First weekends in Jeonju and week two of teaching

I feel as though I've lived a year in the last 2 weeks. The amount of information I've been inundated with and all of the new experiences have stretched time. So to pick up where I left off last week...

Friday night I went out for a night in one of the districts near Chonbuk National University. Chonbuk Dae is about a 10 min cab ride/25 min walk from where we live. Quinn and I had our first Soju experience with our lovely Kiwi friend Rosa by our side. Needless to say, none of us will ever drink a full bottle of Soju in one sitting again. The hangover was reason enough for that... we spent all day Saturday "sleeping off our jet lag" aka our hangover. If you can imagine, Soju costs 1,100 Won for one bottle (about $1.10) and that bottle will more than set you straight. Soju is the drink of choice in Korea, particularly in social situations. I will take it easy on the Soju from now on.

Saturday evening, Rosa, Quinn, and I went out with a friend Laura. Laura is from Scotland, has lived in lots of countries (India, Australia, South Korea multiple years, etc.) and she has the most incredible and entertaining stories. We all went out for pizza and then out for drinks at a few bars in the area of the city by the name of Gaeksa. (I had heard some scary rumors about pizza in Korea, but I have to say, this stuff was pretty good!) It's a huge shopping district that is lit up to the point where you are walking in a florescent daylight. The first bar we went to played American music and felt like a bar where I would hang out at home. Then we headed back to Chonbuk Dae and went to a World Beer Bar and a "Western"bar by the name of "Woops." The World Beer Bar was really cool... you picked your beer out of a cooler, sat down to drink all you wanted, and then took your bottles up to the counter and paid at the end. Korean culture seems to be a pretty honest one, so this seems to be effective.

The walkway in Gaeksa.

Yummy bulgogi (Korean beef) pizza. 

World Beer Bar

Sunday we woke up and went on a hike to a mountain near Laura's house. It was great, we walked down the street from her apartment and there was a trailhead! You could see all of Jeonju from a lookout near the top. It was a great/easy hike. There is a ridge line with trails on it that surrounds about 2/3 of the city. We talked about starting at one end one day and just hiking until we didn't want to anymore and catching a cab home. The trails are part dirt and part man made stairs using the rocks from the mountain. It was raining that day, so I didn't take my nice camera out, but I snapped some cool shots with my ipod. On the way back to Laura's apartment, we walked along a reservoir that was quite beautiful as well.

This week, school has continued to challenge me. My class load (17 classes with 30 kids in each) at Bong Seo makes my job at that school difficult to get a good grasp on. Each teacher has different expectations about their class, some voice theirs, some are non-existent, and some offer tools to help me. Mostly the former. Obviously, I am still learning the teaching technique suits me best, as well as how on earth to discipline children when they can mock you in their own language. Some of the Korean teachers are very supportive of their children learning English, and some think that it is not very important. Their attitude is generally reflected in their classes eagerness to learn.

I have the most difficulty with the first grade classes. They are so new to English that they have a decent size noun vocabulary, but when it comes to verbs and comprehending sentences and directions, they are at a loss. It can be very frustrating if the teacher does not speak enough English to translate directions or explain connections that I am trying to make to the kids. This is frustrating and exhausting, but I am trying to keep on rolling with it. A few shots of Bong Seo Elementary...

Teaching at Young Jin on Thursdays & Fridays has been somewhat of a relief for me. The school is small and I have the kids two days a week. I have started to notice distinctions between the kids who are very smart and the kids who have problems learning. The staff is incredibly friendly and helpful in the classroom. Most of them understand English to the point that they either co-teach with me, or help me if the children to not understand. The sixth grade class is my favorite... Sixth grade in Korea is still part of elementary school and then in middle school there is a first, second, and third grade of middle school. My sixth graders are fairly apathetic, but if you are persistent with them, they understand English well enough to allow me to feel as though I'm accomplishing something within the lesson.

