Three Trips in 2 months

So as previously posted I have a trip to the DMZ in May and another trip in June to Jeju Island. Today I paid for a trip where I would do a Temple Stay and then visit the city of Busan.

The temple I will be visiting and staying at is located in Gyeongju (in southern Korea). This temple was built in the 16th century, and is made out of solid rock, and it is the only cave temple in Korea. At this temple I will also be able to observe the emphasis the temple has on zen martial arts, as well as take part in traditional stuff like the tea ceremony and zen meditation. My temple stay schedule is something like this:

FRIDAY
14:00 p.m. Check in at Golgulsa, receive temple uniforms and room assignments.
15:00 p.m Opening ceremony and orientation.
16:00 p.m. Tour of the temple.
18:00 p.m. Dinner at the temple.
19:00 p.m. Evening ceremonial service.
19:30 p.m. Tea ceremony and conversation with monks and nuns.
20:30 p.m. Prepare for bed.

SATURDAY

04:00 a.m. Predawn ceremonial service and meditation.
06:00 a.m. Breakfast at the temple.
07:00 a.m. Community work.
08:00 a.m. Hermitage tour.
11:00 a.m. Closing ceremony.
12:00 p.m. Lunch at the temple.

After my stay I will be heading to Busan, famous in Korea for its beaches. As I'm going in May I'm hoping the weather will be perfect for being at the beach... however, I don't know how reasonable that would be a this rate. Two days ago it was sunny and in the mid 60s, and then today it was in the 40s with some light snowing. In mid-April! I didn't think I'd deal with this weather once I left Chicago...

-AALA

Date Update and Travel Plans

So my date went surprisingly well as far as conversation goes. Despite the language barrier we had a very good conversation, and we found out a lot about each other. We saw each other again on Saturday night while I was out with a friend, and we're making plans to see each other this weekend. He has promised me to continue working on his English so that we could better communicate. I am pleasantly surprised how well things are going despite the huge differences in knowledge of languages and cultural backgrounds. At this rate I'll REALLY have to work on my Korean hahaha.

I am now officially going to go on a trip to Jeju. Information can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju-do

The trip I paid for cost 350,000 won (or roughly $315) and it includes 4-star hotel accommodation, round-trip airfare, 2 buffet lunches, a chartered bus on the island, a submarine ride, and horseback riding. My friend and fellow teacher, Yelena, and I are both going together on the DMZ and Jeju trips, so it's sure to be a good time. We'll be going in a group, so we'll also be meeting new people. My only regret is I won't be able to go to Loveland. Just read the Wikipedia entry and you'll find out what that is...

-AALA

PS -finally got my first paycheck today! And it feels great.

A Date with the Language Barrier

So, I'm about to embark on a situation that I surprisingly never expected would happen to me, despite the fact that I intend on making traveling my career: I'm going on a date with a guy who does not speak English fluently. And funny enough, he's not even Korean; he's Iranian. He's fluent in Persian, Turkish, and Korean, and he tries to communicate the best he can in English, but it's hard for him. I'm going to try and find a Korean-English pocket dictionary so I can put in as much effort for him to understand me as he does for me to understand him. At any rate, it won't be bad practice for me in the long run as it will help me pick up more of the Korean language.

I must admit this is an incredibly interesting situation for me. It is sure to be a fascinating study into the dating norms and ideas of other cultures... and I can bet this will be a story down the line. But for now I will go on this date, take the difficulties as they come, and see how things go. Perhaps the language barrier will prove too much. Perhaps not. We shall see.

-AALA

Happy Easter

A Happy Easter to everyone!

I have pictures of my visit to the Korean Folk Village that I want to post, but I have yet to save some really great action shots of me playing jump rope with some Koreans that my friend and fellow teacher, Yelena, took. So that entry will be for another time.

I am starting to bond with my kids. They are getting closer to me, and more of them have been hugging me and playing with me. They have also (thankfully) started to get into the rhythm of how I do things and my strictness. They're learning what they can and can't get away with. They are definitely better behaved than when I first got them. Not to say that they behaved badly to begin with! On the contrary, all of my kids are indeed a good bunch of kids. But, for example, more of them say "thank you" and "please" and they stay sitting in their chairs longer than they did in the first place. So it's coming along nicely. And a few of them can even say one long sentence I taught them which is "I don't have to go to the bathroom." I'm so proud of them! I'm starting to see the rewarding side of teaching.

I have a trip to the DMZ coming up in May. "DMZ" stands for Demilitarized Zone. There are tons of tourist groups that go, and since I haven't been able to make a major trip yet this is something I've been looking forward to. For more information go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone

-AALA

Ashley's birthday party and eating a baby octopus

Alright, it took me long enough but...

So one of my kids, Ashley, had her birthday party last Wednesday. I knew it was going to be semi ridiculous from the get-go because Ashley is a very girlie girl. Her mother constantly dresses her up in pink and in really nice and girlie clothing. Also, she likes attention and loves to try and hold my hand and such, which I don't really let her do so much as I'm still getting comfortable enough with my kids.

Well, the day got more ridiculous when, on the day of her party, I saw her wearing a pink frilly princess dress and a tiara. I kid you not.

She wore that. To school. All day.

Not going to lie, I think that her mother is not preparing her well for the real world.

Anyway, there was a lot of good food to be had. Ashley's mother brought in spaghetti, fried chicken, some sort of Korean dish with some weird type of noodle, beef, peppers and onions that I really like, fruit and juice. Oh and those cupcakes you see. Yeah, each one had an edible thing on it with each students names, including mine:

That must have been ludicrously expensive.

