yet another misunderstanding

i found out shortly before this incident that it is common for boys in korea to be circumcised in their early teens. they believe this is better because the child will understand why they have to get the surgery and they can be put under for it.  one day, i had one of my students who is around the age of 13 walk into my classroom limping. i asked the students what happened and half burst into laughter and the other half set to work trying to figure out how to explain this to me in english. one student volunteered,"teacher, he cut his..." and makes a cutting motion on his finger. i THOUGHT i understood but was confused as to why he was limping. when i asked them they shook their heads and kept making the cutting motion, "no, no, no....a part very important to a man." after i got the awkward "OH!!!!" expression off of my face, i explained that in the states we do that when the boy is still a baby. the conversation ended shortly after that but about 5 minutes into the lesson i had one student interrupt and say "i think the states way is much better teacher."

one year later

i can't believe that it has already been a year since we arrived in korea. the time seems to go so much faster here compared to back home. the other day jeremy and i were talking about how different life is now compared to when we first arrived.

some things that we had to face when we first arrived:

-eating ramen everyday because we couldn't read any of the menus. we still can't read half of it but now we can recognize what we like

-jetlag! getting up at 6am every morning. we figured we could walk around and see the city only to find out that koreans are not morning people. the streets are deserted till at least 9, if not later.

-staying in a love motel for the first two weeks. exactly what it sounds like. rooms can be rented by the hour or the night and mood lighting is always provided ; )

-sticking to the same two restaurants because they had pictures on their menus

-taking hours at the grocery store staring at labels i couldn't read and trying to find any food slightly resembling something i knew

-spending the meal avoiding the free kimchee on the table (i still do this)

-getting yelled at for crossing the street without a walk signal (they're really strict!)

- figuring out that there are no preservatives in a lot of the food. we have to race to eat certain foods before they go bad. especially fruit and bread.

-since there are no dryers we try to put all the fans on our clothes to get them to dry faster before the mildew smell sets in.

-waking up to the smell of kimchee, fish or whatever else the apartment above us decided to cook for breakfast that morning.

-buying a car for around $200 but having to push start it anytime it rained. (we got it fixed eventually)

-going to the bathroom outside at work. in the summer it was a race to see how fast you could pee before you were attacked by mosquitos

even though we don't have to deal with most of these things anymore, it just adds to the experience of living in a different country.

what's in a name

before walking into a classroom at my previous school, you could guess what about 80% of the kids names were going to be. john, sally, ann, jimmy. basically all the typical western names. at my new school, the names are a bit more unique which i love but i can never get the spelling right. when my student told me her name was donna, i excitedly wrote it on the board, how could i mess this one up? after writing it, the students started hysterically laughing. "teacher! you spell it d-a-n-a." the whole class was a lesson in korean spelling of western names. lincoln was l-i-n-c-o-n, ellen was e-l-i-n. then there were the ones that i've never heard before. i had an alva, lyon, rani (pronounced ronnie), claude (pronounced cloud), lina and zinee. the names will be easy enough to remember but the spelling may take me awhile.

i have what??

a brief explanation of what jeremy and i are doing now. we have decided not to resign with our previous school, ecc. it was honestly the perfect school for our first year and we are forever grateful for the experience and the opportunity to work with such amazing people. we decided, however, that we want to do some more traveling this next year and therefore picked schools that allowed us to do so. jeremy got a job at a vocational high school which he started the other day and loves. i will be working part time at an academy which will be a nice change of pace and allow me more time off.

with that being said, in order to change schools there are several hoops to go through and forms to be filled out. one of these was a health check at the local hospital. simple enough, urine test, blood test, hearing and sight, along with a chest X-ray. when jeremy and i went back to the hospital to pick up our results the nurse looks at jeremy "you're fine" then proceeds to turn to me and say "you have kidney disease." i love how delicately she put it. now, after being here a year, i have heard of several serious misdiagnoses, which is why i wasn't too concerned.

i went back to the hospital the following week and had more tests done. i walked into the doctor's office to get the new test results. he had my chart with my passport picture on it and when he looked up he jumped back. always the reaction you want when someone looks at you, right? he continued to go on and on about how i look so different from my picture and how my cheeks were "sharper" now. reading in-between the lines: you used to be fat, but not to worry, you look fine now. he then turned to me "oh and you're fine, no kidney disease." i can't wait for my health check next year.