"Overweight program" & beauty lesson?

Idk why I was surprised when I found out that our school has an "overweight program." After I thought about it for a little while, it makes sense given Korea's idea of beauty. Maybe I was surprised because there aren't that many overweight students in my school.. Maybe a few here and there, but not enough (in my opinion) at all to create a program for it. But anywho, I was informed that I was invited to go on a hike on an Olle (a mountain/hiking route) with this program, especially since the school is really dedicated to improving the student's English and so me going would mean the students would be speaking English. Regardless, I was pumped about it because it was an opportunity to get closer to some of my students. Actually, I spent that week making sure I memorized the names of the "overweight" students in my head so that when we went on the Olle, I could get the whole name remembering talk over with quick and get to some real stuff, you know how i'm all about the real talk haha.

well turns out that when we got to the Olle, those very few overweight students weren't there!! The handful of students that were waiting at the start of the trail were actually, in my eye's at least, mostly normal/average weight students.. honestly, I think they just had a little bit larger bone structure than the petite, little girls (but that's bone structure, not actual fat). And when all the Principal (the one with the visor) wanted a picture of everyone, half the girls ran away and the other half that stuck around for the picture covered their faces as you can see below:




but here is the thing, i could not sleep that night because my mind was just racing with thoughts about how i wanted to teach the girls at school a lesson on beauty. I was talking to them on the hike and bus ride back and it just shocked me how some cute girls think that they are so ugly and fat and much much more. So, that night, i just couldn't stop thinking of ways to make them think about some of these questions:

Where are they getting all these ideas of beauty from? Who is behind these ideas of what beauty is? and is it right to just give in to what a someone else's standard of beauty is?

ah, if i don't succeed in teaching them English, then fine but at least, I want to succeed in making them THINK. but how to exactly approach giving middle school girls that have such a wide range of English abilities the tools to think is a bit tough.

I thought about showing them the Dove commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U), but the other day I was at a Photo place with Erin and Liz and there were some younger girls there. They got their pictures taken (of course covering there face) and then without any request or anything, their picture was automatically put on the computer for touch-up, but not just any touch-up. Their eyes were widened and the sizes of their faces (jaw area) was reduced. And the girls were standing right behind the guy and were asking for more reduction and changes. So, I am afraid they would see the commercial and be like, "yeah, so what? of course they have to get that much done to look good." (ah well this would just be said but minus all the articles and with wrong conjugations of verbs)


Then, I got thinking of how this is the country where it is common for girl's to get plastic surgery as their graduation present from HIGH SCHOOL and 25% of Korean mothers will recommend that their daughters get plastic surgery (maybe this statistic includes sons too.. i forget). Regardless, it got me thinking of the TLC "Unpretty" video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeujqiv5i1g&ob=av2n)! It shows how a girl overcomes her boyfriend's pressure of getting plastic surgery and how another girl overcomes her not being happy with her weight.

But I am afraid that they won't take the message of the TLC video to heart because after getting up from my sleep to remind myself of the video - i noticed that all the scenarios that they are of African-Americans. I am afraid they are just going to dismiss this as something for darker skin people. I mean, it was just a two weeks ago that I had lunch with one of my students who is probably one of the smarter 3rd graders. We talked for a couple of hours on Korean History. She wants to become a diplomat and she knew so much about France, Italy, Japan, China, etc. But when Africa came up in the conversation, she said, "Oh, but it is very poor there and they have dark skin." I was shocked because this was coming out of the same mouth who had been thinking of ways to better the relationship between S.Korea and France. And of course I had to give her a lecture on skin color and just how diverse Africa is but after, I had to ask her what she or her classmates thought of me when they saw me. She said that half the class thought I was very pretty, but the other half commented on my darker skin color. well i knew that would happen but i just wanted to confirm it.

I digress but if they have a stigma implanted in their minds, then I don't think showing the TLC video is going to be as effective (and now i totally want to do a whole lesson on race, but I will really have to think how to go about it) but maybe doing beauty first might be a good starting point.

I was then thinking of having them think about those questions of beauty and show them the Christina Aguilera's "You are Beautiful" video, but after watching it again, i saw that it had two men kissing.. which i know would very controversial to show to middle girls.. at least at this moment. Sam morrow (shout out<3) recommended looking up the Glee video for "You are Beautiful," but I can't find it anywhere.

gah. does anyone have any other ideas about how to talk about beauty with middle school girls that range in abilities from being able to understand most of the things i say to others who do not know the answer to "what is your name?" or the alphabet.

take care,
Shreya

- p.s i am living off of 7,500 won right now. That is less than 7 dollars. Aug 25th can't come sooner

more pictures from the Hike:





girls washing off their feet because.. (next picture will explain why..)




