Summer Camp, the Conclusion

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During the 2nd week of camp, I taught 3rd & 4th graders. I had a lot of fun. The 3rd and 4th graders are the highest level for their age and it’s a lot easier to plan activities for them. Here are some pics…

  

  

My absolute favorite!

  

During week 2 the students “graduated” camp with certificates from the vice principal. On the last day of camp, the vice principal also invited the 3rd and 4th graders to come back to camp the following week along with the 5th graders. For me, this meant I had to make all new lesson plans at the last minute. In the end, everything went well and I had a great time at camp. But I am glad that I don’t have to do that again until the winter!

Week 3 Pictures…

We played a “Trash Ball Game.” The students answered questions for a chance to throw wadded up paper into a box.

  

These boys said the book was easy so I made them read it to the class.

During week 3, the principal handed out the certificates.

We also gave certificates to the parents.

Summer vacation!

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I have been looking forward to summer vacation for MONTHS! JuHye and I booked a trip to the Philippines back in early May. We have been waiting so long to go that it almost feels unreal that it’s finally here!

We met up on Tuesday evening in front of Paris Baguette to take the bus to the airport. The weather was rainy and gross so we were both excited to get out of Korea for a while.

The four hour flight to Cebu was very smooth. We had seats in the exit row and that seemed great in theory, but the leg room wasn’t enough to make up for the fact that our seats didn’t recline. I can’t complain though. One of my favorite parts about the plane ride was that everything was in English! It’s amazing the great feeling you can get from something that simple. After being in Korea for 6 months, it was wonderful to be around other English speaking foreigners.

We got into Cebu around midnight and then we had to go through customs. The line was long, but the process was pretty painless. We walked out of the airport to find a taxi to the hotel when I heard JuHye say, “That’s my name!” She kept walking and I was looking around to see what she was talking about when I saw a man holding a sign that said “JuHye Lee.” Upon further inspection, I noticed that the sign said the name of the hotel we had booked for the night. I said, “JuHye, that IS your name!” We had a free hotel shuttle service and we didn’t even know. It was great.

The hotel we stayed at on Tuesday night wasn’t great. We booked something cheap and close to the airport because we knew that our flight didn’t get until late so we wanted to save some money. We slept with the window open and we woke up with the roosters. They have been crowing ever since. The room came with free breakfast, which was nice. The menu was pretty hilarious. It had breakfasts to suit every taste. There was the “Kim” that was a Korean style breakfast that included panjeon (seafood pancake) and rice. JuHye had the Lulu that was a pancake and fruit. I had the Diego, which was an omelet with salsa. There was also the “Joe” that had steak, gravy and french fries. Too funny.

I am posting this from my phone at the restaurant at the hotel we are staying at. I’m not sure if the next hotel will have wifi so this may be the last post for a while.

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M.I.A.

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After summer camp, I had two days of “desk warming” and then I was off the rest of the week.

I have been pretty busy exploring and relaxing so I haven’t done any blogging.

This week I’m back to summer camp. I’ll try to post more very soon. Hang in there. 🙂

Urban Hike

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I recently ran across a Busan etour website and found my neighborhood and discovered all sorts of things that I never knew existed. On Sunday I decided to set out alone to explore my area.

Dongnae Station is in the middle of the map. I live near Minam Station (left of Dongnae), which is about a 15 minute walk from Dongnae Station. I make this walk all of the time. If you look at the map, you can see that there are all sorts of landmarks in the area behind Dongnae Station so I decided to go exploring and see if I could find any of the things listed on the map.

I was basically wandering aimlessly. I just started walking in what I thought might be the general direction of things and hoped eventually I might run into something on the map. The first thing I came across wasn’t actually on the map.

   

  

The cool thing about this place was that it was tucked away in the middle of an outdoor market that I just happened to decide to walk through.

Next, I saw something that looked interesting so I walked up the winding driveway and it happened to lead to a Buddhist temple. The temple was quite busy. I saw many people heading up the stairs and there were women out front greeting people as they entered. They bowed to me when I walked up so I said, “annyeong haseyo” (hello) and they all giggled. They were super cute so I decided to try to ask them directions to one of the places on the map. I showed them the map on my iPhone and they all discussed things amongst themselves before they called over another woman who spoke a bit of English. That woman asked me where I was trying to go and then walked me back down the winding driveway so she could give me better directions. Her directions weren’t extremely clear so I ended up getting a bit lost.

