Korea - September 3, 2011

I'll just say from the get go that I don't expect this blog to be very long. Since I wrote my last blog, there have been a few things that have happened. I wrote a couple days ago, and the last thing I wrote about was going to the Radio Star bar.

In terms of observing classes, it's been a real learning curve. I am taking over the youngest class, called Kitty class. There are 5 kids in this class - Vivian, Jack, Kevin, Will, and Ella. These kids are awesome. Most of the week had presented a challenge with Kevin being able to do the activities that had been planned for him. I learned that this wasn't the way Kevin usually behaved - it was somewhat abnormal. That's how he was for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But yesterday a new Kevin came to class. He was actually doing the activities! It was amazing. It incredibly new to me.

I am scared, yet I feel prepared to be with these kids for whatever amount of time I am scheduled to be with them. I think I should clarify the way in which I feel prepared: I feel like I can be with them and teach them, and this is from the providence of spending my last 6 summers working with kids. I should also (especially) mention the fact that the foreign teachers are awesome. They have been an incredible help to me and have given me so much advice. But in terms of the lesson plan, that kind of preparation will take some getting used to. I didn't take the lesson plan books home this weekend - I was encouraged to take the first day teaching to get to know my kids and hang out with them, etc. This Kitty class will probably be the hardest to teach. My guess is that it will either be this class or my Odyssey class.

This past week (Tuesday-Friday) I was assigned classesMornings and early afternoons is kindergarten time. Afternoons, usually from around 2 o'clock on is elementary school time, which consists of 8-11 year olds (I think). Then towards later afternoon/night, there are some middle school classes consisting of students aged 11-15 or so. Apart from Kitty class, I have 5 different classes in those groups as well as a few of my own private classes, which is one-on-one with an adult or student. I think the classes to which I'm forward are the middle school classes, called TEPS A and TEPS B. These classes both speak a lot of English; one class just wants to have conversations the whole time, whereas the other class has been going through a book that involves learning how to debate. Yes - they are learning how to debate in English. Apparently one debate went so far as questioning the nature of man! That is pretty intense. That is something for which I am very excited.

A few nights ago (the night after Radio Star) I went out with Kelsey to a couple of places. We went to this place that specialized in rice wine, i.e., Maekgoli. One is served a large (2L) tea kettle full of Maekgoli. There is a separate small metal kettle with a little thing inside it; one must ring it for more Maekgoli; once the little kettle is rung, a waiter comes, takes the big kettle, and refills it. Rice wine doesn't taste much like rice. To me it tasted a lot just like regular wine, but a different kind of flavour. It's hard to explain, but it was good enough to have 4 bowl-style cups of Maekgoliover a couple hours. The only thing I didn't like was the massive headache in the morning. Man, this stuff really likes to dehydrate the brain. I was out with 4 other girls (three Koreans and Kelsey, a former foreign teacher who was finishing as I was training), and so I was not the only person drinking. Drinking Maekgoliis a communal kind of thing. Also, at this time, every time you order more Maekgoli, you get free side dishes. So, the only thing you pay for is the Maekgolidrink. The waiters automatically bring more food. My taste buds then had a lot of new treats, including Korean potato/vegetable pancake, mussel, clam, Korean-style fried eggs. It was really awesome.

Two nights ago I met some of Kelsey's other friends. I met a teacher from school (Sumi, I don't think I had met her yet), Sang Mok, and Kelsey's good friend Paul. They were really cool and taught me a lot of important and useful normal Korean sayings. After being here for four days, it's been a little bit overwhelming in not being able to see a lot of English. While this is very tough on the brain, it also pushes me to really want to learn Korean. I want to learn the language - spelling, reading, and speaking - as well as the culture itself. The learning curve has been very steep, both because of the newness of this place as well as my appetite to learn. Right now I'm still learning the letters of the alphabet, so reading is coming along.

Learning the meaning/English translation will be a much different story. Even so, I've noticed a nice amount of Konglish, which is basically an English word transliterated into Korean. For example, there is a Thomas the Tank toy on my desk. The translation of the name of the toy is "tomasuh." Another example is Isaac Toast, which is a little fried toast shop down the street from my apartment. There is one order that, when translated into Latin letters, reads as "pija." The sounds, 'ch,' 'j,' and 'z' are all very similar. Therefore, the word read, "pizza." Among the expressions I have learned, the most important are "Hello," "This one, please," "Thank you," and "Goodbye." This has allowed me to confidently order food as long as there are pictures to which I can point. One big step towards learning Korean will be to buy a Korean/English keyboard to use with my laptop. This way I can switch over and start writing in Korean with ease.

