Billy In Korea!

Kickin’ it South Korea!

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:10:17 +0900

Kickin’ it South Korea!

It's been over 2 months you say...

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:06:02 +0900

Who’s keeping track! :)

Well, summer vacation is almost over and it’s ridiculously hot here… so hot in fact that I’m just going to stay inside and post on here!

Well it’s almost been six months since I came to Korea and the time went by kind of quick. People have asked me whether I’ve miss the US or want to go back home and I always tell them not really :) Now before people from back home start poo-pooing me, here me out! I’ve lived in the US for 25 years or so and I’ve been in this country for almost 6 months, why do I need miss the place or go back so soon? I’ve been there and done that :) The US isn’t going anywhere so I’m enjoying my time here :)

I will say probably the single biggest thing being in different country has made me realize about the US is that is really is a “melting pot” off different things. People have always said it and I’ve just never really thought about it, but the US has variety. There are many different people from many different countries and cultures and they bring who they are and mix it into the American culture. In Korea, everything is Korean which isn’t necessarily bad it doesn’t have the variety. If anything should stay the same in the US it should be that it’s about about everyone and how they are different!

Can We Skip Tomorrow?

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:46:24 +0900

My co-teacher is out-of-town tomorrow (on his honeymoon) so I have to teach all 4 classes (3rd-6th grade) and an after-school program class by myself. I’m not sure why I’m making this post instead of preparing for my lessons. Having never prepared a lesson by myself before I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. I’ve been looking for content the last couple of days and I just can’t seem to find anything to go along with the lessons. Without having a Korean teacher in the class I feel like they’re not going to understand what I’m saying, so I’ve been trying to think of ways to teach the lesson so that they’ll be easy to understand. For some reason I agreed to draw a picture for one of the students so I also need to do that before I go to sleep, this night will never end.

So to end on somewhat of a happier note I got my longboard in yesterday and I went riding with another native english teacher that has a longboard here in Hapcheon. The place were we went at the park had a bunch of other kids practicing roller-blading so it was kind of fun skating around as they watched us. Whenever the kids where done practicing we let a couple of them ride our longboards which was pretty funny because they almost fell the first time, but they seemed to get the hang of it after that. Today was also the first time I fell off my longboard, I tried turning too hard and hit the concrete… it wasn’t too bad, but my leg might hurt tomorrow.

Random side-note I added a comment system.

Excuse Me, You Don't Look Like Your From Around Here... Let Me Ask You Directions

Mon, 31 May 2010 20:59:52 +0900

Well, that felt completely backwards. So as I was walking back from the supermarket and a random person asked me where the supermarket was. Granted the only reason they probably asked me was because I was walking with a plastic bag which had a supermarket name on it.

In English I wanted to say “Keep going down this street and take a right and go all the way down that street and it will be on your left.”, with my limited Korean it turned into “it’s over there”. Realizing that those were horrible directions I then told them “go this way” pointing down the street and then I said “go that way” pointing down the other street to the right and finally I said “if you go that way there’s a super market”. It was funny to me that they asked the person that looked the most out of place for directions. Hopefully they made it there because I’m not sure I would have with my directions.

Still Here

Sun, 30 May 2010 21:26:10 +0900

I’m still here and things are going good, sorry for not really posting. Sometimes I don’t think things are interesting enough to post about, but maybe I should just write about stuff anyway.

I promise to post stuff soon :)

Gahoe Girl Squad Badges Of Honor

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:18:02 +0900

This is the cell phone that I use in Korea.

You might be asking yourself, what are all those things attached to my phone!? Well, let me tell you…

First, let me talk about the black and white things since they’re unrelated to the story, but you might be curious anyway. The black thing allows me to attach a charger to the phone, I’ll never understand why they didn’t make it so the charger could attach directly to the phone. The white thing is a thumb drive. This story deals with the green frog and the red koala.

At one of the schools I teach at, Gahoe Elementary School, there’s a group of girls in the 5th grade that are a step above the rest of the class when it comes English, they’re all eager to learn and they hang out together. I’m going to refer to this group as the Gahoe Girl Squad or GGS for short.

After lunch the other day as I was walking through the library I saw the GGS doing a dance number while singing a song, it was definitely silly looking. We all had a quick laugh about it and then I continued on to the classroom.

A few minutes later one of the girls from the GGS came into the classroom and told me to follow her to the library. When I got into the library she pulled up a chair and told me to watch. The GGS performed their full routine, which was awfully cute and then the proceeded to “demand” that I dance with them. I told them I couldn’t dance, but they said it didn’t matter because they could show me what to do, so we went back-and-forth like this for a few minutes. In the end I wound up giving in and danced part of the their routine with them. As goofy as I felt it afterwards, it was fun and we all had a good laugh.

