Spring Time Reflections

On Monday morning I walked into my classroom, sat down at my desk, got myself together and then was bombarded by five little five-year-olds ‘talking’ (when they get excited they yell) to me and telling me things about their weekend. “Miss Kearney!! Look at my skirt! Look at my dress! Miss Kearney! I got new shoes! I have a ring at my house and it’s berry BEEEERRRRYY beauuuutiful! Miss Kearney! Look at my chin! I have a cut! I need a band-aid! Miss Kearney! I showed my brother what an ‘O’ is! I’m done unpacking first, do I get a smiley face??” (Can you tell that these children come from rich families?) Monday mornings are hard to always be excited about, especially when you just took a trip away for the weekend, your train tickets home got messed up and hard to change because you’re foreign, and you don’t get home until well after midnight only to find yourself locked out of your apartment because your building ‘super’ just installed new cable boxes and accidently locked your upper lock to which you have no key. But hearing those shouts of joyful exclamations into my ear make it all worthwhile and remind why it is I do what I do.

The picture above is the class I had for two months; just five little five-year-olds who have picked up on my silly-ness. They love hiding under my desk as they had a big moment there a few weeks back. I can't help my 'just kidding' nature that I have and kids are even better targets than adults because they're so darn gullible. I chalk up this trait to being raised by my father. Anyway, one day I walked into class after lunch when all the girls should have been there, yet not a soul was in sight. I was confused as I just saw them walk up the stairs a few moments before. I walked over to my desk, put my coat on my chair and then heard five little voices shout 'BOOOOO!!!' from under my desk. I screamed. Then laughed really hard (yuk status for those of you who know the level my laugh can attain) for about ten minutes along with my girls. I don't know if they were prouder of themselves or if I was.

This past weekend, or Easter weekend as it’s referred to at home since I have not found one Korean who observes this holiday, was spent with two friends in Busan, a port city on the southeastern side of South Korea. It was so nice to be able to get out of Seoul, see some new sights, try some new things, and reflect upon my life thus far. It’s ironic to me that I got to Busan and thought, it’s nice to be out of the big city, when Busan itself is a huge city compared to anything I have ever lived in or near before. There’s still a subway there, tons of buses, tons of people, and tons of things to do and see, with the beach being at the top of the list for the warmer months of the year.

As it is a port city, Busan is famous for its seafood, which was plentiful both in quantity and selection. Saturday was a beautiful day and we got out early to visit some places around the city, with the fish market being the first stop. We stumbled upon an outdoor one first with tons of adjumas (old ladies) sitting on their haunches over big bowls of ice, water, and sea creatures. Many of them shelled shellfish as they sat there awaiting hungry or curious customers, and it amazed me to realize that this was their everyday life. Fish. Octopus. Sea slugs. Scallops. Mussels. And many other unnamable items.

Right next to the seemingly renegade fish market was an indoor one with actual fish tanks to hold the sea creatures in, and many adjumas and adjushes (old men) selling their fish. After taking copious amounts of pictures, we ran into a ‘stall’ owner who spoke English, showed us many of his products and invited us to pick some out to eat upstairs. He told us that most of them were delicious as sashimi (uncooked) and we should be adventurous and try some. He also enticed us with holding out said items to buy, most interestingly an octopus and a sea slug. I was enthralled by these two items and got

to hold a live octopus (which I later ate – still alive and squirming in my mouth) and the sea slug. Now, the sea slug looked very much like a specific part of the male anatomy and my two girlfriends and I had giggled previously over this thinking we were quite clever. When I asked our En

glish speaking seller what it was he said ‘sheep penis.’ I responded with a confused ‘Whaaa??’, which then made him do a very Korean thing of repeating something in English until he knew I understood. “Sheep penis! SHEep penis. Sheeeep PEEENis. SheeP PeNIS!.....” Finally I yelled “Okay, okay!” to which his response was to put said ‘sheep penis’ into my hand and told me to squeeze it. The result is much like you are probably picturing in your head and made me giggle quite a bit. I later ate that raw also (quite tasty actually), and found out the proper name was a sea slug.

