Week 7 Recap: Moving!!

This was actually at the graduation ceremony but hey.

Orientation is over.  Real life is starting now.  Even I have trouble really believe it.  On Wednesday we had our real placement ceremony with our school officials watching us.  It was a bit intimidating frankly.  However, we all had our line up and one by one we were called by name with our school and somehow were able to identify the Korean faces that were connected to us.  Some people got flowers and some got presents and some got a head nod---I got a head nod and a wave haha.  It was cool though.  After the ceremony, my Vice Principal and Fulbright Co-Teacher found me pretty quick and we went down to lunch together, which was slightly awkward as with any new meeting, but lunch was absolutely delicious.  

This was being displayed in the stadium
where the Taekwondoe show was

Then we got in the car with ALL my stuff and made our way to Daegu.  Daegu, my new home for the next 300ish days.

My host bro! 

We went straight to my homestay where my Vice Principal dropped my co-teacher and me off with my stuff.  My co-teacher and me went up on our own and met my host mom, who is perfectly delightful.  I think she knows as much English as I know Korean ^_^ .  She spends a lot of time looking things up on this dictionary translator app on her phone and I've kinda taken to doing that too. My host dad came home a little later and he's pretty cool I think.  I also have a 6 year old host brother who acts like he's 6 but looks like he's 10 haha.  He's pretty cool though, I just wish he would enunciate a little more.  I feel like he asks me questions I know, but he says them so weird I can't understand until my host mom translates.  I figure in a year that will get better :).  My co-teacher helped us navigate the first couple hours successfully.

My first day at school was spent familiarizing myself with the text book I'll be using and learning how to use the cd associated with it.  I met my principal who was pretty funny.  He's got a little bit of a funny voice and he laughs a lot.  He English is so so but he likes to try speaking with me.  My second day about 30 min after I showed up at school, I was hard at work lesson planning and he just appeared at my shoulder and wanted to say good morning.  Then he proceeded to have me come to his office and gave me two peaches.  Talk about wow.  I spent most of my 2nd day lesson planning, working on my power points and preparing my own mad lib.  I'm really hoping my lesson is too long, I'd much rather it was always too long than too short.  That way the extra activity can be cut as necessary.  

My homestay these first few days, has been really great.  Again its hard to understand my host bro but he's really cute even so.  And my host mom, looks out all the time.  Yesterday morning she made me breakfast, a egg over hard with two pieces of toast cut into triangle shapes :) awwww and with strawberry jam.  Talk about delicious!  Then for lunch we had Kim bab, basically veggies, egg, spam rolled in rice and wrapped with seaweed.  I actually really like kim bab, its great.  And we had dumplings on the side.  And then we went out for dinner and had barbecued pork with pig skin and heart.  I thought it sounded a little weird too, but actually the skin tasted like super thick hard bacon and the heart just tasted like dark meat off a chicken. There was even melted cheese to make it awesome.  I thought my Mom would be really proud of me--I ate a lot of onions with dinner too.  haha

So the left is the pig heart and the right is just pork.
Believe me really tasty!! 

The other big thing that happened yesterday was that my host family took me to this amazing taekwondoe show!  It was super sweet!  These guys did back flips and broke stuff and fake fought each other.  Maybe that doesn't sound crazy cool, but with the lights and and stuff it was really awesome.  They played this whole story too, where there was this whole class learning from a master and half the class got their hands on this mask and turned evil and so the good half of the class kept having to fight them and finally be the end they saved them from themselves.  ^_^ Yay hero stories!

Here's hoping my first week of teaching is a success!

Seoul Weekend Part 2: Travels with Friends

In the second part of Seoul Weekend I traveled around Seoul with ETA friends and with my awesome Korean Roomies from last year.

