Traditional Korean Course Dinner

Friday night our boss took all the teachers at my school out for a Traditional Korean Meal. I don't even know how many courses this meal had but it went on forever! It was delicious - the stuff that I was brave enough to try, that is!

traditional Korean table settings - in the carafe is green tea. in the little square dishes are sauces: a garlic sauce, red pepper paste, and soy sauce with wasabi

Some of my schools staff - many had already left and a few didn't come

Some of my favorites :) Jamie, Dan, Fran

spicy kimchi and seafood, raw fish wraps, pumpkin porridge, pork and cabbage

raw fish!

cold veggies and jellyfish

A kind of Korean-style beef stew - very yummy! Along with beef there are mushrooms, dates, chestnuts, peppers, green onions...

In the middle are paper thin slices of radish onto which you put the various veggies and then wrap up and eat after dipping in garlic sauce

veggies and fish

prawns - very yummy

What Happens When You Have British Friends...

When your friends are English (as in actually from England not as in speakers of the language) you can't help but become a fan of English football (soccer to us Americans). So one of my best friends, Dan, second from the left, is a big fan of the Tottenham Hotspurs who, well, don't actually win many games but we have fun cheering for them anyway! Here we are watching the Carling Cup last Sunday night. It was a great game but sadly Tottenham lost to Manchester United in penalty kicks after 30 minutes of overtime. :(

Dan brought some Tottenham gear over and put it on my wall for the game...

Soccer holds me over sports-wise until baseball season which is just a month away... Which reminds me, if you aren't already planning to, you should watch the World Baseball Classic which started today. It involves 16 teams from all over the world including the US, Canada, China, Korea, Japan, Italy, South Africa... Japan won the Classic last time it happened in 2006 but Korea is really hoping to knock them out this year, especially since Korea won gold in Olympic baseball last year... I'll be cheering for Korea and the USA as usual and I hope you get to watch some of the games!

My Goofy Friends

So to celebrate my new apartment that actually has separate rooms (a big deal after 1+ years in a studio!) I threw a housewarming party for all of my friends. About 25 people turned up... it was a lot of fun. Here are some pics...

Me with all the food I spent two days making for the party - before it was devoured!

First few guests/my closest friends here. From L to R clockwise Fran, Jamie (Hyo-Jin), Glenn, Dan, Dickie

the party grows...

boys being boys - misbehaving (Drew, Glenn, Dan)

girls being girls and not causing any trouble at all (Marie, Sarah, Kay)

Korean girls... Green, Jennifer (Ji-Hoon), Kelly (Kyoungee)

Re-enacting something funny that had just happened so I could take a picture. Glenn opened a beer, the cap somehow ricocheted off the ceiling and right into Fran's drink! :)

Aw - Katie, Taylor, Dickie, and Jamie

Drew and Green being silly


Dan and Fran - such a cute couple!

The shoes of my friends! :)

The New Place....

Bedroom Before

Bedroom After

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After - if you're wondering about the jersey - I needed something to cover the place where I tore the ugly wallpaper from the door and it took the paint off. My Canadian friend (a big hockey fan) happily volunteered an extra hockey jersey the night of the party as a solution to my dilemma...

Living Room Before

Living Room After

Living Room 2

Hall to the Bedroom (that's a collage of my family on the wall)

Bathroom Before

Bathroom After: You might notice there is no sink and no separate shower. This is the Korean style. I was very lucky that in my old apt. it was a very "Western" style with a proper shower and sink - that is not the norm in Korea. Here it is the traditional Korean style with just a drain in the floor and a shower head. Usually the shower head isn't even mounted on the wall - you just stand there and hold it over yourself. But they attached it to the wall for me. :) And of course there's no sink - just a faucet on the wall - so I use that little basin for brushing teeth, etc. and then just pour it down the drain. It's not the most luxurious set-up but it works...

What you see when you enter - those dining room chairs aren't usually there but this was taken right before my Housewarming Party so they were there for guests to sit on. That white door goes into the bathroom. The living room is the first door on the left. The bedroom is through the kitchen on the left. On the other side of the kitchen is a storage enclosed-porch thingy where my washing machine is.

"Dining Room" before

Dining Room After - again before the Housewarming Party

A Good Monday

Mondays are generally awful days for everyone. For teachers, it's hard to get motivated and it doesn't help that students don't want the weekend to be over (especially here where Sunday is their only day of the week without school). But today was one of my best teaching days of all time. When you teach 7 or 8 classes a day it's hard to be on your A-game 100% of the time. For me, every class is different and the curriculum and level change from class to class. Generally I have a few good classes and the rest are average. A lot of times its just drills or spelling tests or review. But today I was on my game in every single class and I felt like each class learned and I connected with all of the students. It was great.

