Transitions

Right before I left for America, I cleaned out my office, organized the English classroom, said goodbye to my classes, and made a farewell speech to the entire faculty. When I returned I was to make the switch from Gilju Elementary to Sung Hee Girl's High School, and was under the instruction from Taebun to head over there as soon as I returned. I shouldn't have been surprised then, when at noon the day before I was to go to my new school, I got a call from the Education Center supervisor and was told to return to Gilju for one month.

It made sense with my contract, which went from March 25-March 25, but we were all told months ago that because of the influx of people applying for EPIK, the late March orientation would be removed and all new teachers would come in February. Thus, Gilju was supposed to have a new teacher when I returned, and I could start at the beginning of the school year at my new school instead of a month into it. The supervisor explained that the move was probably now impossible because Gilju didn't get a teacher and they would expect me to return. She then called both of my schools to reverse all of the transition arrangements.

Thus, I returned to Gilju for the duration of this month, and everyone including the principal was confused as to why I was back. At first, between the jet lag and the confusion, I was really frustrated by this. Because teachers in Korean schools must change positions or schools every couple of years, I would have to adjust to an entire new staff of teachers (excepting Mrs. Shim who stayed on with 5th grade English) and confuse the students when I suddenly return for the new school year and am replaced by a new teacher in a month.

However!

Korea is Dynamic, and these inconveniences are both minor and irreversible anyway. After I let it soak in for a day, I found it relieving to come back. Gilju is comfortable for me, rather than jumping into an entirely new environment as soon as I returned. I know the classes, and I get to share my knowledge with the new Korean English teachers and help them adjust to co-teaching with someone who knows the ropes. I now also have more opportunities for advance communication with Sung Hee, which was difficult before because of their own faculty changing and my being in America. I'm also their first foreign teacher, so I think they aren't quite sure what to do with me yet. I've met some of the faculty twice so far, and I'm really excited because it seems like everyone is such a perfect fit to my personality.

There's also Yena. This year, Elementary English education added 2 hours a week for 3rd and 4th grade, which originally had been just 1 hour. Therefore, there are two new teachers for 3rd and 4th grade English, where last year Mrs. Im had done both. I've had a stroke of amazing good fortune as a result of my return and the reworking of the system, because the new 3rd grade English teacher is a kindred spirit. I'd not gotten close to many Koreans in the last year, because most of those that I knew were married with children. Yena, however, is exactly my age with the same college degree (English Literature) and has a passion for world travel, having done both mission trips and internships abroad. She also now lives only a few blocks away. When we first met and she asked me if she could find mozzarella cheese anywhere in Andong (not a chance), I knew we were destined to be friends forever.

What I had originally thought to be so inconvenient has turned out to be a complete blessing for my entire new year here.

Andong also recently has acquired a new set of Native Teachers, bringing our EPIK number up to 24. We can also now claim to be a multicultural set of EPIK foreigners, as we have added a pair of Canadians and a South African to our American mix. We are so progressive.

Because of our bigger number, we have formed groups for Elementary, Middle School, and High school teachers so we can keep ourselves organized and supported. Bonnie and I have taken up the chairwomen roles for the High School group, with Scott and Katie on Elementary, and Helen and Erin on Middle School. Andrew was appointed supreme leader by the supervisor because he still has seniority as being the first in Andong. My how our numbers have jumped in under 2 years.

Now that I'm aware of my ever-changing current schedule, I will return to my blog posts about the Southeast Asia trip. We did, in fact, make it past Ho Chi Minh.

Back in Korea

I'm back from Southeast Asia! With all my pictures now sorted through (over 10 gigs...it took a bit of time) I'll be posting on Vietnam tomorrow, followed by Cambodia and then Thailand.

As for this week (yes, guilty, I've been back since Monday), I made it through my last English camp in Elementary school. I'd say it was bittersweet, but I'm also glad it's over. Unlike the others, where the gender spread was equal and the student count was about 8-10, this week I was gifted with 11 extremely energetic boys and 2 shy girls from the 4th grade.

Like the other two English camps I had at my school this winter, I was alone without a co-teacher. Usually I find the freedom kind of liberating from the routine of the school year, so I don't mind being completely in charge. In this case, teaching was near impossible when the boys refused to go near the girls for circle or team work, and wanted to spend most of the time swiping mop handles from the supply closet and having sword fights.

