Day 44: Christmas in Korea

Merry Christmas! We've had a pretty good last few days and had some fun being silly foreigners wearing Santa hats both at school and around town. We both wore them all day at school on Wednesday and Thursday while trying to make some really boring lessons interesting for our students. One of the classes (mostly 2nd graders) was learning about how to manage money. On Christmas Eve. We felt bad for them, but we don't have much freedom so we just did our best to be funny and weird for them.

Last week we found a great online shopping site that has an English-language website that has free shipping domestically in Korea. We ordered a couch, a table, and a rug from it, and they were delivered this week, which was an awesome Christmas present to ourselves! We also got a really nice gift from one of our bosses--Dongbaek tea from Jeju. Dongbaek is the pink flower that blooms in the winter. After school we went home to our new furniture, made some pasta (it's a luxury here), drank some of our new tea, played Christmas music, and opened the presents that my parents sent us. It was actually a really nice Christmas Eve.

Our fancy new tea

Our living room actually looks like a place people live with our new furniture. Our little tree and presents are in the corner.

Delicious pasta for Christmas Eve dinner

 Today, we got to talk to both of our families, and we went for a run while wearing our Santa hats. We were just going to go for a normal run, but a couple miles in we just decided to climb a mountain instead. Geoje is so awesome that we can just randomly decide to do that. We climbed the same mountain that we climbed our first weekend here, but it was a lot cooler this time because it was a really clear day and we know our surroundings a lot better, so we could see more of the island and places that we saw meant a lot more to us this time.

In the afternoon we decided to explore for a place to eat. We walked through an outdoor market for a while, then we went to the big 8-floor department store and wandered around for a while. We got a Christmas-y drink at Starbucks and people watched for a bit before exploring town a bit more. We went to the part of town that's closest to the Samsung shipbuilding yard, which has a bunch of foreign restaurants. We hadn't been there before so it was a new place for us. We looked at a few of the restaurants but none of them seemed like they would be worth the price. We ended up going back to the restaurant on the 6th floor of the department store that we went to the first weekend here. We didn't want to go to a place we'd been before, but it was really hard to turn down getting full on delicious food for only 15,000 won, which is like 12 or 13 dollars.

Even though we didn't eat at this restaurant, there was a garden on the roof on the 11th floor that was open so we got a nice view of the Samsung shipbuilding yards.

Tonight we were watching the action movie channel (Harry Potter Deathly Hallows parts I and II this time), and there was a commercial for an app that lets you order takeout. Sarah decided that we needed to try it since we were both hungry again after eating at 4. So we ordered pizza delivery and it worked! This might be a bad thing for us...

Anyways, Merry Christmas to everyone! Tomorrow we're off to Cambodia, so we should have some interesting stuff to share here!

Day 38: Life

Hello readers! (aka Mom ;) haha just kidding, maybe one or two other people read our blog too...)

It's been two weeks since the last time we blogged, but it feels like 2 days. Our time here has absolutely flown by. I'm sure it will slow down, once the novelty wears off, but we have very much settled in here. Work is going really well. I really like the kids. I'm finally getting to know them well enough to joke around and have fun with them. On Friday, we had our first test of the term. If they finish the test early, they can draw. Max, one of my trouble makers, drew this lovely impression: 

He likes me though, I can tell. ;) 

I've been studying Korean a lot more, which is good. I'm understanding a little bit more of the routine, daily conversations. If anyone read my Japan blogs, you'll know that I LOVED going to the post office. I think it'll be the same here. We had to go and return a package of things that we ordered for our apartment. I was so excited to understand the post office lady when she asked me where we were sending the box. She also complimented me on my writing (Hangul), which I'm sure was B.S., but I understood! When living in a foreign country, you have to focus on the little victories. :)

 I can also pick up bits and pieces of the kids' conversations. The other day, I could tell that some of the girls were mad at the boys. Like, fuming. It was break and there were only girls in the classroom. I shut the door and said, "Just girls today! We don't need no men!" (Yes, I used less than "standard" English.) They all totally understood me and cheered! It was great. With all the lessons about "Mom is in the kitchen," I have to sneak my feminist agenda in there whenever I can. 

