8.7.2012 - 8.24.2012
talk orientation... 300 native english speakers, one college campus, 3 weeks of classes = lots of bonding and some unforgettable times.
Video By: Ted. (This video is of us during our Orientation... you will notice we had a TON of fun! Jochiwon will forever be remembered as a place where I met amazing people and had one heck of a time! I show up about 1 min. 40 seconds -- I'm dancing an Irish Jig!)
We spent 3 weeks preparing to become teachers (pretty sure it takes people years to master teaching but I guess they think we can do it a few weeks.) So I am now an unofficial english teacher… that is super scary. The days were filled with lectures, which were mostly boring, like fall asleep boring or play tic-tac-toe with your neighbor boring. I lost my voice a few days in and I attribute that to the Nori Bang (Karaoke) and also whispering a lot in class. Ok. ok I am a bad student. I mean come on I am an art major - we don't have lectures - we make things. They gave us a couple of classes where we DID something.. but not enough for me! My favorite was calligraphy painting and Tae Kwan Do and also K-pop (Korean Pop) dance class. My nights were spent at the 'benches' - which is just what is sounds like.. a bunch of benches outside of a convenient store. The drink of choice for the students is Soju - a horribly tasting sort of Vodka. It's cheap so they drink it. I stay away from all of that but I go for the social aspect! The benches got old after night 1 or maybe 2.. so I started looking for other things to do. One night I did ballroom dancing and a couple other nights a group of us played ultimate frisbee! At least I wasn't picked last (just second to last!) And you better believe I didn't do much running. My teammates would try to get me to hustle and I told them… ehh I don't really run. I also played football one night and was the quarterback - since they do the least amount of running. I was 'Aaron Rodgers' haha and of course my team won!
Pretty much orientation was a time for us to get to know each other and pretend to learn and know what we are going to be doing for the next 5 months. (but their most famous saying was 'it depends on your school' - so really none of our questions were answered. At least we got time to get to know each other. My best girlfriend is Naomi, I don't even know how we became friends - but we were attached at the hip since like day 2. Then I friended a Brit. 'called' James in art class (the first Thursday we were there!) He is pretty great - along with him came a couple more Brits. Then that weekend - on Sunday I met some people from Group 4 - Nathan, Katrina, Joel, Steve and on and on. They are my adopted group :) Ok.. so what is this about Groups. Well they split us up into groups according to what province (or region) we are going to. So I was in Group 1 which Ellis and Jainne, the best group clearly. Our group consisted of Chungbuk people and also Jeju people (the small island off the southern tip of South Korea!) The rest of the groups were all the other 5 provinces. Don't ask me who was what. I can't tell the difference between all the names - they sound too similar for my ears. But maybe after 5 months I will understand!
I won't bore you all with exactly what we all did in orientation since most of it really was super boring. However, we did have to make a short video - and since I have a nice camera I was deemed videographer, even though my videography skills are basically 0. But it was fun and here is the link if you guys want to take a look -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GClsesfoX4k. It is pretty funny! Our group put a ton of work into it. I even woke up at 6 a.m. (not a morning person) to film the fight scene for 2 hours before breakfast and lectures! There are so many great memories from my time in Jochiwon. I feel so blessed to have met the amazing people I did and for the hard work the coordinators put in!
talk orientation... 300 native english speakers, one college campus, 3 weeks of classes = lots of bonding and some unforgettable times.
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| group 1... because we are number 1 ---- yo. |
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| bad student... but at least I won :) |
Pretty much orientation was a time for us to get to know each other and pretend to learn and know what we are going to be doing for the next 5 months. (but their most famous saying was 'it depends on your school' - so really none of our questions were answered. At least we got time to get to know each other. My best girlfriend is Naomi, I don't even know how we became friends - but we were attached at the hip since like day 2. Then I friended a Brit. 'called' James in art class (the first Thursday we were there!) He is pretty great - along with him came a couple more Brits. Then that weekend - on Sunday I met some people from Group 4 - Nathan, Katrina, Joel, Steve and on and on. They are my adopted group :) Ok.. so what is this about Groups. Well they split us up into groups according to what province (or region) we are going to. So I was in Group 1 which Ellis and Jainne, the best group clearly. Our group consisted of Chungbuk people and also Jeju people (the small island off the southern tip of South Korea!) The rest of the groups were all the other 5 provinces. Don't ask me who was what. I can't tell the difference between all the names - they sound too similar for my ears. But maybe after 5 months I will understand! I won't bore you all with exactly what we all did in orientation since most of it really was super boring. However, we did have to make a short video - and since I have a nice camera I was deemed videographer, even though my videography skills are basically 0. But it was fun and here is the link if you guys want to take a look -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GClsesfoX4k. It is pretty funny! Our group put a ton of work into it. I even woke up at 6 a.m. (not a morning person) to film the fight scene for 2 hours before breakfast and lectures! There are so many great memories from my time in Jochiwon. I feel so blessed to have met the amazing people I did and for the hard work the coordinators put in!
Video by Ted: (Another awesome video of our adventures in Jochiwon. I show up at 2:30 (for a snid-bit and again at 2:50.. a few times!)
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| so.. this is a good story. I am standing there taking a video of these dancers on the stage (at the peach festival) -- do I notice this man? or does anyone tell me? No, they all take pictures instead. It took me a good couple of minutes till I noticed. When I did he started to speak Korean to me and I had no clue what he was saying.. and probably wouldn't have even if I had known Korea - because he was missing all his teeth but maybe one or two. I guess he was just trying to look out for me keep my skin beautiful - they don't like to get tan here - the paler the better! |
The next weekend we stayed in Seoul after they took us there for a performance. It was a cooking show, kind of like Stomp but with food. It was entertaining! After that we hiked a mountain (ok.. it was a mountain to me!!) to get to the Seoul Tower, we went up to the top to see a view over all of Seoul. It was worth the torture to get there.. I guess. But of course we find out later we could have taken a bus to the top, instead we fold Jonathan - Mr. Military - So we hiked it. Ug, don't ever follow military men. I learned that in South Africa. They take you off road-ing and such hard impossible ways and also quickly. It wouldn't have been a bad hike it we weren't sprinting! The view was totally worth it and so was the A/C :)
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| in Seoul Tower... Joel, Nathan, Stuart, Me, Naomi and Jonathan. (also random asian man posing :) |