Roomy Picture a the stream: Chungaechan :)

We started out at this really cool stream that has only been in Seoul for a couple years.  It's a man made water way that really just adds some aesthetic awesomeness to that area of town.  We walked for many many hours on Saturday all around that area.  From the stream we went to one of the more famous book stores in downtown Seoul called Kyobo Books.  I bought a present for a family at my church in Seoul there--it was a cute little clay set I thought the whole family could play with together.  After the book store we walked over to Myungdong, a well known shopping district and had lunch.  Apparently that area is known for a dish called KalGookSue, which is basically noodles and dumplings in a flavored broth.  I gotta say it was really delicious.  I really liked it and highly recommend  it! ^_^

Eating KalGookSue

We shopped a little bit and then made our way over to this college-y artsy district called Hongdae.  Where we went to the Trick Eye Museum.  The Trick Eye Museum is such a cool place!  The art is supposed to look like its coming out of the walls, so when you take pictures with the art it looks like you're really in the scene!  These are some of my fav pics from that trip.

I also went back to my SGC Korea Church from last year and I'm sooo happy!! I felt so at home there, to be with all these people I haven't seen in so long and they were all so happy to see me.  And my Mini-Sunsangnim (<-- that means teacher) (little boy that I was close with last year) has grown so much.  He's 7 now and his little brother and sister have grown a lot too!! I couldn't believe it.  The sister is walking now and has such long hair now!

Then in the afternoon I met up with my awesome Korean roomies!! ^_^ I missed them soo much :)

With my amazing Korean Sisters!!

Tomorrow my new life begins.  Tomorrow I'm moving into my homestay and on Thursday I'll get a tour of my school.  I can't believe it's finally here.  Here it goes.

Seoul Weekend: DMZ

This is a soldier guarding us from the N. Korean
door on the N. Korea side of the room.

This passed weekend I went to Seoul with my whole program.  It was really a fantastic trip where I got to see and do so many wonderful things.  First we went to the DMZ on Friday and that was a really crazy experience.  For all intents and purposes, it is a war zone.  But right now, not only is it a war zone, but a tourist destination.  And I didn't think about it that way till I got there.  That place is the visual reminder of the severe divide in Korea and yet we foreign people can go there and take pictures with soldiers that guard it.  Honestly, I don't know how I feel about the whole concept, but it made me feel really strangely.  Even so, seeing that place in person was a very moving experience.

This is a picture out the window of 1 of the blue buildings.
The right side is N. Korea and the left is South.

You could physically see the line that divides the North and South.  It isn't like Germany where there was a wall you could touch or graffiti, it's just a raised section of pavement that separates the two countries and even in the building where negotiations take place, the room is divided down the middle by a table and in the center of the table are the recording devices, precisely in the middle.  

This is the negotiation table.

This picture is opposite, S. Korea is on the right and N. Korea
is on the left.

 We also visit a tunnel site where N. Korean soldiers tried to tunnel down to Seoul underground.

The sign saying the N. Korean capital direction.

After that, we visited a train station that connects to a station in the capital of N. Korea.  Obviously this can no longer be used by S. Koreans, but N. Korean government officials have been known to use it from time to time because after the N. Korean capital the rail becomes a transcontinental railroad.

Me "walking to" N. Korea.

After the visit to the DMZ we went to the American Ambassador's home to have a cook out/pool party.  It was also really strange to have that weird feeling switch.  Serious DMZ to party, but it was fun no doubt :)

Week 6: Seoul Travels and Finals

I am a little late in my update for this week, but I have good reasons which are to follow shortly.

This is me with the Kimbap I made :)

Last weekend I visited Cheonju with some other ETA's and took a cooking class.  We learned how to make bulgogi (a beef dish with veggies) and kimbap, which is awesome.  It is laver (dried seaweed flattened and cut into a square shape) with a layer of rice on it, then long pieces of veggies, egg, and processed meats are laid in the middle and then the whole thing is rolled up.  Then you cut the now cylindrical shape into smaller pieces.  It is really tasty and pretty healthy ^_^

So the main entrance to this place said that this was "Times Square" ^_^

Afterward I caught a bus to Seoul and met up with my former roomy, Taekeum.  Before we met I hung out by myself and wondered one of the biggest malls I've ever seen.  Not only architecturally beautiful, but also diverse and interesting.  The mall was connected to a huge department store on one side, which indirectly connected to the subway station.  Go figure.  This place was gorgeous though, I'll give it that.

This is where I first entered the Mall, its a side entrance, but wow.

