Hwaseong Fortress Pictures

DISCLAIMER: I cannot take credit for these photos, it was Lee who took them, and generously donated them to my blog :)

(Lee is one of our new teachers from Manchester)


The beginning of the walk along the Fortress wall


A large Golden Buddha in the distance, which we knew we had to find
The alarm bell
You could pay 1000 won ($1) to "gong" the bell. Here is Mike getting his money's worth
Then Lee gave it a go
This was at the top, although I'm not sure what it's purpose was/is
Beautiful fall colours on the way down

The King who built the Fortress
We finally found our Buddha! And he was marvelous! Underneath the Korean writing at the bottom of the picture was a little meditation room. It was beautiful.

Our work here is done!

The week of scared children and new teachers

This week was indeed the best and worst of times. It seems like years ago that we said goodbye to Jo and Pete on Monday night. Almost as long ago was our goodbye party for Shaun, Aaron and Chris on Tuesday night. It was sad to see them go, they were a lot of fun.

Our "old" group of teachers (taken on Tuesday after Jo left but before Aaron, Shaun and Chris)


Meanwhile, at school it was my first week with "Team 3" (there are 8 teams, Team 1 knowing the least English, Team 8 the most). For the last 4 weeks I have had Team 1, but with so many teachers leaving, Team 3 was available and I decided to take the plunge and switch, as I was told that Team 3 had similar English to Team 8 but retained the cuteness of Team 1. Without getting into too many details it turned out not to be the case this week, as they were quite the troublemakers. It was trying, to say the least, but the situation was greatly improved by the fact that we had Halloween programming, which included classes such as "History of Halloween" where I read the students scary stories, "Pumpkin Carving", "Trick or Treat", and my personal favourite, "Haunted House". Haunted House was my favourite because the students sat and watched a scary movie in the Theatre while the teachers dressed up in scary costumes and hid in the classrooms. Then, the students went on "tasks" ten at a time, such as "Drink blood in the Restaurant", "Take the neck tie off the zombie in Homestay" and "Feel the eyeballs in Hospital". When they arrived at the given classroom to complete their task one of the teachers would jump out and scare the begeezes out of them. My job was even better, as I got to dress up as the Wicked Witch of the West and randomly walk through the halls, jumping out from behind pillars and doorways. I got a lot of good screams. It was awesome. Yes, I am sick.

The Wicked Witch of the West
The teachers preparing to scare the crap out of the kids

In other news this week, our three new teachers arrived on Friday afternoon. Two guys and one girl, from Canada, the US and the UK. On Friday night five of us went for Indian food in the Hotel basement and it was INCREDIBLE. Like 50 times better than the first time. I'm not sure if it was because someone different was cooking, or if it was because I missed non-Korean food more this time. It was so comforting, I felt so mellow afterward. I had two heaping plates and I woke up Saturday morning still full!

On Saturday we had a 9–2pm Halloween program for kids aged 6–10. It was a lot of fun because they were so young and cute. The didn't understand a word we said for the most part, but their cuteness made up for it. This was a voluntary overtime deal, so we could either be paid for it, or we could take an extra day of vacation whenever we wanted it. I opted for the vacation. I'm hoping to be able to do 5 days of overtime before my guests arrive so I can spend more time with them all. I don't know if the Village will have that many Saturday programs though. Hopefully!

So, on Saturday night the our new group of teachers decided to go to the "Crazy Duck" which is a mostly foreigners bar that we've been to a couple of times now. It was a lot of fun, and although I packed it in at about 2am, I found out today that almost everyone else went to Karaoke after the bar and didn't get home until 6am!! Too crazy for me.

Today I finally went to Hwaseong Fortress which is a wall surrounding the centre of Suwon. It was built over 200 years ago by the King of the time, for his father who had been suffocated in a Rice Chest by his father. It's a lovely story, really. Anywho, the fortress was cool and we found this amazing golden Buddha which was about 2 stories tall. I stupidly forgot my camera, but I will get pictures from someone else and post them ASAP.

All who read say "I"!

I must admit that I am curious as to whether anyone other than my family reads this blog. So, if you are reading and enjoying pls comment or email and let me know! And let me know what's going on with you!

Office party!

So the big happening this week was our "Goodbye Aaron, Chris, Jo and Sean/Hello Mike and Vickey/Congrats Jeannie" office party. Aaron, Chris, Jo and Sean are all leaving on Wednesday of next week, Mike and Vicky started teaching this week, and Jeannie was promoted a couple of weeks ago to ... well I don't know what her official title is, but we'll call her "Boss of Teachers" for now. In celebration we went to a Galbi place across from the school.

And now, it's picture time people:


See? THIS is what I mean by never-ending side dishes!





Chris, who is leaving next week, Mike, who just arrived, and I, doing what I swore I would never do in a picture...


