Vacation, Day 1

My neighbors have been incredibly nice to me ever since I met them.  We walked in the park together almost every night until it started raining so much (and I stopped walking), the mom had  brought me American food (syrup, pancake mix, Jell-o, peanut butter, and canned tuna) three times, and they've taken me out to eat and on a couple day trips (to an amusement park and to the border).  One of the first few weeks I was here, they asked if I could tutor their daughter, and I said no.  It's illegal for me to have another job, and I was still scared of getting kicked out of the country.  I ended up agreeing to tutor her once a week for an hour for free.  I still only had one friend, wasn't doing much with my evenings, and I really do genuinely enjoy tutoring.  So I tutored her for free once a week, and they took me out once in a while and sometimes bought me things.  A couple weeks before vacation, they said I should come to the beach with them.  I said sure.  The initial plan was to do two weekend trips, but they had to cancel the second.  They asked if I could do one 5-day trip instead.  We would visit their family friends in Andong, then go to Sokcho, which is a beach I've been dying to get to.  I said why not?  Haha.  Why not...

The first day of our trip, they picked me up about 6am.  We started driving, and stopped for breakfast a few hours later.  Now, Koreans don't really differentiate between breakfast food, lunch food, and dinner food.  They just eat food.  I was starving, and, used to Dad's cross-country races, assumed we wouldn't stop again until lunch around noon.  I ate bibimbap, which is rice mixed with vegetables, some spicy sauce (most of which I took out), and lots and lots of sesame oil. Lots.  I wasn't sick, but did not feel well all morning.  We stopped 3 times before lunch, and every time the mother tried to get me to eat more food!

A couple hours after breakfast, we made it to Andong.  We stopped first at a traditional folk village, met the family's friends (a couple and two young kids) and looked at the mask museum.  We took a bus to get to the actual village.  It's big enough that it took several hours to walk around.  People still live there, so you're only allowed in a couple houses.  The surrounding area was gorgeous - bright green rice fields, ponds of lily pads, small mountains in the distance, and lily pads.  There is also a small pine forest.  Everyone was really excited about the pine forest, which I didn't understand until I saw it.  The trees are extremely tall and very slender.  There are enough leaves at the top to provide shade, but the leaves don't start until very high up.  You're surrounded by thin, vertical, weaving lines as high as your peripheral vision can see.  There's no undergrowth, so the ground was a soft carpet of needles.  The atmosphere felt very calm, even with lots of little kids running around.  (Didn't hurt that there was a slow river passing in front of a cliff just beyond the forest.)  Pine trees apparently give off some sort of chemical or something that's good for the health.  (Kimchi, seaweed, walking barefoot on stones, and mud from the west coast are all also "good for the health."  It's a favorite phrase here.  I think there's a Korean word for it that we just don't have in English.)  On the teachers' trip the next week, some of the older teachers were even hugging pine trees.

In one area, they had some traditional swings and games.  I started pushing the kids, and they were having so much fun!  I did that thing where you run under the swing to get them really high, and they about flipped out!  Traditional swings are meant to be stood on (they tried to teach me how to swing myself standing up, and it is so hard!), and I think the kids were not used to going so high!  It was a lot of fun.

After walking around, we had lunch at a restaurant there.  Actually, we had a feast at the restaurant there.  There were at least 3 main dishes, a soup, and at least 10 side dishes!  There had to be about 50 plates on the table.  I told the father that I thought it was a feast, and he said it was a normal meal.  Still feeling a little sick, I just had rice and grilled fish.  This fish was amazing!  The father said it was probably trout or mackerel, but wasn't sure.  I think it was grilled in oil, but it might have just been the oil from the fish.  It was grilled whole, only missing its scales.  It was amazing!  There was more flavor in one bite than in any serving of fish I've ever had in the States!  I think I have a new favorite Korean food.  The craziest thing was that the father and his friend though that the fish tasted flat!

After lunch, we drove to the friends' parents' house.  It was a small house in the country, with a yard, one large room running the length of the house, a kitchen and bathroom on the side, and 3 bedrooms off the main room.  The yard had a small vegetable garden and some kimchi pots in it.  I didn't take pictures because I didn't want them to feel like I was treating their house like a tourist attraction.  We had some watermelon, the grandparents gave the kids money, and I took a nap.  That evening, we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner.  We grilled some pork outside, and I ate a lot because I was so hungry!  (And it was so good!)  Then, the women brought out more meat and huge bowls of rice porridge!  I do not know how Koreans eat so much.

I went to bed that night on the floor in a room with the mother and her daughter.  Pretty fun first day.  I was excited for the rest of the trip.

Pictures!

I've finally uploaded all my pictures, so here's the last two months in photos!

 This is the main palace in Seoul.

This is a traditional Korean house, in a neighborhood of traditional Korean houses.

 This is the changing of the guard at the palace.  (I can't figure out how to change the order of the pictures!)

More traditional Korean houses.

At the palace again.  This might be the queen's quarters.  (There weren't any signs.)

The mountains behind the palace.

Changing of the guard again.

The throne.

Inside the throne room.

A pavilion on a lake.

The East Sea!  This is near Uljin, during my vacation with my neighbors.

We went to a mask museum in Andong.

A representation of a mask dance.

This is a typical hat for an aristocrat during the Joseon dynasty.

These pillars keep away evil spirits, I think.  Later they'll be painted.  I think they're shamanistic in origin, but I'm not sure.

A pretty landscape, with a heron in the sky.

Rice fields and a leafy crop!

Two herons!

Tradition Korean house in a folk village in Andong.

People-carriers.

