My first month

So I've already been in Korea for over a month now.  Every year it seems like time flies by a little faster than the previous.  Why can't time slow down when you're having fun and speed up when you're not?  In the past few weeks I have been settling down and getting accustomed to my daily life.  It has been good to start getting comfortable with my apartment and the area in which I live.  I have been going on short hikes to get in a little work out on the mountain that I live by.  There are so many mosquitoes on this mountain so I have to walk fast or run so I don't get bit.  I think it helps my work out in the end!

I'm sorry I haven't written in a while but I've been really busy and so much has happened since then!  I'll start with Busan.  Busan is the second most populated city in Korea and it is on the south eastern coast.  On the high speed train from Daegu it takes only about 45 minutes to get there.  They say that on a clear day you can see Japan from Busan!  I went to Busan with 5 other friends to visit our friend Kevin who we became good friends with in orientation.  We boarded the train on Friday night and thought we would start off a good weekend with some beer and a few bottles of soju.  We had heard that it's totally legit to drink on the train.  Apparently it wasn't.  We were asked to quiet down multiple times and I'm pretty sure everyone on the train hated us.  I later learned that people take the KTX because it's supposed to be quiet and people want to sleep.  Sorry, people!  We lost a few more friends when we arrived to Busan and hopped on the subway with beers in hand.  Apparently just because it's legal doesn't mean that it's kosher to drink on the subway.  One Korean lady was particularly angry and yelled at us for a while in Korean.  It's actually a lot funnier when you have no idea what the person is saying.  Now we had upwards of negative 40 friends in Busan.  The plan was that we would all stay at Kevin's apartment on his floor but that meant that there would be 8 people in a studio apartment because Kevin's girlfriend, Ruth, was visiting from Seoul.  We decided it would probably be a good idea to get a 'love motel' instead.  Because Korean children usually live with their parents until they get married 'love motels' are really popular.  They are small motel rooms that you can rent by the hour or the night and usually cost around $40 a night.  Don't ask me what they cost by the hour haha.  I've heard that many love motels are actually pretty nice for the price but some can also be pretty bad.  I think it's kind of a hit-or-miss type of deal.  Well, I think that we missed on ours.  The first thing we noticed when we walked in was the bright yellow cement floor and the cockroach on the ceiling.  The wallpaper was stained with who-knows-what and apparently smelled really bad.  We ended up having to sneak the boys in because we told the hotel lady that there were only three of us when in actuality there were six.  Do you remember what Korean showers are like from my previous blog?  Well the water drains into the floor.  When six people are showering and using one bathroom it gets pretty disgusting after about ten seconds.  Whatever.  We didn't care that much.  We were in Busan on the beach!  It was probably around 80 degrees and we were really excited to see Kevin and the other friends that we had made in orientation who were living in Busan.  We spent the weekend partying, eating and lounging on the beach.  I don't think I've laughed so much in 2 days than I did on that trip.  On the Sunday that we had to leave we decided to go to the most famous beach in Busan called Hyundae (like the car).  We were all taking a nice nap in the heat when I hear a man trying to talk to my friend Lara.  I suddenly sit up to see what's going on and this old Korean man is squatting in front of Lara with a small paper cup and two toothpics in his hands.  He is trying to give Lara something and she is shaking her head in protest.  I finally figure out that the man has a cup of boiled bug larvae and is offering her some.  He notices that I sit up and he begins to walk over to me.  My instinctual reaction is to open my mouth.  Please don't ask me why.  Apparently opening of the mouth universally means "feed me."  Needless to say he pops a few boiled bug larvae in my mouth and I begin chewing.  Before this I like to think that I can at least tolerate everything that I have eaten in my life.  Not anymore.  Everytime I even smell the cooking of these larvae I begin to gag and have to run away.  I really hope that no one tries to feed me these ever again.  Besides this one event Busan was really incredible and we've already made plans to visit again within the next few weeks.  Apparently Busan has the biggest fireworks show in the world (?) and it takes place in October so we will hopefully be going for that.

