The awesome side

So I left the presentations early last night. My kids weren't going to present, because no one told me that all the teachers were supposed to pick a group (last week we were supposed to pick 3 out of the 9 classes), so I didn't tell them to bring their flash drives or computers or anything. And if I had to make a 3 hour presentation and a 10 page handout, I wasn't going to sit through 9 classes worth of presentations.

So I came home, put on some angry music, and set about making slides that elementary kids with little English could understand. Luckily, astronomy is full of awesome pictures.

Well over an hour after I got home (and when I left, the presentations were already at the two hour mark), my first roommate came home, and was like, "I know exactly why you left, and I understand." A few minutes later, more people come in, but they brought the TAs, who are all awesome, and we sat around while I added more slides and chatted about the week, about Korea in general, about the Korean language and what the TAs think about the North Korea situation (they hope the people will overthrow their own government, which does seem like it would be a nice solution, and it's nice to know the feeling here is, "Those poor North Koreans, run by an evil dictator," and not, "I hate North Koreans").

So it ended up being a good night. Now it's the next morning, and I'm sitting here drinking some tea and eating an orange, and in a few minutes, we're going to get on a bus and head up to the DMZ and Seoul for the day. At least, I think we're doing both. I'll let you know later. But it sounds like a few of the TAs are coming with us, so now I'm looking forward to it even more. It helps to have translators around who are our age and share a sense of humor.

The awful side of things

You wanna know how to make me completely enraged? Tell me at lunch on Friday that I need to make a 3 hour lecture for underprivileged elementary school kids for Monday morning, when I have slides intended for gifted and talented high schoolers. After I've taught for three more hours, had dinner, and sat through two hours of student presentations so it's 9pm, tell me you need the study guide for that lecture by tonight. Also, I'm supposed to be in Seoul all day tomorrow. And don't apologize. Oh, you weren't planning to? Well that's just par for the course.

I walked out of presentations when I got this news whispered to me in between groups.

I've been as positive as I can be about all this, but the lack of organization and communication here is beyond belief.

Let me sing the praises of TAs

Here's the first set of pictures my friend took of us running around Korea: Mahmoud's photos.

The young Korean woman who has a big profile picture in the set is my TA, Hana. She wanted to go out to eat last night, but it turned into a big thing with all of the professors and most of the TAs. We had amazing food and a really good time. Afterwards, she took a much smaller group of TAs and professors to a cocktail bar. All the cocktail names are English, but good luck with your order. Hana recommended something called a Scarlett O'Hara, which was very fruity. I tried ordering an amaretto sour, but the bartender and Hana got into a discussion, and apparently he was explaining that there are three different ways to make an amaretto sour. I don't remember the third, but I chose something with citron, and the TA next to me chose the melon one. I have no idea what was in our drinks. It was not an amaretto sour, but it was tasty anyway.

That's me with my "amaretto sour" and Rebekah with her Scarlett O'Hara

Tonight we went out again, with some of the professors and TAs, to get sushi. We all ordered the same thing, to make it easier, meaning I got some good sushi, and some things I didn't like, but it was a good time. The TAs are all amazing people. We keep paying for them when we go out. Some of them are happy to accept it, but Sara's TA, Hosanna, was saying she felt bad about it. We explained that in America, TAs make very poor money, and professors make more, so they treat their students.

Hana is next to me, and the other TAs are scattered around.

The TAs are the best thing about this trip, I think. They've been giving us tours of stores and the area near campus, explaining Korean language, culture, and food, and generally being the nicest people we know in Korea. Hosanna said it's fun, and I'm glad she thinks so, because this trip might have sucked a lot if they hadn't been around to shepherd us and be our friends.

At the cocktail bar, the TAs were telling us how to write our names in Korean, and how the Korean alphabet works, drinking games in Korean, music, and so on. And we taught them about Never Have I Ever, and we all enjoyed American music, hate writing Greek letters, and like eating the crunchy stuff they give you in bowls at bars. It was everything I wanted out of my Korean trip.

Monday, Take 2

Ah, new week, new class, new TA. I switched TAs with my friend, so now Hana is my TA, and Sundong is Mahmoud's. I'm not even sure how this happened, but I'm happy with it. Sundong was great, but Hana and I are much more chatty and friendly, and I think that's true with the guys as well, considering when I ran into them after class today, they were going off to play pool. Speaking of other teachers, here's a picture of most of us!

