Heart and Seoul

Today, Corey and I visited Seoul for the second time. We didn't make any new friends on the subway, but we did meet some fellow foreigners at the Chabad House. We went there in the morning for a schaharit service and kiddush lunch, but ended up staying until 3pm. The rabbi and his wife (and 4 kids) were very welcoming. The other foreigners that came for the service were also very friendly and shared lots of stories and advice. I won't go into too much detail about each of them, but they all had different reasons for moving to Seoul and unique perspectives on what it meant to be a foreigner and Jew living in Korea.

After lunch, Corey and I went out into the winding streets near the Samsung Museum of Art. It was too cold for my liking so we stopped into a tea shop. It turned out to be quite fancy and I spent the equivalent of about $5 on a tea. The cafe was pretty and warm though so it was well worth it.

When we went back outside after tea it had turned even colder. I was freezing in my dress, so I bought some tights from a woman selling them on the sidewalk. When I tried on the tights they were way too tiny for me to be able to even move, never mind walk in them! So I bought a pair of sweatpants, also sold on the sidewalk, and even though they were way too short and kind of (ok... very) frumpy, I was thankful to have them and be warm again.

With the cold taken care of, Corey and I were able to do a lot of exploring. We walked along Hangang Park, which is this cool sprawling bike and pedestrian pathway along the river. There are parks and built in exercise equipment at different spots along the way making it the perfect mix of fun and functional.

We wandered (in a circle it turns out) until we were at Itaewon, which is a popular place for foreigners to hang out and shop. It's close to the U.S. army base so a lot of people are ex-pats and you can hear English being spoken everywhere you turn which is quite a shock after hearing almost nothing but Korean being spoken in Incheon. We ran into a girl from the U.S. who helped us find our way to the subway while telling us that she works 11hours a day teaching English at a Haegwan (a private tutoring place where students go to get an edge on their competition [a.k.a classmates] in various subjects). I'm so grateful to be working at a public school! I really do enjoy teaching, but 11hours seems a bit crazy.

These are some places in our neighbourhood

Corey and I have settled in to our life in Incheon pretty well now. We finally unpacked the last of the suitcases today! Yay! We have a solid routine where we take the subway to our schools together in the morning and walk home in the afternoon when the weather is nice. Friday, Corey stays at school late to rehearse The Wizard of Oz which he is preparing to perform with his students in the English festival next month.

In the evenings and on the weekends we get some time to explore the area where Corey and I have our two apartments. One of the apartments is across from a movie theatre and Juan subway station. There are a lot of restaurants all around and the streets are always busy with cars and motorcycles. There's a pizza place called "Pizza Maru" just half a block away and a 7/11 half a block away in the opposite direction. There is also a Paris Baguette at the corner of the street, which is a popular chain bakery here,

The other apartment, where we spend most of our time, is in a quieter, more residential area. There are a lot of houses and apartments, quite a few little gardens that people keep up, and some variety stores. On the main street, a two minute walk away, there is a really good bakery that I have visited several times now. I think it's called Hans. They make super fresh bread and delicious cakes and pastries. There's also an underground supermarket that sells a bit of everything. They have some fruits and vegetables that always look a bit aged, boxed snack food, and essentially anything you'd find at a Dollarama in Canada. Here's a picture of the apartment and the laneway that leads up to it.

We have Internet!

We have wireless internet set up now. This is seriously exciting stuff. We still don't have cellphones and we can't get them until we are officially registered as aliens (which should be around the end of this week), but at least one line of communication is open again! Not to mention, this makes lesson planning and prep a lot easier.

Over the weekend, Corey and I went to Seoul. It takes about an hour by subway from where we are. We were lucky to get seats right when we got on the train because as we got closer to Seoul the train got packed! We sat next to a lady who introduced herself to us as Carol. She's originally Korean, but has been living in the States for the last twenty years. She asked where we were from and where we were going. When we told her we had just come from Toronto and we were going to explore Seoul for the first time, she insisted on being our tour guide. I kind of thought she was joking. I mean, who gets on the subway, meets a pair of foreigners and changes their plans for the entire day to accommodate them? It sounds crazy, right?

She was not joking. Carol showed us around marketplaces, department stores, palaces, and more. She helped us translate to talk to shopkeepers and kept bartering for us to get a better price. She took us out for lunch and gave us Korean baked goods to try. Of course, we didn't have a phone number to give her, but she gave us her business card and insisted we get in touch with her when we have phones so she could show us around Incheon too.

It's probably a good thing that I had no certain expectations about life in Korea. So far I have been shocked and surprised about a hundred times. It's mostly good stuff like making new friends and finding out that I kind of enjoy K-Pop. Sometimes there's stuff I have to adjust to like not having a dryer and not being able to just have a conversation with people without playing a sort of charades to communicate, but it's small stuff.

