Hike

Pictures from my weekend

Hiking around

Today Eric and I had a great afternoon!! We went for sushi downtown and I finally attained a map of the city we live in (a month after we got here). Then we returned home and since the weather was amazing and we were not at work we decided to take advantage of the day and explore the nearby river walk. There are many pictures of our hike on facebook so feel free to check those out, but I like to save special treats for my blog. So with my awesome camera given to me by my father I have taken some amazing pictures of flowers on the walk. Sooo good! And those are here for you.




Happy hiking!

Counting

I'm teaching my self hangul in a Parisian cafe in s Korea. Happy spring

New blog format!

Hello! Do you like the new format of my blog? I have changed it so I can update my blog from my iphone using wifi where ever I am!!! This is exciting for me! One cool thing is you can click the button that says snapshot and you can see all the photos I've posted!!! Its sooo awesome. Enjoy!

Happy st Patrick's day

From Korea !!!

The adventure continues

So to pick up where we left off...

Eric was super hungry. We settled our things into the hotel and decided to go out in search of food. Anything would suffice. We found a place just outside the hotel. We went in and found that no one spoke English. Our waitress was Chinese. She was studying Korean at school. She used her iphone to help her look up words to let us know what we could order. We ordered some food. This restaurant is what we now refer to as a meat restaurant. There are holes in the middle where hot coals and grills go for cooking your own meat. The waitress eventually had to show us what to do, but in the end the meat was amazing. We went back to our hotel and finally to sleep. The next day we slept in and then Eric went in search of food. While he was out the phone rang. It was the director of my school. He asked if we knew we were supposed to be picked up at one. I said no and that Eric had just gone out to get food. I said that we were told three. So he said that would be fine. We thought we were going to our apartment and so at three we grabbed all our luggage and went downstairs, still in the clothes we'd been traveling in all this time. We got downstairs to the surprise of my director who thought we'd been told that we were actually going to school. So the first day at our new schools we were sleepy, unwashed and kind of smelly I'm sure. Excellent. So that was Tuesday. At my school Tuesday, and Wednesday were final test days and absolute madness. Wednesday was the teacher-I-replaced's last day. Thursday was a holiday and the day we actually moved into our apartment. So we spent the day off settling in. Friday was my first day and it was pizza party day all day.

So the following Monday (last Monday) was the start of a new session at my school. I am slowly figuring out what to teach and how to handle my classes (they aren't all polite and eager to learn). Monday was confusing for everyone. This is apparently how all hagwons (private schools in Korea) work. There is mass disorganization and minimal communication. Tuesday I had a better grasp on what to do, and I was way more comfortable. I've been slowly progressing, and I'm getting a pretty solid idea of what to teach them and how and at what speed to go. I think I'm getting comfortable recognizing when they actually know, and when they are just saying yes so they aren't sitting silently with no answer. Its basically like I'm a real teacher.

One week after arrival in Korea I finally got my phone. I was really excited to finally be able to communicate with people again.

I've started keeping a log of my favorite thing that happens at school every day. This is because some times are really frustrating, and I get really depressed about it. Some of the younger classes are not interested at all, and very disrespectful to women. It is hard to convince 9 seven year olds to stop talking in Korean, if they don't know enough English to understand what they're being told. The first hour of my day, every day, is basically trying to do this, but it gets better. My classes progress from lowest level to highest level every day, so the days do get easier. Eric and I traveled to Daegu this past weekend. It was absolutely amazing! We met up with Dory and had tea, then met up with Nick and several of his friends for dinner and drinks. We met so many interesting people that night. The next day Dory and I hit up downtown Daegu for some shopping and I tried Paris Baguette (a popular cafe chain) for the first time. Life changing awesomeness.

So this is more or less the story of journey so far. I can guarantee there are many exciting things to come in the future.

in Korea!

The story of our arrival is sort of a long one. I will try to briefly describe it, and then move on to more exciting things. We flew non-stop from Chicago to Seoul. We went through customs, and wandered aimlessly around searching for the subway. We found it and bought tickets from the airport into Seoul's main station. We waited patiently as many non-express trains went by, and met a nice English girl going to teach in Masan. We got on the train and started talking. We shared in a lot of confusion and a local Korean over heard us, and joined in the conversation. What friendly people! He had spent quite a bit of time working in Skokie (of all places!) and so was quite good at English. He gave us lots of advice and information. When we got off the train we met another couple look super confused and carrying lots of luggage. It turns out that the woman (Memuna) is also a new English teacher in Ulsan! So we all took the train together to Ulsan!

We arrived in Ulsan around 10pm. We had called Eric's director when we got on the train to Ulsan and were told that when we got to Ulsan "a man in a van would pick us up and take us to our hotel". He would be holding a sign that says "Mr. Eric". So we arrive and disembark the train. Immediately a random American man strikes up a conversation with the four of us. We are all disoriented and overwhelmed. We got quite distracted and mingled on the platform for too long, and very slowly made our way to the entrance of the station.

There a man holding a sign that says "Eric" grabs two of our luggage and starts dashing away at breakneck speed. As we rush our goodbyes and run after him, we see that he was parked sort of half on the sidewalk and half in the bus lane. He spoke no English and after shoveling us and our luggage into the van drove off into the night. After a while on some high volume roads, he took what looked like an off ramp. Eric, asleep with his head on my shoulder, missed the ultra sketchiness that ensued. We pulled up over a hill and as we reached the top the driver switched from brights to normal headlights, and plunged the car down the hill into darkness. We had suddenly gone from brightly lit interstates to dark residential roads. We drove around tight corners and back alley ways for maybe ten minutes. Every time I couldn't see the tiny alley next to us where we were about to turn I would look out the front at a tiny house falling apart with some trash in the front yard, and wonder "Did we just get kidnapped?" or "Is this what Korean hotels look like?" We reemerged into an area with neon signs and flashing lights. The driver pulled up outside of a building, got out and ran into a building. He came out and ran around the corner. When he returned he was on the phone shouting in Korean at someone. After a moment or two of this he hung up and started to drive again. We drove around some more and finally he brought us to our hotel. He checked us in and paid and helped us with our luggage to our room. He was able to signal to us that we should take our shoes off in the entrance way and then repeatedly signaled the number three at us. We had been told we would be picked up at 1pm the next day. He was so insistent we thought that we would be picked up at three the next day not one. This was not the case, but it appears I have other pressing matters to attend to at the moment. I shall continue this epic shortly and I thank you for your patience.