School is Awesome

I don't mean to shit on everyone else's EPIK experience but so far I have to say that I'm the luckiest kid in Korea right now. When they told me I was teaching in Elementary school I was a little apprehensive but I paid for the plane ticket and new the rules of the game.

When I finally got to school everyone was nice, the kids while they stared didn't lose their shit and jump me. I got some handshakes some short English conversations and many "hello's" in Korean. The teachers have been really nice, even though I'm only going to teach 6th graders at this school, I've had a chance to talk to the 3rd & 4th grade English teacher and the 5th grade English teacher, I'm going to do some after school classes with her so I'll get to see them.

On the first day after school was done and most everyone was gone or leaving I was standing on the stairs on the breezeway between the buildings and an older lady stopped and we talked for probably 10 minutes, she kept trying to tell me her English is no good but I was like "well we're having a pretty substantial conversation so you must know something". She's a 2nd grade teacher so I probably won't get to teach her kids or see her again until teacher meetings on Tuesdays.

Speaking of meetings this Tuesday, I have to introduce myself and give a short speech, which my co-teacher asked my to write so she could translate it to those who don't speak English. Then on Monday off to teach the first class of 6th graders. While I was sitting doing my eternal nothing yesterday a girl came in and stood between my co-teacher and I(we sit next to each other turned towards the center) she said something to my co-teacher and then turns to me and hands me a piece of paper all folded up. It was a note "To Teacher" I asked if she was in 6th grade, cause she's kinda small, but I should have known from how good her handwriting was and also how well put together the note was, grammatically speaking. Then I got to the end of the actual note, which was like 4-6 questions and a statement and saw that she had just written "love" over and over again. I think they may need to be taught how exactly the word works but that's for another day and I can do that with "Handsome" and "Beautiful", cause every foreigner apparently gets called those depending on the sex of the teacher they're talking to, so they use the partially correctly.

Off to the Okcheon street vendors to buy stuff!!

Day 1

Here I am sitting in the main teachers/staff room here at beautiful Samyang Elementary school. This is apparently the largest Elementary school and probably school in general in Okcheon. Korean schools breakdown in a very similar way as American schools, 6 years of Elementary, 3 years of middle school and 3 years of High school, also and this is as an aside and a preemptive strike, the keyboard here at my school feels like the keys are about 3/4 scale of a regular American keyboard so for a while as long as I post from school there will probably be some errors. I just can't be this perfect when I may have a class to go to. Also I'm lucky in that I have a dedicated English teacher. She's dedicated in everysense of the word but I mean in two cases here. 1)She only teaches English and only to the 6th graders, so 11 classes worth. We heard all about people who get teachers who are homeroom teachers and they have to be jacks of all trades. It's like elementary in America where the teacher you have teaches all the core classes then there is still a seperate music teacher and an art class. 2) is she's really good at what she does so shes super prepared.

We also have our own English village which I didn't think we would get. Just becaue I figured that not everyone could be winners but so far I've heard of more people getting "villages" then not. All they are is dedicated rooms to and for English, it's hard to explain but what it does mean is the kids come to us not the other way around. It means the world to teachers who have been here and started with no english room.

The staff at the school has been nice. It's a pitty I can't remember any of their names. I'm just terrible like that. If we didn't have nametags on all the time at orientation I would have known the names of like 2 people. So I'll have to make a seating chart of the office that I'm in so that I don't go around mumbling and pretending to say these poor folks names. Also nametags should be mandatory for everyone in the world at all times. Just go ahead and tatoo it to everyones faces. Good day though

Let me show you how it's done. Korean-style

No! This isn't about stealing thing a la James Carville on that one episode of 30 Rock. This is about laundry. Right now it's about 9pm and I'm doing laundry. What makes Korean style so different you ask. The washer and dryer are on the roof of the hotel and they have given me access to them.

I don't know how long I will be here but if it is much past this week I will make sure to bring my co-teacher to the roof of the building and kindly ask, "how does this thing work?" cause right now I'm flying, and washing, my underwear and only my underwear cause I can't read Korean and I don't want everything to run together in some sort of cultural disaster of, well for lack of a better term, epik, proportions. I don't even know what I would do if my clothes were lost or damaged I probably have enough money to make it to the first paycheck but spending most of that on clothes would be bad. So here I am sitting on the 5 floor of the Okcheon Tourist Hotel with my dirty underwear in a strange machine with writing on it that is alien to me on the roof, spinning, spinning always spinning towards the future.