Even though it was tempting to play movies all week, I resisted (limiting it to one- Home Alone, a popular choice for little boys) and added more race and guessing games to tire them out. Using newly taught vocabulary and words they already knew, a popular game was one where two students faced off with a bell between them. With hands on their heads and backs to the TV screen, I showed the other students pictures to act out, and the opposing students had to hit the bell and say the correct vocab word. I put the girls on separate teams so they could pair up in the face of time-consuming opposition from the boys. Another variation was to use the same team and bell format, but show them scrambled vocabulary words (after, as a warm up for the day, giving them a word worksheet so they were familiar with scrambled words). In this case their teammates weren't acting, they could look at the TV screen this time, it was just a race between the two students to figure out the answer first.

Another invaluable activity I found was Highlights (the magazine for kids) hidden pictures. The kind where a bunch of little pictures are hidden in a big one, with a picture and word key at the bottom. After a search online I found plenty of places to print them out. A great way to get them to speak in English without noticing (because in looking for the pictures they would say the English words when talking to their friends). Very fun and surprisingly challenging. Meanwhile, I could covertly hide the mops.

Now I can rest. I really will miss all those kids, no matter how difficult they are.

How I Spent the Holidays

Happy New Year!

2009 ended with a busy winter camp schedule and 2010 started with a terrible cold that's been dragging on despite the full course of antibiotics that I fed into my system. Luckily the doctor visit and meds were only about $5 American. I have yet to report on my English camps, which have been vastly different from the summer camps, but I'll but that off for a few more days and see if I can't kick this nasty bug.For now, I'll let you know how I celebrated Christmas and New Year so far from home.

Christmas is a National holiday in South Korea, though the weight of it is much lighter compared to America. Nobody buys real evergreen Christmas trees, and the only ones we found in Andong were at grocery stores, and no taller than 5 feet, though I know that there are actual stores for Christmas decor in the larger cities. Many shops downtown played some Christmas tunes and did some decorating, but for the most part it was still pretty tame. Decor seemed to be treated like a kind of trend; an unusual sort of charm. Like something out of a 1950's Christmas magazine issue- garlands and bows, bells and trumpets and doves. Iced Christmas sugar cookies were the most entertaining- about $1 a cookie at the big bakery downtown, but nonexistent elsewhere.

And then there was the tree that popped up downtown:

A towering cone of flashing lights. I love it.

On Christmas Eve we decided to add our own touch of Christmas spirit to Andong at the site of the great tree. Somehow, miraculously, we all organized 20 of the Andong native English teachers to sing Christmas carols. We collected donation to go to two local orphanages (where two of the teachers volunteer), and our total came to upwards of around $700. Some of that did come from private donations prior to the event from people who couldn't make it. We were thrilled!

We had a whole booklet of songs, ranging from the solemn Silent Night, to the more upbeat Jingle Bell Rock. The biggest hits were Rudolph and Jingle Bells, because they have popular Korean equivalents. The most comical was our rendition of Little Drummer Boy, because we couldn't seem to match our ba rum ba bum bums to any consistent speed. But where we lacked in singing talent, we made up for with our sweet hats.

[The penguin hats were a Baskin Robbins promotion. If you bought an ice cream cake, you got a free hat. We ate a lot of ice cream.]

We also had Dave. Dave's Hagwon (after school English academy) had him dress up as Santa, so we suggested he show up to caroling in his suit. Much to our delight, he actually did, and with a big bag of candy that he handed out to Children.

We ended the evening with a trip to the bar to celebrate.

Christmas day was calming. The morning was spent at home. I surprised Scott by cleaning the apartment while he was asleep, and he surprised me with a delicious western-style breakfast in the morning. We opened presents, Skyped our families, then met up with some of our friends for a game of Balderdash and a trip to see Sherlock Holmes.

