Philosopher Gabby Shares the Meaning of Life

Hey there! I'm back already! I'm on fire! Typing champion! No one can stop me! Write all the blog posts! Exclamation!

me

It's Day 92 and the first day of October
(I know I say this every time, but the time is flying!)

It's already pretty cold here in North Korea. My co-teacher says that we don't have much of a fall season- it goes from hot to cold very quickly without a nice gradual transition season. I hope it doesn't get too cold too quickly, because I still have a lot more exploring to do.

The universal pose of awesomeness

(also note, this photo was not taken in Hwacheon...)

I still am not ready to give you a tour, what with my absolute lack of photos... And actually I don't really have many photos for this post either~ but I have lots of words to share. Prepare yourself for STORY TIME

To delve into my deep, philosophical side, I would say that the reason I came to Korea was to find myself.

JK JK JK
I actually am pretty sure I know where I am. I'm sitting at my desk.

Or is this not me?
Or is this just one variation of a Gabby who exists in limitless parallel dimensions?

More seriously, besides the obvious goals of teaching in Korea (inspire international understanding/education, perspective on the education system, Korean culture and language understanding) I really want to build a better base and feel like I have control of my life. College was very much: No sleep/eat all the vending machine food/never see the sun/procrastination every day/What am I doing with my life?

I want to be a healthy and happy person, so I when I am not doing teacher things, I try to do things like exercise and sleep regularly. I have little control over my diet as I basically eat whatever my host mom puts on the table and whatever is served for lunch in my school cafeteria. My host mom gives me A LOT of food - so I don't think that I will ever lose any weight, but it is all healthy food! (hopefully when I finally get a place of my own, I can control my diet as well and decrease the giant portion sizes).

Amelea and I go to a nearby gym after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's a really nice place, it's free, and it's only about a 3 minute walk from the elementary school. Here are pictures of the gym I've stolen from Amelea without her permission:

My favorite thing about the gym is that there is this awesome view of the mountains!

I don't have much more than a half an hour or so at the gym because I have to make it back home in time for dinner. But I can get pretty sweaty if I work myself hard enough. Here, admire my very first work-out selca I took just for you:

예쁘죠?

There are also some really great bike paths along the river that I use for running on the weekend. One route I take is about 10k or 6.5 miles there and back. The first third of the path is alongside family farms of corn/peppers/rice/plants-I-don't-recognize. The second third is this fantastic narrow tunnel of plants in a forest that makes my inner tree-hugger pee in excitement. Every time I run through that part I'm like:

My running form decreases to this ^ as well. Either that or I'm hopping around, pretending to be a woodland elf...



The final third of my route is on a plank pathway on the river. It is beautiful. Check it:

When I run there aren't too many other people outside. Usually. Last Saturday was different. There was a walk-a-thon event with hundreds of people... and I didn't run into them until I turned around and started to head back. So I was trying to run one direction as hundreds of people walked in the other. And the trail in the forested area can get pretty narrow... so I stopped running and squeezed awkwardly around way too many people. At the front of the pack was all the 아줌마s and  아저씨s in their intense hiking/workout gear. One old lady shouted at me, "벌써 다 갔다왔어?" "Wow! Did you already make it there and back?" to which I said no and tried to start explaining that I am just running on my own, and I started at a different time, but she cut me off with the typical Korean response to a foreigner speaking Korean - shock and immediate immitation of what I say. Sigh. Another failed conversation...

I also saw at least 10 of my students and their families. They were all very shocked and shouted my name (since I'm usually in business casual clothing and much less sweaty/red in the face).

Another fun this about this route is the wildlife I run into. One day a decently sized snake decided to cross the trail in front of me by the farmlands part. It was all like, slither slither slither. I stopped running to marvel at how smooth they can move (and surprisingly fast, so I wanted to give it some distance). I also see lots of birds, like this one really fat one that freaked out when I came running around a corner and "flew" away (glided pretty near the ground). If my animal-obsessed child memory holds true, it was a pheasant.

