Since I was heading to class in Busan, I figured I might as well go early and make a day of it. Two friends from the Busan expat group joined me for a morning of thrift shopping in Nampo-dong. There’s so much I don’t know, but thrifting is my area of expertise in any country. After all, thrift tends to find me. We had a snack from some street vendors then I led us through the maze of the market, not quite remembering where the cluster of used clothing stores was, but not too worried. Getting lost in Korea usually means finding something better. At our third stall, I sorted…

The morning was cold and rainy so I threw on my oversized hiking jacket and called for a cab. Today was the day– I was going to get my Korean driver’s license! I crawled into the backseat of the taxi and took note of the driver’s magnificent beard. If a casting call needed “generic mystical Asian teacher” I could give you no one more perfect for this. The ride to the center was over thirty minutes, through mountains and over bridges. We chatted in Korean about the best cars to buy and living in Seoul since he did as well. My language still has a lot of gaps because he…

I think Yana will become my new S. She has the same shyness and optimism, and seems eager to bond. After our once-weekly classes together, where I found out 8 of my students do in fact come from the orphanage, we ate lunch and took a walk around our tiny school. We then spent a long moment in the teacher’s lounge where all the ladies updated me about the American woman Maria competing on Miss Trot, which is a musical competition featuring my favorite genre of Korean music. I watch a lot of Mister Trot reruns on cable because I don’t need a high level of language skill to guess…

“What do Americans think of Korea?” asked Jack at lunch. “Honestly, Americans don’t know much about Korea. If I’m being frank, the question I get asked most often is ‘do they eat dog?'” Americans aren’t taught much (any) history or culture of Asia which is strange given that a country like China was and is a major and influential world power that drove much of technical advancement and trade throughout late human history. I told him I think Korea is more efficient in a lot of ways and he responded, “but in America the land is wide and you can own guns.” Sometimes I want to tell people, if America…

Within my town there are plenty of buses— but if I want to go to Changwon which is 15 minutes away by car, I have to wait up to 30 minutes for a bus going in that direction. And certain buses only come every 60 to 90 minutes. What is this, America? Every day a buying a car seems better and better. Over in Changwon, met a friend for Chinese food and she took me around the bustling center. “Where you from?“ Greeted a strange young man on the corner in possibly the rudest way to meet foreign friends. I stared at him in confusion, trying to decide which approach…

One con of living in a small town is I had to walk twenty minutes to get to the nearest post office. The pro was on my way back a group of middle school girls stared at me, said “wow”, and then waved. The road to local celebrity? I accept. I seem to get no reaction out of anyone else so I appreciate whatever fan club I can get. Today I had planned to do a writing worksheet and comic drawing with my fourth graders today but I quickly realized I had heaped too much on their plate for one 35 minute class. Luckily, I was able to learn from…

I am really not joking when I say that I may have imprinted on my fifth graders. I was down in the fourth grade hall and en route to room 5-4 when suddenly class 5-4 clamoured around me and shouted that we should walk together. Slowly I was enveloped by a chatty group of ten year olds who happily marched me back to their room. The 5-4 homeroom teacher doesn’t speak much English but actively participated. She offered to click through the PowerPoint for me and as our signal I shot her increasingly ridiculous finger guns. After relevant video clips, dialogue listening, and phrase practice, I had the kids play…

These days I finish class around 11:40 or 12:35, have lunch, then enter a fugue state until 3PM where I am furiously and single-mindedly putting together a lesson for the following day. Once I week I serve as a teacher at another school: today I took the bus with all the high schoolers to my travel school which is in the old center of town. I swung by a bakery before I arrived thinking that it’s never good to arrive empty-handed. I discovered my travel school has no single, permanent native teacher and I was glad to have gifted them with treats, since they likely never receive much recognition. The…

Last week, co-teacher Helen told me the sixth graders have nunchi. Nunchi, as I’ve mentioned before, can be EQ or the ability to “read the room”. My Seoul sixth graders were not mature enough to have nunchi, but Helen was right about this group. They are clever, funny, engaged, and easy to form a relationship with. I so much enjoy teaching on my own. Except for one rowdy fifth grade class– they weren’t bad but two kids did have the theatrical need for attention. However, their homeroom teacher, a young man and unlike the capable-looking male fifth and sixth grade teachers, asked me after class if next time he could…