Exploring Geoje

Jin, Morgan and I

 The more I see of Geoje Island the luckier I feel to have been randomly placed in such a beautiful spot. Summer is ending soon, so to enjoy some of the last nice weather Injun, a Korean teacher I work with, brought Morgan and I to a local beach last weekend. For 1,500 won (about a buck fifty) we took an hour long bus ride that dropped us off a short distance from a beach in an area of Geoje called Okpo. Okpo is host to Daewoo Shipyards, which is even larger than the Samsung one in Gohyeon (the area of Geoje I live in).

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It was a beautiful day and while the water was a little too cold to swim, it still felt so nice to be on a white sandy beach and get some sun! I am glad I found these beaches now so next year when it gets unbearably hot again I will know where to go.

Afterwards we decided to explore the town a little. Okpo has over 50 "westerner only" bars as well as a lot of western themed restaurants. We thought the "only foreigners" signs seemed just a tad racist but soon learned they were really more of a warning-  most of the bars labeled as such usually contained more Vietnamese hookers than drinks. Luckily someone let us in on this little fact before we decided to check one out!

Samsung

Elisti and I overlooking Samsung Shipyards

 The next weekend Elisti and I decided to conquer a hike we had been hearing about a lot. It started basically right out the back door of our apartment building and went straight up the mountain side- and I mean literally straight up. Apparently Korean's aren't too into the whole switch-back idea. The two hour hike alternated between a vertical climb and long flat stretches. The best part was a viewpoint towards the beginning where you could overlook almost the entire Samsung Shipyard. It is insane how large it really is in relation to everything else on the island!

A temple in the town where the hike ended

Randomly along the hike we would come across these little 'outdoor gym' areas where excersize equipment had was being used by Korean hikers. During the two hours we were on the mountain we stumbled upon at least three of these clearings. What a great way to workout- outdoors mid-hike! The walk ended after basically sliding down another vertical path into a small town a few minutes walk down the highway from Gohyeon.

Outdoor excersize area

Hiking seems to be a pretty popular thing to do, at least on Geoje. I am constantly seeing locals covered head to toe (literally- they wear gloves, arm guards, and facemasks no matter how warm the weather) in sun protective hiking gear carrying walking sticks headed up the mountain. There are many more trails all over the Island that I want to check out as the year goes on.

Happy Chuseok!

Elisti and Sophia

Chuseok is a harvest festival very simliar to America's Thanksgiving. It usually lasts about three days and the focus of it is to honor elders and perform different rituals and customs. Typically a family will visit both sides of the family during the holiday, so the Chuseok weekend is rather long in order to have time to do so; we had from Friday until Thursday the next week off.
School on Friday was focused around teaching the children different customs that they may expect to see during the holiday. Every child wore their Hambok to school; the traditional dress of Koreans. The children looked adorable dressed up in every color of the rainbow! Us foreign teachers were given Hamboks to wear as well. They are very beautiful but definitely not the most comfortable or flattering outfit I've ever put on.

My Kindergarten Class

First my kindergarteners were taught the right way to bow, and the correct manners for drinking tea. Then they all made their own traditional rice cake dessert and finally they were taken to the gym where they played some traditional Chuseok games. These included throwing a stick into a bucket, kicking some sort of bouncy ball suspended on a string, and my personal favorite- running at a row of lit candles with a towel attempting to blow out all the flames with it at the end.

Learning the correct way to bow

Learning the proper way to drink tea

After a busy day at school I quickly packed up my things and basically ran to the bus station (of course when I actually need a cab there are none to be found). I BARELY missed my bus- i literally was standing at the crosswalk as it drove by, so ended up on the last bus of the night an hour later. I got to Jinju around 10:30 and spent the night there with Morgan, woke up early the next morning and headed to Daegu where we were meeting Shireen and a few of her friends. Shireen is a friend from home who is stationed in Uljin. She went through a program called EPIK, which places teachers in public schools, and had met some people through her training camp which they are all given when they arrive in Korea. 

