12 September 2007
Dear friends,Thank you all for the many questions about how I am doing and all the detailed prodding. Here is a huge outpouring of thoughts and feelings and I will try and add some more soon. It means a lot to me that you care to ask! I have been here since the 6th of September, about seven days in a new time zone. Oddly enough I adjusted a lot of the plane, two days of travel, then, by the time I got here, I only needed about another two to feel comfortable.
I was greeted by my smiling boss, Mr. Park, at the airport in Ulsan who drove me through South Korea's Industrial capital city. The rain had just stopped and the air was cool and fresh enhancing the different vegetation the city has taken great care to plant. Most signs are entirely in Korean, leaving me, "the foreigner" feeling like I am in kindergarten again relying on iconography to know the meaning of otherwise helpful signs. As we pulled into the dirty and narrow street where I work in Deokshin, I could feel the mini van slow down and got a little nervous. The van stopped and Mr. Park told me that the building to our right was my new school and walk around the corner where I saw a red bricked Asian-style house with a bright steel gate and walled yard. The stone walkway led us into my new home, a spacious four room apartment on the lower level of a house. I have a gorgeous kitchen, gas stove and a large extra room I can use as a music studio. The last tenant had bought a piano and left this behind with an acoustic guitar so it is for me to enjoy! I couldn't stop jumping up and down and Mr. Park thought this was pretty amusing. He encouraged me to have a nap and have a beer which he had put in the fridge along with orange juice, bottled water yogurt and other brilliant edible choices. In addition to food, Mr. Park had ready for me basic pots, pans and bowls. The biggest surprise was the rice maker on the counter when I walked into the kitchen. I have a T.V. with cable to use, a couch, bed, ottoman, and bookshelf. There is a washing machine in the bathroom and no shower curtain - many Korean baths are 'wet bathrooms' where there is one drain on a tile floor. Plenty of natural light shines down on the linoleum floor and I have lots of space compared to my last apartment in Montreal.
The school is part of the GnB empire, one of the country's leading private English teaching institution. Korean students go to regular school in the morning, activities afterwards and then they come to English school. The students come here and vary in ages 8 - 17, only that is their Korean age. In Korea, when you are born, you are 1. When they arrive here for the first time, they are given a new English name. We choose this, a practice I thought was extremely odd. A new student in one of my classes had not been given a name and I was given the honour/responsibility of choosing an appropriate name... we chose Thomas which sounded similar his Korean name.
I have met three other "foreigners" one from America, one from Alberta and another from Australia. I am one of four, yes only four, white people in this town and get mixed reactions from the locals. I feel safe and welcome here and lucky to have a boss who is taking such good care of me. Yesterday we drove into the city of Ulsan to get a Korean ID card so I could get a cell phone. He took me to the most expensive department store, the Hyundai store, (where his wife likes to shop) to find a large towel and some other items. The towel was 28,000 won, close to $28 CAD and I had to explain that I did not need such a nice towel. We drove a little further to a more thrifty store and found a more reasonable place similar to Sears or Zellers. I noticed that in the grocery stores Koreans do not buy "normal" coffee supplies. Coffee here is almost exclusively water soluble dehydrated chucks. Before visiting Italy I wasn't really a coffee drinker but apparently the add water and stir stuff is just not cutting it. I have become somewhat of a caffeine snob. I found a French press, cutting board and bath towels for the beach and towels for a make shift ironing board. Things are not cheaper here and contrary to what you might think, electronics are not less expensive, if anything they are more costly.
The other native Korean teachers are very kind and we get to share dinner between classes paid for by the Hogwon, the name for English school in Korea. I have had name tags thrown at me, propeller toys landing on my head and kids who play the repeat e-v-e-r-y word you say because they think it is clever. Gradually, I am learning how to not try and control them but at the same time allow the other students to learn; an admittedly difficult balance. I have also had children give me candy after class, visit with me in the teacher's preparation room and call out enthusiastically to me as I walk outside between the two buildings. The Koreans are very eager and generally very loud. I am using Mom's teaching advice and using actions whenever I can, a pedagogy system she has introduced in Barrie and Wasaga beach for the first time. Most of the children have a great vocabulary and know many nouns when I act them out and laugh at animal noises I make to help them guess. They do need a little work stringing ideas together though!
I am looking forward to a possible trip to Jin-Ha beach near our town on the weekend. Slowly each day I am getting a feeling for what is normal social behaviour and at the moment get a bit of a private yet friendly vibe from the other like-aged staff. Like the French, Koreans don't invite people to their homes. The home is a very private place and gatherings always occur out of the home, similar I suppose to some they way some people interact in Montreal. The difference is this is customary here. I miss all of my close friends like crazy and hope to hear from you any way possible. I am still waiting for a cell phone and home internet connection so I can post photos!
must practice, matthew
