Korea Day 7

Today again, we are repeating the lessons from yesterday so things went quite smoothly. The students are very cute although they are not as quiet and 'fragile' as we had been led to believe! Joann did have a student who was taken to the hospital on the first day because he was so upset as he was left waiting for the bus for 45 minutes (a mix-up by the bus driver). Korea has a medical system where people pay for medical services but parents are still very quick to take their children to the hospital. People here also wear bandaids on any wound, often about 4 inches by 4 inches! I have also never seen so many bandaids on people's faces.

The rain here seems to come out of nowhere, pours for a short while and then it's gone. Unfortunately, it arrived as we were leaving work to go home!! Joann and I had both left our umbrellas at home.

Joann and I went to a neighbourhood called Insadong. It is supposed to be one of the traditional areas left in Seoul. The area sounded very interesting with a temple and a palace to see. When we arrived, we wandered around and then tried to find a place to eat. We finally found a place where Joann would eat (she won't eat mystery meat) and had Spicy Chili chicken. It was similar to last night's meal but it was served with kimchi and some raw cabbage. It was very tasty and, again, we had some Cass.

By this time, it was too late to visit the temple or palace so we wandered around. The streets were more narrow here and the area was quite interesting. There were tons of street vendors with little booths set up and some very interesting stores. We saw an older gentleman painting fans so I took his picture. We have some photos of this night for you to see. Unfortunately, the night scenes do not come out well but the streets look like Time Square or Vegas with all the lights.

It was amusing, we ran into one of the other teachers on the subway - this made us feel like Seoul natives!

Korea Day 6

Today we had our first western breakfast in our kitchen. The kitchen is quite large and bright.

We started over with the class from Monday so it was more hectic than yesterday. The day seemed to go well. There is a photographer, Mr. Salmon, who comes around to classes and takes photos and videos to upload to the camp's website. It is a bit distracting but I understand why it is necessary. I might try to post the link but I will have to give directions as the website is in Korean.

Joann and I had an early dinner. We went to a place just up the street from our accommodations. It smelled delicious each time we passed it. We had what is called 'seasoned chicken'. This is chicken in a sauce, like BBQ sauce, but spicier. Again, it came with a few potato wedges and we ordered some rice to go with it. We had a beer, we've determined that Cass is the best of a bad lot of Korean beer.

We had a little walk, Joann had ice cream (Baskin and Robbins), we did a bit of school work and had our first early night.

Korea Day 5

Today is a repeat of yesterday with a new class of students. As a result, things went quite smoothly. We had breakfast at the university cafeteria. They really do eat rice for breakfast! I had a small bowl of rice and beans and a banana.

We had dumplings for dinner and they were delicious. Joann didn't come for dinner with us - she's scared of dumplings!! We are finding that the Korean diet is mainly rice, noodles and meat. We are all craving vegetables and fruit. We do get a banana each day with lunch.

After dinner we went to Lotte Mart (a big store with some clothes and household items and food - a bit like a Korean Walmart). We got some fruit, yogurt, bread, juice and jam so we can have western breakfasts. The place where we are staying has a kitchen on the 7th floor - conveniently on the same floor as my room!

Korea Day 4 (first day of classes)

For the first day of classes we had to wear our camp t-shirts. They are white and very plain. We also could not wear shorts and had to have closed in shoes. Apparently this is more socially accepted here.

We were assigned locations from which to great the students. Joann and I were in the auditorium helping the students find their seats. It was fun to say hi to everyone and hear their English names. Everyone here has a Korean name that is given to them and they choose an English name for English classes. It is cute as they choose names that they have heard but do not know how to spell so I have a Sindy and a Jammy (he pronounces it as Jamie).

The teachers did their little intro to the class, we had class photos taken and we took our students to class. There was an altered schedule due to the morning welcoming so the morning went by quickly. Here are photos of one of my classes and one of Joann's.

We take the students to a university cafeteria for lunch and the food has been quite good. The six daily classes are listed below:

1. We start the day with "Diary Masters". Students are given a topic to write about each day as part of their homework. We give them a little activity to do while we correct the diaries. I then have a few students read their diaries for that day.

2. The second class is Intensive ESL where we read and answer questions and learn new vocabulary. There are sections in the book with topics like Lizards, parts of speech and we do one topic each day.

