South Koreas got Seoul!

Hey everyone. I have a few minutes before I leave for the hagwon, so I thought I'd let everyone know what we have been up to. Last weekend we went out with our Korean co-teachers for a beer, and then went to Ellui, the foreigner hangout in Yeochon. There were quite a few people there and it was a lot of fun. As usually, everyone stayed out way too late (since the bars do not close) and we ended up getting home quite late.

The next morning we were up bright and early to go babysit the best nieces, Hana and Sara. They behaved perfectly all day and did not fight one time in 12 hours! We made brownies, went to the playground, and played all day. At the playground, one young Korean boy said "Hi" and started talking to us. Soon we had a throng of 30 kids surrounding us asking us questions in English and Korean. It was quite an event. They thought Megan and I were Hana and Sara's parents, and that Hana and Sara didn't speak Korean, only English, because they were American. FINALLY Hana stopped being shy long enough to tell the kids (in Korean) that we were babysitting them. It was pretty crazy...!

Sunday was a lazy day highlighted be Megan and I cutting our hair. We have some pics that we will put up later.

This week is a short week for teaching. We have Friday off for Foundation Day. Korean flags are popping up in the neighborhood left and right. We are taking advantage of the off day with a trip to Seoul, Itaewon to be specfic. The foreigner part of Seoul. Expect a recap soon! We are going by train because the train station in only two blocks from our house, pretty nice!

Here are the latest pictures. The first few pictures are of Megan's students, then from Friday night, and then a few pictures from babysitting. Hopefully we can get some pics up from the haircut soon too...

Check out the pictures on facebook!!

Weekend update!

Hello again, I’m back! Here is the biggest update, Dave and I purchased a car! It is a ’96 Hyundai Elantra with awesome seat covers, working windows, and of course the essential air con (air con is Konglish for air conditioner since Koreans think the word is too long to pronounce). Last week on Wednesday, Dave and I test drove 2 cars. One of them started, the other needed to be jumped. Based on that, and some other minor details, we decided to go with the one that started. Now that we knew what car we wanted it was time to figure out how to get car insurance. Our boss kindly helped us out with the insurance before school. He took us down one floor to talk to car insurance people, pretty convenient eh? Even though we are 23 years old and have 7 years driving experience back in the states, Koreans must be 20 years old to drive. This means that we essentially have only 3 years of driving experience. This “lack of” experience made our insurance rate higher than what we thought. Luckily while we were figuring out the insurance, one of the other car salesmen, who worked at the car dealership we went to , happened to come in and he undercut his coworker by giving us 100,000 wan off of the car. A 700,000 wan car ($600, booo to U.S. economy) was exactly what we wanted after hearing how much insurance would be. We accepted on the spot and by the next day were driving our way around town. All together the car/insurance cost us about 1,600,000 wan ($1600) which was lovely.

On Saturday we went to the open market in Yeochan, near our house. It is about 2 blocks of vendors selling vegetables, fruit, seafood (alive and dead), and side dishes. The seafood is so crazy to see. Next time we will have to take pictures! There are live octopus, crabs, eels swimming in tanks and/or buckets everywhere you look. There are old Agima’s ( old women) squatting down cutting up fresh fish as you walk past. It is quite the sight to see. Seeing as we have no idea how to cook half of the things we say at the market we opted for the essentials: fruits and vegetables. We bought peaches, apples, carrots, potatoes, onions, green/red peppers, and curry for about $25. Then I took Dave to a whole foods place that my co-worker Liz showed me. This place was great! We were able to get boneless chicken breasts along with many other frozen foods that are easy to cook.

After shopping we decided to take advantage of our newly found independence. We took a scenic drive to the beach and around the very country part of Yeosu. Even though it was raining and gloomy outside it was great to be able to go wherever we pleased, and listen to music! The only thing stressful about driving here are Korean drivers.
The sign says "Yeosu" in hangul.


They are very aggressive drivers who do not stay in their lanes or watch for other traffic. Dave did an excellent job driving. He basically has to be aware of all possible cars which even means pretending that parked cars are moving.

That night we made stir fry as a picnic and drove to Dolsan Park to see the bridge lights. It was very beautiful and a perfect spot for a date. Our first REAL cooked meal tasted wonderful, and the view was spectacular. That night, since it was still rainy and humid, we stayed in and drank our fair share of wine and soju while playing Super Mario brothers 3, haha.

This upcoming weekend we are babysitting Hana and Sara while Jeff and Hye-gyong go out of town for a wedding, so expect to hear about the kids in our next blog post. Hopefully we will also be planning some fun trips outside of Yeosu soon such as Seoul.

We miss you and hope you are all doing great! Please please pleas keep writing, e-mailing, facebooking us whenever possible because we really look forward to hearing about updates back at home. Anyounghaseyo!

LINK TO THE LATEST PHOTO ALBUM

Weekend Update - Chuseok Edition

Today is the fourth day of a four day weekend. We were afforded this opportunity because of the Korean holiday Chuseok 추석. This is a holiday based on the lunar calendar, instead of the solar calendar we are all used to, so it lands on different days each year.

On our day off Friday we caught a bus to Yeosu Shinae (Downtown) and set up our bank accounts at "Friendly Bank". It was soooooooo nice to finally get paid... Later that day we finally got out and hiked the mountain closest to us. It takes about 45 minutes each way, and is a nice workout. The both of us decided that we need to make this a regular thing. It is an awesome cardio workout. Our goal is to be able to hike the mountain without taking a break until reaching the top. We have some pictures from the hike posted on Facebook.

