Jon and Sarah Plus Korea

Thanks/Goodbye for now

2010-09-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Since we're back in the U.S., our lives are back to normal, so we don't have anything exciting to share with you guys. Thanks for reading the blog and commenting! I had fun keeping up with the blog, and maybe one day I'll have something else interesting to share in this sort of format. As for now, me sitting around doing homework and applying for jobs isn't too exciting.

If anyone finds this blog because they're interested in teaching in Korea, feel free to comment or e-mail me if you have any questions. I have a whole year's worth of wisdom I'd love to drop on you.

Seoraksan

2010-09-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

One of the things I wanted to make sure we did before leaving Korea, was to visit Mt. Seoraksan. It is the third highest mountain in Korea, located in Sokcho (just an hour north of us), and is a very popular tourist destination for Koreans, who love outdoorsy stuff.
We couldn't believe it, but the "Big Buddha" at Seoraksan temple was even bigger than our personal "Big Buddha" in Ingu.

The view from the top:

I couldn't find Jon for a while, then I Spotted him perched on a cliff:

These boys, like many young Koreans, took the proximity of foreigners as an opportunity to ham it up. They sat up on these rocks and yelled, "Help me!" for quite a while. Then I yelled down: "How are you?" and one boy yelled: "Terrible!"

This is sad to say, but that was our final Korean adventure. You can see more pictures here.

Belated Posts

2010-09-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

Well, we've been home for three weeks now, but I still have some pictures to share, so I'm going to make a few final posts.
The last two weeks that we were in Korea, we taught Summer Camp. English Camps are usually pretty fun, since everyone has a relaxed attitude, and the main goal is to make sure the kids enjoy themselves. As with Winter Camp, we had a day of role plays where the kids made their own masks and props. I never stop being impressed by their creativity!
This costume evolved like so:

Some other good ones:

You can find more pictures here.

Students

2010-08-03T00:20:00.000-07:00

A lot of our students go to the local church that we attend, and last week they asked if they could come home with us afterwards. They like our apartment because we have a big playground, and I guess they're kind of curious about the way "wayguks" live.

After playing outside on one of the HOTTEST days so far, we retreated into our tiny apartment, which isn't exaclty designed to have three kids running around in it, or three of anything, really. So Hui (the girl) found my camera and ran around our house taking pictures. All of the ones that follow were taken by her. I loved going through my camera later and finding these (That's So Hui's bear).

More pictures here.

Anniversary

2010-08-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

As I'm reminding myself daily, we've almost been in Korea for a year. But there's something else that's been around for a year now: our marriage.

For our anniversary, we decided to spend a day at the beach followed by "Italian" food in Jumunjin. If you've heard me talk about foreign food in Korea before, you know why I used the quotes there.

Anyway, it ended up being a really great day, because it was the first time the water on Ingu beach was warm enough to actually get in and swim. There were a few tourists there, and we joined them for some wave jumping. We didn't wear our bathing suits, but that's ok because Koreans just tend to wear whatever's around to the beach, including heels and jeans. Even when they wear a bathing suit, it's usually covered up by a t-shirt and shorts. (A funny aside: the head of our English center told me that her goal for the summer is to fit into a bikini. I told her I don't really like to wear bikinis. She was surprised and said she thought all western people wear bikinis. She was actually only buying one for her trip to Russia, because she thought she would stick out if she wasn't wearing one.)

The one is supposed to be for one year, but my Aunt Amy says it looks like we're saying "We're number one."

In the field outside of our apartment (Jon bought me the dress for my birthday).

By the sea in Jumunjin.

Yes, Jon got a milkshake with his meal.

More pictures here.

Korean Cultural Trip

2010-08-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, EPIK teachers from all over our province came to Jumunjin (which, luckily enough, is only thirty minutes from our town) to take part in a day of Korean culture. I forgot my camera, but luckily our friends Will and Theresa took a bunch of pictures, which I stole.

The women got to try on traditional Korean Hanbok:

And how to sit like an unmarried Korean woman from the Joseon Dynasty:

We participated in a traditional Korean tea service:

And even shot bows and arrows (mine went the least far).

It was a fun day, especially since we spent most of the time learning how to swing and see-saw in the traditional Korean way instead of teaching.

More pictures here.

Everland

2010-08-02T23:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, but I want to make a few last posts before we go back to America. Which we will be doing on August 12th!

One thing that I wanted to do before leaving Korea was go to Everland, which is supposed to be the Korean version of Disney World. I've never been to Disney World, or any huge theme park, so I was really excited about seeing all the characters and shows. Everland turned out to be more like Six Flags, in my opinion, which I've been to several times, so it wasn't that exciting. It was still weird in a special Korean way, though, and there were a few good roller coasters, so it wasn't a waste.

The theme for summer is "Summer Splash" so they have a big water show. The interesting thing about the show was that over half of the actors were foreigners. It was strange seeing big bulky westerners dressed up like flowers and badly lip syncing to Korean songs. Here's a short clip of the monsters appearing in the show.

Afterwards we were extremely wet:

One of my favorite things was the "Spooky Fun House." You had to push buttons while you walked through the house in order to get a glimpse of the "curious ghost" that lives there.

More pictures here.

Thank you!

2010-07-15T23:32:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to quickly say thanks to everyone who commented on my "smelly" blog post or who I spoke with over e-mail/chat/Skype/etc.

Things have gotten better. Although I'm not sure they've has changed their minds about our stench, since we got so upset about it, they've decided not to mention it anymore. The Febreezing has gone down as well (which I think is a sign that the original Febreeze overkill was mostly a result of annoyance...as if they were trying to say "See, we were right. You do smelll. Otherwise we wouldn't be using all of this Febreeze.").

I had a fun Korean birthday (which I'll post pictures of soon). And now we're just getting used to the idea that we're coming home soon (August 12th), saying goodbye to all the great people (including our students) that we've met this year, and spending as much time as we can on the beach and in the woods.

I don't know if any people who are considering going into the EPIK program read my blog, but if you're out there, I hope my experience doesn't dissuade you. It's not that common of a thing to happen, and even knowing what I know now, I would repeat this year in a heartbeat.

Here I am, showing how cool I am with everything, by giving not one, but two peace signs:

Into the Woods

2010-06-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

Our apartment complex is surrounded by a row of trees. For some reason, I'd always vaguely wondered what was behind them, but since Korea is a small country that tends to develop or plant on every available piece of land, and since right next door to our apartment there are stores and houses, I assumed it wasn't much. One day, I was sitting in our bedroom and I looked out the window to see a couple decked out in hiking gear appearing out of the trees. I started paying attention and noticed this actually happened quite frequently, then I looked down at the tiny garden that sits below our window and noticed a path leading into this unexplored area. We decided to follow the path and see what was back there. We were not disappointed! It turns out that, although there is a lot of development right along the road next to our apartment complex, right behind that development there are miles of trees, rice fields, farm houses, and even gravestones leading all the way up to the top of a mountain. Needless to say, it's beautiful!

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

More pictures here.

The Coffee Factory!

2010-06-21T00:41:00.001-07:00

If you read the title of this post, then you know that my dreams have all come true. There is an amazing coffee factory and cafe in Gangneung, our neighboring "big city" and our friends Will and Theresa recently introduced us to it. It's called Terarosa, and they have the reputation of having the best coffee in all of Korea. They're so popular that the delicious bread they bake all sells out before noon. In order to make sure we didn't miss out, we caught a 7:30 AM bus so we could reach the cafe right at 9:00 when they opened.

Gangneung is pretty big and urban, so I was surprised at how rural the area surrounding Terarosa was.

The entrance:

Coffee-tasting bar (those are un-roasted beans, if you're wondering about the light brown coloring):

Display of old-school coffee grinders:

The beginning of a coffee tree:

Theresa showing the part of the plant where the coffee cherry grows.

Stacks of fresh coffee beans:

The cafe was huge and divided into several different seating areas. I thought this part was particularly pretty:

Delcious, fresh, chocolate-filled bread.

And a delicious latte, of course. Korean baristas like to put designs in the top of foamy drinks, usually opting for the ever-endearing heart. I think this one is a Christmas tree?

Hanging out with a cute baby.

The whole crew.

That's it for my new favorite place in Korea. Hopefully we'll make it back there before we leave (which will be in 6 weeks, can you believe it?).

You can find more pictures here.

Buddha's Birthday

2010-06-21T00:16:00.000-07:00

On Friday May 21st, we had the day off for Buddha's Birthday. We ventured to Hyu Hyu Am (the Buddhist temple across the street from our apartment) to see what the festivities entailed.

Buddha's got it good. He gets all of this food. You can't really see it in this picture, but he has some Ramen and chips on his right side. (Funny story: Jon used to work in a Thai restaurant and every day they would give a small gift of food to their Buddha statue. After the sacrifice was over, they would offer the food to Jon. They told him otherwise they would feed it to a dog. )

Some people paying their respect to the "Big Buddha."

A view of the Temple area. There are a lot of small temples grouped together.

We ran into a student from our school.

I never thought about it, but I guess most religions have their own TV station. It's still weird to think about a Buddhist TV network, though, because they don't really evangelize. I guess it's just up-to-the-minute Buddhist news?

And here's a video I took of the monks chanting and people worshipping. Sorry, I don't know much about Buddhism, so I'm not sure what to call the rituals. I get the impression that most Koreans hold kind of hybrid beliefs between shamanism and Buddhism or Christianity, so even my co-teacher, who was raised Buddhist, doesn't know much about Buddhist tradition.

You can find more photos here.

Cheating.

2010-06-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do a little bit of a blog cheat, and, instead of telling you about it myself, share with you a blog post made by our friends, Will and Theresa, about a recent visit they made to our area. Ok, it was in May. So, I'm really behind, but enjoy (click the link below).

Will and Theresa's Blog.

Missing home

2010-06-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't been that great of a Blogger lately, and part of it is sheer laziness, part of it is because we've been having a very frustrating experience at work and I haven't quite felt up to it.

In short: we smell. Or so says our school.

In not-so-short: One day, I was sitting at lunch and the chief teacher sat next to me, then she got up and moved away. Later that day my co-teacher approached me and said that some of the teachers had complained that Jon and I "have a bad smell" that's how she said it. Kind of like we had a disease. Needless to say I was mortified having this conversation and thinking about all the teachers talking about us smelling bad and that teacher moving to sit somewhere else. All I could say to her was "We bathe. We wash our clothes. We brush our teeth. I don't know what it could be." She said "Yeah, I don't know" and didn't say much else. I told Jon about it, we were upset, we didn't bring it up with her again and we didn't do anything about it (because what could we do? We already, like most people, make a daily effort not to smell bad, and we had no idea WHAT smelled bad or WHY).

After a week or so, we kind of forgot about it, then the head of the English Center came into our office and, with our co-teacher translating, again told us that we had a bad smell. She actually said a lot of stuff in Korean, then said "smell" in English and waved her hand in front of her nose. This time, unlike most of the times when ridiculous stuff happens to us here, we reacted strongly and negatively. We both said that maybe it was a cultural issue, because we've heard that some Koreans think all foreigners smell bad (just like some foreigners think all Koreans smell bad), our co-teacher vehemently denied this, but then she said "Don't you think some Koreans smell bad?" which undercut her point. Then I pointed out that even if we did smell bad, if we were Korean no one would even think of telling us about this. I used one male teacher who always reeks of cigarettes as an example. I said that if we complained to the head of the English center about his smell, no one would have a meeting with him to tell him to do something about it, they would just tell us to deal with it.

After this heated discussion, the class that I usually teach with the teachers was cancelled for the rest of the semester. It was a Friday and we went home angry, and came to school today (Monday) angry. We always get to school before the other teachers. We were sitting in our office and when our office assistant came in the room she plugged her nose and said something to June and then they opened the door and windows and turned off the air conditioning (Great! No airconditioning is really going to make me smell better). Then I started to notice a strong smell of Febreeze in all of my classrooms. Whenever we would leave a room, someone would come in behind us and spray something. In one of my classes, the smell of the Febreeze was so strong that the students were coughing and I had to open a window so they didn't choke to death.

Basically, I now feel extremely uncomfortable all the time. These people who I've become friends with and gotten to like think that I stink. There's nothing I can do about this. Every time I get near someone I'm just thinking that they're probably thinking about how smelly I am. I'm trying to get over it, though, because I know these aren't bad people (Except the Chief Teacher. Moving to another seat? That is just about the rudest thing anyone's ever done to me.) and they don't realize how hurtful it is to us, especially since we're already outsiders. Maybe it isn't that offensive to tell people they smell in Korea? I doubt it, but maybe.

As excited as we are to come home, before this incident we were still thinking about how we would miss our home in Ingu and living by the beach and our adventures in Korea. Now, honestly, I'm just counting down the days.

Hope you can't smell me through the computer! Love and miss you all.

Videos!

2010-06-08T23:29:00.001-07:00

Lately I've taken a bunch of short videos of my students and different things around town, so I thought in lieu of a regular post, I would share the videos with you.
First, I want to show you Ji Hoon. Ji Hoon is such a sweet and funny kid, but he has a hard time in school, and particularly a hard time in English. Not because he's not smart or he doesn't try, but because he is bullied by the other kids. I assume they always bully him, but in English it's worse, because they know I can't understand what they're saying. I'll turn around and he'll be crying or hitting someone or throwing something at them. The Korean school system doesn't seem to take bullying that seriously, so the only punishment for these kids is getting yelled at for a few seconds in the hallway. Anyway, the other day Ji Hoon was running through the hallways acting like different animals and saying their names in English. I, of course, broke out the camera and asked him to do it again.

