September is a big month for weddings. I attended a few, for my host family's friends as wells as work colleagues. The interesting thing about Korean weddings is that everyone you know is invited. All of your family comes, of course, but so does everyone at your place of work, and lots of people you don't know. However, most of the wedding guests won't attend the actual ceremony. They'll show up for the end, take pictures with the couple, eat lunch at the reception, leave some money as a wedding present, and leave. Of the five or so weddings I've been to this year, I only went to one actual ceremony, and the reception took place in the same room as the vows, with the guests all sitting at tables instead of chairs or pews. Also, most Korean brides rent their wedding dresses instead of buying them, which seems awfully practical.
My friend Ju-hee and I are still spending plenty of time together, both at work and on the weekends. Since I last wrote, we checked out the Green Tea Museum, where we had excellent green tea ice cream. Later that day, we visited the Glass Castle, another museum dedicated to (what else?) glass sculptures.
Sculptures at the Green Tea Museum
Tea!
Glass fish
Jeju's famous harubang statues
Glass pumpkins for the fall season
Glass bridge
Glass hallabang tree
Sometimes, my host family and I go hiking, which is especially popular here. Jeju has tons of little hills in addition to the famous Halla-san mountain in the middle of the island. This particular trail ends at a Buddhist temple. When we finally reached the top, we could hear them chanting the evening prayer. It was really beautiful.
These stone towers can be found at every Buddhist temple. We added our own stones to the towers.
Teacher-student relationships are pretty different in Korea. Since students spend literally all their time at school (from 9 in the morning to as late as 11 at night), teachers function more like parents for their students. It's not uncommon for teachers to spend time with their students on weekends, and I've engaged in this practice as well. I've gone out with groups of students to see movies, eat lunch, take sticker pictures, and sing at the norebang. The teacher is expected to pay for the entirety of the outing, but it's really nice to see my students outside of the stressful school environment. Here are a couple of my favorite students hamming it up at the coffee shop and the norebang.
Halloween fell around midterms, so we watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and made toilet paper mummies.
Even my host father got in on the fun!
I spent my Thanksgiving in Seoul, with most of the other English teachers. Fulbright organizes a special Thanksgiving celebration with the Korean ambassador every year, with a real Thanksgiving meal. After months of fish for breakfast and an endless supply of rice, it was a nice change. The event took place at the Folk Museum, and we were treated to some traditional music. I also loved their beautiful hanbok!
I only had a little time in Seoul that weekend, but a friend and I did a little shopping and stopped by a Doctor Fish spa. These are trendy beauty treatments in Southeast Asia, and they're becoming more popular in Korea. You stick your feet in a tank of water filled with little fish who nibble at the dead skin. It tickles terribly when you begin, but you get used to it, and afterwards your feet are incredibly smooth!
The traditional Korean band
Lots of students opted for dance numbers
The science club sold soap
Should I be embarrassed that my students are using the same robotics kits that I used my senior year of college?
The international club had foreign clothing for us to wear. Ju-hee and I are modeling Chinese outfits.
As you can see in the following pictures, I tried to get pictures of most of my students, but it proved a tremendous challenge. The first picture represents an entire class, which was just to big to include in a single picture. I ended up taking pictures table by table, but lots of the girls refused to have their pictures taken, literally hiding from my camera. You can also see an excellent representation here of the many poses in the average Korean girl's repertoire, many of which are designed to cover the face and therefore make it look smaller. Also note the hand print turkeys in the background of some of these pictures, which were a big hit come Thanksgiving.
Korean schools wait until it's absolutely freezing out to heat the classrooms. The hallways are never heated. Hence the many coats and scarves in these pictures.
For an island, we've had quite a bit of snow this season. These pictures were taken prior to a pretty epic snowball fight between my host brothers and I. There's a park not far from our house with lots of beautiful wooden sculptures that were particularly captivating covered in snow.
And we're finally up to the current day. On Friday, most host brother In-ho graduated from elementary school. I also attended my school's high school graduation, even though none of my students were graduating. The ceremony bore little resemblance to an American graduation, even ignoring the fact that the season seems a strange time for a graduation. There were no caps and gowns, and only a single student walked up and received her diploma on behalf of her entire class. It was pretty raucous inside the gym, with students talking and taking pictures. I even saw a few students splitting a cake! In-ho got lots of flowers to celebrate his graduation, and we had dinner at a delicious eel restaurant afterwards. The ribbon and flower arrangement behind him is a staple of important events around here, from weddings to funerals.
After almost two months of paid vacation time, I'm heading back to school tomorrow to teach a winter camp. It's only two hours a day with twenty students, but I've heard mixed things about actual attendance, so we'll see how that goes. We're doing a tour of English-speaking countries, and I'm hoping to share lots of my travel pictures with my students. More to come!
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