Pages

Saturday, 30 March 2013

Dongtan: Week One


I have been here for a week.

It is really weird for me to be in a new place.

I feel like, 

where I got here at first, 

it was Japan all over again...


Even though Japan and Korea are very different.

For me it is the same weird feeling,

of getting used to a new "somewhere" around the world.


When I got to Sanbon at first,

I shared a room with Alyssa.

That was the big difference with Japan:

In Japan I just had no one with me to make the transition.


With Alyssa, I felt that there was something I knew,

that I could hold onto.


That's what I tried to be for the new teachers, 

Heather and C.J. when they got here.

Just a cushion, for them to feel that,

Korea could indeed become another "home",

where nice people were there for you in case shit happened.


...here I feel like Japan is over me all over again. 

A great new place, 

yet unexplored, 

but far away from everything else,

an empty place where I have to make mine and empty space.


The apartment I am in right now is temporary.

I am moving again in two weeks.

So I cannot make it into what I want:

it is not mine.

It is an empty cold 3 rooms "opistel".

It looks amazing and has a great view,

but it is really cold and empty.


I find myself in an "in between", 

just like when I was in my apartment in Sanbon,

waiting for Alison to leave so I would have furniture.


Sitting on the floor and waiting for time to pass...

Heather, my Darling~ <3


Heather is a sweetheart: she finishes work earlier than the other teachers at A-Class (at 6 instead of 10pm) and she came twice this week, to hang out with me, have a drink and sleep over. On the occasion, I also invited Yeonjoon (a friend I met thanks to my BBF Lala<3)that lives close by, so we could hang out and be more than two.


 The first time, we hanged out in Byeongjum and Suwon and ended up being out too late for the subway. Having to pay a ridiculous price for a cab back to Sanbon, Heather decided to take the cab back to Dongtan with us so we could split the fare in three. 



She had to wake up super early in order to get back to Sanbon to work the next morning, and it was painful to wake up so early, but I think it was worth the fun we had. She got lucky, missing the subway transfer, she got to work only  a few minutes late. Ironically, I was almost late for work myself even if I had woken up 2 hours early and live 1 minute away from my workplace: I hadn't seen the time and ended up having to come back to the apartment because I had forgotten some stuff.




Dongan : Japan?


Ironically, while Dongtan emotionally makes me live Japan (my student exchange to Japan in 2005) all over again, it actually literally feels like Japan: It is a clean clean clean new town full of malls and parcs and open clear spaces. 


And everywhere you look you will lay your eyes on at least one Japanese restaurant. I have tried two of them so far: they both look amazing from inside and have really tasty food, but are really expensive. Being broke, I do not plan on trying them before I get my pay check.





I paid a ridiculous price for Yakisoba in this place,
but the portion was enormous and the meat of good
quality. While I honestly prefer the cheap couterpart
to this expensive meal, I actually got two "service"
side dishes while I hanged out in the restaurant drinking
my pint. That meat was soooo tender and melted in my
mouth, I loved it ~~~ <3

The whole restaurant has a very intimate feeling to it, having wooden separations in between tables, cherry trees all over the place and fake wooden rooftops making it look like a mini village. While the food was expensive, it was good and all in all I would like to go back, with people, ideally.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night, we tried yet another Japanese restautant, a "yakiniku' place this time. The place also looked nice. While the first place I went to was mostly a fish place, this one was an asian BBQ place and the meat we ended up ordering was really good. We had beef and lamb (beef was soooo yummy).




It was SOOOO humid and cold outside and we walked
around so much to finally settle down in this little restaurant
that was actually close to my current apartment building.
This picture was taken as we, red nosed, had just sat in the
BB place....

NGLOW: Orientation #2

It has now officially been a full week since I moved to Dongtan and started working at NGLOWkids (though I have officially signed the contract only yesterday) and today was my second "orientation" day. NGLOW opened three schools so far, and the one in Dongtan is just a baby that has been around for a few months only. For that reason, we do not have that many kids so far, but are making promotional activities on Saturdays to get the parents to see what the dynamic of NGLOW is like. 

On those days, the school is open from 11 to 4:30 and during that time the kids that subscribed got to do many games and activities using both English and Korean - some of the kids who come already know a little English and some still don't know any, so we both have Korean and foreign teachers leading the activities. 

The very first day I started "working" for NGLOW, I went to such an 'orientation' day. Parents come to school with their baby boy or girl (between 3 to 6 years old - North American age) and we take care of them during the day. Teachers from the other two schools come to help out and make sure things are fun. Those days are straining but we get to interact with potential new kids and their mothers get to see how nice it is here ^3^



This morning everything went very smoothly, as it was the second "open-house-ish" in a row we had and we knew what to expect. The transition from lunchtime to gymtime was a bit crazy (we had two crazy boys - twins - who went insane, screamed yelled and ran around in the gym toys and stuff) but all in all, it was really nice. We had the kids make sugar house roofs with bread, whipped cream and candy to bring home and they were really good doing it. I was actually expecting it to be messy and difficult to manage, but it went super well. We did have a majority of girls, which helped creating an "artsy" mood: everyone was trying their best.

