Perfect Event

We had our first volunteer activity on Saturday and it was perfect. One of the students organized a trip to Daegu where disabled people play at sport that is a bit like Bocce ball.

We were greeted by a man in a wheelchair.  His arms, and legs were contorted.  His face was contorted when he spoke and was really difficult to understand.  You could see how stressed all the kids looked. As he speed off in his wheelchair (that seemed to be rocket powered) one student said to me, "my heart is beating so fast".

The people who could throw for themselves, did.  The ones who couldn't had these ramps to let the bean bag/ball roll down.  Two of the kids were responsible for moving the ramps.  They had to just listen to the commands of the players and do what they were told.  Then, they would have to help the players hold their ball.

The disabled people (who are referred to as "clients" by the center who organized the event) were remarkably good at this game and incredibly good natured. The guy who met us turned out to be a silver medal winner for Korean Special Olympics which explains why he was so strict about enforcing the rules. He also turned out to be pretty funny.

Naturally they wanted Sandy and I to play against them and predictably, they beat us.  I cannot say that I gave my all, but I am reasonably sure they would have beaten us anyway.  Later, they asked my kids to play.  As much as I like them, I have to say they were really, really bad at this game.

During the break time one man decided to tell his story of how he ended up in a wheelchair.  He was an engineer at an architectural firm.  They gave him a motorcycle as a bonus, he wrecked, had 10 operations, was getting better, something went wrong in the hospital and ended up with physical problems, and by his own estimation, limited mental abilities.  Quite sad, and perfect for kids to hear.

As things began to wind down, one woman needed eye drops put in and the kids were happy to help...one put them in, the other wiped her face. The kids had gotten past being afraid of people with disabilities to jumping quickly to help them. They saw them as people, not freaks.

The participants wanted some group pictures at the end, and by looking at their faces, I think you can see that the kids coming to the event added greatly to their day.

As we were walking out, I asked the kids what they thought.  One said she wants to come every month.  Another said this was a precious memory, another said at first she was scared of them, but now she had fun and liked them.

I cannot think of anyway that this could have gone better.  The kids organized it, they did something good that made somebody else happy, they will likely do it again, and the way they see disabled people has changed. Damn am I proud of them.

Proud as can be

Today was the first fundraiser for the volunteer club.  There were no classes today because of the entrance exam, so the students organized a  movie day.  They charged about 40 cents for the movie, 50 cents for snacks or drinks.  They made nice posters to advertise it which included pictures of the girl who was ill who needed medicine.  The students did almost everything on their own and I was really amazed at how well it went.

As a teacher, you often focus on the problem kids...I guess it is natural.  Things like this give you the chance to celebrate the majority of kids, the ones who are decent, who see a problem that want to help, who want to do good things, but do not have the chance.

I am feeling so proud of my kids right now.

No Trains, Planes or Automobiles

Today is the worst day of most kids lives here...the university entrance exam.  Entrance to most universities is based solely on this test.  It can not be understated how important this test isGood Score=Good University=Good Job=Good Life (maybe).

Everyone accommodates the test. During the listening portion of the tests, flights and trains do not run in the area of the testing centers.   Most businesses start late to provide a quieter atmosphere for the test.

Yesterday the kids bid farewell to the third year students.  The third year students were given some words of wisdom from the teachers, and then the 1st and 2nd year students lined the walk way, played drums and cheered for them.

I do not have much belief in the university entrance system, but I gotta say I love the comradery the kids show.

This morning I went to the high school where the test was being taken in our area.  Again, kids lined up from all the local schools and cheered for their schoolmates. A few parents walked their kids through the crowd, one did something I have never seen here: kissed her daughter on the lips. That maybe normal in the US, but it never happens in Asia.

As I was walking out, I saw one mother turn wistfully back at the school, her daughter inside determining the rest of her life. Funny how I never think of the stress on the parents until I saw that mother's eyes.

Toilet Cleaning Fool

I just got busted.

Kids here (and in Japan) are responsible for cleaning the bathrooms.  As you might guess, high school boys definition of clean differs slightly from the normal person.

