Your English is Good

Huzzah! I have captured the internet again so time for another blog!
I'll tell you a little more about work and my apartment now...

So I work for Chungdahm Learning in South Korea. I work at the Bundang branch which is around 1 hour 30 minutes southeast of Seoul by subway. It's a hagwon, or after school English school. I teach from 4:30 to 10:30pm in the form of two 3 hour classes. You can click on any of the images in my blogs to enlarge them. Try it. It feels like you're really there, no?

I'm not really sure what the deal is with the random metal dude riding a stick horse followed by stick puppies, but it makes it easy to find our work. The area my building's in is a suburb so it's pretty swanky. Unfortunately, it means that our kids are more spoiled than most and the mom's are more intense because they don't have to work and therefore have more time to fuss over their kid's A-'s...

Lots of tall buildings in Sunae

Here is our teacher's lounge. We each get a locker and will spend our breaks and prep times here. Usually you can find our manager, Ducky, here annihilating people on Mario Kart DS. Here is Ben (right) talking to one of the teachers we replaced.

I teach two different types of classes to elementary kids and to middle school kids: Memory English and Bridge Reading. Memory English is a mish-mash of various english skills: reading, writing and listening. It's pretty entertaining so far because our book is called "Gross Body Facts" so we get to discuss boogers, scabs and vomit for 3 hours at a time... yaaay... The other class focuses on reading and analyzing random passages about seabirds and cryonics. In general, the elementary classes are more enjoyable because they're so eager and hyperactive. The middle school classes are more painful due to their zombie-like attitudes. You can feel every minute of class tick by when it feels like you're talking to yourself. We teachers can tell when another teacher is having a rough class when we can hear them speaking through the walls for the whole 3 hours. I have one middle school class that is fun, though. Mostly because the kids have good senses of humor and are willing to participate. Here's a picture of Oh Jun, George, and Jack. The 3 girls were too shy to let me take a photo of them

Oh yeah, so most students have English names that either someone has given to them or they chose themselves. They're usually pretty regular (I have a Kendra in one class) but occasionally you get really strange ones like Nobody or Cozy Cozy.
For the most part I enjoy my job. My students are fairly well behaved and my coworkers are awesome. My manager and Head Instructors are great, too. It definitely makes the job easier when you don't have to stress out about your bosses all the time.

Here is my roomie, Kay! She's from Cali and went to Berkeley. She's bubbly, fun and likes to eat a lot so we get along splendidly. We didn't get to spend too much time together during training but after being at the same branch together for a bit we realized what a good match we were.


We need to go back and get that monkey chair still...

Here's our apartment at night. (Ooooh!)

It's a 32 story building with two towers (although only one is pictured) and we live on the 12 floor of this one. It's a mighty nice building with good security, big gym, sauna, and indoor golfing area. I don't golf but we found a golf club in one of the closets so I might try it out.

Here's a shot from the inside with the landlord and the realitor. It has one bedroom (mine) and a loft (Kay's) and it the biggest apartment we've seen or heard about so far.

Next is another view of our living room. You can see our view of our area, Jeongja, too

The view from one of our huuuuuuuge windows!

It's hard to tell from this picture but there's a river that goes by our building. It has a running path as well as bike lanes, fountains, playgrounds, basketball courts, etc. Our apartment is also surrounded by Love Motels, motels that are usually used by couples who are looking to get some time alone. You can usually distinguish these by their interesting names (Hotel Novios) and their tented garages (to hide the cars of their guests).

Our kitchen! The cupboards on the left are actually our fridge and freezer and that little circley-thingy to the right of it is our washing machine. It's small but we have a lot of space around it so I'm not worried.

Our bathroom! It looks smaller than it is. I'm just glad that there's a divider between our shower and our toilet. Most apartments have one room with everything in it.

Here's Kay's loft. It's not tall enough for either of us to stand up in but it's pretty roomy.

This is a shot of my room. It's not too big but there's plenty of space for me. I'll post some furnished photos once I get some furnishings... hopefully after I get my first paycheck.

Random photo time!

Here's the view of Jeongja on my way to the subway station to work. Since it's still pretty chilly I'll take the subway to the next station to get to work but whenever it's nice or we have enough time Kay and I walk. The subway entrance is the little dome on the left.

Noraebang!!! Most nights we go out we'll end up at one of these singing rooms. The first night we all hung out we went and loved it and thus the Karaoke Kings were created.

Dad, please disregard the beer and soju bottles! Love you!


