Do you ever have days where you think to yourself, "Where am I? What's going on? What in the world!" I'm not talking about the wild days of your youth--- or should I say the mornings after the wild days of your youth when you literally don't know where you. I'm talking about when you look at your life and you think, "I did not see this coming!" I feel like that sometimes here in Korea. Chris does too. In fact, he somewhat regularly yells "You're in Korea!!!!!" at me. There is a story behind that. I'll tell you at the end of this post. How's that for bait?
I get waves of "What is going on?" at school. For example, I'm in the middle of a crazy map game where I give directions and they find the correct building and they are all freaking out and yelling the answers at me. I raise my hand for silence(or yell, but it sounds bad to admit that) and call on a cute little girl who is raising her hand to give me the answer and get a point for her team. She says, "Teacher, your eyes beautiful color. I take them." Ummm... thanks, but no. You will not take them. And you just cost your team a point. I mean, I'll probably give you a point for the compliment, but that's besides the point. Things like this happen all the time. Everything is going as normal as a middle school classroom with a teacher who speaks a different language than her students could go -- when suddenly, I'm again reminded that its kind of crazy that I'm teaching middle school in Korea.
Another circumstance that I sometimes find myself in that causes me to question my situation in life happens more regularly than I would like. Old men approach me and proceed to get uncomfortably close, stare an uncomfortable amount, and ask uncomfortable questions (or make uncomfortable statements). It's generally uncomfortable. I usually end up thinking, "Why did Chris make me come here??" (In a really whiny voice) One particularly funny example is while Chris was talking on his cell phone a man came up to me, touched both of my arms and said:
Old Korean Man: "Prince William wife? You?"
Me: "Kate?"
Old Korean Man: "Yes. You. Kate? Prince William wife?"
Me: "Umm..... No. I'm not Kate. Bye." (Trying to get out his touching range)
Old Korean Man: "You George Bush daughter?"
Me: "No. I'm not famous, I'm just white. Bye!"
Chris to his phone: "Sorry, I have to go save my wife from a Korean man."
Me to Chris: "Why did you make me come hereeeeee!" (Ooozing with whiny tones and bitter undertones)
There are two girls about my age who work at my school but aren't teachers. One of them is an office administrator and one of them does some IT work. They are about the sweeties girls in the entire country and make such a huge effort to be friends with me. In fact, they come to my classroom every Tuesday and Thursday to "study" English. Now, their English is pretty terrible, and my Korean is worse than their English. Communicating is pretty interesting and often makes me think, "Never in my life did I think that I would have friends that I can't actually talk to." On Tuesday we were practicing ordering drinks at Starbucks in English (don't ask) and then one of them grabs the white board and starts to draw a picture. (Sidenote: I always keep a white board, marker, and eraser handy when I hang out with these girls so that we can play pictionary to communicate.) She draws what I assume is a Sumo wrestler. So I say "Sumo wrestling?" No. that's not it. About 10 minutes later I'm finally able to communicate that when someone is fat we say they are "overweight," "large," or "plus sized." To be fair, sumo wrestlers are overweight. As I'm teaching them these words and looking at this depiction of a giant (apparently woman) I started cracking up. "How ridiculous is this!!" They started laughing too. Of course, they could have just been laughing at me, but I'd like to think we were mutually enjoying the ridiculousness of the situation.
Finally, TV. Watching television frequently makes me think, "Where am I? What is going on here?" I think we've mentioned before that we get about 70 channels and 4ish English channels. We have CNN (the international version), we have the Discovery Channel ( which unfortunately became Discovery Channel Korea recently and no longer is entirely in English.), and then a few other channels which usually play English shows or movies. The most common show? CSI. It's always on. When I'm not in the mood for a gruesome murder/betrayal/assault I will sometimes watch Kung Fu Panda which is so frequently that I have every thing about the movie memorized. When none of the English shows have caught my fancy, I sometimes flick through to a Korean show. Koreans have this style of show that is half game show/half talk show and there are constantly about 20 different ones to choose from. Just a few nights ago, I was watching one of these game/talk shows for about 10-15 minutes and literally the only thing that happened was that about 13 pretty girls watched 3 goofy guys stand on blocks of ice. That's it. I mean, there was giggling and chatting happening as well. But it all revolved around this block of ice.Weird?
Ok, that's all for now! Sorry it's been so long since we've posted anything! I'll remind/nag/coax/bribe Chris to post something soon as well! And about that story I said I was going to tell you about, well, maybe next time. OR, maybe I'll just get Chris to write about that!
