Jeju island August 2011

So its been a while since I have posted anything and all I can simply say is ive been lazy.  Thats it.  But good news is I have some new stuff that I want to share.  So last week was my summer vacation.  We are aloud one week off in the summer and it happened to land on my birthday!  Awesome!  So my gf and I decided to head to Jeju island, the island just south of the mainland.  Now Id say the best way to describe Jeju island is its like Disneyland to America.  Its just basically a big island full of wacky and fun things for tourists to do for a week and also has beaches that will leave you speechless.  When I fist arrived to Korea I was told that Jeju Island was a "must go to"  so i said why not.  flight out there and back wasnt too bad, about 200$ round trip.  So after a long night of shinanigans on Wednesday night, celebrating my 26th birthday with my close friends here in Daegu, we get some rest for our big trip.  Mind you when I say shinanigans I mean it too, talk about a 300$ tab at your famous korean bbq place type shinanigans.
The next day we get on the train to Pusan where we catch 30 min. flight to the wonderful island of jeju.  As we are walking out of jeju airport, the tropical beach breeze hits our face and we are here!    Palm trees everywhere and a nice smell off the ocean.  we get our rental car and drive to the first beach we find and watch the sunset and walk along the beach burying our feet in the sand.  We then get pretty hungry and gf tells me about she wants some famous jeju island food.  So we eat Black Pig.

  Now black pig is done the same way normal Korean bbq is done, they bring you the raw meat and loads of side dishes and you cook it at your table yourself.  She brings out these steak looking peaces of meat and slaps it right on the bbq.  Once it cooks for a while she cuts it up a bit and we are ready to eat, and man I haven't tasted something that good in ages.  I was in pork heaven.  Imagine bacon but in steak form.  so good.  once we were finnished we needed to find a place on the beach to set up our tent.  yep dis is a campin trip!  so we find a little nice spot and start to set up.  At this point it is about 12am and a word to the wise, never set up your tent in the dark if all you got is a tiny little lamp light.  so we are lookin at 2 cranky, tired people trying to set up this little 2 man tent in almost pitch dark.  after a few fights we finally get it set up.  here is the kicker, gf begged that we take the rain cover off, swore it wouldnt rain and if it did promised to buy dinner the next two nights.  guess whos wallet was full come dinner time?  yep me.  so at about 4 am i get woken up to screeming RAIN! RAIN! and sure enough im up and outside in my boxers tryin to put this damn rain cover, soaking wet and swearing under my breath.  but we were fine, didnt really rain much and nothin got too wet.  next morning...my birthday!  what a georgous birthday it was too.  i look at my phone and it says....6:28.  Okay guess its time to start the day.  Thats one of the things you get when you sleep in a tent.  Your up when the sun is up.  We get up out of our tent with the ocean right in front of us and I start to boil some water for coffee.  We brought a small little gas stove so we could cook breakfast in the morning and what not.  After we have our coffee and breakfast, we pack the tent and head out to see some cool Jeju attractions.  First we decided to check out this outdoor glass museum.  Nothin real too special or worth mentioning.  was cool.  After the 30 min walk about we stumble upon a buggy car race track a few miles down the road.  For about 30 bucks we get to ride this buggy car around this track in the mud.  It was worth the money just a bit too short.  was like 20min and your done.  good enough.  We then decide its beach time.  So we head to the first beach we find and plop right down on the sand.  We definitely knew we were at a tourist destination when we came to find out that it costs 70 bucks just to sit at a table with an umbrella, no thanks the hot sand will do us just fine thank you.  After swimming and goofin around the beach we get showered up and head to the famous Loveland.  Now this is what im talkin about.

Loveland was awesome!  It is basically an outdoor sex museum.

Pretty good laugh for about an hour and a half.  This place surprised me because Koreans are not usually open at all about sex.  I mean they cover themselves up from head to toe when they are at the beach and they are always shy when sex comes up in a conversation.  They dont even hug in public!