We finally hung out with another person this weekend! Yay! Her name is Brittany and she is one of the other foreign teachers at our school. Now that we've met her, I think it will be much easier to "network" through the ex-pat community and make some new friends. 

Another highlight of this weekend was figuring out how to online shop. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we've had such a hard time trying to find affordable furniture. A couch isn't something you think too much about unless you don't have one. We found a great Korean discount site that has an English version. We ended up buying a small sofa/futon, a rug, and a small table for like the equivalent of $90 or so. Our apartment will soon feel much more like a home. Here are some pictures of our apartment and some of the surrounding areas:  

Bedroom

Living room with mattress pad as makeshift couch...

Kitchen

Our little Christmas tree with presents from Steven's parents :)

From the outside.

Our closest outdoor "gym" - right next to a freshly plowed field.

One of the roads we often run.

One of the mountain roads.

The gravel road along the mountain ridge that we often run.

The view from the same road.

The neighborhood from our roof.

We have a short week with Christmas this week! And we did find a church to go to for a Christmas service, which will be great. We are also starting to get really excited about our little trip to Cambodia! One week from now we will be enjoying Angkor Wat and 90 degree temperatures! :D

Day 24: Busan and Christmas Plans

Two weeks in to our new job in our new city, and I would say that we're beginning to feel pretty comfortable here. We've figured out the buses, grocery shopping, eating out (more than we probably should), and we've discovered some awesome running routes. Week two of work went incredibly fast. We've gotten into a routine, which makes the days fly by. We also found an American movie channel on TV. It seems to play mostly action movies. As we were writing this, one of the Taken movies ended and Star Wars episode 1 started.

This weekend, we decided to take a trip to Busan, about an hour bus ride north across some huge bridges and through a couple long underwater tunnels. It was a really cool drive. When we got to Busan, we hopped on the subway and went to this giant department store. We thought the one in our city was huge...this one was about 10 stories with 2 basement floors and an 11-13 floor that was really an outdoor rooftop park! The store itself wasn't that exciting, just expensive clothes; lots of Western brands. Christmas music was playing so it didn't feel like we were really in a different country. The sky park was really cool though.

Here are some pictures:

These are the bathrooms...yes, that's a dachshund peeing.

Gardens, real dirt 11 stories up.

The view of the harbor from the roof. 

After the department store, we made our way to Yongdusan Park, which we had seen from the sky garden. It was built on a mountain/hill in the middle of downtown Busan, and on top of it stood the Busan Tower.

The tower behind an important general.

The view of Busan from the tower - with the mountain it's built on, it's higher above the city than the Space Needle.

View of the tiny ant people in the park below. 

After the park, we visited a place where, unlike the department store, we knew we were in a foreign country! We walked a few blocks through a crowded market area where everything from liquor and chocolate to squirming eels and pig face was being sold. That was just on our way to Jagalchi, the biggest fish market in Korea. The building itself is 6 stories tall. The bottom floor is filled with tanks and tubs filled with live fish, clams, oysters, eels, octopus, squid, rays, sea slugs, anemone, and pretty much any other edible sea creature you could think of! The floor was soaking wet, and every so often a fish or squid would wriggle itself out of a crowed tank and splosh onto the floor. I'm sure the locals thought we were ridiculous, the way we gawked at everything. The other floors in the market were mostly restaurants. One, a seafood buffet; another, you buy a fish from the first floor, bring it up, and they cook it up for you right there! There were also a few other, simpler, seafood restaurants. It was pretty cool. We will definitely go back sometime and try the restaurants, but yesterday we just looked at everything and took it all in.

