First Week at Dongbyun Middle School

This week has been fun, tiring and a little bit stressful. It has taken some time to figure out how I should create my lessons but I think I have a pretty good idea now. Korea has a country-wide curriculum, so the schools follow the textbooks pretty much exactly. This actually helps because it gives me a clear direction to go with my lessons.

Dongbyun Middle School

This week I have been starting every class with a PowerPoint presentation about myself. The students are amazed by the following things:

1. I have a boat. Apparently only rich people have boats here.
2. Sean is my younger brother. I guess I can understand this one. He's obviously much taller than me and he has a beard in the picture I showed them. Also, many of them have said he looks really strong.
3. I played rugby. A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that. So I can't really blame the students for this one either.
4. I like Girls' Generation. Most of them assume I wouldn't know who they are. They are also surprised that Sunny is my favorite. Most people here really like Yoona.
5. I included a picture of Sean with a big northern and they're always fascinated by it and sometimes call it a shark.

In conclusion...I guess they're mostly just really interested in Sean. I should bring him in to meet them some day.

This is the picture of Sean's fish that I showed them.

This week, I've been a bit of a celebrity around the school (one student even said I look like Kristin Stewart...). I teach almost every student in the school once a week so they're constantly saying hi to me in the halls. It's actually kind of nice, we'll see if it gets annoying. One student says "nice to meet you" almost every day. I guess maybe that's one of the only things he knows how to say. Also, I live right by the school and I guess most of the students do, too. I can't really leave my apartment without seeing at least 3-5 students on the streets. I had the students make name tags for their desks so I can attempt to call them by name. I kind of wish I would have had them all choose English nicknames. I'm pretty good with names so I probably could have memorized most of them if I had done it that way. However, it's really hard to memorize over 300 names like Soo Yeon, Su Kyeong, Se Hwan, Hye Lim, etc. I might see if I can have them do that next week and just write the English name on the other side of the tag and turn it around. 

I have five co-teachers and they all have pretty different styles, in terms of how they work with me. Two hardly say anything during my classes, two intervene for translation pretty frequently, and one gets involved mainly just for discipline (which is quite different in Korea than in the United States). Here, it's not  unusual for a teacher to smack a student on the back or shoulder if they aren't paying attention. They also might do things like have them stand in the back of the room. Yesterday, one of my co-teachers put a green dot on a few students' faces with a marker. She was speaking Korean when she did it, so I'm still not really sure what that was about. Another big difference I've noticed is the time at which teachers arrive at the classroom. When I student taught, it was a big deal to be in the classroom and set up by the time the bell rang. Here, teachers usually get to the classroom 2-3 minutes after the bell rings and THEN set up. They thought I was weird when I started to head to the classroom two minutes before the bell rang. 

The teachers are all extremely nice and helpful. Last night we all went out for shabu shabu and I was introduced to basically all the teachers.

Shabu shabu. Basically you cook the vegetables and meat in the broth in the middle and there are a bunch of different sauces you can eat it with.

Today has been the best day so far. Part of the reason is that I only have three classes. But also, it seems that they stuck all the best students on this day as well. I teach two classes of intermediate 3rd graders and one class of mixed level 2nd graders. (See explanation of grade levels at the end of this post). The 3rd graders have a pretty high English proficiency and good attitudes. Also, this particular group of second graders were very well behaved and friendly. After class in both levels, students came to talk to me. The second graders told me about how one of them saw Girls' Generation in concert, and a group of 3rd grade boys came to ask me about why I came to Korea. I'll have internet tonight, which means I'll be able to make better lessons. I use the internet a lot for Powerpoints and inspiration. 

*Breakdown of Korean grade levels: Elementary School: Grades 1-6; Middle School: Grades 1-3; High School: Grades 1-3... basically instead of continuing to count, they start over when they enter another school. So using the US way to count grade levels, I teach grades 7-9.

I heard this playing outside a store last night and was way too excited :P. 

Artist: Girls' Generation

Song: Hoot

Album: Hoot EP 

Released: October 2010

New Home, School, Everything...

