Christmas In Korea

Christmas is over, and I survived. I have been worried about being away from home for Christmas since I decided to come to Korea. Christmas has always been a big deal for me - the whole season, not just the day, so I was anticipating that it was going to be a difficult time for me over here. I was pleasantly surprised to have a nice holiday. It was still hard at times. I missed the big build up this month - Christmas is not a big holiday in Korea, so there are nowhere near the amount of lights, songs, movies, etc. that there are at home. It's ironic that I used to complain about being over-Christmased at home given how much I missed it this year. Being away from the family was the hardest part. It's amazing how many small rituals you take for granted: our hors d'oeuvre dinner on Christmas Eve, watching DVDs all Christmas day, visiting Grandma and Grandpa... We never did anything I had considered "special" for Christmas, and it all ended up being painful to be away from! School activities made things more bearable. We had caroling contests for our elementary students on Wednesday and a full day of kindergarten activities on Christmas Eve. I also snuck in a lot of Christmas games into my lessons - more for my benefit than the kids. Anna, Danielle and I have also been having Christmas themed movie nights every Tuesday to keep us in the spirit.

Thank god for Skype. I was able to spend Christmas morning (and about seven other times these last few days) with the family that way. It ended up being pretty close to my typical Christmas mornings, just via computer. They even put the laptop next to the Yule Log on TV at Grandma and Grandpa's, so I was able to sit next to the fireplace while I opened presents. I was spoiled, given how much mom and dad have already given me to help me get ready for/settled into Korea. I got a little teary thanks to a calendar they made full of family photos (which is going up on my wall first thing on January 1st), but the tears only lasted a few minutes and I focused on the fun day I had planned. Grandpa is now hooked up on Skype so he can join in the video conferencing merriment.

The ECC crew, plus friends, got together for brunch at Natalie's (she's the one who went to high school down the road from me). We ate lots, in the true spirit of Christmas, and drank the remaining homesickness away with mimosas. Next came shopping at PNU (Pusan National University). Nothing is closed on Christmas here. The streets were packed with people - Christmas is a big couples holiday here, so there were many coordinated outfits. I bought a dress for work/maybe New Years for 25 dollars. Next we headed to meet up with everyone again for Christmas dinner. Katie and her friend Lauren came too, which was nice. The Seaman's Club is located right on the pier which made for a sketchy cab ride. There was a ton of food at the buffet and I ate WAY too much. They had everything a Christmas feast should have, except for perohe. Oh well. The turkey coma set in and a few of us went back to Natalie's for movies and cards. I learned to play euchre for the eightieth time and hopefully it will stick this time around.

I spent most of Boxing Day the way I usually spend Christmas Day - in my jammies watching movies. I incorporated as many of my gifts as possible: I watched Grey's Anatomy while knitting and eating peanut butter cups, wearing my necklace and the socks mom knit with breaks for reading magazines.

We were supposed to go to see Sherlock Holmes last night, but it was sold out. We hit up a noraebang instead. Noraebangs are karaoke clubs. For fifteen dollars, we got a private room for an hour to rock out to the biggest song catalogue I have every seen. There are couches and pillows, a big flat screen and a built in light show with every song. There is a nice reverb on the microphones, so even horrid singers like me sound okay. When you are done singing, the computer gives you a score. I think the computer is programmed to be polite though, because I got some pretty good scores. We closed the night with a loud rendition of the class Journey song, Don't Stop Believing... because it is not karaoke without Journey.

All in all, a pretty good Christmas. I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday. Miss you all. Next adventure to look forward to: Chinese New Year in Beijing!

Jimjilbang

I had, what I feel, was a very Korean friday night this weekend. After school, a few of us headed for dinner at an all you can eat Korean BBQ buffet. I love Korean barbeque... bulgogi is by far the best thing I have eaten since I got here, so much so that I have had it four or five times. It's basically thinly sliced marinated beef that you cook at the grill built into your table. You put the meat into a lettuce leaf with ssamjang, a spicy red paste, and some onion that is soaked in the Korean equivalent of soy sauce (I say equivalent because it is sweet, not salty). The buffet has a bunch of other meats, soups and side dishes and it only costs 7500 won. We stayed for almost two hours... until we realized they were closing.

