Friends Visit – Friday: Teaching and a New Friend Made over Drinks

Lydia came to school with me the next day, having actually slept in my bed the night before, with me on the yo. She graciously agreed to hold my beginning adult class at bay whilst I tested them with individual interviews. This was for two hours, so I’ll have to buy her an iPod or something for keuriseumaseu. (If you’ve forgotten what this means, say it really, really fast and you’ll get Christmas). She sat in on my other two classes and gave me advice on pedagogy and we debated whether some methods would be effective or not. I was also able to give her suggestions for what to do with her more advanced students, things like role-playing or just giving them a discussion topic and asking their opinion about it. More specifically, I recommended a role-play I did for 7th Grade Social Studies called D.C. 3000, for which the class was required to figure out how to survive on an alien planet. It was a team role-play with the class divided by occupations—psychologists, engineers, biologists, and soldiers. Team games seem to be helpful for EFL classes because the students can help each other think of solutions to the problems (and how to speak the English to relay those solutions). As for topics, news articles work fairly well. Have them read a short article about the Six-Party Talks (which are called the Five-Party Talks here, as Korea is one party in the Korean mind, not two). This gives them some accessible vocabulary to use in their discussion since they can usually comprehend what they’re reading. I’m hoping to do something similar to these things with a 3rd grade club class I may get to lead eventually when the 3rd grade is done with their University entrance exams. That or watch Heroes, Season 1 with them.

Lydia came to lunch with my co-teacher and me. We had makgugsu at this delightful open air restaurant. Unfortunately, Lydia is afraid of bugs. Deathly afraid. When she was sleeping in my room, I told her there were ants in the room, but that I had laid out ant traps. That was a mistake in itself. At any rate, while we were eating, a butterfly fluttered into our room. Now, butterflys are usually exempt from the bug-phobia as far as I know, but not for Lydia. She immediately tensed up so that she couldn’t eat and kept watching the butterfly. We explained to my co-teacher her fear and talked about the irrationality of fearing something that is always associated with flowers and generally pretty things.

At any rate, the butterfly fluttered around the room a good 10 feet from us, so Lydia relaxed a bit and stopped keeping track of its every move. It was at that point that the butterfly decided to make its assault and flew right next to Lydia’s head. She freaked out, jumping up from her cross-legged sitting position on the floor, batting at her hair to scare the butterfly away, and then insisting that I chase the butterfly away! Now, there were other people in the room when this happened, and it was rather embarrassing for me to be walking around the room trying to shoo a friendly creature of the pollen. In my shooing, the butterfly made its way back to her, and she ran to one of the other tables where patrons were either awkwardly laughing or frowning. An old man spoke to her in Korean, “The butterfly is attracted to the beautiful flower. Why do you run away?” Marvelous.

The whole scene was rather ridiculous, and I will never let her live it down if I can manage to remember it. Let us hope that I cannot.

That night, I “learned” my third form at the dojang, and during the two hours of my TKD practice, Lydia hung out (hanged out?) with a friend she just met on the bus ride from Seoul to the hamlet. After TKD, they invited me to join them at a nearby restaurant for drinks and dinner (in that order).

Her friend, Lee Kang Hyeon or Ryan, was a friendly guy and spoke fairly good English even. He is a business student in Seoul but was in town for the Chuseok holiday. We spoke about many things, including first impressions. His of me was apparently that seem to be a sincere person, something that he usually doesn’t feel from Americans. I can’t really blame him, but then again, I make a conscious effort to at least seem sincere. Acting comes in handy sometimes, though I usually am sincere. His younger sister is in one of my classes, and says that I am energetic and handsome. Given all the complements, my ego was sufficiently stroked for the evening, and I felt pretty good about myself. Though that could have been the soju and beer talking… Neither of which helped with my TKD test the next day…