Out in Daegu

Mo and I trying to find Shireen at the bus stop
(turns out we were at two completely different
ones on opposite sides of town)

We spent the long weekend walking around exploring the town and putting the subway system to use. Daegu has a lot of great shopping. You can find some amazing deals, and also some very expensive stores. We made the  mistake of trying to order food at a Japanese restaurant in the middle of an ally full of upper end shops. Fifteen dollars a person later we had consumed about two thin slices of raw salmon each and a few chunks of tuna so frozen it had steam coming off of it (we thought we were ordering sushi). There are roads in Daegu where all of the shops on it are geared towards the same thing, such as "cell phone ally" where one can choose among many competing cell phone stores. The strangest one was puppy ally. There were hundreds of dogs lining the streets in little glass windows. They all looked impossibly small and like they must have been taken away from their mothers immediately after birth. The best part of the trip was definitely a short hike we took up a mountain/hill that was dead center of Daegu city. The view from the top was amazing and it was very nice to have this beautiful park located right in the heart of the city.

Hiking

The view from the top of our hike
in the middle of Daegu

Monday night we attempted to celebrate the Korean holiday authentically and cooked a big feast. The entire meal was pretty much all thanks to Shireen who did an amazing job at transforming all of the random and strange items we picked up at the market into a slightly less strange and very delicious meal! All in all it was a great trip and wonderful to finally meet up with Shireen! Many thanks to her very nice friends who slept on a hard wooden floor for three nights in order to let us girls have a comfortable bed!

Dicipline techniques

September 6th, 2011
Every day that I spend here I think I enjoy it a little bit more. There are definitely periods where it can be a little lonely, but I am loving my new apartment as well as living so much closer to some of the other teachers. They have been a great help getting settled in and have given me many helpful hints for getting around/surviving this place. Elisti even told me about a running trail that is only a short jog or walk from our apartment. It is very nice to find a great path where I do not look so out of place jogging down the street. Many of the people running or walking this path may be wearing face masks (still haven't figured out exactly what that is about), but still! And this morning I joined the gym that is right by my apartment that Elisti and Sophia go to. The island itself is very beautiful. It is a great mix of city life as well as beautiful surroundings. There are even supposed to be great hikes right out the door of my apartment that hopefully I will get to go on soon.

Teaching has been going much better as well. I have found that the trick is over-preparing extensive lesson plans for all my classes, at least for now until I get in the swing of things. When I can come up with the next task quickly I think the children are kept slightly more focused and it is a little easier. This is not to say that I have gained even close to complete control of ANY of my classes. The Kindergarteners jump all over me and I think often feel that my blabbing is getting in the way of their socializing time.The older kids typically listen a little bit better, but are much farther behind in the language learning process. I even got a class of "babies" yesterday where five or so did not have English names yet. I was given the task of selecting a list of names for those students to choose from. Regretably, no one went for any of the Kardashians; none of the girls seemed to like Kourtney, Kloe, Kim, Kylie, Kendall, or Kris. The boys did not even consider Bruce, Scott, Lamar, or Mason! However, they jumped all over the cast of the Jersey Shore and my class now contains a Deena and a Jenny, who I'm hoping won't notice if I slowly start calling J-Wow.

During the last period of the day I had an extremely unruly child, Henry. He had given me problems last class, but the hand raising technique had proven ineffective as he just waved his arms around making strange noises and becoming even more of a distraction. Today he refused to answer any question I asked him or participate at all (I'm not sure if he does not understand me or was trying to be spiteful) and then began banging his desk and chair. When ignoring him, and then pleading with him to quiet so the other children could hear did not work, I did as I had been told previously to do and stepped outside to grab a Korean teacher. My director was nearby and when I told her what was going on she said no problem and ducked into a side room to grab what I thought was a more forceful or intimidating teacher. However, when she entered the room she had a ruler in her hand and began talking extremely fast and sternly to Henry, who quickly sat on his hands to hide them... I guess this was the hand striking I had heard about from teachers at other schools. I felt a little sorry for Henry, but he was not hit and promised to quiet down. My sympathy ended quickly when the teacher had to be called in a SECOND time as he yet again would not shut up. This time he was pulled out of my classroom and did not come back until a while later, now with a much better attitude. Whether it was the ruler that did the talking or some other sort of persuasion I am still not sure.

