Spring Time

Korea is getting much warmer. I can actually stand to be outside at night. It's nice to finally feel like you have a full day to do what you want. Before I would hate to get up in the mornings. I'd rush to the teachers room where it was warm and rush back and forth from class because it was cold in the hallways. And then I'd rush back to my house to be warm again afterschool. It was real struggle to go back out after that. But now....its pretty warm.



I wake up early to go for a run. Go biking by the river in the evenings. I walk around in the evenings and go to dinner. It's so much easier with a little warmth. Its still a little chilly but its ok. I can't wait until the real heatwaves hit. I hear that the summers are insane here with crazy high humidity. I can't wait to see what its like. The Koreans don't sweat or smell the way us foreigners so its going to be a funny sight. I wonder how bad it will be?

New Semester

I've been back to teaching after the winter break for almost 3 weeks now. This semester is a lot more comfortable than the last. I think it has a lot to do with me having more experience with the teaching style and subject matter they deal with here. Over the winter I got to know some students better and understand their level of maturity more. I still have some classes that are a hassle to teach just because the teachers have trouble controlling them. I've decided to just teach and not be stressed out about certain things. There still have been some trying times though.

A friend of mine told me that for some reason on after being here for 6 months people go through a phase of having a really strong urge to go back home. I didn't understand really since "at 4 months you already know how you feel about Korea." But just before my sixth month I had 2 weeks where I really just didn't think I was going to make it through this. I absolutely hated everything about this place and was wondering how to not be miserable for my last six months. I really really wanted to leave. I just grew tired of what I saw as "nonsense." I now understand what she meant.

I'm glad to say that it has passed because it was really bad. I don't know if it was the constant gloomy weather. The sky is only blue maybe twice a week and that's the only sunshine we get here. Even then its overcast and still grayish. Maybe that got to me. The weather is warmer and I can actually stand to be outside at night. Its getting better.

Hola Yola!!!

I shoulda posted this one so long ago but I was away. My friend from back home is now teaching in Seoul. I can't even believe she's here. I remember when she told me that she would come but I wasn't sure about it. It is really good to have someone from home out here with you. In the beginning, although I met friends, the friendships of course weren't as close or intimate as the friendships that had been built over the years.

She loves the Spanish language and is kinda hating Korea right now so I hope she doesn't dip out on me. Its been 6 weeks and I have yet to see her though...?? I tried and tried to meet up but so far it hasn't worked out. Maybe this week I'll get to see her. We have classes for 4 days this week and then go back on winter break (ridiculous I know). The Korean public school makes no sense to me. But basically I go back on real vacation this time until the beginning of March. Hopefully I'll get out of the country again.

I'm back....

Sooo....Its been like 2 months since I last posted anything on my page. This is mostly because right after Christmas I got pretty ill and winter vacation started at the same time. I had to teach "Winter Camp" classes from January until the beginning of February. The classes were all day. I actually taught more than I do during the normal school year 8:40-4pm pretty much non-stop with no break. Although it was tiring it was really nice. I prefer it to the normal school year because the classes are just too big.
During winter camp I had 8-16 students per class plus taught with a co-teacher. It was fun, I got to know my students individually and they even got hooked on this Korean drama "F4" which stands for "Flower Four" I think the original Japanese version of the show was called "Flowers better than Men". The scenario of the show is that there are 4 extremely wealthy guys that go to something like a Beverly Hills High School with all the rich kids. Then there's a girl who is poor that the school took in. She's not beautiful or smart or wealthy but is opinionated and "strong"...but not really (Korean culture). The two of the four "F4" are all in love with her and all of the rich girls are jealous. All in all its pretty cheesy but I like it.
During the winter session I had my students do a role play about being a college student and looking for an apartment that close to their University. It was set up just like a real scenario, you call the owner's and ask questions about location, size, facilities etc. So I thought it would be great practice for them to actually call to the U.S. I brought my laptop into class and we used my skype to call people off of craigslist. It was hilarious and the students couldn't believe that they were actually going to talk to Americans in class. I'll post the video I recorded of it. It was a really good idea.

