Where's Waldo? Check the vacuum.

So a foreigner walks into a bar.
The beginnings of any good joke ... and pretty much my life for the past 8 months.
Just switch out “bar” with “Korea” and the good times ensue.
Although many a Korean bar has been visited by myself and other Fulbright friends.
But that's neither here nor there.

The past couple weeks I undertook the extremely difficult challenge of teaching my students about St. Patrick’s Day and all that is the glorious Irish-American holiday. The fact that this is probably the most difficult thing I had to do all week (besides change the paper in the stupid I-don't-ever-want-to-work-for-the-foreigner copier in teachers’ office) is more than ok with me.
While explaining the cultural and aesthetic significance of wearing green, drinking green beer, dying various American canals green (which many of my students exclaimed, “Planet hurt!”), and explaining exactly what a leprechaun is, I think it’s safe to say that Hwasun High School can check one more thing off their “Know more stuff about America” list.
When I began my St. Patrick’s Day lesson, I figured the majority of students would have some idea what it’s about ... in that they all basically understood Halloween (costume = candy). However, I was completely wrong. Not a single student had even an inkling about what St. Patrick’s Day is.
Not being Irish, or a St. Patrick’s Day enthusiast, I wasn’t completely devastated, and it did provide quite the chuckle when I first asked them to explain to me what they thought people did on this particular holiday.
I gave them a couple minutes to think, then had them tell me what they thought Americans do/should do on this most sacred of holidays.
While I got the standard, “Americans visit family” ... or “Americans eat delicious foods” ... there were some jewels.
Now I’m not saying that I think we (‘mericans) should start implementing these into our standard St. Patrick’s Day celebrations ... but here are some suggestions from my Korean students:

“Americans should play computer games. All day.”
“Kill things.”
“Sleep forever.”
“Eat ham.”
“Kiss the boyfriends.”
“Play the soccer.”

Just think about it. Playing the soccer after eating ham and killing things, sounds like a good time to me.

In addition to sharing with my students the awesomeness of St. Patrick’s Day, I also introduced them to Waldo (of Where’s Waldo fame), in hopes that they would be more excited to practice giving directions in English.
So after a crash course / refresher of important English directional terms (left, right, across from the 7-11), I allowed a couple students to hide paper Waldo cut-outs in various places around the classroom (in the window, in multiple pencil cases, in the vacuum (hindsight - not the best idea), in their shirts, etc) and instructed the rest of the students to give directions to the poor kid I blindfolded at the front of the class. With a few exceptions, this turned out to be a pretty great lesson, as most students genuinely wanted their classmate to find Waldo and not wander aimlessly about the classroom. Although I did have those interesting moments when students (specifically boys) would tell their blindfolded friend to walk straight (towards a pretty girl), bend down (which for some reason they would do), and “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” ... which thankfully, they didn't. I also had some other, more mischievous students, lead the blindfolded kid out of the classroom, around the hallways, back into the classroom, and eventually to Waldo. While this wasn’t the most practical or orthodox of lessons, they were using English, so I let it slide.
This provided me with much entertainment ... something I’m desperately need in order to survive teaching the same lesson 18 times a week.
I’ve now determined that all future lessons will be chosen/created on the basis of exactly how much entertainment they provide me. While word-searches somehow have a magical silencing effect on high schoolers, they are not nearly as entertaining as watching the class-clown dig through the vacuum cleaner in hopes of finding Waldo, or listening to about 30 students attempt to pronounce the sentence, “I really like lilies.”

