The Good, the Bad, and the Bathrooms

Part of adjusting to new things is living through both the positives and negatives that come along with them. Obviously, living in a new country and working a new (entirely unfamiliar) job, I have experienced these things. Luckily, things get easier once you've grown used to them. I celebrated my two-month anniversary of my arrival in Korea last week, and I think, by this point, I've gathered my thoughts on most things (for now).

The Good

• #1: Scenery & Nature
  Being from the flat Midwest, I can always find an appreciation for a nice landscape. No matter the direction that you look in my city of Boryeong, there are mountains. Seoul is the same. I haven't been many places in Korea yet, but with mountains taking 70% of the country's area, I have a feeling there's not a bad sight to be seen. (The hundreds of mountain hiking paths are a plus, too.)
  

• #2: Korean Patience
  I have been to plenty of places with citizens that have been straight-up impatient with and/or unwilling to help foreigners who didn't know the native language. You won't usually find that in Korea. While out on the town, I have had several instances where entire conversations were one big cloud of confusion. Though this can be frustrating, Koreans keep a smile on their face and patiently work with you toward understanding one another and getting the job done.
  

• #3: Public Transportation
  Whether it is by city bus, coach bus, subway, passenger train, or high-speed passenger train, the entirety of Korea is connected, accessible, and affordable! You may have to do a transfer depending on where you're going, but you can get practically anywhere in the country within half of a day. (Seoul is 105 miles from my city. To get there, I just hop on a train for 2.5 hours and $12.)

The Bad

• #1: English Comprehension
  The English comprehension for a majority of my students is very poor. About half of my classes are book work, which is fine, because they simply talk with or repeat me. However, when I prepare a game that they haven't played before (no matter how easy), it is like pulling teeth to get the point across. There are a few students who will just say "No English," or "My English is bad" when I try to explain anything. So half of it is comprehension issues, the other half is for lack of trying to understand me.

(Wikipedia)

• #2: Name Memorization
  I am bad at memorizing Western names. They're typically in one ear and out the other. But when it comes to memorizing Korean names, I am absolutely hopeless. And it's not that I haven't tried! In my first week here, I said that knowing my students' names was one of the most important things for me to start off. I played an icebreaker game with the students that I'd often played when I was in school. Everyone sits in a circle and pairs their name with an item that starts with the same first letter. For example, "Jason Jambalaya." With each new name, the next student says every name that has been said around the circle so far and adds their own. The final person in the circle recites every name. This has helped me to learn the names of entire classes in the United States. Here? I made a point to go last and say everyone's names. Immediately after the game ended, I didn't remember a single name. They are not names that I've heard before! To this day, I only know the names of about five of my students. So I'm working on that. (Also, all given names are two syllables, the family name comes first, and most of them are the same.)

Just Korea Things (The Bathrooms)
I think that one of the quirkiest qualities I've found in Korea is that many bathrooms have motion-censored renaissance or classical music. Gone are the days of playing music on your phone, or turning on the sink so that no one can hear you. You have automated music! (Unfortunately not all bathrooms have this, but most schools do.)

The bathrooms are unique for other reasons, too. The urinals, for example, always flush before I've even begun peeing. Many toilet seats are heated, or have a built in bidet. The bathrooms oftentimes don't even have Western toilets, but, instead, squat toilets. (Though, I have yet to find one, which is fine.) And lastly, the plumbing system is apparently so poor that they encourage you NOT to flush your toilet paper in many places.