Korea!

DAAADDDDD!!!!

2009-03-24T16:31:00.002+09:00

Okay so next was supposed to be about Koh Pha Ngan but this just happened and it had to be communicated to everyone who knows my dad.

One of my students, whose name is Kang Yoon, made a Steve Wakeen joke today. Class was just about to start and he says to me, "Are you okay?". And I was like, "Yeah I'm okay, are you okay?". And he goes, "No! I'm Kang Yoon." Hahahaha oh man I was shocked! And then he realized how brilliant that was of him and I swear I've never seen him laugh that hard. I mean he was unbelievably pleased with himself. It makes sense, too. He's already playing with a language he hardly knows.

Anyway, I had to share because it was just so weird to have someone halfway across the world, who can barely speak English, make the same joke as good ol' Dad.

Thailand: BKK, Koh Samui

2009-03-23T16:06:00.011+09:00

This will be the first of many posts (I hope) about our time in Thailand.

Enjoy!

Pasty-white but stoked at BKK. It was in the middle of a January night and we were comfy in jeans and a tee. Pretty much awesome.

John and I landed at BKK at like 1:30 AM. Our original plan was to spend the night at a nearby hostel, but last minute we decided to just hang in the airport for a few hours and fly right down to Koh Samui, an island in the south of the country in the Gulf of Thailand.

Our flight left at 6 AM and landed at about 7 AM. We got an unfortunately expensive taxi (we actually didn't have any other option) to take us around to look at some places on the beach. Though we looked at a few places, our new home became the first one we saw: Central Bay Resort on Chaweng Beach.

We loved it there! It was cheap (maybe $25 bucks a night), right on the island's most beloved beach, and we liked the little restaurant it had. Here are some pics:

Our little bungalow! Clean and comfy, even without hot water (that's a real luxury here.)

See the prow of the ship, beached on the right? That's part of the restaurant. Chaweng Beach was unbelievably beautiful, and unlike most tropical beaches, it had great waves. We bodysurfed like it was our job.

A couple of my personal favorites:
Here I am, ruining John's vacation by making him take pictures with me. Fun!

Do you see the giant cheeseburger on these chips? That's because you are looking at Double Cheese Pork Burger flavored potato chips. haha!

We stayed at Chaweng for maybe three days and pretty much just relaxed all day on the beach. At night we walked down the little strip and were attacked by guys trying to sell John tailor-made suits. John was too nice to say no to them, so we ended up being engaged in conversation every time and actually got to know some of them - haha.

One of those nights as we were walking back from dinner we were offered a free drink at this hotel bar. The hotel was this ultra-modern, super expensive thing all done in black and red and white. It was called The Library and the bar was called The Page. They seated us on these huge cushions propped up against a little table on their deck (which was built right on the beach) and then gave us an unbelievably delicious cocktail which I kind of sucked down (and then ordered another). We had a little glass table in front of us with a tiny little candle on it so we could see the ocean better....they even gave us flashlights to be able to read the menu without destroying the ambience. It was probably a top 5 Thailand moment for us.

Up next: On Koh Pha Ngan with Alex and Tom

Number Jeopardy

2009-03-12T08:39:00.004+09:00

This activity was so much fun that after the first class did it I brought my camera in to the second class to snap some photos of it.

Here's how it goes:
I split the class into two teams and distribute big pieces of paper with the numbers 0-9 (plus some duplicates just in case) to each team.

Then, I read questions which have numbers for answers. The first team to hold up the correct numbers in the right order gets a point!

Here's what it looks like:

......good times.

UPDATES

2009-01-13T13:50:00.003+09:00

Okay everyone, I finally finished a bunch of posts I began a while ago, so they won't appear on the top. They'll appear in the order I started them. The new posts can be found easily by going to the blog archive located on the right. Click on the arrow next to 2008, and then on the arrow next to October to find the post named "Seoul". Next, open up November to find "Cheongju" and "I worked through most of October: the post-Silleuksa YES programs". "Christmas in Korealand" is the fourth new post, but it is right below this post, where it should be.

Also, I added a gadget that allows you to subscribe to my blog posts. Since I post so rarely, this is a great way to check if I've posted without having to visit the blog - you can just click on your bookmarks toolbar to see all the posts that are up.

This section is for those who have never subscribed to an RSS Feed before:
To subscribe to the posts, look for 'subscribe to korea!' on the right. Click on "Posts" and then choose the last option (unless one of the others is more convenient for you). This will open up a new tab asking you how you want to subscribe to the posts. Just click on "subscribe now", again, unless another option suits you better. Next you will be provided with the same options you are presented when you create a bookmark, so put the bookmark wherever you want it! If you choose to put it in your toolbar, there will be a button on your toolbar similar to the "Most Visited" and "Latest Headlines" buttons that are standard on Mozilla Firefox. Just click the button to see a list of posts, from most recent at the top to least recent at the bottom.

Lastly, I thought you all should know that John and I finally watched the Godfather, parts I-III. Now we have moved on to watching all 24 Bond films in order. We just finished You Only Live Twice and are looking forward to On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Oh, plus this week I started tutoring two girls my age twice a week. They are the minister at my school's daughters and they're unbelievably sweet. We're all pretty excited about the deal. One of them will be working on her MFA shortly....she sculpts! I can't wait to get a picture of one of her sculptures on here. It's pretty cool.

Ciao!

Christmas in Korealand

2009-01-03T14:32:00.008+09:00

I just want you all to know that Christmas was okay, even though I missed you all terribly. And I only got really really emotional once before Christmas when I was listening to Johnny Mathis like we always do, and once on Christmas after I opened the pearl necklace my dear mother gave me. But I had a great time with my friends that day and I made sure to have some Christmas cheer around, and open a present on Christmas Eve, and to be with my family at least in spirit/virtually over the internet. Here are some pictures of the Christmas cheer:

Here you can see from the left: The doggie Christmas card, the cute little snow man, a picture my friend Alex made me (it's got a pine tree on it), the cutest little North American mammals ornarments that nearly broke my heart when I opened them, and the light-up plastic pine branches reindeer I bought.

Our Charlie Brown Christmas tree, complete with presents and animal ornaments. The big green box was John's gift from me - a big, red, remote-control truck. Pretty cool. I also got him an indoor basketball hoop you hang on the wall.

Here's the whole gang, having a forest gathering on my desk. (Mom I took this photo for you. I know you miss the little buggers.) There's a Skunk and a Hedgehog and a Fox and a Bunny and a Squirrel and a Raccoon.

Lastly, here I am in my brand new sweatshirt! I got the Santa hat in a white elephant (Yankee swap) gift exchange with my buddies.

East vs. West

2008-12-22T13:26:00.001+09:00

Okay, so John found this website that shows a series of images created by a decorated (so-to-speak) Chinese artist living in Germany. The images are little pictograms comparing Eastern and Western cultures, which I happened to find brilliantly insightful and just simply perfect. We e-mailed them to all our friends working here in Korea with us to give them a giggle.

You can check it out here.

Anyway, then I sat down and started reading some of the comments on the images. It was nuts. Some people said they were blatantly racist against Asians. Others said they thought the images made more fun of Westerners. But most people thought the same as John and I did (including one of the Koreans I work with). Those differences are so flippin true(mostly) and are the source of a lot of both our joys and frustrations living here. BUT THEEEEN there's this one guy who made an argument so outdated that he engaged every single person commenting on the site in an argument: that it is wrong to point out cultural differences and all stereotypes only lead to bad things. When people disagreed with him he flipped out and started swearing at them and used a whole lot of straw man arguments and non-sensical grammar. It was amazing. It was like watching a wet cat being backed into a corner by a bunch of hungry dobermans. But the point is the images - I think they make fun of both cultures equally and you guys might get some idea of what we're experiencing on a daily basis. So you should check them out.

I worked through most of October: the post-Silleuksa YES programs

2008-11-30T18:27:00.012+09:00

The 4th Program (our second): Sports Day

From the left: Sue-bin Kim (now a friend of ours), Ms. Park, Me, Jihye (John's co-teacher)

This time at Yeoju English Stars we simply went to a local elementary school and played sports with the kids all day long. I thought it would be lame but I ended up having a ton of fun goofing around with the kids. Not to mention the excellent company - we were with a group of people who had become our friends and also some of our favorite Korean English teachers (including my co-teacher this time!) I'd say the highlight was listening to John and Billy commentate on the final event of the day, a "mission relay" race in which the groups raced each other around a giant "track" completing tasks at each station they encountered. At my station, I made little kids get dizzy and then carry a cup of water and dump it it in a bucket a few yards away. This was not my idea but I kind of wished it had been - the little kids looked like the drunken Korean men I see around all the time. Hahaha! But whenever I was waiting to instruct the kids, I was laughing, too: Billy is ridiculous! He got up on the mike and did not stop talking for the entire relay. Eventually John joined him and it got even funnier. They started asking each other questions like, "Billy, do you think the weather will play a factor in this race?" And Billy answered, "John, that is a great question. I wish I had thought of it. Maybe we can get someone down on the ground to answer that for us....Hey Mya! What's the weather like down there?" Haha....that was the most sense Billy made, I think. The rest was just actually ridiculousness. For example: "I don't know that you could call this a relay, John. It's more of a....a, um, I mean I guess it is a relay."

Earlier we tried to teach the kids how to play American football, with limited success. However, it did give me a chance to bond with one of my students (I think he was the only one from Daeshin in the program). His name is E Ju Ho, but we all know him as T.O., after the professional football player. The kid rocked at the game! He was so good! Now he signs all his papers T.O., which is kind of adorable.

We also had the opportunity to enact a devious plan to give our friend Rob a nickname we had concocted days earlier: Lob the Lobster! The best part about this nickname is that it works at least 2 ways. The first is making fun of the Koreans because they cannot say their r's unless they're supposed to be pronouncing an "l". The second is making fun of Rob because he dropped a game-winning touchdown pass despite having been a tight end on the Bills practice squad. Oh man it was too good: he now has a lobster claw hand gesture to go with his fancy new nickname.

The 1st Annual YES English Festival

Okay, the long and short of this is as follows:

Every single foreign teacher in Yeoju had to come up with an activity to do in a booth they would be given for this festival. The luckier of us 1) were given more than twenty minutes to figure out what we were going to do and 2) didn't have our brilliant ideas shut down by our co-teachers more than twice.

Then, they wanted a performance out of us. Since it was to be held in mid-October, we ordered a bunch of Halloween costumes and put on a fashion show and did some skits. I was a bunny rabbit, and John was Batman.