Also I see lots of fun dragonflies and dead animals like mice.

Also (and this isn't just on my running route - more like every place in Hwacheon) there are giant moths EVERYWHERE. Hundreds come every night and they are all dead of the street/sidewalks by morning. They usually are piled around the streetlamps (y'know the typical moth obsession with light holds true for these giant moths as well). The scariest thing about these moths is that their fat abdobens (like the size of my pointer and middle finger together) is FULL of hundreds of tiny white eggs. The moths die and then their eggs practically explode out of their abdomens.

These are of course the same little dudes that attacked Taemin at the Chuncheon KPOP concert I went to.



The other running route I haven't explored as much, maybe only 7 or 8 kilometers along the river in the other direction. It's nice but I think I like the other way better. On this route there's also a plank pathway on the river, but then the beautiful river view gets cut out as the trail curves up the mountain to go around an army base. Most of the army base is bordered by a giant stone wall, but there is a part with a wire fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. I could see rows and row of tanks and war machines things my brother could probably name but I am clueless about. Right after the army base the path returns to the riverside and then there is a nice park. The park had lots of signs claiming that this and that was a "picture zone" and there were already several familys staking out various picturesque areas and setting up their tripods when I went running by.

I found this nice little part that stuck out over the river and it was super peaceful. The wind blew by softly, and the water from the river sort of splashed up against the base of the platform, and I spun around taking in the beautiful green scenery like:

All in all, I am really loving my new home.

I'm much healthier and have a somewhat steady life schedule. And while I had a good streak of getting 8-9 hours of sleep and not using the computer or my phone about an hour before going to bed (which really makes a difference folks) I felt much more energetic and happy more often as well.

Moral of the story my dear readers:

1. Get exercise

2. Go outside

3. Sleep

1+2+3 = Happiness

Bye bye!

~ short ribs 





Meet the students

Hello dear Interwebs nomad. Since you have made it this far into who-knows-where, stay a while. Listen to some stories from a wizened young lass who actually isn't that wise but likes to fancy she is.

Today I'll tell you about some adorable monsters that will trick your heart open and make you want to forgive their every action. They are... my students.
Korean 3rd and 4th graders.
Heart-controling, mind-bending Korean 3rd and 4th graders.

To help you understand the current situation first you need some information:

It's now Day 88.
88 days since I came to Korea. And I've been teaching at my school for over a month now!

The tour of the school itself will have to wait because I still haven't taken any photos of the grounds… But I have more than enough to share for this post!

My desk is in the school's English classroom - a really awesome room with tons of materials for English learning. The 5th and 6th graders have class there, along with the after school club classes.

Me at my desk. Photo credit to Jiwon (you'll learn about her soon…)

Since our desks are part of the classroom we don't exactly have the same kind of privacy as the other teachers' office rooms (the best personal, American equivalent I can make is the mysterious and forbidden teachers lounges that we could never enter as elementary schoolers, except here, teachers have their desks there as well and do most there work there). Every morning, lunch break, and any other chance these little rascals get, students always come running to our classroom to clamor around our desks and/or play games in the classroom. This makes lesson-planning and prep rather difficult since the students constantly want attention…

With one exception! One of my 4th graders is actually kind of helpful!
Meet 지원 (Jiwon), my personal assistant:

지원 complete with her daily green bow in hair.

지원 comes to meet me in the English room almost every morning and definitely every lunch period. She organizes my desk and teaching "basket" (what I put my materials for my classes in, and carry since I have to travel around to each 3rd and 4th grade classroom). Sometimes she puts everything away for me while I'm in the middle of working on something… so then I have to bring my notebooks/pens/etc back out once she leaves…
But~ just look at that cute, little buck-toothed smile! I can't tell her to stop whatever she's doing and end up smiling back at her and thanking her for her "help" every time, whether it's actually helpful or not.

I don't know why she insists on meeting me or even helping me. Other students prefer to hang out with their friends, which 지원 does occasionally as well though not as often as she spends time with me, so it's not that she doesn't have friends… She is the older sister of twin 2nd graders, so maybe she's used to taking care of others/helping out?

