Time for More Pictures!

Okay, since I haven't really been able to describe what rural is like here, I took a couple pictures of Song-ri (where my school is located). Further down the post are a couple more Osan pictures for comparison. And! All these pics are clickable. For those who don't know, click them to see them up close, nice and big, in all their detailed glory!

This is a lane I walk down every day on the way to school. This is a road that cars actually traverse. I don't know what happens if two cars going in opposite directions encounter one another. I imagine a lot of reversing. At the end of the lane you can see a home with a gate.

I believe this will soon become a garden. You can see a small green house on the left of the picture and houses in the background.

A typical view from my walk

A slightly different view of the same spot on the same said walk.

This is one of the entrances to my school. It is the one nearest to my classroom. I pop out of here quite frequently to fill my water bottle from the delightful fresh water available outside. You can see two of the spigots on the left. Those two are not for drinking. The principal explained that that water comes from the river. Two more spigots (not pictures and further to the left) have fresh, pure, clean water. People from the village often fill their water bottles here. People do not drink the tap water here. They buy or boil. I don't really know why. I usually bring a couple liter bottles everyday and fill them for home. Thus saving ourselves the cost of buying water and the nastiness of boiled water.

Our school has a soccer field. I'm told the kids really love it. From now on I'm calling it Football as is proper. That's what the rest of the world calls it and now I'm in the rest of the world. :D The green netting is for golf. I guess we have a driving range or something in the bank. I've been promised a tour of that (and I'm assuming an golf style ass whuppin') once the weather gets nice. It's almost nice. Getting warmer daily.

Just a view down the walk outside the school. Those doors at the end lead to the cafeteria where they serve me yummy foods with names I can't really pronounce. Sometimes I'm kind of scared at what I may actually be eating. While eating lunch one day the principal asked about dog. Yes, they do eat it. He said it is quite delicious and is something akin to a comfort food for him. It's good when you're sick because it's full of vitamins and minerals. This may have been a joke, but he said after an operation a few years ago, he got a dog and boiled the whole thing in a large pot. He made the this big motion with his arms to show that it was rather large. He then ate dog everyday for something like a month. I guess it worked because he recovered from the surgery just fine. I'm still not trying dog.
First class of the day, 6th graders! Il-kyu made them set all their phones aside. Mostly so they wouldn't fiddle with them all class. This is only one of the piles. I believe a cellphone is a "necessity" for elementary school children now. I've seen them even in the hands of the 2nd graders. I need to remeber to do as in the example above for my classes without Il-kyu. They loved their damned phones.

Oh yes, I promised a couple Osan pics for comparison. This is right behind my apartment building. At the back of the picture you can see the little market that is very near to my home. Actually I think there's two markets in there. I'm also told there is a fried chicken place, but that didn't appear open when Mel and I looked.

Oh! We had fried chicken on Saturday. We found a little place right around the corner from us (5 minute walk due to crosswalk lights). 21500w got us a large plate of half fried and half spicy chicken. The spicy was covered in a sweet sauce. We couldn't find boneless so we threw caution to the wind and just tore into boned chicken. I'm pretty sure one of my pieces had a spine. I do not like boned chicken. They served us some of those buggle things while we waited for the chicken. And we had beer! Beer and chicken mmmm. It was just Cass though. Cass is like Miller Lite or something. It's pretty tasteless, it's yellow, I suppose there's some alcohol in there.... There was also a couple sides. One was something like pickled squash. The other was like coleslaw with what appeared to be a mustard dressing. It was not mustard. It was some sickly sweet substance. It was pretty good.

More Osan! On the left is actually just another view of the market I showed in the last picture. In the background is the building across the street that contains said chicken place!

Okay, here's my last picture. Sunday night we decided to get another pizza. We wanted one with the "bites" on the outside. They're basically dough balls with a little cheese in them. The place had a mexican one or a deusche one. Unfortunately the mexican one was no longer available (much to our chagrin) so we ordered the deusche one. Those items on there that look like hot dogs? Pretty sure they were hot dogs. Really good hot dogs, but still hot dogs. This one had corn just like the last one and also came with a side of sweet pickles. However there was some really good garlic dipping sauce.

