To bring everybody up to speed, I thought that I would post a brief summary of what it's been like here so far. I hope that you don't mind the quick Q & A format ... this message was originally written for Lex (Jon's sister), who asked: Are you enjoying the teaching / new culture?
My lengthy reply was as follows:
"I think that the teaching gig has been going really well for us so far! Better than expected, at least. It's ridiculous that it's my job to teach my native language to a group of people, really ... Most of them have been learning English since high school at the latest. Their grammar is good and their vocabulary extensive. I only wish I could speak French as well as my students speak English. I guess the hardest part is keeping people's attention on the topic, and understanding Konglish (a strange mix of Korean expressions using English words, like 'skinship'). Oh, and reading Korean, which I really can't do for the life of me. I'm absolutely illiterate over here. Jon and I both have cell phones with this handy little Korean to English dictionary function that has proven handy for normal things, like understanding how to work our washing machine. Lifesaver!
To give you an idea of what we do ... the most complicated things I have to teach are English expressions because, I find, that they don't often have a root in common sense. Why, for example, do you see ghosts, but feel spirits? What is the paranormal? Why don't we have 80 different words for the 80 different types of buses that exist in Seoul and area? Why does a bus have a route, but a subway has a line? And these examples are just from one class, 50 minutes long. Put on the spot, I often try to come up with an educated guess ... like that a ghost may have a spirit but a spirit never had a visible body ... that the terms 'inter-city' and 'intra-city' buses include dozens of bus sub-types, etcetera.
Of course, if you were concerned about getting the answers exactly correct, you might feel bombarded with questions that are very difficult to answer correctly (especially with the little prep time that we've got each day for seven hours of class). Maybe that makes me a lazy teacher, even a horrible one. But I'm guessing that my students need a functional answer, not an impeccably correct one, or that they're often just curious when they're digging for more information. So I'll try not to stress about it too much during my first month here.
The new culture is loads of fun! It's like almost anything goes as long as the institutions of marriage, education, work and shame are respected. Women wear anything as long as it's paired with high heels. Yellow is a feminine colour. Not pink. The food is spicy and often paired with soju, a vodka-type drink with 20% liquor often taken as a shot, or with beer. Businessmen vomiting on the streets is not unheard of, although never glamorous. Homosexuality still elicits giggles from my students, but both men and women hold hands while walking down the streets as an acceptable sign of friendship. I expect that seeing two middle-aged businessmen holding hands while they look for a restaurant or talk business will continue to throw me for a loop for a while yet. But being in the centre of an entertainment district has other perks, like shopping and easy access to all modes of transportation. Sales, for example, are 'Happy Sale', and the buses come almost as frequently as the subway.
It's been great so far, if a lot to take in at once."
So, that's my teaching/cultural experience in a nutshell.
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