Gwangju, my new home.

I got into Gwangju yesterday after a closing ceremony, some words from important people, a lecture about cultural differences, and lunch, I sat on a bus for 4 hours to get to Gwangju from Seoul. Gwangju seems really dirty and not very modern. I don't mind it but it's gonna take some getting used to. There are so many weird things that I need to learn and I want to learn them, but it's so hard considering that the people that are telling about me their practices can not speak English very well and I can't speak Korean. This is going to be a long long year. For instance, they have a very complicated trash system. There are different bags that they get for their trash. Not just any bag you get from the market, a SPECIAL bag. Apparently, they have different bags depending on the city as well. I want to follow the rules, but I don't understand them!! I don't think the people that speak English here (i.e., my co-teacher and the head of English teachers) understand me either. I ask them a question and they just nod their head. I do the same to them, so really, there is no communication going on here.

But anyways, my apartment is very tiny, but it's nice! I love their wallpaper and the heated floors! But I don't like their bathrooms! It's basically one room with everything in it: toilet, sink, and shower. Yes, shower. There is no distinction between where the shower is from the rest of the bathroom. Well, that's because it's ALL IN ONE ROOM! So I could be peeing and washing my hair at the same. How efficient these Korean people are. Even though I got to my apartment yesterday, I did not sleep in my own bed last night. No, there isn't a juicy story here, but I got to sleep in the apartment complex's owner's daughter's room. I really didn't want to; I just wanted to be in my own bed, but I didn't know how to say that in Korean, so I decided to just do it. When am I ever going to get the chance to sleep in a real Korean household? The owner's apartment is SOOOOOOOO nice! Like crazy nice for an apartment! The living room, dining room, the daughter's room, EVERYTHING was nice! There was even a second floor!!! It was so nice. Oh, I forgot to tell you why I slept in her room. The reason why is because there was no heat in my apartment, so they insisted that I slept there because it would be too cold in my own place. I wanted to take a shower before I slept there, but of course, there was no gas, so the water was ICE COLD. Needless to say, I decided to forego the shower. I would've died from frostbite or something serious. haha

So when I got to my apartment, I had no roommates, no working TV, no Internet, no working computer. I was SO alone. I couldn't turn on my computer because I didn't have an adaptor. The TV wasn't working because there wasn't a cable. So what did I do? I started talking to myself while unpacking. Oh how fun that was. Tomorrow, I have to go to the hospital to get a health check. Yeay me!

Annyeonghi kyeseyo Seoul, Annyeong Gwangju

Annyeong everybody!! Yesterday was my last day at the institute and it was bittersweet. Some of the people that I have met during orientation are teaching in other provinces while I will be in Gwangju, but thankfully, I know quite a few people that are gonna be in the same city! I’m very excited and scared at the same time. I’m sure everybody has felt this way at some point in their life. It’s a crazy feeling. I want to be here so badly, but in the same breath, I don’t because of the uncertainties and failures that await me. But yesterday was the last day in Seoul and we had a closing ceremony and some words from some important people and there was also a cultural differences lecture which I found really interesting because that is one of my many interests. I try to keep in mind that they do things different here so I should do as they do, but I just fall back into my American habits. I hope I haven’t offended anyone too badly by handing them something with my left hand or not bowing/now bowing low enough. Who knows what else I have done that was disrespectful? I’ll adapt in time.

The bus ride to Gwangju was about 4 hours long. I have discovered why there is a stereotype that Asian drivers are horrible. IT'S TRUE! Well, at least in South Korea. I wouldn't say this pertains to ALL Asians in America, but to ALL Asians in South Korea, YES. They're horrible! I don't even know why they have lanes if they don't drive in them. I don't know why they have blinkers if they don't signal when changing "lanes". I don't know why they have mirrors if they don't look to see if there are other cars. But I do know why they have horns - to honk at pedestrians to see if they want a taxi; to tell them to get off the road because the light is green and this is when they decide to follow the rules; to honk at other drivers that happen to be driving worse than they are. It's been raining here as well, so that's another factor to play into their horrible driving. Aiyayai. But anyways, the bus ride was good. The bus was half full and the seats could recline all the way. It was also decorated as if we were on the inside of a genie bottle. It was quite festive. I met a few more Gwangju people that I haven't met before and got chatting with them. We have a good group this year. I'm really excited to get to know all of them.

After we arrived in Gwangju, we went to a research institute where all our co-teachers were waiting for us. The Native English Teachers (NET - that's me!) went to the front of the room and said our names and found our co-teachers who were holding our names up. My co-teacher's name is Jo, Bori. I still haven't called her by her name because I can't say it correctly! She's actually my age; she's about 5 months older than me. The head of the English teachers (I think that's her title) was there to meet me as well. We then went to eat at a vegetarian restaurant which was super duper yummalicious! Then we went to Lotte Mart - I think that would be the equivalent of Walmart? in America - to buy some essentials for my apartment. I felt so pressured to buy the more expensive stuff, but I felt like I couldn't say no because they're older and in Korean culture, if you're younger, older is wiser so you can't challenge them. I spent about 180,000 won, so that's about $170. I'm not really sure. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is!!! Anyways, after we finished buying all that stuff, I went back to my apartment all by myself...