Last week, while in the midst of explaining the difference between “fart” and “smell” (which did happen) ... the school nurse barged into my classroom and demanded that all my students stop class and pee on sticks.
As this request was carried out only in Korean, I had absolutely no idea what was going on and was pretty confused when all my students stood up and ran to the bathroom together.
The school nurse, who speaks little to no English, showed me one of the sticks, and just kept saying “test, test, test”.
When some of my students returned to class (pee sticks in hand) I asked them what was going on, only to be met with a myriad of responses:
“We pee on this.” Ok. Ew.
“Pee test, Rauren.” Oh. We’re getting somewhere.
“I am the best!” (said while waving around the used pee stick) Congratulations. Stop that.
Then my husband, who speaks a tad bit better English, informed me that it was a school-wide pee test - testing every student for what he called “drugs”, followed by the cigarette smoking motion.
That makes more sense.
(I later found out that this wasn’t a drug test, but instead a test to check each student’s sugar levels, in an attempt to find diabetic kids. This still seems strange, but whatever.)
Anyways, the school-wide pee test resulted in a 15 minute disruption of my class, where the entire student body was running around school, to and from the bathrooms, waving their pee sticks in triumph.
Girls and boys.
I don’t exactly understand why it was a good idea for every single class to be tested at the same time, as this caused what can only be described as complete and utter chaos in the restrooms / hallways.
I also don’t understand why the nurse and/or teachers didn’t collect the pee sticks in the restrooms, but instead felt like having the students run around the hallways with their used pee sticks was a better idea.
Additionally, I was offered about 5 or so used pee sticks as “gifts” ... while students exclaimed, “Oh Rauren, my gift for you” ... “I made for you.”
No thanks. I can make my own. I don’t need yours.

While not busy being the cultural ambassador to Hwasun and trying to avoid sticks with my students’ urine on them, I found some time to visit friends around my area - in two different cities, Gurye and Jeonju. Both are “cities” in my province ... making a visit not only necessary, but super easy via the Korean public transportation system. So I hopped on a bus and an hour and a half later found myself in Gurye ... a town that (no joke) makes Hwasun look like a booming metropolis, except for the whole Clark Kent / Superman thing. Gurye is a city known for two things - the two stoplights that it proudly owns. Also, my friend Beans lives there. And when she wasn’t busy getting hit by cars (yeah, that happened) she gave us a tour.
So after the 20 minutes or so it took for her to show us the entire town, we headed to a nearby flower festival - one of only a billion festivals that Korea boasts of.
This particular festival was one for the record books. The record books that record “mediocre, not too exciting festivals”.
To be perfectly honest, I’ve found that during my time spent in Korea the festivals that are supposed to be “Awesome!” and “Super cool!” are in fact, not that “Awesome!” and not that “Super cool!”
I feel that I now have the credibility to judge Korean festivals (8 months gives you that somewhat “pretentious” ability). And I must admit that the festivals that I have visited (Chrysanthemum, Kimchi, Green Tea, Fire, Flower) have been built up immensely - by Koreans, the Korean tourism web-site, fellow ETAs, practically the Buddha himself, only to be shattered by their so-so-ness.
But, you have to give Koreans some points for trying so hard ... celebrating that which would usually not be celebrated ... but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve had my fill of Korean festivals.
Most festivals include about 500+ stands selling various obscure food items, some type of “traditional” thing (i.e. dancing, music, rope making) that I feel is only thrown in there to make it more legit, and usually awful weather. The Gurye flower festival was no exception to this new rule I just created. The weather was pretty awful ... come on Korea, stop sucking in the weather department ... and it was basically an open field with many a gross food stand, some traditional dancers (who looked as if they stepped off the “Alice in Wonderland” set), and some flowers. In the parking lot.
The entire Flower Festival, which advertised one thing and one thing only - flowers - had no flowers. Not even fake ones. With that, I was completely disappointed.
It should be noted that most every Korean city has some type of festival, be it large or small, only because most cities receive so much money from the government they have nothing else to do with it, so they hold a festival, spice up the town a little. However, I would much more appreciate a Spice Girls concert, instead of a flower festival without flowers.
Anyways, I had a pretty good time with my friends, wandering around the festival, checking out the latest ajumma fashions, and witnessing an authentic re-enactment of traditional Native American flute playing.
Really.
Apparently an old Korean guy thought the festival was lacking just one thing: him dressed in head to toe Native American (can I say “Indian” here?) gear, playing some type of wooden flute. I was thoroughly engrossed in it for 5 minutes.
It was that good.