From left to right: Me, Greg, Rebekah, Peter, Sara, John, Mahmoud, and Neil.
David, the last teacher, is somewhere else.

This was taken at this week's opening ceremony, which is why we look all nice. I room with the other two girls (obviously). I suspect Sara would be horrified by this picture - she's not nearly as frumpy or old as she looks here. Greg is Russian, but did his degree somewhere in Canada, and is currently post-doccing at Stanford. Peter is originally from Hungary, via a long list of places, and teaches in Virginia, as do the next two, Sara and John. Mahmoud is my colleague from GMU, and Neil is from New York, as are David and Rebekah. And yes, Greg is trying to look like a Russian mobster, but maybe comes across as Russian pop star instead in this picture. If you think he looks tall next to me and Rebekah, you should see the pictures of him next to our tiny Korean waitress one night.

My new class is so much more fluent than my last class. They understand me much better, they read better, and most of them can speak better. They were also extremely quick to grasp all of the concepts I gave to them. I'm excited about this week, in spite of the climate change theme. Here's hoping it goes a little smoother than last week. Now, off to check my lessons plans.

And for anyone who wants to talk to me on skype, I'm generally online sometime between about 5:30 and 7pm EST. That's my time to be online and go over the day's lessons before I go to breakfast and class. The other option is to stay up until 4am EST when I get home from work, or get up early before you start your day. But I usually go to bed by 10am your time, so if you're not online by 8 or 9am, I've probably already closed my computer and gone to get ready for bed. I'd love to talk to people if you're around, but those are pretty much my only windows of availability.

Success!

Hee! So I mentioned that one of the TA's names is Hana, and she likes Doctor Who. I've been wanting to spend more time hanging out with people who really live here, and a Korean girl only a few years younger than me who also likes Doctor Who is exactly my speed. The director of the program has come out with us, and toured the Korean Folk Village with us, and has had meals with us, but he's sort of our boss, and also he's my parents' age. Some of the other teachers have gone out to parties, but I'm not a huge fan of dance clubs in the states, so I've been hesitant to go along.

But Hana and I were talking after the opening ceremony yesterday, and she asked what I was doing after I left, even though she had work all evening. So I gave her my email, and we decided we should hang out some night, because I guess nerds need to stick together. She said she tutors until 11 pm half the week, and that's on top of her responsibilities as TA/camp counselor for the KAIST program. But I had an email when I got up this morning, saying which days she was free, if we wanted to go get dinner. And she ended with "let's make an appointment for a fantastic and joyful memory in Korea." So cute.

I made a Korean friend!

Korean Folk Village and Spa

Today is a quiet, rainy day, and I think all the teachers are appreciating it by laying around reading and resting. We have this week's opening ceremony, to meet the teachers and students and introduce ourselves at 4pm, but until then, not much seems to be happening.

Yesterday we visited the Korean Folk Village, which was described as a Korean Williamsburg. They're not completely wrong, but I would drop that down to a Korean Jamestown, which was much less impressive when I visited. Williamsburg goes to great lenghts to be authentic. They have actors who really pretend to live and work in that time period, and they're building an entire plantation the way it would have been built in the old days. Jamestown and the Folk Village both seem to settle for mock buildings you can't enter, and models instead of people in most of the buildings. There are live performers, but we only saw them at the folk dance and acrobatic performances. And I can't understand Korean, but honestly I'm not sure if the tightrope walker really represented a traditional Korean performance, or just something he could do in old fashioned clothing to entertain visitors.

On the other hand, it was interesting just to wander around, because the signs were in Korean and English, so we could actually understand what the different sites represented. One of the few live craftspeople was a woman spinning silk from silkworms. It's way easier than I would have guessed. They literally just pluck the silkworms from the trees, soak them in warm water, and then untangle them by yanking on one end and running the silk through a small hoop to make thread. It gets wound around a support frame, and it's crazy how strong it feels.

After the Folk Village (it's almost two hours north of us), we drove back to Daejeon, and went to the spas. We were trying to find an outdoor hot spring, but the closest one was hours away in the opposite direction from where we were. But there is an indoor hot spring/spa in Daejeon, not very far from where we're staying. It's attached to one of the hotels.

