Hello everyone and good afternoon from Haba!
A couple times someone has asked how I ended up in Korea, so I decided to throw in a special entry that addresses that question. A few years ago, right after I graduated from Calvin, I first looked into teaching abroad. I've always been more curious about/interested in Southeast Asian culture and language than I've been for most other places around the world, so I started to dabble in information concerning Japan and China and Korea. Very quickly I found that Korea was undergoing a big push to bring in more native English speakers, so I worked with a recruiter to find a school. During the fall of 2008, actually on Thanksgiving day, my recruiter gave me an offer, and I had to let her know with a day or two if it would work, but at that time, a few other factors got in the way, and I ended up turning it down. Truthfully I probably shouldn't have started the process then because I heart wasn't set on going yet … I had to spend a little more time around the States before I could leave them.
Then, starting in June of 2009, I served 2 consecutive AmeriCorps terms with the Red Cross in Grand Rapids. These terms were great times for getting to know people in GR outside the Calvin bubble and especially after my first term, the seed to get up and go somewhere was again planted in my mind after about half of our members from the year ended up at least leaving GR if not departing the country entirely. I spent the first 2 years of college rooming with a great guy named Casey Nagle and for most of 2010 he and his wife, Anna Pettinga, taught English at a school in Gwangju (where I am now). When Casey returned in late Fall of 2010, he and I got together for dinner, and during that dinner he told me about his school and how great the experience had been. After that meal, it wasn't until the beginning of the next year that I actually began to talk with Brian about coming here and taking his place.
Back in February we exchanged a few emails, and we quickly found out that he wanted to leave at the beginning of July, and I would not be available to teach until later in July. At that time we left it saying that when it was time Brian would talk with his director about me, but it didn't seem like it would work out. After that, I had all but dismissed this possibility, and it wasn't until May that Brian emailed me again, and it turned out the timing would work out. For the next 2 months, I scrambled to pull together all the things I needed (FBI background check, apostilled documents, college transcript, etc) to send to Don to make sure that this would actually happen. And it wasn't until the beginning of July that I had my visa and everything was in place. And then I bought my plane tickets, and here I am now!
So in this process, normally one would use a recruiter to find a placement with a school, and that's what Casey and Anna had originally done, but I was both blessed and cursed (a bit) with direct communication to my school's director. I found that it was nice to have an insider's scoop into the policies and practices of my schools before I arrived because then, obviously enough, I knew more about what to expect when I started. Granted, there was lots that I didn't know (and that I'm still learning), but I had more of a heads up than do many teachers who go through recruiters. The only frustrations from not having a recruiter came when I need to compile some of the documents, and I didn't really know how to go about finding them and/or what they even were. This was the first time, for example, that I'd ever heard of an apostle. As a final note here, if any of you or anyone that you know is interested in teaching around this city, I do now know a recruiter (the same one Casey and Anna used), and I will gladly make that connection for you.
For this extra message, I have one more thing that was brought to my attention by another friend because of something I wrote last time: I gave that list of some things that I would gladly accept, and in there I included "a power strip." Today, while chatting with Drew, he pointed out that just in case more than one person wanted to send me the same thing, I probably didn't really need 25 power strips … or even 2 for that matter. I realized that he was right. Drew suggested some sort of registry, but I think that's a little much … something as simple as this could work: if you're inclined to send me something that can't be used in multiples, let me know before you buy and/or send it … just so that no one wastes any resources on me.
Ok, maybe I just lied a moment ago; I just remembered something else that came up during my chat with Drew: if you don't have a Facebook account, you'll be able to follow the specific photo link I sent to you, but you won't be able to navigate among the different albums from Facebook itself; you'll have to use each individual link to look at different sets of pictures. I will try to always send out an update when I've added new photos to an album, but you should hold onto the links I send just in case you want to check out the pictures some other time. Also, still for those who don't have Facebook accounts and for anyone else really, I'm working on using Picasa to upload pictures as well, but I haven't really figured that out yet. Once I do, I'll let you know.
Oh gee whiz. Here's my actual last thing (I think): I have also uploaded all these emails to a blog, so feel free to pass this along to anyone else who might be interested in hearing from me during my time here. You can find my blog at: http://bginkorea.blogspot.com/. I will reiterate once: this blog will have the same information that my emails contain, so if you're content reading my messages this way, then you need not necessarily visit the blog, but feel free to do so if you want.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Ben's Korean Adventure, edition 4
Hello and good day!
I have been here for nearly a week at this point. It's now Monday morning, and I'm gearing up for the school day. Lately I've been going to bed "early" (say around 9pm), so that I can be up early (around 4:30-5ish), and it's been great. We'll see how well that persists as I get more involved with other things, but for now, at least, I'm going to try my best to maintain that schedule. Thus if you want to connect with me online (through gmail or the like), if you're online early in the morning or early in the evening, you should be able to catch me. So far video chatting with some people has been great. Anyway … my first weekend in Gwangju! What a riot.
Right around this time we're having a large turnover in teachers at my schools. 4 of the 8 English teachers are leaving, and at least 1 of the Korean teachers is leaving as well. Just last night 2 of the new English teachers arrived, and I could only laugh to myself because Don asked me if I would show them around a bit. I gladly would have, even if the best I can do is walk down streets and say, "This looks like a restaurant" or "This looks like a pharmacy", but as it turned out, I had already fallen asleep by the time they arrived.
So Friday night we went out to celebrate the going away of Brian and Sunny, one of the Korean teachers. At the time, I didn't realize that it was her last day, so it will be a little sad to go in today and not see her around. But such is the fate of rotating staff … especially right after a hire. That evening we went to T.G.I. Friday's to commence the eating and drinking and carousing. I ended up eating too much food, but it was good. On a side note, my appetite has diminished quite a bit since being here. I think it's just from eating a little less across the board, which probably is a good thing considering how much I like to eat in general.
We went there and had drinks and just mingled for a little while. Those who attended were: Brian, Dianne (Korean teacher who shares some classes with me), Darrell and Brooke (Australian couple who've been around for a couple years now), Lisa and Louis (South African couple who are leaving this week), Sunny, and Jackie (another Korean teacher). It was very nice to just sit and chat and wind down after the stressful, busy nature of the week's classes.
As we finished up the dinner, Darrell wanted to go downtown to meet up with another of his friends, and I ended up joining him for the rest of the evening. Now, speaking of a trip full of firsts, we took a taxi to the next stop, and that was my very first time ever riding in a taxi. Since then I've used a few others (even one all by myself; again, I'm becoming such a big boy!), and it's interesting. Because of our location and the cost of things, each ride ends up being around $5 (in Won, of course, since the US currency isn't used here). So we took the taxi and went to a couple bars downtown.
The first bar is called the Speakeasy, and it's a foreigner bar. This will hold true to what I say about the hiking we did on Saturday as well, but there is something interesting about the connection of one foreigner to another here. Because most of us (that's my speculation, but I think it holds true in this area) are here to teach English, that's precisely what we have in common -- we all speak English. Except for those who've spent some time in another country or an area where they understand nothing that's said by anyone else (and all others don't understand what they are saying either), I doubt that you can fully understand why this connection point is so pressing here. I know I didn't really get it until arriving, and I've only been here for about a week. It's so weird to walk down a street and think, "Huh. I can't understand anything -- passing conversations, street signs, music, nothing." And then all of sudden you're in a place where you understand everything again. It is strange. I think that before arriving I held a small bias against those people who spend a lot of time around other foreigners. Is the point of coming to another country the cross cultural engagement aspect and being fully immersed in the culture and people and language? But now that perspective has been completely flipped over; I understand why one would latch onto other foreigners, and I think that's a really good thing.
So, we went to this first bar, and as I'm not much of a bar guy, I bought a beer and just kind of stood around, watched some darts and mingled a bit with Darrell and one of the bar tenders, whom Darrell knew. I really had no desire to meet new people that night because there was already so much going through my mind. After an hour or so, we then went practically next door to another bar, the German Bar. This bar was hilarious and fun and funny all at the same time. The bar was nearly empty by the time we arrived, and we went there simply because Darrell's friend, Sean, had gone there right after leaving the Speakeasy. By the time we arrived, Sean and few others were singing karaoke and drunken lovely time. Haha. It was quite the sight. After the first song or two, most of Sean companions departed, which left me, Darrell, Sean and Yundo (Sean's girlfriend) still at the karaoke area. I did take pictures of this place, and you should make sure to check them out. The whole bar had wood panelling everywhere, and it simply looked completely out of place in this part of the city. There was even, for who knows what reason, a little Christmas display behind the main door. Maybe some forgot to put away all the decorations? Or maybe they just celebrate the season all year long in the German Bar? Who knows.
And karaoke, wow. Karaoke is something else in Gwangju. I will save the bulk of that discussion for another message, but for now know this: this specific karaoke machine would show the most arbitrary (possibly even random) scenes behind the lyrics. I took some pictures of the TV screen just to capture a few of the ridiculous things we saw. Haha. That only made the whole experience all the better. For one song we might be looking up at the Eiffel, and in the next moment, we might be on a beach … just looking at the backs of people. It was weird. And hilarious. And this bar also had a nearly full drum set as well as guitar sitting there, so while Sean and I sang away, Darrell ended up fooling around with the live instruments adding so much more flavor to the songs. It was great. Also, it was during this jam session that I decided Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" is my new favorite karaoke song. I pretty much rocked the socks off that song, and it's totally within my strongest vocal range. It was nearly perfect. Although I will admit, I never realized how many times they repeat "la la lie, la la lie la lie la lie, la la lie, la la lie lie la la lie, la la la la lie, etc. etc." Believe me. It's repeated a lot. And you should probably go listen to the song right now just to verify. After the German Bar, we headed back home, 'cause we needed some rest for our next day.
