English Festival 2015

I can't remember if I've ever mentioned it before, but here in South Korea many schools and/or districts will hold an "English Festival" at least once a year. The intention is to let kids have an "English experience" for a day. It can be a very broad description depending on the organisers. 

A couple I've been to have taken contributors from many different schools in one district and is kind of like a talent show. Groups from each school put on a short performance, all in English (be it a skit, rendition of a book, or a song), or compete together as teams to solve problems like spelling bees, races, and general knowledge.

Others, like the one my school recently had, are for one school only. They focus on an intensive day of games similar to what we'd play at the end of a lesson, craft projects, English music, or cultural education.

Eli Came To Stay

Thought I'd show you what a Korean copy of Harry Potter looks like. It's CUTE!

As we were feeling pretty exhausted from Tokyo and the subsequent onslaught of visitors, we decided to not go anywhere for Seollal, the Korean Lunar New Year holiday in February, and just spend the week relaxing.

I tend to get a bit antsy when we don't do much because half of me feels like we're wasting time, but it was also pretty good for my health, because I did feel a big difference when I eventually went back to school.

Anyway, our friend Eli came all the way up from Jinju (on the south coast) to hang out and spend a couple of days with us!

On the main day of Seollal, we went to Gyeongbokgung, as there was apparently something going on there, but by the time we got there we were really hungry. And, like Christmas Day at home, almost everything is closed. Gah.

After a lot of searching, we found a donkatsu place and I burnt my mouth on cheese. As usual.

Obligatory "why" photo. Eli hasn't faced the horrors yet.

By the time we'd finished searching and eating, it was kind of...actually quite late. Oops. So the museum had started closing up and everyone was leaving, boo. I felt a bit bad, considering Eli told us he hadn't ever looked around Seoul aside from the glimpses he'd seen at orientation, but there's always time for more!

While we were waiting to cross the road, I snapped this photo of two young girls in their traditional hanbok, taking selfies together which I thought was a really cute contrast of old and modern. I posted it to instagram and they actually found it, haha. They were really lovely and it was a nice coincidence!

Hourly Comics Day

Hourly Comics Day usually comes and goes without me doing much more than maybe entertaining the thought of drawing some hourlies. If I'm lucky I'll pick up a pencil and sketch out the first hour of my day, then forget to do any more until the events of the day have vanished into the ether that is my poor memory.

So the fact that I actually managed to finish an entire day's worth of comics really made me quite happy. I didn't do the full 24, though. I know I'm sleeping for a fair few of them, which doesn't exactly make for thrilling panel work, but I've seen people just carry on documenting the next few waking hours to make up a full 24. Maybe next time.

In an extra feat of showing-off-ness, this comic includes writing in 3 different languages and scripts.

Anyway, you can click on the photos to see the minuscule writing in something a bit less painful, if you so wish.

Without much further adieu, I present to you: A Day in the Life of (a Really Sleepy) Guest English Teacher in South Korea

Coffee and Bossam with Han and Lina

I stole this photo from 이민정 ^^;

A little while ago, Nick and I met up with some of our EPIK orientation co-ordinators for some dinner and a chat. We went to a bossam place in Hongdae and had a really great time! 

I'm always happy when I can talk freely to people without awkward pauses, and meeting and talking to many Koreans is a big priority of mine here. I can talk to Westerners all I want back home and even in my apartment, but there's so much to hear and learn from people in Korea that's just so much nicer than reading it all in a book. There's opinions and stories there you'd never read otherwise.

What's the point in living abroad if you don't interact with the locals?

After eating, our conversation was mid-flow so we went to a nearby coffee shop which was incredibly adorable and seemed to know what they were talking about. All kinds of mysterious roasts, blends, and coffee making devices could be seen.

It reminded me a lot of the cute, hipster places I love visiting at home. As it was fairly late, the cafe was quiet and service was very fast.

The Strongest Man in Incheon

So, after Orientation week, we ended up hanging out with some of the people we'd met, and made the most of the fact that we had the majority of a Friday off of school. (For me, that meant going to the bank and finally replacing my lost bank card, oops.)