So, that's that. Oh yes, so I guess the "afterschool" classes are ones I teach all by myself. No Il-kyu to help! :O Having not known this, I had nothing prepared. Il-kyu gave me a game to play with the kids which seemed like a good idea. There were 4th grade, 6th grade, and then Top Class English (volunteers and best of kids from 5th and 6th grade).

So, we played the game. It took them like 5 minutes. The rest of the both classes were riviting games of hangman! However, once we arrived at Top Class English, there was a problem. Some of the Top Class students were also in the 6th grade class the period before. So, they were kind of hangmaned out. The 5th graders however were all gung-ho for hangman. So, we played a couple games of that. I dug up another game on the internet when I thought the 6th graders could take no more. It was an "alphabet soup" game. Basically a scrabbled word fill in the blank game full of bad puns. Then I showed them pictures of and about me and mine via the facebook. So that killed that class.

The afterschool classes shouldn't be too bad. Il-kyu has material for them, we just didn't have time to get it together. He had to go to the immigration office to take care of my alien registration card. The Top Class could be a bit harder though. With the 5th and 6th graders together, there seems to be a large age disparity. The 6th graders seems a lot older and more mature than the 5th, so finding activities that appeal to both could be difficult.

Anyway, hopefully you find yourself entertained. That's it for me.

Aaron

How We Got to Korea (you know, the background details)

Okay, so I've become aware that not everyone knows how we ended up in Korea. Yes smart aleck, a plane is technically the correct answer. However, I was referring to all that interesting background stuff, not just the means of transport.

Anyway... I think the first embers lit back around May or so. Melissa and I had previously talked about going to Japan to teach. It sounded cool, but I didn't think it would be a good idea. It's very expensive to live in Japan. Teachers there have to pay for their own apartment. In addition, the pay really isn't that great. Lots of people want to go to Japan so the demand for teachers is a little less.

I was surfing the job searching resources on my college's website and came across an item that mentioned teaching in Korea. I looked into it a bit and found myself quite intrigued. The wages seemed pretty good, housing was covered, air fare too, and it sounded like a lot of fun. I talked to Melissa and over the next couple months it was something we researched into in spare time and talked about here and there.

It was too early to do any kind of paperwork back then. We couldn't come until after September due to the wedding. We also wanted to wait until after Christmas. That meant we'd be starting in the spring semester. February or March. So we researched. Well, I should say Melissa researched. Melissa read up on everything relevant.

We decided to work with a recruiter. Basically a recruiter is a person who finds people to teach in schools. The schools pay the recruiter a fee and hopefully everyone is happy. A lot of recruiters are shady and will put people in any old school. A lot of the schools are um not good. In Korea, there are public and private schools (Hagwons). Public schools have a set contract that is the same everywhere. Hagwons dictate their own terms in nearly all matters. Typically Hagwons do pay more. It is possible for an uninformed person to sign on with a Hagwon under a horrible contract. If the recruiter isn't on the up and up, the person won't know until it's too late. Then they can stick it out for the year or leave.

At first, we were talking to a Hagwon. Thankfully Melissa is very well informed and we realized that they were being a bit deceitful with their contract. We also realized the recruiter we were working with was just trying to get us to take the job. So, we jumped ship to another recruiting company.

I'm a little hazy on the details because Mel handled 99.9% of the paperwork. The new recruiter introduced us to the schools we're working at now. There was a phone interview with the schools for each of us. There was lots of paperwork, but the recruiter mostly guided us through that. So a bunch of minor details later and we're here.

So, I am working for a public elementary school. It's in a rural area just outside of Osan. Melissa is working at a high school in Osan. Oh, and rural has a very different meaning here. It does not mean farming community or anything along those lines. It's more like less city. It's hard to describe exactly.

In my school, two other people speak English. One is my co-teacher English. He speaks English very well. The other is my principal. He struggles a lot, but he has a good grasp. Everyone else.... they know very very little. It varies from person to person, but mostly 'hi' and 'thank you' are about it.

