Those Korean hip hop dancers were getting off! The show was pretty amazing. Oh, I got together with some friends for my friend, Ife’s, birthday, and we had a fabulous time watching the play, A Ballerina in Love with a B-Boy. The play was a pantomime, but the plot was easy to understand. Duh! It was about a ballerina who was in love with a street dancer. She gives up her career to be with him. Take a look at the video and the pics from the performance.

Time flew during my visit at an orphanage in Busan on Saturday. I arranged the visit through a local Korean volunteer group that pairs foreigners with organizations that could use volunteers. To get to the orphanage, I met with another young lady at the Onjejeong subway stop and we took bus 209 there. First, we went upstairs to play with some girls who were about three to five years old. The girls were accustomed to the other young lady, who is from Canada, I think. They crowded around her and pulled away from me when I came near. I was a stranger, and they didn’t want anything to do with me. I tried to offer a little girl a toy, and she took it, and threw it somewhere. This happened again and again. So then, I started feeling, a little isolated at the orphanage. Imagine that! I really wanted to play with the kids and that wasn’t happening.

I imagined holding and playing with younger children. So, I told the girl who joined me on the visit that I was going to go back downstairs on my own. She said, “okay” as she happily played with two little girls. I went downstairs (when I could find the staircase, again, I’m directionally challenged). After peaking inside a few rooms, I found a room with about four cribs. Babies! Babies won’t pull away, and I figured that babies in an orphanage need to be held. I attended a conference or a workshop a while back and I recall the presenter talking about an orphanage in Romania where the babies were left in cribs for hours at a time and suffered from extreme neglect. The babies in Romanian orphanages ended up being detached from humans, and were withdrawn.

I haven’t held a baby in years, and I thought it would be fun to hold and play with the babies. I used to babysit my baby brother and cousins. When I walked into the baby room, the two Korean women who were watching the children were cleaning the floor. They motioned for me to wash my hands. I washed them in a small bathroom in the baby room. I then immediately went to a crib and picked up a little boy. He was probably about nine months or maybe a little older. He could stand and walk on his own. I held him for a long time, but when I went to put him back and pick up another child, ugh oh, he started to cry. Then he bawled. I didn’t want to spend the entire time holding or paying attention to just one child, so I tried to comfort him, while I held another child. He didn’t stop crying until the ladies finished cleaning the floor and took all of the children out of the cribs. That’s when the fun really began. At first, he wouldn’t come back to me, but then he warmed up and stopped pouting. Anyway, I was able to play with all of the babies, and I had the best time!!!

I am planning to make regular visits there on the weekends!

Hey, if you like the Diva, why not like me on Facebook? I have a ton of photos that I’m adding to the page in addition to more commentary about day-to-day haps in SoKo (South Korea)! Anyway, here’s the Korea Diva Fan Page!

What’s in Osan? There’s another military base near there, and there are some Greek Paraphernalia shops that cater to black sororities and fraternities. Just in case you didn’t know, I’m a Sigma Gamma Rho. Before I even came to South Korea, a friend of mine, asked me to get him a jacket. He’s an Omega. I thought that he was crazy! When I got to Korea, I thought that he was even crazier, because I could barely find people to speak English, never mind finding some nalia out here. I couldn’t even find hair products for black women in Busan.

Later, I hooked up with a sorority sister who I knew from back home. She was living near Seoul. That sorority sister connected me to another in Osan. So, my Omega Psi Phi friend is going to get his leather jacket, and I am hoping to buy an SGRho jacket for myself. The shop that I visited is called MJ’s and they even had fur-lined jackets, blankets, and they can custom-make just about anything on a jacket. Just show MJ a picture.

I haven’t met any Greeks that I know of who are teachers, except for my sorority sister Lea, who I knew from back home. All of the sorors and frats that I know are on the military base. And let me add that there are a lot of Masons, too. I am sure that all of the black fraternities and sororities are represented on the bases. There are Greek parties one a base somewhere in Korea almost every weekend. Yes. Compared to the teachers, it’s an older crowd, but it’s my crowd.

