Wheels

After a few months of lots of hand gestures, writing prices on paper and making a fool of ourselves in general, we finally bought a car last weekend. We searched in our town, we went to Daegu with friends and by ourselves, and we finally went to Busan.

The car is 8 years old, but it only has 71,000 KM (about 42,000 miles) on it. Because it had one owner and a digital odometer (harder to cheat with these), it looks and drives great, we think it will last us as long as we are here. At $3000 it was more expensive than the other cars we were looking at, but it had one feature we really wanted: the dealer would buy it back at a fixed price...about $2000.

A Boy Needs Surgery Part 3

As I mentioned before, the students are trying to raise money to pay for operations for a boy, who is a Burmese refugee in Thailand, that drank acid.

The students are finished with mid term exams and are now going full steam on fundraising. We started making donation boxes yesterday and will raise money starting this week.

One girl, who secretly loves me but says she hates me, asked to not have her picture taken. Naturally, she will be in the first picture I post (she has the yellow blanket on).

I received an excellent ribbon tying lesson from one of the girls. Unfortunately, I was a much worse student than she was teacher and my ribbon had to be thrown away after everyone laughed at me.

The overview of the group. I can't believe we have 26 people now.

Surprisingly enough, the boys even had a good time.

I am doing a series of lessons about issues that children have including HIV, lack of education, access to health care...all exciting stuff (to me at least). The timing on the fundraising has been excellent since the kids are learning about issues and having an opportunity to do something about it.

I am really enjoying this and I think the kids are too.

Perfect Timing

Yesterday was awful. I had four classes, and two did not go well. Kids were not trying in one, and in the other they were just playing and chatting. The other two classes went well and my special lunch time students were great. Something really bad happened in the office that upset me a bit, too.

I came to school today with trepidation. Will it be another difficult day? Do I really know what I am doing? Am I making any difference at all?

When I walked in one of my students was waiting for me. She had spent two hours writing a letter for me. She wanted to tell me that her English was not very good, but she really enjoyed my class and me as a teacher. She wanted to apologize for not doing her homework, too. I forced myself not to hug her, but I did thank her and now she will start coming to visit me at lunch for help on her homework.

I feel great.

Gyeongju

We spent a couple days in a training seminar in a near by city, Gyeongju. Sandy and I went there once before, but I never got around to writing about it.

The city is called an outdoor museum because it was the capital of Korea during the Silla dynasty about 1300 years ago and has ruins all around that shows off the power of the country during that time. This picture, which I took on the earlier visit, shows the natural beauty and some nice hills except they are not hills, they are burial mounds. They are all over the area and they have one that they have made a tunnel into the middle of to see how the ancient kings were buried. Small rooms with treasures covered with hundreds of feet of stone and dirt. Very cool.

As usual, the most exciting things happened by accident. When we were out for a walk, we happened upon a cultural festival which featured traditional Korean dancing and singing. We have become fans of traditional Korean drumming, called salmonori. I am normally not a big fan of traditional dance, but the fan dance was great.

An Excellent Weekend

I wanted to post some pics from last weeks particularly excellent trip to Deagu.

As always, my favorites are the excellent T-shirts

I love the Sexy Cookie shop since Sandy and I have always referred to the women's nether lands, so to speak, as a cookie.

There was a nice little festival which had pink balloons for breast cancer awareness.

There was also a race for kids...very cute.

The number one site of the day was the bridal shop mannequin with it's future husband, the washing machine. I find this especially funny given that men will never touch these babies (I am referring to the machine versus the wife who I am almost sure they will touch).

We are going away for meetings and a couple of days of vacation, so there will probably be no posts for a few days.

No Sleep...except in class

Kids need a crap load of sleep and they are going to get it one way or another. As I mention in the next post, kids sleep in class here. One major cause of sleepy kids is they sleep 48 minutes less per night than kids in the US according to this story. The main reason: kids spend an average of 2 hours and 6 minutes a day in cram schools. So some of the effects of the cram schools are offset by sleeping in class.

I also wonder about how diet affects the kids. Koreans, at 3.5%, have the lowest rate of obesity in the OECD according to this article. Lower than even the Japanese. I do not know if diet plays into the sleepiness equation, but I know that for the first three months I was here I was exhausted every afternoon and had to sleep. Finally, I changed my breakfast and saw a dramatic improvement in my energy level.

Discipline

Kids here are generally well behaved, but they are still kids and kids do stupid things sometimes. Schools seem to be responsible for all sorts of discipline from small stupid things like smoking to criminal acts like assault or robbery. With a fast changing culture and society, what do you do?

A decade ago the western influence was much smaller, the kids had more respect, and a bit of fear of their teachers. It was common for kids to be beaten in school. A few years ago the government changed the corporal punishment policy. The policy has changed, but the students, teachers and schools are in transition. It seems that nobody is sure what comes next.

I have talked to a number of teachers from various schools, so I am basing my comments on general observations. I am not writing about my school or Sandy's school, but what happens in schools in general.

Some of the common punishments include:

• blind eye: some teachers feel that it is better to ignore the behavior and let the students suffer the consequences
• standing: kids will have to stand at their desks or special desks at the back of the room
• scolding: either in the class or in the office where it is closer to yelling than talking
• knocking: the teacher will use his or her knuckles to lightly rap a student on the head.
• kneeling: kneel on a concrete floor for an hour and your knees ache
• disciplinary card: a way to record disciplinary problems which can lead to "volunteer activities" like cleaning the bathrooms or eventually expulsion.
• beating: small sticks will be used to hit the students on the palms of their hands, back of their legs, or their buttocks.

Some common problems and how they are resolved are:

• sleeping in class: blind eye treatment, knocking and standing at the back of the room. This is a common issue in every school and some classes will have 1/3 of the students sleeping.

