A few weeks ago, my friend and I decided to go to Seoul Forest. It's not much of a forest but a really large park with significantly more trees and grass than the rest of Seoul but it is definitely not a forest. We walked all around and got really hot and really tired but it was a really nice day and the "forest" was quite nice as well. It has many different areas with different features. There is a small lake, a playground for kids, sculptures, a deer corral, and much more!
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Last week, many of the staff members from school and I went to Sejong Village which is near the Gyeongbokgung palace in Seoul. We climbed up the mountain/hill in the area, saw many sights and went to several historical places in Seoul's history. We went to an art gallery/museum, the home of a famous Korean poet, a tiny secondhand bookstore, and ended our night with samgyeopsal or Korean barbeque. Here are some pictures that I took from that day! In my wanderings during one of the last weekends, I ended up at the first Starbucks in Korea. I thought that was kind of neat. I have now been to the first Starbucks in America and the first Starbucks in Korea. Just thought that was kind of fun!
Here's some of the glorious food that I have eaten lately and just neglected to post about. Did I mention that I LOVE food! This was a small part of the lunch that I had with my Korean friend's family. It is a traditional Korean meal that includes a ton of "banchan" or side dishes. There was boiled egg, soybean paste stew, bulgogi (seasoned beef), grilled fish, many vegetables and different kinds of noodles and fried, stir fried, and grilled things. There was soooooo much food! We also had this delicious tea after the meal. It was AMAZING! My badminton club at school is almost definitely better than most badminton clubs because when we get bored or feel lazy, we order in and make food! Some of the teachers in the club made bibim guksu or spicy mixed noodles. That's in the small white bowls. We also ordered in pizza with fries and spaghetti as well as pig's foot. The pig's foot was extremely delicious and not too chewy. It was perfect! The pizza was a shrimp pizza and it also had some cream cheese and sweet potato on it. It was quite delicious even though the description doesn't quite sound delicious (trust me it was!). This was such a good way to spend an afternoon! This last weekend, My friend and I went out to go see a park and we stumbled upon this small art street where all of the shops are inside of shipping containers! We were also hungry so we were looking for food and at the end of this street right across from the park was a busy restaurant inside another shipping container. We thought that that would be a nice place to stop and eat. So we did. And it was. I got a shrimp noodle soup that had shrimp, noodles, and boiled egg mixed in with chopped onions. I also got sparkling water (my love!). As per usual with this style of restaurant where it is more cafeteria style (you order at the counter and get your buzzer and then wait for them to call that your food is ready) the banchan (side dishes) were self serve. There was kimchi and another dish that I'm not sure what it was but it tasted good! Overall, this place was really nice and really delicious. This is one of my Korean food loves! Pat bingsu! This is basically shaved ice on crack! If you think of shaved ice, many people think of snow cones and the crunchy ice with neon syrups. Bingsu is more similar to Hawaiian shaved ice. The ice is actually shaved so that it is extremely thin and melts almost immediately in your mouth. There are also a million topping options for bingsu. This bingsu is pat bingsu because it has pat (pronouced pot) or sweet red beans in it. This bingsu in particular came from a bubble tea shop (Gong Cha) that I LOVE so it had the tapioca pearls in it as well as some shaved almonds and soybean powder and a slightly sweet sauce on top. This was definitely big enough to share so I'm glad I was with my friend to eat it! It was delicious and a wonderful decision on such a hot day! It has been cherry blossom season for a couple of weeks and so there are many different cherry blossom products. Starbucks has cherry blossom flavored and themed drinks and some stores have cherry blossom themed items as well. I saw this soda in the convenience store and thought that I had to at least try it. This is definitely something that I cannot get back home. So I bought it and tried it and didn't hate it. It kind of tasted like a mix between cherry, rose, and strawberry. It was carbonated so that was nice. Overall the taste was okay but I probably won't buy it again. This drink has a bit of a story to it. I went out walking to go to my favorite bubble tea shop near my apartment (Gong Cha). It's about a 15-20 minute walk and it was really hot so I was looking forward to my nice cool Gong Cha bubble tea. When I got to where it was, it was not there. The shop was closed! There was not another Gong Cha nearby so I had to sadly wander for a bit trying to find an alternative. I eventually ended up at Cafe Bene and splurged a little. At Gong Cha, I would usually spend about 4,000 Won or $3.50 on a good sized drink. I bought this fancy schmancy drink with mango sorbet and chunks (because I thought it would look pretty and taste really good and it did) for about 7,000 Won or $6.50. That was an expensive drink but I felt that I deserved it particularly after having walked all the way to the Gong Cha that no longer exists. This was my free tea from finishing the stamp tour at the street museum with my Korean friend's aunt! It was delicious! We also had this amazingly light, fluffy, and creamy cheesecake that this cafe makes in house every day. It was wonderful!
