Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye sucks, the end.

Just kidding, I suppose I have more to say about it than that. But still, I think that sums it up nicely.  It is only July 20th, and I am starting what I realize will be a long process of goodbye-ing. In order for this to make any sense, I have to explain my schedule for the remainder of my time here, so here goes.

This week, Monday and Tuesday, are the last day of regular classes. I have received goodbye letters and hugs and many sad faces and kids jokingly yelling you can’t go in Korean from the back of the room.  It had been emotionally draining, as am not good at saying goodbye in the best of circumstances and these are not the best of circumstances. I find it hard to strike the balance between emotional sincerity and being professional, so mostly I am just awkwardly waving good bye.

Tuesday we will have a staff dinner, to which I hope I am able to share good memories with my coworkers, don’t have to drink too much, and no one makes a big deal about my leaving.  They idea of them pointing to me in Korean and saying something and me looking confused and bowing in front of all of the staff makes me preemptively cringe, so here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.

Wednesday is the closing ceremony, so I don’t teach. I do have lunch with the other subject teachers for the last time though, so I think I will try to bring something nice in, like a cake or something. We shall see.

Somewhere in all this we have to clear out our desks because they will be putting in new windows and painting or something. Meaning after Wednesday I will be deskless at school, shuffled off to some other part of the building, though where I’m not sure. So Thursday and Friday I will be desk warming and reading, I guess. I will miss my own desk and I am kinda disappointed that I won’t be able to finish off my time here in it.

Then, knock on wood seriously, my dad should be coming Saturday. We (hopefully) will spend a couple of days up in Seoul, then come back down to Busan and spend some time here before heading back up to Seoul August 1st.  I will go back down to Busan the second and have Monday through Wednesday off. I have no idea what I will do with that time. Hopefully spend time with friends. Wander around Busan some more? Take a day trip to some place I haven’t been yet? Who knows.

Then I deskwarm the 6th and 7th, peddling around somewhere, worrying that my summer camp is too hard. Then I have two weeks teaching summer camp. The first week is 3rd grade, the second week is 4th/5th grade. Then I will have two days to pack up all my stuff, close down all of my accounts, and kiss the life I slowly have built in Korea over this last year goodbye. I leave for Hong Kong the 28th of August, hang out there for a week, fly to Oregon the 2nd of September, than fly back to Colorado the 6th.

The point of very boringly writing out the schedule of my last month here is to show that I will slowly be leaving, packing away aspects of my life here one at time, except for the most important part, which is saying goodbye to the amazing friends I have made.

I think that we all feel like things are coming to a close. Even though we have a month left, all of us feel the shift from being here now to thinking of the future. A lot of us have vacations and camps at different times, so none of us are one hundred percent sure that we will see each other again, even though we likely will. Goodbye is just hanging above us all, all the time. Last weekend was a friend’s birthday, and we all partied a little too hardy, resulting in drunkenly tearful exclamations of how we are all going to miss each other.

So this remaining time here is going to be tough and bittersweet. After all, it wouldn’t be so hard to leave if it wasn’t so great to begin with.

Two Other Seasons

If you asked me what was the most interesting part of living in Korea in between the months of February and April, I don’t think I would be able to answer you. Seasons always have affected me. By the time late winter/early spring rolls around I am pretty mopey. It’s like, every year, by the 5th or 6th month of cold weather, my brain half truly believes that it will never be warm again. So, spring is always colored by feelings of frustration and hope. It gets warmer, but isn’t warm enough, and sometimes it gets colder again, which just crushes me. Every year, spring holds me in suspense, even though I know what is going to happen.

Whenever I get antsy or overly worried about things I have no control over, I hear my dad’s voice saying, “You can’t control the weather, Sara.” This always seems to help me relax. There are many things I can’t do and am not responsible for. But despite this piece of fatherly wisdom calming me in other situations, when it comes to actually worrying about the weather, I still do it every year.

Spring in to summer:

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And what is most striking about this is that it happened to me here just as strongly, if not more so, than it did back home. I think living abroad has taught me a lot about myself in ways that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t even really come here to “find myself” or other such typical post graduate ideas. I came because I already knew that I love to travel, and because I had and still do have a real interest in South Korea. I wanted to learn more about parts of the world I hadn’t really focused on in school. But despite my intentions I do feel like I learned more about myself, things I didn’t know.

It turns out, if you take a person out of the context that they lived most of their lives in, and put them somewhere new, they find out different things about themselves. I suppose it is a growing experience. But ultimately I still don’t know what people mean by wanting to “find” themselves by living abroad. If anything I just feel more and more confused about who I am and what I like and what I stand for, not less.

Somethings you thought would be consistent across boarders turn out not to be, and other things, things like hating late winter, turn out to be something in you that follows you everywhere.

Seoul Part 3:

But enough about me, let’s talk about Korea.

First, spring is well celebrated here. I thought it odd that Korea had almost no winter sort of rituals or celebrations, as in America, most of are major holidays are in the cold months. But here, it turns out that they save their celebrations for spring. I don’t know how many cherry blossom festivals I went to. I don’t know how many other festivals in general I have seen since it has started to get warmer, but it has been a lot. I feel like South Korea and I are the same wavelength when it comes to this, hide until it’s warm, then go outside all the time.

