I learned a little more about my school today. (:
I will be teaching at Seosu Elementary. There are only 30 students total there.
http://www.seosu.es.kr
Tomorrow is my last day here in Jochiwon. On Wednesday, everyone who will
teach in my province is going to Jeonju city to finish out Orientation.
Then I will start my job on March 2nd! :O !!
Monday, February 21, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
5 / Weekend 2
>Highlights of my weekend in Seoul:
Street Food / I could never get bored of trying new food. (: We stopped for dinner in a tiny tiny tiny little room off the side of a street where this old woman made us all our dishes right in front of us. When I say tinnyyyy, I mean smaller than my room back home. Amazing :O So good.
Bath House / Place you can stay over for 12 dollars a night, sleep, and use all the nice sauna and bath stuff. There were rooms full of hot jade stones and salt. Plus I got to walk around naked. Wheeee
Sweet Potato Latte / Sounds awful, changed my life.
Had a really great weekend with everyone. (: We went on a field trip to see Cookin' Nanta, and to Building 63 where there was a wax museum and aquarium. I made it all the way to the top AND I stood on the glass floor. . .For a second. . . Didn't cure my phobia, though :'c Good try, Sean.
Then we all sort of went our separate ways. Went shopping in crazy crowded streets. Can't get over the feeling of Seoul.
I really sit down and try to write, but it's like when I do I can't seem to remember it all clearly enough to write as well as I should. But if anyone is ever in Korea, I do recommend visiting at a bathhouse. It was amazing. Lying down in the hot jade... Going into an oxygen room... Soaking in those massage-y pools... Nice. c: We did have to sleep on the floor, though. With wooden pillows! And if they weren't wooden, they were hard sponges.
Today, Sunday, we were in Myeongdong shopping. So crowded! So crazy. I didn't find anything, but walking around was so great. I think I'm getting used to the movement here. People are always going somewhere, and always so fast too; they don't care if they bump into you a little.
Time at Orientation though is winding down. :C After Tuesday, everyone is off to their province. All of us in the same province will be together another few days, and then we're all heading to our cities and towns. I'm really getting excited, but I'm incredibly nervous as well. The next couple of days are going to go by so fast.
by the way, here are my two favorite gums I've tried here :s
One is XYLITOL, and the other is Rose flavored.
Now, XYLITOL doesn't sound *or* look safe to eat, but I bought it anyway. Something about the bottle made it seem like something that might make my life better. AND IT DOES. It's so minty and fruity and amazing. Why don't US brands make anything minty AND fruity AND good? That looks like vitamins? Psychology. Don't I look ready to face the world in that photo? Thanks, XYLITOL.
The Rose one is just nice and smells so pretty. Then when you chew it, it's like minty pretty.
EVERYTHING here is pretty. I was in a Starbucks the other day? It had everything Starbucks has at home, but somehow it was... better? Even the simplest things are so well put together and presented. I love it here.
Street Food / I could never get bored of trying new food. (: We stopped for dinner in a tiny tiny tiny little room off the side of a street where this old woman made us all our dishes right in front of us. When I say tinnyyyy, I mean smaller than my room back home. Amazing :O So good.
Bath House / Place you can stay over for 12 dollars a night, sleep, and use all the nice sauna and bath stuff. There were rooms full of hot jade stones and salt. Plus I got to walk around naked. Wheeee
Sweet Potato Latte / Sounds awful, changed my life.
Had a really great weekend with everyone. (: We went on a field trip to see Cookin' Nanta, and to Building 63 where there was a wax museum and aquarium. I made it all the way to the top AND I stood on the glass floor. . .For a second. . . Didn't cure my phobia, though :'c Good try, Sean.
Then we all sort of went our separate ways. Went shopping in crazy crowded streets. Can't get over the feeling of Seoul.
I really sit down and try to write, but it's like when I do I can't seem to remember it all clearly enough to write as well as I should. But if anyone is ever in Korea, I do recommend visiting at a bathhouse. It was amazing. Lying down in the hot jade... Going into an oxygen room... Soaking in those massage-y pools... Nice. c: We did have to sleep on the floor, though. With wooden pillows! And if they weren't wooden, they were hard sponges.
Today, Sunday, we were in Myeongdong shopping. So crowded! So crazy. I didn't find anything, but walking around was so great. I think I'm getting used to the movement here. People are always going somewhere, and always so fast too; they don't care if they bump into you a little.
