Miracle Medicine

Eric got to experience our first time using the Korean medical system today.  It seemed that he had the same horrible cold that I had a couple weeks ago until he woke up this morning feeling and looking completely terrible.  However, there is no word in Korean for "sick day" so he had to go to work anyway.  Fortunately one of the Korean teachers talked him into walking over to the clinic that is close to school and within thirty minutes they had given him an anit-biotic shot, two chest x-rays and fifteen pills to take each day for the next three days.  Tonight he feels almost normal.  Oh and everything cost him the equivalent of about $40.  That's without any insurance.  Once we have our insurance cards he can go back and get most of it refunded. Who knows what was in that shot or all the pills he will be taking for the next three days but apparently it's something that works almost instantly.

Time is Flying

If the first three weeks are any indication of how fast this year is going to go by, it will feel like we are coming home tomorrow.  Neither one of us can believe that we have already been here three weeks and started our fourth week of work today.  Our apartment is set up just about the way we like it and starting to feel more like home and less like a hotel.  We are starting to do much more cooking in our tiny kitchen and finding our way around the city seems almost easy now.

In other news, I think we are closer to President Obama than we ever been in our own country.  We noticed lots of extra security everywhere we went yesterday with the Nuclear Summit taking place here this week.  Obama also made the front page of the newspaper here with his binoculars looking into North Korea (we have read that tourists get beat or shot for doing that).

Since Eric woke up on Saturday with the cold I had a couple weeks ago I ended up venturing out on my own Saturday morning.  This is a much bigger deal than going somewhere by myself back home!  I was nervous about going out on my own without knowing how to ask for directions or even having a way to contact him to tell him if I got lost but like I said, getting around the city is almost easy now.  So I took the subway to the Korean Folk Museum at Gyeongbokgung.  It was an interesting place to learn about Korean life many centuries ago. Our Saturday night was spent at Dunkin Donuts eating donuts and grading the tests we had given on Friday.  Sunday we went to one of the largest tourist attractions in Seoul, the N Seoul Tower.  It is located on Mt. Namsan and is the tallest structure in Seoul.  It is also located at the geographic center of Seoul and from the observation deck at the top you can see the entire city all the way around.  Eric has been longing for some more Kolgi King (Meat King) so we went there for a dinner of pork, beef and duck Korean BBQ style (aka BBQ-ing at your table on the floor).

This will be a busy week at work for us as we have test scores to input and report cards to do for our elementary students.  They do monthly report cards here instead of only two or three times a year.  We will be writing a lot of report cards over the next 12 months!  On Friday we are taking our kindergarteners on a field trip to a Chinese restaurant so they can supposedly practice manners.  That should be interesting for some of my little ones...

We are in the process of putting all of the pictures we have taken on a Shutterfly page but with the poor internet connection we get at home and the limited time we have to sit at a computer at work it is taking a while.  We are hoping by the end of the week we will have that up to date so you can see ALL of the pictures we have been taking if you would like.

 The N Seoul Tower

 We are only 8, 331 km from home

 Somewhere over those hazy hills is home

They even had Cold Stone here!

 We of course had to get some!

At Eric's favorite restaurant: Kolgi King!

Living with 10 million people

We always knew Seoul had a large population, but we never knew exactly how many people lived here until we looked it up the other day.  10.2 million.  10.2 million people in a city that is twice the size of Portland, but has 20 times the amount of people.  The population density is eight times that of New York City.  Needless to say there are a lot of people here and this weekend we began to feel a bit more "crowded" than we have before.  During peak hours in the subway stations you can look up the very long escalator from the bottom and see people packed shoulder to shoulder all the way up.  You better push your way onto the escalator too if you ever want to get up!  Crossing the ten lane streets during a busy part of the day can be interesting as well with a massive amount of people going both directions.  Once again, you better push your way through if you want to get across before the cars start going again.  That is if the cars decided to stop at all.  Just like New York, red lights are suggestions.  Additionally, turn signals are basically non-existent and sometimes I'm not even sure which direction is the "right" way when cars decide to go both ways in the same lane.  We are both very glad we will never have to drive here! 

