A Look Back on My First Month in Korea

Before you start reading this blog post, it might be wise to grab something to eat or drink or at least prepare yourself for a long read. This is probably going to be my longest blog post yet, and since I have a lot of thoughts, I'm not really sure how long or how cohesive it's actually gonna be. Now that you're situated and warned, let's get started.

It's been a full month since I first touched down in Korea and began this whirlwind of new experiences. I came with high expectations, expectations that proceeded to be met and exceeded very quickly. Korea has been everything I hoped it would be and more. I've truly fallen in love with the Korean culture and lifestyle and am looking forward to learning even more about it. However, my trip to Korea was never meant to be about travelling the world or learning about a new culture or about hearing lots of K-pop. From the beginning, I've meant for the journey to be something much more deep: a journey of self-discovery.

You see, in university it was easy to fall into a rut of routine and laziness. I hung out with the same people, did the same things, ate the same food, and played the same games. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my years at university and maybe I'm being a tad to harsh in judging myself and my habits, but there comes a point where routine just doesn't cut it anymore. It's really easy to tell yourself you're going to do new things or even make a resolution to try things out of your comfort zone, but it's also just as easy to ignore those resolutions and just keep doing the same old stuff. I'm slowing coming to realize that sticking to a routine isn't really that conducive to personal change.

So this trip to Korea was definitely the best possible decision I could make. A few weeks before I flew out, I made a list of things that I wanted to change about myself in Korea, things that would only really be easy to change with the fresh start that Korea brought. So far, I've been doing really well with keeping to that list here. I've met a ton of new people, been exposed to a completely different culture and language, and been forced into a huge number of new and challenging situations. I'm still the same Aaron deep down, but there's of changes that have occurred that have changed my outlook and myself for the better. I'm more self confident about myself, more willing to go outside of my comfort zone, and just in general feel more positive towards everything. So let me talk a little bit about my experiences as a whole that have brought about some of this change.

The first, most important experience has been teaching. Teaching children has made me more driven and more engaged than I've possibly ever been about a job. I don't know if it's just because I really like teaching or maybe because I'm focused on working hard, but I seem to mesh with teaching in Korea very well. I knew before coming to Korea about the Korean work ethic, a work ethic that is centered about working very hard. So coming to Korea, I intended to work very hard as well. However, when I arrived I found that this work ethic didn't apply to foreigners as much as I thought it might. If you think that stopped me from working hard though, you'd be wrong. I'm not often one to toot my own horn, but I think I definitely put in more hours than was expected of me. I try to come early every day to work and stay at least an hour or more after work ends to get everything done. And even though it was originally because I didn't want to seem like a slacker, I'm really enjoying staying later. I don't want to say it's easy to stay extra time (because it isn't), but I do it because I'm genuinely enjoying teaching. The reason I stay later is so that I can put some extra thought into lessons or finish grading some papers. I want to be the best possible teacher I can be to these kids, so the extra time flies by really easily.

Something else along the lines of teaching has also changed me: the kids. I'm not vain enough to think that all the kids like me, but hearing some of their reactions to things I've done is probably the greatest reward of teaching. For example, in one of my classes out of six students, there were only two that weren't being disruptive. As I've been instructed, after my class I talked to one of my fellow teachers about it, to get advice on how to deal with the trouble-making students as well as to get any insight they had about how to control the students. I had more classes after that class, so I returned to my classroom to teach and didn't think anything more about it until the end of the day. At the end of the day, I went to that class' homeroom teacher to see if she had any advice for me. What happened next was possibly one of the best feelings I've had as a teacher. The homeroom teacher said she had just got off the phone with the mother of one of the kids that was being a good student. Apparently, when the homeroom teacher had told his mother what a good student the kid had been (despite the disruptive student in the class), the kid had become incredibly excited because I had complimented his behavior. The fact that my simple approval could make the student that happy was so amazing and really made me feel like I was doing my job as a teacher. And that hasn't been the only case, there's actually been more than a few cases where I've heard that my students said I made them think deeper or had just made them really excited to be in my class. Being able to inspire young children to be excited to learn and take part in class is feeling that is pretty much incomparable.

On the topic of new feelings and experiences, there have been a number of other experiences besides teaching that have taken me out of my comfort zone. The fact that I have to speak an entirely different language is so foreign to me that it's definitely taking me some time to get used to. However, the confidence I get from being able to speak or understand the smallest amount of the language is huge. There's something about being able to easily use a phrase or understand portions of a conversation that's very uplifting. Even being able to understand the elementary Korean my students use is a huge confidence boost. That, combined with my continual increased comfort with the language, just makes all these new experiences and challenges that much better. I've always loved the feeling of mastering something and the continual improvement to my mastery of the language feels really good.

Finally, even my open-mindness to the different foods in Korea has a profound and positive effect on me as a person. There's a number of things I never would have tried if I hadn't come to Korea (octopus, slug, unnamed meats). Being open to trying all these new things has really changed me, and even though I haven't been a fan of everything I've tried, I'm still very glad I'm willing to open my mind to the possibilities. Heck, I've even kinda instituted a personal rule for eating, along the lines of "don't ask, don't tell". I don't ask my friends what I'm eating and they don't tell me.

