"Teacher very handsome!"

April 06, 2010

My blog is all over the place; I feel like everything is all jumbled up and nothing is in sequential order. For instance, I want to tell you about something that happened YESTERDAY. haha One of my students said, “Teacher, you are very handsome!” and I said, “Handsome??” “Yes! Teacher very handsome!” I thought that was so funny and being the Christina that I am and not a professional teacher, I giggled at the student’s misuse of English. I then went into a brief impromptu lesson on the use of “handsome” and “pretty/beautiful” explaining that obviously the former is for boys and the latter is for girls. The student laughed and apologized. I thought it was hilarious. Today, I think the rest of the other girls got the memo or something because they were all telling me that I am pretty. These students are such ego boosters! Love it!

In all of my classes, I try to talk to students directly and work with them one on one, or at least with their group. So I was talking to this one girl and I noticed that she was using those eyelid tape thingies that make it seem like you have a double eyelid, or a creased eyelid. I was shocked on the inside; I didn’t show my surprise. Then, she looked at me and I saw that she had blue contacts on. That made me even MORE shocked! I felt really sad when I saw this because these kids are taught that western or white people are the epitome of beauty. Any characteristics that white people have must be beautiful and if my students don’t have it, then they are not beautiful. I really did not feel positively about this girl not accepting her Korean race. Then, I went to talk to another group and realized that ANOTHER girl had the eyelid tape too. I just want these girls to realize that they are beautiful too, even if their skin is not white or if they have monolids. It kinda upsets me. They are really influenced by the advertising around them. Most of their ads seem to feature white models and if they do use Korean people, they are the white-looking Koreans/they have had some sort of plastic surgery to westernize their features. This country is great, but they put a lot of emphasis on appearance, which doesn’t seem to be a healthy thing to be teaching the younger generation. Some of my kids brush their hair during class (boys!) and I have other kids who look at themselves in the mirror (boys&girls!). This one girl today was looking in her little pocket mirror and was checking up on her hair then I saw her smile and throw up a peace sign fob style in the mirror. ^_^ Y I thought it was rather funny though. hahah

Another incident that happened today was super funny to me. I was leaving my last class and there were so many girls outside of my class. They weren’t waiting for me though; they were waiting to clean the classroom next to mine. They all sorta tried to talk to me in English but there was one girl who did most of the talking. She was explaining to me why they were waiting there and I nodded in understanding and then we said bye. The other girls around her were ooohing and aahhing at their friend for being able to converse with me in English. Then the girl started clapping and jumping up and down in excitement. It was sooo adorable! I’m glad that some of the students are thrilled about speaking in English. It makes my job a bit easier.

Today, I was not the last one to leave the office like last night. I left around 5:30pm compared to last night’s 6:30pm. Mind you, I get off work at 4:30. Eek! I really don’t like going to my empty home. Today after work, I went with my co-teacher to U-Square, which is a bus terminal and there is a shopping mall there as well, which is where we went. I had to buy a USB stick and I succeeded! It was 23,500 won, which is I think $23 ish? I don’t know. It’s very small and the part that goes into your computer doesn’t look like any other USB that I have ever seen. I feel like it’s high tech, but maybe I’m just behind on the electronic times. After I bought that, we walked around a bit and now I know where to buy books in English if I ever need any extra reading material. Then we headed over to E-mart because I needed to buy some stuff for my apartment. I have a list of 30+ things but I didn’t buy it all today. That would be crazy. I just bought the essentials (i.e., mop, bathroom mat, drying rack, socks, etc) because I didn’t wanna spend too much money and I had to carry it all on the bus back home. When we finished at E-Mart, we were walking towards the exit to get to the bus stop (which is quite a long walk) and I asked my co-teacher if she wanted to eat dinner, my treat! So that’s what we did. They had this walkway of restaurants and the smells were SOOOOO mouthwatering. We decided to eat at this Korean restaurant that she had previously mentioned was very popular. Omigosh, it was absolutely delightful. Whoever comes to visit me in Gwangju, this is where I will take you for one of our dinners. The best dinner I have had so far. It was fairly simple, but it was so flavorful, cheap, and refillable! Can you imagine that? A REFILLABLE dinner! It was a soup, so I guess you could imagine it. But that doesn’t take away from how amazing this food was. I don’t remember what it’s called/how you say it. You just gotta taste it. I guess that means you guys have to come to Gwangju.