Next is a video of our students at Hyeonbuk elementary school. This is our Friday school with an entire population (counting all grades and all teachers) of 20 at the most. These are my favorite students. They know a lot of English, they want to learn more, and they get really excited when they see us. This is one of the few schools where all the students call us Sarah and Jon instead of "Teacher" or "Sonsangnim"(Teacher in Korean) or "Hey!" A few weeks ago, we got to play this crazy game with them. Watch and see if you can figure out the rules.

Students playing instruments. There are a lot of problems with the Korean school system, but a lack of investment in the arts is not one of them. All of our schools have traditional Korean music classes, art classes, and many have violin and piano as well. You might remember that Hyeonbuk school has it's own rock band. Monday morning, we were sitting in the office when we heard some nice music out in the hallway, I went outside to investigate and found two of my favorite fourth grade students practicing a duet. I had to label this "students playing instruments" because I'm not sure what either of these instruments are called.

Lastly, I'll share a little bit of the craziness that is election time in Korea. I still don't completely understand the situation, but the jist is this: instead of being identified by their names, the candidates have numbers. This leads to confusion, especially with older voters, who end up just voting for number one. There are 8 or 9 positions and up to 8 candidates for each position, so I don't know how they keep all of this straight. The candidates hire people to stand on the side of the road, wearing t-shirts and foam fingers with their number, and bowing to passing cars. Candidates also have their own trucks with huge pictures of themselves on the side that ride through town blasting an original song about how great the candidate is. We heard this candidate's song several times a day: in the parking lot of our apartment complex when we got ready in the morning, on the street when we walked to school, and in the parking lot of school once we arrived. You've got to admit, it's a pretty catchy song.

Update: Still in Korea, Still Alive

2010-05-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

I just realized that it's been a very long time since my last post. We've almost been in Korean for nine months, and the longer we're here, the less exciting things I have to share. However, there is one very exciting item I need to disclose: It's summer! (Sort of, well it's actually quite cold today, but it's been summer for the past two weeks).

When we first came to Ingu, our co-teacher told us that there are two seasons in this area: Winter and Summer. That seems accurate. There wasn't really a fall when we got here. It was the end of August and it was warm enough to wear shorts, then it was cold enough to wear a coat, scarf, and boots. After living through what seemed to be an eternity of freezing weather, we turned around one day to find ourselves sweating and in need of a wardrobe change: back to shorts. We didn't have a cool spring. We had a cold winter and now we are having a hot summer.

So, that's what we've been doing lately. Enjoying the hot summer. We try to spend as much time as possible outside, taking advantage of the fact that we live at the beach. The weekends go a little something like this: read on the beach, walk on the beach, sleep on the beach, repeat. It's a hard life.

Jon being attacked by a seaweed monster.

Ingu Harbor

It's really amazing that the ocean is this beautiful, considering the amount of trash we've seen on the beach and in the water.

And just for fun, here are some goats that we passed on the way to work.

More pictures here.

Lately...

2010-04-29T16:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post, but nothing too exciting has been going on, so I've been trying to save up my stories for a decent post. Here's what we've been up to lately: parties, school dinners, teaching, and sunshine.

A few weeks ago, our co-teacher June and her husband Matt hosted a barbecue at their house (they're actually living with June's parents temporarily, so they threw a party when her parents went out of town on a trip to Thailand). It was supposed to be an outdoor party, but surprisingly enough, it was too cold to eat outside, so we let Matt freeze outside and bring our hamburgers inside.

Some of the guests enjoying cake, chips, gimbap (rice and fish wrapped in seaweed), beer, and raspberry wine.

Jon with June's niece and her friend.

This baby was the center of attention. All the women were passing her around and taking pictures of her (these were women who had just met the baby's mom for the first time).

A few days after the barbecue, things started to warm up. How warm? Well, we were still wearing scarves and jackets, but we were willing to walk around outside for a reason other than going to school or the store. We decided to finally check out a lake that is located just north of our apartment. We pass this lake all the time on the bus on our way to other schools and on our way into town to buy groceries, but we've never walked in that direction. We decided to take a Saturday afternoon to picnic and walk around the lake.

Jon, being weird in the pavilion.

Koreans don't eat sandwiches on picnics, they eat gimbap!

The view from the pavilion.

A view of the lake.

We are so happy to feel almost warm.

Last week, the teachers took a trip to Gyeongpo lake in Gangneung. We were supposed to be taking this trip to learn about the "wetlands" (a man-made swamp with signs identifying birds that don't actually seem to live there), so we spent about 10 minutes walking through the wetlands and 3 hours eating and drinking.

The whole gang (minus Yeong Eon, who was taking the picture, and June who wandered off somewhere) in the "wetlands." That's the principal next to Jon.

The delicious duck we had for dinner. The white stuff is minced garlic and onion. It's set over a pot of boiling water and seasonings that infused it with more flavor. The stuff on the right is Kimchi Pajeon, a Korean style of pancake that sounds gross but is actually delicious.

Jon pouring a drink for the PE Teacher.

We really like this guy. He's a temporary teacher at our sister school.

This dinner was one of the most fun ones we've been to. Adding to the fun, was the fact that a couple of teachers were late, and they were given funny punishments. One, the 4th grade teacher, had to sing a duet with her friend (pictured above). I managed to capture it on video.

The student teacher at our school (her English name is Hazel) was two hours late to dinner, because she tried to leave early from the lake and skip dinner, but the principal noticed, so she had to drive all the way back to Gangneung. She brought everyone beer to make up for being so late. We were told that in order to surprise her when she came in, we should all "disco."

Last weekend, we had a surprising experience. We went to Gangneung to eat and drink coffee, and after walking around for a while we started to feel this mysterious feeling. We were hot. I actually had to take off my sweater and jacket and walk around in short sleeves! Since then, the weather has gotten cold again, but we made the most of this glorious day of warmth.

Frolicking in a park area in downtown Gangneung.

Of course, we've also been hard at work (sort of). Here's Jon singing and dancing with students during a break between classes.

You can find more photos here.

Trip to YangYang and Sokcho.

2010-04-12T23:12:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, after several delays due to horrible weather, Jon and I finally made our way up to the YangYang/Sokcho area to visit Will and Theresa.

While waiting for the bus to YangYang, I decided to take some pictures of downtown Ingu, just to give you guys a better idea of what it looks like. It's obviously a hot spot!

In this photo you can see (From left to right) our "salon" (with the yellow doors), "Oh my Fried Chicken," Music Town (The Norebang we went to with Jon' dad), and the pharmacy.

These are Ingu's grocery stores. There are three of them next to each other and they all sell the same things. They mostly carry dried foods and sometimes some meat in a freezer in the back.

Ingu's only clothing store:

The police station:

After arriving in YangYang, we took a bus with Will and Theresa to a really cute coffee shop in Sokcho.

Next we took advantage of the warm(er) weather by taking a nice walk around Daepo Harbor.

I tried silkworm for the first (and last) time.

and we ate some delicious fresh seafood by the water:

More pictures here.

Happy Easter

2010-04-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

It's actually looking quite similar to a season I heard of once in a far away land called "Spring." We still had to wear sweaters and tights (well, I wore tights, not Jon) on Easter Sunday, but I was atleast able to take off my jacket and not grimace for a picture under one of the beautiful trees that is budding in our apartment complex.

Here's one right under our window:

And here we are on Easter morning:

We've been attending the small Methodist Church in Ingu for a couple of months now, and I finally brought along my camera so I could share with my loyal blog readers (try not to feel guilty if you're not that loyal of a reader).

Ingu Church is a small church. No one speaks English except for one girl who is from the Philippines. She married a Korean last April, moved to Korea a month later, and just had a baby. She's only 21 and she speaks a little more English than she does Korean, although she is taking Korean classes now. Despite the fact that we have communication issues, everyone at the church has been very kind to us and we enjoy seeing them every week and eating together afterward.

The first Sunday that we visited the Church, everything was in Korean, of course. The next week, the bulletin and the slideshow used for Bible verses and responsive readings had been translated into English. Every Sunday when we leave, the Preacher's wife gives us some type of food and says the only English she knows: "I love you."

Many of the students attend the church as well as the handyman from our school, and we are always happy to see each other.

Here's the church:

and the playground, which is usually full of our students:

The great meal we had after Easter service (OK, the green stuff isn't actually "great" but everything else is):

I'll leave you with a picture of Jon, who lost his winter coat in Japan, and resorted to wearing the fur lining from my coat during the last snow storm. With this picture, I will say, "Goodbye winter in Korea. We won't be seeing you again."

More pictures are here.

Girls' Day Out with Yeong Eon

2010-03-28T23:01:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned Yeong Eon a lot on the blog, mostly because she's great, and also because she's the only person our age that lives in Ingu. I feel very lucky that we get to work with her and that we've become good friends. Last week we took our friendship to the next level by venturing out on the ultimate bonding experience: shopping! and coffee! We took the bus south to Gangneung where we spent several hours eating, shopping, talking, and taking pictures. I learned a little bit about what it's like to have a Korean female friend: it involves a lot of hand holding (Korean girls tend to hold hands with their female friends, Korean boys link arms or put their arms around their male friends).

We ate a delicious Ginseng Chicken Soup together:

Had really delicious lattes from the supposed "best coffee shop in Korea." They put a heart in my drink, so I'm willing to believe the hype.

Shopped and shopped and shopped

and ate street food, including Soondae (Pork intestines stuffed with pork blood and noodles). I'm not even going to pretend like it doesn't sound disgusting, but it actually tasted pretty good.

I learned that chipmunks are considered pets.

Then we went to a sticker photo booth and took some silly photos:

I have a lot of random photos here, from the past month or so.

Nagoya

2010-03-24T00:33:00.000-07:00

After leaving Andrew in Ashiya, we went to visit Matt, another friend who is living and teaching in Japan in a small town called Ogaki. I actually don't have any pictures from Ogaki, because there wasn't much to see there. It is a small, cute town that is know for the quality of it's tap water (that should give you an idea of the excitement that awaits any visitor to the bustling metropolis of Ogaki). We weren't in Ogaki to see Ogaki though, we were in Ogaki to see Matt. Matt is in a Japanese band and we traveled to the nearby city of Nagoya to see them perform.
Before the concert, we visited Nagoya Castle.

Jon pulled a stone to test if he was as strong as the men who built the castle. He was successful, but I'm not sure if that says much because I was also able to pull the stone.

Matt's band played at a venue called "Club Rock N Roll." Here he is before the show.

...and during the show.

During their last song, the keyboardist came into the crowd to let us know her opinion about trends.

So that's it for Japan! We went to so many places and saw so many people in such a short amount of time, that it was hard to write about all of them. I hope you got a decent picture of our trip. You can always look through all of the photos here to see even more of our adventures.

Again, I'm sorry about being a bad blogger lately. I will do better! Now that the trip blogs are under my belt, I can get back to telling you about the wacky things our principal and students do.

Ashiya, Takarazuka, Osaka, and Kyoto

2010-03-22T00:14:00.000-07:00

One of the main reasons we wanted to visit Japan was to see our friends who live there. Andrew has lived in Japan for a year and a half now, teaching English in a town called Ashiya which is close to both Osaka and Kyoto. Thanks to Andrew, we were able to see all of the interesting things the three cities had to offer.
First off, we went to a manga cafe. This is a place where you can rent a room for a certain amount of hours in exchange for free drinks and snacks, a computer, a TV, and all the manga you could possibly want to read. Strangely enough, I wanted to read zero manga (it didn't help that they were in Japanese), but Jon kindly found some Japanese fashion magazines for me.

The next day we went to Takarazuka where we found some pretty strange signs at a tea house.

I'm famous in Japan!
The main event in Takarazuka was the Takarazuka Revue, a famous all-women acting troupe that performs musical versions of western plays. We saw a musical version of "Hamlet." The only English was "To be or not to be" which was sung at some point in every scene. Here are Andrew and Jon waiting to go into the play.

In Osaka, we visited the shrine of the great warrior god "Mario,"

and the goddess of cuteness, "Hello Kitty."

We also found poop-shaped candy (this sort of stuff is popular in Korea too).

Kyoto is a great place to see Buddhist and Shinto Temples. Shinto temples can be recognized by the ever-present giant orange Torii gates. At Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, there was a path of Torii gates that stretched for miles.

Unlike many of the Buddhist temples that we've visited in Korea (which are free and are full of actual monks), both the Shinto and Buddhist Temples in Japan seemed to be more about procuring good health, wealth, and luck than any religious or transcendental experience. The shrines all cost money to enter and most of the traffic was directed toward buying different things in order to have temple priests pray for your wishes to come true.
Here are rows of Ema (votive plaques) and origami swans at Fushimi Inari, both used to make wishes come true.

More Ema:

Omikuji (Shinto ritual fortunes):

After visiting Fushimi Inari, we moved on to Kiyomizudera, a Buddhist Temple.

