She does, he does, CUE SYNCHRONIZED DANCERS

Let's talk about Korean weddings.

Yesterday, my co-worker Connie got married. Instead of getting gifts, Koreans give money for weddings. As co-workers we are required to give money whether or not we go, but we are also somewhat required to go.

I was excited to go anyway, seeing a Korean wedding was actually something I came here hoping to attend. Connie looked gorgeous. Her dress was lovely and MASSIVE. We arrived and took a co-workers picture with her on this massive couch thing in a room with carpets and shiny beads and fancy lighting.

We then hung out in the reception hall area for a while before sitting in the bride section of the weddingy area. Lets talk about the weddingy area for a second. It was a long room with black walls. There were small lights in the walls that did a twinkling star sort of a thing. There were also flowy flowery light up pattern things, and mirrored stands with purple flowers on them. Down the center isle was more or less a glass case runway. Inside the runway were more lights and glass/mirror flowers. There were also what I thought of as wedding stewardesses whose job it was to direct guests, and help members of the wedding who were either older, respected, or wearing heels to high to move around by themselves.

I have been told (and now seen for myself) that the success of a wedding is determined by how many people show up. I have also been told that there are like four degrees of separation between the actual people getting married and some of the people who show up. Like families of business friends friends sort of thing. Because of this, there was constant talking throughout the entire ceremony. A guy sitting three rows ahead of us was on facebook on his phone for about half the vows.

The ceremony began with the mothers of the bride and groom coming to the front and lighting candles. They were wearing hanboks, which are traditional Korean dresses. They are super beautiful and it was cool to see them as part of the ceremony.

The fathers came in and sat down, and then the groom, followed by Connie in her glorious huge dress. There was some sort of pre-ambley speech thing, and then vows.

This is when things started to become interesting and incredibly foreign. A man (I assume a friend of the bride or grooms) sang them a song. He had a gorgeous voice. The catch? He was reading the lyrics of the song off his cell phone as he was singing.

Next, a big tray with a wedding cake on it was rolled out. And the couple cut the cake. WITH A FREAKING SWORD. Then four women (friends of the brides) did a choreographed dance to K-pop. Like, Brittney Spears type choreography. Everyone loved it! Our co-worker Sue was in it, and she told me today it took them six weeks to learn.

They started a dance to another song, this time with pom-poms, and the groom jumped out and danced with them. He had clearly learned it without Connie knowing, she was surprised and cracking up, that was pretty adorable.

This is all happening while people are talking.

After the ceremony was over we were told we had to be in a picture, so we waited while family members were in pictures, and got arranged and re-arranged for 10 minutes before the photographer snapped some shots.

I think I have mentioned before that the documentation of events is as, or more important than the event itself. Even during the ceremony a friend of Connie's would jump up to the alter where they were standing to fix her hair, or bring her crying tissue, or arrange her dress perfectly.

It was a really interesting cultural experience. I had a blast seeing how it all went. The space was amazing and very fancy, and it was definitely totally different from what I was expecting.

Afterwards there was a big buffet, which was great. Our new coworker came with us, and we got to know her and spent the rest of the day with her and our other foreign co-workers. (All great people).

Work lunch and catch up

I am back! Hello!

Well before I tell you about the work lunch, I'll do a quick catch up. Things are still going well. Teaching is good. We are coming to a strange part of the year. In January students re-enroll in the program. This makes things stressful for the school on several fronts. Obviously they need a certain number of students to keep the school afloat. Also, they rework the schedule. They test all of the older kids to decide who should progress to a more difficult class and who should stay at their level or level down. Our friends and co-workers Joel and Jessica leave at the end of December as well. The two of them are being replaced by only one person (Amelia, who seems great). So that calls for some rearranging class-wise as well. Although none of this changes my current schedule, you can definitely feel the strain of management freaking out. I'll be interested to see how it all works out in January, but there isn't much I can do about it now.

