Lets begin by saying "annyeonghaseyo", or in a more familiar language "hello" and that I'm sorry it has taken so long for me to update my blog... but we have been REALLY busy! :)
Over the past month, Alex and I have made new friends, done a 16km hike to a buddhist temple, travelled 3,5hours to see cherry blossoms and started playing squash and doing yoga... So, let me elaborate...
Firstly, I would like to mention that school for me has gotten a lot easier. My grade 1 middle school kids are totally cute and awesome, they listen to every word, repeat after me and shut up when i put my finger on my lips... this unfortunately, is the only grade that is so obedient. The other grades are uninterested, obnoxious, rude little buggers who will only behave if there is some sight of candy or chocolate... This is relatively easy to curve in your favour when you have learnt one simple trick: walk into the class with a HUGE bag of candy and then only give one or two students something at the very end of the lesson... this allows you to make a bag of candy last extremely long AND the kids stay focused. The only flaw here is the said bag of candy ends up back in my office with me - leading to expensive self treating...
So, lets get back on track and do the elaborating I mentioned... We have a new South African - Afrikaans guy from Stellenbosch who has joined our ranks. He is awesome - makes me feel like I'm at home. There is something about a thick Afrikaans accent coupled with a loud voice and a rugby player build that just screams SOUTH AFRICA! :)
A couple weeks back, we had a public holiday on a Wednesday due to elections... So we decided to make a trip to see a buddhist temple. This was actually quite a brave choice on the day because we woke up to find it was raining. Nevertheless, a group of us grabbed our umbrellas and started our journey. A bus trip, 8km walk and a bit of water from the sky later, we were at Baek Dam Sa buddhist temple where we indulged in some "tea" (which tasted like liquid molasses) and took photo's of temples that were closed (because we were out of season) - sounds like a fail, but it was an amazingly beautiful walk with good people and good conversation!
A week or so after this, Alex decided it would be a good idea to go to a cherry blossom festival - 3.5hrs and 3 bus trips away. This confused me slightly because we live in the countryside and already have cherry blossom trees in our towns, that were soon going to blossom. Anyhow, long story short, I'm an awesome boyfriend who likes to do things for my wonderful girlfriend, and so I agreed to make the trip... We got to the festival at around midday and were greeted by some of our orientation friends, we watched some traditional dancers beating on pots and pans and took some photo's of the "beautiful blossoms" we had travelled so far to see. We then decided we were hungry and went to find lunch. This proved to be unsuccessful when we ordered seafood pancakes (AKA cold chewy squid omelette that hasn't been cooked properly) and a few beers, because the bill set us back roughly R150 each. Anyhow, we had done it and we headed home so that we didn't have to spend more money on accomodation for the night. Here's the clincher: 7 hours of travelling, R500 of spends, crappy food and some snaps of flowers later we arrived home exhausted and went to bed - only to wake up the next morning and find that all the cherry blossoms had come out in our home towns.
All this travelling led to us being rather stiff, so we have added some squash and yoga to our weekly schedule... Squash is different here as they score like only Koreans can and Yoga proves interesting when you cannot understand any of the instructions - but hell... we are stretching and having fun! :)
I am off to a teachers dinner tonight where I expect I will be given live octopus and some other outrageous fishy dishes, so wish me luck! The problem is I cannot refuse food or not eat something when the principal is buying as it is considered VERY rude... So, I am currently trying to think of ways to smuggle excess octopus out of the restaurant and freeing them in the Sea of Japan. Ideas are welcome...
Hope everything is going well that side and I hope to hear from you all! I will try update this more regularly as well. Happy Birthday everyone who had one in April too!
My email is chrisashton18@gmail.com if you don't already know...
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Photos
Oh, if you want to see photos... there are tons on my facebook page! Invite me if you wanna see them!
Getting Settled...
Hello again lovely people!
So, a lot has happened since my last message so I thought I would drop a line (or a few)...
