Holidays in Korea

This past week has flown by once again, but not without draining a lot of energy from me. It was a very tiring week with the preschool and middle school students, but I made it surprisingly. Let's see where do I even start with this past week. Well, our hagwon went to a Christmas party at a hotel where we met about 10 other English Schools. There was great food, good company, and entertainment of which we took part in. We {our schools} competed against one another. E.C.C. sang and danced....yeah, it was interesting :) I directed our 'choir' and about 12 of us danced to Mary Mary's "Shackles". yay ;) It was fun. We placed 3rd which was good given the fact that the mic didn't work for part of the choir portion, and we forgot about 5 seconds of the dance...hmmm.

This is a pic of Joanne teacher, one of the lovely Korean teachers I work with, and myself at the dinner party on Saturday. Good times.

For Christmas Eve and Day I ended up going snowboarding in Phoenix Park (same place I went last weekend). This time though I went with a program called Adventure in Korea. They set up trips throughout the year for foreigners who want to go out see what's out here. Hiking/snowboarding/fishing/camping trips

Anyways, I went boarding Sunday afternoon which was great! The place was crowded on Sunday-all day, which was weird seeing that it was Christmas Eve and all, but Christmas in Korea isn't really that big of a deal. Some of the people I met went to a concert that night on the slopes and saw some fireworks. Pretty good show if I may say so myself :)

The band we heard was called 'copy machine' and this is a pic of the girls i went with and the band. yup.. the Koreans looking like true Koreans...:) love it.

After that we took off and hit up some bowling because what else do you do on Christmas Eve? :) I believe my score stayed in the double digits :) yay for bowling.These are my Room 307 youth hostel roommates. good people.

It was also great to have the hostel right on the slopes. I think people stayed on them until about 2 in the morning. Hard Core.

I decided to snowboard on Christmas morning which turned out to be the most painful (literally) Christmas I've ever had. Yay! Okay, so it started off as a great morning; the slopes were empty, there wasn't any music blaring from the speakers, it was just me and nature, the way I like it.

Well, soon after that moment of tranquility I was rudely awakened by truly becoming one with nature. I was doing a run and was practicing my turn and had my back to the downside of the slope when I fell backward and totally flipped/rolled/tumbled whatever you want to call it, and landed extremely hard on my ars. It left a nice bruise. oi. Anyways, I continued for another 3 hours. Gotta learn from your mistakes and push through the rough times regardless of how painful they may be. (or something like that). Here's a pic of Danny, Kevin, and I Christmas morning on the slopes.

Well, this week is only a 3 day work week which is nice. I think I'll take this weekend away from the slopes though...

Hopefully I'll be contacting Holt soon in regards to starting the research for my parents.

I'm also going to be starting language courses somewhere in Jan. Either at a school or church or something. I realize though I need to get that together asap. I'm sick of not being able to communicate. oi. okay, I should get rollin'. Hopefully this weekend I'll get together a link that has more of my pics from Korea on it. Okay, Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I with you all a great New Year. Crazy how time flies by...

Oh Korea :)

So I started pre-school last week monday which has been very interesting to say the least. :) me teaching 4 year olds that don't speak English...good times. I now have about 10-12 classes a day (10a.m.-9p.m.ish) of children from the age of 4-16. I'm learning a lot about patience (or maybe realizing I lack in that area:) It has been a necessary learning experience for me I suppose :)
Things here are growing on me by the minute which is great! I am finding my place here and have been able to get out of the Bupyeong area which is very nice. I went to church with a friend this past sunday and met the music director who is trying to convince me to sing in his church choir. The pastor at the church went to Calvin Seminary and all 3 of his children went to calvin as well! Small world :) It's crazy to talk to him about familiar streets with him. I'm having difficulty finding an English service that I enjoy which is frustrating, but it's nice to have different musical opportunites to choose from. :)

So after the long week of teaching I took off for the weekend. A couple of us went snowboarding/skiing on the east side of the country. Yeah :)....hmmm where do I start with that adventure. I attempted snowboarding for the first time, which was a sore but fun experience. I had 2 different teachers throughout the day, neither of which spoke fluent english...actually hardly any english at all...but I learned a lot!

This is a pic of my friend Mason and myself taking a breather (I can only take so much falling in one day!) Everyone out here snowboards and are VERY fashionable while they do it. Gotta love Korea. :)

I then went to a concert at Seoul Arts Center with a friend and was able to hear some Mahler pieces, one of which was an excerpt from Goethe's Faust Act II! yay! :) ( It was great to hear classical music again. It involved the voice faculty from Seoul Nat'l Univ. along with a full orchestra, a children's choir and about 200 other voices...a little taste of heaven ;) ahhh....

