about impending unemployment), is such a good feeling. Working hard during 
a month to be rewarded with quite a comfortable life I must say, may sound boring, but after the last year of consistently having to eat whatever food I could scrape together, having to figure out creative ways to get anywhere, and consistently worrying if I’ll be able to make enough money- I am so pleased to have some peace of mind. I wonder if finally these are boring or un-daring or un-brave sentiments but how can I argue with that glorious thing that, is - peace of mind.
a month to be rewarded with quite a comfortable life I must say, may sound boring, but after the last year of consistently having to eat whatever food I could scrape together, having to figure out creative ways to get anywhere, and consistently worrying if I’ll be able to make enough money- I am so pleased to have some peace of mind. I wonder if finally these are boring or un-daring or un-brave sentiments but how can I argue with that glorious thing that, is - peace of mind.
I had a birthday and turn
ed the very-close-to-25 age of 24. But no matter, I worried enough about turning 23, I think I’ll deal with another random age for another year. I just remember being so mean to my sister when she turned 25, and well soon it will be my turn. I guess all these things come around. I went snowboarding for my birthday and my new friends cooked me an amazing curry dinner with WINE and CHEESE (unheard of luxuries in Korea) and an ANIMAL cake!
!! I spent my day pretty sad in fact, mostly just missing people I loved on my birthday but when I arrived to that glorious celebration of 4 on a bedroom floor I realized again, how many reasons I have to be consistently grateful.
ed the very-close-to-25 age of 24. But no matter, I worried enough about turning 23, I think I’ll deal with another random age for another year. I just remember being so mean to my sister when she turned 25, and well soon it will be my turn. I guess all these things come around. I went snowboarding for my birthday and my new friends cooked me an amazing curry dinner with WINE and CHEESE (unheard of luxuries in Korea) and an ANIMAL cake!
!! I spent my day pretty sad in fact, mostly just missing people I loved on my birthday but when I arrived to that glorious celebration of 4 on a bedroom floor I realized again, how many reasons I have to be consistently grateful.
And my scooter has brought many new sights and sounds. I can now go anywhere at any time and I joined a meditation group which brought me to be introduced to this fabulously beautiful huge temple on the other side of the city. I don’t know if anything I do can be termed “meditation” as emptying my m
ind is like trying to removing all the concrete from the roads of the world, though I am trying to chip it away bit by bit. I try to concentrate on breathing and stilling my mind and then I think about breathing or about stilling my mind and then I think I’m thinking nothing but I’m thinking about thinking nothing and then I forget what I’m trying to do and I’m lost in memories of people I love or places I want to see again and things I will see and 5 minutes later I only remember what I am there for. Though being in the temple is such a beautiful thing in itself, old people and young people come to pray and they bow again and again - a full body now , so fully erect and then down, nose touching the ground and up again (my students complain about how much tiring bowing they have to do at holy holidays) and then the chanting begins. One starts and another joins and then another and the chants come together in this ethereal whirl of human voices that I get wholly lost in.
ind is like trying to removing all the concrete from the roads of the world, though I am trying to chip it away bit by bit. I try to concentrate on breathing and stilling my mind and then I think about breathing or about stilling my mind and then I think I’m thinking nothing but I’m thinking about thinking nothing and then I forget what I’m trying to do and I’m lost in memories of people I love or places I want to see again and things I will see and 5 minutes later I only remember what I am there for. Though being in the temple is such a beautiful thing in itself, old people and young people come to pray and they bow again and again - a full body now , so fully erect and then down, nose touching the ground and up again (my students complain about how much tiring bowing they have to do at holy holidays) and then the chanting begins. One starts and another joins and then another and the chants come together in this ethereal whirl of human voices that I get wholly lost in.
So I spend my week climbing 3 times a week (becoming a very strong monster of a woman) and trying to learn how to not think about how the other side of my life is very entrenched in a bunch of “listen and repeat” and “Stop talking”. Amidst parties and fun weekend trips as well as a board game center called the fun café and dreaming about the summer I don’t really find much time to write about what is going on in this funny country.
I am lucky in my job. It’s not actually a school as such it’s an afterschool program of extra English for rich students. Most Korean children will go to normal school and then go to a couple of these hagwons for maths, science, English, taekwondo and sometimes ping-pong. 9 year olds are encouraged to spend all their time studying, and often when we have “weekend share time” all they say is “study” (Or watch tv, play computer games and occasionally do something exciting like go to the supermarket.) Incidentally, here is also a study hagwon where they go to simply “study”.
