Back in Korea after Christmas

December 31, 2005

After a very long day I am back in Korea. I woke up at quarter after 4:00 AM Calgary time and proceeded to the airport with my parents. At 6:00 AM I got on a flight to Vancouver. Once there I had a five hour wait until my flight to Incheon. The flight to Incheon was fairly normal. The potatoes in my first meal were cold and the bun was frozen. I’m considering writing a complaint to Air Canada. I also didn’t get the aisle seat that had been reserved for me on the flight from Calgary to Vancouver.

Right now I’m feeling very tired and enjoying the most uneventful New Years Eve ever. I want to stay up a little bit longer so that I don’t feel completely lost when I start teaching again on January 2nd.

I had a really great time when I was back in Canada for Christmas. I was with my fiancé everyday and was constantly reminded why I love her. I got to visit with my parents, my friends, and other members of my family as well. I thought time passed quickly here in Korea. It passes even quicker when you are on a one week vacation trying to visit with people that you haven’t seen in six months.

The only really bad part was the trip to Canada. My flight from Incheon to Vancouver was 30 minutes late. By the time I had cleared customs and picked up my bags my connecting flight had left without me. I was put on stand-by for the next flight, but the plane had mechanical problems and so they had to bring in a smaller plane. Of course all the people trying to make a transfer to a Frankfurt flight were more important than I was (keep in mind that I had already missed a flight because my original flight was late). I missed that flight as well and didn’t arrive in Calgary until 6:30 PM, three hours after I was originally supposed to have arrived. Oh well.

My time in Canada reminded me how much I missed that great country and how much I am growing to appreciate other countries. Canada is empty when compared to much of Korea, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s nice to be able to drive on the Trans Canada on Christmas day and only see five or six other cars. It’s also nice to be able to walk down the street without having to push your way through a crowd as I did tonight to get on my bus.

On Monday I start teaching again. Seven more months and a whole lot still left to do until I get married.

August 15, 2005

Today is Korea's independence day. Sixty years ago South and North Korea (before they were separated were liberated from Japanese rule. Yesterday I was lucky enough to get to a soccer game between North and South Korea commemorating this day and supporting the idea of a unified Korea. I don't know how far off a unified Korea is, but everyone at the game seemed to be favour of it.

We were lucky to get to go to the game because tickets were only being given to Korean NGOs (Non-Government Organizations). Since the school at which I teach is connected to an NGO, all the teachers were lucky enough to get to go to the game.

The game itself wasn't much to speak of. South Korea won 3-0. The score doesn't really reflect the effort that North Korea put in to the game. North Korea simply wasn't ablem to get anything into the net. They did have a few good chances and it would have been really nice to see them score.

The stadium was packed. I would imagine it was almost sold out. Apparently the stadium holds approximately 60,000 people. It is huge. Inside on the bottom floors it has a shopping mall and a movie theatre. Crazy.

My saturday consisted of going to the river with everyone from school and playing frisbee for 2 hours. Really a lot of fun.

A brief entry

Well, this one will be pretty brief. I've had a fairly uneventful week. It did go by quickly, but nothing much happened in it. Classes seem to be getting better all the time. At least it's easier for me to be up there doing the teaching. The TSE class is quite interesting at times. These students are supposed to be preparing for a test that could determine what job they get or what school/program they get into and yet they still won't take the time to do the homework that I give them. Oh well.

This weekend has been quite eventful. I spent the day Saturday with someone that used to attend our church in Calgary, but who now lives in Ottawa. He is in Seoul for the week for some meetings. We spent Saturday afternoon at a palace near Insadong. Not Gyeongbukgung, but a smaller one. It has a secret garden. Chandeokgung. That's what it's called. Yesterday and today have been two of the hottest days I've experienced so far. 38 on the Humidex. Insane. After the palace we wandered around the Insadong shops and then made our way back to the Novotel hotel where my friend was staying. We met up with one of his coworkers who had just arrived in Seoul that day and went for lunch at a really good Korean/Japanese fusion restaurant near where I teach. Quite an eventful day it was.

This afternoon I had a picnic with my host family. After we went swimming. This was the first time that I've done real swimming (practicing all the strokes) in a long time. I am exhausted. After swimming we went 10 pin bowling and had supper at a nearby restaurant. I had some sort of soup with strange gelatinous noodles in it. It was actually quite tasty. On the way home my little host brothers went for hair cuts. It was quite a good day. That was the first time that we've spent to much time together and I think it went well.

July 17, 2005

Well, in two days I'll have been here for one month. The time has started to go by really quickly. For about my first two weeks or so I had been counting the days that I had been here. For the last two weeks I have not had time to count. It has been just crazy. I'm sorry that I have not been able to spend the time to update this blog. I just finally got around to uploading pictures from the last two weeks and now I have time to write a short entry. I have added a link to my pictures from the sidebar on the main page. It shows a random assortment of pictures from my time in Korea.