Po enjoyed his first Christmas too.^^

The days between Christmas and New Years Eve were spent at an overnight English camp out of town (but more on that later), so our celebrating was a bit subdued due to exhaustion. The big trend in Korea is to go to the east coast on New Years Eve and wait to watch the first sunrise of the new year. Since we didn't get back from our camp until about 4 that day, we skipped a trek out to the beach, but our Hapkido instructor took a picture on his phone and sent it to me so I wasn't completely in the dark. Instead, 10 of us went to our friend Erin's apartment for wine and fancy finger foods. We brought frozen cheese sticks, which looked a little sad between the homemade crab rangoon and the brie and crackers plate. We flipped on the TV to catch a countdown, which followed a large KPOP party in Seoul, and ended with the ringing of a large iron bell. Every town in South Korea has a bell to ring on the new year and for other special occasions. No giant ball, but the similarities were surprising. It was also interesting knowing I would get to see the new year in a time zone half a day earlier than everyone back home, who would later see clips on TV from around the world cheering after midnight.

School Festival

I was helping a student after school last week (being the end of the year, school ends after lunch), when an announcement by the Principal came on the intercom. The student looked very excited and told me that there would be a festival at 2 o'clock with music and traditional dancing. She asked if I wanted to go with her, so we headed up to the auditorium on the 5th floor at about ten to 2.

It was a bit of a surprise walking in, because teachers were handed big brown envelops on the way in, and there wasn't another student in sight. I figured this was because most of them had gone home at 1 anyway. At 2 the principal was introduced and he walked up to the podium.

My student didn't translate too much for me as he was speaking, but what she did tell me was that he made a joke about underwear, remarked that only female teachers were in attendance (about 20-25 of us, but no men), and explained that children should spend more time at the library.

At 2:20, the two of us were starting to get a little stir crazy. This was quite a long introduction for a festival. Several of the teachers were reading a packet of paper that was in their brown envelop. At 2:30 my student looked a little crestfallen and told me that she hoped the dancing would start soon, because she had to leave at 3. At 2:55 she hopped out of her chair and left. At 3 the principal ended his speech, and I thought surely the festival would be starting, so I stuck around. Mrs. Shim, who came in after me and sat behind me sat next to me and asked how I knew about this. I told her my student told me about the festival.

The vice principal now took the podium, and Mrs. Shim pulled out a 16-slide PowerPoint printout from her brown packet. I sat through another Korean speech until 3:40, of which the only translation I got from Mrs. Shim was that walking is good fro your health.

As the vice principal left the podium, Mrs. Shim informed me there would be a student performance, and although she was going to leave, would I like to stay? I can't help but wonder what she thought I was doing there if not to watch a performance. Indeed, I stayed.

This is how I saw it, keeping in mind that I haven't yet seen a mask dance before this or had their meanings explained to me.

(The pictures are from my cell phone, so they aren't perfect)

A line of students enter with drums and gongs, playing in the traditional Samulnori style. They stand in the back for the duration of the performance as the musical accompaniment to each dance. Behind them enter another line of students, all in the dress and character persona's from the Hahoe mask dances so famous to Andong. After a group dance, they all leave, with only the Butcher character remaining for his (although a 6th grade girl was behind his mask) dance.

Enter the bull (controlled by two very coordinated students in its body). It charges the Butcher, who finally fells the beast with his stone axe after several blows to the head. After a song to accompany the sharpening of his dagger, he plunges it repeatedly into the bull, and pulls from it a heart and a pair of giant testicles that the Butcher holds up with a mighty proclamation to the audience.

Amazing.

After the Butcher's exit, the Widow enters and dances, then falls upon her knees and sends up a very haunting cry. After this, she stands up and starts taking a collection of money from the audience. With a handful of won, her dance becomes a bit more lively and she shuffles away.

The rest come out soon after, and their dances were a bit more difficult to interpret. The Servant and the Fool first have a bit of a scuffle do to the laziness of the later, and then the Monk, Scholar, Aristocrat, Flirtatious, and soon after, the Butcher, follow them on in a group dance with several changes of pairings.

It ends when the Aristocrat and (I think) the Scholar get into an argument over the possession of the bull testicles that leads up to a tug of war. The Widow finally takes charge of resolution, holding them up and shaking them in the faces of the two who have taken separate sides of the floor, and then ends up keeping them herself.

After one final group dance and a short Samulnori performance, the students all come out and take their masks off for a bow. All but one is a girl. I'm glad that I stayed, because I haven't had the chance to see student work outside of English class first hand until then. Elementary school performances are certainly very different back home, where about this time we'd be putting on Christmas recitals.