Coworkers! Kay, Billy and Daniel really captured the essence of our awesomeness for this photo. Good job, guys!

So, there's a funny story that goes with this picture... Kay, Ethen and I went to a random restaurant after work and order some chicken dishes. Kay and I usually rely on pictures for our selection or Ethen's Korean translations. We selected this dish based on the former. While waiting, Ethen informs us that the name of the dish was something about "poop" and "house" but Kay and I were not concerned. Then we get it... and realize.. there is something odd about this meat... Ethen asks the cook what part of the chicken it is exactly... turns out to be the butt. So we ordered a plate of chicken butts... they tasted alright. Pretty chewy, though.


Next up is tempura udon! A Japanese dish actually but I've never had one with so much seafood in it. Yep, those are octopus legs in it. This meal cost about 9 bucks and was soooo good!

That's all for now!

Bienvenido a Korea!

Yay! Finally a blog entry! Sorry it took me so long but things have been pretty hectic and since the move to my apartment I have been internetless. However, I am "borrowing" it from a neighbor and since it hasn't immediately booted me off and I finally have time to take a breath I figured why not get that blog finally going?
To start off: don't worry. I am totally fine. Seriously. Everyone I've met has been wonderful (minus the scary ajummas that push you out of their way in the subways) and the food has been great.

So let's start from the beginning...

Duuuuuuuude, anyone who comes out here... FLY SINGAPORE AIR. The flight was amazing. I only ended up sleeping 2 or 3 hours becuase there was so much I wanted to do. Each seat was equipped with their own screen with remote. There was a huge library of movies, tv shows, operas, documentaries, video games, and language lessons (including project runway, dad, so you can get your Tim Gunn fix). So with endless amounts of entertainment, which included Back to the Future, and the mid- flight snack of king-sized ice cream sandwiches I figured I could sleep once I landed. Here's a pic of the menu and the remote. On the reverse side of it is a full keyboard and buttons for the games.

So, made my way through customs without any hassle and scurried off to collect my luggage. After waiting... and waiting... and finally realizing that I'd seen the same bags rotate by at least 10 times without mine in it that they were not there. An airport employee approached me and informed me that my bags were not put on my last plane and that they'd send it to my hotel as soon as they got it. Bah... well, it made traveling to the hotel that much easier. Luckily, I was only without my bags for a day. On the way I met a couple of other CDI-ers, including my hotel roommate, Tracy. We all were pretty exhausted by the time we got to the hotel around 11 so we just crashed. Here's what my home for 2 weeks looked like. It's a typical officetel which is what they call most apartments out here. The beds were comfy, the floors were heated so your feet don't get cold and the toilet seat was heated which was always a pleasant surprise. There were loads of buttons on the side of it which I never really experience since you had to be sitting on them in order for it to work. A ladies only button was extremely tempting though, but a male friend, Jason, later informed us what it was like.
So the first week was pretty much a blur. We had classes everyday from 9 to 3 to prepare us for our first week of teaching. Classes consisted of learning class structure, mock teaching and tests. The word of the week was definitely Intense. We still managed to have fun inbetween though. I made some great friends who I definitely plan on staying in touch with.

Now for a flood of pictures!


Bi bim bap! Definitely one of my top 5 meals thus far. Take rice, mushrooms, mung beans, onion, seaweed and various other veggies, top them with an egg and throw them into a sizzling bowl. mix 'em all together so that the egg gets cooked from the hot pot and consume.








One day after work and after our mandatory health inspection, a bunch of us wandered to The Coex, Korea's largest mall. It's huuuuuge! Not only does it have so many stores and food stalls but it's own basketball stadium and ice skating rink. Here are the boys trying to figure out where to go on the interactive mall map (shown below).
























Here's Gangnam, the area I trained in. Pretty nice. I'm not use d to being surrounded but such huge buildings.We were in the business district so there was a lot to do with plenty of places open all night. Coffee is a big fat deal here so there is a Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks or some coffee equivalent on every corner. Too bad I don't like coffee.

Here's Ethen and Ari at Korean BBQ. So here, rice doesn't usually come with this meal and needs to be ordered specially and is eaten with a spoon (oi! We had it all wrong!). Also, once the bulgogi is cooked you dip it in sauce and wrap it in a lettuce leaf with various spicy vegetables. So gooooood...







Here's my roommate, Tracy, and I. We got along right from the beginning and were definitely the most extroverted girls during training. It's too bad we didn't get placed in the same branch. That's all for now! Tune in next blog where I shall continue my game of catch up with updates about my apartment and work!