Eric and Stephanie's Korean Adventure: GEPIK Orientation 2013

I just finished three days of training for my new job and I can honestly say I did not learn much. At least not much that I felt I can put into practice right now. However, I did meet a lot of new people, some of whom I plan to keep in contact with, and I did learn quite a few tips that I will hang on to and try out when I am teaching some kids with a bit more English knowledge, either here or back home. A bus picked us up near the school that I work at Wednesday morning and dropped us off again on Friday afternoon. The orientation was for all of the teachers who are new (or haven't attended before) to the Gyeonggi English Program in Korea, basically the official name for the department that handles all of the foreign English teachers in the public schools in Gyeonggi province. In case you are wondering a bit about geography... Gyeonggi-do is a province in Korea that surrounds Seoul on all sides.

The red is Gyeonggi-do and the white area near the middle of it is Seoul. Seoul is not part of any province it's just a city/area by itself I guess. My school is in Guri, Gyeonggi-do which is just slightly east of Seoul (only twenty minutes by bus from our house in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul to my school in Guri). I met a couple of other girls who just arrived a few weeks ago and also work pretty close to Guri. I met a lot of interesting people of all ages and from all over the world. I was actually quite surprised by how many South Africans were there. Before now, I'd only run into maybe two or three teachers from South Africa but apparently there are A LOT of teachers from South Africa working for GEPIK which was neat (I'm a bit jealous of their accents actually).

The orientation started with a traditional samulnori presentation (if you haven't seen a samulnori presentation before you should youtube it. I think they are very neat!) and was then followed by several sessions about various topics that ranged from activities you can do in the classroom to how to work best with your Korean co-teacher to important cultural information, etc. Some were definitely more interesting than others but overall it was a nice little getaway to the Gyeonggi-do countryside and opportunity to meet new people I suppose! Oh and the free food and real shower wasn't bad either :)

Since some people have been asking us about the atmosphere surrounding the North's latest threats I thought I would just say that there is no concern whatsoever coming from the local people here. Every time a new president is inaugurated in South Korea the North finds it to be a perfect time for a new round of verbal threats. The things they say may not sound entirely intelligent at times, but at the end of the day everyone is very certain they are smart enough to know the consequences that would come (like no more North Korea) in a very, very short time if they were to venture outside their space. They cannot single handedly decide to void the armistice agreement nor do they have the means to attack the United States like their propaganda videos suggest, but they do enjoy using their imaginations. We are just glad we went to the DMZ/JSA last year and didn't wait since I heard they may possibly soon be cutting back on what tourists can see or even putting tours on hold for a time.

We also got word today that our first (we're not sure how many there could potentially be) meeting between the Ministry of Employment and Labor, us and our former employer will take place next Tuesday morning. This is much sooner than we thought but we are very thankful and now hopeful that this means all of our last financial things and ties to our former employer will be sorted out, in our favor, sooner than we expected.

Here are the few pictures I took at the training...