 We hung out in a giant bowl on the beach

 Our dinner one night which consisted of lots of squid! Yummm

 The crew (minus Shaun who is taking the pic) in front of the 'love motel'.


Two weekends ago was one of my coteacher's last day as she is going on maternity leave until after winter vacation.  My two coteachers and I decided to go out to dinner since we wouldn't see her for a while and just to hang out.  Emily and I had been talking about going out for makchang for a while.  Makchang is pig intestines that the restaurant gives you raw and you grill it up yourself.  Each table has its own little grill in the center, and like much Korean food, the servers bring it to you and you cook it.  I had eaten tripe in Ecuador and really liked the flavor but I always had trouble swallowing it because it is so chewy and I could never break it down enough to swallow it.  I would chew it for a while to get the flavor and then spit it out.  I hoped that the makchang would be easier to swallow because I didn't think it would be as appropriate to spit it out in front of my coteachers at a sit-down restaurant (in Ecuador we ate it off the street).  We ordered spicy and regular intestines and, like normal, we got tons of different Korean side dishes.  This is one of the greatest things about Korean food.  You get the meal and included in the meal are many side dishes with various types of food.  Always included is kimchi, which I love.  with the inestines came tree leaves that you were supposed to make a little wrap out of with the different side dishes and sauces.  Apparently the leaf is very high in iron.  Lots of barbequed meat is served with these leaves.  The intestines and all the side dishes turned out to be delicious and I was even able to swallow it with a little extra chewing.  I think these were of higher quality than the ones I often ate in Ecuador and this is why I was able to successfully complete the eating process.

 My coteachers, Emily and Ju Young.

 Cutting the makchang

 Leaf wrap

After we ate dinner we walked next door to the norae bang.  Norae bangs are the karaoke rooms that Koreans are so very obsessed with.  You can seriously find a norae bang on every street corner.  I was a little bit nervous because I have rarely sang karaoke in front of other people completely sober.  If I sing back home it is after having a few drinks and the entire group I'm with takes the mic and we perform a hilariously ridiculous ballad and it is completely a joke.  In Korea karaoke is not a joke.  My two coteachers and I paid for an hour in the norae bang and we opened up the song book and started choosing songs.  I was pretty relieved to find out that my coteachers were no Celine Dions like I imagined all Koreans to be.  My intimidation flew out the non-existant norae bang windows and I let loose.  My coteachers and I ended up having a really fun time dancing and singing.  I closed the hour with an epic performance of "Ode to my Family" by the Cranberries.

 Norae bang

This past week beginning on Tuesday was a mini-vacation for Chuseok.  Chuseok can be compared to Thanksgiving in the states.  People travel to be with their families and they cook and eat and do different things.  Because of this I didn't have to be at school from Tuesday through Friday.  All the EPIK teachers traveled to different places and I decided to go to Seoul and hiking with a group of five other people.  We signed up for a pre-planned trip through a travel company called Adventure Korea that caters to foreigners.  They plan trips all over Korea and lots of people really like the company.  This past Friday, Saturday and Sunday was a hiking trip to the Seoraksan mountains.  Seoraksan is the biggest mountain range in Korea and apparently is pretty well-known.  When i told my coworkers that I was going there they said, "Wow!  Seoraksan!  Good!" hah.  So we headed to Seoul on Wednesday morning where we would stay for two nights before the hiking trip.  Full of "Seoul" puns, the trip turned out to be a blast.  I couldn't believe how huge it is.  Seoul is one of the biggest cities in the world with over 12 million people and the 3rd largest subway system in the world which we dominated.  When I say 'we' I mean the other people in the group.  We took a trip to a palace which is located in the city at the base of a mountain built in the year 600 something!  The king of the dynasty during this period lived here and it was destructed when Japan took over but rebuilt later.  We also visited Seoul Tower which is on top of a mountain and overlooks the entire city.  We were not the only ones who had this same idea.  In fact I believe that about 98% of Seoul had the exact same idea.  My allotted 15 seconds of viewing time was pretty incredible as the sun was setting right when we were there.  Earlier that day we walked down the Han River and took a little rest in a park and that night we wandered around the city.  Seoul has amazing shopping and food and I would definitely like to spend about a week there.  I don't think I could live there though.  Everywhere you walked there were about a bazillion other people.  There would definitely be something to do all the time though.  While I was there I met a friend from Willamette, Brett, who has been living in Seoul as a teacher for the past month.  Before we graduated we both talked about meeting up.  It was really nice to see someone from home!