Seoul and the DMZ

Two weeks ago, the teachers of the Gyeongbuk province (that have been here since before summer) were invited by EPIK to go on a trip to the DMZ and Seoul. Our POE (Provincial Office of Education) officer, Angela, explained that is was a thank you for working so hard over the summer. Apparently they hadn't intended us to teach every day (that wasn't an official requested vacation day) although most of us had done so. Though some of my best teaching moments were during the summer English camps, so I took this trip as a happy bonus.

The trip started out on Friday at 9am at the POE office in Daegu. This meant hopping on the 6:30 bus out of Andong to make it on time. Ugh, yes. After a bunch of coffee and an hour and a half bus ride, we finally made it to the Daegu bus station bathroom. Since there were six of us- Myself, Scott, Katie, Alice, Bonnie, and Tom (Andrew got a ride with his co-teacher who was selected to go, and the head of the Andong office of Education), we split up into two taxis from the bus station. My taxi driver got confused and took us on a ride all over the city and to the intercity education office (though the one we needed and told him was located very close to the bus station), so it's really fortunate that taxis are so cheap in South Korea.

Because so many teachers were on the trip, we were split into three large tour buses; the Andong crew were allocated to bus 1. Lucky for us, this was also the bus with Angela, and Angela is awesome.

After making it to Seoul, the first place we visited was the Gyeongbokgung Palace. Scott and I had been there once during my late orientation in March (which I didn't write about due to my huge encounter with so many new things). The first time I wandered around by myself, but this time we were lead around by the bus 1 tour guide, whose English name was Bill. I was able to see where certain people lived: a special group of houses for concubines, for the prince, princess, and the grandmother (queen and mother of the crown prince). There was a carved stone picture on a chimney outside of the grandmother’s living quarters, covered with images of animals and plants that were carefully selected as symbols of long life, fitting for a respected aging queen.

Other features were more subtle; not as distinct as stone carvings, but slight alterations in the basic design. Most interesting surrounded the structures for the prince. The roof of his living quarters was missing the long white block that capped the other buildings, which our guide explained was so his spirit could ascend to the heavens while his body slept.

Another thing I would have missed completely was the shape and arrangement of the building posts. They were all round nearest to the places of the prince, surrounded closely by another set of square posts. I was told that the circle was the unending symbol of the prince, while the square the symbol of the royal guard, protectors of the prince. Some of these post placements were so hidden that I had to squat down and peer under the buildings to catch a glimpse. Also, the stone tiled pathways the prince would walk were uneven and riddled with imperfections, which I learned was to show that a crown prince was always to walk slowly and deliberately, without any cause to rush. I usually pride myself on picking out detail, but there were clearly things still tucked away from my careful notice.


The backdrop of Gyeongbokgung, a large mountain, was also an item of interest. Bill explained that the best location for a place, according to Korean tradition, is between a mountain and a river. The flow of water would guarantee good fortune for the future of the family, and the mountain offered strength and protection. For this reason the palace was built with the mountain to its back and a moat-like body river of water flowing through its front courtyard.

However, the strong imposing shape of the mountain also meant that living too close to it would mean disaster for future generations (though success for the first to live there), because there was too much strength energy to handle. Ironically, despite this manner of thinking, the president's house (in Korea, it's called "The Blue House") was built right next to the same mountain. The first president to live there was very prosperous, but since him, Bill pointed out that every president has met with some terrible misfortune, whether it be through shady dealings or suicide. Indeed, the last two presidents died within the last year. Interesting thought.

At the back end of the palace grounds there was also a folk museum. Not as grand at the National History Museum, but another good small place to go to glimpse replicas of daily life as well as some interesting artifacts. A section of the museum is set aside for temporary exhibits, and this I found most intriguing because it was a history of the female Hanbok. The fabric and pattern trends did change during certain decades, but the style has remained pretty much the same through the ages.

The front of the palace was slightly more lively, with traditional music and dance in the usual location for the guard changing ceremony. My favorite is the hats they wear, with big ribbons attached to a spinner to swirl around in circles as their head swings back and forth.

As soon as it was dark, we headed over to Seoul Tower.

In the dark, it was hard to notice anything but the large glowing tower itself, but there were some human figures suspended overhead (one of the Seoul Tower's trademark images) that were nearly transparent until illuminated by light. Very creepy.

