Chusok

This week was a rough week at school. I had to give several students a bad grade on a paper because of bad choices they made (no cheating, thankfully), and the effects of that lasted most of the week. Please pray that these students will make wise choices in the future and that there will be no more fallout from this week.

But what's one thing that always makes a rough week look better? How about a 5 day weekend? Thankfully, that's exactly what I am enjoying right now, all thanks to Chusok. Chusok is the Korean thanksgiving holiday. It is one of the biggest holidays in Korea. The celebration takes place over three days. This year the main holiday falls on Sunday, with the celebration extending to Saturday and Monday. However, the school was generous and gave us Monday through Wednesday off. Hooray for a two day week!

Chusok falls sometime at the end of September to the beginning of October each year. The exact date varies from year to year, depending on the lunar calendar. Its celebration corresponds to the harvest. Just like American Thanksgiving, most people travel to visit family for the holiday. Families get together and enjoy a big meal. However, before they can enjoy this meal, the family first offers it to the ancestors. Traditionally, this was part of the ancestor worship and done to honor the ancestors. Another big part of Chusok is gift giving. Traditional Chusok gifts include big boxes of fruit (like apples, grapes, and kiwi), dried seaweed, soap, toothpaste, and Spam. And I'm not talking about a package or two of Spam but about a big box with 12 cans of Spam. People traditionally give gifts to the family they visit, their landlord, their boss, their pastor, and, for children, their teachers. Basically, Koreans generally give Chusok gifts to people who are in a higher position than them, one deserving of respect. While I am a teacher who does have Korean students, I did not get any Chusok presents this year. Generally, more elementary teachers at PICS get Chusok gifts than high school teachers. Last year my roommates received 3 boxes of grapes and couldn't eat them all before they went bad. This year only one of my roommates got one Chusok present from a student: some perfume. And, just to clarify, gifts of soap, toothpaste, or perfume are not trying to send a subtle message that you smell bad or are dirty. It is just tradition.

Since we have 5 days off of school, one might think that it would be a good time to travel and explore. However, because most Koreans travel for the holiday, the roads are a mess. As a result, it is much better to stay put. The only place you can really go and not get stuck in traffic is Seoul because most people leave Seoul to visit family in smaller cities and villages. You may still get stuck in traffic on the way home and be stuck in basically a parking lot for several hours. Using the subway is a much better way to travel since you can at least keep moving.

Yesterday I went with two other teachers, Nicole and Kari, to Seoul to go ice skating. There is an indoor ice skating rink at Lotte World, an indoor amusement park. You can use the skating rink without paying admission to the rest of the park. We took the subway in and out of Seoul and had no problems. It wasn't very crowded, especially for a Saturday. We had a lot of fun skating, though there was definitely some cultural differences between ice skating in the States and ice skating in Korea. First, everyone has to wear gloves in order to be allowed on the rink. If you didn't have gloves, you had to buy some there for 600 won (about 60 cents). Second, many people, adults and children alike, were wearing helmets. At first they were trying to insist that we had to wear helmets, because we were women, but since there were other women not wearing helmets, it is more likely that they wanted us to wear helmets because we were foreigners. However, once we had our skates on and were ready to go out on the ice, we took off the helmets and no one bothered us about them. Apparently the helmet rule was one they were not enforcing. The gloves rule they did enforce, though. Another cultural experience to ice skating was the two safety guys. They skated around the rink, making sure everyone was following the rules and clearing the rink when it was time to clean the ice. They also wore gloves while on the ice. One of the safety guys wore pink gloves (a very Korean thing to do) as well as fuzzy pink ears (also a very Korean thing to do). Definitely not something you would see in the United States.

Nicole and Kari in a very Korean pose.

The safety guy wearing pink gloves and pink fuzzy ears.