THERE WAS COW POOP EVERYWHERE - who would have ever thought cows could navigate steep mountains?!






yay peppers!

Mishaps and all

Yesterday, one of my students came into class early to talk. Just some background to this story - I did this whole lesson last week on answering the somewhat dreaded question amongst middle school girls, “How are you?”.. so I asked her how did she feel BUT yesterday (I am all about challenging the students haha).. She goes:

“Teacha! Yesterday, my hand PEEING!”

I bursted out laughing because she just kept repeating (louder and louder each time) that her hand was peeing. At the moment, it didn’t occur to me that she was speaking konglish, which is a combination of Korean and English. It was only later that day when Rachel, Belin, Liz and I went to our first Korean language class (outside orientation) that someone said PEEING.. and I was like waaiiiit – what is that?! Hah. So, peeing in Korean means bleeding. I am pretty sure she probably thinks I am an insensitive teacher for not having more concern over her hand peeing – my bad.. my bad.

Ah now that I think about that – I’ve had quite a few other mishaps. The 2nd day of school, I was warned about this 2nd grade class. I had a great first day so I was feeling pretty confident about myself as a teacher. And yet again..how life proves to be so humbling! As the girls are walking in, I see a student walk in but was not wearing a skirt or the regular shirt uniform. Instead, said student was wearing what looked like boy shorts and a wrinkled white t-shirt. Said student’s hair was also short and I swear, there was a puberty mustache growing. I was convinced this bad class was trying to pull a prank on the new teacher by having one of their brothers or boyfriends come to class and sit in a student’s chair. But I was noticing all this as a cute little girl who doesn’t speak very much English had come up to me and wanted to talk to me. With the language barrier and having already covered the typical things you would talk to a student about during the first meeting, I pulled out my konglish, pointed to the said student and said, “why namja essayo??” this means “why is there a boy here” Sure enough, this quite cute girl turns around and SCREAMS to the whole class in Korean something…which I didn’t need to know Korean to understand that she had just told the whole class that I thought said student was a boy. Epic fail. Said student’s name is Bo Kyoung and apologized to her about 10 minutes in that class period. She was wearing her gym uniform. Good thing is that Bo Kyoung laughed it off.

Bo Kyoung is now a walking reminder to me of … well … of many things. Again, one thing remains constant, life is humbling.

Oh hah, I lied when I said I had a great first day of school. I had a great first day minus the heart attack I had the five minutes as a teacher. Instead a ding-dong bell, my school has this TINKERBELL/unicorn music. It’s really funny. So it rang and my first class (2-4) came in and sat down. So I thought “whew, at least they all came in and sat down –maybe everyone was right about them being sweet.” Because if you know me well, you know the first thing I do is imagine the worst case scenario, which for middle school girls was jumping on desks and spraying me with silly string. Seeing them all seated, I was so relieved. I proceeded to say “GOOD MORNING!,” expecting everyone to say back “GOOD MORNING!” AH, only a few students said good morning back and the rest kept talking to each other in the back. A few of them even got up and started “play fighting” with each other. I tried saying “Good morning” again, but it was even more futile than the first time. I thought all my fears about my students were coming true…

That instant I remember picturing myself in one of those cliché movies .. Dangerous Minds, Sister Act or Freedom Writers, in which the teacher walks in and the class is an absolute disarray … then because the teacher believes in them and inspires them, they become a disciplined class or win some prize or something. I even remember consoling myself, “It’s okay Shreya, they are not the sweet students that everyone said they were going to be, but you can totally pull a Sister Act or Freedom Writers on them and help them realize their potential.. yeah, you can do this.” (yes I have to talk to myself from time to time to calm myself down).

As I was about to scream real loud to get their attention again, the tinkerbell/unicorn music started playing again. They all sit down and are quiet. Hah. And then, the big Ah-ha moment – class doesn’t start until tinkerbell/unicorn music starts again. And that is the story if how I learned about our school bell system and when classes start. I still laugh with my students about the first day when I started to try to teach them during break time .. [insert the "you live.you learn" song by Alanis Morissette]

That’s all for now, folks.

