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. 

Gwangju Field Trip

While we were in Gwangju for our provincial orientation we got to go on a cool field trip.
First we went to a memorial. In the 1980 there was a military coup that took over the South Korean government and in Gwangju there was huge resistance so they sent in the military and shut down the city and all the roads in and out. There were uprisings and the military started beating and shooting people, some of the people were even innocent and weren't involved in the uprisings. Its called the May 18th Democratic Uprising. Anyway, this event was the beginning of the democratization of the country. It led to several other uprisings in the 80s that eventually led to democracy.
Now they have a huge memorial for the victims of the massacre. It is crazy to see that this stuff was going on just 30 years or so ago. Before coming here I didn't know much about Korean history after the Korean war. One of our lectures was on Korean history of the last hundred years or so. It was very interesting to learn about the progression of the government and also the economy.

It is also a national cemetery and everyone who was killed in the massacre is buried there. Those who participated in the resistance and uprising who have died since are buried there as well. There was also a really cool museum but I didn't get any pictures of it.
After the memorial we went to a performance. They did various traditional Korean songs and dances. It was really cool except we had to sit on the floor and it was almost a 2 hour performance so by the time it was over I couldn't feel my legs, but other than that it was awesome.

Our whole group with the cast.

After the performance we jumped back on the buses and headed to a Bamboo forest. It was kinda cool. Just a big hill of huge bamboo shoots with trails running through it. They also had a souvenir shop in the midst of the bamboo where we bought some bamboo ice cream. It was really good. 

(Went to take this picture and Paul decided to turn around)

My co-teacher, me, and my roommate and his co-teacher enjoying bamboo ice cream.

After the Bamboo Forest they took us to dinner at a pretty fancy restaurant. We had a whole 7 course meal. It was really good. 

They gave us our rice in bamboo cups, that was kinda cool.

 On the last day of provincial orientation we had a ceremony where people from our individual schools came to pick us up and take us to our apartments, schools, etc. My mentor teacher (teacher that is in charge of helping me out with anything I need) and my vice principal came to pick me up.
Anyway we had to perform for them to try and impress them. Half of us sang and the other half played Korean instruments. I didn't get to play a cool instrument but that ok because they had to practice really hard for several days in a row and our practices were pretty short and simple and I already knew the song so it was no pressure. Well no pressure until they decided I should do a solo. Yes Layne! I sang...again. ;).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQDjjd2-XgM 

Here is the cooler performance which I wasn't a part of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rj-WsZYqVg
It's really long so I can't believe they learned that whole thing in 4 days. 

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! 

I Got Seoul!

Since we are stuck on the same campus all week, when it comes time for the weekend we are all ready for some fun and a change of scenery. So the first full weekend I was here me and my new friend Kendall went up to Seoul and spent some time with a couple people I know from my mission. We rode the train up to Seoul and made our way through several subway stations to find our destinations. It was an experience just trying to figure out Korean transportation by ourselves but we had a good time and it was nice to get away.
First we met my friend Jong Hyuk who was a missionary with me in Canada. He took us to a restaurant and bought us dinner.

                             Jong Hyuk, me, and Kendall (the phone is not mine, I still don't have one)

This is what we ate: It was some ridiculously hot sausage. Even though it was like eating fire, it was really good.

That night Jong Hyuk let us stay at his flat in Gimpo. Pretty awesome we didn't have to pay to stay anywhere. The next morning he came and got us and took us to the train station and we ventured back through a few different subway stations to meet my friend Ki Yeon. I know her from church in Vancouver and I also taught her a few times while I was a missionary. We met Ki Yeon and went to church with her at in Seoul. 

Kendall and I

Me and Ki Yeon

Then after church Ki Yeon took us back to her house and her mom fed us Lunch! It was great!

Yes that is fried spam!

Ki Yeon's mom was so good to us and made us lots of food. 

After dinner we took the bus, subways, and train back to Jochiwon. Back to our wonderful life at orientation. The week of the 10th through the 14th was pretty unspectacular. I honestly can't even remember anything that happened that week other than, on Friday we had a Yoga class we I really enjoyed. My body felt so good after doing Yoga. Other than that, the whole week was packed full of classes and lectures. Oh I guess one of our lecturers was a magician and showed us some cool tricks, but other than that it was quite and uneventful week. 

We did go out (on the one night we didn't have class) and explore Jochiwon a little. 

On Saturday, we had a field trip to Seoul. All of the TaLK scholars packed onto 3 big buses (by the way the charter buses here are pretty sweet and very colorful) and we headed to Seoul. First we went to a museum that had a lot of old Korean stuff. We only had like an hour to look around though. I didn't take very many pictures but here are a few. 

Huge Buddhist mural. 

