Here are some pics of what our daily orientation life has been like:
Our crib.
The can. Like Kenya, the open bathroom is also popular in Korea, with no separation between the shower and the rest of the room. Everything is tiled so cleanup is really easy. You just splash water everywhere. I really like this setup.
Lisa in the laundry room. She's pretty much fluent in Korean, so it was a cinch. (It helped that the Maytag washers had instructions in English.)
The cafeteria. It's really shiny.
Breakfast. Yeah, that's kimchi and cornflakes. The Koreans don't touch the cornflakes - it's strictly for the Westerners.
Lunch/dinner. It is always a healthy serving of rice, some soup/broth, kimchi, fruit salad with mayo, and some noodles or meat.
The campus coffee shop - pretty swanky. I had read that access to coffee was few and far between in Korea. So far that has been thoroughly disproven, with not only a plethora of good coffee shops, but also coffee dispensers on almost every corner. I'm crossing my fingers that this trend continues.
I wanted to post a video of our Class Leader, Grissom (he told us that he chose his English name because CSI is his FAVORITE show), because he's hilarious. His English isn't the best, but he makes up for it with enthusiasm and animation.
Here is a video of one of our class sessions: Songs & Chants. It was led by a very charismatic elementary school teacher, who needed only a few claps to turn a room full of supposed adults into giddy schoolchildren. Most of our sessions were very blase - this was one of the only spirited classes.
On Saturday we went to Korean Folk Village. It sounds like a cheesy amusement park type of place, and probably would be in America (i.e. Tombstone, Arizona) but they do a good job of giving off an authentic feel while maintaining accessibility. They basically transplanted a bunch of traditional homesteads from the countryside, ranging from peasants' straw-roofed houses to noblemens' sprawling estates (complete with concubine quarters). They have also employed a lot of artisans to demonstrate and sell traditional (many of which could also still be considered contemporary) artifacts like straw baskets, silk garments, and forged iron tools.
This woman was in one of the peasant's homes, spinning silk into thread from silk worm eggs. It was fascinating. She was boiling several dozen eggs at a time, and would stir it with chopsticks to draw up the threads, which loosened from the heat. She strung them through a small hole in the opening of the wooden apparatus at her feet, through her hands, where she funneled them into a single thread, and onto the spinning contraption to her left, where the thick, firm threads were wound into a skein of silk.
One of the Korean guides said something to her and she picked up one of the eggs with her golden chopsticks and pierced it, pulling out a small golden brown silk worm larvae. She offered it to me in her palm. I motioned towards my mouth, asking if it was for me to eat, and she nodded. So I ate it. It tasted much like you would expect a stewed bug to taste, with very little crunch but a slight, unpleasant aftertaste reminiscent of moth balls. Apparently silk worm larvae are a popular snack among Koreans.
The whole park was very tranquil. There was a Buddhist monastery complete with an actual practicing monk.
Many of the trees were wrapped with what looked like straw leg warmers, which is, in fact, what they turned out to be. The guide told us that the trees would get cold and die without their booties.
The biggest attraction for us was the performances in the afternoon - traditional farmers' music, a tightrope exhibition, seesaw acrobats, and equestrian feats. I was particularly interested in the tightrope act, since we had just seen some pretty impressive moves in the King and the Clown the night before, and I thought they would be even more impressive in person. Indeed, I wasn't disappointed.
The musicians, led by an old chubby man who never stopped grinning, beat a variety of drums while dancers marched around them with long tassels attached to a rigid stick on their hats that would spin as they turned their heads. They all had seemingly boundless energy.
The acrobats were two very petite girls who, despite their diminutive size, would send each other flying on the other end of the seesaw with every jump. They mimicked each other in the air, beating drums or doing flips.
The highlight for me, though, was definitely the 70 year old man on the tightrope.He would flutter his fan and walk or run or bounce across the rope. He made it look really easy.
