Meet Some Kindys

Here are Gloria and Kasey. They are in the Eagle Kindergarten Class and they speak English pretty well.  They are 7 years old in Korean, but are the international age of 6. Korea (and other Asian countries) counts their first year as age 1 and not zero.  They age with the New Year, not their birthday, so some kids can be up to two years older than in the US and other countries. 

Pencil cases are very popular here.  I already bought two! The kids don't use pencils with erasers on the end, they have a separate eraser (not unusual, I know). But when they need to erase something, they have to put down their pencil, unzip their pencil case, erase, then they put the eraser back in the case and re-zip.  Two seconds later, they need to erase again, so they go through the process all over again.  And all the students do this, even students in the higher grades.  Why can't they keep their erasers out on their desks?  I find this perplexing. 

When I saw them with their hoods on I made the mistake of telling them they looked like ninjas.  They acted like ninjas for the rest of the class and we didn't get any work done.

And here are Joseph and Leo in Dragon class.  They are 6 years old. They speak and understand some English but they still talk a lot in Korean.  I want to learn Korean just to understand what the heck Leo is saying!  He is so cute and very earnest when he is talking to me but I have no clue what he's saying. 

My School

My school is a short bus ride from my apartment.  I have quite a few buses I can take there and being so close to the "terminal" is quite convenient.  We are on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building. Here are some pictures of the school:



View from across the street

My desk. The folders are for all my classes and hold the lesson plan, textbook & workbook, and attendance records for each class. Classes are based on the student's level of English and how long they've been at the school. I have about 15 different classes that I teach a week and each class meets 2 or 3 times a week.  Try writing an evaluation for each student- you have to know their reading, writing, speaking and listening abilities and if they are improving or not.  It's overwhelming work at first.  I barely knew their names, much less how well they understood English.

My Neighborhood

As I mentioned before, I live in Anyang, Gyeonggi-do (population: about 630,000).  Anyang is a city about 35 miles from Seoul. (Koreans don't pronounce Seoul as one syllable like we do, "sole" or "soul"; there is an extra vowel in there.  As soon as I can perfect it I will pass along the pronunciation.) The older downtown area is called Manan Gu, or Il Bonga (sp?), according to my director.  I live in this area.  The bus terminal is also located here but it isn't a building, it's a section of the main road where all buses travel. The Anyang Subway station is also in walking distance from my apartment.  I can hop on the subway and go to Seoul rather conveniently. Here are some photos of my neighborhood.

I took this picture from the CGV, a tall building that houses a cinema,a Hot Tracks (bookstore and stationary), a UNI-QLO, a cafe,and a few restaurants.  The glass structure in the background of the picture is Anyang Station.  There is an Outback Restaurant in the building opposite this one.  I haven't tried it yet but I'm sure squid shows up on the menu.



I'm standing on the overpass that connects the sidewalks.  The buses pick up and drop off here. 

 

A traffic sign.  The green cross at the bottom is a symbol for medical care (not marijuana, as it is in CO and CA).

Alley of my building.  I put my trash out on the front step and it gets picked up in the morning, then sorted at the nearby center.

Here is some information about addresses in Korea.  I've taken it directly from the 8th Edition of Lonely Planet's guide to Korea, published April 2010:

                              ...in Korea, the actual 'address' is seldom very useful. There are very
                              few signs labelling street names. Indeed, most streets do not even have
                              names at all. Every house and building does have an official number,
                              although it's rarely to be found on the outside - and if it is, it's likely
                              to be in hangeul. To complicate matters further, since numbers are
                              assigned to houses when they are built, house No 27 could be next
                              to house No 234. Many larger buildings have names - knowing this
                              may often prove more useful than knowing the address.

(I'm not sure of the proper way to cite borrowed information on a blog, so I hope I'm not breaking any rules.)  Anyway, for all you folks who think I'm crazy when I tell you I don't know what my address is, I'm not kidding, I really don't know what it is.  And I've asked my director and I still don't know.  But there are mailboxes in the building and I've gotten bills already so I still need to get down to the bottom of it.  Color me confused.  Teachers I've talked to say they have their mail sent to their school.  (I got my ARC today and I will open a bank account this week.  Maybe I can shed more light on that soon: does the bank and cell phone company need my address? Hmm.)

Il Bonga, or First Street, is a popular area with a lot of restaurants and shopping.  It reminds me of Downtown Crossing in Boston, but with a few more blocks.  (No Filene's Basement here, though.)

 

 

In some areas, the lights on the curb light up to stop and to walk:

 

 

I felt I was waiting for the traffic lights to change for an abnormally long amount of time so I timed it at different stops. They were about 2 full minutes long! It's hard to cross the streets (or jaywalk) here because there are so many lanes of traffic, you actually have to wait for the Walk signal.

 

When I arrived in April, I noticed that crews were hanging up lanterns all over the city.  It is to celebrate Buddha's birthday which is this Friday, May 17th.  I hear that it is like celebrating Christmas, so of course the city is decorated a few weeks earlier.  Here are some pictures of the lanterns.