Namhae:

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I would say that summer is well and truly here now. I have been enjoying time on the beach and just being outside in general. I also took another awesome trip up to Seoul, which I have only really visited when it was colder. I also had a relaxing weekend on the island of Namhae, which is in South West Korea. The weather does make teaching a little harder though, because I join the kids in looking longingly out the window. If I could teach class outside I would. Also, this is my first time having a full time job outside of school, so some part of me still expects summer vacation. Though they don’t actually have the summer off in Korea, which I think is interesting. They get a month off in late July, but it’s nothing compared to the three off in America. Most of them study during the break anyway. I have mixed feelings about this, as it is much better for their retention and general education not to take such a long break, but some of my best childhood memories are in summer. It is just kind of sad that they have to work through everything.

The Other Side of Culture Shock.

If culture shock was a mountain, I would be on the other side of it by now. I more or less felt over it after Taiwan, but emotions aren’t linear. I was still kind of dealing with it through February, though not very much.  This timing of this was useful too. As I was getting over the culture shock, I was coming up on my half way mark for being here. February was, emotionally and physically, a half way mark.

I want to say more about this time, but I’m finding it difficult to describe adjusting to a different culture well. The feeling seems to be a general one, but it also seems to be in the details mostly. An example that comes readily to mind is personal space. When I first got here, the fact that lines only kind of existed, and that people shoved you around in subways was hilarious. It was just another one of the other million things that was different to me. Look at all these people pushing past me to press their faces to the subway door, why are they doing that? Does that actually save any time? Haha, wacky cultural differences!

Then, when the culture shock set its petty claws into me, those situations became less humorous. Seriously, why are they all shoving past me to press their faces into the door? If one more old lady runs over my foot with her cart, I’m going to scream. Okay, but it really doesn’t make sense to start trying to get in the subway/door/elevator while people are still leaving it, right? Like, that actually really doesn’t make sense and is quite annoying, but its not like they are going to stop anytime soon. It’s so dumb. That feeling persisted, and not just about personal space, but food, and restaurants and work environment and everything else too.

It’s almost like being a teenager again. As a kid, you kind of just go along with things, and aren’t bothered by them, really. But as a teenager, you start to develop your own thoughts and opinions about things, and everyone and everything is suddenly stupid.  Getting over it feels a little like maturing, too. Now, to me, the personal space thing isn’t all that interesting. I find it neither hilarious or infuriating, it just is. It still doesn’t make sense to me to try and enter a metro when people are still trying to leave it. And I still don’t enjoy little old ladies rolling over my feet with their carts, but I don’t think about it overly. I even find myself pushing my face up against doors now, so that people don’t try to get in front of me.

But even as I adjust to Korea and start to feel normal, I have random moments where I re-remember where I am. Sometimes, when I am on the computer in the dark in my apartment, I glance up from screen, and some subconscious part of my brain expects to see my room in my parent’s house.  I feel disoriented for a few seconds when it is my apartment instead. I think this might be part of feeling more normal here too, though. It’s like my brain can’t fully put together feeling normal and living in South Korea at the same time.

And though I enjoy it here, and am just starting to feel settled in, I fully realize that I want to go home. I have made the decision to go home in August (well, September, I’d like to travel first). I have been contemplating staying longer or not since I have gotten here, and have felt both strongly that I’d like to stay and that I’d like very much to leave. But in all of my feelings and contemplation and wondering what would be best for the future, there has been an undercurrent of feeling that I didn’t fully understand. And finally it occurred to me what it was. I missed home. It wasn’t home sickness, it wasn’t culture shock, it wasn’t boredom  or frustration. I just miss home.

It took me awhile to figure out because I still really like Korea. I like my job, my apartment, my friends, the city, the money, everything, I guess. But that didn’t stop me from missing home. I didn’t realize that those two feelings could exist so strongly at the same time. Under everything, I just want to go home. I want to be able to have conversations with my co-workers, I want to eat American food, all salty and fatty. I want to see my friends and my family and figure out what to do with the future, rather than avoid it.

 

I feel very certain that I want to go home in August. But I worry that I will miss Korea too. That while I am at home, I’ll miss my students, kimchi, the sea, the subway system, the really convenient convenience stories, street food, the friends, both foreign and Korean, that I have made here. Sometimes I worry that I have trapped myself into feeling vaguely dissatisfied no matter what I do.

But I’m hoping that I haven’t. I realized that the wonder lust that I always feel isn’t necessarily satisfied by living in another country. I have wonder lust here, where I want to go see other places too. I think I can live in America and every once and while travel, and that will be enough for me. I hope so. I think so.

On another, and last, note, I have a completely different teaching schedule now. Last semester I taught only the 5th grade, but this semester I am teaching 3rd, 4th, and 6th grade. The Korean school year starts in March, so this means that I still see last year’s 5th graders and 6th grades, but I have entirely missed out on last years 4th graders, this years 5th graders, which is a bummer. But I’m happy that I can still see my 5th graders once a week, and it is fun to meet the 3rd and 4th graders once a week too.

