6 months in Korea-A wedding (not mine) and Namsan Tower

Wow...6 months. I can't believe it. In some ways, it seems like I've been here forever but in others it feels like I just landed. These have been 6 of the most difficult yet joyous months of my life. I've learned so much about myself-mostly that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned who I can lean on no matter what (my family) and who I couldn't trust after all. I've learned that despite feelings otherwise, I'm an incredibly blessed person. The last four years have been difficult. But they've led me to where I am now. My co-teacher and I were talking about fate, destiny, and karma today...I truly believe that I've been led to Korea for a reason. Right now that reason is healing. I've got a lot of scars on my heart from difficult work situations and people that have betrayed me but I'm working so hard on getting rid of that scar tissue.

Day 169 of Living in Korea: Car elevator!

A few weeks ago, I went a wedding. One of my co-teachers was getting married, so a couple of us hopped in the car, drove down to Apgujeong, and tried to find a place to park. Unfortunately, the area of Apgujeong that the wedding hall is in is a very confusing, maze-like place. My poor co-teacher (not the one getting married) drove around and around, before we finally found the parking garage for the wedding hall/convention center. Here, I got to experience something for the first time-a car elevator! Korea doesn't have wide open spaces like we do in the States, at least not in Seoul. To get around this, they've dug basements below a large percentage of buildings to park cars in. Usually there's a ramp to take down, but there wasn't even room to build a ramp. So they installed an elevator!

Day 168 (WOW) of living in Korea: Sports Festival

So I'm still not the best about keeping current on blogging...whoops. To be fair, things have been a little bit crazy lately. But when are they not...

Anyway, I decided that today was finally the day to write about our sports festival!

Day 147 of Living in Korea-General updates

Wow, it's been a long long LONG time since I blogged...I really need to do better about keeping this updated. I do have a good excuse though-I've been really busy!! I have a Korean class once a week, I meet one-on-one with a Korean teacher once and a week, and the rest of my time is filled out by hanging out with friends or seeing the sights of Seoul. Or going to Costco...but it's always for a good reason!

Day 79 of Living in Korea-Summer Vacation in Korea

Wow, it's been a long time since I've blogged...I know I've been updating Facebook a lot, but it's not quite the same.

Last week we started back to school after a five week vacation. So those of you that complain about how American schools have too short of a summer, QUIT COMPLAINING!! There are a lot of things that students in American education take for granted, but that's another series of posts (one that I will eventually write about.)

Day 40 of Living in Korea-Summer Camp!

Well, this week has been FANTASTIC! Instead of having 22 different classes in one week, I have 2 classes every day. The 1st grade group has 21 students and the 2nd grade group has 17 students. The 1st grade is kind of quiet, but they're such good kids! The 2nd grade is a wonderful group! They are SO MUCH FUN!

Day 35 of Living in Korea-Cell phone shopping and 2nd trip to Costco

Well, today was one of those days that had highs and lows. I met two of my co-teachers for coffee this afternoon so we could hang out for a while and then go shopping for cell phones. You all know how attached I was to my Blackberry, so I was really hoping to find another smart phone.

Day 35 of Living in Korea-Seoul trip continued

The preceding videos show a bit of what we did after registering for the test. We went walking to see what we could eat for supper and found an amazing bulgogi (Korean BBQ) place.

Day 33 of Living in Korea-Best. Week. EVER!

This week has been so much fun! Monday I got to school and it was a normal day, nothing too exciting. However, my co-teacher told me that I wouldn't have any classes on Tuesday due to nationwide testing. Sweet!

Day 28 of Living in Korea-two more short videos

Wow, four weeks....so hard to believe!! I've learned so much about myself, about Koreans and their culture, and even a lot about America and our position in the world as well. The last month has been so eventful; I can't wait to see what the next 11 bring!!

Here are two more short videos of my school. One is a normal Korean classroom and the other is about the dreaded hole toilets. Fortunately I haven't had to experience those yet!