Anna and I then headed to a jimjilbang. In simple terms, it's a bathhouse but without all the sketchiness of the ones in North America. Mostly. The one we went to is in a big hotel on the beach. After you pay (less than ten dollars), they hand you a key, towels and a pair of pyjamas. The men's and women's bathing areas are completely separated. You'll understand why in a second. The key is for a locker for your stuff. ALL your stuff. The baths are all nude. It was pretty bizarre at first, not being a fan of public nudity myself. But it was after midnight and not many people were around. The baths are a room full of different temperature pools from cool to really, really hot. There are tinted glass windows that look out onto the beach. The water was really pretty.

After we were sufficiently pruney, We went back to the change room and put on the pyjamas we'd been given. They were kind of like scrubs, but pink. The men's ones are orange. Once you are dressed, you can move to the coed floors. There are blankets and these headrest things that are supposed to be substitutes for pillows. Then you find a spot somewhere and sleep. There are many different sauna-like rooms in the coed area. Each is at a different temperature. The hottest was sixty degrees celsius and the coldest was minus four. Some rooms have pebbles on the floor and one had salt. The rest of the areas are heated stone or hardwood. We chose to sleep in the ball pit. It's an area filled with about five inches of small stone balls - kind of like an adult fun room. It was surprisingly comfy. People are awake and around at all hours, which was pretty annoying (did I mention Koreans don't sleep?), but I had a fairly decent sleep. It was nice to wake up to an ocean view.

We opted not to go back to the baths in the morning - too many people for my liking. I should say that staying over isn't necessary at jimjilbang, but we did it as part of the adventure. Plus, it costs the same to go if you stay one hour or sixteen. So why not? I had a surprisingly good time, given that I swore I would never set foot in the baths when I first heard about them. I must be becoming Korean after all.

Plans for Christmas have finally been settled. First comes Skype with mom and dad in the morning while I open presents, then brunch at a friend's place around noon. We are going to stuff ourselves full of food until it is time to... eat more food. A place called the Seaman's Club is hosting a huge buffet dinner that night. It's a little pricy, by Korean standards ($25), but it will have turkey, ham, roast beef, mashed potatoes, stuffing, etc. We all decided it would be worth the money to have a real Christmas dinner in the land of squid and spam.

Finally - we discovered an English library in Busan this afternoon. Lots of books, including pretty current ones, and I can get my library card as soon as I get my alien registration card. Anna borrowed a book for me today, to hold me over. I am so happy - English books cost a fortune here.

I hope the week before Christmas is treating you well. It doesn't quite feel like the holidays for me yet, but all of us here are doing our best to get into the spirit!

Pictures

I just put up a bunch on facebook: my apartment, some of my classes, the korean wedding I went to... Check them out! This video is of one of the ECC students singing for the bride and groom. I wouldn't have posted it, but the song is a special one for me - mom and dad know why.

It's starting to look like home

Shopping for the apartment this weekend was a success. I have Katie to thank for the decorating help and mom and dad to thank for the financial help. Katie and I managed to find almost everything I needed to make this place livable and a few extra things to make it feel like home. Cleaning wise, I've tackled my bedroom and the bathroom. I managed to get some of the grime out of the washroom (and can I just say, ew - for a place that was apparently cleaned before I moved, there were WAY too many black paper towels). It will likely get a bleaching about once a week for a while, nevertheless. I'll post some pictures next week once I've finished getting it set up. I still have the kitchen to tackle, but it was the least offensive dirt-wise, so I feel less pressed to get it done. Plus, I haven't eaten more than a handful of meals at home since I moved in because of my schedule and going out with friends (tough life, I know).