Finding English speaking Koreans here in Korea often results in a most excellent encounter, which proved to be true throughout the rest of the trip. On Sunday we took a journey to a Buddhist temple called Beomeosa, which means Temple of the Nirvana fish. It was MAGICAL. Beomeosa is located at the top of a high mountain in Busan and it is a huge Temple compound, if compound is any sort of word to describe a sprawling temple. There were lots of people there as tourists, but also a lot of people on temple stays who were there to hang out and pray a lot. Many hikers were there also as there is a huge mountain/river right beside the temple with big boulders everywhere. On our short walk back down a group of Korean hikers, decked to the nines in gear, asked us some questions and, as per usual, were very excited with our answers. “English teachers! American! Here in Korea! Learning about temples! Hurray!” They asked us to come close to the river to dip our hands in and splash around a bit, then pushed us into a group picture shouting “We are the world!!” and alternated holding our hands and making hearts over their heads with two hands.

I was lucky to go with two friends, Amber and Vicky, who are also quite spiritual people because they also just got it about the place. As it was Easter, we were already talking about how the day contained some spiritual connections for all of us, so it was a serendipitous event to find a little praying platform in front of a small building off the beaten path that had a few Buddha statues inside. There were mats there to sit on so we all grabbed one and sat down to have a few moments. It was thrilling and made me reflect on the life I have in Seoul and think about what kinds of things I want to do when my time is done here.

Once we had our time finding (!) God again on Easter instead of him/she/it being handed to us on a crispy little wafer, we sat by a stream for a long time thinking some more. As a huge city, Seoul actually does have a lot of mountains and places to hike, but there are always SO many people everywhere. It was nice to be able to sit next to a nice stream and be more alone, with the sound of the flowing water drowning out any noise from others around. I had my Kindle in my bag, the bible downloaded, and the Old School Catholic in me it felt like it was a good time to pull it up and read a few verses fitting to the situation. Then to balance it out I sung some songs that are much more open and in tune with nature, I do believe all of which I learned at Journey’s End Farm Camp. We all felt such a strong presence of something more than us sharing that moment and it made me realize how much I miss nature and its calming/spiritual effect on me.

It was a grand trip indeed, and it made me appreciate Seoul a bit more as I got to get out of the bubble and realized I missed some things about it. City life is becoming routine to me and something that I quite enjoy what with so many things to do, places to see and new experiences to have. However, the trek over the weekend has reminded me of things that I highly value in my life that I am missing living here.

With all that being said, I am excited to enjoy the rest of my time here in Seoul as it’s made a big impact upon my life. One thing I absolutely love about this place is all of the museums; one for robots, locks (and keys), wars, kimchi (I haven’t been yet, but I sure do hope they serve free kimchi samples), Science, art, art, art, and everything traditional/cultural about Korea. A few weekends ago some friends and I took a trip to the War Museum of Korea and it was as informative as it was sad. Korea has a terrible history with most of the surrounding countries trying to take them over because they are so small. One thing I really admire about Korea is how much of a fight they put up to remain their own country. It also amazes me how much different North and Korea are, and how there was a whole three-year Korean year war that is still technically going on between them.

Seoul just had the pleasure of holding a Conference on Nuclear Weapons with people from 50 different countries. I have to admit, when I read about it the weekend before it happened, I got quite nervous. North Korea had just been telling the world that they were going to launch a long-range rocket for their ‘space program’ while the rest of the world, even China, was against it. Then alllll of these world leaders come on over the Seoul, just a couple hours drive from North Korea to discuss matters to which North Korea was fervently opposed. However, other than the INTENSE increased security in the subways and around town, nothing bad happened. Recently they just launched their ‘space rocket’, which cost $850 million dollars to make and exploded within a minute. I just don’t understand it all.

Oh my, oh my I have so much information to pass on but as so much time has passed, the volume of words becomes overwhelming. I’ll put this up now and write more later. It is now the Monday morning following the Monday morning I wrote about in the beginning, and I have just taken a trip over the weekend to a Cherry Blossom Festival, which was beautiful with perfect flippin’ weather. I am leaving for school in about ten minutes and look forward to the greeting I will get from my girls, especially since I am getting two old students back and one new one. Should be an interesting day.

Farewell for now, friends and family. I hope everyone is doing well and your spirits are being raised by the warm weather and blooming plants coming our way.

Until next time.

