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Published: March 28th 2010
Sadly enough, Cheongju is not on the list of options for cities in South Korea on this travel blog website. "South Korea" will have to do. But if anyone is wondering I am in Cheongju. We arrived here Friday night. It is currently Sunday evening and we start teaching tomorrow! It's not that easy though: let me rewind.
Friday: We get up, pack all of our luggage into a van outside the hotel. There's about 14 of us loading all of our stuff in this van, and riding in it to training. It was a tight squeeze. But before all of that: I am coming out of the elevator with a luggage cart full of 4 bags 50+ pounds each, 3 carry ons, a purse and my training binder. Jake is upstairs getting his huge box that is filled with a bike. You can imagine that I am struggling slightly. I see 2 Korean men between me and the door outside to the van. I'm pushing and pulling trying to get the awkward thing going in the right direction and they start to move towards the door. Yay! Help! Of course not, I have not seen any Korean men be very helpful to women. I haven't been here for long but an example is in the subway: you give your seat to older people, yes, always, but a man and a woman are standing, man takes the seat without hesitation. I realize there are exceptions. Anyway, they head toward the door and I am following close behind. Next thing I know, 2 glass doors swinging shut in my face. Thanks, guys! I nearly broke 4 hotel doors because my huge metal cart is banging into the glass...and finally someone helps me get outside, only to let go of the cart. There is a very slight decline but it is just enough to send me flying into the bus only to be smashed by the luggage cart one second later. It was too heavy for me to stop from slamming into me! Luckily it didn't hurt and I thought the whole situation was semi-humorous. So we load all of our stuff, smash into the van and the bus ride is fairly quiet because everyone is nervously studying. We had a class structure test for the AM and PM sessions and also our final mock teaching. I was never too worried about it but then everyone was talking about how they didn't sleep and stayed up all night stuyding and mock teaching. Then I began to panick. The latest I stayed up the entire week was 10:45. And that was rough! Anyway, we get to the training center and have to unload EVERYTHING and take it to the 4th floor of the building. This wouldn't be too challenging if the 3ft by 3ft elevator didn't have a very sensitive weight limit. We could only fit one person at a time with their luggage and that was even tight! If you live in America, you have never seen an elevator this size in your life. So we unload all our luggage and take off to our separate training sessions. I got a 10/10 on the morning class test and my mock went fine. When morning class ended and we were all waiting anxiously to hear our results, our trainer said, "okay, you will find out your results at the end of the afternoon session." You can imagine that that was good news.
We took a break for lunch and I walked to Paris Baguette, a pastry shop that had quite a few different yummy treats. After an hour break it was back to training for the PM session. At this point my brain is exhausted. It is full of information. I am nervous/anxious for where I'll be going in the next few hours. I am tired of standing in front of people practicing teaching and then listening to criticism for the next 10 minutes. We'd been doing the same thing for 4 days and we just wanted to know if we passed! I get the test and my mind literally goes blank. I'm like....ugh, crap, what is the answer? I managed to fill out the 10 questions and I passed with a 7 out of 10 which is the bare minimum. Ha ha...I'm not sure what happened. I think I had brain overload. Next 3 hours: more mocking, more criticism. We finish and my trainer says, "wait here for your recruiter, he will tell you your results." I'm like great! I've never even seen or met my recruiter and HE is in charge of passing me?
20 minutes go by. Every time I hear footsteps I glance up anxiously. Everytime it's just my fellow trainees finding out they passed. I'm like "okay, seriously...I couldn't have failed right?" But the absolute humiliation of failing was such a terrible and scary option, I couldn't rule it out. It wasn't like, oh you failed, it's okay. It was like "I already told everyone I know that I AM teaching in South Korea, that I was HIRED, that I have a JOB!" So anyway, these thoughts continued in my head for quite some time. Then my trainer came in and said, "go to meeting room 1." I'm like...can someone just tell me what's going on already! Gosh they know how to drag this thing out. I go into the training room and see a large chunk of my fellow trainees- although, some are missing. Most people are all smiles and I see Jake, and ask him what's going on. He said we were the ones who passed and they were going to have a little closing ceremony for us. All our trainers came in and said congratulations and then we watched some videos on Korean culture and students and their lifestyles. That video itself could take up a blog. It compared a student in Korea to a student in America and it was unreal. If you see the time they spend studying comparatively, you can't help but be concerned for the future of our country. The differences are incrdible!
So I passed, we signed our contracts, and without saying goodbye to anyone we were rushed downstairs with all our luggage to a call van. Jake and I were driven to a bus station in Seoul and then barely managed to get all of our things to the right bus. The van driver was helping us and he didn't speak English. He took us all the way to one end of the station, then said "no no" turned us around and we walked to the other end, then looked flustered, and we turned around yet again only to walk right back to where we were. And yes, this is with 7+ bags and a bike. It was embarrassing. Koreans stared at us like there was no possible way 2 people owned that much stuff. I'm ashamed.
