All Work and No Play

Well, June is wrapping up quickly, but not easily. For the months of June and July, our boss informed us that we would have to work weekends; YES, Saturdays AND Sundays! I don't like that at all. So far, I worked one Sunday at home for three hours, but this past weekend I worked seven hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday.

There is reason as to why we have to work so many hours. When it's my teachers' and mine summer vacation, our students will participate in a summer camp in Seoul, where they compete by performing skits and reading speeches. The only problem is is that US teachers have to write the scripts and skits. LAME. So the students came in this past weekend to practice and we are there to help with pronunciation. It's hard work, and I do like it, but not on the weekends.

Another reason we are not too happy right now is because the dates for our summer vacation have not been decided. We were to find out in April, and when April finished she said May. And when May finished, she said June. Now that June is almost done, we gave up on asking her. She said originally that it would be the first two weeks in August, so that's what I'm planning. Of course, I can't book any flights yet, because that would turn into a huge mess. BUT, I can tell you I am planning about five days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the rest of my vacation in Bali, Indonesia. Our boss said we would get between 11 and 14 days. I hope it's 14.

We have been teaching phonics since May, so that is getting old too. It's hard to think of new activities to keep the kids entertained. They do pretty well though. We covered all the letters, A-Z, did all the vowels and both the long vowel and short vowel sound and now I am working on -th, -sh and -ch. Those sounds are pretty hard for them so I will have to come up with something.

It's been raining for about eight days now; apparently South Korea has a monsoon season and I am stuck in the middle of it. It's not too bad yet, but I guess the rain comes down harder in the late summer. I hope I don't have to learn how to use a canoe. I live close to the river, so I could take my canoe in to work instead of walking. That could be interesting.

Well, that's all for now. I am surviving, and hopefully I will have my dates for summer vacation soon, so that will give me something to look forward to!

I'm the Only One with Blonde Hair

Last night was another one of my many Korean adventures: getting my haircut. Even something as simple as that in Inje can be a challenge. The place I go the hairdresser doesn't speak English. I have been to him three or four times, so he knows how to cut my hair.

The first couple times, he cut my hair like a 13-year old Korean kid, but this one looks better. I hope my features don't resemble a 13-year old Korean kid. He also doesn't speak English, so I have to communicate to him like I do my 9-year old students: hand motions, noises & sounds and the few Korean words I know. Then later, I thought I could just bring in a picture of myself with the haircut I like, but that would be too easy.

I think another reason why I always go to this guy is because he looks like a Korean John Lennon. I'm not kidding. He is one of the few Koreans that has facial hair; just a small goatee, nothing fancy. But he also has these round glasses that are slightly tinted. His hair is longer and touches his shoulders. It's unreal.

AND, the best part...the haircut is under 10,000 won (just over $9). I don't think you can find that anywhere in The States anymore.

So going back to the title of this blog post, after getting my haircut, I look on the floor and I truly have blonde hair..especially in Korea.

Lame, but simple story.

대전에있는 주말 - Daejeon, South Korea

This past Monday was Korea's Memorial Day, so we had a three-day weekend. It was awesome and a much needed break. Things have been going great at school, but repeating phonic sound all day long is not the most rewarding thing. I feel like I felt when I took my first Spanish class; a foreigner yelling at me in a different language..I get it.



But since we had a long weekend, a friend of mine from Inje was going to visit his friend in Daejeon (Day-djan, -dj like the /J/ sound in the word 'judge') a five-and-a-half hour long bus ride. Not the best bus ride, but Daejeon was fun. I don't like to quote Wikipedia often, but according to them, Daejeon is the fifth largest city in Korea with a population of almost 1.5 million. It has it's own metro system.



The second we boarded the bus in Inje, my friends says to me, "oh, I don't have a phone, so I don't know how to get hold of my friend was we get there." I thought, 'oh great, I know exactly how this trip is going to end." But we ran into little things like that the whole time, and that's what makes traveling exciting.



So we had to call another one of our friends from Inje, because she had this guy's phone number in Daejeon. So once I got his phone number, I saved it in my phone. No problem. So once we arrived, we met up with the guy from Daejeon and we boarded the subway, but my friend from Inje had trouble getting through; his card wasn't scanning. So we called someone over to help. Then my friend looked down and noticed that his name was on it. Usually those cards don't have your name on it, so he finally realized that he was trying to use his bank card to get through the metro. Needless to say, I laughed really hard. Then we went to a popular shopping part of Daejeon and looked around a little. We also got something to eat.



