After two months in South Korea I am by no means an expert on Korean language or culture. However, I definitely have learned a lot about Korea and Koreans. These are some of the culture differences I have noticed between Koreans and Americans:
Men and Women
When you have dinner with Korean families, the men sit on one side, the women and children sit on the other. They will talk amongst each other, but conversation is more kept within the groups than I am used to.
Most Koreans live with their parents until they are married. Usually the women live by pretty strict rules, whereas the men are pretty free to do what they want. The only example of this that I can think of is that women living with their parents usually have a curfew, whereas the men usually do not. Even 30 year old wome still living with their parents have a curfew.
Men are the breadwinners in Korean families. Women do often work, but usually get paid much less, as I have come to understand it. This isn't completely different from America as men do get paid more than women, but there are definitely a fair few families where the wife makes more than the husband.
Drinking
Drinking is part of their culture, and it is looked upon well if a man can drink a lot. The earliest I've seen a bar here close is 6 am, though I'm sure there are some that close earlier (they probably close if they have no one in there). I don't think their alcohol is taxed very much, because I can get imported beer for near the price I get it in the states, and soju (a local rice based liquor that has about half the alcohol content as vodka and tastes pretty much like half vodka) is plentiful and very cheap.
Education
Koreans are a very education oriented people, just about all families that can afford it send their children to private schools, even after their kids go to public school. So kids may be going to two or three different schools a day. There are children that are learning English and Chinese on top of their Korean studies, and many spend all day at school or studying all the way through Highschool. This is a bit extreme compared to America, however I have talked to Koreans about it and they say that once they get to college school is a breeze. Though they don't know what to do with having free time for the first time.
My take on this: it is a bit extreme, children need to have some free time to figure out what they like to do, play sports, even just relax. Training your brain is like training your muscles, it's good to work out a lot, but you need to rest as well. I have read that playing a sport is good for healthy brain development, which America is a lot more sport oriented that Korea, and is a good thing, but I think that too many Americans don't place enough emphasis on education for their children and their country as a whole. What is one of the first things to get cut when funding is low? Education. What is the number one factor to increasing future economic growth? Education. Education should be one of our top economical concerns, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a teacher, I've always thought that! But in conclusion I believe that in general Koreans put too much emphasis on formal education and Americans put too little emphasis on it. If we could meet somewhere in the middle we'd be great.
Gifts
It is common to receive gifts from Koreans and Korean families, especially food. There aren't many weeks that I don't come home from work with at least one gift from one of my students' families, or sometimes even Korean coworkers. On thanksgiving I brought home about 4 bags of food, part of it leftovers from our festivities, but a lot of it was gifts from parents.
Service in Korea.
In Korea you don't tip waiters, taxis, bartenders, anyone. I have seen some foreign bars that leave tip jars out, but that is it. In fact, not only do they not expect tips, but sometimes they give what is called 'service'. Which is where they give you a few free beers, or some extra time at the noraebong (private karaoke rooms), free friesor something of the sort. They usually do this when you are with a big group. How I reasoned it is that when you bring a big group of people they make more money. When they give you stuff, it makes your experience more enjoyable, which makes you want to come back.
That and the fact that they charge enough for their food and services (still less than America in my city, though comparable, Seoul and bigger / international cities are more expensive) to pay their employees without having tips a necessity. Tips in America are expected, which in my mind undermines the whole idea of tipping. You are supposed to tip when you feel service was especially good, not because it is required. It should be the responsibility of the company that employs the workers to pay them an appropriate amount, not the customers. If customers feel that the person serving them did an exceptional job and want to give them extra money because of it, THAT is what tipping is about. If you need to raise your prices in order to make enough money off your product and still pay your employees an agreeable amount, so be it. Service in Korea is usually better than what I'm used to in the states anyway, and they don't even accept tips.
Trust
Koreans are much more trusting, and.... trustworthy. In general.. I've seen trucks filled with boxes of fruit sitting on the side of the street over night. At least some, if not all, of the inventory would be gone in the morning in most parts of America. I've seen mini marts with fridges of beer sitting outside them, no one looking after them. Beer would definitely get stolen back home. I'm not sure if it being such a small country, somewhat cut off from the world has anything to do with it.
I only say somewhat cut off because it is surrounded by ocean, and North Korea which no visitors come from that direction. It has a fair amount of foreigners in it, many more than I expected. Also a much more western society feeling than I expected (except all the fried squid being sold everywhere, ha).
