New Friends, New Ideas

Greetings!

First of all, I have had a number of inquiries from worried family members and friends regarding the N. Korean attack on the South Korean island of Yeongpyong. No worries--I am safe, alive, and nowhere near that island. In terms of safety, the advice I was given was just to observe the Koreans around me. If they aren't freaking out, I probably shouldn't either. Then again, how do they really know. But this sort of thing "happens all the time" so if the Koreans don't believe it's serious then there's no reason for me to get all worked up. The Koreans are going on with business as usual, so I will too. I registered with the U.S. Embassy here when I arrived, and I recently signed up for their e-mail/text message alert system so I will receive a text and an e-mail if there are travel warnings being issued for South Korea. Until then, I'm keeping my eyes and ears peeled and continuing to ask questions. I think that's all I can do right now.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of the past week I was at teacher training/orientation for GEPIK middle school and high school teachers. GEPIK is the Gyeonggi (pronounced geeyong-gee) English Program in Korea. It is basically the organization that recruits Native English teachers for the public schools in the Gyeonggi province. My employer is my school, but my contract is a standard GEPIK contract that all GEPIK teachers have no matter where they work. Soo anyway, GEPIK held this orientation this week in Anseong, a small city about an hour south of Suwon. I got a chance to meet a bunch of other English teachers in my area and go to lectures giving me great teaching and classroom management tips specifically for my situation. It's often hard to get advice from people from home about teaching because there are so many things that factor into teaching English in Korea that make it difficult and different than teaching American students. All of the lectures were geared specifically towards teaching Korean middle school and high school students in large classes with co-teachers and language and culture barriers, so they were super helpful.

I really enjoyed mingling with other teachers too and swapping ideas about what has worked (and not worked) in our classrooms. Most of the teachers are about my age and the majority of them have been in Korea for less than 6 months so we're all in the boat. Besides finally being able to make some of my own friends, my favorite part of the week was probably the demo lesson presentations we had to do. The entire group of about 80 people were split into groups of 15 according to what area we worked and lived in. In my group, consisting of teachers teaching in Suwon and surrounding areas, we got put into pairs and assigned a lesson topic to teach. We had one night to make our lessons plans (only 15 minutes long) and the next morning we all "taught" each other. Now, since classrom management is one of the biggest challenges of our jobs, as the students we were instructed to act like our students! Challenging our "teachers" with off-topic (and incorrect) questions, creating distractions, and not listening to directions and therefore delaying the activities, we imitated our students' accents and often inappropriate questions and language. We were all sort of fooling around with it and it was fun! I also walked away from the demo lessons with 5 other lesson plan ideas (worksheets and activities included) to bring back to my class.

My partner Michael and I did a lesson on American Holidays. We split our "class" into three groups and gave each group an information card about one of the following holidays: Halloween, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. After Michael and I did an example with Choesok (Korean Harvest holiday), the students were instructed to learn the information on the card. Then they had to go around and ask the other students about the other holidays and write it down on the charts we handed out. For the activity, we posted signs for each holiday on opposite sides of the room and the students were instructed to run to the sign that matched the vocabulary word we gave them, for example "jack-o-lantern", "pumpkin pie", "fireworks", or "independence". I think it was a success!

Another fun part of the orientation was learning a traditional Korean mask dance called Tacheum. Thursday afternoon we got to choose an activity to do, choosing from tradition dancing, learning about K-Pop (Korean pop music), a craft activity, and Korean calligraphy. All of the activities sounded appealing but I knew I wanted to do one that would get me up and moving after a whole morning and afternoon of sitting in lectures and lessons. I of course enjoyed dancing it and learning about the history and story of the dance. The traditional Tacheum dance is actually a mix of drama and movement and the performances almost always followed the same story that ends in tradgedy. Our instructor described the dance as very "down to earth", meaning that it was really a people's dance. It was never performed for the King or anything. It was and remains very sacred to the Korean people.

