Outdoor Market Near My Apartment

Korea has big shopping places similar to Wal-Mart, Macy's, Circuit City, and grocery stores, ect., but what I love is the little mom and pop places and that's where I buy all my fruit and little treats. Here's a picture of the street. We call it "the market".

Tons of fresh fish

All kinds of ddohk (rice cake)

All kinds of vegetables

All kinds of beans

Most popular street food- ddohk-bok-ee and ohdeng (rice cakes in a spicy red sauce, fish cake on a stick)

Meat on a stick with special sauce drizzled on it and spicy powder

Fried fish shaped cake filled with red bean... so warm and crispy

Good Eating!

There are a lot of meat places in Korea that have a grill right inside the table. The first picture is a shot of the table with some of the side dishes they give you.

Randomness About Korea

Here people are really into appearances. That’s why they have such great skin care products and why they have mirrors absolutely everywhere. I mean anytime you’re about to enter or exit somewhere there’s a mirror; like the subway and elevators. And you always see people fixing their hair and shirts. At first I didn’t think much of it, but now I do it too, just because it’s there. Speaking of that, I got a 1-hour facial for less than $10. It was deep cleansing and a mask. I fell asleep, it was great!
Getting around: You know how nowadays we barely give directions. We just give people addresses and expect them to “mapquest it” or however they want to look it up online. We depend on addresses, street names, and definite markers to know where to turn. Here they don’t really have addresses. They do as far as the post office is concerned, but not really. (I heard that buildings might be numbered in the order they are built) So you can’t just look up where something is. And google maps (my best friend) does not work here. I think Koreans just sorta know where stuff is. To give directions you have to guestimate everything. You pick something that will probably be there for a long time, like the Honda dealership or convenient store and say turn left on the tiny street after that. Luckily google earth works here, but since I can’t just look up street names, it’s usage is limited. I’ve already figured out my longitude and latitude to look on google earth and so that way I can at least get to see my area of town better. (If anyone wants my coordinates to see for themselves where I am then please email me)
I really want to take Korean classes and I have found a couple of places that have them, but unfortunately they’re all while I’m at work or way too far away. I decided to label the things in my apartment in korean. I haven’t finished yet, but I figure it’ll be an easy way to pick up another 20 or so words.
So far I haven’t found a ton of things to do. Possibly because I’m on the outskirts of the city. My coworker and I found an indoor rock wall climbing place. It’s only about $5 for the whole day. There’s also a pool hall near work. That’s inexpensive too. It’s not dark and filled with questionable people like you might think. It’s usually filled with teens and well lit.
On TV there’s a few English channels, but they still have Korean commercials. I like that. They have way less commercials here. Or I should say that there’s less commercial breaks, but then in between shows they have a long break. The commercials are pretty much the same style as ours.
There’s this huge 2-story store that’s like Wal-Mart and inside is a food court and one of the places is fast food and they have great French fries. For my coworker and I, it’s like a little piece of home. Sometimes on the way home we’ll stop in just for those fries.
Daegu is famous for pig intestine. So we tried it recently. It’s seasoned and grilled. It looks sort of like calamari, except bigger. It tastes pretty good actually, but it’s chewy. Sorry, I forgot my camera that day.
I found this café that’s so cute inside. I met the girl and she’s so friendly and knows a little English. I had my coffee and prepared for my class there one day. I think it’s going to become “my spot”. I love it.
For Thanksgiving I got to see my family through webcam. It’s was awesome! So if anyone else has a webcam let me know.

Community

I’ve been trying different churches since I’ve been here. Daegu has a lot of churches, but not many have English services. I haven’t found anything that really strikes me. It’s frustrating. I think I have decided which one I’ll attend though. Along the way, I’ve met a few pretty cool people though. One lives in the same area of town and is an English teacher too (unfortunately we have opposite work schedules). Another girl is from the Philippines. I learned a long time ago that what makes a place home is the community you build for yourself… aka, the people. So that’s what I’ve been anxious to do… have a church home, have additional friends outside of school to hang out with, and have “my spot” like the Green Bean Café that I recently found and enjoy. I keep reminding myself that it’s one of those things that just takes time.

Really What I'm Doing

Now that I’ve been here for a little while I suppose I should clarify what it is I actually do. I work at an after school academy. They are very popular here. There’s some for math or music, etc… so mine is English of course. Many kids go to ours two days a week and to another one the other days. There are some kids who attend ours from 4-7pm and then go straight to another one and don’t get home until around midnight. It’s just the thing kids do here. Oftentimes I feel bad for them sitting in regular school all day and then sitting in academies on top of that. It’s a known fact that academies give more homework than regular school. I’ve heard that this has increased in the last decade and so day schools have been giving less homework these days. I still feel bad for them.
Many of you asked before I left “If you don’t know Korean, how will you teach them English?” I had no idea at the time, but I wasn’t worried about it. The one thing I did know is that you’re supposed to “feed them English”. Now I can clarify. When you were in middle school first learning French or Spanish, did you have a person from France/Spain who knew no English teaching you? No, you had an American who was fluent in the language who spoke mostly in English, but taught you the basics of the language. Then as you progressed, they didn’t want you speaking English in the class, right? And your teacher started using more of the language with you in class. And if you were to go really far with it, you’d enter a class where there’s no English speaking whatsoever, not from you or the teacher. Next you’d work on true fluency.
These kids start English really young in school with their Korean teachers. They learn the basics from them and by the time they are in middle school, many of them are ready for foreign teachers (me). For some of my lower level classes I try to speak a little slower and I simplify my language for all classes, but on the whole they understand me. So what I work on with them is increasing their vocab and refining their grammar. Some of them will write or say “he go to store” and forget about “s” to match with he, and forget “the” because it doesn’t work that way in Korean. Some kids know and so as soon as they say it, they’ll fix it. But I have a couple who really can’t put sentences together for the life of them. Another major thing I teach them is transitions. They have trouble seeing that there’s a relationship between sentences next to each other, so I teach them how words like “However, because, also, after” etc. work and then they have to give me their own examples.
Through this I’ve noticed just how many words have multiple meanings. I really feel bad for the kids because I’m sure it confuses them. I’ve also noticed that girls are better than boys at handwriting (their Korean writing too). That makes me laugh.
I had no idea how difficult it is to write on the board. It’s more difficult than it looks, especially as a lefty. First of all you have to write vertically with no place to rest your arm. You can’t stand right in front or you’ll block the view, so you have to write at a weird angle off to the side. And you’re not supposed to face the board, but continue facing the kids. Plus I’m a lefty which makes the hard, impossible. I definitely don’t have it down.
I have to say that on the whole I’m liking this and I’m glad I did this. I have my moments and I have things I don’t like of course, but thus is life, right? I have a couple of kids that frustrate me and I don’t know what to do with them sometimes. I really don’t like preparing lessons. Sometimes after one of my longer days with my biggest classes, I can feel my throat starting to hurt from having to talk so loud and so long. But I really like it when the kids are eating candy and they offer me some during break. I like it when the shy kids raise their hand to answer. I like it when I can see the wheels turning inside a kid’s head and they get a concept. I like it when they teach me something about Korea.