Originally I had been confused about our arrival time, but apparently it's the most popular at night because of the city lights and the view is the clearest. However, I’ve never been so high up at night (the whole tower is 777ft high). and was seized by a sudden fear of heights when I had to step into that elevator. I could have sworn I felt the whole thing swaying, and I felt a little like my mother taking creeping careful steps to the wall of windows.

Before making it through the elevator line of imminent doom, the coffee shop on the observation deck caught Katie and my eye, with a big sign for a "Pumpkin Latte." True to its word, it was just that, but perhaps more actual pureed pumpkin than latte.

Friday night was eventful. Bill had been telling us all day on the bus about the best nightclubs that we could visit, with a free shuttle downtown from our hotel. After running into him again in the lobby on the way out, he told us we weren't dressed well enough and wouldn't be allowed in with our jeans, no matter how tight Andrew's were, so we decided instead to find a bar. Waiting for a shuttle though, Andrew's tight pants turned on him. Because we are all mature 20-somethings, we started practicing our sweet Hapkido and Taekwondo moves while we waited. Unfortunately, Andrew tried putting his right leg up on Katie's shoulder (not a move our Hapkido master probably intended for us) and twisted his left leg so hard that his left kneecap popped out. It was on the side of his leg. The side. Scott and I ran off to alert Bill and Angela and call 119 for an ambulance, and when we came back he was moaning out of pain and relief "oh you Korean angel!" for an old Korean woman had hopped off the shuttle just as we left to pop his leg back into place, and was rubbing it vigorously. He remained pretty positive about the whole thing, though he had to go back to Andong early.

The rest of us woke up on Saturday by a sudden onslaught of rain just in time for our ride out the the DMZ.

Ah, well, we were all still very eager to see it. Our first stop at Imjingak, gave me the first glimpse of the DMZ area: The Super Viking! There was a whole theme park of oddities, apparently making the DMZ more of a prime tourist lure for families with children. You know, apart from all of the swerving because of the large spiked road blocks scattered all over the road to make quick travel impossible in case of invaders.

Because of the rain, there wasn’t much to see or say through the mist around the observatory looking in to North Korea, save for a tree or two that may have still been in the South. Nonetheless, we were still required to stay behind the photo line (which was right where the observation deck roof stopped, so there was no shielding us from the rain). I'll have to go back. Behold, North Korea:

The trip down to the 3rd infiltration tunnel was better. I officially spent Halloween in a dark creepy tunnel used for the purpose of North Korean invasion. Like all of the tunnels they found, it was headed toward Seoul, and it was one of their longer endeavors. We had to wear hard-hats because it was rather short and narrow. Scott talked about this tunnel on an earlier visit to the DMZ, (at www.fourteenhoursaway.blogspot.com).

We also had a chance to see Dorasan Station, the train station built with a railway to Pyeongyang, in the event of reconciliation with the North. This would also allow for land travel to other parts of the world, which South Koreans are otherwise incapable of doing because of the Northern blockade.

Getting back into Daegu after the DMZ on Saturday was an altogether different adventure. The plan was to arrive back at 7. Enter the worst foreigner in Korea, Patrick. There is one teacher in the EPIK program who is like a badly written character in a movie- the kind written without realist qualities that make them human. Patrick decided to insult and inconvenience all several hundred of us without a care. Each time we set out, he decided to switch buses. On Friday he went from bus 2 to 3, Saturday morning from 3 to 1. He did this, of course, without telling the people in charge of attendance, making us 20 minutes late on Saturday (which made us then miss our time slot at the DMZ to watch a documentary and slip another hour behind). When our POE supervisor, Angela, told him he should go to bus 2, he told her he was going to stay on bus 1. Never mind that Angela's boss was also on our bus. After telling her no three times, his bus 2 tour guide came on and asked him why he had no common courtesy for others, and he told her he liked the bus 1 tour guide better. In the end he didn't leave.