The first day I got to my school on the 2nd of January my supervisor told me “oh yes you have kindergarten class” and ushered me into a room of 7 crazed children. Apparently not all kindergarteners cry all the time but this class had all sorts of things going on with it. My first 40 minutes with them I tried
all sorts of things from simple sharing time to a few games I learnt in Italy. After a flurry of, “Teacher! I don’t like”, I kind of let havoc ensue until the dreadful 40 minutes were over. The next day a similar thing happened though this time we had gym class and everyone thought everyone else was cheating and there was a whole class of crying kindergarteners looking at me to determine who was cheating and to stop the tears. Still again I tried to make things right with fun arts and crafts to hear a volley of “Teacher! Too hard!” Again, I tried with a seemingly innocent game where everyone was a different fruit or vegetable and we threw the ball at each other. Though one child started crying because he was a carrot and bunnies eat carrots and then the carrot dies. Never mind that humans eat strawberries but that kind of logic was too advanced even for my brain at the time and the game, yet again, dissolved in more tears.
all sorts of things from simple sharing time to a few games I learnt in Italy. After a flurry of, “Teacher! I don’t like”, I kind of let havoc ensue until the dreadful 40 minutes were over. The next day a similar thing happened though this time we had gym class and everyone thought everyone else was cheating and there was a whole class of crying kindergarteners looking at me to determine who was cheating and to stop the tears. Still again I tried to make things right with fun arts and crafts to hear a volley of “Teacher! Too hard!” Again, I tried with a seemingly innocent game where everyone was a different fruit or vegetable and we threw the ball at each other. Though one child started crying because he was a carrot and bunnies eat carrots and then the carrot dies. Never mind that humans eat strawberries but that kind of logic was too advanced even for my brain at the time and the game, yet again, dissolved in more tears.
Still jet lagged, I started having crazed dreams about these children, always crying, always coming to me and saying “Teacher, I don’t like” and seeing that dreaded clock, tickin
g so determinedly slowly. Until an email from a friend where she said in response to my complaints, “Oh I love little children, I just sing songs and let them colour.” Well that was a little life changing. Give a bunch of 6 year olds things to colour and you have a quiet happy class. It was bliss, no one was shouting, no one was punching each other, EVERYONE “liked”. Finally there I was, with 7 happy kindergarteners, quiet, controlled, all colouring and they were so focused that I started colouring too. Oh but this caused quite a stir because “Teacher! Mario is not pink! He’s red and white! And teacher! This is red Angry bird!” Oh I got in so much trouble colouring in everything wrong but I told them that anything in life could be any colour. Prince, the leader of this class, (the hardest child to keep happy and thus the most important child to keep happy) would tell the other children their colouring was all wrong and only occasionally could they remember that all things could be any colour, and if I didn’t step in in time more tears would be dropping on that already tear-soaked carpet.
g so determinedly slowly. Until an email from a friend where she said in response to my complaints, “Oh I love little children, I just sing songs and let them colour.” Well that was a little life changing. Give a bunch of 6 year olds things to colour and you have a quiet happy class. It was bliss, no one was shouting, no one was punching each other, EVERYONE “liked”. Finally there I was, with 7 happy kindergarteners, quiet, controlled, all colouring and they were so focused that I started colouring too. Oh but this caused quite a stir because “Teacher! Mario is not pink! He’s red and white! And teacher! This is red Angry bird!” Oh I got in so much trouble colouring in everything wrong but I told them that anything in life could be any colour. Prince, the leader of this class, (the hardest child to keep happy and thus the most important child to keep happy) would tell the other children their colouring was all wrong and only occasionally could they remember that all things could be any colour, and if I didn’t step in in time more tears would be dropping on that already tear-soaked carpet.
Oh but we learn, I learnt to deal with them, of course in the end I learnt to love them and how to deal with different instan
ces and how to (sometimes) get them in a line and also how to have lessons that they actually enjoy though unfortunately my class became unintentionally “colouring class” and soon every time they saw me they would say “teacher colouring!”. And as soon as this easy rhythm was firmly established of course, the year changed and a new set of challenges arrived.
ces and how to (sometimes) get them in a line and also how to have lessons that they actually enjoy though unfortunately my class became unintentionally “colouring class” and soon every time they saw me they would say “teacher colouring!”. And as soon as this easy rhythm was firmly established of course, the year changed and a new set of challenges arrived.
So the new Korean school year begins in March and they have given me a class of 2 two year olds. TWO YEAR OLDS. I didn’t believe this to be possible but Korean’s go by a different age system. Basically when you are born you are 1 years old by default and you turn 2 years old at Korean New Year which is around the 20th of January. Thus as of right now I am 25 and I will be 25 until Jan 20th or so when I turn 26 and I don’t change my age on my birthday. Bearing this in mind my little screaming tribe of “4 year olds” are in fact somewhere between 2 and 3 years of age. So on the Monday I entered this class to find toddling Koreans, 2 boys and a crying girl and I played blocks and peekaboo while their te
acher laughed and I tried to make them say hello. Day 1= fail.
acher laughed and I tried to make them say hello. Day 1= fail.
