Heated Floors Are the Best Invention

While the year is coming to a close, winter is here to stay for a while. In Korea, most homes have an ondol, a special heating system in the floor. As it’s been consistently around -6 degrees Celsius in the mornings, and the river on my way to work is beginning to ice over, I think an ondol is one of the greatest inventions ever.

                                 

Each morning I’m reluctant to leave my apartment and each morning, I tear up without fail as the wind whips at my face. At school, I practically turn into an ice cube because so many windows are left open, a practice that I still don’t understand. 

                                              

In fact, on Christmas Eve( yes, we were still in school), I was sitting in the cafeteria next to the principal, desperately trying to operate my chopsticks. The flat metal sticks kept twisting on me as soon as I’d try to grasp at something. After curious eyes watched me for a few moments, the principal and the teacher across from me each took one of my hands and squealed. Then, they proceeded rub feeling back into my fingers. A few minutes later, I was able to eat my lunch. Needless to say, the first thing I do when I get home from school these days is to turn on the ondol.

               What an ondol looks like underneath the floor

The ondol can be tricky( well, only if your Korean is limited). I’m still trying to translate some of the Korean settings so sometimes I have to roll around on the floor to find a warm spot, but it’s the best for movie watching and reading when it’s dark and cold outside. I know I said in the summer, I was dying for winter weather, and now that it’s winter, I’m ready for spring. But as it’s almost 2014 and spring will be here soon enough, for now I’m just going to relish my heated floors.

Well, January, I’m ready for you and ready for the light and warmth to come back. Happy New Year! 

Top Ten Moments of Awkwardness in Korea

Awkwardness gets brought to a whole different level when you’re in a foreign country. The language, the customs, everything is different.  Just when you think you’re trying to do the right thing and fit in with the crowd, something blows your mind and reminds you that you are not blending in as well as you thought.  Whether the following situations blow your mind or just make you laugh, here are my top ten awkward situations as a visitor in Korea thus far:

1. Getting on the bus going the wrong way, only to figure it out when the driver gets to the end of the line and gives me the, so, what are you doing? look. Thankfully, he didn't leave me in the middle of nowhere, in the dark. After a ten minute smoke break, he took me back into town on the opposite route without making me pay extra.

2. Standing in “line” at an ATM machine and repeatedly having older people cut in front of me like it’s no big deal.

3. Having random Koreans motion to me with their camera, then realizing they don’t want me to take their picture, they want me to actually be in their picture. I must be a strange sight to see, indeed.

4. Having to do a Breathalyzer test in a rental car on Jeju Island at a mandatory stop. Have you ever had to play charades with a police officer?  It took at least three tries to figure out what exactly he wanted me to do. I was not the least bit intoxicated.

5. Finding out that there is no toilet paper in the bathroom at school, or almost anywhere else for that matter. This means you must bring your own or steal tissue from the teacher’s room if you’re desperate. And believe me, even some of the teachers get desperate. Also, how awkward is it to have to decide how much toilet paper you need before you go into the bathroom?

6. Dancing with both the Vice-Principal( older gentleman) and then the Principal ( older female) while surrounded by borderline intoxicated co-workers at my first teacher outing( Noraebang/ Karaoke). Apparently my acting skills were phenomenal that night because my co-teacher thought I was having a blast. I was, in fact, mortified.

7. Being patted on the butt by the new female Vice Principal. She did the same thing to the other foreign teacher when she met her, too, so now I think she must just be a touchy person.

8. Watching kindergartners do a modified English version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs where one of the dwarfs introduces himself saying, “I’m sexy.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks. Have you ever watched Mean Girls? The “sexy dance” stuff is a real thing here, though the kids might not wear those kinds of outfits. Also, none of the parents or teachers watching seemed to think it was strange at all.

9. Getting caught, at an all teacher dinner, dumping soju( Korean rice alcohol) out of my shot glass into a bowl so that the principal can pour me some more for a toast. Everyone laughed at me, but I guarantee my liver was better off for doing it.

