Week 3

Week 3

We are going on day 20 here in Seoul and we are finally finished our teachers training. We start teaching on Monday and we are looking forward to getting into the classrooms. We will learn much quicker on the job. We spent this week making lesson plans for the whole month of September and making teaching aids. As a result I am now addicted to laminating. It took us a while to get everything straight because of the crazy amount of books that we have for the various different classes. I am including a picture of just some of my books (Nat).

Some of Nat's books

The shuttle vans waiting for the kids

The Korean teacher that we have been training with (Jenny) has taken us to two Korean restaurants for lunch this week. At the first one we had a pork soup made with pig stomach and intestines, and little sausages made with much of the same. We were able to stomach it, I just ate the broth of the soup and the sausages were actually pretty decent. At the second place we had fish which was very good. Meals in Korean restaurants are very cheap, we usually eat for between 5,000 and 7,000 won (5-7 dollars). These meals always include numerous side dishes, like kimchi (usually made with radish or cabbage), picked radish (different than our radishes), rice, soup, red pepper paste, onions, garlic, and others. They differ a bit depending on the place.

Us with Jenny in the classroom that we did our training in

More pictures of the view from the floor that the school is on

We have also taken some pictures at the school to show you what it is like. It is on the fifth floor of a building that has a couple other schools, a departments store and a few other things. We have a nice view of the mountains from the window when you get off the elevator. All of the classrooms are named either after a historical figure, such as DaVinci, a positive attribute, like grace or honesty, or a planet, like Saturn. This makes it easier to remember where our classes are, and if we have two classes that are the same we can distinguish them but class name.

Entrance to the school

School layout

Kindergarten Uniforms

TV's where parents can watch their children in class.

Staff Room, every teacher has a desk, very cozy.

We moved into our apartment this Friday after being in a temporary one in a different building for a week. We had to move everything down four flights and up another four flights, well I say we but I should really say that Don did most of it; I helped with the lighter bags. We have been busy cleaning and unpacking. The director of our school arranged for a second bed to be brought up to our apartment and a bigger fridge (the one that was here was a bar fridge), which was really nice. She is coming by again tomorrow to bring us a few more things. Everyone is being really helpful and accommodating. A few teachers left this week so we were able to get some of the things that they were leaving behind. I got a hair dryer and a straightener, which was great! We were also happy to find a toaster oven here; we were toasting our bread on a frying pan last week. We are trying our best to make the place comfortable.

There are two grocery stores less than 25 meters away from our building. We have fun finding new things to try whenever to go shopping. We can stand at one spot in an isle for five minutes trying to figure out what we are looking at, we probably look pretty funny. It took us a while to figure out what was laundry detergent and what was fabric softener and to make sure we weren’t buying detergent with bleach in it. We have tried some different drinks here, some very similar to what we have at home and some very different. Cold coffee is very popular here and there are a lot of varieties. We haven’t really ventured into those yet, but maybe eventually. A lot of people here drink a type of instant coffee that is a lot better than what we have at home. They come in individual packets and you can get black or with cream and sugar. We were surprised that they were as good as they are and apparently the kind that we bought (Taster’s Choice) is considered poor quality.

We will make sure to get the apartment all in order so that we can take pictures and a video to add to the blog next week. Not that there is much to see, the apartments here can pretty much be photographed in one shot, hehehe.

Oh ya, we also have a landline in our apartment, if you want the number let us know and we will email it to you.

Week 2

So we have now been here for 2 weeks and have started our training at the school (Eungpyong SLP). On Sunday we went to church with our friend Eric and his family. They attend Yumsan Presbyterian Church. The drive to the church was an adventure in itself. Eric’s father drove up many steep hills through some very narrow streets with cars parked on both sides of the road; we were amazed at the tight spaces he was able to get through. Once at the church we parked on top of a steel parking structure build to add more room for parking. The people here have to park so close together in order to maximize space for others that it is hard to believe that anyone can get out of their cars once they are parked.


We met up with Eric’s grandmother (Young Sook’s mother) as soon as we entered the church and Eric translated her greeting and questions. Everyone was very welcoming. The service started off with praise music, and then there were prayers, readings and a sermon. Everything was in Korean so we did not know what was being said, but the sermon was accompanied by images displayed with 2 digital projectors so we could kinda figure out the topic.

I didn't take these pictures, they are from the churches website

After church, Eric and his father took us out to lunch at a Korean restaurant where a few other people joined us. We were served so many dishes that they did not all fit on the table and some had to be removed to add new ones. It was all very delicious.


On Monday we started our training. Throughout the week our teacher, Hanna had taught us the rules of the school and about some of the programs that we will be teaching. We have also had the opportunity to sit in on many classes to see how the other teachers manage their lessons. We are being trained with a new Korean teacher who started off as Jin and then was told she had to change her name because there is another teacher named Jin, then she was Sue but Hanna had forgotten that there was already a primary teacher named Sue so she had to change it again and finally she is now Jenny. We found this interesting; they require everyone to have an English nickname, even the students. We may have to name some of our students who come to the school without English names, so Don has compiled a lengthy list of name choices for us to choose from.

View from the floor that the school is on

On Friday we were required to create a lesson plan and teach a mock lesson. It was pretty funny pretending that we were students while one of us was teaching; we had a lot of fun with it. We have also received our teaching schedules, Don will be teaching 7 classes Monday, Wednesday and Fridays and 6 classes Tuesdays and Thursdays; and I will be teaching 6 all week. We are teaching different types of classes to, some are more intense than others so we will see which ones require more preparation. I have 2 classes of students who come to the school all 5 days for 80 minutes each day, these are for students who have done their kindergarten at the school and therefore already know some English. I think that it is amazing that these kids go to school all day and then come to our English school for 80 minutes and then have to go home to do the homework that they have received from both schools. Many of these students take other classes too. There are some classes that we have that are 160 minutes long! I would like to see some Canadian students live a day in the life of a student here, that would make for some interesting reality television!