Classes have begun. My last note mentioned that I had done introduction lessons and told my classes a whole lot about me... Well, I have since learned that they only understood about 20% and still to this day ask me where I'm from. To put it clearly they speak about as much English as a mole cricket (don't worry Sam - that wasn't a dig at you). The only expressions most of them know are "Hello", "I'm fine", "delicious", "best" and "handsome"... which they use repeatedly. In fact, there are different levels of these phrases including "most delicious", "most best" and my new favourite "most not handsome" - which is apparently easier to say than "ugly". I would like to clarify that this is never said about me - my eyes open more than 1cm wide so I am considered very handsome! :)
To put the positive spin on school - I have been having a lot of fun and the kids have started to speak to me even if I don't understand... I have been proposed to a few times - once by a male student, I have been compared to Wayne Rooney, Tom Cruise and pretty much any white person I put in a PowerPoint presentation and I have been laughed at for my lack of chopstick talents (which I would have sworn were quite good). Another great highlight was playing my dads song "The Park Hobo" to my high school classes and them following me around for half a day trying to figure out how to tell me that he is very good and they want his music...
As for weekend shenanigans: Alex and I spent the St Patrick's Day weekend in Seoul and got horribly drunk on Guiness and Soju. There were LOADS of Westeners at the festival with Irish bands, Irish beer and over-the-top Irish costumes! A weekend which should have been at least 2 days longer to allow for a proper recovery!
The weekend before that we spent in a little town (well, bigger than our town) called Yanggu for a newly acquired friends birthday! I'll let you guess what we did... That's Right! We drank too much beer and Soju, only this time we had awesome coffee cake to wash down! The birthday boy, Jarrett, showed us his Ukulele skills and by god they were something! Watch out "Korea's got talent" - a Texas boy is coming to make you all look stupid!
So, that leaves our towns... Inje and Wontong. We have really settled in and its mostly because the small communities of English teachers have been so welcoming. We have met new people, eaten new foods (Yes - we've drank more beer and soju) and learned a whole lot more about the culture in which we are now neck deep in. There is NO crime, you can leave a bicycle outside the market for an hour while you shop and return to find a fully functional bike with even your wheels still attached! Everyone has a smart phone - and they wave them around like a 5 year who has just found his 'little boy bits' - nobody cares or even thinks about stealing!
Our salaries came in on the 23rd and we are both officially millwonaires, which is actually quite disappointimg because the exchange rate is 150:1... but still, I'm RICH!!!!!! Bwahahahahahahaha (evil laugh).
The weekend coming up looks like it will be a goodie, with another beer and soju birthday celebration on Friday and a trip to our closest City (Chuncheon) on Saturday to do some much deserved shopping for some more western food stuffs and clothing...
Our general mood (insert salute here) is good and we are taking in all the beauty and weirdness of Korea!
So, this is me signing off after hopefully getting you up to date with my life in the sticks of South Korea... I would love to hear from you too, so just drop me an email or a message on Facebook!
Love and Kimchi!
So, a lot has happened since my last message so I thought I would drop a line (or a few)...
Classes have begun. My last note mentioned that I had done introduction lessons and told my classes a whole lot about me... Well, I have since learned that they only understood about 20% and still to this day ask me where I'm from. To put it clearly they speak about as much English as a mole cricket (don't worry Sam - that wasn't a dig at you). The only expressions most of them know are "Hello", "I'm fine", "delicious", "best" and "handsome"... which they use repeatedly. In fact, there are different levels of these phrases including "most delicious", "most best" and my new favourite "most not handsome" - which is apparently easier to say than "ugly". I would like to clarify that this is never said about me - my eyes open more than 1cm wide so I am considered very handsome! :)
To put the positive spin on school - I have been having a lot of fun and the kids have started to speak to me even if I don't understand... I have been proposed to a few times - once by a male student, I have been compared to Wayne Rooney, Tom Cruise and pretty much any white person I put in a PowerPoint presentation and I have been laughed at for my lack of chopstick talents (which I would have sworn were quite good). Another great highlight was playing my dads song "The Park Hobo" to my high school classes and them following me around for half a day trying to figure out how to tell me that he is very good and they want his music...
As for weekend shenanigans: Alex and I spent the St Patrick's Day weekend in Seoul and got horribly drunk on Guiness and Soju. There were LOADS of Westeners at the festival with Irish bands, Irish beer and over-the-top Irish costumes! A weekend which should have been at least 2 days longer to allow for a proper recovery!
The weekend before that we spent in a little town (well, bigger than our town) called Yanggu for a newly acquired friends birthday! I'll let you guess what we did... That's Right! We drank too much beer and Soju, only this time we had awesome coffee cake to wash down! The birthday boy, Jarrett, showed us his Ukulele skills and by god they were something! Watch out "Korea's got talent" - a Texas boy is coming to make you all look stupid!
