changes, chicken feet and cute children

No time for a full-on post, but a few notes from Daegu:

1) In the lastest string of changes, we are not, in fact, getting our public school kids until at least March. Classes between then and now will be on a week-by-week or day-by-day basis depending on which schools we can schedule, and will probably be entirely daycamps. We start this week with 4 days of different grades from a prestigious private school in Daegu and one day of a kindergarten class from Yeungjin's academy. Definitely keeps us on our our toes, but we're also getting pretty good about adapting to curveballs.

2) I've realized that my friend in Sudan, where people live in huts and goats wander around in the streets, is eating less exotic food than I do. I'm pretty sure I had chicken feet tonight in town.

3) I hung out with the first- and second-grade classes yesterday to prepare for this Wednesday and Saturday when I'll be teaching youngsters, and they sure are cutie little bundles. Cutie little bundles who speak about 10 words of English. And apparently not all of their parents have impressed on them why they go to this place with the strange people who babble nonsense, because some of them feel it's their duty to teach us to speak properly. One little girl resolutely repeated "Han bon do" each time I said "Another one, please," and one of the boys had the following conversation with me:

[6-year-old scribbles what appear to be a boy monster and girl monster on his paper.]
Me: Oh wow! Two people - one, two.
6-year-old [pointing to each in turn]: Namja, yoja.
Me [pointing to each one]: Yes ... "man," "woman."
6-year-old [pointing]: Nam-ja ... yo-ja.
Me [pointing, nodding]: Yes ... "ma-an," "wo-man."
6-year-old [perplexed ... decides to take a different tack, points to a boy across the table, then a girl next to him]: NAM ... JA ... YO ... JA.
[We go a few more rounds of pointing at different people and pictures, with him first getting more emphatic, then patiently slowing down for this simpleton who just can't get it, and finally giving up to go bang on the drums.]

I HAVE RENTERS!!!!

Five months later, I finally have income back at the condo in the Springs. Whew - major relief! The new renters move in on Tuesday, even. I'll still be paying a little each month, but I can finally start getting to some of those financial goals - fun and boring - I came over here with instead of just scraping by. Here's to renters!

an interesting read

So my vagabond reporter friend, Megan, has had some amazing stuff on her blog, but her latest post is a particularly interesting story about a math teacher she met in Vietnam. Check this out: http://gypsyscribbler.blogspot.com/2007/11/hey-mccain-youve-got-friend.html.

where I live

I'm finally getting together at least some pictures of campus ... check out my web album by clicking here (click the "Slideshow" button for the best way to see them all big one after another). It will probably be updated somewhat over the next couple months, and this just covers some of the areas, but you'll get the idea of what an amazing facility it is.

Week 2 down

Our second batch of kiddos has just left and I'm finally getting to that "I haven't written in awhile ..." post.

Life here is divided between the chaos of herding 200 children and the quiet of rural isolation - it's really an odd deal. For the past three days I've been going nonstop from the wee hours to the wee hours, and now I'm sitting here wondering what to do with myself for the rest of the week. It's like in three days I've forgotten how to have hobbies. Never fear, I'm sure I'll remember by tomorrow. :)

I've now taught two three-day weeks and one Saturday session, and although we still have all those startup fiascos popping up, it seems like we've been here forever.

Last week's class of 11- and 12-year-olds (Korean age) was wonderful - full of sweet, fun kids and eager students, and even the rapscallion boys' ringleader was nothing more than a minor discipline problem who responded really well to direct commands. I was sad to see them go.

I figured I couldn't possibly be so lucky with this week's group, and when I walked in and saw it was a group of 13-year-olds, I braced for a tough session. Just in the year's difference, you can see the kids slipping into teenage diffidence - guarded eyes, self-conscious shrugs, baggy clothes, dramatic eye rolls ... and that one kid in every group who always slouches under a black hood.

But then lo and behold, by some cosmic fluke these kids were even more amazing and full of surprises - in fact, the one with the hood turned out to be my most interactive and helpful student. And their grasp of English was incredible, which meant we got to move past basic vocabulary into more fun cultural lessons (they were perplexed that adults don't ask each other their ages within minutes of meeting, for example, because in Korean that's mandatory to know what form of language to use). To a kid, they were earnest participants and really put themselves out there. The weirdest part was that although all my girls were great, it was the boys who were the ones first in line, volunteering the most answers and helping turn out lights and close doors. Like I said, cosmic fluke. But I'll take it.

These first two groups were a PR move - free for 200 selected from hundreds of participants, I think largely because they scored well on a test, and a lot of them were from well-off families who invest in private English academies. Next up (and from here on out) we get general public school kids for weeklong sessions, which will undoubtedly be an entirely different ballgame.

Now back to remembering how to read, run, study Korean ...

the plane has landed

We're here ... whew. At the Village finally, and the first round of kids come Monday. In the meantime, another set of Korean machines and panels to learn, another round of faces to meet, another room to unpack. Our time here has been like three jobs, three homes, so it's nice to finally be able to live out of furniture instead of a suitcase and really be getting on with the job we were hired for.

The past week has been a flurry of moving and shaking hands - Tuesday was the big opening ceremony, and all the local politicians were there plus UCCS and Yeungjin representation and a slew of reporters. (Sidenote: The mayor of Daegu speaks great English and even in Korean proved that charisma is a major political selling point worldwide; also, Korean journalists are quite snappy dressers, contrary to their American counterparts.) The thing was broadcast on all three national news networks and it was quite the affair. And everyone was appropriately wowed by the grandiose architecture including the major selling point - a retired jetliner suspended 20 feet in the air, used to simulate the flight experience for students - so it appears to be a promising start. Now comes our part ... wish me luck! :)

Oh and belated happy Halloween, everyone. Hope y'all enjoyed my favorite holiday back there for me - they don't celebrate it on this side of the world, and what with everything else happening, our crew didn't do anything to mark it, either.