Updates

Hey all!

I figured I was due for an update on this thing. Not too much is new here. I have been keeping busy at school for the most part. We are in our last few weeks of regular school days, I think 4 more weeks, before we move into our winter camp session. This will be 10 days long over the course of 12 days (yes, I will be in school for two Saturdays, lame). My native English speaking co-worker and I will have our work cut out for us but we have a few free work days without classes or Englishtown groups to get ourselves ready. If you have any inspiring themes we could use, let me know!

Korea has been treating me well. It has been nice to fill my weekends up with visiting people, going out to international styled restaurants, and going to bars to meet foreigners. It really helps to be around new people to Korea too. K-pop has not grown on me and I doubt it ever will and as for the meat eating... I have a bit of a deal with my co-worker that I will eat her seafood if she eats my beef, chicken, and pork. I was adventurous at first but I must say that I am a true vegetarian through and through no matter how hard I try to like meat. I am sure I will continue to eat meat as it is served to me but when I can avoid it I definitely do.

This weekend, we went to see Catching Fire, went to a fundraiser, and went to what's called a dog cafe! You go and buy a coffee, which is a pretty steep $5, but then you get to play with the cutest and fluffiest puppies and dogs that wander around the cafe being pet by all the patrons. It was so cute! There is also a kitten cafe too which I'm sure jamie will drag me to soon.

As for future plans, we only get Christmas day off so a bunch of friends we have made will be going to Jamie's place in Gwangju to have a big Christmas Eve feast, have Christmas morning with each other, and then go back to our respective homes. As for New Year's, we only get the 1st of January off so we have not made any big plans for that yet. However, for our winter vacation (January 16th-February 2nd) Jmaie and I plan to meet up with her Queen's friends, Tristan and Jenny, in Bangkok and then travelling to Vietnam for our holidays. We will be booking our flights this week so we are extremely excited about this.

Wolchusan Mountain

We went for a hike.
Little did we know, this hike is for experts. Jamie, our two Brit friends, and I start walking up the hill to the base of the mountain. All the Korean people were already walking back down since we had started sometime around 2pm. We were giggling a bit at how dressed up all these people were. I mean they looked like intense hikers. They were blowing pressurized air on their boots, had matching coats and spandex pants, walking poles, music coming from their backpacks... everything. Us waygooks (foreigners) were wandering up the hill that we all expected to be Gatineau hill type of hike (maybe harder) and the three of them all smoking their cigarettes. Being already tired and really out of shape I made a joke how I was glad that at least I was doing this trek with a bunch of smokers.
Suffice to say we were not at all prepared and were in for quite the surprise when the rocky path turned into stairs and then to piles of rocks, ladders, and rocks with metal poles stuck in them.

Can you spot the two white guys?

I was trying to get a shot of where the bridge was on the mountain. (almost the peak) Instead, here's my friend Kris.

We huffed and puffed our unfit selves up the mountain and made it to the bridge which wasn't even the peak! We hiked for what was only about 2 kilometres  but "cloud bridge" where we stopped had an elevation of 120metres... soo we were going pretty vertical.

Wolchusan means "mountain where the moon rises" in Korean. It was beautiful and the pictures really don't do it any justice. We definitely wished we were more prepared and had left earlier but that's why you should do research before going somewhere right?

Desk Warming

Native English teachers have this awesome thing called desk warming. You literally have absolutely nothing to do except sit at your desk and try to look busy. Usually you have lessons to plans and things to mark but if you have a day like mine today, you have no idea how many classes you will teach next week or which classes. And so, the other native English speaker in my school and I have been just finding funny sites and laughing at funny pictures all afternoon. Sounds like a good deal that I'm getting paid to do this!

Hwasun

Engrish town

airport

Taxi/directions practice

basically New York right?

the play room, pretty much where i live

barber shop

Cold apartment

My first real class!

I have a group of 12 kids in grade 5/6 that I teach Monday to Thursday for an hour. They are incredibly lively and cute. 11 of them are girls so I feel pretty badly for the boy. You know how scared of the opposite sex you were at that age? Ya.. it's even more so for them. Their English is alright but I didn't have much of an idea as to what their level was when I started my lesson today. They were pretty rowdy since I was new to them and all but I showed them a slideshow about me and they were pretty interested in it.
When I let them ask questions about me they mostly just wanted to know if I had a boyfriend, why I didn't have a boyfriend, and if I was going to meet Korean men and date them.
Any way, I am hoping to take some pictures of my work place soon. It's like a little Museum of civilization where they can practice their English in real life settings. Tomorrow I get to dress up as a doctor and teach them phrases like "I have a headache" , "I have a stomachache", etc. I think it will be fun but I have a steep learning curve as I have never taught kids before.
Wish me luck!

My New Digs

The bedding came with the place obviously

Taken from my closed patio balcony thingy

My kitchen! The fridge is unnecessarily MASSIVE

My "dressing room". Here's the vanity and there's my heating mattress pad for the winter behind it.

Loads of clothing storage

I have an oven! It's a big deal here...

Showering might be interesting....