One of the annoying things about EPIK orientation so far has been doing everything with 400 other people. When we all got back on the 10 buses to take us back to Dankook University, we were told that one person was missing, so we had to wait. 30 minutes later we left, supposedly without him. Later, Lisa and I sat with him at dinner. Turns out he was on the bus the whole time, fast asleep.
So far they've been sensitive to the jetlag suffered by 400+ people and have given us ample free time - too much, apparently, for some people. Two teachers have already gotten in trouble for sneaking into an empty dorm room and pushing the beds together, scratching the brand new wood floors. The dorms are segregated by gender here, as they supposedly are in any Korean university, specifically to prevent, um, "distractions." (I am only wondering WHY they needed to push beds together? A post-coitus covert cuddle?) Koreans also have great care for their floors, since the heating system runs immediately underneath it, but particularly for sanitary reasons. They always take off their shoes before entering a living space.
Two other teachers came back from town, drunk off of soju, at 3am. Since the dorms close from 1am - 5am (a fact that EPIK heavily publicized when we first arrived), they stood outside banging on the doors and yelling until a security guard finally let them in. Apparently a huge breach of cultural etiquette.
We spent today in class. An elementary school teacher came to talk to us about the Korean government's curriculum for teaching kids, and walked us through the government's website for teaching english, as well as a provincial website with videos of model classes.
The second session was entitled Listening, and I expected to catch up on my Hangul lessons during the class, but it turned out to be really entertaining and enlightening. It was led by Walter Foreman, a Canadian-turned-Korean who had dyed brown hair and a good inch of grey roots. I was clearly skeptical. But he opened his PowerPoint presentation with an ACDC song, and apologized that it wasn't louder. "It's already on 11." (Spinal Tap, anyone?) He was a really engaging speaker, and gave us some good exercises to help our students improve their listening, comprehension and analyzing abilities. He also mentioned that he posts EVERYTHING to his website, including activities and powerpoints, which may turn out to be a good resource.
In the afternoon we had our class meeting (we're divided into classes based on the province we are heading to), where we filled out our applications for a bank account and a cell phone. Apparently past EPIK classes had to take care of everything on their own once they got to their schools (getting their Alien Registration Card, a medical exam, bank account, cell phone, etc), but this year they decided to make it easy on us and just take care of everything here. It's nice. We should have our cell phones by Thursday.
At night they showed a Korean movie in the cafeteria - The King and the Clown. It was really good, and funny, though it got pretty morbid near the end.
Technically, though we arrived yesterday, today was the first day of orientation. We're staying in the dorms at Dankook University. They're really nice - everything seems brand new, from our plastic-wrapped office chairs to our shimmering gold-embroidered bedspreads to our paper slippers. Every room is accessible by a touch pad dead bolt, the code for which we had to program when we arrived. Everyone has a speaker in the corner of their room, which EPIK admin uses to wake us in the morning and deliver important messages to us ("the X-ray bus is down, it will reopen at 2pm"). It's very Big Brother.
11am this morning Lisa and I (and the rest of Group 3) went for our Medical Check. Height & weight. Vision test. Blood pressure. Urine collection. Blood test. Hearing check. It was all very efficient, though the sanitation left something to be desired. Urine samples were taken in simple paper cups, sans lids, and delivered back to a lab technician who PH tested them, poured some into a test tube, and put the remaining urine on the floor under his desk. Later another tech came by and started combining the contents of different cups. They seemed to be unsure of how to dispose of all the extra.
The X-ray bus, which was apparently used to test for TB (isn't there just a pinprick test for this??), was broken, so we all had to come back at 2pm with "all cotton clothing".
We have had several (joking) conversations already about how this "orientation" feels like a giant extermination plan. There are 500 teachers here, all filed through giant lines like cows at a slaughterhouse, living in otherwise empty dorms with rooms which lock electronically. Our buildings are locked from 1am to 5am. And did I mention that our towels and coffee cups smell like gasoline?
Not to worry, though. It is all very sanitary, I'm sure.
