Colds in Korea are not fun.

Hello!
I apologize for not posting in a while.  I somehow got a terrible cold last week and have not been able to do much of anything, besides knit and watch movies.  I made a trip to the doctor on Saturday, and plan to go again this afternoon.  This whole business has just taken up way too much of my time and my productivity levels are dropping drastically.  


On one hand, it is kind of the teachers and vice-principal to worry about me.  But on the other, it is so strange when someone tells me that I should go to the doctor for a cold.  Then I tell them that yes, I did.  They insist that I should go again, to get an IV.  I have never in my life needed an IV, so I can only imagine how that will actually help me.  But I will try I guess.  


In my 3rd grade classes this week the topic is "Our Foreign Neighbors".  So, I talked about foreigners in Korea, foreign marriages and reasons that Koreans might marry a foreigner.  I learned that marriage between a Korean and a foreigner is by far more acceptable than simply being gay.  I mostly threw that in there to make sure that they were paying attention, because any time you mention anything about being gay, there is an uproar in the classes.  Sometimes they try to accuse their friends of being gay, and other times they just say "oooh, no teacher" and laugh uncomfortably.  


Coming from Minneapolis, which has the 2nd largest gay population in the US (after SanFrancisco) it is amusing to me.  I should be more specific.  Their reaction is amusing to me.  I am no expert, nor am I politically minded, but to see that Korea is still in complete denial about homosexual relationships makes me yearn for the grace with which homosexuality is embraced in Minneapolis.  That being said, I know even in MN that there are many obstacles left to fight in the quest for equality, but we have come a long way.   (I hope that this has not offended anyone, it is meant to be more of a comment on views of homosexuality in Korea, such as I've seen.)


We also talked about foreigners in Korea, and what sort of sights in Busan the students would recommend to foreigners.  Many of them take pride in their city and offered great places, Haeundae Beach, Dadaepo Beach, Nampo, Seomyeon, etc.  Several students made a joke out of it and put Keonkuk Middle School, which is our middle school.  One of the groups yesterday chose Keonkuk Middle School, and wrote
 "We go to school every day.  We are very hard."  
Now, I struggled with what to say to the group because I try to encourage them to use English and I try not to correct them in front of other students; I want them to be comfortable speaking in my class.  Because this was a written exercise, and that particular phrase is... not quite acceptable in a classroom setting, I decided to shift them another way.  I asked them if they meant that they worked very hard, or studied very hard.  No.  They were talking about how hard it is to walk up the hill that the school is on.  Okay, that's a direction that I can work with.  I think they changed it to "We go to school every day.  It is difficult to climb the hill."  


Oh the joys of teaching.