This last weekend, I spent time with the friend I usually hang out with but there was also a special treat in the form of my Korean friend's family! They invited me out for lunch on Sunday (there was way more food than is just in this picture!) and we also ended up going on this amazing stamp/scavenger hunt. Every time I am with my Korean friend's family I am awestruck by how generous and kind they are. They are always extremely kind and helpful. I find that whenever I am with them, it is just like being with family! I'm hoping to meet up with them again before I leave. I can't believe that I leave four weeks from tomorrow and my time at my school is finished three weeks from tomorrow!
Cherry blossom season is quite exciting here in Korea. About a week ago, the cherry blossoms bloomed and they are beautiful! I didn't really realize how quickly spring had come. One day, there were almost no flowers on the trees outside of my school and the next day: BAM Look at all of those flowers!! They are AMAZING. So, to celebrate the cherry blossoms, my friend and I went to Seokchon Lake Park which is near Lotte World, Lotte Tower, and the Lotte department store. This is a man made lake in front of the tower and Lotte world. Lotte Tower actually just opened about two weeks ago and these giant swans in the lake were commissioned for the opening of the tower. It is one of the tallest buildings in the world now. There were TONS of people at the park. It was kind of tough to navigate around but we bobbed and weaved our way around the lake. We ended up in several different places. There were vendors along the walkway selling different things. We bought fake cherry blossom clips to put in our hair and we also got our faces painted! it was glorious! We walked around for quite some time and eventually went to take a break at the mall/department store nearby. We got a late lunch (beef with beef broth and rice, green onion, and kimchi), walked around the ENTIRE mall/department store and came across a random fansigning event for the kpop group Highlight (formerly known as B2ST aka Beast). There were sooooo many people! Eventually, we made it back outside. It was quite dark but the cherry blossoms were lit up so nicely! There were areas lit up with regular lights and an entire section lit up with colors!! It was so pretty! At the end of the night, I was sad to go home but it was such a great day!
In Korea, there is a large population and very little space. This means that there are many apartment complexes with many floors. I live in a small apartment complex and I am on the third floor in this walk-up. My apartment building is one of many in the neighborhood that are all sandwiched together. The streets are also quite small. They can fit about one car! I'm also quite close to a subway station. I am probably a 1 minute walk away from the subway! Overall, my neighborhood is pretty quiet and very chill, even though we are very close to a busy main street. In addition to being heavily populated, Korea likes to stay up late. Many places do not open until the afternoon and they stay open until very late. This means that my night owl tendencies work perfectly here! I usually do get up reasonably early though! I usually have some kind of bread or pastry that I've bought for breakfast. Korean bakeries make this delicious sweet red bean paste filled bread and other delicious pastries that I love to eat!In Korea, there is a large population and very little space. This means that there are many apartment complexes with many floors. I live in a small apartment complex and I am on the third floor in this walk-up. My apartment building is one of many in the neighborhood that are all sandwiched together. The streets are also quite small. They can fit about one car! I'm also quite close to a subway station. I am probably a 1 minute walk away from the subway! Overall, my neighborhood is pretty quiet and very chill, even though we are very close to a busy main street. In addition to being heavily populated, Korea likes to stay up late. Many places do not open until the afternoon and they stay open until very late. This means that my night owl tendencies work perfectly here! I usually do get up reasonably early though! I usually have some kind of bread or pastry that I've bought for breakfast. Korean bakeries make this delicious sweet red bean paste filled bread and other delicious pastries that I love to eat! After this, I walk to my school. It's about a ten to fifteen minute walk depending on the traffic light and how fast I decide to walk up the slightly steep hills of my neighborhood. When I get