It ended up being a decent amount of fun, despite the fact that, due to co-teachers with a decidedly "can't do" attitude, my idea of finger-painting devolved into playing word games and John's idea to make slime eventually became a water balloon toss. And, I actually enjoyed hopping across the stage like a big goofball. When John's turn came around, he carried a South African he had just met across the stage. I kid you not, there was a resultant photo opp. with Batman after the show. Haha, ohhh John.

John and one of his pets having fun at his water balloon booth.

Alex and her co-teacher, Sojung.

Shannon!

Me as a bunny, before I made my bunny ears.

The legendary John as Batman. Oooh this lady made me mad. Who does she think she is? Hahaha.

Two of my pets. The first is the infamous T.O. (real name: E Ju Ho), a first grader, and the second is a third-grader, whose name I always forget.

It's the teacher's turn! I taught some other English teachers how to play Halli Galli, which was one of the games at my booth. The Korean sitting on the left is Gwak Juhwan who I've mentioned previously. He teaches at Daeshin High School and has been an invaluable friend to me at work. Next is Marcelle, the South African who teaches English at John's High School, and then on the right there is Wilber (yes, with an "-er") who teaches English at Daeshin High School. If you're wondering about the toilet paper, you should know that often Koreans will carry it around with them. That's because it's not uncommon to find a bathroom with no toilet paper at all, plus they use it instead of tissues.

...And one more for the road!:

The 5th Program: Gyeongbokgung

My group and me outside the throne room.

Gyeongbok Palace is the royal palace of the Joseon Dynasty and it's located right in the heart of Seoul; that is, if Seoul had a heart. There's no real downtown to Seoul. There are just different areas named after notable streets. (oh man, it occurs to me that this is pretty ironic considering Koreans don't use street names - they use landmarks) But the point is, it's this giant palace hanging out in the midst of a metropolis.

To be honest, this program was a bit of bust. We were all busy and tired when we very hurriedly planned it, and then it was raining and freezing cold on the actual day. But the palace was amazing, and I was working with a co-teacher who loves to take pictures so now I have some action shots of John and me teaching. Hooray!

Still in the middle of Seoul.

John, teaching away.

The gate.

The throne room.

The party house.

Outside the palace complex and next to the National Folk Museum of Korea. Cuties!
A screen displayed inside the museum. Beautiful, huh?

Jewelry for your hair.

Dragons and phoenixes....awesome.

Alex on the bus. Also awesome.

And now YES is over until next fall! It's too bad, really - we had fun and made extra money - but it's nice to have our weekends back.

Cheongju

2008-11-30T18:09:00.026+09:00

One random weekend John and I didn't have any plans so we decided to see a little more of the country. We picked a place called Cheongju, a city in in the middle of Korea, where a martial arts festival was supposed to be going on. When we got there we found out the festival was actually in Cheonju, a place I was deathly afraid we'd end up because the Koreans have such a hard time understanding our mispronunciations. Haha, funny how things work out, eh? Anyway, after spending 2 hours trying to find the city bus terminal so we could get to downtown (it took that long because we were following a map that didn't make any sense....it turns out the city bus terminal doesn't really exist), we finally found some people who told us that there is no bus terminal besides the one where we were and that a taxi ride costs the same as the bus, anyway. HA!

The taxi took us to the major shopping area of the city where we walked around observing all kinds of interesting things on our hunt for a place to eat. (please see "Funny Korea" entry) We didn't find a restaurant, but we DID find some Americans! If you're wondering, often times foreigners will say hello to each other when they see one another here because foreign strangers outside of Seoul are such a rare occurrence. Anyway, it was this really nice girl called Heidi who was showing a newbie around town. Incidentally, they were on their way to dinner.

We ate at a place called Kraze Burgers (aka Expensive Mediocre Burgers) and learned that Heidi only had three weeks left here in Korea. I think it was strange for both parties to meet someone on opposite ends of the journey. Heidi was sort of thrown back to her first few weeks when she was just starting to figure things out but was nowhere near feeling comfortable; whereas we had a glimpse of the future as we listened to someone who'd been here for a year reflect out loud on her time in Korea. We could see ourselves a year from then: comfortable with our situations in Korea, and sad to leave, but incredibly excited to go back.

The four of us (the newbie came with, too) went out for some drinks afterward. Heidi took us to the major foreigner bars where we drank Western beers and played foosball.....what a trip that was! It was our first time in a place that reminded us even remotely of home. It was a good time, and the best part was that Heidi had a place for us to sleep so we saved some money and another experience at the jimjilbang. Plus, she gave us some recommendations for what to do the next day since the martial arts festival was a no-go (and showed us where to pick up the bus!!)

We ended up at a sweet fortress in the outskirts of town and then made a quick stop at nearby low-budget zoo (had to get my tiger fix). It was a gorgeous hike around the ancient wall and in general a really great way to spend a Sunday - maybe even greater than watching the tail end of a martial arts festival.

Check out the pics:

A view of the city. This street is just off the big shopping area. Aren't the lights cool? Look how far down they go!

Here's a part of the cool fortress/wall we walked around. The roof-dealy is one of the gates into the fortress.

The fortress was a short walk from the park entrance. I felt the need to hang on this tree (who wouldn't?) and John thought it was a good photo opp. I don't know, I think I look pretty awkward. Haha.

On the wall...

Different people, same gorgeous view.

Here it is again, just a bit down the trail:

Classic. This is one of my favorite photos ever.

One of the gates. John dramatically opens the doors, and I graciously see you out. (In real life, those doors can't be moved.)

Posted as per John's request. This is a classic Korean canine - itty bitty, dirty, and wearing clothes. haha oh man. love it.

Dad, John thinks you'd like this picture, so it's on here.
I think it's pretty cheesy. I haven't looked this 90s since I was in middle school and it actually was the 90s. But enjoy!

Pure
genius.

I set up that sweet shot above, and John thought of this awesome action shot. Good team effort, I'd say.

We found these plywood cutouts at the gate at the end of our journey and had some fun with them.

The Zoo:

First, we were all excited about getting to see some tigers and stuff. Then, we saw how bad of a zoo it was and it made us sad. We still had no problem enjoying ourselves for a while, though.

(That's me putting on my sad face.)

A big grizzly putting on his grizzly-face.

And then John putting on his ridiculous-face!

Less dignified than a monkey....More intense than a leopard. Bahahaha, I will cherish these photos forever.

Then the way the animals were kept really started to get to me. Those cages aren't very big, and there are FIVE tigers in there. FIVE.
Do you see the expression on my face? Can't even smile properly. That might explain why I nearly exploded on the bus ride back to downtown. The bus was absolutely packed, as in, to the point where the bus couldn't allow any more passengers. So almost everyone was standing up, holding onto the rail up top and trying to be as small as possible. Everyone except this one guy - this one older Korean man who was between me and the rail, and who I was pushed up against. He had both his hands on the rail, spread wide apart, and was standing at arm's length from it not trying to be small at all. Additionally, he actually moved backwards away from the rail and into me at one point in the ride. I was mad enough that he was being so inconsiderate, but when he moved his body up against mine so much that we could have been snuggling had we been horizontal, I nearly lost it. I was angry already, but I got just plain upset when he was touching me so much that I felt violated. Gah. It still makes me angry to think of it. Poor John had to deal with my rather perturbed self all the way back to Yeoju.

Funny Korea!

2008-11-26T11:31:00.011+09:00

Here are some images of things that keep us going during the dark times:

YEOJU, SK
Bathroom signs in Shannon and Billy's apartment building. What exactly are they trying to do here? Get behind the sign?

Lotteria is the Korean McDonald's (even though there's McDonald's here, too). This is a glorious burger wrapper. Injoy!

John's favorite new socks. This is only a taste of what they sell in large numbers on the sidewalk.
On the left there is a ghost panda complete with cape and jack-o-lantern, and on the right is a badass monkey pimped out with his bling.

SEONUNSAN, SK

Juice I got from a vending machine. See the little white squares in the sky? Those were in the drink, too.

DAESHIN, SK

There's my nametag!

CHEONGJU, SK

These are nothing more than giant-headed mannequins we saw in Cheongju.

A clever ruse.......discreetly sticking a Negro Modelo on a Corona ad....sheesh.

Why is there a suit of armor in McDonald's?

Dig that bandana-under-the-hat look.

Yes, it IS a couple wearing matching sweatshirts. Couples wear the same clothes all the time here, actually. And the men wear man purses.

YANGMOON-SAN, SK

aHAHAHAhaha are you serious!? This is at Yangmoon-san, where I went with John and some of his teachers/vice-principal for a short hike.

You don't even know......there are so many even funnier things we don't take pictures of. Oh wait, sorry Uncle Joe! I mean: "of which we don't take pictures." heehee.

In Seoul with the Koreans

2008-11-12T11:02:00.007+09:00

One of the teachers from my school really wanted to hang out with me and Sarah and have us meet her boyfriend, who spent a year at the University of Iowa in the States. Her name is Miss Han, and she always attends my teachers' English class I run on Mondays for the teachers at my school. Anyway, after planning on hanging out for a month, we finally got to go on Sunday!

We met her boyfriend outside of the Express Bus Terminal in central Seoul. It's right in the middle of the city. We hopped on a subway and met Miss Han at one of the subway stops along the way to Insadong, a pretty cool shopping district in Seoul. Lots of foreigners hang out there, and on this day, there was a ton to see. Lots of Korean performers and a few foreigner street performers. We saw this really cool outdoor shopping center, where loads of Koreans go to take pictures cuz' it's awesome. Take a look:
You can see how it's just ramps going up and up. It doesn't have specific floors to it, although it's multilevel. All the floors have a little slant to them.

Here's a picture of us there, because we're cute:As you can see, Miss Han is awesome. She bought that hat on Saturday just for us to see on Sunday.

Here's another fantastic picture:

A bunch of Koreans were taking pictures of their friends and children with these cutouts at the same time, but when Sarah got behind this one, all of them stopped to look at her. Suddenly, people started applauding. Haha, Sarah is apparently really good at fitting her face to a magazine cover. Give her a round of applause, if you please.

