SNOW DAY!

So it takes a lot for Koreans to call off school, but today it happened! Busan has experienced its worse snow storm for 5 years! I walked out of my apartment this morning blown away (literally and figuratively) by the weather conditions awaiting me. I had heard when I got here that Busan snowed occasionally, but it never stuck. Well, let me tell you, these were big flakes and they were sticking. They got at least several inches today.

I managed to schlep myself to school without falling, yet I still stood out. People here carry umbrellas for everything, sun, rain, and snow! I never carry one around, I felt quite naked without one as everyone else shielded themselves from the onslaught of flakes and wind.

Anyway, after I had made about 800 copies for test review today, I was informed school was cancelled because the shuttles that bus all these Korean little ones around from school to school all day, everyday would not be able to drive in the snow. Nobody has snow tires here.

Also, since we would be losing a day, review day was no longer needed...into the recycling box went my copies. Oy.

The foreign teachers had to stay 2 hours, until 3:00pm, to prepare for tomorrow. When the clock stroke 3 we ran out of there like giddy school children, along with the actual school children who had the day off thanks to the snow. Now, the walk home was tricky because many sidewalks and entrances, including my apartment building, are made of a faux marble type material, which I learned today is dangerously slippery when slushy. However, I avoided the embarrassment of wiping out and eating it in front of my door man and even managed to snap some shots of the historical (and beautiful if you ask me) snow fall...

The women were still wearing heels in this! Nothing will stop them from achieving fashion. I love it. Hope everyone had (or is having) a lovely Valentine's Day! Wish I could spend the day with my Valentine, you know who you are, So Ju is awaiting us when we are reunited!

~Sarah

Matching Underwear?

Ok, so this post isn't really about matching underwear, per se, I just needed a catchy title. This weekend I went out and about for the first time and explored Seomyeon, where there are lots of markets and shops. I also rode the subway for the first time. Instead of rechargeable cards (boring) like they have in London and such, they have phone charms. Ya? Adorable and clever. I am holding off on buying mine until I found the most sparkly and tacky one possible.

Anyway, in this shopping haven of Seomyeon, there are quite a few underwear shops, more than I have ever seen per capita in any other place. A common theme to these shops is matching underwear sets for couples. I know. But it is actually quite adorable. They had all of the red ones out for Valentines Day. Now, I have lived in romantic European cities, Paris of course being the epitome of love and romance, but Busan, surprisingly, rivals it. Not in the way that people are snogging at every bridge and park bench, but Korea is very couple oriented, and since couples are incredibly busy working and studying (and living with their parents) the time they have in public is quite treasured. I am constantly bombarded with couples holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes... And the men holding the woman's purse and shopping bags. We could do with a bit of that understated romance in the west I think. I hate carrying my shopping bags.

Enough about couples and underwear now. My parents are reading this.

Here are some photos of Seomyeon, a lot of the shops are also underground...

Street Food

For M-Larrrrr.....get here soon and we shall indulge.

After Seomyeon we took a cab to Busan Station, one of the bigger subway hubs here because you can transfer to another line and also catch the KTX train to Seoul. It is also home to China Town and Texas Street, funny enough, Texas Street and China Town is the night home of the Russian sailor population. This is evident by the sketchy vibe and signs in Russian.

Bottom two words say "vodka" and "sodzhyu" or so ju. I love both those things thank you very much.

We then made our way to a very popular tourist attraction, and hot spot for foreign night life, Gwangali Beach. We got there just in time to see all of the flashing neon lights on the hotels, clubs, restaurants, and even a mini carnival. Oh ya, and the gorgeous, epic bridge that makes Gwangali quite the landmark of Busan. I only had my point and shoot, so these pictures aren't great, but you can see what I mean...

That's about it for the weekend here. Can't wait to see more of this city.

~Sarah

First Day of Teaching. And Drinking.

Well today was the day. The day I officially become an active, employed, certified teacher. I have 7 classes today, from 2:10-8:10 with a one hour break. It's not as bad as it sounds, it actually goes by super fast, classes are only 40 minutes. It started off well with me being told I was teaching the wrong class, in the wrong room. Because of this, I had no idea what I was going to be teaching (even though everything at my school is laid out and planned from a very structured book I had no idea what was going on). As goes the first day really. C'est pas grave. I finally got into the groove of things and landed with my feet on the ground. My day started off with the little ones, (as the day goes on my students get older I go from 5/6 in the morning and gradually work up to 12/13, but we'll come back to those students later, unfortunately) but anyway, the little ones have so much enthusiasm and energy. I love when they finish a worksheet and scream "teacher....finishie!!!!" (they can't say finished). Don't have the heart to try and correct them either. That is one phonetic mistake I will let slide, it's too damn cute.

