My New Camera

I just recently bought myself a new digital camera. It's a Nikon D60 SLR. I bought it here in Korea from E-Mart. Thankfully, I can find an instruction manual online in English. I'm so excited to use it!

Away to Busan

Wow, it's been a while since I've written. Time just flies by here.

The end of July brought about a week vacation, my first at my new job. Sarah and I decided to head down to Busan for a few days. Busan is on the southern tip of South Korea. The morning of, we got up early and took the subway to Seoul station.

(Seoul station - heading toward KTX tracks)

The subways here are really easy to navigate. Everything is labeled in English and Korean, and some Chinese. They also have really good signage and announcements of stations. I like them so much better than the ones in Toronto. They are much cleaner and better organized.















(Korean subway station) (inside of the KTX) (inside the KTX)

Anyways, we got to Seoul station and got on the Korean Train Express (KTX). It's a high speed train that travels around 300km/hr. Although it goes so fast, it doesn't feel like you are moving unless you walk down the aisles. It was interesting travelling through the length of Korea. No matter where you are, each city and each country side looks the same. There are not a lot of defining features.

The train trip was about 3 hours. We booked a hotel online, and we stopped at the tourist centre in Busan station, and someone told us where to go, and wrote the hotel name in Korean for us. So we hopped into a cab and were on our way. We went to the hotel, which we had made the reservation with. It was a really nice place. We got to the desk and they were very confused, which made us somewhat worried. They finally figured out that we were at the wrong hotel. So we got back in a cab, and drove all the way back to the train station. It turned out that the hotel that we wanted was a literally right beside the train station. So we spent $5 on cabs to right next door to where we were. The confusion was that we booked online under one hotel line, but I guess it transferred us to the more inexpensive one. It was a silly mistake, but it wasn't anything horrible.
















(view from our hotel of Busan station - we were that close!)


(a sign at Busan station)


So once we finally checked in, we went off to explore. Busan is a port city, so we went down to the harbour. We went to the Jagalchi fish market. It was interesting, but very fishy smelling - go figure. That's one thing that I noticed there, was that the water smelled really bad. It was a mixture of fish and sulphur. That's one of the reasons why I'm glad that I didn't move to Busan, but it's a nice city to visit. We walked around the area a bit, went into an underground shopping mall and were typical tourists.

(Jagalchi Fish Market)

(Busan Harbour) (Sarah and I at Busan Harbour)



Later that night, we headed down to a beach. There I walked along the beach at night and looked at the skyline. The bridge was all lit up. Other nights they have light art, but they didn't have any that night because there was a talent show going on.




(Busan sklyine at night)


(Busan skyline at night) (Gwangali bridge) (Talent show)

On our second day, we went to one of Busan's beaches, Songdo beach. We went on a good day, it was a little cooler so there weren't many people there. Even with less people, there were still umbrella's everywhere! Going to the beach is one of Koreans favourite past times it seems.

The first part of the vacation was really good. The second half was a little disappointing. We would be all excited about going to an attraction, and then find out that it wasn't what we expected. The most exciting things that we found were the simple, and free things like underground shopping and the beach.

It was really nice to visit another part of Korea, but it was also really nice to come home. Going to Busan made me really appreciate where I do live in Bundang. Everyone will tell you that it's the nicest place to live in Korea, and I think they're right.

First Impressions

I finally arrived here in Korea on Friday night. Thursday/Friday was such a long day. It's strange leaving Thursday morning and arriving Friday night, but only really going through 24 hours. I ended up flying from Toronto to San Fransisco to Seoul. In total, it was about 18 hours of flying, and five hours of waiting. A very long day! The school sent someone to the airport to pick me up. It was amazing, that with the taxi waiting for me for an hour or two, he only paid around $1.50 or 1,500 KRW (Korean Won), which is ridiculously inexpensive! In Canada, airport parking would have been $20-40! Travelling through Incheon towards Bundang was really interesting. Everywhere you go, you are always surrounded by mountains and lakes. The mountains here are almost a cross between B.C. mountains and New Brunswick mountains in that they are rugged and covered with trees.

My school is in a city called Bundang, which is pronounced like "Poondang," which is a suburb of Seongnam City, which is part of the Greater Seoul Area. It's around 30 minutes south west of Seoul. I'm teaching at a school called L.C.I. (Language Clubs International). On the Saturday after I arrived, all of the teachers went on a picnic, up in the mountains, about three hours away. I don't know where I was, but wherever it was, it was amazing. Along the roads there are random crops, and rice paddies. It's not like in Canada where crops are laid out in a systematic order. Here it seems like they plant wherever there is room.