Language
The language is simpler than English, it is more methodical. I read somewhere that Korean is ranked by many linguists as the most scientific or mathematical language... something to that extent. Which I could see that. Writing Korean only consists of straight lines and circles. They don't seem to have as many tenses and times where you need to change a word. You can use (phonetically spelled) 'ee eh yoh' which translates to "am" after your heritage, after your name, after your employment, after another person's heritage or name or a group of people's heritage, and many other instances without any changes. In comparison in English we say, I am, or she is, or they are etc.
This is all I the differences and a bit of analysis on the differences that I can think of at the moment. I'm sure I know of more, but am not bringing any to mind. I may come back and edit this post and add what I think of later if I come up with something good in the near future. I expect I will do another analysis of this sort around the time I am leaving, when I know more about Korean culture, and hopefully the language also (I've been putting a decent amount of time into studying Korean recently, and am improving slowly.. the hardest part is the pronounciation). Oh and one last little note... Koreans in general seem nicer than Americans. At least where I live, most people are very kind. I don't know if that is true of all Koreans (obviously not ALL Koreans or we wouldn't be having this conflict with the North having bombed one of the South's islands right now) but it does seem significant enough for me to take note of.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
I've been studying Korean, and can now read it, though I don't know what most of it means. There are a good few things spelled in Konglish, so it's written in Korean but when you read it, it says an English word. So that's kinda nice. But I definitely need to study more. I probably won't do a lot of studying in the next week or two, as we will be busy at work. Also, I joined a book club, we are reading a book about North Korean defectors, people who have escaped from North Korea... they have a really difficult time assimilating to life in South Korea and other places, after being cut off from the world and living like they're in the early 20th century instead of 21st, it's no wonder why they have a hard time fitting in. That plus the fact that they are looked down upon. The book is called "Nothing To Envy" by Barbara Demick, I suggest it to anyone that is interested. I got the book late, so I need to catch up, so I'll probably spend free time catching up in the book before I do any serious studying.
Also taking up a bunch of my free time is writing report cards, which are due soon and take a long time. We also, have to write a script for a play for our classes. Anyway, it's getting busy at the moment.
I'm trying to be a good teacher, I definitely think I'm getting better. I like teaching the older kids more, but I don't think that would surprise most people that know me well. My only third grade class I really enjoy teaching. My 7 year olds are usually good, and my 6 year old class (remember 6 = 5, 7 = 6 in age where we come from) can be quite challenging at times, but it is rewarding when I can tell they are learning. It is also rewarding when they are calm, hah.. they're a pretty crazy class compared to the others.
I'm making new friends, including some locals. The locals are really nice, the parents of some of our students took my teacher friend and I out to dinner last week, and we even went out for a beer after with one of the fathers. It's starting to get cold, I need to get some more long sleeved shirts because I unfortunately didn't bring mine from home. I'd take time to read through this and maybe time some more, but I have dinner plans with a bunch of the teachers, our boss is taking us out, and I have to get ready, hope you enjoyed this update!
Also taking up a bunch of my free time is writing report cards, which are due soon and take a long time. We also, have to write a script for a play for our classes. Anyway, it's getting busy at the moment.
I'm trying to be a good teacher, I definitely think I'm getting better. I like teaching the older kids more, but I don't think that would surprise most people that know me well. My only third grade class I really enjoy teaching. My 7 year olds are usually good, and my 6 year old class (remember 6 = 5, 7 = 6 in age where we come from) can be quite challenging at times, but it is rewarding when I can tell they are learning. It is also rewarding when they are calm, hah.. they're a pretty crazy class compared to the others.
I'm making new friends, including some locals. The locals are really nice, the parents of some of our students took my teacher friend and I out to dinner last week, and we even went out for a beer after with one of the fathers. It's starting to get cold, I need to get some more long sleeved shirts because I unfortunately didn't bring mine from home. I'd take time to read through this and maybe time some more, but I have dinner plans with a bunch of the teachers, our boss is taking us out, and I have to get ready, hope you enjoyed this update!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
New classes
So on Wednesday I had one new class scheduled, an afterschool Kindergarten class for 4 students who are behind in English development. It's definitely different from every class I've had so far, there were only three there, they talked very little, and were very subdued. This class is definitely a new challenge in figuring out a way to get through to all of them. I have some students in my 6 year old class who are about their level of English speaking and writing capabilities, maybe one or two, but they are energetic, and I can at least get them to try and say the words. I have to figure out a way to get these kids going, I think I just need to go in there with a lot of energy, try and have them sing and dance, see if I can get the energy up like that.