Huge tower

Me with Seoul Tower in the background. 

After the Museum they took us to Hongdae (a popular part of Seoul) and let us find our own lunch and shop or look around or whatever we wanted. Me, and a couple friends went and ate pork belly, sam geoup sar. It was really good but it ended up being more expensive than we thought it would be. 

Stole this video from Kendall (along with several of the pictures)

After lunch they took us to a Korean Musical called Miso. On the way there this happened randomly as we were walking down the street. 

The play was really cool. They wouldn't let us take pictures in the play but here are some I found online. 

After the play we had the choice to either go back to Jochiwon on the bus or stay in Seoul and do what we please. So Kendall and I met up with Hwang Hye Ryeon, another friend who I used to teach in Vancouver.
We also met up with her friend Ji. They took us to a restaurant in Hongdae. It was a pizza place. It was really good. Their bread was great! Then we walked around and ate some street food and checked out some shops. 

This is what Hongdae looks like, except it was way more packed with people than that

That night Kendall and I stayed in a hostel but it was more like a bed and breakfast. We had a room to ourselves. It was really nice and pretty inexpensive. The people were really nice too and seemed excited to have us there. Sunday morning we got up and went to church with the girls. 

Ji, Hye Ryeon, Me, (cute little photo bombing girl), Kendall

It has been great to see people that I know from when I was in Canada! 

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. 

Korean Folk Village

I woke up Sunday morning, still tired but ready to go explore Korea. It was still foggy outside and sprinkling but it wasn't very cold out. I got ready and went down and ate my first meal in Korea. We had quail egg and pork jang-jo-rim (that was the first time I have had quail eggs and they were quite good). We also had kimchi sundubu (kimchi soup with soft tofu), and, of course, it wouldn't be a Korean meal without kimchi and rice. I keep forgetting to take my camera to meals so that I can get pictures of the food.
After breakfast I went to the lobby to see if I was one of the lucky 40 who would get to go on the field trip. Since I was on the wait list I didn't think I would get to go. They went through all the people then started naming people on the wait list and telling them they were in. I was 4th on the wait list and Amy (my fellow Idahoan) was 5th on the list. And guess what, they ended up taking the first 5 people from the wait list! I was psyched when I found out I got to go. The bus ride to the Korean Folk Village was much calmer than the bus ride the night before. It was light out so we could see more of what Korea looks like however it was still foggy and wet so our windows were all fogged up again. I was surprised how brown everything is. I didn't think it would be more brown than Idaho. Although, it is very hilly and all the hills are covered in trees. I am really looking forward to the spring because I think it will be very pretty then. I was also surprised that it was more rural than I thought it would be. Shoving 50 million people in a country smaller than Utah I didn't think there would be much space anywhere. But there was actually numerous fields and open space, as well as countless small hilly forests. It was funny because there would randomly be an extremely high apartment building or a couple tall buildings here and there, but they seemed so out of place surrounded by fields and much smaller buildings. It took almost 2 hours to get to the village. TaLK provided our tickets to get in and they also bought us lunch at a restaurant while we were there.
The village was pretty cool. It had a lot of Korean traditional stuff and it showed a lot of buildings from the Joseon dynasty. Here is a link that shows a map of the village:
 http://www.koreanfolk.co.kr/folk/english/guide/guide_map.html

Most of the buildings are from the Joseon dynasty which was from 1392 - 1897. The houses with tile roofs are upper class and the buildings with straw roofs were where lower class, poorer people lived or worked.
It was super muddy because it had been raining, and it was foggy the whole time we were there but it didn't rain while we were there and the air was kind of refreshing even with the fog.

Korean Totem Poles

Some Cool Shrines

They had some intricate wood carvings

 Some cool structures and scenery 

 Very artistic Buddhist shrine. (these statues were pretty big) 

Buddhist Temple (this was the prettiest building inside and out)

Inside

Huge Buddha (Very cool!)

This was just in front of the temple.

A really old Bell

There were various performances while we were there. 

Here is a video of this one. 

You write your wish on a paper then tie it to the rope. In the fall they burn the rope and you wish will come true (or something like that)

Horses and Horsemen did a cool show but I didn't get a video

Some great bridges for pictures. 

More scenery of the village. 

There was a separate part of the village that had a amusement park with rides and everything. There was also a section with various museums and art. 

Don't I look amazing?

Fun in the jail

Watch your head when you exit (love the Engrish)

The ride back, everyone pretty much slept on the bus because we were all understandably tired. I was unfortunate and sat right in front of the only people who didn't sleep. Instead they just talked the whole way home so I couldn't sleep. 

Sunday night we had a pre-orientation that was pretty much orientation for the orientation. 

Had a great time at the village! So glad I went even though I was jet lagged! It was a cool experience and a great day.