After going back to the classroom for a little while, the GGS rushed in, surrounded me and demanded that I give them my cell phone. It was all a little unexpected so I didn’t question what was going on at first and just gave them my phone. Then all rushed off and huddled in a circle so that I couldn’t see what they were doing. I finally asked “why?” while trying to see what was happing, but they quickly told me “No!” and pushed me away. A couple of minutes later they returned with my phone like it’s pictured above and told me “This is gift!” and then quickly ran out of the classroom.

It’s time like these that make me glad to be here.

Where toilet paper is the new napkin

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 21:52:41 +0900

So I’ve realized that it’s been about a month since I’ve posted on here… for shame!

I find that I want to post about stuff, but what I want to say winds up being to long so I never get around to it. So this time I’m going to keep it short.

It’s been a little over a month and half since I’ve arrived in Korea. A quick update of what’s happened since I’ve last posted…

I got my apartment, which is pretty nice (will try and take a video of the place soon)
Went to an orientation in Seoul for all the new native English teachers like me and met a bunch of people
Went to a dinner party in Seoul put on by my recruiter (and another) and met more people and had fun
Got my first paycheck!
Finally met most of the other foreigners in my city

Living here has definitely gotten more comfortable and I’m far more willing to do more things.

I was thinking today, now that I’ve been here for a bit is anything different from when I was living in the States?

I’ve eaten more onions and tomatoes then I ever have in the past (big deal if you know me). I will agree with most people that onions cannot be tasted most of the time, but there are times when you can really tell they’re there (yuk!). Tomatoes aren’t as bad I originally seemed to think they are, they’re still a little weird though.
I’ve haven’t played any games since I’ve gotten here (also a big deal if you know me), mainly because trying to hook up the xbox 360 that I brought is a bigger pain then it should be. I can’t really say that I’ve missed playing games because I haven’t really thought about it.
I haven’t programmed a single thing since I got here, not sure why. Maybe unconsciously I need a break from the 4-1/2 years of programming from my previous job. I am started to get the burning desire to make things though, so this probably won’t last.

Well that’s it for now! My new goal is have at least one post a week, so I’ll see how that goes. Till next time, enjoy your life!

How are you helping the students learn English, besides just playing games? Are the classes very different from back in the US?

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:50:41 +0900

At this point, I mostly do what is asked of me, so I don’t teach the classes outright and instead assist the current teacher. It’s almost like I’m a tool for the teacher that they can choose to use in different ways.

There are a couple of teachers that are interested in working with me to come up with stuff. Many of them have told me that if I would like to change anything they would be willing to listen. For now I’m learning as much as I can about how they teach and I think I’ll try to contribute more after I get a better feel for the classes.

I would say the biggest thing difference that I’ve noticed compared to schools in America is how unorganized the classes here. I don’t think most teacher plan out ahead very far and it seems like the daily lessons can be changed on a whim. The last school I teach at I only go to one day a week so the 5th and 6th grades have two English classes back-to-back. On the first day of the 6th grade class there we played games for the first hour and then we were supposed to do one of lessons during the second hour, but do the persistence of the students we played games for two hours.

It Means What!?

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:44:24 +0900

Nah-pun-num!

This word doesn’t mean what I thought it did. Growing up, I heard that word from either my mom or other kids and I always thought it meant “bad person”. Yesterday, I found out that it does not.

So a couple of days ago one of the girls in the 6th grade was being mean to me and I thought I would be clever and call her a bad person in Korean, so I pointed at her and said “nah-pun-num!”. She look surprised and then went to tell the 6th grade teacher that I called her that. The teacher didn’t say anything to me, so I just assumed that the girl was surprised that I was saying she was bad. This should have been my first clue that maybe I said something wrong.

Last night I was hanging out with some of the other teachers and they were joking that they thought that one of them was mean when they first met him. So, I was like “no, he’s a good person” in Korean and then I said that he was not a nah-pun-num. Everybody was then like, “nooooo! don’t say that!”. They told me that the num part of the word was a bad word. I told them I had said that to a student that was being mean the other day and then they said that it would have been really bad if I said that to a girl. Great, that’s exactly who I said it to, so now I feel really bad about doing it and I’m still not really sure what it means, but I’m sure the student didn’t appreciate it.

Lesson learned: Not all the Korean words I learned while I was little should be said.

What are you doing for food these days?

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:43:00 +0900

Hmm, lets see…

breakfast: ham & cheese sandwich, kimchi, kim, rice

lunch: whatever the school serves, which so far has been stuff lke bibimbap, chicken, soup, rice, kimchi, bananas, and other stuff that I can’t remember

dinner: rice, kimchi, kim, squid, sanjipso (pork with salty dipping sauce), tenjang jigae, chinese food (not american chinese, no orange chicken), and dukbuki (squishy spicy goodness)

There’s of different kinds of food that I need to try out.

