Tag Archives: ESL

Baseball in Busan

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Thursday, April 14

So… I am still trying to play catch up on here so this post is about a baseball game I went to back in April.

Baseball is very popular in Korea, but Busan is especially famous for baseball and it ‘s not because they have a good team (they have lost 2 of the 3 games I’ve been to). The Busan Lotte Giants are famous for their cheerleaders!

The cheerleaders even change outfits throughout the game!

The great thing about baseball games in Korea is that you can bring in your own food and drinks. Yep… even beer! And people don’t hold back. I have seen small groups of people carry in cases of bottled water and beer. I mean, seriously… how much water can you really drink in a 3 hour span.

Another thing that’s quite popular are these newspaper pom-poms. People tear up newspaper and make pom-poms out of them. This one was generously given to us by a friendly Korean at the game.

Here are the gals at the game.

Ben, Chris and Stella

We made friends with the girls behind us…

And the guys in front of us…

You might be wondering why everyone’s putting orange sacks on their heads… you are, right? Towards the end of the game, they pass out these sacks so everyone can put their trash in them to make it easier for the clean up crews after the game. Somehow people decided to make hats out of them and wear them until they were ready to dispose of their waste. It caught on and now it’s just a thing you do at Lotte Giants games.

You can also make cute bows out of the bags. That’s a bit more than I am capable of, but Chris and Stella seemed to figure it out.

Hanging with the guys… Tim & Justin

It was a great time… baseball in Busan is so much fun!

Go Giants!!

One final interesting fact about baseball teams in Korea:

Back home, teams are named after the city they are from and the stadiums are usually sponsored by and therefore named after companies. Here, it’s the opposite. The Lotte Giants play at Busan Stadium. Lotte is a HUGE company here. It is the name of the major department store chain and you see that brand name every day. Some other baseball teams in Korea are the Samsung Lions (from Daegu), Kia Tigers (from Gwangju) and LG Twins (from Seoul).

Advice for an EPIK applicant

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**Please note that contract details and application requirements have drastically changed since I applied (and are constantly being changed), but let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to help.**

I was recently asked by Emma of Emma’s New Groove if I have any advice for someone applying for EPIK (English Program in Korea). I definitely do!

reflections

My first bit of advice is get your documents together…. NOW! Recommendation letters, background check, passport photos, etc. I applied through a recruiter (Korvia) because the process intimidated me and I wanted someone to hold my hand along the way. As I was in the process of applying, I wished I had gone through EPIK directly (http://www.epik.go.kr/).
Busan burial mound Bokcheon
Decide which level you want to teach. Every level has its ups and downs. The up side to elementary is that you will more than likely have an active co-teacher, meaning you will literally be CO-teaching. The down side is that some of the co-teachers are crotchedy and stuck in their ways, but it’s just the luck of the draw and every level has good and bad co-teachers. In middle and high school you will more than likely be teaching alone. If your co-teacher is in the class, he or she will probably only be there to play the role of disciplinarian. You may or may not be teaching out of the book. Some people like the freedom of not having to work out of a book, but you have to come up with all new ideas every week. The good news is that there’s a large community of English teachers in Korea that are more than happy to share ideas.
Teach English in Korea EPIK
Decide where in Korea you want to work. Do you want to go urban or rural? Do some research. If you can swing it, try rural. You get paid more and a lot of times the rural cities aren’t as small as you’re afraid they will be. Korea’s a small place so it’s fairly easy to get around on the weekends. I chose urban and ended up in Busan. I love Busan. I think it’s great and would highly recommend it to anyone. It’s not as hot in the summer here, but it is very humid. I’ve been told it doesn’t really snow here in the winter, but it is quite windy so the cold is a bit bitter. I’ve heard that Busan is quite popular so if you’re interested in working here, APPLY EARLY. **On your application you’ll be asked to pick one preferred office of education to work for. The next question asks if you are willing to work in other provinces or if you’d like to withdraw your application if the office of education to selected is unavailable.**
Capture the Colour 2013 Green

Boseong Green Tea Plantation

Be patient. This application process is one of the most painful things you can go through. It will stress you out like no other. The best way to experience the least amount of stress is to apply early. It’s still going to take you forever to find out if you got a job, but your odds are better. If you apply early, pass your interview and send your documents in right away, you are probably going to get a position. You probably will not know if you have gotten a position until a month before it’s time to go to Korea. For the fall intake, I think some didn’t find out until a week or two before.
Take a picture of 2 family mart employees making a heart with their arms- 50

