Ohhh Korea...

Hello everyone, I know it has been a long time since I have updated this but here it is :-)  Everything has been going well lately.  We have recently started a new school year over here in Korea, so I have had a huge schedule change and gotten new classes.  We have also gotten a good deal of new students. I forgot how difficult it was to remember all the new students names haha.  I have kindergarten classes and the kids are difficult, but they are silly and ridiculously cute.  It is really difficult to try to talk to little children who don't know English, and barely know Korean. I find it a bit strange that parents would go to the extent to make their kids study a foreign language before they even get a handle on their own native language.... ohhh Korea.....

Here are some of the new kindergarten kids being silly...
Here are two new ones in my Bunny class, their English names are: Kevin and Ellise

 Here are two more boys from the Bunny class, their English names are: Joy and Jack

 Here is my director's son. His name is Dae Gyeong, his English name is Eric. He is extremely difficult to teach, but he loves me and any time he sees me he always runs to me yelling HELLO! and hugs me

 Here is a picture from my Tiger class. They are definitely the most difficult class, but probably the cutest, so its a bit of a catch 22.. Here is English names: Linda, Eric, Tony and Jenny. They seriously love making their chairs into a train and do it everyday when I walk into the class.

 Just another one of Linda, she is just the cutest little girl on the planet...

So other than the new classes, life has been good.  Definitely getting those strong cravings for real Mexican food... actually any Mexican food would hit the spot.. Right now I even feel like Taco Bell may be real Mexican food. I only get to eat Korean food everyday for nearly every meal. My taste buds are getting bored over here......

Here is a standard meal I cook at home.. Onion salad, been sprouts, tofu, rice with kimchi and seaweed. YUMMY!

One other thing about Korea that is hilarious is that every little mart or shop sells silly socks with characters or animals all over them.  The kids love them here and they all wear them.  So I always keep an eye out for the silliest ones and have gotten two so far in my 7 months here... Check them out!

And yes that is a teddy bear drinking soju (which is like a rice brandy) and oh yeah damn right I found some Obama socks!

Lastly the weather has finally started picking up over here and this week it is hitting the 50's! So I took a few pictures around my block and from my balcony to give you an idea of what my neighborhood is like.

Views from the balcony:

Around da hood:

It may be a bit hard to see, but at the end of that street in the last picture is the ocean!

Anywho, definitely missing everyone at home lately and California in general, but I'm doing just fine over here in Ulsan, South Korea. And, next week my buddy Jamie is coming out to visit me all the way from California! STOKED!

Shredin update!

So life in Korea has been good lately.  I started doing some private English lessons for a woman, Hee-Jeong, who owns a bar near my apartment.  That has been going well.  My classes are all going well at the school too.  A couple weekends ago, there was a big Liverpool game vs. Manchester United.  My friend Jason is a huge Man U fan, so we were going to have a good rivalry going watching the game. Before we went Jason lost a couple bets to me and ended up having to wear a Liverpool shirt to watch the game. That was hilarious... Liverpool won the game too!

This weekend Josh and I went snowboarding and skiing up in Gangwon-do.  It was one hell of a trip to make it happen.  The cool thing about Korea is that there is a really good transportation system going on over here.  So we were able to book seats on a bus which takes you to a resort and back home.  It is a good 4 hour drive to get there so it was nice to be able to get on a bus and relax.  The only thing about it was the bus left Ulsan at 3:50AM and left from a place that is a good distance from where we live in Ulsan.  So we had to take the last bus from out area (kkotbawi) over to Shinnea around 10:30PM.  So we had quite a few hours to burn over there.  We went to a bar called Golden Anchor and played a few games of pool and just hung out until they closed around 2AM.  As they were closing and kicking everyone out, a group of three foreigners were kind of upset about it closing and we were talking to them before we left and ended up hanging out with them until we had to take our bus.  They were also some English teachers around the same age as Josh and me.  One was from Scotland, one from Ireland and one was from Austin Texas. They ended up being really cool. Anywho.... we took our bus up to the resort and arrived at about 8AM at the resort which is called, Hiwon.  When we got there we had to get our rentals sorted out, which were apart of a package deal we had set up.  So we had vouchers to get our rental gear.  Naturally we went to the rental area, but got turned away and told to go to the ticketing area.  We were really confused...  The ticketing area also turned us away and told us to go back to the bus we came on. At this point we were extremely confused... Eventually we just go to the information desk and the man there helps us and calls a phone number on our voucher.  Turns out we were getting our rental gear from a van in the parking lot. HAH!  It was very strange, but worked out just fine.  We had an amazing time on the slopes.  Although I have to say Koreans have some strange mountain etiquette.  The snowboarders take their board off completely for the chairlifts.  I could not be bothered with that business at all.  And for some reason on the runs people will be going a decent speed then out of no where carve all the way across the run without looking and I was almost crashed into 4 times.. Other than that it was a good time, I was one of the fastest people on the hill and was pretty much never passed at all on the runs. That was really fun.  I guess it helps that I have been able to snowboard on some real mountains in Tahoe.  The expert runs on this mountain felt like the intermediate blue squares at home.  Here are a few pictures from our mountain excursion...