It was only $5 a person, and the men and the women go into totally separate facilities, because everyone bathes completely naked. One of the women in our group wasn't very excited about that, but as long as it's single sex, I didn't care, and neither did my younger roommate. But even the older roommate admitted she felt better once we were in the spa because, as she said, not all Korean women are young and gorgeous. There were women of all ages and shapes, so it was hard to feel self-conscious.

What was weird was that unlike the hot springs I visited in Colorado, for instance (which were outdoors and smelled very strongly of minerals, neither of which were true here), people used this spa as a literal bath. Most spas make you shower before you enter the pool or sauna or whatever, but here people brought entire shower kits, and scooped water out of the springs to rinse off. There were lots of shower areas around the side of the spa room, and people would mostly wash there, and use either water from the showers or scoop water from the baths. There was no soap in the water, so it didn't feel dirty, just unexpected.

We had noted before, as well, that Korean people are much more hands-on with people of the same gender than Westerners. And that was extremely clear in the spa. Women were scrubbing their daughters who were probably 14 years old. Women were washing other women's backs. One of my roommates wanted a massage, but mostly they do a scrub instead, where they just use a scrubby hand towel and some kind of soap/lotion, and scrubbed, in her words, "ALL over." She liked it, but she said she felt like she had a new layer of skin.

There were also two types of saunas, and four different baths, ranging from 100 to 113 degrees, and one cold bath. One of the medium baths had "waterfalls" which were just falling water that felt really good on your back when you sat under them.

After that we went to dinner, which was some amazing Korean barbeque. They bring you raw meat, pork and beef, and you put it on the grill at the table. You're supposed to wrap the meat in lettuce with whatever condiments you like - garlic, a green onion salad, a spicy sauce, kimchi - and then eat it with your hands.

Today, as I said, was our lazy day, but we went out for lunch. We thought we had walked into another Korean barbeque, but instead they brought out bowls of broth and put them on the burners in the table. The server scooped vegetables from a big platter into the bowl, and left the raw seafood and meat for us. Apparently, it's actually a Japanese way of cooking. So you wait for the broth to boil, and then you cook your meat and fish it back out again with a big spoon or tongs. We had clams, mussels, tiny whole octopi, and some kind of tiny squid. The other table had beef. I think we won. So you cook your meat and eat that and the vegetables. Then they bring noodles, which you cook in your broth, and you eat those. Then the server takes what little broth is left in your bowl, and makes a mushy rice dish, about the consistency of risotto. It's a really cool way to make broth and then use all of it. We also got a bunch of dumplings to share around, which were all good.

And now, it's about time to get ready for this week's opening ceremony. I'm still not sure whether I'm teaching high schoolers or middle schoolers this week, or whether I'm supposed to be teaching Astrobiology or Climate Change, but I guess I'll find out.

Home Store

I went to my first Korean store today with Sara and her TA, Hosanna, and Hosanna's sister, Gospel. They were born in the US, though their parents are Korean and they've spent most of their lives here. But their English is almost flawless, and Sara and I haven't asked, but we assume their parents opened a Bible or hymnal and stuck a pin in somewhere to pick their children's names. They're amazingly nice girls though, and I really enjoyed walking around with them. Both Hosanna and Gospel kept an eye out for things they knew would look weird to an American, since they'd spent time in America and knew what our "normal" is. And Korean kids are very touchy feely with other people of the same sex (or at least, my younger boys sit in each other's laps and constantly touch one another, and both of the female TA's I've walked around with have taken my arm or held my hand at one point or another), and it makes people seem much friendlier and more familiar than they might otherwise.

Ha Na was also a good tour guide the other night, and also incredibly sweet, but she didn't understand why we stopped to take pictures of the tank of octopus outside a restaurant in town. Gospel and Hosanna knew we'd want to stop and try the dried squid snacks and the thick grain juice that was weirdly coffee-like, but skip the hot dogs.

The store has everything. A huge selection of clothes and shoes and bags, but also a huge grocery store with anything you could want. You can buy alcohol for a dollar a bottle, but Frosted Flakes were $6 a box. Probably because they're manufactured in America, but it still seems weird to pay that much, no matter the reason. They have Dunkin Donuts here too, so that made me happy.