On Saturday I went with Darrell and Sean and a group of other foreigners on a mountain hike. Now, truth be told, if I had known how long the hike would last I might have reconsidered … or, at the very least, I would have packed a little differently. We hiked up the 3rd tallest mountain in Korea, Mt. Mudeung. The whole hike took about 5 hours, and although we didn't technically reach the summit (because there's a military base up there, and we probably would have been killed up approaching), we reached the 1100 meters mark at the top of the public portion. It was such a gorgeous day for the hike; we arrived and starting walking in the late morning, and we had a nice cloud cover for the bulk of the day, and although that did obscure our view from the top (it looked like we were basically just hanging out up in the clouds when looking down), it did keep the sun and heat away. Here's another topic better saved for another day, but one interesting thing that I saw on Saturday more than before was the general Korean aversion to the sun. There were a bunch of people hiking the mountain (although not as many as in the Fall and Spring, apparently, when the weather's even nicer), and practically everyone looked like a professional hiker -- the gear was astonishing, and the vast majority were covered from head to toe during the hike. Mind you, I would have loved to do this with flip flops, biking shorts and no shirt, but that would be unheard of for the typical Korean. Their's is probably the better way to approach the sun, but I don't think I've been won over by that part of the culture … yet.
The mountain itself was beautiful. Again, you can see some pictures, but they won't do it justice. We walked next to a few streams; there was a blending of deciduous and coniferous trees; in some spots it was pretty open, while in others, there was simply a little tunnel through which we passed, like we were in a jungle or something. There were even some sweet rock formations toward the top. Oh, it was so gorgeous. I hope to go back and hike that mountain a few more times in the coming weeks because it is very close, and it's a pretty simple way to get out, get active and do it with little cost involved. Next time I will prepare much better, though, and bring a lot of water. After hiking we headed home to clean up, and then we went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant and had shabu shabu, which blew my taste buds away. If you've never had that before, I encourage you to go find a Japanese place that serves it and have some. Basically, you given a a pot over a flame in the middle of the table where you cook everything as you eat it. In the pot is seasoned broth, and then you cook greens and mushrooms and meat. The meat (we had beef) is cut very, very thinly, and it cooks very quickly when the broth is at a rapid boil. Eventually, after you've gone through a couple servings of the former, you throw in some noodles to cook, eat those and end the meal with some wicked fried rice. Whew. What a meal. And the whole thing cost about $10. So good. The rest of Saturday was pretty uneventful, and that brings us to …
Sunday and my move into my apartment! I know that some of you have been waiting for this part for a while. I had even received a question more recently asking how long I would be staying in the motel, but I am no longer there. I think that my apartment is a pretty good size, and since this is my first time ever living by myself somewhere, it definitely seems like more than enough space. I don't really have a good place to host other people (the kitchen table is rather small, and I have only one chair for it), but otherwise I've very pleased with everything here. I don't have a key to my apartment; there is a keypad lock outside the door that I use to enter and exit, and each time, like the electronics at the Tomato, it makes a cool little beeping noise when I lock or unlock a door. Once inside, I have my kitchen/largest room. In the kitchen I have all the basic things -- gas stove top, sink, counter, drying rack, fridge, washing machine -- wait, what? Clothes washing machine? Yes. Haha. My washing machine is nestled into my kitchen right between a couple other cabinets, and my clothes drying rack is located in another room. Woo hoo!
To the left of the entryway is my bathroom. Here are a couple things to know that are common for Korean apartments: 1. the whole can be the "bathtub." In my bathroom, nearly everything is tiled, and I have a hose with a sprayer head that attaches to my sink, such that when I switch over the sink from a normal dispensing of water to the shower head, I'm able to use it to shower. And then I just stand in the bathroom to clean myself. I actually really like this. This morning, for example, (for better or for worse) I started cooking my some rice, went and showered, and returned in time see the rice be ready. Now, I know that it's unsafe to cook something and leave the kitchen (who knows what could happen, right?), but to avoid this sticky predicament, I simply left the bathroom door open … so that I could watch the stove and shower simultaneously. Oh, this efficiency, how wonderful! haha. 2. (This applies to the whole apartment) Hot water doesn't automatically come through a faucet. The first night I was here, I tried to shower, and much to my dismay, even though I waited for the water to warm up a generous amount of time, I ended up "showering" in cold water (I use quotations simply because I ended up cleaning only the necessary spots … so it wasn't really a full shower … since I'm sure most of my back never felt the chill touch). It wasn't until just yesterday when I was talking with some of my other teachers that I realized I have to actually turn on the hot water to use it anywhere else. As it turns out, there's a panel on my kitchen wall that allows me to turn on the gas heat -- both for hot water and for my apartment's general heating in the winter. When I discovered this, I thought "Hmph. That's pretty clever." And I do still think that to be the case. It saves one the unnecessary use of gas to heat water when the water probably doesn't need to be heated.
Beyond the bathroom I have my office area, which is consumed almost entirely by a massive desk. This desk is like a CEO quality desk. HUGE. And I'm lovin' it (cue McDonald's jingle). Can you guess what else my office area houses? If so, you are the best guesser in the world, and you should make that your profession because in this room (where I'm currently sitting) I have: a) a sweet leather chair, b) my clothes drying rack, c) a cooling (normal) fan, d) a heating fan, e) a wicked framed deer painting/mural that takes up most of one wall and … f) a church pew. Haha. Oh, it's so great. Apparently Brian found the church pew thrown out somewhere, thought it was hilarious and brought it home. I, too, think it's hilarious, and I'm very glad to have inherited it. Awesome. I'm thinking about starting my own house church … any takers?
And then we come to the bedroom. Oh, yeah. In this room I will probably spend more time than any other single place in all of Korea. Is that weird to think about? Nope. [note: I've gotten into the habit of saying "yep" and "nope" for the last year or so now (thanks old housemates … specifically Sarah ;), and now I find that that's one of the hardest things to break; I need to teach kids "yes" and "no" not the other words. whew. I've noticed some other habits like this that I have to master so that I don't end up instilling these children with some idiosyncratic quirks … but I'll save my own quirks for another conversation] Here's another culture point that I've encountered: Korean beds tend to be very, very firm. I've been thinking that it might give me just about the same "restful" sleep to use my desk as a bed instead of the mattress. This will take some getting used to, although Matt (he and his wife Kristen are two other teachers, and they're the ones with whom I attended Calvin) gave me a little insider's trick. He and Kristen have put some extra blankets under their sheet, so that the bed has a slightly softer feel. This should be happening in the very near future … otherwise my back will continue to ache a bit upon each waking.
So that's my place! It's a little dull and drab right now, but it is mine nonetheless, and I like it. Also, I literally just found out my mailing address, which is:
#403, 1185-4, PungamOdong, Seo-gu, Gwangju, South Korea 502-778. So, if any of you wants to send me things, I will gladly accept any letters, games, beef jerky, combos, sweet tarts, various spices/seasonings, kids books in English, a power strip, you know, little things like that (ha. Those specific food items were given to me by Alexis and Stefan, and they were great; apparently Korean equivalents don't exist and/or aren't very good). I still need to figure out how to mail something from here, but I figure I'll get to that soon enough. I do also have a cell phone now, and my number is 010-8672-4562. If anyone were to call from the States, I believe it would be something like this: 011 (exit number from the States or Canada) - 82 (South Korean country code) - 010-8672-4562. I think that would work. Obviously I haven't tried it, but that's ok. Another note, if any of you were wanting to reach me, I'm in class each day (in your time) from 8:30pm until 6:30am, so that's definitely the time to avoid.
Alright. I think that's about it for now. I did receive a fair number of questions; thanks for these. It reinforces that at least some of you are trudging through the miry muck I send you each time and trying to look for more insights. Most of the questions concerned the school and students and things of that nature, so next time, look forward to: why my kids are even at my school, more deliciously funny kids stories, and Ben teacher the Giant crushing kids' wills to be unruly.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to join me for some of the hike shots, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/
ps- if you want to take a picture tour of my apartment, visit:
I have been here for nearly a week at this point. It's now Monday morning, and I'm gearing up for the school day. Lately I've been going to bed "early" (say around 9pm), so that I can be up early (around 4:30-5ish), and it's been great. We'll see how well that persists as I get more involved with other things, but for now, at least, I'm going to try my best to maintain that schedule. Thus if you want to connect with me online (through gmail or the like), if you're online early in the morning or early in the evening, you should be able to catch me. So far video chatting with some people has been great. Anyway … my first weekend in Gwangju! What a riot.
Right around this time we're having a large turnover in teachers at my schools. 4 of the 8 English teachers are leaving, and at least 1 of the Korean teachers is leaving as well. Just last night 2 of the new English teachers arrived, and I could only laugh to myself because Don asked me if I would show them around a bit. I gladly would have, even if the best I can do is walk down streets and say, "This looks like a restaurant" or "This looks like a pharmacy", but as it turned out, I had already fallen asleep by the time they arrived.
