Sunday, November 16, 2008
I really like presents :p Especially from little kids. It makes you feel all warm inside. So my kids had introduced me to "Peppero Day" the week before November 11th while they were playing with me in my office. Once I heard that couples give each other peppero I immediately thought of Valentine's day. What did we do as children on valentine's day?? We gave the teachers and each other valentine cards and candy!!!! So that meant, I'd be getting free snacks ;D And indeed, look at my stash!! I continued to get a few more on the 2nd day too.. I was in heaven :D
Talking about snacks.. I give out candy to winning teams whenever we play games in my classes. One of the candies is yellow so a boy kept on asking me "lemon? lemon?" in a really cute voice!! I was like ;_; I'm sorry, I have no idea!! I should try out the candy before giving it to them. I'm really glad I'm teaching elementary school. They can be monsters but they're cute monsters :D
Continuing where I left off on the last post..
November 1st was my first day of "Saturday English Program." The class for the 3rd and 4th graders went really well. I spent many many hours and lost a lot of sleep preparing the powerpoints and activities for them so if it bombed, I would've been sooo disappointed! My co-teacher had originally thought that the books we bought would have movies or animation for the children to watch on the TV.. even though I already informed her that it was only a sound clip reading out the stories in a very boring and slow voice. I don't think she was expecting me to have to put so much work into the classes. My class for 5th-6th grade was really boring. She wanted me to teach them from these boring educational Discovery science books and since I was an Astronomy major, she wanted Astronomy related. She rejected my airplane book. It probably would've been more interesting to boys, but at least it was a story and girls still have fun doing activities.
We went with a book on Stars where I had to create a bunch of activities and required specific items that ended up being substituted with other items that made the experiments not work lol. I wanted them to make a kaleidoscope but since mirrors were potentially dangerous, the idea was rejected. I then wanted them to do an activity with a glass bowl, water, foil, black paper, and a flashlight, but instead of glass bowls I was given plastic cylindrical tubs. It didn't work at all :( I felt bad that the students had to sit through the boring reading and explanation of the book and do an activity that didn't work out in the end. Fortunately, for the class yesterday, my coteacher decided to just do a super quick summary of Chapter 2 and move on to the activities rather than to actually read the book lol. Yesterday I had them make constellations out of foil, glue, and black paper so it was simple :D It took a lot of time so class ended 30 mins past time but the kids had fun! Now I need to find glow in the dark paint/glue for the next class. The 3rd and 4th graders are working on making a "moving tiger." My prototype 1 Tiger turned out really.. weird. He had uneven skinny legs, his body was really fat, and his ears kept drooping lol. Prototype 2 came out ok but some of the holes were misplaced and he had too many stripes so it would take forever to color. I'm proud of the final tiger :D He's cute!
Anyway, back to what I've done for the past few weeks..
11/5: Teacher's field trip! Jang abandoned me when she found out we were going to the sea rather than going hiking... I was left to talk to the male "pragmatics" teacher in her office for the whole bus ride. Going there was fine, he just explained some stuff and pointed out locations and showed me where we were on the map.. but coming back was horrible. He wanted to discuss religion and politics. Two of the things I probably hate "discussing" the most. Real discussions are ok, but people forcing their opinions on me is not ok! My life is just going to be filled with forced opinions when it comes to religions and politics. Other than that, the 4th grade teachers saved me by accompanying me on our walk around Sangam Dong Sky Park. They are really nice :) I love their students too :p The park used to be a waste area but the government eventually cleaned the area and planted a bunch of plants there so now its a huge field high up :D The other teachers pressured me in walking on the red balls in the picture above.. it hurt like crazy but it was "good for my health." right.....
