“it's a world of laughter, a world of tears, it's a world of hopes, it's a world of fear”

Sports Day

Well Korea doesn’t really have high school sports teams the way the US does. I was in the tennis team, and of course I had friends that played an array of sports as teens: soccer, basketball, football, etc. However, Korea does have PE classes with PE uniforms not unlike back home. But in order to commemorate students who excel in specialized sports, schools all over Korea have a Sports Day. Sports Day at my school is a two day event that includes a whole wide range of events so that every student can participate in something: soccer, relay races, three-legged races, dodge ball, and basketball. Here go another English teacher at my school, Heidi, and I with some students cheering on the teams:

This was my favorite shot from the whole event, the second grade relay race winner’s photo finish:

Can I just say that for a day that promotes physical activity, I’ve never eaten so much in my life? The parents contribute a lot to this event, food and their time. They buy the students A LOT of food: burgers, pizzas, ice cream, sodas, Gatorade, cookies, and any other foods that represent the polar-opposite of a sports day. Luckily, that basketball game I played helped burn off some (but definitely not all) of those delicious calories.

Everland

Something I really wanted to scratch off my Korea “bucket list” was going to an amusement park here.
I finally got the chance to go to Everland, about 40 minutes away from the Suwon station. It’s really convenient to get there too because there’s a shuttle that leaves every 30 minutes from the Suwon station (starting at 9am) to take people to Everland. I doubt we have anything like that for Disneyland back home. In typical theme park fashion it had its signature rollercoast, but my favorite was one in the rock and roll park that spun you in ways you wouldn’t expect. Here’s a picture from that ride:

All in all it was a lot of fun and Korean theme parks are reasonably priced with reasonably priced concessions (unlike theme parks at movie theaters back home). It was about $30 USD for admission at we had a good restaurant lunch for about $18. Also, Everland has many animal displays so we got to see tiny foxes, monkeys, sheep, tigers, seals, polar bears, skunks, and rabbits.

I think we were all surprised to see so many waygooks (foreigners) working in the theme park’s shows. Here we are with some of the performers after the show:

Speech Exam Week
So I am currently wrapping up my second to last week in Korea and it is currently speech exam week. This is the week I’ve also decided to let students know of my plans for departure. The big gasps of reactions I get each time make me appreciate my time here even more. The speeches have gone by well, and especially today, they really studied. The theme is what they would do if they only had a month to live. A lot of the responses are universal like spending more time with friends and family, writing thank you letters and donating their organs. Some are original, like one student would try to die a day before his diagnosis in order to prove doctors wrong, another said he would eat a long list of foods so he could die from overeating, while another noted that she would marry her boyfriend and travel the world.
I have one student though who is painfully shy. She couldn’t go through with her speech and cried in front of everyone. My co-teacher also told me later on that she also missed school the day following the exam. All I hope is that she’s well and that her classmates’ extrovert personalities rub off on her. Learning experience? Never being shy, and never having to come out of my shell because my shell has always been nonexistent, I can’t completely relate to reaching a level timidity where I would freeze, but I do have sympathy for all my students.

So here I am, another round of speech exams on the way from my second graders, the most seasoned of my students and the most prepared, so I’m looking forward to what they have to say. More blogging to come later...

Dynamic Busan, Aloha Hawaii, & Comtemplative Comments

Busan (부산)

