Net-izens

Much has happened since our last entry. I'll try to keep it short so as not to bore you, but we feel like new people. We feel like "Net-izens"-as my co-teacher called us upon receiving Internet, but let's not jump ahead. So. we've moved, we've gotten cell phones and we have internet. We set up a skype phone number so people can call us on a US number and avoid the international phone bill (413-992.6490) and we are slowly trying to visit every eatery and drinkery on our new street.

The new digs= great. It's in an apartment complex which makes it very authentic. We live on the 6th floor and shannon likes it because she doesn't see her students every time we walk to the supermarket. Jamie however frightened the hell out of one of his students. She lives in the building and the poor think practically ran away when she saw him (her personal sense of decorum kept that from happening). ANWYAY, the apartment is 18 peyong (the unit they use to measure apartments here) which means we have a bedroom, a living room, bathroom, kitchen and a balcony. It's quite lovely. We both really enjoy it and although we said we'd be fine in the other place, this really is so much better. (aside from the day's worth of cleaning).

Move in day was hilarious. Both of our schools sent contingencies to move us. Shannon's school showed up first at 9:00 with 7 men and no translator (not that it mattered much) and then jamie's school showed up at 10am with another 7 men. The move took no time at all and everyone was gone by 11 at which time all the women showed up. Three of Shannon's co-teachers, her principal and two of Jamie's co-teachers. Shannon's principal promptly decided we needed a bigger fridge, and then just as quickly, she left. Shannon's co-teacher Ms kim brought us more kimchi, someone brought us fresh, hot donuts and everyone brought us toilet paper and tissues. The TP and tissues is a korean custom. The idea being that the tissue just keeps coming, signifying your life continuing to roll on pleasantly. Or something like that.


So, our new apartment is a 15 minute walk to both of our schools and there's this great exercise park on a hill right next door. There's great shops and restaurants real close by and we can walk to HomePlus (it's like Target only much more expansive).


I'll take some pictures now so you can see for yourselves and the next edition will include: meeting 72-year old hiker Mr Kim, our trip to insa-dong and chuseok holiday preparations.


Exciting things about Korea:

Mountains:
Seoul is surrounded by mountains. It's very exciting. Almost anywhere in the city you can see mountains so it means that you can easily get to hiking trails and that you get splendid views of the city while hiking




Age:
Generally we avoided this one because shannon just had a birthday and is not to interested in being any older, but in Korea, you're considered 1 when you are born and turn 2 when you pass the new year. Which means that born right before New year you could be 2 years old just three days after being born. HOWEVER, we're not certain how this works exactly because there seems to be some discrepancy with people who are born in 1980. We can't figure out if we're 30 or 31. it varied depending on who we talk to.

Pop stars:
are OUT OF CONTROL! There are so many here! there's this one band that has 15 members! crazy. nd it's not only our students that love them-the teachers too. There's been this huge controversy with this singer Ja-Beom and it's been the best way to get people to practice english! Of course...maybe it's the same in the US and we just weren't hanging around the right people.

Epic Entry

Both jamie and i are finally teaching in the classrooms! It's exhausting and very different from the sort of teaching we've both done in the past. We both have 22 45 minutes classes per week. On the one hand, that's ridiculous. On the other, it's the same lesson plan for 15 classes so by the end of the week I imagine we'll both be really good at it. That being said, we have about 35 students in a class so it's hard to try and get them all talking english. Then once we get them all talking, it's somewhat hard to get them to calm back down again. Overall it's good though. Korean students are ridiculously shy. it's unbelievable. Not one of them is not shy-it's like the cool thing to be. I'd say it was just my school because they're girls, but jamie has the same issue. I've never seen anything like it. if i want them to "report out" or even just read something I'm going to have to plan in time for waffling! it's ridiculous. they turn bright red. i really think they might faint. Literally. All in all thought, they did participate and they did get up. i think it's because i wasn't going to change my mind. i think the korean teachers (because all the korean teachers tell me it's a korean trait) are more flexible with allowing some to speak and others not to.