Day 19 of Living in Korea-Finally tried Korean food! (I'm so ashamed to admit that....)

What a great day! The people of Korea are definitely the best part about it. I worked hard this morning (and a little bit this afternoon) and got a LOT of work done. I'm still not where I need to be, but I'm getting closer. Unfortunately I didn't get to go home early, which is ok. One of my co-teachers stayed at the school and worked on her own work and then invited me to hang out with her after school was over.

Day 18-An Event-filled Day

Today began with bad news. A student in WaKeeney was killed in a car accident yesterday. My thoughts and prayers are with the Berqguist family and everyone in WaKeeney. I wish I could be there to comfort you. :-( Anna was an amazing young lady (even if she didn't want to play the clarinet!) and will be missed by so many people.

Day 17 of Living in Korea-Busy week!

Well, so much for keeping up the blog...to be fair, it's not entirely my fault! My internet decided it didn't want to be wireless anymore this weekend. I still have no idea what happened or even how I fixed it, but as of late Sunday night, it's now going 100% of the time. My TV also conked out (I fixed that) and my Windows Media Player decided it didn't want to play How I Met Your Mother anymore. My first inclination was to throw my computer across the room, but fortunately I started doing some digging and managed to fix that as well. Crisis averted.

Day 9 of Living in Korea-Sadly neglecting the blog

My darling little sister pointed out that I have not blogged in a number of days. So, since I'm actually home from school on time, I thought I'd update you all on what I've been doing!

Day 4 of living in Korea: more thoughts and impressions about school

One thing that has really driven me nuts the last three days is some of my co-teachers. They'll arrive either right on time or several minutes late! For each and every class that I see this week, it's the first time I'm ever seeing them. So I'm understandably having a hard time getting the kids under control until the teacher chooses to walk into the room. And sometimes after they walk in depending on the teacher. So today, with my last class of the day, I was finally able to take the bull by the horns! HA! I walked around, got them to sit down, and shut the doors, all before the co-teacher arrived (5 minutes late). I guess I can understand why they don't feel the need to arrive on time-technically they're not really supposed to be doing anything for my class-but it's still really frustrating and disrespectful.

The good news is I seem to have been hitting my stride in class. I did finish early in my 3rd grade class today, which sucked, but everything else has gone swimmingly. My parents' class was interesting. The first five minutes was me sitting in there by myself. Finally one parent showed up: Mrs. Geum, which I learned is Korean for "gold." We talked for a little bit-she's a 44 year old mother of 3 who is married to an Korean English teacher. Very nice lady. Mrs. Lee showed up a few minutes later. She's a 39 year old mother of two who is a housewife. They were both very pleasant ladies that I enjoyed talking to. They told me that they didn't think one hour a week was enough and tried to get me to commit to more...thankfully I asked my main co-teacher about it and she said there was no way, since that would put me over my required hours.

At the beginning of every class, the president of the class stands up and says, "Attention! Bow to teacher." Then everybody bows and says "Good morning" or "good afternoon." How awesome is that?

We've been studying two things in each grade this week. 2nd grade (7th grade) has been studying "I'm so sorry" and descriptions of people. For "I'm so sorry," I made a worksheet that has reasons to apologize and apologies on there that they have to match up. For example: "You dropped my plate." goes with "I'm so sorry. It slipped out of my hands." At the end of the class, we've been playing a memory game where they have to try and match these up in pairs. Some of the combinations have been hilarious! "You broke my window." "I'm so sorry. I was hungry." "You drank all of my water." "I'm so sorry. I threw the baseball too hard." are some of the examples of the mismatches. The nice thing about their English level (especially the advanced classes) is that they can giggle along with me at the mismatches. They also learned a few new words: pothole and suspenders. So that's been fun :-)

The 3rd grade (8th grade) is studying men's and women's roles in the English language and agree/don't agree. At first I was a little offended by it, but I don't think it was intended to stereotype. We talk about whether or not they've seen a female fire fighter before, or police office, or boxer, etc. I ask them to come up with some other jobs that you don't always see women doing. My favorite one so far? Father. Yup, one of my 3rd grade boys threw that out there today. This is why I love teaching middle school. Don't get me wrong, it's had its rough moments too. But moments like that, where I can laugh with them, make it worth it.