On a less ominous note, Christmas is coming! It's really strange to think of Christmas away from home. My family has gone to Pittsburgh to see my Mom's whole side of the family every year for a looooong time. I am the first to miss a Christmas (except for when my cousin got sick and destroyed Christmas, but don't worry, we rescheduled). It will be hard not to be there this year. Oddly, it helps me to think that our Christmas' won't be on the same day! The 25th comes to Korea a day before the US. But we have a big Christmas party to go to with friends. The lovely people we replaced left us a Christmas tree, and gifts have been seriously pouring in from Ben's and my family members. Our apartment is very festive and we have good people to celebrate with.

So now to yesterday. First of all, it was Ben and my 3 year anniversary. That's crazy. We had to go into school on a Saturday for an open house/information session thing the school does to try and get more students involved. Our job was to dress nicely and look American/Canadian/English. We also bowed at one point. Videos of some of our classes were taken ahead of time to show the kids' language progression. They were actually pretty adorable. After the presentation was over, the school took all the employees out to lunch at a duck shabu shabu place.

Lunch was a fun but strange experience. I found it to be kind of draining. Being the odd one out as far as fully understanding etiquette and Korean customs was a bit exhausting. The lunch was done as a sort of two in one holiday party/goodbye to Joel and Jessica. This is the second goodbye meal we've been to (the first was Johnny and Amanda's just a few days after we got here). Mr. Kim, the head of the school gives a speech thing, and then other people are asked to as well. All of the foreign teachers, including myself, stood up to say something to Joel and Jessica.

Then there were "In This Coming New Year" type speeches. I found the speeches given by the Korean staff to be bizarre (as did many of my foreign coworkers). I have found several times that speeches that have an uplifting "you guys are doing such good work" message always have a "but we have to do EVEN MORE" side to them. Also, there is some concern about the amount of money the school is making. In almost every speech given by management, there was a pretty clear message along the lines of "you guys are doing really good work. Please keep doing good work. The only way we can get more students is if we work harder." While I understand that teaching well and having the students be engaged and excited is very important, the idea that any teacher can do more than put their best energy into teaching to up enrollment is very strange to me. I consider it my job to teach the kids in my classes to the very best of my ability and with the best attitude I can. If I do a good enough job that the kids are happy and stay enrolled, or other kids and families become interested I guess that could count as DOING BETTER. But I'm not sure how much control I have over it.

Something to keep in mind (for you, reader, and probably for me too) is that these speeches were mostly given in Korean and then translated by our head teacher. So it's possible that some of the strange undertones came from being lost in translation. They were also all delivered in a very affectionate way that was clearly meant to be inspiring and motivational. Once again, cultural differences and the Korean work ethic have to be kept in mind.

It was a fun lunch despite the strangeness. There was good duck, and lots of chatting and laughing. Our head teacher Lynn had been pouring her heart and soul into the open house and was absolutely giddy when it was over. It was great to see her smiling and relaxed.

Another interesting note is about Korean drinking etiquette. It is very very common to have drinks at business dinners or lunches. The rules of this sort of business drinking are really complex and interesting. The top things to remember as they have been explained to me are: never let your bosses cup run dry, never fill your own glass, but be sure to fill the glasses of anyone around you who is drinking, face away from your boss when you drink, and when someone is refilling your drink hold your glass with two hands. (Actually taking and giving things to others with two hands applies to everything, not just booze. It's a respect thing I actually really like, it makes passing something less haphazard. It shows that you are putting bodily effort into taking or giving something to someone.) ANYWAY. Fortunately, because I am a female and foreign, people filling up the cups (mainly my boss) were less pour happy with mine then they were with the men.

 It was another interesting experience. Later that night Ben and I had a nice dinner out, and after getting incredibly lost and wandering for an hour and fifteen minutes looking for our meet up point, joined our friends downtown for a great night of dancing and singing (at a nori bong, which is karaoke where you get your own couchy room with your friends). Then there were glorious 5am kebabs, and sleep by 6. It was a great day.
Next weekend we are going to a Korean coworkers wedding. Korean wedding! I am psyched. I will most certainly have something to say about later!

