A Normal Week

Here's what's been happening this week!

• We had some good classes at PNU this week.  We did all sorts of stuff.  On Monday we had an interesting discussion about capital punishment, Tuesday we had a discussion for the first half and played battleships the second half, Wednesday we did Speed Quiz/Price is Right/Scrabble, Thursday we had an awesome cooking class! (we made Chicken Scallopini), and Friday my friend Elaine came in as a guest speaker!  It was a great week.  Only 4 more classes though!
• I also went to Asia's largest department store on Thursday to meet Elaine and get some dinner.  It was pretty cool.  I didn't really do any shopping but maybe I'll go back before I leave Busan later this week.
• CrossFit has been good.  Hard as usual, but I enjoy it!  I think I'm going to get lunch with the instructors and some of our classmates sometime next week before I head out to Suncheon.
• I haven't started practically any lesson plans for next semester.  Ugh.  I have a few ideas including exchanging and actually responding to letters from Soon's all girls high school and doing a unit including shopping, big numbers, food, fashion, and other things that fit in that category.  I really want to try to get more unit based lessons that build off each other.  I was able to a bit last semester, but it was hard with random classes cancelled and things like that so sometimes it seemed a bit jumbled.  
• Ryan is here for the weekend.  I think he's still zonked out right now even though it's like 1 in the afternoon haha.  Whatever.  He didn't seem too pleased with my goshiwon, especially the bathroom and shower facilities haha.  It's definitely not luxury, but it works!  I think I have to move out this Friday or Saturday.  Hopefully I can stay through Friday night, but I guess I could always just stay in a hostel for one night if I need to.

Well I think that's about it.  I haven't really done anything too terribly exciting.  I have no idea what Ryan has planned for today, if anything.  Might go to the sauna since he seems to not want to use our lovely showers here.  We're having dinner later on with a few of our buddies that are here in the city already so that'll be good.  So overall things are good!

The Busan Life

Well I am still here!  I haven't really done a lot of updating as you can see.  I don't really have an excuse to be perfectly honest.  Pretty much just laziness haha.  But hey it's vacation so I can be lazy right?

Even though I haven't really been doing a whole lot of blogging, I have been doing some things so I guess it's more like I have just been lazy at blogging.  Last time we left off, I was hanging out in the goshiwon and getting settled into there.  Since then, I had my mini-vacation within my vacation where I wasn't teaching any classes, but now I'm back to work and resuming my class at the University. 

I guess I'll just give you the highlights of what I have been doing rather than a gargantuan blog post.