Miss Han's boyfriend is super nice and, since he spent a year in Iowa, he speaks English really well. He empathized with our culture shock and missing home. He said when he was in Iowa, he used to make kimchi, but his roommate would get really pissed at him for smelling up the house. He'd wrap his kimchi in multiple multiple sheets of plastic and put it in the fridge, but his roommate knew something was amiss the moment he walked in the door. I thought they would take us out for Korean food or something, but he insisted that we go out and get American food, because we must be missing it quite a lot by now. They tried to take us to Outback, but it was closed, so we went to Bennigan's instead. Oh man, it was quite possibly the most delicious meal I've had in recent memory. I got mushroom soup (Sarah, of course, got the alternative: pumpkin soup) and a fantastic monte cristo.

We all ordered our own food, and the Koreans only told us after we had gotten our gigantic plates of death that usually Koreans will only get 2 or 3 dishes for 4 people, because they like to share. I felt a little bad about this, because I know they just assumed we'd want our own entree, because we're Americans. Anyway, next time we'll know better. We were soooo stuffed when we got done, and I even took half my sandwich in a doggie bag to go. Okay, here's us at the restaurant:
Interestingly, most of the restaurants in Korea will give you a discount if you belong to a certain telecom company. Miss Han has an SK Telecom phone, so our meal was discounted 20%! Unfortunately, Sarah's phone is a Show Telecom phone, so she doesn't get quite as good discounts at places. I don't have a cellphone yet, and I might just not get one here. I haven't really needed it, because cellphones are all around, and I'm always with someone who has one.

Miss Han's boyfriend (sorry I keep refering to him this way, but I don't exactly know his name and I don't want to mess it up on here) is an electrical engineer. When he told us that, we were like, "Oh, wow!" He was really confused. He explained that a lot of people choose engineering here, because it's easier to get into university if you choose engineering as your major. He has a contract with Samsung where they pay for his school and he has promised to work for them for four years after graduating. I found that whole thing really interesting. It sounded like he picked it not because of any inherent interest in the subject, but because it's the path of least resistance to get what he wants. I wonder if lots of people in Korea don't really go to university for things that they actually like. He also explained that pretty much ALL the jobs in Korea require an English language test before you can be hired. If you don't score high enough on this test, you don't get a job: it's that simple. These tests are administered even to people at Samsung who will never use English in their job or have any contact with English speakers. The corporations and smaller companies all want employees who can speak English. "Korea is crazy for English" as so many Koreans I've talked to have put it. He showed us a whole block of buildings in Insadong devoted to teaching English. It's pretty amazing to see it.

Finally, we went to Namsang, by my request. I really wanted to see the Seoul Tower. We hopped on a bus and went up there. It's so awesome! You can see the whole city from this tower. I was interested to see that there isn't a clear "downtown" to Seoul. There isn't a cluster of big buildings anywhere. It's all sort of spread out equally across the entire space. Most of the big buildings are apartment complexes, which are incredibly common. Anyway, here are some cool pics:

Lots of young Korean people will take a lock up to the chain link fence around Seoul tower. They attach the lock to the fence and throw the key over the side. This is supposed to symbolize their everlasting love. Haha, everlast...sigh.
This is us in front of the Seoul tower!
This is a better view of the full Seoul tower from farther away. You can go up in that observatory thing, but we didn't this time. It's a breathtaking view from the base of the tower looking out across the city. If any of you come to Korea, this'll be a place to take you in Seoul for sure!

Hey, people!

2008-10-22T20:30:00.001+09:00

How do you like the new look? I got sick of the blue. I knew I would. I don't know why I chose it in the first place.

Orientation at last

2008-10-22T09:13:00.005+09:00

Sarah and I have finally gone through orientation here in Korea! The teacher workshop for the middle school and high school Native English Teachers in Gyeonggi province took place October 14-17. I didn't realize how many people were actually here teaching English; something like 240 teachers showed up to this orientation. It was like 55% Americans, 20% Canadians, 13% South Africans, and a smattering of New Zealanders, Aussies, and UKites. "Americans are particularly prevalent" said pretty perfect Polly in her pink pontiac. I don't know if she actually said that, but maybe she would've if given the opportunity. Anyway, we finally were able to attend orientation.

We didn't know quite what to expect from the whole thing, but we were dropped off by my coteacher at the bus station and climbed on the bus to go to the Hyundai Learning Center. I met a Canadian named Len on the bus. Did you know Canadians watch american football? Well, apparently they do. Len told me as much. Our driver dropped us off at some random building and drove away. Well, a bus full of foreign teachers busted up in the front doors of this random office building in the Hyundai Learning Complex. After much gesturing and yelling, we figured out we were in the wrong place! Some of us started walking up some stairs towards another building (Why not explore?) and caused a ripple effect amongst the other teachers. Half of them followed us, while the other half wisely stood their ground. After busting up into another office building, we walked back down to where the bus had dropped us off. Apparently, the bus driver had finally figured out his mistake and had come back to pick us up. The other teachers were yelling at us from the open bus doors. We got back on the bus and started off towards a new destination. The Hyundai Learning Complex is built on a big hill with very narrow streets. In addition, people who work at the learning complex park their cars on the streets. You can imagine how laughable it is to have a tour bus trying to maneuver these pathways. Anyway, now all of us are back on the bus, peacefully seated again in our seats. The bus driver suddenly decides he needs to go back down the hill to get where we're going. His eyes are visible beneath his sunglasses. He is trying to get directions on his cellphone. This is a man intent and able, a driver with apparent skill and confidence. He turns his head to find his route, grips the wheel, turns.......*crunch*. Some engineer's car bites the dust. Our driver sums up the situation in an instant. He has probably been here before. He puts the bus in reverse, starts climbing back up the hill, fumbles the clutch.....*crunch*. The engineer's car has now felt the fury of a busload of foreigners with a Korean driver twice. Our driver accepts the facts and takes us away from that cursed disaster zone. Finally, we are here: orientation begins.

We started orientation by watching some traditional Korean dancing. We then were organized into groups based on our location in the province. This was a good opportunity to meet other people from our area! Alas, Sarah and I already knew 8 out of 10 people in our group. We've been here 7 weeks and we've put forth the effort to get to know the foreigners in our area. It has helped us a lot with the culture shock and adaptation to Korea. We were given an hour and a half to go through icebreakers. It was pretty easy. We just made the new people talk about themselves for 45 minutes each. Haha, just kidding, but really, 90 minutes to break the ice? We're not penetrating glaciers here. Or maybe we are??? We then had dinner and were expected to spend two hours after dinner making posters presenting ideas to 1) Introduce world cultures into the classroom and 2) Create an English-friendly environment at our schools. Needless to say, our group dominated the activity.

That night, we went out to the bar downtown to have some drinks with other teachers. We met a bunch more people and rocked out. We weren't allowed to have alcohol on the premises for the duration of the orientation, so each night a large number of us went downtown to the local bar. We didn't necessarily drink a lot, but alcohol eases the obvious social awkwardness and tension around new people. ^.^ These outings proved to be one of the best parts of the orientation. We were able to meet people from all different walks of life, people from different countries, and people with a lot more experience than we. Talking to people who have been here for 5-10 years was amazingly valuable for learning about teaching and Korean culture. The whole week turned out to be a big encouragement for us. I really feel like Sarah and I are doing the right things, both in the classroom and outside. In addition, it really helped to realize that there is a vast support group here with experience and compassion to help us out when we need. In a lot of ways, the native English teachers are on their own here in Korea, but the amount of support we can give each other is tremendous.

For our orientation, we spent a lot of time listening to lectures. We saw a couple demo teaching examples, which would've been quite a bit more useful a few weeks ago. Sarah and I attended an optional Korean culture class, which allowed us to answer some of our lingering questions. Korea really has quite a unique culture, and we're still struggling to figure it out. In addition to the lectures, they brought in a group to perform Nan-Ta for us. They brought in these 4 different percussion instruments. It's special, because it's a mixture of brass and leather, which they say you wouldn't expect to go together. The first instrument is a brass bowl-like thing a little bit larger than your hand. You hit it with a little mallet and it sounds a lot like a mini china cymbal (for you drummers) to me. The next one is a big gong thing that looks like a frying pan hung on some bamboo. You whack that with a mallet and it makes a deeper, resonating sound. The third instrument is a kind of round bongo with leather on both ends of it. You use a stick with that to make a deep *bong* sound. The final instrument looks like an hourglass with leather on both ends of it. You lay it sideways and use sticks to hit either/both end(s) of it. The first instrument is always the leader. It's doing the most complex beat, sort of like the melody, and all the other instruments follow it. The gong thing always plays at the start of a measure. The bongo thing splits up the measure into quarter or half notes. The hourglass thing does a more complex beat, keeping the rhythm. Watching this in action was absolutely unbelievable. There is supposed to be a kind of connection between the audience and the performers; they become one through the music. At any point in the performance, it is totally acceptable to start clapping and cheering. They taught us 3 cheers in Korean, but I have sadly forgotten them. I know now how my students feel when I ask them to review the vocabulary we covered in the previous week. After they performed for us, the players went through the theory of each instrument and had us sample each rhythm by clapping. They then allowed some of us to actually go on stage and try the instruments out! Unfortunately, Sarah and I missed out on this opportunity. There was limited space and time, and I was too slow compared to the ravenous dogs disguised as English teachers...

All in all, orientation proved more useful than I expected. We got a lot of ideas, met a ton of new people, and enjoyed a needed break from teaching. Some lectures were really good, some were pretty bad. We got a lot of different views and ideologies on teaching. I realized that Sarah and I are in okay situations, even if they can be difficult. We have to plan our own lessons, but that's actually a good thing. Some teachers we talked to have become expensive tape players at their schools. The freedom that Sarah and I have been given seems to be a little unusual for inexperienced teachers like us. We've been handed the reins and have to stay on the horse. Haha. Sarah is in a really interesting situation, because she sees each of her classes more often than I see mine. She's in charge of a lot bigger portion of each student's English education. We've been given a huge responsibility here.

That's one of the points that really struck me during the orientation. One of our lecturers was comparing language education here to language education in our countries. Would the USA accept a Korean teacher with no teaching qualifications to teach Korean in the US? What about if this teacher didn't speak any English at all? Ridiculous? Many of the native teachers here break their contracts and leave partway through the year. What would the outrage be in the US if we went through all that trouble and many teachers flew home without upholding their end of the bargain? It's at least a little interesting to think about. Our standards are much higher for our foreign language teachers. Obviously, this isn't a fair comparison, but what I like about these questions is that they exemplify the immense desire of the Korean people to learn English. They're desperate for English here, and the Korean government has been spending loads of money to bring in more and more native teachers and continue to adapt the curriculum to the needs of the students. It's amazing to think that only 50 years ago, the required foreign language in Korean schools was Japanese. Now, they have recently (2004) established an "English village" here in Korea for students to visit. We were presented with the history of English education in Korea. It's fascinating. Korean people are very conscious of their culture. As you well know, language often shapes and defines and culture. It gives it context. Korean people have had to work very hard to maintain their language and culture under the constant pressure from China and Japan. Thus, many Koreans are worried that English will displace Korean and the Korean people will lose a piece of their identity. I hadn't really realized that there was such strong resistance to English here. I'll be really interested to see what happens in 10 years when they compare the money they're spending on English to their results.