--------------------------------------


I went to a restaurant that served something called "shabu shabu," which is Japanese style food. Basically what happens each table has a stove built into it. A pot is brought with a special kind of broth to heat up. In the mean time you go to a buffet where there are raw vegetables, noodles and meat and seafood. Once the broth is boiling you put in the food to cook for a few minutes. So this is what I decided to attempt to eat:

So on the plate you can see raw beef, lettuce, mushrooms, cuddle fish, and being held by the chopsticks is a raw baby octopus.

Now, I'm not one to back out of trying new things. However, once the baby octopus was cooked through I had second thoughts...

Can you see why I was starting to back out?

Well, here I am about to eat that sucker:

So the ending to that particular story was that I ate that thing whole. I did not like it. I probably won't ever do it again. The only good thing about doing so is that I'm less afraid to eat Korean food I'm unfamiliar with as I think "I ate a baby octopus whole. I can eat anything." Speaking of which, I'll leave you with the last creature I also ate at the dinner:



-AALA

Not leaving this weekend after all

Of course something would happen that prevents me from getting out of town for the weekend. Of course Jim would get sick on the exact weekend I chose to visit, even though he hasn't been sick the entire winter. Of course this would all happen on the weekend that I've looked forward to for a week and a half.

I'm am not happy at all right now.

-AALA

Like Night and Day

First of all, Happy Saint Patrick's Day. A year ago I found out about my gallstone problem (my very first attack came the weekend before St. Patrick's Day when I was celebrating in downtown Chicago with a friend), and 2 years ago I was in Argentina celebrating with some Irishmen in a bar in Buenos Aires. Nothing exciting for me tonight (as I am also trying to conserve money for the weekend).

I had two quite extreme days on Monday and Tuesday. I mean in the sense that my kids were like 2 different people, and that one day was very good and the other was not quite so much so.

On Monday I teach 3 classes: my morning kindergarten and then 2 elementary school English classes. My kindergartners were good for most of the morning, but then after 11pm or so they were just all over the place with disobeying rules: they kept speaking Korean, they kept whining, etc. I had to keep taking away their "stickers" (points they get for being good or doing something right, etc). It was a poor start to the day. Then my first elementary class at 2:30pm was incredible. They usually are quiet (especially these 2 girls in particular who act like a deer is about to get run over when I call on them since they don't pay attention), but on Monday everyone actively participated. It was amazing, and it put me in such a great mood. Then my next elementary school class took that all away. Even my smartest kid all of a sudden acted like he lost 10 IQ points... he couldn't answer questions that I was sure he could get. It took him the longest time to respond in complete sentences. Even when I gave him incredibly obvious hints he never picked up on it. It took every fiber of my being to not yell or raise my voice.

Then Tuesday came along and things were so much better. Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach 4 classes. My usual kindergartners were much better, and in fact I could not be mad at them yesterday because they were so funny. In my last entry I mentioned that I say "ay-yi-yi-yi" in class... they all started for no reason just chanting it together in unison very loudly; so loudly, in fact, that everyone in the halls and the classes next door could hear (and asked me about it later). It was just so funny and out of nowhere that I couldn't be mad at them. Then during a song that we were singing called "Round the Village" the kids decided to replace the word "Village" with the name of a kid in class, Zackary. So they sang "Round and round the Zackary." I couldn't help but crack up. My 5:00pm class wasn't as great, but that had nothing to do with the day; that class is my least favorite as it is quite clear the students overall just don't want to be there.

I'm currently doing laundry for the first time since I got in to Korea. I have a lot of clothes, so I can get away with it, but I ran out of pants, so it was time. I took a picture of my washing machine and I took it to one of my Korean supervisors so she could tell me what I had to press (as all the buttons are in Korean).

Some things to note about Korean culture:
-Don't write names in red. I tried to write my students' names in red marker on the board for something and they got all worried and were like "Teacher no! No red!" Apparently names inked in red mean they're dead.
-Beating your children is totally OK. I walk a fine line when it comes to telling parents about their kids. I have been told by other teachers at my school that some of my students have been severely beaten before for things the teachers reported, like one of my kindergartners, Alice, just doesn't concentrate a lot, and likes to be in her own little world. A teacher wrote about it in her report about Alice to the parents, and apparently Alice got quite the punishment for it. In fact, in my first report that I sent to her parents (the teachers have to write weekly reports for the parents for kindergartners), her mother gave me permission to punish her if she wasn't concentrating. If there are things I need to address I bring it up, but I try to do so in a way that won't get the crap kicked out of them by their parents
-90% of cars here (that I have seen) are either from Hyundai or Kia
-All cars have GPS in them. All of them. They are standard. This is probably because most streets don't actually have names. Like, if you want to go the corner of Broadway and Belmont, it doesn't work. There's no way to say that. You would go by landmarks, like a subway station name, or a building. If I'm in a taxi in Seoul I would tell the driver Suji-gu (my district), Punduckcheon-dong (my neighborhood) and Lotte Mart (a major building in Suji that is like a mega Super-Walmart). And then from there I could either walk to my apartment, or just direct the driver to my apartment. I know "straight" in Korean, but I'm still trying to retain what "left" and "right" are.

I had a second birthday party today. It was kind of ridiculous; more so than the last one. The girl wore a princess dress to school. I will post those pictures up another day, because that party deserves an entry of its own.

-AALA