Geoje City
Geoje as a city is nice. The main part near where I live is called 'Gohyeon'. The bars are good, the food is decent. They keep the place relatively clean (depending on the time of day) and it's pretty accessible to foreigners. We have the Sea Spa which is a really nice jimjilbang, a movie theater, a few arcades, and a whole lot of clothing stores and barbecue places. Can't complain.
Okpo
Okpo is... a neighborhood? Another city? I don't really know how Korea works, and less how the island works. But it's on the island. It's also almost all foreigners. Sometimes it seems there are more foreigners than Koreans there. There's an Irish bar with huge beers, and they have the better McDonald's.
Busan
I've been to Busan three times since arriving, twice on purpose, once by accident. I'll tell that story later. Busan is a nice city, in parts. The area immediately near Sasang station seems kind of seedy, but there are some good restaurants. My first time going there I went with a coworker to meet some friends. I had just purchased a cell phone roughly an hour beforehand (prepaid) and ran around screaming 'WHERE IS A FREE WIFI SIGNAL WHERE IS A FREE WIFI SIGNAL WHERE IS oh there it is' trying to get access to my gmail and contact info for people, because writing things down is for old people.
Busan the first time was pretty good. We went to a mall that was pretty nice and had a wax museum in it, got some Mexican food at Fuzzy Navel that was pretty decent, and wound up at the beach in Hongdae. The beach had a videogame tournament taking place which is... well, welcome to Korea. Wound up back in Geoje shortly after that for a going away party (which are pretty much a daily occurrence in Korea. Somebody is always going away and they never seem upset about it. . .)
Busan the second time was for a friend's birthday, and also was a pretty good time as far as I can remember. Did some mart drinking, got a hotel room, went to Wolfgang's which has excellent fish fry, and then drank, and then kept drinking, and then drank a whole lot more, and then went to Rock n Roll Club and played beer pong and the rest of the night is pretty fuzzy, but I've been assured that I enjoyed myself, and videos from the night certainly back that argument up. The morning after I stayed in Busan nursing a hangover, did some shopping (managed to find some Converse only a size too small that have stretched nicely to fit my gigantic American feet), and ate some pretty decent gyuudon at a restaurant next to Sasang station.
All in all, I'd recommend Busan pretty highly.
Mart Drinking
Mart drinking isn't something that happens from my experience stateside, at least if you aren't homeless. Probably cause it's illegal in most places. But hanging out at convenience stores and getting sloshed is surprisingly not uncommon here. And by not uncommon, I mean I seem to be doing it a lot, I see other people doing it a lot, and the Koreans here seem to be pretty fond of it.
Buying beer from the mart is halfway between buying it at an actual grocery and at a bar, so it's much more affordable. They provide chairs and tables and they clean up after you even if you throw everything on the ground, and there are public bathrooms or conveniently parked trucks near most of the locations I've been to. There's also wifi, and access to a microwave.
They tend to be a great place to meet strangers. Not in a Craigslist sort of way, no, but definitely in a talking to other travelers/teachers/foreigners randomly way. Everyone goes to relax outside of marts. I had a good experience in Seoul at a mart at the intersection of a bunch of clubs, sitting and chatting with random foreigners and English speaking Koreans. They're a crossroads for drunk, friendly people in the country. Most of the time you'll never see these people again, but for a brief period of time you're all best friends. Strangers will buy you drinks and ice cream and tell you their most intimate secrets.
Basically, mart drinking is the best.
Garbage
Korea is filthy.
That's really all I would need to say on the matter, but I guess I can add onto that.
Korea is absolutely disgusting.
There is constantly garbage littering the streets. There are no public garbage cans, for the most part, and the best a conscientious individual can attempt is at least throwing your trash onto the bigger piles of refuse lining the streets, or in front of a mart so that one of the workers will clean it up.
To add onto this problem, there tends to be a rainy season (it was 'right when I arrived' until 'now it's cold'), and there are tons of band flyers and the aforementioned prostitute trading cards slung everywhere people might walk, so they tend to get pasted to the ground via rainwater and the uncaring tread of passersby. Also, there is a more open sewage system in Korea, where the fetid waters are closer to street level directly under the sewer grates, and the smell can seep through harshly out of nowhere. There's a spot near where I live where you'll be walking along, enjoying the smell of a bakery, when suddenly you hit a wall of odorous war crime. Never a pleasant experience.
The silver lining to this, is that all these problems tend to happen later in the day. Every morning, before Korea wakes up, but after it comes home from drinking (so, roughly 6-9am) a group of workers comes out and sweeps up the streets. If you're the first one awake in the morning, and then you went back home around noontime and didn't leave again for the rest of the day, you'd have no idea the country got so filthy.
I've heard a few explanations for the lack of trash bins. The first I was told was a fear of terrorists, which doesn't make any sense, considering the few places there are public receptacles are in the areas of highest transit which would cause the most damage. The second, more logical reason is simply that they don't have the willing manpower to collect the bins multiple times a day, so letting it get dumped all over all day and then cleaning it up once early in the morning is actually more efficient.
And it is, but guys, Japan is right next to you and they are pristine. If you ever had to invite them over for dinner you would be so embarrassed.
Confucianism and its effects
Confucianism has twofold very visible effects. First, is the age hierarchy. Somebody older than you is automatically right. No matter what. Even if irrefutable evidence proves them wrong, you're still morally wrong for trying to prove that. As mentioned briefly with the ajumas that will elbow you into the ocean and spit on your bloated, floating corpse, it comes into play at work as well. Your boss is your boss, they're older than you, you will respect them. I've had younger bosses before (only a year or two of difference, but still) that were pretty cool, and this is just not something I could see standing up here.
The other part is your position as an educator. You get a lot of cred for being a teacher here. People assume you're wealthy, you get treated like a king, mothers are throwing their virgin daughters in your direction in hopes to wed them to such a successful individual...
Well at least people assume you have good money, but that could be because of the foreigner thing. Huzzah stereotyping!
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Let's Do the Time Warp
As I'd like to hurry things along before my memories of events fade from my old age, I'm going to use this post as a way to briefly give some general impressions on Korea, and the next blog or two is going to skip the days pretty quickly. I promise work isn't all that exciting, and that's most of what I do. Elsewise, this blog is going to be very scattered and disorganized as I try to recollect day-by-days or even weekly chronicles from over a month from now at this point.
Also yes I realize I haven't uploaded any pictures yet. I don't have a home computer, so picture upload has been difficult. I'll make my way to a PC Room one of these days and get all that taken care of.
The Apartment
The apartment they gave me is...nice. It's roomier than I was expecting. Individual bathroom, separate bathroom, kitchen area, separate laundry room. There really isn't all that much room to spread out, though. The main entryway, and the only legitimate room beside the bedroom is essentially all kitchen. The lease does include a microwave (broken) and a refrigerator (tiny) as well as a washing machine (no dryer, had to buy a clothesrack) and a rice cooker which I'll never use because I'm fine with instant rice like a jerk.
The shower in the bathroom is a hole in the ground and a hose besides. The shower nor the sink worked when I moved in, and I had to do some amateur plumbing to get them to acceptable levels. Also, the kitchen sink had bean plants growing in the sink trap that I had to take care of. They sure as sugar went over the apartment before I moved in, I'll tell you. Regardless, everything is in working order at present, even if it does take forever for the bathroom floor to dry after a shower. Debating investing in those raised floor...racks? Whatever they are. Water drips through them onto the ground, dry off easily, yadda yadda. I'd need two for the bathroom (one for the toilet, one for the sink) and multiple for the laundry room (where the air conditioner and washing machine drain onto the floor) and they're 16,000 a pop, so it's really not the top of the list.
I've been donated some furniture, and, with a bit of interior understanding, the place has gotten rather homey, but unfortunately the main area for hanging out is still my bed, which I would like to sleep on and not have people spill beer all over. Fortunately my work still hasn't gotten me the bedframe I was promised, so it's not much better than sitting on the floor to be on the mattress anyways. Huzzah.
The apartment is also on the fourth floor with no elevator, which isn't a problem until you come home drunk and decide you want to move furniture in and out of the building.
Hey, no judging.
Workplace
After being there for a bit, the place I work is really nice... as a building. Everyone who works there is super friendly, it's always very clean and well stocked, they get any supplies I ask for them. We don't have an (official) head instructor, so there isn't anyone spying on my classroom to make sure I'm not beating the kids or anything. I mean, I'm not, but I COULD.
As for work itself, on that subject, 80 percent of the job is student management. The material practically teaches itself, but getting the kids to sit still and look at it is a difficult task. You have to balance getting the kids to enjoy class with getting work done, and too far in either direction makes some or all of the kids miserable who will then rat your ass out to the nearest Korean adult because how dare you just try to get through a lesson instead of letting your kids yell in Korean and hit each other and watch music videos on your computer. Of course, when they complain, they never explain what they were doing wrong (let's face it, neither did we, eh?) so it comes off as you being a terrible teacher at a terrible institute, you risk the kid complaining to their parents and getting pulled out of the place, which loses your hogwan money, which gets you fired. And we don't want that. So make the kids happy.
