Korea Day 15

I did feel more refreshed today after a good night sleep. I can taste my day off - today is Friday!!

Today was the big speech contest. Tim, a very strong student in my class, won the speech contest for our class. He speaks well and he is confident so I knew he would do a good job representing our class in the contest. The two little classes were very cute with their class cheers. The speeches were quite impressive. They were short but everyone tried really hard. Personally, I thought Tim did the best job but someone else was chosen. My class talked about what they wanted to do when they grow up. Tim wants to be a singer. The winner talked about pollution.

It's laundry time so Joann and I got instructions - all the dials and buttons have Korean instructions!! We have a load in, each floor where we are living has a front loading washing machine. There are drying racks behind the kitchen. Unfortunately, there is no iron so don't criticize too much when I start to look wrinkled.

After laundry, Joann and I will get something to eat, go for a walk and get some fruit for breakfast.

We also have to look into getting a visa for China. I am not sure if I mentioned this but Hailey's boyfriend, Jesse, was here and he is living in Beijing. He told us to get in touch with him and he would take us out one night. It's great to have contacts. Hailey and Jesse are in the photo when it was her birthday.

Well, I'm out of things to say for now and I don't have any new photos uploaded. We have now been here for two weeks. It doesn't seem that long at all.

Just to update, we managed to get two loads of laundry washed and hung to dry. We went to an italian place for pizza. It was good but not like traditional pizza. We were very excited to see arugula on the pizza though. After pizza, we went to a newly opened ice cream place, Cold Plate Creamery. Apparently the Koreans really like ice cream! It was delicious. You pick a flavour of ice cream and a theme (mine was mud pie and coffee ice cream) and they make it for you. They put the ice cream on a frozen slabe of marble (hence the name) and mash it a bit and add all sorts of good things. To mine, they added an oreo cookie, some peanut butter, a bit of whipped cream and some chocolate sauce. They then mush it all together back into a ball and put it in a cup, waffle cone or waffle cup. It was delicious. It was a very popular place as it just opened yesterday. They had staff out in the afternoon trying to entice people into the store. It was full when we went. It was funny because Baskin and Robbins is just down the street so they also had people out front of their store, trying to compete for business!

After the ice cream, we went for a short walk and headed in to sleep.

Korea Day 14

I did not sleep well last night so I was quite tired today. Our classes are preparing short (7 sentences) speeches to present to the class. My class is speaking about what they want to do when they grow up. I have things from a doctor (like their parents) to lawyers and cooks and food stylists. Their speeches are very cute. I am trying to get them to make eye contact and speak loudly. Tomorrow and Saturday, I will have to pick the best speech in the class and then all the classes will go to an auditorium and the class winners will speak. There will be an overall winner chosen by the teachers.

The food here is interesting. The lunch a few days ago looked like meat and rice in a dark brown sauce (gravy). It was actually potatoes and rice with sauce. The meals often consist of mixing carbs. There is often rice and potatoes in the same dish. They also try to do Western food but don't quite get it right. For example, we had spaghetti but it had a sweet and sour sauce. At a restaurant, they served rice with spaghetti on top and rice with pizza on top too. Surprisingly, we did not order either.

There is a shortage of fruit and vegetables served with meals. There is the occasional salad but they use cabbage instead of lettuce. We have learned that we can get fresh fruit quite cheaply from streetside vendors who sell later in the evening. We were wondering why most people are so thin and we think it's that they just don't eat very much!

Here are some shots from today. This is Joann's class in the line for lunch.

Here is my class working diligently??

The electronic dictionaries are very good. These girls are playing a game where a word is given with a few letters missing and they have to fill in the missing letters. When they get stuck, they ask me for the word. I had trouble with the following one:

S U ___ ___ E C T

I thought it was suspect but they told me each letter only occurred once in a word so there was no second s. Do you know the word?? The answer will be at the end of this blog. What a teacher thing to do!!

The big white machine is the air conditioner and everyone likes to stand in front of it to cool off.

This is back to my class.

Here is the lunch line where they get the food. Students are given one main dish and can pick two of the little side dishes on the shelves to the right in this picture. They also get a banana and a yogurt drink. Yogurt drinks are very big here too. Also a lot of coffee is instant coffee with sugar and powdered milk mixed in it. When hot water is added, voila, coffee. I find this too sweet. You can also get real coffee and lattes but they cost about $5 each. There are Starbuck's around too.

This is Jammy (pronounced Jamie) hamming it up for the camera.

Most of our group went to Itaewan to play trivia in a bar tonight. This area is where the US army base is so it is very westernized. I was very tired and I wasn't too excited to do something that I can do at home so I stayed in and did a bit of work and went to bed early (9pm). I slept quite well


The puzzle word is SUBJECT!

Ginger's room

This shot is my bathroom, looking to the right as you go in the door. You can just see the shower head hanging to the left of the mirror.



My bathroom is also long and narrow. This picture is looking to the left as you go in the door.






The desk is on this side. In the far left, you can just see the stairs going up to the 'loft'. I have two chairs, as my room is supposed to be for 2 people. This is great as Joann can come and visit and have a place to sit. I am on the 7th floor and she is on the 5th floor.





I am also lucky with storage as there are shelves above the desk and beside the closet.







This is the sleeping loft. As I mentioned, I can't stand up in it but I can kneel. There is also a sky light up there. It is to the right of this photo.

As I think I mentioned earlier, I scored a nice room. When you look at it though, you must realize that usually there are two students living in it!