I’m writing this Tuesday night but I won’t post it until tomorrow because I don’t have internet in my apartment yet. I’ve had a really busy and exciting past few days. Yesterday, we left orientation and went to our separate areas. They took all the Daegu people to this place with an auditorium where they called us up by district and matched us up with our co-teachers. It felt a little weird because we were kind of on display until they called our name and we left with the teachers. I’m working at Dongbyeon Middle School (동변중학교) in the Seo-bu district of Daegu. I got picked up by a teacher named Kim Hwa Ok and a woman who works in the office. Hwa Ok speaks very good English and is super friendly. She looks really young, I wasn’t sure if she was a teacher when I first saw her. But when I told her I was 22, she said she was jealous that I was so young. So I basically have no idea how old she is. (By the way, asking someone’s age in Korea isn’t considered rude.)

(If you copy and paste 동변중학교 into Google Maps, you can see my school.)

We went back to the school and the first person I met there was the principal. He didn’t speak English but he was very nice. We had coffee in his office and Hwa Ok translated between us a little. After that, we went upstairs to meet the other English teachers. They had brought some food for me, like muffins and stuff, which was nice. Everyone was super nice and excited to meet me. And then the students came into the picture…I felt like a unicorn or a yeti or something. The students acted like they’d never seen anything like me their lives. When classes ended they kept coming in waves to meet me. It was kind of cool, they asked me a few questions and a ton of them told me I was pretty or beautiful and one said I had big eyes, which kind of made me laugh. 

When school was over, I went back to my apartment with Hwa Ok and Suh Sang Sun, who will be my main co-teacher. Basically, she is the main person responsible for helping me get everything set up. Mr. Im, who is in charge of the finances met us at the apartment and decided he wanted to come shopping with us. We went to a huge department store called Home Plus. Sometimes in Korea I feel like I’m in the future. Home Plus had escalators but they weren’t stairs, they were ramps so you can bring your cart on them. Genius. It was a little weird being with a group of people I just met and we were only shopping for me. Also, they said the school was going to pay for my bedding and dishes so I wanted to be careful not to pick expensive things. Mr. Im doesn’t speak English, which didn’t help because then the three of them would be speaking Korean and I didn’t know what was going on. Just when I started to feel like we should hurry because they all probably wanted to go home, Mr. Im suggested we take a break and eat some topokki at the store. An interesting difference between Korea and the United States is their opinions about foreigners. In the United States, if someone doesn’t speak English people assume they’re stupid. In Korea, it’s almost the opposite. For example, Mr. Im and the principal both said they wished they could speak English and the principal said he would like to sit in on my classes if I do some for the teachers. So instead of thinking I’m dumb because I don’t speak Korean, they’re more focused on the fact that I can speak English. 

This is topokki. The round things are rice cakes and the flat things are made of fish. It's a little spicy but very good.

When we finished shopping, we went back to my apartment and they helped me bring everything in before leaving for the night. So then I was on my own the first thing I did was clean up. The previous teacher must not have been the cleanest guy in the world. The floors were pretty dirty and there was a lot of dust. Luckily, he did have cleaning supplies which he left behind. After cleaning the apartment, I unpacked a little and went to bed around midnight. Because of the typhoon, school was delayed until 10:30 the next day, so it was actually a pretty good night’s sleep. I’ll talk about the actual school days in the next one because this is getting kind of long!

My apartment video won't upload here for some reason so here's the link to it on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=3517073646865&set=vb.1272690024&type=2&theater

This song is super big here right now: 

Artist: SISTAR

Song: Loving U

Album: Loving U EP

Released: June 2012

Cultural Experience Day!

Today was cultural experience day at orientation! We didn't have any lectures or classes today. Instead, we went to the Traditional Culture Center, Hanok Village and Keumsan Temple. At the Culture Center, we learned a traditional Korean dance, played sameulnori (traditional Korean drums), and made a pencil case using hanji (traditional Korean paper).

The dance instructors were really funny and entertaining and got the whole class involved (which is difficult to do since each class has about 50 people). First, they showed us the basic moves, then we "performed" in smaller groups, and finally eight people (including me) did a "lion" dance with a big lion costume.

