Update

Sorry that I have not been posting. My internet in my apartment is still not working correctly and I have to wait until I get paid to do something about it. With any luck there will be more posts soon!

Weird Things About Korea

There are indeed McDonald's in South Korea,  and they offer 24 hour delivery. This is a pack of their delivery vehicles. They're pretty cute. The menu is pretty much the same, although they do have something called a Bulgogi Burger, which is like a teriyaki pork burger. It wasn't bad but certainly not great. 

Living in Korea has not helped my belief in the stereotype that Asians can't drive. There are a lot of scary drivers over here and to add insult to injury none of them can park either. This car is almost entirely blocking the entrance to my apartment building!

Yet another example of the weird parking choices of South Koreans.  If they have a nice car they actually put these blue foamy blocks on the side of it. The idea being that if someone opens their door too close to your car it will hit the foamy blocks and not damage your vehicle.

Koreans spam not just your mail box but also your door. My building has a code to get into it, but this still does not deter them. These are all ads for various grocery stores and restaurants. Sometimes they are offering a good deal but I don't know enough Hangul (Korean alphabet) yet to tell where they are located.  I can leave my house with a clean door and come home 8 hours later and find twice this many posted to my door. So annoying!

All the bars in Korea have electronic dart boards.  I know this isn't that weird, but I have never in my life seen darts played so frequently and regularly in bars before.  I pretty much insist every time I go out with the other teachers that we play darts. I sadly have yet to win a game. It is now officially one of my goals for the next year to win a game of darts before I leave Korea. If I'm not back in a year it's because I still haven't won.

 

Korea has a weird trash system. You pretty much just put your trash in special trash bags on the street wherever you find another pile of trash. It can't be any old bag, but a very specific bag. You can of course buy rolls of these bags in stores, but when you purchase an item the bag they give you is a trash bag as well. This system makes for very dirty streets to say the least.  The cool thing about this is that people put furniture they don't want out on the street as well. I have found myself walking around some nights "shopping" for new furniture.

 

South Korea is VERY polluted. This is the view from my roof top in Suwon on a not so polluted day. I am trying my best to adjust to this, but coming from fresh aired California it has been a bit of a challenge. I pretty much wake up with a sore throat every morning. Although part of that might be from yelling at my students!

Getting in the Swing of Things

     So I might just be getting a hang of this whole teaching thing. So far my classes this week have gone MUCH better! It has really helped that I have actual lesson plans and units to cover in books.  I am actually starting to enjoy some of my students and I am quickly realizing which students are going to be fun and which ones are going to be a handful. It turns out I  might not be awful at this after all!
     On a different note in my little studio apartment I only have a stove top to cook on. I am lacking both a microwave and an oven. Considering that previously 98% of my cooking involved microwaving something, I could really use some suggestions on healthy stove top meals. So far I have been making a lot of fried eggs, pasta and ramen. If I keep this diet up I will balloon so much you all will not recognize me when I come home! So please send me some recipes and help me out!

First Weekend in Korea!

     I promise that pretty soon my "firsts" will be over. This particular word has seemed to dominate my blog titles.  On Friday night a couple of teachers took us newbies out to Au Jeu De, which is the College bar area of Suwon. It was a really fun night out and there was definitely some group bonding happening, which was nice. However, we stayed out until 6 a.m. I was literally walking home and it was daylight outside. SUCH a long night.
     On Saturday one of the teachers took a couple of us into Seoul. I only saw a tiny bit of Seoul called Itaewon. This particular part of Seoul is highly populated with ex-pats, so we bar hopped to a lot of western bars. It was a good little area to know about for when I inevitably get a little homesick or just want a good cheeseburger.
      That evening, once we got back into Suwon, we went out at Suwon Station and I actually met a few locals. They were very nice girls, but communicating with them was very hard. Note to self: learn more Korean a.s.a.p. ALSO, try not to learn Korean while drinking...because you won't remember any of it. Overall, it was a really fun yet really exhausting weekend.
     Now I have four more days of teaching ahead of me. I'm still not feeling great about myself as a teacher, but hopefully there will be a marked improvement this week.

The Newbie Teachers!

In one of the bars we were in there was just a pile of broken chairs in the corner. I really don't get it.

First Day of Summer Semester

      Yesterday and today are orientation days for the summer semester so I got to some of my new students. There is a batch of kids that comes Monday,  Wednesday, Friday and a batch of kids that comes Tuesday/Thursday.  I don't know if you can use the word batch to describe a group of kids or not? Perhaps I should know considering I am teaching English. It makes me think of my mom's home made chocolate chip cookies that are oh so sweet and delicious. Luckily, the first impression that I got from most of my kids is that they are pretty sweet as well.
     The one class that is going to be VERY hard for me is called Little Avalon. The Little Avalon students are in first and second grade and their English skills are SUPER basic. Yesterday it was very difficult to get any sort of discussion with them and to communicate the classroom rules to them. Also they are very young and very hyper.  I left that classroom feeling very frustrated and like a horrible teacher, which wasn't great because it was my first class of the day. Luckily my other two classes had more advanced English skills and those went very well.  I just keep telling myself to be patient and that no one is a great teacher on their very first day. I want to do well at my job and I want to help the student's learn so I will just keep trying to improve.
       On a totally different note, last night after work I stopped off at a convenience store and bought a beer and drank it on my walk home, which is totally legal here. How awesome! The only downside is that Korea has several types of beer that they make but they pretty much all taste like miller or miller light.

First Day of Exploration

       I was off yesterday for a one day break between semesters(these kids really never get a break,) so I tried to explore Suwon with another teacher who arrived at the same time as me.  We ended up basically wandering around for a couple of hours and not really finding anything in particular, but it was still fun.  We took a cab back to our apartments and I was able to use my few works of Korean, which are basically Konglish(Korean-English), to communicate with the cab driver and he actually dropped us off right where we wanted to be. I was pretty psyched about it!
     Later that night we met up with one of the English teachers who has been here for a while and she took us to Suwon Station. Suwon Station is basically a huge mall where you can find pretty much anything. The metro and train station are also based out of there, hence the name. We wandered around for a bit and then ventured out into the surrounding area which is filled with restaurants and bars for dinner.

      For dinner we had Duk Galbi, which is basically a spicy chicken stir fry. It was actually really good but a little spicy for my taste.

After dinner we got some street food. I actually don't know what they were called but it was basically like a big donut hole covered in cinnamon sugar. It was SOOOO good!