Last weekend I went to the Seoul Lamp Festival with Val, his/our friend Peter (the Korean-American who's originally from the town over from Sarah in NJ) and his friend, which I think many of you saw pictures of on FB. Unfortunately, at the festival I dropped my camera and the retractable lense got jammed, so the camera is temporarily out of service. I think it will be an easy fix because we took the lense part apart and nothing's broken, the lense is just jammed and needs to be re-aligned. If I discover the price of repairing it is close to the price of a new camera, well, Happy Chanukah to me! I'll probably buy a new camera. So sorry about that, you'll have to wait for more pictures for a while.

This weekend, after I got home from the training, I met two of the girls from orientatin out for drinks and dancing. Michelle was my roommate at the training and she hails from Toronto. She's been in Korea for about 3 months. Blythe is from Sacramento and has only been here for 3 weeks! Michelle, Blythe, Val, and I met for drinks at a REALLY cool bar at Suwon station that looked like a Moroccan restaurant with colorful pillows on which we sit on the floor and a sheet of veil separating each table. The vibe was chill and the drinks were good. We stayed there for a while and then went out dancing. We had a great time shaking it and drinking our free drinks (you get a ticket for a free drink after paying the \10,000 cover (about 10 bucks). That's a little steep if you ask me but getting a free drink out of it, I can live with it. After dancing the night away, Val & I headed home around 3am. I already have plans in the making to meet some of the other GEPIK teachers in my area next weekend. YAY for finally havs ing friends.

The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful because I caught a nasty cold that pretty much put me out of commission for Sat and Sun. I spent the days Skyping with family and relaxing with Val and watching TV which I finally got set up. There are a number of English channels including movie channels and National Geographic Wild. Pretty sweet! I also found 2 channels that air reruns of one of my favorite shows ever that is no longer on and I can not find anywhere online: ALIAS! 10 points for my Korean TV channels.

This week and next week I am not teaching regular classes due to my students preparing for and then taking their final exams. So I'll be sitting at my desk all day, every day so feel free to g-chat me anytime!

Love to you all. I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving!

Love,
Mel

You Guessed It! More Korean Culture

Hi again!

OK, so you're probably thinking, "Ew, what the heck is this post about? Toilets and hairy food?" Well, yes it is. :) I've been making more observations about surprising and different things I am encountering here in Korea. So I'mma just go ahead and get to it.

1. Koreans drive like maniacs. They're as bad (or perhaps worse) than New Yorkers. Whenever I get into a taxi I fear for my life. People zoom through intersections and drive REALLY close to other cars. People even drive through red lights on a regular basis. Waiting at a red light, it's not uncommon to see a car slow down, the driver look to see if there is anyone coming in the opposite traffic direction, and zoom through the red light, spastically honking their horn. It's INSANE.

2. Regular toilets are a rare siting. Squatting toilets, as seen in the photo, are what you'll find about 70% of the time. These definitely get some getting used to. I'll be the first to admit that I avoid them at all costs, only using them if my bladder is about to burst and there is no toilet in the bathroom I'm in. And when I must use it, it's difficult. It takes some practice. If I don't pay attention, I end up peeing on my shoe, followed by me usually cursing and wiping my shoe furiously. Then I feel ridiculous. There is usually at least one regular toilet if you need to go ....erm... "number two," but otherwise you gotta use a squat toilet if the real one is occupied. Luckily at Sannam the teachers' bathroom has one regular toilet which I use whenever I can. Oh, by the way, the toilet seat is heated in the winter. So instead of that moment of wincing you have when you first sit down on the cold porcelain toilet seat, you sit and get a warm surprise. It's sort of nice. And in a school where the halls aren't heated (only the classrooms), you sort of want to stay there. Ok, enough bathroom talk.

3. There is no Korean equivalent to "bless you". Koreans don't say anything after you sneeze. It might not sound so bizarre, but after being accustomed to hearing someone say something after you sneeze for your whole life, being in a silent office (because everyone is hard at work... most of the time) and sneezing and it remaining silent is REALLY strange. I'm still not used to it!

5. In the winter, to keep warm outside people wear face masks. I was confused at first but I guess breathing warm air keeps you warm. It makes sense. I've gotten used to seeing people walking around looking like burglars or surgeons or gangsters but I was shocked when I first saw it. Even in the summer I saw people wearing them, which I don't understand really...


