one month!

after work on friday, my boss had all the teachers over for dinner at her new apartment. some of my co-workers and i got her a gift. we gave fruit (which is a traditional korean gift to give to a dinner hostess) and a plant (which i think is a good housewarming gift). while we were discussing gift options, one of the korean teachers said "laundry detergent" which i first thought was really strange. apparently it's a popular housewarming gift here...

today i went shopping in sheenay with kirsten and jesseca. it was fun, although it was raining and everybody had umbrellas. i stopped by starbucks because i hadn't had it yet here, but they don't have the drink i like over here. i don't know how i will survive without berry chai's for the eleven months, this may be hard!! since they don't have the option of soy milk in s.korea, i got an americano instead. i started drinking them a few weeks ago and i finally like the taste without the creamy taste.

while shopping we also realized that koreans really do not like americans shopping at their stores. kirsten asked a lady if she could use the fitting room and the lady refused to let her. it happened to me earlier that day at a different store, but i blankly stared at the guy who wouldn't let me use it until he opened the fitting room for me. we're not quite sure why, but they didn't even seem that happy to see us in their store.

in the taxi on the way home, our driver was trying to speak english with us. this was fine, although it made for some interesting conversation. he asked us if we were from america. then he assumed we were from new york. jesseca said "georgia" but he had no idea where that was. kirsten said california (where she last worked) which he understood. i said "south dakota" and he kept saying "michael jordan" which at first confunsed us until we realized he thought i said north carolina (although i'm sure everybody knows this, considering i do, michael jordan played for unc). so i let him think i was from north carolina...he then proceeded to ask us about the song "hotel california," so i sang a few lines of it for him. he asked if ABBA sang it and i said, "no, the eagles" and he also asked "how old?". i told him around 30 years. who knows if he understood. i've noticed that many koreans will want to talk about what they know about the states. it's really weird because they will usually mention hollywood, sports, or obama.

as for teaching, it's still going very well. on friday, i received a card from one of my students that said "to erin: i love you very much" awww, so cute! my kids here are so sweet and i really do enjoy working with them. i never imagined ever singing or dancing for them, but i'm that teacher now. they think it's so funny and they tell me, "teacher, you're crazy crazy crazy, so silly!" on friday, since it was the end of the week, i let them have a "snowball fight" for a minute before class was over. they were learning different regions of the world (dry place, wet place, cold place) and they read about snowball fights in the arctic (it was in their book...) so it fit in.

after one month, i feel like i've only been here a few weeks. i'm lucky i made friends quickly and i'm at a school that takes good care of me. it's mostly been a breeze getting situated and trained in teaching, but it hasn't all been easy. although i realized this before i left, being in south korea means missing out on events at home, both happy and sad. a friend of mine from high school was killed in a car accident and i had to miss her funeral. liz was a beautiful girl with a unique and quirky personality. i was fortunate enough to have hung out with liz right before i left for korea. she was so happy and loving her life. the lord used her in great ways and you could see his love shining through her.

almost friday!!

i love thursday and friday because it means it's almost saturday and sunday!! today i will teach only three classes and they all go by pretty fast because i have good kids. yesterday, i had my kindergarten age again and they couldn't stop wiggling, standing, and talking. i bribed them with candy and that got them back to work for awhile. the class is 80 minutes long and it's hard to keep little guys entertained that long. although there's less of a language barrier in the states, i have a new respect for elementary school teachers. i imagine it's just as hard as teaching mouthy kids in middle school or high school. even though my kids have a hard time sitting quietly (it's not even that much, my 2nd graders are very well behaved) i really enjoy them and i hope next semester when we switch classes i can stay at the level i'm at. it's fun to ask them what they're doing for their weekend or asking them on monday what they did. they never do anything fun. they go to violin and piano lessons (which i enjoyed doing, but on the weekend?!) and one girl told me she went to the library. but some of the boys say video games.