After a pretty long day we decide to head to a different beach to set up our tent for the night (before the sun goes down_yeah lesson learned).  So we drive to the north coast of the island, a part we havent seen yet, and its beautiful!  best part we have seen yet.  We decide to park our tent along with dozens other tents, only they were about 3 times the size of ours and much more high tech.  we find a great spot and set up, this time with no tension or fighting. We shower up and decide to head out around the area we are staying in, there is a lot going on, seems pretty busy and it is vacation season so basically every Korean on the main land ends up in jeju.  my gf says she wants to take me to dinner so we start looking for a place.  she says she wants to spoil me so we stop off at this nice looking hotel and see if they have a dining room or know of a place around the area that would be nice to eat at.  Don't you know it!? we walk around to the back of the hotel and what do we see......a huge outside buffet right on the beach and a live band. so we have a real nice dinner stuffing our faces. after we have a pretty simple night.  we walk back to our tent and we find this Korean family camped right next to us, like almost touching our tent.  they are cooking food and having dinner and I decide to chat with them.  They were really nice, i had my gf translate what i couldn't get out in my broken Korean, but i did a real good job.  it always surprises me how much better i am at speaking Korean than I think. They were really amazed on how much Korean i could speak.  but i have to say most Koreans are amazed at anything we foreigners say in Korean.  they get so surprised and shocked.  wow! he said 안녕하세요! (hello)  i mean come on give me some credit.  anyways, i don't think i have met a nicer family.  they kept shoving food in our mouths and sang happy birthday in Korean.  it was a really nice time.  one of the daughters was actually going to Syracuse at the time as a foreign exchange student.  pretty cool people.  you get a lot of Koreans like that out here.  its just the way they are, very gracious and giving.  i had to take everything they offered to me cuz its considered rude to not accept something that is offered to you when it comes to food.  just a great night.  we then walk a long the beach and find some roman candles, fireworks, and set them off.  then back to the tent.  good night.  next morning up early again. The sun was shining pretty bright today and i knew it was gonna be a good day.  we started boiling some water to make some coffee and ramen.  meanwhile the father from the our friends next door came over and gave us loads of homemade kimchi.  i tell you the generosity in this country still amazes me.  after breakfast we decide to go hiking on this little mountain next to us that sits right on the beach looking over the ocean.
  as we head up the hill, we couldn't even make it 20 yards without being drenched in sweat.  that's the thing about South Korea in the summer.  the humidity is overwhelming.  after talking the gf into making it to the top, we find that its a burial ground.  we see these man made hills.  Koreans don't do the ol' traditional graveyard, tombstone type of burials, they find random spots around the country side and just shovel heaps and heaps of dirt and crap on top of a dead body.  thats it.  weird.  We head back down and head straight to the ocean.  after more lolly gagging in the ocean, we shower and decide to head for some sightseeing.  we dottle around and find the huge maze.  that was fun to get lost in.  then we head to an underground lava tube.  that was cool.  its basically an old tube where lava used to flow through when the island was active.  it was so nice because when we headed down the temperature dropped about 20 degrees.  after that we head back to the beach where our tent is and meet some friends from deagu and have dinner with them in downtown jeju.  after dinner we found a hotel cuz it was getting late and we had to go to bed early because we had to get up at 7 the next morning as we are headed to koreas largest mountain/volcano, Halla mountain for an 8 hour hike.

to be continued ..

First experience teaching English in Korea part 2 (2010)

After 3 months in Korea, I definitely   found a groove and loving it.  enjoying a new culture im unfamiliar with and new lifestyle im not accustomed to.  now work is easy.  probably the easiest job Ive ever had and sometimes the kids can be great, sometimes.  There is a wall between you and your students compared to the Korean teachers and their students.  You don't speak their language.  its that simple.  so teaching can be a workout.  obviously kids dont listen generally, but kids that dont speak your language, its takes not listening to another level.  but thats the challenge, right?   this is why i love teaching, because there is a challenge everyday.  if there wasnt it would be boring and i would hate it.  Korean students are very different from kids I know and love back home.  FAct: korea is now #1 in the world in education.  #1.  after 3 months of teaching here I can see why too.  Kids are staring at a book probably 16 hours a day.

 First, kids go to there regular school at about 9am then finish at about 3pm, then they go to what is called a hagwon (where i come in) which is an academy.  there are English hagwons, math hagwons, music, really any subject, you name it.  typically students go to about 2 hagwons a day.  so, say they finish at 3 they would go to my hagwon and start at about 3:45 and go to 3 different classes at mine, first my class then 2 Korean teachers which are 45 min each.  then they would go to say a math hagwon.  so we are looking at children going to school for about 12 hours a day.  Oh and kids go to school on Saturdays too!  damn.
Ive never seen children so tired in their life.  Too make matters worse, my hagwan is not hesitant to give homework either.  The amount of homework these kids do is unbelievable, and that's just from the hagwans, I cant imagine what the their normal school gives them.  Now my school really focuses on memory when learning english, which I dont think is helpful because they are not learning anything.  but whatever i just do what im told.  while we are on the subject of my school, i shed some light on my schools management.

