My Apartment

The first view when you look in from the entrance way. Behind those sliding doors is my "laundry room" with a washing machine and a folding rack for drying clothes.
My kitchen area. I am very lucky to have a table - I think I might be the only apartment with one. The only furniture provided was the dresser you see, a fridge, a bed, and a small vanity. I think the table was found by an old teacher when someone put it in front of there apartment to be given/thrown away. In the left corner you can kinda see my sink, cabinets, and there's two gas burners. No oven :(

My bathroom. There is no shower just the shower head on the wall. The drain is under the sink and you shower just standing in the middle of the bathroom. It's not that bad.

My bed and giant window. I love the window and all the light it lets in although that means at night being able to see all kinds of flashing neon lights. On the left is the vanity in the shadows and a t.v. I think I'm also the only apartment to have a t.v. but I don't have cable so I haven't even turned it on.

Summer Break

July 25th – 29th was my summer break. I didn’t know that before I came, but that would have been helpful because then I could have made plans. As it stood the only people I really knew in Korea were the teachers I worked with and they had made plans weeks in advance. I got lucky in that two new teachers came a week and half after I did. It sucked even more for them because they had three days training then a week free. Since we were in the same boat we did a lot together. There is also the other joy, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but that until I get my Alien Registration Card I cannot get a cell phone or the internet in my apartment. So not only were we newbies, but for any of us to make plans it had to be done a day in advance or communicated in the amount of time we were online that day. It’s been interesting getting use to being disconnected. It’s all the more difficult because I don’t know where a lot of things are so I can’t even suggest landmarks to meet at. It’s been a struggle.

For the week of my summer break Korea decided to celebrate with daily downpours. I spent a lot of the week wandering around my neighborhood and getting to know the area, or hiding inside. I went to Seoul a couple days and that was the highlight. Seoul Station, which is in the center or Seoul is a 40 minute bus ride from where I am. The bus system here is really nice. The charge for this bus ride is about $1.40 and the bus runs every 10 minutes or so. The bus is air conditioned, has nice seats, (and when I get a phone) is equipped with phone charging stations. From Seoul Station you can pick up two of the subway lines (there are 9 in total).

The first place I went to was a neighborhood called Insadong. It was down pouring like crazy the day we went (that night were the mudslides) but we tried to dodge from store to store. There is a main street in Insadong that is really cute. It’s a great place to walk around. We ended up leaving after a little while because of the rain but went back on a nicer day. There are quite a few touristy shops in Insadong and it’s also well known for its traditional tea houses. We attempted to find one and order tea but ended up with a drink that tasted like cranberry juice and had a couple pine nuts floating in it. Such is ordering food and drinks in Korea. It’s a lot of pointing to something then crossing your fingers that whatever you just ordered is good.

On another day one teacher and I went to Namdaemun Market. Namdaemun is a huge market where you can find almost everything. There are sellers in shops outside and huge shopping markets that you don’t see until you’re inside what appears to be a one-floor building only to find out it goes down two more levels and runs underneath all the other shops. Again, it was raining the day we went but it was easy to walk outside when it was nice then duck indoors to escape the rain. There were shops selling cameras, clothes, food, baby clothes, ginseng and pharmaceuticals, beauty products – everything. We went into one building that had to have 50 sellers all next to each other just selling jewelry and hair things. I feel like this wouldn’t be too unusual except everyone’s stuff looked the same; not only that but everything was sparkly. Women’s fashion here is pretty “cute” and literally everything was sparkly from necklaces to hair ties. Walking into that much sparkle was overwhelming. I can only imagine what it would look like on a sunny day.

*I will take this moment to say that if I should return from Korea wearing bows and super sparkly things I hearby charge you all to have an intervention.*

Overall it was a good vacation. I would have loved to go journeying somewhere across Korea or a neighboring country but the weather really limited things and I didn’t have very much time to plan. Korea has been having an unusually long rainy season much to my enjoyment. On a positive note, I have been reading a lot. It was nice having a week vacation and I felt good going into school afterwards. I taught two weeks before so I felt like I got things under control. Now I just need to last until my next week-long vacation . . . at Christmas.

Mudfest

My first weekend in Korea I went to the Boryeong Mud Festival (Mudfest). Some of the other teachers at my school were going so I decided to tag along aka: invite myself. I heard it was a lot of fun. We took the train down from Suwon, it was about two hours on the train and a nice ride. The festival is held in Daecheon on the beach. Basically it's like MTV Spring Break. I went with a group of eight people though we ended up being twelve in total when everyone found their friends. There was a roped off area with inflatable slides, tug-o-war, and other games and things meant to get you as muddy as possible. The story is that the mud there is suppose to be really good for your skin so everyone goes in bathingsuits, gets completely muddy, drinks, and has a good time.

I had fun walking around and seeing everything. I also took time when people were getting all muddy to go down and stand in the water. I feel a sense of accomplishment in every body of water I get to stand in so I stood in the Yellow Sea/West Sea for a couple minutes just thinking about thing. Mostly reflecting on how I'm in South Korea (who saw that one coming??). It was never a plan of mine to come here but I'm going with the flow and enjoying this unexpected trip. I feel like oceans/seas are good places for reflection so I had my little moment then joined up with the group and took part in muddy tug-o-war. Such is life :)

Later in the day we went back to our rented room, took showers, then went out to dinner. Since we were right on the ocean there was a lot of good sea food to be found and dinner was clams and oysters grilled in the shell right at our table. I'm not a huge shellfish fan but it was good. The place we stayed in was called a "pension". They are very common here and it's basically an empty room and they give you mats and pillows for however many people your sharing with. It's good because you can cram a lot of people into one to make it cheaper. The downside is that you sleep on the floor with only a thin mat. It was not the most comfortable experience but for one night it was fine.