to my school, I change my shoes into my indoor slippers to avoid getting too much dirt in the school. This is something that every student and every teacher does. It's really neat and it means that I get to wear extremely comfortable shoes all day! I teach a class almost every period. After four periods, it is then lunch time. Lunch is a little different at our school. The school orders the lunch in every day and it is delivered to every classroom. Each class has their own lunch cart that sits in the hallway and near the end of fourth period the carts get filled. We all bring our lunch cart with the different foods on it into the classroom or staff room. There are trays for the food and spoons and chopsticks for silverware. We all serve ourselves lunch from the provided food. Every day is something different but there is always rice, soup, and some kind of kimchi. The other foods could be a protein or a starch or a fruit or vegetable. Sometimes we get special juice or yogurts. It's a delicious surprise every day! We then clean up our cart and put it back into the hallway where the food containers are whisked away to be returned for another day. After lunch, I teach a few more classes and eventually the day ends and I head home. By the time I get home, it is just about dinner time. Now, in Korea, eating out is not too expensive. A lot of times, buying and cooking all of your food can be more expensive than simply eating out. So, I usually go home and then I go out to eat somewhere in my neighborhood. There are MANY places to eat near my apartment. I can always go to the convenience store that is a 30 second walk from my apartment or I can go and get kimbap down the street or ddukbokki and twigim across the street. I can walk a little further and go get naengmyeon or cold noodles. I can even go get Burger King if I want. There are so many options and all of them are delicious! Usually, I'll go out to eat and then depending on how I feel, I will go back home and rest until the next day but sometimes, I go and explore different areas of my neighborhood. In doing this, I've found parks, fun restaurants that I want to try, and small street markets where they sell lots of different foods and goods. It's really fun to see all of the different things that are in my neighborhood!
Now on weekends, when I'm not teaching, I like to go out into Seoul and explore wherever I can. I've been to many different places so far! I've been to Gangnam, Itaewon, Insadong, Hongdae, and Myeongdong which are all different districts in Seoul. I just hop on the subway and go wherever I want. Currently, it's cherry blossom season so this weekend, I'm planning on going out to a few different parks to see the beautiful cherry blossoms in bloom. I have now been in Seoul for about one month. I can't believe that I'm almost halfway done with my program. I've really enjoyed myself so far, and my school and all of the teachers have been amazing! In starting this experience, I was expecting something that was very similar to the experiences I had student teaching in America. I did not quite get what I was expecting. I'm treated more like a full fledged teacher here and it is quite interesting and nice. I also think I'm probably the school's first student teacher so that is pretty special. I think what has surprised me most about this experience is how welcoming everyone has been. Every person in the school is extremely nice, helpful, and welcoming. Everyone from my cooperating teacher to the principal are so kind and helpful. On our of my first days, the other native English speaker in the school who is contracted by the government to teach English and I were eating lunch with the other teachers and we all together decided that it would be great to have a bit of a language exchange. Almost everyday on the white board in our staff room, we write words or phrases in both English and Korean so that we can all learn a bit about each other. Thankfully, I am picking up more and more Korean as time goes on and I'm pretty excited about that. I can order food in a basic way and I can make small comments about things. I'm not good at holding an actual conversation but I can get by alright. Also, thanks to the language we share as a staff, I know a lot of random words and sentences! I can say, "Tomorrow, we will plant flowers." 내일 우리는 꽃을 심을거야 (Naeil oorineun kocheul shimulkeoya)! I've also reached out a few times to people who I know in Seoul and we have been getting together and having a great time! Overall, I'm achieving my goals and this experience is turning out to be what I hoped for and even more!