We got a few more kinds of alcohol to try, some chips, a box of cookies, sushi, fruit (not weird fruit, just because we wanted fruit), and some Korean desserts the girls suggested. Gospel told me about the time she was in the US visiting, and Hosanna was still in Korea. And Hosanna loves peanut butter, but you couldn't get it in Korea until just a few years ago. So Gospel bought two jars, but then tried to take them through security, and had to throw them out, completely unopened. Likewise, when I asked what she missed from the US, she said you can't get Reeses here. Apparently Koreans have something against peanut butter.

After we got back and unloaded groceries, Sara and I went back into town for dinner, and lucked out and found a restaurant that had a copy of their menu in English. So at least ordering was easy. Dinner was amazing, a rice curry, and a dish with rice and octopus that was actually really spicy. We had some leftover, and managed to ask for a takeout box, but for some reason the woman seemed really opposed to giving us one. I need to ask a TA about that, because when we asked for a bag or box, she asked, "Take out?" and we told her yes, but she kept shaking her head and making "no" signs. But then she turned out to have a box after all, obviously made for take-home. We took food home the other night as well, so I don't think it's a big cultural taboo, but that means I have no idea what the problem was. 

I should go to bed, but first, quote of the day from my student, when explaining an artist's rendition of what water on Mars would look like. "But how Mars can look like this? It's an imagination picture!" My kids can be adorable.

Some things are universal.

I should have something more interesting to say today, but mostly I just talked about Mars with my students and finally got them excited about things. Turns out even Korean kids with limited English skills love hearing about the possibility of life on Mars.

The funniest part of my day by far was one of my students fumbling with a cord, and his friend poked him and said, "In Soviet Russia, Korean-blah-blah-blah." I wish I knew the whole joke, but just the fact that Korean kids do Russian inversions cracked me up.

We watched some Korean TV today. I found a Korean sit-com, Korean Fear Factor, Korea's Got Talent (it was actually called that), a show where a guy teaches SAT level English words to the camera in Korean, and a bunch of travel shows in English.  So that was... interesting. I don't know if we learned anything actually, other than Korean game shows are both weirder and tamer than American shows (the competitors' reactions were way over the top, but the actual challenges were kind of boring), but not quite as crazy as Japanese game shows. For whatever that's worth.

Also, the things I miss when I'm in Korea, away from the internet for four days, and with limited time: what the crap is going on in the UK? Apparently Rupert Murdoch is taking every senior UK official down with him? My roommate was like, "So he runs the equivalent of The National Enquirer or something?" I had to find her a list of everything Murdoch owns. Sorry, this is not Korea related at all, but I feel very disconnected from the world right now.

Three days finished, two to go in my first week. It's been up and down so far, but we're closing in on the end of the week. With that said, I should go fix up my lesson plan for tomorrow. After I told my kids about Mars, one of them asked if I could do the same for Neptune, and I had to admit probably not, since we haven't flown many (any?) interesting missions to Neptune. But I told him I'd do Saturn and Jupiter. Especially since one group is doing Mars for their project, so to be fair I should give the other group a presentation on Europa.

I'm really here!

We have internet! We have all the teachers! I have a TA and a class! Let's go!


I should probably post first about my students, but I'll get to them later. I finished my second day of teaching today. After the first day, we decided that we should try out the various alcoholic beverages the teachers had bought while we were out on errands over the weekend. So eight of the nine teachers came to the girls' apartment, and we tried some kind of unfiltered rice wine (not as sweet as I'd hoped), a Korean beer (many people liked it, but I thought it was a pretty unimpressive, wholly unremarkable light beer), a Japanese beer (didn't get to try any), two kinds of Korean wine (both weird and not delicious, but in distinct ways), and an Australian wine Sara picked up just because, which was fine, except I forgot I don't like cabernet.

It was really nice just relaxing with everyone, and I feel like it was a good group bonding experience. We'd been getting along before, but it was nice to sit together after our first day teaching and find that no one had terrible experiences, but everyone was a little frustrated with various things.