We went to Namdaemun Market this weekend.  A market similar to Saturday Market in Portland but on a much, much larger scale.  The alleys of vendors were pretty narrow, especially when a large amount of people were trying to go both ways and you were standing right in the middle.  Sometimes you might be walking behind a person that was moving quickly and then all of a sudden just stops in the middle of the sidewalk.  Good thing they are used to being bumped into.  Not far from Namdaemun Market is Deoksu and the Deoksugung Palace.  We got there just in time to see the ceremonial changing of the guard.  There is always a guard standing outside of the palace grounds just like when the palace was really in use.  The guard would stand outside to protect the King and anyone else inside the palace.  This palace was used during the Joseon Dynasty which lasted from 1392 until 1910 when the Japanese took over.  It was last used by King Gojong from the late 19th century until the end of the dynasty.  We were not able to take pictures inside the palace but did get many pictures of the guard changing and the outside which you can see below and more on our Facebook pages.

We also discovered Itaewon this weekend.  A small area with many western restaurants.  I was extremely excited to find Taco Bell!  Though we opted to have a Mexican dinner at Taco Amigos instead, it was nice to find Taco Bell, McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, Baskin Robbins, Quiznos and many other western restaurants all on the same street.  There was also another market on the streets with many, many people all going different directions.  Fortunately, we have not lost each other yet!  With all the western food in Itaewon it is the place the foreigners hang out.  We saw more foreigners here than we have seen the whole two weeks we have been here.  There might be over ten million people in this city but even on a crowded street we can pick out a single foreigner instantly.  Now we know how much we stick out too!

Oh and if you include the populations of Incheon and Gyeonggi Province with the population of Seoul, you have 25 million people living in the small Northwest corner of South Korea.  That's a lot of people!

 Namdaemun Market

 Changing of the Guard Ceremony at Deoksugung Palace

 There were a few different buildings on the palace grounds but this was the official palace used by the Kings as their throne room

Week #2

Today we had a birthday party at school for the kindergarten students that had March birthdays.  Apparently these birthday parties each month are a big deal.  All of the students brought a gift for each of the birthday kids.  The birthday kids each went home with a big bag of presents.  There was also a ton of food.  Good food.  Strawberries, apples, bananas, grapes, candy, gimbop (Korean sushi) and of course chocolate cake.

We are really enjoying Korea.  Although it took some adjustment we are starting to settle in and feel at “home.”  The school we are working for, SLP Gwangjin, has been working out great for us so far.  It is definitely a different environment than home but once we figured it out we really enjoy it.  Once the kindergarteners leave, we teach 40 minute classes of elementary students.  I’m still surprised at how teacher directed the instruction is for the elementary kids in the afternoon.  The teacher teaches the lesson during which the kids answer questions so that they are practicing their speaking and then it is all about the worksheets and homework.  Parents will complain if their kids do not have homework nearly every night.  This week we both tried supplementing the curriculum with things like crossword puzzles and word searches using vocabulary words.  The kids loved it.  Some of the parents did not.  Eric has a class with parents that did not appreciate the vocabulary word search their kids spent time doing and they made sure the school knew about it, just to make sure it doesn't happen again.  I guess instead of making fun games that reinforce what is being taught we need to make worksheets instead.  Very opposite of the current push in the U.S. to have lots of hands on games and activities for kids to do to support their learning in the classroom!  

Even with the cultural difference in education, we are really enjoying our school.  The director of our school is an interesting lady.  If you are on her good side, we have been told, she will give you just about whatever you want.  If you are not on her good side, she will not give you anything.  She does not speak English so she does not like trying to talk to the foreign teachers.   However, we were told from the very beginning she really likes it when the foreign teachers at least say hello and good bye to her.  So everyday we both make sure we do.  She always gets a very big smile on her face when we do, even though that is all we say.  Today we were surprised to learn she was giving us some more stuff for our apartment.  While we were at work a microwave, toaster, dining room table and chairs, another twin bed (though we really don’t need or have room for 3!) and some cleaning supplies were delivered to our apartment.  None of the stuff was new, it was all hand me downs but the fact she went out of her way to make sure we were the ones to get it and have it delivered to our apartment makes us think we must be doing something right.