--John

Seoul

2008-10-21T16:33:00.008+09:00

The weekend after that, John and I went to Seoul with Alex and Billy and Peter and our new friend Rob. We also met up with Frank, who was John's roommate freshman year and who has managed to unravel many a good time in the past. This time was no exception. (In a drunken attempt to hit John, Frank has actually managed to hit me in the face before.)

So it started out really great - we met at the bus terminal in Yeoju at around 12:30 PM, made it into Seoul by 2 - 2:30 (the bus ride is only an hour and a half, if that), and were navigating the subway toward this stream in the middle of the city that Rob wanted to see. The stream was pretty neat - it's this little river-type thing that was once disgustingly polluted before the government decided to clean it up and turn it into a little nature area.

We wandered around this area for a long time. On either side of the stream is a street with toooons of little shops crammed up against each other. These shops tended to be very specific and came in groups. For example, there would be a few shops in a row that sold baseball caps, and another few shops in a row that sold zippers, and so on. It was really cool. I bought these obnoxiously typical oriental foot slippers that I ended up getting rid of because they didn't fit me right.

We also found a huge market crammed into an alley. Down the center of it where small stands where you could sit at a little bar and each delicious food. I had Korean dumplings in soup (mandu), which I watched the woman make right in front of me. It was unbelievable.

So then night was falling and we decided to hit up the local Buy The Way convenience store for some inexpensive drinks before hitting the bars. We bought some bottles of soju, some beer, and some wine and sat around outside and chatted. I had told Billy that I didn't want Frank there and that if he came, I would leave. Well, he was coming, so I decided not to be a poor sport and leave, but informed him that if we started drinking, I would leave. But I didn't leave! And we got drunk outside at the Buy The Way and especially at this unbelievably delicious and cute Korean restaurant we found (I started a conversation with the Koreans eating next to us and pretty soon we were pouring drinks for each other - the girl even gave me her number). Dinner was actually blissful - one of the happiest times I've had in Korea. There's just nothing like overcoming a language barrier and truly enjoying people who have been steeped in an entirely different culture for their whole lives.

In the meantime at the other end of the table, Frank started blabbing about his lamentable love life to the entire table as he got drunker and drunker. We retired to a bar and then there's little left to the story, really. Frank gets violent when he drinks, especially when he's emotional. Plus, he's talked himself up as a martial arts champ to 6'8" Rob all week, put him in multiple headlocks the weekend before, and so this time Rob was having none of it and smashed Frank's head into the sidewalk six times.

The damage was considerable. Frank's face was messed the hell up but he was only ever wailing about this girl he was into, Rob was in tears because he never wanted to hurt him that badly, and the rest of us were just unbelievably upset by the whole episode. Ugh. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth - and I will leave it at that.

But here are some pictures:

Peter is on the right and Rob (aka "Lob the Lobster", but that's another story) is on the left. But this picture is all about the dude in the middle, who is carrying a ridiculous load of something on his back. Amazing.

Here's the stream I was talking about...

....and here's some guy singing in it. Haha! The ledge in the foreground is a bridge and the end of the stream. Along this part of the stream are all the myriad little shops. A short walk away is Dongdaemun (dong-day-moon), an area known for its giant fashion shopping centers in the form of towers.

The view from the bridge.

This is an older part of Seoul. On the hill behind the traditional Korean building are a bunch of traditional Korean homes. It's so cool that these areas still exist in such a modern city.

Unfortunately, this is what the night looked like for us after dinner. These two are Koreans, but you get the point. At least none of us needed help walking (except for Frank).

Seonunsan Provincial Park

2008-10-21T16:10:00.012+09:00

The second weekend, the organization Korea On The Rocks was having a meet and greet so Shannon and Alex and I reunited to check out Korea's rock climbing scene. It turns out Korea has some of the best rock climbing in the world - fancy that!

The meet and greet was held at Seonunsan Provincial Park where there is this badass crag people were climbing on. I mean I'd seen professional rock climbing pictures before but I guess I didn't actually believe rocks like this existed. The pictures don't quite capture it, though. Anyway, so it took us at least 4 buses to get from Yeoju to the mountain. That in itself was a trip. The mountain was a city bus ride away from Go-chang, but there was no bus that went directly from Yeoju to Go-chang. So we first had to take a bus to Icheon (the city next door) and then to Jeonju (not to be confused with Cheongju, a city John and I visited together on a subsequent weekend) and then on to Go-chang. Actually, we accidentally bought tickets to Cheongju first, and then a very nice Korean man who was helping us realized it at the last second and we exchanged our tickets and made a mad dash for the bus. In our defence, it's almost impossible to pronounce Korean just how it's supposed to be pronounced after a week of being in the country. Go-chang is located in Jeolla province, so it was decently far south in Korea.

The meet and greet was pretty cool. The bus dropped us off and we immediately made the 30-minute hike to the crag and met a toooon of climbers. Many of them were Koreans but most were foreignors (lots from Canada). They were so intense - most were incredibly experienced but some of the kids were beginners like me, so we stuck to the 2 climbs we could do. It was my first time on real rock so it was pretty exciting. And everyone was really nice if a bit cliquey, and the ones who weren't cliquey were really awesome. They invited us to party in the hostel with them that night and we ended up having a great time. I learned one Western drinking game and one Korean drinking game and talked to people from lots of different places. All in all, it was a really good opportunity to be introduced to Korea's climbing community.

Here are some views of the park:
I just love the mist. It comes off the mountains in great sheets in the morning - it's so thick it looks like smoke in the first picture. This is what my drive to school looks like sometimes.

Here is the big kids' crag:
And here is the beginners' rock:
Alex and Shannon are both decently experienced climbers, and the guy on the rock is a really good climber, too. There is a more difficult climb far to the right of this photo. But this climb was my very first on real rock! And the one just to the right of it was my second! Here I am:
I'm lookin pretty badass in those spiffy shoes and special climbing pants, huh? I got a lot of comments on those shoes - the other climbers seemed to think they were pretty sweet.

This is the hostel we partied in. I guess Korean hostels are schmancier than normal hostels - I don't know because this is the first I've been in. But we had a great time and I got to talk to lots of Canadians. haha!

Okay so in this park were all these really strange, beautiful flowers. I think the park must be famous for them because there were tons of Koreans taking very professional photographs of them, and because there was a seafood festival going on, there were tons of amateurs taking photos, too. Here's a close-up (you can see them pictured above, though)
That's a close-up. They don't look quite as strange this way, but if you click on the third picture of this post, you might get a better idea of how strange they are.

Here is a photo of rocks piled in the river that leads you into the park. The flowers line the banks of the river, so this is where all the photographers were.

I told you I love those piles of rocks!

So there was also this seafood festival going on that some Korean we met on the way to the park insisted we check out (like we would even consider not!) Here are some snapshots:

.....giant tanks of live seafood......

.....really nice young boys cooking eels for the customers......

......small children painting a cloth mural (we all took a shot at it)......

......baahahhaha and Shannon haggling with the locals. Classic.

After checking out the festival (in which I ate eel and bought berry wine and chestnuts), we made the long trek back to Yeoju. We had spent the night with all three of us in a 2-person tent. There was also a crazy thunderstorm going on all night, so we didn't sleep very well. Plus we were kind of tired of some of the people there. So that's why we went home.

É so! (That's all!)

Did I mention I travel?

2008-10-21T15:57:00.016+09:00

In case you were wondering what I do on the weekends, I either travel about the country or participate in the Yeoju English Stars program I introduced in the Temple Stay entry.

The first weekend after the initial arriving-in-Korea weekend, my friends Shannon, Peter, Alex and me took a little trip to Wonju, a city maybe 40 minutes east of Yeoju to hike in Chiaksan (or Chiak-san) National Park. Apparently Koreans speak of "ak" when something is challenging or difficult, and "-san" is an ending that means mountain. Similarly, "-sa" indicates temple, "-ri" village and so on.

Well the name was apt. It was an unbelievably difficult hike! Think using a stairmaster for 3 hours on the hardest setting. It was actually probably worse than that.....but it was breathtaking and rewarding and I'd do it again. Oh, then it took another 2 hours to get down, and that was worse. You probably wouldn't know this if you haven't' hiked recently, but down is worse. You're exhausted at that point and it hurts all your joints and your feet. I was sore for almost a week afterwards. I mean my calves were shaking violently by the time I reached the park entrance.

Anyway, I think this time I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Okay so here is what the park looks like on the way in:

Apparently it only takes 13 hours to hike the whole ridge, but I don't know how much I believe that.

...A bridge on the path leading to the trailhead. Check out the cool dragon head! This sign post was right by it:

Yup, that's right. We went to Birobong Peak, the 5.6 km hike that felt like 20 km (in a good way).

Here we are, innocent little us, having no idea what we were in for. Actually, I knew it would be a tough hike (we warned by one of the teachers Alex works with that Chiaksan is "very danger"), but the others didn't believe it.
We're standing on another bridge that looks out over this beautiful little falls/pool:
So then we walked a little more down this path and came across a temple. Here are some pics:

Finally, after walking for a half an hour, we began the real hike. At first it was pretty easy. We made it to a second waterfall pretty soon.
That's Peter and Shannon, still looking chipper.

Check these out:
See the rock piles? Hikers place these stones to make wishes. When you place a stone, you make a wish, but if you knock over someone else's stone in the process, you are cursed instead! At the top of the mountain are enormous piles of stones that one guy spent 30 years creating. He hiked to the top and placed a stone there every day. What a crazy! These piles were just to the left of the little cascade. Here's another picture of them, because I happen to love them:
So then after the "waterfall", the hike started to get difficult.
All those rocks are actually stairs. Often, there were actual staircases made of metal, but they weren't much easier to ascend because they were so long and steep. Here are some views of the way up:

And a caterpillar:

The view of the mountainside was where we breaked for lunch. Then the hike started getting ridiculous.

You could not actually traverse that part of the trail with a pack on your back, unless maybe you were a Navy Seal.

