Ugly Duckling Country
I am calling this country the ugly duckling country because it has seriously turned into this beautiful country in the past week or so. The cherry blossoms were out a few weeks ago, lasted about a week and then they all fell off the trees. BUT now flowers are starting to bloom and all the trees have their leaves back. I went hiking yesterday with Beth, to the same mountain we go to every week (2-3 times a week) and it was seriously like we were in a totally different place. We stopped a few times and said...is this even the same mountain, I'm not sure I know where we are. Needless to say we did manage to make out way down the mountain safe and sound and never got lost, so don't worry.
I'm really looking forward to my next couple months here in Korea, because our little Sangju group has so much planned around Korea. This weekend we will be going to Busan to enjoy a little beach time. I'm very excited seeing as Busan was my number one place that I wanted to live when I came to Korea. Sangju is nowhere near being anything like Busan I'm sure!
The following weekend (May 12) I do have to teach and Beth teaches on Sunday so it will be a nice quiet weekend in Sangju. Sometimes the weekends home are good to have, even though traveling around Korea is great and there are SSOOOO many things that I want to see here. We are planning on attempting to make some Korean dishes and have a little picnic by the river. I have to admit as much as eating out is great and cheap here, I miss cooking (weird I know!) So I'm looking forward to attempting this whole cooking thing here. I'm nervous though because I have never attempted to make Korean dishes and I've heard they are not easy...I will try my best though!
I signed up for a 10k in Daejeon, which is the city we were at for orientation. The 10k might seriously kill me since I'm incredibly out of shape, but it was only 10,000\ and it's for breast cancer. So if it does kill me, at least it was all for a good cause right?!
The weekend after Daejeon is the last weekend and May and just so happens to be Buddha's birthday so we have a long weekend. We haven't really decided what we will do. Our Sangju group is going to some DJ festival up in Seoul and since Beth and I just weren't really feeling it we are going to try to plan something else fun. We will probably do the tourist thing and go sight seeing.
We are going to a Mud Festival in July. It's supposedly the largest Westerner gathering in Korea. Mud Festival!
We went to Seoul this past weekend, and the weather couldn't have been much better. It was warm and sunny all weekend, but not too hot! Saturday we went to the zoo, which is kind of different than the zoos at home, 1 because we didn't have to pay. It was nice though, and just really great to be outside and enjoying the weather. After the zoo we met up with our Sangju group and went to the Namsan Tower. We took the cable car up the mountain to where the tower is. I knew Seoul was huge but being up there you really get to see just how massive the city is. It was so pretty from up above, and it's great to have such a large city and then be able to see the mountains off in the distance....breathtaking really! We didn't actually go up in the tower, but you could see so much from just the mountain I think we got to see a lot! Up on top of the mountain was great, with everything to see, all the people that were there, and the live music that was playing; was a really great day and was nice to be away from the chaos of work. The one thing that I thought was pretty cool was at the top of the mountain there are millions of pad locks attached to the fences with love notes locked to them.
Come to find out, couples from all over the place come to the tower together and write a note to each other then lock it to the fence. It is said that if you do this with you significant other you will be in love forever. It's a little cheesy yes, but it's cute, and there were so many Korean couples up there!
Now since I mentioned the chaos of work, I'll do a little venting about that. Keep in mind I do still really enjoy Korea but there are somethings I don't understand nor do I think I ever will understand it.
1. The one thing that drives me crazy here is the lack of communication, or the last minute communication/planning here. It's midterms this week and my high school teachers didn't even tell me I wouldn't have class (yes, I already knew but it would be nice if they would tell me these things too)! Teachers dinners, you are told about them usually the day of the dinner, forget if you have plans apparently they don't plan ahead here in Korea.
2. The stares that I get everywhere I go! Yes, I am well aware of the fact that I am a white person, I'm not the same size as you at all, and I know I do not speak your language. I swear I'm trying but please quit staring at me it makes me paranoid. It makes me even more paranoid when you laugh at me as I walk by you and then laugh when I try to speak Korean. It makes me not want to say anything in Korean again, I will never be able to speak Korean like you, nor do I have the same accent as you.