Her English skill is not very high, so we speak with lots of gestures and more Korean than English (though I really do try to ask simple things in English to encourage her). Once she clears away everything on my desk, we usually have a moment of awkward silence, when she looks at me expectantly-
Then we usually draw things for each other, or I write things out for her to slowly type into a blank PowerPoint. And we exchange candy very often. ;)

Apparently elementary schoolers (at least the younger ones) are not allowed to use computers. 지원 doesn't really even know how to type in hangul (Korean alphabet lettering), let alone English, much less know how everything else on the computer works.
One day we were typing a conversation (think "Hello Jiwon! Hello Gabby teacher. How are you? I'm happy." etc) when the foursome came. The Fantastic Four. Four 4th grade boys who seriously crack me up.
They confronted 지원 and I when she was meticulously typing a new word in English. First they yelled very quickly in Korean. Then 상근, the most vocal of the boys, decides to explain it to me in English (which I enjoy immensely considering that his English skill is lower than his friends). He says, "Computer. No. No computer. Jiwon no. We no. No computer," accompanied with large X arm gestures and earnest facial expressions. His friends all nod vigorously in agreement. 범규, a boy with better English, then says, "Students can't computer. Jiwon, stop."
I then nodded my understanding and assured them it's okay. No problem. Don't worry.
They insist a bit more and poke 지원 with neck cutting, stop now, hand gestures.
I shoo them away, and because they are boys with too much energy and short attention spans, they promptly run off to bother someone else.

Actually I think all my students have too much energy. By the end of my consecutive four classes every morning, I'm usually exhausted. It's like they suck the energy out of me to add to their overflowing supply of it. It also doesn't help that they always find more sugar. I had some candy in my desk drawer, and some students must have found it because one day, I come to school and it was all gone.
One little 2nd grade girl was bouncing around and asking me a billion questions, all the while consuming this sugar-overdose-invention:

 Of course this antique would appear again to spite me after more than a decade of extinction. 

I took the Push-Pop away from her as my patience was wearing out, with a strong suggestion: "I think that's enough now, right? Why don't you put it on my desk and go sit down for class?"

Sometimes they put their energy to more creative/productive projects (other than their daily project of gluing themselves to Amelea teacher* and I). My second week or so of teaching, two of my adorable 3rd graders gave me these bracelets they made. I don't think I've ever been so happy about rainbow colored bracelets. ^^

And despite all the trouble these children can get into, the best thing, the reason why I love life right now, is how much they make me smile and laugh. 

Seriously, laugh.

The Fantastic Four have a new obsession with singing for Amelea and I during lunch. It all started when Amelea showed them this video of an amazing child singer:

They got really into the song, trying to sing the English lyrics they don't know how to pronounce at all. Then they started their own version. The chorus of "Tomorrow", when the girl belts "TOMORROW TOMORROW I LOVE YA TOMORROW" they start screaming "GIVE ME MONEY, I WILL, I HAVE NO MONEY, I DO" (돈내나, 돈줄게, 돈없어, 돈많다/돈꺼져) or just "TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO".
The reason they are saying all that about money is because the Korean word for 'money' is '돈', like "ton", and the "to" sound is enough for it to sound similar to the word "tomorrow".
Remember, they are fourth grade boys. And they find just about everything that each other say/do hilarious.

They have sang this at least a bagagillion times.