I do not worry too much about the toilets because I do everything in my power to not use squat toilets. Urinals and sinks are hard to avoid, so I periodically sneak in and clean them when the kids are in class.

Today I was just about finished with the 2nd round  of cleaning (it takes a few tries to get the shmootz off) and in walks the Principal.  "What are you doing?"  damn...I was busted.  I really did not want anyone to know because I think people would think it was odd.  I explained the bathrooms were just too dirty and I could not stand it. I showed him the chemicals I bought to clean it.  He looked around, "Very clean!".  Soon we were discussing the chemicals and how everyone complains about the toilets.  Then he was on his way after his trademark, "Very Good".

Do Something Good 2nd Month

The volunteer club seems to be going pretty well.  Sometimes it is like making sausage, disgusting to watch, but the end results are good.

The club has about 40 members and is doing the following projects:

Sister School:  Students are raising money to help pay for salaries for teachers in a little school in the jungle.  It is an interesting little village of about 100 people that has been decimated by the pollution caused by a local mine.  Their school is a bamboo hut and their teacher has not graduated high school.  With a bit more money, they can get a better teacher.


Health Care: The students are raising money for a 12 year old girl named Boi Pop Chan who had TB meningitis 3 or 4  years ago and had a lot of brain damage. Since then she is paralyzed, she can not speak, eat on her own or do anything. So her mother is taking care of her full time, so has no income. The father of the kid is a Mon (Burmese ethnic group) soldier. The mother use to be in the Mon army too, as a nurse, but had to stop to take care of her child.

The Mon army is paying for a small house for this kid and her mother. The community is providing them with food. The kid now has a lot of convulsions due to her condition. So she needs to take medicine twice a day. So her monthly treatment just for the convulsions is 1000 baht (about $35) a month. The kids will raise money to pay for that for a while at least.

Animal Care: There are over 100,000 street dogs in Bangkok.  The students are raising money to help support for a spay and neuter program at a clinic for street dogs.

Local Projects: A group of students is looking to help kids, handicapped and old people.  They are going to participate in an event for handicapped people in two weeks.

In the next week or so, the fundraising projects start.  More about that later.


  

Why I stopped for a while.

Why have I stopped blogging lately?  Simple answer: I have not felt like it.  It takes a lot of time and energy and I just have not felt like writing much lately.

Do Something Good 1st Meeting

We had our first meeting of the volunteer club today. Last year's project for the boy who drank acid, Se Tu, had about 30 students, but I did not know what to expect today, so when we got 55 I was really pleased.  

The students decided that they wanted to work on international projects in Thailand including :

• a sister school for Burmese refugees
• an animal sanctuary
• helping with health care for an individual. 

I think I have ended up with another big project which will be like childbirth: I will be exhausted, aggravated, frustrated, happy, proud and in the end I will forget all the bad stuff and think, "That was great!".

Good Kids

I am really enjoying the students this term.  The things I like the most these days are:

1. Enthusiasm.  There is just nothing like coming to school and having kids scream "Steve-uww"from the windows.
2. Generosity- The single greatest trait of most Koreans is how they share.  If a kid buys some food, they always share it.  The same is true with my colleagues. 
3. Closeness- I love it when I see a couple of high school girls walking around holding hands and just laughing like little school girls. It seems in most places kids are in such a rush to grow up, they can not enjoy adolescence.
4. Notes-I often get thank-you notes from the kids...usually with a few grammatical mistakes which for some unknown reason, makes them even better.

Kids have problems here, but there is an awful lot that the rest of the world could learn from a country where kids study hard, don't do drugs, don't have a lot of sex, and are generally just not snarky like they are elsewhere.

Shortages but not of porn

There may be a shortage of food and about everything else, but at least the North Koreans can get their porn.  According to an article todays' paper, "Foreign porn has spread so widely that any home with a player usually has one or two porn DVDs."

I guess all they need is a little electricity and they can have themselves a good time.

Safe and Stupid

Some Koreans, like some Americans, have the same blame the foreigner first attitude, so it is no surprise that when a foreigner does something stupid and criminal it gets lots of attention. There have been recent stories about Americans  who have molested kids, attacked old men, and video taped and distributed liaisons with Korean girls.  The haters have good material to hate us.  I have always been treated so well, so I think the haters are a minority.

