In June we made tofu at the bean curd farm. I expected a mildly interesting field trip but it turned out to be a pretty fun time.
Step 1) Grind the beans
Step 2) Pour the beans into hot water, sift & smoothen, pour back into hot water, and repeat until the texture is right
We also made rice cakes. We all took turns pounding the huge glob of rice. After the students, the teachers finished the job.
Final step: Eat! Tofu is now delicious because we made it ourselves.
A while back a magician also came to our school. There was lots of audience involvement. When I first walked in midway through the performace he was pointing a gun at the crowd of children and shaking his hand rapidly like he was about to slip and fire a round at a random kid. This made everyone go CRAZY but it was all in good fun. This would never fly in the states.I tried something similar with my 4th grade class where I shoot them with a bow & arrow or hit them with an imaginary bat instead of discipling them. The 4th grade class usually listen pretty well so this works effectively. The hit target will quickly channel his energy to falling to the floor and having deathly spasms. It's a great way to immobilize a rowdy boy before he starts sprinting around the room.
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Mudfest
This weekend I went to the Mudfest in Boryeong. Sorry, no pictures, wayyyy too wet and muddy. The fest was both a disaster and a success.
For the first time I realized the scope of the foreigner population. I heard there were half a million of us at the fest. Imagine a giant beach party half-covered in mud. There was a central location with music, mud wrestling, fountains, a mudslinging cage, and two very stocked convenience stores (in Korea, this is where you buy booze). Of course, all of Daejon beach was crawling with wet and muddy foreigners. If Busan is Korea's populous west coast beach-city (San Jose perhaps), then Daejon is the dirty Jersey shore; and this weekend it definitely resembled a sloppy Wildwood.
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I had a great time. But unfortunately there were a lot of complaints sent in the direction of my recruiting agency. My ambitious recruiters (which consist of two guys living in Korea with family and friend helpers in Canada, and lots of good connections) took it on themselves to load what amounted to be a total 1 kilometer stretch of buses from all over Seoul and send them to the beach in Boryeong. They booked several Minibanks (Korean-style rental rooms with no beds, only floors to sleep on) for the crowd to stay in overnight. What they failed to realize was that so many people --mostly recent college grads-- in such little space will fail to get along according to each others' standards. I won't get into the details, but there are some degrees of temper, imprudent behavior, and generally gross things that some people assume unacceptable or impolite yet there's always someone else who goes about things differnetly. We all have our judgments about manners and morality, but our preferences and desires are always testing the limits of someone else.
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Regardless, the foreigner population is a very eclectic bunch of fun and interesting people. We were able to let loose and get to know each in what ways we knew how this weekend in Daejon. I feel that the teachers in Korea are a culture unto themselves whether we like it or not; whether Koreans like it or not. Korea is such a homogenous country and the divide between national culture and foreign culture is clear-cut and pretty bifurcated. There are military people, international students, and other visitors claiming residence in this country. They're sort of a different breed more identified with their own purpose. I gather from the teachers I meet that we're more nomadic and less pinned-down to anything in particular. But even though ESL teachers come bringing probably the most diverse range of personalities of any population that I'm aware of and even though we all come to Korea under different circumstances, it doesn't change the fact that we're all here now living and learning and even being indoctrinated into something slightly Korean and sharing the common life of managing classrooms full of Korean children.
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Regardless, the foreigner population is a very eclectic bunch of fun and interesting people. We were able to let loose and get to know each in what ways we knew how this weekend in Daejon. I feel that the teachers in Korea are a culture unto themselves whether we like it or not; whether Koreans like it or not. Korea is such a homogenous country and the divide between national culture and foreign culture is clear-cut and pretty bifurcated. There are military people, international students, and other visitors claiming residence in this country. They're sort of a different breed more identified with their own purpose. I gather from the teachers I meet that we're more nomadic and less pinned-down to anything in particular. But even though ESL teachers come bringing probably the most diverse range of personalities of any population that I'm aware of and even though we all come to Korea under different circumstances, it doesn't change the fact that we're all here now living and learning and even being indoctrinated into something slightly Korean and sharing the common life of managing classrooms full of Korean children.
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Love it or hate it, teachers living in Korea are more alien than teachers never having lived in Korea. And teachers living in Korea all share a level of the same quirks, survival mechanisms, and Koreanisms different than teachers do living in any other foreign country.
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Additionally, I hear that Korea is hiring more ESL teachers than ever right now. Economics elsewhere are bad enough to add an extra incentive for anyone to leave there homeland, and Korean expansion and education is so competetive that any school without an English teacher is quickly getting left behind.
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Cheers to Korea, a country that imports foreigners on a competitive cultural anamoly.
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Cheers to Mudfest, where we can all go have fun and hate each other at the same time.