But at least it's not like my Daisy Duck class, with half the students not paying attention, hitting each other, or running around constantly. I get one student to behave and two more stop paying attention or start hitting each other... There are good days and bad days, the days that I have more energy definitely tend to be the better days, and I'm thinking I'm going to have to get addicted to coffee in order to succeed at this teaching kids thing, which I'm already on my way to... hah.
After my new afterschool class I packed up my stuff, walked down the three stories from the teachers office to the front door, and was walking out the front door when a Korean man that works in the front secretary office walks up to me and says to me in pretty broken English that was mostly understandable that there was a scheduling conflict and my new 3rd grader class that was supposed to start the following Monday was actually today, and had already started. So I hustled back upstairs, grabbed what materials I thought I might need and headed in there to wing it with teaching this class. It went great though, the kids were nice enough, and even though it's the lowest level of classes our English program offers (means these kids have the worst English out of the elementary kids) they understood me just fine, and I was able to teach them some new vocabulary and read stories with them, play some games. It was a nice change of pace, not having to talk in very simple and direct dialect, and having my students listen whenever I said something. I didn't have the powerpoint presentation I was supposed to present to them handy, so I filled the extra time with games and a reading out loud team game. Which after my boss talked to me after the class seems like exactly what they want anyway, the foreign teachers in the elementary classes only meet with the students once a week, and they pretty much just want us to get the kids to get a lot of practice speaking English during that time, and hearing our accents.
Today (Friday) I drank an entire coffee drink from a mini mart, the little chilled ones they sell. I usually only drink half or have a few sips, because I don't want to drink lots of coffee and get addicted to it. But I've come to the conclusion that I need to. I had a whole one today and was hyped up all day, and had a lot of fun with all my classes. Daisy Duck was still a bit of a hassle with kids not listening and hitting and what not, but I had more fun than usual.
So in conclusion, bring on the coffee!
I have my first day of Korean class on saturday morning, and I have work right after it. Sports day it's called... we are getting all the kids and their parents together in a park and playing games and giving out gifts, doing some rehearsed dances that I've practiced both songs twice each day for the past week and a half... Besides that, I might run the mountain behind my apartments a few times, it's about a 40 minute jog if I take the short route and jog through town to my apartment, and it's got good scenery. Probably play some more poker if Josh and Darrell and one or two other guys are up for it. Give me a call if you want to chat! 916.265.0228
But at least it's not like my Daisy Duck class, with half the students not paying attention, hitting each other, or running around constantly. I get one student to behave and two more stop paying attention or start hitting each other... There are good days and bad days, the days that I have more energy definitely tend to be the better days, and I'm thinking I'm going to have to get addicted to coffee in order to succeed at this teaching kids thing, which I'm already on my way to... hah.
After my new afterschool class I packed up my stuff, walked down the three stories from the teachers office to the front door, and was walking out the front door when a Korean man that works in the front secretary office walks up to me and says to me in pretty broken English that was mostly understandable that there was a scheduling conflict and my new 3rd grader class that was supposed to start the following Monday was actually today, and had already started. So I hustled back upstairs, grabbed what materials I thought I might need and headed in there to wing it with teaching this class. It went great though, the kids were nice enough, and even though it's the lowest level of classes our English program offers (means these kids have the worst English out of the elementary kids) they understood me just fine, and I was able to teach them some new vocabulary and read stories with them, play some games. It was a nice change of pace, not having to talk in very simple and direct dialect, and having my students listen whenever I said something. I didn't have the powerpoint presentation I was supposed to present to them handy, so I filled the extra time with games and a reading out loud team game. Which after my boss talked to me after the class seems like exactly what they want anyway, the foreign teachers in the elementary classes only meet with the students once a week, and they pretty much just want us to get the kids to get a lot of practice speaking English during that time, and hearing our accents.
Today (Friday) I drank an entire coffee drink from a mini mart, the little chilled ones they sell. I usually only drink half or have a few sips, because I don't want to drink lots of coffee and get addicted to it. But I've come to the conclusion that I need to. I had a whole one today and was hyped up all day, and had a lot of fun with all my classes. Daisy Duck was still a bit of a hassle with kids not listening and hitting and what not, but I had more fun than usual.
So in conclusion, bring on the coffee!
