Week 1

Guess what! I have a girlfriend, she is a little chubby but that's ok! I think she is beautiful (I may be a little biased I guess)

Here She Is

We had a fun time making these dolls on Saturday!

Wow the time has flown by and at the same time if feel like I have been here forever in Jochiwon. The people here at orientation are amazing. Everyone is from different backgrounds and places and each person has different reasons why they are here and how they got here. It is humbling to see what some of them have already accomplished, and to see how ambitious some of the other TaLK scholars are. I feel so lucky to be here. Last year in February they had almost 300 scholars here and this year we have about 120 at orientation. From what I hear, people liked the program so much that many of them extended and so there were significantly less spots available so it was very competitive. Before I came, I figured that not many people would have graduated from university already since this program only requires 2 years or an Associates degree. But I am one of the only ones that doesn't have a Bachelors. So, I feel very lucky that I was picked.
Another surprising thing is that most of these people don't know much, or any, Korean. There are a handful who have studied it in college or something, then there are those who's parents, or at least one parent, are Korean so they know the language.
So I was feeling pretty good about my language ability till I tried having a whole 30 minute conversation with my K-pop teacher and I realized I have forgotten so many words and so much grammar.

The opening ceremony of orientation was pretty sweet. We had 2 cool performances. One by a drumming group and the other by K Tigers who do cool Tae Kwon Do demonstration shows.

I stole this video from someone else because I didn't have my camera with me at the time.

Here is a video of the K tigers performance as well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flqt2edBtbk 

I'm not sure which performance I liked more. They were both pretty awesome. 

Ever since the opening ceremony they have been keeping us really busy with lectures and classes. Some are fun but mostly just boring stuff about how to be a better teacher and advice and instructions on working with our schools/principals/mentor teachers/students/co-teachers/ etc....

The building where our classes are. 

Everyday, we have to get ready and eat breakfast before our first class at 8:40 then we have class till after 8 at night with only lunch and dinner breaks in between. On top of that, we have to do lesson plans and get ready to teach real student's (for our practicum on Monday) in our own free time (8:20pm - whenever we want to sleep). I feel like they are trying to make us feel like Korean school students who go to school till 10 pm then still have homework to do when they get home. Although it is a bit intense at times, overall it has been a great experience thus far and I have learned a ton that I know will help me out as far as teaching goes. In a lot of ways it really reminds me of the MTC (in a lot of ways its nothing like that but in many ways it is very similar). 

A picture of our lunch the other day. We are well fed. 

Not all of the classes are boring. On Saturday we had Tae Kwon Do (yes im still sore) and arts and crafts (I know my girlfriend is amazing!). One day we also had a 단소 (danso, korean flute/recorder) lesson, it was very hard to get it to make sound. We also have a Korean class every night and since I can read and speak Korean ( to an extent) I get to go to the K-pop class where we get to learn songs and learn dance moves. Our teacher is way cool. He is my same age and he was on The Voice of Korea (pretty much the Korean version of American Idol). He has a great voice and its fun to learn from him. 

He is the guy in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLjkvxUqvBA 

One day I sat by him at lunch and we are pretty much best friends now, haha (but really he even requested me on Facebook ;) ). We had a really long talk and it was great language practice for me. It made me realize how much of the language I still don't know and also how much I have forgotten. 

Saturday morning we had a medical check up which was quite thorough. (urine test, blood test, sight test, hearing test, height, weight, all kinds of other stuff). Then Saturday night after dinner, scholars fled the campus to various areas, mostly Seoul. We were all ready for a break after the long week of lectures. My new friend Kendall and I took a taxi to the train station and took a train to Seoul to visit some of my friends there. I will talk about that in my next post. 

The people here at orientation are amazing! I have made so many friends from all over the world. Everyone seems really smart and put together (not surprising since they had to figure out all the paperwork, forms, etc. to get here). 

Props to Ka Lo for making this awesome video of our first week here: 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_nCJsFxTs16b0dhWm1ZOUF4Mlk/edit  

I'm bummed I can't get it to upload so I just have to give you the link.