The next destination was the Sorae Port of Inchon (dunno if this is an official name). I was warned by one of the 4th grade teachers to not have any expectations and really, it's not a pretty area lol. We did get to explore a bit and did have a really good seafood dinner. We had sashimi (I don't really like Korean sashimi.. theres bones...), steamed crab, and a spicey fish soup. The steamed crab was awesome :D I didn't try their octopus sashimi though.. after it's cut up it STILL moves.. it was creepy O_O The 4th grade teacher said it sticks to your mouth while you chew it too @_@
11/8 : Anthea and I decided to go exploring in Guri for Homeplus and Lottemart. I had found them on a map online the day before but we only had time for Homeplus. And boy were we disappointed. It was a Homeplus Express. It was only a grocery store and the store was tinier than my local grocery store. After Homeplus Express we headed off to get Ashley a cake and to Gangnam for her birthday dinner at Dos Tacos. To get to Dos Tacos you go out exit 6 and walk really far down until you see Tous Les Jour. Turn left down the alley before Tous Les Jour and you'll see Dos Tacos. It's a tiny but good Mexican restaurant. I had a chimichanga as usual and as every restaurant makes their chimichangas different, this one was also different and I am unable to compare. BUT it was still yummy. After dinner, we headed off to sing (Noraebang?)! Ashley picked some really scandalous songs.. bad Ashley... it was fun though :D After singing we took some cute sticker pictures :D It was a pretty cheap night! We each chipped in about 20k~ The night ended with Ashley coming to sleep over at my place :)
This past Thursday my school was closed because Anthea's school was hosting important high school exams. It was kinda annoying because they forced me to use a paid vacation day and didn't allow me to just come in and sit instead. But that day Anthea and I finally went to Lottemart! It was pretty large and we only explored one of the buildings but I was still kind of disappointed. I didn't find a good towel, no filter for the faucet, and no lint catchers. Butterknives were way too expensive to buy as well >< After Lottemart, we met up with Ashley in Gangnam so she could visit the Northface over there and check for her jacket. She ended up buying a small size black influx jacket :D The guy gave her free socks too haha. We had Quiznos for dinner that night but it wasn't what I expected. The combo (6500 won) only included a soda and a sandwich. The rosemary mozarella bread was also an extra 300 won :( I was having a bit of a hiccuping problem from the soda too haha. After dinner we headed down to the Kyobo bookstore and to Hottracks to get some more pens :D I need to stop buying pens.. I left a bunch at home because I was too lazy to bring them.. now I've bought more :xIn case anyone is reading this from Guri and wants to know how to get to Gangnam-- you take bus 1115-2 or 9-3 to Gangbyeon terminal station and hop onto the subway for line 2 (green line), then you ride all the way to Gangnam. Any of the 9 buses will take you to the station too but they all take a roundabout way besides 9-3.
To get to Costco from Guri, take bus number 201, 2227, or 2228 from Doldari stop and get off at Mangu Station bus stop (you'll hear it announced). After you get off, cross over the street twice (so you make a diagonal line to the other corner). Walk further and you'll see Costco on your left. Emart is also nearby and you should be able to see it from the bus stop. After that bus stop, the bus will loop like crazy. If you miss Mangu Station, stay on it all the way until Sangbong Bus Terminal stop. It'll be one of the median bus lanes and Costco will be on your right (the bus loops in a full circle before going back to Guri). To get home, just hop onto one of those buses and it'll take you back home.
As Anthea says, "Ok so.. Susan has crazy 6th graders.." When we were leaving my school around 6pm some of my 6th graders were playing in the park next to my school and they spot me and start yelling numbers.. So they aren't exactly the brightest students but they are one of my favorite classes.. they yell to me "117".. and other numbers until they finally correct themselves and say "119" and then I'm like O_o?? You need the police?? That's when I spot a boy on top of the roof of one of the gazebos. Before we decide to cross the street to get closer to them, a small firetruck comes by. Apparently my landlord (who's also the school nurse) had already called for help XD. It was pretty interesting, partially because my 6th graders are again classified as crazy but also because they couldn't get the numbers right AND told the nurse and me that they were class 6-2, when I just had them on that day.. they were class 6-6. It's not a big deal, kids climb on roofs and get stuck like cats right? XD Everyday is an interesting day in elementary school.
I've been incredibly busy and unable to update :( But right now I'm yet again proofreading a paper.. but this time this paper needs to be completely rewritten. I retyped it into word because I was only given a hard copy and I've been tracking changes. It looks completely red :x The teacher wants me to use red pen to correct so I'll give her this red edited electronic copy and her hard copy back with red all over it. Wonder what she'll think? :o I did get bribed with a "sponge cake" which happened to be a crumbly cake rather than spongey but it's been a good breakfast the past couple of days. I needed a break from the paper so I decided I'd finally do a post. So what have I been up to since last post? Here's a "short" summary:
10/17 weekend: Jack came over and Jack, Anthea, Ashley, and I hung out all weekend! On that saturday Anthea, Jack, and I went to Sinchon to look for cellphones. We failed in finding a place that would give us a SK plan without a 200,000 deposit/have a Korean friend sign their name so we decided to come back after some rethinking and when Ashley would have her bank account and ID card. Since I'm stupid, I left Ashley's phone number at home. I had intended to call her that morning before we set out but it was really early and I ended up not calling her. The paper was left on my desk :( We went to Sadang hoping she'd just come anyway but after waiting about an hour we gave up haha. We did get a really good lunch in the Sadang area for pretty cheap though!
