My Schedule

Now might be a good time to talk a bit more about my schedule lately.

A few of the things I mention are in an article Bonnie (another fellow teacher and friend) and I wrote for Andong in the EPIK Newsletter. You can find it here (click on "Gyeongbuk" and Scroll down to "Andong Teacher's Give Back"):
http://epik.go.kr/boardnews/detail.epik?num=11
Unfortunately, they forgot to put Bonnie's name on the article, so it only has my name listed. She wrote the first part about the teacher's class, and I wrote about Korean class and martial arts.

Outside of school, which I'm at from 8:40-4:40, I have acquired a very active schedule in the evenings. Here is the breakdown:

Hapkido: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.

(Above photo by Andrew, with Helen in the background and our Hapkido master on the left. Usually everyone's in uniform, but this was from a pretty laid back, small class day.)

Depending on what other things I have going on, I go from 6:45-7:45 or 8-9. It costs us 80,000 won a month (around $75). Scott and I joined up soon after our friends Andrew and Helen mentioned going about two months ago, though Andrew's knee incident put him on a month long hiatus. Hapkido is a form of martial arts that is sometimes referred to as kickboxing, developed in Korea (although they're most well known for Taekwondo). I love it, and it fills the empty hole that horseback riding filled in my weekly exercise routine. It's helping a lot more with my flexibility, which is nice after spending the second half of school cramped in a chair.


Our Hapkido studio is about a 10 minute bus ride from our home, and although we learned later there was one near my school, we wouldn't dream of switching. Not that it wouldn't be fun to spar with my students, but I would hate for a 4th grader to take me down. Plus, our Hapkido master is quite possibly one of the friendliest people in the country. He doesn't speak very much English, but it doesn't make a difference. As with most things in the country, we understand through body language, and this is the best example of that. We mimic him, and when we misunderstand a certain kick or take down move, he steps in and holds our leg or arm in the proper position, or shows us exactly which pressure point or sensitive area or the arm or leg we are aiming for. No further explanation needed. Ouch. A lot of the things that we do are in a line (rolls, flips, pad kicks, etc), so as long as we don't start, it's pretty easy to pick up on.

Poker: Wednesday, 8:30-12am.

Another hobby I picked up since I've been in Korea is poker. Ironic, considering how it's illegal for Koreans to gamble and I should choose to learn how to do it in their country. (picture taken on my phone- a bit blurry and dark)

After Hapkido we all meet up downtown and head to Andrew's apartment. He has a little side room, like a sun room with wall-sized windows, which is the perfect size for a table and chairs. We call our poker game "The Golden Pig" because we have a sparkly golden piggy bank that we all throw a 500 won coin into before each game. If anyone gets a royal flush, they win the pig. We don't have a backup plan for it when that inevitably never happens.

The usual group is Me, Scott (whose arm is pictured dealing), Andrew (on the right), Dave (on the left), and Helen (between them), although Alice and Katie come by sometimes if they don't go to their Taekwondo class. Katie is dangerous. We play with a 10,000 won buy in, winner takes all except second place, who gets their money back. Katie has never failed to get first or second whenever she comes. It's amazing. Recently we have picked up another two maybe-regulars, Miz, an Aussie from a nearby small down that scooters in to Andong, and Andre, another EPIKer from the September group with Helen. It's great to look forward to something in the middle of the week and be able to wind down and reconnect with my friends if I get too busy to see them otherwise.

Teacher's Class: Mondays at 6:15, once a month.


A big group of the EPIK teachers got together to teach a volunteer class on rotation every week, Monday and Wednesday. It turned out that so many people responded to help teach the class, that Scott and I only do it once every four weeks on Mondays. Because the classes change teachers every week, we took to using the schedule for "Survival English" on bogglesworldesl.com. It is very well planned, and we could use similar handouts and easily review the prior lessons to keep the whole class from falling into disorganized chaos.


Korean Class: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30


We tried a Korean class during the spring semester, but it wasn't a conversation class; there were about 8 Korean instructors to sit down with us and go over a textbook, but essentially no structure and a little tedious. Although it did give me practice in writing characters and their sounds, which has been invaluable. This new class has been much better suited to my personal learning style, with one instructor who talks with us. He asks us questions and we learn how to give answers based on our personal lives. What we learn is more from the impulse of the moment, which is fantastic.

Therefore, I leave every morning at 8:15 and get home at 7:45 on Monday (unless we teach the class, then 9), 9 on Tuesday, midnight on Wednesday, 5 on Thursday, and 7:45 on Friday. It's been harder for Scott, who teaches a 2 hour class after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays in addition to everything else.