We both have a hilarious time with the textbooks because the explanations are written in Korean. To create an exercise it pretty easy, but to figure out the grammar point is a bit more difficult. Jamie, however, has excellent web search skills (and a high tolerance for painstaking tasks) so he looks them up for us.

my (shannon's) co teachers are really adorable. I technically have two sets of teachers work with: One set is the women I share an office with. there's 5 of us- not all English teachers. One of them, the oldest, has taken me under her wing. she was so worried about me the other night that she called my co-teacher (the one who is organizing all the paperwork for me) because she couldn't call me. hilarious. she bought me a gift for my birthday. chopsticks! very cute. The other woman is my main school liaison. she's the one that has to herd me around and translate everything for me and call immigration and all that jazz. She super charming, but i'm sure not thrilled to have to babysit me constantly. Then there's another korean teacher (literally she teaches korean) who speaks english conversationally but she's so excited to learn that we chat a lot. And the last woman is the music teacher. she speaks very little english, but i hope we'll ultimately trade songs! That's one group. there's me, my Number one co-teacher (the one i go to with any issues), the woman who was worried about me, a korean teacher and a music teacher. we're all in the counseling office. they're real sweet. For my birthday, they bought me a cake and sang happy birthday.

Ok. the other group: the English department. There are 9 of us. i co teach with five of them over the course of a week. They're all very sweet and I think fairly nervous to work with me. they speak English well, but have a hard time with comprehension so it must be nerve racking to have to do work with me in a classroom with students. for the most it seems like i create the lesson plan and they step in when necessary. I feel bad because they all have a lot of work to do so i imagine it's frustrating to have to share and work on lesson planning with another person when you have never done that in the first place. Not that any of them complain. they're all very sweet. We're going out for dinner tomorrow night as a department! very exciting. i think they got the idea because Jamie's department went out a few weeks ago too. This past Sunday i met up with a few of my co-teachers to go and buy books for our English classes. Is was fun to pick out books for the library and then they took us out to dinner (jamie came along). delicious of course. One of the women, had also cooked us dinner! Ms Kim-She sent me home with a huge back filled with food. She even made us (from scratch) kimchi-two kinds. She very worried about what I eat. Every day someone asks me what I cook at home. I've got to start lying because it's embarrassing to say rice and vegetables all the time... Anyway, that's the English department.

This past weekend we went into town to visit one of the many palaces in Seoul – this one is called Deok Su Gong and is located near city hall (a very cool area). The palace itself was really beautiful (and modestly sized as far as palaces go – it seems that a lot of the original space was dismantled around the turn of the century). The changing of the guards was really neat to see too – it was like a 9 minute ceremony and included at least 30 people. They even had an ancient marching band! Once we get internet in our apartment we'll figure out how to post the video on line. The palace grounds also hold an art museum, surprising enough and we were there during the last week of an exhibit on Bolero. By exhibit, I mean that every single piece of art in the building was Bolero – kind of a strange museum! His work is a lot of fun though, and the palace grounds also had his sculptures/statues set up throughout.

After Deok Su Gong, we wandered for a bit downtown and ended up at some neat spots – first was Seoul plaza, where some event was occurring. We caught some live music before continuing on! After the plaza, we ended up at the Cheonggyecheon stream – it is gorgeous. The story is that after the Korean War ended in 1953, this stream was cemented over for a highway bypass. Since then, the bypass was demolished and the stream was uncovered – it is lined with cut stone and has a fantastic design to it.

We are enjoying traveling the city on the weekends, although this weekend we'll be preoccupied with our move! Luckily 95% of stuff can fit in our suitcases (although we do have a lot of furniture between our apartments which I believe will also coming along) More details about the move to come.

OK and now, fun things about Korea:

Pizza – Pizza, while not as popular as in the US, is available and enjoyed by many Koreans. Its not bad, but a few differences. Firstly, they are generally over the top with toppings (akin to some of Antonio's pizzas for the Amherst folks), and some of them look just out of control with drizzlings and features – OH, I saw one shaped like a heart! Second, all pizzas come with a side of pickles! I don't know why. When I inquired about them, my co-workers thought it was traditional in the US as well! When a friend of our was asked "What do you eat with your pizza?" she promptly replied, "Breadsticks!" Earning her the puzzled remark, "More bread?"

Side dishes – Forgive me if we mentioned this before, but on the subject of side dishes they are a necessary aspect of every meal here. And they are free! At any meal you can expect to see anywhere from 3 – 10 of them (I'm not exaggerating; I've heard at some places you can expect 20). Kimchi (spicy fermented cabbage) is literally served with every meal, and it kind of grows on you. It makes every meal very exciting, as I'm typically trying 3 or 4 new foods each time. Be warned those who do not like seafood or spicy, because you'll run into a lot of both here!

Galbi – OK, I have a food theme going here so why stop: galbi is Korean barbeque. The hook is that you barbeque at your very own table!! It is incredible and fairly cheap (I think we paid under 10 bucks a person, including drinks). Also brings a slight aspect of danger to the meal for added excitement.

