Hawaii Pictures and New Apartment

I got back a few days ago from an awesome vacation in Hawaii with my family! I already miss them but at least I’ve been busy since I got back. I got to the airport near Seoul around 5:30 Saturday afternoon~ Dave met me there and we went straight to my new apartment in Gwangju. My new mentor teacher, Cathy, met us at the Gwangju bus terminal at 11:00 at night and took us to the new place. She is super sweet and extremely helpful! The apartment is close to the same size as my old one but broken up into different rooms, which is nice. It was not nearly up to Marsh clean standards but it was too late to do anything about that so we just went in and passed out (on the floor… I’m working on getting a bed).

Sunday we woke up early and went to Mokpo to pack up my old apartment. Justina, my old co-teacher, and her father came all the way from Gwangju so I would have a car to move! Koreans might actually be the most helpful people I have ever met. Since Sunday I’ve been scrubbing every inch of the apartment and unpacking the numerous boxes of stuff that I have accumulated over the past 5 months. Honestly, I have no idea where it all came from.

Yesterday I also went to Hanjae Elementary to meet some of the faculty and kids. They took pictures of me fake-teaching 3^rd grade for either a yearbook or a school magazine…I didn’t quite catch what she was explaining. The school and everyone in it seems really nice, I even have an English classroom!!

As of about 20 minutes ago I think I have finally finished unpacking and cleaning everything, though I still can’t get some of the mold out of the bathroom.

Here are some pictures of my new place:

 Bathroom~ sink shower may be the one downfall of this apartment.

 Separate kitchen

 Full size closet

 Separate laundry room

And my temporary bed

And my many albums of Hawaii!! :

Hawaii~ Days 1 and 2

Hawaii~ Day 3

Hawaii~ Day 4

Hawaii~ Days 5 and 6

Enjoy!

xox

광주 (Gwangju)

I’m moving to Gwangju!! I know it has been way to long since I’ve posted on here but with this new development I’ve been kept pretty busy!

Korea is divided into 8 different provinces and within those provinces there are some self-governing cities. Gwangju is a self-governing city surrounded by the Jeollanam-do province. It is a huge city about 50 minutes north of Mokpo (where I currently live), with easy access to the rest of the country. Here is a map to explain it a little better:

Usually in TaLK if you start with a 6-month contract and extend to a year, you have to stay with the same school for the whole year~ BUT since I have a 4 hour commute every day my PoE Coordinator felt bad and decided to move me! I will be transferring to Hanjae Elementary just north of Gwangju and will be living in Ilgok-dong, Gwangju. Also, Dave is applying for 학원 (hagwon or private school) jobs in Gwangju so our commute is going to go from 3 and a half hours to 10 minutes which will be really nice!


For more good news I'm going to Hawaii this Friday (July 20th)!! Unfortunately this means I only have today through Thursday to pack for Hawaii and pack my entire apartment to be ready to move on Sunday the 29th when I get back. I can’t wait to see the family and Hawaii but until Friday I am going to have a very busy week!

As far as traveling goes I've mostly stayed in Jeollanam-do for the past month but last weekend (14^th and 15^th) I went with Adventure Korea to the Boryeong Mud Festival! There must have been 50 or so TaLK scholars there with the same tour group and it was basically the foreigner Spring Break of South Korea. Here was our itinerary:

	Destination	:	Daecheon beach,Boryeong in Chungcheongnam-Do
	Departure Point	:	Hongik Univ. Subway stn(Line.2 Exit 1)/ Express bus terminal stn(Line 3,7,9 Exit 3)
	Includes	:	Transportation(A chartered bus),accommodation,Mud beach experience fee(extreme training
	Description
	Adventure Korea is gearing up for the annual MUD FESTIVAL. This is the biggest festival in all of South Korea and Adventure Korea has been taking people down south to play in the mud since 2003. With all our experience we know what you want and what to expect. So sign up and let us take you to a place where you’ll find it is the muddier the better. The festival is held over a period of nine days. Therefore we will be taking two trips, the first one is on Saturday 14 - Sunday 15 and the second one will be Saturday 21 - Sunday 22(http://adventurekorea.com/ourAdventure/calendar_content.asp?id=calendar&RowNo=699). You can choose which ever weekend suits your schedule best. On Saturday we will travel down to Boryeong. and go to the actual mud beach for the silt extreme training. Here you get the chance to dress in military gear, compete in races, wrestling, muddy games and much, much more. This is a special extra activity that we have built into our schedule only for ADVENTURE KOREA members(check the pictures above). And it’s well worth it. Get muddy, make loads of friends and have a blast before we even get to the festival area. After checking into our hotels, you will have free time to explore the festival area, and all that Daecheon has to offer. Daecheon is a beautiful sandy beach town, so all the mud for the festival is trucked in especially. Paint yourself in mud of various colours, wrestle your friends or total strangers, tug-of-war games, and the various mud slides, but watch out or you may be put into the mud prison. Why not pose for the photo competitions, our AK members have been selected for brochures etc in the past – maybe it will be your turn this year. Don’t forget the massages, crafts you can make, the gorgeous sauna, and so much more. At night after the muddy part of the festival is over there will be a concert and fireworks. Here you will see some of the best fireworks displays in Korea, and you will be guaranteed a great view from the beach. On Sunday you will have more free time to get muddy again, or just relax on the beach, before we make our way back to the buses and back to Seoul. This really is the festival not to be missed, and is world famous. The mud at the festival is very good for your skin, so save a bit of money and give yourself a fun full body mud mask. Come on and get down and dirty with Adventure Korea.
	What to bring	:	Toiletries, sandals, Towel,swim suit and extra socks(for extreme training)
	Schedule	:	Day 1 07:30am Depart from Hongik Univ. Subway station(Sub Line 2,Exit 1) 08:00am Pick up at Express bus terminal Subway station(Sub Line3,7/ Exit 3) * Please come to the pick up site on time as we are leaving on time and please let us know which site you want to be picked up from those two sites above through e-mail 11:00am Arrive at Daecheon beach 11:20am Unpack our bag at our accommodation 11:40pm Partake in the Festival -  Street Parade( Marching band, theme cars, performance groups etc) -  Mud sliding -  Mud wrestling 13:30pm  Move to the actual mud beach by our chartered bus 14:00pm  Experience the Silt extreme training course -  Silt basic training & Mud wrestling -  Cavalry battles -  Human pyramid game -  and much more 16:30pm Partake in other Festival activities. 20:00pm Free time - Explore the night Daecheon beach - Partake in the Mud fireworks fantasy Day2 08:30am Get up and go for a walk to the beautiful morning beach 09:30am Partake in the festival 11:00am Check out and put your bag in the bus 11:30pm Partake in the festival      Partake in any of your beach activities such as swimming,      Suntan and beach volleyball 16:00pm Depart for Seoul 19:30pm Arrive at Express bus terminal station 20:00pm Arrive at Hongik Univ. station

The festival itself was a blast even though monsoon season kept us pretty wet the whole time. Unfortunately I hurt my back pretty bad on the first day so I didn't get to participate in as much as I would have liked. While we were at the mud beach they had us split into teams to do various games and the first one our group did was mud wrestling. They had the girls go first and there were about 15 girls on each team in a mud pit surrounded by an inflatable ring. The goal was the throw as many of the opposing team members out of the ring as possible. After the first round the other team (dragons) still had 10 or so girls left vs my team (tigers) who only had 6 or 7. During the second round 3 girls ganged up to try to throw me out of the ring and that is when I destroyed my back. On the upside even with 3 on 1 they couldn't get me out of the ring, on the downside my team still lost. Even with a hurt back the whole thing was a blast and I will definitely be going back next year. 


This is a video Adventure Korea put together from this weekend, pictures to come:


2012 Mud Fest with Adventure Korea


Also, one of my friends made a video of our orientation and I wanted to share so you could see exactly how much fun it was J. A lot of 8^th gens were on 6 month contracts so they are getting ready to go home, I think this video shows just how close we all were and I am definitely going to miss everyone heading back to the states!


8th Gen Orientation, courtesy of John F. Scott


-xox

TaLK Extension

I know I have a LOT to catch up on but I just wanted to let everyone know that my 6 month contract extension has been approved! I will be with TaLK until January 31st and then I'm considering moving to the sister program EPIK. I'll write a little more about EPIK later but in a nutshell, they get paid more and are in less rural areas.

Also, since I've missed so much I'm just going to post pictures of the Jeju trip, "Beer Olympics" in Gumi, and the shooting range in Daegu which should catch me up.

This weekend I'm puppy sitting and staying in because my wallet can't handle any more fun until the next paycheck!

Jeju Cultural Trip

Beer Olympics and Shooting Range

xox

Interviewer~

Note: I wrote this May 23^rd and forgot to post it… sorry!

Last weekend for me involved some much-needed downtime. That being said, I still didn’t actually stay in my town the whole time.

Friday night the English teacher that comes to school twice a week and is my age agreed to come help me get a smart phone. Since I decided to stay here for at least a year I figured it was time I got a real phone. We went straight to Gwangju after school to an SK (Korean cell phone company) office her uncle owns. It took about 3 hours with paperwork and translating the contract but eventually we figured it out and I am now the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy S2 HD lte. After that I took her to dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant in Gwangju as a thank you for being my translator all night. I had planned on being home and in bed early but by the time I got back it was already past midnight.

