The Long Haulidays
I last wrote only a few days into my time in Korea, at the end of my first (half) work week. A lot has happened in the last month or so (as it does) and I am just now getting into the swing of work and teaching. After those first three days in the school, we were let out for a long Korean holiday break for ten days. That holiday being...
Chuseok (September 30-October 9)
Chuseok, literally "Autumn eve", once known as hangawi, is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in North and South Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar on the full moon. This holiday is most easily described as the Korean version of Thanksgiving. This year, Chuseok was back-to-back with another holiday, Hangul Proclamation Day (aka Hangul Day and Korean Alphabet Day), resulting in the long vacation period. Hangul day is a national Korean commemorative day marking the invention and the proclamation of Hangul, the alphabet of the Korean language, by the 15th-century Korean monarch Sejong the Great (Wikipedia).
The long holiday gave Michael and me a great opportunity to settle in, having arrived only four days prior, and being thrown into work the very next day. We spent the first week of vacation organizing the apartment and discovering as much about Boryeong as we could. Halfway through the week, Nick, who has been in teaching in Korea for a year now, caught a train to Boryeong and adventured with us for a couple days before we all headed to Seoul for the last weekend of vacation.
The nicest thing about Seoul is its obvious international community. There are English speakers EVERYWHERE, and the food choices (especially in Itaewon) are diverse and plentiful (both of which are luxuries for those living in Boryeong, the land of fried chicken and pizza). Between meals, we found time to wander the hillside streets of Itaewon, visit the National Museum of Korea, check out a few (horribly crowded) clubs, enjoy our guest house's rooftop view of Seoul, and get a cell phone plan with someone who spoke English. (We visited seven cell phone stores a few days prior with no luck.)
Returning home from Seoul, we used our final day of vacation to do... absolutely nothing.
Orientation (October 21-26)
On our (almost) one month anniversary of being in Korea, we were plucked from school and forced to travel two hours away to attend a six day orientation. To me, this was annoying. Orientations have obvious benefits, but they are also generally held BEFORE you start the job. With this job, our only option was to go in blindly, and once we'd basically figured it out, we have to go learn how to do what we've already been doing for a month. But it wasn't so bad!
Classes included everything from Korean culture and norms, a mandatory taekwondo lesson, storytelling, lesson planning, EPIK regulations, and even a day trip to Seoul to visit a traditional Korean palace! (Several good dinners, too.) Each lecturer was informative and interesting in their own way, I actually did learn a lot of useful information, I got many good ideas and pointers for classroom activities, and I met several great people that I plan to stay in touch with! What I can and will complain about is the 9am-8:30pm classes every day, and the 11pm curfew for adults.
Halloweek (October 28-November 2)
I wanted to make sure all of my classes got to celebrate Halloween, which was difficult to do with orientation happening the week prior, and the frequent cancellations of my classes the week of. SO, I did stretch it out to November 2. But festivities started last Saturday (after crafting my costume together on Friday night) when we returned to Seoul's popular foreigner destination, Itaewon, to celebrate Halloweekend. And WOW were the streets (ALL OF THEM) packed. Clubs had lines down the street and $20 cover charges, people outside were shoulder-to-shoulder sardines. On most occasions, this calls for a terrible time, but add a little alcohol and thousands of anime-loving Koreans to admire our Pokémon costumes (Togepi & Ash), and it actually made for a pretty great time! After spending several hours in the streets doing photo-ops with whoever asked, we did find our way to a bar that was free and not too packed, off the beaten path!
I continued on with my Halloween festivities at school all the way through Thursday, just to make sure everyone got to have some Halloween fun. I had the kids sing along to a song about Trick-or-Treat, color jack-o-lanterns, identify Halloween mosters with a crossword puzzle, listen to "This is Halloween," showed them pictures of some of my past costumes and pumpkin carvings, and, of course, made them little bags of Halloween candy.
Just Korea Things (The Food)
For Lunch: School lunch is pretty cookie cutter every day. Some sort of soup (probably has fish in it), kim chi, rice (comes in varying colors!), a meat, and then some other plant-based salad OR fruit. Every day.
Nights and Weekends: As previously mentioned, my city, Boryeong, is the land of fried chicken and pizza. We have five types of restaurants here: traditional Korean, Chinese-Korean, Korean BBQ (similar to Hibachi), fried chicken, and pizza. You can literally walk down our main street of restaurants and pass four chicken places in a row (and continue on to two Korean restaurants, with a pizza place next to it, and then two Korean BBQ joints). And the delivery app features 31 chicken places, 18 Chinese-Korean places, 10 pizza places, and six traditional restaurants. (And that's just the ones that deliver.) Does this get tiring? Yes. But we do have a McDonald's that delivers, too. "What's a man gotta do to get a sandwhich around here?" (Hint: there are none)
Pairings: Oh, the pairings. Every sit-down restaurant will give you pairings. Pizza comes with sweet pickles always. (Yeah, I don't know.) Most places will give you kim chi and/or pickled radish (comes in varying colors!) Chicken is often paired with (what appears to be) raw sliced cabbage, covered in something like thousand island dressing (surprisingly good). Some places that are more hip will give you mixed nuts, popcorn, or shrimp chips. I'm sure I'll experience more variety over time.
For more insight on Korean foods, check out my video blog on snacks below!