They've also performed their interpretation of "Let it go" and "What does the fox say?" (My favorite is still definitely their "Tomorrow" rendition)


Final student story for the day~ I sort of knew this after my first few days of teaching, but I have one class in particular I love more than all my other classes. One of my 3rd grade classes is full of a bunch of troublesome but hilarious boys and outnumbered girls who hit them more often than the boys hit each other (hitting/violence is very common in Korean schools and doesn't have the same repercussions as American schools. I see them do it so often (and they are so tiny anyways) that I find it more of a sign of affection/friendship/camaraderie than a negative act of violence). Along with several low level students who I tried to connect with and encourage from the first day, and they now are trying so hard and I feel like they are improving a little and that makes me so proud of them. This is the class with the boy who saw me at that KPOP concert a while ago, and I feel like he is super curious/confused by me and it's great because he pays attention in class now when he used to be very troublesome (so my co-teacher says). This is also the class where the girls who made me bracelets are from.
Even though they are pretty naughty, don't all do their homework, and so I can't give them many stickers as a reward, these kids all just click with me somehow. It's like I become instantly happy when I see them. I become happy just thinking about them.
In the cafeteria for lunch, the boys will get super excited and wave at me if we make eye contact. In class several of them refuse to say my name correctly and call me 갈비 instead of Gabby. 갈비 (Galbi/Kalbi) is the word for short-ribs, usually beef or pork (or in my part of Korea, chicken too) and grilled and delicious.

I try to scold them for calling me this. Honestly, I don't think I should enjoy being called meat… but they are so adorable. And I think 갈비 tastes great. And they say it kind of affectionately. And I can tell they just want attention. And did I mention that these kiddos are adorable?

Like… like.. baby penguin adorable:

viola. FInally found a place for gifs in this post!

Alrighty!
And that, dear reader, is the end of my student tales. You have been warned, if you ever try to argue or get angry at these children, you will lose! The cuteness will win! Your heart is not your own!

Feel free to wander back sometime. I might just have a new tale to tell you ^.~

안녕!
~ 갈비 티쳐


*I don't remember who I've introduced, so just in case I haven't, Amelea is another Fulbrighter who is teaching the 5th and 6th graders at my school. She is awesome. We sing and dance and eat and have all the fun together. I'm super lucky~ we are the only Fulbrighters with another Fulbrighter at the same school.

School, Zorro, 돌, and REDFACE

Hi there!
Okay, I'm a liar. I really thought I would write more last last week… and I didn't.
Things came up…

I will now uphold an apologetic gif theme throughout this post. Just about every one there is. All the gifs. I'm sorry if this takes forever to load...

Anyways, I'm here now to tell you more about Korea! This post is of formidable length. Let's get started.

Today is Day 78!
Time is sure flying by~

First, I would like to tell you a bit about my daily life at school. I co-teach 3rd and 4th grade English, so my students are very energetic and I need to keep things exciting and varied enough otherwise their attention is out the window (if it isn't already before I step into the classroom). There are 8 classes (4 3rd grade 4 4th grade) of about 20 students each.

I teach from English textbooks that are actually pretty good. There are interesting pictures and animation stories that the students like a lot. I just finished a unit called "I like chicken" for my 3rd graders and "Where are you?" for my 4th graders.
…
Sometimes there is bad material though. So my co-teacher and I make our own, more exciting games pretty often.
And sometimes there is just downright wrong material:

Koreans have a hard time distinguishing L and R… but really? These are supposed to be my teaching materials! Spell check! 

Korean English education trolls be like:

I will give you a tour of the school and fun stories about my students another time. There are too many other things to catch you up on ^.~

So ~
Last weekend I went into Seoul, Gangnam district (remember Gangnam style? I even had a "Gangnam style" themed post back in the day before it went viral. Yeah. I'm a blogging hipster) for a very big family gathering. It was for my host mother's sister's baby's first birthday.
You're all probably like:

Sorry? Whose birthday?

The thing is, in Korea, your first birthday is a super big deal. There's even a word for it. It's your 돌 or 돌잔치.
The baby and parents usually dress up in Korean traditional dress (called a hanbok) and have various activities, like the normal gift-giving and feasting on yummy food. One special thing about 돌 is that the baby gets presented with several different items all with hidden meanings. The baby chooses one, and whatever she/he chooses will be her/his future. For instance, if the baby grabs the pencil she/he will be a great scholar. If the baby grabs money, she/he will be very wealthy and prosperous.

Here's some awesome Wikipedia info about the history:

In the past, the death rates for children were high and many children died before their first birthday, so it was an important milestone for the baby and parents. The whole village used to celebrate a baby's first birthday, sharing food and wishing for long life and fortune for the baby.

