Hi Korea, I'm Here!

I always run out of things to say when giving presentations. No matter how I practice it and calculate the time, I end up like 15 mins early or something!! First class I taught on Monday was a 5th grade class. I ended up ending early so the coteacher used the time to administer a chapter test for the previous chapter. My coteacher is really good. She's better than any foreign teacher they could hire (including me!!) During the class, she was constantly translating and really co-teaching rather than standing on the side. If there were any breaks in the class she'd handle it with ease with more practice and keep their attention. I wish I could do that. Anyway, first 2 days ended ok!!


Today, along with the rest of the 5th graders, I had two 4th grade classes. The co-teacher for 4th grade is the one who speaks in 90% Korean during her class. She's a really good teacher as well and really strict-- they all listen to her and she's loud. During my class, she mostly stood on the side and translated when they really seemed like they had no idea what I was saying. She also gave me pointers during class when they were busy doing a game inside the book as to how to use the CD activities. 4th grade was easier to teach even though it was sooo basic and they pretty much knew it already. I just began with introduction and getting their names/group names, taught the lesson on the board, used the CD for listening & repeating, and then played a game with them at the end. I like them :p My 5th graders are a bit harder to teach. Half know the material from cram schools while the other half doesn't. If I had to sit through a class with that material, I'd fall asleep. I need to find more interesting things to do in class.


My classroom is super nice! I don't think we have air conditioning, though there's this big unit in each classroom, I think it's a heater.. I dunno. It's cold in the morning and cool in the afternoon with a breeze but without a breeze it's still really warm. With a classroom of 40 students, the classroom gets pretty hot. I can't pull the blinds up to let the air in either because the sun is too bright and just adds to the heat inside. Anyway, my classroom doesn't really look like any other classroom in the entire school. It has 6 meeting room type tables, a computer in/on each table, a huge screen tv in the front, and a surround sound system. The curtains are even different. They spoil me too much here. My own huge office, my own nice classroom, and my huge apartment. Aside from the distance from my school and my apartment being old enough that everytime it rains the water turns brown, everything is pretty awesome :o. I think I will go broke from living in a market area though. I can't stop shopping. Maybe after I get the internet I won't go out as much. I don't even have to buy a lot of groceries.. the grocery store is like 10 ft from my building. I buy food only when I'm out, so everything is fresh!


Teaching aside, lunch is still awesome as always :D My coteacher also bought us (extra curricular + English teachers) Rapokgi and Dokpokgi. One has ramen in it and one is just plain rice cake stuff in hot stuff with veggies. Ashley's Korean Teacher had told us about it so I mentioned it to my coteacher a week earlier. She's really good at helping me enjoy life here :p It was really yummy :D I noticed people here sweeten everything rather than salting. Is it more healthy this way or just a preference?

EDIT: To post pictures.. go through Picasa program.. select the pictures you want on your drive, then click "Blog This" -- it'll still give the access denied page but it will post. :D Bad thing- only posts 4 pictures at a time I think. If you know html, you can probably just upload to picasa and then type it in yourself.

Hi all! It's been a while! So for some reason, the Vidalia/Tor plugin stopped working for me. I was too lazy to try other methods in connecting but it seems like I'm still not going to have internet at home until maybe next week. We went to the immigration office yesterday to apply for my ARC and my multiple reentry visa (Atlanta only gives you a single entry visa). It cost a total of 64,000 won. They'll mail the passport and stuff to my school next week. THEN I can finally open a bank account, get a cellphone, and get internet!! I'm at school at 7:30AM in the morning just to use the internet. So sad :x


Kids here have to clean up the school everyday. They rotate on who cleans when and where. Last Thursday, 4 students from grade 4 came to my room to clean it during lunch. It's awesome having them clean ;D They don't do a spotless job or anything, but it's much better than nothing! They came back after their classes ended and played in my
office for about 2 hours. Half the time was spent teaching me Korean and other half was spent just chatting/playing. The next day, one of the students comes to my office in the morning and gives me a present! It's so cute :D I forgot that one of the perks of being a teacher (especially a foreign teacher) is you get presents from students. She gave me a cute lil purse/bag thing. It's too small for pencils, too big for money, so I just kind of use it as a camera case.

