First Day of Camp!

Breakfast this morning was kimchee, rice, clams, crab, shrimp and squid...looking at those poor sea creatures with their little black beady eyes staring back at me, I just couldn't eat.

Then the kids came-- it all happened so fast.

Standing in a homeroom with fourteen Korean twelve year olds and one Korean co-teacher was a bigger culture shock than I expected.

Here's some things I was told about Korean culture before today:

-Koreans are used to teacher-focused classes that have VERY little interaction with the students.
-Koreans move in groups. Instead of trailing off in pairs or threes like Americans do, the whole group sticks together.
-The children are shy and need a lot of encouragement to talk.

Okay, so take the last three things I listed... Multiply those three things by 2489742 and that was my class today. No joke.

All of my questions posed to the class fizzled into unanswered silence. Even if the students understood my questions, they just assumed I'd answer my own questions for them. At first, I thought they didn't understand me. Considering I had no means to gage their English comprehension levels (Koreans generally have a fear of being wrong, which is why they wouldn't answer me), I began to break down some of the questions in the activity directions. Then the students started to sigh. One of the little girls told me to just start the activity. I guess they understood after all.

Then break-time came. I told the kids they could have a 15-minute break to go to the bathroom and stretch their legs. To make sure they understood, the co-teacher translated for me. So a couple minutes passed and not a single person moved from their desk. They barely even spoke to one another. "You can stand up or go to the bathroom," I assured them.
"Stand up?" one girl asked.
"Yes! If you want to," I said. "You can do whatever you want until 3:40."
The girl stood up and sat back down immediately, giggling.

So a few more minutes passed and nothing happened. It was so awkward. In the meantime, I prepared what we were to do after break.

Then before I knew what happened, all of the students stood up AT ONCE (okay, someone must have started it) and shuffled out the door to go to the bathroom. I'm pretty sure my co-teacher could see my shock as I looked around the empty classroom, because she started to laugh at me.

"I'm not used to this!" I exclaimed. "In America, we go off on our own until the break is over." She said Korean students move in groups. It's so strange to learn a cultural difference and then see it put into action.

After a lot of coercing in the three hours that I had the kids in the classroom, I was able to get the kids to think of a "team name" for our class, make a poster and a cheer.

Want to know what our team name was? Crazy Cows. Want to know why? Well, I'll tell you...

I wrote a bunch of nouns on the board (some were kid's ideas, many were mine). Then, I wrote a bunch of "describing" words. One of the words were "crazy." We mixed and matched the two categories of words. One kid especially wanted "Crazy Cows." When we voted, the vote was practically unanimous.

I didn't get it, until I saw a girl draw in her notebook a picture of U.S. beef and cows that were crazy. They were talking about Mad Cow Disease, which has been all the hype in S. Korea the past few months.

I thought it was kind of funny, so the co-teacher and I made sure the kids only drew pictures on the board that had to do with cows that are crazy for English.

Tomorrow I start cooking with classes...too bad we can't make steaks.