Suri, Moses and Shiloh

If it isn't enough that Koreans are so determined to have their kids learn English that they spend hundreds of dollars a month on their schooling they also accept the fact that upon entering into our school we change their kids' names.
Afterall why should we go to the trouble of learning names like Soyukchin and Chimnahaseyo when we can just rename their kids Billy and Jenny and Sarah?
I haven't named anyone yet, though I have two kindergarten students that are without names because something just feels wrong about that two me; however, right now I am just pointing at them when I want their attention so I guess that is no better.
And I think that if celebrities can get away with crazy baby names why can't I?

A typical day

Everyone seems curious about what my days are like so here is a typical day in the life of me.

6:30 am - wake up, look at the clock...laugh a little and fall back asleep
8:00 am - contemplate getting up...laugh a little and fall back asleep
9:00 am - convince myself it is time to get out of bed
9:30 am - get out of bed
10:00am - coffee, shower, cereal, check email and see what's going on back in Canada
11:45am - head to work
12:00-7:30 or 8:30 depending on the day - work (about four of these hours are teaching time)
9:00pm - all the teachers head to the gym (because the teachers that work together, party together, and work out together will never get sick of each other...lol)
10 ish - get home and fire up the rice cooker
10:30 - chat on messenger, maybe a little downloading, French review
11:30 - read or watch tv or movie
1ish - fall asleep

En francais s'il vous plait!

Au jour'dui j'ai commencer les etudiers pour la francais! (and if you know french and want to correct the grammar in that sentence by all means go right ahead)

So my plan is to come back to Canada bilingual or at least ready to write the French proficiency test. I am taking online courses through Durham college and have skipped French 1 and have started into French 2 and 3, I am three weeks behind in the classes and have some serious catch up to do...so no more downloading The O.C. to fill my nights :(

Both French 2 and 3 look like review from highschool, though it will definetly take me some memory work to get it all back, but once I am caught up I think I will really enjoy it!

Au revoir!

Pictures from Friday night

Well these are the people I've been hanging out with this past weekend and some of them I work with.

In the top picture it is myself (and I've only been gone a week so if you didn't recognize that you are looking at the wrong site!), Joseph (teacher from the school, in the striped shirt), David (manager of the school, white shirt), Richard (Korean teacher from the school, black shirt), and Mike (black shirt in the centre)who works at a university nearby.

In the bottom picture Lorne is the guy in the white shirt and his wife Marianne, in front. Others in the photo are teachers from nearby or that have worked with Lorne in the past and came down for the weekend. The bar we were at is a foreigner's bar downtown, but our crowd was pretty much it for the night.

The Weekend

Well I successfully completed my first week of school, success being that I did not kill any of my students or myself. Actually this teaching thing may not be too bad but I can't imagine doing it for life, I need conversations that go beyond ABC's and phonetics.

Friday night was a fun night out with four of Lorne's friends who came to visit for the weekend and then we met up with some other foreign teachers who actually live in Daejoen. There was nothing really out of the ordinary Friday, I think bar scenes are pretty much universal. Someone was taking pictures on Friday and is going to email them to me so once I get them I will post a few up.

Saturday I braved my first outing on my own. I walked to the HomePlus, which is like a grocery store/Wal-mart type place and about fifteen minutes away. I wandered around the grocery aisles for about an hour just checking things out, I think I can find pretty much the same things here as I can in Canada, although their fruit and vegetable section is sadly limited. On the other hand though, seaweed salad (wakame) is extremely cheap and one of my favourite things to eat and super healthy as well. Ask me again in a month and I'm sure I'll be tired of it but for now it is fantastic. The weirdest thing I bought, my mistake, was a mini loaf of bread from the bread section, it looks like normal white bread but when I got it home I realized there is a peanut butter like substance between every other piece, which I think is the epitome of true laziness when you can't even make your own P.B sandwiches!

I wasn't able to walk home because of the groceries and a few other odds and ends that I needed so I hopped in a cab and carefully pronounced "SongChong Dong, Op-or-a-hous-a," which Lorne and David had assured me would always bring me right back to the school, which is about two minutes from my house. The cabby started out the right way but pretty soon I didn't have a clue where we were so I was able to convey to him that we were lost. I gave him a business card for the school, which Lorne and David also had assured me would work to get me home, but it didn't help. The cabby got on the phone for back up help and managed to get me home. Once he got me to the school he took the business card back and wrote, what I assume are, proper directions for my next cabby. It's kinda like my lost and found card I guess.