The main attraction here was the "Love Stone." A person is guaranteed to find their true love if they can successfully walk from one rock to the other with their eyes closed. Andrew successfully made his way with Jon as his guide.

Despite the stupidity (sorry) and hilarity of the Love Stone, the temple was very beautiful.

Later, in Kyoto, we went to "Cafe La Siesta" which was a Nintendo-themed bar,

where there were baskets full of video games,

and Jon had a drink called "The PacMan."

We had a great time with Andrew and did so many things, I can't (or maybe I won't because I'm too lazy) write about them all here. We were sad to leave him behind.

You can find lots more pictures here.
Next I'll post about our trip to visit Matt in Ogaki, Gifu, and Nagoya.

Tokyo

2010-03-17T23:25:00.001-07:00

Sorry for being such a lazy blogger lately! We started teaching last week, so I've been a little preoccupied. Hopefully I can remember our trip to Japan!

If I could sum up our trip in one word it would be: nerdy.

We saw soft drinks featuring videogames:

Played videogames:

And played with toys based on videogames:

On our first morning in Tokyo, we went to a tiny little cafe that was owned by an old man and his wife. Halfway through our meal, the wife came in and placed this turtle in a bucket next to our chair. Jon thought they might be planning on cooking it, but when the old man leaned over and talked lovingly to the turtle, it was apparent that it was actually some sort of pet.

Jon really liked playing with the origami.

A trip to Tokyo wouldn't be complete without a visit to Harajuku, an area known for girls dressed up in crazy fashions. Unfortunately "Harajuku girls" can only be seen on Sundays, and we weren't in Tokyo on a Sunday. I had to settle for a picture of me, in my normal clothes, where the girls usually stand.

We saw a lot of cute (and weird) stores. Unfortunately, another apt description of Japan is "expensive," so no shopping for me.

Another must-see spot in Tokyo is "Akihabara" or "Electric Town" the hub of all things nerdy/technological. Akihabara is full of arcades, manga shops, video game stores, and "maid cafes" (Creepy places where you are served by a girl in a maid costume).

The weirdest thing (ok, not the weirdest thing, but the weirdest thing I feel comfortable writing in my blog) that we saw in Akihabara were stores specializing in making custom dolls. Apparently it is a trend now for Japanese people (men and women, adults and children) to make these dolls and then buy them clothes and accessories. When I say custom, I mean custom. Everything can be chosen from hand size to eye color.

Here are some finished products:

The best part of Tokyo was visiting the Studio Ghibli museum, a museum displaying the work of Hayao Miyazaki a Japanese director who made some of my favorite movies (My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, Spirited Away, etc..). The inside of the museum was really interesting and displayed different animation techniques and sketches from the movies. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed inside, and it was a rainy gross day so the pictures from outside don't look too great.
Here I am with a big Totoro:

Inside the museum's cute Straw Hat Cafe (looking like the Cheshire cat):

It's still as cold as ever here. We had another snow storm last week.
I'll post more about Japan tomorrow. You can find the whole album of photos here.

Port Barton

2010-03-01T20:20:00.000-08:00

After our brief trip to Sabang, we headed to Port Barton, another town on the island of Palawan where we stayed for the majority of our trip.
We had to get up for a 7 AM boat ride from Sabang to Port Barton, and were a little worried because we didn't have an alarm clock (note to all travelers: always bring an alarm clock). I asked someone that worked at the resort to knock on our door to wake us up, but they must have forgotten. Luckily, what with all the dogs barking, birds chirping, monkeys making whatever sound they make, and bugs biting, we didn't exactly sleep straight through the night and managed to wake up on our own. I mentioned in the previous post about Sabang that our cottage didn't have electricity between the hours of 11PM and 6PM. I discovered that fact at 6AM when I tried to turn on the lights to pack my bag. We ended up using the screen of our digital camera as a flashlight and luckily didn't leave anything behind.
So, 7AM rolled around and we left Sabang:

Jon read on the front of the boat, and I think this picture is real-time documentation of the beginning of the terrible sunburn you'll see in later pictures.

We stayed at Greenviews Resort, but the view from our front porch was more blue and brown than green:

It was definitely a relaxing place to stay.

From the moment our boat landed on Port Barton beach, boat owners were hassling us to use their services. Port Barton is a quiet place, and there's not much to do, so most people spend their time going island hopping to the surrounding islands or taking different boat tours. The boat tour we were most interested in was to the mangrove river.
Our boat driver/tour guide took us out in a tiny boat to reach the river.

We passed some fishing huts along the way.

Here are some pictures of the mangroves:

On our way back, we stopped at an island that our tour guide kept telling us had "white sand." He was right. This island was only ten minutes away by boat from Port Barton beach, but the water was somehow much clearer and the sand much whiter.

The next day, we set out for a hike with a couple we met on the boat ride from Sabang. Michael is from Germany and has been to more places in the US than we have, he's also been to more places in the Philippines than his Filipino wife Joy.
Michael had been to Port Barton before, so he led the way to the waterfall, which is tricky to find.

Even though it was a difficult hike in the blazing sun, Joy talked almost the entire time.

Some farmland we passed:

We got lost when the path disappeared into the woods, and this lady kindly showed us the way.

We made it!

As I mentioned, Jon got a pretty bad sunburn. We had 90 SPF sunscreen, but it didn't seem to do anything for him, so I came up with this great (and fashionable) solution:

Besides our adventures to the mangrove forest and to the waterfall, we spent most of our time doing what we do best: relaxing.

When we left Port Barton, we again had to get up super early. This time the people at the resort remembered to wake us up, but we still had no electricity. Even though we had to leave at 5 in the morning, they were nice enough to fix us a 4:30AM breakfast. This is what breakfast looks like at 4 in the morning with no electricity. I think Jon had one last mango shake for the road.

That's it for our trip to the Philippines. Next I'll begin our trip to Japan. More pictures from the Philippines can be found here.

2010-02-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

This is Kim Yu-Na, also known as "Queen Yu-Na." If you've been watching the Olympics, you probably already know about her. She is the reigning women's figure skating World Champion and, as of 5 minutes before this post, the reigning Olympic gold medalist.

When I met my 5th grade co-teacher, one of the first things he asked me was "Do you know Kim Yu-Na?" I told him I didn't, and he quickly explained that A.) she was Korean and B.) she was the World Champion.

Korea is a small country that doesn't get much attention in the international press; as such, they are fiercely proud of those who do make it into the spotlight.

Another co-teacher once recorded me greeting the students in my class and made a video where Kim-Yu Na's lips moved and my voice came out. I mean, they really like her.

Today, we dropped everything at 1:00 PM and watched the figure skating competition. Even though I'm not Korean, I still felt very proud watching Kim Yu-Na skate and break another world record. I loved how emotional she got when she finished, and I frowned as the Japanese competitor took the floor, hoping she didn't beat Yu-Na. I was in luck, as Kim Yu-Na's score remained the highest, and she took home the gold medal.

I use Korean celebrities quite often in my lessons, as I've learned they're an easy ploy to get the kids to pay attention. Kim Yu-Na is one of my favorites to use. It's a good thing she won gold and will continue to be in public favor so that I don't have to research any new pop stars. It's hard to keep up with "kids these days."

Sabang

2010-02-25T17:01:00.000-08:00

After our stay in Manila, we flew to the island of Palawan to experience rural life in the Philippines and, let's face it, play on the beach.

Our first stop on Palawan was the town of Sabang. In all the travel information I read online, Sabang was listed as a must visit location, if only for a day, to visit the Underground River, a World Heritage Site.

We stayed at Bambua Resort in Sabang, which is not exactly a typical resort. When I think of resorts, I think of being cut off from the local culture, sitting on the beach, and having someone bring you a drink with an umbrella in it. Bambua is a collection of a few cottages tucked on top of a hill. There is no airconditionining, there is no power between the hours of 11PM and 6PM, you can hear monkeys and birds as you sleep, and the stars are the brightest I've ever seen.

The strangest thing about Bambua was our company. As I said, the resort is made up of a collection of cottages, and there appeared to only be two cottages that were not lived in by the owners of the resort. Jon and I were in one cottage and two EPIK teachers we know who also live in Yang Yang were in the other. We ran into these teachers on the bus on the way to the airport. We asked where they were going. They said the Philippines. We asked where in the Philippines. They said Palawan. We asked where in Palawan. They said Sabang. We asked where in Sabang. They said Bambua Resort.
This was our cabin in Bambua:

The resort's restaurant:

Delicious Filipino food:

A rooster outside of our cabin. There were roosters and chickens running around EVERYWHERE we went in Palawan:

Walking between Bambua and the beach, we were able to see daily life of the people who lived in Sabang. Here's a view of some of the houses and farmland:

A Methodist Church:

Every house seemed to have its own ox, this one was grazing right in front of our resort (please tell me if I'm misidentifying this animal. It might just be a cow.):

The main part of the town with some souvenir shops and restaurants:

As I mentioned, the main purpose of our trip was to go on a tour of the Underground River. The river flows through a cave for 8.2 Km before running into the South China Sea. It is supposedly the world's longest underground river. Obviously, we didn't travel the entire 8.2 Km through the cave, although our tour guide said that is an option if you come at a time when scientists are there to study the cave. We took a 45 minute boat ride in, and then 45 minutes back out.
Here is the group that preceded us exiting the mouth of the cave:

A rock formation that looked like a jellyfish inside the cave:

Exiting:

At the entrance to the Underground River park:

On the boat leaving the cave:

The next post will be about our trip to Port Barton. Again, if you want to go ahead and see more pictures, the album is here.

Ingu School is Forever!

2010-02-25T16:25:00.000-08:00

I'm going to take a quick break in between my vacation posts to tell a funny story.

On Tuesday night, we had a goodbye dinner for the teachers who are leaving our school. In Korea, teachers are only allowed to remain at a school for 4 years and then they must move somewhere else. For some, this is a frustrating experience, but for teachers at our school, parting is mostly sweet with no sorrow mixed in to confuse things.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but most teachers hate our school. In the past, I've detailed some of the crazy antics of our principal, and for a while I thought that his behavior was normal for all principals. It turns out that he is quite a unique gem, and is actually infamous in our school system as being one of the worst principals. The principal at one of our friends' schools in Yang Yang shares the title of "Worst Principal Ever," and when my friend made a complaint about some issues at her school, our region's coordinator said the only solution would be "to fire the principal."

Korean society is vertical, so in any company, the boss sets the tone. A good principal, as we've seen at some of the smaller schools where we teach, can make a school a happy and relaxed place to work, a bad principal can make a school miserable.

This is my way of attempting to explain the tension at our school. Many Native English Teachers attend wild parties at their schools, have group breaks and snacks often, and enjoy spending time with their co-workers. At our school, we only spend time together when the principal makes us, not because we don't like each other, but because the principal is so controlling and crazy that he makes social situations not so fun.

Some examples of craziness:
1. One time we were supposed to attend a meeting for new Native English Teachers and co-teachers. The principal decided that our co-teacher wasn't allowed to come and instead the head of the English center (who doesn't speak English) would take us. The head of the English center didn't want to do this because her daughter was sick, and our co-teacher wanted to come because there was pertinent information to her job. The solution? We left the school with the head of the English center, drove down the road and parked in a gravel lot. Our co-teacher snuck out the back door of the school and met us in the lot. We ran out of one car, jumped into the other, and zoomed to the meeting.
2. The English Center at Ingu School has an interesting acrostic name. It's called Talent's Garden. Here's what Talent stands for:
T-True
A-Academic
L-Learn
E-East-sea coast
N-National
T-Talents
Sometimes, when the principal gets drunk at school dinners, he brags to us about making up this name. The sad thing isn't that he came up with it. It's a pretty good effort for someone who doesn't speak English. The sad thing is that no one (not the Korean co-teacher who speaks English fluently, not the Native English Teachers, not the people at the board of education) was brave enough to tell him that it didn't make any sense.

So I was going to tell a funny story right? I got a little sidetracked.

As I said, we were at a dinner to say goodbye to the teachers who were leaving to go to new schools. One such teacher, the first grade teacher, was in our English class for teachers last year (I came up with the name Talent's Gardeners for it, but the Principal said that was too long, so he changed it to T-Gardeners. See? Crazy!). On the first day of T-Gardeners class, we played an icebreaker game where we each listed 5 things about ourselves, one of which was not true. Everyone had to guess the one that was false. I don't remember the 1st grade teacher's entire list, but I do remember the item that was false: "I like teaching here." At dinner, when the principal handed her the certificate of appointment to a new school, I looked at the teachers at my table and whispered "happy." "Yes" they said, "very happy!"

After this ceremony, we had a pleasant dinner of delicious Korean barbecue. Yeong Eon and I talked in our combination of English and Korean (mostly English, because she's much better than I am) while Jon went around and did the duty of pouring drinks for everyone. He had the usual funny experience while pouring a drink for the principal who told him that his (Jon's) father was a "traditional Korean man." I don't know what that means, but it's probably a huge compliment.

At the end of dinner, the Principal stood up to make a toast. He spoke for a while in Korean and then yelled: "Jonathan! Sally!* Ingu School is forever! Understand?"

*Yes, Sally is a nickname for Sarah, but it is not one that I have ever gone by. I don't know how he suddenly forgot my name.