This is Hapcheon, the city that I’ll be living in for a...

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:32:00 +0900

This is Hapcheon, the city that I’ll be living in for a year. The photo makes the city seem big, but it really isn’t.

In A Weekend Far, Far Away...

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:25:42 +0900

I’m in the middle of another no plan weekend and I’ve done more then I originally thought I would.

When I first arrived in Hapcheon, I randomly met another foreign English teacher while shopping in the supermarket. At the time I didn’t have a place and I also didn’t have a phone, but he gave me his number anyway so I could call when I finally got a phone. So yesterday after walking around for a while, I decided to give the guy a call. We met up and he showed me around for a little while and then I went to his place to eat some food and meet his family. It was awfully nice of them to make me some food and his wife and kids were really nice so I was glad that I was able to do something Friday night.

Today I went hiking on a trail that I saw on Friday. It was fairly relaxing, but towards the end the trail was pretty steep and I think it took about an hour and a half to climb all the way up. I should have brought my camera because the view from the top was really nice and you could see the whole city (Hapcheon) and the surrounding area.

To get to the trail you have to walk on the stones across a fairly wide river. On the way back across, a couple of high school students randomly stopped me, asked me my name and wanted to take a picture with me on the stones in the middle of the lake. It was all pretty silly. Well after crossing back over and walking around a bit more, I run in to the same students and basically talk to them for about an hour and a half. Since they were in high school they could speak English fairly well and mixed with the Korean that I know we were able to talk about random stuff for a while. The phones they were using had this ability to speak English phrases, so sometimes they would just look things up and have their phone say something to me. It got hilarious sometimes because the phrases wouldn’t make sense to me in English, but they would in Korean.

I don’t have plans for the rest of the evening, but maybe I’ll get lucky do something interesting.

Hey Billy,
I let Tumblr do a search using my gmail and you popped up. Do I know you?
I'm also an English teacher in Korea.

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:55:17 +0900

Hey! I’m not sure if you remember, but I’m Ben’s friend. I worked with him and he got me in contact with you to learn more about teaching in Korea.

Last Of Three

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:03:00 +0900

I’m at my final school today and I’ve got to say that I like this school better then Gahoe (2nd school). The kids are more active and seem to take part in the classes more. I really like the 6th grade here, I think all we did was play games for two hours. They remind me of the 6th grade from Bongsan (first school), but there’s few more of them.

Unlike the other two schools they didn’t show me around here and they don’t really tell me what’s going on. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing sometimes.

When I met the English teacher again, she asked me if I had prepared anything for today and I told her no. If she wanted me to have prepared something it would have been nice to tell me before I showed up today. Can’t really blame someone for something they don’t know about.

The classes at Myosan are the biggest out of all three of the schools, the class size on average is about 8 here. I think I also prefer teaching with different grade teachers as opposed to a single teacher like I do at Gahoe. The teacher at Gahoe is nice and everything, but having different teachers bring different dynamics to each class, making them more interesting.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do this weekend, my previous plans fell through so I don’t have anything to do now. I get kind of bummed out and not as confident at times like these. Back home I could call somebody up and go do something, but I haven’t met enough people here to do that yet. I guess I just need to look at the bright side and figure something out.

Ridiculous Day

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:03:00 +0900

Yesterday had to be one of the most ridiculous school days ever. It was my first day at Gahoe Elementary School and it was closed because of the weather. Of course nobody decided to tell me until I was half way through my bus ride which took an hour and a half. The day started with me having to wake up 5:45am, catch bus at 7:30am which stops in another town at 8:00 and waits till 8:40 before leaving for Gahoe, awesome! Since the school was closed most of teachers and the principal didn’t come to school. Around lunch time some the people that were there decided to make Korean pancakes, eat ramen and get drunk off beer and traditional Korean wine. At one point the principal called and everyone got quiet and they told him that nothing was going on. After the call everyone went back to partying, it was definitely a first day to remember.

My first week of teaching has been great so far. I really enjoy teaching the kids, they all have such different personalities. As far as actual teaching is concerned, I don’t do as much as I was expecting. I wind up assisting the teacher rather then teaching the class outright. Sometimes I feel like it would be nice to actually teach the class, but I’m not sure what I would do if I did. The way I teach also wildly varies with the teacher that i’m teaching with. They all decide to use me in different ways, which makes the amount of work I have to different all the time. The most ridiculous thing I’ve had to do so far is sing and dance to a crazy song in the 5th grade class, I felt so silly, but the kids were having fun so it was alright.

So Much For Teaching

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:32:00 +0900

Sometimes I wish were explained to me a little better.