10. And last, but certainly not least, listening to one of my fourth graders swear in complete earnest, in the middle of her skit, and in front of her me and her entire class. To reminisce with me on that one, check out my previous blog post here: http://jenasadventuresinkorea.blogspot.kr/2013/07/classroom-incidents.html

A Day in the Life of Jena

If you’re curious about what one EPIK Elementary teacher’s schedule is like in South Korea, here’s your chance to find out.  Though none of our schedules are typical because each school and each grade level varies greatly, it gives you a little window into my world.

Friday's Schedule:

5:45am  Wake up and think, why body, why?  Roll over and go back to sleep.

6:15am  Alarm goes off. I get up five minutes later and make some ginseng tea and get myself awake enough to cook both breakfast and lunch. After braving it for three months, I stopped eating school lunches and now bring my own. It’s a pain, but when you have a gluten intolerance, food control takes precedence.

Breakfast is boiled sweet potatoes, a fried egg, and some greens mix from iHerb. Lunch is a marinara sauce, egg and veggie mess that I shove into my food thermos.

                                                 Hot food thermos

7:10am  Shower time. I give myself enough time so my hair can dry before I plunge into the coldness outside. I choose a warm, but versatile outfit that works for both class and a school musical performance I’m going to in the evening.  Before heading out the door, I double check to make sure I have everything I need for the day. There will be no coming back to the apartment.

7:54am Rush out the door, already behind schedule. I’m walking to school because I know it’s the only exercise I will get today. I usually ride my bike.

                        Part of my walk to school with the performance hall in the distance.

8:37am  Arrive at school. I down lots of warm tea ( because it’s freezing in the school) and prep for classes.  No class first period. I briefly phone check Twitter, Facebook, email, and see what’s going on in the world.  

9:50am  Sixth Grade class. Last comparatives lesson. At the end of the check up, I ask them about four situations they might come across in the US where they need to know which is longer, colder, faster, etc. I chose comparing temperatures, car speeds, hiking trail lengths, and heights of people. In Korea, they use Celsius, kilometers per hour, kilometers, and centimeters.

                                                Outside my classroom

10:30am   Break. Tea time. Also, I play a game where I try to guess( in my head) what all the Korea teachers are saying to each other.

10:50am  Two more sixth grade classes. In between classes, my co-teacher jokes about one time in the US when either he or his friend only had a car that said mph instead of both mph and km/h, so when he drove in Canada, he was constantly trying to figure out his speed. How annoying. When I took my car to Canada one time, it was hard enough constantly looking at the smaller km/h underneath the mph on my car’s speedometer.

           

                                      My old car- see how tiny the km/h numbers are?

12:20pm  Lunch. Students try to peek in my food thermos to see what I brought for lunch this time. One fifth grade student says: “Teacher, diet?” Me: “No.” Little do they know that my lunch fills me up way more than the Korean lunch ever did. That darn white rice makes me hungrier than if I didn’t eat it.

  

1:10pm  Finish up the last sixth grade class.

2:10pm  Free talking class. Today we’re practicing how to ask a lot of questions for needed information. We’re solving a mystery riddle: "Jane is dead. There’s some glass and water on the ground. Richard is asleep on the couch. What happened?" The boys go crazy when they figure it out. They want another riddle.

3:00pm  Take a deep breath. Almost there. I prepare for Monday and message a fellow EPIK teacher in Busan about starting up a writer/editor group.

4:40pm  Quitin' time. My main co-teacher pokes her head into my room and asks, “Are you not leaving?” We walk out together, catch a cab and head to another neighborhood to get dinner before the concert. The lady who takes our order knows what I like and my co-teacher thinks it’s funny. I’ve only been there maybe four times, but I guess it’s hard to forget a girl with hair like springs in a small-ish city in Korea. My co-teacher insists on paying for dinner, so I am determined to buy us coffee.

5:25pm Head to Dunkin’ Doughnuts. I buy buy plain coffee in a shop full of doughnuts that I can't eat while my co-teacher runs home to change her coat. Twenty minutes later or so, I start to wonder if she’s changing more than her coat. Her place is super close to the shop. When she finally comes, she confesses that she brushed her teeth and couldn’t decide on what to wear. I buy her coffee and we head off for the performance center.