Looking down the aisle

After our day, we were pretty tired. We at at a Vietnamese place, actually, and headed home. On our way home, we started talking about what we should do with our Christmas break. We get 10 days off following Christmas, and we didn't want to just sit around in our apartment for the holidays feeling homesick. So..........WE BOUGHT PLANE TICKETS TO CAMBODIA! Air Busan flies direct from Busan to Siem Reap, so we'll be going there for four days!! Both of us have always wanted to see Angkor Wat, and Cambodia is extremely rich culturally, not to mention affordable! So, very excited about that. It's only three weeks away! 3 weeks from now, we'll be here:

Day 17 (again!): Hallyeohaesang National Park - This one's mostly pictures :)

Weekend!!

After a long first week, it was wonderful to do some relaxing and some exploring this weekend! On Saturday, we went for an epic run up and over a mountain. We climbed about 1000 feet up, went back down the other side, and then back up and back down. It was really hard!! But so beautiful. As a reward, we had some shrimp burgers from McDonald's.

Today, we decided to figure out the bus system and explore the southern part of the island a little bit. The whole southern coast of Geoje is a National Park. It reminded me a lot of Acadia, with lots of great rocky cliffs and piney mountains. At our first bus transfer, there was a store with huge aquariums outside full of all different fish, eels, clams, crabs, and even sea urchins. The bus drive was beautiful, but I got a bit carsick on all the twisty mountain roads (Sarah). Pictures really tell this story better than words do.

We live in the green circle; we took the bus down to the peninsula in the orange circle - it took just over an hour.

This "Windy Hill" with a windmill was absolutely crawling with tourists, though it wasn't even close to the coolest place on the peninsula.

Steven in danger of Falling! down the path.

This place was called Sinseondae, and it was on the other side of the peninsula from Windy Hill (about a 3 minute walk). It had these cool purple rocks and way fewer people! (The 3 pictures before and one after this are also from Sinseondae.)

A corn dog - double deep fried and coated in french fries. You can see the layers.

This one and the next 3 are from Ujebong, a 100m mountain on a sub-peninsula of the one we were on all day. It was really steep on both sides--two of these pictures are looking one way, and the other two are looking the other.

The island on the right is Haegumgang. It has really cool rock cliffs and there are sightseeing ferry boats that go right around it. Since this place is only an hour from our apartment, we might come some other time and do the ferry.

Geoje is beautiful, but it is odd as well. There is an abandoned amusement park (where two children died falling out of a duck-themed ride), a POW camp turned theme park, an area of the peninsula *right* next to the crowded touristy area that was completely desolate, with a cracked and abandoned parking lot and amphitheater, goats grazing nearby, and then this sign outside a Buddhist temple: 

Day 17: Week One Reflections

Well, it's been a while since we wrote a post, and there's a good reason for that: our first week of work. It was busy and tiring learning the ins and outs of our new jobs and getting used to our new home and our new workplace and coworkers. Once we get used to everything, I think we'll really like it here. Geoje is absolutely gorgeous (see Facebook for some pictures from our first weekend here), and we already like our boss a lot and we're starting to feel more comfortable at work. We have to be at work from 1-9 Monday to Friday, so we've been running in the mornings and then relaxing at our apartment for a couple hours before work. Work goes really fast, and Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are especially crazy. We both have classes from 2:20 until just after 7 on those days, while Tuesdays and Thursdays we each only have 2 classes and are done teaching by 4:30. Those are our grading/planning days.

Sometimes the lessons portray gender roles that are a bit too traditional for my taste :( 

Planning isn't too hard, the curriculum lays out exactly what we need to cover for each class. Classroom management, on the other hand, is very difficult. The kids are young (7-9) and don't necessarily understand the rules that we lay down in English for them, that or they can pretend they don't understand. They also respect the foreign teachers significantly less than they do the Korean teachers, which makes it very difficult to control them. It was also a full moon on Friday, and Steven was convinced that was the reason that the kids were extra crazy that day. I'm not so sure.....

Thanksgiving was also this week, which brought a couple small bouts of homesickness. A beautiful run, talking to family, and some delicious Korean pizza got us through that though!

Day 8: Moving to Geoje!