I have my first day of Korean class on saturday morning, and I have work right after it. Sports day it's called... we are getting all the kids and their parents together in a park and playing games and giving out gifts, doing some rehearsed dances that I've practiced both songs twice each day for the past week and a half... Besides that, I might run the mountain behind my apartments a few times, it's about a 40 minute jog if I take the short route and jog through town to my apartment, and it's got good scenery. Probably play some more poker if Josh and Darrell and one or two other guys are up for it. Give me a call if you want to chat! 916.265.0228
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
update
So it's been a little while since I've updated, so here's the skinny on what I've done the past few weeks. I hiked the tallest mountain in this province, mu deong san, with my buddy a few weekends back. It was a pretty easy til the last half kilometer or so, which was pretty steep and tiring.
One weekend more recent than that I went to Busan, an international city on the South East side of South Korea ( I live in the South West..) for an international fireworks festival with my friends Josh, Darrell, and Brooke. We left Gwangju at 8.30 am, checked into the hotel and got to the beach around 1.30. The festival didn't start til 8, but we heard that it got super crowded, so we got there early and set up a portable picnic table and just poker on the beach all day, had a few beers and got dinner while we waited for the show to start. It was a good thing we got there early because by 7.30 you could barely get off the beach to go to the bathroom and get back on (which after drinking beers all day was needed often). Then we eventually managed to get onto the subway and get back to the area of Busan we had a hotel in. On our way home we got some snacks from a mini mart, and when we came out it looked like a guy was proposing to his girlfriend outside, he was down on one knee and everything.. Josh went up and started clapping for the couple, but apparently he wasn't proposing to her, or she said no, because the Korean guy wanted to fight Josh about it, I had to jump in between them and cool it off.
The next day we went to the bus terminal to get tickets home, but they were sold out of the soonest available bus, so we had to wait 2 and a half hours for our bus, so we whipped out our handy portable picnic table and our cards and started playing poker. After about an hour of playing a cop came up to us and confronted us (it's illegal to gamble in Korea I think) it's understandable, we did have a crowd of people watching our game, we felt like we were playing in the world poker tour or something! But the cop said something to us, and we tried to explain to him that we weren't playing for money (our poker chips was a big bag of change so it looked like we were... and we actually did have 5 bucks each riding on the game...) he seemed okay with it, the Korean guy next to us said the cop said we could keep playing... But the cop came back 5 minutes later with another cop that was itching to give us a ticket. We put the cards and chips away immediately and managed to not get a ticket. All in all it was a really fun trip.
We had a halloween / birthday party last Friday at school, which was a lot of fun. There is a themed birthday party for everyone who had a birthday in that month on the last Friday of every month, and the whole Kindergarten part of the school (4 - 7 year olds) get together to celebrate. Most of the students had costumes, and we had a haunted house which was really lame, but scared the crap out of some of the kids. I wish I had remembered to bring my camera that day, or to the fireworks festival (I brought it to Busan, but left it at the hotel).
This last weekend was my friend Shannon's birthday, and we had a crazy hat party at her place to celebrate, and then went downtown. Besides that I just hung out with friends and played a bunch of poker. I wanted to go climb the nearest mountain, but was too lazy and unmotivated to do it by myself.
My classes are pretty good. Daisy Duck (my 6 year old class) is still a little wild, but I'm figuring out what works as I go. I found one activity they all do well, so I printed out a bunch of similar ones so I can have them do that if they finish early instead of run around hitting each other. Today was a long day, my first class got me flustered because three boys kept fighting, which had me in a bad mood for my second class, which is a rather unruly class. I usually have fun with that class, but not today because I was already frustrated with my first class, and the fact that I have two more classes starting this week, new books, no cd's for the books, and an oddly planned field trip and work this weekend. I have a bunch of paperwork building up from all the new stuff I have coming at me. I am also still having some of my classes observed, which makes me nervous when I have my boss sitting in class watching me, and I have to do detailed report cards on every student I have in the next few weeks, so it's just a really busy time for me right now. Oh, I also start my Korean class this Saturday, and I also have work Saturday. I think I can manage to do both if I time it right, BUT my fellow teachers that have taken the class suggest that I learn to read the Korean alphabet before I go to the first class, which is gonna take up what little free time I do have this week. I also had a spider bite on my wrist for about a week now, which hurt and was swollen for the first few days, now it's just a bump going away.