Check out these cute photos of random Korean babies' 돌:

We went to a nice banquet hall in a hotel and ate a buffet and doted on the babies (there were multiple babies there). Of course there was the special birthday boy who had a very nice, traditional hanbok on, then got changed about halfway through. I only got a few photos of the birthday boy. Here he is with me in his more comfortable clothing:

There were even fancy gifts for everyone (even me, the awkward not-family, not-even-Korean, wait-why-are-you-here person) :D

It's a rice cake with the baby's name, 준혁, and a towel embroidered with the date, name, and first birthday special stuff on it. I will now never forget this day. haha

Everyone was generally very nice to me, especially the people I sat at the table with. But I definitely got some weird looks when I walked past the other tables whenever I went to get food from the buffet. One little boy even stood up, looking shocked like:

Foreigner spotted! The area is contaminated. Proceed with caution.

Making me very much like, "Okay, Gabby. No sudden movements. Be as inconspicuous as possible. Be sure to bow and greet the seniors. Make apologetic eyes as people who seem particularly disturbed by your presence. Bust out the 'Sorry, Sorry' dance for bonus points"

^ most well-known dance move in Korea

So maybe I didn't dance. And maybe I wasn't glared at that much. But I still felt super awkward. I just wanted everyone to relax and enjoy this family reunion… even if a random white girl is sitting in the middle of it all.

AND OKAY THE FOOD WAS REALLY GOOD AND THE BABIES WERE REALLY CUTE AND I ENJOYED MYSELF OKAY? I'll stop complaining okay?

Next!
The weekend before that weekend. You know, when I posted my last blog post and promised to write more and all that jazz. Well I went to Seoul that weekend as well to see a musical! I saw 'Zorro'!
And my not-so-secret ulterior motive to see the musical was because SHINee's Key was performing as the lead!

Smirk.

Zorro the musical has been around several years (first opened in London in 2008). I honestly hadn't heard of it until this spring. It's a fun and exciting show with sword fighting to spice up the normal musical pizazz. As musicals go, it was pretty novel in Korea when it had it's first stage back in 2011. Korea doesn't have much exposure to Latin/Spanish music and culture, and this musical is full of good Flamenco and gipsy music! 

Basically Zorro has a good track record in Korea, and so they decided to revive it this year. This time around all the leads are double-cast, or in the case of the title role, quad-cast. Yeah, there are four different dudes who play Zorro. I missed Key's first shows, so last last weekend was my only chance to actually see Key himself perform the role. And see him I did.

There was a live-band specifically trained in Spanish music (after intermission a mariachi trio started the second act and it was AWESOME). And the chorus was spot-on for singing, dancing, stunts, acting, the whole shebang (there were also some distractingly good-looking chorus members…). 

I think the dancing and the set were my favorite actually. The sets and dancing were all amazing~ like broadway-could-learn-something-from-you good. You can see the turn stile stage in action and some of the dancing in this clip:

There was also a fly system for some cool basic stunts like jumping off a tower (Definitely no crazy, death-seeking stunts like Spiderman Turn Off the Dark All Bats are Grey in the Dark Wait Dracula?) and two trap doors that were used really well (I jumped when Zorro fell one of the times. Did not see that coming at all!). The turn stile was used very naturally as well, with actors moving right along like they are used to walking down stairs and through doors that are moving all day, every day.
Costumes were really good! Here are some concept designs from the special program book I bought:

 Also there was a flaming Z on stage at one point. That was impressive.