After getting my fill of Gurye and its flowers, I headed over to Jeonju ... a fairly large city, known for having the most delicious bi-bim-bap in Korea, and thus the world. (And that’s saying a lot.)
Bi-bim-bap (a dish with rice, various vegetables, sometimes an egg, and some spicy red sauce/paste - gotuchang ... not ketchup) just happens to be my favorite Korean food ... next to live octopus and dog, of course. So while in Jeonju I by-passed the standard sightseeing “stand here, look at that, take a picture” and instead spent a glorious night with some ETA friends.
But I did manage to eat some delicious bi-bim-bap ... and it was the best I’ve had in Korea so far. Now I know that I’m probably biased a little bit because it’s supposed to be “most delicious” ... and the fact that I don’t really know how to accurately judge the deliciousness of Korean foods (festivals, on the other hand, are a different story). But I went with the crowd and agreed that it was probably the best ever.
And while the time spent in Jeonju consisted mostly of: spending an evening at a local bar with friends, hearing some white girl rap, being asked to “keep it down” in said bar, and eating more Papa John’s pizza than should be allowed ... I had a fabulous time.

If anyone is interested: In my time spent as “cultural ambassador” (I block off selected times in which I hold this title) I’ve discussed, to the best of my ability, the recent passing of the health care bill with my host-family, some students, church-lady friends, and fellow teachers. Basically getting their take on the whole “USA marching their way towards communism and doing their best to speed up the coming of the Antichrist” thing. And surprisingly, absolutely every single Korean I have spoken with thinks this whole health care thing is a pretty sweet move on our part, wondering why the US hadn’t done something like this earlier.
Not to get all soap-boxy (because this is a blog, and not a bathroom), but nice job America. The Koreans give you two thumbs / peace signs way up.

Also ... discussing health care legislation allows me to address important and urgent questions like these, which are inevitably brought to the forefront of discussion:
“How do Americans clean their ears? Do they use Q-tips?” - courtesy of my co-teacher.

This past weekend (Gurye and Jeonju were two weekends ago. Keep up.) I ventured into Gwangju to enjoy the performance of a couple fellow ETAs, in their Korean debut as “Boomerang” - basically two guys, with guitars, who bring all the hits to Korea. They actually managed to book a gig (is that still cool to say?) at a Gwangju bar called “Crazyhorse” (Koreans love them some Native Americans) and jammed (is this acceptable slang?) for a couple hours. Playing hits such as, “She’ll be coming around the Mountain”, a currently popular K-pop hit “외톨이야”, and even some of their own stuff, they were able to please absolutely everyone in the bar - “absolutely everyone” being their foreign friends, as the “locals” were not to be found.

So that was basically my past week and a half, nicely packaged and brought to you in “Lauren’s blog”. I keep telling myself that I will eventually get around to coming up with a more interesting and exciting title than the current, “Fulbright Korea 2009 - 2010” ... but then, why change something that I don’t want to take the time to change?
Also ... I’ve been meaning to figure out how to get a snazzy template for my blog (I mean, if I’m going to own some Internet real-estate, it might as well be fancy) but again, I don’t necessarily know how / have the burning desire to do it. And besides, I don’t want to scare away all my precious readers with a sparkly stars background, or by blasting the latest emo song into their headphones.
With that, make sure to check back next week - to find that I’ve changed nothing, but have hopefully posted what went down in Jeju.
(I am heading to Jeju Island this Wednesday to help chaperon my school’s first grade students on their annual field trip, and take part in the 2nd Fulbright Korea ETA Conference.)
The first should be an adventure, because taking 250 Korean high schoolers anywhere is always a good idea ... and during the latter, I’m hoping to find out exactly what I’m supposed to be doing here in Korea. I’m not sure if i get it yet.