Wow these last few weeks have been INSANE. And even that feels like an understatement.
Let's see... where to start....
First, EPIK Orientation.
Then, placement and first day.
Lastly, settling in?
(Can you tell I'm teaching EFL with my easy-to-follow agenda? 😂 hope you can all imagine me holding up fingers to indicate 1st, 2nd 3rd... you're welcome)
EPIK Orientation:
For those who don't know, EPIK is the English Program In Korea. This falls under South Korea's Ministry of Education and the NIIED (National Institute for International Education). Most public schools hire their native English teachers (NETs) through EPIK. Anyway, EPIK hosts a 9-day orientation for in-coming NETs. Orientation was essentially my kick-off into my job in South Korea.
And orientation is intense. 12-hour days of lectures and classes all focused on teaching EFL better, understanding the culture, and figuring out how you fit into it all.
During orientation I thought I was overwhelmed and then it all just kind of snow-balled into my first day, weekend, week and
actually being overwhelmed. Orientation wasn't even a week ago and it already feels like it was ages ago...
There's not really a lot to tell about orientation (mainly because it was just SO MUCH INFO) but there are a few things that I'll reflect on.
First, I kind of had a bad attitude. Not the whole week but definitely when I first got there. I kind of felt like I just made a group of amazing friends (
친구!!!) and now I had to try to make more?! I did end up making other friends but it started a little begrudgingly (that totally doesn't sound like me, right?! 😏). I learned a lot and found myself so, so, SO grateful for Ruby and Dr. Matsuda (If you're at ASU, I highly recommend taking classes with either of them). I was reassured to find a lot of the teaching and specifically TESOL principles/practices I had learned were being re-taught. I was also super grateful for the opportunity to hear from others who have been teaching here for several years, sharing their experiences, successes and fumbles.
Also, the campus was beautiful! Busan University of Foreign Studies hosted us. The campus is up on a hill so if I didn't already know that "every day in Busan is leg day," I definitely learned that truth while there.
(so green and so beautiful - everyday, this little desert girl is amazed!)
I also had my first experience living in a dorm and having a roommate. I learned that I'm that roommate that stays out way too late and sneaks in just past curfew (yes, we had curfew! which really was a good thing otherwise I never would've slept). In the evening after Korean classes were over, more-often-than-not, people would head "down the hill" to bars, noraebangs, or cafes. If you pegged me for partying at the latter... you'd be right. But the place doesn't matter, good people = good times. It was nice to just eat 빙수 ("bingsoo") and decompress around friends. Going into orientation, I seriously felt like I had known my 친구 group for so much longer than just the 5 or so days since we had met - seriously, such a blessing!!
For the "Opening Ceremonies," they had the Arirang Taekwondo Club perform. It. Was. AWESOME. And then later that week they taught us a brief taekwondo class. Very cool.
(Guys. I broke a board! Goal: to learn Korean - BAM!)
We had
a lot of rain. Apparently there was a typhoon so that explained it. I guess Japan ends up taking the brunt of the storms that come through so it really wasn't any worse than monsoon storms in 29 or AZ. However, I did go on a short-lived adventure and roll my ankle 😅 ...ever-so-graceful. Thank goodness for Addri always looking out for me!
(rain, rain, rain...)
(maybe you can't tell, but I definitely could. swollen left ankle)
(I don't usually have kankles, ok?! or bruising)
At Orientation, we also got one "cultural" day where they dropped us off at Haeundae Beach (해운대) and Dongbaekseom Island (동백섬) for a couple hours and then half of us went to a traditional show at the
Busan National Gugak Center (국림국악원) while the other half got to go make street-food-style fish cakes. It was nice to come back to 동백섬 during the day and walk around. And of course, Jun met us there! 친구 reunited!! Again, it is
so beautiful in Korea
. I hope I never get over how extraordinarily beautiful it is here.
(missing: Alex. He did the fish cakes, as modeled below...)
