Finding Time Is Hard

No matter what I am wanting to do, finding time for anything is difficult. A typical day here looks like this:

6:30 AM Wake up and get ready for the day
8:00 AM All team meeting and breakfast
8:50 AM Meeting with individual camp
9:10 AM Begin class
12:10 PM Lunch
1:30 PM Back to class
4:30 PM Meeting to plan evening rally
5:30 PM Dinner
6:30 PM Head to gym to prepare for rally.
8:30 PM Go back to the dorm after cleaning up from rally.
9:00 PM Plan lessons for the following day.
11:30 PM Go to bed.
6:30 AM Wake up and do it all over again.

So I'm sorry if you've all been waiting at your computers with breathless anticipation for what I am going to blog next, but I just have not had time to keep up with this. I am having an incredible time in Korea, that's for sure, but I've mostly just seen the inside of a classroom so far. The days are long, and the nights are all too short, but Korea is an incredible adventure. In addition, I find the act of writing to be strenuous here; I have even been having a hard time journaling. I think there are 2 reasons for this. One is that my days are so full that it is very difficult to find time to write, and if I have the time, I probably still don't have the energy. The second reason is that I spend all day trying to explain things to the children as simply as possible. I use simple words to form simple sentences, and I repeat myself... a lot. I find it very difficult to get out of that mode when I'm out of the classroom. Even with the other people on the team, I often find myself speaking very slowly and using lots of hand motions to illustrate what I am trying to say.

So a quick-ish update:
On July 19, we headed to Game Science High School in Wanju, South Korea which is about 45 minutes from the university in Jeonju. There are pictures of my time there on Picasa here. (Make sure to check out the pictures of me eating squid) Wanju is a very beautiful area.

This high school was created to train video game developers. It is a boarding school comprised almost entirely of males. The students were all huge video game nerds. They spend every spare second playing online games. I found teaching my class at this school quite taxing. Picture it: I have 19 students, only two of which are female, and they are all about 17 years old. They have been sent to year round boarding school. They have taken their final exams, and this English camp is the last thing they have to do before they can head home for the only 10 days they get off in the entire year. These kids were completely spent; they were ready to go home, and they were so shy. There's a reason these kids choose to sit alone and play video games: they have no social skills. If you observe them outside of class whether they're eating lunch or playing on their computers, whatever, no one talks. So attempting to get 19 incredibly introverted teenagers to speak seemed a lesson in futility. Especially when you think of trying to get them to speak a foreign language. I felt very overwhelmed in the classroom during that four day camp. Did I mention I had the lowest level English speakers? I did my best. I went through the lessons. I was funny; I was frickin charming... and nothing. Stone faces. So I hit a bit of a rough spot when we were away at the camp. I think it was a combination of jet lag, exhaustion, feeling ill-prepared, not enjoying the food, and a ton of other little things like the way we were sleeping in the dormitory with the boys. There were boys right across the hall. Did I mention there was a window in our door that the boys liked to peek in? Ahhh... It was stressful, but I made it through.

Kind of a Laid-back Day

Today we had a meeting and a couple meals but other than that we were free. We walked around Jeonju a bit; saw some silly Engrish. We went to a giant market tonight; it was a bit overwhelming, especially when I couldn't find where to pay. Apparently, the checkouts were on a different floor. I think I'm too tired to write. Here are some pictures. Consider this 6,000 words.

I made it to Korea!

Well, I left my house at 5:15 AM (Denver time) yesterday, and finally arrived at the dorms where we are staying around 8:00 AM (Denver time) this morning, which was about 9 PM Korean time. The jet lag situation doesn't seem too bad, although I couldn't sleep past 7:30 this morning, but I think that has more to do with the suffocating humid heat than time zone issues. My hair has decided to curl in Korea with this humidity.

So here's the break down for the trip:
3 hour plane ride to California
15 hour plane ride to Seoul
1 hour waiting for a bus
3 hour bus ride to Jeonju

The plane ride was not too bad. About half an hour in, the girl beside me realized her chair was broken, it was constantly reclined, and asked to be moved. I was pretty happy because that would give me a little more room, or so I thought. Instead, the guy in the aisle seat pretty much commandeered the middle seat too. He stretched out his newspaper across it. He turned on the lights, turned off the fan, and for some odd reason plugged his headphones into the center chair jack. Oh well, I stretched my feet under the center chair in front of me, pulled my jacket over my face, leaned back, and slept. I used my jacket instead of the blankets provided. I heard that you shouldn't use the blankets on airplanes because they are rarely washed, but the blankets which were on our seats looked clean enough; they were in sealed bags. I broke the bag and started to drape the blanket over me, and there was some kind of gummy candy stuck to it, after that my blanket graced the floor.

 I was awoken with the smell of our first in flight meal. It was a sickeningly-sweet stir-fry with rice, a roll, and a brownie (this brownie was about 1"x 2" yet had more than 30 ingredients, including less than 2% chocolate. How do you make a brownie with less than 2% chocolate? I don't want to know.), but you don't need me to tell you that airline food is bad. This airline food was pretty standard, which is to say, sub-standard. After lunch/dinner/breakfast? (it was 3 in the afternoon in denver and 4 in the morning in Korea) they turned down the lights and everyone slept, when we woke up, they gave us a snack, I felt like I was in preschool.

   One more meal towards the end of the flight and we finally arrived in Seoul. We literally waited for 0 minutes going through customs, and walked into the most beautiful airport I have ever seen. It had hardwood floors with glass and stainless steel details. It was gorgeous. In the bathroom, you hover your hand, over a sensor, and it applies a new plastic cover to the bathroom (I was very disappointed to find out afterwards that this was not standard in Korea because it is awesome). They had some kind of dance performance going on in the airport and it was so funny  to see these Koreans dressed in flapper clothes and swing dancing. I loved it.

The bus ride from Seoul was pretty. Korea is a very beautiful place. Everything here is very cutesy; it's so amusing. For instance, their construction signs show what appears to be a cartoon duck in a hard hat warning you to slow down.

The party lights that came on as the sun went down on our bus.

After all that, our very gracious hosts took us to a Korean restaurant for dinner before taking us to the dorms to sleep. It was very sweet of them, but all I really wanted at that point was to brush my teeth and shower. And eat we did, They brought out a skillet full of ground pork patties and quite the smorgasbord of  side dishes. Can you have a smorgasbord of Korean dishes?

Anyone who knows me should be impressed to know that I tried everything on the table (and even liked some of it).

I didn't see anything to drink, although there was something brown in a pitcher at the end of the table with some bowls sitting next to it. Our host (who moved from Canada from Korea 15 years ago has a funny little way of speaking that combines his Canadian and Korean experiences, for instance,  he said "The most thing to remember is to be flexible." Most thing, okay.) mentioned to us that Koreans don't typically drink with a meal; they eat first, then have a drink after. I was so sad... and thirsty. I hadn't had anything to drink for about 6 hours at that point. Finally, they decided we could have something to drink, and I drank bowl after bowl of that brown water. I don't know why it was brown and I don't care. It was delicious and thirst-quenching.

Korean Coke. I tried some. It tastes like I remember American Coke tasting.

Well, apparently the wi-fi in the dorms doesn't reach the end of the hall. Guess who's in the room at the end of the hall? So I need to let the girl staying in the room with me use the one internet cable they were able to scrounge up. I will update soon. Love you guys.