Saturday I had the opportunity to interview Korean university students for teaching positions at an English summer camp. I met up with my coordinator and 2 other English teachers at the Mokpo bus terminal around 10 in the morning and we got on a bus and went back to Gwangju. We spent 6 hours interviewing the future teachers. Each group came down in pairs and I spent 10 minutes asking questions and the Korean teacher I was paired with asked 2 or 3 minutes follow up. My job was mostly to rate how their grammar, vocabulary, conversation, ect was. The Korean teacher’s job was to check for attitude and ability to survive English camp. Apparently these camps are pretty stressful since the teachers basically work from 8am to 9pm. Once we finished with the interviews my coordinator and I went downtown for some Indian food. I think that was the first time I’ve actually eaten Indian food and it was delicious!

Sunday I walked around Rose Street since the roses are in bloom now!

Next weekend is Buddha’s birthday so we have a long weekend but I think I might take another weekend off before my big trip to Jeju!

xox

May Recap

I just realized it’s been more than two weeks since my last blog post so it’s time to do a serious recap! The reason I haven’t been writing on here is because I’ve been working on my extension essays. I just finished the application and it will be sent in next week so hopefully I’ll be in Korea for at least another 6 months!

So, let’s start with Cinco de Mayo. Korean’s have no idea what Cinco de Mayo is but in this country you can always find foreigner celebrations. My friends and I found an event in Seoul organized by a Mexican restaurant there so we decided to check it out. It was by far the most alien feeling I’ve had in Korea, like reverse culture-shock. It was in a park area in Gangwan, Seoul and as soon as you walked in it was entirely foreigners. It was so odd being able to hear other English conversations around us! The food was amazing, it was the first time I’ve had Mexican food since I got here and I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I used to do happy hour with the girls every week or so at a Mexican place in Columbia so it is definitely one of my comfort foods. We spent a good 6 hours there with the other foreigners and then headed to the jimjilbong in the bus terminal to sleep. Seoul is about a 4 hour bus ride for me so I went home pretty early to work on lesson plans for the week.

Me with a delicious chicken quesadilla and margarita (and of course my friend making a face behind me)

Last weekend a group of us went back to Jochiwon where we had orientation. It was so nice to actually be able to explore the city. When we were there it was so cold all we wanted to do was stay inside but there are actually a lot of cute shops and restaurants right near our campus! There is also a place there that has the most amazing fried chicken I think I have ever experienced so we partly went back for that!

This week on my day off I went to the Boseong Green Tea festival! This was by far the best festival I’ve ever been to. My friend, Emma, has Wednesday’s off too and it was the first day of the festival so we decided to go. Since we were the only two foreigners there we got recruited to do every hands-on exhibit they had! We got dressed in traditional Korean clothing to hit a GIANT drum 3 times. Apparently if you do this and make a wish it is supposed to come true and since we were dressed the part I’m pretty sure it will work! Then we went to actually make our own green tea! We started with freshly picked tea leaves and dried them in a kiln. We had to continuously flip them (with our hands mind you) so they wouldn’t burn. Then after 10 or so minutes we would move them to canvas and roll them for about 10 minutes and then switch back. Meanwhile I’m pretty sure everyone at the festival came up to us to take pictures, video, or try to talk to us! Even the Mayor of Boseong came up to us for a photo shoot! We did this for a total of 2 hours and at the end they bagged it for us to take home! After we made our green tea we went back to the Hanbok (traditional Korean clothing) place to pick up pictures they had taken of us. As soon as we got there they had more photographers around so they made us dress up again for another photo opportunity. While we were waiting for our second set of pictures to print we got a personal magic performed show by a very nervous Korean kid who spoke little to no English. Finally we headed to the green tea fields which may have been the best part of the trip. Standing in those fields was like standing in a picture! Overall it was by far the best festival yet and maybe even the best experience I’ve had in Korea!

This weekend I’m going to Gwangju to help interview Korean University students who want to teach English summer camp. Every year the TaLK coordinator and the JLP (another teaching program) coordinator each choose one scholar from their program to come interview so I feel extremely lucky to have this opportunity!

Here are some pictures from the green tea festival:

Boseong Green Tea Festival

Now that my application is finished hopefully I will go back to updating once a week!

xox

DMZ and Bungee Jumping

I can officially say I survived bungee jumping at the DMZ!

Saturday and Sunday I went on my first Adventure Korea trip to the DMZ and it was definitely an eventful weekend.

