1 Second Every Day: My First 2 Months in South Korea

June 24th is exactly 2 months since I arrived in South Korea to teach English. I’ve been recording my time here using 1 second snippets every day, with the help of a handy app (1 Second Everyday) which removes the hassle of having to mash them all together.

Some days there are too many seconds to choose from, and other days I realise it’s 11:30 pm and I’ve completely forgotten. But here’s the final cut.

Some shots are for visual entertainment, whereas others are auditory, so turn up the volume and be prepared to be overwhelmed and a bit confused.

Featuring:

My aunt harassing a pony.
A giant wasp.
Christmas WHAM songs playing in May.
A Korean taking an evening stroll backwards.
Buying a bike.
Falling off my bike.
MERS.
School lunch.
Dancing fast and slow.
Buddha’s birthday parade.
PSY concert.
Singing Savage Garden at 6 am.
Teaching ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’.
Towering over small children.
Sunsets in Seoul.
Cat cafes.
Crocheting.
Feeding my pet rabbit.
Giving away my pet rabbit.
Lots of food.
Lots of small children.

It’s probably slightly annoying for my friends here as capturing ‘my second’ has become a bit of an obsession, but now I’ve come this far I’m not sure I can stop. So let’s call this Episode 1.

My Teaching Job

Despite being in South Korea for over a month now, I’ve only posted 3 times. One of those was a 3 minute video of my journey from London, one was a brief overview of my first impressions and the other was my first hiking experience.

This first month has been very hectic and exhausting, mainly due to work, which is something I haven’t mentioned much on here.

To set the scene, if you’re picturing a building like the school you went to as a child, then erase that. I work here:

Where I work, everyone smiles.

I work in a hagwon, which is designed for kids to go to after their regular school. They are usually inside office blocks. After-school academies are standard in Korea. They are obsessed with education. Going to the right kindergarten means getting into the right elementary school, which means getting into the right high school, into the right university and into one of the BIG employees (think Samsung, LG, Hyundai). This apparently affects who wants to date you as well.

My director was telling me that his daughter is 10 years old and is up until 11pm doing her homework in order to pass exams for school. All children are required to score highly in academic subjects, sports and also play a musical instrument.

One of my 9 year old students described her weekly after-school schedule to me. The only one she actually likes attending is ice skating.

The worst Friday schedule ever

So there is a lot of pressure on students from their parents, who are willing to spend a fair amount of money on sending their children to hagwons like mine (200 USD a month). This makes for an ‘interesting’ work environment…

Kindergarten

From 10 am until 3 pm, my school is a kindergarten. I have one class of six students (5-6 year olds) who are extremely cute and well behaved. I was expecting them to only be able to talk a little bit and certainly not write, but they surprised me. These guys babble away in English all lesson, never using Korean unless they are trying to figure out an English word amongst themselves. They write long paragraphs about their weekends, using irregular past tenses, present and future. Quite simply, they are amazing.

Their classes are 40 minutes long and there are text books I have to follow. Today I was told I’m behind schedule which my Korean co-teacher looked appalled at, despite no one telling me and having precisely one morning of “training” with the previous teacher. (This lack of communication and hit-the-ground-running setup was something I’d read about and expected. But it still didn’t make it any less stressful).

My Kindergarten class, on a field trip to a farm.

Elementary

At 2:50 pm, the kindergarten students go home (I hope) and the buses of elementary students arrive, dropping off children who have just been to school since 8 am. Ready for more school!

These classes are 50 minutes long and I have 4 in a row. The classes get progressively older and more able, and vary in size from 4 students to 8. The hardest one by far are the very first class who are absolute beginners. Even though they are a couple of years older than my kindergarten class, they started learning English later and are therefore much less able, understandably. It’s a challenge trying to teach them whilst making the lesson clear, educational but also fun.

My oldest class are about 13 years old and have me at 5:30 pm. They are always absolutely exhausted and even though I’d like to give them a break and let them relax a little, I have a set of textbooks with deadlines to get through that my co-teachers are checking up on.

All The Extra Work

So I teach about 6 – 7 classes a day, which adds up to 25 teaching hours a week. On top of this, we have extra duties.