When I first applied to teach in South Korea, I was concerned about the workload. I have come to realize, that not only do I have several hours of free time a day while teaching in a public school, classes are canceled a lot. Today all of my classes were canceled, but my co-teacher had an assignment for me. She wanted me to inventory every book in the small library. I had to list the publication name, author, publisher and the level. I was glad that she had a form, so I could type in the info. The project will definitely last for longer than a day, though. The books will be waiting for me tomorrow. Read more…

You are at a disadvantage if you are not totally fluent in reading, writing, and speaking Korean. When I came here, I was shocked to sign bank documents not knowing what they said, and only relying on what I was told about the documents’ contents. There are other instances when living in South Korea that you can ask questions about what you are signing or what’s going on, but you end up relying on what someone tells you. My only suggestion Read more…

We open every class, talking about the weather. Every day we say the same thing: It’s cloudy. It’s rainy. It’s cold. It’s been raining for the last few days, and I know that a lot of people have colds. Speaking of cold, the weather is still chilly. It’s been so dreary lately, I can’t wait for the warm weather to break and for the sun to come out.

This week I experienced my first rough class since I’ve been here. Actually all of the sixth grade classes were hard to manage. They didn’t have enough work to do, and my co-teacher was in our adjoining room testing their speaking. It was difficult keeping them quiet, and one student said something in Korean to me that made the other kids chuckle. I have no idea of what he said.

I tried to manage the class with incentives (lollipops since I couldn’t find the stickers that we use for good behavior). That worked for one class. It didn’t work for the others. I tried to give them extra work, but they didn’t do it. That’s a first! She gave them extra work, and they didn’t do that either. Only two students even tried.

My classes have a different tone overall this term. I don’t think that my new co-teacher would have tolerated that, and I wanted to keep them quiet while the testing was going on.

I made a game last week, that I would have played with them had I not been wary of the noise. I created a game based on Jeopardy, from a template. We played the game once as I planned last week, but on Monday when my co-teacher started the game up, I saw that she had changed it. She went into my program and added text. She translated some of the questions into Korean. I was disappointed, because the questions were simple, from our last lesson. I wanted to students to be able to read and understand the questions without the translations. I’m sure that they don’t need the translations by now in the sixth grade. We have been studying questions like Where are you from? Which floor is it on? for weeks. She changed the way the game was played slightly, but I think that was an improvement. The students played in six small teams instead of two large teams, and anyone from the team could answer the questions. I thought that was a good idea.

I have experienced kindness here that I have not experienced from strangers in America, and I wanted to take the time to reflect on that. Read more…

I’ve been in South Korea for seven months, so I decided to post some of my photos from EPIK, English Program in Korea orientation. I attended orientation back in August 2009. I looked though my old photos from my journey in Korea with a friend of mine yesterday and realized that I really didn’t post many of those pics here.

I learned something important about teaching in South Korea today. I had been told in the English Program in South Korea (EPIK) orientation that Koreans are very indirect. I have not found that to be the case in my experience. My co-workers, the vice principal and the principal have no problem telling me directly what they want. The principal and vice principal can only speak to me through a translator. I tried the direct approach today. In a meeting about our class, I told my co-teacher what worked and what didn’t, but most importantly, I told her what she needs to do to help me in class. The conversation began with her telling me what I needed to work on. She wanted me to pronounce ordinal numbers more, and listen out for students who were pronouncing the words incorrectly. I asked her to walk around, and let me know as soon as she hears a problem. We have about 30 students in class, so it’s difficult to hear everyone. I had to write on the board while I was talking and listening.The bulk of the conversation ended up being what she needs to do to help when I am teaching. I talked about my expertise as a teacher. I used to work with students with special needs. We talked about how we can help each other as a team. I usually don’t speak up in meetings and just agree to do everything that I am told, even if I have misgivings or believe that I am doing everything that I can. I felt good about the conversation, and I think that if nothing else, I made my co-teacher more aware of my feelings, and my desire to be respected as a professional. This is actually her first time teaching English, and I am sure that it’s her first time working with a foreigner. So, I am trying my best to be understanding. I tried to make it clear that I really don’t like being told what to do, but suggestions are fine as long as we both adhere to them. Above all, I hope that the conversation leads to a greater show of respect for my ideas and insight.