In the rest of my free time I am constantly reading on my Kindle (I stopped biking so I could allocate the 20 minute walk to work each morning as reading time, in case I don't have time later on), hanging out with Scott and Po, playing some WoW here and there, or keeping up with my social life. Sometimes we'll meet up with our friends after Hapkido during the week, or since Thursday is the only day left unscheduled, we'll nominate that as a movie night (when a good English film comes through. Good meaning above 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, because we cant' be too picky).

All of it's fun and optional, of course, but sometimes I'm left feeling a little drained from it all. Monday morning always feels a little bit daunting.

EPIK Conference in Gyeongju

I feel like I went into hibernation this week after making it through last week. Anyway, I'm awake now. This is part 1 of my 2 part four day weekend in Gyeongju (I'll work on the sightseeing half of it tomorrow). Thursday and Friday were spent at an in-service training conference for EPIK.


Thursday morning, Scott and I woke up at 7:25, just 5 minutes before we were meant to leave town. We also hadn't packed. Luckily, when we gathered with our co-teachers and Katie and her co-teacher fifteen minutes later, they were not deterred from first getting breakfast. Korean breakfast isn't anything like a western breakfast, so we had a traditional fare of soup, rice, and kimchi.


We arrived almost an hour late at the hotel after a 3 hour drive, but luckily that starting hour was designated for signing in, and being nearly last meant our name badges were easy to find. I heard a lot of people talking to friends about their awkward small talk or silences with their co-teachers on the drive down. For me it was a five word conversation: "Sara, take a nap" and my response,"OK." Taebun understands me, especially at 7:30am.

Because Scott, Katie and I have already been teaching for a long time, we weren't quite sure what to expect out of this conference. It was mostly for the new EPIK teachers who arrived in September and those of us that had the late orientation back at the end of March. There had already been one just before Scott and I arrived.



The first day ran from 11 to 7:30. Two lectures, a demonstration on co-teaching, and a"Discussion About Co-Teaching Styles and Interpersonal Relationships," which oddly was the only of the four where they split up the Native and Korean teachers into separate rooms. It ended with a fabulous eclectic buffet dinner to satisfy Western and Korean diets. Mostly I devoured raw salmon, which is surprisingly hard to find here.


The second day ran from 7:30 to 2, with two interactive lectures and an open forum. The primary target seemed to be for a newer teaching audience, but it was a nice refresher for me. One of the speakers had been in Korea for eight years, so I couldn't pretend to have her insight, so there was a lot yet to soak in. Particularly using warm up and short transition periods of time to incorporate improv and movement, even within large classes like mine. I also felt very useful at the conference during discussions, because I came with a lot of ideas from experience so far, and was able to pass those along to newer teachers; like making group forming into a game, and planning for classes with mixed degrees of English literacy. Likewise, the newer teachers had some fresh opinions that I could benefit from, which was helpful after doing my own routine for so long.


The target of the training seemed to be directed at better co-teaching, but I was a little surprised because the tables were set up in most of the conference rooms in threes, leaving every other co-teaching pair split up. Scott, and Katie are incredibly lucky in our co-teaching assignments, so this didn't really deter us from doing discussions and activities. However, for those who struggled with their Korean co-teachers, it appeared to me like they could, sadly, segregate themselves quite easily.

My favorite part of the conference was Thursday night, when Scott, Katie and I stayed in to teach our co-teachers how to play Texas Hold'em. We had to improvise, so while the Koreans debated over which flavor of squid jerky and mixed nuts the would buy, the three of us grabbed some beer, some highlighters and a couple packs of toothpicks to turn into poker chips. Back in the hotel room, while Scott went over the basics, Katie and I labored over marking hundreds of toothpicks. This was the result (set 1 of 6):

Of course, into the second hour we had to continue coloring the extra blank ones as the minimum bet raised and chips were traded in. In the end, we had a pretty awesome travel poker chip set.

It was a pretty epic game. They picked it up really fast, and Scott's co teacher Hyeon-beom almost put me out early with his raises before the flop and mythically good hands. But there was a lot of great luck. Somehow the whole thing was bizarrely magical, with rivers like this:

Whenever toothpicks changed hands, we turned it into a battle of the schools. Scott's Dongbu Elementary was stealing my Kilju money, or Katie's Bokju (sorry Katie if I butchered that spelling) Elementary money would change hands between them. Of course, I was responsible for slaughtering Taebun in a face off between us that made him the first to go out.

Although it wasn't officially a part of the conference, the conference gave us the rare opportunity to hang out with our co-teachers. The Korean teachers especially are so busy with extra school projects in addition to managing the ease of our lives here, that it seems so seldom that we get to sit down and have fun outside of the classroom. While most of the foreigners all went out together to the locals bars after the lectures and dinner was over, tempted as we were to join them, it seemed to be more exciting to see our co-teachers corrupted by the forbidden world of gambling. Well, with toothpicks anyway.