 Juxtaposition of the thousand and a half year old palace and the city.

 The girls

 Girls in traditional dress

 A clothing store called "Teenie Weenie".  The sign says "Fly to your dreams" and "All that bear."  Don't ask me...

 "Soft and deep tastes of flesh chicken."

 Once again cooking our meal.

 Seoul Tower

On Friday morning with an hour and a half of sleep we had to get up to go on the hike.  I was pretty much dying of exhaustion but thank God for the 3-hour bus ride.  I was able to take a little nap before we hiked the mountain.  We get to the mountain with our group of 75 (way too many people) but then i realize that the Korean idea of hiking is pretty different from my own.  Hiking this mountain, which means you literally climb the entire mountain, are thousands of other people doing the same thing.  From babies to 80 year olds, the mountain was drowning in people.  It got really really frustrating having to wait behind a long line of slow people or waiting for the people going the opposite direction to go past.  The hike to the top of the mountain proved to be pretty treacherous as it was super steep and there were so many people.  I was astonished at the way the really old people and young kids could climb this mountain.  Before the recent waves of Christian missionaries Koreans have been predominantly Buddhist because of the history of Chinese domination.  Now Korea is one of the most Christian countries in the world which is kind of sad to me.  Many younger people reject their Buddhist heritage for Christianity but the older people tend to stick to their traditions.  I would guess this is why there are so many older people that religiously hike the mountains.  I've noticed that when I go hiking on my mountain that the majority of the people hiking are probably around 50 or 60 years old.  Mountains are sacred in Buddhism and temples are usually built on or at the base of mountains. One of the most interesting things is that on so many mountains, and in public spaces in general, there is "work out equipment."  Apparently the government places workout equipment in the middle of a mountain where old men in suits can go to "work out."  Right when the get off work they must climb the mountain to work out without changing their clothes.  It's really strange but hilarious because we would view these machines as pretty ridiculous.  To me they seem like playgrounds for grown ups.  The machines don't really work you out to say the least and you will have a good laugh watching someone so seriously 'working out' on these machines in their professional dress.  Anyways hiking wasn't exactly as I imagined it but it was an experience.  On Saturday we went to the beach instead of doing the 11 hour hike and we lounged in the sun and rode mini electric motorcycles.  My favorite part of the 'hiking trip' was ironically the spa.  But this ain't just any ol' spa.  Spas in Korea are very popular and everyone is very naked.  First you go into the 'shower' where you undress and hang out naked in your choice of about 8-10 different tubs.  These tubs are more like mini pools and each is a different temperature.  They have cool and hot pools, saunas and an outdoor hot tub like pool.  The water they use is apparently mineral water that i believe is from a hot spring.  People also go to the shower to, you guessed it, take a shower!  They bring all of their bath stuff and sit in front of mirrors with shower heads and bathe each other.  Yes, they rub each other down from head to tow.  My friends and I were pretty comfortable after a few minutes but we never reached this level so we decided to bathe ourselves.  When you are done in the 'shower' you put on these really stylish shorts/tshirt uniforms and go to the 'spa' area that is integrated with the men.  Here there are about 10 different saunas at different temperatures and even a cold room that is totally iced over.  You can also hang out in the center and lay on the ground to watch TV.  We decided to pay an extra 1,000 won (85 cents) to do the massage chairs.  This was the most intense 10 minutes of massage that I've ever endured.  All in all the 'hiking trip' was fun although we did have a few complaints with Adventure Korea.  We may not be booking another trip through them.