Last night we met back up with the gang and went out to TGIF's for dinner. This was in a part of Daejeon that I had not yet been to and it was almost like stepping into little U.S.A or little Canada, complete with CostCo, the Outback, a huge mall with familiar stores like Chanel and Mac... I can't wait to go back there! The only difference was we were the only non-Korean's around and we attract so many stares. There were two teachers in our group who are Korean and one patron in the restaurant actually interrupted them during dinner to ask if we could teach their children English in private lessons! After dinner we went out for a few more drinks and some Soju juice, the typical Korean drink to get drunk off of, though you can barely taste the alcohol. And I'm sure I'll have one or two Soju tales of my own within a few weeks... Once again we were provided with munchies, which I have learned is the law, you have to have some sort of food to accompany alcohol, and amongst the munchies were tiny snail shells which you are supposed to suck the snail out of (yum). You could actually see the dirty water coming off the snail and I fell back on my tactic of "when Marianne tries it, I'll try it." Then she tried it. Lorne said they tasted like dirt and other people really liked them. I went back on my word and didn't try them. It's funny I actually thought I was pretty adventurous in what I would try up until arriving here!

And now it is Sunday afternoon and I'm not sure what I am going to be up to, maybe walk around my area and see what else is around here.

Ta ta for now!

That's not advertising, that's just littering...

In the market the other day we would see people carrying stacks of flyers, much like the annoying ones that get posted on car windshields but instead of delivering them anywhere they just wait until there is a good crowd of people around and then they throw them up in the air and walk awayso the ground is covered with thousands of flyers. Elissa think how easy mail delivery drops would have been if this was the way they did it in Oz!

Food

Alright everyone keeps asking me about food here and I can't say I'm an expert on it yet because I have been somewhat hermit-like this past week...until last night, but more on that later.

The main Korean staple, other than rice, seems to be kimchi, which is cabbage that has been steamed and has hot sauce on it, tho the hot sauce just tastes like Tabasco to me. And it is everywhere, like a full aisle in the grocery section, it reminds me of Tim Tams in Australia. My verdict is still undecided on whether I like it or not, but people say I will become addicted to it.

I have not seen dog anywhere on menus but I'm told that people do eat it, mainly older people. Nobody I have met has tried it and I don't plan to. If you are that curious about it you will have to come try it for yourself (you can sleep on my floor).

It is typical when you go into bars that they bring you munchies, last night there was one dish that looked like cockroaches (my most dreaded bug of all!) and they said I had to try one, when I said what I thought it looked like they told me I was close, it was silkworm larvae *shudder*. Everyone said I had to try at least one, so I said when Lorne's wife, Marianne, tried one, I would try one, which is going to be my answer for anything I don't want to do because Marianne doesn't like anything. One of the girls who we were out with has been here three years and she said they taste just like dirt, so I don't know why anyone would want to eat that, much less as munchies at a bar.

Today is my first time venturing to the grocery store on my own so more on food later!

Pictures of My Place

Finally Here!

Yes I actually made it to the airport after what seemed like weeks of waiting around!

I have been here for five days and what a five days it has been!

FRIDAY

I arrived at Incheon airport on Friday night at 5:20, Korean time (we are thirteen hours ahead here). After sixteen hours on an airplane and probably another 5 or 6 of sitting around different airports I was ready for a nice hot shower and a good sleep. INSTEAD, I was picked up by the owner of the hagwon (private school), and driven to Seoul for dinner and to meet his entire family...mother, father, sister in-law, brother, baby niece and dog. Of course they spoke little English so it made for an interesting night of me nodding and smiling and trying to respond to the questions I thought they were asking, in return they nodded and smiled back, pretending to understand. We spent the night at his parents house, which was a beautiful apartment on like the 60th floor of a downtown apartment complex which was quite the view.