Then, occasionally, there were moments that reminded us why we were doing it. Those moments looked a little like this:
Pretty good moments, huh? And then, finally, the summit:

Yup, that says 1288 meters. That may not seem like a big deal, but that's a lot of meters to climb in less than 6 km.

And these are the piles that man spent all those years compiling:

That's Alex behind Shannon, in case you were wondering. But here, check out the summit for yourself:

Here are just a few shots of the hike down:
We're almost there! Isn't Korea beautiful? This next one is a picture of a small altar outside the temple. I took a picture of it on the way up, but it was so much more intriguing as night was falling, so I took another picture:
The plan had been to stay in Wonju for the night, but we got back with time enough to make the bus back to Yeoju, so we just went home. We were exhausted. And satisfied.

I'm back!

2008-10-21T15:49:00.002+09:00

Sorry everyone for the entire month of neglecting this blog......it's just that life happened. Seriously though, living abroad got really tough on me for a bit and so I sort of became indifferent to everything - I stopped teaching myself Korean, stopped posting to this blog, I even stopped putting as much effort into my job as I usually do. Hopefully now I'm coming around that bend!

I would also like to thank the new-coming commentators....I really appreciate hearing from you and am so incredibly pleased you've taken an interest in my experiences. It means a lot. This actually goes for the veteran commentators as well. You're all great and I wouldn't have bothered keeping this up if it weren't for you!

I miss and love you all.

Stay tuned,

Sarah

Lunch today

2008-09-25T13:07:00.006+09:00

I just wanted to share this with you...

I just had lunch at school (the school just takes some money out of our paycheck every month). I usually eat with some combination of Ms. Park, Ms. Han, and Teacher Quak as well as other teachers who don't speak English as well and it is always interesting.

Anyway, I love the people I work with. I love Koreans. I have not met a single Korean I have a hard time getting along with. They're pretty easy-going people, especially since it is the height of bad manners to show bad feelings (for example when you spill water on a principal: see Sunday entry. He just smiled and waved it off when it happened). And they're very in tune with other people's emotions. I find it kind of amazing actually. They can always tell when I am feeling frustrated or angry or disappointed. When I worked at the English department at the UW, I would say something like, "If I seem out of it, I'm just having a bad day. Don't worry or take it personally or anything." And my coworkers would be like, "Oh, I didn't even notice." Whereas seriously the second I'm not feeling jubilant the Koreans are asking me if I'm okay. It's unbelievable.

Another example: On the way to the cafeteria I met up with Ms. Han and she asked me how my day was going today. I had just really enjoyed chatting with the class that's been giving me the most problems, so I responded with enthusiasm that my day was going well. Ms. Han was like, "Your teaching is getting better." I was like, "How could you know that?! Is that what people are saying?" She was like, "Your face. Your face is brighter." Amazing. In the last couple of days, I had really started to become comfortable with the fact that this is how my classes are going to go and I am doing everything I can. This is just how it is- and I am a better teacher for accepting that, I think. And Ms. Han picked up on it. All the Koreans pick up on stuff like this. I understand now why Asian traditions talk about different kinds of energies and why many of them repress emotions. Here, emotions aren't as intangible or as vague of concepts as they are in the West.

So at lunch it was me and Teacher Quak and Ms. Han and Mr. Park, a very nice man who sits across from me in the teacher's office. I finally asked Teacher Quak why Koreans generally don't drink anything when they eat and he had no problem answering that some do and that's normal and that there's no real reason why they don't. Then he asked if I had any other questions and all three of them were eager to answer. And they joke with me and stuff. I can't begin to express my gratitude for the effort they have taken to include me. They're just so nice and pleasant.

I miss the United States, but I will miss it here when I leave.

Korean Cafes and Downtown Yeoju

2008-09-22T11:53:00.009+09:00

I had my first experience with Korean cafes on the way home from the Temple Stay. I parenthetically mentioned this in the Temple Stay entry, but what happened was one of the co-teachers doing the Yeoju English Stars camp with us offered to drive us home after we all ate and drank after the camp. It had been a really long day and we were exhausted, but this teacher (his English name is Dan) really wanted his brother to meet us so he asked if we would talk to him for "just an hour". We agreed to because we knew Dan was aware of how tired we were - we figured it was really important to him. Plus, refusing an invitation in Korea is pretty rude.

So we went, and we were really glad we did. The cafe was a really nice one: it was a two-story building that was really cozy inside with comfy chairs and wooden booths. We had picked up his brother on the way (his brother is also an English teacher), so the 4 of us took a booth and a waitress came over and brought us menus, water, and an an ash tray with a wet napkin spread inside it. We decided on beer (except for Dan, who was driving - he had a coffee) and sat and talked for an hour or so. John and I were pleased because we felt like we had gotten pretty good as speaking so Koreans could understand us and also at handling the awkwardness of these first conversations. It's pretty awkward when the topic of our relationship comes up - people are always wanting to know exactly what we are to each other and if we live together and stuff. (It's actually kind of tough to get across that we live in the same building but in different apartments, and that we did not ask for this. Someone felt like being exceptionally kind when we were assigned our schools.) Anyway, we learned a lot from the two of them and it was really entertaining to see two adult Korean brothers interact. They teased each other just like in the United States. Haha, it's amazing how everything here is the same as home, only different.

So then the next day, we figured we'd check out downtown Yeoju (we live in a village called Ohak that recently became part of Yeoju). We talked to Shannon online and met up with her at the bus terminal. The three of us grabbed some lunch at a chain called "Paris Baguette" which is the strange sort of bakery. Then we walked around downtown to see the sights. There are a bunch of clothing stores (like Fila and Arnold Palmer...actually, most of the clothing stores here have English names, regardless of whether or not they're Western companies) a supermarket, tons of little stationary stores where you can buy cute school supplies, bars, restaurants, cafes, PC bangs (bang = room; they're places where you pay by the hour to use a computer, generally for online gaming), and a pedestrian mall.

An example of a PC bang. They're everywhere, and they all have funny names like "Sudden Death". Haha!

Here's the pedestrian mall. John tried to take a video of this ridiculous little dog wandering around with a little grandma doggy sweater on it. It's the most common kind of dog around Korea....they look kind of like a cross between a pug and a spaniel and a weiner dog. Unbelievably ugly. John loved this one cause it was so old and senile and hilarious-looking in its sweater. Anyway, he didn't press record hard enough so the video was never taken.

So then we got tired of walking around, so I suggested finding a Korean cafe. This one wasn't nearly as classy, but it certainly worked for our purposes.

In that white dish in the first picture are these weird Korean Fritos. Decently tasty.

So theeenn....we made a trip to E-Mart for some school supplies (see post "Dad, this is me, on the runway for real" for a description of E-Mart). E-Mart is just down the road from the bus terminal in downtown Yeoju, so on the way back to the terminal where John and I catch taxis back to Ohak (about a 5,000 KRW or 5 USD ride) we stopped for some pizza! It is, after all, a "Delicious Concept For Family"....hahaaha the Konglish you see around is just ridiculous.
Here you can get bulgogi pizzas (see the "Dad, this is me, on the runway for real" post for an explanation), which are delicious.

Also in downtown Yeoju is a fast-food restaurant you can find anywhere in Korea: Lotteria. Lotteria is like a Korean McDonald's, only they don't really know how to do burgers here. John and I ordered a "Paprika Bacon Beef" burger and got a burger with all the things you see listed on the wrapper below except a burger instead of a chicken patty, plus bacon and a giant slice of a yellow bell pepper. The "fresh sauce" is really strange. It's dark and gooey.) But we thought the wrapper was really funny.

injoy!

Check this out!

2008-09-19T09:28:00.002+09:00

I just discovered that the images I post are click-able! Click on them to make them huge and view the details better. This really helps view the group photos and the painting details better. Check it out.

Discipline

2008-09-18T19:35:00.003+09:00

Just thought I'd share....

Yesterday, John was having a lesson on dancing where he gave everyone dancing vocabulary (like wiggle, point, spin) and had them come up with their own dance moves and then perform them in front of the class, and this one group of girls just refused to perform their dance move. So he made them get up to the front of the classroom and perform moves that he made up - which were, of course, infinitely more ridiculous than what they could have come up with! Needless to say, the whole class was laughing. Haha, I thought that was a pretty good punishment.

I liked one I came up with yesterday, too. These kids would not shut up for the life of me, so I moved their desks around. That didn't really work, so eventually I took one kid who was openly flouting my no-talking rule (right in front of me, where I had moved him), and moved his desk to just outside the door in the hallway, facing away from the classroom. Hahaha, the whole class was giggling. He looked so ridiculous, but I didn't even skip a beat. It worked! They got quiet pretty fast when they realized I wasn't kidding around (even though I was laughing on the inside!). Oh, I'll be chuckling about that for a while.

Temple Stay at Silleuk-sa!

2008-09-12T11:22:00.024+09:00

Anyone with a remote interest in Buddhism may want to opt out of reading this post. It has the potential of making you wildly jealous.

Yeoju is home to a famous Buddhist temple called Silleuk-sa (pronounced shi-look-sah). It is the only Buddhist temple located on a river in Korea (most Buddhist temples are located up in mountains), which makes it both extremely accessible and extremely beautiful.

So in Yeoju there's this group called MSM, whose purpose I do not fully understand because I was told it was created to help the native-speakers (as we are called) adjust to life in Korea by introducing them to some Koreans and native-speakers who have been here for a little while already. Basically we go out to dinner and then drink together (Koreans actually drink more alcohol than Americans do, if you can believe it). But, everyone in MSM (mostly Korean co-teachers and incumbent native-speakers) is also involved in this program affiliated with the Gyeonggi-do Provincial Office of Education that does English camps with low-income kids in the area. In fact, this is how I met them. John kept talking about this Temple Stay his co-teacher had lined him up to participate in and I was all bummed because I was the only one in the area not signed up to do it. Plus, it's the one thing I really wanted to do in Korea. (My idea of a temple stay was that you spend the weekend with monks learning about what they do and maybe making kimchi). So John's co-teacher got me in on it, picked me up early from school last Tuesday, and took us to Silleuk-sa......where we arrived on the scene for a training session. Actually, I had no idea until I arrived that it was a training session.

So, unknowingly, I had signed myself up for an all-day Temple Stay for low-income kids on Saturday. Haha, which was fine. We were there on Tuesday for a crash course in meditating and participating in a Baru Gongyang, or Bowl Offering, which we were going to teach little kids how to do on Saturday. We were also going to tell them how to do yoga, but we didn't train for that.

