Are you cereal?

There are a lot of things about Korea that I do not understand. Most things are just funny to us foreigners. Like this one: When you go to a Supermarket in Korea, you will find that some of the cereal boxes have things attached to them. A bowl, I could understand. A spoon, sure. But no, the things attached to these boxes are seemingly random. Two that I saw during my last trip to the market: a blanket, and a reusable water bottle. (See below)

Thanks for the inspiration, http://roketship.com/

Winter Camp

Our street, after a little snow

According to Wikipedia:

"In South Korea, the school year is divided into two terms. The first term runs from early March to late August with the summer vacation from mid-July to mid-August. The second term usually resumes in late August and runs until mid-February. In the second term, there is a long winter break from mid-December to early February."

My last day of classes for the semester was December 23rd, 2009. The next three weeks (Dec. 28 - Jan. 15) would consist of "Winter Camp." Winter camp differs for every teacher in Korea. For me, it was three weeks long (14 actual teaching days). The contract asks for four hours of teaching per day, but my school asked me to teach six hours per day, resulting in overtime $$ for me! I taught three classes per day. I made up my own curriculum, and was asked to turn in lesson plans at my leisure. I had a great time with the kids. I tried to make it fun for them, since this technically was vacation time for them. January 15th was my last day of "teaching" winter camp. I popped in a movie and my co-teacher ordered Dominoes Pizza for us. (Side note-- Dominoes, and most pizza here, is super expensive! A large pizza is about $30 USD!)

The next week, we were on vacation! I requested 10 days off (which, with weekends turned out to me a 14 day vacation). We decided to go to Thailand and have a long layover in Hong Kong on the way back. It was wonderful to get out of the freezing cold here. Fun stuff!

Now we're back. My school is currently on what they call, "Spring Break." The 6th graders have graduated and I haven't taught since January 15th. I have been sitting in my office waiting for the new semester to start on March 2nd. I will try to write a little about our vacation, stay tuned!

The clothes my students wear

Some are funny, some are cute, some are racist. But they all have one thing in common: my Korean students are wearing them. This will post will be updated every time I find a noteworthy sweater or shirt. Here they are:

My School

Front View of the school I work at:


Side View:

My desk in my office:

The rest of my office:

Inside the classroom:







The kids wear interesting shirts... they have no idea what it says!

Our Apartment

The 100,000 won challenge

Yesterday was great overall. Around 9:30am my co-teacher came to our house and we all walked to my school. I am amazed at how close it is. We were walking leisurely and it took less than ten minutes. So the first thing I saw at Song-Il elementary was the playground and modern infrastructure. We go in to meet the School Director (Korean version of the principal) and he seems like a nice guy. A girl came in and served us all green tea. After a short translated conversation, we headed up to meet the Vice School Director, who made us coffee and told Steve and I we were an attractive couple. We waited for a bit until my co-teacher found us a ride to get our mandatory health check-up. Soon, we were in a car with the P.E. teacher driving to "Good Morning Hospital." When we arrived we were sent to a series of rooms to check our height, weight, hearing, sight, teeth, blood pressure, get a chest x-ray, urine test, and blood test. The results come back next week so until then we can't get our Alien Registration Card which allows us to get a Korean cellphone, open a Korean bank account, and set up internet and cable at our apartment.

After the hospital we headed for a speedy trip (seemed like the P.E. teacher was in a rush) to E-Mart (like a Korean Walmart, but more expensive). They had everything there, so we quickly got some necessities and left. One thing that was a little different was that we had to box (not bag) our own groceries.

The P.E. teacher dropped us off at home, we put our groceries away, and rested for a bit. Steve's co-teacher was supposed to come by and show him his school but she never showed up so we decided to explore and look for dinner. We found streets filled with bright neon and flashing lights. After walking a few blocks we stopped in a place and asked, "menu?" A woman pointed to the wall at a list of items and prices, all in Korean. So we point to a dish that a group of people had that looked good and sat down. She brought us soup and asked, "Soju?" to which we nodded enthusiastically (hey, it was our first Saturday night in Korea!). About 5 minutes later she brought out a steaming pot of whatever it is that we ordered and served us. Everything from the soup, to the kimchi, to the main dish was incredibly spicy. We started eating and notice that the dish was full of whole shrimp (or crawfish?) with antennae and eyes lookng at me. I lost my appetite. We noticed a guy who seemed to know a few words of English so we asked him, "How much?" pointing to our food. He looks at us and says, "One-hundred thousand won" (roughly $100 U.S. dollars). Steve and I said thank you and tried to hide our disbelief. We looked at each other like, what the heck do we do? This meal was not worth $100! We checked our wallets and found that we only had 60, 000 won. We sat there and waited a long time, scared to ask for the bill. Finally the woman comes by and Steve takes out his wallet. He starts pulling out money and she takes 13, 000 from him ($13 bucks!). We realized we had been sitting there for a good 30 minutes freaking out about the bill when a guy had just played a joke on us. Wow. Good times.

Our First Day in Pyeongtaek

I woke up around 6am because we went to sleep around 10pm. Excited for the day. Steve's co-teacher met us at our apartment last night to give us the keys. She also told us that my co-teacher will be meeting us at 9am to take us to the market and help us get necessities and groceries from the store. Then we have to go to the doctor to get a health check up. When we are finished with that, Steve's co-worker is going to pick him up and take him to his school to meet the school director (on a Saturday?! Looks like we'll be starting work on Monday!).

So far I don't feel too much culture shock. I feel like living in LA prepares on for a place like this. It's sort of a cross between LA's Koreatown, Vegas, and the stores in downtown Buenos Aires. So far, Steve and I love what we've seen of our neightborhood. Can't wait to explore!