We decided to go to Wolmi and take in the cool sea breeze and go on some rides. But of course, forgetting that we are cursed so that any time we do this the rain is heavier than any other time of the week, month or year.

Needless to say, we ended up totally soaked to the skin, and totally unprepared. Cue all the 아줌마 and 아저씨 shaking their heads and laughing at the crazy foreigners.

I'm doing a rain dance to beg the weather gods to JAM THEIR HYPE

We realised that we're like the BBC's dream team for a minority representation sitcom.

Twist potatoes and fried-things-on-sticks galore! I know it seems like I eat nothing but junk food, but I assure you... you're, uh, probably right. Haha.

(You're not right, thank you very much. But healthy food is far less interesting to blog about ;p)

We went on the Viking whereupon a Korean man shouted at us through the tannoy and laughed at our horrified screams, I can only assume if he was asking when we wanted to die and "AAAAAGH!" in Korean means "Higher and faster, please!!"

I don't know if the ride was made better or worse by the fact we were the only people on board, haha.

We wandered on into the arcade and played all sorts of games, mainly Tekken whereupon I whupped a lot of butts, and one of those strength-test games. This is where the weird title of this blog post comes from, by the way. Our friend Justin managed to get the high score, as well as 2nd and 3rd, so he was duly dubbed "The Strongest Man in Incheon". For the record, I briefly held 3rd position.

Upon reflection, we're really bad at selfies.

Party at our place!

EPIK Orientation

Timeframe context: Late September.

So this is a story all about how our lives got flip-turned upside-down, because we had about 3 days notice that the orientation week we'd been told we wouldn't have to attend was now happening and mandatory.

I'll be honest, we were pretty stressed, and annoyed. A week or two advanced notice would have been nice. I had my Open Class that week, and Nick was meant to be helping out with his school's sports day, so we were both pretty bummed (and I was scared I'd have to replan my class that I'd been working on for months now.)

Not to mention sharing a dorm when we have our own comfy apartment 45 mins away.

Not to mention orientation is meant to be for newbies. We'd been in Korea for 5 months, we didn't need to learn what a Korean school is like, and how to say "annyeong haseyo".

Not to mention we weren't in the mood to end up as glorified mentors to all the other inevitable newbies that would want to know everything about anything.

Bitterness and sulking aside, we went along, signed in, and...ended up having quite a bit of fun by going to lunch with Nick's roommate and one of their next-door neigbours. We found out they'd been here a while too (first clue).

Photo of some great people. And me. ;p

It turned out that, actually, a lot of the people there had been here at least a month (which made sense, considering the new intake had arrived at least a month or so prior) and the lectures we went to were at the very least vaguely aware of this and adjusted their talks to accommodate for us. Mood lifting.

Dongdaemun at night!

The first night we ended up with a few hours spare in the evening so we went for a walk with some actual newbies, who were very fun to talk to and I hope we managed to get them realistically excited for the coming year, haha.

We sat and talked for quite a few hours before heading back and preparing for the next day.
Did I mention I lucked out with my roommate? Yessss.
Did I mention the showers were very...Korean? Noooooo.

We were in a government dorm building, which was a bit old and...not mosquito-proof, but hey free accomms. The only problem really is that I forgot to pack a towel and Korean towels are...hand-sized. Not great for making a dash to the bathroom. So I would end up getting undressed IN the shower and hanging them strategically.

Chuseok | Osaka Day 5

This is going to be a pretty short post, but it's a nice way to tie up the Chuseok posts, right?

On day 5, there wasn't really much time to do anything other than head to the airport and head home. Unlike the UK though, you don't have to turn up a million hours before your scheduled flight, so we still had the slight luxury of a lie in and a relaxed check of all our bags.

We bought breakfast while waiting for the airport train and I had to take a photo because it so perfectly captures mine and Nick's different ideas of how a good breakfast should be. (For clarity, his is sausage and egg on white bread, while mine is a chocolate waffle encasing chocolate mousse and a sort of chocolate jelly.)

I spotted this really cool work of art, made of old Osaka rail ticket stubs. It was taller than me, so it's a pretty impressive exhibit, as there were 3 or 4 different images there to look at.

Incheon from above. Really pretty!