The curriculum itself is...dull. There is no meat to it, and it's all premade for you. You teach method. Not speaking method, not listening method, not reading or writing methods. Answer finding method. 9 times out of 10, the kids won't even listen to the question you're asking them. They will listen for some words that they can find in the textbook and regurgitate the answer they find without even sort of understanding what it means. You throw them a curveball and ask them a question they need to think about and they cannot answer it, at least not without a lot of leading intonation and help from teacher. It's depressing, at least for me, because you realize nobody is there to learn a language, they're there to pass tests. And they do that very well, because the method they know works more often than not. But for someone like myself with a great interest in languages (despite how good I may or may not be at acquiring them), it's sad to see so many kids just not care about learning the lingua franca.
Which brings me to my next point.
Speaking English in Korea
From what I can tell, there's virtually no reason to learn Korean. And I've made some attempts, trust me. I've learned Hangul, going so far as to even study the exception rules, and I've picked up simple phrases (Thank you, please, left, right, how much, etc), and am trying to get at least some basic knowledge of the language as I progress (although let's grant that my first month here was trying to get adjusted to the country and meet people, so I haven't set too much time aside for language study). With what I know, I can go into a restaurant, order food, pay for it, and thank the person while saying the food was delicious. The majority of the expats I've met here can't even do that. Reason being, there is no reason to. Speaking English is a status symbol here. If they can speak English to you, they will speak English to you. You can order something in flawless Korean, and if you look foreign, they will reply to you in English. And you can answer them in Korean, and they'll respond in English again. I've seen it happen. It's happened to me, in my less than stellar but still comprehendable Korean speaking attempts.
People on the street will randomly talk to you in English. I've had kids stop me on city blocks to practice English with me, just to prove that they can. I don't mind it, it's great that they're trying. But it really does seem like a novelty thing that people do.
Not that that's not a thing that happens in the states, I've seen people at restaurants embarrass themselves by attempting to speak Mexican to the waitstaff (and finding out they're Polish or something, oh ho ho). But it's such a weird thing to have people multiple times a day wander up and say 'Hello, how are you, nice to meet you, you enjoy Korea?, thank you very much, goodbye' for no reason other than to prove that they can. And where I live there is no shortage of foreigners (some neighborhoods we outnumber the Koreans), so you'd think they'd have gotten over the novelty by now.
Foot Traffic (and traffic in general)
This is a big thing with me. I hated how people walked in Japan, seemingly randomly, slowly, and stopping for no reason. They had the luxury of it being explained with the walking patterns differing all over Japan (let's pretend it's island to island) so it's a whole bunch of people from different walking styles all intermingling. I can excuse that, but it still gets irritating.
Korea is quite possibly worse, but in different ways. People will just shove you to the side. I shouldn't say people, ajumas will shove you out of the way. Ajumas are crazy old ladies that dominate everything in their Confucian power grasp. They will stare you down for simply existing as a non-Korean, push you out of the way (even if you weren't in the way), spit on the ground immediately next to you, and do anything they damned well please because nobody would dare tell them to stop. They will ride their bicycles straight at you and expect you to move, even, and seemingly especially if there is a wide gap to either side of you that is completely clear of any obstacles. They just want to see you move.
There's also the matter of cell phones. Cell phones in Korea just...are. Everybody has one. And they're all using them. Constantly. It's just part of being. It's not even considered rude to be on a cell phone. Clerks at stores will be on cell phones. People have them out at special ceremonies. Cab drivers will be playing on them while they taxi you to your destination. And everyone has them glued to their faces while they're walking around, causing them to just sporadically charge in arbitrary directions as they get distracted watching their latest kdramas.
Other than that though, for the people that are paying attention, at the very least they will walk at a good speed on the right side of the path and it's easy to navigate them. Although there is a weird tendency to stop at the traffic lights for... forever. Traffic is unidirectional in Korea. The light on each four sides of the traffic light will go green, one side at a time. Which makes crossing on foot take even longer than that, especially if there is a separate timer for the green arrow and the regular green light. At a crosswalk, Koreans will wait forever until the green man says go. If there is no crosswalk, nothing can stop the Korean pedestrian. They will charge into oncoming traffic face-to-cellphone and dare the world to hit them. Which may actually be a dare, because by law anybody hospitalized by a motor vehicle is the lucky beneficiary of all of the driver's money until their hospital bills are paid off. Which gives you a nice two week vacation as you recover in the hospital. And judging by the way people drive here, they'd be all to eager to run you down regardless. So maybe the crosswalks are just an ingenious way to prevent people from playing chicken with traffic.
Food
Dak galbi, barbecue, HOF chicken, street mandu, jjahjangmyon, kimchi... kimchi. Kimchi. I hated kimchi before I came here. I hated kimchi for my first few weeks. I'm...starting to come around. At the very least, it does taste different depending on where you get it from. Different restaurants will make their own kimchi, and the spicier ones are better from my experience. Kimchi as a cooking ingredient works better than kimchi by itself, though. I think it's the addition of heat. Something about cold fermented cabbage is just...unappetizing. But it's allegedly one of the healthiest things you can put in your body so you eat it regardless, and you keep trying it until you like it.
Street mandu is probably my favorite thing here. Steamed mandu is the best, little dumplings either fried or steamed or a third thing that are stuffed with meat and vegetables, or kimchi, or what have you. Some will be sold from carts, some will have tents set up for you to eat at, generally it's great. Beware the vendors that just sort of microwave it. It tends to be much less appetizing then.
Street food is the best no matter where you are in the world. Street mandu is great, and even better is just street meat. It doesn't matter what kind of meat. It's meat on a stick. Eat it.
HOF's are just chicken and beer places. They're open late, and they have chicken and beer. They also cost buttloads of money. You're paying about 16,000 for a basket of chicken and chips, but at least the beer is cheap. It's no worse than three drink minimum bars with 25 cent wings back in the states, but with the beer being the discounted item, it just feels wrong for some reason.
Barbecue is meat. Meat you cook yourself unless you seem to American, in which case they'll cook it for you. But it's always good. I've found a place called Dino Meat Barbecue that is all you can eat for 16,000 and I don't know why I don't eat there every day.
Dak Galbi is essentially stir fry that they do at the table in front of you. You pick the ingredients, and some poor undergrad stays up til the wee hours of the morning to serve your drunk ass the food. Worth it.
Jjahjangmyeon is one of the more popular Chinese dishes in Korea. It's noodles or rice with black bean sauce, mixed vegetables, and generally some type of meat. Pretty good stuff, but I'm starting to miss American cuisine.
Jimjilbaeng
Like the onsen I went to in Japan, except you can go in with tattoos here, hey~! Also the one near my house has a tub with water jets on it. So relaxing~
Naked time is fun time.
Also yes I realize I haven't uploaded any pictures yet. I don't have a home computer, so picture upload has been difficult. I'll make my way to a PC Room one of these days and get all that taken care of.
The Apartment
The apartment they gave me is...nice. It's roomier than I was expecting. Individual bathroom, separate bathroom, kitchen area, separate laundry room. There really isn't all that much room to spread out, though. The main entryway, and the only legitimate room beside the bedroom is essentially all kitchen. The lease does include a microwave (broken) and a refrigerator (tiny) as well as a washing machine (no dryer, had to buy a clothesrack) and a rice cooker which I'll never use because I'm fine with instant rice like a jerk.
The shower in the bathroom is a hole in the ground and a hose besides. The shower nor the sink worked when I moved in, and I had to do some amateur plumbing to get them to acceptable levels. Also, the kitchen sink had bean plants growing in the sink trap that I had to take care of. They sure as sugar went over the apartment before I moved in, I'll tell you. Regardless, everything is in working order at present, even if it does take forever for the bathroom floor to dry after a shower. Debating investing in those raised floor...racks? Whatever they are. Water drips through them onto the ground, dry off easily, yadda yadda. I'd need two for the bathroom (one for the toilet, one for the sink) and multiple for the laundry room (where the air conditioner and washing machine drain onto the floor) and they're 16,000 a pop, so it's really not the top of the list.
I've been donated some furniture, and, with a bit of interior understanding, the place has gotten rather homey, but unfortunately the main area for hanging out is still my bed, which I would like to sleep on and not have people spill beer all over. Fortunately my work still hasn't gotten me the bedframe I was promised, so it's not much better than sitting on the floor to be on the mattress anyways. Huzzah.
The apartment is also on the fourth floor with no elevator, which isn't a problem until you come home drunk and decide you want to move furniture in and out of the building.
Hey, no judging.