3. Reading circle is the third class of the day. We read a book with our class and go over new words. We have a CD of the book so we can play it and then discuss the book. My book is a really condensed and modernized (in language) version of "The Merchant of Venice" and Joann has a similarly condensed version of "Treasure Island".

4. We have lunch at 12:30, after these three classes. As I said earlier, the food is good. Sadly, we kept the students outside for a bit after lunch to let them run around (they range in age from about 7 - 14) and play a bit. The Korean leaders at the camp told us that parents pay a lot of money to send their children to English camp and want them learning, not playing. It is also interesting that Korean children are 1 year old at birth so they are (by numerical value) a year older than children from Canada.

The afternoon is called 'Western School' where we are to simulate classes in a Western school.

5. Western School 1 - Wteach a lesson and do questions with the students. Some topics are math literacy, money sense, animal habitats, and the human body.

6. Western School 2 - We teach what skills are needed to give a good speech, we listen to famous speeches (Martin Luther King Jr. - I have a Dream, for example) and teach students how to speak appropriately when giving a speech.

7. Western School 3 - We teach debating skills from choosing a side of a topic to giving a rebuttal for an oponent's comments. On the last day of camp, the parents will come in and watch our class' debate so it needs to be good.

At the end of the day, we got our first allotment of money for meals and we were on our own for dinner. Molly, arrived two weeks before the camp started so she knew some good restaurants. We went for Vietnamese food. It was delicious. It is interesting here, space is at such a premium that buildings are tall and narrow. As a result, a restaurant can be on any floor. This restaurant was on the second floor and I don't think I would have noticed it if we were not taken there!

Joann and I are trying to walk a bit each day so we went for a little walk around our neighbourhood before returning home for the night.

Korea Day 3

This was the second day of orientation. We went over more rules and regulations. We had our photos taken for name tags and were told that we needed some kind of song or cheer to introduce ourselves to our classes. We were also told that we also needed to decorate our classrooms and the hall outside the classroom. We were given some felt, a few stickers and tape. My stickers were fish, octopus and starfish. I used the theme "under the sea" and drew other animals to decorate the room. I also made a yellow submarine because my class's colour is yellow. For my song, I changed the words to "Under the Sea".

During lunch we went for a walk around the campus of Korea University. It is quite beautiful with nice buildings and lots of greenery. Here are a few photos.

We went for dinner as a group with the camp leaders. We had the worst meal so far. It was also a place where you cook your own food. One platter was seafood and the other was fake meat and packaged noodles. You can judge for yourselves from the following photos!

After dinner, a bunch of us went to Techno Mart (I think the name says it all, Joann and I wanted USB sticks to be able to easily give files to our C.C.'s) Unfortunately, it was closed when we arrived so we popped in the local Lotte World (grocery/housewares store) and bought a few things for our rooms.

When we got back to our place, Joann, Erin (another teacher here with us) worked until Midnight trying to get our lessons ready for Monday.

Korea Day 2

It's now Saturday morning and we went for breakfast with our leader from Camp Korea. We went to an American style coffee place (like Starbuck's) and had coffee and a bagel. We had orientation day 1 at Korea University where we sat in a classroom and learned half of what we needed to know to teach. There are 10 of us who are teaching together at Korea University.

We teach 5 classes each day, two in the morning before lunch and three in the afternoon. In the morning we teach 'intensive ESL' where we introduce new vocabulary and practise reading, talking, and writing in English. The second class is reading circle where we all get a copy of a book and read together. I am not sure what we will be reading as we will get the books in a few days. During lunch, we take the students to the caf and we all get the same meal. We get a few minutes to play outside before returning to work. Apparently, Korean parents do not send their children to camp to play, they want only work to be done. In the afternoon, we have three classes of 'western school', which is supposed to be like a typical classroom in Canada. The third class is also vocabulary and practising English skills. The fourth class is improving the students abilities to speak in front of a group. The last class is working on debates. On the last class, the parents will come in and we will run a debate in our class. We arrive at work at 8:40am and the first class starts at 9:30. Classes are 50 minutes long with a 10 minute break at the end. We get to leave the class at break time and have a washroom break or a rest. Each class has a camp counselor who watches students during the breaks, helps at lunch and gets the students on the buses at the end of the day. My C.C. is Ashley and she is very sweet and hard working. During classes, she gets materials organized and helps with office work. We both write a small report (1 or 2 sentences) for each student at the end of the day. This goes home to the parents each night. Each class has 12 students.