Day 2 went in a similar fashion but Day 3 brought a greater havoc I have ever known. I am not only expected to have an “English class” with toddlers but apparently I have to do it alone some days of the week. So here I was chucked in a class with the 2 boys and the crying girl (normally attached full body to the teacher). The girl had now attached herself full body to Amy, a new Korean teacher, but she wouldn’t go near me amidst her crying and screaming. We tried to amuse her with toys and silly things but happiness was not welcome to her agonized mind. Then Amy said “Mary, I umm… I need to go to the toilet” and we looked at the impossible situation with this child and I said to Amy “She may scream, but she won’t die, so you are just going to have to run.” The child realized that Amy was going for the disentangle, and she wrestled like I have never seen any 2 year old wrestle, Amy, overcome by her strength and resolve looked as if she was to give in when I shouted “Amy! Run!” and she threw the child’s arms away and ran out the door. The child tried to make for the door but her grief choked her up the extent that she could no longer walk and she lay helpless on the floor with all the combined weight of the world’s pain and abandonment upon her. It was at this point, while I picked up the child who no longer had the resolve to cast me off that I started laughing at the situation. Here I am in this weird country across the world from my home with three 2 year olds watching a wrestling match of a grief stricken baby and a Korean young adult and I wondered, really, how did my life come to this? I have always been adamant and loud spoken about never teaching little children, let alone babies, and here I am, dealing with the precise reason why I did not want to teach these sub-human beings in the first place. How did this happen? Really?
Honestly it is only half an hour a day that brings me to these monsters and otherwise I have different kind of monsters to deal with. My bitchy group of 13 year olds has almost brought ME to tears more than a couple of times. Being a teacher is, it really is, really hard. You have to keep your cool all the time. You have to pretend to be angry at times but when you actually let yourself get angry or get affected you have lost it. And if you expect children to care that you are sick or hungry or just unhappy you will be disappointed. You have to soldier through everything you are going through and continue and teach and keep your head and never ever get emotionally involved. I would say I’m a very relaxed teacher, I don’t like rudeness and people talking in class but if that can be kept calmly under control there won’t be any problems
. I have a flaring temper though and there’s a moment where repeated rudeness lights my spark and I am that screaming teacher I never wanted to be. I was sick last Thursday and on Thursdays and Tuesdays I teach at another school a 40 minute drive away in another town. For the most part I really like my children there, I teach 7 classes in a row for 1 hour each so it’s a bit of a long haul and I try many mind games to not think about class 2 as “class 2” because then it can make me crazy thinking about how far class 7 is away. Though, on Thursday I was sick and my body was aching with that flu ache and my head was in spinning. So my temper was shorter than normal and I snapped at a few children and let all the classes out early until class 5 when a student was sleeping on her desk and refused to sit up. I was joking to the other kids about throwing an eraser at her head when I finally got truly mad by her rudeness and threw the eraser across the room and screamed a long tirade, which of course they didn’t understand but they got the gist.
. I have a flaring temper though and there’s a moment where repeated rudeness lights my spark and I am that screaming teacher I never wanted to be. I was sick last Thursday and on Thursdays and Tuesdays I teach at another school a 40 minute drive away in another town. For the most part I really like my children there, I teach 7 classes in a row for 1 hour each so it’s a bit of a long haul and I try many mind games to not think about class 2 as “class 2” because then it can make me crazy thinking about how far class 7 is away. Though, on Thursday I was sick and my body was aching with that flu ache and my head was in spinning. So my temper was shorter than normal and I snapped at a few children and let all the classes out early until class 5 when a student was sleeping on her desk and refused to sit up. I was joking to the other kids about throwing an eraser at her head when I finally got truly mad by her rudeness and threw the eraser across the room and screamed a long tirade, which of course they didn’t understand but they got the gist.
I don’t necessarily regret losing my temper like that, children need to know they cannot get away with rudeness and Jenna will never sleep on her desk again though I do wish in those moments that I did not have to such strong recollections of sitting in school watching various teachers have these kind of freak outs and wonder what the hell was wrong with them (and if they are this unhappy, WHY are they teachers?)
Teaching is a mystery, I don’t know what to do half the time but we are meant to know. Behavior control was something they did not seem able to teach us in university, they always said “you will find your own style” and well I’m finding it, but it’s not easy, to keep measured, keep calm, keep focused, only pretend to be angry and never let them get to you. When sometimes you just want to scream “Why are you so selfish???” (and yes I know my parents are laughing at me right now, it all comes back to you doesn’t it?)
Oh but they can be fun and funny and they give me sweets and make some ridiculous English errors and finally, they improve, which re
ally, is so exciting. And now spring is springing, and there is a new hope of easier beach days in the air. And after m
uch dark, I now walk home from school with the sunset.
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