Manila

2010-02-22T22:53:00.000-08:00

I know it has been a very long time since my last post, but I have a perfectly reasonable explanation: we've been on vacation! I've been putting off my post-vacation post because I have so much to share that I don't even know where to start. I guess it would make sense to start from the beginning, huh?

The first stop on our winter vacation was to someplace warm: a wonderful country known as the Philippines. We spent a few days in the capital city of Manila, and the majority of our time relaxing on the beach on an island called Palawan.

In Manila, we stayed in a nice, quiet hotel called Casa Nicarosa. It's situated on a secluded street, which would explain why we ended up driving around in circles ever time we tried to take a taxi there. Our conversations with the cab driver went something like this:
Us:"It's on Madre Ignacia street."
Cab Driver: "Casa Ignacia?"
Us: "Madre Ignacia"
Cab Driver (asking someone for direction): "Do you know where I can find Madre Nicarosa street?"
Us: "MADRE IGNACIA!"

Here's a picture of the front of the hotel (yes, we did end up finding it), and the view from inside. I love how a lot of the buildings in the Philippines are very open.

The population of the Philippines is 80% Catholic, so our main destinations in Manila were cathedrals.
Here we are in front of Manila Cathedral:

There was a wedding going on inside the cathedral, and we were encouraged to go inside and take pictures. I bit.

We also went to Quiapo Church, home of the famous Black Nazerene statue, a carving of Jesus made out of dark wood. There are many legends about why the wood is so dark. My favorite involves a man poisoning Jesus' toe in order to kill a man who kissed his foot every day. He failed, because Jesus absorbed the poison and slowly turned black. This story was told to us by a man in our hotel as a fact.

We happened to visit Quiapo Church on it's feast day, and there were huge crowds. Not every one could fit inside for mass, so it was broadcast over a huge TV in the courtyard.

We also made our way to Roxas Blvd., one of the major streets in Manila, where we saw many families picnicking, many street vendors, and a lot of poverty. At one point I saw a couple that couldn't have been older than 14 carrying a diaper bag and a baby.
Here are some children playing in the water beside Roxas.

I took a short video to capture that atmosphere along the Boulevard. I think the man walking up to sell us pearls at the end says it all.

My favorite part of our stay in Manila was our visit to the area called Intramuros (within the walls), an area that still retains pieces of the fortress built during the Spanish colonial period.
We took a carriage ride from a very pushy driver,

enjoyed a delicious meal in the sunshine,

and explored the streets.

In my next post, I'll talk about our trip to Sabang, but if you can't wait until then and just have to go ahead and see all the pictures from our trip, you can go here.

Some more pictures from COEX Aquarium

2010-01-27T18:22:00.000-08:00

Yeong Eon was kind enough to send me more pictures from the aquarium (I forgot to mention that all photos in the previous post were TM Yeong Eon), and I thought I'd share them to show you the truly weird nature of this place.
There were fish in a traffic light...

...a telephone booth

...a vending machine

...a wine glass (or is it a champagne glass?)

...a dripping sink

...a washing machine

...and a refrigerator.

There were also crabs in a very tiny space shared with jazz musicians,

and bats lit to have some sort of Gotham City effect.

Also, here's a cute picture of our school's staff (some of them, anyway).
L to R (Back Row): Mrs. Kim (head of the English Center), The 6th grade teacher, the 5th grade teacher, the 4th grade teacher, the head of administration, the school handyman, the tennis coach, Jon, and the Vice Principal.
Front Row: Yeong Eon and I.

*You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge.

Pictures from the school trip to Seoul

2010-01-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

You can scroll down to the next post for a full description of our adventures in Seoul.

Getting eaten by a shark at the COEX aqaurium:

Headboard filled with fish:

Playing with the fun house mirrors in the aquarium:

Sitting through a long presentation that was entirely in Korean:

Teddy bear at the education expo in COEX mall:

Pretending to be interested in English materials at the education expo (we are posed for a lot of pictures so the school can show them to people and pretend like we do things we don't really do)

You can find more pictures from our trip toward the end of this album.

A trip to remember (unfortunately)

2010-01-25T17:12:00.001-08:00

Last week, Jon and I accompanied our school on a two day trip to Seoul. We spent most of the trip stuck on a bus in traffic. The rest of the time we went to elementary schools, a musical, an aquarium, and an education expo. A lot of interesting things happened on this trip, so you'll have to bear with me. I think a list will be the best way to give an accurate picture:

1. The Food. We had a tiny grain of hope, a slight sparkle in our eyes, that perhaps since we were venturing into the big city, the principal would choose to mix up the restaurant selection a little bit. Gangwon-do is not exactly an international province, and Ingu certainly doesn't have any non-Korean choices. Alas, when we arrived in Seoul we were greeted with the regular meal of soup and rice with salty/pickled sides. Not that we don't like to eat these things, just that we already eat them everyday, except the few times we visit Seoul.
2. The sleeping arrangements. We were told that the school was going on this trip because we had a lot of money left over in our budget that we needed to spend (the exorbitant amount of money our school has and the amount it wastes is a whole other topic that I won't get into right now) so I sort of assumed we would be put up in some fancy digs. Not exactly the case. The school arranged for two rooms: one for the women, and one for the men. They were arranged in a typical Korean fashion with hardwood floors and pallets for everyone.
Although Jon and I obviously would prefer to have our own room, you know, together, the main issue with this sleeping arrangement was our anticipation for what the men with which Jon was forced to sleep would be doing: staying up all night getting extremely drunk. It turned out to not be that bad for Jon, since the hotel room was divided into two parts, and the men who decided to stay up were separated from the men who wanted to go to sleep. However, I ended up only getting about 4 hours of sleep because the women I was sleeping with decided to stay up and whisper to each other until 3 in the morning with the TV on. Add to this the fact that I'm not used to sleeping on the floor, and you get the picture.
The funniest thing to come out of our separate sleeping arrangements were the Principal's drunken comments to Jon that night:
Principal: Do you want to sleep with Sarah?
Jon: No. I'm OK.
Principal (a few minutes later): Do you want to sleep with Sarah?
Jon: No. I'm OK.
Principal (a few minutes later): Do you want to sleep with Sarah?
Jon: Yes.
Principal: Oh, but there's no room.
Which transitions nicely into my third point:
3. Alcohol. We were anticipating a lot of drinking on this trip, just as we anticipate it when we go out to dinner with our school. Our co-teacher (who, perhaps wisely, decided to pass on the trip) warned us that often on these types of trips they'll break out the soju and karaoke machine a few minutes into the trip and keep it going until they arrive at their destination (keep in mind this is a three to four hour trip). Well, luckily, there was no drinking on the way to Seoul. It's not that I care that much if people are drinking, it's just that they tend to be loud and disruptive and I wanted to read, practice Korean with Yeong Eon, and relax since we had to be on the bus at 8:30 in the morning.
When we ate dinner, the drinking began. I think I've written a little about the drinking practices in Korea before, but just as a refresher I'll explain a little bit about it. It's a sign of respect to offer someone a drink. If you're elder offers you a drink, you can try very politely to turn it down, but they will probably pressure you several times to accept it, and then you will probably give in. You must accept a drink from an elder with two hands, and drink with your face turned away. Once you empty your cup (shot glass), you refill it and offer it back to the person. These are the rules for Koreans, when Jon and I say "no thank you" they say "ok" and offer us Cider instead. We occasionally accept a drink or two. I'll usually accept one per dinner, and two if I'm feeling friendly. I'm very glad that everyone knows better than to pressure us into drinking, but I still get upset when I see teachers who genuinely don't want to have anything eventually give in because the person who's offering them the drink is being, for lack of a better word, rude.
Jon and I sat at a table with the female teachers, which put us in a place of safety as far as the offering of drinks went, and we were able to sit back and watch as the men began to act more and more foolish.
By the time we reached the musical, the principal was very drunk, which meant he became way more friendly with Jon and I. He sat with us, spoke in broken English about his heart being big with love (Something he tells us every time he's drunk) about how much he loves America (another standard) and about how much of a gentleman Jon's dad is (a new one, since he just recently visited). He told me Jon is very handsome so I should be very happy. He also pulled his patented drunk move, which involves bulging his eyes out, putting on a very serious expression, and moving his face very close to yours for several seconds. I can never tell whether or not he is trying to be funny. I can tell, though, that he is crazy.
On the way home from Seoul, the fifth grade teacher opened up the secret stash of soju. As the trip progressed, his face got more and more red and his actions more erratic. At one point (after she tried to refuse a drink from him) he tore Yeong Eon's book from her hand and warned her that reading on the bus "makes you sick. It is very dangerous." I'm glad he warned us, because before I thought that eating dried squid and drinking massive amounts of alcohol on the bus could make you sick; now I know that this can only be brought about by a good long read. By the time we reached home, and our final dinner together, he was so drunk that he lay on the floor in the restaurant, until it was time to leave and he emerged with a paper cup of coffee between his teeth and a cigarette in his hand.
4. The Musical We went to see the Principal's favorite musical entitled "chincha chincha ju hwa yo" which was translated to us as "very very I like you" but probably means something more like "I really really like you." The musical was pretty fun. It was easy to follow (even though it was all in Korean) and the music was catchy. A lot people in the audience were very excited because a famous Korean comedian, Kim Jin Su, was starring in the musical.
I was fortunate enough (this is sarcasm) to be the Principal's chosen friend during the musical. Have you ever been somewhere with a drunken friend/acquaintance who ended up embarrassing you? Me too, that person was my boss. The Principal warned all of us before the musical began that we needed to be quiet. Once it started, he decided that being quiet could encompass singing along (with the incorrect words) to all of the songs, and clapping in very inappropriate places. Needless to say, he got a lot of dirty looks, not that that in any way deterred him. He also was kind enough to be my translator for the night, which was interesting since he doesn't speak much English. He told me things like "1970s, this musical, it is true."
During the finale, Kim Jin Su ventured out into the audience to shake people's hands. He was moving down the line when he saw something strange: foreigners (can you guess who they were?). He stopped, gave us a shocked look, and then hugged me and gave Jon a high five. When he came back on stage, he stopped singing and announced to everyone that there were "Waguks" in the audience. Then greeted us with "Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm movie star." We're kind of used to this type of attention by now, but it's definitely not as common in Seoul, since there are a lot more foreigners there than in Ingu. It made me feel sort of guilty, since some of our co-workers were very excited about getting to shake his hand, and we didn't even know who he was, but that's just the way it works here. We are special solely because of where we were born and what we look like. It's hard work being famous.
5. The Aquarium When we heard we were going to an aquarium in Seoul, we assumed it would be pretty nice, and I even thought about doing some research to see if it had any endangered animals or anything particularly interesting. I'm glad I didn't look anything up because I would have spoiled the magnificent underwhelmingness/weirdness of the COEX aquarium.
First of all, the aquarium is inside a mall.
Second of all, if any of the animals in the aquarium are endangered, it's because the aquarium is endangering their lives. I'm pretty sure that none of the living conditions for the animals were humane. The bats were kept in a well-lit area. I could reach my hand into all of the tanks. I saw one crab that was put in a space so small he could only shuffle back and forth within a 5 inch margin.
It seems that since the aquarium lacked any interesting species, they decided to make up for it by interesting displays. Such displays included: fish in a vending machine, fish in a headboard, fish in a toilet bowl, and fish in a refrigerator.

Sorry this was such a long post, but hopefully you found it interesting. There were more stories I left out like the Principal giving what seemed to be a very serious speech for twenty minutes, and then when we asked Yeong Eon what he was talking about, it turned out to be a story about an altercation he got into on the highway.

My next post will be less wordy and more photo-y, so stay tuned.

Winter Camp: Week 2

2010-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

We are now in our second week of winter camp, which is exactly the same as the first week, but with new students. Last week we taught the students from our "home school" (Ingu) and this week we are teaching all of our other students from the four other schools we visit every week. I thought I'd share some more pictures of how funny/creative/cute our kids are.
We did role plays again, and again there were some great masks. These two won the "Best Mask" prize:

We also played an icebreaker game where each student had to paint a picture of their partner as their favorite animal (stolen from my days of radio station retreats).

(this kid's partner was the one pictured above with the crazy bird mask, so he decided to draw him as his favorite animal, a tiger, wearing the bird mask)

Today we went on a treasure hunt to find the items necessary to make a dinosaur pencil (you'll see what exactly a dinosaur pencil is in a moment). Before the hunt we made pirate hats (of course)!
Everyone thought Jonathan's hat was really cool and scary:

Mine was slightly less menacing:

This boy thought Jon's hat was so cool, that he stood next to him and drew everything exactly the same.

This girl is really quiet and sweet, so we were more than a little surprised by her extremely violent hat (apparently she'd been, shot, stabbed, and hit with an arrow):

Lastly, this is what the dinosaur pencils looked like when they were finished:

Oh, and, one more thing. One of our students was wearing this awesome hat today:

I moved all of the student artwork from this week into one album. You can find it all here. Also, a few pictures from the past week were added to This Album.

Winter Camp Day 2: Role Plays

2010-01-04T20:29:00.000-08:00

Today we spent Winter Camp practicing, preparing materials, and performing role plays. I decided to pull out some art supplies in case any of the students needed any props or masks that we didn't already have, and was so impressed when every one of them made their own masks and props.
This team asked if they could have a banana from the food props, and then used it to trace and make their own bananas:

This was one of my favorite masks. There wasn't a speaking part written in the script for this students, so he decided to be the announcer and made up a character for himself. (You might recognize him as Gwang Pyo from the previous post).