After ice skating we went out for frozen yogurt at a place called Snow Spoon Cafe. It is a self-serve yogurt place like Lemon Tree. They had several varieties of frozen yogurt with many different toppings, especially fruit, along with a few different syrup choices, including "pignacolada." I guess Spanish to Korean to English translation doesn't work very well.

Tomorrow I am heading to Everland, which is the Korean version of Disneyland. I'm looking forward to the rides and experiencing the Korean version of an amusement park. Because it's still the Korean holiday, the park shouldn't be that busy. Plus, Everland is offering a discount to foreigners, so I can get in for almost half-price. I am going with about 9 other people from the school, so it should be a fun time. One of the other teachers is driving because it is hard to get to Everland using public transportation. The only downside to this plan is that we might get stuck in traffic on the way home. Thankfully, we will be going in a vehicle that is large enough to qualify for the bus lane, which will move faster than the other lanes of traffic. My plans for Tuesday and Wednesday currently consist of a lot of relaxing, without too much else going on. All in all, it should be a very good break before the final push to the end of the first quarter complete with plenty of tests and papers. But in the meantime, happy Chusok!

Korean-American Friendship Festival

This weekend was the Korean-American Friendship Festival on the Strip near Osan Air Force Base. The Strip is a walking mall right outside Osan's main gate. It has tons of restaurants and stores of all sorts. Thanks to the Strip, I've had Thai, Mexican, Turkish, Brazilian, Chinese, and Japanese food (in addition to American and Korean) since coming to South Korea. There are also carts and booths set up in the middle, where you can buy more food, souvenirs, and bootleg DVDs. The Strip is kind of a cool downtown area, though one that is best avoided on Friday and Saturday nights when the military personnel are all heading to the bars. Here's some pictures of the Strip on a regular weekday.

The Korean-American Friendship Festival took over the Strip and the surrounding streets on Saturday and Sunday. There were tons of booths set up with food and other items for sale. There were also some rides available for children. It reminded me a little bit of a "mini" state fair.

I went with one of my roommates, Kari, and we had a lot of fun walking around, talking, and eating a lot of food. We went right after church on Sunday, and it wasn't very busy. We had been in the area Saturday night for something else, and it was packed. It was nice to be there without the crowds, as we were able to walk comfortably down the street and we didn't have to wait in line for food. The festival had all sorts of food, including several varieties of Korean and American food. For American food, there was everything from burgers, hot dogs, and brats to snow cones and funnel cakes (yum!). I even found corn on the cob (on a stick, no less).

For Korean food, they had kimchi (of course!), fish, squid, rice, and other tasty treats, including one Korean delicacy: silkworm larvae (see picture below). Most of the Korean food booths had plastic examples of their food displayed, which is typical in Korea. Restaurants in the food court do it too. It can be hard to tell if it is plastic or not, but the food in the display pictured below is plastic.

I had two Korean dishes for lunch, both very tasty. The first was a meat popsicle; it is just meat on a stick. I had one made of chicken that was covered in some sort of sauce.

After that, I had something that I believe could be the next hot food item at the Iowa State Fair. It meets both criteria for popular state fair food: deep fried and on a stick. It is called the Potato Twist.

It starts as a regular potato on a stick that a machine cuts into a spiral pattern. After the potato has been "twisted," it is deep fried. Once it is cooked, the potato twist is rolled in salt and seasoning so that it coats the outside of the twist. It is delicious! It's just a deep-fried potato, so it tastes somewhere between a potato chip and a french fry. Wouldn't that go over wonderfully at the state fair?

Haircuts, Volleyball, and Immigration

Well, after two weeks of not posting, I figured that I should update everyone on what has been going on here. We haven't had any more typhoons or tropical storms, yet. There is one on the way, though. Typhoon Sanba is supposed to hit Korea on Monday; however, the track of the storm seems to be east of Pyongtaek, meaning we will only get minimal rain and that's about it. All in all, probably a lot of hype for nothing.