So Much!!!

So my Supervisor is pretty awesome. A couple days ago he dropped this gem on us during an informal get together; "Last night we had a party, I drank, (pause for dramatic effect) sooo much."

That has pretty buch been the oreder of the past couple of days for us not in the actual drinking part of it but in the joke department. We are having a good time as the 3 new foreigners in town but I'd like to break out and know my co-workers a bit more. I know of other people whoo have met the staff and some who have already been out with theirs but I still have only met my co-teacher, who is awesome, and taken a 45 minute ride from the Capital of the Province to this ciry. Just to give you a little background I'm one of those teachers who lucked out super hard. My Co-teacher speaks immpecable English, she got her Master's from a school in London and she's just perfect in everyway.

Anyway I've been past my main school twice once in a car and once walking the cool thing about walking there is I believe that I can basically take the river walk and get to it from where I'm at now which is the Okcheon Tourist Hotel, quaint little place, probably already said this but they serve us breakfast, lunch and dinner. We requested breakfast be western and lunch and dinner be Korean. Western breakfast means eggs, either scrambled or over easy, salad and french fries with something else. It's pretty darn tasty and hits the spot. Really no complaints here other than no laundry mat and the fact that I can't go to work tomorrow. I'd love to start but we are still in quarantine until this Wednesday then they let all the Chungbuk teachers out of the cage.

I have arrived!!

Hey everybody what's up?

It is a beautiful afternoon here in Okcheon, South Korea where I will be spending the next year of my life at least. I literally had the fastest 2 hour bus ride of all time getting to the Provincal capital, Cheonju, then met my awesome Co-teacher. She's great speaks near perfect english if you ask me couldn't ask for a nicer more helpful lady. Anyway we got a couple of things going on, first of all me and the two other english teachers who are just arriving are in quarantine, until September 3 just like the other teachers in our Province. Unlike them (possibly) we are all staying in a hotel as our permanent residence is not yet ready. So here I sit in front of a flatscreen TV that's probably 3.5-4ft wide with internet anc cable hooked up to it, just a typing away, tippity tap, tappity tip. So yeah dinner is here at 7:30 then I think I'll turn in early-ish tonight just because I've spent all day in black slacks and a tie.

Unfaithful

So if you've been keeping up you know that I haven't been updating much. Now that's not because I don't like writing anymore or cause I all of a sudden fell off the faace of the earth. It's just that for right now I'm surrounded by hundreds of others in the same situation as me.

New country, new job, new field. Not alot of people have taught and I'm among those masses. Basically we've had class at a rate of 4 a day from 9am until 5:30 with 30 minutes in between and classes and lunch at 12:30. After that we have dinner at ~5:30 and then optional Korean survival classes, which I took every single one of, from 7pm-8pm followed by free time. Most people have spent their free time taking advantage of no open container laws here in South Korea and buying from the 7-11 or GS 25 mart and drinking on the patios they have set up. It's all very nice.

Last night I went to downtown Jeonju's shopping district, it's basically a brightly lit 4 block by 4block area with everything you could imagine for stores. I even saw a FUBU.

Anyway back to the title of this entry. I have been unfaithful to my blog and once I am settled into my apartment next week and hopefully have internet set up shortly thereafter I will be back into blogging beast mode. I will try to keep this updated as often as possible until then but I can make no garuntees since tomorrow is the big day when we meet with our Provincial Offices of Education(POE).

The past few days

Wow, time flies in a very strange when you are spending most of your time trying to get acclimated to a new place and just settled in in general. I'm still at the Orientation site and we have a few more days to go but it's still been really fun. Yesterday(Sunday) we took a field trip to a temple and then to historical village both located in the city of Jeonju. The Buddhist temple was amazing and situated in a really amazing valley. There was an amazing 11 meter tall gold statue of Buddah, and I once cared about converting that but now not so much.