😂😂😂
At the Gugak Center, we watched a play called "천생연분" (trans: Match Made in Heaven). Before the show started, I tried to translate the title and typed 북 instead of 분, so I thought it was gonna be about North Korea - whaaa?! 😂😅 Basically, it was
just like watching a historical drama, with all the romance, comedy, and tropes! It was great. Meanwhile, they utilized traditional dance and music and had screens explaining their history and significance. It was really cool. They didn't allow photography until the end, so I was only able to record the outro music scenes. Enjoy! (PS - sorry if the drums annoy you, Mom, but it was really cool... guess you had to be there? 🤷😅)
Oh, and we passed a fire station that I thought was super cool... and of course there's a K-Pop song for that 😉
On the last evening of Orientation, they had a ceremony stating we had completed however many in-service training hours. The highlight, however, was the amateur K-Pop performance, starring Alexa (I'm sure you can spot her, she's a natural):
I complained about the hills, right? Well, here's some more complaining...
(that big hill, tho')
(and then stairs, stairs, and more stairs)
And bitter-sweet, last night goodbyes before they ship us off to our various provinces in the morning:
Placement and First Day:
I was placed in (...drum roll, please....)
YANGSAN! (
양산시)
This was crazy ironic for many reasons. First, because a major reason I had selected Gyeongsangnam-do for my province was because of the rural locations (but with reasonable access to city, like Busan). I am literally in the heart of downtown Yangsan, with subway access to Busan. Second, I was *hoping* for elementary school or maybe high school (elementary is most common, high school is least) and I got middle school - I seriously used to tell my junior high students that they were my least favorite grade to work with! Going into this, I thought I had very little specific expectations or hopes. I was really just excited to be doing any of this at all. Upon news of my placement, I realized some of my unrealized expectations 😂 None of this was "bad" to me, just crazy ironic. The Lord definitely knows better as to what I want and need, though. Even though, unexpectedly, my placement came as a surprise, I was
so excited and
so relieved to just know where I was going and have even the slightest narrowing-in on what I'd be doing.
Also, I literally moved 20 miles north of where orientation was held... for reference, here's my little map I made to keep track of the 진구 gang, blue dot is orientation:
So the very next morning, after being told placements and saying goodbye, our POE (Provincial Office of Education) picks us up and takes us to the office of education. Basically, I drove with my four other GOE EPIK teachers (Gyeongsangnam-do Office of Education) about an hour to Changwon, only to drive back to Yangsan (20 minutes from where I was originally). Our GOE coordinator is great. He even brought us all McDonald's (I don't eat McDonald's, but when someone in Korea gives you food, you eat it. Also, McDonald's delivers in Korea.
Everything delivers in Korea).
I got to the GOE and, along with the 4 others, was greeted by my co-teacher who then drove me back to Yangsan and I started work that day. I thought orientation was overwhelming, it was nothing compared to going straight to work and meeting
all the people. Not to mention, orientation was like a little bubble of other foreigners all speaking English 99% of the time. Aka: so unprepared in that regard. But I also loved it. I loved getting to my school, seeing all of the students (I'm at the 2nd largest school in the province, beeteedubs 😲) and finally having a clear-
ish purpose. The first day, I met the vice principal and principal (and of course, all of my practiced Korean introductions escaped me) and they announced over the intercom that I was there. Before I even met students in their classrooms, students knew my name. It was kind of like being a celebrity (and still is) in the sense that so many students stop and stare at you before rushing through all the English they know to greet you and scurrying off. Luckily, some (those with a little more English confidence) hang around and grill you for everything you could possibly know about America and pop culture. Sadly, I think I might know more about their pop culture than my own!
Amid all of this first day, I didn't necessarily feel overwhelmed or culture-shock. It was once I got home that that lurking feeling of being overwhelmed was realized. Culture shock. It's a thing. When I got to my apartment, I kind of took a huge, deep breath and only then realized I had been carrying some sort of weight with me. And then, you realize you're not in
your own place so you can't really get comfortable until you
make it your own place.