I’m at work on Christmas Eve with a headache. I didn’t even teach today…which begs the question why did I have to come? I didn’t teach yesterday either. My students had more exams. I think I should’ve been able to start my vacation early. Even on Monday I only taught one class for some reason??? My head hurts too much to think about why that is though. Anywho I’m bored to death and the fact that I skipped lunch probably doesn’t make the situation any better. Ooooh before I forget….I got some great news today!! For winter camp…which I was kinda dreading, I found out that I only have to teach about 12 students at a time. Hooray! Also one of the two classes I’m required to teach will consist of TWO, count ‘em TWO English teachers i.e. ADULTS. Thank goodness….a break from children and more mature subject matter too.
I can’t wait to leave town for Christmas tomorrow…Although it doesn’t feel like the holidays at all it will be a welcomed break. I’m still deciding if I wanna do an impromptu trip to Thailand. I saw some other peoples pictures and seeing as how I am soooo easily enticed its looking like a great idea.
I had teacher training last week for about 4 days. It was really good to have and also quite a bit educational with the information presented on Korean culture. It’s really amazing, every week I learn something even more shocking than what I learned the week before. Whew when’s it gonna slow down? I think I’ll start a section on my blog solely dedicated to Korean lifestyles…I need to think of a catchy title for it though.
Well I guess that's all for now. Happy Holidays Everyone.

A weekend in Jinju

I haven't spent a weekend in Jinju since my third week in Korea. I think I just felt so miserable and isolated from the rest of the world here that I just wanted to get out any chance that I got. So I was always out of town on the weekends and it was getting exhausting. This past weekend I decided to stay here and check out my city.

I had a really nice dinner with the female teachers from the school. We were celebrating because one of the teachers will be retiring soon so we had a dinner in her honor. After dinner we went to a really nice coffee shop in town called the Coffee Flower. If I ever make a list a things to do here in Jinju that place will definitely make the list, its great. We had the upstairs reserved for us and it was really cool because its cozy like a house and there were several different rooms to sit in. They make these really delicious waffles with fresh fruit and ice cream. It's great.

The younger teachers left early to say goodbye to the handsome ethics teacher that was leaving. It was supposed to be a simple goodbye but someone got the idea to go out drinking too. So went to a bar and drank and played drinking games and took pictures until it was really late. And then decided to go bowling. I was tipsy and sleepy and we still had class in the morning. Note: In my last entry I wrote about how long my week was and there were all these exciting things going on this week...this is part of it. I'll get to the weekend in a second).

Once we finally said our goodbyes I laughed so hard because instead of giving hugs and kisses like people in other parts of the world, they just shook hands! Wow! Who does that? I just laughed and they looked at me like I was crazy but the feeling was mutual. I love the teachers at my school though they're great.

So for the weekend I started out just hanging out with friends downtown and listening to one of their stories about how she wanted to leave her hagwon because she felt so mistreated. After listening to them talk about their situations I appreciated my school so much. It gets stressful every now and then but at least I've never had anyone try to take my passport or get angry because I got sick or upset that I went out even though I was sick and blame me for students quiting the school. Whew...thank goodness.

On Saturday morning I met with the male teachers and my "representative" her English name is Dana...funny story. I'll tell it later. But she translates to the non-English speaking teachers for me and helps me out with just about everything. Everyone always jokes that she's my secretary. She was kinda forced to go on this long hike because none of the other teachers speak English and they said she needed to translate. I kinda felt bad. The hike was great though. It was a really beautiful site surrounded by the ocean and huge rolling green hills. The day was very overcast so you couldn't even distinguish the sky from the ocean. There were so many boats and fisherman out in the distance too. It was a very nice site. The hike also went well because that handsome teacher that left the school came back into town to join us for the hike. That was a pleasant 8 am surprise!

We had lunch on the mountain and I was pretty much forced to try some kind of disgusting raw fish. It was really ugly and brown with silver skin and tasted horrible. I tried to smother it with as much kimchi, veggies and sauce as I could but it didn't help. I was pretty much yelling at someone to pour me some water so I could wash it down. It wasn't quite a yell though since I had a mouth full of food and was trying my hardest to stay calm and respectful...that's big in Korea. They guys laughed so much because I looked like I was gonna loose it.

Later that night there was a Christmas party at one of my friends homes. It was really good to go there and eat and relax with friends. We tried to go to Nora Bong later in the night but she's in a small town so no luck with that. We ended up in a bar drinking some beer and being "loud" foreigners.

