Springtime in Korea

Spring in Korea was really pretty. They have lots of cherry blossoms which makes it quite beautiful. Also everything starts turning green making the landscape much more enjoyable to look at. 

This is the road that goes past my school.

On the bus to school. The video isn't great but the trees that line the road were so pretty.

The view from of the Wolchulsan mountain from the front of my school.

Near my school there is a cultural festival that honors a great Korean doctor and teacher who was either from Japan or went to Japan and came back. I can't remember. Anyway, So they planted lots of cherry trees to honor him. (Although found in several places in Korea, these trees aren't native to Korea.) So when all the trees are in bloom they have the festival and its very pretty. During the week of the festival all of the teachers at my school went down the road to check it out after school one day. 

Its called the Wangin festival since the guys name was Wangin. 

We enjoyed the beauty of spring,

Drank out of a spring that will "make you smart", and went and ate dinner at a nearby restaurant. 

That weekend I traveled to Daegu to see one of my mission campanions Sumin. He is serving his mandatory 2 years of missionary service right now. He was on leave so I traveled to see him. We hung out, ate, watched a movie, and grabbed some ice cream. It was great to see him. 

Many people thought this was at a theme park or something but it was just in the subway station. 

After meeting with Sumin I traveled back to Mokpo and I was going to try to catch a bus to a festival at a nearby Island. I ended up going to the festival the next day but when I got there all my friends were leaving so I just rode back with them to Mokpo. On one of the bus rides along the way I lost my keys so I couldn't get into my apartment. It was a nice day and I didn't know how to contact my landlady so I decided to just take some time and go hike the hill in my town (Its called a mountain but its not really a mountain.) So I went and hiked Yudalsan by myself. 
Here are some random pictures from my hike up Yudalsan. I took them all with my phone since my camera is broken. Much of the mountain was still quite brown, although, there were some very pretty flowers starting to bloom. 

General Lee

View of Mokpo and the ocean from par way up the mountain. 

There are several of these platforms on the way up

This is a really big bridge that is really pretty when it is lit up at night. I met a Korean man who said that many people commit suicide off that bridge and that a woman whom he used to work with had jumped off that bridge the week before. So that was an awkward somber moment on my hike.

Lots of selfies since I was alone.

  

Hey that's not a selfie! Asked a stranger to take my picture.

Its hard to find a really clear day in Korea. As you can see in these pictures its not too clear. I don't know if its fog or smog or what, but it's quite unfortunate. However, whenever there is a really clear day, I find myself in awe at the beauty of the Korean landscape. 

Some really old rock carvings that were carved into the mountain. Not sure what they mean.

Sorry so many random pictures. Anyway it was good to hike and get to see my whole city from up on the mountain. When I got back down the mountain I got a message from another guy who lives in my apartment building. He had contacted the landlady for me. So when I got back to the apartment she was able to meet me there and give me another key.

There's no place like..home?

By the time the Gwangju orientation was over I was just ready to get on with life and finally know where I would be living and teaching. I had so many questions that couldn't be answered till I talked with my school. Also, I was kind of sick of living out of a suitcase. I was excited to finally settle down somewhere that I could call home for more than just a week or two. 
My mentor teacher and vice principal came and picked me up and took me to my school to meet the principal and get some paperwork done. 
This is what my school looks like. The grass here in Korea gets so brown! It is finally starting to turn green now though. 

I found this one online

My principal seemed very intimidating when I first met him but actually since then I have become a lot more comfortable with him. He actually asked me to go to the gym everyday after lunch and hit a volleyball back and forth with him. Weird right? I guess its a Korean thing. 

After we stopped by the school they took me to Mokpo and we went to the immigration office to fill out a form so that I could get my ARC (alien registration card, sort of like a green card). 

After that they took me to my apartment. 

My apartment building (Yes, it is called "For you Dream")

My room was left very clean and nice by the previous scholar. (Thanks Emily!) 