Why Dynamic Busan? Well that’s because that’s the city’s slogan. Every city in Korea has a slogan, for example, Super Pyeongtaek, Happy Suwon, Seoul of Asia, and Fast Cheonan. Well I was in Busan this past weekend at it was AWESOME. Why have I not been there every weekend?! Busan is on the other end of Korea, the south part of South Korea. After a friend’s 80s birthday party on Friday, a couple of us headed over to Busan on the overnight train. We left 11:40pm and got to Busan at 4am on the midnight train (no, not to Georgia). Getting to the station was just, well it was breathtaking. Because the holiday that commemorates Buddha’s birthday is coming up, the entire station was lit up by different types of sculptures, like Rose Parade floats. They were awesome and then we proceeded to head to our hotel.
After our cab driver found our hotel, the Dawn Beach Hotel where we had a reservation, we saw the hotel doors were closed, and it wasn’t lit. We were worried. Aren't hotels open 24/7? After we went to a neighboring hotel, they informed us that our hotel was in a fire the day before. So then we panicked and began looking for hotels in Busan. Do you know how difficult it is to find a beachside hotel in Busan on a Saturday when it’s cherry blossom season?! Extremely difficult! So we found a hotel, and it was a gold mine. Great room, great price, great service. We wandered around the area then headed to the Busan Tower area, which alone is very beautiful. After some time doing that, we then headed to the beaches for food, more food, and some beachside cocktails. We spent the nighttime around our hotel’s area, which has an arcade district and countless blocks of restaurants. I now equate Busan as if it were Los Angeles’ and Las Vegas’ lovechild. Sunday was spent in Chinatown, the only Chinatown I’ve ever seen that has a strong Russian presence. The food there was great, reminded of the Seafood Port restaurants in Torrance. Coming back on the express bus was a breeze too. It baffles me that in four hours one can go from one end of a country to another. In California, four hours later, and you’re still in California!

Side notes: we almost got killed by the taxi driver from hell who had way too many driving close calls. We made him drop us off in some obscure location by a police station. I mean, who lets their tire get hit by a two-by-four on the freeway and doesn’t pull over to see if they have a flat or not? I mean, Come on! Btw, I’ve never heard my friend Josh swear so much before (i.e. “We need to get the F out of this cab!” Also, we almost missed our bus terminal stop because the driver decided to make a “California Roll” style stop where he opened the door for a whopping two seconds. That’s not enough time for us to grab our bags and jet. That’s the complaint list. Nothing about Busan though, I loved that place!

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Aloha
So my school is planning & paying my ticket home. In my contract it states that my school is responsible for paying for my ticket to my “home country.” This is where I had an amazing idea, why not get my school to pay for me to go back to my home country, but not my home city? So I’ve decided to go to Hawaii. I have family in Hawaii, so I’ll be staying with them. Free lodging PLUS my cousin’s husband is a La Cordon Bleu chef, what could be better? So I’ll be in Kauai for a few days before I return to LA on June 9th to visit my family and friends. I’m really stoked about these trips, and hopefully the LA trip converts into an LA (or at least So Cal) stay. Summer in Hawaii!! Whoop whoop! Funny because as my plans were coming into fruition I later found out my friends Phoebe, Pati, and Nick are also going to be in Hawaii this summer around the same time, but unfortunately not the same days. Phoebe will be going first, then Pati & Nick, then it’s my turn to hit up America’s Busan.

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Contemplative Comments

So in the span of three days I’ve heard from two different people that they got a comment from a student about them. They are both in different schools and these are two completely different people, so I was thrown back not only these comments happened, but that they happened within a short window of time. I won’t mention the comments because they’re not worth repeating, but worth noting. Both people were hurt and it put them in a crummy mood, I just hope that those around them and the people who made these comments put away their ignorance before it creates escalating and unnecessary problems and prejudices. Comments like these definitely won't help in others seeing you in a positive light. Although this didn’t happen to me, I can’t help but to think about it and its effects.

Lesson: Think before you speak. On that note, I bid you ado.

OMG Japan, DMZ South Korea

A lot has been happening in the last week and it would be crazy for me not to write about it. As some of you know, I am planning a trip to Japan in exactly one month where I will be in Tokyo for three days. Well at least that’s still the plan. There are still travel warnings for Americans on the US Embassy website, so I’m pretty much trying to keep positive and hope those warnings are lifted before my travel times arrive. If not, I’ve already considered reinvesting the Japan funds on another trip, so I guess I’m just waiting now. The devastating earthquakes and tsunami that struck Japan are tragic, and therefore it fuels me to still go because during this time I feel they could use my tourism dollars (much like tourism helped the post-Katrina New Orleans recovery) to help a bit in stimulating their economy.