The kindergarten class I teach at Young Jin is just me having playtime with them and getting them to speak English. They are the most adorable little people and they love giving hugs. They have a lot of energy, and it is somewhat overwhelming, but fun none the less. The adult class that I was dreading to teach at first is quickly becoming one of my favorite classes. Not because I like teaching them the most, but because the women are the most wonderful people. Their main purpose for learning English is to be able to talk to their kids and help them practice their English. One of them speaks English pretty well and she said she wants to take me to the Jeonju Hanok Village. Hanok Village is a traditional Korean village that has been turned into a more touristy area complete with shops that sell handicrafts and a wide array of restaurants. It is one of the most beautiful areas in Jeonju.

As I walked to the bus stop on Thursday from my school, two of the mothers who spoke English very poorly tried to ask how I was getting home, and I told them I was just going to take the bus. I think they were trying to ask me if I needed a ride, but didn't know how. Then a third mother pulled up to the bus stop and told me to get in her car. She put my address in the GPS and then when we got to my apartment, she informed me that she would drive me home after class every Thursday. On Friday, I was walking to the bus stop and my fourth grade co-teacher pulled up and said that she was going into town, so she could give me a ride home. I feel honored by the hospitality that the mothers and teachers from Young Jin have shown me.

Sunflowers in the courtyard of Young Jin Elementary.

I have started going to yoga classes with a Korean teacher. I went twice this past week and I will go 3 times a week from now on. The classes are the most intense that I have been to. The teacher is a wonderful older Korean man who emanates calmness and kindness. He helps adjust you to push yourself a bit deeper into each pose. The classes are a perfect way to balance the stress of teaching, and I feel completely refreshed when I'm done with each one. The two classes that Rosa and I went to this past week were full of older Korean women. I was amazed by the flexibility and the discipline of those older Korean women! They put me to shame. The Korean women talk during class, and Rosa and I are convinced that they are making fun of us. Either way, I have learned to tell myself whenever Koreans seem to be talking about me to just imagine that they are saying all positive things! Perks of not understanding the language...

Friday night I went to dinner with the head teacher (Grace) from Bong Seo and the other English teacher, Amanda. We went to a Korean Barbeque kind of place. They bring out all of the fixings and put them on the table and they bring out the meat raw and you cook it at the table. Then you make wraps with lettuce and all the toppings. It was so tasty! 

This weekend was the Jeonju Sori Festival, so there were a bunch of concerts and cultural events that were happening in the Hanok Village and Gaeksa section of town. During the day on Saturday Rosa, Quinn and I walked around Gaeksa and caught a little bit of the performances and Rosa and Quinn did some shopping. 

Quinn and Rosa

Saturday night, Rosa and I went out to the Hanok Village and had a delicious Italian dinner (Saturday nights have turned into Western food nights apparently). There was a band playing folk music near the entrance of Hanok Village, and they sounded awesome. The Hanok Village was incredibly beautiful, with fountains/rivers running along the pathways and the architecture makes you feel as if you have traveled back in time. After dinner we headed to see a few Korean bands play, the first band we went to was not our favorite, so we went to another bar and caught another band who had a girl drummer (who was awesome). We caught two bands there and then a DJ played. Overall, a pretty great night of live music. Afterwards we went to a dive bar that reminded me of a place that I would hang out at back home. It's called Deep In and you can write on the walls, the main bartender is incredibly nice and speaks English very well. I really enjoyed it. 

The restaurant in Hanok Village. 

Gaeksa at night.

Deep in wall behind the bar.

Bar munchies...

Tonight I went out for dakgalbi with Rosa and our friend Phillip. Afterwards we went to a bar called Art and Travel. It is officially my favorite bar in Jeonju. The walls are covered in pictures of art and pictures of people are pasted on the wall in the shape of the world. There are lanterns hanging up and the bar has a bit of an Indian flare to it. The kicker: they have craft beer!! I found an IPA in Korea!! For a price of course... so not an everyday thing, but a once in a while thing. 

Other fun happenings from the last week or so: I went to the open air market near my apartment with Quinn. They have everything from produce, to fresh meats, to live seafood, and silkworm larvae... a delicacy in Korea. I will probably try it at some point. Everything once right? The fun part of the market was the song and dance once once you ask the price of something and you try to tell the people how much you want. I will learn Korean soon enough, but in the mean time, the older ladies and the men that work at the market were very nice and they were humored by our confusion. 

