Co-teachers

After seeing most of my friends having facebook posts about going hiking with their school and co-teachers, it was finally my turn. Last Wednesday after all of my classes were finished, I went with my co-teachers to Palgong Mountain. We didn't do much of a hike, which I was okay with. Originally we were going to take the cable car up the mountain, but then changed our minds at the last minute and I hadn't worn the right shoes for hiking. I wore the right shoes for riding a cable car...

I want to introduce you to my co-teachers. This is Hyuni, and she is amazing! She is my main co-teacher, not in the sense that I teach the most classes with her, but she takes care of me. She was the one who was there to pick me up and got me on my feet here in Korea. She continues to keep me on my feet. I've never known anybody more resourceful with information and so quick to solve problems and be efficient at the same time! I can ask her the most random question, and if she doesn't know the answer (she usually already knows it) she finds it out in seconds! It's AMAZING! 

I teach five 6th grade classes with her and unfortunately they are the first classes of the week, so I'm not usually quite on the height of my game with those classes. She as least makes them easier for me! 
She also lived in America for a year, so understand or can at least acknowledge the reason for my frustrations and the things that I miss. Or the things I don't miss...

I'm very spoiled to say the least...

I teach four 6th grade classes and one 5th grade class with Ms. Nam. She is very quiet and very sweet and though she would say that her English is not very good, I appreciate how she continues to try to communicate with me and explain things to me. She has incredible classroom management and her students are always mentally present with good attitudes and I know that is difficult especially with most of her classes being 6th grade classes, and for those of you who are familiar with teaching... they just don't care about much... She also teaches my favorite class, 6-7. They have figured out how to butter me up! They know they are my favorite and they work hard to continue to be my favorite! :)

I teach the most classes with Ms. Lee. I have four 4th grade classes with her and five 5th grade classes with her. The kids are always very excited in her classes. It could be the age level, but they are always wanting to play a game. Unfortunately, I am a mean teacher and come up with other activities that are more useful! It took me a while to figure out some of the classes with Ms. Lee, but now that the school year is almost over, I think I have finally figured out the kids! I have a few classes that respond much better to gaining rewards than having them taken away. Too bad, in just a few weeks of classes, they will be mixed up again, and I will have to resort the rewards system...

The other Ms. Lee is a P.E. teacher her at Woonam, so I don't actually teach with her, but her desk is in our English office, so I spend a lot of time with her. She is very kind and although she doesn't use her English very often, I can always communicate with her and I knew I got her approval a month in when we said, "Marie Teacher....I like you..." That was all I needed ! :)
My last co teacher did not go on the hike with us, but her name is Ms. Young. She is a head teacher and has many years of experience and I teach three 4th grade classes with her. Her students always listen very well, and I seem to think that they are "getting it" most of the time, which is always a welcome feeling! 

After doing our hiking we went to a place to eat that was explained to me as an "ajumma hangout". Wasn't that the truth? There were dozens of older women in there slurping their noodles, and by golly did they notice the foreigner walking into their establishment! It was hilarious how many heads turned... The staff there was not very friendly, but there were tons of people and the food came out in minutes, and it tasted really good. Also it was super cheap! 

Afterwards, we went to get coffee, and I ended up getting some kiwi juice and cheesecake. Our "coffees" ended up costing us triple what our meal cost us! 

I'm glad my school gave us the afternoon off to experience this! 

Jikjisa Temple Stay

When you are informed of a free temple stay weekend...you usually jump on that quite quickly. To be honest, seeing the word FREE was all I really needed. We've kept pretty busy on the weekends and it felt great to not spend much money. We only had to buy the train there and back which was under 10,000 Won ($10.00). 

The Gimcheon Culture Center is awesome and I made sure to send them an email telling them so after this weekend:

So we went to Jikjisa Temple on Saturday and changed into the great "burnt orange" clothes provided. Although they may not have been the most attractive, I honestly wanted to buy the pants. They were awesome! I went there in skinny jeans and extremely enjoyed this freeing experience of baggy pants...This was like reliving high school for me! For those of you who knew me 10 years ago, sports were #1 in Marie's book, and sweats were a very common thing for my friends and I, and the baggier- the better! ahah! 