We've also been taking side bets as to when the first eggs are going to crack. A LOT of these new teacher trainees are venturing away from home for the first time in their lives, and Korea seems like a much more difficult country to assimilate in than Kenya was, especially without the support system that Peace Corps provided.
Here's our schedule for the week:
Friday, Feb 20
Medical Check-up
Welcoming Dinner
Saturday, Feb 21
Explore Korea
Secondary/Primary school introductions
Listening (?)
Class Meeting
English Camp introduction
Task Based Learning
Korean Movies (I'm pretty excited about this one)
Sunday, Feb 22
Korean Cultural Experience (Korean Folk Village in Yong-in)
Monday, Feb 23
Same as Saturday's program, in a different order.
Tuesday, Feb 24
Surviving in Korea
Speaking
EPIK Life
Co-teaching
Reading/Writing
Songs & Chants (oh, boy)
Wednesday, Feb 25
Same as Tuesday's program, with
Model Lessons & Making Lesson Plans
Preparation of Lesson Presentation
Korean Movies (!)
Thursday, Feb 26
Lesson Presentations
Meeting with Provincial Office of Education Supervisors
Korean Traditional Music & Dance Performances
Farewell Dinner
Friday, Feb 27
Load luggage
Questionnaire & Closing Ceremony
Korean houses are heated via 'On-dol', a system of water pipes running beneath the floors that radiate heat upward. It's nice waking up in the morning to heated floors, especially when the temperature outside is in the teens and your doors are made of rice paper.
For breakfast we went to the "Ostrich Cafe," as Jeane called it, which was a small bakery a few blocks away with a gigantic white sculpture of an ostrich/dinosaur and her hatching baby that literally took up half the seating area. We had a few random bread items - one turned out to be a ham and cheese sandwich, another a blueberry sort of pancake with a sweet filling - and some delicious cups of Americano (I had heard that Korea doesn't have good coffee, but so far this info has been disproven). We took a stroll through Insadong, one of Seoul's main traditional thoroughfares. Narrow stone streets were lined by dozens of pottery and tapestry and art shops selling clay tea sets and chopsticks and large calligraphy brushes and items I have yet to discover names of. All of the shops were decorated in a heavy Asian aesthetic, with simple, elegant designs. It was all very romantic. We stopped to watch some restauranteurs making dumplings through an open window, and admired the pictures of exotic (to us) dishes they served, an entire octopus here or a shrimp tail sticking out of a dumpling there. So far I haven't seen any roasted dogs roadside, but I'm keeping my eyes open.
For lunch we took the subway about 45 minutes away to meet some of Rob's friends who have been teaching in the suburbs of Seoul since September. The subway was very clean and efficient, and crowded with people, a good number of them wearing surgical masks, even at 11AM. When I first walked through the train's open doors I was immediately transported back to fourth grade and Lawrence Lee's house. It was a distinctly Asian odor, separate entirely from the smell of the food that Mrs. Lee was cooking. It was a smell of body odor, but not an unpleasant one like that of Americans or Europeans when they forego deodorant. It has traces of garlic, and rice, and ginger, and while I stood there on the subway inhaling, I was struck by the strong undertones of cocoa powder. I could only think, I really am in Asia.
We met Rob's friends at their favorite local restaurant, which served family style meals around a low table with a gas burner in the middle. We sat on thin mats on the floor. They placed a pot with broth and green onions on the burner, and piled plates and bowls in front of us with layers of thinly-sliced frozen beef and noodles. One of the bowls had only rice and green onions and a single raw egg. It was similar to fondue, except that we cooked all of the meat at once instead of piece-by-piece. We each filled our bowl when we wanted to, and ate with flat Korean chopsticks and a single spoon when there was nothing left to grab. Afterwards we each had a complimentary neapolitan ice cream cone.
After the meal they took us up to see their hagwon, or private after-school learning institute, one of thousands which many Korean children attend. Here they teach a variety of subjects - science, business, math - but in English, with an emphasis on learning vocabulary rather than actual subject content. The teachers complained about being overworked, that the hagwon was run as a business with little concern for their students' actual education.