The epic move

September 4^th, 2011
Friday was a very hectic day. It started with me packing up all of my things from my temporary apartment early in the morning, and lugging them down the three stories to the road. Once I flagged down a taxi I attempted to tell him where to take me- Hang Gang Bill, Soobi. It seemed simple enough and Emma had written it down for me, assuring me that if I just repeated this to the taxi driver they would get me there. Not so much. After a half hour of driving in circles, and trying to communicate to the driver using my English to Korean phrasebook once again, I gave up and had him drop me off at my school, Kids Club, which he recognized the name of. I had to bring my extensive luggage collection to school with me, and then use what little time I had left before class started to quickly try to prepare for my first day of teaching.

This proved to be even harder and more exhausting than I could have imagined. The first half of my day was taken up by my kindergarteners. They are very bright and participate a lot in class, so it
easy to pass time. However this also means that while some are constantly shouting at the top of their lungs, others are silently staring off into the distance in the back, so it is hard to include all the students. However, I am continually impressed by how intelligent they are!

Much of the class times seems to be spent playing parent to the students, comforting the ones that are crying, making the ones who caused the crying apologize, comforting the students who are DEVASTED that they didn’t get to read the part they wanted in the book, etc. It is very interesting how big of a difference between American schools and this one there is for the amount of affection the teachers should show the students. In America it can be taboo to be too hands on with the children, and teachers must maintain a loving but professional roll. Here however it is encouraged to constantly be picking up the children, giving them hugs, telling them you love them, etc. I’m not sure if this is to show the children how much we care, or to create a bond that would cause the child to be devastated and protest immensely should their parent attempt to withdraw them the extremely expensive program…haha

The afternoon classes are the real struggle. The other English teachers told me to not even worry about preparing much since all I am doing is teaching out of the book. However I completely disagree! We will be told to use one thin book for a good 3 months or longer, so I have to be able to make two pages of material last 55 minutes- a very big struggle since many of these classes remain completely silent the entire time. It’s hard to read if the children have no idea what I am talking about, or they are just used to the typical Korean style of teaching which does not encourage much participation
from their end. I think it is some sort of mix of both.

After class my school gave me a bus to take all of my luggage to my apartment which was very helpful, and two of the foreign teachers in my school (both from South Africa, as was Emma and are the other two foreign teachers at Kids Club): Elisti, who lives next door to my apartment, and Sophia, who lives a few buildings away, came with me so there was no way to get lost this time. We lugged the baggage up four flights, only to realize that none of us had the key to my place! Emma either forgot to hand it off, or forgot to tell any of us where she placed it. We took my bags into Elisti’s apartment, I
quickly packed up a backpack for the weekend, and we hiked back to my school to see if they perhaps had my key- which they did not. Luckily I was already planning on leaving for the weekend and went directly to the bus station to go see Morgan in Jinju and Elisti was nice enough to keep my pile of bags in her apartment all weekend.

The bus trip to Jinju turned out to be quite the adventure. I made it there with only a little help from some pedestrians (I’ve found that the younger the person on the street you find to ask a question, the more likely it will be that they know enough English to communicate back). I had an hour to kill so went looking for food and after about 45 minutes of frantic searching was able to come up with some sort of odd crab sandwich. Finding edible food is still proving to be a little bit of a challenge. Morgan and I leaned the term “NO Ko-gi!” (no meat) this weekend, which seems to be a little help. I had been told that the bus ride was one hour, but once I boarded a Korean man who spoke English told me it was actually two. This was sort of a problem since neither Morgan or I have cell phones at this point and the plan was that she would be waiting an hour from my boarding time at the bus stop to meet me. It was complicated even further by the fact that there were TWO bus stops in jinju. Morgan was planning on assuming that I had gotten off at the wrong stop (since it is very hard to tell which is which not being able to understand the driver’s announcements) and going to the second stop if I was not there at
the arranged time. I was very anxious the entire trip but luckily when we pulled up Morgan was there still waiting; I have never been more grateful to see a friendly face!

Over the weekend I met many other foreign teachers as there are many living in Jinju. Morgan’s apartment is nice, and is in a great location, but she said when she moved in it was a MESS. Apparently the Koreans say it is good luck if your apartment is messy when you arrive; I think that
sounds like a good excuse for landlords to not have to clean them in advance.