• Make-up: blind eye or scolding. Girls are not allowed to wear make-up. Most girls wear make-up...it is kind of a game. The funny thing is the prettiest ones, who need no make-up, wear the most and get into trouble for it. I guess it is a game, but generally the teachers turn a blind eye to it unless it gets excessive and the girls will be scolded for it.

• Cell phones: blind eye or phone taken. Kids are not allowed to have phones. Nearly every kid has one. It is a game. If they play it properly and turn it off in school, nobody minds. If they try to send messages or play games in school, the phone is taken away.

• Chatting in class: blind eye or scolding. If it is a momentary chat, usually a blind eye. If it continues, the kids will be scolded in the classroom and possibly the office. This is a common issue in every school.

• Being disruptive or disrespectful: disciplinary card, scolding, corporal punishment. Disrespect for teachers is not tolerated by most teachers. If a kid speaks inappropriately, he or she will be taken to the office and yelled at. If the kid responds appropriately, it may end there. If he or she does not, beating or kneeling. Apparently this happens a lot less than it did in the past.

• Criminal acts from robbery to assaults are also frequently dealt with by the school. The response to this varies, but will generally involve parents and be severe...from corporal punishment, to expelling the students. I think it depends on the school, and the actual crime.

I use my progressive disciplinary system, which goes from yellow, to red card, to standing then to one of the schools disciplinary cards, generally works for me. I am told by teachers at other schools that they do not think it would be effective for them and they are unsure what would be good for them.

I think it is an impossible situation. Teachers want to comply with the laws and they want kids to learn. They did not get into teaching because they like to beat kids. Some end up doing things they do not want to because they are at a loss for what else to do. The kids, who have grown up being disciplined with corporal punishment, do not really understand how to behave. Parents often times want the schools to take over complete responsibility for their children.

Now that I think of it, it is amazing that the kids are generally so well behaved.

...on the other hand, it may be toxic crap

I hate to admit it, but after reading this NY Times story about e-coli and American ground beef, I have to wonder what the hell is going on with our food inspection system as it relates to ground beef. The story does a good job or reporting the whole grinding process and the twists and turns (all away) from significant inspections.

To their credit, Costco tests and inspects their meat themselves. A shocking revelation by Costco's food safety director is, “Tyson will not supply us. They don’t want us to test." Why? Because if there is a problem, they do not want the scrutiny a report to the government would bring.

The number of significant health problems seems to be somewhat small, but there potential of huge problems. I am guessing after a few of the multi-million lawsuits go through the courts, some of these practices will change...until then down with American (ground) Beef.

My friend was right

When I wrote about university students in Korea having cosmetic surgery, my friend said the number was too low. There is a story, which I did not see, that says she was right. The number of women who have had cosmetic surgery according to a dissertation (which could be total crap of course) is 50%. Wow.

Chuseok

Today was Chuseok and Koreans flock to their home towns and pay respect to their ancestors. Many of the women colleagues were looking forward to cooking all weekend while the men sat and relaxed (that may be a lie).

I have been reading a book with traditional Korean stories which, apparently, all children have read. The stories focus on respecting parents, wives, and country. Living in Asia for a while, I realize how much we can learn in this area.

The Vice-Principal at my school invited Sandy and I to join his family for the ceremony. From what I am told, it is really unusual to invite non-family members to the ceremony and I really appreciate him inviting us. Really nice man and a really nice family. The ceremony was quite short, about 15 minutes where the men take turns doing deep bows in front of a table of food, and incense to pay respect to their ancestors. We sat around and ate a nice meal prepared by the women.

The markets were full of speciality gifts which includes buying all sorts of packaged stuff. Some looked good...nice wine sets for example. Some seemed strange...Spam as a gift? But the most ridiculous to me were the packaged food...14 avocados for 150,000 won ($128) or, my favorite, 16 pounds of beef for 1,300,000 won ($1104). At least it was not any of that crappy, toxic American beef.

Silliness aside, I think it is great the way people respect their elders and ancestors...we ought to do something similar in the US.

AIDS

I am doing a series of lessons about kids in developing countries that I know. The kids have had various serious problems like HIV/AIDS, lack of access to health care, education, clean water etc. I wrote a short essay about each child and I have the students ask me about the story. Later, the students ask each other about the issue and finally they write about it.

The first lesson was about Pyrote, a boy who I knew in Thailand. He died of AIDS. When it came time for them to ask me questions, the first girl asked, "How can we help children like Pyrote?" Ding, Ding, Ding. I was so happy that was the reaction. The second question was, "How do people get HIV and AIDS?" I thought, "Wow, how can she not know that?" I did the same lesson with 8 classes and around half of the students had the same question.

I was told kids are taught about HIV/AIDS, but if they were taught, they have forgotten. Not sure how everyone would have reacted if I said sex, so I just avoided it by exchanging the words "have a relationship with out a condom" for "have sex without a condom". The kids listened, nobody laughed...pretty good.

You might think with the AIDS epidemic it is crazy for kids not to know. The thing is while the US with 1.2 million HIV+ people has an epidemic, according to the CIA Factbook, Korea has 12,000. The kids ought to know, but not knowing is a lot less dangerous than it would be in most other countries.

Cram Schools and Such

People are obsessed with education here. Kids from elementary school on go to cram schools after their regular schools to get an edge. I did not get how popular cram schools are until I read in the paper today that there are 398,000 teachers in regular schools and 518,000 in cram schools. Add the unlicensed teachers and the number jumps to around 600,000.

The schools cost varies but they average around $500 a month per kid. One of the teachers said he spends about $800 a month for cram school for one of his kids. Not sure how people can afford this.

I guess it is no surprise that Korean kids do so well on international tests for math and science. English on the other hand...