I Never Expected This!

Yellow dust...you hear about it from every guidebook, website, and person having anything to do with Korea. Sand from the Gobi Desert, blows in in the spring, irritates noses & lungs. Ok. I still wasn't really sure how to picture it. I guess I had in mind the sandstorms on the dunes in Colorado, or perhaps something like the film of pollen you find on your car every morning when the trees bloom? How about something between nuclear fallout and Krakatoa?

All last week, other expats were mentioning yellow dust in their Facebook posts, and I was wondering which Seoul they were living in, having seen nothing out of the ordinary myself. Yesterday, however, was unmistakable. I THINK it was a regular storm that made it nighttime-dark around noon. But once that blew by, it got lighter, but not clear, and there was a pronounced yellow glow. You couldn't discern anything in the air, like with snowflakes, and I didn't end up with sand in every crease, as I did after climbing the Colorado Dunes, just eerie yellow overcast, like wearing cheap sunglasses. This must be what the Dust Bowl or Mt. St. Helens were like. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any pictures. I thought I might try today, but it was sunny and clear, as if the yellow dust were never here.

I don't think this has anything to do with the cold-ish ailment I've been nursing this weekend. That's probably more related to the Korean disdain for calling in sick, and thus the liberal sharing of germs around the office. I had to bail on the cat cafe on Friday--a wrenching decision, since I haven't been there in 2 months, though it can hardly be called a decision...more a lack of ability to stand up. I missed the St. Patrick's Festival/Parade and a middle eastern lunch with the Seoul Veggie Society yesterday, too, though that was in part due to having to be at school to interview applicants for this year's EEP program. The kids were supposed to choose one of four pictures and tell a short story (ie 4-5 sentences) about it. Whenever I've tried activities like this in my classes, the students seem completely flummoxed, so I was curious how this would go. And either this year's crop of 1st graders is pretty poor at English, or this activity truly is outside the repertoire of most Korean schoolkids. (I'm inclined to believe the 2nd, as I've never seen evidence of anything creative taking place in a Koren classroom)

I had 2 or 3 kids stare at the paper until my co-teacher told them "time over". About 45% gave perfunctory answers when prompted ("What's happening in this picture?" "Basketball."), and about 45% did put together a few sentences, usually descriptive rather than creative ("They are in a classroom. They are studying English.") Then there were the standouts. One boy labored through a couple sentences about the picture he'd chosen before asking if he could do a different picture. He then proceeded to read the sample at the bottom of the page verbatim. Another, when asked which picture he chose, gave a long explanation of how the other kids in line didn't seem to be choosing Picture 4, so he was going to do that one in the hope that he might earn some extra points for it (Picture 4 wasn't actually that unusual, but he did earn full marks for a good, competent story). There was one fantastic tale of a basketball game involving teenagers from Russia who eventually had to flee because they were cold; and then there was the story that even got my head teacher to laugh: the boy and his family were sailing to the USA when they met a sea monster; after fighting the monster, the boat sank, and then they discovered Atlantis (a 7-syllable word) and swam to an island where they called a Korean scientist, and in the end, they were rich. The pronunciation and grammar were atrocious, but he got his point across, was far more creative than anyone else, and I've conversed with this kid about the English books he reads at home, so I know his attitude is good. The other interviewers were asking kids if they like English or want to be in this program, and several were honest and said 'no'.

So this week, we start EEP, in addition to all the other scheduled insanity. I've GOT to get better, 'cause I don't have time to be sick. My temperature was within a couple ticks of normal this afternoon, but it's back to 100 now, so I'm hoping this is the final battle. I'm teaching classes the rules and consequences this week, and I still have to decide how exactly I'll do that, and what the consequences are going to be. The good behavior of the first week was apparently just a 'welcome back' respite; my last class on Friday let me know how much work there still is to do.