3rd Day of Orientation, Company Dinner Party, & the Morning After

Third and final day of orientation, we had another guest speaker named Gilly Dempster, originally from Scotland. She lectured about kindergarten education and had a lot of fun activities and songs for us to try, as well as suggestions for classroom management and getting kids involved. I didn't get any pictures of her, either, though I wish I could have. Her energy filled the room! She was a lot of fun, and very informative.

After lunch, we received our schedules for the first week of actual teaching, which starts on Monday. In November, we'll start teaching paid classes, so we'll get a few more workshops between now and then, but for now these are the free sample classes to promote the school. Of course, this doesn't mean we get to slack off; quite the opposite! Despite being so inexperienced with teaching in a classroom setting, we need to do our best to make the school look good, and that means getting the kids to have fun using English. May be easier said than done, but I'm more excited than nervous!

After we got our schedules, we received a kit with whiteboard markers and an eraser and a lesson plan. Yep, they're going easy on us at first and pretty much giving us the lesson plans. We still have to determine how we'll implement the plans step-by-step, but for the most part the work is done for us. We had to come up with materials lists to submit to Cindy so she could make sure we have everything we need by Monday. Since my assigned classroom is the Cooking room, that meant a lot of kitchen things.

Here are some pictures of my new classroom! I also get to use this as my homeroom/office, since I'm not teaching classes anywhere else.



And here are some more pictures in the links, in consideration for those who have slow computers/internet connections.

Once we'd familiarized ourselves with our rooms, figured out our materials requests, and gotten the Reading Room straightened out a bit, we all went out as a company for dinner at a Korean BBQ place. Now, Korean BBQ is a little different from Western-style BBQ. In the restaurants here, you sit down at low tables with big holes in them, and the servers put braziers of red hot coals into the holes. Mesh screens are placed over the coals, and thin cuts of marinated pork are laid out on the screens to grill. Korean beer and a strong liquor called "soju" are commonly served in restaurants here, and they're both pretty decent. Soju is a little strong for me, but I really liked the beer. I wouldn't have had anything to drink, really, but it's considered rude to not accept at least the first drink when somebody else is buying.

The food was excellent. I've never had pork so delicious, and I'm not usually a fan of pork. It was perfectly cooked, a little sweet, and very fresh. I sat across from one of the staff, Chris, who doesn't speak much English, so we had a fun time trying to communicate. He showed me how to eat some of the various side dishes.

Everyone sort of moved around the tables so they could sit by new people every so often and chat. Everything in Korean meals is communal, so after awhile I stopped caring whose glass was whose and just tried whatever looked good and happened to be in front of me at the time. And, of course, there was much drinking. This is a very important thing in Korean culture, to bond with your coworkers over good food and drink, and if you refuse to go out, it sends the message that you don't like the people you work with. I, naturally, had to make a good impression.

On our way to the second bar (yeah, they wanted to drink some more), we saw a bit of the cultural festival in Anyang. It was kind of neat, though we didn't see much more than the decorations and a few game booths.

I didn't drink at the second bar, except for water, as I'd reached my limit. I did partake of some of the bar food, which is pretty awesome in Korea. They give you things like beef jerky, peanuts, salted almonds, dried squid, sheets of nori (seaweed) and sesame oil for dipping, and fruit salad. Everything was delicious, and even though I was full from the BBQ, I nibbled. I wanted to leave, since everyone started smoking and I wasn't feeling well, but none of the other people in my apartment wanted to come with yet, so I waited around until they were ready to go home. In the meantime, I discovered a hidden talent; using an Asian-style toilet without wetting my shoes. (It's more difficult than it sounds.)

The next morning, I wasn't really hungover (I'd had a lot of water to offset the alcohol with dinner), but I was bone-deep exhausted. Nathan came over to our apartments and we went for a shopping trip to Lotte Mart. We saw a terrifyingly huge but sort of pretty spider along the way.

Nathan was his usual charming, witty self as we picked up some essentials for his apartment.

I begged off early, as the humidity and heat of the shopping center was making me dizzy and ill, so I took my little bag full of purchases home. On the way, I finally got a few nice shots of the fountain not far from our building.



And then I went home, took a nap, did a load of laundry, and rigged up a clothes line in my apartment. The end.

Well, not really. We're going out for karaoke tonight, which is called "noraebang" in Korean. I'll post about that tomorrow!

Cheers,

-Maria

The New Guy- Orientation Day 2

Orientation Day 2

It was a good day at orientation. We focused a lot on storytelling techniques, with a special guest speaker, Soo Kim. I didn't get any pictures of her, but she was very enthusiastic and had some great tips for effective storytelling. I think I'm going to enjoy this part of my job a lot!

We also finally got to meet our new foreign teacher! Nathan, from Cardiff, Wales. He's a charming fellow, a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure he'll fit right in with the rest of our group.

After lunch (McDonald's burgers and fries and Coke), we met another special guest speaker, Tyson. He had a couple of really informative and helpful lectures and demonstrations on effective classroom management and teaching techniques, as well as a section on culture shock and cultural differences. I'd heard some of the culture shock stuff before when doing my research, but he brought up a lot of points I hadn't even considered. I'm really glad Tyson came by, because I think his information will help us all deal with the stresses of culture shock much better in the months to come. Understanding, kindness, and respect can do a lot to ease the way.

