Classes, Vacation, etc.Ilsan, South Korea

It's been a while since we've updated - partially because we've been busy, but mostly because the internet (or Jay's computer) was being obstinant, leaving my computer as the only one with internet access for about a month. Oh, and also, we're lazy.

So, life in Ilsan. We're now about to finish our second full month of teaching, with all the attendance sheets, daily logs, homework corrections and student evaluations that go with it. I could say there's a lot of paperwork. It would, however, be more accurate to say that there is a lot of paperwork for teachers at any school, but the plethora of useless paperwork at this particular school is quite impressive. We have daily attendance sheets (including the pages covered in every class) that are copied by the Korean women at the front desk, class lists of all our students, monthly curriculum plans that change weekly, and at the end of the month we write evaluations for every student and send it to the parents... But the thing is, only a few of those parents will be able to read the English evaluations. Additionally, since this is a private school and the enrollment of the students is entirely dependent upon the happiness of the parents, we do not ever give poor evaluations. In each category, on a scale of 1-5 (1 being "needs extra help" and 5 being "excellent), we need to consult our co-teachers before ever marking anything below 3 ("good"). Because, clearly if a child is not good at doing his or her homework, it's the teacher's fault and the child should simply go to a different school. Oh well. But it makes me wish I could teach in a school like the ones I went to - if the student is a horrible slacker, rip 'im (or 'er) a new one on the evaluation and the parents will punish the student - not the teacher. 

Paperwork aside, we're both pretty pleased with our jobs - we love our Korean co-teachers, with whom we work every day, and like the other foreign teachers a lot, but we work at a separate building and rarely see them. Our students - or the majority thereof - are wonderful kids. The exceptions are thankfully few and far between and can be kept in line - they are easy to frighten into behaving. At least, for me they are. Jay has some sort of nice-guy complex and he won't kick students out of class for speaking Korean or being rude. On the plus side, he'll learn some new Korean words.

A few weeks ago, I decided to change my routine a bit: trading in the tried-and-true method of teaching English through English, I opted for a day of clucking and whistling instead. Actually, I got sick and lost my voice, but it certainly did change things! It was a true test of my kids, as my first class was a bunch of rambunctious seven- and eight-year-olds. Upon seeing that I was unable to talk loudly, they behaved perfectly throughout the lesson, did their workbooks with no arguments or distractions (and without even teasing the slower student, who takes a long time to do her work), sat silently and patiently as I corrected their work, until we could play a review game. I love those kids! I knew they were good, but I never would have imagined how well-behaved and patient they'd be - normally they can't even sit still for one minute.
But even with the older kids and the few "problem" classes, my being unable to speak made talking in Korean (even whispering) an impossibility, so it actually led to more practice of English - and an overall quieter classroom. Hmmm, maybe I should adopt this cluck-whistle-approach more often. Either way, I was impressed with the results. But I am also happy to have my voice back.

On the note of schedules, our classes changed a bit this last month - Jay has 7 ECC (non-kindergarten) classes on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and another 6 ECC classes on Tuesday-Thursday, plus a kindergarten class of a whopping 2 students. I have 7 classes every day - one set on MWF, and another set on TTH - all at ECC. We're tired, but enjoying it. Now if only they could add a "nap time" class in the middle, it would be perfect. "Hello! Today we're going to learn about nap time. Everyone, say 'nap time'. Good! Now, how do you spell nap time? Good job! Okay, now let me demonstrate. Now, you have to be very quiet for this demonstration..."

Truly, the Korean work ethic is rather ridiculous. Our boss expects us to come in on various Saturdays for seminars/decorating classrooms/going hiking with the parents of the kindergarten kids... Actually, only Jay has to do the last one, as I don't technically teach at the kindergarten. Additionally, as ours is a private school, it doesn't have the kind of summer and winter vacations that schools in the US (or even public schools in Korea) have - there are no vacations that are even a full week in duration. This week was in fact our longest vacation - 4 days off - for Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. As this is the huge vacation of the year, everyone travels at this time - either out of Korea or within Korea to visit family members. Plane tickets are therefore very expensive, so we decided to stay in the Seoul area for the vacation and rest. Yes, we are lame and cheap. But on the plus side, we went hiking to Bukhansan National Park, a mountainous area just north of Seoul.

