It’s been a long time since I last posted here - six months to the day I think – and I doubt very much that anyone even checks this thing anymore, so if you are here reading this now, you probably got an e-mail from me or Hilary. If not, well, count me impressed. (How did you get here, then?) Anyway, there’s really no reason for the long absence other than my own laziness… I thought maybe I’d say something like, I wanted to wait until I knew the country more so that I could more accurately explain our experience here, especially considering the length of time we’ll be here, but that would just be a lie. It was really only lethargy. I think I told Hilary ten times since we got here that I would write this. But enough already, chances are you didn’t visit our blog to read what you have so far.
There are so many things to be said about our stay so far, stories and impressions and whatnot, that it’s somewhat hard to pick a place to start from, so I’ll pick one at random.
This is a photo of the staff, including the people that we were replacing (the large bald man and the smaller hispanic woman).Our first night in town, the headmaster of our school, MC, took us to a sashimi restaurant that specializes in tuna. Hilary and I are both big sushi and sashimi eaters, and were excited to try it here closer to the meal’s roots. Almost every restaurant in Korea serves a myriad of side dishes along with whatever you order, and the number of sides increases greatly when you go to a restaurant with a set menu. Tuna Village is one of the latter. Along with the large platter of raw tuna off all types came kimchi, salad, some sort of fried vegetables, some green spinach-like steamed leaf, some small octopus limbs in a nice sesame sauce still wriggling away and what appeared to be slivers of tongue also still wriggling. Hilary and I, both wanting to show MC that we were going to jump right in, proceeded to try one of everything. There really is no need to explain the taste of all of the things, as I’m sure anyone reading this is only wondering about the octopus and the tongue, so here it is: the octopus was great and the tongue wasn’t tongue at all and was actually disgusting – it had the consistency of cartilage and was stickier than snot, so it clung to the back of my throat from the entirety of the meal, no matter how much beer I drank to wash it away.
There, I’ve at least temporarily satisfied my desire to tell food stories.
I was Santa last year. Probably the worst ever, but maybe not. Next year it's Macy's for me.Our jobs have been roughly the same since we got here, though our students have changed due to the Korean school year starting in March. In the mornings we have the youngsters. When we started out, Hilary had the really young ones while I had the kids a little older and with a little more English experience. That all ended for me in March. Hilary and I now share the young ones. We have 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds. It was extremely difficult for me at first, partly because I had a handful of kids that cried every time I entered the room. Hilary didn’t have the same problem. Korean kids spend much more time with their mothers than their fathers, so they are much more comfortable with a female teacher, also Hilary’s better with the little guys and girls than I am. Thankfully that has stopped. Actually, the kids are great and while it was very hard going early on, it has gotten much better, so much so that I really enjoy my morning classes (mainly because the kids are funny a lot of the time). Hilary and I share a favorite morning student. His name is Moonie, and he is wild and funny and cute. Hilary wants to take him home with us. I’m including some pictures of him and many other kids.
Maybe I should back up and explain about our school a little bit. We are teaching at an English academy, which means that the school teaches English and nothing else. We have children too young for standard school in the morning (from 10:30 to 2:30) and school agers from first grade through middle school and first year of high school in the evenings (from 3:00 to 7:30).
We have a book or a set of books for each class but have the freedom and necessity to supplement that with almost anything we see fit. The materials we have range from moderately interesting to narcolepsy-inducing. As a result, often I try to work in as much conversation and story telling as possible.
I’m running out of school things. Especially without Hilary here to remind me of things or anyone asking me any questions (if you have any questions, put them in the comments and when I update this next, which will be within the week, I will address them). I don’t want to write everything into this one post because it would be too massive a block of text, so I’m going to split it up some. I’ll try and cover more of our impressions of the country in the next entry. Hope everyone’s doing great wherever you are reading this from. We miss you all.
(Also, uncle Craig and aunt Mia came to visit. It was great to see some family and we had a really good time with them. So, if you two read this, thank you so much for coming to see us. It was great.)
(Also, I must apologize for how scattered this is. I tried to make it as coherent as possible. My next post should be better. And the lack of photos. It was loading really slowly. Another time.)
