Korean Fashion

Koreans have a great sense of fashion.  I am being honest.  They are pretty trendy and in the bigger cities, you rarely see a sloppily dressed Korean.  BUT, even their socks are fashionable!  In Korean culture, usually you remove your shoes before entering a room, whether that be a: restaurant, your apartment or in the school.  So your socks are always exposed.

All my students always make fun of me when I have holes in my socks.  They always point and laugh and say 'hole' in Korean.  I always get embarrassed, but I am too cheap to buy socks.  Apparently socks are very cheap, so that's why there is no reason to have holes in your socks.

Mine and girls' socks

Kids' socks are also very fashionable.  They never have plain, white socks.  They always have some cute little character on them or the socks will have more than five colors.  It's pretty funny.  So one day during cooking class, I brought my camera and wanted to take pictures of all my kids' socks.  The girls were willing, but the boys weren't.  I made them do it anyway or I told them we couldn't go to cooking class and eat food.  So they obliged.

Mine and boys' socks

They also have lots of other little accessories like bear ears or something on top of hoodies and bunny ear on top of their cell phone.  Winter hats for young children are also popular with raccoon, tiger and lion faces.  They are pretty awesome when young kids wear them.

Mina with her hood

Unfortunately, I never bought any Korean clothes.  I am considered fat over here.  I will admit that I have gained some (beer) weight, but I hope I'm not fat.

Summertime In Inje

I know this is old news now, but on October 3, it was a national holiday, so we didn't have school.  It was still about 75 degrees and the mountains were still green, so I thought I should take some pictures of what the summer looks like in Inje.

It's weird to think that these will be some of my last opportunities to take pictures.  It's getting really sad realizing I have such little time left.  So I wanted to remember what my town looked like on a perfect end-of-summer day.

I rode my bike around town and first stopped at the Catholic church in town.  They don't offer any masses in English, and I hate to admit it, but I never even went to church.  But I took pictures of it! (I don't think that counts).

There are a whole bunch of fields in people's yards.  Houses with yards don't have grass like a typical property in the States, but instead they plant a whole bunch of vegetables and rice.  They really like to plant cabbage, because Korea's most popular dish, kimchi, uses fermented cabbage, and cabbage can't grow in the winter, so you need to grow lots in the summer.

I also took this picture down the main street..

...you can see the huge green mountain invading the background.  Inje is surrounded by mountains, so everywhere you looked, you were always staring into a mountain.

And I took pictures of my favorite stores.  These were the ones I went to most frequently.

My favorite restaurant where I can get a substantial meal for $4

EcoMart, where you can buy anything under $3

You can get some crappy, over-priced coffee here

And the bakery and the 24-hour convenient store

And now the summer is coming to an end.  There are only so many other things I can write about, but I will sure share them.

Cold and Flu Shot

Whew boy, was I sick a couple weeks ago.  I had a sore throat that felt like my throat was shredding every time swallowed and my nose was insanely stuffy.  So it's a good thing we have this doctor friend that works in Inje.  All Koreans must do two years of service, usually serving two years in the army after they turn 18.  But some guys can chose to do their service in a different way.  So this guy chose to be a surgeon in a small town.  His English is superb.

So, I hate to bother him about medical stuff, but I really just wanted to ask him what name of drug I should buy from the pharmacy.  But he simply asked me if I was at my apartment and I said yes.  So he stopped by and dropped of some pills for me to take.  He said take them three times a day for three days.  He didn't even tell me what they were...well, he said one was for rhinitis, which I know means stuffy nose.  Instantly, I felt better and with lots of rest and fluids (not beer) I felt better in those three days.

Then I kind of got everyone sick at school, so then everyone wanted to get a flu shot.  But you can't get a flu shot when you get a cold, so the two other teachers and my boss couldn't get one because they were sick.  But I was able to.  Woo hoo!

When we arrived at the hospital, everyone was prescribed cold medicine, but I was able to get the flu shot.  The doctor spoke English and he happened to be the father of one of my very smart students.  He asked me if I was sick and I told him I was last week, but now I felt better.  He asked me if I took any medication and I said yes.  He asked me what I took and I told him I didn't know.  He laughed and didn't really say anything.  He probably thought I just swallow pills for fun.  That's not true.