After that, we went to our friend's apartment. It was very nice. Most of the foreigner apartments are nice, so that's a good thing. After getting settled for a while, we went out for the night. We went to one bar and played pool. Daejeon was a fun city with lots of buildings and lights to look at at night, but the streets are really dirty.



The next morning, we woke up and walked around the city. We were gone most of the afternoon. We walked and saw some tall buildings (which you don't find in Inje), we went to Expo Park and to a soccer game. First, Expo Park is an area where there is a huge science museum, art gallery and a theme park. In 1993, Daejeon was home to Expo '93. They had a science theme, and ever since then, they have added more things to this park, including the art gallery and the theme park. There were many things to do there, but we were running out of time, so we were in a hurry.



After that, we went home to eat and shower quick (the humidity was terrible down there), then after that, we went to a soccer game at the FIFA World Cup Stadium. Daejeon hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2002, and Daejeon's professional soccer team was playing a game against Japan. They guy who we stayed with got free tickets from his school, so that was quite an experience. I have never been to a soccer game before, and although Daejeon lost (I think 2-1) at least I got to see three goals being scored. The crowd went crazy. Even on the close goals. Plus, the two South Africans I was with are really into soccer, so they knew more about it than me. I enjoyed my time though.



Then, we went back to our friend's apartment and ate some more. Then we were going to go out again, but I feel asleep at 11 o'clock and didn't wake up until the next morning. Needless to say, I was tired. I still got to see everything I wanted, so that was awesome. Then we had to make our way to the inter-city bus terminal and make the five-hour trek back home. Not fun, but I tried to sleep as much as possible because we caught the 4:30 bus, so add 5.5 hours and that takes us to ten o'clock. I think we arrived home at 9:30, but we were pooped. Great trip though. Better than staying in Inje. It's nice to escape for a while.



Enjoy these photos from Facebook as well. Thanks

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100833040227640.3236601.13932786&l=6cbc2d19cc

Cooking Day

Hello Everyone. So every Friday, instead of teaching a normal lesson (right now, it's phonics) we have our classes in the kitchen where the students are able to do some cooking. Our classes start off with introducing the recipe. Usually it's something small and typical Korean, sometimes it's a little more Western and sometimes it's just jam-packed with sugar and chocolate. This past Friday, we made kimbab (김밥, 김 meaning seaweed and 밥 meaning rice). It's very delicious.



So we start off by having a sheet of seaweed and spread some rice on it. Then there are many things to put inside: thin strips of carrots, cucumbers, scrambled egg and pickled radish. You lay it all out on one side and roll it up like an egg roll. It's very delicious and the kids love it.



Here are some pictures of my kids.. It looks really out of control, but Fridays are usually pretty crazy days. The video is of the kids playing an intense game of rock, scissor, paper. There was one kimbab left and by playing rock, scissor, paper is the fairest way to determine the winner. that game works for any small conflicts in the classroom. Who knew?

Lantern Festival

Hello! The first week in May we had Thursday and Friday off, we had to work for three hours on Saturday, then we had Monday and Tuesday off for Buddha's Birthday. So it would have been six days off in a row, but we had to work for those three hours right in the middle of that break. But I'm not really complaining.



There was a huge parade full of lanterns and huge lantern floats to celebrate Buddha's birthday. I took many pictures, but a lot of them were blurry. I should know how to use that camera by now. I've had it for years.



After the parade finished, we went out in Myeongdong, a part of Seoul with many clubs and bars. There are no bars in the town I live in, so I was excited to get out and do something besides drink -- which is dance and drink.



We just got a hotel before we went out, which sometimes is hard to find because we were in the 'foreigner' part of Seoul and since the lantern festival brought in so many people to Seoul, I was worried that we wouldn't find anything. But we did, so we headed out.

I gave the key to my friend who was staying in the same hotel, because I didn't want to be responsible for it. So when we got off the subway station to head to the clubs, some people put their stuff in the lockers so they didn't have to carry their purses and sweatshirts with them all night. Whatever.

After being out for a while, around 3 o'clock in the morning is when I get bored, need to fall asleep, or need to change bars. I decide I just want to go back to the hotel and fall asleep. I ask my friend for the key and she tells me it's in her bag in the locker at the subway stop. I was a little irritated because you don't have access to those lockers at that time of the morning, because they lock off access to the lockers and the entrances to the subway. So now we paid 80,000 won for this hotel that nobody can sleep in.