On Sunday I was super excited because it was Kimchi day at my co-teachers house! I got up early and went over to have breakfast before we started to make kimchi. It was so much more work than I thought it would be. Around this time of year all of the women make a years supply of kimchi for their families. Sometimes groups of women will get together to make enough for all of their families. They were not as excited as I was since this is a mandatory thing they'll be doing every year for years to come. I thought that you just boiled the cabbage and blended together some seasoning and spices then mixed it all together and called it a day. That's not exactly how it works out.

When I arrived there were two huge red tubs filled with this red paste and Mrs. Im's mother-in-law, her friend and her maid were all there to help out. They kept mixing so many ingredients into the mix. It was garlic, some kind of seeds, whole salted and boiled shrimp chopped up, some kind of grey stuff and bottles of brown liquid and peppers. I mean it was like massive amounts of just "stuff" going into the mix. We had on gloves and mixed these two huge bowls of stuff with our hands. Once we finished mixing we got the heads of boiled cabbage out, cut them into quarters and opened them one leaf at a time smearing the kimchi sauce on them and then packing each piece of cabbage into a container. There was soooo so so much cabbage to do this with. It was very interesting though watching the process kind of turned me off. I just had to get passed it though because we had that kimchi for lunch later on that day.

All in all I have come to the conclusion that Jinju is not such a bad city after all. I'm starting to feel more comfortable here and the teachers at my school actually do know how to have a little fun.

Wow it's been a while since I've done a post. I've been pretty busy having a little fun in Korea. So last week was a pretty busy one for me. Lets see...my second graders were having exams so on Mon and Tues I had no classes to teach. The teachers wanted to give them a little break so we watched movies for class. It kinda sucked on my end because I taught about five classes from Wednesday through Friday so I watched the same 45 min of Journey to the Center of the Earth over and over again. My students loved it though, and so did I. Fantasy movies are really big here in Korea.

On Wednesday I had the last class for my English Conversation students and we had planned to watch a movie together....so yeah lots of movies for me. When I got home I didn't even want to see a t.v. or laptop. I just wanted to read or close my eyes and not look at anything.

Later on when I got home some of the younger teachers from school called and told me that they were hanging out because it was leaving soon. I was so sad because he was so handsome and really great guy. So I don't have anyone to look forward to seeing when I go to work these days....tragic. Especially since Korean guys are usually pretty shy/mellow but he was a good flirt. I don't speak korean and he doesn't speak english but somehow we managed to speak. Well, lets get back to the subject. I didn't feel like going to nora bong so I stayed home.

Thursday all of the teachers got together and had a really nice lunch to celebrate the students finishing their exams. It was at Japanese restaurant. The food was beautiful and strange and largely un-edible by me. I had to order a second round of orange chicken for myself. I had some huge snail looking animal that was chewy, it was alright I could do it again if necessary. I also finally tried this raw oyster thing. It was also alright I may have enjoyed had been more drunk and not so analytical of the texture. Everything, if you don't already know was raw of course. There were these small crabs that looked so good so I made sure to grab one of those. Had I been less hungry and halfway thinking I would have known that they were raw as well. But no I just bit into it and got a mouth full of gushy nastiness. That, I will never do again. Fool me once....There were also a bowl of snails and some kind of really odd sea slugs, I think that's what they are. But they eat them raw dipped in some sauce. I don't even wish I were adventurous enough to try that. I've seen them in the sea food store and they do not look at all appetizing. It was a really good experience and I enjoyed my day there. Oh I must add that after lunch we were served some very delicious Korean style tea. It was very Cinnamony and sweet. Quite tasty in fact.

Afterwards we went hiking which is quite different in Korea. They have stairs almost all the way to the top. It's exhausting but the view is great from the top. I like hiking with the school because afterwards it kind of a tradition to sit down in this huge tent at the bottom and drink rice wine and have some snacks. The older male teachers always want me to sit with them and chat and drink. They are very funny and some kinda flirty so I sit next to the ones that have their sanity. Some teachers wanted to go to a movie after hiking but I had made plans to meet with a friend instead. I felt terrible because we had kept planning to meet and I kept putting it off. I'm glad I finally followed through because she's a really great friend to have. Lots of energy and knowledge about korean culture since she's been here for a while. I love that she can give me the scoop on so many things.