I was touched to receive emails, tweets, and Facebook messages indicating concern from my family and friends, thank you. I, however, was not affected at all. It’s bittersweet, but Japan takes the fall for any turbulence that may occur along the Pacific Ocean because it cocoons over South Korea and there is a sea in between as Figure 1 depicts below:

This weekend was also personally eventful for me. Some things happened with some friends that are now comedic, and I got to go to Hooters in Seoul for a birthday. Hooters is not something most foreigners know about in terms of finding one in South Korea, but their entire clientele is just that, foreigners. Weird paradox I suppose.

The next day was entirely devoted to Korea, and I mean Korea, both ends. I took a trip with some friends to the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone) on Sunday. The DMZ is the border between North and South Korea. The trip was great and we did it through a great company called Adventure Korea (www.adventurekorea.com) and that is also the company that my friends and I went white-water rafting through. The trip consisted of going to a bridge, the Freedom Bridge, that connects both countries, going into an infiltrated tunnel North Koreans tried to dig in order to sneak into South Korea, watching a DMZ film, going through the DMZ museum, looking through various souvenir shops, getting to see North Korea through a periscope, and going to the train station of the only rail that connects Seoul (South Korea’s capital) to Pyongyang (North Korea’s capital). Needless to say that I learned a lot from each part of the tour, and I mostly enjoyed the film they showed us about the DMZ (I want to look into where I can get a copy) and that I got to see North Koreans going about their day through the periscope. Also, I got to buy DMZ chocolate, North Korean-made soju, and North Korean postage stamps. To be honest, this trip to the DMZ has now lit a curiosity fire in me in wanting to visit North Korea at some point in my lifetime. A big part of me also wants the reunification of both parts to be imminent.

It still baffles my mind that the world allowed this country’s policies to happen. How does everyone in a country just “agree” that they will be isolated and allowed to be told what to do at all hours with no way out? It’s almost magical and I cannot wrap my head around that process at all. The thing that is now engrained in my head came from the DMZ film I watched where the fourth infiltration tunnel (and the last one to be discovered) was found in 1990. That’s crazy! That’s during my lifetime!

So those are the thoughts running through my head about that event. I’m still in the lent process of not eating chocolate, so I guess those DMZ chocolates are safe…for now. Also, happy birthday Jaz!

Moral of the story: Be grateful.

A Ling Thing

It was the about two days before I left for South Korea last year in June that I was packing and catching up on my podcasts via my Apple TV. One of my favorite ones, and a shame that he decided to cut his run on CNN, was the Larry King Show. As I was packing I decided to play my podcasts as background noise and images to get myself moving. I hadn’t noticed the title of the episode I was playing and when the interview began it was Lisa Ling (reporter, she used to be on The View) and her sister Laura Ling talking to Larry about Laura’s North Korea capture. A little background info: Laura was reporting in China near the North Korean border when a tour guide led her the wrong way and North Korean guards captured her and told her she had crossed into North Korean territory. Also, Lisa Ling had once been granted access to North Korea to take pictures and video of the wildlife there for an assignment, something that made the North Korean government suspicious as the family now had a history with the country. Laura was captured for some months and held in a cell when a former president came to her rescue, Bill Clinton. Kim Jong-Il had negotiated to let Laura go if Clinton would go and get her. As it turned out, Clinton was one of a scarce number of country leaders who sent his condolences to Kim Jong-Il during his father’s passing some-odd years ago. Kim Jong-Il wanted to thank Bill for his gesture and in turn return Laura to her family.

As I’m watching this intense interview and hearing Lisa and Laura talk about letters they exchanged during the capture, I must say that I gave every article of clothing I was packing a second look before placing it in the luggage. Now it’s comical, but at the moment I gave each shirt, sweater, and pair of pants the same look you give someone when they tell you that you are wrong.