6:30pm Concert starts. The boy next to my co-teacher is so obnoxious at times that I wish his mom would do something about it. Besides that though, the concert is incredible. I think back to when I was in fifth and sixth grade. In comparison, our school orchestra was terrible. I’m blown away.

                                                                 Program

                                        Concert hall before the performance begins

8:20pm Time to go. When we make it outside, my teacher says something like, “I would have said something to that boy if his mother hadn’t been there.” I laugh and tell her he was driving me crazy, too.

8:30pm Brisk walk back to my neighborhood. I time it right and catch the bus so I can go to an atm and get cash to pay for my volleyball uniform and stop at Daiso for essentials like notebooks and a lint roller. At times like this, I wish I banked at NH which has atms everywhere in the smaller towns and cities. Oh well.

9:10pm Get home. I make tea and organize my thoughts for the next day. I have a volleyball game and I need to figure out the food situation.

9:40pm  Food stores are inadequate. I walk to the closest store and plan to buy some more sweet potatoes and salt. I come back with all of that plus chocolate.

10:00pm  Prep for tomorrow morning. This includes things like charging my second phone battery, boiling my water stores for the next day( no joke), and reading  emails, etc.

                                                     Daily water store

10:20pm  Rare TV show time. I get in a few laughs while watching two episodes of ‘New Girl.' I end up eating the entire bar of chocolate, 2 kiwis, and some Kettle chips that I hauled back from a Costco in Ulsan( really healthy, yeah?)  So much for going to bed early.

12:30am Bed. I wrap myself up like a cocoon and wonder how good my volleyball skills will be in twelve hours.

What Hot Feels Like In Korea

I now understand that when the travel brochures suggest certain times of the year to visit places, they are really not pulling your leg. I don’t recommend coming to Korea in June or July if you’re put off by heat and humidity. It’s really something else if you’re not used to it.

In Korea, it’s so hot that…

1.     All you want to do after work is immediately toss down your bag, plug in and turn on the air conditioning unit, then pull off your clothes, mop the sweat that hasn’t already dripped onto the floor, toss them in the laundry bin( there will be absolutely no re-wearing them) and slump down on the floor to watch K-dramas or movies. No worthwhile thought processes are possible until the room temperature drops to at least 28 degrees and the sweat stops bubbling out of your pores.

2.     You’d rather starve to death than try to make dinner. The thought of moving makes you want to cry.  Though, at least tears might possibly cool your face down a little bit. It’s too much work to feed yourself. You take slow movements as you eat because any faster ones will cause immediate sweating and you’ve already taken two showers today.

3.     You’ve become anti-social because you don’t have a car and the thought of leaving your air conditioned bubble actually creates anxiety.

4.     You’re starting to gain a little weight, which is usually a winter thing, right? Why? Because exercising has become a thing of spring, which your body has conflicting feelings about. On one hand, it’s dying to move faster than a slow stroll, yet the effort it’s going to require to cool you down is almost not worth the effort. You can’t exercise in the early morning because it’s just as hot as during the day. Exercising at night makes you heat sick, too, and then put that together with elusive sleep and you have one cranky teacher the next morning.

5.     On vacation, your favorite food is bingsu( Korean shaved ice) because shaved ice makes you feel like your core temperature has dropped ten degrees even though it probably hasn’t changed at all. It’s all about the perception of change. You eat it twice a day, almost after every meal. This may also be the reason for some of the weight gain as the top is usually covered in ice cream or gelato. You could care less about the gelato, though you consume it with vigor anyway, because it’s cold. But you eat it after the shaved ice has become nothing but a puddle of flavored liquid at the bottom of your bowl. Thank goodness you have a friend to eat it with because if you ate bingsu by yourself, you might become obese by the end of the summer and it’s no good eating a giant bowl of it in a café by yourself. You already get enough stares for being a foreigner, you can’t imagine how the stare number would escalate if you polished off the whole thing by yourself.

