English Classroom

In the Korean public school system, the kids have a homeroom and have all of their classes there. The teachers move around from class to class, and when they don't have class, they stay in one of the teachers' offices around the school. In another effort to stress the importance of English education, the Korean govt has been giving money to hundreds of schools around the country to establish English rooms. These rooms are used primarily by the Native English speakers when they teach the students; and are filled with the latest technology. H's school just set up one such classroom this March. Here are some photos: 

Welcome to the "Exciting English Environment"  (yes, I made that up)...

Simple but necessary rules for my class.

6 groups with 6 students in each group. A few of my 7th grade classes are up to 38 per class...

This is a touch-screen system. I take the stylus and can write/draw on the screen, and it's projected onto the big screen for the kids to "ooh" and "ahh" at.

The view from one of my windows (the EEE is on the 3rd floor).

This is my desk in the main teacher's office. There are about 20 teachers (including the VP). A few of us just got new computers last week. My monitor used to be in the "fish bowl" under my desk; now the new flat screen monitor is proudly on my desk top.

1st Ride of Spring

Last Sunday (the 5th, H's grandpa's 80th birthday) we took our 1st motorcycle ride of spring 2009. We went about an hour away to Jecheon, which has a lake (not common in Korea). We knew that there would be a cherry blossom festival the following weekend, so we wanted to beat the masses and see if we could spot some blooming flowers. Not many were in bloom yet, but it was still a wonderful ride and we also happened to stumble upon a cool rock formation.

This Saturday after our class in Seoul we're hoping to check out the "most famous" cherry blossom festival in Korea. We were there a few years ago but this time we may take in the festivities from a new spot...we'll keep you posted.  Hope you're enjoying the nice weather as much as we are!!

The cool rock formation.

I bet this is looking georgous right now!!

Colorful bushes along the side of the road.

After our ride we met friends Adele, Bryan, Brandon and Roxy for dinner. (yes, 2 Brandons!)

The Month of March

Our first month back to work/school has really flown by. It's hard to believe that we've already got our 1st mid-term at grad school this Tuesday. Our finance class is not our favorite; the professor basically reads from the book and is not helpful with our homework assignments either. At least he's allowing us to have a cheat sheet for our test. 

Our school life has also had some changes. B has 3 new Korean co-workers, and 1 new foreign teacher. His class schedule now includes going to an elementary school twice a week as well. They've set up after school programs for most of the elem. schools in our area, so most of our friends also have to take part in this. It's a lot more planning and a bit of headache to get out to the schools (since they're all in the rural areas) but B has his motorcycle so he's fine.

I also has a new foreigner at school. Actually,  my guy is dating B's co-worker (they came together). I've also got a new main co-teacher, so that's been a big change. The best new thing at my school, by far, is the new English classroom. Some schools in Korea have been given grants by the govt to establish English Zones, classrooms filled with hi-tech goodies for the foreign teacher to use. My room reportdly cost over 30,000 US dollars to renovate and set up. I'll have to take some pictures and post them on here soon.

Our computer's hard disk crashed a week ago. At first we thought we would lose all of our data, but luckily the repairman was able to find most of our documents and recovered them for us. We were happily surprised that he only charged us a total of 120,000won (about $100) to fix it up. So far it's working well again.

On the 7th we took in "The Marriage of Figaro" in Seoul.

Last weekend was our friend's b-day party. Roxanne & I got dolled up for the event.

Our group enjoying dinner.

Back to Work

On Monday we both headed back to work. The Korean school year begins in March, so we have a new bunch of 7th graders at our school. In addition to new students, there were a number of faculty changes in both of our schools  as well. Both of us have at least one new English co-teacher, so that will be a big change since we work together with them in the classroom. We've also learned that both of our schools will be getting an additional foreign teacher. H's school will get a man and B's school will get a woman. We've been told that these two newbies are married, but they will arrive sometime next week and we'll find out more then.

H is still going out to her rural middle school every Friday (starting on the 6th), and now B will also be picking up an additional school. He's been told that it will be an elementary school, but the details aren't set yet.

Tomorrow (the 6th) after work we will be heading into Seoul to watch the opera, "The Marriage of Figaro." We're looking forward to our second opera experience (the 1st being in Prague when we were studying abroad in '06). We'll spend the night in Seoul since Saturday is our first grad school course of the new school year. We start with an analtyitcal accounting class every Tuesday and Saturday, and in April we'll begin our 4-week long finance class. This semester's classes sound more rigorous than last terms', but we'll see how it goes. 

We'll leave you with a few fun quotes from our new 7th grade students:

"Teacher, what size shoe do you wear?"

"Do you have a gun?"  (When asked why he would ask that, he replied that he read that all Americans own guns).

"Can your cat jump high?"

"What's your blood type?"

Trip Pics

Here are some photos from our trip to Malaysia!

