After 15 hours of flight time, 9 hours of layovers, and a 3 hour bus ride, I finally made it from Boise, ID to Goesan, South Korea (괴산군)! For those of you that don’t know, I will be teaching English here in South Korea for at least one year through a Fulbright ETA (English Teaching Assistant) grant. We will be at Jungwon University (중원대학교) for 6 weeks for orientation, then we will head out to our placements throughout Korea! There are about 70 of us, and we will be dispersed throughout the country, which means lots of new friends to visit around the country 🙂
Orientation is pretty intense, but also extremely rewarding and fun! A typical day consists of 5 hours of Korean language class, at least 1 hour (if not 2 or 3) of teaching work shops or cultural workshops, then there is an additional hour of review class (it’s optional, but pretty much everyone goes anyways), and an hour of office hours for our teachers (선생님). Which means that on average, we go from 8am-8pm every day. Definitely exhausting, but I’ve learned a lot in such a short amount of time!
The very first day we arrived (literally about 2 hours after we got off the bus from the airport), there was a language placement exam. I was placed in a beginner’s class, but no surprise there considering my Korean skills were at about 0 when I first arrived. Before the test began, they told us that if we didn’t have at least a basic understanding of Korean (i.e. Hangul, their character system) we didn’t have to take the test. Myself, along with 10 or 15 other ETAs stood up and walked out because we knew we wouldn’t be able to do well on the test, plus, I wanted to be in the beginner class to make sure I had a good base knowledge of the language. We ran into another group of 5 or 10 who also walked out after the test was handed out because it was too difficult and they also wanted to be in beginner haha.
Jungwon has a pretty big campus. The city of Goesan itself is fairly small and is in a rural area in the middle of South Korea. For those of you whom I told I would be in Seoul for orientation, I lied. I didn’t read the handbook until about 3 or 4 days before I left (procrastination at its finest…) so I just assumed we were going to be housed at a big university in Seoul – whoops! Anyways, it’s beautiful here! We’re in the middle of rolling hills and everything is green and lush. The university is less than 10 years old, being built in 2009. It’s based off of Buddhist principles (according to my tour guide) and therefore is built so that all buildings connect to each other and there are no main buildings that are cut off from other buildings. That being said, it’s super easy to get lost. There are so many twists and turns, random hallways and stairways that come out of no where, and doors that we can and can’t use. It took most of us this whole week to figure out exactly how to get from our dorms to the cafeteria, to the convenience store on campus and to the different classrooms we use on campus without getting lost at least once during the day. That doesn’t sound too bad, except for the fact that all of these are actually super close to each other so it shouldn’t have taken us that long to figure it out ha.
This is the view from my window!
Picture of the university! (yes it’s giant, yes that’s a pool, and no I didn’t take this picture)
Fun fact, the university looks similar to universities in North Korea, so they shot a movie on our campus over two days! Apparently, whenever movies are made and they need a set that looks like a North Korean university, they always come to Jungwon! However, we didn’t know this at first so we were all very confused when we saw a giant Kim Il-sung picture, communist propaganda, and lots of men walking around in North Korean military uniforms with guns. But all was well, we were just living on a movie set!
On another note, my roommate here at orientation is AWESOME! Her name is Kathy, she’s an elementary teacher from Chicago, and she’s the sweetest. We connected right away and I’m so appreciative that we got placed together. We keep each other accountable, but also have lots of fun so it’s been great 🙂
Roomie pic!
This week we went on school visits to see what school life is like for Korean students. We were split into groups of around 10 people and went to either a high school (고등학교), middle school (중학교), or elementary school (초등학교) where a current ETA is working. We sat in on a class, got a school tour, met the principal, ate lunch with students, and had a Q&A session. I went to Yangji Elementary School (양지초등학교) and the students were so stinking cute!! They were really excited to see us and kept saying hello, waving, and insa-ing us. Insa (인사) is the Korean way to greet someone by saying hello and bowing. One of the students told me that I reminded her of Ed Sheeran. Still not sure how to take that…haha. The funniest part of that compliment is that one of the other guys in our group is a tall, large, red-headed guy who wears glasses and looks a heck of a lot more like Ed Sheeran than I do. But we were told that you’ll get compliments where people tell you that you remind them of a random American celebrity who you actually look nothing like, and that it happens quite often, so I suppose I’m just getting ahead of everyone else with my first one of these compliments. Anyways, I would still prefer to be placed in a high school, but after this visit I decided that I wouldn’t mind elementary too much because they’re just so adorable!
We haven’t had much free time since being here because we’re always so busy, but I did go into town with people a few times in the evenings. My roommate and I went to a cute coffee shop with a few other girls and we got waffles and gelato. It was so good! Then we decided to get Korean BBQ for dinner – definitely the best choice. It was 맛있어요 (delicious)! Some of the other ETAs ended up coming to the same restaurant that we were eating at so a few of us joined up with them afterwards. We went to a bar to meet up with other ETAs and we got some chimaek (치맥) – aka chicken and beer. 치맥 is a combination of the Korean words 치킨 (chicken) and 맥주 (beer). It was fun to hang out with everyone outside of class and the university! I also went to noraebang (노래방) with a large group of ETAs another night. 노래방 is Korean karaoke; you get a room with friends and sing karaoke for as little or as long as you want. Its name is literally singing room or song room. 노래방 is super popular in Korea and there are 노래방s in every city. We ended up having to get 3 or 4 different rooms because there were so many of us! I was in the largest room and I think we had about 15 of us in there at one point. There are always tambourines and two microphones in the rooms so you can jam out with your friends. It can get pretty crazy, but it’s so much fun! One of the guys in our group even sang “Umbrella” by Rihanna while holding his umbrella the whole time – haha!
On another note, I took a KPop dance class Wednesday night! It was so much fun, but holy cow, I didn’t realize how difficult kpop dancing could be – and our teacher taught us an “easy” routine. I can’t imagine what a “hard” routine must look like! I have a new found respect for kpop dancers! Unfortunately the class was only a one-time thing, but one of the other ETAs does a lot of kpop dancing and he said he wants to get a class together for us so hopefully that happens!
Not sure if this link will work, but here is a video of us ETAs dancing!
Our dance crew!
For those of you that don’t know much about Kpop, it stands for Korean pop (music) and is crazy huge not only in Korea, but all over the world. There are tons of very famous girl groups, boy groups, duos, and solo artists. Kpop music videos are always incredibly artistic and sometimes over-the-top, and the artists themselves always look polished and beautiful (except for a few groups who are more into shocking fashion statements). Kpop artists are known for being great singers, dancers, and fashion icons. Dancing is such a big part of kpop that many groups will release a dance version of their music video along with the regular version, so that you can watch them dance. Many also put up dance practice videos as well. Being good dancers is key to kpop fame!
This is a compilation of some dances from kpop music videos, just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
This one’s a compilation of some of the most popular kpop songs. You can see the artistry in many of these videos. The later ones are ones that are more popular. Psy (think “Gangnam Style”) holds many of the very top spots since he hit the international market in such a big way with “Gagnam Style.”
I’m excited to learn more Korean and more about the country and culture. I have more Korean class and cultural workshops coming up, I start 태권도 (taekwondo) class next week, we leave for a weekend trip to the beach town of Sokcho (속초), and we get our placements!! Lots to look forward to so I’ll update soon! I miss you all back at home lots and lots 🙂
Miss Coldiron in South Korea 