Another thing that gets them riled up is agree/don't agree. We start off simple: I think fire fighting is mostly a man's job. A few agree, most disagree. We go through men are stronger than women and men are smarter than women. Then, we get to the fun one. In Korea, all men are required to go into the military for two years after high school. So I ask the class if they think women should go into the military. Every single boy raises his hand and yells in agreement! And then every single girl meekly raises her hand in disagreement! Not surprising, just fun to watch.

So far, my favorite classroom technology is the automatic water-based chalkboard eraser. It's positioned at either end of the chalkboard, and when you hit the button, it goes all the way across the chalkboard and wipes the board completely clean. Fantastic!

School bells!

The first video covers the bell that tells you to go to class as well as the dismissal bell. Totally caught me off guard the first day:

Day 3 of living in Korea: first venture out of the apartment (besides school)

There are many, many things about Korea that surprise, shock, and tickle me. My favorite surprise so far? Corporal punishment! YES!! Yesterday, I saw a teacher take a badminton racket (for some reason everyone has one) from a boy and whack him with the handle twice! It was awesome! Several of my co-teachers have whomped students on the back with a stack of papers or with the palm of their hand. The best part? The students (including the whompee) all cracked up. I couldn't help but smile :-)

Another thing that has surprised me: there are 7 class periods in a day, which isn't unusual. The unexpected part of that was what the students do during 7th hour. All of the students in the school are responsible for cleaning the classrooms and the teachers' offices. They will come in and sweep all of the floors, empty the trash, and mop the floors. For all of you students in the US, DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT WHAT YOUR TEACHERS MAKE YOU DO!

The teachers here are quite a bit different. So far the 6 teachers that share the office with me are pretty quiet. Jillian (my main co-teacher) told me today that the most talkative one was gone because her father passed away yesterday :-( They're always fluttering in and out of the office. The Korean teachers all have homerooms, so that's where they are first thing in the morning. They'll come back before the homeroom time is up to get some stuff done. While they're at their desks, a student will bring a box full of cell phones down the office! Hmmm...maybe a good idea for teachers back home...

I usually teach 4 class periods a day, running 45 minutes each. One of my classes canceled today. I told Jillian that was nice, and she said "Oh, but that means you'll have 5 classes on Thursday." I told her how many classes I was used to teaching and she couldn't believe it! However, American class sizes are much smaller than Korean class sizes. Most of that is because the schools that I taught in were rural schools and therefore smaller, but urban schools make a very strong effort (as much as they can with all of the budget cuts) to keep class sizes down. I have 20 classes a week with about 40 students in each class-you do the math!!! I also found out today that tomorrow I teach a parents' class. The vice principal decided that since my contract stated I was supposed to teach up to 22 classes per week, she was going to add a class for parents. There's up to 6 moms and 1 dad each week depending on who shows up. Jillian said that the previous English teacher was using something she downloaded from the teachers' blessing that is the internet, so I quickly Googled it and printed off a new set of questions. The main goal is to get them speaking in English. I'm curious as to how this will go! To get to 22 classes a week, we're supposed to have a meeting last hour on Fridays with other English teachers, but apparently they're usually canceled.