Here's one nice thing that happened today:
In my first class of the day (6 students, all 8 years old) one boy was trying to spell the word "those" out loud. He kept on spelling it incorrectly so I kept encouraging him that it was ok and to try again. Unfortunately the other kids started laughing at him quite meanly. He tried to keep going but his little eyes welled up and tears started spilling over. Instead of comforting him which I figured might embarrass an 8-year old boy even more than crying in class, I gave all of the students a calm reminder that we all make mistakes and that part of a being a good friend is not laughing at each other when we mess up. One little girl was so convicted by this reminder that she started sobbing uncontrollably. I ended up having to take her out into the hall so she could calm down. As I stroked her hair she was still crying but saying, "Teacher! I'm very sorry! I am a good friend. I'm sorry!" It was precious. When the little girl and I came back into class the students started apologizing to the little boy they had laughed at and comforting the girl who had cried and it led to a nice discussion about what it means to be a good friend. I wish there hadn't been so many tears in that class but I felt like the kids learned a valuable lesson.

I'm Back!

I'm sorry I haven't blogged for a while. Shortly after my last post, I found out I was moving in a few days instead of in a few weeks like I originally thought. Needless to say, it has been a very stressful and busy past couple of weeks with packing up, moving, and trying to furnish and arrange the new place. Moving in Korea was certainly different from back home. A few days before I moved the moving company came to my apartment and dropped off a ton of reusable boxes and large plastic containers. These were for me to pack in and have ready by the time moving day arrived. At 11am on February 9th as promised the movers showed up at my door. They loaded all of my furniture and boxes into a truck and I was outside my new place with all my stuff within 1 hour. I felt bad that since I'm on the second floor apartment the movers would have to carry all the heavy items up the big flight of outdoor stairs to get them into my place. I was mistaken. No sooner had we arrived at the new place with the moving truck that another truck pulled up. Instead of a truck bed there was a flat metal surface which, after being loaded with a few items, was lifted upward like a crane and movers on the second floor simple pulled my items off of it onto my balcony and then in the door. So there was no carrying anything up the stairs! I was impressed. I'm finally getting settled into the new place. It's much more homey than the place I was in before which, despite being clean and new, was hopelessly tiny. Living in a studio gets old really quickly. I will post pictures of my new apartment soon but there are still a few finishing touches to do before I'm ready to show it off.

Work is going well. We started a new school year this month so I've been getting used to a new schedule and new students. Overall I seem to have good kids this year. No one sticks out as a problem-child yet but there's plenty of time for that to change and kids are always dropping out and joining throughout the year which keeps things interesting.

I'm excited about going to my first concert in Korea. I'm seeing Jason Mraz (singer/guitarist) in Seoul on Saturday so I'm very excited for that. I've been a fan of his since freshman year of college and I never thought I'd be seeing him live in Korea!

I've been enjoying the Wii and Wii Fit I purchased recently (they are much easier to get and a lot less expensive here in Korea than they are in the States). I'm not really a big video game person but the interactive and social aspect of the Wii is really enjoyable especially when friends are over.

I'm not 100% sure and it's still a long way off but I have a 4 day weekend in May and I'm hoping I'll be able to squeeze in a Beijing trip then. The travel agency with whom I booked Thailand, Hong Kong, and Cambodia/Vietnam (I can't believe I've been to all those places!) has a 4 day/3 night Beijing sightseeing tour where you see all the big things. Obviously a longer length of time would be preferable but just in case I don't get the opportunity again, I want to make sure I see the Great Wall while I live in Asia.

On a more general note, I am really loving life right now. I am glad to be back in Korea, work is going great, and I am so comfortable and happy in my new apartment. Now if only I had enough money to fly home and see the people I miss whenever I want!

Changes

So it's the start of a new school year, which means I now have a new schedule of classes and mostly all new students. It's an exciting time because I get to start all over and "reinvent" myself as a teacher. Plus after a whole year my students and I are pretty tired of each other and it's nice to get some new ones. I really want to be more organized this year as well...but we'll see how that goes.

In other news I am very excited to announce that I am moving in a few weeks out of my studio apartment and into a real 2-bedroom place. I am so so so excited! The new apartment is closer to my school and it's not in a big apartment building like the one I'm in now - it's in a villa. Very exciting...

Here are the hockey pictures as promised. Hockey in Korea is almost exactly like baseball in Korea. Same energy level, same constant cheering, same dried squid instead of nachos and fries. Just replace the clay and grass with ice. Actually it was quite fun, although it was packed since the arena only held 1200 people! The teams were the Anyang Halla (Korea) vs the Seibu Prince Rabbits (Japan). Korea won!

Pics are up!

The pics of my trip are up, I did one post for each day so to see them in order, scroll down to Day 1 and start from there. Now that I'm back it's time for Winter Intensive classes so all this month I get to go into work 2 hours earlier every day and teach an extra conversation class. Other than the extra time required, it's really quite fun, my intensive class has 4 students, 2 girls and 2 boys, all highly energetic and borderline ADHD :). Getting them to pay attention takes about 3/4 of the class time.

Meanwhile, life is good, I've been spending lots of time with friends and trying to think about plans for this year. Plans are to head to a Korean hockey game this weekend so I'll be sure to post about that... bet you didn't know Korea had ice hockey! I didnt...

1/1/09 - last day of the trip

Some final shots of Vietnam...

Love riding on the back of a motorbike!

Amazing Benh Tanh market

Goodbye Vietnam!