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Published: September 29th 2008
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Wing
Out our window somewhere during our 15 hour flight. So our first month in Daejeon, South Korea has come and gone and what a month it has been! After a very long flight (15 hours) we hopped a bus at the airport and bussed to our city of Daejeon. The city has about 1.5 million people and is known as Korea’s science and technology capital. It has one subway line which connects some of the important areas (our apartment, the main train station, the other YBM ECC where our friends teach, the world cup stadium, etc.) but there are apparently a few more lines being built currently although I doubt we will be here long enough to see them running. Our first week was pretty smooth although I got quite ill from jet lag which was pretty rough. We went to Seoul for training two days after we arrived (which is where most of my jet lag sickness took place). We stayed in a pretty classy “love motel” while in Seoul, which had a nice collection of porn on each floor and each room came with free condoms and used toothbrushes. Oh and there was also a red light mounted on the wall above the bed in the hotel room.
Baggage
Jeff carrying our belongings for the next year. The training was long and proved to be as unhelpful as we thought once we actually started teaching. The first week of teaching was stressful, chaotic, and overwhelming but it has since settled down. I did not feel prepared at all for what teaching was really like.
Our initial image we had before arriving of Korean children being polite and eager to learn English was quickly corrected after our first class. I would say that image is still true for about ¼ of the kids at the school, but the rest are kids/teens who have been in classes all day and the last thing they want to do is learn a foreign language. So it really becomes finding a balance between trying to be a good teacher and being realistic about the outcome. As for the other teachers at our school, they are great! We have 5 foreign teachers from Canada and 2 from the US. Most of our Korean partner teachers are very helpful and friendly. Both our manager and school director are women and very friendly and helpful as well.
The food here is spicier and has more side dishes than I ever expected. My tolerance
Our apartment
We live on the 10th floor of apartment building 107 on the left. for spice in food has already begun to grow and the no-red-meat diet was thrown out the window on day two when the school took us out for a welcome dinner to a Korean BBQ restaurant (marinated beef or pork strips cooked right in front of you). I think we would be missing out on a lot the traditional food here if we didn’t eat red meat, and since most of our ordering at restaurants consists of us pointing frantically at pictures on the menu, it would only be a matter of time before we accidentally ordered something with pork or beef. There are hundreds of restaurants here as well as loads of clubs and foreigner bars.
Our apartment is about a 5 minute walk from our school and is in Mannyeon-dong. As far as we can tell no one uses street names here and instead everyone gives directions by “dongs” or neighborhoods. So you always know the general area where things are, but not always the exact address. Our apartment is pretty spacious by Canadian and Korean standards and we have a “western style” bathroom which means we have a bathtub rather than a shower hose on the
Expo park
The view of Expo park out our back window. wall and a drain in the center of the bathroom. We are on the tenth floor so we have a pretty nice view of the city/other apartments surrounding us. The teacher who was living here before us left it unbelievably dirty so it took us a weekends worth of cleaning to make it livable. We have a living room, kitchen, office, spare room, nice sized bedroom and an enclosed balcony.
The nightlife here seems pretty vibrant in certain districts, especially in Dunsan-dong, about 10 minutes from our dong. We have been out a few times with some of the foreign teachers here to the foreigners bars (think campus pubs), a very serene hookah bar, as well as to night clubs. Cabs here are also super cheap (a five minute ride will cost you around 3-4$ regardless of how many people you have) so it makes getting around a lot easier and affordable.
We also have been keeping pretty busy on the weekends. The second weekend we were here we went to see a baseball game in the Hanbat stadium where our team in the national league (the Daejeon Tigers) were beat pretty badly. The following weekend was Chuseok
Kitchen
Our lovely kitchen. (Korean thanksgiving) so we had a couple extra days off. On that Saturday we went to see a soccer game in Daejeon’s world cup stadium where the home team lost again, but it was still pretty exciting to watch. On Sunday we decided to go for a hike up one of the many mountains that surrounds Daejeon (The city of Daejeon is almost completely surrounded by mountains and many of them have hiking trails and Buddhist temples to visit). The mountain we chose to climb (Gaphasan) proved to be very strenuous and must not have been a very popular hike because the paths were quite narrow and at times very steep. We made it to the top and the view of the city was beautiful (See Gaphasan entry for pictures). That night we went over to Noeun (another dong) to have Chuseok dinner with our friends at the other ECC in Daejeon. On Monday we went on another hike up a different mountain (Bomunsan) with a fellow teacher’s church. This hike was a bit easier, and definitely more people friendly as there were actual steps and wide paths to follow up the hill. It is also popular in Korea to
Living room
Our sunny living room. have exercise equipment in parks and mountains. We have found clearings with these machines in most parks we have been to although they mostly seem to be a socializing spot for older Korean men rather than a place to exercise. The view from this mountain was even more impressive and there was much more to see when you got to the top (See Bomunsan entry for pictures). Last weekend we traveled north east of Daejeon to the city of Danyang to explore the Gosu caves (See Danyang entry for details and pictures).
The weather here, up until the end of last week, had been hot, sticky, and humid. It seemed that the temperature had been pretty constant (between high twenties and low thirties) from the day we arrived until last week where, after a day of rain, the temperature drastically dropped. For the last few days it has been cool (around 15) and it seems that autumn is finally here. It was pretty strange to have the seasons change in the span of 48 hours but also quite a relief as I had had just about enough of the humidity.
I think that is it for our one month
Night view
The view from our balcony at night. update! We still do not have internet in our apartment, but once we get it we will try upload stories and photos more frequently.
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Bob Caissie
non-member comment
eye brows
Wow nice photos..is it a korean tradition to always raise your eye brows?