Each new day brings more Culture Shock...

I am starting to question whether being at this particular boarding campus would be of any benefit in my goal of learning how to operate a boarding school for inner-city children. Amazing experiences with incredible learning opportunities everyday because we are “building a school” that is still in the completion process… yes. Something that I will be able to directly take and translate and use in third-ward Houston?... highly unlikely.

So, it hit me… the culture shock. How is it that American children and Korean children can be such polar opposites? While the two following comparisons are my own gross generalizations – they are experiences that have shaped my view of our societies as a whole:

• ·      In America, those with raw athletic talent and muscular physiques are praised and rewarded. In Korea, the girls don’t want to work out for fear of gaining muscles, and many of the boys would opt to protect their fair skin by sitting in the shade rather than playing a pick up game of any sort of sport outside.

• ·      In America, students (and parents) find homework a rare necessity and spend little time focused on their studies.  In Korea, after 2 hours of studying on the first night of school, I stayed with the students in my classroom an additional 20 minutes, until 9:45pm, when we headed back to the dorms only because they had to take showers and prepare for lights-out at 11:00 (And this is less than typical public schools where students go to academic-tutoring “Hagwans” after school for up to 5 hours!)

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We are still in an un-approved building (with below video taken the day our boarding students arrived), with no solidified schedules for our 8th graders, no form of communication between teachers other than face-to-face and email (this no-phone business is killing me!), and a news station that is making our campus out to be, well, not the most positive talk of Jeju-Do...

But, we just wrapped up the first day of school, and it is days like these that make me wonder how I could ever NOT want to be a teacher!

While I was able to play a straight face for all of my science classes – working through routine rules and procedures, I was on dorm duty this evening to relieve our 3^rd floor “dorm mom” who has done an incredible job molding the culture of our “family”. This is when the culture shock hit me again – these girls are incredibly talented and smart. They sincerely want to achieve success - be the best they can be. I have yet to witness a group of teenage girls sit and focus their full energies on creating quick masterpieces on the lined paper they were provided. On more than one occasion, I was asked incredibly thoughtful questions, such as “Teacher, what would be a better way to describe how so-and-so developed a speech that would create the foundation for how others view animalism?” and “Ms. Sokola, how do you continue your healthy workouts if your body tires after completing the process only one time?”

I think God has me right where he wants me… 

For our evening activity, I asked our girls if they wanted to do an “American” workout… better known to you all as INSANITY! Below are a few of the pictures Emily was able to snap before they noticed the camera was out! (They were embarrassed by the sweat that was dripping down their precious faces.)

I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of a community that focuses on the “Total Human Development”. At an afterschool meeting, the students gathered in the Performing Arts Center to hear about all of the activities that teachers would offer afterschool. Yes, we had the typical sports like basketball, soccer, tennis, badminton, volleyball, and cheerleading (We are… The best… K.I.S. – my inner-cheerleader came out and I even pulled out a back-handspring on a crowded auditorium stage!)… but we also have cooking classes, a crochet group, model UN, Student council, Global citizenship, and my personal favorite – Music PLUS, where the presentation consisted of our head of school, Dr. Jeff Beedy, on the Guitar, his wife on an acoustic guitar, the 6^th grade English teacher playing a mean harmonica,  a boarding assistant strumming the bass, and our school Business Director, David Lee, wailing on the drums. Seriously?! I will track down some footage and post it in the very near future.

Missing you all - Thinking of you often. Talk soon. Anyong Asseyo!