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

Hiking, McDonalds, Church, and Dog Cafe.

This week has been pretty good. Last weekend Whitney and I went hiking. (a popular thing to do in Korea..it's like a Korean past time) We realized that there was a hiking trail right behind our apartment complex. We pretty much live in the mountains. The hiking was fun, it was really just a bunch of steps up the mountain and then just a trail on top of the mountain. The view is pretty and they have these little work out stations with pull up bars, etc..and also these twisty turny things that you exercise on too. I'm defiantly going to try to start hiking more, since the mountain is right in my backyard.


Saturday night we went to dinner with a lot of the other foreign teachers to a restaurant we've been to a few times. It's really good, but really spicy. We met the new kinder teachers who just got here, who are replacing the other two that we've been working with for a month. Yea, so there only 4 kinder teachers me and Whitney and the other two are leaving, so now we have 2 new teachers, and they are going to be asking us how to do everything...ha. We are pretty new too, and are still a little confused on everything. This will be interesting. So, anyways after dinner we went downtown and went to a few bars, then we went to this dog cafe. This was one of the strangest things. It was a place where they had about 15 dogs and a few cats all running around in this room with make-up on, some were dyed different colors and some were shaved in funny ways. And you could just play with the dogs! Apparently you could get coffee also. So we went there and played with the dogs just for a few minutes, I think you're supposed to pay, but we weren't there for very long, and the koreans didn't say anything when we left. It was fun, just very odd.

Sunday I went to church with Whitney and two other English teachers from our school. It was an English speaking church. There were about 7 Americans there and the rest were Koreans who attend the English service to help them learn English I guess. The church wasn't bad. I don't know if I'll go back though. The pastor really creeped me out. I can't really describe him, but he is just creepy and Whitney said the same exact thing. Everyone was really nice though, they had sandwiches afterwards, and they gave us both a loaf of bread. After church we walked around downtown for a while, and did some shopping. We also found the McDonalds in our town! :) And ate there of course. They have a few American resturaunts here....Outback, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Baskin Robins, Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and thats about it I think. Some of its kinda expensive though - especially Pizza Hut. So, if I get too sick of Korean food I have a few places I can go :) I eat at school everyday though. I ate something today that looked and tasted like grass..it probably was seaweed..again.

Well, I get a break in October for 5 days and Whitney and I are trying to decide what we are going to do. I think we may go to China! :)

Busan :)

So, last weekend my roommate Whitney and I went to Busan. We had Friday off, so we figured we might as well take advantage of the 3 day weekend. Busan is a city about 3 hours west of where I live, it's known for its beaches. So on Friday we packed our backpacks and hopped on a bus. The buses are actually pretty nice. They have a cheap one and a more expensive one. We usually go on the cheap one for only 15,ooo won (which is roughly 13 dollars), but we decided to take the more expensive one (which is still cheap for only 22,000 won - about 20 dollars) because it was leaving at a better time. The nice bus has wider seats, foot rests, and you can lean your seat back far. So pretty much like first class. Both of the buses have TV's also. Anyways, once we got to Busan, we automatically got on the subway to head to our hostel. And oddly enough we met this korean guy, (who was helping us) who had just been in Orlando working at Disney for 6 months. He was so excited to find out that we were from Florida. He was also just visiting Busan, but lives in Seoul. So we exchanged facebook info, and now we have yet another friend in Seoul.

We got to the hostel and checked in. It was a little different from the hostel we stayed at in Seoul. And by that I mean it had signs saying it was a hostel. But it was still just this guy's house, which was on the roof. He had actual rooms though and a kitchen and a common room. He also had a dog :) Once we checked in and everything we decided to go check out the markets. So we got back on the subway and found the markets, which is a whole street of shops and little carts of people selling stuff. Tons of socks, shirts, jewelry, hats, food, fake purses, and lots of other random stuff. It was fun. For dinner we found a pizza hut! It was good, but it defiantly was not like pizza hut in the states. We ordered a potato pizza and when it came out it had everything on it! Potato, onions, peppers, sausage, peperoni (or i think it was just ham), bacon, corn (yes corn), and this weird white paste on top. It actually was not too bad, I was just not expecting that. It was really expensive too, most of the American food is pretty pricey here.