This kid did horribly in his role play, probably because he spent most of the allotted practice time to create various props and disguises. At one point he made himself a mustache (wholly unrelated to his role play).

Some other really creative masks:

And now for the performances! Click "Read More" Below to watch the videos. Click here for more pictures.

This team won "Best Overall" award:

And this team won "Funniest." They were playing famous Korean Pop Singers: G-Dragon, Jessica , and Tiffany. (If you're interested, the links will take you to a G-Dragon music video or a video of Jessica and Tiffany's group Girls' Generations. This will also give you a good picture of what most Korean music is like. They love pop!)

This team won "Best Masks" and the girl on the left won "Best English." That's our co-teacher acting like a dog.

"What are you eating?"
"An apple."
Where is it?

"Yes I do apple!"
The boy won "Best Actor" and the girl won "Best English"

This team did not win any awards, for obvious reasons. They did work really hard on their masks though.

Winter Camp

2010-01-04T15:47:00.000-08:00

This week we have Winter English Camp, and since there are 8CM of snow on the ground, it definitely is living up to its name. Of course, since I'm used to Georgia, I assumed that all this snow would mean a cancellation in school, but no such luck. The buses, somehow, can still run, and therefore there is still school. I shouldn't be complaining, because Winter Camp is actually really low-key and fun, plus we get official camp t-shirts!
Yesterday, we taught our students about the most popular food for Americans their age: Peanut Butter and Jelly. Peanut Butter is an imported food, so a lot of Koreans don't really eat it, and none of our students had ever tried Peanut Butter and Jelly before. Most of them really enjoyed their sandwiches, while our co-teacher wasn't too fond of hers and our office assistant refused to try one. We understand, since later they offered us their favorite snack, a pastry filled with red bean paste, and we politely declined.
Here are some of the students enjoying their meal:

..and Man Su being silly:

As I mentioned before, we've had a lot of snow in the past few days. This was the view from our front door last night:

Here's a truck we passed on our way to work:

When we arrived at school, we found Gwang Pyo sweeping the steps with his umbrella:

Yesterday I received a care package from my grandparents with more coffee, socks, a scarf and a hat. It was pretty much perfect timing. I'll admit it: I'm wearing two scarves and two pairs of socks today.

More pictures here.

Korean Cooking

2010-01-01T22:59:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve, we learned how to cook Jon's least favorite Korean food: Kimchi. This week, we attended a workshop for all of the EPIK teachers in our area and on the final day we took a Korean cooking class. Besides the dreaded Kimchi, we made bulgogi (fried beef) and Doenjang Jjigae (soybean paste soup). Although we do a good bit of Korean cooking at home, it was nice to learn from experts and to cook with our friends.
Here's the cabbage waiting to be smothered in sauce:

Our friends Will and Theresa were so ready to make Kimchi, because their personal supply was getting low.

Even though Jon doesn't like to eat Kimchi, he did enjoy making it, so much so that he used our table's entire supply of chili paste in 5 seconds.

I think Lunar New Year is a much bigger deal than regular New Year here, plus it was extremely cold outside, so we had a pretty uneventful New Year's Eve. We stayed in Yang Yang with William and Theresa, went out for pizza, and I fell asleep before midnight. In the morning, Koreans in our area traditionally go to the beach to watch the sunrise. I think I mentioned before that it was extremely cold, so getting up to watch the sunrise at 6 AM sounded less than romantic.
We headed home on Saturday morning to a cold apartment and frozen pipes. Man, this living in a cold climate thing sure is difficult. It's snowing today, though, so I think all the cold might be worth it.
Happy New Year! You can find more pictures here.

Christmas in Korea

2010-01-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! Sorry for the long wait between posts. We've been pretty busy lately, as you'll see in the next few posts.
School ended on December 18th. That is, school ended for most of the students and some of the teachers. The English department was, and still is, expected to come to school every day except on our official vacation days.
Luckily, Christmas is an official Korean holiday. Since there's really not anything remotely Christmas-related, or really anything to do, in Ingu we decided to head to Seoul. The first item on our agenda was to eat as much western food as possible. Thanks to some internet research, I found a legitimate Mexican restaurant called Dos Tacos. I've never been so happy to eat a burrito in my life! For any readers in Korea, you can go here to find directions to Dos Tacos.

I'm not in any way trying to imply that we dislike Korean food. We actually love it, but sometimes it's nice to have a change, especially since most Korean food uses the same ingredients over and over again. Some of the other non-Korean food we enjoyed in Seoul included Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, KFC (I know, embarrassing), and Thai Food. I didn't realize until I wrote it down that we mostly ate American fast food. Oh, well.

Besides gorging ourselves, a benefit of being in Seoul was actually being able to enjoy Christmas festivities. Apart from the occasional mini tree in a shop window, the Ingu area is sorely lacking in Christmas cheer. On Christmas Eve, we headed to Gwanghwamun Plaza where there were lights, ice skating, Christmas music, and a lot of Christmas trees.
We really wanted to ice skate, but so did everyone else, and all the time slots were sold out. Fortunately, though, we were able to witness the bizarre children's rink where all the kids scooted around on planks instead of skating.

I hung out with a penguin.

and we learned that this year's Christmas was brought to us by Ford Taurus.

While exploring the area outside of City Hall, we came across an outdoor Christian Concert. The performances included an interpretive dance performed by Mary and an angel, a rock and roll group, a hip hop group, and dancers. At one point, we watched as Jesus came out carrying the cross and healed a blind man. The blind man then began to break dance. Afterwards, someone removed Jesus's crown of thorns, replaced it with a Yankees cap, and the crowd broke into a chant of "Go Jesus!" as Jesus showed off his moves. We walked by the area again an hour later and Jesus was still dancing, this time wearing a Santa Clause hat.

On Christmas Day we ventured out with our friend Chung to a huge Andy Warhol exhibit at the Seoul Museum of Art,

and we saw snow! Here I am proving that I (kind of) had a white Christmas.

Even though we missed our family and friends a lot over the Christmas Holidays, we had fun exploring Seoul and seeing what Christmas is like in another country. Did I mention that we enjoyed the burritos?
I hope that you all had a Merry Christmas as well. You can see more pictures from our adventures here.

Christmas Gifts

2009-12-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had my final class with my favorite 5th graders. It's a class of seven students, all of whom have high English levels, work hard, have good attitudes, and are hilarious. I look forward to going to their class every week. After class was over, I was packing up my things, and the students approached me and handed me a big envelope. Inside was this:

They also made one for Jon, who will get to teach them next semester, as they will move up to 6th grade.

Fred's Visit: Day two (the much awaited sequel)

2009-12-09T20:33:00.000-08:00

Sunday was defnitely less action-packed than Saturday. Since we'd seen pretty much all there was to see in Ingu, we travled south to the big city of Gangneung to visit the Charmsori Gramophone and Edison Museum (if you'll recall, Jon and I went there before, but my camera broke so I lost all of the pictures). Fred works for GE so we thought he'd be interested in the museum, plus it's just a really weird really great museum in general.
Unlike last time, we had an English-speaking tour guide, so we actually learned a little about Edison and music players during our visit.
Here are Jon and his dad in the museum:

Our tour guide showing off the collection of light bulbs:

We even got to listen to a phonograph, and teach our tour guide the word "crank."

After the museum, we took a bike ride around Gyeongpo lake in Gangneung. I've wanted to ride a tandem bike for a while now, and I finally achieved the dream!

We stopped for a breather halfway around the lake.

More pictures from our adventures can be found here.

Fred's visit: Day one

2009-12-09T18:51:00.000-08:00

This weekend, we hosted our very first visitor! Jon's dad was able to stop by Korea during a business trip. It was a great experience, first seeing someone from home and second, being able to share a little bit of what life is like in Ingu. We ended up learning more about Ingu ourselves, as we visited places we hadn't seen before and didn't know existed, and did things we never were brave enough to do before: like public singing.

The first item on our agenda was to take Fred to see our school. It was a Saturday, but the kids still had to go to school for a half-day, and everyone was anxiously awaiting our arrival. We first had to meet with the principal, who did the normal bragging about how great Gangwon is, and actually complimented Jon and I on our teaching, which was nice, especially since he's never seen us teach.

Here are Jon and his dad in the hallway of the English Center. OR are they actually on the streets of New York City? Who can tell?

Fred was very happy to find his home country represented in the English classroom:

Next we explored the area around Jukdo or "Bamboo Island," this supposedly used to be an island, but is now attached to Ingu.

The view from the top of Jukdo of Ingu Beach is beautiful.

While walking around outside of Jukdo, we found these really interesting rock formations. They made me dream of summer when it will be warm enough to go there and read.

Later we went to Jumunjin to eat at our favorite pizza place. It was a very windy, cold day which found us hiding in doorways and running into buildings to try to escape the pain, but we still managed to explore a little.

One of the most interesting parts of Jumunjin is the huge fish market, where we found a dried Manta ray for sale:

We also went down to Jumunjin Harbor. I love this picture because it adequately captures how we were feeling in the weather (you can click on the image to get a close-up).

After lunch, we returned to Ingu, where we finally got to show off Ingu's pride and joy: THE BIG BUDDHA at HyuHyu-Am temple.

I mean, it is really big.

We went inside of HyuHyu-Am for the first time. The temple is made up of a long circular hallway covered in paintings, in the center of the hallway is a small room with an altar.

The last, but certainly not least important, event of Saturday was our trip to Norebang. Norebang or "Singing Room" in English, is basically karaoke without an audience, or rather, only the audience of a small group of your friends. You pay by the hour for your own room with a bunch of TVs, two microphones, and some tambourines. Would you like to see some videos of us singing? I thought so. In case you were wondering, the lovely Korean woman in the videos is Yeong Eon, our office aid who LOVES Norebang.

I took a lot of pictures so you can find more here, but try not to spoil it for yourself because "Fred's visit: Day two" will be up shortly.

The Coffee Shop

2009-11-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

Although I love to complain about the rarity of coffee, specifically good coffee, in our neck of the woods, Ingu actually does have one coffee shop. Granted, this coffee shop only serves plain drip coffee and charges 5,000 Won (a little over three dollars) for this drip coffee, but the view from the coffee shop is very beautiful, so we still go there occasionally. The cafe is on the top floor of a hotel, and overlooks the ocean.

On our last visit, the barrista played the same song three or four times. Like most Korean songs, it randomly had English lyrics: "Fighting fighting. My life is beautiful life." I took a short video of Jon enjoying the music.
You can find more pictures here and more videos here.

Wednesdays

2009-11-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

Wednesdays are traditionally bad days for us. On Wednesdays we go to the bad school to teach the bad children. The school is called Namae, and at Namae we teach a two hour after school class with no co-teacher and children who love to hit and trip each other. Every week I try to mentally prepare myself and remain in the best mood possible, even if I fail to teach anything. I usually fail. This week I mostly succeeded, partially because my students were being particularly funny. They sucked me in with their charms. To document this rare moment in history, I took a couple of videos.
First, here are my fifth graders, performing a role play about the Bremen Town Musicians for the lesson entitled "Can you join us?" This is normal class time, and not after school, so they are better behaved and I have a co-teacher in the room. The kid who is playing the mouse is just so funny.

Later, during after school, I played Bingo with the 3rd and 4th graders to try and emphasize letter sounds, something the third graders are having a particularly hard time with. They were actually decently behaved. I think the trick is to only do activities where they remain sitting.

You can find more pictures here and more videos here.

A Weekend in Yang Yang

2009-11-28T20:03:00.001-08:00

Last Saturday, Jon and I went to Yang Yang, the big city North of Ingu, to visit our friends William and Theresa. They graciously allowed us to spend the night in one of the spare rooms in their huge apartment (of course, any apartment with a closet is huge to us). On Saturday evening, we went to Sol Beach, a huge resort along the beach.
Here's the outside of the resort:

I'm pretty sure Sol Beach is the fanciest place I've ever been.
Here are the elevators, which are surrounded by flowing water.

Here we are inside the lounge. The nightly performers are two westerners who sing "My Heart Will Go On."

On Sunday morning, we went with William and Theresa to a tiny Methodist church in the country. They have a Korean friend who is a professor and speaks English, and he takes them to church every Sunday. There were probably a total of 15 people in the church, and they of course all stared and smiled at us. During the sermon, the preacher would randomly say one sentence in English, looking at us for reassurance, then continue in Korean. I really enjoyed being able to sing traditional Methodist hymns in English while everyone else was singing in Korean.

After the service, there was a huge lunch spread with all fresh fruits, vegetables, and produce provided by the church members. Jon and I befriended an older man who spoke pretty good English and told us that he really likes Americans because he remembers when they helped South Korea during the Korean War, but he thinks our students are turning against us because they have "Red" teachers. I'm not so sure this is true.
You can see more pictures here and videos here.

Hot Topics

2009-11-22T23:49:00.000-08:00

Twice a week, Jon and I teach a 30-minute English class to our fellow teachers. This week, we printed off a list of issues, and taught them how to say "I'm for it," "It doesn't concern me" and "I'm against it."