Workplace
After being there for a bit, the place I work is really nice... as a building. Everyone who works there is super friendly, it's always very clean and well stocked, they get any supplies I ask for them. We don't have an (official) head instructor, so there isn't anyone spying on my classroom to make sure I'm not beating the kids or anything. I mean, I'm not, but I COULD.
As for work itself, on that subject, 80 percent of the job is student management. The material practically teaches itself, but getting the kids to sit still and look at it is a difficult task. You have to balance getting the kids to enjoy class with getting work done, and too far in either direction makes some or all of the kids miserable who will then rat your ass out to the nearest Korean adult because how dare you just try to get through a lesson instead of letting your kids yell in Korean and hit each other and watch music videos on your computer. Of course, when they complain, they never explain what they were doing wrong (let's face it, neither did we, eh?) so it comes off as you being a terrible teacher at a terrible institute, you risk the kid complaining to their parents and getting pulled out of the place, which loses your hogwan money, which gets you fired. And we don't want that. So make the kids happy.
The curriculum itself is...dull. There is no meat to it, and it's all premade for you. You teach method. Not speaking method, not listening method, not reading or writing methods. Answer finding method. 9 times out of 10, the kids won't even listen to the question you're asking them. They will listen for some words that they can find in the textbook and regurgitate the answer they find without even sort of understanding what it means. You throw them a curveball and ask them a question they need to think about and they cannot answer it, at least not without a lot of leading intonation and help from teacher. It's depressing, at least for me, because you realize nobody is there to learn a language, they're there to pass tests. And they do that very well, because the method they know works more often than not. But for someone like myself with a great interest in languages (despite how good I may or may not be at acquiring them), it's sad to see so many kids just not care about learning the lingua franca.
Which brings me to my next point.
Speaking English in Korea
From what I can tell, there's virtually no reason to learn Korean. And I've made some attempts, trust me. I've learned Hangul, going so far as to even study the exception rules, and I've picked up simple phrases (Thank you, please, left, right, how much, etc), and am trying to get at least some basic knowledge of the language as I progress (although let's grant that my first month here was trying to get adjusted to the country and meet people, so I haven't set too much time aside for language study). With what I know, I can go into a restaurant, order food, pay for it, and thank the person while saying the food was delicious. The majority of the expats I've met here can't even do that. Reason being, there is no reason to. Speaking English is a status symbol here. If they can speak English to you, they will speak English to you. You can order something in flawless Korean, and if you look foreign, they will reply to you in English. And you can answer them in Korean, and they'll respond in English again. I've seen it happen. It's happened to me, in my less than stellar but still comprehendable Korean speaking attempts.
People on the street will randomly talk to you in English. I've had kids stop me on city blocks to practice English with me, just to prove that they can. I don't mind it, it's great that they're trying. But it really does seem like a novelty thing that people do.
Not that that's not a thing that happens in the states, I've seen people at restaurants embarrass themselves by attempting to speak Mexican to the waitstaff (and finding out they're Polish or something, oh ho ho). But it's such a weird thing to have people multiple times a day wander up and say 'Hello, how are you, nice to meet you, you enjoy Korea?, thank you very much, goodbye' for no reason other than to prove that they can. And where I live there is no shortage of foreigners (some neighborhoods we outnumber the Koreans), so you'd think they'd have gotten over the novelty by now.
Foot Traffic (and traffic in general)
This is a big thing with me. I hated how people walked in Japan, seemingly randomly, slowly, and stopping for no reason. They had the luxury of it being explained with the walking patterns differing all over Japan (let's pretend it's island to island) so it's a whole bunch of people from different walking styles all intermingling. I can excuse that, but it still gets irritating.
Korea is quite possibly worse, but in different ways. People will just shove you to the side. I shouldn't say people, ajumas will shove you out of the way. Ajumas are crazy old ladies that dominate everything in their Confucian power grasp. They will stare you down for simply existing as a non-Korean, push you out of the way (even if you weren't in the way), spit on the ground immediately next to you, and do anything they damned well please because nobody would dare tell them to stop. They will ride their bicycles straight at you and expect you to move, even, and seemingly especially if there is a wide gap to either side of you that is completely clear of any obstacles. They just want to see you move.
There's also the matter of cell phones. Cell phones in Korea just...are. Everybody has one. And they're all using them. Constantly. It's just part of being. It's not even considered rude to be on a cell phone. Clerks at stores will be on cell phones. People have them out at special ceremonies. Cab drivers will be playing on them while they taxi you to your destination. And everyone has them glued to their faces while they're walking around, causing them to just sporadically charge in arbitrary directions as they get distracted watching their latest kdramas.
Other than that though, for the people that are paying attention, at the very least they will walk at a good speed on the right side of the path and it's easy to navigate them. Although there is a weird tendency to stop at the traffic lights for... forever. Traffic is unidirectional in Korea. The light on each four sides of the traffic light will go green, one side at a time. Which makes crossing on foot take even longer than that, especially if there is a separate timer for the green arrow and the regular green light. At a crosswalk, Koreans will wait forever until the green man says go. If there is no crosswalk, nothing can stop the Korean pedestrian. They will charge into oncoming traffic face-to-cellphone and dare the world to hit them. Which may actually be a dare, because by law anybody hospitalized by a motor vehicle is the lucky beneficiary of all of the driver's money until their hospital bills are paid off. Which gives you a nice two week vacation as you recover in the hospital. And judging by the way people drive here, they'd be all to eager to run you down regardless. So maybe the crosswalks are just an ingenious way to prevent people from playing chicken with traffic.
Food
Dak galbi, barbecue, HOF chicken, street mandu, jjahjangmyon, kimchi... kimchi. Kimchi. I hated kimchi before I came here. I hated kimchi for my first few weeks. I'm...starting to come around. At the very least, it does taste different depending on where you get it from. Different restaurants will make their own kimchi, and the spicier ones are better from my experience. Kimchi as a cooking ingredient works better than kimchi by itself, though. I think it's the addition of heat. Something about cold fermented cabbage is just...unappetizing. But it's allegedly one of the healthiest things you can put in your body so you eat it regardless, and you keep trying it until you like it.
Street mandu is probably my favorite thing here. Steamed mandu is the best, little dumplings either fried or steamed or a third thing that are stuffed with meat and vegetables, or kimchi, or what have you. Some will be sold from carts, some will have tents set up for you to eat at, generally it's great. Beware the vendors that just sort of microwave it. It tends to be much less appetizing then.
Street food is the best no matter where you are in the world. Street mandu is great, and even better is just street meat. It doesn't matter what kind of meat. It's meat on a stick. Eat it.
HOF's are just chicken and beer places. They're open late, and they have chicken and beer. They also cost buttloads of money. You're paying about 16,000 for a basket of chicken and chips, but at least the beer is cheap. It's no worse than three drink minimum bars with 25 cent wings back in the states, but with the beer being the discounted item, it just feels wrong for some reason.
Barbecue is meat. Meat you cook yourself unless you seem to American, in which case they'll cook it for you. But it's always good. I've found a place called Dino Meat Barbecue that is all you can eat for 16,000 and I don't know why I don't eat there every day.
Dak Galbi is essentially stir fry that they do at the table in front of you. You pick the ingredients, and some poor undergrad stays up til the wee hours of the morning to serve your drunk ass the food. Worth it.
Jjahjangmyeon is one of the more popular Chinese dishes in Korea. It's noodles or rice with black bean sauce, mixed vegetables, and generally some type of meat. Pretty good stuff, but I'm starting to miss American cuisine.
Jimjilbaeng
Like the onsen I went to in Japan, except you can go in with tattoos here, hey~! Also the one near my house has a tub with water jets on it. So relaxing~
Naked time is fun time.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Welcome to Geoje
My first night, right after arriving in the city, I wandered around a bit. I was in downtown Gohyeon area, which to this day is where I spend most of my time, so I figured it was important to get at least somewhat accustomed to the area. I tried to keep a stable direction in my head and come across landmarks here and there, which is hard to do when you're brand new and you pass a CU Mart every 12 feet. There are mountains and water in every direction, so you can't really use those to judge where you are for the most part either.
I did eventually get oriented, and wandered around the area a bit before turning in, falling asleep with the tv on.
The next day we had our 'work orientation'. I took a cab in (cabs cost about a dollar here, really), and figured my way into the building. Our building is swank. We have an aquarium in the waiting room, we have a waiting room. We have secretaries, cleaning staff, management staff. The building is sterile clean and freshly wallpapered, we have water coolers in multiple locations, showering units in the bathroom for...some...reason... and we've got our own private offices with computers, projectors, whiteboards, markers, pencils... the whole works. It's almost like I'm a real teacher!
