Tongyeong Beyond Advanced

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9:20am came far too quickly! I dragged myself out of bed and opened the suitcase that I was fairly sure I'd be able to close again. I then searched for the most work appropriate and least wrinkled clothes I could find and threw on some mascara in hopes that it would fool people into thinking I was awake. I did not. Leon was waiting for Tim and I downstairs and we were off to the Tongyeong Beyond Advanced school. Beyond Advanced is a chain of private English language schools spreading throughout South Korea with the Geoje Island branch being its newest addition. We walked in on the first floor of one of many tall buildings to see a large reception desk with several ladies having rapidly fast phone conversations. We past them by and were led into the teachers lounge. Now remember the teachers lounge at school? Remember how off limits it always was and if you somehow made it in there you had some sort of bragging rights...well not here! The teachers lounge is a doors open come one, come all type of place. There were Korean teachers and Western teachers all looking very busy and students flitzing about waiting for the bell to ring for class. I was introduced to a Canadian girl named Belinda whose classes I would be shadowing from 9:30am-3pm. I feel very lucky to have shadowed Belinda, because she has an Elementary Education degree from her university in Canada and has taught students in Australia and the U.K. before coming to Korea. In other words, she knows her stuff! So, I was able to see her techniques of disciplining and keeping the students under control, as well as learning a lot of great ideas for making teaching fun. The Tongyeong branch is the largest of the Beyond Advnaced schools and has six foreign teachers, where Geoje will be the smallest, with just Tim and I as the foreign teachers. It was good to see how the big, busy school runs, yet know that we'd be making our way to a much smaller and slightly more relaxed school...I am grateful for being placed at the Geoje branch!

3pm came slowly, but surely, and Leon was waiting outside to pick us up. The Tongyeong teachers had invited us to go for dinner and bowling with them later that evening. We made plans to meet back at the school at 7pm, but for now it was time to grab some food, then try to catch up on some sleep! Leon dropped us off at the motel, which was good so we had our bearings, then we headed out for lunch. As we were looking for a place to eat, we came across a place with all these metal vats and I immediately wondered if it was a brewery! So, we stepped inside to check it out, but found that it was not a brewery at all. The man working in the store turned on one of the vats and it looked like a science experiment with some sort of liquid bubbling inside under a bright red light. We stared unknowingly at it for a moment, then he brought us two dixie cups of a dark brown liquid. It was my turn to try it first...Tim and I have begun to take turns of who will be the first to eat/drink the strange things we come across...so I tasted it and it just tasted like rotten, sour, fermented fruit. Which I believe is pretty much what it is. Tim convinced me that it was completely rude to not finish the drink, a fact of which I don't know, and I doubt he does either, but I finished it anyway just in case and he was entertained at my dismay. The man then pointed to a bag of pears and a canister of ginseng, so we kind of know what we drank. We thanked him, feeling guilty for not buying anything, then as we were stepping back out into the rain, he yelled after us and ran out with an umbrella. It had started to come down pretty hard, so Tim took it, we thanked him again and were on our way to find food. I think that was approximately the sixth umbrella we'd been offered in 1 1/2 days.

We found a cozy looking place, although most places seem to be cozy as the floors are heated and that is where you sit to eat! So our general tactic is to go in, say, "Annyong Hasseyo," sit down and when they speak Korean to us, we say, "Okay!" Then wait for whatever they bring us to eat. It's been surprisingly successful so far! So we did just that and the lady spread a big piece of plastic over our table and brought us water. We sat in anticipation and before too long about 5 dishes came out, including kim chi and sardines. We snacked a bit and hoped more food was coming and soon after that, we received two soups and about 5 more dishes. At this point we were content with what we had to eat and were trying all these small dishes of unique foods and enjoying ourselves, but then, the lady comes out with a huge tray with about 15-20 more plates on it! These plates are about the size of my fist, so they are not large by any means, but they are heaped with things like seaweed, whole garlic cloves, what tastes to me like kim chi in a bunch of different forms: cubed, in strings, normal kim chi, oysters, whole mini crabs, and meats of all sorts, so they fill you up. By the time she fit all the plates on to our table we were just laughing at the ridiculous amount of food in front of us. We had three rows of food covering the entire table. There was no room for anything else or they probably would have brought it!