I have three co-teachers now instead of one, and so far I am very happy with them. All three of them are competent teachers, and they are all kind to me. I think I like this schedule and these teachers more than I like the situation last semester, so far. Here’s hoping it stays good! *knock on wood*

The End of Winter Camp and Taiwan

The last couple of days of winter camp, I admit, were not my most inspired teaching moments. There was a general feeling, both with the students and with the teachers (I was not alone in this, many other native English teachers and Korean teachers felt this way) that we just wanted to get through the rest of the week with as little as fuss as possible. The feeling made me think back to my days as a student, oh so long ago (cough, 9 months ago, cough), when I would slink into a classroom, slump down at my desk, and take half-hearted notes, knowing that what I was learning wasn’t going to be on the final.

I had that feeling, except then it was my material, and I was teaching it. Vacation was calling, so alas, not my best teaching. But not my worst probably. I taught, the kids seemed pretty interested, and it seemed we all have fun, despite the lackluster feelings.

But winter camp finally ended after what felt like years. I was heading off to Taiwan!  I went from the 19th to the 23rd.  I had absolutely no idea what to expect of Taiwan. I had watched some Taiwanese dramas back in the day, but they weren’t exactly informative about what Taiwan was like. I’ve been calling this month my drama month, because I visited the three countries that I watched Asian dramas from, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. But despite enjoying the hi-jinks and romantic entanglements of Taiwanese stars, I knew nothing. Not a word of the language, not what its currency was like, I wasn’t even sure where Taipei, the capital, was on a map. I didn’t know what they eat, and I only knew of a couple of tourist attractions, the 101 tower and the night markets.

So I went with a clean slate of expectation, and found myself on one of the best trips I have ever taken. Taiwan actually made me think a lot of Barcelona, with the wider streets having a lot of palm trees and the narrower streets having a lot of plants. It was just very green there, which I was sorely missing in winter in Korea.  Taipei has some more downtown looking areas, but they bleed out into other neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods sort of lead out to the country, and the country kind of leads you into other cities. There wasn’t a lot of clear lines and I was never 100 percent sure where I was to be honest. Sometimes I thought I was in Taipei and I wasn’t. All the buildings looked slightly old and worn, like they built all the buildings, left for 20 or 30 years, and came back again to slightly rusty, slightly bending buildings and streets, over run with trees, vines, flowers, and plants.

Not to say they didn’t have modern looking buildings and conveniences (the subway system was nice and usable), but these types of buildings seemed to be the majority. It really added to the look and atmosphere of Taiwan, and I liked that they looked that way.

The first day we took it kind of slow, all of us were a little tired from traveling, so we just met up with Rachel’s (one my friends) friend Leah, who is Taiwanese (I’m not sure how to spell her name), who took us to a nice dumpling restaurant. Leah would be the guiding force of our trip, and was beyond amazing and helpful. Yay Leah!

Anyway, we stuffed ourselves silly with Chinese/Taiwanese food and then spent some time wondering around the city, but we headed back early, planning a full day for the next day.

Since Taiwan is small, it is easy to take day trips out of the city. We went to a mountain side village that inspired the village in spirited away. The train ride, then bus ride there were gorgeous. I started to hit all of us what a pretty country we were visiting on the ride to the village. The village itself also cemented that thought. It had beautiful scenery, wonderful streets full of goods and great tea shops where you can rest and take in the views. Later we headed back into the city and met up with Leah, who again, took us to great food. We also saw the 101 tower, a temple in the city, and ate some snake.

Yes, me, who couldn’t eat anything with a hint of mustard on it, who stuck her nose up at any piece of meat with even a sliver of fat on it, ate snake. But first we drank a lot of its fluids. So there is a transitional Taiwanese process, where you drink half of the blood in this little glass, then drink half of the ginseng mixture, then pour half of that into the other half of the blood, then drink half that and then continue the process with snake medicine, snake venom, and then snake bile. You finish it off with the snake soup, which is just broth with floating chunks of snake in it. I consumed it all, and it wasn’t actually that bad. The snake was very bony though.

The next day Leah took time off of work and drove us all around Taiwan, showing many cool things. We went to this modern museum, which is mysteriously closed on Wednesday, so we couldn’t go in. But the area is a harbor, so we went and saw the ocean and just sat and enjoyed the sun for awhile. Then we went up to a temple, which was just mind-blowingly beautiful. I feel like none of my pictures captures how pretty anything was.

She took us to a historic street, then a bread factory, and a whisky distillery, and then a night market. It was a day full of scenery, sights and food. It was also very nice to be driven all those places, as it would not have been possible to see all those things without Leah driving.

The fourth and last full day (the next day would mostly just be me traveling back), we went to the zoo. The zoo has a panda, which we were excited to see. I apparently saw a panda when I was little, but I don’t remember it, so it was cool to see one for the first(ish) time.