So Friday night we went out to celebrate the going away of Brian and Sunny, one of the Korean teachers. At the time, I didn't realize that it was her last day, so it will be a little sad to go in today and not see her around. But such is the fate of rotating staff … especially right after a hire. That evening we went to T.G.I. Friday's to commence the eating and drinking and carousing. I ended up eating too much food, but it was good. On a side note, my appetite has diminished quite a bit since being here. I think it's just from eating a little less across the board, which probably is a good thing considering how much I like to eat in general.
We went there and had drinks and just mingled for a little while. Those who attended were: Brian, Dianne (Korean teacher who shares some classes with me), Darrell and Brooke (Australian couple who've been around for a couple years now), Lisa and Louis (South African couple who are leaving this week), Sunny, and Jackie (another Korean teacher). It was very nice to just sit and chat and wind down after the stressful, busy nature of the week's classes.
As we finished up the dinner, Darrell wanted to go downtown to meet up with another of his friends, and I ended up joining him for the rest of the evening. Now, speaking of a trip full of firsts, we took a taxi to the next stop, and that was my very first time ever riding in a taxi. Since then I've used a few others (even one all by myself; again, I'm becoming such a big boy!), and it's interesting. Because of our location and the cost of things, each ride ends up being around $5 (in Won, of course, since the US currency isn't used here). So we took the taxi and went to a couple bars downtown.
The first bar is called the Speakeasy, and it's a foreigner bar. This will hold true to what I say about the hiking we did on Saturday as well, but there is something interesting about the connection of one foreigner to another here. Because most of us (that's my speculation, but I think it holds true in this area) are here to teach English, that's precisely what we have in common -- we all speak English. Except for those who've spent some time in another country or an area where they understand nothing that's said by anyone else (and all others don't understand what they are saying either), I doubt that you can fully understand why this connection point is so pressing here. I know I didn't really get it until arriving, and I've only been here for about a week. It's so weird to walk down a street and think, "Huh. I can't understand anything -- passing conversations, street signs, music, nothing." And then all of sudden you're in a place where you understand everything again. It is strange. I think that before arriving I held a small bias against those people who spend a lot of time around other foreigners. Is the point of coming to another country the cross cultural engagement aspect and being fully immersed in the culture and people and language? But now that perspective has been completely flipped over; I understand why one would latch onto other foreigners, and I think that's a really good thing.
So, we went to this first bar, and as I'm not much of a bar guy, I bought a beer and just kind of stood around, watched some darts and mingled a bit with Darrell and one of the bar tenders, whom Darrell knew. I really had no desire to meet new people that night because there was already so much going through my mind. After an hour or so, we then went practically next door to another bar, the German Bar. This bar was hilarious and fun and funny all at the same time. The bar was nearly empty by the time we arrived, and we went there simply because Darrell's friend, Sean, had gone there right after leaving the Speakeasy. By the time we arrived, Sean and few others were singing karaoke and drunken lovely time. Haha. It was quite the sight. After the first song or two, most of Sean companions departed, which left me, Darrell, Sean and Yundo (Sean's girlfriend) still at the karaoke area. I did take pictures of this place, and you should make sure to check them out. The whole bar had wood panelling everywhere, and it simply looked completely out of place in this part of the city. There was even, for who knows what reason, a little Christmas display behind the main door. Maybe some forgot to put away all the decorations? Or maybe they just celebrate the season all year long in the German Bar? Who knows.
And karaoke, wow. Karaoke is something else in Gwangju. I will save the bulk of that discussion for another message, but for now know this: this specific karaoke machine would show the most arbitrary (possibly even random) scenes behind the lyrics. I took some pictures of the TV screen just to capture a few of the ridiculous things we saw. Haha. That only made the whole experience all the better. For one song we might be looking up at the Eiffel, and in the next moment, we might be on a beach … just looking at the backs of people. It was weird. And hilarious. And this bar also had a nearly full drum set as well as guitar sitting there, so while Sean and I sang away, Darrell ended up fooling around with the live instruments adding so much more flavor to the songs. It was great. Also, it was during this jam session that I decided Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" is my new favorite karaoke song. I pretty much rocked the socks off that song, and it's totally within my strongest vocal range. It was nearly perfect. Although I will admit, I never realized how many times they repeat "la la lie, la la lie la lie la lie, la la lie, la la lie lie la la lie, la la la la lie, etc. etc." Believe me. It's repeated a lot. And you should probably go listen to the song right now just to verify. After the German Bar, we headed back home, 'cause we needed some rest for our next day.
On Saturday I went with Darrell and Sean and a group of other foreigners on a mountain hike. Now, truth be told, if I had known how long the hike would last I might have reconsidered … or, at the very least, I would have packed a little differently. We hiked up the 3rd tallest mountain in Korea, Mt. Mudeung. The whole hike took about 5 hours, and although we didn't technically reach the summit (because there's a military base up there, and we probably would have been killed up approaching), we reached the 1100 meters mark at the top of the public portion. It was such a gorgeous day for the hike; we arrived and starting walking in the late morning, and we had a nice cloud cover for the bulk of the day, and although that did obscure our view from the top (it looked like we were basically just hanging out up in the clouds when looking down), it did keep the sun and heat away. Here's another topic better saved for another day, but one interesting thing that I saw on Saturday more than before was the general Korean aversion to the sun. There were a bunch of people hiking the mountain (although not as many as in the Fall and Spring, apparently, when the weather's even nicer), and practically everyone looked like a professional hiker -- the gear was astonishing, and the vast majority were covered from head to toe during the hike. Mind you, I would have loved to do this with flip flops, biking shorts and no shirt, but that would be unheard of for the typical Korean. Their's is probably the better way to approach the sun, but I don't think I've been won over by that part of the culture … yet.
The mountain itself was beautiful. Again, you can see some pictures, but they won't do it justice. We walked next to a few streams; there was a blending of deciduous and coniferous trees; in some spots it was pretty open, while in others, there was simply a little tunnel through which we passed, like we were in a jungle or something. There were even some sweet rock formations toward the top. Oh, it was so gorgeous. I hope to go back and hike that mountain a few more times in the coming weeks because it is very close, and it's a pretty simple way to get out, get active and do it with little cost involved. Next time I will prepare much better, though, and bring a lot of water. After hiking we headed home to clean up, and then we went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant and had shabu shabu, which blew my taste buds away. If you've never had that before, I encourage you to go find a Japanese place that serves it and have some. Basically, you given a a pot over a flame in the middle of the table where you cook everything as you eat it. In the pot is seasoned broth, and then you cook greens and mushrooms and meat. The meat (we had beef) is cut very, very thinly, and it cooks very quickly when the broth is at a rapid boil. Eventually, after you've gone through a couple servings of the former, you throw in some noodles to cook, eat those and end the meal with some wicked fried rice. Whew. What a meal. And the whole thing cost about $10. So good. The rest of Saturday was pretty uneventful, and that brings us to …
Sunday and my move into my apartment! I know that some of you have been waiting for this part for a while. I had even received a question more recently asking how long I would be staying in the motel, but I am no longer there. I think that my apartment is a pretty good size, and since this is my first time ever living by myself somewhere, it definitely seems like more than enough space. I don't really have a good place to host other people (the kitchen table is rather small, and I have only one chair for it), but otherwise I've very pleased with everything here. I don't have a key to my apartment; there is a keypad lock outside the door that I use to enter and exit, and each time, like the electronics at the Tomato, it makes a cool little beeping noise when I lock or unlock a door. Once inside, I have my kitchen/largest room. In the kitchen I have all the basic things -- gas stove top, sink, counter, drying rack, fridge, washing machine -- wait, what? Clothes washing machine? Yes. Haha. My washing machine is nestled into my kitchen right between a couple other cabinets, and my clothes drying rack is located in another room. Woo hoo!
To the left of the entryway is my bathroom. Here are a couple things to know that are common for Korean apartments: 1. the whole can be the "bathtub." In my bathroom, nearly everything is tiled, and I have a hose with a sprayer head that attaches to my sink, such that when I switch over the sink from a normal dispensing of water to the shower head, I'm able to use it to shower. And then I just stand in the bathroom to clean myself. I actually really like this. This morning, for example, (for better or for worse) I started cooking my some rice, went and showered, and returned in time see the rice be ready. Now, I know that it's unsafe to cook something and leave the kitchen (who knows what could happen, right?), but to avoid this sticky predicament, I simply left the bathroom door open … so that I could watch the stove and shower simultaneously. Oh, this efficiency, how wonderful! haha. 2. (This applies to the whole apartment) Hot water doesn't automatically come through a faucet. The first night I was here, I tried to shower, and much to my dismay, even though I waited for the water to warm up a generous amount of time, I ended up "showering" in cold water (I use quotations simply because I ended up cleaning only the necessary spots … so it wasn't really a full shower … since I'm sure most of my back never felt the chill touch). It wasn't until just yesterday when I was talking with some of my other teachers that I realized I have to actually turn on the hot water to use it anywhere else. As it turns out, there's a panel on my kitchen wall that allows me to turn on the gas heat -- both for hot water and for my apartment's general heating in the winter. When I discovered this, I thought "Hmph. That's pretty clever." And I do still think that to be the case. It saves one the unnecessary use of gas to heat water when the water probably doesn't need to be heated.