School Bus

The foreign teachers take turns to ride the school bus in the mornings, meaning that every three weeks I need to arrive at work an hour earlier (8:30) to spend an hour collecting children and doing their seat belts up. This is easy, but eats into sleep of course 🙂

Lunch

Lunch is at noon, and each teacher is allocated a class to sit with to serve and supervise while they eat. Depending on how fast you can get the kids to eat, this leaves about 25 minutes for a lunch break to yourself.

Sing-a-long

At the end of each kindergarten day (2:30 pm), we do a 15 minute sing-a-long session, run by yours truly – the foreign teachers. So every third week, I run this. And if you’re not running it, you stand at the back singing anyway. Again, it’s easy and quite fun actually. Even if I do wake up every day with ‘I am the music man’ stuck on repeat in my head.

Textbook prep

I have 1 hour 40 minutes allocated every day for creating supporting textbook materials. I love this time because it’s nice to have some quiet time during the day. I fear this might be taken away from me though once I finish the textbooks allocated to me.

Classroom Cleaning

When the final class ends each day at 6:25 pm, every teacher must clean their classroom – wipe down the tables, sweep the floors and empty the bins.

Monday meetings

Every Monday after school there is a teacher’s meeting which can be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

 

The Gist

From what I’ve heard from other teachers I’ve met in my town, my hagwon does seem to be long hours. It’s starting to get easier, as I get my head around all of the textbooks and deadlines I have to keep to. I’m starting to realise there isn’t much time for straying from the curriculum and doing extra fun activities.

Also, because the school is a business and is primarily focused on retaining students, it feels like a lot of things are done to look good for the parents. For example, we are currently preparing for an Open day, which means getting our students to talk for 15 minutes on video about a project they’re doing. So there is a lot of emphasis on us as teachers preparing the students to look good on camera for their parents. Another example is that on field trips with the kindergarten, the main point of the trip seems to be to take photographs of the event and then piling back on the bus, instead of actually letting the children enjoy it.

Apologies if this post feels a little rushed. I have been meaning to post for ages, and am intending on writing about a lot more – including my trip to Seoul, another hiking adventure in Seoraksan, some no-prep ESL games I’ve been using in the classroom, and just general Korean quirks I’ve found entertaining. All of that to come, once I get my ass in gear and start spending more time at home in the evenings and weekends. Although I just bought this beauty for 30 USD so there might be a small delay…. 🙂

Hiking Korean Style: Songnisan National Park

I’ve been in South Korea for just over 2 weeks now, and before yesterday I had only left my city of Cheongju on one rainy occasion to visit a nearby town that had a very well stocked English bookshop (Cheonan, if you’re interested).

Cheonan Bookshop – worth a visit

So far, I’m not in love with my home town of Cheongju. Aesthetically it’s nothing to write home about – lots of high rise concrete apartment blocks, neon lights, coffee shops and highways. There are many beautiful flowerbeds and trees dotted around the streets, but in terms of architecture the focus is on being compact and quick to build. Koreans must be accustomed to having very little space everywhere they go, which is tough even for me coming from the little island of Great Britain, so I have no idea how someone from a sparsely populated country like Canada or New Zealand would adjust here. It feels almost claustrophobic.

I live on the western edge of town which is the opposite side to the lush mountains, and when I tried running beyond the city edge I found a maze of densely populated farmland blocking me.

It’s not all bad though; I have some friends on the east side of town, where there is a beautiful fortress and several large parks, with trails that disappear into the mountains. Throughout town there are also big forested mounds that were clearly not worth the effort of building on, so Koreans have converted them into miniature woodland walks with intermittent scatterings of exercise machines throughout, which seem very popular with the older generation (ajummas and ajusshis). A quick 10 minute jaunt around these mounds can provide a brief respite from the constant bustle of city life, even though you can still hear the traffic through the trees as you walk.  I guess I have been spoilt with huge parks in London, where you can easily while away an entire afternoon.

The Fortress, Cheongju

The main advantage of where I live is that I am a 10 minute walk to both of the main bus stations in town. Korea, being a fairly small country, is easily travelled from top to toe in a matter of hours by bus, and Cheongju is pretty much in the middle. As a result, I can see myself working in Cheongju during the week and travelling as much as possible at the weekends. This weekend marked the first real attempt at that…

Songnisan National Park

Having heard that Koreans’ favourite pastime is hiking, I was keen to escape the city and get a taste for what hiking means to this nation. The most obvious choice was Songnisan National Park, which is only an hour and a half bus journey away from Cheongju, and cost 5 quid. Luckily I have already met a couple of other foreign teachers who have an itch to hike, so we were all enthusiastic about getting up at 7:30 am on a Saturday to get going. After the coffee sank in.