Another perk of being a foreign teacher is the snacks that other teachers give you/buy for you! In general, Asia doesn't really know what it's like in America. They usually see it as more of one culture like it is here, and that you can't get the food you eat here in America. Soo, everytime I'm out with my coteacher on some errand and she sees some snack (manjuu yesterday) she buys it for me ;D They also give me a bunch of snacks at school.

Most of the people here are really nice to me. My coteacher says that people at our school at all nice, but beware of people outside of school. She fears for my safety :D Most of the people outside of school including vendors have also been nice but I have met quite a few clothing vendors that are just plain rude. I can't understand them, they can't understand me, but when we're writing down numbers and pointing (basic basic stuff) and then they turn to the nearest Korean and laugh at you, that's not very nice. It's not going to get me to buy anything ever from them. And no, I'm not mistaking their laughter, it was like pretty mean make fun of the foreigner laughter-- even the other customer looked really uncomfortable that the vendor was laughing at me.

Ah.. yea so that aside, I tried to go clothing shopping this past week. Clothes here are really expensive! If you can, don't do like I did and bring a bunch of bath supplies (unless it's something of quality that would be expensive here.. they have Aveeno here but it's very expensive), instead, bring enough teacher/plain clothes. Every nicer looking thing is either super expensive (minimum 40,000 won) or too fancy with frills and whatever. The cheapest shirt I've found so far was 3900 won and that's plain white, without any shape. I bought a long sleeved one for 4900 b/c I thought, they wouldn't sell things that looked bad right? no, it really did look bad.



This Sunday I went to Seoul to visit Tanner's friend Joonho and his family. Him, his wife, his daughter, and his son pretty much spent all afternoon with me. Sunday was his daughter's birthday (age 8) so there was a birthday party for her for lunch. Food was great :D Joonho's wife is a good cook! His daughter, Emily, had pretty good English since she had her early years in the states. His son (5 years old?) was super cute! They're both really good behaved children. Anyway, in the afternoon, they drove me around Seoul and took me to Myeong-dong. We shopped around there for a bit. It's like shoppers heaven lol. Anyone who wants to shop in Seoul should definitely go there! We also went to Migliore department store. It totally was nothing like a regular department store. The inside is made of tons of small clothing shops like at a market. Clothes were fairly cheap. I got a nice white wrinkle free blouse for 23,000 won. Ashley, we're going back when you get here :p

Sunday was also the first day I went on the subway. The subway is actually fairly easy to get around. There's English on all the signs and they announce each stop in English after they say it in Korean. My landlord had given me a U-pass card to ride the bus but I thought she had said it was just for busses. I found out that it worked for trains too after I bought a T-money card at the subway station lol. So now I've got 2 cards that do the same thing- work for busses and trains. I don't know how much the U-pass costs to begin with, but the T-money card cost 3000 won. The card comes with a really handy subway map and a map of Seoul. It also comes with a coupon book of I guess famous attractions/stores in Seoul that you can use the coupons at. Some of the coupons are specially labeled "foreigners only" lol.

