안녕하세요! (Hello!)

Last week we had this “English Market” for the kinders. We set up little stores in each room. We had a fruit market, a vegetable market, a stationary store, a flea market, and a snack store (all real stuff). Each kid was given a little purse and some fake money. And they were allowed to buy things, using only English of course. They had to say things like “How much is this?” and “Can I have a discount please?” It was very cute. We actually had to have the kids memorize the “script” the week before. So I think the kids finally understood why they were memorizing those sentences, even though most of the kids didn’t even remember the lines. It was good though, and the kids had a lot of fun, especially since they were allowed to keep everything they bought.

This weekend was good. Went hiking on Saturday morning, enjoying the beautiful weather while it last. I know it’s going to start getting cold soon. Later on I went out to eat at “Kimbop Nara” with Whitney and Aaron. This is a great little place with good cheap Korean food, I usually eat the mondue, which are dumpling things, and also the tuna kimbop. Kimbop is rice with a few other veggies wrapped in seaweed…and you can get other things in it too, like tuna. :) That night Whitney and I tried to get everyone together to go bowling, but it ended up only being me, Whitney, Jake and Devon (2 other co-workers). It was a lot of fun. I love bowling. I would say I did pretty well too. One game I got 5 spares in a row. :) After bowling we decided to go to “Fish and Grill” and have some fruit flavored soju cocktails. They are so delicious. They’re just like fresh fruit smoothies with soju.

Today has been a pretty relaxed day. Just hung out in the apartment all morning/afternoon. Cleaning my room, catching up with a few things. At 4:00 Whitney and I went downtown and met Gena (one of the Kinder Korean teachers) and “Rebecca” (one of the secretaries at our school). We went and saw the movie “Fame”. It was really good. It’s funny because they play the American movies here with Korean subtitles. But there were some parts of the movie that were either slang words or English expressions, that the Koreans did not get at all, so sometimes Whitney and I would be the only ones in the movie theater laughing.

So..as far as TV goes, Korea plays American TV shows, but only a select few. They are all in English, just with Korean subtitles. The only shows they play are: CSI, House, Greys Anatomy, Oprah, Ugly Betty, Gossip Girl, Tyra, Project Runway, NCIS, and a few other of those crime shows. So, those are pretty much my only options. At least that’s all I’ve seen so far. And of course the Korean channels are always interesting too..they have lots of weird random shows. Although, they do play some pretty good American movies every now and then. Yesterday they played the Sex and the City movie! The commercials are the best. I could watch Korean commercials all day long. They crack me up. Here is one that they play all the time, it’s my favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flA6bD_OzJA

Korean class has been going well. I’m so excited that I know the Korean alphabet and that I can actually sound out and read signs around town. Although I can read the signs, I have no idea what it means. As for actual Korean words - I know the basics, hello and thank you. But I’m also learning a lot of random words. So far I know words such as: vomit, shoes, baby, pig, nosebleed, tree, beer, moon, candy… You know, the most essential words.

This week I only work till Wednesday and then I have a 5 day vacation for Chuseok (Korea’s Thanksgiving). I’m so excited about going to CHINA!!!

Boseong Green Tea Fields

So this weekend has been pretty good. The week didn't start off so well though. On Tuesday, Whitney and I walked into school and checked our temperature (as we do every morning because Korea is a little paranoid of the Swine flu) and we both had a high temperature. Mine actually wasn't that bad..but I had a sore throat and could tell I was getting sick. So, we told one of the Korean teachers and she automatically called our boss lady and they decided that we should both go to the hospital. So our IT tech guy at the school drove us to the hospital and helped us with everything, he's a really nice guy, but he speaks hardly any English. At the hospital the nurse had us wear masks...which was quite funny - especially because I wore my glasses that day and everytime I took a deep breath or laughed my glasses would fog up. They are very fast at the hospital..like the longest we waited was probably about 7 minutes. We had a very broken English/Korean conversation with the doctor about our "illness" and from there he decided that we had many of the symptoms of swine flu..therefore we needed a swine flu test. (the first one at least..and if it came back positive then we had to take the second one). The nurse told us to go upstairs and we waited for a few minutes and at that time Tanya came (our "principal"/boss), and she can speak very good English. We took the swine flu test, which was just a little swab from the throat - it came back negative. The doctor brought us in again and this time we had Tanya there to translate for us. The doctor had about a 5 minute discussion with Tanya in Korean and then she turns to me and Whitney and says "Caroline you have the common cold and Whitney has tonsillitis" (which she knew that she had either that or strep, since she's had it before). From there we went across the steet and got some medicine from the pharmacy. I didn't think I was getting medicine, but apparently I was and I was kind of confused on why I was getting something for just a cold. I just went with it though. Once I got it, I took a look a the pills and on it said tylenol. Ha. Well...after all that, you would think that they would send us home..you know since we were sick and all. At least send Whitney home since she had tonsillitis, which is contagious...nope we went right back to school and continued teaching. All they wanted to know is that we didn't have swine flu. So, yea that was interesting.