Seoul

East side of Jeju Island

Jeju-Si

Rishi Tea Cafe in Itaewon

Seoul

6.     By the beginning of September, you praise the heavens for the relief that the drop in temperature of seven degrees brings. The breeze feels glorious. You emerge from your apartment like a butterfly from a chrysalis. You’re reborn, energized, made new. You can smile again. You have a sudden desire to meet up with all of your friends in one day, including the ones who lived close enough, but too far away. They’re the ones who you texted and messaged in the state of barely functional, alone,  in your underwear, and  sitting in front of the fan on high.

         Everyone can be decent now, both in attitude and attire, though, because autumn is coming.

Haeundae Beach in the Heat of August

While the humidity in Korea during the summer months is almost unbearable, there is one place, besides underneath an air conditioner, where you can find relief:  Haeundae Beach.

For about 5,000-7,000 won, you can rent an umbrella until 6:30 pm and hide yourself on the beach among thousands of other people. Rows and rows and rows of different colored umbrellas line the beach. The people watching potential is phenomenal. You can even order food without leaving the shelter of your umbrella, either by replying to calls for chicken, beer, and patbingsu ( red bean and ice dessert), or by calling it in. You may hear a couple of announcements for lost children or even police warnings about some guys taking pictures of girls in bikinis( which my friend told me was illegal). There will be some folks trying to be surreptitious with their cigarette smoking when that’s not allowed either, but best of all, you can just enjoy the sun and the very cool water from inside an inner tube and float the afternoon away without worrying about the near 100 degree Fahrenheit ( or 37 degree Celsius) weather back home.  You might even meet some new friends. 

If you ever visit Korea in the summer, I highly recommend spending an afternoon at Haeundae Beach.

  

Gyeongju in July

Despite being uncomfortably warm and humid, Gyeongju has some beautiful places to visit in the heat of summer.  I recommend heading out in the early evening. If you're willing to brave having your clothes either sticking to your body, or drenched in sweat( which will pretty much happen anytime you walk anywhere in Gyeongju in July), Daereungwon Royal Tombs and the surrounding areas are great places to check out.

          

Being Schooled in Korean Culture

      Imagine this: You are in Korea, enjoying a perfectly delightful meal, Korean style, which means sitting on the floor, and all of a sudden your meal is interrupted by squabbling over in the corner. You turn your head and see two or more people huddled together and it looks like they’re fighting. Fighting? Really? You look a bit more carefully and notice there are several women quarreling over something. One uses her hip and corners the other one while she hands something to the lady behind the counter.

Don’t worry, they’re not about to get into a full on brawl. They are just arguing over who should be allowed to pay the bill. That’s a real thing here. People actually fight over the honor of who pays for the meal.

          I’ve been lucky enough to be treated to countless meals by older co-teachers or when in a group. On one occasion, when I thought it was my turn to do the honoring, I managed to outsmart my co-teacher( who happens to be the same age as me) by paying for our meal while she visited the restroom.  Sometimes, it’s all about timing and preparation. On another occasion, I’ve had to quickly force my debit card on the cashier.

          In other circumstances, when my co-teacher and I run across former students of hers in restaurants, she has almost always stopped to pay for their meals without telling them. I love this game, and if I ever run across any of my students in a restaurant with their friends, I would love to do this, too. That would also require my Korean to be a little bit better, so I better work on that.

One might see a pattern here, though, right? The older individual often pays for the younger individual’s meals, though it can also depend on who does the inviting and who you're with. With my Westernized Korean friends, we often do it American style and split the bill.

          There is a situation; however, in which I had not encountered until recently and I’m still not sure what the proper etiquette is. Here’s what happened:

One day, my co-teacher and I went to downtown Gyeongju for lunch at Seoga & Cook, a restaurant known for its upscale atmosphere and more Westernized cuisine. What we hadn’t planned on, was running into a student and her mother and sister.  Eun Jin spotted us directly from the street and waved to us from the window with her sister as we walked toward the entrance.  We climbed up a couple flights of stairs to the entrance, walked in and bowed to the Eun Jin’s mother and waved to Eun Jin before choosing our own seats. After ordering our meal( one large dish of salad and grilled pork with other sides to share for 18,000 won), we relaxed into our chairs and sipped on water.