Since 13 TaLK scholars signed up for the trip we decided to meet Friday night in Seoul and then be at the express bus terminal for pickup early in the morning. I got there first around 10 and people trickled in until midnight when the last girl arrived. Unfortunately we had assumed that being in Seoul we would find a motel easily and be nearby for morning pickup.

What we didn’t realize was that the express bus terminal was in a relatively residential area and there were no motels in sight. We took taxis to the closest bar/club area and started searching for motels there. We split up and each group went into 2 or 3 motels, none of which had vacancies.  When we all finally met back up it was almost 3am and even if we did find a motel we would only have it for a few hours. Eventually we decided just to go back to the bus terminal and hope it was still open so we could try to sleep there. Luckily, Seoul doesn’t sleep and the terminal stays open all night so we were able to grab some benches and lay down for an hour. I don’t think any of us actually slept though, which made for a very exhausted tour group!

We met up with the rest of the Adventure Korea group at 8 and got settled onto our bus to the DMZ. I planned on sleeping a little on the bus but since there were so many new people to talk to that wasn’t happening! We spent 2 hours getting to know the people around us before arriving at our first stop, lunch!

Lunch was at a place called Goseokjeong. There was a museum, some cool tanks and planes, and then rocks you could climb down to get to a small beach. It was a really gorgeous day so eating lunch outside on a beach was well received by all!

After lunch we went to our tour of the 2^nd tunnel. North Korea has dug a ton of tunnels into South Korea to attack the country. Our tour guide told us that South Korea has found 20 of them but only actually acknowledges 4 of them. The 2^nd tunnel is not open to civilians, only to guided tours so it was a pretty cool experience! At the end of the tunnel there were these two army statue guys with guns guarding a gate that goes into North Korea. There were a bunch of signs in front of them which apparently say don’t take pictures or we’ll assume you’re a spy…needless to say I took pictures. I guess if they were serious they would put it in different languages? Woops!

To be honest the rest of the day is kind of a blur since I was running on no sleep. We went to an observatory to take pictures of North Korea. Again, probably weren’t supposed to but all of us did anyways. Then we went to a bombed North Korean labor party building used to promote communism before the Korean War. Apparently the building was also used for torture and is known by locals to be haunted but I didn’t catch who was torturing whom. We toured a railroad site with a train that used to go between North and South Korea and then after our last stop at a memorial site we finally went to our village to get our rooms set up and to have dinner!

Once we were all settled in our tour guide started up a bon fire and we got a chance to relax. In the morning our tour guide laughed at us for all being in bed before 1am, little did he know we had already been up for almost 48 hours!

It’s lucky that we did get sleep though because we were up bright and early to go bungee jumping Sunday morning! Out of 40 people signed up for the trip 36 decided to bungee jump! Our guide said that was the largest group he’s ever had and it took about 3 hours to get everyone off the bridge. The bridge we jumped off was called Taebong Daegyo and it was a 54meter fall. I still cannot believe I willingly jumped off a bridge but I’m glad I can say I did it!

After bungee jumping we went back to the village for lunch and wandered around until it was time to leave. I got back to Mokpo around 10:30 but it was definitely worth it for as much fun as I had!

I’m still waiting for the close up video but here's a link to the pictures:

Bungee/DMZ pictures!

xox

Strawberries and other fun stuff...

Saturday I went to the Nonsan strawberry festival and honestly I don’t think I’ve ever eaten that many strawberries in one day!

My friends and I met up at the train station around 2 and went straight to a farm to pick our own strawberries. Basically it was $10 for all you could eat strawberries plus a jar of homemade strawberry jam and homemade strawberry soap to take home! We literally spent 30 minutes picking and eating every strawberry in sight and once we were finally full we headed to the actual festival.

I’m always surprised at how organized these festivals are! There are food vendors, live entertainment, and cultural activities for as far as you can see. It’s like going to the state fair ever weekend! My friends and I tasted strawberry makoli, strawberry slushies, chocolate dipped strawberries, and strawberry cake! We actually got to decorate the cakes ourselves, which was a lot of fun… and very messy!

Once we never wanted to see a strawberry again we headed to Daejeon for the night. We took up an entire floor of motel rooms and then headed out for dinner and drinks. I love how easy it is to go from one city to the next without any plans, definitely one of the perks of Korea.

Today is Wednesday, so my day off. I decided that the haircut last week wasn’t enough and I wanted to try dying it! I went for all over blonde highlights and I think she actually did a really good job. Again, no appointment, just walked in and she sat me right down!

Here’s a picture of my new color:

These albums are the strawberry festival and another festival I went to just afterschool on Friday. Technically it was over but you could still go and walk the grounds, which were really pretty so Rosemarie and I did that on my way home!

Strawberry Festival

Wangin Festival

xox