Today was a very eventful day. This morning was our last training session, and we had to take a short written test (really short--10 questions that took about 3 minutes. Turns out our hour or so of studying last night was too much...) and do some mock teaching of all three of the levels we've been trained on this week. Our test day ended up being our easiest day of training yet! Everyone in our April training group passed, and then it was off to our respective branches!

Chungdahm had arranged a van to take us to the bus terminal, and from there we took a bus to Geoje. Our van driver was supposed to help us buy our tickets. We were supposed to pay for them and them get reimbursed by our branch. Unfortunately, the bus driver only seemed to have understood part of his instructions (he didn't speak any English so we couldn't talk to him). He told us to wait in the van while he went in to get the tickets. He came back out with them and then he showed us which bus was ours. Then he asked for payment. Since we were under the impression that we were going to be paying for our tickets directly, and therefore would be able to use a card, we didn't have enough cash on us to pay him back. The thing was, we were only about 5,000 won short (about $4.50) for a 34,000 won ticket. We showed him that we had no more cash but he didn't seem to understand. He called someone on the phone and when he hung up he gave us some of our money back. We tried to refuse, but he insisted and we ended up with some money back, but not the amount we gave him. It was very strange, and we don't really know where the money he took went or how he would get the remaining balance. Oh well. We had our tickets and we didn't loose that much money. Fortunately, the rest of the trip went much more smoothly.

It's not everyday that you get to drive across essentially an entire country in just over four hours! That's what we did though! Korea is very mountainous, and it was a beautiful drive! We drove through a few minor cities, but mostly through mountains and countryside. So different than Seoul.

We got to the bus terminal on Geoje Island around 6:30. Our manager came and picked us up. She was incredible. She brought us to the office and showed us around. Next, she brought us to our apartment! Now we've heard horror stories about Korean apartments. They're the size of a closet and covered in mold. We absolutely hit the jackpot, though! Our apartment is brand new with two rooms, both bigger than our previous room in George and Kristin's house. We don't have any furniture yet, but the company is providing us with a bed on Monday.

After showing us our apartment, our manager showed us how to walk to the nearest grocery store. She also pointed out the popular restaurants, bakeries, cafes, etc. On our way home, we got takeout from a kimbap place. Kimbap is like the Korean equivalent of sushi. Sooo good.

Now we have the weekend to relax a bit and explore our neighborhood! Monday we get to actually start teaching kids!! During our training we learned that Chundahm April has 5 levels. We were trained in the middle three levels and told that we wouldn't be teaching the first or last levels as new teachers. Guess what my (Sarah) first class Monday is? First level. HAH. Oh well. The lessons are well structured and pretty much completely laid out for us, so hopefully it won't be a problem. First level is the youngest kids and I'll just be teaching them phonics. I'm actually pretty excited about it. Until next time! Annyeong!

Day 5: Real Life?

Yesterday began our official Chungdahm training, and just like that, our roles switched from "tourist" to "employee," or, for now, "student." We have class from 9:30 to 1:30, which really doesn't sound that bad, but yesterday was so crazy busy, and just plain crazy crazy. First, we were told that we had a medical exam at 2:15 and, therefore, could not eat anything 6-8 hours before. No big deal, right? We'd eat a big breakfast and a late lunch. Turns out, the hotel restaurant had a list of our names and wouldn't let us in for breakfast. The Chungdahm leader told us that we really weren't allowed to eat breakfast. Sad.

The first day of training was very intense and pretty overwhelming -especially on no coffee or breakfast. Just a ton of information crammed into a short period of time. Lots of new people. We were given general information about the program as well as instructions for completing our homework (5-8 hours/night of reading, videos, quizzes, and lesson planning).