So funny story that might better explain this weird experience of overwhelmed/culture-shock:
When I got home that first day, I come inside and immediately try to call my mom and sisters. Only to realize it's 2am their time and no one is going to pick up. I hang up and sit back on my bed, only to let it sink in that I'm kind of completely alone now. And not that I felt completely hopeless or anything but it was kind of sad actually making that realization, one that you had tried to plan for going into this experience, that you can't just pick up and call your go-to, trusted support system with the news of the day to decompress. So I started to cry... a little... and then I started to pray and so I started to cry... a lot... Only to then have my mom call me back. I answer her video chat with tears streaming down my face, like the adult that I am, and cry more because I feel bad that she has to see me cry when everything is ok, ya know? Anyway, so I tell her about my day. How it was kind of rough because I got a main co-teacher that has a lot on her plate, who told me point-blank she really won't be able to be there for me. How this is all so exciting but I'm also
exhausted and don't really know how to do any of the things in my apartment yet because I just got here and they're all in Korean and no one has shown me how. How my students are adorable but I have 23 classes each week of over 35-40 students in each one (no repeats) and how they're coming up on mid-terms so I'll be teaching straight from the textbook, no "making English fun."
In the middle of all of this, I get excited to show my mom my apartment. I go to the door to unlock it and go out and... I'm locked in. My mom and I are laughing hysterically because how in the H-E-double am I locked
in?! So I get this great idea to call Jun 진구 (
not Jun 오빠) and have him come enter my code from outside my apartment to let me out! Because, duh, he lives like 25 minutes away in Busan and I'm locked in my apartment. (Did I say I was exhausted?). So I hang up with my Mom and video call Jun. He patiently walks me through
unlocking my door... before letting me know that was the stupidest thing he's ever been called for 😅
(top lock automatically locks/unlocks; bottom lock, well... falls prey to user error)
Anyway, yeah, it's overwhelming, but overwhelming in a subtle way. Like, everyday things that you now have to re-figure out because they're done differently or in a completely different language.
Settling In...?
If that's what you call this. I'm not sure how long it takes to feel like the everyday is
your new everyday... but I hear the magic number is 3 months. In 3 months it will be December 10th (1 day before Daniel's birthday and 8 days before mine), and we'll see where I'm at 😊
In this first week, I've learned that I need people. Aside from friends and family, it's the little things like interacting with random strangers in the same language. There are so many times I'd
love to just casually reach out to another person but I can't because of that language barrier. I've also learned that actual language (the sounds, words, and gestures we use to communicate) is not the extent of language. That culture is so inextricably a part of language that it also largely defines our communication. Like, I knew this in a theoretical kind of way, ok? But even when someone else speaks English, there is still so much meaning being lost between us when we come from different cultures. On that same note, seeing how there is so much shared across languages and cultures is amazing. If you don't believe me, just get a classroom of middle-schoolers who have never played Heads Up, 7-Up to play and they will definitely pull out all the stops that any other kid would (stomping, tip-toeing, peeking, blowing on thumbs, whispering in ears, being "clever") without even being told that that's just how it's done.
So, settling in? Daniel told me, first-things-first, make the apartment my own. I dropped more money than I normally would have before a paycheck but I bought new sheets, pillows, deco, etc., to make my little studio my own and that has definitely helped. I am beyond amazed by all the tender mercies the Lord has sent my way, through friends I have made, friends and family back home praying for me or reaching out with exactly the right words at the right time (which they probs don't even realize), and just everyday miracles that make me smile and feel happy to be here. I mean, just look at my walk to school each day - beautiful:
At orientation, one of the lecturers just happened to be a former student of Dr. Matsuda's. I introduced myself and we were both so excited to have studied under such a great professor and in the same field. This lecturer is such a sweetheart - she got me a gift before she had to leave and before I left for my placement. It was KitKats and a T-money card (for the subway here). I had set it on the table in my apartment without really thinking about it, other than planning to eat the chocolate later on. That first day when I came home this week, after crying and being "locked in" my apartment, I looked over and saw the sticker's message, "You Belong Here" 😊 Maybe it was just another sticker when she put together the little gift, but it turned into a little blessing just when I needed that reminder most.
Still excited for this adventure!!!
안녕!
Bekah
P.S. - Mom, I eat fish! Like, I've had a lot. It's in everything. And I eat it. But I intentionally ate sushi and raw fish for you (and Michael!). Oh, and that's raw beef on the left (can't remember it's Korean name, but I ate that, too!).
