Life is about to get so crazy, I couldn't’ be more excited about it! Hopefully my blog can still find an update once a week!!
Last weekend was Simone’s Going Away Adventure Party! She lives in the mountains in our province and I had found that she has a ziplining course in her town so wanted to go once it got warmer. So she booked the trip for us! 10 friends trekked to her city and went ziplining. It was an absolute blast. We had to leave Pohang pretty early to catch the buses and make the correct bus times but we got there in perfect time. My fellow Pohangers were not in good shape as they had all gone out drinking the night before. I was smart and stayed in and got a good nights sleep! The ziplining was so exhilarating! The first one was the scariest, its so intimidating to just jump off a ledge over a million trees really high up! Anyways after the first one I absolutely loved it and was spinning all over the place, going backwards, and I asked the guides if we could go upside down! They spoke pretty good English, were young, around 21 and the girl unhooked herself on the last line and did a somersault! It was pretty cool. Everyone was saying how it would be such a fun job, however they don't’ realize how things can get old quick. Like teaching skating.. don’t get me wrong! Is an awesome job, but when you’re friends want to go skating it can get old. In college I didn’t mind as much taking friends skating as high school days.
Anyways it was tons of fun and a nice way to spend Saturday with friends. After that we headed to a “fusion” restaurant for Korean/Western Chicken and some cocktails. After we had dinner most people went home. However Michael, Lucy, Dirk & Simone hung out in town. They showed us their little foreigner bar. It is a really neat place. Apparently the owner has been imprisoned many times iN SK for smoking or possession of marijuana. The place is really really neat, and he built it all himself! He played music from a record player! And awesome music at that. Then we did one last Norebang (karaoke room) with Simone. At orientation on our last night we Norebanged, so we figured we needed to send Sim off the right way and Norebang again! It was a blast. We all cuddled up in Dirks apartment as Simone had already been kicked out of her place. Woke up, then they made french toast and some delicious smoothies for us! After that we took a little walk around Mungyeong then got some coffee at the cutest coffee shop I’ve ever seen in Korea. The decorations were absolutely adorable! I have pictures somewhere! After that we journeyed back home.. Unfortunately the bus we got on in Gumi was non direct so it took ages to get back. But such is life without a car, and language barriers. Oh and the bus was sooo crowded. Every seat was taken and about 20 people were standing for almost an hour til they got to their stop! All on their smart phones the whole time. Or in the seats passed out asleep. Dirk donated a skateboard he acquired to me.. hahah and I have decided to ride it to school everyday just because I can.. More on that later.
The week at school was absolutely crazy it feels like! Monday morning Joanne tells me that Eunjeong’s baby is sick so we won’t have English class today. Then she says maybe after lunch, then maybe before lunch.. Meanwhile every class period the students come into my office asking about English class.. So she gave the homeroom teachers absolutely no notice that they didn’t have English that day! Korea.. She runs in the period before lunch and we go teach the lesson.
Monday afternoon I message my new co teacher and tell her that I have some ideas for the lesson plan. She says that I can do whatever I want. I tell her my portion of the lesson will take a little more then 10 minutes and she says that’s fine and she is sorry for not planning again. I also taught Kindergarteners for the first time! They were absolutely adorable but I have no idea what they are understanding.. All we went over was hello, hi, how are you, I’m fine, thank you, and the letter A. It is definitely going to be a challenge but they are so cute and I think the teachers are happy with it so far. My co teacher wanted to stay in the room and help but her kids were acting up when she was in there. Soo that didn’t really work unfortunately. :/ I’m sure in a few weeks it will go much more smoothly!
After school I went for a nice bike ride, then the first time running in my five finger shoes! They felt absolutely wonderful. I was definitely thinking about what my body was doing almost the whole time. It felt really nice, I never had to stop for the distance that I wanted to go. I ran a little less than a mile and a half. They have put in a really nice running track, a bunch of sport courts, workout machines, and what not near the bridge which is about a five minute bike ride from my house! They are still working on some things, I think finish putting in grass and a few other things. Either way the running track is really nice, I can go in a loop, or along the river! Then can do stairs across the bridge and bike through the rice field! Monday night was topped off by my friend bringing my Costco requests of cheese and Peanut butter to my house! Cannot tell you how much I missed cheese. The only cheese here is like plastic cheese like American Single Slices but tastes much worse! I now have a huge hunk of Costco Cheddar Cheese! I cut it into smaller blocks so praying that it doesnt’ go bad!
Tuesday was pretty standard. My new 3rd grade students are getting used to me a little bit! My portion of the lesson went well despite not having planned anything out. I really like my new co teachers teaching style, just wish she spoke more to me and we had more time to discuss the lesson. My afterschool class went well. I gave all the kids English names this time so I can know their names. Unfortunately I have one girl who came last semester so for the most part i’ll have to come up with new things to teach, dang it! Haha laziness. I have a co teacher this semester but I’m not sure what’s going on with that.. Eunjeong said that I had such a small class last semester because only a few students understood me.. which is a bunch of crap. They can understand me enough to play the games, do the activities, and such. It’s just that the kids who didn’t come were the ones who didn’t care about learning English and put no effort into figuring out what I was saying. Joanne agrees with me, that the students understand what I’m saying and she doesn’t really need to be there. She has just taken attendance and sat in the back of the class working on her TOEFL exam study guides which is fine.. I’m not exactly sure of the dynamic between them from “bad relationship” that Eunjeong told me about earlier in the year.