Beyond the bathroom I have my office area, which is consumed almost entirely by a massive desk. This desk is like a CEO quality desk. HUGE. And I'm lovin' it (cue McDonald's jingle). Can you guess what else my office area houses? If so, you are the best guesser in the world, and you should make that your profession because in this room (where I'm currently sitting) I have: a) a sweet leather chair, b) my clothes drying rack, c) a cooling (normal) fan, d) a heating fan, e) a wicked framed deer painting/mural that takes up most of one wall and … f) a church pew. Haha. Oh, it's so great. Apparently Brian found the church pew thrown out somewhere, thought it was hilarious and brought it home. I, too, think it's hilarious, and I'm very glad to have inherited it. Awesome. I'm thinking about starting my own house church … any takers?
And then we come to the bedroom. Oh, yeah. In this room I will probably spend more time than any other single place in all of Korea. Is that weird to think about? Nope. [note: I've gotten into the habit of saying "yep" and "nope" for the last year or so now (thanks old housemates … specifically Sarah ;), and now I find that that's one of the hardest things to break; I need to teach kids "yes" and "no" not the other words. whew. I've noticed some other habits like this that I have to master so that I don't end up instilling these children with some idiosyncratic quirks … but I'll save my own quirks for another conversation] Here's another culture point that I've encountered: Korean beds tend to be very, very firm. I've been thinking that it might give me just about the same "restful" sleep to use my desk as a bed instead of the mattress. This will take some getting used to, although Matt (he and his wife Kristen are two other teachers, and they're the ones with whom I attended Calvin) gave me a little insider's trick. He and Kristen have put some extra blankets under their sheet, so that the bed has a slightly softer feel. This should be happening in the very near future … otherwise my back will continue to ache a bit upon each waking.
So that's my place! It's a little dull and drab right now, but it is mine nonetheless, and I like it. Also, I literally just found out my mailing address, which is:
#403, 1185-4, PungamOdong, Seo-gu, Gwangju, South Korea 502-778. So, if any of you wants to send me things, I will gladly accept any letters, games, beef jerky, combos, sweet tarts, various spices/seasonings, kids books in English, a power strip, you know, little things like that (ha. Those specific food items were given to me by Alexis and Stefan, and they were great; apparently Korean equivalents don't exist and/or aren't very good). I still need to figure out how to mail something from here, but I figure I'll get to that soon enough. I do also have a cell phone now, and my number is 010-8672-4562. If anyone were to call from the States, I believe it would be something like this: 011 (exit number from the States or Canada) - 82 (South Korean country code) - 010-8672-4562. I think that would work. Obviously I haven't tried it, but that's ok. Another note, if any of you were wanting to reach me, I'm in class each day (in your time) from 8:30pm until 6:30am, so that's definitely the time to avoid.
Alright. I think that's about it for now. I did receive a fair number of questions; thanks for these. It reinforces that at least some of you are trudging through the miry muck I send you each time and trying to look for more insights. Most of the questions concerned the school and students and things of that nature, so next time, look forward to: why my kids are even at my school, more deliciously funny kids stories, and Ben teacher the Giant crushing kids' wills to be unruly.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to join me for some of the hike shots, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/
ps- if you want to take a picture tour of my apartment, visit:
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Ben's Korean Adventure, edition 3
Hello today!
Before I say anything else, I want to give you this update: my luggage has arrived! I haven't yet gotten it because it's waiting in Don's office at the school, but it is here. I will be retrieving it this afternoon, and finally I'll have some new clean clothes. Woo hoo! No more dirty, smelly Ben.
Now last time I didn't explicitly explain something at the very end of my message: teachers at my school are referred to as (name) teacher, thus I'm called Ben teacher by both students and other staff members (usually when being referred to when students are around). Before I came over here, I wondered what I would be called. Usually when I've worked with kids before, they would call me "Mr. Ben" or something like that. That seems to be the American trend, at least in the upper Midwest. I've never really been fond of that title, so when I found out about "Ben teacher," I was overjoyed. I don't think I let on too much, but that's definitely one of my favorite things to hear when talking with kids. And I do think it's funny because many of the kids will call my Brian teacher by accident, so we'll see how long it takes for me to fully cement my place among them.
I've been rather surprised and very pleased by the way students and teachers interact at my schools. Granted, I don't know how this applied to public schools, but in my schools, which are private schools, called Hogwans, it seems that there's almost as much hanging out with the kids as there structured sessions of instruction. In some ways, I've felt a little like both a babysitter and a teacher when interacting with the kids. My kids are very affectionate. They will hug and climb and pull and even a couple have kissed me or another teacher. There was one funny boy in particular who, after kissing Matt teacher, said, "Matt teacher is delicious." And, granted, you can't hear the right tone through these characters on a page, but the way he said it, his voice and the look of his face presented a perfect, hilarious, precious picture. I heartily laughed when I heard the story.
Additionally, the older kids have shown me some extra kindness with a couple gifts. One girl gave me a notebook and pencil, which are pocket-sized and have already been put to good use. I've been carrying them around and jotting down things to remember for later -- either because I need to know the information for something else I must do or so that I can write to you about something interesting I encountered. And another girl gave me an iced coffee. Oh, what great students I have.
More about the schools: both of my schools are exclusively English schools. Now, in the kindergarten we do teach about other subjects, but we go through that material in English, obviously so that students can build up their word banks and better understand larger contexts and concepts. In the older classes, we focus on reading and writing and speaking. In these classes, we don't branch out much beyond what I would typically think of as an English literature text book, so I wouldn't have science or math lessons with these classes, whereas with the younger kids these topics will come up weekly.
Also, in the mornings I spend time with the Kindergarten-aged kids because they don't have school outside of what we're doing. On the other hand, older students have English classes in the afternoon because they have their normal classes for the bulk of the day. This aspect is very different from what I personally experienced in school, but then again, I wasn't trying to learn native fluency in another language during my middle/high school years.
So this past week I did get to spend 2 days shadowing Brian, and then, because Brian covered for another teacher, Friday I mostly taught on my own, which was very interesting. Before I came here, after finding out the age groups I would be teaching, I was most excited for working with the youngest kids, but if my first day's experience holds true for any length of time, I may end up enjoying the older kids more. I did struggle a bit with both groups of kids, and it was different for each time. With the younger kids, I had trouble with transition times, moving from one topic or book to another. I think this stems from simply not knowing the class resources as well as I could (hence the reason that right now there's a stack of school books sitting on a shelf in my room -- waiting to be explored before going back to school tomorrow morning). Additionally, and this simply part of starting something new, I need to learn the flow of the class; how much time should we spend with this book or that, or, more accurately, how much time do we need to spend with this or that? These next few days are going to be interesting, to say the least.
With the older kids, I ran into a different problem; I spent too much time focusing on the little things. In one class, for example, we were making comparisons, and the students didn't use/had some difficulty with articles before any nouns. So then I tried to explain it the whole group, but as I checked individual sheets, I saw the the same problems persisted. Afterward I ended up talking with Don, and he just reminded me that I am one teacher in the each students' academic career, so I don't have to make everything perfect right now. As a perfectionist by nature, that's a difficult perspective to maintain, but it's truly what I need to hold onto. Thus with the older students I ended up going more slowly than I had anticipated, but it was only the first day; lost ground can be recovered at this point.
I realize that I've already sent out one message today, but I wanted to get this one out also … before it becomes too old of news. We'll see if you get it today or tomorrow. For now, though, I'll leave you with funniest, most interesting story from the first day: teaching 6 year olds about sperm and eggs. Haha. Yes, I hope that was the response most of you had when you saw it at the end of my last entry. As it turns out, Korean kids learn about basic reproduction at a very early age, and I think that's kind of cool. There's nothing about sex, but still, this is so much more than many American parents would want their kindergarteners to learn in class. I just took pictures of the workbook, so check out the Facebook album to see all the pages we covered … and even a few that I have yet to teach next week. So basically, now that I've started to teach the kids about the birds and the bees, everything else is just water under the bridge, right? Right.
Alright. Stay tuned, next time you'll find out my new favorite karaoke song, learn how difficult it is to climb the highest mountain in the world [within city limits] and get the scoop on my new digs.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see that pages and other images of the school, visit:
ps- I've also updated some other albums a little bit, so visit:
Before I say anything else, I want to give you this update: my luggage has arrived! I haven't yet gotten it because it's waiting in Don's office at the school, but it is here. I will be retrieving it this afternoon, and finally I'll have some new clean clothes. Woo hoo! No more dirty, smelly Ben.
Now last time I didn't explicitly explain something at the very end of my message: teachers at my school are referred to as (name) teacher, thus I'm called Ben teacher by both students and other staff members (usually when being referred to when students are around). Before I came over here, I wondered what I would be called. Usually when I've worked with kids before, they would call me "Mr. Ben" or something like that. That seems to be the American trend, at least in the upper Midwest. I've never really been fond of that title, so when I found out about "Ben teacher," I was overjoyed. I don't think I let on too much, but that's definitely one of my favorite things to hear when talking with kids. And I do think it's funny because many of the kids will call my Brian teacher by accident, so we'll see how long it takes for me to fully cement my place among them.
I've been rather surprised and very pleased by the way students and teachers interact at my schools. Granted, I don't know how this applied to public schools, but in my schools, which are private schools, called Hogwans, it seems that there's almost as much hanging out with the kids as there structured sessions of instruction. In some ways, I've felt a little like both a babysitter and a teacher when interacting with the kids. My kids are very affectionate. They will hug and climb and pull and even a couple have kissed me or another teacher. There was one funny boy in particular who, after kissing Matt teacher, said, "Matt teacher is delicious." And, granted, you can't hear the right tone through these characters on a page, but the way he said it, his voice and the look of his face presented a perfect, hilarious, precious picture. I heartily laughed when I heard the story.