As we were planning on doing a 15-20 km hike, and not knowing what facilities would be at the Songnisan Park end, we wanted to buy some food to take with us before getting on the bus. This obviously proved harder than we planned, as I’m learning that everything here is, because the main shops didn’t open until 10 am. We resorted to a little corner shop, where we randomly selected food based on the pictures on the packaging, narrowly missing the purchase of some sweet, crunchy anchovies.

Once on the bus, which left precisely when it said it would, we were quickly told to be quiet by the other Korean passengers for talking too animatedly. Apparently this is a rule – no talking on buses. Silence ensued until Songnisan; time to admire the scenic views along the way.

Bus journey to Songnisan.

Strangely, although no noise on buses is enforced, we were later to discover that walking along a busy hiking trail with your phone blasting out music is completely fine.

We were soon dropped in the little town at the start of the hike, and began making our way along the trail, accompanied by a large number of brightly coloured Koreans equipped with hiking poles, backpacks and visors. It was already getting hot, but everyone else had shirts, rain jackets, trousers, hats and even gloves on.

Busy trail

With Buddha’s birthday coming up on May 25th, there were a lot of decorative lanterns on display to further brighten up the path, complimenting all the colourful clothing.

Park entrance gate

The trail started out along a flat, well paved path wide enough for vehicles, but after about 2 km we took a left up a steeply ascending path that narrowed and became paved with stepped rocks. All of the Korean co-teachers at work had warned us that climbing to the peaks in Songnisan was VERY DIFFICULT, so we weren’t entirely sure what was coming up.

Of course we stopped several times along the way to catch our breath, encouraged by little cafes selling drinks, ice creams, and full on meals in some cases.

Stops along the trail

After about 2 and a half hours, we reached the first peak – Munjangdae. Legend has it that if you visit Munjangdae rock three times, you will go to heaven. We’re planning on returning in autumn to see the leaves change, and next spring again, so I’ll keep you posted on whether it’s true or not.

Munjangdae Rock

Perhaps due to this legend, or perhaps just because of the sheer number of people in Korea, the top of Munjangdae was RAMMED. There were absolutely tons of people picnicking in the shade, and it was by far the busiest I’ve ever seen the top of a mountain to be. And that includes Snowdon in Wales that has a bloody train running to the top.

But to be fair, the views were breathtaking.

View from Munjangdae Peak

Top of the rock

Friendly Koreans

A couple of nights ago I met a pair of foreign teachers who had been living in Korea for a year, who within less than a minute of chatting told me that “Koreans are dicks”. This actually supported many opinions I’d heard and read about on the subject.

However, my own personal experience, albeit 2 weeks long, has been quite the opposite. And especially so on this trek. A huge number of hikers seemed to take pleasure in saying hello to us, and were thrilled to hear us respond with ‘annyeonghaseyo’ (안녕하세요)!

Later on, as we left the hoards of people and continued along the less popular ridge path (probably because it did not come accompanied with a promise of heaven), we came across a family of Koreans picnicking. On seeing us they immediately ushered us closer and signalled for us to join. We weren’t really hungry, having just eaten, but then again, you don’t turn down a free lunch do you?

Koreans definitely know how to picnic. They were incredibly generous, although hilariously they completely ignored all of our attempts to communicate in Korean. The chat went something like: (us pointing to ourselves, “Cheongju, teacher, hagwon”), to which they did not even acknowledge we’d spoken, and continued to dig into the banquet of kimchi, bulgogi, rice, and other mysterious pots.

Casually picnicking with a Korean family

The further we continued, the less busy the trail got, and the second and third peaks we reached we had completely to ourselves which were spectacular.

View from Cheonwangbong Peak

On the 7 km journey back down, we barely saw a soul. Near the bottom the path joined a stream where we spent a good deal of time faffing about taking photos and cooling ourselves with water.

At the end of the 17 km loop we patched together was the Beopjusa Temple, home to the world’s largest Buddha (made out of bronze).

By the time we’d finished walking around the temple in awe we were starving, and so we felt we deserved the bibimbap and makkoli we found down in the town before catching the last bus home at 8:30 pm. Pretty scrumptious!

