YAY Internet!!!

Hello Everyone,
Sarah-
We finally have internet in our apartment, as of about 2 hours ago. It feels like such a luxury! Today was spent recovering from a rather late night last night and cleaning up the place. I actually slept on and off until 1:30 pm. I have not done that since like, sophmore year of college. It was bliss.
So I thought I would tell a little more about my school. I work in Jurye Girls Middle School. Jurye is the name of the area, and it is located in Sasang-Gu, which is a district in Busan. It is about a 25 minute bus ride from the apartment, but actually only about 10 minutes by car. Warren and I take the same bus every morning, getting on around 7:45 (if we are on time...). The bus drives all around Danggam-Dong, which is the area that we live in, before heading northwest. At a certain point, Warren gets off the bus and transfers, but I stay on all the way to my stop. I walk another 10 minutes or so, always longer if Im a little late because I get stuck behind hoards of elementary students who clog the sidewalk.




This is the 10 lane highway that I cross on an overhead crosswalk.





The corner of the green building is part of my school. It is up a hill, with a small mountain behind it.

When I get to school, there are usually groups of girls spotting me and shrieking and waving. When I come in right at 8:30, which is a little late, I should be in the building by 8:30, I watch as the girls around me line up and have their hands hit with a short stick, which they call the "lovestick," or get chased a little by the guy who stands guard to catch late-comers. It always makes me a little nervous and guilty, cause technically I am just as late, and if I was a student, I would be punished. The other day there was a line of girls in the hall on their knees, just kneeling. last week on my way inside, a large line of girls with signs were chanting something (probably the rule about lateness, or something similar) The Vice principal was walking around them, swating them randomly with a switch in the back of their legs. I presumed these were the girls who have been consistently late. Its not uncommon to see kids get whacked on the hands or the back of the legs. Thankfully it does not happen in my classes (not yet) but many times I have seen girls get smacked or swatted. Actually it doesnt bother me as much as I thought it would. The girls never seem to care much. They are smiling half the time! It just seems pretty pointless to me.
My desk is in the teachers office, where there must be about 30 different teachers and office personal working. I have a desk in a cubicle with 7 other teachers. From the first day, almost every teacher has gone out of their way to be friendly to me, even if they can barely speak a word of English. I feel very fortunate to be in the school I am in. It is a very pleasant environment. Actually the only problem is I get embarrassed sometimes because of how generous and kind they all are-they give me gifts all the time and talk about how pretty I look and tell me what a good teacher I am. It is wonderful, but it can get a little uncomfortable for me, only because I dont know how to react other than thank them. Yesterday I was actually given a full dinner of organic pork cutlets and delicious sauce to bring home and cook. In my cubicle is a Korean teacher named Mrs Kim.(Kim is the most popular name-its kindof rediculous how many people's family name is Kim) She has been giving me Korean language lessons in her own free time. I also have some male teachers who are very nice but speak little English. My desk is next to my main coteacher, Miss Jeong. She is awesome! She is young, probably around 27 or 28, Korean age. (In Korea, you are 1 year old the day you are born, and even though they celebrate birthdays, you do not get older. You turn a year older with everyone else every new year in January. So if a Korean tells you they are 28, in western years, they are really 26 or 27.) Miss Jeong is very friendly and speaks English very well. We get along great, and I really enjoy talking to her. She has been more than helpful with sorting out everything for us, from apartment issues to telling me which bus to take to get where, to getting this internet hooked up, to showing me how to eat the complicated meals at lunchtime.