Today I expected to be teaching a class, but alas that was not meant to be. This morning another teacher joined me in the staff room today and I learned that she was going to be teaching English for today, so I was like “Me too!”. The interesting thing was that the 5th grade teacher that I worked with yesterday for today’s lesson came into the staff room while the English teacher was teaching her class and after talking for a while she realized that she had been looking at the wrong schedule and that I wasn’t teaching her class today. She had thought that today was Tuesday and even though I knew it was Wednesday I was just assuming that I should use my Tuesday schedule for today since there Monday was a Holiday. She then told me that she was going off her Wednesday schedule, but I told her that I only have schedules for Mondays and Tuesdays. Later she went and asked someone about what I supposed to do and they told her for the rest of the week I should just observe the other English teacher. So, that’s all I did today.

Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the other two schools that I will be teaching at during my stay here. I’m a little sad because I kind of wish that I could stay and teach here, I feel like I won’t get to know the students and teachers as well, jumping between three schools each week. The other fantastic (sarcasm) thing I found out, was that no teachers from this school will be at the other schools (different from what I was originally told), so it’ll be interesting to see how things work out.

I got my phone today! Now I’ll finally be able to talk to people here and back home. From what I understand it’s only $24 a month is way less then the $85 for my iPhone back the in the US. After using my iPhone for a year, this new phone sure stinks as far as the user experience goes, I guess I can’t have everything.

BILLY!
Congrats on the personal/professional endevor! Nothing is more captivating and rivetting than a "fish out of water" tale. I see you ended up is the deep-souf' of Korea. When you get more setteled you should take a trip out to Busan. There are some really fun resorts/hot springs.

Reading your plight of being a stranger-in-a-strange-land is very reminicent of the time I lived in Korea. You're not alone! Completely socialist education system aside, I have no doubt that you'll do well. If worst comes to worst, you can live on Choo-Choo bars and Yogu drinks!

Advice that saved me and my father whilest living in Korea:
1) Invest in a rice cooker and one of those little hibachi BBQ grills. As a fellow male, you can live on kalbi/bulgogi bbq'd meat and rice.

2) Learning some basic phrases: (written in my best Konglish):
"Uhl mahy ay yo?" - How much is this? (formal)
"Muhl-lah" - I don't know.

3)Learn numbers (and combinations there of)
Bek - hundred
Chon- thousand
il - one
ee- two
sam- three
sah - four
oh - five
yuk - six
chil - seven
pahl - eight
cuhl - nine
ship - ten

Good luck, my friend!

Chris Y.

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:06:58 +0900

I never knew that you lived in Korea! Thanks for the tips, I’m sure I’ll be able to calm down more with time.

Haha, i’m definitely in the south :)

Michael Dooly!

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:39:00 +0900

Even though I said that today was mostly uneventful, I kinda forgot to mentions the kids at the school. For most kids I was either the scariest or coolest thing around, blank stares and random outbursts were the norm for me today.

For some reason the 6th grade class decided come talk to me every chance they got. I think it had something to do with the fact that their class was right beside the staff room that I was staying in, but they would just open the door and say random stuff to me. At one point the entire 6th grade (5 kids, I think) was in the room and they decided that I looked like Michael Dooly I’m not even sure if I spelled that right and I couldn’t find anything online about it either. Maybe somebody knows who he is.

This is the “town”, if you can even call it that, in...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:28:54 +0900

This is the “town”, if you can even call it that, in front of the school. Even though the town is kinda old and rundown looking the scenery is fantastic, there are so many huge mountains and the lake is awesome. In the summer this place should be super fantastic!

This is the main school that I’m teaching at. I’ll...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:23:00 +0900

This is the main school that I’m teaching at. I’ll take some pictures of the inside soon.

Even though it’s not the biggest school, it’s huge when the total students this year is 35-37. There’s one classroom that only has three desks, because the entire grade only consists of three students.

Billy In Korea!

Kickin’ it South Korea!

It's been over 2 months you say...

Can We Skip Tomorrow?

Excuse Me, You Don't Look Like Your From Around Here... Let Me Ask You Directions

Still Here

Gahoe Girl Squad Badges Of Honor

Where toilet paper is the new napkin

How are you helping the students learn English, besides just playing games? Are the classes very different from back in the US?

It Means What!?

What are you doing for food these days?

This is Hapcheon, the city that I’ll be living in for a...

In A Weekend Far, Far Away...

Hey Billy, I let Tumblr do a search using my gmail and you popped up. Do I know you? I'm also an English teacher in Korea.

Last Of Three

Ridiculous Day

So Much For Teaching

Michael Dooly!

This is the “town”, if you can even call it that, in...

This is the main school that I’m teaching at. I’ll...

Hey Billy,
I let Tumblr do a search using my gmail and you popped up. Do I know you?
I'm also an English teacher in Korea.