Ricky the Ranger, Aaron (Sarah's bf who is leaving next week) and Chris.


My birthday buddy, Julia (We are both Jan. 12 babies!!)

My new boss Jeannie

Our new Korean teacher Vicky, our money-man Steve and Hannah teacher.

Ricky the Ranger, Aaron and I.

Julia and Vicky

The BIG Boss and Chris.

Next week will be clazy!

Yes, I said it; clazy! Koreans have a very hard time pronounces their "r's", so crazy is clazy, delicious is dericious, and rattle is lattle. They also like to add superfluous "e's" to everything so I work at the "English Village-e" and I eat "lunch-e".

Anyway, now that you know the proper lingo, next week is going to be clazy because we are losing our four senior teachers (their contracts are up) and four new teachers are starting. One, a Canadian who lives near Montreal, arrived last night, but the rest don't have their Visas yet, so they may not even arrive next week! On top of that we are also losing a Korean teacher and our boss was just transfered so another Korean teacher took her place. So, all in all we are going to have six new teachers starting and so we'll be terribly short staffed. Plus, it's "Halloween Week" so we have a bunch of new programming taking effect.

Since so many people are leaving this week we're going to be having a staff party on Friday night. It should be good; we are going out for Galbi (bbq'd pork or beef) and drinks. On Saturday the four retiring teachers are having give-away parties for all of the stuff they can't take with them. I am hoping to score a lamp, a colander, some serving implements, cleaning supplies and a garbage can. Wish me luck!

DIET!!

I met up with a friend of a friend of a friend last night in order to hear about her experiences with Dahn "Yoga," in my attempt to find some sort of relatively inexpensive workout regime. Well, it turns out that Dahn "Yoga" is not really Yoga at all, but simply uses Yoga breathing and meditation. It is also quite expensive, and you have to sign up for six months. It does sound intriguing though, so if I can find a place where I can take a drop in class I think I'll try it.

Anyway, she was telling me about her Dahn teacher, who, on several occasions, grabbed her belly-fat (she doesn't have much of it) and yelled, "DIET!!" Appalled, I asked how she had dealt with it. She replied that she had been startled and rather upset, until several of her friends told her that they had had little old ladies come up to them in train stations and supermarkets and grab hold of their stomachs, screaming "DIET!!" in their faces. Compared to that, my friend of my friend of my friend said, it didn't seem so bad.

I almost feel that my Korean experience won't be complete until that happens to me. How Koreans stay so thin is beyond me though, as EVERYTHING is sweetened, from kidney beans to potato chips to cream-injected baguettes to tomato sauce.

I HAVE A PHONE!

Hurray! I have a phone! Now I KNOW that you are all going to want to call me ASAP, so email me and I shall give you the number. OK everyone, ready, set, EMAIL!

....

I DON'T HAVE ANY NEW EMAILS PEOPLE!!!

Fine. Don't email. Don't call. Continue to post and use Skype, if you must.

Anywho, it is a cool phone and I like it mucho. It's funny that it is the bottom-of-the-line here in Korea. In Canada it would be (and is) wicked! It has a 2.0 Camera/Video Camera, MP3 Player, Bluetooth, Games, Seoul Subway Map(!), a Dictionary, etc.

The best part is, it was free!

Amendment to "A few of my Favourite (Korean) things..."

I would like to amend an earlier statement in the post "A few of my Favourite (Korean) things.." It has been brought to my attention that it was in fact my MOTHER who took me to the wildlife park, and I did in fact tell my FATHER that we had chips. Not the other way around. I would like to apologize to any I may have offended.

Sincerely,
JayainKorea

My First Korean/English Exchange

I had my first Korean/English exchange with one of the Korean teacher's friends yesterday. There was a mix up with where we were meeting (I stood at one corner for 40 minutes while she stood at the other), but once we found each other it went quite well! I'm excited for the next one, which will be at the same time, same place.

A few of my favourite (Korean) things... and a few things that are just plain odd.

Having been here now for three weeks, (wow!) I feel that I should talk about what I really like here, and what I find rather odd.

My favourite things (in no particular order):

1) Mocha raisin bread. Truly delicious, and like all delicious things, completely awful for you. It is nice thick raisin bread, filled with mocha cream and covered in powdered sugar. You never have to worry about having butter or jam for your bread with this stuff, b/c it is pre-sliced and between each slice is a big dollop of mocha cream. YUM!

2) Chicken Galbi, which is very spicy chicken, cooked at your table with lots of veggies and "rice cakes" (which are not really rice cakes at all but rather very thick, short, addictive noodles), plus all sorts of side dishes and lettuce leaves to wrap it all up in!

3) Marinated meat cooked at your table that you wrap in lettuce leaves. I know I kind of just mentioned this above, but it's so good that it deserves it's own number. I think anything hot wrapped in lettuce is delicious; I must try it with tofu.

