Reach the World – Journal – About Me

On October 2, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Fulbright Korea, Reach the World, VolunteeringLeave a comment

Originally published for Reach the World, October 2, 2015

Annyeong-haseyo!Mannaseo bangapseumnida!

Hello! It’s nice to meet you. My name is Janine Perri, and I am currently teaching English in South Korea as part of the Fulbright program.

If you had asked me when I was a kid or a high school student what I would be doing after college, I wouldn’t have told you that I would be teaching English in South Korea. I might have said I would be a writer. Maybe a lawyer. But moving from my home on Long Island to a country halfway across the world? It didn’t even cross my mind. So how did I get here?

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Reach the World – Traveler Bio

On October 2, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Fulbright Korea, Reach the World, VolunteeringLeave a comment

Originally published for Reach the World, September 30, 2015

Hello! My name is Janine Perri. I am from Long Island, New York, and I studied English and history at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. It’s nice to meet you!

I love learning about new languages, people and places. That’s why I moved to South Korea to teach English to high school students. South Korea is a country in east Asia, right between China and Japan. South Korea is known for its pop music, beautiful festivals, and a very spicy vegetable dish called kimchi.

As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, I teach English classes for 600 Korean students each week. That’s a lot of students! But we still have a ton of fun. Sometimes, we even play games like Jeopardy, Hot Potato, and Twenty Questions.

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Chuseok – A Korean Thanksgiving

On September 29, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Family, Fulbright KoreaLeave a comment

This weekend was Chuseok, a Korean harvest festival based on the lunar calendar. Often called “Korea’s Thanksgiving,” Chuseok is a time for feasting, gift-giving, and spending time with family. It was the first time my busy host family shared a meal together, and it was my first time meeting my host dad’s family.

On Sunday, my host family and I traveled to Miryang, a country town about an hour outside of Gimhae. I thought Goesan was rural, but it is like New York City compared to Miryang! Miryang is nestled in the mountains and surrounded by rice fields, farms, and small village homes. One of these homes belonged to my host dad’s parents, who invited us for the evening.

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Sports and the Sexes

On September 23, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Fulbright Korea, SchoolLeave a comment

As the 4:30 bell rang, I grabbed my change of clothes and rushed into the restroom. It was our monthly Teacher Sports Day. Throughout the afternoon, I had flashbacks of elementary school Field Day. Relay races. Tug-of-war. Red Rover. And, of course, the fear of embarrassing myself.

Athleticism is not my strength. I remember that when I was in my seventh grade gym class, I tried to shoot a basketball into the hoop, but it bounced off the rim, then hit one gym teacher in the face and another in the stomach. When I didn’t think it could get any worse, I did the exact same thing the following day.

Nope. Definitely not my strength.

As the teachers filed into the gymnasium, I noticed that the women were still wearing their office attire. Most of the men had changed into shorts or gym clothes. I felt a little self-conscious and wondered if I had missed something.

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Humans of Gimhae Jeil High School

On September 20, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, ESL Lessons, Fulbright Korea, SchoolLeave a comment

Working with a textbook is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it provides exercises and prompts around a theme or a unit, so lesson planning is much easier. On the other hand, many of the units or individual exercises are not fitting for my students’ level, or they are awfully boring. This week’s textbook lesson had an interesting topic about future plans, but the textbook exercises would have been too hard (and let’s face it, too boring) for my students.

Luckily for me, I am responsible for teaching the writing section of the textbook to my second graders, while my co-teachers teach the reading and vocabulary sections. That means I have a lot more leeway to adapt the material or substitute my own exercises for those in the book. So this week, I did exactly that.

“Pick up your textbook,” I said to each class after ten minutes of doing the textbook exercises. My students looked at each other. “Go on, pick it up. Pick it up. Now close it. Put it down. We don’t need it.”