On the trip back to Daegu, we stopped at a rest area and were told 5 minutes, because we were already so behind schedule. After 20 minutes, nobody could find Patrick. He wouldn't answer his phone, and people were searching the whole rest area for him. He had gone back to bus 2 without telling anyone. Incredible. We were then caught in a wave of traffic, and didn't make it to Daegu until after 10. That was 3 hours later than scheduled (and 40 minutes behind the arrival of bus 2). At this point everyone on our bus needed special arrangements, because the buses stopped running out of Daegu at 9:30. When Angela was explaining alternatives, our bus driver started shouting rapidly, causing Angela to stop, smile, and tell us "Oh, he is talking about the Patrick." I wonder if he'll be allowed to stay in the program after this one. We did have one small justice. He left his bag on the bus so he had to wait for us to get in.

Several of us decided to stay in Daegu anyway, so for me it wasn't terrible. Plus, it was Halloween, and foreigners in costume were abound. I managed to catch Swine flu, but not to worry, I didn't bring it back to Andong.

Autumn Out with My School

Every Wednesday, all of the students leave school after lunch, so usually the staff all gathers to play volleyball or another game similar to dodge ball (my inability to play well at both led my injured pride tochallenge some of the teachers to a footrace instead, then trip and roll in the dirt and gravel while I was in the lead 5 feet from the finish. Now I try and stick to hitting people with volleyballs). Last week, I was informed that instead of volleyball, we would go hiking. There's a hill right behind our school that I haven't tried yet and often hear people talking about, so I assumed that we would head up there during the regular 2 hours we would spend on volleyball.

I was surprised, then, when I was ushered into Taebun's car. When I asked where we were going, he didn't know. Neither did Mrs. Im when she got in, or the new 5th grade gym teacher. This is how plans usually play out, so I've found it's always easiest to go with it.

Therefore, when we stopped at a rest area after a half hour of driving, I was open for anything. This same rest area was the home of a trained duck (painted with sparkly red paint to set it apart from the common duck), which would jump (without flapping his wings) to catch bits of vegetables.

The next stop was to see Banghojeong, an old lecture hall built and named for the pen name of Jo Jun-do (but don't ask me who that is, other than a scholar of some note) on the rocks overlooking a lovely shallow river. The pavilions contain Jo Jun-do's works, as well as many poems by scholars. It's now accessible by a modern bridge, which I found to to be more aesthetic than eyesore; simple fluid lines in an unoffending white.

The location was inspiring, between water and rock. It was surrounded in yellow- little flowers and trees that I was informed are famously called gold trees- money trees. I stuffed some of the fallen leaves in my pockets, just in case.

Our next stop was a white stone beach, in a narrow long river valley between two hills.

The stones looked almost malleable, with as many soft soft curving dents as there were jagged edges. I didn't catch the name of the place, only that it's famous for photographing nude models.

We continued our journey through the land of apple trees. We were pretty close to the town of Cheongsong, which like Andong is famous in the country for its apples. In the summer, all of these trees had little bags tied on the branches to protect every fruit, but now they were hanging in bunches almost too heavy for the branches.

When we made our third stop, I was beginning to wonder if our hiking trip was going to involve any hiking. We arrived at Yongdamsa temple, and were greeted very enthusiastically by a male and female pair of Jindos (Korea's signature breed).

The male, after happily licking our principal, vice principal, and several of the teachers in turn (A remarkable attention to the hierarchy!), went running around our fifteen or so cars marking the tires with his urine. But not to worry, after all, this particular Jindo was a Buddhist (as evident by his Buddhist-marked doghouse).

The temple was quite small, built during the Silla dynasty (and rebuilt in the Joseon), smaller than the other grand temple's I've been to, with only a few buildings. But it is still functioning, like all other temples, and was so quiet in a little clearing beside a forest and a mountain. It was a nice change to see a humble temple.

Our final stop did involve hiking a small path down a slight mountainside, to see a small waterfall pouring into cavern visible at just the right angle between two rocks.

This trickled down to pool into a small pond in the nearby clearing beside the mountain, and turning my back to the waterfall, the contrasting openness was the most beautiful view of the day.

We didn't go anywhere extravagant, and made a lot of little stops which at first seemed to me a bit oddly chosen. However, that meant I saw several places that I couldn't take a bus or my bike to- places I wouldn't even know how to ask for. Surrounded by the colors of autumn, they had an out-of-the-way kind of charm and beauty. I can see the large mountains and cultural sites easily enough on my own, but these little trips are just another reason to be grateful for my school.

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.