Read From the Beginning
Yesterday I completed my last day of vacation school, at least vacation school at my school. We had a good final class yesterday. I'd been having them write every morning about various topics and for our final class I had them compare and contrast American high schools to Korean ones. This wasn't an entirely fair question since they were basing their ideas of American high schools on High School Musical and Step Up, the two movies we watched in class. But all the students seemed to be in agreement that they would prefer to go to school in America because the students have more freedom. They don't have to wear uniforms, and they have free time to do things besides study. Several students wrote woeful tales of studying all day and night so they could go to college. One girl expressed the one difficulty of going to school in America to be that she didn't have enough clothes. The other day we had a debate about whether or not Korea was the best place to live. After a thrilling debate by my divided class I gave them a few minutes to come up with the best reason to defend their side. The Pro side Korea was the best place to live becauuse their ancestors had died for the country. The Con side said that students in Korea don't have any free time because when school is over they have to go to the academy and study all night. In any case, there seems to be some resentment amongst the students about all the studying they have to do. And I don't blame them. It just encourages me to spend all my class time doing fun things, since they seem to have the boring things covered.
We had a scavenger hunt around the school as our last activity, which seemed to be a big hit despite the fact that it was rather chaotic and several of the clues mysteriously went missing. They had no idea what to do because I guess they don't have scavenger hunts in Korea. And instead of following the clues, several groups would see a clue and grab it. Then they would show up at my desk claiming to be done. So I would ask how many clues they had. "We have three clues!" "Well," I would say, "You are supposed to have 14, so go look again." But everyone had a fun time running around and then we had pizza, so the day was a success.
Next week we have another English camp that includes all the best English students in Gunsan. Jordan and I will be teaching an elementary class together. Since we've never taught elementary students before and don't know what ages these kids will be, it should be an interesting time.
This week we had a little change of pace with our English camp. We worked with the 60 best English speaking fifth graders of Gunsan. The kids' English was quite spectacular, they were well behaved and younger than we are used to working with, so it was a fun experience. There were twenty kids to a class with two native English speakers and one Korean teacher, so even if they had wanted to misbehave, they wouldn't have gotten far. Jordan and I were able to work together, and since the Korean teacher we worked with was uber-prepared, We didn't have to do much but read sentences for the kids to practice their pronunciation and listening skills. We did have some time to teach them Heads Up, Seven Up, which was a huge hit, depsite Jordan's doubt that it was a fun game. In fact once we taught them the game, they never wanted to do anything else. Heads Up, Seven Up is apparently a universally loved game by fifth graders. I've never played with my middle schoolers because I figured they would cheat, but the fifth graders are young enough to do what they're told. And they never ceased to be surprised by who put their thumb down. Jordan and I even played a few games, and I must admit that it's still as fun now as when I was in fifth grade.
We also got to have some good bonding time with the other native English speakers since they were also working at the camp. Jordan now has a virtual golf date with some of the guys who apparently play every week and I met a woman who scrapbooks. So we are planning to have a scrapbook party soon, probably when the men are out golfing.
There were two highlights of the camp. The first was when we discovered that the school was right across the street from our apartment. The first day we got into a taxi and showed him the name of the place we wanted to go, and after much gesturing we discovered that the school was back around the corner. So we had a pleasant 5 minute walk to school each morning which was extra nice because there was lots of snow and the roads were icy. The second highlight was that we got free lunch everyday at the nearby Italian restaurant. If only everyday could be a pleasant half day with the smart students and free lunch...
Heads Up, Seven Up from Chasing Donguri on Vimeo.
When the weather's cold, and the heat can only make you so warm, it's time to hibernate cocoon style.
Jordan Adds: When Marisa says that the "weather's cold" she means that our apartment temperature has dropped below 70 degrees F. The coldest our apartment ever gets--and this is without heating, mind you--is 65 degrees.