We woke up around 6AM and took the subway for about 90 minutes to Dobong-san, the station nearest to the beginning of our hike. Finding the trail was easy, as we simply followed the masses of Koreans in hiking gear past the many stalls selling food, backpacks, hats, hiking poles (we paused to buy these), gloves, hiking boots, water, soju, soda, and other random items, past a small temple to a set of various trailheads. We headed towards Jaun-bong peak, and simply followed the signs pointing in that direction at every fork in the trail. As a result of our early start and of our general lack of recent hiking activity, Jay moaned and whined for the first few hours of the hike, insisting upon rest stops every few feet. So, it was a slow climb at the beginning.

Along the way, we certainly had company. Although we knew that hiking is popular in Korea, we didn't expect so many people to be on the trail. This may have been silly, as the park is right next to Seoul, but oh well. Also, the Koreans have their own form of Smokey the Bear. I'm not sure what his name is, but he seems quite popular.

After lunch, the going got a bit tough, as the trail bottlenecked into a very narrow area that was very steep granite - including handrails! I had wondered why some hikers seemed to have rock-climbing gloves on, but I understood why when we reached this point. Jay loved this part, though. Fricking billy goat.

The view from the top would have been more impressive if there weren't so many people on all sides of us. Most of the pictures we took from here are in the Bukhansan gallery.

The way down was thankfully not nearly as steep as the way up, though my knees were hurting. Jay enjoys the downhill portion, though. I wonder how I always manage to hike with people who hate the uphill but love the downhill... Clearly they must all be crazy.

We reached the Mangwolsa temple about halfway down the trail, but didn't go inside, as we were tired and inappropriately dressed for a temple.

At the end of our hike we went through a lovely mini-town in the outskirts of Seoul that was very laid back and reminded us of a combination of Venice, Berkeley, and some city in Austria. We then proceeded to the next subway stop and the 90-minute ride home. All in all it was a lovely day and a wonderful hike, but now we're sore and tired. Maybe we're out of shape? Hmm.

Our classes start up again tomorrow, then we have the weekend, then two more days before our session ends and we have a day off on Wednesday. Hopefully we'll get another chance to go hiking sometime soon before our legs forget how to.

For now, we have to fill out student evaluations again and get ready to go back to work in the morning (and by morning, we mean 2:00 pm). Good night!

Home cooking, vacations, and Jehovah's witnessesIlsan, South Korea

Today is Korea's Liberation Day, a celebration of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II and Korea's resulting independence. Flags are displayed all over and it's a public holiday (hence my writing this instead of teaching). 

The next big holiday coming up is Chuseok, equivalent to the U.S. Thanksgiving. For Chuseok, we will have four days off from work (Monday through Thursday) and of course the proceeding weekend, so we will be leaving Ilsan for a while. We'd hoped to go with Mark and some of his co-workers to Beijing, but the tour we were interested in  is already full and most plane tickets at this point (before we even have our first paycheck) are prohibitively expensive. So, our next plan of action is to attempt to book flights to Jeju, South Korea's most tropical area - an island off the southern coast of the peninsula. Known as Korea's "Hawaii", it is a famous destination for Korean newlyweds and Japanese businessmen, so booking seats during such a busy time may be difficult, but we'll see what happens. :-)

On a completely unrelated note, let's talk about food. Of course, this is mostly to reassure the worried Californian mothers that we are in fact getting our nutrients and daily vitamins, but it may be interesting to others as well... 

Although it is entirely affordable to eat out (and well!) for every meal, we prefer to make our own food. However, it would NOT be affordable to go to the grocery store and buy steaks, western pasta sauces, and ice cream. So it's a good thing that we aren't interested in that sort of a dinner. Instead, we're trying to adapt to a sort-of Korean style of eating, with a reasonable budget and my forays into cooking without a stove... this is what we've come up with: salmon steak cooked in soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, pepper and olive oil with white rice; watermelon; various kim chi dishes; fermented yellow radish; a spicy squid tentacle side dish, and soju. On the note of soju, it is not like sake. It's more like vodka. And we bought a crappy version, apparently. Either way, we're not terribly fond of it.

So that's about it. The salmon is interchangeable with pan-cooked marinated tofu and other types of fish. The fish here is amazingly fresh - in a supermarket they have tanks of live fish -cuttlefish, crabs as large as our torsos, and a basic silvery-fish (no clue about the name) in a simulated stream... Plus you can buy any and all parts of the fish here - it's good that we're not squeamish. In fact, we would have happily bought a whole squid, but it was so much cheaper to get a different type of fish that we didn't. Maybe next time. But it's entirely possible to feed both of us with a main course of fish that costs less than $3 total - amazing. Chris and Mona - you should be happy to know that the beef is absurdly expensive in comparison and, since Korea's now importing beef from the U.S. (oops), we aren't going to bother. Oh, and in the way that we can buy cheap top ramen in the States, they sell fresh udon noodles that are pre-packaged with spices. Add some veggies or fish and voila, amazing dinner.

