Counting Down

This final week of classes was quite a roller coaster. The students have been great in behaviour, more than usual, the school staff has been extra nicer, and the lessons have been entertaining. The students learned about Canada, Bucket List and even played K-Pop Slam game. Two classes won pizza party and other class earned a small snack. The first graders (106), and second graders (205) both won a pizza party because they got the highest amount of stickers with respect to their grade. The third graders (305) won a small snack party but they won’t get it until I leave which is unfortunate. Also, after work each day I have been trying to keep myself occupied with the many friends I have made in Korea.

On Monday, I only have 4 classes, so it went quickly and after a weekend of fun, it was a great chance for me to relax. After work, the English depart treated me to a Pizza Hut dinner! They were really nice and of course tried their best to communicate in English as much possible. I really liked the dessert because of mango jelly! On Tuesday, I had 5 classes but they were all good classes and the 205 class had their pizza party. They were an enthusiastic bunch because they destroyed their competition and some of the students are the most sociable Korean kids I know. After work, I went to the National Pension Building to process my pension papers so I can get my money back near middle of August. I made sure that they can send the money directly to my Canadian bank account.

On Wednesday, I had 5 classes again, but the 305 class had some issues with their homeroom teacher about a pizza party. 305 class is first period at 9am so it was difficult to arrange for pizzas. Instead, I spoke to my co-teacher and she was willing to deal with that class next week by providing them some snacks. I told her that would be wonderful and just give me the receipt so I can give her cash because this was my treat for the students. After work, I met up with my friends Nonia (Soko), and Dharma at Nampo Dong to enjoy a western style buffet at a restaurant called, “Ashley’s”. We were three starving foreigners and we dug in right away. There was no stopping us after we began! On Thursday, I had only 4 classes, and the students started to realize that my days at Yang Dong Middle School are coming to an end. The students started to get create with their farewell gifts for me. After work, I went to PNU area to eat at a Korean restaurant with bunch of friends but I couldn’t stay too long because I had a personal dinner with Karen, and her mom! Her mom came all the way from California to hang out with her daughter for couple of weeks. Karen being a good friend of mine invited me over because her mom was cooking Filipino food just for me! Her mom was such a lovely person and even saved some fresh mangoes and Filipino bread for me. At the end she packed some food so I can eat it for lunch the next day. I didn’t get home until 12:15am but it was well worth it! On Friday, I had 5 classes and all of them were first graders! They were attentive, and they really showcased their English skills by writing farewell greeting cards with wonderful messages inside them. Some first graders decided to make a huge farewell gift with their chalk boards. The last class of the day earned the first grade pizza party! They also watched Finding Nemo while they were eating their delicious slices of cheese pizza and sweet potato pizza. For me, it was a great way to end the day, and the students were really sad that I will no longer be teaching them. I gave them my e-mail address and told them that they can only message me in English if they want to receive a response back. After school, the principal took me and bunch of teachers out for an all out Korean meal. We got to the restaurant at 5pm and we had food coming until 7:30pm. There were so many dishes and I stopped taking pictures after awhile too! Every 15-30 minutes another dish appeared in front of us. The principal made a speech about how he is going to miss me and that I am like a son to him. He was really hoping that I would renew the contract but he was happy either way. He wished me good luck in the future and told me that he gave the reference letter to one of my co-teachers. I got it earlier in the day so I thanked him and told him that I would miss him too. Overall, this week has been an eye opener because I always felt that my students weren’t either paying attention to me or didn’t care enough but they did all of these cards, writings, messages, and showing their appreciation without any of my co-teachers telling them to do it. They did it all on their own and my co-teachers were surprised as much as I was. I guess, I was not just a good teacher to them but a positive Canadian (foreigner) role model as well. My mission as a teacher in South Korea has been accomplished. I am impressed by the students conduct in each class, their ability to follow along when I speak quickly at times, and finding my corny jokes actually funny. There is no great profession and feeling when you know you made a positive difference in a young student’s life. This is exactly why I wanted to be a teacher since I was in high school. In conclusion, I am quite grateful for the opportunity that South Korea has offered me, and many other Guest English Teachers. Thank you!

All Bamboo-ed Out

My second last weekend in South Korea was spent exploring the Bamboo forests and hanging out with a fellow Canadian who lives in another city. On Saturday I went to the Bamboo forest in Damyang, close to Jeollanam-do, near Gwangju. We were able to also walk through the Metasequoia tree path, roam around the Gang Cheon County Park, and taste traditional Korean pepper paste. The tasting part was okay but I really enjoyed the Gang Cheon County Park more. It was a relaxing trip because I did not have to plan anything. My friends Niki and Jason planned everything so all I had to do was show up at 7:25am to Seomyeon and get on the bus. As soon as I got on the bus I fell asleep for the next three hours. You can check out the pictures for yourself to see how breathtaking the Bamboo forest and the County Park were. We took so many group photos as well. At least one of us shouted, “Group Photo” throughout the trip. We finally got back to Busan around 8:15pm. I headed home right away to cook dinner and get up early for the next day.