Thanksgiving

We got an oven. Thank goodness. And we got it before Thanksgiving. Also thank goodness. And we got a box full of spices. Glorious. And a beer brewing kit! White Elephant IPA is soon to live in my home.

BUT! Thanksgiving!
So early on Ben and I decided we wanted to host Thanksgiving. We are big cooking people and we like having people over. We have hosted international Thanksgivings before so we figured we were good people for the job. We took care of the turkey and stuffing and did the rest potluck style.

The challenges: turkey. It's difficult to find turkey around here. There is a bar/restaurant downtown that caters to foreigners (and is run by foreigners) that sells holiday meat around the holidays. So for an arm and a leg we covered the turkey. 2. Bread. It's all puffy white bread here so Ben and I made bread. Fortunately Ben worked on a farm in Italy and made bread every Friday for 5 months. Convection oven. I love our convection oven, but it does take some getting used to and some recipe tweaking to use it. The turkey came out perfectly, the stuffing was a little dry in spots, but mostly pretty delicious.


We used veggies from the market and cooked for like six hours. We set up the apartment with all kinds of weird seating, different level tables, cheap table clothes, candles, and wine. But it looked awesome and we had a great turn out of people. It is pretty cool to be in a foreign country and have over a dozen people come over to celebrate a holiday with you. I am thankful indeed to have so many great friends who welcomed us so quickly.

Anyway, everyone brought AMAZING food. It took a lot of re-arranging just to fit everything. We all pigged out and then played cards against humanity (for those of you who don't know, this is the pg-13 version of apples to apples). There were tears of laughter involved. The last people left at 2:30 in the morning. It was a massive success.

As is proper, we have been living off the leftovers this week.
Christmas shopping has begun and we are looking forward to our next holiday in Gwangju.

Korean shopping culture shock, view out my window, and the art of dressing in ski gear to go to work

Hello there! Long time no information I'm afraid! That's because not a whole lot has happened that screams BLOG ABOUT ME! But I will give you a general update.

It has started to get chilly in Gwangju. There were a couple delightful weeks where I would look at the forecast here and see 60s and 70s and look at the forecast for Syracuse and see the oncoming tundra wasteland that is Syracuse winter. It was quite satisfying and I highly recommend it for any grad who has moved to a kinder climate than that of Syracuse. But it has started to get chilly so I'll bite my tongue. The awesome thing though (which I was actually told about before I came here) is that fall in Korea is really beautiful. It sort of happens overnight. One day it's 75 degrees and the trees are green and the next morning everything is yellow and red and it's 50 degrees. Apparently that's how all temperate weather in Korea comes in (and out). Abruptly. I have taken a few pictures out the back window of the apartment to give you an idea of the view we are working with. (These were taken about a week ago, so it's even more colorful now).

  Alright, so I also stuck a picture of our plants in there. But they are pretty great, huh? huh?
Also! Here is a video out the window of a bus to give you an idea of the area near downtown/the pretty tree business.

So briefly back to the weather, the strange thing is that the school doesn't turn up the heat in the building until a certain point. It's possible this is a legal thing (I know in the summer large spaces like grocery stores can't turn the ac up very high), Regardless it makes for interesting attire choices. Today I am wearing two pairs of tights, a shirt, a dress, and a wool sweater. Inevitably I will end up in the giant shawl thing which Amanda kindly left behind for me. It makes me look like a wizard.