I did my laundry today, too. It was a daunting task, not because of the amount of laundry (I was actually a little worried at how little I had given it's been two weeks - what have I been wearing?), but because my washing machine scares me. It's all in Korean and the layout of the display is nothing like the machines back home. I just found the picture at the top of the page online with a translation of everything, thank god. Also, people don't use dryers in Korea so everything is currently hanging on a rack in my living room. I am hope knowing that it will take a day or two for my clothes to dry will keep me from letting my laundry pile up until I'm down to my last pair of undies.

I'll post some pictures of the in progress apartment in a separate post... assuming I can figure out how to do it. Bathroom pictures will be saved until its ready - I want people to truly appreciate the before and after pictures.

Th End of Week One

It has been a busy first week. I started teaching on Tuesday. My start times vary from day to day - Tuesday and Thursday I start at 10AM, Wednesday and Friday at 1PM and on Monday I don't start until 3PM. Our days are 8 hours at most, so I finish at nine MWF and six Tuesday Thursday. On my early start days, I spend more time with my kindergarten class. These days will be my favorite, I think. My class is small - only five kids. This is their second year at school, so their English is pretty strong. I will take some pictures soon and tell you more about them.

I moved into my apartment on Tuesday night. It wasn't what I was hoping for - the bathroom is pretty dingy, the internet and phone didn't work and there is a lot of crap left behind from people who lived here before. It made for a tough day of adjustment. I had been so excited to move out of my motel and I was about to ask to move back into it. On Wednesday, I bought some cleaning supplies and started tackling the mess. I have a closet on my balcony, so I am putting a lot of the extra stuff in there. I unpacked some of my clothes and got the school to start sorting out the phone and internet. I am feeling a little better every day. I am going to tackle the big cleaning jobs this weekend and do some shopping. Hopefully, this place will start to feel like home.

I went out with two of the teachers from my school last night and some of their friends. We went to see New Moon, which just opened in Korea on Wednesday. It was a good night. They brought me to Rock and Roll, an English bar, for dinner and drinks. It was nice to be able to read an entire menu without needing pictures. The food and the drinks are cheap, they play good music, and they speak English. It was just what I needed to remind me that being away from home is not that bad.

Today, I am going to the hospital for my physical. The girls warned me I would be poked, prodded, x-rayed and asked to pee in a cup. Should be an interesting morning.

Subway adventures

I just got back from my weekend at Katie's. It was my first time on the Busan subway system and made for a few adventures. First of all, my school is a three minute walk to the subway. When I was out on Tuesday, I spotted the stop near the Home Plus (one of the department stores here). Confident that I knew where I was going, I headed out at 10AM on Saturday morning to catch the subway to meet Katie for 10:30. I walked down the steps to the station and followed a hallway to another set of stairs that took me... to the other side of the street. Oops. Turns out what I thought was a station was just an underpass across the road. Confident (sort of) that I would find the stop eventually, I kept walking down the road. And walked. And walked. (Side note - on the way home, I realized I had only walked about 500m, but it felt like a loooong time given I had no idea where I was going). I finally came across the subway. The station I found was not the one that is supposed to be closest to my school, but one two stops down the line. Next time, I will ask one of the other teachers at my school which way to walk. Relieved regardless, I bought my ticket, headed for the platform, and hopped on the train. Two stops later, I realized I was going in the wrong direction. Awesome. Now, here is the thing about the Busan subway, the east and westbound trains don't share a platform. If you get on the wrong train, you have to get off and exit back into the main part of the station to get to the other side. Another fun fact - when you buy a ticket, you indicate what station you are going to and this is the only station they will let you exit. In other words, I was trapped behind the turnstile. After some interesting sign language with the subway attendant, he let me back into the main part of the station where I bought ANOTHER ticket and got on the right train. The rest of the trip was fine - I was only five minutes late to meet Katie who, because she knows me, completely understood.

