Blogs from Dongtan, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, Asia

I’ve been back in Korea for a month and I have been informed that it’s time for a blog update. So here it goes: The flight back went really smoothly. Absolutely no issues getting back to the country and back to my apartment. Despite being in America for what seemed like forever (2 months), my town seems almost exactly the same (there’s a new hair salon that caters to foreigners, though I’ll never use it due to my loyalty to Helena. She cuts my bangs for free and gives me fries sometimes. Can’t beat that service. Also, my favorite chicken galbi place was pulled out. Luckily there’s another location of the same chain in town. It’s just much farther away, unfortunately.) I enjoy most of my classes. I have to teach kindergarten now. It’s only twice ... read more

Over a recent long weekend we decided to capitalize on one of the last warm(ish) weekends of the season and we took a trip down to Busan (Pusan? Your choice), Korea’s second largest city and largest seaport. We took the slow train (about 5 hours) down from Suwon on Saturday morning. It was nice because we went in a boys group and a girls group so we could see the things we were all the most interested in, but come together as well. In the girl’s group, our first stop was the Busan Aquarium, the country’s largest aquarium (so many superlatives in Busan!). The coolest part was a pretty large tank with a sea turtle and sharks that you could take a tour in with a glass-bottomed boat. The tour was all in Korean, but it ... read more

So I finally got to experience the wonder that was Mud Fest. It was hyped to an extreme degree, so I was a bit nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, but luckily that didn’t happen. It was one of the most fun weekends I’ve ever had. I roomed with a couple of my coworkers, so we got up pretty early Saturday morning (tough for me, but I made it happen) and took a cab to Suwon, the nearest large town from where we live. We took a train south from Suwon to a small, rural town called Daecheon 대천(not to be confused with Daejeon 대전, the 5th largest city in the country, which I’ve already visited. They’re on the same train line btw. That’s not confusing at all…) We took a bus into ... read more

Wow! It's hard to believe I've been here two months and haven't posted in 1 month. I think I'm starting to get the hang of things. It's still been bitterly cold and I know that there's a lot more to do when it gets warm out. So, I decided to write this entry on the bus on my way into Seoul. It's my first trip by myself into Seoul and I ended up getting on a bus I've never taken before because it said it was going to the right neighborhood. But neighborhoods are pretty large, so we'll see how this goes. At the end of February we had kindergarten graduation which was baffling and adorable in turn. the graduating "7-year-olds" (probably 6 by now) put on a musical about a man trying to feed his ... read more

So I've taught my own classes for over a week now and I'm really getting the hang out it. But not gym. I don't think I'll ever get used to the gym classes here. There's always kids running everywhere and I don't know all of their names yet since I don't teach the kindergarten kids regularly. They also play some pretty risky games. Dodgeball is pretty common, though I'm not sure it's a brilliant idea in a room that has a lot of computers. The computers are also a problem for one of my gym classes b/c one of the kids loves pulling the cords out of the computers and flipping switches, etc. Basically I spend my time watching him like a hawk while the other teacher runs the gym class. Another game the kids LOVE ... read more