Miscommunications

    This past week can be summed up in miscommunications. My week began with a side trip to CU, a common convince store like 7-Eleven, to buy a coffee. Francesca, my co-worker, and I purchased our items and headed for the door. The woman at the register stopped us, pointed at her phone, and began a conversation in Korean. Neither of us know Korean, so Francesca's best guess is that the woman wanted a picture of us. The woman smiled and began typing on her phone: youtube.com. Our vain giving us the wrong impression, the woman did not want a picture, but rather to show us something. She played a video which was again in Korean, about the Heavenly Mother. It took us a while to figure this out though, I honestly thought it was a ad for an airline. They kept showing people boarding planes and then flying to South Korea. Finally there were interviews of english speakers that gave us the gist, "Korea is where the Heavenly Mother is. It has become a mecca for Christians. Everyone who is truly devote should make the trip." We watched the video for about five minutes before we told her we had to go. Nevertheless she tried to invite us to her church where they, surprise surprise, worship the Heavenly Mother. It was quite a bizarre twist to our plan of buying coffee. When telling our adventure at work, we were told that this happens quite often. People will stop you in the streets to try and bring you to their church. Not sure how well that flies in the U.S., but hey, I'm in Korea, right?
     The second real miscommunication occurred on Saturday night. Aaron and I have been playing on going out for a night on the town then heading to a nori bong (Karaoke bar) with two of our Korean, bartender friends. I'll mention that we were suppose to meet these guys at 3 am when they got off of work. Okay, so we hit the town and met a bunch of Koreans at each place we went. At Bon Voyage (the foreigner bar; which ironically did not have an foreigners that night except us) we befriended the barkeeps and a man who goes by JK. We all had so much fun time together that JK plans to meet us again this weekend and bring his friends so we can all meet. I'm excited because maybe I'll gain some Korean friends to hang out with and they can show me the ropes. After we hit up a place named Clover. Clover is a bar/club. They do about 1 hour of low-key bar and then a half-hour of dance club. It's really interesting and you get the best of both worlds: you don't have to pick between going to a bar or a club. So we befriended the people who work there. In fact, they gave us free drinks which they lit of fire. The owner can breath fire and naturally wanted to lite our drinks aflame. Who wouldn't? On our way out they also gave us free James Bond beer cups; which is great because now I have more cups. By this time it was time to nori bong. We went to meet up with Sun and Cameron and they weren't there! It was only 3:05 am, so either they didn't want to wait or they changed their minds about singing. I have yet to figure that mystery out. Nevertheless, Aaron and I were intoxicated enough to continue our journey. We entered the nori bong.
     You pay per person and you get a room for your group. It's similar to a hotel where each group gets their own room to sing in. The woman working did not speak a lick of English, but we thought, "hey let's just figure it out. How hard could it be?" VERY hard is the answer. They give you this HUGE remote that only has letter in Korean and a song book which is also solely Korean. I pressed every button to try and get the TV to play something, anything, but I failed. Aaron and I worked on this for about 15 minutes, the woman working attempted to show us one button and then quickly gave up on us. It was so frustrating. Luckily, we left the room and I gave the woman my confused puppy-dog eyes and we got a full refund. Moral: next time bring someone who knows Korean to the nori bong. Now I know.
     I do have a highlight from my week though and it has to do with work! My male students are louder and more distracting than the girls, shocking right? They are usually the ones that I have to 'check' to keep class going, but they are more willing to joke with me. The ones who smart-off to me are actually my favorite. One of the boys named Kevin is one of these students. It's nice because I think he is one of the students who gets my humor and isn't afraid to laugh. The other day we were doing something, I can't remember what, but he tried to put a sticker on the wall. "Kevin if you don't take that sticker off you have to wash the whole wall." "But teacher this is my painting. It no sticker. Painting." "Kevin you crazy." "No teacher, you crazy!" "I know teachers crazy, Kevin, but you're crazy too!" Now that class openly jokes that I am crazy and I always say that it is true. Let's be honest, it isn't a lie. Okay, so to my point, at the end of class Kevin asks me if I like the color orange. I say yes because I don't care enough to go into color theories and then he begin rummaging through his backpack. All of a sudden Kevin pulls out a nectarine and says, "teacher for you because you like oranges!" Although it was a nectarine and not an orange, and he asked me about the color and not the fruit, I thought it was the sweetest thing to happen to me since I arrived almost a month ago.
     I can't say that all of my students like me or if I'm even doing a good job, but that piece of fruit gave me hope. One student seemed to like me, so I guess I'm doing something right. Needless to say, it was the best piece of fruit I've ever eaten. Perfect and sweet.

Nice to blog with you!
   <3 Stine