 A few moments later, Eun Jin, her sister and her mother prepared to leave, but not before her mother came over to chat with my co-teacher. I should have known what was happening as soon as my co-teacher started to show her distress signals. Eun Jin’s mother paid for our meal! All I could do was bow because I had no idea what was actually going on until she told me after the fact. Eun Jin was all grins as she and her sister pranced out of the restaurant.

          Afterward, my co-teacher sat down all flushed and bothered. “I’m not sure if it’s okay,” she said. “It would have been better if … only drinks. Then it wouldn’t have been such a burden.”  While I completely understood this sentiment, I felt like I could still play the foreigner card and just go with it. What was I going to do, anyway? It’s not like I could have a conversation in Korean with an insistent mother. It was an incredibly kind gesture, though it made us a bit uncomfortable.

          “I was going to treat you,” my co-teacher said shaking her head. After a few moments of muttering and awkward laughing, she gave in and said, “Well, enjoy!”

          And we certainly did.

Hopefully the awkwardness will fade by the time we have to face Eun Jin in August when school resumes. Though at the rate I run into students outside of school, another encounter may be sooner than I expect. In any event, I feel both humbled and honored because this is a perfect example of Korean hospitality at its finest.

         

Oh The Food!

When we walked in, I thought, “Nope, don’t have to take our shoes off here.” The floor was the first thing that really made me distrustful. This place didn’t seem clean enough to be a restaurant with its decrepit walls and narrow walkway. Thankfully, the table we sat at was clean and the air conditioner, though run-down looking and dusty, still blew out cool air in 30 plus degrees Celsius weather that had us nearly melting. If my friend and I had been by herself, and not with her Korean-American boyfriend, we would have quickly strode on past this place without so much as a second glance.

To counterbalance being slightly uncomfortable, I ordered comfort food: Kimchi Chigae or Kimchi stew. It was the first thing I tasted upon arriving in Korea and I feel in love with its spicy goodness immediately, despite my taste buds being almost burnt off. The adjumma brought us a giant plate of panchan and told the only person among us who looked remotely Korean that she had given us extra. My friend and I just smiled and nod-bowed.

Though I had misgivings about the building itself, the food turned out to be delicious. We ate to our heart’s content and all for about 6,000 won a piece which is roughly $5.34 USD right now. Gotta love the Korean pastime of eating out. Unless you’re eating in major city like Busan or Seoul, most meals are around the 5-12,000 won mark. So, if you ever have a chance to make it to Korea and you’re looking for something to eat, “trust the adjummas” as my friend’s boyfriend remarked while we shuffled down the street, bellies full. I’d say that more often than not, that statement has been pretty true.

 I definitely underestimated this restaurant. I didn't get pictures of the inside, though. 

           

Panchan and Kimchi Chigae

Panchan

Other food I've had in Korea:

Dakgalbi cooking

Fried rice after dakgalbi

samgypsal, kimchi and sesame leaves

Bubble tea in Seongondong, Gyeongju

Raw fish at a teacher dinner

Goguma ( Sweet potato) latte

Traditional Korean fare

Indian food in Haeundae

Sad looking school lunch. Though I recently stopped eating school lunch, it normally looks better than this.

Porridge restaurant in Hwangsongdong, Gyeongju

Chinese restaurant with amazing lamb kebabs

Seongondong, Gyeongju

Grounds of a traditional Korean restaurant close to the tombs in downtown Gyeongju. This place is tucked away and I bet I couldn't find it again if I tried. My co-teacher and I got lost trying to find it.

 

The first time I had South African food was in Korea!

 This place is in Itaewon and definitely worth visiting if you are a fan of good meat.

It may not look tasty for some, but this was delicious!

Thai food in Itaewon, Seoul