This is the cubicle wall next to my desk. These postit notes are girl's names. The brave girls wrote them for me the first week, so I would remember. I have about 600 students. I teach each english class once a week. The middle school consists of grades 1,2, and 3. These are basically the equivalent of 6th, 7th, and 8th. I know,it sounds scary. But its really not so bad. If anything, this job has taught me that not all middle school students are demons. Or at least, Asian ones are not. In general they seem much younger and more innocent than American students. Some of my grade 1 students are so little and cute!
There are many shy girls, but there is a surprising number of confident and sometimes very loud girls as well. I often, if not always, have a few companions wherever I go, jabbering "Hello teacher" or "Hello Miss Walshy" (they have some troubles with Walsh) If I ask "how are you?" I get a rapid-fire string of words "I am fine, and you?" Most of the time I really enjoy trying to communicate and watching them interact with each other. They are always joking about their friends, which usually results in some pretty violent smacks, but it all in good fun I suppose. It is impossible to remember them all, but I think I have gotten pretty good about recognizing the girls who visit me at my desk regularly, or who talk in class. I remember probably an average of about 3 or 4 girls per class, so thats about 1/6 of them...not too bad.
My classes have been going pretty well. I try to focus on activities and group work, so they are usually pretty active and engaged, which is alway a plus, since the students go to public school in the morning and then many of them attend private school until 9 or 10 in the evening, and only sleep for a few hours at night, before they are back at school, doing homework. I have 4 coteachers including Miss. Jeong. Mrs Kim, Mrs. Jeong, and Miss Ji. Mrs. Kim speaks English very well, but the other two, dispite being English teachers, have very poor abilities. I really run the classes and they translate if I ask, and many times even when I do not ask. The Korean system for learning english is incredibly terrible and ineffective, which is why, despite tons of government funding, they still rank very low on global tests. They focus on memorization, and very little English is spoken in the classroom. Its frustrating to witness, but Im doing my best to make a little difference for these girls.
Jurye is a lower economic class district of Busan, and many of the girls in my school are poor. I feel good that I am helping, or at least trying to help, these students who have never had a native English teacher before, and have fewer opportunities than children who live in the more wealthy parts of the city.
I have a group of girls who I call my fan club, who are the most consistent with their visits. They are hilarious and sweet and I love them. I will post some pictures of them very soon, and write about them more detailed, but right now I think my post has gone on long enough.
The rest of it in a nutshell: I teach 4 or 5 classes a day, 45 minutes each, and I am extremely busy. Inbetween classes students come talk to me at my desk, which is a good thing, but means less free time for me to plan lessons. As of next week I will have English club 3 times a week after school, leaving me with practically no free time at all. This is upsetting, but theres not much I can do. I have lunch with the teachers everyday, and its always traditional Korean meals, which are usually pretty delicious, but difficult to figure out. Its shocking to me that the students eat it. The food is very spicy and, well, just nothing an American child would touch.
I have been told that I am doing very well as a teacher, which is very encouraging, especially because I really enjoy it, and can seriously imagine it as my career. I am also told that the other teachers really like me, and its obvious that my students like me as well. So all in all, I am working harder than I ever have, but it seems to be paying off, and its very satisfying. Here are a few more pictures:








This is walking back to the bus stop. The forcynthia and cherry trees are on my school's grounds. There are cherry trees all around the school which are just starting to blossom. In a few days its going to be gorgeous.
Sorry for yet another novel-long blog. I hope it didnt bore you to death. I am very happy and excited about my job, I mean as much as I can be. It is still a job after all. I do still have to wake up before ten. You cant have it all I guess.
LOVE, Sarah

An update

At last, another update!

Warren:
We still do not have internet set up in our apartment... we're waiting on our Alien Registration Cards. Hopefully it will arrive within the next 2 weeks - we need it to set up an internet account and get cellphones, among other things. Until then we can only really check email and such at school, but luckily this weekend another EPIK teacher in our apartment complex offered us the use of her internet while she was away. So we've taken the oppurtunity to update the blog.

We'll try to catch everyone up with the events of the past month in a nutshell. It was almost one month ago exactly when we flew out of Boston Logan Airport bound for Korea. We stayed 2 days prior to our departure with our friends Jamie and Tim at their place in Boston. It was nice to relax a little before the big trip and after saying goodbye to our families. The travel time was about 24 hours total - a 5 hour flight to San Francisco, a layover and another 12 hours to Incheon Airport, outside of Seoul. The flight over the Pacific was long but comfortable enough. We flew on Singapore Airlines and the service was really good. You have your own little tv in the seat that you can play games and watch movies on. I almost forgot a funny little story from our trip - Sarah getting her pant leg caught in one of the moving walkways at the San Francisco airport. Luckily someone hit the emergency stop button before her pants were entirely eaten by the walkway. I had a good laugh.

