Photos on Flickr

I just created a Flickr account so if you just can't get enough of the exciting photos on this blog then you can head over there and check out the rest! Just follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akgregory/

I will try and keep it updated as we do things even if I don't blog about them right away.

Church in Korea

For our first Sunday in Korea we were invited by some of our co-workers to attend the English service at their church. It was only a short 15 minute walk from our apartment complex. Now, I had heard there were some large churches in Korea, but I was totally unprepared for the size of this one. Ansan Dongsan Church has about 15,000 members and the English service is held on the 10th floor of their education wing. Yes, that's right, I said 10th floor. Seriously, the place was ginormous! Architecturally, the building is amazing. The front of the main building has a huge glass curtain wall, behind which the main auditorium seems almost like a suspended cube. See below for a photo.

Through a little research on Wikipedia we found out that the largest church congregation in the world is actually in Seoul. Currently they have about about 780,000 members. Perhaps we will visit sometime...I'm guessing that they probably have about 10 English services!

School Days

The day after we arrived in Ansan we reported to our school bright and early...at 1:30pm. Our director, Mr. Kim, took us to the hospital to have a health check-up required to complete the visa process. We then went to the bank and set up our Korean accounts. The good news is that our paychecks will be automatically deposited on payday every month, but the bad news is that our first payday won't be until November 8th - yikes!

Our first week at the school consisted of meeting with Mr. Kim to discuss various aspects of Korean culture and guidelines for getting over our jet lag, observing a couple classes and learning the basics of the curriculum and teaching schedule from our supervisor, Sophia. Also, at Mr. Kim's request we spent a couple days decorating 2 bulletin boards with pictures of the U.S. and Great Britain. Luckily, we were given a head's up before we left home so were able to bring some supplies with us. The students thought it was fascinating to come watch us work on their breaks between classes!

Our first official day of teaching was Thursday October 2nd. However, since there was a teacher that missed a week of classes due to a hospital stay we had to fill in for him a couple of times previous to that. Luckily, the most we had to do was give the students a test. The first couple of days were pretty easy with not many classes, but the next Monday we each had to take on an additional 2 or 3 classes on top of our 6 assigned ones to cover for another teacher. Since our MWF schedule is the busiest I figured that after making it through that long day everything else this year would seem easy. It was sink or swim, and I'm happy to report that we survived! Once we got a few days of the curriculum under our belts it all started to make more sense.

My students range from 1st grade to 7th grade. The younger kids are much more fun but harder to communicate with than the older ones. For the most part the 6th and 7th graders are not very well behaved and it's obvious that they would rather be anywhere else but sitting in that classroom. It's not surprising because by the time they come to school it's already almost 8:00pm.

This is the reception area of the school and what you see when you get off the elevator on the 5th floor.

A view looking through the reception area towards the elevator.

This is the first of the 2 main hallways.

Second hallway - there are probably about 15 classrooms total on the 5th floor and maybe another 5 on the 6th floor.

The students like to run around the hallways and so there are some signs posted to get their attention. This one is my favorite!

The first of our bulletin board projects. Since we had limited time to gather pictures all of the UK is represented with pictures of London!

Our USA bulletin board. Once again, we had to do the best we could to tie all our random pictures together. The large image of Garth Brooks at the bottom is used to symbolize the cowboy and American west!

Here is a view of our staff room. Right now there are 8 foreign teachers, 7 Korean teachers and our supervisor (and sometimes teacher) Sophia who all share this working space.

Another view of the staff room.

Here is my little desk for the next year. Everyone keeps things very organized...mostly because if you didn't you'd have no room to work at all.

Address

For those of you out there who are dying to send me some mail, or better yet a package, here are the addresses you'll need.

Regular mail can be sent to our apartment at:

Andrea Gregory
Jugong Apt. 509-1306
1536 Sa-Dong
Ansan City, Kyunggi-Do
426-743, Korea (South)

For packages or anything larger than about 12" wide (our approx. mailbox size) it would probably be best to send them to our school address since we will have a better chance of receiving them:

Andrea Gregory
ECC Ansan
716 E-Dong, Hanyang Dae Plaza, 5th Floor
Ansan City, Kyunggi-Do
426-857, Korea (South)

I believe things can be sent via UPS, FedEx or the US Postal Service but I'm not sure how much it will cost.

We do have a phone in our apartment and if you are the type of person who knows how to make an international call the number is: 82-31-419-3141. 82 is the country code so I'm guessing you'd have to dial a "1" or some other numbers before that.

I have Skype which has been successful so far in making free phone calls using the internet. If you are a Skype user and I don't already have you as one of my contacts feel free to add me. My user name is akgregory.

Arrival in Ansan

The day before we left for Korea I was super stressed, to put it mildly. I was running around town doing last minute errands and trying to squish all my stuff into the suitcases. Our flight left from St. Louis so my parents drove me up there Monday afternoon the 22nd. We got a bit of a later start than I had planned, but would you expect anything less from me? We made it to Holly's house that evening and had a bit of a scare when we looked up the luggage size and weight regulations again for both United and Korean Air. Korean Air is very strict but after a couple calls to United we were assured that Korean Air would have to accept whatever luggage they sent over to them. Potential crisis avoided.

The next morning we made it to the airport in plenty of time for the quick flight to Chicago. In Chicago we had to change terminals and check-in at Korean Air for the second half of the journey. The 13 hour flight was a breeze - they had plenty of movies, TV shows, music and games in the seat back screens to keep a person entertained for at least 24 hours. The plane was really nice. We had to pass through at least 4 different sections of seating before finding ours. Luckily it was not full so we got to spread out across our row to have some room for sleeping. When we arrived in Korea it was about 4:00pm local time, 2:00am according to our internal time clocks...just about my normal bedtime!

Our director sent a van to pick us up at the airport and the driver was waiting with sign in hand just outside of the baggage claim area. Luckily, it was over an hour drive to our school so we both got a short nap. Our school is on the 5th and 6th floors of a large office building. We were a little dazed upon arrival but went upstairs for a couple minutes and got to meet a few of our fellow teachers. The driver then took us a few blocks away to meet our school director, Mr. Kim, at our apartment. Everything else from that evening is a little fuzzy since all I really wanted to do was go to bed. But, I do know that we got very lucky in the apartment department. Ours is really pretty spacious compared to what I was expecting. We have a western style bathroom with bathtub and shower, 2 bedrooms, kitchen/dining/living room, and large enclosed balcony with storage shelves and a washing machine. Our director made sure to show us how to use the washing machine ("small dirty, big dirty"), turn the gas stove on and off, and then he turned the TV on to the Discovery Channel before leaving us for the night with instructions to come to the school at 1:30 the next day.

Remember how I said all I wanted to do was go to bed at this point? Well, when we went to test them out we found that apparently Koreans like their mattresses hard, really really hard. I was reluctant to actually sleep on it but removed the existing nasty looking linens and put on my clean sheets and hoped for the best.

Well, this is what it felt like, minus the sleeping bag and mat. It was seriously like a rock. Needless to say, the next morning I had no problems getting out of bed, which I guess could be a good thing for me. I have since tried to remedy the problem by putting one of the old comforters on top of it for some padding. That didn't really help so we went to a bedding store and I bought another thick comforter to add to the first. It's a little better now but I still wake up a little stiff everyday. You have to make sure to lay on your back because if you accidentally lay on your side then your arms go to sleep because there is no give in the mattress springs!

The next day we were taken by our director to set up our Korean bank account and get our health check-up at the hospital. You can imagine how awkward that was when being done by someone who doesn't speak any English. It was good to get out and see a little of the city we will call home for the next year. Ansan has a population of about 715,000 which is small by Korean standards. We are connected to Seoul via the Seoul Metro Subway system. It is about an hour long trip which we have experienced a couple times already. But, that is another blog for another day.

Below are some photos of the apartment complex, school building and Ansan. For some interior shots of the apartment check out Holly's blog because I haven't taken any yet.

Our apartment complex...our building is next to the one on the far left of the picture.

Building 509 - that's us! We are in apartment #1306.

The view from our balcony consists of lots more buildings just like ours...

...a school (bottom right) with noisy school kids playing in the field every morning...

...and a ginormous church building. Very exciting stuff. Actually the mountains in the distance are a nice plus.

This is the building our school is in.

ECC stands for "English Children's Club"...I think. It's not really club however, just a place where the kids have to study late into the night so they can get a good test score and get into a good high school and then into a good college.

The school building again.

This is the area between the 2 buildings in the previous picture...the "neighborhood" around our school and the area we go to eat dinner or go to the convenience store.

Another view of the street life. Everything is very well-lit!

Goodbyes

Saying goodbye to all the people and places familiar to me was one of the hardest things about preparing to be gone for a year. I finished up at my job in St. Louis at the end of August. It was sad to clean out and pack up my desk and pass off my projects to others. But mostly, it was hard to say goodbye to my coworkers. I was more attached to them than I had ever realized but I guess that happens when you spend almost every day with someone. There were goodbye parties and some tears were shed.

Here is a picture of my desk before packing it up. Don't you like my large corner office? I had a nice view of the back parking lot.

Then, it was one last evening out with my friends to say goodbye. I will miss them all!! Here's a picture of Holly and I with our friend Deb.


My parents and brother drove up to St. Louis over Labor Day weekend to help me move out of my apartment. They were so helpful and considering that I had almost nothing packed up yet we really got a lot accomplished in less than 3 days.

My apartment before the move.

Everything that came out of the apartment.

The end result...so sad and empty.

After moving all my belongings to a storage unit near my parents house I took a week long trip to visit friends and family in Kansas.

Lucky for me it was the week of the Kansas State Fair. I spent a cold and windy afternoon there and it brought back many great childhood memories! It was really nice to get to spend more than just an extended holiday weekend with family and friends.

My brother and I with our grandparents.

Once back at my parent's house I had about a week to get my life in order and pack 2 giant suitcases with everything I would need for the year. I won't go into detail but let me just say that I didn't get much sleep that week.

Background

First off, let me just say that yes, I know I am really bad at blogging. I know, I've been in Korea now for at least 10 days and haven't posted anything yet. Well, that's going to change...starting now.

I wanted to just write a little about how this journey happened in the first place since some of you may be asking "why in the world would she move to South Korea?". My friend Holly and I have talked and dreamed for a long time about taking some sort of an extended trip to get the travel bug out of our system. We could never quite figure out how to do such a thing while still being able to support ourselves while away. Student loan payments don't just go away while you are out of the country! Anyway, this past spring when the idea of becoming an English teacher in South Korea presented itself, the whole thing just felt right. Good salary...check. Only working 30 hours a week...double check. Benefits including severance pay, health insurance and vacation time...triple check. And best of all is the chance to see another part of the world for an extended period of time!

We worked with a job recruiter to find a position that we were both happy with and then took on the long process of getting our work visa. It was a ton of paperwork but well worth it! The school purchased our plane tickets and after many hours of preparation we took off on September 23rd.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! Over the next year or so I will be posting updates, stories and photos of my adventures teaching ESL in South Korea and traveling around Asia. I hope this will be a great way to stay in touch with all the friends and family I am leaving behind. Keep checking back in the weeks to come for more details on my plans and when I will be leaving the country.