We were invited Saturday, along with others from the Haven (our church), to a party at the Air Base, which turned out to be a day full of fun. We got a bit of a tour to start off, and learned some fun facts: the airbase is approximately 2000 acres in size, is home to around 2500 air force personnel (approx. one tenth of those being pilots), and maintains two squadrons of F-16 fighter jets (do the math and you discover that it takes approximately 40-50 people to support one fighter). The base was originally built in 1938 by the occupying Japanese forces; it was used by the United States from 1945 onwards.
The various amenities available on the base include a very large gym facility, a golf course, various fast-food restaurants (including Taco Bell and Burger King, which don't exist anywhere else in Gunsan), and the expected commissary, etc. The base is not considered to be "full fledged" because it lacks things like its own hospital, schools, etc. and so families are not allowed to accompany personell asigned here; consequently most (all, as far as I can tell) people are in and out in a year.
Anyway, after the tour we had lunch in the "Chief's Den" and played some Pit (with a WOW music video playing the background). Marisa and I were also tied together with rope and made to figure out how to untangle ourselves... we were uncessuful, but managed to amuse everyone nontheless (or perhaps consequently).
After our lunch settled we headed over to the very nice gym, and played wallyball (essentially volleyball in a squash court where you're allowed to hit the ball off the walls). We had enough people for four three-on-three teams, and had a real blast playing (it felt great to be physically exhausted for perhaps the first time since coming to Korea). One guy on my team named Tony (a police officer in Miami who chose to take a year off duty to teach in Korea) had been a volleyball setter for several years in college and grad school.
After everyone was spent we got to go up in the air base control tower before heading home on the 6:20 bus (which stops directly outside of the air base). We're hoping to have more wallyball action soon.
Monday morning we left bright and early for the "2009 Winter Guest English Teacher Teaching Improvement Workshop." This means that all the foreign teachers in our province met at a youth hostel for a two day workshop about teaching English in Korean public schools. It was, to say the least, intense. A more accurate description would involve me pulling out my hair and the hair of the person next to me out of boredom that led to madness. The schedule went something like this: We woke up at 7:30 and left for the local bus station to catch a bus to Jeonju (the capital, about an hour away). Despite the fact that we have gone to this bus station many times, it's always a bit of a miracle when we convince the taxi drivers to take us their because despite the fact that the word 'bus' is the same in English and Korean, they can never understand where we want to go. However, we persevered and arrived in time to catch the bus to Jeonju. After the hour long bus ride and a short taxi ride to the Department of Education we got on another bus for an hour and a half ride to the beach and youth hostel where the group was staying. We later found out that this trip was rather redundant since we drove most of the way back to Gunsan and then further south down the coast.
We arrived at the hostel around 12:30 and received our room assignments. I stayed with Carol, a woman from Gunsan who we met through Winter Camp, and another woman from somewhere else who is originally from England. Carol is from New Zealand, so our room had a good representation of the English speaking countries of the world. The hostel was very nice, I would hardly consider it to be a hostel, although it was Korean style, so we slept on the floor with blankets. We were surprised that they didn't even have mats (I believe most Koreans who do sleep on the floor normally have mats of some sort), just thick blankets. It was still pretty comfortable, although at one point in the night I got rather hot since they had the floor heat turned up pretty high.
After we got settled, we had an exciting lunch of fish soup (when you're on the coast, you eat seafood, for dinner we had octopus) and then the excitement began. We started with a two hour lecture by a man from a Korean University and continued for the rest of the day (until 10:30pm) with two hour, or slightly shorter lectures. By the end of the first lecture I was ready to go to bed, by the end of the evening I was ready to pull out my hair. The next morning when we had another three hours of lectures I almost slipped into the realm of craziness from which there is no return. There were some good moments, but they were few and far between and could have filled maybe about two hours, instead of the 12 hours that we had to sit through. By the time we left the hostel everyone was in a sleep-deprived, zombie-like haze.
After the lectures they bused us to a nearby temple for some sightseeing. It was nice to get out and have a walk in the pine trees and remind yourself that there is life beyond the lecture room. We left early since our friend Matt drove to the workshop and offered to give us a ride home. The trip home took about an hour, as opposed to the three hour trip we had getting there.