Langkawi Island- northwest Malaysia- 1-31-09

Cable Car on Langkawi Island: 1-31-09.

7 wells waterfall: where we lost and found both our camera and wallet!!

We took a 3 hour boat tour around Langkawi: we saw bats, eagles, fish, and lots of cool formations. 2-1-09.

Crocodile cave, full of bats.

Driving the boat through a cave!

Coral Island-Snorkeling day trip from Langkawi 2-2-09.

Feeding the sharks on Coral Island.

Naan, an Indian bread, so delicious!! 

H trekking throuth the jungle. Cameron Highlands, 2-4-09.

Halfway there!

We hiked up a steep trail for 20 minutes expecting to reach the lookout: when we got there, we found this sign :(

We finally finished our jungle hike (took 3 hours)

Jungle Trek- Cameron Highlands- Our 4X4 got stuck! 2-5-09.

Waterfall on the way to the flower.

Rafflesia-the world's largest flower. We trekked for over an hour to find it!

Tea Plantations.

Cameron Highlands: More tea plantations 2-6-09.

A lone tea picker in the fields.

Kuala Lumpur: the Hindu Thai Pusam Festival 2-8-09. (thousands of people)

Many of the believers will shave their heads before the festival as a testament of their faith.

The purpose is to make a march up to this cave temple. Some of them carried their babies on this bamboo stick all the way up.

Some of them had hooks in their backs and rods through thier cheeks.

Some of them carried heavy alters up the 300 stairs.

View from the top looking down on the crowds.

Old buildings in the historic town of Melaka, UNESCO World Heritage Site) 2-9-09.

Dutch church in Melaka 2-9-09.

Hand made shoes in Melaka.

The Tour de Langkawi passed right by our hostel.

Birthday dinner: H, Chantal, John, B and Mark. 2-10-09.

2-11-09 Mersing: Coast town where we were supposed to board the ferry for our island. Low tide= stranded in Mersing for the day.

Tioman Island: 2-12-09.

Monitor Lizard Crossing.

Monkey on the beach.

Mark & Chantal; our new Dutch friends. We saw each other in almost every city that we traveled to! We spent 3 days together on the deserted island.

Tioman Island: Paradise!! 2-14-09

Singapore city Scape  2-16-09.

Fountain of Wealth (Largest fountain in the world) Laser Show.

Singapore: 1000 Lights Buddha (15 meters, 300 tons)

Back in Wonju

Yesterday at 11:30am we left Singapore via bus, and, having to stop at border patrol in Singapore, were asked if we could take a quick survey. That survey lasted 10 minutes so we missed our bus that would take us into Malaysia. 15 minutes later another one arrived so we hopped on that one with no problem. Once in JB, Malaysia (border town) we caught a bus to the historic town of Melaka, since it was on our way to KL and we hadn't gotten any souvenirs from there. H and all the bags stayed at the bus terminal there while B went into the town and got a magnet and keychain. Next we caught a bus to KL, thinking that we'd be able to catch a bus from that station to the airport...wrong. We ended up taking a cab there but it wasn't too pricey. We got to the airport 3 hours early so we just hung out there; we did notice that a few flights were delayed due to snow but our Beijing flight was fine. We did end up boarding 15 minutes late, but we were up in the air and napping in no time (our flight was from mindnight to 6am). 

Upon arriving in Beijing, we noticed snow covering the runway and planes; it had snowed about an inch. Our flight was due to board at 8:15am, with an 8:45 take off. We sat, and sat, and sat. Twice they made announcements, but only in Chinese and Korean so finally we asked what the holdup was. They informed us that due to the snow, we would be delayed a bit. (Although other planes were still taking off). 2 and a half hours later, at 11:30am we took off from Beijing. Due to the time difference, we arrived at Incheon at 1:40 (but it was only a 1hr 20min flight). We flew through customs and at the baggage claim, our bags were one of the 1st to come out! Hoping to catch a 3pm bus directly to Wonju, we went to the ticket counter and were told that the next direct bus wasn't until 2 hours later...Instead of waiting we caught a bus to Seoul's bus terminal and from there took a bus to Wonju. In total, we spent 29 hours in transit! We're glad to be home, and Chomps is also glad we're home. 

Our friends are going back home to their country tomorrow so there's a going away party tonight. Tomorrow we hope to take it easy at home all day!!

Last Day

Today is our final day of vacation: in a few hours we'll leave Singapore by bus and head to Johor, a Malaysian border town. Then we'll get on a bus bound for Melaka, the historical town that we stayed at over H's b-day (we didn't get a chance to get any souvenirs so we'll swing in for a few keychains and such). In the early evening we'll catch a bus to KL central, and immediately switch buses and go the airport. Our flight flies out of KL at 12:20 midnight on the 18th. We'll arrive in Beijing at about 8am, our flight to Seoul leaves at 10am and we'll be in korea by noon the 18th. Lots of traveling for our final day of vacay! Will post pics when we're back in Wonju. Thanks to all who have been checking our blog!!