That last one is ridiculous I know..but at the top of the mountain they had all these giant hearts and all the Koreans were taking pictures in front of it making heart shapes with their hands... So we thought we would one up them and make the most ridiculous picture.


Oh yeah here are a couple older pictures that I just got from some friends.  They are from the Andong mask and dance festival I went to in late September.. Awesome times...

This massive group just assembled out of no where for this picture.  We saw a couple of the girls in their traditional clothes and we asked them to take a picture with us. They were really excited since we were pretty much the only foreigners at this festival. So all day people wanted to take pictures with us.  When we asked them all these people just came out of the wood-works to get into this picture. Turned out to be one of the best pictures of my trip to Korea so far.

Oh kindergarten...

Sometimes my kids are just so silly.. Today we were playing a game where I give them a vocabulary word and one person draws a picture on the white board and then the class had to guess the word and use it in a sentence.. Todays pictures were especially funny.

here is Carl and his picture of a cow.

Here is one boy, Chester, and his interpretation of a pig. 

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

The last month has been a blast here! My classes have all been going really well which makes everything a lot easier.  I have been getting a lot of new students. It is fun to get new students especially because I get to give them English names.  I recently named some new kids, Arsinio, Dirk, Mario, Frank, Will, Jade, Annie, Shane, and Kerry. 

Over the holidays my director gave me a giant helping of kimchi that her mother made on her farm. It is delicious, but it is enough to feed three families!

My sissy, Lauren, came to visit me for the holidays. We had an awesome time. One of my favorite meals here is Korean BBQ. You cook your food right on a grill in your table. Check the spread!

We also went over to Mugeodong, which is the district of Ulsan where my friend Jason lives.  They have a really cool place called 'Beer Mart". It is like a bar but there are just tables and fridges of beer to drink, which you buy at mart prices. Its a really cool place.  So I had to take Lauren there with a few of my friends. Here is Josh, Jason, Me, Lauren, and Nancy.

For New Years weekend Lauren and I went up to Seoul.  Seoul is just a massive city and you really can feel the 10.5 million people + a few million tourists for the holiday.  While we were there I had to seek out some good Mexican food to satisfy my cravings.  I found a place online called "Taco Rico" where the chef is actually from Mexico! So we had to go there for one meal. That was a delicious meal. Ahhh how i miss Mexican food..

Also while we were in Seoul we went to an district called Myeongdong, which is a cool shopping area with shops and tables selling trinkets, socks, gloves, food, you name it! It is always a fun area to walk around. It was amazing how busy it was there. Here is a picture of Lauren right before a wall of people which stretched every direction for 4 blocks.

At night we were hanging out with some friends who live there in Seoul. We also got to meet up st with Fayliza, who I met just before coming to Korea. Friday night was a great time out with the friends. New years eve was a good time just being out with a good group of friends. We had a blast at a couple different bars/clubs and had a blast.  Seoul is a really cool city.  It is especially nice being able to access a few more foreign things that I don't get to enjoy down here is Ulsan.  Here are a couple more pictures from Seoul.

Me, Lauren and Fayliza.

 Lauren making friends haha!

 Mario and Lauren in Myeongdong.

 Me and weird dirty old Xmas Garfield.

 Lauren's always makin friends....

Anyways, everything has been awesome here. At the end of Laurens visit I was really sad to see her go and it made me feel a little bit homesick knowing she was going back to California. But she definitely brought me some holiday cheer and it will was really nice to be with my sister in Korea. I really enjoyed showing her where I live and how life is around here. Here is the final picture of Lauren leaving at Pusan airport..

Happy holidays to everyone and I wish you a happy new year! :)

Check out a few of my good classes!

So I thought it would be cool to show everyone my students here are 5 of my classes which I enjoy teaching.
Here is one of my very gifted classes. They are 10 years old and have a very high English level and use the highest level book I teach.
English Names (left to right): Julie, Alice, Martin, Denny, Chris, Andrew, Joelle (who is also my director's daugter)

 Here is a class that their English class isn't so high, but I have fun in the class and the kids seem to enjoy my class. They are also about 10-11 years old. I have them obsessed with reading with a lot of emotion when they see an exclamation point. They find it hilarious.
English names (left to right): Thomas, Jack, John, Sky, Lily, James, Jeff, Sally, Sophia, Gloria

 Here us a class that I like the students, but sometimes the girls are so difficult to teach.  Celina and Cena randomly start singing and are always being ridiculous.  But on its good days this class is awesome and they are fun to talk to. They are about 12-13 years old.
English names (right to left): Celina, Anna (in front), Cena (in back), Angella, and Robbin (he is so awesome, one of my favorite students).

