EPIK Orientation Day 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8

This is the first update I have posted in almost a week. I had the bad luck of getting sick (really sick) last Sunday (Orientation Day 4) when we spent all day out in the cold at a Korean Folk Village. Anyway, I am feeling better now so I thought I would do a quick rundown on the past week. 

Korean Folk Village (Day 4)

Early one morning we jumped on a bus and were taken to a traditional Korean Folk Village about 2 hours away. 

The first thing we saw was some traditional dancing. I wish I could tell you more about it but I don't even know what it is called. 

Then we went to watch a guy in his 60's walk across a tight rope and do some kind of crazy things (see the second video below). I would have liked to take some longer video footage but my hands were freezing cold. 

Then (drawn by the sound of Gangnam Style blaring over some speakers) I stopped to watch some stunt men.

I then had a bit of free time so I wondered around the village and took some photos of the traditional houses.

North Korean traditional village building

South Korean traditional village building

South Korean traditional kitchen

Some crop fields in the village

In the afternoon we spent some time with a Korean culture master to learn to play a traditional game known as Jaegi, or better known to you and me as hacky sack. 

Korean Culture Master

Day 5 and 6

Nothing too exciting here. Just more lectures (all of which were very good). 

Lesson Demonstration and MOE meeting (Day 7)

We had to do a lesson demonstration in front of our home class and a guest lecturer in the morning. My demonstration went fairly well (considering I was still sick) and I got some good feedback from the lecturer. In the afternoon all the new Daejeon teachers met with the Daejeon MOE supervisors and we finally found out where we would be teaching. I think I am really lucky. I have been placed at a middle school in a good part of town.  

Meeting our co-teachers (Day 8)

We were peppered with "Official EPIK Announcements" from about 6:30am until I caught my bus at 9am with all the other Daejeon teachers. Once on the bus I was no longer EPIK's responsibility. The bus took us to an auditorium where there was another opening ceremony and we met our co-teachers. After the ceremony the two co-teachers that came to meet me drove me to my Apartment. The apartment is quite old but I am happy with it. It is almost right next to my school and only a 15 minute walk to the subway station. I have been too sick to explore the area yet but I have already spotted a Taekwondo and Hapkido club within a 2 minute walk of my apartment. 

EPIK Orientation Day 3

I will keep this brief again today. I am super tired. 

The lecturers today were again all really good. One of them was called "Hidden Wonders of Korea". They got us all involved by dressing us in the traditional Korean dress known as Hanbok. 

The mix of western and Korean food continued today

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

That is all for today. 

EPIK Orientation Day 2

I will keep this brief. Today has been a huge day. I have only just got back to my room. Breakfast was at 7:30am and we had a day packed with lectures and group work. Like I said. It has been a huge day but it has gone super quick because all the lectures have been really good. I wish my lecturers at university were as interesting and enthusiastic as the people they have here. 

It snowed this morning :). Later on the day warmed up a little (around 3 degrees celcius) and what little snow fell has now melted and refrozen as slippery ice. I took this photo as i walked to my first lecture this morning.

This is one half of the dining hall where we eat our meals. As you can see there are quite a few of us (about 600 at the Daejeon orientation venue). The crazy guy in the photo is Nubia (sorry if I got the spelling wrong). 

The food the kitchen is serving is a mish mash of western and Korean foods which is fine with me. I am not going hungry which is the important thing. Here is what I had to eat today.

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

Super tired but I have to brainstorm some ideas for "shopping" lesson plans, and by brainstorm I mean think of google search terms ;).

That is all for today.

EPIK Orientation Day 1

Even though I arrived at orientation yesterday, today was the first day where we actually had to do anything so I am going to call this EPIK Orientation Day 1. 

I was awoken by a loud "official EPIK announcement" at around 6:45am this morning which was blasted over the public address system informing the first group that they need to be down stairs at 7am for their medical exam. I tried to get some more sleep but was repeatedly woken by "official EPIK announcements" so I gave up and spent some time reading the massive orientation text book they gave us instead. 

About 2 hours later it was time for my medical exam. There was a urine drug test (I hate these, don't tell me when I have to go to the bathroom), height and weight check, eye exam (they told me to keep my glasses on), medical survey, blood pressure test, blood test and a chest xray (they had a bus with an xray machine in it on site). The test was surprisingly quick considering how many people they had to churn through. I think all up the test only took about 15 minutes. 

After lunch we had the opening ceremony. 

As far as opening ceremonies go it was good. The speeches were short, the seating was comfortable and it was nice and warm :). After the speeches some traditional Korean singers and dancers went up on stage and did their thing. 

After the opening ceremony we had a short break and then ploughed on into a lecture on Korean culture and history. To many of you it might sound boring, but we had a really fantastic speaker. I was quite disappointed that he had to cut his lecture short because he was running over time. He had lived here for 15 years and had some interesting insights. One of the things that I though was interesting is that in Korea each day two convenience stores open each day and now there are over 14,000 convenience stores open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

Another interesting topic he talked about was the size of the country and the population density. I already knew the population was about twice that of Australia and that the land area of South Korea is about the same as Tasmania, but what I did not realise is how little of South Korea can undergo urban development. Only about 30% of South Korea can be built on, the rest is all rugged mountain ranges and doesn't lend itself well high rise development. 50 million people squashed on to 30% of Tasmania. That really put things into perspective for me. 

The picture below shows a rough breakdown of the foreigners present in Korea. China was top of the list with about 700,000 followed by the USA with about 150,000 from memory. 

He also talked about etiquette in Korea but I will write about that in a later blog. 

After the lecture we broke off into smaller groups to discuss the next few days and work out our groups for a group assignment we have to present at the end of orientation. I have to (with my partner) write a English lesson plan for year 10 students on the topic of "shopping". I think it will be an easy topic to write a lesson plan for. We can use more advanced language and shopping is an interesting topic for most young people (particularly girls). 

That is all for today.

Meeting Friends and EPIK Orientation

This morning I rode the subway again and went to meet John. John is an Australian who has been living in Korea for the last 4 years working as an English teacher and happens to be the brother of one of my primary school teachers who is by chance good friends with my mum. Anyway, John was kind enough to shout Jay and myself lunch at a burger place called Kraze Burgers near City Hall station.

It was pretty good. I wish I had of taken a photo of the food, but it slipped my mind (again). If I am looking for a burger again I will be going back there. The burgers alone were about 10,000 won each which is a little more than you would pay for lunch if you went to a Korean restaurant by the time you include something to drink and some chips (the cheese chilli fries are great!), but if you are looking for some western food this is a better choice than McDonalds. 

I thought I would post an example of my camera (Sony RX100) operating in HDR mode. 

Here is a picture of John and myself with HDR mode turned off.

Here is a picture with HDR mode turned on.

 

The HDR mode takes three quick photos with different exposure settings and then merges all the pictures together to try and make the photo as good as possible. As you can see it works really well when objects are stationary. 

Anyway, after meeting John for lunch I headed to my EPIK orientation. There was nothing scheduled for today so a group of us went for a walk near where we are staying. We came across this amazing market of fresh food (fruit, fish, meat), clothes and nick nacks. I'm planning to head back when I am not part of a large group and take some time to try and get some awesome photos. After that we stopped at a small Korean restaurant (half the group headed back to the orientation venue because the restaurant wasn't big enough for all of us) and had something to eat and played a couple of drinking games to break the ice. After that I headed back to our orientation venue for dinner only to find that I was too late. Sadness. I ended up grabbing some instant noodles from the local convenience store. 

That is all for today