After school today, I decided that it was time to venture out of the apartment! Between jet lag and being exhausted from school, I haven't really explored my neighborhood. Tonight I took an hour long walk west (I think) and found many things. I found: Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, Levi's, Baskin Robbins, Outback Steakhouse, two shoe stores, the other side of the movie theater I walk by to get to school, the other side of my school, wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men (3 of them!), the Han river, Guri Tower, a guy punching himself in the abs (true story), and the mountains. And lots of Korean businesses. Lots. I walked along the main street in Guri for at least a mile, which took me past the interstate. After that, it was noticeably quieter. I stumbled across the less hectic side of Guri. I didn't take any pictures here, but I will soon. The buildings in this part were only two or three stories tall and there was only a narrow winding street separating the buildings. I kept walking even though I wasn't 100% sure of where I was. I knew I was being stared at already just for being there and I didn't want to admit defeat by turning around. Fortunately I knew that as long as I had the elevated train tracks in sight, I was ok. I made a quick left turn, walked for a bit more, looked around, and then went in the direction of the river, which took me back to where I had been earlier thankfully. All in all it was a very pleasant walk. Tomorrow, I will go east! (I think)

My classroom!

Well, one of them. This is the main classroom for all of the foreign language teachers, which means I have to share it. But that's ok. The other classrooms aren't 45 miles away from each other, so it's a lot easier!

First day of school+Korean grocery store+other random thoughts

Today was the first day of school!

But first, the Korean grocery store, Lotte Mart. It's like Wal-Mart on steroids. There are four floors and it has EVERYTHING you could ever want! Do you need cucumbers? First floor! How about socks? Second floor! How about a 1/4 size violin? Also second floor! Need a piano to accompany that violin? No problem! Clothes, shoes, air conditioners, appliances, school supplies, EVERYTHING! And I didn't even go to the fourth floor! Instead of escalators, they have flat moving ramps (like airports) but they go down or up so you can take your cart with you to different floors. And there are people everywhere. Koreans don't take well to waiting. So they push you out of the way or squeeze themselves in instead. If you don't bring a reusable bag to the store, you have three options: buy a new one, get charged 40 cents per bag, or use a box for free. So we picked up what I needed and boxed up my groceries. Jillian, my co-teacher, took me home and I put away all of my groceries. I was able to find peanut butter, bread, and butter-YAY! I didn't know if I'd be able to find those things or not. I was also surprised to find Special K-one of my favorite. Jillian talked about going to CostCo sometime soon, so I'm hoping to find Cheerios there :-)

The rest of the day was spent sleeping. That's right, I slept from 2 pm until 1 am. I was TIRED!

I woke up at 1 am this morning and immediately started going through my curriculum that Jillian gave me. I stared at it and stared at it and realized that I had no idea what to do. I looked through lesson plans and their corresponding chapters in the book from the previous teacher and managed to piece together lesson plans for each grade. It turns out that I didn't have nearly as much planned as I needed to. More on that in a bit.

My walk to school takes 10 minutes. Today it took a little bit longer because not even half a mile from my apartment, it started POURING. Just what I needed. Of course my hair poufed up, my bag was soaking wet, and my bum was soaking wet. Grrr. I wasn't 100% positive on where I was going, but fortunately some students were walking to school at the same time :-) So I followed them! I was greeted at the gate by a male teacher (still not sure who though) and then greeted by the English classroom by Jillian. She took me inside, showed me my space, and then told me it was time to speak to the whole faculty-YIKES. We went into the next building, she gave a short little speech in Korean, I gave a short little speech in English, she translated, and off we went! The Japanese teacher (who also speaks English) took me back to our office and the connecting classroom to show me how to get things set up. The technology here is wonderful. In our main classroom, we have a 5 ft long projector screen that's connected into a computer, document camera, speakers, and anything else you could need. There are 8 different stations set up around the classroom and each station has a 20 inch wide computer screen that we can put the power point on as well. So even your students that have a hard time seeing are able to see without any problems! They also have keyboards connected to them, but they decided to rip off all of the keys. Why? Who knows!

The students here are MUCH more rambunctious than American students. They have 10 minute passing periods and you would not believe some of the things that go on. They scream, they jump on each other, and when I walk by, every single one of them says "Hello! Nice to meet you!" Every. Single. One. Some of the girls have been standing in the doorway of our office making a little heart sign at me :-) All of the students were required to write a letter to me, asking me questions or telling me about Korea. Some of them are so funny! A lot of them asked how old I was, if I was married, if I had a boyfriend, what my favorite singer was, etc. One of them hoped for a male teacher but said a female teacher would be all right as well. A few of them drew things for me; when I get home I'll try to take a picture of them. They're...interesting.

