Chrissy Renae

Today was such a fun day of teaching, I feel like I just havvve to tell you all about it. I wish I could carry around a hidden camera all day, and then peice together funny clips from the entire day. All my kids are just sooo cute, and I love getting to know them better. My co-teacher didn’t come to most of my classes today, so I tried to take advantage of my time alone with the kids to get them to loosen up a bit. I feel like sometimes they’re too scared of making mistakes, and probably intimidated by having a new unfamiliar teacher, that they’re afraid to try in class or participate much. So my goal for the next few weeks (the Korean school year ends Dec 21) is to get them to just loosen up a little and have fun, so that hopefully by next year they’ll be ready to come back and get to work on making some real progress with their English. That’s the theory at least…

A lot of other elementary teachers say their 6th graders are a real handful, but I seem to have the opposite problem. My 6-3 (6th grade, class #3) class just SITS there and stare at me, never raise their hands, never answer questions. A big part of the problem is their English comprehension is veryyyy low (even lower than some of my 4th graders?) and I think they are just a genuinely shy group. So I decided to hurry through the lesson, and we spent the last part of class getting some “culture” lessons on American music. So of courrrrse I had to show them the “New York” video by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, and “Single Ladies” by Beyonce. I think they’d heard the songs before, but hadn’t seen the videos so they thought it was just hilarrrrious. Judging by their dance skills, a few of them might be destined to be the next Jay Z or Beyonces.

The 4-1 and 4-2 classes seemed to have the opposite problem from the 6th graders… Rather than being too shy, they were just uncontrollably noisy and couldn’t stop goofing around. They were still really helpful during the lesson and completed the role play and finished the little coloring project the book required, but they were very chatty. So I decided to let them loose on “Naver”– which is like the Korean version of google I guess– and pull up a bunch of Korean pop songs. They kept pointing at eachother saying who the good dancers were, so finally I picked 5 kids to go in the back and give us their best 2PM performance. I am realllly sad because my camera died halfway through (of all times to have a low battery!), and so I only caught the mediocre group. Their dancing COULD have been just as good, but they just didn’t put nearly the same amount of energy into it as the other class. But oh well, I’m sure we will have many performances ahead of us. Especially if Mrs. Kim keeps letting me go crazy with them all by myself!!!

The video won’t work right now, but you can see it on facebook if you’re my friend there…. I’ll try again tomorrow.

In Daycare class we played UNO and Halli Galli, and the kids fully governed themselves. I love just watching them play and tease eachother and celebrates their wins. It’s all in Korean so I don’t know what they’re actually saying, but it’s funny how with kids you can put the pieces together because they are just so expressive. Usually I just watch them and laugh and make up conversations for them and play referee when they start fighting over who won, who cheated, who was mean, etc etc. I feel bad because I’ll watch a few of them bickering, and then suddenly one will just burst into tears and cry uncontrollably. It’s hard to console when you don’t know why they’re sad, and it’s nearly impossible to punish anyone when you don’t know who said the mean thing that caused the cryer to cry. So mostly I just try to stay cheerful, hand out lots of hugs, and distract them with funny songs. Days like today make me feel like I could probably be a teacher forever, and love it.

I experienced my first all-nighter in Seoul this weekend…….and I survived!!! I think I’ve mentioned earlier that the subways close at midnight, so if you’re not out of the city by then (aka haven’t even gotten to the club by then), you’re out of luck getting home until the next morning. A few weeks ago this same thing occured, but we got a hotel part way through the night so I didn’t feel quite so out of it. However, this time we decided to rough it and pull the all night adventure, and still made it home alive to bed by 7am.

As a recap of the adventure, we actually headed to Seoul about 1pm to go watch Clint finish his 10 K race and cheer him on. Due to some mishaps on the way we were a bit late, but we still got there in time to say congratulations and meet some of the other runners. We (Beenish, Dario, Freddy, Jono, and I) entertained ourselves with rock-paper-scissors tournaments all the way there, which can surprisingly keep you occupied for hours and hours. The Korean kids use R-P-S (ching, cheyng, chong… or something like that) to determine the order for evvverything, so we foreign teachers have adopted the same technique. It works for just about everything, surprisingly. RPS to take the next drink, RPS to carry a box, RPS to take a picture with random Korean, RPS to drink out of the cup on the ground or eat something terrible looking, etc etc. It’s amazing.