Working at the school continues to be good. Today there was a torrential downpour as fallout from the typhoon happening in the south. We had a special typhoon-day-schedule that allowed students to have shortened classes and leave early, presumably before the storm got worse. All the teachers stayed at the school though and we continued to do work as if there was not a major storm rattling the windows. I think tomorrow is supposed to be a "normal" day, whatever that means!

We is being teachers now!

Corey and I have started work at our respective schools this week. Corey is at Sunhwa Girls Middle School and I am at Sunin Boys Middle School. The schools are right next door to each other. We actually share a courtyard area. I will try and add photos soon. I should also mention that the schools are at the top of a steep hill so when we look out we can see the tops of buildings and mountains in the distance. It's very pretty!

I co-teach with five different Korean, English, teachers. They are really nice and they've all been very welcoming. They all have different styles of teaching and each of the classes is quite different in their levels of English and their behaviour in class. I like the students a lot! I have 21 different classes and I teach each class once a week. Most of them are really excited to learn English.

I am learning about K-Pop from my students and when I used "Girl's Generation" as a Hangman word in class, they were thrilled. They also listen to Gangnam style every day at lunch, in case you're wondering. Today though, I heard some of the boys singing along to T.Swift's latest song, which I think gives me the green light on using her music/lyrics in class.

I will post more updates soon and more pictures. For now, here are some pics of one of the apartments. Corey and I each have one, since it's in our contracts.

Orientation in a Nutshell

Over the past six days, Corey and I have been staying at the hotel and attending mandatory training sessions to prepare us for our role as native English teachers. We've had mini lectures on everything from classroom management and lesson planning to Korean language and culture. We've had the chance to meet a lot of other foreign teachers from the United States, Canada, the UK, and South Africa.

Today we had our culminating event for orientation. As a group of 80 English teachers, we took a field trip around Incheon. We took tour buses to a large office building. There we met a sort of foreigner welcome agency. They taught us how to make miniature Hanbok (traditional Korean costumes). Corey's and mine turned out quite differently even though we had the same materials. I'll try and upload a picture of our work :)

Afterwards we went for lunch at a restaurant in Chinatown (yes, Incheon has its own Chinatown). We sat on cushions on the floor to eat our dohl-sot Bibimbap (steamed rice and vegetables served in a hot stone bowl [Corey wants me to add it was minus the egg]). It was very cozy as we all tried to find ways to sit comfortably and manage our heavy metal chopsticks.

Still in Chinatown, we went in groups of ten to "complete a mission." We were told there was a prize for completing this mission, but were never actually told what the mission was. I think we were supposed to take photos as a group in front of certain buildings, but our friendly tour guide insisted we just enjoy our time strolling through the streets, viewing a museum dedicated entirely to jjajangmyeon (a type of Chinese noodle dish with fried meat and vegetables that the Koreans have adopted), and sitting outside a local convenience store watching the traffic go by. When we got back to the buses, our tour guide insisted we had completed "the mission" and handed out cookies to our group members. 

The last stop on our tour was Bupyeong Market. The market is actually a huge mall/maze combined with a subway station that connects the Incheon line with the Seoul line. They have everything you could ever imagine there and some things that are probably beyond your imagination. I know for me the fancy spam gift packages were something I never would've dreamed up. 

I needed to buy a new USB connector cord for my camera since I left mine at home in Toronto. Our tour group stopped by a huge camera shop and the sales clerk quickly found the exact cord I needed. He sold it to me for 8000won (about $8) and threw in a free case when he saw I didn't have one for my poor abused Canon Elph. I thanked him in English and Korean. After looking around at a few other shops, our group headed to the subway to get back to the hotel. We loaded money on our new bank/T-money cards (they work kind of like the Presto system that Toronto is trying to set up) and away we went.

I'm looking forward to meeting my co-teacher tomorrow and finally seeing where we are going to live for the year! Hopefully Corey and I will be able to find each other again without phones or internet. I'll keep you posted when I'm able to get back online. 

Arrival in Korea

I said I would figure out how to start a blog, so here it is. Over this year I will try to document some of the adventures Corey and I face in our new home. Let's start with our arrival here in Incheon, South Korea.

At the airport, Corey and I met several other English teachers that would be on the same flight with us. It was reassuring to find out everyone was a mix of nerves and excitement. The 13 hour flight went by pretty quickly. I watched about four movies and a couple TV shows. The stewardesses kept bringing us food. Then we landed at Incheon airport.

All us English teachers got through customs quite quickly and efficiently. We met up with our various agencies at the gate. Corey and I met up with our Canadian connection group and piled our stuff, then ourselves, into a small shuttle bus to our hotel.

We  took the Incheondaegyou Expressway from the airport into the city. It's a long bridge with water on both sides, creating some beautiful views. When we got to the Hotel Royal Incheon, we had fifteen minutes to sort out our rooms and get ready for dinner. After dinner, Corey and I joined a few other teachers to take a walk around the block, looking at local shops and an outdoor market. We fell asleep soon after we returned to the hotel.