It was all coincidental and decided to look at it just like that, a coincidence and not as a sign that I should keep my butt in LA. Okay, now fast forward to nine months later. I’m going to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) that borders South and North Korea on a tour this weekend. I must say I’m really excited because hear of people going and it is right along my quest do more actually Korean things during my stay here. Well like clockwork, the Lings do it again and find a way to give me information as I’m about to embark on another Korean destination. This Monday, I came across this op-ed piece that Laura Ling wrote for the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ling-north-korea-20110304,0,1805224.story

To think that I come from one of the most technologically driven nations and I move to another one that compares well to it, it’s hard to think that some of the things she wrote about are actually happening at this very moment just miles away from where I am. I must say that I appreciate the work Laura and Lisa Ling do, I appreciate their experiences, and how they go about informing the world of the happenings in parts we would never know about otherwise.

해피 음력 설날!!!!

Hope everyone has a happy lunar new year!!!!

So things that have happened recently have included a birthday, a trip to a Korean monument, dogsitting and just hanging out.

I've been good and the temperature is actually rising here in Korea now. Like 88% of the snow on my block has melted, and yes that's my true scientific statistic, you can go again and check for standard deviation if you must.

One of our group's teacher friends, Trina, had a birthday last week. Thai food, and J&J's at the main gate were what the festivities consisted of and it was fun. Birthdays can be tough for teachers in Korea, and I remember mine came at the same time as my "three month slump." So it's nice to help someone feel better about their birthday when you've gone through yours and you know how it can be.

This past weekend was so much fun. I went to Suwon, which is known as the provincial capital of South Korea. We hit up the market and the Art Street, which is just streets among streets of shops and food. The city of Suwon is best known for the Hwaseong Fortress, a huge landmark in SK. The fortress was built in 1796 during the Joseon Dynasty. Here's a video of when we first began our journey at the south end of the fortress. The walk up was pretty steep, icy, and tiring, so pardon my condition in this video.

There's a bell halfway through the fortress and we got to ring it. That was pretty fun and it was great being able to walk through such an important piece of Korean history. It was reminiscent of my trip to the Great Wall of China. Here's a video of me ringing the bell at the fortress.

After the walk around the fortress, which includes seeing all of the city of Suwon atop of it, I was glad I did it. I still have one great Korean landmark I need to see during my time here, which is the Seoul Tower. Granted, I've seen it from a distance as you have to drive around it to get around Seoul. But I've never been in it, so it's definitely something I want to do in the very near future.

I was also done with my dogsitting assignment yesterday. Mr. Lee and his family brought me some great souvenirs from Taiwan and Rocky was an ease to take care of. It was nice living in Osan too, finally going to an E-Mart, and getting to know the area a little better. I'm privileged in the fact that I live in Songtan and that I don't have to go out of my way to really understand the businesses there. To prove my point, I went to Family Mart (a chain Korean establishment) to buy some juice and the manager said "Happy New Year" in English. Yeah...I don't think that kind of stuff happens in the regular Korean cities. So it was interesting being in Osan and calling for cab and ordering food. It wasn't difficult because I know survival Korean, but it was definitely different than Songtan. Here's Rocky, the dog that assured my stay in Osan for three days (even though I still made my way into Songtan and Pyeongtaek to see people):

All in all this past week has been good in me experiencing Korean culture in that I got to see a great Korean landmark, lived in the home of a Korean family, and the other day some friends and I gathered at this awesome restaurant in Pyeongtaek to have some Korean spicy chicken.

감사합니다 for reading! (thanks for reading)

End of Winter Camp, But not of Winter

So my two weeks of teaching winter camp are now over. I got to teach along with my friends Lizelle, Jaime, and Mike for two weeks and it was a blast. It was like a four hour work day, and I even got a bonus for helping organize the camp (sweet!).

The camp was set up into four groups, each foreign teacher taking on a question and creating two weeks worth of lessons around those question. Who, Why, How, and What were the class categories. Mine was Who, and I focused on post-modern humanitarians that included Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Shakira, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr, J.K. Rowling, the 14th Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, and Princess Diana. At the end of the two weeks, the students had to present who they thought were the best male and f

emale humanitarians from what they learned. It was great seeing that the children all picked different ones and for different reasons and therefore letting me know that I had selected a good and diverse group of people for them to study about.