And then I meditated with a Buddhist monk, in a Buddhist temple, in Korea. It was truly sublime. He sat there with us and explained everything, first - how to sit, why we sit that way, why we hold our hands this way, why we hold our tongue in our mouths a certain way, and what we are trying to do when we meditate. He explained that while we meditated we were to imagine letting in all of the energy in the universe. He said that humans are good at utilizing water energy and food energy, but not air energy. So he told us to focus on our breathing. With our mouths closed and our tongue on the roof of our mouth, we were to breathe in deeply and hold the air in our bodies and then exhale only 2/3 of what we breathed in. We were to breathe in, hold, and exhale for the same number of seconds each.

Then he hit his bamboo clapper three times, which signaled "begin", and we meditated. It was only for a few minutes - just enough to get an idea of what we'd be doing on Saturday - but it felt really good. It felt like I had just woken up in the morning. It's not like it was the first time I'd ever meditated, either. It's just that before I had no idea what I was doing. Having guidance from a monk and meditating in the tranquil setting of the temple made all the difference. Monks generally meditate for 2 hours at a time, but on Saturday we were going to be meditating with the kids for only 20 minutes. (Still a long time to ask little kids to sit still and be quiet, if you ask me).

The Baru Gongyang training took hours. We sat waiting in one of the temple buildings for a really long time - apparently some things came up that needed attending to immediately. When we finally got going, we were hungry, and we were learning the Buddhist monk eating ritual without the food (that's what a bowl offering is). You can't imagine how frustrating this was, especially when the monk would talk in Korean for minutes and minutes at a time and we got zero translation as a reward for our patience. But the meditation had put us in a particularly amiable state and most of us weren't too upset by it. Anyway, so we learned the ritual, step-by-step. When monks eat, they are given four bowls that fit inside each other complete with a lid, a placemat-napkin, a white napkin for cleaning, a pouch with wooden chopsticks and spoon, and a sash for tying it all together. I will not go through the entire ritual with you, but the important details are as follows:

- the ritual is very meaningful to the monks, who believe that all of reality consists of different forms of energy, and so the taking in of energy (water, food, and air) is of utmost importance.
- nearly every movement in the ritual has a rule for it (the way to untie the sash, the way to fold the sash, where to place the sash and white napkin, how to eat, which utensils/foods may be placed in which bowls...the list goes on, but really once you do it the only difficult part is re-tying the sash.)
- the ritual is to be completed in absolute silence (no talking, no making noises while placing the four bowls on the placemat-napkin or while using the eating utensils, etc.)
- you must not take more food than you can eat, because you must eat absolutely everything in your bowls, including the water and raw radish slice used to clean them afterwards.

After we learned the Baru Gongyang, we all went out to eat. It was fun! Mr. Kim is the man in charge, I think, and he's just this crazy middle-aged man who's unbelievably sweet, and has the energy and demeanor of an 8-year-old. Anyway, our go-to girl's name is BoYoung. She's a beautiful young English teacher who speaks better English than any Korean I've met so far. She's really cool, too. Both of them plus a few of our co-teachers were at the dinner with us. We went to another Korean restaurant where I had a chance to show off my chopsticks skillz. I'm starting to get really good at the whole eat-at-a-Korean-restaurant thing. I've probably had the experience around 5 times now. People like to go out to eat together, just like in the States. They just talk less while they're doing it. The first time I ate out with Ms. Park at that cafeteria on the way to my apartment, I asked her what sort of things are acceptable dinner conversation in Korea. That's when she told me that Koreans don't actually talk much while they're eating together.

So Saturday rolled around and the camp went just fine. True, the roles we had volunteered for were all switched around and we didn't know what we were doing until we were doing it (Pretty much as it was happening, I was handed a little pamphlet on the temple and then told to teach each group of children about a designated building, then quiz them and give them gifts), but we had a ton of fun. The kids were really cute and enthusiastic for the most part. We also bonded a ton with the other English teachers, in addition to partaking in the Temple Stay activities ourselves. It was my most productive Saturday in a while. Oh, and we got paid 100,000 won (about $100) for it!

Sejong Gate (see post "Sunday" to discover who Sejong is), the entrance to Silleuksa. The temple compound is a solid seven-minute walk from here.
Sejong Gate detail....this is what's underneath the gate! So beautiful. According to a plaque on the side of the gate, the painting is done in the traditional Korean style called geumdancheong.

There's a really sweet goldfish pond on the walk from the gate to the compound. I took a ton of pictures of them. They're huge! And bright.

Jackie, this is for you and me: a dragon detail on a smaller gate just outside the temple.

Annie, this is for us. That, my friend, is the badass-est turtle ever. Too bad I can't bring it home to you!

Josadong, the building chosen for me to teach little kids about. Inside portraits of the temple's three most important monks (Jigong, Muhak, and Naong) are enshrined. The juniper tree encircled by a fence in front of Josadong is over 500 years old. Apparently Muhak planted it in memory of Naong. Also, there is a 1000 year-old gingko in the area, and a 2000 year-old juniper on a Korean island in the East Sea. I will be making pilgrimages to these trees, rest assured.

Views of the temple proper (however poor they may be). The first picture is one of the temple's "treasures". This object was John's to present. It's a skillfully made pagoda called Dacheung Seoktap. It was constructed in 1472. The building on the left in the second picture and the one pictured in the third are the same building. The building on the right of the second picture was where I did 108 bows in a row on Saturday, which left me sore for days afterward. When you do the 108 bows (which I didn't learn about because I took the opportunity to visit the restroom), you give a full bow with your hands together in front of you, then get on your knees (with your hands still together), sit on your feet, and put your head and hands on the ground in front of you. Then you sit back up, put your hands together, and get back up (hands still together). 108 of those is exhausting, and takes just short of an hour to accomplish. It was a really good way to spend an hour, though. Not only is it an excellent workout for your thighs (which literally barely functioned for me afterward), but it is also really peaceful.

Try if you can to imagine the place at twilight, the temple building with the candles glowing red from the inside and forested mountains and the Han river as a backdrop, and without my friend Billy's head getting in the way of your view all the time. Throw in the fact that you just meditated with a Buddhist monk in a Korean temple and you have one of the most sublime experiences of your lifetime. I wish I could have captured it on camera for all of you, but I didn't take pictures on Tuesday. These are all from Saturday. I doubt it's possible, anyway.

The building of the bows.

Cool doors.

The gang! On the far left is Billy, a creative writing major, who is kind of hilarious. He has all these ridiculous ideas. Next is Mr. Kim, behind him my friend Alex, who's really cool (she and I and our friend Shannon went on a hike on Monday the 15th for Chuseok), then John, me, this guy Art who takes amazing photographs and has been here for a couple of years - super nice and helpful, in front of Art is Mark, then BoYoung holding the shirt up, then this really nice co-teacher who wears designer clothing all the time (she's wearing Guess jeans for the Temple Stay), next to her is a co-teacher named Dan (he kidnapped us later by feigning an offer to drive us home from dinner after and then asking us to meet his brother (another English teacher) for an hour at a Korean cafe). In front of Dan is Alex's co-teacher, and next to her the director of the Yeoju English Stars program who was hanging around near me while I was teaching about Josadong and took a liking to me. Despite the language barrier, he was able to communicate to me that he would be running a marathon the next day. An unbelievably sweet man. [Notice the cell phone in his hand, mid-group photo. Cell phones are exalted here, I think. And behind him is some woman. I actually have no idea who she is.

The unofficial official photo. In front are the two monks we worked with. The monk on the left is the headmaster of the temple. You know how in animated movies the turtle character is always old and wise? This monk looks exactly like that - an old, wise, inwardly happy man whose face resembles a turtle. The monk on the right has a great face, too. He taught us to meditate.

That's all for now!! I'm sorry I didn't get pictures of the kids.....but I will see them again. We do something like this every other weekend.

School

2008-09-12T09:51:00.007+09:00

Now that I have a day off, I can get this blog current and answer a bunch of questions.

Okay, first of all, about my job: It was really bumming me out for a while. In fact that's half the reason I had John write the last post. I really didn't want to use my blog as a place to complain and I knew that if I did, it would worry some of you and also probably allow me to continue feeling sorry for myself, which I didn't want. Here's the deal: I teach 20 classes a week, which is more than anyone else at my school. Other teachers usually teach 13-16 classes a week, but they have paperwork to do for the state that keeps them incredibly busy. I think it's about normal for the native-speaking English teachers in Gyeonggi-do though.

Here's how the school system in Korea works. Elementary, middle, and high school each consist of 3 grades and the numbers restart at each level. So there are grades 1-3 in all 3 schools. It looks like this:
Elementary
1
2
3
Middle
1
2
3
High School
1
2
3

The middle and high school grades are about equivalent to grades 7-12 in the U.S. Within each grade, the students are split up according to academic performance. The smartest of each grade are in Room 1 of their grade, the mediocre students in Room 2, and the poorest students in Room 3. So far it has been my experience that smaller schools may only split their students into 2 groups per grade.

So I teach M1-1 (the smartest 7th graders) twice a week, M2-1 and M2-2 (the smartest and the average students of the 8th grade) twice a week, M3-1 (the smartest 9th graders) twice a week, and the entire 11th grade, H2-1, H2-2, and H2-3, four times a week. There are 40 students in each class except for the one 7th grade class, which has 18 students.

My H2-3 class was absolute hell for a while there. The very first class I had with them, they wouldn't actually let me talk. The spoke in Korean to each other across the classroom while their normal teacher just rubbed the shoulders of the students in the back who were sleeping as a way of gently waking them up. It was so frustrating. I tried to talk a little bit about myself and then ask them questions, and then allow them to ask me questions, but I couldn't even get through the bit about myself. So I moved on to asking them questions, but that was nearly impossible, and then they wouldn't even ask me questions. I had only taught middleschoolers at this point (this was my first day) and they had been largely too shy to ask me many questions, but I had hoped the highschoolers would be a little more outgoing, not out right obnoxious. One of them actually told me I looked like Jesus (my hair was down, and being brown and wavy, they made the connection). Then they also told me I look like Angelina Jolie and Jessica Alba. Basically, I don't really trust Korean comparisons of Aryan people to other Aryans. Hahaha.