Scavenger Hunt – Take a photo of convenience store employees making a heart with their arms

Get doubles of documents. Ask for 2 (or more) copies of the same recommendation letter, get at least two background checks, apostilled copies of your diploma and transcripts. If EPIK falls through and you’re still serious about going to Korea, you’ll need backup documents because EPIK won’t be returning what you’ve already submitted. You don’t want to scramble at the last minute. Also, if you’re in Korea and want to change jobs for the second year, you’ll already have extra documents and it will make the application process much easier.
day 67
Look online for a Facebook group so you can share your experiences with other people that are going through what you are. Other places like Daves ESL Cafe and Waygook.org can be helpful, but once you apply it’s nice to be able to cut out all of the crap and just talk about what you want. It can also be a good way to network and make friends before you go. Most of you will be going alone so it doesn’t hurt to make all of the friends you can.
Making a toast

Thanksgiving pot luck

EPIK has now started making “official” facebook groups for applicants that are monitored by them. It’s nice that they see the need for it, but I think it’s much nicer to be able to form a community with your peers rather than being in a group formed by EPIK. If you agree, don’t be afraid to make your own group for your intake. EPIK does have an official facebook page with a lot of great information so be sure to check it out.
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I hope this is helpful to any people thinking about applying to EPIK. Korea is amazing and I think it’s well worth the journey. It will be a year of your life that you’ll never forget. If you have any more questions, please post a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Jusanji Korea at sunrise

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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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.

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.

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.

Korean Health Care

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I am constantly amazed by Korean health care.

Let me start by saying that a month before I came to Korea I sustained an ear injury. I was cleaning my ears and tried to give my 4 year old nephew a hug, but he resisted and ended up kicking the Q-tip into my ear. Ouch! Yeah, it was stupid, but it happened and now I have a giant hole in my eardrum. The hole is about half the size of the eardrum.

I saw the doctor right after it happened and he asked me to come back before I left so he could check on it. It hadn’t healed so he recommended that I get the hole patched. I would have had to have gone to an Ear Nose Throat specialist and the doctor thought that it would cost no less than $600-700. I told him that wasn’t going to happen and that I would get it checked out in Korea. He said that should be fine because it was a pretty simple surgery.

A few weeks ago I finally sought out an ENT  here to see about getting my ear all patched up. It just so happens that there is an ENT very close to my school and apartment (about a 5-10 minute walk). And the best part is that he speaks PERFECT English! His nurses are adorable. They get super nervous when trying to talk to me so they have put one nurse in charge of me. She knows just enough English words so that I pretty much know what she’s talking about. When I walk off I usually hear the other nurses clapping for her or giggling. It’s so funny.

In the doctor’s office I was able to see the hole in my eardrum. The tool that the doctor uses to look in the ear is connected to a TV on the wall. The hole is shockingly large. The ENT confirmed that I would need a patch, but he only performs surgery on Wednesdays and he was all booked up until September. That worked for me because I have several days off in September for Korean thanksgiving (Chuseok) so I booked my surgery for September 14th. AND the best part is that the doctor said that the surgery will only cost me about $100. Nice. That visit cost about $10.

So this doctor is apparently very thorough because he scheduled me to come back in two weeks. He asked me to bring a copy of my health check that was performed at my EPIK orientation. My follow-up visit was this past Wednesday. He advised me that I would need to have some tests done before my surgery. During my visit I had blood drawn and gave them a urine sample. I was also advised that I would need to go to the hospital across the street to get an EKG. I thought all of this seemed a bit overkill for a simple outpatient ear surgery, but whatever he says! That visit only cost about $12 (including the tests). My next appointment is in two weeks so we can go over the results of my tests.

I got off work around noon on Friday because it was the last day of school. This was perfect because I was worried about when I would have time to go get my EKG done. I went to the hospital right after school. Be prepared to be impressed. I swear to you that I went to the hospital as a walk-in trying to get an EKG. I was in and out in about 10 minutes. The part that took the longest was when I went to the wrong counter and the two nurses were too shy to speak English to me so one of them escorted me to where I needed to go (even though I heard one of them mumble “go straight and turn left” after I walked away). The EKG only cost me $5.

Korea, your health care system is remarkable. Thank you for providing waygookens (foreigners) like me such wonderful health insurance!

Instant message from my co-teacher

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Things like this make everything worth it…

“i’m lucky teacher because i met you!”