Coming back to Geoje at the end of the weekend sort of felt like returning to Port Orchard
after a long and busy weekend in Seattle; a lot of fun but it is always nice to be back in the comfort of your home. Elisti now had the key to my room, so I was able to get all my bags unpacked. This place is actually very nice! It is bigger than my temporary apartment- only slightly, but hey, I’ll take any increase in size. It is also fairly new and has a great set of furniture which was put together by
Emma while she was living here. Also, since it was left to me by Emma, not a local, it was very clean when I moved in!

A real bed!!

Kitchen

Closet and Laundry Room

A sink-shower this time

Observing

August 31, 2011
Today I observed Emma all day, taking feverish notes and hoping dearly that I can remember which kids learn from what book, etc. I will have a total of nine classes, all different ages, skill levels, and using different curriculum. I have Kindergarten in the morning, which I was told is the most “high-stakes” of my classes as the parents pay a lot to enroll their students in a private English class, and can easily move them to a competing school if they do not feel their child is being taught properly. This means I tred a fine line between educating the children and making sure that no one goes home and complains that "Shannon Teacher" was mean to them. This goes from 9:00 am until 1:30, with an hour break. I have another hour off and then four 50 minute classes that are really more of an afterschool English camp for children elementary school age. These four classes alternate every other day, hence the 9 classes total.

After school the teachers threw a party that was half for Emma’s going away, and half to welcome me. It was very sweet of them; they pulled out all the stops with a mix of Korean dishes as well as fried chicken (they seriously LOVE it here) and seafood pizza. There was even a delicious Korean cake with caramelized fruit and tomatoes on top! They are all very sad to see Emma go as she is a very talented teacher, so I have big shoes to fill (a phrase I used today to my director that in retrospect I think was completely lost on her). Part way through the dinner one of the directors thrust a microphone at me and told me to stand up. With no prep time I had to give an impromptu speech of how happy I was to be at the Geoje School, and what great students they had, blah blah blah. As I went to hand the microphone off one of the teachers loudly asked if I had a boyfriend. When I replied that no I did not, she asked me how I felt about Korean men... I struggled to find a non-offensive way to say "not in a million years" and quickly sat down. Emma told me later that I better get used to this whole last minute/no notice aspect as it is very common in Korea. She said it is not uncommon to be told that you will have a long weekend or days off the night before it happens, or even that you have a speech to give at an assembly minutes before it begins… this gives a little more insight to my sudden plane flight fiasco. In fact I was just told at dinner today that I must be out of my apartment by Friday, something I don’t think that would have been mentioned to me until the morning of had I not thought to ask All in all I really enjoy this school. I even learned a good student control technique today; apparently it is common and very acceptable (in fact it was suggested to me in the teacher’s guide) to punish a child by having them
stand against the wall with their arms raised above their head for as long as you tell them to. So if all else fails at least I have a good crowd control technique.

"Yachting" field trip

August 30, 2011

I woke up early this morning to go on a short jog. The country side was very beautiful once outside the city a bit, but the most interesting thing I discovered during my run was what appeared to be an army of Korean men (and a few women) dressed in matching grey jackets and pants. They
swarmed the streets on mopeds, bicycles, and by foot. I was extremely confused (and a little alarmed) until I later learned that these were all the workers of the Samsung shipyard that Geoje Island hosts, one of the largest shipyards in the world. These workers swarm the city, mostly in the morning traveling to work, in the afternoon traveling home, and often at night piss drunk helping eachother stumble down the streets.

Their fashion-forward matching grey jump suits

Parades of them appear every morning mopeding to work

School today included what I had been told would be a “yachting trip” aboard one of the student’s very wealthy parents’ boat. This field trip turned out to be more along the lines of the four classes of students taking turns for about three minutes apiece on a speed boat doing figure-eights in
the water. It was definitely fun, but the main concern of the teachers was to make sure the children didn’t go flying off the back of the speeding boat. I’m not sure where the educational value of this trip was supposed to come in, but I am very impressed by the school’s apparently extremely lax
safety regulations.

Building the cigarette/sand castle

All the children wore hats or visors- Koreans are very scared of the sun!