You Are My Sunshine

I was looking through the list of contacts in my old phone last night to get some numbers, and the way in which memories and time collided very much gave me the feeling of stepping into a DeLorean to take a quick trip back to other times. Being so far away from everyone makes me feel like my time back at home is paused; like there is a frozen Katie Kearney somewhere back there and I’ll de-thaw sometime and get back into the picture. Sometimes it feels as though I will be in Korea teaching forever and I have to remind myself that I will soon be gone, back into my old life, and it will eventually get to the point where it doesn’t even seem like I left.

While still here, the roller coaster times at my school continue with new and strange developments happening daily. Our principal was recently fired in a most Korean type of way, which is to say very passive aggressively. More and more power was being taken away from her until one fateful Friday she pulled me and another teacher into an empty classroom just before we were leaving for the day and said, ‘Today is my last day. Don’t tell anyone else. I wanted to say goodbye and thank you for being nice to me.’ It was still a bit shocking even though she had been talking about leaving since the end of October. We quickly got a new principal named Susie who seemed like a light shining at the end of our ever blackening tunnel. We had a big meeting with the entire staff one Friday and she told us things like “use less books and do more projects”, “the students shouldn’t take so many tests”, “you’re certified teachers, you should know what’s best.” I had to remember to close my mouth as it was hanging open in awe. However, I have been in Korea long enough not to get my hopes up and lo and behold, she quit the following week. The owner/current principal of our school holds the interest of money most important and not proper education, or proper treatment of his employees.

As our school is currently vice-principal-less (as our owner is the ‘principal’), the Korean staff now have a much larger workload. Everyone is really stressed out and there are more students dropping from the morning classes. I just lost three this past week and I’m pretty bummed about that, but the bright side is that I can get accomplish more with the ones I have left. This teaching experience is making me think on my feet more than I ever have before, and is allowing me to roll with the punches better than I ever thought I could. Now when odd things happen I can just kind of laugh (or REALLY, REALLY laugh, depending on how stressed I am or the lack of sleep I’ve been getting) and just move on. I can’t control these situations, and I am now learning to set fewer expectations on a place that’s constantly changing.

However, as per usual, my little kiddos are the silver lining in all of this confusion. I have one girl in my class named Sally and she doesn’t speak much English as she just joined our school about two months ago. The other kids in my class very pointedly tell me ‘Sally is a KOREAN’, which to them explains everything. The other day we were doing an ‘Around The World’ kinda game where I showed two students sight words on a flash card and they had to race each other to read it first, and Sally actually won a round! She barely speaks but she beat the pants off another student. I screamed for joy, high fived and hugged her, then realized she looked semi-scared so I backed off to let her know I wouldn’t act that wild every time she spoke. It was one of those ‘holy shit I’m really getting through to them’ teacher kind of moments and makes any bad things I’m going through manageable.

I have another girl in my morning class whose name is Pinky. Yes, Pinky and no, she doesn’t have a friend named Brain. I’m pretty sure her mom let her pick her own name. She’s another one I’ve had some good break throughs with as she was new with the class this year and had trouble socializing. Now she socializes too much and I often have to tell her to quiet down; ‘LILY! LET’S PLAY A GAME!’ She also often comes up to my desk just to see what’s crack-a-lacking and to tell me ‘My mommy is a Korean.’ To which I reply ‘My mommy is an American.’ ‘Well my daddy is a Korean.’ ‘Well my daddy is an American.’ ‘MY BROTHER IS A KOREAN!’ ‘MY BROTHER IS AN AMERICAN!’ And then I have to remind myself I’m not four. However, Pinky is and we go through this routine at least three times a week.

I’m going to include the video I took of all of us singing their favorite song ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ We sang this during their snack time, and it was the second time in a row, so some of them get up and clean up during it. Kids teach me not to get offended so easily. Also, please note that three girls during the song take their hair out of pony tails so they can head bang better.

**The video is taking an unreasonable amount of time to upload, so I will try again later tonight.**

In life outside of school, I have been seeing a lot of art lately. I am becoming more acclimated to living in a city and am enjoying it much more than I was in the beginning. I LOVE hopping on the subway and getting to anywhere in the city that I need to go. There is also just so much to do here all the time, and I am now figuring out how to do it and how to get to where I need to go. I recently saw an exhibit with a friend called “This Is My Home” and it was all aerial views of Earth – from people struggling to the beauty of the Earth to folks picking tea to uranium mines to scarlet ibises in flight to things I couldn’t quite understand because the description was in Korean. The next day I went with some other friends to a photography exhibit by David LaChapelle, which focused on wealth, fame and religion. It was awesome and weird and sparked some interesting conversation. I took myself out on a date a few Sundays back and saw some interesting photography by Karl Lagerfield, who, I learned that day, is a big fashion kinda guy, and he really pushed some boundaries with pictures he took. I say that in an ‘a lot of people were naked and risqué’ sorta way knowing how Koreans are about nudity. I really enjoyed watching their reactions.

