Don't make me cut you...

Today, one of the girls in grade 2 (US 8th grade) got mad at something one of the boys in her class said or did.

She took her paper cutter (like a miniature version of a box cutter) and sliced a 15cm* cut into HIS FACE.

The boy got ~50* stitches.

(all numbers reported by a teacher with a fairly limited grasp of English - I clarified, but y'all know...)

Now, I never really taught in really bad schools, but some of my schools were pretty tough and I've had some kids who were really, really violent. Like, in jail and long-term treatment center violent. And yet never have I has anything this bad ever happened - not even once. (I mean, threats, yes, but not actual violence. Some bad fights, throwing of desks, death threats and general psychosis, but no one ever actually cut a classmate.)

The police were not involved.

Also, my co-teacher, in telling me of this incident, mentioned what a good student this girl usually is.

Food Stuff

I'm teaching a unit on Western food, restaurants and menus. I would love to be able to show my students pictures of "real" Western place settings, and they love to see pictures of my friends and family (or for me to be able to say, "this is dinner at my brother's house"), so if you get a chance, it would awesome if you could take a picture of a healthy meal and a typical place setting. People here tend to think that Americans eat crap most of the time, so non-crap is preferred.

Thanks!

3 things

1. My co-teacher is awesome, and told me that I should come in late on Thursday, and if everyone else is leaving, I should leave early, too. And that I should ask the vice-principal if I can leave after lunch. This might dove-tail nicely into a suggestion from a friend that I "make a doctor's appointment in Gwangju" for that day. I might actually go to one of the Oriental medicine clinics or something - migraines, disturbingly creaky knees, and allergies might all be things they can help with, and my insurance should cover it. Will try to avoid the bloodletting or the suction-cup bruise machine, though.

2. I did my last long run before the race. 8km (thought I had to walk the insanely steep hill before the last .2km). With the walking of the mountain parts, I probably covered about 9-10km. If I am able to maintain a pace similar to what I had for the 8, I'm on target for the time I expect to hit.

I thought I was being all smart running on the dirt track between the river and the rice fields. At twilight. There were literally clouds of small flying bugs. So not cool.

3. The best lip balm for long runs/long workouts is thick lip gloss (Rimmel's Lip Vinyl is good, as is The Face Shop's lip plumper). It stays on forever, even when the rest of you starts to get dehydrated.

Except for when you are running through clouds of flying bugs. Then it is just gross.

Bloom's Taxonomy

One of the first things I remember learning about educational theory is Bloom's Taxonomy - that learning and cognitive function is arranged in a hierarchy, from recall through synthesis and evaluation. While the Wikipedia article has a graphic of an inverted pyramid, Bloom really looked at it as a line.

The point is, at one point, I like to think I was a higher-level thinker. Not only was I able to remember and apply, I was able to analyze and synthesize information in order to evaluate it. For a while there, I was kind of smart in at least a few areas. Granted, there were often times I couldn't locate my car keys, but that is beside the point.

Now, so often it feels like I'm struggling with remembering and applying.

I know that a lot has to do with the language issues and cultural differences. And I know that because I'm able to communicate on such a limited basis with most of the adults around me, I'm viewed as being kind of slow-witted, in addition to the whole being both a woman and a foreigner here which means that so many of my opinions and ideas are worthless. So basically, I feel like all my critical thinking skills are caught up in figuring out bus and train timetables, race calendars, and deciphering nutritional information.

And really, I understand that in some ways, that really is higher-level thinking - I'm going from a different alphabet, sounding out words, deciphering meaning because even though I can read the word, most of the time I have no freaking clue what it means. Just figuring basic stuff out does take some higher-level thought, though I really don't want to tell you how long it took me to figure out that "bu-lan" was "bran" flakes (in my defense, there was another word in front of it. It probably means "flakes".)