 

 

I haven't done all the research for Buddha's birthday but I'll learn more this weekend.  His birthday is a public holiday in Korea so I don't have school!  But my director has planned a trip for the teachers to go to Kwang-gu (sp?) for the long weekend.  It should be fun!  And I'll make sure to post all about it. So stay tuned!  

Arrival in South Korea, Days 1 & 2

An nyong ha se yo! Hello! Greetings from the Land of the Morning Calm. I've been in Korea for four weeks now and there is much to tell. Because I've waited so long to start blogging, I'm going to rely on my photos to tell most of the stories.

 

Yes, this is me saying "Adios" in Denver, not waving hello in Korea, but I missed a photo op :(
But I made a friend on the plane, my neighbor I was sitting next to, and we exchanged info.  She lives in Incheon and I'm looking forward to hanging out one of these weekends.  

I live in Anyang, a city in the province of Gyeonggi, and it isn't too far from Seoul. After arriving on Thursday in mid-April, I took a shuttle from Incheon International Airport to the Beomgye bus station, a 45 minute ride.  Here are some random pictures of the scenery outside the bus window. 

I was trying to take a picture of the bridge.  Can you see it?

My director, Nicky, picked me up from the bus station and took me to school where I met my fellow English and Korean teachers. I also met Hayden-teacher (from New Zealand), the English teacher I was replacing. She took me to my apartment-studio. I had packed two huge suitcases, an enormous carry-on backpack and a large purse, so I was thankful that the apartment was on the first level of the building. The entrance is in the alley of the main road.

 

(FYI, the literal translation of "An nyong ha se yo" means "Are you peaceful?", according to my Lonely Planet phrasebook.)

The next day, I shadowed Hayden and his classes, as they were to become my classes.  I teach 2 kindy (kindergarten) classes in the morning, Dragon (2 students) and Eagle (2 students), starting at 10:30am.  I am referred to as "Mary-teacher"; the other teachers also tack on "-teacher" after their names. (It sounds like "teacha" when the students say it.) I also eat lunch with the kindys at noon. I think it's pretty awesome that I get to try authentic Korean food at lunch everyday!  But I wish I liked kimchi (it's served at nearly every meal!), so I hope by eating it every day I will learn to like it. I have free time after lunch until elementary classes start at 3:20pm.  But it's not quite free, I have to spend the time preparing my lesson plans for each class.

Because it was Hayden's last day, one of his classes decided to bring in snacks to celebrate.  It was rather fun:

The snacks were opened and thrown into a pile- salty along with sweet.  I've noticed that a lot of food here is not too salty or too sweet, that even snacks we'd consider salty (potato chips) will have a sweetness to them. Even pastries won't be super-sweet. (And I'm not including ice cream.) There is a hot dog pastry at many cafes that are on a sweet pastry bun. It's so bizarre to me but I'm enjoying doing the research to try everything.

Here is Hayden with his class: Sally, Kayla, Sam, Billy and McQueen.  (Yep, McQueen!)

 

 
Korean students who study at hagwons (where I teach) or other English academies will choose English names.  They use these names at their English schools only.  Sometimes their parents choose their names, sometimes it's the students themselves and sometimes it's even their English teacher. Sally and Julia are very popular names at my school. 

After school was over, at around 9pm, the director took the teachers out to dinner to bid Hayden farewell.  We went to a Korean BBQ restaurant.  You slip off your shoes at the entrance, sit cross-legged on the parquet and await a delicious meal!  The main draw is the grilled meat but you can't enjoy it without all the sides: Korean meals are known for their side dishes.  Here are some photos of that meal.  I don't know what everything is called and it looks like I missed taking pictures of all those sides but here you go:



The meat comes out raw and in large pieces.  You place it on the grill and as it becomes to cook, someone will take scissors and cut it into small pieces.  That was strange at first but it's quite handy to cut meat with scissors!  The silver tube draws up the smoke from the grill.

As you can see, chopsticks are required for this meal, and for just about every Korean meal. : )  I had to learn to use them pretty quickly.  I had a trial run at lunch time but wasn't any better by dinner.  Even four weeks later, I lack chopstick skills.

Here are all the side dishes in no particular order: garlic, red pepper paste (?), radishes, tofu, kimchi, onions.  The soup on the right with the egg is served cold and the dark noodles are made from sweet potatoes. (I got all this info from the Korean teachers as we were eating so I could be citing incorrect information if I didn't hear them correctly.)

Soju! Korean distilled alcohol, usually made from rice. Tastes like vodka to me!



As with most nights out with friends in Korea, we visited a noraebang after dinner (aka karaoke).  Here are Hayden and Ryan (English teacher from the mid-west) belting out Bohemian Rhapsody, Journey and some Muse. What did I sing?  Why, Britney Spears, of course.  And Eunice, one of the Korean teachers, and I sang LeAnn Rimes' Can't Fight the Moonlight.

 

 

Days 1 and 2 in Korea were splendid and I look forward to more good times ahead.  Stay tuned!