I finally got some pictures of my kindergarteners that you can see below, as well as some pictures from the birthday party and time at the gym today.  We are glad to be just about done with another week and have a few possible sightseeing ideas for this weekend.  Stay tuned for pictures and info of where we end up!

 Elizabeth hard at work on a puzzle

 Matthew likes to pretend he is an angry monster

 Tommy prefers to run around the classroom and the entire 4th floor for most of the morning

 Emily showing off her coloring

 Tommy also enjoys sleeping under the table when he gets tired of running around

 Elizabeth likes to read under the table... we are still working on the concept of sitting at a table

 Elizabeth and Sophie reading The Three Little Pigs

 Birthday Party time!

 Present time!

 Every Thursday we walk down the street to Leader Gym for P.E. time

 Laura playing at the gym

A Weekend in Seoul

We spent our first weekend in Seoul exploring a couple different areas.  On Saturday we tested out the subway system for the first time and have found it the easiest way to get around the city by far, thanks to our subway map in English.  After a shopping trip at Emart (Korean form of Wal-Mart) we met up with some other teachers from our school at a beautiful park on Han River.  Although it was bitterly cold with the wind, it was a gorgeous place by the water with all kinds of walking/biking paths, picnic and BBQ areas and much more.  We even saw the stadium that was built for the 1988 Olympics from across the river.  For dinner we were taken to the Meat King, an all you can eat meat buffet, a Korean BBQ restaurant.  We were able to choose whatever meat we wanted and BBQ it at our table. 

Feeling confident in our subway skills we ventured even further on Sunday going to The War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan, Seoul.  The memorial and museum were amazing.  In the US you are taught very little about the Korean war and even then only from the perspective of the Americans helping the South Koreans.  We learned so much from this museum.  We had a tour from a Korean man that lived in a refugee camp as a teenager during the war.  The entire country was completely torn apart during the first year of the war.  Thousands were displaced from their homes, forced to live in refugee camps during brutal winters with little food.  In North Korea people were forced from their homes and forced to accuse their friends and neighbors of being anti-communist.  Those that were caught were then killed either immediately or publicly.  North Koreans were forced to live through the war in their attics or basements to avoid being caught and killed by the communist soldiers.  Twenty-one UN countries helped the South Koreans fight through the brutal first year and the two years of stalemate that followed.  When the war finally ended in 1953 thousands of families were separated by the Demarcation Zone, forcing some family members to live in North Korea while others of the same family were in South Korea.  Many of these families are still separated today, including the man that gave us a tour of the museum.  Once the war was over both countries needed to rebuild.  As our tour guide said, when they rebuilt they had to do so on top of the bodies of the 200,000 soldiers and numerous citizens that lost their lives.  South Korea still hopes for the day that Korea can become unified once again.  They feel very grateful and indebted to the twenty-one countries that helped them during the war.  It is a memorial not only for Korean soldiers, but for all of the soldiers that fought the war with them. 

 The crack through the memorial represents the disunity between North and South Korea, something that South Korea hopes will one day be unified again.

 Every soldier from every country that lost their life fighting in the Korean war has been inscribed on a wall outside the museum

 Thousands of dog tags from soldiers are assembled into a tear drop representing South Korea's sadness of the split between the north and south

The flags of the other 21 nations that helped fight the war with South Korea surrounded by the UN and South Korean flags on the ends

Korean Education

It hasn't taken long for us to start to get a feel for how the Korean education system works within a private language school and how much it differs from education in the United States.  A few things we have noticed strictly from our perspective thus far:

1)  Teacher Appearance:  The way a foreign teacher looks and dresses is HUGE in Korea.  A teacher at our school that started the same day as we did has already been fired because of appearance.  The Korean parents care very deeply about the way their child's teacher looks and if they do not like it they will complain or even pull their child out of the school.  Clothes, hair, makeup, everything must look very neat and put together in order to be considered a "good teacher." 