The next time I saw any of the 11th graders, I had an activity for them so that we might get to know each other (since I had failed so miserably on the first go around). This is how I learned that boys perform much better when given a task to complete. But my H2-3 class was still giving me trouble, and while all of the other classes had sort of gotten on board with me, this class fought everything, however minor. It continued like this for the next week and a half, with me trying something completely different each time I saw them. I mean they wouldn't even write down the answer if I gave it to them.

I finally reached my breaking point. I was doing the second half of a lesson on American pop stars, which was simply games having to do with some of the stars' songs, when my computer froze up. (The computer was providing the music.) The lesson wasn't going well, so I took the opportunity to ask Teacher Quak (their usual teacher) what he thought I should do about the problem. We talked for the next ten minutes while the class just chatted with each other, initially assuming we were trying to figure out the technical difficulties but more and more realizing that we were talking about them. Finally, I decided I would just do my best to make them feel foolish. Now, there is a TON of personality in this class so I knew it would be difficult, but I think it semi-worked. I just made them stand up and do what I did (John does this for fun with his girls but I knew my boys would hate it). And they did. I made them raise their arm, hop on one leg, turn in a circle, stuff like that.

Eventually I told them to raise both arms above their heads, and didn't let them put them down for a few minutes. All it did was tire out their arms, but eventually, the kid who called me Jesus and who is sort of the ring leader (not a bad kid, he just likes attention) said sorry. And I was like, "Good! Who else is sorry?" And most of them said sorry and I let them sit down. Then I announced that if they ever attempted to chat in Korean throughout an entire class instead of follow my directions, I would have them do the arm thing for the whole period. But I was cut off by some kids in the back who started talking to each other.

I was too shocked to care and class was about over anyway, so I just had Teacher Quak translate the point I was trying to make and left the class. (The students are in the same classroom all day. It's the teachers who change every period.) But the next time I saw them, they were quieter, and they finally participated in the activity. The Jesus kid even pointed out that they were quieter in the beginning of class, almost as if they had made a collective decision to be. So I thanked them and did a warm-up of hangman (the world was FAMILY) and then asked them to draw me their families and told them they could get candy if they volunteered to tell me about what they were drawing. It was the best class ever. I had a lot of fun with the group in the back that gives me the most trouble. They wanted the candy, so they raised their hands in a hurry, but I really made them work for it. They had to tell me all about each of their family members in complete sentences. Anyway, they ended up making up this elaborate story about how two of their fathers are in rival gangs, and their siblings each have a different position in the gang....hahaha we laughed a lot, especially when one of them started threatening to call his father if I didn't give him the candy. Now he says"Father call?" to me when he sees me in the hallways. They're actually very intelligent, just disinterested in school. That should ring a bell with plenty of teachers in the States!

So after class, I asked Teacher Quak if he said anything to them. He said no, he was just as surprised as I was that they cooperated. He thought that they probably realized they were being rude and decided they didn't want to be. He said at lunch that they seemed to have "opened the window to me". This was the last class before Chuseok (the reason why I had today and yesterday and next Monday and Tuesday off), so I'm hoping that this wasn't just a one-time thing.

In all, this is what makes my job difficult:
- I am teaching all boys.
- I am a young American woman....so boys have a hard time taking me seriously.
- The large class size makes both activities and maintaining control difficult tasks.
- Except for the H2-3 class, I am alone in the classroom.

I wouldn't have really started to feel bad for myself if I weren't aware that most of the other native speakers in Yeoju had it easier. They are not on their own in the classroom, they are not teaching all boys (as a woman, no less), and they have smaller class sizes. But now that I have made some progress, I am doing much better! It'll still be difficult, but at least I don't feel bad for myself anymore. I think that happened somewhere between the class where I punished them and the class where they were quiet. Now I just have to figure out how to get my 9th graders to participate.....

[The End]

Some pictures

2008-09-07T22:58:00.007+09:00

This is the view from my apartment when I look down...

....This is the view from my apartment when I look to the right at sunset.....

.....and this is the view of my kitchen table in the morning! Take that, Dad!

The first school week

2008-09-07T21:17:00.004+09:00

I'm going to have John write this one. Our experiences were very similar in some aspects and way different others - but he'll explain.

Hello all! We finished our first week successfully; we are both still very much alive! This first week has been fascinating for both of us. We arrived on Monday and had to introduce ourselves to our classes. This first week for me was supposed to mostly focus on having a little fun with the kids and getting to know them before we hit the ground running next week with English classes. Each day when we I arrive at school, I must say hello to my principal, the principal of both the middle school and the high school. The hierarchy of your work place is extremely important here in Korea and it can get confusing very quickly! Each day before I leave, I must say goodbye to both my principal and the vice principal of the middle school. Sarah has to say goodbye to only her vice principal and doesn't have to say hello to anyone when she arrives at school. As I said, the hierarchy system and the practices that go along with it seem to vary between places and can be quite confusing. When we gave our gifts, it was important to give the gifts in descending order of hierarchy. We first had to present the gift to the principal, then the vice principals, and finally to our coteachers.

We have both had fairly good experiences with some of the other teachers at our schools. Ms. Han, the Japanese teacher at Sarah's school, commented that Sarah is quite skilled with chopsticks! Sarah was really happy to hear that, because she was having a tough time with them when we first got here. She's a champ, probably better than I now. Ms. Han is really nice and invited Sarah over to her home for dinner sometime! Everyone here has gone out of their way to make us feel as comfortable as possible in our transition. I got to meet a number of the other male teachers at my school, because they play soccer every Wednesday after school. They don't play on grass here though. They play on a kind of gravel/dirt at the schools. Anyway, they were excited to hear that I play soccer, and they all wanted to see me play goalie on Wednesday. Well, in the warmup time before we started playing, I was playing goalie for a few shots. When I made a diving save, everyone started cheering and clapping! I guess it's not that common to dive on the dirt ground, because it's pretty harsh stuff. My leg got skinned a bit, and I was bleeding a little after the dive. I'm pretty used to it. Goalies are tough ;). When I walked over after we warmed up, they all saw me bleeding and freaked out. I tried to shake it off and have them ignore it, but they insisted on fetching the medkit from the school and applying iodine and antibacterial cream on my leg. They spent the rest of the night and the next morning talking about it. I had a great time playing soccer with them, and we all went out for dinner afterwards. It's like their "once a week guys' night out", and they all just have a good time and drink a bit of soju. Soju is the most common form of Korean alcohol. It's 44 proof, inexpensive, and tastes like vodka to me. It's very important for Koreans to be able to drink a lot. Living in Wisconsin was good prep work for me and Sarah. Haha.

On Thursday, I lamented, "I just wish I could order some pizza!" We were both hungry for something a little different, so Sarah called Ms. Park and asked her to please help us order some pizza. Ms. Park promptly came over to Sarah's house, ordered the pizza for us, and stayed to chat for a few minutes before it came. We were so grateful! Ms. Park is so nice, and she's really funny! She wanted to know what Sarah meant when she said, "What's up, dude?" After trying for a couple minutes to describe the utility of 'dude', we decided the best way would be to show her the Bud Light commercials where the dude just says "dude" for every situation. Anyway, when our pizza came, Ms. Park left, and we paid the delivery dude. You don't usually tip in Korea, and this holds true for delivery drivers. Also, a bottle of cola is included with the pizza. Sarah and I had to laugh, because printed on the label of the Pepsi was a bunch of Korean with pictures of pizza, cheeseburgers, and other western foods. Maybe a suitable translation would be: If you like this unhealthy drink, try it with these fattening foods! Sarah was annoyed, because our pizza didn't have any red sauce on it. The Koreans don't seem to be crazy about red sauce on their pizza, and they love having seafood on it. We walked past a Dominoes today that was selling their new Crab Pizza!

Sarah and I had vastly different experiences with our students during our first week. For the most part, Sarah's students are unruly. The classes are large, often numbering 40 students. Also, she has found out that her course is entirely separate from the students' other English classes,and Sarah is responsible for assigning grades at the end of the semester. She's going to be on her own in the classroom, without the aid of other teachers. It makes for a tough situation. The 7th graders are best for her, because they're adorable and pretty well mannered, but unfortunately, she only sees them twice a week. She has to teach the entire 11th grade class 4 times each week, and they are full of "teenitude". They are split into 3 levels of English ability with level 1 being the best. Her 11-3 class, her most unruly class, yelled at her to just let them watch Prison Break Season 3 for the duration of their classes. Apparently the foreign teacher from last year just let the students watch Prison Break and then led a discussion of the previous episode during the next class period. However, Sarah is holding strong. She really wants these kids to succeed, and although other teachers at her school have actually encouraged her to simply use Prison Break as a kind of sedative, Sarah has invested herself fully in this class. I'm really proud of her. She's doing great, even if it's immensely difficult! Anyway, since she teaches the same classes so many times a week, she's very involved in her lesson plans, and she often works on lesson plans into the night when she's at home.

My situation is quite a bit different. I will always be presenting my material with a coteacher, even if a couple of my coteachers don't speak English very well at all. I am still responsible for writing all the lesson plans, but I don't see each class more than twice a week, so many of my lessons will be reusable with a few changes based on the English abilities of the class. Mostly, the girls seem to be a lot easier to control than the boys at Sarah's school. They will get chatty and fall into giggling fits from time to time, but these distractions are at least tolerable. We'll see what happens when I start actually focusing on teaching in these next couple weeks. Luckily, my coteacher understands that our goal here is really to help get our students interested in English. My focus is to try to get the girls at Changmyeong to have fun with the English language through games and engaging activities. It's going to be difficult, because there is quite a difference in the abilities of all the classes, but with a little luck and hard work, I think we're going to do well here.

Sunday

2008-09-05T15:28:00.005+09:00

Phew! The first week came and went so fast that I didn't even have to time to write about it. Let's see, where did I leave off......

Okay so before I get to teaching I want to tell you about the mini-adventure John and I had on Sunday. So the guy who created Hangul (the Korean alphabet) was a man named King Sejong, and he was buried here in Yeoju. He is one of Korea's most beloved leaders so John and I figured we'd take the chance to see some of the Korean countryside and go see this tomb. But, The tomb is 2 km away from downtown Yeoju, and downtown Yeoju is a car ride away (which is a major problem if you don't have a car). We tried to catch a taxi there, but we don't speak Korean and the cabbies don't speak English. We tried to show the taxi driver the romanization of the name for his tomb, but he couldn't even read English. We kept on walking towards downtown having resolved that we were going to attempt to pronounce the name of his tomb out loud. (It has been noted that Koreans have an especially difficult time understanding mispronunciations of their language.) So we're walking and walking but we can't get a taxi to stop for us.