The zoo is connected to a gondola, which is really quite extensive, as far as gondolas go. On the way there my fear of heights was hard to keep at bay. I think I might have mentioned to my friend that I was afraid of heights once or twice ( a minute), which I’m sure they loved. But my fear of heights couldn’t overcome the enjoyment of the view I was seeing which was dazzling. (I’m sorry, I am reaching for thesaurus words here. There are only so many times you can say amazing). We went to the top of a mountain on the gondola, which again had dazzling (breath-taking, dramatic, marvelous?) views.

We wondered through a small town, went down a bit of hill, and found a nice and secluded tea shop over looking the nearby valleys and cliffs.  The tea there was done in this very complicated, traditional way with clay pots, a lot of water, and tiny tea cups, but the tea was great and the process was beautiful. The tea shop had a very relaxed atmosphere, and the only sounds you could hear were birds. I made friends with the tea shop dog too.

After that we went to the Chiang Kai‑shek Memorial Hall, which I am certain has tons of political meaning that I am ignorant of and should probably find out. But for now I can say that it was very impressive looking. And while it felt very grand, It was used very openly by the public, which I liked. People were jogging through the large park. People were having aerobics classes and dance offs in the square. It felt like even with all the stateliness, it wasn’t taking itself too seriously.

After that we met up with Leah and ate a lot of delicious, cheap food, which there are no pictures of, because it was too busy eating it.  To cap off my adventure, everything was absurdly cheap. Including my hostel, I spent less than 200 on my trip, and I wasn’t even trying to be frugal. It was awesome.

Now I am back at work, and starting my regular routine again, so I have no idea what I will write about next. Until next time.

Christmas, Japan and Winter Camp

It has been over a month since I have posted. And what a month it was. The last post included pictures of the beginning of Christmas time in Korea. And except some scattered Christmas trees and some lights, Christmas time in Korea is a little, sad? disappointing?  I don’t know how to describe the feeling exactly or even why I felt the way I felt, but I did not enjoy Christmas time at. all.  I do know that in large part it was because I missed my friends and family the most during that time. Christmas is a big deal back home to me and my family, so spending it away from them was lonely.

Not that the expat community here in Korea didn’t try. There was a lot of events for volunteering at orphanages, and a lot of different Christmas themed events at different bars and places around Busan. There was a thing called Santa-con, where a large group of foreigners dressed as Santa Clause and when from bar to bar, singing Christmas Carols. My friends and I got together on Christmas day and had a potluck at a friend’s house, where there was lots of tasty food and cookies and good company. But still, but, but, but, I dunno, it didn’t feel right.

And I do believe that that time sort of put me in a slump.  I think culture shock has kicked in, which was bound to happen at some point, so why not now? Culture shock generally happens when people are abroad for awhile, long enough to feel the day to day problems become irritating instead of interesting. There is generally a sort of mini-depression, you don’t want to go outside, you sleep a lot, you feel almost irrationally angry at your host country, and homesickness intensifies. The best way to combat culture shock is to know about it, and go out and engage with the culture anyway, even when you just don’t want to deal with it.

So, I have been going out anyway, seeing friends (both Korean and foreign), visiting parts of Busan I  haven’t seen yet, and generally having a good time, even if some part of me feels down. But as my mom says (and I rolled my eyes, but it is true) this too shall pass, and I am not too worried.

In a way, I am kind of glad that I’m struggling a little.  Usually things that you work for, things that you work through, mean more than when everything just comes easily, and I do want my time here to mean something, and I think it will. Not to say that I am enjoying the culture shock, but things could be worse, for sure. (This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass…)

On a completely different note and tone, I also went to Osaka, Japan and had a wonderful time! Right now, at work, the kids have a month off of school for winter break.  So, I have two weeks vacation, then two weeks where I teach a thing called Winter Camp. For me, I broke up my vacation so that I had one week off, then two weeks teaching, then another week off. The first week off I went to Seoul and Osaka, and the second week off I will go to Taipei, Taiwan, which will have its own separate post.

So from the 28th through the 2nd, I went to Seoul and Osaka. We left Busan early on the 28th and spent the 28th and 29th in Seoul, then left for Japan early on the 30th, then left Japan in the afternoon on the 2nd. It was cool to spend a couple more days in Seoul. I spend a long weekend up their awhile ago, but I feel like I got to see more of the city this time, because we just happened to take more buses this trip.

Then we were off to Osaka, which is a really cool city. Their subway system is beyond confusing, as different private companies own each subway line. This means you have to buy different tickets and walk with out a lot of signs to get from one line to the other, and let’s say we spent a lot of time mildly lost, but I don’t mind being lost during vacation so much.

The first night we met up in the center of the city, in a place called Nampa, which was just so what you want Japan to look like, I was very pleased. The dorky part of me that watched anime as a teenager enjoyed it very much.  The second day was New Years Eve, we met up again, and went to this place called the floating gardens, which is just two very tall buildings connected by a glass escalator. The views were amazing. We also wondered around a Japanese mall and just took in some sights of the city.