Love letters to teachers in Korea all come in this shape:

Experiencing my first Typhoon

Well hello there, Typhoon Kompasu :)
thank you so much for greeting me this afternoon by blowing my umbrella away and making me walk home umbrella less. shit show? Yes, indeed.

Fun fact: In Korea, little babies are told that:

when it rains, it is God peeing and that when it is snowing, it is God pooping (or at least my host sisters were told this). My younger host sister laughed at me when i came home and told me to shower and clean myself off of God's pee-pee.

haha and God has white poop?! You would think the snow part would be more of God' tears or heavy dandruff.

My host father is quite a clown :)

even with the language barrier.. we still pull out the funnies

first week of teaching!

I have been teaching for ­­­­­a few days now! I guess my experience is a little different from most of my fellow Fulbright ETAs. Most of them are gloating in the celebrity status that they get at school. Why do they get this immediate rock-star status.. you ask? Well, blonde hair, blue eyes or even a white face will do the trick. You see, S. Korea is a very beauty-obsessed culture and there are very specific things that make you beautiful. There was this Korean girl at Orientation that I thought was gorgeous, but according to Korean standards, her face was not white or small enough. This explains why a majority of Koreans get plastic surgery to get “better” eye-lids or nose. Anywho, it is interesting to be Indian-American in S.Korea to say the least. Instead of getting that burst of excitement upon seeing me, it is more of a VERY CONFUSED look when I am introduced as being from America. In that sense, it is somewhat exhausting being “ON” all the time because 1) I am so conscious of how I am being judged on my appearance and 2) I have to work harder to prove myself to them because I do not get that American-card unless that is brought up in conversation but even after.. not really.


But, maybe this is the reason I have a “diplomatic visa” or it is my duty as a “cultural ambassador.” In a sense, I am a walking example of how diverse America is and every confused look I get is another chance I have to break the stereotype that Americans are all white. Just hopefully after a while, it won’t be so exhausting …


Even showing my students pictures of my friends BLEW THEIR MIND – they did couldn’t grasp at first that the person that looked African,, Filipino, Irish, Mexican and me were all, in fact, “American.” In one class, I had to go back and forth with this one students who just would not believe that my friend who was black was American. She pointed to the picture and said “African!” and I said “No, American!” She looked puzzled and pointed again, African!” It became screaming-fest back and forth of “African!” and “No, American!”


I guess another upside is that the compliments I do get are very thoughtful ones. There are less students petting me or wanting to touch my hair and more of the “You are a very diligent and hard working teacher,” “Can I be your friend, teacher?” or “All the teachers think you have the sweetest heart.”


As for my students, they are very cute girls. I was told before that students on the Island are much more naïve and sweet. Why that is... I am haven’t fully figured out but when I do.. I will surely write about it.


I spent an hour at the moon-bang-gu trying to figure out how to decorate my classroom and came to the conclusion that the classroom isn’t really for me… it is for the students. And so, I decided to do a “Cube Activity” for my first lesson. There is a cube cut out and they have to answer 6 BASIC questions about themselves. I thought this would be a good lesson for a couple of reasons: 1) I can learn about the students 2) obviously, use it as decorate the classroom .. hang it off the ceiling and staple it to the bulletin board 3) I can also gauge how much English they know


I am glad I did this activity first because I was SO SURPRISED the fact that in ALL my classes there would be one girl who knew EVERYTHING and could write multiple sentences.. and she was sitting next to a girl who looked at me as if they had never heard English before. Its not that I had too high hopes for my students.. I will surely teach and love them at their level, but how do you “teach to the middle” when half the class has a great grasp of English and the other cannot even spell the world nurse or know how to answer “What is your name?” Yesterday was a tough day.. I taught five classes, almost back-to-back with just one break. And after a whole day of seeing this extreme range in abilities all day, I was just quite discouraged. The pouring rainstorm didn’t help either. I am thinking of dividing the class half and half based on abilities. Sure, I’d have to spend that much time more creating different lesson plans but it would be worth it.. I think. The only thing I’d feel guilty about is having my co-teacher be responsible for the other half of the class. Sure I would give her instructions of what I want to be done with those students, but I am worried I would be asking her too much. gah, okay time for hopkido with the host sisters.. i'll finish my thoughts later and put up pictures too :)

as much as i am at peace in Jeju and constantly smiling from ear to ear, at times .. I find myself longing for the familiar - mostly old friends and other Fulbrighters.

but then i got to thinking: isn’t it just the unfamiliar until a new unfamiliar comes into our lives? Then, don’t we long that familiar once unfamiliar again..

idk .. gnite, kids.