The next morning we went to Haeundae beach. This was the popular well known beach, where everyone in Korea goes during the summer. It was extremely crowded to say the least! When we got to the beach, we had to buy an umbrella (there is no room for you to just lay out your own towel somewhere). I think the guy was asking if we wanted to sunbathe and we said yes apparently and so he put us away from everyone else in a sunny area where we could lay out. Because koreans do not sunbathe, they don't want to look dark. We were told that Koreans don't want to be dark because that makes it look like they are lower class and working in the fields all day, so the whiter you are the higher the social class. But anyways, so we were the only ones not under an umbrella and away from everyone else..so we get stared at on a regular basis anyway, but this was just like putting us on display. The beach was sooo much fun though. The water was crazy crowded. I had never seen anything like it in florida. There weren't many waves so these boats would drive back and forth to make waves. So everyone was packed in the water and the waves would knock you into someone. The Koreans are so friendly though, they would just laugh and keep going. We actually met these other American guys who teach English in Seoul. One was from New York, so he talked our ears off for about 2 hours. We were supposed to meet up with them later that night but we never did.

After that beach, we got back on the subway and went to our hostel and took quick showers so we could go to the other beach which was just a short walk from the hostel. That beach was less crowded, but it was also later in the day. That one had a really pretty bridge over the water too, that lit up different colors at night. We walked along that beach for a while, took some pictures, and had a few Koreans come up and chat with us. It was fun just people watching and there were all sorts of mini concerts, dancing soju bottles (which was pretty funny), and different things along the water. Then we kinda just hung out on the beach all night and watched the bridge change colors, it was really relaxing.

Overall, it was just a nice weekend. I defiantly want to go back.

mini update

So, I've finished my second full week of teaching. And I'm still a little confused on what I'm doing. Whitney and I have decided that it has been way harder for us to adjust to how they teach, then it was for the other American teachers. Because we are the only ones with an Education major..therefore we have been taught stuff that is completely different than what they are telling us to do. We also can't really tell what level the students are on, because the material that we are teaching these kids is way beyond where we think they should be at. I'm also still getting used to all the differences in the school. Such as how all the kids take off their shoes when entering the classroom. It's just kind of odd to have all your students running around with no shoes on. Well, the Kinders have little bootie/slipper things that they wear. Another thing is that there are no grades. We check stuff like workbook pages and journals but we don't record any grades.

I was supposed to go river rafting and paintballing this weekend with all the co-workers, like a school trip. As was said in our meeting (translated) "We need to have one in harmony". Their translations can be quite funny sometimes. But anyways, it was canceled (or I guess postponed) due to the rain. Which I think would have made the water rafting more fun. Oh well. So, Whitney and I have just been hanging out. We walked to the World Cup Stadium yesterday, which was fun. It took us forever to walk there..it looked a lot closer on the map. I'm still not sure what World Cup was there. Once we got there we found a big mall outlet/groccery store. The mall was huge and had lots of stores: Guess, Levi, Fubu (haha), Calvin Klein, Polo (or a knock off of polo), etc.. There were also tons of shoe stores. And ice cream shops.

Ok, well this was just a quick update. I'll add more later. :)


Few things I've learned about Korea:

1. The kids LOVE stickers. My name tag at school will probably be covered in stickers at the end of the year. We even use stickers in their workbooks.

2. Most men ranging from 18-30 wear man purses. Don't really know what they carry in those. Many of them are designer bags, like Louie Vuitton and such.

3. Almost all Korean women wear heels. Even just with shorts. The Korean teachers at my school wear them for a few minutes on the way to school, just to take them off and wear slippers all day.

4. They love ice cream here. There are a ton of Baskin Robins and little ice cream shops everywhere! This is one thing I love about Korea! :) oh and they have Dunkin Donuts everywhere too. They have just about as many Dunkin Donuts here as we have McDonalds in America.

5. Koreans are all super friendly! :) They love to help lost Americans and will do anything to help you. The Korean teachers at my school are so nice too. The other day one of them ordered us a pizza and had it delivered to our apartment.

I'll have to add to the list...

