Tuesday with Jasmine

Tuesday morning began nice and early when I met my Korean friend Jasmine at the subway station near the University area of town. We had arranged to meet there for our usual Tuesday/Thursday Korean lesson. Jasmine had kindly offered to take me to the cell phone store to help me set up my cell phone however I won’t be able to do that until I get my ARC (Alien Residency Card), which hopefully will be in later this week.

We found a little café and went in to begin our lesson. Jasmine is a wonderful teacher; she is very patient and she has excellent English so she can explain things very well. I feel slightly bad because I told her I’d help her with her English, but it’s almost perfect to begin with (whereas my Korean is pretty much non-existent, so she has way more to improve in me!)

While we were in the café there was music playing in the background. I was so surprised to hear German in the tune. I thought that perhaps I was going on a language overload and that my brain was playing tricks on me, but alas the artist was saying “Ich Liebe Dich, Vergiss Mich Nicht” (I love you, don’t forget me). How random is that?!?!? I had to laugh as I explained it to Jasmine who probably thought I’d lost my marbles due to the fact that I was so excited when I heard another language I could understand.

My Korean lessons are going very well. I’ve managed to memorize most of the alphabet symbols, so now I can start sounding words out. I’m surprised how easy it has been to learn to read (not that I do it that well yet, but it’s a start). I think that the most difficult task will be memorizing the words so that I actually know what they mean when I say or read them. My goal is to be able to have a conversation in about 6 months… people seem a little wary when I tell them that, but we’ll see.

After that café, Jasmine took me to the post office and gave me the tour of how to mail letters in Korea. You may seem it sounds like a very simple task, but let me tell you that even the most simple of tasks can be challenging when there’s a complete language barrier and cultural differences.

We continued on our way until we found Jasmine’s favourite café. Her boyfriend is studying to be an architect and he designed this café and Jasmine helped to decorate it. It was very charming inside. One thing I like about Korea is that things are very different—all of the cafes are unique.

In this café, we had a very delicious Korean dessert (for lunch!). It was called Gua-Il-Bing-Su which translates literally to fruit with ice dessert. It was a huge bowl that was filled with shaved frozen milk in the bottom. Over the frozen milk shavings were cut up strawberries, bananas, kiwis, nuts, vanilla ice cream and sweet red bean rice cake. It was served with a small pitcher of milk which you pour over top and then stir everything up. It was delicious!!! That day happened to be a little chilly, so I’d recommend eating it in warmer weather but it was really tasty—I’ll definitely be buying it again.

After our lunch and chat, we headed towards work. My day of teaching was very weird. For some reason, the kids were all really poorly behaved (like all of my 6 classes for the day!). I don’t know why they all behaved so badly, but it was very odd. They lacked attention, they spoke when they weren’t supposed to, they didn’t listen…..

At one point nearing the end of the day, I put chapstick on my lips. The girls were very interested in what kind of chapstick Teacher has, so I allowed them to smell it, but gave strict instructions for them not to touch it because that would put germs on it. Then the boys were interested (of course this is more interesting than doing their schoolwork) so the chapstick got passed around. I turned my back for one second and a boy named Justin was putting it all over his lips (he was about 13—he should know better!). I guess I should know better too—don’t trust kids with anything that has the possibility to go wrong. All of the girls screamed that now my chapstick was full of germs—probably true; I don’t need any more help getting sick. Oh well, it was a learning experience.

The highlight was when Justin said “Teacher, my lips are tingly!!”—the chapstick had peppermint oil in it and he was shocked by the sensation. Haha—he liked it!

One nice thing happened the other day…

I was in the restaurant eating dinner very close to the school when one of my students and his mom came in. I said a quick hello and then went back to my dinner and book. A little while later my student came up to me and said in his broken English “Teacher, you don’t have to buy dinner when done—my mom buyed for you”. How sweet I thought! I sent a thank you home with him because his mother had already left the restaurant, but I thought that was a very nice gesture.