Time at Orientation though is winding down. :C After Tuesday, everyone is off to their province. All of us in the same province will be together another few days, and then we're all heading to our cities and towns. I'm really getting excited, but I'm incredibly nervous as well. The next couple of days are going to go by so fast.
by the way, here are my two favorite gums I've tried here :s
One is XYLITOL, and the other is Rose flavored.
Now, XYLITOL doesn't sound *or* look safe to eat, but I bought it anyway. Something about the bottle made it seem like something that might make my life better. AND IT DOES. It's so minty and fruity and amazing. Why don't US brands make anything minty AND fruity AND good? That looks like vitamins? Psychology. Don't I look ready to face the world in that photo? Thanks, XYLITOL.
The Rose one is just nice and smells so pretty. Then when you chew it, it's like minty pretty.
EVERYTHING here is pretty. I was in a Starbucks the other day? It had everything Starbucks has at home, but somehow it was... better? Even the simplest things are so well put together and presented. I love it here.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
4/ Things
i'm currently focusing on reading in korean... think i am making progress c:
they say you can learn it within a few solid days or even hours.
i think i am getting it down, but the japanese characters i learned keep
getting in the way.
also, the korean L/r sound is really, really hard for me.
my spanish seems to come out like 10x force when i try to do it. :O
other than that, learning lots about education i guess.
my lectures all center around teaching these days.
it's interesting and should prove helpful, but i sometimes zone out. :s ee
we are trying to plan a trip to seoul this weekend.
i feel okay, pretty good really. i just never seem to get enough sleep!
ps i don't think i could estimate in real terms
how much rice i am consuming
pps corn tea? just say no
they say you can learn it within a few solid days or even hours.
i think i am getting it down, but the japanese characters i learned keep
getting in the way.
also, the korean L/r sound is really, really hard for me.
my spanish seems to come out like 10x force when i try to do it. :O
other than that, learning lots about education i guess.
my lectures all center around teaching these days.
it's interesting and should prove helpful, but i sometimes zone out. :s ee
we are trying to plan a trip to seoul this weekend.
i feel okay, pretty good really. i just never seem to get enough sleep!
ps i don't think i could estimate in real terms
how much rice i am consuming
pps corn tea? just say no
Monday, February 14, 2011
3 / Weekend 1
long video of my weekend in jochiwon & gapsa temple c:
here
:s too long to upload.
other than that, lectures again todayyyyy. so long.... then a cooking lesson
about how to make japchae.
think i am... 66% over my jetlag.
hoorah
here
:s too long to upload.
other than that, lectures again todayyyyy. so long.... then a cooking lesson
about how to make japchae.
think i am... 66% over my jetlag.
hoorah
Thursday, February 10, 2011
2 / Got Some Seoul
Yesterday was a lonnnnnng day. We went into Seoul for the Opening Ceremony of the TaLK Program.... We're the 6th group [6th Gen] to come through as scholars and teachers. (:
The bus ride was really long, and our bus driver was a little... Aggressive? Clumsy? ... Bad combination ... Traffic in the Seoul area seemed like it was really crazy, though it was different than in the States... Less honking. Our bus driver tapped a couple people on the way to and from the ceremony and while one time he got out of the bus and I think had a... Discussion... There wasn't really a problem.
The Opening Ceremony itself though was great. I think that it really hit me what kind of a responsibility I've been given... There were a few speeches that made me feel so welcome, but also very aware of what my job is and how important education really is. I think that sometimes we lose sight of that a little in the States. A lot of people go to university because they have to if they really want a certain kind of life; that means sometimes it can feel a little more like a job than a privilege. But anyway... I really hope I can be a good teacher. I'm really starting to think about it more... A month of Orientation seems like a long time, but it really isn't! I can't believe that so soon I'll have a group of kids I'm responsible for helping educate. :d
At the Ceremony there were a few performances as well. (: There was a kid's choir I forgot to film because they were SOOO CUTE (and pretty talented!)... Then a jazz ensemble using traditional instruments... Very nice... Annnnd this group of BA kids doing a taekwondo demonstration. I have NEVER seen anything like that before. They were so organised and just... Woww, impressive. Seriously. Can't even describe it.