My teaching has been getting a little bit easier. I ma spending less time planning individual lessons and more time thinking about where I want my classes to for the month. It's a little harder to do this for the basic classes as they have a text book that we are working through. Sometimes, however, the basic classes just want to talk, and so we do that. It's great when the conversation gets completely off topic and I can just answer the student's questions or ask them my own.

The tough part for the basic classes are the students that are very shy. They don't like to speak or they speak very quietly. Some of them are warming up a bit, and I got to know many of my students a little better this week. On Monday my last class of the evening took me out for a very famous Korean pork dish that I cannot remember the name of. After that we went to the norebang (Korean singing room). Karaoke, but in a small room instead of in front of the whole bar. I tried my best even though I am the most horrible singer in the world. It was great to hear my students singing both English and Korean songs.

On Friday only two students showed up for that class. One of them is very shy and the other one is completely outgoing. They are about the same level. We ended up talking for the whole class, and this gave them a chance to get to know me better and me a chance to get to know them a little better.

I spent yesterday at one of the beaches near Incheon. It was a very warm day and we all got a little sunburnt. My face was probably the worst of any of them though.

As usual I have my pictures available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjfriese. You can also click on that big new bar on the side of the page to be taken there.

--Tim

July 2, 2005

Thursday night I went for an hour long walk. I walked from my apartment to Seoul Land which is an amusement park here in Gwacheon. There were many different groups of people out enjoying the evening. I left as the sun was going down at 8pm and by the time I returned at 9pm it was dark. People were out running, inline skating, skateboarding, walking their dogs, or just enjoying the evening with their special someone. There is a chair lift that will take you over the river from the bottom to further up the mountain. At that time of night there was no one on the chair lift. There is also a tram car that drives from the bottom to Seoul Land and then back down again. Both of these cost money to ride. Seoul Land seems to cost roughly as much as Calaway park, though there is a price for just going into the park with no rides. I didn't see much of it from the outside, but the rides did not look very exciting. Most of the people on the road were only concerned with getting their exercise or enjoying their evening. I have no idea how busy the park is, but it seemed dead on Thursday night. I'm sure there are more exciting amusement parks in Seoul.

Friday I noticed a sore throat coming on in the morning. During the day I had to go to the Seoul Immigration Office to pick up my Alien Registration Card (I did this all by myself, it was quite scary). When I got back I spent time at the office trying to organize my thoughts for classes on Monday. However, I was feeling very homesick and so was unable to concentrate. I think the homesick came on because I didn't want to be sick in a place where I had no one to comfort me. Dan and Katherine came to the office that night and it helped to talk to them about Canadian stuff and about my fiance.

Today I went to the Korean War Memorial with two of Eun Ji's married friends that I had never met before. We had a good time wandering around and looking at the many different exhibits. Canada's many small war museums pale in comparison to the size of this place, it is absolutely huge! It records in detail the events of the Korean war and which countries participated. It also relates information concerning other wars that Korea has participated in and some history from when Korea wasn't the country it is today. Today I felt a lot less homesick than I did yesterday. I was able to talk with my parents in the morning, and this evening I spent at home with my host family. I mostly read while my host brothers played piano and drew. In Pyo, the older one is working on a Karate or Tae Kwon Do style comic book. Maybe they were ninjas, I couldn't tell.

June 30, 2005

Well, the last few days have been quite the adventure. At work I started doing what are called level tests. These consist of me having a conversation with a possible student and then deciding what level of English they speak. Usually I scare the students. Which means that they are scared of conversing in English. Hopefully they'll get over that. I'm scared of conversing in Korean, but I'll do it when I have learned a little.

So that was my Monday and Tuesday. Nothing but level tests. Tuesday night a bunch of us went out for Rachel's birthday. She's from Canada as well, but is going home at the end of July. It was interesting. We went to a Korean restaurant and had cake.

Wednesday I went out touring with Rachel and Eun Ji. They went to the Blue House which is where the Korean President lives. I was going to go on that tour with them but I did'nt have any form of identification. I am still waiting for my alien card and while that is happening, Korean immigration holds onto my passport. When they got back from the tour we went for a walk through the nearby palace. It was home to the regions King and Queen in the 1390s. I have pictures up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjfriese. Click on the June 29, 2005 set. After that I went back to the office and Jae Sung, Rachel, and I went out for Korean food that I cannot pronounce. It was pork that you cooked on your table and then wrapped in a lettuce leaf and gobbled down whole. It was very good, but the whole process tool an hour and a half as you have to wait for the pork to cook before you can eat it, and you can only cook one piece of pork at a time. The food here so far has been very good so far. I love all the seafood and the spicyness.