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Pronunciation Problems

On September 16, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Fulbright Korea, Language, School, Silly Janine Teacher!Leave a comment

As difficult as it is when you and another person are speaking to each other in two different languages, it’s much more difficult when you are speaking the same language but cannot understand each other due to pronunciation and regional accents. While I run into the former problem in my everyday struggles with speaking Korean, the latter problem is most common when I am helping my students with their English writing.

Today my students were writing a few sentences about their future plans. As I was walking around the classroom to help them, one of the girls called me over.

“Spelling…’liber’?” she asked.

“Liber?” I repeated, glancing at her paper for a clue as to what she meant. “What is ‘liber’?”

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Casinos, Polar Bears, and Dinosaurs: A Lesson on the United States

On September 4, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, ESL Lessons, Fulbright Korea, School1 Comment

*I cannot take credit for creating this lesson. I adapted it from a lesson another ETA created a few years ago. The joys of sharing!*

Twice a week, I teach special “Speaking and Writing” classes for the more advanced English students in the second grade. Unlike most of my classes, which I teach from a textbook, I create my own lessons and materials for these two classes. With the dizzying freedom of being able to teach whatever I want, I decided to do a lesson on the United States, complete with a USA Bingo game and a postcard activity. As you will see, my classes are a little too obsessed with gambling and Coca-Cola advertisements.

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Conversations about Beauty

On August 29, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Family, Fulbright KoreaLeave a comment

I have always been uncomfortable if someone compliments my appearance. Usually because I don’t think about it too much and tend to focus on aspects of my character instead. Fortunately, the student choruses of “Teacher, pretty!” are finally dying down, but the issues of Western and Korean beauty standards are still at the forefront of my mind. Especially after today.

This afternoon, I met one of Ye Bin’s friends at the mall. We ate pizza, practiced English and Korean, and then went to a photo booth. Even though I usually dislike taking pictures of myself, it was surprisingly a lot of fun to make silly faces and poses.

But when we went to print the pictures, a Photoshop application popped up on the screen. That’s where it went downhill.

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Departure Day

On August 21, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Family, Fulbright Korea, Orientation, SchoolLeave a comment

Goodbye Jungwon, hello Gimhae!

Today was yet another ceremony to serve as a farewell to the friends we made in Goesan and as an introduction to our co-teachers and schools. In the morning, the ETAs and OCs said tearful goodbyes and took pictures with each other. I never imagined that I would become so close to my fellow Fulbrighters in such a short amount of time. Luckily, we will all be together again for the fall conference in October!

After taking pictures, the ETAs, both new and renewee, entered the auditorium the same way as for the Placement Ceremony. We stood in a horseshoe around the audience, and we stood with the other ETAs in our provinces. This time, the audience was filled with co-teachers, vice principals and principals from our schools. The OCs called our names one by one so we could step forward and bow. Some co-teachers stood up or presented flowers to their new ETA, while others took note of what we looked like. Fulbright also gave us flowers as a goodbye gift, which was a pleasant surprise!

After we finished our bows, all 120+ ETAs rushed to find their co-teachers in the audience. My co-teacher did not stand when I bowed, so I hoped he would remember what I looked like (there was a reason for my bright red blazer!). After a few minutes, my co-teacher, Mr. Hong, introduced himself and we went to the goodbye luncheon in the cafeteria. After lunch, we started the long drive to Gimhae.

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The Prevalence of English in Korea

On July 28, 2015January 22, 2017 By Janine PerriIn Culture, Fulbright Korea, LanguageLeave a comment

Before I left for Korea, I posted an article I had previously written about English as a global language. Even though I’m only a few weeks into Fulbright, I am starting to realize for the first time just how much of an impact English has around the world–in positive and negative ways.

Korea is the first country I have visited that has a non-Roman alphabet (Hangul). Though I can recognize the letters and syllables in Hangul, this is my first experience (that I can remember, at least) of being nearly illiterate. While this is disconcerting at times, it is even more disconcerting to see how much I am able to understand–because even in a small rural town, so many words are also in English.

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