Little boy in the middle: one of the crazy twins... getting help from my boss...
I love how all those kids come up with weird English names. Today we had
an Allie, an Alvine (??), a Jasmine and a Cinderella...
Pretty Eileen helping the youngest of the kids today, Daniel (4 years old) who is already
enrolled in the school and in the class I teach. He was the only kid already enrolled that
came today (last time we had 3 or 4 of them who came in).

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

NGLOW Kids

Welcome to The New Dongtan!

Je viens de commencer à travailler à Dongtan, une ville "boom-town" qui est apparue de nulle part il y a quelques années alors que Samsung a décidé d'établir son siège social dans cet endroit un peu éloigné de Séoul, où rien n'existait. Maintenant, beaucoup de familles y sont établies et c'est un endroit où tout est neuf. C'est un petit paradis de gens beaucoup trop riches qui peuvent, entre autres, se permettre d'envoyer leurs jeunes enfants dans une école enseignant l'anglais qui leur coûte au dessus de 1,200$ par mois. 


Après mes mésaventures à Sanbon, j'essaie de me familiariser avec Dongtan, une ville qui, ironiquement, comme la mienne, est apparue grâce à un boom économique et l'établissement d'une grosse compagnie: La mienne, une mine; la leur, l'électronique. Est-ce que cet heureux adon signifie que je vais trouver ma place ici, et réussir à faire un bon travail? En tout cas je veux mettre toutes les chances de mon côté. 




L'école où j'ai commencé à travailler est la toute dernière branche d'un groupe de 3 écoles d'enseignement de langue anglaise dans la région. C'est le bébé de la gang et donc, encore en développement. Toutefois, jusqu'ici il me semble que c'est vraiment un joli endroit où travailler. L'école est, comme presque tout aux alentour, toute neuve, et est assez petite: ils ne visent pas à avoir plus de 40 enfants inscrits. C'est une petite école qui prend tout le 6ième étage d'un building, comprenant 8 pièces, donc un café où les parents (mais aussi les enseignants) peuvent se faire des cappuccino, expressos, lattés, jus de kiwi, banane ou fraise maison et un gym où on amène les enfants pour jouer et faire des activités durant la journée.


 Il y a officiellement 2 enseignants de l'étranger: Une fille qui à l'air super sympathique, et qui s'appelle Stormy, et moi (pour l'instant on est 3, mais la troisième personne est un gars qui ne travaillera plus à partir du mois d'Avril - ironiquement, je pense qu'il a eu droit à une surprise imprévue semblable à celle que j'ai vécue le mois passé... je ne peux que compatir, et espérer que ça va marcher pour lui ailleurs, et pour moi ici).



Mon frère, tu aimerais ma nouvelle école: la couleur par excellence ici c'est le orange. Moi je l'aime parce que la marque de vêtements par excellence portée par les enfants qui y viennent, c'est Burberry. De la tête aux pieds...Non mais franchement hi hi hi. C'est triste mais presque drôle...



Le programme utilisé par NGLOW est encore en mise en place étant donné que ça ne fait pas très longtemps qu'il existe, mais ils sont parti de rien pour faire leur curriculum et il me semble intéressant. Ce qu'il y a de différent avec NGLOW par rapport à A-Class c'est que la gestion des groupes classes est beaucoup plus libérale, ce qui est à la fois intéressant et effrayant. J'ai en gros pas mal le champ libre sur la façon dont j'enchaîne les activités. Par contre, au moins, il y a quand même, pour les 'phonics' un curriculum bien structuré. J'ai encore beaucoup à apprendre et j'espère que les efforts que je mets seront suffisants. Cette semaine, en fait, je suis l'enseignant que je vais remplacer et dois essayer d'apprendre sur le tas avant d'avoir à commencer mes cours. Je commence officiellement le mois prochain avec mon horaire de 9-6, mais cette semaine je ne travaille que de 9-2:30, ce qui me laisse du temps pour m'habituer à l'entourage et me familiariser avec les différents endroits qu'ils y a ici.




Est-ce que les uniformes des enfants ne sont pas tout simplement adorables? Ils sont vraiment trop trop trop trop cute quand ils viennent à l'école avec leur petits sacs et leur costumes!!!


Saturday, 16 March 2013

10K!

10K!!!! Thank You!

This blog finally went over the 10,000 pageviews! Yay! Thank you for reading! I feel like I should do something special for the occasion...  any clue of what could be nice? Taking any suggestion here feel free to tell me!