I will first say this is the most unorganized business that I have worked for.  none of the kids learn the same material throughout their visit at Elite.  for instance, in my class, I teach speaking with and essay book, and the other teachers teach grammar and listening.  My essay book is not tied in with the grammar and listening classes.  So one can see how kids would get confused and stressed out because the work is hard.  they would understand it better if we were all on the same page. anyways, my immediate boss seems likes she drinks 5 cups of coffee every morning, everyday before she comes to work.  shes all over the place, not direct, and always seems flustered.  AND she always makes us feel like we did something wrong. Then there is the assistant director of the school, who is this massive Korean version of the hulk

He walks around with a huge rubber stick in his hands and looks like hes gonna wack the next person who looks at him the wrong way. He walks around slowly, bending the rubber mallet in half and holds it behind his back.  He strategically walks silently around with a death stare on his face.  I have heard him yelling numerous times, tearing some kids head off for cheating or not doing homework.  One the major culture shock moments I have had was when I walked in to a room and I saw the assistant director hammering his huge stick on some kids hands who just stood there with his hands out and head down in shame.  Then I noticed all of the Korean teachers carry a stick with them everywhere the go.  They carry long wooden sticks.  I have also seen  some of the teachers bringing kids to tears just by yelling at them, but I have never seen physical harm since I came to Korea. 

One major problem I have had with the school is that I, the foreign teacher, don't feel as valued as I should be.  I am the native speaker and came across the world to share.  I feel as if we are just a commodity, which i soon learned thats how all hagwons run their schools.   Im just here sucking off of the korean economies teet.   For example, I wont be told about changes about my class until the very last minute.  There is no communication at all, which is a major part of good management, you'd think.  A lot of times they expect us to get things done that probably take a couple of days to do, to get done in an hour.  Just a strange system that they got going.  So many kids quit as well, and so many new kids arrive at the same time.  The Books are way outdated and and pretty corny too.  I just glad that they leave us alone enough to where I can sort of be myself and teach how I want to.  Thats whats good about the freedom I have here.  the only thing that keeps me goin is piss laughing with my kids, singin songs, sometimes making fun of them  and them givin it right back to me.  I wont trade those moments for anything.

Finally off and running!

I finally got my butt in gear and started writing.  Here we go.
So Ive lived in South Korea for a solid 8 months now.  wow.  where did all the time go? but now that i think about it i have definitely changed quite a bit in 8 months.  thinking back now on who i was when i first arrived here, i can tell i am absolutely a different person.  not bad or good, just different.  living in a foreign country will do that to you i guess, who woulda thought.
Korea is an interesting place, as you could assume anything thats not familiar to your home would be.  when i first stepped off the plane i felt like i was star struck.  everything was so new.  all i was worried about was that i got to my apartment i was promised safely and without any hassle.  and that is exactly how it went.  Koreans are very compassionate and helpful to foreigners (my first impression).  got to my apartment and everything was just how i expected it, unbelievably small.  On the plus side it was fully furnished, just a bit dirty from the last teacher who lived there.
From the horror stories i have heard about what happens to teachers when they first arrive, my experience was cake.  everything panned out as it should have.  got settled in nicely to small place that had everything i needed and some.  besides a pretty serious jet lag, i was golden.  so my first night in korea is here.  The taxi driver and I were looking at my humongous suitcase, trying to figure out how we were going to fit in in this tiny cab and take it across town to my appartment.  Lucky we found a solution and crammed it in the front seat.  the cabbie was a bit anxious during the drive but with only a few scratches on the dashboard everything was fine.  
In safely. And relieved.

Two days later.  Monday.  My first day of teaching.  I walked in with my co-worker, whos from Vegas, got about a 30 min run down of what I need to do and was handed a book and was told to go teach.  Boom.  thats it.  here are your books, now go be a teacher.
First day was actually fun.  I had no idea what the kids were learning and its seemed like neither did they.  So I just sort of rolled with it, got to know them, and they got to know me.  I was a brand new teacher so all of the students were kind of taken back by me because they didnt expect to see me.  The teacher I replaced i found out he was fired, and I heard none of the students liked him either. By the end of the week i was on track with the students, most of them knew where they were in the book so that was helpful.  the books i was teaching from were pretty out dated but what can i do about that.

  Teaching was easier than I thought! I had fun with my kids!  they loved my goofy jokes and games.  I thought i could really get the hang of this.
its when you run out of those jokes and games, thats when the fun stops.
Fast forward 3 months later, i felt like I was in hell....to be continued.