My last two weeks have been spent doing more than just watching out for possible typhoons. I have been really busy with school things and with other personal things. To start with, school. As crazy as it sounds, we are already halfway through the first quarter. Progress reports come out on Tuesday, which is something both the students and I have a hard time believing. Didn't school just start? Anyway, now that we are 5 weeks into the quarter, units are starting to finish up, resulting and tests and papers and lots of grading. Overall, the students did very well on both their tests and papers. Right now I'm in a bit of a grading lull, which is good because in a few weeks every single class has a test or paper due (or both). I will definitely be grading a lot during that time. In all of this, my carpal tunnel is doing okay. It has been bothering me some, but the pain hasn't been killing me. It is a livable kind of pain, which right now I am glad to get. I've had the "why are you wearing that brace?" talk with all of my students now, so the entire high school knows about my carpal tunnel and have been asking about it. I've been also keeping busy with planning for future units as well as completing my year plans. All teachers have to generally outline what they are doing each month for the entire year, including what standards will be covered. These plans are due at the end of September. I have figured out approximately what I will be doing each month; now I just need to put the standards in. The nice (and sometimes frustrating) thing about English is that you can cover almost any strategy with any unit, it's just a matter of what approach you want to take to analyzing literature and what you want to focus on. Some units lend themselves better to certain standards and strategies than others, but many of the standards could apply for every single unit. The tricky part comes in figuring out which units should cover which standards, which is what I have left to do with my year plans. Thankfully I have a couple more weeks to finish them.

But enough talk about school. Last week I bit the bullet and got my haircut in Korea for the first time. When I was here for student teaching, I just let my hair grow because I was afraid to have someone I couldn't communicate with cut my hair. You see, I really, really, really like my haircut. I've had the same haircut for about 6 years, and it is so easy and looks nice without a lot of effort. People compliment me on it all the time, even complete strangers! So I decided last time not to even mess with it, but just to deal with it until I got back to Iowa and Bridget could cut it. This time I knew that was not going to happen. One, it would be longer until I got back to Iowa. Two, I hate my hair when it gets too long! I absolutely love my short hair, so when it gets to a certain point (long for me), I have to get it cut or it just drives me crazy. Since I was going to have to get it cut in South Korea anyway, I decided to do it before my hair got too long. And as an added bonus, one of my roommates needed to get a haircut, so I was able to go with her. We went to a place across near the main gate of Osan Air Force Base, giving us a good chance that the stylist spoke at least a little English. And she did, enough to explain that I wanted a trim, in the same style, and that the back was kind of layered. She took it from there. I was nervous the entire time. When you have long hair and you don't like the haircut, it's pretty easy to put it up in a ponytail until it grows back. Not so with short hair. It is what it is, and everybody can see it. And I had no idea what I was going to get. When it was done, I looked in the mirror at both the front and the back. It wasn't exactly like how my hair is normally cut, but I still liked it. The back wasn't layered or stacked exactly like it usually is (slightly longer right now), but it is short enough. The sides are cut slightly differently too, but not enough to throw off the entire haircut. Overall, I am very happy with the haircut and am very glad that it is short again! Yippee!

Another "yippee!" moment happened last Saturday at the school's volleyball game. It was the first home game of the season, and the teachers who wanted to go all piled in a van and headed out to the gym, which was about 45 minutes away. Now I know you're all thinking, "I thought you said it was a home game. How can it be 45 minutes away?" Well, PICS doesn't have a gym that they can play sports in, for either games or practice. They have to rent or borrow gyms instead, sometimes from universities. All of my Grandview readers should be familiar with this concept. The gym we used last Saturday was in Anseong at a university. The father of one of last year's graduates is a professor there, and he arranged for us to use the gym for free whenever we need it. Needless to say, they try to hold their games there whenever they can, even though it's not close to the school and there are no bleachers for the spectators to sit on.

