Four seasons

When we arrived the weather was freezing, colder than anything I've ever felt, it is only like 5-7 degrees Celsius though, so not as bad as I was expecting. Everywhere inside is heated so that is fine. Our apartment has underfloor heating so it wasn't too cold. There were three quilts/duvets on the bed when we arrived and we needed all of them to be warm.

Then in April it started to warm up, I will never forget when we were at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Jinhae, it was the first weekend we wore T-shirts. It was amazing not to have to wear a jersey or a jacket and to have sun on our bare skin.

From then on it got consistently warmer and by the time of the Ulsan Whale festival at the end of April we were in shorts and dresses. At the festival there was a foreigner Dragon Boat Race. This was so much fun, foreigners from all over Korea came to race the Dragon Boats. Our team came third.

Then ended the spring and the humidity got out of control, everyone was using fans and the air-con was blasting in the classroom, at home, in the store. The humidty was unbearable. I can do hot, I just can do humid. The Koreans cherish their pale complexion and would hate to get a tan. They wear long clothing and always use an umbrella to protect themselves from the sun. I don't know how they do it in the heat. I have heard of a girl putting sunblock on in class so she wouldn't get burnt from the classroom lights, i mean have you ever...

 The fan is something they love and wave around all day

 Beach is covered with umbrellas, you wouldn't want to get caught out in the sunlight.

 Umbrellas block out the sun on a summers day.

Ajummas love the visor. It can protect their whole face form the sun.


Now we have moved into the fall/autumn and the humidity just disappeared one day and now there is a definite chill in the air. Jerseys and coats are coming out. The students no longer carry around their fans, they now have small lap blankets with them where ever they go.

Wow I am dreading winter. I think I'm going to freeze. -20 degrees Celsius...

Days at school

So I am teaching English at a co-ed high school in Ulsan. High school kids are definitely not my favorite. I love little ones and studied to be a primary/elementary school teacher. These teenagers are definitely not my forte. I feel like we are too similar in age. But I have decided to make the most of it.

I teach 22 classes a week, 19 of which are normal classes. Some are all girls classes and others are all boys classes, only one class is co-ed.

When I started teaching many of the students were very amused by me being a foreigner and they were enthusiastic about classes and learning English. Many of my co-teachers say that the students who shine in my classes are the ones who are problems in their classes, I guess that just goes to show that not all students fit into the perfect mold they are trying so hard to shove them all into. All teachers have the exact same teaching methodology and expect all students to learn in the same way. Even in art classes, if the students are asked to draw a picture of a tiger, and they are creative and draw ones that are slightly different from the norm they are told that their picture is wrong, that isn't what a tiger looks like.

I'm getting carried away, off topic. So right from the beginning I had my favorite classes, and they were always the ones with the naughty students in. Normally the boys classes. I loved that they were making fun of each other(no one gets offended, its only a joke) in ridiculously bad English. I honestly don't care if you are talking during group work in my classes as long as it is in English.

I have had a second grade boy student tell me a story about his friends dad being a multi-millionaire Arab man who married a Korean woman, and they had a son, who came to live in Korea with his mom when his father was working on the oil ships. The story got unbelievable at one point and I knew he was lying and making fun of his friend for having a suntan. But both boys thought it was funny and it got them both speaking English. I loved it.

I have a girl in one of my first grade classes that tries to teach me a new Korean word every class. She is always so impressed when I remember her word and even more impressed when I remember her name. She is so enthusiastic. Her English isn't wonderful but she is always willing to try, always volunteering to go first or do something in the classroom. She is definitely one of my students who is improving the most.

As well as my 19 normal classes a week, I also have one teachers class every Monday  morning, 5 or 6 teachers come to my classroom and sometimes I will have prepared a specific lesson and other times we will just chat. At the moment, we are swapping recipes and they are teaching me a Korean card game. Initially I hated having to teach them but since I have relaxed and let the class go more into conversations between equals than having a teacher-student relationship with them it has become really enjoyable for me as well as for them.

Other then that I take an essay club class once a week for two periods. I enjoy these students and I can really see the improvement in the English abilities in them. Their writing has improved tremendously since we started in March. Normally it takes them two weeks to write an essay, they take the steps in the essay writing process very seriously and obviously they enjoy having a chat with their friends every now and then. The essay topics are normally things they are interested in.

The weeks move past with much of the sameness, but occasionally there will be a class that I thoroughly enjoy or a student who just makes my day.

Arrival in the land of lace lanterns and ligers

My boyfriend, M, and I moved to Korea (the land of Lace and Ligers) in March 2012, we have now been here for just over 7 months. Our decision to come to Korea was based on the word of a friend who was all horns and whistles about the Land of Lace, Lanterns and Ligers. So we decided to give it a shot, initially planning on staying for 2 years.