Anyway, I'm just saying that often I don't feel very smart anymore. This may be the massive amount of Survivor I watched this weekend (Don't judge me!) or just being more than a little tired of my not-too-intellectually-challenging teaching schedule.

Pain in the ass/knitting geekery

I don't know what I did, but it feels like I pulled a muscle in my right glute. I'm making myself giggle by thinking "pain in the ass" because I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old.

I was going to do another long run today (my last one before the race) but didn't want to make things worse or have a seriously crappy run before I went to do the race. I know I'll be able to complete the distance, but it is how gracefully I'll be able to do so that is the question. I will probably try to get in a fairly long run early this week and throw in a couple easy ones. Then Saturday I fly to Jeju. It sucks that I'll have to leave so quickly after the race on Sunday in order to get back, but - get this - in order to take a sick day at my school? You have to actually be sick. As in, my co-teacher will call to check in on me or something. Crazy. I haven't taken one all year, and she knows that there is a good likelihood that I'll take one on Monday, but... Anyway, yeah.

So other than the gym yesterday and some cleaning and shopping, I have done nothing this weekend except watch torrented TV and knit. I finished the collar and set in the sleeve (singular - only one done) for the sweater I'm knitting for Claire, Morgan and Anna's daughter (my brother and his wife), and started a summer top in the round. It was going to be Lelah from Craftster (Not the pattern, but the picture is a million times better that the designers) but you know, lace=having to pay attention. So I did one pattern repeat of the lace and now it is just a ton of stockinette in the round. The yarn is from a Korean company and says it is 100% bamboo, but there is a single of something sparky plied in, so i'm guessing mostly bamboo and a little synthetic something. I'm loving the drape of the fabric. In a few inches I'm going to have to decide what I'm going to do with the top - right now, I'm thinking halter or plain tank top.

ETA: No, wait, I did do one thing that was cool - I took the motorcycle out for a longish ride. There is a Volvo factory near me!! And I navigated the big confusing roundabout in Gwangyang-Eup!(that last detail was only for the few people who have actually been there).

t-shirts

One of my students is wearing an "I <3 Dokdo shirt today.

The trainer at my gym (who just won a bodybuilding contest for the whole province) was wearing a Warren Easton shirt the other day. Warren Easton was one of the schools in New Orleans where a lot of my middle school students would go for high school. And it was one of the school's shirts, not just using the name. It was an incredibly strange experience.

No, really, not a lot going on here. Why do you ask?

+/-

+ Yesterday was a vacation day. Happy birthday, Buddha!
- Working the Friday after a vacation day is not very nice at all.
+ The school brought all of the teachers ice cream this morning
+ ice cream for breakfast is perfectly acceptable in Korea

- My run yesterday was painful and ugly.
+ I will for sure be able to finish the race on the 3rd
+ I finally found flights back and forth (I was going to have to take a ferry and about 7 hours to get back)

- Trying to search through flights to the US in late July
+ I will be home from about July 21st through about August 17th. Actual dates subject to change based on flights, but that is the approximate window.

Pink Ribbon Marathon

This weekend is the one year anniversary of my very first 5k race! I celebrated by running another 5k, the Pink Ribbon Marathon, which is also a breast cancer fund raiser.

I met a group of friends in Gwangju, and after shopping and eating and laughing harder than I have in a very, very long time, we ran. And it was so.much.fun. Seriously, racing the the most fun thing ever. You are surrounded by all kinds of people who are out there doing the same thing you are because they are the same kind of crazy that you are and think this is fun. Like a big old group of crazy pounding down the street. But you know, in a good way.

The 5k course was really only 4.3. My time wasn't great, but I had a lot of fun, which is the whole point. At about 3km, an older guy pulled up next to me and said "fighting!!" which is basically Korean for "go get em!" and we ended up pulling into the stadium at the same time. With about an 1/8th of a mile left, I said, "Fighting!!" and we raced to the finish line.