This was a really strange art thing just outside the entrance to
"Times Square", made me wonder who thinks of this kind
of stuff?

This is just inside the Sauna about to head into the bath part.

Then I met Taekeum and we went to get some dinner--Chimac--which is Korean shorthand for chicken and beer haha.  We went to this cute hole in the wall chicken place that had a sale on chicken, all you can eat chicken with one glass of beer per person.  It actually turned out to be a little expensive, but it was tasty and it was provided a nice area for us to catch up on each other's news.  Goodness knows a girl's life can become pretty complicated after a while hahaha.  Then we stayed the night in a Sauna (actually it was a sauna we had stayed in last year together too hah)  It was great to chill and have a hot bath.

The next day we met up with our German friend who was touring Korea for a couple weeks and went to lunch with him.  I got to see his hostel and that was cool, because I've never been in one before.  It was a funny moment there too, because there was this Asian guy there who asked where everyone was from and low and behold the guy is of Chinese heritage, but grew up in Germany and the US so he speaks fluent German and English and not really Chinese or Korean.  I've never met a fluent German Asian person before.  Maybe that's a weird thing to say.  It was really cool.  That made a group 3 Korean speakers, 3 German speakers, and me.  Haha, good thing they all spoke English or I would have been really lost, the whole time.

After we hung out for a while I had to catch the bus back to Goesan and on the bus I met this really nice Korean guy who helped me study a little for my exam.  :) Now we're facebook friends and maybe later on we'll meet up again.  Then on the walk from the bus station to the school I met another guy who lives in Goesan who said he wanted to look out for me.  It was a nice night.  Jesus was lookin out.

This week was a really important week for me because my Korean language final exam was on Wednesday.  I was super stressed allllllll weekend and week leading up to it.  I thought for sure I would fail but now that it's over I feel a little better.  I feel like I killed the reading and writing part, but both speaking portions were a struggle for me.  It's not that I don't know the material or that I didn't learn it, its that I just froze up under pressure and I kept trying to think of complex sentences to say and it was just hard to do on the spot.  Either way I think I'll just make it over the goal line to pass.  I think I'm ready to enter my homestay and the like from a language stand point for sure.

This weekend we're going to Seoul.  Tomorrow we are visiting the DMZ and the American Ambassador's house for a pool party.  Then Saturday and Sunday are ours to do with as we choose.  On Saturday I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, but on Sunday I'm going to visit the church I went to last year and then meet both of my former roommates for dinner ^_^  Finally, on Monday we have our graduation ceremony from the Korean language program.  We'll come back to Goesan Monday afternoon. And then next Wednesday we depart for our "new" lives.  

Week 5: Placements and Culture

This is the group that will be with me in Daegu.  However
their schools are a little far from mine.

As I mentioned in my last post, we received our school placements on Friday and I have been informed that I have been placed in Daegu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu#Climate at Jukjun Middle School http://www.jukjun.ms.kr/ .   I was expecting a High school, but I was lucky enough to have dinner with one of the orientation leaders tonight who has a similar middle school and she was really encouraging.  I was pretty nervous about how to lesson plan and handle students with lower levels and not that all those fears are assuaged, but I feel encouraged nonetheless.  It turns out I have at least 3 Korean friends that live in and around Daegu, so I won't be hanging out with all totally new people.  That makes me feel a little more confident too, because I was super worried about not being able to see my Korean friends.  2 of those people I met at my school when I studied abroad last year. ^_^

Eating Pizza in the ETA Lounge on Campus with my Friends

Over the weekend my friend from Seoul came to visit.  It was too bad that the weather was sooo hot because we could only hang out inside for fear of heat exhaustion.  Ok, so that's a little bit of an exaggeration but it was like 95 degrees.  We did do a short campus tour and ordered pizza with some of my American friends here.  Mostly we just caught up on our lives that we've missed out on in the intervening year since we've seen each other.  It was really nice to see a Korean friend.  Thus far, this program has very much been a bubble of hybrid American-Korean culture and to have someone totally outside of that bubble be around, was really cool.