 This class is 14-15 year old students and is my favorite class to teach.  They have the highest level of English and are able to have conversations about more relevant topics that the boring stories in the book.  We have a good time and often just spend classes talking about a topic for the whole time and not use a book. I often feel bad for the one boy in this class because I know he gets picked on a lot, but he is a strange guy.  I am always nice to him and have lots of conversations before and after class with him.  But one time I asked him what music he liked. He told me rock and pork. I said to him pork is a meat. He simply replied, ya I know and then walked away.  Pretty hilarious.
English names (left to right): Jason, Lina, Lucy, Kathy, Sandy. And there is a girl ducking down in the back and I just call her ms. smartphone.

 This last class is one of my later classes where the students are 13 years old.  They can be a chore to teach because the class is so small they go through everything fast and we often move too quickly in the books.  The boys are crazy. Every time they see me they say, "LETS PLAY GAME!!" and they always have weird conversations with me and stalk me when i teach other classes like jumping so they can see into the window of my other class.  They are still a pretty fun class to teach though.

I have quite a few other classes, but they are just not as cool as these ones.

Little update

So life has been good in Korea.  I am definitely settled in just in the groove.  I have been having some fun weekends with friends.  We have been hanging out at my apartment a lot since it is probably the biggest place of all the teachers I know in Ulsan.  Other than that been enjoying nice dinners out with friends, going to the beach and lighting off fireworks and having random adventures.  A friend had a motor scooter which she was not using.  It ended up breaking down and was taken to a shop.  She said she didnt want it anymore.  I offered to buy it from her, but she didnt care about the money, she just told me to pay the mechanic to fix it and I could have it.  For the last month the mechanic said it was "lost"... So we had basically given up on it thinking he had sold it for parts or something... Somehow he all of a suddent comes up with it waives almost all the fees to tow and fix it and now i have a new scooter which only cost me 20,000won (or about $20).
Here's the beast!

Also here is a picture of the front of my hagwon, Saint Andrew, that I teach at. I also live on the top floor....

This is a crazy teaching week for me.  I have open class for my kindergarteners, which means their parents come to the school and watch my classes.  The directors are also filming me to make a video to basically advertise that they have a foreign teacher and our classes are awesome.  It was a bit stressful, but it went very well. Anyway, hope I have some good adventures soon to share. Cheers.

Halloween weekend

What a crazy weekend.  First, Friday was just a wild day at the school.  I was told to start my day at noon which is 50 minutes earlier than normal. Which was no problem, but then I get a call from one of the other teachers at about 11:40AM telling me I am late. Which from what I knew about when I was supposed to be at work that wasn't true.. Anyways, we were celebrating Halloween with the kindergarten classes and had to dress up.  So i bought the cheapest stuff I could find which ended up being an eye patch and crappy pirate hat.  worked out fine.  All the kids dressed up and we took them out around our area walking and singing Halloween songs in our costumes.  Then we ended up at the park where each of the teachers were on the corners holding bags of candy and the kids would trick or treat and get candy from us.
Here is an awesome picture which is also extremely funny in front of the school:

Friday night was awesome. went to my friend shaun's dad's new bar called pub hq.  The best part was that I was on my bar A game and won 3 games of darts and a game of pool! what a night! 

On Saturday I took a train with 12 other foreign teachers to Busan to watch one of the biggest fireworks shows in the world.  It is such a big event when you go you have to go stay on the beach all day to stake out a spot.  We got to the beach at around 2pm and the place was already getting extremely busy.  The show didn't start until 8pm.  So we waiting on the beach all day, which ended up being a fun time.  Unfortunately it started to rain around 7pm, so we were waiting on the beach in the rain for another hour to watch an hour long fireworks show in the rain too! it was a bit crazy doing that, but it was well worth it.  That was easily the best fireworks show I have ever seen.  People really need to take notes for the 4th of July hahaha.  That night we went out to a couple bars in Busan which was a good time. And there were plenty of foreigners out which is really fun.  I ended p sleeping on the wooden floor in a hotel room some of the other people in my group rented.  That was awesomely painful, but a lot better than sleeping outside in the rain.  Great weekend though, and met a few really cool people who I will continue to hang out with. Gotta love making new friends.