On Sunday, we met up with Ashley and explored Myeong-dong, shopped at Migliore (got our shirts that say "This is my Saturday night shirt. I also wear it on other days when it doesn't smell" and found Mari's store), ate at Myeong-dong Gyo-Ja (yummy!! It's a popular Chinese place with only 2 or 4 different dishes), and then went to the crochet club. Jack went home on Monday after observing 2 of my classes :D
10/24 weekend: The cable guy came and after some investigating, he concluded that there is no possible way for me to get cable TV and cable internet -_-;.. Something about the box missing from the roof and something about no replacement?? Anyway, I went with Jang to look for materials for our Saturday class and then ate at Pizza Hut together. Her treat :D
That Saturday, Anthea, Ashley, Mi-Young, and I went to Namdaemun to look for some fake coats. We found a bunch of male "Black Face" jackets XD but no jackets for girls :( We did end up buying some purses though ;D We headed to Dongdaemun after that. I found a coat at BangBang for about 50k won. It's really too big though. I don't see how their "small" 90 size fits the girls here. They're skinnier than me! Oh well.
Our next destination was Sinchon. We finally got our cellphones! They're pretty :D Though after buying a cord for it and everything, there's no way I can transfer things to my computer or onto my phone :( For the cellphone, go out Exit 8 of Sinchon station and go straight. On the left there will be a KTF/SK/SHOW place where a bunch of people work. Most notable are 3 young but fun/nice guys. The cellphone cost 70,000 won with a 30,000 activation fee (spread out on our bill for the first 3 months). They gave us a charger, clear cellphone case, and a USIM card. We did have to sign up for an internet plan though. I found out later that you can cancel the internet plan at any time and they'll only charge you for the days you've had it (not the whole month)!
After cellphones, we went to fulfill our main objective of the day. Go to the cafe for Coffee Prince in Hongdae!! It was a lot of fun :D Drinks were incredibly expensive but we spent a lot of time there chatting and taking pictures :) There was even a really cute kid that liked to explain the whole menu to people. After Hongdae, I got sick and we pretty much went home..Sunday, Anthea and I went to Kyobo for more materials for my class and Costco to get some much needed western foods and items :D It was a pain to lug it all back though.
Ok last thing in this post (I'll continue in next)--> I finally got internet at home :) No more wire rack as a desk and sitting outside on my balcony. I signed up with Hanaro Telecom (SK) b/c they offered 1 month free with the contract, no modem fee, no activation fee, free gift (still waiting for it), and it's 35k a month. I've slowly been getting back into knowing what I can do now that I have internet at home. It's really weird to not have internet for a whole month and a half. I know there was internet at school, but my computer at school is like 10 years old and everything is blocked on my school's network. Only thing I can do is chat on gchat with Ashley while being logged into gmail -_-;.. Sometimes I still walk to my balcony and open the window and try to guess if it'll rain today before I realize, oh I can check the weather online... It's weird being reconnected.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
I even get to listen to the pitter patter sound the rain is making on the roof. My new desk is made out of wire. It also functions as my drying rack. Multipurpose, isn't that awesome?
I've got a lot to write and lots of pictures to post up about last weekend but I've been too busy to do that at school. I have to start preparing for the Saturday classes I'm teaching :[ I received my health card today as well as a break down of my pay and the deductions for this month, but that wasn't the things that I'd been really waiting for. I want my internet and cable TV!!
So the cable/internet guy was scheduled to come at 5pm on Wednesday. That fell through. He had pushed it up to 4pm (called at 2:30pm to let me know). Kinda sucked because I needed to go to the bank to set up internet banking so I had to leave school in a hurry. After getting home at 3:30 from the bank, I get a call from my coteacher informing me that the cable guy had just cancelled the appointment (it was 3:40pm by this time) because of the rain. Pissed off as I was, I decided to find my own internet. I proceeded to my table next to my kitchen b/c Ashley had said she was able to pick up internet on top of her microwave, but no luck for me.