Aside from clothes shopping, I explored my area a bit more and bought a whole lot of other stuff. I've spent maybe 400-500$ in household items, food, transportation, stickers for students and other stuff for school, clothes, and other random stuff. It really does add up!! I brought $1000 US with me to start with and I think it's a pretty good amount because unless your coteacher and school is crazy speedy in getting you your health checkup and then ARC, you're not going to have access to the 300,000 won settlement allowance. I think my first water bill is also going to be sky rocket high because they didn't clean the apartment until after I moved in.. as in all the water they used while scrubbing, washing, wiping, and all the cleaning I did on my own is all going to be on my bill :x

Some key things that you should buy when you get here: Kitchen faucet filter head, dish scrubbers and soap, dish tray, drain unclogger, tissues, TP, paper towels, washing machine lint catchers (super useful.. I took the ones on the washing machine off b/c they were old and dirty), cleaning spray, vacuum cleaner (my apt had one..), rice cooker, kitchen towels, indoor slippers, bathroom mat, bathroom shoes, bedsheets+blanket+pillow, desk lamp, extension cords/extra adapters, toothbrush and other stuff holders, swiffer type mop, and clothes hangers. There's a bunch of other stuff but I'll list them in a huge list with prices later.

Ok so they didn't really clamp me down.. but they stuck clamps on my wrists and ankles and a bunch of suctions on my chest during the health checkup. After that they measured height, weight, bust size, vision, hearing, blood pressure, andddd blood! So Ashley, they do draw a tube of your blood lol. Start preparing for that now.. like maybe get loud rock music on your ipod or something. If you need to and you go when I don't have school (weekend or something?) I'll volunteer pinching your other arm over and over or slapping you somewhere to distract you :D I have to go back on Thursday to pick up my results.. I wasn't supposed to eat anything for breakfast and lunch but in the 5th grade teacher break room there were these rice fluffs with sweet stuff so my coteacher let me eat one :p She took pity on me... After the check up she also bought me ice cream lol.

Oh goodness, today I got to observe the rest of the 5th graders and then a class of 4th graders. The last 5th grade class was pretty unresponsive and only answered if prompted. There was one kid that was chewing gum and he was supposedly found smoking one day. As for the 4th graders.. they're wild lol. The teacher for the 4th grade classes is really good at controlling them and getting them to respond but she speaks mostly in Korean with them. She's going to be doing a whole lot of translating when I teach :x I'm a little scared of the 6th graders.. my coteacher said they're really bad..... oh well, guess I'll see tomorrow!

My students refuse to give up on figuring out how to sign me up for cyworld.. since I teach 4th graders all day on Wednesdays, I take my breaks in my office. They come in every break lol. Oh well, I don't have much else to do anyway. Since they promised to come back even during lunch I sped ate my lunch @_@ It was sooo good~ I wish school lunches were like this back at home. Zha Jiang Mian, kimchi, pickled radishes, and the tofu skin/wrap type thing with rice stuffed inside plus apple juice. Ok that's weird, instead of students, theres a teacher in my room now talking on her cell phone lol. My office is multipurpose....


Yesterday after the testing, I went ahead and bought my rice cooker!! My coteacher said 52000 won for a small rice cooker was a good price (the one I saw at the LG electronics store) so I went ahead and bought it. And guess what?? The cool dude gave it to me for 50,000 without asking! I was contemplating taking out my useful phrase book to ask for a lower price but I was like screw it. My rice cooker is so cool. You can see the ugly smelly old rice cooker behind the beautiful redness infront.

Anyway, after bringing that home, I went out to get a much

needed haircut!! My bangs were yet again an inch or 2 below my chin. I went to Park Seung Chol Hair Studio (http://www.pschair.co.kr). My stylist's name was Soon Mi Yang. If you're in the Guri area and need a good haircut, then go there. It's definitely not cheap there (cheaper than back home) but my stylist could speak English and did a really good job. She cut my hair, super layered it, washed it, blew dry, cut bangs, did more trimming, blew away bits of hair, and then used a straightener to straighten it. All for just 20,000 won :D Btw my hair no longer looks like that in the picture. Without it straightened, it's a puffy mess from the humidity. She also mentioned a magic perm but that would cost 130,000 won, while in Taiwan it cost me 2000 NT (divide by 32 for US conversion). In Taiwan, he charged me less than normal I believe but still.. that's a big difference. I think I'm just going to look for a straightener here. I should've brought mine from back home but it would probably have made me go over weight limit lol. I did get a large can of Mise en something hairspray for 4000 won from a nearby beauty shop though. Hopefully that'll help some. Since I didn't get to eat all day, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner for once :D I kept passing by a place called Teriyaki really close to my apartment on the main street that looked good and cheap. I was able to get 10 pc sushi + Maki + Udong + side dishes all for 8000 won. The sushi was a little strange.. the rice tasted kinda powdery? Maybe they add something different to it in Korea. But it was filling and good nonetheless!!