Adventure Teaching



There was an Adventure Teaching even last night in Gangnam - Big Rock Brewery, if I remember the name of the place correctly. There were over 50 teachers coming from all over the place who came to chill. It was really nice to see that Adventure Teaching is doing so well. I am very happy with what the organisation has done for me so far, and it's really nice to finally interact with the people I've been emailing with back and forth for the past 6 months or so.

Adventure Teaching's Super Trio
On its website, Adventure Teaching refers to "The Arrival Store", a great site you can use to buy things that are hard to find in Korea, but that you might need if you move here for a while. Most of my co-workers have used it and it is a very handy store. I think I must have had a bad karma, because I never got what I ordered (got reimbursed without any problem so no worry on that part). All the people I know that used the services of The Arrival Store have had no problem however so I still recommend it strongly. Last night, when I told them about my Arrival Store problem, I got a free beer ^3^ See?! Everything can turn out to be a good thing in the end, that is what is great about life. It always changes. You just have to see things as they are: fleeting moments that you have to enjoy little by little.

To be honest, however, I almost felt out of place, surrounded by white people all around. While I do hang out with people from work, we usually go out with other Korean people. This time, I felt like I was in some weird in-between kind of place where even the korean waiters spoke English (if you are looking for a place in Gangnam to have a chill beer and play darts and you don't speak a word of Korean, Big Rock is perfect for you). I guess I am being weird, but I suppose I'm just quite fine with being a minority when I hang out, not used to be the majority for once....


You see the TALL guy at the back? This guy was not standing on a step. And see me? I was wearing 8 inches heels...
I also was told that Dokhoon (the only Korean on the picture) never smiles in pictures, we we got a lucky smiling shot!


MyeongDong - More Randomness




Here are some randomies from my trip to Myeongdong last weekend. I am taking it easy this weekend so I planned on making random blog updates, even though most of the things I'll be posting will be long past the "best before" period...

Last weekend the weather was crazy hot on Saturday: I had pants and very warm boots so my feet were so overheated that it actually hurt. By the end of the day, I ended up buying a pair of lighter shoes, but I had to carry the bag with my boots around so the pain switched from my feet to my shoulder eh eh... whatever. 

I can't wait for summer to be here at last. I want to wear summer dresses and shoes, and stop having to wear thick coats which weight on my shoulders make me irritable at the end of the day. Summer has its load of uncomfortable moments, especially in Asia, but I still like warm weather best. Afterall, before summer, spring will come, and spring is always a great season in Asia, with flower and warm weather (not too hot :3)

Okay, enough blabbering on this for now, just have fun looking at my stupid pictures....



DBSK (or am I mistaken?) and the lovely flowers they bought me....Not. Will no one ever
give me flowers? I find that guys underestimate the value of simple things like flowers 
nowadays. Flowers have no "use" in bouquet and it is true that they do not last long, but
it is for this exact reason that they are beautiful. Receiving a flower bouquet means that
the person cares about the 'present moment' and is able to enjoy the beauty of it: things that
don't last are beautiful in that they are pieces of unique fleeting moments that one can
only enjoy for a short time..... anyways. I love bouquets.
I just LOVE the smell of Tony Moly's beauty products. I never realized that they were so expensive however.
When I got into this store, I got super excited because they were selling them in big bunches (hand creams
and lipgloss), but then I saw the price: around $120 for each bag. I suppose that for the amount of product
inside those plastic bags, $120 is not that bad, but since I don't actually need that many... 



Thursday, 14 March 2013

Rodin Café - Myeongdong




Last weekend I went to Myeongdong twice in two days. I had just received my paycheck so I felt like I wanted to spend money <3

I have this thing, when things are not going too well, where I just want to surround myself with new things in order to feel like I am not where I am. Well buying new clothes and wearing them is one thing, another is to visit new places. Myeongdong was amazingly crowded on both days, with only a slight little difference: Saturday it was 23 degrees out, and Sunday only 4. 

On Saturday I got nice deals, did not buy that many things, but I finally got the inner skirt pants and socks to go with my Hanbok. Now the only missing things are the hair accessories :3
I also got a nice orange and white one piece for $10 (on sale) and a nice white top with black bow patterns on it. 

On Sunday I finally bought a wallet to replace the one I bought in Japan in 2008 in the trip I took with my childhood friend (the wallet that ended up costing me a second plane ticket...) and a couple of other things, I ended up spending around $300 on Sunday, bad bad bad me. Anyways. Now I'm good for a while.

The first thing Heather and I did when we got to Myeongdong on Sunday was to get coffee (we had both stayed up pretty late the night before and thus woken up pretty late so it was around 4 when we finally arrived there, and neither of us had had coffee yet) and we actually found a pretty nice (tho expensive) coffee place on the first street we walked onto. It's called Rodin Café and is a two-floor small coffee shop that has a nice 'chalet' feeling to it, warm and nice, good looking staff and tasty coffee. If I lived near Meyeongdong, I would definitely go there with my computer and just chill out, and do my stuff with a tasty coffee by my side.