At about 1 in the afternoon, we met up with the boss (who is a very nice lady who spoke less English than I thought she would, but still plenty more than is common) and went over hours, wages, reimbursements, living situations, etc. We were then dismissed to do prep work. For the next.....six hours. Which was, well, absurd. But it was something I was told I needed to get used to. As per the schedule, I'm at work 1pm until 10pm Monday through Friday, and at least three hours every day is prep work. What it actually is, is 'deskwarming', which is a Korean job skill that requires you to procrastinate on the internet for a few hours until your class starts. It take me roughly 15 minutes to prep for a class, I shortly found out, so if I were to do nothing but prep for the whole time they had set aside from me, I would have the entire semester done in a week.
As myself and the other new teacher didn't really have much to do,we were getting prepared to leave about an hour or two into finding our bearings in the branch when one of the Korean coteachers told us to stick around because we were getting free food. Not wanting to burn through my meager funds, and wanting to sample some good Korean food as recommended by locals, I stuck around. This backfired because we ended up getting Chinese food. Not that it wasn't fantastic! But, it wasn't Korean. We got to chatting, and I found out the very uncommon fact that myself and the boss are the only people at work who drink, or at least enjoy doing so. That... doesn't happen a lot in Korea. Everyone here drinks. It's hard to walk down the street without seeing a drunk middle aged guy hanging off of his friend. Yes, I know it's eight in the morning, what is your point.
The other new teacher (I hate using names in a blog but it is starting to seem like I'm going to have to) ended up tagging along on the way home with me so that we could do prep work together (we didn't actually do any of the sort at work). She needed my help, because she was given a class that she wasn't trained how to do, and I was given 5 days worth of teaching the same class over and over, so one of us got the short end of the stick. I'm talking about me, teaching the same thing everyday is tedious. So I generously helped her out, and retired to Shaun of the Dead with Korean subtitles.
The next morning I woke up at 7am, still on my training regiment, and being affected by the whole 'I'm in a hotel room' thing, where my body doesn't sleep soundly because the surroundings are weird. So I went to the fish market. It only took a little wandering around, and it helped that I could follow my nose. Because the smell was awful. Offal, even. I got there and there were live fish squirming, dead fish cooking, people chopping and gutting fish up all around, and the whole thing is situated right above a sewage drain. The smell is quite atrocious, but it is a sight to experience for somebody who didn't grow up on the seaside. Of course I had the unfortunate effects of managing to look at everything as a 'pet' instead of a 'food' for the same reason.
My first class was later that same day, and I went in thinking I was prepared. I mean, this is what they trained us for, right? Wrong. They didn't train us. They didn't train us at all.
I was optimistic, happy, smiling, thinking about how much fun this would be. And then my first kid showed up. She looked at me and went 'You my teacher?' And I said 'Yep!' and she made a...a face. And swore in Korean, and left my classroom.
Well, things were off to a great start.
The whole class was like that. Just very...tense. Nobody wanted to be there, they just wanted to sit and silently judge me. See what I was made of.
It was my first day as a teacher, I wasn't made of much.
As we struggled to get through on the prep work I did and the little bit I was taught, the class progressively got a bit better. We were laughing together by the end and not staring blankly at each other, which is enough progress to make over a three hour class period.
I left my first class feeling pretty drained. It didn't really go how I had expected at all. The kids at the private schools here seem to be fully aware that your employment is based on you keeping them happy. If they go home and complain to their parents, they get switched to a different school. This happens enough times, you lose your job. So there's not really a way to punish the kids, or get them to pay attention other than just being stern and...hoping it works. They get distracted, they refuse to do work, and 'sending them to the principle' just makes them come back mopey and even less willing to work. It's... frustrating. At this point I hadn't really figured away around it, and it was just irritating. I wasn't expecting such a small, four student class where none of the kids listened. It was like teaching in an inner city school back in the states, except with less change at being shot.
Although all the students have knives. Granted, they're box cutters, but still, was a shock to see that all of them are more armed than I am.
The first week was essentially just that. Getting to know the kids, getting to know the job, really...not doing a whole lot back home. Mozying around with the girl from work, going into random places looking for food. I ended up getting japchaebap, which is horribly offensive from a western standpoint but I assure you it's delicious.
The only eventful things that happened during my first week were finding out that Dunkin' Donuts serves bubble tea, and getting into unintelligible arguments with the landlord at the motel I was stationed at. He yelled at me about how I had dirty clothes in my room, and how I took the key with me when they needed to clean, charged me for the maid doing my laundry, and then forced me to pay for an extra day (which I got reimbursed for), and all of this via shouting in Korean at me until I understood him. I'll give this to the people, I haven't had anyone back down on me. Always push forward. And really, it was the most honest exchange I've ever had in my life. He'd yell and point, and I'd hand him money until he went away.
Aaah, international relations.
I ducked out really early on my checkout day to try and avoid him, managed to successfully, and then set up camp in the apartment I'd be occupying for the next year or so.
It's nice.
I did eventually get oriented, and wandered around the area a bit before turning in, falling asleep with the tv on.
The next day we had our 'work orientation'. I took a cab in (cabs cost about a dollar here, really), and figured my way into the building. Our building is swank. We have an aquarium in the waiting room, we have a waiting room. We have secretaries, cleaning staff, management staff. The building is sterile clean and freshly wallpapered, we have water coolers in multiple locations, showering units in the bathroom for...some...reason... and we've got our own private offices with computers, projectors, whiteboards, markers, pencils... the whole works. It's almost like I'm a real teacher!
At about 1 in the afternoon, we met up with the boss (who is a very nice lady who spoke less English than I thought she would, but still plenty more than is common) and went over hours, wages, reimbursements, living situations, etc. We were then dismissed to do prep work. For the next.....six hours. Which was, well, absurd. But it was something I was told I needed to get used to. As per the schedule, I'm at work 1pm until 10pm Monday through Friday, and at least three hours every day is prep work. What it actually is, is 'deskwarming', which is a Korean job skill that requires you to procrastinate on the internet for a few hours until your class starts. It take me roughly 15 minutes to prep for a class, I shortly found out, so if I were to do nothing but prep for the whole time they had set aside from me, I would have the entire semester done in a week.
As myself and the other new teacher didn't really have much to do,we were getting prepared to leave about an hour or two into finding our bearings in the branch when one of the Korean coteachers told us to stick around because we were getting free food. Not wanting to burn through my meager funds, and wanting to sample some good Korean food as recommended by locals, I stuck around. This backfired because we ended up getting Chinese food. Not that it wasn't fantastic! But, it wasn't Korean. We got to chatting, and I found out the very uncommon fact that myself and the boss are the only people at work who drink, or at least enjoy doing so. That... doesn't happen a lot in Korea. Everyone here drinks. It's hard to walk down the street without seeing a drunk middle aged guy hanging off of his friend. Yes, I know it's eight in the morning, what is your point.
The other new teacher (I hate using names in a blog but it is starting to seem like I'm going to have to) ended up tagging along on the way home with me so that we could do prep work together (we didn't actually do any of the sort at work). She needed my help, because she was given a class that she wasn't trained how to do, and I was given 5 days worth of teaching the same class over and over, so one of us got the short end of the stick. I'm talking about me, teaching the same thing everyday is tedious. So I generously helped her out, and retired to Shaun of the Dead with Korean subtitles.
The next morning I woke up at 7am, still on my training regiment, and being affected by the whole 'I'm in a hotel room' thing, where my body doesn't sleep soundly because the surroundings are weird. So I went to the fish market. It only took a little wandering around, and it helped that I could follow my nose. Because the smell was awful. Offal, even. I got there and there were live fish squirming, dead fish cooking, people chopping and gutting fish up all around, and the whole thing is situated right above a sewage drain. The smell is quite atrocious, but it is a sight to experience for somebody who didn't grow up on the seaside. Of course I had the unfortunate effects of managing to look at everything as a 'pet' instead of a 'food' for the same reason.
My first class was later that same day, and I went in thinking I was prepared. I mean, this is what they trained us for, right? Wrong. They didn't train us. They didn't train us at all.
I was optimistic, happy, smiling, thinking about how much fun this would be. And then my first kid showed up. She looked at me and went 'You my teacher?' And I said 'Yep!' and she made a...a face. And swore in Korean, and left my classroom.
Well, things were off to a great start.
The whole class was like that. Just very...tense. Nobody wanted to be there, they just wanted to sit and silently judge me. See what I was made of.
It was my first day as a teacher, I wasn't made of much.
As we struggled to get through on the prep work I did and the little bit I was taught, the class progressively got a bit better. We were laughing together by the end and not staring blankly at each other, which is enough progress to make over a three hour class period.