Every day is still a new experience. We are way out of our comfort zone, with very little to remind us of home. We arrived on March 3 2012 and at the airport we were met  by our co-teachers for the year. M's co- teacher is young and mine is slightly older, married with two kids. They both were very nice. They took us to drop our bags off at the place we would be staying at for the night because neither of our apartments were ready yet. The place was cute and better than I expected. But it would not be home. Once we had offloaded all of our belongings, we went to an E-mart, a large store like a hypermarket back home, to get some breakfast things and then we went out for dinner.

We were about to experience Korean food for the first time, and we were both a little nervous. First we had some green chili peppers, and Kimchi.

 This is cabbage which is fermented in a red chili pepper sauce, the longer it is fermented the better it tastes. I couldn't stand it for the first couple of months, but now I love it. It really grows on you.

Kimchi

 Then we had some Mandu (dumplings), which is pork and green onions and some other stuff in a kind of pasta pastry. These were delicious. My absolute favorite from that first night.

Mandu

We had some fish and noodle soup, it had some clams and muscles and then fish pieces in it.

Seafood noodle soup

Lastly we had pajeon, which is like a Korean pancake/pizza but the concept is like an omelette. This was so good, from the beginning it has been one of M's favorites and has become one of mine. You dip the pieces into that sauce, wow, so good.

Pajeon

All of this came with what Koreans call 'service' which just means complimentary sides.

Service - except for the soup, rice and fish

That was our first experience of Korean food and to be honest neither of us really enjoyed anything. Some of the food we forced down, but it really does grow on you. I now actually really enjoy many Korean dishes and sides.


Living arrangements:
My co-teacher hadn't actually found me an apartment yet so we were both to stay at M's place until her and I found one for me. The commute to school each morning was awful because the bus stop is so far from M's apartment, therefore a long walk and it was freezing (at least for me) March temperatures are anything from 2-10 degrees Celsius.

After about a week we found an apartment, which is amazing, it is about a block and a half from my school. We were planning on trying to find something in the middle of our schools (1 hour apart by bus) so that we would both have to commute 30 minutes each morning. But this apartment was a must have. The ceilings are high, the floors are wood. The bedroom is large and separated from the kitchen, unlike M's apartment which is only one room and much smaller. There was nothing in the apartment, so the school had to provide a bed, washing machine, fridge, table, chairs etc. My school had some extra money in the budget so they bought some cutlery and crockery. I also got a big screen TV which was a huge bonus. M's apartment was fully furnished so all of his budget went into cutlery, crockery, bedding and appliances. Which we have moved to my place and now we are sorted.

M and I planned to do one week at mine and one week at his to make the commuting fair, but my place was so much better we just ended up staying at mine full time.
There are a few other foreigners in my building which is really nice. We often have braais or do things together.

Photos of the apartment coming soon...

Organisational skills need some work...

Prior to coming to the land of Lace Lanterns and Ligers we had such huge missions when trying to organize our documents.
My biggest mission was trying to get my degree from the dreaded university. I technically graduated in December 2011 but the graduation ceremony would not take place until the following April so they refused to give me my certificate of qualification. I got letters from faculty officers and head of the examination board but that just wasn't good enough for the Korean government, they needed the actual degree. After much begging and negotiation, as well as knowing people in the right places, I got a letter, which was close to looking like a degree, with the correct wording, and I was in. Finally I had everything I needed to ship off to Korea, until we realized we had to have everything appostilled. The only place in the whole country that can appostille these documents is in Pretoria. So we sent off everything by courier. I needed my degree/letter to be certified by the Education Department and then sent to the International Relations and Immegration Department to be appostilled. This was too much for the courier to fathom and I ended up having to pay more money for them to collect the documents from the Education department the following day and take it to the International department. When all they had to do was wait 5 minutes and it would have been ready to go. The frustration was unbearable. I just wanted to break down in tears.

Once the couriers failed to succeed in this task, we opted for asking some friends to attempt it. Shame, it was such a mission for them but eventually we had success.
Much to our dismay, we needed the same process done on additional documents a few days later so we decided to just go there and do it ourselves. We packed all of our bags, not knowing if we were leaving South Africa or just having a stressful trip to Johannesburg. We went to stay with M's aunt and uncle. We saw a few friends and attempted to sort out our documents. Which turned out being a mission to even find the right buildings but once we had, it was pretty easy and we should have just done it ourselves in the first place.

So documents all stamped and embellished with official seals and ribbons, we were ready to have our visas processed. We went into the Korean Embassy with all our documents, which they didn't ask to see. We applied for the visa in record time, and were told we could collect them within the next two days. Thank goodness.
With our bags packed and now proof of approval for our visas, we booked our flights for 2 March 2012.

From waiting to hear for months and months, and stressing about whether we had all the right documents and the process of organizing them being brutal everything happened so quickly and we were going to Korea. Leaving in two days. All the stress and worry was worth it. 

Somewhere to start from

M and I have been in South Korea for just over 7 months and I regret not starting a blog when we left South Africa. We have been outside of our comfort zone for so long now, that things have become normal. I have luckily saved all my email correspondence from home and will be using that to update my blog. I can't wait to be up to date and writing in real time.