My next few classes were young ones too, an 8 year old try to lock me out of the classroom and I couldn't push the door in because he was pushing against it, but a little girl came to my rescue and pulled him off. 8 year old Korean boys are strong, but apparently not as strong as 8 year old Korean girls. For the most part my early afternoon classes were lovely. The kids did what I asked and weren't too loud. But then came the middle school classes, and with them, the teenagers. I have always laughed off teachers who complain about middle school aged kids, I mean how different could they be right? Ok well, I am eating my words. The first class of surly teens I was blessed with had a wonderfully sweet front row, with a back row full of challenges. Overall, they were actually much better than I anticipated. Texting and cell phones are going to be my new enemy though, we'll see how that battle goes. The only challenging thing about my next middle school class was that no one remembered there books. Thanks guys. Cause I don't have a book either. That was a fun class.

Like I said before, overall a really positive day. I met a lot of very sweet kids, and even the ones who weren't I am hoping will warm up to me soon and vise versa. Or at least bring their books.

After work I was invited out by my Korean coworkers and one of the other foreign teachers. We went to a BBQ chicken restaurant of all places. I stuck to the service food and a side dish of mushrooms my coworkers had ordered for me because they felt so uncomfortable with the fact that the 2 Americans weren't eating. Love Korean hospitality. I really do love my new co workers though. They were all so awesome and it was a blast wasting away the Friday night over massive pitchers of beer and shots of So Ju. Kombae!!! This was not only my first night out with the office, it was also my first experience in a Korean restaurant bathroom, which is slightly more glamorous than a hole in the ground, in the fact that it flushes. I would like to announce to all of my close friends reading this, that to your surprise, I was actually very good at this and had no problems throughout the evening. Who knew? I guess So Ju makes the impossible possible.

Another successful day in my new home where I can check off even more firsts. Keep them coming Korea!

~Sarah

First Days in Busan...Awaiting My Second Half

So these first few days have been amazing, chaotic, confusing, overwhelming, and hilarious. I love everything here, even the things that I find strange I still love. However, I find myself wishing all of my friends were here with me all the time, not because I am lonely, (because this is actually the first night I have spent on my own in my apartment) but because every time I see something funny, I want to make a sarcastic comment but there is no captive audience to use my wit on (for Hanne).

I guess the best way to update everyone on what has happened so far is start from the beginning. The journey here was probably the hardest part of the move for me. I hate flying. I hate airports. I hate being near large amounts of people. I hate loud noises. And I hate babies. So air travel is my own personal hell. I am always shvitzing that my bags will be lost or stolen and the plane will go down in flames. None of this happened of course. The worst obstacle I endured was on my second flight (of three) which was 12.5 hours from Minneapolis to Tokyo. I actually had an empty seat next to me, quite lovely, but on the other side of me was a Vietnamese family with 2 children under the age of 4. Ya. The children didn't want to sleep when everyone else was (though they were more than happy to sleep through the meal times so their mother would have disrupt everyone during sleep time to get the flight attendants to bring them food). They also disrupted sleep time by allowing their children to watch DVDs on a DVD player without headphones. So I got to listen to Ratatouille the entire way to Tokyo. There are lots of scenes with crashing dishes in that movie.

Anyway, besides that, and my bags being outrageously overweight, (which I paid for financially and physically) it was a pretty uneventful trip to my new home 8,000 miles away. I was picked up by my boss, Daniel, who had a sign for me. He drove me to my new apartment in his car, which had tweety bird seat covers, again, an example of a time I would have loved to have some of my mates with me to enjoy that.

My new apartment is awesome in substance, size, and location. I live in Dognae....and I think there are a couple of other more specific location names, but Dognae is the most important for this purpose. It has a plethora of old bath houses and spas, facials here I come, apparently you don't have to get naked for those like you do for everything else in the bath houses. It also used to be the old center of Busan and is only a 10 minute walk for the main center of the city with loads of shopping and nightlife and it is only a 5 minute walk from school, very convenient.

