In a typical week. I would teach 3-4 classes a day of course. My subject to teach was Movie Making. So we gave the students these little cameras. They had to get into groups and choose a genre of film: Horror, Comedy, Drama, etc...then they had to write their scripts all in English. Then they would go and act out there five minute films. It was a lot of fun at first but to teach the same exact thing every hour and a half, it got super boring.
For me, it was a little hard at first because well to me all of my students looked exactly the same (I don't think this anymore), but on top of that they were wearing all the same uniforms and I could not pronounce their names for the life of me. So a lot of times, I wound up saying, "Hey YOU, do this." A lot of times they were very pleasant to teach, but they were mostly teenagers. So they were quite rebellious. Even Asian teenagers are rebellious at times! We would catch them with cigarettes. They were always cursing in Korean. Some of them absolutely refused to answer any questions in English.
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| All Matching Uniforms! |
We had some rules for them there. One of the rules was: No Spitting. I know, should this seriously be a rule? Well, in Korea, it has to be, because mostly all older men smoke. They smoke because they get free cigarettes in the military. I mean you can imagine how much excitement they get in military. So I guess I would take free cigarettes too, if I were in their position. So in Korea, it is totally acceptable to hock up a lung on the streets, right in front of you. So the teenage boys, learning from their fathers, would just spit anywhere. That's disgusting. So we had to make a rule and teach them that was unacceptable and completely rude.
When I first got there, I didn't know any Korean. My first words were "Anyonghaseyo", which means "hello" and "Kamapsumnida", which means "thank you." Of course teaching teenagers, I quickly learned all of the bad words in Korean as well. Like I learned how to say: bitch, dog-baby (son of a bitch), I fucking love it, bastard (bad guy)....those are just some of my first words. One day a girl came up and told on one of her friends. She said, "Teacher, he called me Beyonte" I went up to my co-teacher,Park, and asked what that meant. He just started laughing and said, "It means pervert." I finally got to the point where I could be like, "I know what you are saying!! If you say it again, you are in big trouble!" I really wonder what they said to me before I could understand...maybe it's better that I will never know.
One day in the movie making department at English Village, Maisey and I were teaching were teaching together. One group of boys decided their genre was going to be "pornographic." They took their cameras into the bathroom and took videos and pictures of their genitals. Well Maisey and I had no idea what to do. We went to get the head teachers to take care of it. Our head teacher Richard and a guy who worked for admin. named Jun. (Both Korean men of course) came in and said a ton of mean stuff. (you could tell by the facial expressions on the boys faces.) Then they made the boys do these ridiculous calisthenics. They had to raise their arms or there knee for like 15 min.
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| Teachers goofing off with movie making props. |
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| Students filming their "action film." |
Although, I think Koreans actually have it better than Chinese students because they told me they get beaten not because they didn't do their homework. They did their homework, but they did it incorrectly. Their parents find this totally acceptable because unlike America, the teachers are really, really respected. I was talking to my husband about this one day. He said yes, that happened to me growing up and if he saw one of his teachers to this day, he would have a hard time not beating the complete shit out of him, because this teacher hit him because he was walking on the wrong side of the hallway.
There was also a foreign teacher I taught with from Canada. He had been teaching in Korea for like 10 years and he took advantage of the fact that teachers didn't really get in trouble for little abusings like this. He would be really mean, and grab the children really hard. He would trip them on purpose. I had a really hard time teaching with him and I reported him as did other teachers. He finally got fired.
One thing that I really learned from teaching middle school students was they kept me hip. I knew all the cool music and shows. In Korea, they have a genre of music called K-pop.(Korean Pop, yes I know you could have figured that out, but people have asked me what the K stands for). Anyway in Korean pop songs, a lot of times, they sing the verses in Korean and then they sing at least a couple lines if not all of the chorus in English. When I first got to Korea, I heard a song on the radio they said a lot of stuff in Korean and then it said, "I so sorry, but I love you." strange...no? This is now my favorite boy band in Korea, Big Bang.