Saturday

In the morning they prepared for me a traditional breakfast of rice, that watery soup that I always refer to as dishwater, seaweed, kimchi and egg. The food was really good, although it felt more like dinner than a breakfast. After breakfast they all started going about their daily routines and sat me down with the dog and baby to entertain for a few hours, because apparently I strike people as the type of person who enjoys dogs and babies. In the afternoon the owner, Brian, thought that maybe I was bored, so his brother and him took me to see The Davinci Code, which surprised me because I assumed they would have dubbed movies with Korean soundtracks, but they just stick in Korean subtitles. Finally Brian put me on a bus in the early evening and sent me off to Daejeon, where I met David, whom I have been talking with these past weeks prior to coming to Korea. We grabbed my bags dropped them in my apartment and were off once again to go grocery shopping. I didn't get much because I was moreso walking around in a daze trying to take everything in and let it sink in that I was actually in Korea. David asked me if I liked rice and when I said that I did he told me I needed a rice cooker because it was easier to cook rice with one. I told him I didn't think it was necessary but he insisted, and I gotta admit, I love it. I get home from work, drop some rice in the machine, add some water and 20 minutes later I have perfect rice!

Again David brought me to my place and said he would be back in 45 minutes and we would be going out to meet one of the other teachers and show me around Daejeon a little more. 45 minutes later I was introduced to Lorne, the head teacher from Canada, and his wife, Marianne (whom he met in the Phillapines in December, married her a week later, and with all her visa processing she just arrive last week). We started the night off with a little pool playing, headed downtown to check out two of the foreigner bars, which were pretty deserted, apparently because we were too early, tho I still have yet to see another blond around here. After all that we headed to a singing room which are all the rage in Korea, not quite kareoke, instead you go into a place which has 5 or 6 sound proof rooms with a big screen and music sound system and whoever is in your group gets up and takes turns singing to each other. No, I did not sing, and no i do not plan too! Though David and Lorne both swear I'll be up doing it within the month... Finally at around 3 am we headed for home and I got to sleep in my very own apartment, which I should mention is not quite the shoebox I had imagined it would be and is a nice amount of space for one person.

Sunday

Sunday was pretty uneventful, woke up early and wandered around a little, then spent the better part of the afternoon sleeping and watching dvds. Lorne and his wife came and picked me up at night and we headed out to the mall and market, which is quite similar to malls at home. I picked up a few other odds and ends that I had been needing and came home for a good night's sleep and prepared for my first day of work!

Monday

Hot water guy showed up about 20 minutes after I had had my cold shower for the third day in a row. Followed Lorne around to four different classes that day and had a lot of sitting around. The school is interesting because it is only a few months old, so some classes have as many as 12 kids per class and other classes will have only 1 student. Ages range from 5 to 15, though most are around 7 and 8.

Tuesday

Had three classes of my own. First one was with 2 kindergartens and we pretty much just sang the alphabet song for forty minutes and practiced letter recognition. Second class was with 1 kindergarten who cried so hard when she saw me that her mom cancelled her class for the day and said we would try again Thursday. Third class was 2 girls around the age of 15 who all the other teachers hate and stuck them with me, they actually aren't that bad, I just don't think they really care to learn English that much.

Wednesday

Settled into the typical work day. Got internet at home! Wrote the longest blog entry ever!

Delayed

So it's Sunday night, I should be cramming the last few items into my suitcase and figuring out what I have forgotten and how I'm going to survive one year with just two bags of belongings, instead I'm hanging out in my basement watching The Breakfast Club.

After a rushed trip to the Korean embassy last Thursday I was told that it would be 5 days processing time, not the 3 that I had originally been told, and they needed my passport photos and transcripts, which I have sent to Korea to have my visa filed there.

Hopefully I will have everything straightened out tomorrow and have a new departure date to look forward to, maybe by the end of the week.

For now it is round two of good-byes and get togethers and putting off packing for a few more days!

1 week!

I can't believe it is only one week and I will be heading off to South Korea! This whole process would have been much easier had I not unpacked from Australia. So much to do this week and so little time... the dentist, a much much needed hair cut, catch up with friends, the neccessary family time, a trip to the Korean embassy to have my passport stamped, and oh yeah figuring out what I need to pack for an entire year!

Okay next time I post I will be on the other side of the world!

Ta ta for now!