Smiling & Waving Prohibited

My wife is taking the day off and she asked me to write about my experiences so far. I think she has viewed this blog as more of a collaboration than a solo act. Only time will tell which one of us is mistaken.

It has definitely been an interesting experience so far, and much different than my time in Japan (for those interested, I’ll flush out the differences in more detail later). I really haven’t done much in class yet. I just sit off to the side and observe…occasionally adding in a comment or two. It hasn’t been the most exciting. I’m actually looking forward to teaching next week. I’ve introduced myself to each class and they’ve all gotten the opportunity to ask me some questions. Since their English is quite low, the number of questions I’ve received has been somewhat limited. Almost every class asks me: my age, birthday, if I speak Korean and whether I have any children. Most ask how tall I am, some have asked my weight, and one even asked what I thought of the kid sitting beside him (his neighbour got him back however, by asking me if I thought his friend was silly).

In my spare time between classes I’ve been researching where to travel within Korea. Korea is quite a bit smaller than I expected and therefore almost all points of interest are within reach. Even Busan (Pusan) is only a two and a half hour trip on their Bullet Train equivalent. I had thought of perhaps visiting the DMZ in the near future (though they needed our passports to get our alien cards, so we won’t be able to visit until we get them back). I’ve heard it is a very interesting tour. It sounds like it only costs around $35 each for the day trip. Not too bad for a trip into a potential war-zone… The website noted that there were some special rules for people partaking in the DMZ tour. My favourite of which was “No waving, talking, gesturing or smiling to the North Korean army”.

I’ve actually been enjoying the food. I think my digestive system had a much harder time adjusting to the fish diet I encountered in Japan that it has to the spicy food of Korea. We get served lunch at school ($2.50 a day is removed from our payment) and I’ve been enjoying it. To clarify, I’ve been enjoying the food. Not the lunches in general. At my school lunch consists of the specialty teachers (3 English, 2 Physical Education and 1 Science teacher) eating together in the administrative offices. The Administration makes themselves scarce for about 30 minutes while we eat (I have no idea where they go, or why we eat in their office – perhaps because it is fairly large?). It takes me about 10 minutes to eat, and then I sit listening to the other teachers speak in Korean to each other for about 15-20 minutes. None of them speak English overly well (not even the two English teachers). It seems like it is impolite to leave before the oldest teacher is ready to go, so we sit there until they stand up to leave. Then the younger teachers clean up and wheel the food kart away. It is an interesting process. Though probably better than eating in a cafeteria full of screaming kids (the kids actually eat in their homeroom class – not much of a break for the Homeroom teachers).

For the most part I’ve been eating more at lunch and having smaller dinners. That might change as we discover foods and restaurants that we like in the area. Also, once we get our kitchen sorted out I suspect we’ll be more inclined to have larger meals than what we’ve been eating so far.

For those of you awaiting some photos, Meg will most likely post some tomorrow. We’re hoping to venture into Seoul on the extended weekend (It’s a 5 day weekend for us – sadly, it’s come too early for us to make good use of it) and I’ll be sure to take numerous photos there. I’ll try and post them next week.