Lighting was solid. There was a screen backdrop used for some really good projection tech at the emotional, plot-thickening background story "The Man Behind the Mask" (a gorgeous song, NAILED by Sonya, the actress who played Inez that day). I really liked the night/evening lighting color combos for lighting too. But of course, Key and one of the other male leads had their head just out of the light a few times… and the light designer in me kept shouting "Get in your light! C'mon!"
Ahem.
For the actors~ as I said, Sonya, who played Inez, the gipsy queen, was phenomenal. Really. Beautiful voice. Sassy, fun character. The other female lead was a little weak, but her role is weak anyways so I didn't mind too much. She had this part where she tried to sword fight and I tried really hard not to cringe it was so pathetic. Like, girl do you even lift? The man who played the villain was an average actor, he didn't blow me away until his song at the end when I realized, "oh, so he can sing. That's why he got this role." The older lead called Garcia, a Yoda-like character who trains Zorro to sword-fight was also phenomenal. He had perfect comic timing and made me burst out laughing repeatedly (started out the show as more of a drunkard, then whips off his monk robes to show that he is ripped, does some awesome sword play, then dresses up in disguise and is hilarious again) and he was also a great, emotive singer.
Key himself was also really amazing. He really astounded me with his sword-fights, and like usual he was a spot on, perfect dancer. But I think Spanish dancing suits him particularly well. He was very passionate and sharp, but also a bit sassy - really perfect for his style. His singing was also very very good! I think KPOP groups use a backup track so often that I forget that they can be really amazing live singers as well.

And I will say this, I am a SHINee fan. I am already very biased towards these handsome, talented, dancing young men. Look at their beautiful faces.

 Look at them.

LOOK

AT

THEM

Um, actually. Well, they are beautiful almost all the time.

Back on track, I think Key is amazing. But… okay, might as well put another apology here.

More honestly: The acting was pretty cheesy at parts, and as absolutely perfect as Key is… well, he might benefit from some more acting lessons.





...






And now the fans come.

And this will be me:

No more fandom for you Gabby. GTFO.

Please don't kill me fans. And if for some extremely odd reason you are reading this Key, don't be offended… everyone can practice more and get better. ^^;

I say it was cheesy, not just because it was a musical (and, let's be honest, most musicals are insanely cheese-filled) and everyone was acting very big most the time, but because I could see pretty obviously when Key would break character and how aware of the audience he was. I KNOW he is used to performing as a KPOP idol, where audience interaction is essential. And as I fan myself, I know I was straining towards the stage with 'look at me, look at me' thoughts. But there is a limit I think one should make in theatre, especially when all the other actors on stage are staying in character. Key was pretty awesome when dancing and sword-fighting and singing his ballad, because all of those required most of his attention. But there's a few parts where the character Zorro himself is awkwardly standing on the side, trying not to be noticed by the villain or naked woman in a bath (yeah, that scene was awkward). Whenever those type of scenes happened, Key would look around awkwardly, then, as his character isn't particularly busy, he would look at the audience and I could feel the disconnect. Instead of maintaing the stakes required in that scene, Key's expression would chance as he interacts with the audience members, then when his attention was required back in the scene I felt like he had to shift back into character and "prepare" Zorro's next line or action. That was just what I felt.

Theatre critic Gabby, out.


Finally, there is a lovely store in Korea called THE REDFACE. Yes. THE REDFACE. The moment I walked by this store I was like, "Did they spell 'North' wrong?"
This is a legitimate outdoor wear brand called THE REDFACE. See for yourself:

Please compare the logos:

I am honestly used to seeing terrible knockoff stores in Asia (yes, China and Japan are both just as guilty, with maybe China taking 1st place in Most Knockoffy) but usually it's just a few stores that are pretending to be Starbucks, KFC, or some other mashup:

But THE REDFACE is not considered a knockoff and actually very successful and acknowledged by Koreans as a company just as proper as Samsung and Hyundai (though not as internationally renowned). They have signed models like Covergirl does and real commercials/CFs that you can see on websites and TV. 

Like I said before, many Koreans love hiking, and when they go hiking they deck out in ultimate hiking gear. I have discovered that THE REDFACE is one of the top providers of the well-worn gear. And so the business is thriving. And laughing in THE NORTH FACE's face.

So many faces.

수고했어요! You've made it to the end of this post.
How are you feeling?
Get some sleep, okay? And THANKS FOR READING! :D

- Elleirbag