The leaves are gradually turning from soft lush green to crispy golden and burnt orange, littering the parks as they fall to the ground. The days are still hot, but the humidity has dropped and the evenings now have a hint of coolness in the air. It’s a refreshing change and for the first time in my life the prospect of winter excites me rather than fills me with dread. The winters here are cold and clear, the skies are canopies of bright blue with not a cloud in sight- so I am told. The idea of wearing tights and boots, big woolly jumpers and knitted hats and scarves is far more appealing than sweating profusely and sticking to whatever I sit on, which has been the way for a few months now.
Last week was a tough week, the tiredness seemed to kick in at the beginning of the week rather than towards the end. Though I am still enjoying the teaching and building a good rapport with the majority of my students, I find that teaching for nine hours on a Thursday pretty much drains me of any energy/inspiration/ability that I have. I have discovered that teaching six hours a day is the optimum and this amount means that I still have buckets of energy and enthusiasm from start to finish. After about six hours of teaching I begin to lag and I feel very sorry for the classes that I have after this point in the day. The job is very high energy and battling with the language barrier can be frustrating and overwhelming. 95% of our students are poor English speakers and listeners so mime and providing visual explanations through acting is an integral part of teaching- I knew my drama degree would come in handy somewhere along the line...
I have a group of students who are about 13 years old and they are fascinated by horror stories. In fact most of the teenage population of Korea seem to be spellbound by a gory murder or a ghostly tale. And if you tell them that the story is true their reactions are even better- the boys cower behind their hands and the girls scream until their faces go blue! We have had two lessons where the classroom lights have been turned off, the curtains drawn and we indulge in telling some gruesome stories of urban legends or eerie hauntings. I think I have scared them all off from ever visiting England as I always claim that my stories are true. There is a famous Japanese horror film called ‘The Ring’ where a girl crawls out from the TV with her long black hair covering her face so that only one very wide and manic looking eye is visible. The children are forever asking me to do this and after a little persuasion I obliged to be met with a classroom full of ear-piercing screams and mobile phone cameras clicking.
Horror films are very prominent here though. And you can turn the TV on at any time of day and there will almost definitely be more than one Korean horror film showing. Some of them are unbearably scary and it is slightly concerning that my 12 year old students are asking me if I saw the film the next day... Though bizarrely, the Koreans won’t show gore or weapons on TV so knives, guns, blood etc are all blurred out and left to the viewer’s imagination.
I have started teaching a group of 14 year olds which is an incredibly tedious job as they are all moody, hormonal and so uninterested in learning that the minute they walk into the classroom they actually put their heads on the desk in an attempt to sleep. As an introductory lesson, I asked them to write on a piece of paper a list of things that they liked and didn’t like and what sort of job they aspired to do in the future. After fifteen minutes I collected the pieces of paper to find that the majority of students had written things such as ‘I don’t like anything,’ and ‘I don’t want a job. I want to sleep’ and one had even written ‘I hate the world and everything in it.’ I find this quite sad as I remember being very excited and passionate about everything at 14 and although I was very moody, I had so many dreams about the future which I voiced as often as I could. I asked the children why they bothered to study if they were so opposed to the idea and they said that they didn’t know. But thinking about it, I would probably be quite a depressed person if I had grown up over here. Dreams are not really encouraged, the desire to want to travel outside of Korea is pretty much unheard of and thinking outside the box may as well be illegal (all the girls want to be air stewardesses and all the boys want to be businessmen). Creativity and originality is shunned in favour of being industrious and getting things done as quickly as possible. Coupled with the ridiculous amount of hours that children have to study each day, I think it would be a pretty uninspiring place to grow up. I certainly count myself lucky that I was born in a country where thinking outside the box and not wanting to be a ‘sheep’ was encouraged and praised.
I did a bit of research in this area and statistics show that South Korea has a phenomenally high suicide rate compared to the UK, especially in teenagers. The pressure put upon teenagers to study for such horrendous hours clearly contributes negatively to their mental well-being. Some of my high school students are made to study for up to 16 hours a day during the exam season.
“Suicide rates unsurprisingly spike around the time of midterm exams for high school students...At a public rally to mourn one of these victims and to protest the pressure-cooker conditions forced upon them in high school, 400 students and supporters cheered one student's speech: "We are not studying machines. We are just teenagers.”
Anyway, enough of the gloom- let me tell you about our wonderful little hamsters. Matilda and Sammy the Rascal were bought from the local supermarket for £1.50 and have bought joy, happiness and a large amount of hamster poo to the household. We’ve had them for two weeks and they are warming up to us quite nicely. I shall put some photos of them up in the near future.
That’s all for now. This weekend we are heading to Busan as we want to look at Beomosa temple and spend a little more time on the beach before the autumn really sets in.
Will write again soon.
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