We watched some informational videos about Buddhism and the Temple Stay program and went on a tour led by the monks around the Temple. Unfortunately the guide did not speak the best English or Korean for that matter, and so I didn't get to find out as much as I wanted about the different buildings.

Dinner was an interesting experience to say the least. There is definitely an order and a special process when eating at a temple. There are four bowls (or bowels as the interpreter said) all used for different things. The biggest one is used for rice and it is placed in the bottom left corner. To the right of that bowl is the next largest, the soup bowl. Above the soup bowl is the water/ utensil bowl. To the left of the water bowl is the side dish/ vegetable bowl. 

We started the dinner process by getting our bowls and correctly placing them. Then they came around with water and we poured the water from the largest bowl to the smallest one to "clean" the bowls. They followed with rice, and soup. We passed around the vegetable sides, and were instructed sooooo many times to get one piece of yellow radish to "clean" the bowl afterwards. DO NOT EAT THE YELLOW RADISH! My group of friends had an interesting temple stay to say the least. Erin was the one who didn't get the yellow radish...

We were told to eat all of our food, and when they say all, they mean ALL the food. We kept our bowl up to our mouths to cover them as we ate. Also, it should be noted that all of the food was vegetarian. That being said, the soup was surprisingly tasty and it was great knowing that there was no meat product in it. I spend a lot of time at school guessing what weird "meat" product is in our school lunches! 

They repeatedly told us to NOT eat the yellow radish.... Jake was the one who ate the yellow radish... After all of the food was eaten we put 5 spoonfuls of the "cleaning" water into the largest bowl and used our yellow radish to scrub the dish "clean" and moved the water to all the bowls. At the end we were to drink the water with floaties and eat the yellow radish. This was difficult. The water was cold, kimchi juice infested with the occasional rice bits. I also am not a fan of the yellow radish. This was just something you just had to do, stomach it and do it...

There was still a bit of the "cleaning" water left in one of the bowls and instead of waiting for the bucket to come around, many people decided to drink the rest of it. The monk thought this was crazy and asked if their stomach hurt? I found this ridiculous, because there was no difference between this "cleaning" water and the kimchi-rice infested water we had all just drank except it DIDN'T have kimchi and rice in it... I was confused! Nonetheless, I used the towel to soak up the rest of my water in my water bowl. We wiped the bowls clean with the towel and theoretically, they were now clean for the next use. 
(I believe the guys actually re- cleaned the bowls at 5:00 the next morning...)

After dinner we made lotus lantern. It seems like every time we do a craft, if you don't do it fast enough or with the exact amount of confidence needed on your face, your project will be taken over by an eager Korean woman. Maria was the one who lost her craft project. Not sure she did much on her lotus lantern. She was definitely the sacrificial lamb of that craft time... After we made the lantern we wrote a wish or a dream on it, and lit them. With this lighting of the lanterns came one of my favorite memories thus far in Korea...

Emily was the one who lit her lotus lantern on fire...

We walked outside to a different part of the temple complex to the stone pagodas. The plan was to walk around them three times for our wishes to come true. My friends and I were towards the back of the group and the rest of the 150 people had already made a trail around the pagodas.

Some commotion made me turn around and I looked to see someones lantern on fire in their hand and a monk hitting it out of their hand. I immediately start taking pictures of the lantern because all I can think of is..."What dumbass lit their lantern on fire?" After taking quite a few pictures, I look up and see that Emily isn't holding a lantern anymore, and it immediately hits me... Emily is that dumbass! 

We were not at a place and time where it was appropriate to laugh, so we were having to silently laugh and this cause tears to stream down my face! The best part was that we still had to walk around the pagodas three times and each time we had to walk by the abandoned burning lantern. On one of the passings, we saw some of the monks standing over it trying to put the fire out. It was hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing. But since it was suppose to be a very serious moment, the muffled laughter was actually painful. 