• I traveled to Daegu to visit my friend Elaine and help out with her winter English camp at her elementary school.  It was really cool!  I went the night before and stayed with her homestay where we had a nice dinner and got to hang out with her host parents and siblings.  They were really nice and they spoke really good English!  Her siblings are also very good at English even though they are both in elementary school.  In fact, I think her host sister would probably fit right in with the advance class at my high school haha.  She's very smart!
• It was really fun to help out with her winter camp too.  They were doing kind of a food camp and the day I was there, they were dying Easter eggs.  Elaine introduced me as "The Egg Master" since I told her that I am totally into dying eggs and that I still do it regularly which is true.  It was really fun!  Her kids were very well behaved and even though it was a bit messy and got a little crazy at times, it turned out to be a great cultural lesson for them as none of them have ever done it before.  So yeah Daegu was great!  Oh I also got a really nice new winter coat.  It was definitely a lot more than I would normally spend, but it was like more 50% off and it had a really high quality and I know I'll wear it for a long time so it's worth it.
• My wonderful co-teacher, Ms. Jeon, booked my flight tickets over to Jeju for the Spring Fulbright conference!  Yay!!  I'm really excited to finally get over to Jeju.  Jeju is the island off the southern coast of Korea and is frequently called Korea's Hawaii.  Granted it is not nearly as warm, but from what I have heard and seen, it seems to be just as beautiful and has many lovely white beaches.  Unfortunately, I will be there in April so I probably won't be able to enjoy the beach as much as I would like, but I'm not complaining!  I'm really really excited to go to Jeju!
• Along with or invitation to the conference came a survey inquiring about the possibility of renewing our grant.  With Fulbright, you are permitted to renew your grant for up to two additional years, provided that you have performed well enough during your first grant year.  Well, I'm still not 100% sure either way so that's basically how I filled the form out.  Honestly, I'm probably not going to renew, but I'm not completely committed to saying no yet.  If I were to renew, I would change cities and schools.  Suncheon is awesome, but there aren't really any ETAs around as I have mentioned before so I would want to go to a new city.  If I were to renew, I would definitely keep an all-boys high school environment, but I think I would want students that have higher levels of English.  I don't know.  Like I said, I probably won't end up renewing, but I still have to get a little more info about it so we'll see how it goes! 
• And yes, I started my new class at the university!  I actually have two classes now so that's cool!  It's pretty much the same thing as last time, just have a discussion and informal chats.  The biggest difference between this and last class is that I have a budget!! Yay!!!  It's about 400 dollars so I have to spend it wisely.  A good part of it will probably be spent this week towards buying ingredients for a cooking class that I am doing.  I am super stoked for it!!  I think we are also going to go to Norebang/Karaoke and to a Board Game cafe where we can teach each other games and stuff.  I'm pretty stoked. 
• We went out as a class for Valentine's Day.  The first class and I went to a coffeeshop and the 2nd one and I went out for lunch.  It was really fun!  In celebrating V-Day and most of our single-ness, we decided that the topic of the day should be love and relationships in Korea and America.  It was pretty educational and it was fun to be able to talk about it and compare and contrast Korea and America with regard to those things.  
• I have been continuing getting beatings at CrossFit Busan.  I can't believe how much harder it is here!  This week they introduced a new exercise called Hindu Pushups.  It's basically like a push up except you dip down onto the floor and flow back.  I don't really know how to describe it well.  It's like combining "The Worm" dance with push-ups.  For some reason, I just can NOT do them!  I don't know if it's because my upper body strength is like non-existent or if I'm just too uncoordinated or if I have bad balance or what.  It was pretty awful.  He also tried to get us doing more exercises with the Kettlebell but that wasn't really working out because we couldn't get the right form down and he didn't want us to hurt ourselves haha.  
• But I'm starting to get to know everyone there a bit better and they're all super cool.  I was chatting with the owner and he told me that he is leaving in September to go to Dubai to compete in the World Jiu Jitsu Championship.  I guess he got 1st place in the East Asian trials so it's pretty exciting stuff.  He's going to get to fly over there and stay in the famous 7 star hotel there.  He said that he's also entering grad school at PNU this March and he's going to get married in October, on top of all of his training for World's and opening the gym!  It's crazy!!  But yeah, all of them are cool and I'm kind of bummed that I have to leave so soon.
• I've also been able to hang out with some of my Fulbright buddies that have come down here to Busan!  I got to meet up with Payal, Ryan, Adam, Hilary, and Lauren was just here for the weekend.  It's great to be able to see them!  Most of them are all up in Seoul now so I haven't been able to see them as often as I would like, but some of them are starting to make their way down here so I'm super stoked about that!  I'm trying to get them to come to my class, but a lot of them are teaching winter camps and things like that so it's been a little tricky to coordinate, but I think I'll be able to get a couple of them to come in towards the end of this week and some of next week too.

Um I think that's been about it.  That wasn't too bad of a summary.  Short(ish) and covered the things that have happened so it's good enough for me!  I guess if you have questions, you can always send me an email or write a comment or something.  Gosh only like 5 more months left!  It's been a fast one.  Hope things are going well back stateside!

The Move into the Goshiwon

So yesterday I finally moved into the goshiwon.  The place itself is good, but the move was frustrating.  Of course, it happen to be pouring down rain this fine afternoon and I proceeded to soak my suitcase, my backpack, and the bottom of my pants.  It was pretty annoying, but thankfully my suitcase absorbed most of the water and my clothes and other things were spared so I guess I can't be that annoyed. 

When I arrived at the goshiwon and after a call to the lovely May, the owner of the goshiwon came down to greet me and show me around the building again.  She was talking to me in Korean for about 6 or 7 minutes and I honestly understood about 3 words that she said.  I was trying to convey that I had absolutely no idea what she was saying, but I was experiencing little success.  This is one of the many, many times I have wished that my Korean skills were at least semi-existent, but alas, there is very little I could have done in this particular moment.  After some nodding and smiling from yours truly, she seemed content to leave me on my own to unpack and she left.  She is a very nice lady and I know the communication problem certainly isn't her fault, but it's probably the biggest problem that I have encountered living as an expat who can't speak the language.  It is really my fault that I don't know Korean very well since the only time I really studied it was at Orientation so I don't really have a right to complain about not being able to understand people.  I just wish it was easier sometimes.  Oh well!