The next day at 11am, my friend Leni and his wife came down to Busan from Jinju. We had lunch together, drank bubble teas, shopped for a bit at Lotte Department store, and watched a movie (Lock Out). It was great seeing him since the EPIK orientation. I also said bye to my favourite Bubble tea place and to the barber shop that I go every 4 to 5 weeks. The two gentlemen kept saying how they were sad to see me leave Korea and wished me good luck in my future adventures.

Entertainment Weekly

My week was once again busy and only two more weekends left now. This week was busy starting Tuesday! Only day I had to relax was Monday. Tuesday I went to Children’s Park with my students because it was Sketch Day (students have to go outside and paint something for their art mark which was worth 25% of their final grade). I even made a little sketch of the view I had while sitting underneath a tree. It was a gorgeous day too! Later Tuesday, I went all the way to Niki and Jason’s place for dinner that they made especially for me. They lived near the border of Ulsan which is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes away from my place. I took the bus, subway, and a taxi to get to their place. It was worth the trip because both of them are amazing people and a cute couple. Niki cooked up a yummy chicken curry with Korean spices and honey! She also bought fresh mangoes for the occasion as desserts and served mango juice as well. She knows how much I complain about getting fresh mangoes in Korea so she ordered it online just for this dinner. After all of this, they let me sleep over at their place too because it was getting late and I didn’t want to commute another 90 minutes back to my place. The next day was Memorial Day in Korea so I had no work, hence I was willing to stay over at Niki and Jason’s place to begin with. I woke up at 7am because I needed to get to Sasang bus station to meet up with Jeongeun for the 9:30am bus to Yeosu for the Expo! I left Niki and Jason’s place around 7:40am and I arrived in Sasang approximately at 9am. Good thing Jeongeun bought the round trip bus tickets in advance. We got on the 9:30am bus and it took 2.5hours to get to Yeosu. We met up with Vivek at the Expo around 2pm and we hung out there for another 5 plus hours. We took plenty of photos so you can check them out below. It was a lot of fun and I have never been to an expo like this before. A great experience and I felt like I was back in Toronto because of the multiculturalism. At 8:50pm we left Yeosu and arrived in Busan again around 11:20pm and we rushed to get to the subway. Fortunately for us, we got into the subway just in time and we headed home. I arrived back at my place around 12:15am. It was quite a busy day. The next day I woke up at 7am for work but I only went to sleep at 3am, so I had 4 hours of sleep. I was lucky that it was my Thursday schedule, which meant I only had 4 classes to teach. I got even luckier when one of the classes got cancelled because of some educational testing for middle schoolers. I had three classes and all of them were easy laid back classes. Right after work, I met up with my friend Nonia (Soko) for dinner. We went to this place where they served chicken in a can. Just check out the picture for yourself. It was really good though. We chatted for hours about a lot of things in life. It was well needed considering I am always on the go and no time to think about myself, my past, my future and what I want to do in life. Great conversation for sure and I appreciated it a lot. Friday I went to the movies with Andrew, Erin, Dharma, Brian and his two friends. We watched Prometheus. I thought it was going to be about Greek mythology because I only saw the trailer once and it didn’t give me too many details. Instead, it’s a prequel to the Aliens movie. It was good but nothing compared to the Avengers!

Saturday, I co-hosted a basketball day just to be active in the city with my friend Jake. We played basketball for few hours and just hung out. It was a great day to be active. Although we lost 9-15 to the Koreans, we had tons of fun. I was certainly out of shape but it was great to be back on the court. Later that day, we hung out and played Apples to Apples and then headed out to watch a movie called Snow White. It had that Bella face girl from Twilight. She basically ruined the entire movie for me. Snow White is now tarnished forever because of Bella face girl. The movie itself seemed like Twilight, Chronicles of Narnia, a little bit of Avengers and Lord of the Rings in my opinion. Twilight because of Bella face girl and her clueless facial expressions, Narnia because of the sceneries, Avengers because of Thor, Lord of the Rings because of the dwarfs. Either way, the graphics were really good but the acting and the storyline sucked big time.

On Sunday, I met up with Ann, John, Nav, Elizabeth, Jeongeun and Barney for lunch! Ann cooked a special Thai dish just for me. She wanted to invite me for lunch or dinner for a very long time. Finally the plan came into action. John made mango with sticky rice, Elizabeth made Rubantini (mango juice + cider), and Jeongeun made brownies. It was a perfect meal, with great food and wonderful company! After lunch we headed to Dalmalji Hill to see Shakespeare’s play, “Much Ado About Nothing” performed by foreigners living in Korea. Few of the actors and actresses I have spoken to before so it was nice to see them in a different light. They performed really well and the show itself was free. They put a lot of effort and it clearly showed. It was a beautiful day outside and the weather was perfect the whole weekend. I came back to my place around 10pm, cleaned up a bit, did laundry, and packed some things into my suitcase as well. I have less than 16 days left in Korea!