These are two boys from my class.

Annnd those flip flop feet are mine. There was another girl behind me as the body.

After the dancing, we went to the craft room. They had small bowls of glue with paintbrushes in them and pencil cases with colored strips of hanji paper already cut out for us to cover the pencil cases with. The glue was different from any glue I've ever used before. It was very forgiving, so if you made a mistake it was very easy to pull the paper off and fix it. Also, the women in the room who were giving instructions were VERY helpful. As in, sometimes they'd come over and basically do it for you. 

Craft Set Up

My Finished Product

Our final cultural experience was sameulnori, traditional Korean drums. We saw these performed during the welcome ceremony for orientation, so it was cool to learn about how they're actually played. The instructor was really enthusiastic and fun. (I will note that none of these instructors spoke English. Our class leaders had to translate. So when I say they were fun, entertaining etc., it's kind of saying a lot since we got this impression of them even when we couldn't understand them.) He led us through the different patterns for the drums and we did a lot of practicing. Some people had other instruments, which was kind of cool because we put them all together. He also showed us some examples of songs. 

Some of my classmates with their drums.

Example from the instructor.

After sameulnori, we took some group pictures before going into the restaurant for bibimbap, which was really good. Then, we walked to Hanok Village together, where we had some time to just walk around and go to shops. The shops had a lot of handmade trinkets and things like fan, wallets, keychains, etc. I bought a small wallet and helped another girl buy a fan by asking the woman in the store how much it cost. 

Posing in the head cut-outs with Camesha!

Bibimbap

Sign for Hanok Village

When we were finished in Hanok Village, we got back on the buses to go to Keumsan Temple. When we got there, some people went to use the bathroom and found, to their dismay, that most of the toilets were Japanese style toilets, or "squatter" toilets. Basically, the toilet is kind of just in the floor and you squat over it instead of sitting on it. It's actually supposed to be better for you, since that's technically how humans are made to use the bathroom. Anyway, once the bathroom break was over, we walked up part of a mountain to get to the temple. It was a big square area with one big temple at the back and two smaller ones on the sides. In the temples, there were big, gold statues. There were also a lot of stone formations and statues around the area. 

The outside of the big temple.

Inside the big temple.

The three leaders of Class 3! The two girls next to me are Ellie and Song, our main leaders, of course.

On the way down from the temple I learned a lot of new vocabulary from some English people, which was pretty interesting. They have like 100 different ways to say "drunk", as well a bunch of other things that I had never heard before in my life. 

When we got back to Jeonju University, I had to go to a class leaders meeting, which was mostly just messages to pass on to our classes. However, it was also established that I'll be doing a short speech at the closing ceremony with one other class leader. I'm actually pretty excited about that. 

By the way, it's very hot and humid in Korea right now...

Artist: f(x)

Song: Hot Summer

Album: Hot Summer

Released: June 2011

Taekwondo and Getting Started

I'm doing two posts today because I didn't want that last one to be too long. This one is going to be about what we did today. We went to breakfast at around 8:15am and then had a little over an hour before our campus tour. This was the first time we were divided into our separate "classes". Basically they just need to be able to split us into smaller groups. Everyone in my group is going to Daegu like me, so that's pretty nice. We have two class leaders, Korean girls named Song and Ellie, who both speak very good English. They gave us a really quick tour of the parts of the campus we would need to know. After that, we had another break before lunch and then the welcome ceremony. This part of the day was awesome. They had two performances for us. The first was Korean traditional drums and the second was the Jeonju taekwondo team. They were SUPER entertaining and extremely talented. After the performances they had representatives from the university speak, as well as a man who works for EPIK who is originally from Canada but has lived here for 14 years. He talked a little about the history of Korea and gave us some advice.

After the welcome, we split into our classes again and went to classrooms. Here, Song and Ellie went over the orientation schedule and we chose which level Korean language class we wanted to take. I originally chose level two but they said they encouraged some people to do three to even it out, so I decided to give it a try. I guess we'll see how that goes. We also had to "elect" a class leader from one of our own and, long story short, it's me. I'm still not exactly sure what that even entails. I guess that's another thing to wait and find out. 

