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).

I'm a terrible, terrible blogger.

I'm sorry.  And now I'm going to be even more terrible and make another post without pictures.  I'll try to do better next week.

How has life in Korea been?  Rainy.  Very, very, very, very, very rainy.  The streets are wet, the bus is wet, my feet are wet, the corner where I keep my umbrella is wet, everything everywhere is wet.  What do I think of when I think about Korea?  Rain.  What is the only thing I can think to write about?  Rain.

But it's ok.  It should stop raining by August...or by September.  And there have been some other things going on.  Like lots of fog.

I got a phone!  It's my first smartphone ever, and I love it!  It still confuses me sometimes, though.  :)

My friend from college came for another weekend and left.  She's in Austin now, drinking lots of Shiner.  I am very jealous.  We ate fried chicken, we went to see a palace, and on her last day we decided to stay inside because it was raining too hard.  The fried chicken was good, though.

Last weekend, I went to an island in the West Sea.  (Actually, it was four islands connected by bridges.)  It rained.  It was foggy.  The first day, we rented bikes and rode them up the hills and through the puddles.  There was lots to see, under the fog.  The place was beautiful, and the fog gave it an eerie feel.  Every once in a while the fog would lift 30 feet or so, and we'd say "Oh my gosh!  Look over there!  That island!  That's amaz--- oh wait, the fog's back."  This place has been compared to Thailand, and at times we could see parts of wonderfully clear or turquoise water and HUGE hilly islands in the distance.  It's almost enough to make me want to go back.  Saturday night, the fog and rain lifted enough for us to see a cloudy sunset, set off some fireworks, and hang out on the beach.  (It turns out, there are lots of bugs that bite you on muddy beaches.  They're most active in the evenings.  Don't bury your feet in the sand!)  It was a fun time, and there were some cool people there.  On Sunday, we took a walk around part of the island, ate some ramyeon for lunch (Koreans say ramyeon instead of ramen), and read and watched some Korean dramas in our hotel room when it started to rain really hard.  Not a bad weekend.

The weekend before that, my neighbors took me to Lotte World.  It's a big amusement park in Seoul.  Half of the park was indoors.  Their 10 year old daughter came, too.  We went on lots of fun rides, but I went on the bigger ones by myself.  We ate fried squid dipped in peanut butter.  We went ice skating, but we did not go to the shooting range.  (Yes, there's a shooting range.  Yes, I will go back.)  I wore the biggest skates available at the rink.  The guys working there didn't believe me when I asked for my size.

The past couple of weeks, half of my students have been preparing for final exams, and the other half have been doing post-exam review.  (They had their finals two weeks ago, but still have a week and a half of school left.)  So, work has been pretty easy.  I will be glad when I get to start doing real lessons again, though.

That's about it.  I've met a few more foreigners in my area, and we'll go shopping and get dinner.  It's sooo nice to be more social!  I'll try to post more often!

Limbo

People keep asking if I like it in Korea.  The truth is, I don't really know yet.  I'm pretty much settled in at work, but my apartment is still only halfway set up, and I haven't really gotten any sort of routine yet.  I haven't met that many people here, and I always seem to be on some sort of errand.  I won't be able to get a phone or reliable internet until after July 4th, so it looks like I'll have about two more weeks of limbo.

I have been exploring a lot, though.  My neighborhood just keeps getting better and better.  There are parks everywhere, and apparently a really nice bike shop around the corner.

I met my landlady (Julia) and we go walking in the park most nights with her friend.  The two women and their families have been really nice, and they're always giving me food!  Mrs. Chang even took me out for steak last night with her family!  Julia owns a beauty salon downstairs, so I stop by and say hi most nights after school.  It's really nice to have a casual conversation in English, even if it's broken.

My friend from college came to visit this weekend.  She's starting at a school in Seoul this week, and will be staying with me next weekend, too.  It was so much fun to have her here!  We met my other friend in Seoul and saw a neighborhood full of traditional palaces and one of the castles in Seoul.  (Pictures will come on a better internet day!)

On Sunday, my college friend and I went to climb one of the smaller mountains in Seoul.  Her guidebook described it as a Shamanist walk. Just a few minutes up the mountain, we were surrounded by beating drums and chanting from several directions.  We were in a small village that had as many Buddhist temples as it had houses!  They were beautiful, all painted in vivid colors.  (Pictures are discourages, so those will not come on a better internet day.  Sorry.)

Further up the mountain, there were small shrines every five minutes or so.  Some of them were very small, just flat spots with little bowls of rice, but some had altars on them.  Near a few larger ones, older Koreans had set up tents where they were sweeping, or preparing vegetables, or drinking water.  I have no idea if they lived in the tents or were just spending the day there.

We got lost so many times on this mountain because all the trails criss-crossed each other going between shrines.  We did see some great views, though, which I did take pictures of.

On another side of the mountain, the government had recreated the wall that used to protect Seoul.  You could walk up the side of the wall to the peak of the mountain.  This path was steps almost the whole way, and there was little shade.  We had used almost all of our water on the other side already.  (I had refilled at a mountain spring, but my friend didn't trust the water.  So far, so good, and I hope I still feel well tomorrow!)  My friend made it all the way to the false peak, but I didn't even make it that far.  I sat down next to some Koreans in the shade who gave me lots of food.

That's it for now!  I'll try to post again this week!

My Neighborhood and My First Korean Mountain (sort of)

It's very late, and my internet is very slow, so these pictures are out of order.  Sorry!  I can't upload the videos I took, so you'll see my apartment later!

This is the main pedestrian street in my neighborhood, right around the corner from my house.

This is a park on the way to the subway.

Here are some exercise machines in the park.  These things are everywhere!

This is that main pedestrian street again.

This was at the top of the mountain.

Here's the view from the top of the mountain.  Not quite the Adirondacks.

Another view from the top of the mountain.  My friends says it's not always so hazy here.  It might be yellow dust.  If you look very closely, you might see more mountains in the background.

I think they're growing wildflowers near the top of the mountain.

A BIG gym near the top of the mountain.

The walk only took about 30 minutes, but it got steep at times.  (Yes, that's a streetlight.) 

I was glad it was short because these were the shoes I was wearing!

The entrance to the mountain park.