I was trying to find Beokcheondong Gobungun Ancient Tombs. The woman told me that I should walk past these apartments so that’s what I did. If you click on the picture, you can see that the tombs are in the background, but there’s just no way to get to them from where I was. I kept walking up and behind this area, but it came to a dead end. It was so frustrating because I could see the tombs and the museum… I was walking all around them… but I just couldn’t figure out how to get to them.

  

So I went back and decided to keep walking even farther past the apartments on the main street. It worked out for the best because I came across some other nice finds, including a Confucian school and this man, decked out in full hiking gear, that I though truly represented my “Urban Hike” theme.

  

  

I had been walking for a few hours at this point and I was beginning to get exhausted, but I was determined to find the tombs before heading back home. I followed the road and took the first right at the next major intersection and I just kept walking…

 

I was so close to quitting, but I didn’t. I pushed through and I’m so glad I did because after the bend in the road, I finally found what it was I was looking for (and more)!

First I walked up the trail…

  

Then through the Dongnae Eupseong Fortress and Science Park…

  

As I walked a little further, I knew I was in the right place!

  

After the long journey I had just endured, it felt AMAZING to walk across this bridge because it led straight to the tombs. Success!

  

  

Sunday’s hike was so much fun. I can’t wait to get out there and explore some more!

I hope you clicked on some of the pics. I know the pictures don’t really do it justice, but the views were truly amazing.

Saturday

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I have been wanting to join a gym since I got to Korea, but there aren’t really any near where I live so I opted to workout at home. It’s been a bit of a struggle because my motivation comes and goes. A few months ago I went to Daegu and saw a flyer for Curves. I didn’t even realize there were Curves in Korea.

On Saturday morning I searched the Curves website to see if there was one near me. The website showed an address (in English) for one in Sajik, which is just one subway stop away from where I live. The problem with finding addresses in English is that it makes it somewhat difficult to locate the place on a map. I had to use my very minimal Korean skills to translate at least part of the address into something I could input into the GPS on my phone so I could figure out where the Curves was located. It took awhile, but I was able to locate what I thought was Curves with my phone. It definitely felt like quite an accomplishment.

I set out to find the Curves and was successful! The building wasn’t where I thought it was, but it was closer so that was a good thing. I didn’t remember to time it, but it was probably about a 15-20 minute walk from my apartment. I wasn’t really expecting them to be open (it was about noon), but they were. I ended up signing up. The woman that was working was really nice and she knew enough English so that there were no problems. I’m going back Monday for my first workout. I am familiar with all of the machines because I worked at Curves for several years. The only thing that they have that I’m not familiar with is the stretching machine. I’m excited to try it out.

Immediately after I signed up at Curves I headed to the subway station and went to meet up with some friends to go see a show called “Ballerina Who Loves B-boy.” It’s a non-verbal dance show where a ballerina falls in love with a b-boy and quits ballet so she can dance (really terribly) with her b-boy boyfriend. The b-boys were great, but the story wasn’t very good. There was definitely room for improvement. It was a fun show though and I stayed entertained through most of it, but there were a few odd “I don’t know what’s going on right now…” moments. We paid 50,000 won ($47.50) for our tickets and we had amazing seats. Afterwards Faith and I went to Nampodong to do some shopping and have dinner and then we both headed home.

Coming up next: Sunday

On Sunday I decided to go exploring in my neighborhood and it turned into an amazing 4 hour urban hike. Come back tomorrow to see the pics.

Summer Camp – Week 1

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I am thrilled to say this…

It’s over!!! One week down, two to go.

Most elementary English teachers in Korea have to teach 3 weeks of summer camp after the regular semester ends. As I previously mentioned, during the first week I taught 1st & 2nd graders. In my school, the students don’t begin learning English until the 3rd grade so this was my first time to teach the little ones. It was a challenge! They are soooo full of energy and their attention span is so short. They were all really excited about camp though. They were always in a good mood and very enthusiastic.