So after the race congratulating we moved on to another part of town to go to this big buffet dinner thing with a bunch of other foreign teachers. Most of the people there actually RAN the race, but we snuck in and pretended we were as hard core as them. Somehow we killed like 5 hours just hanging out there as we waited for the realllll part of the night begin. The food was pretty good– salad and wings and hot dogs pleased our little Caucasian hearts.

Next, meet HONGDAE, one of the clubbing districts of Seoul, where we went to support the RUBBER SEOUL AIDS DAY event. It was basically this big fundraiser to support AIDS research,and one ticket got you into like 3 different clubs all night long. So, we ended up at Jane’s Groove around midnight, but then never ended up using our “unlimited usage” part of the deal because we were too unfamiliar with Hongdae area and didn’t want to get lost. We were so relieved to even just find Jane’s Groove that it was much easier to just stay put and make the rest of our friends find us there. I haven’t had a big night out dancing for a verrry very long time, so it was really nice to just go crazy and have fun. Dancing all night provides this huge outlet and it’s nice to pretend nobody’s watching for a little while.

Eventually our feet were tired and we were ready to be done, but the subway still didn’t open for a few more hours. So Beenish, Freddy, Jono, and I wandered to this funny little rasta bar down the street. I don’t know how we found such a place, but I think it’s my new favorite wind-down location. The owner was this funny little Korean guy with dreads, and everyone there was sooo nice to us. Jono played the bongo with some random people while the rest of us found little corners to crash in for a while. We woke up with blankets and pillows– so apparently this place must be used to the middle of the night stragglers taking refuge on their carpeted floors.

At 5:30 Beenish and I decided to search out the subway station, and then spent the next hour and a half miserably trying to get home. Luckily the subway was very empty so we didn’t attract too much attention with our nodding heads and open mouths. So we made it back to Dongducheon, taxi’d it home (even though it’s only like 4 blocks…) and then took advantage of our day of rest and got plenty of rest. On the subway trip home Beenish and I were both like WE ARE NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN THIS IS SO MISERABLE. Yet, here we are Monday already planning our next all-night Seoul trip. I guess the fun side outweighs the awful tired early morning part….. So where will you find us next Saturday? Probably in Hongdae.

korea is SOOO blasted cold

nice run, clint

intense RPS. loser had to drink out of dirty cup off the subway floor...

another RPS incident, i believe

clearly we're into taking pictures of ourselves...

jane's groove is full of groove

uncontrollably sweaty (tori, this one's for you!)

good morning, korea

Usually I’d say that going to Seoul on a week night is a bad plan (90 minutes on the subway each way…), but if Myeong Dong is included, I will neverrrr say no to such an idea again. This week Sophia was like.. if you’re free on Thursday we should go to Myeong Dong.  Not knowing what that is or where that is, I was just like, yeah sure sounds good. Well turns out…. MYEONG DONG IS THE COOLEST PLACE IN THE WHOLE WORLD. It is  shopping heaven, so I feel really shallow even saying such a thing, but I can’t help myself!!!! We came out of the subway straight into this GIANT department store that was like 17 floors of pure beauty. A whole floor for jeans, one for shoes, one for coats, one for men’s suits, one for designer shoppes, one for makeup, etc etc. Like Nordstrom on crack.

The only problem with being Nordstrom on crack is that the prices were also on crack, so I’ll probably never actually buy anything from there. But it’s really pretty to look at! Outside there was a big light display (I can’t believe it’s December!), and the beginning of a giant maze of shopping streets that seemed to stretch on for miles. The middle picture below is just one example of the visual overload I was trying to take in. So we wandered around looking at all sorts of pretty stuff, and what did I find?? Zara and Forever 21!!! That’s right, even in Korea, I just can’t get away from them. (Jackie– imagine the one in San Francisco but 5 times bigger. Dangerous.) So Sophia and I spent a very long time rummaging through both stores, and I came out with some very lovely finds. Including a beautiful pair of black heel boots, which I’m sure you’ll see more of in pictures soon. Honestly it’s not very characteristic of me to be THIS excited about shopping (can’t you see the !!!’s everywhere!) but somehow it just made me the happiest person in the world. The Christmas music was blaring in the streets, familiar sites like Outback, Starbucks, and Smoothie King were on every corner, and the streets were PACKED with cute little Asians dressed in peak fashion. So throw all that in with a newly stocked Korean bank account, and the hugest F21 in the world, and how could I not be this happy?

