Events...Broken Down

So a lot of stuff has been going on since the last blog, so allow me to catch you up on things.

Children’s Day & Buddha’s Birthday in South Korea
This is a major holiday, May 5th, in which the schools are closed in order to observe children and their immense contributions to society as well as their extraneous labor. This is actually not sarcasm. Many of my students stay at school on a nearly daily basis until 10 pm at night studying, Korean children deserve a Children’s Day more than any other children. I decided to go to a park here in Songtan that day and just take the nature in. Big ol’ mistake! The place was littered with picnics, and children, and children playing around picnics. I can say the same thing for Buddha’s birthday on May 10th. I understand going to the park on Buddha’s birthday, it’s a national holiday, what else are you supposed to be doing?

Korean Wedding
So I went to a Korean wedding, I can now scratch that off my list. The music teacher at my school got married and it was my opportunity to experience a Korean wedding in Korea. I will say that the experience was quite different to a Western-style wedding. There was a huge lunch buffet, I ate extremely well. They had everything: salads, a sushi bar, dessert bar, etc. However, the meal happened before the ceremony. Also, in order to get a ticket for the meal one had to give a gift, and the standard in Korea is to place some money (anywhere between 30-40,000 KRW) in an envelope to the couple. So it’s like they’re getting a return on their investment. The ceremony itself was actually brief. And because the bride is the music teacher, some students attended and sang a song during the ceremony, it was quite nice. The best part was that my school had a shuttle bus that took the staff from the school in Songtan to the wedding hall in the northern part of Seoul. That was very convenient. Speaking of the wedding hall, everything takes place there: reception, ceremony, and photographs. Quite interesting. Just pay the fee and let the hall staff do the work.

Teacher’s Day
Korea has a holiday to commemorate teachers, listen up USA, you could learn something. This year teacher’s day was on May 15th, a Sunday, but was observed at my school the Friday before. It was nice, there was an outside ceremony with the entire student body from both the middle in high school (only the second time since I’ve been here have I seen the HS interact with the MS). There were some speeches and some awards to long standing teachers at the school. Then, a student representative from each homeroom went up to the teachers and “pinned” them with a boutonniere of carnations, the flower symbolizing Korea’s Teacher’s Day. I also got a nice card from a student and a dress sock gift package from the PTA. The same day was also followed by another ceremony, the ribbon-cutting of the new school dormitory. I told ya, these kids stay here late, so the school decided to incorporate dorms onto its campus. They’re actually quite nice, and although its yet from being fully furnished, it’ll make student life here more bearable for the kids.

Speech Competition
Today was the first annual English speech contest at my school. To be honest, I didn’t think many students would sign up, but it turned out to be quite an event. 23 students signed up, of which three winners are selected. I and four other English teachers were the judges. These kids worked hard all week as they came into my office hours asking for an array of advice. I was happy to oblige. These kids have real courage for being the first ones to participate and doing it in front of a large student body and their teachers can’t be easy, kudos to them. It brought this nice work day to a close.

Things I’m looking forward to: Sports Day (two days in this week), some dinner meetings with friends which I will enjoy to the max, and speech exam week in my class next week. Big happenings during my final moments here.

What I Know

An excerpt from one of probably four emails that have made me smile and happy dance to the extreme:

“I want to thank you also. We really enjoyed meeting you and after talking about it, we would like to offer you a full time position at our school. We think that you would be a great fit, that the students would love working with you and that you could help us go into the future with all of our goals.”

I was offered a job as a technology teacher for a great Catholic school in LA, how great is that? How perfect is that? EXTREMELY!

I’m so happy to be going home in a month, and even better is that now I can stay. It all pretty much aligned. In the last blog I posted how I had one of the best Skype conversations ever, well this was it. It was referring to the interview I had for this job, one of the best interviews in my life. I Skyped with the principal and vice-principal of the school and it went well and beyond anything I could have expected. I want to thank my family and friends for their support and well wishes on this new venture.

Point of order at the moment: Enjoy Korea.

Now that I know this, and now that it’s all laid out into impossible-to-believe perfection, I have to really make the most of my time here.

p.s. the other three jump for joy emails off the top of my head: Hispanic Scholarship Award recipient email, CSULB College of Education scholarship award email, and the email telling me I passed my comps for my master’s degree.

