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.

Small Update

Just a little update about a few things that happened throughout February and the start of March.
The main thing being it's really cold and a few sprinklings of snow.

For 4 days.

I managed to get ill enough that I napped in the medical room (far bigger and nicer than the ones we had at school and not at all scary) and my head co-teacher, also a little worse for wear, took me to the hospital.

The custom here seems to be that you go to the 'hospital' (now that I've been to a few, as well as a proper, big, 'general hospital' I'd be more inclined to call it a 'clinic') for any little aches and pains. You also see a specialist, rather than a GP, and they get right down to it before it can get any worse, which I do like.

Anyway, the ENT doctor diagnosed me with everything under the sun (slight hyperbole. Early onset flu, bronchitis and a few other things), but with all the Korean to-and-fro it felt a lot worse. Either way, the meds did the trick and I'm really very glad I went.

"Welcome to Hell"

My 6th graders graduated without me really realising, and everyone else was kind of busy so I didn't get to see them ㅠㅠ but at one point I saw a load of posters lining the way to the hall where the graduation would take place, all congratulatory and encouraging for the new MIDDLE SCHOOL times. Except this one, which took a more pessimistic tone. As they say (apparently) "Middle school is where happiness dies and sadness begins".

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

Seoul Food | 백반 Baekban

Because I don't post about food enough (ha), I thought I'd share with you the incredible dinner my head co-teacher treated me and Nick to sometime back in late January. I'm not sure if this would really be called 'baekban' but I'm also not sure what it's actually called, so until I find out, this is the placeholder name I'll be using.

I read two different meanings for baekban, "hundred side dishes" and "cooked white rice". Either way, it's pretty accurate.

This is a more traditional Korean-style meal, with loads and loads of little dishes scattered around for everyone to pick and choose from. It's absolutely ridiculous and a lot of fun. Usually most places just wheel in a trolley and rapidly throw bowls into empty spaces with skill and accuracy, but this place took a different and presumably more time-efficient method.

They wheel in a second table-top and it slots on over the existing one. In one fell swoop, all of the food is on and ready and you don't have to worry about spilling stuff on a customer in the rush.

It was super nice and we got to have some quality time with our busy co-teachers and coworkers, even if it was only for a little while. ^^

Christmas in Korea

I feel like I already talked about Christmas traditions in Korea, but it bears repeating so I'll say it again: It's very different.

As far as I can tell, it's a commercial holiday. (Even more so than at home ;p) Historically, it's not a Christian country, so they have no reason to cherish it the way we do. It's a holiday shipped over from the US, like many things here, with a romanticised spin thrown over it so that it's mostly about spending quality time with your other half. Think of it as December Valentine's Day. Or just...December Sales Day where everyone conveniently has the day off.

It's not a big family event where people from all over the place gather to eat a lot of food. They have Chuseok for that! If anything, couples might exchange gifts whilst on a cute date, or parents might give their child a gift but according to my co-teacher that's where the line is drawn. It's not a gift-heavy occasion and even then it's quite often just money.

Because of this, there's also a distinct lack of Christmas decorations to be found. Sure, a lot of the shops we go to and big stations we visit have a tree set up somewhere, and a lot of cafes have snowflake decals and wreaths up on the windows and walls. But I'm yet to see big strings of lights everywhere in shopping areas, and extravagant window-dressing like at home. I'm not sure if I'm sad or happy about this.

When Nick was talking to his students about Christmas and Christmas Songs, they touched on the topic of Christmas carols. As far as they were concerned, any old Christmas song from the 80's and 90s is a Christmas carol. Ah, yes, All I Want For Christmas Is You, that age-old traditional Christmas carol by Anon. Actually, I don't think I heard a single actual carol. Maybe Silent Night, but with a modern cover and with a very different vibe to the quiet, solemn piece you usually hear in the streets.

Then there's the fact we barely had a break for Christmas. December 25th, that's it. No more, no less. We were in school right up until Christmas Eve, and back in the classroom bright and early on Boxing Day. So it kind of didn't sink in that Christmas had come until I was lying in bed on the 25th wondering why I wasn't in school on a Thursday. Usually there's a lot of build-up. The traditional adverts start to pop up, decorations stretch as far as the eye can see, and you can usually see trees dressed and lovely in living room windows. Music pumps out of stores everywhere and people start to ask you about your plans for the holiday. Christmas food is all over the place, people are frantically buying gifts and wrapping paper, and everyone busts our their favourite hideous sweater. Even most work places tend to have decorations and I remember well all of the Christmas-themed activities we'd do in school every year for the last few weeks of term.

But there was none of that, and it was a little bit confusing and jarring, even for me, the self-proclaimed Scrooge.

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.

에버랜드 | Everland

Happy Birthday!

Another testament to how far behind I am with these posts, I went to Everland with Nick and Kiegan (Korvianites, woo!) for her birthday weekend. On October 5th.

Everland is one of South Korea's few theme parks (understandable, considering there's not much space to be wasting on rollercoasters) but it's decently sized and looks the part. Apparently it's better than Lotte World, but I guess I'll just have to go there to compare ;p

Anyway, we had an exciting journey via the subway, including the very new chunk of light rail line that I think was built specifically to make it a bit easier to access Everland and that stretch of the country.

Driving the trainnnn~

The weather was great and we actually saved an awful lot of money thanks to the fabled "Native Teacher" discount that we weren't 100% sure existed. It was a bit of a mission finding the right place to go and then filling in all the paperwork (all in Korean, because I'm assuming it's not a common thing for them to talk about or have papers printed for) But lo, we presented our papers and the lady behind the desk issued us 3 wonderfully discounted entry passes.

Starting small, we first went on a log flume so that we could dry off as the day went on, so obviously no pictures but it was kind of scary. We apparently 'got air' on the last drop (because they're boats, not on a rail or anything) but I was too busy screaming to notice, I assume.

We then took it easy on what I think was a kids ride, whereupon we initially complained that it was too slow and cutesy...

But apparently that was just the beginning and it ended up really quite alarmingly fast.

"look terrified, it's more fun"

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 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.