Additionally, the older kids have shown me some extra kindness with a couple gifts. One girl gave me a notebook and pencil, which are pocket-sized and have already been put to good use. I've been carrying them around and jotting down things to remember for later -- either because I need to know the information for something else I must do or so that I can write to you about something interesting I encountered. And another girl gave me an iced coffee. Oh, what great students I have.
More about the schools: both of my schools are exclusively English schools. Now, in the kindergarten we do teach about other subjects, but we go through that material in English, obviously so that students can build up their word banks and better understand larger contexts and concepts. In the older classes, we focus on reading and writing and speaking. In these classes, we don't branch out much beyond what I would typically think of as an English literature text book, so I wouldn't have science or math lessons with these classes, whereas with the younger kids these topics will come up weekly.
Also, in the mornings I spend time with the Kindergarten-aged kids because they don't have school outside of what we're doing. On the other hand, older students have English classes in the afternoon because they have their normal classes for the bulk of the day. This aspect is very different from what I personally experienced in school, but then again, I wasn't trying to learn native fluency in another language during my middle/high school years.
So this past week I did get to spend 2 days shadowing Brian, and then, because Brian covered for another teacher, Friday I mostly taught on my own, which was very interesting. Before I came here, after finding out the age groups I would be teaching, I was most excited for working with the youngest kids, but if my first day's experience holds true for any length of time, I may end up enjoying the older kids more. I did struggle a bit with both groups of kids, and it was different for each time. With the younger kids, I had trouble with transition times, moving from one topic or book to another. I think this stems from simply not knowing the class resources as well as I could (hence the reason that right now there's a stack of school books sitting on a shelf in my room -- waiting to be explored before going back to school tomorrow morning). Additionally, and this simply part of starting something new, I need to learn the flow of the class; how much time should we spend with this book or that, or, more accurately, how much time do we need to spend with this or that? These next few days are going to be interesting, to say the least.
With the older kids, I ran into a different problem; I spent too much time focusing on the little things. In one class, for example, we were making comparisons, and the students didn't use/had some difficulty with articles before any nouns. So then I tried to explain it the whole group, but as I checked individual sheets, I saw the the same problems persisted. Afterward I ended up talking with Don, and he just reminded me that I am one teacher in the each students' academic career, so I don't have to make everything perfect right now. As a perfectionist by nature, that's a difficult perspective to maintain, but it's truly what I need to hold onto. Thus with the older students I ended up going more slowly than I had anticipated, but it was only the first day; lost ground can be recovered at this point.
I realize that I've already sent out one message today, but I wanted to get this one out also … before it becomes too old of news. We'll see if you get it today or tomorrow. For now, though, I'll leave you with funniest, most interesting story from the first day: teaching 6 year olds about sperm and eggs. Haha. Yes, I hope that was the response most of you had when you saw it at the end of my last entry. As it turns out, Korean kids learn about basic reproduction at a very early age, and I think that's kind of cool. There's nothing about sex, but still, this is so much more than many American parents would want their kindergarteners to learn in class. I just took pictures of the workbook, so check out the Facebook album to see all the pages we covered … and even a few that I have yet to teach next week. So basically, now that I've started to teach the kids about the birds and the bees, everything else is just water under the bridge, right? Right.
Alright. Stay tuned, next time you'll find out my new favorite karaoke song, learn how difficult it is to climb the highest mountain in the world [within city limits] and get the scoop on my new digs.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see that pages and other images of the school, visit:
ps- I've also updated some other albums a little bit, so visit:
Ben's Korean Adventure, edition 2
Hello again dear friends.
Now, don't think I'm making a habit of this double-posting in one week because I probably can't really keep up all this exceptionally clever writing all the time, but then again, I'm a pretty exceptionally clever guy, so maybe I can. We'll just see how that all shakes out ;).
Today I want to tell you more about my schools and what it's like to step into a teaching role like this. After talking with Brian since being here, I found out that when he started his predecessor had already left, so he basically talked with Don the director [note: from this point henceforth, I will only give the appositives about people when I first introduce them … so if you don't remember someone, you'll just have to look back at older posts to find out more] for about 10 minutes before his first class, and then he just jumped in and began teaching. I'm writing this part of my message early Friday morning, before I teach by myself, and although I'm rather nervous about today, I've very glad that Brian's been around and able to walk me through many things … even if I still would prefer another week's worth of in-the-class training.
So since I did arrive late Tuesday night, my first day in school came Wednesday morning. Classes begin at Haba, the Kindergarten, at 9:30am, so Don picked me up at 9:10 to make the hike from the Tomato to the school. It seemed like a much longer trip than I now know it to actually be (since yesterday I got to walk to and from school all by myself -- I am such a big boy now!), but seeing all the new, different sights definitely affected my judgement there. So we arrived at school in time to see students showing up on their buses.
Here's an interesting cultural aspect that I hadn't really thought of before, and I can't truly say how far this extends (ie- from one coast of Korea to the other … or just from one edge of this city to the other), but it's what I've encountered here so far: footwear and its place in the house is different. I first bumped heads with this notion on my flight to Seoul. Shortly after departure, one flight attendant came around and handed out simple, disposable slippers (I wish I would have kept mine … but I felt weird about it, since everyone else just left them on the floor when we left). So then we all took off our shoes, and we wore the slippers for the rest of the flight. Granted, I still don't really know if this happens on all International flights, but my experiences since then lead me to believe that this may be isolated to a certain area.
Then, when I came to my motel room, I ran into another similar aspect -- after opening my main room door (the one in the hallway), I had to open another door inside. I first just stepped into the main part of my room without thinking about it, but Don quickly stopped me and told me to leave my shoes here … in that little anteroom, if you will, between the doors. So now, each night, my shoes just chill between the locked doors and wait for me to leave the next morning.
[note: it's now Saturday, and I'm writing again]
And beyond those two, I found that at the schools, no one wears street shoes around the building. As students file into the entryway, they go to short cabinets along one wall, take out different shoes, put away their street shoes and head to class. Likewise, teachers, upon arrival at school, will go to one cabinet and swap out their shoes for slippers (and these slippers look a lot like Adidas sandals … although they're a bit different). Since I didn't have any slippers with me, I ended up using shoe covers (like hair nets … only for the bottom of my shoes) for this whole week. As we left Haba on Friday, Brian gave me his slippers, which was like some magical, special passdown moment when I completely took the reigns from him, so no more baggies for me.
Haba has quite a few different classes inside, and from what I know, all classes have specific names. I teach in Edison, Rainbow, Sun, Angel and with the Speaking Class that's a little bit different from the rest. In general, classes are broken up into three classes: intensive, normal and basic. As one could infer, the intensive classes receive the most language instruction, thus teachers spend more time with those classes. I spend 160 minutes each day with Edison, while with a normal class, like Rainbow or Sun, I only spend 30-40 minutes a day. Most of my students are 5 or 6 years old, although Angel class has 7 3 year old children in it. I haven't yet taught for them by myself, but it's rather mind blowing to see kids that little learning something. Additionally, the way that Koreans count one's age is different than you will expect. I haven't yet figured out exactly how it works, so the description will come later, but for now know this: the Korean age could be up to nearly 2 years older than an American age. Part of this is that every child pops out as a 1 year old, and the other part has something to do with when kids actually become a year older. Thus, the kids I'm teaching are pretty young.
Each of these classes actually has at least 3 teachers. First, each classes has a homeroom teacher. These teachers really don't speak much (if any) English, and they stay with classes all day long. Edison's homeroom teacher is a woman named Ji Hye [pronounced g hey], and it's really interesting to see how she interacts with the kids and all the things that she does during the day. In some ways she's the mother of the class. She will discipline if necessary, use Korean to help explain or provide directions, serve the kids' lunch to them, sit and comb the girls' hair after lunch, put band aids on injuries, help me with lessons, and do all sorts of other things with and for the class. Next, each class also has a Korean teacher, or Korean coteacher, as I would call them. These teachers are native Koreans who speak good English, and they spend time with the students covering grammar and mechanics and the like. They also serve as liaisons, when necessary, between the homeroom teachers and the last type of teacher, the English teacher, translating to make sure that we're both on the same page if something comes up. So, finally, we have the English teachers (like me!). These are native English speakers who spend time with the students, teaching about some topics as they arise but ultimately focusing on pronunciation and generally good speaking habits.
So as an English teacher, I spend just over half of my day at Haba with the younger kids. My day is broken up into different segments, and I spend most of those with Edison, but I also give 2 or 3 segments to other classes (depending on the day of the week). This part of the day lasts from 9:30am to 3:40pm, and right around 12:30 each day is when we have lunch. The school provides lunch each day, and it seems that most of the teachers are pretty unimpressed with what they receive. So far, I've only enjoyed it. Since I generally am not too picky about food, I have a feeling that this should be ok with me for a while yet, so I will be consistently having Korean food throughout the year. I'll write more about food in the near future because that has been a great topic thus far.
Starting at 3:50pm most days, I walk over to the other school, Oedae [way day], the afternoon school, and I teach 2 or 3 classes. These classes, like the ones at Haba, are driven by course books, and so my responsibilities remain nearly the same -- I'm supposed to given some instructing direction, but I'm primarily there for the speaking aspect. In these classes, because the students are older and their English is better, I have no other teacher -- it's simply me and 8 students (whereas in Haba it would be me, homeroom teacher and 11 or 12 students). The class size in both schools has been so great. It's just big enough to provide lots of variety, but it's not too big that students get lost. Granted, I still don't remember everyone exactly, but I'm getting there.
