My Time Abroad In South Korea

My name's Maia, and I'm teaching English in Gwangju, South Korea. I'm an artist from Chicago, Illinois. Go back far enough on this blog and you can read about my semester abroad at Hongik University in Seoul in 2013.

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Waiheke Island, New Zealand, March 2017

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Favorite bits of Toi o Tāmaki/The Auckland Art Gallery, from a visit in March 2017.

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Mount Eden, March 2017

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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 2017

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Saw this Cecily Brown painting at the Leeum Museum of Art today almost cried about it.  Easily the prettiest painting I’ve seen in years.  It is just... so... much....

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I lit basically cried that I managed to get these tickets like, oh my god, that’s where my obsession level is at.  I just sat there refreshing the page over and over.  I’m abt to pay 80 bucks to sit at the back of an arena but I don’t even CARE you guys!!!!!!!!!!! I can die happy, basically.  I hope everyone has a nice lyfe.

I was really mad at myself because I like “technically” signed up for their fanclub so I could have gotten presale tickets, but I didn’t properly register my membership :(  If I missed this opportunity my current state of depression woulda been amplified a lot, but as it is, I’ve spent all January looking forward to my bff coming to visit (WHICH IS CRAAAAZY AND AWESOMEEEE) and now I can spend January and Feb in a state of constant anticipation for this. :)))))))))  I haven’t felt this pleased in a while you guys.

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I talked about this last year (was it on here or on insta??) but I updated it a bit to fit with my current 6th grade’s fave idols (tzuyu, yoojung, yerin, and park bogum are all required by law) and I just want to brag, once again, about how this is the single most successful PPT activity I have ever created and my students literally SCREAM when they understand the point of it and anyway I love myself.

Also, yes, if they turn you down you hear a ‘womp womp womp’ sound and if they say yes then 썸 or 드디어 만났다 start to play, because I am amazing.

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Thank you~.  It causes me intermittent stress but it’s usually not so bad.  I just worry about my students learning the wrong behavior when they’re in my class :( I lov them though.

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I know that when a student (a student I especially like, in particular) is being yelled at, I shouldn’t feel happy, but I for the past five minutes, hearing the librarian walk a student through everything they just did wrong (tease another student then hang on the door to the hallway so I couldn’t come out to her when she was upset), and repeatedly scold “Look at me!” honestly just made me overflow with relief.

I’ve built up a fairly thick skin when it comes to bad behavior.  I try to recognize that I have very little control over the behavior my students exhibit.  Native-English speaking teachers here are (supposed to be) paired with Korean teachers, and thus no one in charge ever puts much thought into how to help teachers with class management.  Yet, we’re often left alone in the room, whether physically or all-but-physically.

The tools I’ve been taught to use to manage my students’ behavior is all preventative or hardly punitive. (”Please behave and I’ll reward you, if you don’t behave I will take said reward away.”)  But the only way to get a student to stop doing something is to make them understand why and how and to what extent they’ve done something wrong.  Instead, I’m usually left to just yell louder than an elementary school teacher should yell.

Yesterday one of my 3rd grade student cursed at a team he was competing against (essentially he called them shitheads), and so I stopped the class and said very clearly to everyone; “욕 하지마” (don’t swear).  His response (” 할 거야 ”) was literally “I’m gonna” with some added informal speech for good, delinquent measure.  I made him stay after class, and tried to explain, in broken Korean, that he is not allowed to swear, because it isn’t nice.  I made him promise he wouldn’t do it again, and when he did I thanked him and told him I knew he was a good student.  He tried to lock me in the library.

So, like, it’s just nice sometimes, so hear a kid scolded, and have it explained to them what they did wrong and to hear them actually, in the end, apologize, for misbehaving.  It is at least a good reminder that my students aren’t all little devils -- they just need someone to explain what being well-behaved means... and so my class is probably still a lost cause, but I can just remember to let go of the control a little for that reason.

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Walking along the river near Chuncheon’s puppet museum during the Chuseok holiday.  September, 2016.

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Riding an express bus across Korea at twilight: 10/10, would recommend.

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An important conversation to preserve:

Minho, third grader: (very upset) Teacher! Teacher, look at what he did!

Me: (another student has defaced his worksheet with something embarrassing, so I color both sides so that it can no longer be seen).

Me: (to little graffiti artist) Why did you do that?

Youngwoo, third grader: (shrugs)

Me: Apologize to Minho.

Youngwoo: No, I won't.

Me: You are unable to apologize? (*"can't" is very literal in Korean)

Youngwoo: No, I just don't want to. (refuses to fall into my reverse psychology trap)

Me: Why not? Minho is your friend.

Youngwoo: He's not my friend.

Minho: What? Well then what am I? (*in Korean "friend" describes someone who is the same age as you. adults refer to all children the same age as "friends")

Youngwoo: A zombie.

Me: (angry sigh)

Minho: (pretends to be a zombie)

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Taipei at night, in August 2016. (part 1/2).

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Small glimpses of Jiufen, Taiwan in August 2016.  

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Yehliu Geopark - Taiwan (August 2016), a day and a place where the sun was so hot we were crying tears of joy that being on the coast at least provides some cool ocean breeze.

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Look at that Spirited Away landscape 😶 (at Jiufen)

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Da'an, Taipei, Taiwan (at Taipei, Taiwan)