Bibimbap to celebrate

This was a fantastic day trip from Cheongju that I’ll be recommending to anyone I come across who hasn’t done it already. I’m looking forward to returning in the autumn when the hills will be speckled with oranges and browns, and of course a third time to claim my pass into heaven. 😛

Korea: First Impressions

It’s been almost 7 days since I arrived in Korea; wide-eyed, groggy and confused. It feels a lot longer than a week as it’s been non-stop since I landed.

I was fortunate enough to have a 3 day overlap period with the teacher I was replacing, so I had someone to direct my barrage of questions at, ranging from how to teach my kindergarten students to how to operate my front door, and everything in between.

Obviously there are the big things that I’m trying to get my head around, such as the entire language, which textbook I should be teaching, and how not to offend everyone I encounter, but there are a lot of little things that I didn’t expect. It’s hard to say if this is normal or not in Korea because of my limited experience here, but based on talking to other foreigners who have been here a while, it seems these are all pretty common. In no particular order, here they are:

Slippers

I knew slippers were a thing here – having indoor shoes, bathroom shoes, outdoor shoes – but even so it still feels odd. Especially changing into slippers at work, and seeing everyone dressed smartly ready to teach down to the ankles, and then seeing a pair of crocs or fluffy slippers. It’s so comfy though, I love it!

The kids keep their school slippers at school.

There are also restaurants where you sit on the floor, and at the entrance is a big rack where everyone leaves their shoes. This is when I discovered just how crap I am at sitting cross-legged.

Awkward Shower

The bathroom is like a wet-room, with the shower hose hooked up directly above the sink. If the sink wasn’t there you’d actually be able to stand underneath it. But as it is, you have to hose yourself. The good thing is that you get to hose down the whole bathroom while you’re at it.

Ready to soak your toothbrush

This shower setup also provides an extra excuse to incorporate yet more slippers into your life. Once you have showered, the whole bathroom is covered in water and so you then need to wear your bright pink bathroom shoes to enter…

Slippers are a permanent fixture

House Key

My house doesn’t have a door key. Instead it has a passcode. Every time I leave the house my stomach drops as I think OH BOLLOCKS I’ve forgotten my door key, only to realise that I don’t have one. I’m basically living in the future. Not sure what happens when the battery runs out though…

Jaywalking

I know there are many countries where jaywalking is illegal, but England isn’t one of them. We’re all far too busy being late for our afternoon tea appointments to worry about waiting for the green man to grace us with his presence. It’s all about legging it until you’re half way across the road until you can slow to a walk.

But here they are BIG on waiting. And waiting around what feels like 4 -5 minutes! Sometimes there isn’t a car in sight, yet Koreans are still waiting for the green man. Heaven forbid you are trying to reach the diagonally opposite side of a big intersection, because you will spend about 10 minutes waiting to get there. And sometimes you start crossing with the green gentleman’s go ahead, and then a car ploughs on regardless and you have to run anyway.

Mopeds

They drive about on the pavement and use the zebra crossings. Pretty strange, but it keeps you on your toes.

rubbish

Trash. Garbage. Whatever you like to call it, Korea appears to be very organised at it. For one, recycling is enforced here in your apartment building. Secondly, you have to use the correct bag. And if you don’t, the CCTV will spot you and print off shaming photos of you that get plastered around your apartment building. This happened to the girl I replaced.

Being Low

Not mentally! But physically. I’ve been spending a lot of time close to the floor this past week, which is something I’m not used to.

To begin with, the “kitchen table” in my apartment reaches about 30cm off the floor, and I’ve just had to order something called a floor sofa in order to sit at it comfortably.

The dining table. And Cyril.

I also have an ironing board that is just centimetres off the floor, which I may use if I feel like getting stuck into some leisurely ironing at some point.

And then of course there is work, where I have been spending a lot of time with some very tiny people and their very tiny furniture.

I am a giant at work

Of course, these people are insanely cute though so I will let them off 😉

Little chefs

On the other hand…

When you’re out on the street, everything is UP. Floors and floors of shops, cinemas, bars, offices, schools. Anything you’re looking for could be at any level.

Pretty much everything is new, which is overwhelming but really exciting. There are of course other differences that I haven’t mentioned here, but I’ll save those for another post. For now, it’s time to start my first proper weekend here in Cheongju.

27 Hours: London to Cheongju

I made it!