I was surprised by how dirty the water and beach were; there
were shampoo bottles, brooms, and old gloves floating in the water and laying in the sand. My children created a nice sand castle that looked to be about 25% cigarette butts. Other children refused to go in the sand at all saying it was “dirty”.

After the boat rides and some icecream, it was back into the buses and to the school. Lunch time was next, Emma informed me that every day consisted
of rice, kimchi, some sort of soup, and a few side dishes. I get free lunch if
I eat at the school, and the director told me more or less that it would be appreciated to spend this time with the students, so I think I will be trying some very interesting and authentic dishes!

After school I went to “Meat Home”, a Korean BBQ, to meet up with a large group of foreign teachers for Emma’s going-away-dinner. It was quite a walk into town and I was EXHAUSTED after a day of work (I really am getting a newfound respect for what my parents do) but I forced myself to go. I
am so happy I did! Not only did I find out the walk was not nearly as long as I imagined, I finally oriented myself in relation to my school and the rest of the city. Geoje is not at all the small suburb I imagined, but rather a very busy and highly populated city that is scrunched together between large green hills.

This dinner was also a great opportunity to meet about 20 foreigners also living on the island.
There are many people here from South Africa, as are all the other foreign teachers at my particular school, which is interesting. They confided in me that their first language was actually Afrikaans, but they were not allowed to speak it at school as the directors did not want the student’s parents knowing they were not native English speakers. After dinner we went toget a drink at the “Family Mart Bar” which I assumed a bar jokingly named after the family marts that are on every street corner. Actually, it turns out many people like to buy beers at the 24 hour family marts, pull up chairs outside, and
hang out for a cheap night of drinking. After half a “soju” (a local favorite which tasted more like vodka than beer) I made the semi-long trek home. Luckily Korea is a very safe city with people out and lights on all hours of the night.

The search for food begins..

August 30^th
I was told last night to meet at the Avalone school, a few buildings down from my temporary apartment, at 1:30 pm. This left me with the whole morning to explore the town. My first mission: coffee! On almost every other street corner there are “Family Marts”. These are pretty much a slightly nicer gas station type store. I entered one and found my new favorite Korean product: ice cold Starbucks “lattes” sealed in a cup with a little expandable straw. I loaded up on those and went out to search for my next meal. I walked up and down the street desperately looking for restaurants showing pictures of the dishes they offered. Even with the seemingly endless choices of places serving food, I had little success finding anything that I could confidently identify as meat-free. Almost all of the food looked to be the same noodle and meat dishes with the occasional egg or shrimp thrown in. Fried chicken restaurants also appear to be extremely popular. Finally I entered a shop and with the help of my handy Korean/English dictionary pointed out “I am a vegetarian” and was able to order a noodle/egg/vegetable soup mixture.

Soon it was time to head to Avalone, where I thought I would be teaching. However I was told once there that this was just a secondary school, and I would be catching a “bus” (a small van of children also heading to their classroom) to my destination across town. Once there I followed the excited students into a building where I was met by my fellow foreign teachers- the first English speaking people I had talked to in what felt like weeks! The teacher, Emma, whose job I am taking over for showed me around quickly and tried to catch me up and introduce me to students as best she could before the student’s speech contest started. This was an opportunity for some of the more talented children to recite stories in English or sing songs that they had memorized. It was not only extremely cute but also pretty impressive what a strong grasp many of these young children already had on the language. This contest lasted all afternoon so I did not do much actual observing of the teaching process. I was put on a bus once again back to my apartment where it was time to venture out now in search of dinner. I walked deeper in a new direction towards what appeared to be the busier part of town. There were many clothing shops with American brands, I even saw a Brooks store! Ever thought of a new location, Drew? There was also a huge market of many fresh fruits, vegetables, baked goods, meats, and lots and lots of fresh seafood. There were tanks of live squids, and fish so fresh they were still flopping around in their display baskets.

 It all looked delicious but since I have not figured out the stove in my place, nor do I have so much as a pan or a plate here now that I think about it, I kept looking for something already prepared. I came across a “European restaurant” where there were English subtitles to each dish and was finally was able to eat something I could identify.