This was an interesting excercise, because a lot of the issues ended up being great talking points about differences between the US and Korea. When we discussed whether or not the drinking age should be raised to 25, we discovered that the drinking age in Korea is 20. The teachers were shocked that it is even higher in the US. When discussing whether the voting age should be lowered to 15, we discovered that none of the teachers know what the voting age currently is.

One of the younger teachers is really good at listening comprehension, but tends to be very quiet during class, while the older teachers love expressing their opinions and don't mind trying to speak English, even if they make mistakes. During this class, the younger teacher mostly stayed completely silent, probably because the older ones were being so outspoken. Toward the end of the class, we discussed giving homes to the homeless. I glanced over at the young teacher's paper and watched as she scribbled "I'm against it."

Trip to Samcheok

2009-11-19T18:26:00.001-08:00

This weekend, the Epik teachers that live in Sokcho and Yang Yang went on a trip to Hwanseongul Cave. Jon and I enjoyed seeing our second cave in two weeks. We're probably officially cave connoisseurs by now. We also enjoyed getting to know some of the EPIK teachers that we haven't met before.
After reaching the park where Hwanseoungul cave is located, we had to walk 1 1/2 kilometers uphill to the cave, which was not exactly easy, but the view was really beautiful.

This cave was much more impressive than the cave we went to in Taebaek, and had even funnier signs

After visiting the cave, we got back on the bus and sang some karaoke:

Then we went to Hassla resort, where we had a fancy meal complete with caviar and steak.

Then we carved some wooden ducks.

Another exciting thing that happened this week was that I got my first care package. My nonie sent me some coffee, gloves, and socks, which were all much needed. I had my first cup of the coffee today, and it was a nice break from the weak coffee beans they have here.
The weather is already so cold, and we're told it's only going to get colder. I think I have weather-culture-shock.
That's all for today!You can see some more pictures from our trip here.

Korean Bureaucracy

2009-11-12T15:59:00.000-08:00

Things Koreans Care About:
Paperwork
Things Koreans Don't Care About:
Doing any of the things written in the paperwork.

For example:
-Jon and I had to have a fake meeting with our co-teacher where we pretended to discuss the afterschool program so that someone could take pictures of the meeting to submit to the board of education.
-Even if all our classes are canceled, we still have to write all of our lesson plans so that they can be submitted to the principal.
-It is documented that the woman who is in charge of the English center, and doesn't actually speak English, is our co-teacher, even though Jon and I never work directly with her. Our real co-teacher is not allowed to go to official meetings with us because on paper she is only our translator.
-So that we will work the minimum required hours, our school created an afterschool program where we teach the other teachers English. The teachers don't want to attend this class, and we don't want to teach it. On paper, we have taught the class twice a week since September. In reality, we have only taught the class twice.

Taebaek

2009-11-08T23:15:00.001-08:00

This past weekend, Jonathan and I traveled to Taebaek, in the southern part of Gangwon province. The town was pretty much perfect for us. There was a lot to do and see, but it wasn't super crowded or hectic like some of the larger cities we've visited.

We stayed in a Taebaek Highland Forest cabin, which had one notable surprise: no bed.Although itt did have comfortable mats.

I was really impressed with how isolated our accomodations were. We ended up being a twenty-minute bus ride plus thirty-minute walk away from downtown, and we were completely surrounded by beautiful woods and mountains.

Here's Jon walking on a makeshift bridge during our morning hike:

As usual, we had some interesting interpersonal encounters. First, we ran into a man who was carrying around an orange tree, tried to talk to us for twenty minutes even though he barely spoke English, tried to drag us to eat lunch with him even though we told him we were waiting for a bus, took pictures with me on his cell phone, then gave us some photos of himself to remember him by.

We also ran into some children with toy guns. They loved us the minute we started playing along with their shooting game. They followed us around until we went into a grocery store and the clerk kicked them out. Just a side note: unlike in the US, playing with toy guns is not really discouraged here. Violent crime isn't much of an issue, and gun ownership is illegal.

Our main outing in Taebaek was to Yongyeon Cave. We took a train up to the cave:

We enjoyed yongyeon, but they really tried too hard to make it cool by adding lots of flashy lights and giving silly names to different areas, like "Dragon Head" and "Gateway to Hell."

We liked the Yongyeon a lot more once we got away from the flashy displays, and more into the plain-old cave.

Before we left on Sunday, we visited Gumunso, where there are Paleozoic rock formations...

... and Jon was attacked by a dragon.

We took a train home, which was fun at first, and had a beautiful view...

then the train started going backwards, which was not fun, but scary. It turns out the conductor had gotten on the wrong tracks, so we rode backwards for about five minutes to where the tracks switched, and then started back on our journey going on the correct path. This did not exactly instill me with much faith in the Korail system.

There are a lot more pictures from our trip here. Videos are here.

3rd Graders

2009-11-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

Last week, Jon got to help me with my 3rd grade afterschool class. These are the craziest students I teach. During afterschool, their homeroom teacher isn't in the room, so they act horribly. There's a lot of running around, hiding under desks, and yelling. No matter how frustrated I get with them during class time, I always immediately forgive them during break time, when they come to me to ask questions and show me things they've learned. It's not their fault that at the age of 9 they're not quite ready to sit still for an 80 minute class.

During the break time, I took some photographs of the tiny terrors.

The boys played a shooting game with Jon, pretending that the alphabet letters from the rug were guns...

...while the girls drew on the board

According to one of our students, this is what Jon and I look like.

Whenever we play games, our students get to pick team names. This time, Korean pop star G-Dragon faced off against Obama.

More pictures are here.

(Non) Snow Day

2009-11-01T18:13:00.001-08:00

It snowed today! Which we thought would mean no school, but no such luck. Here are some pictures of our beautiful and painfully cold walk to work this morning:

(Atleast Yeong Eon, June, and I have warm winter slippers)

More pictures here. Videos here.

Halloween

2009-11-01T17:48:00.001-08:00

The great thing about American holidays is, even though we don't get to celebrate them here, we get an excuse to have a holiday party with our afterschool classes. Last week, we taught our students about the joy of Halloween. In my third grade class, I taught my students different vocabulary like witch, ghost, mummy, vampire. After I taught them all the words, Jon snuck in the back of the room with a vampire outfit and turned off the lights. Then taught the students the "Ghost of John Song."

Then we let the students make their own masks

And we went Trick-or-Treating. We told the students they could only get candy from doors with pumpkins. Here we are searching the hallway:

Here's June distributing the candy. She made sure every student said "Trick-or-Treat" before they got any. I'm not sure why she put it in a shoe.

We also made balloon Jack-o-Lanterns

Every other Saturday of the month, there is a half-day at school. Luckily, Jon and I don't have to go in on Saturdays, but June and Yeong Eon do. When we came into work on Monday, we found this note from Yeong Eon on our desk:

Our most recent Ingu photo album can be found here, and videos are here.

Some interesting things that have happened lately

2009-11-01T16:27:00.000-08:00

The Grandmother
While driving back to our home school from one of our more rural schools, an old lady waved us down. She asked June which way we were headed and then asked if we could drop her off on our way. She was going to a community sports day up the road, most likely to compete in some sumo wrestling or tug-of-war. Jon was sitting in the front with June, and the grandmother sat next to me in the back. As we drove on, June and Jonathan began discussing something, and the grandmother looked over at me and grabbed my hand. She looked at me as if to say something, then just nodded and smiled, and continued to hold my hand and rub my arm. I found this simultaneously funny and endearing and it left me with a big smile on my face. The funniest thing was that neither Jon nor June noticed, so I had to wait until we'd dropped our hitchhiker off to tell them what happened.
Scary Americans
On Fridays, we visit our smallest school, where our biggest class is 3 and smallest is 1. We only teach 3rd through 6th grade, so we don't see the younger children very often. When we first started working there, the other teachers told us that one of the kindergarteners used to cry every time he saw Jean and Kate (the previous Native English Teachers). They were all impressed when the child saw us in the hallway, didn't cry and said hello to us. On Friday, we saw him for the second time. He waved and said hello, and I reached down and patted his hand. Then he just stared at me for a while. We usually go back to Ingu to eat lunch, but on that day the Vice Principal invited us to eat with them, and while we were sitting in the cafeteria, we noticed the kindergartener sitting at the other table, crying. Our 5th and 6th grade students informed us that he was crying because of us. Eventually, his father, who is a teacher, had to drag him out of the cafeteria.
Well-Informed Homeless (?) Man
While we were waiting for a bus in Jumunjin, a bigger town next to Ingu, a man saw us from across the street, and decided to walk over and speak to us. I can't quite figure him out. He looked kind of dirty and acted a little crazy, but I'm not sure if he was homeless or not. It's strange, but when we're in public, the only people who ever try to speak to us are either children or crazy-looking adults. Anyway, the man came up to us and started saying things like "Lyndon B. Johnson. Richard M. Nixon. Satellite. Neil Armstrong." We nodded and smiled appreciatively, occasionally replying with something like "Satellite. Yes." He then said "Hillary" and gave two thumbs up. We asked "Do you like Hilary?" "NO NO NO!" he replied. "Do you like Obama?" "Obama? No no no." "Who do you like?" "Richard M. Nixon. Richard Milhous Nixon." Interesting choice. He also told us some important information like "John F. Kennedy. Assassinated" and showed us that he could read by taking Jon's book and reading out loud, pointing out words he knew.
No Longer Feeling So Beloved
I think I've adequately painted the picture thus far that we are treated like celebrities in Ingu. Anytime someone walks up to us we expect a friendly smile, a wave, and a "Hello." If someone really wants to practice English, we might even get a "Where are you from?" This weekend, we learned the hard truth that it's tough out there in the big(ger) city. While we were waiting for the bus in Jumunjin, just before being accosted by the above mentioned man, a bus drove by and we saw a kid with his head sticking out of the window. We looked up and smiled, expecting a loud "Hello!" What we got was an equally loud "Kiss my a**!"

Dinner and English Speech Contest

2009-10-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Jon and I hosted a dinner for our co-teacher June, her husband Matt, and our office assistant Yeong Eon. I made a cobbled together version of bruschetta (which I had to grill in corn oil instead of olive oil, which is hard to find here) and ceviche. Matt made us a delicious carrot cake for dessert, which we really appreciated since we only have a stove top and no oven, which means no baking.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Koreans are very into gift-giving, so to thank us for having her over, Yeong Eon gave us some perfect gifts including a box full of Korean snacks, a carton of milk, and some instant latte mix.

Yeong Eon is practicing English, so she brought along her English book and practiced phrases like: "Your decorations are very beautiful." Also, when June and Matt arrived she said: "Welcome to Sarah and Jonathan's house." She's great. June calls her our entertainer.

On Saturday, we accompanied our student Seung Eun to an English Speech Contest in Gangneung. Seung Eun is probably our smartest student, but she's pretty shy. She wrote a speech about Jukdo or "Bamboo Island." June translated it word for word into English, then Jon rewrote it so that it made sense. We've been working with her for a month on the speech, and we were so proud!

Afterward, we went out to coffee with June, The 5th grade teacher, the vice principal's assistant, Seung Eun, her mom, and her sister. I know I've complained about the instant coffee in Korea, but once you get into bigger towns, they actually have really great coffee shops, a lot of which roast their own beans.
We found out that Seung Eun's mom owns a beautiful bed and breakfast that we noticed on our first day in Ingu and in which we've been planning to stay sometime. She also told us that her husband is a coffee roaster, and they have their own brand of coffee called Hippie Coffee.
We rode home with Seung Eun's family and were really impressed with their ability to communicate in English. Seung Eun has near-perfect listening ability and could translate everything we said to her mother. Her mother asked us what type of music we liked, and when Jon said he liked Metal she said she loved Metallica and Iron Maiden. Jon says she's the Lorelai Gilmore of Ingu (Inn Owner, strange music taste, smart daughters). They invited us to go with them to a coffee festival this weekend in Gangneung. We can't wait!

More pictures are here and videos are here.

Sports Day

2009-10-27T18:33:00.000-07:00

On Friday, October 23rd, our school held it's Sports Day, where there weren't that many sports, and there were a lot of things to eat. The first activity we observed was a The Price is Right style game, where some of the students and parents had to guess how much a bag of chili peppers weighed and how big the biggest highway in Korea is.

Later there was a tug of war, where Jon and I were pitted against each other. I was on the green team, and he was yellow (my team won).

There was also a relay race, which was the most fun to watch. It started with the Kindergartners:

The race got pretty intense near the end:

The green team cheated in the relay race (one of the kindergardeners decided to run straight across instead of around the track) so the yellow team was not happy about it:

The best and worst thing about Sports Day was the massive amounts of food. First, the mother of our student Seung Eun, who we assisted with an English speech, made us a picnic basket with gimbap (sushi rolls), rice balls, and salad.

Then, our school staff provided us a meal of Korean Kimchi Pancakes (not as bad as they sound), fruit, rice cakes, chestnuts, and soup:

THEN (oh yes, it's not over) we went outside where our students' moms pushed plates and plates of bulgogi, fried chicken, and fried dumplings. They also asked us if we wanted any alcohol, at school, in the middle of the afternoon.

More pictures are here and videos here.