So, teaser resolution time: because I didn't have the shoes, as I explained earlier, I did have to wear that plastic shoe bags (or whatever they're called), so all day I walked around with the slight crinkle in my step. And some of the kids found that rather amusing, so a couple of them would occasionally reach over and grab them or pull on the elastic around the top of it. Funny kids. I obviously forgot my lunches each day because we have lunch together. As I said, I've enjoyed the food; it hasn't been too hard on my stomach yet, and let's hope that it keeps going that way. And finally, I am now a Giant. Essentially I find this rather funny because Brain became short only after I entered the room. Haha. In Edison class, the kids noticed my height right away, and Brian even used me to help describe "tallest" and "shortest" one day when I stood side-by-side-by-side with him and one student, Jun Pyo [june p-yo]. And in the afternoon classes, it's been even a funnier aspect of the first few days. There's one of the afternoon classes with which I meet every day, and because these kids are 11 or 12 years old (I think), they are funny and lively, and I think it'll be a great year (keeping them reeled in and attentive will be the challenge here). Even on the first day, they mercilessly prodded Brain for being so short, and by the second they called me a tree and Brian a bug. That was amended after the first time it was used, but you get the idea. They caught onto the heigh difference and made the most of it, even if I'm not really that much taller than Brian. And most recently, on Friday, either that class or another, decided to call me Giant sometimes, which I think it funny and fitting because I could crush them at any given moment with my huge feet or superior intellect. Haha. Don't worry; no crushing will take place here.
Now, I want to make two requests of you all (and some have already been doing this, so I want to make them "official requests"): first, give me some updates from your lives. If I didn't care about you/didn't want to hear about what's happening in your life, I wouldn't have added you to this group of recipients, so feel free to write back when you can. Second, even if you don't want to write back much about your life, send me any questions that you have -- either about what I've written or about something else, and I'll address it in another post. Chances are, if you're wondering about it, someone else will be curious as well. For example, one person wrote back and asked how I, speaking no Korean at all, could possibly teach in a Korean school. The answer, as described above, simply stems from having the three teachers and the people to translate. So, send me your questions and your life stories, and I will love the both of them. Oh, and also tell me when you plan to come visit because it's pretty figgin' awesome over here ;).
This is probably enough for now. Next time look forward to … Matt teacher tasting delicious, Ben teacher receiving gifts for his hard work and Ben teacher drawing sperm on the white board. Whew. What a riot!
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see some shots from the classroom, visit:
Now, don't think I'm making a habit of this double-posting in one week because I probably can't really keep up all this exceptionally clever writing all the time, but then again, I'm a pretty exceptionally clever guy, so maybe I can. We'll just see how that all shakes out ;).
Today I want to tell you more about my schools and what it's like to step into a teaching role like this. After talking with Brian since being here, I found out that when he started his predecessor had already left, so he basically talked with Don the director [note: from this point henceforth, I will only give the appositives about people when I first introduce them … so if you don't remember someone, you'll just have to look back at older posts to find out more] for about 10 minutes before his first class, and then he just jumped in and began teaching. I'm writing this part of my message early Friday morning, before I teach by myself, and although I'm rather nervous about today, I've very glad that Brian's been around and able to walk me through many things … even if I still would prefer another week's worth of in-the-class training.
So since I did arrive late Tuesday night, my first day in school came Wednesday morning. Classes begin at Haba, the Kindergarten, at 9:30am, so Don picked me up at 9:10 to make the hike from the Tomato to the school. It seemed like a much longer trip than I now know it to actually be (since yesterday I got to walk to and from school all by myself -- I am such a big boy now!), but seeing all the new, different sights definitely affected my judgement there. So we arrived at school in time to see students showing up on their buses.
Here's an interesting cultural aspect that I hadn't really thought of before, and I can't truly say how far this extends (ie- from one coast of Korea to the other … or just from one edge of this city to the other), but it's what I've encountered here so far: footwear and its place in the house is different. I first bumped heads with this notion on my flight to Seoul. Shortly after departure, one flight attendant came around and handed out simple, disposable slippers (I wish I would have kept mine … but I felt weird about it, since everyone else just left them on the floor when we left). So then we all took off our shoes, and we wore the slippers for the rest of the flight. Granted, I still don't really know if this happens on all International flights, but my experiences since then lead me to believe that this may be isolated to a certain area.
Then, when I came to my motel room, I ran into another similar aspect -- after opening my main room door (the one in the hallway), I had to open another door inside. I first just stepped into the main part of my room without thinking about it, but Don quickly stopped me and told me to leave my shoes here … in that little anteroom, if you will, between the doors. So now, each night, my shoes just chill between the locked doors and wait for me to leave the next morning.
[note: it's now Saturday, and I'm writing again]
And beyond those two, I found that at the schools, no one wears street shoes around the building. As students file into the entryway, they go to short cabinets along one wall, take out different shoes, put away their street shoes and head to class. Likewise, teachers, upon arrival at school, will go to one cabinet and swap out their shoes for slippers (and these slippers look a lot like Adidas sandals … although they're a bit different). Since I didn't have any slippers with me, I ended up using shoe covers (like hair nets … only for the bottom of my shoes) for this whole week. As we left Haba on Friday, Brian gave me his slippers, which was like some magical, special passdown moment when I completely took the reigns from him, so no more baggies for me.
Haba has quite a few different classes inside, and from what I know, all classes have specific names. I teach in Edison, Rainbow, Sun, Angel and with the Speaking Class that's a little bit different from the rest. In general, classes are broken up into three classes: intensive, normal and basic. As one could infer, the intensive classes receive the most language instruction, thus teachers spend more time with those classes. I spend 160 minutes each day with Edison, while with a normal class, like Rainbow or Sun, I only spend 30-40 minutes a day. Most of my students are 5 or 6 years old, although Angel class has 7 3 year old children in it. I haven't yet taught for them by myself, but it's rather mind blowing to see kids that little learning something. Additionally, the way that Koreans count one's age is different than you will expect. I haven't yet figured out exactly how it works, so the description will come later, but for now know this: the Korean age could be up to nearly 2 years older than an American age. Part of this is that every child pops out as a 1 year old, and the other part has something to do with when kids actually become a year older. Thus, the kids I'm teaching are pretty young.
Each of these classes actually has at least 3 teachers. First, each classes has a homeroom teacher. These teachers really don't speak much (if any) English, and they stay with classes all day long. Edison's homeroom teacher is a woman named Ji Hye [pronounced g hey], and it's really interesting to see how she interacts with the kids and all the things that she does during the day. In some ways she's the mother of the class. She will discipline if necessary, use Korean to help explain or provide directions, serve the kids' lunch to them, sit and comb the girls' hair after lunch, put band aids on injuries, help me with lessons, and do all sorts of other things with and for the class. Next, each class also has a Korean teacher, or Korean coteacher, as I would call them. These teachers are native Koreans who speak good English, and they spend time with the students covering grammar and mechanics and the like. They also serve as liaisons, when necessary, between the homeroom teachers and the last type of teacher, the English teacher, translating to make sure that we're both on the same page if something comes up. So, finally, we have the English teachers (like me!). These are native English speakers who spend time with the students, teaching about some topics as they arise but ultimately focusing on pronunciation and generally good speaking habits.
So as an English teacher, I spend just over half of my day at Haba with the younger kids. My day is broken up into different segments, and I spend most of those with Edison, but I also give 2 or 3 segments to other classes (depending on the day of the week). This part of the day lasts from 9:30am to 3:40pm, and right around 12:30 each day is when we have lunch. The school provides lunch each day, and it seems that most of the teachers are pretty unimpressed with what they receive. So far, I've only enjoyed it. Since I generally am not too picky about food, I have a feeling that this should be ok with me for a while yet, so I will be consistently having Korean food throughout the year. I'll write more about food in the near future because that has been a great topic thus far.
Starting at 3:50pm most days, I walk over to the other school, Oedae [way day], the afternoon school, and I teach 2 or 3 classes. These classes, like the ones at Haba, are driven by course books, and so my responsibilities remain nearly the same -- I'm supposed to given some instructing direction, but I'm primarily there for the speaking aspect. In these classes, because the students are older and their English is better, I have no other teacher -- it's simply me and 8 students (whereas in Haba it would be me, homeroom teacher and 11 or 12 students). The class size in both schools has been so great. It's just big enough to provide lots of variety, but it's not too big that students get lost. Granted, I still don't remember everyone exactly, but I'm getting there.
So, teaser resolution time: because I didn't have the shoes, as I explained earlier, I did have to wear that plastic shoe bags (or whatever they're called), so all day I walked around with the slight crinkle in my step. And some of the kids found that rather amusing, so a couple of them would occasionally reach over and grab them or pull on the elastic around the top of it. Funny kids. I obviously forgot my lunches each day because we have lunch together. As I said, I've enjoyed the food; it hasn't been too hard on my stomach yet, and let's hope that it keeps going that way. And finally, I am now a Giant. Essentially I find this rather funny because Brain became short only after I entered the room. Haha. In Edison class, the kids noticed my height right away, and Brian even used me to help describe "tallest" and "shortest" one day when I stood side-by-side-by-side with him and one student, Jun Pyo [june p-yo]. And in the afternoon classes, it's been even a funnier aspect of the first few days. There's one of the afternoon classes with which I meet every day, and because these kids are 11 or 12 years old (I think), they are funny and lively, and I think it'll be a great year (keeping them reeled in and attentive will be the challenge here). Even on the first day, they mercilessly prodded Brain for being so short, and by the second they called me a tree and Brian a bug. That was amended after the first time it was used, but you get the idea. They caught onto the heigh difference and made the most of it, even if I'm not really that much taller than Brian. And most recently, on Friday, either that class or another, decided to call me Giant sometimes, which I think it funny and fitting because I could crush them at any given moment with my huge feet or superior intellect. Haha. Don't worry; no crushing will take place here.