After training, it was off to our medical exam! The exam process was incredible. It could not have possibly occurred in the US, Obamacare or no. There were about 60 of us foreigners who showed up at the clinic all at once. It was pristine. Everything sparkling white, no hospital smell, the nurses with perfect, almost glamorous, white and baby-blue uniforms. After changing into the karate-uniform gowns provided by the hospital--blue for males, pink for females (not kidding)--we sat down on rows of white leather couches to wait for our names to be called. We went in assembly line style: height/weight, eye test, hearing test, chest x-ray, EKG, urine sample, dentist check, blood sample, personal consultation. It was the epitome of efficiency. I'm not saying it was fun, just very, very impressive. It was also somewhat entertaining to listen to the Korean nurses trying to pronounce all of the English names. I felt kind of bad for them.

While I was waiting for Steven to finish up his exam, I began talking with another couple from the program. They're from Florida. The guy was like, "You guys are from Michigan? Where?" "Grand Rapids." "Oh yeah? My best friend went to school there for a year. What school did you go to?" "Calvin, your friend?" "No way! She went to Calvin too! Sarah Ledeboer, know her?" Turns out, she's the daughter of the pastor of Steven's parents' church. Crazy Dutch bingo...I'm not even Dutch and I can play now!

After the exam, we went out for pizza with the couple from Florida. The pizza was weird enough that it was definitely not American pizza, but not so weird that it wasn't delicious. Corn and mayo were both present. As were cheese stuffed crusts.

We came back to the hotel and worked on homework until we absolutely crashed. It's good to have work to do again though. I know it's weird, but I've missed studying quite a bit since graduation and really don't mind the work.

Today was a little less crazy. Still tons of work, which is fine, and no medical exam, which is wonderful. We also finally found a grocery store! There are probably 20 restaurants per block, convenient stores on every corner, and, oddly, a TON of golf stores.....but it's taken us four days of walking around to find the grocery store. Steven got overly excited about that.

I think we're starting to get the hang of training, and of being in Seoul, but those things will only last another 3 days, and then it's off to another adjustment period! But for now, we're going to enjoy the temporary feeling of (kinda sorta sometimes) knowing what we're doing.

Day 3: Bukhansan National Park

We decided that today we wanted to do some hiking. It's our last day in Seoul that we don't have training, and we felt the need to take advantage of it. There are quite a few mountains in and around Seoul, and many of them are in Bukhansan National Park, which is actually partially within the city limits of Seoul. It took almost 2 hours by subway/walking to get to the park, but it was worth it.

We didn't really know exactly where we were going, so we just started hiking uphill. A mile or so in, there was a beautiful temple, called Hoeryongsa. The woodwork and painting were amazing.

We kept hiking up and eventually found a nice rocky area with good views to stop and have a snack. We sat down and started eating, and suddenly a cat appeared! We had no idea where it came from, but it was clearly used to begging from hikers. It sat there looking at us, patiently waiting for us to give it some food. Based on its size, it seemed to have been doing quite well for itself. Not surprising, considering Bukhansan gets about 10 million visitors per year (there was a sign proclaiming that it is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most yearly visitors per area of any national park in the world).

Our snack time buddy - all white with bright blue eyes and a black tail.

After our cat-infested break, it was only another kilometer or so to the top of Sapaesan, one of the park's mountains. The views from there were amazing. We could see a lot of other peaks in the park, but we could also see a lot of Seoul, which was kind of cool. Here are some pictures from the top:

On the way back down we made some observations about Korean hikers. First, and most obvious, almost all of them were completely decked out in hiking equipment. Trekking poles, fancy backpacks, nice hiking boots, and, above all, multicolored hiking pants. There were so many people who had the same style hiking pants, with one color at the bottom and top of the pants with a different color in the knee/butt area. If I were to start a Korean business, I would probably manufacture multicolored hiking pants, because there seems to be a huge market for them. Second, the most common demographic seemed to be 50-somethings. In America most people you see hiking tend to be younger, but today most people we saw were at least in their 40s, and many were older. And it was a Sunday, so it's not like young people were in school.

We thought about doing another mountain, since it was only about 11 when we got done with Sapaesan, but we haven't fully recovered from our 30-hour travel day yet so we decided not to overdo it and go back to the hotel and relax a bit in preparation for the start of training tomorrow. I guess it's time to stop being tourists and start working!