Today I only had four classes! Tomorrow: four classes! Wednesday? You guessed it: four classes! Each class is 45 minutes long and the students have a 10 minute passing period in between. Today, I had 1 7th grade class (they call it 2nd grade since it's the second grade in middle school) and 3 8th grade classes (3rd grade.) Like I said earlier, I discovered quickly that I didn't have enough material. So, Facebook saved the day! I showed them pictures of my family, of my house, of my car, of my cat, of my students, of everything! They were very curious. They ooohed and aaaahed at my car and my house-they were very impressed! They also LOVED my niece!! But who wouldn't love my niece?! They liked seeing the pictures of the trash can band, they laughed at pictures of some of my students, and my 7th grade class learned that my brother's nickname is "Big Bad Monkey." They were very amused by that!

Fortunately after my first two classes, I had TWO WHOLE HOURS to fine tune my lesson plans! I'm going to be so spoiled over here! A quick lunch of a peanut butter sandwich, banana, and a delicious Korean melon given to me by one of my co-teachers, and it was time for 5th hour. This class was much rowdier than the first two classes. Fortunately I remembered one thing from my methods classes: proximity. So I wandered around the classroom which helped a lot. The fine tuning of the lesson plans also helped! I only had three minutes left at the end of each class, which was just enough time for a few questions. They were the same questions in pretty much every class. My last class did ask me if I knew any Korean, so I repeated the little bit that I knew, which they loved! They're so funny :-)

I asked Jillian earlier if we'd be going straight through the book, and I was surprised to hear her answer. I knew the students had big tests at the end of this month, but I didn't know that they would most likely cancel English class next week as well! Woo hoo!! Two weeks without me teaching! However, I still have to be here. So I guess it will be a good time to brush up on my Korean, get lesson plans done, and talk to all of you. I love teaching, but it will be nice to have a bit of break to help me get used to things. Jillian said that if I wanted to, we could do half of the lesson this week and half next week so that each week would be easy. On Wednesday, we're going to begin the process of getting my Alien Registration Card. Yes, I am an alien. But not from Mars. From Kansas.

Living in Korea Day 1

Saturday night I arrived in Korea at about 6 pm local time. There was a man in the airport holding a sign with my name on it, so I went with him, we loaded up my luggage and the adventure began! It was pouring rain in Incheon so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked. But what I could see was beautiful! There are huge hills covered with trees and tall buildings everywhere. They don't have the luxury of space like we do in KS, so they have to build up instead of out.

The drive to Guri took about 2 hours. It was on interstate the whole way...not sure if they'd call it interstate, but their signs were the same shape as our interstate signs. I'm not sure exactly which direction we were going or even what cities we were in most of the time. We went through several tollbooths...in front of each of these toll booths was a dummy directing traffic-the first of many strange things I'm sure I'll see here! I wish I could have gotten a picture of them, but it was dark and we were going pretty fast.

I'm not sure exactly how tall my apartment building is, but I'm on the 9th floor. In apartment 911. I laughed when the driver told me that :-) I hope it's not a sign! In my building I have a bank, pharmacy, grocery store, a little noodle place, and a cleaners of some sort. There's a parking garage underground that doesn't have a lot of space. How do they deal with them? They have little lifts in each space. The first person to park there has their car lifted up above the other one! I'll take a picture of it and post it soon.

I talked to mom and dad on Skype for almost an hour last night. After that I crashed pretty hard. I woke up at about 5 am on Sunday and just lounged around for a while. The apartment is filthy so I couldn't do anything until I wiped everything down. But I didn't have the code to my door (they don't use keys, they use keypads as locks) so I couldn't go anywhere! I unpacked my two big suitcases and stacked up all the clothes on my bed.

