Naked adventure time

 Time for the weekly update!  I know you all have been waiting on pins and needles for this (either that, or going about your daily lives).

So, the school situation is about the same.  Still feeling a lot of stress about managing a classroom and being a good teacher.  Thus far, doesn't seem to be the life changing career shake up I was hoping for.  But, next week is midterms (so minimal planning required on my part), followed by a 5 or 6 day holiday, so at the moment my feelings about school are a bit more positive.

My landlady, bless her, speaks not a word of English.  Every time she comes over she talks at me in Korean, and I just nod and smile.  Friday, she brought me a bed heater thing.  I thought she wasn't going to bring it until November, so the fact that she already brought it makes me greatly fear the coming cold.  WINTER IS COMING!  Scary music!  I need winter clothes!


I desperately need to learn more Korean, as sometimes it would just be nice to know what the heck is going on.  Like when I go to meet someone at our city's boat stage (it's a big stage downtown that looks like a boat.  Eventually maybe I'll take pictures of all this stuff), and there's a surprise festival or something there, with singers in traditional hanboks and...belly dancers?  It was an amazing surprise.

Also, I love Korean street food.  Yesterday, I ate something like a corn dog, except the dough was different, and I'm not really sure what kind of meat it actually was.  Oh, and the condiment selection was, "ketchup, mustard, sugar." 

My big adventure for the weekend was trying out the jimjilbang.  It's kind of a bath house with spas.  It was fun, although we got slightly lectured for apparently not scrubbing thoroughly enough before trying to get in a hot tub. 

I'm sure everyone is dying to hear what it's like to hang out naked with a bunch of naked Korean people, so I'll do a shorty synopsis.  We paid 7,000 won to get in, and we were issued a stack of towels and a lovely set of jimjilbang PJs (for the common area).  Then we went into the lady section, first storing our shoes in one locker, then handing in that key for an awesome key fob that had a key for our clothes locker and served as a charge card while we were inside.  They had a little snack bar in that section that we later grabbed some drinks from.  Inside, there's a serious shower section, where you're supposed to scrub down good before getting into the communal hot tubs.  They really take that scrub down seriously.  Then there's several pools of varying temperatures, mostly hot, but with a few frigid ones too to mix things up.  Then there's a couple steam rooms.  So, after we'd relaxed there, we put our jimjilbang pajamas on and headed upstairs to the co-ed section.  The jimjilbang has sleeping rooms where you can spend the night, a lounge with TVs, a PC bang, massage rooms, a little restaurant, and, my favorite, salt rooms.  Yes, rooms full of rock salt that are heated, and you just lay in the delicious warm salt.  Weird, but awesome.  I'll definitely try the jimjilbang again.


After the jimjilbang, I decided to walk further and explore the area.  I found a random outdoor gym park and a pet store with some adorable tiny puppies.  Good times. 

Back at home, I answered the door to a very earnest Korean woman.  I thought she was a census worker.  She desperately tried to communicate with me by talking in Korean.  I did my "smile and shrug" routine.  Later, someone told me she was probably from a church.  That made me glad I didn't understand.  :-)

Well, off for more fun times!

A Weekly Update

Well, it's been a few days.

It continues to be up and down a bit.  More of the same: generally I like Korea, but I'm still struggling with my school situation.  I don't want to complain too much.  I'm sure there are other people out there with much worse schools.  I guess I just expected teaching to be more fun than it actually is.  I didn't realize what a good student I apparently was.  I loved learning stuff.  Apparently, other students did not/do not have as much intrinsic motivation as I did.  They definitely know the English word for "candy" though.  We've started an "English dollar" reward system.   Friday,  we had dollar market, which the kids go nuts for.  So maybe positive rewards will improve class behavior.  Also thinking of a new group discipline system.  I have had a lot of advice about it.  The problem is that I'm the forgiving, pushover type and I make a really shitty disciplinarian.  So I really do need to drag one to the principal and show them I'm serious, I just hate to single one of them out.  Soon...

I'm getting a few things sorted out in the rest of my life.  I finally have a table and chair in my apartment.  I also got a bank account.  Now all I need is a phone.  I feel a bit stressed asking for anything, because I feel like my school is going to think I'm too demanding.  I haven't asked for much, just the super basic stuff that's in my contract, and even that not forcefully or completely. I still feel uncomfortable though, especially when they ask things like, "Why do you need a table?" Why do you think?  I know sitting on the floor is much more common here, but my American joints are not comfortable with that.  I always hate asking for anything, and the fact that I'm sort of helpless here makes it really difficult.