Field Trip to Incheon

Today we had a field trip!! We went to Incheon, which is famous for its pottery, and we go to paint some cups. I hope mine turned out ok! I had so many ideas after I turned it in! So sad, but I will post a photo as soon as I receive my cup in a couple days. We also went into a traditional private Korean school (hagwon). That was actually the first thing we did. I'm not doing this in chronological order, but whatever. I write it as it comes to my brain! So at this particular hagwon (not sure if it's the same as others, but I assume it is), they sit on the floor on pillows with a desk/drawer thingy in front of them. I was sitting there for 5 minutes and I grew so uncomfortable. These kids have school from like 8am til 11pm. Imagine sitting in that position for such an extended period of time. I was ready to get outta there! But we went there not to study, but to learn about the traditional bowing they do in Korea. They have tons of different ways to do so depending on who you are bowing to. They get pretty intricate. We had a few volunteers participate in the demonstration and they put on traditional Korean clothing called hangbok, I think. It's beautiful and colorful. I may want to buy one, but I think they're super duper expensive! Not sure, and they're usually worn for weddings, I believe.

Another activity we did was painting. We only had one color, black. so we had to utilize shading, which I am HORRIBLE at! Of course, I stood next to the artist of the group. Her artwork was amazing! But I would hope so considering she went to art school. Someone in the class actually called out my first painting and laughed! "HA! somebody just drew a tree!" I guess we were supposed to paint what the instructor painted, but I thought she was just showing us technique. Boo to her for not making the instructions clear. But I did redeem myself on my second painting. :) It definitely looks a lot better than the first!



We had a traditional Korean lunch at a restaurant today. We have been eating all our meals at the university cafeteria, so this was the first time we had food from a restaurant. The food was amazingly delicious! We had to sit on the ground and my booty was hot. Literally and figuratively. Their floors are warm because they heat their water through underground pipes, which I think it is such an efficient way to keep a home or any other place warm.

So, tonight I tried Korean street food for the first time! A few friends and I were walking down the street looking at the different vendors trying to see which one we wanted to try first. We saw most of the same food but we came across this cute old Korean man making some weird swirly thing on a stick. We definitely gotta get this! So we did. It was a potato that was swirly cut in a contraption that was deep fried for what seemed like an eternity (aka 2 minutes-ish). There were two plates of spices that you could dip the potato on a stick in - one was a cheesy powder and the other was a chili powder. We were smart and dipped it in both and boy oh boy was that thing good! First experience with Korean street food = A+++ We wanna try more and more and more!!!! Maybe tomomorrow!

Seoul Exploration

So last night, I went out to explore the city for the first time. My roommate and I have been cooped up in this institution (educational, not mental) and we thought that night would be the night to get outside of these walls. We had unsuccessfully "tried" to go out the previous night, but we decided to study the Korean alphabet, which proved to be beneficial and successful since I am now literate in Korean!! Though I am a little rusty with the "complicated" vowels, I am SO proud of myself! I can pretty much read any sign around the city but it may take me a wee bit longer than someone more advanced than I. So, my roommate and I finally made it out to wander around. There are a lot of little streets packed with tons of people and neon signs. It's really nice!!! I'll try to post a picture here so y'all can see. But anyhoo, another orientation goer came with us and we ended up at a place called Kool Cat Cafe (I think). I tried Cass beer, which was pretty light but not too bad. Then some other foreigners came and of course, they were seated next to us and we all became friends!!! It was a great first night out on the town. I hope for a few more before orientation ends and I leave Seoul!

En route to Korea & First day of Orientation

I got to the airport yesterday about 2 hours before my flight. I was a little bit sad on the inside on the way there, but I held back my tears. “It will be a great experience,” I told myself. Once I got to the airport and was waiting in line to check in, a lot of emotions were running through my brain. “I’m gonna be gone for a whole entire year. That’s a long time. I’m gonna miss my mommy! I don’t speak Korean! What am I doing????” Since I had such ample to think of these ominous things, I lost it – I started to cry. The people in line were staring at me like, why is this girl crying suddenly? out of nowhere! I told myself to breathe and just to calm down. Everything will be fine. I needed someone to console me, so I called one of my best buds. She helped tons!!



