chuseok pt. 1: seoul (updated)

or, chuseok: looking for a seoul to steal. i couldn't not make a seoul pun. stop judging me with your cold internet eyes. so last week marked the chuseok holiday in south korea, which meant i had most of the week off, which meant it was time for my first big trip of the year. but wait! i'm getting ahead of myself. what exactly is chuseok?

according to local experts (wikipedia), chuseok is a major harvest festival celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. whatever that means. to the uninformed and barely interested american, chuseok is more or less the south korean version of thanksgiving. families return to their hometowns to share large, traditional meals (with plenty of songpyeon!) and pay respect to their ancestors. to foreigners living in south korea, chuseok is primarily recognized as free time to do whatever we want. or in other words, awesome.

so with nearly an entire week off of school, a handful of us daegu teachers decided to book a trip with adventure korea, an outfit based out of seoul that organizes trips for foreigners all around the country. our trip would start on wednesday when we would take the ktx express train up to seoul. after staying in seoul for two days, we would take a bus to seoraksan (sorak mountain) for three days of hiking and/or beach bumming. at night we would stay at a spa resort and have the option of saunas and hot baths. does it sound amazing? uh, yeah. and, aside from some minor complaints about adventure korea, it was.

i'm breaking it down into two parts just because there's too many pictures for one post. so this first part is just seoul. we (max, chelsea, nancy, gemma and myself) left for seoul around 11am on wednesday morning (my first express train ride by the way). the ktx takes around 2 hours to get from daegu to seoul so we arrived in seoul shortly after 1pm. i plan on uploading a video i took on the train but the file size is too big. that's what updates are for!

and here's the update! video from the train ride (i officially have the nerdiest voice ever):

i wouldn't be staying with max and crew in seoul so i had to meet another group of friends (connie, colleen, kailey, lara, and francoise) at the station. from there we headed to mr. kim's friendship hostel where you "stay as guests but leave as friends!" this was also my first hostel experience and i gotta say it was pretty nice: bunk beds, working shower, free internet, cable, nobody kidnapping me to do horrible torture experiments in the middle of the night. it also had a great location next to hongik university (aka. a college town, aka. plenty of bars, aka. my memory is fuzzy??).

not having any real plans, we decided to set off to see gyeongbok palace. built in 1394, it was the largest of the five grand palaces built during the joseon dynasty (i had to look that up). being a holiday, there were hundreds of people there, ruining my photo ops...again. i should probably touch up these photos when i get a chance. they look dark and sinister.

these little girls are dressed in traditional korean dresses, called hanbok.

basking in the palace's royal splendor worked up our appetites so we hopped on the subway and tried to find something delicioius. actually, from the moment we arrived in seoul i feel like i was constantly eating. its like i had a tape worm. or a family of tape worms. i ate seven meals a day with dessert making up at least 3 of them. i have no regrets (note to kailey/connie: which is not to say i never have regrets).

compared to daegu, seoul is big. but daegu is big, so what is seoul? seoul is huge. for every one thing daegu has, seoul has an entire area of town devoted to it. seoul has bridges that shoot out water shows. seoul has one of the world's largest subway lines. seoul has mexican food.

seoul has garfield the cat.

we ended the first night by meeting one of the epik class leaders from orientation named nicholas (that's his "english" name, i don't know his korean name). i didn't know him from orientation but i guess he's kind of awesome. he's tri-lingual (korean, english and french), super friendly and taught us some korean drinking games that, wouldn't you know it, got everyone pretty wasted. after hitting up some bars we landed in a luxury noraebang where we stayed until about 5 in the morning. korea!

the next day we went for a walk.

this is a little outdoor workout space they have hiding under a bridge. there were all sorts of old people here doing crazy exercises on crazier machines. they have places like these all over, not only in seoul but in daegu, too.

later that evening we decided to go to seoul tower to watch the sunset over the city. it's an impressive view. they also had these mesh figures hanging all over the place. they looked pretty cool floating against the sky. i want to make a comment about the ethereal quality of their mesh transparency as compared to the vacuous quality of the space/sky, but this isn't livejournal, so i'll just leave it at that thought.

yeah lets put the little kid up on the railing that looks out over a huge drop on the hill top. way to pull a mj (michael jackson).

after we hiked down the huge hill leading up to the tower we were, of course, hungry. so we hopped in a cab and tried our luck at finding food. it was the sign below that won us over. surely this would be greatest meal of our lives!



it was a mistake! bland, tasteless noodles in a bland, tasteless sauce with dokk (rice cake), egg and the worst mandu i've ever had. so i got a corn dog from a street vendor afterwards. no regrets!


i'm not entirely sure what was going on here but i think it was some sort of dance contest. most of the dancers would go about 2 minutes before giggling and covering their faces. i'm not sure who won.

that night we decided to call it early, because afterall, we had to wake up at 6 the next morning to catch the 7:30am bus. somewhere along the way those plans fell apart. we met up with other people who were in seoul. we went to a club. we lost track of time. we went to bed at 4am. yes, 4am. when did we need to wake up again? oh yes, 6am. brilliant. and what were we supposed to be doing the next day? going on a massive hike. right. awesome.