That night we had some free time which I spent walking around taking night pictures. I was very inspired when we were walking around with our lanterns, but by the time I went back and got my camera, my inspiration was lost. Lights out was 10:00, and as early as that sounds, it was nice to go to bed early especially knowing that the wake up call was going to be at 5:00 am.

We slept in an oven. The floor heating in Korea can be nice, but when it is too high, there is no way to escape it because you are actually sleeping directly on the floor! Wasn't the worst sleep I've gotten in Korea, but it was by no mean good sleep. 

At 5:00 am we were woken up by a monk. We had some time to get ready and make our way to breakfast. I normally do not eat breakfast, so the idea of eating rice and kimchi was unbearable. Luckily, it was less of a process for breakfast so I could slip by and join some others that had already eaten and pretend that I had as well. 

There were many times during this weekend that we weren't really do anything but sitting around. On a more structured event I'm sure we would have been doing some silent time or prayers or something. I think that they wanted to wake us up at 5:00 to give us the monk experience, but in reality they had nothing for us to do so we sat around until 7:30 or 8:00.

At this time we learned the correct process of doing 108 bows. It involved 5 points of us (2 knees, 2 forearms/ hands, and our forehead) touching the mat, and then our hands turning upwards and raising up to our ears. As we did this we were to say a prayer or wish and put a bead onto our rosary-like necklace. Then we would stand up and repeat the process 107 more times. At around  bow #77 I started to count down. It was a little physically draining, but not too bad. The next day though my legs were in a lot of pain. Apparently I don't use my quads enough...

After the bows we changed back into our regular clothes and got on a bus. None of us knew where we were going to be honest, but we drove for almost and hour to finally stop in a small town at a Korean BBQ. This was a welcome surprise! Even though it hadn't been that long, it was nice to have some meat! All of it was free! We feasted! It was awesome. Then we got back on the bus and drove another 20 minutes to a random cabbage field. We jumped off the bus and went and "harvested" a cabbage that we each got to keep and take with us... (As if we were all wanting a random huge cabbage...) But it was still really random and fun. 

Then we jumped back on the bus again and went to a location where we put on aprons and bandannas and were able to make our own kimchi. They already had the cabbage fermented or at least slimy / squishy, and the goop that you put on it made as well. So we basically just spread the goop all over all of the crevices of the cabbage and put our newly made kimchi, that we also go to keep in a bag. 
Those who know kimchi also know that it is smelly stuff. So after we made the kimchi, 150 random foreigners boarded their trains and buses to go back home with freshly made kimchi and huge heads of cabbage. I can't even smell very well or even at all, but I was able to smell that train! ahah

It really was an interesting and informative weekend. I'm glad that I participated and I'm also glad that the Gimcheon Cultural Center added the events on the second day. It got us out in the country doing random things and of course I am so thankful for my free cabbage... more to follow on that! :)

My cabbage ended up becoming "water kimchi" made by my co-teachers mother. At least someone got some use of it. Now the kimchi that I made.... It became friends with the garbage. I had planned to take it to school as well, but after 10 minutes of it being in my home, it was all I could smell in my apartment, and I was NOT okay with that! :)

Hand Turkeys

I was given the lesson of "Do you know about Chuseok?", and it had a reading section on Thanksgiving, so I asked my teacher if I could go ahead and teach that section. Since it was a reading lesson, I made a powerpoint with sentences that the kids read about some of the traditions of Thanksgiving. After they read the sentences, I explained about each tradition. They loved the slide of my family of over 20 all sitting at our extremely long table at my house!
"Maa-rie Teacha? Where are you?"

I've had to explain many times this year, that my family is not rich. When the kids see my spacious house and all of our farmland, they think that we are extremely wealthy... Korea is a small space with small land, so these aspects are associated with having money. But in the middle of now where Kansas, this is NOT the case. I've tried to explain, but I doubt they have figured it out! ahah

After the reading exercise, we made hand turkeys! They could decorate them as they pleased, but I did required that they write what they are thankful for and also put "Happy Thanksgiving" at the top of the page. Most of the kids were thankful for family and parents, but I occasionally got a very creative answer!

