Happy (Belated) Pepero Day!

Yesterday was Pepero (빼빼로) Day. Some in the US of A complain about Valentine’s Day being made up by marketing companies, well Pepero Day is like that. Except even more so. Pepero are these skinny wafer sticks covered in chocolate and sometimes nuts. They’re basically Korean Pocky, if you’re familiar with that. And since if you lay them next to each other, they make the number 11, the Lotte company that makes Pepero decided that 11/11 should be Peppero Day, when people give each other Peppero. (Lotte denies they actually started it, but I have my suspicions.)

I’m actually kind of bummed I’m missing out on 11/11/11, but I’m not staying another full year just for that.

Anyway, I was debating if I want to celebrate this day with my students, since I didn’t want to spoil them by giving them all Pepero and even if it is really cheap, buying a box for my 32 students  who I teach today would add up. But for the past few weeks, I’ve been having them get into teams to do their work, so instead I gave a box to the team with the most points by the end of class. A reward for participation and good behavior. Yes, bribery.

Annyong from Suwon!

I’m writing this post from my apartment in Suwon and very much enjoying the feel of the ondol as it warms up. I don’t know how frequently I’ll be posting until I officially get an internet connection, since the wireless connection I’m using is pretty unstable.

I’ve been in Suwon since Friday. My first opinion of the city: it’s cold. Really cold. But more seriously, I like it. The area I’m living/working in is Yeongtong, which is the newest section. The two guys who came here with me from training and I have just been wandering the city, enjoying the many, many places to eat (we’ve pretty much decided Koreans love eating out, and that’s just fine with us) and taking in all the bright lights. It’s not as big or fast as Seoul, at least not the area we’re in, but I like it that way. I don’t think I’d want to live and work in Seoul, it’s just too much. But Suwon is close enough that I can visit on the weekend.

Okay, so my apartment. The one major downside: my washer is broken. The upsides:

1. I was moved in immediately (although I don’t know who’s paying for it…)
2. It’s well-furnished (I have two fridges!)
3. I have hot water! (the guys do not…)
4. It’s about 5-10 minutes from Chung Dahm and from Homes Plus
5. My walls/floors are not bubbly
6. And the only thing that was stinky was the comforter I was given and I just Febreezed that.

The last two things on that list are related to this: One of the guys was moved into the most unfortunate apartment. It. Smelled. Foul. I can’t remember exactly how the smell ended up being described but it was something like a mix of dirt, fecal material, possibly BO and something else. Anyway, it was not a pleasant smell. So we popped over to Home Plus as soon as we could and he bought a ton of cleaning supplies and incense. It smells a lot better now but apparently a large chunk of the smell is coming from his kitchen sink, so it looks like he has to get some Drain-O or something. And as if the smell wasn’t enough, his walls and the laminate of his floor have huge bubbles in them. I don’t know who lived in that apartment before him, but I’m really glad the only thing I have to deal with is a broken washer.

I’m actually really pleased with my apartment. It’s just the right size and the location is really great for me. I have to get some decorations in here though because my walls are basically white. But decorating will not be on my list of things to do until after I get paid.

Tomorrow I get to observe one of the classes I’ll be teaching. And then I get to teach that class twice on Tuesday. So soon!

Hey Readers,

You’ll never guess what happened to me on the subway this morning. This guy was smiling at me and he took my class binder from me and he was being reeeeal friendly. And I think he might have thought that I was – But wait! I’ll get to that later!

So today was our first day of real, nitty-gritty training. We were bused to the training center again and broken up into groups according to what levels we’ll be teaching. I’m teaching Eagle level, which is the 3rd highest. There are 2 other people in my reading class and 1 more in the listening class. The other groups seem to have more people, except for the group that’s learning to teach the lowest level (E-Chip), which only has two people. There are a ton of people for April English, which is the school for the very beginning students, but they’re on a completely different track than us and have their own leveling system. There are a lot of levels in Chung Dahm.

Classes were pretty straight forward. In the reading class, we were introduced to the reading class curriculum and shown how to teach the first hour of it. In the listening class, we were introduced to the listening class curriculum and shown how to teach the first hour. They went over a lot of information and honestly I should probably be preparing for tomorrow instead of writing this blog, but I wanted to have some fun time before I got back to serious work. Tomorrow we have to present mock teaching sessions based on the chapters they provided us in our training manuals and we need to prepare for the mock teaching tonight. One of our teachers said we should expect to prepare for at least 7 hours… Which is crazy because if we started now, we’d basically be up passed midnight. Crazy.

But now for the fun part of the day.

We had directions on how to take the Seoul subway back to the hotel but unfortunately the group of us that was going back together got on the train going the wrong direction (a rookie mistake!). So we got all kinds of confused and turned around for a few minutes, but it ended up being fine. We just got off a couple stops later and got back on.

About one stop from our station, this elderly couple got on the train and the man sits in the empty seat beside me. I had been sitting down, so I gave my seat to the woman. And as I’m standing there in front of them, the man reaches out and takes my binder, with all my class material in it, and my subway map. He was kind of smiling about it so I thought maybe it was some kind of joke. By this time, everyone else is watching because not only does he not give it back but he places it very carefully under the shopping bag he was carrying and he half-bows to me. Which was very confusing. I started looking around at the others on what to do but everyone was just kind of like ‘Whaaaa?’ Luckily, one person knew what was up. She said that it’s polite to hold the things of people who are standing if you’re sitting. Which was just so very nice of the elderly man. And we all very enthusiastically chorused him with 감 사 합 니 다 (gamsahamnida -thank you) when we got off.