Now, I want to make two requests of you all (and some have already been doing this, so I want to make them "official requests"): first, give me some updates from your lives. If I didn't care about you/didn't want to hear about what's happening in your life, I wouldn't have added you to this group of recipients, so feel free to write back when you can. Second, even if you don't want to write back much about your life, send me any questions that you have -- either about what I've written or about something else, and I'll address it in another post. Chances are, if you're wondering about it, someone else will be curious as well. For example, one person wrote back and asked how I, speaking no Korean at all, could possibly teach in a Korean school. The answer, as described above, simply stems from having the three teachers and the people to translate. So, send me your questions and your life stories, and I will love the both of them. Oh, and also tell me when you plan to come visit because it's pretty figgin' awesome over here ;).
This is probably enough for now. Next time look forward to … Matt teacher tasting delicious, Ben teacher receiving gifts for his hard work and Ben teacher drawing sperm on the white board. Whew. What a riot!
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see some shots from the classroom, visit:
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Ben's Korean Adventure, edition 1
Hello and good morning.
I'm in Korea! And it has been quite the trip, let me tell you.
Just to recap for anyone who doesn't know (which is most of you), this journey has been a little bumpy so far. I did get to hang out with a bunch of friends and some of my family the day before I left GR. I have some pretty frigid' sweet friends, you know? And if you didn't know that, you should let me know, start hanging out with them and then you'll know it for yourself.
So I boarded my United flight at 6am on Sunday in GR. Whew. All seemed well so far. My next flight wasn't supposed to leave until noon from Chicago, making the direct flight from O'Hare to Incheon, Seoul. I arrived without complication and went looking for my next flight.
Upon arriving I found one screen with lots of flights on it. LIttle did I know that these were only the United flights from this gate, and that screen was not as comprehensive (of the whole airport) as I initially thought. Note: maybe I'm entirely alone in this, but never having used a large airport before, I had no idea the scope of O'Hare. Maybe most other people do some research in their spare time, or maybe they simply pop out of the womb already fully understanding such things, but if that were the case, apparently the knowledge fairy just completely overlooked me :(.
So I arrived in O'Hare, thought I had found the fight terminal for my flight to Seoul, and was 12 minutes away from boarding this flight when I discovered, much to my chagrin and surprise, that I was definitely not only at the wrong terminal, but also at the entirely wrong gate. Haha. Granted, that's not exactly how I responded at the time, but you get the drift. And then I, like so many actors in too many films I've seen, began to hustle (nearly sprinting) in the right direction.
Now as you can guess, I didn't make the flight, thus rather than have my last day in America in Grand Rapids, I decided that spending it in Chicago would be an adequate substitute. Thankfully, again, my sweet friends stepped up, and I ended up spending some time with Joshua and Heather and spent the night in Josh's new apartment (which is pretty sweet, despite the fact that being in a hot, muggy Chicago and on upper floor, Josh and I would just sweat while sitting still, as if we had just played the final game in a World Cup match and actually won -- ooooo … sorry US Women … too soon?). Spending the evening with Josh was definitely a highlight in and of itself, but we did also have some awesome Greek food for dinner, and I'm pretty sure that there was a Dutch guy sitting at a table behind me … just from the way he haggled with the manager over a red sauce that didn't really stand up to his expectations. What a funny interaction that was to watch.
So that evening I had to rebook flights to still arrive in Gwangju at a reasonable time, which meant that because the next best flight from Chicago wouldn't depart for a few days, I expanded this whole adventure to include a little more of my native land, thus at 7am the next morning, I was headed to Los Angeles. Prior to that flight, I'd never been farther West than North Dakota (and really, that's quite North as well … so I don't even know how much it counts in the "I've been out West" category). The whole flight was gorgeous. I didn't even look outside too much, but from the 4-hour flight and the times I did stare longingly outside, I gained a new appreciation for the expansiveness of our country and the simple beauty of plans and deserts and mountains and waterways.
After I arrived in LAX, I made sure to know exactly where I needed to go … and I got there on time. Whew. I was almost on my way to Korea for real now. I jumped on the large plane at about 2pm Monday, and skipping a few details in between, I hopped off it at about 6:30pm Tuesday … taking my first few strides on Korean soil. The flight itself was great, and maybe I should be looking for a vocation in which I need to do more international travel because I could really get used to that. Great food; superb views of the land below; newer media at your fingertips; and interesting people to talk with -- what more could you want? Maybe a better place to sleep.
I was seated next to a guy named Shim, who had been in the US for a business trip. He was a really pleasant guy, and maybe I can call him my first Korean friend since being outside the country? He gave me his business card upon parting, and he's actually headed to Gwangju in a couple weeks for holiday, so I'm hoping to meet up with him again. We mingled throughout the flight, and in our last couple hours, I actually taught him some some card games, Briscola and Euchre. We played with slightly modified rules in Euchre, but in both games, Shim came out on top much more often than I did. I'm pretty sure he's a card shark ;). (side note: I'm laying on the my bed at the Tomato Motel right now with the TV on, and it's some show that's showing interesting things with animals, and I just saw a woman give CPR to a cat … and I basically threw up a little bit in my mouth. Ugh. Hearing about that skill at the Red Cross was more than enough already, let alone seeing it in practice. Weird.) Beyond the chatting and gaming, I did get caught up on some newer flicks, so for anyone still wanting to watch Clash of the Titans, Rango, Sucker Punch, or that other one I watched that wasn't even good enough for its name to stick in my memory, you can probably just skip them, and you won't really be missing much.
AND THEN I LANDED IN SEOUL!
Korea is beautiful. Wow. Flying in and seeing the country from the air was a great introduction to the country. On this part of the flight I felt pretty similarly to when I was flying over the States, but it was different, of course, because there is so much coastline; the water is gorgeous. I'm looking forward to exploring more and more … but maybe not until I get a little more grounded here.
In the airport this was my first time being in a situation where the majority of people spoke a different language than I did. I had been thinking about that a lot over the past couple weeks, and it was cool and exciting and daunting and a little overwhelming and little underwhelming all at the same time. Standing in line to go through security (and get my sweet stamp ;), it just clicked that I couldn't understand anything that the many people around me were saying. My feelings were so mixed at that time because of the blending of isolation and connectedness that happens simultaneously in that situation. I could, at any given moment, reach out and touch another person, yet at the same time, even with that tangible point of connection, I would still be completely cut off from open, spoken communication with that person. It's a weird situation, I think, because talking with people is something that I do so often. And now I have to learn a new way to talk with these people if I'm to step back into that habit.
At the airport everything went mostly smoothly … except that my original checked luggage is still lost somewhere between GR and Seoul :(. Ok. For any of you planning to travel internationally in the near future (or distant future), please make your flights. Ha. That has been such a pain, and it continues to plague me. So right now, I have basically 2 sets of clothing and a random mix of other things. Ha. What a joy. Hopefully sometime today I'll hear more about the luggage and maybe, just maybe, it'll come back to me. That'd be a really cool, great thing. When it came time to bus to Gwangju, I ended up just talking with a man at an information kiosk, and he readily took me to the booth and made sure that I bought the correct ticket. After that I went to another kiosk, and a swell gal there let me use her cell to call Don, and at 7:50pm, I was on my way to Gwangju. Woo hoo!
Apparently the buses here are pretty top notch. This opinion came from a couple other teachers at the school, and my experience only reinforced this idea. I hopped on the bus at Incheon, and we only stopped once at a rest stop before arriving in Gwangju just over 3.5 hours later. Again, Korea is beautiful. Seeing the scenery as we drove past was very neat. Granted, I will admit that ended up pseudo-sleeping through about half of the trip, but from what I did see, it was very interesting. I definitely have more exploring to do in this area … just to see those things that I've missed.
Shortly after arriving in Gwangju, Don showed up to retrieve me from the airport. Meeting him for the first time was great. It completely reinforced everything I'd heard about his so far; he seems very pleasant and personable, and I think it's going to be a great working environment for the next stint. He drove me around Gwangju for a little while, and then we went to our neighborhood (where I'll be living and working), Pungam-Dong. I'm going to save my description of this neighborhood for another day … one during which I can walk around and get more pictures of the place … just so that you all can see what I see. Until then, though, know that I like it a lot. The longer I'm here, and it's only been about 30 hours so far, the more I want to learn Korean so that I can more effectively connect with the city and people around here.
That first night (and until Sunday afternoon when I move into Brian's old apartment), I stayed/will be staying in the Tomato Motel. Ha. What a funny place. I've heard some stories about this place, which, again, I'll save for another day, but it's a sweet little place, and the best part, without any doubt in my mind, is the shower. Whew. I took a picture of it … and it's pretty fancy-schmancy, as some would say. Think about this: standing under a shower head, while having other spray massage your body and still having the option to employ a separate handheld shower head. Awesome. I've showered there twice by now, and it's pretty much the best thing ever. Those of you thinking of remodeling in the near future, you should definitely look into this fantastic device. I promise you won't look back. Oh, and there's some sort of steam room option as well, but since it's been so hot lately, I've opted for cool showers instead. The motel itself is within a quarter mile of the schools and my new apartment, so this morning I get to walk to school all on my own … let's hope that I get there ;). Ha. It's just down the street and around a few corners, so I'll be fine; no worries.
