Holiday Rituals/Rituais de férias

Last night, our hagwon held its annual (I think) Christmas dinner party at a samgyeopsal (galbi, I think) restaurant. It was definitely a really nice place; there was plenty of food, and in good form, the school provided unlimited Chilsung cider, Coca-Cola, maekju, and soju. The departing teachers (one of our Korean English teachers, one of the secretaries, and two bus drivers are leaving) got to give goodbye speeches, and the newbies (three Korean English teachers, one new secretary, a new math teacher, and our school president's younger brother, who is apparently coming on as a bus driver and general administrator) gave "introduction" speeches. Then the president, director, and head teacher gave speeches, as well as anyone else who was so inclined (this did not include me). The drinks flowed, assigned seating was (at least partially) ignored, and fun times were had by...most. It would have been a lot nicer if they hadn't been using the same tongs to handle the raw meat and put the cooked meat on my plate. Or putting the raw and the cooked meat so close together on the table grills that they were touching. Needless to say, I didn't each much of the meat - but there was plenty of (safer) food to be had, so I definitely got my fill. Plus, I don't think any of my coworkers got sick, so I guess it turned out all right in the end.

The foreign head teacher gave a short speech and ended with the exhortation for the Korean English teachers and the foreign teachers to be closer in the coming year. As if on cue, at the end of the night our company president handed my boss an envelope of cash for all of us to go to noraebang (a.k.a. karaoke) together after dinner. At which point five of the Korean teachers produced some excuse to not stick around and promptly split. All nine foreign teachers, the three new Korean teachers, our boss, and two other Korean teachers wound up going to a huge noraebang room and ordering a bunch of alcohol. Husband promptly split (he hates noraebang), and I followed about 45 minutes later. (I waited until my boss, who has a sick two-year-old at home, left.) I think the rest of the group dispersed about an hour after that.

While I understand that the thought is very generous, I am not sure why it doesn't occur to our company president that we might already have plans for a Saturday night, especially the one before Christmas. Then again, I know I should be grateful - most of the other hagwon teachers in town are amazed that we get a Christmas dinner at all.

Still, I wish it came with awareness of food safety and hygiene.

Our school administration works very hard to try to make sure that all of the teachers (foreign and Korean) mingle and mesh well. Some things work better than others, and some people mesh better than others, but we as foreign teachers are often not quite sure what to make of it. Korea (very similar to Japan) has a huge gift-giving culture, so pretty much any holiday is an excuse to give gifts to family, friends, coworkers, and crushes. There are some really interesting "holidays" to illustrate this point. For example, we all know Valentine's Day as a Hallmark holiday back home to give flowers, chocolates, and other goodies.

In Japan and Korea, Valentine's Day is a holiday for women to give men chocolates, but they created a companion holiday on March 14 - "White Day" - for men to return the favor and buy chocolates for women. Korea, however, took it a step further and invented "Black Day" for single people to eat noodles with jjajang (Chinese black sauce).

And then there's Pepero Day, which is celebrated on November 11 by giving everyone you know boxes of Pepero sticks. Pepero (a copy of the Japanese "Pocky" sticks) are long, thin crackers (hence why they are given on the date 11/11) that are dipped in chocolate and sold in boxes of about 20 or so. They are deceptively innocuous - their small size and thin layer of chocolate eliminates any guilt you may feel about eating sweets, until you realize that you've consumed four boxes in one sitting (true story!). The only purpose whatsoever that this "holiday" serves is to give people way more cookies than anyone should ever eat, and to increase sales for Lotte, the Korean mega-corporation that makes them (and probably invented the holiday in the first place).

Teacher, what?

One thing that our school does (and I'm pretty sure we're the only school in the city that does this) is collect money for major life events of staff members. Every time someone gets married or has a death in the family, money is collected from everyone at the school (teachers, secretaries, and bus drivers alike) and presented to that person. They request W30,000 (about $30) from each Korean staff member, and W15,000 from each foreign teacher. I guess they charge us half because we are strangers in a strange land, but they still want to include us in the collection to make us all more cohesive. However, this year we had (I think) four weddings and one funeral, which totaled to about $150 between US. The flip side of this is that we are always welcome to attend and eat at the buffet in the wedding hall for free (and all of us almost always do), but it can still get irritating at times, because we usually would rather be excluded and just hold onto the cash. Not only that, but the Koreans usually find it strange that we would want to attend, and they don't understand that we see it as getting our money's worth.