2)  Parental Influence:  Korean parents are all about their child's education.  English education for their children, especially their sons, is the most important thing in the world to many Korean parents.  The first few days of class the parents would sneak into the hallways where the classrooms were and try to discreetly peer in through the glass doors to see what was going on, to see what the teacher looked like and to see what the teacher was doing with their child.  Other parents would sneak their children into class without paying and then try to look into the class to see if it was worth paying for before they did.  While our school does not do this, some schools in Korea will broadcast the closed circuit video cameras on the internet so parents can go online and watch every minute of their child's class to see what is going on.  I wonder what the teacher union in the U.S. would do if that started there...  Many of the students want to work ahead in their workbooks because it is a competition not only between the students, but between the parents to see who's child can finish the workbook first.  In some ways it seems the parents almost care too much.  In other ways, I wonder how many more students would get help at home and do better with their schoolwork if more parents did care in the U.S...

3)  Curriculum:  The majority of the curriculum we are using is put out by Sogang University in Seoul (since our school is part of the Sogang Language Program).  It is all completely workbook and worksheet based.  Games, manipulatives, art, etc. is all considered fluff and should not be used in the classroom because it takes away from the learning time.  The more worksheets a student completes the more they know.  I find this quite interesting since worksheets are currently frowned upon in the U.S. since they require students to be sitting down at a desk instead of moving like we assume children "need" to.  Although Korean students are still kids and like to talk and goof off in class at times, when it is time to do a worksheet, the room is silent.  It's time for the students to see who can finish first.

4)  School Structure:  Since it is only our first week at the school, the first week back for students and the first week the school has been in this new building things have been a bit chaotic and disorganized.  However, we still have a pretty good idea of the structure of a day at the school.  For the elementary students that we teach in the afternoons it is strictly teacher directed instruction and workbooks.  But for the kindergartners there is a bit more freedom, especially with my young kindergarteners.  Kindergarteners often start at a private language school when they are five years old.  However, Korea has their own way of how people age from one year to the next.  When a baby is born in Korea they are one year old.  Every lunar year (usually in January, sometimes February) they turn another year older.  So if a baby is born in December they are one and turn two within another month or so.  By American standards a baby might be only three months old while according to Korean standards they are already two years old.  This is why I have kindergarteners who are really only 3.  There is not much you can do on a worksheet with a three year old (I'm still trying to get them to hold a pencil the right way).  While all of the kindergartners have their workbooks (including my little three year olds), there is also time in the day where students get to go to the gym and each week do science, music, and PE- all similar to a regular school.  Although we are expected to eat lunch with the students instead of have our own lunch break, we finish teaching earlier than our scheduled time at the end of each day which is when we are able to do our planning and have a break.  There is no doubt they are long days without much break until the end but that's how the Korean culture is.  Many Koreans work fifty or sixty hour weeks with little or no break each day.  One thing we have learned quick is that Korea does not adapt for foreigners.  If foreigners want to be successful, at least as teachers, you adapt to them.

I'm sure we will learn much more and our observations may even change as we still have so much time left here but thought we would share what we have observed this far :)

A few pictures, many more to come

                                                              Our apartment building

                                                                  Gwangjin Gu, Seoul

                                                                       Breakfast

                                                  Eric cooking dinner in our tiny kitchen

                                                   Our first home cooked Korean dinner

                                                         They have REAL oreos here!!