on the next installment: did our brave reporter meet his end on the cliffs of seorak mountain, or did he live to blog another day?! perhaps the fact that you are reading this question is a clue. stay tuned!

cute asian girls in cardigans

are taking over south korea. fall always was my favorite. also, check out those heels...

big update coming soon about my seoraksan trip. pics pics pics! (this post might get picked up on google porn searches?)

when you're alone

when you're alone

and life is making you lonely,

you can always go...

downtown!

downtown daegu is a melting pot of stationed u.s. soldiers, english teachers, white guys with korean girlfriends, and, of course, koreans. there are bars, there are restaurants, there are noraebangs, there are dvd bangs, there are arcades, there are weird themed rooms that look like little girl bedrooms with huge teddy bears where couples can play wii sports or old creepy men can watch tv. its what you imagine an asian city to look like. a huge mess of neon. they also serve cocktails in a bag that look like adult capri-sun. i guess i'm saying it's pretty great.

here's a video i took of a cosmetic bottle dancing:

and here's petula clark singing "downtown":

daegu kwanchon chodeung hakkyo is falling down

daegu kwanchon elementary school - tucked neatly into the suburbs of daegu proper in a little town they call chilgok (the name chilgok means seven valleys, which comes from the seven peaks of nearby palgongsan). the school provides for around 700 students (if my math is right, which it probably isn't) from grades 1st through 6th. english education in the public school system starts at grade 3, which means i only see about 500 of the students. that seems like an absurd number now that i'm looking at it. 500 students each week. but i guess it does feel like it by the time end of day friday hits.

it's been two weeks since i first started teaching and i feel that maybe...maybe i'm starting to get the feel for it. i wouldn't go tossing around the words "pro" or "natural," but the words "failure" and "slouch" don't seem to apply either. teaching english in korea is based on a cooperative teaching method. this means that in every class i teach i work directly with a korean english teacher as well. the amount of control i get over the classroom varies greatly from teacher to teacher and class to class. i have 3 co-teachers in all: miss yun, miss park, and miss kim. miss yun, who teaches 3rd and 5th grades, is my head co-teacher, meaning she is responsible for my well-being, deals with my paperwork, and is more or less a surrogate parent to me. she's married and has a 3 year old son whose name i forget (sorry miss yun!). miss park is a year older than me and is responsible for the 6th grade. she's learning to play the drums and is apparently a really good "rock-style" singer, although i've yet to hear example of this. miss kim is two years older than me and teaches 4th grade students. she's a contract teacher so she splits her time between daegu kwanchon and nearby unam elementary school. her english is probably the best of the three having spent a year studying in canada.

4th and 6th grade english classroom. every classroom comes equipped with a sliding whiteboard that reveals a huge flatscreen tv that they play lessons from a cd that accompany their textbooks. i show a lot of ppt presentations on those screens.

co-teaching has its advantages and disadvantages both. when it works well it makes for a productive classroom - i can use english freely, students know what they are doing, and there are few hang-ups because the korean teacher can translate if need be. however it doesn't always work so fluidly. since i'm the first native english speaking teacher they've worked with, and this is the first time i've taught (anything really), nobody is entirely sure what my role in the classroom should be. sometimes it works out well and i'm involved in the entire lesson, but other times i sort of stand awkwardly to the side while the other teacher goes on for 15 minutes playing things off the cd. (the cd thing is kind of weird too. half of the class focuses on these cd activities - which involve listening to dialogue, repeating key words and phrases, watching video clips, etc. sometimes i wonder if i'm even needed when they have these tools at hand) i think a part of this is because we don't work together on the whole lesson plan. rather, they usually come to me at the end of the day and tell me to figure out an activity for the following days class. i think they also probably don't know how well i work in the classroom so they're trying to ease into it. and like i said, it's only been two weeks, so i'm not expecting everything to be perfect. these are just some initial impressions of my new occupation.

this was a table we set up for the lesson "do you want some more?" while miss yun was going over cd material, i was sitting in back at this table. one group at a time would come back and we would practice an authentic dining experience. i would offer them food, ask if they wanted a particular item, when they finished the snacks i would ask if they wanted more, etc. it was a good activity that i think utilized the whole native teacher aspect well. some students are really shy and its hard to get them to talk, even when addressed, but others get really into the dialogue and ask a lot of questions and try their best. miss yun wants to do more activities like this in the future which i couldn't agree with more. similarly, for my friday 4th grade class i had to come up with dance moves for a song on one of the teaching cd's. for half of the class i taught the song and dance moves and had the students practice singing and doing the movements. then the second half of the class they practiced a role play and i got to pick the top 3 performances. everyone had a lot of fun and i felt really involved in the class.

these are some 5th grade boys. i do not know their names yet. sorry guys.

these are some 6th grade boys.