As far as requirements for living in Korea go, I still need to get my alien residency card, aka ARC or AR card. I have to get a medical exam. Basically, if they find marijuana in my bloodstream (because it resides in the body much longer than one might think), then I will no longer be able to teach (to my understanding). Don't misunderstand me - this does not mean I have been smoking marijuana. I never have and I don't think I ever will, even to understand the experience behind it. However, traces can be found in the bloodstream even from secondhand smoke. I've smelled marijuana here and there throughout town, and it hasn't been secondhand smoke. I've never been with someone either who has smoked marijuana, producing secondhand smoke. What is my point? I don't really know. I just have to do a medical exam, anyway.

After passing that, then comes the AR card. Once I have that, I'll be able to open up a Korean bank account and as well get a phone. An important note about phones - you might think that WE need our phones with us all the time. You might think that phones are important. But while I think we take phones for granted, there may be another aspect. We are used to electronic communication, but I think our attitude towards electronics has been mostly that electronics are toys. Therefore, our primary use of electronics is for toys rather than as tools.

But here, the primary attitude is not the same. The attitude is that to be Korean, you must communicate with people. Communication is the key to living. We communicate in order to live, we live in order to communicate. I think we've lost our ability to hear God communicate to us because we have become so self-indulgent and have nearly accepted thinking that we're autonomous. But if we listen, he still communicates. It takes a tough ear to hear God speak to us, and yet he also speaks to the individual in the way that the individual was designed. After all, it was God who designed us. For me, learning to hear God came through recognizing how often people tell me to do something when these people do not even know each other nor do they know someone else has told me the same thing. This, as well as prayer, has become the first way I know that God communicates to me.

When the electronic age came, Korean communication had a new opportunity to grow - phones became tools for communication, rather than toys for personal enjoyment. I think this fits with my attitude towards phones: I try to use them as a tool. Having said that, I really can't wait to get a phone, which will allow me to communicate much more with the people I have met. I hope this also means that I'll be able to put all my contacts from my Telus SIM card onto the SIM card of my phone and throw a text your way every once in a while.

That's about all for now. Take care and God bless.

Korea - August 31, 2011

Hello everyone!

I intend to keep all of you updated on my travels and adventures and whatever else I'm doing in Korea. For those of you who don't know, I moved to Korea on the 29th of August, 2011, to work at ECC School in Jeon Ju, South Korea. This school runs all year around and is an "extra-curricular" school for Korean children to learn English.

Let me start with the plane ride. It was my first time flying (surprise!), and for my first time, it was pretty smooth. The night before my flight my dad, Zach (younger brother) and I went to the Pearson Airport in Toronto to check it out and figure out basically exactly what I needed to do. Early on Sunday morning we went to the airport. I checked in my luggage, had my money exchanged to Korean Won, boarded the plane, and flew here. It was a very long flight (13 hrs), and when we had 3 hrs left, I was itching to get off of the plane and see this wonderful place called Korea.

After getting of the plane at Incheon, I got my luggage, and hung around the airport for a bit until I went to the information kiosk and asked for help to get a limousine bus to Jeon Ju. We went through Seoul, Gimbo, Daejon, Iksan. The bus made a stop but I didn't know which city. The bus driver had no idea about English so I didn't even bother asking him how long the stop would last; I was also too chicken to just ask a Korean if they knew English so that I could find out when the bus left again. So I just got off, hung around and felt the air for the first time in a long time, and got back on when the bus driver came back. We made a short stop at Iksan before heading to Jeon Ju. This was basically at a gas station/mechanic shop. I got off the bus, and this old man directed me straight to the bathroom in Korean. I found it, and when I came out after going, the bus was just about to leave. It's a good thing that the stop light to get back onto the road lasted about 5 minutes.

Oh, and I should mention. I think many of you know the saying, "shit a brick." You know, like, "I got so scared I almost shit a brick." Well, this bus driver was nuts. He commanded the road, but when he swung around a corned, my eyes opened and I almost shit a brick. It was ridiculous. Fast driving, lane changing all the time. Not to mention the fact that while driving fast on a superhighway AND following other cars within inches, this bus was HUGE and it was not an automatic. On kind of the same note, nearly everything I see is Hyundai, KIA, Daewoo, Mercedes, Toyota, and BMW.

After the bus ride, I got off the bus close the the Core Hotel in Jeon Ju. I couldn't even see the hotel because we were parked about a block away from it, but I knew it was the end of the ride because everyone got off and I (thankfully) saw Kelsey Hunter waiting with the ESL school manager to pick me up. They brought me to my apartment (check out the pictures if you haven't already). The apartment is pretty nice. My mattress is incredibly hard, but yet I was still able to sleep like a baby last night because I was incredibly exhausted. I think I'm starting to feel the effects of jet lag, but since I have no idea what jet lag is supposed to feel like, I'm not even sure that it's jet lag. Meh. I got through today pretty well.