I left my first class feeling pretty drained. It didn't really go how I had expected at all. The kids at the private schools here seem to be fully aware that your employment is based on you keeping them happy. If they go home and complain to their parents, they get switched to a different school. This happens enough times, you lose your job. So there's not really a way to punish the kids, or get them to pay attention other than just being stern and...hoping it works. They get distracted, they refuse to do work, and 'sending them to the principle' just makes them come back mopey and even less willing to work. It's... frustrating. At this point I hadn't really figured away around it, and it was just irritating. I wasn't expecting such a small, four student class where none of the kids listened. It was like teaching in an inner city school back in the states, except with less change at being shot.
Although all the students have knives. Granted, they're box cutters, but still, was a shock to see that all of them are more armed than I am.
The first week was essentially just that. Getting to know the kids, getting to know the job, really...not doing a whole lot back home. Mozying around with the girl from work, going into random places looking for food. I ended up getting japchaebap, which is horribly offensive from a western standpoint but I assure you it's delicious.
The only eventful things that happened during my first week were finding out that Dunkin' Donuts serves bubble tea, and getting into unintelligible arguments with the landlord at the motel I was stationed at. He yelled at me about how I had dirty clothes in my room, and how I took the key with me when they needed to clean, charged me for the maid doing my laundry, and then forced me to pay for an extra day (which I got reimbursed for), and all of this via shouting in Korean at me until I understood him. I'll give this to the people, I haven't had anyone back down on me. Always push forward. And really, it was the most honest exchange I've ever had in my life. He'd yell and point, and I'd hand him money until he went away.
Aaah, international relations.
I ducked out really early on my checkout day to try and avoid him, managed to successfully, and then set up camp in the apartment I'd be occupying for the next year or so.
It's nice.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Training Week
After settling into South Korea, getting my bearings, and then immediately losing them again because soju is ₩1500 (about $1.50) and ~2 liters of beer is ₩4000 (about 4 bucks). A bunch of us had the idea that training was going to be a breeze.
After the first day of training we maintained this perspective. First day's training mostly involved orientation. A bunch of us sitting in a room as one of the staff explained stuff about Chungdahm, how the classes work, reminded us to do our online training, etcetera. Seemed like cake. So we celebrated by gathering a bunch of trainees together and going to the Coex Mall for dinner and generally lazying about.
The mall was a pretty decent sight. Well put together, nice fountains and rest areas, attached to a ritzy hotel. Good food to be had there as well. A bunch of us were walking out of a random pharmacy when some foreigners dashed right at us. Two attractive-esque (let's face it, quite skanky, actually) girls tackled us with questions about what there was to do here. In Seoul. The biggest city in the nation. Apparently they had come from Jamaica (neither of them looked the part) with help from the Jamaican mafia in order to see an Eminem concert (yep) and now they were bored. Not from the area ourselves and only having had two days to explore the city, we had nothing. Our response? "Drink".
Their response was that they didn't drink... but they had a whole bunch of alcohol. A laundry basket full of alcohol that some guy pushed on them despite their urgings that they don't get drunk. And did we want it? Because, if we could help them find their hotel, we could have it.
Now kids, step back for a second here. Think about what your parents taught you. The good kind of parents, not the ones that shouldn't have had kids. They tell you not to accept candy from strangers. And this is good advice, follow it. Follow it your whole life. But as you get older, learn to use discretion. I've accepted candy from strangers at the mall who were giving out free samples, friends' parents I'd just met, other college students on campus. Not a big deal. But a couple of girls with shady stories, claiming to be in with the mafia, staying in a hotel they don't know the location of, offering to give you free booze if you followed them back to their hotel room? That's one of the worst case scenarios that your parents were afraid of when that candy advice came up.
So naturally myself (and a friend from training) decided to be impromptu tour guides for these two strangers.
We had gotten a glimpse of the hotel they were staying at when we came off the subway (the Internation something or other), and trekked our way in the direction we thought it was in, the whole time listening to these girls tell stories about their trip (apparently they frequently get turned away from taxis), and stopping every few feet so they could harass a random local with questions worded loudly in English. Obviously we were in the presence of noble ladies of a high caliber (see: firearms). The hotel itself. was. gorgeous. Everything was gold plated and immaculate, gleaming and clean, and smelled pleasant. There were fresh potpourris laid out on scattered tables, and the hotel staff was dressed properly. There was even a lawyers' convention taking place in the main room (that the girls we were with attempted to sneak us into for... some...reason). By all appearances, this posh inn was the top of the top, which indicated that we were either quite secure in our journey, or this was the place that rich tourists go to cover up murders, trade drugs, and perform kidnappings and extortions.
In a rather uneventful manner, we hurried the girls up to their room, and in return they thrust a green laundry basket filled to the top with expensive liquors and then thanked us and sent us on our way. I-I mean we had sex with them! Just... just loads of it. It was fantastic. And then we rappelled out a window. Like in Die Hard or something. But really, in the end, we had a laundry basket... full of liquor.
We made our way back to the group we had abandoned fully triumphant in our quest (after hurrying out of the hotel in case it had all been stolen/someone was trailing us afterwards), and our traveling companions were....disappointed that we weren't murdered, or drugged, or at least charged an absurd amount of cash for taking up the time of high class hookers, and then getting stained with an STD. What good friends I'd made. Understandably though, they just were upset that we were rewarded for our foolishness instead of being punished for being idiots, as we rightfully should have been. I'll just claim optimism about trusting our fellow man, and look down upon my friends for slandering the good name of two quite reputable women of their word. The nerve, really.
After our adventure, we went back to 1405 in our hotel, drank some of the booze, and readied ourself for training the next morning.
Training
The next day training started for real.
It was clear that none of us were prepared for it.
To explain the matters in short, there are roughly three days of actual training. Monday is orientation, Wednesday-Thursday are the brief training sessions, and Friday is testing. They're cramming what should amount to a week or two of preparation into three days of training broken down between two instructors over 4-6 hours a day. We don't teach English, per se, we teach method. What this means is that we teach the kids how to find the answers, not understand them, because that's how the Korean school system is designed. Our school does make some efforts toward actual integration with vocab, and some grammar help, which is more than some of the schools do, but less than is needed. They're trying to get us to memorize and understand the teaching method for two different types of classes, gauge us as teachers and fix our faults, or at least address them, and educate us on the class structure and material in preparation for our first day of class. The first day of training went miserably, and all of us realized we'd need to buckle down and properly study the material to prepare for the second day of training.
So that night I went out drinking with some other trainees. Just a handful of us barhopped for a bit, and a smaller handful of us wound up in a great bar I'd recommend called 'Self Bar' in Gangnam. It's a little hole in the wall (ground really, it's downstairs) and it's called Self Bar because you just... you serve yourself. There is a fridge with beer in it, and you grab beer and pay at the end of the night. There's a bartender there to get you food and cocktails if you need them. It cost a bit less and was a good atmosphere.
Afterwards, because we didn't understand this whole 'training is tomorrow thing' apparently, we went to 'norebang', Korean karaoke. It was a super cheap place right next door, and the owner was quite friendly. Unfortunately the microphone had a horrid echo effect we couldn't figure out how to turn off, but we solved that by exclusively singing 90's songs. Also, the English selection was exclusively 90's songs, so hey. Afterwards we ran home drunk in an absolute downpour, stripped down, and waited for the next day to happen.
The next day happened. Everyone did miserable in training again. Slightly less miserable, but we still were confused with the takeaway. None of us were really quite sure what we were learning. Study sessions were decided upon, and people got together and mock-taught each other until we thought we had it figured out. For myself, at least, it didn't really click until the next day's classes. The next day was primarily fine tuning for people...although everybody in the program had reported of 'this one person in my class just... I don't think they're going to pass the training' which was a terrifying insecurity a whole lot of us had, because not passing training meant buying our own ticket home. Also that whole 'disappointment' and 'not having a job' thing wouldn't help matters much.
Testing ended up not being so bad. We had learned as much as we were going to, and had notes to rely on. My class structure is essentially 'wing-it' (even, and especially to where I am now) so I was quite relaxed, and was mostly thrown by other peoples' performances. After everyone had done their tests, we were all seated in our rooms and told to wait for staff to come in with good or bad news.
I haven't been able to get an accurate count. I asked around and nobody was certain about anything. I kept telling people I failed because that's just the kind of guy I am (hilarious) so I got a few apologetic 'I'm sorry's until I revealed 'I'm kidding'. If anybody failed, officially, I didn't hear about it. But from stories I'd heard of what went on in some classes, maybe not everybody was prepared enough to get a pass... but did anyways. The branches are desperate for new blood, and to be honest the trial by fire of having your first class does better to prepare you than the training does.
That said, The training could do with some lengthening. The instructors were great and did their best with the time they had, no issues there. But the training itself could use a full week, if not two weeks, to prepare the new teachers, although understandably putting trainees up in a hotel for two weeks would be...quite costly, so that's most likely the issue there. The other argument I'd make is that the program could do with a quick 'celebration gathering'. Just...something. Cheese and crackers. A pizza. Anything after the final testing. Something to just say goodbye and good luck to everyone you'd just spent a harrowing week with. Instead we're ushered nervously out of the rooms, quickly gotten to sign a contract for our new jobs, hurried into cabs with Korean drivers who don't really speak much in the way of English, and tossed on a train or a bus to go on a lengthy ride across the country to a place we're unfamiliar with. It's all a whole bunch of stress with no uplift, and it does a lot to make you feel more alone in a country you've barely arrived in.