The bus was really nice and Jake grabbed us 2 pepsi's and 2 snickers for a little congratulations party! Ha ha. Sidenote: No one helped us load all of our stuff under the bus. Anyway, an hour and a half to Cheongju. The drive was pretty much yuck. Besides some mountains in the distance, we mainly saw dirt, fields, construction. I was like "oh dear, where are we going?" Then we suddenly exited and we were in Cheongju. Pulling into the bus station I saw The North Face store, Pizza Hut, and Popeye's. I was like "okay, can't be that bad." But when we got out the entire city was lit up like Las Vegas. Huge TV screens advertising, bright neon lights on every building. It was awesome! We weren't sure what to expect of this town but it is the perfect size and so far I love it!
We unloaded all our stuff from the bus and stood in absolutely freezing wind, waiting for our director. He didn't come so we found a phone and called him and he was on his way. However, he was driving a regular size car. Definitely didn't fit our stuff so he had to call another guy and we split it up. He took us to a hotel that was very cute/nice. It had a huge flat screen, a desktop computer, and a water dispenser in the room. We were hoping to get our apartments that night but another hotel. Then he took us out to dinner and it was SO good. We cooked the pork at our table and ate it with kimchi, green onions, garlic, lettuce, rice, and an assortment of other things. My taste buds were experiencing brand new flavors! It was so good and we got really full, and then he took us back to our hotel and said goodnight. The bad thing about Korean food: the aftertaste. I could hardly even sleep the strong stench of garlic was filling every breath. GROSS!!! ALL day the next day I could taste it and I was like "gross." But it was so good while we ate it. Ever since my first Korean meal I knew: Korean food burps REEK! It is hardly bareable.
The next morning we got up and wandered outside. It was like a different city than the night before! There were NO people anywhere. No bright lights. Still flyers scattered all over the ground of almost naked Koreans. It was so weird to see the difference. We walked for 10 minutes before we saw a person. Almost every shop was closed. It was 11:30 AM. Apparently too early to be awake on a Saturday. We walked forever until we found Caffe-Italy. Coffee & gelato. We fumbled around with pointing and words like "latte, bagel, coffee" and finally got two warm blueberry bagels, cream cheese, and our coffee's. Of course we were the only people in the entire place. It was a great breakfast though. By the end of it, there were signs of human life. Kids and mothers were walking in the streets. A group of kids would grab eachother and point at us and scream "hello, hello, bye, bye bye." They were cute.
Our director picked us up at the hotel and then drove us to the school. Our school is on the 7th floor of a building, and it is pretty nice. It's very modern/cool when you walk in. Bright colors in contrast with white. Both of us were like "wow, this is nice." They showed us our classrooms and we are teaching right next store to each other. Then the teachers we are both replacing came in and talked to us for a while. He showed me my textbooks and told me about kids that are troublesome. I was under the impression there was no such thing as bad students in Korea. Ha ha but kids will be kids. In training I was basically told I need to be a little more "compassionate" with my students. And to never use the word "no" in class. It has a negative connotation. If they say the wrong answer just say, "yes, but what else do you think it could be?" Not gonna lie, that's gonna take some practice! When subbing in American schools your vocabulary is pretty much limited to the word no.
For a number of reasons I won't get into, yesterday during that time at the school, my first low point on this trip took place. One aspect was seeing all the teaching material that I need to have ready by Monday. I am teaching 2 different classes every day, and only 1 of them is the one I trained for. That means I have a bit to learn. It also means: a lot of prepping! Yuck. But I know I can handle it. There were a few other reasons...but the only one I will write about is seeing my apartment. That is a blog in itself but let's just say it wasn't left very clean. And that is never a fun feeling. Moving into something dirty and gross. They had 2 people there cleaning it when I arrived but I'm not sure what they did. There were things left in the apartment. Some of them were helpful: kitchen supplies, a hair straightner, etc. Some of them not so much. Garbage basically. Lots of garbage and crap that I didn't want. So I was feeling rather glum. I mean...quite bummed. Another thing was that we don't have internet yet. I know that's not a huge deal but piled on with everything else I was like..."what are we doing here?" for the first time.
We went outside to get bedding from our Korean friend who drove us around (took a few trips with all the luggage) and who doesn't really speak English. He is very sweet though. Then 4 people came up to us and were like, "are you the new teachers?" AHHH English, YES! We are. So good to hear English. Ha ha. We talked with Jen, Rob, Nick, & Ben for quite a while and then they invited us to their place and we hung out for a long time just talking. They are all GREAT! It's been quite some time since we've had normal, good conversations so just talking to them was refreshing. There are some very, shall I say "different," people teaching over here so it was AWESOME to meet 4 seemingly normal people. Ha ha. We keep asking ourselves if we are the weird ones?