Three of the actors I worked with there formed a "Boy band" called The "EV BOYZ." They made an amazing song and video about Korea called "Kickin it in Geumchon." If you're interested you can watch it. Just go to YouTube and type in "Kickin it in Geumchon". Hilarious! You will laugh out loud I promise. Everything they say is absolutely true especially my first year in Korea. They also have another smash hit called, "AEI love you", about dating a Korean girl. So go now and watch, for a good laugh. I tried to include the link...but I'm obviously an idiot, because I couldn't get it to imbed in my blog.
Another thing that kind of weirded me out when I first started teaching, was the amount of affection I saw between middle school boys and Korean men in general. I would be teaching my movie making class and the boys would be playing with each other's hair, holding hands, lying in other's laps. Old Korean men, especially when they were drunk, would just be walking down the streets holding hands.
I went out with the girls one night and we went to Geumchon. There was a bar there called "Posse." It is mentioned in the Geumchon video by the EVboyz. Anyway, we were all hanging out on the roof having some soju cocktail. Remember I warned you about soju previously. Well they have a cocktail, which is even more deadly, which is flavored soju mixed with juice. Well across the way there were some military Korean boys sitting at a table. One of them looked like he was waving at me, so I waved back at him. Well I learned a valuable lesson that night. In Korea if you wave someone over with your palms turned upward, it's like waving an animal over. So to politely wave someone over, it's like waving goodbye here. So these military guys came over and had a few beers they were sitting too close for comfort.
After that we had some nicer looking Korean guys come over and say, "Hello, we are having a bachelor party, we were wondering if you guys would come over and join us." We didn't want to be rude of course, and there was free booze involved. We joined them and we were all talking. One of the guys started hitting on me. He wasn't actually not that bad looking, but as he was flirting with me, he had his other hand on the inner-thigh of his buddy, who was a man. So I was like, "I'm really confused. You like me, but it looks like you may be gay?" He said, "Oh no, no, he's just my friend." I did not hook up with that guy. I don't think I'll ever get his hand on the guy's inner thigh image out of my head and him thinking, "that's totally normal. All men do that with their friends." This has created such a complex within in me that every Korean guy I have dated and even my husband, I have made them promise never to touch their friends in any of the ways that I have listed above. Of course my husband is so proud and he is always like, "Korean men don't do that, you are making this up." I would swear this on a Bible and I have witnesses to boot!!
Okay so back to Korean men...finally, right? Just kidding, I know not everyone cares so much about Korean men. I just happened to catch the yellow fever and couldn't shake it.
Alright, on one of my previous posts, I had met a very hot bar tending Korean man with big muscles and nice hair. I swear he must have took so much time getting ready and so much gel every morning or night getting ready. He got my number and we had planned a date. That Sunday, I went to Seoul, to meet Aaron, the bartender. We went to an Italian place. This was a cute little dollhouse-looking place. He only ordered chicken breast and I ordered a huge plate of pasta. I was like seriously, you are not going to eat pasta? He said he couldn't. He works out three hours a day. He said Korean women said he was fat. I said, "Well, Korean women are bitches, because you look good. I just want you to know that I am never going to be as skinny as Korean women and I hope you are okay with that, because I enjoy eating whatever I want, but if YOU want to work out for three hours that’s fine with me." That’s about all we did that day was lunch and talk, but we were going to meet again soon.
I wasn't sure if I really liked him or I just liked that I had a cute almost Korean boyfriend and I could be like "Hey look at my boyfriend...he's so hot." But I was going to try to make this work. Plus, there wasn't really anything else going on with me at the time.
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| P.S. I got permission to use his picture...see what I mean with the hair...lol |
Next time, I will move on to how I accidentally started dating two Korean men at once.
He's so not fat! Pretty cute actually, go Jessica!
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