Seoraksan (a.k.a. Seorak Mountain)

This past weekend a group of my friends and I went to Seoraksan, which is the 3rd largest mountain in Korea. It is located on the Northern part of South Korea. Basically the closest you can get to North Korea without going into it.

I put a group of 12 people together and we went with a tour company (Waygook Travel), who provided transportation, a South African Braai, accommodation, and a English breakfast. All of these things were added bonuses because I really just wanted a way to see Seoraksan in the beautiful fall colors without having to plan it! :)

This trip proved to be an interesting one, and I'm so very thankful that I was with all of my very bestest foreign friends who could make even the unpleasant moments great! We should have known it was going to be an interesting trip when we were picked up at 5:10 AM to a heavily drunk tour guide. The following are my friend Lily's thoughts about the trip that she wrote in her blog. She summed it up really well...

"Since our destination was a good 5 – 5 1/2 hrs away, even on a chartered bus, we had to be at the bus terminal at 5 am on Saturday morning, so we started our day at 4 am. (Yuck!) The bus was about 30 minutes late – it was slightly annoying to have gotten up so early for a bus that was late, but we were all in generally high spirits at that point. Little did we know, this was a warning sign – the universe was screaming at us, “Run away! Retreat! Save yourself!” If only we had listened. Instead we piled onto a tour bus along with about 30 other people who had paid to take this tour.

The trip was run by a loud, crude South African man and his Korean wife. Along with this couple were 7-10 other “friends” of the tour leader (I think his name is Derrick) – mostly South African, with a few other Korean women, all apparently tagging along on this trip for free. When we got on the bus at 5:30 in the morning, all we wanted to do was sleep. Derrick had other plans. Even at 5:30 he and the other South Africans were already drinking. Possibly, they had never stopped drinking from the night before. They proceeded to drink steadily through the entire bus-ride. I honestly have no idea how they were still standing when we arrived.

Not only were Derrick and his friends drinking like nothing I’ve ever seen, but he was insisting that we all get into the party spirit. For the first hour, the bus lights stayed off and people napped. At 7 am the lights came on, loud rap music started pounding and Derrick announced that cocktails were available for purchase. (Who wants a rum and coke at 7 in the morning?!) It was clear that the only people enjoying the loud music and insanely timed cocktails were Derrick and his free-loading friends; all of the paying customers would clearly have preferred to be sleeping.

In addition to becoming personally more and more obnoxious the more he drank, the other problem with being on a bus run by a man who is hammered is that he made us stop every 45 minutes along the way so that he and his drunk friends could pee or he could have a smoke.  As the morning wore on and we inched our way to our destination, we all started to get really hungry. Each time we stopped, Derrick assured us we would stop again soon for some food. Finally, 6 hours in, he announced that we were stopping to eat. We eagerly climbed off the bus only to find that the rest area Derrick had chosen only had a convenience store and no real food.

Jonathan and I tentatively bought something called “Pizza hotdog” in an attempt to find something other than chips and cookies to tide us over. This proved to be a frozen piece of bread stuffed with ketchup that was taken from the freezer and deep fried until it was greasy on the outside and still cold on the inside, containing neither pizza ingredients nor a hot dog. It was supremely unsatisfying.

Back on the bus we spent another hour on the road before finally arriving at Seoraksan. Before we got off the bus Derrick drunkenly sang us a tuneless song about Seoraksan which he thought was hilarious while the rest of us wished he would just shut up. He finished his ballad by telling us that we needed to gather wood while we were there in order for us to have the bonfire we were scheduled to enjoy that night.'

...