 There are lots of stairs involved in Korean hiking

 The climb was worth the view from the top

 Biggest Buddha i've ever seen

Complaint #1:  No beds in the hotel room.

OK I really must go.  I've started to get sick and I really need to go to bed.  I'll leave you with a few pictures that I took in my 4th grade special class.  I taught a lesson on clothing and took pieces of my own clothes in.  We played a game where they had to put on my clothes.  It was pretty funny.

Stay tuned.  Hugs and Kisses <3

Teacher, what's your blood type?

Well I survived my first week of school!  I arrived to Daegu last Thursday from Jeonju.  Orientation felt like college and when we boarded the buses to go to our different cities I felt a little bit sad.  I made tons of friends that would be with me in Daegu but I also met people who would spend the year in cities all over Korea.  It took us about three hours to get to Daegu and when we arrived our co-teachers were waiting to pick us up.  We were all pretty terrified when we pulled into the parking lot.  One of the most talked about subjects by the lecturers in orientation was 'how to get along with your co-teachers.'  We were pretty much told that if our co-teachers don't like us then it would be a excruciatingly long year in Korea.  The most important thing in an EPIK teacher's school life was to be friends with your co-teacher.  If they invite you somewhere always go.  If they don't want to do something in a lesson that you want to do, don't do it.  Always smile and never complain about Korea.  If you don't want everyone in the school to know something don't tell your co-teacher.  The lecturers made it seem like our co-teachers were going to be old, angry hags that don't speak any English and are so overworked because of us poor, helpless foreigners that can't do anything on our own.  I was pleasantly surprised to meet my co-teacher and an office assistant from my school who had come to pick me up.  My co-teacher is a tiny little woman whose 34 in Korean age, 33 in US age.  She's really cute and about 8 months pregnant.  She has a hard time speaking English and seems pretty embarrassed.  Every time she talks she says the sentence first in Korean and then tries to translate it into English.  We leave the Office of Education and my co-teacher, Ju Young, takes me to my apartment.  I am really excited when I walk in and realize that my apartment looks like a very new building and that no one has ever lived in my specific apartment ever before.  It is very clean and the teachers had decorated the bathroom with Winnie the Pooh decals. Haha.  Here are some pictures of my apartment:

As you can see in the picture of the bathroom, Korean bathrooms don't have bathtubs.  The shower head is connected to the wall of the bathroom and the whole bathroom is your tub.  There are drains in the floor of the bathroom.  I kinda like it because that means I won't have to ever clean my bathroom!  The downfall is that the bathroom floor is wet for a good hour or so after you shower.  I've shown my apartment to multiple people and they all say that my apartment is really clean and better than theirs.  I'm pretty happy about it!  I still need to buy some stuff and figure out the garbage system.  I just have a big pile of garbage and recycling that has been sitting on my floor for a week!

The other day I was sitting in the parking lot of my apartment building and the landlady walks over to me and starts trying to talk to me in Korean.  I don't know what she is trying to say but then she points and grabs my hand.  I pick up all of my banjo stuff thinking that she is kicking me out of the parking lot.  I follow her and we go into the building and pass the first floor (where I live) so i figure maybe she is taking me to her office to sign some papers or something.  We walk up four flights of stairs and then I realize that she is taking me to the roof.  We walk out the door and she leads me to a picnic table with benches and an umbrella.  She shows me that I can play my banjo up here and she shows me how to put up and down the umbrella.  The view from the roof is amazing.  Here is a video:

K. So now I'm going to talk about school.  After my co-teacher shows me my apartment she tells me that we are going to our school to meet the head-teacher, principal and vice principal.  I'm really nervous because I've heard that the principals are usually old, stern men that are very traditional and you need to make a good impression so that they like you and make your life easier.  We head over to the school and I realize that my house is about a 7 minute walk to the school, which is awesome.  I am led into the principals office where he, the vice principal, head teacher and my co-teacher are all sitting.  Throughout the whole meeting I make sure that I have a huge smile on my face and that I'm outgoing and try and make them laugh.  At orientation they told us that Koreans don't like awkward silences and that you should just keep talking all the time.  So that's what I did.  I think the principals really liked me because they were laughing and smiling and asking me questions.  One of my co-teachers told me that since I've been at the school the principals have been a lot nicer haha.  I ask my co-teacher about the school and she tells me that it is very small compared to other schools and that there are only about 320 students.  Many of my friends teach at elementary schools with one to two thousand students!  Because my school is so small I will teach 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes and I will see each class twice a week.  I will also have 4 special classes that will only have about 10 students and I have more freedom to teach whatever I want during these.  Since my contract says that I have to teach 22 forty minute classes I will also have to teach 2 teacher classes a week.  This means that the teachers and principals have to come to my class twice a week after school and I have to give them an English lesson!  This is the part I'm most nervous about!  I have two co-teachers.  One I work with everyday and the other also works at another school and only comes to ours on Wednesdays and Fridays.  My co-teachers tell me that we will each teach 20 minutes of every class and help the other during their 20 minutes if they need it.  With seeing each class twice a week, having special classes and teacher classes I will have to plan 16 lessons a week!  Most of my friends do 4-6 lessons a week and have to teach the same lesson like 6 times a week.  My school is also right at the base of Apsan Mountain and because of this there are Buddhist temples all around.  Here is a picture of my school, Namdok Elementary.

 

(Temple on left, school on right)

As I said earlier, I have 2 co-teachers but so far I have only mentioned one.  My other co-teacher's English name is Emily.  She is also tiny (like the majority of Korean women) and super cute.  She's 38 years old and has 2 kids.  Did I mention that she is freakin awesome?  She speaks English really well and has worked with other foreign teachers before when she worked in a hagwon (private English academy) and she understands everything that we have to do because she has done it all before.  This is how awesome she is:  last Saturday she invited me to go with her family to Woobangland which is the biggest amusement park in Daegu.  Her husband bought us all wristbands so that we could go on any ride and we spent the whole afternoon there riding rollercoasters.  Well, her husband felt bad because no one besides me wanted to go on the rollercoasters so he went on one with me and was terrified and almost threw up!  I felt really bad after that and told him he didn't have to go on any more.  After Woobangland they took us all out to dinner to eat a really yummy fish dish.  The fish was pollock in an amazing spicy chili sauce.  Surrounding the fish was pieces of pig (?) intestines and very large fish eggs.  Sounds interesting right?  It was actually delicious!  I have loved almost every dish that I have eaten here so far.  Our school lunches are amazing!  The other day they served hard boiled quail eggs with pieces of pork in a yummy sauce.  I think I like quail eggs better than chicken eggs!  Anyway, this past week she invited me and a foreign English teacher that works at her other school to the Daegu International Jazz Festival.  It was a very classy evening and I think the tickets were pretty expensive.  I need to figure out a way to
repay her.  Emily is also an amazing teacher.  She is really good with kids and does fun activities to keep the kids interested.  Many of the teachers here strictly teach the textbook (which is not very good to say the least) but she supplements the book with better materials.  I think it will be really fun to teach with her.

Since downtown Daegu is only a 25 minute commute and it is in a very central location we use it as a meeting place.  Daegu has roughly 2.5 million people which is about the same size as Quito, Ecuador but Daegu's downtown is much bigger and way more bustling.  Cars try and stay out of downtown because there is constantly big masses of people walking down the streets.  There are so many restaurants and stores and Daegu is known as the fashion capital of Korea.  The girls here are dressed to the T all the time and all of them wear high heels.  I've heard that Korean women even wear high heels when they go hiking (I'm not even kidding)!  It's pretty hard to look semi appropriate when all the women look so stylish all of the time.  Not to mention they are all really thin and adorable!  To say the least it has been really fun going downtown on the weekends!