Transition

This “adventure” began with meeting my old, yet very cute vice-principal and my sophisticated and wise co-teacher, song-sunsangnem, at the Departure Day ceremony at orientation. My vice-principal is VERY QUIRKY – he kind of reminds me of my dad. He told me:

“if you ask me a question, I will not answer. But if you do not ask me a question, I will answer.”

In an odd way, this made me really happy because 1) I miss my dad terribly 2) I love quirky people <3

My co-teacher and I ended up talking for the whole two hours until the meeting with the Fulbright Executive Director, Mrs. Shim. Of the many things we talked about, I told her that I want to 1) learn something new every day and 2) laugh at least once every day. She really liked that and said she wanted that as her goal as well. I then introduced the idea of “accountabilibuddy” to her. And guess what?! I am so happy to say that co-teacher is now my accountabilibuddy :)



picture from the plane of some smaller islands/large rocks? off the coast of Jeju



picture of the sunset on Jeju and my co-teacher, song-sunsangnem, on the side!


I then met my principal and my other co-teacher, yungenyang-sungsangnem, at dinner. I have to admit I was quite nervous to meet my principal.. the principal has extraordinary power in the school in South Korea. Emilee L., an OC who was at my school the previous year, also told me that she doesn’t speak much English. So when I finally met her, she said:

“PRETTY! You have a small face! In picture they sent, looks big face! You look like movie actress!”

My honest thought at this moment was “am I being pranked?! Where are the hidden cameras?!” You see, the whole plane ride over I had envisioned the conversation with the principal and co-teachers and kept practicing all these things to say in Korean. I mean.. I was almost SWEATING (okay, I was.) from this initial meeting because the first impression means so much in Korea. And, I did not for once think that she was going to say that! And out of all things say something like “YOU HAVE SMALL FACE!” South korea, you keep me on my toes. As for the rest of the conversation, the principal’s English was limited to those first sentences but the co-teacher helped translate. She told the co-teachers to tell me that I was very funny and charismatic. Win.

And then at 10 at night, I met my host family for the first time. At first, I was a little disappointed when I realized that both my hostparents do not speak English, especially because I envisioned having a very strong relationship with my host mother. While it does not mean that we cannot still a strong connection, I just didn’t realize how hard I’d have to work to overcome the language barrier. Yesterday, my host mother and I spent about 10 minutes passing back and forth my Korean-English phrasebook just to understand where on Jeju Island we lived (and yes, this was all in front of a map). This was a really humbling experience because towards the end of Korean class, I was FINALLY beginning to feel like I was understanding Korean.. that when someone was speaking korean, it wasn’t some terrible BAD joke that I wasn’t understanding the punch line to anymore.. but now, it really feels like I’m back to square 1 ..Though I am grateful that my host sisters know some English and translate as much as they can.

I have two host sisters – Kwon En (14 years Korean age, 13 years American age) and Kwon Ah (12 years Korean age and 11 year American age). Kwon En is very mature and loves to read. I really look forward to reading with her at coffee shops nearby. Kwon En is very playful and loves games. I ADORE them. The other day, we bought a small soccer ball and we played throwing/kicking games together, which just ended up in them teaming up against me and me being the goalie. I taught them HOP-SCTOCH today! Now, Kwon-Ah can’t stop skipping on foot haha.



Its funny how at orientation we kept hearing how Korean mothers will NOT let you in the kitchen. Well, I guess “it really does depends” because my host mom grabbed me for our first dinner and put gloves on my hand! I made kim-chi from SCRATCH. YES, that’s right.. Shreya Trivedi was in the kitchen and made KIM-CHI. I did a little bit of charade hand gesturing and signaled my hostfather to take a picture with the camera. I am pretty sure he was confused how this was exciting enough to take a picture. Mom, I hope this makes you proud.



i taught my host sister and her cousin how to french-braid hair and they were trying it on each other.



our (my host sisters' and mine) hands! its funny how you can bond over just about anything.. even about having two bracelets on



after dinner, we went to go see the waterfalls at night!

Off to Gapado Island (and very small Island off the shore of Jeju Island) for a small family vacation!

Always,
Shreya