MATJANG!

Here are some pictures from my FAVOURITE Korean reality TV show, Mu Han Do Jon (Endless Challenge). I had a romantic dream about one of the guys the other night. Ha! Endless challenge had come to my taekwondo studio to do a show and he held my hand!
Last weekend, I got a call from a foreign teacher in Mokpo who needed a partner to go onto a Korean TV--Matjang(Tastes Good)-- with him. Although the call came at 7am and I had just gotten to bed 4 hours earlier, I responded with a very enthusiastic "IM SO THERE IT'S INSANE!". I had wanted to go on the show when I first hear about it way back in September but it's only for couples (or a guy and girl willing to pose as a couple). Anyway, the timing wasn't great (nor was my hair after a night of partying and no time to shower) but I was really excited and ended up having an awesome experience. The show is a cooking competition for foreigners so I had talked to many people who had already been on. Mostly, they concluded that they were happy they did it, but would never do it again. In true Korean style, the organization was pretty bad and the contestants were pretty unaware of what was going on. Although this was the case for my show too, it didn't bother me that much (which is surprising considering how sleep deprived I was). I don't want to give away any details about the show or the competitions we had to do since i want people to be surprised, but I will post a link to the website where it will be posted. Our show is airing on Christmas Eve (which I'll miss because I'll be at the orphan's christmas), but it will be posted on the internet about a week later. I've also heard that people back in Canada have been able to access it as long as they use internet explorer, so I will for sure post the link when it becomes available.

I will not lie to the teacher

My co-teacher was away on Friday and I had to teach grade 5 (shudder) all by myself. 2 classes went amazingly well, the other two...well... not so well. In my first bad class, i sent 7 or so boys back to their homeroom to get their textbooks and told them they had 3 minutes to get back. LIke 10 minutes later, they start to trickle in and only 4 had textbooks and I wasn't in the mood to go down without a fight. With only 5 minutes left in class, i wanted to play a game with them but no one would be quiet, so I just stood at the front, completely quiet and slowly started dismissing students who were quiet, too. By the time I was done, the only ones left were the boys who said they were getting thier books and didn't. They had to stay in class and write "I will not lie to the teacher" 15 times (not enough) then I delivered their signed sheets to their homeroom teacher. My last class was worse, though. As I was watching the dialogue clip along with the class, i noticed that one girl student was standing on the other side of the classroom with two handfulls of a guy's hair and he had two handfulls of her hair and they were reefing. GAWD! I was like "WHY? WHY? WHY?". This is totally typical of them and I was so freaking angry. This one kid who causes problems every day started yelling "Lee Young Sun, phone" over and over again (that's my co-teacher's name). I was well-prepared to use"NAJAT!" (get out) on him if he caused me any problems so I sent him out. Instead of standing in the hall and repenting, he had his face pressed against the glass door, so I threw it open so I could keep an eye on him but he slammed it back in my face. All the while, another boy student was having a total meltdown and I had no idea why. I told the class to be quiet and put their heads down on their desks and I marched the door-slamming kid down to the VP's office (he was away) so we walked to his homeroom and, by this time i was insanely flustered, told his homeroom teacher (the sweetest woman) "NO ENGLISH! NO ENGLISH! I'M SORRY. NO ENGLISH!" and then ran back to my class. To my absolute shock, they still all had their heads down and were chatting quietly. JUST WHAT I NEEDED!

As I've already mentioned on my blog, I've been taking Taekwondo lessons every night and I really love it. My job can be really aggravating and I've been nursing a broken heart, so kicking the crap out of things every night REALLY helps. I've even earned my yellow belt! Unfortunately, when I arrived at Taekwondo on Friday night, guess who was there! Door-slamming kid! He's now in the class. I was really upset at first thinking "so much for that", but then realized I can probably just ignore him or make amends and try to improve our head-butting. I haven't had a class since that night, so we'll have to wait and see.

Learning to Love the Heck Out of Korea #2: Getting It All Out

Ok...so this truly is just an excuse for me to rant about the country and culture that I currently find myself in. Please excuse the inevitable typos. It's Canada cold right now but no heat in the schools. Needless to say, my hands are frozen and a little too stiff to type. Oh the humanity.

School is going ok. "Good, not great", as Dwight Schrute would say. (oo, that rhymed). Anyway, I've been trying to have a new attitude and "love the heck out of korea" as one of my last posts showed. It's just that... it seems that Koreans just don't want us here. They want us to love the heck out of their country, that much is for sure. Unfortunately, you can't really have one without the other. You can't have your kimchi and eat it, too. You can see these contradictory attitudes in my students and all the way up to the laws that effect us as foreigners. There've been many instances where I feel so resentful towards my students. Most of the time, if instructions are longer than the standard 2-word ones (I.e. "read", "write", "listen", "be quiet", "don't hit", "sit down", "no kicking", "knife away"...you know) then their attention is completely gone and they're yelling over me asking the Korean teacher to translate. But when I see my students on the streets, they are falling all over themselves to talk to me in English. I mean, forget that they will, straight up, ignore me when I ask them a question in class or **demand** that they're taught in Korean because they don't understand English. Well, DUH, you're never going to learn it unless you shut the hell up and listen! Ahem...ok, that was a little rough. My apologies.

Anyway, I just read a blog entry by another teacher in Mokpo where she was talking about this new reality TV show where 2 sets of foreigner couples go on it and have to do a cooking competition. Anyway, I agree with her that it's a great and fun idea, but (as she points out), the producers leave the foreigners in the dark so that they have no idea what's going on in the show and look like idiots. When the contestants have to speak Korean and make a mistake, big, bright letters flash across the screen making fun of them. Haha...just imagine if we had a show in Canada like that. Hunt down immigrants with accents, put them on TV and then make fun of them. It just wouldn't happen. Oh, Toto. Just another reminder that we're not in Kansas anymore.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

I am proud to announce that I ate LIVE octopus at my staff dinner tonight. Ya...it was moving and suction-cupping to my bowl and chopsticks!

Cartoon Heroes

http://mokposangdong.es.kr/

Copy and paste this link into your web browser. It'll show you video clips from my school's festival.

When it pops up, click on the little cartoon video camera that says "photo", then click on the middle picture in the 2nd row of pictures. SO INCREDIBLY CUTE. I can't stop watching it. The first dance is SK and the 2nd is JK.

I'm not sure if the link will work in places other than Korea, let me know.