Some photos:
The clown that tried to eat Sloane's head:


My photos with Tyra:


Clear indication I have maybe been in Korea too long:


Empire waist dress? check
Dress over jeans? check
Sweater worn to cover strappy top? check
Random hair accessory that doesn't match anything else? check.
taking too many pictures of ourselves before we think there might be anything strange about that? check.

My family of triathletes

Saturday my dad and brother became triathletes. My sister became one last year.

I'm just so incredibly impressed and proud!! The idea of doing all three events on one day absolutely astounds me. I know how much work you all put in, and I'm so glad today went well!

question about electronics

Because y'all know a lot more about this than I do...

This is a question about electronics. The current here is 220v. The adapter for my Garmin Forerunner is 120 (input: 120vac, 60hz, 10w output: 5vdc 400mA). My limited understanding is that in order to use this adapter, I would need both a plug adapter (from blade to pin) and a step-down transformer. The other option would be to get a new AC/DC adapter here. Am I correct in assuming that I would need to make sure that the output matches this one? Or is that something that is pretty standard? Basically, I think it might be easier/cheaper to find a new adapter rather than finding a transformer, but I REALLY don't want to mess up the Forerunner with an experiment (I fried the AC adapter for my battery charger my first week here).

Am I thinking about this correctly? Which would be the easiest way to go?

5 things

One would think that I would be able to pull together something more than a list. One would be wrong.

1. Teacher Day was Tuesday. I had a class sing "the teacher song" for me on Monday (which according to some of my co-teachers is A Very Big Deal) and there was a lot of cake in the teacher's room. CAKE!!

2. I guess it was/is somewhat common for teachers to receive elaborate/expensive "gifts" (and by gifts I mean bribes) from parents on teacher's day, so many cities now have a "Teacher's Sports Day/festival" on the actual day. This was the reason for the hours and hours of volleyball practice. Because insane levels of competition and pressure for schools to win is a GREAT way to reward teachers!

3. We played three or four games and got schooled by one of the middle schools nearby. One of the women had played volleyball when she was in college, and I was just happy to get some decent blocks in. She wasn't so happy, which made my principal happy. If that makes any sense at all.

4. I had a BLAST hanging out with the teachers at my school!

5.I realized that while my individual word recognition in Korean isn't great, I'm pretty darn good at figuring out the main idea of what is going on in most situations. Also, I understand a heck of a lot more than people think I do.

a few little things

1. I got my hair cut and colored Saturday. I love the front, and the back is almost short enough. I may be the only foreigner who could say, "no, really, cut it shorter and layer it more." It is a chin-length bob angled down from the back to the front. Same dark brown that it would be if I didn't have gray hair.

2. I got sun burnt on my run and wanderings with a friend along the coast of Gwangyang.

Both of these were noted by teachers and students today. Often.

3. Tomorrow is the big volleyball tournament. Teachers are tweaked out about this.

4. I went to Home Plus to get the two things I forgot yesterday. I think they might remember the Westerner carrying a motorcycle helmet buying a hair flat-iron and kitty litter, but that is just a guess.

I just ran 10k.

I finally found a way to run outside here without having to drive anywhere, which is awesome. I walked one of the big hills and ran along the rice fields and the river. I could see the mountains in the background and the weather is just about perfect. The breeze off the river kept the gorgeous sunny day from feeling too hot, and I was able to remember why I like running.

This means that Jeju will not only be done, it will be done without walking or throw-up. It will not be fast, but it will be done.

Here, kitty kitty

Jakob has been living with me for a few weeks now. We sometimes have an uneasy truce regarding the whole, "waking me up for no darn good reason," but I am losing the "please don't attack my ankles and/or feet," game.

So, for Virgina, here are some pictures to let her know Jakob is doing fine, although he misses her terribly.

This cracked me up. It looks like he is saying, "oops! Did I just say that?!" or something.


Right before he attacked the flash of the camera:


"You woke me up for THIS?! Wait, flash - ATTACK!!"


"Maybe if I ignore her she'll go away..."