If you normalize the statistics for age and sex between Koreans and foreigners, there is not a big difference in crime statistics. It seemed reasonable for the Korean government required us to get a document from our state saying we did not commit any crimes.  No big deal, it took about a week and it was done. 

Now they have decided to require that people get FBI background checks. The process entails:

• get fingerprinted- how long this takes depends on your jurisdiction
• send the documents to the FBI- 3 months for processing plus a week for mail (3 months...ridiculously long)
• Send the documents to the US State Department to be certified- 3 weeks for certification, 1 week for mail

If everything goes perfectly, you must wait 4 plus months for this one stage in the process. 

Korea is competing with Japan and the rest of the world for native English teachers.  The JET Program in Japan is far better organized and has a better reputation the EPIK program (which I am in).  One advantage Korea has is the JET program is bureaucratic and takes forever to get through the highering process.  With this new requirement,  the EPIK program has lost a big advantage.  

Given that everyone already has to go through a background check at the state level, it seems unlikely that this FBI background check will have any real impact on crimes committed by foreigners.  What seems certain to me is there are going to be some people who go to another country because they do not want to wait for this process to be completed. 

Gyeongju Part 2

We made our third trip to Gyeongju this past weekend.  I wrote before about it being a living museum, and that is fair since there are cultural sites everywhere you look.  Last time we were not able to go to Bulguksa, a temple that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  We made it this time and it is really beautiful. It was founded in 573 expanded, destroyed and rebuilt over the years, but the statues are original stuff.

Kids and Museums

We have gone to lots of museums recently and they have all the normal stuff behind glass...great for adults.

What I think that is different is that they are all been overflowing with families with young kids...fabulous in my opinion.  Most museums are free, so it is a cheap way for any family to have a day out. In addition, they have lots of interactive displays in separate areas for kids. Some of the display are designed for little ones, some for the whole family, and even some computer generated stuff to appeal to teens.  Brilliant in my opinion.

Silly Pictures From Gyeongju

As mentioned before, Gyeongju is great and beautiful, but like everywhere, there are a few silly things I had to take pictures of.

I really do not know what they mean by this sign

A funny non-infringing (kind of) sign

I love the Love Hotels because they all have some personality.  This weekend we stayed in one that was pretty tame outside of the love toy vending machine.

Do Something Good!

I am starting a volunteer club at school. The purpose of the club is to

• get students interested in volunteering (something that is not very common here)
• teach them about other countries and the problems people have
• give them an opportunity to speak English with me
• give them an opportunity to develop leadership skills
• improve students' resumes to enter university 

I wrote a few times about Se Teu, the boy who drank acid, and the program we had to pay for his operations.  I think it was a great experience and wanted to continue doing something like this.  The school supported it, but I did not have the sense that they were enthusiastic.

Students who were in the group last year have been sending in their university applications, and now there has been a growing realization of the value of a volunteer program and everyone is remarkably enthusiastic.

I contacted a US based organization, Do Something Good. They provided me with the materials to help organize the students and some advice. I am hoping that I will have the students take over all the leadership very quickly including the choice of projects.

As usual, I had low expectations....maybe 10 or 15 kids will be interested.  I put up some signs Friday and I have got 26 kids signed up already.  What they hell have I gotten myself into...again!

Weekend Pics

This weekend we joined what seemed like a million others to a rain soaked lantern festival in Jinju.  In the end it was nice, but not great because of the rain.  I also posted a couple of pics of the rice fields.  The pictures do not really capture the incredible contrast of the blue sky with green/yellow of the fading rice.

Vacation

Just got back from a vacation around the south west part of Korea.

We spent a day in Damyang which is famous for bamboo and old trees neither of which were exciting. The town had a really nice feel with a long walking park and hundreds of families enjoying themselves. The government provides tons of free things for people to do and they really take advantage of it. It is great.

My favorite site in Damyang was a series of boulders placed across the river. It afforded the more daring a way to cross (and fall into) the river.