So this weekend we have a big work christmas party which involves all the English institutes/Hagwon's in this area and supposedly we have a talent competition between all the schools. We are singing O holy night and I'm giving a voice lesson to the faculty tomorrow..hmm... :) We are also doing a dance routine...hmmm...should be interesting. Supposedly there will be around 2,500 people...I'll let ya know how that goes ;)

We only get Christmas Day off which is too bad, but I'll take what I can get. The plan is to go on a snowboarding trip for the weekend with some friends. Should be good :) Not as good as being home by any means though :(

Alright I'm callin it a night. Teaching takes a lot out of ya!

oh, we had our first major snow a couple days ago...it made me really happy :) This is right outside my apartment :)

Good-byes

Well I had my first couple good-byes this past week and I have more to come throughout the next couple months. One of the hard things about teaching out here is that everyone comes and leaves at different times throughout the year. The school year really never ends and everyones contract starts at different times. Just when you are finally getting to know peeps they all leave ya. Crazy. I guess I need to start getting use to it.

Anyways, this is a pic of Maive and me (she's from Ireland) and she left this weekend. Great girl. Very Irish :)

Also this weekend I switched apartments. E.C.C. (my school) doesn't do a very good job with organization or communication (which are kind of essential to run a school I thought), so really none of the bosses told me I was moving, but I found out through co-workers. oi. Anyways, I'm in and the place has pro's and con's like everything else in life :)

I did a little more shopping this weekend which was good. I love the markets in Seoul; great food, cheap everything, my kind of place ;)

Tommorrow I will be teaching pre-schoolers along with my other classes, so that should be an interesting experience. (We'll see what happens when you put me with 4 y.o. It'll be fun :) I'll probably be working from 9:30-9 at night for the next couple weeks. It'll be rough but the paycheck will be nice and hopefully I'll be able to visit Japan or China with that money...we'll see.

I've also been checking out churches in the neighborhood which has been good. I actually sat in on a Korean service today and didn't understand a lick of it, but the music was good ;) I then went to the English service at the same church and the music wasn't that great and neither was the pastor....the praise team leader is trying to finagle me into joining their worship team but I don't know...we'll see...

Taekwondo is going well. It's always an adventure to say the least. There are about 10/11 of us in the class (I'm the only female) and I have a lot to learn!! The instructors can't speak any English so it can be frustrating, but it's good.

The language studies haven't really begun yet. I'm thinking within the next couple weeks I'll start studying more intensively. I'm getting sick of not being able to say anything except "hangumal obsiyo" which is "I can't speak korean". yup. oh, and I can count to 10 in both numbering systems....yeah...that only gets you so far in a country :)

alrighty, I'm turning in for the night.

Blessings.

December is here :)

Well, December truly is here whether I like it or not :) The weather has been fluctuating throughout the weekend. Currently it's about 48 Fharenheit during the day and 28 during the night, but this weekend it was extremely chilly! supposedly it snowed but I never saw it. oi :) I hear there are usually only 2 seasons in Korea, Summer (very hot and humid), and Winter (very cold and not a lot of snow). Should be a good year :). The length of days is about 10 hours (7:30-17:30ish); it's rather nice.

Well this past weekend we had a going away party for some of the foreign teachers. It included Irish, Americans, Canadians, British, and Aussies with a couple Koreans. I've learned that the Korean teachers usually party with their fellow Koreans, and the internationals usually stay by internationals. It makes sense to hang out with those you are most like, but I wish there was more intergration between the 2 groups.

It's weird to be surrounded by so many people that look like you but are soooo different from you. I feel as though I'm in a position where I'm wrongly perceived by both the Koreans and Foreigners. The Koreans physically see me as one of their fellow Koreans until I open my mouth, and the foreigner sees me as one of the Koreans. I feel so dutch on the inside but I'm so Korean on the outside.

Itaewon is a place where ALL the foreigners teachers, GI's, etc... go to bar hopping, dance, and be around other foreigners and westernized places because clearly that's what you should do while your in Korea....doesn't make sense. Anyways, I went a couple weeks ago and I was talking to some white people who were surprised that I spoke fluent English...weird. hmmm..alot to adjust to.

Anyways, as most of you know I have many reasons as to why I am actually here in Korea. Here is a quick summary to refresh your memory because I know you all really want to remember :)
1. Grad school wasn't working for this year-basically I wasn't good enough..hmm..
2. I have no idea what I want to do with a vocal performance, german minor degree anyways...(if anyone has ideas, let me know :)
3. Financial reasons (big one)
4. Get some more travelling under my belt
5. Hopefully pick up another language, and lastly and probably most importantly
6. attempt to find my biological parents (or have closure to that situation).
In regards to the last one, many people have been asking me how exactly I'm going to start this process...I usually say I'm going to go around knocking on the each door in Seoul and see if I find anyone that looks like me.
They just kind of look at me in a confused sort of way...yup.