At the picnic we have authentic Korean BBQ. That is where there is a mini BBQ in the middle of the table. You then put meat on it, and cook it. When it's ready they pick it up with tongs and cut it into bite sized pieces with scissors. Apparently they use scissors for everything, which is a big strange at first. There are always side dishes with every Korean meal. They are usually vegetables cooked in different ways, and kimchi - always kimchi. Kimchi is pickled anything (usually cabbage or cucumbers) in spice. And of course there is always rice. I never used to like rice. Rice in Canada is not the same, I don't think that we cook it properly, but here it is good. Sometimes they serve raw lettice with the meal. You make a sort of roll with with the lettuce. You put rice and whatever else you want in it, then roll it up like a small lettuce tortilla. It sounds strange, but it's not bad.

This week was my observation week where I learn to teach. It was supposed to be two weeks, but for obvious reasons I missed the first week. It's not that it's hard to teach or that the information is complicated (it's Kindergarten to Grade 2 English), it's just a lot of information about the curriculum and all that is expected. It's a good school, but there is a lot of work involved. As one teacher said, you earn your salary here. I have read about other ESL schools and some of the teachers have said that their kids don't really learn, but just repeat, but at this school, I think that the kids are actually learning. They understand what they are saying.

I teach at what is called a Hagwon or Hakwon, which is a private language school. I have three classes a day. The first is morning Kindergarten. Some people say not to teach Kindergarten because it is exhausting and just babysitting. It's true that it does take energy, but it is much more than just babysitting. These kids are expected to work.

So I have Kindergarten from 9:30-2:00, with an hour lunch break. I have the same kids every morning, so I get to know them really well. I have the youngest class. They are 3-4 in North American years and 4-5 in Korean years. Let me explain, Korea uses the lunar calendar, so the length of a year is different, as well, when a child is born they are automatically 1, so in Korean years they are "older." So during the morning, I sing songs with them, go over the date and weather, practice letters, addition, show and tell, and have play time. Each of the teachers also teaches a special activity. Mine is arts and crafts. Other teachers teach science and logic. Our school has a gym and a small jungle gym upstairs, that the kids get to use. There are times during my morning, where I don't have to teach, such as when they have play time, Korean grammar, and Korean character building.

My next class is at 2:30. One set of kids I have Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and on Tuesday and Thursday, I and another teacher switch classes. I guess to change things up. These kids are in Grade 1. From this point on, these classes are after school classes. These kids work on reading, grammar, phonics, verbal skills, etc.

My last class is at 4:00. Again, I have one class Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and another class Tuesday and Thursday, only I don't share either of my classes with another teacher. The M.W.F. class is pretty advanced. They are almost fluent in English, so in some ways the class is very enjoyable. All of the kids, in all of the classes are very inquisitive. The T.TH. is more basic. They are older, but didn't start learning English until later so that they only know very basic English. So basic that we have to teach them how to pronounce letters. It must be very difficult to learn English sounds, because in Korean some letters are interchangeable. For instance, g's are the same as k's, r's as l's, and b's as p's. So that class will be challenging, but it will be interesting to teach them English from scratch.

Of course, that is just the classes, I also have grading and homework. The kids (except Kindergarten) gets spelling words and homework every night. But I won't go into all that. This school will be a lot of work, but I think that the experience will be rewarding overall.

Not There Yet

This has been a very frustrating weekend. Things have not turned out at all like what I expected or planned. I was scheduled to fly out to South Korea on Sunday morning, but I was suddenly not able to make my flight.

I went in to Toronto on Tuesday to the Korean Consulate to have an interview to get my work visa. That was a very intimidating two minutes of my life. The Consul only asked me about six questions. I was really nervous because I wasn't sure what he was going to ask me, and this was the guy that was going to decide whether I was to be allowed into his country or not. So this was kind of a big deal. So once I finished with the visa process, all that was left was for the consulate to mail my passport and visa back to me. I was expecting to receive it on Thursday or Friday, just in the nick of time to catch my flight on Sunday. Friday came along, and no passport. I finally called Canada Post to see what was going on because it should only take a day to get from Toronto to Brantford via Xpresspost. When I called Canada Post they told me that my package had gotten "misdirected" and at that point had no idea where it actually was. Finally, after many frantic phone calls back and forth, I was told that it was at an undisclosed gateway facility where I couldn't get to it, and there was nothing that they could do until Monday. Great! Here I was all packed and ready to go and my passport was who-knows-where. Needless to say I was not entirely thrilled. What made it worse was that Sarah had gotten hers, so she was still set to fly out, with or without me. So our carefully crafted plan seemed to be falling apart around us.

So, the weekend was wracked with a whole lot of emotions. Saying goodbye to friends and family, worrying about lost paperwork, and stressing about flight details. As it turned out Sarah's flight got cancelled on Sunday because of tornadoes all around Chicago. She ended up getting a flight early Monday morning, and left without me. I finally got my passport and visa on Monday afternoon. That was a relief, to finally have that crucial piece of paperwork safe with me and not floating around somewhere. I wasn't able to get a flight until Thursday morning, which means that I will get there Friday night. I will have missed a full week of orientation, and all because someone probably put that package on the wrong tray at the post office. So hopefully everything goes smoothly. I'm just hoping that they don't lose my luggage!