Late-Onset Culture Shock

I think the hardest thing about living in Korea, as a foreigner, is what feels like constant scrutiny. Maybe it's easier in Seoul, or Busan, places where being a foreigner is no longer so noteworthy, but in my small city and smaller neighborhood, I feel as if everyone is super interested in anything and everything I do, from the moment I step outside my door. If I buy bread at the bakery, the owner wants to know why I'm buying it. For dinner? Breakfast? If I run into my students, they want to know where I'm going, why am I going there, who will I meet? Friends? Korean friends? American? A boy? Girl? Your boyfriend? North Korean spies?

Okay, the last one was an exaggeration, but sometimes I feel like a teenage girl with an overprotective father. It's even worse at school. If I change the way I do my eyeliner, people ask me about it. If I get a sunburn, I have to explain that yes, Western people get sunburns. If I wear short sleeves in winter, people worry I'm too cold. If I wear longer sleeves in summer, people worry that I'm hot. I have never in my life been under so much scrutiny, and in some ways, it's starting to take it's toll on me. I know that there's no malicious spirit behind the asking, merely innocent curiosity, but that doesn't change the way it makes me feel.

On most days, this doesn't really bother me so much. Heck, there are even some positive aspects. I know that I keep myself looking sharp with much more consistency than before, and no matter who I'm with, I try to comport myself in a teacher-like manner. To some degree. I mean, there's only so much dignity you can have at 4 AM trying to hail a cab outside the noraebang. But that doesn't mean a girl can't try!

Lately, though, it's been fraying my nerves. The need to "keep up appearances" and blend in is nothing new for me. My mom is the sort of person who constantly worries about what people will think, and as much as I tried to avoid it, I inherited a great deal of that habit. All through school I cultivated invisibility as a defense and a way to get away with just about anything. If you don't stand out, it's a lot easier to skip a class or do your own work at the back of the room. I've used my chameleon-like powers to fit in at wildly different jobs, some of which I wasn't at all naturally suited to.

To me, standing out always seemed like something negative, something to be avoided. Getting perfect grades meant I'd be made fun of, but failing would have been worse, so I aimed for safely average. Flamboyant fashion choices just didn't seem worth the comments. As you can imagine, as a white girl living in (somewhat) rural Korea, there is no way for me not to stand out. I can wear the exact same outfit as my Korean friend, down to makeup and hairstyle, and I will still stand out as a foreigner. For the most part, I've come to accept that. I've carved out my own niche of fitting in, conforming to all the social and fashion rules that I can, but sometimes something goes wrong, and my little illusion of fitting in comes crashing down around my ears.

I only realized how much stress this was putting on me over the past day or so. The realization grew out of a few factors coming together in that wonderful way that bad things are able to clump together. For one, I've been having a hell of a time trying to dye my hair over here. I've managed to accidentally turn my hair purplish brown, then gray trying to fix the brown, then pinkish brown at the salon trying to cover up the awkward swampy gray color. All of that happened in about a week, and the damage it caused does not bear mentioning. Since then I went back to blonde, dyed my hair red, it faded out to a strawberry blonde, and I'm currently sporting an accidental, though perfectly nice, warm brunette shade.

I've been dyeing my hair since high school, so at first it really didn't make sense why I was getting so incredibly stressed over a minor coloring mishap or two. I hate having a feeling and not knowing why, so after weeks of pondering the stress, trying to follow it to the source, I realized what was wrong.

Culture shock. It's finally hitting me.

My life in Korea is great, but the two hardest things about living here are represented in my hair struggles. One, the feeling of a lack of control over my own life and lack of familiarity on which to ground myself, and two, the stress caused by the seemingly constant scrutiny of those around me and my constant inability to simply fade into the background if I want to.

For the first, dyeing my hair is something I'm good at, something I've been doing by myself for years, with usually good results. Now, suddenly, not only am I unable to buy the supplies I need to do it myself, even the hair salons lack the kind of dye I'm used to. That's no fault of the salons- why stock dye for non-Korean hair if the majority of your customers are Korean? As for the second, that's pretty obvious, I suppose. If even a small change in makeup choices garners comments, imagine what a drastic hair color change is like. Even if every comment is positive, the mere fact that it's being commented on is what is slowly driving me crazy. If it was at least the color that I wanted, that would be one thing, but as it stands, well...at least dye washes out.