I am planning on going to Holt Childrens Serive in Seoul (whom I was adopted through), and see if they have any more information about my case. I figure I should get some closure to that part of my life (I say closure becasue I'm feeling they won't have any more information). In the rare case that they do have more info, I am excited/nervous to see what comes of that. I've been avoiding going to Holt mainly because I don't know if I'm ready to deal with the reality that I might never know who my biological parents are. I know that my true family that I love deeply are in MI (and my sista in Nicaragua ;) but I don't know if I'm ready to get that closure to my questions/hopes about my "family" here. Anyways, I can't really explain all my thoughts here and I don't want to bore you all, so I will end this topic here :) I'll keep you updated though on when I go to Holt...it will most likely be sooner rather than later.

Well, again my apologies for the scatteredness of this entry. I hope you are all doing well and i would love to hear from ya ;)
Peace.

Some more randomness :)

Well, I just talked to Boss James yesterday and supposedly he wants me to take up some Pre-school classes come December. We are at a shortage of teachers (as usual) and nobody really knows what's going on (as usual). Anyways, it will be nice to make overtime wages but not so nice to do overtime hours :)

Random thought: So at E.C.C the students refer to the teachers as "(first name) teacher", so the students call me Laura teacher etc...Even our colleagues refer to us that way...it's kind of odd...hmm.

Last weekend Kevin, Danny and I went to Bukhansan nat'l park again (in the middle of the city) and hiked Bukandae peak (the highest peak in the park, but it really wasn't that high). This is the one that Danny and I tried to do a couple weeks ago but ended up on the wrong side of park due to the taxi driver dropping us off at the wrong end. (all the gates sound exactly the same anyways). There were a lot of people at the top which was rather discouraging, but it was still a decent view. Behind us is another mountain which is where the hard core rock climbers like to go. I unfortunately won't be going there anytime soon...hmm..

This weekend we are having a going away party for the 4 girls leaving within the next week. Other than that I think I will take this weekend off from hiking and buy some Christmas gifts for the family, attempt to find a half decent coffee shop, and maybe hit the sauna. pretty chill.

It's easy to spend a lot of money here with things being so cheap (I just bought a wool sweater for $3 last weekend). Food is relatively cheap as well. yay :) I'm getting use to sweating while I'm eating (food is sooo spicy!)...my taste buds will be shot by the time I get back though, but then again I was really never that picky of an eater to start with as most of you know :)

Oh, so here is a pic of some of my students with their true colors coming out . This was during the Halloween party fiasco. Basically a day full of chaos. This is a class that I actually love :) Great students, decent English, and a long attention span :)

Okay, so I think that is about all I have to say for now:)

My journey thus far

Well I have been here for about a month and a half now and figured I should start a blog rather than the mass e-mailing. I'm going to apologize ahead of time for the scattered/randomness of this blog. I'm hoping I can give you a quick summary on what has been going on so far...I hope you don't get bored! :)
When I first arrived it was an interesting transition to go from the grizzly bear, granola eating, backcountry life of Montana to the apartment surrounding, kimchi obsessed Bupyeong, South Korea.
The first couple weeks upon arrival were difficult/interesting for me. One of my friends from back home was here visiting some friends, so it was nice to see a familiar face. Basically though I felt overwhelmed by my job, lack of friends, people that looked like me etc...
I guess being surrounded by Koreans has been the most difficult experience thus far. Taxi drivers, pedestrians, sales people, students etc....all assume that I can speak Korean and I just stand there staring at them, it's really great...hmmm.
Let's see, the weekends have been great. I've been able to hike basically every weekend, mainly in Bukhansan Nat'l Park (in Seoul). On my off days I also have been taking the subway into Seoul, checking out markets, sights, bars, and coffee houses (or lack thereof).
(Buses and Subways have also been a new experience...not the same as my great '85 chevy cavalier...:(
Work has been getting better, yay!! I'm starting to understand the students a little better and how they work. I usually work about 30-35 hours a week and have anywhere from 4-8 classes a day. The children are anywhere from the age of 6-16. Crazy...I love em...at least most of em ;) I start work at about 2 or 3 p.m. and go until 9. We have a new curriculum starting this month, so it's a nice change.
Oh, I also started studying taekwondo about a week after I got here. I am loving it more and more. I go with my friend Mason 3 times a week. Seeing that there is a language barrier between my instructors and me, I've been learning a lot through observing.

Everything here is about trial and error and learning from my mistakes. I am figuring out what personalities I am clashing with and which I get a long with, what food I like, what teaching style works for me etc...it's good for me but it can be a frustrating process.

Okay, I gotta get ready for work. I'll write more later :)