Hoping to get a good grasp of Hangul (the alphabet) this week, so I will be more at ease traveling by myself. I have gotten in touch with another climber through a Korean climbing website and I think I may take a trip to the coast this weekend to climb there. I also plan to climb at a fall meet and greet for climbers in Korea in October sometime, up north. Looking forward to getting out, meeting some like minded people, and enjoying the fall weather that will soon be setting in. 

Hopefully Typhoon Sanba that we had today will be the last of the summer monsoon season. The typhoon was a bit of a let down... it weakened before it got here and we just had pouring rain and a bit of wind all day. I had a run-to-catch-the-bus-in-the-pouring-rain-and-still-miss-it moment this morning...   Not my favorite part of the day, but we all have our moments right? 

Look forward to some more cultural centered blogs coming up... eventually me talking about my daily life will get boring. At the two week in country mark I can say that I miss people from home, but I am very happy with my life here. It's shaping up to be a good year! 

The first days of teaching...

The last four days have been nerve racking, confusing, and exciting. Monday I went to get my medical check at a Korean hospital with Quinn and Andy. Andy was the liaison between the doctors and nurses and us. We got a bunch of tests done, including blood draw and a chest x-ray...

Later on Monday, we went to a large Korean grocery store named Home Plus that is owned by a larger British company. This means they have some more "Western friendly" food than other Korean grocery stores, for a price. Try $6 for a small jar of no name peanut butter packed full of hydrogenated oils! Too bad I still bought it. Some things you can't live without...

I will explain the program that I work for before I go into details of my first days. I work for a program through Woosuk University that hires English teachers to teach in schools within the county of Wanju, which is right outside the city of Jeonju where I live. I have two schools that I work with through the program, one on Monday-Wednesday and the other on Thursday-Friday. At my M-T-W school, BongSeo Elementary, I have 6 different classes on Monday and Tuesday and 5 on Wednesday, all ranging from first to third grade. So basically I go from one classroom to the next and give an English lesson for each class. There are 30 kids in each class at this school.  The classes are 40 minutes long and there are 10-minute breaks in between each class.

My first day at BongSeo was Tuesday. I was put on a bus by my boss's helper, King, who drove me to the bus stop and told the bus driver to make sure I get off at the stop for the school. It's about a 45 minute ride to the school and I kept thinking the bus driver forgot the instructions to drop me off at the school. He did not, I made it to the school just fine. No one was there to meet me at the bus stop, so I wandered around the school grounds until I asked a mother if she spoke English and she got a child to show me where to go.

I met the lady in charge of the program (Grace is her English name) and she took me to my first class, where I was expected to teach. I had no lesson plan prepared, so I went off the top of my head. Which may have been good or bad? That's basically how the whole day went. I have 2nd and 3rd graders on Tuesdays, so they are somewhat knowledgeable in English. Wednesday, I had 1st graders all day. A lot harder to communicate with in English. This was made even more difficult if the teacher did not speak English and could not explain directions to the children if they could not understand them coming from me. At BongSeo, about 1/3 of my teachers speak decent English, 1/3 can recognize some English and they attempt to help discipline their kids, and 1/3 do not speak English and do not intervene at all while I am teaching.

This can be frustrating on many levels. The first and second graders do not have an English language textbook and I have to way to know what they have been working on already. So if the teacher does not speak English, it only exacerbates the situation, because I have no way to ask. This is the case in most of the classrooms so far. That being said, the teachers that do have a decent knowledge of English are very sweet and very helpful. I look forward to when I will not be so overwhelmed with the introduction to the classes/planning process all while adjusting to the time change and Korean culture. Let's just say, I am more than exhausted when I am done with school in the afternoons.

Wednesday, I managed to get lost walking home from the bus stop to my apartment (for the first time by myself). I freaked out a bit, but decided I would just walk until I saw something that was familiar. King, the boss' helper, had given me directions home, but I botched them, so I just wandered. I managed to find the bus stop where I had gotten on the bus in the morning, which I knew how to get back from, but I decided to retrace my steps and try to get back to the apartment another way. I oriented myself using some buildings and got myself back to the apartment all on my own! Super excited about that!