My last task ended with buying rice. Ok I thought that since rice is from Asia (the kind I eat anyhow) it would be cheaper here. No, definitely not. So I bought a 10kg bag for 29,000 won yesterday. The large 20kg bag was 43,000 but how does anyone buy that without a car or something to carry it in?? 10kg bag was already making me sweat before I reached the stairs to my 5th floor apartment. (a side note: a police siren just went off nearby.. students in the hallway are now mimicking the sound.. like my dog does). Anyway, hopefully that bag is going to last me all year. If not, I'll go back to buying ramen or eating frozen dumplings :p

Tomorrow is a full day with 6th graders. I wonder if they really are bad.. I can be mean if I need to, but I'd rather not.

So this weekend was pretty much a battle with my appliances and I guess the rest of my apartment. After finally getting a bus (waited 1 hour, bus 9 guy said he doesn't go where I need to-- he lied. I saw plenty of bus 9's go the same route as my bus 6-3) to go home, I started cleaning my refrigerator. I was only able to clean out the bottom half as it was soooooo dirty!! I left the freezer and outside of the fridge for Saturday. Posted pictures are before and after shots of my nasty but now clean fridge!! One of the things that my apartment came with that I'm very very happy it did is my cool vacuum cleaner! He's my new Korean best friend :p I also cleaned up and bought a billion things for my sink area including that cool bunny friend and towel hanger :D My towel hanger involved melting the wax on the back side and then nailing him in. I hope the landlord doesn't mind holes in their cabinets lol. I'll make a list of prices of everything I bought once I have internet. I keep forgetting to bring my log book to school with me. BTW, it's a very good idea to keep a logbook in Asia b/c unless you have a credit card here, you'll mostly be using cash. This is the only way to keep yourself in check with how much you're spending. It's also good as a small journal in case you want to see what you did on what day :DOther appliances/stuff I battled this weekend include microwave (just as nasty as fridge), toaster, toilet, bathroom drain, cabinets and rice cooker. The rice cooker won :( I quit cleaning it after I unscrewed it in many places, cleaned whatever I could see, and it still smelled. So I'm going to go buy a new one today!

This blog is taking forever to write.. I keep having a billion students come into my office lol. First group mostly played amongst themselves. 2nd group played scrabble by themselves and helped me figure out where the keys to the cabinets were.. but now they're attempting to get me signed up on cyworld @_@;..

Back to writing!! I also had the time to explore the market area that I live in. I live down the street that has the green arch. I went up and down the main street away from the GS Square (GS Square is right next to the subway), and all around the outdoor market. I bought craploads of stuff again :x Approximately spent $150 so far lol. I did get a free "service" with the nail polish remover I bought though. I was asking the lady where to buy the cotton wipes to use with the nail polish and after discussing with hand motions she pulled it out and said "free service." :D

Today.... I spent an hour on the bus. Normally a bus ride of 5 mins turned into a bus ride of 1 hour.. Why, you ask? Well... I believe I missed the stop the first time around so I had to sit on for a whole another loop! I'm not even sure if the bus driver was supposed to stop where he did for me but he took me straight to the school when I noticed I was far far away haha. I really like the bus drivers here! I'm forever going to tell the bus driver my stop from now on so they point it out for me each time. Maybe at some point I'll figure out where I am and figure out how to get the bus to stop >_>;.. I saw a buzzing thing on the ceiling but no where else.. are we supposed to press that?? What about the short people? :x Anyway, my day started out with an adventure, at least I now know where the LotteMart is XD