Aha. Before leaving, we'd been told "get to the airport early! It's crazy during chuseok, you'll be queuing for hours!". When we arrived, we'd scoffed. Queues? What queues? Arriving in Japan, we had the same reaction. Leaving? Same again.

Then we arrived back in Incheon.

The immigration queues.

As Nick said when we got home, I think we were actually queuing at immigration for longer than we were on the plane to GET to Korea.

Small side note before I end this post, to any new or aspiring GETs (why are you reading this?), you don't need a multi-entry visa. Don't waste your money. Once you've been in Korea for something like 2 months, as long as you have your ARC with you (which you should) you can pass through immigration totally fine on a single-entry. We were so worried, but plenty of people said they only use a single-entry E-2, and they were right. Woohoo!

School Bonding Time

I'm really behind on posts! For the last two days of the final week of school, we had "teacher bonding" time. I think most, if not all, schools do this, because Nick also had a similar event with his school. These dinners might as well be compulsory. They're pretty important as a social event, and are seen as a treat from the principal and vice principal, so to refuse would be pretty rude, right?

The idea is you eat, drink, and be merry with your coworkers, in order to strengthen friendships and sort out any misunderstandings outside of the workplace. It's a really nice concept and I wish we had something like this at home.

Anyway, I only had a few lessons on the Thursday, and nothing else to plan, so I was dozing until it was time to go. We were roughly assorted into teams, piled into any available cars, and drove to a nearby barbecue house. I feel like we ended up booking out the entire place.

Can I just say, Korean BBQ is my new obsession and I want it forever. You can't really recreate it at home and just the casual, chatty, social aspect is so relaxing!

*Homer Simpson noises*

Now, this is Korea. So there's also bound to be a lot of drinking involved. Again, it's part of the social aspect, so generally it's encouraged to join in as much as possible. My school was quite partial to a "one shot!" of beer or soju, (essentially, DOWN IT) which quite pleasantly led me to discovering that I much prefer Cass and Hite to any of the beers we have back home. They're lighter and milder, which I guess is why so many people DON'T like them. Even my coworkers were surprised when I said I preferred it, because they all seemed to prefer Western beers.

Once we'd all stuffed ourselves and quite possibly depleted the restaurant's entire supply of 쌈 (leafy vegetables such as lettuce that you use as a sort of burrito wrap vehicle for all that meat), half of us moved onto "round 2", a nearby bar, whereupon the drinking continued.

Here, I had my first experience of "strange food". For the uninformed, about 4 years ago I made a promise to myself to try everything once. I heard people saying "번데기" a lot, but assumed they were joking around. But then the crockpot of soup appeared and, oh.

For the uninformed, 번데기is "silkworm pupae". Yep. Bugs.

The Korvia Summer BBQ!

Woo, it's been a while! In fairness, this is the longest-running and most consistent blog I think I've ever had (and, being a child of the internet, I've had a LOT of blogs...) so I'm not going to lie, I'm quite proud. It probably helps that my life is a lot more interesting now. Let's face it, "I went to a palace" is much better than "I slept for 13 hours then went on Tumblr" ;)

ANYWAY. Quite a few weeks ago now, Nick and I went to the Korvia BBQ. For the uninformed, Korvia is the recruitment agency we used to get our jobs in Korea. It's a great agency, with kind and caring staff and I don't think I'll ever be able to stop singing their praises. 

One of the many great things they do for their recruits is they hold a party or barbecue when the weather is good, to give teachers old and new a chance to mingle and meet some fellow English speakers. It's really nice when you're far away from home with very little in the way of home comforts. I'm quite lucky, because every day I come home to my own little slice of England, but for many people, especially those in more rural areas, I can imagine the homesickness can hit hard.

So, after doing some shopping in the morning (we wanted to buy a "thank you and happy birthday!" present for our lovely recruiter, Daisy) we hopped onto the subway and headed off for Yatap. Annoyingly, we had to take quite a convoluted route there, which meant that we ended up taking the same amount of time as some people that came from much, much further away! However, the subway here is very comfortable so I'm not complaining too much.

When we arrived in the right area, we found some helpful posters dotted around, and slowly the sound of very non-Korean voices drifted over. Yaaay~

Pictured above: the aforementioned sign, my plate piled high with lovely lovely food, and the obligatory photo of Nick eating and wishing I was doing something other than taking terrible photos.