He listened to my chest and heard that I was in top shape to get the flu shot.  So that was it.  All is good.  The flu shot was a little expensive because we don't have insurance here, but the school still paid for it.  It's about $30.

Awkward Interview

Wow, I just had the most awkward interview in my life.  I thought I was bad at being the interviewee, but I am worse at being the interviewER.  Gross.

My boss called me in early one day and said I had to interview the new teacher.  A new teacher will be coming the first weekend in December, so I was in charge of interviewing her.  Usually another teacher at my school would handle the interviews, but for some reason, my boss had me do it.

I asked the other teacher what she asked in the interview and she just said it's just to check the interviewee's English; to make sure it's clear and understandable.  That sounds easy.  So I called the interviewee and really had no idea what to ask her.  My boss didn't give me any guidelines or anything, so I just asked the interviewee some general questions.  She has already taught in Korea and she had a pre-recorded interview with the recruiter from Minnesota (yeah, the new teacher will be from Minnesota, just the the one that replaced me), so she was already a good candidate in my book.

So when I finish the phone call, my boss asks if she accepted the job.  What the heck!!!??  I didn't know I was supposed to offer her the position!!!  All my boss really told me was to ask questions.  So I said, 'I think so.'  I didn't know what to do.

So now I am frantically trying to contact my recruiter to tell him that my boss really wants this teacher.  I was emailing the interviewee because I had her email address from her resume and I said something like, 'sorry if I wasn't clear before, but I want to offer you a position at Inje English Village..' something along those lines.

Luckily, my recruiter contacted me right away and said all was good.  Then the interviewee emailed me back and said the same thing.  Whew!  I never want to conduct another interview again!

K-Water Field Trips - Chuncheon, South Korea

For three Saturdays, our school took three groups of students to one of the K-Water headquarters. At the headquarters in Chuncheon, there is the 소양강댐 (Soyang Gang Dam) and the soyang River. Our lessons for those weeks were about ecology and the environment, so we had words like: river, lake, mountain, rock, tree, etc. It was a good lesson.

But our director wanted us to teach the kids a song. So I was in charge of finding a song. I found a few that seemed suitable for all the kids' age and English level, but after teaching the song for six weeks, I was sick and tired of singing that song. I will NEVER sing "If All the Little Raindrops" again in my life. I promise that. But we made actions so we could help the kids remember the words and that worked. But after singing it for six weeks, the kids also got sick of singing that song. I don't blame them.

I really didn't mind the K-Water weekends. We would have to work Monday-Saturday, but our boss would give us Sunday and Monday off, so the following week would be a workweek from Tuesday-Friday. Can't really complain about that.

So we would all load the bus between 8:30 and 9 in the morning and take the one-hour trek to Chuncheon. Then most of the day, the kids spoke Korean, so each teacher had a helper (usually a middle school student that spoke decent English so if we gave the kids instructions, the older helper could interpret). That was pretty nifty.

We took the bus to the top of the dam where you could view the picturesque river flowing through the mountains. It was really beautiful up there.

I always tried to gather my group of students so I could take a picture with them, but with kids running around everywhere, it's not the easiest task to accomplish as a teacher.

We would always eat dalkgalbi for lunch because Chuncheon is best known for its delicious dalkgalbi. NOM NOM NOM! K-Water gives a lot of money to our school, so K-Water/the school paid for everyone's lunch. I am very lucky to be working at this school.

After lunch we went to the water museum where most of the signs were yet again in Korean. So I just made stuff up in English so it looked like I knew what I was talking about. Usually I just make a joke and they all laugh, laughter is the best medicine (wow, that was a lame statement!).

There was always some sort of concert happening in the plaza outside the museum, so we would watch that for a while. One time it was a magic show where one of our students was selected to go up and preform with the magician. The kid that was selected was stubborn sometimes, so if he didn't get his way, he would get physical and violent. AND, he is in Tae Kwon Do, so I'm sure he can kick some serious ass. So he attempted to kick the magician, but all was good. I slowly shook my head in the audience. But now I'm laughing about it.

Another time we were there, there were some drummers preforming. Some of our students were yet again selected to get to bang some drumsticks on some big blue barrels. Then I heard the announcer say "영어선생님" and I knew exactly what that meant. She wanted an english teacher to come up too. then all of a sudden the kids started chanting "Andrew Teacher, Andrew Teacher." I was actually nervous.