'[Later] we all trooped back to the bus with the firewood we had collected. (I’m sure the Koreans thought taking sticks from national parks was some sort of strange foreigner tradition). When we arrived at the beach hotel, Derrick instructed all of us to unload all of the food and supplies from the bus (us, the paying customers – not all of his drunk friends who were tagging along). In the meantime, he made a lot of comments about all the free labor he was getting while he took our money. By this point we were all STARVING, having not had lunch and having been awake since 4 am, so we carried the supplies figuring if we didn’t help we would never eat. But Derrick seemed unconcerned about preparing dinner in a timely fashion, so we all continued to wait around for several more hours until it was ready. It was cold. It was raining lightly. Everyone who was remotely “in charge” was completely wasted. Allow me to share a quote from a friend of ours who expressed what we were all feeling so eloquently:

“This is the worst day of my life.” – Chris P.

Eventually we had dinner. And I admit, it tasted really good. Steak and salad and lamb chops and potato salad. We were starving and we ate a lot. Feeling a lot better we decided to head out to the beach. Derrick continued to insist that we could have a bonfire only if we carried all the wood we had collected out onto the beach ourselves, so eventually, we moved our stolen wood out to the beach. The beach was really beautiful at night and it would have been really fun to sit around a bonfire with friends and enjoy it. Unfortunately for us we had to sit around a bonfire with Derrick, who at one point looked down at his drink and muttered to himself, “If I don’t have another drink in 5 seconds I’m going to be angry,” and when the drink did not magically appear, “Now I’m angry. Get me a rum and coke!” and handed his cup to a guy sitting next to him – a random Scottish guy who was just another paying customer. (I will remind you that he had been drinking since at least 5:30 that morning and was still standing somehow). Jonathan and I decided to call it a night when Derrick announced to no one in particular, “Now we will have a competition! Naked swimming!” and pulled down his pants.

Several of our friends also went back at this point and we all went to bed a little early. A few hours later I woke up violently ill. I proceeded to have a bout of food poisoning only rivaled by that one time I got salmonella in Russia. (Possibly it was from undercooked lamb?  - not sure as everyone else was ok, but it didn’t seem to be a virus). After spending all night in the bathroom, I couldn’t even keep liquids down and I knew there was no way I was spending any more time with Derrick, his obnoxious friends, and the bus from hell.

If you take anything away from this story, take this: NEVER go on a trip with Waygook Travel unless you really hate yourself. Especially not Derrick from South Africa. It will be the worst experience of your life. But, DO go to Seoraksan if you get the chance. Especially in the fall. It was (almost) worth the rest of the nightmare. And the beach where we were was beautiful, I just wasn’t able to enjoy it from the motel bathroom. Also, that sometimes in your darkest hour you find a magical English-speaking Korean wizard to remind you that all hope is not lost."

Link to Lily & Jonathan's blog: http://twosorethumbs.wordpress.com/

Now, about out time at Seoraksan: 

There was a temple at the base of the mountain. This temple was covered in swastikas, and while most of our first thoughts are of hatred, murder, discrimination, and death, this symbol has been used in Buddhism for centuries. In this context it means "good" and is represented as a lucky charm. Obviously the complete opposite of how it has been used in recent years.  I'm having to train myself to see this symbol and think good things, and not instantly the bad. 

One of the best parts of this tour group was that they pre-purchased our cable car tickets so that we did not have to wait in line. We just showed up at our allotted time- 2:00. On the way up our cable car was just us foreigners, about 50 of us. It was very orderly and pleasant to watch out the windows. On the way back it was a mixture of Korean and foreigners and it was just like the subway... Even though there was plenty of room, no one wanted to be left at the top (because that was sooooo realistically possible....), so I was being pushed in the back and crammed against the glass to ride down. Luckily there was a Kelly Clarkson song that came on that Sian and I jammed to! Good moment! And we know what we are singing for the Nora-bong  night!

At the top of the mountain where the cable car took us there was a viewing deck and then you could walk up some more stairs to the actual top of the mountain. Well, not quite the top. To get to the real top we had to scale the side of the mountain. In America, this would not be allowed, but in Korea it was almost encouraged by the guy with the climbing gear hanging off the side of the mountain presumably to catch the ones that fall off the mountain!?!?

I really do wonder how many people slip on this incline. It was not the easiest thing ever. I mean, I didn't find it hard, but when I looked around at the variety of people that were climbing, I imagine is is difficult to some. 