Enough about that! On to the shopping tale. So Ben and I got paid on Wednesday after seven weeks of living off the money we brought with us. We did fine off of that, but it was pretty exciting to start filling in the gaps as far as kitchen supplies, house stuff, groceries we didn't need but wanted, AND PLANTS. Two other things we were really looking forward to investing in were a beer brewing kit (Korean beer is like Natty Lites sad cousin) and an oven. (Koreans do not bake much, and so do not consider an oven a necessity. Because so many foreigners do consider it a necessity and we are cooking people we decided to buy one that we will easily be able to sell on when we leave). We tried to buy one online at a store called GMarket, which is the Ebay of Korea. This did not work for us. Apparently sometimes it can be a bit faulty. It was for us. So in person stores it was! First we went to Home Plus, a big department store that is connected with Tesco, a department store in the UK. This makes finding certain things easier. Alas, their ovens were wildly expensive. We also couldn't find a good number of the things on our list. We decided despite the fact that we had been shopping for around two hours, that we wanted to get everything on our list and we would venture to Emart, another department store nearer to our house. We returned home, unpacked, and took the 20 minute walk to Emart. Both of us were oddly nervous as we headed to the ovens. And with good reason. Once again there were only five-ish ovens there and they were well out of our price range. Highly disappointing. It was at this time that I started to feel exasperated. The phrase "come on, Korea" was said a couple times. It was only after we failed to find the correct (and much needed) vacuum bags for our vacuum, and a freaking pot for less then 60 dollars that I really lost it. Thus far it is the first time I have noticeably felt culture shock. There have been plenty of instances where I have noted cultural differences, or been told about Korean beliefs or customs that are greatly different from American ones. This does not rattle me. But having a good number of things that we need, or have been really looking forward to getting and being totally incapable of getting them was pretty daunting.

Luckily, we managed to figure out the oven purchasing online. Now we are just crossing our fingers that it comes before Thanksgiving (which we are hosting). So long story short, everything worked out, but I had my first noticeable and distressing culture shock experience! Still having a blast and learning a lot. Now off to write some tests! Toodles.

Halloween ECC Style

So this will not be a writing heavy post. But brief Halloween update:
We celebrated Halloween with the kids today. We were required to dress up, and led the kids in various party activities. We trick-or-treated from classroom to classroom, gave out candy, played pin the tail on the donkey (I was the donkey artist, that's goin on the ole CV), and did some trivia games. There were also pictures of us posted for the kids to vote with stickers on the best costume. We found out a week before the day that there would be cash prizes which was unfortunate because I would have been MUCH more elaborate had I known that. FORTUNATELY Ben had decided to be Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I was his makeup person and it turned out pretty awesome, so we won grocery money! Huzzah! Without further ado, here are the pictures of me and some of my kids and Ben's sweet award-winning costume!

Busan! Our first adventure out of Gwangju

This weekend we ventured to Busan! We went with the hope of getting to the fireworks festival, but I will tell you up front, no fireworks were seen. It's ok though! We had an awesome time.

Our friend Chelsea was the one who suggested we go. We aren't getting paid till the second weekend in November, so we are doing our best to be frugal, but with the promise of free camping and cheap bus tickets we signed on. On Friday's the school day ends at 10. We decided that not having a super clear idea of the plan it was best not to try and negotiate Busan in the dark. So Friday night we picked up all the camping gear from Chelsea's place, and she crashed on our extra bed so we could make an obscenely early start on Saturday morning.

The thing we learned from this trip is: book your freaking bus tickets. Apparently for heavily traveled routes like Gwangju to Seoul it is super easy to show up and end up on the next bus. Not so for Busan. We got to the terminal at 6 and couldn't leave till 8:30. But we played card games on the floor while simultaneously providing well dressed Koreans with entertainment. We got on the bus and I passed out for the next four hours and woke up in Busan!

 So Korea is basically all mountains. And Busan is on the coast. The combination of mountains and super blue ocean is really stunning. We took a subway to the main beach to figure out our next move and admire the view. After finding a hotline to get Busan info, we discovered that Songjeon was the only beach we were allowed to camp on. We had actually figured that was the case ahead of time, but wanted to check if we could be any closer. We jumped in a cab and scouted out an excellent beach camping spot. Once we were all set up we waited for Luke, Chelsea's boyfriend who was coming from Seoul. We did a bit of walking around and exploring until he arrived. When he did we went to an AWESOME restaurant. The building was modeled after an old Korean turtle battleship which apparently kicked ass many moons ago. The cuisine was basically the Vietnamese take on shabu shabu. Again you get the hot broth, meat, noodles and rice, but this time there were like 8 piles of fresh veggies and rice paper to wrap all the deliciousness in to eat it!