Yang Yang Salmon Festival

2009-10-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

On October 17th, Jon and I went to Yang Yang's annual Salmon Festival. Yang Yang is famous for two tings: Salmon, and Pine Mushrooms. We accidentally missed the Pine Mushroom Festival, and we didn't want to make the same mistake twice. At the Salmon festival, we had the option of catching fish with our bare hands, then heading over to a tent where someone would cook and season the salmon for us. I thought this sounded fun, but once I actually saw people doing this, I was no longer interested. It's actually not a very fair situation, since they fence the salmon in, making the human to salmon ratio about 1:50. There's pretty much no way that you couldn't catch one. Also, there were a lot of dead fish laying around on the banks. I didn't object to watching other people try their hand, though:

We did participate in some other Salmon festivities, like the ever-popular "throw the beanbag through the fish eye" game.

The highlight of the festival was this delicious clam and noodle soup:

Teaching

2009-10-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

This month, I've been teaching my 3rd graders a lesson entitled "How many cows?" The point of the lesson is to learn how to ask and answer questions regarding liking animals, having animals, and counting animals. Some of my classes know the vocabulary so well that they are completely bored, others still can't differentiate between like and have (which is particularly hard to teach at the schools where I have no co-teacher). Anyway, the best thing about this lesson is using animal props.
These are two of my 3rd graders Jason (in the hat) and Lion (face covered). Just so you know, I didn't assign them English names, they already had them. I would never advise a kid to choose the name Lion.

These props were for a role play. Here's another third grade class acting out the role play. It might be hard to tell what's going on. The general idea is that momma pig (in the hat) counts to see how many baby pigs she has. She has 3. She then sends them off to play. After they've been playing, brother pig (the puppet) counts again, and finds that there is one less pig. Sister pig (felt pig) quickly corrects him and informs him that he forgot to count himself.

We also recently discovered that at our smallest school (with a total of eight students) our 4th, 5th, and 6th graders are in a rock band. Front Row (L to R) My one and only 5th grade student on guitar, Jon's one and only 4th grade student on guitar, Jon's 6th grade student on bass. Back row: Jon's 6th grade students on drums and keyboard. Make sure you turn down the volume before you watch this video, and please watch it the whole way. About halfway through there's a really cute chant and a cool keyboard part.

I used the Facebook uploader for the videos this time, as I know Vimeo doesn't work well on some computers. The videos are still available on Vimeo as well. Ingu pictures are here, Seoul pictures are here, and orientation pictures are here.

Trips around Yang Yang and Gangneung

2009-10-16T16:59:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we visited nearby Namae Harbor:

We ran into some students there, who saw us buying cookies and candy from a truck, so when they next saw me in class they said "Teacher. Cookie." "Yes." I replied.
We also walked by something that looked dangerous:

Yesterday, the principal planned a last minute trip to look at some mountains and go out to dinner in Gagneung, a large city south of Yang Yang. The strange thing about these social events is that all of the teachers complain about having to go to them, and the principal, by all appearances, doesn't actually enjoy our company. Despite this fact, we were told that we should put money into the school social fund, and attend all the events, or the other teachers might ostracize us. I'm not complaining, because Jon and I actually enjoy going on the trips, I just think that we are the only people who want to be there.
The view along the mountains was very beautiful:

and Young On was wearing makeup, so she let us photograph her:

While Jon and I enjoyed looking at the view and being out in the cool fall air, the Principal was mostly concerned with drinking on every stop (there are no outdoor drinking laws). He offered Jon and I both a drink of Johnny Walker out of a paper cup, which we politely accepted. We luckily had a bunch of fried potatoes we'd bought at a roadside stand, which I proceeded to stuff in my mouth afterwards.
Here's Jon with Young On and June, enjoying some potatoes:

You can see more photos here, and videos here.

Some funny things about Korea

2009-10-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

The Ghost
Last week we came into school to discover that the Vice Principal was very upset with us. Why was this? Because Jonathan left his computer on, some neighbors saw the screen through the window at night, and called the school to complain that there was a ghost. My favorite thing about this story is that the Vice Principal wasn't annoyed with the neighbors for bothering him with ghost complaints, he was more annoyed that Jon caused them to complain by leaving on his computer.

Traffic Laws
There are none. After sitting in the car for several minutes with our co-teacher, who was stopped at a green light, waiting to turn left, with no oncoming traffic, then trying to cross the street at a red light, watching car after car zoom under the light, Jon and I decided to ask what exactly the rules are. We thought maybe red lights were more like stop signs here, even though some cars don't even slow down or stop under them. When I say cars run red lights, I mean almost all cars run red lights, and I don't mean the light is yellow so they try to make it under, I mean the light has been red for several seconds, when they first see the light it is red, and they just keep driving. Apparently it is just as illegal to run red lights here as it is in the US, there just aren't as many police officers patrolling for moving violations, and you can apparently easily bribe them into not giving you a ticket.

The (Possibly Drunk) Bus Driver
One day, we got on the idle bus, to find our bus driver asleep in the back seat. He then woke up, and went through another passenger's grocery bags. After he found nothing to his liking there, he looked through our box, which he was disappointed to find was full of school supplies. While he was driving us back to our home school, he pulled off to the side of the road next to a fish stand. He proceeded to yell at the ladies working at the stand for a few minutes, then continued on his way.

Discussing Physical Appearance
I've talked before about all of the teachers yelling at the school dinner about how beautiful me and Jonathan are. I've been compared to a doll probably about 10 times now, which I think is mostly related to my pale skin, and the fact that Koreans need to get more dolls that look like them. Yesterday, while we were on a school trip, one of the lunchroom ladies came up behind me and started rubbing my belly and everyone started laughing and yelling things, my co-teacher said they were just saying how skinny I was. So, I know, it sounds real tough living with a bunch of people who mostly like to compliment your looks, but they don't only talk about the good things. A group of young students at one school love to call Jonathan Pinocchio and pull on his nose. The other day when I was at the supermarket, I was looking at skin care products, and a sales woman walked up to me, pointed at my zits, and then pointed to the product she thought I should use. This openness about the way someone looks is not only used for us foreigners either. At our staff dinner last night, several male teachers made an effort to compliment Young On, our office assistant, on her new makeup. I couldn't even tell she was wearing different makeup.

Photoshop
Young On recently showed us her profile on the Korean equivalent of Facebook. All of the pictures were Photoshopped in some way. Sometimes she added words above here head, or made her face extremely pale, it also appeared that she had Photoshopped her sister's eyes to be bigger in some pictures. The weirdest thing she did was blur out her mouth in several photos, and when I asked her why she just shook her head.
When we later showed her our wedding photos she was absolutely amazed that we had done nothing to alter the original photos. She showed me some of her friends' wedding photos, and it was almost like looking at a ghost. All the edges had been softened, the background blurred, and there was an extremely white girl sitting in the middle.

Chuseok in Seoul

2009-10-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, Jonathan and I took an express bus to Seoul to meet up with friends and explore the city. Initially, Seoul was a little scary to me, since it's the biggest city I've ever visited, but, although we got lost a few times, it was overall extremely easy to navigate and had the best subway system I've ever used. We also found that, just like everywhere else in Korea, everyone was extremely helpful. For example, one night when we were walking back to our hostel, it started to rain, and a guy walked up behind us and said "share my umbrella." He was a student at the local college, and went out of his way to walk us back to our door.

Due to Chuseok, a Korean holiday similar to Thanksgiving, many Koreans left Seoul to be with their families, while many Westerners went to Seoul to see each other. It was especially strange for me and Jon after being the lone foreigners in our town to see so many English-speakers in one place. Because many Koreans vacate Seoul for the holiday, many attractions we wanted to see were closed. We did manage to visit a few major sites, including Gyeongbok Palace. My favorite part of the palace was Hyeongwonjeong, the King's "Palace within a palace":

Next door to the palace was the National Folk Museum of Korea, which wasn't too impressive since it mostly displayed replicas, but it did have cool Chinese Zodiac statues outside. Here's Jon with his sign, The Bull:

We also visited Seoul Tower. After walking around for thirty minutes trying to figure out how to get there, then taking a taxi where the taxi driver yelled at us and told us we should be on a bus, then taking a bus that slowly chugged its way up to the top, we made it. Here's a view of the city:

Our other Seoul adventures included running into our old friend Gandalf:

and eating another one of those huge waffles:

We enjoyed being able to see our friends from EPIK orientation in the city, and visiting friends from Georgia who now live in Seoul, but after a tiring weekend we felt like country bumpkins from little old Ingu and were ready to go back to the town where everybody knows our name.

Many more pictures from our trip can be found here!

Party Boat

2009-09-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

On Monday, our school's staff took a boat ride around Ingu and the surrounding towns and then went out to a sushimi restaurant.

Here are Jon and I with our Co-teacher June, before we got on the boat:

While on the boat, Jon and our office assistant Young On showed off their dance moves:

Dancing on the Party Boat from Sarah Colombo on Vimeo.

Jon and I tried to act Korean:

A lot of the teachers were afraid of getting on the boat. I suppose that's because most Koreans don't know how to swim. They were depending on Jon and I to save their lives. Also, a large percentage of the staff suffered from seasickness:

Jon, the principal, and our 6th and 5th grade co-teachers fed the birds:

Feeding the birds from Sarah Colombo on Vimeo.

Then we ate some raw fish:

Today is the beginning of our Chuseok Holiday. We were originally supposed to have Thurs, Fri, and Monday off, but last week our Principal changed his mind. The school that Jon and I usually teach today has a holiday today, but since our main school doesn't, we still had to come in and sit at our desk all day. The Principal said if we want, we can go home at 2PM instead of 5 today, but that will subtract 3 hours from our vacation time. Although, how you can successfully take away 3 hours from someone's vacation escapes me. Tonight we're taking a bus to Seoul and we'll be there for the weekend, meeting up with some old friends from home and new friends from orientation.

More pictures from the boat ride are here. And my videos are here.

Sokcho

2009-09-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Jonathan and I went to Sokcho, a city north of Yang-Yang, to a small "International Film Festival." This was a pet project of some EPIK teachers, so it was a very low-budget but fun event. We saw two good documentaries, both of which should be on DVD if you are interested: The Iron Wall, a movie about Palestine and Israel, and The Future of Food about Genetically Modified food and the patenting of seeds.

While in Sokcho, we saw a familiar face.

We also found this cute coffee shop that sells Vespas and bikes.

Here we are along Cheongchocho lake, hanging out with the official mascots of Sokcho.

Teaching is going well. Here's a video of Jon with his 6th grade students. He's teaching them a chant called "What do you want to do?"

Jonathan Teaching his 6th Graders at Ingu from Sarah Colombo on Vimeo.

And, just because they're so cute, here's a video of some of the Ingu Kindergarteners:

Ingu Elementary Kindergarteners from Sarah Colombo on Vimeo.

Last night, we went on a boat ride and out to Sushimi with our co-workers, and I have more pictures and video from that, so there will be another post very soon.

I added more pictures from Sokcho to the album here. And videos are here.

Update

2009-09-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

I planned on making a post today about the awesome Charmsori Gramophone and Edison Science museum that Jon and I visited this weekend, but alas my camera decided to do something weird and now i can not get to any of the pictures or video we took. Suffice it to say that this was a very strange, very enjoyable museum. There were, obviously, large collections of Gramophones, as well as collections of many Edison inventions. Some pieces of the collection were actually interesting, like old telegraph stations, others just seemed a tad unnecessary, like curling irons and baby dolls. There were also a lot of things that were completely unrelated to Edison (i.e. Beanie Babies, pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, action figures). We had an English brochure, but all the plaques were in Korean, and the tour guide spoke Korean. At the end of the tour they took us into a room and played clips from several DVDs in English (The Sound of Music, some PBS live concerts) at extremely loud volumes. According to the brochure, the point of this room was to show off the sound technology.

We also visited Gyeongpodae, a pavilion overlooking the beautiful Gyeongpo lake, where we ate roasted chestnuts and talked to a man who said he saw us an hour before at the bus station (this happens to us every day, students tell me they saw me at the convenience store or office workers at other schools say they saw us walking to work. We stick out). We also visited the Korean Traditional Poetry Plaza, which was made up of several large tablets inscribed with poems. We want to go back soon to rent tandem bikes to ride around the lake, although our height differences may make riding one an impossible feat.

As for teaching, everything is going pretty well. We are always very exhausted at the end of the day, which makes it hard to resist the urge to indulge in as many delicious Korean treats as possible. All of the snacks here are filled with chocolate, and I have basically tried every variety. It doesn't help that we live directly behind a convenience store.

This morning I drank my last cup of coffee, and we'll have to drive into another city in order to buy whole coffee beans. Instant coffee is much more popular here than it is in America, and a lot of the ground coffee comes with sugar already mixed in. We'll see how teaching goes tomorrow when I am caffeine-less.

Our students are very cute and, for the most part, very sweet. My third graders are considered the "naughtiest" since they can't resist hitting each other anytime their homeroom teacher leaves the room. Since they don't speak English, they simply pretend they don't know what I'm saying if I get onto them, even though I think it's pretty obvious by my tone and facial expression what I mean, and even though they definitely know the word "no." It's actually pretty comical to be sternly telling a child "No hitting!" and have them innocently look up at you, with wide eyes, making a surprised noise that sounds like "whaaaaa?"

That's all for now! Hopefully I'll have more pictures for you soon!