The Obligatory "Room Tour"

Two blog posts in one day? Crazy talk! Sorry about that though.
I said I'd give a little photo-tour of our officetel at some point, so while I was testing out my new phone I thought I'd combine the two.

Firstly, the living room:

Look at that giant window. Aw yeah. So really this place is pretty much open-plan. It makes 20-30sq.ft. feel that bit bigger. Every little bit of space gets used, so that wardrobe is pretty big, and each segment under the stairs is actually a cupboard.

There's two fairly confusing and intimidating things on the wall, one for the hot water and underfloor heating, and the other is our doorbell. It's meant to have a digital peephole for the front door, but it's seemingly broken except for the intercom, and occasionally the whole thing just decides to yell at us. I can only assume they're party political broadcasts, urgent news, and building maintenance updates.

There's also two big sofas (with throws on, for comfort, because nobody likes a sticky leather seat in 30C+ weather) and a table that I assume should be our dining table but instead gets used to hold most of the kitchen appliances.

"Is that man pooping?" | Seoul's Trick Eye Museum

In the name of the moon... and cutting off your ear for love~!

So, quite a while ago now, f(x)'s Amber posted a series of photos to her instagram from the Trick Eye Museum in Hongdae, Seoul. When we found out we would be meeting up with some lovely Korvia recruits in Hongdae, we took the opportunity to head off to the museum first.

Being completely unaccustomed to Korea's odd street labelling system (or lack thereof), combined with the fact we didn't have our usual option of Google Maps to fall back on (all hail the Googly Overlords), it took us quite a long time to find. The museum itself is in a basement, so the entrance at surface level is only really big enough for a staircase. I think we wandered all over the place in completely the wrong direction before finding it pretty much right where we started. Sigh.

Arriving in Korea!

So, the morning of May 26th arrived, and I was terrified. So many things had already been delayed and rejected, what if we fell at the final hurdle?

It was fine.

We arrived early, and thanks to our recruiter and the people at IMOE we were allowed to pick up in the morning rather than the afternoon. The lady behind the desk had our passports ready WITH VISAS as soon as we walked through the doors and I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I had to excuse myself to the bathroom before my makeup got wrecked.

Anyway, it was then a mad dash back to the subway, back to the airport, onto a plane, and off to Incheon. There was some faff with baggage (of course it was my suitcase that had to be searched) and with immigration (of course I wouldn't have the right information on my entry form) but THEN we found the man with a little sign saying "Nick and Marichelle" and we were off over the giant bridge, finally in Korea.

We were taken right to the Incheon City Hall and met Sarah from IMOE and got right down to signing contracts and setting up our bank accounts, which was a big relief considering we'd thought we'd have to set them up ourselves.

Embarrassingly, it took us far too long to realise that the people sat opposite us were in fact our head co-teachers.

Then, our co-teachers drove us straight to our new home! It's an officetel in Bupyeong, and it's wonderful. They kept apologising for it being so small but it's far bigger than I'd expected! It has a MEZZANINE!

It needed quite a bit of tidying and cleaning, and it took a while to get used to where everything was, how things worked and finding all the hidden cupboards, but it feels like ours now. There's aircon and a fan for the hot, hot summer, and an electric blanket and ondol (underfloor heating!) for the winter. A huge window with a lively view, and, most importantly...

A rice cooker.

I'll take some photos and do an officetel tour in another post. Just thought I'd put a little update and end to the Fukuoka blogs until then o/

Welcome! | いらっしゃいませ！| 어서오세요!

Hello!

Right, I'll try and keep this brief, considering most of you know me in real life (and thus should have a fair idea of what's going on with me at the moment), or have found me through a search (and thus should have the ability to read my little sidebar bio), haha.

Anyway, after what is fast becoming half a year of training, application, and stress, I am on my way to Incheon in South Korea, to teach English with my lovely boyfriend Nick (whose blog you can find here).

I've written a summary of how I came to have this job, but in the interest of shortness I've added a jump below (opens in a new tab). If you want to bail now, here's your chance! I won't judge you.