 After that we grabbed beer to sit with on the beach! We talked, played games, put our toes in the water. We decided we didn't want to spend the money on a cab to and from the inevitably packed beach, and looking on the map figured we'd be able to see the fireworks. We moved to a dock nearby in the hopes that our view would be a little better. But come 8:00 we didn't see or hear anything. We were a little bummed, but pretty happy to be mellowed out with all our camping stuff on a gorgeous beach. 

The next morning we cook a WHOLE LOTTA meat on a little mini stovey thing that Chelsea brought. We got coffee in an awesome shop overlooking the beach, and then headed to the bus station. We got there at two in the afternoon, only to discover the next available bus was at 6:40. Needless to say it was a bummer and a long wait, BUT WE LEARNED OUR LESSON.
It was a great first trip out of Gwangju and we definitely want to go back.

Twas quite the weekend!

Alright everyone! I had an excellent and weird experience filled weekend so I figured I'd fill you in. On Friday Ben and I were invited to attend a field trip with the younger kids at ECC. So instead of coming in at noon, we came in at 9:30 to get on buses with a bunch of adorable Korean kids. We bused to Tamyang about 45 minutes away. Tamyang is known for its bamboo forests. We hustled the kids through a bamboo museum before getting back on the bus to go check out the actual forests. We were provided with an AWESOME lunch by parents of one of the students. After that we walked the kids up a little hill to have free time. I should say "free time". The head teacher announced it was time to run around and play with the kids, but then they were ushered from one spot to another to take pictures with their teachers. They did get to do a little running around and bubble blowing though. Apparently for every school trip the school is expected to put out a photo album for parents. This leads to a lot of staged fun. We were then led in K-Pop group dancing. Let me tell you, forty 4-6 year olds dancing in sync to Korean pop music is hysterical....especially when you add six foreigner teachers. We headed home shortly after that. On the bus ride home the child who I am certain is the most adorable human person played with my hands and fingernails the whole way. It made for a long day afterwards because I had six hours of class after a morning full of little kids, but it was fun.

So Saturday night Ben and I met up with our friends Nate, Cheryl, Jack, Kezia and Kat to go bowling. Bowling is the same in Korea except for the wildly enthusiastic (and sometimes chanting) Korean men in the next lane. After that we went to Ashely which is an all you can eat all (the wine) you can drink Western buffet. Needless to say it was delightful to indulge in salmon, mac and cheese, pizza, cheese cake, and presecco (honesty note: there were like 15 more items that made their way across my plate) . After we met up with Joel and Jessica and played darts downtown and did a bit o' dancing.

SUNDAY! Lemme tell you about Sunday. We went to a jimjilbong. This is a Korean bathhouse and something that the west has messed up hard on. We need some of these suckers. So you go...and pay FIVE DOLLARS to have access to multiple hot tubs, a warm jet pool with heavy duty jets to massage....well, all of you....a cold pool, steam rooms and a sauna room. So we went with a big ole group of us and obviously split up by gender to spend the afternoon pampering ourselves. You can also pay an extra 20 bucks to have an older Korean lady scrub every freaking particle of dead skin off your body. We are talking cups of dead skin all around you when she is done. I did this. I have sweet baby skin now. Afterwards we went out for Indian food and then knocked out (after the most absurd bus ride of my life, the bus drivers here should be institutionalized). ANYWAY! it was an awesome weekend. More to come my pretties.

Observations about Korea

Now that I have been here over a month I will post some things I have found interesting.