I could still go on for pages about all the fantastic things being in Korea has done for me, but since I'm starting to feel a little sleepy, that'll have to wait for another day. There is one point I'd like to conclude with though. I said this journey to Korea was a journey of self-discovery above all else. I've discovered so much about myself in just one month, that I really can't describe it all. But I do have to say, I'm more excited about what is still left to discover.

My Trip to Danyang Part Two

Sorry, for not posting anything sooner, but I ended up teaching eight classes and watching my first movie in all Korea (yay!) yesterday, so I didn't have time to post. Technically, I'm still in the next day here, so I'm doing what I promised. So without further ado, onto the rest of the story.

My second day in Danyang was pretty relaxed. The day started late, and we visited the local market again to get food for our lunch. Lunch was to be a boiled chicken soup, something very famous in Korea, but the Korean name I can't remember at the moment. Also, Toohyun picked up some 막걸리 (makgeolli) which is a Korean rice wine and we drank some of that with lunch. The boiled chicken soup was fantastic and was accompanied by a delicious vegetable salad with a kiwi dressing. After that we relaxed and watched some K-pop on TV, which eventually turned into a very odd Korean show about a bunch of forty-year old men doing a bunch of weird stuff. A little later we went out for ice cream, and then proceeded to head to the aquarium.

The Danyang Aquarium is actually quite impressive, despite it being in a relative rural area. It rivals the Vancouver Aquarium, with everything but the outdoor pools for dolphins and larger sea mammals. The interior is fantastic and has a number of fish, reptiles, and amphibians from all over the world, so I of course got to see my favourite animals: frogs! After the aquarium, we went out for some Korean BBQ (do you see a trend?) and I got my first chance to try freshwater slugs. Quite an interesting dish, but they weren't that bad. We went to different restaurants, had some soju at both, then once we were full we went home (grabbing some more soju at a convenience store before we got home).

The rest of the night I spent by drinking soju, attempting to speak Korean with Teresa and not doing very well, and eating a number of different seafood snacks called anju (안주). Anju is the Korean term used to describe food eaten when drinking. Finally, I taught Teresa how to count to a million in English and then went to bed, full and happy.

The next morning we left early to beat traffic and because we were meeting Sarah's mom and brother to have Korean BBQ for lunch (surprise!). When we were there, I found out that Sarah's grandmother was recovering from a knee surgery in the hospital, so we decided to go visit here. When we got to the hospital, a number of interesting things happened. First, I was introduced to almost all of Sarah's family on her mother's side. Remember when I said all the students called me handsome? Well, apparently my face type or body type or just being a foreigner is very attractive to Koreans. I got a number of compliments from Sarah's family and one of Sarah's aunts even tried to set me up with her daughter! And I don't mean she suggested it, I mean she actually called her daughter, had her daughter talk to me, and then sent a picture of me to her daughter. Then, in another Korean custom, I was forced to eat even more, despite just eating lunch. And of course we had some makgeolli with it. I didn't even know it was legal to drink in hospitals!

Eventually we made our way out and Sarah and Toohyun drove me back to my apartment in Osan. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and I loved every second of it! I'll post a few more things about Korean culture that I've noticed over the past three weeks, but that's for another post. Thanks for sticking with me through this lengthy blog post and I'll update soon!

My Trip to Danyang Part One

Sorry everyone for not posting much in the past week! My school had a three day vacation, so I suddenly had five days off in a row. So, thanks to the generosity of one of my coworkers, it was off to Danyang (단양) for three days!

Danyang is a city in rural Korea, about halfway between Busan and Seoul. It's apparently quite famous for garlic and most of the dishes were served with lots of garlic on the side or in the dish. It's also apparently the Mecca for fishers, and has an aquarium that rivals the aquarium in Vancouver. We ended up arriving on Friday afternoon and were shown up to the apartment I would be staying at. My friend's husband's family lives in Danyang, so I would be staying with my friend, him, and his mother. For clarity, my fellow teacher's name is Sarah, her husband's name is Toohyun, and his mother's name is Teresa.

Immediately afterwards I was shown around the traditional market there, as we waited for a couple of my Sarah's friends. As we walked around, Teresa bought some food for the dinner we were going to be having. I was given lots of different things to try, and I have to say all of it was delicious. Sarah's friends arrived soon, so we ate a small lunch and then set off to a famous tourist destination.

There were lots of photos from the trip, but I'll only be posting a couple to keep the blog smaller. I'll probably upload more to my Google+ if people want to see more. This castle is called 온달관광지 which translates to Ondal Tourist Attraction. It's a recreation of a castle used in a number of different movies and TV dramas. Most interestingly, it's connected to a cave almost 1 km in length. So we got to explore that portion as well, which definitely had some pretty tight squeezes.

After 온달관광지 we headed back home to get ready for dinner. As most of the conversation about dinner had been in Korean, I didn't really know what to expect. Turns out that we were headed to one of Toohyun's friend's farms to pick some fresh vegetables and eat Korean BBQ. So of course, a 12 pack of soju was picked up, despite the fact that only three of us would be drinking: Toohyun, one of Sarah's friends, and I. The meal was absolutely amazing, and I ate so much. I learned a fair bit about pouring drinks for elders, as well as a lot of table manners. It was a fantastic night!

I'll post Part 2 later today or tomorrow, as I'm headed off to work now.