Also, we're becoming steadily more accustomed to teaching - we've now taught for two weeks, know most of our students by name, and are not nearly as tired at the end of the day as we were when we started. Despite one or two problem students apiece, we're enjoying teaching a lot, and are discovering new techniques and games for the kids each day. In fact, we're to the point that it only takes about an hour or two to prepare for all our classes, paperwork is now a simple matter finished in a few minutes, and we have time and energy at night not only to cook and eat dinner, but also to walk around Ilsan and see where we live.

So there it is - updates on the past week and a half. The only other story of note is an interesting wake-up call that I received last Saturday. Exhausted from the week, Jay and I were trying to sleep in when the doorbell rang. Granted, it was about 10:30 in the morning and not an unreasonable time to visit, but we were very confused because rather than the typical "ding-dong" chime, the doorbell plays a video-game style mini-song. Assuming it was someone related to the school who had come to fix our air-conditioner (that currently empties water into a large bucket, which must be emptied on a daily basis), I went to the door-phone and responded in English, "hello?". No answer, so I fixed the nest of hair on my head into a reasonable door-answering state, and went to open the door. Two women were walking up the stairs, but hurried down excitedly when I opened the door and started speaking rapidly in Korean. I mumbled that I didn't understand Korean... English? they asked. Yes, English. So the younger woman, who was dressed in what almost looked like a cross between traditional Korean dress and the attire of the American pilgrims, rifled through a miniature book and handed me a page in English. I skimmed from the first line "Even though you and I don't speak the same language...." to halfway down the page "message of God. Jehovah's..." and then shook my head quickly and handed the book back to her, closing the door as she said something that sounded strongly like "sorry". 

I was awoken by a Jehovah's witness. For the first time in my life. ...in Korea. I don't quite know how to deal with that, but Lindsay, a Canadian teacher at our school, said that it's actually quite common. What did I miss when researching Korea? I mean, I know that it's supposed to be a huge notch in the Christian missionaries' belts, but door-to-door proselytizing? I wasn't expecting that. And it would have to be in the Christian fashion too. I mean, it wouldn't bother me to leave for school and have some monk chilling out on the stairs and meditating meaningfully, but do you have to ring the doorbell? Is waking me up and pointing a book at me really going to make me think "oh, you're right! How have I been so wrong? Sign me up for this redemption business!" ? I think not.

Our first week of teachingIlsan, South Korea

Holy crap, we're tired. It's pouring rain, and we're hiding at home and trying to recouperate. We each have 14 classes total (7 on MWF, 6 on TuTh, and one daily summer intensive course) and, including time to plan our lessons and fill out general daily paperwork, we're at the school from around 11 in the morning to 9 or 10 at night. Our courses range from the youngest children, about 5-7 years old, who do not know the alphabet, to the oldest students, in high school, who will be studying abroad soon. Despite being tired, despite the huge range of lesson plans we have to prepare, and despite the 70+ names we have to remember, we're loving it. The students (or the vast majority thereof) are wonderful, the variety of lessons is exciting, and no matter how tired we are at the end of the day, we are energized for every class by the students themselves. I'm sure that we'll have more to say on this later but for now, we are very happy with our decision to come here and to teach. We've both found that we love teaching (so far), and are inspired to work hard to teach well. Hurray for inspiration! And now for a most-welcomed weekend of relaxation and laziness.

Explorations of Seoul and random acts of kindnessIlsan and Seoul, South Korea

Taking advantage of the long weekend before starting our new jobs on Wednesday, we decided to explore Seoul a bit with Mark. We looked on a huge map, saw two palaces and a large green park-ish looking area near the Anguk station, and decided to go there. It took about 20 minutes to get from Mark's apartment to the Anguk station, but as soon as we got off the metro, Mark realized that he'd left his backpack on the train. Oops. As the train had already departed again, we went to an information booth and tried to explain the situation. Utilizing a great deal of creative sign language, we got our point across and he told us to go to the Station Office, pointing behind us. Looking in the direction that he was pointing we saw (A) a huge flight of stairs going up and (B) a large corridor and some turnstiles on the same floor as ours. We started walking towards the stairs, looking confused, and an older man who had over heard our linguistically-challenged "conversation" with the booth attendant tried to explain how to get to the station office. We understood stairs, left, and walking from the ordeal, and made our way for the stairs. Halfway up, a younger man chased us down, and tried to explain that we were going the wrong way. We were confused, so instead of giving up, he motioned for us to come with him, and led us back down the stairs, down the corridor, and to the turnstiles.

