Been Slammed

Not sure where to start. There has been a lot going on over here. I've been grappling with getting to know the kids better and running head long into some of the same things I found in Atlanta. Kids learn what they see around them so if all they see are negative images of people other than Koreans they are going to pick them up. I had a child tell me that she likes Africans cause they are made of chocolate. I'm not sure if that is just the color she knows their skin is or if someone unthinking said that and it stuck with her. I showed her some pictures of my old students and she was trying told me they were all chocolate. It was then followed by a conversation about why their hair was in braids. I've been talking to a friend here who has it worse. His students pull on his skin and say "Yo, Man!" in greeting because that's what they see.

Then I have the joy of listening to and judging speech contests. I really hate that I feel like some of the kids got an unfair advantage because their homeroom teachers came to me and asked me to edit their speeches. Which I did happily. The ones who didn't had potential but the English was so bad it took away from their over all scores. I'm taking time these days to work with the students more on finding a rhythm and tone in how they speak. It's interesting to see the kids realize without fully understanding my words that you don't yell when you are asking someone for directions so it makes sense to speak in a normal voice while practicing. Some days teaching here is easy and fun others it's painful. Overall I love my students and I really enjoy working with them. The current class of 6th graders are really getting comfortable with me so they come in to my office and hang out and talk with me. The only downside of this is I'm picking up more and more Kpop references. I now can throw out singer and band references at them and cut them off before they start singing things like Super Junior at me.
I thought American kids were good little consumers but these Korean kids have them beat. They can rattle off cellphone ads, chicken ads, you name it. They also can do all the dances that go with the songs on command (I just had 3 girls doing the dance to that video in my office when they heard it playing.)

Time to get back to teaching... I'm staying in Daegu this weekend to go to a festival downtown and catch up on sleep. Next weekend I'm headed to Seoul. I'm going to really miss being able to hop on a train anytime I want to get anywhere when I go back to the States.