Sarah:
Next was the EPIK orientation in Daejeon, with about 150 other EPIK teachers. The first night we arrived there was a mix up with the hotel rooms, and we had to stay in a Korean style hotel, which we would later learn are usually called love motels, as they offer hourly rates, and provide 2 of everything. It was pretty nice actually, but we were so exhausted from the flight, we would have been happy with anything, as long as we could go to sleep. We had about a week of lectures about teaching that were very helpful for the most part. This was broken up by a trip to a Korean Folk Village where we were able to see a traditional Korean village from the past reinacted. At the end of the week, before we left for Busan, we decided to venture to the public bath right next to our hotel, which is very famous in Korea for their ancient hot springs. Even though it was our idea, we almost chickened out right before, both being terrified of taking off our clothes in front of large groups of Koreans, but we were strong and did it in the end. I went with another girl (they are seperated by the sexes) who I had met only an hour earlier. It was interesting actually, because as soon as I actually undressed, I felt comfortable. There is something about being naked when everyone else is naked that makes it not embarrassing. I really enjoyed it. There was about 5 different small pools of mineral water, each at different temperatures and with different vitamins and herbs in the water, like ginseng. The Korean people scrub themselves very intensely with rough clothes, until their skin is bright red. But they have very nice skin, so maybe that is their secret. Warren said he liked it alright, but he was alone, so I think it was a little more awkward for him to figure out what to do. We were both very glad we did it.
On the morning we left for Busan, we both were very nervous, but on top of that, I woke up nauseous and started throwing up, and couldnt stop. We were dressed up and rehearsing how to say hello in Korean, but I was distracted with my illness, and felt panicky and upset. We had a 4 hour bus ride, which was hellish, as I spent a good portion of it dry heaving in a plastic bag. When we arrived, I was too worn out to care how my first impression with my coteacher went, but luckily, when we were introduced, I felt comfortable with her pretty quickly. We were both very lucky actually, because our coteachers were friends with each other, even though they were from different schools. This made our lives much easier, as the coteachers took care of figuring out our apartment space, and took me shopping for things for the apartment. They also took us to dinner, but as I was still very sick, I had to confess that I couldnt stomach most of the food, which was a little awkward, but not that big of a deal.

Warren:
We will post some pictures of the apartment sometime soon, but for now I can just tell you that while it is certainly smaller than our apartment from this summer - its plenty of room for us and we like it. It has 4 rooms and a balcony - A kitchen/dining room, a living room/bedroom, a bathroom and a little extra room that we will probably use as a workspace or something of the sort. We live on the 11th floor of Jugong apartment building 103, in Danggam - gong area of Busanjin-gu. Danggam is the name of this whole apartment area which was built by the goverment. We have a nice fairly nice view - we look down on a little pond with goldfish and you can look across our part of Busan to mountains in the distance. Right behind our apartment is Baekyang mountain... not exactly right behind, but 5 minutes walk and your on a winding footpath up through the trees. All up along this path are little terraced garden plots - this is where residents of our apartment complex can grow some of their own plants and vegetables. You see a lot of older people coming and going on the path, tending to their gardens. It makes for some good exercise and nice escape from the city. Close to our apartment complex is a little cluster of stores - a bakery, a small restaurant, a grocery store and a post office. There is also a fried chicken place and a pizza place... in front of which is our bus stop. We hop on the bus here to take a 15 ride into Seomyeon or the half hour commute to work. Sarah and I will save the info about our schools for another time, but I'll tell you a little bit about Seomyeon.
Busan is a sprawling city with lots of different hubs of activity, most of which we haven't seen yet. There is the Haeundae beach area which is a more upscale, trendy place and the most popular place during the summer time. There is a also a lot going ow down by the city port, another sort of downtown area called Dongnae and a lot of activity around Busan University in the north. Seomyeon is apparently the busiest of these places - two subway lines cross here and there main landmark is the giant Lotte Department store - over 10 floors of all your consumer desires! The surrounding area has restaurants, bars, various little shops and tons of street vendors selling everything from fried squid to imported American alcohol to clothing and cellphones. Its a very brightly lit place - we had lots of fun the first times we went there just wandering the streets under the lights of all the giant signs and whatnot. But not all the activity is above ground... seomyeon is a metro hub and while the station itself is huge, it is also connected to underground shopping mall that stretches for blocks! Seomyeon is a lot fun and I think we've only scratched the surface. Just yesterday I went with another EPIK teacher to a music market - an old building sectioned off into tons of different areas selling all sorts of musical accessories. Seomyeon is also where the swing dance club that we've been invited to is located - but I'll let Sarah explain some of that story...