Eric Teacher and Stephanie Teacher

Our first day of work has finally ended!! It was probably one of the longest days we have ever had.  We left our apartment at 9:30 this morning and got home at 8:30 tonight.  It was the first day of the new semester for the kids and the school had just moved to a new building over the weekend so things were busy and hectic to say the least.  We were assured it would not be like this everyday!  Needless to say we still both enjoyed it, it was just a long day by the time it ended.  We are now known as Eric Teacher and Stephanie Teacher. :)
Before today we had not seen the curriculum, known what ages/levels our students were or what our schedule of classes would be like.  As soon as we arrived at the school this morning we were given our class of kindergarten students and a workbook for each student and were shown to our classroom.  I (Stephanie) have 6 students, ages 3 and 4, who speak/understand absolutely 0 English.  I was surprised at how well behaved they were for the most part and were able to sit at a table for more than 5 minutes, at least at first.  As English teachers our primary job is to teach them conversational English, not just book English.  So my morning was spent reading books to them, talking to them while playing games in the gym room and attempting to teach them color names while they were coloring pictures.  By lunch time one had fallen asleep and 3 others had started crying, which I was unable to do anything about unless I got a Korean teacher to listen to what they were saying.  Even though it was very busy I really enjoyed it and am really excited to work with these students, and hopefully by the end of the semester they will at least know a couple words in English.  :)  Eric had 5 kindergarten students, ages 5 and 6, who speak/understand almost no English.  He spent the morning reading them stories and working on letters.  He didn't have any criers or fall asleepers but he does have Mike.  Mike will keep him busy with the amount of energy Mike showed today.  :)
Our afternoons and evenings are spent teaching different classes of elementary students who range in age from about 7-15.  This was very hectic today, as we didn't know what students we were supposed to teach, where we were supposed to teach, or have the workbooks we were supposed to teach from until after each session was starting.  These students all seemed to be well behaved and studious.  However, even the more advanced students seemed to have a hard time holding a conversation with us.  They have a good grasp on book English- grammar, spelling, punctuation, but have had little experience with actually speaking and talking in English- which is our job to teach them.
It was a very busy day and we are both pretty exhausted but we also think we are really going to enjoy it once things have settled down and we really know what we are supposed to be doing and where we need to be throughout the day.  We are also starting to adjust more as our apartment is starting to feel more like home (especially since we got a bigger bed and will not be sharing a twin bed tonight!) and we experimented with the bus for the first time after work tonight and got where we hoped we would!  We will share more about our first week teaching soon!

The Beginning

We have landed!! After an extremely long 13 hours of flying (12 of them straight from Seattle to Seoul) we were more than ready to get off the plane!!  We were able to get through customs and immigration, get all of our suitcases, exchange our money and find our driver pretty quickly.  The school had hired a driver to take us from the airport to our apartment (about another 40 minutes of sitting!) where we met up with one of the other teachers at the school.  He also drove us around the neighborhood a bit last night and is coming to help us get around again today.

We also saw the school last night.  They are in the process of changing buildings so they are not completely set up yet but it looks like it will be a nice place.  We start right in Monday morning so we will see how it all goes!

We were expecting our apartment to be small, and it sure is!  Americans definitely do not come to Korea for a good sized apartment!  There is a small refrigerator/freezer and the kitchen consists of 2 burners and a sink.  A very small washer sits underneath the stove just like where an oven would be at home.  There is also a communal dryer across the hall.  The shower head hangs on the wall in the bathroom with no real confined area to be the shower so that is the one thing we are still figuring out!  However, the apartment building seems to be in a nice, quiet neighborhood, the building was quiet last night and as you can see by the picture below we have a pretty nice view of the Han River from our window.  There is also a walking/biking trail that goes along the river through the entire city of Seoul.  Once we get everything unpacked and in place we think we can make it a pretty nice place to call home- our first together!

Today we plan to do some shopping for the apartment and possibly explore a little through the city or walk along the Han River.  There is no doubt it is going to take some adjustment but we are hopeful that will come quickly.  We are very grateful for all of your thought and prayers and will keep you posted as our first days here begin! 

                                             View of Han River from our apartment window

T-Minus 18 Hours and Counting!!

The school wanted us to arrive earlier than we had anticipated so we are about to enjoy our last meal at Burgerville for the year, our bedroom is mostly empty, our bags are packed and our plane tickets are now set for tomorrow morning at 9:30!  Tomorrow we will be flying from Portland to Seattle and then Seattle to South Korea.  We are scheduled to arrive in Seoul at 6:00PM Saturday, Korean time.  We are so excited it is finally happening.  It has been a long road getting here, but definitely worth every step.  Seeing all of our paperwork come through in the very last minutes that we needed it to and watching all the last minute details fall into place has assured us that this adventure is meant to begin.  We cannot wait to see where it takes us this next year and how it helps us grow closer together as newlyweds and beyond.  Staying here would be much more comfortable and easy but it can be very difficult for a person to grow unless they step out in faith and get out of that comfort zone.  This will be a learning opportunity we would likely never have again so now is when we will step out of what is nice and comfortable and see what we can learn about ourselves and each other.   And so the adventure begins very shortly.  We will update you once we arrive!