In being here, I have found that the Korean culture is a very welcoming culture. I was invited to play badminton with the other staff during one of my first weeks here and now I play with them every week! We all eat food together and play badminton in a very friendly environment. Also, as a whole school including students and parents, we planted flowers in a schoolwide initiative to make the school beautiful. I worked with staff members and families just to do something fun and good for the school. Culturally, according to my cooperating teacher, teachers in Korea are viewed as very important and as they are employed by the government, they are taken very seriously. There is less directly visible parent involvement in the school but there is so much support for students and the school from the parents and the community. I think a lot of this experience is enhanced by just saying yes. I trust the people in my school and the people who I work with in my program very much. They have shown that they are very considerate, thoughtful, and generous people who want to help and share their culture with me. Because I have been to Seoul and Korea before, I came into this experience with a few expectations but I maintained a very open mind. I have had an amazing past month or so and I would definitely recommend that anyone considering going abroad go for it and remember to keep an open mind and not be afraid to say yes. Today I'm going to tell you about garbage. Sounds fun right? Well, here in Korea, you can't just go out and buy any old garbage bag. You have to buy the garbage bag that matches where you live. Each city/town/province has its own garbage bag. It's kind of crazy! There's also a special bag for food waste. It's yellow! Additionally, recycling must also be separated out from the garbage but you can put that in whatever kind of bag you want.
Now, there are special garbage bags but there really aren't any dumpster-esque things outside of apartments to put these oh so special garbage bags. You end up just setting them all in a pile on the side of the road or in front of your apartment or wherever everyone seems to be piling them and then they are magically picked up in a day or two. It's really interesting and feels super different from what I am used to in the US. Last Wednesday, we planted flowers at our school! It is a part of the school's mission to make the school beautiful and to keep it beautiful to show pride in both the school and in the community. I was asked to come and help! I was working with many of the students, other teachers, and parents of students at the school to help plant many flowers around the school's front. It was a ton of fun and it was wonderful to see everyone working together and showing so much pride in the school! I can't wait until the flowers grow in a bit. I think it will look absolutely AMAZING!
On a side note, I had a magical moment with one little girl today, who I think is in the second or third grade, when we were planting flowers. She kept coming up to me and the native English speaking teacher and kept saying how she speaks English very well. We both said that she did and she kept wanting to show off to us different things. It was super cute! Eventually, she got onto the topic of Let It Go from Frozen so we sang Let It Go from Frozen and it was magical! This little girl was super adorable and was so proud that she could sing Let It Go in English. It was a lovely experience and is one of the joys of teaching and working with children in general! Korea and umbrellas man . . . Being from the Pacific Northwest, we kind of grow up with the concept of "I don't need an umbrella. That's what a rain coat is for!" It's also often WAY too windy to use an umbrella without it almost immediately turning inside out or breaking. Well, here in Korea, EVERYONE uses umbrellas. It's really weird for me. It's like the exact opposite from the PNW. At my university, we joke that all of the freshmen and the people who are not from the PNW are the ones using umbrellas. Even though it rains all the time, very few people use umbrellas! Using an umbrella can be disastrous and completely ineffective in the PNW.
It rained a decent amount yesterday so I walked to school in my rain coat without an umbrella (I also don't own an umbrella) and I felt like I was getting really funny looks. As I left to go home from my school, without an umbrella, one of my fellow teachers stopped me so that they could go inside and grab an extra umbrella for me to use. It was super nice but also super unnecessary. I did appreciate it however! It was SO NICE!!! I ended up using the umbrella all the way back to my apartment but it felt so weird. I don't think I have used an umbrella in the last four years! When it has rained here, it seems like most people don't wear rain coats and therefore use umbrellas instead. Almost everyone I saw out when it was raining were wearing their usual clothes and jackets and there were few to no rain coats in sight aside from my own. I think if I came from a place where umbrellas were used more frequently then I would be all about using an umbrella but I don't know if I will get used to using an umbrella. I also don't particularly like having to keep track of umbrellas when I'm indoors and worry about not hitting anyone with my umbrella when I'm walking around. When I am using a rain coat, I can be agile and do whatever I want without much worry. Sure, my raincoat will get wet but that's what it's for. At least I'll be dry! Here is a gallery of pictures from the last week or so that I haven't posted blog posts for yet. They will come but I've been a touch busy! They're coming I promise but for now here's a ton of pictures!
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AllisonThese are the chronicles of my time before, during, and after student teaching in South Korea! Archives
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