Safe and Sound in Geoje!

After a 13 hour flight to Beijing, 13 hour layover in Beijing, and a 2.5 hour flight... I was picked up from the Busan airport in an airport limo, complete with a driver holding a sign with my name and massage chairs in the car! My boss, Lily, met me at my apartment, which is super cute and already furnished and pretty well equipped. Beth and Will stopped by soon after and took me on a quick walking tour of our city: Aju, their apartment, the school... and finally, a delicious korean BBQ dinner!

I feel very rested and I have mostly acclimatized to the time zone and everything here. The only tipoff that my internal clock is a bit wonky is that I am writing this at 7:45am local time on a Sunday!!

Found Will and Beth!!

Geoje Calling

After a long hiatus from Korea -- and updating my blog, I will be traveling to Geoje, South Korea to teach at Tree House English. I will be meeting my friend Beth and her partner Will, who are already teaching at Tree House. I am excited to have awesome teaching colleagues and great travel partners for this experience! Stay tuned for updates and pictures of food, adorable anime characters and travel adventures!

Here is a link to Beth and Will's blog, which gives some detail about Geoje and their experiences teaching English in Korea so far!

http://operationexpat.wordpress.com

Next stop, North Korea!

This weekend, we decided to go to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea.
Our tour took us to a tunnel that was discovered in 1978, that the North Koreans tried to dig between their capital city, and Seoul. Another part of the tour took us to an observation area where you can see across the demilitarized zone into North Korea. Unfortunately, it was pretty hazy on Sunday so we couldn't see a whole lot. Finally, we went to a railway station that was renovated in 2007 and was supposed to connect North and South Korea by rail so that South Korea can ship goods by rail to other countries like China. It is pretty much abandoned now, but its main claim to fame is that it's the only station in the world that shows the next stop 'Pyongyang,' which is in NK.

We definitely maximized our weekend... and it will pretty much be our last one in Korea, since we fly out early next Sunday.

Now we are wrapping up camp. All the kids are writing final tests today and tomorrow. I have also discovered that they love Tom and Jerry cartoons! I am cracking up because they are from the '50s and I have heard them say 'Zoot Suit' and 'Gee whiz' so far!

Gyeongbok Palace

For our day off, we went to Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul... it was SO hot... so we didn't enjoy it as much as we could have... we were mostly trying to avoid the blinding sun! It was pretty cool, though, we could see traditional houses and buildings. We also went to an exhibit about one of Korea's famous Kings and military heroes. They had lots of cool interactive exhibits, and we got to write our name in Korean.

Then we went to a shopping area and wandered around a bit before coming home.  We are making the most of our 1 day off a week by seeing lots of cool stuff!

---

 

2nd Week at Camp!

Things at camp are still good -- the time goes by quickly. 

We took Kim Young Dal out for dinner last night to a really delicious barbeque restaurant. It's quite handy, too, because he can order for us in Korean!! In class today, we are making a special dessert with our classes -- called Patbingsu.  It is kind of like ice cream... shaved ice with toppings: red bean paste, chocolate syrup, sticky rice cake and fruit cocktail... We'll see how that goes... the kids are excited about it!

We have continued to sing very contemporary songs... the ABBA hits have come out... and next week I have two days of the Carpenters, back to back!! "Top of the World" and "Yesterday Once More"... although thankfully no Willie Nelson (or Beethoven's Attic...)

We work today (Friday) and tomorrow, and then have Sunday off again... Kim Young Dal suggested that we go to a palace in Seoul, so we will probably do that. After tomorrow, we will be half way through the camp! We are starting to get excited about Tokyo!

My students are doing self portraits at the moment so I have a few minutes to update the old blog!  Hope you all enjoy your long weekend... while I only have one day off.... :)

Baegundae Summit

As planned, we went 'hiking' with Mr. Kim on Sunday... 850ft+ and 6.5km later... We made it up to the Baegundae Peak and back! Some of the climb involved stairs or stones in the shape of stairs, but towards the end, we were propelling ourselves up a sheet of granite to reach the top! 

The mountain was just outside of Seoul, so we had to take a 2hr ride on the metro from Suwon to even get there... And then the actual climb. Making small talk (with limited English-Korean communication skills) Mr. Kim busted out a gold pin he got for climbing Mt. Everest... 4 years ago... When he was 67 ! Apparently he has climbed mountains all over the world. Luckily, we are 45 years younger than him so we were able to somewhat keep up! The views were really cool from the top. We could see the whole city of Seoul and many other smaller mountain peaks.

When we got home we were all exhausted so we made some dinner and went for a little nap... Mine ended up being a full nights sleep as I didn't wake up until it was time for work on Monday! Kate received the picture above from Mr. Kim, who is apparently something of a photo editor... As you can see he has pasted his face on the Korean flag! Ha ha

This week, school is going well so far. I sang a Backstreet Boys with my kids yesterday & Surfin USA today.  It's hard to watch the Olympics here because I can't get anything besides Korean programming, and not only do I not know what they are saying, but they are also showing sports I know nothing about... Archery, Handball, Judo, Fencing, Badminton... The only familiar sport they play sometimes is swimming.

Other than that, everything is good. We are having a lot of fun!

Hwaseong Fortress

We have been at camp for 3 days now... It is going much better for me, personally, because I went from having the youngest class of 30 kids in Taiwan to the oldest class of 11 kids in Korea! What a difference! All of the class sizes here are so small... It's a treat! As usual, this camp has its own quirks... We have 'circle time' every day where we sing popular music with our kids.. The first day was 'Take me home Country Road' by John Denver. Yesterday it was 'Life is a bowl of cherries' from the current musical, Fosse. There actually are some real songs mixed in there, like Justin Bieber... But watching my kids croon to John Denver was worth every penny! We haven't been doing as much exploring since camp started, but yesterday we went to one of the markets and walked around and then walked back along te fortress wall, which was lit up at night. 3 more days of work this week, then we have the day off on Sunday. We are supposed to meet our friend Mr. Kim for a mountain hike! I will definitely keep you posted on how that goes. One of Linda's students recommended that we bring frozen water bottles!