They made a "Wall of Chin-up" to encourage us about our
language classes, and this was my note :)

This week, in language class, we had our last quiz and we're doing our final lessons.  I performed a 5 min speech in Korean, and I felt really dumb doing it too because when I practiced, I was able to perform it smoothly, but in my class, in front of my teacher, I just stumbled a lot.  I have definitely learned a lot in my language class, but, at the same time, I feel like my evaluation in my class is not an accurate reflection of my real ability because I can communicate passably about necessary things with my Korean friends in Korean, I just can't do it as a performance--> which includes speeches or tests.  Granted I do have a passing grade on my tests, but even that is just barely.  The real test of my skillz (yes, with a "z") will be when I get out there in the "real" world.  ^_^

We did talk about our homestays today, which was a good discussion, if a little repetitious.  I think whatever the composition of my family, we'll get along.  I'm really hoping my Korean abilities will be enough to get by talking about things there.  (what I said about with my friends more refers to eating or shopping or opinions I have).  I really want to learn more about Korean cooking, so hopefully my "Mom" will be willing to teach me : D.   They also talked about all kinds of things in terms of letting our families know where we're doing things and how to be tactful in Korean culture and how to figure who when it is okay to help to do chores like laundry or cleaning.  Also our contract stipulates that our families are not to request we tutor our host siblings, however there are clever ways to endear ourselves to our host parents without directly tutoring them, which we probably won't have time for anyway. Good to know the tricks.

My Roomy: Taekeum

This weekend I am planning on heading up to Seoul to reunite with one of my former Korean roommates for a day trip.  Still not sure what we'll do quite yet, but it's bound to be a good time.

Week 4: Done and Done

Here I am in the absolute middle of Week 4.  Can you believe its almost been a month??? Tomorrow will be a whole month Korea side (does that make sense the way "State side" does?)  Anyway, I have A LOT to report on, so without further ado.

So last weekend I went on a mini-trip with some other ETA's to, basically, a rented house just for us.  It was on the side of a small burbling stream (yes I used the word burbling and it was awesome).  I helped cook the samgyupsal so I didn't get to play by the stream as much as some of the others, but I checked it out.  Conclusion: it is pretty much the same as an American stream.  However, the view of the mountains is TOTALLY different.  I maintain, as I have for a year now, that you cannot see a view like that anywhere in the States.  We stayed overnight and came back in the morning.



In my last post I mentioned teaching practice through Camp Fulbright and over the weekend we were required to be part of the activities for the students.  So on Sunday I got up bright and early and helped draw a human sized sudoku puzzle on the floor of a classroom (with my own personal duct tape) and then manned a scavenger hunt station in which the students had to hold words and rearrange them to make a sentence.  The scavenger hunt activity was themed as CIA spy school and so for my station I wore my sunglasses and pretended to be a relatively lax training sergeant.  It was good fun, but by the end the kids were just totally worn out.  Later in the afternoon, the students did a very strange talent show, in which the teams were given a movie and they had to perform a skit.  Some of the movies were really hard and so even though I hadn't signed up to help run the event I helped one of the teams--their move was Inception, go figure, right?

Monday and Tuesday were pretty relaxed.  I took my Korean Language quiz Monday and I passed!! Yay! So my average is still passing.  Although, admittedly it is a little bit close to the border for comfort.  Apparently, last week our Korean teachers met with the orientation staff to discuss us and essentially evaluate our participation and progress in our class.  At lunch we were comparing marks and it turns out I got full marks in all categories and they said that they saw me improving a lot and appreciated my class participation :)  !!! I was soo happy!! In my class I have felt really far behind a lot and for them to say such positive things, I was so incredibly happy.

Today I had my second experience teaching and it went really well.  I taught on prepositions and it was kind of funny.  My first lesson was a little easy for my class and today the lesson was a little too hard.  So I think it was a little hard because maybe my directions weren't very clear, so that is something for me to work on.  On Friday I'm teaching about motivation to an advanced class.  I'm looking forward to it but I'm a little nervous too because the instructor told me and my partner today that we should model what we want them to do by giving our own motivational speech.  Oh man.

Friday is also going to be a big day because we will get our school placements!  So by the time I go to bed on Friday I will know where I'll be spending the next year! ^_^ Check y'all next week!