Today, I spent more of my breaks talking with my TA, who told me to use his American name, Sean. This is good, because I know his surname is Kim, but his Korean first name is still escaping me. My students also chose American names today. Two chose Brendon and Kevin, but the other two choose Moon and Bear. Close enough. Brendon is my favorite. He actually speaks to me, and asks good questions. Plus, he pulls out his ipad and shows me and other students the solar system app, and an app that uses the ipad as an infrared camera, both of which were genuinely helpful during my lectures when I had trouble communicating to them.

The students' English isn't as good as I'd hoped, but I spoke with them all individually today, and all but one could actually understand me and respond. Not fluently at all, but they got their point across. Which is good, because from standing at the front of the room, I'd really thought Brendon and one other kid were the only ones who knew English at all.

Today, when it was time for dinner, Sara and I went downstairs to ask if the guys also wanted dinner. Mahmoud was sitting with his TA and Rebekah in his apartment, just chatting. His TA is named Ha Na, though half the people are just calling her Hannah. Close enough.

This is the girl Mahmoud dragged over as soon as she told him she studies English by watching Gossip Girl and Doctor Who. I asked her if the difference in accents bothered her, or was even noticeable, and she agreed that sometimes it was confusing, because they don't always sound like the same words. She also said American was much smoother, while British people seem to pronounce letters like "t" much more than Americans. So that was interesting.

We asked her where to go for dinner outside of the cafeteria, and she walked us into town and helped us order food. It was definitely the best food I've had since I've been here. She told us the food would be good, but the "building design is very bad." After a brief discussion, the Americans were delighted to explain the term "hole in the wall." And it was. Fantastic food, tiny, cramped single room for eating. We took off our shoes and sat on cushions around the low tables. We ordered too much food, but there were cold noodles with vegetables, spicy tofu and zucchini, spicy squid and peppers, rice and vegetables, and a hot noodle soup. All were delicious, with plenty of seasoning. The owners and Ha Na were really concerned that the squid and tofu dishes would be too spicy for us, but they were really good, and not that bad at all. Spicy, for sure, but most of us had had worse. The Koreans were impressed, but really I'm thinking somewhere, Americans gave a very poor showing at eating spicy food. The rice and noodle dishes were flavorful, but not spicy. They were actually my favorite. And they brought out these really long, thin, green peppers that everyone sort of leaned away from, but Ha Na seemed surprised, and said they weren't spicy at all. They weren't as sweet as a bell pepper, but she was right, not spicy in the least. We dipped them in something like ketchup. Pretty good.

After dinner, a few of us wandered around the part of town near the university. We got taro bubble tea (which is not a big thing here at all, but Ha Na likes it too, so she knew where to find it), some more food at another store, and tried in vain to get Mahmoud a pay-as-you-go cell phone. Everything we found required a contract, though.

It's maybe a 20 minute walk into town, but nighttime here is actually quite nice, so it was pleasant walking home. And now I need to sleep.

Arrived!

Well, I'm here. We were supposed to have internet in the apartment, but apparently the engineers need to register our computers, and they don't work on the weekends. So maybe Monday I will have internet.

I almost missed my connection in Detroit, because my flight out of Baltimore was delayed. I had to sprint from gate A2 to A54 in the Detroit airport, but somehow my luggage and I both made it. Then when I got through customs in Korea, there was no one waiting for me. She showed up after about half an hour of me standing there, trying to use a pay phone but not being able to use it, and then waiting again. I got on a bus with two other teachers, who are also my roommates (Sara and Rebekah), and got off the bus three hours later, in the dark, with no one to greet us again. Luckily Sara had rented a phone and had the coordinator's number, so we called him, and he showed up a little later.

The apartment itself is nice, and I'll post pictures when I have more reliable internet (for now, coffee shops are my saving grace). The other teachers all seem pretty cool, but the administration here is completely unprepared. They did admit as much though, so at least they're honest. But I was told I would be teaching a one week course in Astrobiology three times, which is what everyone else is doing for their own subject. But the director pulled me aside yesterday to tell me they actually expected me to teach one week on Astrobiology, one on Planetary Science, and one on Climate Change. I told him as politely as I could that that couldn't happen, but he just said I should do what I can. Which is literally almost nothing. So we'll see how all this goes. He also said that the kids would probably not be fluent at all, but we shouldn't tone it down for them, they would just catch up as best they could. It seems like there's been a huge lack of communication in general, but all the teachers are feeling the same. Many don't have lab supplies they were promised, so we're all sort of making lesson plans up on the fly.