Tuesday evening I was determined to bike to the beach! It’s very close on the map, and I had some idea how to get there. Got a little confused on the way there, ended up behind all these steel factories, and big shipping port! But navigated through the rice fields and finally made it! It was really beautiful, I can’t wait for summertime. I think it should be about a 15 minute bike ride there. Then can go for runs on the beach, lay out, be a beach bum! Cannot wait. It’s nice because its pretty isolated so it’s pretty quiet! I’m trying to get the other people that live near me to invest in a bike as well and then we can all go together. There is a bus that goes there but is only every hour or so. Either way ended up doing a 10 mile bike ride, with a 6 minute/mile pace! Not too bad, loving the new bike so far!
We had dinner together Tuesday night, as we were waiting outside of mainstreet in our little town, this man kept telling the two who were there to come inside the chicken place we had eaten the week before.. We wanted to try somewhere else but finally just gave in. Turns out that he wanted to buy us dinner. He was a regular at the restaurant and said that because we are brothers and sisters in Christ, he wanted to buy us dinner. We are away from our families and friends and he felt like the spirit called him to do that. So he told us to have a party on him, and he would pay the tab tomorrow. It was very nice of him. Luckily we have Joe in Heunghae now who speaks Korean a little bit so can help us at restaurants and what not! But it was soo kind of a random stranger to just buy all of us dinner! Ohh Koreans. They can be so friendly at times!
Thursday night volunteered at the orphanage and showed two of the new girls where the orphanage was and to see if they wanted to do it. We took a taxi back together and had some Korean bbq for dinner at the restaurant by my house. They are absolutely lovely! I’m very excited to be living near them! We are planning some fun things, like dinner club! Have someone cook the main dish, then everyone else brings another item. I think there are about 6 of us participating so every 6 weeks we’ll host.
Finally.. after debating all week about what to do. I decided to join an Ultimate Frisbee Team! They were looking for another girl to join, and I had been emailing with the coordinator of the league trying to figure it out. The bad thing is the weekend I’m going to Seoul in April there are 4 games.. In order for me to be eligible to play in the play offs I have to play in 6 games.. Which means I now have to miss salsa class. :/ So I’ll be missing two weeks of Salsa but i’m sure michael can help catch me up when we go for voluntary dance night. Lessons are Sunday nights, Tuesday and Fridays are open dance night where we’ll just go and practice! My friend Dan can speak pretty good Korean and is going to come along for a few weeks to help translate. His fiance is Korean and they did the class the previous session. I’m very excited about the frsibee team but a little bummed they are based out of another city. If I stay in Korea another year and in the same city I will definitely organize a team for my city. There are lots of people interested but I think they just don’t know about the league. So on Sunday I’ll play two games on the beach! Then each weekend following i’ll play two games on Sunday evenings. The team seems very friendly and welcoming so looking forward to meeting them and playing a team sport again! I had a blast doing it for the intramural in college when we won the championship! So hopefully it will be similar!
Finally I have also signed up to teach two nights a week at a private boys high school for conversation classes! I will get paid extra and from what i’ve heard from past teachers it’s very easy and the boys English is pretty high level.. But obviously challenges for me. Boys, and High School! I’ve pretty much conquered the level of Middle School by teaching with the orphanage kids.. Now to take the next step for high school boys.. Either way will good to add to my teaching resume if I want to continue int his direction, or working with another age group in general.
My schedule at school this year is very different and I have all day Friday except my Kindergarten class for 30 minutes to plan. Which is okay, but I just feel like my plate is totally loaded! Hopefully I did enough work to make my lesson plans work for a while. I will probably do a little work on the high school lesson plan this weekend! Not to mention a few other admin things I have to take care of!
So as much boredom I’ve had the past few weeks/months will all be a distant memory in the past starting this weekend!! I’m very excited about it. Being “bored” not having specific things to do was really hard for me. I think that was part of my winter slump and being down from time to time. The weather has warmed up even a little more (although is supposed to rain all weekend = Ultimate Frisbee games in the rain) and my friends and I are all signed up for our first running race April 1st, we’re doing a 5k. Then the following month 10k, and finally a half marathon here in my city in June! Another reason my work days have been going by so fast is that I have started working out in the English room the last hour of everyday. I explained to my co teachers that I can’t really jump around in my apartment because I’m worried about my downstairs neighbors. They really don’t care, but I told them of course if I ever had more work to do I would do it at home. I rather use my laptop anyways as it’s easier to work powerpoint and other programs when it’s in English. This weekend i’ll just have to start a plan for the high school class. The rest of my week is planned so it should be fine!
Ehhhhh sorry this was a super long post! But have to let you all know what’s going on and so you know if I post less often you know why! I know one day when I’m old and working at some desk job or something looking back on my time iN Korea i’ll appreciate all the little stories!
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Pictures from Ziplining! Still need to catch up on skiing, and other winter festivities!
All my loving! Nicole
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