In my humble opinion, Halloween is one of the best holidays. What's not to like about wearing costumes and eating sweets?! Now, Koreans do not officially celebrate Halloween. But when asked, ALL of my students can tell you about the holiday, and shout shameless requests like, "TEACHAAA, GIVE ME CANDY!" I regress, but imagine my surprise when I walked into the English Cafe the week before Halloween and saw it fully decked out in festive decorations. The student workers did such a good job! I can only imagine how many hours it took for them to make all those little jack-o-lantern and ghost cut-outs.
Here are some more pictures of the English Cafe. The students were really creative. I especially love the mini pumpkins that they made by taping strips of orange construction paper around orange paper cups. Over the past 3 months of teaching, I've come to realize that it's often more important for me to be a cultural resource than an strict English teacher. My students learn nearly all of their required grammar and vocabulary in other English classes (taught by Korean teachers). In contrast, my class is the one hour a week that is solely dedicated to building conversational skills and exposing them to American culture.
This is a role that I take rather seriously. Koreans, as well as the rest of the world, have many preconceived notions about American life and culture (e.g., Americans are lazy and never study). I feel that I have a personal and moral obligation to teach my students about the nuances of American culture as accurately as I can. Students are always excited to hear about holidays and fun American traditions. This was, of course, no different. For the entire week prior to Halloween, I taught them a very fun and festive lesson.
For my Halloween lesson, I first presented a PowerPoint about Halloween traditions: making jack-o-lanterns, wearing costumes, trick-or-treating, and scary movies. I used the latter to transition into a short movie clip from Dawn of the Dead, the infamous zombie horror film. After that, I proclaimed that zombies have come to Daejeon, looking for delicious brains to eat. Then, I explained that in order to survive, students must kill the zombies, using 4 chosen tools from an arsenal of 16 possible tools. For the rest of class, students worked in small groups to weigh the prons and cons of all the tools, eventually decide upon the 4 best tools, and detail reasons for their choices.
The outcome of this lesson was super hilarious. I was amazed by my students' imagination and creative explanations for choosing certain tools. For example, one brilliant group stated that they would choose Kim Hyun-Jun (Tool #1 - a superhuman soldier from a popular Korean tv drama) and place him in an isolated room to lure in all the female zombies with his attractiveness. Next, they would use the unlimited supply of SPAM (Tool #2) to create fake brains that they would then plant in the aforementioned room to lure in the male zombies. After that, they would use a flamethrower (Tool #3) to incinerate the entire zombie population. Last, they would fly to safety on the back of Superman (Tool #4)!! XD
With this Halloween-themed lesson, I faced the inevitable dilemma of deciding whether to give candy to all my students. As much as I would've liked to have done so, I have nearly 700 students and this generous gesture would've been far too expensive. So, I came up with an ingenious way to reward only the students who were willing to put in a little extra effort. A few minutes before class ended, I passed out a Halloween word search puzzle and promised that I'd reward them with a Halloween "surprise" if they brought it back completed to my office. That way, everyone could learn where my office is and those who wanted candy had a tangible way to get it; while ambivalent students were left candyless. Here's a puzzle that one student decorated with adorable Halloween illustrations.
Halloween Day, itself was rather uneventful. I went out with some Fulbright Daejeonites in the evening and had a good time exploring the nightlife around Chungnam National University, which is apparently where young locals like to hang out. The following week at school was a well deserved break for me. Every semester, students are required to participate in a school-wide English speech contest, which they decided to hold during my weekly class. One week prior to the speech contest, the first grade students were given a list of 30 long sentences. For the actual contest, students were asked to choose a slip of paper that had one of the sentences written in Korean, translate it into English, and then speak it properly in 20 seconds or less.
So pretty much, it wasn't a speech contest but a test of rote memorization. Due to its closed-ended nature, I had imagined that every student was capable of doing well, but I was wrong. Since the sentences were extremely obscure and awkward, nearly all the D-level and most of the C-level students were disheartened and didn't bother studying. That being said, 95% of A-level students got a perfect score on the speech contest. Here are some of my favorite examples: "I heard the amazing news that Sharon has developed a liking for book" or "She has played the flute for 10 years more than I have. I don't think I'm eligible to evaluate her." And the ultimate best one: "I'm starving. Do you have any munchies I can have?" Hahahahaaaa.
On Saturday, August 5th, I decided to take advantage of the autumn weather and go hiking with Aaron, one of my Fulbright friends and his 9 year-old host brother. We went to Mount Sikjangsan, which is located southeast of downtown Daejeon. It's considered one of the eight most beautiful landscapes in the city and as I've recently learned, it's the tallest peak in Daejeon. Websites describe Mount Sikjangsan's hiking trail as a "graceful, gradual climb." Well we must've been going up the wrong path then because it surely wasn't the calm, peaceful afternoon that I signed up for. Instead, it was incredibly steep, with huge rocks jutting out in every direction. Whew, it was quite the workout.
On the way up, we occasionally stopped for water (and breathing) breaks. Every time, the host brother would complain about how his father (the avid hiker) only stops for zero or one break, at the most. To be fair, all Koreans are EPIC hikers. No joke, you have grandmas and grandpas donning $400+ of professional hiking gear and speeding up the mountains, with their high-tech trekking poles. Like everything else in their lives, Koreans take hiking very seriously. Eventually, we made it to the highest peak and found a sizable opening in the trees to get an aerial view of Daejeon. It was a lovely sight and made the treacherous climb all that more worthwhile.
On the following Thursday, November 10th, I had the day off from school for the College Scholastic Ability Test (more about this in another post). So I went hiking, yet again, with a second-year Fulbright friend Rachael. This time, we went to Mount Gyejoksan, which is located in the northwest direction, outside Daejeon proper. Gyejok in Korean means claws of a rooster, which is apparently what the mountain range looks like. As soon as we arrived, we met a middle-aged Korean man who insisted on being our tour guide for the entire hike. At first, it was endearing but it got annoying fast. Fortunately, it was a nice day and this trail was much more enjoyable than that of my earlier hiking trip.
There was a stunning Buddhist temple at the top of one of the highest peaks. From the observation point, we had an amazing view of the mountainous terrain and surrounding areas of Daejeon. It was great to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and stop to enjoy the outdoors. Although we just barely missed the changing autumn leaves, I'm glad that I got to explore some of the beautiful natural scenery that Korea has to offer.
That concludes my lengthy synopsis of autumn adventures in Korea. I hope that everyone back home enjoyed their Halloween and are gearing up for the winter holiday season. I'll be coming back to America for for Christmas and New Years!! Last week, I officially booked my ticket home. Hope to see many of you between December 23rd and January 5th! I can't wait! Let the countdown begin...
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