Wow. What a jam-packed ten days it has been. It has been pretty eventful from the get go from nearly missing my flight to Kuala Lumpur (where I stopped over for seven hours, got some delicious local food in, crashed a birthday party and then had a four-hour delay to Busan) to completing an intense eight-day orientation schedule with EPIK, the program I'm working for in Korea (more on that below), to now - where I am finally settled into my new apartment with food, water, kimchi and a rough idea of what the next year is going to look like.
Let me get to the most important details first: where am I?!
I have been placed in a rural town called Geumsan (금산) where the population is approximately 60,000 strong. It is famous for being the ginseng capital of Korea and even has a worldwide ginseng expo happening in a few weeks. I'm not really a huge fan of ginseng (or anything herbal really) but hey, I'll support my local town.
I'll be honest - when I found out I was going to a rural province, I immediately pictured cows, farms, lots and lots of trees and a straw hut. But Geumsan, while it may be in the countryside, is definitely not the picture I just painted (thank goodness!) When I think about it, in some ways it reminds me of my hometown of Adelaide. It's unassuming, slow-paced but still busy without the skyscrapers and bright flashing lights of bigger cities. The town has a downtown area with quite a few restaurants, popular cafe chains, a supermarket and your typical Korean clothes stores and make up stores. I live in the more suburban area of the town which is pretty quiet and peaceful. Hopefully I'll be able to explore the town a bit more as I settle in and show you what it looks like!
I'll talk more about my schools and my students in my next post as I'm still not entirely sure how it's going to happen yet. I visited my main school, Buri Elementary School, this morning and met all my students - all 33 of them - and will greet my second school, Namil Elementary School, tomorrow. I have to say though, I am so happy I got elementary school. Younger kids are the best.
Now quite a few of you have asked me what the EPIK orientation is like so I thought I'd do a brief review. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be intense. I had read other people's blogs about how busy the schedule would be but it's so different when you experience it yourself. All teachers arrive on the Sunday before orientation begins so as to familiarise themselves with the dormitory building, the amenities and hopefully make some friends before the week starts. Our orientation was held at the Busan University of Foreign Studies. It was such a beautiful campus and you could see green, lustrous mountains from every part of the university. I'll definitely miss having such a breath-taking view from my room but will not miss that dreaded uphill climb from the bottom of the university to our dormitory building.
Once the orientation week begins, it is non-stop all day everyday. Teachers are divided into classes of about 30 people and we are expected to show up to every class and every lecture. Classes and lectures start at 9AM each morning and are related to teaching English as a foreign language - becoming familiar with the English curriculum in Korea, how to manage a classroom, how to prepare a lesson, benefits of cooperative learning and so on. The lectures are full on but EPIK does a great job in finding engaging and fun lecturers. We also had Korean classes after dinner until 8:30 at night. This was the best part of the orientation, in my opinion. My Korean teachers were so much fun and really tried to make the lessons relevant. They covered all sorts of vocabulary but we mainly focused on........blind dates. If you know anything about Korea, you'll know that going on blind dates is the thing to do and for people to set up for you if you're single. It's so common for people who have never met you before to ask if you're single and if you want them to set you up with someone. So yeah, we covered a lot of that.
During the middle of the week, we were taken out on a field trip to some of Busan's tourist attractions. This was a very welcome break from the gruelling schedule and we enjoyed some of the gorgeous views of Haeundae Beach, the Nurimaru APEC House, the United Nations Memorial Cemetery and the Busan Museum. Haeundae was a lot smaller than I imagined. For such a famous beach, it really was probably the size of Bronte Beach in Sydney. It was, as I said before, gorgeous though. The day we went was a hot, sunny day but once you reached the beach, you could feel the cool, slightly salty and fishy wind blowing onto your face. The United Nations Memorial Cemetery was also a surprisingly poignant addition to the tour. We watched a video on the history of Korea, the wars it went through and the camaraderie between soldiers from all different nations. Not gonna lie, I got a bit teary when thinking about sacrifices all those soldiers made for their country and for the people now living as well.
At the end of the orientation week, there is an assessment piece. Teachers are put into groups of two or three and must prepare and present a lesson plan to one of the lecturers. We were given about 90 minutes of class time during the week to prepare the lesson with our group and then the rest of the time was up to us to figure out when we would meet and work on it. This was, in my opinion, probably the most stressful part of the week. We were already having classes until 8:30 PM every night and then expected to plan a 40 minute lesson (in a group!) to present.
Orientation week ends with a closing ceremony (there's an opening ceremony too) and Kpop dance and song show. Despite the hectic schedule and stressful assessments, I really enjoyed the EPIK orientation. I had an amazing roommate who was there to listen to me gripe and complain (and also griped and complained with me) about all the stuff happening, met some great friends who have also been placed in the same city and province as me and got to re-experience the easy lifestyle of a Korean dormitory student.
So anyway, that's a very basic look on what's been happening the past few days. It's only been a week and a bit but it honestly feels like a whole month has gone by. In the meantime, follow me on my Instagram www.instagram.com/lamdotdot and my Instastories for more live action!
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