How do you deal with culture shock? How does it manifest for you? Have you been able to dye your hair in Korea? Tell me about it in the comments~

Beauty Review: Nature Republic Super Aqua Max Fresh Watery Essence

Again with the ridiculously long names. Anyways, I've been using this product for a few months now, and finally getting around to reviewing it! As you may have guessed, I got out of my Etude House rut for once and picked this up from Nature Republic, as I was in need of a lightweight emulsion/essence now that the weather is so hot and I'm a sweaty American. The Super Aqua Max Fresh Watery Essence, which sounds a bit like the name of a mecha, turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.

Okay first off the packaging is really pretty. I love the color, and it really suggest a fresh and cool feeling. Granted, Nature Republic products don't have the cutesy vibe that I usually go for, but the clean, simple lines reflect the clean and simple products you can find at Nature Republic.

SUPER AQUA MAX FRESH TEAM GO!

I skinned it.

As far as the bottle itself, there are pros and cons. Pro #1: it's a really pretty color. I know that's not necessarily a priority but it's just a really nice looking bottle. Pro #2: It has a pump that is also covered by a lid. This makes it easy to dispense just a small amount, while also making it possible to bring this along in a bag if I'm traveling somewhere, without worrying that the pump was going to start covering my clothes in moisturizer. The only con is that the bottle is glass, so if I were to bring this along in a bag I'd have to be very careful to wrap it up in socks or something to keep it from breaking.

Now, the actual product is, of course, what is most important, and in that regard this stuff is PERFECT. I'm an oily mess even in winter, so with this hot and humid weather, anything I put on my face needs to be very light and not at all oily or greasy. As this is more of an essence or emulsion, I want it to sink in easily without making my face slimy. The texture of this essence is really light and, well, watery. The label doesn't lie. I don't need a lot of moisturizing during the day, so lately this is all I've been using under my BB cream, and I really like how that's working for me.

Would I recommend this product: Certainly for people with more oily skin, but if your skin is dry, you might need something with a bit more kick. It's a bit more expensive than I usually go for, but since it doesn't take very much to cover my face, I can tell it's going to last a long time and be a good investment.

Where to buy: If you live somewhere with Nature Republic stores, that's the easy route. If not, you can go here! Happy shopping~

Daily Snapshot: sister, teacher, mother...brother?

There's all sorts of classes, but my favorites are the ones who share my dumb sense of humor, the ones I can laugh and joke with. A great example happened just recently, in my 2nd period 2nd grade class.

We were playing a game in teams, where each team had a mixed up sentence on strips of paper to rearrange into a correct sentence. First 3 teams to finish got points, so the pressure was really on. However, it's really hard to keep track of which team raises their hand first, so...things get a bit silly.

For instance, in the third round, team 4 was convinced, and I mean CONVINCED that they had been the second team to finish. As I'm scanning the crowd, consulting with my coteacher, I suddenly hear the piercing cry of a middle school student in the wild.

"언니!! Unnie! Unnieeeeeee!" 

언니 means big sister, but it's the word that a girl would call her big sister, so naturally I was looking for a girl as the source of the whining. But not. It was one of my boys, a bit of a joker, but not a bad kid. 

"언니! Please! Our team...finish!"

I have to admit, being called big sister maaaaay have influenced my scoring. Maybe. Look, we're still trying to get over Yuna Kim taking second place, why can't I mess with the scores in my English class? I am a...benevolent dictator? 

Anyways, as the class moves on, he keeps calling me 언니, so I finally ask him.

"Why 언니? Why not 누나 (noona (what a boy calls a big sister))?"

"Because...um...I am girl."

"Haha, okay. My pretty younger sister."