6 Days of Difference

Last Thursday- I Took Someone to Holland

I met a family via mutual friends here in Korea, whom I later found out (after they had suspected it) that their son has autism (very recent diagnosis). Having had much experience in the field of autism and its partners and because they had heard of my professional background, they were really interested in meeting with me. I met with them over dinner at their house, but before I could, some prep work had to be done. I could definitely speak as a relative (twice over) of someone who has autism and as an educator. But something is missing. I can't speak as a parent. So quite some time ago I decided to contact the moms in my life who have background knowledge (I wrote about this in a previous blog posts http://theoscblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-to-holland.html) because they can offer that parental advice, experience, and piece of mind. I went to this dinner with my handy-dandy notes and I'm glad it went better than I had expected. I was able to put their minds at ease, which I must say was a great feeling. The biggest piece of mind I think I could offer them just came from my own observation, "Remember, some of the things he's doing aren't because he's autistic, they're because he's three years old. That's the stuff three year olds do." I think I was able to get them to differentiate that not everything is autism, it's the genuine common thread in the human experience.

I feel they are now able to "go to Holland." http://www.child-autism-parent-cafe.com/welcome-to-holland.html

Want to help autism? You can help by downloading this fine piece of media. Everybody wins! http://theoscblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/sarah-silverman-legends-of-autism-award.html

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Last Friday - Cheonan

Last Friday was a lot of fun. After a half day of work (out of a series of 4 consecutive half work days, thank you midterms), the English department headed out for dinner in Cheonan. Cheonan is a city within Gyeonggi provice (where I live), but I'd never gone. It was strange because my friend Mel (from http://melinsouthkorea.blogspot.com/) had just told me about how she abruptly ended up in this city a couple days earlier. We went to this great restaurant inside a mountain by a couple of universities in Cheonan. The restaurant was great and the food (along with the makoli) was a plenty. After this, the "young teachers" went on a hike. That was tiring. Having eaten so much before was not such a good idea, but after it was done, I can now say I've hiked in South Korea. Afterwards there was a gathering at Mel's where she made an awesome vegetarian meal followed by rounds of Catchphrase (a game I MUST own when I get back to the US) and You Don't Know Jack (remember that one?).

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Saturday- Up & DoWn

This day started out fine. A great dinner for the "mayor of Korea", our friend Mr. Bruce Lee who celebrated the 10th anniversary of his 25th birthday. Moti Mahal Indian food, you can never go wrong with the restaurant. Another event followed after. Some stuff happened there which left some damages, but time heals all. I just hope things get better in that respect.

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Sunday - Blossoms

Sunday was new day. I had made plans to go to the Pyeongtaek Flower Festival in Anjung and it was a lot more than I had expected. It was fields and fields and more fields of wonderful plants from all over. There were exhibitions set-up, even animals too. I was thrilled when I saw the albino boa, I always wanted a snake as a kid but my mom had a phobia, so instead we compromised and I got smaller snakes with legs, or as the rest of you call them: lizards. I had a lot of fun there and a great meal soon followed.

Side note: this was my first experience taking a city bus in Korea, almost made it the whole year without it happening, but I will say that after being on it, it would have been fine if I had never rode it

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Monday- Damages

I had found out earlier that day that one of the foreign exchange students at our school (or as I lovingly call them, FESeseses), fell off a horse while going on a horse-back riding trip. Luckily it was nothing major and he only had some pain, nothing broken. Time to dust off and ride again.

Later in the afternoon I got some messages. I got an email from my brother, a Facebook message from my sister, and a status update from my cousin notifying me that my great-aunt Carmen has passed away. Of course I felt it, but I asked to leave school early because I needed to get home to use Skype and call my mom and she if she was okay, after all she was her niece. My mom was okay, as okay as you can be I suppose, but she was worried about what my grandmother's (my great-aunt's sister) reaction would be about the news. So I guess I was worried about my mom being worried about my grandmother. Everything is being arranged right now so that she is buried in her hometown of Mazatenango. You were a great woman aunt Carmen, loving, happy, fun, and hospitable, you will be missed and I feel fortunate and blessed to have been able to meet you. That three hour drive we took the last time I was in Guatemala keeps replaying in my head.

Rest in Peace to my great-aunt Carmen.

Later in the same day a few of us teacher friends in the area had some Mexican food together, it was good for us, we needed to get our minds off of some things if even for a brief moment.

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Tuesday- Three

Bad things happen in threes right? I hope they don't happen in eights, nines and tens. Well a problem arose with one of the FESeseses and another student at my school. Because the FES student came to me when the problem happened (drama between the two girls), solving this problem consumed most of my work day. I'm used to the FESs coming to me because as foreigners in South Korea, we tend to understand each other and I'm able to offer advice. Luckily, I only taught half of my classes this day, so I was able to be there for the FES and see that a solution be executed.

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Wednesday (today) - Skype Savior

Thank God Skype is around! That's all I have to say. This is helping this funk big time. I just had a great time in one of the best Skype conversations ever.

More info coming soon.

Hmmm....

This week just needs to be over.