We spent the day shopping. Katie showed me some of the big shopping areas in Busan (and really, almost everywhere is a big shopping area... no lack of consumerism here). We went to Shinsegae Centum City, which is the largest department store in the world. It has a skating rink, golf course, spa, movie theatre and floor after floor of shopping. It's crazy. We spent some time in Haeundae, the area Katie lives in, checking out some of her favorite little stores for stuff to mail home to our friends for Christmas. After that, it was back to Katie's apartment to relax. We ended up watching movies for the night - both of us were tired and I am still having a tough time staying up past 10.

This morning (I slept til 7AM... baby steps), we headed to Pusan National University (PNU) area to check out their shopping. They have tons of stores crammed into a small neighbourhood of alleys. I have discovered, for the most part, shopping here is cheap. I haven't bought anything except for a sweatshirt and a cellphone charm that works as a subway pass. There are machines in every subway station that you can put the charm in and insert cash and it loads the money onto the charm. You swipe them at the turnstile and it deducts the money. Way easier than the tickets, especially if I get on the wrong way again. As for the sweatshirt, Katie and I both got one because we found them hilarious - on the chest it says Oh Dear God with a picture of deer antlers. No more unnecessary shopping for me though. The only things I will be buying before my first pay cheque (in a month) will be the essentials for my apartment once I move in. Here's hoping I don't need much.

I'm back at my motel now, watching Ocean's 11. There is a surprising amount of English TV here, it just all has Korean subtitles. Katie and I watched Friends this morning. The goal is to stay awake until 11PM tonight. Wish me luck!

Seoul

I am in Seoul for three days for my foreign teacher orientation. My school is run by YBM, a big company in Korea, so they bring all their new teachers to Seoul before our start date. A lot of the material is pretty dry - it's a lot of going over the textbooks we use and company policy. The bonus is that it's taught by an American guy who taught for ECC just last year so he has given us a bunch of information on Korean culture, good spots to see in our various cities, tips on culture shock, etc. I was able to get most of my questions about banking, going to the doctor, etc. All the little things they don't really tell you much about before you get here.

There are thirteen new foreign teachers from around the country. Eleven of them are in Seoul. It has been really nice meeting new people and now I know I will have a place to stay when I come back to do the tourist thing. Apparently I will be pretty popular too - Busan has the best beaches in the country so I will likely have some couch surfers in my future. One of the girls, Valerie, is from Sudbury and we have bonded over Northern Ontario chat. All of the others have been in Korea since at least Friday (some as long as two weeks). That being said, some still haven't been to their schools yet. Apparently all the ECC schools are supposed to put their teachers under a 10 day quarantine because of H1N1. Mine didn't, obviously. I am really grateful for that. I'm going stir crazy enough as it is.

Seoul seems pretty interesting. I haven't seen much as training keeps us occupied all day. A few of us took a walk after class to check out this beautiful stream that runs across the city. Apparently women used to come do their washing in the stream many years ago and it became a bit of a historical place. They did a complete remodel a few years back and it now has nice stone walkways, lights and trees all the way down. It's really pretty, especially at night. I walked back to the hotel on my own (everyone else takes a subway back to their parts of the city). It was kind of neat walking alone after dark (not too late, it was only 6PM). It is very common for women to walk alone in the evenings in the city here. Korea seems incredibly safe. It is a huge dishonour to one's friends and family to break the law here and you can tell people really believe that. For example, along the stream is an outdoor portrait gallery that is completely unsupervised. Anything like that at home would be vandalized in a second.

I've been eating mostly Korean food. All of us go out to lunch together. We have been looking for the restaurants with the most pictures on the menu and point at whatever looks good/not too strange. It's worked so far. We had one incident today where the meal we ordered (we tend to order the same thing and share) had a raw egg on it, but we ate it anyway and it turned out okay. Bring on the salmonella. I did cave tonight and grab McDonalds. The other teacher staying at my hotel is meeting friends, so I was on my own for dinner. It's a big faux-pas to eat alone in Korea and I'm not brave enough to try street vendors yet -we were recommended to give our stomachs time to adjust before delving in to non-restaurant food, plus I want to learn the words for chicken, beef, pork, etc. first.