So again the class progresses. My comment must have gotten through to him, though, because the next time I walk near his desk, I hear a cry of "Noonaaaaa~~"

"Ah, I'm noona now?"

"Yes. Ana-noona~ Very pretty. Please...one ticket!" Side note: I use a lottery system for prizes in my class, hence him wanting a ticket.

Little charmer. Though it is a bit disheartening that I never get a compliment without being asked for something.

Again class progresses. The activity involved asking you friends and recording their answers, so once again this kid comes to me.

"언니~ How long does it take to walk to school?"
"It takes about 15 minutes."
He wrote down my answer and '언니 as my name.
"Okay...Noona! How long does it take to..."
Again, I answered and he wrote a different name. He proceeded to ask me three more times, once as hyung (older brother), once as teacher, and once as mom.

Needless to say, I was really confused about my identity by the end of the class.

Korean Countryside Adventures

Time has been flying by. It feels like just yesterday I was bemoaning the changes in my office, with favorite teachers moving to new offices or even worse, new schools, and scary new teachers moving in and refusing to let us turn the heating on. Imagine that. Wanting to turn the HEATING on. Now I have constant daydreams about air conditioning. They said it would be on this week, but...

Anyways, I bring up the rapid passage of time because recently, we had a bit of an office family reunion. By the end of last semester, especially after spending so much time together during winter break, some of my officemates really started to feel less like coworkers and more like friends or family. Our daily lunch adventures became comfortable; our group narrowed down to the usual suspects. Lee Kyuwon, the taciturn but kind office head, with his amazing knowledge of tiny local restaurants. Hong Mija, the other office head, always trying to communicate with me, even though her knowledge of English is as limited as my knowledge of Korean. Kim Yunju, who feels like a sister and who is the only one who likes spicy food as much as me. And of course Jang Hyeonji, my lovely coteacher. Sitting in the car on the way to our meal, it felt less like 5 coworkers, and more like dad, mom, and three sisters.

Hong-ssn, Hyeonji, Soohyun, Lee Kyuwon-ssn, Yunju, and me.

So, months later, after ages of planning over kakaotalk, we managed to all find a time to meet up and try to put our little family back together. That makes it sound like something catastrophic happened, wow. Nothing so horrible that a little dinner couldn't fix. We all piled into Kyuwon-ssn's car and, as usual, I had no idea where we were going, how long we would be there, what we would be eating, etc etc. All I knew was that we were meeting at 5:30...somewhere in Korea. I assumed.

As it turns out, we ended up in this amazing little restaurant way out in the middle of nowhere. I didn't even realize it was a restaurant until everyone started getting out of the car.

I want one.

Tucked away off a tiny road, hidden among the bushes and trees, I felt as if I'd wandered onto the set of Secret Garden, the bit with the actual magic garden on Jeju Island. There was a rooster on the roof, that we all assumed was fake until it moved. The coolest thing was that instead of sitting in the main building, we got our own tiny private room with a big window facing out on the scenery. To summon the server, we literally had a phone that acted as a sort of walkie talkie between us and the main building. It was brilliant.

The window's a bit dirty, sorry, but LOOK AT THAT VIEW.

Our little room, the side dishes, and peeking through  the door is our crocodile friend.

As you can probably tell, we all sat on the floor around a beautiful low wooden table, munching on side dishes as we waited for the main event. I can't remember all the dishes that were there, but all the vegetables were so fresh and delicious, I would have been happy to eat only those. There were fresh cucumber spears dipped in red pepper sauce, kimchi, sautéed mushrooms, hot peppers, fish cakes, and a few other vegetable selections that I didn't recognize but were nevertheless consumed in great quantities by all.

Do it yourself: restaurant style.

Ah yes. The main event. I love how many dishes in Korea you have to cook yourself. From ramen to BBQ, it gives the meal a fun, hands-on vibe, though it also kinda stresses me out unless I'm with someone who knows what they're doing. Fortunately, in this case it was just a sort of soup, and who doesn't know how to heat up soup?