I swear I had so many I wanted to talk about but now as I sit down to blog I'm forgetting them! Oh well, I'll write about them later when I remember. In other news, I've been introduced to new, exotic fruits. A lychee and a hairy lychee (I'm sure you can figure out which is which) is a South East Asian fruit. The first time I encountered the lychee was at a dinner out with some fellow teachers from my school. It was a buffet dinner and upon seeing them I asked Nam Teacher, "What the heck is that?!" She laughed and explained that it was a fruit from South East Asia. With her instruction, I peeled the lychee (a somewhat difficult task) and popped the soft, rubbery center into my mouth. It tasted citrus-y and sweet. I liked it so much I even went up to get more from the buffet. Tonight I went to another dinner out with teachers at another buffet-style restaurant and what was there?! My favorite new exotic fruit. I was excited. I also saw snails at the buffet which I didn't have the guts to try. Octopus tentacles are enough for me at this point. Ick!

That's all, folks!

Love,
Mel

Trip to the Buddhist Temple

Hi folks,

I'm so glad to see your comments. There's no easy to way to reply to your comments (we aren't on Facebook, ya know), so I'll say here thank you so much for your comments and I'm so glad to hear from some old friends like BLANDINA! Girl, I was so happy to see your comment. So there's my mini shout-out and thank you to all of you who are commenting. I love them and I love hearing from all of you.

So here are me updates. Nothing new to report at school really. Just getting into the groove of things. Next week I'm going to teach about Thanksgiving since next Thursday is the day o' giving thanks. I'm really going to miss going to Grammy's with my fam and eating all the delicious food until I feel like my stomach is going to burst, but mostly I'm going to miss the company. They don't eat turkey here and they hardly have any bread products besides sugary cereals and white bread so it's not like I can even try to cook a Thanksgiving meal with turkey and stuffing, etc. Oh well. I hope you all enjoy this festive and delicious day. I'll definitely be thinking of home next Thursday!

This past Sunday I got to do something really special. Rachel and Ryan's mom took us to the Buddhist Temple that she attends. The temple is in another town, about 25 minutes away, out in the open surrounded by mountains. When we first arrived we visited the Buddhist museum on site that had ancient relics and information ... that I couldn't read because they were either written in Korean or Chinese! Fortunately, Rachel and Ryan's mom served as a tour guide and with her good English guided Val and I around and explained what we were looking at. As she explained some things I started to remember some of the information I learned in my Buddhist Traditions class I took at Muhlenberg sophomore year. I remember it being a terrible class because the professor was not good at all, but I also remember the material being interesting. As we walked around the museum I remembered flashes of information and it was nice to be able to ask questions and have somewhat of an intellectual conversation with her. At museum I got to "write" on parchment using ancient printing, meaning there was a slate with raised Korean characters and a raised picture of a temple. We brushed ink onto the slate and placed the parchment on top, then we gently rubbed the paper against the inked slate with a clothed wood so the ink transferred onto the paper and created a design! I got to try twice (didn't go so well the first time... I smeared it everywhere) and bring them home. I also got to taste flower tea, which was just tea made from a flower (it looked like wild daisy to me) soaked in water. It was so earthy and delicious!

After the museum we headed to the main area where the temples, statues, and ancient gong was. We got to peak into the temple which was very beautiful, surrounded by candles, statues of Buddha, and scented with incense. R & R's mom (I actually don't know her name!) explained that the statues of Buddha are not sacred and when people bow and pray they are not bowing and praying TO the statue. The statues are simply there to remind the believers of why there are there. I thought that was interesting. I sort of wanted to go into the temple and just sit but I chickened out about asking! There was another small temple where there were supposedly 1,000 Buddha statues. Crazy, right?!

As we walked around the temple she pointed out the mediation area (outdoors but secluded by tall trees and bushes) and we studied the paintings on the outside of the temple depicting Buddha's life. As she explained the paintings much of what I learned in my Buddhist Traditions class came back to me and I could determine what the paintings were depicting! That felt really cool...I had no idea I learned so much in that class. We continued to walk around and admire the scenery and the colorful accents of the leaves that were turning orange. It was such a special experience for me and she was such a great tour guide. I hope maybe I can go back and learn more about it. I know there are often crossovers with Judaism and Buddhism (Jewdhism?) so I wasn't surprised about how connected I felt there. I remember feeling connected to Buddhist beliefs during my class at 'Berg but actually being at a place devoted to them touched me.