I arrived in Seoul yesterday about a half hour before expected, which was nice. I had a nonstop 12-hour flight from LAX and it was the worst flight I’ve ever experienced. I sat near the back; there were about 2 or 3 more rows behind me. My row only had two seats, so I had a lot of space between me and the window. I don’t even know why it was so bad, but I had a headache, my stomach was queasy, and I wanted to throw up. The guy sitting next to me actually DID throw up. It was his first time doing that on a flight. Speaking of the guy sitting next to me, he was AWESOME. He has such an amazing life story; he was very fascinating and easy to talk to. He was en route to Cambodia and I asked him why he was heading there. He said his girlfriend lives there and I poked and prodded about their relationship-how they met, etc. It turns out that he was going there to get married because his parents had arranged his marriage! This guy is 22 years old and on I believe on his 21st birthday, he and his family went on vacation to Cambodia. Upon their arrival at the airport there was a girl waiting for them and this new friend of mine asked his parents, “Who’s that?” and they said, “Don’t you know her?” and he said, “No, should I? Is that my cousin?” Nope, sorry, buddy, this is your fiancé! He already had a girlfriend too. Poor guy had to break up with her. Such a sad sad story. But he said he’s starting to kinda like her a little bit. It’s crazy though. He was saying to me, “We’re both doing life changing things.”, “I can’t believe I’m coming here single and leaving married.”, “There’s no turning back now.” I felt so bad for him, but I have a good feeling that it’ll work out for him. He has such a kind heart, but it wasn’t always that way. He has a tattoo on his forearm and I asked him what it means and he told me that it wasn’t something he wasn’t proud of and that it stood for the gang that he used to be in. He told me that he was up there in the hierarchy but not quite an OG. He joined the gang when he was 12 years and got out when he was 20. He did a lot of “work” for the gang, but I won’t go into the details. He decided to leave the gang after doing about 4 years total in juvi and state penitentiary. He wanted to turn his life around and from what he has told me, he is definitely on the right track. I got a really good vibe from him and he seemed like a really genuine person. But anyways, he was definitely a great neighbor to be sitting next to. I always sit next to old people, boring people, crying babies, or unfriendly people. It was nice to sit next to someone my own age.

After the flight, I proceeded to gather my two suitcases to add to my duffel bag and “personal item” aka purse/laptop bag. Then I went to find out where I could get a bus ticket. I asked just about everybody on the way out of the airport. I got outside and the cold didn’t feel so bad. Then after about 1.5 seconds, I was FREEZING so I had to put on my puffy jacket. Thank goodness I had it! I instantly warmed up! I bought my bus ticket (my first Korean purchase!) for 9000 KRW. Then I got on the bus and sat next to some guy who smelled of cigarettes. I was happy he got off after several stops. Then he knocked on the bus to get back in for some reason. Soon enough, I found out why. He got back on the bus to yell at some girl in the back of the bus for breaking his suitcase (or something?). “Be careful! TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE! It’s broken now! Be careful!” I had come to Korea reading about how nice Korean people are, and this guy did not seem nice at all. ANYWAYS, I got off the bus and it was FREEEEEEEEEZING, more than when I was at the airport 1.5 hours ago. I proceeded to hail a taxi, but NONE of them would stop for me! I did not want to wait anymore because it was soo cold so I decided to walk. Obviously I walked in the wrong direction so I decided to go back to where I got off the bus and ask this nice looking Korean man. I showed him the Korean words of where I was going and I asked “How do you get a taxi? They won’t stop for me!” This guy didn’t speak much Korean, but I guess he understood “taxi” so he steps out onto the street and just sticks his hand out and a taxi almost immediately stops for him. What the heezy!? I tried that for like 5 minutes and NOTHING. This guy does it for 5 seconds and poof! a taxi halts. Then he told the taxi driver where I was going and helped me put my heavy suitcases into the back seat. This fellow was quite helpful. Kamsahamnida, mister. The taxi driver was also very nice and his English was really good! He had actually spent about 7 months in North Carolina working. He drove kinda slow and he took me down a one-way alley, going the wrong way, but I arrived safely at the university dorm, so I didn’t care. I checked in and even got gifts! EPIK (English Program in Korea) must be super rich or something because they gave us EPIK clocks, EPIK towels, multi-colored EPIK pen, a sandwich, a water bottle with some Korean guy on it, an orientation booklet, and an EPIK sweater. I’m sure they spent billions of won on this stuff. So crazy how well they’re taking care of us. They seriously feed us every 5 seconds, or so it feels like it. We, of course, have 3 meals a day and then out of nowhere, they’ll have snacks and drinks for us (e.g., after we get out of class at 9pm). It’s great!

