Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Jeju!

Last week I started going to a Seon Korean Buddhist Temple in Gimnyeong with some foreign friends. Young Ja, the multi-cultural director, has lived internationally for the last 15 years, speaks wonderful English (with a French accent) and arranges foreigner visits. We've gone for dinner and meditation the past 2 Tuesdays and we're going for a stay overnight this weekend. The Temple is quite peaceful. We're developing a little foreigner community there and we've started studying Korean Buddhism which we intend to continue in the weeks to come.

The visiting Monk preparing our green tea

Halla called my name again last weekend. I can't stay away! My friend Jason and I hiked up the Eurimok trail and down Yeongsil. Well, it isn't so much a hike as it is stairs upon stairs upon stairs and slowly ascending boardwalks. But it's still gorgeous and nice to be out in the mountain forests. The weather is turning chilly, especially above the tree line at the top. We were thankful to have brought extra layers. We indulged in the Jeju tradition of eating hot ramen at the summit.

Yum! Hot Ramen!

Beautiful Hallasan

I'm having a blast teaching about Halloween. I've been given permission to forgo our normal lessons for the "cultural experience" that is Halloween. I carved some pumpkins and you should see the kids' eyes light up when they see them! They've never seen Jack-O-Lanterns before. They are amazed at my strength and dexterity...I guess carved pumpkins look pretty tricky. The teachers are excited about it as well. I've been wearing a $3 witches hat I bought at Lotte Mart and the strange looks I get are bigger than normal. But the candy is a hit. That's a cross-cultural trend: kids like candy. So is "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and "This is Halloween" from Nightmare before Christmas. I must extend a hefty thanks to You Tube, they furnish 90% of the multi-media in my lesson plans.

I mentioned the American tradition of making hand-turkeys on Thanksgiving to my co-teacher and she's very excited to try it. I can do almost anything if I call it an American Tradition. Woohoo!

6th Grade Dioramas:

My scary Jack-o-Lanterns:

The kids love my witch hat!

3rd Grade Halloween masks

Hope your Halloween is as fun as mine!

Sunsets, fall leaves, and good friends

I hiked Mt. Halla with some friends last weekend. It was an incredibly beautiful day and the fall leaves were stunning...


Dinner with the 4th grade teachers:

Our field trip to the Dinosaur Theme Park:
A lookout over Sarabong with my friend Jessica at Sunset:


It was a great week. Next week I'm introducing Jejudong Elementary to Halloween...

Beautiful Chuja-do

Last week was again wonderfully short. The 6th graders went on their graduation field trip, a sight-seeing tour around Jeju Island, on Thursday and Friday. I usually teach 6th grade on Thursdays...so no class! Friday was my planning day, so I only taught 3 days last week. My co-teacher invited me to accompany her and a few other 4th grade teachers to Seogwipo (sog-ee-po) City on the southern tip of the island to visit the 6th grade students and teachers Thursday night. We left school, drove over Halla Mountain, and came into Seogwipo just as the sun was setting. After joining the kids for a buffet dinner we walked down to Cheonjiyeon Waterfall where the kids were enjoying an outdoor show in the amphitheater. The performer was a comedian of sorts and making them do all kinds of funny things. It was really fun to be included and the 6th grade teachers appreciated us visiting and kept thanking us for coming. We drove home in the dark and saw at least 10 wild deer (No-ru) while we were driving over the mountain. They are supposed to be a sign of good fortune...

Cheonjiyeon Waterfall at night

Saturday morning we left for Chuja-do, an island northwest of Jeju Island. My friend John is the Foreign English teacher there and 5 of us took the ferry to visit him. Unfortunately, the 9:30 ferry was sold-out by the time we got there, so we meandered through Tapdong and got some Dunkin' Donuts coffee. We ran into a bunch of my students riding bikes and they got to play with Pita the puppy. We caught the 1:40pm ferry and enjoyed a sunny, scenic, serene boat ride across the sea. John met us at the ferry and we spent the day walking around Chuja Island. We really lucked out with beautiful, sunny weather all weekend! John invited some of his friends from school and "older brothers" out to have dinner with us. We ate at a seafood restaurant (they're all seafood restaurants...Chuja is famous for local and fresh fish) and the meal was delicious. (Of course, we also enjoyed soju!) We had 4 courses of fish dishes: sashimi, fish "pizza", grilled fish, and fish soup. After dinner we went to a bar where we drank maek-ju (beer) and toasted the night away. John's friends really took a liking to Juan. I don't think they'd ever met a Spaniard before.