Then I had to check out of the dorm where I experienced more communication problems when dealing with paperwork.  It was just not that fantastic of a day.  But eventually everything was worked out and I successfully checked in the goshiwon and out of the dorm so that's good.  The only thing now is that I don't have internet at the goshiwon!!  The internet cord just doesn't work and I'm pretty sure it is a problem with the internet and/or cord rather than the computer since I successfully posted this so I guess in a way that's a good thing.  I'm going to tell my buddy May about it, but I'm going to wait until Monday so she can have a weekend off from helping me haha.  And I still have my smartphone so I can send/receive emails and things so I can still communicate with the world so that's good. 

Here's some pictures of my new crib!

I can't actually sit at the desk since my suitcase is under it.  There's no other place for it though!

There's my bed and maybe more importantly, my fan/tie rack!

Where did that handsome guy come from?

Those are actually just nails on the wall that are now part II of my closet!  And there are 3 pairs of pants on that one hanger...you have to be creative in tight spaces!

What else...  Um I had a couple of CrossFit days.  Those got better.  The MMA fighter took over the last two classes I did and they seemed to actually be easier than the other guys.  There's two teachers there and I guess they take turns teaching the Jiu Jitsu and the CrossFit classes.  The other guy is a bouncer at a popular club/bar that he's trying to get me to visit so he's a pretty fit guy too.  But yeah the MMA fighter/owner was a little bit easier, which I was pretty surprised about but no complaints from me!  I was telling him a bit about the differences between his gym and the one I go to in Suncheon and it's interesting to hear why he has his certain style and why he has or doesn't have certain equipment.  I'm definitely learning more about fitness than I ever have in the States.  Didn't really see that coming when I initially came here, but I guess it goes to show you that you should just expect the unexpected over here!

Okay well I think that's about it for now.  I'm attempting to plan a zipline adventure at Jeju Island sometime this month too.  I've really been looking to go to Jeju for some time, but it's hard to coordinate with school so hopefully I'll be over to go!  If not, I know that I'll be there for sure in late March/early April with the Spring Fulbright conference.  I also ran into one of my PNU students at the coffeeshop and we're going to hang out sometime next week.  Maybe go shopping for some Korean clothes! :)  I've noticed that Korean clothes fit me a bit better than most American clothes so hopefully I can get some good things before I leave.  I would really like to get a suit sometime since the ones in America were almost all too baggy on me and I didn't want to go to a tailor.

Anyways, I'll post again soon, hopefully in my goshiwon so I don't have to use the wifi from the coffeeshop!  Have a good one. 

A Vacation within a Vacation

Hello world!  This marks the first week of my vacation within my vacation, which means I have a 2 week break from my winter internship!  It's pretty exciting but I'm a little sad at the same time since I really enjoy having the classes and getting to know the students and Korean culture as a whole.  But it is nice to wake up and have the freedom to just do whatever I want with no obligations. 

So what have I been doing?  Well on Tuesday I ventured out to the CrossFit facility that I recently discovered to see what it was about.  Apparently it is really new and there aren't a ton of members yet.  I might even be the first non-Korean member!  I don't really know for sure since I haven't gone during all the different hours but it could be a possibility.  Anyways I walked in and a couple of guys greeted me and started telling me about the gym.  It's a half Jiu-Jitsu half CrossFit gym that's owned and ran by an MMA fighter who is probably the most ripped Korean I have ever seen.  He looks really young too so I was pretty surprised to learn that he was the owner of the gym, but then again most Koreans look pretty young to me. 

So I signed up and went to the 7:00 class that night.  Unfortunately, there isn't a little uniform they provide like the gym in Suncheon so I have to bring my own clothes and then do my own laundry and all that, but it's not a biggie.  The gym itself is actually pretty empty too.  Just some medicine balls, kettlebells, and some stretching equipment.  It's pretty much just a big open space which is a lot different than the gym in Suncheon.  There you have some weights and benches and a rowing machine and a few other things so I was a little surprised but whatever.

Then we get to the warm up.  There's only 3 of us in the particular class I am in and we go in full force right away.  He has us run about 1/2 mile, do a bunch of bear crawls, some crab walks, jumping things and a few other things I haven't done at Suncheon.  It was a much longer warm up than I have ever done.  Then we did the workout.  We had to do 50 up downs/burpees, 100 push-ups, and 150 squats.  Ugh.  In Sucheon, the owner divides the workout into 4 or 5 levels and you pick the one that works best for you.  Not here!  It's the hardest level for everyone!  Yesterday's workout was even worse, especially the "warm-up."  And it focused largely on arms which made for a difficult workout for me since my arms aren't really all that strong.  He had us do burpees, kettlebell swings (with 20kg kbs...I usually only use 12kg!), and pull-ups.  And to "strech" at the end, he made us hang from the pullup bars for 30, 20, and 10 seconds.  I couldn't even go today because my triceps felt completely shot.  It was a struggle to even lift my arms above my head haha.  I was in my dorm room and I was going to try to do a thing where you drop down to the ground and do a push-up but I knew that just was not going to end well so I relented and I gave myself a rest today.  It's definitely going to be an intense month, but I think it'll be good.