We then went to the Osaka Castle, where we saw that there was a light show for News Years. We hung out there, and paid a lot of money to go in, but it was worth it. There was an insane amount of lights. There were also booths with food, and a Japanese techno-pop concert, which was fun. Some of us were trying to figure out how to count down from 10 in Japanese for the New Years, and eventually a Japanese couple turned around and helped us out, so we were ready. They all counted down in English anyway, but hey, we learned some Japanese.

The last full day in Japan my friend and I went to Universal Studios, mostly for Harry Potter world, because we are both Potter Dorks. We meet up at 11 and headed over, and there wasn’t a line to get into the park really. We went and stared at the giant Christmas tree and wondered around looking at “Hollywood” and “New York” and all the pretend American things. We saw that the lines in Harry Potter world were really long, so we wanted to buy an express pass. We followed signs to these machines, were some Japanese park workers helped us out, and we saw that the next pass was a timed entry for 6:30 pm, and I didn’t want to wait that long, so we just decided to get lunch and wait in line.

It was funny, because Universal was pretending to be America, all the food was American. It was a little disappointing because I wanted Japanese food while in Japan. But hey, a Hamburger is always good. Then we wondered over to the Harry Potter World area, and to our horror, those timed entry tickets weren’t for express passes, they were to get into Harry Potter World at all. So we rushed back and got spots at 6:50, two hours before the park closes. It was very disappointing. It meant that we wouldn’t be able to ride any of the rides in there, but we hoped that we could still tour the castle and see the shops.

But in the meantime, we had four hours to kill in Universal. We went in the Back to the Future Ride, which was fun. Then waited in line forever for the terminator experience, only for that to break down, so we got a one time express pass for waiting there, and decided to go to the Spiderman ride with it.  The non-express pass wait was 130 minutes, but with our pass the line was only 30 minutes, which was cool. Spiderman is my favorite superhero.

During all of this waiting in line, the temperature dropped a lot, and it was freezing. We spend hours standing outside in the freezing cold for rides we didn’t really want to go on, just waiting to go to Harry Potter World. But finally the time came, and we entered the park, and it was everything I wanted it to be. I dorked so hard.  I had Butterbeer, and it was sugary deliciousness.

The next day we returned to Busan, where I slept three days until it was time for Winter Camp. Winter Camp is special classes for students who want to (or whose parents want them to) come and study extra English. It is four classes a day, back to back. So a lot of English for those students. I had to plan the 20 hours of lessons and materials for the camp, and make them both educational and fun. It was very stressful planning winter camp, just because I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I taught 3rd graders last week, and I am teaching 4th and 5th graders this week. The class size is about 20 students. I had never taught 3rd graders before, so I was worried about teaching them, not knowing what their level of English was. But it went surprisingly smoothly.

Wow, this was a long post. Next post I will update you on how the second week of winter camp went, and how Taiwan hopefully goes. I also hope it will be shorter.

2 Seasons

It has been awhile, sorry. I feel like life here as picked up speed and I don’t have time for anything but going at full speed or sleeping. Which makes me sound really intense, but I am always doing things that I like. For example, every Wednesday I go to a language exchange for 2 hours to learn some Korean. I am learning how to knit every other week. Sometimes I have work dinners and other times I take day trips around Korea, like to Gyeong-Ju, or around Busan.  Other times I just go out, or celebrate various holidays. Last week I learned various Scottish line dances on St. Andrews day. The point being, if it isn’t one thing, then it is another, and I find my life here pleasantly full.

I have also booked flights to Osaka from the 30th to the 2nd to Taiwan from the 19th to the 23rd of January, so I have that to worry about budgeting for, but I am very excited to see even more of the world, knock on wood.

In all my business though, I still found time to notice the change of seasons here. We went from late summer into Autumn, then Autumn into winter, and the changes where very noticeable and rapid. Sometime around late September, early October, all the leaves changed in like a week.  And did they. Fall in Korea is spectacular, the trees change into incredibly bright colors. The Fall weather was mild, a little cold, but over all still pleasant. Just cold enough to make your checks pink, but still warm enough that you want to go outside.

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Then, in the space of a few days, it rained a bit, there was a lot of wind, and suddenly all the trees are bare and it is freezing. The kind of cold where you turn the corner and the wind slaps your face and you just wish you were inside. But still Korea entices me outside with all of its pretty Christmas decorations and cheap shopping. Christmas in Korea is interesting. There are actually a large number of Christians in Korea for whom Christmas has religious meaning, but on the whole, Christmas here seems more about the pretty decorations, giving gifts, and romance than anything else.

Especially the romance. Christmas here is, if you aren’t single, a day you spend with your significant other. Korea is always like living through Valentines day. The couples are adorable and frequently wear vomit enduing matching outfits. There are way more holidays and milestones to celebrate being a couple here. So it is singles awareness day everyday here, yay!

I feel like I am learning about teaching more here everyday, which is interesting. I thought that I would get frustrated with kids, but I find that I don’t. I’m not sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that I don’t take them too seriously and I don’t take myself too seriously either. I think people who come here on a power trip have a bad time, because kids, world over, don’t respond well to barking orders and “because I said so”.  So relaxing, having some patience, and not trying to flex my authority muscle too much has definitely made teaching more fun than I thought it would be.