On Saturday several of my coworkers and I went to Boseong to see the Green tea fields. It was about an hour and a half bus ride. Then we took another smaller bus to the actual fields, so we arrived there around 5 ish. It was so beautiful, it was quite a hike though. Once we were on top of the mountain it was a georgous view. It was a really good day, and I had a lot of fun hanging out with everybody, including two of the korean teachers who went with us. :)

Kinder birthday party! I love these kids.

The green tea fields.

Everybody at the top.

Insides of a cow anyone?

The past two weekends have been really fun. Lets see...the weekend before last we had a school dinner. It was a "farewell/welcoming" dinner. Two of the other Kinder teachers were leaving and then it was welcoming me and Whitney, and also the 2 new people replacing the ones leaving. It was the whole staff, including the owners, the cooking ladies, and the bus drivers. It was interesting - we ate at a galbi place. Which is where you cook your meat right at the table, and then rap it in a leaf and eat it in one bite (which is hard to do when you have a little mouth). It's good though. Some of the side dishes were: kimchi, a whole fish, and there was this one plate with all different parts of a raw cow - the liver, the lining of the stomach, toungue, and something else that I can't remember. Yea. It was a little strange, or strang-ee (as all the koreans say). At one time during dinner the owner of my school came around to each person and poured a shot of soju (the korean alcohol). And we had to accept it with 2 hands (as you have to do with many other things). After dinner all of the foreign teachers and many of the Korean-English teachers all went out to a bar. We actually began walking to one and then the owner of our school found out we were all going out together and decided to take us to this really nice private bar, with couches and a karaoke room, and even a golf range in the back. So she took us there and gave us her credit card and told us to have fun! We were all like woah, thank you! It was so nice of her and just so different. Bosses don't usually say here's my credit card - go have fun and get drunk together! They are very into co-workers bonding and being in "harmony". So that was a fun night. It was great to go out with the Korean teachers too.

So this past weekend I went to Seoul with 7 other foreign teachers at my school. We went to the Korea v. Australia soccer game. It was a lot of fun. One of the teachers at my school is from Australia, so we all decided to root for his team, instead of Korea. He gave us some Australian gear - flags, head bands and bandannas, so we were all decked out. We also all did the Australian soccerroo chant. Unfortunately they lost. 3-1. The Koreans were all pretty excited though. On Sunday we did a lot of shopping. We just shopped in this one area where our motel was, it was a great street for all kinds of shopping. Lots and lots of Korean memorabilia. I bought a lot of stuff and could've bought so much more. There were lots of fans, paintings, korean masks, korean dolls, lots of jade, and just a ton of cool stuff. Even in the alley ways there were people selling Korean antiques, like old coins, flags, old swords, pottery, etc.. It was defiantly a place where I was like "I want to get that before I leave here, and that, and that.. Anyways, for lunch we found a Subway :) Something that can not be found in my town. It was so delicious. We also went to an American Grill for dinner, and we all had burgers. There's a lot more American food in Seoul then there is in Gwangju, so we were taking advantage of it while we were there.

School is going well. I'm really enjoying it. It's just such a unique teaching experience, and the kids say the darnest things. A few of my classes can be very frustrating though, because the real young kids don't know much English and they are wild and crazy, and even when I yell at them, it doesn't seem to bother them because they can't really understand what I'm saying. And for the kinders, the only way to punish them is to take away "stickers" or to put them in time-out. For my afternoon elementary classes I can make them hold their hands over their head for a punishment, or send them down to the head teacher and get yelled at or hit.

So the English language doesn't seem too hard until you try and teach it. There are some things that I can not explain..and then other things that I can explain but make no sense to the kids. Like the other day I had to try and explain the difference between having a cold and being cold. The kids were like "teacher - same?" There's also so many expressions used in stories, the kids want to know what the words mean literally, but I have to explain that it doesn't really mean that..it's just an expression. Oh, something kinda funny happened today. While teaching phonics, there was a picture of two men, a white guy and a black guy, and one of the kids points to the black guy and screams out OBAMA! And then they all started to say Obama. I was like what? How do these 5 year olds, in Korea, who can barely speak English and probably don't even know the name of their own president know Obama? It's crazy. It made me laugh though. This is also the class that can hardly remember their own English names. Although I did teach them the word fantastic. So when I ask "how are you today?" They all love to say "I am fantastic!" But they can't pronounce their f's, so it sounds like "pantastic". It's so cute.

I started taking Korean classes last week. My school does it and one of the Korean-English teachers teaches it. Not all the foreign teachers take the class, just about 9 of us. We had a writing and speaking test today - and I got minus one on writing and a prefect on speaking! Woo! Yea, those were only the constants though. We have a test on the vowels next Wednesday, and I will probably fail because they all sound the same, and it's very difficult to tell each one apart. It's a fun class though, and I'm excited about learning how to read Korean. I can actually read some signs around town know..well I can at least sound them out, don't really know what it means though.

Alright, well just thought I would do a little update. Oh and if anyone wants to write me a letter, my address is:

Caroline Grant
ECC 2nd Floor SamIn Building
1120 Juwol-Dong
Nam-Gu, Gwangju, S. Korea
503-310