Sunday was even more beautiful than Saturday. John took us on some hikes around the island and through the 4 villages. We went up and over the peak in the middle of the island which has a 360 degree view of Chuja, all the small surrounding islands, and the sparkling sea. If ever the big city life of Jeju (ha!) gets to be too much, I know I can escape to Chuja for a few days. Most Koreans have never been to Chuja and I invited a few of my Korean friends next time I go. We caught the 4:15 ferry back to Jeju and we all slept the hour ride home.

Mondays I teach 5th grade all day. It can be very tiring and frustrating if they are particularly feisty or if the lesson doesn't work. But today was a very good day! My co-teacher and I planned our new lesson titled "What are you doing?" last week and I wanted the kids to come up with their own vocabulary instead of using the usual 'listen and repeat' method to give them vocabulary words. They really got the idea and contributed long lists of action verbs that we made into gerunds ("ing"). Then we played a theater game called 'Slideshow' where the kids act out a picture of the action and other students guess what their action is. The kids really got into it and had fun acting, working in groups, thinking creatively, and writing. I was really happy how well it turned out. They don't all work that way! Then we played a simplified form of Mad-libs and made funny stories using our new action verbs and some review words like adjectives and types of food. Again, all of them wrote at least a few words and most of them understood the lesson and wrote pretty funny stories.

In the 6th grade, we're in the process of writing Pen Pal letters to my mom and step dad's 6th graders in Federal Way. My kids are excited about it and are doing pretty well with writing and learning the letter form. They don't spend a lot of time writing as a part of their curriculum here so I'm trying to incorporate that a little more, especially in the 5th and 6th grades.

On Thursday the whole school is going on field trips. I'm going with the 4th grade to the Dinosaur Thema Park! Yes, Thema. It's right next to my apartment and I've wanted to go since I got here. I've heard it's a little lame, but it should be fun going with the kids. The 4th graders are really great kids and the teachers are a lot of fun. Thursday night I'm hiking Sarabong with my friend Jessica. The sunset is supposed to be beautiful from the top and it's only a 30 minute walk. And next weekend we're going back to Hallasan, this time to the summit. The weather has been consistently nice for the last few weeks, sunny, warm, light breeze. I hope it holds out a little longer. It should be a great week!

The posse: Cindy, John, Kati, Pita, Me, Julia and Juan

I'm voting!

I'm sending in my ballot for the Nov 4th elections today. Glad to be doing my part to end the madness. Hope you are ALL doing the same.

On Becoming Korean

I got a cell phone! I have been welcomed to Korean civilization now that I am connected like everyone else. On Thursday my friend Sin Nae (Jessica) took me to the local LG Telecom and helped me get a cell phone. It is possible to get one without bringing a Korean person along, but it is extremely helpful if you have someone who can vouch for you and translate things like plan costs, contract length, etc. You usually get a better deal that way. I paid $10 (10,000 Won) for my new Anycall phone complete with 3 color change cases, a plastic outer case, headphones, and a charger. And it's a sweet phone. The ringtones have names like "A rendezvous with friends," "Morning coffee," and "love letter." And my screen saver changes from day to night complete with sunrise and sunset pictures at the appropriate times. It does cost me to make phone calls (18 won or about 2 cents per 10 seconds) but text messaging is cheap so I'll stick to that most of the time. And I won't make international calls unless it's an emergency of some kind. If you want my cell phone number, send me an email and I'll give it to you.