One of the core Buddhist symbols is the Lotus flower. When Buddhists meditate they put their hands in the "lotus position" (pads of the middle finger and thumb touching) and there are symbols and metaphors of the lotus all over Buddhist art and scripture. The Lotus flower, if you don't know, is a white flower that grows out of mud and dirty water. The basic significance of the L is that we live in a world that is dark and dirtied with crime, greed, and deceit but by meditating and following Buddhist beliefs we can rise out of the "mud" and exist like a beautiful, pure flower. I liked the idea that you are not leaving that dirty world behind you, but you can exist purely and beautifully among it. Just like we can't escape all the terrible things in this world, but we can learn to not let it take over us and bring us down.

As you can tell, I really enjoyed this experience and I could tell it was nice for Rachel, Ryan, and their mom to share this with us. I had been looking forward to the visit ever since she mentioned she wanted to take us there and I'm glad we got to do it on a beautiful fall day. After the temple we ate at McDonald's (the kid's choice) and then went home. What a great day! The picture of Lotus flower, I must admit, is a Google image. I didn't have my camera handy when we saw the one growing in the pond at the temple!

Love to you all!

Love,
Mel

International Day, Hiking

Hey folks!

After receiving some bad news from home and having some stress at work, it's been a long week. So I'm just relaxing on a Sunday evening, listening to my new favorite online radio station called Radio Latina, a French radio station that plays latin-style songs in French, Spanish and English. All of the advertisements and talking is in French so it's like music to my ears! I miss French SO much so I love being able to listen to it whilst jamming to some great tunes.

The week was difficult because I found out that one of high school classmates died last weekend. I was not close with him, but some of my closest guy friends from home were. He was like a brother to them. To add to everything, I also got a very sad note from one of my best friends explaining that her roommate was seriously injured in a freak accident and they are waiting to find out if her brain is injured since she's in a medically-induced coma. Needless to say, it has been really hard to be away from home this week because my friends are hurting and I can't give them the support I want to. So I was kind of distracted this week and was missing home, wishing I could be there to give support to my friends. It's been hard dealing with it by myself here, even though I have Val who has of course been wonderful and a shoulder for me to cry on. When you go through things like this you just crave the company who share your pain, you know what I mean? I know my friends are well-supported at home, but I wish I could do more than send an e-mail, talk on a short phone call, or send cyber-hugs. So that's what my Facebook status was referring to this week, if you're wondering. I'm OK, my friends aren't and I can't help them. It's the worst, feeling so helpless.

Annnyways, the point of this blog was not to depress you. I actually have happy things to share. So let's get to them.

On Thursday after work I joined Val at International Day at Ajou University (where he is taking his language classes). This was an all-day event where all of the international students set up booths representing their countries and served food and had activities. The festival was concluded with cultural performances by some of the students. Sadly I missed most of the food and activities since all of that closed at 5 and I didn't get there til 5:15 or so, but I did manage to get some Turkish ice cream and of course a Cameroonian pancake. There were SO many countries represented there, like Poland, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, China, Japan, Lithuania, Vietnam, the U.S., etc. It was awesome! I was in heaven, being in such an international community haha. During the performances I got to do things like watch a Mongolian play this awesome cello-like instrument, enjoy Polish girls firedancing, jump along to the music with the Germans who performed a drinking song/dance (what a surprise haha), and participate in a Turkish circle dance similar to the Hora. It was really fun but tiring since I had come straight from work!