So, that leaves our towns... Inje and Wontong. We have really settled in and its mostly because the small communities of English teachers have been so welcoming. We have met new people, eaten new foods (Yes - we've drank more beer and soju) and learned a whole lot more about the culture in which we are now neck deep in. There is NO crime, you can leave a bicycle outside the market for an hour while you shop and return to find a fully functional bike with even your wheels still attached! Everyone has a smart phone - and they wave them around like a 5 year who has just found his 'little boy bits' - nobody cares or even thinks about stealing!
Our salaries came in on the 23rd and we are both officially millwonaires, which is actually quite disappointimg because the exchange rate is 150:1... but still, I'm RICH!!!!!! Bwahahahahahahaha (evil laugh).
The weekend coming up looks like it will be a goodie, with another beer and soju birthday celebration on Friday and a trip to our closest City (Chuncheon) on Saturday to do some much deserved shopping for some more western food stuffs and clothing...
Our general mood (insert salute here) is good and we are taking in all the beauty and weirdness of Korea!
So, this is me signing off after hopefully getting you up to date with my life in the sticks of South Korea... I would love to hear from you too, so just drop me an email or a message on Facebook!
Love and Kimchi!
Hello People!
Hello South Africa
I just thought I would send an email to let everyone know what has happened in the last few weeks...
Alex and I arrived in Korea two weeks ago and were quickly rushed into a dinner consisting of rice, kimchi (pickled cabbage) and some sort of meat that didn't resemble anything we were used to - but it was edible. We then retired to our rooms which were in the KT (like Telkom in SA) boarding house in Daejeon. I was sharing a room with an Australian named Joel, Alex with an Asian-Canadian named Heather... I rushed for a computer and tested the speed, it was an amazing 38 megabits per second which is 10 times faster than South Africa's fastest available speed! (I was thrilled!) We then relaxed a little before going to bed to try kill the jetlag we had from the 16 hour flight...
The next 9 days were hectic! Day 1 started with a full medical examination (eye tests, hearing tests, blood tests and urine tests) - not fun at all. We then rushed to grab lunch as we had been told we could not eat from 9pm the previous night - Alex was NOT happy! Lunch was Rice, Kimchi and some sort of meat. This meal was accompanied by a "soup" which was nothing more than the water that the "meat" had been cooked in with some spring onions cut into them. We ended the day with an opening ceremony where they welcomed us and gave us a run down of what to expect - it was at this point that they introduced the 10:30pm kerfew... Haven't had one of those in a long time! :)
Day 2 to 9 consisted of 12 hour days sitting through back to back lectures on how to teach, what to teach, why we teach and some important facts about South Korea. On the bright side these lectures were divided by meals which all consisted of... Yip! Rice, Kimchi and some sort of meat with a side of "soup"... YES, even breakfast was the same, it was only on day 3 that corn flakes and milk were introduced - this made all 500 westerners very happy!
On the last day Alex and I found out we had been placed in Inje, Gangwon-do and we were fetched by our respective co-teachers at the office of education in Chuncheon. Their English is not good, infact "hello" and "how are you" became the grand total of conversation for the next 90minutes on our seperate trips to Inje.
My apartment ended up being in Inje town in a very modern "foreigner apartment block" where there are 5 other guest english teachers staying. This was a massive relief! They are all very nice and have welcomed us into the town. Alex is placed in the neighbouring town, Wontong, and is a 10minute bus ride and a 20 minute walk away... This is also great! She has a similar apartment with more foreigners (probably the craziest people we have ever met) who also welcomed us both with dinners and drinks on the first couple nights! The one guy even lent me his spare Xbox so I can play games...
As for school, I am placed at Sinnam middle and high school which is in the neighbouring town on the opposite side to Alex's town and Alex is placed a mere 2 minute walk from her apartment in Wontong - luckily, my co-teacher lives near me and is giving me a lift each day (about a 30 minute trip)...
This week I have had lessons and Alex has had a week to lesson plan - the students seem very nice, but are not as well behaved as we were lead to believe. This isn't a problem though, the loudness and unruly kids can actually be quite fun! We teach every class with our co-teacher and they are supposed to partake, but I think it will end up with me teaching and them sitting in and keeping the kids quiet. Middle school uses a textbook, which I have to follow, but high school I write the syllabus. Both Alex and I teach middle school grade 1,2 and 3 and high school grade 1, 2 and 3. I have seen almost all my classes for introduction and from Thursday I will be starting actual lessons...