I know it will get easier once I get used to these new classes and get this coming stuff out of the way. So next week should be better, and hopefully this field trip on Thursday is fun. The field trip is actually to get all the foreign teachers out of the building because we have some inspector coming and it is technically illegal to teach the younger kids at our school english... or something like that. so the big boss just figured it would be easiest to send all the foreign teachers out with the older kids. Alright, well I'm going to look up something online that can help me learn Korean alphabet, because I don't have a book yet. Hopefully my next update will be sooner than it took me to write this one!
One weekend more recent than that I went to Busan, an international city on the South East side of South Korea ( I live in the South West..) for an international fireworks festival with my friends Josh, Darrell, and Brooke. We left Gwangju at 8.30 am, checked into the hotel and got to the beach around 1.30. The festival didn't start til 8, but we heard that it got super crowded, so we got there early and set up a portable picnic table and just poker on the beach all day, had a few beers and got dinner while we waited for the show to start. It was a good thing we got there early because by 7.30 you could barely get off the beach to go to the bathroom and get back on (which after drinking beers all day was needed often). Then we eventually managed to get onto the subway and get back to the area of Busan we had a hotel in. On our way home we got some snacks from a mini mart, and when we came out it looked like a guy was proposing to his girlfriend outside, he was down on one knee and everything.. Josh went up and started clapping for the couple, but apparently he wasn't proposing to her, or she said no, because the Korean guy wanted to fight Josh about it, I had to jump in between them and cool it off.
The next day we went to the bus terminal to get tickets home, but they were sold out of the soonest available bus, so we had to wait 2 and a half hours for our bus, so we whipped out our handy portable picnic table and our cards and started playing poker. After about an hour of playing a cop came up to us and confronted us (it's illegal to gamble in Korea I think) it's understandable, we did have a crowd of people watching our game, we felt like we were playing in the world poker tour or something! But the cop said something to us, and we tried to explain to him that we weren't playing for money (our poker chips was a big bag of change so it looked like we were... and we actually did have 5 bucks each riding on the game...) he seemed okay with it, the Korean guy next to us said the cop said we could keep playing... But the cop came back 5 minutes later with another cop that was itching to give us a ticket. We put the cards and chips away immediately and managed to not get a ticket. All in all it was a really fun trip.
We had a halloween / birthday party last Friday at school, which was a lot of fun. There is a themed birthday party for everyone who had a birthday in that month on the last Friday of every month, and the whole Kindergarten part of the school (4 - 7 year olds) get together to celebrate. Most of the students had costumes, and we had a haunted house which was really lame, but scared the crap out of some of the kids. I wish I had remembered to bring my camera that day, or to the fireworks festival (I brought it to Busan, but left it at the hotel).
This last weekend was my friend Shannon's birthday, and we had a crazy hat party at her place to celebrate, and then went downtown. Besides that I just hung out with friends and played a bunch of poker. I wanted to go climb the nearest mountain, but was too lazy and unmotivated to do it by myself.
My classes are pretty good. Daisy Duck (my 6 year old class) is still a little wild, but I'm figuring out what works as I go. I found one activity they all do well, so I printed out a bunch of similar ones so I can have them do that if they finish early instead of run around hitting each other. Today was a long day, my first class got me flustered because three boys kept fighting, which had me in a bad mood for my second class, which is a rather unruly class. I usually have fun with that class, but not today because I was already frustrated with my first class, and the fact that I have two more classes starting this week, new books, no cd's for the books, and an oddly planned field trip and work this weekend. I have a bunch of paperwork building up from all the new stuff I have coming at me. I am also still having some of my classes observed, which makes me nervous when I have my boss sitting in class watching me, and I have to do detailed report cards on every student I have in the next few weeks, so it's just a really busy time for me right now. Oh, I also start my Korean class this Saturday, and I also have work Saturday. I think I can manage to do both if I time it right, BUT my fellow teachers that have taken the class suggest that I learn to read the Korean alphabet before I go to the first class, which is gonna take up what little free time I do have this week. I also had a spider bite on my wrist for about a week now, which hurt and was swollen for the first few days, now it's just a bump going away.
I know it will get easier once I get used to these new classes and get this coming stuff out of the way. So next week should be better, and hopefully this field trip on Thursday is fun. The field trip is actually to get all the foreign teachers out of the building because we have some inspector coming and it is technically illegal to teach the younger kids at our school english... or something like that. so the big boss just figured it would be easiest to send all the foreign teachers out with the older kids. Alright, well I'm going to look up something online that can help me learn Korean alphabet, because I don't have a book yet. Hopefully my next update will be sooner than it took me to write this one!
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