So I survived my first official week on my own in Busan and already there is so much that's happened that I want to write about, so bare with me if this post is a little all over the place. I'll start with the obvious. I've been placed at an Elementary school called Deoksang and the district of Sasang-gu. I'm pretty much directly west of the center of the city and the beaches by about 30-45 minutes depending on the area. I already love my school! It's fairly small for public school in a metropolitan area, only about 600 kids. I've been told that my classes will only have between 25-30 students, which is great because at orientation they told us to be prepared for up to 50 students in a class. I have my own classroom that is solely an English classroom in the all English wing of the school. It's adorable and really cool that I have my own space in the school. I will only be having three different co-teachers, which is also really nice because again, at orientation we heard stories of having up to 20 different co-teacher's in one school. It'll be nice to feel little more on the same page with everyone and not have to worry about dealing with so many different teaching styles. The first day of the new school year here was Friday but there isn't much to report. None of the kids actually had classes, it was just for them to meet there new homeroom teachers and have an opening ceremony. I spent pretty much the whole day sitting at my desk in my classroom, on facebook and gmail. I attempted to be productive and make a powerpoint to use this week in class to introduce myself to the students, however, the ppt on my school computer was only in Korean...wah wah.
But even more then my school, I'm sure you're wondering what my apartment is like. It's small. Small but very liveable. I have a pretty decent size bathroom, that does not include a washing machine or any other appliances (like some here is Korea do), so that's very exciting. In fact, I have a little "laundry room" behind my bathroom. And then the rest of my apartment I guess could be classified as a studio. It's just one, medium sized room with a kitchen area on one wall and my bed across the room on the opposite wall. My apartment came furnished with: a mini-fridge, a small eating table and chair, two little stools, a dresser and mirror, a wardrobe, a desk with shelves, a TV, and a twin sized bed. In addition, the previous teacher who lived here also left me with a microwave, a small counter top oven, dishware, cooking stuff (like a wok, pot, baking pans), a rice cooker, a blender, and a mixer! I was hoping this would be the case, however, many of my friends apartments didn't come complete with all the home appliances...then again, they all got placed on the beach, so I don't feel to bad that they'll have to purchase to few more things. Anyways, for a small place, my apartment has decent space, I don't feel totally crammed. And an added bonus, I live in walking distance of everything I need, including my school and the subway- again, not everyone was so lucky. Although, I was a little disappointed with my placement initially, there are a lot of upsides to my living situation that others don't have.
While I feel like I'm settling in ok, Korea is definitely not what I expected. I couldn't tell you exactly what I was expecting, but I know that this isn't quite it. I think so much mystery still remains about Asia, and because of that I had built up this exotic place in my head. Korea is certainly
exotic, but in a much different way than I imagined. One of the most surprising things so far has been the very low level of English most Koreans seem to have. I know that's the whole reason I'm here, to teach authentic English, and I know that English is not this nations second language, but still, I didn't expect it to be so poor. Pretty much no one over the age of 30 can speak more then a few simple words or phrases in English unless they are part of the major business world. When I get lost or need help with something, I immediately look for kids who look to be in middle school or high school because they have the highest English skills. I'm going to have excellent miming skills by the end this year because so far that's been the best method of communication. But there is really no way I can go the whole year without learning Korean. I so miss the ability to seamlessly communicate with those around me. Lining the sidewalks around my house and on my way to school are so many vendors that I would love to be able to form a relationship with. Everyone is very friendly and is as accommodating to me as they can be, but it'd be so much easier to just learn Korean. However, even though the older generations lack English skills and avoid using what little they know, the young kids take every opportunity to practice theirs. I'm definitely the only white person in my immediate area, so you can imagine that I stand out a bit when walking down the street. But I see a lot of the kids that go to my school walking around and every time they see me they say hello! They always ask my name and where I am from. Plus, they are seriously adorable!
Coming back to my first impressions though, I think I am also really surprised at how developed Korea is in some respects. I realize that I'm in a major city and that being in the country would probably present a more traditional lifestyle. But it somehow feels like parts of this society are even more western then we are. I'm sure you're all wondering what I mean by that so let me try and break it down. First of all, South Korea is about the size of Indiana, but has the population of Texas and California combined. Now consider that almost 70% of the country is covered by mountains and they have almost no natural resources. However, South Korea is the 13th largest economy in the world. For that to happen, be maintain, and continue to grow, the level and rate of development has to be so high and so fast. We were told this story during orientation: a couple teachers left their apartment one morning to go out and on their way they passed a store/building that they considered to be heavily under construction. When they came home that evening, not only was the construction finished, but the store was open for business. To me, even as a westerner, not only is that completely impressive, but it's also shocking. Because this is the way society works, everything is "bali-bali", which here means hurry hurry, is the reason I say it feels even more western then home. The times that I've been out on adventures through the city, I find that I'm constantly reminding myself to look up because to one building are at least 5-7 different establishments.
This has been a pretty long post so far, but hopefully an interesting one. There are just a couple more fun facts I want to through is here, some that highlight some of Korea's lack of development and some that are just interesting. First, it's not uncommon at all to find squatting toilets here. Yep, just a porcelain hole in the ground with a flusher next to it. Lucky for me, these are the only kind of toilets at my school. You can't drink the tap water here. If you do, you should boil it first but it's recommended that you just buy bottled water from the store. We talk a lot about taking clean water for granted at home (especially where fracking is concerned), but here that's a reality. They eat everything here. The other night we ordered a seafood dish for dinner and got dirty looks for peeling the skins off of shrimp and not eating what looked what looked like little brains of some animal. However, I was a fan of the octopus. They don't use driers for laundry. Everything is dried either outside or on a drying rack. I did my first couple loads of laundry today...more then one load is too many, there's no room to dry it all. It is considered very inappropriate for girls to wear any kind of low cut shirt here. However, it is totally acceptable, in fact encouraged, to wear the shortest skirts and shorts. Also, it's very frowned upon for girls to smoke in public. At orientation, a Korean man slapped a girl across the face for smoking outside the dorms...I thought that was hysterical. And the last thing I swear, corporal punishment in the classroom was just made illegal only two years ago, and it's still very common for teachers to use it. I truly hope that that is not a situation I encounter. If you're still reading, thanks for hanging in there! I'll try not to wait so long before I update the blog again. Love and miss you all!