We have an opening ceremony thing this afternoon to meet the parents and get introduced to the students, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully I'll have more reliable internet starting tomorrow, but this coffee shop is only a ten minute walk from the apartment, so I can at least update from here, even if skyping might be awkward.

T-18 Hours: Packed!

It's 3:30 the afternoon before I get on my plane, and I think I'm packed. My suitcases feel suspiciously light, though that could be that all my clothes are summery and skirts, shorts, and polo shirts really do weigh a lot less than jeans and sweaters. I was going to just buy shampoo and conditioner over there, but since I seem to have plenty of room, I just threw mine in the suitcase anyway. I also have basically an entire mini-drug store in my first aid bag, so I feel pretty prepared. My passport and ticket are in my purse, and I guess after that it's all negotiable anyway, if I have forgotten anything.

I made fried tomatoes for lunch today, a cup of my Bean Factory coffee, and Mom and I are going to the barbeque place I love for dinner tonight. Because nothing says a last night in America like a pit beef or pulled pork sandwich. Mmmm.

As the first semi-educational item in this blog, I learned one interesting thing yesterday, which is that Verizon customers in South Korea (and some other countries) totally luck out with regard to using their cell phones. Verizon uses CDMA technology, which is pretty much the standard in America, since both Sprint and Verizon use it, and they're the dominant companies. But AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM, which is vastly more popular worldwide (I saw as much as 87% of the worldwide market). In America, you're unlikely to care about the type of network, and most people make their decisions on whether AT&T or Verizon has better coverage in their area, which is only rational. But if you're a Verizon traveler in Europe, you're mostly screwed, because your phone can't talk to the GSM network at all. AT&T and T-Mobile people can just pop a new SIM card in and they're good to go, which is why GSM carriers are better for people who travel abroad a lot.

South Korea however, is one of the few places (along with nearby Asian countries, and a handful of other really splotchy areas of the world) where my Verizon phone should work just fine. I'll be roaming, of course, since I won't be on a Verizon network, but at least it'll work.

So please still refrain from texts and casual calls, since I get charged pretty heavily for them, but in emergencies, I actually will have cell phone use. Huzzah!

First Post: T-61 Hours

Hello, world!

This will be my blog for my 3 weeks teaching a summer high school science camp at KAIST in South Korea. I'll be teaching the same week-long course in astrobiology 3 times to different groups of Korean high schoolers, and I'll be an hour or so south of Seoul, in Daejeong. There are about a half dozen American high school science teachers at the school, along with another grad student, Mahmoud, from my university, George Mason. I've been told the kids will be fluent in English, and Korea is a pretty education obsessed country, so I'm expecting the kids to be pretty bright. Still, I've heard of problems in the past, so it's entirely possible that "fluent" does not mean the same thing to the KAIST administration that it does to me. There's also the conflict between Western style education, which is more focused on discussion and analysis, and the Eastern style, which is more focused on memorization and drilling. I've been told it could be challenging to get the kids actively involved, between the language and cultural gaps. I'll find out in a week!

 I'm not planning on getting a card for my phone, but Korea is supposed to be one of the most wired countries in the world, so internet access should be good: email, this blog, facebook, and skype. Korea is 13 hours ahead of the east coast US though, so when it's evening for most of you, it'll be the next morning for me. I'll be teaching most days from 9-4, so I'll mostly be available online in your morning to midday, or maybe for short periods while I'm getting ready in the morning, if necessary. Keep that in mind.

I have my visa, plane tickets, and teaching materials as of today, so all that's left is packing.

I'll try to take lots of pictures when I get to Korea, but I'm pretty bad at remembering to get my camera out when interesting things are happening. Still, aside from the actual teaching, we're supposed to take trips to Seoul, the demilitarized zone, and the Korean Folk Village. It's only three weeks, so I'm not sure what else I'll have time to see and do, but that alone should be enough, on top of 30 hours of teaching a week.

This will be not only my first trip to Korea, but also my first time out of the country, and my first time teaching in this capacity, so be prepared for discussion of teaching as well as travel. On the other hand, I'll be teaching Korean high schoolers, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of interesting cultural observations.

I think that's all for now. More updates once things start happening!