At the end of orientation day 1, we had to move to our new accommodations. They are much nicer than the first night accommodations! We have our own bathroom, desk, closet, shelves and bed. The bed is a full single bed, the bed the first night was about one-half of a regular single bed. Koreans also seem to like really hard mattresses. After settling in, we met for dinner. We had Korean BBQ which I had never had before. It was delicious. You sit at a table with an element, like a coleman stove in it and they put a grill on this and bring you meat, onions, and garlic to cook. You throw it all on the grill and cook it. Above the grill, there is a vent to suck up the smoke and some of the heat. You get lettuce, onions in sauce, pickled white radishes and sauces to go with it. There is also kimchi, which consists of little side dishes which are served at the table and shared by everyone. An example is different vegetables like cabbage or bok choi in red chili sauce. This is the kick that goes with the meal. It is served on almost anything. Koreans enjoy very spicy food! You can see the grils and the stainless steel vents in the following pictures

After dinner we went to a nice little bar and had beer. The beer is quite light here but it is pretty cheap. Korean beer, that is, foreign beer is quite expensive ($6 - 12). It was great fun as they brought us a mini-keg (I called it an urn) with glasses. This cost about $15 and gave us each 2 small glasses of beer (there were about 10 of us). We shared about 4 of these. Joann seemed to quite like the beer - she had more than I have ever seen her drink. I think it was because our boss, David (Irish - pouring beer in this photo) teased her about nursing her first beer!

Arrival in Korea

Hello there. The trip to Seoul went quite smoothly. Korean Airlines was great - great service, nice clean plane... I liked the uniforms too!

I ate 2 meals, watched 2 movies and even slept for a few hours! The time change is quite interesting. We left Toronto at 11:50pm on Wednesday, July 15 and arrived here 13 hours later. The time in Seoul when we landed was 2:00am on Friday, July 17!

At the airport, we were checked for swine flu - they have little devices that they press to your skin behind the ear to check your temperature. I was fine - Korea doesn't want any one bringing in the swine flu!

We were met at the airline and brought to our accommodations. Unfortunately, we had to stay in one place for this first night and were moved to our permanent accommodations on Saturday night.

The accommodations for the first night were clean, neat, efficient but tiny. The room was 2m by 2m. I will upload photos of the room soon. We arrived at these rooms at about 5am - the airport is about 1.5 hours outside of Seoul. We were given a blanket and a pillow (very small) and had a free day. Our group leader said that we could meet for breakfast at 6am and lunch at noon and dinner at 6pm. We went for breakfast - sadly we ate at McDonalds as the Korean restaurants were not yet open. I'm sure you're curious - an egg mcmuffin tastes the same here!! Our group decided not to meet for lunch. I am including a few photos of our rooms. If you look closely at the photo of Joann, you can see both back corners of her room. Also note the width of the bed!

Joann and I slept for a few hours and then took the subway to a place that Estelle had talked about from her trip to Korea a few years ago, Cheonggyecheon. It is a small stream that flowed through the downtown area of Seoul. It had been hidden beneath a truck bypass for decades. In 2003, it was uncovered and walking paths were opened. It is below the city level and has nice trees and plants along the water. It is 11km long so we had an ice cream and went for a long walk. It felt great after the long flight and the tiny rooms where we slept! Here are a few photos that I found on the internet to show you how nice it was!

We visited a few markets - big spaces where vendors have spots to sell their wares. There were many (30-40) vendors all in the same area selling the same items! There were hats, shirts, ties, suit jackets, vests galore!! Most items were quite shiny, glitzy and not appealing. The Korean population, though, dresses very well - we didn't find the stores where they shop!!

It was funny when we first got on the subway, the weather was hot, overcast and very humid. I noticed that everyone was carrying an umbrella! This did not bode well...rain will come out of no where and pour for several minutes, off and on through the day. It is the rainy season!! We survived by staying in the markets (in buildings) until the rain stopped. We quickly learned, my umbrella is now always with me.

We found the Korean people to be very friendly and helpful. Every time that we stopped to decide which way to go on the subway or which way to turn, someone stopped and asked to assist us!

We had dinner in a noodle place - we sat on the floor at a little table and had noodles in a bowl with some veggies and broth. I can use chopsticks but have you ever eaten noodles with them?? We managed but it wasn't pretty!!