i've started to cook here! usually i make some buckwheat noodles with stirfry veggies in sesame oil (omega-6 fatty acid!). i put carrots, cucumbers, mushrooms, and green peppers in with a little red chili paste that koreans put on eeeverything. i also add one egg and tofu for more protein. hopefully i'll learn more variety soon before i get sick of this. it's hard going to the grocery store and not always knowing if what you have is for sure what you went in to get.

i'm starting to recognize kpop everywhere i go!! some of it actually isn't that bad, but i would much rather be listening to music on the radio from the states. they are still really into boy bands and one of the teachers told them that boy bands were popular 10 years ago in america. i guess they get kind of offended when you tell them that because they don't believe that anything can be better than their kpop. here's a link of a really popular song right now. kpop and a boy band: this is a train wreck.

this week went by really fast. i had a lot of fun on thursday and friday at school. it was a review day for my older kids, so i made them play jeopardy. they were really excited and it was really hard to keep the noise down. i gave choco-pies (a soft wafer/marshmallow cookie dipped in chocolate that the kids love) to the winning team. after the game, i had to make them get back to work.

i finally found some food here that i like!! it's a korean dish called bulgogi (thin slices of prime rib beef, usually marinated). amber, kirsten and i went to a restaurant where all the tables have grills in the center, you order your meat and you grill it yourself. you wrap the meat in lettuce, sliced onions, and garlic. i add a little kimchi in it, too. while we were at the restaurant, a monk randomly showed up and started singing at the restaurant.

today i went on a hike with kirsten and kyle. the trail was really cool, and along the trail, there are mounds (where people are buried) and gravestones. it was kind of strange, but after awhile i stopped noticing them. although the trail was fun and had beautiful sites (every once in awhile you could catch a glimpse of the mountains and sannumdong--the area i live in), we got to a part of the trail where you could hear a ton of dogs barking coming from a dog farm. eventually you could see the building where all the dogs were. it was so sad :(

today, kirsten and i were walking back to my apartment and we saw an almost fully lit cigarette fly down in our direction from one of the apartments we were passing. we looked back and nobody was in their windows. we think it was probably intentional. a lot of koreans are very racist and dislike foreigners living in their country. it's sad that sometimes people will go out of their way (even in the smallest way possible) to express hatred toward others. on a much brighter note, for every one person who is unfriendly, there are so many more who are helpful and eager to meet americans. a lot of the time, people will say hi as you walk by, most small children will stare, and if you are in a coffee shop and start talking to them, their parents will be happy they get to practice their english. a few nights ago i was getting coffee with a few of the teachers and three small children were so excited to see white people and ran over to us to speak (the little) english they knew. their mothers smiled and said bye to us when we left.

it's definitely hard getting used to being stared at a lot. koreans just aren't used to seeing many white people. the same day we were at the coffee shop, a korean girl got out her phone and took a picture of me as i walked by to order a drink. she wasn't even nonchalant about it. very strange...

more things i've noticed about korea:
-all the american teachers have noticed about their culture: men wear purses! they aren't even man purses (bigger, messenger type bags), they're handbags!! i saw one in a grocery store the other day carrying a coach purse! we have also seen men in high heeled boots. not cowboy type boots, but boots with a bigger heel.
-if you give your kids an assignment to do on their own that will be reviewed later in class, when they are finished they will yell, "FINISHED!!" they are sooooo competitive with each other and they need to be verbal about it. i've tried asking them to let others finish, but they don't seem to care.

choongday

this weekend, we went downtown to go to the bars in choongday (another part of cheongju). these bars are like U.S. bars on steroids--koreans love their bright lights. it almost looks like a carnival/circus lights. a little strange, but somewhat normal if you block them out. they also have the strangest games on the street you can play. koreans love their arcade games and you will find them frequently playing outside bars. you can also pay 500 won (almost 50 cents in the states) to try and win a baby bunny!

although i think the food here is fine, i haven't found anything i really like. last night was the first time since i've been here that i was completely satisfied with what i ate. i went to an indian restaurant and i had some spinach/herb chicken dish with naan (bread). hopefully i'll find some korean food here that is tasty (soon!). right now i've been eating a lot of tofu (i'm so lucky i like it). i've been trying to find food online that have less sodium in it. the amount in the dishes here is ridiculous, although you can't even taste it in the food. but, no luck so far.

