Korean Life 5

Been a long week for me thus far as I came down with a chest infection and had my first visit to a Korean doctor. My supervisor took myself along with another new Canadian teacher from the school as she had to translate for us. The doctor gave us each a shot in our buts and pouches of about 8 pills to be taken 3 times daily. Not sure what was in the pouches or the shot but I am happy to say that I feel a million times better then I did at the start of the week!

The teaching at the school continues to be great and I am getting to know my students a lot more. I have been pleasantly surprised to find how similar they are to the students at home. Not really sure how I expected them to be but my Kindergarteners don’t like sharing or being copied and my older students look for any opportunity to joke around with me and take a break from the curriculum. Many of the students at the school have taken to calling me Mountain teacher as I pass them in the hallway. It is Korean custom to call people by their title so I am known as Martin teacher at the school and I guess Mountain wasn’t too far a stretch.

A clear difference in the children here from those at home though is how much and how hard they work. Before arriving I was under the impression that the students would go to either a math, science, sports or English academy after school but I have come to find out that many of them do ALL of the academies AFTER their regular day at public school. Throw Tae Kwon Do in the mix and many of the children are not getting home till well after dark when they have to get to work on their homework from the various institutions. With that being said they are a very happy and upbeat bunch and I naturally try to make their time at the English academy as enjoyable as possible.  Some of my students travel alone for up to an hour on public transit in order to get to the academy! It seems as though hard work is really engrained in to the culture here and retirement doesn’t seem to exist as there are people who look to be in their 80’s selling produce or pulling around carts with things to sell just about everywhere you go!

The food industry here is huge as every other store is a restaurant or café and all of the streets are lined with these stores and restaurants. You would think it would be hard to stay in business but every night of the week the streets and restaurants are packed with people socializing and enjoying food and drinks (Soju) after a long day of work. Everyone seems to live in buildings of some sort and there are huge high rise complexes all over so I suppose that with the readily available amount of reasonably priced restaurants it makes more sense to eat out most nights. I went for my first real Korean dinner with 5 other co-workers tonight. I don’t remember what the style of restaurant is called but they brought us a tray full of meet and vegetables that we cooked over a broth that was boiling in a big pot in the center of the table. The food was delicious! The waitress noticed me struggling to grasp a dumpling with my chopsticks at one point and brought me a fork, which cracked up everyone at the table.

This weekend is Chu Seok which is the Korean Thanksgiving. The students have been bringing in presents for all of the teachers all week and today the parents of my kindergarten class gave me 200 dollars in gift certificates to a high end department store. Pretty sweet. It is a long weekend so myself and 3 other Canadian teachers are leaving Saturday morning for Muuido island which is about 2 hours from Seoul. We are renting a hut on the beach and it is apparently supposed to be quite the party there!! The weather here is still a balmy 30 degrees during the day so I am looking forward to a weekend of swimming in the ocean, partying and tanning on the beach!!

A Canadian couple from the school are heading to Tokyo for the weekend and another Canadian teacher who has only been here a couple of months is heading to Beijing. Pretty cool options for a long weekend :)

So long till my next post!