Yesterday I met some friends downtown at a local ex-pat restaurant/bar for Sunday brunch.  There aren't many places that serve authentic Western food so there are usually lots of foreigners at the Holy Grill.  It is run by Canadians and features a selection of burgers, Tex-Mex and eggs-and-bacon breakfasts.  After we ate brunch we walked around downtown and a girl we met the night before, Madeline, pointed out this cafe/spa that she had been to previously.  This cafe is particularly special because it has little bath-tubs in the floor filled with tiny minnows.  You pay \6,000 (around 5.50 USD) and you stick your feet in the tub and the little minnows attack your feet with their tiny mouths and eat off the dead skin from your feet.  I can't even explain to you the feeling of 50 minnows nibbling your feet.  It tickled so bad and was such a weird experience it took me about 5 minutes before I could even look in the water.  Lara (a friend) and I were laughing so hard we were crying and we were probably the butt of many Korean jokes since the whole coffee shop was filled with Koreans enjoying coffee and bread.  I'm sure we were being a little disruptive.  So we had to sit with our feet in this minnow infested water for 15 minutes.  To my embarrassment my feet must have had much more dry skin than anyone else because the fish were getting a feast of dead skin from my feet.  There were so many more minnows eating mine than anyone elses.  It was quite an experience!

When we were in orientation many people warned us about the personal questions that Koreans ask you right when they meet you.  They told us that we would definitely be asked our age, if we are married or have a boyfriend and many other questions to determine our status.  Older people have a higher status than younger people and there are different words for everything in Korean depending on if you are using formal language with an older person.  I was introducing myself to one of my classes and a student raises his hand and asks, "Teacher, what's your blood type?"  I laughed and thought this was a pretty funny question coming from a fourth-grader but i answered it anyways.  After the fact I learned that Koreans believe that one's blood type says a lot about their personality.  I don't know what O positives are like...  Anyways, I don't find these questions too personal and I take it as a sort of game where I try to one-up the Korean by asking them even more questions than they ask me.  So it just so happens that I have a very good looking co-worker who is 26 and took me on my first night here to get groceries and eat dinner.  I was pretty curious about his relationship status so about an hour after meeting him I ask him, "Are you married?"  He answers, "No."  "Do you have a girlfriend?"  "Yes."  "How long have you been together?"  "Five years."  "Are you going to get married?"  "Yes."  "How did you meet her?"  No answer.  Either he didn't hear me or I totally won the Korean question game.  So the next day I tell my co-teachers that I think my co-worker is really hot and that I wished he didn't have a girlfriend.  I was also warned in orientation that you should not tell your co-teachers anything that you don't want the whole school to know about because Koreans like to gossip.  I notice a week later that it seems like my hot co-worker is scared of me because he won't talk to me and doesn't look at me when I see him in the cafeteria.  I tell my co-teacher this and she giggles and looks at my other co-teacher.  I ask her what's so funny and I know what she's going to say.  She says, "You remember the first day when you told me you thought he was cute?"  I say yes.  "Well that day I was talking to our co-worker and I told him that you thought he was really cute and you were sad that he had a girlfriend."  I am so embarrassed that she told him that and now he's too scared to talk to me.  Hopefully it's not awkward next time I have to talk to him!


Next weekend me and a few friends are going to Busan, which is on the coast, to see some friends from orientation.  I guess you can see Japan from the beach on clear days.  It should be a lot of fun!

Oh and in many public buildings they use squatter toilets.  There are only squatter toilets in my school and they really scare me.  I don't know how to use them properly and I don't particularly like them at all.  Let's just say I have only gone to the bathroom once at school.

Either my co workers put this little note on the door of my apartment or someone is in love with me and creepily spies on me: