Hello Daegu... I miss my Ninjas!

Wow. I’m finally here. Sitting in my OWN apartment. My little, studio apartment.

I arrived in Korea just a short 2 weeks ago. Since, I’ve seen sights, eaten street food, had booze in a bag and met some awesome friends.  I’ve done 8 days of training with the EPIK program, performed a lesson plan demonstration, and received my official certificate of employment. Today alone, I loaded my bags in Daejeon on one of the two luggage trucks, rode a 2.5 hour bus ride to Daegu, met my co-teacher, Olivia, met my Principal and Vice Principal, toured part of my school (only the first floor, not the fourth where my room will be), met my landlord who helped me move into my apartment, went to lunch at a phenomenal noodle restaurant, shopped for the essentials at Home Plus, took a nap, figured out how to wash laundry (and washed my sheets), wandered the neighborhood, ran into a coffee shop with free WiFi (Barista B, a coffee shop the ex-English teacher told me about), figured out how to cook with my gas stove without blowing up the apartment (there was an actual threat of this) and unpacked (for the most part).  What I haven’t done is figure out how high to turn on my water (you choose the temperature for the floor and the running hot water), so I may or may not have hot enough water in the morning for a shower.

Buses from Daejeon to Daegu (plus 2 more trucks for luggage- they were huge!)

First sight of Daegu

Where we met our co-teachers

Front of my apartment building (I'm on the 3rd floor)

Door to my apartment

My apartment!

Kitchen

Washer (for clothes), shelf, microwave and fridge

Kitchen on the left, bathroom on the right 

Batroom

Essentials purchased at Homeplus run #1: laundry detergent, fabric softener, "slippers" (for school), water, milk, orange juice, cereal, choco pies, and COFFEE

The unpacking process- CHEERS to my new apartment!

Unpacked

They have shoe cabinets next to the doors here... because you take your shoes off when you walk in

I will write more about my apartment, neighborhood, school and life in Daegu soon, but I need to get caught up. So back to where I left off.

My time in Seoul went wonderfully. I got to meet some really awesome people. I’m not sure if I’ve explain before but I do believe I’ve referenced the “ninjas” before. The “ninjas” began when we all started posting things on the EPIK Facebook group a few months back and realized that some posts were being taken down (that regarded drinking or buying flights early) by the EPIK coordinators, so we (and by we I mean one girl that we have now dubbed “Mama Ninja”) decided to create a Facebook page of our own so we could talk about things openly, get to know each other a little better and discuss plans for our future without the worry of being judged by our new employer. Yes, we still use the main EPIK page for things that are “legal” to talk about, but we use the ninja page more… thus the ninjas. After getting to chit chat with one another, a few of us decided to arrive in Seoul early in order to get over jet lag and get to know one another, so the ninjas took over the Hong Guesthouse. So, there are ninjas and guesthouse ninjas.

Guesthouse Ninjas

The guesthouse ninja group eventually grew to be quite a large party, so it was difficult to get to have in depth conversations with everyone (especially since I was a wimp and didn’t go out every night like some of my fellow ninjas), but I got to at least get acquainted with everyone, and those that I really got to talk to quite a bit have already turned out to be quite good friends.

There’s Adam. May as well be called Papa Ninja. Poor guy, one of the only ones that knew where he was going or what he was doing (he has lived in Korea prior to this, and can speak some Korean), so he kept trying to get everyone going in the right direction. But have you ever tried to keep a group of 15-20 people that have never been in the country, much less city, that they are in together? Not that easy. I’m sure he got frustrated a few times, but he really did help us all get acquainted and get pointed in the right direction.

Adam (aka Papa Ninja)

There’s HaylieRae, who was my roomie during our stay at the guesthouse, along with Jordan, who is the Apple Genius from Chicago who I have gotten to know pretty well because he was the most active in the Facebook group and was in my class at orientation. Our other roomie, Justin from South Africa, was the guy who maybe slept 10 hours in his entire 4 day stay. Don’t know how he did it, or how he survived it, but he was funny as hell.

Justin and Haylie(Rae)

Jordan and Kaleena

There is also Kaleena who I hung out with quite a bit at orientation and am located fairly close to in Daegu, so I’ll probably be talking about her in the coming year as well… and Katherine from South Africa who I’ve been reading her blog since before I knew it was hers… and Jeff who is placed in Daejeon, who only showed up on the last day, but climbed the mountain with us and spent a lot of time with us at orientation.

Johanna, Katherine, Nina, me, Kerri and Haylie

Jeff, Abby and myself

There’s Sarah from Ireland who has taught with EPIK before, Nina who can speak Korean fairly well seeing as she has been to SK several times before, Johanna who is Korean American and is fluent, but has never been to SK before, and Kerri from England who had a Korean flatmate before coming here, so she knows the ins and outs of Korea and can at least get around. There's Katie from Ireland (another blonde who, in the first day or so, I kept getting mixed up with Abby). Michael and Lizzie, a couple that are placed in Chungbuk and are super awesome.

Myself, Lizzie, Michael, Katherine, Adam, Sarah, and Katie eating Korean BBQ

Then there’s Abby- or should I say the other half of “Alby”. She is blonde and her initials are AB, just like me, so people kept getting us confused, calling me Abby, calling her Allie, so we just had to go with it. She has taught with the TaLK program before, so she too can get around fairly well, speaks a little Korean, and knows the ins and outs as well. We also ended up being roomies at orientation, so I ended up getting to know here the most probably. She is placed in Seoul, so I’ll definitely be visiting.

  

There are tons more guesthouse ninjas, too many to talk about, but I’m so glad that I got a few extra days to get to know these wonderful people… I have to admit I cried just a little when I said “goodbye” to them this morning in Daejeon… even though I know I’ll bee seeing them all soon…

Now that I'm oriented....

Orientation was a great 8 days. Aside from preparing us to teach, they also prepared us for life in Korea, and we met some awesome people.

Our first morning, we were woken up by the wonderful PA system in our building to let us know they were running early for their already extremely early schedule. We had to quickly get ready for our medical exam, where they checked our eye sight, hearing, blood pressure, took chest x-rays, a blood sample and a urine test. I was actually really relieved when the lady taking my blood got a vein on her first stick. It isn't usually that easy. 

Welcome to EPIK Orientation

Korea has great "Konglish" on their coffee cups

First stick!

Buffet meals

That evening we had our opening banquet. There were some awesome performances, women singing traditional songs, girls dancing to traditional music and guys doing a traditional performance while drumming and using other instruments while dancing and twirling these bobby things and streamers on their heads. It was really fun watching the dancers and singers.

Opening ceremony- Singers

Dancer

Pom Pom guy

My favorite act

The next two days we spent going to classes, starting at 7:30am with breakfast, on the fourth day of orientation, we took a field trip to a traditional Korean folk village, Youngin. There, we got to do crafts (my class made masks and learned a quick dance) and watch some fun performances as well (a tight rope performance, people doing acrobatics and such on horses, and those guys with the pom pom and streamers on their heads-- I love them!). It was a lot of fun getting to relax and take a day off of classes, but again it was tiring. The next two days were spent doing the 8 to 8 classes again, with added work at night because we had to prepare for our lesson demonstrations at the end of the orientation. We did get to take a taekwondo class, which was extremely funny, and painful in the following days. We did jumping jacks, we did kicks, we did punches, we did running and stretching and things that seemed more like dancing than actual fighting. But even after a huge blood blister on my toe, we all had a great time.

Had to draw a picture on top of our heads

We had to draw this with the book on top of our heads. The directions were: "Draw a lake in the middle of your page. Now draw 3 trees to the right of the lake. Now draw a house to the left of the lake. Draw a sun above the trees. Draw a square window and a rectangular door on the house. Draw a car below the trees. Lastly, draw a sailboat in the middle of the lake." I didn't peek... I think I did pretty well!

Taekwondo class

Learning to bow 

Wearing traditional clothing.... the dress is a "hanbok"

Youngin

Creating masks

 

Dancing

My favorite lunch- bibimbop.... SO GOOD

The streamer and pom pom guys again!

Tight rope

These girls were so cute!

Karaoke on the bus home

On our last day we had our lesson demonstrations, where we were assigned groups of 2-3 and were given an age level and topic to teach. I personally think our group did really well (seeing as we had to condense a 45 minute lesson into 15, and there were 3 of us teaching instead of 2) and got a good review from the instructor. After the lesson demos were  finished, we had a meeting with our MOE (metropolitan office of education) where we were given a packet with our contracts (yay!) and other vital information. We were also assigned buses for the following morning and were given luggage tags (3 for the luggage, and one to keep). When I went up to the lady and told her I didn’t have enough luggage tags, she looked at me like I was insane. She ended up telling me to use the 4^th one and take a picture of it instead of keeping it. I thought it was a good solution.

Class 7A leader- Boram

So cute

They got so emotional from just a card!

After signing our contracts, we went to our farewell dinner, which was still buffet style, but had a huge selection (including a desert table) and the closing ceremony. We then had to go to our rooms and pack our bags to take downstairs. OMG was that the biggest mess you have ever seen. They had taped off areas for each city, and people were to leave their bags downstairs overnight. It was crazy, but ended up working out and being a really good solution to not being way to jam packed in the morning. So after I’d dropped my bags off, I met up with a few people and went out for one last hoorah.

Luggage waiting to be packed onto the buses- only about 1/20th of the bags

Closing ceremony

It's official!

It was actually a pretty low key night at first. We found this self serve bar way out of the way, which had a decent lager beer (from Thailand) for an OK price (beer is pretty expensive here unless you want crappy beer). We then decided to relocate and ended up at the Hof, which is where we had gone a few nights prior. There were SO many EPIK people in this bar, but we did luck into some seats, and the cute little lady brought us a few extra plastic tables and chairs over. They were so nice, and I’m sure totally overwhelmed. The night was fun, but I knew I had a long day ahead of me so I took it easy.

Lager from Thailand

The group

My roomie- the other half of "Alby"

The girls

The next morning it was time to say “goodbye”. Some of my friends had gotten up early in order to say goodbye, and they ended up helping me take all of my bags up a hill with stairs (they are amazing- thank you guys if you are reading this). Then we piled onto our buses and headed out to our new home—DAEGU!

Looking back, I don’t know how people move to another country without an orientation like the one EPIK provided us. They were so amazing with answering all of our questions and preparing us for this next adventure in our lives. I feel like the staff really did want each and every one of us to succeed. The National Director even ate lunch with us and ended up being on my bus on the day of the field trip (he even sang karaoke). I think they just realize that we are all nervous, this is all so new to us, and they have been in our shoes before.

Class 7!!

I really did get to meet some awesome people, and conveniently several people that are right in my neighborhood (literally- one within a 2 minute walk from my apartment and 2 others within a 10 minute walk). And I’m sure that there are a few others that aren’t that much further away. Kaleena is 2 subway stops away, which I think would be about an hour walk, but only about a 20 minute bus ride (possibly less). There are a few other people that are down her way as well, so I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s part of town. But first, I have to get settled on my own.