Here's a video tour of my apartment: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1HN7L2ZZFE&list=UUXpJR3J7-Vcplrlm96UZzcQ

(I can't get my videos to upload so I decided to put them on YouTube) 

This is the area where I live. 5 minute walk to the Bus station, 5 minute walk to E-mart(similar to Walmart)

It was a Thursday when I got to Mokpo. I just kinda relaxed and organized my stuff for the first few days. Then on Sunday I went to check out the local ward. It is a ward about the size of the branch in Vancouver. They are nice people. The next Monday I went to school but didn't start classes till the following week. 

I met a few other TaLK scholars that live in my same building or right across the street. Even though my apartment is about 40 minutes from school I think it is worth it to live in the city. 

Mokpo is a small city of only about 250,000 people (that is more than Boise or Salt Lake). There are about 40 cities in South Korea that have a bigger population that Mokpo. It is a port city in southwest Korea and I heard it is the 2nd biggest port city in Korea after Busan. 

In Korea it seems that every building has either a restaurant, convenient store, or cellphone service shop on the bottom floor. Honestly, economically I don't know how they all stay open because these 3 kinds of stores are everywhere. 

The restaurants here are pretty cheap and groceries here are pretty expensive so I have found that it is almost cheaper to just eat out. Plus it is definitely more convenient. Anyway, there are probably 30 or more restaurants within a 5 minute walk of my apartment. Like I said, I don't know how they all survive. 

I always eat lunch at school. They have really good food. I have found that cafeteria food here isn't thought about the same way as in America. I think in America no one likes to eat cafeteria food if they can avoid it. So usually the food is really good. I do eat a lot more seafood here than I did in Canada. We have a lot of dishes that involve fish or some kind of _______(insert sea creature). I would say I eat some kind of seafood on a daily basis. Oh also in Korea, the principal and all the teachers/ school workers eat lunch in the school cafeteria with the students. So that's cool because in America it seems very rare for teachers to eat lunch in the cafeteria. At least from what I can remember. 

My school is pretty small. Each grade has one teacher and then there are a few other teachers for other subjects (English, calligraphy, P.E., art, music, etc.) Including lunch ladies and secretaries I think the total staff at our school is probably about 25 people. In total, kindergarten through 6th grade there are about 100 students. 

I have at least one English class for every grade. This is my classroom:

It is nicely equipped with a touchscreen T.V. that is hooked up to my computer, so that comes in handy. All this fancy equipment and yet I still have a chalkboard (Not complaining but I'm pretty sure all the other rooms in the school have white boards).

Anyway, everyday I take a bus at 11:30 and I get to my school at about 12:15. Then I eat lunch. 

My teaching schedule is as follows: 

In the 6th grade class on Tuesday and the 5th grade class on Friday I am just a co-teacher and another teacher actually teaches. 

After I finish teaching I stay at the school till 5 then I get a ride home with the 5th grade teacher who lives is Mokpo. 

On Wednesdays, after my 1 class, all the teachers meet in the gym and we play volleyball. Koreans are pretty crazy about volleyball, which is totally ok with me because I love playing volleyball. Everyone is pretty decent so it makes it fun.

Teaching is crazy. The kids are not nearly as disciplined as you would think young Asian kids would be. Some days are better than others. Overall I enjoy it, it can just be really frustrating when the kids don't even care. I think it is hard for them to realize why they need to learn English. When you don't see a need to learn something you aren't going to try very hard to learn it. So I have been thinking about doing a lesson on how English will help them in life. 

Disciplining them is hard because If I say something in English they just ignore me and I don't really know how to be mean in Korean. As a missionary we only learned how to be nice and polite in Korean, now I need phrases like "Sit down and shut up!" However, I am learning more everyday about how to get their attention and make them listen. I just don't know how my friends that don't know any Korean even get by.