I am learning so much about myself here and one of those things is that I enjoy being by myself and having dates alone. Now parentals, don’t get nervous here and think I am alone too much. I have been hanging with some great friends from school and beyond, but I really enjoy treating myself like a lady and getting out into the city to see art, grab tea, and eat Korean soup so spicy I have to blow my nose a hundred times. I appreciate this time in my life a lot. Next Monday I am very, very, very excited to go and see Yo-Yo Ma, a most excellent cello player. I even bought myself a new dress today for the occasion.

Speaking of classical music, I am digging it so very much at this time. There are two Korean families that I spend time with in a language exchange sort of way, and they are very in tune (pun intended) with the classical music scene in Seoul. They give me a lot of tickets to see shows and sometimes even bring me along with the family to witness some kick-ass cello and violin playing. I enjoy it very much and am quite thankful to be linked to these two amazing families.

So friends and family I’m happy once again to share my trials and tribulations with you because it helps my mind so much to get them all down and process them through writing. There have been glimpses of spring here, so much so that I actually had to take off my coat when exploring a new park a few days ago. I hope the signs of spring are coming your way, too.

Until next time.

Halfway Through With New Beginnings

I sit in my apartment listening to a podcast of ‘Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me’ and am unaware of most of the newsworthy items they are referring to. I know some basics and am able to laugh at the expense of some of the folks trying to run for President in the Republican category, but I feel more out of the loop than I have in some time. I miss waking up and listening to the Morning Edition on VPR and getting the scoop while making and eating breakfast. Now that I’m so far removed, literally and figuratively, from the States and the news, I find it hard to take the extra effort to read up (read the news!?) on what’s happening back home. I find out some important information from New York Times Headlines e-mailed to me (though I often only read the subject line of the e-mail before deletion) or through, sadly enough, Facebook, which is how I recently found out who was in the Superbowl. I don’t really know what to make of all this; I know I should keep myself more informed, but I don’t want to feel guilty about it, so it is what it is.

A lot of change has been occurring in my life over here as a new semester began on Wednesday; my old Kindys graduated, I got all new classes and a new classroom, and five teachers left with two new replacements coming in, which suddenly makes me an ‘experienced’ teacher at my school. It has been a lot of fun to see Korea again through brand-new eyes and asking ‘Have you tried kimchi? Norebang? Do you like BBQ? What do you think of the people/culture/CROWDS?’

It was certainly hard to introduce the new teachers (newbies) to the school in such a tumultuous time while trying to be realistic yet not pessimistic. Basically there has been a lot of staff changes and under enrollment, which accounted for less teachers being hired this coming school year. This may be directly related to our administration, or to the fact that Korean families are moving away from Hagwans because Korean elementary schools are beginning to offer English lessons also.

Whatever the case may be, the beginning of the semester was quite stressful. The schedule wasn’t fully worked out and two teachers did not have morning classes and were unsure of how to spend their time and therefore unsure of their position at the school. I found out that moving classrooms is a major bummer, especially when you’re adding your stuff to the previous classroom owner’s, and that starting new classes from the beginning is confusing and overwhelming and made even more so when you have learned from past mistakes and are trying to improve upon them.

That all said, I cannot even tell you how wonderful it feels to start from the beginning. When I arrived I came halfway through the semester and the students did not even know their teacher was going to be leaving. BIG adjustment period. I didn’t come in as ironed fisted as I should have, which contributed to some behavioral problems in the afternoon classes. This time all the kids I currently have knew I would have them a couple weeks beforehand. They were prepared and so was I.

This semester I have ten six-year-old (five in Korean) Kindergartners in the morning, called the Dolphin Class. They are ADORABLE and think just about everything I say is hilarious. Talk about a self-esteem boost. I am no longer just ‘Ms. K’ but am now full-fledged ‘Miss Kearney’ and it makes my heart sing to hear those little voices call it out. One girl, Edeline (who writes her name with hearts attached to every letter) often looks at me and says, with a look of confused wonder and happiness, “Miss Kearney is silly!” Yes, children, yes I am. The other day I played my ukulele for them and they all went nuts during “The Wheels on the Bus.” Three girls were actually head-banging, which made me giggle a lot. I guess head-banging to music you’re reaaaally feeling is more instinct than a learned behavior.