3. What just breaks my heart here is the bullying. So many students are bullied here and they just don't really do much about it! I wish there was some kind of discipline set in place for the kids that are bullying other kids but there isn't. I just don't get how they do not see this as a problem. There have been 2-3 suicides in my province as well as one in Daegu in the past two weeks. How do they not see this as a problem and want to do something to change it?! Now, not all the suicides were due to bullying (most not all though) the others are due to the pressure in the school systems. We have talked about before and it's so true...these kids don't have friends at school because they are considered your competition!
4. Coming from a high school that supported their kids and their staff 110% this is a hard place to live sometimes. They also do not have a special education system here in Korea. If you are a student that has some kind of special needs you are kind of out of luck and the Korean teachers don't seem to want to help them. Sometimes they don't even receive I book, and they def are placed in the back of the room and never called upon or helped with the information we are learning. I have tried taking things in my own hands and put them in a stronger group of English speakers or I will try to sit with them one on one. BUT I seriously have one co-teacher that has pulled me away from one particular student and said 'Oh no, don't talk to her. She's stupid and doesn't know anything, it's a waste of time!' And then we are back to the bullying....no wonder we have such a problem with bullying here! Even the teachers bully the kids of course kids are going to bully other kids!
5. This week is midterms...which means no classes (which is a good thing and a bad thing). It makes for an easy week, but a boring week, and I really enjoy spending time with my girls here. They can really make my day! However, I am told I have to stay until 4:30 because that is what my contract says. I would be totally fine with that, if they wouldn't have told me that I could leave at 12:30, but then they change their mind and tell me I have to stay. Plus, all the Korean teachers leave at 12:30 and they do not come back. My co-teacher, who can be a really big jerk, has fortunately been super nice this week and has convinced the principal to let me leave early everyday! Today I will be going with one of my other co-teachers, Lucy, to a neighboring city for a festival! I'm really excited to go and spend the day with her and her little daughter. I had such a great time the last time I was with them, I think today will be just as great!
I'll end on a positive note! I believe (which nothing can be for sure here in Korea) that I got my dates for summer vacation. Beth will be asking her school tomorrow what her dates are, and hopefully we will have the same dates. We are looking at heading to the Philippines for a nice relaxing beach vacation. Her brothers girlfriend is actually from there so she is helping us out on where we should go while we are there. The beaches in the Philippines look absolutely beautiful!!! We really want to go caving while we were there, I think it would be one of the coolest things we could do there. I'm looking forward to the vacation and seeing the other countries in South East Asia. We have such a great opportunity to see the world right now and I can't wait to take advantage of the opportunity I have been given here.
I'm really looking forward to my next couple months here in Korea, because our little Sangju group has so much planned around Korea. This weekend we will be going to Busan to enjoy a little beach time. I'm very excited seeing as Busan was my number one place that I wanted to live when I came to Korea. Sangju is nowhere near being anything like Busan I'm sure!
The following weekend (May 12) I do have to teach and Beth teaches on Sunday so it will be a nice quiet weekend in Sangju. Sometimes the weekends home are good to have, even though traveling around Korea is great and there are SSOOOO many things that I want to see here. We are planning on attempting to make some Korean dishes and have a little picnic by the river. I have to admit as much as eating out is great and cheap here, I miss cooking (weird I know!) So I'm looking forward to attempting this whole cooking thing here. I'm nervous though because I have never attempted to make Korean dishes and I've heard they are not easy...I will try my best though!
I signed up for a 10k in Daejeon, which is the city we were at for orientation. The 10k might seriously kill me since I'm incredibly out of shape, but it was only 10,000\ and it's for breast cancer. So if it does kill me, at least it was all for a good cause right?!
