End of orientation

It ends tomorrow. After nearly four weeks of orientation, three in Suwon, another one here. I think we're all ready. We're all tired, talking about teaching on Tuesday (we think). Talking about how we're going to get to our rooms and close the door and sleep for fifteen hours. This last week has dragged at times. Repetitive classes, locked in a dodgy resort hotel with nothing around for miles, with eleven o'clock curfews and no drinking. The orientation has been a great experience, but more than the training in teaching, it has been the social networking and the cultural lessons that happened mostly accidentally that have made it so worthwhile. I'm glad I found this program.

Homestay turned out to be a good experience for me, and for most of the people here at Gyeongbuk. I was picked up around ten by my family. I was introduced in halting English to "Mother" and "Father" - that was all I ever learned of their names - and was wondering how we would communicate, when Dennis, their twelve year old son, spoke up in fluent English. It was for his benefit that I'd been invited into their home, but there was little he needed from me in the way of English instruction. He spoke slowly and his grammar was occasionally imperfect, but he was completely comprehensible with a vocabulary that was near complete. They're taught by rote memorisation here, and the kids' memories are amazing. During the weekend Dennis asked me for the English words for some things, everyday things like "parsimon" and "pond-skimmer" (a type of bug). I had no idea; his mobile phone gave him the words.

Dennis was a nice kid; I liked him. He was very smart, a little chubby, keen to learn. I asked him if he was the best at English in his school, and he told me that there was a girl who was better. I knew how he felt - my mind going back to the one girl who always beat me in class when I was his age.

We first went to Potech, the university where his father worked as a manager of the maintainance department. The only drawback to talking always through Dennis was that there were a lot of conversations about action movies and computer games. We had a meal in the cafeteria, then went to their home and played Rubikkum (sp?). Everyone found it a little stressful at first, and afterwards the father suggested, "all of us little nap?" to which I enthusiastically agreed.

In the afternoon we went to a traditional Korean village and I talked some more with Dennis. I invented a game he found hilarious, where we would point to modern things in the village and say "traditional Korean fire extinguisher" or "traditional Korean television." At six thirty we went to pick up his eighteen year old sister from high school. Six thirty on a Saturday that is. She was in school uniform and everything. The West is so screwed...

Afterwards we had a huge dinner of salt pork at a restaraunt. I was not allowed to pay for anything the whole weekend. We went back to their place, watched some Simpsons episodes, and I went for a half hour walk to the local park with Dennis. We talked about Korean playgrounds and pets and the like. He didn't have a dog; he used to have pet slugs, but they died, and he told me he thought slugs were not very good pets. We came back, I had a beer with his father, we watched Simpsons episodes then went to bed.

The next day we went to Pohang, and to the easternmost part of Korea - the "tiger's tale" according to a stylised traditional image of Korea, now split in half by the North/South border. It was a really pretty beachside area with a bizarre pair of sculptures of hands, one in the water:



Then had a nice lunch before I had to go back to the hotel.

Dennis sent me an email that night with links to some stuff that we had looked at together on the computer, and a message saying he was sad that I had to go back to the hotel so early, and that if I had holidays I should come visit them again, and he would make me a music box. Sweet.

Me with my homestay family:



What else to mention of orientation in Gyeongbuk? It has, as I said, mostly been repetitive and not terribly useful. But it's been a good chance to bond better with some of the people in my immediate area. I haven't made any new friends - don't really need any more at this point - but have improved a lot of friendships with people I didn't know so well.

Yesterday was a nice day. We had another excursion to watch a demonstration class, then an interminable trip to Posco steelworks, which they are ridiculously proud of around here. But afterwards we had samgyeopsal, my favourite Korean meal (pork belly barbeque wrapped in lettuce with heaps of side dishes), then went to a field of blooming lotuses, then jumped a fence into what looked at first to be a playground, but turned out to be a royal park from the Silla dynasty; it was incredibly beautiful. A really good time with some people here whom I really like.

I met my Korean co-scholar today, who seems nice - it might take a while for us to bond properly, but it looks like we should be able to do so. And I have a place! I haven't seen it yet, but it's a single room flat on the edge of Gumi, close to the Gumi/Gimcheon highway, on which my school is located. A ten minute bus ride from my school, great transport by bus or train to most parts of Korea. This is ridiculously lucky. Others are off in fields, have to get lifts to their school at eight in the morning, need to take three seperate buses to get to any city, or have been told by their Korean scholars that "if you don't have a car, you're basically fucked." So I'm good.

Sorry these entries have been so prosaic and technically careless. Hopefully once I'm settled I'll have time for some more reflective stuff, but so far it's all been written in moments snatched between other activities. After today I don't know how long it will be until I can get internet access, so if I'm a little quiet for a while, don't worry.