Friday I went with Val to his tutoring session with this ADORABLE little boy named Sang. He 11ish and he just sits there and smiles if he doesn't know the answer. I've come with Val a few times when he goes to teach him just cause I like to be with him whenever I can and watch him teach because he's so good at it. Sang's mom doesn't speak a word of English but she's very sweet (I can just tell!) and always prepares food for V & I when he teaches. On Mondays I often go with Val to teach Rachel & Ryan, the brother and sister I mentioned in an earlier, because they just live across the main road from me. Their mom speaks great English and their grandma is always there. The grandma doesn't speak any English but I guess she really likes me and always just watches V & I and smiles. I wish I could talk to her! I guess a few weeks ago V went without me and their grandma was like "where's sexy?" haha. Even when I'm exhausted after teaching my after-school class on Mondays I like going to see Rachel and Ryan and their mom & g-ma. When I do come I usually help Val teach or just sit and watch. They are Buddhist and their mom is studying Buddhism in English (to practice) and she offered to take me with her one time so she can share it with me. I was like YES I would love to, so I think we're going to do that soon. Rachel is going to be a student at Sannam starting in March (that's when they start new grades here) so I'm excited to have her there. Her English is SO good, WAY better than most of my current students, so she'll do great.

After V and I went to Sang's on Friday, I took him to Outback (by his request) for our one year9-month anniversary. I finally got my salary so I insisted that I treat this time. I ordered steak and V ordered seafood pasta and we drank yummy wine. Our waiter was ADORABLE and tried to speak English to us. He was so sweet and sent us home with extra bread (Val's favorite thing of all time). We gave him a tip even though it's not customary to tip waiters here, and we also gave him a penny I had in my wallet as a souvenir. He was so excited he told us he was going to pin it onto his shirt (that's already packed with flare as part of his uniform). On our receipt he wrote "thank you and good luck! :)". Even Val admitted that he was adorable. Not in a I'm-attracted-to-him sort of way, but in a he-has-a-sweet-personality way. You know what I mean. The delicious food, casual atmosphere, memorable waiter, and special occasion made for perfect date night. To conclude the night we came back to my apartment and watched Toy Story on youtube (thanks, illegal internet movies!).

Today we went on a hike with Taylor (mentioned him in a previous post also...he's Val's American friend from the language school) and Taylor's Korean girlfriend Jin. I hadn't met her before and she was really sweet and her English is excellent. There's a mountain in Suwon that we decided to climb...I don't even know what its called actually. Hmm. But we hiked for about 2 hours, and it was really nice. The foggy and overcast weather was ideal for hiking but not ideal for the view at the top, as we couldn't see much! It was very nice to do something different and physical this weekend instead of the normal just sitting around. The cartoon at the top of this post says it all about the hike-- that is not an exaggeration in the least. Hiking is a common weekend activity here and people take it very seriously. Everybody was wearing those matching hiking clothes, visors, nice hiking shoes, and using those sturdy plastic hiking sticks. No joke. EVERYBODY. We were totally underdressed in our sweatpants, oversized t-shirts, and dirty sneakers. It was so bizarre! Also, about halfway through the hike there was a resting area that had workout machines. You are probably thinking, who the heck works out during a hiking break?! That would be the Koreans. Now I know how they all stay so skinny. These outdoor work-out machines are common here, but I never thought I'd see one in a location like this. So as we were sitting and resting, the Koreans were on the machines working their shoulder rotations, doing sit-ups, and.....wait for it....hoola-hooping. It was the most bizarre thing. Here we were on the side of a mountain and there's man, dressed in fancy hiking clothes, hoola-hooping. I had to laugh. I took pictures, which I will be posting soon. You have to see it to believe it.

The end of the hike was the coolest part. To get to the true, rocky peak of the mountain, we had to use a rope to assist us up the steep rocks. There were 3 ropes strongly fastened (I didn't even notice how) at the top of the "peak" and they extended all the way down to the base of that part. So to get up you scale up the rocks using the rope. It was pretty epic, though the view at the top was disappointing because of the fog. Nevertheless it was refreshing to do something new and see a new part of Korea. After hiking down the 4 of us got dinner at another one of those cook-at-the-table restaurants, but this time we had to take our shoes off at the door and sit on the floor. It was awesome and the food was delicious. We got pork and cow meat that was especially savory and tasty and I even tasted some mini jelly-fish tentacle thingys soaked in vinegar. They tasted like vinegar and felt like rubber. Yay new but odd sea creatures entering my stomach!

And that brings us to now, sittin in my PJs on my bed and bloggin'. It's 10:15 so I gotta go to bed (yup, living the wild life!). Thanks for reading! Pictures soon.

Love,
Mel