So Korea has these saunas called jimjilbangs that are very popular because they are very cheap. They are about 8,000 won per night, but it's everyone just sleeping on mats on the floor; no bed, no blankets, just the mat and the floor. So we found one near our hotel and my other friend and I paid 13,000 won for this one and we got about two hours of sleep. We were crabby the next day.

Now I can look back and laugh at it, but I wasn't laughing too hard at the time. I remember I got back to Inje and slept for six hours, or something like that. It was a fun trip though. It seems like something like this always happens to me when I go to Seoul. So I think I need to plan my trips better...

Beer Olympics in Chuncheon

So a couple weekends after our trip to Gyeongju, there was a Beer Olympics competition in Chuncheon. Chuncheon is the largest city in Gangwon-do province, and only an hour from Inje, so it's a great escape to a bigger town for the nightlife or a big department store. This time, I was going there to drink beer!

I don't know who organized it, but I think the owner of this bar (Tombstone Bar) was a Westerner, so lots of foreign teachers go there to party. Honestly, I have never spent a night in Chuncheon, so I don't know the 411. Anywho, the rules for this competition were as follows: have a team of four, create a team name and come dressed in costumes. There were to be three games played: beer pong, tippy cup and boat race (if you're not into drinking, I think I leave leave the descriptions out, just so you all think I still have my innocence.



So there was a total of 17 teams, and there were some long pauses between every game, so it turned out that all the teams just kept drinking in between the games. Needless to say, everyone was pretty drunk. Somehow, our team managed to stick together and take 3rd place. First, I think we were pretty good, but other teams left early and others just diminished because of their drunken states, so it wasn't a clean 3rd place, but I'll take it.

It was a fun change of pace. Oh, I should tell you our team name: Waygook Powerhouse 3000. In Korean, waygook means foreigner, so I wanted to stick with something international, since this is the "Olympics." There were three Americans on my team with one South African. It was a great time!



I should mention that as my 'waygook-ness' serves me, I added that I was from Minnesota on the back of my T-shirt. I ended up meeting two girls from Minnesota, so that was very pleasing. Thank goodness for Minnesota nice.

Gyeongju, South Korea

Sorry it has been forever since I have written on my blog. I guess I went on a short hiatus. I'm back anyway and I have a few stories to share from the past month. I finally started doing some things, so now I actually have some stories to tell. I'm hoping I can write a couple a week, so keep watching for little stories being published.



The First Friday in April (April Fool's Day) our boss gave us the day off and she drove us down to Gyeongju, a city about 5 hours by car. She paid for everything, including the one night stay at the Hilton. Gyeongju is a very important city to Korea's history because "Gyeongju was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla (57 BC – 935 AD) which ruled most of the Korean Peninsula between the 7th and 9th centuries," cited from wikipedia.org. I have to cite it because a lot of the museums and monuments we visited had most of their signs and information in Korean, so I couldn't get the full understanding of everything. And our tour guide spoke no English.



We saw many important things: Tumuli Park (where lots of important kings, queens and generals are buried ~ one hump means one person is buried and two humps means a king and queen are buried together), Cheomseongdae (which is an astronomical observatory that is the oldest surviving observatory in East Asia), Seokguram Grotto and Bulguksa Temple (which is a Buddha statue next to a traditional Temple) and Anapji Pond. All very important monuments in Gyeongju and Korea. A few are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.



I sat in the front seat so I could help my boss with the directions. She had a GPS, but sometimes she would look to the passenger seat as if I understood what the GPS was saying in Korean. Good thing I looked at a map and knew a little about what direction we were headed in. I also just looked at the map and followed the arrows from the GPS. My Korean isn't that good that I can understand. It was a pretty cool experience. I think we got lost a couple times, but that's what makes those adventures so much fun!



It was just a short trip; we drove down there Friday and arrived in late evening and had dinner and went swimming. Then we woke up the next morning and ate breakfast at the hotel and hooped on the Gyeongju City Bus Tour and saw all the monuments. The weather was great for the time of year and the trip was really educational. Definitely one I will remember.



For all those who don't have Facebook, here is a link to my album where you can see all the pics I took: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10100728410516420.3194090.13932786&l=154f232f20