In the afternoon on Monday/Wednesday/Friday I have my old Kindys back, plus three others from another recently graduated Kindy class. There are eleven of them altogether and as I have my fist full of iron now, they listen to me like champions. I actually look forward to teaching this class, while last semester evening classes seemed more like a duty. It’s so grand to be reunited with my Deer Class (though they chose their new name and are the Eagle Class now) and I cannot wait to continue learning and growing with them.

On Tuesday and Thursdays I have a class that I fought hard not to get, but to no avail. They are the “ESL Kindy” class, which are four kids who are in their second year of learning English. They are called ESL because they have never had the all day full immersion program, but just afterschool twice a week. They are notoriously the worst class to teach as they are badly behaved and with little (LITTLE) English. The bad-ass ring-leader (the kind of kid who looks a grown-up in the eye and says ‘NO’) dropped for a month so the first day wasn’t that bad. It was actually good. I came in with two iron fists and an iron helmet to which they responded well. I have come to learn the rule of having students respect you before liking you when the time calls for it.

I could tell you tons more stories about my new kids I have – the way I just have to look at Yuni and she closes her little eyes and giggles, or how Katie tried to sound out b-i-t by looking wildly around the room before shouting out ‘CAR!!’, or how Joon is perhaps the shortest 5-year-old I’ve ever met but thinks he’s probably the strongest – but I want to end with something totally different.

Lunar New Year happened a few weeks ago and I took a vacation to Japan with two good friends and were then joined by two other friends. I wrote this ‘piece’ (that feels like a pretentious writer’s word) about it the night I got back and it sums up our time well.

I am overwhelmed at how awesome the vacation was that I just had. I went to Tsushima, Japan with Ada, Chris and then Dashik and Ashley for the last day. We traveled far, long, and well while overcoming obstacles left and right. We met wonderful people who were very kind to us, especially Takashi our pension host who was the best. Ever. We hiked grand areas, and explored wonderful beaches. We found a blue starfish (he-toe-day) with orange speckles all over it next to a ‘run of the mill’ starfish missing one leg of its star in a tide pool. (Finding a treasure like a starfish in a tide pool has been my dream for as long as I can remember – thanks Sesame Street – and that dream just came true to a higher level than I ever could have hoped for.) We also saw some of the elusive cat scat (plus the innumerous amount of deer turds all over), and hawks everywhere including as many as nine in the same spot circling over an area. We saw the most amazing views, including one where we could see both Korea and Japan (we think, but we’re going with yes because it made it all the more amazing), all of the two towns, lots of mountains and ocean, ocean, ocean.

We ate a lot of noodles, though not as many snacks as we would have liked, and also had an outdoor Japanese BBQ under the stars complete with sushi at the end. We had the most random brunch I have ever experienced on our last day including ramen with mushrooms and cabbage, galbi meat cooked with tons of onions, coffee made in a rice cooker bowl, and some cereal all while R. Kelly serenaded us in the background. We went to a sauna and I finally got the hang of the cold water pool interspersed with the HOT water and saunas. We bugged out about a three-hour bus ride once we got on the island, only to have it be on an old amazing bus with huge windows on a day that was full of glorious sunlight, through twisting mountain roads with beautiful scenery.

We slept in Busan one night in a jimjilbong next to at least a hundred other Koreans. Noisy business. We took two ferry rides, one of which had to be first class due to lack of space, which earned us a free drink and peanut/fish snacks. We kept re-learning skipping rocks in the ocean is super hard, but something you keep doing when there are plethoras of perrrrfect skipping stones surrounding you. (This fact makes me realize how much I value other people who love skipping stones enough to also look down at rocks and exclaim “These are perfect skipping stones!”) We played silly games and even got two Japanese friends to join in with us. We learned that attitude is everything, especially when you are traveling in a foreign country. We came back to a hugely crowded city, but were blessed with a snowfall big enough to kick some up when you ran through it.

From a land where folks don’t play football nor know what a groundhog is, Until Next Time.