Tag: south korea

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

Welcome to Korea: Chickpea vs. Daegu

Posted on by chickpeainkorea

Anyeong haseo from Daegu!

I am officially in my new apartment.  So much is going on, but I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. First of all, you can thank someone in my building for this post, as I’m using their unsecured wireless network. I probably won’t be able to get Internet at my house for about a month, since I need my Alien Registration Card to set it up, and that won’t come for a month or so. I’ll just have to hope Mister or Mrs.  Unsecured Wireless doesn’t notice that I’m using his connection, or use a PC bang (Internet cafe) until then.

My big lesson plan presentation yesterday went well — my group took second place overall, which was nice. I wasn’t too nervous, and I feel a lot better about writing lesson plans now. Thanks, EPIK!

Last night was fun — we had the farewell dinner and a talent show by our fellow teachers. It sort of felt like the grown-up version of the last night at camp. Of course, lots of people went out afterwards, but Alex was feeling sick and we had a big day today so we just packed out stuff and hit the hay early. Yeah, yeah, we’re old.

Today was, of course, the big day. We had a four-hour bus ride from the orientation site to Daegu, where we finally met our co-teachers. Turns out I am the first native teacher my new school has ever had. I think this is a good thing, since they have no preconceptions about Native English Teachers — some previous NETs give us a bad reputation. Also, that means they’re as new at this as I am, so that helps.

So, it turns out I’m teaching middle school — hoorah! In Korea, middle school is  the equivalent of grades 7, 8 and 9 in the U.S. (13 to 15 year olds). I’ll only be teaching grades 1 and 3 (7th and 9th grades). This is great news because it means fewer co-teachers and fewer lesson plans.

I also found out that I’ll have my own …

Alex and Chickpea Do Korea

Welcome to Korea, Day 3: It’s official, I like kimchi

Posted on by chickpeainkorea

Tons has been happening here, and you know how bad I am at keeping things brief, but I’ll try.

The flights went about as smoothly as they could’ve. When we checked our luggage, both Alex and I were each 12 pounds over the weight limit (that translates to $164 EACH extra luggage charge on Singapore Airlines). Fortunately for us, our check-in lady must be related to Mother Theresa because she helped us rearrange our stuff into our other suitcases, allowed each bag to be about six pounds over the weight limit so we wouldn’t be charged, and even came around from the counter and helped us zip up the last bag (after Alex and I had been making a scene for about 10 minutes in the middle of the airport while he tried to zip it while I was sitting on it.)

The flights weren’t too bad, even the loooong one from San Francisco to Seoul. We got all kinds of cool free stuff (socks! toothbrushes and toothpaste! a Givenchy travel bag!); each seat had personal TVs with about a zillion movies and TV shows to choose from (along with a Learning Korean game that I didn’t learn much from); and even the food was good. (Seriously, they came around about once an hour with snacks and drinks — free beer! — in addition to a few full-sized meals.)

After we landed in Korea, it took three freaking hours for our shuttle to arrive to take us to our orientation site, which was a three-hour drive away. We didn’t get into Jeonju University until about midnight, Korea time, so we had been traveling for a solid day and a half, working on about six hours sleep in the past 48 hours. (We spent the final hours before we left trying to cram in as much crap as possible into our luggage, which explains the weight overage. We added it up and it turns out that, between the two of us, Alex and I brought a little over 300 pounds of luggage. Blergh.)