Alright. Since this email is already so friggin' long, I'm gonna end it here. I have, since arriving, experienced my first day at school, so let that be a teaser … the next edition will include some about my first day at school: not having as cool of shoes as the rest of the kids, forgetting my lunch and being called a giant time and again. Whew. What a first day it was!
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see how awesome my friends are, visit:
I'm in Korea! And it has been quite the trip, let me tell you.
Just to recap for anyone who doesn't know (which is most of you), this journey has been a little bumpy so far. I did get to hang out with a bunch of friends and some of my family the day before I left GR. I have some pretty frigid' sweet friends, you know? And if you didn't know that, you should let me know, start hanging out with them and then you'll know it for yourself.
So I boarded my United flight at 6am on Sunday in GR. Whew. All seemed well so far. My next flight wasn't supposed to leave until noon from Chicago, making the direct flight from O'Hare to Incheon, Seoul. I arrived without complication and went looking for my next flight.
Upon arriving I found one screen with lots of flights on it. LIttle did I know that these were only the United flights from this gate, and that screen was not as comprehensive (of the whole airport) as I initially thought. Note: maybe I'm entirely alone in this, but never having used a large airport before, I had no idea the scope of O'Hare. Maybe most other people do some research in their spare time, or maybe they simply pop out of the womb already fully understanding such things, but if that were the case, apparently the knowledge fairy just completely overlooked me :(.
So I arrived in O'Hare, thought I had found the fight terminal for my flight to Seoul, and was 12 minutes away from boarding this flight when I discovered, much to my chagrin and surprise, that I was definitely not only at the wrong terminal, but also at the entirely wrong gate. Haha. Granted, that's not exactly how I responded at the time, but you get the drift. And then I, like so many actors in too many films I've seen, began to hustle (nearly sprinting) in the right direction.
Now as you can guess, I didn't make the flight, thus rather than have my last day in America in Grand Rapids, I decided that spending it in Chicago would be an adequate substitute. Thankfully, again, my sweet friends stepped up, and I ended up spending some time with Joshua and Heather and spent the night in Josh's new apartment (which is pretty sweet, despite the fact that being in a hot, muggy Chicago and on upper floor, Josh and I would just sweat while sitting still, as if we had just played the final game in a World Cup match and actually won -- ooooo … sorry US Women … too soon?). Spending the evening with Josh was definitely a highlight in and of itself, but we did also have some awesome Greek food for dinner, and I'm pretty sure that there was a Dutch guy sitting at a table behind me … just from the way he haggled with the manager over a red sauce that didn't really stand up to his expectations. What a funny interaction that was to watch.
So that evening I had to rebook flights to still arrive in Gwangju at a reasonable time, which meant that because the next best flight from Chicago wouldn't depart for a few days, I expanded this whole adventure to include a little more of my native land, thus at 7am the next morning, I was headed to Los Angeles. Prior to that flight, I'd never been farther West than North Dakota (and really, that's quite North as well … so I don't even know how much it counts in the "I've been out West" category). The whole flight was gorgeous. I didn't even look outside too much, but from the 4-hour flight and the times I did stare longingly outside, I gained a new appreciation for the expansiveness of our country and the simple beauty of plans and deserts and mountains and waterways.
After I arrived in LAX, I made sure to know exactly where I needed to go … and I got there on time. Whew. I was almost on my way to Korea for real now. I jumped on the large plane at about 2pm Monday, and skipping a few details in between, I hopped off it at about 6:30pm Tuesday … taking my first few strides on Korean soil. The flight itself was great, and maybe I should be looking for a vocation in which I need to do more international travel because I could really get used to that. Great food; superb views of the land below; newer media at your fingertips; and interesting people to talk with -- what more could you want? Maybe a better place to sleep.
I was seated next to a guy named Shim, who had been in the US for a business trip. He was a really pleasant guy, and maybe I can call him my first Korean friend since being outside the country? He gave me his business card upon parting, and he's actually headed to Gwangju in a couple weeks for holiday, so I'm hoping to meet up with him again. We mingled throughout the flight, and in our last couple hours, I actually taught him some some card games, Briscola and Euchre. We played with slightly modified rules in Euchre, but in both games, Shim came out on top much more often than I did. I'm pretty sure he's a card shark ;). (side note: I'm laying on the my bed at the Tomato Motel right now with the TV on, and it's some show that's showing interesting things with animals, and I just saw a woman give CPR to a cat … and I basically threw up a little bit in my mouth. Ugh. Hearing about that skill at the Red Cross was more than enough already, let alone seeing it in practice. Weird.) Beyond the chatting and gaming, I did get caught up on some newer flicks, so for anyone still wanting to watch Clash of the Titans, Rango, Sucker Punch, or that other one I watched that wasn't even good enough for its name to stick in my memory, you can probably just skip them, and you won't really be missing much.
AND THEN I LANDED IN SEOUL!
Korea is beautiful. Wow. Flying in and seeing the country from the air was a great introduction to the country. On this part of the flight I felt pretty similarly to when I was flying over the States, but it was different, of course, because there is so much coastline; the water is gorgeous. I'm looking forward to exploring more and more … but maybe not until I get a little more grounded here.
In the airport this was my first time being in a situation where the majority of people spoke a different language than I did. I had been thinking about that a lot over the past couple weeks, and it was cool and exciting and daunting and a little overwhelming and little underwhelming all at the same time. Standing in line to go through security (and get my sweet stamp ;), it just clicked that I couldn't understand anything that the many people around me were saying. My feelings were so mixed at that time because of the blending of isolation and connectedness that happens simultaneously in that situation. I could, at any given moment, reach out and touch another person, yet at the same time, even with that tangible point of connection, I would still be completely cut off from open, spoken communication with that person. It's a weird situation, I think, because talking with people is something that I do so often. And now I have to learn a new way to talk with these people if I'm to step back into that habit.
At the airport everything went mostly smoothly … except that my original checked luggage is still lost somewhere between GR and Seoul :(. Ok. For any of you planning to travel internationally in the near future (or distant future), please make your flights. Ha. That has been such a pain, and it continues to plague me. So right now, I have basically 2 sets of clothing and a random mix of other things. Ha. What a joy. Hopefully sometime today I'll hear more about the luggage and maybe, just maybe, it'll come back to me. That'd be a really cool, great thing. When it came time to bus to Gwangju, I ended up just talking with a man at an information kiosk, and he readily took me to the booth and made sure that I bought the correct ticket. After that I went to another kiosk, and a swell gal there let me use her cell to call Don, and at 7:50pm, I was on my way to Gwangju. Woo hoo!
Apparently the buses here are pretty top notch. This opinion came from a couple other teachers at the school, and my experience only reinforced this idea. I hopped on the bus at Incheon, and we only stopped once at a rest stop before arriving in Gwangju just over 3.5 hours later. Again, Korea is beautiful. Seeing the scenery as we drove past was very neat. Granted, I will admit that ended up pseudo-sleeping through about half of the trip, but from what I did see, it was very interesting. I definitely have more exploring to do in this area … just to see those things that I've missed.
Shortly after arriving in Gwangju, Don showed up to retrieve me from the airport. Meeting him for the first time was great. It completely reinforced everything I'd heard about his so far; he seems very pleasant and personable, and I think it's going to be a great working environment for the next stint. He drove me around Gwangju for a little while, and then we went to our neighborhood (where I'll be living and working), Pungam-Dong. I'm going to save my description of this neighborhood for another day … one during which I can walk around and get more pictures of the place … just so that you all can see what I see. Until then, though, know that I like it a lot. The longer I'm here, and it's only been about 30 hours so far, the more I want to learn Korean so that I can more effectively connect with the city and people around here.
That first night (and until Sunday afternoon when I move into Brian's old apartment), I stayed/will be staying in the Tomato Motel. Ha. What a funny place. I've heard some stories about this place, which, again, I'll save for another day, but it's a sweet little place, and the best part, without any doubt in my mind, is the shower. Whew. I took a picture of it … and it's pretty fancy-schmancy, as some would say. Think about this: standing under a shower head, while having other spray massage your body and still having the option to employ a separate handheld shower head. Awesome. I've showered there twice by now, and it's pretty much the best thing ever. Those of you thinking of remodeling in the near future, you should definitely look into this fantastic device. I promise you won't look back. Oh, and there's some sort of steam room option as well, but since it's been so hot lately, I've opted for cool showers instead. The motel itself is within a quarter mile of the schools and my new apartment, so this morning I get to walk to school all on my own … let's hope that I get there ;). Ha. It's just down the street and around a few corners, so I'll be fine; no worries.
Alright. Since this email is already so friggin' long, I'm gonna end it here. I have, since arriving, experienced my first day at school, so let that be a teaser … the next edition will include some about my first day at school: not having as cool of shoes as the rest of the kids, forgetting my lunch and being called a giant time and again. Whew. What a first day it was!
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see how awesome my friends are, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.650994634524.2129602.15300236&l=d28df3ba2e&type=1
or
if you want to see some my first legs of travel, visit:
or
if you want to see some my first legs of travel, visit:
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