We had another short break and then it was time for the welcome dinner. This dinner had more food than most of the meals and we sat with our classes again. We were free after that so a bunch of us went and got some ice cream and then a guy named Korey and I split off and joined some other EPIK people at a bar down the street. They played almost 100% Girls' Generation there so I was basically in heaven! 

Tomorrow we have our health check and I'll be glad when that's over so I can finally take headache medicine again!

Artist: Girls' Generation

Song: Run Devil Run

Album: Oh! Repackage

Released: March 2010

I Made It!

It's official! I've been in Korea now for about three days but I've been pretty tired and haven't had much time to update this. I'll start from the night before I left because that was actually quite an experience.

I was up really late Thursday night because I guess I had more to do in terms of packing and getting ready than I thought. Right when I thought I might be able to get a few hours of sleep, I got a phone call from American Airlines at 3am telling me that my flight to Chicago would be delayed until 1pm. My flight from Chicago to Korea was at noon so that obviously wasn't going to work. American Airlines didn't have any seats on an earlier flight. Luckily Mike and my dad were there. Mike quickly found a flight on Delta and my dad paid for it. Crisis avoided. Also, once we got to the airport, my dad explained what had happened and the lady who checked my baggage arranged to have it sent all the way to Incheon so I wouldn't have to go get it and re-check it.

The flight to Chicago was really short and uneventful, as usual. Once I got to O'Hare I had about four hours until my flight to Incheon. During that time I met up with the girl who was going to be my hotel-mate for the first night in Korea. It was pretty nice to have someone to travel with for that first day. The flight started boarding at 11:30am and the plane was beautiful! The airline was called Asiana. They played elevator music while we were boarding and each seat had a pillow and blanked already on it. I felt like I was at a hotel  Also, the flight attendants were really friendly and well put together. They were all Korean women with their hair pulled back in tight buns, and they spoke Korean and English. I guess I'm just not used to international flights but I thought the food was great too. We got two full meals and two snacks. For both of the meals there was a Korean option and a more Western option. I chose the Korean option both times. The first was bibimbap with rice, kimchi, fruit and soup. The second was octopus with rice, fruit and salad. I was expecting the flight to seem like the longest thing I've ever done in my life but it actually wasn't that bad. I was able to sleep a little bit on and off and I brought a lot of stuff to do during the flight. They didn't let us keep the windows open because it didn't get dark outside during the flight. It was kind of nice having a low amount of light on the plane.

When we finally got there, it was pretty easy to get around the airport and figure things out. My hotel-mate was missing one of her bags when we got there which really sucked but they ended up finding it and she should have it by tomorrow. So at the airport, I picked up my phone that I ordered from the Arrival Store. It works great and I can use WhatsApp to talk to most of my friends from home which is really cool. From the airport we went to a hotel where we met up with some other teachers from the EPIK program and when out for dinner. It was a lot of fun, the waitress just kept bringing us food, we didn't have to order anything.

The next morning we went back to the airport and met more EPIK teachers and then finally boarded buses to the orientation. The bus ride was cool because it was almost 3 hours long so we got to see a lot of Korea along the way. When we got to Jeonju University, we checked in and got our room assignments, along with some goodies like an EPIK t-shirt, towel, a Jeonju mug. I met another girl from Minnesota, named Daad, at the airport and we decided to be roommates for orientation. The first day was pretty much free. We met up with some other girls and went to a small restaurant and bakery. Knowing the Korean alphabet came in handy because I was able to find bibimbap and bulgoggi on the menu. It was also kind of funny because at one point I asked the waiter what something was in Korean and that must have given him the idea that I spoke Korean because then he tried to continue to talk to me.

View from our room at Jeonju University

After we got ice cream we pretty much just came back to the residence halls and went to bed early. I have some pictures I wanted to post but the system is being really slow right now so I might try to add them later!

Artist: Wonder Girls

Song: Like This

Album: Wonder Party

Released: June 2012