Before I move any farther, I should explain something about volleyball. PICS is part of the Korean-American Interscholastic Activities Conference (or KAIAC, pronounced like kayak), which consists of international schools throughout Korea. In KAIAC, schools compete in the sports of volleyball, basketball, cheerleading, and soccer. With the exception of cheerleading, all sports have both a girls and a boys team, including volleyball. While boys volleyball does exist in the United States, I haven't heard of a team in Iowa, and I didn't want to confuse anyone by suddenly talking about boys volleyball.

So last Saturday I went watch both the girls and the boys volleyball teams. The girls played first and won in 3 (best 3 out of 5). Then the boys were up. Now, the girls team at PICS is known to be good, and they have a really good shot at winning the tournament in October. However, the boys team needed a lot of work at the beginning of year. But work they have been doing. Their coach this year is the new science teacher, and he has been pushing them really hard, and they have been improving. And it showed last Saturday when they won in 3. As far as anyone can remember, that is the first time girls and boys have both won in 3 games. Yippee!

Oh, have I ever mentioned what the mascot for PICS is? We are the Conquerors. Yes, I went from being a Defender to being a Conqueror. The emblem is almost the same as Grandview's old helmet and sword emblem. When I first saw it, I had a deja vu kind of moment.

At the volleyball game with a couple other teachers, sporting my new haircut.

This week, specifically yesterday, has also had its share of adventure. Yesterday we had a half day at school for teacher in-service. However, instead of being able to work in my classroom in the afternoon, I, along with the other new teachers, had to go to the immigration office in Suwon about 30 minutes away (depending on traffic). We had to go to finish filing our immigration paperwork and get our ID cards so we can continue to be in the country and get paid (legally). While you can easily spend a couple hours at immigration, especially with 6 people's paperwork to process, we had an appointment, so it wasn't going to be too bad. Well, that was the plan at least. It all started early Friday morning when the woman, Miss Song, who was supposed to take us (and who had the appointment) fell and broke her ankle, requiring surgery. Needless to say, she could no longer take us. And because she was no longer going, we no longer had an appointment. Even though the same people's paperwork was getting processed, we could not fill her appointment time because someone else was taking us. If you don't have an appointment, once you get there you have to take a number and then wait your turn, just like at the DMV. Thankfully, you can have about 3 people per number, so we just needed 2 numbers for the 6 of us. Well, here's the thing with the "take a number" process: you have to be at the office in order to take a number. We left school about 12 and got to the office after 2. 30 minutes turned into 2+ hours fast once we got lost. We tried to take what was supposed to be a faster way, missed our exit, and got lost. Making matters worse was that the navigation program was not working. We also got little to no help from the strangers we asked for help (we did have a Korean speaker with us, so it wasn't a language problem). We eventually got to the immigration office and got our numbers: 455 and 456. They were currently helping #304. So we waited. And we waited. And then we waited some more. Finally, about 4:30, it was our turn. Three of us were easy: we had all the necessary paperwork, photos, and numbers to make it a smooth process. Thankfully, I was in this group. Now all I have to do is wait for them to process my paperwork and then print my ID card, which will be ready in a month. The good news is someone else can pick it up for me, provided they bring the receipt. The other 3 in the group were not so lucky. Their attendant got confused and had some problems processing their paperwork. Further complicating the matter was that they were missing a few pieces of necessary paperwork and their applications didn't have photos on them. But, praise the Lord, there was a photo booth right there where they could take the pictures and the remaining paperwork can be dropped off on Monday. We finally left immigration about 5:30 and made it home shortly after 6, tired and hungry. We're all looking forward to our next trip to immigration in 2 years if we decide to stay in Korea! (NOT!)

All in all, plenty has kept me busy these past two weeks, and I have not been bored. This weekend appears to be no exception. There is a festival happening down by Osan Air Force base this weekend, which we are tentatively planning on attending. I'll let you know what happens. Thanks for all your continued prayers and support!