 I have to give a hat tip to the girl in heels who traversed the river. A girl can be a risk taker, but one of the risks should not be appearing to have short legs.

We spent our first night in a love hotel. We knew it would be hot when we saw the hallway lit with black lights and painted with flourescent paints. We got into our room which had your standard 6 foot long mirror next to the bed. I have no idea how they expect you to brush your hair using it, but I guess it was OK.

You can read more about the vacation after the jump

The Deadliest Mile

Today's paper had a story about Korean roads being the 5th most deadly in the world, but this is compared to the population.  Of course in a densely populated country, a lot of people do not drive so this statistic is meaningless.

A much more important measurement is the number of deaths per mile driven.  In this category, Korean roads are deadliest...slightly ahead of the Czech Republic and 20% ahead of Malaysia which was in 3rd.

Koreans are consistently some of the most thoughtful people I have met, but it seems that there is some sort of evil spirit that takes over their bodies when they get behind the wheel.

This weekend I was doing my usual driving/bitchin' about Korean driving when I realized I was nudging into traffic and being a slightly bad driver myself...I am afraid it is catching.

Can You Pass This Test?

A student challenged me with the following question from a national test that was given early this month:

"28. With no attempt there can be no failure and with no

failure no humiliation. So our self-esteem in this world

depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed

potentialities. Thus, ________________________________.

This illustrates how every rise in our levels of expectation

① the higher your expectations are, the more you will achieve

② self-esteem can be increased by lowering actualities

③ success divided by pretensions equals self-esteem

④ early failures in life may lead to happiness later in life

          ⑤ more supposed potentialities increase chances of happiness


13% of students nationwide guessed the correct answer, 3.  A guess may be the wrong word since a guess would mean that 1 in 5 (or 20%) students got the right answer. I have attached a few passages/questions and, according to the Flesch Easy Reading Formula, they are university level for native English speakers.


Most kids struggle with saying anything past, "How are you?" and "What's your name?", but they are expected to understand ridiculously complex written questions that most native English speakers would have to read a few times (like I did) to understand.

Eventually the translating software will actually work and the need for reading English will diminish, so the current lack of focus on speaking is an enormous mistake. The government is making strides, but until the university entrance exams have a spoken component the current system will stay in place and the vast majority of kids will study English for a decade and not have even a rudimentary grasp of the spoken language.

Since the questions are already on the internet, I thought it was a good idea to publish a few of these after the break if you are interested

Trust

According to the UN, you are about 14 times as likely to be robbed in the US than in Korea. There are some conveniences that come along with safety; shop owners leave things on sidewalks overnight, bicycles are not locked in some areas, and nobody checks tickets on trains (but they do on subways).

My favorite recent crime story was about a man who was robbing a little private school.  When he produced a knife, the woman fell.  As she got up, they discussed why he was robbing the shop.  She pulled out a bible and they talked about it and he apologized and left.

Less than 20 minutes after he left, Cho came back to the institute and kneeled before Woo with teary eyes, asking her to report him to the police. Since she refused to do so, Cho called 112 (which is 911 in Korea) and turned himself in.

Only in Korea.

High School Boys for Mature Women

There is an article in today's paper about male sites for young men to sell themselves to mature women.

More than a dozen male high school and university students have been caught by police for operating multiple online community sites brokering sexual encounters between younger men and older women.

 ...Of the 14, seven were high school students.... 

...Among community cafes they operated, one site had a membership of 550 adult females

I am not sure what to make of this.  I am guessing some of the "550 females" are really guys pretending to be girls and others are just playing around and not really seeking an encounter. That said, there must be a market for something like this.

According to the article, "The boys did it because they wanted to make money."  This part does not surprise me since there was another article today with a Reuters poll saying that Koreans are the most materialistic people in the world.

These sort of things really do shock me because the people I meet do not seem to be any more materialistic than people anywhere else. In addition, I know that there are sex related things in big cities, but we just see none of it here in our little town.

Even though I posted a few things lately that seem a bit negative, I really do think Korea is a great place to live, to raise a family, and to teach.