and this a class of 6th graders. they were the only class that wanted to do a whole class picture. usually the girls were very against it. the kids, as maybe you can gather from the pictures, are all really funny and adorable. the younger ones will walk up to me and the hallway and give me a hug. the older ones prefer high-fives. the girls just wave and giggle and try to push each other into me.

in addition to my normal classes, i teach 3 teacher classes each week. at first i was really nervous about teaching teachers. i thought they would come to class and cluck their tongues and shake their heads at what i called "teaching." turns out they're the most fun i have teaching all week. unlike my normal classes, where i don't do much planning, i plan the entire teachers class. this means i get a lot of freedom in what we do. thanks to some advice from miss yun, i've started off mostly with lessons and activities that focus on pronunciation. the teachers really let their hair down. they're all smiles and laughs and we have a good time.

so that's it two weeks in. maybe in another two weeks i'll be singing a different tune, but for now i'm enjoying the new challenges and responsibilities. next week is chuseok, meaning i have most the week off. a group of us are going up to seoraksan national park for some hiking, beaching and, i dont know, probably drinking, too.

daegu, jump on it, jump on it, jump on it

daegu ya'll! after a 3.5 hour drive through an unbelievable mountain path we arrived - daegu, city of hot weather, hot food and hot women (and i'm serious, that is what they are known for in korea). after a bunch of waiting around we were finally introduced to our co-teachers, our surrogate parents for the next year. mine, a small woman named yun i-sook (miss yun), who looks like she could be blown away by a strong gust of wind. her english is so-so, but as a fellow human being she's an all-star. koreans, i will say, are generally some of the nicest people i have ever met (like this story: i was walking around looking for something to eat. i ended up going into a random restaurant and after struggling with the menu, the old lady who worked there helped me order, and after a little while gave me some free rice cakes and soup. she even helped me with my korean). and at the front of the line is miss yun. it's only been a week but she's already gone out of her way to help me settle into my new korean life. she's taken me shopping, invited me out to dinner, took me to a traditional korean market with her family, took me to the international body painting festival with another teacher from our school...and so on. oh, speaking of the school - i've been placed at kwanchon elementary school in the chilgok area of daegu. its sort of north of the main city, a kind of self-sufficient island with everything you could possible need (except the costco which is downtown). the other teachers at the school are just as great. it's surprising how many of them have at least a little knowledge of the english language. sure, there are gaps in communication, but for the most part they try to involve me in their conversations. it also helps that i am a consummate drinker. on both monday and tuesday nights i was out with my fellow teachers, slamming down soju and maekchu (beer), chowing down on all sorts of barbecued meats (like chicken stomach, for example), and having a great time. i genuinely want all these people to be my friends. i want to take them with me to the states and be as welcoming and hospitable to them as they are to me. anyways here are some pictures (none of school yet, i'll try and get those next week).

my apartment. its tiny. essentially a cube with two smaller cubes attached at the top that house a bathroom and a tiny kitchen/laundry room combo. it's really only limiting when i try and cook. also no dryer. i wash my clothes but by the time they dry on the drying rack they're all brittle and wrinkled. small complaints for an overall agreeable living space.

the international body painting festival was held in daegu this year. it threatened to rain all day - i'm not sure how that would work (i guess it would just be the body festival) - but luckily it held off, at least while i was there. unfortunately we arrived too early to see the finished works, but i did get to see the work in progress. later some of my fellow daegu epik teachers showed me pictures they took of the finished work. you'll have to take my word for it that it was pretty cool.

living statue with miss yun on the left there in the nautical stripes (abi i think you'll be pleased to hear it's all the rage over here in korea - like everywhere, its crazy).

some teenagers rocking it out while people waited to see the painted bodies. they were actually kind of good. the girl had some pipes on her.

daegu!

i met another epik teacher at the festival and afterwards we toured downtown daegu with her co-teacher's son playing guide. he was a computer engineering major and had pretty decent english for only studying for 6 months. still he got flustered a lot and had to resort to looking up translations on his phone. its a common practice with korean/english conversations. he took off after dinner so we met a group of other epik teachers at a canadian owned bar in downtown daegu called the holy grill. it was like a mini-reunion of orientation. after 10pm they started an all you can drink for 15,000 won deal. that's not even $15. it was crazy. josh, the dude with the glasses in the pictures below, was a sweaty mess by the end of the night. i don't even know how he got home.

left to right: gemma, chelsea, max (engaged to chelsea), josh.

after we left the holy grill, we went down to the basement to a bar called go go vinyl. it was basically a dance club. there was dancing. some of it was awkward. some a little too suggestive (for instance, what's with the girl in the yellow?). most of it was fun. at this point josh was like a crazy drunken tornado, tearing up the dancefloor, making challenges to dancers way out of his league. there was little we could do to stop him. the next picture tries to illustrate the seizure inducing lights that invaded the dance floor.

and this picture is mainly for abi. it's impossible to tell but above the monkey's left hand (picture's right side) it says "woo kiki." hopefully i'll be back to get a better picture.