Islands In The Stream

So we're here on Ganghwa-do Island. It's definitely out of the city. But the actual downtown of the city isn't too bad. It's still rural by Korean terms and isn't as nice as the city we've been staying for orientation, but overall it's cool. Our apartment is HUGE! We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment. That is unheard of here. It's the biggest place we've ever lived. How strange is that? We thought we were going to be living in a closet! The only problem we have with it is that it's not within walking distance to the downtown of the city. It's just far enough that we have to take a bus but close enough that I think it's silly we are taking a bus. And, there is absolutely nothing in the apartment right now. They said all the furniture and everything is coming on Monday, the company they ordered everything from got busy and backed up. So Derek and I are sitting "Korean Style" in front of our computers.

Our co-teachers can read English very well, but can't communicate it well. (That is a problem for many Koreans). Since we are living together they loaded our luggage in my co-teacher's car and we rode with Derek's co-teacher. The trip was not bad, but definitely awkward at times. But we obviously communicated some, I know Derek's co-teacher is married with 2 daughters, has been teaching for 13 years and plays guitar in a band but overall I just looked out the window. We then met up with my co-teacher and he took me too see my school, while Derek and his co-teacher went to see his. I met one other teacher, who spoke great English and was the English co-teacher last year. I have my own classroom and students come to me everyday which is different than most other teachers. The downside is though, that on Thursdays and Fridays I go teach at 2 different schools on the other side of the island. Derek is teaching at another school as well, but doesn't know his schedule yet.

Derek said he met his entire school and everyone kept saying how handsome he is. Haha. We then met up at the apartment, and our co-teachers insisted on taking us out to eat. We went to a traditional Korean restaurant, and the food was good. But I was so stressed from the day I didn't eat much. Our teachers wanted to be able to talk with us so they invited another teacher who speaks English very well to join us. Again, he called Derek handsome and said I look like a princess! Haha, they all wear glasses here. Maybe that is why they keep saying that. After dinner, they said they wanted to take us to the Plus Mart (grocery store) to get some items to hold us over. We got bottled water (you can't drink the water here), fruit, crackers, cleaning stuff, 2 plates, cups, and utensils and toilet paper to hold us over until we know what items will be coming on Tuesday. And they helped us check out. I actually think the super market is going to be the easy. You can clearly tell what everything is, and there is a lot to choose from. I saw many western brands. Pringles, ritz, diet coke…

I think it is going to be a hard year, but I can really tell now that the co-teachers are trying to help us. They bent over backwards for us once we got here. And they are making an effort, I just think it's going to be hard with the language barrier. Or harder than I thought since they both don't speak English very well. Tomorrow they are taking us around the island and to get phones, so we'll see how tomorrow goes. In the meantime, we need to start learning Korean!

Village People

It’s not every day you get to experience a culture and history as rich as Korea’s. And it’s been quite a while since I heard the phrase “field trip.”

Last Sunday, the EPIK crew loaded up 10 buses to tour the Korean Folk Village and Icheon, an area famous for its ceramics work and rice, a field trip for 300 people, many, like Beth and myself, brand new to this country.

Part of this whole EPIK experience is to help us acclimate to this country, to ease us into a place that’s very far away from home, both physically and culturally. And there’s only so much you can read in books and listen to in lectures.

The Korean Folk Village was an accurate representation of what life was like in ancient Korea. The lady who gave us the tour spoke great English, but her portable PA system didn’t work very well, and it was hard to hear her over the din of the other people in the outdoor space, so most of us just kind of looked around and made up our own story.

We saw kimchi pots (used to ferment the cabbage and other vegetables used in the dish), straw mats and roofs and how they were made, silk worms boiling and the ropes that came from them, and so many other things it was hard to keep track of.

One of the cool things was the area where they tortured and jailed the people of the village who caused trouble, and many people took turns smiling for pictures in the racks and taking licks with the giant wooden paddles.

At one point a friend remarked, “Imagine this place back in those days, how cool it would have been.” I thought that was strange, because I had just been doing that, picturing the village square on a hot summer night, men and women walking to and from their houses in the orange glow of firelight.

After we had the chance to see everything, we saw some traditional Korean performances, one a colorful and lively dance, and the other a tight-rope walker who admitted he was very nervous and asked for someone to please catch him if he happened to fall.

We ate lunch at the Folk Village, one of the best meals we had during Orientation, bulgogi (a marinated beef dish cooked in front of you) and all kinds of fresh vegetables and rice.