Man-carrier.

Interior of woman-carrier.  I think it was made for small women!

Courtyard of one of the biggest houses, made for an important family in the 16th century.

This is the view through their front gate.  Not bad.

Another view of the courtyard.

Playing with traditional toys.

This lake was featured in the movie Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring.

In the movie, there was a floating pavilion in the middle of the lake where a Buddhist monk lived.

Trees growing in the water.  This lake is famous for these trees.

Some statues inside a huge TV show set.

A view of Sokcho from the lighthouse.

The sea viewed from the lighthouse.

The harbor (?) from the lighthouse.

An ancient monument (or a reproduction) in front of a waterpark.

The gate leading to the TV set.

Reproductions of Joseon-era weapons.

And that's it.  When I was traveling with my neighbors, and when I went on the teachers' trip, my companions were not very patient with me while I was taking pictures.  Most of them are rushed, and I feel like my best pictures were taken with my phone!  I'm traveling in September a couple times with other foreigners, and I should have better pictures then!

August

Wow, it's been a long time since I last blogged.  August was pretty nuts.  The last week of June and the first week of August I was teaching a summer English camp at my school.  I taught it with my co-worker, Mr. Kim, whom I really do not get along with.  I'd known that I would have to teach this camp before I even got this job - it's standard for public school jobs.  I'd known since the beginning of June when the summer camp would be.  But until the week before it started, that's all the information I had.  Around that Wednesday, I found out I would be teaching 5 levels of classes.  Five!  A bit later I found out I would teach the 3 upper levels 3 times a week, and the 2 lower levels twice a week.  The classes would be 40 minutes long.  The format of the camp was such that my Mr. KIm would teach for 40 minutes, then I would teach the same kids for 40 minutes.  That Thursday, my co-worker gave me a brief outline of topics for each class.  Most of them were standard: feelings, daily activities, dates, etc.  He also tells me that he wants to make the Level 4 class a class on fairy tales and the level 5 class a journal writing class.  I try to make his fairy tales work (they're from a Korean website, they're very long, and the English in them was terrible), but on Friday he lets me know that I can choose my own if I want to.  I spend most of Thursday and all of Friday (and some of the weekend) stressing out about how to get the Level 5 students to actually write a journal entry.  I'm able to map out a decent plan for each class that should have them writing paragraphs by the end of the second week.  Over the weekend, I go to a bookstore and pick out two books for the Level 4 class.  I plan on doing one book each week.  (I told my Mr. Kim that by the end of the week I wanted my students to be able to read the book back to me or describe what happened in their own words.  He laughed and said they might be able to do that in Korean.)

The first day of camp, my Level 3 class went pretty smoothly.  During the Level 4 class, my students read the book aloud to me about halfway through the class.  They had learned the target language, went through the game I had prepared, and were able to use the target language in context.  Shoot.  What was I going to do for the rest of the week?  I was very curious to watch my co-teacher's Level 5 class.  I really wanted to know how the students would react to having to write so much.  He lectured them for about 15 minutes on the importance of keeping a diary, taught them some key words, played a game with the words, and towards the end of the class had them copy the words three times each in their notebooks.  Shoot.  They are going to be so mad when I have them create their own full sentences!  The first class went ok - they were definitely a handful, but I did get them each to write 3 sentences.  (I had originally aimed for 6-7 longer sentences.)

The rest of the camp continued in a similar fashion.  The lower level kids were cute, but sometimes hard to control.  My co-teacher always played a game at the end of his class, always let them be rowdy, and always ran over his class time.  Instead of a 10 minute break, the kids usually only got a few minutes, and it was so hard to get them to sit down again.  I got them to do more than parroting a few times, but mostly it was singing songs and coloring.  My Level 3 class was a joy.  Level 4 was a constant source of stress - they finished the second book I picked out in one class also, so the first week I was always trying to plan a last-minute lesson for them.  The second week I chose Green Eggs and Ham, and managed to stretch it out all week.  They loved it!  Level 5 was rough the whole time.  They played a game right before my class, and were not pleased about getting back to work.  I did adjust my plans, but still made them create at least three sentences every class.  They were annoyed, but I knew they were capable of it and a couple of them actually had fun with it.  I ended up bargaining with videos - if they would write 5 sentences in 10 minutes, we could watch Mr. Bean.

The afternoons during summer camp were the worst.  (All the classes were in the morning.)  I don't get along with my co-worker.  His habits annoy me, I don't like conversation with him, and he's generally a very awkward person who makes a lot of unnecessary noise.  Really, this man drives me up the wall.  It might just be because I literally stare at the top of his head every day (we sit across from each other), but after summer camp, I do my best to avoid interaction with him.  (Since there's only one other teacher in the department, and she sites on the other side of the classroom around a corner (lucky), I really don't talk to anyone all day at work.  So if you talk to me online during the day, that's why I word vomit all over you.)

The last two days of camp the AC was broken.  It wasn't terribly hot, but they let me go home after classes on Friday anyway.  I about ran out of there.  I was free of my co-worker and on vacation!!!

Since I just got here and August is the most expensive month to travel in Korea, I had decided not to leave the country this vacation.  I made plans with a friend who lives nearby to explore our area and Seoul, and to go camping on some islands off the west coast.  Then it rained.  Every day.  We were troopers for the first couple of days, then gave up and started looking for indoor activities/ staying home all day watching TV on our laptops.  I'm actually glad I got a lot of down-time then, because the second part of my vacation was exhausting.  I had accepted an offer from my neighbors to go on a 5 day trip with them.  It was....exhausting.  And definitely needs its own blog post (or five).