The subway trip home was borderline miserable, but I will try to overlook that part. Even on a Thursday night at 11pm, it was PACKED and we had to stand for almost a whole hour before it cleared enough for us to get seats. My feet hurt, I kept coughing all over the place (no my cold still isn’t gone), there was no fresh air, and it was toooo crowded for my likings. However, I’ll happily forget that part for a repeat of the fun little excursion to the heaven that is Myeong Dong.

would I get a million compliments throughout the day when my hair looks like this:

Clearly I’m settling in when I start rolling out of bed and coming straight to work, nasty pony tail and all. So much for my “I’m going to get ready and look nice for work EVERY day” commitment. Yet, all day the little girls keep saying “oh chrissy teacher your hair look so beeeeautiful today!” I think I’ll have to live here forever.

This cold is still looming so I haven’t been venturing out too much. The highlights of my week have consisted of 2 hour naps after work, a weird dinner concoction I made out of what was in my cupboards  (can of corn + bowl of rice + can of tuna.. DELISH), and getting really good at Guitar Hero at Jono and Freddy’s.  However, my settlement money and airfare refund is supposed to come through today, so the tides are about to turn and I’m going nutso. I’ve been scraping by won by won, but now I’m going to be a millionaire before the day is over. So bye bye Ramen, bring on the chicken gambi and mandarins by the bucketful!! Mwahahaha. And how about a ticket to Thailand too?

Here are some projects the kids pulled out today. We worked on conversations with the advanced class, and body parts with the daycare kids. Oh, and made books with the 6th graders so I’ll have to show you those later. Probably the coolest project we’ve done so far.

Three whole days without a post?? AHHHHH.

The truth is I’m at that weird point in a trip… the point where suddenly it’s not really a trip anymore. Everything starts to feel more normal, and I begin to feel all settled in, and the WOW moments start to happen a little less frequently. And I still laugh and smile and am happy just as much, but that new feeling starts to fade, and I feel more like I’m at home than away.

Every time I move somewhere new I go through this same pattern, but I forget everytime until it starts to happen again. So I am still in love with Korea, but the AHA I SHOULD BLOG ABOUT THAT thoughts are not coming as naturally, so I’m going to have to work a little harder to keep you entertained.

This weekend was great, although mostly chill. Friday night we went out with a big group of us for dinner and then KARAOKE all night, and that was really really fun. The only problem is it reignited my cold and so I put myself on bed rest for the majority of the remaining weekend. So I don’t really have much excitement to report from Saturday or Sunday. I deep cleaned my house, finished Three Cups of Tea (I think I’ll pay homage to that book with its own separate blog post later), experimented a little in the kitchen, and gave myself a facial. Pretty exciting, I told you.

Monday was my first FULL DAY of teaching. Although I was technically a teacher already last week, most of my classes were cancelled due to random interferences, so it didn’t really feel like a real week. But this week, we’re back on track and I just finished Day 2 of classes allllllll day. I love all of my students. Even the annoying ones and loud ones and shy ones. They are so patient with my inability to speak Korean, and they laugh at my awesome dance moves and quirky sign language. Sometimes it is realllly frustrating when Mrs Kim is not there and I can’t communicate with them and my hand motions aren’t doing the trick. Language and being able to talk to each other are things we really take for granted… so to have that just taken away when I’m working with these students and all my co-workers makes me so mad sometimes! Especially when I want to tell them how awesome they are or express my appreciation for them. Hopefully they can just feel it.

There are only 3 weeks left of classes, and then it will be winter vacation for the following six weeks. Rough, I know. I’ll have english camp for a few weeks of that, but the rest I am free to do pretty much whatever I want. So I will hopefully take some vacation time in there and get to go on a trip. WHERE SHOULD I GO?

my friends here are awesome

beenish the canadian

this is our attempt at karaoke