Today Rachel, Eun Ji, and I went to the Korean Parliament buildings. We got to sit in on the National Assembly for about 15 minutes. We weren't even going to that as today was the day that they were going to vote to impeach the defence minister after what has happened in the military over the past two weeks. So, because of this you needed a ticket to get in to see the National Assembly. We didn't have a ticket, but as we were about to leave the building one of the workers came up to us and tols us in broken English that he was going to do what he could to get us in to see the Assembly for a little bit. Finally he came back and told us that we could go in. So, we went with him to his office where he grabbed his suit jacket and we proceeded to the seating area. We got to sit through one vote concerning decorating some famous tombs with flowers. No word yet on the impeachment.

Tonight I think I will go for a walk through Seoul Grand Park (which happens to be right behind where I live) and tomorrow I will head into work again.

From Korea

Well, it finally started raining. Before I get into that, however, I will relate some of what has happened the last few days.

I last wrote on Thursday. Since then I have sat in on more classes and begun to get an idea on what I will be doing when I start teaching on July 4. On Thursday afternoon we had another of the Test of Spoken English classes. I think it went well. The students are a little more advanced and are quite receptive to any help or correction that I can offer them. Thursday night I sat in on one each of Dan's and Katherine's classes. Dan's class was absolutely hillarious. There were only two guys present and apparently they don't usually say much during the class. That day they were joking around with and making fun of each other. I have never seen Korean people behave like that, and it was quite refreshing.

Friday I again sat in on more classes. After the morning basic class we all went out for lunch. It was me and 4 women. We had what seems to be known as "War Stew." The idea is that when the Americans left Korea after the war they left lots of food behind. So the Koreans took all the left over food and combined it with their own food. It was actually quite good. Hot dogs and noodles and generally Korean stuff. We ate this at a chain restaurant which is famous for this type of food. The class itself went better than the one on Wednesday. The students seemed to be more able to focus on the conversation with me there.

The two evening classes went well aswell. The first one was basically a party. Some of the students brought food and drink and we sat around and chatted. I went into the class 15 or 20 minutes before Cheryl and had to entertain the class. We started talking about the weather, and then moved onto Canada, and then onto the recent military accident. The consensus seemed to be that the shooter was unstable and that is why he did what he did. They didn't seem to buy what I had heard which was that the shooter had been poorly treated by his superiors. The rest of the class we discussed fairly simple things including the love of one of the students (he is
married) for what he refers to as the beautiful Korean women. I wonder what his wife thinks?

The last class there was going to be only one student showing up, the same one that took us out for dinner on Wednesday. Cheryl suggested that I spend the class alone in conversation with him. This also went well. We began talking about Canada and how it looks and where I was from. I then directed the conversation towards the work that he does. I had him explain what Intelligent DNS was to me. I was able to help him out in explaining it because of my understanding of technical language. At the end of the class he said he was happy, so I guess I was able to help him better understand how to explain what he was talking about.

Friday night In Pyo went to the hospital. I got home around 10:30 and soon after Hwa Young's sister came over to babysit the Jun Hae, the youngest son. The next day Sang Young (the dad) came home from his trip to Russia. That afternoon we all went to the hospital to visit In Pyo. He looked like he was in bad shape, but his spirits seemed up. He had had surgery to strengthen his upper jaw bone, and I could see bone coming down from just behind his top lip. That evening I went out with the sister and some of her friends. The friends were a Russian-Korean couple attending school in Seoul. We went to a bar and then to a PCbang (PC room) to play some Starcraft. That was my first time in a place like that. It was interesting to say the least.

Today Sang Young instructed me in how to read Korean and he did a pretty good job at it. In the afternoon we went to the local library and then had a quick bite to eat (I feel like I ate an awful lot today). We then wandered the long way home, stopping occasionally to look at and read Korean signs. He always translated for me and prompted me when I wasn't remembering the pronunciation of a letter. I think I have made some serious progress and can sort of remember the pronunciation of some of the characters and what they represent. When we got home we ate some watermelon that he had bought and talked about Korean and Canadian families. I described where my family had come from and he told me about his and about the importance of family in Korea and how this is changing somewhat. We also talked about globalization and what the Americans are doing to the world through the likes of Starbucks and Walmart and the war in Iraq.

I said I'd get back to the rain. It has been raining non-stop here since about 5 or 6 pm and it doesn't look like it will let up any time soon. I guess the rainy season has officially started in Seoul and the surrounding area.

I'm feeling pretty good about staying here so far. I seem to be getting along well with everyone that I need to. I do, however, miss my fiance Iliana terribly.