We parted feeling good about our decision to go with EPIK, since we would be teaching in public schools, where the emphasis is on education rather than profit.
From there we took the subway to Hongik University, in search of Heimdall, a cafe Rob's friends recommended to us, where Garrarufa fish eat dead skin off of your feet while you sip coffee or beer or eat peanuts. It was one of the most bizarre-sounding things I had ever heard of - clearly I had to try it. Heimdall was on the seventh floor of a high rise overlooking the city and, immediately, a multi-room luxury karaoke studio. There was a small seated section with tables, and some walled-in smoking sections, but the main attraction in the room was the raised patio in the center, where glass tables were set over two pools of water. We took off our shoes and socks, washed our feet in the deep floor sinks lining the room, and settled in on the smooth wood floor surrounding the pool of Turkish Doctor Fish. We (I) spent the next hour giggling, shrieking and shivering as the tiny fish nibbled at our feet.
The next pool over was full of Chinese Doctor Fish, which just seemed to be much larger, more aggressive versions of the Turkish variety.
Afterwards we washed our feet again. I can't say that my feet felt much softer or cleaner, but I'd go back anyway. It seems like something whose novelty would take a long time to wear off.
Lisa and I arrived in Seoul on Wednesday night (Korea time - 14 hours ahead of the US) after 18 flight hours and about 22 hours of travel time. The trip started out portentously, with United Aiirlines moving up our flight by an hour (we made it but weren't able to get to run a couple of errands we wanted to get out of the way) and charging Lisa $200 for an extra checked bag, and only got worse when we found out that we were assigned seats in the LAST row of the plane, which, if you weren't aware, don't recline. In addition, my headphone jack wasn't working. The stewardess was very apologetic. I don't know why an airline would even MAKE seats that don't recline, or why they would put someone in a seat without headphone access, for a 6 HOUR FLIGHT. (Oh wait, I do know. They're just another Money-fearing corporation who knows that their customers really don't have a choice.) After take off, though, the apologetic stewardess moved us up to "Economy Plus", which is just a fancy way of saying an exit row. After that it was gravy, with extra leg room.
Our flight touched down in Incheon, about an hour outside of Seoul, at 7:30pm, and after walking down endless automated walkways, over antibacterial-soaked "decontamination mats," and through spotless odorless hallways, we picked up our bags (all of em! first time!), scooted through Customs and found ourselves on the wrong side of a language barrier. Cabbies knew how to say "taxi?" and not much else. All we knew was "Annyeonghaseyo" ("hello," sort of) and "Kamsahamnida" ("thank you"), which left little room for negotiation. In any case, we had already decided to take the bus, so we bought some rice water from a convenience store for some change, found a pay phone, and called the Anguk Guest House, where our friends Rob and Jeane were already holed up. Luckily they had reserved one of their four rooms for us, and the proprietor spoke some English.
We bought a bus ticket (9,000 won - about $7) and some lackeys ran over to grab our mound of bags and stow them under the bus. I grabbed a couple of thousand-won notes, unsure about tipping protocol, and offered them to one of the handlers. He looked surprised, but took them anyway. Tipping as convention seems not to have reached this part of the world - if gratuity is expected, it is included in the bill (novel idea!).
The bus dropped us off around 9:30pm, about three blocks from the guest house, which posed a problem for us and our 150+ pounds of luggage. The guest house proprietor had said if we called him he could come pick us up, and the bus driver was nice enough to lend us his cell phone while the rest of the bus passengers waited. Five minutes later the proprietor arrived, and we dragged our bags in three trips across the busy main road to him. He hoisted my backpack and told us to follow him - to his car, i expected, but no. We fumbled and dragged and rolled our luggage after him through a few winding streets and up a hill to the guest house, where Rob and Jeane greeted us. They asked us if we wanted to go get something to eat. We said yes, then promptly fell asleep until morning.