Trip to Seoul

So, we had our "summer vacation" this week. Worked on Monday and then had the rest of the week off. After quickly trying to figure out where to go, Whitney and I decided to go to Seoul. On Wednesday we somehow made it to the bus station and bought a ticket to Seoul for only 16,ooo won (which is a little less than 16 dollars). The bus ride took about 4 hours. Once we got there we had to figure out the metro, and had about 3 different people try to help us (koreans are soo friendly! -we think that they just want to use their English, and so when they see us looking lost, they jump for the chance to talk to us) This one lady went totally out of her way and walked us to the right metro line. We got to the right station and from there we had to find this hostel we were going to stay at. We only had the address, so we just started walking down the street and realized there was no way we are going to find this place. We decided to walk into a Starbucks and ask someone in there if they knew where it was. No one knew where it was, after the piece of paper with the hostel address got passed around like the whole place, we finally found 2 Koreans who spoke English and wanted to help us. Actually came to find out that they went to college in the U.S. - one went to the University of Illinois and the other went to Berkley! They helped us find this place, which took forever to find - no signs or anything- and they walked up and down streets helping us find the place. (once again - soo nice! most Americans would never do that) So we finally found the hostel, they walked us right to the door. And well..I had never stayed in a hostel, but Whitney had, and she said this place was not like a normal hostel. We knocked on the door and this Korean guy answered, and it was just his tiny apartment. (like just a bedroom with a wall of kitchen stuff and a bathroom) It had 3 bunkbeds and a little table with a computer. Soo..yea that was an interesting experience. If there wasn't anyone else staying there..I probably wouldn't have stayed there with these strange korean guys. (they were pretty nice though) There was another couple staying there that were from Switzerland, and there was also these 2 guys, one from Georgia and the other from Columbia, who had just been in China for 3 months. So the hostel was sketchy, but we decided to stay. After we "checked in" it was already around dinner time so Whitney and I decided to get some dinner and then shop around our little area.

Since we were both a little tired of eating Korean food, we luckily found a ton of American resturants. So for dinner we had Outback! :) They had pretty much the same food..didn't have a bloomin onion though, which was kind of upsetting. The sweet potato was a little strange too - it was white inside but it wasn't a baked potato, it tasted good though. After that we walked around all the little shops and enjoyed just soaking everything in. Went back to the hostel slept on the hard beds with tiny bean bag pillows (weirdest thing). Oh - and it was like 90 degrees because we can't sleep with the air on here. In the morning I took a shower and asked for a towel and he gave me a washcloth. Yea they don't use big towels here.

Anyways, Whitney and I decided to go on the bus tour that day and the two guys at the hostel joined us. We got on the bus, but we didn't stay on it for long, we just got off at one stop and went to one of the palaces. The palace was so pretty, and just an awesome aspect of Asian culture. I couldn't take enough pictures. The palace was huge! It had like 12 different sections, all with beautiful views of lakes and mountains in the background. It took pretty much the whole day to walk around the palace. After that just Whitney and I went to the Seoul tower. We were told it was better to go at night, because then you can see the whole city lit up. We got up there by cable car and then went to the very top. It was such a great view! I took pictures, but my camera doesn't really like night pictures for some reason, so the pictures I took don't do it any justice. That took all night to do, so we were pretty exhausted when we got back to the hostel. Oh I think that night we had McDonalds for dinner :) That was a good day. Even though Whitney and I got squished in the subway doors when running to get on it/trying to catch up with the guys who walked super fast. It was so much fun hanging out with the guys from our hostel though, and having other "forigners" with us.

The next day we wanted to go on the DMZ tour with the guys but we needed our passport and well our passports our at our school in the process of getting our alien cards. So I defiantly want to do that next time, it's the tour of the North Korean border. So instead of that, we we went shopping in well known cheap shopping area. We met my friend Beth there who I went to school with at UWF. We did a little shopping and then go figure ate lunch at an American bar and grill. There were lots of Americans around the shopping area because it was right outside the military base. So it was strange to see so many other Americans. Shopping was fun though, most of the vendors spoke a little English, so many of them were a bit pushy on buying their stuff, kinda like in mexico. You can bargain too, so I need to work on that. Although I did get a little lamp for 20,000 won which was originally 35,000 won.

After shopping, Whitney and I decided to try and get on the military base. (She used to live here, so she has an ID card) My ID was expired, but I was hopping that they would let me in anyways or not notice. I was wrong. Since it was expired they had to confiscate it :( ..oh well. He was nice though and let me on anyway. So that was the first and last time I'll be on base. We walked around base for a while and Whitney found her old house and her elementary school. The base was huge, so we eventually caught a taxi and he took us to the comissary. Unfortunatly, we did not realize that you needed a ration card to get in and buy stuff :( That was very disappointing. So I guess it doesn't really matter that they took my ID card, because I wouldn't be able to buy stuff at the commisary anyways.

That night we couldn't stay at the hostel so we stayed at my friend Beth's place. She was nice enough to let us stay in her tiny aparment which just had one bedroom and just enough floor space for me and Whitney to sleep. The next day we went to the National Museum of Korea. It was kinda cool, but we couldn't read any of the descriptions of things, so we had no idea what we were looking at. After the museum we hopped on the metro (for the millionth time) and went to the bus station to head back home.

Overall, I had such a good time in Seoul! I love it there! I can't wait to go back, there is so much to do!! And some good cheap shopping! :) I tried to keep this blog a little shorter, it's hard to write everything.

Hope everyone is doing well. :)

Oh - good news: We found peanutbutter here! woohoo