As you can see from the picture, we were rocking some seriously healthy dinner plans. Lots of leafy greens, those tiny mushrooms that look like noodles, and under all that was a whole chicken (in pieces), rice, and some spices and onions and stuff. The chicken was, I assume, already cooked, but once we got the burner going, the whole thing quickly got up to a nice boil, slowly cooking the greens and mushrooms as we stirred from time to time.

Enter the chicken.

It was such a simple, delicious dish. Also, you've never really lived until you've tried to eat chicken off the bone with only chopsticks and a spoon. I can't say that my method was...graceful, but the chicken got from my plate to my mouth with minimal accidents, so I call it a win. While I feel like this soup would be wonderful on a cold winter day, the simplicity of the ingredients also rendered it surprisingly refreshing on a hot, muggy day.

Then, as if we didn't already have enough food to feed a small, healthy army, we ordered a squid and vegetable fried...sort of pancake...it's hard to explain, but trust me, it was fantastic. I've had a lot of these, at various restaurants, but this may have been the best. It was really thick, stuffed to the gills with fresh veggies and squid, and even though I had already eaten a ridiculous amount of chicken, I couldn't resist it's fried, tentacly charms. Is tentacly a word? NOW IT IS.



Ignore the chicken carnage, look at the delicious alcohol!



The final element to our meal was a bowl of dongdongju, which is a sort of sweet, traditional rice wine. It came in an earthenware pot with a ladle, and we drank it out of small bowl-like cups. As I relaxed, nibbling at side dishes and sipping my wine, I slipped into that perfect feeling of belonging somewhere, of being comfortable enough with a group of people to just sit and listen to the conversation wash over you. What I mean is, I felt like I was at a family dinner, where my family just happened to all be speaking in Korean. I faded in and out of the talk, understanding for a while and then losing the flow again, but I didn't mind. The air was warm, and after my second cup of wine, I was feeling pleasantly fuzzy around the edges.

It's evenings like this that keep the homesickness at bay, finding pockets of home even in the most foreign of settings, shaping what is unfamiliar into something comforting, something safe. Because when you're this far from home, what else can you do but make a new home?

How to Talk to People in Korea

AKA Slow Motion Teacher Talk.

It's a disease.

The first symptom, as you might guess from my subtitle, is slower speaking speed. Unsurprisingly, if you speak quickly to someone in a language they aren't super comfortable with, they won't understand you. It's the same for me with Korean. If someone mumbles or talks too fast, I can't catch anything, but if they slow down for me, suddenly a world of comprehension opens up for me.

When I first started teaching, I was nervous. When I'm nervous, I speak more quickly. I think a lot of people do this. In an ESL classroom, though, fast talking is not gonna fly (though it is great for saying things you don't want your students to hear). That was the first critique I got from my co-teacher: slow down. So I did. Suddenly, a classroom full of unresponsive glassy-eyed students began to understand me. Maybe not everything I said, but finally I was getting through to them on some level.

So began my descent into what I refer to as "teacher English". I find that the changes can be organized into three groups, starting with...

 

Slow Down

Like I said, the first change, for me at least, was speed. When I talk to non-Korean friends, I talk fast. I mean, I don't sound like a conversational auctioneer, but I also didn't inherit my dad's slow southern drawl. If I'm excited I can pass on a record amount of information with a single breath. But since I came to Korea? Well, it's like going from the autobahn to a school zone.

When I'm teaching, I always have to keep a little voice in the back of my head saying "slow down, relax". If you think you're speaking slow enough, try to go a bit slower. If your students start laughing at you, you've probably slowed down too much. Try to find that sweet spot where they can follow what you're saying but you don't sound like a tape player running low on battery power.

Another part of the big slowdown is a sort of...spacing of your sentences. For example, let's say I'm telling a story about my car stalling on a bridge. Normally, I would tell the story like this:

"Last year, I was driving on a bridge, and suddenly my car stopped, right in the middle of the bridge. It was really scary, and I don't know anything about cars, so in my panic I called my dad to help me instead of thinking to call a tow-truck or the police or something."