Back to continuing yesterday's post!

edited out apartment stuff.. found a picture ;D

Yesterday, the Vice Principal came up to my office to visit and greet me :D I really like how everyone puts the effort to try to communicate even with broken English and hand motions. He kept having to leave the room to maybe look up sentences he wanted to say or ask someone how to say it. It was really cute haha. I learned that everytime I describe the Principal as nice, they laugh (does that mean he's really scary behind his nice grandpa look??). I also learned that the Vice Principal's son is in I think either Middle School or High School studying sciences. He wants to be in a Chemistry field later on in life. So, the VP respects me (as a scientist??) and thinks it's nice to have females in the sciences field too. Apparently there aren't that many here. After about an hour of discussing/him going in an out, he informed me that we'll be having lunch in the meeting room. They ordered pimbimbap (sp?) delivered with nice bowls and trays of appetizers. I really like how the delivery orders here aren't all paper and plastic.

"Nice Guy" - termed such because on the first day I went to school, they told me that if I needed any supplies to see him and he'd help me set up the internet.. so he was a "nice guy" and is now always referred to as "Nice Guy" instead of his name, and the manager who carried the heavy luggage up took me to GS Square to buy stuff after school around 3:30pm. It was really funny when they debated on how to tell me the 300,000 won was going to be deposited straight to my bank account b/c they couldn't figure out if I had any money at all on me lol. Eventually they pointed at the line in the contract (Umm they don't even know what "GEPIK" is..) and then drew this schematic lol. The manager really loves to write and scribble constantly. On the housing contract (the 2nd apartment we looked at.. he scribbled ALL over it even
though we didn't get it in the end). I also busted out my ds for the touch dictionary program I had on there to act as a translator at some points. Anyway, after we get there, we stop at the grocery floor. I ask if we can get Shampoo and some bathroom supplies and so we do! Goodness their Pantene big bottles are freaking $9!!! I ended up buying some Korean brand that had 2 big shampoo bottles and 1 big conditioner bottle for $12. The store helper lady gave us a little extra 'service' and gave me a free small bottle of shampoo haha. Afterwards she helped me find everything else I needed. 24 rolls of toilet paper = $15 (I'm so going to go broke from just TP), All purpose cleaning spray = $7?, Soap tray = $2?, Bath towel = $2, Detergent = $7, umm either I'm forgetting something or something was more expensive but the total came up to be $46. I'm very used to getting CVS deals where everything comes out to be close to free so this was a major shock for me lol. I see why they give us the $300 settlement allowance!!

When we finally got up to the floor with the household goods (bed sheets etc) they stopped and tried to decide how to ask me about money again. I already told them I exchanged a lot at the airport but I guess they didn't understand last time lol. So they ended up calling my coteacher to have her translate and after translating they still decided that the department store was too expensive and I probably don't want super high quality stuff (GS Square is like a SOGO or Shinkong Mitsukoshii) and took me back to my apartment to drop off my stuff. When we got back there was some notice on my door that ended up being just a notice that the gas people were going to come to check for leaks since the gas repair dude came in the morning. I had been taking icy cold showers for 2 days lol. It's fixed now so it's all good.

The manager dude left after checking for hot water and me and nice guy went to the market in my area to do economical shopping! Ah, I love markets! There we got a "bed cloth"-- something like a thin blanket to place on the bed instead of sheets, and a pillow. Nice guy helped me haggle a dollar off XD We also got cheap shower and indoor shoes and got me some groceries :D Nice guy was amazed my frozen dumplings I picked would be enough for dinner :o After grocery shopping, we stopped at the cheap Sheng Li type of shop (many things for $1 or something cheap) and picked up utensils and shower hanger/hooks and a toothbrush holder. It's really inconvenient not having a sink in the bathroom. I have to hang everything everywhere! Oh well.. one less thing to clean. Nice guy was very nice.. he patiently waited for me to choose everything and made sure I bought all I wanted and carried ALL of the bags. I feel bad that the guys keep insisting on carrying everything. (picture = first home cooked meal XD.. I forgot that I hate the juice in Asia too.....)