In my school English is taught from the 2nd grade on. There are two types of classes. There's regular classes and after school classes. For some reason, over here school ends after lunch. Then there are after school classes. However, I believe that they're still manditory. The regular classes have a set curriculum (by the government). After school classes have curriculum set by the teachers.

I think that coveres most of the background. I'm sure Mel can fill in all the gaping holes I left. I'm sure there's tons of stuff I left out. I'm forgetful. Oh well, tell me in the comments. Comments validate my existence. :D

Aaron

Withdrawal

So, hello there. It's my fourth day of school, my sixth day in Osan, and my seventh day without smokes (yay me!).

Seems like it will be a very low-key day today. I believe we have student council elections early on, followed by the kindergarten welcoming. I think a large portion of the rest of my day will be spent observing classes. Sitting in on 3rd, 4th, and 6th grade is on the schedule.

Yesterday I sat in on 1st and 2nd grade classes. These were not English classes, just normal everyday classes. In the first grade, I have no idea what was being taught. I learned that the 1st graders are cute and very busy. English lessons don't start until the 2nd grade, so we're weren't really able to communicate. They did enjoy babbling at me a bit in Korean. We also took them on a tour of the school and to see the English room. They were quite happy.

Second graders have a little more English. Most of the time they like to say "hi" or "hello". They did this often while I was in their class. They were learning to count to 100. The teacher had me count it out in English so they could hear that as well. It was rather amusing.

Lunches. I was scared to death of lunch. I didn't know what the food would be like or if I would like it at all. Monday I didn't get to eat lunch because I had to have a medical exam. Tuesday I dreaded it all morning. Finally, lunch came and it was excellent. We had a soup made with kimchi and tuna. Kimchi is typically cabbage that is fermented a bit and made spicy. Other vegetables can also be made into kimchi I guess. All I know is it is good. There was also rice and a small salad. The salad had a little tofu and some sprouts, but otherwise fit my perspective of normal. There was a noodle dish that also had chicken (on the bone). The principal encourage me just to pick it up and eat it, but I felt that would be a bit rude so I persisted in trying to pick the meat off with my chopsticks (quite unsuccessfully). There were also boiled carrots. I do not like carrots. I did not eat them.

On Wednesday, I was worried about lunch again. What if Tuesday was a fluke? What if I didn't like the food? What if it made me have to poo?! Well, lunch came and was even better than Tuesday. There was a spicy bean sprout soup and a large portion of rice (with corn, shrimp, ham, and other goodies in it). The salad had a mustard based dressing. There were onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and kiwi. Yes, kiwi. There was a side of a dish that I haven't learned the name of. It's like kimchi but prepared a bit differently. It was basically tender, really spicy radishes. I hate radishes. They are gross when served raw in salads. These were delicious. There was a little bottle (travel size shampoo sized) of what I thought was milk. Il-kyu told me it was actually yogurt. It was really liquidy and super sweet. Nummy! I look quite forward to lunch today.

Tonight they're having a welcoming party for me. After school Il-kyu is taking me to a Japanese sushi place where we'll meet all the other teachers. One of the teachers who lives in Osan will escort me home around 8 or 9. I've been led to believe there will be a large amount of drinking involved (FTW!).

Hmm.... what else? Oh, it's like my 8th day without my 360. Ack! I have so many games to play! I still have games from before I left in my queue and now I have Afro Samurii, Matt Hazard, Star Ocean, and Resident Evil 5. My power supply got blowed up before I had the voltage converter. Now I have to wait for a new one to come all the way from America. *sigh* I guess at least by the time it gets here, Il-kyu will have also had our new tv delivered (the one the school is buying us). I'm really worried that I'm going to be disappointed when it's not as amazing as the desk and couch. I will keep my hopes high though! :D

Is this a long enough post? What haven't I talked about yet? Are there more differences I need to address? Perhaps if commenters ask detailed questions, I will be forced to respond via posting another blog.... Get on it!

Aaron