I think I could go on a long time about various aspects of my life here, but that would be boring. But maybe in the future, I will talk generally about what I am doing and give some small example of differences here, like I did with the seasons. Who knows?

Busan Part 3

There I was, 3 days into living in Busan. I had a school, and I had an apartment, and I knew how to get between those two places. And for the moment I was done with my whirlwind of documentation. It was the weekend, the first in Busan, and it was time to explore. Luckily, I met a lovely group of people at orientation, and we were all on a messaging app called KaKaoTalk, or KaTalk, as it’s know.

Freshman year of college was an awakening to my own social awkwardness and inability to make friends easily. So when I arrived here, I expected to find a similar dynamic to freshman orientation. You know how it goes when large groups of strangers get together. People find people that they can talk to without being immediately irritated with each other, they go around in giant groups of 20 or so people, and they all start to get to know each other. This is where I failed in freshman year. I did not see the point of going around in large groups of strangers, not talking about anything in particular, clogging up hallways and making decisions and walking places at a glacial pace. So I kind of skipped that whole process, and after that it was very hard to make friends, because everyone already had their group.

This experience was very different from that though, because of a couple of things. One, I  joined in on things this time. Amazingly, if you want to get to know people, you have to talk to them, even though my little introverted heart wanted very much not to. The other thing is that this orientation was full of adults, as opposed to glorified high school kids. So the judge-y, clique-y feeling of college orientation wasn’t as present in this one.  Once everybody was settled, we got together over the weekend. And though the EPIK teachers are adults, they are younger adults, and when younger adults in a strange new place get together with people they don’t know too well, they drink. And did we.

You can picture it, large groups of twenty something foreigners wondering in mass with each other. Going to the beach, going to restaurants, hiking, going to carnivals, going to clubs.  None of us knowing how to speak Korean. It was pretty much the definition of being the ugly American. Except that we aren’t all American. The EPIK teachers come from all over the world. In our wandering circus of foreigners, there were Americans, Canadians, British, Australian, New Zealanders, South Africans, and a number of people with duel citizenship to many other countries. In any other circumstance we would consider ourselves very different from each other, and we are, but we are tied by a common language, and here, that is enough in common to make us a group.

But as the weeks went on, we started to break out of our mass of frighten foreigners and talk to  other people.  Most of the Koreans I have met have been very friendly and helpful, and it is easy to make friends here, so we started to break from our foreigner shell and made some Korean friends.  We also stopped wondering around in such a large group. Not only do you start making friends that you have more interests with, it is also impractical to go around in such large groups all the time. But because the Busan batch of EPIK teachers is a good batch, we kind of have a community. So you have people you usually hang out with, but you also have other friends that, if they are doing something that sounds interesting, you can join in with them, no problem. Socially, at the moment, it seems we are in a good place, but who knows, social situations always change.

Other than exploring Busan in a giant group of foreigners, I spent time teaching. I have a very unique situation in that I only teach 5th grade. I teach the seven 5th grade classes three times a week.  This allows me to get to know my students better than many of my peers, who teach grades 3 through 6, and teach each class only once a week, or sometimes once every two weeks, having sometimes upwards of over 600 students. Though I am having a lot of difficulty with the names, I am starting to figure out what each classes attitude towards certain activities are, and what each student is capable of in class. I am learning who struggles, who is shy, who is out going but not necessarily grasping everything, and who seems to be bored by the level I am teaching at.

It is a lucky situation right now, because I can get to know my students, which allows me to teach them better, and because I only have to make 3 or so lesson plans in a week.  Even in this fortunate situation, I find teaching to be a challenging job because I want to do it well, but sometimes I feel like a completely under prepared moron. I know I just need experience, but getting that experience is the hard part. In the meantime, I hope that I don’t teach too terribly.

And that should more or less catch everybody up. The next post won’t be Busan part 4, but probably about something that has been on my mind, or a particularly interesting event, or something. Till next time.  *knock on wood*

Busan Part 2

I had thought about calling the posts Busan part 1,  Busan part 2, and Busan part 3 for awhile before deciding that it worked. I am going to be living in Busan for a year, so in a way everything is going to be about Busan, and I can’t just number all my post so that a few months down the line I’m at Busan part 12, or whatever. That would be boring. But I think calling the first few posts from Busan, Busan part 1,  Busan part 2 and Busan part 3, works because I still feel like a visitor here. Like a tourist. As I am getting into my routine, that feeling has become less and less and is changing into something else, so by the blog post after the next, I feel like I can start talking about my life here, rather than just what it is like. But for now, I’m still settling in, so this blog post and the next will be about me visiting Busan, even though I live here.