• Koreans really look out for each other. It is a society that has historically been through a lot of poo, and so there is a huge sense of Koreans looking out for Koreans. For this reason it is an incredibly safe place. You can leave your iPhone on a table, leave, come back, and it will still be there. (Ben did it by accident so I have proof). The crime rate here is one of the lowest in the world. I could safely walk home alone at 4am. 
• Korean food is the bomb if you are into spicy food, meat, and seafood. So it's all working very well for me. 
• There is a big culture of respect here. Bowing is a thing! I like bowing. If I am walking down the street and I look at a kid long enough they will bow. And if I incline my head to an older Korean walking down the street they will respond in the same way. I have also noticed they get really psyched if I do. Ben and I have actually cracked up walking down the street before because a stoney faced pissed off looking Korean will end up BEAMING when you give them a wee little bow. It may be a sort of "oh, wow, foreigner showing respect" type deal. I dunno but I'm into. MUTUAL RESPECT ALL AROUND THAT WE SHOW WITH OUR HEADS! 
• Shopping is scary. There are always people in the grocery stores and if you start to show any interest in a product they bamboozle you in Korean. Ah well. 
• The foreigner community is pretty awesome. I have been totally floored by how many people have come back and come back and come back. There are people who have been here anywhere from 2-10 years. I was invited to attend a girls night (which made me a little nervous ahead of time). I told Ben that if there was excessive high pitched talking and squeeking he would have to come save me. But there was not! There was lots of laughing and talking and dancing and I have plans with like half of the ladies I met. 
• Korean kids are worked to the bone. Which can make them difficult to teach
• Name brands and image are VERY important to Koreans. People will "work" insanely long days to show their importance and diligence. Even if they are just sitting around the image has to be maintained. Brand names and fancy expensive equipment are important. Physical beauty is important (Korea is number for one plastic surgery in the world). 
• If you are trying, people are very friendly. Like if we go to the market and try t learn the words for things, and try and talk to the sales people they are great. And the Korean teachers at our school are lovely too. As long as you are good about communication they are excited and willing to help and collaborate. 

Warggg! the class bell is going off. TTFN (ta ta for now) 

I taught I taught!

Following our Thursday mountain triumph Ben and I had our first full on day of teaching. Fridays are long days, which means the school day goes from 2:50pm to 10:00pm. Unfortunately we have to come in at noon for our first month, so its a reeeeally long day for us. I was pretty nervous, but it went well for the most part. The class times change from 50 minutes, to 45 minutes, to 40 minutes, which completely flustered me. Each class also has different material so I am currently living in perpetual fear that I will completely fail to give one class the correct test or book or something. (I am told this goes away after the first month).

As with any teaching/child related experience, it really all depends on the specific class. I had some that were a lot better then others. My favorite class was with only three kids. They are fairly advanced but also really eager. Because Korean kids work SO HARD it is common for the older kids to check out and become less interested the longer they have been at ECC, so it was nice to be with students who stayed on topic and got through the material. The hardest class I had was actually around the same age group and level as the three kids, but there were like 10 of them. I had to get through about 9 pages of the book with them and Amanda warned me that they are just a rude bunch. They spoke Korean to each other through the whole class (this is forbidden since its English language learning) and I felt crappy about it because having to power through material on my first day with them left no time for anything fun, and did not make for a good first impression. BUT! There is plenty of time and I am hoping to have good times with all of my classes. Today will be my second full day of teaching. We will see how that goes.

And then the foreigners conquered the mountain!

Well hello! I shall speak to you of the newest Korean developments. This past Thursday was a Korean national holiday. So myself, Ben, and our new coupley friends Kezia and Jack, and Cheryl and Nate decided to hike up Mount Mudeungsan. We met at the bus stop at 10, and the six of us plus every expensive gear wearing, hiking pole toting Korean in all of South Korea headed to the mountain. At the bottom of the mountain it was so crowded we were basically hiking in single file. However by the time we got to the more challenging part of the hike the people thinned out a bunch and we were able to enjoy/struggle through with much more personal space. We ended up taking a bit of a circuitous route which resulted in our climb taking about 4.5 hours up, but also resulted in some really incredible views.

The photos really don't do it justice. From most spots you could see easily 25-30 other mountains as well as ALL of Gwangju.