Then we were back on the buses and off to Icheon (not to be confused with Incheon), where we toured Woljeon Museum of Art, named for a famous Korean artist who passed away in 2005. He painted a number of subjects and wrote poems in Chinese characters on his paintings to help tell their stories.

After the museum, we painted mugs on famous Icheon ceramic. Beth and I both painted our mugs using two of Woljeon’s paintings as templates (some would say we plagiarized…I say we were just inspired). We learned all about the ceramic vases that were made there in the old days.

Dinner that night was almost overwhelming. There was so much food on the table, it was hard to tell where to begin and what to eat next. There was Icheon rice and kimchi and dried fish and rice soup and tofu and pork and it goes on and on. They also served us rice wine that was very sweet and deceptively strong. I think quite a few people got pretty drunk, because it could sneak up on you.

It was a great day, my favorite of the Orientation. I want to go back and see everything when it’s warm. I forgot to mention earlier how everything was covered in snow and frozen mud. I think everything would be much more beautiful in the spring and summer, when the cherry blossoms bloom and everything’s green.

EPIK Orientation

This Orientation is one of the main reasons we chose EPIK (English Program in Korea), rather than a private school (hagwon) or another public school system. For those who don’t know, EPIK is a Korean government-run program, so we are essentially Korean government employees, working for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the National Institute for International Education.

Anyway, I couldn’t imagine being thrown into a culture like this, and more so into teaching, without this Orientation. I was honestly kind of dreading this part, wanting to get settled into our apartment and start the job, but we’re learning a lot, and we’ve already made some good friends. From what we’ve been told, EPIK is the only one that offers anything like this.

The Orientation focuses not only on good teaching techniques and games you can play with the students to keep them interested, but we’re learning about the Korean culture and language as well. (We have Korean lessons in about 30 minutes.) We’re getting tips on Korean mindsets and lesson planning and which games work and which games don’t.

After dreading the Orientation for so long, I’ll be kind of sad to see it end this week, although Beth and I are very excited to meet our co-teachers and find out exactly where in Incheon we’ll be placed. Then there’s a three-day weekend, and we start teaching a week from today.

So that’s an overview of the whole thing. I’ll get to specifics in later posts, and you can read all about our dorm room and the opening ceremonies and the food and the hell that was the medical checkup in time.

Over the Hills and Far Away

Korea’s been a blast so far. It’s kind of difficult to update regularly, because for now, the EPIK Orientation keeps us pretty busy, and when there is a little down time, we spend it resting and we spend the nights exploring and unwinding after lectures and classes.

We left Portland, Oregon at 6:00 am last Wednesday and had a layover in Los Angeles before heading out for Korea. The flight was 12.5 hours, and the in-flight radar showed the route we took skirting the Alaskan and Russian coasts before dipping south, over Japan and into Korea.

The flight itself was pretty intense: half a day of sitting in a coach seat, without many chances to stretch our legs. Each seat had its own monitor, so we could watch movies and TV shows and listen to all different kinds of music. The movies ran the gamut from new to classics. Beth watched Where the Wild Things Are and I watched the Mike Judge movie Extract. Neither of us was very impressed with our choice. For the most part, I avoided the monitor and slept or stuck to my iPod. Beth seemed to have a good time exploring all the options.

The Korean Air flight attendants took really good care of us, feeding us all the time with various snacks and meals, and all the soft drinks and juice and beer we could drink. I was kind of impressed with the way they handled the inevitable time difference as well. When it was supposed to be night, they made the passengers close all their windows and dimmed the lights to simulate the evening hours. (I’m sure this is a normal thing, but give me a break; it was my first international flight.)

When we landed, it was still daylight (about 5:00 pm local time), and we didn’t really have a problem navigating the Incheon International Airport. There weren’t too many English signs, but we found baggage claim and picked up our bags and secured some carts so we could roll our 300 pounds of luggage down the long corridors and through the crowds. It took us a little bit to find the other EPIK teachers, but we ended up just spotting some other Westerners and following them.

The sun finally went down and Beth slept a little on the bus ride to Eulji University – where Orientation is being held – and I looked at the sights: the glow of neon of the endless Korean signs, the height and expanse of the massive apartment blocks, the city streets lined with “bangs” and pizza parlors and bars and convenience stores.

So now we’re here and settled into our tiny dorm room, and we’ve already made some good friends and we’ve learned a lot, and we find that we’re so excited that we can hardly stand it, to finally be in another country and experiencing another culture firsthand.