Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Oh, right the blog that I promised to try and update. First of all, sorry there are no pictures. My camera inexplicably died days after my arrival in Korea and now my co-teacher has my cell phone in her possession as she tries to browbeat the cell phone place into giving me service. They’ve been remarkably unhelpful so far. So I have nothing with which to take any pictures. You all should tweet about how unhelpful Olympus is when you purchase a defective camera from them. Ok now, moving on from my tech problems.
I’ve settled in at school pretty well, which is to say I’ve already had one lesson that was a complete flop. But, oh, well, that happens to every teacher, and at least my co-teacher was very understanding and helpful about sorting out an activity and salvaging something from the day. Last week my 3rd grade middle school students played mafia in our classes, which was a fun way to end our unit on detective stories. They didn’t speak as much English as I wanted them too, but they sure got passionate about the game (and I went hoarse from trying to be heard above all the accusations).
My weeknights have been pretty quiet, but the weekends are a lot of fun. Two weeks ago, I joined dozens of other EPIK teachers for an awesome get-together in Seoul: one evening with all the August arriving teachers, and one evening with just the teachers from Gangwon-do province. It was exhausting, but fun.
Last weekend, everyone seemed already had plans, and feeling homesick and sorry for myself, I decided I wasn’t just going to sit in my apartment in Cheorwon and mope. So on Saturday I booked a hostel and hopped on a bus to Seoul. I arrived about dinner time and took the subway to Myeondong, where I grabbed dinner and shopped until I could shop no more. I didn’t really buy much, but definitely enjoyed wandering through the crowd for a while. After that, I headed to my hostel.
On Sunday morning I decided to go to Grace Community church, which I had found while searching on google for an English-speaking church in Seoul. I showed up and was very surprised when I ran into someone I knew! Marilyn went WWU just after me and did the TESL program, and she did the same internship as me at Korea University just six months later than I did. I knew that she was back in Korea, but what a surprise that she was on the worship team at a church I just randomly showed up at!
After church, I went to Sinchon and found a larger grocery store where I was able to buy cheese. Hurray! But I still haven’t found Nutella.
This week is the Korean holiday Chuseok, which is similar to Thanksgiving. I’m planning to hop on a bus and head to Sokcho to take in the beach, since everyone has Wednesday-Friday off.