I had left you all off with my co-teacher driving me towards my apartment, me feeling nervous and surreal in the back seat. We drove through a lot of the city and the traffic was frightening. At first I was feeling nervous in the back seat because of meeting my coteacher for the first time, but halfway through the ride I was nervous because I was fearing for my life. The name of the game for driving for Korea is aggression. Such petty things as using turn signals, or waiting for someone to let you in when changing lines, or not tailgating, or waiting your turn to go, have no place in Korean driving. Sidewalks are more like a theory than an actual practice. People park on them all the time. Motorcyclists and scooter drivers delivering food or whatever else use the side walk as a secondary road. In a way I can’t blame them, if I were on a scooter, I wouldn’t want to drive on those roads either.

In the moments that I wasn’t watching the road and gripping my seat in terror, I looked out the window in fascination. It looked how you imagine a modern Asian city to look. Tall concrete buildings made colorful with endless signs and people, giving everything an oddly cramped feel. Everything here feels both big and small at the same time. There are huge buildings, apartment blocks that are like sky scrapers, new business buildings and hotels and malls made of glass that seem too big to be where they are, a rectangle shape somehow fitting into a square hole. But the huge buildings are made of tiny shops and apartments. Shops that can only fit a few tables, or clothing stores with only a few racks of clothing, because the space is so small. But however small a space is, or how gray and concrete the building look, or how dank and vaguely smelly a stairwell is, the interior of the restaurant or clothing store is going to be adorable. It is amazing. The Koreans have interior design down pat. Sure, sometimes you might come across a groady looking place, but on the whole most stores here are trying for a calm oasis from the city feel, and most of them succeed. But seriously, if you like modern interior design, this is the place to be. 

  

So we are driving through the city and we go further and further away from the center, but before I could start to worry about actually being far away from everything, we pulled up to my apartment. It is in a high-rise apartment complex with businesses at the bottom, known as an officetel here. We got my luggage out and started inside and up a nice elevator and I was starting to get nervous. Sure, so far it looked nice, but I had heard horror stories. People with mold, people with hard beds with mystery stains. People with no wifi.

So we made our way up to my floor and I was just hoping for sanitary.  But as we walked in, it was more than sanitary, it was pretty nice. The first thing I saw after entering the password protected door was a row of tall dark wooden armoires that had plenty of storage for all my things and a bathroom with a nice big separate shower stall. In Korea, a lot of these small studio apartment’s bathrooms don’t have a separate place to shower, the bathroom itself serves as the shower stall. People have to hold the shower head above their head as they awkwardly crutch over the sink, trying not to get the toilet paper wet. So I saw the bathroom and was sold. Here’s what it looks like. 

After that, we headed over to my school, one subway stop away, but on the other side of a mountain, so I can’t walk there. And the good news is that I am right next to a subway stop. It is literally right out side of my apartment. The rest of the city is at my doorstep, so that put to rest any worries of my location. The school is at the foot of the mountains, and has a great view from the back of it.

All the doors were open, letting in a nice breeze. In the distance, maybe a floor up or down the hall, I could hear a kid practicing the saxophone. It was a pleasant and serene sort of atmosphere. I was shown my shared office space with the other special subjects teachers, and around the rest of the school swiftly.  There was still more to do. But first, I had to meet the vice principal. I was, once again, nervous.

I remembered different etiquette all at once. Bow, shake hands, as a women subordinate I shouldn’t initiate the handshake. Or was it the opposite? I thought I had read somewhere that I should actually initiate the handshake, because it was awkward for men to initiate a handshake with a woman, particularly a younger one.  Now I’m not sure. How much of my practiced Korean introduction do I say? Before I could think any longer we had reached the end of the hallway, and to my surprise it was the vice principal who was playing the saxophone, not a kid. He stopped playing, looked up at us approaching, said hold on a second in Korean, put down the saxophone, and wandered over to us. All my preparation went out the window because he just gave me a cherry wave, said hello, and started talking to my co-teacher in Korean before we wandered away. It was wonderfully casual.

The rest of the day and the next were spent doing a lot of boring documentation work, buying stuff, and trying to adjust. It wasn’t until the following Monday (I got in on a Wednesday) that I actually taught.

So next time, I will talk what it is like teaching Korean 5th graders and what it is like being a tourist in a place you live in, going around in a large group of foreigners.

 

Orientation Part 2, Busan Part 1

The rest of orientation went very quickly. We figured out where the wifi was, stuttered our way through ordering food in Korea for the first time, and figured out how to get into town.

We went on a “cultural excursion” as EPIK called it, where saw other people, Koreans, and Korean things in any large amount for the first time.  We saw the Jeonju Hanok village, which is a historical village, with a lot of older style houses, and a lot of tourism. We made fans and played drums. We ate bibimbap and oddly shaped ice cream…things and visited museums and generally had a good time.

 

We also had to come up with a lesson plan and present it with two of our other group mates to the rest of our group and a judge, who would tell us what we needed to fix afterward. It was a mix of group word, public presentation, and time management, while most of us were still shaking off the jet lag, so it was an oddly stressful addition to the oddly stressful environment of orientation. But the slight nerves surrounding the orientation presentation were nothing compared to the nerves of what followed directly afterward.