In class, it would go something like this. "Last year...I was driving on a bridge. In the middle...my car stopped. My car was broken. I don't know...about cars. It was really scary. But...I didn't call 911. I called my dad." (cue laughter)

As you can see, the longer more complex sentences get broken up into shorter statements, and sometimes I'll even take a pause in the middle of sentences to allow people to catch up. I try not to let this happen too much with my higher level students or my friends who are super good at English (gold stars for you all, seriously) because I don't want to teach them weird, unnatural sounding English, but for anyone at a lower level, it really seems to help.

 

Simplify

This shows up in a few ways. Most obviously, it's helpful to cut out all your slang. "You got it?" becomes "Do you understand?" "Wanna grab a cup of coffee?" becomes "Do you want to drink some coffee?" "I'm not feeling up for it" becomes "I'm too tired." Notice the trend? It's gotten to the point where I'm so used to making this change that I had a hard time coming up with examples. If I stay here too long I'm going to lose all my slang and start talking like a textbook. True nightmare scenario right there.

Imagine this said with no inflection, 100 times a day.

It's also good to avoid idioms and cultural references, unless you're ready to explain them. Now, if you're working with students who are a high enough level, this kind of thing might be a piece of cake for them, but with lower levels you don't want to bite off more than you can chew. For example, with my co-teachers I can say "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" because I know they know the saying, or at least I can explain it easily, but if I said that to my students, I'd probably get blank looks. Things like "piece of cake" are even worse. There's no real logic to that one. Is cake inherently easier to eat than other food? Does deliciousness equal easiness? Inquiring minds want to know!

The other aspect of simplifying your language is harder to explain. It means building your sentences out of grammar that's easier to understand, that your students are more likely to know. For instance, I won't usually say that something is "harder" or "easier" or "simpler"; I'll say it's more hard, or more easy, or more simple, just because I know that will be easier for my students to figure out. Instead of saying "This weekend I'm going to study" I might say "This weekend I will study." The more you know about their level, the more you can tailor your langauge to incorporate what they already know, which helps to build confidence, and also helps when teaching new vocab, since you can sandwich it in with stuff that's already kicking around somewhere in their brains. Supposedly.

Sign Language

No matter who I'm talking to, I use my hands. I think it's pretty universal, though some people are more prone to gesticulation than others. However, the longer I spend in middle school classrooms and with my less than fluent Korean friends, the more my life begins to feel like the longest running game of charades in history.

 

 Sometimes I worry that this is becoming too much of a crutch. It also makes me feel a bit like a clown, but frankly, if it helps my students or friends or doctor to understand what I'm trying to say, I'll take it. It also works as a great way to elicit target language without giving too many hints. Want them to say baseball? Mime swinging a bat. Though I think I must suck at this one, because they always guess tennis. I've pretended to be a seal, I've faked a coughing fit, make my fist into the shape of my home state, all to get points across that otherwise would have been impossible.

The most common gestures are those in the classroom. Listen: touch my ear. Write: mime writing. Work together: mime pushing two students together. The list goes on and on. What I've found helps the most in regards to classroom hand gestures in consistency. Whatever you choose to mean listen, or write, or shut the eff up, make sure it's the same every time, because then even the lower level students will be able to follow along, and hopefully it will help them catch up on the basic classroom language.





The worst part about all this is that I can't stop. Now, no matter who I'm talking to, I sound like an English teacher. Fortunately it hasn't seeped into my writing yet, but I fear that day can't be too far off. The other thing I've noticed is that bits of more...shall we say...Korean phrasing have been sneaking into my lexicon. For example, I regularly find myself encouraging people to "Take a rest" if they seem sick or tired. There's nothing inherently wrong with the phrase, grammatically, but I don't recall ever putting those words in that particular order before I moved to Korea. Another common phrase is "Do you know (insert any noun here)?" Instead of asking "Have you heard of the Beatles?" I'd be more likely to ask "Do you know the Beatles?" It's a small change, but it comes directly from the way most people here communicate with me. I know there's more, but somehow they're all slipping out of my brain in this hot weather.

Do you teach ESL? Has it changed the way you talk? Any tips? The comment section is always open.