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