They answered a lot of questions we had and were all VERY friendly. Rob & Jen are from Canada and she teaches at CDI and he came with for the year to hang out. They have been here for about 3 weeks. Nick is from Texas and he has been here for about a month I think. Ben is from Tennessee and he's been here the longest: 3 months. There is another teacher who's from Idaho that we haven't met yet.
Our new friends took us out to dinner and then to Home Plus. Walmart on STEROIDS. It's at least 4 stories high and MASSIVE. Clothing, electronics, food, anything you can think of is at home plus. It was PACKED. But we finally got to buy some of the things we needed and I hope to take video of the inside of this place because it's crazy! We carried everything we bought home and of course the bed sheet I bought did not fit. I made Jake go back to the store with me to return it and we weren't sure exactly how that would work with the language barrier. I showed it to one guy and he said "service center." I found what looked to be like a service center and showed her my receipt. Without Jake's help I may have failed but after a minute I got my money back. When you check out at this store they ask you if you want 1, 2, or 3 months. All in Korean so I had no idea. But you can delay the payments I guess over time.
My wrists are hurting from typing but I am finally getting to the fun stuff. Ha ha. We met up with our friends at 11 so we could go out and see the "it" spot in cheongju. We got there by taxi, which is really cheap. There are 2 universities in Cheongju and near them is where all the action is. Again, it looked like vegas or something. Neon lights, loud music, dressed up people. We walked around and saw where the different western bars are where you can order in English and where you'll find Americans. We also learned about business bars which apparently is where you can get rather friendly with your waitress. After a while we went to MJ's bar and hung out. We played WII, darts, and pool. It was pretty fun....I think most of the people in there were speaking English but there were lots of Koreans. Highlight: my first official game of darts, and I beat Jake. And yes, he grew up with a dartboard. However, he killed me at WII tennis. After games and loud music we ventured outside around 1:30 which is apparently when the night gets started. For Jake and I though, it may set a record for longest we've been awake in at least a year. Ha ha yes, we have realized we are quite lame. Ben was pretty excited about taking us to a Norebong, which I'd heard about but apparently not enough. I knew it was karaoke which is why I quickly said, "I will not be singing if we go." But I didn't realize how they do it here. Ha ha it was so fun! You rent a room with a big flat screen and loud speakers. They give you 2 microphones and a couple of tamborines. All these crazy lights come on and you pick whatever songs you want and sing! I'm not sure if that even sounds fun but it was SO much fun and I definitely got video of this! This is EXTREMELY popular here and they are ALL over the place. We sang for about an hour and then left. After my duet with Aerosmith, I hardly had any voice left. We took taxi's home and called it a night. 3 am. Sidenote: I finally had Soju for the first time.
Today was productive. Yay for cleaning for HOURS! I wish I could have flown my mom or nyrie in for the day to help me 😊 You guys wouldn't believe some of the yuckyness in this place. Did I mention the entire apartment is smaller than most dorm rooms? That was to be expected though. I finally started to unpack, AFTER cleaning, and began feeling MUUUUCH better about the place and everything in general. We had fun last night, met some cool people, and I am getting more and more excited about my place. After all, it's not everyday that I have my own room and area to call home 😊 Jake said to me last night, "We're going to be with these people for a year. We haven't been with any same group of people for a year...ever." I'm pretty excited about being in one place for an entire year! That hasn't happened since high school in Puyallup. I will be even more excited when I get internet 😊
At some point today, our friends came over with coffee and we went up to the roof of our place. The sun was out today and it almost felt like spring! Besides the fact that it's freezing. We sat on the roof for hours and talked with the warm sun shining on us while a cool breeze was coming and going. Altogether, today has been good and I'm very excited about being here. First day of teaching is tomorrow...which I'm a little nervous about. Time will tell....
Jake and I walked to this PC shop to use the internet. Downfall of that is having to us a PC. I'm sorry but I don't know how people do it. Everything is so much more difficult and the websites freeze and....I could go on and on. Ha ha. Praise God for Macs! However, we are paying for this so it's about time to head out. We're meeting our friends in a few for dinner. Then we need to prep for school tomorrow. Tomorrow we go to school 3 hours early for meetings and just to get prepared. I'm excited about it though!
I hope all my fam made it to Southern Cali safely and that you're all enjoying yourselves in the sun 😊 I want to skype with everyone soon! Hopefully we get internet tomorrow...but if not, it's gotta be sometime this week! We have internet, we just don't have the code and password you need to get on. Lame.
Miss everyone. Have a great spring break! Fly to Cheongju if you're bored 😊
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Stacey
non-member comment
Wow
I did read all of that! Love the updates. Glad you are doing so well over there! Miss you guys.