At noon my co-teacher Jillian came over to walk me to the school and then to take me to the grocery store. The walk is a very pleasant and quick walk. When I told about my previous commute back and forth, she couldn't believe it. It's going to be soooo nice to walk to school instead of driving everywhere. I have a feeling it will also have its downsides though. She did tell me which bus to take to the school, so one of these days, I will try that. On the way to school is a park as well as the subway station for Guri, which will be very convenient. One of these days, I'll venture into Seoul, but probably not for a week or so at least. I need to figure out Guri before I do anything else.

I have to go and get ready for school right now, but I'll post more on my Korean grocery store adventure later!

LOVE Chicago! (but not the rain)

The interview went great this morning!! The man was very friendly and asked very good questions. Unfortunately my Korean pronunciation was awful! He had to look at my application to figure out which school I would be teaching at :-) The good news is he asked me point blank when I was leaving for Korea, then started signing my papers!!!! All that's left now is picking up my visa on Thursday at 3 pm. After the interview, we watched a movie (at 10:30 am-weird!) and then went to Navy Pier to eat lunch and just relax for a while. We did everything you possibly could inside and then finally left. It's been raining *all day*-not fun! After the Pier, we did a little shopping on State St. then headed back to Union Station to beat the rush.

I'm having a hard time grasping the enormity of what's about to happen in my life. It doesn't feel real. It feels like I've just kind of glossed over the last four months and none of this is actually happening. I think once I get on the airplane Friday morning without my mom, things will really sink in. The emotions that I'm feeling about Friday are confusing and overwhelming. I'm psyched to be following the dream of living in a foreign country, but terrified of trying to fit into such an incredibly foreign country. I'm excited to see and experience new sights and sounds, but petrified of the consequences of regret.

My next blog post will most likely be from South Korea!

Updates

The last 72 hours have been insane! Tuesday night I received my visa issuance number, which was the last piece of the puzzle that I needed! Or so I thought...

Wednesday morning I called the Korean Consulate in Chicago to make sure that I had the right documents assembled. To my surprise, they told me that I needed to come to Chicago for an interview. With my brother getting married next weekend and me tied up with medical appointments and other prior engagements, there was absolutely no way that I could get to Chicago and back and still make it to the wedding, the rehearsal, all of my appts, etc. So I called my recruiter Joyce (through KorVia Consulting) and asked her to talk to the school. Fortunately God was smiling down upon me! My amazing mom and I will be traveling to Chicago on June 7th, my interview is on the 8th, I pick up my passport on the 10th, and we both fly out of Chicago on the 11th! Of course, she'll be returning to KS while I'll be en route to Korea!

All of these changes are just now starting to sink in. I'm spending as much time as possible with my family and it's getting harder and harder to say goodbye to them each time I see them. The actual booking of the ticket really cemented things for me. My hands were literally shaking the entire time I did it. I've also started packing suitcases and the rest of my house up. Seeing a full suitcase in my bedroom and seeing piles of stuff everywhere else is an emotional kick in the pants. I'm incredibly excited to begin this new life, to sit down and dig in my beliefs, feelings, and all of the long forgotten corners of my mind. I can't wait to sit down and completely reinvent myself over the course of this year. But I hate that it's coming at the expense of my friends and family. *sigh*

Since the next two weeks are so busy, I probably won't be updating this much (if at all.) Once I arrived in Korea, look for more frequent updates!

Work in progress!!!

You're either here because I told you to come here or because you stumbled across my little blog. If it's the latter, welcome, but be patient with me! If it's the former, I'll only be working on the blog for the next couple of weeks.

For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Stephanie and I'm preparing to move to South Korea. I'll be living in the city of Guri, teaching at In chang Middle School. My start date is supposed to be June 8th, but until I hear more about my visa number, everything is pretty up in the air.

Please feel free to follow me if you'd like to keep up on my new life in South Korea!