Invasion of Cars and Sand

This past weekend was quite busy. On Saturday I hosted my 4th potluck called, “Red Invasion” so everyone had to bring in a dish that had some sort of red in it. Everyone got creative too and everyone was satisfied with the results too. This will surely be my last potluck because the rest of my weekends in Korea are packed with plans. After the potluck we headed to the Songjeong beach to just hang out. Originally we were supposed to have a bonfire but we changed our minds and played Werewolf (similar to the Mafia game) and just chatted away. On Sunday I attended the Busan International Motor Show at BEXCO with my friend Dharma! We had tons of fun snapping pictures away at cars and models. I really want a red BMW now. That has always been my dream car to own but of course I am broke as well.
After the Motor Show, we headed to Haeundae Sand Art Festival. My favourite ones were the Dragon and the Phoenix artworks. The festival had concert performances by future K-Pop dancers. It was really good and you can check out the artworks yourself as well.
This weekend was non-stop fun and tons of great memories! Three more weekends left in Korea.

North vs South

For Buddha’s Birthday long weekend I went to Seoul to finally check out some of the attractions that I have missed out on my previous trips up north. Seoul to me personally seems like a totally different country than the rest of Korea. Even Busan, the southern tip of South Korea has a different vibe and experience than Seoul, the capital city. The cultural experiences are contrasting because there are plenty of foreigners and plenty of multicultural restaurants to eat out at. In Busan, it’s the same old crowd and the foreigner population is a lot less here in the south.

Anyways, as soon as I got to Seoul I went to Myeongdong to browse through the open market and to grab lunch (chicken galbi) and then I went to drop off my things at the hostel. The hostel itself took me 45 minutes to find. It was located on top of a mountain and I didn’t know so I started to walk for the first thirty minutes thinking it was close by. The map fooled me and it was actually really far away. I was at least walking in the right direction the whole time. I finally took the taxi and got to the place. As soon as I got there Jay was waiting for me with her Korean friend. Jay and I dropped our things off and headed to Hongdae area for dinner. We met up with my friend Noelia and JK (my EPIK coordinator) for some fried and grilled chicken. Afterwards we just walked around for a bit and took pictures. We wanted to watch a movie (MIB3) but the schedules were conflicting because it was either too late or too early. Instead we just went to Baskin Robbins to have some desserts before Jay and I departed back to our hostel place. The next day at 7:30am Jay and I headed out to our DMZ tour. We didn’t do any reservations so we were fortunate enough to even go on a half day tour for 46,000 won per person. It was well worth it because it gave us a different perspective of the conflict between North and South Korea. We took lots of pictures but we were not allowed to take any inside the 3rd Tunnel. This part of the trip was the main highlight and the most important reason I went to Seoul for this long weekend. I can finally cross it off my bucket list in Korea. After the DMZ tour we went and watched a martial arts comedy musical show. It was very good and enjoyable. I was at the edge of my seat the whole time anticipating what’s going to happen next. You didn’t even need to know Korean in order to enjoy the show. I was able to take a quick picture before the actual event began. We were not allowed to take pictures during the show for obvious reasons (blinding the actors with flash or distracting them). Another bucket list item I can cross off. For dinner we went to Itaewon area and met up with Candice (Mincer) for some Mexican food. Before dinner though, Jay did some shopping which she desperately needed to do because she only had one pair of jeans and the Korean sizes do not fit her. It was probably her highlight of the trip. It’s very hard to get proper sizes for foreigners in Busan. We headed back to the hostel pretty early, around 8:30pm because we were both exhausted from all that walking at the DMZ, Itaewon and waking up super early for the tour. The next day was another walking adventure.

Monday, we visited the Gyeongbokgung Palace and I also took pictures of the famous statues outside of the Palace as well. I had to rush because my KTX train back to the south (Busan) was at 1:30pm. I barely made it inside the train cart because it was 1:29pm when I got in and the next minute, on time, the train started to take off. Unfortunately for me, I went and sat in the wrong cart number because I went into cart 8 but I was supposed to be in cart 9. I was that tired and exhausted that I didn’t pay attention to where I was supposed to be seated at. I came back to Busan around 4:30pm and headed directly home to take a shower. After few hours of checking and updating things on Facebook, I got an invite from Victoria to check out the Samgwangsa Temple because today was Buddha’s birthday, and they were having a huge celebration with lanterns to honour the special day. By the time I came home it was time for me to sleep because the long weekend was officially over and it was back to work schedule. I have a feeling that next weekend is going to be hectic and busy just like this one but we’ll see.