Luckily I had company for my four-and-a-half hour bus ride to the opposite end of the country. A tall Canadian girl who made for good conversation and had a bubbly personality and may walk into this room at any moment, because I'm typing this at work and we work together (she is a doof, but in a good way). When we made it in we were met at the station by our new boss, our secretary, and a few of our coteachers. She went off to her new apartment, and I was crammed into a tiny (love?) motel for the next week. Free of charge, though! Also, my new boss bought me hot meat buns from Dunkin' Donuts. Which were pretty great, honestly.
I marked my address and took a picture of the building with my now almost-useless US smartphone, and wandered around a few city blocks, taking in the sights of my new city before ultimately wandering back, too tired and unfamiliar to really do anything with the night, and fell asleep with the tv on.
The next day would be the first day of the rest of my...year.
After the first day of training we maintained this perspective. First day's training mostly involved orientation. A bunch of us sitting in a room as one of the staff explained stuff about Chungdahm, how the classes work, reminded us to do our online training, etcetera. Seemed like cake. So we celebrated by gathering a bunch of trainees together and going to the Coex Mall for dinner and generally lazying about.
The mall was a pretty decent sight. Well put together, nice fountains and rest areas, attached to a ritzy hotel. Good food to be had there as well. A bunch of us were walking out of a random pharmacy when some foreigners dashed right at us. Two attractive-esque (let's face it, quite skanky, actually) girls tackled us with questions about what there was to do here. In Seoul. The biggest city in the nation. Apparently they had come from Jamaica (neither of them looked the part) with help from the Jamaican mafia in order to see an Eminem concert (yep) and now they were bored. Not from the area ourselves and only having had two days to explore the city, we had nothing. Our response? "Drink".
Their response was that they didn't drink... but they had a whole bunch of alcohol. A laundry basket full of alcohol that some guy pushed on them despite their urgings that they don't get drunk. And did we want it? Because, if we could help them find their hotel, we could have it.
Now kids, step back for a second here. Think about what your parents taught you. The good kind of parents, not the ones that shouldn't have had kids. They tell you not to accept candy from strangers. And this is good advice, follow it. Follow it your whole life. But as you get older, learn to use discretion. I've accepted candy from strangers at the mall who were giving out free samples, friends' parents I'd just met, other college students on campus. Not a big deal. But a couple of girls with shady stories, claiming to be in with the mafia, staying in a hotel they don't know the location of, offering to give you free booze if you followed them back to their hotel room? That's one of the worst case scenarios that your parents were afraid of when that candy advice came up.
So naturally myself (and a friend from training) decided to be impromptu tour guides for these two strangers.
We had gotten a glimpse of the hotel they were staying at when we came off the subway (the Internation something or other), and trekked our way in the direction we thought it was in, the whole time listening to these girls tell stories about their trip (apparently they frequently get turned away from taxis), and stopping every few feet so they could harass a random local with questions worded loudly in English. Obviously we were in the presence of noble ladies of a high caliber (see: firearms). The hotel itself. was. gorgeous. Everything was gold plated and immaculate, gleaming and clean, and smelled pleasant. There were fresh potpourris laid out on scattered tables, and the hotel staff was dressed properly. There was even a lawyers' convention taking place in the main room (that the girls we were with attempted to sneak us into for... some...reason). By all appearances, this posh inn was the top of the top, which indicated that we were either quite secure in our journey, or this was the place that rich tourists go to cover up murders, trade drugs, and perform kidnappings and extortions.
In a rather uneventful manner, we hurried the girls up to their room, and in return they thrust a green laundry basket filled to the top with expensive liquors and then thanked us and sent us on our way. I-I mean we had sex with them! Just... just loads of it. It was fantastic. And then we rappelled out a window. Like in Die Hard or something. But really, in the end, we had a laundry basket... full of liquor.
We made our way back to the group we had abandoned fully triumphant in our quest (after hurrying out of the hotel in case it had all been stolen/someone was trailing us afterwards), and our traveling companions were....disappointed that we weren't murdered, or drugged, or at least charged an absurd amount of cash for taking up the time of high class hookers, and then getting stained with an STD. What good friends I'd made. Understandably though, they just were upset that we were rewarded for our foolishness instead of being punished for being idiots, as we rightfully should have been. I'll just claim optimism about trusting our fellow man, and look down upon my friends for slandering the good name of two quite reputable women of their word. The nerve, really.
After our adventure, we went back to 1405 in our hotel, drank some of the booze, and readied ourself for training the next morning.
Training
The next day training started for real.
It was clear that none of us were prepared for it.
To explain the matters in short, there are roughly three days of actual training. Monday is orientation, Wednesday-Thursday are the brief training sessions, and Friday is testing. They're cramming what should amount to a week or two of preparation into three days of training broken down between two instructors over 4-6 hours a day. We don't teach English, per se, we teach method. What this means is that we teach the kids how to find the answers, not understand them, because that's how the Korean school system is designed. Our school does make some efforts toward actual integration with vocab, and some grammar help, which is more than some of the schools do, but less than is needed. They're trying to get us to memorize and understand the teaching method for two different types of classes, gauge us as teachers and fix our faults, or at least address them, and educate us on the class structure and material in preparation for our first day of class. The first day of training went miserably, and all of us realized we'd need to buckle down and properly study the material to prepare for the second day of training.
So that night I went out drinking with some other trainees. Just a handful of us barhopped for a bit, and a smaller handful of us wound up in a great bar I'd recommend called 'Self Bar' in Gangnam. It's a little hole in the wall (ground really, it's downstairs) and it's called Self Bar because you just... you serve yourself. There is a fridge with beer in it, and you grab beer and pay at the end of the night. There's a bartender there to get you food and cocktails if you need them. It cost a bit less and was a good atmosphere.
Afterwards, because we didn't understand this whole 'training is tomorrow thing' apparently, we went to 'norebang', Korean karaoke. It was a super cheap place right next door, and the owner was quite friendly. Unfortunately the microphone had a horrid echo effect we couldn't figure out how to turn off, but we solved that by exclusively singing 90's songs. Also, the English selection was exclusively 90's songs, so hey. Afterwards we ran home drunk in an absolute downpour, stripped down, and waited for the next day to happen.
The next day happened. Everyone did miserable in training again. Slightly less miserable, but we still were confused with the takeaway. None of us were really quite sure what we were learning. Study sessions were decided upon, and people got together and mock-taught each other until we thought we had it figured out. For myself, at least, it didn't really click until the next day's classes. The next day was primarily fine tuning for people...although everybody in the program had reported of 'this one person in my class just... I don't think they're going to pass the training' which was a terrifying insecurity a whole lot of us had, because not passing training meant buying our own ticket home. Also that whole 'disappointment' and 'not having a job' thing wouldn't help matters much.
Testing ended up not being so bad. We had learned as much as we were going to, and had notes to rely on. My class structure is essentially 'wing-it' (even, and especially to where I am now) so I was quite relaxed, and was mostly thrown by other peoples' performances. After everyone had done their tests, we were all seated in our rooms and told to wait for staff to come in with good or bad news.
I haven't been able to get an accurate count. I asked around and nobody was certain about anything. I kept telling people I failed because that's just the kind of guy I am (hilarious) so I got a few apologetic 'I'm sorry's until I revealed 'I'm kidding'. If anybody failed, officially, I didn't hear about it. But from stories I'd heard of what went on in some classes, maybe not everybody was prepared enough to get a pass... but did anyways. The branches are desperate for new blood, and to be honest the trial by fire of having your first class does better to prepare you than the training does.
That said, The training could do with some lengthening. The instructors were great and did their best with the time they had, no issues there. But the training itself could use a full week, if not two weeks, to prepare the new teachers, although understandably putting trainees up in a hotel for two weeks would be...quite costly, so that's most likely the issue there. The other argument I'd make is that the program could do with a quick 'celebration gathering'. Just...something. Cheese and crackers. A pizza. Anything after the final testing. Something to just say goodbye and good luck to everyone you'd just spent a harrowing week with. Instead we're ushered nervously out of the rooms, quickly gotten to sign a contract for our new jobs, hurried into cabs with Korean drivers who don't really speak much in the way of English, and tossed on a train or a bus to go on a lengthy ride across the country to a place we're unfamiliar with. It's all a whole bunch of stress with no uplift, and it does a lot to make you feel more alone in a country you've barely arrived in.