Here are some photos of my new place on the 6th floor of the building:

The next day, the other foreign teacher, who lives below me, came to pick me up for my first day of work. I was observing her teach because I was going to be taking over her classes soon. The first class was adorable, they were at a beginner level, so about 5/6 years old. However, one of the girls had a cell phone that went off and it was then explained to me the Korean children get phones as young as 3….oy. I really enjoyed watching the classes and it will be helpful to be familiar with the kids before I start. Later that night the other 2 foreign teachers took me out to dinner at a restaurant called T3. We ordered broths, 1 seafood and 1 beef, and cooked vegetables and seafood/beef in them. It was really good and I tried octopus for the first time. When I say octopus, I mean we plopped a proper full on octopus in the water. It didn't have much taste and was kind of chewy.

The next day I got up early for my health check at the hospital which is a requirement to get an alien card here. We took a cab to the hospital and it was only like $2.00. Definitely going to be using cabs a lot here. I was really impressed with the Korean hospital. It was huge, no wait time, and cheap. The health check was simple and painless, except for the needle they stuck in my arm. But we go on. My supervisor, Jenny, took me around a bit afterward and we eventually schlepped ourselves back to school just in time for the first class. This is also when I was informed I would be taking over teaching on my own the next day. So that was a fun addition to the needle in the arm. The first class I observed this day was the cutest ever! They were the very first level and around 4/5 years old. One girl told me I had big eyes and then proceeded to draw a picture of me with big curly hair. She drew me quite thin as well....thanks for that.

~Sarah

Waiting...

So, this process all started a year ago. A relationship I had been in (and out of) for 3 years was starting to sour and I knew more than anything that I wanted to leave America. At first, I wanted to go to France because I had spent a year in Paris as part of a study abroad program for my junior year of college. But with $40,000 in student loans to pay off, consideration to potential income versus expenses had to be a focal part of any decision.

At the time, I was an AmeriCorps member serving a term in Mount Vernon, WA. I had 6 months left on my contract and explored every sort of option from serving in the military, joining the foreign service, working on an organic farm, or relocating to San Diego. Previously, my best friend, Sss-lar, had wanted to teach English in Russia and we began discussing this possibility more at length. Then, I found a program in Toronto, Canada, that would give us our TESOL certification from Trinity College London, one of the best certifications in the teaching English world.

So, off to Toronto my best friend and I went. After an unbelievably fun time there, we were finally clad with a certified skill! It was real triumph for us as we were both fine arts majors (her a French major and me a International Relations major)! Anyone who has graduated with one of those degrees knows how hard it is to transfer them to money making jobs without getting a graduate degree. During our student teaching, we met a lot of Korean students and heard from teachers who had previously taught in Korea. That combined with the knowledge that Korea pays for your plane ticket and apartment made the decision to choose Korea extremely easy.

Thus, upon our return to Seattle, our search began. We both posted resumes on Dave's ESL cafe and decided to let fate run its course. After a few minor offers, Appletree Recruiting contacted me and after speaking to them on the phone, I knew I wanted to work with them in finding the perfect job. Sss-lar and I had already picked Busan because of its proximity to the beach and smaller (yet still large) population than Seoul. I told Appletree about my friend wanting a job too and they seemed thrilled with the idea to place us in Busan.

After that fateful call with Appletree, the process of packing up our lives in Seattle and driving across the country to Sss-lar's parents' house in Illinois began. I spent the fall there and had several interviews with different schools. The first school, iSponge, said they would hire me which made me ecstatic as they were a very popular and well-known school. A week later, I got another job offer which confused me since I thought I was already employed. In broken English, the recruiting company explained that iSponge wasn't sure whether or not the teacher who was already there would stay or not. So, they wanted me to look for other schools in the meantime. Mild panic set in as I desperately needed a job!

However, this seemed to be a blessing in disguise as another school asked to interview with me. They offered more money and were in a better location! They offered me the position after the interview and I will now work for Berkeley Language School in Haeundae, Busan!

Currently, the school has sent my visa papers to the immigration office and I am waiting to get my visa number. Then, I can apply for my work visa in Los Angeles. So, for now, I spend my days hanging out in San Diego with my mom and my brother as much as I can because I do not know when I'll be back to America after I leave for Korea.

I plan to keep this blog (I know its a little cliché) so that I remember everything that happens. 2011 will be a great year. I just know it! So, happy new years and welcome Busan goofin' !

-Melissa