Once again, it has been three weeks since I last updated my blog…woops. There have been a lot of ups and downs during that period: moments when I am truly happy for being where I am and seriously consider staying in Korea as an ETA for another year, and other moments when I just want to curl up in the dark alone and count down the months until my contract expires. I’m going to try to keep things on the light side for this post, though. Since we are just coming out of Thanksgiving season, I will write following the same theme of one of my recent classes: “I’m thankful for…”
I’m thankful for the times when I connect with my students.
I’ve had some really good lessons in the past few weeks…and some that have totally bombed. Sometimes the same lesson will go just fine and dandy for one class, then totally fail in the next. Exhibit A: my Thanksgiving lesson. I asked students to write four things they were thankful for, then draw, decorate, and name a hand turkey. Some students got really into the whole hand turkey thing, while others… Below are some of my favorite hand turkeys for your viewing pleasure.
I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not, but I’m developing a better understanding of the way the minds of middle school boys work. Games where they can win points and maybe prizes are great and all, but you know what’s even better? Games where they can take points away from other teams and savagely destroy one another. I may or may not be training a generation of boys in rural Korea to stab people in the back and make others suffer…
I’m thankful for the people at Uiseong Presbyterian Church.
Although I am rarely able to understand more than the words “God” and “Jesus” (하나님 and 예수 그리스도) during worship services, I am truly grateful for the people at church (particularly the young people) who have taken me in and done their utmost to make me feel comfortable there.
I’m thankful for Becky, my Uiseong doppelgänger.
I don’t know how I would have made it through these past few months without Becky. She’s a good friend, an incredibly patient volleyball coach, and a high-quality doppelgänger. People in town are always confusing us two “blonde” waygooks for each other. Because apparently we don’t spend enough time together here in Uiseong, we’re currently in the process of planning out a tour of SE Asia this January. We need a break from the cold Gyeongbuk winter.
I’m thankful for Thanksgiving.
This was the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent outside of Iowa, and while my family was enjoying a full Thanksgiving dinner spread, I was passing my time with middle school boys. Thanks to the generosity of the Fulbright program, though, I was able to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner later that weekend in Seoul and catch up with other ETAs, even if it was only for a short period of time. It was pretty cold there, with the first light snow of the season, so my friend Annie and I passed much of our free time before the meal inside at the National Museum of Korea (국립중앙박물관).
After gorging ourselves at the Thanksgiving celebration, we and a couple of other ETAs went to see the protests in central Seoul calling for the resignation of President Park Geun-hye. These protests had been pulling millions of people to the streets for weeks, and throughout the country one could see signs bearing the slogan: 박근혜 퇴진! These measures and abysmally low approval ratings (less than 5% nationwide) finally swayed the president, who just this week announced that she would allow the national assembly to decide what to do moving forward. (Still not making the decision to resign for herself…)
The next morning, we met with Becky in Myeongdong 명동 for a little bit of shopping before heading back to our Korean homes. Although the weekend was far too short, it was just what I needed to make it through another month of classes. We are rapidly approaching the end of the school year, which means that any focus middle school boys might possibly have is floating out the windows (which are inexplicably left open in the school hallways, even in the dead of winter).
roving robyn 