Physically I am here in Cheongju, South Korea (although mentally I am a sleep deprived jelly brain), after a fairly smooth journey. Being unable to string together coherent sentences I thought I would cheat and post a video I put together of the 27 hour journey.

TL:DW It’s bus-train-train-plane-plane-bus, which is quite nice to pronounce, if not a bit of an arse to actually endure.

More to come once I get a proper night’s sleep in.

On Your Marks, Get Set…Go Korea!

Bye bye rainy London – I have booked my flight! I officially have 4 days to pack my life up, say my goodbyes, learn Korean and eat as many British sausages as possible.

Am I dreaming?

Little by little, this hazy teach-in-Korea idea is becoming more concrete and inescapable. First signing the contract, then applying for my E-2 visa at the Korean embassy, and now purchasing a one-way ticket to Seoul. At each step, a little voice in my head is saying “THIS IS IT”, although it’s not; I’m still in London and I still can’t clearly picture how my job, friends, apartment or general surroundings will come into existence as of next Wednesday. I feel as though I’m hurtling towards a blinding white cloud and holding my breath in anticipation of what will emerge on the other side.

I am in no way ready and haven’t even attempted packing yet, but I would quite like someone to present me with a magic button that whisks me forward in time to Wednesday morning so I don’t have to sit here helplessly fretting and waiting. Plus that way I could avoid making any packing decisions whatsoever, which as everyone knows are some of the most excrutiatingly difficult decisions you have to make in your life.

On the other hand, all these unknowns are exactly why I signed up to this, and not knowing what my day-to-day life will become as I set foot in Korea leaves the imagination free to envisage a plethora of outcomes. Which, believe me, changes hourly from carefree and venturesome to sad, stressed and alone.

I’m starting to receive farewell messages from friends and family, which although generally supportive, seem to have an undertone of morbid curiosity in watching me move gradually closer to this peculiar life experiment I have volunteered myself for. Most go something along the lines of “Have a great time! I’m looking forward to hearing about how it turns out”, which is an acutely British way of saying “I think this is a ridiculous idea, and haven’t the foggiest why you’re doing it. But good luck?”.

It’s not all unknowns though, as the area I do know something about is of course my job.

Where will I be working?

I will be moving to a medium sized city in the center of Korea called Cheongju (종주) that has a population of about 700,000 people. It’s close enough to head to Seoul at the weekends (in an hour and a half apparently) but hopefully small enough to enable city escapes and not get swallowed in a sea of metropolis.

In the private industry in Korea, the hours you work are very much tied to what age group you teach. As children often attend private schools after being at public school all day, teaching children from elementary to middle school generally means working an afternoon/evening shift such as 2-10 pm. If you wish to teach adults, which is where I have the most experience, you will be doing a split shift in order to fit in English classes around their working day.

Having worked a split schedule in Peru for 11 months, I knew I never wanted to do this again – going to work twice a day, waking up early and finishing late are just not worth the 6 hour break in the sunshine, in my opinon. I’m much more of a morning person so I’ve opted for a kindergarten/elementary hagwon, with hours from 10-6:30 pm.

Now hagwons in general have a bad reputation online, but kindergarten/elementary seem to be in the OH MY GOD THEY ARE THE WORST category. It is seen as essentially babysitting and being a full-time entertainment clown (as opposed to the rest of the clowns who are busy giving everyone the shivers). Looking on the bright side, I think they will at the very least be cute, if not a little snotty, but having students who get enthusiastic about everything – if pitched right – will make a change from teaching apathetic adults in Peru. Stay tuned to hear how it really turns out.

Life Rotation

I have been emailing the teacher I will be replacing a lot since passing the interview, which has been a useful insight as I will most likely be taking over her entire life. This includes – but is not limited to – her schedule, her classes, her apartment, her kitchen blender and her pet rabbit. I’m also hoping to steal all of her friends as I only know one person in the whole of Korea at this moment in time. And they don’t live in Cheongju.

Cyril – my future rabbit.

The End of Meta Posts

Along with my long-overdue transition to Korea comes the joyful fact that my blog posts will soon actually be about life in Korea, and not about speculating on life in Korea from outside of Korea. I may also be able to stop using the word hagwon so much, as a result of finding more interesting things to discuss and thereby stop confusing everyone in my family who’s trying to make sense of this blog.

Writing this post has been a fantastic opportunity to further procrastinate on packing, but I really should do some real live mother flippin’ packing right now.

Starting now….Now.