The weekend after Daejeon is the last weekend and May and just so happens to be Buddha's birthday so we have a long weekend. We haven't really decided what we will do. Our Sangju group is going to some DJ festival up in Seoul and since Beth and I just weren't really feeling it we are going to try to plan something else fun. We will probably do the tourist thing and go sight seeing.
We are going to a Mud Festival in July. It's supposedly the largest Westerner gathering in Korea. Mud Festival!
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| Seoul from Namsan Mountain |
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| Tower from the bottom of Mountain |
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| Locks |
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| Tower looking up |
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| People relaxing at the tower |
Now since I mentioned the chaos of work, I'll do a little venting about that. Keep in mind I do still really enjoy Korea but there are somethings I don't understand nor do I think I ever will understand it.
1. The one thing that drives me crazy here is the lack of communication, or the last minute communication/planning here. It's midterms this week and my high school teachers didn't even tell me I wouldn't have class (yes, I already knew but it would be nice if they would tell me these things too)! Teachers dinners, you are told about them usually the day of the dinner, forget if you have plans apparently they don't plan ahead here in Korea.
2. The stares that I get everywhere I go! Yes, I am well aware of the fact that I am a white person, I'm not the same size as you at all, and I know I do not speak your language. I swear I'm trying but please quit staring at me it makes me paranoid. It makes me even more paranoid when you laugh at me as I walk by you and then laugh when I try to speak Korean. It makes me not want to say anything in Korean again, I will never be able to speak Korean like you, nor do I have the same accent as you.
3. What just breaks my heart here is the bullying. So many students are bullied here and they just don't really do much about it! I wish there was some kind of discipline set in place for the kids that are bullying other kids but there isn't. I just don't get how they do not see this as a problem. There have been 2-3 suicides in my province as well as one in Daegu in the past two weeks. How do they not see this as a problem and want to do something to change it?! Now, not all the suicides were due to bullying (most not all though) the others are due to the pressure in the school systems. We have talked about before and it's so true...these kids don't have friends at school because they are considered your competition!
4. Coming from a high school that supported their kids and their staff 110% this is a hard place to live sometimes. They also do not have a special education system here in Korea. If you are a student that has some kind of special needs you are kind of out of luck and the Korean teachers don't seem to want to help them. Sometimes they don't even receive I book, and they def are placed in the back of the room and never called upon or helped with the information we are learning. I have tried taking things in my own hands and put them in a stronger group of English speakers or I will try to sit with them one on one. BUT I seriously have one co-teacher that has pulled me away from one particular student and said 'Oh no, don't talk to her. She's stupid and doesn't know anything, it's a waste of time!' And then we are back to the bullying....no wonder we have such a problem with bullying here! Even the teachers bully the kids of course kids are going to bully other kids!
5. This week is midterms...which means no classes (which is a good thing and a bad thing). It makes for an easy week, but a boring week, and I really enjoy spending time with my girls here. They can really make my day! However, I am told I have to stay until 4:30 because that is what my contract says. I would be totally fine with that, if they wouldn't have told me that I could leave at 12:30, but then they change their mind and tell me I have to stay. Plus, all the Korean teachers leave at 12:30 and they do not come back. My co-teacher, who can be a really big jerk, has fortunately been super nice this week and has convinced the principal to let me leave early everyday! Today I will be going with one of my other co-teachers, Lucy, to a neighboring city for a festival! I'm really excited to go and spend the day with her and her little daughter. I had such a great time the last time I was with them, I think today will be just as great!
I'll end on a positive note! I believe (which nothing can be for sure here in Korea) that I got my dates for summer vacation. Beth will be asking her school tomorrow what her dates are, and hopefully we will have the same dates. We are looking at heading to the Philippines for a nice relaxing beach vacation. Her brothers girlfriend is actually from there so she is helping us out on where we should go while we are there. The beaches in the Philippines look absolutely beautiful!!! We really want to go caving while we were there, I think it would be one of the coolest things we could do there. I'm looking forward to the vacation and seeing the other countries in South East Asia. We have such a great opportunity to see the world right now and I can't wait to take advantage of the opportunity I have been given here.
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