Another difficulty is that it is hard to plan for lessons because I'm not sure what the children already have been taught. For example the first graders are more advanced than I thought they would be. I planned to teach them the letter A and when I went to class they already knew the whole alphabet, and not just the song but they can recognize and point out each letter.

Also, as a new teacher, I'm not really sure what the school expects of me yet so there is that difficulty too. 

Overall, it has been a great experience and despite those difficulties I am really enjoying it. I'm sure as I get more experience teaching it will become easier as well. 

By the way, my schools name is Gurim Elementary and it is in Yeongam County that's how I got the name for my blog. 

Practicums: Oh What Fun!

Ok this post wont have so much food ;).
Being in Jochiwon for the first 3 weeks was great but seemed a bit monotonous at times. However, we did have practicums (teaching practices) which I think were helpful. For our first practicum we worked in groups of 2 or 3 and we prepared a lesson plan and we taught it to real kids in a real school. We ended up with 3rd grade and the kids were actually very well behaved. It turned out better than we expected. Kendall actually ended up teaching 6th grade and he had a fight in his class and afterwards he was a little traumatized. So I got lucky I think. It was good to get a feel of what a real classroom was like.

 Here's me teaching.                          These are the other 2 scholars I taught with.                                                                 (we taught animals, hence the cat whiskers)

We had 2 more practicums but for those we just had to teach each other and pretend like we were teaching real kids. They were still pretty stressful though because we were graded and judged on how well we did. 

The first one was solo teaching and the second one was co-teaching. Here is me during my co-teaching lesson:

At this point this was the longest/thickest i had ever grown my beard. (I'm pretty sure the ladies dug it)

The worst part about practicums was that we weren't teaching real kids so it was hard for it to be realistic. Also it was very tiring trying to act like a little kid when other were teaching (we had to be their students). It sounds like fun, and it was for the first few lessons, but it got old pretty quick.

Other than practicums we did try to have some fun.
For one of our lectures we had 20 minutes to make an English video and the group with the best video from each class won a prize. Our group won! I wasn't able to upload the video, it was kinda lame anyway but still pretty good for coming up with the idea and shooting it and editing it, all in 20 minutes.
Anyway our prize was 2 tickets each to the "Color Me Rad" fun run! So when the run comes to Gwangju sometime this summer I will get to go for free. The reason we got free tickets is because that lecturer is actually the one who brought the "Color Me Rad" fun run to Korea. (Sidenote: She is Mormon and graduated from BYU).
Anyway, another group in our class made a really funny video about a dictator type teacher. So we decided to make a longer version for the talent show that was upcoming (That's why it is called Mr. Kim is back). Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzay3WI2I_s

A girl (Cheryl) also asked me to sing with her in the talent show. She had been looking for a guy to sing the male part of A Whole New World from Aladdin. So I gave in and said I would do it. I even got my K-pop teacher to help us out on our parts.

The talent show was on our last night in Jochiwon. I was pretty nervous and we had a few hiccups in our performance but it turned out ok. First, they had my mike turned way down, then once they got that fixed, I was worried that Cheryl was going to trip over my cord and I totally forgot one of the lines to the song. Anyway here is our performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGjjepfz5vU
(Oh btw: I shaved that night because I wanted to look nice for when we met our provincial coordinators). 

The next day we had a closing ceremony and we all said goodbye to each other and everyone was crying. We all jumped on our various buses and headed to our provincial orientations. My province is called Jeonnam or Jeollanam-do. Our provincial orientation was more of the same. Lots of lectures and practicums. We stayed at a business conference center that had a cafeteria and dorm rooms. It was in Gwangju, the 6th largest city in South Korea. Out of the 120 TaLK scholars that were in Jochiwon, 25 of us our assigned to the Jeonnam province. So there were 25 there in Gwangju. It was about a week long and we mostly just stayed in the dorms and worked on lesson plans and things. We did go out a couple times and had some fun. I'll write about that in my next post! 

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.