Silver suits are everywhere! This particularly hilarious because jamie had just bought a silver suit and was considering wearing it to the wedding. We should have brought it to korea!

The cars are not small. While this is not really "exciting" it did surprise both of us. we expected the cars to be European sized vehicles. But No. they're all midsized cars and several SUVs (although more of those in the states). Driving, however, is frightening! People seem to take most driving signs and signals as suggestions- although i will say i haven't seen anyone blaze through a stop light (not to imply that we didn't' see a demolished scooter at our neighborhood intersection just the other day). Also, driving on the sidewalk seems very common. Bike riding=not a good idea.

Dunkin' Donuts are everywhere. Apparently Korea runs on Dunkin'. And i must confess-it's good! Who would have thought that coming to korea would also be my homecoming for Dunkin' Donuts. OKOKOK. I know we already said it, but it still surprises me!

Moving is Settled.

We're settled! We're moving!

So, we do think that we will be moving ultimately. Our co-teachers and principles seem to think it's a better choice. Especially because S.M.O.E (Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education) will be paying for the fees to make that happen. While we'd probably be fine with the set up it is true that one apartment will be cheaper. We looked at an apartment today. Still within walking distance, infact we walked there today. It's three rooms, the kitchen is fairly large (at least larger than our old kitchen on Grant Ave), and the bathroom is HUGE (comparatively). There's a real tub! Anyway, we need to wait for those people to move out and for people to rent our current rooms. We'll let you know how that goes.

In the meantime we've both been going to school everyday. Jamie has actually been able to be in his classrooms, saying hello to students and introducing himself to them. Shannon on the other hand has been relegated to a desk to make lesson plans. A particularly difficult task considering she's never met the students. However, both of us eat lunch at school in the Teacher's Restaurant/cafeteria (a room or section with no students). Korean food of course. Everyone keeps asking if we like it so we've learned the word for Delicious (No idea about spelling, in either Hangul or English). It's seemed to keep people appeased. It's funny how worried they are about us and eating. We certainly haven't started losing any weight. (doubtful shannon will considering her 30 second walk to school).

Thursday we went for our medical check-up for the Alien Registration Card. Jamie's co-teacher came with us so we didn't even have to mime the phrase, “Pee in a cup” and while that would have been an exciting time, maybe it's better we didn't have to. On Monday we're going to try and go get our alien registration card. Yay! The excitement of bureaucracy! Our poor co-teachers! These women are dealing with all of the logistics of having a foreign english teacher for the first time. But really, thank god for them! We imagine it wouldn't have been as fruitful as calling all the government offices ourselves.

Today at Shannon's school was Foundation day - essentially the school's birthday. The foundation that funds the school is a cosmetics foundation so all the teachers got these huge gift bags with everything from perfume to toothpaste to towels. Later, there was a ceremony acknowledging all the teachers who've worked there for 10, 20 and 30 years and afterward there was teacher “sport day.” We played volleyball. Sort of. The men played the first set of volleyball, the second set was a relay race for the women and then the third set went back to volleyball. However, the third set they had Shannon play on the team. It was fun (albiet awkard). There were no other women playing so not only was everyone staring at me because she's a westerner, but also the only woman playing. Of course she hit the ball and it went completely backwards (you know, she never won ONCE when she played in High School). Anyway, the ball goes completely backward but goes into the basketball net! Hilarious. Everyone clapped. Incidentally we lost the game. (She's got a record to keep)

So, after the game we had to go see the apartment but we came back in time for the dinner. It was hilarious. We walked in (it had been going for about an hour already) and everyone started clapping and cheering for us. There was lots of beer and soju (although we missed both of those things) and raffles. Apparently Shannon won while we were away but they gave her a second chance. She won (again) a gift certificate to the movie theater!

So here we are at the end of week one. We've successfully completed a week of school, made it away and back on the subway, visited our new friend Dave and then our old friend Christina and have potential new housing. Highly productive!

Exciting things about Korea:

For the most part people don't drink things with their meals. As least not when it's korean food. For example, both at the university and at our schools, it's rare to get a beverage when your getting your food. Instead you eat and then when you return your tray you stop and get a drink of water or tea-finish it before leaving the Cafeteria-and then head out. It's not such a bad system-you don't get full drinking soda, but Korean food is Spicy!

In Korea-we're teenage stars! Almost every time we go out there's at least one teenager that nonchalantly walks over to us to say “hi.” Usually the conversation doesn't go much farther as they burst into giggles or laughter and run/walk away. Of course it happens all day at our schools here, but it's a little funnier on the street.