The hike down was a little rough. I think about half an hour in we were all just ready to be at the bottom. But we returned victorious! After a six and half hour hike we were all pretty pooped. We returned to our various apartments to recuperate for an hour before reconvening to eat Korea barbeque.

Korean barbeque is a magical thing. You sit at a table with a grill in the middle of it. The waitress brings out a million like side dishes for you to munch on, and then sets coals into the grill. You then select a type of meat to grill. They bring the meat marinated and raw on a big ole plate with mushrooms and garlic to plop on there as well. Then you grill it all up right at your table. When the meat is ready to cut it (yes with scissors) into little pieces. You wrap the little pieces in lettuce leaves, and some of the other grilled deliciousness and some magical sauce stuff they give you and then shove it all into your face. Its amazing. So that is the tale of my Thursday off.

Its all about the food

I know why you are reading this blog. It’s because you want me to tell you about Korean food. And now that you have been patient and read through some stuff about my life here I will oblige you. Let’s talk about ordering food. It is dirt cheap people. Dirt cheap. They bring the food to you in regular restaurant plates and bowls and when you’re done you leave them outside your door and they come and take them away. So I have ordered bibimbap, which is rice with cut up veggies, sometimes ground pork, and an egg on top of it. You add sesame oil and chili paste to it and mix it all together to make an insanely delicious fried-rice-on-crack type deal. Then there is kimbap. Which is essentially Korean sushi. Like sushi you can order it based off of what the main meat or veggie inside is. Unlike sushi it has a bunch of other stuff that gets rolled into it. It costs like 2.50 a roll. And we are talking like 12 pieces in a roll. Two is a large meal. And now I will tell you about the market. It goes for about four blocks and has a whole lot of delicious food. Amanda introduced us to the butcher and produce people there that she likes. The veggies are all from small farms in the area and they are absolutely amazing. And dirt cheap. We bought eggplants, peppers, onions, garlic, and peaches. When we asked from the eggplants she told us the price for a kilo and we thought it was the price for one. A kilo was 3 won. We had 9 eggplants. I kid you not. And the garlic was 5 won a kilo. We have probably fifty cloves of garlic. Not kidding. We are excited to go back and get all sorts of things, crab, fish, beef, veggies, Korean pears. Its all pretty awesome. Ciao for now, and I will inform the interwebs when we have a connection at home.