Last night my future roommate (Kaylene Kramer, with whom I work 7 years ago in Chatham doing corn detassling) came and picked me up from my apartment. We went down the street to the main street by the apartment. A main street in Jeon Ju is eight lanes wide. Mopeds do as they please. Taxis pretty much do the same thing. Traffic is insane. So crossing this thing felt like crossing the Jordan. Seriously, it's crazy. If you think Toronto drivers are crazy (and suck at driving; no offense to those of you who live in Toronto), you have nothing on Koreans. I'm not even kidding. Anyway, we walked down to the Mcdonald's about 15 minutes down the street. I got some decent food for the first time in a while - a McChicken combo. Then we went about a 1/2 hr down the other way to E-mart (they call it E-martah) were I bought my first thing in Korea - an alarm clock. Yes, I brought mine from home. Yes, I plugged in the adapter into the wall. Yes, I then plugged in my alarm clock into the adapter and it worked. Yes, I came back and the bloody thing was fried. So now I have a nice new one with the Korean plug on the end. And it goes "beeep beeep beeep" instead of the traditional "RANH RANH RANH RANH." Blasted noise.

I woke up this morning at 8:15am (it's 1:25am, August 31, 2011 as I write this. It 12:30pm, August 30, 2011 for you). Showered for the first time in what seemed like a week...which is pretty close to reality but not that long. It was a nice wake up. I actually woke up about 15 minutes before my 8:15am alarm, and the was because of the birds and such - the city was started to move. The rear window picture from my apartment has a bit of forest in it; if you were to look straight out, you would see a bit of forest. I swear I heard monkeys. I asked Kelsey (a former Redeemerite) if there were any monkeys around here or in that forest, and she said she didn't think so. But I swear I heard monkeys. But boy, it was a beautiful sleep.

While in my payamas I showed Kelsey what I had chosen to wear. There was some disparity between what I was told I should be wearing and what I actually have to wear. I'm not pointing and fingers (*cough Jordan couch*), but Kelsey said that my dress shirt, dress pants, dress shoes, and tie was too formal. So I didn't wear the tie and unbuttoned the top couple buttons so it was a little more casual. But it was still good because Koreans are big on first impressions. And off to the school we went.

School started at 10am and we were there for 9:30. Before the bell wrang I had to go into the play room where all of the kids were; the youngest group, 4-6 is in the morning and has a few blocks in the afternoon. There I had to introduce myself to all of the kids. Talk about not knowing what to say to a group of kids in which many speak very few words of English. I observed 6 classes throughout the day. Four of these classes were with the young ones, and 2 were with the elementary-aged kids (9-10). They spoke much more English and their comprehension is much better. After observing these classes and getting a lot of advice from a veteran teacher of 5 years, I felt like I would be most comfortable teaching at that level. I don't know what classes I'll have (I start teaching next week), but I do know that I'm taking over the Kitty class, which is like 3-4 year olds. They don't know very many words and speak a lot of Korean (which could help me learn it); they also like to run around a lot. They like to do what they please a lot of the time, but a lot of it is just trying to ask them questions in order to receive an answer in English. This also means that English loses its rules, including word order, e.g., "Johnny, clean up Johnny book please." It'll be interesting. I can't wait to find a groove.

In terms of culture, this place is amazing. I love the land. People stare at me often. I am an incredible minority now. It's kind of weird going from a majority to a minority. I am incredibly humbled because I don't know the culture, the language, the rules of engagement for conversation, etc. It will be challenging. My stomach will have to get used to a lot of new stuff. Today I ate a pork loin, cabbage, some corn, rice, and a bowl of broth that tasted like fish. It was a very good meal. I think I should also mention that the cost of living here is lower than in Canada. For example, my meal, which filled me, tasted good, and is healthier than usual North American food, only costs roughly $4. And I had a big appetite.

After I got home from the school, which is about a 15 minute walk down to another busy street, I took some pictures of the apartment, uploaded them, and took a nap. At about 9pm this evening I went out with Kaylene, got a small Korean pepperoni pizza (amazing, tasted good and had a typical asian spicyness to it, cost 5,900 won or $6). Then we went to 711, where I grabbed a Pepsi and saw little cans of Heineken and said, "Praise the Lord." Right underneath the 711 is a bar/lounge/band place/foreign-people hangout called Radio Star, where I made my first Korean friend, Young Jo Yoon. He plays bass. His favourite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was sad that John Frusciante was no longer the guitarist. I am so happy that the first friend I made here is a musician. And that brings me to writing this blog.

I thank the Lord for all his blessings. Considering how well this has all worked out, regardless of the little hiccups that happened in getting here in terms of both the paperwork and the flight, I can see how much God works through his children and affirms his plan. I ask for your continued support. I covet your prayers. I will also keep you in my prayers. Until next time, take luck, care for it, and God bless.