Me and the Mudfest Mascots

The night we got there they had fireworks and it felt good sitting on a beach on a beautiful evening talking to new people. The next morning I walked on the beach for a while with two girls before we headed back to the train to come home. We also got our free souvenier which was some soap made with the famous Boryeong mud. It was nice getting to meet a bunch of new people and the festival is only once a year so I was glad I was able to go.

Mudfest walkway and Daecheon Beach

School and two days of training

The school that I am working at is called LCI Academy. It is part of the LCI chain of private English schools (hagwons) and this particular branch has been open for three years. Any Koreans that I’ve talked to have told me it must be a big school because we have seven foreign teachers in total. The school staff consists of us seven foreigners, three Korean teachers, the Director, and his wife. We are the main teachers and the Korean staff only teach a couple classes while also serving as secretaries, book keepers, translators, and support for us. They make sure we have the books we need, are on schedule to complete books on time and are the best place to go with questions about school, life, or if you’re not sure what you ate the night before. Their English is a bit limited but they provide an invaluable service to the school and to our lives here in Korea. If you need to see a doctor you go to them, tell them what’s wrong, and they’ll write it for you in Korean. One of the first weeks I was eyeing some street food and had them write down the name so I would know what to ask for. Anything needing translation, they are the first people to go to. They are also the middle ground between us and the Director and his wife. Messages get passed through them from both sides and it’s a hard job because “don’t shoot the messanger” does not always apply.

My first day at LCI they had me shadow the teacher I would be replacing. They gave me her (my) schedules and a packet she had written about how to teach each section of class. I sat on the side of the classroom watching her teach and writing notes all day. There are a lot of different periods and separate books that go with a lot of them. Many subjects are taught multiple times a week. In one week for Kindergarten I teach: a Theme book, Phonics, Math, Kids Excel, Social/Science Book, Cooking, Storybook, ORDA, Writing Diary, Show & Tell, a Song, a Poem, Arts & Crafts, and Science. I will explain things in more detail later but for now, for understanding’s sake, Kids Excel = Reader Rabbit on the computer, and ORDA are these sheets that deal with spacial skills: patterns, shapes fitting together etc. things like that.

I had two days to learn how to teach all of that. Missing my flight and loosing the third day of training meant I didn’t even get to see how some of the periods were taught. It was a lot to digest. All of the subjects are pretty easy to teach the key is just learning how they want you to teach it, and staying on schedule. The hardest part is keeping track of all of the books. There is a Theme book, a book for math, two books for phonics, a book for Storybook. . . you get the idea. The second day of training (Friday) they bounced me around between different people’s classes. I thought it was to give me different perspectives but really it was because they were having a big going away party in my soon-to-be class. I was disappointed at first because I wanted to get to know the kids but it turned out to be really nice seeing how other people teach. Everyone has a different style, some are more strict, some are more organized, and it was nice looking in on and getting suggestions from the different teachers.

After kindergarten I followed the teacher I was replacing to the afternoon classes. Five days a week I have kindergarten from 9:50am to 2:20pm. On Monday, Wednesday, Friday I have a class called PK1 from 2:40-5:00 and a class called EC2 from 5:10-6:55. So first was PK1 which is one of the top classes in the school. These kids are in their first year of Korean school and come to LCI after they finish the regular school day. These kids are really smart. They are also really competitive but I think that goes with the territory. For that class there are another four books although they are not all taught every time I see them. The last class EC2 are three nine-year-old boys who have not studied English for very long. That class only has three books :).

By the end of training on Friday I felt like my head was going to explode with everything I had to remember. I knew the Korean teachers and the Director’s wife would be in my classroom for the first couple days observing me and giving me feedback. The amount of books I felt like I had to juggle was ridiculous. I didn’t have time to prepare lessons, in part because I was kind of lost, so I knew I would be going into Monday only half prepared.

That weekend I also moved into the apartment I will be in for next year (pictures to come). My first three nights the school put me up in a hotel because the teacher I replaced didn’t leave until Saturday afternoon. My room was really nice. When you walked into the room there was a small foyer to take off your shoes (you never wear them into a house) and you put the key in a slot which made all of the lights turn on. The only light switches on the wall were for the bathroom lights so to turn the rest on or off there was a giant remote. I don’t know what half of the buttons were for but between six of them I was able to control the lights and the t.v. There was a separate remote for the air conditioning. The bathroom had a huge tub with a shower head but no curtain. The ‘no curtain’ is pretty standard here but one of the teachers told me the hotel is a “Love Motel”. That made some puzzle pieces fall into place like why there were two robes and my welcome packet included toothbrushes, razors, and condoms. (I later found, when another new teacher came, that some of the floors had vending machines selling sex toys , luckily I wasn’t on one of those floors.) It really was nice though and I guess such places are very common in Korea. I think it has something to do with most people living with their parents until they’re married, but I digress….

Hotel Room

On Saturday check-out was at 12:30 and I couldn’t move into the apartment until 3:00. Luckily someone told me if you ask they will hold your bags at the front desk so I left my suitcases there, minus my backpack, and went wandering for a few hours. It took me two trips to get my things over to the apartment but finally I was finished. I had a lazy weekend, unpacked, and got ready for my first week teaching alone.