Another thing that we do, that seems like a good idea on principle, is have a birthday collection. Every other month, we each contribute W10,000 to the birthday fund, which is used to buy a cake once a month and give W20,000 as birthday money for everyone enjoying a birthday that month. Unfortunately, this isn't always put into practice flawlessly. For example, one of my coworkers didn't even get any of her birthday cake, because the cake was brought in right before she had to go to class, and everyone else ate the whole thing before she got back. (Because of this, I now make sure to cut her a slice and put it on her desk before the others devour it all.) Husband got a birthday cake but no birthday money (and June was our first month, so we didn't even know we were supposed to get birthday money until several months later). I brought it up last month to the Korean teacher who is in charge of birthdays, and she assured me that she would give both of us our money on my birthday...and then she forgot to give me my birthday money, too. I had to ask again at the end of the month to get it. On top of that, because the kinder birthday party was held on my birthday, I didn't get a birthday cake - we just ate the kinder cake.

Some of this may seem like splitting hairs, but when we all put in money every month, I feel like it's important that everyone should get what they are (supposedly) entitled to.

And then there was the Chuseok gift. Every year for Chuseok (the Korean Thanksgiving), the school president and director present us all with W100,000 gift certificates to Lotte stores (which includes a series of fast food restaurants, department stores, and grocery stores). In return, it has become tradition for all of the teachers to contribute W25,000 to purchase a really nice gift for them. Again, it seems nice on principle, but most of us just balked at the pointlessness of it - why not just subtract our expected contribution and give us the difference? Better yet, why not scrap it all and call it even?

A lot of this goes back to cultural clash, I think - while those of us from North America take pride in being frugal, Koreans make a show of being generous with gifts and expensive food - anything less, and you are seen as cheap, which is a huge no-no here. Whenever our school provides food for dinners or luncheons for special occasions, we are constantly reminded of how expensive the food is, which feels really weird to us. Obviously, we understand that it is culturally expected here, but to be confronted very matter-of-factly with something considered extremely rude back home makes it feel very awkward, and hollow.

To be fair, though, we all have our own holiday rituals that we perform without even thinking every year: Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas dinners, obligatory Christmas gifts for extended cousins and coworkers, and the annual Christmas letter that hsa to be worded just right and goes out to everyone in your ever-growing address book. The holidays have become a time when we make sure that everyone who gave us a gift gets one in return and that everyone gets a politically-correct "Happy Holidays" card (since "Merry Christmas" is now considered passe and, by some, bigoted).

Oh, the joys. Personally, I am just grateful to be celebrating the season with a group of coworkers that has become my family away from home.

In other news, our contract extension addendum is sitting on our coffee table as I type this. We are scheduled to meet with our school director before class tomorrow to sign it, which will extend our contract to January 29, 2014. In the meantime, we will be making tentative plans for our post-teaching travels. Suggestions are welcome and encouraged.

Saint Nick/São Nicolau

Some days, teaching children makes me feel like this.

The caption of this photo from Facebook reads:
After becoming Bishop of Bari, St. Nicholas was imprisoned and tortured during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian (303-313). After his release, the aged bishop participated in the Council of Nicea (325), where he is said to have walked across the room to slap the face of Arius, the arch-heretic who denied Jesus' divinity. By all accounts, St. Nicholas held firmly to the orthodox faith, while showing gentleness to his flock, whose souls he perceived as threatened by the poison of Arius' false teaching. In sum, St. Nicholas showed himself to be what my latinist friend calls "episcopus cum testiculi" (for which a colorful alliterative translation suggests itself).

That's a "bishop with balls" for those of you who are less Latin-inclined.

Happy Feast Day of Saint Nicholas!

Birthday Love/Amor no meu aniversário

So my 27th birthday has come and gone. My birthday has never been something I have particularly looked forward to; aside from a few small parties thrown by my family (and once by my college roommates my sophomore year), most of the time people just forget it entirely. My birthday always falls right around Thanksgiving (and every few years, like this one, actually lands on Turkey Day), so all throughout high school my friends would either overlook the day or not be able to do anything because of the school vacation. By the time I got to college, I just quit telling people, because they would inevitably be back home with their families, and celebrating it a week late just seemed pointless. I expected it to be no different this year, so I prepared to enter my late twenties in a slightly depressed emotional state with little to no fanfare, continuing the relentlessly dull march toward thirty, old age, and my eventual grave. (And yes, I am a naturally cheerful person.)