On Friday night the director of the school took all of the afternoon teachers out for supper. We went to a Korean BBQ restaurant where we had numerous side dishes and thick pork slices that kind of looked like bacon. It was very good. Don drank some Korean beer and we both tried some Soju which is a Korean liquor made from sweet potatoes. There are different kinds, some are smoother than others but it is not bad. After supper we walked down the street to a local “western” bar that the teachers have adopted as their own. The owner of the bar speaks English and they are super friendly. We had a great time talking with the other teachers and meeting some of their Korean friends. Don played darts and lost :( . But he came close to winning the second round.

Craig and Tosin

On Saturday Craig and Tosin, two of the teachers from the school took us on a bus tour of downtown Seoul. The bus took us past 27 landmarks and gave us some great ideas for places to visit in the future. We did stop to walk around Itaewon; a district of Seoul that is very popular with tourists and U.S Army personnel, so there are a lot of foreigners there. We walked around for a bit and had some kebobs at a great little place. Then we caught the next tour bus. We had a great time and are thankful that the teachers here are so helpful and willing to show us around.

Some of the things we saw on the bus tour

Week 1

Hello everyone, this is our first blog from Seoul, we have now been here almost a week. We are currently living in a small motel room in the Eungpyong district (gu) of Seoul. We will probably get to move into an apartment at the end of this month.

Our Motel room

Washroom

Flights

We flew out of Sudbury at around 5:50 pm on Saturday August 8^th. By sheer coincidence we were on the same flight as two Don’s, Al and Ashley relatives who had been up at their camp in Spanish and were heading home to California. We actually ended up sitting in the same row as them, very weird! We had a nice flight to Toronto even though it was raining the whole way. Once in Toronto Al and Ashley treated us to dinner at the Swiss Chalet in terminal 3 to celebrate our one year anniversary, which was wonderful, thank you again guys.

Our Korean Air flight left Toronto at around 11:50 pm. We flew on a Boeing 777, the biggest plane that Don and I had flown on. It was a smooth flight that lasted thirteen and a half hours. We were served two very good meals and some snacks. We had dinner shortly after take off and we had the choice of a couple different Korean dishes, it was very good. We had breakfast four hours before landing and we had the option of either Korean porridge or an omelette with tatter tots, we both had the omelette and it was good. We also managed to get some sleep which made the flight feel a lot shorter. It was much better than we had both anticipated.

Package we received on board containing slippers/socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a lanyard, and a mask.

Arrival

We landed in Seoul at 2 am the local time on Monday August 10^th (1 pm EST the day before) and were greeted very warmly by our employer’s sister and her husband. We managed to communicate using hand motions and body language since we don’t speak any Korean and their English is also limited. They drove us and our mountain of luggage to our motel and wished us a good night.

We managed to get some sleep after settling in a bit. The next day we decided to go out and explore the neighbourhood. We walked around for a couple of hours and culture shock started to settle in. It is hard to walk around and not be able to read anything or understand anyone and know that they will not understand you. Something else that was hard to adjust to was the weather, it reached 38 degrees Celsius on our first day and it cooled down the next day only a bit due to the remnants of a typhoon that brought a couple days worth of rain. We enjoy walking around, but it can get very hot even in the shade.

One the evening of our first day here we met with our employer, who treated us to a Korean meal (dolsot bibimbap) which was delicious. She shared her pride in the school and told us that we will have all the support that we need and not to hesitate to ask for anything.

We continued to look around on our second day and found a pc room where we could check our email and facebook. We also found some great bakeries, which are everywhere here and some convenience stores.

On Wednesday we met with a guy named DK, this is someone that Young Sook told us about who did an exchange at Laurentian University in Sudbury. We had to take the subway to meet up with him and found them to be super clean, but also very deep, it feels like you walk down (and then up) forever, thank goodness for escalators! We met up with DK and we walked around an area of Seoul that has many Universities and therefore has a lot of young people. We were to a Pizza Hut for supper, which was yummy, but different from our Pizza Huts back home. It was also pretty pricy compared to other places we have eaten at here. One funny note, we were scolded (well only DK understood it) for using more than one salad plate since it is the custom for everyone to eat off of one dish. DK explained that we didn’t know but that we would make sure to follow this custom next time. We had a great time with DK; he helped us get subway passes and then took us by bus down to the Han River (Hangang) where we walked through a park and across some nice bridges. He got us back to the subway station and made sure that we knew where we were going before he headed home.

DK, Don and I near the Han River

DK wrote this on the binocular machine on the bridge, there was writing all over it.

On a bridge over the Han River

Entering a covered bridge

We have also managed to find a McDonalds nearby where we have been able to access wifi. We have gone there a couple times to check email and we managed to talk to Dad and Susan briefly one evening. It will be much nicer when we have an apartment with internet where we can communicate privately. I think that we will have to find some other hotspots because McDonalds gets old really fast

We have spoken to an old friend who lives here but used to live in Sudbury, Eric. His family is going to take us to church Sunday morning and then out for lunch.

We start our training at the school on Monday and we are both looking forward to meeting all of the teachers and learning from them.

Some shots taken near the school