After all that, we went into Seoul itself for scavenger hunt where we had to find certain locations and take a lot of pictures. It was pretty awesome, but FREEZING cold. :p Group 6 Team 3 all the way. We got lost once, almost got lost a second time, but all around had a pretty amazing time coming in last. Seoul is a very vibrant city. I really enjoyed it, and I want to go back sometime soon for sure.
Hope it's ok I borrowed this pic from you, Asraya. c:
The way the city was laid out was very interesting. It seemed like there were a lot of very big, very busy streets, and then a lot of smaller alley-like streets sort of branching off. So full of people... Vendors... Sounds. Street food! I wish I'd gotten to try some, but I guess we were on a bit of a mission. There were also SO MANY restaurants. I've never seen so many restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, etc in my LIFE. You'd pass one coffee house and then there'd be another like two stores down. A lot of "sandwich and cake" shops too. Eventually we all stopped to eat... We went to a restaurant that was very busy. I forget what the food was called, but we sat around a little table with a hot plate in the middle, and our food cooked right in front of us. Soooo good. I'm loving all the spicy stuff. (:
No matter how much I write, I never really seem to express what it's really like... I can't put everything into words. And talking about how I feel... I should try to get more in-depth about it, but it's just so... There's so much running through my mind and heart all the time that I can't really fathom how to write it down. I don't really feel like pictures would do the job either! I did take video yesterday though. I put some of it together:
Like always, I'm still pretty exhausted, but I'm happy all the time and just really excited to be where I am. I hope that I can bring that to the classroom sometime soon. c: I'm also meeting a lot of people; it's really nice, but sometimes a little intimidating to be introduced to so many so quickly. I'm not the best at remembering names, too, so that's a little rough. :p I mean, there's 239 of us, so that's a lot of names!
Anyway, today I start lessons and that kind of thing... Looking forward to it. I'm going to try to write about more specific things I notice about the culture, or about different foods/places... There's just so much.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
1
hi! i guess this is... my first post...?
i don't have a way to upload photos right now, so sadly a picture-free one. :c
but yeah! i'm in korea now. everything is wonderful. i like the food, the people,
and the weather (not as cold as it could be).
the past couple days i arrived here to the university where i'll be dorming for the next
month or so and doing orientation activities. it's a lot of fun here, and all the scholars
are really nice and interesting. i feel really silly cos i'm always looking around like O__O
at everything, but there's a lot to see and lots of differences to note... i guess at times
like these, you get to see how your own culture is very unique even in a modern world
with so many shared ideas and technologies. i'll try to write more about that kind of
thing independently... with pictures...
anyway.
i got here, was all jetlaggy and in a daze... then yesterday we went on a field trip
to CHINATOWN, some museums, that kind of thing. it was pretty surreal going to
chinatown in korea. my first time seeing anything in daylight too, so that was interesting. :p
there we ate some delicious things, i struggled to learn some words, etc.
we bussed around to the incheon landing memorial... i'm kind of a nerd in that i like that
kind of history stuff. i knew a little bit about the korean war, but not the logistics of
that landing. it was very interesting. our tour guide repeatedly talked about the marines
being very brave. i had some secret pride going on.
and then we went to the "future city".
i looked forward to the "future" alllllll dayyyyy thinking about hovercars and cool
gadgets and stuff, but it ended up being about city planning for the incheon area.
which was very interesting, but dude. it felt like very subtle brainwashing :p
love incheon... support incheon... love incheon... support incheon...
incheon, the place for beautiful people to lead interesting lives...
incheon, the place where the world will someday come to meet asia.. incheon, incheon, incheon... love... love us....
no, but really the planning had such clear goals and seemed very ambitious. i was very impressed by that, and the designs for the city were stunning.
BUT THEN they got me even more excited with this "5D Movie" we were supposed to see.
i was pretty skeptical at this point cos they showed us a "4D Movie" which was obviously just 3D, but i mean really how much can you ask for.
i was late to the 5D one and everyone was like... wow... that was messed up... have fun
so i pranced right in there like :D because i'm pretty comfortable with things that are messed up
DUDE
i wish i could like detach my brain and hook it up to the computer so everyone can see.
it was really fun and i had a great time, but SERIOUSLY
there was this tree character, right? and he was like "nature is wonderful, i get all my nutrients from nature" ---so far it seems like koreans have this thing about nutrients--- and saying something about
incheon was so natural, etc.
and then he was like WANNA SEE A SURPRISE? and like... covered the screen with his
tree hands... and i was like ok, this is the part where they talk about parks and stuff that are going to
be in incheon
so he lifts his tree hands so we can see, and it's not a park. THERE ARE NO TREES.