Strength

A blog I read regularly posted Strength standards for men and women. You have to go through a bit of T-Nation BS to get to the chart.

I think that maybe if I went by the BW measurement (they say you can use which ever is lighter for you) as my measurement it would be somewhat accurate, but then I would be able to say I am GREAT in so many areas!! I'm either at the top level or almost there for many categories, good in most others, and decent in pull-ups. I have issues with dips (basically, I'm afraid I'll get stuck like a bug on the handles of the dip machine. It is a long story and maybe doesn't make any sense, but I'm pretty sure I can't do one yet.) and so that is the only measure I don't even get decent marks on.

I will be running a 5k in Gwangju next weekend, which should be a lot of fun. It is a breast cancer fund raiser, (the Pink Ribbon Marathon. In Korea, all running races are marathons) and a ton of friends are going to be there, so it should be a blast.

I registered for the 10k June 3ed on Jeju-Do. If my run today was any indication, I hope to have a 5k run, a few km interval run, and the last few km repeating the mantra, "please don't let me throw-up in public" until I stagger across the finish line. I'm thinking it won't be pretty, but it will be done.

I've had mandatory multi-hour volleyball practices the past few days for "Sports day" next week, which is one of the reasons I think the run was so.so.bad. The teachers at my school take this stuff incredibly seriously. We were killing the other team and since my shoulder and elbow are pretty tired, I was doing more feinting kind of stuff (which, according to my school, is now "meguk-style." Sorry, USA.) and I kept getting directions to hit the ball harder. It didn't matter that we had won the last five games and were ahead. So basically, I spent 2 hours spiking the ball at 40-60 year old Korean women.

also, my gym is REALLY hot lately, like, disgustingly horribly hot, which isn't helping with the wanting to die while running business.

In non-exercise/sports related news, I somehow managed to get my school to allow me to "work from home" tomorrow, since my other school is testing. I'll go back for volleyball practice (because even if it is kind of frustrating, it is fun) and then will have a weekend at home!!

Breathe

Last weekend in Daegu, the friend who was belaying me reminded me a couple of times that I needed to breathe.

Today in the volleyball games at school, two different teachers, neither of whom speak very much English, told me to relax.

Seeing a pattern?

Things aren't bad at all. I mean, today I've been cranky for no good reason, but in general, things are going pretty well right now. I just would probably be better off with regular reminders to breathe.

I got the papers regarding my intent to re-sign or resign my contract. They are due tomorrow. While I like the idea of trying to move to Mokpo and having a much easier time getting around Korea, having more people to hang out with, being able to do all the different stuff I like to do more easily, I also like the community of my school, my apartment, my neighborhood. I like it that the lady in the yarn shop across the street let's me look for as long as I want and leaves me alone until she deals with my broken Korean of "pretty!" and "how much?" even though most of the time I don't buy anything, or how kids in my neighborhood say "Oh, Jessica! HiHello!!" - I'm a real person here, with a name people know.

I am pretty sure what I will do is say "mokpo" as my first choice for next year, and send a follow-up email to the powers that be explaining that I'm still trying to get in touch with all the folks who might be leaving, that I love my current school, but if I can move to a position in Mokpo that is recommended by the people currently there, I'd like to move to a bigger city.

Breathe.

The Bull

This weekend, I went to Daegu to go rock climbing. While I knew that this weekend was Children's Day and that next week was Parent's Day, I really didn't know what that would do to the public transportation system. I ended up getting standing room on both the bus there and back (which turned into me sitting in the aisle, because that's how I roll and I wasn't going to stand for more than 2 hours on a moving bus). Sitting cross-legged on the floor of a bus with my head on my bag in my lap proves that if I set my mind to it, I can fall asleep in any moving vehicle.