We finished training early, got Nathan a bus card, and went back to our neighborhood for some dinner. BUT FIRST WE HAD TO CHECK OUT SAM'S VERY PINK ROOM.

We wound up at a place that served something like hot pot. It was full of some kind of bivalve and haddock, but it was otherwise pretty tasty. We also had a lot of beer.

After checking out Nathan's apartment, we determined a few things: His place is bigger and has a nicer view, but whoever lived there last was a slob and a terrible poet. I didn't get any pictures yet. We've all more or less decided that Nathan's place would be great for a party, once it's all cleaned up.

Julia wasn't feeling well, and I wanted to go home, so we walked back together while Melissa, Sam, and Nathan went off to find a store to pick up essentials for Nathan's apartment. Apparently, they failed at that task and went drinking instead. At least they all made it home okay.

Today is the last day of training, and I'm off to work in a few minutes, so I'll wrap up here. Will be back late tonight, as apparently our employers are taking us out drinking. Should be interesting! I'll bring my Benadryl and hope the place we go isn't too smoky.

Cheers,

-Maria

Fantastic Foods and First Day of Orientation

So, we (Julia, Melissa, Sam, and I) decided to get some authentic Korean cuisine for dinner last night. After wandering around for several blocks, we settled on a restaurant that looked about as authentic as it got-- and we were so very right! The hostess of the restaurant was wonderful, helping us through the language barrier and bringing us her recommended specialty: beef bulgogi. I was excited to try bulgogi in Korea, even though I'd had it in the states, and I wasn't disappointed. It's flippin' DELICIOUS. Slightly sweet, very garlicky, and it came with a staggering array of interesting side dishes (yes, including kimchee, which I did not eat), and some fabulous mushrooms stir-fried right in with the beef and garlic. So good! Even the Korean beer was quite drinkable, much as I've found Japanese beer to be, and I'm not a beer fan.

I was too busy eating to take pictures of the food, but here's the restaurant.

And here's Anyang at night.

For the four of us, the meal (including beer, rice, and the ridiculous smorgasboard of side dishes) cost 40,000 won, or a bit shy of $40. Unbelievable. A meal like that in the states would have cost at least twice what we paid.

After a meal like that, we were all pretty sated, so sleep came easily. Which was good, as we had to get up early so Cindy could pick us up for our first day of orientation at English Village!

I think I must have been nervous, because I had a lot of crazy nightmares and woke up at 5am. Dozed a bit until 7ish, when I got up and got ready for my day. Of course, I managed to slop orange juice down the front of my shirt, so I had to change before heading out the door. OTL

Getting to see the school for the first time was impressive as well as intimidating. Everything is super shiny, colorful, and brand new! I loved the layouts for the classrooms. Here's a little tour, courtesy of my iPod touch:

The Reading Room, which is where our orientation was being held.

The main hallway, with bonus Sam!

Some views of the entry way.

Here's the Culture Room, with Melissa trying to fix some paper dolls that had fallen off the wall.

Everything is very high tech. So colorful, too!

The Cooking Room might be my favorite thing. Lacking an oven in my apartment, this might be where I sneak off to bake cookies!

There's this huge world map on the floor! Right in front of the Infor.Room [sic] which is the library on the floor above our school. Hey, look, a display! With Sponge Bob! (That one was for you, Elise!) The library is pretty neat. There are four different sections of the library organized by reading level, with some adult books on the highest level of ability. Very slick! There's also a nice view from the window.

We walked around outside, too. The grounds are very scenic, beautifully landscaped, with lots of places to sit and relax. There's also a small playground, and I think Sam was tempted to try that see-saw. The path continued up to a nice view of the mountains.

We came back inside from our mini-tour for lunch, which was pizza. But not just any pizza, KOREAN pizza, which has toppings like shrimp, potato, and corn. There's also sweet potato baked into the crust, which is sinfully delicious.

After lunch, we still had a bit of time to explore, so we headed up to the rooftop garden. Despite the onset of autumn, the grounds were very pretty. I even learned the word for "cute" or "pretty", which is "kiyowa" (spelling may vary) in Korean. I'm striving to learn at LEAST one new Korean word every day, so there's my quota!

Training was a lot of fun, but you kind of had to be there, so I won't bore you all with the details. In summary, we played a lot of icebreaker games, learned a bit about English Village's mission statement and policies, and familiarized ourselves with the layout of the place. After we wrapped up our first day of orientation, Cindy told us that we would be getting our alien registration cards, health exams and drug screenings, bank accounts, and cell phones within the next couple of weeks. We'll also be getting our first paycheck on October 10th, and while it's only 10 days worth of pay, it'll go a long way to help us get through to our next check in November! Though, with how cheap food, transportation, and health care is in this country, I'm not too worried.

Our fifth and final (I think) foreign ESL teacher is Nathan from England. He's in a different apartment building (about a mile from our place, give or take), but Cindy brought us over to meet him. Unfortunately, he'd stepped out (probably for food or other necessities), so we didn't get to see him. We did get to see the crazy awesome view from the fifteenth floor of his building, though. While I was sorry we missed him, wanting to welcome him to Korea and all that, we'll be seeing him tomorrow morning for training. I can't wait!

Still trying to figure out how to take videos and import them via iPhoto without making them into JPEGs. Weird program. Also, I STILL don't have photos or video of Sam's ridiculously pink room, but I'm sure I'll have time this weekend.

Tomorrow: More training, meeting Nathan, etc etc...

Cheers!

-Maria