Tomorrow I move into the goshiwon!  I think I'm excited for it.  I'm definitely going to miss having a bathroom in my room, but it'll be nice to have my own space.  It'll be a hall bathroom that I share with the other students in my hall.  But yeah I'm thinking I will like it.  I know a few of my friends are already in their goshiwons in Seoul and they seem to like it.  And I'll get to sleep with the fan on!  My roomate doesn't like to and always turns it off if I have it on so that'll be nice.

Today I got a haircut!  I was so overdue for one.  It was getting all curly and nasty at the ends and I've been meaning to for a while, but just never got around to it.  So I downloaded a pic of myself on my phone that had my hair at a length that I desired and just showed it to the barber and he did his work.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  But really, most anything was an improvement over what I had haha.  And it's only like 5 dollars for a cut so I can't complain!

I'm also trying to plan for my next 3 week class.  I'm thinking of different ideas and things to do with them outside of the class.  I have a little syllabus made, but I don't really have anything planned out day by day or any of that yet so I think I'll do that next week.  Also I have to go on my recruiting spree to get guest speakers for my class!  I'm also going to experiment and see if I can get a Skype thing going so I can recruit my stateside pals to join us, but I'll have to see about that. 

I suppose that is about it.  I only have like 5 and a half months left here in Korea.  Hard to believe last year at this time I learned that I was a finalist in the Fulbright competition.  I'm still surprised that I got it haha. Okay well I'll try to keep the posting more regular and I'll catch you all later. 

Have a good one.

PNU Class Update Part 4! Finally all caught up!

Yay! Final update!  Now I can tell you the whole reason as to why I came to the lovely city of Busan, home of 3.4 million people which makes it the second largest city in Korea and easily the biggest city I have ever lived in.  So way back in October, the lovely crew at the Fulbright Korea office in Seoul  gave us a big list of various internship opportunities that were made available to all of us fantastic Fulbrighters.  At this time, I had no plans whatsoever for my 2 month vaca from school so I figured I should start making some and I contacted a couple of the people that were listed on the website, one of those being Professor Pore of Pusan National University(PNU)!

So after I sent out my resume to him, he emailed me to set up an interview to talk about what I would do.  I traveled to Busan on Wednesday afternoon (the only time that would work out between my school schedule and his university schedule).  Surprise, surprise, I got lost on my way to meet him and ended up being about 45 minutes late.  After several apologetic emails and explanations of how this is only my first time really visiting the city (the only time prior was spent in the bus terminal after the Fall Conference frantically trying to locate my wallet that basically contained my life. If you didn’t catch that gem of a story, it’s somewhere in the archives of this blog), we sat down to discuss what the responsibilities of the internship was.

Essentially, I was going to become a visiting instructor teaching an English conversation class and extra-curricular class where we can go around the city and experience the culture of Busan.  I wouldn’t get paid since Fulbright and our visa strictly prohibits any sort of payment outside of our assigned schools, but that’s okay since Fulbright is paying us during vacation anyways!  We both seemed happy with the situation so we agreed that I would come to PNU and teach a class or two to some university students.  I was pretty stoked about this since PNU is one of the best universities outside of Seoul and the students generally have a very high level of English so it would really be a great learning experience for me in terms of being able to communicate with Koreans about Korean culture in a language I can understand.

As you saw from my misadventures last post, I finally arrived here the second week of January and have been here ever since!  It’s a great city and I’m a little jealous of the Fulbrighters who get teach here.  Maybe I should have requested an urban setting after all!  But I actually really like living in Suncheon and I love the school I’m at, but still Busan is pretty neat.  Anyways, I discovered that 18 students signed up for my class and it was for 2 hours, 10-12 on Monday-Friday.

So first day of class, we just did the introductions and everything.  I wrote a syllabus so we went over it.  I even had a class name!  It was “Merging Language and Culture: A Global Studies Enrichment.”  Doesn’t that sound nice and fancy?!  So yeah I had about 15 students the first day and we did introductions aka played Trainwreck.  If you don’t know that game or remember my description, I went into detail about it on Update #1 so you can check it out there!  They all liked that and then afterwards, I made them take me on an English tour of the campus because I totally got lost on the way over the building where the class was held (in my defense, it is pretty isolated from the rest of campus!!).  But it seemed like a good first class so I was happy.