Sarah:
So, we are going to write more details about our schools in another post, but I will just say that the majority of the teachers I work with, while more than kind and helpful, do not speak the greatest english, if any. However, within just the first week of working, I was invited by the school's P.E. teacher to a swing dance party in the city of Daegu, which is the third biggest city in South Korea, and about 1 1/2 hours away from Busan. Not sure what I was getting into, and completely overwhelmed, I agreed. So, despite Yashin's(her nickname, which means Goddess!) broken english, she became my second friend in Korea, after my main coteacher. She has taken both Warren and I under her wing, and completely randomly we have started to learn swing dance. But I am getting ahead of myself. She picked us up that first saturday with her two friends, Cheena, and Smurf (his nickname, after the cartoons. We dont even remember his Korean name, which is not important, because everyone calls him Smurf). We drove to Daegu. Luckily Cheena knows a little more english than Yashin or Smurf, so we could maintain conversations pretty well. We went to an amusement park first, which was very fun. I even went on two rollarcoasters, despite my notoriously disasterous stomach. But I was eating anti-motionsickness drugs like candy, so even though I felt a little ill, I managed alright. It was a really good time, and then of course we were tired and ready for bed, but we had a big swing party to go to! We had no idea what to expect, but it turned out it was a large gathering of a few swing clubs from Busan and Daegu, to celebrate the year anniversary of the club or something like that. There was delicous food and drinks, and of course, amazing dancing. Warren and I were completely intimidated, but thrust into the midst of it anyway, and forced to learn the basic steps. The whole thing was really fun and inspired both of us to learn and at least attempt to be a little more graceful. We are both pretty terrible now, but maybe by the time we are back in the states, we will have a little more talent. Here are some pictures of that weekend:





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Well, that's all for now... many more photos and stories to come!
-Warren and Sarah

1st post - where we live

Hello All,
In time we hope to detail some of our adventures here on this blog. We have now been in Korea for a little over 2 weeks and already have had many experiences we'd love to share. However, I thought that for this first post, I would just give a little description of where we live with some help from Google Earth.

First and Foremost, we are now in the Republic of Korea and (along with about 50 million other people) to call it home. For a year at least.

Here it is. South Korea:

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I have circled Incheon, Daejeon, and Busan. Our flight from San Francisco landed at Seoul-Incheon airport where we were met by the EPIK staff. They transported us by bus the Yousung Hotel in Daejeon, where our orientation program was held. After the orientation, we took another bus to Busan.
Busan is where we will be living and teaching for a year. Here it is:

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Busan has between 3.7 and 4 million people living in it, depending on who you ask. Between 3.700002 and 4.000002 now. The next picture is a closer view of the area in which we live and work:

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Here I marked our apartment building, my middle school, the area where Sarah's middle school is and I also circled the Seomyeon area of Busan. It takes us each about a half hour to get to school on the bus. We take the same bus from our apartment, I have to transfer once, while Sarah stays on the same bus. I'm not sure exactly where Sarah's apartment is, so I circled the general area based on what she told me. You can see my school - Jugam Middle School (in Korean) quite well. Seomyeon is a bustling downtown area where Lotte Department store ( over 10 floors of shopping!) is located, along with tons of street vendors, cafes, bars, shops etc. It takes about 10-15 minutes by bus to reach Seomyeon.
Finally, here is a closer view of where we live:

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Our apartment is right next to an expressway, which provides a pleasurable white noise to lull us to sleep each night. You might have noticed a lot trees around. It may be hard to tell from this picture, but there is a large mountain behind our apartment. Baekyang mountain, under which Baekyang tunnel can take you. There are many paths on the mountain that look great for walking - they are used frequently because people from the apartments have small garden plots terraced on the side of the mountain.

Well, now you know about where Sarah and I live. Unfortunately, we don't have an internet connection in our apartment, so I had to post this at school (hard at work!) However, we have been taking pictures and committing our stories to memory so that we can relay them here in the future.

Peace and Love to all,
-Warren