I didn't want to give up.. so I went out onto my balcony and yay, 2 networks in range!! One unsecured!! Because Korea's slowest internet is faster than fast internet in America, even with a crappy low connection, it's still faster than back at home. I found that if I lowered my laptop any lower than the bottom of the windows, the connection would cut off. That meant either holding up high constantly or finding something tall to prop it up. I decided to use my drying rack.. With that, I had to stand. But I wanted to sit down! So I grabbed a dining room type chair and stuck it on the balcony. I now either kneel on the cushion until my knees hurt or sit on top of the backing of the chair until my butt hurts. It's all worth it though, I have internet :p
He rescheduled for today.. and he did come even though it was raining just as much as it was yesterday but after examining the lines and seeing how oddly they're set up and kinda go out the windows down to the first floor, he informed me that he'd be returning tomorrow. :( I think it's just not meant to be! I should just cancel totally and forever use my balcony as my computer room. I think it'll be a lil cold in the winter, but it'll also keep my laptop's temperature down~
That's all. I posted new pictures of my wild students in between the paragraphs because they're just too cute (even if they're wild). I wanted to smack some of my 6th graders today though. I'm glad my coteacher freely yells at them. The most I do is glare until their friends are like "Susan teacher is staring at you!!" which gets them to stop fooling around. And if they're supposed to be watching the monitors (TV died today lol) then I grab their heads and turn them in the right direction. I'll post about the fun weekend later~ Oh, lunch is still super yummy :D
Thursday, October 16, 2008
On to the food and fun! So Anthea and I went into a restaurant where the menu was completely in Korean and there weren't any pictures. We had the owners pretty much translate/use hand motions to describe the dishes on the menu. We ended up ordering Samgyopsal and rice. It was sooo much food! I'm still not used to the massive amount of food that Asians eat. If I weren't walking home everyday and ate barely anything when I'm home alone in my apartment, I'd definitely be so much fatter than when I came. I have to mention again, school lunches rock ;p
Cooking for 1 is a hard task. Sometimes I undershoot and end up having to supplement my meal with snacks/yogurt.. but quite often, I cook way too much. Korean beef is extremely expensive.. I found that out the hard way when I bought a small smaaaaaaallll lump of beef for 20,000 won (~$20 US). The price was labeled as 3980 in the case but I didn't know that was by 100 grams until she weighed it and asked if that was ok. Because the other meat department people in the grocery store I went to (department store grocery store) were kind of making fun of me when I asked where the beef was -_-;.. I just wanted to get away as soon as possible and ended up taking the beef with me.
So I've been trying to make some of the dishes my mom cooks at home with the beef. I don't eat a lot so one dish takes me forever to eat.. that small lump of beef is down to 1/4th the size after 2-3 weeks. I don't have internet at home so I can't really look up receipes so I've been doing stuff by what I THINK is right. One dish = tomatoes (cherry tomatoes b/c that's all I had), garlic, soy sauce, and beef. My mom later told me that she never adds soy sauce to that.. oh well. Another dish = Beef, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, and seasame oil. I added onions, green onions, bits of carrots, some kind of stringly white mushrooms, and the dokpokgi rice cake things. It turned out um ok/looked ugly? Last one I tried was beef, garlic, soy sauce, onions, and oyster sauce. That turned out incredibly salty. I mixed up two of the recipes my mom mentioned.. you don't need soy sauce lol. I ate a ton of rice with that one XD
For veggies, I've just been frying them normally. I've noticed that the rice here is kinda hard.. and gets hard after one day in the fridge. I've been cooking 1 1/2 cup of rice with 1 3/4 cup water and have been letting it sit in the water for about 15 minutes before cooking but it's still harder than I guess the Japanese rice. I'll try 2 cups of water next time. Just for anyone who likes the tofu skin sushi thing and want to make it themselves.. One and a half cups of rice is more than enough (1 cup might even be enough). As you can see from my picture, some of my tofu things exploded b/c I put too much rice lol. There's also 14 skins in a pack so either prepare to eat a lot/microwave next day, or make them only when you have guests to eat them with. It took me 3 days to finish mine with me stuffing myself all 3 days. Anyone else have good simple recipes, please let me know!!
Aside from food, we went to Seoul last weekend! Ashley is here now so we went exploring :D Anthea came over to my place so we took the train to Yongsan together. We met up with Ashley there. It took us 30 mins to find her b/c none of us have cellphones lol. After finding her we went to Yongsan Electronics Market to shop around and mostly to survey what's there. I think we explored most of the area. I can't really tell b/c the map online didn't help too much.