Ever since then, we pretty much just have discussions about current events or issues or just how our day is.  We had a lot of talks about comparing the Korean and American education systems but we covered everything from societal views of beauty (particularly Korea’s huge amount of plastic surgery and child beauty pageants in the US) to the student’s upcoming trip to Australia.  And we played a few games here and there like Price is Right and Scattergories which was always pretty fun.  They were really surprised by some of the prices of things in America compared to Korea.  They generally guessed everything being way, way over which disqualified them of course (after a few tries, they started using the whole 0.99 cent pricing but no one just did the whole one dollar tactic that many scheming Price is Righters do..). 

But the class has been great.  It’s been cool to get their perspective on a variety of issues and really be able to get a Korean viewpoint on things.  Up to this point, I haven’t really been able to, except with my co-teacher.  I would ask my students, but their levels aren’t really all that high and I’d probably only be able go a little deeper into issues with the top 15 or so students and that’s if they aren’t feeling shy or tired and it’s a similar situation with my homestay family (plus the children are still pretty young).  So I’m actually probably learning more than they are. 

And I’ve had a few guest speakers some in!  They have been fantastic!!  My Fulbright friends Ammy and Brittany have both come over lead discussions and participate in the class and the students all really liked them.  It’s good to have a fresh perspective from a variety of people since I obviously don’t represent all of America’s ideas and opinions.  One student, Su, even hosted Ammy at her apartment since Ammy doesn’t teach or live in Busan.  I hope to have even more Fulbrighters come in now that most of them are returning to the country from their international travels.  But a lot of them are going to hang out in Seoul and take language classes or do internships up there so we’ll see!

I don’t know what else to write about for the class.  I think that’s pretty much it.  I could go into certain discussions I suppose, but it would be pretty long and I don’t remember 100% of everything that we talked about.  Well, I’m going to do another class in two weeks and actually there’s going to be two sections, a morning one and an afternoon one since the professors anticipate a bigger crowd with new students entering the program so hopefully I’ll have big, full classes!  Well, not too big, but I wouldn’t mind more than the usual 9-10 that generally came.  But a lot of them work or like I said were going to Australia and this is a class that’s free to them so I can understand their not coming.  But it would be nice to have a more consistent crowd!

I don’t want to leave this warm coffee shop and go out into the cold.  It’s actually not too terrible.  It’s like 30 degrees.  It’s actually one of the warmest parts of Korea, but I’m always cold so it’s usually not warm enough haha.  At least there’s no snow!  That’s one of the perks of living in Busan to Seoul is the lack of snow!  My students keep telling me that the only reason Busan has so many people in it, is that all the old people come here.  Maybe it’s the Florida of Korea?  Sunny, warm and a relatively high senior population.  But, I don’t really see it since I live in the University area.  There’s lots of young people here but most of them still don’t talk to me haha.  But I’ve really only interacted with my students since I’m not taking any classes myself or doing the gym(until now..hopefully) but whatever.  Now that I have more time, maybe I’ll be able to meet a few more people.  I’ve talked to a couple around the university, but since it’s winter break, most students aren’t here so it’s a little empty.  But I’m enjoying the downtime so I’m not complaining!

I get to sleep really late tomorrow since I don’t have class.  I’m also checking out the CrossFit gym that I FINALLY found!  I’m soooooo stoked!  It’s like a ten minute walk from my dorm/will be goshiwon!!!  I think the reason why I didn’t see it is that it has a big Jui Jitsu sign on the front and there’s a small Crossfit sign over on the side.  I’m so annoyed it’s taken me this long to find it.  I learned about it the first day of class and three weeks later I finally found it.  No one really knew about it so I couldn’t ask them.   The one guy told me about it but he only knew about it through a friend and then he only showed up the first day of class and I’ve never seen him since.  Brittany is actually friends with him and she thinks he might be prepping for his upcoming military service.  But I’m going to investigate it tomorrow.  I hope it’s CrossFit not Jui Jitsu.  I’m a little concerned that they’re going to completely kick my butt, especially since I haven’t had a really solid beating since CrossFit Suncheon, 4 weeks ago.  But as the famous and wise Mrs. Shim/Jim McFadden once said “If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing!”  Apparently that’s a google search term that people used to find this blog haha. 

Okay, I’ve put it off long enough.  I have to brave the cold and head out.  See you later blogging world!!