8/13: First Week in Jochiwon



YeonDong Elementary School

YeonDong Elemental School with Yoo Jin and Seo Hae In running towards me

Going out for Korean BBQ with the foreigners

First night in Jochiwon, out for Korea BBQ

First night in Jochiwon: The youngest pours. That is soju which is a rice liquor

Cheongju-A larger city about 40 minutes east of Jochiwon

The stream right outside my apartment

First night in Jochiwon, Chimek

Love motel

Practicing CPR on the sidewalk

Famous celebrity cutout at Home Plus

My apartment building

Running path outside of my house

Lotus Park: running path by my house

             The day finally arrived to leave orientation and meet our coteachers, see our school, see our apartments, see our town..needless to say, it was stressful! We packed up, said goodbye to our mentors and hopped up onto the coach buses to take us to Sejong. The entire bus ride I was nervous and so anxious and had no idea what to expect. There were only five of us going to Sejong and all we knew was that it was a relatively new city. Basically the Korean government decided that they wanted to make a new government headquarters and picked a spot of land to place this new massive city. Therefore we were knew we were close when we saw huge high-rise apartments surrounded by a ridiculous amount of cranes.

            Finally arrived at the Sejong Office of Education building and it seemed like everyone was meeting their coteachers in the parking lot, exchanging pleasant greetings and getting their luggage packed into their coteachers cars, except me. Then I see this young guy come over and ask if I was Julie and introduce himself as a teacher at YeonDong Elementary School. When I asked him if he was my coteacher he said no but his English was a bit broken and hard to understand so I wasn’t sure what was going on. Needless to say, my nerves were not calmed. All of the English Native Teachers and Korean teachers went out for a lunch where once again I had the chopstick initiated panic attack as I clumsily tried to munch on the side dishes. We had bulgogi soup which is basically a meat stew which was great except that it was 100 degrees outside and the steam from the soup caused me to melt. I did have the chance to try raw crab though which was alright. They cut the crab in half and you literally just suck the meat out. In later months I learned that this is an acquired taste but is relatively popular in restaurants. After lunch we had to wait for like 30 minutes to an hour for the landlord of our building to come show us where we were going to be living. He finally shows up and we all get back in the cars, spend an unnecessary amount of time trying to get out of our parking spots on a one way street only to drive across the bridge to our apartments. Literally I live right across a small stream from the bridge and can see the restaurant from my window! Hilarious!!

           Anyways, get to our apartment building which was really pretty on the outside so I had high hopes but as soon as  I walked into my apartment, my heart sank. It was the smallest room I had ever seen. I made the mistake of walking in with my shoes on and was quickly yelled at by the landlord to come back and take my shoes off. Luckily “come back” meant taking one step backward as there really wasn’t anywhere to go in the apartment. As soon as you enter there is the kitchen which is about the size of my bathroom at home and then as it is considered a one-room, the one and only room besides the small kitchen and bathroom is about the size of the office at my house with a desk and a bed. It is way smaller than I expected and is more of a bedroom than an apartment. BUT it is brand new. Literally everything still has plastic on it which is good and bad. Good as it means that everything is new but bad as I have to buy everything I need for the apartment from silverware and pots to blankets and pillows.

            Once I got over the shock of the size of my apartment we headed to my school where I met my principal and VP. When we pulled up to the school I was so pleasantly surprised at how small and fresh it looked. The principal was out in the garden with his rabbits and chickens when I met him and already thought he seemed like a laid-back, nice guy. The Vice principal was a little less laid back but had a really warm smile.  I also was taken around and introduced to all the teachers including the handsome fourth grade teacher as the guy helping me told me. He said,  “This is the fourth grade teacher. Isn’t he very handsome?” I was kinda just thrown into that one, lol.

            The guy helping me had some work to do so I was told to sit at my desk in the teachers lounge and look over the curriculum I would be teaching. So I looked, and looked and looked, just waiting for a couple of hours before it was time to go to Home Plus to get me some stuff from my apartment. Home Plus is basically Target and we spent some time running around trying to find the essentials for my apartment. It was pretty overwhelming as it finally hit me that I am in a country that speaks a completely different language and therefore all the products are in another language. Not to mention there are like six brands for each thing you are looking for. So imagine trying to find canola oil when there are six different brands of canola oil, they are right by the sesame oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, etc and you can’t read any of the signs. My helper tried to help me out the best he could but it was hard with his English and luckily I ran into a short Irish woman who helped me sort some stuff out and invited me to the Sejong Teachers Facebook page. Later it would turn out that I would become friends with her and even travel around Korea with her.