Oh, for the record - now that we have left orientation and have had proper food.... Its not that bad at all! You can get 50% of the stuff we get back home - just battle to find tea, spices and good quality cuts of meat! Fruit is also very expensive and wine is non-existent!
Both Alex and I have been a little overwhelmed by everything so far, but it seems to be falling into place, we just have to find a way past the language barrier! Hand gestures really go a long way! :)
Hope that is a good summary! Missing you all! Will keep you updated as much as possible...
Please pass on to people I may have left out!
Chris
Reply Reply to all Forward
I just thought I would send an email to let everyone know what has happened in the last few weeks...
Alex and I arrived in Korea two weeks ago and were quickly rushed into a dinner consisting of rice, kimchi (pickled cabbage) and some sort of meat that didn't resemble anything we were used to - but it was edible. We then retired to our rooms which were in the KT (like Telkom in SA) boarding house in Daejeon. I was sharing a room with an Australian named Joel, Alex with an Asian-Canadian named Heather... I rushed for a computer and tested the speed, it was an amazing 38 megabits per second which is 10 times faster than South Africa's fastest available speed! (I was thrilled!) We then relaxed a little before going to bed to try kill the jetlag we had from the 16 hour flight...
The next 9 days were hectic! Day 1 started with a full medical examination (eye tests, hearing tests, blood tests and urine tests) - not fun at all. We then rushed to grab lunch as we had been told we could not eat from 9pm the previous night - Alex was NOT happy! Lunch was Rice, Kimchi and some sort of meat. This meal was accompanied by a "soup" which was nothing more than the water that the "meat" had been cooked in with some spring onions cut into them. We ended the day with an opening ceremony where they welcomed us and gave us a run down of what to expect - it was at this point that they introduced the 10:30pm kerfew... Haven't had one of those in a long time! :)
Day 2 to 9 consisted of 12 hour days sitting through back to back lectures on how to teach, what to teach, why we teach and some important facts about South Korea. On the bright side these lectures were divided by meals which all consisted of... Yip! Rice, Kimchi and some sort of meat with a side of "soup"... YES, even breakfast was the same, it was only on day 3 that corn flakes and milk were introduced - this made all 500 westerners very happy!
On the last day Alex and I found out we had been placed in Inje, Gangwon-do and we were fetched by our respective co-teachers at the office of education in Chuncheon. Their English is not good, infact "hello" and "how are you" became the grand total of conversation for the next 90minutes on our seperate trips to Inje.
My apartment ended up being in Inje town in a very modern "foreigner apartment block" where there are 5 other guest english teachers staying. This was a massive relief! They are all very nice and have welcomed us into the town. Alex is placed in the neighbouring town, Wontong, and is a 10minute bus ride and a 20 minute walk away... This is also great! She has a similar apartment with more foreigners (probably the craziest people we have ever met) who also welcomed us both with dinners and drinks on the first couple nights! The one guy even lent me his spare Xbox so I can play games...
As for school, I am placed at Sinnam middle and high school which is in the neighbouring town on the opposite side to Alex's town and Alex is placed a mere 2 minute walk from her apartment in Wontong - luckily, my co-teacher lives near me and is giving me a lift each day (about a 30 minute trip)...
This week I have had lessons and Alex has had a week to lesson plan - the students seem very nice, but are not as well behaved as we were lead to believe. This isn't a problem though, the loudness and unruly kids can actually be quite fun! We teach every class with our co-teacher and they are supposed to partake, but I think it will end up with me teaching and them sitting in and keeping the kids quiet. Middle school uses a textbook, which I have to follow, but high school I write the syllabus. Both Alex and I teach middle school grade 1,2 and 3 and high school grade 1, 2 and 3. I have seen almost all my classes for introduction and from Thursday I will be starting actual lessons...
Oh, for the record - now that we have left orientation and have had proper food.... Its not that bad at all! You can get 50% of the stuff we get back home - just battle to find tea, spices and good quality cuts of meat! Fruit is also very expensive and wine is non-existent!
Both Alex and I have been a little overwhelmed by everything so far, but it seems to be falling into place, we just have to find a way past the language barrier! Hand gestures really go a long way! :)
Hope that is a good summary! Missing you all! Will keep you updated as much as possible...
Please pass on to people I may have left out!
Chris
Reply Reply to all Forward
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