Luckily for me, I was quite mistaken.

The day started off with a "surprise" party in my Korean class (I say surprise because my Korean teacher told my classmates that they would throw me a "surprise party" when I told him about my birthday the Tuesday before). It was very sweet: he bought an entire cake from Paris Baguette (a chain bakery prevalent in Asia), and one of the other students brought his guitar for them to sing to me.

고마워요,선생님!

My coworkers are very perceptive people; frankly, even if they weren't, spending seven hours a day in the same building with zero privacy outside of the bathroom makes moods incredibly contagious. They picked up pretty early on that I was feeling melancholy about my upcoming coming-of-age day, so I guess they schemed among themselves about how to cheer my countenance. When I arrived at work on Thursday, this was waiting for me on my desk:

Yes, that is my fabulously organized desk behind all of my goodies.

Some close-ups:

From the Canadian-Minnesotan couple.

From the Texas roommates.

From the Canadian.

From the Texas Tech alum.

From the foreign head teacher.

From the SFASA Alum.

My mother-in-law sent these two cards, which (miraculously) arrived precisely on time on Thursday.

Impeccable timing, Joel's mom!

To top it all off, the Kinder monthly birthday party was that day, too, so I actually got to eat the Kinder cake on my birthday. Woo!

The festivities didn't end with my coworkers, either. My first class of the day, English World 4 (English World is the first series of books when the kids start the program; these are our youngest kids, around age 7) threw me a little party. When I got to the top of the stairs on the way to class, the girls in the class greeted me and asked me to close my eyes, which I did. They took my basket and my CD player and led me by the hand to the classroom. I was then told to sit down while they arranged my gifts on the table in front of me.
"Open!"
"No, no, no!" (I kept my eyes closed.)
"One, two, three-"
"No, no, no!" (I waited.)
After some more chattering in Korean, they finally agreed to let me open my eyes. I opened them to a collection of candies, notes, and a little gift bag. Here are my spoils from the little ones:

Leah's and Noah's notes. Noah has a minor obsession with Angry Birds.

Bonny's note. She probably got help from her dad.

The green bear and the pen were both from Noah.

That night, several of my coworkers took me out to dinner (Japanese food!) and then we headed downtown for a few drinks afterward. We met up with one of Joel's friends from another hagwon and spent a few hours just chatting while Joel and some of the others played darts. It was lovely.

And the birthday festivities didn't stop on my birthday, either! The next day, several of my MWF classes brought snacks to celebrate. The most interesting gift by far, however, wasn't even a birthday gift. In my Carnival 5 class, one chapter went over major family events (e.g. family reunion, wedding, funeral, birthday, baby shower), and one of the vocabulary words was "wedding anniversary," so I explained it with the most readily available example - mine. One of the girls apparently was so impressed by this that she actually bought Joel and I an anniversary gift - well before our anniversary.

Those are real flowers in the box, too.

A close-up of the snow globe.

Friday night ended on a good note when my last middle school class of the night put this together for me:

The whole shebang.

A tower of Choco Pies and lollipops. The cake on the right is from Paris Baguette.

The note.

The white board, decorated with my partner-teacher's markers.

I now have all of the notes under the glass cover on my desk so that I can be continually reminded of all of the love I got on my birthday.

They put glass plates over all of the tables and desks here. It's a little weird, but it also provides great decorating opportunities.

Honestly, it was probably the best birthday abroad I could have asked for. You guys sure do know how to make a girl feel special.

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I thought I would take some time to write and reminisce about my awesome birthday to help make me feel better. Frankly, it has been a less-than-stellar past few days. We are at a point where we have to decide whether or not we are going to extend our contract, and for how long, so we are thinking pretty hard and actively making contingency plans. There is a lot that is up in the air, so any prayers - or just positive energy - that you could send our way would be great. Meanwhile, Joel will continue to relieve stress by killing aliens on Halo, while I continue to do so by cleaning, putting puzzles together...and writing.

Until next time.