IT'S JUST A BUNCH OF SKYSCRAPERS.
and then the tree character was like ISN'T IT BEAUTIFUL??? IT'S SO GREAT!
at this point i was sort of feeling bad, like wow his family just disappeared
and then the movie ended with a bunch of repeating about supporting incheon and loving incheon
:O lol. so basically, this trip has fulfilled all my hopes and dreams ALREADY
about being in korea. i really am very very happy even though i'm tired and my sleep
is all wacky. it's 4:17 in the morning here right now and i am ravenously hungry.
i feel so grateful to be here.
tomorrow i am going to seoul for the opening ceremony of orientation,
which is going to be really cool. and then hopefully i'll be able to stay awake and
functional at night so i can go check out the downtown. (:
love you, talk to you later! <3
i don't have a way to upload photos right now, so sadly a picture-free one. :c
but yeah! i'm in korea now. everything is wonderful. i like the food, the people,
and the weather (not as cold as it could be).
the past couple days i arrived here to the university where i'll be dorming for the next
month or so and doing orientation activities. it's a lot of fun here, and all the scholars
are really nice and interesting. i feel really silly cos i'm always looking around like O__O
at everything, but there's a lot to see and lots of differences to note... i guess at times
like these, you get to see how your own culture is very unique even in a modern world
with so many shared ideas and technologies. i'll try to write more about that kind of
thing independently... with pictures...
anyway.
i got here, was all jetlaggy and in a daze... then yesterday we went on a field trip
to CHINATOWN, some museums, that kind of thing. it was pretty surreal going to
chinatown in korea. my first time seeing anything in daylight too, so that was interesting. :p
there we ate some delicious things, i struggled to learn some words, etc.
we bussed around to the incheon landing memorial... i'm kind of a nerd in that i like that
kind of history stuff. i knew a little bit about the korean war, but not the logistics of
that landing. it was very interesting. our tour guide repeatedly talked about the marines
being very brave. i had some secret pride going on.
and then we went to the "future city".
i looked forward to the "future" alllllll dayyyyy thinking about hovercars and cool
gadgets and stuff, but it ended up being about city planning for the incheon area.
which was very interesting, but dude. it felt like very subtle brainwashing :p
love incheon... support incheon... love incheon... support incheon...
incheon, the place for beautiful people to lead interesting lives...
incheon, the place where the world will someday come to meet asia.. incheon, incheon, incheon... love... love us....
no, but really the planning had such clear goals and seemed very ambitious. i was very impressed by that, and the designs for the city were stunning.
BUT THEN they got me even more excited with this "5D Movie" we were supposed to see.
i was pretty skeptical at this point cos they showed us a "4D Movie" which was obviously just 3D, but i mean really how much can you ask for.
i was late to the 5D one and everyone was like... wow... that was messed up... have fun
so i pranced right in there like :D because i'm pretty comfortable with things that are messed up
DUDE
i wish i could like detach my brain and hook it up to the computer so everyone can see.
it was really fun and i had a great time, but SERIOUSLY
there was this tree character, right? and he was like "nature is wonderful, i get all my nutrients from nature" ---so far it seems like koreans have this thing about nutrients--- and saying something about
incheon was so natural, etc.
and then he was like WANNA SEE A SURPRISE? and like... covered the screen with his
tree hands... and i was like ok, this is the part where they talk about parks and stuff that are going to
be in incheon
so he lifts his tree hands so we can see, and it's not a park. THERE ARE NO TREES.
IT'S JUST A BUNCH OF SKYSCRAPERS.
and then the tree character was like ISN'T IT BEAUTIFUL??? IT'S SO GREAT!
at this point i was sort of feeling bad, like wow his family just disappeared
and then the movie ended with a bunch of repeating about supporting incheon and loving incheon
:O lol. so basically, this trip has fulfilled all my hopes and dreams ALREADY
about being in korea. i really am very very happy even though i'm tired and my sleep
is all wacky. it's 4:17 in the morning here right now and i am ravenously hungry.
i feel so grateful to be here.
tomorrow i am going to seoul for the opening ceremony of orientation,
which is going to be really cool. and then hopefully i'll be able to stay awake and
functional at night so i can go check out the downtown. (:
love you, talk to you later! <3
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