And then a deus ex machina arrives! It appeared in the form of Ms. Choi (one of the English teachers at Cheungmeung), who swept us up into her car when she saw us on the side of the road. It turns out she was on her way to a wedding reception! She invited us to come along for a free lunch. There we are in our civvies, in a car with a lady we just met, to go to a Korean wedding reception for lunch. At this point we're kind of stumped. How did we get ourselves into this?

Anyway, it was fine. People were dressed across the spectrum of formal and informal, and all we had to do was eat lunch and meet John's principal. We didn't have to pay for anything because Ms. Choi payed for us (She gave 10,000 won, or $10, because Koreans generally give money when they come to a wedding to help the couple pay the cost of the ceremony/party. But it was really cool because many of the women were dressed in hanbok, which is traditional Korean dress. It looks like this:

(I didn't take this picture....I found it on the web.)

So we ate lunch in this sort of cafeteria-esque room in this complex built especially for weddings. Towards the end of lunch a horrible thing happened. I got up to get some water in the little paper cups next to the jug fountain dealy, and I dropped my cup. I spilled all over myself and all over a bunch of men hanging around the jug fountain. I was too horrified to look anyone in the face, but I'm like 70% percent sure I spilled water on John's principal. AWESOME. I got an apology out and sat back down as fast I could and tried not to cry for the rest of the time we were there. It was horrible! I guess it's not the end of the world, though.

So after lunch Ms. Choi was kind enough to drive us to E-Mart, where we had planned to go after King Sejong's tomb. We fumbled around there for a couple of hours trying to find all that we need, but it's tough when everything's in two different places and labeled in Korean! So we found some stuff and some food, stumbled through the check-out, and grabbed a taxi at the nearby bus terminal (John brought along some junk mail he found in his mailbox so we could show the driver where we needed to go - he's so smart!)

And that was how our Sunday went!

One last thing about the comments....

2008-09-05T15:27:00.002+09:00

I have been responding to some of your comments, so make sure to check back!

I made it easier!

2008-09-05T09:48:00.002+09:00

Okay, now you should all be able to leave comments without even registering. Hopefully not too many random people leave me mean comments. Just select the "Name/URL" option. Thanks again for keeping in touch!

Instructions for leaving comments

2008-09-04T08:06:00.002+09:00

Many of you have asked about leaving comments! I am so excited! I live for your comments! All you have to do is scroll to the bottom of whatever post you'd like to comment on (or you can comment at the bottom of any post if you have a general comment to make). There at the bottom it will tell you how many comments have been left by other people. Just click on that. So if it says, "0 comments," click on "0 comments" The page it takes you to will have a big box that says, "leave your comment here" or something like that. Okay? And thanks in advance for anything you'd like to say. It's so great to hear from you guys. I will be posting more shortly about my first week at school. Lots of love to you all.

The first full day - Saturday

2008-09-03T19:39:00.007+09:00

Here I am with Ms. Park. She's unbelievably sweet. In the morning she took me to Daeshin Middle and High School where I met the two vice-principals (one for each school), other teachers, and even some students. Students come to school on Saturdays for club activities. Everyone went way out of their way to make me feel comfortable and welcome. I actually really like the people I work with, when I can talk to them. We pretty much just went in so I could see the place and the people (and so they could see me) and to take care of a few administrative issues (like getting me on payroll.

Meeting the other teachers was hilarious. When you first meet Koreans, they almost always ask you these questions: are you married/do you have a boyfriend; age; height; are you Christian (meaning Protestant). This information they like to get mostly in order not to offend and because they are just curious. It took a while for the boyfriend question to come up, but when it did it was pretty funny. As soon as I said yes, I have boyfriend, he works at Cheungmeung School, Ms. Park informed me that all the single male teachers were disappointed. Which made both of us giggle. And then they started asking me about him! They wanted to know if he played any sports. I said, "Soccer," and they all cried out! Apparently the Daeshin and Cheungmeung male teachers play each other in soccer a couple times a year. More laughing. Then they wanted to know how tall he was. I told them, but it didn't mean anything to them because they use the metric system. Soon after this I am at my desk and Ms. Park is informing me that Cheungmeung is only 3 km away and that John is actually living in the same building as me!! All the sudden, I am being summoned because someone is on the phone for me. Lo and behold, it's John. He was going through the same motions as I was at the moment, and his co-teacher called my school as soon as she heard about me. Keep in mind, John and I last spoke to each other as we were being whisked away by our co-teachers at 5 PM the night before. We had no idea where the other was living or when we'd be able to even talk to each other, so this is unbelievably exciting for us. We assumed it'd be days before we were able to get in contact with each other.

So then it's time to leave Daeshin and not only do we not go straight home, but we go to Cheungmeung to see John, and then to a traditional Korean restaurant. Cheunmeung was really funny, too. I met John's vice-principal and co-teacher and some other English teachers at the school. Now, Cheungmeung is an all girls school (Daeshin is all boys), so when John walked out of one of school buildings there were droves of girls following him, watching from windows, and then surrounding our little group of teachers. They talked really really fast in Korean in really high pitched voices. I'm telling you, they were positively drooling. Even when they talked to me! When they found out I lived near New York they just about had a fit. And all the girls and all the teachers told us both how beautiful we are. That is a common thing....people here think I'm pretty because I have small face, which is the Korean ideal. In fact, that's how they compliment me. One of the middleschoolers met me, bowed, and said in Korean, "You have a very small face." Ms. Park burst out laughing and explained it to me. After that, John hopped in the car and all three of us went back to Hyun Jin for a quick break and a change of clothes, and then to the traditional Korean restaurant.

At the Korean restaurant, we walked in and up to a large platform (there were a couple) on which there sat a few low tables with cushions on the floor around them. We took off our shoes and stepped up onto it and then plopped down on the floor. (Koreans don't walk into restaurants, temples, or their homes with their shoes on.) Ms. Park said something to the waitress in Korean, and then a few minutes later our table was COVERED in little white dishes, each with something different in it, plus four different kinds of soup and one larger main dish (it was bulgogi). I tried again to use the chopsticks but was still pretty shaky. To be honest, I was kind of a mess. I dropped a piece of kimchi (which is covered in a spicy red sauce, in case you're wondering) and splattered it all over my white shirt. Pretty classic. Oh, the thing about eating Korean food. It's really spicy. You will most likely sweat while you're eating it. And it's rude to blow your nose. Nor do you take beverages with your meal, you just drink a small cup of water afterwards. Crazy, right? And no napkins, either, so try not to eat with your whole face if you find yourself in Korea. It was great fun, though! Ms. Park treated. I cannot say enough about Korean hospitality.

Dad, this is me, on the runway for real.

2008-09-01T20:34:00.008+09:00

Here we are the airport! I thought these flags were cool so I asked my friend Brooks to take a picture of us walking past them. And there's John and the huge Boeing 747 that delivered us. Let me tell you about Korean Air. It is fantastic! The flight attendants are these beautiful Koreans who are all smiles and dressed exactly the same way, including the hair, waiting on you hand and foot practically. It was kind of nuts. And the plane was comfortable, despite the length of the flight. Fourteen hours is a long time to be sitting down. Anyway, we were fed twice, and the first time we had a Korean meal! It's called bibimbap, which is vegetables mixed with rice, sesame oil, and a spicy red pepper paste. Delicious.

I thought our flight path was kind of interesting. We flew north-northwest from Chicago, across Wisconsin and over just the tip of Minnesota into Canada. We then flew northwest across Canada, along the northern shore of Alaska and the very edge of the Arctic Circle - get this- across the Arctic Ocean into Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula (the Russian half of the one-time land bridge between the continents). We weren't in Russia long, though. We flew south once we were over Kamchatka into the Pacific Ocean, down over Japan and then across the Korean Peninsula where we landed in Incheon International Airport. (Incheon is right next to Seoul). Just so you know, northeastern Russian looks brick red from the sky, with lots of topography. And rivers. But no vegetation.

So we landed! The airport was like the future. I'm serious. Absolutely sterile, automated everything, soothing female voices from the PA system. Oh, and SmarteCartes are free there. We exchanged our USD for KRW (Korean Won) and were out of there. Customs barely looked at us.
Our co-teachers were waiting for us outside the airport. Some of us were shoved into a picture, and then whisked away to the car. I'm telling you, everything in Korea is rush rush rush! Hurry up and wait! My co-teacher;s name is Park Jung You . I call her Ms. Park. (In Korea, the family name comes first, then the generation name and the first name but I'm not sure of the order) So Ms. Park and Mr. Huang, a science teacher at Daeshin, took my bags and rushed me to their car, and then we rushed out of the parking lot, and then we rushed to Yeoju.....during rush hour. So mostly we sat in traffic. I think it takes about 2 hours to get to Yeoju from Seoul/Incheon. At one point we stopped at a rest stop (they're huge in Korea!!) where I actually requested some coffee because I was nodding off in the car in my first few hours in Korea. Then we stopped again closer to Yeoju at a cafeteria for food. There I had my first taste of bulgogi, which is beef dressed in this sweet-tasting sauce....so good. It's a favorite dish of mine, actually. I tried using the chopsticks but I think Mr. Huang was in a hurry because he told me, in broken English, to just use the fork. Haha. He's actually a really funny guy - you should have seen how upset he got when he saw the traffic.
Anyway, then I was taken to the E-Mart, which is sort of like a SuperTarget, for some breakfast foods (on them!) before they took me to my apartment (it's in a high-rise called HyunJin, or Evervill in English) High rises are very desirable in Asia. They tried really hard to get my internet working for me, but we inevitably failed, and we were all exhausted, so they left me with the keys and instructions to meet Ms. Park, who lives in the same building, early the next morning.

Arlington Heights, IL

2008-09-01T19:59:00.004+09:00

Me at the hotel! I had just taken an early morning swim the day we left for Korea. The day before, I had flown into Chicago from New York and met up with John at O'Hare. We took the shuttle from the airport to our hotel where we met all the other people from the UW going to Korea to teach. Most of them were really cool - after the teaching ESL workshop they had for us we went to the hotel bar for some drinks and chatting. John and I stayed up late talking with a few of the other kids.

Welcome!

2008-09-01T19:23:00.001+09:00

This is my brand new blog! I have never done this before so bear with me if I'm horrible at it. Man I feel like I've been saying that a lot since I landed here.

Anyway, this is to keep all of you in the States (or wherever you may be) informed on what I'm going through on my grand adventure to the Orient.

I'll start from the very beginning....