Makin' friends, learnin' stuff, shabu shabu

It’s been one week! Wow. We don’t have the interwebs in the apartment they have us in until we move into Johnny and Amanda’s place, so my communication has been limited. But hopefully we will be able to make that move by next weekend. As for what has happened this past week, phooowf! I shall tell you. This week Ben and I shadowed Amanda and Johnny for all their classes. It’s a training period, so it has been a lot of information, and a lot of me asking Amanda one million questions. When she leaves I will be taking over about 12 classes. They range in size from three kids to thirteen kids. They are divided by level but the age range in each class is only about two years. But I am teaching from 7 to about 15 year olds. The most confusing thing is the curriculum. There are textbooks, workbooks, and supplementary material. For me the biggest challenge has been getting my head around what classes use what books and how often and all that jazz. But its pretty exciting stuff! I won’t actually teach a class until this Friday, but I have lead games in the classrooms, given speaking tests, and been introduced to most of the kids I will be teaching. They seem fun. Because the Korean school system is so hardcore (students attend regular school 8-2ish, and then often go to up six afterschool Hagwons like the ECC where I work) they are pretty fried and don’t get a lot of social time. This makes classroom management a little more difficult then I expected it would be. But I won’t really know how that’s going to go for me until I am in control of the classroom as opposed to watching someone else’s classroom. This Saturday we were required to go to the once a year training seminar that happened to fall the weekend after we got here. I wasn’t wildly pleased about that, but the information was actually really helpful and the guy who was presenting had been a teacher and had a lot of really good advice. The other teachers at are school are all really fun people! There are three other foreign couples (excluding Johnny and Amanda who leave Thursday). We have been taken out to fried chicken (apparently its a thing) by Joel and Jessica who have been at the school for over a year. And we spent a lot of time with the other two couples last night but I will get to that. There is also a large staff of Korean teachers, who seem like very nice people and who we will work pretty closely with as they teach our students either before or after the foreign teachers to deal with phonics and grammar. Alright, so before we left we received an invitation from Dan, who works with the recruiting agency thing, to go out to dinner with all of the new teachers in Gwangju. So last night we went to the downtown area with Cheryl and Nathaniel to have shabu shabu. WOW BOY, let me tell you about shabu shabu. You take your shoes off as soon as you walk into the restaruant, and you sit at low tables on the floor. Built into each table is a burner with a big ole pot on it. In the pot is a spicy broth that gets heated up once you are seated. They bring out a plate of giant mushrooms, srouts, cilantro, and a bunch of other stuff and that goes in and cooks. Then they bring out a plate of thin sliced beef that goes into the broth and cooks. AND THEN YOU EAT IT TILL YOU EXPLODE. Well, actually, once you have eaten that down to the appropriate size they bring out fat delicious noodles that go into the pot. Then they bring out rice. It was delicious. Whilst we were at dinner we made friends! We sat across from a couple who had both been in Korea for a couple years before. We actually started talking because we are going to buy a phone from Chelsea. Her boyfriend Luke works waaaaay north a couple miles from the DMZ but she lives a couple minutes from us. We talked with them for all of dinner. Turns out they have similarly nerdy interests to us and there was much talk of Doctor Who and Firefly. Long story short, Chelsea is coming over tonight to drink wine with us and play dominion. We are making friends! Bahaha. It also didn’t take us long to realize we are really lucky as far as the foreign staff of our school goes. There’s more of us then is usual, and we ended up clicking really well with everyone we came with! Besides Cheryl and Nathaniel there is Kezia and Jack. They met and started dating last year while both working at different schools in Gwangju. The six of us ended up spending the rest of the evening together. We had a LOT of fun with them. We went to two other bars with them and met a friend of Kezia’s named Kat who is really delightful as well. She is on her second year back too. There was pool playing, beer drinking, dancing, all sorts of fun stuff. We both came back to the apartment feeling really really good about getting to know the people who are here with us! We also all arrived within two months of each other so we are all going to be here pretty much the same time! It’s exciting stuff. There is a big expat community here and it seems to be good people.

First day!

School day number one was interesting. After 25 hours of travel jumping into a full day (that starts at 9pm according to your body clock) is tough cookies. We went to the school at 10 am to go to the hospital to do our medical check. We were whisked through about five different departments to do blood tests, x-rays, vision checks, etc. This process is required to receive your alien registration card. We then returned to the school and met Lynn, the director of all the teaching staff. She was very kind, and showed us around and set us up with some packets to start familiarizing ourselves with the rules of teaching, lesson writing, classroom behavior expected of the kids, etc.

Shoulda brought some sleeping pills.

Hello! Happy blogging to ya. This is my attempt to fill you all in about my daily goings on, and to catalog this crazy adventure of living and working in Korea. So lets talk travel! Fourteen hours on a plane is not awesome, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting. Because of the time of day we left, it was light outside for the full trip. After they served the plane meal (Ben and I both opted to get the Korean meal of bibimbap and kimchi, YUM) they shut all the window shades and turned off the lights. I think they wanted us to sleep. I wanted me to sleep, but alas, it was many movies and a half hour nap for me. Once we landed in Korea we got our stuff and did a quick run through customs. We then had to locate the bus to Gwangju. This wasn’t too difficult and the transition from airport to bus was quick. Our bus driver was a freaking crazy person (apparently this is standard for Korean drivers) but we both slept some. Once we arrived in Gwangju, we were picked up by Amanda (one of the teachers we are replacing) and Will (the do-it-all guy for the school). They brought us to the temporary apartment we will be staying in until we take over Amanda and Johnny’s place once they move out. They also gave us some snacks and information for heading to the school the following morning. We crashed at midnight Korean time.