Today we are still recovering from the two day madness, and we have to keep reminding ourselves that we were only gone for one night, as it feels like we were gone for years. Tonight we are looking forward to some social time. Jordan was invited to go golfing, and since apparently girls aren't allowed in this club, I invited Carol over for a little scrapbooking. Tomorrow we are very excited to leave for a longish trip to Seoul, to shop, eat food not from Korea (do I see hamburgers? is that Mexican food over there?!!!!) and do some sightseeing. The Lunar New Year (a big holiday in Korea) starts on Sunday and lasts for three days, the year of the Ox is upon us, so perhaps we will witness some festivities. Apparently you should start the new year with new clothes, so that will be our first stop. Our hostel has internet, so you can expect to hear from us while we're there.
For more pictures see our album.
Here is video proof of the madness we experienced.
Our first minutes in Seoul started propitiously. After dropping our bags at the hostel and making our way out to the corner of the street to begin our exploring, we ran into a neighbor from Gunsan. She works at the BBQ chicken restaurant that's around the corner from our house, which we frequent often, much to the enjoyment of the family who owns the place. She was out looking for apartments with her younger sister who will soon be attending university in Seoul. The probability of us running into her on a street corner in Seoul is quite enormous so we looked on it as a good luck charm for our trip.
Our trip revolved mostly around eating food. And I won't lie and tell you that we were sampling the many varieties of Korean food that line the streets of Seoul. Nope. We ate as much American food as we could find and savored every minute. We went to Subway, and TGIFridays, and Outback Steakhouse and found some Mexican food. It was all incredibly tasty, and the hamburger I had at TGIFridays was probably the best I had every had. It was also about the size of my head, but I ate it all. I will dream about it in my kimchi filled days to come. It is incredibly nice to be able to have a quick trip to Seoul to enjoy all this. I remember when we lived in Bolivia and used to spend months dreaming about the food we would eat when we got back to the States.
We also had an adventure buying our Wii at the electronics market. The Yongsan Electronics Market is the largest electronics market in the world. You can find anything you might possibly want. We wanted a Korean Wii (Korean Wiis are cheaper than American ones) that had been modified so that we could play American games. This is of course illegal, and would have been a lot of work to make if we were living elsewhere. But this is no problem here. There was a huge row of guys selling Wiis, all of which could come modified if you so desired. We ended up with a modified Japanese Wii, which was considerably cheaper than any of the other Wiis we looked at. Jordan can tell you all about the good deal we got, all I know is that now we are the proud owners of a really cool Wii.
We toured various Museums around the city, including the National Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Prison Museum. The latter tells the story of prison life during the Japanese Occupation. It was very grim and disturbing with the scenes of torture that were modeled and tours of the actual jail cells. The Museum of Contemporary Art was more amusing, mostly because we had a slightly crazy time trying to find it. We ended up riding an Elephant Cart in freezing snowy weather around in circles for a while before we managed to find the place.
We also took a trip up to Seoul Tower, which is the tallest point in Seoul and from which you can gaze on the beauty of the huge city. We rode the cable car up about an hour before sunset so that we could experience Seoul by day and by night. The day was a little cloudy, so it didn't make for the best view, but we were trying to sieze the moment as the weather forecast was pretty grim about sunlight.
We spent most of our time inside at Museums and shopping malls because the weather was absolutely frigid, perhaps the coldest weekend we have had in Korea so far. We tried to see one of the large palaces in the city, but the freezing wind ended our trip short.
We our glad to be back in our "Sweet Home" (as it is called by Jordan's co-teacher). Our Wii is hooked up, and I'm just waiting for Jordan to get out of the shower so we can give it a spin.
We have more photos in our album.
Today marks the first sandal wearing day of the year. It's currently 54 degrees. Toasty!
If you want more of our experience in Seoul, check out this video. It's long, but has many exciting parts, like when I film in the electronics market which is apparently illegal and when we get stuck on the elephant cart in the snow. Special memories.