I Wish You To Better

Hi!

So to be honest, I really don't have a whole lot to say (again). My friends and I haven't traveled the past few weeks. This is partly due to the fact that we spent all of our money on previous adventures, and also because we've been busy celebrating Halloween followed by a series of birthdays.


Once I finally went back to school after being sick I was bombarded by the students. One of the teachers jokingly told them that I moved back to America and some of the kids actually believed it. Sad. When they found out the real reason I was gone, they kept asking me if I was ok and "are you have a cold?". When I told them that yes I do in fact have a "cold" aka a swine flu scare, they would tell me "I wish you to better". I think they meant "I wish you would feel better" but its all the same right? It sounds cuter when they say it anyway.


Birthday weekend was quite extensive. Sara, Anna, and Rebecca had birthdays (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - respectively). Friday night we went out for dinner to celebrate Sara's birthday. Saturday night we got a room in the Grand Hilton Seoul to have a birthday party for everyone. The hotel was really nice and the staff spoke perfect English. The Grand Hilton is also a convention center, so there are several nice restaurants in the hotel as well as a spa. We didn't take advantage of that but we did take advantage of the overpriced room service. Naturally we ordered cheeseburgers and I'm telling you it worth every penny...uhm won? Especially because they were delivered by a beautiful man. Being the typical polite Korean accommodating worker that he was, he actually asked when we answered the door if he could come in to our room with the cart to bring us our food. What? Did he actually think we were going to say no or something? Um...no sexy Korean man at the door with a cart full of cheeseburgers I don't want you anywhere near my room.





We had birthday cake, of course, which I got for the girls at the ubiquitous Paris Baguette. Rebecca has a serious aversion to birthdays and getting older (even though she only turned 23), but she still marketed the weekend as a "Sweet Sixteen" party. So in order to make her happy, and not make her feel old, or rub it in her face that I am still a baby at 22, I put 16 on the cake. We're not old yet, but we'll be there soon, and after turning 21, birthdays are a little scary I suppose. Our next big milestone is 30 - which I don't even want to think about.

Anna, me, Rebecca, Sara, and Mika

Acting 16

We went out in Hongdae of course, not letting the bad weather rain (literally) on our big birthday parade. We were so excited to go out and not have to stay out all night waiting for the subway to open since our hotel was a short cab ride away from where we go out. Ironically, we still stayed out until 5am. But it sure was nice not to have to take the subway home for an hour at 6am.


Sunday a few of us went to a movie in the COEX mall. It was raining and we needed a place to nurse our hangovers. We tried to see Inglorious Bastards, but it was sold out for the afternoon show, so we went to the Michael Jackson movie - the only other movie playing in English that none of us had seen (the movies come out about a month after they do in the US here, some even later). The movies are shown in the original language just with Korean subtitles. Usually subtitles bother me because I end up reading them even if I can understand the movie perfectly without them, but Korean is still incredibly foreign to me even though I'm getting better at reading it, so they were easy to ignore. I wasn't super impressed by the movie, to be honest, but listening to Michael Jackson for 90 minutes wasn't too terrible. He was crazy for sure, but also undeniably genius at what he did.


So - what else is there to say? I always tell you all about what I'm doing, but I'm not sure if you get a feel for what its actually like here. Well, where to begin? The differences are endless. Pretty much everybody lives in apartments here. Even in my city (of 400,000) there are no houses. It makes the cities seem smaller than they actually are, because everybody is just sort of stacked on top of everybody else. The majority of apartments are high rises (mine is pretty small - only 6 stories). In Korea, instead of making one giant apartment building, companies make 10 or 15 or more that all look identical to each other and put them in little arrangements. Mine is not like this, but mine is an exception. Most of my friends live in those types of apartments. One of the teachers at my school told me that one of these little apartments can cost the equivalent of $300-400,000 in a larger city (like maybe Suwon with approximately 2 million people). In Seoul, it can be almost double that. But to rent one apparently you just deposit like $100,000 with the landlord, live there for a few years, and then when you move you get your deposit back. I tried to ask how they make their money, but all I could really get out of the conversation was that they invest the deposit to make enough money to pay the mortgage. Seems like a strange system to me because I'm used to paying actual rent, so...I'll look into this.


On the agenda for the next week: nothing. At least not until I get paid. No school Thursday (I'm working on convincing my school to allow me to skip school entirely) because its the big college entrance exam (sort of the equivalent of the SAT) on Thursday - so none of the students will be in school. Hopefully the English portion goes ok for the kids. Some of my students are still saying "nice to meet you" in the hallway to me, even though I've been here for close to 3 months. I tried explaining the difference between "nice to meet you" and "nice to see you" to them. Some of them got it, some of them seemed to get it but still say "nice to meet you", and the rest of them didn't have a clue what I was saying. I'm finally learning a few of their names, which is a big deal considering I have half of the students twice a week, and the other half only once a week, and they all have names like Yoon Kyeong, Seok Min, and Cham Yeup. Names to me sort of just sound like the rest of the language. Its not instantly obvious to me that what someone is saying is actually a name. What's a cham yeup? I'm learning, but its slow going.


Teaching overall is good. Its definitely helpful to have the co teachers in the room with me, because they can translate game rules, or even just basic things I say that the students don't understand. It really amazes me that after studying English since elementary school these kids don't have much of a response for when I ask simple questions like "what did you do/are you doing this weekend?". I took Spanish for the same amount of time these kids have been learning English and I can think of plenty of things to say. Hell, I took Italian for only one semester (well ok it was two semesters crammed into one) - but still, I can think of equally as many things to say in Italian as I can think of in Spanish or even English! I mean, how do they not get it by now? To me that shows that there is a serious flaw in the way English is taught here. The only class where I don't have a co teacher is with the taekwondo kids. In case I never explained this - I teach them because their coach feels its important for them to speak English because some of the students compete internationally and English is spoken pretty much everywhere they go. The only problem with teaching them (and with the rest of the kids really) is that there are no lesson plans or objectives or goals or anything to give me an idea of what I should be teaching them. And I don't speak Korean. So basically what this means is that I don't know what I'm doing, but even if I did know, I have no way of communicating it to my students because at any given point I am the only one in the room who has any freaking idea what I'm saying!


On another note, I have become acquainted with someone who I can only assume is the godfather of dance in Seoul. He was referred to me by several friends who I know that are in LA dancing but have connections in Seoul. He gave me the name of a studio that seems legit and apparently the staff can speak somewhat passable English. Which doesn't bother me too much because luckily you don't really need to speak the same language to understand dance. He seems pretty integrated in the hip hop scene here so I'm excited to finally get back in a dance studio. Its been since May since I actually danced (clubbing doesn't count for me!). I'm pumpppppped.


That's all for now. Here's the latest from G-Dragon, he's got a new song out. The video is...well you'll see. And I'm strongly opposed to most of his wardrobe choices, but the song is catchy! Also, I'm not sure what GaHo is doing in there at the end. GaHo is G-Dragon's dog, and its sad that I know that, but its sort of a famous dog. Like Tinkerbell to Paris Hilton. Gaho (가호) means like...blessing or grace in Korean. The song is called Breathe. Click here to listen!


"Things I can't say in words run through my body as I dance...Because we feel the power of speaking another language: the language of dance." -- Elenor Schick