Yesterday we (I and some new ex-pat friends) went to the squid festival.  I gotta say, festivals are probably more fun when you understand more of what's going on, but it was still pretty neat.  Some Korean grandmas were enjoying the festival by drinking soju and singing.  Their business-men looking husbands invited us up for some soju, which was kind of funny. The fish market was really cool (although I felt bad for the various sea creatures awaiting their doom).  I caught a fish in a pool.  Maybe I'm eligible to be on Hillbilly Handfishing now!  Then we climbed quite a lot of steps to get to a lighthouse with a heck of a view.  Then we went to this sweet little cafe owned by a German guy and his Korean wife, who have apparently biked all the way to Europe.  Sorry I'm crap at taking pictures!  I need to get a new camera. 

Well, I'm nursing my first little Korean cold, so that's all I'm writing for today.  I leave you with some pictures:  a random, tasty drink from the convenience store that I bought so I could know what eating beauty tastes like, and a random photo spot up on the mountain yesterday.

A Random Blurb On Korea And Cancer

It might just be me, but Korean people seem really worried about cancer.

A lovely Korean lady in Emart (it's amazing how random people speak English) gave me a sample of yogurt drink and eagerly told me that it helped prevent cancer. 

I've also heard the same about kimchi, which is apparently a miracle food that cures everything from cancer to the common cold. 

I love weekends.  I love having weekends off again.  That's awesome.  Today I went around for a bit with another EPIK teacher and some of her friends from orientation.  Lots of fun, although I'm a bit jealous of her situation (she got a really posh apartment and what sounds like a completely sweet job; I feel a bit screwed in comparison).  Then again, plenty of others have it worse off, so I need to try a bit harder to look on the bright side.

Korean people are generally quite nice, especially when they're not terrified about speaking English.  Or even when they have no English sometimes.  I'm getting better at communicating with very few words, so I get awfully proud of myself when I can tell a cab driver a destination.  One of the cabs I took today had a lovely driver who was so friendly without saying anything in English.  I think he asked if I was Filipino.  Fortunately, I know how to say "America" in Korean!  미국 ("mi [me] gook). There's your word of the day people!  I think he told me my Korean or Korean pronunciation was really good, which I found quite amusing.  Or he could have been saying something else entirely, I just shrugged and smiled, and he kept talking.

By the way-try dak galbi if you're in Korea!  Delish.

Happy Day in Donghae

So I think my Fridays might be glorious here.  No middle school classes!  Yay!  And school ends early, yay!  I love having a head start on the weekend. 

I survived my first full week.  Can't lie, teaching is much rougher than I expected.  Discipline for my middle school kids (especially my M2 class of boys) is ROUGH.  I'm trying some new things, and I think I'll make behavior a part of their grade, 'cause I'm sick of their shit.  And I will hopefully get some long term curriculum/semester planning done this weekend so I'll feel more on top of my game.  Ideally would have done that before school started, but since I had no information about anything until less than 24 hours before I came here, it really wasn't an option. 

So I've been passing out a lot of hard candy as bribes...I mean, rewards...and naturally, well, when candy's just sitting there, I gotta try some, right?  So today I had a little oopsie and ended up with a chipped tooth.  Fortunately, Allison is religious about getting her teeth cleaned and was planning on going to the dentist. So we went together to Charm Dental.  And they were charming. Most of the staff spoke great English, especially one of the dentists who Allison knew (I think she's the mom of one of the kids at our school).  Korea may be disorganized about a lot of things, but it has healthcare figured out.  Korea has a pretty awesome national healthcare plan, which apparently includes dental care.  I haven't gotten my official Alien Registration Card, but the amazing dentists there did an inspection and polished off my little chip for free, and told me to come back for a proper checkup and such when I got my ARC. 

Then I had a bit of retail therapy and bought a flannel shirt, which will be nice when winter hits.  We got "teacher discounts."  Just a couple dollars, but super sweet.  Korean people in general are very nice. 

After that, Allison and I grabbed some coffee at a place called French Kiss.  Well, Allison had an iced coffee, I had a "sweet potato latte."  Adventure!  I was expecting to be slightly squicked out, but it was AWESOME!  It was like drinking liquid mashed sweet potatoes-delish.

Then we went our separate ways until later tonight, and I finally wandered into a Korean beauty store (Etude House).  So I am currently trying a mask.  Maybe I, too, can have skin as lovely as a Korean woman's!  Meh, probably not, but a girl can try.  And I'll just go ahead and ignore that it's probably full of weird parabens and other "beauty" chemicals that I would never put on my skin in the US. 

So, outside of school, I'm enjoying Donghae alright.  Hopefully I'll get to do some hiking and visit a jimjilbang this weekend.

Ciao, dahlings.

Surviving My First Week of Teaching

So, it has been one week of teaching so far.  That went pretty fast.  I still feel in over my head.  After all, I was expecting to be an assistant teacher, and instead was essentially thrown in the deep end. 

I'm hoping to get my goals for the semester and such ironed out and try to get discipline under control.  My youngest kids are awesome (good at English, obedient, respectful and enthusiastic).  The older ones...yeah, we're working on it. The first couple weeks have been total day-by-day survival mode.  www.waygook.org has saved my hiney. Thank you fellow English teachers for posting amazing lessons for my older middle school students to ignore. 

