Dinos + Tanks = Invincible.

Shaina and I decided to go on a mini-adventure not far outside of Cheongju proper last weekend. Here is what happened.

We took a bus downtown where Mr. Lee, one of the friendly managers at our apartment building, told us we could find a bus that would take us to the Museum, the Fortress, and other attractions. Armed with our printed map of the area, two backpacks, and the spirit of adventure we set off to discover unforeseen new locations! Our luck that day must have been at max stats because nearly everything went off without a hitch. Here are some photos from the Museum. 

These were used to ring bells in Buddhist monasteries. 

The Koreans were the first people to innovate movable metal type characters. Here you see a sheet covered in movable letters that would then be used to print onto a blank page. 

Confucianism is still the most influential philosophy today when it comes to social order and knowing one's place within the social structure.  

Milk soda?

Ancient Korean spear heads. Remember, their civilization traces its roots back nearly 5000 years. To put that in perspective, their civilization is 20 times older than the US is. 

Buddhism is big here. 

Ancient belt buckles worn by cavalry men. 

After the museum we decided to look for the zoo which was supposed to be nearby, but we instead ran into this.

Yes. We had found a free children's museum filled with... you guessed it... horrible paper mache dinosaurs from what appeared to be the late 70s to early 80s. 

Shaina impersonates the what would be normally called a dinosaur. 

Try to invade this country... tanks + dinosaurs =  invincible. 

Randomly finding a dino museum... priceless. 

What are dinosaurs really? Perhaps we will never know.

The dinosaur section was just one of a few different section meant for children who wished to discover the miracles of science. There was a paleontology section, an aeronautics section, and a space section. Check the video at the end of this post for more in depth coverage.

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What? This was on the evolution poster. Maybe Mulder and Scully need to get on this. 

Neptunes, my favorite planet.

After the museum detour we found the zoo a little further up the road.

Anyway! Here are some pictures and video of the zoo in Cheongju. It was roughly $0.95 to enter. Many animals here I had never seen up close like this. When I say up close, I mean it. 

Kayngru

Merky

Verltr

Hienuh

Another merky

Awtrish

Zehbr

Homo Paintusapicturus

Sroth

I'm a Seoul Man... and other bad puns

My co-teacher, Jenny, and I at my welcoming dinner

It has been an eventful two weeks.

Teaching can be a challenge at times, but that makes the successful lessons all the more satisfying. I recently discovered the secret to getting the students to enjoy writing.

 
DRAWING! I have been working on a unit focusing on the phrase "What did you do yesterday?" Since writing a paragraph long story would be very difficult and boring for my  5th graders, I decided to do a comic book project. It was a hit! I was impressed by the drawing skills of my students, but I was particularly impressed by the vocabulary some of my kids used during the exercise. Our main sentences (from the book) were "I saw the moon." "I touched a snake." "I went to the museum." etc. But when one student wrote "Superman saw the fortress." I couldn't help but feel proud about the amount of creativity I was seeing in my classroom.

 Last weekend, there was a festival in downtown Cheongju and Andy and I were looking forward to checking out the celebration. When we arrived at the park where the festival path was supposed to begin, we didn't find much. There were a few groupings of yard sale-ish tables, and that was it. In hopes of finding the main events, we started to leave the park. That's when the leader of a group of young drummers called us over and asked to get a picture with us. I'm sure this won't be the last time that strangers ask us for a photo!

After searching for (and failing to find) the festival, we decided to go to the terminal and hop on a bus to Seoul. The hour and a half ride only cost about $7! We walked down Cheonggyecheon Stream, a beautiful site in the middle of the city.

After walking along the path, we grabbed dinner at a delicious Italian place (finally, pizza and alfredo!) and found a bustling market street. We did some modest shopping, found a really neat watch shop, and were home by 9:45pm. 

It was a great visit, but we haven't even scratched the surface of Seoul. I'm sure there are many more visits to the city in store for us.

Settling Down

Orientation has come and gone and we've been in Cheongju for almost a week. It has been pretty hectic. We left Jeonju Monday morning to meet our co-teachers in the Chungcheongbuk-do province. We are placed in Cheongju, the capital of our province. I've never lived in a city before, but I love it already!

My co-teacher, Jenny, is wonderful. We went with Andy and his co-teacher to lunch on our first day and I was glad that we had the chance to get to know them while sharing a delicious meal. After lunch, we parted ways to go to our respective schools.

 

 My work shoes!

  

A view of Jungang ES

The English classroom.

My desk

Monday night was my first experience at a staff dinner. Our Vice Principal is retiring and, although I was invited only hours before about the event, I thought I should attend the dinner to show my support. I am glad I did because I was able to sit with the cafeteria and maintenance staff and learn their names. They were so sweet and laughed with me as I tried to pronounce everything correctly. They were shocked and pleased when I tried ALL the dishes served and used my chopsticks.

 

My first day of work began on Tuesday (Andy didn't have to start until Friday!) but there weren't any students that day because of the typhoon. It was a pretty unnerving experience. The wind was incredibly powerful and there were fallen trees in the park near my school that only 24 hours earlier had been growing strong.

The weather on Wednesday was back to hot and humid. It was still a great day because I finally met my students. As expected, they were excited to see me but even more excited to ask how tall I was.

I taught my first class that day: Grade 4. I knew that I needed to keep things simple but, having never taught elementary students, let alone ESL elementary students, the experience proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. Fortunately, my co-teacher was there to support me and I am learning to speak in a slower, clearer, and exaggerated way. I find myself talking this way with Andy when I come home from work. It's as if I need to rev up my speech to conversational mode again when I'm with native speakers.

Cheongju is a great place to live, at least in our area of the city. The people have been so friendly. We have several managers for our apartment and the one gentleman, Mr. Lee, speaks excellent English. He is very helpful and I love talking to him when we come or go.

The buses are constantly running during the day and taxis are incredibly cheap. It makes traveling throughout the city easy and affordable. Andy and I have taken 15 minute rides and paid a total of $5 or less.

Certain foods are quite expensive. We can basically say goodbye to cheese for the year; a pound of American cheese is at least $10. We can't find any Mac & Cheese or hot sauce, so there goes our specialty. The cost of fruits or vegetables vary depending on what's in season.

It's not bad, though. We've found some great rice dishes and eggs, chicken, and pork are decently priced. Fortunately, we don't have many bills for the year so we'll be fine.

I've had my moments of homesickness. I knew that living in a different country wouldn't be easy, but I underestimated how frustrating the language barrier would be at times. In spite of that, I'm starting to fall in love with this place. There have been too many cute moments and I've befriended so many kind people that I know this is going to be an amazing year.