Finally some media to make the surrounding words less boring

2009-09-10T04:14:00.000-07:00

After trying for several days to get through to the English-speaking department (which appears to be run by one poor busy woman) we finally have our very own internet! Which means I can finally share pictures and videos!

So first off, here are a few shots from our first day in Ingu, when we explored the town.

We live in a coastal town, so we can access the ocean whenever we want, just by crossing the street. I actually just wanted a picture in front of the water, and was not planning on being crushed by this huge wave.

There is also a big Buddhist Temple across the street from our apartment, and it has a ridiculously huge statue. See tiny Jon on the bottom left for reference.

If you're interested, you can take a virtual tour of our apartment:

A tour of our new apartment from Sarah Colombo on Vimeo.

and our school:

Untitled from Sarah Colombo on Vimeo.

We've been doing a lot of cooking using our handy Korean cookbook. Click the link if you're interested in trying Korean food. I think it's great, but almost everything is ridiculously spicy, so be warned. The first meal we made (mostly Jon made) was Octopus:

Yes, that is a foot next to the pan. We couldn't get our stove to work, so a neighbor loaned us her portable stove. We cooked on the floor.

You can see a lot more pictures here and videos here.

Dok jo se yo

2009-09-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

Hello! It's been a while. Since my last post, Jon and I found out where we would be living for the next year, moved there, met our co-teacher, and explored our new schools (yes, that is plural, 5 to be exact).

We live in Gangwon-do province, in the city of Yang Yang and the town of Ingu. Yang Yang is a coastal city, which is great for us. Our apartment is across the street from the beach, and a huge Buddhist temple. We have a pretty small apartment, with 3 rooms. I guess that's a really small apartment, but it's very nice and the rent is free, so we can't complain. Some of our friends from orientation told us they had three-bedroom apartments, but we live in an area so small that our apartment complex is the only one in town.

About that small town: Ingu is very charming, and hopefully the charm won't wear off and make us stir-crazy. We are the only foreigners in our town. This means people stare at us all the time. We are extremely noticeable and no one is shy about showing that they are interested in us. Sometimes people drive by and put their hands over their mouths and giggle. Sometimes they speak one or two English words to us ("Hello," "Good morning") then laugh and walk off. Old women talk to us in a string of Korean, pointing at things, and laughing the whole time. Some children (students at our school who we hadn't met yet) followed us around town for a while, and every time we turned around they would hide behind a building.

Our first full day in Ingu, we were walking around when we ran into our office assistant Yung On, who we had met the previous night. She speaks a little English, so I tried to ask her if she got her hair cut in a salon I saw in town, she said she didn't, but then walked me over to the salon, talked to the owner, and I was dragged in and given a hair cut. The stylist knew almost no English, so she said "short?" and I said "no." Surprisingly enough, it turned out looking really good.

Our main school is Ingu elementary. That is where our co-teacher, June works, and it is the school that pays us and where our office is located. Despite Ingu being our main school, we only spend one day of the week teaching there, the rest of the week we travel to 4 other small schools in the area. One school only has 8 students total in grades 3-6, meaning that Jonathan and I both have a class with only one student. I teach 3rd and 5th grade and Jon teaches 4th and 6th. It is not normal in our program for couples to be placed at the same school, but it makes things pretty convenient for us since we have to travel around a lot.

Today we went to the school with 8 students, and during the break between classes, the people in the office asked if we would like to go outside and gather chestnuts from their trees. We didn't find many, but everyone else gathered them and then gave them to us. One of the teachers also noticed that the school slippers (sandals that you have to change into once you enter the school) were too big for me, so she found a pair of the children's slippers, and gave them to me as a present. They look like Keds and they have a pink bunny on them.

A strange part of Korean culture is the complete lack of embarrassment about public drunkenness. We had a staff party on Tuesday night, and we got to see our Principal and our co-workers get extremely drunk and talk openly with us about how much they loved the USA and Americans. The principal said Jon reminded him of Bruce Willis, because he was brave just like in "Die Hard." He also said I look like a Barbie Doll (maybe a 5-foot-tall, brunette Barbie?).

There are a lot of traditions revolving around Soju here. It's similar to Sake, and costs less than a beer for a bottle. You are supposed to pour Soju for your elders, and often after you do that they will turn around and pour one for you in the same cup. If you drink the whole thing they'll yell "One shot!" Jon and I wanted to please the principal, so we offered him a cup of Soju. Jon went first and the principal said (through our co-teacher's translation) that the other half of the bottle was filled with his heart. He told me that he had traveled a lot, but never to America, and had never met an American face-to-face, then said in English "I am very happy."

Another teacher (male) offered Jon a drink, then hugged him and kissed him and told him that he loved him. Later he yelled across the table, "Sarah! You are so beautiful! Jonathan! You too!"

It was a lot of fun to get to know everyone a little better and see them in a differnt light. We spent a lot of time with other teachers who weren't drinking, and who were very excited to learn that we were protestants. One lady offered to drive 45 minutes on Sunday morning to pick us up and take us to her church.

The funniest thing about the drinking is everyone pretends like it never happened. I know that happens in America as well, but no one even gives an embarrassed look or mentions that we went out. We had to drive some where with the Principal the next day and he acted very serious and official.

We really love our Co-teacher. We heard a lot of complaints before about people's co-teachers not knowing a lot of English, but June's husband is from New Zealand and doesn't speak Korean, and she lived in New Zealand for 4 years, so we don't have any language barrier. Also, because she's lived in the Western world, we don't have to worry about as many cultural misunderstandings.

Sorry for the long post, I've been wanting to post all week, but we've been very busy finishing our lesson plans for next week. I took a lot of pictures, and will post them as soon as we have the internet in our apartment.

Anyang-he-kay-say-o!

The Most Beautiful Food I've Ever Seen

2009-08-26T04:40:00.001-07:00

This is the gelato-covered waffle I referred to in the earlier post. So, yes, it does have tomatoes underneath that whipped cream, but it is still delicious.

Video from Keumsan Temple

2009-08-26T04:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of a monk in Keumsan Temple. Unfortunately, it is sideways due to the way I held my camera, and I don't know how to rotate it. I'll do better next time.

If you are interested in seeing more videos from our trip so far (they're all really short and a few are also sideways), you can go here .

2009-08-26T04:06:00.000-07:00

For the past 4 years I have had the same Nokia, block-phone. All it did was text and call. It couldn't even take pictures or show anything in color on the screen. Now I am in Korea, the land of the morning calm and technology. I just got my Korean Cell phone, which was the simplest model available. It has a built in camera and mp3 player. It is also called "Fashionable Music Phone" which makes me feel very, well, fashionable. The picture below is almost true to life. It fits in the palm of my hand.

Some observations

2009-08-25T03:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't gone through "culture shock" yet, but I have observed some interesting cultural differences about which I think westerners will enjoy learning:
1. Tomatoes as dessert.
I know, Tomatoes are a fruit. They probably aren't much more sour than a lot of fruits I enjoy eating with sweets, but Jon and I were still shocked, and frankly a little disgusted to find tomatoes in the center of a dessert waffle we ordered yesterday. This waffle was topped with gelato, whipped cream, kiwi, and bananas. We'd been eyeing this waffle for days in the window of a restaurant across the street. I have to admit I felt a little betrayed when, upon reaching the center of the waffle, buried under a heap of gelato, there were slices of tomato. What's that about Korea?
2. Overly-accomodating restrooms
People love to complain about the public restrooms in Korea, because a lot of times the toilets are built into the ground and you have to squat over them, or there isn't any toilet paper, and if there is toilet paper you have to get it from a dispenser outside of the stall. However bare-bones this may seem, there are aspects of public toilets that are quite luxurious. First there is the "courtesy button." This is to the side of the toilet with a big red button and a speaker. When I first saw the courtesy button, I was afraid to push it because I assumed it was a way of summoning someone to come to your assistance. I was later told that this is actually a way for shy people to cover up the noise of going to the bathroom. Pushing the button triggers a toilet-flushing sound.
The other "luxurious" aspects of the toilet I can't really explain because I haven't used them and they are written in Korean. Along the arm of some of the toilets, there are 10-15 buttons, I think one transforms the toilet into a bidet, but I have no idea what the rest of them do.
Here's an example from tripadvisor.com:

3. Giving Gifts
We were advised before we arrived to bring gifts for our bosses, but when we got here found out we brought way too few gifts. Not that anyone expects gifts from westerners, but they do give them out very often. I left my purse in one of the lecture buildings the other day, and after I informed the security guard, he went back into his office and came out with drinks for me and Jon. We only needed to be in the building for about 5 minutes, but he wanted to make sure that we were comfortable.
We have 4 lectures a day and every day between the first and second and third and fourth lectures we are given a snack and drink. We were also told to expect to never have to pay for a meal when we go out with our bosses, since they will think it is their job to take care of us and will therefore always buy our food.
4. Cutesy Stuff
If you looked at any of my pictures from walking around in Jeonju, you may have noticed that all the store signs are adorned with cartoons. Most of the adds here have cartoon characters. It seems that they use cute-appeal instead of sex-appeal. The cutest thing I've seen so far are "Flip Flops." They are solar-powered figurines that I have seen in literally every car. The most common are little flowers that dance when they are in the sun. Here's an example from uxsight.com:

Note: I am certainly not trying to establish or confirm any stereotypes, just observing the things that are different from my culture. Of course, according to the experts, I'm currently in the "Honeymoon Phase" of adjusting to a new culture, so I think all of this stuff is wonderful, funny, and cute. When I get to the next phase it might all make me furious or depressed.

Trip to Keumsan Temple and the Jeonju Hanok Village.

2009-08-24T05:23:00.001-07:00

On Sunday we went on a class field trip (which is a pretty big undertaking since our orientation class has 600 people) to a local temple and Hanok Village.
We first went to Keumsan Temple, which was a beautiful area. We were able to see monks chanting inside some of the temples and even invaded their privacy by taking pictures. I also have a neat video but am having trouble uploading it at the moment.

This is the beautiful view on the way to the temple.

Jon drinking from a fountain outside of the temple. Is it sacred? We don't know.

This is the view inside of the temple.

A Hanok Village is basically an area of preserved historical houses. Parts of it are actually historical, like the Hyanggyo which was a Confucian school now designated as a national treasure. We also visited Gyeonggijeon Shrine which was built in 1410 and holds a portrait of King Tae-jo Lee, the founder of the Joseon Dynasty.

This photo was taken inside the walls of the Hyanggyo.

Walking through the Hanok Village, a lot of the houses were very small with low roofs, apparently they make their bulldozers to match.

In the Hyanggyo, we were fed a giant Bi Bim Bob, mixed together in one pot.

Hanji is a traditional Korean paper art which Jeonju is famous for producing, at the Traditional Hanji Crafts Center, we all decorated our own fans using hanji.

That's all from our trip around Jeonju, for more pictures you can go here.

We made it!

2009-08-23T03:31:00.002-07:00

After a very long plane ride, a very long wait in the airport, and a very long bus ride, Jon and I arrived at Jeonju University in Jeonju, the provincial capital of Jeollabuk-do to begin our EPIK (English Program in Korea) orientation. We arrived at 1AM on August 20th (12PM August 19th in Georgia). We will be in Jeonju until Friday, August 28th at which time we will head off to the province we will be living in for the next year: Gangwon. I haven't been able to use my computer until today, so I'm going to break the events of the past few days into several posts. First I'll talk about orientation.
EPIK orientation is preparing us to teach in the classroom. We attend lectures on topics such as Korean Curriculum, Co-teaching in the Classroom, and Classroom Management. The classes have been extremely helpful with regards to ideas for games in the classroom, lesson plans, and discipline, especially for less experienced teachers. Today we had an especially fun lecture on using magic in the classroom.

We are also learning about important cultural differences so that we can get along better with our co-teachers and other peers.
Some interesting social rules that seem strange to westerners include:
-You should not beckon people with your index finger. This is what Koreans would use to beckon an animal, you should always beckon with a palm facing down gesture.
-When you receive a gift or drink from an elder, you must use 2 hands.
-Koreans do not talk in as direct a manner as Westerners, it is very important to read between the lines when a Korean talks to you, because they may be telling you something important and you won't even know. An example is one of our lecturers whose principal kept telling him his haircut was "interesting" and asked him if he thought his haircut was "good for the happiness of the children." He was trying to say: "I want you to change your haircut."
-It is more unusual here to challenge someone's opinions, and may make others uncomfortable.
-They love group activities and it will seem very strange and possibly disrespectful if you decline an invitation to go out.
So, now that the boring stuff's out of the way, here are some pictures:

This was our first breakfast at orientation. Yes, that is Kimchee and yes those are French Fries.

I took this one for my dad. It says "Exciting place Tomato PC Zone." It's an internet cafe. A lot of the businesses' English translations don't shy away from bragging. Some other stores we ran into were "Best of Best" and "Best All."

This is outside of the Arts Center at Jeonju University.

This was taken in the first restaurant we went to in Korea. The menu was written completely in Hangul so we had to get our bilingual friend to order for us. Jon is cutting his noodles with a scissors because they come uncut.

This is the bathroom in our dorm room. It's sort of like the entire bathroom is the shower. Instead of having a shower curtain, there are drains in the floor, and you have sandals to wear around the bathroom until the floor dries.

For more pictures, go here. I have videos too, which I will post soon.