They tried to try to talk to me in Korean quite a bit and I had no clue what the heck they were saying. They probably felt the same way when I was talking to them. I did have a pretty high level student in one of my classes that always listened very closely when I would talk and then he would say, “Ok, ok, ok!” and translate what I said to the rest of the class (even if they didn’t need it). It was pretty funny.

We learned about many different things this week:

Monday – Body parts, “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes” song
Tuesday – Animals & colors, “Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?” book/song
Wednesday – Bugs, “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song
Thursday – How are you?
Friday – Review & Veggies

I don’t have camp next week so I will be sitting at my desk all day Monday and Tuesday. I’ll probably prepare for lessons… or watch movies. I have Wed – Fri off so I’ll probably go to the beach if the weather is nice. I am also thinking about doing a temple stay (at a Buddhist temple about 2 hours away) with one of my friends.

Camp starts back up again on August 8th. I’ll be teaching 3rd & 4th graders. Wish me luck!

You can view the pictures below. Click on any photo to see a larger image.

Parents Class

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I am pretty sure that I mentioned before that I am teaching a parents class during summer camp. I change elementary students every week, but the parents class is the same parents all 3 weeks. They are really nice ladies and I am happy that the two women that I thought might drop out of the class are still coming.

There are 2 teachers for the parents class, JuHye and myself. JuHye’s class is supposed to run from 2:00 – 2:40 and my class is from 2:50 – 3:30. The vice principal was worried that the parents wouldn’t feel comfortable in a classroom with just me (because of the language barrier) so she suggested that JuHye and I teach together. We did that for the first few days, but if we do it consistently then it will put me over my teaching hours so it won’t really work out. Plus, JuHye and I would rather teach separately.

Today was the first day that I taught completely solo and it went extremely well. The first few days they kept saying “English stress!” at the end of class and today one of the women said, “No stress. Enjoy.” That made me feel good.

Babies!

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So my co-teacher is pregnant. Yesterday she asked me if it’s common for people in America to find out the sex of the baby.  When I said yes, she said, “Really??” and then explained that in Korea it’s illegal for the doctor to say the sex of the baby. To get around this he will say things like, “I think your baby will like dolls.” or “I think your baby will like sports.”

My co-teacher went for her sonogram yesterday and was hopeful to find out the sex of her baby. She said that her mother-in-law was going to come along with her and she was nervous because her mother-in-law was hoping for the baby to be a boy.

This morning I found out the results. Seems like the baby will “resemble its mother.”

Flooding

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Some of you might have heard that there’s been flooding and mud slides in South Korea. This was going on near Seoul, which is on the north end of South Korea. I live in Busan, which is in the south.  It did rain quite a bit here today, but it wasn’t nearly as severe. Some of my friends’ camps were cancelled and others had a lot of absent students due to the weather.

One of my friends did post the picture below on Facebook today. She took it just outside of her school in Busan. I cropped her face out since I just stole it from her Facebook without asking. I thought it was the least I could do.

Nothing like this happened in the part of Busan that I live in.

I’m safe and sound. Just thought you all might want to know.

If you haven’t heard about the flooding, you can find out more here.

Summer Camp

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7 posts in 7 days. Can you believe it?? What’s gotten into me?

Today was the first day of summer camp and I think it went pretty well. I am teaching 1st and 2nd graders this week. I was originally told that I would be teaching alone, but as it turns out, my co-teacher is sitting in on my lessons (or supposed to be) to give me a hand if I need it.

I am also teaching a parents class during all 3 weeks of summer camp. I had no clue what to expect. There were 8 moms signed up for the class, but only 5 showed up today. I was surprised that 3 of the moms had a fairly high English level… two of them even had English names (Cindy and Julia). I suspect that 1-2 of the moms might stop showing up after discovering that the other moms are much better at English than they are. Time will tell.

Last week I had a conversation with some 5th graders about summer camp:

Meagan Teacher: Are you coming to my English summer camp?
Student: No. I don’t have time.
Meagan Teacher: What are you doing this summer?
Student: I go to academy.
Meagan Teacher: What do you study?
Students: English, math, science, Korean
Meagan Teacher: Oh. my. god.
Student: Yes.

Korean students are very hardworking and study quite a lot. Many of them spend so much time studying that they don’t have time for much else. Even though it’s summer, many students will be coming to school for various camps or studying at an academy. I sometimes wonder when they have time to have fun and be kids.