It'll be nice to be back in Busan for the weekend. I am going to stay with my friend Katie on Saturday, which I am very excited about. Busan is a little lonely right now, not really knowing anyone yet. I should be moving into my apartment around Tuesday, which will be much better. I can unpack at last and be close to the other teachers in my school. I'm anxious to get back to my own school on Monday. I had a chance to take a tour and meet the other teachers briefly on Tuesday. They all seem really nice. I am the only Canadian at my school, the rest are American. I am sure the eh? jokes aren't far away.

Tonight is a quiet night in. I found a channel that plays English movies (with Korean subtitles, of course) and I am going to force myself to stay awake until at least 10PM. I made it to 9:30 last night and was able to sleep until around 5:30ish. It's not great, but it's progress. Love you all.

Mailing address

Erin Sunstrum
c/o YBM ECC Gaegeum
Gaegeum Dong 182-13
Busan Jin-Gu, Busan, South Korea
614-110

Send me love!

In Busan

I arrived last night around 9:30PM local time. My school director met me at the airport, which was nice. She seems pretty friendly so far, which is good. I've heard some bad stories about directors here and am hoping I end up with something better. The school is putting me up in a motel for about a week. I guess they literally pass apartments from one teacher to the next, so I have to wait til the person I am replacing leaves. The motel is alright - it's clean anyway. They give you all sorts of perfumes and lotions on a tray that get used from guest to guest. I have a feeling it's one of THOSE motels. Although they may all be like this. Needless to say, I'm not touching much.

I can't figure out how to work much of the electronics in the room... including the heat and the TV. But I have my laptop and DVDs and internet that I am hijacking off a neighbour, so I am surviving. I did manage to figure out the fan so the heat was more bearable. I made sure to open a window a bit so I wouldn't die of fan death.

I skyped mom and dad this morning which was nice. The homesickness sucks right now, especially because I will be so unsettled and out of a routine for a bit, but it's good to know how easy it is to talk to home.

I have most of the day off today. I'm supposed to be at the school for 3 o'clock to get a better idea what is going on for the next few days. Apparently I am heading back to Seoul tomorrow for a few days to go through training with all the other December 1st start teachers all over Korea from my company. Then it's back to Busan on Friday night, weekend off, and orientation at my school on Monday. Tuesday, they throw me to the wolves - my first day of teaching.

I'm going to venture around the block in a bit to grab some food and scope out the area. My body is all out of whack from the time change, but hopefully getting into an eating routine will help get me on schedule. Sleep was rough last night. Even with the exhaustion of the long trip, I was still awake at 3AM for most of the rest of the night. Part of me misses the ability I had to sleep at any time of day I had when I was sick. Or in university, come to think of it.

So far, so good. This is going to be a tough first few weeks, I think but it is going to be an adventure which is what matters.

In the air...

Left Ottawa this morning on what is going to be a loooong journey. I fly Ottawa > Toronto > Vancouver > Seoul > Busan. It's 25 hours of travel time airport to airport. Here's hoping for a decent nap on the plane.

I lucked out with a window, but my seat doesn't recline because of the emergency exit behind me. Ah well... After mom found out it was $6000 to upgrade to executive class, I am now only moderately less jealous of the pods. Moderately.

I am blaming the knots in my stomach on acid reflux, but even they are better than they were this morning. It would be nice to know where I am going/what I am doing after I get off the plane. I figure I'll calm down a lot more once I'm settled. Katie has promised me some of the fastest internet in the world which will make home feel that much closer too.

So you can thank free Wi-Fi at the Vancouver airport for the creation of this blog. I can't promise how much I'll update it, but I figured I would give Dad one more thing to check read in the morning.