Luckily I had company for my four-and-a-half hour bus ride to the opposite end of the country. A tall Canadian girl who made for good conversation and had a bubbly personality and may walk into this room at any moment, because I'm typing this at work and we work together (she is a doof, but in a good way). When we made it in we were met at the station by our new boss, our secretary, and a few of our coteachers. She went off to her new apartment, and I was crammed into a tiny (love?) motel for the next week. Free of charge, though! Also, my new boss bought me hot meat buns from Dunkin' Donuts. Which were pretty great, honestly.
I marked my address and took a picture of the building with my now almost-useless US smartphone, and wandered around a few city blocks, taking in the sights of my new city before ultimately wandering back, too tired and unfamiliar to really do anything with the night, and fell asleep with the tv on.
The next day would be the first day of the rest of my...year.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Let's backtrack a bit shall we?
Oh hello, I didn't see you there. Welcome to my blog. Please, have a seat by the fireplace, enjoy some triple distilled scotch and a clichéd facetious introduction. Let me regale you with anecdotes of my journey.
Like all stories, let's start at the beginning. Granted I've been abroad again for a month, but computer access has been limited to thieving single bar access on a defunct smartphone while cowering from typhoons in the shadows of various coffee shops. That is, to say, sparse and wanting.
To shorten the prologue, my life was a mess. Not quite a shambles, but definitely in disarray. Sparing the details let's just say I wasn't where I wanted to be in my life, not a year after graduation from university, and was spiraling further from the top. Working a dead end job that left me too drained to pursue other interests, skipping between increasingly more questionable living situations, in and out of confusing romantic situations, and finding comfort in that greatest of all of manmade parasites, the drink. Two dollars goes a long way if you don't mind drinking what essentially boils down to insultingly harsh whiskey mixed with stale wine filtered through gym socks. But after a few weeks of intentionally putting such a concoction into your own body, you either fall down and never attempt to stand up again, or you re-evaluate your situation, look for ways out, and take what comes along as a lifeline.
In such a situation, I found myself reaching out to jobs abroad. At the recommendation of a friend, I applied for a teaching position in South Korea, and within a week I had heard from a recruiter. Using my overpowering charisma and ability to bluff that my professors had taught me anything I hadn't already known prior to entering uni, I powered through the interview processes, and found myself on the path of employment abroad. Three short months later (after a surprisingly quick turnaround for my criminal background check) and a large chunk of startup fees, I found myself pulled from my desperate pit where I had struggled to make ends meet (the whole while lying to myself that I was just biding my time until something better came along) into a whole new life uprooting myself and starting anew, away from everything I had grown comfortable with.
I wasn't entirely new to this, as the evidence presented by the existence of this blog goes to show. Having studied abroad for a year in Japan, eastern Asia could only present so many unfamiliar situations (so I thought). Going for a job had a different feel than going for study. I was wholly unprepared for a teaching job, having done very little in that way in the past (some years in the parks and recreation department, some bit of English help while in Japan). There was moreso the matter that I was, am still unsure, of coming home from this. Was this a career move, or simply a temporary excursion? There was also the ever encroaching thought coming from the part of my mind that produces a surplus of self-doubt that I was just using this as an escape, as a way to avoid actually pursuing a career or doing something real with my life. I'm still not sure how untrue that is. The next year of my contract is going to always have the feeling of "well, what comes next?" lurking beneath it.
Still, underfunded and underprepared, I said my goodbyes and departed.
The trip
Just like when I went to Japan, I had a lengthy layover at O'Hare airport. I had been dreading this, as both trips to O'Hare that I had made to and from Japan had been miserable experiments that involved me playing on the moving walkways for hours.
This time was not so bad, despite the seven hour layover I had. The trick, it seems, is not to be in Terminal 5. If you're traveling through O'Hare, don't go to Terminal 5 with more than an hour to spare. I somehow, on my previous times passing through, managed to only stay there, and had never actually seen the rest of the airport. Somehow.
I made up a few experiments to pass the time while I was waiting. First was "Sit on an object that isn't a seat, and see how many people also sit on it." Railings, displays, models, statues, billboards, etc. People would look around hesitantly and then also sit on them, at least momentarily.
Second was simply "misdirection". If somebody asks you for directions, send them to Terminal 4. (hint: Terminal 4 doesn't exist, but Terminal 3 and 5 do)
The third experiment was with the toilets. They have these fancy seat covers that electronically replace themselves if you wave your hand over a sensor. Two sides to this one: a) Just enjoy the realization that almost everybody who goes into the bathroom plays with them, whether they need to or not. b) wave your hand over the sensor over and over again to see how long it takes to run out. I've got this sneaking suspicion that it just cycles the plastic through and 'cleans' it.
Anyways, after hours of amusing myself in the airport, drinking copious amounts of extra-espresso'd coffee, and a final phone conversation with a friend before canceling my cell service, I made my way to the dreaded Terminal 5, where other teachers-to-be were already waiting. They were all friendly, and we spent some time chatting before the plane departed.
The plane ride itself was pleasant. I sat next to a friendly and quite attractive (yes, hello) girl and a guy who was amiable when he was conscious. The food was...interesting and the alcohol was free. So, all good.
After the 14 or so hours aimlessly meandering through the air (we routed through Canada and Siberia? Is that a standard route?) we finally landed in South Korea.
Arrival
South Korea, for all its fear of terrorist attacks, has an absurdly easy customs to pass through. They barely look at your luggage and they just sort of wave you through. It may have been the teaching visa that made it that easy, as I'd already had a thorough background check done, and I've no idea as to how difficult it is for other people to get into the country.
The process of meeting up with people, waiting for our baggage (which was utterly destroyed by the handlers of course), and getting the hotel was a nightmare. We had to front the (non-reimbursed) cost of getting ourselves from Incheon to Seoul for a 45 minute bus ride. We were greeted by a taxi driver in a nondescript location who shouted at us in Korean until we followed him which was...unsettling. When we arrived at our hotel, the driver managed to further ruin my already wrecked luggage case. Fantastic.
The hotel itself was fairly nice. Very clean with a convenience store on the ground level, and fancy room keycards that activated all the lights and electronics in the room. Unfortunately the air conditioning was broken in my room, so I tried very hard to avoid being there, Seoul being scorchingly hot at the time.
When we all settled in and showered for the first time since the flight, we wandered around the immediate area (yes, our hotel was in Gangnam and we were stylin'). We found a bar and wandered in and tried to order ourselves some beer and soju (soju being the dangerously bipolar best friend of everyone in Korea distilled from rice) and were introduced to the Korean concept of 'anjuu' or 'mandatory side dishes, you cheapass foreigners'. Apparently you need to buy expensive food at a lot of bars in order to purchase alcohol, which is the opposite of the two drink minimum for all you want 5 cent chicken wings I'm used to from bars back home. Luckily we had a Mormon with us, so he ate, and we drank. All the drink was surprisingly cheap overall and we managed to stay out til late and entirely eliminate our jetlag in one fell swoop.
The next few days were fun filled romps through the city. First exposure to Korean supermarkets, peeking into clothing stores, trying new foods. I paired up with random other trainees and wandered the city in groups, sampling food and talking to locals.
Some of the interesting things that I encountered:
-prostitute trading card.
They're not actually trading cards, more calling cards. But there are quite a lot of them that just get distributed to the ground in hopes that people pick them up. I was picking them up and trying to come up with a way to make it into a ccg but then I felt dirty and threw them out. Possibly the worst part about this is that I saw the distributors on the street, and it was a group of highschool girls probably just making a quick buck by fronting ads for hookers.
-street meat
Street food is always good, everywhere. You want good food? Buy it from a guy in a truck. Korea is no exception. Although the guy in the truck tried to convince me I was eating dog. I'm still fairly certain it was chicken. Regardless, it was fantastic.
-'Yogiyo' Come here button
Yogiyo means 'here'. Each table at a restaurant and most bars will have a button that you press to call the server over. Why don't we have these EVERYWHERE?
-NO TIPPING
Again, same as with Japan, no tipping. On top of that, no tax! Shopping has never been easier!
-Internet memes everywhere
Gangnam style aside (which infests the nation down to the cell phones in everyone's pockets) there are internet memes everywhere. I'd see posters with pictures I've known from tumblr and 4chan littering the streets, and eventually got bored of cataloging all the different ones because it happened so frequently. An unrelated but interesting fact is that Korea is one of the most wired nations in the world, so many people playing computer games and being on high speed internet, yet console gaming is almost nonexistent. You can't find video game stores anywhere. Which is unfortunate, cause I brought my Wii and I need stuff for it.
The rest of the week (training aside, I'll get to that later) was a blast. Drinking every night, winding up in room 1405 watching crazy Korean television, going to the karaoke bars, running around in the rain, it was a blur of excellence that passed by too quickly.
But really, it was and still is too damn hot in Korea.