After chowing down on our feast, we headed back to our motel and this time as we stepped out of the elevator we noticed a rather odd vending machine. It said in big red lettering, "Enjoy Love," and was filled with dildos and lube. We considered this briefly, but were too tired to be bothered. We headed back to our rooms and I passed out immidiately. Tim, convieniently I might say, failed to bring any sort of time telling device with him, so I became his clock for the first week. I set an alarm, which like the morning one, came all to fast. I thought I'd had to drag myself out of bed that morning, but this time I really had to force myself to get up. I definitely could have slept the evening and night through. But, we decided it'd be better to make friends! And in retrospect, I'm very glad we did. I got myself up and ready, then pounded on Tim's door to wake him up and we slowly made our way back to the school to meet the rest of the foreign teachers. We went to a little restaurant that is essentially fast food, but is way better than any fast food in America. I had some delicious Udon noodles, but unfortunately for me, they don't take precaution here for soup or beverage temperatures. So, while everyone else ate, I stared at my noodles, taking one out at a time and waiting for it to cool so I could eat it. Delicious, but too time consuming...especially for fast food!

After dinner we headed to the bowling alley, with a quick stop along the way for alcohol. This is when we got our first taste of Somak. In Korean, beer is makjew, and they have a famously cheap and popular liquor called Soju. So, after you take a few slugs of your beer, you fill it back up with Soju and you have Somak! The beer is not good (and for those of you who know me as the beer snob that I am, you know that just means it's equivalent to Miller or Bud back home) and the soju is not good, but somehow, you mix them together and it's like magic...instantly delicious. There were about 6 or 7 other foreign teachers (from Beyond Advanced as well as other English language schools in Tongyeong) and one of the teachers brought her adult class out with her as well. It was one of the Korean guys birthdays and it was fun to have them there to talk to, despite the fact that their English skills are pretty low. We bowled a few games, then headed out to the bar. It was around this time that we decided to mention the fact that there is a dildo vending machine at our motel and should we not be weirded out by that?! The foreign teachers all laughed and said, "Ahh the love motel." So, apparently all over Korea they have what they call love motels and they are only $8/night to stay there. All of the teachers had spent their first days in a love motel as well, so at least we weren't the only ones to get put up there! But, any motels like this in America would be filthy and disgusting, but this one was very clean and nice. And I think I was too worn out to care anyway! It was great to spend time around people who have been living in Korea for a while. We got so many tips and general heads up from them that made me feel good about moving to Geoje Island that much more knowledgable.

It was a great night out with new friends and we were super grateful, because we didn't have to observe the next day until 3pm. I slept til around 1, when I got up and slowly got my act together. I was luckily able to close up the bag I had opened and had all my bags packed and ready to go when Leon came for us at 2:40. This afternoon I shadowed an American girl named Brittany and it was nice to see the contrast between the two teaching styles. It was another long day as I was still so tired, but Tim and I cut out around dinnertime and went down the street for some Gimbap. Gimbap is the quickest and easiest snack to find here. It is essentially a vegetarian "sushi" roll, so it is rice and pickled veggies and such wrapped in seaweed. It's delicious, except they don't serve it with soy sauce, so it's always good to have some on hand to enhance the flavor. We finished observing classes around 8pm, then had to wait for Leon to finish whatever it is that Leon does. He's definitely the driver for wherever anyone needs to go, but I haven't figured out what he does the rest of the day, but I know he works everyday from something like 8am-10pm. Then, around 9pm, we finally left to go to Geoje Island!

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Photos

Tongyeong
Love Motel

Tongyeong
Love Motel

Tongyeong
Love Motel

Tongyeong
My view of Tongyeong from the Love Motel

Tongyeong
Love Motel Dildo Vending Machine

Comments

[enlightenedtravels]

Dad!
Lol thanks for the advice dad! No worries there.

[Cameron]

Good stuff Kailie!! These are great blogs, I can't wait to come visit!

[Ashlee D]

Food
Another great blog! Do you ever wish you could just know what type of food they have, you want and order it? Doesnt it scare you to have no idea what your about to eat ... and for that matter the quantity, do you always finish it all or are you throwing a lot out. After this blog all i can picture is the two of you patiently waiting on whatever these ladies think you would appreciate to eat, you get it - it tastes disgusting but inorder to not be rude you sit there miserable consuming it!

[enlightenedtravels]

Fooooood!
Sometimes I wish I knew what I could order, but we have learned a few dishes that we like, so I actually had what I wanted for dinner today, so that was cool. For the most part though, I don't mind being surprised..it's part of the fun. We've eaten some really weird shit. It definitely scares me, but I like that. And Tim will eat everything, so I don't worry about quantity. I eat myself full and he eats the rest..works out rather well. We haven't had a meal that was all disgusting yet. There have been plenty of disgusting things, but you can just choose not to eat it and eat the good stuff. But it's definitely a game of chance trying everything!!