All was well. It was a lot of fun, although it looks like I had no idea what I was doing. But I rock at music and rock at life, so of course I was good.

Then to get home, we took a boat from Chuncheon to Yanggu, which was maybe half an hour. the buses met us in Yanggu and we drove home the forty minutes to Inje from Yanggu.

We had some pretty fun Saturdays and it really was a fun change of pace from just working the regular workweek. I know the kids liked it too.

Twenty-two Days

Hello Everyone! I want to thank everyone for following my adventure while I have been in Korea. It's hard to believe that my contract ends in twenty-two days. I will try very hard to write one post a day to talk about what happened that day, or about how I'm feeling.

Right now, I can honestly say I have an abundant amount of emotions. I am happy to return home, but sad to leave. I have had a countdown on for a few months now, and now that I see the '22,' I kind of wish that number was higher.

I have to think about what kind of job to get (which I am slowly applying for jobs now). Busy thinking about looking for my own place in the Minneapolis area. Preparing for grad school. It all sounds exciting, daunting, boring, scary, and the list goes on.

This weekend is Halloween and I will go to Sokcho for that. I love the teachers in Sokcho, and most of the teachers from Inje will go too, so it should be a good night. The following weekend (my replacement teacher) and I will chaperone a trip with a handful of students to Daejeon. We leave on Friday and come back Sunday. Friday is a regular working day, but saturday will be overtime, so that's another good chunk of change to get before I return home. The weekend after that I plan on going to the DMZ. Then the week after that is my flight. Woooo, I can't believe it.

So I should have some good stories to share in the next three weeks. See you all soon!

추석 - 서울 ~ Korean Thanksgiving, Seoul

Well, Chuseok came and went very quickly; it was already a month ago.  Chuseok is like American Thanksgiving when it time for the Koreans to do their harvesting.  They also spend time with their families.  This year, Chuseok was from September 11-13.  It fell on a weekend so we got about five days off.  I was originally planning on going to China, but only two weeks after arriving home from my summer vacation and not having enough time to get a visa, I couldn’t make it feasible.

This is a typical intersection - six lanes wide

Then I thought of going to Japan or Taiwan since it was a similar flight distance (Japan – two hours, Taiwan – five hours) but I just decided against it.  I thought I should spend some time in Seoul doing things I haven’t done yet there.

Korean War Museum

The first thing I wanted to do was see the Korean War Museum.  It was so interesting.  They had huge memorials displayed for all the soldiers who lost their lives in the Korean War.  They even had it separated by country AND by state.  It was such a great honor to go there. 

Each black slate had names etched in them

Once I got inside the museum, the first floor was all about wars from a long time ago.  Then the second floor was just for the Korean War, so I spent most of my time up there.  I really wanted to read everything and we watched a few short movies.  My friend Jazmine was with me, so after spending a few hours in there, we decided to leave.

Outside the Museum with Namsan Tower in the background

Outside there were old replicas of war machinery, like tanks, planes and ships.  It was really interesting. 

Then we saw this lady who appeared to be sweeping off some bricks near the water.  She was in heels and we were waiting for her to fall in.  So naturally, I just watched and snuck photos of her..haha.

Crazy Lady

Then we went to Namsan Tower (or Seoul Tower) which is the geographical center of Seoul.  Now I don’t know if it was just foggy ot if it’s actually the pollution, but it always seems to be hazy in Seoul.  But I’m glad I was able to make it up there to see the view.

I also debated about going up at night, but thought that if it was foggy during the day, it would foggy during the night.  I didn’t know what was better, and I thought there might be a chance of rain, so I thought we should go while we could.

Up near the ticket booth, they have an observation deck where people puts locks on it to lock their love for one another there forever.  That was really cool to see and it was way bigger than I thought. 

I spent three days there total and got most of the things done that I wanted to in Seoul.  I still want to go to the DMZ, see the Kimchi Museum and a few other little things, so I may have one more chance the weekend before I fly out.

Also, walking through the streets of Seoul, I ran into a Starbucks.  I never get Starbucks because I am more of a Caribou fan, but I always enjoying seeing the name Starbucks in Korean Characters.  So here ya go!

Chuseok was fun and I’m glad I could escape Inje for a few days.  I can’t wait to come home and celebrate American thanksgiving with my family!  See you all in 35 days!!