Like all stories, let's start at the beginning. Granted I've been abroad again for a month, but computer access has been limited to thieving single bar access on a defunct smartphone while cowering from typhoons in the shadows of various coffee shops. That is, to say, sparse and wanting.
To shorten the prologue, my life was a mess. Not quite a shambles, but definitely in disarray. Sparing the details let's just say I wasn't where I wanted to be in my life, not a year after graduation from university, and was spiraling further from the top. Working a dead end job that left me too drained to pursue other interests, skipping between increasingly more questionable living situations, in and out of confusing romantic situations, and finding comfort in that greatest of all of manmade parasites, the drink. Two dollars goes a long way if you don't mind drinking what essentially boils down to insultingly harsh whiskey mixed with stale wine filtered through gym socks. But after a few weeks of intentionally putting such a concoction into your own body, you either fall down and never attempt to stand up again, or you re-evaluate your situation, look for ways out, and take what comes along as a lifeline.
In such a situation, I found myself reaching out to jobs abroad. At the recommendation of a friend, I applied for a teaching position in South Korea, and within a week I had heard from a recruiter. Using my overpowering charisma and ability to bluff that my professors had taught me anything I hadn't already known prior to entering uni, I powered through the interview processes, and found myself on the path of employment abroad. Three short months later (after a surprisingly quick turnaround for my criminal background check) and a large chunk of startup fees, I found myself pulled from my desperate pit where I had struggled to make ends meet (the whole while lying to myself that I was just biding my time until something better came along) into a whole new life uprooting myself and starting anew, away from everything I had grown comfortable with.
I wasn't entirely new to this, as the evidence presented by the existence of this blog goes to show. Having studied abroad for a year in Japan, eastern Asia could only present so many unfamiliar situations (so I thought). Going for a job had a different feel than going for study. I was wholly unprepared for a teaching job, having done very little in that way in the past (some years in the parks and recreation department, some bit of English help while in Japan). There was moreso the matter that I was, am still unsure, of coming home from this. Was this a career move, or simply a temporary excursion? There was also the ever encroaching thought coming from the part of my mind that produces a surplus of self-doubt that I was just using this as an escape, as a way to avoid actually pursuing a career or doing something real with my life. I'm still not sure how untrue that is. The next year of my contract is going to always have the feeling of "well, what comes next?" lurking beneath it.
Still, underfunded and underprepared, I said my goodbyes and departed.
The trip
Just like when I went to Japan, I had a lengthy layover at O'Hare airport. I had been dreading this, as both trips to O'Hare that I had made to and from Japan had been miserable experiments that involved me playing on the moving walkways for hours.
This time was not so bad, despite the seven hour layover I had. The trick, it seems, is not to be in Terminal 5. If you're traveling through O'Hare, don't go to Terminal 5 with more than an hour to spare. I somehow, on my previous times passing through, managed to only stay there, and had never actually seen the rest of the airport. Somehow.
I made up a few experiments to pass the time while I was waiting. First was "Sit on an object that isn't a seat, and see how many people also sit on it." Railings, displays, models, statues, billboards, etc. People would look around hesitantly and then also sit on them, at least momentarily.
Second was simply "misdirection". If somebody asks you for directions, send them to Terminal 4. (hint: Terminal 4 doesn't exist, but Terminal 3 and 5 do)
The third experiment was with the toilets. They have these fancy seat covers that electronically replace themselves if you wave your hand over a sensor. Two sides to this one: a) Just enjoy the realization that almost everybody who goes into the bathroom plays with them, whether they need to or not. b) wave your hand over the sensor over and over again to see how long it takes to run out. I've got this sneaking suspicion that it just cycles the plastic through and 'cleans' it.
Anyways, after hours of amusing myself in the airport, drinking copious amounts of extra-espresso'd coffee, and a final phone conversation with a friend before canceling my cell service, I made my way to the dreaded Terminal 5, where other teachers-to-be were already waiting. They were all friendly, and we spent some time chatting before the plane departed.
The plane ride itself was pleasant. I sat next to a friendly and quite attractive (yes, hello) girl and a guy who was amiable when he was conscious. The food was...interesting and the alcohol was free. So, all good.
After the 14 or so hours aimlessly meandering through the air (we routed through Canada and Siberia? Is that a standard route?) we finally landed in South Korea.
Arrival
South Korea, for all its fear of terrorist attacks, has an absurdly easy customs to pass through. They barely look at your luggage and they just sort of wave you through. It may have been the teaching visa that made it that easy, as I'd already had a thorough background check done, and I've no idea as to how difficult it is for other people to get into the country.
The process of meeting up with people, waiting for our baggage (which was utterly destroyed by the handlers of course), and getting the hotel was a nightmare. We had to front the (non-reimbursed) cost of getting ourselves from Incheon to Seoul for a 45 minute bus ride. We were greeted by a taxi driver in a nondescript location who shouted at us in Korean until we followed him which was...unsettling. When we arrived at our hotel, the driver managed to further ruin my already wrecked luggage case. Fantastic.
The hotel itself was fairly nice. Very clean with a convenience store on the ground level, and fancy room keycards that activated all the lights and electronics in the room. Unfortunately the air conditioning was broken in my room, so I tried very hard to avoid being there, Seoul being scorchingly hot at the time.
When we all settled in and showered for the first time since the flight, we wandered around the immediate area (yes, our hotel was in Gangnam and we were stylin'). We found a bar and wandered in and tried to order ourselves some beer and soju (soju being the dangerously bipolar best friend of everyone in Korea distilled from rice) and were introduced to the Korean concept of 'anjuu' or 'mandatory side dishes, you cheapass foreigners'. Apparently you need to buy expensive food at a lot of bars in order to purchase alcohol, which is the opposite of the two drink minimum for all you want 5 cent chicken wings I'm used to from bars back home. Luckily we had a Mormon with us, so he ate, and we drank. All the drink was surprisingly cheap overall and we managed to stay out til late and entirely eliminate our jetlag in one fell swoop.
The next few days were fun filled romps through the city. First exposure to Korean supermarkets, peeking into clothing stores, trying new foods. I paired up with random other trainees and wandered the city in groups, sampling food and talking to locals.
Some of the interesting things that I encountered:
-prostitute trading card.
They're not actually trading cards, more calling cards. But there are quite a lot of them that just get distributed to the ground in hopes that people pick them up. I was picking them up and trying to come up with a way to make it into a ccg but then I felt dirty and threw them out. Possibly the worst part about this is that I saw the distributors on the street, and it was a group of highschool girls probably just making a quick buck by fronting ads for hookers.
-street meat
Street food is always good, everywhere. You want good food? Buy it from a guy in a truck. Korea is no exception. Although the guy in the truck tried to convince me I was eating dog. I'm still fairly certain it was chicken. Regardless, it was fantastic.
-'Yogiyo' Come here button
Yogiyo means 'here'. Each table at a restaurant and most bars will have a button that you press to call the server over. Why don't we have these EVERYWHERE?
-NO TIPPING
Again, same as with Japan, no tipping. On top of that, no tax! Shopping has never been easier!
-Internet memes everywhere
Gangnam style aside (which infests the nation down to the cell phones in everyone's pockets) there are internet memes everywhere. I'd see posters with pictures I've known from tumblr and 4chan littering the streets, and eventually got bored of cataloging all the different ones because it happened so frequently. An unrelated but interesting fact is that Korea is one of the most wired nations in the world, so many people playing computer games and being on high speed internet, yet console gaming is almost nonexistent. You can't find video game stores anywhere. Which is unfortunate, cause I brought my Wii and I need stuff for it.
The rest of the week (training aside, I'll get to that later) was a blast. Drinking every night, winding up in room 1405 watching crazy Korean television, going to the karaoke bars, running around in the rain, it was a blur of excellence that passed by too quickly.
But really, it was and still is too damn hot in Korea.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
A Helping Hand
I've been presented with an opportunity to teach English abroad in South Korea! It requires a bit of startup, and I'm reaching out for some assistance in living up to one of my goals for once.
If you've at all enjoyed this blog, or just happened across this page and have a buttload of money in your possession that you aren't using, or even if you hated this blog and want to throw money at me to make some sort of point (that'll teach me), I will graciously accept your nickels, dimes, and piles of cash.
Thanks everyone for your support! When I get to SKorea I'll be updating this blog again! I promise I'll do better this time.
-Roshi
http://roshigoestokorea.chipin.com/teaching-opportunity-in-korea
If you've at all enjoyed this blog, or just happened across this page and have a buttload of money in your possession that you aren't using, or even if you hated this blog and want to throw money at me to make some sort of point (that'll teach me), I will graciously accept your nickels, dimes, and piles of cash.
Thanks everyone for your support! When I get to SKorea I'll be updating this blog again! I promise I'll do better this time.
-Roshi
http://roshigoestokorea.chipin.com/teaching-opportunity-in-korea
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
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