4) Never-ending side dishes. I love that you can go to a restaurant, order a meal, and with it comes seven or eight side dishes and a jug of water which they refill constantly. Mind you, the side dishes are almost always the same from restaurant to restaurant, and I only like about three of them, but still, I feel like I'm getting my money's worth.

5) Fresh fruit Soju. Pretty much a daiquiri but with Vodka instead of Rum and lots of pulp and delicious fruity-flavour. They actually crush fruit and blend it with Soju. No disgusting, sugary, imitation fruit flavour. What a novel idea!

6) Coke is 70 cents. So are most ice cream bars, snacks and drinks. Awesome.

Yes, yes I know, all of my favourite things have to do with food. It's not my fault, I blame it on my parentage. It's like the time I cam home from the zoo with my dad and my mom asked "How was the zoo?" and I said, "Great! We had chips!"

Ok here are a couple that have nothing to do with food:

1) Korean hospitality. So far everyone has been super helpful, super friendly and super understanding of my Korean-language ineptitudes.

2) The location of our apartment building. It's close to everything. Awesome.

3) My apartment. I feel very at home here. It's a nice space.

4) The mountains. You can't really see them here in Suwon, but they are all around Seoul, and they are beautiful.


Things I find bizarre:

1) Everyone holds hands here. Children, old people, middle-aged people, women and men. The woman-to-woman is strange, but the man-to-man is just downright bizarre. And men and boys here are very touchy-feely with each other. The boys at school love to stroke each other's hair and arms and hold hands, and then they turn around and beat the crap out of each other. It baffles me.

2) The fact that men are allowed to hold hands here, but they aren't allowed to be gay.

3) Women and their looks. Women are VERY concerned with their appearances. Everyone is manicured, pedicured, coiffed, designer everything, and always, ALWAYS high heels. For every occasion. Except hiking. Then hiking boots are required.

4) Couples wearing matching tshirts.

I'm sure there are more things but I can't think of them right now...

Hiking in Korea

I went on my first hike in Korea this weekend, which is a big deal, because hiking is HUGE here. It is quite different from a Canadian hike, firstly because it is so popular that there are hundreds of people on the hill with you, and second because they all wear colour-coordinated brand new hiking gear, from special hiking boots and shirts to brand-name hiking sticks and uber chic hiking packs. I read a review of "hiking in Korea" that said, "The rules for mountain climbing demand not that you climb a mountain, but that you dress up in heavy boots, alpine hat, coloured jacket, and have a knapsack or pack over your shoulder. If you are thus equipped you are "mountain climbing", even if you get on the wrong bus and end up at the seaside." This may very well be true, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't passed by well over half of these people; most of whom were twice my age!

My hiking buddy and fellow teacher, Shaun.

What is looked like for most of the hike

(Roughly) where we were hiking to

Shaun looking out over the city, near the top

One of the peaks near the topView from the peak in one direction

View from the peak in another direction

View from the peak in another direction (toward Seoul)

Coming back down

2 weeks!

I can't believe that I've been in Korea for 2 weeks already! The time has flown and it's all been really great! It's funny though, that after 2 weeks I only taught my first class by myself today. The 1st week I simply observed and the 2nd week was holiday, which brings us to today. As I write this I realize that it was EXACTLY two weeks ago that I arrived. Well, in one hour it will be anyway.

My first solo class was drama, and it was quite great. The kids responded well, and we were able to get through the entire "Clang Clang Rattle Bing Bang" script without too many problems. Bravo, Team 1! They seem like a really good group of kids so far.

Today I also found out that the Taekwondo class near the school is $90 for unlimited classes/month. I'm not sure if I will sign up or not, but I will at least try one class. It would be neat to say that I learned Taekwondo in the place it was created.

After work today I was the recipient of more Korean hospitality. I was trying to figure out the automatic stamp machine at the post office, but it would only give me domestic stamps. The post office was packed, and everyone had a number, but the man behind me came up and tried to help me and then marched me over to the counter (by-passing the very long line), explained my predicament to the lady, and proceeded not only to get me the stamps I needed, but also to get my money back from the domestic stamps I had from the machine. It was pretty sweet!

When I got home today I was in desperate need of exercise, but as it was raining (a common theme around here), I decided to look for Yoga videos online. Although I didn't find any free videos, I did find a pretty cool podcast which took me through a nice 30 minute class. I added another hour of my own practice to it, and it was great! I'll definitely be checking that out again, maybe tomorrow. (http://wordpress.com/tag/home-practice/)

In other news, I love my rice cooker. It is awesome. You pour 1 cup of rice in and 2 cups of water, and man oh man, it does the rest! I am sitting here right now writing this as it makes me a perfect cup of rice that I don't have to even check on! It's awesome. Apparently you can also use the rice cooker to make soups and stews and all sorts of yummy things. I'll let "y'all" know how that goes when I try it :)

Ciao for now