Parents were having their small kids do this! It was CRAZY! One false step and they were seriously smashed brains on the rocks! 

Also, it was insane, but there was actually a shop set up at the top. It was a make-shift photo station where you could get your picture taken with a Korean flag, and receive a fake gold metal with your name carved into it! Only 10,000 Won, such a bargain! :) 

Admittedly, the view at the top of the mountain was quite magical and well worth risking your life to see. Seoraksan was much more rocky than any of the other mountains I have seen so far in Korea, so it offered a different view than I am used to seeing. 

I could have stayed up there for a long time just gazing off in the distance, but there was a Korean man yelling in Korean, and I only assumed he was regulating the people on the top since it was a small space. Getting down was slightly challenging, but mostly because we were trying to share the climbing foot holes and the ropes with the people trying to climb up! :)

Benji!!!!!

Eeeeeemily!!!!!!!!!

This guy was quite frightening, but also magical...

That night we stayed at a place on the beach. Only downside was that it was pretty cold and drizzly, so staying on the beach too long at night was not the easiest. I went to bed rather early, and the floor heating was on our pension, which at first seemed really nice. Half way through the night we were all awoken sweating our butts off!

There was a nice mixture of toasty warmness and extreme cold that night that I will not forget any time soon... :)

The next day we went to Naksansa Temple. We found our own way there. I don't even know if there was someone from our tour company who even went... It was a great view of the ocean from this temple and they had a few different highlights, which included this giant Buddhist statue of Haesugwaneumsang. It is 15 meters tall and made out of 700 tons of white granite, and is the largest of it's kind in the Orient. 

There was also a bell/ gong that people were ringing. I'm assuming it was okay if you donated money, because no one yelled at us or ran us off. 

We went back to the pension to again wait what seemed like ages to eat our English breakfast. I know that all of my Brits were pretty excited about this, but I'm not sure it lived up to it's expectations. I personally enjoyed the South African braai much more than the English breakfast. It needed some tea or juice for it to be a lot better for me. 

The last thing that we did before heading back home was riding ATV's. I actually enjoyed this more than I was thinking I would. Riding 4-wheelers is nothing new to me.... It was new for me to be riding them with all of my friends and 50 other people without any instructions or rules. Again, this would not happen in the States. We didn't even have to give them any information or sign anything! Nothing to say that it was not the companies fault if we died... blah.blah.blah... Say whaaaat? 

So, here we were with 50 people, some of who had never driven an ATV before doing so with no instruction. At all. Surprisingly, I only witnessed one flip and only one girl running off the trail into the ditch... Not too bad! :) 

I rode my 4 wheeler for half of our 30 minutes. It was not as agile as ours back home so I lost interest kind of quickly. I gave my 4 wheeler to Hunter and he used it for the last 15 minutes, so I'm glad he got some time on it as well! :) I decided I wanted to take some pictures, so I jumped on the back of Ben's 4-wheeler and was very irresponsible with my camera. At one point I didn't have it on my neck but over my head upside down as Ben was taking the turns quite quickly. Obviously I wasn't holding onto him as well... Living on the edge! 

The ride home was uneventful, except we were again faced with the problem of finding food to eat that wasn't just junk food. Luckily a few of us found some Gimbap at one of the rest stops. Ben got off the bus early and for the first time made it to his house much quicker than the rest of us. Usually he is the one that has to travel and extra couple of hours, so I'm sure he was happy about that! 

The last hour of the bus ride before Daegu, the bus turned into a Nora-bus, and the singing started... I'm sure at some random times this could be fun, but after a weekend of not great sleep and dealing with annoying issues, I think most people in my crew were just plain done.

Darren with the cutest curl ever, and Emily

Matt, Chris and Ben

Ben and I

Darren and Emily trying to overtake us... :)

I am so glad that I have such good friends. This could have been a bust of a weekend with the way the tour was conducted, but because of the people I was surrounded by, I still had a good time! Maybe something we can laugh about in the future.... :)