i still need to take pictures of my neighborhood. there's a park right up the street from me and yesterday there were a ton of little kids and their parents out playing. it was nice to see them there, the playground is very quiet during the week since all the kids are studying.

school is still going well. i taught my first kindergarten class--i learned i have eyes in the back of my head. that was the hardest class to control because they know so little english. amber, one of the teachers here, has taught the korean kids for a year and gave me some korean phrases to use on them. during one of my breaks she came into the office we all share for a minute and told me to come look at her classroom. there was a small child sitting underneath the table and wouldn't come out. she said it was like that all day. i also learned that one of my little girls in my 1st-2nd grade class is 4 (5 in korea). i'm assuming that my kindergartners are around that age and maybe even a little older.

today i plan on going on a hike with a few of the teachers. there's this mountain really close to my apartment that has a good trail. at my school, you can look out the stair windows and see the mountains--they are so beautiful! i can't wait to view them from the trails. i also plan to finally get around to e-mailing people other than my dad and jane. the time just flies by here!

a few more things about korea and their culture:
-there is this thing they believe in called fan death. same with air conditioners. they believe if you have a fan on in a room where the windows are closed, you could die. the fans they sell here have about a 3 hour limit before they automatically shut off. i keep my conditioner on at night with the windows closed and nothing bad has happened to me yet...
-the other day i was correcting homework with a red pen and wrote their name with it. i had to go over every single name with white out because koreans believe writing names in red pen is cursing death on that person. i knew that they believed this, but it slipped through my mind.

incheon

this weekend i went to incheon with some of the teachers to go to the beach. incheon is a major seaport on the west coast and is very close to seoul.

the beach we visited was on an island, so obviously a ferry was needed to transport us. as we were walking onto the ferry, the first thing we noticed were the jellyfish in the water that were swimming up near the top. this kind of alarmed me because i didn't want to be swimming in the ocean with jellyfish that swam so close to shore. there was actually no need to be concerned--the tide was so low, we decided to explore the beach instead of swimming. there were a ton of washed up dead jellyfish on the beach that were perfectly placed so you could touch them but not get stung. they felt like hard jello jigglers. we also found this sand that was filmy on the top, but it was like walking on a water bed. there were also slugs, snails, and occasionally a sea cucumber. i'm not exactly sure how to describe them, but they're basically an orange, bumpy version of a slug, but bigger. apparently they are really tasty and even considered a delicacy in korea...

we ate dinner at this seafood place where you order your food and they start the grill up right at your table. they bring out this deep pan with fire in it and a grill to put the food on. when the shellfish pop open they're ready to eat. i actually didn't eat the shellfish (my stomach still rejects even thinking about it after getting the flu the day after eating seafood) so i had bibinbop. bibinbop is basically vegetables, rice, chili paste, seaweed and a fried egg (they put fried egg on everything). it's actually really good (and fun to say). you can get it basically anywhere you go.

that night we stayed in bungalows, which fit two to three people. it's just an open room with a soft (not soft enough) floor with some pillows and blankets. basically, it was like camping, except the bathrooms suprisingly were better than the ones at campgrounds in the united states (although i barely know what those are like, i'm not the camping type).

today i had my first classes with my little kids. i was told some of them may not have english names and we get to name them if they don't. so the cutest little girl in one of my classes didn't have an english name. my original plan was to name them after popular american television show characters (like from the oc, grey's anatomy, gossip girl), but this girl liked none of those names. so i decided to start listing off my friend's names, starting with kate. she chose that one right away. smart girl.

so far, they have been good students and very well behaved. they're kind of shy since i'm their new teacher, but i was told that won't last long. at the beginning of class when i introduced myself, i asked them all where they thought i was from. with the exception of one guess, they all thought i was from canada. the other guess thought i was from france.