How Korea Made Me Love Shopping

Shopping in SA (or Mauritius): Try on lots of things. Nothing fits. Hate yourself. Find one thing that looks good but it's ridiculously expensive. Hate yourself and now you're broke. Eat chocolate. Ah well; most of the clothes look like they're aimed at teen prostitutes from Benoni anyway. But it looked so nice on the mannequin... Ooh, these pants look great... for the 5 weeks that they last before they start falling apart. Plus (specifically in Mauritius) everyone is trying to rip you off because they think you're a tourist... AAAGH! Run away!  You give up! You're going to hide in your room, rolled up into a little ball of sorrow because you're hideous and hate yourself. Wah.

Shopping in Korea: Think nothing will fit, and baffled by the strange styles. Can't try things on - shop owner insists it's one size fits all but your mammaries seem to disagree. Still, this beautiful dress costs the same as two cups of coffee, so why not? If it's too small you'll just have to join the gym, won't you? *stern look* Oh, but these shoes are only $10... And look at this FANTASTIC Konglish on this shirt! Oooh, socks with mustaches!

You throw your money at them, gleefully. If you run out of cash you can always just live on school lunches and maybe join a church (free lunch after the service). And even then, you're not spending THAT much money because It's Skin is having a 30% sale and everyone at the market keeps giving you huge discounts because you're paying in cash. So, what the hell? Just buy the stuff.

And when you get home, and try on all your loot... It looks fantastic. Your curves fill out those dresses the way Korean women wish they could. You love how the fabric hangs just so, and how gorgeous those shoes make your feet look.

Thank you, Korea. Not only do your children tell me I'm beautiful every single day, not only do your cosmetics work like a bomb and make me feel like a princess, but you just made me BELIEVE that I am beautiful by letting me see it for myself.

And that's awesome.


For the record, I'm a 72kg, 5'6", size 7 UK shoes, C cup nunganungas, round-bottomed woman. And every single thing I bought today fits perfectly. 

Ordering Delivery In Korea

Last night I decided to be adventurous and order delivery from one of the many magnetic take-out menus that appear on my door.

By which I mean it was raining and I was lazy.

So I flipped through the biggest booklet, and found a page with no pictures, but a lot more to choose from than fried chicken or chicken schnitzels.

I googled for the area code to phone them. In Daegu, you put 053 before the number on the menu. No one tells you this. You're expected to just know it.

Behold the phonecall!
Subtitles provided in italics.

Woman on phone: 유보세요.
Yo, 'sup.
Moi: Erm, um, annyeonghaseyuboseyo. kimchi mari baedal juseyo?
Er, um, hellohi. (meal) delivery please?
Woman on phone:  오옂단아이나니이도아누뵤자.
Sure. Where would you like it to be delivered to?
Moi: Er. I can't speak good Korean. Again please?
Annoyed woman on phone: 어딜아러나어러리너.
Where do you live? For god's sake, learn some Korean. I hate my job.
Moi: ????!!!
Woman: 집!집!집!
House! House! House!
Moi: Oooooohhh riiiiight. House. <address in Korean -
Woman (interrupting): sdlhfsjkdjsjkshdjf. Hangs up.

She'd cut me off before I could tell her my apartment number. So I wasn't sure if the delivery was coming, or what would happen. So I figured I'd go down and wait by the door until the delivery guy shows up, or get chicken if he didn't come within 30 minutes.

It was very cold, very wet, and it had now taken me over 2 hours to find a meal, phone and order it.

Well, he wasn't coming. It turns out the last bit of speedKorean was 'We don't deliver if the order is under 10 000 won.' Which I only discovered because my lovely neighbour friend called them to check.

And then she gave me wine and spaghetti instead. So, this time was a failure but it still felt like winning.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Korea is not an easy place for people to live in, if they are living alone. This probably comes from the fact that most single people live with their parents. Min said that people who live alone walk to the takeout place and get takeaways there. So, next time she orders takeout we're going to do it together. Otherwise I'd have to order 3 meals to make it over 10 000, and then I'd have too much food.