I found the shop that sells rock climbing gear and bought shoes (and do you know how long it has been since I have been able to REALLY go shoe shopping? FOREVER.) and even though I had the people at the shop write down the directions to the crag in Korean for the taxi driver, it was a mess. I was collected by a friend on his way out there after getting to within about a quarter of a mile. Thankfully, he answered his cell phone. I got my harness, sent a climb for the first time since Chaing Mai, did a lot of belaying, and had a great time.

The next day, we went to The Bull. Will post pictures. Three of us got there early to meet the guy with the tools and equipment we needed to set stuff up, and by the time the others were coherent the basics were set up for people to start climbing. It was too much for me to get more than a few meters up, so I played a bit on the bouldering wall we set up and watched other people do some pretty fancy climbing.

Things I learned this weekend:
1.) While I can understand and make myself understood at least a little in Jeollanamdo, there is a dramatic difference in how easily I can communicate in other parts of Korea.
2.) In a small town, taxi drivers know where everything is. This isn't the case in bigger cities. DUH.
3.) When people start getting unnecessarily loud and dramatic, I shut down and practice avoidance.
4.) Group sleeping arraignments means that I will get almost no sleep whatsoever.

Body image

As I've mentioned a gazillion times, I'm a huge fan of Stumptuous. In her blog today, she asked:

"What if, and I’m just sayin’, what if we all just loved our bodies fiercely like mother bears loved their cubs? What does body love mean, anyway? Does it mean unconditional anything goes, it’s ok to have this drink because I deserve it, or this smoke because I’m worth it? Or does it mean caring and watering and petting and thoughtfully feeding to make the body hum and purr?

In twenty years I want to look back and feel that I did not waste those possibilities. I don’t want to wait two decades to know that I was fabulous and didn’t realize it. I want to nurture all those possibilities right now, and start by lovin’ my bad self. Who’s with me?"

And it reminded me of so many of the conversations I've had and seen floating around lately.

Personally, I'm not good at this. I'm taking a "fake it 'till you make it approach," some days with varying levels of success, but what I find incredibly interesting from an academic standpoint and infuriating from a personal standpoint is that it has become so endemic that when women DON"T talk about how much they hate their bodies or what they want to improve, other women often find ways to sneak in barbs or subtle attacks, often, I think (hope?) subconsciously. From comments about how other women are dressed to backhanded compliments that end up pointing out flaws, to fake concern about eating disorders or distorted body image (ah, the irony), it is so common and so incredibly frustrating.

I just wish I knew of a better way of handling my feelings of pity and anger without just taking it silently.

Weado/Geoje-do

The week before last, I went with my smaller school on a field trip to Geoge-do. We went to see Weado, a island that had been totally landscaped, and visited the POW camp memorial.

From Wikipedia:
Koje-do Island - a prison camp where over 170,000 communist and non-communist prisoners were held from December 1950 until June 1952. Throughout 1951 and early 1952, upper-level communist agents infiltrated and conquered much of Koje section-by-section by uniting fellow communists, bending dissenters to their will through staged trials and public executions, and exporting allegations of abuse to the international community to benefit the communist negotiation team. In May 1952, Chinese and North Korean prisoners at Koje Island rioted and took Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd captive.

So it was a bit of a strange day, to say the least.

The boat ride TO the island was lovely, and it was a beautiful day. Some pictures of plants and kids:

This is a shot of the entire school. Yes, ALL students (and the English teachers. Don't ask, I don't know why either.)


Grade three. All girls, brilliant and SUPER cool.




The principal and me


Some of the gardens


A couple of teachers would "pose" in what I thought was a bit incongruous with the background. I was called over and... well, forced is too strong, but "encouraged" to do a "cutie" pose. So here I am, "cutie" in front of the memorial for the POW camp. I maybe have been in Korea for too long. But not so long that I don't find it more than a little inappropriate.


Anyone know where Grandpa was stationed? I was wondering that the whole time I went through the exhibit. I was given the opportunity to try to explain "propaganda" to my co-teacher, and I really did learn a lot. There is so much I don't know about the history of this country.