We were finally, finally, after months of waiting, of planning and researching and wondering, were getting our final placements. We were going to learn about what school we were teaching in, in what part of the city. We were going to get our school contracts and packets of information that would be it. After that we would have the goodbye dinner, pack our luggage, leave it downstairs and prepare for another big change.

After the presentation, which went smoothly enough and was not really a big deal, I sat in a room with the rest of the people going to Busan, and learned I was going to an Elementary School, in Bokbu, Busan, South Korea. After that, I waited impatiently for the meeting to finish so I could google it.

 

I googled it and was worried. It seemed to be on the very outskirts of the city, it what looked like an isolated little cluster of buildings away from the rest of the city. With the spotty wifi and only my ipod to work off of, I couldn’t figure out if there was a subway stop next to the school or not.

I imaged being stuck in some small town on the outskirts of the city, away from everything I wanted when I decided to move to Busan. I wanted the sea, I wanted to live in a big city, and this school was apparently far away from both. My heart sunk and for a moment I just started at google maps feeling dissapointed, then trying not to.

But after a few minutes, I just kind of laughed at myself. First, maps are deceiving, and Korea is a small country, it probably wasn’t as far away from everything as I thought. Second, I asked myself if it really mattered, and decided it didn’t. I was here, I was finally here, and I was going to teach and everything else was just gravy.

So feeling lighter, I packed up my stuff and the the next day, all of the Busan teachers got on two buses and left.

We drove a few hours to Busan, seeing interesting and beautiful scenery and mountains on the way there. We also got a view of the city as we drove in. It looked like white concrete and glass buildings scattered endlessly in between hills and mountains and rivers. It looked huge and amazing and overwhelming.

 

 

We were dropped off at a middle school in the middle of Busan, where we waited with our luggage to meet our co-teachers. Our faces were set in nervous smiles. I couldn’t stop moving my hands, shuffling from one foot to another. We felt like kids getting picked up from summer camp by our parents. As the co-teachers showed up, we were one by one lifted away to our new lives, full of hope and fear.

My co-teacher showed up with a male co-worker, who was driving. Before saying hello, or anything else after seeing if I was the right person, they put my things in the car, directed me to the back seat, and started driving.

My co-teacher turned in her seat and looked at me with a small smile on her face and said, “You look very young.”  I let out a nervous laugh and nodded saying that that was true, people tell me that all the time.  She turned around and talked to her co-worker, and I guessed my co-worker too, and started talking in Korean with him. I sat in the back, vaguely realizing how surreal everything felt.

In a world wind of action, we went to my apartment, saw my school, and started on all the documentation that had to get down for me to live there. After that, I saw more of the city, taught some kids, and had some fun, but I will talk all about that next time.

Orientation Part 1

I am actually already in Busan, finishing my first whole day here. There is a lot to say about, well, everything, but I haven’t even begun to start processing these last two days, though I can tell you that they were good. So instead I will leave talking about Busan, my new school, co-teachers, and classes until it all actually starts and I have a more solid idea of what I am doing.

I can, however, talk about orientation.

It was…weird? A very generally positive experience, yes, but still odd. Someone described EPIK orientation as being like a bubble, and that is exactly how it felt. A strange transitional period, not connected to your past and only tentatively connected to your future. When I was researching about EPIK, I had trouble finding any detailed accounts of orientation anywhere. I mean, a blog would mention one aspect of it and another blog would talk about something else, but I couldn’t seem to get a complete picture anywhere. It was frustrating, but now I can understand why. There is no point into getting into the meat and potatoes of what you do in EPIK orientation, not because it wasn’t useful or important, but because it was so insular to that period of time.

First, the actual, physical place felt disconnected from everything. Joenju University is where the orientation took place, and it was on the outskirts of a pretty sizable city, which you would not be able to guess just from the campus. It felt like the middle of nowhere. Everything was also shrouded in humid fog that stopped you from see too far into the distance except for the rare moments when the sun broke through.

These were the views from my dorm room, which I think accurately shows what it looked like there. Oh! Also this photo.

It is dark and kind of hard to make out anything, but basically in the background you see the dorm and in the front there is a road lined with trees.  The photo dulls the color a lot, but the light made the leaves a very bright green color, which was very pretty and added to the feeling of unrealness, to break out some great English. But we were mostly functioning entirely with in this one stretch of road. There was the lecture building, the dorm, the cafeteria, and a street that people huddled around, drinking a little, letting off some steam, or desperately searching for wifi. The whole place felt like a set, or like something from the Truman Show.

Adding to the feeling was the lack of wifi, being around English speakers and fellow foreigners 24/7, and the town being very empty because the students were out for summer break. Eventually even the odd bubble of orientation opened up, but that was definitely what the first few days felt like. I will go more into the later half next time.

Such as, next time, I think I will talk about breaking out of the bubble a little, and the fun and different kind of weird that that brought with it. Thanks for reading!

PS. I’m sure there are mistakes in here, spelling and grammar wise, but I am too tired to edit really well right now. But I feel like I should apologize in advance for it, because, I don’t know, it is somewhat ironic that I would have spelling and grammar errors while being an English teacher.