Anyways, since this is getting long.. to summarize the rest really quickly.. I've been spending the rest of my time cleaning my office and apartment and making things comfortable for me :) I'm really liking it here! I didn't really like the apartment at first (too big.. somewhat dirty) but I really love the location and after clean up it's awesome :D I still need to buy some things but with that dollar store near me, I'm happy to go shopping!! (Pictures are of the inside sandals they gave me to wear at school. There is a heal b/c the students are too tall lol)

Hi everyone!! I'm finally here :) So to give a detailed account of my flight here and what I've been doing for the past few days!!

I took a flight on Korean Air from ATL -> Seoul ICN airport. The flight was about 15 hours and was pretty good! I've been a little stressed recently and when I'm stressed multiple things happen including loss of appetite XD Not that I don't get hungry at all, just I don't get hungry often and can't eat much. So I finished lunch for the sake of finishing it but didn't finish dinner. I noticed that Koreans eat something like pickles too.. I dislike them :[ there were quite a few in my meal lol.. The lunch overall was good but the dinner was a choice between Salmon pasta and Chicken pasta. I went for the Chicken pasta but just like everywhere else in Asia, pasta sucks and it ain't pasta! I got maybe 3 hours of sleep before the flight.. and 3 hours of sleep during the flight. I don't like missing the food even if I'm full so I like staying up :p I ended up watching 4 movies - Sex in the City, 10 Items or Less, My Mighty Princess (funny Korean movie!), umm there's another one but I can't remember what it was that I watched....



After arriving at the airport it took about an hour and a half to get through immigration, get baggage, and exchange money. Ashley-- make sure you exchange money at the Korean bank all the way at the end (near baggage claim 1) right before you exit the doors to the general public area. There Mr. Kim picked me up (they put up signs in 2 places in case you don't see one of them :p). He only works at the airport so him and his coworker took me to the bus I needed. I got on the Jamsil bus heading for Sheraton Hotel. His coworker was cool-- his English was better AND he was fluent in Chinese!! Anyway, I hopped on the bus and when it got to Sheraton, the
bus driver kindly notified me :) An English teacher from my school and the school manager were there waiting to pick me up :D Teacher Jang (the English teacher) is super nice and very fluent in English. It's like that type that sounds as if she came to America for exchange at some point-- less of an accent. The school manager's English isn't as good but is still ok with hand motions XD He drove us to my apartment afterwards and carried my heavy 50 lb bags up 5 flights of stairs to my apartment!! Crazy man..




















My apartment is absolutely gigantic. After the first night, I asked them whether they could find something smaller closer to the school but after they cleaned out the previous guy's belongings and I cleaned up the place after they left, it seems alright! It's located in the Guri market area right by the metro so it's a very convenient location. The school is about a 5 min bus ride from there. I have a large living room, 2 bedrooms, and 1 bedroom/closet. It also has a bathroom (no sink??), kitchen, and balcony/laundry area. They spent a good portion of yesterday cleaning it out.. today we're going to go buy the things I still need.. like sheets that fit the bed, a pillow, cleaning stuff, etc.

Yesterday I also got to meet the principal and a few other teachers. We went out to eat lunch with the principal and the teacher manager. The restaurant was a really nice Korean restaurant situated on a hill. Omg the appetizers were enough to fill me!! The appetizers filled the entire table.. after giving us maybe 10 mins to eat that, they came out with another table full of food >< I'll just be observing them teach all next week. Apparently I have 700 students.. They have 1500 students here and I'll be teaching grades 4-6. Craziness!! Ok I need to go buy stuff, I'll post the rest tomorrow!