Major Victories

When I started at this school, I had a really rough class. The lowest level boys refused to participate. One student, in particular, stared sullenly at his desk for the entire lesson. He didn't even open his book. He had floppy hair at that stage so for a long time I knew him only as this:

That day I swore that by the end of the year I would make him speak. And every week I'd give the class some sort of game, and he would say nothing. Every week I told myself, this is it! This is the one! And... Nothing. The other kids in the class are warming to me and starting to try harder, but this kid...

Zilch.

And then today he's all....

And on the inside, I'm going

But on the outside I'm just

How did I do it? The pass the pencil case game. Except in my class, it was a bomb (baseball), and we had a powerpoint thing that counted down with beeps and huge explosions. First the kid holding the bomb when it blows has to say a sentence about the picture on the screen. Then in round two, they have to say any sentence that we learned today in order to pass the bomb along. If they're holding it when it blows, they're dead and are out of the game. Anyone still alive at the end of the lesson gets signatures on their Katie, GIMME CANDY! charts.

The best thing about this lesson? I didn't just get this kid to speak.

I got ALL of them to speak.

I might just be a good teacher after all.

The ppt for the game is available here: http://www.waygook.org/index.php/topic,3718.msg19097.html#msg19097

A Day in the Life of an Epik Teacher

Loosely based on truth.

23:45 Start getting ready for bed
00:10 Realise you forgot to download the latest episode of Game Of Thrones. Torrent the crap out of it.
00:16 Download complete. You love Korea.
7:00 Hit snooze.
7:15 Hit snooze.
7:30 Hit snooze.
7:40 Race to the shower. Brush teeth in shower. Try to avoid spraying toilet paper.
8:00 Fall down 4 flights of stairs in your efforts to leave the building speedily.
8:02 Cycle at break-neck speed through crowds of small children. This requires ninja-like reflexes.
8:19 Stroll casually into the staff room, just in time. Open up spreadsheets and ppts, and look busy... until everyone goes off to their home room classes, leaving you alone.
8:20 Sleep/Facebook.
9:00 Look busy and try to remember where the classroom for your first lesson is.
9:15 Realise this lesson is going nowhere, the kids are asleep, and they're giving you nothing. They're exhausted from camping on Palgongsan for the last two days. Scrap the plan and play games on the board using vocabulary from the lesson. The kids love it.
9:45 A free period! Try to figure out what you last taught the class you have after lunch. Something to do with giving advice...Search the internet for pictures of interesting problems for them to solve.
9:55 INSPIRATION STRIKES. Create a complex ppt game involving PSY's latest music video.

Giving Advice: PSY's being a dick! What should I do?

10:50: Another class of exhausted first graders. Play games for the whole lesson, based on vocab from the chapter.
11:35 Co-teacher is concerned that the first graders won't finish the content in time for their midterms. Whoops.
11:45 Teach the 3rd grade lesson for the 9th time.
12:30 LUNCH! Pizza, bibimbap, toffee, kimchi pancakes. Poke at unidentified object on tray. Realise it's two slices of bread glued together with jam, then battered and deep fried. Oh, Korea.
13:00 Supervise 'English Time' in the English room. This means showing Doctor Who episodes to students, with English subtitles. Notice the number of students has doubled since yesterday.
13:25 Worry that you still don't know what you're about to teach to this class, and go to the co-teacher to ask in a roundabout enough way that she doesn't realise you don't actually know what you're doing.

The co-teacher smiles and interrupts before you even begin. She explains that these students are falling behind because their classes keep being disrupted by other events, and because they're a low level, so she has decided to have a catch-up reading class instead. She advises you to take a break.

14:00 Make vague gestures towards lesson preparation and self-studying Korean. Mostly faff around looking for amusing gifs to spice up your blog.
15:20 Last class of the day and you teach that third grade lesson for the 10th time, now having done it so many times that you can do it on autopilot, with OOMPH.
16:00 The cleaning locusts descend.

16:25 Flee!
17:00 Stop at Hansot for dinner. Point at something on the menu and hope it tastes good.
19:00 Meet people downtown for no reason other than to avoid the strange smells in your apartment
21:00 Try to remember where you parked your bicycle. Did you ride your bike here? Hic. Walk past the booze in a bag stand.
21:30 Hic.
22:30 Chat up some hagwoners who've just gotten off work, and consider hanging out with them until the early hours of the morning. Remember that tomorrow is Tuesday and you have to get up at 7...ish.
23:00 Home sweet home.