I’m sharing a room with an awesome girl named Shirlen. Isn’t that a pretty name? She’s from TEXAS. When she told me that, I thought to myself, oh no. A Texan. But shortly thereafter, she clarified that she is not a republican. Needless to say, I took a sigh of relief. She is very talkative, social, nice, and friendly. I’ve met a lot of other people too, from all over the world—South Africa, Australia, Ireland, and of course America. Talking to some of these people makes me feel really uncultured. They seem know so much about a lot of places and have traveled way more than I have and have lived in countries I’ve never been to. That being said, I also think I’m the youngest person here. There may be other 23 year olds, but I haven’t met any. The youngest I’ve met so far is 24. Not that much older than me, but still older. But talking to these people reminds me why I’m here- to have this amazing experience living in another country, learning a new culture, a new language, and to improve the English abilities of Korean kids. I have to remind myself of that everyday because it is fairly overwhelming to be here, but I know I won’t regret this in the end.

Anywho, I just finished my first full day of orientation. We first had an opening ceremony which started off with a high school sulmoni “band”. Not sure if band is the right word, but it’s a group of these boys who play percussion instruments: drums, gongs, etc. It was AMAZING! I wish I brought my camera to the orientation! I’ll try to find someone with video or a photo or something, but they played with so much energy and passion. it was so great to watch. They were rocking out on those drums! They were shaking their little Korean heads like crazy. I loved it. Then there were some speakers. One notable one was Hyunwoo Sun. He’s a Korean who speaks impeccable English, of course with a little bit of an accent. He taught himself how to speak English. How amazing is that? That is one smart guy. I was pretty inspired. He talked about Korean history and culture. Some things he spoke about were why Koreans hate the Japanese, and why Koreans are interested in whether or not you’ve eaten and how old you are. It was nice to hear what he knows about his culture, which is quite a lot!

After that, I opened up a Korean bank account! Can’t wait to fill that baby up with some won! It was a fairly easy process, but the lady helping us with the application was saying that it’s very confusing and even she doesn’t understand the form. Even when she was explaining it, the examples didn’t match what she was saying, but overall it was easy. Just print your name (last name, first name) and sign. There’s practically no room for me to write my name and sign, but she assured us that we could just write over the Korean characters. It was weird. I didn’t understand a thing. for all I knew, I could’ve been signing my life over to North Korea. We filled out our forms and they collected them to give to the bank for us. See? Easy process. I don’t even have to go to the bank to get an account. They do it all for us.

Then there was a lecture on classroom management and how to dole out punishments and how to keep control of a classroom. There was one section on “Techniques that don’t work”. I am definitely guilty of some of those techniques, such as "Don't smile on the first day. Be stern first and then have fun later." I hope I can be a good teacher!

At the end of the day, we had Korean lessons! this was the highlight of my day. Obviously, I’m in the beginner course, so we were learning the Korean alphabet. It’s so confusing and things sound the same with a very slight difference. I hear the difference but I can’t retain the difference. I think I have most of it down though. We’ve learned most of the alphabet and tomorrow, we have a quiz. eek! we even had homework tonight too. Just a few pages. I haven’t had homework in a looong time. I even studied a little bit! But just after a couple hours of lessons, I can already read some Korean! It’s very exciting!

The Big Day's Eve

it’s 1131pm right now and it’s starting to creep into my system that I’m leaving TOMORROW. in a little over 13 hours I’ll be on a plane en route to Seoul, South Korea. Oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into? I have a headache from doing VERY last minute things. I have butterflies in stomach and I feel like I’m gonna throw up. Literally. I have a frog in my throat just wanting to come out. Ribbit ribbit. Bud. Weis. Er. Maybe that’s what I need – a beer to calm my nerves. I seriously still cannot believe I am leaving. Wow.

The next time I blog will probably be from a cyber café or from my own apartment in Gwangju..we shall see. Korea awaits me!

Unbelievable

Visa: check. Airfare: check. Guidebooks: check. Going away dinner: check. Luggage: half-check. It still hasn't hit me that I'm moving to Korea for a year. It has been almost 6 months since I first applied to teach abroad. You'd think it would've hit me by now! I leave in just a measly 3 days and it still hasn't settled into my brain that I'm moving to a foreign land 9,500+ km (I should get used to the metric system now) away from familiarity. Not just visiting, MOVING. For a YEAR! It is just simply unbelievable. I don't know ANYTHING about Korea. Well, I've learned a few things in the past couple weeks, but other than that, it's a complete mystery to me, and that is part of its appeal, I suppose. But it is also making me feel uneasy and maybe even second guessing myself. I don't know what to expect while in Korea. Am I making the right decision? Will I like it? Will the people like me? Will I make friends? How will I be as a teacher? How am I going to survive in a land where I don't speak the language? Will I pick up the language? If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that this is going to be one heck of an adventure. Not completely sure if I'm ready for this, but I have to go for it and give it all I've got. First stop is Seoul for orientation! Wish me luck!

P.S. Thanks to everyone who made it to my farewell dinner! It really meant A LOT to me, even if you only stayed for 15 minutes! It really made my night, and hopefully the rest of my year too! I love you guys!! :)