Tioman Island

On the 12th we caught a ferry to Pulau Tioman, an island off the east coast of Malaysia. We arrived at Air Batang Beach at 12:30pm, found a small chalet for about $10 a night, and we hit the beach along with our Dutch friends. The island is fairly deserted now since it's still technically typhoon season, but in our 3 days on the island we only encountered rain once (at 7am!) The 13th we walked to Tekek, the only town on the island, to get some snacks and such. Then we all took a walking trail in hopes of reaching Monkey Bay, a spot supposedly great for snorkeling and swimming. We only had flip-flops on, and the trail was more like a hiking trail so we just stopped when we saw the 1st signs of beach. Although it wasn't Monkey Bay, it was still a nice beach and we had it all to ourselves! Unfortunately, our underwater camera somehow got water into the battery, so the screen is now not functioning...we're hoping that once back in Korea we'll be able to get it fixed. Our friends convinced us that Friday the 13th was to blame for our bad luck. That night after dinner we stayed up playing Dutch and American cards all night.
The 14th we stayed at our own beach all day and did some swimming and snorkeling. When we went to grab lunch, we accidentally left our snorkel gear on the beach and when we finally remembered a few hours later, both sets were gone. I guess it was still the 13th somewhere...
Today at 9:30 we caught the only ferry back to the mainland but had to say goodbye to our Dutch friends, who are staying in paradise for one more day. We arrived at 11:55am, so we missed the noon bus to Singapore. The next time open is 3pm, and that only takes us to the border of Malaysia/Singapore, where we'll have to get a new bus to take us into Singapore. We've read that traffic going into SP is really bad on sunday evenings (which is when we'll get there since our bus leaves at 3 and takes 4 hours...) so we'll see what time we reach our hostel. We'll see SP all day tomorrow (the 16th) and some of the 17th but we'll have to leave around 2pm in order to get to Kuala Lumpur to catch our flight, which leaves at 12:30am the 18th.

Day of Transit

We woke up at 6am today so that we could be at the bus terminal by 7:30 to see if we could get seats on the bus headed toward the island. We were lucky in that we got on the same bus as our friends. The bus ride was supposed to take 4 hours, but ended up taking 5 due to a flat tire on the bus. We arrived at Mersing, the port city, at 1:15pm only to be told that the only ferry going was at 10am (due to a low tide). So, the four of us checked into a cheap hostel and walked around the town a bit trying to kill time. Now it's dinner time so we'll get a bite to eat and then relax in the hostel until bedtime. Our boat doesn't leave until 10am tomorrow, so we're hoping to get to Tioman and get checked into a hotel by 1pm. We're not sure if we'll stay on the island 2 or 3 nights yet, since we still want to get down to Singapore to explore there a bit.

B-day in Malacca

Today is H's 25th birthday! We started the day a bit later than usual, waking up at 8:15 without an alarm clock. By 10 am we were wandering around the old town again, taking in the Dutch architecture that is everywhere. We grabbed lunch at a cool food stall mall filled with traditional foods. After lunch we saw signs saying "Tour de Langkawi" and found out that there was a big bicycle race coming thru town at about 1:30. We were able to catch the racers from the balcony of our hostel; they were so fast!!  Later we walked through China Town looking for a place to exchange books- we finally found one a few hours later and were happy to trade in our old books for a new one. 

For dinner H was in the mood for cream sauce spaghetti, so we found a restaurant that we had passed by earlier with a bit spendy prices. We thought, meh, it's a b-day dinner so what the heck. Hwent with chicken alfredo while B had a local Malay-style pizza. Both dishes were tasty. After dinner we were letting our food digest when a Brit entered the bar area and was talking to the server. He mentioned that it was his b-day soon so he would like a drink. H said (rather quietly to B) "it's MY b-day TODAY"  The man over heard and came over to enquire whose bday it was. He insisted on buying us a round of drinks (not cheap since Malaysia is a Muslim country and alcohol is forbidden in that religion). After two drinks and a nice chat, we saw our new Dutch friends walking by. We knew that they were arriving in Malacca but hadn't seen them around town. They joined us for another drink and we discovered that they're going to Tioman Island in the morning. Our plan was to go to Singapore in the morn for a few days, and then end our trip on that same island. However, since there is a low monsoon season on the island now, we've heard that tourists can be "stranded" on the island for up to 4 days (not good since we have a plane to catch on the 18th). So it makes more sense to go there now and, if we do get stuck, we'll simply pass up SIngapore and head straight to the airport. Plus, now we'll get to travel with our new pals!!  Since we didn't buy our tix in advance, we're hoping there are 2 seats available for the 8am bus tomorrow. We're not sure if we'll have internet on the island or not, but we'll try our best!!