The discipline is getting a LITTLE better, because now I have some Korean teachers in my worst classes (part of the time at least).  My amazing fellow American teacher gently strong-armed them for me ("In her contract. Must have Korean teacher in class.  If no Korean teacher, she tells EPIK office.  School gets in trouble.") Thank you, Allison! 

So, small improvements.  Still kind of wish I hadn't caved on the provincial placement, but oh well.  C'est la vie.  I also have high hopes of getting a table soon (from the school).  I might even get my bank account and phone this week!  Maybe...

Last night I figured out how to turn on my gas range all by myself.  I did a happy dance with a little song.  Feeling totally incompetent at everything has a silver lining:  when you figure out simple stuff, you feel like a friggin' genius!  Yay, I turned two knobs and was a semi-success at cooking corn dogs in a pan!  Oh yeah, I've got to buy a microwave.  I was going to try to live without one, but screw that.  I am far too incompetent and/or lazy to cook food properly.

Today, I saw a toy poodle.  Oh, it was a glorious poodle!  If only I had had my iPod or camera to take a picture!  It's true that there are some restaurants that still serve dog as food here, but apparently they're pretty uncommon and not really very popular.  And when people have dogs as pets here, they do crazy stuff.  This glorious tiny white poodle was sporting the traditional poodle cut and wearing a cute vest leash.  Ah, but the best was its dye job.  Its ear fur was dyed pink, and its little leg poofs were electric blue.  Such a gorgeous poodle I shall never see again, I'm sure.

Well, just wanted to keep in the habit of updating for my small, but faithful, following.  Love to you all, until next time!

First Post from Donghae, South Korea

So, brief recap to catch us up: lesson went well enough at orientation.  In the afternoon, I found out my placement: Donghae Sahmyook Academy.

So, Donghae is where I've been since Tuesday.  It's a mid-sized town (I've seen varying reports on numbers, from 100,000-150,000 people), on the east coast.

At this point, I'm sort of regretting agreeing to a provincial placement.  I wanted a big city, but said I'd be flexible when my coordinator told me that all the metropolitan places were filled.

I was the second to last person picked up from the bus stop, and the gentleman who picked me up confirmed my suspicions (I'd Googled the school the day before): it's a religious, 7th Day Adventist private school.  Not that I have to teach religious classes or anything, but they did tell me the first day that I shouldn't drink, smoke, or wear accessories.  Which means I can do these things, I just have to lie.  Oh yeah, and the awesome drinking soju and eating with co-workers that's supposed to be part of Korean work culture is not happening here.  This would have been a deal breaker for me if I'd known it was an option when I was signing up.

I also don't have a co-teacher.  The head of the English department is our go-to guy who helps me out with some stuff, but basically they gave me a class schedule and expected me to teach from day 1.  Fortunately there's another American teacher at the school who is awesome. I teach 3 middle school classes (one from each level) 4 times a week and then 4 different high school classes once each every week.  So it averages out to about 3 middle school and one high school class per day, then I'll be having a couple others later.  So, so far, I kind of hate middle school kids.  They're crazy little mo-fo's. 

Well, I guess I should do a little lesson planning for the upcoming week...I was so unprepared for this.  I shall leave you with a few pictures and a video tour of my apartment:

My desk at work: Somebody put apples on all the teachers' desks.  I don't think it was actually a child though.

Downtown Donghae

WA Bar (a bar with a bunch of beers from all over the world). This picture is for my Dortmund friends!

Glorious, lovely E-mart.  I love these umbrella bag things-I don't know if I've seen any such nifty wet-umbrella-bagging-things in the USA

"The Sensitive Soap Dish"  -don't hurt it's feelings!  I <3 Konglish.

 

^ Video tour of my apartment!

A Few Pictures From Orientation

Okay peeps, finally an update.  Sorry, it's been hectic.  Here's some photos I didn't have a chance to put up before:

Tasty airport snacks: the sparkling green tea tasted like Sprite, the other drink is some kind of rice water and the snack cake tasted like a Twinkie.

Seoul as seen from the bus

Opening ceremony special performance by a traditional Korean instrument orchestra

Looks like Icebreakers gum from the States, tastes like ***.  Okay, actually it tastes like a Halls cough drop, but when you're expecting mint, it's an unpleasant surprise.

Awesome random wrestling statues outside the gymnasium at orientation

At a museum we visited: In case of fire, place this bag over your head. Or, you know, you could follow the exit signs...

Another delightful musical performance for us!

Same place, this set is playing some really loud music that's supposed to symbolize a rain storm or something.

At our awesome Korean pottery excursion: we got to paint some pottery, then they gave us chunks of clay to play with while we waited for everyone to finish