On a side note... I am kind of loving the Korean lunches! They generally consist of one or two types of meat and some type of soup, rice, and a fruit or vegetable. Kimchi is served in bowls that are placed on every lunch table, every few seats. For those who don't know what Kimchi is, it is basically spicy, fermented cabbage. That sounds kind of gross, but I had it for the first time yesterday at my school and it was delicious! I have heard that you can get not so tasty batches of it though.

Yesterday, I had my first day and YoungJin Elementary. Here I am teaching a third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade class along with a short kindergarten class, and an adult class. Yes, you read right, an adult class. All women except for a man who I can only guess was forced to come by his wife who is in the class. My teachers at YoungJin were good for the most part. My sixth grade and kindergarten teachers do not speak English. My third grade teacher is a man who is very sweet and eager to learn English. He is friendly and even sat next to me at lunch. The fifth grade teacher is also a man. He speaks some English and teaches about half the class and gets me to step in for pronunciation and to do some exercises. 

The adult class is very interesting. I was at a loss for what to teach. The ladies told me to talk about American culture... I had no idea where to begin or what to classify as a ubiquitous American culture. I ended up opening the floor for questions and asking them what they would like for me to teach. One of the ladies who spoke English pretty well said that they are all housewives and they would like to hear stories about romance and love. So that should be interesting. 

I like YoungJin Elementary a bit more... it's a little closer and the class sizes are much smaller, with 15 kids a class on average. I also teach the same classes Thursday and Friday, so I feel like I will be able to bridge more of a relationship with the kids. I already had a student give me a present in my third grade class! He asked me if I like fish or birds more and he gave me an eraser in the shape of a fish. So sweet! The location of YoungJin is also more rural and the school is smaller. Between the two class buildings there is a nice courtyard that you can see the mountains from and sit in the shade. The walk to the bus stop from school is through a smaller farming community and on a road next to a river. It offers incredible views of the mountains. From the bus stop I can see Jeonju in the distance. 

After school yesterday, I got the results of my medical test (I passed/all tests were normal) and went to the immigration office to get my Alien Registration card. Still fighting off jet lag, I ended up passing out around 8 o'clock. I felt much better today. I don't know if that's a side effect of the extra sleep or the fact that it is Friday and I have finished my first week of teaching and I am looking forward to going out tonight with new friends to explore Jeonju. Either way, I'll take it. 

Today, I got REALLY lost on the bus ride home and ended up getting off the bus in a completely different part of town and hailing a cab to take me home. Funny thing about Korean cab drivers... they don't know addresses. They use landmarks as their address. So King wrote down the name of a building near my apartment in Korean and I keep that piece of paper with me wherever I go. If I get too lost, I just hail a cab. I hope to get past this point, but for now it works. Plus, cabs here are incredibly cheap. 

Sidebar... still getting used to being somewhat of a novelty everywhere I go. Koreans, particularly older Korean women, have no qualms about staring you down. Literally, they openly stare at you even after you make eye contact which should make things awkward. In school, the kids stare as if you are a complete anomaly. During lunch today I had a little girl actually stop, do a double take, take a few steps back with wide eyes and exclaim, "Whoa!" I can tolerate the kids, because they are sweet and once you make eye contact with them they will smile/giggle and say "Hello teacher!" I am still hoping the novelty wears off or it begins to be less noticeable to me. 

One more sidebar, favorite quotes of the week: A little third grade girl saw my ipod yesterday and said, "Ohhhhh ipod. You know Steve Jobs?" Another golden quote during the question/answer session in my third grade class via a translation by their teacher: "Student says you so skinny, but when she see pictures of people from America they are fat. Why is that?" 

Tonight, I am going out with Quinn, the girl that arrived the same day as me, and a new friend Rosa, who is from New Zealand. We are going to check out some of the Western/Expat bars and I am hoping to meet some hiking buddies and rock climbing buddies.

Until next time...