On the other side of the turnstiles was a small room and he pointed to it, saying "Station Office". We were ready to use our metro cards to get us through the turnstiles again (as we'd already left the train area). However, the Very Helpful Man motioned for us to wait, and ran over to the information booth. He came back with a temporary ticket to get himself through the turnstile, went through, and went into the Station Office. After a moment in which we all stood shocked at the trouble he was going through for a few idiotic foreigners who'd left a bag on a subway train, he emerged with a station attendant, who used special tickets to allow us through the turnstiles as well. He led us to the Station Office and the Very Helpful Man waved as we showered him with many thanks (in English and Korean), and he made his way off to continue his day.

In the Station Office, we tried again to explain our situation to the station attendant, who spoke no English, and he called someone, presumably another station worker who did speak English, and Mark told her over the phone what had happened, providing the subway line, the direction, and a description of his backpack. The station attendant then told Jay and I to wait in the office while he and Mark went back down to the train area so that Mark could point out the spot where the car we'd been in had stopped. So we waited, rereading our schedules for the coming week, and amusing ourselves by watching the security cameras keeping tabs on various locations within the station. We saw Mark and the station attendant go down an escalator in Camera Four, and then bypass a turnstile in Camera Three. We counted the Koreans who escaped payments by ducking under the turnstiles in Cameras Three and Six, and then watched Mark and the station attendant return through Camera Five. It was very exciting, let me tell you. Mark came in and sat with us while the station attendant talked some more on the phone, and to our great surprise, Very Helpful Man showed up on Camera Three, entering the turnstile, and then going up the escalator in Camera Five. A moment later he'd re-entered the Station Office and talked with the attendant before leaving again. Apparently he'd come back to check on how things were going before (as we saw in the Cameras) going back down the escalator, through the turnstile, and boarding a train.

In the end, they found Mark's backpack about an hour later, at the end station of line 3, Suseo. We therefore boarded the train for the 40-minute ride to Suseo, obtained the backpack, and returned to Anguk after a short meal in Suseo. The point of this story? How kind and helpful the Koreans can be to foreigners.

...

...

...and don't leave your backpack on the frickin' train.

By the time we got back to Anguk, it was nearly 5 in the evening. We made our way to the first palace, only to discover that it was closed on Mondays (but the outside looked quite nice) and then proceeded to make our way around the perimeter of the park, as the whole thing was enclosed in a huge wall and the entrance was far away. When we finally reached the entrance, it was about to close and we were no longer allowed to enter. So basically, we spent the entire day in Seoul learning the intricacies of the Subway system. We'll have to return later for a trip to the park, and when we do, we'll keep our backpacks in our laps.

New apartment, schedule assignmentsIlsan, South Korea

We moved into our new apartment on Friday, after Sean left for Australia. The apartment is actually only temporary, as we will most likely be moving to a larger place in October. For now though, this is our new home. It has a large bedroom/office with a couch, dresser, desk, and bookshelf in addition to the bed; a kitchen equipped with a microwave, gas range stove, lots of cabinets, and a fridge/freezer. Additionally, the main room that has the kitchen also has a portable clothing rack and a side-closet containing our washing machine and the bike that Jay bought from Sean. Finally, the area by the front door has a large cabinet for shoes (appropriate, as it is customary in Korea to always remove your shoes before entering a home).

So, we're pretty much moved in and ready to prepare for our first week of teaching. We start on Wednesday, evenly splitting all the classes from Elaine and Sean. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we both have 7 classes plus a summer intensive course and on Tuesday and Thursday Jay has 6 classes (plus the summer intensive) and I have 5 (plus the intensive). Basically, we're teaching elementary, middle school, and a couple of high school students, and next month we will be adding one or two Kindergarden classes apiece. We're already technically working overtime without the Kindergarden courses, so on the one hand, we will definitely be busy, but on the other hand, we'll have a great amount of teaching experience under our belts by the end of the year, and Jay will be able to make a large dent in his student loans.

In addition to our classes, we're excited to explore Ilsan and learn Korean. Already, Jay can read most of the Hangul alphabet and I'm looking into finding a Korean language exchange partner in the area. Depending on the business of our schedule, we'll have to see how much language progress we can make.