            Finally finished up some shopping before going “home” and turning this barren one room into my home for the next year. I spent the rest of the night unpacking before going out to dinner with two of the girls I came with. All of our Korean was limited so we picked a random restaurant and randomly picked something off the menu. It turned out to be DELICIOUS and a future favorite restaurant of mine. Once we finished up eating we went to our landlords to ask him about getting wifi set up in our apartments. Who knew that simple question would lead to a weird and long night. He decided to take us on a tour of Jochiwon, the town within Sejong City (more like Sejong County) where we live. He took us to the foreigner bar where we ran into some fellow Americans and then when we asked him where one of our other friends lived, not only did we go straight to her apartment but then went to another apartment building where he knocked on another foreigners door (by this time it was like 10pm). Someone answered and he said, “These are new teachers and they want to make friends. Let’s go get chimek.”…WHAT????? We had no idea where he was taking us or what was going on. The girl, Chris, agreed and before I knew it we were all (including our landlord) sitting at BRDs (a delicious chicken restaurant) eating chimek which is basically fried chicken with beer. Although I was so full, the chicken was fantastic!! Eventually the night was over and I was able to go home to try to get some sleep before my first day of work.

          For the next few days life was relatively easy. Life consisted of watching the English classes that were already happening and sitting at my desk preparing lessons which was way more difficult than I thought considering I still hadn’t met my coteacher and had no idea what level the kids were. It was fun to watch the classes though cause before class started the kids would run over to me and ask me questions (in Korean), play with my tablet, play with my iPhone, and anything else I had on the desk. They were so curious about me, it was so cute. They were all playing Gonggi (공기) which is really similar to jacks. I was just watching and these girls just beckoned me over to play with them. They were awesome and I totally sucked but at least it got me interacting with them. Then when class was over a girl from another group came over and said "Teacher, you play with me next time." I was so excited to hear her English and to get invited to play! Another time these other girls from fourth grade came over and told me to come with them after lunch (told being a strong word, they really just beckoned and pulled me with them). I think they were supposed to be cleaning the gym but instead they wanted me to play with them and see how far we could throw our shoes. So there we are throwing our shoes in the gym and running around instead of cleaning, oh well! I did get to teach them the hokey pokey which they liked and began to learn their names (Su Jin, Hyo Joung and Min Je).  I also got to meet my future coteacher who seemed pretty nice. She spoke great English which was awesome and actually told me what was going on in the school. I was pretty excited about working with her!
          I did have some awkward moments though. The first couple of days at lunch I just had the Principal stare at me as a I struggled with chopsticks. He made some comment in Korean and laughed at my poor attempt. I had never used chopsticks before and had no idea how to use them. The secretary sitting next to me positioned them in my hand correctly but they just twisted and squirmed about. I was so embarrassed that that night I went home and bought some chopsticks and only used them for the next week. Everything I ate, I ate with chopsticks and practice picking up and dropping things. Luckily it came a lot easier than I expected and within a couple of days I could actually eat at lunch. I still dropped stuff all over the place but it wasn't half as terrible. 
          I also learned that every Wednesday the teachers played volleyball together. It was wonderful. The whole staff came out and I had a blast. No one was that good so I looked amazing (just the fact that I could serve overhand got a lot of oohs and aahhhs). One of the teachers even asked me if I wanted to play in a league with her. Plus after eating we all went to the teachers lounge where they had ordered in fried chicken for us. It was hilarious though because all of a sudden someone opens the fridge and pulls out two six packs of beer, IN SCHOOL at 5pm!! That was for sure a first for me!

            In terms of social stuff, the Irish woman I met earlier, Maggie, had organized a dinner for the foreigners to get to know each other. We all went out for Korean bbq and then went to the foreigner bar after. It was nice to meet people and know some of the faces I see so often around town. It was so thoughtful and I really appreciated getting to know all the foreigners and build a support system.

            That weekend I had no idea what to do so Friday night I went out to eat with two of the new girls and had amazing samgyupsal, bbq meat, before going back to Home Plus to buy more odds and ends. It was the first time I had ever taken a taxi in Korea and was really proud of us that we made it there and back. Saturday I went to Cheongju which is a city about 40 minutes east of Jochiwon. We weren’t really sure where to get off so got off at the first busy area. We wandered around and actually ended up getting sushi for lunch which was delicious. We wandered around a bit, found the love district which basically consisted of many love motels. In Korea there are tons of love motels which are “rent by the hour” hotels that have these dark curtains over the parking lot so you can’t see who goes in and out of the cards, lol. We also wandered upon a group of students who were providing free CPR courses right on the sidewalk so one of my friends joined in and learned CPR. We were supposed to be meeting some other teachers and soon realized that we were way far away from them so hopped in a taxi and headed towards shinhae (“downtown”). We arrived in shinhae and I loved it. It was bustling with people and neon lights were everywhere. There are a couple of shopping alleyways so we met up with other teachers and spent the afternoon wandering around the shops before getting pizza and heading to a bar for drinks. Then came the best part of the night-my first experience at a noraebang which is basically karaoke. You rent out a room and just get to sing karaoke for however long you want. I had a blast and really enjoyed it. I even sang some K-pop songs and got 100%! It was a great way to spend my first Saturday in Korea.

            My first Sunday was a nice relaxing one which consisted of some skype with the family, a run along the running path and some lesson planning at the local coffee shop. Plus I had gotten my wifi installed (and learned how to put a password on it even though it was all in Korean) so I was able to watch all my Korean dramas!!

            Overall, the first week was okay and I am ready to see how teaching will be with my new coteacher.  Here goes nothing!