Teaching & Toilets

Day 9 - 8am

Yesterday afternoon was my first day of teaching. I had no idea what to expect, and was pretty nervous after meeting the kids last week who bluntly told me how much they hate learning English. But I was up for the challenge and consider myself a somewhat flexible person. 5 years of coaching peewee soccer helped out a lot.

One thing to note is that this is all volunteer work for Holt Children's Services in Korea. It isn't a fancy hagwon (private tutoring center), but rather a government paid, volunteer ran latchkey program held at a local church (which I will still refer to as a school). Most of the kids are from low-income families and their parents work all day long.

I divided the kids into 2 groups. 4-8 yr olds and 9-11 year olds. The first group had 9 kids total and they were out of control. They pretty much disregard all of the volunteer parents and social workers. Sometimes they just get up and wander off. But since the other adults don't care, I don't either. I also found out, after being told the contrary, that they did not know how to read or write the alphabet. This makes the whole teaching process much harder. I'll have to start from square 1. I had to speak in Korea for the whole hour just to communicate to them. I have no idea what I would have done if I didn't know how to speak.

The second group of kids were much better. There were 5 of them, and they were much more attentive and respectful. They understood the activities and games and really enjoyed their time with me. This class will be a piece o' cake. At the end of the lesson, I got the 101 questions about my personal life from the female students. "Do you live alone?" "Do you have a girlfriend?" "When was your last girlfriend?" etc etc etc. It was pretty amusing.

I go back to that same school this afternoon for round 2. Hopefully I can come up with something to keep those youngin's under control.

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(Warning: This is about Poop)

Korea is a haven for any Chris-Gray's and other intestine-ally/bladder-ally challenged people. For those who don't know me that well, or haven't experienced travelling with me, I have a very sensitive stomach, which heightens when I travel. I always have to pee and get stomach aches all the time, resulting in a desperate need to or incapability of going number 2. I am usually the burden of the group. I get even more nervous when I know I'm not going to be near a toilet, which then results in needing to pee even more. Long car rides are awful, and middle/window seats on airplanes are suicide, because I'm also self-conscious about how many times I ask the aisle seat person to get up for me.

But Korea is a toilet Utopia. There are nice clean public restrooms everywhere, and they aren't for customers only (that's right Chicago and NYC). When I wander the big American cities, and actually find a restroom that doesn't require the purchase of a $5 coffee to use, there are always other problems. No toilet paper, the lock hinge is broken, or sometimes the main door doesn't even close. Then of course the toilet itself is disgusting.

I also have to say, the toilet seats here are amazing. My host family has a massive electronic toilet seat. It keep the seat warm at all times, and has a built in bidet. I definitely want to buy one when I return home.

Restrooms. For something we all use. And we all use everyday, I don't understand why we don't take a little more pride in the facilities available. Thank you Korea, the US could learn a lot from you.