For lunch I had the bright idea to go see what was open in downtown Yeochon... Nothing... We finally found a Korean/Western fusion restaurant. The food ended up being good. We went over to Won's on Saturday and had a dinner. It was a traditional Korean style dinner, which is starting to taste good to us. There are pictures of the meal on the blog. Megan and I tried Octopus for the first time, and fish head soup broth. We also made a traditional Korean dish called Songpyong. It was fun to make, you roll some smashed up rice in a ball, flatten it, and then put some walnut in the middle and roll it, like a dumpling. There are pictures of the process.



Sunday we relaxed for most of the day, since basically EVERYTHING was closed for Chuseok day. In the early evening we walked over to the mountain we hiked a few weeks back and hit up the "gym" to do a few exercises. It was quite crowded with Koreans. People were in great moods for the holiday, so many of the Koreans were saying "Hello" or "Anyoung Haseyo" as we walked by. We even were given a deep bow from a elementary aged kid. Working out felt pretty good, hopefully it can become a regular thing. We decided to go drink some beer in the city park for the evening, and then check out Downtown. There were TONS of Koreans hanging out, but only two Wayguks, so we went back to the park with some Heinies. To close the night we checked out some random outdoor restaurant on the park. We sat and tried to read the sign in Hangul but after a few beers it gets difficult. 오아시스 was the word, and it was writing in a fancy script, which makes it more difficult to read. We finally figured out phonetically "O-ah-si-suh", combined with the pictures of palm trees in a desert... OASIS! We ordered a delicious chicken meal by accident, since we finally read a item that said "something something Chicken" and then said the the server (in Korean) "Here - Good?"... He said yes.

HERE IS A LINK TO THE PHOTOS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS POST!!


Today we are relaxing, hoping to stock up on the big items from Lotte Mart, and get some veggies and maybe some other stuff from the Open Market down the road. We also hope to check out some beater cars... Hope everyone is having a good time, remember to keep emailing or commenting!

The F***ing Way She Goes

**WARNING - Offensive language referenced again **

There are certain times in Korea, when dealing with business, that you feel really left out in the dark. Korean culture deals with non-Koreans in a certain way. Everyone is called a "way-guk" - foreinger - and is always treated as such. This occasionally comes across in dealing with school.

For example - a new student was just added to Megan's class today. The problem with this is that this class is in "review mode". They are taking one month to review the material and stories they've read for the the past six months. How many of these stories has this girl read? None. How often does she understand whats going on, or is able to keep up with the rest of class. Never. What does the boss say when this is revealed - "That's Ok - she'll figure it out.

Example two. I have a kindergarten level class. These kids can identify letters, but mostly speak Korean. They think I speak Korean. They have decent sized English vocabularies, but are really hard to maintain. A new student was added to the class. She cannot even identify a letter. I explain this to management. "That's OK - she can just follow along and copy the others".

Example three. Today it was known that the foreign teachers will start collecting homework for the Korean students. Though this has not been the case for as long as the hagwon has been running. Of course this was told with virtually no explanation - accompanied by the "Understand?"... Of course we don't understand!! You told us this in 5 minutes!

This all ties back to the "wayguk" issue in Korean culture, plus another issue of Koreans waiting until the last minute to decide things. These are examples from the last week, so you can only imagine what may happen in a years time. However, I just thought back to an episode of Trailer Park Boys (a Candian comedy) to help me understand how to cope with this. "The F***ing Way She Goes..." I realize it is just the "f***ing way she goes" sometimes :-D (if you watch this with speakers on, realize two f-bombs are dropped, so cover the kids ears)

New Classrooms + A Rainy Visit to Hyangiram

Hello everybody. It is Sunday Noon here as I speak. I caught the 4th quarter of Gopher victory number two on an internet radio stream from Bowling Green, so that was pretty cool. Megan and I are going strong during our second month here. We have a few new pictures from this weekend at Hyangiram temple, which is an absolutely beautiful temple, on a mountain, facing the sea, on Dolsan Island. It was a rainy day, but a decent temperature made the hike pretty fun. We were with Jeff and the girls.

Here are the latest pictures!

I received my International Drivers Permit this week, so I am looking to get a car after my first paycheck. A decent enough used car can be had for under 1,000,000 won. In the month since we've been here, the won has plummeted compared to the dollar. It was 1,000 -> $1, now it is about 1,200 -> $1. So, this makes the car cheaper, but getting paid... not so cool. Basically we earned $200 less in the 10 days since we earned our money... Weon, Hye-gyong's brother will be helping us out on the car front. I am pretty excited to do some exploring. We also are hoping to make a trip us to Seoul in one of the coming weekends. We only live two blocks from the train station, so rail trips are easy.

This week was the first week in our own classrooms. Hopefully we can get some pictures up one we finish up getting the rooms decorated. We can also get some pictures of the students then too. The week was quite interesting for me. I don't know if the students saw a new movie or what happened, but I had three separate "F*** you" incidents. The kids don't know what it means, or how strong of a swear it is in English language. I was pretty shocked. I explained that it is NEVER ok to do in class. I can only imagine on of the 6th graders walking up to someone on vacation and say - "Hi... F(@# YOU!" - and then getting punched into oblivion. There were some other behavior issues, but I am finding some weeks are going to go like that. I did get a nice treat last Tuesday when my adult students no-showed, so I got to leave 1.5 hours early.

The coming week is Chusok, Korean Thanksgiving. Thanks to an non-optimal lunar calendar, we only get one of a potential three days off, but what can ya do? We will be having the big meal with the Kim family, so expect more pictures. I hope everyone is doing well back home! Please send more emails, IMs, anything!!