All in all it was a good day I think I'll walk down to the store and see if I can pick up som hangers

The 10:30 Post #1

So the 10:30 posts begin in earnest here. It isn't even 10am today and I already feel like I've done quite a bit. I took Mom to work this morning then drove across town to get the second part of my physical done, the blood work. I spent all day Sunday drinking bottle after bottle of water to pump myself up and swell the veins in my arm for this one and it worked. Well more like I got the really good nurse this time. I told her about how they tried 3 different veins and kept moving around in my arm last time and she was like "I don't do that, I find a vein and I don't move". Lo and behold she did it and even made it nearly painless. Also while I was there I had them look at my ear because since I last visited them I couldn't hear anything with my left ear. Turns out it was just earwax on my ear drum so they flushed out my ear and sent me on my way. I can hear everything now it is glorious. Gross yes but you don't know how many times I thought I was sick or catching something that would derail the trip just about a month outside of it happening

As far as thoughts on South Korea and the whole program go all I can say is I wish that there was a forum or just online community like ITIL for EPIK teachers and people because the visceral negativity that oozes from Dave's ESL Cafe is so tough there isn't like one troll it's more like everyones either a troll or a newbie. ITIL is much more comfy.

In other news today is the 40th Anniversary of Man landing on the Moon. Why haven't we gone back or further? I don't know but we should look into that.

Super In!!!!

HAHAHA!!! Yes There is nothing in the way but time now. I got a note from the Post Office yesterday after work that said they had tried to deliver my Passport yesterday but no one was here (I had to take the bus in so I left around 10:50am 40 minutes before they came by). So I went to the Post Office this morning at 8:30 and picked it u. There was still a bit of apprehension but I ripped the envelope open and there it was on page 9 my Visa from the Consulate. What did I do after that? Went out and spent $715 on a plane ticket to Korea. I go from Greensboro to Washington D.C. to Tokyo to Seoul. I was a little shaky about taking this because I wasn't quite sure what kind of plane I was going to be on for the first leg but I looked it up and it isn't a turbo prop or anything super old so I felt better. Other than that big planes and long flights at least the middle part. I would much rather have the one really long segment to take me all the way to Asia then having to cross the continent then cross the Pacific Ocean then stop in someplace not Seoul. I guess what I'm trying to say is two stops is better than three.

I'm in!!!! Giggity Giggity Giggity!!!!

Yesterday morning it finally arrived!!! My EPIK contract to teach is here and now all I have to do is apply for my visa. As I sit and type I am 6 and 1/2 weeks away from quitting my job and then spending a few days in Raleigh, High Point and then back here in Charlotte with my Mom before I head overseas for at least a year. I'm going to be placed in Chungcheongbuk-do or Chungbuk Province which is smack dab in the center of Korea, so I will be about equidistant from all sides of the country. My last day in America is going to be either the 17th of August or the 18th and then I might go dark for a bit until I can really get set up over there. Soooo excited to finally have the waiting over with now all I have to do is wait until then and keep my head down and keep working cause I kinda sorta need all the money I can get

But Bernard how will you get along?

I know zero Korean. I'm trying to to learn by myself online stuff, I don't want to pay for rosetta stone and I cannot find a class here in Charlotte so I do what I can, or at least I tell myself that. I think that once I arrive and have no choice I'll be much better about it but for now I'll try to build an infrastructure for learning the language through immersion which I'm sure many people say they'll do and don't, and I know I probably wont either but I won't let that deter me.

You might also say, "but Bernard do you even know anyone in Korea?" The answer is yes, I have one friend from school. She's from Korea and went back this January. We've talked through facebook messages before and for a while and shes cool so that's one person I can ask questions to and talk too. Then there are people from I think I'm Lost, which is a forum for the JET program and Japan. They have forums for other teaching jobs but mostly in Japan. Either through my incessant nagging or other peoples desire to do the same thing that I'm doing, which is really just getting away, so odds are that none of them speak Korean either but hey they are great people to talk to and hang out with on long weekends and such.

Other than that I don't really have a ton of people to go to other than my family and other friends who may read this which is where the commenters come in.

Hurray commenters!!1!11!one1!1