After Yongsan, we headed over to Dongdaemun to meet up with Mi-Young (Semi's friend). Mi-Young is really nice and overall an awesome person. Her personality is really funny and matches with ours pretty well. We went to Doota to shop for clothes and then went to dinner. It happened to be Samgyopsal again but it was just as good :D Mi Young kept eating these really spicey peppers and she was addicted and claimed they weren't too hot. But then she dipped the pepper in the hot sauce and after biting into it she finally said oh too hot! That didn't stop her though.. few minutes later, she repeated the process. It was really funny to watch XD
After dinner, we walked along the "artificial stream" all the way to the end of the stream. It was a really nice walk. She said it was about 4 km and we walked maybe 2/3 of it. She did this all in boots. Craziness. I wish I was able to walk in heels as long as Korean girls. My feet were hurting from the little amount of time I had to walk in heels yesterday. I don't know how they do it all day long and on uneven ground.
Ashley came back with us to Guri that night and spent the night! The next day we had McD's in the morning for breakfast b/c it's right next to where I live and explored my market a little bit. I can't wait for this coming weekend. We're going to be exploring more of Seoul again and going to a crochet club. Jack might be coming up this weekend too :D Unfortunately, no Guri teachers were on the list for GEPIK orientation so we all have to stay at school and teach, but I'll just make up for all the fun this weekend :)
I've been so busy since my last post! To start off, here are two pictures from the front door of my apartment. Today, 6th grade has midterms and I happen to only have 6 graders on Thursday so I'm finally free to post up pictures/write up entries.
One day my coteacher comes to me and says "So you said you have no friends here? There's a foreign teacher at the Guri middle school next to us." This got me excited b/c it was still only maybe the 2nd or 3rd week I was here and without internet and without any other fluent English speakers besides my coteacher, I pretty much had no one to speak in English to. I could already feel my English deteriorating like it did in Taiwan XD Anthea came over to my office after the work day ended and we talked :D I had originally thought it would be a teacher that has been here for a while but it turned out she was slightly newer than me haha. That was just as fun though b/c then we could go exploring together! My English is still deteriorating from having to use super short/easy sentences and speaking slow, but at least it's slowing down XD
Teaching has been going pretty good. I'm slowing finding ways to make my students speak and to keep up their interest in English. I dislike the book/curriculum provided so I only loosely follow it. One of my coteachers doesn't like the CD at all while the other one does every part of the CD. I'm trying to slowly do half/half so both are satisfied and I can still do whatever else I plan for the students.I've been using a whiteboard game to supplement the "Let's Write" section and the "Let's read" or whatever. It forces them to write/read as fast as possible and forces them to help each other in their groups. If one person makes a mistake in their group before putting up all their boards and yelling finished, their group gets disqualified for that round. The first group with all boards up and correct gets a point. I've started giving the first 2 groups that get their boards up so that I can end up giving each group at least one point. The kids don't pay attention to other groups enough to know who was 2nd, so it encourages groups that otherwise wouldn't participate as much when they notice that, oh they have a point too and they could possibly win :D
We had an open class yesterday. We were kind of hoping not too many people would come so it wouldn't be so nerve racking (for my coteacher.. I'm new so they don't expect anything from me yet :p) but a ton of people came. The whole back of the classroom was super filled and the hallway was filled too with teachers looking in through the windows. It made the classroom really hot but the students for the class were awesome. My coteacher picked her favorite class but it was still iffy on whether they'd volunteer or not with so many people watching. Luckily they all responded loudly and did everything like incredibly well behaved children. Two groups ended up tying in a couple of short quick games we played so they received candy, but at the very end, my coteacher asked me to give candy to the rest of the students too since they were so good :D
The meeting was pretty long and completely in Korean (besides when I had to speak) so I don't really know what the other teachers thought. I'm planning on emailing them all and asking for feedback in English.Besides that stuff and watching the kids while the play soccer after lunch, I'm pretty much just busy with making lesson plans. I finally received my ID card in the mail on Tuesday though. My coteacher and I will be going to the bank to open up an account at the end of the day. Hopefully.. HOPEFULLY I'll have internet and a cellphone soon!!I'll continue writing about life outside of school in my next post.
edit: Just wanted to comment on the playground. They usually have like 2 soccer games going on at once (but only 2 goals on the playground..) and then all the other students are running around on the playground as well at the same time. It's pretty interesting watching little kids run across the field fearlessly as balls are being kicked everywhere. I'd be too afraid to play on the playground :x
