Chaos in the Classroom

My posts are shorter than I'd like them to be due to lack of time, but I still want to make the effort to try and post something every couple of days. Today was just a giant whirlwind. I went to work and it began just like any other day. However, by the end of the day, not only was I the only English teacher left in the school, but the only English speaking person period.

The director apparently made both of my Korean co-teachers so angry and upset, they decided today they'd had enough. It was only a matter of time before things blew up because of the way they are treated, but I didn't expect to lose both of my only English speaking co-workers today. My co-teacher walked out mid-day and the other had previously put in a notice that today would be her last day.

Due to a bunch of female drama in a language I don't understand, she was in the office with the shouting angry director most of the afternoon, leaving me alone in the classroom with 2 different classes. We don't have separate classrooms, just a curtain to divide the room. Typically 2 classes go on at once in 30 minute increments. One Korean English teacher teaches one class and my Korean co-teacher and I teach the other before we switch. Without a Korean co-teacher present, it's extremely hard to control the classroom because the students' English levels are so extremely low.

I don't want to dwell on the negativity and complain about all the typical ways and poor working conditions of a bad hogwan, (even though I'm pretty sure mine could be blacklisted) because you can find plenty of that online, but I will say it was a challenge to be left in the classroom alone this afternoon with 20+ screaming children who know approximately 20 words of the English language. I just wanted to sit in a corner in a fetal position and rock back and forth when my attempts to make them sit down didn't work. Apparently, using Korean to tell them "too loud" or to "have a seat "makes it worse because they just laughed and went even more crazy, making it a game to see how loud and how awful/out of control they could be. Toy fruit and wigs from the role play stations flew across the room, little girls made it a game to see who could scream and laugh the loudest, boys pulled out their Taekwondo moves and by the time the class ended, the room was literally upside down. What a disaster!

We are told not to raise our voices and since the school is ran as a business, the students are basically allowed to do whatever they want so they don't go home and say bad things to their parents. All I could do this afternoon was stay calm, try and direct them one by one with hand gestures to their seats and pray that they would stop. Eventually and miraculously, I got most of them seated long enough to put on a cartoon on YouTube to occupy them until my Korean co-worker came back from her dramatic meeting with the director.

6 year old girls

Daycare students
These aren't students of mine so they're looking at me like
"who are you and why are you taking my picture you crazy white woman!"

On a positive note, this morning was great because I got to see all the students in their Seollal (Lunar New Year) traditional outfits, which was absolutely adorable. At the end of the day, I was given 3 gift baskets from 3 of my students (a coffee/tea one, one with seaweed paper and oil and interestingly enough, one with cans of spam and tuna). I was told at the end of the day by one of my co-teachers that the students actually brought more gifts for the teachers for the director to distribute to us, but she "picked through the good stuff, kept what she wanted and gave us what she wanted to give us". I was just happy I got gifts today and got to experience my first Korean holiday.

Gifts from my students (coffee & tea, canned tuna and ham, dried seaweed and canola oil)

Tonight, I was invited again for bulgogi at my now ex Korean co-teacher's family's restaurant. They treat me to dinner now weekly and I'm so grateful for them and their hospitality. They can't speak a single word in English, but they treat me like family. I'm in love with the kitten there, named Nabi, which means butterfly in Korean. I ate and sat at the restaurant playing with the kitten again until closing and the sister of my co-teacher's mother-in-law drove me home.

Nabi

Nabi & me

Despite the long and tiring workdays, I really do find myself content with my life here and I feel like I'm starting to find a routine/pattern. Naju can be very isolating since there isn't much to do here, but I'm so thankful for the new friends I've made so quickly, the sweet students I have who actually want to learn and treat me and the other kids with kindness, my simple way of life here, and my little shoe-box apartment.

New Friends & Gwangju

Yesterday I rode the bus to Gwangju to walk around downtown and have dinner with some of the other foreigners. I'm not yet familiar with the bus system here because the language barrier makes it difficult to purchase tickets and read the bus/bus stop names and signs. The first person I met here, Blair (a super nice guy from New Zealand who also lives in Naju), came all the way back from Gwangju (where his girlfriend lives) to get me so he could ride with me and show me how to take the bus. 

Before dinner, we walked around, had coffee at a really nice coffee shop and walked to the site of the 1980 Gwangju Massacre. I didn't know much about the massacre, but the death toll was between 200-2,000 depending on the source. I watched some videos when I got home to try and find out more about it. This is the most informative one in English I could find:

We had dinner at an American restaurant, The Alleyway. I was so excited to have familiar food that I killed over 1/2 of a large pizza. We had a table of of around 15-20 people from all walks of life and from various English speaking countries (the US, Canada, NZ, etc.). Everyone has a different story of why they're here; from a "burned out medical scientist" to the guy who "just wants to travel and party", to one who "just wants a simpler way of life" and to the one who "genuinely loves kids and teaching and wants to touch lives". We all come from different backgrounds, have different interests and reasons why we're here, but the differences don't matter, we are all here together, all accepted as we are, and it feels like one big family.

Wall Surrounding the Gwangju Massacre Site

Gwangju Massacre Site