My room is long and narrow. When you come in the door, the desk and shelves are to the left. On the right is a closet and the bathroom is behind the closet. At the back of the room, behind the desk, there is a narrow set of stairs leading up to the 'sleeping loft' (as I call it). I can kneel in the room but I can't stand up. This does give me more space.

Joann's room

Here are some pictures of Joann's room. Her room is almost a square. When you come in the door, her desk is to the left with the shelves above it and her bathroom is to the right. Her bed is in behind the bathroom.

Here the bathrooms are quite efficient. They are completely tiled and there is a glass door that seals it off from the rest of the room. The shower head is above the sink and to shower, you close the glass door and turn the water on. The whole bathroom can get wet but it is contained from the rest of the room.

The flat black screen is a TV and, yes, there are about 3 English speaking channels. I must admit that I have not turned mine on yet.

Korea Day 13

Here are some photos of Joann's class today, Wednesday, July 29. There are a few shots of the cafeteria where we eat lunch. With my class, you can see what the food is too. The food in the caf is pretty good.

Here are some picture of my class today. I was showing them photos on my computer. We were studying animal habitats so I was showing them pictures of deserts, rain forests, and tundra. Students have electronic dictionaries but they can be as annoying as phones.

There is also a funny video with my class in it but there was an error when I tried to upload it so I will try again later.

After work, I fell down the stairs leaving the our building at the university. I didn't hurt myself but I was a bit embarressed. As we were walking up the stairs in our residence, I tripped again and my lip hit the step. I think I will have a bit of a fat lip but otherwise I'm fine. I don't know if I'm tired or just becoming more of a klutz than usual.

One of the other teachers heard that you can get a pedicure here by having little fish eat the dead skin off of your feet. It sounds a bit weird but we decided it would be an interesting experience so 6 of us set off to a good place that was recommended by a few of the Korean women that we work with. Apparently, it was a coffee shop/pedicure place called "Dr. Fish". It was disappointing because when we got there, they no longer had the pedicures, it was just a coffee shop. We wandered around the area and did a bit of shopping.

Korea Day 12

Okay, I have to admit today was not a great day. It started out fine but at about 10:30am, I started to feel ill. I think I have a cold coming on and I am overtired. I think I was pretty good with my students but I had a headache and I was feeling lousy.

I think we are all still getting over the jetlag and we are all really tired. It seems that the person in charge is adding work for us on a regular basis. We have to do comments for the kids every day (we were told once a week), we have to do extensive comments (we were told a sentence or two), we have two meetings a day (we were told one a day). I know these things sound like really small things but I think it's the accumulation and the exhaustion speaking.

The day went smoothly at school but we had a 30 minute meeting after classes were over. I came home, took 2 aspirins and went to bed. After a 2 hour nap, I felt much better and things didn't seem as bleak.

Here are some photos of my Tuesday class. They are from the camp photographer as I keep forgetting to take pictures.

Here is a shot of Joann's class. Again, I can identify them when she is in the photo!

Korea Day 11

Today was the start of the second week and things went pretty smoothly at work. I know all of my students' names and I know the daily schedule. There is a fair bit of work each day as we have to write comments for each student, we have to give the homework to our C.C. to put on the report and we have to create a vocabulary list from the lessons. Joann and I are working together most of the time, although we are teaching different books.

Here are a few shots taken by the camp's photographer today. These are, obviously, of Joann's Monday class. There are fewer of her class as I can't yet recognize her students unless she is in the shot with them. I also recognize the blue felt fish that she made to decorate her class. Her class colour is blue!

The remaining class photos are from my Monday class. They are a pretty good bunch. For the picture where I'm bent over looking over some students, they are showing me how their electronic dictionaries will say the words aloud to get the proper pronunciation! I was impressed.

It is amusing here - they try to serve Western food but it doesn't come out quite right. For instance, today at lunch we had spaghetti. It was spaghetti but it had sweet and sour sauce on it.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant that is about 2 minutes from our place. We had a noodle dish and a dumpling dish and shared them. The food was great but the sauce was a bit too spicy for us (even for Joann). I was impressed that I got Joann to eat dumplings. I thought she didn't like them because she was unsure what was inside them. In fact, it the texture of the outside that she doesn't like, when they are steamed or boiled. The dumplings at dinner were deep fried. After dinner, Joann and I went back to Insadong. We are both enamored with this area. It is busy but quaint and interesting for a stroll in the evening. We have walked through our neighbourhood so much that their isn't much left to see here.

We found out the the palace is closed on Mondays but we visited a Buddist temple. It was beautiful. Here is a shot of Joann standing at the gate of the temple.

Here she is standing outside with a prayer wheel.

Here is a Buddha where people make donations to the monks. Joann told my that they live on the generous gifts of other people for their food. There were some bottles of water and a bag of rice as offerings in front of this Buddha.

Here is one of the painted panels about Buddha's life. This is him taking his first steps.

After having a look around, we went into the temple gift shop and bought a few nice items. I bought a ring that is like a prayer circle as the outside part of it can be rotated. I like it!! I also bought the monks a bag of rice! Joann told me the meaning of the white elephant - I think Buddha first appeared as a white elephant but please don't quote me on that. This white elephant has a young Buddha standing on him. Joann cut him out of the photo so I thought that might cause her some bad luck. This statue was not at the temple but a few blocks down the road from it.

Joann has decided that she can have 2 Baskin and Robbins cones each week (such restraint) - she ALWAS gets chocolate mousse ice cream! I had a tiramisu gelato in Insadong and it was delightful.

Well, it's 11:30 pm here and I'm exhausted. I have many more photos to upload but I will leave that for another day. I am off to bed. Good night - I guess it's good morning for you as it is 10:30am there!