The winter camp commenced with winners from each one of the classes presenting their speeches, winning prizes, and a big dinner in Songtan. By the way, my new favorite dish: spicy chicken bulgogi. I had a lot of fun and now I get to enjoy a nice break during the Lunar New Year, which is followed by another break. Might spend a day or two in Seoul to take in the Lunar New Year festivals over there. Also, I'm dogsitting for my coteacher Mr.Lee in Osan for three days, so I think it'll be fun to get to learn about that part of Korea.

Still cold, but meh, what are you going to do?

Here's a video of one of the winners in Mike's class. It's a magic trick, enjoy!

1st Day of Christmas

2 more hours. Yep, 2 more hours and I don’t come back to work until 2011. Everything is practically ready. Got my coworkers a “thank you” Christmas cake and my co-teacher treated me and the exchange students to lunch at the Pizzeria. Actually, my co-teacher, along with my principal, gave me Christmas gifts…FOR MY PARENTS. What’s that about? o_O Because my parents are the ones teaching in Korea, dealing with a real winter, and having to learn new things? Riiiiiiiiight (Dr. Evil voice).

Anyways, I’m excited. Tomorrow is Korea’s Christmas Eve, and even though I’ll spend all day suspended in the air, I get to spend American Christmas Eve at home in LA. How I miss thee and all the people you house.

What’s cool is that packing was easy, just the shopping bags and souvenirs. It’s all stuff I can dump out and not have to repack. Can’t wait to have my American goodies.

It all won’t feel real to me until I have a Starbucks Venti Soy Eggnog Latte in one hand and a Chipotle chicken burrito with medium green and medium corn salsa. It’ll taste like home.

Because my friends are the people (next to my family of course) that I want to see the most, here’s a song that is applicable. The #1 Christmas song for me this year.

#1- Phoebe Buffay’s Christmas Song from “Friends”

Fes Pt.2/ 4th Day of Christmas

About a month ago one of the French foreign exchange students came to me and said the she wanted to talk to me about something. She felt because I was foreign as well that I would understand and be able to offer her advice. Because at that moment there wasn't enough time for us to meet I told her she could come by during my office hours.

Well I've seen her along with the other exchange students and she never really said anything about the topic (whatever it was). I discussed this with my teacher friends and we came up with an array of answers, as I'm sure you have as well.

So today I saw her with another exchange student from Taiwan and asked her if she ever solved her problem. She told me she hadn't and if I had the time at that moment to talk. So we talked in my classroom and her issue are the other Korean students. This was a relief considering the scenarios me and the other teachers had come up with.

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It all has to do with Korean maturity. Here's my hypothesis (which I talked to Yaya about when we video Skyped). Korean kids go to school non-stop. When they're not in school, they are in the school's study halls, or they are at the hagwons (private institutions), or they're even working a job. Because of this non-stop schedule, Korean kids never get a chance to be just that, kids. They don't have time to play, hang out with friends, and go over each other's house to play video games and such because there are "more important things to do."

This has caused these children to mature at a slower rate than their foreign counterparts. For example, I teach high school, and sometimes these students laugh at things I used to laugh about in middle school and maybe even elementary. Granted, I do have my set of advanced university-bound students who are really mature, act their age and beyond, but that's not the majority or bulk of these students. The bulk of these students look older, but they have such a childlike mentality and laugh at things that if I laughed at those same things in high school, someone would be right behind telling me to grow up. This is the effect of what overworking these kids has led to, and all my colleague friends and I, and now the foreign exchange students, agree.

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So when speaking to her, and the other Taiwan student who joined us later, I got the sense we were on the same wavelength about the teenage culture in Korea. They told me how Korean teenager idea of fun is just dinner, karaoke (called norebong here), and maybe a movie. I told them that yeah, that sounds like normal PG fun, but that I remember going to parties in high school. As soon as I said that, both of them bursts with a big "YES!" that showed their agreement with me. They said how when they got to Korea their host families where going to have a party, but that it was just a dinner. They told me how much they missed going to real parties with their friends, I felt bad for them at this point.