On being vege-tarian in Korea: I have officially become an omnivore again. This is for many reasons. It's not impossible to be a vegetarian in Korea. However, when you don't possess the vocabulary necessary to omit certain items from your order it becomes difficult. Also, they make almost everything with a fish product. Just about all soups have fish broth and almost all kimchi is made with shrimp paste. And soup and kimchi are served at every meal. The concept of vegetarianism isn't really known in Korea. Culturally it isn't understood. So people at school always gave me funny looks and were concerned that I wasn't eating when I brought my own food to school for lunch. Now, the funny looks I'm entirely accustomed to, but people were genuinely concerned since they don't understand why you would not eat fish or meat. I should also explain that a normal Korean meal has roughly 5 side dishes most of which are vegetables and then 1 soup (fish, vegetables, seaweed, bean sprouts, etc), rice, and probably 1 meat dish. So they are very used to eating large amounts of vegetables at every meal. I just felt that I was being slightly offensive, causing my friends extra worry, and missing out on the experience here.

Sports Day! This Saturday was Sports Day for my school. Sports Day is a really big deal here. The students have been missing classes for the last 2 weeks + in preparation for the event. Families and friends, grandparents, school board members, and local politicians were all invited. The day was full of performances by the kids of different dances, races, and fun activities. It's somewhat similar to Field Day, but on a grander scale. It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I came and participated. After the day the staff all went out to a seafood restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, I overdid it on the raw fish in my new eating-meat ways and got sick. Really sick. But 4 of the teachers took care of me, gave me a Korean massage on my stomach, took me home for some sweet plum tea (said to cure stomach troubles) and drove me all the way home (45 min from where we were). So Sunday I stayed in bed all day nursing myself with soup, tea, and juice.

Learning Korean: It's tough. I'll start with that. I've learned to read and write Korean characters. I sometimes feel like a kindergartner, practicing my letters slowly and in large-print. And reading from kids books trying to deduce meaning from pictures and sounds. Korean is very different from English. Pro-nouns are seldom used and subjects are often assumed. There are no articles and the verb always goes at the end of the sentence. But I'm getting the basic shape of sentence construction. I've been meeting with a friend once a week and she teaches me some Korean phrases that I study for the week. I have a large stack of flashcards that I study on my long bus rides everyday. And the teachers at school are helping me learn as well. I get the feeling that most foreign teachers don't make the effort. Every time I say something in Korean, I'm met with "Wow!" and wide eyes from my friends and teachers. They are incredibly impressed that I know any Korean and care to learn it at all. I may take a class at the local University. And I'm meeting more Koreans who want to help me all the time. Last week I went out with 3 teachers from my school and they are more than happy to help me learn when I ask what things are. It'll come. I've set a goal for myself that I want to have a conversation in Korean by Christmas. I think I can do it...

The Sa-oo-na (사우나): Friday was Korean National Day! Everyone hung Korean flags and we got a day off from school. So I celebrated by indulging. Cindy and I went out for waffles again (anyone who wants to come to Jeju will be treated to these delicious waffles I assure you!) and then I headed to a local Sauna. (Sauna in Korean is Sa-oo-na...사우나). Saunas are a big part of Korean culture. They are everywhere and most people go to their neighborhood sauna on a pretty regular basis. Men, women, and children all take part in this custom (men and women separately). I was told of a nice one in Oedo (Way-do) which is nearby my apartment that overlooks the ocean. It is in a pretty big hotel and the entrance fee was 5,000 won ($5!!!!) There were 4 indoor pools, 2 hot and 2 cold. They were all sea water (salt water) and one of the hot pools was green tea water with a big jet in the middle. There was also a hot sauna room and a cooler sauna room. And two outdoor pools that I didn't get to. I decided to get a scrub and have the full experience. And it was an experience! An older Korean woman laid me on a padded table and dumped warm water over me, then scrubbed every ounce of dead skin off until I wanted to scream. She oiled up my skin and washed my hair and gave me a vigorous massage on my shoulders and neck. Then she told me to go take a shower, which I gladly did. The scrub cost 20,000 won and it was worth it. I took a little nap watching the ocean, and as the sun started to set over the water I bathed in the hot pools. It was heavenly. At home a scrub or massage would probably $40-50 easily and the Korean Spa I go to in Lynnwood is $35 just to get in! I'll definitely be taking advantage of this local custom regularly. Oh, and this spa was more expensive than most... usually they are only 3,000 won ($3).


And so...I feel like I'm getting the hang of things here. And I'm becoming more Korean by the minute! Of course, the locals probably don't think so. I still get stared at every day, where ever I go. You learn to tune it out, or just smile back and that usually scares people into looking away. Usually.