But then after I explained the Korean maturity mentality I mentioned above, I got a sense of sympathy from them so that they're able to meet their classmates halfway. I also told them that a big part is intimidation. When I first got here I blogged about being the "new puppy" everyone was dying to play with, and after that died down I was just a teacher to them. However, there is still a large number of students in the school whom I don't teach, they're not in any of my classes. When I see those students in the halls, they don't know how to speak to me. Heck, some of them have even said I make them nervous. Double heck, even some of the other teachers have said I make them nervous. That's just it though, it's intimidation. Korea is a very homogeneous society where the majority eat Korean food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, only speak in Korean, and many have never left Korea to travel. Given these circumstances you can imagine that it's hard for them to relate to people who are multilingual, come from multicultural hometowns, are of a different ethnicity, and have left home to travel the world. Granted, before I got to Korea I made sure I traveled up and down the east coast, west coast, and even some places in between, including the home countries of my parents. The only reason some of these teens have ever gotten on a plane has been to go somewhere else within Korea, a country that is smaller than many US states. And it's not that I'm saying they don't know any better, but this is because the country is on a tipping point in its westernization, it's going to take some time.

So how is a Korean student who has had to go to school from sunrise to sunset supposed to relate to someone who came from France, speaks English fluently (even though it's not her native language), and has traveled before? It's tough. Granted, I'm very fortunate to live and work in Songtan. This is city that is abundant in foreigners, English-speaking shops, diverse restaurants, and so much more. This was very good for me when I got here, but it's not such good news for the students. Yes, I see them at the Main Gate area, and I see them sometimes getting a McDonald's burger, Baskin Robins ice cream, or some Popeye's chicken, but that doesn't mean I see them interact with the Americans there. The silver lining here is that they have grown up accustomed to seeing people from around the world, but there is still that lack of interaction due to intimidation. It's that same layer of intimidation that I'm covered with when I'm with them or when the four exchange students are with them.

The students I have just think of me as Mr. Navarro, just another teacher, but I do wish that the students I don't have would think the same. Some of them don't want to practice their English skills because of that intimidation. It's strange because talking to the exchange students we all relate to the fact that people from our countries want to be multilingual and cannot wait to practice what they've learned. I remember when my parents went to school, they didn't want any of us to speak Spanish because they wanted to practice their English. And when they did learn English, it was up to my sister and I to retrieve what words we could from our French database so we could continue talking about our parents in a typical offspring fashion. Had the French & Taiwanese students never wanted to speak English to foreigners, they would not have befriended me, the other English teachers at my school, or one another for that matter. So that's another observation we made, that the intimidation layer can never be lifted until these other students see that they are free to want to practice outside the classroom and with me. Granted, they do well when they're with me, but I wish it would go outside the walls of the school. Had I not learned and practiced what little I know in Korean, I would have never learned to read or had gotten home each time I stepped into a cab. I also understand that these kids are in Korea, so why learn a language when you don't need it?

Student back home take many languages. I took French, two years of Russian, Latin, two years of Spanish in HS, and a semester of advanced Spanish in grad school. And I know that honestly Spanish obviously comes easily to me because of my background, but I've also taken it upon myself to want to practice Latin, Russian, and French when I was taking those courses. Have I ever needed Russian to survive in my country or culture? No, but I was curious to learn and I really wanted to be a student of the world. But because of the homogeneous mindset that exist here in Korea, it's going to take some time for this idea to sink into the minds of students.

On a final note, I will give Korea credit for taking a step in the right direction that other countries have yet to do. That is that is has hired native English teachers to teach throughout its country to increase student fluency. This starts in kindergarten and continues in high school. However, because this is a recent trend in the education system here, the students I have now were part of that transition, which means that it will only get better with each passing year because students in high school will emerge who had a native English teacher at a younger and younger age.

All I can do in the meantime is be supportive to these exchange students, be glad that they have one another for support, and hope that they learn what they came to learn from this experience. I'm still learning too.

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#4- David Archuleta's "Riu Riu Chiu"